As a new year begins we can’t help but look back at whats been a strangely filled year for Star Trek. 2024 was a bittersweet year with a stunning amount of Star Trek on our screens, all of which was coming to an end in their final and news from behind the curtain about the next steps into the final frontier.
Looking back at the highlights, even with saying goodbye to three separate shows in the wider universe, it’s still been a tremendously good year in the final frontier!
LONE GUARDIAN
One of Star Trek’s biggest surprises in recent years was the animated show built for a teenage audience as a gateway to the franchise and it’s second season was a massive highlight for Star Trek in 2024.
Now protege’s of Admiral Janeway, the outlaw crew became entwined in the search for Chakotay in a story that gave the history of the Protostar, explaining how it became a lost starship in the first season. In telling the story Captain Chakotay was found and saved after being lost in time and living alone on the abandoned ship before Dal and the crew bring hope of escape.
Bringing a new lease of life to Chakotay, and in a way making up for his being lost in the background of Voyages later seasons, the series showed it’s value in using legacy characters to help shape a new generation while giving one of the most satisfying and well-built finale’s the franchise has seen in a long time. Adding Chakotay to the mix without the flashbacks made for an excellent addition to the extended cast while adding an extra layer of emotional nostalgia as he and Janeway were finally reunited.
With the fate of the show now in the hands of Netflix after some studio shenanigans, it’s likely we’ll never see Gwyn’s crew and her officers in training’s first adventure, especially with Ella Purnell’s calendar filling up with other ventures including Sweetpea and Fallout. So if that was the end, it at least ended on a high for the crew of the USS Prodigy.
THE NEW CLASS
With only brief glimpses of the idea in DS9, TNG and the Kelvin Timeline, we’ve never quite seen the Academy in action but it’s an idea thats been floating around for quite some time. Since it became public knowledge that the sixth Star Trek film was almost an Academy-based flashback to bring in younger actors, there’s been a call for Starfleet Academy to become it’s own TV show and now we’re in a world where it’s actually happening!
While the show won’t be released until later this year at the earliest, production began in Canada for the latest addition to the Star Trek world with a surprise batch of cast involved. Mary Wiseman as a guest star was a given, but throughout last year we got more returning cast including Robert Picardo as the Doctor still going strong, a returning Jet Reno and amongst a group of new cadets looking to make their mark, two huge names as regulars in Paul Giamatti and Holly Hunter!
With more announced since then, including Orphan Black and She Hulk star Tatiana Maslani and multi time WWE Womens Champion Becky Lynch, there’s certainly been more than enough news to keep the hype going for the rebuilding of the Academy in the 32nd century!
ENGAGE THE CORE!
Joining an ever growing list of projects that have came to a close, Lower Decks aired it’s final season to close 2024 on the Star Trek calendar. Utilising cameo’s and in jokes aplenty to fuel itself along, Lower Decks had also turned the idea of Star Trek venturing into animated comedy into a bit of a success and even transferred to live action with a Strange New Worlds crossover.
Easily quotable, Lower Decks won a lot of hearts by bringing many fan jokes into the story right up to it’s penultimate episode with the Ensign Kim trope becoming a plot point. But the self deprecating humour of Trekkies everywhere was far from the shows strength as over it’s five seasons it did it’s fair share of character building to make the quirky underdogs into well rounded characters starting – or in one case restarting – their career into Starfleet.
Celebrating everything it had achieved, the finale made a big effort to avoid the old Trek lore and focus on Lower Decks own history to bring the main cast to a satisfying conclusion. With an exciting and engaging adventure that had the Cerritos on Enterprise level duties, we saw the crew rise us to be the heroes of the hour before setting off on new adventures.
TIME TO PLAY THE GAME!
Far from the canon world of the Star Trek Universe, the gaming world based around the long-running Star Trek Online had some fun updates for the expanded gaming media part of the franchise. Long before STO became the dominant game on the video game branch of Star Trek, many others had filled the void from DS9’s Harbinger to the unsurprisingly limited Starship Creator experience. In 2024, now under new management at German-based DECA, STO’s developers decided to play tribute to games of the past byt expanding their fleet with older game assets.
Included in the first bundle was the massive tank-like Typhoon carrier from 2000’s Playstation entry Invasion; Gizmo Games’ entry the Achilles from 2001 PC combat game Dominion Wars; and the Premonition, a Sovereign-styled ship from Blizzard’s Star Trek strategy game Armada. On top of that we even got some carrier pets and the rifle from Elite Force.
Sure, the continuation of the game’s current story featuring Mirror Universe Borg, General Janeway and using our own character as the Terran baddie is also a bonus. Btu nothing beats the nostalgia of grabbing those old ships with new features for Star Trek Online’s expanding force!
FINAL DISCOVERY
Just as The Next Generation had done in the 80’s, Discovery was a complete regeneration of Star Trek even before it launched it’s first episode in 2017. Beginning it’s life as a mystery drama that would tell the tale of Starfleets first mutineer, the show reinvented itself by going beyond any era seen in Star Trek so far to bring the 23rd century idealism into the 32nd.
Often a target for not being an extension of the Next Generations style or format, Discovery suffered from being the first show under the harrowing social media microscope and would make several changes to appeal to fans of both old and new styles. In 2024 we saw the final episodes released, closing this generations flagship show in it’s fifth and final season with a format that perhaps did bring the best of both worlds when it came to old and new styles.
Reviving an old thread that was never revisited, Discovery’s final tale would go back to a loose thread from Picard’s era. In the Next Generations sixth season episode, The Chase, Picard;”s former mentor Galen left enough breadcrumbs that could be followed, leading to the discovery of the Progenitors; an ancient and extinct species who had spread the seeds of life throughout the galaxy leading to the knowledge that many warring planets all came form the same source genetic history.
A fairly large reveal, the story was lost in the episodic format and Picard went onto the next mission after Riker goes a bit mad. Centuries later,t eh displaced Captain Burnham and her crew would be tasked with finding the Progenitor technology before rivals of the weakened Federation did. In doing so Discovery ‘s final season played out in an episodic format as the followed the trail and figured out clues with a story of the week vibe that arched into one giant ten part puzzle.
Like any iteration of Star Trek (or any media, for that matter), Discovery’s wasn’t for everyone. But to see the show pick up a thread from Trek’s past to wrap up it’s final season and deliver a final story of exploring the inner strengths of the crew and their shared adventure made for a fitting end while allowing other shows to develop in it’s place.
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