Infinite diversity in infinite combinations. That's the mantra of Star Trek fans across the world. Yet when it came to alien life the infinite combinations and diversity often came down to face-paint and prosthetics on noticeably normal people. There's little to separate human and Betazoid aside from dark eyes. Vulcans are human looking with pointed ears. Even the reptilian Cardassians have human features buried under rubber and glue.
Over the past few years through Comms, we've looked back at past iterations of Star Trek with rose coloured glasses and a bit of humour. This time round, we're reaching back only seven years for the 'youngest' retro review to date. Since it's debut in 2017, Discovery has launched a whole new world of Star Trek from animated comedies, to sombre reunions with past heroes. Ait all began with Discovery. This year the flagship show of the modern era comes to a close as Michael Burnham leads her crew through a treasure hunt that began centuries before her time. With the end in sight for Discovery as a series, we're looking right back to the beginning. The episode that, not only kicked off the show, but of the modern Star Trek era.
Whenever you ask a DS9 fan where to start, the answer is rarely from the beginning. The first seasons of the show were good, sometimes great. The foundations were laid for a darker show than the flagship adventures of the Enterprise We had Federation turncoats in the Maquis; an uneasy peace between Bajor and their former oppressors in Cardassia; there was politics and religion crossing over on all fronts and from the end of season two we had the Dominion lurking on the far side of the wormhole teasing their incoming takeover of Federation Space.
The word 'Legacy' has been storming every corner of fan circles since the closing episode of Star Trek Picard which saw the former captains story with the Borg come full circle in more ways than one. While showrunner Terry Matalas has said there's nothing confirmed with Paramount to his grand plan to continue the stage set by the finale, we're digging into the Comms archive to look back at one of the touch stones of the seasons story arcs.
In a diplomatic mission gone wrong, Captain Picard is beamed back home to the Enterprise after being shot in the chest and dies. The shot blew out his mechanical heart and as he crosses the celestial border from life to death, he's met with his creator. Or at least someone claiming to be God, his old pal Q. Q explains the situation. The heart, or lack of, killed him. Then he plays back the fight that made him lose hos actual heart; a bar room brawl with a Nausican when the Captain was a newly minted Ensign. As Picard watches his young self being stabbed through the chest, leading to an artificial heart being implanted leading to it being shorted out decades later, Q gives his old pal a choice. Stay dead, or go back and fix the mistake.
These days Star Trek can, and is, a collection of tales with multiple settings. From secretive science experiments, to unimportant Starships. In the 1990's Star Trek was seen as only one thing: A crew exploring space on the Enterprise. And there was even pushback to there being a different Enterprise and crew in the 80's before the launch of The Next Generation. But producers of the time weren't worried about cries of heresy as they came up with a new plan to expand the Star Trek Universe with Deep Space Nine.
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