Variant Covers #2
Bye-bye 2021, hello New Year ramblings
Despite another fuck storm of a year, I believe 2021 ended on a high note for sci-fi fans. We finally got to see Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” (Part One). Marvel brought the Spiderverse to live-action in “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” The king of bounty hunters returns in, The Book of Boba Fett, directed by indie OG Robert Rodriguez.
Marvel kicked major ass this year with their Disney+ shows “WandaVision,” “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” “Loki,” “What If…” and “Hawkeye.” On the big screen, films like “Black Widow,” “Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “Eternals,” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” smashed the box office.
Paramount+ has been killing it in the Star Trek department. This year’s “Star Trek: Discovery” (Disco) season four and the new children’s animated series, “Star Trek: Prodigy” have been this year’s high points, as far as I’m concerned. Disco season four has embodied the ideals of Star Trek in a way that no show has done since possibly the “Star Trek: Voyager” days.
This season, Sonequa Martin-Green’s Michael Burnham takes the Captain’s chair as Star Trek’s first black female captain to headline a series. Martin-Green shines this season as her character fully embodies the ideals of Starfleet and the Federations, namely, understanding and cooperation. In this first half of the season, the newly appointed Federation President leans heavily on Burnham and her crew’s ability to see things from the perspective of a time when the Federation and Starfleet were on an exploratory and humanitarian mission. This season sees the Discovery crew facing a massive gravitational anomaly that threatens all life in its path. This threat provides the perfect opportunity for the Federation to rebuild after it was decimated 100 years prior (A mystery Burnham and crew solved in season 3 after being hurtled 900 years into this strange new future).
In the midseason finale, we see the remaining federation members meeting with former and potential allies and members to discuss the threat facing them all. Impassioned speeches frame the dilemma of whether to seek contact with the species that may have sent the gravitic anomaly to their galaxy or destroy the anomaly and launch an attack on whoever sent it. Ah, that age-old human dilemma, to think about and resolve a problem thoughtfully, or to blow it up? Not to give away too many spoilers, but surprisingly for today’s writing, the new Federation council votes to solve the problem with diplomacy. Of course, it wouldn’t be dramatic storytelling if someone didn’t disagree with that idea and tried to take things into their own hands. We’ll have to wait until the next half of season four premiers in February, but I’m sure the crew of Discovery will tackle this dilemma with mindfulness, compassion, and badass-ness!
“Star Trek: Prodigy” is a show I wished I had when I was a kid. If I couldn’t have it as a kid then I wish my kids could have had this when they were little. This would have been the perfect show to watch with my little ones when they were actually still little. It does a great job of introducing Star Trek ideals to children. Using “Star Trek: Voyager’s” Captain Janeway, and bringing Kate Mulgrew back to voice her, is the stroke of genius that makes this new age of Trek so exciting. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where the crew of the USS Protostar go next.
