Saturday’s “Star Trek Universe” panel in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con was packed with cast, crew, and—most importantly—announcements that fired up the entire audience.
Strange New Worlds
Strange New Worlds was up first. Next season, Scotty (Martin Quinn) will be a regular and Doctor Roger Korby will make an appearance. This relates to showrunner Akiva Goldsman’s comment in a 2023 interview with Variety: “We’re always doing the thing that we do best, which is secretly just a lot of relationship stories in space.” Roger Korby is Nurse Christine Chapel’s (Jess Bush) future fiancé.
That’s a fun description of the show, as there’s been a lot of romance brewing here and there, but I do wonder if all of the shown romances will continue to be heterosexual ones or if we’ll get some queerness in the mix. With Discovery being over and Lower Decks being canceled, we’re suddenly very short on queer representation.
Next up we got a quick look at a future Strange New Worlds episode, in which Pike (Anson Mount), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), La’an (Christina Chong), Chapel, and Pelia (Carole Kane) are administered a serum meant to transform them into Vulcans. It works for four of the five, much to Pelia’s dismay, and Spock (Ethan Peck) has to join four (temporarily) full Vulcans on a mission as he’s constantly reminded of how he’s only half Vulcan.
It’s played for laughs and played well, but I do hope we get some time to focus on how that has to wear Spock down and bother him considering the initial attempt to turn them back to humans fails and they’ll be stuck like that for some time.
During the panel, Goldsman said one of the things that keeps Strange New Worlds fresh is his freedom to try out new genres and see what the cast can take on. So far they’ve succeeded at every challenge, including the now well-known musical episode and the upcoming Hollywood murder mystery one. In fact, the musical episode went so well that the panel teased a possible staged Star Trek musical.
Peck and Rebecca Romijn (Una Chin-Riley/Number One) were present at the panel but neither had a lot of questions to answer. Romijn did say that we’ll get a lot of Number One in the captain’s chair in Season 3.
Lower Decks
Next up was Lower Decks, ushered in with a trailer showing some of the many high points of the last four seasons and another teasing few things to come. The latter, seen below, reveals that Season 5 will launch on October 24.
Joining executive producer Alex Kurtzman on the panel were series creator Mike McMahan and cast members Tawny Newsome (Beckett Mariner), Jack Quaid (Bradward Boimler), Noël Wells (D’Vana Tendi), and Jerry O’Connell (Commander Jack Ransom).
The whole cast seems to agree that Season 5 is their characters’ collective growth era and that the one way to save Lower Decks—if it can be saved—is through fan campaigns. (Season 5 is the series finale.) Prodigy Season 2 did eventually see daylight, after all, so there’s always a chance.
Among the jokes and camaraderie was the repetition of something McMahan and Kurtzman have said multiple times: Star Trek doesn’t punch down and that’s how Lower Decks is consistently funny.
Unfortunately, that isn’t accurate. Star Trek: Lower Decks has punched down. It’s just been at disabled people. Season 2 focused on the Pakled race and the entire ‘joke’ was that intellectual disabilities exist, despite how the Pakled got to space on their own. There were other issues with disability representation in Season 2 specifically, but this isn’t the time for a retread.
Starfleet Academy
Thanks to previous questions from the audience, we learned that the upcoming series Starfleet Academy will have a Deaf character and one who uses a wheelchair. This is the Star Trek series that isn’t about being heroes out saving and exploring the stars. Considering the attitudes shown in Strange New Worlds toward disability—from Pike acting like disability will end his career and essentially his life, to Hemmer saying that a blind human wouldn’t make it in Starfleet—this news feels less exciting than it should be.
We need more disabled characters and disabled stories. But in a franchise that’s all about going to the stars and exploring strange new worlds and new civilizations, disabled people deserve to be out there doing all of that as well.
When asked if there were disabled writers in the Starfleet Academy writing room, writer Tawny Newsome answered, “I can’t say because not all disabilities are visible.” That in itself says a great deal—no one in the room deals with a very noticeable disability, yet the creators are writing a Deaf character and a wheelchair user. This points to comedic stories about us without us yet again.
However, some announcements concerning Starfleet Academy are encouraging. Namely, Kurtzman and co-executive producer/showrunner Noga Landau announced that Tig Notaro, Mary Wiseman, Oded Fehr, and Robert Picardo have joined the cast.
The panel also shared a particularly heartwarming video of the younger cast members hearing for the first time that they got their roles (seen above). There’s absolutely heart and potential there. I’m just a little concerned due to modern Trek’s abysmal history with disability representation, especially when Newsome and franchise Strange New Worlds Jonathan Frakes have been dismissive of the important historical context of Pike’s mobility device in the past.
Section 31
Our first-ever trailer for Section 31, introduced by a video from star Michelle Yeoh, shows a very action-focused piece with a glimpse into what made Empress Georgiou who she is.
The movie, which does not yet have a release date, looks to be an exploration of her character and the Terran Empire rather than a story about spy shenanigans, and in my opinion, that’s a very good thing. The eponymous Section 31 can’t be the good guys in a utopia because they’re secret police. But delving into how twisted people in a twisted empire twist others could be a fascinating journey if I’m reading the trailer correctly.
Joining the panel in person were Omari Hardwick, Sam Richardson, Olatunde Osunsanmi, and Kacey Rohl. Rohl was revealed to be playing Rachel Garrett, a character featured in the memorable Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. Richardson will play a chameloid, which we’ve only seen once before in Star Trek IV.
Section 31 will look at the messy side of the Star Trek universe, following the third ‘incarnation’ of Georgiou after all the development she’s gone through. The stunt work looks fantastic. It’s exciting to see Yeoh getting back to her action roots while also still being in Star Trek.
The future seems pretty bright for Star Trek fans even with recent cancellations. There’s lots more to come on the horizon and maybe, just maybe, we can find a way to keep Lower Decks going if we rally.
Stay tuned for more SDCC ’24 coverage from The Beat.
