As part of a twentieth-anniversary look at 1994 at a site I write for, I contributed a look at the state of Star Trek that year. It's a long one, and I hope y'all like it!
Topics covered include: the circumstances under which Our Heroes will sneak around, two endings to The Next Generation that aren't really endings because TNG can't have an ending, the five times the Enterprise blew up in a single calendar year, worldbuilding across shows, Ben Sisko's reaction to a utopian society made with a build-a-Walden kit, a healthy family on television(!), a spate of people defecting from the military to join a struggle that isn't really theirs, some things that Gene Roddenberry might've had a word or two about had he not died, the carefully shifting aesthetic of the Trek movies, TOS cast members performing a script by TNG writers, Guinan's sense of inner peace, the hype building for Voyager, how & why Picard and Kirk's Nexus fantasies diverge from what you'd expect given their characters, Soran's philosophy, and the totemic sacrifices that must be made for TNG to assume its place of prominence.
Topics covered include: the circumstances under which Our Heroes will sneak around, two endings to The Next Generation that aren't really endings because TNG can't have an ending, the five times the Enterprise blew up in a single calendar year, worldbuilding across shows, Ben Sisko's reaction to a utopian society made with a build-a-Walden kit, a healthy family on television(!), a spate of people defecting from the military to join a struggle that isn't really theirs, some things that Gene Roddenberry might've had a word or two about had he not died, the carefully shifting aesthetic of the Trek movies, TOS cast members performing a script by TNG writers, Guinan's sense of inner peace, the hype building for Voyager, how & why Picard and Kirk's Nexus fantasies diverge from what you'd expect given their characters, Soran's philosophy, and the totemic sacrifices that must be made for TNG to assume its place of prominence.
