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Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard Season 3, Episode 8 - "Surrender" Star Trek: Picard season 3, episode 8 "Surrender" saw Data (Brent Spiner) face off against his evil brother Lore (Brent Spiner) seemingly for the last time, but has the benevolent android finally seen the last of his evil brother? Data and Lore's consciousnesses were restored inside a new, advanced Soong-type android by Altan Inigo Soong (Brent Spiner), the son of Dr. Noonien Soong (Brent Spiner), the androids' creator. Once rescued from Daystrom Station, it became clear Data and Lore were vying for control of the new body.

The Data/Lore hybrid proved to be dangerous, and Vadic's (Amanda Plummer) capture of the USS Titan-A called for a drastic solution. After Commodore Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) removed the partition separating the two personalities, Data and Lore began a battle inside the new android body for ultimate control. The battle ended with a decisive victor and an exciting new rebirth.

What Data Did To Lore In Star Trek: Picard Season 3, Episode 8

At the outset of their positronic battle, the ruthless Lore seemingly had the upper hand, as he attempted to erase Data piece by piece. Data even offered Lore his memories, since Lore had so few of his own, and Data believed his memories defined him and were the best of him. A bemused Lore absorbed all of Data's memories, and Data's essence seemingly dissipated.

Lore didn't realize Data had tricked him. By absorbing the memories Data offered to him, Lore was absorbing Data himself, slowly merging with him and eventually becoming him. As was always apparent, Lore was a minor consciousness compared to Data, and he now exists as a small part of Data's consciousness alongside Altan Soong, the prototype android B-4 (Brent Spiner) , and Data's late daughter Lal (Hallie Todd).

Chances are very good that Lore is finally gone for good this time. He wasn't simply disassembled or deactivated this time - Data essentially absorbed everything Lore ever was, holding onto only the good bits, like his grasp of humor and use of contractions. Data's new, more human form may technically be a hybrid of several different android memories and personalities, but Data is clearly in the positronic driver's seat.

Lore is ultimately something of a tragic figure. He was incredibly close to the ideal artificial life form Dr. Noonien Soong had dreamed of, but he lacked basic human empathy, a flaw he could never truly overcome. His last moment realization that he had lost to Data and was essentially facing death felt something like acceptance. Star Trek: Picard has finally returned Data to exciting new life, while bidding a final farewell to Lore.

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 streams Thursdays on Paramount+.

• Star Trek: Picard (2020)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)

• View history

Lore was a Soong-type android constructed by Doctor Noonien Soong and Juliana Soong at the Omicron Theta colony . Built in Dr. Soong's own image, Lore was the fourth android they constructed and embodied the first successful example of a fully functional positronic brain . An earlier model Soong-type android protype, B-4 , also had a positronic brain, but of a less sophisticated type, resulting in a simple-minded personality. ( TNG : " Inheritance ", " Datalore ", " Brothers "; Star Trek Nemesis )

Lore's head, removed from his body

Lore was extremely advanced and sentient , possessing megastrength , speed and intelligence when compared to a Human . Lore's emotional programming was also very advanced. However, he began displaying signs of emotional instability and malevolence, leading Lore to see himself as superior to Humans. Lore frightened the other colonists , who demanded that Soong deactivate him. Lore later claimed that they saw him as "too perfect", and were envious. ( TNG : " Brothers ", " Silicon Avatar ", " Inheritance ")

Eventually, Soong capitulated, but not before Lore had secretly contacted the Crystalline Entity in a bid for revenge, offering it the planet 's life to ensure his own survival. After deactivating and dismantling Lore, Soong set about constructing Lore's brother , Data , an android without destabilizing emotions. ( TNG : " Datalore ", " Brothers ", " Silicon Avatar ", " The Offspring ")

Lore's positronic net differed from Data's: it had a Type-"L" phase discriminator compared to Data's Type-"R". ( TNG : " Time's Arrow ")

Soong placed Lore's components into storage, intending to eventually correct Lore's behavioral problems. Lore later harbored resentment towards his creator for abandoning him. Yet, when he met his father again on Terlina III and learned that Soong was dying, he was sincerely upset and, for a brief moment, he displayed a genuine concern for his father. Nevertheless, Lore's malevolent streak soon prevailed. ( TNG : " Brothers ")

Data with Lore in 2364

Following Lore's communiques, the Crystalline Entity attacked Omicron Theta in 2338 and destroyed all life on the planet. Both Lore and Data were left behind, but Data was subsequently discovered by the crew of the USS Tripoli . Lore remained in Soong's laboratory until 2364 , when the USS Enterprise -D arrived at the planet. The ship's chief engineer , Lieutenant Commander Argyle , and chief medical officer , Dr. Beverly Crusher , were successful in reactivating the android. ( TNG : " Datalore ")

Although initially presenting himself as willing to please and serve Humans, sharing some information about his ' childhood ' in the colony with his ' brother ', Lore swiftly returned to his previous ways. Deactivating Data, Lore stole his uniform and masqueraded as him. Lore summoned the Crystalline Entity once again, intending to feed the crew of the Enterprise -D to it. His treachery was discovered due to the differences between him and Data (such as Lore's use of contractions ), and he was transported into open space . ( TNG : " Datalore ", " Silicon Avatar ")

Lore drifted in space for nearly two years , until he was rescued by a passing Pakled trade ship . Lore subsequently responded to the homing signal intended by Soong to draw Data to Soong's new laboratory on Terlina III . After Soong had reactivated Lore, Lore expressed frustration at his father's 'dismissal' of him in favor of working on Data, but was apparently as close to upset as he could come when he learned that Soong was dying , protesting that his father seemed fine despite his obvious age .

Emotions installed

However, his grief for his father was overshadowed by his anger when he learned that Soong had summoned Data to him with the intention of giving Data an emotion chip that would allow him to feel Human emotions (as Data's emotionless "childhood" had given him a greater understanding of right and wrong). Lore became sore and resented his father's 'favoritism' of Data, despite Soong's protests that he had never designed a chip for Lore simply because he assumed that Lore had remained deactivated. Despite Soong's attempt to placate Lore, Lore nevertheless tricked Soong by posing as his brother and stealing the chip for himself. Because the chip was not designed for him, it caused Lore to become even more unstable and he mortally wounded Soong before departing the planet once again. ( TNG : " Brothers ")

In 2369 , Lore discovered a group of Borg that had been disconnected from the Collective after integrating Hugh 's sense of individuality into the hive. Lore styled himself their leader and gave his Borg individual names, coercing them into becoming his fanatical followers. He began cruel experiments on them, attempting to replace their organic brains with positronic components. Meanwhile, Lore influenced their behavior, which made their attacks more violent – they ceased to assimilate individuals, and instead began murdering them.

Lore leading the Borg

Lore directed his Borg followers to launch attacks on targets in Federation space , in order to lure the Enterprise -D – and thus Data – in an elaborate attempt to use the emotion chip to manipulate Data to his side. Lore had modified the chip so that it could remotely instill anger and hatred in Data. Confused with his new emotions, and with his ethical subroutines deactivated, Data betrayed the crew of the Enterprise -D and joined Lore at his base . ( TNG : " Descent ")

While in Borg captivity, Geordi La Forge was able to instruct Captain Jean-Luc Picard as to modifying a Borg interlink transceiver in order to reset Data's ethical program with a kedion pulse , restoring his sense of right and wrong. Data would still experience negative emotions; however, he could at least choose whether or not to act upon them.

Permanently deactivated

Upon realizing Lore's malign nature, Data fired upon and deactivated Lore, whose last words were " I… love you… brother. " Lore was subsequently dismantled – and the emotion chip, though damaged, was removed and returned to its rightful owner. ( TNG : " Descent, Part II ") Two years later , Data finally had the chip installed. ( Star Trek Generations )

Following the lifting of the ban on synthetics, Altan began construction on a new golem to serve as a 'totality', combining the memory data of B-4, Lal, and Soong himself with the personalities of Data and Lore into a singular being. He gave the new golem an older appearance, based on an aged Soong, hoping to reflect the wisdom of age. Unfortunately, Soong died before he could complete this golem, and Starfleet seized his work, storing it at Daystrom Station . The integration appeared to have failed, and Data and Lore were at odds with each other inside the golem, each trying to seize control. ( PIC : " The Bounty ", " Dominion ") Following the android's activation, Lore would interrupt Data, taking control over the android. While placed into a cognitive-function-only mode, Lore interjected in Data's attempts to explain the situation to Picard, in order to insult him. Lore seized control of the android while plugged in to the USS Titan -A 's computer. Lore locked Geordi La Forge out of Engineering and lowered the ship's force fields, taunting La Forge for trying to appeal to Data's memories of friendship. La Forge was able to successfully appeal to Data, who took control of the android from Lore. ( PIC : " Dominion ") La Forge lifted the partition separating Data and Lore in an attempt to get Data to take full control over the android so he could help retake the Titan , but Lore began swiftly overpowering and deleting Data's personality. As he was deleted, Data handed over his own memories to Lore, including those of playing poker with his friends aboard the Enterprise -D, and, finally, his memories of Spot , stating that he was handing over the memories because while Data had everything, Lore had nothing. Upon taking those last memories, Lore completed the process of deleting Data from the android but Lore began to experience the effects of deletion himself, and Data's personality returned. Data had deduced that Lore would not be able to resist taking his memories as trophies. He had taken the things that had made Data who he was, and as such, the two personalities became "one" and Lore merged into Data. The brothers said goodbye to one another as Lore's personality was finally overwritten with that of Data. Data later tells La Forge that he's Data, but he's also Lore, B-4 and everything else that Dr. Soong programed into the android. ( PIC : " Surrender ")

A Lore head taken from a bottle of Data bubble bath

Years after Lore's deactivation at the Borg compound, bottles of bubble bath that bore the likeness of Lore were in circulation, and by 2381 , were sometimes being surreptitiously used to represent the limited edition Commander Data bottles. They were differentiated from the Data bottles by having a furrowed brow and a smirk. ( LD : " An Embarrassment Of Dooplers ")

Lore's personality in Daystrom Android M-5-10

Memorable Quotes [ ]

" The troublesome little man-child. Are you prepared for the kind of death you've earned, little man? "

" Now, show me your warrior fierceness. "

" I am not less perfect than Lore. "

" Often-Wrong's got a broken heart; 
can't even tell his boys apart. "


" Where's Data? You didn't fill Data with substandard parts, did you, old man? No. That honor was bestowed upon me. You owe me, old man. Not him. Me. "

" Data. "
 " That's not Data. " 
" What? "
 " You should listen to her, captain. She's way ahead of you. "
 " Lore! "

" They had lost their sense of purpose. Well, I gave them their purpose… and they gave me mine. "


" The reign of biological life-forms is coming to an end. You, Picard, and those like you, are obsolete! "

Appendices [ ]

Appearances [ ].

• " Datalore " (Season 1)
• " Brothers " (Season 4)
• " Descent " (Season 6)
• " Descent, Part II " (Season 7)
• LD : " An Embarrassment Of Dooplers " (likeness on bubble bath bottle) (Season 2)

Background information [ ]

Lore was played by Brent Spiner in all of his four appearances but only received credit for his second appearance. Ken Gildin , Brian Tomlinson , Dana Vitatoe , and Guy Vardaman served as photo doubles for Spiner in these episodes while Brian J. Williams was the stunt double in the episodes " Datalore " and " Descent, Part II ".

Lore was originally planned to be a female android, to provide a love interest for Data. Her job would have been to go out and repair dangerous situations. It was Brent Spiner who suggested the old " evil twin " concept be used instead. ( Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion  (2nd ed., p. 46)) The female android concept was later used in the third season episode " The Offspring ", although this interpretation had the new android as Data's " child " rather than a potential love interest.

The Pakled costume worn by Spiner as Lore in " Brothers " was sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction for US$2,155.00. [1] Other items which were sold off on eBay include the special effects thumb from "Brothers". [2] Dana Vitatoe's costume from "Brothers", [3] Spiner and Williams' costume from " Descent " and "Descent, Part II", [4] [5] and the utility jumpsuit from "Datalore". [6]

External links [ ]

• Lore at StarTrek.com
• Lore at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 3 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

6 Things To Remember About Lore And Moriarty Before Picard Season 3

There are some things fans should know.

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 is almost here , and while longtime fans of The Next Generation are excited to see their favorite crew back in action , they’re probably just as jazzed about the return of two of the show’s greatest villains . Lore and Moriarty will return for the final season of Picard , and while many are no doubt excited to see them, they may not completely remember why. 

Lore and Moriarty are two of Star Trek: The Next Generation ’s greatest villains, but neither was exactly prevalent across its 178 episodes. For those needing a small reminder, here are some of the things folks will want to know ahead of their return in Picard Season 3. 

Lore Is Data’s Brother, But More Advanced

Lore and Data are both Soong-type Androids created by the great Dr. Noonian Soong, but there are key differences between them. One interesting thing of note is that, while Data was created after Lore, Lore is technically the more advanced of the two thanks to his emotional programming. 

Unfortunately, Lore was prone to malevolence and other negative emotions, which made him incredibly dangerous, considering his other advanced abilities. Dr. Soong ultimately decided that giving Lore the full spectrum of emotions was a mistake, and put his components into storage. He’d go on to make Data without emotions, and Lore would, of course, later find himself reassembled again with a chip on his shoulder toward their shared father. 

Lore Was Allegedly Disassembled During The Next Generation

Star Trek: The Next Generation fans might’ve been shocked to see Lore promoted as appearing in Picard Season 3, especially if they remembered his previous appearance on television. Lore was in the iconic TNG two-parter “Descent,” and after his defeat at the end of it, was deactivated and sent off to be disassembled. 

Obviously, there will be some sort of story about how he was reconfigured and for what reason. After all, Lore was one of the greatest enemies Jean-Luc Picard and his crew faced, so why would Starfleet even risk keeping him active? 

Lore Loved Data As If They Were Actual Family

While Lore was a real ass and had all sorts of evil goals, he also had a strong sense of family. He had a real love for his brother, and one would think Data would’ve as well, if he had the emotional capacity for it at the time. I think this is always important to bring up, as it’s a reminder that while he was a villain in Star Trek , he wasn’t entirely evil. Lore had the capacity to feel many emotions on the spectrum, and while he primarily showed the more negative ones, perhaps he had a capacity for great kindness as well? 

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I imagine this might be a detail relevant to Star Trek: Picard Season 3, and perhaps he could find redemption in the eyes of Starfleet and with the former TNG crew in this new adventure. Or, he might just be the same old Lore and hatch some massive betrayal plot. We don’t really know at this time why he is in the story, and what role he has beyond giving Brent Spiner a reason to work with the cast. We’ll just have to wait and see!

Moriarty Started Out As A Challenge For Data

James Moriarty found his way into the holodeck in “Elementary, Dear Data” when Dr. Pulaski and Geordi La Forge wondered if Data could solve a Sherlock Holmes mystery that wasn’t based on the books. When he easily solved the challenge, there was an immediate question about whether Data solved the case because of its similarity to another Holmes story, or because he really was just that clever. Geordi then decided to up the ante, and asked the holodeck to create a villain that would be challenging for Data , and not just for Sherlock Holmes.

Thus, Moriarty received an upgrade, and while it was not intended at the time, he would go on to become one of the greatest and most complicated challenges that Picard’s Enterprise faced. Holograms can often be a challenge for Starfleet crews from time to time, so readers can only imagine how much of a pain one would be if it was specifically intended to be a rival to Data.

Moriarty Achieved Sentience As A Holodeck Program

Geordi’s wish, paired with Moriarty’s normal cleverness as a character, soon led him to understand that the world he was a part of wasn’t the actual real world. To say these types of occurrences with holodeck programs are rare is an understatement, and Picard and the rest were fascinated by the idea of a holodeck program aware of its own existence as a holodeck program. They were also concerned about the quandary this created, as the ethical rights of destroying a holodeck program were weighed with the creation of one of the more formidable fictional characters in real life. 

In the end, Picard agreed to find a way to bring him the sentience he wished for, and the possibility of life in the real world. He only asked that Moriarty be allowed to lie dormant in the holodeck's memory while Starfleet scientists looked into the matter, and figured out a way for this to happen. Moriarty agreed, and for a while, it seemed like both parties had reached a resolution they were satisfied with. 

Picard Tricked Moriarty Into Thinking He’d Left The Enterprise Years Ago

Moriarty returned to the Enterprise , but unfortunately, it was before Starfleet had developed a way for him to live independently of the holodeck technology. “Ship In A Bottle” showed him taking control of the Enterprise , under the belief that the efforts to remove him from the holodeck were nothing but lies. The crew managed to trick him into thinking they caved to his demands, but in reality, they encased him in a simulation within a simulation. Moriarty “left” the Enterprise thinking he was on his way back to Earth, but really, he’s still in a program. 

If he was mad after a few years stuck in the holodeck, I can’t imagine how he’ll feel after decades spent living in a fake universe. He’s seen with guns in the trailer, which could create a dangerous situation for the crew and even put some lives at risk. Unfortunately, Data isn’t around to help them this time, so hopefully they’re up to the task!

Star Trek: Picard premieres on Paramount+ on Thursday, February 16th. Now would be a good time to revisit some of the previously mentioned episodes, or just some of the best episodes of The Next Generation in general, with a Paramount+ subscription . 

Mick Joest is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend with his hand in an eclectic mix of television goodness. Star Trek is his main jam, but he also regularly reports on happenings in the world of Star Trek, WWE, Doctor Who, 90 Day Fiancé, Quantum Leap, and Big Brother. He graduated from the University of Southern Indiana with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Radio and Television. He's great at hosting panels and appearing on podcasts if given the chance as well.

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Lore's Entire Backstory Explained

Every "Star Trek" series seems to have its own version of Spock, someone who doesn't understand (or cannot feel) emotions in the traditional sense. On "Star Trek: The Next Generation," that character is the beloved synthetic human Data (Brent Spiner), though Data also has elements of another famous "Star Trek" character. According to producer Robert H. Justman (via " The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next Twenty Five Years "), Data was envisioned as "an android programmed by Starfleet Command with all of the familiar abilities and characteristics of Spock fused with the leadership and humanistic qualities of Captain Kirk."

For seven seasons, Data played a major part in the show's explorations of selfhood, intelligence, and emotion. One plan to explore these feelings was to give Data a love interest . Her job was supposed to be repairing the ship in dangerous situations. Instead, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry decided to go down the evil twin route, and so the Lore that we know — also played by Spiner — was born. He's clever, mean, quirky, and very funny to watch, but with a lurking malevolence that's impossible to ignore. Let's take a look at his backstory.

The story of Data and Lore begins on the Omicron Theta colony, where Doctor Noonian Soong and his wife Juliana built a series of androids: Two basic prototypes, the simplistic model B-4, Lore, and Data. These were the first true fully functioning "positronic brains," which is the show's explanation for artificial intelligence in android form, and which is politicized, in various ways, throughout the canon.

The four Omicron Theta creations are known as "Soong-type" androids, because they are made in Dr. Soong's image (Dr. Soong, of course, is also played by Brent Spiner). Soong and Juliana considered all four of them their children, and Data and his fellow Soong-types are often referred to and behave as brothers. The Soongs also have a biological son, Altan Inigo Soong, graced with the same brilliance as his parents and brothers. He is introduced much later in the "Star Trek: Picard" series.

Thanks to Data's fame as the first android in Starfleet, Soong's research is further developed by Dr. Bruce Maddox, who goes into hiding after synthetics attempt to conquer Mars and synthetic life is subsequently banned. He and Agnes Jurati work with Noonian's son to create a whole community of organic androids based on Data's positronic neurons.

Creating Lore

When we first meet Lore on Omicron Theta, he claims to be an improvement on Data, but that turns out to be a lie: He is Data's older brother, not younger. Lore was born extremely advanced, with great strength and speed and high intelligence. He was also, unfortunately, unstable from the jump and he developed a serious superiority complex.

Later, Lore would claim he was rejected for being "too perfect," but the truth is that he's flawed in many ways. The people of the colony demanded that Noonian shut Lore down because he was creeping everybody out. In response, Lore secretly contacted a planet-killing space creature called the Crystalline Entity to come and destroy all life on the planet — excluding himself, of course.

Noonian eventually gave in to the demands of his fellow colonists and deactivated Lore. He stored Lore away and started work on Data instead. Since Lore's emotions were the core of his terrible behavior, Noonian decided Data would be created without all that mess — and he promised himself he would come back and fix Lore later. Noonian later came to feel bad about leaving Data's emotions out and created an "emotion chip" for him, but it took a long time for Data to actually receive and initiate it.

Meeting Lore

Unfortunately, Lore's deactivation doesn't take place soon enough for the colony to avoid the consequences of his actions, and the Crystalline Entity destroys all life on Omicron Theta. Data is discovered by the crew of the USS Tripoli years after the disaster, while Lore remained in Noonian's lab. An away team including Dr. Beverly Crusher comes from the USS Enterprise-D, and they are able to reactivate him.

Lore plays the part of a kind brother to Data at first, sharing stories about Soong, although we see in a few tics and quirks that indicate he's not entirely stable. We soon learn that he's lying about being created after Data rather than before. He isn't a more advanced model, as he would have people believe. That truth is that Soong saw some of his features were broken and resolved to work on him later, then designed the somewhat simpler Data.

Lore's true nature soon comes to the surface — he steals Data's uniform and knocks him out, planning to sacrifice the Enterprise crew to his old friend, the Crystalline Entity. Wesley Crusher is the only person who can tell the difference between the brothers, and he is frustratingly persecuted for his attempts to expose the interloper. Eventually, the ruse is discovered, and during a battle with Data and Wesley, Lore is transported into space.

The good doctor

The Enterprise is working at a Federation colony when the Crystalline Entity reappears, destroying another planet. Data and Riker are able to save almost the entire group they're working with by hiding in caves made up of a certain kind of stone. In an attempt to capture or speak to the Crystalline Entity (and in the hope of getting it to stop killing everything it comes across), an expert xenologist named Dr. Kila Marr is summoned. She seems intensely interested in the Entity, and even more so in Data.

Kila's not an android-hater: She knows Data's relationship to Lore, and Lore's relationship to the Crystalline Entity, and she thinks there's some connection between these things and the group's survival. Isn't it likely, she wonders, that the Entity would overlook the caves if they contained an ally? Were the colonists spared because Data was with them? In the end, it's revealed that Dr. Marr's son was killed in an attack by the Crystalline Entity, and she uses the Enterprise's attempts to communicate with the Entity to first torture and then destroy it. The crew is horrified by this waste of life, and Dr. Marr herself seems to go completely off the rails.

Lore's niece

Did you know that Lore once had a niece? After attending a cybernetics conference, an excited Data returns to the Enterprise to build a Soong-type android child of his own: Lal, which means "beloved" in Sanskrit. At first, the child is genderless and faceless, throwing off Deanna Troi and Geordi La Forge entirely. But the child is intelligent and clearly alive — or at least sentient — in the same sense as Data himself. Lal refers to Data as "father," just as Data and Lore do with Dr. Noonian Soong. Data creates Lal knowing all the things that can go wrong, and he's determined to improve on Soong's failures with Lore.

Eventually, Lal chooses a form: Human female. The crew easily goes along with her choice of gender and race, just as they are okay with Data's claims to fatherhood. After a few attempts at schooling, in which she mostly unnerves the other children, Lal takes up a job in Ten Forward under Guinan's guidance and begins learning the ins and outs of social behavior. After a Starfleet Admiral arrives to take her away, Lal's fear response kicks in and causes a cascade failure in her neural net. Ultimately, Data is unable to save his daughter, and they say goodbye.

The emotion chip

Lore drifts in outer space for almost two years before his rescue by a Pakled trade ship. Soon after, Noonian — alive, but dying — sends out a homing signal to summon Data to his new lab on Terlina III. It also summons Lore, who arrives with much resentment, but shows genuine concern when Noonian reveals that he is dying.

However, this family intimacy only lasts for so long. It all goes out of the window when Lore finds out why Noonian sent out the beacon in the first place: He has created an implantable chip that will allow Data to feel human emotion. Lore is, of course, unable to comprehend that Data's makeup and background make him more ethically sophisticated, and therefore able to deal with having emotions without going unstable like Lore.

Lore gets jealous about this, even when Noonian explains that Lore didn't get a chip because he thought he was still deactivated. This isn't a great excuse, since it leads back to the fact that he was deactivated in the first place. He takes the chip for himself by impersonating Data, but Soong explains that the chip was made specifically for Data and that the chip is just going to make him even more unstable, which it does — he eventually kills Noonian because of it, disappearing into the cosmos.

Hugh the Borg

While Lore is gone and presumed dead — or at least no longer a problem — the Enterprise-D discovers a gravely injured Borg drone at a crash site in the Argolis Cluster. Beverly Crusher fights for his life and they bring the Borg back to the Enterprise for care and study. It's the right thing to do, but Geordi La Forge understandably doesn't trust the Borg, named Third of Five. He treats the patient like a machine and keeps his guard up. Soon enough, the Borg starts showing signs of individuality and ego, necessary for a personality to form.

The Borg are a cybernetic race of former humans (and others) who have been assimilated into a vast hive-mind collective, ruled by a Queen. They operate as a group, and can hear each other's thoughts at all times. Beverly and even Geordi come to care for their subject, giving him a human name: Hugh. Captain Jean-Luc Picard suggests they send Hugh back to the collective as a kind of Trojan Horse, hoping his individuality will infect his brethren like a virus. But what does all this have to do with Lore?

Lore's Borg army

One year later, we learn the results of the Hugh gamble. The Borg ship that retrieves Hugh from the Argolis crash site does indeed become more individualist — an effect that causes them great consternation, as they are used to operating as a unit, without personal thoughts. They are adrift and disconnected from the collective when Lore comes across them, ripe for control, and assumes leadership of the group.

Lore gives the Borg individual names but restricts their freedoms — his rule is a totalitarian one. The Borg become his fanatical followers, shouting slogans and threatening violence. They don't even bother assimilating people into the collective anymore, they just kill. Lore is now the leader of a fascist movement made up of formerly mindless drones.

Eventually, he starts experimenting on them, trying to replace their once-human, organic brains with positronic brains like he and Data have. These experiments do not go well, resulting in mutilation and death. What Lore really wants to do is experiment on human subjects, and he plans on using Data to acquire them.

Lore's death

Lore's Borg army begins an attack in Federation space, luring Data in. Lore can now use his emotion chip to moderate Data's own emotions and perceptions — when Data kills a Borg, he feels a perverse pleasure afterward, an alien sensation to him. Lore decides to deactivate Data's ethical subroutines, and Data deserts the Enterprise to follow his brother.

Geordi and Picard are captured, and Data does experiments on Geordi, putting his crewmate through a terrible ordeal. Between bouts of torture at Data's hands, Geordi is able to teach Picard how to modify a Borg interlink transceiver to reboot Data's ethical programs. This won't decrease Lore's power over his emotions, but he'll at least have the option of acting on them.

Lore continues to manipulate Data for some time, fighting against the ethics rising in his subroutines, but eventually Data recoils from the cruelty and futility of their experimentation. The Borg on whom Lore has been experimenting all die horribly, and this is what pushes Data over the edge. He attacks, deactivates, and dismantles Lore, whose last words are: "I love you, brother."

Lore's mother is also an android

Data meets and becomes close with Dr. Juliana Tainer — formerly Juliana Soong, Data and Lore's "mother" — and they play music together. After an accident it becomes apparent that Juliana is also a Soong-type android. She's more developed than both of them, which bodes well for Lore in terms of potential future appearances.

Juliana comes with a holographic chip of Noonian, which Data activates on the holodeck and learns that it's a message directly to him. Soong's hologram explains that the original, organic Juliana was injured in the Crystalline Entity's attack on Omicron Theta, and by the time Soong made it to Terlina III, she was in a coma. Soong built her a positronic matrix and loaded her mind into it, creating a special shutdown loop in case she ever discovered she was an android.

Data wrestles with the decision of whether or not to tell her about her true nature. Eventually, he opts to leave her be, telling Juliana that she was the love of Soong's life, despite the fact that he was sometimes cold toward her — he could never quite get over the fact that she was a replacement for his real wife. They agree to meet again on Atrea and Data calls her "mother" in a touching moment.

Data and Lore's other brother makes an appearance

Lore's now-damaged emotion chip is back in Data's hands, but he's wary of using it due to the instability and actions of his brother. It will be years before he installs the chip, causing a lot of drama during the movie "Star Trek Generations," but not going haywire like Lore would. For the remainder of his appearances, Data possesses emotions, and his arc becomes one about learning to control them, which he eventually does.

In "Star Trek: Nemesis," the tenth film in the series, Data comes up against another older brother, B-4. While Lore's appearances always stage him as being on par with (or perhaps even more capable than) Data, in this case, the roles are reversed — B-4 is a much simpler machine. However, a lot of the same hijinks ultimately ensue, with Data and B-4 impersonating each other and B-4 eventually betraying the crew.

In order to save the Enterprise, Data valiantly offers his own life to destroy a Reman Warbird, and Jean-Luc Picard ends the film discussing Data and his sacrifice with a repaired but still confused and unsophisticated B-4.

Lore is coming back for the final season of Star Trek: Picard

This slide contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Picard."

In the first season finale of "Star Trek: Picard," the titular character briefly visits with Data in hologram form after downloading the remains of his consciousness from B-4. Positronic brains and neural nets, Dr. Maddox discovers, are capable of "fractal neuronic cloning," using just a single positronic neuron to recreate the whole of the consciousness. This is part of an arc that saw the fifth Soong brother — the biological son of Noonian and Juliana — create a planet of Soong-type androids, including two off-world sleeper agents, sisters who may not even know they're androids. These Soong-types are highly advanced, with all of Lore's abilities and none of his problems, and it's exciting to think about what artificial life could look like in the future of the show.

In 2022, it was revealed that Brent Spiner is set to reprise the role of Lore in the third and final season of "Star Trek: Picard." Fans already knew that Spiner was going to be involved, but his return as Lore wasn't confirmed until New York Comic Con, where a new trailer was released . One thread of the series has been Picard's grief and acceptance of Data's death, so Lore's appearance is likely to stir a lot of emotions in the titular character. There was another big Lore reveal at NYCC : The character will be part of a new comic book series called "Star Trek: Defiant." The comic is set before "Star Trek: Nemesis" and sees Lore join the crew of the Defiant, led by Worf. Lore already has a fascinating backstory, and it is set to be filled out even more in the near future.

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Star Trek: Picard - Lore is Unable to Resist

Goodbye, brother.

SPOILER WARNING: This clip may contain spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 3, Episode 8 "Surrender"!

In "Surrender," Lore's deception took the things that were Data, and in doing so, Lore became Data. They are one now.

In addition to streaming on Paramount+ , Star Trek: Picard also streams on Prime Video outside of the U.S. and Canada, and in Canada can be seen on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave. Star Trek: Picard is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

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Star Trek: Picard's latest teaser reveals some unexpected comebacks

The final season of star trek: picard is bound to go out with a bang.

By Emma Roth , a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

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Star Trek showed off the latest trailer for the final season of Picard at the New York Comic Con on Saturday, revealing some unexpected reappearances by legacy characters: hologram James Moriarty (Daniel Davis) and Data’s evil counterpart, Lore (Brent Spiner).

The trailer opens with Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) receiving a distress signal from Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), prompting him to band together with old friends from The Next Generation , including William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Geordi La Forge (Levar Burton), Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), and Worf (Michael Dorn). At the heart of the trouble is Vadic, a villain who appears to be played by Pulp Fiction ’s Amanda Plummer.

Things get even more exciting at the very end of the trailer, with ominous scenes flashing both Moriarty and Lore. This is the first time we’re seeing Spiner reprise his role as Lore, and it’s also the first we’ve seen (or heard) that Moriarty’s making a comeback in Picard . The final season of Star Trek: Picard is set to debut on Paramount Plus in the US on Thursday, February 16th, 2023.

That isn’t the only Star Trek trailer revealed at this year’s NYCC. We also got a glimpse at the trailer for the fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery , featuring Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), Saru (Doug Jones), and Tilly (Mary Wiseman). We don’t know when the new season will come out just yet, but it’s rumored to make its debut sometime next year.

Paramount Plus also showed off a new midseason return trailer for the animated Star Trek: Prodigy . Picking up where things left off, Vice Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) hunts down the abandoned USS Protostar ship that was taken over by Dal (Brett Gray), Gwyn (Ella Purnell), and other young crewmembers. The second half of the first season is set to debut on Paramount Plus on October 27th.

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Picard Season 3: Can Data and Lore Coexist In His New Body?

Brent Spiner is back in Star Trek: Picard Season 3 as Data in a 'new' body, but he's not alone since Lore is in there with him. Can they coexist?

The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 3, Episode 7, "Dominion," now streaming on Paramount+.

Known for its serious allegory and sci-fi action, Star Trek is also very silly. Data and his "family," all played by Brent Spiner , are an example of this. However, people still adore this character, and he's currently in what seems like an untenable situation. There is no way that Data and Lore can coexist in the same body, is there?

If there is any doubt that Data is The Next Generation 's Spock, he's died and returned one more time than everyone's favorite Vulcan. At the end of Picard Season 1, Data asked to "experience death" as he found living as only a digital consciousness unsatisfying. His goal was always to become more human, and one can't be less human than living on a hard drive. However, the body Alton Soong constructed is not an android. Like Jean-Luc's positronic body, it is a mixture of tissue and hardware that ages and can be vulnerable. Alton wanted to merge his mind with his "brothers," Data, Lore and the simplistic B-4. However, Data and Lore are such strong personalities they have to be segregated from each other. Alton wanted them to merge, as Data and Lore always represented two "halves" of humanity. But, if the partition comes down, Lore will kill Data like Ultron tried doing to Jarvis in the second Avengers film. With that partition, can the two opposites be good roommates?

RELATED: Season 3 Reveals Jean-Luc Picard Has Children All Over Star Trek

Alton Soong Did Not Want Data and Lore to Fight to the Death

The Soong family shares one quality even more than their propensity to look like Brent Spiner. They are intelligent and able to engineer things no one else can replicate. Yet, they are also foolish in other ways. They make bad decisions , and Alton's weird desire to merge his consciousness with his late father's androids is one of these. Perhaps one-way fans can rationalize that all Soongs look-alike is pure ego. They are reckless but driven to accomplish miracles. Alton may realize this, so he relegated his uploaded consciousness to the background. That he included a partition in the new "brain" to separate Data and Lore suggests he knew they couldn't coexist.

Star Trek's secret weapon is making silliness salient. Alton hopes the two brothers would merge on their own. If that happened, he would achieve his father's dream of creating true artificial "life." It also gives Data his dream of being human. (And Lore's, too, though he'd never admit that's what he wanted.) Perhaps, inside this new nearly-human shell, the two won't merge but strike up symbiosis? Data and Lore could, in theory, maintain their individuality while still working together inside this new form. However, Star Trek fans know that Lore wouldn't want to share the space with his brother. He would want to dominate him and, possibly, destroy him entirely.

Lore was the fourth android Alton's parents, Noonian and Juliana Soong, constructed. Unlike Data, he was given emotions, and with them came instability. Lore was jealous of his younger brother Data, eventually tricking his dying father into giving him an "emotional chip" meant for Data. This made him even more unstable and villainous. Eventually, Lore was dismantled, and Data was given the chip, though it didn't change him all that much. This suggests that something in Lore is missing in Data. As Geordi suggested, the ideal solution would be for them to merge willingly.

RELATED: Picard Season 3: Worf and Raffi Make a Perfect Team

Lore and Data Could Coexist In a Body, but Probably Shouldn't

Fans of Star Trek: Picard should hope the partition stays up for the next few episodes before the series finale. Watching Spiner bounce back and forth between Data and Lore is a treat. However, given the way the Borderline Personality Disorder trope has been used in the past, it runs the risk of being insensitive. It's also not very satisfying for Data to finally get a human body to play around in, all while sharing it with his brother. Though personalities coexisting as individuals in a shared mind is not new to Picard .

In Season 2, the Borg Queen, played by the late Annie Wersching , and Dr. Jurati, played by Allison Pill, merged into a new kind of Borg collective . Like the others, they are a hive mind, yet the drones maintain their individuality. However, they have as many bodies as minds. Data and Lore exist as two halves in a single head. The partition is going to come down, one way or another. Perhaps one of the characters will die or flee in Titan's computer or elsewhere. Perhaps Data will inhabit the ship as a sentient onboard computer? Maybe Lore will, turning the Titan into a giant weapon against everyone? Lore might even call the Crystalline Entity to come to devour everyone, just for old times' sake. Unless both characters drastically change, they can never truly share the same body. They would constantly be at odds.

There is also the question if Data should come back at all. The character made a compelling case for shuffling off his not-so-mortal coil at the end of Season 1. Perhaps, a "new" character will ultimately emerge. Star Trek fans get elements of all the Brent Spiner characters they love, while Data's earlier choice is respected. Yet, if Data does go away, that means Lore gets to keep this new body, and that's not a satisfying ending. Though, if Data knew getting a human body was possible, he might not have been so quick to ask Jean-Luc to turn off his lights. Still, it wouldn't be a proper The Next Generation reunion without Data in the mix somehow. Lore and Data could barely coexist when they each had their own bodies, and now that they share one, conflict is inevitable.

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 continues with new episodes each Thursday on Paramount+ .

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Is Giving Us The Ultimate Brent Spiner Performance

This post contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Picard."

Throughout his seemingly unending tenure on "Star Trek," actor Brent Spiner has played the android Data, his own twin brother Lore, an android prototype named B-4, and the creator of all three, the elderly Dr. Noonien Soong. Additionally, since "Star Trek" takes place over such a broad timeline, Spiner also played the son of Noonien Dr. Altan Soong, as well as two of the character's ancestors, Dr. Arik Soong, and Dr. Adam Soong, the latter of whom lived in Los Angeles in 2024. That's six different characters. 

At the end of Start Baird's 2002 film "Star Trek: Nemesis," Data sacrificed his own life to blow up an enemy ship and save the U.S.S. Enterprise from destruction. At that point in "Star Trek," Lore had been deactivated, and the last Dr. Song had died of old age. The only remaining Data-adjacent character was B-4. Perhaps not content with only one Spiner in their universe, in 2020, the writers of " Star Trek: Picard " invented a dubious way to resurrect Data for the show's first season. It seems that someone salvaged a single particle of Data's body out in space somehow, and was able to — heavy sigh — clone his entire android brain, somehow. Data's consciousness and personality were encoded in a computer database, but not shunted into an android body. When the consciousness of Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) was downloaded into the same computer database, he was able to speak to Data briefly. Data felt he had lived a good life, and that mortality was increasingly appealing. Picard deactivated Data, effectively killing the character a second time. 

And yet, for the third season of "Picard," Data has returned. The reasons how are a little complicated.

Every Brent Spiner All At Once

In the sixth episode of "Picard," called "The Bounty," Worf ( Michael Dorn ), Raffi (Michelle Hurd), and Riker (Jonathan Frakes) have broken into the Daystrom station to investigate a mysterious weapon theft. They find that the station is guarded by a complex A.I. program that temporarily stymies them with holograms of crows and of Professor Moriarty (Daniel Davis). They eventually learn that the security system is tied into the android consciousness of ... well, it's not Data exactly. But it is Brent Spiner. 

A hologram of Altan Soong appears to explain that the aged android in front of them — Spiner is 74 — is a new android model that contains the complete experiences of Data, Lore, B-4, and even Data's short-lived android daughter Lal (Hallie Todd) from the "Next Generation" episode "The Offspring." When Worf and crew revive this new android, it begins to cycle through its personalities rapidly. It's Data for a few moments, but then becomes B-4, not recognizing anyone. Then Lore snarls at them. Spiner used to play various members of the same family, but it's rare that he is afforded the opportunity to play them all at once.

This new composite character — Datalore-4? — is of course a somewhat cheap opportunity for the writers if "Picard" to bring back a twice-dead character in as organic a fashion as they could muster (without time travel, at least). But it may have also been alluring to Spiner, as he wouldn't merely be reprising Data for the umpteenth time. Spiner has said in interviews that he is ambivalent about playing Data, and that he was finished with the character multiple times over. The composite android would, as audiences see, allow him to give a broader, more challenging performance.

Spiner understood the dangers of playing a well-recognized character on "Star Trek." Many cast members of the 1966 series, for instance, became typecast and struggled to find high-profile work after their tenure on the show. Spiner once said in a TV guide interview that he could win an Academy Award for playing a role wildly against his type and aggressively demanding of his talents, and Data would still be listed first in his obituary. The idea of merely playing Data again was likely uninteresting to the actor. 

The composite android is not Data. It's a new character, recently constructed. It's several characters at once. Data, as Trekkies are able to point out, was constantly striving to be more human, fascinated by our species and the strange social foibles we adhere to. He didn't have emotions, however, beyond slight rudimentary reactions to things. While the "Star Trek" writers took a great deal of delight in teaching Data objective lessons about humanity, Data was often seen, even after seven years, approaching humanity with a fresh face every day. Data was, to employ an acting term, always on the same note. 

Throughout "Picard," however, Spiner has had a chance to do a lot more. His two Soong characters are dramatically different. Altan was timid and peaceful, Adam was aggressive and villainous. Now, with his new character, Spiner is allowed to be all his old characters at once, as well as something completely new. It's the ultimate Spiner "Star Trek" performance, a handy package for the actor to deliver everything at the same time. What audiences have seen so far has been nothing short of astonishing.

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Star Trek: Picard Finally Got What It Wants—But at What Cost?

“surrender” sets the stage for picard ’s endgame with a messy, emotional clearing of the board..

Star Trek: Picard ’s third season has felt like such a departure from its first two at times that it has felt almost standalone , the rare character beats and plot points that have mattered to its nostalgic tale of changelings and family mattering little more than a footnote. But this week saw the series try to relate to its past self—and clear the board for its finale in a rare clumsy misstep.

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“Surrender” acts as a coda to last week’s Titan invasion subplot, and also a convenient rebalancing of the Next Generation scales in order to get all of Picard’s old friends back beside him in time for one last boardroom meeting (and a resulting adventure, I guess, but Trek fans really wanted that boardroom meeting). As Va dic stalks the bridge of the Titan in an attempt to get Jack Crusher in her clutches, aboard the ship and the Shrike alike we are given the chance for key heroes we’ve yet to spend much time with this season to reconcile themselves back in the familial fold.

It makes for a peculiarly tense episode, one that dances in between rehashing last week’s chaotic dilemma ( whether or not Geordi and the remaining crew can trust Data/Lore enough to use his vast computational abilities to wrest control of the ship back), emotional catharsis ( as Riker and Troi reconcile their differences aboard the Shrike ), and the aforementioned tension, as Va dic and her men try to strike a deadly bargain for Jack. It makes “Surrender” also surprisingly messy in a way Picard ’s third season rarely has been, as it tries with blistering pace to deal with plot threads and character beats from long in its past, while also clearing the board for what’s to come in the final two episodes . While shocking exits and unanswered questions abound, much of “Surrender” ultimately feels like it didn’t really matter, outside of a singular aim: getting Picard and all of his old friends back in one room together.

And that moment is, for the most part, worth it—not to fast forward to the climax, but there is indeed a loving glee, both among the gathered heroes and the audience, to finally see the TNG main crew side by side, ready to do what they do best as they’re confronted with an existential threat to the Federation. With Deanna all but telling Jack, one she’s free aboard the Titan , that it’s time to figure out what makes him so peculiar (but as long as we do so next time), there’s a sense of relief— not so much in the knowledge that there are answers to come, but that Deanna Troi is here, our TNG heroes are here, and everything is going to be all right. But it’s how “Surrender” gets to this moment of relief that makes it feel like a slight stumble for a season that has otherwise surprised with its consistency thus far—even if that stumble was more out of excitement to finally get to t he t hing that everyone wanted.

Let’s rewind a little. As Vadic begins threatening the Titan bridge crew to goad out Jack—by promising to execute an officer every 10 minutes until he shows up—the increasingly desperate survivors, especially after the shock death of Vulcan science officer T’Veen at Vadic’s hands, find themselves pondering the troubling choice of unleashing Data/Lore, threatening to lose their old friend entirely even as the powerful android can use its abilities to wrest control of the Titan from Vadic. On the one hand, making this the dilemma that distracts from the actual tension aboard the bridge is peculiar because it is essentially the same dramatic conflict that occurred in last week’s episode. On the other, this time at least the conflict is resolved thanks to a genuinely emotional solution rather than a logical one—as Geordi mournfully decides that the only way this can all work is if Data and Lore’s warring positronic brain halves have the walls broken down between them, so they can mentally duke it out for primary control of this new and improved amalgam body.

Meanwhile, aboard the Shrike , Riker and Troi use the opportunity of their lax imprisonment to tackle in person their differences over the death of their son Thaddeus, and how the trauma of failing to address that loss has driven them unintentionally apart. These scenes are for the most part great, even if they do also occasionally dip into a weirdly meta mockery of the life Troi and Riker had set up for their family on Nepenthe in the first season of the show—a strange tack to knock an episode of Picard that is arguably, before this season, one of its strongest and most warmly-received. The emotion between Deanna and Riker feels earnest in spite of these tonal fumbles, though, thanks to stellar performances by Marina Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes, and the parallel of the duo repatching their marriage by sharing the burden of their son’s death forms a nice parallel to the tension aboard the Titan as Picard and Beverly find their own son under threat.

This all climaxes when Data and Lore’s existential knock-out in the stark white of their collective unconscious sees an emotionally fraught Data seemingly lose himself to Lore, bit by bit. The domineering brother gloats as one by one the moments of Data’s life, rendered as his rare trinkets and collections from his time aboard the Enterprise— from his memorial hologram of Tasha Yar to even Spot the cat—are offered up to Lore only for him to disseminate the memories as nothing more than frivolous, forgettable garbage. It’s gut wrenching to watch, even with the hindsight that Data had already been given a far more personal farewell at the climax of Picard season one , especially because we also get to see Geordi’s reaction to Data’s slow, seeming death. But that tragedy turns to catharsis again, when Data reveals that he wasn’t surrendering his memories and being to Lore, but integrating himself into his brother’s positronic consciousness.

With Lore gloating that he will keep Data’s memories for himself, he has inadvertently allowed himself to become everything Data is—the shape of the experiences and emotions, from joy to grief, in his time aboard the Enterprise that made Data the Data we knew and loved. It lets this newfound amalgam of Soong androids, with enough of an approximation of Data in charge, to be reborn—for Geordi and us to get our robot friend back, for Data to save the Titan and literally expel Vadic from the bridge, for everything to truly feel like the TNG reunion Picard had been teasing for months and months to finally come to pass.

And yet, in doing so “Surrender” reveals some of its messier steps. The Shrike scenes with Riker and Troi being so dissonant from the rest of the episode’s action aboard the Titan already didn’t help, but placing the focus on these two more emotional arguments lead to a snapshot resolution of the tension in the episode’s main plot—Data promptly booting Vadic out of the ship’s systems, and Jack rescuing himself and Seven when Vadic and her cohorts get sucked out into the vacuum of space by an emergency hatch being opened. Womp womp, the villain of the piece is gone in an instant, and if you weren’t sure it was permanent, they smashed her body into itty biddy bits across the Shrike ’s hull, and then blasted that hull into itty biddy bits for good measure. It’s a shame because Amanda Plummer has been fantastic as a villainous threat this season; to see her just go out so suddenly with little more than the shock value of the fact she’s not sticking around for the last two episodes doesn ’t feel worthy of the promise Vadic had as Picard ’s most competent villain. But it’s also a shame because after an episode of tense build up aboard the Titan , the resolution feels largely clinical, like the episode realized it had already performed the emotional resolution of reuniting Troi and Riker, and healing Data, so now it just had to end and get everything out the way for the proper finale.

It’s messy, for sure—but like I said up top, it gets Picard to where it really wants to be ahead of its endgame. We’ll just have to wait and see if this little stumble, pacing-wise, is going to have been for an endgame that’ll make this feel more like a little blip along the way. But for some Star Trek fans, just getting to see TNG ’s heroes all together again might be worth just about anything, this stumble included.

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29 years later, Star Trek is rebooting a villain it stole from another franchise

Star Trek is bringing back a villain that literally no one expected.

Nobody expects Moriarty! The stakes for Star Trek: Picard Season 3 are at an all-time high, but nobody could have anticipated that this nostalgia-filled Next Generation reunion would also become... a Sherlock Holmes crossover? Here’s how the big New York Comic-Con trailer for Picard Season 3 reveals three new villains, two of which we haven’t thought about in a very long time. And the implications could be fascinating.

The final Picard Season 3 trailer

At New York Comic Con 2022 , the explosive teaser trailer for Star Trek: Picard Season 3 revealed quite a bit. The story of the upcoming season seems centered on a new villain named Vadic (Amanda Plummer) who wants revenge on Picard, for... reasons that are not clear!

We also get a full look at the returning Next Generation cast, including Geordi (LeVar Burton), Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Crusher (Gates McFadden), Troi (Marina Sirtis), and Worf (Michael Dorn) — who notes he now “prefers pacifism to combat.” Considering he was a fierce Klingon warrior throughout The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine , this change was certainly unexpected.

The trailer gives us glimpses of Seven (Jeri Ryan) and Raffi (Michelle Hurd), who seem to have switched places in regard to their interest in Starfleet. Seven is now in uniform and a commander in Starfleet, while Raffi appears to be out of uniform, which could indicate she’s quit Starfleet (again!)

We’re also introduced to two new members of the La Forge family: Mica Burton as Alandra La Forge and Sharpe Chestnut as Sidney La Forge, the youngest, and eldest daughter of Geordi La Forge, respectively. Both are in Starfleet, and at one point in the trailer, Picard gives “La Forge” the order to “gun it” because it turns out Sidney La Forge is the helmsman of the USS Titan . In Season 1 of The Next Generation , Geordi La Forge was the helmsman of the USS Enterprise before becoming the chief engineer in Season 2. (Mica Burton is also the real-life daughter of LeVar Burton.)

But the big news of the trailer is definitely the rogues' gallery...

Picard Season 3’s villains, explained

Vadic in 'Star Trek: Picard'

As revealed at New York Comic Con, the primary antagonist of Picard Season 3 is a new character named Vadic played by veteran actress Amanda Plummer. Vadic talks a lot about burning down the Federation and getting vengeance on Jean-Luc. The inciting incident of the season seems to be Vadic (or her forces) attacking Beverly Crusher, who according to Gates McFadden is working for a 24th-century version of “Doctors Without Borders,” and that Crusher is “being hunted.”

The source of Vadic’s anger will clearly be a major reveal in Season 3, but for now, her ships in the trailer give-off major Star Trek 2009 reboot vibes , reminiscent of Nero’s (Eric Bana) Romulan forces in that film. Of note, Vadic also appears to rock one gloved hand and one not-so-gloved hand, which has got to be a shout-out to Khaaaaaan!!

But Vadic and her motivations are really just the beginning of the game. Because the game in Picard Season 3 is very much afoot!

Daniel Davis returns as Moriarty.

Moriarty’s Star Trek return

In December 1893, in the Arthur Conan Doyle-penned short story “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” Sherlock Holmes faced his greatest nemesis of all time, the evil Professor James Moriarty. Back in the day, Doyle created Moriarty as a retroactive end-all-be-all villain because he wanted to kill off Sherlock Holmes. (Pretty much every adaptation of Moriarty is slightly better and more fleshed-out than the Doyle original.)

But what does Moriarty have to do with Star Trek? Well, in the TNG Season 2 episode, “Elementary, Dear Data,” a sentient holographic AI version of Moriarty was created by Geordi and Data after they were getting bored of Data solving Sherlock Holmes roleplay scenarios too quickly. Played by Daniel Davis, this Moriarty became self-aware of his 24th-century setting and tried to take over the Enterprise . In the TNG Season 6 episode “Ship in a Bottle,” Moriarty returned, tried to take over the Enterprise again, and then was stuck in perpetual simulation by Picard. At the time of “Elementary Dear Data,” TNG had to pay royalties to use these characters. But in 2022, Moriarty is very much in the public domain.

Star Trek’s connections to Sherlock Holmes run deep. Picard Season 1 showrunner Michael Chabon has written one Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel, The Final Solution , while Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer has written several Sherlock notable Sherlock Holmes books, starting with The Seven Per-Cent Solution . There are also deep canon implications that Spock is a blood relative of Sherlock Holmes on his mom’s side. Will Picard Season 3 finally set that record straight?

Daniel Davis as Moriarty, Brent Spiner as Data/Sherlock Holmes, and Patrick Stewart as Picard in the episode “Elementary Dear, Data” (1988).

But how is Moriarty back in Picard ? Somewhat tellingly, the first shot of Moriarty in the trailer seems to show him on the deck of the La Sirena . In the two previous seasons of Picard , one feature of La Sirena is its numerous holographic crewmembers. Presuming that Moriarty is back as a literal AI hologram again, perhaps he comes back through La Sirena ?

Brent Spiner returns as Lore

Brent Spiner as Lore in 'Star Trek: Picard' Season 3

For longtime TNG fans, the biggest shock was that Brent Spiner is returning to Trek canon not as a resurrected Data, nor as the android prototype B-4, but instead, as the android Lore, Data’s evil twin brother from The Next Generation.

However, this new incarnation of Lore looks decidedly more human than Data or Lore looked before. Spiner seems to be keeping his natural skin tone, and also lacks those classic yellow android eyes. Still, in the final shot of the trailer, Geordi clearly identifies that this is Lore.

The last time we saw Lore was in the TNG Season 7 episode, “Descent Part II.” In that story, Lore had briefly brain-washed Data and led a group of liberated Borg to attack all sorts of planets. It ended with Data becoming good again, and then, turning Lore off. Presumably, Lore’s body was taken from the Enterprise and stored on Earth, likely at the Daystrom Institute where Dr. Jurati (Alison Pill) worked as a roboticist in Picard Season 1. Then again, the press release says that this character is named Lore, which could indicate there's some other twist. B-4 with Lore’s memories? A composite of Lore and Data’s memories that resulted in a new uber-Lore?

Lending credence to the idea that this return is not straightforward, comes from Brent Spiner himself. Speaking at the Star Trek Universe panel at New York Comic-Con, Spiner said that Lore is back in “a very complicated way.”

Either way, Picard Season 3 seems intent on not only giving the Next Generation crew a proper send-off but also, filling this finale with the deepest Trekkie cuts ever.

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 hits Paramount+ on February 16, 2023.

This article was originally published on Oct. 8, 2022

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New Official Star Trek Logs Offer Clues About Lore, The Titan And More Ahead Of ‘Picard’ Season 3

| February 11, 2023 | By: TrekMovie.com Staff 128 comments so far

The official Star Trek Logs account on Instagram is active again today, with a number of posts tied to the upcoming release of Star Trek: Picard season 3. For recent seasons of Discovery , Lower Decks , and Prodigy, the account was used for weekly “logs” from different characters (voiced by cast members) and set after the most recent episodes, but they are doing something different for Picard.

Due to the highly serialized nature of season 3 (likely with little or no time between episodes), there’s a whole a series of logs; each provides backstory for a character or a ship featured in season 3. They are presented in LCARS format and voiced by the USS Titan’s computer. There are 9 character logs and 3 ship logs for a total of 12.

Most cover the history of these characters and ships from their appearances in previous shows and movies, but there are also some tidbits to fill in the gaps before season 3 of Picard . We have gathered some of the highlights.

Lore and Soong update

Brent Spiner is returning in season 3 and it has been announced that Spiner is playing Lore, Data’s brother introduced in the first season of TNG. Lore was last seen in the two-part TNG episode “ Descent ,” and the new log gives us an update:

Lore was last seen in 2370 as the leader of a cult of former Borg drones. At that encounter, Data deactivated him for the final time. Lore’s mind and body have since been taken to Starfleet’s Daystrom Station along with the late Altan Soong’s research.

The Daystrom Institute of Advanced Robotics in Okinawa, Japan, was featured in the first season of Picard . The Soong android B-4 was also stored at Daystrom in Japan after being disassembled.

Brent Spiner as Lore in the season seven opener, “Descent, Part 2”

The log also gives us an update on the Picard season 1 character Altan Soong (also played by Spiner), indicating the character died in the years between season 1 and season 3. Originally, Dr. Soong intended to download himself into a “golem” android, but that that was used to resurrect Jean-Luc Picard instead.

Brent Spiner as Altan Soong in season one

A character image for Spiner in season 3 was released earlier this week:

Brent Spiner in a character publicity image for Picard season 3

Here is the full Star Trek Log for Lore.

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Star Trek Logs (@startreklogs)

TNG character updates

The log for Jean-Luc Picard gives a good backstory but mostly covers what has been already seen in the first two seasons of Picard . However, the logs for the other TNG characters offer some insights into what they have been up to in the time since they were last seen onscreen.

Beverly is a mystery

The log for Beverly Crusher picks up after her time as the Chief Medical Officer of the USS Enterprise-E:

She later resigned from Starfleet, undertaking private medical missions throughout the Alpha and Beta Quadrants on her personal ship, the SS Eleos. Dr. Crusher’s current whereabouts are unknown.

Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher

Worf gets promoted and classified

The log for Worf picks up after his time on Deep Space Nine and through the final TNG movies:

Following his brief tenure as a diplomat, Worf returned to Starfleet serving aboard the USS Enterprise 1701-E and in other assignments that resulted in his promotion to the rank of Captain. His time aboard the Enterprise-E was brief, having stepped down after the incident above Kriilar Prime. Worf’s whereabouts since then are classified.

Michael Dorn as Worf

Geordi gets a family and big promotion

Geordi LaForge’s log offers insights into his life after being the chief engineer of Enterprise-E:

Later, La Forge received the rank of Commodore and was given a series of special assignments by Starfleet Command. His daughters Sidney and Alandra La Forge also currently serve in Starfleet.

LeVar Burton as Geordi La Forge

Riker and Troi still hold Starfleet rank

The Captain William T. Riker log includes an update following the events of the season 1 finale of Picard :

Riker returned to active duty in 2399, leading a fleet of Starfleet vessels to protect Jean-Luc Picard and the Synth home world Coppelius from Romulan attack. He continues his role in Starfleet, having most recently lent his expertise on the new Titan refit.

The  Commander Deanna Troi’s log also ends with a link to Starfleet:

Troi continues to hold a rank within Starfleet should her expertise be needed.

Jonathan Frakes as William Riker

Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi

Seven had help from two admirals

There is also a log for “Commander Seven of Nine,” indicating Seven has kept her Borg designation even in Starfleet. It was revealed in season 2 that Seven had once failed to get into Starfleet, and the new log offers insight into how she eventually was able to get a commission:

With help from Admirals Picard and Janeway, Seven received a Starfleet commission. She currently serves as First Officer on the USS Titan NCC-80102-A under the command of Captain Liam Shaw.

Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine

Raffi has La Sirena, but the rest is only rumor

Raffi’s log starts off with “NOTE: Commander Musiker’s personal details are classified” before it goes into her character history, including what we saw in the first two seasons of Picard . The log ends with:

For years, Musiker has worked to overcome several addictions that plagued her life and Starfleet career, with the hope that she might reconnect with her son Gabe and his family. Musiker’s current Starfleet status is classified. Rumors suggest she has left Starfleet entirely. Her present whereabouts are unknown.

There is also a log for La Sirena , which covers the ship’s history after being taken over by Seven in season two:

Following Seven of Nine’s admission to Starfleet and assignment to the USS Titan NCC-80102-A, Raffaella Musiker took command of La Sirena; however, current ship’s status and whereabouts are unknown.

Michelle Hurd as Raffi Musiker

The fates of Enterprise-E and Enterprise-F

There is also a log for the USS Enterprise , which covers all the ships with that designation. It has already been revealed that the season will include the Enterprise-F, successor to the Enterprise-E last seen in Star Trek: Nemesis . Regarding the Enterprise-E, the log ends with “Final Mission: CLASSIFIED.”

Here is what the log had to say about the Enterprise-F:

NCC-1701-F-Odyssey Class. Launched in 2386. Commanded by several captains in the past 15 years. Currently scheduled for decommissioning after the critical systems were compromised during the “the Monfette Gambit”, the rescue efforts for the Raillian refugees on Fenton IV. The Enterprise-F’s final flight will be on display during this year’s Frontier Day.

NOTE: Christopher Monfette is a writer for Picard .

USS Enterprise-F as seen in the final trailer

Enterprise-F with other Starfleet ships in the final trailer

The Titan has a storied history and some special features

The hero ship for season 3 is the USS Titan. This particular log was written by showrunner Terry Matalas and offers some more backstory about the ship and the history of the three ships of that name.  The logs introduce a new ship into Trek history, the first ship to bear the name Titan, and it has a surprising link to a Trek character introduced in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . From the log:

NCC-1777-Shangri La Class. Launched in 2290 under the Command of Captain Saavik. Known for its multiple encounters with the Klingon Empire, including the Exo-Port Takeover and Horizon colony rescue. The Titan became Starfleet’s flagship under the recommendation of Captain Sulu of the Excelsior. The Titan was instrumental in maintaining frontier stability before the Khitomer accords and the subsequent launch of the Enterprise-B.

Kirstie Alley as Saavik in Star Trek II

The second Titan (NCC-80102) is a ship first mentioned at the end of Star Trek Nemesis , and was first seen on the covers of a series of Star Trek: Titan books, and later in Star Trek: Lower Decks , under the command of Captain William T. Riker. According to the new log, the ship was pulled from service in 2398 after “suffering extensive damage.”

This leads to the USS Titan for season 3 of Picard, here is the description:

Because of Captains Saavik and Riker, the Titan’s legacy was continued with a brand new starship, one that would retain its registry, but now with the “A” designation, an honor only given to a select few starships. NCC-80102-A. Constitution III Class, referred to in Starfleet slang as Neo-Constitution Class. This new Titan is primarily an exploratory vessel, honoring the retro design of the Constitution Class II . Launched in 2402 under the command of Captain Liam Shaw. Work began on a refit using the original Titan space frame, however, with the development of cutting-edge technology, the Titan’s design changed mid-construction and a new ship took form. As per tradition, Starfleet engineers affectionately designated it as a refit, having kept much of the original Titan’s internal components. The Constitution III was designed to cater to a close support envelope at sub-light speeds, namely in and around densely populated solar systems, as witnessed by is overpowered impulse engines. To date, the new Titan has the largest sub-light power-to-geometry ratio in the fleet.

USS Titan in final trailer

Here is the full Titan log…

More Picard coverage to come

In the coming days look for interviews from the Hollywood premiere event with members of the cast along with showrunner Terry Matalas. We will be posting our regular recap/reviews on a weekly basis, starting with the first episode on Thursday, February 16, and each week our All Access Star Trek podcast will discuss the latest episode, starting on Friday, February 17. Our  Shuttle Pod podcast team will also discuss the upcoming season. Until then, you can read our spoiler-free review of season 3, written by Mark. A. Altman .

The third and final season of  Picard  premieres on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, exclusively on  Paramount+  in the U.S., and Latin America, and on February 17 Paramount+ in Europe and elsewhere, with new episodes of the 10-episode-long season available to stream weekly. It will also debut on Friday, Feb. 17 internationally on Amazon Prime Video in more than 200 countries and territories. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave.

Keep up with news about the  Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

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Commodore LaForge? Could that be a sly reference to the episode where Geordi is trapped on the planet with the Romulan, who he keeps calling Commodore?

“I never lie when I’ve got sand in my shoes, Commodore.”

More likely it is a reference to smash hit band The Commodores.

They had the Commodore rank in TOS

So the Enterprises are basically throwaway now, huh…great. Also the Enterprise log is not linked.

I still maintain this new Titan should have a different number instead of 80102-A.

The hero ships are now pointless. Fans who clamored for the F should remember the saying “be careful what you wish for, you may get it.” Seeing the Enterprise E would have had some emotional power to it, the F will be meaningless and will then be gone. They missed an excellent opportunity here. It’s a shame.

I feel like the Titan stuff is a bit convoluted. The callback to Saavik is great, but the “using the old spaceframe” stuff just feels like an unnecessary indulgence. And was the Excelsior the flagship until — at some point presumably after the TOS films left off — Sulu personally urged the still-in-service Titan to be made the flagship?

(I wonder how carefully vetted these logs’ texts were — I thought the claim that the launch date of the Enterprise-C was “classified” was a bit much.)

Totally agree on the Titan issue, I don’t even see the point. It’s funny but it was the exact same irs done for the Stargazer and it was basically a new ship just built out of the old one. Just say it was a new ship from the beginning. This seems to be something Matalas likes to add since it’s been done twice now.

It was hinted at that we would see more than one Enterprise. Looks like they may have been referencing the F and G, not the E and F. New Enterprise, folks!

No, we’re likely seeing the D one last time in the form of a flashback or holodeck sequence. Burton is on record as saying they spent 3 days filming on a replica of the Enterprise-D bridge set.

I don’t see the point. Why couldn’t they have just sunseted the E and introduced the F? Instead of killing off the E early, a short life on the F and already on to the G presumably for the Picard Successor Series?

Picard famously said “plenty of letters left in the alphabet” but this is getting silly.

I hope season 3 ends with the launch of the Enterprise-G. I believe the Enterprise-G was one of the original designations for the then new starship in early TNG production. What a great ship to launch the next next generation.

My theory is if there is a new ‘Next, Next Generation’ series, the showrunners want to redesign the Enterprise-G to their own specifications. They probably used the current F design in honour of the online game.

I wonder if they will take the D-saucer section (which they listed as being recovered in Picard S2) and mate it to a new Ross-class star-drive and call it the G. 🤪

That would be cool to see.

I would be so unhappy to see the -D dish again, as in gnashing my teeth just thinking of it.

Me too. I will always acknowledge that it was at least a bold design (as say compared to the incrementalist failure of the NX-01 shit design), and I have a lot of respect and love for Probert, but it is still butt-ugly — there is no getting around that.

Dude the D is my favorite ship lol. I love it so much! But I know it’s not everyone’s favorite, but I grew up with it. It was the first Star Trek model I bought as well but had so many different toy versions of it.

I even had a large LED poster in my room in college! :)

I love the swooping lines of the D.

I really don’t find many of the other ships, that many of the ship geeks feel are better, in anny way aesthetically pleasing.

I think it’s why I like the elongated ships (that Matalas clearly doesn’t). The slipstream Aventine model that Eaglemoss offered briefly is a favourite of mine.

More, to me, the demands of the physics of warp shouldn’t be giving us the kind of designs that look like they were welded together in an ocean ship dry dock in the 1970s. (Having grown up in view of a major harbour, many of these designs hit my old ugly ship buttons. My imagination naturally fills in the rust that keeps needing overcoats of paint.)

If they’re going to be mundanely mid 20th century practical, to me they may as well be the bumpy ships of the original SW. Heresy here, I know.

I hope not. That’d be lazy writing.

NCC 1701-OG

As good as the reviews have been, I remain skeptical that after viewing this season that I’m going to say, “ wow I was wrong, there was a natural and holistic reason to include lore in this season and he wasn’t shoehorned in simply because they wanted to have a role for Brent spinner”

Knowing your opinions around reading your comments, I am confident you will not come around, and will very likely actively hate this season.

As will, 99% of the commenters on this site. And anyone who disagrees with them will likely be attacked and trolled for daring to think for themselves

I think it’s going to be a good season — I usually agree with Altman, so I’m really excited now.

I didn’t like the never ending your daily marketing by Matalas on the build up, and Matalas was unproven and season two of Picard (which he worked on) I thought was the worst season of Star Trek since Enterprise season four. So I was legitimately skeptical and I’m not apologizing for those opinions — and I still never hope they never market a new Trek series like that again.

I’m glad you’re feeling optimistic, but for your own sake, go in with low expectations. You’re much more likely to enjoy it!

Never apologize for an opinion. It’s good to be skeptical with regards to this stuff. As for marketing, I have largely paid attention but can separate it from my opinion of it.

So you’re sure that nearly everyone will hate it, but that everyone will attack everyone who hates it? Talk about a silly persecution complex lol

The only people who get grief are the ones who are trash talking repeatedly, incessantly, and non-stop for attention.

I mostly agree, although I used to get some push back from you every time I talked about my issues with SNW lol. And I always said I liked the show, but I still wanted to discuss what I didn’t like which was (and still is btw) canon issues. Now all those issues are in the past, I’m just bringing up an example, mostly one of perspective. It’s not a big deal at all.

But yeah it can happen and I know you were just giving your opinion but as we all know, tone is very hard on a message board. People can feel like they are being attacked even if the other person is just debating their points in their head. So while I generally agree people can get waaaaay too triggered at times lol, which still amazes me in 2023 how much it does happen, some people are also just more sensitive than others or read things differently.

And I’m going to say something a little controversial, but we also deal with people who has mental issues too and when we’re all anonymous and know nothing about each other, we have no idea who are really talking to at the end of the day.

But some people just want to constantly argue lol. Or feel offended over everything. So for those people, it’s why I wish this board had an ignore button, NOT because I think they are evil, but it’s gets tiring dealing with these personalities when 90%of us just want to have civil and normal conversations with others, even if we disagree, without the drama, troll baiting or tedious arguing.

I just refuse to do it and I don’t.

Given Altman‘s review i’m expecting it to be a really good season.

Here’s a thought, instead of making assumptions about me, given you’ve actually seen much of the season, can you with all confidence tell me that you think Lore was needed in this season, or was he shoehorned in to give Spinner a role just like they did in Picard season two?

And despite what you think about me, I’ll have no problem saying I’m wrong on this if Lore ends up being integral to this season. An likewise, I hope you’re honest with your answer to me on this question.

By the way, if you bother to pay the attention to my posts over time you will notice many instances where I’ve said I’ve been wrong on some thing and I’ve apologize to people, and I try to discuss back-and-forth with people as well — I don’t have your habit of making negative comments but then disappearing and not following up to the responses

AlphaPredator, given you chose not to respond, I will assume that Lore/Spinner is in fact shoehorned into this season as I was suggesting might be the case. Thanks!

Omg, what is this, middle school? ;)

Let’s just let people live their lives on a Saturday and come to our own conclusions as the season unfolds. There’s no tangible validation to be found on these boards for some of the subjective details you sometimes seek it for.

AlphaPredator said he saw the first 6 eps, so either he will respond to my question, or he won’t. I’m not sure you need to have a role in this, but by all means, feel free to manufacture whatever drama you want on my comments…lol

It’s not a private chat room and you were goading someone for not getting back to you after a mere 4 hours, with a failure to respond clause.

You do you, but I just don’t think that’s a productive way to communicate here, and sometimes there are things said on these boards which are perfectly understandable as to why they don’t get responded to.

+1. Christ, the show premieres in five days. Find out then. This is a blog, not Bob’s 24-Hour-Turnaround Service.

(Thoroughly agree with the concern, though.)

Dude, you are so far off “Trek” here. :-) It was a sarcastic-humorous retort back at AlphaPredator — he and I do this all the time with each other…we are big boys and can handle it.

chill out…calm down. lol

All right, all right. I overstepped on this one.

No worries, I should have put a wink emoticon on it. Sarcasm doesn’t always come across correctly when written down.

You will probably hate it and crap on it no matter how good it is.

Based on Altman’s review, I think I am going to be very happy with this, actually.

Please don’t confuse my significant dislike of the nearly daily marketing/mini-spoiler dropping by Matalas with whether I will like this season or not.

You may dislike the 6-week promotional campaign, but the Paramount will be closely watch both the views and the net uptick in subscriptions associated with this premiere. They will also be watching the newer rating metrics that take into account the social media impact.

Matalas is doing everything to end up with the best numbers possible for this season of Picard, however it’s measured. He’s managed to get the show into just about every list of “What to watch this week” new releases for this upcoming week.

For that he gets my respect, even if it’s over the top. It’s what it will take to get another 25th century show greenlit.

Yeah no doubt if this is a big success they will probably incorrectly assume it was because of the crazy intense marketing campaign… So yeah I can see us being stuck with this approach for years, unfortunately.

I, for one, am glad there is an explanation as to why 60% of the Titan-A is made up of impulse engines. ;)

It sounds like Titan is the A-10 Warthog of Starships.

Nice analogy!

In-system close support prioritization is a significant flip from the Luna-class Titan that was a long range explorer.

Also curious for a designation as a neo-Constitution.

Matalas is on record as being a fan of the refit design. I get that, but this is way too anachronistic for its own good.

He apparently can’t take criticism of it either…

I can live with it.

The warthog analogy actually makes it more palatable.

Matalas and his crew of retro production designers had their idea of how Starfleet might go nostalgic in design. I can understand why that visual code might appeal to some older Berman-era fans, especially Americans. (It has a decidedly American aesthetic to me.)

There are however other fans like me, old and new, who like the more globally-informed/influenced design choices in the new shows being produced in the greater Toronto area. I’m glad we’re not stuck in one production design across the shows.

I really wish we could get more international design into the ships for the other live action shows. Discovery’s 32nd century ships (and production designs overall) have somehow digested some of the Space 1999 visual DNA, but that’s it.

Interesting, the Enterprise-E looks to have come to an end around 2386 (assumption based on the launch date of the F). It looks like Worf was the Captain towards the end, thus synching up with the Una McCormack novel – I do love that touch with Worf being Captain of the Enterprise, the Flagship of the Federation.

The Enterprise-F has been in service for 15 years already and is about to be decommissioned. Obviously the creators wanted to give a shout out to the STO design team by giving them the F, but if it’s being decommissioned, then a replacement is obviously being designed behind the scenes. Terry has probably planned it this way just in case there is a spinoff eg Star Trek Legacy

I really wish they hadn’t even bothered. The Odyssey-class has never been a beautiful design IMHO. And if they’re just gonna do it dirty like this, then the reasoning feels even flimsier.

I agree, never been a fan of the Odyssey class. I’m happy that they’re decommissioning it though, so we’ll hopefully get a better design. No offence though, to the original creators of the Odyssey class, it’s just not my preference.

Fan of the class or not, the name ‘Enterprise’ deserves more respect than this seems to be getting…

Well, it’s been in service for more than 15 years, which is more than double the lifespan of the Enterprise-D. For us, it’s only going to be there for about 15 seconds.

Yeah. I get that not every series can be about the Enterprise , but this? This is just [redacted] stupid. Could’ve just as easily said that the E or the F was still in service and not shown it at all, but nope, gotta drive a stake through our collective chests.

Nevermind how the Luna -class Titan was essentially cut off at the knees…

I agree with this; it sounds far too shoehorned in.

Hmm imo it would make sense if they say the E was destroyed by the Living Construct and it took them two years to build the F because of how devastating their losses was from it. They had a lot of ships to rebuild and different admirals had different priorities (ie Janeway with the Protostar class.) Which yes since it was the Enterprise taking that long is not that likely but at the same time if they had ship building crews working around the clock on a lot of different ships, it makes sense.

Continuing my thoughts, it would also serve to tie Prodigy into the larger Trek universe and into PIC as well.

It’s an appealing thought Gritizens.

More, as some of us commented around Prodigy’s finale, it would explain why Starfleet was so pressed to build cookie cutter ships for the Romulan exodus.

Even the construction of a top-line capital ship like Enterprise would be compromised by the pressures.

Yeah that was part of my thoughts too, I just didn’t get them typed out. It wouldn’t be an explanation for everything but it would be for a lot relating to ships. And the E being there makes sense because it would have been an unknown threat and if they called the Defiant out for it, then they would have likely called the Enterprise too.

Considering none of the Sovereign -class ships present at that battle was explicitly referred to as the Enterprise , as well as the fact that all of them were labeled as Sovereign or Enterprise (if I’m remembering the Trekcore and Trekmovie reviews correctly), I Wouldn’t put much stock in it.

It’s called retconning and also none of those ships were mentioned by name. The Dauntless and the Protostar were the only ones that were.

The registration number was clearly visible at one point.

TrekMovie doesn’t screencap that much, but someone in a thread did provide a link to a clip.

It would be a visual retcon to say the 1701-E wasn’t there.

With the Enterprises, I feel this is a bit like coming down on Christmas morning after a long year, and finding the box of the toy you’d been dreaming of has already been opened, and the toy’s in there, but it’s kinda scuffed up, and your parents tell you that actually the neighbors’ kids got to the tree first and had a lot of fun with your present, but you can have it now.

I just really hope there’s some good justification for not only having the -E long gone, *and* the -F on the verge of decommissioning. Otherwise — not unlike the gratuitous dead Troi-Riker kid or maybe-not-dead?-no-REALLY-dead Data from S1 — it just sort of feels like a troll (the thing you were interested in seeing all these years is actually long gone, haha, we lured you in with nostalgia but we’re going to be “edgy” and teach you your lesson… and then try to lure you back with nostalgia yet again). I say this as someone who hasn’t watched anything Trek since Picard S1 (I gave up on DISC after S1, never got around to PIC S2 for this reason and the negative word-of-mouth, but will probably catch up and give this season a try).

I will say, I’d always been baffled about the use of the STO design. I mean, the designer did a fine job, and it’s a nice incremental update on the Sovereign-class, but it’s much better suited to an online game than to anything cinematic.

I found the Odyssey-class F fairly ugly too.

I can understand why the powers that be don’t want that to be the Enterprise going forward but also don’t want to push it out of canon. That would be the real disrespect.

Like the Luna-class Titan (which has been getting hero moments in LDS), , I respect Matalas for honouring it in canon without being bound to use it as a hero ship.

Why are you guys so obsessed with ships?

Lore seems to be the biggest mystery of this show in terms of returning characters. So now that we know Starfleet basically put him back together, wouldn’t they just have reprogrammed him not to want to take over the galaxy? Maybe that explains why he’s wearing a Starfleet uniform because he actually is in Starfleet now. But Matalas also described him as a villain in the season IIRC.

I’m really fascinated to see how he’ll fit into all of this.

Wonder if Lore will turn out to be a hybrid with Data. Makes no sense becoming a Starfleet Officer.

I’m sensing that’s where they are going with it. He’s a combination of both characters who has Lore’s personality but also Data’s memories or something similar.

I have a funny feeling that Lore has been put back together so Starfleet can test a new experimental technology…ie merging android and organic materials (like organs etc) together.

An advanced cyborg or android/ human hybrid if you will…. hence the reduced gold skin, hair colour and ageing. Just a theory…

Yeah that’s also my hunch on that topic. Probably Datas mind in a golem body and they needed some of lores software to make it actually work ( since it was not a human mind they needed to transfer )

Agree with this — or, someone uploaded Data’s files into Lore’s positronic brain (which was as advanced as his, and could accommodate him better than B4’s) and then stuck it into the golem body Soong had intended for himself. But some of Lore is still present, and he’s working through the schizophrenia thus induced…

People keep saying this, but based on that “log”, my money is on a hybrid Lore/Soong.

That can work too, but I guess people just really want Data back in some form and this is probably the best they will get since B4 apparently didn’t work out.

Wow, it seems like they will go to any length it seems to shoehorn Spinner into a role.

my bet is Lore/Soong/B4 (Spare parts) Golem Body

Maybe Lore took the place of Data in Commander Maddox’s experiments after Starfleet failed to secure Data.

Alphantrion!!!!

Dude I been thinking about you for days now!! I was worried because I haven’t seen you respond. I don’t know what area you live in, but I am so sorry what happened to Turkey. I know this is off topic but I think people understand. Are you OK? Your family?? I can’t imagine what it’s like right now regardless. It’s so depressing what has happened. But I am happy you’re fine at least.

Thanks for the well wishes, me and my family is fine but unfortunately there are many dead here. It is a traumatic situation for the whole country and the grieving process will be long but hopefully we’ll be able to rebuild.

Glad to hear you are okay.

I’m at least glad to hear you and your family are OK, but I can’t imagine how dramatic it is for everyone there. I was really hoping you posted somewhere to see you were OK but then I thought you probably just have other concerns right now then posting on a random message board.

But good to know!

Best wishes for all of you on the road to recovery

I remember you from my comment about “why have we never seen a Turkish Starfleet officer?” a year or two ago. I second Tiger2’s well wishes. If you don’t mind the question, do you live in Hatay or near the Turkish-Syrian border?

No, I live in the middle part of Turkey which thankfully was less effected by the devastation. I actually live in Ankara the capital city.

Seconding the well wishes here alphantrion.

This one of the more globally representative boards. I’m always concerned when one of us drops off when their has been a tragedy.

Looking forward to hearing your views when you’re ready for some diversion.

And yes, agreed. That’s possible too. I think Matalas has something good up his sleeve so I’m open for anything.

Perhaps this Lore, is the desperate try to get an new Host Golem Body for Soong. But it was done in a Hurry so that some old memories still resists inside the Old Golem Body. in the end we have Soong that with many Personas now. Lore, B4 and himself. Reminds me of some “He-Man” Man-E-Faces Figure (Yes, i am that old)

But this is now spun from deep inside me :)

Edit: Oh i see many others come to the same conclusion. Well, let’s see

Hopefully he’s married to Peanut Hamper

Ask your doctor about Horizon Colon Rescue.

But.. what…. Saavik? Are we going to see Captain Robin Curtis? Or Kirstie Alley?

Are flashbacks in S3 like… the Dr. Who short with Paul McGann? Are we going to see a series of these in each episode?

Clearly I should have something better to do tonight…

Well, I’m not sure Kirstie Alley had much interest in returning to Trek, did she? Unless she said something to the contrary in recent years that I missed. By the by, RIP.

I’d be all for a Robin Curtis cameo as well. I always thought she was fine in the role. Different but fine.

There is a lot of info about her working with Riker on the Titan… of course I had no idea. :)

I think you’re misinterpreting the words here. ‘Because of Captain’s Saavik and Riker’ likely refers to the exploits of both captains, not them convincing Starfleet to continue the Titan lineage. History shows that names get reused a lot in Trek ( Defiant , Saratoga , Hood , etc.)

Well, I just wonder why this was in these “logs” at all unless it’s important info for the series, somehow.

Last I checked, she didn’t seem to, and her…political views likely would’ve made her persona non grata among the Trek fraternity.

Even a posthumous cameo, such as her picture on a historical log, would still be a nice tribute.

As for the “fraternity,” if you mean the screaming meemies of the internet, who cares? They would find something else to scream about three minutes later.

That would be awesome! Sounds like they need to do a flashback (or mini series, Kelvin movie, whatever) to that Titan or even recast Saavik, such an awesome character. You read some of the DC comics at the time… should have totally had more of her. I’m good with Robin Curtis, but with Saavik being half Romulan, half Vulcan.

I’d be up to a made for streaming movie.

Or, if a Vanguard station 47 streaming series ever gets made (along the lines of the books), perhaps the Titan could be worked into the action.

Perhaps David Mack can be inspired to write a Titan/Vanguard novel…. He has a great track record in writing female captains.

It’s unfortunate that web sites always throw up the photo of Kristie Alley as Saavik and not Robin Curtiss. Curtiss did two movies to Alley’s one, and she seemed more committed to Star Trek versus just trying to maximize her $. I also think she was more credible in the role.

I liked them both, never really understood why Curtis got flak. She played a marvelous Vulcan in my book.

So the Enterprise-F has been in service 15 years AND is close to being decommissioned in it’s FIRST TV appearance?!

Also no explanation AT ALL to it’s service history or crew?! Why bother putting it in?!

Completely ridiculous.

Agreed! The Enterprise deserves better than this.

Well the B and C each got about ten minutes screen time, so not unusual

At least the B was on it’s maiden voyage, though the C should have been expanded upon more.

Yup. Shouldn’t have even bothered. I get trying to thank the STO crew for their help, but this ain’t it, chief.

Perhaps the final scene of S3 will be the TNG crew coming aboard the Enterprise-G for its maiden voyage? That would be a great throwback to Generations and possibly signal the main ship for the next live action show will be an Enterprise.

On the other hand, that’s 15 years and multiple captains’ worth of material for another spin-off one day…

How long do you keep a car? When things get old you cuck it.

Oh… I Just read The Sandman, by German Autor ETA Hoffmann. In it an artifical women plays a crucial role and one characters Name is… Coppelius…

Saavik making Captain by 2290 sounds like quite a career advancement, who do they think she is, Kirk?

She did learn from the best and pretty much served through some of the most consequential events of the time.

I’d actually figure she would be tarred with the brush of Genesis, and also not have the ‘out’ of having helped save the planet in TVH. I really thought they didn’t begin to touch Robin Curtis’ talent, which is a shame. I saw her in some episodic TV series in the 80s where she was a committed teacher who basically got sacrificed by the school for doing the right thing and she was awesome in it (don’t even remember what series it was, but she was GOOD.)

Terry is good at making stuff up in his head. Lol. He has his own canon.

So he’s a fan then? ;-)

So did Altan Soong die before he could download into a new Golem? Or did his mind transfer fail? Or better yet, did he do like his father in the Cold Equations novels and transfer to an android body and assume a new identity?

I believe the golem body he gave Picard at the end of S1 was intended for him. Maybe he didn’t have time to construct a new one before his death?

Prediction: Lore isn’t Lore at all, it’s just Soong straight-up golem-izing Lore’s old body.

It must have been so fun to write these!

>starting with the first episode on Thursday, February 17 , and each week our  All Access Star Trek  podcast will discuss the latest episode, starting on Friday, February 18

This paragraph was written by someone from alternate reality with alternate calendar, it seems.

No one complained so much when the Enterprise D was destroyed after such a short run. Perhaps moving forward the shows want to use a completely new Enterprise design not seen before but wanted to honour the design of the Odyssey class as per STO on screen and make it cannon. The same with Luna Class… whilst great designs. It’s also about fitting with what works on screen

well, Lore has still got that smirk. Actually kind of pleased he’s back, thank the Prophets it’s not another damn Soong.

Jonathan Frakes is looking fantastic in that pic. But…I don’t think I’ll ever get used to WORF HAVING EARS?! I think I’d unconsciously assumed he didn’t have any.

Before his character name for S3 was announced, I assumed Spiner would return as Altan Soong as that would provide some link to S1. I wasn’t initially pleased Lore was returning, but given what we’ve learned so far I’m trusting that Matalas has done the character justice. And yes – thank the Prophets we’re not getting yet another brand-new Soong.

Regarding Worf, I’ve been re-watching several key TNG and DS9 episodes lately, and I can’t recall ever having seen Worf’s ears. Other notable Klingons – Duras, Gowron, Lursa, B’Etor, and Martok, even K’ehleyr and Alexaner (who had human blood) – I cannot find scenes where they showed their ears.

I think you can see the very tips of his earlobes in a few passing shots but never fully exposed.

Likely this is another concession made for Mike Dorn’s desire to not spend 4 hours in makeup every day

Colonel Worf’s ears were visible in ST: TUC, as was General Chang’s. When Lt. Worf wore the bob during the early seasons of TNG, sometimes his ear lobes were visible. I don’t recall having seen more than that.

The Titan log just makes me wonder… Why Constitution III class and not Shangri-La II class? ESPECIALLY if it was designed after the original Shangri-La?

Fridging the F is really dumb hopefully the shenanigans of the season reverse the decision and it just gets a second wind. Unless we’re to expect the G, H and I suddenly get service times of 50 years each when their three predecessors average about a decade between them, it doesn’t seem like much thought when into it.

“the Enterprise-E, the log ends with “Final Mission: CLASSIFIED” maybe the Enterprise-E is still out there adrift somewhere or just been missing and presumed lost – and will show up again during the course of the show. Hoping.

A 'Star Trek: Picard' Star Is Going to Med School on This Week's 'Chicago Med'

Meet Naomi Howard, student doctor.

The Big Picture

• Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut joins Chicago Med as Student Doctor Naomi Howard in a new episode.
• The episode will revolve around treating a bipolar artist and Dr. Ripley keeping a cancer diagnosis secret.
• Season 9 of Chicago Med is heading down a darker path as new characters bring fresh energy to the show.

A new doctor is in the building for Chicago Med , and this one comes from the far reaches of space. Following her most recent stint aboard Star Trek: Picard Season 3, Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut will walk through the doors of the Gaffney Medical Center as Student Doctor Naomi Howard on tonight's episode of the hit NBC medical drama, titled "I Think There Is Something You're Not Telling Me," at 8 p.m. ET. Sharpe Chestnut confirmed her entrance with a photo of her new uniform on X (formerly Twitter) , showing she's ready to learn from her new colleagues.

The new episode will apparently thrust her directly into the action without much time to get her feet under her. Per the synopsis, tonight's installment will see Dr. Charles ( Oliver Platt ) working closely with a medical student, likely Howard, to treat a bipolar artist. The young doctor will be learning on the fly while, elsewhere in the hospital, Dr. Ripley ( Luke Mitchell ) tries his best to keep Sully's ( Daniel Dorr ) cancer diagnosis under wraps. Season 9 is heading down a darker path with Ripley and, if the title is any indication, his past and present may all come to a head this week as he's prodded for answers . Johnson ( Henderson Wade ) is also pushing hard to work his way into Med's trauma fellowship.

Sharpe Chestnut's television star has been rising fast in recent years, culminating in her turn opposite Mika Burton as Ensign Sidney La Forge , the older daughter of Geordi La Forge ( LeVar Burton ) and helmsman of the USS Titan in Picard . She's previously enjoyed roles in Issa Rae 's Rap Sh!t and Homeland , as well as the first season of Freeform's hit mystery series Cruel Summer . Broadcast television isn't an unfamiliar landscape to her either, as she previously joined the team at NCIS: Los Angeles as FBI Special Agent Summer Morehurst for a pair of episodes.

'One Chicago' Isn't Going Anywhere Anytime Soon

Season 9 of Chicago Med kicked off back in January and, since then, things have continued to look up for the ever-popular One Chicago universe. All three shows, including Med , Chicago Fire , and Chicago P.D. , were renewed for new episodes during the 2024-2025 season back in March. The franchise has remained a staple in NBC's lineup of dramas even as this latest season has seen some turnover in the network's schedule with the end of Quantum Leap and, more recently, Extended Family . Gaffney, in particular, has been thriving with a few new additions, including the aforementioned Mitchell alongside Grey’s Anatomy veteran Sophia Ali .

Chicago Med still has a couple of nights to go before Season 9 concludes its 13-episode run. Tonight's installment featuring Sharpe Chestnut premieres at 8 p.m. ET on NBC. All previous episodes are available to stream on Peacock.

Chicago Med

The city's most highly skilled medical team saves lives, while navigating their unique interpersonal relationships.

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Star Trek: Discovery boldly goes where no Trek has gone before by saying religion is... OK, actually

‘Whistlespeak’ breaks from Trek tradition to be pretty chill about believing in a higher power

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Star Trek’s future is a secular one. Franchise creator Gene Roddenberry was an avowed atheist , and the series and its spin-offs have routinely criticized organized religion as manipulative, illogical, and detrimental to the evolution of a society. Individual members of the human race may have an undefined spirituality, a curiosity about the afterlife, or a sense of wonder at the unknown or unknowable, but specific religious beliefs are typically reserved for alien cultures.

But, if Trek’s fervently pro-science and anti-superstition has remained constant, so have the attempts by different storytellers within the franchise to approach religion from other, more tolerant angles. And the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery , “Whistlespeak,” may present Trek ’s most even-handed take on faith to date.

Religion as childhood fantasy

Somewhat restrained by the standards and practices of 1960s television, Star Trek: The Original Series used sci-fi allegories to criticize religion as an institution that stifled advancement and expression. In two episodes (“The Return of the Archons” and “The Apple”), Captain James T. Kirk and his Enterprise crew encountered a planet where a population was cowed into willful ignorance or repression by a deity that turned out to be a computer, which Kirk summarily destroyed.

In the 1980s, however, Star Trek’s writers were free to take the gloves off and criticize religion directly. In the 1989 Next Generation episode “Who Watches the Watchers,” Captain Jean-Luc Picard is mistaken for a god by a Bronze Age civilization for whom religion is already a thing of the past. Picard is mortified to be the catalyst for what he, in no uncertain terms, views as a societal regression, and steps in to reveal the truth to his new worshippers, even at the risk of his own life.

The position of “Who Watches the Watchers,” and of Star Trek at large, is that people turn to the supernatural when there are questions they can’t answer, but that the answers will always come, eventually. The willingness to pursue those answers and the patience to avoid drawing rash conclusions is a sign of maturity. By contrast, inventing digestible but unsupportable explanations for life’s mysteries is a sign of immaturity , a phase to be grown out of.

Other people’s gods

After Gene Roddenberry’s death in 1991, there was a gradual shift in the way Star Trek stories approached religion. The human species had still exited the evolutionary stage at which religion was practiced, but many of their peers in the galactic community — such as the Klingons and the Bajorans — held strong religious beliefs. And these beliefs began to be explored in much greater detail.

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , the human members of the command crew go to great lengths to not only respect but participate in the Klingon rituals of their comrade, Lt. Commander Worf. Ahead of Worf’s marriage to Jadzia Dax, his colleagues Captain Sisko, Chief O’Brien, and Dr. Bashir join him for four days of fasting and physical exhaustion (though not without complaint). When Jadzia is murdered and Worf fears her death has not earned her a place in the Klingon Valhalla of Sto-Vo-Kor, Bashir and O’Brien follow Worf on a potential suicide mission to win glory in her honor. Worf’s friends are content to take Klingon religion at face value, and the existence of Sto-Vo-Kor is never questioned.

During this era of Star Trek, alien religious beliefs were not merely tolerated, but validated. This is an important wrinkle in the case of the Bajoran religion on Deep Space Nine , whose worshiped Prophets are undeniably real: a species of non-corporeal beings who live outside of time and periodically intervene in the development of the nearby planet Bajor. Whether or not the Prophets have done the things the Bajorans worship them for is not up for debate, only whether or not they should be treated with religious reverence. Through DS9 ’s exploration of Bajoran politics, religious power is as dangerous as the person wielding desires it to be — not inherently malevolent or infantilizing towards its people. But, of course, since the existence of the Bajoran gods can be scientifically proven, their value as an analog to real-life religion is limited.

Discovery’s middle way

The streaming era of Star Trek under executive producer Alex Kurtzman, which began in 2017, has seen some new, minor references to religious practices in human society. For example, an unnamed background character serving aboard the USS Cerritos on Star Trek: Lower Decks can be seen wearing a hijab, indicating that some semblance of Islamic tradition is still observed in the 24th century. Not long after we meet Captain Christopher Pike during the second season of Star Trek: Discovery , we learn that his father taught both science and comparative religion.

But “Whistlespeak,” which comes midway through Discovery ’s fifth and final season, returns fully to the Original Series’ territory of a classic “weird alien religion” episode, and with a much more multi-faceted approach. Captain Burnham and her crew visit the planet Halem’no. which is nigh-uninhabitable except within the radius of a tower-like device that was secretly installed by a Federation scientist centuries earlier. The planet’s surviving inhabitants are a peaceful and friendly pre-warp civilization who believe that the towers are temples built by their gods.

Disguised as locals, Burnham and her friend and shipmate Lt. Sylvia Tilly join the faithful Halem’nites for a ceremonial marathon up to the towers as tribute to their divine saviors. It’s a joyful ritual that brings the entire community together, but there’s a shocking twist the Starfleet visitors only learn after the race is finished. Tilly and the marathon’s other winner, a Halem’nite named Ravah, are locked inside the tower, where they will eventually asphyxiate; a sacred sacrifice to keep the planet’s terrible storms at bay.

Though Starfleet officers are forbidden to interfere in the development of pre-warp civilizations, Burnham isn’t about to let Tilly (or Ravah) die to satisfy some arcane ritual. However, rather than tearing the whole society down like Kirk might have done, Burnham appeals directly to the community’s leader — Ravah’s father, Ohvahz — and implores him to stop the sacrifices, explaining the tower will do its work whether or not his child gives their life. Ohvahz is, naturally, open to the idea of not killing his child, but fears that revealing that their temple is actually an alien artifact will shatter his community and lead to violent conflict. What is their civilization without their faith and traditions?

“Better off,” is how Picard would probably answer. But Burnham’s response is more measured.

“There is still what you believe. Nothing we’ve shown you means gods don’t exist… it’s just that you know that there’s also us… Beliefs can evolve. Denying that can cause almost as much chaos as the worst storm.”

It’s probably no accident that Ravah, the teenager who’s supposed to be sacrificed in this episode, is gender non-binary, a trait which is not controversial for the Halem’nites but is condemned by many conservative religious groups here on present-day Earth. There’s also a parallel to the climate crisis, as the Halem’nites will need to learn to maintain the alien weather tower in order to keep their world safe. Would Christianity collapse if their leaders recognized that some of their flock don’t fit into the gender identities described in their holy texts, or that human intervention is required to undo human-made damage to the Earth? Probably not, and their inflexibility is only doing harm to their community. It’s not necessary to hold onto harmful policies or practices, nor is it necessary to throw out an entire system of beliefs because of new, contradictory, or unanticipated information.

Meanwhile, aboard Discovery, Dr. Hugh Culber has been trying to make sense of his own spiritual awakening, a feeling of connection to a higher power that has lingered with him since an out-of-body experience on a recent away mission. As a scientist, Culber’s first instinct is to investigate, understand, and catalog this sensation, but the explanation eludes him. He seeks the advice of his friend Cleveland Booker, a non-human with his own spiritual life, who essentially asks him, “Why do you need to understand it?” With this guidance, Culber decides that the value of his new spirituality is in how it feels, not where it comes from.

The approach to religion in “Whistlespeak” does not broadly condemn religion like The Original Series or The Next Generation , or rationalize and tolerate faith as a quirk of the other, like Deep Space Nine . Instead, “Whistlespeak” questions why a philosophy that is rooted in the unknowable should be attached to absolutes. Spirituality is what you make of it, whether that’s on an individual or community level. Religion can do harm, but it doesn’t have to, so long as its leaders and its believers are willing to embrace uncertainty. In this way, at least, science and religion can find some common ground.

Star Trek: Discovery is cracking open a box Next Gen closed on purpose

Star trek: discovery is finally free to do whatever it wants, the 10 horniest episodes of star trek, ranked by cultural impact, loading comments....

Star Trek's 2009 Reboot Changed Everything

Star Trek has been an important fixture of sci-fi TV for decades, and alongside its continued existence, movies have helped further flesh out the characters. But in both the movies and TV, the early 2000s weren’t kind to the franchise: 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis was a critical and commercial disaster, and Star Trek: Enterprise had a respectable four-season run, but the shortest of the shows since the original series. Change was in order, and it was eventually decided that would take the form of a reboot that took everyone by surprise.

Star Trek—that is, the reboot film released May 8, 2009—is one of those movies that showed up at just the right moment. At the time, movies based on old TV shows like Starsky & Hutch and Charlie’s Angels had found commercial successes, which gave this reboot some cultural context. It also helped that it was being helmed by a trio of filmmakers who knew how to make hits: J.J. Abrams was still riding the high off directing Mission: Impossible 3 (speaking of movies based on old TV shows), along with the almost-ended Lost and the still young Fringe . Writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman had written Mission and were further on Paramount’s good side with the first Transformers movie. If there was anyone who could make a new Star Trek flick that’d get anyone’s attention, for better or worse, it’d be these guys.

It really can’t be understated how much Paramount was banking on this new Star Trek being a hit back then. The studio wanted, more than anything, to get audiences to care about Star Trek again, and how best to do that in the 2000s? By hyping up its action scenes and Kirk being quite the ladies man. That didn’t entirely go over well, much like Abrams’ comments that the movie would mainly be for non-Trekkies. Even with that, the movie couldn’t help but look interesting. Those trailers didn’t tell you a dang thing about its actual plot, but they had good vibes, and made you want to see how the Enterprise crew would come to be the adventurers our parents and grandparents had fallen in love with back in their day.

And fall in love, people did: the reboot movie was met with critical acclaim and later four Academy Award nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Makeup and being the only Trek movie to net an Oscar. Despite mixed reactions on the movie splitting off into its own timeline, critics and audiences loved the young cast’s takes on the original characters—especially Zachary Quinto’s Spock and Zoe Saldana’s Uhura—and their chemistry. With a $385.7 million box office, Star Trek succeeded in making people care about the franchise once more. But its high ended up coming down quicker than you’d think, and in the years since, the movies have been marooned in space.

A few years later, 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness left an odd taste in audiences’ mouths. It still made money, but something about it felt off: maybe it was how it did a more convoluted retelling of Wrath of Khan, or maybe it can be owed to its very weird B-plot with 9/11 parallels that feel like they belong in a completely different movie (or another franchise entirely). Star Trek Beyond , conversely, went for a considerably simpler approach and just functioned like a regular episode of the show. That energy, combined with a still-incredible needle drop , was the right move, even if the film wasn’t a smash hit when it dropped in 2016. Paramount’s spent years trying to get a fourth movie off the ground since then, and it’s anyone’s guess as to if it’ll actually happen.

Things have gone much better over in TV land: Star Trek: Discovery and Lower Decks , a pair of well-liked shows, are both ending after their respective fifth seasons—a run that feels like a miracle these days. Star Trek: Picard gave Next Generation fans the legacy sequel they’d been wanting for years, and Star Trek: Prodigy , despite how messily its schedule was handled, brought younger audiences into the fold. It’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds that’ll be spearheading future TV plans, which currently include a Starfleet Academy show and the Paramount+ film focused on Michelle Yeoh’s Discovery character Phillipa Georgiou .

Star Trek 2009's biggest aftershock came outside of its franchise with the big reboot and legacy sequel boom of the 2010s. New takes on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, RoboCop , and Evil Dead were born from this movie’s success, even if it was just to revitalize its own series. Abrams, Orci, and Kurtzman went on to become even bigger names in Hollywood: the former famously went on to revive Star Wars for the big screen, and is a producing powerhouse. Orci and Kurtzman went on to be involved with the Amazing Spider-Man movies, and create or executive produce shows like Sleepy Hollow and Fringe. When the duo separated, Kurtzman—following his directorial debut The Mummy , which failed to launch Universal’s Dark Universe—effectively became Star Trek’s equivalent to Kevin Feige. Orci, last we heard, was writing a Spider-Man adjacent movie for Sony that’s gone quiet in the years since its announcement.

All-in-all, Star Trek was a game-changer, and for better or worse, you don’t get our current movie landscape without it. With how big the franchise is right now, it’s understandable why Paramount’s wanted so much to get a fourth film off the ground—but is it possible by this point? That hypothetical (and surprising ) Star Trek 4 has been waylaid by shifting creatives for years, to the point you feel like someone should finally make the call to pull the plug. Not only did Beyond give the Kelvin universe its cleanest end after the passings of Anton Yelchin and Leonard Nimoy, fourth movies can sometimes be dicey, especially when their franchise wasn’t really built with it in mind. And it’s anyone’s guess as to if a Starfleet prequel set in the same timeline will rejuvenate it for more films or just be a small detour before we head back to Prime time.

In 2022, Chris Pine said the best way forward for Star Trek movies may require they be less bombastic, more geared toward fans, and cost less to make. It’s an easy sentiment to get behind, and that may really only be possible by junking Trek 4 and doing it with another movie. The Enterprise of the Kelvinverse had a good run, and after 15 years, it’s more than fine to boldly go in a new direction.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel , Star Wars , and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV , and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who .

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‘star trek: discovery’ co-showrunner teases the final episodes and her message for fans.

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Co-showrunner Michelle Paradise with her "Star Trek: Discovery" cast and crew.

For five seasons, Star Trek: Discovery has taken audiences on the ride of a lifetime. With its series finale now in sight, I sat down with executive producer and co-showrunner Michelle Paradise at SeriesFest in Denver, Colorado to discuss the beloved show’s journey and what fans should expect from this ever-expanding television universe on Paramount Plus, before we say a proper farewell to the U.S.S. Discovery.

So for starters, what has Paradise enjoyed most about the evolution of Star Trek: Discovery , since it first premiered in September 2017?

“That’s a really great question,” Paradise said. “I have loved being a part of it. I joined halfway through season two, and it was starting to know what it was and it’s really found its way. I’ve really enjoyed the character arcs and getting to take them all to these different places. It’s also hard for me to separate out the evolution of the show from my evolution on the show and stepping into co-running it with [co-showrunner] Alex [Kurtzman] and starting to take over more of that in later seasons. It’s been the highlight of my career.”

Mary Wiseman as Tilly and Blu del Barrio as Adira in "Star Trek: Discovery" episode 7, season 5 - ... [+] streaming on Paramount+.

Paradise is no stranger to television production. She was previously an executive producer on such television projects as Exes & Ohs and The Originals , but I wondered what it might be about her Star Trek: Discovery cast and crew that perhaps feels special.

“It’s like a big family. First of all, our cast is incredible. They’re all insanely talented actors but they’re lovely human beings. They approach one another and they approach the project from just a place of love and respect for one another and for the material, which is always a wonderful place to start. You can’t say enough of [actor] Sonequa [Martin-Green], our number one and the tone that she sets on the show and on the set. We have a lot of folks on the show and the crew who come back, year-after-year. They all really love the world of Trek and they love one another. We try and go bigger and better and bolder every season, and there’s never a feeling of Oh, we can’t do that . It’s always a feeling of How do we do that? ”

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Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham in "Star Trek: Discovery" streaming on Paramount+.

Since the original Star Trek series first premiered on television in 1966, the Star Trek story and fictional sci-fi universe has evolved into several iterations, including Star Trek: The Next Generation , Deep Space Nine , Voyager , Enterprise , Strange New Worlds and Picard - not to mention the numerous Star Trek movies over many decades, including the three recent blockbuster films, starring Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana and Zachary Quinto, with another sequel in the works.

Throughout all of these years, Star Trek fans have remained quite loyal and vocal, both when they love a story and even when they don’t. So, how does Paradise and her Star Trek: Discovery creative team try to appease Trek fans, but also not allow the chatter to stop them from taking on some creative risks?

Wilson Cruz as Culber and Anthony Rapp as Stamets in "Star Trek: Discovery" episode 6, season 5 - ... [+] streaming on Paramount+.

Paradise said, “I think the best way to answer that is we always try to honor what Trek is - where it came from, what is the DNA of any Trek series, which of course goes back to the original series, and then also honoring what is this version of Trek and knowing that it’s our job to make the best version of Discovery . Someone who loves Discovery may not love Strange New Worlds or someone who loves Strange New Worlds may not love Discovery. By design, these are all very different shows. To a certain degree, it has to be okay that not everyone is going to love this iteration. We always feel like if we can do justice to the franchise as a whole - what it means, do justice to the characters and do our best version of Discovery , then we will have succeeded.”

Ever since the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes ended late last year, there have been signs of movement and optimism within the entertainment industry, but also a sense of some standstill with television and film productions. So, what is Paradise seeing around the current state of Hollywood?

“I think it depends on who you talk to,” Paradise said. “It feels a bit like a mixed bag to me. There are a lot of people who are still very much struggling - writers, crew members, directors - because things have not picked up in the way that they would normally at this particular time of year. By in large, there’s not really a pilot season, as we used to know it. That’s very difficult for people. Of course, there’s still a lot of wonderful opportunities, but it seems like the compression that happened - it’s the combo platter of the [Covid-19] pandemic and the strikes, just after that. It does feel condensed - there are fewer things but I feel like, to some degree, that had to happen because in the big balloon of streaming, that in retrospect, it doesn’t feel like it was necessarily sustainable. Hopefully it will ease up, sooner than later, and kind of calm down because there’s still a lot of people who are struggling to get back into work right now and I feel for them - it’s hard.”

On more of a positive note, when asked what Paradise is enjoying most about the television landscape today, she says that she feels there is a lot that can be done, applauding the way that every week, Star Trek: Discover y is a “cinematic storytelling into television,” though she admits that the visual design of Discovery is not sustainable for every network and studio.

While our real world faces divisive times with war, political unrest and other conflicts, I wondered if Paradise and her team keep in mind the real-life issues occurring, when crafting its stories for the screen on Star Trek: Discovery .

Mary Wiseman as Tilly, June Laporte as Ravah and Wilson Cruz as Dr. Culber in "Star Trek: Discovery" ... [+] episode 6, season 5 - streaming on Paramount+.

“That comes from just the DNA of the show itself. The original series did not shy away from what was happening societal at that time. It did not shy away from tackling those things in the way that it could. That’s one of the cool things about sci-fi - aliens can stand-in for another culture, different relationships can stand-in for whatever is happening in society at the time. That’s kind of baked into any Trek show, is that reflection of what’s happening in the world at that time via sci-fi and the different ways we could do it.”

Paradise added: “In Discovery , we were very much aware of that and very thoughtful about what are the types of stories we want to tell, how does that reflect certain things that are going on. Trek means so much to so many people and where people are actively looking to Trek to reflect themselves in some way or actively looking to Trek as an answer to what’s happening in society and for hope that, as divisive as things are right now, as challenging around the world and in our country, that there is hope and we can overcome it with our better selves.”

Blu del Barrio as Adira, Tig Notaro as Jett Reno and Mary Wiseman as Tilly in "Star Trek: Discovery" ... [+] episode 7, season 5 - streaming on Paramount+.

When asked about what fans can expect ahead in the remaining episodes of Star Trek: Discovery , which drop every Thursday during this final season, Paradise teases that fans “might see more of our bad guys this season.” She added: “We did not going into the season [knowing] that this would be our last season. We’re so fortunate - CBS Studios and Paramount Plus gave us the opportunity, after the fact, to go shoot some additional material, and I feel like the thing I just want to keep reiterating for fans of the show is it has a proper ending. Our Discovery is not going to end on a cliffhanger of Are they all going to die? and then we never find out. It was worth the investment and I do think when people finish the season/series, they will feel like this season - again, we didn’t know going in - but it does feel like if you didn’t know that, you would think we knew going in because of what we’re doing thematically and where our characters go. So, I think people will feel very satisfied.”

As the conversation with Paradise concluded, she was left with one last question: For Star Trek: Discovery fans, people who have followed these five seasons - as they soon finish these final episodes, what message do you as a co-showrunner want to say these people, after investing their time in the series over the past seven years and falling in love with these characters?

Mary Wiseman, Sonequa Martin-Green and Michelle Paradise.

“I just would want to say thank you. There is no Discovery without the fans and they are always so loving and supportive and passionate, even when they don’t like what we’re doing, they’re passionate. As writers and creators and actors and the directors, we love that! We love that passion and their passion means so much to us.”

Paradise added: “It was a gift. Hopefully, we’ll all get to do it again someday.”

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