star trek the bridge

‘Star Trek’ Fans Can Now Virtually Tour Every Starship Enterprise Bridge

An interactive web portal explores the vessel’s evolution over nearly six decades

Daily Correspondent

For decades, many “ Star Trek ” fans have imagined what it would be like to work from the bridge of the starship  Enterprise , the long-running franchise’s high-tech space-exploring vessel. Through various iterations and seasons of the series, created by  Gene Roddenberry in the ’60s, the bridge has remained a constant, serving as the backdrop for many important moments in the show’s 800-plus episodes.

Now, die-hard Trekkies and casual watchers alike can virtually roam around the Enterprise’s bridge to their heart’s content, thanks to a sophisticated and highly detailed new  web portal that brings the space to life.

The site features 360-degree, 3D models of the various versions of the Enterprise , as well as a timeline of the ship’s evolution throughout the franchise’s history. Fans of the show can also read detailed information about each version of the ship’s design, its significance to the “Star Trek” storyline and its production backstory.

Developed in honor of the “Star Trek: Picard”  series finale , which dropped late last month on Paramount+, the portal is a collaboration between the Roddenberry Estate, the Roddenberry Archive and the technology company OTOY. A group of well-known “Star Trek” artists—including Denise and Michael Okuda , Daren Dochterman, Doug Drexler and Dave Blass—also supported the project.

“Through new technology, we can bring audiences back in time as if they were there on set during the making of ’Star Trek,’ providing a window into new dimensions of the ‘Star Trek’ universe,” says Jules Urbach, OTOY’s CEO, in a  statement .

The voice of the late actress  Majel Roddenberry , who played the Enterprise ’s computer for years, will be added to the site in the future. Gene Roddenberry  died in 1991 , followed by Majel Roddenberry  in 2008 ; the two had been married since 1969.

The portal’s creators also released a short video , narrated by actor  John de Lancie , exploring every version of the Enterprise ’s bridge to date, “from its inception in  Pato Guzman ’s 1964 sketches, through its portrayal across decades of TV shows and feature films, to its latest incarnation on the Enterprise-G , as revealed in the final episode of ‘ Star Trek: Picard ,’” per the video description. Accompanying video interviews with “Star Trek” cast and crew—including William Shatner , who played Captain Kirk in the original series, and Terry Matalas , a showrunner for “Star Trek: Picard”—also explore the series’ legacy.

The interactive, 3D bridge models contain a surprising level of detail, right down to the consoles and turbolifts. The site, however, has so far been hit or miss for users, suggesting that the team behind it may still be working out a few of the technical kinks, reports the  Verge ’s Sean Hollister. And as Kyle Barr writes for  Gizmodo , one big downside is that the models don’t contain any “Star Trek” characters, who he says are “the beating heart of the show and its ideals.”

“Sitting in the captain’s chair, with all the stations empty beside you,” he writes, “is enough to make one wistful.”

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.

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Bridge officer

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A bridge officer was an officer whose station or main duties took place on the bridge of a starship . A group of bridge officers were collectively known as the bridge staff .

In 2366 , Picard ordered Riker to " assemble the bridge staff for a mission briefing in fifteen minutes. " ( TNG : " Tin Man ")

For a bridge officer to be eligible to take command, the Bridge Officer's Test had to be passed. ( TNG : " Thine Own Self ")

Even acting ensigns , such as Wesley Crusher , could be bridge officers. ( TNG : " Where No One Has Gone Before ", " Hide And Q ", " Coming of Age ")

If a non-bridge officer and a bridge officer held the same rank , the bridge officer was considered the ranking officer . ( VOY : " Displaced ")

In 2374 , Ixtana'Rax threatened to kill all the USS Defiant bridge officers if there was the slightest sign of treachery. ( DS9 : " One Little Ship ")

During The Doctor 's legal proceedings against Broht & Forrester , Harry Kim testified that thanks to command subroutines being added to his program , " in an emergency, he's as capable as any bridge officer. " ( VOY : " Author, Author ")

See also [ ]

• Commanding officer
• First officer
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• Third officer
• Communications officer
• Conn officer
• Operations officer
• Science officer
• Tactical officer
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Immerse yourself in the complete Star Trek experience with Star Trek™: Bridge Crew, including The Next Generation expansion. Share your galactic adventure with up to four friends, with cross-platform co-op gameplay. Playable in VR or non-VR. Includes the original Star Trek™: Bridge Crew and The Next Generation expansion. OPERATE AS A CREW – Take command of the bridge or coordinate roles with up to four of your friends in co-op gameplay. A UNIQUE SHIP – Take command of the USS Aegis, the first starship of her kind, with cutting-edge Starfleet technology. A SHARED GALACTIC ADVENTURE – Communication, trust, and close crew coordination are the keys to victory. Features: The Enterprise D, Operations command role, Romulans, and Borg.

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The web portal will allow fans to virtually explore the many dozens of evolutionary iterations of the famous Starship Enterprise bridge, across every epoch of Star Trek‘s history, with each bridge made accessible in the timeline as a 1:1 scale, “in-universe,” 360 recreation. De Lancie, who has portrayed extra-dimensional being Q since 1987’s Star Trek: The Next Generation, narrates a supplementary documentary, offering a deep dive into the evolution and legacy of the bridge — from its inception in Pato Guzman’s 1964 sketches, through its portrayal across decades of films and TV series, to its latest incarnation on the Enterprise-G, as revealed in the final episode of Star Trek: Picard.   This combined documentary and exploratory online experience brings the legacy and history of the starship Enterprise to life through meticulous recreations of the filming sets used for production as well as the aforementioned “in-universe” life size, functional immersive virtual interiors. The recreations were produced for the Gene Roddenberry Estate, and overseen by veteran Star Trek artists including Denise and Michael Okuda, who authored The Star Trek Encyclopedia, as well as Daren Dochterman, Doug Drexler and Dave Blass.   The Archive will also, for a limited time, allow fans to try an experimental technology preview through the web portal, enabling them to walk onto the bridges of the Enterprise (boasting working turbolifts and consoles) and explore them in every detail, all from an instantaneous livestream.

You can find out more about this engrossing project at the Roddenberry Archive website and through the OTOY YouTube channel.

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How ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Resurrected an Iconic Set

By Scott Mantz

Scott Mantz

• ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Team Built a ‘Museum Quality’ Enterprise D to Make Things as ‘Cinematic as Possible’ 11 months ago
• How ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Created the High-Tech Bridge of Its Newest Starship 1 year ago
• How ‘Babylon’s’ Cocaine-Snorting Opening Sequence Came Together 1 year ago

SPOILER ALERT:   This story discusses major plot developments in Season 3, Episode 9 of “ Star Trek: Picard ,” currently streaming on Paramount+.

All season long, the producers of “ Star Trek: Picard ” have boldly pulled out all the stops to make the third and final season one for the books. To that extent, it seemed like only a matter of time until we finally got to see the Enterprise — that is, the Enterprise-D, the Galaxy-class starship that made its first appearance in 1987 with the premiere episode of “ Star Trek: The Next Generation .”

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Executive producer Terry Matalas went through hoops to make sure history never forgot the name Enterprise. Speaking with Variety, and sharing photos of “The Next Generation” cast on the ship, Matalas says, “Everyone tried to talk us out of doing this, because financially it’s a nightmare, and the timing was tight. To the moment we started filming, we were still gluing pieces together. But you can’t have a ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ reunion without one of its major characters, which is the Enterprise.”

As for how it was even possible for the Enterprise-D to exist after it was virtually destroyed in 1994’s “Star Trek: Generations” (only the top saucer section was still intact after crash-landing on the planet Veridian III), it turns out Geordi La Forge took it upon himself to completely restore it for the Starfleet Museum.

However, despite the prominent presence of the Enterprise-D bridge on seven seasons of the TV series that ran from 1987 to 1994 (as well as the 1994 “Generations” feature film), construction guidelines were scarce for production designer Dave Blass and art director Liz Kloczkowski, who spearheaded the project.

Blass pivoted to another invaluable resource when he recruited “Star Trek” legends Mike Okuda and Denise Okuda (from Herman Zimmerman’s “Next Generation” production design team) as consultants.

“The Enterprise from ‘The Next Generation’ was the first Enterprise on which I was the principal graphic designer,” Okuda says. “I got to work with [‘Star Trek’ creator] Gene Roddenberry on making that bridge come to life.”

But even with that deep-dive knowledge and experience, finding the source materials to reconstruct the bridge still proved to be a daunting challenge.

“The first thing we did was to go in the garage and dive into boxes and see what we still had,” Okuda says. “We had some original drawings and art, but large chunks of it disappeared. You realize you’re going to have to reconstruct a lot of this from scratch.”

It took three months and a team of around 50 people to completely rebuild the bridge, which was a physical build and not done on a green screen or in VFX. It measured exactly the same as the original set: 50 feet wide and 100 feet long.

All this work was in addition to every other set built for Seasons 2 and 3, which were shot back to back. “We were doing all the interiors of the starship Titan – like the bridge, the transporter rooms, the crew quarters, the hallways and sickbay – as well as [the enemy ship] the Shrike, Daystrom Station and the Borg,” says Blass. “So, all that all on top of each other.”

The goal was to re-create the look of the LCARS panels, as closely as possible to their appearance in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“We took advantage of the huge advances in real-world computer display technology to make a few subtle upgrades to the displays,” Okuda says. “In a scene where one of our officers is using the science equipment, if the director wanted to show the scan itself, we would have had to insert the animation in post-production, back in the day. Now, it’s easy to do the animation and have it play back on the set, so the cast could see it in real-time.”

When it came to challenges, Blass says, the wood archway was one of the hardest pieces to recreate. “It’s a complex curve that arches and changes thickness,” he explains. “You can only get so much information off a blueprint. The construction team printed out a full-size paper plan to lay it out and then used a number of templates to shape the final piece.”

The chairs were another set piece in recreating the Enterprise-D that needed to be taken into consideration. “We had to sculpt the right shape based on the basic form, then do a deep dive on the right materials that have the right color and texture,” Blass says. “Each chair has four different materials.”

Blass adds that the infamous carpet, referenced by Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard in the episode, “was very hard to find as it’s a pattern that has been out of stock for decades.”

“That was tricky because you’re talking about lighting that was much more intrinsic to the 1990s,” Matalas says. “Now we have different cameras in a different cinematic style to the show. We had to find a hybrid of the old style and the new with our director of photography, John Joffin, and I think we found a really great sweet spot.”

When the cast saw the bridge for the first time, they got right down to business.

“This season was so ambitious, and we only had two days to shoot on this thing,” Matalas says. “It was literally, like, get everybody on, you got your four minutes of nostalgia, and then we have to boogie. But it was all very natural for them. It was like being back on Stage 8 at the Paramount lot. Patrick Stewart even did the ‘Picard maneuver,’ which he was very proud of.”

And what of the ship today?

Their work remains intact. “There were lots of interested parties who wanted to save the set,” Blass says. “Luckily it has a home in the Star Trek archives.”

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Why Was the Enterprise Bridge Different in Every ‘Star Trek’ Film?

• 1.2K Shares

• By Eric Pesola
• Updated Mar 22, 2023 at 5:12pm

Paramount Kirk and crew gathered on the bridge at the end of Star Trek II.

You’ve watched these movies a hundred times each. Perhaps you watched the second one a few more times than that. But as you watched, did you notice that the bridge of the Enterprise changed each time Captain Kirk sat down in his chair? There are a few reasons for this.

To backtrack a bit, the Enterprise’s bridge was perhaps the most essential set for the entire series of films. It was the place where Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the others could belt out their lines and size up the enemy. It was where Kirk outsmarted Khan and where the Klingons heard a computer voice counting. 

From the start, the redesign of the Enterprise bridge was complicated. Though the Original Series’ bridge would not work with high-quality film cameras, it was redesigned in parts. Starting first with the initial design for Star Trek: Phase II , the bridge was modernized by designer Mike Minor. When  Phase II  morphed into  The Motion Picture  (TMP), these changes were made even more significant by production designer Harold Michelson. 

Paramount The Motion Picture bridge

The bridge for TMP was almost colorless — some would say that this reflected the film’s soul as well. Gone were the bright primary colors from TOS, replaced with steel grays and light blues. 

“I think the concept was a very  2001  approach,” Leonard Nimoy told author Jeanne Kalogridis in her book, “ Star Trek: Where No One Has Gone Before – A History In Pictures .” “[It was] very cool. Very scientific. Steely gray. A very metallic film.”

Paramount The Wrath of Khan bridge

For the sequel, Director Nicholas Meyer had the bridge repainted. Under the direction of Minor and set decorator Charles M. Graffeo, there were more colors now for fans to look at. Instead of gray and blue, we saw sandy-brown, black, and light blues. It helped that the crew themselves were decked out in the colorful “monster maroon” red uniforms. They also removed an entire station behind the captain’s chair.

Paramount The Search for Spock bridge

In  Star Trek III , the bridge largely remained unchanged unless you count the scarring leftover from their battle with Khan. Keen eyes will see slight variations on the bridge from the end of  Wrath of Khan  to the start of  Search for Spock . Art Director John E. Chilberg II made a few changes with displays and monitors, which were updated. Some of the wall “gadgets” and ornamentation also changed. 

Before you say, “there was no bridge in  Star Trek IV ,” you’re almost right. Since the Enterprise was destroyed in  Star Trek III , the crew took over the Klingon vessel. When they got back from saving the world (by delivering whales from the 20th Century), they got a new Enterprise. This ship was supposed to be the Yorktown , but Starfleet renamed it the Enterprise-A. So our heroes got their old ship back — sort of.

Paramount The Voyage Home bridge

As you can see, the bridge of the Enterprise-A is entirely different from the Enterprise-refit. It was whiter, brighter, and had more colorful displays and lights throughout. It’s almost reminiscent of the J.J. Abrams  Star Trek  series bridge, which was the work of Keith P. Cunningham and his team. 

Paramount The Final Frontier’s bridge

One might think that the Enterprise-A, fresh out of spacedock, would not need additional changes. Shouldn’t it be ready for action as-is? This was not the case, as the look of the bridge changed yet again. This time, the team under art director Nilo Rodis-Jamero added padding in interesting places. The set got a more tan color throughout. These changes were acknowledged in the film, as Kirk complained about missing his old chair. 

For their final journey on the Enterprise-A, the crew got a wholly new look. For  Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country , this came full circle, and Rodis-Jamero’s new-look bridge was quite different. Unlike the “steel” look in TMP, this bridge looked as if it were actually made of steel. Stainless steel, perhaps. The rest of the bridge was darkly colored, which allowed for the displays and screens to earn a lot of attention. The padding behind the captain’s chair was now burgundy, a change from the tan in the previous film. 

Paramount The bridge in The Undiscovered Country

The Answer Revealed

Why were the bridges different on a ship that was supposed to be (mostly) the same from picture to picture? There are actually two correct answers. The first was that the budget for these films was small. Producer Harve Bennett was called in by Paramount to create movies on a TV budget after TMP budget nearly wiped out any box office earnings. 

One of the ways Bennett did this was by “ redressing ” the bridge for different roles. This meant that the Enterprise and Excelsior bridge (in both Star Trek III and IV ) were virtually identical. They were the same, exact set but changed around a little to ensure that fans would not think they were looking at the same stage twice. But, since they were part of “one happy fleet,” they ought to look similar. This meant that after each redress, things were different. 

But the interesting reason (which also works with canon) is that the bridge was designed to be replaced at regular intervals. According to the “ Star Trek: The Next Generation – Technical Manual ,” Rick Steinbach and Michael Okuda wrote that this idea originated during  Star Trek V .

As the duo worked alongside Herman Zimmerman on the sets, the three agreed that the bridge was a “plug-and-play module designed for easy replacement.” They theorized that this easily changeable unit would allow for “control systems to be upgraded, thereby extending the useful lifetime of a starship.”

They noted that this would also help explain the differences in the four Miranda-class ships filmed — the Reliant, the Saratoga, the Lantree, and the Brattain. They all had wildly different bridges but were the same class vessel. 

READ NEXT: On ‘Star Trek,’ Why Didn’t They Just Replicate Starships?

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Creating Star Trek’s First Bridge

Gene Roddenberry knew he wnated the bridge to be at the center of the action in Star Trek . Beyond that, his designers, Matt Jefferies and Pato Guzman, had little to go on.

Jefferies was still designing the Enterprise itself in early 1964. He had honed in on a design that separated the warp engines from the main component of the ship: the saucer section. It made sense to place the ship’s command center on top of the saucer. Which meant the bridge was going to be circular.

“It was pretty well established with the model that the thing was going to be in a full circle,” Jefferies recalled years later. “From there it became a question of how we were going to make it, how it could come apart, where the cameraman could get into it.”

Guzman proposed a domed “Control Room”, which introduced two now-familiar features: a viewscreen in the front and the captain’s chair in the center.

Roddenberry writes in The Making of Star Trek that he wanted the captain to be in the center, “so he could swivel around and see every vital station. His people should be in contact with him easily.”

Practicality

Guzman left the series in October and was succeeded as art director by Franz Bachelin. By that time, Jefferies had become skeptical of the direction in which they were going.

“I had to come up with the construction drawings to actually build these sets,” he told William Shatner for his book Star Trek Memories , “and my problem was in trying to figure out just what the hell Bachelin had done such a pretty painting about.”

I mean in terms of practicality, his paintings just didn’t work; the construction crew would have gone out of their minds trying to build what he’d painted.

A self-styled “nuts-and-bolts man,” Jefferies began thinking from the position of the ordinary bridge worker.

The idea of the whole thing was that if a guy’s supposed to be on his toes and alert for hours, he’s going to have to stay sharp, and if you can make him comfortable it will help. So I felt that everything he had to work with should be at hand without him having to reach for it and at a comfortable angle.

That resulted in the design of the consoles around the edge of the bridge.

Building the set

Jefferies disliked placing the consoles at a higher level than the center of the room, where the captain and pilots were seated, but he didn’t have much of a choice: they needed to be able to roll sections in and out.

The set consisted of eight such “wild” sections: one for the turbolift, one for the viewscreen and six work stations. When assembled, the eight components formed an octagon, approximating a circle.

Construction started in November 1964 and took six weeks to complete. The electric wiring alone required hundreds of man-hours. All the instruments could be controlled from a single panel off-stage or individually by the actors. Miles of wiring were needed to connect everything.

At the behest of “The Cage” director Robert Butler, the set was painted in bluish-grey. This was changed when “The Cage” was rejected by the studio but Roddenberry was asked to produce a second pilot. Contrasting blacks and reds were added to the railings, turbolift doors and navigation console. That color scheme would remain for all of Star Trek ’s three seasons.

Franz Joseph’s Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual (1975), now considered apocryphal, suggests that the bridge was rotated 36° port to allow turbolifts to travel down the centerline of the saucer section. No reason was given as to why the bridge crew would be looking in another direction than the ship was traveling, although with artificial gravity limiting any sense of momentum, and electronic displays instead of windows, there is no reason either why the crew should face directly forward.

Can anyone comment on why the SF Tech Manual is considered “apocryphal”? What source of equivalent detail exists that’s considered canon?

I was wondering that as well.

There aren’t any canon reference materials such as tech manuals, or the encyclopedia, the chronology, medical reference manuals or blueprints. It’s all licensed to various publishers just as the novels are.

That’s not a scene from “The Cage”. Yes, it was the bridge used in “The Cage”, but that’s Shatner in the back (behind him, Sally Kellerman?) and actor Gary Lockwood next to the captain’s chair. This is the episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before”.

Thanks for pointing that out. I’ve changed the caption.

That’s an interesting photo of the bridge from “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. Not yet in the red color scheme, which it had in the broadcast version. Maybe this is a still from an early rehearsal before they modified it?

In so far as the “canon” question of Star Fleet Technical Manual . As someone else mentioned these materials are just licenced to publishers. However, bits and pieces of information from the SFTM had made it into the films and a couple episodes for television over the years. For example, some of the schematics were used as displays, and ship names (only mentioned in SFTM previously) were used. It’s considered “apocryphal” because since 2002 the Star Trek Encyclopedia , Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future and The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual are considered the “official” reference point for all licenced tie-in material according to the Star Trek franchise. So if you want to publish say an owner’s manual for the Enterprise , the info has to be consistent with those three references. Your site is great, by the way.

Franz Joseph’s work was firstly based on the only “canon” source for Star Trek available: the TOS episodes themselves. He literally reverse-engineered from film frames. A work licensed by the studio, The Making of Star Trek , whose author had access to the studio, sets and production personnel (including Roddenberry) was consulted. Joseph also used actual production drawings by Matt Jeffries. He also corresponded with Roddenberry, whom was enthusiastic and encouraged his work. Which was at the time actually endorsed by the studio. The sheer lunacy of having a canon relating to a work of imagination and fiction aside… I can’t imagine anything being more “canon” than Franz Joseph’s work. Certainly in terms of being closer to the source material in timeframe. The idea of people going back after the fact and saying his work was inaccurate or incorrect is pretty wacky. He was working based off sets that changed on an almost weekly basis. Creating the inner workings of a starship that didn’t actually exist by matching sets in episodes with the only consistent aspect being the exterior model of the ship, and the dimensions decided upon by Roddenberry and the production staff once production of the series proper actually began. He did a splendid job and stuck beautifully with the details of the show, using creative license only where absolutely necessary, because no detail existed. Or because the details of the the exterior didn’t match up with the interior without modification. Or where details of the set were changed for creative reasons, but made no mechanical sense. Since supposedly canon only relates to what is shown on screen, then all we really have today is the three seasons worth of episodes that were filmed in the 1960s. Anyone working on technical renderings of The Original Series has no more canon to work with now than Franz Joseph did then. Unless you count subsequent Trek series, and those were created after the fact. If they were written and created properly, they should be created to fit into the canon that existed, instead of retconning their reality. The studio owns the show and they can do whatever they want to for their official licensing. But the idea of publications today being more official than official publications from back then has everything to do with copywriting and marketing, and nothing to do with what’s faithful to the source material or makes sense. Kind of like revisionist historians that rewrite history after the fact. Lol. Oh well, we love it, but it’s just a TV show.

The picture of the black-and-white bridge from “Where No Man Has Gone Before” is actually a photoshop job. The bridge in that episode had the red railings and turboshaft door. Here’s a shot from the episode. This is the photo was was altered because someone (who?) wanted to see what Kirk, etc. would look like on “The Cage” bridge. Notice that all the actors are in exactly the same position. The position of their bodies and all their arms and legs line up perfectly. This tells us that it can’t be that the black-and-white bridge photo was taken during a rehearsal and the “red bridge” was taken later after the bridge was repainted. It’s just one photo (of the red bridge) photoshopped to look like “The Cage” bridge. Also note that the Burke chairs in the black-and-white photo have the leather extensions that actually weren’t used in that episode.

You’re right! Thank you so much for pointing this out. I’ve taken that picture out.

Submit comments by email .

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode 4 Recap

Episode 4 of Star Trek: Discovery sees Burnham and Rayner team up to save the Discovery and its crew from a time travel wormhole.

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Episode 4 of Star Trek: Discovery aired on Paramount Plus this week,as it approaches the halfway mark in the fifth and final season. The sci-fi spin-off series consists of ten episodes, with one airing each week until the finale on May 30. The show began in 2017, and Season 5 has been praised for its serialized storytelling and exciting visual effects. Star Trek: Discovery stars Sonequa Martin-Green, Callum Keith Rennie, Doug Jones and Anthony Rapp.

The fourth episode of Star Trek: Discovery 's final season sees Burnham and Rayner put their differences aside when they realize they are in a wormhole and have traveled back in time. They must fight to save the Discovery and the crew on board, by facing off with bounty hunters, Moll and Lák.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode 3 Recap

Star Trek: Discovery Episode 4 sees Moll and L’ak meeting with a dodgy dealer. They hand him a bag of the latinum and the dealer tries to raise the price of it, and it turns out Moll has poisoned the latinum, and takes the item from the dying dealer. L’ak is uncertain. But Moll assures him they’ll get ahead of the USS Discovery . She continues that once they have the Progenitor’s tech, they’ll be free. She tells him they have to hurry to catch Discovery on Trill. It is revealed that the device obtained from the dealer is the same one planted on Adira Tal in the final moments of the previous episode.

Elsewhere, the device activates in Adira’s quarters on the Discovery, and the device hops off the uniform and runs across the room and disappears into a girder.

In his lab, Stamets spots the bug and watches as it disappears into the wall. Captain Michael Burnham gets a report from Owo, revealing that she’s picking up some odd readings, and something has broadcast a signal from the ship. Burnham and Captain Rayner try to beam to the bridge, but they go nowhere.

The ship is moving but the lights flicker and a klaxon sounds. Rayner asks if they are under attack, as Burnham tries to contact the bridge but nothing seems to be working. Burnham and Rayner head to the bridge on foot and find the rest of the crew unconscious and wearing 23rd-century Starfleet uniforms. Rayner and Burnham realize they’re in a wormhole and have traveled back in time. Discovery follows Burnham as she goes through the wormhole into the future. Turns out, they haven’t just traveled back in time, but they’re actually jumping through time.

Burnham arrives in the future and explains the situation, and that she's undertaking an important mission for the future Discovery . Burnham demonstrates her personal knowledge of several crew members to prove her story , as Airiam, Tilly and the rest of the crew are confused at her appearance.

They remain skeptical of Burnham’s claims, but she says she will convince Airiam, and everyone will trust her judgment in the end. Burnham reveals she saw Airiam die, and she recounts the climax of “Project Daedalus.” Airiam convinces the rest of the crew of Burnham's legitimacy, and asks what help Burnham needs from them. Elsewhere, in the lab, Rayner and Stamets prepare to tackle the temporal shield, but a phaser wielding TB and Rhys interrupt their plans.

YB orders Stamets to shut down the warp core, but Rayner suggests Burnham come down, but there’s no time for that, and she urges Rayner to handle the situation. Rayner convinces Rhys they’re from the future with the knowledge he learned during interviews, but YB is still not convinced.

Rayner tells the story about Burnham arriving at the bridge and not feeling like she belongs. He tells YB she deserves to be there, and pleads with her to trust her instincts, which he knows are currently telling her to stand down, with YB seemingly convinced. Discovery ’s warp bubble is broken, and Rayner puts the device on the chronophage. Another time jump occurs, and they arrive back to the present day, which is fully intact.

Burnham orders Rayner to go to see Culber to tend to his hand injury, while Rayner states that it isn’t lost on him that what made them successful was their closeness with the crew. He admits he can be stubborn like Burnham used to be, but Burnham concludes they make a good team.

Star Trek: Discovery episode 4's ending sees the rest of the crew caught up on the chronophage. In the six hours since the time jumps began, the DOTs have found a warp signature that matches M’ak’s ship. Rayner compliments Rhys on his theory, which proved to be accurate. However, M’ak’s trail disappears, as Burnham orders the bridge crew to get to work on solving the mystery.

Star Trek: Discovery

Star trek 4: paramount needs to let this sequel die.

'Star Trek: Discovery' season 5 episode 4 uses time travel to remember the past 5 seasons

It's pretty obvious watching this episode that the cast and crew, at the very least, strongly suspected that this was going to be the last season of "Discovery" when it was written.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Star Trek: Discovery" season 5, episode 4

With the news that "Star Trek: Lower Decks" is ending after its current season, that really only leaves "Strange New Worlds" as the last remaining Nu-Trek series currently airing on television. 

And, a word to the wise: If you're a die-hard fan of " Discovery ," make sure you have your own physical media, 'cause no one likes being at the mercy of whatever an overpaid television executive thinks. You're welcome. Moreover, after this final season of "Discovery," we're going to have until wait until next year for the next season of " Strange New Worlds ." It's all starting to feel a bit like "Game of Thrones" all over again.

Episode four, entitled "Face the Strange," is without a doubt the best entry so far in the fifth season, and one can't help but wonder after watching exactly when the cast and production crew were first informed that this would be the last season, because it was definitely before this episode was actually written. The reason? It is, for all intents and purposes, a 60-minute, time-travel-powered, postscript-style reminiscence of all elements of all five seasons — or as much as you can cram into an hour — and what a rollercoaster ride it's been.

So when Alex Kurtzman or Michelle Paradise or whoever it is that actually has authority in the writer's room entered said room, put down their grande iced sugar-free vanilla half-double decaffeinated half-caff latte with soy milk and a twist of lemon in their Paramount-branded 40oz Stanley Clean Slate Quencher H2.0 Flowstate™ Tumbler and announced, "Wouldn't it be great to revisit chapters from seasons one, two, three and four?" no doubt everyone cheered. "And how will this be possible?" asked Kurtzman, to which an eager-beaver intern no doubt excitedly thrust their hand up into the air and exclaimed, "Why, time travel , of course!"

Related: ' Star Trek:' History & effect on space technology

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"Quite right," replied Kurtzman (in our imaginations, at least), adding, "But it can be for one episode, so it has to be an isolated, self-contained form of time travel." Thus was conceived the "Time Bug," and with it came a ton of technobabble to precisely explain its parameters. Although quite why Zora didn't detect it was not addressed. Also, you know, transporters. 

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But this clever Time Bug, which can manipulate time in just about any way that's convenient for the writers to overcome any potential chronological complications — like life-changing paradoxes — came onboard the USS Discovery by way of that shifty Malinne "Moll" Ravel (Eve Harlow), who managed to infiltrate the Trill homeworld undetected, as we saw last week .

As a result, we get reminder glimpses of Michael Burnham's first coming aboard the USS Discovery way, way, way back in season one, complete with appropriate uniforms and everything. We get a fleeting reminder of the Red Angel and the battle with Control , naturally The Burn gets a mention, and there's even a not-very-subtle nod to the short-Trek " Calypso ." It's all a little bit like a Greatest Hits album that doesn't include any of the tracks that you actually liked, being played at 45 instead of 33. Remember vinyl?

Since it's now obvious that this season was written after the cancellation announcement had been made to the cast and crew, the single most important question is, Will the show benefit from that, or will it suffer? Are the remaining six episodes going to be a drawn-out epilogue, tied loosely together with a mostly lame plot? Or, will advance knowledge of the show's future actually serve the writers well, allowing them to produce something above and beyond the normal level of writing? 

There's even a very entertaining scene, in which 23rd-century Burnham must fight her 32nd-century self. Of course, the illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator fitted to the space bug prevents any changes from affecting the timeline, so you know, phew . 

Most of the original Discovery bridge reappear, as close to how they looked seven years ago as possible, and even Lt. Cmdr. Airiam (played by Sara Mitich in the first season and Hannah Cheesman in the second) makes a cameo, so that's nice. Also, we can really see as Sonequa Martin-Green flips between her two Burnhams just how effective that dreadlock hair piece that she wears through this season actually is. Half the show's budget probably went to that. 

 —   Watch the bittersweet trailer for 'Star Trek: Discovery's final season (video)

— Star Trek streaming guide: Where to watch the Star Trek movies and TV shows online

—  Star Trek's Seven of Nine returns in new novel 'Picard: Firewall' (exclusive)

It's a fun filler episode, and, even if it doesn't advance the plot an inch, it does allow character development to take place, particularly between Burnham and Captain Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie). Arguably the biggest surprise was that the writers were able to resist putting Captain Pike (Anson Mount) into this episode. 

The fifth and final season of "Star Trek: Discovery," and every other episode of every "Star Trek" show — with the exception of "Star Trek: Prodigy" — currently streams exclusively on Paramount Plus in the U.S., while "Prodigy" has found a new home on Netflix.  

Internationally, the shows are available on  Paramount Plus  in Australia, Latin America, the U.K. and South Korea, as well as on Pluto TV in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland on the Pluto TV Sci-Fi channel. They also stream on  Paramount Plus  in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In Canada, they air on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel and stream on Crave.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

When Scott's application to the NASA astronaut training program was turned down, he was naturally upset...as any 6-year-old boy would be. He chose instead to write as much as he possibly could about science, technology and space exploration. He graduated from The University of Coventry and received his training on Fleet Street in London. He still hopes to be the first journalist in space.

'Star Trek: Discovery' season 5 episode 3 'Jinaal' is a slow but steady affair

This Week In Space podcast: Episode 106 — Space Potpourri!

Jupiter's violent moon Io has been the solar system's most volcanic body for around 4.5 billion years

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A Borg Cube is tracking your ship, and you must locate a series of prototype defenses in order to survive your final encounter with it. At every step, the Borg are tracking you and trying to disrupt your efforts. Resistance is a tough challenge mode for dedicated players! Can be played with any of the three playable ships.

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30 May 2017

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‘Star Trek’ Fan Leaves Behind a Collection Like No One Has Done Before

When Troy Nelson died, his shelves were filled to the rafters with memorabilia from the popular franchise. Soon, the massive collection will be boldly going, going, gone.

Evan Browne said her brother Troy’s love of “Star Trek” began with the original series, which he and his siblings watched at dinnertime. Credit... Connie Aramaki for The New York Times

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By Sopan Deb

• Published April 1, 2024 Updated April 3, 2024

Editors’ Note, April 2, 2024: After publication, The Times learned that Troy and Andrew Nelson were named in a civil lawsuit filed in Pierce County Superior Court in 1998, in which they were accused of molesting three disabled adults in a state-licensed facility that they operated. After a six-week jury trial, Washington State was ordered to pay $17.8 million to the plaintiffs. The state said it intended to appeal but missed the deadline and paid the victims. The Nelson brothers denied the allegations and were never criminally charged.

Troy Nelson and his younger brother Andrew were almost inseparable.

The two youngest of six, they were born two years apart. They lived together in their childhood home in Bremerton, Wash., for more than half a century. Near their home, there is a park bench on which they carved their initials as young boys.

The Nelson brothers never married or had children. They worked together at the same senior home. They even once, as teenagers, dated the same girl at the same time while working different shifts at the same pizza shop. This lasted a week until they realized it.

“Two parts of one body,” Evan Browne, their older sister, said of their relationship in an interview.

On Feb. 28, Andrew Nelson, who had been treated for cancer for years, went to feed the chickens and ducks that were gifts from Ms. Browne to her brothers. He had a heart attack and died. He was 55. Just hours later, Troy Nelson, who was stricken with grief, took his own life. He was 57.

“He had talked about it before,” Browne, 66, said, tearfully. “He said, ‘Hey, if Andrew goes, I’m out of here. I’m checking out.’ Andrew would say the same thing, and then it really happened .”

What Troy Nelson left behind has become a sensation. After his death, family members posted pictures on social media of his massive — and, really, the keyword is massive — collection of “Star Trek” memorabilia, which have now been shared thousands of times.

The items took up two living rooms and a bedroom, all lined with bookshelves, according to Elena Hamel, one of the brothers’ nieces. The centers of the rooms were lined with additional bookshelves — all packed to the brim — to create aisles. There were jewelry cabinets serving as display cases.

The shelves contained action figures. Dolls. Models of ships. Posters. Ornaments. Lunchboxes. Legos. Several toy phasers and tricorders. (For non-Trek fans, the phaser is a weapon, and a tricorder is, essentially, a fancy smartphone.) Multiple “Star Trek” lamps. (Yes, there are “Star Trek” lamps.) Trading cards. Comic books. Trek-themed Geeki Tikis (stylized tiki mugs). Life-size cutouts of famous characters. A life-size captain’s chair.

While it’s impossible to account for every private collector in the world, Troy Nelson’s collection is almost assuredly among the largest — if not the largest.

The last additions to the collection came in the final weeks of his life: Stuffed rabbits in “Star Trek” uniforms. “I’ve never seen a collection that size,” said Russ Haslage, the president of the International Federation of Trekkers , a “Star Trek”-themed nonprofit that Haslage founded with Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the franchise.

Haslage’s organization opened in 2020 a “Star Trek” museum in Sandusky, Ohio, that has received donations of memorabilia from estates. Those collections “pale in comparison” to Mr. Nelson’s, he said. (Haslage has reached out to the family to ask about donations from the collection.)

The older brother’s love of “Star Trek” began with the original series, which he’d watch with his siblings.

“It was our dinner meal,” Ms. Browne said. “When we had dinner, we were sitting in front of ‘Star Trek.’”

Troy Nelson began collecting in the late-1970s. His first acquisition was a model version of the Starship Enterprise. Then came Star Trek conventions. Why the franchise was such a draw to him remains a mystery to his family.

“I really can’t say. I mean, other than the fact that he was brainwashed with it at dinner time,” Browne said, laughing. “That sounds ridiculous. When we grew up, it’s like, ‘Dinner is at this time. And if you don’t get here at this time, you don’t get dinner.’ So it might’ve been a comfort for him .”

Troy Nelson would often monitor sites like eBay for items he didn’t have. On several occasions, he would express frustration on losing out on an item before being able to bid on it. Until he found out the reason.

“Andrew already got it for him,” Ms. Browne recalled.

Obsessive “Star Trek” fandom has long become an indelible part of pop culture, especially as the franchise — which has spawned several television series, movies, novels and comics — has been a long-running institution. There have been documentaries that have studied the subject, such as “Trekkies” in 1997. It’s been lampooned on “The Simpsons,” “Saturday Night Live” and “Family Guy,” and become a story line in an episode of “The West Wing,” among many others. For dedicated fans, accruing collectibles isn’t uncommon.

“When you collect these things, you’re closer to that genre that you enjoy so much,” Haslage said. “When I first started in 1979, I was grabbing everything I could get my hands on because it was cool, and it was a piece of the whole ‘Star Trek’ mythos. If you have these pieces, you’re a part of that universe in some way.”

It turns out that collecting is a pursuit that runs in the family.

Andrew Nelson collected mall swords, Ryobi-branded tools and statues of warrior women, like Xena, the warrior princess .

Browne’s house has a wall with thousands of smashed pennies and her living room windows are full of glass sugar and creamer bowls.

Browne’s father, Bud Peers, collected salt and pepper shakers, guns and knives. Troy and Andrew’s father, Norman Nelson, collected scrap metal and wood.

Hamel has 17 Christmas trees, all fully decorated with separate themes.

Browne’s son, Michael, who is 36, collects anything and everything related to black bears.

“ When you have a large collection like that and it’s displayed like that,” Hamel said, “and it’s something that is important to you, it’s often really calming to be in a space like that. It’s just all the things that you love. It’s soothing.”

As far as Browne knew, Troy had no history of mental illness or any previous suicide attempts. After Andrew died, she received a distraught and frantic call from Troy with the news. She told him that she was on her way.

Ms. Browne said she called him when she got to the Tacoma Bridge. No answer. And then again, at the Manette Bridge. No answer. When she reached their home, the back door was open. And then she found him. The phone call was the last time they spoke.

Troy Nelson did not leave a note, but did leave some things meticulously arranged by his computer, including a key to the house, burial plans for the two brothers, and bills.

“ I don’t know really what I thought,” Ms. Browne said. “All I could do was just scream.”

The Nelson family is boxing up Troy’s “Star Trek” collection to prepare it for auction. Andrew’s ashes will be placed in an urn carved in the likeness of the supermodel Bettie Page . (He was a fan.) Troy’s ashes will be placed in a “Star Trek” lunchbox.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

Sopan Deb is a Times reporter covering breaking news and culture. More about Sopan Deb

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This Week's Star Trek: Discovery Is a Time-Hopping Marvel

In "face the strange," discovery returns to a trek trope it mastered in its first season to deliver a clever, thoughtful reflection on how far it's come..

Star Trek: Discovery is really good with time. We knew this almost immediately when one of its earliest episodes to really wow us was “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad,” a delightful time loop caper. We knew it again, when it flung caution to the wind and catapulted itself into a future no Star Trek show had visited yet at the climax of season two . And now, as it stares down its final end , Discovery once again turns to time—and twists it, to look back on its long, strange trip.

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“Face the Strange” is a deceptively simple episode on the surface, and a bold move for a show on its last lap: instead of accelerating the chase between Discovery and Moll and L’ak as they hunt for more clues to the Progenitor tech, it almost literally slams the brakes on everything to deliver a wonderful little character piece, not just for Michael Burnham, but to give time to explore Discovery ’s crew, and even its newcomer in Commander Rayner, who is still struggling to adapt to Discovery ’s more personable approach to hierarchy. After leaving Trill with Adira unknowingly tagged by Moll, the Discovery heads to coordinates where it expects to find the next piece of the puzzle, only to find... nothing. But what Adira was tagged with, it turns out, wasn’t a tracking device, but a “Time Bug,” a piece of Krenim technology held over from the Temporal Cold War (another great bit of using Discovery ’s handling of time, in this case the passage of it, for a fun Voyager / Enterprise nod!). The Time Bug infiltrates Discovery ’s systems, and locks them down—not by disabling the ship’s systems, but by trapping them in a spiraling series of time loops.

Burnham and Rayner—who were busy arguing in the ready room over Rayner’s abrasive mood—are partially unaffected by the bug’s looping, having attempted to beam back to the bridge at the precise moment it activated. While they’re caught in the same looping, being shunted backward and forward in Discovery ’s timeline, they remain aware between each loop that something is wrong—and that if they don’t put aside their differences and disable the bug, Discovery will be shut down while Moll and L’ak solve the clues to the Progenitor tech and doom the galaxy (to the Breen, of all people, we learn in one of the loops!).

This is already a really fun idea, because as we previously said— Discovery knows how to do a killer time loop story already, and has known how to do that for a very long time. But what crucially sets “Face the Strange” apart from “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” (god bless the show also toned down its love of long episode titles) is a context that the episode itself ultimately plays with: one of these episodes came just seven stories into the show’s existence. The other is the 59th , and in the time between them Discovery has done so much, changed so much, and developed in its own confidence, that it can use a similar structure and format like this again not to say “hey, look Star Trek fans, we can use the same tropes as the shows you loved,” but to instead say “hey, how do we use this trope to make a Discovery story?”

The answer is in both its characters—of course, particularly Michael—but also in the masterful way “Face the Strange” uses the concept of time looping to revisit a bunch of key moments from Discovery ’s metatextual past, giving Burnham, who went through it all, and Rayner, as the newcomer, (and eventually Stamets, who thanks to the spore drive tardigrade DNA, can’t be affected by time loops—a delightfully clever nod back to “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad”!) a chance to see just how far this crew has come through and how much it’s changed them all along the way. Through Michael and Rayner’s eyes as they puzzle out the pattern of each loop, and what they need to do to stop the bug, we get to go through so much of Discovery ’s past—from it being built in drydock in San Francisco, to the moment it jumped to the 32nd century, to fighting off the Emerald Chain in season three, and, most crucially, climaxing back in the early days of season one when Michael was still just a downtrodden turncoat barely given a second chance by Starfleet after the start of the Federation-Klingon war. And with that perspective, and the carried awareness from loop to loop, both Michael and Rayner alike come to understand what Discovery has been through all the better.

It’s an episode that’s perfect for a final season—standalone enough that it is also simply just a great time loop scenario, but also vitally informed by Discovery ’s history over the last four seasons to deliver a really touching moment of acknowledgement for the series as it looks back on how far it’s come. It’s fun seeing the old blue metallic uniforms again, or seeing Stamets realizing that a) he’s a little worried he can quickly empty engineering of officers with a totally fake spore breach warning, or b) he used to be able to do that even quicker by being a massive asshole. It’s just as fun to see Rayner, who’s still resistant to connect to Discovery ’s crew, soften as he sees everything they went through to get to where they are now, and slowly but surely use the things he’s picked up about them to his advantage. It’s both extremely fun and extremely good that, in the last time loop set during Discovery season one, we not just get to see how cold and distant the bridge crew were back then, but that Discovery finally does justice to its former cyborg crewmate, Airiam (the returning Hannah Cheesman), making her belief in Michael key to saving the day—three seasons in the making, but a far more fitting farewell to the character after her clunkily unceremonious death in season two.

But above all, “Face the Strange” is Michael’s episode, and her journey is the one examined most of all. Because if you’re going to narratively go back in time to Discovery ’s first season, well, as much as she doesn’t want to, you’re going to have Present Michael face Past Michael. Sonequa Martin-Green plays the encounter to perfection: two determinedly stubborn women with things they still want to prove to both themselves and the world, pushed in each other’s faces. That it becomes a knock-down mirror match punch-up is deeply funny—fitting the aggression if Discovery ’s original wartime setting while also just making it the inevitable outcome of putting two unstoppable forces in each other’s way. But Martin-Green sells just how much of a difference there is between Michael’s past and her presence in these moments with incredible charm and subtlety. The show really hammers home that while there are still things about Michael that are still Michael, the young woman petrified that she had no place aboard a starship in season one and the undeniably heroic captain of season five represent a remarkable journey the character has been on.

Crucially, however, while Burnham vs Burnham ends with her current self Vulcan neck-pinching her past self, the actual moment the day is saved is done not by Michael, but Rayner, finally learning the keys to understanding what makes the Discovery crew tick. After Past-Michael wakes up and, being so eager to prove her worth, takes the Rayner and future-Stamets on at phaser-point in Engineering as they prepare to finally destroy the Time Bug, it’s Rayner who steps in to get her to back down, making a connection—by leaning on the things Michael had told him about herself in their argument at the start of the episode—and getting Michael to see that one day she’s going to prove herself on a long, painful, but rewarding path ahead of her... if only she stops being so stubborn for a damn second and let them save the future. Even if she doesn’t remember it, it’s the exact perfect advice season one Michael needs—advice she’ll learn the hard way through Lorca’s betrayal . And in having it passed onto her from Rayner, a man who Michael herself has begun to help grow and connect to others again after all his own frustrations and hurts, really hits home just how far she’s come.

“Face the Strange” is an episode Discovery could only pull off once, as its journey comes to an end—and it does so almost perfectly, an incredibly compelling use of a time-and-tested Trek format to examine the metatextual and textual journey it’s been on these last seven years. While there’s still more adventures to go on just yet—with the Time Bug stopped, the race between Discovery and Moll and L’ak is now tighter than ever—this was a great chance to take a moment and have its heroes and the show alike take stock of how much it’s grown: and how ready it is to bid farewell.

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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‘Under the Bridge’ Is a True-Crime Story That ‘Reckons With the Trauma of Childhood’

Under the Bridge

• Lily Gladstone Investigates Missing Teen in ‘Under the Bridge’ Trailer
• ‘Under the Bridge’: Riley Keough to Headline Hulu Series

In 1997, the murder of 14-year-old Reena Virk by a fellow group of British Columbia teens sparked a media frenzy, and the ensuing scrutiny shed a spotlight on the problem of bullying and violence among girls. But Hulu ’s new true-crime series Under the Bridge , inspired by Rebecca Godfrey’s 2005 nonfiction book , digs deeper into the complex realities behind the sensational Canadian killing and the media blindspots about race, class, xenophobia, and poverty that underpinned it. “It’s a more feminine and sensitive take on a crime story that reckons with the trauma of childhood,” says creator Quinn Shephard during a recent Zoom interview, alongside showrunner Samir Mehta. “It’s about understanding how and why violence like this occurs in youth and what steps we need to take to break those cycles.”

The drama, which stars Killers of the Flower Moon  Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone and Daisy Jones & The Six ’s Riley Keough , zooms out to show the various puzzle pieces surrounding Reena’s life and the crime. Those include Reena ( Vritika Gupta )’s deteriorating relationship with her religiously-devoted mother Suman ( Archie Panjabi , The Good Wife ) and Indian immigrant father Manjit ( Ezra Faroque Khan ), and her desire to belong among a   clique of troubled girls, including vicious queen-bee Josephine ( Chloe Guidry ), the scheming Kelly ( Izzy G. ) and reluctant follower Dusty ( Aiyana Goodfellow ). “This is a crime that could not have happened had it not been for the age of the people involved,” Shephard says. “The perpetrators were between 14 and 16 years old and a lot of them were foster kids and kids with really bad home lives. [We wanted viewers] to understand the level of fantasy and reality and anger about their parents. The tragedy is how a tiny teenage rivalry can escalate to the level of intensity like the mafia, that vying for power.”

While peer pressure and teenage hazing can be fierce, the allure of being part of a high school clique is often irresistible. “The theme of being abandoned is what leads to this need for a created family,” Shephard says. “The show has tenderness around the tragedy because you get to unpack how a lot of these kids were searching for a sense of created family.”

Lily Gladstone Investigates Missing Teen in 'Under the Bridge' Trailer

“A theme that ripples through almost every episode is this need to belong,” Mehta says. “Every character in some way is reaching out, looking for someone to accept them in some way.”

To provide an adult perspective, Shephard, Mehta, and the writers turned Godfrey (Keough), the author, into a character in Under the Bridge and created the fictional police detective, Cam Bentland (Gladstone), a woman who grew up in town in an adopted white family. Rebecca and Cam, who were intimately involved in high school but have been estranged for years, team up to help solve the case.

In real life, Godfrey grew up in the same area of British Columbia as Reena, near where the crime happened, and was not a crime journalist before writing this book. That allowed her an entry into the girls’ world. “She was young and edgy and fit in with these teens, and they confided in her in a way they probably wouldn’t with other journalists,” Mehta says. “She was able to go undercover into their world and get a version of the story that only she could.”

Threading in Godfrey’s perspective, Shephard says, allows the audience to “unpack their own conflicting emotions about what’s going on and and to zoom out on the blind spots that went into the telling of this story and the media coverage of this crime in the ’90s.”

“Someone like Rebecca Godfrey was really sensitive about, ‘Oh, the media is sensationalizing the story and making the teens archetypes,’ so that ‘Queen Bee Kills Outcast’ is the story. But she was like, ‘These are complex kids. A lot of them are foster kids. They have troubled lives. These are the kind of girls I hung out with in school.’ But then Rebecca also didn’t really touch on the fact that the crime was racially motivated and didn’t explore that as much in her book.”

To fill in that perspective, it was paramount to honor Reena and create a fleshed out character. A rebellious, outcast teenager, Reena had tried to befriend the clique of girls, several of whom lived in a group home for kids. Initially, they drew her in, but then turned against her. “A lot of the coverage just painted her as the victim,” Mehta says. “We wanted to understand who she was as a person, to see her alive and understand how she came to believe that these [other girls] were her friends.”

The fictional character of Cam, an indigenous woman who grew up as the adopted child of white parents (including a police chief father and a detective brother), allowed the writers to create a foil for Rebecca and a contrast to her perspective. She’s also someone who has a close connection to the girls being put under the microscope by her fellow law enforcement officers. “This case becomes very personal for her. So a big part of her arc is coming to understand why that is,” Mehta says. “Sometimes who you are in childhood crystallizes in a way that you’re not even aware of. Then you look back and you have to reckon with, OK, who did I end up becoming through a series of circumstances that weren’t exactly my choice? And what do I want to do about that now that I’ve become conscious of it? I think Lily [Gladstone] is particularly great at capturing this theme.”

Indeed, like the girls at the center of the story, Rebecca and Cam are grappling with their own painful childhoods. — “those traumas that happen when we’re kids that shape who we become” — as they investigate the truth of what really happened the night that Reena Virk was killed.

Darko Sikman/Hulu

“For me, childhood was the time when I felt my emotions the most intensely, and the stakes of my life felt like they could not be higher,” Shephard says. “And Rebecca had many people in her life pointing out how she told this story and why she got so obsessed with it might be linked to her own childhood experiences in that town and her own loss.”

She adds, “A lot of people are shaped by and impacted forever by the things that happened to them as kids. The formative experiences of youth have a ripple effect, I think, on who you end up becoming in your adult life. And if as a society, we can work on those being more positive experiences, then maybe the adult life can be positive.”

Under the Bridge , Wednesdays, Hulu

Under the Bridge where to stream

Aiyana Goodfellow

Archie panjabi, chloe guidry, ezra faroque khan, lily gladstone, riley keough, vritika gupta.

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Published Apr 12, 2024

Star Trek: Lower Decks to Conclude with Fifth and Final Season

The hit original animated series will arrive later this fall.

StarTrek.com

Star Trek: Lower Decks will conclude later this fall with its fifth and final season.

Series creator Mike McMahan and executive producer Alex Kurtzman confirm the news in a touching tribute to the series and its fans:

To the fans,

We wanted to let you know that this fall will be the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks . While five seasons of any series these days seems like a miracle, it’s no exaggeration to say that every second we've spent making this show has been a dream come true. Our incredible cast, crew and artists have given you everything they have because they love the characters they play, they love the world we've built, and more than anything we all love love love Star Trek . We’re excited for the world to see our hilarious fifth season which we're working on right now, and the good news is that all previous episodes will remain on Paramount+ so there is still so much to look forward to as we celebrate the Cerritos crew with a big send-off.

Finally, thank you for always being so creative and joyful, for filling convention halls and chanting LOWER DECKS!" We remain hopeful that even beyond Season 5, Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford and the whole Cerritos crew will live on with new adventures.

LLAP Mike McMahan and Alex Kurtzman

Star Trek: Lower Decks is an animated comedy series that focuses on the support crew serving on one of Starfleet’s least important ships, the U.S.S. Cerritos . The crew residing in the “lower decks” of the U.S.S. Cerritos includes Beckett Mariner, voiced by Tawny Newsome; Brad Boimler, voiced by Jack Quaid; D'Vana Tendi, voiced by Noël Wells; and Sam Rutherford, voiced by Eugene Cordero. The Starfleet characters that comprise the U.S.S. Cerritos ’ Bridge crew include Captain Carol Freeman, voiced by Dawnn Lewis; Commander Jack Ransom, voiced by Jerry O’Connell; and Doctor T’Ana, voiced by Gillian Vigman.

The series is produced by CBS’ Eye Animation Productions, CBS Studios’ animation arm; Secret Hideout; and Roddenberry Entertainment. Executive producers include Alex Kurtzman, Mike McMahan, Aaron Baiers, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth. Titmouse, the Emmy Award-winning independent animation production company, serves as the animation studio for the series.

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Star Trek: Lower Decks streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel. The series will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in the UK, Canada, Latin America, Australia, Italy, France, the Caribbean, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and South Korea.

Stay tuned to StarTrek.com for more details! And be sure to follow @StarTrek on TikTok , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , and Twitter .