Amph [NERRRD] Observations, rhetorical questions, comments & 58 Years of Star Trek (General Thread)

So, recapping stuff from the STU panel (which was basically 30 min for DIS, 30 for PRO and 30 for PIC).. it looks like they've released the 3 trailers they premiered there, but from the discussions and other bits and touching on the major points from the trailers:

DIS S5:
-Continuing their effort to make every season feel different, this season is aiming for an adventure feel (befitting the "search for the treasure" concept mentioned in the trailer).
-New Captain of another vessel for Burnham to bounce off of.
-Burnham and Book's situation still complicated.
-Stamets is looking for the next engineering/science challenge to push himself forward as a part of.
-Warp riding!
-The cast would love to do a musical episode.

PRO S1.5:
-Jellico is returning as an Admiral to act as a foil to Vice Admiral Janeway.
-The Outrageous Okona will also be appearing this season (figures that Star Trek would give us an animated Dash Rendar before Star Wars!).
-The actress playing Titania on She-Hulk is joining the cast this season.
-When asked about a live action return for Janeway, Kurtzman revealed that there have been talks about a possible something, but nothing confirmed to reveal yet even though he'd obviously love to bring her back (to which Mulgrew added "hopefully while she's still ambulatory").

PIC S3:
-3 villains this season: main one is the commander of the "Shrike" (the ship seen attacking in the trailer that looks like a Vorlon Cruiser mixed with a Vulture Droid), Vadic, played by Christopher Plummer's daughter, Amanda (cry havac! ). She's of the "seeking revenge"-type villain variety (against Picard ad the Federation). Moriarty!!!! And Lore.
-LeVar Burton's actual daughter will be playing one of Geordi's daughters (two named from the three named in AGT). He's looking forward to showing Geordi in a healthy relationship- something that they failed to do during TNG's run.
-Marina is 80% drunk Troi in real life . She couldn't talk about much about what Troi is doing because her plotline is tied to something major about the plot that wasn;t in the trailer that they weren't allowed to talk about.
-Gates also couldn’t say much beyond the trailer info, except that the show runners chose to not develop a character arc dealing with Bev’s long term sexual frustration
-
Dorn says the showrunners and he met halfway on changes to Worf. That there will be parts of Worf we won't recognize and others that we will. But how that reflects the changing nature of the character.
-Frakkes says Picard and Riker have, not necessarily conflict (as would upset Gene) but a strong difference of opinion that Matalas compared to a Crimson Tide-like scenario (when asked, he wouldn't say who was Gene Hackan and who was Denzel ).
-Spiner couldn't say much about the "somehow Lore returned" angle, but only because he wanted to protect the panel host as if he broke his NDA, that not only would CBS send Spiner to jail, but the host as well .
-ENTERPRISE-F!!! They didn't actually touch on it during the panel beyond seeing it for a brief moment in the trailer (that shot was quick that not even I was certain it was what I believed it to be, so i didn't attempt to ask during the Q&A about the bloody letter...)
-There will be a "passing of the baton" from the legacy crew to the new this season (with the audience question using Bones in Farpoint, Picard in Emissary and Kirk in Generations as initial base examples).
-Stewart warmed up to bringing the TNG cast back into the show after his resistance to the idea at the start. But, as the showrunner clarified, they wanted to make sure they earned it first.



Oh, the biggest moment of the day was shortly before the panel:

Season 1 has its ups and downs. Season 2 may have a small handful of questionable moments in the middle, but the start and end are really strong. Besides having some of the strongest moments for the Picard character and really boosting the newer characters, Season 2 also benefited from echoing 90's Trek in terms of having more self-contained single and double episode stories woven within the larger ongoing arc (vs Season 1 which was almost entirely serialized). Maybe 1 or 2 don't hit as hard as the rest and maybe 1 in particular feels like filler but, well, that's Star Trek.


EDIT- Oh, almost forgot! They described PIC S3 as being the "what would the final TNG movie we never got look like?" while having the benefit of not being constrained to a 2 hour limit so it would avoid half of the cast getting short-changed on character development.

However, at the end, he also pitched to the Paramount+ reps in the audience that they'd still love to make another movie.

 

I think that's one place where we benefited greatly from the missteps of the first season- they were rushed to finish sequences when the season got altered midway through development/production and we ended up with things like the copypasta fleet. I think they recognized/saw the disappointment that brought (even if the Inquiry is a cool design with that chainsaw/serated-knife look to the saucer edge with the lights). So, for the next season, they focused on one or two hero ships like the Stargazer and Excelsior II and just brought in/upgraded existing STO designs/models instead of creating new ones from scratch or replicating the few they had made themselves. At least that's my take on it.

And, yeah, this is based on the original Odyssey design, not the more recent Yorktown refit. Amusingly it looks like it is between the Eaglemoss STO livery and Federation livery model versions of the original. So the one I currently own looks like this (less white, more Fed grey, red/blue nacelle glows) but lacks the black line detail, whereas the one I didn't get looks less like this (whiter, orange/blue glows) but has the black paint. And the Refit is obviously different but is in STO colors.

 

New wallpaper of the upgraded Ent-F model.

 

I think Moriarty will be used by the TNG crew to beat Lore, not as a bad guy.
He was created to outsmart Data after all.

 

Presumably the intent was for it to be an iterative design- something not far removed from the Sovvy that still evokes some of the design choices while building outward with some new, unique detail concepts (like the split neck and heavier leaning towards the seas creature vibe of the Galaxy via Flight of the Navigator).

Much like how the Excelsior is just an overweight Connie (A/B pairing) and the Galaxy was a larger, broader evolution of the Ambassador (especially the Probert Ambassador) (C/D pairing)

Presumably you would see a larger design change jump after the E/F pairing. Don’t want to fill the gaps in too quickly, though- they went through 6 letters in 100+ years. Only 4 more until they hit the J in 200 years.

 

Moriarty: “I was created to outsmart Data.”
Lore: “So you’re an idiot.”

 

That actually is a far better concept than I had believed they would go with as well.