PRO S1E1 and E2 "Lost and Found" Review by AnswerMan

 Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

I guess the fear of missing out is real, because I really didn't feel the urge to check out Star Trek Prodigy until I discovered that it's no longer streaming anywhere. All of a sudden I just had to see it, so I bought the DVD (which luckily are still available for purchase new). It served as a reminder of how just because something is available right now doesn't mean it always will be since we don't own our media anymore. The promise of Paramount+ was ALL OF STAR TREK. It's why I subscribed as Trek was disappearing from other platforms. But now it's all of Star Trek, minus Prodigy which will be available for a short time on Netflix and then dropped altogether. This reality has prompted me secure my own physical library of all of Star Trek. NEVER FORGET.

My first impression of Trek's third animated show (not counting that one Short Trek) was that it is quite fun! And purple! It does seem more geared towards kids, but that's ok. Some of the very best media released in human history was for kids. But so far in this series opener it does provide a different tone. Our bad guy, for instance, is just a villain. I assume we'll get more backstory eventually, but come on. The guy kidnaps orphans and forces them into slave labor? That's pretty one dimensional.

PICARD S1E7 "Nepenthe" Review By Answerman

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Picard and Soji make it to Nepenthe, where they find a wild child and an old cabin. Inside he finds two old friends, Troi and Riker. It's nice to see them, and frankly nice to see them together. They have a daughter, Kestra, and a deceased son. They moved to Nepenthe because of it's healing properties, but lost their son anyway, even though his condition could have been easily cured if not for the synthetic ban. Now they just hang out, raising their daughter, and making pizza that takes seven hours to prepare. We haven't seen Troi and Riker since the finale of Enterprise, and they haven't changed much, especially Chef Riker. The planet provides a quick sabbatical for Soji to process that she's an android, and attempt to figure out who to trust. Kestra helps her a great deal through this process. The girl that plays Kestra is very talented, and she easily becomes a super likable character. 

PICARD S1E6 "The Impossible Box" Review By AnswerMan

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Soji has been dreaming, which seems like an odd activity for an android. But not that odd for an android that doesn't know that they are an android. Narek believes that her dreams may be the answer to where her home world is, which is a question that we didn't really know existed until now. So he vows to his evil sister that he will continue boning Soji and not leaving her quarters until morning for as long as it takes to uncover the answer. Ah, the sacrifice.

PICARD S1E5 "Stardust City Rag" Review By AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

Ok look, I love Seven of Nine. Seeing her more mature, more human, more adapted, is very good. Seeing her with dual phaser rifles taking out the bad guys honestly just gets my heart pumping. And hearing shades of Voyager's theme music all the while, is just... more than I expected. Honestly, the Picard series seems to be as much a Voyager spinoff as a next gen spinoff, despite the opening credits stating "based on star trek the next generation."

PICARD S1E4 "Absolute Candor" Review By AnswerMan

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Picard, knowing that he is dying, insists on making a stop off that really has nothing to do with the mission at hand. There is a planet with Romulan refugees that he once was responsible for. There is a band of female warrior assassin nun combat killer praying people who are the enemy of the Tal Shiar and wear their emotions on their sleeve. They helped to evacuate many Romulans to Mars, but after the synths attacked and Picard resigned, they just got forgotten about. Including Elnor.

PICARD S1E3 "The End is the Beginning" Review By AnswerMan

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This show is...complex, I guess. There's more going on in this episode than I can even try to explain. There seems to be a lot of bad guys, but I can't quite figure out if they're all on the same team or not. Picard is attacked in his home by seemingly the same crew that killed Dahj, which seems to be the same crew that is working on the Borg cube with Soji, but why would they kill one and work with the other? Is it because she came to some sort of awakening? If so, it was them that started it when they came to her apartment and killed her boyfriend. Also, Maddox is apparently on planet Soundcloud or something, making awful rap music. I'm so confused, and I don't like that. Let's face it, I'm watching this show no matter what, that's a given. But typically when I have trouble following a show I will just quit watching. I feel like that's where I would be on this one if it weren't Trek.

PICARD S1E2 "Maps and Legends" Review By AnswerMan

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Well this is getting complicated, isn't it. Let me see if I can simplify all of the recent developments in a single opening paragraph. <clears throat> Well you see, the Romulans that live with Picard and are part of a secret police society inform him that there's an even secret-er, almost mythical Romulan secret society, called the Zhat Vash (no relation to Picard's old girlfriend) that just have always hated androids, and AI in general. They operate everywhere, silently undermining any kind of android happenings. Clearly, they are responsible for the death of Data's daughter, and the subsequent scrubbing of the crime. They also are likely after Data's daughter's twin as well. So Picard must get moving!

PICARD S1E1"Remembrance" Review By AnswerMan

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I have to admit, I was super stoked about the release of yet another Star Trek series. I was especially excited that it would focus around MY captain, the very British Frenchman Jean-Luc Picard. Then when I found out that it would also feature two more of my favorite characters, Data and Seven of Nine, I nearly creamed myself. To watch the premier, I hushed my family and explained that the first episode of Picard was the most important thing going on in the universe at the moment. Then the opening sequence started, and "Blue Skies" began playing. Fucking perfect. Tear in my eye already. Let's do this!

SHORT TREKS S2E6 "Children of Mars" Review By AnswerMan

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This trek follows two little girls who both lose a parent in the android attack on Mars that we learn about in the Picard series. It starts with them both talking to their parents, then heading to school. The two do not get along at all, and spend all day antagonizing one another until it finally boils over into a fight. Like, a real fight. Holy shit do these two go at it. While waiting to speak to someone and receive their punishment, the two learn about the attack on Mars. They join hands and put the past behind them.

SHORT TREKS S2E5 "The Girl Who Made The Stars" Review By AnswerMan

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Michael (Burnham, I presume?) is a little girl who is afraid of the dark. Her dad tells her a story about the very first people on Earth. In the fable, there used to be no stars, and so people didn't go out at night, or else the night snake/devil/monster would get them. But the little girl found an alien, which gave her a ball that contained all the stars. Then the people weren't afraid of the dark anymore, and the little girl grew up to be a strong queen who slays the monster. Little Michael is no longer afraid of the dark, either.

SHORT TREKS S2E4 "Ephraim and Dot" Review By AnswerMan

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This trek is set up as possibly a pilot for a new animated series. It follows a pregnant tardigrade as it attempts to find a place to lay its eggs. It collides with the Enterprise, and trades blows with a robot. It's cute, and has a fair amount of drama. The feel of the scenery is the same as The Animated Series, but when we see our familiar characters we see that they've gone too close to the uncanny valley.

SHORT TREKS S2E3 "Ask Not" Review By AnswerMan

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Ensign Sidhu, who is stationed at a star base, is put in charge of guarding Captain Pike. He has been relieved of command during a fight with the Tholians. He does everything he can to talk Sidhu into releasing him. He makes a darn good case that it would be the right thing to do, and would personally benefit Sidhu, since her husband is likely in danger. They trade arguments back and forth, citing codes and subsections and paragraph b's. It would make a great courtroom drama.

SHORT TREKS S2E2 "The Trouble With Edward" Review By AnswerMan

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In this short trek, we get the origin story for Tribbles, and it's pretty hilarious. Edward is an extremely awkward and awful person who happens to be under Lynne Lucero's new command of the Cabot, a science vessel tasked with solving a food shortage crisis on a planet near Klingon space. Edward's idea is that Tribbles are delicious, and can be bred to reproduce quickly. Honestly that's not a bad idea, but I think he loses them when he suggests that he can breed them all with brain damage since they're not sure if they're intelligent or not. Words cannot describe how awful Edward is. He makes Barclay look like Don Juan.

SHORT TREKS S2E1 "Q&A" Review By AnswerMan

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At first I was confused as to the purpose of these shorts, but I am beginning to really like them. Each one is different and has a different purpose. It may be to fill in some blanks in the main series that will become important later, as in "Runaway" or "The Brightest Star." They might be just for fun, or even testing the waters of a new format or series. Or like "Q&A," just there to fill in some backstory.

SHORT TREKS S1E4 "Escape Artist" Review By AnswerMan

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If I had any money I'd be sipping jippers on a beach somewhere. True story. So would Harcourt Fenton Mudd. But he's come up with an even better plan: cashing in on the reward for his own head over and over. He's pulled this off by creating mechanical duplicates of himself that he sells, posing as a trader. We find this out by following one of the dupes as it's doing its job of stalling on the way to being cashed in. The best part is that the duplicate seems just as surprised to find this out as the viewer is.

DISCO S2E12 "Such Sweet Sorrow" Review By AnswerMan

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Blowing up Discovery proves unfruitful. The data has become part of the ship in such a manner that can use the ship to protect itself from annihilation. Scrubbing that plan, they decide that the only way to keep the data out of the hands of Section 31 is to send the ship into the future. They do have that time crystal, and the plans for a Red Angel suit.

Turns out, the Red Angel kind of is Michael after all. With her sharing DNA with her mom, she will be piloting the suit, and it is apparent that she is the one leaving the signals. Speaking of which, we've got our fourth, which takes the crew to the dilithium rich planet of Tilly's friend Po from the short Trek "Runaway". Po helps with coming up with an on the fly method of generating the same power as supernova to activate the time crystal.

DISCO S2E12 "Through the Valley of Shadows" Review By AswerMan

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A new signal appears on the monastery planet where L'Rell and Tyler dumped their baby. So Discovery is off to check it out. Turns out that the signals and the Red Angel are independent of each other. So we still have a mystery on our hands. 

Burnham and Spock decide to check on a Section 31 ship that checked in late. They discover a dead crew, sans one. But I'll just go ahead and spoil this early because it was completely obvious upon first viewing, that lone survivor is yet another Control nanobot stand-in. He nearly kills Burnham, but Spock saves the day just in time. They head back to Discovery with the knowledge that Burnham is somehow key to Control's plan.

DISCO S2E11 "Perpetual Infinity" Review By AnswerMan

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Well once again the new season of DISCO is about to launch and that is putting me in the position where I have to force myself to power through the rest of these reviews of last season. It's not that I don't like DISCO, I do. It's just that... I don't know, it's exhausting. The show is very dark, and ...not fun. I almost feel guilty about not having much good to say about it, because I do appreciate that Star Trek is still a thing. Yet here we are.

DISCO S2E10 "The Red Angel" Review by AnswerMan

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There's a lot of story progression going on here. The Control station has been destroyed. All ships have been checked for viruses. All seems to be well. But for reasons that I don't entirely understand, the combined crews of Discovery and the Section 31 ship decide that the only way to be sure that all is well is to catch the Red Angel. This will make sure that no more AI from the future makes it to the present. Oh and Section 31 created the Red Angel suit, and it was taken by Klingons. Also, the Red Angel is Michael. And Michael's parents worked for Section 31 and created the Red Angel time-traveling Iron Man suit.

DISCO S2E9 "Project Daedalus" Review by AnswerMan

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It's certainly an odd choice to only get to meet a character that has been around for two seasons in the episode that kills her off. Prior to this episode, Airiam was basically a piece of scenery, and I didn't even know her name. But here's what we learned about Airiam in her debut/farewell show:

1. She was once a normal human
2. She eloped
3. She crashed
4. ?????????
5. She is mostly robot