The Guardiannn of Foreverrrrr...!

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I haven't watched much Discovery. Burned by Abramstrek, I was bearish on the idea of any new Star Trek being any good, and while I was intrigued by the presence of Michele Yeoh, the clips I saw didn't look promising. The Discovery itself is an ugly-ass ship with a goofy "go into warp" sequence, the klingons got changed again (and not for the better), and it had the unpleasant whiff of "darker, grittier" dankness.

BUUUUUUT I was intrigued by the trailers for Strange New Worlds, and I watched it, and that show was really good. The Enterprise is still too damn big and they need to turn on the lights, but the writing and performances were great, and the season finale "What If...?" story of Captain Pike going through the events of Balance of Terror was very cool.

Since SNW, while theoretically a prequel to the Original Series, is actually a spinoff of Discovery, I've been periodically going back and looking into the connective tissue between the two shows, most of which is in the second season. Anson Mount's Captain Pike is very likeable, completely unlike Jeffrey Hunter's stick-up-his-butt shoutyboy, but that can be chalked up to something mellowed him out on his five-year mission.

But not gonna lie, the first time I was actually engaged was when the show went to Talos IV. I mean, if you're gonna have Pike, you gotta have Talosians in there sooner or later, right? When I saw the "Previously on Star Trek" montage with footage from "The Cage," I actually grinned. The updated Talosians actually look more like the Vians from "The Empath," but it's still a very '60s-Outer-Limitsey look, so we'll give it a pass. The psychic visit from Vina was poignant, and makes Pike's final fate in "The Menagerie" even more of as happy an ending as Pike could get when you see the stronger emotional connection.

Discovery then gets shunted way off into the future (which, honestly, I'm fine with, I can happily ignore it there), but it does get at least one more giant shout-out to TOS, in the form of the Guardian of Forever—because of course that's still around 10,000 years in the future, and it's a great plot device that is woefully underused in canon appearances. Its two other appearances in TOS and TAS are the award-winning episodes from those respective shows, so I've always been a little surprised it didn't show up more often, compared to all the other wibbly-wobbly time-travel stuff in the franchise.

The Guardian has apparently had a few upgrades in the 10,000 years that passed: it disguises its appearance, it manifests a humanoid interface in the form of Carl, it makes bad jokes and is even more condescending than in its original appearance (if such a thing is possible), but it also clearly shows empathy and compassion. It has also moved from its original location, and all of this seems to stem from the Guardian's experiences during "the temporal wars," which I know are connected to the Enterprise series, but I haven't watched that one either. >.> Is this all radically different from "I was made this way, I cannot change"? Yes. But the Guardian is an eons-old transdimensional AI that was tampered with by Section 31 and who-knows-who-else for 10,000 years, so who's to say it can't evolve?

On a meta-level, I know that the whole disguise and coyness bit is just so the show can have the big reveal of "Surprise! It's ya boy!" But I ain't even mad. Paul Guilfoyle's "Carl" has a convincing Guardian of Forever voice, and it is actually a very cool moment. So I'm glad to see that Discovery is not about dumping on the past the way Abramstrek was. I still can't say that I'm actually interested in the show, overall it's still not my jam, but I am at least friendly to it, and it's nice to be able to like Star Trek again.

-TG