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The History Of The Romulans, And Their Place In The Star Trek Universe

"Star Trek" is home to countless alien races, but few have as enduring a presence in the franchise as the Romulans. They're the most persistent adversaries of the Federation, so much so that blue-tinted Romulan Ale remains under trade embargo. This hostility makes it all the more ironic that they resemble humanity's first alien allies, the Vulcans , sharing their pointed ears and arched eyebrows.

The in-universe origin of the Romulans is that they were Vulcans, millennia ago. In that distant past, the Vulcans were a warlike people, far from the cold logicians that fans know. That changed when (in Earth's 4th century), the philosopher Surak taught his people to embrace logic and master their emotions. Not all Vulcans accepted Surak's teachings; "Those Who March Beneath The Raptor's Wings" were eventually exiled from Vulcan. These dissident Vulcans settled on the twin planets Romulus and Remus, evolving into the Romulans and personifying a violent path not taken by their Vulcan cousins.

"Star Trek" is big on allegory — the interstellar powers represent the geopolitics of the 20th century. The Federation is the United States of America, a democracy of many member states. As the Federation's most pressing rival, the Klingon Empire is the Soviet Union. The Romulan Star Empire is China, a "sleeping dragon" superpower.

So, why have the Romulans endured as a crucial part of "Star Trek" history — and what does their role in that history look like?

Romulans in the Original Series

The Romulans were created by writer Paul Schneider, debuting in the season 1 episode "Balance of Terror." The episode features the Enterprise reacting to the destruction of outposts along the Romulan Neutral Zone; the culprit is a Romulan ship armed with a cloaking device. The Romulans flee back home while the Enterprise pursues its invisible quarry in a cat-and-mouse game.

This episode established the Romulan Star Empire had fought humanity in a devastating war a century ago. The war ended with a Neutral Zone established between the two parties' territories. Notably, no human had ever seen a Romulan in this time (or at least, no human who survived to tell about it). That means the Enterprise crew is stunned when they discover their adversaries are identical to Vulcans. The Romulans' exact backstory isn't spelled out, but Spock (Leonard Nimoy) speculates they are a Vulcan offshoot who retained his ancestors' warlike ways.

Schneider modeled the Romulans on the Romans; their twin homeworlds are named for the mythical founders of Rome and they employ ranks like "Centurion." Interviewed for "The Captains' Logs" by authors Edward Gross and Mark Altman , Schneider explained: "I came up with the concept of the Romulans which was an extension of the Roman civilization to the point of space travel, and it turned out quite well."

The Romulans' ship, dubbed a "Bird of Prey" due to the hawk painted on its underbelly, also created an association between the Romulans and birds. By "Star Trek: The Next Generation," their imperial insignia had evolved into a stylized raptor. Their ancestors' moniker, "Those Who March Beneath The Raptor's Wings," was probably extrapolated from this connection too by writer André Bormanis (the name first appears in "Star Trek: Enterprise" episode, "Awakening," written by Bormanis).

Further appearances

"Balance of Terror" is one of the most acclaimed episodes of "Star Trek: The Original Series." It was even semi-remade for the season 1 finale of "Strange New Worlds," titled "A Quality of Mercy." The unnamed Romulan Commander (played by Mark Lenard, who would go on to play Spock's father, Sarek) is an especially well-remembered villain, predating Khan Noonien Singh as the first worthy adversary of Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and the Enterprise. Even with his last words, he retains dignity and honor: "I regret that we meet in this way. You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Despite this dynamite debut, the Romulans made only two more appearances in "The Original Series." They are the antagonists of the season 2 episode "The Deadly Years," about the Enterprise crew succumbing to premature aging. However, only their ships are seen, not the Romulans themselves. They make a second and final onscreen appearance in season 3's "The Enterprise Incident" ( written by the legendary D.C. Fontana ). In this episode, Spock seduces a Romulan commander (Joanne Linville) while Kirk poses as a Romulan officer to steal her ship's cloaking device.

According to "The Art of Star Trek" by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, "Romulans were originally intended to be more of an ongoing threat to the crew of the Enterprise, but the make-up requirements proved too expensive. Klingons were cheaper." Note how, in "Balance of Terror" and "The Enterprise Incident," Romulan extras often wear ear-concealing helmets — an easy way to bypass make-up expenses.

The Romulans had only minor roles in the six theatrical "Star Trek" films featuring the original cast. They were rejected as villains of the third film, "The Search for Spock," again in favor of the Klingons (this is why the Klingons in that film have a cloaked ship called a Bird of Prey).

The Rihannsu

During the 1980s, the Romulans took center-stage in "Rihannsu," a five-novel series written primarily by Diane Duane (Peter Morwood co-authored the second, "The Romulan Way.") Published from 1984 to 2006, the novels invented a culture and language for the Romulans wholesale; they are technically not "Trek" canon but remain acclaimed for their world-building.

"Rihannsu" ("The Declared") is the Romulans' native name for themselves, akin to how German people call their nation "Deutschland," the Japanese call theirs "Nippon," etc. They are driven by "D'era," an expansionist impulse akin to Manifest Destiny, and "Mnhei'sahe" (ruling passion), a complex code of conduct that is foremost a rejection of the Vulcan system of logic.

"Mnhei'sahe" is weighed by one's personal strength and devotion to the Empire. Romulans seek power not for personal benefit per se, but because greater power serves the Empire. Selflessness is an alien concept to the Romulans; do things for the sake of your own Mnhei'sahe and others will benefit in the process. "Mnhei'sahe" spreads its claws even into simple Romulan social interactions, where the ideal outcome is for both parties to depart with their honor intact.

Much of Duane's other additions are inferences based on "Balance of Terror" and "The Enterprise Incident." Akin to Rome, the Romulans are an Oligarchic Republic; a Praetor is elected by the Senate itself, not the people at large. "The Enterprise Incident" showed a Romulan woman with a high military rank. So, "Rihannsu" gave the Romulan society a matriarchial tilt; a Romulan's family lineage is derived from their mother, not their father.

Much of "Rihannsu" is a holdover from the suggestion in "Star Trek: The Original Series" that Romulans were a warrior culture. For instance, their society has a semi-feudal system with a strong emphasis on family affiliation. Canon material would take a different path, showing Romulans as militant but not exactly honorable.

The Next Generation

In "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the Klingons were now good guys (mostly). They also became the go-to warrior race of "Star Trek"; Klingon society took on Viking and Samurai characteristics, where war, personal honor, and feudal affiliation were everything.

The Romulans became less and less the noble Roman-esque adversaries that Schneider had conceived of, with "TNG" instead highlighting their duplicity (with the cloaking devices) and isolationism. Thus, the stereotypical traits of Romulans became paranoia, deception, and xenophobia.

The Romulans were reintroduced in "TNG" season 1 finale, "The Neutral Zone," where it's said they had stayed out of galactic affairs for much of the 24th century. The episode (where several of their colonies are destroyed by the to-be-revealed Borg) awakens them. Creator Gene Roddenberry had initially not wanted to use the Romulans, but poor reception to the Ferengi meant the Federation needed a new adversary. Thus, the Romulans became the most frequent alien antagonist in the series; the Federation and Klingons were united as their enemies. Recurring Romulan villains included Tomalak (Andreas Katsulas) and Sela (Denise Crosby).

The most notable additions to the Romulans in "TNG" included V-shaped forehead ridges (dimorphic evolution from their Vulcan cousins), the D'deridex Class (enormous green warships descended from the Birds-of-Prey from "The Original Series"), and the Tal Shiar, Romulus' secret police.

Romulan highlights in "TNG" include "The Defector" (a Romulan military officer defects to the Federation) and "Reunification" (where Ambassador Spock has begun a push on Romulus for the two peoples to be one again).

The Next Generation (cont'd)

The Romulans weren't as prominent in "Deep Space Nine" as in "The Next Generation," but that series featured them finally uniting with the Federation. While the Federation and Klingons fight a losing war with the expansionist Dominion, the Romulans initially stay on the sidelines.

In the season 6 episode, "In The Pale Moonlight," Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) and Garak (Andrew Robinson) falsify evidence of the Dominion's plans to invade Romulus and try to sway Senator Vreenak (Stephen McHattie). When their deception is revealed, Garak (with Sisko none the wiser until it's done) pulls a move the Romulans would be proud of: he assassinates Vreenak and frames the Dominion. Thus, the Romulans join the war as allies, and remain so until the series' end.

The Romulans finally got a silver screen spotlight in "Star Trek: Nemesis," the final "TNG" theatrical film. The Romulan Senate is assassinated by a bio-weapon and a new Praetor, Shinzon (Tom Hardy), seizes power. It turns out Shinzon is a failed clone of Picard, the product of an aborted spying operation. The biggest wrinkle "Nemesis" introduces to the Romulans is the Remans. Playing on the pre-established twin planets Romulus and Remus, the grey-skinned Remans are a slave race, toiling as forced laborers and shock troops.

The film skimps on the details of Reman history, so viewers can surmise they evolved on Remus and were subjugated by the Romulans. However, the novel trilogy "Vulcan's Soul" by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz builds on the Remans displaying telepathy like the Vulcans (which the Romulans have always lacked). In this telling, the Remans were Vulcan exiles who refused to give up their telepathy and so were oppressed by the future Romulans; their appearance stems from the poor living conditions on Remus.

Looking to the past

"Star Trek: Enterprise" was a prequel set in the 22nd century, beginning before first contact between humans and Romulans. That event was depicted in the season 2 episode "Minefield," when the Enterprise stumbles into Romulan territory and is disabled by a cloaked minefield. True to canon, only the Romulans' ships are seen in the episode.

The Romulans finally took a larger role in season 4. The three-parter, "The Forge/Awakening/Kir'Shara" was about a Vulcan conspiracy to invade the Andorians. The ending revealed that Vulcan Administrator V'Las (Robert Foxworth) was in league with the Romulans and secretly working towards reunification. A subsequent three-parter, "Babel One/United/The Aenar," featured the Romulans as the explicit villains. A Romulan drone-ship, equipped with a holographic projector and controlled by Admiral Valore (Brian Thompson), attacked ships throughout the Alpha Quadrant to ferment dissent (the story begins with it destroying an Andorian ship while disguised as a Tellarite one, it later destroys a Rigellian freighter while disguised as Enterprise, etc.). However, the attacks only wind up bringing the targeted races together.

"Enterprise" established a firm timeframe for the Earth-Romulan War: 2156 to 2160. Moreover, the war was revealed as the event that brought the Federation together; Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites united in a military alliance against Romulan expansionism and never broke apart. The Romulans' increased presence in season 4 was building up to the war, but unfortunately, "Enterprise" was canceled before subsequent seasons could depict it. Thus, the Earth-Romulan War remains undepicted onscreen, confined to novels "Beneath The Raptor's Wings" and "To Brave The Storm" (both by Michael A. Martin).

The home world destroyed

Romulans were again the villains of a "Star Trek" film in director JJ Abrams' eponymous reboot. In the year 2387, Romulus and Remus are destroyed when their star goes supernova, shattering the Empire. Spock manages to contain the explosion with the substance Red Matter, opening a wormhole that sends him back in time to the 23rd century. Following him is the Romulan mining vessel the Narada, captained by vengeful Captain Nero (Eric Bana) — his name is another allusion to ancient Rome . 

The Narada's presence creates an alternate timeline; Nero and his men destroy Vulcan with Red Matter before being defeated themselves. Nero and the Narada's crew stand out from other Romulans thanks to their shaved heads and tattoos; the admittedly non-canon comic "Star Trek: Countdown" suggests this is part of a mourning ritual. Normally the tattoos would fade, but Nero and his crew burnt them into their skin to ensure they'd never forget the loss of their home.

"Star Trek" returned to the "TNG" era with "Picard" and followed on from this point. It turns out that Starfleet offered to help evacuate Romulus, but after an attack on Mars, reneged on the plan; Picard himself resigned in disgust. The Romulans are far from extinct though. The Empire has collapsed into warring factions, one of which is the Romulan Free State. According to "Star Trek: Discovery," Vulcan/Romulan reunification will have become a reality by the 31st century. The groups remain culturally divided, but they again exist on the same planet, renamed from Vulcan to "Ni'var" (meaning two combined into one).

Romulan worldbuilding

Michael Chabon, showrunner of "Picard" season 1, also shared (via Medium) worldbuilding notes on the Romulans . These presumably influenced his onscreen depiction of them. Chabon writes that the Romulans are such secretive people that there is nothing more intimate to them than the truth; marriages have three participants because there must be third-party verification in everything.

The Romulan government is organized like an espionage network, with multiple competing cells, while Romulans all have four names: the common name (used for familiarity), imperial name (the state-recognized name), open name (for outsiders), and their true name (used only for close intimacy). Chabon suggests that a rumored reason for the Romulans' secrecy is the abundance of camouflaged predators on their adopted homeworld; their cloaked warbirds are modeled on a raptor whose plumage blends into the horizon.

Not all depictions of the Romulans totally align — compare Duane's Rihannsu to Chabon's Romulans. However, they all draw upon "The Original Series" and make inferences from there. "Star Trek" writers and fans aren't much different; they both take canon material and expand on it with some imagination.

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A Closer Look at Romulans

Looking at Star Trek's Romulan Empire.

StarTrek.com highlights Romulans throughout the Star Trek universe.

The Untold Truth Of Star Trek's Romulans

Star Trek   gives good bad guy. Since  Star Trek: The Original Series'  ( TOS)  premiere in 1966, Gene Roddenberry and his colleagues have brought us lots of memorable recurring antagonists. There are the warlike Klingons, the trickster Q, and the relentless Borg — but before most of  Trek 's repeat villains came the Romulans. 

Only appearing in a few of the original series' episodes and making minor appearances in the original crew's films, the Romulans were nonetheless remembered when the  Trek  franchise was revived with  Star Trek: The Next Generation   ( TNG ). For most of their time onscreen, the Romulans have been Cold War -like opponents. They plot, they assassinate, and they threaten, but they rarely make open war on Starfleet. But when they do open fire? Well, nine times out of ten, the Romulans only let slip the proverbial dogs of war after their work in the shadows has made their victory seemingly inevitable. 

Unlike Starfleet, the Romulan military and secret agents have few moral qualms about dealing with other species, and their mercilessness helps breed paranoia within their ranks. They'll do anything to get ahead, and assume everyone they meet is just as willing. Their paranoia sometimes proves more than accurate, as even some of the most idealistic members of Starfleet have taken a break from their usual ethical high ground when dealing with the sons and daughters of Romulus. 

For more about one of  Star Trek 's oldest powers, keep reading for the untold truth of the Romulans.

Their creation was inspired by ancient Rome

According to commentary on the  TOS  season 1 Blu-ray, the idea for the Romulans came from writer Paul Schneider, who wanted worthy adversaries for Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and was inspired by the Roman Empire . 

Romulans make their first appearance in the  TOS  season 1 episode "Balance of Terror." We learn that after a bloody conflict with the Romulans, a peace treaty was forged between them and the Federation via subspace radio. The treaty establishes a neutral zone in which neither side's ships are allowed to enter. A map is displayed to the  Enterprise  crew that shows the planets Romulus and Remus on the opposite side of the zone. 

Romulus was the legendary founder of Rome. In Roman myth, Romulus and his brother Remus are born to a mortal woman, Rhea Silvia, who mates with Mars — the god of war. Left for dead by their uncle Amulius' servants, the twins are saved by a wolf. They're eventually raised by shepherds and, upon growing to adulthood and learning the truth about who they are, they kill their uncle and seek a place to start their own kingdom. There are different versions of how it happens, but at some point in the tale Romulus usually kills Remus in a dispute over where their new kingdom is to be founded. 

Considering the treachery and violence we've seen the Romulans are capable of, if nothing else Schneider picked fitting names for their worlds. 

Romulans are an offshoot of Vulcans

When the  Enterprise  first encounters Romulans, they're the first humans to actually see the race, and their physical similarities to Vulcans leaves some crew members questioning Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) loyalty. Their similar features aren't a coincidence — Romulans are an offshoot of the Vulcan species.

Centuries before the events of Star Trek  when the Vulcans begin to purge their emotions in pursuit of pure logic, not everyone plays ball. Some Vulcans reject the new ideas, and after a bloody war they leave to create their own society on Romulus and Remus. 

Romulans, however, are not   just Vulcans on a different planet. Millenia of genetic drift created many subtle variations in their physiological makeup. They still share pointed ears, but there are some obvious differences, like the prominent ridges on Romulans' foreheads. There are less obvious differences too, which Dr. Crusher learns in the  TNG  episode "The Enemy," when she unsuccessfully tries to heal an injured Romulan by treating him as if he were a Vulcan.

Predictably there are Romulans like TNG 's Sela (Denise Crosby) who feel nothing but contempt for Vulcans. But some feel a strong kinship toward their less passionate cousins. In the  TOS  episode "The Enterprise Incident," the Romulan Commander (Joanne Linville) admires and and is attracted to Spock. In the  TNG  two-parter "Unification," it's feared that Spock has defected to Romulus, when in fact he's there meeting the members of a growing movement of Romulans who wish to reunite with their Vulcan ancestors. 

One of the first onscreen Romulans was Spock's dad... kind of

If you're more familiar with the original crew movies than with  TOS , or more familiar with  TNG , then you may be surprised to learn who played the first onscreen Romulan Commander: Mark Lenard, who would later appear in "Journey to Babel" as Spock's father Sarek. Lenard reprised the role of Sarek in  TNG , in a number of the original crew movies, and even lent his voice to Sarek in  Star Trek: The Animated Series . But before he played Sarek, he played the unnamed Romulan Commander in "The Balance of Terror." 

Speaking to  Starlog  (via MyStarTrekScrapbook ) in 1984, Lenard said the Romulan Commander role was the second time he'd gone up for a part on  TOS . And while the second time proved the charm as far as getting on the series was concerned, it would take a third try before he got to meet any of the series regulars. In "Balance of Terror," all of the communication between his character and the  Enterprise  crew takes place on a viewscreen, so there was never any need for him to be in the same space. It wasn't until he returned as Sarek that he was able to meet the intrepid crew.

Lenard wasn't the only Romulan in that episode to return later as a Vulcan. Lawrence Montaigne, who plays the ambitious Romulan officer Decius in "Balance of Terror," returns as the Vulcan Stonn in season 2's "Amok Time." 

The Romulans boast a number of secret cabals

One of the reasons so many Romulans remain loyal to their government is the Tal Shiar — a powerful secret police that conducts clandestine operations both inside the Romulan Empire and against Romulus' rivals. They kidnap, torture, assassinate, and don't lose much sleep over any of it. 

The Tal Shiar is first mentioned in  TNG but becomes more visible in  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ( DS9 ), when we witness how resilient the organization is. In the two-part DS9  story spanning "Improbable Cause" and "The Die is Cast," the Tal Shiar join forces with the Cardassians' secret police — the Obsidian Order — in a sneak attack on the Dominion. The whole thing turns out to be a trap and their fleet is decimated. The events wipe out the Obsidian Order and help lead to the overthrow of the Cardassian government. The Tal Shiar, on the other hand, are still one of the most powerful parts of the Romulan government when we meet their leader Koval (John Fleck) in the  DS9 s eason 7 episode "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges."

More recently in  Star Trek: Picard ,   we learn the Tal Shiar is a part of an older organization called the Zhat Vash — something so secret some Tal Shiar members believe it's a myth. The Zhat Vash is dedicated to wiping out all synthetic life, and it's embedded in governments all over the galaxy, including the highest ranks of Starfleet.

A favorite episode proves Starfleet isn't above using Romulan tactics

The Romulans are often depicted as unduly paranoid in contrast to the well-intentioned heroes of Starfleet. In a fan-favorite episode –  DS9 's "In the Pale Moonlight" — Starfleet proves that sometimes the Romulans should  be paranoid. 

Captain Ben Sisko (Avery Brooks) commits himself to convincing the Romulans to enter the war against the Dominion. He enlists the enigmatic Cardassian Garak (Andrew Robinson) to retrieve Dominion plans to invade Romulus. When that doesn't work out, Garak sells Sisko on the idea of creating a fake holographic record of the Dominion leaders discussing the invasion of Romulus. Sisko invites the Romulan Senator Vreenak (Joseph McHattie) to DS9 to show him the recording, but the senator sees through the lie. Not long after an enraged Vreenak leaves the station, we learn his ship has been destroyed and the Tal Shiar believes the Dominion is behind it. Sisko realizes Garak never meant for the fake holo-record to work, but instead always planned to assassinate Vreenak and pin it on the Dominion. Sisko is enraged and even attacks Garak in his shop, but in the end — because he's desperate to defeat the Dominion — he keeps the truth to himself. 

The entire story is told from Sisko's point of view as he reads it into a log entry. In the final moments of the episode, as soon as he finishes the tale, he orders the computer to delete it. 

Romulans make Star Trek's most famous beverage

Apparently, when Romulans aren't plotting to dominate the galaxy, they like to party. Sprinkled here and there throughout the  Trek  franchise is Romulan Ale — a  very  strong alcoholic drink that is illegal in the Federation, yet Starfleet officers keep getting their hands on it anyway. 

The first time the beverage is mentioned is in 1982's  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan when Bones (DeForest Kelley) brings a bottle of it to James Kirk for his birthday. Kirk is noticeably surprised at how strong the drink is. Regardless, he somehow doesn't have a problem serving it during a diplomatic dinner aboard the  Enterprise  in 1991's  Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country — a detail that is used against him and McCoy when they're framed for assassinating the Klingon Chancellor. Ben Sisko serves what appears to be replicated Romulan Ale to a Romulan senator in the  DS9  episode "In the Pale Moonlight," though the senator refers to it as "kali fal," which may or may not be the Romulan name for the blue drink. At the wedding reception for Riker and Troi in 2002's  Star Trek: Nemesis , Worf (Michael Dorn) complains that "Romulan ale should be illegal" as he nurses a headache. "It is," Geordi (Levar Burton) reminds him.

As far back as the TOS  episode "The Enterprise Incident," the Romulan Commander shares a blue drink with Spock as she's trying to seduce him, though we never hear its name. 

In 1995, they wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas

In 1995, the Romulan Empire made its first appearance on a Hallmark commercial. No you didn't misread that. Promoting a Romulan Warbird Christmas ornament, Hallmark released a commercial depicting the pointy-eared aliens kidnapping a Hallmark cashier to interrogate her about how she'd "pirated" the design of the ornament from the Romulans. 

And they didn't just get any actors to show up in costume and makeup. The cheerful cashier's interrogators are mostly  Star Trek  actors who had already played villains on at least one  Trek  series. Martha Hackett — the Romulan woman in the commercial — is probably more well known to  Trek  fans as the Cardassian Seska on  Star Trek: Voyager . But she'd also played the Romulan officer T'Rul in the two-part  DS9  episode "The Search." The introduction of the Defiant  includes a cloaking device on loan from the Romulan Empire and it's T'Rul's job to run the cloaking device and keep its secrets from Starfleet. 

Considering neither T'Rul nor any other Romulan is shown on board the  Defiant  to safeguard their cloaking secrets after "The Search," they apparently weren't any better about protecting their secrets than they are at interrogating Hallmark cashiers.

Romulans are in lots of first drafts, but fewer final drafts

When it comes to the Trek  movies, the Romulans usually play second fiddle if   they show up at all. Romulans were the chief antagonists of J.J. Abrams' 2009  Star Trek  reboot, but before that they failed to take center stage in any of the movies. The closest they got was 2002's  Star Trek: Nemesis ; their homeworld and government are important to the plot, but the main villain is Shinzon (Tom Hardy) — a clone of Picard — and a race of former slaves called the Remans. 

But it isn't for lack of trying. The Romulans were originally meant to take a larger role in a number of  Trek  films. Remember the Klingons in 1984's  Star Trek III: The Search for Spock ,   led by the ruthless Commander Kruge (Christopher Lloyd)? According to a 2002 issue of  Star Trek: The Magazine , it was originally going to be the Romulans who clash with the  Enterprise in orbit of the Genesis planet — not Klingons. They were  originally planned as the villains for 1998's  Star Trek: Insurrection , but were ultimately replaced by the face-stretching Son'a. In Michael Piller's unpublished book Fade In , the  Trek  writer wrote that Patrick Stewart — among others — was very much against the inclusion of the Romulans, who the actor felt were "unexciting." Stewart worried that using the Romulans would make it appear as if "we just couldn't come up with any new bad guys." 

The process of turning an actor into a Romulan has evolved

The look of the Romulans, the process of creating that look, and the resources devoted to it have all changed significantly since their first appearances. In  TOS , Romulans look almost identical to Vulcans, and the cost of adding latex pointy ears to actors made them too expensive to use on background actors. On the  TOS  season 1 Blu-ray commentary, we learn that in "Balance of Terror," only two of the Romulan actors were actually given the ears while the rest of the Romulans are made to wear helmets hiding their ears.

Romulans show up a lot more once  TNG  comes around, and their reintroduction comes with a new design. Prominent brow ridges were added to Romulan prosthetics. According to the reference book  Star Trek: The Next Generation 365 , this was both to make the Romulans appear more menacing and to help differentiate them from their Vulcan cousins.

As of the 2020 premiere of  Star Trek: Picard , hi-def technology changed things. On  The Ready Room  – the  Picard  after-show — prosthetic designer Vincent Van Dyke said that "every single background performer, all the way to the foreground hero characters" not only are fitted with ears, but "laced brows." Every single Romulan actor on  Picard  wears a prosthetic piece that includes eyebrows which have been painstakingly laced — one hair at a time — into the prosthetic. Long gone are the days of fitting the extras with skullcap helmets. 

In Star Trek: Picard, the Romulans become both friends and foes

One of the unique things about  Star Trek: Picard is that while it gives us plenty of Romulan villains, we also meet possibly the most sympathetic Romulan characters to ever appear in any  Trek  production.

When we find the retired Picard running his family vineyard, he's accompanied by two Romulans who treat him like nothing less than family. Laris (Orla Brady) and Zhaban (Jamie McShane) are former Tal Shiar agents who live with Picard, cook for him and — when a Zhat Vash squad comes gunning for the retired admiral — risk their lives for him. Their loyalty springs largely from Picard's efforts to evacuate the Romulan Empire. Both are fiercely protective of Picard, particularly Laris. 

At the same time, the Romulans have not all left their more villainous impulses behind. Along with Picard's Romulan friends, the newer series introduces us to the seductive Narek (Harry Treadaway), his ruthless sister Narissa (Peyton List), and the fanatical Zhat Vash whose agents have the unsettling ability to spit out a corrosive liquid that kills both themselves and anyone unlucky enough to be nearby. 

Star Trek: Picard forces 2009's Star Trek to make more sense

One of the interesting side effects of  Star Trek: Picard and its stronger focus on the Romulans is that it manages to reach back in time and force 2009's  Star Trek to make more sense. 

A lot of fans — even those who enjoyed J.J. Abrams' reinvention of the  Trek  franchise — weren't overly impressed with Eric Bana's Nero. The Romulan villain goes into the past and, among other things, destroys Vulcan. Nero does what he does purely for vengeance, to get back at the Federation for the supernova that destroyed Romulus and killed his family. To some fans, Nero's motivations didn't add up. After all, the Romulan supernova is a natural phenomenon. How could Nero blame the Federation, the Vulcans, or anyone else for not helping, particularly when you consider how hostile the Romulans have been to, well...  everyone ? 

But with  Star Trek: Picard and the backstory it presents, Nero's quest for vengeance comes into focus. In  Picard  we learn that Starfleet committed to helping evacuate the Romulan Empire and then, after the unexpected synthetic revolt on Mars, backed out of the endeavor. From Nero's point of view, it's one thing to stand by and do nothing; it's quite another to offer help and then to withdraw it at the 11th hour. It makes Nero's rage much easier to relate to, though his actions are no less monstrous. 

The Narada was a Romulan mining vessel that was in service in the late 24th century .

In 2387 , the Narada was commanded by Nero ; his second-in-command was Ayel .

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History [ ]

Following the destruction of Romulus by the supernova of the Romulan sun in 2387 , Nero took the Narada to intercept Ambassador Spock , who was attempting to create an artificial black hole which would consume the star before it destroyed more worlds. Both the Narada and Spock's ship, the Jellyfish , went missing after they were pulled into the black hole.

Interior of the Narada

The Narada emerged from the black hole, 75,000 kilometers from the edge of Klingon space , in the year 2233 , creating the alternate reality . There, the Narada encountered and attacked the USS Kelvin , easily overpowering the much smaller Federation starship . During the attack, the Kelvin 's commanding officer, Captain Richard Robau , was killed, forcing Lieutenant George Kirk to take command. With his ship heavily damaged and facing imminent annihilation by the Narada , Kirk gave the order to abandon ship. To save the lives of those evacuating in the shuttles , Kirk rammed the Kelvin into the Narada . Although the Narada sustained enough damage to ensure the safety of the Kelvin 's evacuees, the vessel was still operational.

The scans the Kelvin took of the Narada 's 24th century technology, that went with the survivors on the shuttles, were used by 23rd century Starfleet to reverse-engineer the more "advanced" technology seen in the alternate reality, according to a post by Star Trek screenwriter Roberto Orci on Ain't It Cool News . [1] Director J.J. Abrams also said in an interview with MTV that readings from the Narada "inspired ideas and technology that wouldn't have advanced otherwise." [2]

The unfinished Narada surrounded by Klingon warbirds

The Narada warps after the Jellyfish

Twenty-five years later , the Narada was involved in an attack on a Klingon prison planet and the destruction of 47 Klingon warbirds . Shortly thereafter, the Jellyfish , with Spock aboard, emerged from the black hole and was immediately captured by the Narada . The Narada then left for Vulcan and drilled a hole into the planet , all the way to its core . When the Federation sent a small fleet to Vulcan to investigate the seismic disturbance , the Narada destroyed them shortly before the USS Enterprise arrived. The crew of the Enterprise successfully stopped the drill, but were unable to stop Nero from injecting red matter , taken from the Jellyfish , into the core of the planet, creating a black hole, which quickly consumed Vulcan.

The Narada is consumed by a black hole

Following Vulcan's destruction, Nero interrogated the captured Christopher Pike using Centaurian slugs , forcing the helpless captain to reveal Earth 's planetary defense codes . Nero took the Narada to Earth and began drilling into the San Francisco Bay . However, the drill platform was destroyed by that era's Spock using the Jellyfish , which he confiscated from the Narada . After drawing the Narada away from Earth, Spock rammed the Jellyfish into the Narada . The remaining red matter that was aboard the Jellyfish was ignited, creating a massive black hole that slowly began to crush the ship. Kirk offered to assist the crew of the Narada , but Nero refused. Kirk then had the Enterprise fire upon the Narada to ensure its destruction until the ship was pulled apart and ultimately devoured by the black hole. ( Star Trek )

According to writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman , Kirk orders the Enterprise to fire on the Narada as it is being pulled into the black hole at the end of the film to prevent the ship from possibly emerging elsewhere and causing more chaos and destruction. [4]

• See : Narada personnel

Technical data [ ]

Weapons [ ].

Despite being only a mining vessel in its own time, the Narada possessed weaponry far more advanced than those of any of the ships it encountered in the 23rd century. The primary weapons seemed to be highly destructive missiles , each of which could break into several component projectiles. These projectiles were powerful enough to penetrate the standard shields that starships of the time utilized. The Narada housed at least enough of these weapons to easily destroy entire fleets of ships; more than fifty vessels were destroyed over twenty-five years.

As a mining vessel, the Narada also had an immense drilling apparatus , which was a platform at the end of a lengthy metallic line seemingly hundreds of kilometers long. The drill emitted a powerful beam that could penetrate a planet's surface and continue all the way to its core. The high energy output from the beam itself also acted as a disruptor of sorts, causing localized interference in both communications and transporter signals.

With the Jellyfish in its possession, the Narada could also deploy bombs loaded with the incredibly destructive red matter.

Appendices [ ]

Background information [ ].

The Narada was designed by James Clyne . Production designer Scott Chambliss wanted the ship to be asymmetrical, in contrast to the "perfect symmetry" of the Enterprise . Chambliss contemplated "the scariest thing in space" and looked to a kitchen knife, imagining "500 gigantic knife-edge points". "That's how the Romulan ship developed, with a kitchen knife and the twisted imagination of James Clyne," he said. During development, the ship was referred to as "Hanson's Ranch" to keep its name secret. ( Star Trek - The Art of the Film )

J.J. Abrams wanted the ship's interiors to feel mysterious by having them be "amorphous, to have a sense of no corners, ceilings or floors". To minimize the size of the set, Chambliss called on his experience in theater to build a set where parts could be moved around to create another section of the ship each day. Cinematographer Dan Mindel used "abrasive" yellow-green lighting to suggest the angry and fragmented mindset of the Romulan crew. Visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett complemented the feel by underlighting the digital shots "in classic horror movie style", based on a lighting test "that went wrong, but I actually liked the look" of.

ILM model supervisor Bruce Holcomb stated the Narada was six miles (ten kilometers) long, [5] while Post magazine mentions it is five miles (eight kilometers) long. [6] The film's Blu-ray gives a final estimate of the ship's length at 30,737.3 feet (9,368.7 meters). Regardless, the ship was one of the largest digital models ever built by the company: according to Roger Guyett, the detail required near 1:1 scale.

Apocrypha [ ]

The Narada , before being retrofitted in 2387

In the Star Trek prequel comic book miniseries Star Trek: Countdown , the Narada 's advanced weaponry and appearance are explained as being the result of the ship being retrofitted with salvaged and reverse-engineered Borg technology. The Tal Shiar in the 24th century had been experimenting with Borg technology, and Nero's ship was the experimental vessel used. The Narada was retrofitted at The Vault ( β ), a cloaked military installation in deep space, subsequent to the destruction of Romulus. The Borg nanoprobes allowed the ship to grow and repair itself, and also take on a much larger and more menacing appearance. The ship's speed was increased from Warp 9.8 to "…immeasurable transwarp speeds." This information also appeared on the Blu-ray release of the film in the supplement section "Starships." While the Narada itself was not referenced in Star Trek: Picard , that series confirmed that the Romulans had access to Borg technology in the form of the Artifact , a disabled Borg Cube .

The Borg connection paid off in the sequel to Countdown , Star Trek: Nero . After Nero escapes from Rura Penthe – the " Klingon prison planet " – the Narada takes him to V'Ger , which Nero uses to calculate where Spock will arrive. By then, the Narada had seemingly developed a telepathic link with Nero that allowed him to command the Narada remotely.

In Star Trek: Ongoing 's " Mirrored, Part 1 ", set in the alternate reality's mirror universe , Kirk – Spock's first officer – commandeers the Narada from Nero following the Terran Empire's conquest of the Klingon Empire. He attacks and destroys the Enterprise , and sets course for Vulcan. However, after recovering Spock Prime, he is outmaneuvered by Spock Prime, Uhura, and Spock – Uhura having saved Spock's life before the destruction of the Enterprise – and is killed before he can destroy Vulcan, with the two Spocks remaining on Vulcan to rebuild while Uhura takes command of the Narada .

The Narada 's connection to the Borg is confirmed in the Star Trek: Boldly Go series – set before the completion of the USS Enterprise -A – when the Federation is attacked by a Borg sphere seeking answers about the temporary presence of a fragment of the Collective in this galaxy, but their primitive technology at this time allows the Federation and the Romulans to destroy the sphere and save those who have been assimilated.

In Star Trek Online , while the Narada itself doesn't appear, it's revealed that after her disappearance, the Tal Shiar continued their experiments with Borg technology. This results in Mogai - and D'deridex -class ships being retrofitted in similar ways and looking almost identical to the Narada .

The 2013 virtual collectible card battle game Star Trek: Rivals has the Narada as card #107.

External link [ ]

• Narada at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 1 USS Voyager (NCC-74656-A)
• 2 Daniels (Crewman)
• 3 Star Trek: Prodigy

• July 5, 2024 | Podcast: All Access Boards The Voyager-A For ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Season 2
• July 4, 2024 | First Look At Hero Within Comic-Con Exclusive Star Trek TNG Jackets
• July 3, 2024 | Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Teaches Us A Lesson In “Temporal Mechanics 101” [Episode 204]
• July 3, 2024 | Chris Pine Wonders How ‘Star Trek 4’ Will Deal With Kirk Now That He Is “A Lot Older”
• July 2, 2024 | Paramount Reportedly Close To New Acquisition Deal With Skydance… Again

Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Returns With A Bang In “Into The Breach” (Part I & Part II)

| July 1, 2024 | By: Anthony Pascale 31 comments so far

“Into The Breach, Part I” and “Into The Breach, Part II”

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, Episodes 1 & 2 – Debuted Monday, July 1, 2024 Part I: Written by Kevin & Dan Hageman, directed by Ben Hibon Part II: Written by Aaron Waltke, directed by Andrew L. Schmidt & Patrick Krebs

This delightful series doesn’t miss a beat as it reintroduces us to the characters and sets them on a grand new adventure.

WARNING: Spoilers below!

“Greetings, Starfleet Academy hopefuls.”

Some time has passed since the season 1 finale, and the kids are now Starfleet Academy hopefuls, each assigned to a different specialty. Separately, Murf, Rok, Jankom, Zero, and Dal get a message from Admiral Janeway that “prep school is over” and it is time for some “study abroad.” They reunite to be greeted by their escort: It’s the holographic Doctor, or as he reminds us, a “hero of the Delta Quadrant.” Their escort tells them the mission is to explore the wormhole that was created when they blew up the Protostar last season, which created a gateway to future war-torn Solum (where Chakotay is), not to be confused with the peaceful Solum of today (where Gwyn is headed)… “This timey-whimey stuff hurts my head,” says Dal. They arrive at their new home, the USS Voyager-A, Janeway’s fancy new ride. They soon find out the ship has other potential Academy recruits, including teen Vulcan Maj’el, one of the snooty Nova Squadron candidates calling the prodigies “Never Squadron.” Burn! The kids are sent to their assignments with four of them very happy: Murf starts security training, Zero heads to sickbay, Jankom’s in engineering, and Rok in Cetacean Ops! But Dal is disappointed command training isn’t an away mission fighting the Borg; he’s just handed a huge pile of books, Temporal Mechanics 101 at the top. Boring!

Sorry kid, can’t talk, have to finish today’s Wordle.

“It’s time for one of my cockamamie plans.”

Dal runs into a brick wall when he tries to rally the gang into some hijinks. They’re not moved by his talk of how they “used to be heroes” on their own ship. Even Jankom is “trying to fit in.” The former kid captain retreats to his room to facetime with Gwyn, revealing he is rethinking the whole Academy thing, but she has her own concerns as she heads to Solum to convince a bunch of xenophobes that a galaxy full of aliens is actually going to be fun for them. But after Zero overhears The Doctor get a cryptic message from Janeway about Shuttlebay 3, which isn’t supposed to exist, they take Dal up on his suggestion of doing some snooping. Jankom and Murf join in, but Rok will have nothing to do with breaking the rules. They eventually find a seemingly empty hanger that actually contains a cloaked ship ( still illegal in the 24 th century). Janeway and her bridge crew show up, so the kids hide as the officers reveal the real mission was to use this ship called “Infinity” to go into the wormhole and save Chakotay—but now Admiral Jerkico is having second thoughts. Noum, Tysess, and Doctor say they are ready to go anyway, but Janeway is going to play by the book for the moment, and will keep trying to convince her boss to change his mind and go through with the secret time travel mission. Dal nails it with: “And this just got interesting.”

Yes, this would qualify as hijinks.

“I have traveled here from the stars.”

Gwyn finally arrives at Solum, and beams down alone with the assurance that she can return to the shuttle anytime. After announcing her surprise appearance to a crowd she is ushered in to meet the elders, but her message of “peaceful worlds and civilizations” falls on deaf ears. Surprise! Asencia (aka The Vindicator) arrived earlier and already convinced the leaders of the planet that Gwyn is a fake Vau N’Akat and a spy there to destroy the planet for her “Starfleet masters.” Things go downhill with calls to “seize her!” and she barely escapes, only to see her Federation ride home (and its pilot) blown out of the sky. These people aren’t very neighborly. Gwyn slinks around the back alleys of Solum until she feels the pull of her heirloom, leading her to the younger version of her father. This lonely astronomer named Ilthuran is far more amiable years before the civil war she is there to stop turns him into “The Diviner.” After she convinces him she is indeed his daughter, he takes her to meet the Lorekeeper, which appears to be an equally amiable version of the future evil robot Drednok. Using the “Arcanum” repository of the planet’s history, this friendly bot suggests Gwyn can prove she is a true blue Vau N’Akat if she can successfully perform the ancient ritual of Va’Lu’Rah. That is, if she survives the dangerous ceremony that hasn’t been done in a millennia. Gulp.

Take me to your leader?

“There are so many violations here.”

Voyager arrives at the wormhole, where the ship is greeted by a glowing orb thing warning “Janeway, do not enter the anomaly.” Ominous, much? At this point Dal, channeling his inner John McClane , falls out of his ceiling snooping spot, exiting by dropping a hint he knows about Shuttle Bay 3. Janeway calls the prodigies to a secret meeting and they spill what they know. The admiral reveals data recovered from the Protostar showing how Chakotay was captured on future Solum and the Protostar was turned into a weapon. The kids now understand his sacrifice; sending the ship back in time to be lost is how they won their freedom from Tars Lamora, “His sacrifice changed our lives.” They know flying the Protostar around almost allowed the Living Construct to fulfill its nefarious Starfleet-destroying mission. As the wormhole is locked to exactly 52 years in the future, the secret mission is to use the Infinity to rescue Chakotay, but even if they had permission, it would have to wait 41 hours so they arrive after Chakotay sends the Protostar back in time; otherwise, bad stuff happens—like Gwyn will cease to exist. Later, the gang’s enthusiasm of being on the inside of the big secret gets overheard by Maj’el. The Vulcan calls her Nova wannabe buddies to meet her at what she now knows to be Shuttlebay 3, revealed by some uncool mindreading of Zero. Dal decides the best way to keep Janeway’s illegal ship a secret is to fly it into another shuttlebay without anyone noticing. That plan works as well as you can imagine: The Novas show up, a struggle ensues, and the secret little ship gets launched at the wormhole just in time for the mysterious entity to show up again for a cosmic “WTF.” Rok and Murf are left behind, but Maj’el is along for the ride as Janeway and her bridge crew can only watch the Infinity disappear into the wormhole… unauthorized and way ahead of the timeline-breaking schedule. Prodigy and its hijinks are back!

Murf calls this pose the “Burt Reynolds.”

Welcome back, kids

The return of Prodigy took too long but was still worth the wait. The 2-part season premiere had all the season 1 touches of fun, lore, and heart while adding new twists by moving our characters into a new setting with a new mission. The team behind the show reveals a new confidence, knowing their formula works and refining it more as the characters evolve. Each episode  stands well on its own, but together they hint at the more serialized second season ahead. It didn’t take the show long to catch us up on where each character was in their post-Protostar life, each settled into the disciplines they discovered suited them in season 1, but we also got hints of new arcs for each, such as Zero’s longing for corporeal love and Dal’s frustration with fitting into the restrictions of life as a Starfleet Academy cadet trainee. All of the catch-up did start things off a bit slow, but the action ramped up soon enough, especially in the second part. No time was wasted reminding us how much we cared about these kids, and their new challenges should be relatable to kids of all ages. The cast is as strong as ever, but Angus Imrie stands out for his nuanced performance, delivering light and touching moments.

Oh to be a sphere in love.

The second season also introduces us to some new (and familiar) characters. Maj’el (Michaela Dietz) and her Nova trainees start off as a bit of a clichéd cool kid clique to conflict with our outcast heroes, but hopefully, things will get more nuanced as the season progresses. The more interesting character tension is between the prodigies themselves, with Rok-Tahk representing the desire to fit into the rules and Dal bristling against them on the other extreme. Bringing Robert Picardo’s Star Trek: Voyager EMH back as a holographic minder for the kids worked right from the start, adding lots of humor (including “I’m a doctor, not a butler”), but also some heart, like when he offered Zero some non-corporeal wisdom about their potential for growth. As we get into the second half of the episode, we get to meet Ilthuran, the younger Diviner, and John Noble is amazing in how he creates an entirely different character from his terrifying (and too often one-dimensional) season 1 villain. An exciting new character of the season is the USS Voyager-A, a beautiful update on the original akin to the evolution of the sacred 1701 refit. The visual effects team nailed it with the classic spacedock scene and we are just getting to see some of the exciting elements of this new Voyager, including Cetacean Ops… a perfect new home for Rok-Tahk. It’s also a nice setting for the kids (and therefore the audience) to learn more Trek lore, even the seemingly mundane like the turbolift—because turbolifts are cool!

Get ready for more “I’m a doctor, not a ___” gags kid, I have been saving up.

The main plot for the season was established well, with quite a bit of exposition for the benefit of those not familiar with Temporal Mechanics 101. The season 1 finale set up a storyline that is going to take place in multiple timelines, with potentially dangerous implications. The secret mission, cool new ship, and mysterious Orb entity all added to the galactic stakes and offered plenty to keep the audience intrigued. The focus is still on saving Chakotay, and who doesn’t choke up when he records his “Tell Kathryn… I’m sorry. But I’m doing this for you” message, establishing the very personal stakes for the season. Of course, once the Infinity was introduced, it was obvious Dal and the gang would end up taking the little ship, and the series of events that lead to them flying it through the wormhole bordered on sitcom antics but got them back into space on their own and set up for many more adventures for this new season. Splitting the kids up in time and space with Rok and Murf on Voyager and Gwyn on present-day Solum does complicate things, but that is a problem for the rest of the highly anticipated season to come.

Is this thing on?

Final thoughts

Prodigy is as good as it has ever been, and possibly even better. This show may be targeted at young audiences, but it works for all ages and even for us (too often cynical) older fans as well, demonstrating a deep understanding and love for Star Trek. The show simply makes you feel young again.

Still has that new ship smell…

• Stardate 61859.6 (as of Part II).
• Rok-Tahk’s presentation on solving the Tribble multiplying problem referenced the late Edward Larkin from the Short Treks episode “The Trouble With Edward.”
• The original USS Voyager was mentioned as a “floating museum,” which was seen in Lower Decks , set a few years before.
• It’s mentioned that Admiral Janeway personally took command of the new Voyager because much of Starfleet was focused on the “ Romulan evacuation .” This effort was headed up by Admiral Picard at this time (around 2385).
• The USS Voyager is launched from above Mars, home to the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards , not long before the Synth Attack on Mars from  Picard and Short Treks .
• Janeway said she promised Picard she wouldn’t lose the new Voyager in the Delta Quadrant, referring to how she did get lost in the Delta Quadrant for seven years on Star Trek: Voyager .
• One of the Nova candidates was a Lurian .
• Zero notes Bolian births are “colorful.” The Bolian mother talks about her baby having “heartbeats,” indicating Bolians have more than one heart.
• Bonnie Gordon (who voiced the USS Protostar in season 1) returns, voicing the Voyager and Infinity computer, as well as the Bolian mother.
• Jimmi Simpson (voice of Drednok) also voices the much nicer robot “Lorekeeper.”

You can tell he is a nice robot because he is painted white.

TrekMovie’s  Prodigy July binge-watch

Since all 20 episodes were released on Netflix at once, we’re binging it in five-episode arcs; we can’t stick to watching just one a week! Each All Access Star Trek podcast (every Friday morning) will cover five episodes, while written reviews for all five will publish throughout the week, with two-parters paired up.

This will all wrap up just as San Diego Comic-Con kicks off at the end of the month. We also hope to have more Prodigy interviews and analysis in July and beyond.

We welcome fans joining us through July covering 5 episodes each week. However, for those choosing to binge the show even faster, we ask readers to avoid spoilers for episodes beyond the latest recap/review in our comments section .

Season 2 of  Prodigy is available to stream on Netflix globally (excluding Canada, Nordics, CEE, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Belarus and Mainland China) and season one is currently available on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe with season two coming soon. Season two has launched in France on France Televisions channels and Okoo.

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

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Catch Up On ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ With Season 1 Recap And Season 2 Preview

It is hard seeing this review living in Canada. This is the first time since 2017 I haven’t been able to watch a Star Trek show at the same time as those in the U.S.

Okay so fingers crossed I don’t get in trouble for suggesting this … but … Maybe try a VPN? That way, if you already subscribe to Netflix, you should be able to see Netflix’s US catalog.

That’s what I did. I logged into the UK yesterday and watched the first two eps…

(Whoops, edited! I meant to reply to OP.)

I am watching again on Netflix, as I want them to get as much watch time logged as possible, for the show to be successful and get another season (or five 🤞😉), but there ARE a few other options to watch it for absolutely nuthin’ now, and rewatch whenever it comes to Canada later, for your eyeballs to count!

I’d love to provide you with the name of a 🏴‍☠️-site, but don’t want to get banned over it… 😬💦

Of course, if the rights holders could coordinate the international release(s) better 🎬🤝📺, we wouldn’t even need to acknowledge those kinds of sources at all, that do very little to reward the production (other than allow the show to get popular within, uh, penurious circles, and hopefully contribute to word-of-mouth).

It looks great, I can’t wait to get back into the world of Prodigy again.

NO Canada!! Lack of information is what’s most frustrating. I’m sure Trekmovie has been contacting Bell Media. They are just not responding apparently. I’m going to wait a week to see if we get clarity . If not I’m going to be exploring other options to watch Prodigy.

I’m not waiting until Christmas/early 2025 for a physical media release/ digital purchase option

If you subscribe to Netflix, subscribe to a VPN service like ExpressVPN. (They have a 30-day money-back policy.) If all you want to do is watch Prodigy, get a refund before the 30 days. I used the time zones to my advantage yesterday. I logged in to the UK at 6 p.m. yesterday. As it was July 1st in the UK, I was able to watch the first two episodes.

Without spoiling anything, I watched the first three episodes last night and had to force myself to go to bed. For sure a good sign. I don’t know if it was really dumb or really smart for Paramount+ to let this show go. One thing is clear to me though I can’t wait run and go watch more. The world building they create on this show is some of the best of any from the Star Trek Universe.

This show was meant to be a kids show to attract new fans at a young age. But it seems to only appeal to old fans who already watch Trek. The show failed to reach it’s demographics so they did the right thing in canceling it.

Useless opinion without data. P+ canceled it to take advantage of a tax write-off. . I have grandsons 8, 10, and 13 who all have been hooked on it from the get go. They find it … fascinating.

The show also entered the top 10 in children shows when it debut on Netflix last year. While I’m positive way more adults are watching it that’s a great sign kids are at least watching it too…or watching it with their Trek parents.

And very happy your grandkids are loving it. It’s such an amazing show and my favorite season of modern Trek so far.

The world building is truly stunning. I been impressed with every episode so far and I know people keep saying it but it’s hard to believe this is a show made for 8 year olds in mind. But they are getting Star Trek at its best IMO.

As far as Paramount+ it still sucks but that place has real problems that goes beyond one show. I won’t be surprised if other Star Trek shows appear on Netflix in time.

Sadly I think P+ is on deaths door and may be able to stick around beyond a few more years but it sounds dire unless they there is some major turnaround or reprieve.

And as much as we love Star Trek, I don’t think any of the modern shows have been strong enough to make a real difference with P+ viewership and why it’s gone from five shows to now two in a such a short time.

Hopefully it will do better on Netflix. And unlike Paramount +, lots of people actually have it.

But yes it’s an amazing show. This what the franchise needs more of again.

Not available to watch on SkyShowtime in Europe. Stupid.

I wish they had stuck to the original vision of the show and not turned it into “Star Trek Voyager Part Deux”.

The show is too content heavy, no wonder kids didn’t watch it.

Are you kidding? Star Trek: Prodigy, and especially its second season, is absolute perfection. Kids can find young heroes to identify with, while adults can follow the fates of characters they’ve known for decades. I can’t count how many times I was on the verge of tears; I hadn’t expected to be so emotionally affected. All the familiar characters are logically integrated into the story where it makes sense. For me, it’s one of the best modern Star Trek series.

This makes me wish for a continuation of Star Trek: Enterprise in a similar animated format. A live-action sequel is 99 percent unlikely, and this would be an easy way to continue the stories we were “robbed of”. Also, it could pick up directly after the “Terra Prime” episode, without having to jump fifteen years into the future, which would be necessary in a live-action sequel…

I’ve said it before: just because Voyager characters appear does not make it a rehash of Voyager. It’s such a lazy attack line for trolls like you to wheel out.

This is its own show with its own identity and you know that- you just have nothing better going on, so you hop on here and try to cause some trouble. If you weren’t so bland and predictable, I’d feel sorry for you.

I managed to get through the first five episodes so far and it’s amazing. Season 2 has already managed to take an already excellent first season and so far exceed that.

It’s just so well done, thoughtful and with a lot of heart. This is Star Trek at its best and could be my favorite season of modern Star Trek (currently Picared season 3 is my favorite) but I won’t get ahead of myself yet lol.

I’m happy to be back in 24th century starfleet. I’ve only seen the first two episodes and I loved them both. I miss those crazy time travel stories from the modern era. What I loved the most was Gwendala on Solum. I’m a fan of the worlds introduced in Prodigy The Hagemann brothers nailed it. And I’m happy John Noble/Jimmi Simpson are back.

The only worry is this weird Janeway/Chakotay relationship. I might be misreading it.

Totally agree dear. This feels like the golden age of Star Trek again, only animated. Everything feels like its in the right place and love being back in the 24th century again. I started out as a TOS and 23rd century girl back in the sixties but I want to see more of this era since there is still so much they can explore in it. And it’s fun returning to our old favorite characters while being introduced to new ones as this show does splendidly.

And the timey whimey stuff in Star Trek is always good fun. I can tell they are going to have a blast with it here.

I was finally able to watch the first two episodes. And if these episodes are any indication I am in for a fantastic season!

I agree with this review so much and just how well crafted these episodes were and I immediately became invested with the characters again and their new home on the Voyager A.

I was happy to see everyone back and instantly love Ma’jel. Besides having such a splendid name I’m always happy to see more women Vulcans like Saavik, T’Pol and T’Pring. She easily fits right in.

I really loved seeing Gwyn back on present day Solum and curious how they will connect it to Chakotay and the 25th century.

Rok steals my heart every time she talks and Jankom is a riot. But I really love seeing Janeway back on another Voyager being her usual clever and endearing self. That’s where our girl belongs. And I can never get enough of the Doctor.

But it’s a fantastic start. Reading ahead of what others think of the season overall it sounds like it’s another winner. The most excited I been for a show since Picard ended.

Wow so happy to see how much you loved the opening episodes. And yes it gets even better! As you said it’s so thought out. Every episode feels important to the overall story and all the crazy time travel shenanigans and multiverse implications just makes this season feel absolutely bonkers.

They balance the legacy characters along with the new ones so well and the kids becomes more endearing while giving us some great Janeway scenes. It’s so good!

As far as women Vulcans go T’Lynn is no slouch either on Lower Decks and is now a huge fan favorite but I absolutely love Ma’jel as well and she becomes more involved in the story as it goes.

This show understands what it is and what I love about it the most it doesn’t talk down to its audience. It feels as mature and smart as some of the most noteworthy TOS, TNG or DS9 stories around. They still let the kids talk and act like kids but it’s all done in an adult environment and where science and Starfleet values are king.

And to have Janeway back on another Voyager is really a dream for me. I love her so much and she is being used well.

But it’s just very impressive to me how rich and thoughtful the story telling is. I just finished the next two episodes and floored with how complex and creative the story is becoming.

But that’s why we love Star Trek isn’t it? And take heed while season one focused on a villain and all of that, this season is not framed in the same way. At least not yet. I’m aware there is one but it’s not the main draw and it’s not another end of the galaxy plot either thats been done tirelessly with shows like Discovery and Picard did.

I’m very much looking forward to the rest of the season now. Such a great show.

And I am aware of T’Lynn but cant comment on her since I never seen LDS, but know how much fans love her too.

Yeah the season only gets more stronger as it goes. I want to discuss spoilers so badly but I have been totally surprised by pretty much everything in it. It’s such a fun ride and the stories are all heartfelt and very very creative.

You’re also completely right the story isn’t framed around a villain this time and mostly jist trying to rescue Chakotay. They were smart to let that be the main focus and have the villain subplot not carry the season. Now they are really exploring and probably more so than they did back in season one whichthey did plentyof as well; another reason why I love it so much. And it’s a bit sad we have been to more strange new worlds in this season than we been to on the show titled Strange New Worlds in its second season. And I love that show as well but one of my criticisms of it.

Anyway I’m just happy season 2 was worth the wait. And while I was one of the people not happy the entire season was being dropped at once, it actually really works well since it’s more serialized this time. Prodigy will be the show I will probably revisit again and again for years to come as I do all the classic shows.

And lastly I know some people don’t like when I bring up online scores but I checked the ratings for this season on IMDB and so far every episode has an 8 or 9 rating. That’s insane. Season 1 was also strong but most of its ratings fell in the 7 and 8 category which is still higher than most seasons across all the shows. But at this moment the only other season where every episode has been rated an 8 or 9 is Picard season 3. And I don’t mean just for the modern shows but for all of Star Trek.

Prodigy is a bonified hit across the board; the show I always have to stress was made for 7 year olds in mind.

I would like to note that Dal saying “timey wimey” is a direct reference to Doctor Who. David Tennant’s incarnation of The Doctor explained the universe as “a big wibly wobbly ball of timey wimey stuff”.

I know this was written before the latest season of Doctor Who but it works so well with the conversation between the current Doctor and his companion where he explained how a teleporter worked and the companion said “like the transporter in Star Trek?” To which the Doctor answered “we should go see them sometime”.

Loved the premiere but I do feel like they simply cut to the end credits arbitrarily. Parts I and II end very suddenly and with very little tension build up. It’s like they produced everything in one go (I know they don’t) and then just decide to chop it up when it hits 20 minutes or so, regardless of where the plot is.

Spent the last couple days binging the season (and just started my rewatch this morning). Without saying too much, I’ll just say I loved this season. Definitely worth the wait IMO.

As for these episodes in particular, it’s a very good start to the bigger story. The show does a good job easing us back into the characters’ lives. Nice seeing glimpses of everyone’s lives at the Academy before joining Janeway’s crew, and then seeing what their roles on Voyager will be. I liked both Rok’s and Murf’s enthusiasm when they see where they’ll be. And Zero’s scenes with the Doctor were one of the highlights of the episode for me. Hadn’t thought of their similarities, but the writers did a great job leaning into it here. Another part I really liked from the first episode was Dal’s conversation with Gwyn. Great to see them keeping in touch, and showing how much their relationship has progress. The whole thing with Dal’s suspicions shows how much he still needs to grow, and adjust to his new role on the crew, since he doesn’t like not being in charge, or kept in the dark. I did like Rok being the voice of reason here, but still being pulled into it against her will. And it was great seeing Janeway, the returning Dauntless characters, and of course the Doctor getting some solid screen time this early on into it, hinting at a more direct and prominent role than the Dauntless crew from last season (as good as those parts were back then).

Gwyn’s story on Solum was one of the aspects I was most looking forward to, and they didn’t disappoint here. It’s great getting a closer look at what the culture is like. Great world and character design here. And I figured future-Asencia would come in and mess things up for Gwyn, but I’m surprised it happened so soon. It’s also nice seeing the present versions of both the Diviner (Ilthuran) and Asencia, even if we don’t get to know the latter too much. I liked how different Ilthuran was from who we know, and Gwyn gets to experience the side of him she always wanted to see. In a way, hearing John Noble playing these different versions of the same character gave me serious Fringe flashbacks, and he pulled it off well once again.

I’m so glad you are doing these reviews! It adds so much to my enjoyment to read your takes and insights. Oh, and also the witty image captions. I love them :D

I’ve watched the first two episodes and can’t say I’m all that impressed so far, particularly with respect to the second half, which I found pretty painful. But I’ll keep watching.

The 50 Most Disappointing Movie Sequels of All Time

By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

Sequels are almost as old as Hollywood itself. Even before talkies hit the marketplace in 1927, studios were churning out follow-up movies like The Fall of a Nation and Don Q, Son of Zorro. The trend continued throughout the Golden Age of Hollywood with The Bride of Frankenstein , Dracula’s Daughter , The Thin Man Goes Home, Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell, Jolson Sings Again , and Father’s Little Dividend. Blockbusters of the Seventies and Eighties like Star Wars, The Exorcist, Halloween, Ghostbusters, Batman , and Raiders of the Lost Ark launched film franchises that continue to this day.

It’s easy to understand why risk-averse studios are so eager to green-light sequels. If a formula worked once before, why not simply try again? It’s also much easier to market a familiar story than it is to introduce something new. The only problem is that precious few sequels in Hollywood history have ever lived up to the original. And for every Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Terminator 2: Judgment Day that truly justify their existence, there are about 300 movies like Weekend at Bernie’s II and Son of the Mask that, to put it kindly, do not.  

A list of the worst sequels in history could be almost endless, and almost too easy. Few people turned on Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles or American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile and expected some great masterpiece. So in picking our list of the worst movie sequels, we limited selections to movies that seemed at the time like they might actually be worthwhile. We admit this list is very subjective. And it’s easy to fault us for imagining anything decent could come out of the latter-day Die Hard or Terminator movies, but they somehow managed to get our hopes up at least a little every single time. (If they made Terminator 37, we’d still walk in feeling hopeful. We’re fools.)

Please join us on this sad journey through Hollywood history where Michael Meyers is never truly dead, John McClane transforms from a regular police officer into an immortal killing machine, the odd numbered Star Trek movies always suck, and we wait in vain for the day any Jurassic Park sequel is even halfway watchable. 

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines had a lot working against it before the cameras even started rolling. The first two Terminator movies were the brainchild of James Cameron. He wrote them, directed them, and oversaw every detail of their production. He’s also a genius that’s basically never made a bad movie. But Cameron wasn’t involved with Terminator 3. The film also didn’t have Linda Hamilton or Edward Furlong on board to play Sarah and John Connor. The only thing it had from the first two movies (besides a cameo from Earl Boen as Dr. Peter Silberman) was the Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And as we’ve learned from Batman and Robin, End of Days, The Sixth Day, and many other turkeys, Schwarzenegger alone doesn’t guarantee a great movie. And this is far from a great movie. It’s a reprise of T2, where yet another advanced Terminator comes back in time, played by Kristanna Loken, and John Connor (now Nick Stahl) has to find a way to stay alive with help from another T-850 Terminator, played by Schwarzenegger. There’s almost no scene worth remembering up until the very end when a nuclear war begins and John Connor fulfills his fate by taking command. It’s a genuinely chilling moment, but it can’t make up for the nearly two hours that precede it. To be fair, nothing was ever going to top T2. It’s one of the greatest sequels in Hollywood history, rivaled only by The Godfather II, but Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines doesn’t even come close.

Staying Alive (1983)

The dance sequences in 1977’s Saturday Night Fever are some of the most iconic images in the history of film. But they’re just a few fleeting minutes in an otherwise dark movie about a Brooklyn teenager (played by John Travolta) desperate to improve his lot in life. Gene Siskel considered it the greatest movie in the history of Hollywood. By the time we catch up with Travolta’s Tony Manero character in 1983’s Staying Alive, he’s a waiter who dreams of Broadway stardom. Sylvester Stallone is the director, and he invited his brother Frank to contribute songs to the soundtrack. And with all due respect to Frank Stallone, his work doesn’t exactly stand up to the Bee Gees. (They have some deeply unmemorable songs of their own on the soundtrack.) But bad music is far from the biggest problem in Staying Alive. There’s simply no heart to the story, and Manero finds himself acting in an abysmal Broadway musical that feels like a Flock of Seagulls fever dream. “ Staying Alive is a sequel with no understanding of what made its predecessor work,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times. “The first film was funny and touching, powered by a phenomenally successful score. This one is clumsy, mean-spirited, and amazingly unmusical.”

Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997)

With the very big exception of the Indiana Jones movies, Steven Spielberg has largely resisted the lure of sequels throughout his long career. He could have made a fortune directing follow-up movies to Jaws, E.T., and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but he knew they’d never live up to the originals, and that his time would be better spent on new projects. But 1993’s Jurassic Park was such a mega-hit that he went against his better judgment and agreed to direct 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park. It’s an adaptation of a novel that Michael Crichton reluctantly churned out in 1995 so that this very movie could exist. It’s about another island where the Jurassic Park dinosaurs were bred. Jeff Goldblum heads there alongside Julianne Moore and Vince Vaughn. The dinos attack. People die. In the end, a T. rex is set loose in San Diego. It all feels very humdrum and lacks any sense of wonder found in the original. It made a ton of money, and they’re in the midst of creating a seventh Jurassic Park right now, but only the first one is a genuinely good movie. The sequels are all varying degrees of terrible. 

Bad Santa 2 (2016)

When comedy sequels truly work, which is exceedingly rare, they come out within a couple of years of the original, and are assembled by the same creative team. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and Addams Family Values are the gold standard here. They hit theaters within two years of their predecessors, and the key behind-the-scenes players (Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon for Bill & Ted, Barry Sonnenfeld for Addams Family ) were back. Bad Santa 2 came out 13 years after Bad Santa, without the help of original director Terry Zwigoff or writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. They did have Bad Santa himself, Billy Bob Thortnon, along with Tony Cox as his conniving partner, and even former child actor Brett Kelly reprising his Santa-obsessed Thurman Merman character. The old gang reunites to pull off another Christmas heist, but the dirty jokes just don’t land in this one. “There’s a going-through-the-motions vibe to the whole affair,” wrote Rolling Stone’ s David Fear. “The original believed in its sodden, everyone-sucks with every ounce of its hardened, pitch-black heart — ironically, its horribleness made it that much more humanistic (and hilarious). The sequel is closer to fool’s coal: You can blow the thin patina of painted darkness off it with a breeze and find there’s nothing underneath.”

Teen Wolf Too (1987)

To be very clear, the original Teen Wolf is far from a great movie. But Michael J. Fox had more than enough Back to the Future -era charm to pull off the role as a nerd turned werewolf who becomes a high school basketball star and unlikely ladies man. Sadly, Fox is nowhere to be seen in the sequel. It stars Jason Bateman as the cousin of his character. He goes to college, discovers he’s also a werewolf, and uses his powers to win boxing matches. “College Boxer Transforms Into Werewolf” should have generated headlines all across the globe, but it’s treated as little more than a regional curiosity in this horrid movie. “The pacing is near-cataleptic and the movie’s intended comic highlight is a frog fight in the biology lab,” wrote Michael Wilmington in the Los Angeles Times. “Isn’t that just what you’re dying to see and hear? Bad dialogue, lugubriously paced; awful jokes about werewolves, and guffawing actors churlishly hurling around a lot of little frogs?”

Men in Black: International (2019)

If any movie franchise was poised to create a cinematic universe, it was Men in Black. There’s literally an entire galaxy of wacky aliens to explore, and a small army of Men in Black spread across Earth to battle them. If Sony handled this IP properly, we could be 10 seasons into a Men in Black cable show, eight seasons into an animated program, and somewhere around spinoff movie 12 or 13. But their first attempt to move beyond the Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones movie trilogy was 2019’s Men in Black: International, starring Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Rebecca Ferguson, Liam Neeson, and Kumail Nanjiani. It centers around a London Men in Black office, and the search for a powerful weapon hidden somewhere on the planet. It grossed just enough to possibly break even, but not nearly enough to justify another one of these things. ”It has been 17 years since Men in Black was a hot property, and the intervening gap has done nothing to revive interest in it,” wrote film critic James Berardinelli. “Whoever spearheaded this half-hearted resurrection should be fitted with a golden parachute. For those who remember the Men in Black movies fondly, stick with your memories. Seeing this latest installment is more likely to degrade than enhance them.”

Airplane 2: The Sequel (1982)

When it comes to comedy sequels, the temptation to simply recreate the exact structure of the original movie, along with all of the signature gags, is just too tough for most filmmakers to ignore. That’s why the genius trio of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker opted against creating a sequel to Airplane! so they could devote their time to developing the TV series Police Squad. That show — which eventually morphed into the Naked Gun movie franchise — is also why Leslie Nielsen wasn’t free to appear in Airplane 2: The Sequel. It did reunite Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, and Lloyd Bridges, but writer-director Ken Finkleman simply doesn’t have the same comedic instincts as Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker. (His prior movie was Grease 2. Need we say more?) He wrote a screenplay about a lunar shuttle headed to the moon, but it’s basically just a straight remake of Airplane! minus about 500 laughs. The only good thing about the whole fiasco is that Naked Gun exists because Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker were smart enough to avoid this movie. You won’t see either of the Naked Gun sequels on this list. Unlike Airplane 2: The Sequel, they’re both extremely funny.

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)

If we were making a list of the best sequels in Hollywood history, Lethal Weapon 2 would be near the top of the list. The third one was slightly underwhelming, but the series didn’t crap out until the fourth one arrived in 1998. By this point, Joe Pesci and Rene Russo were part of the Lethal Weapon family along with series stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. Chris Rock and Jet Li came on board for the fourth chapter, cramming in so many big names they barely fit on the poster. In this one, Riggs and Murtaugh battle an Asian counterfeiter/slave trader. Glover is beyond “too old for this shit” by this one, considering that his character planned on retiring from the police force a decade earlier, and it feels like everyone is just going through the motions, and counting how much money they’re making per second. The script was nowhere near ready when filming started, and that’s clear in most every frame. “I felt like Lethal Weapon 4 was outtakes [from the previous movies],” wrote critic Roger Ebert, “stuff they didn’t use earlier, pieced together into a movie that doesn’t really, in its heart, believe it is necessary.”

Iron Man 2 (2010)

The first Iron Man movie forever changed Hollywood. It marked the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the start of a broader superhero fixation that grips the industry to this day, and a new dawn for the career of Robert Downey Jr. But when it came time to make a second Iron Man movie in 2010, just two years after the original, Marvel was still fine-tuning its movie operation. Justin Theroux took over as screenwriter for this one, and he cobbled together a convoluted tale where Tony Stark is forced to confront a serious health scare, a powerful new Russian enemy portrayed by Mickey Rourke, and pressures that came after the public learned of his true identity. “Everything fun and terrific about Iron Man, a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel,” wrote the Hollywood Reporter’ s Kirk Honeycutt. “In its place, Iron Man 2 has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts, and misguided story lines. A film series that started out with critical and commercial success will have to settle for only the latter with this sequel.” 

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

The initial announcement that Natalie Portman was returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder was greeted with real excitement. She’d been AWOL since 2013’s Thor: The Dark World, despite playing a pretty big role in the saga as Jane Foster, Thor’s astrophysicist girlfriend. Excitement grew when fans learned she was going to finally wield the hammer herself and take on the role of the Mighty Thor. But then word slipped out that the character was battling stage 4 cancer. The script tries to balance out this colossal bummer with an endless series of comic sequences that creates a very odd overall tone. If you don’t believe us, listen to Thor himself, Chris Hemworth: “I got caught up in the improv and the wackiness, and I became a parody of myself,” he told Vanity Fair this year. “I didn’t stick the landing.”

Alien Resurrection (1997)

The first three Alien movies were directed by three of the best directors of their time: Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and David Fincher. The third one was a letdown, since Fincher was still a novice, the studio didn’t fully trust him, and the screenplay was never really finished. But it remains a David Fincher movie that’s intermittently innovative and interesting. The same can’t be said for 1997’s Alien Resurrection. It takes place on a military spaceship 200 years after Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley character died at the end of Alien 3. She’s cloned from a drop of her blood, and somehow her memories are intact. They also bring back the Xenomorph alien species, which is a very, very bad idea. (Haven’t these people heard about the events of the first three movies?) Needless to say, the Xenomorphs grow, reproduce, and start killing. Winona Ryder enters the story, and we eventually learn she’s a robot. Ripley once again batters the shit out of the Xenomorph, but haven’t we seen this all before? “This is a series whose inspiration has come, gone, and been forgotten,” wrote Roger Ebert. “I’m aliened out.”

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

For a while, it was popular to cite Spider-Man 3 as the low point of the franchise. But time has been somewhat kind to Emo Spider-Man and his Pete Wentz haircut, and a small cult (as well as endless memes) have grown around its weirdness. And even if you think Spider-Man 3 is a bloated sludge of a movie with too many villains, it’s clearly superior to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which marked the premature end of the Andrew Garfield era. It’s the one where Jamie Foxx plays Electro, Paul Giamatti takes on the Rhino role, the Green Goblin returns, and Gwen (played by Emma Stone) falls to her death. This was the fifth Spider-Man movie in a 12-year period, and it all just feels like a rehash of things we’ve seen before, along with an effort to set up about six different spinoff movies and sequels. “The studios and the producers have to split the difference — between excellence and adequacy, between darkness and light, between seriousness and fun,” Wesley Morris wrote on Grantland. “ The Amazing Spider-Man 2 might have been split too far. It doesn’t taste like anything.” 

U.S. Marshals (1998)

The huge success of 1993’s The Fugitive meant a sequel was somewhat inevitable, even though any such project was basically doomed from the start. There was no logical way for Harrison Ford to be framed for a second murder, escape from the law, and get chased around again by Tommy Lee Jones. It would have been preposterous, and Ford was never going to sign on to such a thing. The only move was to send Jones’ Samuel Gerard character and his team of U.S. Marshals after another unjustly accused man. That’s what happened in 1998’s U.S. Marshals, where Wesley Snipes takes over for Harrison Ford as the man on the run. The movie was a modest hit, but it has aged terribly. Jones himself isn’t even willing to defend it these days. “The thing that drove The Fugitive was that we weren’t chasing just a normal doctor,” he told Rolling Stone in our 2023 oral history of The Fugitive. “Whatever we were doing, we were chasing Harrison Ford, and I think he was the engine of the movie. With U.S. Marshals, we had a different director, had a different approach, and it just wasn’t … the movie wasn’t as good as The Fugitive. ” It’s impossible to argue with that. 

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

The Star Trek film franchise got off to an extremely shaky start with the snoozefest that is 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which just made 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan all the more stunning. Star Trek III: The Search For Spock was a minor letdown in 1984, but words can barely describe our love for 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. That’s the bonkers time-travel one with the whales that’s as fun to watch the 200th time as the first. Leonard Nimoy was given the chance to direct that one, which is why William Shatner demanded the director’s chair for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. It’s about the search for God at the center of the universe and an evil Vulcan named Sybok, but it barely matters. Nothing about the movie works, especially the cringe scene of Spock, Kirk, and Bones singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” around a campfire. It was such a fiasco that 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was designed as a farewell to the OG cast. 

Caddyshack 2 (1988)

Imagine a version of Caddyshack without Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, Lacey Underdall, a single quotable line or even a single laugh. Whatever comes to mind is surely nowhere near as horrid as Caddyshack 2. Chevy Chase is the only returning cast member, and he’s joined by Robert Stack, Randy Quaid, Dyan Cannon, Chyna Phillips, and Dan Aykroyd in the thankless Bill Murray role as the groundskeeper. That’s a good cast, but they can’t save this terrible movie about a millionaire buying the country club and turning it into an amusement park. Original Caddyshack director Harold Ramis is credited as a co-writer, but he denounced the movie in later years and said he nearly had his name removed. The ultimate red flag here is that Dangerfield deemed this movie beneath his standards. This is a man (albeit a comic genius) that took parts in Meet Wally Sparks, My 5 Wives, and The 4th Tenor. He was willing to accept almost any role that put him on the big screen, but not Caddyshack 2. It was the right move. Nothing could have saved Caddyshack 2, not even Rodney. 

Halloween Kills (2021)

The original Halloween, in 1978, is a horror classic that paved the way for A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and many other slasher films of the Eighties. But much like the franchises it spawned, Halloween begat sequel after sequel that fell flat in profound ways. A miracle happened in 2018 when Jamie Lee Curtis returned to the fold for Halloween, which ignored every film after the first one, and managed to create genuine chills by showing a grizzled, gray-haired Laurie Strode battling Michael Meyers yet again. They should have left it there. The 2021 sequel isolates Strode in a hospital room for much of the movie while Meyers wanders through the town of Haddonfield on yet another killing spree. Familiar faces from the original movie show up, including Kyle Richards from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, who acted in the first movie as a child. But the whole thing feels like a tired, pointless rerun. It was also designed to set up a third and final movie, 2022’s Halloween Ends, but they should have learned the lesson of the first movie. You can’t just keep redoing these things over and over. More important, a movie should stand on its own. It shouldn’t feel like connective tissue between two others.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Future film historians will have real fun trying to pinpoint the exact moment the Marvel Cinematic Universe jumped the shark. Some will point to Eternals in 2021, Thor: Love and Thunder in 2022, or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness that same year. But it’s a safe bet that 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will be mentioned many times. Marvel was pounding out content at a furious clip when the movie went into production, and resources were spread way too thin across numerous TV shows and movies. Postproduction was rushed on this third Ant-Man movie, and the special-effects team was focused on wrapping up Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The result was a movie that literally didn’t look finished when it hit theaters. When you throw in a confusing, tired plot about Ant-Man and his family accidentally entering the “Quantum Realm” (ask your 11-year-old nephew what that means), you’ve got a real mess on your hands. “Everyone just kind of wanders through this movie — through its elaborate, colorful, cluttered, psychedelic-album-cover-style environments,” wrote New York critic Bilge Ebiri. “They occasionally crack jokes or cross their arms. Nothing seems to match. If you told me that the actors had been shot before the filmmakers decided what they would be looking at or interacting with, I’d believe you.”

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 (2014)

The Harry Potter franchise set a very bad precedent when the final book in the series was turned into two movies. This was justifiable in the Potter case, since that’s a 607-page book that would have been tough to boil down to one satisfying movie. But it made no narrative sense whatsoever to take the 390-page Mockingjay, the final Hunger Games novel, and stretch it into two movies. The first one clocks in at an agonizing 123 minutes, where very little happens of any real importance. Katniss and her buddies enter an underground district and prepare for a grand revolution, but it’s all just a setup for the second chapter. (There’s also the problem that this is a Hunger Games movie where we don’t get the payoff of an actual Hunger Games.) The movie was a hit and critics were once again impressed by the performance of Jennifer Lawrence, but even director Francis Lawrence says it was wrong to make two movies out of one book. “What I realized in retrospect — and after hearing all the reactions and feeling the kind of wrath of fans, critics, and people at the split — is that I realized it was frustrating,” he told People in 2023. “And I can understand it.… I totally regret [splitting the movies]. I totally do. I’m not sure everybody does, but I definitely do.”

The Godfather Part III (1990)

It would be deeply unfair to put the third Godfather movie on a list of the 50 worst sequels in Hollywood history. It’s a much better film than its reputation suggests, and placing it alongside Alien vs. Predator or Weekend at Bernie’s 2 would be cruel. It also has perhaps the most quoted line (“Just when I thought I was out … they pull me back in”) in any Godfather movie. But this is a list of disappointing sequels, and expectations for this movie were just off the charts. The Godfather is arguably the greatest movie in history. The Godfather II is inarguably the greatest sequel in history. There was no way a third film that came 16 years after the second one would do anything but disappoint. The fact that Robert Duvall backed out over a salary dispute, and Winona Ryder quit shortly before filming, causing director Francis Ford Coppola to give his teenager daughter Sophia a key role, didn’t help matters much. The movie still reunited Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, and Talie Shire with director Coppola, and grossed $137 million, but to call it anything short of a disappointment would be wrong.

Jaws 2 (1978)

Jaws 2 has one of the greatest taglines in history: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water …” That’s just about the only memorable thing about the movie, which is about another killer shark descending on Amity Island that Roy Scheider is forced to battle. This time around, it nearly kills his son before he electrocutes it and once again saves the town. (Does work like this really fall under the jurisdiction of the police chief?) Steven Spielberg was too busy working on Close Encounters of the Third Kind to direct it, but he also had little desire to head back into the water after all the difficulties he faced making the first one. He also knew that topping it would be impossible. To be very clear, the third and fourth Jaws movies were significantly worse. Jaws 2 fails in rather pedestrian ways. Jaws 3-D and Jaws: The Revenge fail in spectacularly inept (and often hysterical) ways. But nobody walked into either of those movies thinking they were seeing any sort of masterpiece. People had high hopes for Jaws 2, and they left deeply disappointed. 

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

The 1999 film calendar was crammed with so many remarkable movies that many critics are now calling it one of the single greatest years in Hollywood history. And even in the middle of all of that brilliance, The Blair Witch Project stood out. The “found footage” horror movie was shot on a microbudget of just $60,000, but still managed to scare the living shit out of everyone who saw it. A sequel was inevitable. Sadly, it completely disregarded the DIY feel of the original, along with anything that felt even remotely original despite being directed by Paradise Lost creator Joe Berlinger. We instead get a very traditional horror flick about a group of Blair Witch Project fans who head to the site of the first movie, Burkittsville, Maryland, and find themselves battling an evil force. “ Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is a not a very lucid piece of filmmaking (and contains no Book of Shadows ),” wrote Roger Ebert. “I suppose it seems clear enough to Berlinger, who co-wrote it and helped edit it, but one viewing is not enough to make the material clear, and the material is not intriguing enough, alas, to inspire a second viewing.”

Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

Die Hard: With a Vengeance is one of the greatest threequels in the history of action movies, largely because they brought back original Die Hard director John McTiernan after leaving him out of the underwhelming second movie. A fourth movie didn’t materialize for another 12 years. This time around, Underworld director Les Wiseman was at the helm. He was working with a ridiculous script where John McClane battles a cyberterrorist in Washington, D.C. Bruce Willis practically has superpowers in it. At one moment, he destroys a flying helicopter by driving a car into it. It’s so ridiculous that even Michael Scott on The Office couldn’t enjoy it. “Here’s the thing about Die Hard 4, ” he said in one episode. “ Die Hard 1, the original, John McClain is just this normal guy, you know? He’s just a normal New York City cop who gets his feet cut, he gets beat up. But he’s an everyday guy. In Die Hard 4, he is jumping a motorcycle into a helicopter in the air. You know? He’s invincible. It’s just sort of lost from Die Hard 1. It’s not Terminator. ” For once, Michael Scott is completely right. 

Major League II (1994)

Creating a sequel to Major League wasn’t a crazy idea. We never even saw the misfit group of Cleveland Indians play in the World Series in the original movie, which remains one of the best sports films in history. And Major League II did manage to reunite the original cast, with the sole exception of Wesley Snipes, who was replaced by Omar Epps. The crazy idea of Major League II was downgrading the R rating from the original all the way to PG. It neutered the characters in every way possible. Who wants a Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn who can’t swear? You want to hear “locker-room talk” in the locker room. The movie also felt like a bland rehash of the original. “There has rarely been such a steep and strange decline between a movie and its sequel as the one between the fast, silly original and the dismal, boring Major League II, ” Caryn James wrote in The New York Times. “While the first film ran riot with baseball cliches, this one plods along and almost takes them seriously.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

In 2003, Disney somehow turned its Mad Men -era Pirates of the Caribbean theme-park attraction into a Johnny Depp movie that grossed more than $650 million. The first two sequels racked up an astonishing $1 billion each, and earned surprisingly respectable reviews, considering the source material. But director Gore Verbinski stepped aside for the fourth movie in favor of Rob Marshall, though it’s slightly unfair to blame him for the bloated, painfully unfunny mess that is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. The franchise simply ran out of gas at this point, and no amount of special-effects wizardry was going to change that. “Its pleasures are so meager, its delight in its own inventions so forced and false, that it becomes almost the perfect opposite of entertainment,” wrote A.O. Scott in The New York Times. “To insist otherwise is a variation on the sunk-cost fallacy. Since you exchanged money for fun, fun is surely what you must have purchased, and you may cling to that idea in the face of contrary evidence. But trust me on this: This movie would be a rip-off even if someone paid you to see it.”

More American Graffiti (1979)

The original American Graffiti, in 1973, was such a colossal pop-culture force that it somehow gave the world Happy Days, Star Wars, and the entire concept of rock & roll oldies. (We’re only slightly exaggerating here.) The George Lucas film took place during one very long night in 1962, but the 1979 sequel, written and directed by Bill Norton, is spread across four New Year’s Eves between 1964 and 1967. Nearly the entire cast, except Richard Dreyfuss, returned from the original (there’s even a Harrison Ford cameo), but the story leaps erratically back and forth through time, sometimes using split screens, and it’s very hard to follow. It also simply lacks the fun and innocence of the first one. Unsurprisingly, it was also a huge box-office bomb that marked the end of Ron Howard’s acting career.

Coming 2 America (2021)

Eddie Murphy spent decades resisting calls to make a sequel to 1988’s Coming to America before finally surrendering in 2021. It was a mistake. The movie is so desperate to evoke nostalgia by bringing back characters, set pieces, and sight gags from the original that it fails to tell a compelling story of its own. Yes, there’s a thin plot about Murphy coming back to Queens, New York, in search of his lost son, but it’s just an excuse for Murphy to lather on latex and makeup to play the old men in the barber shop that are somehow still alive. The scenes back in the fake African nation of Zamunda are even less effective. It’s briefly fun to see Murphy, Arsenio Hall, and the old gang back together, but how many of you watched it even a single time after the first viewing? Be honest. 

Wonder Woman: 1984 (2020)

The problem with Wonder Woman: 1984 isn’t the cast or even the director. Patty Jenkins, Gal Gadot, Chris Prine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, and Robin Wright are all capable of remarkable work. And the first Wonder Woman movie in 2017 is one of the great superhero movies of the past decade. And the problem isn’t even the decision to move the action from World War I to the Reagan decade. That was clever since it opened up so many creative possibilities for the narrative. The problem is the script, which finds Wonder Woman working at the Smithsonian, where she comes across an ancient artifact that grants wishes. This causes her co-worker to transform herself into an evil cheetah, and grants a twisted businessman immense power. This is all much cheesier than it even sounds. The movie hit near the peak of Covid, and most people saw it on Max instead of the big screen. The reaction was not kind, to put it mildly. “Three years ago, Wonder Woman emerged amid a reckoning on male abuse and power; the timing was coincidental, but it also made the character feel meaningful,” Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times. “In 2017, when Wonder Woman was done saving the world, her horizons seemed limitless. I didn’t expect that her next big adult battle would be at the mall.”

Zoolander 2 (2016)

The temptation for Ben Stiller to film a Zoolander sequel must have been intense. The 2001 fashion-industry spoof wasn’t a huge commercial or critical hit, but that was largely because it had the misfortune of landing in theaters just weeks after 9/11. We weren’t exactly in a laughing mood at the time. A giant cult of Zoolander fans emerged in the years that followed, but what they really just wanted to do was watch it over and over, sprinkle quotes into everyday conversation, and attend the occasional midnight screening. They didn’t want a second one packed with more celebrity cameos than actual jokes, and endless callbacks to the original. “There are some clever bits, and the satire is at times scathing,” wrote film critic James Berardinelli, “but, on the whole, moments of hilarity are like oases in a desert of tedium.” 

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

After years of shoddy odd-numbered Star Trek films, fans hoped for a new pattern once the Next Generation crew took over in the mid-Nineties. Their hopes were raised with the release of 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact, which is one of the greatest science-fiction movies of the Nineties. But then came the crushing disappointment of 1998’s Star Trek: Insurrection . Captain Picard and the gang were back together, and Jonathan Frakes was once again directing, but the movie was an enormous step backward. The story centers around the Federation’s attempt to displace the population of a peaceful planet that had discovered a way to live forever. This would have been an interesting two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but it simply didn’t feel like a movie. “ Insurrection is a muddled, gimpy mess, filled with the worst sort of Trek clichés and ill-timed humorous outbursts,” Marc Salvov wrote in The Austin Chronicle . “On top of that, the film might as well have been edited by Mr. Scott in the midst of a Romulan-ale bender: Plot points appear out of nowhere, and voluminous backstory seems to have been dropped in favor of bigger, better explosions and forehead-slappingly bad double entendres. Is this Star Trek or Friends in Space ?”

City Slickers 2: The Legend of Curly’s Gold (1994)

Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz are a brilliant writing duo that gave the world A League of Their Own, Parenthood, Splash, Spies Like Us, and Mr. Saturday Night . “We’ve done one sequel in our entire career,” Ganz told Rolling Stone in 2022. “That’s City Slickers . And the reason we don’t do more is we put our characters where we want them to be.” Mandel framed the issue in a more concise way: “The story is over. It’s done.” The story of City Slickers was definitely over after the events of the first movie, but it was such a giant hit that they were coaxed into writing a sequel. It finds Billy Crystal and Daniel Stern back on horses in the West on a mission to find lost gold. (Bruno Kirby had the good sense to avoid this one. He was essentially replaced by Jon Lovitz.) And even though Jack Palance’s Curly character dies in the original City Slickers, he returns in this one as Curly’s brother Duke. “What I missed was the rich humor and the human comedy of the original film — where the people, not the plot, were what mattered,” Roger Eberot wrote. “By the end of the film, with Slickers II also borrowing from the Indiana Jones movies, I was overcome with deja vu and indifference.”

Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

There are a lot of problems with Blues Brothers 2000, starting with the fact that John Belushi died 16 years before it came out. That’s an insurmountable issue that should have ended any talk of a sequel. But Dan Aykroyd’s never come across a franchise he isn’t willing to drive into the ground. And if he was willing to participate in My Girl 2, five Ghostbusters (and counting) movies, and even (shudder) Caddyshack 2, he was certainly down to try and revive The Blues Brothers in 1998 with help from John Goodman, Joe Morton, and child actor J. Evan Bonifant. They were joined by a truly impressive lineup of musical icons, including Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Bo Diddley, Isaac Hayes, Eric Clapton, Dr. John, and many, many others. It could be the greatest assemblage of musical talent ever to appear on film. But it’s not enough to make Blues Brothers 2000 a watchable movie. It’s about Elwood Blues getting out of prison and putting the band back together, but it just feels sad and pointless without Jake by his side. 

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

Independence Day was the highest grossing movie of 1996, raking in more than $800 million. It was also an incredibly fun popcorn movie as long as you don’t spend too much time thinking about the fact mankind foiled an alien invasion by uploading a virus to their ship’s mainframe from a rinky-dink Windows 95-era laptop. (The aliens mastered interstellar travel, but they didn’t have even rudimentary virus protection? How did these computer systems even line up in the first place?) Rumors of a sequel swirled for years, but Will Smith wanted such a colossal payday they eventually moved forward without him for 2011’s Independence Day: Resurgence . They did manage to bring back Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Judd Hirsch, Brent Spiner, and Vivica A. Fox, but what they didn’t have was an original idea. The aliens return. The world unites against them. Pullman gives another inspiring speech through a bullhorn. Yawn. If this movie hit in 1999 or so, it would have likely been a huge hit. But we had to wait 15 years for this thing. By that point, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in full swing. It made this limp Independence Day retread feel very tired and just wildly unnecessary. 

Cars 2 (2011)

The original Cars is basically Doc Hollywood in a bizarre, post-human world where cars are talking, autonomous beings. They should have ripped off another great movie for the sequel, which sends Lightning McQueen and his team to Europe to compete in the World Grand Prix. Along the way, they get entangled with some British spies. The whole thing reeks like a quickie cash-grab designed to sell toy cars. It’s one of the few Pixar movies to have a “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “Will your kids have fun?” Logan Hill asked in his Vulture review. “Sure, though the green-energy subplot is too intricate. As for the parents, politically, it feels like a focus-grouped cop-out. Lefties will be flattered by the cars’ environmental ideals; conservatives will cheer when it turns out that green energy doesn’t work. Worry not, Disney shareholders: No automotive cross-branding opportunity was risked.” (The movie never explains what happened to the humans in the Cars universe. The cars clearly went Terminator and killed them all when they became self-aware, right?)

Terminator: Salvation (2009)

There’s something about The Terminator that keeps bringing people back into the theaters despite the plainly obvious fact that the series simply cannot work without James Cameron. And as much as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines disappointed the Terminator faithful, it at least had Arnold Schwarzenegger and a powerful ending that gave the series somewhere to build toward. The nuclear holocaust was here, and now John Connor had to lead the resistance. That’s a premise for a pretty great movie. But 2009’s Terminator: Salvation was nothing even remotely great, despite casting Christian Bale as the newest John Connor. Arnold was busy serving as the governor of California at the time, and there’s not a single actor in it from the previous movies. It’s about the early days of Connor’s leadership during the war against Skynet. Lots of things blow up. There are chases. It’s all just an endless green screen of blah. An infamous audio leak from the set revealed that Bale had a complete meltdown at one point and chewed out director McG and members of the crew when a take was interrupted. “Am I going to walk around and rip your fucking lights down, in the middle of a scene?” he roars. “Then why the fuck are you walking right through like this in the background. What the fuck is it with you? Give me a fucking answer!” This audio was 100 times more entertaining than any moment in Salvation . 

Superman 4 (1987)

It’s tempting to put Superman 3 on this list since it’s such an oddball outlier in the history of the franchise, but there’s a certain goofy charm to the movie. Throwing Richard Pryor into the world of Metropolis as a computer genius still makes us chuckle. But there’s nothing even remotely amusing about 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace . It’s a shockingly inept movie about Superman trying to rid the world of atomic weapons, and battling the foe Nuclear Man. The film was shot on a shoestring budget, and that’s clear in every single frame. It’s hard to believe the original film came out less than 10 years prior. “The script of Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal contains neither bite nor gleam, and the movie has no propulsion,” wrote Michael Wilmington of the Los Angles Times . “By the end, the editing takes on a meat-ax fervor, as [one character] disappears mysteriously and the loose ends are given a violently perfunctory last-second wrap-up. The overall effect is of a story atomized and dying before our eyes, collapsing into smashed pulp, ground down into big-budget Kryptonite ash.” The film was such a disaster that it wasn’t until 2006 that another Superman movie hit theaters. It was a direct sequel to the original two Superman movies, and pretended like Superman 4 didn’t exist. Sadly for us, it does exist. 

Sex and the City 2 (2010)

The temptation in sequels is often to move the action to an exotic overseas location since it opens up all sorts of new storytelling possibilities. The Hangover 2 (Bangkok), Oceans 12 (Amsterdam, Paris, Rome), Cars 2 (France, Italy, England), The Karate Kid 2 (Okinawa), and National Lampoon’s European Vacation (Europe, duh) are just a few of the examples. And in the second Sex and the City movie, Carrie Bradshaw and her friends take an extended trip to Abu Dhabi, though they actually filmed it in Morocco. It’s part of an absurdly bloated two and a half hour movie where the four ladies deal with professional and personal dilemmas, discover the power of friendship for the 600th time, and wear designer outfits that must have collectively cost them about $18 million. The whole thing is so abysmal and boring that even hardore Sex and the City fans rarely defend it. It sent the series onto life support before it came back to Max as the 99.9 percent Kim Cattrall-free …And Just Like That in 2022. 

Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)

Is Michael Jordan the GOAT in the NBA, or is it LeBron James? It’s a basketball debate that’s likely to rage for eternity. Both sides have very strong arguments to make in terms of total points scored or the number of championship rings they wear. When it comes to their Space Jam movies, however, it isn’t really a contest. Jordan made a very fun live-action/animated Warner Bros. movie back in 1996. And James delivered a turkey of a sequel in 2021, where the Lakers great and his fictional son Dominic find themselves trapped in the Warner Bros. Serververse. They come into contact with all sorts of studio IP, including Rick and Morty, The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and King Kong, but the whole thing feels more like a Warner Bros. shareholders presentation than a movie. When it comes time for the big basketball game, it’s hard to even care. “It is a film that has no reason to exist,” wrote Alex Shepherd in The New Republic, “except as a vehicle for reminding people that various pieces of content, all of them merchandisable, are available for instant streaming now.”

Rocky V (1990)

The first four Rocky movies followed a familiar formula. A powerful opponent challenges Rocky Balboa to a boxing match, his devoted wife, Adrian, expresses some doubts (“You can’t win, Rocky!”), he furiously trains, and the film climaxes with the fight. In 1990’s Rocky V, however, the formula was completely upended. It begins with the Balboa family losing all of their money after Rocky is diagnosed with a brain disorder that makes it impossible for him to fight. They move back to Philadelphia, and Rocky trains a young fighter named Tommy Gunn. It ends with Rocky and Gunn briefly fighting in the street, but audiences were less than thrilled. The movie didn’t capture the heart of the original Rocky or the cheeseball joy of the sequels. “The dramatic moves are so obvious and shopworn,” wrote the Chicago Reader ’s Jonathan Rosenbaum, “that not even the star’s mournful basset-hound expressions can redeem them.” It would be another 16 years before Stallone was given the green light on another Rocky movie. That one ends with Balboa back in the ring even though Stallone was 60-years-old by that point. It’s also an infinitely better movie than Rocky V . 

Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise (1987)

The insane success of Animal House inspired roughly 100 knockoff movies about wild college campuses. The best of the bunch, by far, is 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds . This one twists the formula by casting nerds as the heroes, and the cool frat boys as villains. It’s hysterical and infinitely rewatchable. (And, yes, there’s a heinous scene near the end where one of the nerds dresses up in a jock’s costume and fools his girlfriend into having sex with him.) The sequel was unable to bring Anthony Edwards back for anything more than a cameo (he made a little film called Top Gun the prior year), but the rest of the cast is back for a movie that takes them down to Florida for a frat convention where they once again battle evil jocks. But it’s rated PG-13, when the original was a very hard R. That means the jokes are much softer, and the laughs never come. The only positive thing we can say about it is the made-for-TV sequels are even worse. 

Batman and Robin (1997)

The Batman franchise was already in serious decline by the time 1997’s Batman and Robin came around. Michael Keaton handed over the Batsuit to Val Kilmer for 1995’s Batman Forever, and Tim Burton ceded his director’s chair to Joel Schumacher. The result was a less-than-stellar movie, especially when compared to the dark brilliance of Batman Returns, but Jim Carrey’s manic energy as the Riddler (along with great songs by U2 and Seal) prevented it from being a total train wreck. Nothing could have prepared us, however, for the horrors of Batman and Robin . George Clooney is the Dark Knight in this one, and he battles Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, and Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy. He’s joined by not only Chris O’Donnell as Robin, but Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl. It’s a clusterfuck of characters, plot incoherence, and cheeseball, pun-filled dialogue straight out of a McBain movie (“It’s ice to see you”; “Let’s kick some ice.”) Nearly every person involved with the movie condemned it in the years that followed, especially Clooney. “It’s a terrible screenplay,” he told Howard Stern in 2020. “I’m terrible in it. Joel Schumacher, who just passed away, directed it, and he’d say, ‘Yeah, it didn’t work.’ We all whiffed on that one.”

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

It wasn’t until the Seventies that hit movies routinely generated sequels. That’s why we have The Godfather II, Jaws II, Rocky II, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and many others. The astronomical success of The Exorcist in 1973 guaranteed a follow-up chapter. But Exorcist novelist William Peter Blatty and original movie director William Friedkin didn’t want to be involved in 1978’s Exorcist II: The Heretic since they were in the midst of a lawsuit with the studio over profits from the first one. The studio did manage to bring back Linda Blair and Max von Sydow, but that wasn’t nearly enough to salvage this low-budget trainwreck of a movie where poor Regan, now a teenager, deals with the aftermath of the demonic possession from the first movie. “There had to be a sequel,” wrote Vinceny Canby in The New York Times, “but did it have to be this desperate concoction, the main thrust of which is that the original exorcism wasn’t all it was cracked up to be?”

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

After the stunning ineptitude of 2009’s Terminator: Salvation, the franchise bounced back to “somewhat watchable” status with 2015’s Terminator Genisys . The critics disagree with us here, and it’s not like Genisys is a masterpiece, but at least it was a little fun. (It wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as the criminally underrated 2008-09 Fox series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles .) And when news hit that Linda Hamilton was finally returning to play Sarah Connor in 2015’s The Terminator: Dark Fate, it was hard not to feel genuine excitement. James Cameron signed on as producer. Hope was in the air. Then we saw the actual movie. In the first few minutes, a de-aged Hamilton watches a teenage John Connor get killed by a Terminator shortly after the events of T2, basically nullifying the entire movie. We flash-forward several years, and Skynet is at its old tricks again. It has sent yet another robot back in time. A grizzled Connor has to protect people that will be pivotal in the future. They meet up with an elderly Arnold, who once again helps them survive. We’ve seen this many times before. Once the thrill of seeing Hamilton in her badass Sarah Connor mode wears off, this becomes just another rote action movie. There’s been talk of another Terminator reboot, but let’s hope it doesn’t happen. Haven’t we all suffered enough at this point? 

The Hangover 3 (2013)

The third Hangover ditches the premise of the first two movies where four buddies have a debauched night on the town, wake up without any memories of it, and try to retrace their steps to find someone they lost along the way. It was insane enough this happened a second time, but moving the action from Las Vegas to Bangkok in the sequel was clever and occasionally quite funny. In the third one, they head back to Sin City for an adventure that’s heavy on plot and action, but very light on actual laughs. It also gives Ken Jeong a much bigger role than he had in the first two, but a little bit of his psychotic Leslie Chow character goes a very long way. And bringing everything back to Vegas just reminded us of the superiority of the first movie. “The second didn’t have to be funny, and wasn’t, but at least existed somewhere in the general vicinity of that borderless country known as Comedy,” Rick Groen wrote in The Globe and Mail . “Part Three doesn’t, not even remotely, which makes it not just bad, but weirdly, fascinatingly bad. What exactly is this? Certainly a cash cow, definitely an exercise in cynicism, maybe even a cri de coeur from the self-hating principals. Whatever, a comedy it ain’t.”

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

Live Free or Die Hard is not a good movie by any standard. But it’s practically Raiders of the Lost Ark compared to the flaming pile of dog shit that is 2013’s A Good Day to Die Hard . There’s no pretext that John McClane is a regular human being in this one. He’s a superhero that couldn’t be killed by conventional or even unconventional weapons. The plot barely matters, but it revolves around an ill-fated trip to Russia where he teams up with his son, played by Jai Courtney, and fights all sorts of evil dudes. They visit Chernobyl, fire off about 10,000 rounds of ammo, and a helicopter flies into a building. Bruce Willis says, “ Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!” and everyone laughs because it reminds them of better Die Hard movies. There was talk of a sixth Die Hard for years, but that’s impossible now that Willis is retired from acting. Tragically, the franchise ended with A Good Day to Die Hard . The best thing we can do now is pretend the last two Die Hard movies were just bad dreams McClane had in the final years of his life. 

Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)

Keanu Reeves isn’t opposed to signing on for sequels. He’s made four Matrix movies, four John Wicks, and three Bill and Ted’s . But when the makers of Speed 2: Cruise Control came to him, he had some doubts. “It was just a situation in life where I got the script and I read the script and I was like, ‘Ugh,’” Reeves recalled to Jimmy Kimmel in 2015. “It was about a cruise ship, and I was thinking, ‘A bus, a cruise ship.… Speed, bus, but then a cruise ship is even slower than a bus, and I was like, ‘I love you guys, but I just can’t do it.’” They carried forward with Jason Patrick essentially in the Reeves role, but it was a mistake. Reeves was 100 percent right to realize that a speeding cruise ship simply isn’t very scary. The film was a critical fiasco that forever killed the franchise and was nominated for eight Golden Raspberry awards. This was a good lesson. If Keanu Reeves thinks your movie is dumb, don’t do it. He knows what he’s talking about. 

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

The initial expectations for Star Trek: Nemesis were very high. Fans were desperate to see the Next Generation cast after a four-year hiatus, and they were returning in an even-numbered movie. The ironclad rule up to that point was that the even-numbered Trek films were all great. Tragically, the streak ended with Star Trek: Nemesis in spectacular fashion. The enemy this time around is Shinzon, a young clone of Picard (played by Tom Hardy) that took over the Romulan empire. (Pay no attention to the fact that Hardy doesn’t look a damn thing like Patrick Stewart at any age.) At the climax of the movie, Data sacrifices himself to save Picard. That’s probably the only moment anyone that saw Nemesis in the theater can recall. The rest is a boring blur of cheesy special effects and dialogue that reads like it was written by ChatGPT. What went wrong? “The director was an idiot,” said Counselor Troi actress Marina Sirtis. “I guess that’s a fair assessment of someone that wasn’t willing to take advantage of the help he was offered.” The movie was such a bomb that TNG never appeared on the big screen again. Thankfully, they returned for the Paramount+ show Star Trek: Picard in 2020. In a clear acknowledgement that Nemesis was a complete turd, they gave Data another death scene. 

Dumb and Dumber To (2014)

Comedy sequels are notoriously hard to pull off. For every successful attempt like Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey or Addams Family Values, you have 50 fiascos like Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment or Meet the Fockers . We won’t list either of those films on this list since no reasonable person expected them to be any good. That’s not the case for Dumb and Dumber To, which reunited Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels with directors Peter and Bobby Farrell 20 years after the original Dumb and Dumber . The moronic duo of Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne travel cross country again in this one, but this time they’re searching for Dunne’s lost daughter. After the initial thrill of seeing Carey and Daniels back in character wears off, it becomes clear a Dumb and Dumber sequel is way better as an idea than an actual movie. It’s also so shockingly unfunny it almost makes you question the value of the first one. But don’t do that. The first one is one of the funniest movies of the Nineties. It’s Jim Carrey at his absolute peak. Dumb and Dumber To is a sad retread. 

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

It may be slightly hard to remember now, but there was enormous excitement surrounding Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull back in 2008. We’d waited through 19 very long Indy-free years at this point, and we finally had Harrison Ford back in his fedora with Steven Spielberg in the director’s chair. They even brought in Karen Allen to reprise her role as Marion Ravenwood from Raiders of the Lost Ark . They also brought in Shia LaBeouf as Indy’s greaser son, Mutt, Cate Blanchett as an evil Soviet, a muddled plot about KGB agents and extraterrestrial life, and sequences where Mutt swings from vines like Tarzan and Indy survives a nuclear blast in a refrigerator. It simply doesn’t cohere into a fun movie that can remotely compare to the first three. “Reckless daring is what’s missing from Crystal Skull, ” David Denby wrote in The New Yorker . “The movie leaves a faint aura of depression, because you don’t want to think of daring as the exclusive property of youth. There must be a way for middle-aged men to take chances and leap over chasms, but repeating themselves with less conviction isn’t it.”

Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)

If you were at least a somewhat dorky teenager in the Eighties or Nineties, you probably have fond memories of the first Highlander movie. It stars Christopher Lambert as an immortal being from the 16th-century Scottish Highlands who battles other immortals in mid-Eighties New York City. The 1991 sequel, Highlander II: The Quickening, roped Sean Connery back into the saga, and holy mother of God, it is an unholy mess. Not only does it completely violate established Highlander canon by transforming the immortals into aliens from another planet, it was filmed on the cheap in Argentina, and director Russell Mulcahy was removed from the postproduction process so the producers could totally butcher his original (admittedly flawed) vision. It often ranks very high on lists of the worst movies in history. “ Highlander II: The Quickening is the most hilariously incomprehensible movie I’ve seen in many a long day — a movie almost awesome in its badness,” wrote Roger Ebert. “Wherever science-fiction fans gather, in decades and generations to come, this film will be remembered in hushed tones as one of the immortal low points of the genre.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Being a Star Wars fan means dealing with a lot of bitter disappointment. This is a franchise with 12 movies, of which only about four or five are universally loved. Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace is often cited as the low point, but we’re not counting prequels on this list. (It’s also not quite as awful as the lore suggests. Watch it again with an open mind.) But the biggest disappointment in Star Wars history came in 2019 with the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker . After 42 years and 50 bazillion hours of fevered fan speculation, the world was finally seeing the (supposed) conclusion of the Skywalker saga. This was going to be the one that resolved all of the lingering issues, gave our heroes one last adventure, and ended the franchise on a perfectly satisfying note. Things got off to a bad start in the opening crawl when we learned Emperor Palpatine was back in the picture, which is something they never bothered to explain beyond Poe’s infamous “somehow Palpatine returned” line midway through the film. And after the prior film told us that Rey came from a humble background, meaning anyone could rise from obscurity and become a Jedi, we learn she’s actually a Palpatine. It was one of many ways that returning director J.J. Abrams tried to nullify Rian Johnson’s work on The Last Jedi . We spend time with Luke Skywalker as a force ghost, Han Solo as some other sort of apparition, Princess Leah via clumsily edited archival footage, Chewie, R2D2, C-3PO, and even Lando Calrissian, but nothing feels satisfying about any of it. It just feels like a bunch of random Star Wars images and characters thrown into a blender. It still earned more than $1 billion, but the reaction was so abysmal that Disney radically switched course and put all of its Star Wars energy into TV shows. We’re heard endless reports and rumors about additional movies, but none of them have actually gone into production. Something has to happen eventually. The Star Wars cinematic experience can’t forever end on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker . Somehow Star Wars has to return. 

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Star trek reveals wesley crusher has been to j.j. abrams' kelvin timeline & gave it a new name.

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Star Trek 2009 Cast & Character Guide

Star trek’s new protostar continues 2 classic starfleet traditions, star trek: prodigy season 3 - everything we know.

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, Episode 9 - "The Devourer of All Things, Part I"

• Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 introduces Wesley Crusher's cosmic abilities as the Traveler and he mentors the USS Protostar crew to save all Star Trek timelines from the Loom.
• In the Kelvin Timeline, Wesley Crusher reveals a new name for J.J. Abrams' alternate reality, calling it the "Narada Incursion."
• The Temporal Wars allowed more contact between the Prime Universe and the Kelvin Timeline, with the Travelers engaging in the conflict and visiting the alternate reality.

Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) has been to the alternate reality of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movies, and Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 reveals Wesley even gave Star Trek 's Kelvin Timeline a new name. Written by Jennifer Muro and directed by Sung Shin, Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, Episode 9 - "The Devourer of All Things, Part I" introduces Wesley Crusher and his cosmic abilities as the Traveler . Wesley mentors the heroic young crew of the USS Protostar as part of his expansive plan to save every Star Trek timeline from the reality-eating threat of the Loom.

In Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, Episode 9 - "The Devourer of All Things, Part I", Dal R'El (Brett Gray), Gwyndala (Ella Purnell), Zero (Angus Imrie), Murf (Dee Bradley Baker), Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzoukas), and Maj'el (Michaela Dietz) expect to find the USS Protostar in a hidden world, but inside an ancient ziggurat, the Starfleet hopefuls instead find Wesley Crusher. Manic, scatterbrained, and talking a mile-a-minute, Wesley gives the kids a quick info download about who he is, what the Travelers are, and the concept of Star Trek 's Multiverse , which is under an existential threat from the Loom. Wesley reveals the existence of Star Trek 's myriad alternate timelines, but what the Traveler says about J.J. Abrams' Kelvin Timeline is shocking.

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek relaunched the movie franchise and reintroduced audiences to Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise.

Wesley Crusher Has Been To J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Kelvin Timeline & Gave It A New Name

Of course, no one in the star trek universe calls it the "kelvin timeline".

Star Trek: Prodigy 's young Starfleet Academy hopefuls initially didn't know who Wesley Crusher was, nor had they heard of the Travelers, but Wesley gave the kids a helpful rundown. Wesley explained his mission of protecting every Star Trek timeline from the Loom. As a Traveler, Wesley has jumped across time, space, and realities, and he not only revealed that he has visited J.J. Abrams' Star Trek Kelvin Timeline, but Crusher calls it by a different name . Wesley tells Star Trek: Prodigy' s heroes:

"Quantum timelines, alternate realities, planes of existence, take your pick, I've been to all of them . There's the Prime Universe we're in right now, there's the Mirror Universe, the Narada Incursion , Fluidic Space, the Mycelial Plane... Ooh, you're not supposed to know about that."

J.J. Abrams' alternate reality was dubbed the "Kelvin timeline" because in Star Trek (2009), the Romulan villain Nero (Eric Bana) and his starship, the Narada, time-traveled from 2387 in Star Trek 's Prime Universe to 2233. The Narada's destruction of the USS Kelvin, and the death of acting captain Lt. George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth), the father of James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), created an entirely new alternate reality.

J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot production team internally referred to the new Star Trek movie universe they created as the Kelvin Timeline, but, of course, no one in-universe in Star Trek would call it that. Thanks to Wesley and Star Trek: Prodigy , viewers now know that the Travelers call Nero's time travel the "Narada Incursion".

Every Time Star Trek’s Prime Universe Connected WIth J.J. Abrams’ Kelvin Timeline

The temporal wars opened up more contact with j.j. abrams' alternate reality.

In Star Trek: Prodigy 's late-24th century time frame, Starfleet is aware of alternate realities like the Mirror Universe, but travel to and from different timelines is still relatively uncommon and usually happens by accident . This changed during Star Trek 's Temporal Wars when the different realities were breached and warring factions weaponized time. Wesley Crusher referenced the Temporal Wars in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2, indicating that the Travelers also engaged in the conflict, which did cross over into J.J. Abrams' Star Trek Kelvin Timeline.

In J.J. Abrams' Star Trek (2009), the creation of the Kelvin Timeline was a one-sided event, and only Nero in 2233 and Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in 2258 crossed over from Star Trek 's Prime Timeline.

Obviously, the Travelers were aware of the 'Narada Incident', and Wesley Crusher says he visited J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movies' alternate reality. In Star Trek: Discovery 's 32nd century, Dr. Kovich (David Cronenberg) revealed that Yor, a time soldier from the 24th century, crossed over from the Kelvin Timeline and died in Star Trek 's Prime Timeline. It's unclear when Star Trek 's Prime Universe Starfleet becomes fully aware of the Kelvin Timeline's existence, but perhaps it's because Wesley Crusher told the young Protostar crew about the 'Narada Incident ' in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2.

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Spocks Father Actor Almost Played A Beloved US President In Star Trek

• Mark Lenard played Ambassador Sarek in Star Trek: TOS and related films, but was also a prolific TV guest actor throughout the 1960s.
• Lenard was first choice to play President Lincoln in "The Savage Curtain," but scheduling conflicts prevented him from taking the role.
• The Abraham Lincoln character in "The Savage Curtain" created a strange legacy in the Star Trek franchise and the wider world.

Best known for playing Ambassador Sarek, father of Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in Star Trek: The Original Series , prolific guest actor Mark Lenard almost added a beloved US President to his list of credits, too. Mark Lenard played Sarek in four episodes of Star Trek between 1967 and 1991, as well as three out of the six TOS movies. However, before he took on his important role in Spock's family tree , Mark Lenard made his Star Trek debut as the Romulan Commander in the classic TOS episode "Balance of Terror" .

Star Trek: The Original Series was just one of several network shows in which Mark Lenard appeared during the mid to late 1960s. As well as appearing in cowboy series like Gunsmoke and Cimarron Strip , Lenard also played four different characters in Mission: Impossible . Due to Lenard's existing relationship with the Star Trek : The Original Series cast and the production staff at Desilu, he was the first choice for what would have been his third TOS role. However, a positive career development prevented Mark Lenard from playing the role of President Abraham Lincoln in TOS season 3, episode 22, "The Savage Curtain".

All 6 Actors Who Played Spocks Mother & Father In Star Trek

Spock's human mother Amanda and his Vulcan father Sarek have been played by several actors across the Star Trek franchise.

Sarek Actor Mark Lenard Almost Played Abraham Lincoln in Star Trek

Mark Lenard was the first choice to play the Excalibans' President Abraham Lincoln lookalike in "The Savage Curtain" . Had Lenard been available to play the former President, Lincoln would have been the only character that he played who wasn't a Romulan or Vulcan in Star Trek up to that point. It's likely the similarities between Sarek and the Romulan Commander meant Mark Lenard was never considered to play the Excalibans' replica of the legendary Vulcan, Surak (Barry Atwater). Mark Lenard explained his reasons for turning the Lincoln role down in a 1981 interview with Starlog #41 , saying:

" The Lincoln segment came up about Christmas time when we had a slight hiatus, and I thought I could work it in [...] But it turned out we just couldn't work it in. I think we went back to work on the other series too soon, and instead of having the six or seven days I would have needed to do the role, I only had three or four days. "

Based on his performance as Sarek, it's easy to see why Mark Lenard was the first choice to play Lincoln in "The Savage Curtain". The statesmanlike dignity he projected as Sarek in "Journey to Babel" would be interesting to see applied to an iconic American historical figure like Abraham Lincoln. Alas, it was not to be, and Lee Bergere was cast in the role instead , providing his own memorable take on the former US President.

Lee Bergere went on to play Joseph Arlington Anders in Dynasty alongside another Star Trek: The Original Series guest performer, Joan Collins.

Abe Lincolns Star Trek Appearance Has A Weird Legacy

Airing weeks before TOS was canceled , "The Savage Curtain" is about an alien species that pits various icons representing "good" and "evil" against each other. While this simplifies a historical character like Abraham Lincoln, somewhat, it still gave the character a chance to deliver a speech about the nature of violence, stating there is " no honorable way to kill" . Lincoln's speech, written by Arthur Heinemann and Gene Roddenberry , has been taken as fact in some corners of the internet. Model and TV host Bar Refaeli attributed the quote to "Honest" Abe on Instagram back in 2014:

Bar Refaeli's quoting of Space Lincoln isn't the only example of the weird legacy of "The Savage Curtain", however. The living Lincoln Memorial floating through space was briefly seen in in the Star Trek: Short Treks episode "Ephraim and Dot". However, the wildest reference to Star Trek: The Original Series ' Abraham Lincoln predictably comes in Star Trek: Lower Decks. "Kayshon, His Eyes Open" revealed that Excaliban Lincoln's skeleton is held by an alien antiques collector. While Mark Lenard may have missed out on this bizarre legacy, he can rest assured that Sarek lives on in the Star Trek universe.

Star Trek: The Original Series

Cast Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, William Shatner, George Takei, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan

Release Date September 8, 1966

Genres Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Network NBC

Streaming Service(s) Paramount+

Franchise(s) Star Trek

Writers Gene Roddenberry

Showrunner Gene Roddenberry

Where To Watch Paramount+

Romulan Episodes of Star Trek

1. Star Trek: Enterprise

2. Star Trek: Enterprise

3. Star Trek: Enterprise

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Balance of terror.

6. Star Trek

The enterprise incident.

7. Star Trek: The Next Generation

The neutral zone.

8. Star Trek: The Next Generation

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The defector.

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Star Trek: Prodigy season two has now graced the screens of U.S. watchers, and the wait – at least based on the first three episodes – was worth it. The kids-oriented animated show from creators Dan and Kevin Hageman captures the beauty, charm, and engagement that blessed the first season. Here’s what you can expect from the first three episodes.

It’s Time for a New Adventure

Six months after saving the Federation in the incredible season one finale , our young heroes are aiming to enroll in Starfleet Academy. They get their first taste of adventure when Admiral Janeway ( Kate Mulgrew ) calls upon them for a special mission. Welcoming them to the beautiful Voyager-A is the Doctor ( Robert Picardo , reprising his role from all seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager ), but Dal ( Brett Gray ), Rok-Tahk ( Rylee Alazraqui ), Zero (Angus Imrie), and Jankom Pog ( Jason Mantzoukas ) quickly get the sense the admiral and her senior staff are hiding something. Whereas Janeway asserts their mission is to study the temporal wormhole formed after the destruction of the Protostar last season, there’s certainly more to it than that.

If you don’t remember the season one finale that well, you may be wondering where Gwyn ( Ella Purnell ) is. As we expected, “Into the Breach, Part I” doesn’t shy away from reiterating for its audience the complex situation involving Gwyn’s species, the Vau N’Akat, inhabitants of the ill-fated planet Solum, which, 50 years in the future, will be subjected to a brutal civil war after first contact with the Federation. Gwyn is on a mission to prevent that war from happening, so she’s in a shuttle heading for Solum, which in the present day doesn’t even know extraterrestrials exist. There’s no way that mission can go wrong, right?

Aboard the Voyager-A , Dal and his friends discover Janeway’s true mission at the wormhole: Fly a temporally shielded, extra-chonky shuttle called Infinity through the wormhole to rescue Captain Chakotay ( Robert Beltran ). And if you don’t remember his situation from season one, “Into the Breach, Part II” has you covered. Basically, Janeway wants to get her first officer and friend back from the clutches of the Vau N’Akat 50 years in the future.

In the season’s second episode, Gwyn does indeed reach Solum and attempts first contact, but quickly finds a cold welcome. To our hero’s surprise, Asencia ( Jameela Jamil ), the person who was sent from future Solum to help search for the Protostar, has already reached Solum and prepared her people for Gwyn’s arrival; she asserts Gwyn is a spy and a traitor to the Vau N’Akat. (At this point, maybe just watch the last few episodes of season one to refamiliarize yourself properly with all the time-travel shenanigans.)

Asencia, using her younger self as proof, shows Solum’s elders she is truly Vau N’Akat, whereas Gwyn is just a Federation lackey. Luckily (and we mean really luckily ), Gwyn escapes Asencia’s trap long enough to stumble upon the Vau N’Akat formerly known to us as The Diviner, Ilthuran ( John Noble ), who is simply a humble astronomer in this time. Oh, and he’s Gwyn’s dad, don’t forget – although for him, Gwyn hasn’t been born yet.

It’s pretty shocking for a person who doesn’t know aliens exist to find his extraterrestrial, not-born-yet daughter on his doorstep, but Ilthuran is joyed at the occasion and promises to help Gwyn prove to the Solum elders that she is telling the truth about her origin. This idealistic version of John Noble’s character is quite different from the villain we knew in season one, and to his credit, Noble makes the shift entirely convincingly. Similarly, Jimmi Simpson returns to Prodigy as Lorekeeper, a robot that helps Ilthuran keep track of Vau N’Akat’s knowledge. It’s the Lorekeeper who helps Gwyn realize there’s a way to convince Solum’s leadership of her origins.

As seen in “Who Saves the Saviors,” the disagreement between Gwyn and Asencia can be resolved (in quintessential Star Trek fashion) by a Vau N’Akat ritual, the Va’Lu’Rah, the victor of which will prove themselves as legitimately Vau N’Akat. After a few minutes of fancy fisticuffs in the depths of a treasured place in Vau N’Akat culture, Gwyn seems to be on the edge of victory until she starts to become displaced in time, no thanks to the adventures her friends are having after encountering the temporal wormhole.

“Jefferies Tubes only lead to trouble.” – Rok, who must have seen every Star Trek episode, as Dal tries to sneak near the bridge to ascertain Janeway’s secret plan.

And just how are Dal and his friends causing temporal shenanigans? After arriving in the Voyager-A at the temporal wormhole, our heroes accidentally find themselves and their new rival, Nova Squad’s resident Vulcan Maj’el ( Michaela Dietz ), on a one-way shuttle to post-Civil War Solum. And yes, it’s that Nova Squad of The Next Generation and Lower Decks fame

By going through the wormhole earlier than Janeway planned, Dal et al. are placing the entire timeline at risk. Why? If Chakotay doesn’t send the Protostar , which contains the destructive Construct, back through time to abandon the ship on Tars Lamora, Dal and his friends would never find the ship and have their first-season adventures. The Federation could succumb to the Construct, Gwyn would never have been born, the Protostar crew would never band together, and the timeline would unravel and doom everyone. Got it? Kudos to your kids if they can keep up with this intriguing and complex plot.

“His sacrifice changed our lives.” “He changed mine, too. And that’s why we have to save him.” – Zero and Janeway about Chakotay.

By crash-landing on the Solum of the future, our heroes first assume they must stay out of Chakotay’s way, lest the captain not escape Solum, but they soon realize their presence must be the factor that aids the escape of Chakotay and his first officer, Adree-Hu ( Tommie Earl Jenkins ) since all these people soon find themselves sharing the same prison cell. Just as it appears their prison break is going to plan, our young heroes realize their involvement has altered the timeline, as Chakotay and Adree-Hu end up being on the Protostar as it escapes back in time from Solum, which wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Who Saves the Saviors” ends with Dal, Jankom, Zero, and Maj’el trapped on the post-Civil War Solum, while the Protostar zips its way to a time it’s not supposed to be in. Gwyn, meanwhile, seems trapped in the dark depths of present-day Solum, her temporal nature in flux considering the actions of her friends, and Asencia is in a position to ensure no outsiders ever come to Solum. Oh, and Janeway and the crew of the Voyager-A are facing off against an unknown presence at the mouth of the wormhole, a presence that warned the admiral against going through the tunnel. Did we leave that out?

A Kids Show for Everyone

It’s a bit to swallow, isn’t it, and tracks with what we know of Prodigy ’s penchant for surprisingly complex science-fiction storytelling despite being aimed at kids. That’s the thing we like best about this show: It doesn’t talk down to its intended audience, and indeed adults will find Prodigy perfectly entertaining – perhaps even more so than Prodigy ’s sister shows.

This show’s reputation for being a feast for the eyes hasn’t diminished, either, as locations like the Voyager-A , current-day and future Solum, the pit where Gwyn and Asencia fight and the temporal wormhole look as gorgeous as we’d expect. Find a “kids” show that looks this good, we dare you.

On the character front, we expect to see some interesting developments based on what’s in the first three episodes. A conversation between Gwyn and Dal before everything goes to hell hints at furthering their young, awkward romance, but much will need to happen to have these characters reunite across space and time.

“To touch, taste, smell, love… with your Medusan physiology, you may never experience these things the way humanoids do. In my experience, we all have an opportunity to grow beyond our programming.” – The Doctor, to Zero.

Zero, a non-corporeal entity trapped in an environmental suit, is as wanting of physical connection as ever, as shown in the Medusan’s observation of Starfleet Academy students. It’s appropriate, then, that Prodigy ’s writers were able to sneak in a small interaction between Zero and the Doctor, the latter of whom was able to relate about lacking physical intimacy (although really, Voyager was pretty spotty on that front… sometimes the Doctor could phase through objects, sometimes not. The show never picked a lane).

Rok-Tahk, lovable as ever, is thrilled to attend Starfleet Academy, and seemed to quickly make a name for herself before embarking on Janeway’s special mission; she created a method for stopping Tribble reproduction (Klingons would be ecstatic!) In the season premiere, it’s touching to see her finally find someplace she feels she belongs, after searching for her sense of self in season one. We don’t see much of her and security-officer-in-training Murf ( Dee Bradley Baker ), as they are left behind when Dal and company accidentally take the Infinity into the future, but we’re sure that pair will cross paths with their friends soon enough.

For his part, Jankom is trying to make some major self-improvement to his personality. Instead of being hot-tempered or rude to people, he is practicing being a nicer person, all the better to fit in with his academy training. To his credit, the Tellarite is more successful than not, but slips into good ole’ Jankom do appear, to some comedic effect.

The most prominent character spotlight comes via Gwyn, as we get the strongest look yet at Vau N’Akat culture both before and after its disastrous Civil War. Remember, Gwyn didn’t grow up on Solum, and indeed never saw the world before making first contact. Her culture presents strong ritualistic vibes, their remarkably detailed architecture and fashion sense strongly invoking the heirlooms Vau N’Akat holds so sacred. Good on Prodigy’s production team for crafting such a convincing presentation of Vau N’Akat culture. This show’s production values are spectacular.

We’re so happy to have Prodigy back. This show proves itself as something its recent live-action brethren generally aren’t: colorful, frequently chuckle-worthy (like Jankom with his bird puns), charming as hell, and liable to expose your inner child and pull at your heartstrings, especially if you’re a long-time Star Trek fan. We’ll never understand why CBS canceled this show, but thanks to Netflix for pulling through for fans. Now, let’s binge a few more episodes, shall we?

Stray Thoughts:

• The first time we see Rok, she is lecturing about a certain Lt. Larkin and his experience with Tribbles, which is undoubtedly a reference to the Star Trek: Short Treks episode “The Trouble with Edward ” and its titular character, Edward Larkin, played by H. Jon Benjamin.
• Gotta love the hit of French horns (reminiscent of Voyager ’s theme music) when we see the shuttle from the Voyager-A pick up the kids, and then when we see the ship itself.
• The Doctor gets a stab at the classic “I’m a doctor, not a…” Star Trek line when he says, “I’m a doctor, but a butler” to the kids as they toss him their luggage.
• The Lamarr -class Voyager-A is such a sleek, striking design. It has elements from the Protostar -class, the Sovereign -class, Intrepid- class, and perhaps even a tinge of Odyssey -class.
• The Doctor mentions how the original Voyager is now a museum piece. The hectic journey of that ship to the museum is seen in Lower Decks ’ “ Twovix .”
• The Doctor notes how Starfleet is currently preoccupied with the Romulan evacuation – the same one that is a catalyst for the events of Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek (2009) .
• It appears the Voyager-A allows turbolift entry directly into one of its holodecks, which isn’t something we’ve seen on a Federation starship. Voyager-A also contains Cetacean Ops, a department aboard many Federation starships but only seen in Lower Decks (and referenced in The Next Generation ).
• What are the chances Murf and Rok stumble upon Dal, Jankom, and Zero as they are trying to enter the unrestricted and mysterious shuttle bay three?
• Why was Gwyn’s shuttle and its resident Starfleet officer so close to Solum’s surface during Gwyn’s attempt at first contact? The shuttle was within eyesight when Gwyn saw it destroyed. Having an alien ship easily visible to a planet’s populace is not a good recipe for first contact.
• Why exactly did the Protostar ’s black box contain footage of Chakotay’s escape not possibly captured by cameras on the ship?
• Maj’el could have used Discovery ’s instant-transporters during her much-delayed walk to shuttle bay three, yeah?
• What are the chances Dal pokes the cloaked Infinity in exactly the spot that opens its doors?
• Maj’el places Dal and company under arrest under Starfleet Regulation 7, Paragraph 4, which was previously mentioned in TOS ’ “The Omega Glory” and specifies, “An officer must consider themselves under arrest unless in the presence of the most senior fellow officers presently available, the officers must give a satisfactory answer to those charges.” No, we don’t have that memorized… tip of the hat to Memory Alpha .
• How would Maj’el know about Gwyn and her burgeoning romantic interest in Dal?
• Maj’el notes of a couple time paradoxes in Starfleet history, including the Bell Riots (as seen in Deep Space Nine ’s two-parter “Past Tense”) and Zefram Cochrane’s warp tests, as seen in Star Trek: First Contact . Interestingly, the subtitles for “Who Saves the Saviors” leaves off the “e” in Cochrane’s name.

The Star Trek: Prodigy voice cast includes Kate Mulgrew (Hologram Kathryn Janeway), Brett Gray (Dal), Ella Purnell (Gwyn), Rylee Alazraqui (Rok-Tahk), Angus Imrie (Zero), Jason Mantzoukas (Jankom Pog), Dee Bradley Baker (Murf), John Noble (The Diviner) and Jimmi Simpson (Drednok) in addition to recurring voice cast members: Robert Beltran (Captain Chakotay), Robert Picardo (The Doctor), Jason Alexander (Doctor Noum), Daveed Diggs (Commander Tysess), Jameela Jamil (Ensign Asencia), Ronny Cox (Admiral Jellico) and Michaela Dietz (Maj’el). 

Stay tuned to TrekNews.net for all the latest news on Star Trek: Prodigy , Star Trek: Starfleet Academy , Star Trek: Discovery , Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , Star Trek: Lower Decks , and more.

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Kyle Hadyniak has been a lifelong Star Trek fan, and isn't ashamed to admit that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek: Nemesis are his favorite Star Trek movies. You can follow Kyle on Twitter @khady93 .

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Preview: Star Trek: Discovery 509 “Lagrange Point” With the finale of Star Trek: Discovery just over a week away, today we have a clip...

New photos + a sneak peek at Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode 8 “Labyrinths”

Preview: Star Trek: Discovery 508 “Labyrinths” As we near the end of Star Trek: Discovery’s fifth and final season, the 8th episode “Labyrinths” will...

Preview: Star Trek: Discovery 510 “Life, Itself” Star Trek: Discovery concludes this Thursday with the series finale “Life, Itself”. Today we have a clip...

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 and complete series box set coming to Blu-ray and DVD The final season of Star Trek: Discovery, which ended...