SciFi Weekend: Star Trek Discovery Season 2; Two Star Trek Movies Planned; The Return of Westworld, A Handmaid’s Tale, and The 100

Star Trek: Discovery season two has gone into production and CBS has released the video below with some glimpses, including brief views involving the Enterprise. Unfortunately we do not see very much. There is a picture of the uniforms, with some updating.  There is no good view of the bridge and only a quick glimpse of Anson Mount as Captain Pike.

It also appears that Paramount is proceeding with two Star Trek movies. One would be the Quentin Tarantino movie, rumored to be based upon either an episode of the original show or Star Trek The Next Generation.  This would not take place in the Kelvin timeline from the J.J. Abrams’ movies.

The other movie would be a continuation in the Kelvin timeline as a follow up in the J.J. Abrams series. This reportedly would involve Captain Kirk meeting his father, again played by Chris Helmsworth. As George Kirk was killed in the first Abrams movie, it is not known if this will involve time travel. I’m hoping that Kirk prevents Nero from killing his father, and then repairs the entire time line. The movie will be directed by S.J. Clarkson, making her the first female to direct a Star Trek movie. Clarkson has worked on television series including Orange Is The New Black, Dexter, and Jessica Jones.

I only have time for an abbreviated version of SciFi Weekend today, as will likely also be the case next week. Three genre series did return which I will briefly note, and will probably discuss all three series in more depth later in the season.

Westworld is back with the story again being told in more than one timeline.  Much of the episode appears to be taking place just after the events of the first season finale. As would be expected in the season premiere, there were many questions raised. I’ll just mention a few thoughts today, but there was far more worthy of discussion in the episode.

It appears that Delos has been harvesting the DNA of its guests, along with all the other information they record. It looks like something Mark Zuckerberg might have come up with. Are clones next? As opposed to the movie, in which the robots were more clearly the villains, the first season often had us rooting for the hosts. I wonder if, even after all the killings, the show will remain ambiguous as to who to support.

In a scene taking place two weeks after the massacre of the first season finale, we see dead hosts floating in water and Bernard saying, “I killed them. All of them.” He did not definitely say who he killed. He is most likely referring to the dead hosts, but could he be talking about the guests? Presumably much of the season will deal with how we get to that scene.

Maeve is still searching for her daughter. I can’t help but wonder what will happen, assuming she does find her. Will the daughter know her, or see any connection between them? As Maeve has not played that role for a year, will the daughter have a new mother?

Hulu released two episodes of A Handmaid’s Tale. The first deals with Offred, showing what happened after she was taken away in the truck in the first season finale. Her story progressed from there, with the eventual revelation of where she is  playing well into the changes in society.

The second episode also spent a lot of time with Alexis Bledel’s character Emily. This included both her backstory as a college professor and her life after being exiled to the Colonies. They are now beyond the book, but the first two episodes showed that this world provides a lot of material to continue with. However, considering how bleak it is, I hope that rather than continuing this for several seasons, they offer some hopeful signs for change in this society.

The fifth season premiere of The 100 primarily dealt with how Clarke spent the last six years, leading up to the point seen in last year’s season finale. We saw a little with the group in space. The most surprising portion came at the end with Octavia in the bunker. That story will be told in greater detail next week. TV Guide did speak with Jason Rothenberg about this:

“Obviously we saved that for the end as a big holy sh– moment to tee you up for the story we’re telling in [Episode 2],” Rothenberg tells TV Guide. “It was really important to me for that environment, for that fighting pit that we see in [the premiere], to feel believable and to tell a story in the next episode that explains how we got there.”

Next week’s episode will be focused entirely on how Octavia went from winning the Conclave into becoming this Mad Max monarch, and while Rothenberg doesn’t want to give too much away about that journey, he does reveal that Octavia’s intentions were never anything but to keep her people safe. “We realize ultimately that Octavia needs to find ways to keep her kru, her new people, Wonkru, together. And she kind of forges this clan in her own image, in a sense,” he teases.

What is The 100 if not a tale of people doing terrible things with good intentions? But as the show has reminded us time and time again, good intentions don’t always mean these actions are just. And after six years of peace, discovering this culture of violence that Octavia has created in the bunker will come as a huge shock to Bellamy and Clarke when they eventually reunite.

“It will be mind-blowing, to say the least, because it’s not at all what they expect. Bellamy will definitely understand some of it based on his knowledge of his sister and what they read together as children and things of that nature,” the showrunner says. “But certainly, they have no idea what to expect when they open that bunker. They don’t know if anybody is going to be alive, let alone strong. And so it could have felt like opening the doors of a concentration camp where everyone was wasting away and barely hanging out, but instead there’s a powerful fighting force down there.”

While Bellamy and Clarke will be understandably horrified to learn of the fighting pit, the fierce warriors Octavia has cultivated in the bunker will prove to be quite useful now that there’s another war on-hand. But whether that justifies what Octavia did to create these warriors will be the question that plagues both Octavia’s friends and family, but also the fans this season.

“It’s fairly remarkable that she was able to keep that, to create that, to forge that steel in the fire of what they lived through down there,” Rothenberg says. “So ultimately that’s all due to Octavia. And the question for people will be, ‘Do we like her or do we hate her or fear her?’ But I think ultimately, we have to respect that she did it, she made it happen. And they will too.”