News Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Teases Its “Yesterday’s Enterprise” Homage With Two Uhuras I haven’t moved beyond making an “In this economy?” joke, but I’m taking things one day at a time By Matthew Byrd | Published on September 21, 2026 Photo Credit: John Medland/Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Photo Credit: John Medland/Paramount+ Earlier this year when the Strange New Worlds team shared Season 4’s episode titles, one stood out from the pack even out of context: the finale, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise.” At the very least, the title was a wink at the legendary TNG episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” However, fans speculated that the episode’s title and climactic placement could indeed hint at a similar time travel story that offers a glimpse into the TOS “future” of the series. After all, we’re creeping up to that point in the chronology. Well, we finally have the first trailer, photos, and description for that episode, and they all seemingly confirm what fans speculated: this episode will offer at least a sideways glimpse into the future of the Enterprise. Here’s what the official description has to say: A time ripple damages the Enterprise, forcing young and old Uhura to cooperate and fix the timeline. Ok, that’s certainly a fascinating tease. And while the episode’s trailer doesn’t offer too many more details, the photos the Strange New Worlds team uploaded do seem to hint at what is to come. Of particular note are Uhura’s hairstyle (!), the crew’s uniforms, and some shots of what appears to be Kirk in command. Together, they suggest that this time ripple is going to offer some kind of glimpse into the very near future of the Enterprise that will specifically see two Uhuras work together to solve whatever caused this little chronological kerfuffle. The trailer hints that the two could be communicating across the time distortion, though that’s simply speculation. However, the situation doesn’t seem quite so simple as the crew (or at least Uhura) interacting with their TOS counterparts. Not only are some of the major legacy characters still missing (though they’re confirmed to debut by the end of Strange New Worlds’ next season), but some Strange New Worlds characters that are not in TOS still seem to be in the mix. At a glance, there is the implication that we’re not just witnessing some kind of time jump but possibly a blend of timelines. That would stay true to both the premise of “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” which played with a kind of “What If?” alternate timeline, and Henry Alonso Myers’ previous claim to try to do something different with this time travel episode compared to previous Star Trek time travel adventures. The mechanics are mysterious (and will likely remain so until the episode airs this week), but the potential for something fun is certainly there. Perhaps more importantly, this episode may offer a glimpse into the broader narrative direction of Strange New Worlds moving forward. There has been some debate over the series’ reliance on gimmick episodes as well as some vague suggestions that the series’ final season will focus slightly more on it seemingly inevitable narrative destination (as well as some of the questions that need to be answered along the way). As such, it will be fascinating to see if what transpires in this episode is indeed more of a one-off curiosity or something that will, at least in some ways, pave the way for what comes next.[end-mark] The post <i>Star Trek: Strange New Worlds</i> Teases Its “Yesterday’s Enterprise” Homage With Two Uhuras appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Outlander: Blood of My Blood The Outlander: Blood of My Blood Season 2 Premiere Separates Fact from Fiction Trippy mashup hallucinations and sweet cameos make for a swell “Remembrance Day” in the Outlander prequel. By Natalie Zutter | Published on September 21, 2026 Image: Starz Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Starz Starz’s Outlander prequel Blood of My Blood picks up right where the season one finale left off, with our two couples (and the eventual parents of Jamie and Claire) stranded by time and duty. The romantic drama leans more heavily on the drama in the second season premiere, smashing the metaphorical bridges between Brian and Ellen, and Henry and Julia—dragging the respective women back to where they started, and sending the men into new trials. That said, there’s still time for one desperate clinch before departing to prepare for war. Spoilers for Outlander: Blood of My Blood “Remembrance Day” Fact and fiction are just as intimately intertwined for both couples, who have to maintain cover stories about not being together to ensure their own survival, while simultaneously not letting these stories steal away the truths only they know. Jamie and Claire had their own arcs built on similar survival mechanisms of self-deception, but it’s much more embedded into the prequel series’ DNA. As we remember from the finale, Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) is called back by the fiery crosses to fight in the Jacobite uprising, leaving Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) no choice but to return home with her tail between her legs, hiding the secret of their union. As for the couple whose fate was more uncertain, we get our answer: Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) tries to send him, Julia Beauchamp (Hermione Corfield), and their infant son William through the stones, only for nothing to happen. At least, not until Arch Bug descends upon them with a knife… Stone-Crossed Lovers Image: Starz The face acting from Corfield when Julia looks back to see that Henry has passed through the stones—! Gutting, and in the first five minutes. And then she has to instantly hide her grief and pretend that “the Grant bladier” was kidnapping her, and oh how grateful she is to be towed back to Castle Leathers like an escaped cow. The only relief is that she has enough allies within the household by now to catch her, as she’s on the verge of emotional collapse. For all she knows, she will never see Henry again; and now she has to fend off Lord Lovat’s advances by simpering and appealing to his ego about how he should lead his men into battle. I’m a sucker for every time someone in the Outlander verse gets to reveal that they’re a time traveler, so Julia letting Davina in on the secret was so satisfying. Even if Davina is still skeptical enough to believe it’s more faeries or witchcraft, someone knowing the truth may make it that much easier for her to devise another escape once the opportunity presents itself. Remembrance Day Image: Starz But poor Henry! He’s returned to Inverness in 1924 (they disappeared in 1923), but so feverish from his stab wound that he gets sent to an asylum. There, the doctor is far too eager to try out this newfangled electroconvulsive therapy on the poor man; instead of clarifying his muddled memories, it distorts everything across the two timelines. The resulting mashup hallucinations are the premiere’s other high point: stunningly shot, disturbingly layered, each one further blurring Henry’s sense of logic or order. It really seems as if the ECT will have scrambled his sense of reality to the point where I don’t know what it would take to anchor him back in the present or remind him how to return to the past. In one of the warped memories, he tells Julia, “I see you, and I hear Claire laughing, and that’s what brings me back home.” But how tragic for Henry to be in the same time as little Claire, but unable to remember the significance of her birthday nor his own surname. He thinks he’s Henry Grant, so of course no one will know to track down Uncle Lamb, at least not immediately. Love Versus Loyalty Image: Starz Honestly, the Brian/Ellen conflict was less compelling for me in comparison to Julia/Henry. I think because the leadup in the premiere is slower, as both clans Fraser and MacKenzie regroup after the disastrous wedding with the Grants, including Malcolm’s unfortunate death (by Brian’s hand, though so far only Ellen knows) and the Jacobite rebellion. Both Ellen and Brian try to do the right thing for familial duty by coming home and aligning themselves with siblings or parents, only to get (in her case) slapped by Collum and (in his case) sneered at by Lord Lovat. Is it any surprise that neither is all that interested in continuing to support their clans’ respective interests? Crossing Over Image: Starz Who else cheered at the appearance of Reverend Wakefield? He and Mrs. Graham were integral to sending Claire back through the stones in the Outlander pilot… plus providing Frank with historical research into both Black Jack Randall and one James Fraser… plus being Roger MacKenzie’s adoptive father and influencing him and Brianna Randall to go into the past. And now we find out that before all that, they were potentially helping reunite Henry and Julia! Of course, it’s only the premiere, so the Reverend is a bit taken aback by Henry’s mad ramblings about the past and seems to believe the only comfort he can offer is prayer. But there’s Mrs. Graham, who we know to be part of the women who dance at the sun-feast at Craigh na Dun. So the premiere ends on a little bit of hope, as she offers Henry the lifeline he needs—someone who believes him. Scattered Gemstones Image: Starz Get a look at the new opening credits! Masquerades and salt circles, war bombing giving way to surging Highlanders—more excellent juxtapositions and plenty of exciting hints for the season. So was Geillis right about the necessity of a blood sacrifice for traveling through the stones? Henry wasn’t able to get through until he got stabbed, and I don’t believe there was a gemstone hidden on that knife, though I’d have to look again. (Just, y’know, you didn’t have to kill the guy, Geillis, just wring out a few drops.) “My heart skips to think of you as a soldier”—Julia’s deadpan delivery to Simon made me crack up, even as I know she was thinking of Henry. There wasn’t time in the finale for Julia and Henry to accept that they may never see Claire again, but Julia remaining stuck in 1715 makes for a wrenching moment when she sobs to Davina that “part of my heart is missing, and I’m afraid it always will be.” Maura/Dougal got only a few minutes of screen time but I’m excited to see how the chaos surrounding their families might make them grow closer. (Current AO3 fic count: 1.) For anyone else who might’ve side-eyed the horoscopes conversation as anachronistic for Julia, apparently the 1910s-1920s really did see a rise in zodiac popularity. Go figure! And no wonder I feel such affinity for Claire, she and I are both Libras. What did you think of the Outlander: Blood of My Blood premiere, and what do you want to see happen in season two?[end-mark] The post The <i>Outlander: Blood of My Blood</i> Season 2 Premiere Separates Fact from Fiction appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Lanterns Lanterns Turns Toward a Mystery in “Bad Optics” And now we’ve got ourselves a murder to solve… By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on September 21, 2026 Image: John Johnson/HBO Max Comment 0 Share New Share Image: John Johnson/HBO Max Well I’ve gotta brand new status quo for you, you’ve got a brand new ring… Recap Image: John Johnson/HBO Max It’s 2026 and John Stewart’s life looks a whole lot different. He’s become an architect, and now works with brother Marcus (Jared Grimes) to build panic rooms. After the events in Metropolis—namely the events of Superman—John and his brother are seeking out government contracts to use money that would normally be spent on weapons in order to scale the concept up into shelters for Midway City. The city council is on board, but John needs to convince the military to get the money, which he’s confident he can do. He gets a call from his mother, who he now refers to solely as Bernadette; they clearly do not speak often, and she wants John to reconnect with Hal Jordan, who is newly released from prison after the Rushville incident.  Apparently, Bernadette has been talking to Hal regularly during his stay, saying that he was lonely and needed someone to confide in. She believes he’s grown and tells John that he wants to apologize, asking him to go see the man in Rushville. John heads to the cafe there to meet Hal, who is totally uninterested in apologizing, in fact. He insists that they’re both to blame to what happened, and that he took that fall for it—John is also a killer, and Hal thinks he’s angry at his mother because she’s unbothered by that. John gets angry enough to clock Hal, breaking his nose and stalking out. Before he gets to the door, Hal warns him not to tell anyone that he was there. The next call John gets is from Sheriff Kane: Hal is dead. They find him frozen in the football field bleachers and his (depowered) ring is nowhere to be found. Kerry tells John that Hal started writing her from prison once her relationship with Billy imploded, then moved to the town on his release and tried to make amends with the people still living there, asking to mow lawns, run errands, and the like. Everyone hated him and refused to give him the time of day. Kerry gives John the keys to the place Hal was renting—there’s no more motel as no one rebuilt—and John finds Earl there in a tray next to Hal’s bed. (He also finds a shotgun setup to shot anyone who comes through the front door.) He gets a call from Marcus, who wants to know if they’re still on for their meeting with the colonel, and John assures him that they are. Earl hears of Hal’s demise and looks visibly depressed. John and Kerry have coffee at the cafe the next morning and the woman who was working there the night that Hal died doesn’t reveal that she saw John there, or that he punched Hal in the face. The coroner agrees to delay the announcement of Hal’s death as a favor to Kerry, hating both Hal and John, stating that his death was a cut and dry shot to the head and assuming that the person who broke is nose did it. There’s no sign that Hal fought back. Amongst Hal’s possessions, there’s a key to a storage unit, and when they investigate, they find large cube that requires Hal’s voice print to unlock. They try to use a recording from Kerry’s phone, but it doesn’t work, and the cube informs them that they have received their only warning and must use a live voice next time. As they leave the storage facility, John insists to Kerry that Hal get a proper burial, which she agrees to after telling John to come have dinner with her and Noah. Image: John Johnson/HBO Max There’s a signal in the center of Rushville just like the Batman one—the new Green Lantern, Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), had it installed as a sort of mea culpa for the incident. John turns it on, which the townspeople take exception to, including Billy. John beats up the entire group when they attack and flees, heading to Kerry’s for dinner. He enjoys talking to Noah (Shea Pritchard), who apparently has big ambitions, wanting to be a senator and maybe even president one day. Kerry gets the call about John beating up the townspeople and sends Noah to his room, then puts John in jail, claiming that she’s keeping him safe from everyone. John calls Marcus for bail money, and the next morning, Guy Gardner is sitting outside his cell. Guy insists that he can’t help with the case because it’s bad optics, but that’s not why John called: He wants Hal buried in his uniform and ring. Guy points out that’s a military convention, but John says Hal was the first Earth lantern and has earned it. Hal’s ring was decommissioned—Guy has a brand new one, which means the old ring is locked up on Oa and Guy would have to break in and retrieve it. John suggests Guy is scared to get in trouble and, when that doesn’t work, reminds Guy that he’s owed: The only reason he’s got this job is because John passed on it. Guy lets him know that Sinestro broke out of the Guardians’ prison, and Hal would have been the prime suspect on that were he not dead. John’s bail is posted and he immediately has to call Aaron for help with their father, who is getting kicked out of his senior living facility for brandishing a gun and shooting out his window. Aaron believes that John still owes him and isn’t interested in helping, but John reminds his brother that he’s bankrolled his entire music career and has done his part to make amends in their relationship, commanding him to pick up their father now. When he arrives back at Hal’s rented place, the server Maggie (Hannah Christine Shetler) from the cafe is there, and she wants “reparations” for her silence and the trauma she suffered when Rushville was decimated. A very specific number that she believes Hal and John cost her. He has until tomorrow to pay up or she tells the sheriff what she saw. Image: John Johnson/HBO Max Noah shows up at John’s door with a suit for him to wear to the funeral. Everyone local is asking the kid where he’s going to college, and John reminds him to care only about the bar he sets for himself, admitting that he has trouble doing that himself and hopes to steer the kid better than he was. Noah isn’t coming to the service given his mom not talking to him about her relationship wth Hal and his dad hates the guy. At the church, Guy is present and Hal is in his uniform and ring. He insists that they’re square now and leaves. John gets a call from Marcus and lets him know that he’s not back, but that he can do their meeting over the phone. John meets  Hal’s old partner Carol Ferris (Amie Mackenzie), who is at the funeral because Kerry got in touch. She gives John a eulogy to deliver, one that Hal wrote for himself because she doesn’t think she can pull it off. She notes that Hal probably liked John a lot and never said so. John delivers the eulogy, which starts out sort of silly and ends very somber. He tells Kerry that he’s thinking of sticking around for a few days to tie up loose ends. That night, John starts digging up Hal’s grave and gets the call from Marcus, who puts on the colonel. The call seems to drop, only for John to learn that the colonel actually hung up on him and walked out. He promises that he’ll fix it, but Marcus points out that John has been stuck in Rushville since what happened there ten years ago. He hopes it doesn’t kill his brother. Once the grave is exhumed, John takes Hal’s ring and calls up the hologram version of him. He looks into the grave, sees his own dead body, and curses.  Commentary Image: John Johnson/HBO Max Time jumps that establish a new status quo are always fun, especially when they manage to pack in believable changes that you don’t see coming. There were several in here that I found enjoyable, starting with Bernadette becoming Hal Jordan’s weekly prison call?? So when you said “don’t tell me you fell for that man,” and mentioned to John how charming he was, you had already fallen for that, huh Bernadette. And you hid the regular correspondence for a decade. I get that John isn’t exactly talking to you enough to notice it, but you are literally penpals with the guy on the down low. More to the point, I have to assume that she started that correspondence because why would Hal do it? There’s no indication that he was reaching out to John in all that time, but we can see that the fallout between John and his parents was nuclear. Mom now gets referred to by her first name and dad is on a fast deterioration slope. The specifics aren’t given, but there are a lot of potential possibilities here for Bernadette in this choice, and I’m guessing a little bit of all of them created the situation: Her disappointment with John not following through on his destiny; her upset at John Sr. for not being “strong enough” to get the ring possibly translating into an irrational belief that he wasn’t “strong enough” to resist his own mental decline; Hal being the person who was strong enough and also the last person who had a connection to John before she lost him; Hal being far more willing to deal in moral grayness than John ever was. On the other side, we’ve got John, who has broken some patterns, but certainly not all of them. You can’t blame him for shattering the ties with his parents after what happened in Rushville, particularly if what Hal suggested about Bernadette’s reaction was true—namely that she didn’t see the problem with John having to kill Zoe in order to end the conflict and get the ring, despite the fact that it utterly broke his heart. The two of them calling while John was in the middle of that fight and having absolutely no care for his personal well being couldn’t have helped either.  There’s a very specific dynamic that played out there, namely the kind where a child who has worked so hard all their life to be what their family requires of them finally hits the most important realization of all: That their accomplishments will never be enough to secure the love and support and safety they are owed. This show is all about what we owe to the people in our lives, in fact—in this episode alone, more than one character is talking about what they owed and from whom and why. There’s a constant scale in need of balancing, and John only has a decade of experience in his life finally demanding what he’s owed from others. It’s hard for him, as we can see. He struggles with what he owes to his parents, not cutting them off completely, but limiting his contact to looking after their base needs. He is finally at a breaking point with eldest brother Aaron, who clearly took John’s guilt and milked that for all it was worth, and now needs to pull some of his own weight again. John says that his choice not to take the ring led to a reconnection with his family at the start of the episode, but what he really means is a reconnection with Marcus. That is the only relationship in John’s family that seems to run in both directions, with Marcus actively and honestly worrying for John and asking about how he’s really doing. When Marcus tells John that he hopes this tying up of loose ends doesn’t kill him, it’s clear that he means it, not just for the business but because he’s worried. Marcus, at present, is the only person who tells John that he loves him and the only person John returns that sentiment to with warmth rather than obligation. That relationship is his lifeline, ostensibly the only thing keeping him afloat. Because despite how well John has bounced back from his entire upbringing and first decade plus of adulthood being a sham, the shape of this new life is… telling. John is an architect, but what he builds are panic rooms: places for rich people to hold out against home invasion and anything else that scares them. And he clearly gets a certain measure of satisfaction from that act due to his trauma from Rushville—he keeps repeating that he helps people feel safe. A goal that he always had, arguably, but one that he thought he’d be fulfilling differently. Now he and his brother are asking to build state of the art emergency shelters for Midway City, a desire to scale up and help more people using government funds, but it doesn’t seem like John’s heart is in it. It’s hard to be someone who wants to do tangible good, but can only make it happen by kowtowing to the proper authorities. Outside of this, we’re given no indication that John has been doing anything else in his life—no friends, no partner, no children, no outward community. He resides in a Hannibal-esque house that he likely designed himself, and it’s beautifully appointed while looking barely lived in. It is, in effect, his own version of Hal’s empty mansion. Better made, sure, suited to his tastes, absolutely. But in the end, it’s just another empty house. Image: John Johnson/HBO Max Then we’ve got Hal, who got out of jail and promptly tried to make amends in a town where no one was interested, but the attempts sounded spectacularly humble. Hearing about it from Kerry visibly affects John, the same way that hearing from Carol that Hal probably liked him seems to momentarily lift 35 years of trauma from his face. Hal and John are too similar, again—they both yearn for praise from people who are unwilling to give it. This is why that meeting in the cafe goes wrong; though he told Bernadette he meant to apologize, it’s clear that Hal wanted John to come back so they could settle whatever is happening in Rushville. Any apology he might have considered (if he considered it at all) was coming later, after the work. It’s always after the work. That’s why it’s too late. The key to this discrepancy is how Hal treats John like a partner when John wants nurturing and care from him. Don’t get me wrong, Hal’s also an asshole, and very purposefully so… but as Carol said, he likes John. And he treats him as a contemporary in that meeting at the cafe: why should I apologize, we both know what happened and we’ve still got work to do, let’s move on. But John is less healed than he’s trying to be. He wanted candor and got the bravado end of the stick, and he was rightly tired of it. Hal only gets the chance to warn him about hiding his return. It’s still sort of absurd to me narratively that not a single person holds Zoe accountable for what happened? While it’s easier to direct blame and anger onto living parties, I just find it hard to believe that not a single person in that town would argue the point. Groups of people generally don’t believe things unilaterally all together, even in the wake of horrifying events. We’re messy that way. But then, there could be other forces at work in that: Noah’s desire to get into politics and maybe become president one day doesn’t sound like a load of red flags at all, particularly not after the advice his grandmother gave him before her death. We’re being directed to wonder whether Sinestro killed Hal, of course. Which is hilarious mostly due to cause of death—no way Sinestro uses a nine millimeter and executes him at point blank range, and no way Hal would take that without a fight. Again, it’s not messy enough. Certainly not for those two. The eulogy is heartbreaking for the fact that you can imagine a much younger Hal drunkly typing the thing out (on a typewriter, no less), starting from a place of thinking it’s funny and trying to be funny, and finally getting to the point where he realizes that he’s gonna die someday. And trying to figure out how he feels about himself in light of that. It ends on the words “I hope I mattered,” effectively the same sentiment that leads to how viciously he protected his wielding of the ring down the line. But the whole point of this exercise is that John Stewart tricked Guy Gardner into giving him access to Hal’s hologram for the purposes of solving the case. Now we’re getting somewhere—or we will next week. The Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum (or, Bits and Asides) Image: John Johnson/HBO Max Midway City is a DC midwest city in Michigan, though if memory serves, it was originally in Illinois. Though John Stewart canonically heralds from Detroit, DC prefers to have their own big cities, which causes a great deal of confusion when trying to figure out how anything works. (Is it weird that Metropolis and Gotham and Bludhaven exist in the same tristate area as New York City? Extremely. Why bother having real cities if you need a bunch of fake ones too.) John rolling his eyes a little at Hal’s shotgun setup, but proceeding to use the setup and the gun several times anyhow. Earl hearing Hal is dead from John’s phone call destroyed me. Also Hal keeping him in a tray right by his bed since he doesn’t have his greenhouse anymore? Stop that. Stop it right now. The bird on the keychain for the storage unit as a signal to John? Hal, that’s adorable. Yet again, we learn more about the man through what he does than any of the bullshit he says. That cube has a sense of humor, allowing the entire buttercup message to play before letting them know that it won’t take recordings. Let’s embarrass the man even in death—he sure deserves it. Put a Green Lantern signal in the center of town and it still takes Guy Gardner half a day to make it over? For a guy who cares so much about branding and optics, he sure has a poor grasp of how timing looks. (Hal telling Guy to go climb a rope at their first meeting, and John immediately running with that joke—they are literally tag-teaming Guy while one of them is dead. I love them.) And yet again with the HP references, this time from Guy about the space prison. It’s more ugly for happening twice. Knock it off. Carol Ferris is Hal’s primary love interest in comics, and there are a lot of things about her appearance here that I love, including that Kerry called her for the funeral without question. (John somehow knows of her, too? Please explain.) I also love that while it didn’t work out between them, they clearly maintained some sort of friendship, and that she’s kept that eulogy all those years, which possibly says more about their relationship than anything else.[end-mark] The post <i>Lanterns</i> Turns Toward a Mystery in “Bad Optics” appeared first on Reactor.

Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: Crusade’s “The Long Road” A mining colony is menaced by a fire-breathing dragon… By Sarah, Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on September 21, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 1 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “The Long Road”Written by J. Michael StaczynskiDirected by Michael VejarProduction number 107Original air date: June 16, 1999 It was the dawn of the third age… We open on Regula IV, where a couple of miners are being menaced by a large gold dragon. They call in reinforcements, in the form of the EAS Medusa. Their ground troops are menaced by the same dragon. On Excalibur, Gideon can’t sleep, so he’s shooting some hoops in the unconvincingly large gym. (Seriously, the space behind Gideon is way more than you need for a basketball court. Also it’s empty, including no other hoop.) Matheson informs him that the Medusa has asked for help. Regula IV is a human colony of back-to-basics types who converted their ships to buildings and live an agrarian lifestyle. But there’s also a mineral on the planet that has antiviral properties that might be able to help with the Drakh plague. Gideon is confused by the report of a giant dragon that is messing up mining operations. Also there has been other sabotage. All on the prank level, and nobody’s been hurt. Gideon and Galen meet with Captain Daniels and Lieutenant Meyers on the Medusa. Galen recommends that just he and Gideon go down and check the place out, but to do so discreetly, as if they’re part of the colony. They dress in native clothes and go to a bar and wait. Gideon tries to pay for a drink with a local coin, but it turns out that he could buy the entire bar with that coin. Sure enough, after closing, a gang goes after them—but then a gentleman named Alwyn shows up, making an incredibly dramatic entrance, and says that Gideon and Galen work for him, and the overpriced coin was a symbol to let him know that they’d arrived. He also makes some comments about how they’re not his brightest employees. Once the gang leaves, Galen greets Alwyn in a friendly manner. It’s clear that he’s also a techno-mage, and he and Galen have known each other for years. Galen suspected it was him from the golden dragon, which is something he used to do to entertain children. Alwyn didn’t bugger off with the rest of the techno-mages—instead, he settled on Regula. Alwyn is hoping that Galen’s presence means that the techno-mages have come home, but no such luck. Galen says he left prematurely, and Alwyn translates that to them booting him out, which Galen is in no position to deny. Gideon asks why he’s engaging in a campaign of terror when this mining operation can save lives on Earth. Alwyn angrily takes them to the mining site, which is destroying the fresh-water supply, and which also displaced several colonists. That is the campaign of terror. The spot with the highest concentration of the mineral is very close to the settlement, and Daniels has refused to mine elsewhere for that reason. Alwyn is trying to make it more trouble than it’s worth for them to continue. He tried reasoning with Daniels and the rest, but it didn’t work, and his pranks are only a delaying action. They’ll come with ships, and Alwyn makes it clear that he will defend this planet with all the power at his disposal—which is considerable. Gideon checks in with Excalibur, and Alwyn and Galen catch up. We find out that Elric, the one techno-mage we’d met before, was Galen’s mentor. Elric took Galen in after Galen’s father died. Elric has also apparently died. He and Alwyn apparently didn’t agree on anything, but they respected each other, and Alwyn is sorry he’s gone. Alwyn also offers Galen a place on Regula, but Galen politely declines, saying he goes his own way now. A group of colonists ambush the mine and take the workers hostage. If the EarthForce ships won’t leave, the hostages will be killed. Daniels sends Meyers down to lead the rescue team. They encounter a dragon, but Meyers knows it’s a hologram and they fly through it. They go to the inn and take prisoners, asking them where the hostages are being held. Alwyn then arrives and sends holographic demons after the troops, but these are able to become solid. He and Galen calmly banter while the demons make mincemeat of the Medusa troops. Then Alwyn tells the colonists that they should release the prisoners—and the hostages. But they refuse. “We don’t have to be reasonable. Not as long as we have him.” Their discussion is cut short by the bartender’s daughter, Claire, who collapses. Alwyn determines that she’s suffering an overdose. The mining operations have kicked up dust into the air, and now they’re breathing a much more concentrated dose of the mineral. Claire and her father live closest to the mine, and she goes outside more, so she’s gotten it first, but this will be everyone soon enough. Gideon offers to take her up to Excalibur. Chambers can do a full workup and that’ll be proof that the mining operation is harming the colonists. Alwyn and the colonists are skeptical that this will be enough to convince Daniels, but they give it a shot. Meantime, Alwyn goes to the inn and lectures the colonists, saying he’s ashamed of them. Taking hostages is the choice of a coward or a criminal, and makes them no better than the people they’re trying to get rid of. They’re going down a road that will destroy them and their way of life. So Alwyn’s going to handle things his own way. Gideon informs Daniels that the mining operations are harming the colonists, but Daniels isn’t interested in listening to reason, especially given that the colonists still have hostages. Then Galen contacts Gideon. Gideon interrupts Daniels to talk to Galen, a conversation that isn’t on screen, and then Gideon informs Daniels that Alwyn is going to use the power of the mine to manipulate enough energy to destroy Medusa. With no choice otherwise, Gideon fires Excalibur’s big-ass weapon on the mine, destroying it utterly, and seemingly killing Alwyn. Gideon delivers a healthy Claire back to the colony. The colonists agree to let the hostages go and help Daniels find another mining site. They want to honor Alwyn’s memory by acting in a manner he would have approved of, as they hate that the last thing Alwyn said to them was that he was ashamed of them. Alwyn, of course, is still alive, but he needed to fake his own death, a decision he made when they said that they didn’t need to be reasonable as long as he was around. That meant he needed to not be around anymore. Alwyn and Galen say their goodbyes. Credit: Warner Bros. Television I’m not subtle, I’m not pretty. Gideon’s job in this episode is to be the grownup, and he actually does quite well with it. He pays attention, he listens, and he has sensible solutions. The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Matheson appears just long enough to banter with Gideon about basketball and provide the mission of the week. Never contradict a techno-mage when he’s saving your life—again. Alwyn and Galen’s relationship isn’t the father-son one you’d expect, given the casting, but it’s obvious that they respect each other and Alwyn thinks that Galen has promise. Welcome aboard. Marshall Teague shows up as Daniels, his third role in the franchise, having had the recurring role of Ta’Lon through four seasons of B5 and also guest starred as Drake in B5’s “Infection.” Scott Paetty plays Meyers, Alison Lohman plays Claire, and Mik Scriba plays the bartender. But the big guest is the late great Edward Woodward, father of Peter, as Alwyn. Trivial matters. Elric was seen in B5’s “The Geometry of Shadows,” where the concept of techno-mages was introduced. He was played by the late great Michael Ansara, which is why Galen makes a comment about his voice (Ansara had one of the best voices ever). Elric died prior to this episode, which surprised me, as Ansara was still alive at this point; he didn’t die until 2013, though at this stage in his career he wasn’t doing much acting beyond voiceover work as Mr. Freeze for various Bat-productions. Galen’s backstory with both Elric and Alwyn is fleshed out in the 2001 novel trilogy The Passing of the Techno-Mages by Jeanne Cavelos. The armor worn by the Medusa troops is the same armor used in Starship Troopers and also used by Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy, Firefly, and Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda at various points. This was the seventh episode filmed, but was placed second both by TNT and the chronological order published in Across Time and Space: The Chronologies of Babylon 5 by Terry Jones & I. Marc Carlson. I have also decided that the latter is the order I will be doing this rewatch in. Production order doesn’t work on any level from a story perspective, and the SyFy airing order has significant timeline issues. I seriously considered the TNT order because that’s what people would have on DVD and streaming services, but ultimately I think this rewatch is best served going in the official chronological order. The echoes of all of our conversations. “You know something about this, don’t you?” “Perhaps. And if I’m right, it’s definitely something you should see.” “And if you’re wrong?” “Well, that hardly seems likely, does it?” —Gideon and Galen. The name of the place is Babylon 5. “If they come with guns, they will leave in boxes.” First of all, I want to say how absolutely hilarious it is that I’ve watched two episodes of a space opera show in the last week that had a giant dragon in it—there was “Once La’an a Time” on last week’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and this. Anyhow, this is an excellent episode. It really only feels like the Medusa asked Excalibur for help because the show’s about their ship, but I don’t much care because the episode works beautifully. A lot of that is on the back of the guest casting, and while it would seem obvious to cast Peter Woodward’s Dad as a fellow techno-mage, it’s also true that Edward Woodward is brilliant. His Alwyn is bombastic, compassionate, opinionated, and heroic. I particularly like the way he played it when the colonist said that they didn’t have to be reasonable because they had Alwyn. The look on Woodward’s face perfectly conveyed what Alwyn himself would state outright later on: that the people of Regula had taken the wrong lessons from his presence. Honestly, the whole episode would be worth it just to have Woodward père et fils bantering together, but it’s good for other reasons, too. One of those is Matthew Gideon, who comes across so much better here than he did in as a clichéd tough guy in “War Zone.” He’s a good mediator between the people on Regula, including Alwyn, and the Medusa crew. The back-and-forth between the Medusa and the colonists is escalating to the point where there’s going to be a body count, and it’s to Alwyn’s credit (and to Galen’s and Gideon’s, since they obviously know exactly what Alwyn is doing) that he finds a way to do a more controlled escalation that will solve all the problems. The lack of any of the rest of the crew is disappointing, but also the double-act of Gary Cole and Peter Woodward, as well as that of the father-son duo, make it work. Marshall Teague’s Daniels is a bit too clichéd a hidebound military asshole, but it’s forgivable, and I have to admit to being amused at how well Scott Paetty played Meyers as completely out of his depth when he leads the raiding party to try and fail to get the hostages back. (His attempt to act tough with the prisoners is hilariously awful.) Next week: “Appearances and Other Deceits.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: <i>Crusade</i>’s “The Long Road” appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays Star Trek Narrative High Jinks Have Always Been a Part of Star Trek The shenanigans will continue until morale… does something By Val Nolan | Published on September 21, 2026 Image: Jan Thijs/Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Jan Thijs/Paramount+ Alright class, let’s settle down and open one of the improbably high stacks of single document PADDs on your desk that tell time travelers from the 1990s how busy you are. Please note that spoiler warnings are in effect for this session concerning Strange New Worlds season four because today we’re going to talk about how that series reflects Star Trek’s long history of boldly going where no one expected… at least in terms of storytelling choices. In particular, the latest batch of SNW episodes is dense with eye-catching divergences from classic Trek space opera into the realms of dinosaurs, horror stories, obvious riffs on The Hangover and Casablanca, as well an episode where the crew is seemingly transformed into Mup… aherm, puppets! Love them or loath them (all art is, after all, subjective; #IDIC), these installments have become an increasingly integral part of the Strange New Worlds experience. Much online discourse refers to these episodes as “big swings,” but the use of that varies from the appreciative to the pejorative. So, instead, let’s initially think of them as “narrative experiments” identifiable by atypical aesthetics, unusual settings, novel casting choices, or a willingness to break with audience expectations. Modern examples often have a formal component (they can be presented in black and white, say, or as a musical). They can feature the regular cast playing wildly different characters (such as last year’s “A Space Adventure Hour”) or they can be a flirtation—even a full-on love affair—with stylistic tropes beyond Star Trek’s typical remit (as in the soap opera pastiche of “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass”). In all cases they represent an artistic gambit and a genuine risk on the part of the creators. In fact, I think that a willingness to take risks is so crucial to narrative experiments that perhaps we might be better off borrowing a relevant Strange New Worlds-ism from everyone’s favourite Vulcan T’Pring (there, I said it!) and instead call them what they are: narrative high jinks. Image: Jan Thijs/Paramount+ Such deviations from Trek’s tonal median are divisive to say the least, however the La’an and the short of things is that SNW’s many narrative high jinks are the contemporary inheritors of those beloved by ’90s Trek which, in turn, are the descendants of those undertaken by The Original Series (the latter motivated as much by financial decisions as creative ones). For example, SNW’s season one fairytale episode “The Elysian Kingdom” is essentially a glammed-up successor to The Next Generation’s Robin Hood lark “Qpid.” Meanwhile the black-and-white Casablanca homage of “A Case of Chiaroscuro” is equally suggestive of Voyager’s “The Killing Game” and “Bride of Chaotica!”, both of which are themselves hugely referential narrative experiments in the franchise’s history. That same SNW episode also gestures further back to the Nazi planet of TOS’s “Patterns of Force” (an installment banned in Germany until the mid-1990s). And as for “Subspace Rhapsody”? Well, it’s not like Star Trek hasn’t featured singing before, offering a platform for world-class performers such as Nichelle Nichols, Brent Spiner, Avery Brooks, and Robert Picardo, though I concede that an occasional song or two is different from a full Broadway-style production.   Indeed, while the sheer level of technical acumen and effort that has gone into SNW episodes like “Subspace Rhapsody” or “Level Five Transporter Accident” is undeniable, original blend Star Trek high jinks were far less formally experimental than what would follow. Back in the 1960s, they often tended to be an individual writer’s fascination with a specific historical era melded to an expensive production’s desire to save money wherever possible. Hence The Original Series found frequent convoluted reasons for Kirk and company to raid the preexisting wardrobes and standing backlots accumulated during Hollywood’s decades of WWII movies, pulp crime dramas, and sword-and-sandals epics. Such justifications included a human historian imposing Nazism on an alien world, cultural contamination via a book about the Chicago mob, and the incorrigible act of handwaving that is the “Law of Parallel Planetary Development” which allows the Roman Empire to exist on a distant planet. Though, personally, my favourite in terms of conceptional boldness masking obvious cost-cutting is “Spectre of the Gun,” a Western played out on incomplete sets (often just a freestanding wall) which results in a distinct and surreal aesthetic. Image: Paramount Subsequent Trek series developed their own repertoire of rationalisation for high jinks, occasionally toying with structural gimmicks such as TNG’s repetitious time-loop story “Cause and Effect” (an episode I bounce off like Roga Danar off the Enterprise’s shields) and developing a Barclay-esque reliance on malfunctioning holodecks. That technology (gestured towards by SNW in “A Space Adventure Hour”) allowed TNG’s Brent Spiner to play every character in a Western, granted Voyager’s Captain Janeway her own turn at fighting Nazis, and provided the Deep Space Nine cast with the chance to cosplay a James Bond movie (a jink so high that it earned a rap on the knuckles from then Bond rights-holders MGM in the process). Deep Space Nine would subsequently draw on its own internal mythology to deliver probably the greatest of all Star Trek’s narrative experiments (and one of its greatest episodes, period) with “Far Beyond the Stars,” during which Sisko experiences the life of a Black science fiction writer in the 1950s, with the show’s main and supporting cast populating this storyworld-within-the-storyworld as characters only loosely related to their usual roles. All of which is to say that narrative experiments, like a message from progenitors hidden in the show’s DNA, have always been a part of Star Trek’s imaginative fabric.  One useful framework for analysing their appearance and frequency is found in Adam Kotsko’s academic book Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era (2025). In it, Kotsko identifies three creative strategies at work in contemporary Star Trek (and, indeed, as far back as the 90s shows). The first of these is fan service, “which emphasizes continuity above all else and results in giving the faithful more of the same.” The second is an “attempt to maximize artistic freedom through a declaration of novelty or discontinuity.” The third is an “assertion that the new instalment is a necessary moment in the overarching story” and so an exercise in “unexpected fresh world-building.” While all three are present in any given iteration of Trek, it is usually the case that “one strategy will tend to predominate.” In the case of Strange New Worlds, we might say that the series begins as fan service (with a literal fan campaign championing the show after Pike, Spock, and Number One appeared in the second season of Discovery) but has lately chosen to prioritise artistic freedom via its emphasis on creatively overpowering high jinks. Image: Brendan Adam-Zwelling/Paramount+ The words which Kotsko uses to describe this approach are key, in particular, “discontinuity.” For the majority of the riskiest instances of high jinks on Strange New Worlds have manifested as narrative breaks in the characters’ presumably otherwise coherent storylines. The crew busting into song throughout “Subspace Rhapsody,” for instance, is presented as the consequence of a subspace fold, a literal interruption to the fabric of space and time; Pike’s awakening with amnesia in a soap opera existence sees him having supposedly lost two weeks (and a certain amount of visual definition!) to a head injury; while Spock’s dream of the crew as puppets (an episode which, no apologies, I adore on account of its commitment to the bit!) occurs during a period of unconsciousness following an accident which damaged his shuttle. These discontinuities and accompanying moments of confusion are further reflected in elements of fan experience when encountering such ambitious acts of creative freedom within an established franchise with decades of tonal and aesthetic history. Some viewers, it seems, feel like they have <stares off screen> woken up in a different universe entirely! That kind of meta discontinuity is the trade-off for any bold creative risk: there is always the possibility of audience rejection. And though I would maintain that many of SNW’s high jinks episodes could easily be the highlight of a given season, their presentation in largely uninterrupted stretches throughout season four, for example, imperils audience immersion in the existing Trek storyworld. After all, if a series is seemingly entirely discontinuous then continuity itself begins to lose all meaning (or, put another way, if Captain Kirk is dressed as a Tommy Gun-toting mobster every week then what exactly are we watching?). Thus the defining struggle of Strange New Worlds becomes not that between the Federation and the Gorn, or between Pike and a future preordained since TOS (in, fittingly, yet another example of narrative high jinks, AKA the episode where they watch an episode of Star Trek); instead it is the attempt to balance traditional tales of boldly going with striking exercises in artistic freedom. Image: Paramount Can Strange New Worlds ultimately achieve this state of equilibrium? Certainly it did in seasons one and two. Arguably even season three, though here the balance begins to shift. The present run has further weighed things in favour of high jinks to the delight of some and the weariness of others, and so we will have to wait until after the final season to answer our question for definite. Nonetheless what we can now say is that in its desire to emulate and eventually align with the original of the species, Strange New Worlds has taken on board what Kotsko calls TOS’s “experimentation with different genres and settings,” often by “directly imitating well-known science fiction or fantasy concepts” (even the recent “Orders of Magnitude,” acclaimed as a return to classic Trek, is essentially SNW doing Crimson Tide). Yes the prevalence of high jinks in shorter streaming era seasons has left the series open to accusations of straying too far from Trek’s initial premise, however, as the puppet version of T’Pring notes at the end of “Level Five Transporter Accident,” such “unorthodox” approaches can—even if we are at first resistant to them—yet come to be seen as “endearing” in time.[end-mark] The post Narrative High Jinks Have Always Been a Part of Star Trek appeared first on Reactor.