Star Trek Magazine #71: Picard, the Borg, Jeri Ryan and Jonathan Del Arco

Anyone with even half an eye on events at this past weekend's San Diego Comic-Con 2019 can't have failed to notice the revelations about the forthcoming Patrick Stewart-starring Star Trek: Picard. The biggest surprise at the Hall H panel on the Saturday was the announcement that both Jeri Ryan – Star Trek: Voyager's Seven of Nine – and Jonathan Del Arco – Star Trek: The Next Generation's Hugh Borg – will be making appearances in the show (as will Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, as Data, Riker and Troi respectively). So it would be remiss of me not to point out that both Ryan and Del Arco are interviewed in the current Star Trek Magazine, issue #71 (#198 in the UK) – a Borg 30th anniversary special, still on sale now.

Clearly I was exhibiting some form of precognition when I commissioned those interviews... and Ryan wasn't exactly fibbing when, in answer to the question would she ever return as Seven, she replied, "Never say never."

If you're interested in reading Ryan and Del Arco's thoughts on the Borg – or indeed former Star Trek executive producer Rick Berman's reminiscences about Borg creator Maurice Hurley (among many other Borg- and non-Borg-related Trek matters) – Star Trek Magazine #71 is available at newsagents, in specialist sci-fi and comic stores, or direct from Titan Magazines.

Star Trek Magazine #68 (Titan, Fall 2018)

At risk of Existential Ennui becoming a vehicle for my banging on about whichever Star Trek publication I've been working on of late – which, let's face it, would be an improvement on my usual prolix piffle (posted mercifully infrequently these days at least)... here's another Star Trek publication I've been working on of late:

Star Trek Magazine #68, out tomorrow in the US and 4 October in the UK. I've no particular reason for drawing attention to this, my third issue as editor (actually twenty-eighth overall, this being my second stint in the captain's chair), other than it's quite a good one, I think – a Mirror Universe special, with a future history of that twisted alternate reality, a compare-and-contrast between Lorca and Picard (the latter of whose return to Trek is also covered), a piece on parallel universes, a profile of "Mirror, Mirror" writer Jerome Bixby, a feature on the DC Comics Mirror Universe Saga, and loads more besides (all handsomely designed, as ever, by the amazing Amazing15).

Even the contents page has been conquered by the Terran Empire. Plus there's a bizarre editorial in which I confess to reading my sister's comics as a kid. Quite what this has to do with the Mirror Universe is something you'll need to buy a copy to find out.

Star Trek: Discovery: The Official Companion (Titan, 2018)

When is a book not a book? Or rather, when is a magazine not a magazine? Actually it's kind of moot, because the answer is the same:

When it's a bookazine. In this instance, Star Trek: Discovery: The Official Companion, a guide to the first season of the newest Star Trek show, arriving in bookshops and comic shops and online outlets in the US in the next few days (having made its debut at the Star Trek Las Vegas convention earlier in August, under the shiny gold-logoed con-exclusive cover above), and in newsagents in the UK on 26 September. In other words, in plenty of time for the November DVD/Blu-ray release of Discovery Season 1, to which the Companion will make a fine, er, companion.

How do I know this? Because I edited the thing, conceiving and assembling it with the indispensable assistance of designer Dan Bura, CBS's Marian Cordry, and a crack team of writers culled from the official Star Trek Magazine (of which I am also editor).

My grand plan for the Companion, such as it was, was to try and tell the story of Discovery Season 1 from both sides of the camera. So while in one sense it's an episode guide, with plot summaries, cast and crew credits, pertinent character quotes and plenty of pictures, in another it's a behind-the-scenes 'making of', with production insights and commentary from many of the principal creative types – such as Season 1 executive producers and showrunners Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts; production designer Tamara Deverell; costume designer Gersha Phillips; prosthetics and make-up maestros Glenn Hetrick and James MacKinnon, and VFX supervisor Jason Zimmerman – along with actors Mary Wiseman (who plays Sylvia Tilly), Mary Chieffo (the Klingon L'Rell) and others.

I wouldn't say it's as exhaustive a document of the making of Discovery as, say, Larry Nemecek's venerated (not least by me) Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion was of the making of TNG, but it's a decent opening shot, I reckon, ahead of any more thorough making-ofs that may materialise down the line.

In any case, I'm quite pleased with it. And as further inducement for anyone minded to pick up a copy, there are four fetching covers to choose from: the aforementioned Star Trek Las Vegas cover; a newsstand one; a Diamond Exclusive one, and a hardcover edition. Collect the set and be the envy of all your friends – or at least those with a more-than-passing interest in Star Trek.

To Boldly Go (Again)

There's a line in Star Trek Generations – the 1994 big screen baton handover between the original series and Next Generation crews, and a film of which I'm fonder than I have any reasonable right to be – that's been resonating with me recently. It comes during the sequence in the extra-dimensional Nexus, when James T. Kirk is rebuffing Jean-Luc Picard's exhortations to join him in saving the world (well, a world) one last time. As he strides up the stairs in his beautiful Rocky Mountains log cabin towards his doubtless equally beautiful waiting wife, Kirk declares: "This time it's going to be different."

Of course, directly after that Kirk realises that the Nexus is a sham and joins Picard in his battle against planet-destroying El-Aurian nutcase Soran and winds up getting killed (spoiler alert!), but even so, that line has lodged in my mind since late last year, when I once again became editor of the official Star Trek Magazine.

I say 'once again' because it's not the first time I've been editor of Star Trek Magazine. I previously edited it for a couple of years in the early 2000s (when it was known as Star Trek Monthly and was a little slimmer than it is now, as well as being, as its title suggests, monthly, as opposed to the current bimonthly... ish), having quit a career as a music journalist in order to do so – much to the bemusement of more than one friend at the time, who couldn't comprehend why I'd abandon such a 'trendy' profession in order to go and edit a magazine about Star Trek.

And maybe they had a point. Looking back, I spent much of that 25-issue stint in charge of the magazine bending it into shapes that perhaps better suited me and my background – a music special, funny captions, endless best-ofs – than the mag itself – and always with an eye to other opportunities at Titan, the publisher of Star Trek Magazine. (To my credit, that last one did work out: I subsequently got to run the Titan graphic novels dept for five years.)

So this time I think maybe it will be different. This time, and coinciding with my reignited fervour for science fiction and space opera, I'm much more interested in Star Trek itself; in digging into how it is (and was) written, produced, filmed – how it's made; how it works – as well as chronicling its latest incarnation, Star Trek: Discovery. In fact, what with Discovery – the first season of which I loved – and the Abrams/Kelvinverse films – the first two of which I loved... and the third of which I actually didn't mind – right now I'm probably more into Trek than at any time since the heyday of Deep Space Nine 20 years ago, and possibly even since TNG was first on telly.

My first issue back in the captain's chair, #66 (March/April 2018), came out earlier this year, and my second, #67 (Summer 2018), is out in the US now and in the UK in a few weeks; I'm pretty pleased with how that one in particular – a DS9 anniversary issue which delves into how that show's first season came together 25 years ago (plus some Discovery stuff, including an interview I did with Wilson Cruz) – has turned out. Whether or not I can extend my prior two-year tenure as editor into a five-year mission – or even an ongoing one – remains to be seen, but I've plenty of plans for the main magazine and its various spin-off specials (including a Discovery one later this year; more on that anon).

As Captain Kirk says to Captain Picard in Generations: "Don't let them promote you... don't let them transfer you... don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference."

The covers illustrating this post are by Star Trek Magazine's regular designer, the supremely talented Commander Martin Stiff from Amazing15.