Hugos 2022: Ballots for Graphic Story and Dramatic Presentation

And here is my last Hugo ballot post! We have my nominations and votes in the "visual" categories: comics, tv, and film. I should note that I was done with the comics back in June... and didn't finish the film/tv stuff until two days before the deadline. I find it easier to organize my reading than my watching, I guess. (I have linked the titles if I have written a review elsewhere, or if the work is freely available on the Internet.)

Things I Nominated

I don't read many comics right as they come out, so my ability to nominate things for Best Graphic Story is always pretty limited. This year I nominated the same thing I did last year... a My Little Pony / Transformers crossover comic! Seemed unlikely to me that The Magic of Cybertron would make the ballot, but I did my bit...

I nominated two tv episodes in Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), both episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2 that I enjoyed immensely: "wej Duj" (Klingonese for "Three Ships"), where the lower-decks crew of the USS Cerritos are paralleled by lower-decks escapades on Klingon and Vulcan ships, and "First First Contact", the delightfully triumphant season finale. To my surprise and delight, "wej Duj" actually made the final ballot! It's the first Star Trek installment to make it since an episode of Discovery in 2018.

I also nominated some random Big Finish stuff I enjoyed, though I have no expectations that any of it will ever make the ballot. Two Torchwood audio dramas (The Five People You Kill in Middlesbrough and Madam I'm) in Short Form, and one Doctor Who audio drama (Shadow of the Daleks) in Long Form.

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Best Graphic Story or Comic

6. Monstress: The Vow, script by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda 

Below, I said I was only really interested in the backmatter in Die. Well, at least Die has interesting backmatter...

 

5. Die: Bleed, script by Kieron Gillen, art by Stephanie Hans

The first volume of this series was a finalist in 2020, the second in 2021. This is the fourth and final; I didn't enjoy those previous volumes enough to feel motivated to read the third before this, so I just skipped it. (It's about people trapped in a TTRPG, and each volume focuses on a different writer who influenced RPGs. The first did Tolkien, the second the Brontës, and this one Lovecraft; it turns out the one I skipped did Wells, so maybe I ought to go back.) I found this hard to follow—too many characters, and even though it came out as twenty issues across three years, it's clearly meant to be read in one go. It seems to be trying to say something interesting about queerness and RPGs, but I couldn't follow the story enough to tell you what. The most interesting part was definitely the backmatter, where Kieron Gillen interviews people about the evolution of RPGs.

4. Lore Olympus, Volume One by Rachel Smythe

This is a webcomic, now released in print, that retells the story of Hades and Persephone with modern trappings. The comics language here uses a lot of manga conventions, and manga tropes dominate the romance story, too. Overall I enjoyed it well enough. Some good jokes, nice art, but sometimes I struggled to keep the characters straight, and the emotions are a little overwrought. This is clearly the beginning of a long story (this volumes collects episodes 1-25 of a serial that has run 200 thus far), and I am not sure it is really aimed at me, though the end promises a darker turn that I would be curious to see the repercussions of.

3. Once & Future: The Parliament of Magpies, script by Kieron Gillen, art by Dan Mora

This is volume three of a series about the Arthurian mythos rising up again in modern Britain; I read volume one when it was a finalist last year. (I didn't intentionally skip volume two; I didn't realize I'd skipped an installment until there were a bunch of references to Beowulf in this one.) It's pretty fun stuff, with strong characters, good art, and occasional moments of genius... but like all the original Kieron Gillen comics I've read, I have this sort of vibe that he's almost but not quite as good as Brian K. Vaughan. Unfair but there you go.

2. Far Sector, script by N. K. Jemisin, art by Jamal Campbell

In some ways I enjoyed this more than Once & Future: as a somewhat erudite superhero comic, it's just more my jam than the non-stop-high-concept kind of thing Kieron Gillen tends to write. On the other hand, this is a good superhero comic but not a great one, and Once & Future is definitely up to more. On the whole, I would say my enjoyment of the two is pretty comparable, so I gave the edge to Far Sector on two bases: I do like superhero comics a lot, and it's also a complete story as opposed to a fragment.

1. Strange Adventures, script by Tom King, art by Mitch Gerads & Evan "Doc" Shaner

As soon as I finished this, it was clearly the best of the four Graphic Story finalists I had read thus far. Beautiful art, thematic complexity. There are snatches of greatness in, say, Once & Future, but this is the kind of thing this category ought to be rewarding.

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Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

6. Encanto; directed by Jared Bush & Byron Howard; script by Charise Castro Smith & Jared Bush

This is (if you need to be told) an animated musical about a Colombian family who lives in a magical house, where each resident of the house has a magical power... except one. I really enjoyed this; it's a solid film with some great songs and interesting thematic beats. I really liked "Surface Pressure," about one sister's need to never stop doing what the family needs, and "Waiting on a Miracle," about the protagonist's desire to do something to help the family. It's a good depiction of the complexity of family dynamics, about how people want to contribute to a system that has disappointed them. I think it deserves awards, but I'm not convinced it deserves this award. Sure, it's got magic, but is it really in dialogue with the genre of science fiction and fantasy? Or is it more a contribution to the genre of children's animation? (if that makes sense) This is to say, don't let its low ranking leave you thinking I didn't like it. I just don't think it's in the core sensibility of what I seek to reward with a Hugo.

5. Dune, Part One; directed by Denis Villeneuve; written by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth

I have never been a Dune partisan. I largely bounced off the book as a teenager (though I probably would find it more digestible now), I have seen the Lynch film a couple times, and I remember enjoying the Sci-Fi Channel original miniseries. This adaptation is probably the best one you could imagine, with room to breathe due to the increased running time but also the budget not afforded the Sci-Fi Channel mini. It's impeccably cast, and like all Villeneuve films I've seen, it looks great. But I felt... somehow unmoved by it all. Magisterial, but I didn't feel invited into either the world or the characters' emotional lives. It's like you're at a remove the whole time.

4. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings; directed by Destin Daniel Cretton; script by Dave Callaham, Destin Daniel Cretton, and Andrew Lanham

Last year, my wife and caught up on Marvel films (at the time, Spider-Man: Far from Home was the most recent), and I felt like that was it: following Avengers: Endgame, there was nothing more I wanted out of them, and I was ready to move on. I haven't seen one since, though I guess I ought to go see Thor 4 in theatres given I saw the other three in theatres. All this is to say that I was actually quite charmed by this, which follows the Marvel origin story formula, but is a reasonably strong execution of it. It has a real sense of style and flair, a good soundtrack, some great set pieces, the best villain I can remember in a Marvel film for a long long time, and a totally gratuitous but excellent comic relief character.* On the other hand, I thought star Simu Liu was charismatic and likeable, but his emotional arc didn't really seem to be present, writing-wise. I really struggled with ranking this. Is it a better movie than Dune? I don't know. Certainly it is less ambitious, and do the Hugos need to award (what is by my count) the eighth Marvel origin movie? Anyway, as it often is, my tiebreaker was the question, "What am I more likely to rewatch?" And the answer to that question is definitely Shang-Chi.

3. WandaVision, created by Jac Schaeffer, directed by Matt Shakman

Thankfully, this was the only complete-season finalist this year. I found this pretty fun at first: the sitcom pastiches are excellently done, and the language of television is abused to disconcerting effect. Moments where the camera angle suddenly shifts out of the sitcom standard, or the credits roll and things keep on going, or the crossing over of the better Quicksilver, are wonderful. Elizabeth Olson and Paul Bettany get to show off more here than in every Avengers film put together. Plus the episodes that are basically just sitcoms are very well done ones! I found this less interesting the further away it got from that basic set-up, however. There are a lot of characters who ultimately don't serve very important functions, narratively or thematically, and by the final episode, the show has abandoned its interesting meta play in favor of a somewhat-above-average Marvel punch-up. The sitcom stuff was ultimately a puzzle to be solved, not an idea to be explored. The idea that someone who lost her real family life and found solace in sitcom families might try to make her own sitcom family seems ripe with possibilities for saying something about family, but the finale doesn't go there, and it has none of the playfulness that characterized the rest of the series. Still, we have a number of episodes of really enjoyable stuff prior to that point, and I was definitely more involved than in Dune, and I would happily see this win.

2. 승리호, directed by Jo Sung-hee, script by Jo Sung-hee & Mocan

Space Sweepers is a Korean space film, about space scavengers who end up in over their heads when they discover a robot with a hydrogen bomb inside it aboard a derelict spaceships... a robot in the form of a human child. Okay, look, it's not a great movie. The villain (played by Richard Armitage!) has no real motivation, and a couple of the characters' backstories feel tacked on, and I found bits of it confusing and/or clumsy. But, you know, group-of-underdogs-in-a-spaceship unite to do great things has basically been my favorite genre of sf film since Star Wars, and this is a charming example of it with a lot of heart. A special shout-out to the character of Bubs, who at first seems to be a quippy murderous robot, but is soon revealed to have extra dimensions. Is it really the second-best thing on this list? Probably not; I think on any objective measure of "good film" it goes below Dune. But would I be excited for it to win a Hugo? More than anything else on this list.

1. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Filmed Adaptation of the Chivalric Romance by Anonymous, written and directed by David Lowery

I didn't know much about this going in beyond that it was based on an Arthurian medieval text (one with which I am unfamiliar) and that it was controversially received. Well, I really enjoyed it: it reminds me of the kind of 1980s pre-Lord of the Rings fantasy film I might have randomly plucked off the shelf at Blockbuster as a kid, and been weirded out but entranced by, before the fantasy genre of film became codified as massive epics. Well, that crossed with a Tarkovsky movie! Beautiful, jarring, potent. Exactly the kind of thing I like the Hugos to expose me to (doubt I would have bothered otherwise), and the kind of thing I like to reward.

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Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) 

6. The Wheel of Time 1x06: "The Flame of Tar Valon", written by Justine Juel Gillmer, directed by Salli Richardson-Whitfeld

This seems like a perfectly acceptable piece of epic fantasy, if you're into that kind of thing. The mean thing to say is that I liked it better when it was called The Lord of the Rings.

5. Arcane: League of Legends 1x09: "The Monster You Created", written by Christian Linke & Alex Yee, directed by Pascal Charrue & Arnaud Delord

This is a 3D-animated cartoon on Netflix set in the world of the League of Legends videogame, and the only thing on the short-form ballot I hadn't even heard of before it became a finalist. I don't have anything against this, but it was the final episode of a nine-episode serialized story that made absolutely no concessions for anyone; there wasn't even a "previously on..." at the beginning. Which I get, no one but me is watching this show this way, but I had no ability to assess it really. It looks nice when it's still, but I found the way people moved a bit off, like it was, well, a videogame. Some very dramatic moments that had me curious about context... but also very gruesome in places, which doesn't appeal. I was going to put this below Wheel of Time but then I realized at least I was never bored watching this (though I didn't find the fights very interesting). 

 

4. Loki 1x04: "The Nexus Event", written by Eric Martin, directed by Kate Herron

I'm sure this was quite exciting to people who had been watching Loki, and indeed, there was some fun stuff in it: I liked Loki getting punched by Sif again and again. But, like, what is a "nexus event"? Maybe someday I will watch all of Loki, but until then, this didn't quite work on its own. My friend Christiana hates it when I evaluate tv this way, but I need some kind of limit. If I am obligated to watch the previous three episodes of Loki, am I not also obligated to watch the previous nineteen episodes of For All Mankind? And that's not happening.

3. The Expanse 5x10: "Nemesis Games", written by Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck and Naren Shankar, directed by Breck Eisner

As I always say, I stopped watching The Expanse during season 3 (not the show's fault), but since I read the books, I was mostly able to follow this out of context. It's another perfectly competent episode whose emotional beats might have landed better had I seen the previous nine episodes of the season, but landed well enough regardless, especially the bits with Naomi. The Expanse has made the ballot five out of the last six times, and this was the best Expanse finalist since "Leviathan Wakes."

2. For All Mankind 2x10: "The Grey", written by Matt Wolpert & Ben Nedivi, directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan

This did work on its own, to my surprise. For All Mankind is an alternative history show where the Space Race continued unabated after the 1960s. This episode is set in the 1980s, and America has a base on the Moon, Apollo-Soyuz is going ahead, there are missile platforms in space, and so on. I am a sucker for shows about competent people working together to solve difficult problems, and this is one of them. (I particularly liked Wrenn Schmidt as Margo Madison, director of Mission Control.) There are lots of good moments in this, a show about how even in dark times we can work together, and it very much made me want to go back and watch the first two seasons. Except, you know, it's on Apple TV+ (surely one of the less necessary streaming services; I signed up for a week-long free trial to watch this).

1. Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x09: "wej Duj", written by Kathryn Lyn, directed by Bob Suarez

Like I said above, I nominated this. This was a great episode of the overall strong second season of Lower Decks, with the story of the lower-decks Cerritos crew paralleled with their counterparts on Klingon and Vulcan ships, all coming together in a satisfying way. The character of T'Lyn, the Vulcan prone to "outbursts," was particularly fun, as was security chief Shaxs doing pottery. It's Lower Decks at its best, and you bet that if a show I actually watch gets a Hugo nomination, I am going to rank it highly.

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Overall Thoughts

This is one of the better Best Graphic Story ballots I've seen; even if I never enjoy Kieron Gillen comics all that much, there's no denying he's one of the medium's most acclaimed writers. There are no finalists this year that stick out as mediocre-but-nominated-for-some-other-reason. Monstress won for its first three volumes but hasn't won since; my guess is based on past voting patterns, N. K. Jemisin will win yet another Hugo.

Similarly, this is a strong long-form Dramatic Presentation ballot, with all six movies being fundamentally enjoyable. (I did not fall asleep during any of them, unlike last year.) I stand by the prediction I made last year before this year's ballot was even out: Dune will win.

I find the state of short form annoying... but what can you do about it when serialized shows dominate the sf&f television market? Now that The Good Place is no longer in contention, I have no idea what Hugo voters actually like.

* After the Mandarin reference, I reminded my wife of the events of Iron Man 3, which we saw some time ago. I figure that was it: we explain how this move relates to the other one for the continuity nerds in the audience, then move on. Little did I expect that five minutes later Ben Kingsley would turn up! If you told me that as originally filmed, his character left them before they went through the portal, I would believe it; I don't think he interacted with a main character again after they crossed over, so you could have totally beefed up his role in reshoots.

Why Can All the Dogs in PAW Patrol Talk?

So PAW Patrol theories are bandied around with some frequency in our household. I was thinking of writing a blog post about my wife's theory about the pup replaced by Rubble, but then some YouTuber did a video on it with more evidence than either of us had. So I decided to discuss my somewhat more far-fetched theory: what is up with the world of PAW Patrol? Specifically, why can all the dogs talk?

also legal: anti-dog apartheid

If you poke around, some people think that Ryder somehow enhances the dogs to be intelligent, but this cannot be case:

• In multiple instances, we are shown that various PAW Patrol pups can speak before they join the group (e.g., Rubble, Everest, Tracker).
• On top of this, the movie makes it clear that all the dogs in Adventure City can talk.* (In the show's first six seasons, we never see any dogs who aren't (eventually) PAW Patrol members.)†
• And, indeed, no one ever reacts with surprise at the existence of talking dogs; they are clearly a normal part of life. A truck driver in the movie reacts with surprise only at the fact that pups are being used as rescue personnel.
  

So whatever's going on in the PAW Patrol world, talking dogs are a normal part of it. On the other hand, other animals do not speak. Cats seem pretty intelligent, but the only talking cat in the first six seasons, the Copycat, gains his ability to speak (among other superpowers) from the Meteor.‡ 

just another day walking to the South Pole

There are, however, many strange things about the world of PAW Patrol. Geography is a key one:

• Adventure Bay is an oceanside town.
• It is, however, also within easy travel distance of the South Pole and a jungle and snow-covered mountains.
  
• It seems to be across the ocean from a London-analogue called "Barkingburg," but some episodes also make it clear that you can reach the jungle and the Antarctic by ground from Barkinburg.§
  
• Circumstantial evidence from the film would lead me to believe it's located in the United States. (A driver of a maple syrup tanker calls his cargo "pure Canadian maple syrup," which feels like a weird thing to do if you are in Canada.)

the visages of absolute power

Another weird thing about the PAW Patrol universe is the way politics work.

• Humdinger is the mayor of a town near Adventure Bay called Foggy Bottom. However, most evidence suggests this "town" is just a cave where Humdinger lives with his nephew Harold.‖ 
• Humdinger, additionally, commits all sorts of crimes but there appears to be no mechanism to arrest him or otherwise hold him accountable.
  
• Mayors, apparently, have absolute executive power that cannot be countermanded. There's an episode where Humdinger functions as substitute mayor in Adventure Bay while its actual mayor, Goodway, is away. Humdinger orders a restaurant owner to sell spinach yoghurt, and when he doesn't comply, tickets him. Similarly, he forces people to wear the same hat and mustache as him. No one disputes the legality of a mayor issuing orders like this; the only issue is that Goodway didn't actually appoint Humdinger substitute.
• Even aside from Humdinger, Goodway rarely seems to make good decisions for their constituents. When a massive cache of gold is discovered in Adventure Bay, Goodway uses it to build a statue of her pet chicken.
  
• This isn't just Adventure Bay; when Humdinger becomes mayor of Adventure City in the movie, he can force through massive construction projects seemingly overnight without being gainsayed.
  

Another thing to note is that ten-year-olds have an unusual degree of autonomy in this world. Ryder, of course, has a gigantic high-tech facility from which he manages a massive rescue operation, but it's not just him. Katie, who seems to be about the same age, owns her own pet-grooming business. The recurring characters also include Carlos, a ten-year-old exploring the jungle on his own (he's possibly an archaeologist); Ace Sorensen, a teenage professional stunt pilot; "Daring" Danny X, a ten-year-old daredevil; and Sid Swashbuckle, a teenage pirate captain. None of these characters have parents that we ever see or even hear about. It seems to be perfectly legal for ten-year-old humans (and puppies) to drive motor vehicles.

Lastly, there's the thing that strikes any parent forced to watch PAW Patrol: adults are stupid.

truly an epic cake

Really stupid. Adults are stymied by the simplest of problems... that can only be solved a ten-year-old boy and his array of pups. One of my favorite episodes is "Pups Save Jake's Cake"; two adults prepare a birthday cake for their friend Jake. They accidentally make the cake so large it doesn't fit into the delivery van. By like several feet. Whoops. But on top of that, their back-up plan is to carry this gigantic cake up a mountain by hand, just the two of them. It turns out, surprise, that it's too heavy. How could anyone be this stupid? But here, adults turn over their entire public safety department to a ten-year-old boy and his six puppies.

(We're not even going to get into other oddities of the PAW Patrol world, like magic pearls in "Pup-lantis," aliens who visit the Earth regularly, ancient monkey civilizations, and the fact that if you cut through the ground on a peninsula, it will float away.)

So, this isn't going to be one of fan theories where I carefully assemble evidence until I build up to some kind of logical conclusion. No, this is going to be one of those fan theories where I just give you my theory and insist it explains all the evidence.

The World of PAW Patrol Is Set after the Apocalypse

Think about it. This explains:

• The weird geography. Clearly a nuclear exchange shifted the Earth's axis and altered its climate. The South Pole is now close to the United States; different climatic zones are found in close proximity.
• The weird governments. Clearly centralized authority has collapsed. Individual communities are ruled by self-appointed dictators who call themselves "mayors." If you claim a cave and call it "Foggy Bottom" and say you're mayor, who can oppose you? If as mayor, you give an order, it is to be obeyed: this is a return to the absolute power of the feudal era.
  
• The talking animals. Anyone who has seen Planet of the Apes or read Kamandi knows that after the apocalypse, animals will arise to sapience, whether it be through mutation induced by nuclear radiation or some kind of virus. (Actually, this one would explain the monkey civilization.)
  
• The stupid adults. If it is a virus that makes animals smart enough to talk, perhaps it is also a virus that makes adults stupid. (Shades of the original Star Trek episode "Miri" here, where a virus lets kids live for centuries, but die as soon as they hit puberty.) Thus kids, especially intelligent ones, take on an unusual degree of autonomy.
  

This adds some pathos to the series. Only Ryder can save Adventure Bay from the stupidity of its adults... but with each passing year, he knows the time is coming where he too will succumb, and end up as stupid as Cap'n Turbot. Who will save Adventure Bay then? 

"My day, too, shall come..."

* The weird part of this is that we also learn Adventure City has obedience schools for dogs, which seems very disturbing if dogs are sapient.

† There is one single exception in nine seasons: a sheep-herding dog with a brief, non-speaking cameo. But surely there are other dogs in Adventure Bay: who is Katie's clientele at the Pet Parlor? who goes to the dog park?

‡ I am aware that a talking cat appears in season seven, but I haven't seen that one yet, since seasons seven-plus haven't debuted on Paramount+ yet.

§ Let's not even get into the existence of a Lost Worldesque hidden realm of dinosaurs, apparently accessible via a tunnel under a mountain near Adventure Bay. 

‖ The episode "Pups Save a Basketball Game" has Foggy Bottom fielding a kids' basketball team, but these are literally the only Foggy Bottom residents other than the Humdingers we see in six seasons.

2021 Hugo Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation Ballots

Best Dramatic Presentation is technically two categories, but I will write up both Long Form and Short Form in a single post.

Things I Nominated

I nominated one thing in each category this year. I decided to nominate a Big Finish audio drama, so I looked back over the 2020 releases that I had actually listened to in 2020 (I range from a little behind to a lot behind with my Big Finish at the best of times) and ended up picking Torchwood Soho: Parasite, which covers shenanigans at Torchwood in the 1950s, fronted by the delightful Norton Folgate, and also featuring good old PC Andy, plucked out of time. (As it's six half-hour episodes, I nominated it under long form.) My guess is that no Big Finish release will ever be a Hugo finalist, though; even if there are a lot of Hugo nominators listening to Big Finish (which I doubt), they put out so much content, it's hard to imagine any single release getting enough nominations to make the ballot.

The only 2020 tv I watched during 2020 was Doctor Who series 12, Star Trek: Picard season 1, (some of) Star Trek: Lower Decks season 1, and (some of) Star Trek: Discovery season 3. I didn't like Picard season 1 or Discovery season 3 much, and none of the episodes of Lower Decks that I saw in time spoke much to me. (I could see myself nominating "Crisis Point," but I got to it too late.)

So I ended up nominating what I thought was a pretty decent episode of a pretty dull series of Doctor Who, "Can You Hear Me?", which was probably the only episode both trying to do something interesting and almost pulling it off. It did not make the ballot, however, though a different episode did, and that one wasn't bad either.

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6. The Old Guard, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, written by Greg Rucka

This movie is about a group of four immortals who get in a lot of fight scenes. I fell asleep about halfway through; I don't think this is entirely the film's fault (I was very tired) but what is the film's fault is that I was at no point motivated to resume watching it.

5. Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, directed by Cathy Yan, written by Christina Hodson

This wasn't very to my taste. I love the Birds of Prey comics, but this isn't really a Birds of Prey film, it's a Harley Quinn film... though as my wife pointed out, it's probably the most enjoyable a Harley Quinn film could be. I did laugh couple times. I liked the performances of the actors playing both Black Canary and Huntress, so maybe I will like them better in some other, Harley-free, film. Plus... this isn't really sf&f, is it? One scene of Dinah using her sonic scream doesn't really count.

4. Tenet, written and directed by Christopher Nolan

At first, this felt to me like Nolan's take on James Bond, plus some sf elements. Our protagonist travels to exotic locations, each with a suitable set piece; what stopped it from being fully Bondian is that Bond would have slept with Elizabeth Debicki's character. The central idea is pretty neat, and the story does some cool stuff with it; by the climax, though, I will admit that I was confused. Robert Pattinson was a delightful surprise, and I also thought Debicki and Kenneth Branagh did great work. It felt to me like something Steven Moffat would have done... but once I realized that, I also realized that he would have put in more jokes! And of course I have to take points off for that. This movie takes itself very seriously... and also I'm not really sure what it was about beyond the sfnal idea; it's very sterile.

3. Soul; directed by Peter Docter; written by Peter Docter, Mike Jones, and Kemp Powers 

I feel like I always understimate Pixar. I'm like, "oh yeah they're pretty good movies," but then I watch a Pixar film and realize they always have a heft and a design sense to them that is pretty much unparalleled in contemporary animation. Things here move and live and breathe and shine. I enjoyed this a lot. I think it's not groundbreaking (it's very It's a Wonderful Life, isn't it?) but I don't know that that matters: good jokes, good performances, good score by Reznor and Ross, and great visuals. I particularly loved the way the afterlife creatures moved through the real world, and the climax with Joe and 22 plunging to Earth was glorious.

2. Palm Springs, directed by Max Barbakow, written by Andy Siara

I would have vacillated a lot on where to place this, but I watched it the day ballots were due, so I didn't have the time to dither a whole lot. Give me twenty-four hours to reflect and I might have placed it on top, who knows. This is a time loop film; I must be a sucker for these things, because in 2020 and 2018, I gave top spots to a time loop story. The time loop is a genre of its own these days, and we're surely in its decadent phase (as Joanna Russ would say) and all the better for it. This is a comedy that opens with a guy already trapped in the time loop for so long he can't remember; he inadvertently brings a woman into it alongside him. You'll know some beats from other time loop stories, but it's very original in other ways and has a good emotional core. Some great laughs, but also some really strong, thoughtful character stuff.

1. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, directed by David Dobkin, written by Will Ferrell & Andrew Steele

I really debated on where to place this. It's about an Icelandic duo with middling talent trying to make it in Eurovision; Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams feature, and Pierce Brosnan plays Will Ferrell's dad. They have to overcome parental doubt, evil bankers, and Dan Stevens's obviously gay Russian in order to persevere and fulfill their childhood dreams. I had a blast watching this: it has fun music and a keen sense of the ridiculous that plays straight into my sensibilities. You have to take this movie intensely seriously and not at all seriously at the same time. I laughed a lot. But, you know, the sfnal content probably amounts to about 120 seconds of run time! Is it consistent of me to ding Birds of Prey but place this so high? So I was prepared to place it below Soul; Soul would be meaningless without its sf&fnal conceit, but Story of Fire Saga would honestly work just fine. But then I was like, "what would I be more excited to see win?" And it's not like Pixar films lack for acclaim. And though I think Soul is good, this was a blast. So here it is.

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6. The Expanse 5x04: "Gaugamela", written by Dan Nowak, directed by Nick Gomez

I have stalled out somewhere back in season 3 of The Expanse, but I have read all the books, and this one is adapted from book five, Nemesis Games, so I had enough context to follow. In isolation, though, it comes across as one of those episodes that's more noteworthy for what happens than how. Big events, but outside of that, there was little that grabbed me here other than the chance to see one of my less-favorite books in one of my favorite series on screen.

5. Star Wars: The Mandalorian, chapter 13: "The Jedi", written and directed by Dave Filoni

I am sure this is quite exciting if you've been following both The Mandalorian in particular and Star Wars on tv more broadly: we learn key information about baby Yoda, and a character from the Clone Wars cartoon appeares in live action. I've been doing none of these things, so it's all kind of wasted on me. Still, it works well enough as a piece of standalone tv, just without the bigger emotional/dramatic hook one might want. I do quite like Ludwig Göransson's score.

4. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 5x12/13: "Heart", written by Josie Campbell and Noelle Stevenson, directed by Jen Bennett and Kiki Manrique

This is the series finale to a five-season show. It seems like the kind of show I would like very much, along the lines of some of the favorites of my youth (and adulthood): big battles of good and evil, colorful characters, angsty side-switching, epic confrontations. But watching the series finale on its own is difficult to appreciate. I feel as though I am watching something that could be quite interesting, but I don't have the ability to appreciate it.

3. Star Wars: The Mandalorian, chapter 16: "The Rescue", written by Jon Favreau, directed by Peyton Reed

Despite this being only my third episode of The Mandalorian, I was quickly able to grasp the mechanics of what was going on here and why I should care. Despite me knowing what the big surprise was going to be, I still got chills. I did have to pause at one point and look up who all the returning characters were at the beginning, but on the other hand, the emotion of the ending succeeded entirely on its own terms. Maybe someday I will watch this show, but I have been enjoying these dribs and drabs of it.

2. Doctor Who 12x05: "Fugitive of the Judoon", written by Vinay Patel and Chris Chibnall, directed by Nida Manzoor

This wasn't the episode I nominated, but it was one of the better episodes of series 12 of Doctor Who, with some dramatic reveals, cracking direction, and sharp scenes featuring Jodie Whittaker's Doctor and the mysterious Ruth. (What brings it down for me are the weirdly shot and pointless scenes with Captain Jack; one assumes they couldn't get Barrowman on the same day as any of the rest of the cast.) This has an impact, but it's also an enjoyable and entertaining episode on top of that.

1. The Good Place: The Final Chapter: "Whenever You're Ready", written and directed by Michael Schur

At last our long national nightmare is over. In honor of that, I give The Good Place my vote.

In all seriousness... I really liked this? My only previous episodes of The Good Place have been those five nominated as Hugo finalists, which long-time readers know I have found more miss than hit, but this seemed to me—based on that weird sampling anyway—to be a charming, effective, and occasionally moving finale. All the characters get good final moments... plus lots of great jokes (of course I was a sucker for the Radiolab one) and a cameo from Nick Offerman playing Nick Offerman teaching someone how to make a chair. This gave me the purest enjoyment of anything on this list.

---

Overall Thoughts

Long Form was a more interesting category than usual this year; I suspect this is down to the pandemic delaying any blockbuster originally scheduled for March 2020 or later to 2021. No Marvel movies; the closest we get to a big franchise film is Birds of Prey. This allows for some more offbeat stuff to rise to the top, which is one of the things I like about this category. Seems unlike I ever would have even heard of Palm Springs without the Hugos, much less seen it.

Short Form is tougher than normal. It usually has a few things that work reasonably well as standalones, but this year literally every finalist is a pivotal moment in an ongoing story! This makes them hard to assess as an outsider; I feel like if I'd seen any other She-Ra, for example, I might have ranked "Heart" at the top, but I'll never know. I am loathe to add more Hugo categories, but I do wonder if Short Form and Long Form need to be split yet again: I don't know what I would call the categories, but with spans of something like 0-90 minutes, 90-180, and 180+, so you get individual episodes, films, and seasons each evaluated on their own terms. Though, if all of these seasons make it into the 180+ category, will there be anything left for the 0-90 one given how serialized televised sf&f is at the moment?

I feel fairly comfortable in saying that The Good Place will take home its fourth and final Hugo. The long-form category is much less obvious to me. None of them strike me as having the "it factor" that will win over (after a number of rounds) the majority of Hugo voters. I don't think it will be The Story of Fire Saga—too weird—nor Tenet—not good enough—nor Birds of Prey—too over-the-top—nor Old Guard—too boring—nor Palm Springs—too comedic. Which I guess means Soul? Pixar films have won twice before, The Incredibles and WALL-E, though both of those seem closer to the sf fan's sensibilities. So who knows.

I might be unsure about this year, but I will go out on a limb and tell you right now that the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) is going to go to Dune.

Was Spock the First Vulcan in Starfleet? (Betteridge's Law Says No, So What Is the Real Question?)

Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet.

Well, many people say this, including the official Star Trek web site, but if you actually look at the "canon," there's no evidence for it. It's never said on screen, and though it can't be disproven, there's some evidence against it: The USS Intrepid has a crew of four hundred Vulcans, and did they all join after Spock? Would a founding member of the Federation really not send a single student to the Academy in a century? Discovery has provided further evidence against by showing us a Vulcan admiral in the 2250s, when Spock was a lieutenant; if Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet, Terral had an exceptional career.

But lots of people are happy to explain that your fanon misconceptions are wrong. I am not going to do that today.

A conversation on the TrekBBS led me to a somewhat more interesting question: why do people think this?

A lot of fanon can be traced back to some kind of semi-official origin, even if it was never said on screen. For example, some people assert that Kirk was the youngest ever captain in Starfleet. This was never stated on screen, but it was part of Kirk's bio in The Making of Star Trek (1968) by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry. Lots of random pieces of Star Trek fanon have their roots in speculation by Michael and Denise Okuda, authors of the Star Trek Encyclopedia (1994) and Star Trek Chronology (1993). But as author Chistopher L. Bennett pointed out on that thread, the idea of Spock being the first Vulcan in Starfleet has no such clear origin: "People always talk about it as if it were a documented fact, part of the unquestioned conventional wisdom of Trek lore. Somewhere, somehow, it must have gotten written down and propagated. The question is, what's the earliest verifiable published statement of the myth?"

Well, there is the kind of question I like to solve!

Of course, there's no clear answer. But with Google Books, the Internet Archive, the Fanlore wiki, and the help of some other TrekBBS posters, this is what I can piece together:

• 1982: William Rotsler's Star Trek II Biographies (the book that gave us "Nyota" as Uhura's first name, not canonized until 2009) calls him "the only Vulcan attending" the Academy and states "that Vulcans were a rarity in Starfleet in his time," implying he is not the first.
  
• 1986: The novel Dreadnought! by Diane Carey calls Spock "the first Vulcan computer expert in Starfleet." 
• 1988: Carey's novel Final Frontier calls Spock "first of his kind in Starfleet"; the novel Memory Prime by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens calls Spock "[f]irst Vulcan through the Academy."
• 1989: The unauthorized reference work The Trek Crew Book by James Van Hise includes a detailed biography of Spock; it seems to indicate that he is the first Vulcan in Starfleet Academy Command School, but not necessarily the Academy itself.
  
• 1994: The first edition of The Star Trek Encyclopedia calls Spock the "first Vulcan to enlist in the Federation Starfleet."
• 1995: The third edition of the Star Trek Concordance calls Spock the first Vulcan in Starfleet, citing it to the episode "Whom Gods Destroy." (This "fact" isn't in the 1969 or 1976 editions.)
  
• 1996: By this point, the "first Vulcan" fact seems to be all over the novels, particularly ones by Diane Carey, but it's worth highlighting that the timeline in the Starfleet Academy middle-grade novels calls Spock "the first Vulcan student" at the Academy. (This timeline is adapted from the Star Trek Chronology, but as far as I can tell, the idea doesn't appear there.) The first of those novels is all about Spock deciding to attend the Academy, and draws on the first-in-Starfleet concept.
  
• 1996: The fanzine Star Born is published, about Spock's Academy days, where he was its first Vulcan student.
  

I think partially what's notable are the omissions. It doesn't appear in books or novels until 1988, which makes me think it wasn't widespread in fandom prior to that. The Internet Archive includes a number of fanworks-- and you would think that fan writers would be all over, "Spock, first Vulcan in Starfleet." But when I search "first Vulcan," what I usually come up with is that he's the first Vulcan/human hybrid. Surely some fan writer in the 1980s would have wrote about how sad it was for Spock to be the only Vulcan at the Academy. Script editor D. C. Fontana is sometime a source of fanon lore, but in fact her 1989 novel Vulcan's Glory has a number of Vulcans on the Enterprise in addition to Spock during the Pike era, so she didn't think he was first in Starfleet either.

The idea doesn't even make it into Star Trek (2009), which seems like the exact kind of place you might expect it, given its emphasis on making everyone involved super-exceptional.

Edgar Governo looked at the fanzine articles collected in the Best of Trek book series, and noted, "There are many, many extrapolative/speculative pieces about Spock's life and Vulcans in general throughout The Best of Trek, but a cursory search hasn't so far revealed any asserting that he was the first Vulcan in Starfleet." TrekBBS poster Daddy Todd adds that "Gerrold doesn’t mention it in WoST [1973's The World of Star Trek]. Neither Asherman’s first edition Compendium [1981] or the 1967 Writer’s Guide make the claim." These are all places I would expect to see a widely quoted piece of fanon lore originate, or at least be cited-- many other ones originate in these texts.

(By contrast, if I search the Internet Archive for references to Kirk being the youngest captain in Starfleet history, another piece of fanon never stated on screen, I get hits in fanzines going back to 1980, and pro novels from the mid-1980s.)

Star Trek: The First Adventure concept art, c. Mar. 1989
(courtesy Memory Alpha)

One of my most noteworthy discoveries is that Spock being the first Vulcan at the Academy was central to the proposed but unmade film Starfleet Academy, also called The First Adventure. This was the brainchild of Harve Bennett and Ralph Winter (both producers on most of the original films); it would have been a prequel "about this young cocky character on a farm who goes to flight school and meets up with the first alien that comes from Vulcan" (Cinefantastique, vol. 22, no. 5, p. 28). A summary of the script at Ain't It Cool News confirms that it calls Spock the first Vulcan in Starfleet.

They came up with the idea while making Star Trek IV, and Bennett and David Loughery got the go-ahead for a script while making Star Trek V; it was pitched as Star Trek VI, but ultimately didn't go anywhere. (Well, until J. J. Abrams came along!) That would mean the script was being written in 1989, or possibly late 1988, right around the same time the Spock-as-first-Vulcan meme begins manifesting. Did discussions of the in-development script leak out into fandom and get picked up by writers? It's a tempting idea, but the timing is wrong, given Final Frontier came out in January 1988. Maybe Loughery and/or Bennett read Final Frontier? It's actually not a focal point of Final Frontier, though, just a small aside by Kirk in free indirect discourse when thinking about Spock.

What is surprising here is how late this concept seems to emerge. If you poke around, you find a lot of people asserting it came out of fandom in the 1970s... but this has as little justification as the idea of Spock being the first does!

I mean, it's not impossible. Maybe it's written down somewhere not digitized and where no one I've asked has looked, or maybe it wasn't written down at all... If someone has a pre-1988 citation for the concept, I would be hyped to see it, but it really does seem like the meme comes out of nowhere in 1988 and cements itself pretty fast, probably thanks to the Encyclopedia.

If this is true, it's an interesting case study in how an idea can take root so quickly that it seems like it's been there all along, when in fact, it hasn't... even if it's an idea you don't believe in!

Friendship Really Is Magic: Thoughts on My Little Pony

I don't know if it goes for all toddlers, but Son One gets into things very intently-- and then moves on. So for a while, he watched Frozen every single day and was particularly obsessed with Sven. (Every time Sven was off-screen: "Where's Sven? Sven needs to come.") Then it was Super Truck, and we were constantly building him Super Truck characters out of Duplo. Then it was Paw Patrol, and Hayley made him a bunch of Duplo pups. ("They are not dogs," he would correct me, "they are pups.")

Now it's My Little Pony. He's actually been low-key into it for a while, and he previously had a period of being into it, but it recently really took off. Hayley has been a big My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic aficionado for several years now, and she has a lot of mini-figures and most of the tie-in comics from IDW, as well as a box full of G1 ponies from when she was a kid. For Son One, he's often really into things when he can draw connections. (It was mind-blowing to him, when about a year ago, he realized the planets in Chris Ferrie's Eight Little Planets were the same planets as in some other book.) The presence of pony toys, pony comics, and a pony tv show means he can always make these connections. "I have that one!" he'll exclaim when recognizing on screen a pony he has a toy of, or "I read a story about that one!"

His tv viewing is limited at home, but his comic reading is only limited by the patience of his parents, so we are constantly being asked to read a lot of pony comics to him. I do enjoy this, but to read a 20-page comic book out loud takes a while, and my commitment to doing all the voices means it also takes a lot of energy. (I am pretty proud of my Fluttershy voice, but I feel like Rainbow Dash never comes out how I would like.)

from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #18
(script by Katie Cook, art by Andy Price)

During his first spate of pony comic reading, he was really into a storyline called Ponies of Dark Water, where the Mane Six turn evil because of magic water from a hot spring. Son One always wanted to read that one. "I want to read the one where they are evil." He would also tell us things like, "I have red eyes because I am evil Applejack." He hasn't asked us to read that one again of late, but he is still into ponies and other creatures that are or have been evil. (It's not entirely clear to me he knows what "evil" is, but he does know that opposite of, say, "good Celestia" is "evil Celestia.") He is especially into Princess Luna and her evil counterpart Nightmare Moon; a passing reference in one comic made me realize there is one episode where Princess Celestia is revealed to have an evil counterpart called Daybreaker, and when he watched that episode, he flipped out with excitement, and often asks if "evil Celestia" is going to be in a particular story. (Thankfully, the other day he told me, "I only like good ponies.")

As long as Hayley has been into MLP, I've known a lot about it. I absorb details about fictional worlds quickly and easily. But now that I am constantly reading these comics, I keep learning more and more. It's a weird experience primarily being exposed to a world through tie-ins, but if you've read as many tie-ins as I have, you know how to recognize the joins. "Ah, this character who just appeared must have been introduced in the show..." and you can even guess pretty accurately what the plot must have been. 

from My Little Pony: Legends of Magic #12
(script by Jeremy Whitley, art by Tony Fleecs)

I am also constantly asking Hayley questions. A lot are about how alicorns/princesses work, but there are no real answers to that. But a lot of questions were raised when I read Son One the twelve-issue Legends of Magic maxi-series; this detailed the lives of a number of ancient heroes of Equestria, and came out in parallel with a season of the television show that also did something similar. I could tell something was going on when I read it; there's a character introduced in issue #7 whose name is never used, for example, until issue #9, and that's because the episode that introduced his character (as a villain) aired between issues #8 and 9.

I was asking Hayley about this story arc... and so she came up with a sequence of episodes that would lead up to this. There are a lot of ongoing plots in MLP, so to understand that storyline, we would need to watch some other episode-- but to understand that, we would need to watch some other episodes, and so on. So when Son One gets his daily dose of tv, all three of us (and sometimes four) sit down to watch with him as we work our way through this sequence. So far we've watched eight episodes, and I'm not sure how many more there are to go.

But what I am realizing is that, like Son One, I am into the evil ponies. Some of the best tv characters are ones that start "evil" but become good. (TV Tropes has an article, of course.) Crais in Farscape, Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Dukat (for a time) in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Blackarachnia in Beast Wars / Beast Machines: Transformers, Astronema in Power Rangers in Space, and so on. (And in comics, there's Megatron in Transformers: More than Meets the Eye.) I think this is because they can often have a little bit of "edge" to them that our heroes lack, but also because they are emotionally complex: they genuinely believed in what they did, even if they no longer do, and so they might regret it but not regret it at the same time.

Because the premise of the show is that friendship is literally magic, MLP has more of these than most shows. You don't win by destroying or imprisoning people as you might most of the time in the above shows-- the characters who switch are very much exceptions in those. In MLP, though, you typically defeat someone by making friends with them... so the show is replete with ex-villains, many of whom go on to become recurring characters (and the ones that don't recur on screen end up doing so in the comics): there's Princess Luna/Nightmare Moon, Starlight Glimmer, Tempest Shadow, Stygian/the Pony of Shadows, Sunset Shimmer, probably others I'm forgetting.

Starlight Glimmer is probably the best of these on screen. In her first couple appearances, she was a unicorn who convinced a town they would live more happily if they had no cutie marks (the unique indication of ponies' talents), because difference is the cause of unhappiness; she then sought revenge on Twilight Sparkle. But Twilight learned that Starlight had been upset when a friend got a cutie mark indicating he was talented at magic and thus left her to go to magic school, and took her on as a pupil. I really like the subsequent episodes I've seen Starlight in, as she struggles with her self-worth.

from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #67
(script by Jeremy Whitley, art by Andy Price)

Tempest Shadow was a secondary villain in the MLP movie; the character never appeared on the tv show, as she was played by Emily Blunt, someone the cartoon couldn't get on a regular basis. But the comics have no such restriction, and there's a great two-part comic story illustrated by Andy Price (the best illustrator of pony comics) where she confronts the tragedy in her past that led her to becoming a villain; it makes a great companion to the issue of the movie prequel comic also illustrated by Andy Price about how she met up with the Storm King. Like there's some legit great art in these things, and thus great character work.

On the show, once Nightmare Moon returns to being Princess Luna, she mostly seems to just turn up to crisis situations alongside her sister, Princess Celestia, who rules Equestria. (One of the only exceptions I've seen is the episode "A Royal Problem," where Starlight Glimmer switches the cutie marks of the two sisters to help them better understand each other.) But there are a number of comic issues that focus on her attempts to readjust to life in Equestria after spending a thousand years as an insane villain on the moon. (And even before she became Nightmare Moon, she was always kind of an outsider.) These are some of my favorite issues of the comics.

The comics even redeem characters the show apparently never does. On screen, Sombra was defeated-- in the comic story arc The Siege of the Crystal Empire, he gets reconstituted from being a spirit, but then is convinced to give up his evil ways. (Apparently, though, the show undermines this by bringing him back in a totally different way later on, still evil. Alas, as it's a great story arc.)

from My Little Pony: Friends Forever #7
(script by Jeremy Whitley, art by Tony Fleecs)

I recently read Son One one where Luna goes to Pinkie Pie to learn how to do comedy, and there's another good one where she teams up with Twilight's dragon spike to investigate arson in Dragontown. ("Forget it Spike. It's Dragontown.") The best one, though, is one (drawn by Andy Price again) where she takes over Celestia's job for the day. The tv show would do something similar later in "A Royal Problem," but this is much funnier, with much more emphasis on Luna's tendency to call other ponies her minions, and on her overall awkwardness. It's not quite how she is in the show... but it's in some ways better, and I always enjoy declaiming stuff in my Luna voice in the stories where she shows up.

Hayley has actually been after me to read her pony comics for years, but Son One is far more likely to throw a tantrum if I don't do it. But as Hayley pointed out to me, I really should be counting them on my reading list!

The Title Fonts and Logos of Star Trek, Part III: Television, 2017-Present

Continued from my discussion of The Next Generation tv show and films, plus Enterprise, three weeks ago...

After twelve years away, Star Trek finally returned to television (kind of) with the debut of Star Trek: Discovery (2017-present). Discovery featured a new logo with a new typeface:

Peters over at FontShop identifies it as a customized version of "Redrail Superfast." Here's how the logo would look if rendered in the actual Redrail Superfast:

The main change I can identify is the removal of the more finicky serifs: in the base font, almost every letter has these points that go out and then down, but in the Discovery logo, they just go out, if they're there at all. It is somewhat reminiscent of the original Star Trek logo... but I am not a fan. I think it's two things: those Rs look off to me, imbalanced in some way, and only clearly Rs because of the surrounding context. The other is that its finickiness means it doesn't read well from a distance, unlike most other Star Trek logos. I think about this a lot because I shelve my Star Trek trade paperbacks in the dining room and often stare at my bookshelf while trying to get my son to slowly work his way through a meal:

Maybe the coloring is partially the issue, but I don't think the Disco logo stands out as well as the Deep Space Nine or Enterprise logos to either side of it; the novel titles are also in the customized Redrail Superfast, and similarly hard to make out, something the S&S cover designer seems to have admitted when they changed font for the sixth Disco novel.

As I mentioned in part I, the Picard (2020-present) promotional materials used the classic Star Trek font:

The subtitle font could be a number of different sans serifs, but I am pretty sure it is "DIN Condensed."

However, the logo that appeared on literally every piece of Picard tie-in material and advertising was not the logo used in the actual show! The actual show's logo looked like this:

It maintains the DIN Condensed for the subtitle (and in fact, the whole title sequence uses DIN Condensed for credits), but the "STAR TREK" is in Redrail Superfast. This was used in the show's title sequence and, as far as I can tell, literally nowhere else!

I think what happened here is an attempt at branding cohesion that someone changed their minds on at the last minute, because when the cartoon Lower Decks debuted later in 2020, this was its logo:

We have the classic "Star Trek" font for the series title, combined with a unique font for the subtitle. I couldn't find anyone on the Internet stating what the subtitle font is, nor could I figure it out myself; I suspect it's a heavily customized version of something preexisting, if not bespoke. It's definitely going for a comedy vibe, but it's also a little reminiscent of the classic TNG font, I think, with the gaps in the R and the D. (Here's a good post at the TrekBBS where a poster imagines what the logo would look like if it used the actual TNG font.) I should note that for its credits and episode titles, Lower Decks uses the exact font TNG used for those things, "Crillee Italic."

So we have a bit of a pattern emerging in the CBS All Access era, with classic "Star Trek" title and unique subtitle. This would be confirmed when Discovery returned for its third season in late 2020, debuting an all-new logo:

Aha, it all fits together! "Star Trek" for the title; "Eurostile" for the subtitle. Eurostile is one of the fonts used for the livery of Starfleet vessels; it's pretty close to what was used for the Enterprise logo, in fact. Interestingly, though, when the season three premiere debuted on CBSAA, it still used Redrail Superfast for the "Star Trek" part, but later they went back and changed it. So it seems like someone decided they wanted a consistent logo, but late in the game, it was decided that the "Star Trek" font was a better choice for this than Redrail Superfast.

I agree, though there's something indelibly original series about that logo that makes it an odd fit for a universal Star Trek brand. Maybe if it had been used all along, but as I discussed in part I, it has pretty much been contained to the original show and things meant to evoke it. It just seems wrong having it attached to a show about Picard! Surely it should have been something like this:

(forgive my crude mock-up)

The next Star Trek show we know anything concrete about is Prodigy, the Nickelodeon cartoon, which will air in 2021. It keeps the theme going:

There's also the Captain Pike spin-off, Strange New Worlds, but no logo has been released for that yet. Based on the current conformity of the CBSAA era, though, I think we can guess pretty safely what font will be used for the "Star Trek" part of the title, at least!

Continue on to next month's discussion of the fonts of the books...