Federation Frequencies AM920: The Final Rantier.

Your host: Garlan Trenn, Broadcasting Live from Deck 9¾ of the USS Disenchantment

Trenn accepting his Broadcaster of the Year award.

Cue old-school Starfleet jingle, equal parts brass and ennui.

GARLAN TRENN (gravelly, mid-century New Jersey meets Vulcan grad school):

Ladies and gentlebeings of the quadrant—strap in. Turn off your empathy modules. This one’s going to sting like a Vulcan neck pinch in a turbo lift.

Let’s talk about Star Trek: Discovery. Or as I now call it: Feelings in Space™.

Now listen, don’t twitch your antennae. I watched the first season. Hell, I liked the first season. Klingons were weird again. There was espionage. There was ethical ambiguity. There was a mirror universe. Remember that? A universe so twisted that people wore eyeliner and ran empires without a single HR seminar?

And then... it all changed.

Somewhere between the spore drive and the space-time wormhole, they picked up a stowaway. Not a Romulan spy. Not a time-displaced war criminal. No, something far more insidious: an ideological bully with a screenwriting credit.

Suddenly the bridge crew had to announce their pronouns mid-crisis like we were all on a panel at the Galactic Inclusivity Expo. The ship’s computer developed abandonment trauma. The captain cried so often I thought they were venting atmosphere on the bridge.

Now don’t misinterpret me, this isn’t about the pronouns. This isn’t about representation. I love representation. I'm not tolerant, I embrace. I demand people be who they are, or else. I want a Ferengi with tentacle pronouns who speaks only in slam poetry. But I want that character to exist naturally in the world, not arrive with a 15-minute monologue and a standing ovation from the cast.

You know who’s doing it right? Strange New Worlds.

Strange New Worlds took the Gorn, the same rubber-suit lizard that Kirk karate-chopped back in the 60s at the Vasquez Rocks (yes, I know the name of the actual location where they shot it. Don't walk away.) and turned them into existential horror. You never see them clearly. You don’t understand them. They’re terrifying. Alien. The Other, in the real science fiction sense. Metaphor for fear. For unknowability. For the limits of compassion.

That’s allegory. That’s metaphor. That’s what science fiction is supposed to do.

But over on Discovery? Subtext got spaced out the nearest airlock. Now it’s all text. Just plain, undistilled, wincingly sincere text. The show used to ask: “What is the cost of survival?” Now it asks: “Have you hugged your sentient navigation system today?”

We used to explore the galaxy. Now we explore each other’s emotional boundaries. With PowerPoint.

I mean, who’s running this ship? The badass captain with commitment issues or a freelance sensitivity consultant with a minor in 21st century sociology?

Look, I’m not against progress. I’m against the performance of progress. And if your idea of a futuristic society is one where we're still awkwardly explaining gender identity like it’s 2023 with warp drive, then buddy, we’ve got bigger issues than the Gorn.

We were promised boldly going where no one has gone before. Not crying where absolutely everyone has cried before.

So please, Discovery writers, if you’re listening on subspace and are strangely given another swing at this... perhaps in an alternate reality... bring back the awe. Bring back the alien. Bring back a little mystery. I don’t need every character to feel seen. I need them to see something bigger than themselves. Something terrifying. Something wonderful.

Something alien.

Until then, I’ll be rewatching Balance of Terror, eating replicated meatloaf, and waiting for someone..anyone... to fire a photon torpedo without asking if it’s a macro-aggression first.

Cue static. Theme music. End transmission.