10 Greatest Star Trek Moments In 2024
Don't try to be a great Star Trek moment, just be a moment. We'll do the judging after that.
*Warning! This is a spoiler alert for the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks in particular.*
2023 and 2022 were bumper, wall-to-wall years of Star Trek. 2024 was no slacker either. Three whole seasons of three separate series aired between April and December. In November, an extraordinary short film moved millions. Star Trek: Discovery wrapped up on a touching glimpse at its own future. Star Trek: Lower Decks is about to conclude after a strong season. The second of Star Trek: Prodigy was arguably one of the best ever made.
2024 was also the year of big reveals for what was to come in the next and the next. "Sitting on that secret [for months] was tough," Robert Picardo, up in Toronto for filming, told TVO Today's Steve Paikin this October. That secret being, The Doctor was to be re-activated in live-action for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Comic-Cons in 2024 were for ever-expanding cast lists.
Elsewhere, fans got behind the idea of a Miles O'Brien statue in Killarney, launched another plane, and in the case of the French fans, formed an airtight seal around any spoilers for the rest of the world. Prodigy might not have got a third season yet, but it did get a theme park attraction. So did the re-built bridge of the Enterprise-D, both opening in 2025.
"Wait, everyone, shut up!" That's… that's Harry Kim! No, that's a room full of Harrys Kim! And one of them has a whole TWO pips. We knew the now-not-forever-Ensign was appearing in Lower Decks from the official trailer. What we didn't know was just how many of his Star Trek colleagues would be starring alongside him in the brilliant Fissure Quest. Garrett Wang is one of the last of the Voyager main cast to reprise his role. Now, someone just needs to persuade Roxann Dawson, and we'll have an entry for next year.
10. Grass Is Greener; Grass Is Breener
On the other side of the "heavy emo" of season four, as Jonathan Frakes put it to Star Trek Explorer Magazine (via TrekMovie), season five of Star Trek: Discovery was generally lighter fare. It still had the high stakes, but it wasn't taking itself quite so seriously. If the show had to go out, at least it went out on greener — Breener — pastures.
Speaking of, if you're looking for L'ak, you won't find him over the fence, but up the Jefferies tube. That was Elias Toufexis' on-set hideaway during the filming of Mirrors, as the actor noted on Twitter. A life-long fan of Star Trek (and then some), Toufexis was geeking out about his role just as much as we were watching him. Breen courier, and reluctant scion of the Imperium, L'ak — and Toufexis — made Trek history. Galactic hell hadn't frozen over, but it was still a bit chilly beneath the mask. L'ak was the first Breen we'd seen take it off.
From Breen and green to the red forests of Sanctuary Four, the fence at the end of the series was to keep Alice safely out. With the news of Discovery's cancellation looming over like that Breen dreadnought, producers sought to construct a coda. The result wasn't perfect, but overall, it was an elegant way to say goodbye to the series that had said its "Vulcan Hello" to contemporary Trek. The 'Red' of one last Red Directive for Discovery, the ship, was then a future for Craft.