Like every other longtime Metroid fan, I've been waiting nearly two decades for a proper sequel to Metroid Fusion. When Metroid Dread became available for preorder, I went to great lengths to secure a copy of the Special Edition, and I began a hunt for the game's ever-elusive amiibo. I steered clear of previews, reviews, and anything else that might influence my opinion or spoil anything before I had a chance to play through the game. Once my copy arrived, I played as long and often as possible. If you didn't know any better, you might think I was excited about Dread.

The thing is, I was dreading Dread. Each new installment in the last 15 years has caused me to question more and more what Metroid is, where it's going, and whether or not I still belong in the fandom. Whereas the original Metroid, Metroid II, Super, Fusion, Zero Mission, Prime, Prime 2, and even Pinball are all games I love, like, or at least respect enough to have played a minimum of three times each—making sure to clear Hard Mode (if available) and get all the items and see all the endings—I haven't bothered beating any of the more recent games more than once. If I haven't truly enjoyed Metroid since the GameCube era, then how much longer can I complain about new installments before giving up on the franchise?

You may have noticed the title of this post.

I can no longer consider myself a Metroid fan.

Get comfortable; this is gonna be a long one.

I've played bad games before, and I've played good games that aren't my style. Dread, somehow, is both. If you strip away everything but the puzzles and upgrades, Dread has the foundation for a solid Metroid experience. However, every other aspect of the game contributes to a Metroid experience that I never want to repeat. I'm not playing Dread again, and based on what it tells me about where the franchise is headed, I'm not playing any future Metroid games, either.

It comes down to four key factors: accessibility, conveyance, difficulty, and storytelling. A fifth factor, which I wasn't expecting to be relevant in a direct sequel to Fusion, exacerbated the problems: not having played Samus Returns first. Until I get to the part where I discuss this fifth factor, I'm going to pretend like Samus Returns doesn't exist, so as not to muddy the waters with information I didn't have when playing Dread.

Major spoilers ahead for Dread, Fusion, and the rest of the Metroid series.

ACCESSIBILITY

There is no excuse for a game released in 2021 to have no customization options whatsoever, save for brightness. I wanted to crank up the music—an essential component of the Metroid experience—which I could barely hear over the sound effects. I wanted to adjust the Free Aim sensitivity so I could actually hit an E.M.M.I. in the face with the Omega Cannon; I had to be extra choosy about where to engage, because my aim kept snapping to odd angles that just missed the target.

I wanted to remap the controls to be logical and comfortable. I can't tell you how many times I got smacked around because I instinctively reached for the wrong button, or because it took me a hair too long to get my finger over to the button I needed. I wanted the option to change the "hold this button" buttons to be toggle switches instead; it's physically tiring to maintain pressure on buttons that aren't where I need them to be, and I had a hard time wrapping my brain around holding and releasing multiple buttons in the right sequence (seriously, taking down an E.M.M.I. was a nightmare).

Adding insult to injury, Dread's control "menu" assumes you're playing with the Switch in your hands, not on a television with a Pro Controller like I did. Having never played a Switch game before, I didn't appreciate the extra effort required to compare my controller against a diagram of a totally different one.

I found myself longing for the ability to toggle upgrades on and off at will, like in Super. When I'm attempting wacky acrobatics involving a series of ledge grabs, I don't want the Morph Ball to automatically roll me into the nooks I'm using as handholds. When I collect Super Missiles, I don't want them to replace my normal missiles entirely; the lower rate of fire forces me to aim every shot carefully, eliminating the option of a wild barrage when there's no time to be accurate. (This, in turn, makes collecting Missile Expansions less exciting—if I can't let loose on the bosses, then I'm never gonna need this much ammo.)

Moreover, I'm colorblind. Dread isn't the first video game to overlook my disability, nor is it the worst offender in the Metroid series (remember the final boss of Hunters?), but it's still disappointing. The map is harder to use than necessary because half the teleporter symbols look the same (why not use colors and shapes?). Unless they're on the same screen together, I can't tell a Charge Beam door from a Power Beam door (which doesn't sound like a big deal until there's an E.M.M.I. closing in and the door isn't opening).

Although I've never been formally diagnosed with OCD, I absolutely have some obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I'm the guy who jumps around the landing site in Super until every block of the map is filled in, including the tiny corners you can barely get into. So you can imagine my horror when discovering how excessively granular the map system is in Dread. Instead of splitting areas into chunks that mirror how much of the map you actually seen on your screen, it uses Samus as a paintbrush to color in the map one pixel at a time. Walk down a hallway that's barely taller than Samus is, and your map of that hallway is incomplete unless you're jumping into the low ceiling while you move. My undiagnosed OCD can't cope with that. It took me ~12.5 hours to reach the final boss, which feels absurd, and filling in my stupid map accounts for too much of that time.

Let me toggle the icons on and off so I can actually see the map. Give me textures instead of bright colors to distinguish water/lava regions from normal regions. Regardless of color-coding, my brain equates "dark vs light" as "unexplored vs explored"; I could never immediately tell what was a room I had fully explored that had water/lava on bottom, and what was a room I had only explored the bottom of. Similarly, I kept mistaking fully explored rooms with lots of platforms for partially explored rooms with shadow regions that just look like platforms. Filling in every inch of the map wasn't just a compulsion; it was necessary to simplify the map enough to make it usable. I've never had this much trouble with a map in a video game.

CONVEYANCE

If you're going to tell me how to play Metroid, give me a dedicated tutorial area that finds a narrative excuse to teach me everything I need to know (eg, Prime). Otherwise, don't pester me with things I could learn from the instruction manual. I don't mind a brief explanation of how to use new abilities as I unlock them (eg, Zero Mission), and I don't mind if gameplay tips are worked into the story somehow (eg, Fusion), as long as the information is communicated in a consistent and minimally intrusive fashion. What I do mind is the kind of scattershot approach taken by Dread.

In lieu of a dedicated tutorial area, the part of Artaria where the game begins is packed with challenges that call on a variety of skills and techniques, with tutorial popups along the way. But the tutorial popups have no rhythm. Dread swings awkwardly between back-to-back tutorial popups and stretches of filler that don't seem to teach anything specific. The path is cluttered with a Charge Beam door and a Morph Ball tunnel that only serve to distract the player. Interrupting the training is a visit to a Network Station, where Adam discusses some game mechanics that aren't immediately relevant. Some abilities (eg, grabbing onto ledges, crouching, wall-jumping) are never explained at all.

The tutorial makes a lot of weird assumptions about what does and doesn't need to be taught. It's not nearly thorough enough to be geared toward brand-new players, yet it provides too much information to be aimed at seasoned Metroid players who just need to know what's new in this installment.

The tutorial popups abruptly cease after defeating the first E.M.M.I. Unlike Super, the Prime games, Other M, and Federation Force, there's no obvious end to the warmup, no cutscene or vast new area making it clear that you're on your own now. (You're never really on your own, though; tutorial popups unexpectedly show up at later points in the game, still with no rhythm or consistency.) This is where I got stuck. Dread had trained me to watch for tutorial popups and not think for myself, so when I found a door I couldn't reach because of a pool of water impeding my movement, I naturally assumed that I wasn't supposed to be here yet—I probably needed the Gravity Suit or something.

Except...I didn't see anywhere else to go. I traveled all the way back to the start in search of another route I'd missed. Nothing. I wandered for what felt like 20 minutes in search of the way forward, until I determined it had to be that door. By complete accident, I blew a hole in the side of the pool, which drained the water and allowed me to proceed.

Here's where my colorblindness came into play again: I physically could not distinguish the destructible rock from the rocks around it. But equally importantly, Dread's messy approach to teaching the player got me thinking the wrong way about the game. When I ran into the same issue with a destructible rock in Burenia, it was because I had started relying on the Pulse Radar to reveal any and all "hidden blocks," which apparently didn't include the one right in front of me. Dread encouraged me to shut off my Metroid instincts and rely on guidance systems that weren't as helpful as they let on.

Perhaps because I had the brightness turned up, or perhaps because of the distracting amount of detail and animation in the backgrounds, I didn't immediately notice that interactive floor panels have a glow around them. Every other Metroid has raised circular platforms that are architecturally distinctive, even before you factor in any special effects; the ones in Dread are square and basically flush with the floor.

It's easy enough to notice a white glow in a dark, empty Network Station; not so much when frantically trying to escape from an E.M.M.I. in a brand-new area I haven't had time to properly explore—one with foggy monochrome backgrounds, a softly pulsating glow that affects the whole screen, glowy white fog rolling off the floor, a white ceiling light faintly illuminating an unassuming machine in the background, and a type of environmental puzzle I haven't been trained to expect. I didn't even spot the suspicious rectangle in the floor below the button—again, too busy looking for an escape route to soak in the scenery.

I also didn't realize until fairly late in the game that a flash of light is the universal signal to use a Melee Counter. The E.M.M.I. survival tutorial says to counter "at the exact moment of the flash," but the regular tutorial only says to counter "at the right moment." Word choice matters. If you're going to bombard me with tutorial popups, don't expect me to look for visual cues that you don't tell me about, especially in a game where basically every special effect is a flash of some sort. I got hurt way too many times trying to counter attacks that, in retrospect, couldn't be countered because they didn't have a flash.

To that end, Melee Counter would really benefit from being presented as an upgrade, not as a basic ability to be taken for granted. Collect it from a Chozo statue early in the game, solve a few puzzles requiring Melee Counter in order to leave the room, make sure the player really understands the mechanic. This would be a perfect place to teach the player that you can shoot and use Melee Counter in cutscenes, too. I, for one, am not accustomed to boss battles with interactive cinematic elements; getting punished for watching instead of playing the cutscenes in the fight with Corpius just made me feel stupid.

DIFFICULTY

Metroid is not a game series I associate with high difficulty. Individual challenges might be tough—Prime 2's infuriating Boost Guardian immediately comes to mind, as do a couple ludicrous item puzzles in Zero Mission—but by and large, the real difficulty is self-inflicted: speedrunning, Hard Mode, 100% completion, even minimalist runs (someday I might resume my 1% run of Fusion that's been stalled for years at the Yakuza boss, a solid two-thirds of the way through the game). As long as I'm simply trying to finish a Metroid game and not being reckless about it, I can usually count on having few or no Game Overs.

I died more times in Dread than I have ever died across every playthrough of every other Metroid game combined.

To be clear, I didn't even finish the game. I gave up on the second form of the final boss, put the Game Card back in the box, and made arrangements to sell it to a friend so I never had to look at it again.

Let's forget for a moment about the accessibility and conveyance issues that made Dread harder for me than it should have been. The gameplay isn't a logical evolution from Fusion; it's a leap toward the likes of Resident Evil, Dark Souls, and other games I have no desire to play. Dread falls outside my gaming comfort zone, and it breaks tradition in unwelcome ways.

Samus starts with three new abilities that weren't in Fusion: Free Aim, Slide, and Melee Counter. The first two are fine—Free Aim offers precision control of an ability that has been expanding since the first game; and Slide is functionally similar to the Morph Ball, almost like an on-demand Boost Ball from the Prime games. Melee Counter, however, is a serious problem for me. I don't play games with quick-time events, and my experience with counter mechanics extends only as far as Timed Hits in Super Mario RPG; our boy Roy in Super Smash Bros. Melee; and the SenseMove, Lethal Strike, and Overblast mechanics in Other M, which I struggled with tremendously and feel are inappropriate for Metroid anyhow.

Melee Counter reduces combat to a series of pass/fail tests: pass, and you do massive damage, earn power-ups, and feel awesome; fail, and you take significant damage, waste a vital opportunity to succeed, and feel like a dunce. Far more often than not, I failed. I wanted to ignore Melee Counter altogether, but that's not really an option; enemies routinely prompt you to use it, boss fights drag on without it, and some bosses require a Melee Counter before they'll die or move on to their next phase. I constantly had to choose between playing how I wanted to play, which usually got me killed, and playing how the game wanted me to play, which usually got me killed.

I cannot tell you how many times I died to random minions—all the self-preservation techniques I've learned over two decades of playing Metroid barely apply when Melee Counter is involved. However, I can tell you that I died to every single boss, repeatedly, often in a matter of seconds. The only exceptions were in two rematches with bosses whose patterns I'd already learned. I could never stay alive long enough to learn a pattern on the first (or second, or third) try; and even once I understood the pattern, the less-than-ideal controls and my ineptitude with Melee Counter usually got the better of me.

Furthermore, I could never tell how close I was to defeating a boss. All the 3D Metroid games give the bosses a health bar, and all the 2D ones since Super have the bosses change color and/or incur visible battle damage as they lose health. Dread does neither. I can't work out a good strategy if I can't gauge the impact of my attacks.

Every time I collected a major upgrade, I backtracked through the whole game in search of any place to use it, in the hopes of finding any advantage to keep me alive longer. This wrecked the pacing, and it also led to frequent disappointment: I kept discovering shortcuts I didn't care about, Missile Expansions I didn't need, Power Bombs I wasn't yet authorized to use, and rooms that suddenly dead-ended in a puzzle immune to sequence-breaking. On the off chance that I might find something useful, I willingly threw myself into lava pits and cold storage rooms without the Gravity Suit. Losing health in awkward increments, rather than continuously like in every other Metroid, usually made these excursions too unpredictable to survive.

It's an unspoken rule that you can only die in Metroid if you run out of energy or, in the case of an escape sequence, time. Nothing short of a planet or space station blowing up around Samus is inherently fatal (except in Hunters, where she can die for something as trivial as falling into an infinite abyss). If Dread were true to its roots, an E.M.M.I. would keep trying to impale Samus at regular intervals, dealing massive damage until the player got the timing right to escape. But no, you have one chance to survive—and the game flat-out tells you that success is virtually impossible (ie, don't even bother; just die).

Needless to say, I died every time I got caught by an E.M.M.I., which was at least once or twice (if not seven or eight times) for every foray into an E.M.M.I. Zone. In contrast with the SA-X encounters in Fusion and the stealth sections in Zero Mission, which are actual puzzles requiring a mix of clever thinking and quick reflexes, the E.M.M.I. Zones in Dread are sandboxes of death, allowing for a wide range of scenarios that aren't necessarily fair or fun. This lack of a curated experience gave the Zones a reverse difficulty curve—the more abilities I unlocked, the less I needed to bother with stealth tactics, so it became progressively easier to bumble through the Zones without demonstrating any real understanding of E.M.M.I. mechanics.

Metroid is all about starting virtually powerless and growing into a nigh-unstoppable juggernaut, with increasingly formidable foes and puzzles challenging your supremacy. The E.M.M.I. don't challenge your supremacy; they make you repeat what is fundamentally the same challenge at various points in the game, but each time, you're a bit less pathetic. You still need the Omega Cannon to win, and all it takes is merely touching an E.M.M.I. to lose, but at least it's gradually easier to keep your distance. And keeping your distance is basically the same challenge in the five E.M.M.I. Zones where it matters, which are all comparable in size and complexity—whatever strategy you use to survive the first one will probably work for the others, and for me, it was mostly trial and error. That's not satisfying, and it's not empowering.

After a while, I became numb to the game's attempts to instill a sense of dread in me. It's hard to feel tense and afraid when I know that whatever's around the next corner will kill me, and that I won't lose any progress because there's a checkpoint at the entrance. The "low health" alarm, which normally inspires panic and lights a fire under me to play better, loses its impact when I hear it all the time (or not at all, because the bosses killed me that quickly). Dread's difficulty interferes with its ability to create the atmosphere I look for in a Metroid game, including a feeling of triumph over adversity. All the power-ups in the galaxy can't save me when practically every boss fight hinges on the pass/fail Melee Counter system I haven't mastered.

For me, Dread was soul-crushing. I can only fail so many Melee Counters before I feel like a failure myself. I can only die so many times before I start dying inside, crushed by my beloved franchise painfully drilling it into me that I'm not good enough to play it anymore. I almost broke down in tears after my fourth or fifth attempt to defeat Experiment No. Z-57, who just wouldn't die. I left each and every play session feeling inadequate, defeated, depressed, and resentful. Dread singlehandedly ruined every day that I played it, and I've continued to live in that negative headspace over the weeks that it's taken me to write this colossal post.

STORYTELLING

Storytelling is more than just dialogue and cutscenes. Everything from music to graphics to level design can help tell a story, evoking an emotional response from the player that makes the game world feel more engaging and believable. Just imagine what the final escape sequence in Super would feel like without the blaring alarm, flashing lights, shaking screen, rampant explosions, and hectic music. Storytelling in Metroid is all about getting the player immersed in the atmosphere. For me, the absolute easiest way to break that immersion is to play fast and loose with story continuity.

Consider the ending of Fusion. Samus knows that the X Parasites are a threat to the entire galaxy and must be destroyed. The Galactic Federation knows that Samus is a threat to their secret plans to control and exploit the X Parasites. Adam, whose duty was to keep Samus locked in a room to prevent her from blowing up the station, is persuaded by Samus to unlock the doors and help her blow up the station, along with a whole planet for good measure. As these two newly minted fugitives escape the destruction, Samus ruminates on what lies ahead: she and Adam will be held responsible; there will be "tribunals and investigations"; and the "beings of the universe" likely won't understand what happened here, despite Adam's optimism that someone will understand.

Consider the beginning of Dread. An indeterminate amount of time after Fusion, but seemingly not long enough for those "tribunals and investigations" to have concluded or for any trust to have been rebuilt among any of the parties involved, Samus is off to find more X Parasites, apparently at the behest of the Federation. By all appearances, it's a perfectly normal mission. Samus is traveling with Adam (and some other AI who seems to be the ship's computer, despite Adam already being the ship's computer) in the same ship that the Federation gave her in Fusion (whose subtle redesign is on the border between "artistic license" and "disregard for visual continuity"). She's getting paid a bounty (which Adam complains is too low, despite knowing full well that Samus would sacrifice her career and herself for any chance to destroy the X Parasites). There are no suspicions, misgivings, or caveats of any kind. Anything about Fusion that might've upset the status quo is never mentioned.

Oh, and this is a small thing, but it says a lot: breaking from the tradition of the previous mainline games, the intro never tells us this is "METROID 5."

To top it off, Samus inexplicably has a brand-new suit that looks radically different from the one she wore in Fusion. I could accept that she acquired a new suit on another adventure between Fusion and Dread. I could also accept that her old suit, which had large pieces surgically removed at the start of Fusion, started to regrow into something new. But I find it hard to accept that enough time has passed for either option to be plausible.

Immediately, the game felt wrong. If you're going to selectively ignore continuity in order to return to business as usual, at least give me a larger time skip than "Just when it all seemed over." I didn't buy it. I couldn't suspend my disbelief.

Then things got worse. Samus is approaching planet ZDR, now she's unconscious, now she's riding an elevator, now she's landing the ship, now the elevator, now the ship, now the elevator, now she's fighting someone, now she's being choked, now she's fine, now let's go shoot stuff. Everything happened so quickly and jarringly that I had to rewatch the intro on YouTube to understand what was going on.

There's no reason to put those events out of order. Showing the outcome of the battle before the battle diminishes the drama. It's extremely confusing to have a series of flashbacks mere seconds into developing what the present looks like, especially when there are flashbacks within flashbacks. All the quick cuts and closeups make things even harder to parse. At one point, a massive blast is fired toward the elevator, but the camera doesn't zoom in or linger long enough to confirm whether our best escape route has been rendered completely unusable—because if it hasn't, then all Samus needs to do is grab the Flash Shift or Speed Booster or Space Jump, cross the broken bridge, and leave.

What's more, Samus's mission is never fully explained. What happens if she encounters the E.M.M.I. or the X? Should she destroy them? Bring them back to the Federation? Report her findings and wait for orders? Obviously it's not important, because once she arrives, her objective quickly changes to, "OK, go home now; this was a mistake." But there's no clear path to the surface—no central tunnel like in Metroid II, no conspicuous statue blocking her path like in Super; nothing that says, "this is the way to victory, but you've gotta do some work before you can pass." The split-second glimpse of Samus landing the ship isn't nearly enough to create a mental picture of where you need to go. All this makes the game feel aimless.

Ostensibly, checking in with Adam at the Network Stations should give the game direction. Except Adam mostly exists to explain game mechanics, reiterate plot details you already know, and tell you what the developers want you to do next. His dialogue is generic, devoid of the bluntness, efficiency, and wisdom that we see in Fusion and (I can't believe I'm acknowledging Other M) Other M. Because Adam never sounds like himself, not even in the intro cutscene, I honestly can't tell where he stopped being Adam and started being Raven Beak—so either their two voices are indistinguishable in the absence of obvious phrases such as "any objections, lady" or "fulfill your destiny," or it was Raven Beak the whole time and he's just the most generic-sounding villain ever, neither of which is indicative of good writing.

What's missing here is any input from Samus. Being attacked by a Chozo is the kind of thing Samus would absolutely have thoughts about. Considering Adam told her to "treat our lost assets with care," Samus should be pressing Adam for a way to disable the E.M.M.I., destroying them only as a last resort. She should definitely be arguing against trying to leave ZDR before determining the truth about the X. For a game that draws so much narrative influence from Fusion, it's striking that there are no exchanges between Samus and Adam or elevator monologues to help develop the characters and conflicts.

Samus's apparent indifference to her mission and circumstances takes away any sense of urgency or character agency. You're fighting bosses and searching for secrets because that's how the game works, not because it seems to matter to Samus. She's not a silent protagonist; she's an absentee protagonist. Compare her elevator rides in Prime, where she's alert and emotive, with her tram rides in Dread, where she's a faceless statue; it never quite feels like Samus is really there.

If Samus isn't there, then I'm not there. Dread kept finding ways to disengage me from the story, disrupt my immersion, and elicit the wrong emotional response from me. Sometimes it didn't even require dialogue and cutscenes to do so.

One of my favorite moments in Metroid II is at the very end of the game, when you finally escape the cramped, deadly labyrinth and return to the peaceful, spacious surface. There's a rush of freedom and relief that comes with seeing the open sky again, Space Jumping into the stratosphere, and knowing you made it out alive. When I reached the surface in Dread (after spending most of the game zig-zagging horizontally instead of really navigating upward like Adam said), I felt...nothing. The surface is just another enclosed area with a ceiling, no different from any other area in the game, and you're there for all of five minutes before being routed back down to Ferenia again.

There is a similar anticlimax before almost every boss fight. I think about my experience with the leadup to Kraid. Gnarly statue at the entrance. Spooky. Ammo refill. Secret path. Save point. Must be something big through this teleporter. Huge excursion that leads to the Varia Suit. Nice! Time for another huge excursion to a bunch of areas I couldn't access before. Is there anywhere I forgot? Lemme try this door. A couple lava pits, destructible walls, and a mix of large and small enemies. Typical stuff. A casual drop down to a door with a worm enemy attached to it. Behind it is...the room I just came from. Well, that was pointless. Oh, wait, there's a tiny shaft I can Morph Ball into. CUTSCENE! TENSION! OH BOY IT'S KRAID!

Compare this with the leadup to Kraid in Super. Gnarly statue at the entrance. Spooky. Weak enemies. A dead end? No, there's a secret path. Strong enemies. Another dead end? No, there's a save point. There must be a secret. Aha! Long hallway with strong enemies, foreboding architecture, a barrage of needles from offscreen, and then it's Kraid, just like in the original game! That wasn't too bad for a first boss. Now there's...another...foreboding room. With an insect-ridden corpse that looks eerily like Samus. And a creepy door guardian who seems to have infested the entire wall. Gulp. On the other side of the door is a dead-end with a pit of thorny spikes. The door locks. I'm trapped. And then...OH NO. BIG Kraid appears.

Dread, I don't care how fancy your graphics are; if you can't build and release tension well, you're not doing Metroid right.

I have several other complaints, but I'll keep them brief. The game starts with an infodump about Metroids and X Parasites, which easily could've been worked into the ensuing cutscene or dialogue elsewhere. I feel weird about the Chozo in this game, who seem less like sci-fi aliens vaguely influenced by the ancient Egyptians and more like stereotypes of Indigenous peoples. After several rewatches, I still don't understand what happened in the last E.M.M.I. cutscene, where Samus's hand starts glowing and the Central Unit just...gives up its power remotely, without a fight? Lastly, I was hoping for a nod to the Metroid project "Dread" referenced in Prime 3, which itself was a reference to an earlier, cancelled iteration of Dread.

Oh, and let's not forget the gigantic plot hole: Raven Beak lures Samus to ZDR to steal her Metroid DNA, right? He defeats her in combat, rendering her unconscious, and then...leaves her to die in any number of ways that might prevent him from extracting her DNA? Like, dude. Carry her to an E.M.M.I. Zone and claim your victory. You are just the worst.

Even the art book that comes with the Special Edition of Dread is deficient in its storytelling. Advertised as "spanning all 5 entries in the 2D Metroid saga" and styling itself as "Mission Logs" on the cover, the art book had me expecting a love letter to the whole series. Except there's no foreword or overarching narrative tying everything together as "Mission Logs." In fact, nothing is even labeled; it's just a collection of images with no context. Dread has a luxurious 128 pages to showcase novel and highly varied art of all kinds; the other four games (plus the two remakes) are crammed into 62 pages and represent a sampling of promotional art only. If you own the North American instruction manuals, you've seen most of this art already. Decent for a casual fan, but disappointing for a diehard. Call it a Dread art book with bonus content; don't get my hopes up.

NOT HAVING PLAYED SAMUS RETURNS FIRST

Normally, when a new Metroid is released, I play it as soon as I can get my hands on it. Samus Returns was the exception. I've been playing fewer platformers in recent years; and I wasn't ready to play another Metroid II remake so soon after playing AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake), which reassured me that at least the fans hadn't forgotten what makes Metroid good. By the time I was finally ready to start a new Metroid, preorders had opened for Dread. I opted to keep Samus Returns on the shelf a little while longer, figuring it would be a good palate cleanser if Dread ended up being terrible.

Biggest mistake of my Metroid career.

Given my fondness for the source material, and the fact that there was source material, I assumed Samus Returns would be a return to form—probably not as good as AM2R, but undoubtedly more engaging and Metroid-y than anything since 2006. I still believed that the last several installments were anomalies, despite the same issues cropping up: problematic storytelling (Prime 3, Other M), core elements that don't feel appropriate for Metroid (Hunters, Prime 3, Other M, Federation Force), and uncomfortable control schemes (Hunters, Prime 3, Prime Trilogy, Other M). I held out hope that the next traditional 2D installment would bring balance to the franchise.

What was that line from the Star Wars prequels? "You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them"?

Samus Returns isn't a return to form; it's an assertion that Metroid has been evolving this whole time into something I no longer recognize. Prime 3 was the Alpha, Other M was the Gamma, Federation Force was Arachnus, Samus Returns was the Zeta, and Dread was the Omega. I skipped a critical link in the evolutionary chain, one that would've dispelled the notion that Dread should have more in common with Fusion and Super than with the last 15 years of the franchise. When I learned that Samus Returns was made by MercurySteam, the same developer responsible for Dread, I found myself playing it not as a palate cleanser, but as an investigation of how many warning signs I missed.

I missed all of them. Accessibility, conveyance, difficulty, storytelling—every problem I had with Dread and with the last 15 years of the franchise were present in some form or another. If I had realized this sooner, I would've been wary of another Metroid by the same developer. Maybe I wouldn't have played Dread at all, choosing to drift away from the franchise instead of needing to forcibly and painfully cut ties with it. Or, I would've gone in with more accurate expectations, a better handle on Melee Counter, and an understanding that glowy floor panels operate everything. I would've waited to play Dread until tracking down the amiibo—the Reserve Tanks I unlocked in Samus Returns are the only reason I didn't give up on that game, too.

Either way, I'd still be walking away from the franchise. But at least some of the disappointment, confusion, frustration, and outrage that overwhelmed me in Dread would've been shifted to the game that laid the groundwork for it.

MISSION FINAL

In the weeks that it's taken me to write and organize these thoughts, I've been listening to Metroid music that makes me remember why I was ever a fan to begin with. Right now it's the title theme for Prime on 30-minute loop, which I've restarted multiple times now. I've needed to be reminded that Metroid—true Metroid—is a fabulously immersive experience that puts me in the Hi-Jump Boots of an awesome bounty hunter and lets me forget about my world for a while.

Dread, on the other hand, is merely a video game.

Whatever I might like about it—and there are things I like about it—is completely irrelevant in light of its flaws. It's poorly written; sloppily designed; dismissive of tradition; impossible to accept as canon; and inconsiderate, if not downright hostile, toward players like me. I am not the target audience. In fact, I haven't been the target audience for about 11 years, but that's never stopped me from taking a chance on the latest installment. Now I know better. There's only one link left in this evolutionary chain, and that's the Queen Metroid. I don't want to be anywhere near her when she takes the throne.

I'm weary of trying to keep up with a franchise that doesn't want me to be a part of it. I'm content to stick with the dozen Metroid games I still care about, especially the half-dozen of those that inspired me to stay with the franchise for as long as I did. Am I bitter about Dread? Absolutely. But I'm not going to let it ruin my mood or monopolize my time anymore. I've said what I needed to say in order to get the negativity out of my system. I've made peace with the last Metroid I'll ever play.

I am done with Dread, and I am done with this franchise. I won't see you next mission.

[Controls screenshot from the Metroid Dread controls guide by All Gamers. Game Over screenshot from a thread by martian717 on reddit. Metroid Mission Logs photo, Metroid screenshot, and Metroid II screenshot taken by me. All other screenshots taken by me from longplays of Metroid Dread, Metroid Fusion, Metroid: Samus Returns, and Super Metroid by LongplayArchive on YouTube. No Etecoons were harmed in the writing of this post.]

I can no longer consider myself a Star Trek fan.

Here's the short-ish version: I'm a diehard fan of The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, and the first ten movies (The Motion Picture through Nemesis). After several years of agonizing over the damage they did to the franchise, I can enjoy 2009's annoyingly titled Star Trek and its sequel Into Darkness as poorly written but well-executed sci-fi popcorn flicks that coincidentally borrow some ideas from The Original Series. By association, I can't accept Beyond as canon, but it's the honorary eleventh Star Trek film of which I'm a diehard fan.

I gave Discovery a generous nine episodes before my outrage and disgust got the better of me. The show was visually, tonally, and narratively incompatible with what I knew as Star Trek; and the gore, infighting, mistrust, incompetence, contrivances, and pessimism in those episodes made the show unpalatable to begin with. Moreover, I felt it was bad form to reboot the franchise in 2009 by returning to Kirk's era, only to re-reboot the franchise in 2017 by returning to Kirk's era in a different timeline. This franchise was boldly going out of its mind.

To wash the taste out of my mouth, I followed every episode of Discovery with an episode of The Orville—which, despite its imperfections, captures everything I love about Star Trek, from the broad strokes (eg, social commentary disguised as sci-fi) to the little details (eg, long, luxurious establishing shots of ships and planets).

I was wary of Picard, because I wanted the franchise to start looking forward rather than backward for inspiration, and because I fully expected to be outraged and disgusted again. The first episode of left me in tears—tears of joy, because for the first time in over a decade, Star Trek actually felt like Star Trek. Different, yes, but unquestionably welcome.

The rest of the season failed to live up to that standard. Despite how much I liked some of the concepts, and despite one truly superb episode ("Nepenthe"), I had so many problems with the planning, pacing, characterizations, gratuitous violence, and wild fluctuations in storytelling quality. I could suspend my disbelief just barely enough to accept it as canon, but I didn't really want to. I also wish I hadn't watched the Short Trek "Children of Mars," which gave me Discovery flashbacks and diminished the impact of Picard's second episode.

I was disheartened by the teaser trailer for Lower Decks, and I was unimpressed and then traumatized by a preview of the first 90 seconds of the first episode. I'm on board with a series featuring a diverse new crew with no apparent ties to any previous series, set sometime after Nemesis, with a unique slant that adds something new to the franchise (in this case, focusing on people other than the bridge crew)—however, this particular brand of humor is a hard sell for me, and I am not on board with sudden, unexpected gore. That makes three series in a row where my squeamishness, which was previously only relevant for a few specific episodes across the entire franchise, is a deterrent to watching Star Trek at all.

What's worse is that there's no end in sight. After Lower Decks, there's Section 31, Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, another season of Discovery, another season of Picard, and at least one yet-to-be-revealed series that I'm aware of, not to mention an R-rated movie originally slated to be directed by Quentin Tarantino. I'm still recovering from the fun but exhausting 11-year journey to Avengers: Endgame; I don't have it in me right now to invest in what is effectively another Marvel Cinematic Universe, let alone one so violent, disorganized, and averse to continuity despite being hung up on nostalgia!

It's reached the point where I physically can't keep up with my favorite franchise, nor do I want to. That is a no-win scenario. My little ship, the USS Fanboy, is in no shape to keep fighting, yet I can't retreat without feeling guilty. So I'm setting the auto-destruct and leaving the battle on my own terms.

Whatever Star Trek is right now, it is not for me. And as difficult as it is for me to admit this, that's okay. I've spent too much of my adult life arguing about what's authentic Star Trek, forcing myself to watch things I knew I wouldn't enjoy, and suffering at the hands of what is supposedly my favorite fandom. I don't need to do that anymore. In fact, I never needed to do that.

There are countless books and comics I haven't read, several games I haven't played, and a few fan-made productions I've been meaning to watch. Even if I ignore everything created from 2009 onward, there is no shortage of new Star Trek for me to experience. I don't have to rely on modern cinematic television, which I often don't enjoy anyhow, to get my fix.

They say all good things come to an end. But perhaps they don't have to. Perhaps what brings you joy is more important than what is canon. Perhaps your vision of a franchise—a vision you believe is in line with that of the person who created it—matters more than the vision of whoever happens to be calling the shots right now. Perhaps, in a universe where absolutely anything can happen, there's still a chance for the undesirable elements to redeem themselves.

I crave optimistic, collaborative, and philosophical stories that are reasonably believable and don't make me want to throw up. I don't mind if stories get dark and serious, as long as those elements serve a greater purpose than just making me depressed. I value the kind of narrative continuity that makes it easy to forgive or explain away the little mistakes and oversights that inevitably occur over the course of several decades. I like cool starships, futuristic gadgets, creative alien civilizations, and relatable characters.

For a good long while, Star Trek was exactly my kind of fiction. Now it isn't. It hasn't been for more than a decade, and I have no reason to believe it ever will be again. That means it's time to move on.

Live fast and prosper, Star Trek.

I am not a diehard Star Wars fan by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, I've marathoned Episodes I-VI in a single sitting, I own several lightsabers, and I can tell a Sullustan from a Selkath, but I didn't grow up on Star Wars the way everyone else did. I was a Star Trek kid; I'd already been exposed to iconic sci-fi characters, weird aliens, cool action sequences, and unforgettable soundtracks by the time I finally watched A New Hope all the way through. For me, Star Wars is just another sci-fi franchise, no different than Firefly/Serenity or Mass Effect. I can geek out about it, but it's not my franchise.

That's why I can tell you with total seriousness that, despite their horrendous flaws, I enjoy the Star Wars prequels at least as much as the original trilogy. That's why I can say with a straight face that I like the Special Editions and don't mind any of the changes that were made—well, except in Return of the Jedi; Prequel Anakin and his creepy smile have no place at that bonfire, and angels somewhere are still weeping about the removal of "Yub Nub." Whether we're talking Clone Wars (the movie, the TV series, or the good TV series), Rogue One, The Force Awakens, or Caravan of Courage, I'm pretty accepting of Star Wars in any format. With no deep personal attachments to this universe, all it really takes to make me happy is stuff blowing up real good.

I think I may need to revise my standards. For years, I've made people wince when I talk positively about the prequels; now I finally have some understanding of the pain they must have endured while watching Phantom Menace for the first time. Never before had I spent nearly two and a half hours wishing a Star Wars movie would either get better or end already. Never before had I seen The Last Jedi.

This is where the spoilers kick in, and where I start running from the angry mob that's starting to form outside.

I went into The Last Jedi more out of fanboy obligation than genuine interest. Entertaining though it was, The Force Awakens failed to get me overly excited about a new trilogy. It isn't a proper sequel to Return of the Jedi, and it isn't a strong foundation for future movies to build off of; it's a nostalgia-drenched reboot that happens to introduce some characters and ideas that could be developed in a sequel. Too many mysteries for the sake of having mysteries; too many important details left unexplained so you'll go buy the book that fills you in on the backstory you're missing. I had no real hopes or expectations for the next episode, because frankly, I had no idea how anyone should follow up on a movie like The Force Awakens.

It should be gratifying, then, that The Last Jedi looks at the plot threads it's been handed and proceeds to tangle or burn every one of them. Luke's first words to Rey? Don't care. Rey's parents? Don't care. Who is Snoke? Don't care. Ben Solo turning to the light side? Let's make it interesting. Captain Phasma? Let's make it a running gag that she's an afterthought who keeps falling down holes. I could go on. This is a movie that revels in subverting expectations, and I respect that—but at the same time, it feels less like an attempt to delight the viewer with surprises, and more like a big middle finger to JJ Abrams for providing a lousy foundation for a new trilogy.

"You are no Vader. You are just a child in a mask." That's not Snoke speaking to Kylo Ren. That's a scathing commentary on The Force Awakens, delivered with a subtlety worthy of Star Trek. As someone who enjoyed the spectacle of The Force Awakens but was disappointed by the derivative story, I find The Last Jedi to be refreshing in its efforts to clear the slate and give this new trilogy a better identity. Unfortunately, that makes it abundantly clear that this was not the direction the trilogy was intended to go. When the plot twists and dialogue so frequently feel like one writer/director trying to undo or criticize the work of another writer/director, it's hard to stay fully immersed in the story. I want to be engrossed in the power struggle between the First Order and the Resistance, not the power struggle between JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson.

Lack of immersion is the single biggest problem I had with The Last Jedi. From the very beginning, the film drives home that it is not to be taken seriously. The first problem is that I misheard "General Hux" as "General Hugs," which instantly gives your villain zero credibility, especially when his superior has a doofy name like "Snoke." The second problem is that Hux is a caricature of a villain—and his interaction with Poe Dameron drives home that not even the heroes take him seriously. "LOOK AT ME, I'M SO EEEEEEVIIIIIIILLLLL! YOU WILL RESPECT MEEEEEE!" Then Snoke's ridiculously large head shows up and eats Hux, further demonstrating that these villains are to be mocked, not feared. NOM NOM DARK SIDE NOM NOM. The first scene of a movie sets the tone for the entire thing, and the beginning of The Last Jedi is outright goofy.

Except...it's weirdly serious, too. Suddenly there are ships exploding and heroes dying in droves. But also Finn lumbering down the corridor leaking fluids everywhere. But also the Resistance getting slaughtered. I found myself having extreme difficulties settling on a mindset for this movie; this was not "serious, with forced comic relief" like Phantom Menace, nor was it "serious, with well-timed organic humor relieving the tension" like Rogue One or Empire Strikes Back. This felt disjointed and inappropriately irreverent, especially following The Force Awakens, which was reverent to a fault. Compare this with Thor: Ragnarok, which expertly uses its opening scene to reset expectations for the series before juxtaposing its newfound sense of humor with anything of weighty consequence.

Another issue with The Last Jedi's opening scene is that it's completely unbelievable. Who flies their bombers so close together that they can all be taken out in a chain reaction because of one stray TIE fighter? Who designs bombers so slow, ungainly, and poorly defended that they can't even reach their target? Who the heck thought it was a good idea to put the bomb deployment button on an easy-to-lose handheld device instead of on a freaking control panel where it belongs!? I'm on board with Poe's poor leadership decision getting the whole Resistance into trouble, but the way it's handled is incredibly contrived. Still struggling to wrap my head around what kind of a movie this was supposed to be, I started to settle on the only answer that made any sense: "poorly written."

For the next two hours, I fought to suspend my disbelief long enough to get immersed in the film. It never happened. I started noticing all the nitpicky holes in the story that you're not supposed to notice on a first viewing—like how our moron heroes never bother to ask Maz Kanata for any personally identifiable information about the codebreaker they're pinning all their hopes on. "The dude is probably wearing a flower" is the kind of clue you settle for in a Carmen Sandiego game. And don't get me started on the whole "let everyone think we're going to run out of fuel and die" plan, which is more about creating drama and setting up a plot twist for the viewer than it is about the characters actually trying to stay alive.

If it wasn't the story taking me out of the moment, it was the visuals. Yoda looked fine at a distance, but strangely terrible and fake close up—a problem I never had with him as a puppet in the original trilogy or as CGI in the prequels. None of the Force-enhanced movement looked natural; when Leia returned from the cold void of space and when Rey got pulled across the throne room, it looked like someone was dragging clipart around a PowerPoint presentation. And for as awesome as that fight sequence in the throne room was, I couldn't get over how the room itself looked more like some planet from the original Star Trek than the inside of a spaceship. Does it look cool to a movie audience? Yes. Is it plausible that Snoke would have chosen to decorate the room that way if a movie audience weren't watching? I'm not so sure.

Time and again, I was reminded that I was watching a movie. After I gave up on trying to get immersed, the movie started looking ridiculous and childish, and it hurt to disengage so brutally from the experience. Sci-fi has always been my favorite form of escapist fiction, and I've never wanted so badly to escape from the fiction. The Last Jedi left such a sour taste in my mouth that I've started skipping Star Wars music when it comes up on one of my playlists. I don't want to be reminded of how uncomfortable and detached I felt watching this film. I don't want to think about what a terrible mess this latest trilogy—and by extension, the whole franchise—is turning into. I'm already bracing myself for Star Wars: Episode IX: Let's Reboot This Trilogy One More Time.

Say what you will about George Lucas. Rian Johnson ruined my childhood, and JJ Abrams made him do it.

"Neelix, would you tell me another story?"

"Why, Naomi, I've already told you so many stories tonight. Don't you think it's time to sleep?"

"I can't sleep. I'm too scared. I want to see the stars again."

"Well, Naomi, you're not alone. I think everyone on Voyager wants to see the stars again. Captain Janeway says it's going to be dark outside for a very long time. If you want, we could paint some dots on the windows and pretend they're stars."

"I don't want to pretend. I'm scared, Neelix. What if the Borg attack us? Or the Hirogen? What if we run out of dilithium and get stuck here in the void?"

"We always make it through, don't we? Voyager is a tough ship, and the crew is even tougher. In fact, Voyager is a lot like another ship—one that went through something far worse than a patch of empty space. One that went through a war."

"Do you mean the NX-01? You promised you'd tell me about the Earth-Romulan War, but then you jumped ahead to the founding of the Federation, and I'm pretty sure you started making things up. That last story didn't make any sense."

"You're a tough critic, Naomi Wildman. But a lot of people don't like the adventures of Captain Archer, so I thought we'd skip the Earth-Romulan war."

"I'm not a lot of people. I wanted to hear that story. Things were just getting really good."

"Maybe some other time. I'd like to tell you a different story this time. A story about when the Federation went to war against the Klingons."

"Another war? You told me about the Xindi, and the Temporal Cold War, and about what's happening in the Alpha Quadrant with the Dominion—and I liked those stories, but it's hard to hear about war all the time. Especially when Voyager keeps making so many enemies. If you won't tell me about the Earth-Romulan War, then I want something happy."

"What about those stories I made up about Captain Kirk in another timeline? Those were happy, right?"

"Those don't count. I didn't like how you changed the characters, and I didn't learn anything like I usually do from those stories. Besides, they all had a bad guy trying to kill everyone with some big weapon. I miss the story about the whales."

"In the story I'd like to tell you, the crew comes across a space whale. Will that do?"

"That sounds fun."

"Good. So, this is the story of Michael Burnham."

"There was a space whale named Michael Burnham?"

"No, Naomi; the space whale comes later. Michael was a human serving in Starfleet around 100 years after Captain Archer."

"I thought you said this was the story of a ship that went to war?"

"It is. But Michael was on that ship, and this is her story."

"Her?"

"Yes, Michael was a woman. In fact, Discovery—that's the name of the ship that went to war—had all sorts of different people on board. Now, you've said that you'd like to see more female role models in the stories I tell you, and I think you'll be very happy this time. In addition to Michael, there was a female vice-admiral, Discovery's chief of security, and Michael's former captain, to name a few—all of whom came from different racial backgrounds, too."

"I like that a lot. Did they all help to win the war?"

"Not...exactly, no. The vice-admiral was captured by Klingons and left for dead; the security chief was killed when she intentionally let an indestructible space bear out of its cage; and the captain was eaten by Klingons."

"Eaten!?"

"Klingons, as you know, are hairless, purple-skinned cannibals. They—"

"Neelix, that's weird. I know what Klingons look like, and B'Elanna has never tried to eat me. Stop making things up."

"I'm serious! That's exactly what Klingons were like a decade before Captain Kirk took command of the Enterprise. Starships were a lot more advanced then, as well—the hulls and interiors were elaborately decorated, and they had technology like holographic touchscreens that floated in midair and a spore drive that could teleport a ship anywhere in the universe."

"Neelix, I told you to stop making things up! Now you're just making fun of me. I know what ships looked like back then, and not even Voyager has that kind of technology. Tell me the real story already. And leave out the Klingons and this spore drive thing for now; I want to hear about Michael."

"Ah...all right. Well, Michael was the first officer of the starship Shenzhou, and—"

"I thought you said she was on the Discovery."

"Yes, but she was on the Shenzhou first. She committed an act of mutiny against her captain, which led to the destruction of the Shenzhou, the death of her captain, and the start of a war with the Klingons. Michael was arrested and transferred to the Discovery as a prisoner, where she served dutifully under Captain Lorca."

"Was the captain evil?"

"It depends how you look at it. On the one hand, he cared so much about his own people that he would do anything to protect them. On the other hand, he didn't behave at all like a Starfleet officer, he caused a lot of damage for the sake of peace, and he tricked or coerced the crew of the Discovery into doing all sorts of morally questionable things."

"I meant the captain of the Shenzhou."

"Oh. No, she was an upstanding officer who had been a friend and mentor to Michael for several years. But Michael thought the captain was making a bad decision, so she knocked her out and took command."

"I don't think I like Michael. Is there anyone in this story who's just nice, and smart, and doesn't get eaten or try to mutiny or anything? This doesn't sound like a happy story, and I wanted something to cheer me up."

"Cadet Tilly is very cheerful. I think you'll like her. And Lieutenant Tyler is a very nice man who falls in love with Michael."

"Tilly probably gets hurt or dies, doesn't she? All the other girls I'd like had something bad happen to them. And Tyler sounds too good to be true. I bet he has a deep dark secret."

"Naomi, don't go making wild guesses."

"That's what grown-ups say when they don't want to tell me I'm right. When does the space whale come in?"

"Ah, yes. Do you remember Harry Mudd?"

"He was...the swindler with all the crazy business ideas, right?"

"The very same. When he was a little younger, Mr. Mudd snuck on board Discovery inside a space whale so he could steal the ship and its secrets and sell them to the Klingons. Discovery was a science vessel, you see, and they were doing experiments with space mushrooms and space fireflies and hundreds of other things."

"What kinds of other things?"

"Well...I'm not sure, exactly, but...but they're not important to the story."

"Why not? You said this was a science vessel, not a warship. Couldn't you make it a science story instead of a war story?"

"It is a science story. You see, Mr. Mudd had a device that kept the ship in a time loop until he accomplished his goal. Of course, he kept murdering the crew each time, but they eventually stopped him."

"That's awful! You told me Harry Mudd was a liar and a cheater, not a killer. I don't like the people in this story."

"I'll admit, they're a bit different from the characters you're used to hearing about. The crew of the Discovery didn't get along very well, at least not at first. A lot of bickering and mistrust and nasty comments. They swore sometimes, and got angry at each other, and did things behind each other's backs. But I promise you'll grow to like them as you get to know them."

"Could you tell me a story with normal people in it?"

"What do you mean, Naomi? These are normal people."

"No they aren't. They sound like what people used to be like a few hundred years ago. I can't relate to those people. They're so different from everyone I know on Voyager and everyone in all the stories you've ever told about Starfleet. I want a story about good people who work together to solve problems. I want a story that gives me hope."

"But you wanted something that would teach you a lesson, right? This story is one big lesson about learning to trust people, doing the wrong things for the right reasons, and finding out who you are. You'll have a lot to think about by the time the story is over."

"I don't want to wait that long. All the other Starfleet stories you've told me have had little lessons along the way. And they weren't so violent."

"I haven't even gotten to the Klingon side of it. There's a lot of blood and gore, and even some...adult things that I probably shouldn't tell you about."

"I don't think I want to hear any more about Michael Burnham or Discovery or the Klingon War. None of this sounds like fun."

"Now, Naomi, you can't judge a story until you've heard the whole thing. Sometimes it take a while for a story to find its footing or set up all the important details. You ended up loving the stories I told you about Captain Picard, but I remember more than a few times early on that you were ready to abandon ship. And sometimes, people have false expectations that get in the way of enjoying the story. You barely gave my stories about Deep Space Nine a chance, because you thought they were too serious and didn't have enough space exploration for a story about Starfleet. But you stuck with them, and now those stories are some of your favorites."

"I guess. But those stories felt like they fit together. This one doesn't feel like it belongs. Tell me a different story, please. One that feels like a Starfleet story, and makes me smile, and gives me something hopeful to think about."

"If that's what you really want, Naomi Wildman, then we can take a break. Maybe you're right—maybe we could use a little more brightness in this dark part of the Delta Quadrant. I've got just the story, too. Have I ever told you about the Orville?"

It's no secret that J.J. Abrams' rebooted Star Trek universe has been a source of consternation and displeasure for me since 2009, but while I've discussed the problems with the feel and storytelling of NuTrek rather extensively, there's one element of the reboot that I have yet to thoroughly critique: the Enterprise herself.

And yes, I'm enough of a fan to know that starship names should be italicized. You'll thank me someday when I talk about "the Enterprise of Enterprise" and you can readily identify which one's the TV show. But I digress.

I bring this up because, once a month, I receive two meticulously detailed and screen-accurate model starships from the Star Trek Official Starships Collection, each one accompanied by a magazine filled with neat photos of the featured ship, its fictional history within the Star Trek universe, behind-the-scenes stories about its real-world development, and distracting grammatical errors. (P.S.: Eaglemoss, if you ever need an editor with content area expertise...) The ships come from all corners of Star Trek's 50-year history: icons such as the USS Enterprise-D, the NX-01 (I'll refrain from saying "the Enterprise of Enterprise" so soon), and Deep Space Nine (which is a space station and not a starship, but I'm not complaining); that one cool ship you saw in the background in First Contact; that weird ship that only appeared in one episode of Voyager...really, anything and everything. Short of buying me an actual, functional starship, this is as good as it gets for a geek like me.

Aside from one disappointment (the refit Enterprise from The Motion Picture [TMP], which is perfectly acceptable until you see how much more surface detail went into all the other ships), every new ship has been a joy to unbox and put on display. Once every few months, a special issue becomes available, featuring a larger-than-usual ship for an extra charge. Some months ago, I was given the option to become the proud (?) owner of the Abramsverse Enterprise from the 2009 reboot.

This was a challenging decision. On the one hand, I have so many problems with the design of the ship in question; I cannot readily call to mind any other ship from the entire franchise that I outright dislike. On the other hand, I was looking forward to a future special issue featuring the USS Vengeance from Into Darkness, and it wouldn't do to have the one NuTrek ship I like on a shelf without its rival beside it. Furthermore, there's always the possibility that a future film or TV series set in the Abramsverse will change my opinion about the reboot, and I'd regret missing the opportunity now to collect something I could like later. The completionist in me ultimately won out, and I've been trying to figure out how to feel about it ever since.

On its own, the design of the 2009 Enterprise (sounds like I'm talking about a car) is passable enough. If it were a ship designed by a new alien race or belonging to a different sci-fi franchise altogether, I don't think I'd mind it. It's sleek, it's curvy, it's glowy and full of lens flare. The problem is that it's a reimagining of a classic ship that, like the rest of NuTrek, ignores every precedent that should have informed its design.

The USS Enterprise of the original Star Trek (TOS) is simultaneously very '60s and very forward-thinking. The ship cuts a memorable figure, distinct from the flying saucers and rocket ships that had dominated science fiction up until that point, but the surface details are only slightly more complex than anything you'd see in Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. It's retro and futuristic at the same time, which makes it difficult to revise for a modern audience without sacrificing some part of its identity. It's also a beloved icon, so someone is bound to complain, no matter what you do. I get that.

I think the refit Enterprise created for TMP is a superb example of a revision done right, though. The ship's proportions and basic shape were left intact, more surface detail was added, and only a few elements (nacelles, deflector dish) were revamped substantially, modernizing the ship by tinkering with the existing blueprints. When you look at the subsequent Enterprises (B, C, D, E, and even J), it's apparent that the same design mentality was still in use; you can imagine each Enterprise being stretched or compressed into the shape of the next one in line, rather than being built from scratch.

Even the NX-01, designed for a TV show filmed decades after TOS but taking place a century before, has several key design elements in common with good ol' NCC-1701 (especially after the refit that was planned to happen if the show had remained on the air). If you can accept that somewhere between Enterprise and Next Generation there is a galaxy-wide revival of 1960s aesthetics that interrupts the otherwise consistent look of Star Trek, then it's not unreasonable to believe that Archer's Enterprise could evolve into Kirk's Enterprise.

Here's the thing: The Abramsverse doesn't reboot all of Star Trek; it only rewrites the timeline starting with the birth of James T. Kirk. This means that Zefram Cochrane still made his first warp flight in the Phoenix we saw in First Contact, and that the NX-01—whose design clearly took some measure of inspiration from the Phoenix—was still out saving the galaxy while Kirk's grandfather was in diapers. We even see models of these ships in Admiral Marcus's office in Into Darkness. So even if every other starship design principle of later Star Trek is thrown out the airlock, the Abramsprise should still look like a descendant of the Phoenix and the NX-01.

It doesn't even look like a distant relative. My wife says it looks like a Fisher-Price toy.

And you can't peg this on Nero disrupting the timeline, either. Starfleet encounters all-powerful beings that destroy starships all the time, yet this one incident where a mystery ship obliterates a single vessel and then disappears for 25 years is enough to spook Starfleet engineers into building a USS Enterprise that's a caricature of the original timeline's ship, and twice as big. Bigger, in fact, than the largest vessels that Picard and Sisko bring into battle against the Borg and the Dominion a century later. I think the following chart speaks volumes about what's wrong with the NuTrek Enterprise:

How would any Star Trek character explain this monstrosity to a fellow Starfleet officer without breaking the fourth wall? In real life, the designers took the original, forward-thinking Enterprise and exaggerated the components for a faux-retro look that's more 1960s than the 1960s. They were going to keep the ship close to the original scale, but then the scene in the shuttle bay didn't look impressive enough, so they doubled the size of the ship to increase the wow factor. No Starfleet engineer says, "This shuttle bay isn't jaw-dropping enough; let's double the effort and resources required for the whole construction."

Part of the reason I like the Vengeance so much is that it at least looks like a plausible product of Starfleet covert ops engineering. It's essentially a mashup of two canonical starship classes (Constitution refit and Sovereign), with creative elements that give the ship a unique look without altering the weight and lines of traditional Starfleet design. Even the Kelvin, lopsided as it is, has a sense of balance in line with that of the Oberth or Constellation classes.

When I look at the Abramsprise, all I can see are the ridiculous nacelles. In contrast with every other vessel in Starfleet history, the nacelles are as thick as the saucer section and even thicker than the stardrive section. They're too long and close together relative to the saucer section, giving the ship the appearance of having been gripped tightly and pulled back like a balloon animal. The pylons that attach the nacelles to the rest of the ship have almost a Romulan-style curve to them; Starfleet pylons are consistently straight, and even Galaxy- and Nebula-class pylons only use curves to round off the sharpness of a right angle. Everything about the nacelles draws the attention to the back of the ship. It's also irritating that the bussard collectors glow blue instead of the usual red. That last point might seem nitpicky even for me, but try changing one of the colors on your country's national flag and see how long it takes to bother you.

Any other elongated class of starship with a sense of movement to its design (e.g., Excelsior, Sovereign) has the look of a graceful bird or a swift predator about it. The Abramsprise has the look of an animal that was injected with whatever absurd vaccine McCoy gave to Kirk that made his hands swell up in the film. The nacelles are oversized jet thrusters hanging onto the back of the ship for dear life, and the saucer section fits onto the secondary hull like a full-sized sombrero on a child. There's no way this ship was designed by the same Starfleet engineers who would've made the Enterprise we know and love if some angry Romulan hadn't killed Kirk's dad.

Here's a comparison shot that helps illustrate how absurdly exaggerated the Abramsprise's features are—note that the engineering hull is basically the same size on both vessels (and also the bridge module, but you can barely tell here):

I think about the thought processes that went into designing the Reliant (immediately recognizable as Starfleet, but with a different shape so as not to confuse it with the Enterprise), the Excelsior (the Enterprise, but with an elegant Japanese aesthetic), and the Defiant (built for war, not exploration), and they all ask, "WWSD?" (What Would Starfleet Design?). The proportions, the contours, they all make sense to me. Nothing makes sense to me about the Abramsprise, and I can barely get a good look at the whole thing because my eyes keep sliding down the ship and falling off the back of it. This is not redesigning a ship for a new generation; this is having a little too much fun with Kai's Power Goo.

NuTrek had an opportunity to craft an Enterprise that made more sense as a successor to the NX-01. And as far as the story is concerned, there's not nearly enough of a rationale for why the new Enterprise looks so drastically different from the one that would have been designed if Nero hadn't shown up for two minutes. Early design sketches of the reboot Enterprise hint at a faithfulness to the source material, but the finished product seems to reflect the personal taste of the director more than the 50 years of Star Trek history that should have played into the design. I could even live with the retro-futuristic design if it leaned more toward TOS in terms of surface detail; ironically, those complex textures make the ship look too close to the Starfleet aesthetic from TMP onward, which only serves to emphasize the differences with the rest of the ship.

Somewhere between the two designs above is the Enterprise that should have carried us into the future.

Following the release of the first official trailer for Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens, I made some predictions about the film. Having returned from the movie theater a few hours ago, it's time to see how I did.

[SPOILER ALERT]

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I'll throw in a few more lines here for good measure.

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[NO SPOILERS AHEAD—WAIT, JUST KIDDING]

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PREDICTION: Han Solo dies. At the very least, someone you care about from the original trilogy will not survive to the end of this trilogy. Probably two or three characters, really. Maybe the droids.

RESULT: Bingo.

PREDICTION: Copious callbacks to the original trilogy that straddle the line between reverence for the original trilogy and pandering to the fans who love anything that references the original trilogy.

RESULT: I was sure I'd get this one right, but I had no idea how right I'd be. If you take out all the sections that closely parallel anything in the original trilogy, you almost don't have a movie. If nobody told you the name of the planet, you'd swear Jakku was Tatooine. Starkiller Base is the Death Star carved into the planet Hoth. There's a lot of time spent running around wooded areas that look like they'd fit right in on Endor. The whole adventure starts with Stormtroopers chasing a droid with critical information across a desert. Somebody with no gunnery experience uses a turret to fend off TIE fighters. The Millennium Falcon flies through the guts of an Imperial vessel in a high-stakes action sequence. People use the Falcon's secret cargo compartment in the floor as a hiding place. There's a confrontation on a catwalk over a huge chasm. The inside of Maz Kanata's castle bears a striking resemblance to the Mos Eisley cantina, complete with one of the heroes chartering a ship out of there. The Rebels plot an assault from their tiny base and suffer heavy casualties in a major battle. The heroes go sneaking around an Imperial stronghold. One of the heroes gets grabbed by a tentacle monster. Need I go on?

The Force Awakens has the courtesy to do its homages respectfully, and everything familiar has a meaningful twist that keeps it from being a straight rehash of the other movies, but man alive. We tolerate it now because it's so well done, and because we've been craving a thoughtfully planned and superbly executed new Star Wars film since 1983 (or 1980, if you're one of those people). In time, I expect The Force Awakens will become the Mega Man 3 of Star Wars marathons—the one that's fine on its own, but a little tiresome when you realize how much of it you just saw.

PREDICTION: A sudden realization that the actors from the original trilogy are way older than everyone else in the movie.

RESULT: I am relieved to say that I mostly got this one wrong. There's a broader age range than I was expecting, with a good mix of middle-aged and older actors rounding out the cast of young'uns (heck, one of the characters is 1000 years old!), and the younger actors demonstrate a maturity I'm no longer accustomed to seeing from their demographic in the cinema. What could have been another case of "Look, Leonard Nimoy! Anybody remember him?" ended up being a graceful merger of old and new. I also credit the costumers and makeup artists, who captured that 1977 fashion aesthetic and updated it to look just contemporary enough not to feel dated—one look at Poe Dameron's hair, and it's like we were prepping for the Death Star trench run all over again. Everyone looks like they belong in the same universe.

However, I credit myself with a minor victory here. The first time you see BB-8 and R2-D2 together, the latter really looks like a relic of a bygone era of sci-fi. It's less pronounced once Artoo is moving around again, but I've never seen everyone's favorite astromech droid look so much like a quaint old prop made from a trash can.

PREDICTION: Ideas repurposed from the old Expanded Universe (now Star Wars Legends).

RESULT: I'll admit that I'm not well-versed enough in the Expanded Universe to catch everything that might've been in the movie, but Han and Leia having a Force-sensitive child, Luke training a new generation of Jedi, and Stormtroopers being used by a new regime in the wake of the Empire's collapse are all part of the old Expanded Universe. I was kinda hoping for Mara Jade, but there's still time.

PREDICTION: An earnest attempt to convince you that the prequels aren't all bad.

RESULT: Well, you can't win 'em all. I found no trace of the prequels here, aside from the marketplace scene toward the beginning reminding me a bit of Phantom Menace. Though, to be fair, all that time spent reimagining parts of the original trilogy left no room for an attempt to convince us that the prequels aren't all bad.

PREDICTION: The heroes get captured, because that's pretty much a requirement nowadays.

RESULT: Yep. Poe, BB-8, Rey, Finn, Han, and Chewie each get captured by the end of the movie (and Rey almost gets captured once as well). For bonus points, the heroes turn the tables and capture Captain Phasma to shut down the shield generator (oh, and there's another original trilogy parallel—somebody's gotta shut down a shield generator). Fortunately, being captured is usually an inconvenience that serves as an opportunity for character development, and it never sidetracks the heroes on some elaborate escape plan that interferes with the main plot (I'm looking at you, Doctor Who).

PREDICTION: Despite starring a woman and a person of color, the film will still manage to screw up equal representation.

RESULT: I am so happy I was wrong about this one. The film goes out of its way to throw gender, race, and age conventions aside and give every character an equal chance to shine. Hollywood has needed a big-name movie to remind the general public that a woman can be strong without being an indestructible man-hating machine, a black man can hold a leading role in a film that makes no mention of skin color, and people over age 70 can be in good enough shape to be action heroes.

PREDICTION: The soccer-ball droid will have more charisma and depth than at least one of the other main characters.

RESULT: I would argue that BB-8 has a smidge more depth and charisma than Poe, but that's probably because the former has more screen time. As suggested above, the characters feel like people, and for once, the novelty character doesn't steal the spotlight from everyone else.

PREDICTION: LENS FLA—oh, wait; wrong film. A moment where you could swear you're watching one of the Star Trek reboot movies.

RESULT: The Force Awakens is a film by people who are clearly passionate about Star Wars and who also know what they're doing. Although the film never once reminded me of the Star Trek reboot movies, it gave me a glimpse of what Star Trek 2009 could have been like with different writers and a J.J. Abrams who had grown up loving the franchise. All that near-rehashing of old material I mentioned above? That's exactly what you do with a reboot. Star Trek could have been the homage melange with heartwarming character beats, and Star Wars could have been the brand-new story with a few references to old material here and there, and everyone would have been happy. I might've gotten this prediction wrong, but the result is eye-opening.

PREDICTION: No matter what the movie is like, the fan community will not be able to agree on whether it's any good.

RESULT: It's still too early to say too much on this point, but so far it looks like I'm right on the mark. A little bit of Googling reveals that the film is indeed polarizing among at least a small sample of fans, with most loving it and a few hating it—little or no middle ground.

For my part, I enjoyed the movie. More than I expected. Despite a small twinge when I saw his name pop up in the credits, I'm proud of J.J. Abrams—and everyone involved—for doing Star Wars justice. The film isn't perfect, and I'll need to rewatch it after this trilogy is complete to draw final conclusions about it, but it does a lot of things well that Star Wars—and Hollywood—have needed to do well for a long time. It is my hope that The Force Awakens will be a stepping stone that helps move us beyond squabbling over casting choices and directorial decisions and puts our focus as fans and filmmakers back on telling and enjoying a good story in that galaxy far, far away.

I grew up watching Star Trek. My first love was The Next Generation, but after seeing nearly every episode of every series and being old enough to examine them more objectively, I've also found a great love or appreciation for The Original Series, The Animated Series, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise—in other words, all of them. Each show has its ups and downs, but the one constant is an exploration of the human condition that makes Star Trek unlike any other franchise. The compelling characters and cool technology alone would have been enough to win me over, but it's that penchant for raising questions with no easy answer, and that optimism that humanity's future can be as bright as we choose to make it, that makes Star Trek as close to my heart as you can get without causing a medical emergency.

Recently, it was announced that a new Star Trek series will be coming to television in a little more than a year. I want to be excited, but I'm wary of the involvement of so many people responsible for the 2009 franchise reboot. I've written extensively about how J.J. Abrams' vision of the final frontier eschews so much of what makes Star Trek Star Trek, so I'm not sure what my worst-case scenario is here: an awful new series in the Prime timeline that makes me angry for all the same reasons the reboot does, or an awesome new series in the Abramsverse that's better than any other Trek. So, with basically no details available other than "there will be a new Star Trek series," my imagination is running wild with best-case scenarios instead.

As much as I enjoy space battles and fight sequences, I feel like Star Trek was already starting to put action ahead of introspection by the time J.J. Abrams took over. Archer defended Earth from annihilation. Picard did the same in two of the movies. Sisko went to war against the Dominion. Janeway made enemies with practically everyone in the Delta quadrant. The Star Trek universe has been on red alert for most of the last 20 years. Let's scale back on the armed conflicts for a while. Mortal peril on a huge scale is fine from time to time, but drama can come from so many more places.

I'd like to see the next Trek return to the franchise's exploratory roots. I'm not necessarily talking about seeking out new life and new civilizations; the universe is already plenty full of strange new worlds we've barely explored. In fact, I'd rather see more of the one-off aliens from previous series and flesh them out the way DS9 fleshed out the Cardassians and Bajorans. What are the Bynars up to? Is the Federation still getting a piece of the action from Sigma Iota II? What about the more established races that only appeared in one series, such as the Breen, the Talaxians, and the Denobulans? Star Trek doesn't need to visit the uncharted reaches of space to find new territory to explore.

How about this: We set the next Trek in the Prime timeline sometime after the events of Nemesis, and (spoiler) after Romulus has been destroyed for the 2009 reboot. No continuity headaches like you'd have with a prequel or interquel, and we could acknowledge NuTrek without trying to build a new Trek empire upon its slapdash foundation. The show would follow the exploits of the crew of a midsize courier ship—a change of pace from the warships and deep-space exploration vessels we're used to. There'd definitely be room for space combat and encounters with the unknown, but the ship's primary mission would be to ferry cargo and people from place to place within known space. That might sound dull on paper, but so does spending 75 years getting home from the Delta Quadrant or hanging out on the same space station for seven years. Limitations give a story more focus, and it's the story you tell within the framework you have that counts.

There are numerous possibilities for a courier ship. Strange cargo. Intriguing guests. Rendezvous with other ships. Time spent on a planet's surface at the beginning or end of a trip. Bizarre anomalies along the way. And let's not forget the places we can go with the holodeck. Really, it'd be like any other Trek, just with a different how or why driving the story.

I'd also like to see an exceptionally diverse cast. The original Star Trek pushed cultural and racial boundaries with the inclusion of such characters as Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu, allowing them to be positive role models for groups of people who had too often been villainized or stereotyped on American television. Each subsequent Star Trek, with the arguable exception of ENT, has found new ways to be inclusive with its uniquely diverse cast. It's not only a tradition to shake things up; it's almost an obligation. The makeup of your main cast says as much about your show as the individual episodes do, and any show that calls itself Star Trek needs characters that challenge viewers to look at the world in a different way.

If it were up to me, the captain would be a woman. And, equally importantly, she would be an alien. Bolian or Andorian, maybe; somebody blue. The Federation consists of more than humans and dudes, but it's not often enough that you see that reinforced on screen. TOS notwithstanding, the average ratio is 1 woman for every 3 men in the main cast of any given Star Trek, and I'd like to change it to a 50/50 split. That's not feminism; that's equality.

From a narrative perspective, aliens are a great way to explore controversial issues without outright offending viewers who feel strongly about those issues in a real-world context. One of the biggest social conflicts in this country today is about how sexual preference ties in with politics and morality. It's been established that Bolians are polyamorous, with co-husbands and co-wives, and that Andorians are passionate about a great many things; I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that the captain could be bisexual. Star Trek doesn't need to take sides to make an impact on society; posing a question or presenting a situation that solicits a reaction from the viewer is all it takes to start a conversation, and there's a divide in this country that won't end until we stop yelling at each other and start talking about it.

In my mind, this next Star Trek needs to stay culturally relevant to survive, and it needs to ruffle a few feathers. People who never used to care about Star Trek flocked to see the 2009 reboot as well as Into Darkness, and now the franchise is poised to reach a broader audience than ever before. Listen to people's water-cooler conversations and make episodes that relate to what people are already talking about, but get people thinking critically about those things. Don't play it safe; challenge the norm and get people to think critically about things they aren't talking about, too.

Consider the incredible buzz generated by Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn Jenner. Gender identity is in the news, but it's often sensationalized and still widely misunderstood. What kind of impact would a well-written transgender character have on the viewer? Especially if the character were to transition a few seasons into the show, after the viewer has gotten to know them. All too often we pass judgment on a whole person because of a single label, before knowing anything else about that person. You can love a person and hate one of their labels, or you could love the label and hate the person. People are complex, and I want this new Trek to make people think about whether they're reacting to the person or the label.

Of course, racial diversity would be important. We've never had a fully Hispanic main character on Star Trek. We've also never had an overtly Middle-Eastern main character (Julian Bashir's heritage is merely implied) or a Korean character—and given that Star Trek started out as a bright vision of what the future might look like, I would love to see someone from North Korea or Iran on the bridge as an equal, their country's political conflicts far behind them. We've also been short on Canadians and Australians, and I would be totally fine if the next Star Trek launched without a single American on the bridge. That's not anti-American sentiment; that's the kind of diversity I expect from an intergalactic organization that recruits people from all over the planet, let alone from the 150+ other planets in the Federation. Maybe the one American could be Hawaiian.

There should be plenty of aliens as well. A Tellarite engineer, perhaps, or a Caitan science officer. A Xindi-Humanoid doctor or a Ba'ku first officer. A quartermaster from one of the countless unnamed races we've seen walking around in the background. There's a range of possibilities. I'd like to see a mix of ugly and beautiful aliens, aggressive and passive species—aliens whose cultures and traditions compliment and clash with the rest of the crew in interesting ways.

Other characters I'd like to see:

• Someone with a physical or developmental disability who is every bit as valuable a crew member as anyone else. If Starfleet can have a blind engineer, there's certainly room for a deaf navigator or a transporter chief with high-functioning autism. The 2010 US census reported that 19% of the population had a disability of some kind; that's almost 1 in 5. How many television characters can you name who have a disability?
• Someone age 60 or older (in Earth years, anyhow) who, again, is every bit as valuable a crew member as anyone else. I've noticed a trend in movies especially that the actors keep getting younger (compare the original Star Wars trilogy with the prequels, for example), and that anything featuring older actors puts a big focus on their characters being old (Last Vegas, Rocky Balboa, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and so forth). Humans on Star Trek have been shown to live well into their second century, and some alien races have mind-boggling longevity. Let's see a ship's counselor whose wisdom and experience matter more than the number of arthritis jokes he can make.
• A traditional conservative, preferably one of the younger crew members. I remember a time when social, political, and religious issues were a matter of debate, where you could disagree with someone but still be friends. That's changed over the last few years, at least as far as I can tell. Conservatism has become synonymous with ignorance and bigotry; either you keep your opinions to yourself, or you open your mouth and be labeled an idiot or a monster. No middle ground. Just as people with disabilities and transgender people need good role models and positive representation on television, so too do people who believe in returning to ways that worked well before or maintaining the stability of what we have. And on a personal note, I'm tired of seeing every. character. on. television. jump right into the sack with their romantic interest du jour after the first date; it would be incredibly refreshing to see someone cultivate a close personal relationship without immediate physical intimacy—and because they choose to, not because it builds romantic tension.

The next Trek stands to be as pivotal a series as The Original Series if it can tap into the zeitgeist, do things that no other show on television is doing, and transform the way we look at our world. Do an episode that speaks to the current refugee crisis, but with Romulans escaping the destruction of Romulus. Explore the climate change debate with an episode about a planet being terraformed. Encounter a species whose government has adopted educational policies not unlike Common Core, and have the crew work through a crisis situation with aliens who, for better or for worse, all have identical training.

At the same time, make meaningful connections with the rest of the Star Trek universe, and take every opportunity to fix mistakes and develop ideas and plot threads left dangling in other series. I want a resolution to the TNG episode "Conspiracy" that brings back the parasites we suspiciously never heard anything about again. I want a holodeck episode where we get to see some of the Romulan War that was teased in the last season of Enterprise. I also want a line from one of the characters about how a lot of the holoprograms of that era are notorious for getting the details wrong, placing events farther in the future than they really were, and having historical figures die or break up with their loved ones who actually lived long, prosperous lives and settled down to raise a family—subtly correcting some of the biggest problems with the final episode of Enterprise. I want to meet a very old Joanna McCoy, daughter of Dr. Leonard McCoy, and have her spin some yarns that shed some light on her father's backstory. I want an episode that makes it abundantly clear that NuTrek is actually an alternate universe, and not an altered timeline that's inconsistent with so much of established Star Trek history. Heck, if you really want to fix continuity problems, establish that Enterprise and NuTrek are in one universe, and all the rest of Star Trek is in another.

No matter what this next Trek looks like, I'll give it a shot. I only hope the people making it have the kind of passion for the franchise and thoughtful approach that will do justice to Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future.

With the recent release of the final trailer for Star Wars: Episode VII: Pretty Much Everything Else Isn't Canon Anymore, I feel it's a good time to make some predictions about this upcoming film. The last time I did this, my predictions turned out to be surprisingly accurate, so you might want to take notes. Here's what I'm expecting:

- Han Solo dies. At the very least, someone you care about from the original trilogy will not survive to the end of this trilogy. Probably two or three characters, really. Maybe the droids.

- Copious callbacks to the original trilogy that straddle the line between reverence for the original trilogy and pandering to the fans who love anything that references the original trilogy.

- A sudden realization that the actors from the original trilogy are way older than everyone else in the movie.

- Ideas repurposed from the old Expanded Universe (now Star Wars Legends).

- An earnest attempt to convince you that the prequels aren't all bad.

- The heroes get captured, because that's pretty much a requirement nowadays.

- Despite starring a woman and a person of color, the film will still manage to screw up equal representation.

- The soccer-ball droid will have more charisma and depth than at least one of the other main characters.

- LENS FLA—oh, wait; wrong film. A moment where you could swear you're watching one of the Star Trek reboot movies.

- No matter what the movie is like, the fan community will not be able to agree on whether it's any good.

I'm not a betting man, but I'd put money on that last prediction. That's because The Force Awakens is arguably in an even tougher spot than the prequels were. Multiple generations of fans have had an immensely personal connection with those first three films. When Episode I debuted, it only had to live up to the impossibly high standards of the original trilogy, For Episode VII, being as good as the original trilogy won't be enough. It needs to be better.

In the last 20 years, the Special Editions have become the face of the original films, much to the chagrin of Star Wars purists. The prequel trilogy—an endless source of outrage for countless hardcore fans—and its spinoffs (e.g., The Clone Wars) have changed the landscape of the fandom, making the original trilogy a smaller and smaller part of what it means to be Star Wars. Episode VII is, perhaps, some fans' only hope of salvaging this fractured franchise. And with the Expanded Universe—the one place where Luke, Vader, the Alliance, and the Empire were still king—being thrown out almost wholesale for the sake of a new continuity, Episode VII needs to prove itself worthy of discarding the beloved Thrawn trilogy (and numerous other works) to make room for itself.

"At least it's better than the prequels" won't cut it. There is a lot riding on this movie. It's a real-life Anakin Skywalker: The one we've all been hoping for to bring balance, but the one that's probably going to tear us apart for it to happen. Whether the movie ends up being marvelous, mediocre, or mortifying, I don't imagine it will simultaneously be able to satisfy those who long for the original trilogy and those who like all of Star Wars, justify rewriting the continuity, and unite fans in excitement about the direction of the entire franchise.

Judging by my enthusiasm for Dungeons & Dragons, the variety of fantasy novels on my bookshelf, the number of fantasy-themed RPGs on my Backloggery, and the fact that I've back-to-back marathoned both The Lord of the Rings extended edition trilogy and all eight Harry Potter films (at separate times, of course), you'd think I was a fan of the fantasy genre. In truth, I merely appreciate a well-told story. More often than not, I like these works of entertainment despite their genre, not because of it.

I'm an escapist. The less my fiction resembles reality, the more I tend to enjoy it, at least as a general matter of principle. That's why I'm such a big fan of sci-fi: when was the last time you terraformed a planet or took a spaceship to work? Sci-fi is often futuristic. I know where we've been, and I know where we are, but I'm most excited to see where we'll go. Dystopian fiction? Forget it. I want to believe we have a bright future ahead of us, or at least a future where our prosperity and advancement have introduced a whole new set of conflicts unlike any we've previously dealt with.

Fantasy? Fantasy lives in the past. Medieval England. Old folklore. Rehashes of Tolkien. Fantasy is hung up on that which cannot be explained. Magic. Ancient curses. Elements that do not hold writers accountable to any standards of logic or continuity. Fantasy is gimmicky; something familiar with something unfamiliar slapped on top of it. ("These aren't any horses! They're magical horses.") Fantasy has the potential to be a realm of pure imagination that bears only a passing resemblance to reality. What I want out of the genre is the whimsical creativity of Roald Dahl, the built-from-scratch feel of the Golden Sun universe, and the utterly foreign lifestyle and culture of Conan the Barbarian. What I most often see and think of is, "WHOA! Dirty peasants, filthy hovels...and a dragon!!!"

And elves. Always with the elves.

Anybody got any suggestions that might win me over?