If you are really hurting for some new Star Trek (and in my opinion, there’s actually been a little bit too much. Maybe try extending for re-visiting something besides Star Trek or Star Wars), CBS All Access has a third addition to the Star Trek universe, the animated series, Star Trek: Lower Decks. This marks the first time in more than 45 years that Star Trek has entered into the animated realm. Their first attempt was fairly serious and used mostly the same core characters as the original series. They even expanded upon Star Trek cannon, exploring the world in which Spock grew up, for instance. This next attempt may do a little of that, but mostly its poking fun in a way similar to the film Galaxy Quest or the book Redshirts. The title suggests (and is) a similar exploration of what happens to the “little guy”/”little gal” newbies on the ship, in particular, the young officers, as what was explored in Star Trek: TNG episode, Lower Decks (though that episode ended on a grim note).

The first episode, Second Contact, didn’t keep my attention throughout but did bring a few chuckles here and there, so I’ll probably stick with it.

On the physics side of things, their opening intro sequence shows an animation of a black hole similar to what can be seen in films such as Interstellar and also now similar to what has actually been seen of the event horizon of a number of real life black holes. A bit less plausibly, they show the ship being drawn into the black hole though an accretion flow , and then being flung black out. Its significantly more likely that the ship would be ripped apart, and then have its bits drawn into the black hole without ever being flung back out in anyway.

Anyway, I’ll stay tuned, and we’ll see what happens!

If you are interested in physics and astronomy in science fiction, then take a look a my (Steve Bloom’s) book. The Physics and Astronomy of Science fiction, available from your favorite online book seller (such as Amazon) or from the publisher, McFarland Publishing, Inc.