‘STILL TREADS THE SHADOW’ (STC)

Please feel free to comment on my review.

This ‘Star Trek Continues’ episode happens to be a sequel to the original TV series episode called ‘The Tholian Web’. I revisited ‘The Tholian Web’ to have the episode fresh in my mind before checking out and revisiting ‘Still Treads the Shadow’ for this review. 🙂

In the episode, the Enterprise becomes trapped on the edge of a rift in space where they encounter an alternative version of the lost starship Defiant that featured in ‘The Tholian Web’. They also come across an alternate version of Captain Kirk being kept in cryostasis.

It was interesting to see an alternative version of Captain Kirk in this episode, who’s older and didn’t return to the Enterprise as depicted in ‘The Tholian Web’. Vic Mignogna does so well with playing the two versions of Captain Kirk – the original and the alternative one.

It’s also good to see that the older Captain Kirk isn’t hell-bent on revenge as one might expect when checking out an episode like this. The older Captain Kirk happens to be nice and friendly, though he’s been alone for so many years when trapped aboard the Defiant.

There is an artificial intelligence aboard the Defiant ship that imprints its mind into the alternative Captain Kirk and it’s named Tiberius. It’s interesting that the AI aboard the Defiant ship bore Kirk’s middle name ‘Tiberius’ and it happens to be pretty ruthless in this.

From watching the episode, I did wonder whether it would contradict established events in the ‘Enterprise’ two-part story ‘In a Mirror, Darkly’ where the original Defiant ship ended up in the Mirror Universe and in its past. Thankfully, this ‘STC’ episode doesn’t do that. 🙂

As established in the episode, the Defiant ship and older Captain Kirk are from an alternate reality that somehow diverged from the original timeline. It was fascinating for the prime Captain Kirk and the Enterprise to interact with the older Captain Kirk in the episode itself.

Incidentally, the writer of ‘Still Treads the Shadow’ – Judy Burns – happens to be the one of the writers of ‘The Tholian Web’ in the original TV series. It’s nice Judy Burns returned to ‘Star Trek’ and wrote this sequel episode in this fan-made series featuring Captain Kirk.

The special guest star in the episode happens to be Rekha Sharma as Avi Samara. Apparently, Rekha Sharma was a regular in the ‘Battlestar Gallactica’ series. I’ve not seen any ‘Battlestar Galactica’ episodes to know who she is, but I did enjoy Rekha in this episode.

This also happens to be one of Rekha Sharma’s contributions to ‘Star Trek’, as she appeared in a few episodes of ‘Star Trek: Discovery’, playing Commander Landry. I’ve not seen ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ yet, but it’s nice Rekha has more than one ‘Star Trek’ contribution.

In ‘Still Treads the Shadow’, Rekha Sharma’s character of Avi Samara happens to be a gravitational wave engineer who’s come aboard the Enterprise to investigate a nascent singularity in space. This is where the alternative version of the Defiant ship is located. 😐

Avi Samara happens to be an old flame of Captain Kirk’s. It was fascinating to discover that through Avi’s interactions with both the prime Captain Kirk and the older alternative version of Kirk. No love scenes are featured between Kirk and Avi in this episode though.

Unless you count the kiss that the older Kirk gives Avi by the end of the episode, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s clear Kirk and Avi had chosen their own separate career paths and they didn’t want their relationship to get in the way of their ambitions because of that.

Apparently, there’s a moment in the episode where prime Kirk grabs and hold alternate older Kirk up by hugging him. It happens to be reminiscent of the scene featured in the original TV series episode ‘The Enemy Within’ where the good Kirk embraced the evil Kirk.

I wouldn’t have registered that from watching the episode itself, though it must have been a challenge for Vic Mignogna to play both versions of Kirk in the same scene together. It matches to when William Shatner often portrayed two versions of Kirk in the same scene.

There are some good scenes featured in this episode, including the scene where Dr. McCoy berates Spock in sick bay on how to treat the AI aboard the Defiant called Tiberius as Kirk’s evil twin. It does echo the dynamic between Leonard Nimoy and DeForrest Kelly.

Dr. McKennah appears in a scene with the older Captain Kirk where she’s looking after him as they explore Kirk’s quarters, I believe. They quote from the poem ‘The Ancient Mariner’, which is something I haven’t come across before when watching the episode. 🙂

When Kirk and the Enterprise examine the ship’s logs by the alternative Kirk aboard the Defiant, he states that he’s been on the ship for 31 years and searched 27 parsecs of space. It’s incredible that Kirk didn’t go mad throughout the time he spent on the Defiant.

Incidentally, a Klingon warship appears in the episode when encountering the Enterprise in space. I expected the Klingons to actually appear in the episode, as it would be amazing and intriguing to see original ‘Star Trek’ series Klingons appearing in ‘Star Trek Continues’.

Sadly, that didn’t happen, as the Klingon warship is immediately fired upon by Tiberius aboard the Defiant and it’s sent into the rift filled with dark matter. Gosh, we didn’t see the Klingons for very long. You’d think there would be more of a gunfight in space then. 😀

Familiar faces who have appeared in ‘Star Trek Continues’ before also appear in this episode. This includes Kipleigh Brown as Lt. Smith, Cat Roberts as Lt. Palmer and Steven Dengler as Lt. Drake. It’s incredible there’s more to the original ‘Star Trek’ Enterprise crew.

It was sad in terms of how the episode ended with the older Kirk self-sacrificing himself to save the original Kirk and the Enterprise crew. The prime version of Kirk was supposed to deal with Tiberius aboard the Defiant before he was knocked out via Bones’ hypospray.

Avi accompanies the older Kirk where they deal with Tiberius, and older Kirk eventually has Tiberius wiped out once and for all. There’s a sense of sadness on the older Kirk’s part, since Tiberius was with him to protect him when he was on the Defiant for so long.

Older Kirk pilots the Defiant ship into the rift where the dark matter is and he has Avi sent back to the Enterprise to save her. Older Kirk is soon lost forever once the Defiant goes through into the rift. 😐 The episode ends on this rather sad note with older Kirk’s sacrifice.

I would’ve liked it if the episode concluded with an epilogue where prime Kirk and Avi discussed the tragic loss of older Kirk. This is especially when Avi was heartbroken about older Kirk being alone aboard the Defiant whilst Kirk tells her that he’s not alone anymore.

‘Still Treads the Shadow’ is a very good follow-up episode to ‘The Tholian Web’. It was interesting how it tackles with a divergent version of Captain Kirk where he was older and didn’t return to the Enterprise like the prime version of Kirk did in ‘The Tholian Web’ story.

The ‘Star Trek Continues’ series continues to impress me, especially with all the hard work, effort and dedication to making this series closely akin to the original TV series with Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew. 🙂 It does make me forgot that it is a fan-made series.

‘Still Treads the Shadow’ (STC) rating – 8/10

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