Alex Kurtzman

            On Wednesday morning I uploaded “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg to my Christian’s Translations blog and started preparing it for publication. I should have it posted tomorrow. 

            I weighed 88.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finally got through to my doctor’s office and made an appointment to get a referral for a colonoscopy. 

            Around midday I applied more primer to the baseboards in the bedroom, this time covering the gaps between the baseboards and the floor. I didn’t try not to get paint on the wooden floor. If this building is ever free of bedbugs then I can sand the paint off again while renovating everything else in the bedroom. As it is any aesthetic improvements to the bedroom would be wasted. 

            I weighed 88.65 kilos before lunch. 

            I got a call from radiology at the U of T Graduate School of Dentistry and finally got an appointment for a CT scan. That’s the first step towards my getting an implant. Just the CT scan is going to cost over $400. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I stopped at a market around Palmerston where I bought two bags of green grapes. 

            I weighed 88 kilos at 18:15. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:52. 

            I reviewed the MP3 of the cassette tape I digitized yesterday. It took but there’s a lot of static and there’s some skipping. I think I’ll try it again to see if I can get a better digitization. 

            I started reviewing the next tape in the pile and so far it seems to be just music somebody (not me or anybody I know) recorded from the radio. If that’s all it is I won’t digitize it. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, the rest of the ham, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a Creemore while watching the third season finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. 

            The Vezda that took over the body of Ensign Gamble but which was captured after Pelia killed Gamble, re-confined in a sphere, then trapped in a transporter buffer has escaped. It somehow was able to enter into the computer system of the Enterprise, find Gamble’s pattern and reconstruct it. Then it travelled across an interdimensional highway called a ley line to the planet Skygowan and the city of Cali-Katchna where Dr. Roger Korby is doing research. The people of Skygowan worship the Vezda and so one of his first commands is for them to stab their eyes out like his are. An away team arrives from the Enterprise. There is a closed portal that leads directly to the prison world where the Vezda possessed Gamble. His goal is to go back there and free the other Vezda. The idea is that the Vezda are ultimate evil, which is not a very Star Trek idea. It’s more from the world of fantasy than science fiction. The portal is covered with writing in multiple languages, one of them being Swahili and one inscription actually speaks of M’Benga: “A young boy was not yet a man, but his time had come to kill or be killed with a knife in his hands”. He explains that in killing the other boy he delivered him to a Vezda. The portal suddenly scans M’Benga and opens. The Vezda has been hiding nearby and now jumps between M’Benga and his crewmembers. He pushes them back and pushes M’Benga through the portal, then follows rthrough portal he tricked M’benga to open. At the same time on the Enterprise Captain Batel undergoes a transformation as her eyes look like they contain the cosmos. Chapel had taken a reading of the Beholder statue on the prison planet of Vadia IX and now Batel’s bio-readings are identical to those of the statue. She is the Beholder. Somehow the Gorn infection, the transfusion of Una’s Illirian DNA, and her own human DNA have made her a hybrid that has allowed the Beholder to embody itself in her. She is now the sentry of the prison and the only one that can stop the Vezda. Batel understands this immediately and is willing to meet that destiny. Batel needs to get to Vadia IX but the portal can’t be opened without the power of a sun. Somehow the combined phasers of two starships have that power but they need to be coordinated precisely as if one mind were piloting them both. The USS Farragut is standing by to help the Enterprise because Captain V’Rei is grateful to the Enterprise for recently saving her life. She has allowed her first officer James T. Kirk to mind-meld with Spock so they can pilot the two ships as if with one mind. While Pike and Batel wait on Skygowan, the two ships fire at the portal. It opens and Pike and Batel step through to Vadia IX. Pike is helpless against the Vezda, which also causes Batel damage when he attacks the statue. Batel begins to transform into the Beholder but what follows is her and Pike living an entire life together from marriage, to children, to their children growing up and getting married, and to Batel dying of old age. This lasts way too long to keep the story from getting boring. Just as Batel dies peacefully in their happy home there is someone at the door and Pike answers it to be faced by the Vezda. Pike returns to reality where Batel is confronting the Vezda. The Vezda begins to liberate the other prisoners but Batel unleashes her power and forces all of the Vezda back into the well. Then the statue reappears on top of the well and Batel is gone. 

            Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was co-created by Alex Kurtzman, who first began co-writing TV scripts on Hercules: the Legendary Journeys. He co-wrote episodes of Xena, Jack of All Trades, Alias, Hawaii Five-0, Lock and Key, Sleepy Hollow, Limitless, Clarice, and The Man Who Fell to Earth (TV series). He co-wrote The Island, The Legend of Zorro, Mission Impossible III, and Cowboys and Aliens. He also co-created Star Trek: Discovery, and Star Trek: Picard. His directorial debut was People Like Us. He co-directed The Mummy (2017), He co-wrote Transformers 1 and 2, the two most recent Star Trek films, and The Amazing Spiderman 2. He created the TV series Fringe. He is a co-executive producer of Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Section 31.