Distant Worlds

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Latest — 21 Oct 2025

The Jerks are back!

Writer/Artist Mark Farinas and I are back on our BS. We're in the middle of a new season of our podcast, SHIP FULL OF JERKS. Our current voyage is through the latest episodes of STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS. Our goal is to raise the level of

More issues

Putting pencil to paper for DISTANT WORLDS

I took a break from pounding the keyboard last month. I needed to take a breath, even from this newsletter. The words were stale. The momentum was lost. I wandered too far into my own head about the work. I don't suffer from writer's block. I

Starships were meant to fly!

I know I said last week that I'd take this one off, but inspiration struck over the weekend. I hit upon the design aesthetic for our hero ship in DISTANT WORLDS, and I had to share some of my sketches. In a later post, I'll go

Spirk it to me!

Last week, STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS wrapped up its third season, which percolates the early formation of Kirk and Spock's bromance. The finale brings it to a boil. For plot reasons, both the Enterprise and Kirk's ship, the Farragut, must fire their phaser like a

Happy 59th STAR TREK!

I don't remember the exact episode of STAR TREK that first caught my attention. The show has always been part of my life. My mom says I would hear those first few strings of Alexander Courage's famous fanfare and bolt into the living room, demanding my

Did Kirk and Spock smash?

Women kept STAR TREK alive when it was under threat of cancellation. They started the first conventions. Without women, STAR TREK may very well have died in the 1970s. They carried the flame of Trekdom, writing fanzines and creating a new genre of fan fiction, known as slash. Today, we

Takin’ Shore Leave

This week’s post will be short and sweet. Life on Earth needs my attention right now, so I’m taking the rest of the month off. I wish I could take shore leave on a nice planet with a beach and those drinks with tiny umbrellas in them. But,

Artifacts from the Final Frontier

I've been doing some file cleaning on Dropbox and my Mac. You know, just clearing out things I don't need, reorganizing stuff that's littered my desktop, and all that jazz. Welp, I rediscovered images of STAR TREK artifacts I snagged and saved. Actual props,

A Filipino family space affair

When STAR TREK returned to television with STAR TREK: DISCOVERY, it wasn't long before another show was announced. This time, a pseudo-sequel to the beloved THE NEXT GENERATION, centered around Picard as a French vintner solving murders across the galaxy. I'm kidding, but I'd

The Filipina Frontier

I goofed last week when I discussed Filipino representation in STAR TREK. There were a few of the pamilya I missed. Mea culpa. Let me make that up to y'all now and showcase those I forgot because of my nearly 50-year-old memory banks. And yet I can still