Thank the Mirror Universe that I can get away with a headline like that, frankly.

This week, for the first time in its history, Star Trek Online got the chance to launch content related to a concurrent Trek TV series with Age of Discovery, a mini-update that brings gamers into the time of Discovery. This first slice does a grand job of capturing Discovery’s look and it’s tone — but it also slips up in similar ways as the show did.

The Final Frontier is about to get a lot cuddlier — and this is coming from a world where swaths of reproducing fluff balls exist. Perfect World and Cryptic Studios has announced that they’re adding Star Trek: Discovery’s beloved Ripper the Tardigrade to Star Trek Online’s Age of Discovery expansion.

When we tend to (very fondly) remember Deep Space Nine, we champion its boldness: Serialised storytelling, a darker look at a utopia in crisis, the daunting dramas of the Dominion War. But it wasn't always a bleak examination of Trek in wartime - and the latest expansion for Cryptic's free-to-play Star Trek Online, Victory is Life, remembers that well.

Experiencing a space you know in real life in digital form is a fascinating, mystifying thing. Seeing a space you helped build, one that only existed fully in the imagination of fans... Well, that's even more special.

Fans who have been playing Cryptic's free-to-play MMORPG Star Trek Online and felt a certain emptiness may have that filled with the latest expansion. It's called Victory Is Life and it's inspired by Deep Space Nine.

Star Trek: Discovery is set 10 years before the events of the original Star Trek, but that wasn't always going to be the case. It was almost an anthology show that was going to take fans from the pre-Kirk Federation into Star Trek's future. If you're disappointed Discovery is solely stuck in the past instead, you really should play Star Trek Online.

Sending players on a mission to save the future by killing the past, or saving the past in the future? Days of future past? It's all very confusing, but that's what happened when Star Trek Online released its Agents of Yesterday expansion seven years ago. Or today. Stupid time.

Earlier this week, Kotaku was approached by a marketing firm working for the publisher Perfect World. They wanted us to help sell two of their games. And in the process, they inadvertently gave us a behind-the-scenes peek at what it looks like when YouTubers shill for game companies.

As promised earlier this week by Star Trek Online executive producer Stephen Ricossa, developer Arc Games has placed not one, but three in-game memorials to the late Leonard Nimoy, best known for playing Spock in Star Trek's various incarnations.

Following the passing of Leonard Nimoy last week, space games like Star Trek Online, Elite: Dangerous, and Star Citizen all have heart-warming plans to memorialise the man who brought Spock to life.

Just because Star Trek: Voyager was pretty horrible doesn't mean we don't miss the folks who starred in it. Five members of Captain Janeway's crew are reprising their roles for the next Star Trek Online expansion, "Delta Rising".

R-R-Romulans have r-r-ridges. Perfect World Entertainment's is gearing up to launch the most ambitious Star Trek Online expansion to date in May, giving players tired of making excuses for their Vulcan characters to roleplay space sex a more passionate alternative with Legacy of Romulus. And Tasha Yar is back!

While being forthright with his community about the woeful state of Star Trek Online's player-versus-player combat, a developer at Cryptic Studios also admitted to something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: PvP in the game is so bad, no one's participating in it. Participation is so low that the studio has seriously considered removing PvP altogether.

Cryptic, the guys behind Star Trek Online and City of Heroes, has found out this week that it's been hacked. User details have been stolen and some "portion of the passwords" present in a database were even cracked. Which is bad. What's worse is that the hack took place in December 2010.

Set your phasers on stupid Trek reference, as Cryptic's Star Trek Online opens its free-to-play docking bay and invites the world inside following a brief subscriber-only period. To see what players get for free, hit up the official Star Trek Online web page.

Players with a lapsed subscription to Cryptic's Star Trek Online can come back an play the game at no cost today as part of the free-to-play early start program. Everyone else can play for free come January 17.

Late last week it was revealed that Cryptic Studios' massively multiplayer Star Trek Online would be going free-to-play later this year, swapping required subscription fees for an active player base. Today we find out what's free and what'll have players reaching for their gold-pressed latinum.

Cryptic Studio's MMO Star Trek Online will be going free-to-play by the end of the year, following in the footsteps of other MMOs that have recently switched from the upfront payment model to the free-to-play model.