When you have a shared universe, one of the biggest benefits is the crossover–bringing characters from one show within the property over to another show. Agents of SHIELD is starting off its second season tomorrow with a crossover of sorts, featuring flashbacks with Agent Peggy Carter before her own spinoff starts early next year. While this situation is a little different, as both Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter are spinning off from the same parent property, they still have enough in common to enjoy the benefits of a crossover. And with that in mind, I thought it would be a good time to examine the crossover and how it helps with the cohesiveness and plausibility of a shared universe. Read more

With Defiance having finished its second season, it’s time for me to shift gears and get ready for my next series to review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I know, I keep starting out with things that are on their second season, but there’s not a lot of new stuff coming in the near future (Syfy’s Ascension excluded) so I’ll run with what I’ve been into. To the topic at hand, then: SHIELD (as I will refer to it for the sake of my keyboard) was a highly anticipated show last year, and when it premiered it didn’t exactly meet everyone’s expectations. Even the highly anticipated tie-in with Thor 2 was a bit of a disappointment for those who (unrealistically) expected a cameo or something. It was frustrating because, much like season 1 Defiance, there was a lot of potential going unused as the show dealt with small and seemingly irrelevant details. Things changed big time, however, after the winter break.

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was heralded upon its arrival as something revolutionary. A television series, set in the same universe as films, affected by the fallout of each one as they were released while allowing viewers to keep an eye on this world in the interim. It’s something not too different from how Defiance‘s MMORPG connection was described. And, much like with Defiance, it’s something that actually has been seen before, although few people tend to think of it in the same way. This time, however, it’s a much better known property: Star Trek. You see, when The Next Generation started in the 1980s, the feature films with the TOS crew were still being produced. Let’s take a look at some of the significant differences between the approaches of these two series and how the concept of a shared universe has evolved.

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