I freaking love this show, I started late with Discovery, although I didn’t fully like it, I still took the bait. Strange New Worlds is amazing though. Since then I’ve watched several shows and movies but SNW and Picard are my favorites for production value, art direction,and focusing on several characters and core values.
I have really adored Strange New Worlds. It feels far more like Star Trek than most of the later stuff, IMHO. I’m glad they kept Ethan Peck as Spock, because he was one of the few things I liked in Disco.
I felt like most of Picard wasn’t great – especially season 2. But I’m just not a fan of big season arcs, at least not the way they do them now. One great draw for me to things like TNG is the fact I can drop in whenever. Long arcs do exist, but they don’t tend to be the point of every. single. episode. Picard felt to me like it had little to offer except the same arc all the time. Most things are just put together like 8- or 13-hour movies now – but I much prefer planet-of-the-week.
In fact, I make the same argument when discussing the Orville. Sad it was canceled, because it felt even more like Trek than SNW.
Sad it was canceled
You just gave me really bad news, I had no idea :(
@circuitfarmer @warmaster I was so disappointed in Picard. Season 1 seemed to take all the wrong lessons from modern TV: it went for the gore and tragedy of Game of Thrones but that just doesn’t fit the Star Trek medium.
I can see what they wanted to do with Discovery, but quite honestly it felt like there was too little respect for what Trek was before. It didn’t have to be the same, but Discovery S1 felt like it was different for the sake of being different, not to be good.
I really could not get into SNW. The almost Marvel-satire-level of constant asides and quips takes me out of it. It wants to be a gorgeous, serious show, a wannabe campy homage, and a modern Marvel action-funny, and eat its cake, too.
Contrast to DS9/TNG, where the show is campy but not self-aware, SNW oscillates between winking at the audience and tearjerker storyline in too small of an interval, consistently.
/review
Absolutely not mArVeL-esque at all, did we watch the same show??
I swear to god anytime a non-comedy show includes some levity these days there’s always someone that manages to cry and make it about marvel.
Yeah, I enjoy SNW halfheartedly but it never hits the mark for me. I think you hit the nail on its head with your points about tonal whiplash, and the fandom pandering that Marvel and others have honed to to a formula.
What I find most jarring is that the show runners introduce this lovely crew of the pre-Kirk Enterprise, ripe for character exploration, and then either saddle them with “alternate timeline Kirk romance”, or sideline them to fill in some previously non-existing blanks in Spock’s love life…
I had been fine with a SNW show that was just Pike and his crew boldly going, but I personally feel like it’s hampered by scorecard TOS nostalgia. Clearly this is just my opinion, I do love it that people are so hyped over Star Trek again! I’m just jonesing for something that points to the show’s future, not another Spock/Kirk recast…
If you ever feel the urge to dig into trek history, check this out: https://ds9redefined.wordpress.com/ https://ds9redefined.wordpress.com/screenshots/
They have a discord where you can find their FTP to download the upscaled/ai episodes. DS9 is complete and they are working on wrapping season 1 of voyager currently.
I’ve gone through multiple ai / upscale attempts and this one I like the most!
If you love SNW, you will likely enjoy ds9 and voy
With the hype of Section 31, I really wish there was a continuation of DS9 like the documentary had. It seems so weird to me that a series that was hated had a critical part of it taken for the newer series.
Maybe you should consider the possibility that it’s not as “hated” as you think, considering it spawned three direct spinoffs and generally revitalized the franchise.I’m a big ol’ dummy.
There are tons of interviews, news, etc. and actors and actresses + show runners involved with DS9 talking about its unpopularity at the time.
You know what, I misinterpreted your comment.
Though I do think “hated” is a bit much - DS9 certainly was the least popular of the 90s shows, but…it ran for seven years.
I liked #DS9. It wasn’t just one big happy Starfleet crew. The interplay was infinitely more interesting for it.
By contrast, I hated #Voyager because even though there should have been tension between the combined Starfleet and Maquis crews, they ruthlessly and relentlessly suppressed even the slightest appearance of it. Also, I didn’t think much of Kathryn Janeway’s philosophy.
But for these very reasons, most fans seemed to love Voyager and hate DS9.
@benfell @ValueSubtracted I loved both of them but obviously DS9 was the better show
@benfell @ValueSubtracted I loved Voyager as a kid, but I was 11 when it ended so 🤷♂️. Rewatching it now is hard because most episodes leave me with the feeling of missed potential. While it didn’t need to be as serialised as DS9 ended up, paying a bit more attention to continuing character threads or subplots across episodes or seasons would have made it a much stronger series. We joke about the torpedo count, but it’s a symptom of how little care Voyager took to developing its story.
I will be very impressed if the S31 movie doesn’t suck.
It’s the first time I have 0 interest in a Star Trek anything.
The entire idea of Section 31 sucks in the first place, so that probably won’t help.
Cheers for snw, jeers for s31.
Cool, cool. Looking forward to seeing how the writers are going to handwave their way out of the Gorn-shaped hole they dug for themselves.
