Then there’s the violence, and the casual way that it’s doled out, especially in the show’s numerous interrogation scenes. I’m not advocating for forced confessions, but given Starfleet’s advanced science, and the Federation has a planet of literal telepaths at its disposal, why are we always punching people in the nose with a butt of a phaser pistol? I mean, I know why: It’s a nerdy sci-fi show play acting as a muscular basic-cable drama, but that doesn’t mean it works. I’ve often theorized that many modern-day Star Trek creators would much rather be over the hall making their own Star War instead. Maybe I’m wrong, and the Picard crew is really nostalgic for the hamfisted Bush-era politics of 24.
lol how could anyone forget Discovery S1? The villain wasn't just tortured in one of the most grotesque ways imaginable, he was also brainwashed into believing he was from a different species.
This is old news, Kurtzman has a pretty huge hard on for violence, but not just straight up violence, he really likes the cartoon evil shit either because he is too dumb to know its that bad or because he really thinks he is making some sort of revolutionary point by disgusting/shocking the audience.
He succeeded in shocking us alright but entirely for the wrong reason lol.
And that’s before we get to the moralizing, which had characters pointing at a bad thing and saying “thing bad.” I don’t think the second season’s 26 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes is because the (inexplicably) conservative wing of Trek fandom was outraged that a show about happy space communists solving problems while remaining friends suddenly “got woke.” Good, old-fashioned Star Trek at least had the good grace to cloak its progressivism in allegory that could slide past the otherwise closed minds of some of its viewers. By comparison, Picard felt like the first draft of a high school theater production made the term after the teacher had explained agitprop.
These exist for sure, you don't have to go too deep into reddit archives(e.g r/star_trek) or obscure YT channels(Midnight's edge etc) to find these right wing conspiracy theorists that also want to claim they always liked Trek but not the new Trek.
But I second the conclusion here, Hollywood/libs will always prefer to see what is at the surface in order to make them feel better about their choices.
Trek was always political and woke and apart from individual instances of writer/producer's brainworms this is a long tradition that goes right back to the originals.
This is also the root of the problem, modern libs want to feel like they are the ones lecturing the world, it doesn't matter if something/someone did it 10, 20 or 30 years ago. They must be the ones to tell the message and it doesn't matter how much canon or history they must ignore(if not destroy) in order to take credit for it.
I believe this is a big part of the reason nuTrek sucks i.e in order to tell a story about how the world sucks and [insert good message here] they can't have the Federation literally be the paradise we hope to achieve, of course not first they try to destroy it and then when fans rage against it they literaly go back to 2020(s2 plot) in order to shove it in our faces. "SEE? WORLD BAD!! SEE? WE BRING GOOD MESSAGE HERE!"
The Federation also going MAGABrexit in the first season also seems to imply modern Western liberal democracies are basically the same thing as The Federation which is :michael-laugh:
They are doing in 2020 what the originals did in the 60's. It is not as if Trek wasn't always obvious allegories e.g Klingons = Soviets etc.
But even the great DS9 wasn't built on this, special episodes like Bell riots or Homefront(9/11 precursor) worked because they were unique and detached from "paradise".
So either you have an extremely gifted team like DS9 that could pull of a pre 9/11 allegory(Homefront) or you spin it up a little by going to the past like Bell.
But nuTrek isn't just 1 or 2 grim episodes per season, they want a 10 episode season built around these themes and so it was doomed to fail.
lol how could anyone forget Discovery S1? The villain wasn't just tortured in one of the most grotesque ways imaginable, he was also brainwashed into believing he was from a different species.
This is old news, Kurtzman has a pretty huge hard on for violence, but not just straight up violence, he really likes the cartoon evil shit either because he is too dumb to know its that bad or because he really thinks he is making some sort of revolutionary point by disgusting/shocking the audience.
He succeeded in shocking us alright but entirely for the wrong reason lol.
These exist for sure, you don't have to go too deep into reddit archives(e.g r/star_trek) or obscure YT channels(Midnight's edge etc) to find these right wing conspiracy theorists that also want to claim they always liked Trek but not the new Trek.
But I second the conclusion here, Hollywood/libs will always prefer to see what is at the surface in order to make them feel better about their choices.
Trek was always political and woke and apart from individual instances of writer/producer's brainworms this is a long tradition that goes right back to the originals.
This is also the root of the problem, modern libs want to feel like they are the ones lecturing the world, it doesn't matter if something/someone did it 10, 20 or 30 years ago. They must be the ones to tell the message and it doesn't matter how much canon or history they must ignore(if not destroy) in order to take credit for it.
I believe this is a big part of the reason nuTrek sucks i.e in order to tell a story about how the world sucks and [insert good message here] they can't have the Federation literally be the paradise we hope to achieve, of course not first they try to destroy it and then when fans rage against it they literaly go back to 2020(s2 plot) in order to shove it in our faces. "SEE? WORLD BAD!! SEE? WE BRING GOOD MESSAGE HERE!"
The Federation also going MAGABrexit in the first season also seems to imply modern Western liberal democracies are basically the same thing as The Federation which is :michael-laugh:
They are doing in 2020 what the originals did in the 60's. It is not as if Trek wasn't always obvious allegories e.g Klingons = Soviets etc.
But even the great DS9 wasn't built on this, special episodes like Bell riots or Homefront(9/11 precursor) worked because they were unique and detached from "paradise".
So either you have an extremely gifted team like DS9 that could pull of a pre 9/11 allegory(Homefront) or you spin it up a little by going to the past like Bell.
But nuTrek isn't just 1 or 2 grim episodes per season, they want a 10 episode season built around these themes and so it was doomed to fail.