My Dear Gen X,
My joints hurt just as bad as yours do and we need to talk about "Strange New Worlds"...
Guys, it's really good.
I know you. Your parents are old and sick and you're wondering how they'll manage. I know your kids have gotta finish strong in high school this year. I know your spouse is not perfect.
Watch this show and let it carry you back to the reasons you loved Star Trek when you were a kid. I know you, and I know this is what you need right now.
Maybe you are...
1.) One of those that saw Mr. Spock on our parents' black and white TV in the 60s or 70s and thought that he had a perfectly reasonable approach to life. At least to an 8-year-old.
2.) That girl back in grade 10 who had a really unhealthy relationship with Deanna Troi because of some previous life trauma.
3.) Like my father, you liked the skimpy outfits (...no, protect, protect... you know the one) but also, AHEM... more importantly he likened Spock's experiences to his own as an immigrant.
3.) One of the uber nerds back in grade 7 that lit up the local BBS or early Usenet with fierce discussions of Kirk's superiority over Picard.
4.) Re-watching old episodes of TNG (God bless you BBC America) and it makes you feel like you're visiting with old friends.
5.) A lover of competence porn. Don't you wish your team at work had the competence and work ethic of Star Fleet? I love watching Miles having coffee (double strong, double sweet) with his sleeves rolled up getting ready to put in some hard hours.
6.) Your dad watched TOS in his dorm room in college. You watched DS9 in your first apartment when you moved out.
Listen guys, make the time for the show. I know you've gotta go walk the dog because the kids never do. But seriously remember the reasons you got into Star Trek when you were young.
There no such thing as time travel. But this show will remind you about the things you loved about Star Trek.
And if you're one of those fans that cares about canon and timelines and are rightly concerned about the show runner's respect for the source material... Put it like this, the show scores enough points to allow loose standards when it comes to canon.
Discovery doesn't feel right. Lower Decks is awesome but scratches a different itch. I never watched Prodigy (sorry). This show is a gift to us in our old age.
This is modern Star Trek at it finest.
I have to agree, Strange New Worlds is, hands down, the best Trek this side of TNG. I couldn't get into Discovery because it's too E D G Y. Like, it feels like the showrunners discovered emo a generation too late, and the whole show should basically be a linewire music video set to Three Days Grace or Linkin Park. It's fucking insufferable, I just can't reconcile that with Star Trek.
Lower Decks and Prodigy are both great, but don't feel like real entries into the Trek universe and therefore are just kinda time sinks to keep you from being alone with your thoughts and reflecting on the void.
Picard was also sort of in the same boat as Discovery in terms of Edge while also trying to be a murder mystery and also a 'Member Berries special.
P R E S T I G E T V was a mistake to blend with Trek and I'm glad Strange New Worlds avoids the mix.
The show is just good TV. The acting is good. The music is too. The writing is very good to the point they are confident enough to push limits, get meta, and rebuff the audience's expectations while still consistently delivering. Even the least of the episodes is well worth the watch even if it is just the once.
The problem I have with the new shows is that they all feel acted, designed and written like American advertisements or stock videos. It's hard to describe, but everything is glossy, polished and corporate-designed, and people never act or speak like the people I know in real life; they act and speak like influencers, vloggers and YouTube personalities. It's eerie and I cannot immerse myself at all. It's too clean, too bright, not industrial or lived in enough. Even the "relatable" scenes just remind me of what an upper class hipster writer in a glass-front writing room thinks is relatable.
The people and sets on DS9 felt so real, so tangible, so relatable. The episode with Bashir's parents comes to mind where the interaction between Julian and them was so gut-punchingly accurate to a regular immigrant working class family. The relationship between Ben and Jake. The entire character of Miles. The people in new Trek feel fake, like a Hollywood writer's idea of a regular person. The politics in DS9 felt genuinely radical, in new Trek they feel shoe-horned in out of an obligation to be progressive with no meat behind it at all, just to market to a target demographic.
Maybe it is because I am European, but DSC/SNW/PIC just feel SO incredibly American. Like Alegria art.
Strange New Worlds is the Trek we should have had all throughout the "reimagining/shot in the arm" years where Abrams giggled and bashed other people's toys together while making explosion sounds.
It's a good show though I really wish they went back to 26 episode seasons. Sure they won't all be hits but there's something to be said about stories that feature more of the supporting cast that fleshes out the world a little more.
As a fellow Gen X, I feel like SNW is...perfectly fine. If you went to the Star Trek store and walked up to the counter and said, "One Star Trek, please," SNW is what they would give you wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Star Trek as you like it! It's a solid C+ for sure. And there are even some really good episodes, too!
But man, do I wish it wasn't trying so hard to be Star Trek, and was actually doing something new and interesting. I grew up watching reruns of TOS before TNG was on the air, and then TNG was appointment viewing in my house. And I love those shows. I have those shows an I can rewatch them any time I want.
This second season has been better than the first, and I've enjoyed it, but there still hasn't been much to really get me invested. There's no hook. None of these episodes are threatening to break into my top 50. Which, granted, there is almost 900 episodes of Star Trek, so there's a lot of competition.
I just want to be excited about Trek, and SNW is not doing that for me.
It's a tough time for anyone to be making new Star Trek content. People always say they want something new, when when they actually get it, most of them are like "no, not like that."
I like more new Trek than I dislike. Hell, I like SNW well enough.
I’m just opposed to the idea that because I’m in a specific age demographic that this particular iteration of Trek should be particularly special.
I started questioning Strange New Worlds in the very beginning when Spock and T'Pring hang out in their luxurious penthouse and constantly make-out like a couple of hormonal teenagers. I lost interest when magic blood cured massive radiation exposure, not only in the person with magic fairy dust in their veins, but in someone else next to them in the room. What in the actual fuck? How is that Star Trek? Based on what I saw, Strange New Worlds is indeed strange, as in "why are they making these strange writing decisions?".
Thanks man. I watched Discovery and it was more "action Trek" (like the newer movies). The first season just made me irritable and while my Trek friend told me to move on (to the following seasons) and forget about it, I just never could. I'm the type that just didn't like the Marvel stuff and haven't watched anything past Iron Man 1.
I'll definitely give this a shot.
Prodigy is surprisingly good. It does skew a bit younger but it does have that Star Trek feel.
But I agree SNW and Lower Decks are great.
It's odd because to me lower decks feels the least like and the most like a Star Trek show... Somehow they walk that line really well.
