The Federation is helping a planet transition out of capitalism to post-scarcity, and it's basically a huge celebration.
Old Trek always danced around it, but In Strange New Worlds there's a roughly 3000 year old character in Starfleet who says "I still have a bunker in Vermont in case this 'no money socialist utopia' thing turns out to be a fad"
I tried getting into Strange New Worlds but it just feels like generic nutrek. The same unnecessary constant violence, the same poorly-written incoherent arc for the main character, the same tired old prequel approach instead of being set sometime after the events of other series. It's just more STD with some TOS paint slapped on top.
Unfortunately, I agree. The tipping point for me was the humour. I don’t like it and I don’t want it. It’s funny how I could be tolerant of cliche in many other types of entertainment, but cliche comedy very quickly turns me off.
That and the resurrection of ancient characters. It’s fan service (I learned this term watching reviews of SNW/picard and learned to hate it) and adds very little to the show. I’m much less interested in the interpersonal dramas, I want to see more (any) space communism and aspirational utopia progaganda.
It's definitely nutrek but it's halfway back to old trek in the format IMHO. Not just the paintjob but in the types of episodes they tend to do. Picard was unwatchable for me. "Hey nerd 'member the Enterprise D? 'Member??? Ok now fuck off"
Those two series, Picard and Lower Decks, are perfect case studies on how to handle nostalgia very badly and very well, respectively. In the future I will give a chance to any TV series or movie that the Lower Decks writers are involved with.
The TNG movies made me question if Patrick Stewart still truly understood his most famous character. The Picard series made me realize that he probably never did.
Spoiler-ish stuff
Speaking of season 2, I think I have a crush on both Ma'ah and T'lyn. Honour friends, slay enemies, study plants, and be Vulcan as a motherfucker.
I've always liked the theory that T'lyn's Vulcan captain is her father. He's looking out for her in his own Vulcan way in trying to help her fit in, but he also trusts her completely. I loved the little detail of T'lyn using her robe's belt as a headband. She's breaking her ship's dress code and doesn't care who knows, which is oddly familiar.
And Ma'ah and Mariner need to hook up. They understand each other's culture and values, and they understand that the other isn't at all a stereotype of their species.
It's fantastic, it's obviously made by people who deeply love and understand classic Trek, especially TNG. Only the animation style bears any resemblance to Rick and Morty, there's none of its cynicism and punching-down. Lower Decks has so much heart.
The Richard and Mortimer look (and some of the first episode's vibes) threw me off but I'm glad I stayed on board.
I think you've just convinced me to watch it because that's exactly why I hadn't watched it lmao
Lower Decks has been pretty dsmn amazing. I made a big gushing post in the mega. It's the only newer trek that I think really gets it
This episode was overall amazing and the B and C plots were complimentary communist tho lower key (decks). I had a bad day and thought episode 1 made me hyped lower decks was back, 2 made my bad day a good day. This one reminded me big time why. It's like getting a hug from space comrades. I'm gonna cry so much when this ends.
LD does the Trek bloomer thing better than any previous Trek, even TNG, which is why it's my all time favorite Trek.
It's in reaaaaaal close constest with tng for my 2 spot behind the unmoving ds9. The lack of episodes kinda makes the difference for me
Ds9 is falling in my estimation and has been for some time. It committed several grave sins, among them introducing latinum and section 31. It also has a strong dose of what @UlyssesT@hexbear.net might call "Adults In The Room Making Hard Choices"
I blocked that user prior to the fall, resurrection and sanctification and I'll keep it that way. Introducing Latinum and Section 31 are 'sins' I guess if you're a child who needs all their media to be didactic. Latinum is shown to only be valued by those who value it and those who don't use it don't seem any worse off, if anything better and section 31 was handled pretty well in ds9, later stuff may have done a bad job and it should have stayed in ds9 but that doesn't fault the show itself. It's got here and there issues but I kinda like that star fleet is shown fromsn outside perspective as kinda naive plant pompous jerks, cause they fucking are. I've got criticisms of the show but damn are they totally not the ones you have.
Not all media, but Star Trek specifically should be communist propaganda and any failure to be so is a failure to be good Star Trek.
Everything that is bad about the bad nutrek started with DS9.
Most star trek isn't good communist propaganda. Ds9 has the bell riots and Bar Association as well as endorsing terrorism as a liberation tactic. Id say it's a hell of a lot more communist propaganda than most of star trek. Do you want tng'a first Teo seasons? Cause that seems to be what you're asking for here.
That's fair and me too, if it wasn't gonna come in at less episodes than 3 seasons of tng I'm sure it'd easily surpass tng. I feel this with most shows but like decks especially would have benefitted from alike 5 more episodes per season, more room for ideas and less pressure to cram it all into one episode, comedy is better ejen given dome breathing space plot wise
The network 25 standard was for sure too much for staff at the time buuuuut they also had to turn it around each year 10 episode shows are getting double that time. 15 a year or 20 every 2 seems like a reasonable compromise. I really miss when a serialized show was still.comprised of episodes with their own stories and the big plot was kinds here and there in between with big plot episodes coming like 6 times a season.
I don't think it's as simple as episodic good serialized bad but a lot of the heavily serialized shows now seem to feel the need to raise the stakes to absurd levels to justify their own structure.
I hate Rick Berman I hate Rick Berman I hate Rick Berman. Every bad trend we see in nuTrek really did start with Berman Trek.
One of the many great things Lower Decks did was when Cerritos visited DS9 and Boimler extremely obviously just did not give a shit about latinum at all.
One of the good plots from DS9 was Keiko O'Brien fighting against then-Vedek Winn to keep reactionary religion from fucking up science education.
We barely got any Keiko after that though, especially in her role as a teacher. Not grim dark adults in the room enough for Berman.
Which reminds me actually, one of the worst Star Trek opinions I've ever seen from a hexbear user was that Keiko should've had an arc of converting to the Bajoran faith. Just doubling down on the character assassination Berman already did to her.
I don't remember which user it was but that user called me Sam Harris for disagreeing.
The even worse example is "For the Uniform" where Sisko does a war crime specifically against anti-fascist guerillas. And most people I see talking about it, even here, defend his actions as necessary Adult In The Room Hard Choices.
Based, fingers crossed we can live to see even the first gasps of that world emerge
There will never be good NuTrek
