An interesting, deliberately thought provoking 🤔 question for a lazy long weekend Sunday morning…
Setting aside whether specific fans like specific ‘gimmicks’ (crossovers, musicals, bringing back Kirk or Khan) or tropes (transporter malfunctions), Space.com is posing the hypothesis that the proportion was too high in Strange New Worlds second season.
There’s no arguing that the season was successful in drawing in large audiences week after week. Taking a look back though, was there too much trippy-Trek(TM) dessert and not enough of a meaty main course? YMMV surely.
For my part, I can both agree that trippy Trek is something I’ve been wanting more of, and that I would have welcomed 2 or 3 more episodes were more grounded or gave the opportunity to see more of Una as a leader and dug into Ortegas backstory.
The 90s shows seemed to be bit embarrassed by trippyness, although Voyager found its pretext allowed even stern Janeway to pronounce ‘Weird is our business.’ One can argue that the high proportion in SNW is a feature, not a bug.
I’d still prefer a 12-15 episode season though.
I completely agree with your line 'One can argue that the high proportion in SNW is a feature, not a bug.' I thought it was great.
Star Trek has always had different vibes for different shows. It also took a while for each show to find it's own vibe. I'm really enjoying the split that SNW has come up with. They lean on all the light/trippy episodes so they can pull some incredibly dark shit out of nowhere in the next. Some of the episodes of SNW S2 are amongst the darkest things ever portrayed in Trek at all. The swinging from the Lower Decks episode to the M'Benga/Chapel episode was intense and because of it you never know what kind of ride Strange New Worlds is about to take you on. Am I going to laugh? Sing? Cry? All of the above? Or something completely new?
I would also prefer 12 episodes but we've also gotten some 'big budget' scenes and visuals due to there only being 10. Then again... bottle episodes...
M'Benga has a dark dark chapter.
I love SNW; the point with more episodes would be to give more leg room for the writers and actors. No more cliffhangers though...at least not quite like that "CUT!"
The stunning things that SNW has managed to do with established characters... Uhura was already a wonderful character but they've managed to give her so much more depth than she already had. Same thing with Spock. Presumably Scotty as well in the next season. But M'Benga... Holy fuck. Dark dark chapter is accurate. The writing is superb and Babs Olusanmokun is spinechilling with his performance. The bredth of that mans acting ability is incredible. Everyone on the show can act incredibly well but holy fuck Babs.
Also that's a good point on the leg room. I can get very narrow minded and I never considered that. Huh. Definitely something for me to think about. Thanks!
Ad Astra and Among the Lotus Eaters were also pretty serious episodes.