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TV Shows: Star Trek
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Download, Season 1) – Following Pike after Season 2 of Discovery (which I am glad, in retrospect, that I watched first) as he resumes command of the Enterprise for some space-wedgie-of-the-week shenanigans. They have a problematic tendency to walk right into ambushes repeatedly, but I appreciate the fact that Pike trusts his crew and thinks his way out of problems. I really hope somebody sent LeGuin a check for “The Ones Who Warp Away From Omelas.” I went back and re-watched the TOS episode “Balance of Terror” after the finale, and was impressed and amused at what they managed to use from it. The biggest problem was that this season was only 10 episodes and a number of the plot points that get introduced in the first half and resolved in the second (M’Benga’s daughter, Una’s heritage, Hemmer) needed more time to breathe. This needed another half-dozen “monster of the week” episodes to space out the continuity stuff and give us more time to appreciate the characters.
Star Trek: Lower Decks (Download, Season 3) – This continues to love Star Trek and make light of Star Trek in equal measures, with a parade of guest stars and deep references you’ve probably forgotten about and enough new gags to appreciate even when you don’t get the references.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Download, Season 2) - I’m not crazy about new Kirk, but I can see why they’re using him (and somebody really did their research on the timeline and what he’d be doing at this point.) The crossover episode was just as delightful as one might have hoped, if a little closer in tone to Lower Decks. Similarly, the musical episode was really fun. But again: This show needed more breathing room. We needed more mention of the Gorn in the background before the finale cliffhanger. We needed more scenes of the various romances and friendships in progress. We needed a few more standard missions and random negative space wedgies to let the big production episodes breathe and to prevent the severe mood whiplash when you jump from musical comedy to survival horror.
I re-watched a bunch of first season Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was entertaining. They clearly hadn’t quite figured out a lot of things about the characters or the technology quite yet, though they also laid the groundwork for a bunch of recurring points (like the potential Picard/Crusher romance) very early. Picard yells at people a lot and is much more stern early on. Geordi is the helmsman and Worf is assistant security chief, but both of them default to being generic “do something” guys. (Tasha’s death was great for Worf, because it gave him a real role in the command structure!) Some of the episodes get very silly, but with the sense that they don’t know how silly they should be. The Ferengi are supposed to be new villains, but their ability to be threatening lasts about half an episode and then they’re just comic relief. And the thing is, it’s not bad. It gets a lot of flak for not being as good as later TNG, but most episodes have a decent sci-fi idea and the crew acting as a competent team to solve it. (Even ones like “Skin of Evil,” where Picard thinks through the problem and treats Argus like the proto-internet troll he is.)
Star Trek: Lower Decks (Download, Season 3) – This continues to love Star Trek and make light of Star Trek in equal measures, with a parade of guest stars and deep references you’ve probably forgotten about and enough new gags to appreciate even when you don’t get the references.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Download, Season 2) - I’m not crazy about new Kirk, but I can see why they’re using him (and somebody really did their research on the timeline and what he’d be doing at this point.) The crossover episode was just as delightful as one might have hoped, if a little closer in tone to Lower Decks. Similarly, the musical episode was really fun. But again: This show needed more breathing room. We needed more mention of the Gorn in the background before the finale cliffhanger. We needed more scenes of the various romances and friendships in progress. We needed a few more standard missions and random negative space wedgies to let the big production episodes breathe and to prevent the severe mood whiplash when you jump from musical comedy to survival horror.
I re-watched a bunch of first season Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was entertaining. They clearly hadn’t quite figured out a lot of things about the characters or the technology quite yet, though they also laid the groundwork for a bunch of recurring points (like the potential Picard/Crusher romance) very early. Picard yells at people a lot and is much more stern early on. Geordi is the helmsman and Worf is assistant security chief, but both of them default to being generic “do something” guys. (Tasha’s death was great for Worf, because it gave him a real role in the command structure!) Some of the episodes get very silly, but with the sense that they don’t know how silly they should be. The Ferengi are supposed to be new villains, but their ability to be threatening lasts about half an episode and then they’re just comic relief. And the thing is, it’s not bad. It gets a lot of flak for not being as good as later TNG, but most episodes have a decent sci-fi idea and the crew acting as a competent team to solve it. (Even ones like “Skin of Evil,” where Picard thinks through the problem and treats Argus like the proto-internet troll he is.)
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