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.
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competence porn
That’s really a key point. Transitioning from a world where Dan Quayle got eviscerated for ‘potatoe’ to a Trump presidency (or Johnson, Berlusconi, Putin, Abbot, AfD, blablabla) has left scars and certain needs when it comes to entertainment.
Reverse that polarity on the deflector and match the harmonic frequency. Mmmmm.
I need you to explain that with a simple analogy.
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.
@Burstar Dang, Jim! it has one of the best openings of all series. Maybe the best so far.
As a fellow GenX I could not agree more. I was absolutely hyped when Trek returned to cinemas only to get increasingly disappointed by a “star wars reboot proof of concept” approach to the movies.
When Discovery came around I was all in, but soon it turned into a shooting gallery pew pew show and became the first Trek show I abandoned mid-way.
Picard was a confusing mess where they made friends with Borg only to fight Borg next season… and then ended to the crowd’s applause because showrunners drowned it in memberberries.
Strange New Worlds is about discoveries and relationships and science. It’s goofier than TOS or TNG but in a nice, friendly way. It does not try to be edgy or shocking - it feels fresh and engaging, just like TNG, DS9 and VOY felt when they were first broadcast.
I guess we’re just about to wrap up the second season, so it may be too early to call - but SNW is way on the way to becoming my favorite Trek, not just of the modern era but of all time.
I agree with you on everything but Strange New Worlds being goofier than TOS or TNG??? Trouble with Tribbles and Sub Rosa would like some words
What I mean is not the comedy episodes, but general demeanor of characters. Lots of little silly quirks that are more common in sitcom characters than navy/explorers that the federation is.
Personally I love it.
Oh I see, yeah that makes sense
I agree with everything you’ve said, but would add that I yearn for a return to the season length of TOS, or TNG.
These 10 episode seasons, or eight in some cases, since streaming’s become the default, are for the birds.
As a viewer I’d love to have (more than) twice the amount of episodes. Knowing the reality of TV/film production though - it would come at a cost of quality. We’d see filler episodes, we’d have much less elaborate sets, plotlines…
I think quality is better than quantity in most cases.
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.
I’ve noticed that the movie and t.v. industry will not tolerate a static shot. They must always be moving the camera around for no apparent reason. Sometimes they just use a jumpcut every half second or so.
I’m not sure if they think it holds the audiences attention better, but I find it extremely distracting and annoying. Maybe I’ve gotten used to static shots from watching real people do real things on YouTube or whatever. It’s like trying to watch a scene on a ship in a storm with these scenes sometimes.
It’s definitely an industry change. Frakes has talked about how when he directs an episode now, the show’s director of photography tells him to keep the camera moving.
I will say that older Startrek episodes did have the soap opera feel. My guess is that they’re trying to avoid looking like a soap opera. To me that means audio as well as visual. They mix soap operas in the lower range at a higher volume for older audiences, cutting out the higher vocal range. It makes it sound like they’re in a closet or something.
@SkepticElliptic @Reva
I was noticing that same thing this week. Hold still!!!I’ve seen some things about viewer retention on YouTube when there is movement like this. It keeps us interested overall. Perhaps it’s similar to monotone voices not being great at keeping our attention.
Bueller, B-ue-ller, Bueller…
You’re not wrong, but that’s why I like it. Before I get in to that.
Discovery had some good moments and some good acting but was overall a mess.
Picard was like someone gave a big budget to a fanfic and said “I’m not taking any notes.” When a bunch of good actors turn in a lousy performances you know the whole thing is broken.
Lower Decks is just all around fun and I really like it.
Back to your statement. I (American) grew up on TOS reruns in the late 70s. I watched old movies and TV shows that had the American 50s optimism for the bright shiny future, but in the late 70s it felt like we’d failed not just economically but more importantly socially. Trek showed a better possible future where we’d solved our problems and learned to work together. It had the 50s optimism for tech and the 60s lessons in social justice. Gene’s vision (and he was by no means perfect himself) was that humanity had solved its problems and that serious conflict had to be external. We were still humans with loves, losses, and petty squabbles but we didn’t have hatred for our fellow man. But we were still working to be better at accepting everyone. Kind of a throwaway but a great example is Boimler the snotty ensign telling legendary Captain Pike it’s kind of offensive to assume all Orions are pirates.
SNW has been a combination of goofy fun, serious topics, and gut-punches like Lift Us Up Where Suffering Cannot Reach.
I still loved DS9 but it strayed away from the vision a lot. I especially hated the parallel universe bullshit which really undermined the point of the original episode. And it gave my conservative friends license to say, look if we’re not tough we’ll get rolled over and be the underclass. Either be the Terran Empire or be slave. I reject that.
I’m tired of gritty dark Trek. Especially in these times where the future doesn’t look good I want to see a shiny happy future where we overcome the challenges by being smart and cooperative. The sets are bright and polished and everyone is fit but the characters actually feel more like real people to me than TNG. I love that we got to watch Uhura’s progression from scared cadet to confident at her job for example.
I’m a bit older than you and gotta disagree one one point. The 50s was NOT an optomistic time for American SciFi. With the exception of “Forbidden Planet”, which heavily influenced TOS, 50s SciFi was dominated by paranoia, repression & fatalism. There were monsters under every rock. Our inability to control ourselves and our technology was dooming our future. The early 60s TOS was an optomistic breath of fresh air. Maybe we wouldn’t blow ourselves up after all
But that’s just the thing. I too like utopia, but I want a believable utopia, not a Starbucks upper class version of what they think is “yass relatable”. I thought DS9 was actually a wonderfully utopian show because it showed that despite incredible hardship, people can still overtake their circumstances and keep a level head, good relationships and a just society. It was authentic to what I as a working class person experience, to what my life is; just an idealized version of it where others and society as a whole share my ideals and ethical standpoints. New Trek on the other hand tries so hard to appeal to progressive politics but fails at realizing the actual authentic circumstances of the working class and instead makes it into some kind of “Eurovision” or “Oscars”-ish upper class atmosphere thing. The recent musical episode was even more insulting in its “what rich people think is fun”-ness.
Now that you mentioned it, I hate that they stopped talking about “duty” and started talking about “work” or a “job”. It’s not supposed to be labour! That’s the entire point of a utopia! Why does everyone treat their Starfleet career like an employment contract with annoying bosses and all? The Lieutenant next to me is my comrade, not my “coworker”. Do they think it becomes relatable because they - in this utopia - still deal with the socialized equivalent of wage labour?
Everything in SNW/DSC/PIC looks, feels and sounds like a Marvel movie with unfunny quips and one-liners, or an advertisement at worst. They speak like the Microsoft boss does when he talks about Xbox - “millions of players all over the world come together to celebrate these incredible, amazing worlds that our people have created for you to express yourselves in” - it’s just marketing talk. It feels incredibly, incredibly sterile and corporate, but when DSC/SNW/PIC characters talk about Starfleet or the Federation, they sound exactly like that. The characters look like Hollywood actors, especially Pike; not like people I know in real life. Miles O’Brien could have been in my local pub; Pike looks and acts like someone who lives in a Californian villa and socializes with Jeffrey Epstein.
Star Trek has turned from union shop working class entertainment to rich white Americans’ entertainment. I do not like that one bit. And it’s not like I hate everything new. I thought Lower Decks was really enjoyable outside of a few stinkers, and I keep reading the novels.
We might have to agree to disagree on the overall look of the thing, but I want to comment on the job part.
It’s always been a bit of a disconnect that you supposedly had this post-scarcity, socialistic, utopia where we have overcome our baser instincts and work cooperatively. But for some reason the dominant organization has military ranks and some people agree to sign-up to take orders and get thrown in jail if they don’t. That never quite squared. But in the real world it’s a simple matter of writing what you know and Gene was ex-Navy so that’s what Starfleet was modeled on. Doesn’t really make sense. It’s also why admirals are so often bad. He had a beef with them.
But yeah I agree I like it better when they talk about their places in Starfleet being a matter of choosing to be a part of it and it being bound by honor and duty. I don’t know why they’re doing that, if it’s supposed to be earlier in the development of the Federation, or if they’re just copying the Orville jokes. I do really like is Una. A lot of that is I always felt robbed by the fact that the network made Gene cut out the idea of a woman first officer after the first pilot and I feel like we’re finally getting to see what could have been with Majel in that role.
When I wrote the above I had not seen the musical yet. It was well-produced and fun, but I think it really undercut the show and I didn’t like it. It made the characters seem silly. Contrast with the Lower Decks crossover which I thought I was going to hate and I thought actually worked fine if you could ignore the cartoon thing. I didn’t mind that it was played for outright comedy because it still took the characters seriously. Much like the DS9 Tribbles episode.
I do think DS9 was great by the way, with a few exceptions, mostly the mirror universe stuff. And Miles calmly encouraging the Ferengi to go on strike because of course that’s what you do, was maybe one of the most subversive things Trek has gotten away with on TV. American media loves to hate on unions so that was a bolder than you might realize and I loved it.
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.
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.
Great write up dude.
I’m not the generation your talking to but that’s fine I just wanted to comment on how well spoken your post was. I was being potty trained when Locutus of Borg striked fear into my tiny heart.
SNW can be the best trek in decades. If it can keep up this quality and get atleast 5 seasons, it will be remember very highly and likely more so than prime 90s trek.
Id love Anson Mount to be the new face of Trek. He’s a stellar guy and he does a great Pike.
Thank you my Dude. I was super high when I wrote it. ;)
lol makes the context of the post even better
The best Star Trek since The Orville! :)
I’m 50 and I approve of this post and SNW.
Gen X here, it’s a better show than any of the new batch, I had hopes for Picard after the first season but then went to the zoo in the second, and that was that, all the other Parmamount Plus shows are straight unwatchable trash.
Season 3 of Picard was good. Sadly, that was a show that didn’t figure out what it wanted or could be until the ending came along.
Yeah, also if you’re curious, I skipped the second season completely and there is no downside to it. So just jump right into this much more enjoable romp that is season 3.
I watched the first season twice. After I finished the second season, I had all but given up on the show, but season 3 was the best season. It truly felt like a continuation of TNG.
TottalIy agree. i was not impressed with season 1 of Picard. I forced myself to watch season 2 and I almost just quit watching mid season - it just felt like they lost the magic. I wasn’t even going to watch season 3, but then I heard about all the cameos and thought it would be nice to see the old gang back together and it turned out to be the best season of the bunch. Still, Strange New Worlds is lightyears better, imo.
Big disagree from me on that. I hated (nearly) every second of it.
That having been said, SQUEEE ENTERPRISE D
Was glorious seeing it again, even after everyone in the show shit on its design all season. That rather embodies the whole problem tbh.
Edit: I love SNW though, so there’s that.
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.
I love all Star Trek.
This is like poetry. Also, are you frickin spying on me?
We are more alike than people realize. We share many similar victories and traumas.
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.
Iron Man 1 had that touch of magic to it, didn’t it?
Yep, it was all the Marvel I ever needed!
FYI, there’s one key way that Discovery season 1 doesn’t feel like proper Trek that is a setup for a huge plot twist in season 2.
It might not redeem season 1 for you, of course. But it did for me.
I may give it a whirl once the disdain dies down. Thank you
Gen Xer here. Grew up watching Star Trek with my mom. Love this show. And she just got a subscription so she could watch it, too! As was said elsewhere, it’s just really good tv. Well done and engaging. Now if they could just give us 12, maybe 14 episodes a season…
