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’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
I guess I’m thinking of rocket futurism. Lots of new automated appliances, imminent flying cars with jet engines, belief that humans were going to accomplish Great Things. That postwar feeling of “everything going up from here”, ignoring that minor issue of the racial divide… But maybe that never really existed and was my generation’s interpretation looking back.