The quality of Star Trek in 1997 was an embarrassment of riches. Some of the best parts of the Dominion War on Deep Space Nine, Scorpion and Year Of Hell on Voyager, and First Contact in theaters. It was a great year to be a Star Trek fan!
The quality of Star Trek that I’ve seen this year has been giving me similar feelings, watching them hit it out of the park every week, wondering how they are going to top the last one then watching them do it, again and again. Is it just me?
I think Strange New Worlds is the best ST in a long long time. I really hope the strike doesn’t derail what I see as a true return to the ST format. Discovery is more like a mini series run since it tends to focus on a singular topic for an entire season.
I don’t want to be that guy, but given the state of the industry, and series being cancelled without warning, it feels more like 2004 to me.
And no, it’s not a perfect comparison.
I’m not sure that it would be, exactly. One of the problems of that time was that a lot of the series were samey, which the revival seems to be trying rather hard to keep out of the habit of, which would help it avoid a repeat of the same incident.
IMO, the cancellation and disrespectful streaming removal of Prodigy is enough of a black mark to keep it out of that category. Regardless of if you like/care about Prodigy, the show got completely screwed and deserved better.
SNW S2 so far has been hitting hard on standard Star Trek stories. Everyone’s behaving as if they’re in Starfleet, the stories have been a good combination of character-driven and interesting sci-fi, and I haven’t found myself wanting to take any back to the draft table and re-write them (with the exception of the special green strong boy juice in “The Broken Circle” which I felt could have been accomplished with a less silly phaser fight and maybe M’Benga punching a Klingon or two.)
Similarly, I’ve said elsewhere that I really liked Picard S3 for the character-driven narration, even if there wasn’t a lot of sci-fi to it, and I’d love to see a Star Trek: Legacy to see how Matalas tackles individual stories and such.
And Lower Decks is fantastic, full stop - always a treat to watch.
Honestly, I’m hoping for this season of SNW to finish out like it’s been going, just returning to “basics of Star Trek”, and then with a solid footing and understanding they can start branching out to larger ongoing plotlines and such. So maybe not 1997 yet… But I feel like the groundwork is being laid, and I’m optimistic.
Not really, no. Strange New Worlds is the only halfway decent Trek show on the air currently, and though the casting and art direction are great, the writing still needs improvement.
Too many of the episodes are xerox copies of previous plot lines that have been done to death. (Steal the ship to go on a mission! Time travel! DNA fuck up!). There’s an over reliance on “previously on” when the 1997 trek was mostly bottle episodes.
And when I say the casting is great, I mean everyone but Spock’s mom (who looks nothing like previous actresses who have played this part) and Kirk. We didn’t really need Kirk to appear in this show — his brother was a nice addition though.
@reddig33 @Tired8281 I’m fine with reusing stories/themes. There’s only few blues songs, but remixing them still keeps me entertained.
I have zero complaints about SNW. I might rewrite some of it, and I also might screw them up by doing so. All I’m looking for is a good story with characters I like, and nitpicks aside, SNW is knocking it out of the park.
The fact that so much highly rated Trek is out now is vaguely enticing but overwhelming for someone not familiar when anything in the current generation. How is the new stuff supposed to be attacked? I also was not into the Abrams movies that I saw, I’d always preferred the more mundane and cerebral stuff in TNG and the slow paced world building and character development in DS9.
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I’m not convinced either way, let me just point out how many people are on strike right now which I know won’t have much of an effect on content immediately this year but might hit hard in the future. I’m interested to hear what this year’s riches would be?
I don’t know if the Chock kiss was as good as the Tholian Web. On its own, without 50 years of character context, probably not. But, with that context, it felt like the Toronto Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup.
I have for some reason not watched any Startrek this year, but based on your post I’m looking forward to it.
Could you give me the highlights? What’s good so far and what’s coming?
Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks (?) will have to be really really really good to compensate for the embarrassment that was Picard. And so far SNW is just OK, so I don’t think 2023 on average is gonna be that good, although maybe better than almost all recent years.
I agree SNW is just OK, I loved season 1 but so far I’m finding season 2 a bit of a let down.
However, I found season 3 of Picard to be the best Trek in a long time, better than all the new shows and new movies. Sure it was massive fan service banking on nostalgia, when Picard was announced I was all in for a new look at an older Picard but after the steaming turd they delivered for 2 seasons it was a nice send off for the original crew while keeping that time period open for more Trek.
Yes, I would agree that season 3 of Picard was the best but that’s more of a criticism of the first two seasons (mostly the second). The problem with it that it was almost exclusively nostalgia. The main idea that the Borg biologically manipulated Picard and made a comeback that way was not bad, but the details of the story were a hot mess.
I say Lower Decks is the best of recent Trek.
