Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Page 6 of 11)

The Lotus Eaters creators should be forced to listen with earbuds. See how they like the high pitched ringing. WTF were they thinking?

Well, episode 4 seems to multitrack, with the captain and the pilot each getting about half of it. Works pretty well here though; not every character needs a complex backstory. A nice (and subtle) way to let us get to know the characters better after meeting the crew in S1.

Really enjoying this show so far.

You've summed it up nicely!

Well, they kinda did suggest in ep3 that the whole timeline is just an infinite mess of countless time travellers tripping over each other with vast changes only to ultimately change nothing noteworthy about the outcome.

As for design and attitude... I think it helps to not compare the newer to the older stuff, but instead the older stuff to the newer. It's a show about the future. We know more about the future now than we used to. Thus, the newer stuff is clearly closer to what the older shows wanted to be in the first place, stylistically. They just couldn't, yet. At least that's the way I choose to see it.

Remember the Kelvin timeline? I think that entire situation made it very clear that we are, in fact, not down for it...

Also, heh, just realized something about ep4:

Star Trek needs to come to an end. just goes on and on. The high water mark was Enterprise years ago.

To clarify I am not defending or rejecting content from the past over the present. I'm talking about the established philosophies and timelines... It's fine to point out that the progressivism of the time doesn't hold up or old episodes logic are built on shaky ground. Many can be and/or, just, are.

I'm just saying that while I'm here for this series and a lot of NEW TREK, the aspects of TREK which drew me to it most were the Federation philosophies it proffered up. So when new stories living in those settings do things within seem to contradict those established ideals without pointing that out somehow, it burns my butter.

And while I'm all for reimagining a story or concept, as previously stated, that's not what the show and it's creator's have been telling the audiences this series is. So then all they have to do is stick with an established timeline... It's not that hard.

I'm not talking about to double down on the outdated or outmoded morality tales of TOS but how does it help to re-set the Eugenics War to a different time... aside from perhaps start this type of discourse
 

Agreed  

Agreed  

Franchises, maybe... but there's never been what one might call a windfall of SF franchises. At least at any one given time. In my lifetime only TREK & WARS have been huge... to some extent Doctor Who as well. Sure I watched some SG but that really didn't hit until TREK was gone and WARS was kind of back. And I'd argue that the MCU is a Sci-Fi franchise.

All that being said we do have a lot of stand-alone content out there, older and newer, which are great. Stuff like For All Mankind [created by DS9 showrunner and BattleStar reimaginer Ron Moore] as well as older series Travelers and Dark Matter by Stargate alumni. What about some Resident Alien or Motherland: Fort Salem?

There's American Horror Story and Black Mirror... or there's The Leftovers, Snowpiercer, The Expanse, Fringe, Orphan Black, 12 Monkeys, Altered Carbon, The Magicians, BrainDead, Stan Lee's Lucky Man, Powers, Sense8 as well as shows like Dark or Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams... even Farscape, Alien Nation, Babylon 5, Blake's 7, Jupiter Moon and Andromeda are out there.

Series canceled too early can also be fun to watch, things like No Ordinary Family, Other Space, The Fades, The Nevers or Almost Human or Limitless. Let's also not forget one seasoners like Jekyll or Maniac are out there.

All I'm saying is this era of SF series is not too different and to some aspects in fact a lot better than what we had before.

Oh, no no, I am not questioning the quality of other Scifi in general. A lot of the things you mentioned there are really good or even great (even though not all of them are even remotely Scifi). But almost all of them are somewhat constrained in what kind of story they can tell, at least not without replacing all the characters like the anthology ones (Black Mirror, Electric Dreams, AHS, ...) do. Quality is good, but versatility is low.

Getting to know the characters while seeing them stumble through different types of story and setting is the strength of ST and, in different ways, of SG and DW. All the other shows listed here pretty much just have one kind of setting and need to make use of it as best as they can.  If you want to see something actually new, you gotta find an entire new show with entirely new characters which is more likely to either be cancelled prematurely or completely outlive its own premise.

As to how I define proper "Scifi" here... it has to at least in some way have the story (not just the setting) regularly interact with so-far impossible technology. 99% of Battlestar could just as well take place on the ocean without losing much. Meanwhile, Star Wars is really just a reskin for ships with cannons, knights with crossbows, wizards with swords and some weird fey creatures and dragons running around. You can tell almost all of those stories on medieval Earth.

If Star Trek wants to tell a medieval story... they just go to a random planet that happens to be exactly that setting.

That one's easy. It's always been about imagining not a but our future. Can't do that if our history already significantly deviates from theirs. Besides, "time travel back to present day" was always one of their most popular episode genres, and that too would no longer be reasonably possible. What they did was a sloppy fix for that, but still a fix. Which, to be fair, is entirely on brand for Star Trek.

You make good point that only a few of the series I mentioned, as well as TREK, have the type of verity you seem to be looking for. That is not to say, however, that none of them do. I would dare say the other other, even from the handful I mentioned you have Farscape, Andromeda, Blake's 7 and maybe Dark Matter. I am not saying there's a lot and sure all of the others may be long over... but there's room for more and there are cleraly ideas out there. And perhaps we'll get more the more mainstreamed the genre becomes.

I'd add to this that Zack Snyder, not to say I'm a fan of his, is purportedly making the Star Wars movie Disney wouldn't let him, only for NETFLIX... It may be awful but it might also help further popularize the idea of similar types of SF around at the same time. Who knows we might get as sick of ST knock offs as folks are of SuperHero everything

Ah, well I go with what a lot of the ole skool SF folks use, which seems to be to use Sci-fi. or even Skiffy, only for the pop science fiction stuff... whereas Speculative Fiction or SF is used for the genre which can then encompass a lot more.

TREK has been significantly deviating since episode one of TNG when it was airing, not 20 yrs later. I don't buy that...or trying to streamline or whatever... I think it's just part of the types of choices this current iteration of TREK Hierarchy will focus on, changes for either arbitrary reasons or to fix some perceived issue.

Now, don't get me wrong I love how they merged a lot of the different fictional histories of Number One into Una but some things don't need it. And if that's what you want to do, try to get another next season of The Orville made or do your own thing. It just seems lazy and what I want from TREK is wild!

Not that Screen Rant is the most reliable of sources but I did come across this:

Khan Is Canadian? What's Behind Strange New Worlds' Weird Star Trek Change...

Or, none of them count... it could almost be like an Arthur C Clarke Space Odyssey novel, where each one takes place in a different alt-universe.

In an old school 24 episode season it would have been fine but in a mere 10 episode season where every episode should be strong due to the limited run time, it was a waste of real estate.