Strange New Worlds

[sasha_feather]

Strange New Worlds. Paramount Plus.

As I watched season 2 I kept thinking, I wish I liked this show better. It's fine but it doesn't grab me, and I feel a bit like I'm watching it out of duty as a Star Trek fan. It was just boring. The plots feel extremely well-trodden. That's not always a bad thing, but it seems to me if you are on a familiar ship (the Enterprise), with a largely familiar crew (Uhura, Spock, Pike), and then also using predictable plots (our fuel harvesting is damaging an alien (2.06)), then you should do something innovative within that framework, something beyond "racism is bad" (2.02).

There is a lot to like here. It's fun to see this mix of new and old characters, and the actors are good. The sets and costumes are fun. I especially enjoyed getting to know a young Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), and I laughed at the comedic performance of Carol Kane as chief engineer Pelia. I especially liked the 2 time travel episodes, one of which is a delightful crossover with Star Trek Lower Decks.

I actively hated the arc that involves a love triangle around Spock. He is engaged to T'Pring but has feelings for Nurse Chapel. Hetero monogamy problems! Why!! Why are you clogging up Star Trek!

The season was also concerned with Pike and his girlfriend, another Star Ship captain, and then with La'An and her crush on James Kirk. This was way too much heterosexuality, and no queer story lines. And then they also made Kirk monogamous (with Carol), which seems like a big stretch.

(Weirdly, Kirk also knows that Carol is pregnant, so they are either playing very fast and loose with continuity, or we are just in a whole different universe than "Wrath of Khan," in which Kirk meets his adult son whom he didn't know existed. Well On the One hand who cares about continuity, right? But OTOH why bother making a prequel series if you don't care about the timeline and all the Star Trek lore? this is also a question aimed at my nemesis J.J. Abrams. But, moving on.)

My favorite episode was 2.03, (cut for spoilers)
in which La'An travels back to the 21st century, taking along an alternate-reality Jim Kirk, and they have an adventure and save the day. It appealed to my 14-year-old self, who also loved "Terminator" a lot. The hero is a young woman who is helped by a charming and handsome man, and he loves her, and then at the end he dies. So the hero gets to have a tragic love and doesn't actually have to be with the guy, it was perfect for teenage me. And I liked thinking about time and causality at that age, it was like a mind puzzler.

I am confused why they styled La'An to look just like Camina Drummer from the Expanse--tightly bound hair, lots of eye makeup, military bearing, serious expression. Camina Drummer is one of my favorite characters of all time, so it's not like I mind, I just find it confusing. It adds to the feeling that Strange New Worlds is just mash-ups and fanfics of other stories. For example,

1.06 - The ones who walk away from Omelas. (It's largely from the perspective of the Omelas-dwellers instead of the dissidents.)
1.07? maybe? - The Hunt for Red October.
2.08 - MASH.
2.09 - Buffy Musical Episode.

Of course I am devoted to mash-ups and fanfics! I am pro-homage. But I prefer mine to be way gayer and more subversive.

Comments

[sovay]

I actively hated the arc that involves a love triangle around Spock. He is engaged to T'Pring but has feelings for Nurse Chapel. Hetero monogamy problems! Why!! Why are you clogging up Star Trek!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

[sasha_feather]

I guess no disrespect to people who enjoy it but I think Spock/Chapel is a bad ship.

[sovay]

I guess no disrespect to people who enjoy it but I think Spock/Chapel is a bad ship.

On general principle or this iteration specifically?

[sasha_feather]

Oh this iteration! The show seems to want me to root for them, but i am unclear why.

[starshipfox]

I really enjoyed the first series, and was largely disappointed by the second. I like the idea of a Star Trek series that is largely made up of single-adventure episodes, as that feels in keeping with the old school Star Trek, and is refreshing in comparison with most of TV these days. But each episode needs to be inventive, and we need to learn new things about the characters. I adored La'An in series 1, but I felt that we learned very little more about her in this series, particularly because the episodes that centre around her are always the same, i.e. La'An has a Bad Day. Meanwhile, Spock keeps ending up in dull sitcom plots, and nothing ever happens to Pike. I feel like there's a lack of interest by the writers to develop sci-fi ideas: episodes tend to be about character's feelings (although characters are never significantly developed) and there are very few inventive sci-fi ideas: like you say, it feels like a mash-up. So frustrating! I keep hoping for better.

[sasha_feather]

Right! Agree with you whole-heartedly. The episodic nature is nice, especially compared to how confusing Discovery can be. And you are right that Spock's episodes are just re-hashed sitcoms, we've seen the delicate dinner party and the overbearing mother-in-law so many times.

[sovay]

the delicate dinner party and the overbearing mother-in-law

Who needs an overbearing mother-in-law on Vulcan?

[luinied]

Huh, so, I pretty much entirely agree with your assessments here, but also I'm enjoying Strange New Worlds plenty?

And it's not that I usually go for predictable comfort food in media! I suspect we must have very different relationships with Star Trek.

[sasha_feather]

There are absolutely things I like about it, but I needed to complain about the things I don't like.

What are you enjoying about SNW?

[luinied]

I hadn't forgotten about this! Life has just been a lot lately.

On thinking about it, I think a lot of it is that I haven't seen a lot of Trek. I've watched a fair bit of TNG (though maybe not even half of it, and barely any from season 1), a smattering of DS9, a bunch of the movies, Picard season 1, and parts of the first seasons of both Discovery and Lower Decks. I've never seen any Voyager, Enterprise, or (most relevant here) TOS.

I've absorbed so much Star Trek love from hanging around my fellow nerds, though! I want to watch and enjoy more. But often it's hard: I quit DS9 before I got to most of the moments I hear love for because I couldn't stand the 90s sexism, I wanted to like Picard and Discovery but they were just massively frustrating, and I've heard enough from people who didn't grow up on TOS and tried watching it as adults that I know not to even go there.

And so, yeah, Strange New Worlds doesn't offer much that's new, but that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for Trek that remembers that it can be funny, that doesn't need to come with warning labels about a main character or two who are awful or about episodes (or even whole seasons!) that are better skipped. I like how it brings the occasional bit of queer or trans normalization into what I recognize as the backstory to the foundation of the franchise. Watching an episode of SNW feels like watching an episode of TNG that a friend who knows TNG a lot better than I do picked out for me-- some I like more than others, sure, but it's always a good time. And I'm enjoying getting stories about Spock and Uhura and Kirk and so on, who I've read long Tumblr posts about but whose original context I know wouldn't be likely to enjoy.

(It may be worth noting here that I mostly don't read fanfic. I can see how these enjoyment propositions could be different if I were a regular fic reader!)

[sasha_feather]

Ah this is interesting thank you! This makes me think, oh this show is designed to pull in new fans. Which is awesome!

GIP

[jesse_the_k]

...wow this sounds like something I would never want to watch.

Thanks for your service.

Also, I read an OUTSTANDING Star Trek fic in the last two years that I neglected to bookmark.

3rd person POV but focus is on young Kirk at the Academy -- who's already fluent in Vulcan because Vulcans rescued him from a planet-destroying event -- but takes Vulcan anyway because it's comforting. Turns out that before the Academy Kirk translated a fundamental Vulcan work into English.

Remind you of anything?

Re: GIP

[sasha_feather]

Not a clue! I haven't read very much Star Trek fic, and of that it's mostly been for Deep space nine. j00j might know.

Re: GIP

[jesse_the_k]

....ahhh, I contemplated my source of fic recommendations and went straight to fancake. Plugged "Kirk Vulcan academy" into search and was delighted to find:

Graduate Vulcan for Fun and Profit https://fancake.dreamwidth.org/1978459.html

And podfic! https://archiveofourown.org/works/11731971

Re: GIP

[sasha_feather]

oh good i'm glad you found it!