Strange New Worlds
Aug. 22nd, 2023 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sasha_featherStrange 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.
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.
GIP
Date: 2023-08-22 10:02 pm (UTC)...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
Date: 2023-08-22 10:09 pm (UTC)Re: GIP
Date: 2023-08-22 11:39 pm (UTC)....ahhh, I contemplated my source of fic recommendations and went straight to![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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
Date: 2023-08-23 02:00 am (UTC)