Has Strange New Worlds returned to a more 'hopecore' vision of the future?

[I am not Spock]

I've seen people saying the new Superman movie gives them 'hope' and much needed optimism in today's times. For me, this was always Trek when i was growing up.

Trek was a future i wanted to live in. It felt comfortable, cosy, hopeful.

You could say some of the more recent shows have drifted away from that somewhat. Discovery and Picard were often quite dark . Has SNW for you returned to that more optimistic Trek feel of old? I feel it has. It's a show where i just want to chill , and hang out with the characters.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I don't want to ruin the tone right away, so I'll hide my reply in a Negativity Box for people to open and read later after others have said happy things.

Spoiler: Negativity Box

The whole series is tainted by a feeling of inevitable tragedy, and there's no hope of a happy ending for practically any character arc.

Pike and Batel: Pike is doomed to a future of beep chairs and illusions.
Spock and Chapel: They'll never find love with each other. Spock will become emotionless and suffer for it.
Spock and T'Pring: It'll end horribly.
Chapel and Korby: It'll end horribly.
M'Benga: He won't be chief medical officer for much longer, so something's going to happen.
La'an and Kirk: They'll never get together.
Una: The Federation will never end the ban on augments joining Starfleet.
Sam Kirk: He and his wife are going to die excruciatingly painful deaths due to neural parasites in a few years.

Over and over the series keeps setting things up we know won't work out, and the best we can hope for is that Una, La'an, Pelia, Mitchell and Ortegas will all survive.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Comfortable and cozy make for poor drama. I think all Star Trek has been hopeful.

 

[fireproof78]

I've seen people saying the new Superman movie gives them 'hope' and much needed optimism in today's times. For me, this was always Trek when i was growing up.

Trek was a future i wanted to live in. It felt comfortable, cosy, hopeful.

You could say some of the more recent shows have drifted away from that somewhat. Discovery and Picard were often quite dark . Has SNW for you returned to that more optimistic Trek feel of old? I feel it has. It's a show where i just want to chill , and hang out with the characters.

The overall tone is more optimistic, but I don't think other series were much darker in tone than before. I think that Discovery and Picard had a very U shaped style story structure, starting at the lower end by acknowledging the negativity that war and disaster had brought to the Federation. As well as the intense climb back to the light.

I love the tone of these series but I love the growth more.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Lots of TOS episodes had sad endings, but even so, they reached. Doing what's right no matter how painful and striving to improve the universe (world) was always the positive message.

 

[Noname Given]

I think the premise here is faulty.

Neither TOS nor Strange New Worlds has ever went away from a more hopeful view of Mankind's future.

(And I bring up both shows here because they are both set in the exact same time period of the 23rd century. And for anyone who thinks they are not remember that we saw Pike's Telus IV mission which took place in 2253 on TOS.)

 

[fireproof78]

I think the premise here is faulty.

Neither TOS nor Strange New Worlds has ever went away from a more hopeful view of Mankind's future.

(And I bring up both shows here because they are both set in the exact same time period of the 23rd century. And for anyone who thinks they are not remember that we saw Pike's Telus IV mission which took place in 2253 on TOS.)

I don't think Star Trek ever did. TOS, as noted, often ended on a downer note. It didn't always promise a "happily ever after" for the crew or the main characters. To quote Kirk:

Maybe we weren't meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through, struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums.

 

[The Wormhole]

Yes, SNW is a generally optimistic and light hearted show.

 

[Mudd]

Yes.

About time.

 

[MrShinzoff]

SNW has a bit of a thematic relationship with a film I liked called First Reformed. In that film Ethan Hawke's character tells someone pivotal to the story that "Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind simultaneously: hope and despair". He was talking to a man who was in a state of despondency because he believed he'd brought a child into a world that was soon going to experience ecological devastation. That idea is played out in the film and I think SNW also explores it continuously. The hope in the show is counterbalanced by a dread - Pike's future being the most obvious one but you could also refer to La'an's and now Ortegas's experience of the Gorn, Una's belief that Starfleet would discover her secret, Chapel's knowledge that she will not be part of Spock's future. It's a show that seems to be telling us that we're right to forsee danger in our future but that life should still be lived fully and joyfully and that catastrophe can be overcome or we can still reckon with it in a way that's tolerable.

 

[Charles Phipps]

As long as we never have to think about the 31st century, Star Trek is about hope. That's also about the setting not the show.

 

[XCV330]

the hell is hopecore?

 

[The Wormhole]

the hell is hopecore?

Just a buzzword.

 

[Yistaan]

I mean if you look past the surface dialogue the idea that the main character is doomed to a life of disability and trying to prevent that will literally destroy the galaxy and doom his buddy (Spock) to the disability instead isn't remotely hopeful or optimistic, so I'm going to say no.

 

[Noname Given]

the hell is hopecore?

It allows Scotty to maintain his reputation as a Miracle Worker?

 

[Rahul]

I've seen people saying the new Superman movie gives them 'hope' and much needed optimism in today's times. For me, this was always Trek when i was growing up.

Trek was a future i wanted to live in. It felt comfortable, cosy, hopeful.

You could say some of the more recent shows have drifted away from that somewhat. Discovery and Picard were often quite dark . Has SNW for you returned to that more optimistic Trek feel of old? I feel it has. It's a show where i just want to chill , and hang out with the characters.

I don't want to ruin the tone right away, so I'll hide my reply in a Negativity Box for people to open and read later after others have said happy things.

Spoiler: Negativity Box

The whole series is tainted by a feeling of inevitable tragedy, and there's no hope of a happy ending for practically any character arc.

Pike and Batel: Pike is doomed to a future of beep chairs and illusions.
Spock and Chapel: They'll never find love with each other. Spock will become emotionless and suffer for it.
Spock and T'Pring: It'll end horribly.
Chapel and Korby: It'll end horribly.
M'Benga: He won't be chief medical officer for much longer, so something's going to happen.
La'an and Kirk: They'll never get together.
Una: The Federation will never end the ban on augments joining Starfleet.
Sam Kirk: He and his wife are going to die excruciatingly painful deaths due to neural parasites in a few years.

Over and over the series keeps setting things up we know won't work out, and the best we can hope for is that Una, La'an, Pelia, Mitchell and Ortegas will all survive.

Funnily enough I agree with both of you:

In SNW the characters' relationships are fucked. To the point I sometimes wonder why the hell the writers even go so deep there (e.g. the Spock-T'Pring-Chappelle drama).
However the future itself is a very optimistic one, generally peaceful, healthy and hopeful, and an improvement over the present day in almost all regards, where dark backstories are clearly outside the norm.
Which is very TOS/TNG, but otherwise surprisingly unique in sci-fi.

Whereas on DIS & PIC, the future itself is fucked. Not a complete dystopia. But hell naw I wouldn't wanna live as an NPC in that grimey, violent setting where suffering is common and everyone has a gun and is always in the edge.
However - the main characters in that story all get their honkey-dory sunshine happy ending. Which is, well, like every other science fiction story, ever.

 

[fireproof78]

SNW the characters' relationships are fucked. To the point I sometimes wonder why the hell the writers even go so deep there (e.g. the Spock-T'Pring-Chappelle drama).

It's drama and relatable?

Whereas on DIS & PIC, the future itself is fucked. Not a complete dystopia. But hell naw I wouldn't wanna live as an NPC in that grimey, violent setting where suffering is common and everyone has a gun and is always in the edge.

Where was this? definitely didn't see everyone packing or anything?

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Where was this? definitely didn't see everyone packing or anything?

I don't remember Discovery showing us much of the setting outside of the ship. Sure everyone in Burnham's family was a victim of violent assaults by terrorists or Klingons, plus they were at war, but otherwise it didn't seem that unusual for Star Trek.

Picard, on the other hand, did seem pretty dark. Raffi and Picard both had guns in their houses on Earth. In fact the first time Raffi shows up she's pointing a rifle at Picard. Seven's walking around with two rifles on Freecloud, Crusher's introduced shooting people with a rifle on her own ship. It spent so much time in the grimier parts of the universe that when they went to 21st century LA and Guinan pulled a shotgun on the old man in her bar, it just seemed like business as usual.

 

[fireproof78]

Seven's walking around with two rifles on Freecloud, Crusher's introduced shooting people with a rifle on her own ship. It spent so much time in the grimier parts of the universe that when they went to 21st century LA and Guinan pulled a shotgun on the old man in her bar, it just seemed like business as usual.

Freecloud is not Federation.

Neither is how Crusher was operating. Neither was Seven.

Seems strange to broad brush a whole organization or culture due to small incidents, not all of which are related to the Federation, nor point to a Fallout esque wasteland. That's dystopian not anything Trek has produced.

 

[Rahul]

I don't remember Discovery showing us much of the setting outside of the ship. Sure everyone in Burnham's family was a victim of violent assaults by terrorists or Klingons, plus they were at war, but otherwise it didn't seem that unusual for Star Trek.

Picard, on the other hand, did seem pretty dark. Raffi and Picard both had guns in their houses on Earth. In fact the first time Raffi shows up she's pointing a rifle at Picard. Seven's walking around with two rifles on Freecloud, Crusher's introduced shooting people with a rifle on her own ship. It spent so much time in the grimier parts of the universe that when they went to 21st century LA and Guinan pulled a shotgun on the old man in her bar, it just seemed like business as usual.

DIS is also incredibly gun heavy.
Part of it may be the post apocalyptic setting, or that most stories involve clear "badguys" (Mirror universe, Klingons, Syndicate, Breen), to the point that it's even kind of a "twist" that our main characters don't shoot back at the winged aliens.

I think the 10C storyline is really the only major storyline without tons of mooks being gunned down.

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But yeah, PIC really takes the cake....