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Spoilers Does it feel to anyone else that SNW is cynically mining Trek's past glories?

People try way to hard to pigeonhole Star Trek in to a tinier and tinier box. No, you can't reference past events. Or use past characters. Or tell a story in a specific period. Or have swearing. Or slang. Or pop culture. It cannot be too actiony but also should show off cool ships. It can't be popular.

Now, go and make a great and compelling drama.
 
zzz said:
I had a similar issue with Enterprise Season 4, which I know most people loved, but I disliked. It feels like they're combing over past Trek's best work and clinging to its shirt tails. In Enterprise it was lore elements like the Klingon ridges, Augments, and Mirror Universe. In SNW it's specific episodes:
  • Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow => City on the Edge of Tomorrow
  • Ad Astra per Aspera => Measure of a Man
  • The Broken Circle => stealing the Ent from STIII, and plot to ignite a war from STVI
  • Those Old Scientists => Trials and Tribble-ations
It's inherently limiting. It's next to impossible to outdo the thing you're imitating. The best you can achieve is recreating the same feeling as the memory of the original story does. There's no creativity, no originality, no new top-tier stories that can join alongside those of the best of past Trek.

It's one step above going " 'member this nostalgia inducing-thing?"
Click to expand...
Do you think the writers are THAT well versed in past Trek? You're talking around 8-9 T.V Shows, hundreds of episodes and 13 feature films stretching across 50+ years. I've noticed the occasional nod to TOS with the format, but it's certainly not imitating TOS. I just did a rewatch recently of TOS and this show is WAY different. If there's similarities with other Trek shows it's very possible that the writer did it not knowing that another writer had a similar idea way back in the 90s. With a franchise this deep and long, those things will happen.
 
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zzz said:
Those Old Scientists => Trials and Tribble-ations
Click to expand...
Wait, you've seen Those Old Scientists? Of course, you haven't, no one has, it won't even air for another month. How about you wait until the episode actually airs before you use it as an example in your argument about this show cynically mining past glories?

And regardless, based on the episodes which have aired, the answer is no, the show is not mining the franchise's past glories, cynically or otherwise. Picard Season 3 was the show which did that.
 
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Grasping at straws.
zzz said:
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow => City on the Edge of Tomorrow
Click to expand...
The only thing those stories have in common is a time travel element. Time travel has been used multiple times throughout the franchise.

zzz said:
Ad Astra per Aspera => Measure of a Man
Click to expand...
Someone/something fighting for their rights has been done multiple times.

zzz said:
The Broken Circle => stealing the Ent from STIII, and plot to ignite a war from STVI
Click to expand...
Stealing vessels and plots to ignite war have happened a couple of times.

zzz said:
Those Old Scientists => Trials and Tribble-ations
Click to expand...
"Those Old Scientists" hasn't aired yet. Though from what little we know about that episode the only things they have in common are crews from different eras interacting in some way and a time travel element. Both those things have happened multiple times.
 
"Stealing the Enterprise" was pretty lame, but doing an homage, or framing your story in a similar fashion to an TOS or TNG show is perfectly fine. Let's not forget, the writers on those shows wrote for other series before that, and their stories didn't exactly come out of the ether either.
 
zzz said:
I had a similar issue with Enterprise Season 4, which I know most people loved, but I disliked. It feels like they're combing over past Trek's best work and clinging to its shirt tails. In Enterprise it was lore elements like the Klingon ridges, Augments, and Mirror Universe. In SNW it's specific episodes:
  • Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow => City on the Edge of Tomorrow
  • Ad Astra per Aspera => Measure of a Man
  • The Broken Circle => stealing the Ent from STIII, and plot to ignite a war from STVI
  • Those Old Scientists => Trials and Tribble-ations
It's inherently limiting. It's next to impossible to outdo the thing you're imitating. The best you can achieve is recreating the same feeling as the memory of the original story does. There's no creativity, no originality, no new top-tier stories that can join alongside those of the best of past Trek.

It's one step above going " 'member this nostalgia inducing-thing?"
Click to expand...

Yes and no.

SNW definitely "riffs" on previous Trek (even recreating"Balance of Terror"). Hell, even on classic movies, that Gorn episode was just "Alien", the pirates out of "Guardians of the Galaxy", and the one with the child sacrifice was previously a book.

But IMO it's okay:
They usually (try to) put a complete new spin on it. But more importantly: The originals are old. I still love them. But they have aged. IMO they're old enough that it feels more like an "update" instead of a rehash, to give a new generation a similar viewing experience we had back then, adjusted to modern sensibilities.

Yes, I also do hope they do more completely original stories going forward. They will. But also they have done most of the classics by now. It will be interesting when they have to riff on the "lesser" old episodes, if they can actually find an angle to improve upon them and their ideas?
 
To give an example:
The pilot episode was very heavily inspired by "the day the earth stood still" - but flipped the perspectives. And thereby created something completely new, that I not only like more than the original movie, but personally think was one of the best entries in modern Trek, period.
 
SNW is a pretty safe remix of what has come before. Likely intentional. Discovery and Pic Seasons 1,2 were riskier approaches but ultimately not as crowd-pleasing. The franchise needed a safe bet to stay afloat, it was SNW.

There isn't much reinvention of the wheel here. Just taking what was once great about episodic Trek, and giving it to us with modern day special effects, identity politics/inclusion, and a more palatable balance of action and dialogue that the 18-35 demos can tolerate.
 
I don't think it's "cynically mining past glories." I think Star Trek tends to re-use certain plot elements because the fundamental premise of Star Trek -- "benevolent colonialist military fiction mashed up with the Western genre but in space" -- only lends itself to so many kinds of stories.
 
zzz said:
I had a similar issue with Enterprise Season 4, which I know most people loved, but I disliked. It feels like they're combing over past Trek's best work and clinging to its shirt tails. In Enterprise it was lore elements like the Klingon ridges, Augments, and Mirror Universe. In SNW it's specific episodes:
  • Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow => City on the Edge of Tomorrow
  • Ad Astra per Aspera => Measure of a Man
  • The Broken Circle => stealing the Ent from STIII, and plot to ignite a war from STVI
  • Those Old Scientists => Trials and Tribble-ations
It's inherently limiting. It's next to impossible to outdo the thing you're imitating. The best you can achieve is recreating the same feeling as the memory of the original story does. There's no creativity, no originality, no new top-tier stories that can join alongside those of the best of past Trek.

It's one step above going " 'member this nostalgia inducing-thing?"
Click to expand...

You say cynically mining past glories, I say "paying tribute to classic Trek."
 
Some Star Trek fans have an unwarranted sense of ownership over the franchise. "I have invested so much time and effort into this franchise that TPTB owe me whatever it is that I want from it, and anything that deviates from that is WRONG."

I was cool on ENT and flat out disliked DISCO after season two. But that doesn't invalidate those shows nor does it invalidate the fans who do like them. I did not stick around their forums and endlessly complain once I knew they were not for me, though. I just moved on.

I love SNW and so far it has been exactly what I have wanted. But, I don't own Star Trek. If the makers of SNW go in directions I don't like, I will just stop watching. If they keep making shows I like, I'll keep watching and participating in discussions. But I don't own these shows. I don't get to choose what is canon. I either enjoy or I don't, and either watch it or don't. Anything else is a waste of time.
 
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