Here’s the thing: Star Trek has only endured for 50+ years because it has constantly reinvented itself to keep it relevant to the times. Some fans appreciate that, some don’t. Most of the critics of Nu Trek seem to hold the Berman years as their benchmark of Trek greatness (& I liked most of those years, but don’t let’s pretend there wasn’t a whole lot of mediocrity there). But don’t think for a second that back in the glory days of the 90s a core component of the fandom weren’t stuck back in the 60s, continuously lamenting how it just ain’t as good as it used to be. It’s the way fans are. Nothing can really measure up to our nostalgia of how things were, huh?
As much as the creators want to appeal to as much of the fandom as possible, they also must engage new viewers and find new fans (because let’s face it, we won’t live forever!). If the new shows were just outdated 90’s throwbacks, they would be eviscerated. Trek has to move with the times, reinvent itself and recreate itself, or it stagnates. The entropy in late 90’s Trek (& as someone pointed out it was hemorrhaging viewers for years) was ultimately its death.
Yeah, I understand all of that and I agree with the idea of making new series with new visions. The current series even would be good as is
if they just tweaked them a little in future episodes to make them have a touch more of visiting alien worlds or strange places or phenomena.
I disagree that the new shows aren’t being optimistic. They may not be in the spirit if TNG, but they are sure in the spirit of DS9, which is just as optimistic but more honest about how humans could achieve it in a dangerous universe.
TNG says, we can end war and poverty, and so do it we must completely eradicate human selfishness, fearfulness and weakness.
DS9, Disco and Picard say we can do it, but we can do it with real humans with all their flaws, as long as we’re willing to do what it takes to protect it, and don’t ignore it’s not so easy for people who have it harder.
That's an interesting perspective, and I could get behind it, especially because the older star treks never claimed people were flawless they just said that humanity had to stop war and greed to be able to be an interstellar species.
It's not that humanity as a whole has ever been perfect it is only that the people that humanity chooses to send to alien worlds to make the first contact with a new species or deal with a volatile intergalactic diplomatic situation those are the people who they choose for their idealism and lack of serious character flaws, (like being a murderer or a black market salesman) but they even failed at that many times and had VERY flawed people end up as crew members or guests which showed that yes humanity was still flawed as were other species.
I guess the only real issue I've had in regards to this aspect with the new shows is how often it seems that the entire command structure of the federation is compromised by someone dark and shadowy, I get doing it once in a blue moon like in real life but its almost so corrupt as to be compared to modern governments, or worse, because most modern governments don't have such lacking security as to allow an enemy agent run their military. Which has happened in both disc and pic.
I guess 350 years in the future they're more gullible or something.
Like I said in the original post, their not bad TV shows, they just need slightly better writers (ones who don't like casting the federation as the bad guys) and a couple of small tweaks and they would appeal to fans like me a lot more.
For instance, a small change they could make that would be a huge improvement, just find a way to make some of the sections of the stories from the Picard series take place on strange new alien worlds, it can have the same storyline, just change the locations to make them more interesting and new, I mean the first half dozen episodes didn't even show an alien world at all and then when they did it was mars and some Romulan worlds, so the same things we've seen in lots of past star trek, so it's a little boring. They didn't even bother to show any of how they made mars habitable, I mean if they're going to show a boring planet we've seen a million times at least introduce some cool new perspectives on how humanity might be able to one day survive on Mars.
(REPLY TO OTHERS)
And yes I understand how TNG and 90s trek did a similar thing to get new audiences but at least they kept the important aspects that made it really good. Like going to new alien worlds from time to time and or bumping into weird phenomena, granted they never encountered the same level of mind-bending concepts that the original threw at us, which was always a very big disappointment because I actually watched TOS and then I got into TNG from there, I used to watch lots of classic TV as a kid. But in the end, I accepted TNG because it still showed new worlds and cool things that could be out there, but these new ones have forgotten to show mind-bending phenomena and worlds that make you think "could that actually be out there somewhere?"
(and no I never really cared for DS9, except that it was interwoven with TNG and voyager enough to make it an okay addition to helping flesh out the star trek universe. Heck without DS9 we wouldn't know about section 31, it was doctor Basheer who uncovered their nefarious goings-on.)
PS:: I do kind of miss having some star trek episodes that can be watched out of order and still make sense, episodes that have a beginning middle and end, all in the same episode without the "to be continued..." part.
It's nice having longer stories, but then if you decide to stop obsessing over it for a while you can't just flip it on and enjoy it, you have to find the episode where the story left off somehow (which is a pain with new trek because most streaming services available in Canada don't have them.) and then watch from that point on.
And you cant try and argue that it's a "new" way of storytelling because it's not, its been around for a very long time. they're just doing it to try and hook people in and force them to continually watch if they want to enjoy the show.
DSN pissed me off when they started doing it too. But at least they had a story where you could fill in the unknowns later and still enjoy the current episode.
Whereas current shows, if you miss one episode then nothing makes sense in the next one. I guess it just forces people to buy some automated recording devices to keep up.
