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Is it just me, or is Star Trek going the wrong way?

I don't get the impression in Disco and Picard the world is any darker than in the previous iterations. The camera just points at the darker places and the shows don't have the pace changes to add levity after the darker parts. That Romulan refugee planet? That's all Maquis settlements in the TNG/DS9 era. The characters just actually went there in Picard.

The evil admirals? Admiral Layton was just as bad.
Exactly. I know many grow tired of the "Well, what about this?" from other Trek, but I can't help but think of Admiral Leyton, Pressman, and Kennelly whenever there's gripping about an admiral in the newer Treks. Same with darker storylines.

I guess maybe it's the whole balance of a longer season, but it certainly isn't new.
 
For me, in the serialized streaming world, I would like for Star Trek to actually focus a series on planetary exploration. Not multiple planets, just one with multiple teams undercover on the ground exploring an alien culture. What effects they have on the world by just being there.
 
For me, in the serialized streaming world, I would like for Star Trek to actually focus a series on planetary exploration. Not multiple planets, just one with multiple teams undercover on the ground exploring an alien culture. What effects they have on the world by just being there.
Not much "Trekking" in that concept. :)
 
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.



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.

At the risk of stating the obvious, what it sounds like what you're looking for is a more traditional Star Trek show.

If so, then hang tight for maybe about a year (or early 2022 at probably the latest).

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
will be going into production early next year I believe, and it promises to be more traditional Star Trek in the "planet of the week/alien of the week" mold. And more episodic and less serialized.

It should be the biggest Star Trek show since whatever...

(Oh, who am I kidding, the YouTube haters will still hate it because they'll make Pike pansexual and their heads will explode after they get a load of Number One. And why am I so bitter... Think happy thoughts... ) :)

No, but Strange New Worlds is going to be the show. Everyone is going to love it.
 
EPISODE ONE: The drop off
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EPISODE 10: The pick up

I'd figure around episode five, the ship explodes, leaving the observation parties scrambling. :devil:

Figure episode 10 ends on the cliffhanger, with a space empire invading, and the Starfleet folks ending up as part of the opposition.
 
I've liked every single series of star trek, sure some more than others, and some really stinker episodes, but in general I've been a fan of all of them.
If its not for you, don't watch it, maybe send a nice letter to CBS expressing displeasure of this or that, and they "May" change it, like the bru ha of the Disco Klingons and Hair.

This.

Griping to us will achieve Jack Squat. Contact information is available on their sites.

You can have a starship tying it all together.
Star Trek: Archaeology
 
you know star wars is about as old as the original Star Trek series and they still left most of the same elements there from the original, they didn't completely gut it to try and appeal to a brainless new generation of millennials and tweens and as a result they still have their fan base even after selling out to Disney.
Um, if you consider an 11 year difference (Star Trek premired in 1966, the original Star Wars in 1977); sorry, but I'd say your math is a bit off here.
 
Weren't "tweens" the core of Star Wars' audience? ;)
IDK - I was 14 in 1977 (and already a big Star Trek fan). I initially really liked the 'grittiness' (read physically dirty and not in perfect working order) aspect of Star Wars; but by 'Return of the Jedi' was back as a BIG Trek fan and my enjoyment of Star Wars waned a bit (still liked it, but liked Star Trek more).
 
I was a 14-year-old Star Trek and science fiction nerdy kid in 1977 and was blown away by Star Wars. In 1980, I was a 17-year-old hanging out with friends who were starting a punk band and I thought Empire Strikes Back was taking itself way too seriously for a muppet movie. In 1983, I was a 20-year-old university student who decided this Ewok stuff was more appropriate for my eleven-year-old sister. In 1999, I was 36, my wife-to-be was 31, my sister was 27, and her husband was 36, and we all went to see The Phantom Menace together and were all kind of shellshocked by how underwhelmed/disappointed we all were.

So, yeah, best for tweens and early teens, I guess.
 
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