No.
A good example of "typical action schlock" would be the 2015 film
San Andreas. You can compare the PIC trailer to a trailer for
San Andreas here.
In the PIC trailer, we already see certain key themes of the series emerging. "Have you ever felt like a stranger to yourself?" "Many, many times.... These past few years, I truly tried to belong here. But it never felt like home." "Sometimes I worry that you haven forgotten who you are." "Be the captain they remember." "I don't want the game to end."
So we're already wrestling with some big thematic content here: Alienation. Guilt/survivor's guilt. Trauma. Self-loathing. Aging. Mortality.
And that's just in the trailer.
Compare that to the trailer for
San Andreas. It introduces not meaningful internal conflicts for the characters to resolve. All conflicts are external -- the characters are in danger, they want to survive. There's no real deeper thematic content; there's the attempt to impose the appearance of deeper thematic content by juxtaposing action scenes with 9/11-style imagery against a melancholy pop song, but that's about as far as it goes.
Now, characters-in-peril stories can be well-done and entertaining. But ultimately, what makes them character-in-peril stories -- or "typical action schlock" -- is that there's nothing else to them, no deeper thematic content, no internal character conflict (except maybe "stop fighting and love your family").
The trailer for
Star Trek: Picard makes it clear that the characters in that show will be wrestling with a lot of internal conflicts and deeper thematic issues. This is a show that's going to be about aging, about mortality, about survivor's guilt, about alienation, about finding meaning in your life. This will certain have action. But it will not be "typical action schlock."
I would expect nothing less from Kirsten Beyer, Michael Chabon, and Sir Patrick Stewart.
Maybe! But who's the bad guy? Can you even tell from that trailer? I can't.
You know that because you've taken a poll?
And some of the most successful
Star Trek films and episodes have indeed been about fighting bad guys (TWOK, TUC, FC, the Dominion War on DS9, "The Best of Both Worlds") and about solving mysteries (TMP, "The City on the Edge of Forever," "Yesterday's Enterprise," "The Defector," "Journey to Babel," "All Good Things...," "Duet," "Second Skin," "Improbable Cause/The Die is Cast," etc., etc.).
By that logic, TNG wasn't "real
Star Trek" because it was such a fundamental departure from what
Star Trek had always been up till that point. Same with DS9.
As T'Pol said in response to someone threatened by something new: "Neither of our species is what it was a million years ago, nor what it will become in the future. Life is change."
Bad Robot is not involved in the production of either
Star Trek: Discovery or
Star Trek: Picard.
This is such a broad statement that it's hard to reply to.
It is certainly true that in general writers are not independent in Hollywood, by virtue of the fact that producing a television program or film costs money and therefore requires a studio and one or more production companies to finance the project.
To say that "writers do not control what ends up on screen" is half-true. In film, writers are usually far less important than directors (though in some cases, such as the Marvel Studios films, the producers are more important than either). In modern television, however, writers -- who are usually also producers, and are on staff -- are generally more important than directors, who are usually freelancers. This is especially true for the position of showrunner.
In any event, arguing that writers aren't actually important enough to decide what's on the show is moving the goalposts, because the post I replied to with my description of the literary accomplishments of Beyer and Chabron was specifically about disrespecting the talent and creativity of those writers.
I'm still working my way through S2, but the buzz I've heard about it has been overwhelmingly positive. I'm near the end and thoroughly enjoying it.
"Have to adhere to a template and tone set by suits" is the
very definition of the entire run of
Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Well, yes and no. You can certainly stay true to its optimism, but part of TNG's tone was determined by the conventions of late 80s/early 90s TV -- flat lighting, standardize and uncreative cinematography, studio censorship with regards to depictions of sexuality, and internal self-censorship with regards to writing two-dimensional archetypes instead of psychologically realistic characters, because psychologically-realistic characters wouldn't always get along and that would violate Gene's Holy Vision
©.
DIS and PIC strike me as being very much in the vein of
Arrival, Ex Machina, and
Annihilation.
Then you have terrible taste and I don't want to be your friend.
Because the overwhelming majority of negative reaction to the Kelvinverse films and DIS I've run into has either boiled down to, "I feel threatened by change" or thinly-veiled "Why can't WHITE GUYS be the center of the universe anymore??" screeds.
And for that matter, we should probably remember that the biggest problems with VOY and ENT boiled down to their desperate desire to maintain the same tone and content as TNG in spite of the late 90s and early 00s being defined by television programs that were breaking new ground in terms of genre conventions and thematic depth and content.
Star Trek has
tried to stay in the 80s, and it was the absolute worst thing that ever happened to the franchise.
It's not often that real life provides something more outlandish than what I've seen on the internet, but there you go...
