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Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x04 - "A Space Adventure Hour"

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That’s so funny you say that.

The whole time I was thinking “TOS fans are going to hate this!”

:lol:

I don’t know if that’s actually true or not, but it was definitely in my mind watching the episode…
I'm an old TOS fan for whom TOS is still my favorite Star Trek franchise series I've said my piece on it earlier in this thread; and I'm one of those TOS fans who really did not like this episode.

My primary complaint is that I feel it was laughing at it and not with it with this particular parody take. And yes as someone else mentioned above they played the Trek parody more like something from the schlock science fiction serials and TV series of the 40s and 50s then the actual Star Trek of the '60s.:shrug:
 
I honestly don't understand why some spend so much time worrying about what other people are going to think of something. I figure just enjoy what you enjoy, no need to spurt schadenfreude all over the place. ;)
 
I honestly don't understand why some spend so much time worrying about what other people are going to think of something. I figure just enjoy what you enjoy, no need to spurt schadenfreude all over the place. ;)
This.

Or take some Valium. Either way, just chill.
 
The holodeck stuff put me to sleep, literally. I did enjoy the TOS parody though a bit. Overall however this was a terrible episode. This series' worst by far.

I wish this series was more "explore strange new worlds".
 
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I'm just confused about why SNW is trying so desperately hard to emulate TNG when it is supposed to take place right before TOS.

Edit: Or maybe they're trying to emulate The Orville?
 
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My primary complaint is that I feel it was laughing at it and not with it with this particular parody take.
It kind of felt mean spirited. I've seen all the parodies out there and most are good for a chuckle. This didn't really do it for me with the exception of the ending bloopers.
 
I didn't think the TOS parody was mean-spirited, but it did feel really lazy. It's like what you'd get if you asked someone who'd only heard of Star Trek through cultural osmosis to make a parody of it.

TOS is ripe for fond mockery, as is all Star Trek, but if you showed me this out of context and I didn't know it was from a Star Trek series, I'd recognise Wesley as an over-the-top Shatner parody, but much of the rest I'd probably just assume was taking the piss out of 50s B-movies. "We need our brain cells for science things" doesn't feel like a mockery of TOS dialogue, it feels like a (hackneyed) mockery of something someone might say in a "Them!" type film.
 
After some reflection, I would bring my rating down a point, specifically because of the parody element. The found footage made sense as part of the plot, but what were the intro and ending bits? Was Final Frontier a real show in universe, or was it something the recreation room invented, but for some reason manifested by the rec room when a human was not inside it ? Nothing in it was necessary for the plot, and it seems to be just a gratuitous parody.

Second, I think the parody was somewhat mean spirited for something that is part of the franchise itself. It wasn't Kirk being parodied, but Shatner himself. There was no effort to distinguish between his questionable acting choices and the elements of his own personality that snuck into the performance. Some of the speech patterns are normal for him, not an act. Moreover, the parody also happened outside of the Final Frontier world. Shatner has peculiarities, and he could be selfish when pushing against other actors getting the spotlight. However, I have no doubt that he has given more to the franchise than he received, as an actor and as a documentary maker. There have been many parodies of Kirk in movies and TV. Those in comedy variety shows will be broad, of course, but there have been many that have been very well thought out. It was only a few months ago that John Cho was teaching a female robot about love in Sanctuary Moon, the show inside of Murderbot: it was a great parody without looking like a personal attack.

The parody of Roddenberry is also mean-spirited, but as the creator who constructed a complicated mythos for himself, he is at least a better target. We have already had a good parody in the form of James Cromwell's Cochrane. I am no myself convinced that Mount was doing a full imitation of Roddenberry.
 
The thing that winds me up about Shatner parodies is that I never felt like he was a bad actor. He does have an obviously theatrical style that often leaps into melodrama or campiness, but it's a perfect fit for TOS - the series simply wouldn't be as entertaining, nor would Kirk be interesting, if Shatner had just played it in a muted, naturalistic way. He's adept at imbuing otherwise-silly scenes with convincing tension ("we've got to risk a full-power start!!") and is a genuinely talented actor.

There's a lot to make fun of in his performance, but I'd rather see that come from writers who appreciate his performance to begin with, rather than the usual "ha ha ha he talks weird" stuff that's been done to death. This felt like it went into the latter - I think Wesley, to his credit, was trying to give the performance a little bit of nuance and not play it as an outright lazy "SPEA-king LIKE.... THIS with STRANGE enunci-ATION" thing that hack impersonators have done for decades, but the writing definitely didn't seem to share that approach.
 
There's only so much one can do with the Vulcan stoic trope, I agree. Plus, it's a prequel. Just line it up in the way we know it'll end up in the end and voila.
Seems to me that TOS handled that already in the first couple of episodes, going from "THE WOMEN !!!" to a more stoic Spock in 'The Man Trap'.
 
Which must still be the case in the 32nd century then.
We have no idea, they never even tried to go that route in the 32nd century because Culbert pushed them towards the tartigrade route.

That said, we know from this episode that in the past 100 years they have gone from needing the whole ships main computer to run a primitive version of a holodeck to an optronic data core the size of shoebox.


Bottle shows don't build as many sets as this episode appears to have and make as much new wardrobe as depicted. It might qualify as a bottle show if the sets used for the holodeck program were already standing sets from another production on the lot.
The fake enterprise set probably cost less then a 100k to slap together, the mansion was probably either a location shoot or an already existing set on the lot, and wardrobe was likely either from the studio costume closet or off the shelf.
 
The fake enterprise set probably cost less then a 100k to slap together, the mansion was probably either a location shoot or an already existing set on the lot, and wardrobe was likely either from the studio costume closet or off the shelf.
The costumes were probably made for the episode. Though they do look more like something from Doctor Who's original run than Star Trek. So does the set. :lol:
 
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