At the risk of sounding like a Discovery hater, I really didn't expect to run into a comment basically saying "The Strange New Worlds crew acts unprofessional, unlike the Discovery crew."
Strange New Worlds disappointment
- Thread starter just2wicked
- Start date
100% disagree. If anything TNG was DEFINITELY a show ABOUT Star Trek because for the first two seasons they went out of their way with the background props of studio models from TOS in all their shots and name dropping TOS characters and situations and hell even doing a full and horrible remake of TOS S1 The Naked Time with TNG S1 The Naked Now.
TNG rarely really showed you it was Star Trek, it just TOLD you it was a majority of the time.
The TNG characters were rarely relatable to a modern audience because they were all supposedly 'perfectly adjusted' with NO PREDJUDICES and they never had a conflict with other crewmembers (unless under Alien influence) because that was now Gene's Vision™.
And Jean Luc Picard was often the ultimate hypocrite as it was often "Do as I pontificate...(Yeh, don't pay attention to what myself and the Federation often do, because when that does happen it's always for a good reason and besides - we're BETTER than you.)
SNW is classic STAR TREK returned to it's actual roots - and it's the best version of STAR TREK since the original went off the air in 1969.
^ That's a lot of complaining about TNG in general (some of which I'd agree with), but:
Picard is a grating knobhead, yeah, the crew are weird, yeah, but over-relying on TOS plots is simply something you can't reasonably accuse TNG seasons 1-2 of. Your complaints even seem to be that it was too tonally different from TOS and had too distinct a vision of its own.
This isn't a convincing case at all. The Naked Now is indeed a remake or loose sequel, but they were not namedropping TOS characters and situations beyond that, bar the brief McCoy cameo in the pilot. I'm struggling to think of even one revisited planet or character, and certainly nothing remotely like SNW's plots of "what if Trelane met Roger Korby", "this character is the great-granddaughter of Khan and also was a Gorn prisoner," and "Pike literally enters Balance of Terror and writes his own fanfic inside it".
Picard is a grating knobhead, yeah, the crew are weird, yeah, but over-relying on TOS plots is simply something you can't reasonably accuse TNG seasons 1-2 of. Your complaints even seem to be that it was too tonally different from TOS and had too distinct a vision of its own.
Yeah right. Is that why is TNG S2 they created a female clone (right down to saying in episodes she's "an old country doctor" and ALSO had a fear of the Transporter) of TOS Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy and even first tried to replicate a McCoy/Spock type 'abrasive' relationship between this 'new' Dr. Katherine Pulaski and Lt. Cmdr. Data? <--- Which they thankfully quickly abandoned but you would think the writers would have realized Data was not like Spock in that Data was childlike/naive to the point that when Pulaski went off on him it came across like a form of child abuse.
It's a Star Trek show.
You're alleging that they tried to copy TOS, but failed due to being too fundamentally different from TOS?
Where are the other abundant instances of them "name dropping TOS characters and situations"? I genuinely can't think of any; off the top of my head, if we're focusing on S1/2 alone (which you designated as the most problematic in this regard), it's literally McCoy in "Farpoint" and polywater in "The Naked Now", the first two episodes of the entire show. You could argue Romulans and Klingons are revisited TOS plot points, I suppose.
Personally, I am not a huge fan of CBSTrek in general, mainly because the 10 episode season format followed by a year or two between seasons, simply doesn't keep my interest enough. Not to mention that I'm not a huge fan of SNW to begin with, but it's currently the only Trek series on TV right now. So I'll watch S3 eventually, but from what I've heard, it's not good enough for me to keep paying for a P+ subscription.
I am disappointed in SNW. I had such high hopes. Pike was such a breath of fresh air on Discovery that I was eager to see him finally get his due in a series led by him. And there is much good about SNW-actors, FX, costuming, bringing back more episodic storytelling. But that's been weighed down by the things I dislike about the series, and I don't think the writing has been consistent or the stories all that great that I've been on the edge of my seat yet, or wanted to go back and look at them again and again like I have done, or would do, as much as I have with Roddenberry-Berman Trek.
My biggest sticking points:
-Seeking virality (viral, water-cooler moments) over consistency, and this has led the writers to do a lot of gimmicky, stunt things to get headlines. I imagine it's an attempt to attract non-Trekkies, but I would hope there was a way to do that that wasn't as gimmicky. This approach has also led to the season's having tonal whiplash from episode to episode at times.
-Cavalier attitude toward canon. The showrunners knew using the Gorn was sticky, but they did it anyway simply because they wanted to and now have had to write around that bad decision to try to make it fit with the Original Series, when it was unnecessary to include the Gorn in the first place. They could've named these reptilians just about anything else and it wouldn't have changed much about the episodes featuring them.
-Clumsy fan service. This week's episode was a prime example, but the wedding planner and their parental figure from episode 2, making La'An a descendant of Khan, having so many Original Series characters already onboard, and shoehorning in Kirk are more examples. I was hoping to learn more about Pike and Number One when SNW was announced. And it would've been great having more new Trek characters to learn about as well.
-Year One: I think the showrunners are more taken with this idea and that's why they've had Kirk on the series so much and done some of the fan service, they want to do their own Original Series show.
-Uneven, or unwanted (for me) character development. I think Una and Ortegas have gotten the shortest ends of the stick when it comes to character development. As for Spock, I really am tired of seeing his love life, like that's the most fascinating thing about him to these writers. In the first season, I was fine with his relationship with T'Pring because that allowed them to add complexity to her characterization, but I didn't care for his relationship with Chapel and his relationship with La'An feels very left field, as well as rushed and underfed. Pike often comes across as too indecisive and doesn't seem to be the kind of captain that is lauded in future Trek. He's a good man, a caring individual, and all, but I would like to see more feats. It feels like SNW is depicting him in the twilight of his career (which I guess really is the case) and most of his great accomplishments are behind him. In a way, he reminds me of how Archer was handled, with more telling than showing his supposed greatness. I liked Pike as captain a lot more on Discovery than I do in SNW.
SNW is not horrible (well, maybe "Four and Half-Vulcans" was), but it's not all that compelling or daring either. I preferred Discovery (especially its first season). Discovery took big swings and had big misses, but there were moments when it was far more gripping than SNW has been so far. I do think the character development for SNW is across the board better than on DISCO, but Discovery was more ambitious (even if it often failed to reach whatever it set out to do).
My biggest sticking points:
-Seeking virality (viral, water-cooler moments) over consistency, and this has led the writers to do a lot of gimmicky, stunt things to get headlines. I imagine it's an attempt to attract non-Trekkies, but I would hope there was a way to do that that wasn't as gimmicky. This approach has also led to the season's having tonal whiplash from episode to episode at times.
-Cavalier attitude toward canon. The showrunners knew using the Gorn was sticky, but they did it anyway simply because they wanted to and now have had to write around that bad decision to try to make it fit with the Original Series, when it was unnecessary to include the Gorn in the first place. They could've named these reptilians just about anything else and it wouldn't have changed much about the episodes featuring them.
-Clumsy fan service. This week's episode was a prime example, but the wedding planner and their parental figure from episode 2, making La'An a descendant of Khan, having so many Original Series characters already onboard, and shoehorning in Kirk are more examples. I was hoping to learn more about Pike and Number One when SNW was announced. And it would've been great having more new Trek characters to learn about as well.
-Year One: I think the showrunners are more taken with this idea and that's why they've had Kirk on the series so much and done some of the fan service, they want to do their own Original Series show.
-Uneven, or unwanted (for me) character development. I think Una and Ortegas have gotten the shortest ends of the stick when it comes to character development. As for Spock, I really am tired of seeing his love life, like that's the most fascinating thing about him to these writers. In the first season, I was fine with his relationship with T'Pring because that allowed them to add complexity to her characterization, but I didn't care for his relationship with Chapel and his relationship with La'An feels very left field, as well as rushed and underfed. Pike often comes across as too indecisive and doesn't seem to be the kind of captain that is lauded in future Trek. He's a good man, a caring individual, and all, but I would like to see more feats. It feels like SNW is depicting him in the twilight of his career (which I guess really is the case) and most of his great accomplishments are behind him. In a way, he reminds me of how Archer was handled, with more telling than showing his supposed greatness. I liked Pike as captain a lot more on Discovery than I do in SNW.
SNW is not horrible (well, maybe "Four and Half-Vulcans" was), but it's not all that compelling or daring either. I preferred Discovery (especially its first season). Discovery took big swings and had big misses, but there were moments when it was far more gripping than SNW has been so far. I do think the character development for SNW is across the board better than on DISCO, but Discovery was more ambitious (even if it often failed to reach whatever it set out to do).
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LOL right? Not as exciting as a show that could be renamed to Star Trek: Therapy.
(disclaimer: nothing at all wrong with therapy as a concept; DSC was just every character talking like a therapist at the worst possible times)
SNW is comfort food viewing. Expecting bold and daring after the loudest portion of the fan base used a rolled up newspaper on Paramount's nose for "bold and daring" is a fools errand.
SNW has hit the formula hard:
SNW has hit the formula hard:
- Ensemble cast: no main character is the focus ever.
- Episodic format: more or less, with limited character continuity now.
- Mix of stories: comedy, horror, adventure and mystery, plus tech gone wacky.
Please point out where I said 'abundant' in my original post. I never used the word abundant. But I will stand by my statement of:
Because yes. Dr. McCoy in the pilot IS a reference as is the entirety of The Naked Now.
And even before they did what they did in SNW S4 - Q in the TNG pilot WAS considered by a majority of fandom in 1987 to be "Squire Trelane all grown up".
The character of Dr. Katherine Pulaski is a complete copy of Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy for the ENTIRE 2nd season of TNG. <--- She's a HUGE TOS reference by herself.
AND if you really want to get technical - William Riker IS William Dekker and Deanna Troi is Ilya from the planned but abandoned Str Trek Phase II and what ultimately became ST:TMP.
So please tell me again how they weren't doing lots and lots of callbacks/references from TOS again in TNG S1 & S2?
And yes
I am alleging that since in 1987 the only other STAR TREK was TOS (and TAS) so yeah, TNG being so fundamentally different shows it WASN'T really "Star Trek" at the time, but ultimately it's true that it did become accepted as a form of Star Trek eventually.
Took a while though
I fear the series is backsliding.
Previously, the choices to do a crossover with Lower Decks & a musical episode were met with a raised eyebrow from me, but both those episodes were well pulled off. But now we're getting a muppet episode? Just because I enjoyed those two episodes in presentation, I didn't enjoy the half assed science that made them happen.
I'm not a canon buff to the point that the Enterprise looking different is going to be a hang up for me. What does bug me is what a previous post described as "clumsy fan service." The Spock/Chapel relationship had a whole back history of where it would go in the future, but they plowed ahead with it, just to end it a handful of episodes later and then decided to re-hash it in Wedding Bell Blues, which I found tedious. That episode also brought us "Trelane" and made him a Q, in a move that no one really needed. Chapel in TOS was literally a reason for Roddenberry to give his girlfriend a job.
While M'Benga has been my favourite character in the series, again, how does he go from the CMO to just a normal doctor by TOS?
The Spock/La'an relationship is another big nothing burger, but the whole idea that Spock just forgets in Space Seed that he not only knew a Noonien-Singh, but dated her and brought up Khan by name in the last episode is just a baffling decision.
Their comedy episodes are usually poor, Four and a half Vulcans being the latest entry. People seem to love the Una/Doug dynamic, but we never get any idea why she feels this way around him? It's cartoonish. Or last season, let's make Spock fully human and make it a comedy, but then when it all about Chapel having this emotional talk with non-corporeal beings about loving Spock the way he was. Or season one, where Spock & T'Pring body swap.
Canon is not difficult to work with in, but the writers are writing themselves into issues with silly stuff. Strange New Worlds should've have been about Pike's missions, learning more about the crew before TOS. After season one, Pike seems either really content or he forgot that he is fated to be disfigured. Una is played as this mysterious character who we still know nothing about. La'an has shown some growth, but she had been pulled into the gravity of the Spock romance plot, which limits her ability to be interested. Ortegas has finally gotten some stuff this season, but she figured out her PTSD in record time. She and Pelia are there for "quips.". They have totally mishandled Pelia. She isn't funny and given her long lifespan, she should be more knowledgable than she appears to be. Hemmer was a far more interesting character.
Previously, the choices to do a crossover with Lower Decks & a musical episode were met with a raised eyebrow from me, but both those episodes were well pulled off. But now we're getting a muppet episode? Just because I enjoyed those two episodes in presentation, I didn't enjoy the half assed science that made them happen.
I'm not a canon buff to the point that the Enterprise looking different is going to be a hang up for me. What does bug me is what a previous post described as "clumsy fan service." The Spock/Chapel relationship had a whole back history of where it would go in the future, but they plowed ahead with it, just to end it a handful of episodes later and then decided to re-hash it in Wedding Bell Blues, which I found tedious. That episode also brought us "Trelane" and made him a Q, in a move that no one really needed. Chapel in TOS was literally a reason for Roddenberry to give his girlfriend a job.
While M'Benga has been my favourite character in the series, again, how does he go from the CMO to just a normal doctor by TOS?
The Spock/La'an relationship is another big nothing burger, but the whole idea that Spock just forgets in Space Seed that he not only knew a Noonien-Singh, but dated her and brought up Khan by name in the last episode is just a baffling decision.
Their comedy episodes are usually poor, Four and a half Vulcans being the latest entry. People seem to love the Una/Doug dynamic, but we never get any idea why she feels this way around him? It's cartoonish. Or last season, let's make Spock fully human and make it a comedy, but then when it all about Chapel having this emotional talk with non-corporeal beings about loving Spock the way he was. Or season one, where Spock & T'Pring body swap.
Canon is not difficult to work with in, but the writers are writing themselves into issues with silly stuff. Strange New Worlds should've have been about Pike's missions, learning more about the crew before TOS. After season one, Pike seems either really content or he forgot that he is fated to be disfigured. Una is played as this mysterious character who we still know nothing about. La'an has shown some growth, but she had been pulled into the gravity of the Spock romance plot, which limits her ability to be interested. Ortegas has finally gotten some stuff this season, but she figured out her PTSD in record time. She and Pelia are there for "quips.". They have totally mishandled Pelia. She isn't funny and given her long lifespan, she should be more knowledgable than she appears to be. Hemmer was a far more interesting character.
This one is relatively easy. He's accepts a different assignment at a hospital then requests the Enterprise again. The billet for CMO is filled but he's willing to take bring a staff physician.
Quite easily. Use a little imagination.
But I think the show will explain it before the end of the series.
He accepted his fate at the end of Season 1.
Okay; they weren't doing "lots and lots" (you might even say "abundant") callbacks/refernces from TOS in TNG S1 & S2.
It's just such a whack criticism to level at TNG, especially when you're praising SNW which is, very deliberately and by its own aims, a TOS tribute act which revisits plots and characters wholesale, up to and including remixing existing episodes. Doubly so when the "lots and lots" of callbacks are relegated chiefly to the first two episodes and then end up reaching for "Troi is Ilya".
I'm not sure why your original post went off about Picard as well - yeah, he's a dickhead, I hate him too, but it seemed like you just wanted to rag on TNG by any means necessary, even if it was totally beside the point.
Characters yes, plots? not really, just Balance of Terror, but that was the whole point of that episode.
There will be a lot of lens flare there
IMO, the first four episodes of season 1 were fantastic. Best of show. They made me really look forward to the next episode. but after that, it's been mostly downhill. It's still my second favorite Star Trek series (TOS), but i am getting more and more disappointed with it. Now instead of looking forward, I'm just hoping the next episode is at least decent. Most TOS episodes are re-watchable over and over, I can only say that about a handful of SNW episodes. I think that's the most disappointing aspect for me.
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