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Spoilers Strange New Worlds General Discussion Thread

Another glowing review.
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Empire weighing in:
With a great balance of compelling characters and engaging, self-contained stories, this throwback series continues to prove itself the very best of the current live-action Trek shows.

And the Observer:
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has not only become the standout series in the modern franchise, but an affirmation of the flexibility and accessibility of episodic television. The series bounces week to week from light-hearted adventure to cosmic horror to screwball comedy, showcasing not only imaginative ideas and spectacular visual effects, but one of the most charming and versatile ensembles in the business. And, rather than being bogged down by the franchise’s mythology, it’s gleefully self-contained and new-viewer friendly.

If Strange New Worlds were suddenly to divert from the Star Trek canon entirely and veer off into its own continuity, never reconciling with the classic series, nothing of value would be lost. That, for my money, is the highest compliment you can pay to any prequel.
 
Does anybody else get the impression, from the debut episode, that the producers, cast, and entire writing staff have all read MWB's Burning Dreams? (Or is it just me?)

Because while I can't point to any specific incidents from the novel that have been elevated to canon status (as opposed to the rather obvious matter of Number One being Illyrian, straight out of DCF's Vulcan's Glory), there are still certain elements of the series in general, and the first episode in particular, that show signs of influence.

It's been over 15 years since I read Burning Dreams, but I would be genuinely surprised if it had a significant influence. Its version of Pike was very much based on Jeffrey Hunter's much more haunted, darker version of the character from "The Cage;" Mount's interpretation is very different. It's not impossible though -- TrekLit author Kirsten Beyer has been part of the writing staffs for all three modern live-action shows, and she's been the liaison to the book and comic tie-ins.

Yep.

Hell, the existence of the Intrepid in TOS kind of puts the lie to the theory anyways if we assume it's a Starfleet ship - and we have no onscreen reason to say it's not.

It also just doesn't make sense on its face. The Federation was founded in 2161 and Spock was born in 2230 -- we're supposed to buy that there weren't any Vulcans in the entire Federation Starfleet for the first seventy years of its existence? That's like saying there were no Virginians in the United States Navy until the 1850s or no Scotsmen in the Royal Navy until the 1770s.
 
I'm almost exactly halfway through Burning Dreams, and while of course MWB had nobody else to base her Pike on than Jeff Hunter (and Sean Kenney), I see an awful lot that matches up very well with Anson Mount's portrayal. Downright uncanny, in fact. Far more than with Bruce Greenwood's Abramsverse-Pike.
 
"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" S2 Review: Alongside the Franchise’s Best Entries

Strange New Worlds also exhibits an obvious trust between its writers room and its cast. Rather than being precious about the established legacy characters, such as Mr. Spock (Ethan Peck) and Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), this series allows them to take on a life of their own as if there was no established precedent for how they ought to be employed in a story. Season Two continues to place Peck’s Spock at the heart of the show’s broadest comedy and steamiest romance, because regardless of whether that’s something you’d do with Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, it’s clearly working here...

...The comparison against the lore-stuffed, nutrient-free fan candy of the final season of Star Trek: Picard is night and day. So much media during this age of the perpetual franchise extension feels like it could be written by an AI, absorbing the previous hundred hours of a saga and extrapolating what the next hundred hours might look like, without the benefit of any real imagination. It’s not new, it’s merely more. Strange New Worlds was willed into existence by a campaign of fans who were hungry for the familiar, but it nevertheless feels fresh and vital. It has the unmistakable flavor of real human investment. Its Spock/Chapel/T’Pring love triangle may have been suggested by The Original Series, but it belongs to this series, and to these storytellers. Its Ensign Uhura honors the memory of Nichelle Nichols, but she is her own entity, and a joy to watch on her own merits. If Strange New Worlds were suddenly to divert from the Star Trek canon entirely and veer off into its own continuity, never reconciling with the classic series, nothing of value would be lost. That, for my money, is the highest compliment you can pay to any prequel.
 
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