Worlds Untreked

[Arpy]

Talking with someone recently about the thread “am I the only one that hates this season,” we got onto the subject of Trek series that failed to live up to their potential, and chief among them for us had been VOY. With the wrapping up of Season 4 now, I think it’s safe to call it SNW for me, regardless what they do with the forthcoming final season. The series is what it is at this point. Thinking back to Pike & Number One’s intro on DSC and the outright jubilance after the announcement of their getting their own spinoff show, I find myself wondering about what might have been, what I would have liked out of SNW, and a few things immediately come to mind:

1. I wanted more of this. Marina Sirtis called what they did on TNG "little morality plays," and with all the things going on in the world today practically screaming from the tin can in your hand for someone to look at and discuss them, whether William Shatner on Star Trek or...William Shatner on Boston Legal, I'm disappointed Trek hasn't chosen to do that. A show about the earlier days of the Federation, with Captains Pike and April, perhaps Garth of Izar, out there exploring "strange new worlds" would have been an amazing forum from which to look at the craziness going on in our world today and saying something about it, about how things might one day be. SNW did that in one of if not the best series premier of any Star Trek show ever...then forgot all about it.

2. I wanted more about the canon we knew. More about Una. She had this “mystique” about her (no pun intended) in “The Cage” that was rather intriguing, and then was this old fashioned sharp-as-a-tack bombshell on DSC, yet 40 episodes later she feels underserved and somehow incomplete. Why is she, as Commander Ransom suggested on LD, the best XO Starfleet ever had? Did we really get to see that on this show? And what about the rest of the landscape of the galaxy as it was at this time pre-TOS? Have we gotten to know it very well – the Orions, Tholians, or others?

3. I wanted more about the canon this show introduced. Weren't we supposed to see more of Captain Angel and Sybok from "The Serene Squall"? What happened to the Gorn between "Terrarium" and "Arena" that made them so unrecognizable to Kirk? What about the Shepards from "Children of the Comet" or the R'ongovians from "Spock Amok"? Or Captain April and the first 5-year mission of the brand new Enterprise? Or what about Pelia's people – the Lanthenites? Are they Highlanders? Flint's people? Aliens? Atlanteans? Did all this happen before for them and is happening again? What's their tech like, if any? How many others are there and what are they like? Are they on other worlds? I wanted more.

What are some things you wanted to see or get from this series that we probably won't?

 

[Ricky Spanish]

What are some things you wanted to see or get from this series that we probably won't?

Straight pylons.

 

[Rahul]

1. I wanted more of this. Marina Sirtis called what they did on TNG "little morality plays," and with all the things going on in the world today practically screaming from the tin can in your hand for someone to look at and discuss them, whether William Shatner on Star Trek or...William Shatner on Boston Legal, I'm disappointed Trek hasn't chosen to do that. A show about the earlier days of the Federation, with Captains Pike and April, perhaps Garth of Izar, out there exploring "strange new worlds" would have been an amazing forum from which to look at the craziness going on in our world today and saying something about it, about how things might one day be. SNW did that in one of if not the best series premier of any Star Trek show ever...then forgot all about it.

This is the thing I miss the most from modern (2009-onwards) Trek in general. SNW is actually the best at this from all the recent shows.

I think there's a few major reasons for that:.

1) The current Trek writers are selected to be fun/action-adventure/character-/vfx-focused writers. That's just what Trek is now (but also had been to a degree in the past). They're just not classic theater writers that are good at putting five people in a room to discuss a single topic for hours. And even if they were - that's not what you do with just 10 episodes, a massive budget & corporate pressure in the back.

2) Politics in general (especially in the US) has become a shouting match. Even (especially) political talkshows. Honest debate is simply not in the mainstream anymore. There's no way for the writers to create an allegory for something, and have different characters take different positions discussing each other, and audiences not going apeshit and starting to hate the characters that would represent the "other" political opinion.

3) Current technology & politics is advancing in such a rapid speed at the moment - you simply cannot write a conundrum today about, say, AI & it's implications, or an allegory for a war in the middle east (or Europe or Asia), the rise of fascism or another cultural/societal shift, that won't be horribly outdated in just one year from now, when the currently written episode will actually air. Remember DIS launching with a "tea party" allegory? Well that didn't age well...

 

[DarKush]

I don't think SNW has lived up to its potential. I was very excited by the prospect of a Pike-led series after seeing him on Discovery. Anson Mount was great on there and I felt that Pike was depicted better when it came to captaining in Discovery than on SNW.

I think SNW has just been a reactive series from day one. I think Paramount wisely listened to the strong fan reaction to Pike, etc. on Discovery and greenlit a series, which wasn't in Kurtzman's plan up to then, from what I've read. And also reacting to the complaints about Discovery, they promised a more episodic series with a lighter tone, but I think they overreacted here and made the series too lightweight, shaving off many potential edges in an effort to avoid the wrath of the internet and to welcome decriers back in.

I also think Paramount, Kurtzman, or whoever, picked the wrong showrunners because they were more smitten by pursuing their own self-amusements and fanboyish inclinations and as well as recreating the Original Series (their Year One idea) than appreciating what was right in front of them, a strong cast and big budget to really put their own stamp on the franchise in ways that even the Original Series hadn't been able to do.

I think SNW has been the victim of a lot of bad decisions, but some of them were for understandable reasons.

What I would have liked to have seen:

-Pike: A Pike more like the Kelvin Pike. I get they couldn't go back to Hunter's portrayal, but I wish there had been more of a middle here. SNW Pike is too gooey, too much of a dad captain. Where is Jellico and a time machine when you need them?
-Number One: I also wanted more mystery with her. I mean, what's the deal with her last name even? I don't remember them saying the reason why. And I do feel she has been wasted. A lot of the screen time that has gone into Kirk learning how to be a captain could've gone to Una.
-Spock: If anything, I would've actually put Spock a little in the background because the character has gotten so much screentime elsewhere. I also would not have made him a Casanova, albeit I do like that the series fleshed out T'Pring more (though I'm not sure how much that jibes with "Amok Time" because no one seemingly knew her, despite Chapel being a romantic rival and Kirk mind melding with Spock on SNW, presumably he might have learned about her from that, or just the talk around the ship). My other wilder idea with Spock was to actually really have him embrace his humanity on SNW, as a way to cope with the Red Angel and losing Burnham, which would've made that take stand out more against Nimoy and Quinto.
-More original characters. Keep the other SNW actors but make them original characters (and not related to Khan). That could've freed up the writers to do more with them, to use them to help make SNW connect with today's audience instead of spending so much time connecting dots and attempts at nostalgia baiting. (And if basically the whole main cast are not on the Original Series there would be no need to explain Spock's experimenting with emotion because none of them experienced it).
-April: A flashback episode or two with him as Enterprise captain would've been nice.
-Kirk: I thought his inclusion was acceptable in the Season 1 finale, but otherwise, I would not have brought him on the series until maybe the series finale.
-Hemmer: Would've kept him around longer.
-Recurring villains: I imagine that all the problems that befell Tinseltown and pushed back Season 3 hobbled them bringing back the "Serene Squall" captain, but she seemed like the kind of character that would bedevil the crew from time to time. I also think it would've been nice to see Mudd again. And I would've liked to have seen a recurring Klingon rival for Pike, preferably a new character, or one of the underused Klingons from the Original Series.
-New enemy species.
-Writing: Far less gimmicks. I think the episodic nature worked fine, but I would've liked more serious stories, with a sprinkle of mirth from time to time.
-Synergy: I would've liked to have had the Prime Kelvin characters integrated, or mentioned, on the series. I also would've liked to have seen them bring the streaming era series together in some kind of special, along the lines of "Those Old Scientists" but even bigger. Pike meeting Jean-Luc (or another Enterprise captain) could've been sweet to see.
-Early Voyages comic: I know it would never happen, but this is what I would've wanted, and that's to basically make that comic series largely part of the history of SNW. The Ngultor species were close enough to how SNW depicted the Gorn that they could've easily taken their place, and with less fandom heartburn.

 

[Haunt Rod]

I actually come at this from a somewhat different angle. Overall, SNW really did give me a lot of what I wanted from Trek. I wanted 23rd century Trek that was intelligent, but also fun and adventurous. I wanted strange aliens, strange planets, big sci-fi ideas, a crew that actually feels like they're having an adventure, and that sense of wonder that made me fall in love with TOS in the first place. SNW delivered a lot of that.

That's probably why the things I feel it missed stand out to me. Not because I think the show failed, but because I could see how much more it could have done with what it had.

I do wish we'd gotten more actual exploration. More strange new worlds, more new civilizations, more going somewhere we'd never been before and discovering what's out there. That's such a fundamental part of what Star Trek is to me, and there were times when I felt SNW could have leaned into that just a little harder.

I also think we could have had more Pike. There were stretches where he felt strangely absent from his own show, which is a shame because Anson Mount is fantastic as the character. And Una is probably the biggest missed opportunity of all. I really like her, but after 4 seasons I still don't think the show ever fully showed us why she was supposed to be one of Starfleet's greatest first officers. Still, she's a great character, and I wish we'd gotten more of her.

One thing I really did enjoy was getting to watch the rise of James T. Kirk. I know not everyone is thrilled with how much Kirk has been used on the show, cue the meme, but he's my favourite character in the franchise, so I'm biased. I really enjoyed watching Paul Wesley get just a little closer to the Kirk we know from TOS with every appearance. There's something really fun about watching that character take shape, especially knowing where he's eventually going to end up.

And that's probably where I land on SNW as a whole. I love its sense of adventure, its 23rd century setting, its characters, its humour, its visual style, its willingness to get really weird, and the fact that it can still make the Enterprise feel like a place where you genuinely don't know what you're going to find when you go to the next planet.

So I don't come away from SNW thinking, "What a wasted opportunity." I come away thinking, "Damn, I wish we'd had more of it."

 

[MrShinzoff]

I think it ultimately couldn't help but be a product of its time. SNW had to make its male characters effete like Star Wars did, like the recent Superman portrayal etc.

It had to contain the excruciatingly painful Marvel humour that's as funny as someone pushing sandpaper down your throat and scraping up your insides. It's Tuesday, it feels like a Tuesday!! They fly now, they fly now!!

And there are no grand ideas. It rarely investigates anything of interest. It outright plagiarises other work. Paradoxically, the most original thing about the show is how brazenly and overtly it does that.

There's no real character development. La'an and Uhura are probably the only ones whose interior life is explored but they just seem to be learning the same lessons over and over.

You could say: Just don't watch it. But they're close to showing the Pike accident and we have to keep watching because this is a central part of Trek mythos. So, the pain has to continue to be endured for now but thankfully it'll be over soon. However, SNW was always destined to fail because success required something exceptional: being independent of its milieu, and very few things can do that.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

I’ll chime in with my unpopular opinion.

I think the show fails as a prequel to TOS. I also think the show succeeds on its own merits as “Star Trek”.

 

[eschaton]

This is the thing I miss the most from modern (2009-onwards) Trek in general. SNW is actually the best at this from all the recent shows.

I think there's a few major reasons for that:.

1) The current Trek writers are selected to be fun/action-adventure/character-/vfx-focused writers. That's just what Trek is now (but also had been to a degree in the past). They're just not classic theater writers that are good at putting five people in a room to discuss a single topic for hours. And even if they were - that's not what you do with just 10 episodes, a massive budget & corporate pressure in the back.

2) Politics in general (especially in the US) has become a shouting match. Even (especially) political talkshows. Honest debate is simply not in the mainstream anymore. There's no way for the writers to create an allegory for something, and have different characters take different positions discussing each other, and audiences not going apeshit and starting to hate the characters that would represent the "other" political opinion.

3) Current technology & politics is advancing in such a rapid speed at the moment - you simply cannot write a conundrum today about, say, AI & it's implications, or an allegory for a war in the middle east (or Europe or Asia), the rise of fascism or another cultural/societal shift, that won't be horribly outdated in just one year from now, when the currently written episode will actually air. Remember DIS launching with a "tea party" allegory? Well that didn't age well...

I just finished watching Pantheon on Netflix this weekend. One of the absolute best sci-fi shows I've ever seen (and actually has a Trek connection, as Michael Taylor is one of the writers). It shows that this kind of political writing in sci-fi is very much alive.

The main antagonist of the series, standing over it like a shadow, is a lightly fictionalized version of Steve Jobs. He's got the glasses, the beard, the turtleneck, the death from cancer. The company he founded deifies his image, always asking what he would do. There's subtle nods to a lot of the insane ideologies that currently fill Silicon Valley as well, such as the whole "longtermist" idea that it's okay to kill millions today to save billions in the future. It's astonishing how contemporary it is, particularly because it was produced in 2021-2022 before the current AI hype bubble built up.

In addition, there's an entire episode of the second season which focuses on a Mossad agent - and the story isn't subtle at all about what side it's taking in the whole Israel/Palestine thing.

I cannot sing enough praises of the show. It's the best thing I've seen in years. Though you can really tell they wanted a third season and packed everything they damn well could into the final two episodes.

 

[eschaton]

On a more general note, I have been a bit let down by SNW, because I think it was billed by the showrunners at the start as sort of a "normal Trek" - a return to format for the franchise, given the experiments in serialization of DIS and PIC fell a bit flat, and things like the animated shows were intended for more niche audiences.

I think the show drifted from that over time. From recent interviews, it seems like the showrunners believe their main goal is to try and explain how everyone ends up where we see them when TOS starts. Which I just don't think is that compelling from a storytelling perspective. Prequels seldom live up to the story they're riffing off of, and I'd much rather SNW have been a set of largely disconnected stories that didn't feel like they needed to nod and wink to TOS over and over and over.

 

[Rahul]

I just finished watching Pantheon on Netflix this weekend. One of the absolute best sci-fi shows I've ever seen (and actually has a Trek connection, as Michael Taylor is one of the writers). It shows that this kind of political writing in sci-fi is very much alive.

The main antagonist of the series, standing over it like a shadow, is a lightly fictionalized version of Steve Jobs. He's got the glasses, the beard, the turtleneck, the death from cancer. The company he founded deifies his image, always asking what he would do. There's subtle nods to a lot of the insane ideologies that currently fill Silicon Valley as well, such as the whole "longtermist" idea that it's okay to kill millions today to save billions in the future. It's astonishing how contemporary it is, particularly because it was produced in 2021-2022 before the current AI hype bubble built up.

In addition, there's an entire episode of the second season which focuses on a Mossad agent - and the story isn't subtle at all about what side it's taking in the whole Israel/Palestine thing.

I cannot sing enough praises of the show. It's the best thing I've seen in years. Though you can really tell they wanted a third season and packed everything they damn well could into the final two episodes.

Oh I agree, good writing - sci-fi, allegories, politics - is still absolutely possible, and can be found in many places (as is bad writing ).

I think it's just infinitely more difficult, the higher the budgets & the broader the (targeted) mainstream appeal is.

If you film 25 episodes for 7 years in a row, it's "easier" to slip in some controversial themes and opinions some time.
In just 10 episodes in a mega franchise IP, with probably a lot of corporate mandates (x amount of screentime for actor y, vfx & action set pieces per episode etc.) - the rough edges easily get sanded off during production.

On a more general note, I have been a bit let down by SNW, because I think it was billed by the showrunners at the start as sort of a "normal Trek" - a return to format for the franchise, given the experiments in serialization of DIS and PIC fell a bit flat, and things like the animated shows were intended for more niche audiences.

I think the show drifted from that over time. From recent interviews, it seems like the showrunners believe their main goal is to try and explain how everyone ends up where we see them when TOS starts. Which I just don't think is that compelling from a storytelling perspective. Prequels seldom live up to the story they're riffing off of, and I'd much rather SNW have been a set of largely disconnected stories that didn't feel like they needed to nod and wink to TOS over and over and over.

I think what makes SNW work on the first place, is also the thing that it struggles with right now: The genre shifts.

Compared to the other modern Trek series, where every episode stays in a similar tone &storytelling - SNW instead switches between action, comedy, drama, horror etc.
It's what makes this show unique, and IMO feel more "Trek"-like than the other (DIS/PIC/SFA) shows.
However it's also it's Achilles' heel, as the line between "genre" and "gimmick" gets more & more blurry, and is often crossed now.

I don't think SNW has lived up to its potential. I was very excited by the prospect of a Pike-led series after seeing him on Discovery. Anson Mount was great on there and I felt that Pike was depicted better when it came to captaining in Discovery than on SNW.

I think SNW has just been a reactive series from day one. I think Paramount wisely listened to the strong fan reaction to Pike, etc. on Discovery and greenlit a series, which wasn't in Kurtzman's plan up to then, from what I've read. And also reacting to the complaints about Discovery, they promised a more episodic series with a lighter tone, but I think they overreacted here and made the series too lightweight, shaving off many potential edges in an effort to avoid the wrath of the internet and to welcome decriers back in.

I also think Paramount, Kurtzman, or whoever, picked the wrong showrunners because they were more smitten by pursuing their own self-amusements and fanboyish inclinations and as well as recreating the Original Series (their Year One idea) than appreciating what was right in front of them, a strong cast and big budget to really put their own stamp on the franchise in ways that even the Original Series hadn't been able to do.

I think SNW has been the victim of a lot of bad decisions, but some of them were for understandable reasons.

What I would have liked to have seen:

-Pike: A Pike more like the Kelvin Pike. I get they couldn't go back to Hunter's portrayal, but I wish there had been more of a middle here. SNW Pike is too gooey, too much of a dad captain. Where is Jellico and a time machine when you need them?
-Number One: I also wanted more mystery with her. I mean, what's the deal with her last name even? I don't remember them saying the reason why. And I do feel she has been wasted. A lot of the screen time that has gone into Kirk learning how to be a captain could've gone to Una.
-Spock: If anything, I would've actually put Spock a little in the background because the character has gotten so much screentime elsewhere. I also would not have made him a Casanova, albeit I do like that the series fleshed out T'Pring more (though I'm not sure how much that jibes with "Amok Time" because no one seemingly knew her, despite Chapel being a romantic rival and Kirk mind melding with Spock on SNW, presumably he might have learned about her from that, or just the talk around the ship). My other wilder idea with Spock was to actually really have him embrace his humanity on SNW, as a way to cope with the Red Angel and losing Burnham, which would've made that take stand out more against Nimoy and Quinto.
-More original characters. Keep the other SNW actors but make them original characters (and not related to Khan). That could've freed up the writers to do more with them, to use them to help make SNW connect with today's audience instead of spending so much time connecting dots and attempts at nostalgia baiting. (And if basically the whole main cast are not on the Original Series there would be no need to explain Spock's experimenting with emotion because none of them experienced it).
-April: A flashback episode or two with him as Enterprise captain would've been nice.
-Kirk: I thought his inclusion was acceptable in the Season 1 finale, but otherwise, I would not have brought him on the series until maybe the series finale.
-Hemmer: Would've kept him around longer.
-Recurring villains: I imagine that all the problems that befell Tinseltown and pushed back Season 3 hobbled them bringing back the "Serene Squall" captain, but she seemed like the kind of character that would bedevil the crew from time to time. I also think it would've been nice to see Mudd again. And I would've liked to have seen a recurring Klingon rival for Pike, preferably a new character, or one of the underused Klingons from the Original Series.
-New enemy species.
-Writing: Far less gimmicks. I think the episodic nature worked fine, but I would've liked more serious stories, with a sprinkle of mirth from time to time.
-Synergy: I would've liked to have had the Prime Kelvin characters integrated, or mentioned, on the series. I also would've liked to have seen them bring the streaming era series together in some kind of special, along the lines of "Those Old Scientists" but even bigger. Pike meeting Jean-Luc (or another Enterprise captain) could've been sweet to see.
-Early Voyages comic: I know it would never happen, but this is what I would've wanted, and that's to basically make that comic series largely part of the history of SNW. The Ngultor species were close enough to how SNW depicted the Gorn that they could've easily taken their place, and with less fandom heartburn.

For me more on the contrary: SNW - warts and all - has no rights to be as good as it still is.

For me DIS is the show that wasted it's most potential - started as a highly visible flagship show, big budget, some of the best actors & characters so far, a unique gimmick, and a strong creator & vision (originally) at the helm.
And then squandered everything at the execution, and became a pretty sloppy show with unsatisfying main arcs & tons of filler that never left a mark.

SNW on the other hand - I would have expected absolutely nothing from a TOS prequel show set on the same Enterprise, except for hurt, canon violations, and disregard for legacy characters.
And instead... it became the only actual "real" modern Star Trek show, with different plots & themes every week, and a consistent cast of characters.

It's a shame it's not as great as it could be. But I never expected it to be as good as it is in the first place.

 

[Ovation]

SNW had to make its male characters effete like Star Wars did, like the recent Superman portrayal etc.

(And so, so wrong on so many levels)

 

[eschaton]

I think it's just infinitely more difficult, the higher the budgets & the broader the (targeted) mainstream appeal is.

I think I should say here for those not in the know Pantheon is animated. I do think it would be essentially impossible to run this as a live-action show, particularly in the second season, as the VFX in cyberspace would make the show have a ridiculously high budget.

Even with all of that, it was actually canceled prior to the second season getting released. The show was seen by almost no one initially due to being on AMC+ of all places, and until Netflix finally bought the rights, the second season could only be seen legally in Australia and New Zealand.