Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

[Joelist]

And, a report card for season one:

The Good

1) Tone is MUCH better than any other NuTrek. Tonally this really does feel like Trek.

2) The episodic format really serves it well. It helps keep the pace consistent and also means that a bad episode (and there were a couple) doesn't sink everything.

3) The cast. After the total charisma voids of Picard and especially STD to have actors with actual charisma has been refreshing. And for the most part the acting has been at worst average (Uhura) to pretty good (Pike).

4) SOME of the episodes were good enough to be rewatchable.

The Not So Good

1) Canonicity - this issue was inevitable with the show being both a prequel and directly involving people depicted in TOS. Interestingly, the canon issues while ever present were still not as ridiculous as the ones that made Picard laughable. And I will lob an additional demerit here to the producers - there was literally NO REASON to have Uhura or Chapel in the series. All either one did was to invite unfavorable comparisons to their TOS counterparts and they also created plot issues in episodes because (like Pike, Spock and Number One) they are never in danger. It removes the element of danger from scenes they are in.

2) Unevenness - All new shows tend towards this but SNW was VERY uneven. Episodes 6 and 9 were awful while Episodes 4 and 5 were outright good. The rest flopped all over the place in between.

3) Wokeness - this is actually both a plus and a minus because while there were a handful of really cringey woke scenes there were ONLY a handful. So this was nowhere near the SJW fest that was STD but any woke at all is bad and needs to be called out.

4) Some of the dialogue, particularly from Chapel and Ortegas, was unprofessional and it breaks the suspension of disbelief. This idea of having everyone talk like its 2022 and a casual setting when they are in a quasi military force needs to stop. When on the bridge Pike needs to be addressed as Captain or Sir AT ALL TIMES and if he issues an order it needs to be followed without argument.

Overall

Strange New Worlds is BY FAR the best NuTrek show. It isn't even close. But is it Trek? Well it's closer than anything before it under Kurtzman but alas not there yet. Some thoughts to help it in Season Two:

1) Get Chapel and Uhura off the ship. That will restore the ability to actually put the cast in peril.

2) Have the crew dialogue redone to be respectful of the chain of command.

3) This is the biggest one - I don't care how it is done they NEED to disconnect SNW from the rest of Kurtzman Trek and put the crap like STD and Picard into an alt universe. It's the only way for them to regain any credibility with the fanbase.

 

[YJ02]

I think you missed my point. Cullen likes SNW and hates STD and Picard. So it is indicative that people are responding positively to the tone and pacing changes and also being episodic.

This last episode was solid. Not awesome but solid.

kind of to the point i was trying to make a while back when i said i think that both this and picard are FAR DIFFERENT and better then "DISCO"

almost as if someone with TPTBs are listening to all of the outcry of the fans over DISCO and decided to clean up their production and writing act
----------------------

also, Romulans, we get Romulans on screen in this ep-- of course a alt mirror of the ST TOS ep-- that look pretty much as they did and have since

but we will still have the massive issue with the new look Klingons-- and the have not been seen in any show other than DISCO, yet, have they?

like TPTB's are struggling: do they ditch the terrible design of the Klingons in disco or just say nothing act like nothing happened and just go straight back to TOS looks for SNW and TNG/ST MOTION PICTURE looks for PICARD or other new shows?

 

[Lord Ba'al]

And, a report card for season one:

The Good

1) Tone is MUCH better than any other NuTrek. Tonally this really does feel like Trek.

2) The episodic format really serves it well. It helps keep the pace consistent and also means that a bad episode (and there were a couple) doesn't sink everything.

3) The cast. After the total charisma voids of Picard and especially STD to have actors with actual charisma has been refreshing. And for the most part the acting has been at worst average (Uhura) to pretty good (Pike).

4) SOME of the episodes were good enough to be rewatable.

The Not So Good

1) Canonicity - this issue was inevitable with the show being both a prequel and directly involving people depicted in TOS. Interestingly, the canon issues while ever present were still not as ridiculous as the ones that made Picard laughable. And I will lob an additional demerit here to the producers - there was literally NO REASON to have Uhura or Chapel in the series. All either one did was to invite unfavorable comparisons to their TOS counterparts and they also created plot issues in episodes because (like Pike, Spock and Number One) they are never in danger. It removes the element of danger from scenes they are in.

2) Unevenness - All new shows tend towards this but SNW was VERY uneven. Episodes 6 and 9 were awful while Episodes 4 and 5 were outright good. The rest flopped all over the place in between.

3) Wokeness - this is actually both a plus and a minus because while there were a handful of really cringey woke scenes there were ONLY a handful. So this was nowhere near the SJW fest that was STD but any woke at all is bad and needs to be called out.

4) Some of the dialogue, particularly from Chapel and Ortegas, was unprofessional and it breaks the suspension of disbelief. This idea of having everyone talk like its 2022 and a casual setting when they are in a quasi military force needs to stop. When on the bridge Pike needs to be addressed as Captain or Sir AT ALL TIMES and if he issues an order it needs to be followed without argument.

Overall

Strange New Worlds is BY FAR the best NuTrek show. It isn't even close. But is it Trek? Well it's closer than anything before it under Kurtzman but alas not there yet. Some thoughts to help it in Season Two:

1) Get Chapel and Uhura off the ship. That will restore the ability to actually put the cast in peril.

2) Have the crew dialogue redone to be respectful of the chain of command.

3) This is the biggest one - I don't care how it is done they NEED to disconnect SNW from the rest of Kurtzman Trek and put the crap like STD and Picard into an alt universe. It's the only way for them to regain any credibility with the fanbase.

As to your point of getting Uhura and Chapel off the ship, that would still leave Pike and Spock and thus the crew would still not be in peril, so you've kind of negated your own point there. You could of course conclude that there can be any number of red shirts used to put in peril, but then there would again be no point in getting Uhura and Chapel off the ship. I get that you don't like the characters and you don't want them there, but the logic here is flawed.

 

[Lord Ba'al]

What I still can't figure out, is how come Spock is surprised that the Romulans look like Vulcans? Shouldn't that be common knowledge on Vulcan that there was a group that split off from their own to form a new colony with their own morals? And all that time "no one had ever seen a Romulan". I just can't buy it.

 

[Joelist]

What I still can't figure out, is how come Spock is surprised that the Romulans look like Vulcans? Shouldn't that be common knowledge on Vulcan that there was a group that split off from their own to form a new colony with their own morals? And all that time "no one had ever seen a Romulan". I just can't buy it.

It didn't make sense in TOS either. But that is where this comes from.

 

[Joelist]

As to your point of getting Uhura and Chapel off the ship, that would still leave Pike and Spock and thus the crew would still not be in peril, so you've kind of negated your own point there. You could of course conclude that there can be any number of red shirts used to put in peril, but then there would again be no point in getting Uhura and Chapel off the ship. I get that you don't like the characters and you don't want them there, but the logic here is flawed.

My thinking was they should do the absolute minimum necessary usage of TOS characters - they have to have Pike, Una and Spock because of The Menagerie. But outside of that they need no others. Having Chapel and Uhura inherently meant that any situation including them meant there was no danger of losing them. One that really came to mind was EP4 with Hemmer and Uhura trapped in a cargo bay - despite their attempts to create suspense you know nothing will ultimately happen because Uhura is in TOS.

 

[Lord Ba'al]

My thinking was they should do the absolute minimum necessary usage of TOS characters - they have to have Pike, Una and Spock because of The Menagerie. But outside of that they need no others. Having Chapel and Uhura inherently meant that any situation including them meant there was no danger of losing them. One that really came to mind was EP4 with Hemmer and Uhura trapped in a cargo bay - despite their attempts to create suspense you know nothing will ultimately happen because Uhura is in TOS.

Something could have happened to Hemmer though. Like it did in that recent episode.

By the same line of reasoning, we can be sure that the Enterprise will not get destroyed. So no sense of danger.

Unless.... they suddenly mix things up and there is time travel and/or alternate universe stuff involved...

 

[Shadow Mann]

As to your point of getting Uhura and Chapel off the ship, that would still leave Pike and Spock and thus the crew would still not be in peril, so you've kind of negated your own point there. You could of course conclude that there can be any number of red shirts used to put in peril, but then there would again be no point in getting Uhura and Chapel off the ship. I get that you don't like the characters and you don't want them there, but the logic here is flawed.

The only way to fix what they did in Strange New Worlds is to make it some sort of dream or Talosian illusion. People have to remember that this ship somehow ends up with James T Kirk in command, and that everything that happens in SNW should be an existing memory for Spock, Uhura and Chapel to be carried on to the events of TOS. Its just IMPOSSIBLE to mesh any of that up.

Strange New Worlds gets a Season 2, and it is already in the can. But the numbers fell off steeply after S1E4, which called all of the rest of Kurtzman Trek into question at Paramount+ and has basically sealed it's fate.

 

[Joelist]

The only way to fix what they did in Strange New Worlds is to make it some sort of dream or Talosian illusion. People have to remember that this ship somehow ends up with James T Kirk in command, and that everything that happens in SNW should be an existing memory for Spock, Uhura and Chapel to be carried on to the events of TOS. Its just IMPOSSIBLE to mesh any of that up.

Strange New Worlds gets a Season 2, and it is already in the can. But the numbers fell off steeply after S1E4, which called all of the rest of Kurtzman Trek into question at Paramount+ and has basically sealed it's fate.

This is another reason that Uhura and Chapel should not be on the show. Also given the timeline Kirk is not going to captain the Enterprise for something like 6-8 years yet. They showed him in an alt timeline episode which disappeared when the decision that created it was changed. Numbers I am not sure of as I did not think there were any viewership numbers available for Paramount +.

It's like I said in The Orville thread - they actually have a decently charismatic cast here and the episodic format and optimistic tone are correct. They even wrote some good stories in the first season. But ultimately it is still stuck in Kurtzman world and he can't keep his paws off the shows.

If they want a Trek they can try to build off of keep this cast and tone and format, write new characters for everyone and set it on a different Federation starship and MAKE IT NOT A PREQUEL! Set it in Prime universe shortly after Voyager returns from the Delta Quadrant and act like STD and Picard do not exist. This would help the canon issues a lot.

 

[Shadow Mann]

This is another reason that Uhura and Chapel should not be on the show. Also given the timeline Kirk is not going to captain the Enterprise for something like 6-8 years yet. They showed him in an alt timeline episode which disappeared when the decision that created it was changed. Numbers I am not sure of as I did not think there were any viewership numbers available for Paramount +.

It's like I said in The Orville thread - they actually have a decently charismatic cast here and the episodic format and optimistic tone are correct. They even wrote some good stories in the first season. But ultimately it is still stuck in Kurtzman world and he can't keep his paws off the shows.

If they want a Trek they can try to build off of keep this cast and tone and format, write new characters for everyone and set it on a different Federation starship and MAKE IT NOT A PREQUEL! Set it in Prime universe shortly after Voyager returns from the Delta Quadrant and act like STD and Picard do not exist. This would help the canon issues a lot.

No viewership numbers are publicly available. That does not mean that they don't exist. Let's just say that what you see NOT happening will be the public tell. There were be much pumping of Picard S3 and Strange New Worlds S2. But that Star Trek 4 movie? Section 31? SNW S3? Discovery S6? Watch them for further development. Star Trek Day is on September 9, and there will be a tribute to Nichelle Nichols.

There is absolutely no way to mesh up Kurtzman Trek to Star Trek either in the prequel timeline or the future timeline of Discovery. Its all wrong IMO. But, its done for me anyway, so whatever!

 

[Joelist]

No viewership numbers are publicly available. That does not mean that they don't exist. Let's just say that what you see NOT happening will be the public tell. There were be much pumping of Picard S3 and Strange New Worlds S2. But that Star Trek 4 movie? Section 31? SNW S3? Discovery S6? Watch them for further development. Star Trek Day is on September 9, and there will be a tribute to Nichelle Nichols.

There is absolutely no way to mesh up Kurtzman Trek to Star Trek either in the prequel timeline or the future timeline of Discovery. Its all wrong IMO. But, its done for me anyway, so whatever!

Oh okay. Based on an earlier post I thought you might have discovered a source for hard numbers.

I agree that there is no way to mesh up Kurtzman Trek. I also think that this obsession with prequels needs to stop - make NEW things. But as long as Viacom (or whatever they call themselves) sticks with Secret Hideout nothing will happen.

 

[Shadow Mann]

Oh okay. Based on an earlier post I thought you might have discovered a source for hard numbers.

I agree that there is no way to mesh up Kurtzman Trek. I also think that this obsession with prequels needs to stop - make NEW things. But as long as Viacom (or whatever they call themselves) sticks with Secret Hideout nothing will happen.

As expected, the recently announced Star Trek 4 film at Paramount has been removed from the slate. This has been known inside for at least a year, and Kurtzman has been using his friends at Giant Freakin Robot and Variety and Screenrant and a few others like CBR to create buzz in the past. That is no longer going to be tolerated, and as quiet as its being kept, "something" will be greyed out for him in April of 2023.

‘Star Trek’ Sequel Removed by Paramount From Upcoming Film Slate

Paramount has removed its untitled "Star Trek" sequel from its slate. The entry was slated to release in 2023, but lost director Matt Shakman in August.

variety.com

 

[Joelist]

Bad Robot has a "sell by date" and based on some developments it looks like some of the major studios are starting to notice that Bad Robot is more about trying to enrich Bad Robot than it is about successfully executing contracts.

 

[YJ02]

S2 Teaser trailer released today

good news= klingon appearance issue fixed. bad news? its STILL a problem

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN-d7dHNDqo

 

[Joelist]

Yes these Klingons look better. But the unprofessional dialogue issue persists.

 

[YJ02]

Yes these Klingons look better. But the unprofessional dialogue issue persists.

the Klingons are still wrong though, per canon

they are supposed to look like TOS Klingons-- you know, suave ,Mediterranean types from SoCal with an attitude of course

Unless the show is going to introduce what had to have been a 'thing' for the Klingons- a period of time when both types of Klingons existed, while they generationally aged out of the effects of the Augment Virus. Or got reconstructive surgery. Younger Klingons with brow ridges as well as the other TOS types

I think that would be interesting to see a Klingon Empire where both of these existed

 

[Shadow Mann]

What I still can't figure out, is how come Spock is surprised that the Romulans look like Vulcans? Shouldn't that be common knowledge on Vulcan that there was a group that split off from their own to form a new colony with their own morals? And all that time "no one had ever seen a Romulan". I just can't buy it.

Yes on all of this Lord Ba'al!. These flubs are why I am so hard on NuTrek. They are all over the place and unavoidable. It's just not Star Trek to me, and it is not good enough for me to manufacture head canon to make it seem to make sense.

 

[Joelist]

Hi ShadowMann!

The flub Ba'al is mentioning is actually in Classic Trek episode Balance of Terror. It's been a running joke in Trek fandom for decades.

 

[Shadow Mann]

Rh

Hi ShadowMann!

The flub Ba'al is mentioning is actually in Classic Trek episode Balance of Terror. It's been a running joke in Trek fandom for decades.

Thanks for the clarification!

 

[Lord Ba'al]

So, Strange New Worlds is back. One episode so far. I wasn't really blown away by it. Compared to season 3 of Picard, this was honestly kinda weak. But there is more to come and it's better than nothing.