Now see, if they’d had Jokester Data drop that pun right before the credits rolled, I’d have forgiven the whole thing.
Now see, if they’d had Jokester Data drop that pun right before the credits rolled, I’d have forgiven the whole thing.
I thought the crossover element of Generations really brought it down. The original cast had a far better farewell in Star Trek VI, and I don’t think the writers of Generations had enough to say about Kirk’s character to justify the tortured story logic that brought him in.
Give me a Kirkless cut and I’ll be so much happier. All the pure TNG elements work fine for me, McDowell is great, and the D looks beautiful with cinematic lighting.
I was raised a Trekkie, can’t rightly say what my first contact was. My earliest memory of it was me expressing a preference for “the one with Spock” over TNG, the only other option at the time.
Canon is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Canon is a pretty flower… which smells bad.
The distinction is lost on me, but cheers.
I like to think that, whatever it is that earns O’Brien that distinction, it had already happened by the end of DS9. Probably some technical wizardry he came up with while hacking together Cardassian and Federation technology. Just something he did to get the job done, but that would be fully appreciated as a genius piece of work with huge applicability sometime well after his death.
Picard is super relevant, though. If we’re talking about an alternate reality where Picard S3 never happened, then yeah, I’d agree that complaints about nostalgia are a little over blown. I don’t see why that would be a discussion worth having, though. Picard did happen, and so did a whole lot of discussion about a possible Legacy show, and if you’re wondering why you hear complaints about nostalgia, that’s a big part of why.
That’s not the entirety of it, though. Outside of Picard, I’ll say that Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks absolutely trade heavily in nostalgia. I can’t agree with your view that either don’t count. Having a fresh style doesn’t change the fact that SNW is set on the classic Enterprise and is continuing to introduce more and more classic Trek characters. And Lower Decks built a whole episode around the reuse of a specific cave set from TNG, of all things. A huge amount of its humour and appeal is definitely based in nostalgia.
I will say that it looks like Starfleet Academy on a good course to do it’s own thing, Picardo notwithstanding, so I’m not saying the franchise has gone completely bankrupt or anything. I just think there’s enough nostalgia going around that it’s pretty valid to feel a little put off by it if one is so inclined.
It’s more about the trajectory of nuTrek than the whole of it. Discovery and the first two seasons of Picard did try to do new things and move the franchise in new directions, but now Discovery is cancelled in favour of SNW and Picard season 3 discarded so much the first two seasons had done in order to dive into nostalgia hard - and its success led to a lot of speculation about a “Star Trek Legacy” series that would double down on the fanservice approach even further. So it does feel like there’s a trend towards “safer” nostalgic content.
And sometimes even fairly minor things just rub me the wrong way, like the Daniels reveal in Discovery. They just feel so arbitrary, and make the universe feel so mush smaller for no purpose.
If anyone earned their retirement, it’s Miles O’Brien. Maybe he could show up for one scene, where he lets the rest of the team know that, just like Wolverine did in First Class.
Last season’s Charades also supports the genetically encoded notion. Which goes against everything we know about Vulcans, but makes for fun comedic episodes, so they’re probably going to just keep doing it. Psychosomatic is as good an explanation as any.
I agree completely, and it really didn’t help that they introduced him in an episode that took place during an alternate version of the TOS timeframe. I can deal with him as a younger Kirk, but as a version of Kirk in his prime? No way.
In 1997 adding a sexy Borg crew member to Voyager reeked of desperation. But the writers actually gave a shit and whoever was in charge of casting took the time to find someone who could actually act, so in the end Seven Of Nine became one of the best things to come out of Voyager (nevermind the cringe worthy marketing and costume).
End of the day, I don’t care about the mental state of the exec signing off on an idea, because even a bad one can turn out good with the right talent. And I don’t see why Star Trek as a teen drama is a bad idea. Star Trek can work with all sorts of genres, and we’ve still got SNW holding down the fort as the old school exploration series.
It’s weird. It’s a weird show. It doesn’t fit in. And it doesn’t want to fit in.
Seemed like the best reference as a notoriously bad teen drama. That doesn’t mean I didn’t watch every episode. It’s fabulously, gloriously bad. Anything else I could name would be mediocre at most.
Not every teen drama is Riverdale. No idea if this show will be any good, but there’s nothing wrong with the premise.
Fascinating! It would be illuminating to see this broken up by season as well. Seven of Nine’s relatively low ratio, for instance, can definitely be attributed to her late arrival to the series. In the latter seasons, I suspect her percentage could be rivalling Janeway’s.
Conversely, it’s impressive Lorca ranks as highly as he does, given he was gone by the end of Disco season one. But since he was simultaneously captain and antagonist while he was around, I guess it isn’t that surprising.
All fair, and I appreciate how much you’re trying to avoid Trekkie infighting in this thread. I’m not always so conscientious about that, but it is, after all, just a TV show.
I’ve seen this complaint a lot with some of the newer shows, but it doesn’t really resonate with me. A good central character ought to be able to carry a show, and I don’t hold Trek as being inherently different in that regard. In fact, I think the original series would have been an example of a show like that if Spock’s popularity hadn’t been taken into consideration by later writers. Even then, I believe it would have a pretty low “pass” rate compared to all the '90s series.
(Incidentally, since Burnham wasn’t Captain until season 4, Discovery passes on a technicality for most of its run).
I’m rewatching season 3 now, and the themes of trauma and mental health are so pervasive that I think it was really appropriate that the burn would be the result of a mental health crisis in one way or another. In that context, I think putting a face to it works. The “Force of Nature” or old-school Borg route could work great, but for a different show/season.
I grew up with this variation on my C64. Good times. https://gaming.trekcore.com/startrekc64-1/
I’ve also come across this mashup with 25th Anniversary, which looks like great fun: https://emabolo.itch.io/super-star-trek-25th