For those of you who have watched the newer Star Trek shows and movies, meaning everything since Enterprise, help predict if I am likely to enjoy the new stuff. Here are some of the reasons I enjoyed the older Trek. The question is whether or not the new stuff keeps these general themes going.
Unlike almost all other sci-fi shows, Trek depicts a humanity that is both enlightened and powerful enough to hold their own against the various villains without having to become bad guys. At least except for one small occasion when Sisko and Garak did a certain Romulan senator dirty, which I can overlook.
The characters are almost all both interesting and good people, with the only boring ones being most of the Voyager crew (The Doctor and 7 saved that series). There weren’t any major interpersonal conflicts among the main characters that I can recall, with even Quark and Odo having more of a friendly rivalry than any kind of actual hatred towards each other. They also didn’t go around killing off characters just to move the plot forward.
And of course, in the end things always worked out for our heroes. The Dominion and Borg are defeated. Voyager makes it home. The main characters don’t live happily ever after, because nobody does, but they do live and they are happy.
Oh, and despite various episodes of time travel and mirror universes, there was basically only one Trek universe.
What happened? J.J. Abrams made a movie that featured the near wiping out of the Romulans (who by that point were on their way to becoming Federation style enlightened) and made two separate timelines, each of which had to be kept up with separately and which seem to share events between them even while still being separate.
Have the shows and movies since redeemed Trek to what it used to be before Abrams got a hold of it? Given what I’ve laid out about what I like and don’t like, am I likely to enjoy the newer stuff?
Well, The Lower Decks is great. but I’m not sure it’s really Star Trek. Strange New Worlds is very watchable, especially for the true fans who can catch all the timeline references. Discovery is inane, but has some good stories and characters.
I thought that Picard was unmemorable, but I still watched it.
Completely agreed. I’m most of the way through Season 1, and I’ve enjoyed every single episode so far.
Also agreed; it’s absolutely an homage to TNG. When it started, I figured it would be more of a comedy than it turned out to be (given it’s a Seth MacFarlane project); as it turned out, there are some very serious episodes in there.
Based on your comments, Discovery is almost certainly out. It spends far too much time trying to be grimdark and morally compromised. Yes, it changed somewhat in later seasons but not in a way I was interested in either.
Picard is also more dark and compromised, although less flat out weird IMHO, but I didn’t manage to force myself through the first season. It was very much a Highlander 2 of a series for me, making what went before worse by virtue of it’s tainting all who went before. But that’s me, still based on your criterea, probably a hard pass.
Lower Decks is just plain FUN, but it’s also full of Starfleet being bumbling normal people. Which, well, actually makes sense. TOS had plenty of captains that didn’t live up to the ideals of Starfleet after all! So if you don’t make it to the flagship, it makes sense that you’ll have a few (or more than a few) loveable screwups at all levels of the ship. So if you want uplifting, maybe avoid, but otherwise enjoy it as a loving send up of Trek by Trekkies and for Trekkies.
I have heard wonderful things about Strange New Worlds but at this time don’t have a streaming option that carries it, so it’s waiting for around my B-day where I tread myself to a season on DVD/Bluray.
If you tuned into Picard in Season 1 and didn’t like it, I think you ought to give Season 3 a shot. It works fairly well without the rest—I never felt lost at all. And it was very enjoyable. It is what the TNG movies should have been.
But the main series I recommend for you? Star Trek Prodigy. It’s on Neftlix now. And it really does a good job of pushing the ideals of the Federation—just by showing it to people who have never heard of the Federation.
I think a lot of people missed it because it’s officially a kids’ show. But it gets Star Trek–even if it does like to have a bit of spectacle, taking advantage of the CGI.
Strange New Worlds is excellent. Best new Trek thing in probably decades.
Discovery came out of the gate with some promise, but it devolved rapidly into twisty-turny-SF-adventure-ride pretty fast, and I gave up on it. Dipped back in occasionally to see if it continued to be terrible, and it had gotten worse. There’s barely any Trek there; it could be literally any cheap, stupid SyFy series. “And then this happens! and then this happens! and you won’t believe what happens next!” If you’re trying to keep me engaged with plot-twist adrenaline rushes, you aren’t making Trek.
Picard was even worse. Just unwatchable horseshit. Wants to be fan service but can’t pull it off. The less said about it the better. Utter dreck.
Stick with Strange New Worlds. Not every episode is a winner, but the hit rate is incredible.
They even did a crossover episode on Strange New Worlds where Lower Decks characters come into the New Worlds universe. Fun episode (“Those Old Scientists” from season 2).
One note on Strange New Worlds — a couple of the main characters were introduced on Discovery and then carried into SNW essentially as a spinoff. For this reason, episode one of SNW’s first season has a lot of flashbacks and narrative housekeeping that deals with the backstory being brought over; it’s clumsy and unwieldy and it’ll make you think we’re all nuts for raving about the show. Have no fear, that first episode is an outlier. They deal with that stuff mostly as an obligation, and then they handwave it and in the second episode they get down to the business of making a traditional episodic Trek show. So don’t judge SNW by its pilot.
Just before the start of S2 on Paramount (about a year ago?) they had all of S1 available on YouTube. That’s where we watched it, because we don’t have a subscription to Paramount. Not sure if S1 is still on YouTube or if that was just a limited time thing.
I liked Strange New Worlds enough that I seriously considered signing up for Paramount, but we’re already subscribed to more streaming services than we can watch.
I am not a fan of Dicsovery - but the episodes with Pike were fantastic and worth watching.
If you can eliminate one charector from Discovery and elevate a second - it becomes a relatively good series - my main issue is that while they do alot of great episodes, when they try and tie it together for the season finale, they kinda blow it. Well, not kinda - they throw every torpedo they have at it.
As for Picard - The first few episodes of season 1 were fantastic - ties a few things together, and then it falters badly - similarly for season 2. Season 3, however, kicks it out of the park.
So - like all trek - there are good/bad and ugly in every series - and I still can’t seem to get thru any of Prodigy…
I pretty much agree with all the comments about the new shows. I had given up on Discovery after the first season, and then went back and watched the second season because I heard that some of it set up the characters for Strange New Worlds. Then I watched the first episode of season three of Discovery and gave up on it again.
You don’t really have to keep up with two timelines. The alternate universe is only in the three movies. The destruction of Romulus is in the main universe.
Season One on Blueray is just shy of $30 on Amazon, less than $20 for DVD. It’s on my wish list.
Now I -know- of places I can get it on the internet, but I have my pride (and no wish to fall afoul of the various illegalities).
Minor quibble though with Discovery - yes, every series has good and bad episodes, from TOS on down. But Discovery (Seaons 1 & 2 which I made it through) didn’t ever feel like Star Trek. Oh, it had the names, and the setting, but it was a complete departure tonally and morally from everything else. Again, way too much effort on being super serious to the point of grimdark most of the time.
It absolutely had moments where it was brilliant almost in spite of itself, but based on the OP criteria, it misses everything they enjoyed in earlier series.
I’ll contrast it with Enterprise, for which I have a bemused love of. Enterprise was an epic bag of win, lose, and WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?, but probably because of it’s format, captured the essence of TOS more than anything since (possible exception for Prodigy, which I haven’t seen yet). Well, at least until it also went sideways with the whole “Earth is going to be destroyed, we may have to compromise our morals for an entire season”.