Gimpdiggity
Master Member
But that wouldn’t allow any needless “this isn’t what I wanted” posts!!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
- Thread starter Noeland
- Start date
Whoof. Dismissive much? I'm just saying when they're bending over backward to convince us this is in the same universe as TOS, even though it damn well isn't, at least a cursory adherence to established lore might be nice. It was a significant plot point in "Amok Time" that they hadn't seen each other since they were [more than] betrothed as children -- and certainly weren't actively involved prior to the 2260s, when she broke it off. Later, they establish that the pon farr is every seven years of an adult Vulcan's life, so one wonders what Spock did prior to that event, when his blood fever -- that he'd hoped to avoid by dint of his half-Human heritage -- compelled him to return to Vulcan and consummate that childhood connection. I am a Trekkie, and as adept at rationalizing as anyone when the writers goof on their lore/homework, but when an entire series from its conception, casting, and production design contradicts lore...? While professing not to...? Well... *gestures at the next bit*
What I want is irrelevant. That ship is more than twenty years sailed. I want quality content and intelligent writing that doesn't rely on Idiot Plot to advance the story. I want well-written characters I at least like. I want the showrunners to not pander to the lowest common denominator, and I want them to actually pay attention to what came before when they're professing to be setting stories amid what came before. I desperately have wanted to like everything from Enterprise on. But I have been disappointed over and over by hollow lip-service, callbacks, empty fan-service easter eggs, and tossing the entire body of work from 1965 to 2000 in the woodchipper while saying they're respecting it and the fans.
When I am baffled by people liking Discovery and Picard and, now, Strange New Worlds, I am not attacking or being contrarian because things are not "just so" -- not matching some impossible panglossian mental ideal... I genuinely do not understand how thinking, intelligent people, whom I respect in just about every other capacity, on here and IRL, can watch stuff that is bad television, as exhaustively deconstructed here and elsewhere, and worse Star Trek, ditto, and come away thinking it is, in fact, a worthy successor. MattMunson has said that he likes it -- with the caveat that he's abandoned original Trek as lost and gone forever, and this is all there is, so he might as well accept it. But I know some people who like the older stuff and this newer stuff the same and I do not get it. I am genuinely, truly, gobsmackedly, brain-breakingly buffaloed.
Heck, from this first episode, when you can ask "Why didn't they leave one person on the ship?" and solve the problem before it happened, you'd think these highly trained professionals would have figured that out in one or another First Contact situation that had gone sideways over the last century and a half. That's not nitpicking. That's a shining example of Idiot Plot. Yes, there were moments I liked. Same with Picard. Same with Discovery. Same with Enterprise. Same with Trek09, Into Darkness, and Beyond. But they were few and fleeting. The reverse of my experience with everything from TOS through... Well... Deep Space Nine, anyway. Voyager was flawed from the get-go, but I still at least half liked it. I can (and have) go on for pages on why everything for the last couple decades has been objectively bad writing and subjectively terrible Star Trek, with multitudes of data points to back up my assertions. I'm not some pimply basement virgin bitching on the internet because the new show doesn't hit my fanboy G-spot.
ScourgiousJinx
Master Member
Although I do agree that rampant negativity can get tiresome in these threads especially when no reason is given or when people are repeating themselves ad nauseam, I really don't think that any of the negative posts since the show premiered were needless or in particularly bad taste. Just my thoughts.
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Gimpdiggity
Master Member
Here’s an idea…stop worrying about what other people like.
Seriously, you’re “genuinely, truly, gobsmackedly, brain-breakingly buffaloed” because people like both? That’s just sad…and weird. Nobody needs a reason to like two different things. At the end of the day, Star Trek is a form of entertainment, and if someone can be entertained by both old and new, then why are you even trying to figure that out?
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Because one pile of continuity is mostly good (or at least above-average) and one pile of continuity is mostly bad (or at least below-average). Both subjectively and objectively. I like to understand. I want to understand. I could understand liking both differently, as completely separate things -- one is thought-provoking sci-fi, usually, and the other is prime-time melodrama in space (where continuity is for wussies). I got no problem with people liking both Yentl and UHF, Little Big Man and Strange Brew... I would also never expect people to equate them, and that's what I see happening with a subset of old and new Trek viewers/fans.
I think my biggest grump is that I could probably accept it more if they acknowledged they were pulling a post-Disney Lucasfilm and nullifying all that came before Enterprise and are creating a new Star Trek universe (which Enterprise and the films that followed are, despite feeble ties to the old canon). And then setting that one to one side to basically reboot Star Trek in the TOS era and go from there. By making the claim with Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Picard that they're part of the 1965-2000 Trek canon, they're trying to make something that doesn't fit... fit. I can't just go, "Welp, I guess everything I saw and everything I read for the last forty-mumble years was just wrong, silly me," and gobble up new content that clashes with all that lore I've internalized since I was in single digits. When with every single episode, I find myself going at least once, "Wait -- that's not...," it tends to kick me out of the experience whether I want it to or not. Not leaving someone on the ship to beam them up in case something goes wrong, Spock and T'Pring having any contact between their mind-linking at age seven and what was supposed to be their wedding in their thirties... Never mind the ongoing matter of the ship, the uniforms, the sets, etc.
Ultimately, I'd rather they had just gone full Orville and created an entirely new sci-fi prime-time melodrama and not even tried to make it Star Trek. It would still have Idiot Plot problems and questionable continuity and internal logic, but at least it wouldn't keep constantly clashing with established lore that they insist this fits within. But yes, it bothers me that lifelong Star Trek fans, in many cases since the '60s and '70s, seem just fine with this, while others (including me) are wildly not. It's one thing to disagree on whether "Spock's Brain" was a good episode, but this is miles beyond that, and I cannot reconcile both viewpoints being factually correct (beyond subjective likes). It's like when a friend I thought I knew and understood mentions they love a movie that I and many people utterly revile -- except that, in this case, it's people who share a decades long love of and appreciation for at least most things Star Trek that I thought we generally agreed on.
And to think this started with me objecting to Spock and T'Pring being together when they weren't in the original lore -- that the showrunners say they're hewing to. A lot of this could've been avoided if they'd just say it's a do-over and everything we thought we knew is up for grabs. I felt so awkward listening to Keith de Candido talking about it, citing specifically, the "previously on Star Trek" bit from Discovery where we got a recap of the events of "The Cage" and then it "continued" with a dissolve to Anson's Pike and this new Enterprise, and most of the room applauded. Where I'd always felt at home among Trek fans, now I felt like an outsider, because everyone was just blithely accepting this blatant contradiction. It does not, to me, make sense. And I want it to make sense. Sorry for believing internal consistency is important in fictional universes for them to have any real staying power.
Lightning
Master Member
Miri
Spock says they were betrothed at 7, he never says they never saw each other again. Fans saw the picture of young T'Pring and made an assumption. He certainly has no trouble recognizing adult T'Pring.
I know it's annoying having long standing fan assumptions changed, but it's often (I won't say always) an improvement since the fans always draw a straight line between two points. The less obvious conclusion adds more complexity to the universe, which is more realistic.
Boba Debt
Master Member
Miri????
It was a common trope in the Original Series that the Enterprise would arrive on a planet that was almost exactly like Earth, just a bit different here or there. In Miri, they find a society that was 20th c Eart but died twenty years ago. In Patterns of Force, the two worlds resemble Nazi Germany (although this was explained as the result of contamination). In Bread and Circuses, the Enterprise finds a world that's 20th C Earth where the Roman Empire didn't fall.
It may be a bit absurd, but it's been a mainstay of Star Trek since the 60s. Same thing with leaving the ship almost empty of senior officers. In almost all the episodes of the original series, the bridge is manned by the D team, while the whole senior staff goes on adventures. These types of absurdities are part and parcel of Trek, old and new.
Referencing the TOS Episode “Miri”, which location shooting was the 40 Acres backlot
Cephus
Master Member
If they'd stop screwing up, there wouldn't be negative posts, would there? There wouldn't be criticism.
Gimpdiggity
Master Member
So we go full circle to my original post that you quoted…you’re unhappy because it’s not what you want.
NakedMoleRat
Legendary Member
This makes me believe two things about the creative team on new Trek.
1. They heard our complaints about Discovery and Picard, how crappy they are, that we don’t like them, it’s not the Trek we want.
2. In their arrogance, they won’t fix them and admit that they were wrong, giving us something we didn’t want, instead they give us a new series that is what we were after.
So, basically… Thank you…
Jerks.
1. They heard our complaints about Discovery and Picard, how crappy they are, that we don’t like them, it’s not the Trek we want.
2. In their arrogance, they won’t fix them and admit that they were wrong, giving us something we didn’t want, instead they give us a new series that is what we were after.
So, basically… Thank you…
Jerks.
Lightning
Master Member
My not quite so cynical take on that:
That told us from the beginning that they wanted all the trek series to have their own feel. That was to try and avoid the burnout of the 90's where TNG, VGR, and Ent had basically the same feel dispite the deferent premises.
While Discovery and Picard both have problems with writing, the series have very different feels. They also do have fans, so there's no reason to overhaul them.
The classic trek formula was always going to be one of the new series, and here we are.
Also, waiting to do classic style trek may have been deliberate, because we are saying how much better it is than Discovery, and a return to form, instead of how different it is from classic trek, as we would if SNW was the first series in 2017. I mean, they redesigned the ship and most of us can live with it.
NakedMoleRat
Legendary Member
Cynical? So an opinion thats different than yours is cynical? Noted for future reference.
robn1
Master Member
So they had to make a few years of crap to make the mediocre show look good.
Lightning
Master Member
Sorry, that wasn't meant as an insult. It's just that ascribing "can't admit they are wrong" as a motive rather than "making varied shows" can't really be described as anything but cynical.
Picard102
Sr Member
Was it? I can't find any transcripts that specify that in that episode.
1138sw
Sr Member
LOL
I think the word you want is, "rampant."
Picard102
Sr Member
It is like talking with a wall to be fair. lol
