The general feeling toward Strange New Worlds’ third season has certainly been more tepid than the previous two. And while everyone rushes to give their opinion as to why, there’s a common theme developing that concerns me. Namely, a lot of blame is being placed on the more comedic episodes of this season, to the extent that it’s possible the series showrunners felt need to provide some reassurance. An interview over at Cinemablend has co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers promising the season four will be the show’s “best work,” but also that—
“I think that we’re probably a little more serious in four[…]”
Mr. Myers, say it ain’t so.
In fairness, the majority of the interview reasserts that “genre-hopping” will still occur, and that the showrunners themselves thought any unevenness in the current season could be attributed to the various Hollywood strikes occurring while they were attempting to get season three made. But that interests me far less than how quick viewers were to jump on comedy being the culprit in Strange New Worlds’ series woes.
We’ve come back to this old fight, I see.
It’s no secret that plenty of fans don’t like it when Star Trek gets “goofy.” In many minds, a science fiction series that takes itself seriously has no business engaging in shenanigans (or hijinks, as T’Pring would have it) of any kind. When Trek goes off the rails or jumps that shark, their socialist utopian future is giving up a little of its hard-won pedigree, as it were.
I’m no big fan of pedigree in general, but I would like to point out that this take is flagrantly subjective and equally “goofy.” Many of Trek’s most famous and beloved episodes are among its silliest, and it’s not reasonable to expect a series that used to run 22-plus episode seasons to have morality plays and deep thoughts aplenty every single episode. Pretending that comedy brings Star Trek down is akin to claiming that a key spice is ruining the flavor of a dish; you may not like the amount of said spice, the flavor balance overall, but you cannot make the soup without it.
Volume would seem to be part of the complaint on many-a-viewer’s lips—the Cinemablend piece linked above specifically notes that season three contains three lighter-leaning episodes, making up nearly a third of the season’s ten-episode run. Too many, it would seem. But I’ll cry foul on this one: To start, that was the same number as last season (“Charades,” “Those Old Scientists,” and “Subspace Rhapsody”). So if you enjoyed season two, you’re misplacing your ire.
But when we get into successful Star Trek seasons in general, “more than a quarter, less than a third” is a good rule on lighter episodes. For example, take the Original Series itself, and its highly successful second season. Of a 26-episode run, I count at least seven comedic/lighter stories (sorry, “Catspaw” counts, it’s a flipping Halloween episode). That’s 26.9%, or 27% rounded up. Only a few points shy of Strange New Worlds’ 30%, notably. And, perhaps even more relevant, the third season of the Original Series is counted as dismal fare overall by even the most devoted Trek fans. You know how many comedic episodes that season had? Zero.
Unless we’re counting “Spock’s Brain” as intentionally comedic. Which… we can if we must, I suppose.
The truth of the trouble is, there are several points working against Strange New Worlds in its basic construction, and these problems were always bound to creep up as time wore on. The first and most egregious culprit: It simply doesn’t have enough episodes.
Star Trek: Discovery, the initial salvo in Trek’s resurgence on television, started out with 15-episode seasons. This is a great sweet spot, one that sits between what we had in classic series, and what we’re currently getting. Lower Decks capped out at 13 episodes per season, which isn’t ideal, but still better than Strange New Worlds, and the more typical episode run in our age of streaming TV. Prodigy gave us whopping 20-episode seasons, and managed to do more in its limited run that most of the shows getting a “full” five seasons. (Bring us back to seven seasons, I beg you.)
Star Trek: Picard only had 10-episode seasons, and you could argue that it worked to the show’s detriment, particularly where its new characters were concerned. But even that’s not a fair comparison to what’s happening with Strange New Worlds—why? Because that series was focused on one of the most beloved characters in Star Trek’s history, a man with more narrative attached to his name than nearly any other, the eponymous Jean-Luc Picard. The show also worked under the auspices of arc-based television, meaning that those 10 episodes were intended to tell a complete story; not so with SNW’s episodic plots.
By the time Strange New Worlds ends—don’t forget, the final season is set give audiences just six episodes—it will only truly have two seasons worth of episodes when comparing it to Trek as we knew it. An entire series comprised of 46 stories. There are only three shorter Trek series: Prodigy, unceremoniously cancelled before it could prove its mettle; the Animated Series, made to bank on audience fervor in the wake of TOS’ cancellation, and thought of by many as an extension of the Original Series itself; and Picard, which was never intended to be a full series, and only went on as long as its leading man was interested in going along for the ride. Is it any wonder that we’re feeling cheated already?
Season three of Strange New Worlds isn’t working for many fans because we’re being given mid-series story arcs without the amount of narrative needed to back those arcs up. Spock’s we’re-not-labelling-it romance with La’an? It’s adorable, but it does seem to spring out of nowhere, founded entirely on the actors’ incredible work in their dance sequences. Actors Ethan Peck and Christina Chong are forced to sell the relationship on chemistry alone with absolutely no buildup—audiences can fill in the gaps, but the gaps we got used to be far smaller than these. As a result, it makes Spock appear either confused or kinda fickle, and vaults right over the steps La’an needed to take in order to be ready for a relationship. (The woman who sang “How Would That Feel” literally five episodes previous is not there yet! It’s only been a few months since then!)
How about Pike and Batel’s partnership speedrun and tearful goodbye? Marie was never much of a fan favorite as a character (and some of the reasons here are complicated, but plenty of them are rooted in weird sexist ideas about who is the right match for Captain Papa Hair Wax), but the choice to have her essentially give up her life to be a time guardian against Ultimate Evil is… it’s just bad, y’all. Particularly when she argues that she never fit anywhere since she was saved from being a Gorn incubator, when she literally nabbed her dream job two episodes previous. And the lifetime-in-a-bottle sequence that we’re supposed to mourn over? Sorry, Farscape and The Magicians did it better—and plenty of other series besides, including TNG’s eternally famous “The Inner Light.”
You know what might have helped? Seeing this relationship bloom over three full seasons of television. It’s difficult to focus on the tragedy of Pike and Batel not getting their rote, highly abridged, extremely heteronormative lifetime—their daughter is gonna marry Admiral April’s son? really?? you had no other ideas?—when we’ve barely seen them together as a couple, and any depth to their partnership only got focus in this season.
How about Erica Ortega’s difficulty adjusting back into her job after almost being murdered by a Gorn at the start of the season? Hate to say this, but it’s hard to care much about that arc when we don’t really have a full picture of Erica as a person. Melissa Navia is one of the most charming actors on the show, hands down, but what do we actually know about Erica? That she’s great at her job, likes pranks, and loves to razz people. That’s about it. (Oh, and that she’s a bit, uh, xenophobic when compared to her companions, which is awkward as hell, particularly when the show doesn’t address it much.) There’s plenty we can guess at, but again, when it comes to on-screen development, we’ve been given practically nothing. When we finally get something real juicy—like La’an killing Erica’s new Gorn friend, assuming her to be a threat to Erica’s life in a moment of split-second trauma-backed terror—the complexity of that pain is mentioned, but not truly explored.
Which brings us to another problem that Strange New Worlds is uniquely poised to drown under: It wants to be a show that plucks at that nostalgia harp every chance it gets, while also offering something sexy, bright, and new. The result is a lot of confusion around who should be getting focus in the series: while the show has a better female main character cast balance than nearly all Trek shows on record, it’s clear that there’s some fear around spending too much time with those characters in favor of Pike and Spock (and now Scotty and Kirk).
For the record, I’m not one of the fans who gets annoyed every time dear ol’ Jim shows up—I think he should, much in the same way Doctor McCoy is constantly on the bridge of the Enterprise when he has absolutely no reason to be. I want to watch Kirk and Spock flirt bond at every available opportunity, and have enjoyed most of the choices SNW makes in filling in the edges of well-known and beloved characters. But this confusion means that I’m not getting enough of either the newer characters or the legacy ones. It results in a lot of uncomfortable storytelling choices; ones where characters make decisions too quickly to understand their motivations or changes of heart; ones where female characters get plenty of screentime, but none of the depth that their male counterparts receive; ones where bioessentialism paints entire species with crude brushes without a second thought.
And again, the answer is simple: Give us more.
I know more about Deanna Troi than I may ever know about Una Chin-Riley because despite being far less central to Next Generation’s overall narrative, I’ve spent days, weeks even, with the counselor. That’s how much narrative space she takes up. Television has forgotten that much of our love of the medium was born of time, plain and endless. The glimmer of prestige led streamers to copy television formats with powerful arcs and singular narratives when most of the allure TV used to provide was company.
What Strange New Worlds has accidentally proven is that you can’t have “episodic” TV without a whole lot of episodes. It would be nice if someone holding the cash at Paramount realized it, and finally gave us back what we’ve all been missing.
Lots of food for thought. I’ve been trying to pin down my own reactions to the season, and I think you’ve touched on some of the points I’ve been struggling with. And I also agree with the overall sentiment. It’s hard to buy some of these character arcs when they have to rush things because of a low episode count. But I think it’s also a matter of consistency. As you mentioned, Batel getting a dream job and then saying she never quite fit in.
Speaking of, one thing jumped out at me. Was there really a significant dislike for Batel? I don’t think I had run into much of that at all, surprisingly. And I thought they were fine together.
My issue with Batel goes back to the time problem. As the post points out, we don’t have enough Ortegas. We don’t really know Una. So why do we need to add a new character to the mix? (see also Ortegas’ brother).
To be fair, if SNW’s goal is to evoke the storytelling style of TOS, then giving more development to the guest stars than the supporting regulars is one way to do that. Sulu and Uhura didn’t even get first names until decades after the fact.
This made me think, please don’t interpret this ramble as specifically aimed at you lol.
For me at least, it’s not that I dislike her, she just feels like the easiest of one too many characters that could be dropped. Pike has plenty to complicate him why does he need this romance with another captain, which also might be part of it, no other captains that I can think of successfully have romances beyond an episode dalliance. They all end up prioritizing the ship and crew in their own ways. I think it maybe what it is, is that it takes up space where we could see the captain spending time with his crew. I haven’t gotten through season 3 yet but even in the previous seasons it felt like they didn’t always contain/focus the stories to the ship’s crew very well. That’s why Kirk irks me, not a bad idea but again, he’s another character and not on the enterprise manifest yet! Kirk is more relevant, but both of them, and April, give us more about a character or two’s relationship with someone who isn’t a main character in the crew, which means we are loosing an opportunity to instead learn more about the crew and their dynamics with each other. If we had longer seasons it would probably be fine! Same with Spock and T’Pring, to some degree, though that is mediated by the way it interacts with Chapel as well. By focusing on main characters relationships, especially romantic, with those not on the Enterprise, it pulls us out of the social/physical constraints of them being on a ship which seemingly should be driving the stories. Luxwanna Troi visiting works *because* Picard is stuck dealing with Deanna’s mom visiting, which Deanna is also dealing with! So is Riker! And even Worf and Alexander! She affects everyone or at least several people! Same with Harvey Mudd! Batel and April impact Pike, and their impacts on the rest of the crew are constrained due to rank and the risk of consequences for insubordination, which is highly salient. T’Pring impacts Spock and somewhat Chapel really. Kirk at least has the potential to interact with most of the crew. And again, with more episodes I really don’t think I’d mind, it’s just there’s so few it comes at the cost of seeing the main characters personal plots be more related to each other because they are turning to each other as they navigate life.
“no other captains that I can think of successfully have romances beyond an episode dalliance.”
Captain Sisko had a long-term romance with Kasidy Yates, as did Captain Burnham with Cleveland Booker. Captain Freeman of Lower Decks was married.
And since when was it wrong to try something different from what’s been done before? On paper, back in the ’60s, Captain Kirk was literally just Captain Pike with his name changed, the differences being solely in the actors’ performances. But in bringing Pike back as a regular character, they had to find ways to differentiate him from Kirk. Putting him in a steady relationship is one way to do that.
This is something I’ve been noticing a lot of, especially when rewatching older shows that are both episodic and serial. Babylon 5, or example, has stand-alone episodes which often move the overall arc along, but which also often feel like filler. As if the writer(s) needed to fill time with a B plot (or, often, an A plot) that could have been cut so that they can make the 20-24 episodes they need for the season. “Gray 17 Is Missing” was 50% really good, and 50% fast forward through it to get to the good parts, for example. BtVS had this problem too.
15 episodes per season might be the sweet spot for a lot of shows.
I hate the idea of “filler episodes,” because it mistakenly assumes that the only thing that has value is advancing an overall series arc. The connections between episodes are meaningless if the episodes they connect aren’t worthwhile in themselves. The priority should be to make each single episode a satisfying story in itself, whether or not it connects to anything else — for instance, nobody would ever say that “The City on the Edge of Forever” or “The Inner Light.” was mere filler. The interconnections and arcs that tie episodes together should exist to support the episodes, not the other way around.
The only thing that should really be called a “filler” episode is a mediocre or weak story that has few merits and was mainly just made because the production needed to slot something into the schedule. There are certainly episodes of Babylon 5 and TNG and other such shows that fit that description (e.g. “Gray 17 is Missing” or “Shades of Gray”), but it is wrong to say that every non-arc episode of B5 is filler, because its original approach was to be an episodic show with serial elements, with the serialization becoming more prominent as it went on, but never to the total exclusion of episodic storytelling. No self-contained episode is filler if it’s a good story in its own right.
Very much agree and this is really a problem in Anime and I think a larger problem of prioritizing “plot” over character development and simply allowing us to get to know the characters.
I’d argue (politely), that a big part of the iyashikei (literally ‘soothing’) sub-genre of anime is exactly that: allowing us to sit with the characters and learn about them, what they have been struggling with for so long and how that struggle has effected them and why they are now ready to accept other people and their help to start moving out of those struggles.
As for the plot over-riding character development, I think that’s no small part of why I’ve been steadily less and less interested in the big, endless shonen series over the past several years or so. I’ve more than had my own fill of the plucky young lad that rises from a humble beginning to become the very best at/defeat whatever the biggest bad is this time, but then I’ve been watching watching anime for a long time now.
TL;DR: Maybe try watching some of the less hyped or talked about shows and see if they might appeal to you more. Maybe you’ll find something more satisfying. Or not, I don’t know your personal tastes and dislikes, after all, and free advice is worth what you pay for it, after all.
Tell that to Naruto.
Or Last Airbender.
Wholeheartedly agree. They can’t seem to find the balance between character-driven episodes, adventure episodes, and stories that further the season arc (not saying one episode can’t be all three, they just haven’t really been able to nail that). They’ll be focusing on one aspect, and then it feels like at the last second they’re like “oh yeah, we have to do this thing” and then rush through important stuff.
It also feels like they’re ignoring the show’s title, and are exploring very few “strange new worlds.” It’s frustrating, because I love everyone in the cast, and the show looks fantastic, but I want some crazy unknown sci-fi planets, damnit!
Finally, talking about other Trek shows, I actually think that Prodigy’s second season is one of the most consistently solid seasons of Trek ever. There was humor, action, heart, and some scary stuff (that even I was like, “damn, should kids be watching this?”), and at no point did I feel like I was watching a “filler” episode. Great show, gone too soon (and also one of the best theme songs!).
I think that they could have significantly improved things by just not having a season arc.
I really wanted more of the “We’ve lost contact with the colony on…” type of malarkey.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that Gene Roddenberry fired Gene Coon after only a year because he objected to the amount of humor that Coon brought to the show.
So the controversy over how much humor belongs in Star Trek goes back to the very beginning.
I absolutely agree! My only nitpick is that all five seasons of Lower Decks ran for ten episodes each, not 13.
The original series cared more about the sci-fi than any notion of long-winded character arcs. We learned stuff, sure, but in snippets and assumptions, rather than monologues. Likewise it would be hard to surprise a jaded contemporary audience the way A Taste of Armageddon did back in the day, but there are some remarkable short story authors out there who might have been up to the challenge.
And why didn’t they at least have a nod to nameless disposable landing party fellas? Otherwise we have to conclude that Kirk, when he came along, took some perverse delight in killing his crew off.
“The original series cared more about the sci-fi than any notion of long-winded character arcs.”
Rather, it cared about character arcs that could be told completely within one episode, like Charlie Evans trying and failing to adjust to being among other humans, or Matt Decker going Ahab on his white whale, or Kirk loving and losing Edith Keeler/Miramanee/Rayna. Before VCRs and consistently clear broadcast signals, there was no guarantee you’d get to see every episode of a show, so the preference was to approach dramas in an anthology-like way and focus on standalone stories. Serial storytelling did exist in soap operas and children’s shows, but on a simple, repetitive enough level that you wouldn’t lose too much if you missed an episode. So the perception of the relative intelligence of episodic vs. serial storytelling was the reverse of what it is today.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS SO MUCH THIS.
big long seasons of Star Trek allow us to get to know the characters in a way that lets us know what their normal is. We don’t just see them in the most bombastic premises, there’s a good chunk that are just fine. Not stellar, nor bad, just fine decent little stories. They’re often seen as fluff or filler, but in reality they’re also flesh on the bones of characters. Geordi and Data wouldn’t be nearly as effective as best friends if we didn’t see them in so many side activities. Luxwana troi would be far less entertaining if we didn’t see Picard day after day after day be thoughtful and orderly and reserved. Nor would we appreciate the joys of his excitement about archeology, or Riker’s trombone playing, or Beverly’s theatrical hobby. Would Guinan even work as a character in such a short season, she’d probably feel like a cliche. We wouldn’t have the Doctor singing opera, or Harry’s clarinet, and Tom Paris has majority character development in the slow gradual arcs possible of 20+ episode seasons. The captains’ affection for particular beverages wouldn’t be nearly as endearing! We can’t get to know the characters well enough for the emotional beats and rewards while doing episodic stories, unless we have more time with them. It also makes it significantly easier to just ignore and discard the bad eggs of the seasons, because one to two or 3 out of 22, gives enough material for us to counteract the implications for the characters and to recognize that it’s likely the inevitable miss. I think the horribly bio-essentialist episode wouldn’t sting so sharply if it weren’t a waste of one of only 10 episodes. It would suck, but we could ignore it’s existence more easily, because there’d be more material to define what strange new worlds is and who it’s characters are as people! All the older series have some genuinely bad episodes, like Geordi and the engineer he makes a holodeck version of and falls in love with. Any Chakotay romance where forget the main cast doesn’t have a good counterpart for him. Various TOS culture planet of the week that are weird and racist, or just whatever the hell Spock’s brain is. Longer seasons give room to correct for and counterbalance it in later episodes or the next season, or for characters to bring up all the stuff they’ve gone through as interpersonal c plot through lines. Even in the first two seasons, while I loved how much they hit it out of the park, exceptional doesn’t mean much when we don’t have an average to return to that it exceeds. It’s just all highs and lows. 10 big stand out episodes feels about right for the 22-26 episode seasons, assuming a few to be 2 parts. That leaves so much room this show just hasn’t been given! There should be silly low dazzle episode where Pike’s horse riding or cooking is relevant, or we see La’an just like working on dealing with all her stuff, like Barcaly kinda, make it gradual like in real life, so we get to enjoy seeing her move towards the friendlier comfortable person we saw in the future. This would also make her relation to Khan more of an interesting tidbit rather than her being a pile of TOS references. It would let us actually know Erica at all, TNG Miles O’Brien has more defined character presence and he’s equally job defined! Una especially to me feels like she’d be best fleshed out by seeing more of who she is to Pike and La’an. As well as letting us know more about Una by herself and how and why she ended up in Star Fleet, we could know the same amount as we do about Picard’s past! She could be roping people into plays like Beverly! We could have seen build up of Chapel working on applications before she leaves and meets whatever his name is from the original series, flesh out that impending conflict so it’s simmering in the background for a while across episodes instead of dropped from above in the musical one. When I watched season 1 I was devouring fanfic of it, and it was because of all the gaping holes from not just having a multitude of small moments with characters. We wouldn’t know Leola root stew if strange new worlds got thrown to the delta quadrant, because we wouldn’t see them discuss food enough to hear it more than twice! We don’t get just random alien or distress situation of the week that is meh story wise but helps develop who these people we should be invested in are! That’s why Tasha Yar is such a weird death, it’s a pathetic plot, for a character who so far had been developed as complex and guarded. We know just enough about her that she is more than the red shirt or main character of the week, but we didn’t have enough time with her for it to be a crushing blow or impact the characters, which we only see several seasons later once TNG gets its legs. This happened to Hemmer in SNW too, because we just barely got to know him before he died.
honestly even putting all this aside, longer seasons make tv feel worth getting invested in, why watch a 6-8 episode thing that’s going to disappear after season 2? I think 13 is probably the sweet spot if we can’t have 22+ episodes anymore. Even Doctor Who felt too rushed when the last few seasons were less than that, because we just barely got familiar with who all these new people are and what they are about before they face big life/world changing stakes at the end of the season.
What sad, unless I’m completely wrong, is due to episode count we’ll never get an explanation about Jenna Mitchell, much less an episode featuring her as Ortegas received. Is Jenna gender flipped Gary? Will/did she marry Gary? Are they adopted siblings? Is the whole Jenna Mitchell who occupies the same bridge position as Gary Mitchell a just a big suspicious naming coincidence?
They’ve said that they want to leave SNW on Kirk’s first day as captain and plan to introduce his core crew. That means 16 episodes to introduce: Sulu, McCoy, Rand, and Chekov (ideally not, in the original series he doesn’t show up until season 2 so he doesn’t need to be there day 1. He would definitely not be bridge crew on day 1. I doubt the SNW writers can resist having an ensign-candidate Chekov though, considering how they’ve treated Kirk). I hope that they don’t forget about Rand or consign her to a passing mention/walk through easter egg.
They also need to “dispose of” Una, Ortegas, and Pike. Pike gets promoted, obviously. Una can’t (?) get promoted if she’s famous for being the best first officer ever? It’d be weird if she became a captain -> admiral but was still ever after famous for being a first officer. Ortegas could get promoted, transferred, or go out in a blaze of glory (with Una??). Of course, there’s also the option of retiring to civilian life. That’s Sam Kirk’s fate unless he transfers to another ship for a while before retiring
“Mitchell” is a common name. We know from “Where No Man Has Gone Before” that Gary Mitchell and Jim Kirk are old friends and that Kirk requested him as part of his crew on his first command, which I expect will be the Farragut.
The producers have already said they won’t bring in Chekov, since he’s too young. The Kelvin movies fudged his age to include him, making him four years older than he should’ve been.
I think the lack of episodes probably exacerbated things, but my main problem with this season was that it just felt kind of…soulless. Like the body was there, but the spirit was absent. It had a full cast and a massive budget, but nothing in particular to say.
Really, what it felt like to me was that they had three big old checklists labelled “Gimmicks and genre homages”, “Types of Star Trek episodes”, and “Plot and continuity beats that we need to hit”, and they just kind of mixed and matched. So instead of good stories, we were just left with things like “Romantic comedy pastiche” / “Q Episode” / “Introduce Roger Korby”, or “Zombie movie pastiche” / “Ticking clock medical emergency” / “Follow-up ‘Under the Cloak of War'”, or “Documentary-style episode” / “Moral dilemma” / “Give Uhura a romantic interest”, and the episodes were just kind of designed to fit these niches rather than developing organically as stories that were actually worth telling.
I think you have finally nailed my main issue with new Trek. My concerns with Discovery weren’t like the popular complaints. I feel that when you have such a short format every episode play has to batter in the overall acr. This makes you mad at the light episodes and let down by the ‘plot’ episodes’ as there is not enough room for any of it to breath in a great ensemble cast. The group in SNW is one of my my favorite but I will never be able to hild it up to the classics because they arent given a chance.
Very interesting – not watching this one as I grew up with Next Generation and the original series episodes I have watched I just couldn’t get through. I need my star trek Captain to be thoughtful and moralistic not a cowboy. But, I see to be one of the few people who loved Enterprise for showing how humans in the beginning of the warp age were still recognizable “modern” humans but able to grow into what we know they became. I even found the opening song uplifting and amazing. So I do not fit the typical star trek fan I suppose.
One question for thought those who watch this show – do the comedic episodes have a “point”? By this I mean the most famous original series episode that was incredibly comedic Trouble with Tribbles still had something to say about dangers of cute and addiction and I think predicted the craze around such today. Do the comedic episodes have serious cores like this in Strange New Worlds?
Also – I know generally what you mean and generally agree but I somewhat wince when I hear Star Trek called Serious Sci-Fi. I mean this is still sci-fi adventure warp drive and transporters along with replicators are pretty much science fantasy. Arguably the economics of it are also given human nature. I mean sure I find it more serious on all levels then Star Wars but this isn’t 2001.
There were three comedic episodes this season, of which I would say that only “A Space Adventure Hour” had a point…kind of.
The comedy episodes of previous seasons have been much better for this. Like, on the face of it, “Charades” is pretty comparable to “Four and a Half Vulcans”, except that “Charades” actually had a solid emotional core and told us a hell of a lot about Spock’s relationship with his mother and with other Vulcans and what it was like for Amanda to spend decades living amongst Vulcans who often regard her as inferior and aren’t shy about saying so, whereas “Four and a Half” was just kind of…there.
“I need my star trek Captain to be thoughtful and moralistic not a cowboy.”
That very much describes Strange New Worlds‘ interpretation of Christopher Pike. (Although he does ride horses, so he’s a “cowboy” in that sense if none other.)
“do the comedic episodes have a “point”?”
The better ones, yes. There were a couple of duds this season, but that doesn’t reflect on the rest.
“I somewhat wince when I hear Star Trek called Serious Sci-Fi. I mean this is still sci-fi adventure warp drive and transporters along with replicators are pretty much science fantasy.”
One: scientific and technical plausibility do not define seriousness. The seriousness comes from the dramatic situations, characterizations, and themes being explored. Two: Compared to most television and film science fiction, Star Trek has generally been relatively plausible. Heck, in the 1960s-80s, just acknowledging that the speed of light was a thing and knowing what the word “galaxy” meant made Trek enormously more realistic than its contemporaries.
Also, given that we already have 3D printers, I don’t see why you think replicators are implausible as a future technology. For that matter, warp drive is not fantasy; it’s grounded in Einstein’s own equations of General Relativity, and a lot of serious theoretical work has been done on the subject. Achieving it in practice is probably prohibitively difficult, but science fiction isn’t required to be absolutely realistic, just to base its conjectures in enough real science to facilitate the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief. Showing a spaceship traveling to another star system on conventional rocket power is fantasy; showing it traveling there via warp drive is science fiction.
Christopher:
Good points. Interesting to hear, this show follows the Picard model of captaining – I may have to give the show a chance. How well does it do in filling in back story of trek and showing how we got from here to there? This was the best parts of Enterprise.
Ok I can see on the seriousness side those arguments and in that I agree. Star Trek was always supposed to be about more than simple adventures – we have Star Wars for that. I also agree it was incredibly more serious on the technical front than any other sci-fi show on TV at the time of the show. Took us many years to get to The Expanse. I just wish someone would make television series out of the Uplift War novels.
I own Science of Star Trek but been awhile since I read it – thought the conclusion there was it was impossible even from a purely mathematical point of view, but I certainly haven’t kept up with it.
You’re definitely right but I would also add that longer seasons give the writing staff, cast and crew more room to flesh out everything else about a show. Many Trek franchise episodes (including some of the best) came about because of the sausage factory schedule when someone put their training and stamina to good use and produced a “Drumhead” at the last second or had the extra time to crack a discarded idea from an earlier script, or a scene, dialogue-read, or actor’s expression from an earlier show sparked someone’s imagination and we got a really fresh story or big arc twist, sometimes near the end of a season. Longer seasons also open the door for new writers, young and old, to get a foot in the door while also making it unnecessary for many writers, cast and crew to seek work elsewhere until the next season’s production fires up, which can be years.
I completely reject the idea of “filler” episodes, a denigrating term every bit as inaccurate and elitist as “mid,” and typically employed by peak TV middlebrows hellbent on one-upping everyone else over what they consume (and anyone this shortsighted and petty is merely a trend-conscious consumer). Every show is going to have weak episodes, even those with short runs where the clunkers are even more glaring. So you get a bum episode-suck it up. Chances are the production window of that episode gave the writers the breathing space to fine-tune or spitball a better episode or two.
I do respectfully disagree about comedic Trek. “Next Gen.” and to a larger degree “Deep Space Nine,” had some nice comedic touches and “DS9” even did a few whole fun episodes (along with a few truly awful ones). Those shows succeeded because the humor was character based and, again, particularly on “DS9,” were geared toward cast members who were more adept with comedy. It also helped that these shows were often spaced around some very fine drama for contrast.
On the original series, the humor was primarily Gene Coon’s influence. Coon was the best dramatic writer on the show but far less successful when it came to comedy and he seemed to lean more and more into guffaw territory as the stress of producing took its toll on him. I’m not just talking about writing, rewriting and greenlighting comedic shows but his seemingly incessant need to tag groan-inducing comedy into closing scenes of a dramatic episode (with “Amok Time” being one of the worst, most glaring examples). The whole episode offenders, “Catspaw” and “I Mudd,” namely, veer dangerously close to “Lost in Space ” territory while even the better-balanced “The Squire of Gothos” would have benefited from a sharper edge.
Look at Sam Rolfe’s much subtler and witty blending of drama, action and comedy in the first three seasons of “Have Gun, Will Travel” and the first season of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” or the early, at times darkly wicked “The Wild Wild West” episodes and the original Trek comedy is an elbow in the rib by comparison.
Of course, and even people who were around at the time forget or deny this, TOS was very much a product of the TV zeitgeist of the moment with a lot of humor-laced genre series running from ’64-’68. TOS was seen by your average viewer and critic as part of a broader camp flavored stew that included everything from “Batman” to “My Mother the Car” and “Mr. Terrific.” The weekly TV viewing guides of the time, along with numerous magazine and newspaper features, would regularly showcase any number of these shows interchangeably under the guise of the new and wacky family and kid-friendly show fad. By its peak, TOS and, more disastrously, the third season of “U.N.C.L.E.,” took themselves and their audiences more than a bit too lightly.
When I was growing up with the original series in syndication during the early seventies, the first season was widely considered the best of the batch while the second, more openly comedic second season, was hit-and-miss and the third season just unwatchable. That quickly changed with the ascent of fandom which was far more embracing of humor and saw these shows as more fan-friendly episodes and, and this baffles me to thus day, and even embraced the Freiberger season. This was also more of the mass market pop culture sentiment by the later seventies and carried over to the public’s reaction to the pronounced humor of the first “Star Wars,” although the post-VCR generations seem hell bent on insisting the franchise be taken dead serious. Trek fans seem more divided with the majority seeming to expect or at least tolerate silliness.
Getting back to your thesis, though, I think television is overall more suited to longer seasons, generally episodic, shows. It gives audiences more time to discover a series and make it part of their lives. It also gives everyone involved with the production a living wage and the time and space to create a more satisfying piece of work. Also, it leaves the studio with a big chunk of episodes that they can more profitably license down the road while also giving future new fans more to discover and savor. Keep in mind Trek didn’t become popular until it was in syndication five to seven days a week around the country which was very much a financial factor when Paramount came up with their seven season Trek formula during the Berman era.
I’d still prefer 22 episodes per year because a solid writing staff and show runner are most likely to deliver at least one or two great extra shows, one or two pretty good ones with one, maybe two, misfires. I’d also point out that 22 episodes with repeats means 44 weeks of airtime. 15 episodes is less than a third of a year while 8-10 (and now six?) being practically a blink. More episodes also means more fiscal responsibility and less ridiculous overspending on comically giant sets with their Volume backdrops and gratuitous spaghetti-on-the-wall visual effects. It’s exactly this kind of bad math that has led to the industry wide streaming contraction and is a HUGE factor in why there’s only one new show in the pipeline.
More and more I miss nineties television, and I’m not even a TV guy.
One slight correction: Lower Decks never had a 13 episode season. All five of them capped at 10.
It’s pretty clear the problem is budgetary more than anything else. As pointed out, Discovery started at 15 episodes per year before whittling down each year to 14, 13, 13, and then 10 during the final season. Otherwise, I agree with the sentiment. SNW doesn’t have near enough time for things to develop. While I believe no one in the industry would be ready to resume 26 episode seasons, it’s clear they need to realize 10 isn’t nearly enough for it to feel like a season, especially when it’s episodic by design.
I also agree that Trek shouldn’t ditch comedy episodes. When we remember X-Files today, no one wants to talk about the conspiracy mythology episodes, but rather the one-off episodic comedy outings written by the likes of Darin Morgan and Vince Gilligan.
They need to find some way to keep the budgets under control while still retaining the current level of production value. Though I imagine the recent Skydance/Paramount merger (and the supposed desire to buy WB) means the current leadership is eager to reinvest in Trek, which might mean higher episode orders in the future, which obviously won’t apply to the final two seasons of SNW or Starfleet Academy, but it might mean future shows benefitting from extra episodes. Star Trek: Scouts (which seems very inspired by Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures) so far has had 3 episodes – I don’t know how many are planned.
I think the biggest problem with the season is that – like TNG Season 2 and the Office Season 4, it got whammied by the writer’s strike. You can see it in several of the episodes that could’ve used just one more draft before being filmed (“Wedding Bell Blues,” with its dance party ending comes to mind as the worst offender). I think that also accounts for some of the failure of the main season narrative to track across the standalone episodes as well as happened in seasons 1 and 2. Early on, I kept wondering what was going on with Batel – thinking there must’ve been some dialog indicating she’d left the ship that I missed , only to have her show up later and have it specifically announced in “New Life and New Civilizations” that the trip she was coming back from was apparently the first time she’d left the ship since coming aboard in “Hegemony.” Overall, I thought the season was OK – even if it was my least favorite (including DSC Seaon 2) season of adventures with Captain Pike and crew.
My wishlist for Season Four:
* Bring back the Enterprise as a main character. Having Scotty be on board is a big step in this direction, in that we can see him “fall in love” with the ship. In short, make it something that is more than just the show’s primary location. Make it these people’s HOME.
* if we must have more Kirk, let’s see him aboard the Farragut or on an adventure with Sam. Or on Deneva with Aurelan and the kids. It’s too big a universe to have him popping on board the Enterprise every 2 weeks.
* We’ve seen Number One do the hypercompetent officer thing for a while – but we’ve never seen what her endgame is. Does she want a command? Would Starfleet ever give her one? What if there were another group of people who would?
* ”What is Starfleet?” Was my favorite episode of the season. More thorny ethical dilemmas and less “pure evil monsters” would definitely be welcome.
* Maybe a WHOLE LOT LESS trips back and forth to Earth and Starbase One for these last couple years?
* I think it’s time we see how things come back together with T’Pring. Might it involve Sybok? A whole Vulcan family episode that somehow wound together all the strands of Spock’s marriage, Sybok and yes, Michael Burnham, Amanda and Sarek could be fun. I think pairing Sarek and T’Pring could produce some fascinating discussions.
The short episode counts not only do Strange New Worlds a disservice for the reasons discussed here. I’d say they also go a long way towards wasting the series’ premise, given a year or so passing for each season we get and the producers stating that it’ll end with Pike giving way to Kirk in the chair. We’re not likely to get more television set in this period once the series is done, at least not until the next reimagining decades hence, so they’re really bleeding potential.
I don’t have any problems with this show doing comedy. I enjoyed all three of the Spock’s Romantic Hijinks episodes, and while the comedy of Four-and-a-half-Vulcans often falls flat, that’s not even its biggest problem. This season simply wasn’t as good as what came before. We got two inarguably great episodes, two strong episodes with slightly problematic elements, three decent episodes, and three stinkers. I don’t think there’s any magic number of episodes that would have improved things. Sometimes a season of TV just isn’t that great. Hopefully the next one will be better.
Given the massive shift in plot and themes, not to mention that there was a year’s gap between the first and second halves of Prodigy’s seasons, I’m of the opinion we should be talking about PRO having given us 4 seasons of 10 episodes each, rather than two of 20 episodes.
And I’m still intensely angry at Paramount’s treatment of PRO and likely always will be. That ‘second season’ shows exactly how much the PRO show-runners understood and loved Starfleet and what it could/should be. Here’s hoping they get to make more of that love and understanding somehow, despite the fools at the top that want every show to magically make all the profit without spending a cent more than the absolute minimum.
As for SNW season three? I found the opening episode pretty damn mid, ep2 unrelentingly awful, and the very early parts of ep3 so bad I had to skip the entire retro-fantasy crap at the start or just give up on watching the show entirely. But luckily the episode and the rest of the season picked up a lot from that point, though it never really got above a C or maybe C+ for me. Overall, for me, S3 started off mid, dropped dramatically and then mostly returned to mid.
Maybe S4 and the half-season of S5 we’ve been promised will be better than this season turned out to be, but I’m not holding a lot of hope, given the brilliant decisions over the past several years by those in the big chairs.
I thoroughly enjoyed most of this season; I thought one of the problems with Discovery was it took itself way too seriously. I would argue that Lower Decks had more genuinely heartfelt moments in it than much of Discovery. Shakespeare used humor, y’all, what’s your problem?
But I think you are absolutely right that it’s been done too quickly. There’s a delicate balance between over-telling and rushing, and I think this essay makes me think it tilted too far towards the latter. They’ve dealt with a major WAR, after all, with members of the crew taking hits – something that Deep Space Nine took several seasons to explore – in a relative handful of episodes. I think the conclusion is absolutely correct: give us more! Let us spend some more time with this crew before doing Kirk/Spock Year One.
Let’s just get straight to the point, SNW is awful. I sat through two seasons of mediocrity before watching a couple of season 3’s episodes and saying “enough”. The author is correct, audiences need time with characters and that really doesn’t happen in modern Trek. The ten or so minutes of Picard, Riker and Minuet chatting in the holodeck in TNG’s season 1 episode ‘11001001’ told me more about their characters than anything SNW has put on screen in three seasons.