An interesting, deliberately thought provoking 🤔 question for a lazy long weekend Sunday morning…
Setting aside whether specific fans like specific ‘gimmicks’ (crossovers, musicals, bringing back Kirk or Khan) or tropes (transporter malfunctions), Space.com is posing the hypothesis that the proportion was too high in Strange New Worlds second season.
There’s no arguing that the season was successful in drawing in large audiences week after week. Taking a look back though, was there too much trippy-Trek™ dessert and not enough of a meaty main course? YMMV surely.
For my part, I can both agree that trippy Trek is something I’ve been wanting more of, and that I would have welcomed 2 or 3 more episodes were more grounded or gave the opportunity to see more of Una as a leader and dug into Ortegas backstory.
The 90s shows seemed to be bit embarrassed by trippyness, although Voyager found its pretext allowed even stern Janeway to pronounce ‘Weird is our business.’ One can argue that the high proportion in SNW is a feature, not a bug.
I’d still prefer a 12-15 episode season though.
I really don’t think the inclusion of Kirk should be considered a “gimmick”. There was no stunt-casting, nor were the episodes in which he appeared particularly gimmicky (well, okay, “Subspace Rhapsody” was a gimmick episode, but in a way that wasn’t structured around Kirk specifically).
Like it or hate it, it’s clear to me that the producers are including Kirk because they think it’s worth exploring the character at this point in his career. I wouldn’t call that a gimmick.
I found that the opinion-piece from Space.com didn’t distinguish classic tropes and use of legacy characters from ‘gimmicks.’
While my personal preference prior to the show’s premiere had been to hold on the introduction of so many TOS legacy characters, to allow the others and original ones to breathe, as long as having Kirk there is bringing new insights to his character (and others’), it’s all to the good. At this point, I’m eager to see more of young Scotty.
I completely agree with your line ‘One can argue that the high proportion in SNW is a feature, not a bug.’ I thought it was great.
Star Trek has always had different vibes for different shows. It also took a while for each show to find it’s own vibe. I’m really enjoying the split that SNW has come up with. They lean on all the light/trippy episodes so they can pull some incredibly dark shit out of nowhere in the next. Some of the episodes of SNW S2 are amongst the darkest things ever portrayed in Trek at all. The swinging from the Lower Decks episode to the M’Benga/Chapel episode was intense and because of it you never know what kind of ride Strange New Worlds is about to take you on. Am I going to laugh? Sing? Cry? All of the above? Or something completely new?
I would also prefer 12 episodes but we’ve also gotten some ‘big budget’ scenes and visuals due to there only being 10. Then again… bottle episodes…
Some of the episodes of SNW S2 are amongst the darkest things ever portrayed in Trek at all. The swinging from the Lower Decks episode to the M’Benga/Chapel episode was intense
Ad Astra and Among the Lotus Eaters were also pretty serious episodes.
Yea I think the season just needed more episodes to breath.
I’ve argued elsewhere that the whole Kirk thing and embracing being a TOS prequel rather than its own show is a bad thing. Whether true or not, it adds even more to what the show is trying to do, on top of musicals and cross overs, so yes it needs more episodes and hopefully they get them.
Paul Wesley Is hands down the best Kirk. I will die on this hill.
Oh I’ve got nothing against the portrayal or actor or even the inclusion of Kirk in the show … I just think the amount of TOS stuff (including Scotty) got distracting in S2, and that treating the show as a TOS prequel, which seems to be the case given what the showrunners have said, isn’t going to be healthy for the show in the long run.
In general, my take on season 2 is that I’ve mentally prepared myself for it to mark the point at which it went bad or stopped being actually good. We’ll have to see, and I’m obviously hoping that I’m paranoid … but I do not trust Kurtzman or paramount or the temptation some executives must be salivating over to just reboot the original series.
I really hope that SNW keeps any more references to the TOS crew to either one-shot episodes or really short cameos, because I genuinely dig it when SNW does it own thing.
It’s cool to explore Spock, Uhura, and Chapel at this point in their careers, and I’m starting to warm up to including Kirk as a semi-regular on the show, but stuff like putting Scotty in an episode where it would’ve been fine if he was replace by a different character is where I can see it going in an unhealthy direction for the show. We, the viewers, don’t need a ton of these call forwards to the TOS crew because we can reasonably say “oh, they’re all in training/serving on different ships right now” and be ok with it - we don’t need to see Chekov, Sulu, Bones, or anybody else from TOS here if it’s gonna be at the expense of the show itself.
