I hate to say it but I think I have to now: I don’t like Strange New Worlds. I loved lower decks and SNW started out with a ton of promise (and some eps I do really genuinely enjoy) but with so few episodes and of those so few feeling like Star Trek exploration, I just think its not for me. A shame cuz I love the cast and the design.
Super happy others still enjoy it though.
You and me both. I tried to lure my SO into a series rewatch before watching the new season, and she was like, “… but we can skip the lame episodes, right?”
Putting it like that, there really isn’t more than (generously) four watchable episodes per season. The writing on this show is as goofy as Voyager, and as aimless as Enterprise.
When every episode is a “special” genre homage, none of them are special.
I appreciate that there’s an almost palpable march towards TOS camp, and TOS had its share of backlot-leveraging genre scripts, but TOS also had its share of episodes done as straighter sci-fi, sometimes building off really solid and thought-provoking story ideas (leaving Shatner and the production designers to add the camp factor on their own).
I know people are sort of tossing the season premiere into the “gimmick” bucket due to the nature of the time travel story, but it seemed like a pretty standard episode of Trek to me.
Genre trappings aside, I’m actually pretty intrigued by the logline for this one:
Una is mistaken for a resistance leader and drawn into a struggle against Klingon occupation.
I was kind of torn on that one, which sort of struck me as the one trying hardest to look and feel like a TOS episode, but it still leaves us with three out of the first four with an identifiable “gimmick,” and the muppet epsiode to come. In fact, it seems like they’ve intentionally leaned into it:
“There’s a cadence between kind of classic ‘TOS’ sci-fi thriller and then the thing that actually makes us ‘Strange New Worlds’…which is our worlds are genres,” Goldsman said. “Those are our strange new worlds. It’s the lens that allows us to tell stories in a way that typically, or at least consistently, hasn’t been done in ‘Star Trek’ before.”
I’m not even entirely sure I hate it, but it’s not adding a fun factor on its own anymore, so if an episode is weak, like the last one, there is nothing particularly refreshing about the fact that they cast Dave Foley and tried to make it funny.
Also, there’s too much Kirk.
Well, given their other mission statement of Getting the Band Together, I don’t think we’re going to be seeing less Kirk moving forward…
