I haven’t seen STA yet, but it seems like, with a few exceptions, the most recent Star Trek has always been controversial, since The Next Generation. I feel like Enterprise deserved it the most, and SNW escaped most of it. Discovery probably got it the worst? Though TNG was by far the least deserving of it.
Discovery definitely feels like it, especially since you have people still arguing quite animatedly about how it’s not Star Trek, and might have Ruined Star Trek Forever, though I would rather imagine much of it to be recency and accessibility more so than much else.
The other shows are a bit less accessible, even if they are newer, since CBS moved it onto their streaming service, and off of Netflix, whereas Discovery aired on Netflix around a time when Netflix was one of the bigger streaming platforms out there, and more people who aren’t as into Star Trek or other CBS properties might encounter it incidentally.
But for the most part, every single successor to Star Trek has always been controversial, and deemed to have ruined it forever, though most of it abates when the next show comes around, and is then deemed to have ruined Star Trek forever.
Though TNG was by far the least deserving of it.
I actually wonder about that. Most of the complaints, like the ones about Stewart being a shakespearean actor who wouldn’t be able to handle the rigours of serious television, or being bald were nonsense, but there was a lot of good reasons to complain about early TNG. A fair chunk of the early episodes weren’t very consistently good.
We know it to be better in hindsight, but if The Next Generation had started today, and not only is the second episode a rehash of a Star Trek (1966) episode, but the fourth was Code of Honour? I would also be inclined to criticise it for being quite bad. There’s a good reason why a lot of the advice for people watching TNG is to stick around until Season 3, or start from Season 3, since that’s when it gets better.
I think the series with the worst long lasting impact is Voyager. VOY Borg are really bad compared to TNG Borg. PRO uses TNG Borg, which is great, but LDS suffers for its VOY Borg and I heard PIC stinks because it makes VOY Borg the main villains.
I don’t know, TNG could be up there, but it was also generally influential as a whole, so both its good and bad ended up getting carried over.
The entire exploding bridge trope came from it, as did evil admirals. It also set up the Enterprise as the flagship, with the best and brightest of Starfleet. Which also meant that people generally assumed it to be the norm, and that the hero ship was some special ship, when it was a normal ship of the line in TOS.
VOY Borg are really bad compared to TNG Borg.
They are, but more due to issues with overuse more so than anything. In TNG, we saw the Borg for all of 4 times. In Voyager, they were shown much more frequently.
But as far as the timeline goes, it also wouldn’t make sense to show an earlier iteration of the Borg, not when they were severely affected by the actions of the Borg.
I heard PIC stinks because it makes VOY Borg the main villains
I’d honestly argue that which version of the Borg to be a minor issue in Picard. Picard’s bigger problem was that it didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be, and kept leaping between multiple different plots and story lines, which confuses it a bit.
It arguably have been better if it has taken one of those plots, and run with it for the entire show. Like the matter with Synths and former Borg drones being treated as subhuman, vindicating the concerns Guinan and Picard had in the Measure of a Man, or visiting the TNG crew and seeing where they are now. As it actually was, it seems like the writers/producers felt that now they had Patrick Stewart, they wanted to do everything before it was too late, and the result was a bit of a mishmash.
The issue with the Borg tends to be more that they really aren’t very much of a threat by the end of Voyager, and were dealt such a blow that it would be almost impossible to ignore.
Their greatest threat, assimilation, is trivially curable, and it’s now known that their assimilation abilities are one of their greater weaknesses. The Federation might have issues with infecting someone with a pathogen to make the Borg assimilate them and self-destruct, but others have no such qualms, and we know of at least one species that did use such methods (Icheb’s parents).
Their adaptation is a greater issue, but even older Federation ships, like the galaxy-class saw good effect just cycling their weapons frequencies. The Voyager’s ablative armour would be well-studied after they returned to Starfleet, and dedicated anti-Borg weapons would have both been in active development, and also use.
As of the events of First Contact, it’s also known that not only are there Borg ruins on Earth that may still be intact and active, but that Borg ships are not as truly uniform as they seem, with Picard pointing out a weakness in a Borg cube that dealt catastrophic damage to it. Local signals, what he felt, scans of what remains of the area, and everything would have been thoroughly studied to determine how to both find and exploit those weaknesses on other Borg cubes, without a former privileged Borg unit at the helm.
Which I find kinda surprising, since I would call SNW fairly “woke” if you actually pay attention to the show. Maybe it’s just because it’s a male captain set in the TOS era, and it’s a more traditional trek show?
IMO “woke” is a red herring when it comes to criticism of newer star trek. Some people hate things for this reason, but it obscues a more interesting discussion.
The real dimensions of value are the writing, the vision, what each series considers “action”, etc. I think it’s a distinction between what you’d expect from a Star Trek movie and a Star Trek TV show. They’re for different audiences, and I think Discovery, STA are going for a much wider market appeal (in varying degrees) and it changes the narrative structure, pacing, etc. I think they’re exploring the audience space with variations on Star Trek themes to grow the francise, and sometimes it’s to the detriment of what some people like about Star Trek - and sometimes it brings in new people.
I like Star Trek to be ethics porn about IDIC being more powerful than raw power. About the value of an education, team work, structure, and trust. I like it when the most tense action scene is a walk down a hallway - but I also like a bit of space pew pew sometimes. The new shows alienate me when they focus too much on physical action, individual exceptionalism, and a grimdark future.
Yeah, Burnham could have been better and she was the center too much. I like Discovery as a show, but I hate it as Star Trek because it actively goes out of its way eschew so many baseline Trek Tropes, the biggest and most obvious being the Spore Drive. It feels like the writers were like “We don’t want to deal with the time issues of Warp travel.”. Then they extended this to the personal transports, which at least made sense as it was the 32nd century.
it was pretty much a push"woman can have masculine names too" kind of preachy attitude from Kurtzman, and not just ambigious name that be either gender. it still an awful name to begin with.
I found Discovery the same way, it’s the only trek series I couldn’t make it through.
Picard suffered from bad writing unfortunately. Season 3 cashed in on nostalgia and I appreciate it for that, but the first 2 seasons were very meh.
Starfleet academy is great though, IF you’re ok with a show targeted to young adults. If you’re not ok with that, the episodes will be very hit and miss. The most recent episode was fantastic, once you get through the 3 minute long sex scene it opened with. Even that does serve a purpose though to show the bond that’s developed between two chars.
STSA feels like a blend of Lower Decks and Discovery to me. I also had issues with Discovery (though it got better after the time jump) but have been enjoying Academy each week.
The SAM episode was a little meh, personally, but I like that they’re dealing with the shorter season format and still doing episodes based around each character.
I dont like DIS because it does not feel very trek to me with the ugly klingons and the overall dark stories and characters. Also (like PIC) its very storyline so i cant really just jump into an episode and be happy (or unhappy, whatever story the episode is)
On the other side i think SNW is what should have been the first series after the pause after ENT. Its hopeful, most episodes can be watched alone and it still has a background story like VOY. And like every trek its woke.
I think that PIC would have gotten a similar (smaller?) shitstorm compared to DIS if that was the first after the pause. LD maybe too but less for the quality and more because its animated. And PRO for feeling more nicelodeon than trek (or rather a mix)
If DIS came just later than others it would have probably been either more liked or at least ignored like a lot ignore PIC or Short Treks
its also all the discontinuity of the series too. Klingon appearance, cloaking tech, ADVANCED TELEPORTATION tech that is never mentioned in any of the old series at all even if just referenced without showing.
snw is actually quite less “woke” than STD, std has all no-men crew by season 4, it was pretty obvious, and the lgbtq+ people have largely been marginalized by that time too, after they served a purpose in season 1.
i think by SNW they realized how bad some of the characthers and how they are overly pushed as the leads.
Discovery probably “got it the worst” because it came out during peak gamergate-era politics. Online fandoms were weaponized and radicalized into right-wing culture warriors. Discovery is easily the least preachy of any Star Trek series but because it had a black woman in a leading role it became an obvious target for ragebaiters to make stuff up about.
it is also the series that had to define what Trek was in current times. It took it a few seasons and the later shows used a lot of that lessons.
it might had a lot of problems, but I dont think it was for a lack of trying.
Ironically my biggest issue with Discovery is that it’s pretty right-wing with its CIA stand-in apologia and blatantly militaristic style in Seasons 1 and 2 at least.
That and the sheer degree of melodrama. Every episode needs to have scenes of at least one or two characters in total anguish. It just wears me down compared to other Treks. For a streaming-era show, it’s not all that bingeable
If you didn’t finish it, I highly recommend the last two seasons. I almost gave up on it for the reasons you cite, but the last two are a large tonal shift (positively in my opinion).
I didn’t like that they fridged Georgiou, who I felt was the strongest character they had thus far introduced. After that it became really really clear Burnham was the main character, which is a concept I don’t think belongs in Star Trek. The only other series that gets close to having a main character is TOS, which I dislike for the same reason. Kirk and Burnham both become boring when they’re the only point of view character for an entire episode.
Personally, of the new Star Trek that’s come along since the Kelvin timeline was started the only thing I’m taking into my personal canon is Lower Decks. The rest has been completely meh at best, downright awful at worst. Most of it I’ve simply let pass out of mind and memory.
There’s just no objectivity anymore. Everything is subjective so if you don’t like it you’re just a hater. Despite the fact the actual writing has been god awful for most of the revival era since Disco
I haven’t seen STA yet, but it seems like, with a few exceptions, the most recent Star Trek has always been controversial, since The Next Generation. I feel like Enterprise deserved it the most, and SNW escaped most of it. Discovery probably got it the worst? Though TNG was by far the least deserving of it.
Discovery definitely feels like it, especially since you have people still arguing quite animatedly about how it’s not Star Trek, and might have Ruined Star Trek Forever, though I would rather imagine much of it to be recency and accessibility more so than much else.
The other shows are a bit less accessible, even if they are newer, since CBS moved it onto their streaming service, and off of Netflix, whereas Discovery aired on Netflix around a time when Netflix was one of the bigger streaming platforms out there, and more people who aren’t as into Star Trek or other CBS properties might encounter it incidentally.
But for the most part, every single successor to Star Trek has always been controversial, and deemed to have ruined it forever, though most of it abates when the next show comes around, and is then deemed to have ruined Star Trek forever.
I actually wonder about that. Most of the complaints, like the ones about Stewart being a shakespearean actor who wouldn’t be able to handle the rigours of serious television, or being bald were nonsense, but there was a lot of good reasons to complain about early TNG. A fair chunk of the early episodes weren’t very consistently good.
We know it to be better in hindsight, but if The Next Generation had started today, and not only is the second episode a rehash of a Star Trek (1966) episode, but the fourth was Code of Honour? I would also be inclined to criticise it for being quite bad. There’s a good reason why a lot of the advice for people watching TNG is to stick around until Season 3, or start from Season 3, since that’s when it gets better.
I think the series with the worst long lasting impact is Voyager. VOY Borg are really bad compared to TNG Borg. PRO uses TNG Borg, which is great, but LDS suffers for its VOY Borg and I heard PIC stinks because it makes VOY Borg the main villains.
I don’t know, TNG could be up there, but it was also generally influential as a whole, so both its good and bad ended up getting carried over.
The entire exploding bridge trope came from it, as did evil admirals. It also set up the Enterprise as the flagship, with the best and brightest of Starfleet. Which also meant that people generally assumed it to be the norm, and that the hero ship was some special ship, when it was a normal ship of the line in TOS.
They are, but more due to issues with overuse more so than anything. In TNG, we saw the Borg for all of 4 times. In Voyager, they were shown much more frequently.
But as far as the timeline goes, it also wouldn’t make sense to show an earlier iteration of the Borg, not when they were severely affected by the actions of the Borg.
I’d honestly argue that which version of the Borg to be a minor issue in Picard. Picard’s bigger problem was that it didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be, and kept leaping between multiple different plots and story lines, which confuses it a bit.
It arguably have been better if it has taken one of those plots, and run with it for the entire show. Like the matter with Synths and former Borg drones being treated as subhuman, vindicating the concerns Guinan and Picard had in the Measure of a Man, or visiting the TNG crew and seeing where they are now. As it actually was, it seems like the writers/producers felt that now they had Patrick Stewart, they wanted to do everything before it was too late, and the result was a bit of a mishmash.
The issue with the Borg tends to be more that they really aren’t very much of a threat by the end of Voyager, and were dealt such a blow that it would be almost impossible to ignore.
Their greatest threat, assimilation, is trivially curable, and it’s now known that their assimilation abilities are one of their greater weaknesses. The Federation might have issues with infecting someone with a pathogen to make the Borg assimilate them and self-destruct, but others have no such qualms, and we know of at least one species that did use such methods (Icheb’s parents).
Their adaptation is a greater issue, but even older Federation ships, like the galaxy-class saw good effect just cycling their weapons frequencies. The Voyager’s ablative armour would be well-studied after they returned to Starfleet, and dedicated anti-Borg weapons would have both been in active development, and also use.
As of the events of First Contact, it’s also known that not only are there Borg ruins on Earth that may still be intact and active, but that Borg ships are not as truly uniform as they seem, with Picard pointing out a weakness in a Borg cube that dealt catastrophic damage to it. Local signals, what he felt, scans of what remains of the area, and everything would have been thoroughly studied to determine how to both find and exploit those weaknesses on other Borg cubes, without a former privileged Borg unit at the helm.
Which I find kinda surprising, since I would call SNW fairly “woke” if you actually pay attention to the show. Maybe it’s just because it’s a male captain set in the TOS era, and it’s a more traditional trek show?
IMO “woke” is a red herring when it comes to criticism of newer star trek. Some people hate things for this reason, but it obscues a more interesting discussion.
The real dimensions of value are the writing, the vision, what each series considers “action”, etc. I think it’s a distinction between what you’d expect from a Star Trek movie and a Star Trek TV show. They’re for different audiences, and I think Discovery, STA are going for a much wider market appeal (in varying degrees) and it changes the narrative structure, pacing, etc. I think they’re exploring the audience space with variations on Star Trek themes to grow the francise, and sometimes it’s to the detriment of what some people like about Star Trek - and sometimes it brings in new people.
I like Star Trek to be ethics porn about IDIC being more powerful than raw power. About the value of an education, team work, structure, and trust. I like it when the most tense action scene is a walk down a hallway - but I also like a bit of space pew pew sometimes. The new shows alienate me when they focus too much on physical action, individual exceptionalism, and a grimdark future.
SNW is a good balance. Discovery on the other hand, was way too emotional for me. Where is STSA on the crying-every-other-scene scale?
My main problem with DIS has a name: Michael Burnham. Not the actress, the script.
And about your question: no, the crying is only in scenes that work (traumatic or sentimental enough) unlike DIS.
Yeah, Burnham could have been better and she was the center too much. I like Discovery as a show, but I hate it as Star Trek because it actively goes out of its way eschew so many baseline Trek Tropes, the biggest and most obvious being the Spore Drive. It feels like the writers were like “We don’t want to deal with the time issues of Warp travel.”. Then they extended this to the personal transports, which at least made sense as it was the 32nd century.
it was pretty much a push"woman can have masculine names too" kind of preachy attitude from Kurtzman, and not just ambigious name that be either gender. it still an awful name to begin with.
I don’t mean the name itself. I mean the way Michael behaves. Even more when you think that she was adopted by a Vulcan family.
I found Discovery the same way, it’s the only trek series I couldn’t make it through.
Picard suffered from bad writing unfortunately. Season 3 cashed in on nostalgia and I appreciate it for that, but the first 2 seasons were very meh.
Starfleet academy is great though, IF you’re ok with a show targeted to young adults. If you’re not ok with that, the episodes will be very hit and miss. The most recent episode was fantastic, once you get through the 3 minute long sex scene it opened with. Even that does serve a purpose though to show the bond that’s developed between two chars.
Oh, I don’t talk about Picard. Too much WTF.
STA is another “SGU-like” i only see it will end quickly.
Yeah you’re wrong. I could barely make it through a few episodes of SGU, but STA is much better.
S2 of SGU was great
STSA feels like a blend of Lower Decks and Discovery to me. I also had issues with Discovery (though it got better after the time jump) but have been enjoying Academy each week.
The SAM episode was a little meh, personally, but I like that they’re dealing with the shorter season format and still doing episodes based around each character.
I dont like DIS because it does not feel very trek to me with the ugly klingons and the overall dark stories and characters. Also (like PIC) its very storyline so i cant really just jump into an episode and be happy (or unhappy, whatever story the episode is)
On the other side i think SNW is what should have been the first series after the pause after ENT. Its hopeful, most episodes can be watched alone and it still has a background story like VOY. And like every trek its woke.
I think that PIC would have gotten a similar (smaller?) shitstorm compared to DIS if that was the first after the pause. LD maybe too but less for the quality and more because its animated. And PRO for feeling more nicelodeon than trek (or rather a mix)
If DIS came just later than others it would have probably been either more liked or at least ignored like a lot ignore PIC or Short Treks
its also all the discontinuity of the series too. Klingon appearance, cloaking tech, ADVANCED TELEPORTATION tech that is never mentioned in any of the old series at all even if just referenced without showing.
snw is actually quite less “woke” than STD, std has all no-men crew by season 4, it was pretty obvious, and the lgbtq+ people have largely been marginalized by that time too, after they served a purpose in season 1.
i think by SNW they realized how bad some of the characthers and how they are overly pushed as the leads.
Discovery probably “got it the worst” because it came out during peak gamergate-era politics. Online fandoms were weaponized and radicalized into right-wing culture warriors. Discovery is easily the least preachy of any Star Trek series but because it had a black woman in a leading role it became an obvious target for ragebaiters to make stuff up about.
it is also the series that had to define what Trek was in current times. It took it a few seasons and the later shows used a lot of that lessons. it might had a lot of problems, but I dont think it was for a lack of trying.
Trying too much (and all at once) in my opinion!
Ironically my biggest issue with Discovery is that it’s pretty right-wing with its CIA stand-in apologia and blatantly militaristic style in Seasons 1 and 2 at least.
That and the sheer degree of melodrama. Every episode needs to have scenes of at least one or two characters in total anguish. It just wears me down compared to other Treks. For a streaming-era show, it’s not all that bingeable
If you didn’t finish it, I highly recommend the last two seasons. I almost gave up on it for the reasons you cite, but the last two are a large tonal shift (positively in my opinion).
I didn’t like that they fridged Georgiou, who I felt was the strongest character they had thus far introduced. After that it became really really clear Burnham was the main character, which is a concept I don’t think belongs in Star Trek. The only other series that gets close to having a main character is TOS, which I dislike for the same reason. Kirk and Burnham both become boring when they’re the only point of view character for an entire episode.
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Personally, of the new Star Trek that’s come along since the Kelvin timeline was started the only thing I’m taking into my personal canon is Lower Decks. The rest has been completely meh at best, downright awful at worst. Most of it I’ve simply let pass out of mind and memory.
There’s just no objectivity anymore. Everything is subjective so if you don’t like it you’re just a hater. Despite the fact the actual writing has been god awful for most of the revival era since Disco
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