The series, already much maligned online from the trailers, drops its first two episodes on Paramount+. Episode 1 is also available on YouTube. Critics who saw it beforehand seemed to like it. Will fans though?
The series, already much maligned online from the trailers, drops its first two episodes on Paramount+. Episode 1 is also available on YouTube. Critics who saw it beforehand seemed to like it. Will fans though?
OK so that was much better than what I was imagining. Much funnier than I was expecting. The characters were both what I was expecting and not at all what I thought. I think it’s law somewhere where all shows with a school setting are required to have two “bros” try to out-Alpha each other.
I’m not sure how I feel about the War College. It feels antithetical to the Federation, but maybe that’s the point. This whole series could (and should) be around “how the Federation got its groove back” so to speak. The jackbooted uniform is rubbing me the wrong way, but that might be by design. Everything going on “out there” is coloring what’s going on on-screen.
And…maybe that’s what Trek is. That’s what it did in the 1960s. I hope it can do the same today.
I enjoyed it, a lot. They were swimming in nods to previous shows and fan service, but as I told my wife, “I haven’t watched 60 years worth of this universe to not enjoy the in-jokes!” That is, yes, they were purely sweetening things for the deep nerds, but I’m a deep nerd and I was happy to get drunk on that Aldebaran whiskey.
The second episode felt like they were writing the characters to be more the Prodigy ages kids, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the script started out as being set up for that show and they just re-worked it for this one, but I will chalk that up to the show still finding it’s feet.
I am greatly enjoying seeing “The future of the future” where we get things like a half Jem’Hadar half Klingon. I also loved how Star Trek is still a vision of a utopia, where the fact that nobody even bats an eye at the fact that someone is of mixed races like that.
I forgot to comment on the War College:
I took that as something that wasn’t specifically a Starfleet thing, but that in the last 120 years while Earth had ceded from the federation and become a exophobic planet, the War College had grown up then, maybe even as an evolution of what was the Starfleet Academy, and now that Star Fleet is back, the War College wasn’t closing just because there was an extra school.
I figure we’ll get an Wednesday S02E03 style rivalry between the two sometime later in the season.
I totally get the WHY of the War College. It’s what’s going on in the real world that makes me dislike it.
I totally foresee conflict between the two schools, starting with rivalry and possibly a “bad admiral” situation within the War College. I do like that they didn’t go with the “easy” answer of putting the Betazoid girl in the WC and not the Academy. I suspect her overactive psionics will make quite the weapon.
We’ve only watched the first of the two parts. I don’t love it, but it’s better than I was expecting, and Star Trek series that take time to find their groove are not exactly unprecedented.
The main issue is that these new shows don’t have the breathing room that the 90s/2000s Trek got. They had 23 episodes per season to fail and try again. The new shows have 10 episodes a season. That’s it.
Survivorship bias is a real problem with this fandom. We tend to forget the “Code of Honor” and “Move Along Home” episodes and only remember the 10 or so strong episode from each season, not the other dozen mediocre ones.
I feel like I should also let folks know that Stephen Miller HATES this new series.
So…just watch it out of spite, if you want.