I get that it's fun and exciting to have some new rules and new players, but I just wish it felt more familiar.

Understood. Or at least made more sense. Particularly on Academy, there were a lot of deep cuts, but then there'd be something out of left field that made you wonder if they'd really watched the source material.

Yeah I agree with all those points.  I wonder why Darem's species had to have a second look anyway.  He only does it once the whole season - couldn't he still look human but have extra powers?  Superman doesn't have a second look.

I had the same thought about the Doctor.  I watched the TrekCulture easter egg videos, and the host remarked that the Doctor didn't even deal with that trauma in Voyager.  So it's weird that it bothered him so long after.  It's also weird that he didn't choose a name, despite that being a thing he did in the Endgame timeline.

One thing about new Trek that bothered me (also brought up by TrekCulture) is that everything has to be a galaxy-threatening event.  Even with the Klingon stuff, the idea that the Klingons (who seemingly owned a huge chunk of the galaxy) were nearly wiped out by the Burn is a little crazy.  Wouldn't it have been just as good if they'd simply been weakened because they weren't technologically impaired?

I get that it's fun and exciting to have some new rules and new players, but I just wish it felt more familiar.

I had mixed feelings. I bought Holly Hunter as a teacher, but not as a Starfleet captain. They never explain why Cadet Scales and the people on his planet appear human most of the time, rather than their natural appearance. I get that the real reason is the cost of CGI, but what possible in-universe reason could there be? Also not sold on JayDen. Sure, Klingons are not a monolithic species, but would someone that different have survived in Klingon society? SAM is much better post-reboot. I appreciate the Doctor being around and the addressing of his trauma from losing his family on Voyager, but would it really take 800 years for him to deal with that? I think the S2 finale shows why the producers wanted Tig Notaro as a series regular, even though she didn't have time in her schedule.

I get what you're saying about not knowing the status of many of the worlds or powers we knew from before, but that's actually something I appreciate. It takes advantage of the time jump and opens story possibilities that weren't there before due to existing canon.

I think the plan was to have more 'mission'-style episodes each season as the series progressed. They mention Tilly was with the 3rd years in the beta quadrant. I don't know how you would justify the chancellor of the entire academy leaving campus for that long, but that was my impression.

I'll watch S2. I thought the series got better as we got deeper into the season. Unfortunate that studio politics has cut short another show.

And I don't know what it is about the new century, but I'm struggling to feel comfortable with how things work in this time period.  I know we spent a lot of time in the TNG era, but it felt like we understood where everyone is and who the major players are and all that.  We know that the Federation was fractured.  We know that the Klingons are almost gone.  The Romulans and Vulcans have reunified.  But are things in such disarray in the Federation that everyone's kinda focused on themselves?  So the Cardassians or the Ferengi are out there but also cleaning up their own space?  It just feels like the villains in a lot of these seasons (even like in Picard) are pirates and random small sects that are causing issues.

STRANGE NEW WORLDS will have a fourth season and a short and final fifth season.

It looks like, because CBS' contract with Alex Kurtzman and Secret Hideout is expiring and they haven't decided whether or not to renew it or find a new producer or studio with all their mergers and purchases, Secret Hideout is producing up to the limit of the contract with these final seasons.

I don't think Season 4 is going to be a wrap-up; that's going to be the six episodes of Season 5.

Ah, I was unaware that there was going to be a shortened season 5.  Good to know!

I don't think Season 4 is going to be a wrap-up; that's going to be the six episodes of Season 5.

**

THE ORVILLE seems to have stalled. There was talk of pre-production beginning on a fourth season, but all the actors denied having been signed or resuming filming, so it's not happening, although it's not clear if it's not happening yet or not happening at all.

Adrianne Palicki says she got a call about Season 4 and her availability, but then the strikes happened and all Season 4 talk ceased and never resumed.

https://movieweb.com/adrianne-palicki-t … -season-4/

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So I think this is an instance where more episodes would have been useful.  The big bad for the season was introduced midway through the season and then wrapped up in a single hour.  In a pre-streaming Trek season, the finale would've at least been a two parter, and I think you could argue that it could have been longer.  Even commercials vs non commercials, a two-part finale would have been 82 minutes-ish vs 60 minutes-ish.  And I think we probably needed those additional twenty minutes.  Some of the episode felt very rushed.

I think you could argue that maybe you get rid of the documentary episode or the "everyone is turned into a Vulcan" episode and give more time to this.  You could've probably done an entire episode of the future scenes if you wanted and give additional weight to Pike's life with Batel.  I know the crew probably had fun doing the Vulcan episode so they'd probably vote to get rid of something different, but I wish they'd used their time a little more wisely.  And, honestly, I thought they got the opportunity to ham it up on the proto-Holodeck episode (and that episode also covered "why Star Trek is important" which was sorta covered by the documentary episode).

And when there's going to be a muppet episode next year when they're going to be trying to wrap this whole series up, I have concerns.

But again I really liked what they aired.  It had a lot of heart.  Like Pike, I wish there was just more time.

There were parts of the finale I liked. Parts that I thought made no sense at all or were, at best, highly improbable.

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I thought Pike getting to live his life with Batel, even it if didn't stick, was a nice touch. Her happening to go through everything necessary to defeat the bad guys through the course of the season was... a choice.

So, didn't we once have BBCode for spoilers?

I don't know that Roddenberry was puritanical. His obsession with the planet Risa is certainly telling.

He was puritanical when it came to his view of what Star Trek should be.  His way or the high way, and it often stood entirely in the way of common story telling.  If they'd left it up to Gene, the show would have been canceled after one season, and never brought back.  Same for TNG.  Gene's vision of the future was utopian but also too stringent and unrealistic. 

That's funny, because it was probably the first case of Trek fan service, which has come around several times since.  I personally enjoyed it, but I think the Enterprise cast were miserable with it.  SNW is very very high on fan service.

ireactions wrote:

ENTERPRISE, despite rendering Vulcans as being a lot like Sarek or T'Pau or T'Pring, is often criticized for its (admittedly underwritten) Vulcans in Seasons 1 - 3 and lauded for offering an 'explanation' in Season 4 for why the Vulcans weren't more like Spock, which has also muddied the waters a lot.

Enterprise Season 4 is (I think) the only live action Trek I haven't seen.  Help me understand what the explanation was.

I wrote about that two years ago:
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 972#p12972

ENTERPRISE, despite rendering Vulcans as being a lot like Sarek or T'Pau or T'Pring, is often criticized for its (admittedly underwritten) Vulcans in Seasons 1 - 3 and lauded for offering an 'explanation' in Season 4 for why the Vulcans weren't more like Spock, which has also muddied the waters a lot.

Enterprise Season 4 is (I think) the only live action Trek I haven't seen.  Help me understand what the explanation was.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the show in general. There are just times when Trek-isms show up on screen rather than Trek. There was a lot of that in the JJ-verse films as well.

Giving the benefit of the doubt, perhaps the crew's over-the-top behavior as Vulcans can be chalked up to the fact that they didn't grow up with the training true Vulcans get. They're initially overwhelmed by Vulcan emotions when they first transform. Perhaps the extreme personality traits are how they manage to keep those emotions in check.