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 miss the 24 episode seasons
I’m up to the third season of TOS right now and it dawned on me the other day that I’ve already seen more TOS than I probably will ever see of SNW. I know they’re putting more time/effort into SNW episodes, but it’d be great to see some longer seasons.
I love SNW but this show is held back by the low number of episodes per season. With 10 episodes it’s just not possible to develop all your characters and still try out weird storytelling ideas. Although some of that is self-inflicted. Nobody forced them to bring on Kirk and Scotty, when they haven’t even managed to give Ortegas something to do in 20 episodes. By season 4 we’ll probably have a junior Doctor McCoy, Ensign Sulu and Cadet Chekov on board, and then it’ll get really crowded.
But back to the topic: I loved the humorous episodes this season but 3/10 is really the maximum amount of funny episodes. On the other hand, I’d love more thought-provoking stuff like “Ad Astra Per Aspera” and “Under the Cloak of War”. 2 out of 10 episodes was not enough for my taste.
In my opinion it is the best Trek in a very long time and blows the recent movies out of the water. SNW deserves the right to add in some fun to keep things interesting.
Betteridge’s law of headlines in action here. Season 2 was the best season of Star Trek since Voyager season 6.
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M’Benga has a dark dark chapter.
I love SNW; the point with more episodes would be to give more leg room for the writers and actors. No more cliffhangers though…at least not quite like that “CUT!”
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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.
Yeah I agree they went too far. Season 2 was disappointing; they seemed to want to spend their time indulging themselves with musical shows and cross overs. It feels like they alternated each episode - one moment you get a serious episode and the next a silly one.
However the season also gave us Ad Astra per Aspera which was one of the best star trek episodes I’ve seen in a long time. Among the Lotus Eaters wasn’t bad; they just didn’t need to shoehorn Khan in - it undermined what was actually otherwise a nice character driven story for La’an. The “should I kill hitler/my grandad” bit at the end was something that could have been impactful but was just didn’t feel right.
Among the Lotus eaters and Lost in Translation were decent serious stories. Under the Cloak of War was an another attempt at a serious episode; it just didn’t come off in the end.
And for me, Those Old Scientists was actually one of my favourite episodes. It was not Ad Astra Per Aspera good, and it was undeniably silly, but there was just something very warm and wholesome about the episode, and it actually reflected much better on Lower Decks than SNW; Boimler and Mariner felt a bit more fleshed out by the episode and it made me more appreciative of the show and what it’s doing.
I think all in all, it was a decent season. It didn’t maintain the high level of quality of the first season, and there were some really poor episodes (the opener Broken Circle and Cherades were terrible, and the muscial episode was just too far EVEN in a season with a crossover with a cartoon) but the highs were high and most of the other episodes were decent even allowing for some silliness. Season 1 was masterful TV in my opinion. Season 2 was decent.
Did they overdo the gimmicks? Yes. I still enjoyed the show despite the flaws but I sincerely hope they reign it in in season 3.
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.
I’ve like em all very much, except the musical episode, it was too much for me, and distracting from wanting to follow the story, I didn’t make it through the whole ep
I’d love it if they did more episodes per season and had some less bombastic adventures, but I really enjoyed what they put out with season 2 and I’d be more than happy to go on that exact same ride for many more seasons. I think SNW has managed to let its characters breathe and live real lives a lot better than other modern Trek, despite the season lengths.
I loved the Lower Deck crossover but I get that might have jumped the shark for some.
No. All the episodes were good. There should be more of them though
