Last week's Star Trek - Strange New Worlds episode, "The Elysian Kingdom" was reminiscent of the Trek I watched as a kid. Dr. M'Benga finds himself the only crew member who still knows he's a crew member among a crew who are playing out roles from a story book he reads to his daughter. This felt so much like half a dozen or more episodes of Star Trek Original Flavour that I half expected Scotty to pop up in a kilt with a bottle of scotch in one hand and a claymore in the other
I didn't find myself tearing up for more than the last few minutes of the episode. A fun, goofy romp with a really great, gut punch emotional twist ending.
This week's "All Those Who Wander" was more of a straight Trek episode. This show feels more cinematic and sweepingly grand than its progenitor, Star Trek - Discovery or Star Trek - Picard, yet they've managed to still make the show feel like the Star Trek I know and love. Pure, fun, dramatic, sci-fi television. This week the crew basically got stuck in short version of Alien and aside from losing the best character of the new breed, it was a riveting and wickedly fun excursion into horror/sci-fi.
The writers and actors on Strange New Worlds have already done what most Star Trek shows take two or more seasons to achieve. They have found their unique voice in the Trek universe and the confidence to use it both for silly and serious Trek, often in the same episode. I have said for a while that The Orville is some of the best Star Trek I've seen in a while, just with the silly factor dialed up a bit too high. Strange New Worlds might not take the compliment, but it's not an insult to say they've basically replicated The Orville's formula but dialed down the goofy stuff just enough to make it Trek again.
Side note: The third season of The Orville has taken a strong turn into darker territory that wasn't as much a part of the formula in the first two seasons. It's odd to think that a "real" Star Trek show like Strange New Worlds is coming across as a bit less heavy than the comedic take on Trek that The Orville is. There's almost an argument to be made that The Orville is what Star Trek - The Next Generation would look like if it had been based on Star Trek - Strange New Worlds.
I've never been a huge fan of the retcon of the ships from the original period. It's still funky to see a ship like Discovery that comes from the era of the original Enterprise yet looks LIGHT YEARS more modern than its "contemporary". We don't talk about the "did an Apple store throw up on a 70s nightclub?" vibe of the Abrams-verse. Strange New Worlds has done a good enough job with its set design that I don't even hate the redesign of the Enterprise for a more 21st Century aesthetic appeal. They've struck the right balance between modernizing the "future" and keeping the ship's 1960s bones.
I noted when Discovery hit the air that the sound mix was constantly using familiar old school Trek sound effects in a way that felt jarring when set against the entirely unfamiliar sets of the Discovery herself. They've done a great job with getting the sound mix's subtleties worked out for Strange New Worlds, or perhaps it's less jarring since the visuals more closely marry up with the audio.
While I have no problem with recasting little seen characters like Pike, M'Benga and Number One, I can never and will never quite forgive them for recasting the roles of Spock, Uhura and Chapel and apparently Kirk himself next season. While the new faces still bug me a bit, they've done such a neat job of updating the Enterprise adventures with a fun dad captain and adding a dose of what's been missing on Discovery (that's humour written so it's actually funny, folks...) that I've learned to live with it and even love it.
As of now I'm hoping for many, many seasons of Strange New Worlds. Long may Anson Mount sit in the centre seat before Pike winds up in the motorized beep beep chair.
2 comments:
First, full disclosure: I've seen few of the newer Trek shows. I've seen season 1 of Picard (which I thought was...good. I guess. Kinda. but I mostly enjoyed due to the cameos than anything else)(I did very much enjoy the new space ship captain and his hologram iterations), but basically, meh.
I've seen a few episodes of Discovery and meant to return to it before I realized I just didn't care enough to. And I haven't seen any of the others.
Having said this, despite my lack of first hand knowledge of Strange New Worlds or Below Decks or whatever else may be out there, I feel safe in stating, with no reservations, that the greatest Trek series since DS9 is, undoubtedly, The Orville. This is a hill I will die on. #RENEW THE ORVILLE!
Totally agree on The Orville. Great stuff, very much a Trek show, with season 3 being even more so than the first two. It really leaned in to the sci-fi drama and dialed back the goofy this season.
If you love The Orville, I'd bet pretty heavily that you'll love Strange New Worlds. They are very much cut from similar cloth. Strange New Worlds has (in one season, amazingly) managed to totally distance itself from Discovery and forge a very Old School Star Trek path for itself.
One man's opinion. And sure, renew The Orville. I can never have too much Trek to watch.
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