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.
What turns me off about SNW is that The Orville is a better return to form to “classic Trek” than actual Star Trek. The episodes revolving around Topa’s gender and identity is some of the best scifi commentary on modern society out there right now.
I think it’s good that CBS never gave MacFarlane his own ST show, lest he be beholden to all the history of the franchise (the same thing that is, in part, weighing down SNW). Who knew that khan was Kirk’s father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate?!
@HWK_290
Be careful about praising The Orville the way you are to people who remember TNG very fondly. It apes TNG very closely but also has more than its fair share of Mcfarlane’s Family Guy humor which isn’t for everyone and definitely doesn’t jibe with Trek.
The episode where we first meet the Krill has Lt. Malloy laughing maniacally and constantly at the fact that the Krill’s god is named Avis. This just isn’t that funny and breaks immersion.
McFarlane himself admits this episode was very juvenile and the show gets quite a bit better once he decides to stop going after Family Guy style jokes. Many people won’t watch enough episodes to see the show is worth a chance.
I’d argue that the Star Trek history weighs it down more than that. Even without the historical references, much of the shows seem to be held back by the trying to live up to it, or having to stick to the same formula. Enterprise and Voyager famously suffered from considerable network meddling to try and recapture TNG, for example.
It could work, but it also means that much of any social commentary that does show up is a bit hampered, since the network wants a safe, conservative star Trek show (and the fans might be partly to blame, because they also want more of the same too, so much of the time).
A modern TOS that pushed boundaries as the original could never be made under the same brand. It’s far too controversial for the network to accept, with all of its progressive and social commentary elements intact.
Not that it’s a fault of Star Trek’s specifically, just an issue with how big it has become. If the Orville became a similarly established brand, instead of Star Trek, it would almost certainly have had the same issues.