This is exquisite

good for you!

This episode was fantastic. Christina Chong’s performance hit me in a way that a Trek performance hasn’t since Connor Trinneer at the end of Terra Prime.

Okay, I’ll give you Code of Honor.

As a purist, I’d say watch them all and in release order, but if you really have to be choosy with your time, here’s a list of things you can skip (in my opinion):

• Star Trek Into Darkness
• Discovery (whole show)
• Picard S1 and S2
• Short Treks

I know suggesting skipping Discovery outright is going to be seen as… extreme, but I suggest doing so only if time is a crucial factor. It’s a dizzyingly uneven show with the lowest points of quality in all of Trek. However, it also has some incredible highs and some truly great characters, so if you find the time to watch it, you should. And I know I’m in the minority on this, but I found Short Treks to be unwatchable.

On the flip side, Lower Decks is incredible, and Strange New Worlds is good. The third season of Picard is excellent. Prodigy is a little weird but it’s got a lot of strength. Star Trek Beyond is also a surprisingly good movie.

holy shit that would have been great, or this creepy motherfucker

The Tholians are at the top of my list. I was absolutely thrilled when it seemed that ENT was going to properly examine them; it’s a huge shame they never got the chance. STO tried to tackle them, but they were heavily limited by the bounds of canon.

A very close second - though they’ve definitely gotten more love since ENT - are the Andorians. My biggest problem with Trek’s portrayal of the Federation is that it’s very much a Humans Club. At best, it seems like the Four Founders are really the Humans, their babysitters the Vulcans, and the two jerks they found.

Would love to dig in more on the political realities of the balance of power between Earth, Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar.

This is such a uniquely bizarre bummer. WHY would they remove the show from the platform? I seriously don’t understand that at all. Cancelling it, while a terrible move, at least has some potentially extant reasons - but it’s literally a new Star Trek show and they’re removing it from Star Trek’s home? I seriously don’t get it!

Agreed

I’d love it if this were true, and sure, only time will tell - but I have very little faith that Paramount will be able to weather the next two or three years of industry shakeup.

With the WGA and SAG strikes (which I fully support) stopping all production, as well as Zaslav turning streaming into a killing ground, AND the looming threat of a Netflix acquisition or merger, Paramount isn’t in a good position to maintain a corrected course. Their market cap is alarmingly weak compared to their competition, and they haven’t even been able to fully coalesce all ST content under their own platform.

The only way Star Trek is going to survive, much less thrive, is if those in charge do a solid return to form; Star Trek needs to be less expensive and more subtle. Chris Pine hit the nail on the head recently when he called out Paramount’s stubborn desire to compete with Marvel, Star Wars, et al:

"We always tried to get the huge international market [with ‘Star Trek.’] It was always about making the billion dollars. It was always this billion-dollar mark because Marvel was making a billion. Billion, billion, billion.

We struggled with it because ‘Star Trek,’ for whatever reason, its core audience is rabid. Like rabid, as you know. To get these people that are interested that maybe are ‘Star Wars’ fans or think ‘Star Trek’ is not cool or whatever, proven to be … we’ve definitely done a good job of it but not the billion-dollar kind of job that they want.

I’ve always thought that ‘Star Trek’ should operate in the zone that is smaller. You know, it’s not a Marvel appeal. It’s like, let’s make the movie for the people that love this group of people, that love this story, that love ‘Star Trek.’ Let’s make it for them and then, if people want to come to the party, great. But make it for a price and make it, so that if it makes a half-billion dollars, that’s really good."

I largely quite like SNW, but this episode had some extremely questionable eugenics apologia laced into the narrative.

I think the broadest problem with nu-trek (though it’s strongly reined in in SNW) is the heavily maudlin over-scoring and the bathos-laden dialogue. When almost every exchange between two characters sounds “perfectly written” and is dripping in score, it’s hard to take seriously.

If SNW employed like, 20% more restraint in that regard, it would sing.

So that they have stuff to throw at Paramount+ execs.

Seriously though I’ve heard explanation like internal-ablative armor thrown around before; better to have the bridge crumble here and there than snap in half and dump everyone into Sagitarrius-A

Between this and the potential Netflix merger/acq, it’s looking prettttttttty fucking grim for the alpha quadrant