Strange New Worlds: Season 3: Episodes 5,6, and 7 have been much better than previous episodes
No holodeck adventures, no hiding in space clouds, no musical dance numbers, no soap operas ( just a tiny bit ) and no less than subtle modeling of how people should behave.
Stories that were actually interesting and that held your attention.
Some of episode 5 was derivative from other Star Trek's and other sci-fi series, but it was done well.
Episode 6 was engrossing and with a surprise ending. I like the slow buildup of King Arthur ( Kirk ) eventually pulling the sword out of the stone ( taking command of the Enterprise ).
Episode 7. I knew people in college like Beto. I thought the actor did a great portraying such a person. I even found myself getting irritated though Star Fleet is fiction. I loved how Uhura handled him. She was kind, but she completely unmasked what he was behind his behavior.
...i haven't watched strange new worlds but my screening companion from the next generation's original broadcast run messaged me this weekend that star trek finally did its own version of and now for a word, which was something of a landmark episode for babylon 5...
...i think that's intended as high praise, even though it's not at all standard-format episodic space adventure...
I can see the similarities, but I don't think those two episodes are similar enough.
S03E07 spoilers
I kinda thought the documentary episode was trying to have its cake and eat it too about a hard hitting exploration about Starfleet and how it looks from a civilian perspective, but it was also about Beto's bias as a film maker. And I get that from the aspect of the true crime podcaster who gets too involved in the story, it's an interesting angle. But it falls apart in universe since Beto doesn't know how to use a camera, some of the stunts he pulled should have gotten him dropped off at the next civ space station, and then he ends his piece with "The difference between Empire and Exploration is the people, I met them when the captain made dinner and found out it was me that had the problem. Starfleet is fine, I'm flawed!" Maybe you could have landed that as a moral, but this episode was short and touched a whole lot of political live wires, so I suspect there was a bit of out of universe editing as well.
The bit about accusing Star Fleet/The Federation as being an empire annoyed me the most. I could have been cleared up with a few definitions. Empires don't ask members if they want to be members, etc.
I also liked the last few episodes better. They are more “standard trek” which I prefer. I don’t mind experimental or wild episodes, but for a while there it seemed that most of the people writing the show wished they were working on anything but Star Trek.
As an aside, I watched a few YouTube videos this weekend about SNW. There is a specific hot take which I kind of disagree with. That is “Strange New Worlds is not in the same universe as The Original Series (TOS)”. Then there’s evidence given such as “in TOS it’s clear that Kirk is the first person to ever see a Gorn”. Or “the uniforms are different” and “the bridge is different”. So yeah there are continuity problems and I guess some people are freaking out about that. Or maybe they just want to make some content and most of us don’t care. I’m on the side of “I don’t mind continuity problems, prequels are hard” as long as the show is good and mostly in the spirit of old trek.
But as a nerd, there is one nitpick I have about one of the recent episodes. There is a shot from outside the front of the Enterprise. It zooms into the bridge and shows that there’s a big window and you can see the whole bridge through the window. That’s a neat shot but clearly that is supposed to be a viewscreen and not a big window. Maybe there are just some cameras in the front. This annoyed me and I’m only half kidding lol.
I don’t know what continuity SNW is supposed to be part of, but I kinda hope that it’s not an alternate universe for the simple reason that I find it difficult to rouse enthusiasm for alt-universe content.
This is not out of a blind hatred towards the JJ movies or anything (though there’s are aspects of those I don’t approve of, like massively increasing the size of the Enterprise for no apparent reason), but rather because alt universes largely feel unnecessary. There’s large gaps in the timeline that could be richly written into and expanded on without being terribly restrictive on the writing staff, but up until SNW they’ve mostly refused to do that, and so it’d be nice if SNW were “prime universe” content.
This is explained in season 2 episode 3 "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow". Romulan spies have gone back in time and sabotaged Earth history. The romulan in the episode specifically mentions Khan's birth and the eugenics wars being changed, since she sees Khan is a child in the 2020s but she remembers the wars originally happened in the 90s in TOS.
I'm ok with this explanation, since time travel being able to change the future has been a part of Trek since TOS, and this is a tidy way to explain any continuity errors between various series in the "prime universe" with an established "a wizard did it!"
My assumption is that, like how Khan still happened, just a few decades later, in the TOS timeline SNW mostly happened, and in the SNW timeline TOS will mostly happen. Some details such as the design of the bridge will change but things will mostly end up the same.
It reminds me of the TNG episode that explained all of the intelligent races being humanoid was genetically engineered by a precursor humanoid alien species. It's a random episode providing a decent enough explanation to a common critique of the series.
Is that even necessary? I thought it was established in Discovery that the prequels are in an alternate universe. Certainly the tech and characters are different.
Was that established after Discovery season 2? If so I wouldn't have seen it since I haven't seen the rest.
But what about Lower Decks? That references TNG/DS9/Voyager but it also had a crossover with Strange New Worlds, which was time travel rather than dimensional travel.
It isn't supposed to be. :-)
Maybe in this alternate universe it is.