Star Trek: Strange New Worlds delivered its third comedy episode of the show’s ten-episode third season this week and if that seems like a pretty high whimsy content for arguably the best action-adventure show of all time, well. Like the real Captain Kirk said imitating the real Mister Scott (who is eleven years older than the captain and not a junior officer when they meet and if I had hair I’d tear it out): “Yohre riiiight.” I’m not sure why these Secret Hideout guys think that playing with genre is such a good idea when their characters are not well drawn because genre-bending only works if you can pair how your main characters would respond to the new situation if the audience knows how they would respond in a regular situation. That’s why that sort of juxtaposition works; fish out of water, all that. But you have to tell the audience what a fish is and why he wants out of the water for that to work.
I got up first thing to watch and it’s terrible and Mimi came in with her breakfast dishes and asked what was going on.
Pike, Chapel, La-an, and Uhura all get DNA’d into actual Vulcans and because this show is a-wizard-did-it, the magic serum that modified their DNA, despite having a whole season dedicated to saying Number One was persona non-grata because she was DNA-modified as a teen and that’s against Federation law for some reason, in certain away team missions apparently that’s all just fine and dandy and DNA mods actually change your hairstyles as well as your eyebrows and ears and somehow magically gets you up to date on Vulcan customs and abilities and knowledge and yada yada there is no spoon Matrix yada. La’an can’t handle it and doesn’t want to turn back into Augmented human.
Oh, cool, says the missus. They turn into sorta proto-Romulans because their human mental capacity can’t take all the Vulcan savagery and that’s driving the hour?
Um, no, I say. That would be a cool episode. This is just Freaky Friday with them jammimg Paul Wesley into the episode just in case Skydance has a collective stroke and greenlights that Year One nonsense that nobody wants.
…
Honestly, all she did was pitch a better version of my dumb logline in two seconds holding dirty plates on the way to the dishwasher because she has a better understanding of the IP than the current stewards of the property are allowed to produce and that’s an embarrassment for everyone involved.
Makes for a short column, but there’s a new Alien: Earth and a new Peacemaker, so it’s possible to understand the appeal of a huge franchise and write to its strengths, because the rest of the major players can seem to do it.
Maybe Skydance will hire folks who know a Star Trek story when they hear it; meanwhile, there are so many more impresive entertainment options available, and that’s a bummer. I loved Star Trek for fifty-five years or so.