Star Trek Strange New Worlds (Season 2)

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I'd argue that "black one one side white on the other" and "Trump riots" are about the same on the level of subtlety.

[Madner Kami]

I'd argue that "black one one side white on the other" and "Trump riots" are about the same on the level of subtlety.

One has the excuse of being a 1960s TV-show, the other squanders nearly 60 years of lessons in how to do things and how not to.

[Frustration]

I'd also say there's been a tension between the Federation as a Utopia to aspire to and the Federation as a lens for critiquing our dominant culture since DS9.

Traditionally, other alien species were used to critique our time. The Federation was supposed to be us after we defeated ourselves and reformed our flaws.

Roddenberry's insistence that there be no intra-Federation conflict was too much. But it's supposed to be fairly idealized.

[Thebestoftherest]

I'd also say there's been a tension between the Federation as a Utopia to aspire to and the Federation as a lens for critiquing our dominant culture since DS9.

Traditionally, other alien species were used to critique our time. The Federation was supposed to be us after we defeated ourselves and reformed our flaws.

Roddenberry's insistence that there be no intra-Federation conflict was too much. But it's supposed to be fairly idealized.

Agree, although part of me feels his idea society feels more like a distopia than utopia, and I get it wanting to show how you think the world should work but feel too sterile.

[clearspira]

I'd also say there's been a tension between the Federation as a Utopia to aspire to and the Federation as a lens for critiquing our dominant culture since DS9.

Traditionally, other alien species were used to critique our time. The Federation was supposed to be us after we defeated ourselves and reformed our flaws.

Roddenberry's insistence that there be no intra-Federation conflict was too much. But it's supposed to be fairly idealized.

Agree, although part of me feels his idea society feels more like a distopia than utopia, and I get it wanting to show how you think the world should work but feel too sterile.

I feel as if Chuck's whole career to date has been him dismantling the utopia that is the Federation. And whilst that is a big negative against my argument of Star Trek portraying ''the hopeful future'', I do not agree that poor execution is an excuse for bad writing. Star Trek at its best did live up to what it was meant to be and precious few of those moments have come since 2005.

Part of that failure was Gene and it always was Gene. He made a great universe. But I can see with both my own eyes and countless cast interviews (particularly from the female cast members) that he wasn't a progressive even by the low standards of the 1960s. Most of the feminism and diversity in this show came from everyone else BUT him. I would say that hyper-sanitised season 1 of TNG may have been him trying to make up for that... if I hadn't read several interviews by Denise Crosby AKA Tasha Yar. The abridged version being that Gene told her that she was basically just there to be the bridge babe and then spitefully killed her off when she wanted to leave. Its notable that her next appearance in Yesterday's Enterprise came AFTER Gene had been kicked to the sidelines.

[Thebestoftherest]

Hopefully we can do better.

[Madner Kami]

Hopefully we can do better.

Better than Gene? We already are. Better than Star Trek? That depends whether these writers go bankrupt in their strike and change careers, to ruin frappacinos and pumpkin spice lates at Starbucks. Or do you mean Chuck? That again largely depends on whether there's another chimney in his house.

[Thebestoftherest]

The first one.

[Mabus]

Well, the final episode of this season had a lot of dumb, but there were some alright moments.
-Kept expecting that the image with the "border straight through the middle of the star system (and the moon system)" from the sneak peak to be a bit more than a complete failure of basic astronomy, but then again, I forgot that this show is run by one of the people who decided that somehow the Klingon-Federation border runs straight through the Klingon homeworld star system. This is what happens when you allow morons without basic knowledge of space to produce a show set in space...
-I guess the Gorn are that stupid that you can just fly past their noses by simply welding some junk on your spaceship... No, them having their mega-jammer on doesn't excuse that, passive detection is a thing, they should have seen the shuttle's engines working.
-So apparently the Gorn are possibly made homicidal by solar flares/CMEs? What, is radiation shielding not a thing to them? And where was the star that made them aggressive last season, when they chased the Enterprise into that brown dwarf/black hole?
-In "Arena", it's mentioned that the Federation had not explored the area of space where the Gorn made their presence known, and neither the Gorn knew of the Federation, yet here the Gorn snapchat the Federation the position of their borders? There's no way you can solve this continuity error, they should have just invented a new race and leave the Gorn alone.
-They're gonna keep doubling down on the Xenomorph-Magog ripoff, aren't they?
-How nice of the Gorn to just sit by and let the ship derelict slowly crash into their most important military asset on the planet. No really, the Gorn ships literally move away from the crashing saucer and don't do anything to stop it.
-Why is this season ending on a cliffhanger? Not only none of the main characters are in danger of dying, or in any other danger, one of the main plot points of the last season was that Pike must be alive and well until the accident, otherwise the entire timeline will fracture. What, they're gonna (secretly) blow up the Enterprise? So what is there left to explore? Is La'an gonna die? Not a good ending for her story with the Gorn. Una gonna bite the dust? Not according to Boimler at least. Ortegas? Oh, if only... The cranky old immortal lady? Don't see it happening. At least in S1, the cliffhanger involved Una, a character whose fate is not officially resolved, but here, what is there left to resolve? And let's not even consider the bad timing, given the writer's strike and all...

There were some good elements in the show.
-I actually liked the casting choice for Scotty, the actor does a good impression of Doohan. All the current TOS characters came across as too fake (Kirk sounds more like Josh Brolin's K, Spock is too unstable, Uhura sounds like her daughter), so it was nice to have a genuine performance for once, bonus for the actor actually being Scottish.
-The Gorn spacesuits were a nice touch, though I wish these guys weren't the Gorn.
-Also, I'm pretty sure the fight scene between Spock and the Gorn in zero G was intended as an homage to the cheesy fight between Kirk and the Gorn captain in Arena. I will give them a plus for at least trying to make it more clumsy due to the setting, so there's that.

Overall, the second season is... disappointing. There were some high and some lows. But with each season having only 10 episodes, it's difficult to have multiple interesting stories, especially since they also try to cram like 3 other plot lines per season. They really need to fire all the current producers and actually replace them with competent ones, who don't hate the source material. Also, get better writers and actual script doctors, because Jesus Christ, the dialogue is just as bad as in the previous season. Are 10 episodes per year that hard to write? OldTrek dished out 26 episodes per year, with dialogue of varying quality, here they can't even handle 1/3 of that.

[clearspira]

The new Scotty is far more "Pegg" than "Doohan".
People see "It's green" or "laddie, you want to say that one more time?" and have based their whole opinion of Scotty on that alone. But he was a very serious character for the most part, which is why he was third in command of the ship.

Its like how people think "that-Kirk-spoke-like-this" when in reality that was only Shatner on a bad day. He was just as capable of a "let them die" or a "you Klingon bastards you killed my son." But no one remembers that. And yes, "KHANNN!" was a ploy to appeal to ego. Khan was expecting Kirk to shout in rage because that is what he would have done.