Last year, Paramount released the first clip of the then-upcoming third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which is the continuing adventures of Captain Pike and his hair on board the U.S.S. Enterprise. Said clip was not from the season premiere episode, which was to resolve a cliffhanger from the previous season involving the Gorn… but rather an unrelated episode where four of the crew were injected with a serum that transformed them into Vulcans… and supposedly, that’s where the “hilarity” ensured.
Needless to say, this got a mixed reaction… and also I didn’t care for it…
This was one of the many big swings that the producers promised for this season. And sure, why not? You can have your big swings… except nobody ever mentioned anything about these swings actually hitting anything. And this is something that soured me on the show during its second season – we need our Spock comedy hour, we need our musical episode – BIG SWINGS… big misses. I thought the Spock turning human plot point was fascinating, but was played for “laughs” and left me wondering when this would be funny… note to any aspiring comedy writers: NEVER put your audience in a situation where they have to ask when your shit gets funny.
So… the third season comes along and… this is the eighth episode of the season; by which point the closest things to what the showrunners wish to perceive as “big swings” is a Trelane cosplayer doing a fake wedding and a holodeck adventure that’s no better or worse than any other Star Trek that takes place on a holodeck… I suppose if you want to count the documentary-esque episode as a “big swing,” then go for it. I thought it was largely dull and uninspired when it should have been thought-provoking.
And then we get this pile of shit… which may or may not be worse than The Way To Eden… you know… the one with the hippies.
The difference between the two episodes is that at least the Eden writers had some idea on how to write space hippies. The people who are writing modern Star Trek can’t even script these Vulcans right; they just come across as emotionless assholes for the sake of being emotionless assholes. Even the Vulcans on Enterprise never came across this poorly. And in watching all this stupidity unfold, at no point did I find myself laughing. Nor did I crack a smile or a chuckle. Hell, I wasn’t even screaming in agony… I was largely bored. This felt like a complete and utter waste of time.
Just about the only thing that worked for me is the budding working relationship between Kirk and Scotty as they try to keep Vulcan La’an from starting a war with everyone… because that is logical… or that’s being an asshole. Fuck if I know. All I know is that those guys work well together; maybe you should put them on a ship or something, so they can work together or something.
So yeah… that was a big swing, alright…
A swing… and a huge, MASSIVE miss.
Please tell me that I need to turn my brain off in order to be entertained by this, so I can calmly reply that if I were to turn my brain off for this thing, I would have found the cure for insomnia that’s even more effective than a 20-minute HHH promo.
P.S. I would be remiss in not mentioning the post credit bit involving Ethan Peck’s Spock and Patton Oswald, but that would involve giving Patton Oswald the light of day. Two mentions of that individual’s name is more than enough and he does not deserve a speck more.
P.P.S. I would rather watch The Way To Eden than sit through that horrible musical episode from last season, too.
I think I have nothing left to say… other than it’s on my list…
dtm666 