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ST: SNW Finale
Finally watched it.
In fairness, it's a perfectly decent episode. But it represents something that I really didn't want to see, so I'm not loving it was a finale.
Basically: like![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
adriennefae says, it really sucks that the powers that own Trek right now seem like slaves to the nostalgia factor. I don't know whether it's their preference or whether they think it's what the fans want, but I dislike it strongly. One of the joys about the ST universe is that there are always new characters to know and love. But this latest round of shows (DSC, Picard, now SNW) seem to think that new characters are only here to be introduced for a short time and then discarded for the sake of old characters, and I hate this.
I don't want Hemmer to die just so we can have Scotty. I didn't need the protagonist of ST to be a sister of Spock's we'd never heard of before. I don't need James Kirk showing up on SNW at all. I definitely didn't need all the characters on Picard being written off so that the cast of TNG can come back! I like the new characters!!! I want more of them!!!
Pike, Number One, and M'Benga are of course reinvisionings of characters from TOS, but we never got a chance to know those characters on TOS, so it seems reasonable to build a show around them and flesh them out more fully. I'm fine with having Spock and Uhura on SNW. I think it's very weird to call this character (who I like very, very much aside from the Spock plotline!) "Nurse Chapel" when she's clearly a completely different character. And for god's sake can we please have more La'an and Erica and M'Benga and Una and also bring Hemmer back from the dead???
And now we have Kirk who's going to be a big part of S2, which I do not need! Especially as played by Paul Wesley! He seems like a very nice man whereas Shatner has always seemed like an asshole, but this very nice man has none of Shatner's charm. Whatever kind of person Shatner is in real life, his Kirk is warm and dynamic and even when he tips into just the slightest bit smarmy, you still like him. I've said a million times that I don't think that anyone could ever have the same ~vibes~ that Mr. Nimoy brought to the role of Spock, and Ethan Peck does not. He is, however, at least playing a character that I can enjoy on its own terms. But Nu!Kirk? Is BORING.
[Aside: Along those same lines, the actor they had playing the Romulan commander is no Mark Lenard. I know Lenard is more widely appreciated for playing Sarek (and he's great in that role!), but he brings such a lovely presence to this one-episode character that this nameless Romulan officer is one of my favorite one-off characters in ST. The actor they chose for this episode is...not him. That's all I'll say.]
So here's my conclusion about this first season of SNW: the first half was great, the second half was pretty good, but the writers seem determined to head in directions that will anger me. I will probably give season 2 a chance, but I am really hoping that they bring in some writers who aren't so hung up on endlessly revisiting characters from the past when they have truly fantastic characters right in front of them. JUSTICE 4 HEMMER!!!!
Oh, and it also wasn't long enough. There is zero reason this needed to be a 10-episode season. Star Trek, like a lot of older iconic TV shows, has always benefited from room to sprawl. It means we get a lot of mediocre episodes in between the really good ones, but it also means that we get so much time to explores characters. There is simply not that time when there are so few episodes.
In fairness, it's a perfectly decent episode. But it represents something that I really didn't want to see, so I'm not loving it was a finale.
Basically: like
adriennefae says, it really sucks that the powers that own Trek right now seem like slaves to the nostalgia factor. I don't know whether it's their preference or whether they think it's what the fans want, but I dislike it strongly. One of the joys about the ST universe is that there are always new characters to know and love. But this latest round of shows (DSC, Picard, now SNW) seem to think that new characters are only here to be introduced for a short time and then discarded for the sake of old characters, and I hate this.I don't want Hemmer to die just so we can have Scotty. I didn't need the protagonist of ST to be a sister of Spock's we'd never heard of before. I don't need James Kirk showing up on SNW at all. I definitely didn't need all the characters on Picard being written off so that the cast of TNG can come back! I like the new characters!!! I want more of them!!!
Pike, Number One, and M'Benga are of course reinvisionings of characters from TOS, but we never got a chance to know those characters on TOS, so it seems reasonable to build a show around them and flesh them out more fully. I'm fine with having Spock and Uhura on SNW. I think it's very weird to call this character (who I like very, very much aside from the Spock plotline!) "Nurse Chapel" when she's clearly a completely different character. And for god's sake can we please have more La'an and Erica and M'Benga and Una and also bring Hemmer back from the dead???
And now we have Kirk who's going to be a big part of S2, which I do not need! Especially as played by Paul Wesley! He seems like a very nice man whereas Shatner has always seemed like an asshole, but this very nice man has none of Shatner's charm. Whatever kind of person Shatner is in real life, his Kirk is warm and dynamic and even when he tips into just the slightest bit smarmy, you still like him. I've said a million times that I don't think that anyone could ever have the same ~vibes~ that Mr. Nimoy brought to the role of Spock, and Ethan Peck does not. He is, however, at least playing a character that I can enjoy on its own terms. But Nu!Kirk? Is BORING.
[Aside: Along those same lines, the actor they had playing the Romulan commander is no Mark Lenard. I know Lenard is more widely appreciated for playing Sarek (and he's great in that role!), but he brings such a lovely presence to this one-episode character that this nameless Romulan officer is one of my favorite one-off characters in ST. The actor they chose for this episode is...not him. That's all I'll say.]
So here's my conclusion about this first season of SNW: the first half was great, the second half was pretty good, but the writers seem determined to head in directions that will anger me. I will probably give season 2 a chance, but I am really hoping that they bring in some writers who aren't so hung up on endlessly revisiting characters from the past when they have truly fantastic characters right in front of them. JUSTICE 4 HEMMER!!!!
Oh, and it also wasn't long enough. There is zero reason this needed to be a 10-episode season. Star Trek, like a lot of older iconic TV shows, has always benefited from room to sprawl. It means we get a lot of mediocre episodes in between the really good ones, but it also means that we get so much time to explores characters. There is simply not that time when there are so few episodes.
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I also want to see more of the SNW characters, but the way new Trek is built, I don't think longer seasons would make it happen. Discovery was longer, and I felt it dragged on a lot, because they didn't use the amount of episodes they had for character development that felt organic and deep enough, and many potentially great characters felt wasted to me (Airiam, Tarka, and so on). Maybe it's my nostalgia talking, but I feel that older Trek treated characters more fairly and let them have complete storylines, so even if they were written off, their stories felt more complete and almost satisfying, even if they got a sad ending (like Dax, for example).
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I really don't think it's just your nostalgia. I feel the same way.
And you're right--probably with teh current showrunners, longer seasons wouldn't make me happy. But I miss 90s Trek a lot!
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I do think that Discovery's done a decent job of balancing the old and the new for the most part - Michael is very much her own character, and the show is very much her story and not Spock's. Season 2 maybe leaned a little too much into the nostalgia, but even then I was more annoyed with the fandom suddenly wanting to make everything about Pike and Spock than with how the show itself handled it. But I was very unhappy with Picard dumping almost all of its new characters to make room for a TNG reunion, and don't want to see SNW going in a similar direction.
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I thought it was a good episode, and I love alternate timelines and characters getting to see what would have happened if they'd made different choices... but I also don't think we need yet another version of Kirk (or Spock, though that ship sailed a while ago I guess), and I want to see that level of care and in-depth exploration being put in for our new characters too. We barely even saw anything of anybody who wasn't Pike, Spock or Kirk in that finale.
Exactly!!!
Oh, Discovery is definitely the best about this. I just find the thinking that led the writers to believe that no one would care about this new character unless she was related to an old character indicative of their entire approach to new characters lately, if that makes sense. The Spock connection simply didn't need to be there in the first place, but it seems that the showrunners don't trust their audience to care about new characters.
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The actor they chose for this episode is...not him. That's all I'll say.
He really, really wasn't. It would have been a nice nod to the OG if they'd used the actor who played Sarek in Discovery. I did like the actress who played the Praetor; she was chilling without being too over-the-top.
IDK how to feel about Paul Wesley. He was fine. Not really charming, like you said, but since it was only one ep and a pretty tense one at that, I think he could still surprise us. I just can't get over the fact that a moody, sometimes-psycho vampire is supposed to be Kirk. And I only watched like a season and a half of TVD.
I'm so, so excited for the TNG cast to come back in Picard. I think most of the new characters got a good send-off/had their storylines wrapped in a way that will make Picard feel like a two-season show and the third season feel like a TNG mini-series. Which absolutely works for me because (1) I don't like seeing Picard without the others, and my battered shipper heart would like to see Picard and Crusher together again (as Tumblr says, Star Trek is the only show that straight-baits as much as queer-baits lol); and (2) I need a better send-off for the TNG cast than f*cking Nemesis!!!
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It would have been a nice nod to the OG if they'd used the actor who played Sarek in Discovery. I did like the actress who played the Praetor; she was chilling without being too over-the-top.
Agreed to both of these.
I am eager to be surprised by Paul Wesley! I've seen some incredibly snarky interviews he made about TVD that show that he does have a sense of humor, so maybe he'll be able to capitalize on that.
my battered shipper heart would like to see Picard and Crusher together again (as Tumblr says, Star Trek is the only show that straight-baits as much as queer-baits lol)
Hahaha relatable!
I need a better send-off for the TNG cast than f*cking Nemesis!!!
Lol I am sympathetic to this!