An interesting, deliberately thought provoking 🤔 question for a lazy long weekend Sunday morning…
Setting aside whether specific fans like specific ‘gimmicks’ (crossovers, musicals, bringing back Kirk or Khan) or tropes (transporter malfunctions), Space.com is posing the hypothesis that the proportion was too high in Strange New Worlds second season.
There’s no arguing that the season was successful in drawing in large audiences week after week. Taking a look back though, was there too much trippy-Trek™ dessert and not enough of a meaty main course? YMMV surely.
For my part, I can both agree that trippy Trek is something I’ve been wanting more of, and that I would have welcomed 2 or 3 more episodes were more grounded or gave the opportunity to see more of Una as a leader and dug into Ortegas backstory.
The 90s shows seemed to be bit embarrassed by trippyness, although Voyager found its pretext allowed even stern Janeway to pronounce ‘Weird is our business.’ One can argue that the high proportion in SNW is a feature, not a bug.
I’d still prefer a 12-15 episode season though.
I really don’t think the inclusion of Kirk should be considered a “gimmick”. There was no stunt-casting, nor were the episodes in which he appeared particularly gimmicky (well, okay, “Subspace Rhapsody” was a gimmick episode, but in a way that wasn’t structured around Kirk specifically).
Like it or hate it, it’s clear to me that the producers are including Kirk because they think it’s worth exploring the character at this point in his career. I wouldn’t call that a gimmick.
I found that the opinion-piece from Space.com didn’t distinguish classic tropes and use of legacy characters from ‘gimmicks.’
While my personal preference prior to the show’s premiere had been to hold on the introduction of so many TOS legacy characters, to allow the others and original ones to breathe, as long as having Kirk there is bringing new insights to his character (and others’), it’s all to the good. At this point, I’m eager to see more of young Scotty.
I completely agree with your line ‘One can argue that the high proportion in SNW is a feature, not a bug.’ I thought it was great.
Star Trek has always had different vibes for different shows. It also took a while for each show to find it’s own vibe. I’m really enjoying the split that SNW has come up with. They lean on all the light/trippy episodes so they can pull some incredibly dark shit out of nowhere in the next. Some of the episodes of SNW S2 are amongst the darkest things ever portrayed in Trek at all. The swinging from the Lower Decks episode to the M’Benga/Chapel episode was intense and because of it you never know what kind of ride Strange New Worlds is about to take you on. Am I going to laugh? Sing? Cry? All of the above? Or something completely new?
I would also prefer 12 episodes but we’ve also gotten some ‘big budget’ scenes and visuals due to there only being 10. Then again… bottle episodes…
Some of the episodes of SNW S2 are amongst the darkest things ever portrayed in Trek at all. The swinging from the Lower Decks episode to the M’Benga/Chapel episode was intense
Ad Astra and Among the Lotus Eaters were also pretty serious episodes.
