2/19/2023
I discovered Star Trek Continues and watched the first four episodes on Saturday night. Episode one was quite good, calling back to the story about Apollo from S02E04 Who Mourns For Adonais and bringing back Michael Forest to reprise his role as the Greek god Apollo.
Holy shit.
Episode two was strong, and quite moving at the end, but episode three was downright astonishing. It took place entirely in the mirror universe and I don't even want to spoil anything about it. I will note Michael Dorn, the actor who portrays Worf, was the voice of the mirror universe ship computer. Everything else about it was downright amazing. nota bene: This is a fan production with high production values and they have good scripts.
A sad state of affairs considering how nuTrek, e.g. Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard are unwatchable trash. Discovery had promise, I enjoyed the first season but I struggled through the second season which amounted to "We will give Michael Burnham access to a time machine and when Michael Burnham not onscreen all the other characters should be asking, "Where's Michael Burnham?"" Season three had promise shooting the Discovery to the 31st century, drawing upon Bryan Singer's unproduced Star Trek: Federation. Ten or so episodes later, there was no reset, nothing new was being done, dutch angles and lens flare were just a meaningless joke. I tried to watch the fourth season but stopped after the first episode because I tortured myself enough.
As for Star Trek Picard, I watched the complete first season and realized the show boiled down to Patrick Stewart cosplaying a character named Jean-Luc Picard with Seven of Nine and a crew who is a pastiche of Firefly. Second season took place entirely in the 21st century, remained unwatchable garbage and seemed to become worse. Out of duty I acquired the first episode of season three, watched Dr. Beverly Crusher use a pump action phaser rifle (something that isn't saved by the rule of cool in any sense) on some plague-masked intruders before taking a phaser hit to her shoulder.
There is no point in continuing watching this garbage.
Yet a fan-made series has scripts blowing the plots and story arcs of Discovery and Picard out of the water, remaining Star Trek rather than Law & Order in space being all dark, gritty, and edgy which is contrary to Gene Roddenberry's vision of utopia.
"B-but Deep Space Nine was dark and edgy"
Yes but it was not a gimmick, that was part and parcel of the storyline. There were strong characters, Federation and non-federation, along with interesting and surprising critiques of the Federation but ultimately there was hope and good at the core.
I insist the writers on nuTrek aren't fans of the show, they're UC graduates with starry-eyed dreams of writing cop dramas for television and never gave Trek more than lip service.
At least Star Trek: Lower Decks is good, but I really have no interest in watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds despite fandom raving over it. For me The Orville is the best new Trek.
