In an era of thunderous blockbusters and hyper-prestigious series, Star Trek is struggling. JJ Abrams’ films tried to rediscover Star Trek for the era of mega action movies, and Star Trek: Discovery tried to rediscover it for serial television. And others, such as Picard and Lower Decks, have just tried to play on fans with intense nostalgia and jokes. They were all Star Trek, but they didn’t have the same impact as the original series or Star Trek series of the ’90s. Watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is like watching The Next Generation or Voyager or even The Original Series. This is a perfectly updated Star Trek terrain for 2022, and that’s largely because he knows what we want: full episodes.
At the moment, the franchise is huge – as big as Star Wars or Doctor Who, but it often feels like it’s been at odds with itself and somehow embarrassed by its own existence in a way that other franchisees don’t. are. It’s like an irritable teenager who really wants to be teased or treated with his family, but doesn’t want to run into friends if they’re being teased.
Strange New Worlds is not like that. This show understands that you can be serious and crazy and yet you can tell really good and funny stories. It is not inconvenient to exist. And, yes, a lot of that is due to a great cast – led by Anson Mount as Christopher Pike and Rebecca Romin as its second commander, Una Chin-Riley (or number one if you’re familiar with the original Star Trek show). But apart from the great cast that appears in a great looking show, what really captivates me is how happy Strange New Worlds is to embrace the full episode.
M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) and Una (Rebecca Romijn) in one of the highest stakes episodes. Image: Marni Grossman / Paramount Plus
Additional episodes are defined as those that do not relate to the comprehensive stories in the series. They are often stay episodes or are the weird, funny episode in a typical dramatic show. They exist because until streaming caught on, most TV series had orders of more than 20 episodes. For the same period of time, many series now come out in 6 to 10 episodes, writers’ rooms usually have to be a little closer to 22 scenarios. This meant that things could get weird. Many of these 20 episodes could have serial plots: Mulder and Scully and their war against the Cigarette Smoker and the Consortium, or the countless storylines of “Favorite Doctor Gets Sick.” But the shows will also have episodes that are experimental or silly or just content, so that the stakes are not raised to “the end of the world as we know it.” Part of the reason Picard was identified with Borg was so influential on Star Trek: The Next Generation was because we knew he was a maniac who liked to play private chill.
As orders for short episodes and highly serialized storylines became commonplace on television, the full episode fell out of fashion. The cast of Star Trek: Discovery is not accidentally playing a fun story about a fourth-dimensional creature soon. But I would say that the full episode is also what distinguishes television from movies as an art form. Highly serialized shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi, broadcast on Disney Plus, feel like movies carefully separated for several weeks. One of the biggest complaints about many new Netflix shows is that they feel like movies that are too long. The plot is always stormy and we never have time to just sit with a character and get to know him.
And the appeal of television for so long – the reason it often inspires huge online fandoms – is that you spend so much time with these characters that you know them better than those with whom you spend two hours in the theater.
Okay, this one is also from an episode with higher stakes, but they’re fighting Gorn! Historically, these are some bad guys with low stakes! Image: Marni Grossman / Paramount Plus
Six episodes of Strange New Worlds are not afraid to catch our breath and allow us to simply enjoy these characters – just as Trek fans did with previous series. So we can have an episode where Captain Pike, who learned his own tragic future in Star Trek: Discovery, tries to come to terms with it, and we can have an episode that makes the extremely crazy Upper Kirk once fight a legitimately ghostly threat. But we can also have an episode in which everyone enjoys their day off and two heroes accidentally change their bodies and negotiate some diplomatic agreements.
The show is convenient to develop the characters in a wide variety of ways, while not feeling the need to always check for any impending threat. Shows like Stranger Things could learn a lot from the more delicate plot. Sometimes we don’t need seven episodes competing towards the end of the world. Sometimes we only need one or two – you know, to have time for that body change or episode of Marmot Day.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds airs new episodes every Thursday on Paramount Plus.
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