Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Is Almost Upon Us! Discuss What You Want


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I finished a re-watch of SNW just last night. It remains consistently strong.

Are there weaker episodes? Sure. The light addiction (1.03) and the child who saves a planet (1.06) don't work for me, and the story about the aliens in the fuel (2.06) had been done at least twice before in other ST series, but for the most part they're solid. Even the silly episodes are responsibly silly -- they are consistently fun, even when they don't play into a larger story. On the re-watch I came to appreciate M'Benga much more than I did before, and indeed that there's some very tight writing for many of the crew.

The episodic approach is way more satisfying (for me) than Discovery, and it means they can change the tone confidently week-by-week. On paper, the storybook episode should be terrible (1.08), but the gift that it gives Anson Mount playing his cowardly character not only is great comic relief, but it also reinforces what agreat captain he is everywhere else. I didn't like the story of M'Benga's daughter, but when in season 2 (2.08, with its remarkably ambiguous ending) we learn that his technique for keeping her alive had been developed during the Klingon War, that's a really cool payoff.

I was also struck by how often they were just riffing on other SF. It didn't matter that it wasn't original -- putting ST characters (whom I like) into the different situations was a good payoff by itself. In a way that starts at the end of Discovery 2.14, when Michael gets her 2001 moment. But introducing the Gorn as a riff on Aliens is pretty good (1.09), or having an Empire Strikes Back moment (2.10) even if they call it a Zombie movie trick, is satisfying. And when they evoke music from TOS, they show they know that they are cheering established fans. (I mean, they pulled off a crossover with Lower Decks, and it was one of the funniest Time Travel stories I've ever seen.)

I'm really looking forward to season 3... can't come soon enough.
 
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There’s definitely some truth to that. I’ve seen several artists mention certain songs they wish they didn’t have to play I’ve anymore, and some don’t.

As I recall, King Missile palways plays “Detachable Penis” within the first 5 songs of their setlist, then tell the attendees who ONLY wanted to hear that song they can go home now.

My favorite solution to this was R.E.M.’s final leg of their 1989 Green Tour, in which they opened with Stand, The One I Love, and So. Central Rain… then left the stage.

A projected slideshow then asked everyone to be respectful toward each other and also “please do not wait until the quietest moment of the quietest song to yell “Radio Free Europe” as Mike does not like that.”

Then they returned, having already addressed all reasonable expectations. It was a brilliant show.
 

I used to agree with that, but I rewatched DS9 over the Pandemic, and frankly, whilst it wasn't in as high gear as it eventually got to, it's not true that it was confused and the first two seasons are actually full of excellent episodes and there's a clear direction to it. It'd say it's actually slightly better than SNW season 1/2, despite loving Pike and his crew, because SNW, whilst a huge improvement from Discovery, still doesn't really like to actually "engage brain" and has had a few dumb and one offensively stupid episodes where the writers revealed they basically don't understand how certain aspects of the world works (the most egregious being the actually-offensive courtroom one, which I surprised you don't have words about, perhaps you have been so desensitized by many decades of truly terrible near-sighted US courtroom dramas - but there is zero possibility the Federation, of all organisations, would use the anti-justice, antediluvian and pernicious "fruit of the poison tree" legal doctrine - you might as well tell me the Federation opposes trans rights) and much worse, don't have the moral clarity and consistency of TNG/DS9 (even in darkness, DS9's moral clarity was remarkable - Sisko et al knew when they were doing the wrong thing for the right reasons or vice-versa).


Mostly is a load-bearing word there. There's absolutely been filler. Not TNG levels of filler (let alone VOY or ENT!), but there have been episodes which really didn't have much to say. And I think if we were looking at 22 or 24 episode seasons we'd see about TNG levels of filler. But I'd still like that! Even the filler episodes tend to be good, like a lot of later TNG filler.

I guess I sound kind of down on SNW, but like, I'm actually down on hyperbole about SNW. It is, I think absolutely, the second-best first two seasons of a Trek show and was the first-best first season! What I'm hoping is it doesn't become the third-best third season and I think it'll be okay because, I also re-watched TNG during the Pandemic and... it still was kind of touch-and-go at times in S3 (where DS9 is absolutely full impulse).

I do feel there's a problem with the writing at times where the writers are sort of overconfident with some of the morals and points, and that's bad because they don't quite get the Federation (nor IDIC even) in the way that TNG, DS9, and weirdly, so weirdly, particularly The Orville gets it (also Lower Decks to a lesser extent). That they at times, are a bit too close to a sort of limp unreflective mainstream socially-liberal present-day centrist kind of politics, a sort of... Hamilton-brained kind of deal, rather than the distinctly more radical concepts of the Federation. Luckily, about 80% of episodes don't even touch on this stuff, only touching on the more typically relevant aspects of the Federation.

Again though, I criticise because I love here!

SNW is a great show. It's a 9/10 show. But there are some real discordant notes that, just so weirdly, The bloody Orville of all bloody shows managed to eliminate (by S3), whilst also playing considerably more dangerous and risky tunes than SNW has yet attempted.

(I don't think I will ever get over how much, by S3, The Orville had exceeded my expectations, particularly as a "Federation fan".)
Any chance of more Orville you think?

Edit:Nevermind. Yay!
 

Initially confirmed by Scott Grimes last August.

Reportedly confirmed by Hulu last October.

IMDB landing page for season 4.

Hr. None of those actually reference public announcements from Hulu itself, or the like. So I'm taking them with a grain of salt until McFarlane or someone starts talking about it being an actual active thing happening. Like, "here's a pic of the actors in makeup chairs:" or something.
 
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Hr. None of those actually reference announcements from Hulu itself, or the like. So I'm taking them with a grain of salt until McFarlane or someone starts talking about it being an actual active thing happening. LIke, "here's a pic of the actors in makeup chairs:" or something.
Well, that's understandable, but I will cling to that thin ray of hope as best I can.
 

I was already enjoying it, from jump, but even more so once the show grew out of the fart scatological jokes and repetitive "jar of pickles" comments.
The other thing that's kind of wack about The Orville is the really Boomer musical references. It's like, with TNG/DS9, yeah absolutely they had some really Boomer musical stuff, but that was because it was the 1980s and 1990s, and they were talking about music that the showrunners grew up with (they were Boomers, age-wise) and that was, at the time, only from like 30 years ago.

Whereas The Orville has similar musical tastes, but MacFarlane is a young Gen Xer, he's 51, he's barely older than me (a very old Millennial/Xennial/Generation Oregon Trail), and the first season was 2017, so that kind of music was more like 55-60 years old - certainly from before MacFarlane was even born! I've never been sure if this was intentional if odd nod to TNG/DS9, or if MacFarlane just really likes the Oldies. Like Oldies so old even some Boomers (like my parents) see them as from "before their time".

It doesn't ruin the show or anything but it is peculiar and worth being prepared for!
 

...feeling the need to name-check the Great American Songbook in the SNW musical episode.

I tried to convince myself that the awkwardness of the moment shows how far removed the series is from the real world of the 20th c., but I know that's not the case.
 

The other thing that's kind of wack about The Orville is the really Boomer musical references. It's like, with TNG/DS9, yeah absolutely they had some really Boomer musical stuff, but that was because it was the 1980s and 1990s, and they were talking about music that the showrunners grew up with (they were Boomers, age-wise) and that was, at the time, only from like 30 years ago.

Whereas The Orville has similar musical tastes, but MacFarlane is a young Gen Xer, he's 51, he's barely older than me (a very old Millennial/Xennial/Generation Oregon Trail), and the first season was 2017, so that kind of music was more like 55-60 years old - certainly from before MacFarlane was even born! I've never been sure if this was intentional if odd nod to TNG/DS9, or if MacFarlane just really likes the Oldies. Like Oldies so old even some Boomers (like my parents) see them as from "before their time".

It doesn't ruin the show or anything but it is peculiar and worth being prepared for!
The musical choices always worked for me, and I'm only two years younger than MacFarlane.
 
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The musical choices always for worked for me, and I'm only two years younger than MacFarlane.
They're undeniably Boomer as hell, verging on Greatest Generation. They're what my dad, who is 75, would see as appealing to people older than him (I mean, we could see him as counting as more like 65 because he's always been ahead of his time, but still).
 
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