Star Trek United

[Ruin Explorer]

But tbh, I find The West Wing also hasn't aged well, and while I get the idea ... for me, I don't know if mashing up two shows I don't care to rewatch will generate a show I would want to watch.

Right?

The West Wing always seemed deeply self-satisfied and bombastic. Now it seems deeply self-satisfied, bombastic, and hopelessly, childishly naïve. Like "should not be allowed out of the house on its own" levels of naïve. Further, it's seemed that way for quite a long time - I don't think it really could talk to the post-2008 financial crash world at all. Because in the world it operated in, that crash could never have happened, let alone been as bad as it was, due to various nigh-infallible, super-smart and good-hearted politicians and their attendants. Even the "evil" or "bad" politicians in the West Wing setting wouldn't have let that happen as badly as it did, and would have direly punished the people who made it happen. But that was shown to be complete fantasy!

It's a very "End of History" kind of show that started airing before "history" came back online, and finished its run before "history" really turned it up to 11.

I think the sort of supercilious attitude it absolutely revelled in would be an extremely poor fit for the extreme earnestness required for a Star Trek show which talked about the politics of the Federation. Also, I'm not sure you'd even be allowed to make a show about a society as extremely socialist, IDIC, and directly anti-capitalist as the Federation simply is, if you focused on the Federation (rather than had it just in the background) so we'd almost certainly see Federation values massively compromised with cheap, nasty 21st century values. I've noted that at times Strange New Worlds briefly forgets itself and treats the Federation as like, New York City In Spaaaaaaaaace, and that's problematic for me. I suspect any show like this would necessarily go that way, which would be no good.

I like Scott Bakula, he's a good actor. I think he was ill-served by Enterprise, a show that stripped him of his charisma and just ... Archer is the worst.

That's the other problem. I like Bakula too, but Archer is easily, no contest, hands-down the worst captain/leader in a Trek show on just about every single level, from simple likeability to actual competence, to sticking to real Federation values. Even bloody MacFarlane's self-indulgent self-played captain on the Orville is a hypercompetent Federation saint next to Archer.

And let's not even start on a crew so bad they make both the Voyager and Discovery crews truly amazing by comparison (again, on every level).

The fault is largely with the showrunners, but that's not reason to go back there.