This year we’ll be given two more seasons of Trek with SNW getting a third and Discovery’s fifth and final.
I do think SNW has the legs to make it to seven seasons like the traditionally successful Trek series, but I am completely happy that the disaster of Discovery is ending. The format of a multi-season storyline has only ever really worked on DS9, and it was a slow build-up, with massive rewards to the viewer, save for the horrible way they killed-off Jadzia.
The strengths of SNW aren’t just its episodic format, but the fact that it seems to have struck a comfortable balance between the ideals of the older Trek and the Discovery premise. SNW has the tortured protagonist, timey-wimey stuff, strong supporting characters, and the ever-present Treknobabble that helps twist the plot in ways that have worked since the ‘60s. What it could do more of is pull away from the TOS characters a bit more.
I know there are legions of Kirk and Spock fanatics that want nothing more than to see them in every episode and witness them in wildly outlandish scenarios…I get it, really. What I have always wondered about is the vast Federation. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of cultures and civilizations that we only ever hear mentioned. Why not flesh a few of them out, let them move toward the main storyline. The whole idea of Star Trek is to tell stories via allegory, so why always do it so blatantly through the eyes of humans? And no, I’m not advocating for a whole show built around the Klingons or Vulcans…I’m not that kind of fan.
In any case, I’m looking forward to SNW, and ecstatic about the end of Discovery.
You must be logged in to post a comment.