I am talking about the Tv series (the movies are sometime better, sometimes worse).
Lately, I have been binge-watching all of the Star trek series...
I have always liked the Trek... then, a thought struck me.
Star Trek isn't really that great a franchise, as far as TV goes.
OK, the Original Series is good, more so if compared with other American stuff from the same years.
The New generation is, already, not so fun.
Some things in it will forever live in infamy in our memory - like, a shrink on the spaceship's command deck - really? - a forever kid android - but Tetsuwan Atom is more interesting than Data, and arrived way first - and ... Wesley Crusher - it was not your fault, Will.
Over all, it has its moments and it is fun to watch, which is what one can reasonably ask from an American Series - but nothing more.
Star Trek Voyager...
I rather forget it, even though Seven Of Nine's actress - Jeri Ryan - somehow managed to inject some interest in the token "sexy quasi-alien woman" character that she was handed, and as a result added some interpersonal dynamics - worth watching for - to an otherwise stale, stale series.
Enterprise, ah, Enterprise... one of the shows worse damaged from the 9/11 accident, it got completely derailed by it for two seasons, and not in a good way.
Watched now, its most important story arch seems a grotesque over-reaction to a tragedy that, had it happen during WWI on the Western Front or WWII on the East front, it would have been classified just a moderately busy day with a couple of squabbles.
By the way, today about 30000 people have died of starvation...
It doesn't look like the media are swayed out of their ways by this tragedy but, after all, none of these were friends of American directors or actors.
Scott Bakula rendition of Captain Archer - as someone points out, Archer basically sucks at his job, and sucks hard - is not the worse thing in the series, being it probably Jolene Blalock's Vulcanian sex-doll, T'Pol and the scripts, but it still manages to make look Janeway good.
When the 9/11 binge was over, Enterprise had a decent last year run, but that's all - too little, too late, as they say.
What remains is Deep Space Nine.
It is a good series but, effectively, it is not exactly Star Trek, more likely it was Paramount screwing Straczinsky - when he finally managed to get his Babylon 5 produced by Warner - and Ronald D. Moore flexing his writing muscles, before creating BSG 2003.
Also, in many ways DS9 is the tomb of classic Star Trek, a its writers have explored most if not all of the original series mythology's tenets and they have shown, one by one, that none could really work.
The Federation proved idealist only when it had no relevant stakes on the table, otherwise it sees no issue in condoning its secret intelligence services a little pre-emptive genocide.
Also, it proves itself just a hypocritical hegemony with group-think mania, when confronted with internal dissent that goes outside the allowed space for it - the Maquis ends up exterminated, under the complacent eyes of the Federation, mostly because they dare have dissenting opinions on what to do with Cardassia.
The Kilingon Empire is dying, and has been for a long time.
Its citizens only pay lip service to the honour and warrior traditions they always talk about, but they really are willing to accept - and exercise - corruption, up to the very highest echelons of their society.
The Ferengi, too, have reached the end of the line for their purely mercantile civilization.
"Greed" is not enough to keep nuclear power plants from blowing up, or to shut them down when they go out of control.
Even to just build stuff that other civilizations may want to buy, a bunch of greedy accountants are not enough... a civilization needs scientists, artists, engineers - and many other people who care more about doing its best than getting paid the most.
But, at least, it appears that the seeds for change were there, as Rom - an engineer with a social-democratic and unionist mindset! - is landed with the role of reforming ruler.
Finally, the Romulans ends up allying themselves with the Federation, and are likely staying close, even after the end of the war... (it is not like the Delta quadrant forces will renounce to impose their vision of an ordered universe any time soon, really), so even those classic series enemy suffer a fatal villain decay.
It is not surprising, thus, that DS9 is the end, for the classic Star Trek timeline in TV - of Roddenberry ideas, it leaves little or nothing standing.
So, in the end, Star Trek is The Original Series, that big budget Babylon 5 called DS9 and, in the middle, a bunch of not so fun stuff that isn't worth a season of Farscape.
Dare I say, I am not a trekkie any more.
A sad look on Star Trek, something you have to get when looking at a long-running TV series or big franchise from a distance.
ReplyDeleteI liked most of it when watched it all long ago.
Looking back, these shows are just entertainment.
Some shows better, some worse.
I once was a trekkie, too, but still I liked Babylon 5 a bit more.
PS: I still watch the new Star Trek show. And you?
I watched Discovery and I think that it was very nice.
ReplyDeleteIt tried a lot to restore the Roddenberry ethos and optimism (possibly because we all need a ton of it), all the while injecting some novelty in the old characterization of the Klingon, and acting very much as a counterpoint to - or a critique of - Enterprise "9/11 derailment" a decade before.
My only real issue with it is with Michael Burman voice in the last few episodes, and especially in the final ceremony.
If it is Soneequa Martin Green natural voice, OK - my bad, I am an ass.
But if not, that baritone tone and somber cadence that were arguably justified by the situation in the first episodes feel a lot less comprehensible in the celebration of the Federation's victory.
I'm old enough that I discovered the Original Series while its first season on NBC was in the rerun phase in 1967 (meaning that I never got to see about half of the first-season episodes until after the show was canceled and went into syndication in 1970). I was ten years old and fell for it hard... yeah, a first-generation Trekkie, that's me. I mean, I bought *scripts* from Gene Roddenberry's Lincoln Enterprises.
ReplyDeleteBut-- I just can't care anymore. I stuck with it through "Voyager" and Enterprise" (though in both cases after a short while I was watching mostly to be amazed at how consistently bad they could be<1,2>), but that was about it; I've never bothered to even see the last two few TNG movies, and the modern J.J. Abrams movie eries doesn't interest me at all.
<1>And, okay, to appreciate Jeri Ryan and Jolene Blalock's asses. A lot.
<2>Does anyone else care that Janeway fucking *murdered* Tuvix?
Looking back on it and leaving financial concerns aside (which of course is impossible, since it all exists solely to make money for Paramount), they should have stopped at the end of Wrath of Khan.