STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS, SEASON ONE (2022)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological*

Despite my having heard a few favorable mentions of STRANGE NEW WORLDS, I was pretty sure that it wouldn't prove any artistic challenge to Classic Trek, for reasons I cited in this essay about one of TREK's other imitators. And I made that guess even without knowing that Akiva Goldsman was one of the showrunners.

What I didn't expect was that SNW would instill in me a much stronger appreciation for STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, because even the weakest episode of NEXTGEN projects a greater sense of authenticity than this weak sauce series.

I saw a few episodes of one of Paramount's earlier streaming space-serials, DISCOVERY, and maybe one or two of PICARD. Both seemed focused on single main characters with assorted support characters. Whether I'm correct in that impression or not, there's no question that SNW follows the ensemble model of NEXTGEN. I wasn't overly fond of most of the new characters of the older show, but at least all of them comported themselves seriously in their dual role as explorers and military agents.

I probably haven't seen most of the shows Goldsman has worked on since the 1990s. But even though Goldsman only co-wrote the first and last episodes of SNW's first run of ten stories, every dumb, overly referential joke sounds like it was culled from the two works on which Goldsman made his toxic reputation: BATMAN FOREVER and BATMAN AND ROBIN. 

Goldsman and his collaborators made a superficial effort to emulate the style and continuity of Classic Trek. The stories focus (in theory) upon the captain who helmed the Enterprise before Kirk: Christopher Pike, whose character appeared in Classic Trek's first pilot, which was also recycled into a two-part story taking place during Kirk's regime. Pike's SNW adventures all predate that story, and Pike is now played by a weary-looking Anson Mount. Since that pilot also established Mister Spock as Pike's second in command, a version of Spock (Ethan Peck) appears in SNW as well, and so does a reworked version of Number One (Rebecca Romijn), a one-shot character from the pilot. Not satisfied with these shout-outs, the showrunners also claim that Pike's Enterprise also harbors younger versions of Lieutenant Uhura and Nurse Chapel, though not surprisingly they've both been turned into "Mary Sue" characters. But I suppose even bad retreads of classic characters aren't as bad as the original ones, of which Helmsman Ortegas, the one who always has a bad joke ready in her quiver, is easily the worst.

What I said in my cited essay is that all the later TREKs have fallen short in creating the kind of freely associative myths found in the Classic version. Goldsman and his writers aren't even able to come up to the level of any of the TREK-imitators, for they unravel ungainly plots designed only to spotlight each actor having his or her "Mary Sue" moment. This Pike would never fantasize about Orion slave girls; he's too busy moaning about a time-travel vision in which he believes he must die to save others. (What a cheery way to start a series.) The new version of Number One is revealed to be an "augment," so she faces prejudice because of the Federation's restrictions about genetic alteration. The character of T'Pring from the Classic episode AMOK TIME is no longer a conniving double-dealer; she's now another girl boss, and she and Spock have a more intimate romantic relationship-- that is, when we're not seeing the beginnings of a relationship between Spock and Nurse Chapel. And how about the pirate episode, where a small contingent of raiders somehow takes over the Enterprise, despite its hundreds of crewpeople? Or what amounts to an "alien holodeck" adventure, which was so bad I couldn't even bear to finish it? 

I've liked Mount and Romijn in other roles, but for the rest of them, I can't even tell if they have any real acting chops, because their characters are so one-dimensional. The only new-to-me performer I liked was Paul Wesley, who plays a slightly younger version of Captain Kirk, and who really does a fine job of emulating William Shatner's style without being entirely derivative-- which is more than I can say for Ethan Peck's Spock.

There's more action on each of the episodes than one often saw in other TREK-imitators, such as VOYAGER. However, the directors are inept at making any of the set-pieces exciting, so SNW scores a blank in that department too. The show's only virtue is that it's not as "in your face" about its political agenda a DISCOVERY was, but that's not really enough reason to watch the next season.