Another interesting example to consider: DS9's Trials and Tribble-ations manages to be one of the most fan-servicey instantiations of Trek ever while still telling a great new story about the here and now. They literally manage to go INSIDE an earlier episode and carve out a whole new plot and conflict that interlocks with and adds richness to the old one.
@@bipolarminddroppings Interesting! I think you're the first person I've "met" who feels that way. Trials and Tribble-ations was produced as a tribute to mark the 30th anniversary of Star Trek. The same week, Voyager (which was running concurrently) also did a tribute episode, Flashback, that featured George Takei as Captain Sulu commanding the Excelsior in Tuvok's past. According to the Wikipedia article on the episode Trials and Tribble-ations, the premise came first as they tried to come up with a way to do a tribute episode, and the VFX team had to come up with a new method to prove they could make it work. The article is fascinating: apparently the work on this episode remastering footage from The Trouble with Tribbles is what inspired the remastering/re-release of the whole TOS series! They also explain that they had the blessing of the writer of the original episode, and that he was on set to play an extra as part of his compensation package. Having him on set they were able to use him as an unofficial continuity advisor. To me, watching Tribble-ations was/is an extremely joyful experience to see how much effort and energy had gone into nailing the details of the TOS look and feel (and sound!), as well as the details of respecting the plot of the original episode while wrapping another story behind it.
@@bipolarminddroppings My thesis on why nuTrek fails would be tangent on this episode. With 20+ episodes, there was room for short form sci fi story telling (isolated episodes), character driven arcs, self referential fan service, and experimental work. In 10-ish episode seasons, every episode has to be an arced character drama, and every one has to fit together. And if you want to do fan service, it has to be jammed into the arc. I found it to be a cute homage, myself. Not DS9s finest episode, but I think the fan service works because they had time to take a break from the season and go all in on it. It's not an easter egg- it's the whole basket of goodies.
@@nattydreds42 In his book "The Trouble With Tribbles" David Gerrold said that he had created the character of Ensign Freeman as a walk-on role for himself. The director opted to use a different actor, because (according to Gerrold) it was felt that Gerrold didn't have the right body type - too thin - to play a believable officer. Whether that's true or not (I personally suspect it isn't, since first of all, he had a cameo in ST:TMP and secondly, I've met Gerrold and he is neither a large nor small person, being average), it was an opportunity to "edit" Miles O'Brien into the DS9 version instead of Freeman. And Gerrold finally did get his opportunity to be in a Tribbles episode. I do wish that someone involved in the making of Trials and Tribble-ations would be honest and acknowledge that they used a scene from Mirror, Mirror when they decided to have Kirk and Sisko "meet". That scene originally had Prime universe Marlena meeting Kirk for the first time, which makes the dialogue following Sisko's exit all the funnier. Spock asks if Kirk knows the "young lady" and Kirk says no, she just seemed like a "nice, likeable girl, and he thinks they could be "friends." I have tried to wrap my mind around the notion of Ben Sisko as a "nice likeable girl" and can't. I don't find Sisko nice or likeable at all. One thing I would like to say about the title of this video is that there's a difference between "NuTrek" and "New Trek." At least in the context of soap operas (where I first encountered the word "Nu") is that it's a way of referring to a new actor in an established role previously played by someone else in a situation where the audience doesn't particularly like the new actor. Since I loathe NuTrek, I refer to it as "Nu". I could use the word FakeTrek, but that really got people angry with me at TrekBBS. I tried to like Discovery, but couldn't. DiscoTrek has horribly boring characters and I have to giggle when they congratulated themselves on being so "original" by giving Spock a human foster sister. Hello, the fanfic writers did that in the late '60s/early '70s! It's NOT a new idea! Picard... ugh. Boring. The only TNG cast member who hasn't aged badly is Wil Wheaton and he wasn't in it. And what's this about Picard being a child when his mother died? She appeared in a Season 1 episode of TNG as an elderly woman! I really like Jeri Ryan on Voyager, but... that episode she and Icheb were in are the last time I watched Picard, and it's soured me on any new Trek series. I haven't bothered with the cartoon one or the Pike one. BTW, there's one callback to "Space Seed" that was missed in this video. Khan refers to Marla when he says he's going to leave Kirk "as you left me, as you left her... buried alive, buried alive..."
@@Shan_Dalamani You don't like Sisko? He's my favorite Captain. You just made an enemy for life...or at least until the end of this sentence. Disco isn't my cup of Earle Grey tea hot but I recommend Strange New Worlds. I'm only about five episodes in but so far I like it better than the last three series.
When Harve Bennet wrote Wrath of Khan, he didn't know Chekhov was not in Space Seed. Walter Koeing said he was the only person who remembered that fact, during filming, and he refrained from saying anything in the event his character gets shifted around or replaced.
This just goes to show that in writing any particular Trek project, "canon" can be easily dumped by the producers to get the story at hand told. It did jump out at me in the film that the Chekov character had not yet appeared on the TOS episode with Khan, but for the purposes of Wrath of Khan, I did a mental jump that Chekov was at the time of "Space Seed," a "Lower Decker" crew member before he was assigned his bridge crew position, that Khan had some interactions with, but we the viewer didn't see in that series episode.
Was it ever stated when Chekhov first came to the Enterprise? Was it ever stated that he was not on the Enterprise before he got assigned a post on the bridge? I believe promotion does not require being assigned to a different ship or unit even in real militaries.
I'm _definitely_ not middle-aged either. I believe Terry Pratchett said it best: Inside every old person is a young person wondering what the hell happened. Good stuff!
The problem I have with Picard's past trauma is that it never came up in seven seasons of the tv show and the four movies. The amount of trauma Picard went through in the show, being turned into a Borg for example and even visiting home to be with his brother and yet in all of that this problem with his mother, and his brothers mother of course, are never mentioned. In Generations when his brothers family die in a fire it would have naturally shown his past issues with his mother, but of course back then those issues never existed. And this is the nagging problem of using characters with such a full past and history. After seven years its all known now, everything about that character has been said. To take it and now introduce something so fundamentally huge and shattering as his mother committing suicide looks weak, and lazy.
I haven't yet seen Picard S2 so I had this spoiled for me (don't care really). My reaction is the same - totally unnecessary given the mountain of material we already have about the life of Picard. It's as you say - weak and lazy. I agree.
Even more than that. In one episode where they do some stuff with the warp engine through the traveller (the guy Wesley ends up joining) they land in a place where thoughts are real. At one point Picard sees his mother (or some sort of projection of her) and seems to be on rather good terms with her.
@Corbomite_Meatballs Late reply. At least three mental state evaluations of different types - Picard was put through the psych test, same as Wesley was in “Coming of Age” when he was Starfleet bound. Wesley’s test tied back into the death of his father, basically recreating the situation and making Wesley face the same “only time to rescue one” decision. Picard confided to Wesley that he (Picard) failed the psych test his first time through. - There’s also a separate “Bridge Officer’s Test” that is required for anybody wishing to command a ship (outside emergency situations). We see Troi take this in “Thine Own Self” and also find out Beverly Crusher had taken it previously (she’s in command during a night-shift). Part of the test is a simulation where the applicant must order somebody to take an action certain to result in death. - The infamous _Kobayashi Maru_ tests how one responds to a no-win scenario.
I gave up on Picard halfway through season one. Middle-aged and used to record TNG on VHS off the TV. Huge fan of TNG and could not believe how horrendous Picard was. I saw that Worf and everybody returns by season 3 of Picard but I just could not bring myself to self torture.
I saw Khan recognizing Chekov as worldbuilding. It makes the Enterprise feel more real, by overtly confirming that stuff happens on the ship that we, the audience, don't get to see. The Constitution class of the time had a crew compliment (I believe) of 305. There are what, 8 people on the bridge? Chekov didn't just suddenly appear on the bridge in season 2, he had to come from somewhere. He could have transferred from another ship, but it's equally likely that he was already on the ship, in another position that we just didn't see, and in season 2 he was promoted to bridge officer. We can't possibly see everything that goes on on the ship at all times. There just isn't time, episodes are 42 minutes. TVTropes has a trope for this: the Law of Conservation of Detail. Chekov simply wasn't important to the plot until season 2. Another example of this is SG-1. Someone did the math, comparing statements about how often SG-1 goes through the gate, with how many times we the audience see their missions. And it was confirmed that we the audience see approximately 1/3 of SG-1's missions.
Agreed. Khan goes straight from 1996 to Ceti Alpha V with maybe a week aboard the Enterprise in between. But we see him read through the ship's entire library in "Space Seed," and it's not too much of a stretch to think he could have viewed the crew registry as well. (It's also the only way he could have learned that famous "Klingon proverb.")
I heard the (humorous) theory that he was working as janitor at the time. But that Stargate example is a god one. A subplot of the episode "200" is that the team is about to go on a mission, but the gate is broken. Most of the episode deals with the in-universe show "Wormhole X-treme", which picks fun at Stargate and other scifi shows, but that subplot comes up again, because it would be Mitchell's 200th trip through the gate. It's the characters 26th episode on the show, so even assuming that they take more than two trips (go out and come back) per mission, he would've taken 8 walks through the gate each episode to come to that number. And yes, there are episodes where they use the gate multiple times, but how often would it happen that they find a planet, go there, find nothing interesting, and come back. There have to be much more missions we don't see, because they are just not interesting enough. And the same goes for Star Trek. The amount of times the ship scans a nebula or makes first contact or someone enjoys the holodeck and nothing goes wrong has to immense. Because if what we see is the only times those things happen, the whole mission would be super dangerous. We don't get to see the episode where all replicators on deck 3 are broken, or Wesley has a birthday party, or where Garak is constipated, or where Chakotay has a mild headache, because those simply aren't interesting enough. We only see the really big things. Which is also why the stories take place where things happen. There is no series where the USS Boring flies around transporting industrial replicators for 5 seasons.
Enterprise can hold around 400 crew members. If you pay ridiculous close attention to chekov in TOS it's revealed that he was in the science department prior to being promoted to bridge crew as he is always seen taking over Spock's station when Spock is off the bridge and in season 2's "The Apple" he and Spock have a fake argument alluding to Chekov's time there. It's quite possible that he met Khan.
I recently saw Walter Koenig at a screening of Wrath of Khan and he brought up the fact that people ask him about it all the time as if he's an actor and he joked and gave this whole headcanon he came up with that Khan saw Chekov coming out of the bathroom and he was in such a hurry he completely ignored Khan
I think the weirder issue with the Chekov/Khan scene is the planetary order. Most systems get their numbers from how close they are to their star, so Ceti Alpha VI blowing up and making them think V was the right place would be like Saturn blowing up and sending Jupiter beyond Uranus.
Yeah, the Chekov/Khan conundrum could even be explained by Khan just having a super human memory and being able to remember even the lowliest person he'd only seen once before maybe
I always assumed Chekov had been on the Enterprise *before* getting that coveted bridge position, and it even works better for highlighting Khan's capabilities that he remembered the face of a random lower decks crewman.
There is one (I'd say) subtle but pointed call back in Wrath of Kahn to Space Seed. Of the books we see on the shelf of the Botany Bay when Chekhov and the Captain arrive, there are two copies of Paradise Lost on it, This is clearly a reference to the end of Space Seed where being condemned to harsh life taming a planet Kahn asks if they know Milton and Kirk explains the allusion "It is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven." At 43 I avoid a mid-life crisis by having my whole life be a kind of unresolved question mark, so any crisis I have at mid-life is just an extension of the one I've had since being a teenager, if not before.
With regards to NuTrek in general and the Kelvin timeline in particular, by far one of my biggest sticking points has been its focus on action. I remember watching Star Trek Into Darkness for the first time and actually being angry with its endless succession of giant set piece action sequences, and so many of them achieved very little in the plot. Kirk, Spock, and Uhura hop on a little ship to try to get to the surface of Quo'nos, but are immediately pursued by Klingons, there's some shooting, a chase sequence, Kirk thinks he's given the Klingons the slip by flying through a crevace, but he gets caught and cornered. The scene could easily be reduced to "Kirk tries to sneakily reach the surface, but gets caught by the Klingons." The violence doesn't serve a purpose other than counting toward the studio mandated explosion quota. The Wrath of Khan on the other hand is very deliberate in how it uses violence. Every time the Enterprise and the Reliant exchange fire, the hits scored by either side have immediate consequences. Star Trek Discovery seasons 1 and 2 feature enormous, visually noisy battle sequences that don't do half as well at holding the audiences attention on each blow inflicted by either side the way the Wrath of Khan does. It's just billions of pew pew bolts being exchanged ad infinitum that don't matter until they do. It's like the end of a Marvel movie bashing two plastic action figures together for 20 minutes. Usually more violence you have in a story, the less that violence matters. But Alex Kurzman and his studio executive buddies think that the audience will be bored if they have to wait more than 15 minutes for something to blow up or someone to blow someone else's head off with a phaser, they'll get bored and watch something else.
Growing up, I never saw Space Seed as I only caught the occasional rerun on tv so when I first saw Wrath of Khan I thought it was a totally self-contained story. The movie is perfectly enjoyable without any previous knowledge of Space Seed and, in my mind, is still one of (if not the) best of the classic ST movies
"The best way forward for Star Trek is to tell new stories... Make the characters the protagonists of their own adventures." So much this! And not just for Star Trek - the moment you said this I immediately went and though of the new Star Wars stuff as well. Why things like Rogue One and the Mandalorian succeed whereas things like Solo and Rise of Skywalker don't. Tickling the nostalgia bone is all well and good, but it's not why we consume media of any franchise.
Rogue One succeeded especially because it did tell a "new" story. Yes, it was packed with fan service, but even though it was closely tied to the story of A New Hope, it still told its own original story. That, plus the way the new original characters worked well, were why it succeeded when "Solo" fell flat.
Some "fan service" is nice, but only for a moment. Like in Rogue One there were some touches but it was almost all new. Besides Tarkin and Princess Leia, the characters were new and exciting and the plot points were very well done. The problem with Solo was that parts of the story were ridiculous, some characters also. But large parts of the story had been written in novels and dit$ney declared they don't count. Screw greedy dit$ney. And I thought of Lando liked women, not just anything with an available socket. He was a suave man of style and grace played by Billy Dee Williams. Don't really want to know what he did to that robot.
The worst part with Solo (at least in my mind) is that it's a totally decent - if silly - space western heist movie made actively worse by Han Solo being the main character. Every time the action begins to pick up pace, the movie grinds to a halt so we can play easter egg bingo with the main character. It actively makes original trilogy Han's arc *worse*, because we now need to assume he started as a selfish smuggler, became a selfless hero... then over the course of a decade went back to being a selfish smuggler just in time to become a selfless hero again. I'm sure the assumption was that no one would see a movie like that if it wasn't about a character we knew, and maybe that's true, (though the Mandalorian proved we'll watch the hell out of a series like that) but that's what is currently weighing down every franchise.
@@thomascattington1660 "But large parts of the story had been written in novels and dit$ney declared they don't count. Screw greedy dit$ney." I mean, sure, screw Disney, but that's not a problem unique to the current situation. Star Wars media was *always* "canon until something contradicts it". The amount of bending over backwards that was done post Episode II to accommodate stories from the 90's that had made assumptions about the Clone Wars that didn't end up fitting Lucas' vision is astounding. Not to mention all the stories the animated Clone Wars paved over in order to tell its own.
I like SFdebris's take on the Chekov scene. He posits that Chekov was aboard but not on the bridge, but instead made Khan wait to use a bathroom, but also broke the facilities and told Khan had to good to one on the next deck.
I would hope that Chekov would have directed Khan to Enterprise's "Haunted Bathroom" (as covered in Ensigns' Log) and not told him the secret door knock, so that Khan blundered in to some crewmembers up to something unspeakable.
Dammit, I +JUST+ posted this as my own joke up top... I must've half-remembered it from my convention days in the 80s. (now who's having a midlife crisis??)
TNG did a Q episode about the ramifications of Picard’s past, specifically his being stabbed in the heart in his impetuous youth. Great episode about not only deal with the effects of your own actions, but also with embracing that past as one building block of the self.
Superman isn’t defined by trauma or traumatized by Krypton’s destruction, he doesn’t even remember Krypton. Clark had a great life raised by two loving farmers, that’s why he’s a hero, not because of some trauma but because he has the power to help others.
One of my favorite examples of using established canon as a way to tell new stories is in DS9's very first episode, Emissary. It's just so good that, even though Ben is heavily scarred by the experience of Wolf 359, it doesn't define him entirely as a person, and I love that they pretty much just have an explicit shot saying "well, TNG's gonna do it's own thing, so bye Enterprise. Saddle up, get involved in this space station and these characters'. Even by the time Worf came in, DS9 was very much it's own show with it's own plotlines, conflicts and themes and it used the events of Worf being disgraced in TNG as yet another way to deepen the plot rather than just bringing back the Enterprise and its crew again.
Thank goodness there was no way to have Worf transfer to Voyager. The Klingon Soap Opera ate TNG, then DS9, and even the last TOS movie to some extent.
@Gabriel Migliorini: You write, "One of my favorite examples of using established canon as a way to tell new stories is in DS9's very first episode, Emissary." *You are so right* , GM. However, at the time it first aired, I thought Emissary was just kind of weird and it didn't work for me on a series that I was expecting not to like. Now, when looking at the first four series (TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY), Emissary was far and away the best first episode that any of them had, both as a stand alone episode, and how they integrated into the series.
a guy back in college made me watch Wrath of Kahn, I'd never seen a whole episode of any Trek and never seen any of the movies. Still haven't seen much more Trek than that. Wrath of Kahn is great. it's a great story with compelling characters that you really don't need all the Trek history to follow. and the fact that the hero and antagonist are never on screen together? chefs kiss
The Chekov error is Keonig's fault. He was hired as a continuity checker. He KNEW he wasn't in the episode but didn't fix the mistake because he would be written out of the movie entirely. And yes, he assumed the same explanation you did.
The only continuity error is that Khan recognizes Chekov, not the other way around. Even if Chekov only joined the crew after Space Seed, he was a bridge officer, and as such would have been familiar with the records of previous missions.
The Chekov thing never bothered me. The ship has over 400 people, most of them aren't shown on screen. More importantly, there aren't any episodes where it's explicitly stated that Chekov wasn't there during the original Kahn encounter
Yes, just because Chekov wasn't navigator during first season doesn't mean he wasn't a junior officer in training below decks. Just because we know about the casting event in the show should not be held against the story.
People don't seem to realize that the bridge crew doesn't man their stations 24-7. And just because you don't see something, or someone, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Or do the same people who refuse to accept that Chekov was on the Enterprise and had met Khan, think that nobody in the future uses a toilet? Because we never see those either.
Going by production order, Catspaw was Chekov's first appearance - not Amok Time. In Catspaw, he is clearly treated as being a newbie. He even responds to a condescending comment from DeSalle with "I'm not that green!"
Alan Seawright from over at Cinema Therapy has said that, “the best special effect is a close up of two actors talking in a good dramatic scene” (paraphrasing) Wrath of Khan proves this so well with the dialogues between Kirk and Khan, and leaves us with some excellent quotes that are still remembered today. “like a poor marksman, you… just.. KEEP… MISSING THE TARGET!” “I will KILL YOU, Kirk!” And not to Khan, but still one of my favorite laugh out loud moments: “Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead!”
@@voltinator Burnham is a "show and tell" case. In the pilot we're told that she's just that good and she deserves to be a captain, and then spends the rest of the series showing us why that's a joke.
What really makes wrath of khan stand out is that, after a dramatic event, no one cracks a snarky joke to the camera (aka, the plague that is marvel humour)
Interesting point about Pike - rather than his character being motivated by his trauma, his trauma is motivated by his character. Everything from the fact that he knows it's coming and has to cope with it, to him ultimately declining every opportunity to escape it, comes from his deeply held principles, his choice to pay a personal cost to protect others. Picard's depicted trauma diminishes his sense of agency. Even if he always would have been an enterprising (lol) starship captain, his history of distant personal relationships isn't only no longer his _choice,_ it's down to a past he _repressed,_ and agency is impossible in response to something that is not perceived. Pike's depicted trauma _emphasizes_ his sense of agency, as he faces every opportunity to make a choice with some degree of foreknowledge, and he chooses his course deliberately. The Oracle in The Matrix said "the true measure of a choice is whether we would make it again, knowing full well what it costs." Pike makes his choices knowing their true measure, because that's who he is. Who he chooses to be.
Makes sense that NuTrek always looks back. Fits perfectly into a movie landscape that is single mindedly focused on using the brand recognition of beloved classics instead of creating new ideas.
One thing I love about WoK is that it brings a sense of adulthood to Kirk, through the midlife crisis and through the new knowledge that he has a son. Like Superman Returns, it adds a richness and a reality to the character.
One of my favorite things about TNG was during the second, I believe episode, The Naked Now when Picard, Riker and Data are Googling if anything like what they are experiencing has happened before. Picard reads that something similar did happen on the Enterprise under James Kirk. He read that as if he hadn't heard of Kirk and didn't say "he was required reading at the academy". It was an acknowledgement of what came before but didn't dwell on it. I completely agree that Nu-Trek needs more of that.
And yet the episode basically recycles the original plot, with only minor alterations. But it allows the new characters to do their own thing in a familiar situation. Shows us how different both crews deal with the situation.
This is one of your best and most thought provoking videos. Since you are still pre-middle age, your brain is still working at full capacity for a couple of more years. I really like Strange New Worlds. I was getting a little concerned that the past trauma of some of the characters was going to fully define them and we were going to flash back every time they were in a stressful situation but I think the writers are just trying to introduce these new characters and their motivations. I enjoy long story arcs but I have come to realize from watching Strange New Worlds and anthology series like Black Mirror that there is still a place for episodic shows and i hope the trend to create them continues. Like you said, not every story has enough narrative to fill 10 hours of TV.
If you've seen it, I think The Blacklist was pretty good at being episodic while the characters had arcs throughout the seasons. There needs to be a good balance between the characters and the stories, or else we wouldn't connect with the characters or the main plot would be lacking, basically a filler.
There's a video elsewhere on UA-cam explaining the concept of "Chekhov's Gun." I commented "If Chekhov's Gun shows up in a Star Trek film, would it be called Chekov's Phaser?"
When Spock dies in front of Kirk, I felt it.However, they give you hope before the credits roll, and leave you with a real anticipation for "The Search for Spock". When "Kelvin" Kirk dies, he's back before the movie's over. I felt nothing. The Kelvin Timeline is just a polite way of saying, "Our writers suck!"
That moment about 13 minutes into this video where you realize you probably relate to Star Trek so much because of your shared traumatic experiences. 😳
I still rate Beyond as one of my top five Trek films of all time. With the other Kelvinverse ones firmly in my bottom five. It just *gets* what makes for a good story that can stand in its own right as well as being good Trek.
Beyond is the best of the Kelvinverse, but it still uses the same plot line as all Kelvinverse movies. Specifically, they are all the Wrath of Khan. Bad guy loses somebody. The Federation is arguably responsible, at least in part. Bad guy gets superweapon and threatens innocents. The Enterprise crew deal with it at significant loss (though sometimes only temporarily).
Funny thing is of the Kelvin timeline my favs are 1: Star Trek 09 2: Beyond 3: Into Darkness I LOVED 09 because like ST:SNW it gave me a look at what Enterprise was able to do. TOS never had the capability visually to SHOW YOU how good the Flagship vessel was, Kelvin timeline & Strange New Worlds did/is doing that. That's what I love about "NU" Retro Trek... SHOW ME why everyone on every Enterprise was the top 5% of Academy Cadet assignments and the elite of Starfleet. Their is a reason we stuck with the Enterprise for so long before going to DS9, VOY, ENT, DIS, SNW (LD is more of a "what about the rest of the fleet" series that I agree with Steve, it can use A LOT fan service that only deeply in invested fans know..which hinders it from being a great show). It's because they can pull off the impossible and they run into so much because the universe knows they an handle it and doesn't back away. For me to visually see that (SNW ep 102 is a great example of this) the pilot and crew of Enterprise move the ship & resolve it in the way that they did. That gets my Trek "Bonner" up...I'm still thinking about the musical scene where Uhura earns respect by showing off her almost Omnilinguistic abilities and solving problems that only she could have done. No shootout between the Enterprise and its adversary, a simple trading of weapons fire to further the plot. That's what I love about "NU" Trek, however the total destruction of Enterprise in Beyond did irk me to a point of whining about it because, why did you have to be that reckless? After ST: Beyond Kirk would not get Enterprise-B if Enterprise-A took the same fate. It's one thing to get put down by a superior opponent from the future, that's impressive. To get beat like they did with Into Darkness...understandable but I could have done without the Khan cut & paste stuff. That said I would have reprimanded Kirk for acting as irrational as he did, had the opponent not ben Khan....Kahn character effects everything about that movie. Now by the time ST: Beyond came around I was sick of the Enterprise getting trashed like it did, no respect for the ship itself was given & I loved seeing a new villain and again the Enterprise crew solving a problem with the talent they have and a ship that can handle it. That's what ST:09 & ST:SNW are doing right for me among the new shows. It's given me the OG crew and showing me why they are as legendary as they are. Every series mentioned and new Trek has that element to it (not factoring in nuances like promotions, plot holes, length of time, etc.) minus Lower Decks. Only that Ship/Station could have pulled off what they did. That's why we get those stories/series to me. P.S. I want my USS Prometheus show & I'll die on that hill. P.P.S. I hate that LD had Bolimer get to Titan like he wanted then made his character a bish for plot sake and fan service. Bolimer deserves better & I don't need "The Mariner Show" when you have characters like Tendi, Rutherford & Bolimer. The are CONSTANTLY being used to push Mariner character growth (if you can call it that) and its frustrating, especially when 6 out of 10 episodes are about Mariner. Sorry for the Book, but I agree about your point on NU Trek.
Thank you. I really enjoyed Beyond and it was so crazy how much everyone didn't like it. I'm sad that Elba probs won't do more Trek cause he already did Beyond, would love him as an Admiral (lol nah I get why everyone didn't like it. it's so hard to watch anything after Into Darkness. which I would have liked except for it being Khan and the klingons and the multi solar system transporter. And Quinto yelling Khan. and the gratuitous underwear scene. fuck that movie was rough watching)
Ricardo was utterly fantastic. ST2 isn't my fav of the movie franchises, but Khan set the bar so high for antagonists. It's such a joy to watch this movie just to bask in the over-the-top character of Khan.
I love listening to your Star Trek takes because they are nuanced and so reflecting of big picture stuff. I think you have changed my mind when it comes to retconning lore in order to tell a better story 🤯
I do remember one easter egg from Wrath of Khan that, I think, was well employed. It's when Chekov and Terrell are investigating the shelter, Chekov finds something saying Botany Bay on it, remembers the name, and freaks out. Terrell, like I did when I first saw this film as a kid, wonders what's gotten Chekov so scared, but anybody who'd seen Space Seed remembers. This starts building tension for the ultimate reveal of our main villain- seeing Chekov so frightened and either left guessing, or knowing, why.
I know this is referring to canon, but we know from the original show that the Federation had a robust treatment system for mental illness. Having Picard's mother at home makes no sense.
I love your analysis. It always comes from a critical view of the writing and production and delves just the right amount into the fictional world without getting cannon crazy. I'd LOVE to see you do some retro reviews. I recently rewatched TOS: A Taste of Armageddon and followed that with TNG: First Contact. It was a fascinating combination and there were some interesting contrasts between Kirk and Picard's leadership styles and the crew's behavior as well. But I'd love to see you break something like that down. Thanks for all the videos!
This is one the best examples of constructive criticism I have come across in my 42 years of pre-middle age. I applaud you, a prime example of an incredibly thoughtful video essay. I can only hope that some one from this phenomenal universe see this, takes it to heart, and we get even better Trek stories in the coming future.
The issue with Chekov not appearing in Space Seed (or in any season 1 episode) was explained by the following excerpt from the novelization of Star Trek II (published in 1982, just before the film was released), when Chekov is captured by Khan on Ceti Alpha V: “Oh, no. . . ." Chekov whispered. He remembered Lieutenant McGiver. She had been tall and beautiful and classically elegant, but, more important, kind and sweet and wise. He had only ever had one conversation with her, and that by chance-he was an ensign, assigned to the night watch, when she was on the Enterprise, and ensigns and officers did not mix much. But once, she had talked with him. For days afterward, he had wished he were older, more experienced, of a more equivalent rank … He had wished many things.” Excerpt From Star Trek: The Original Series - 007 - The Wrath of Khan Vonda N. Mcintyre This material may be protected by copyright.
I know this isn't Trek but the first five minutes of this vid totally explained why I was so disappointed with the return of Star Wars, especially The Force Awakens because they didn't do anything new at all, they just rehashed the first movie and fans lapped it up for the nostalgia. I started to get uncomfortable feelings the moment the secret plans here hidden in the droid. But going 30 years on and things having changed so little was a let down, but I am loving a lot of Trek doing more with its original basis and exploring that more, especially Strange New Worlds. Of course I do also admit that TWOK is my favourite movie.
I thought that the Kelvin timeline movies were OK, but I don't love them. My problem with the films was with the way they portrayed Chris Pine's young Kirk. As a kid they made him a juvenile deliquent with him stealing his step-dad's classic Corvette and running it off a cliff. Then as a young man, he was just a "rebel without a cause" punk that just got into fights with other cadets and that he didn't want to necessarily join Star Fleet. He had to be persuaded by Chris Pike to do so. Going back to TOS James T. Kirk, it was established that all he ever wanted to do was be the captain of a starship. In the Kelvin timeline Trek movies, we did not see a studious Kirk whose historic hero was Abraham Lincoln or read Shakespeare, all things we know Kirk did. Where was the Kirk in the Abrams version of Kirk who could recite word for word The Declaration of Independence. The Kelvin timeline Kirk knew nothing or could care less about history. He was just a disaffected young man that got his ass kicked in bar fights. I think it was this portrayal of Kirk in those films that led William Shatter to say that in those films, "they took the humanity out of Star Trek. "
Hey Steve, while agree with some of your points and disagree with others, I always appreciate your constructive criticisms of the franchise. Your videos are always a pleasure to watch my man.
Fathom events is doing a classic Trek theater run. Took my kids to The Motion Picture couple weeks ago and they loved it. Can't wait for Kahn in September.
Being 58, which makes me "WAY Middle Aged" (I am just glad I lived this long and have been able to see the things I have, including all the Treks) Wrath of Khan is by far the best movie, and it was based on a mediocre episode from the TOS, "Space Seed". All the movies, and series (except Discovery) have been awesome!
Very well put, thank you!!! As for me, I have given up on Star Trek. 2009 is acceptable on its own terms but it is more Star Wars-ey than ST-TOS-ey. For me it went downhill from there. I can appreciate your point about Beyond, but everything else about it turned me off. I have seen enough reviews about ST-D and Picard to be at peace with my decision to stay away and the newer stuff will not get me back. I am comfortable with my DVD collections of the old adventures. Plenty to keep me entertained in my old age. I do appreciate your perspective on storytelling vs. fan service and the interesting take on trauma as an element vs. a defining feature. This clip is REALLY GOOD!!! Thank you.
I saw The Wrath of Khan on its opening day in a giant old theater that seated around 500 including a huge balcony. It was the first and only time I have experienced people standing and cheering in the middle of a movie. So glad I was there, what a memorable event.
I wonder if the Lower Decks approach of "Hey, remember this thing from the old shows?" could be employed in the way Wrath of Khan did with Space Seed. Not as an easter egg or callback, but as a starting point for 'sequel' stories.
Don't they already? The main reason they don't more is they like to shine the spotlight on smaller things when possible. Surprised they didn't point out Project Dropby or whatever could have prevented Wrath of Khan.
Man, as a 53-year old science fiction enthusiast and Trekkie since birth, I really nerded out on this video and agree 100% with the breakdown. Strange New Worlds is the only new product of Trek that has worked for me since JJ’s first Trek reboot.
I like your statements, here. You have done the research and made good points. So far, I think Strange New Worlds is hitting the right notes. I just hope they don't pull-in Kirk too early. Anson Mount is excellent, and the pass-off to Kirk should happen in the final episodes. This is Pike's series and we have seen plenty of Kirk. (BTW Kirk is my favorite captain, but Pike is great as well.)
My biggest gripe with Discovery is that, while I like most of the characters, it gets bogged down in trauma therapy for 1. a disproportionate amount of time , 2. among characters that are often tertiary at best, and 3. always at the WRONG time. It never fails when there's a countdown to a breach or a detonation or some other ship-destroying event, two of the characters will suddenly start having an vulnerable-empowering-but-not-so-urgent weepy/smiley conversation that lasts an agonizing five minutes during a supposedly 30-second countdown. It makes me yell at the TV, "Can you not hear the computer? There are three seconds left! You can be a better ally AFTER you push the button!"
For me, gotta say the height was First Contact. That being said, I guess I have odd tastes -- I've been loving Star Trek: Picard, where every comment section I've ever encountered has someone assailing it with insults. Meh. Enjoy it for what it is. Picard, as "NuTrek" goes, is a good example of a case that goes against the grain of the video. It's all about the old getting older, with the galaxy moving on regardless, and is a great reflection of how characters change. There was a time when Picard would have expressed precious little personal emotion, but the events of his life have taught him not to devalue family and to seize his chances to tell the people around him (even Q) that for him, that's what they are. See the end of the second season, or his relationship overall with the Enterprise crew before them. Picard's life was a life of various traumas before the Picard series, and nobody turns out as repressed as he is during TNG without some life events to cause it. The growth beyond it is very rewarding for me, as a fan, to see.
Very well thought out and delivered analysis. I agree with you 100% and am very pleased that Star Trek SNW is setting its own course Storytelling-wise. I still think that the inclusion of Sam Kirk went a bit too far, and I did roll my eyes at La’an being set up as Khan’s great, great whatever . . . but at least they are trying to make a point of it with the Federation’s absolutist position on augments thru her relationship with #1, so I’ll cut them some slack for it.
Prequel stuff is always a hard sell with me, regardless of franchise, but I'm especially burned out on the past in general with Trek. (Love seeing the different aesthetic presentations for the period, but that's a whole other Twitter fight.) Despite that, SNW has kept me hooked and left me eagerly awaiting each new episode every single week.
With regard to "looking backward", I think what's changed is that the rise of home video (and now streaming, and snarky reviews and memes on the Internet) has dramatically increased the assumptions people can make about what you might already be familiar with, for better or for worse. When "The Wrath of Khan" came out, home VCRs were still pretty new and not everyone had them; if they did, they probably didn't have an extensive tape collection. In most cases, you could only see an old TV episode if you happened to catch it when it was on. Star Trek had been a hit for years in syndicated reruns, and they could assume many viewers had general ideas about what the show was, but they couldn't safely assume you'd seen "Space Seed" and could recall anything about it. It would have been pointless to load the movie with winking references to original-series episodes--only the absolutely most hardcore of Trekkies would get them. It was kind of an Easter egg just to have Khan in there--that was about as deep as it could go. These days, many viewers can actually go and watch the original episode any time they want. And even if they don't, if they're curious, they can summon an "Easter Eggs Explained" video from some UA-camr telling them what they missed. But just because you can get away with it doesn't mean you should. The ultimate in this regard might be the Marvel Cinematic Universe: it's hard to imagine how something like "Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame" could even be popular in a world where you can't call up existing media on demand. The assumption would be that nobody would know what the heck was going on. The place where that kind of thing DID happen even decades ago was superhero comics, where you might actually be able to get hold of some of the old issues that some convoluted crossover was referring to, or have them in your existing collection. In fact, this might be one of the reasons that superhero media is such a dominant force on screen today after spending so long in the wilderness: movies now exist in a more comics-like media environment, thanks to new viewing technology that allows engaging with the past.
A fine overview here. I've been frustrated with the constant attempt to recreate WoK to the point that it has almost degraded the movie. Thanks for bringing the focus back on the WoK as a standalone unique experience. I remain annoyed with too many revenge-centered Heavies in Trek movies, like Nemesis.
I kind of feel like it's worth bringing up Star Trek: Enterprise here. That was a good series with some good ideas and good actors, but it kept getting bogged down in this constant need to remind you that it was Star Trek and try and connect it with the rest of the series, not simply by setting up the basis for later elements like any sequel would, but gratuitously rolling in them at the worst of times, even throwing in a random and out of place time travel plot where some guy comes back from the future to tell Archer that he needs to found the Federation or whatever. That was something that the producers were obsessed with, especially in the first two seasons, and it wasn't until the fourth season that they finally got down to writing an actual prequel, with things ranging from establishing the events that led up to the Romulan War and the subsequent founding of the Federation, to exploring entirely new concepts, like Terra Firma and the general unrest against humanity becoming part of a galactic community. Trying too hard to connect it with everything else is one of the things that brought Enterprise down a peg, when it was otherwise a solid Star Trek series with potential to get into some really cool things.
I haven't seen everything of Star Trek: Enterprise but from what little I've seen of it (which is a smattering of episodes from the first three seasons & most of season 4) season 4 should've been the outline of Star Trek: Enterprise and leave out the Xindi & Temporal Cold War stuff.
A funny thing I heard at one of the ST Conventions was Chekov was onboard, after Khan stated that he was going back to his room because the food didn't agree with him, he headed to the washroom which was occupied by Chekov. In which Khan threw Chekov out of the stall and did his business. (This was at a convention shortly after The Wrath of Khan was released) So don't shoot the messenger.
Sprinkling old characters in order to hope that the love for them will transfer over. That is an issue with Disney Star Wars. Look it is Boba Fett/Luke/Ahsoka/Obi-Wan/Rex/Sabine/Pellaeon, surely you will love this! When you decanonize the stories that birthed the characters and made them memorable in the first place, you can't expect them to still work outside of their contexts.
I will say Uhuras “I ran to star fleet to run away from dealing with my parents death in a shuttle accident” had all the hallmarks of Picard season two but it was done so I got lil and so differently to set up her arc that is rather compelling of someone trying to find their place… strange new worlds did amazing for a first season
It seems to me that OG Trek (through Enterprise) was great sci-fi stories set in an optimistic future and populated with diverse people. Nutrek is diversity stories doing Star Trek cosplay and set in a self loathing, sarcastic future.
Some years after the film Ricardo Montalban appearing on an interview tv show was asked about his character being evil and seeking wrath in his KHAN portrayl. His reply was, "KHAN did it for the love THE LOVE of his lost wife! THE LOVE!"
I like the new Star Trek stuff a lot. Specially Strange New Worlds. But Discovery is a bit too emotional. Sometimes feels like a soap opera. Everyone is crying about their relationships aaaallll the time. Feels annoying.
For me, it wasn't because it was too emotional, it was because they had no idea how to properly integrate those emotional scenes into the narrative. They'd be in the middle of a crisis and such a moment would be dropped in out of the blue and interrupt all the action. It was clumsily added like a parenthetical. Star Trek II had some very intensely emotional scenes, e.g. Spock's death, but they felt fully and properly integrated into the story.
Agreed. Discovery's characters often seem to act like they've just been dumped and it's closing time on a Tuesday at the most dramatic gay bar in the galaxy. (I say that as an LGBT person, and I've spent a fair amount of time at gay bars listening to people complaining about exes).
I have to agree, to much emotion and not enough professionalism. When you're at the mission at hand and in need to see it through, the last thing you need at that moment is someone around having meltdown or a sensitive homemark moment. All the time in this series, someone is or about to cry. Comparing old trek to new trek is like comparing the old NBA to the new. Back then the competition wanted to kill the other team, now they all want to join the other team with greetings of hugs and kisses... Lol 🤮
Live long and Prosper, fellow child of 1980 weened on TOS reruns before a Next Gen adolescence led us into the golden age of sci-fi (DS9, B5, SG1, Farscape, Xena, Buffy and culminating in the genius of the BSG remake). With such inspiration how could we not be the Greatest Generation!?
On the pacing comment, I just read an article that the Khan TV series had finished its base story. But it was only a couple hours long and was going to be extended a bit. It rhymes, like poetry.
I have a large set of comments and bits of discussion written up, but because of the aggression of the youtube comments section in general, and I don't feel like enduring that, I'm just going to say well put together and considered. Some parts I agree with, some I don't. Thanks for doing what you do, Steve.
I think it's ironic that the same people who complain about new Trek not keeping with "Roddenberry's vision" are the same people who praise TWOK as the high point of the franchise. Roddenberry hated TWOK because it was too nautical and militaristic. He loved the foofy emotional "human condition" stuff.
And yet I can't but wonder if the nautical and the militaristic elements that were a large part of Star Trek even before TWOK would have even been there if not for Roddenberry himself. He must have drawn inspiration from those very things to even conceive of Star Trek. Also, people are allowed to enjoy more than one facet of Star Trek, you know?
Roddenberry used Hornblower, as his example to follow, for playing the ship's captain. I also found him to be a bit hypocritical, as he made starfleet the military branch of the federation.
I'm one of those fans who appreciate adherence to canon -- but only up to a point. (For instance, I didn't sweat out Chekov not appearing on "Space Seed." For all we know, Chekov was on the ship by then. They never referenced when he arrived). But I do appreciate getting the big stuff right. That said, excellent analysis and you're so right.
As someone who probably falls into “woke” (or proto-woke considering my Gen X cohort), little has frustrated me more than the diametric social debates over NuTrek since 2017. Star Trek is probably as close as I get to “guilty pleasure”. I’m fond of what I learned earning my literary degree and what I’ve taught. Sadly, Discovery has perpetually pushed buttons that make me want its writers to go back to school. No, again, not because of the message. Not because of the balanced casting, but because… well… it wears *all* its subtext in its sleeve. At least some should be kept in the breast pocket near the beating heart. Besides diminishing the drama, it means that rhetorically it can be (to some) condescendingly on-the-nose for people who agree. By the same turn it can feel hostile to those who disagree. I’m not saying it should be “both sides’d”. I’m saying that there are techniques that nudge those who disagree to accepting the legitimacy of things they disagree with. This is the slow path to going from intolerance, to tolerance, to acceptance, to “we used to get pissed about THAT?” I get that there’s need for both strategies. The less direct and the agit prop, but the legacy of Trek is - for all its laughably unsubtle episodes - that it leads with allegory. I get that Discovery has a different “mission” and I couldn’t genuinely be happier about all the people (such as Jesse Gender) for whom the representation is so essential that it makes other writing issues less prominent. Fair enough. It’s why even what I don’t like about the series I accept as “others need this message that I don’t.” I’ve aged out of some of it. I suppose Lower Decks and to a degree Prodigy are better bridges between “Nu” and old (“Auld?!) but I suspect Discovery isn’t a good jumping off point for people to acclimate to the older series. That’s a page or two I can’t write thumb typing on a phone. I’m among those who think that had this been set in the far flung future to begin with then the show would have met less criticism. That’s not on Kurtzman. That was Fuller’s choice. So was making Burnham Spock’s sister. I like to think Fuller would have been more subtle integrating this show with existing canon. If so, that would’ve eased a lot of the “canonista” anger. I’d welcome that. I like continuity a little more than you, but a lot less than many. I do have lines though - particularly Unification III when with an offhand line we’re told Burnham was an essential inspiration to Spock. It seems a pretty lazy (and somewhat tone deaf) way of bolstering a character by resting a legacy one on her shoulder. I don’t mean this as “a fan.” I mean this as someone who writes and has taught writing. There are other such instances and plenty of “Easter eggs” - some completely harmless, some too clever by half. Some distractingly eye rolling. You’re right that STII did well by not winking. It also added emotion without compromising the stoic nature of the series. I like that NuTrek has more emotion. I do. I dislike how it’s handled. When we’re told a character’s trauma when we first meet them then that becomes our lens. That happens a lot on Discovery. Sometimes that’s because characters have barely any attention so when they finally do, that trauma is introduced because it is an efficient means of adding “complexity” and relatability. But it’s one note that’s been played over and over. Worse still, rarely do we discover it through behavior within a plot. It becomes a speech. Sometimes at the most absurd moment of tension. Shoehorning like that can take an audience out immediately, especially when there are cut and paste qualities. Which there are. Often. Jesse Gender, who I like and found through here, does something that may be generational or just a different school of thought than fits with me. They equate back story with the fullness of character. I think that’s a very modern view and one that doesn’t hold water. Backstory belongs in series bibles so that writers have a foundation to keep consistency within a character until it further develops on screen. The depth should reveal itself through the course of narrative. When done how NuTrek does it, we are actually robbed of drama. The ten episode format makes that a more tempting and arguably necessary shortcut. Or maybe not. I’d say the distribution of development on Discovery is shockingly old fashioned. We live in a golden age of ensemble casts that are free from the pure “triumvirate” lead structure. Anything from Better Call Saul to Watchmen demonstrates how distribution of action between characters enriches narrative and can be done within the confines of a dozen episodes. And even if not, the beauty of Trek on streaming is that episodes don’t have to be 42 minutes. More than that, shooting dialogue-driven scenes is comparatively cheap. It’s hard to believe that they don’t excise and condense dramatic scenes to keep runtimes. Yes, some of that is pacing… but some of it is shortsighted. Even Burnham’s character could be richer and more organic if instead of using these shortcuts they let the drama breathe. But I know that’s not realistic. And yet, Strange New Worlds has already given us more rounded supporting characters in just four episodes than we’ve arguably gotten out of four years of Discovery. Yes, that’s a bit of hyperbole… but only a bit. This has been a choice. And episodic vs. serialized is not at the core of the issue. It’s about other choices made at the top end of production. It seems that the switch may still have been essential just to shake up the template. It’s refreshing because Strange New Worlds feels - derivative though it may be to us Olds - a stepping stone for new viewers to actually understand and enjoy the allegorical nature of the series. That’s been gone arguably since before the reboots. As such, while I have a harder time imagining someone going from Discovery to any of the older series, SNW feels like a portal to enjoying the older shows even if they’re stagey, slower, and their sociopolitical stances are outdated. SNW shares the DNA. It’s too bad that it relies so heavily on pre-existing characters. I like the new Uhura (and am disgusted by some of the troglodytic criticisms online), the new Chapel, and even Noonian Singh. But I wish they all had different names. Not because “don’t mess with my characters!” but because it shrinks the universe yet again. Lt. Kirk may be the most annoying of those! But you know what? I’m okay with it. Because the characters have been historically underdeveloped and I’m glad to see that corrected. It’s a compromise. It’s toughest with Singh because genuinely like the character and the actor - but utterly resent the lack of creativity in tying her to canon this way. I trust they’ll do it okay, but the history of Enterprise keeps feeling smaller and smaller and smaller in a universe free to be bigger and bigger and bigger. Anyway. I hope this holds together. Phone typing isn’t my strength and the UA-cam app is miserable for scrolling to edit. So there are my own actual trek thoughts, actually. Live long and all that! Kerplunk! Or k’plach. Whatever. You know what I mean.
No, your comment is incredibly insightful, and it words well why I still can't get anywhere close to clicking with Discovery, but it's nice to have some insight from someone who also feels this way as to why it works for other folks. Re: trauma: I do think it's also a matter of how that trauma is handled. Having seen the abysmal way in which Picard S2 handled trauma, it was stunning to go back to DS9, which I have been rewatching as I introduced my mom to Star Trek with it, and seeing just how well that series handled events like Odo's actions in "Things Past".
To me, it would have made more sense to have Sulu on the Reliant, both because he was actually in the episode and as a step to him gaining his own command. Lt Saavik could be at the helm. It seemed odd to me that all the original Bridge crew seemed to have made Cmdr at the same time, Checkov had made it to Lt in TMP and although a decade takes place between that and TWOK I'd have thought he might still be a Lt Cmdr, after all it took Worf 7 years to make Lt Cmdr and Troi 7 to make Cmdr. I realise that none of this matters . it's just thoughts.
Tasha Yar’s trauma always bothered me. Probably because my dad had to explain “rape gangs” to me as a little kid. Even as I got older tho. The thought of a rape gang bothered me. As though there would be gangs dedicated solely to rape. I’m sure rape happens in gangs but it’s not usually the gang name ya know. They are usually named for how they make money. Like drug smuggling gangs or gun smuggling gangs or even human trafficking gangs. Rape gangs. Ugh. Just no.
One of my biggest grievances with Modern Trek is the combat, it's too Star Wars-like, I mean I love Star Wars, but the combat style is not what Trek does. Starships shouldn't be fighting like fighters, they should be like the submarines in Red October.
Chekov being captured by Khan was because actor Walter Koenig was TOS's best screamer. Why he got injured in Trek movies I, II, & IV. Troi or Geordi were the sufferers in TNG. Kira or O'Brien were DS9's. Harry Kim's scream in Voyagers pilot made him the go-to guy to suffer for Voyager.
Well said. The layers in this film were brilliant. Sure, it's a Star Trek story. But it's also a story about a man growing old and coming to terms with that. With reconciling his past. With looking back at the choices he made -- sometimes with regret. And with the loss of friends who have been close to him throughout his life. (That's why Spock needed to die at the end. The story would have fallen flat without that.) Also, there's the spectacle of two grand battleships squaring off against each other. Brilliant film.
When I saw the title, I legit sighed and said "wtf, another one of these videos..." then saw it was your video, and I was at first confused and then intrigued.
That is one of the best well balanced criticism to nu trek. Tastes may differ, but one real problem is, in my view, the excess of fan service and unnecessary repetition. Thanks Steve! 🖖
My favorite explanation for the Khan-Chekov issue is Khan's study of the ship's technical manuals, a fairly important plot point in Space Seed. He asks to read them, Kirk says he has "200 years of catching up" to do, and then later Khan talks about what he read in the manuals. Well, he could fairly easily have seen something like the ship's roster (listing Chekov as a lower decks type) or a transfer order for Chekov's upcoming arrival on Enterprise, or even a Starfleet Academy yearbook with Chekov in it. Khan read and learned quickly, with a souped-up memory and intellect, so he remembered Chekov year later. Or it's an alternate universe because TMP and TWOK are both reboots--TMP rebooted TOS, TWOK rebooted TMP, then TNG rebooted again...
UA-cam kept trying to make me watch this video, and I got annoyed, assuming it WAS one of those reactionary videos by people who clearly never understood Trek! Took we a while to realize that it was one of your videos, and thus obviously worth watching!
After watching this I have a new take on WoK. After years of serialized ST we have become used to this idea of season long plot lines where problems arise, get worked out, and stretched or not, in general we can at least feel that the problem has actually been solved. In TOS and TNG we find that almost every episode is case closed, everyone has warm and fuzzies, I'm sure it all worked out, no consequences next week. That is almost the bane of adventure television fighting the monster of the week. And to me there is a tongue in cheek brilliance of WoK telling us that consequences catch up with us eventually.
I got really excited when I saw this video pop up since I had been leaving various commentary elsewhere about the similarities and difference between Wrath of Khan and Momento Mori, the most recent SNW -- since they have a lot of the same aims. I was speculating on why that episode, while fine, never reaches the greatest than Khan did. To summarize, I believe that it has do with pacing, deflating rather than building tension, tonality issues, and trying to juggle too many independent story threads. You took the discussion to altogether different places especially since you are largely arguing in favor of SNW, but I really appreciate your points about honoring canon without being a slave to it, the over-reliance on trauma to prop up the drama, and the importance of building on legacy to move the story forward rather than repeatedly going backwards.
You forgot to mention Christopher Pike's storyline, Steve (though I do believe you addressed that in another vid), in which, via DISCOVERY, Season 2, "The Valley of Shadows," the Captain sees his fate. Although it was "fan-servicey," it didn't feel like that, and now, as Anson Mount continues his role as Pike, it gives him the ability to undercut Chris's character with "shadows" of darkness and fear. I love it, because without that "fear factor," Christopher Pike is just another heroic Starfleet Captain. P.S.: I will be VERY UPSET if the producers/writers change that particular canon!!!!!!!
This is a video that is needed. There is so much hollow fan-service these days which is used often times as a smoke-screen for how poorly written and ill-thought-out the scripts are. As someone who has seen your reviews where you've enjoyed NuTrek episodes, it's nice to see you view NuTrek through a critical lens in this video.
I still want to see a comparison between WoK and the first Nu Trek film. Seeing as how they have the same basic story line (which is why I never understood everyone saying "now do Wrath of Khan!" when they'd just _done_ it), I think the analysis would be worth it.
Dr. Evil: "Remember when I told you 'We're not so different, you and I'?" "We're not so different, you and I." "See, I did say that." I don't know if it tickled my nostalgia bone, but it was pretty funny.
The thing about how Picard season 2 handled Picard and honestly, even season 1, is that they don't seem to understand the character. Season 2 is the worst offender by far here, where the revelations just don't make any sense with who we see in TNG and the movies.
Another interesting example to consider: DS9's Trials and Tribble-ations manages to be one of the most fan-servicey instantiations of Trek ever while still telling a great new story about the here and now. They literally manage to go INSIDE an earlier episode and carve out a whole new plot and conflict that interlocks with and adds richness to the old one.
@@bipolarminddroppings Interesting! I think you're the first person I've "met" who feels that way.
Trials and Tribble-ations was produced as a tribute to mark the 30th anniversary of Star Trek. The same week, Voyager (which was running concurrently) also did a tribute episode, Flashback, that featured George Takei as Captain Sulu commanding the Excelsior in Tuvok's past.
According to the Wikipedia article on the episode Trials and Tribble-ations, the premise came first as they tried to come up with a way to do a tribute episode, and the VFX team had to come up with a new method to prove they could make it work. The article is fascinating: apparently the work on this episode remastering footage from The Trouble with Tribbles is what inspired the remastering/re-release of the whole TOS series! They also explain that they had the blessing of the writer of the original episode, and that he was on set to play an extra as part of his compensation package. Having him on set they were able to use him as an unofficial continuity advisor.
To me, watching Tribble-ations was/is an extremely joyful experience to see how much effort and energy had gone into nailing the details of the TOS look and feel (and sound!), as well as the details of respecting the plot of the original episode while wrapping another story behind it.
Thank you, bubba David!
@@bipolarminddroppings My thesis on why nuTrek fails would be tangent on this episode. With 20+ episodes, there was room for short form sci fi story telling (isolated episodes), character driven arcs, self referential fan service, and experimental work. In 10-ish episode seasons, every episode has to be an arced character drama, and every one has to fit together. And if you want to do fan service, it has to be jammed into the arc.
I found it to be a cute homage, myself. Not DS9s finest episode, but I think the fan service works because they had time to take a break from the season and go all in on it. It's not an easter egg- it's the whole basket of goodies.
@@nattydreds42 In his book "The Trouble With Tribbles" David Gerrold said that he had created the character of Ensign Freeman as a walk-on role for himself. The director opted to use a different actor, because (according to Gerrold) it was felt that Gerrold didn't have the right body type - too thin - to play a believable officer. Whether that's true or not (I personally suspect it isn't, since first of all, he had a cameo in ST:TMP and secondly, I've met Gerrold and he is neither a large nor small person, being average), it was an opportunity to "edit" Miles O'Brien into the DS9 version instead of Freeman. And Gerrold finally did get his opportunity to be in a Tribbles episode.
I do wish that someone involved in the making of Trials and Tribble-ations would be honest and acknowledge that they used a scene from Mirror, Mirror when they decided to have Kirk and Sisko "meet". That scene originally had Prime universe Marlena meeting Kirk for the first time, which makes the dialogue following Sisko's exit all the funnier. Spock asks if Kirk knows the "young lady" and Kirk says no, she just seemed like a "nice, likeable girl, and he thinks they could be "friends." I have tried to wrap my mind around the notion of Ben Sisko as a "nice likeable girl" and can't. I don't find Sisko nice or likeable at all.
One thing I would like to say about the title of this video is that there's a difference between "NuTrek" and "New Trek." At least in the context of soap operas (where I first encountered the word "Nu") is that it's a way of referring to a new actor in an established role previously played by someone else in a situation where the audience doesn't particularly like the new actor. Since I loathe NuTrek, I refer to it as "Nu". I could use the word FakeTrek, but that really got people angry with me at TrekBBS.
I tried to like Discovery, but couldn't. DiscoTrek has horribly boring characters and I have to giggle when they congratulated themselves on being so "original" by giving Spock a human foster sister. Hello, the fanfic writers did that in the late '60s/early '70s! It's NOT a new idea!
Picard... ugh. Boring. The only TNG cast member who hasn't aged badly is Wil Wheaton and he wasn't in it. And what's this about Picard being a child when his mother died? She appeared in a Season 1 episode of TNG as an elderly woman! I really like Jeri Ryan on Voyager, but... that episode she and Icheb were in are the last time I watched Picard, and it's soured me on any new Trek series. I haven't bothered with the cartoon one or the Pike one.
BTW, there's one callback to "Space Seed" that was missed in this video. Khan refers to Marla when he says he's going to leave Kirk "as you left me, as you left her... buried alive, buried alive..."
@@Shan_Dalamani You don't like Sisko? He's my favorite Captain. You just made an enemy for life...or at least until the end of this sentence.
Disco isn't my cup of Earle Grey tea hot but I recommend Strange New Worlds. I'm only about five episodes in but so far I like it better than the last three series.
When Harve Bennet wrote Wrath of Khan, he didn't know Chekhov was not in Space Seed. Walter Koeing said he was the only person who remembered that fact, during filming, and he refrained from saying anything in the event his character gets shifted around or replaced.
Scuttle butt. It's y he didn't recognize the planet. He wasn't there he just heard about it. Uuuuu if Khan hadn't recognized his face.
I don't blame him. That was a larger role for the character. He didn't want to lose it.
LOL!
This just goes to show that in writing any particular Trek project, "canon" can be easily dumped by the producers to get the story at hand told. It did jump out at me in the film that the Chekov character had not yet appeared on the TOS episode with Khan, but for the purposes of Wrath of Khan, I did a mental jump that Chekov was at the time of "Space Seed," a "Lower Decker" crew member before he was assigned his bridge crew position, that Khan had some interactions with, but we the viewer didn't see in that series episode.
Was it ever stated when Chekhov first came to the Enterprise? Was it ever stated that he was not on the Enterprise before he got assigned a post on the bridge? I believe promotion does not require being assigned to a different ship or unit even in real militaries.
I'm _definitely_ not middle-aged either.
I believe Terry Pratchett said it best: Inside every old person is a young person wondering what the hell happened.
Good stuff!
On his 70th birthday, Leo Tolstoy said, "What a strange thing to happen to a little boy."
Dante writes
"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,..."
when he was around 35 years old.
I’m 17 and even I feel that
"But you... i never forget a face. Mister... Bester, of the Psi Corps, isn't it."
I understood that reference 😂
"We're not expendable, Khan. Mundanes are."
"Khan!"
"You still remember, after all these years."
"I'm-- a _telepath._ Work it out."
Loved him in that role
The problem I have with Picard's past trauma is that it never came up in seven seasons of the tv show and the four movies. The amount of trauma Picard went through in the show, being turned into a Borg for example and even visiting home to be with his brother and yet in all of that this problem with his mother, and his brothers mother of course, are never mentioned. In Generations when his brothers family die in a fire it would have naturally shown his past issues with his mother, but of course back then those issues never existed. And this is the nagging problem of using characters with such a full past and history. After seven years its all known now, everything about that character has been said. To take it and now introduce something so fundamentally huge and shattering as his mother committing suicide looks weak, and lazy.
and now in Picard Season 3 he talks to Beverly about the previous 5 failed romantic trysts they had. Where in the world did that come from?
I haven't yet seen Picard S2 so I had this spoiled for me (don't care really). My reaction is the same - totally unnecessary given the mountain of material we already have about the life of Picard. It's as you say - weak and lazy. I agree.
Even more than that. In one episode where they do some stuff with the warp engine through the traveller (the guy Wesley ends up joining) they land in a place where thoughts are real. At one point Picard sees his mother (or some sort of projection of her) and seems to be on rather good terms with her.
@Corbomite_Meatballs Late reply. At least three mental state evaluations of different types
- Picard was put through the psych test, same as Wesley was in “Coming of Age” when he was Starfleet bound. Wesley’s test tied back into the death of his father, basically recreating the situation and making Wesley face the same “only time to rescue one” decision. Picard confided to Wesley that he (Picard) failed the psych test his first time through.
- There’s also a separate “Bridge Officer’s Test” that is required for anybody wishing to command a ship (outside emergency situations). We see Troi take this in “Thine Own Self” and also find out Beverly Crusher had taken it previously (she’s in command during a night-shift). Part of the test is a simulation where the applicant must order somebody to take an action certain to result in death.
- The infamous _Kobayashi Maru_ tests how one responds to a no-win scenario.
I gave up on Picard halfway through season one. Middle-aged and used to record TNG on VHS off the TV. Huge fan of TNG and could not believe how horrendous Picard was. I saw that Worf and everybody returns by season 3 of Picard but I just could not bring myself to self torture.
I saw Khan recognizing Chekov as worldbuilding. It makes the Enterprise feel more real, by overtly confirming that stuff happens on the ship that we, the audience, don't get to see. The Constitution class of the time had a crew compliment (I believe) of 305. There are what, 8 people on the bridge? Chekov didn't just suddenly appear on the bridge in season 2, he had to come from somewhere. He could have transferred from another ship, but it's equally likely that he was already on the ship, in another position that we just didn't see, and in season 2 he was promoted to bridge officer. We can't possibly see everything that goes on on the ship at all times. There just isn't time, episodes are 42 minutes. TVTropes has a trope for this: the Law of Conservation of Detail. Chekov simply wasn't important to the plot until season 2.
Another example of this is SG-1. Someone did the math, comparing statements about how often SG-1 goes through the gate, with how many times we the audience see their missions. And it was confirmed that we the audience see approximately 1/3 of SG-1's missions.
Agreed. Khan goes straight from 1996 to Ceti Alpha V with maybe a week aboard the Enterprise in between. But we see him read through the ship's entire library in "Space Seed," and it's not too much of a stretch to think he could have viewed the crew registry as well. (It's also the only way he could have learned that famous "Klingon proverb.")
I always heard the "official" explanation/retcon was he worked in engineering at the time.
I heard the (humorous) theory that he was working as janitor at the time.
But that Stargate example is a god one. A subplot of the episode "200" is that the team is about to go on a mission, but the gate is broken. Most of the episode deals with the in-universe show "Wormhole X-treme", which picks fun at Stargate and other scifi shows, but that subplot comes up again, because it would be Mitchell's 200th trip through the gate. It's the characters 26th episode on the show, so even assuming that they take more than two trips (go out and come back) per mission, he would've taken 8 walks through the gate each episode to come to that number. And yes, there are episodes where they use the gate multiple times, but how often would it happen that they find a planet, go there, find nothing interesting, and come back.
There have to be much more missions we don't see, because they are just not interesting enough.
And the same goes for Star Trek. The amount of times the ship scans a nebula or makes first contact or someone enjoys the holodeck and nothing goes wrong has to immense. Because if what we see is the only times those things happen, the whole mission would be super dangerous. We don't get to see the episode where all replicators on deck 3 are broken, or Wesley has a birthday party, or where Garak is constipated, or where Chakotay has a mild headache, because those simply aren't interesting enough. We only see the really big things. Which is also why the stories take place where things happen. There is no series where the USS Boring flies around transporting industrial replicators for 5 seasons.
Enterprise can hold around 400 crew members. If you pay ridiculous close attention to chekov in TOS it's revealed that he was in the science department prior to being promoted to bridge crew as he is always seen taking over Spock's station when Spock is off the bridge and in season 2's "The Apple" he and Spock have a fake argument alluding to Chekov's time there.
It's quite possible that he met Khan.
He just wasn't Chekov's Chekov.
I recently saw Walter Koenig at a screening of Wrath of Khan and he brought up the fact that people ask him about it all the time as if he's an actor and he joked and gave this whole headcanon he came up with that Khan saw Chekov coming out of the bathroom and he was in such a hurry he completely ignored Khan
I think the weirder issue with the Chekov/Khan scene is the planetary order. Most systems get their numbers from how close they are to their star, so Ceti Alpha VI blowing up and making them think V was the right place would be like Saturn blowing up and sending Jupiter beyond Uranus.
Yeah, the Chekov/Khan conundrum could even be explained by Khan just having a super human memory and being able to remember even the lowliest person he'd only seen once before maybe
I always assumed Chekov had been on the Enterprise *before* getting that coveted bridge position, and it even works better for highlighting Khan's capabilities that he remembered the face of a random lower decks crewman.
Points off for not using Khanundrum. I mean, it was right there.
@@sunyavadin I agree!
@@sarahscott5305 Thats a great point lmao
@@sarahscott5305 😆😆😆
There is one (I'd say) subtle but pointed call back in Wrath of Kahn to Space Seed. Of the books we see on the shelf of the Botany Bay when Chekhov and the Captain arrive, there are two copies of Paradise Lost on it, This is clearly a reference to the end of Space Seed where being condemned to harsh life taming a planet Kahn asks if they know Milton and Kirk explains the allusion "It is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven."
At 43 I avoid a mid-life crisis by having my whole life be a kind of unresolved question mark, so any crisis I have at mid-life is just an extension of the one I've had since being a teenager, if not before.
"You can't have a mid-life crisis, if you've never resolved your pre-life crisis" [insert a Roll Safe meme here]
With regards to NuTrek in general and the Kelvin timeline in particular, by far one of my biggest sticking points has been its focus on action. I remember watching Star Trek Into Darkness for the first time and actually being angry with its endless succession of giant set piece action sequences, and so many of them achieved very little in the plot. Kirk, Spock, and Uhura hop on a little ship to try to get to the surface of Quo'nos, but are immediately pursued by Klingons, there's some shooting, a chase sequence, Kirk thinks he's given the Klingons the slip by flying through a crevace, but he gets caught and cornered. The scene could easily be reduced to "Kirk tries to sneakily reach the surface, but gets caught by the Klingons." The violence doesn't serve a purpose other than counting toward the studio mandated explosion quota. The Wrath of Khan on the other hand is very deliberate in how it uses violence. Every time the Enterprise and the Reliant exchange fire, the hits scored by either side have immediate consequences. Star Trek Discovery seasons 1 and 2 feature enormous, visually noisy battle sequences that don't do half as well at holding the audiences attention on each blow inflicted by either side the way the Wrath of Khan does. It's just billions of pew pew bolts being exchanged ad infinitum that don't matter until they do. It's like the end of a Marvel movie bashing two plastic action figures together for 20 minutes. Usually more violence you have in a story, the less that violence matters. But Alex Kurzman and his studio executive buddies think that the audience will be bored if they have to wait more than 15 minutes for something to blow up or someone to blow someone else's head off with a phaser, they'll get bored and watch something else.
Growing up, I never saw Space Seed as I only caught the occasional rerun on tv so when I first saw Wrath of Khan I thought it was a totally self-contained story. The movie is perfectly enjoyable without any previous knowledge of Space Seed and, in my mind, is still one of (if not the) best of the classic ST movies
"The best way forward for Star Trek is to tell new stories... Make the characters the protagonists of their own adventures."
So much this! And not just for Star Trek - the moment you said this I immediately went and though of the new Star Wars stuff as well. Why things like Rogue One and the Mandalorian succeed whereas things like Solo and Rise of Skywalker don't.
Tickling the nostalgia bone is all well and good, but it's not why we consume media of any franchise.
Rogue One succeeded especially because it did tell a "new" story. Yes, it was packed with fan service, but even though it was closely tied to the story of A New Hope, it still told its own original story. That, plus the way the new original characters worked well, were why it succeeded when "Solo" fell flat.
Some "fan service" is nice, but only for a moment. Like in Rogue One there were some touches but it was almost all new. Besides Tarkin and Princess Leia, the characters were new and exciting and the plot points were very well done.
The problem with Solo was that parts of the story were ridiculous, some characters also. But large parts of the story had been written in novels and dit$ney declared they don't count. Screw greedy dit$ney. And I thought of Lando liked women, not just anything with an available socket. He was a suave man of style and grace played by Billy Dee Williams. Don't really want to know what he did to that robot.
The worst part with Solo (at least in my mind) is that it's a totally decent - if silly - space western heist movie made actively worse by Han Solo being the main character. Every time the action begins to pick up pace, the movie grinds to a halt so we can play easter egg bingo with the main character. It actively makes original trilogy Han's arc *worse*, because we now need to assume he started as a selfish smuggler, became a selfless hero... then over the course of a decade went back to being a selfish smuggler just in time to become a selfless hero again.
I'm sure the assumption was that no one would see a movie like that if it wasn't about a character we knew, and maybe that's true, (though the Mandalorian proved we'll watch the hell out of a series like that) but that's what is currently weighing down every franchise.
@@thomascattington1660 "But large parts of the story had been written in novels and dit$ney declared they don't count. Screw greedy dit$ney."
I mean, sure, screw Disney, but that's not a problem unique to the current situation. Star Wars media was *always* "canon until something contradicts it". The amount of bending over backwards that was done post Episode II to accommodate stories from the 90's that had made assumptions about the Clone Wars that didn't end up fitting Lucas' vision is astounding. Not to mention all the stories the animated Clone Wars paved over in order to tell its own.
Not just Star Trek. All movies and TV shows.
I like SFdebris's take on the Chekov scene. He posits that Chekov was aboard but not on the bridge, but instead made Khan wait to use a bathroom, but also broke the facilities and told Khan had to good to one on the next deck.
I would hope that Chekov would have directed Khan to Enterprise's "Haunted Bathroom" (as covered in Ensigns' Log) and not told him the secret door knock, so that Khan blundered in to some crewmembers up to something unspeakable.
That wasn't technically SFdebris' take. That was something Koenig himself was telling audiences at Trek cons when the topic came up.
You vill vait till I am done pooping, Mr Superman. Vhat, your colon is genetically inferior? 😜
Chekov's plunger?
Dammit, I +JUST+ posted this as my own joke up top... I must've half-remembered it from my convention days in the 80s. (now who's having a midlife crisis??)
TNG did a Q episode about the ramifications of Picard’s past, specifically his being stabbed in the heart in his impetuous youth. Great episode about not only deal with the effects of your own actions, but also with embracing that past as one building block of the self.
That is one of my fave TNG episodes!
@@oehlda2000 Mine also. Hit me hard in first run.
@@oehlda2000 Seconded
Superman isn’t defined by trauma or traumatized by Krypton’s destruction, he doesn’t even remember Krypton. Clark had a great life raised by two loving farmers, that’s why he’s a hero, not because of some trauma but because he has the power to help others.
One of my favorite examples of using established canon as a way to tell new stories is in DS9's very first episode, Emissary.
It's just so good that, even though Ben is heavily scarred by the experience of Wolf 359, it doesn't define him entirely as a person, and I love that they pretty much just have an explicit shot saying "well, TNG's gonna do it's own thing, so bye Enterprise. Saddle up, get involved in this space station and these characters'.
Even by the time Worf came in, DS9 was very much it's own show with it's own plotlines, conflicts and themes and it used the events of Worf being disgraced in TNG as yet another way to deepen the plot rather than just bringing back the Enterprise and its crew again.
Thank goodness there was no way to have Worf transfer to Voyager. The Klingon Soap Opera ate TNG, then DS9, and even the last TOS movie to some extent.
@Gabriel Migliorini: You write, "One of my favorite examples of using established canon as a way to tell new stories is in DS9's very first episode, Emissary." *You are so right* , GM. However, at the time it first aired, I thought Emissary was just kind of weird and it didn't work for me on a series that I was expecting not to like. Now, when looking at the first four series (TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY), Emissary was far and away the best first episode that any of them had, both as a stand alone episode, and how they integrated into the series.
Using previous episodes as a building block to tell new stories. Something has happened back then, now here are the results.
a guy back in college made me watch Wrath of Kahn, I'd never seen a whole episode of any Trek and never seen any of the movies. Still haven't seen much more Trek than that.
Wrath of Kahn is great. it's a great story with compelling characters that you really don't need all the Trek history to follow. and the fact that the hero and antagonist are never on screen together? chefs kiss
When a movie stands on its own that’s the sign of a good script
The Chekov error is Keonig's fault. He was hired as a continuity checker. He KNEW he wasn't in the episode but didn't fix the mistake because he would be written out of the movie entirely. And yes, he assumed the same explanation you did.
The only continuity error is that Khan recognizes Chekov, not the other way around. Even if Chekov only joined the crew after Space Seed, he was a bridge officer, and as such would have been familiar with the records of previous missions.
Wrong
The Chekov thing never bothered me. The ship has over 400 people, most of them aren't shown on screen. More importantly, there aren't any episodes where it's explicitly stated that Chekov wasn't there during the original Kahn encounter
If that's true, it sounds like a textbook example of Conflict of Interest and we shouldn't really be surprised how that all turned out.
Yes, just because Chekov wasn't navigator during first season doesn't mean he wasn't a junior officer in training below decks. Just because we know about the casting event in the show should not be held against the story.
The Chekov continuity explanation holds up because in Season 2 we see him as an ensign but he isn't introduced as having just arrived on board.
People don't seem to realize that the bridge crew doesn't man their stations 24-7. And just because you don't see something, or someone, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Or do the same people who refuse to accept that Chekov was on the Enterprise and had met Khan, think that nobody in the future uses a toilet? Because we never see those either.
There is time for Chekov to join the ship after "Mudd's Women" but before "Space Seed". Kirk had to explain Mudd's identity to Chekov in " I, Mudd".
@@michaelmorton5698 Plenty of time, as Mudd's Women is the absolutely earliest-stardated non-pilot episode of TOS
Going by production order, Catspaw was Chekov's first appearance - not Amok Time. In Catspaw, he is clearly treated as being a newbie. He even responds to a condescending comment from DeSalle with "I'm not that green!"
Alan Seawright from over at Cinema Therapy has said that, “the best special effect is a close up of two actors talking in a good dramatic scene” (paraphrasing) Wrath of Khan proves this so well with the dialogues between Kirk and Khan, and leaves us with some excellent quotes that are still remembered today.
“like a poor marksman, you… just.. KEEP… MISSING THE TARGET!”
“I will KILL YOU, Kirk!”
And not to Khan, but still one of my favorite laugh out loud moments:
“Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead!”
Yet they're never in the same scene. They do it all over Zoom.
@@voltinator Burnham is a "show and tell" case. In the pilot we're told that she's just that good and she deserves to be a captain, and then spends the rest of the series showing us why that's a joke.
What really makes wrath of khan stand out is that, after a dramatic event, no one cracks a snarky joke to the camera (aka, the plague that is marvel humour)
Interesting point about Pike - rather than his character being motivated by his trauma, his trauma is motivated by his character. Everything from the fact that he knows it's coming and has to cope with it, to him ultimately declining every opportunity to escape it, comes from his deeply held principles, his choice to pay a personal cost to protect others.
Picard's depicted trauma diminishes his sense of agency. Even if he always would have been an enterprising (lol) starship captain, his history of distant personal relationships isn't only no longer his _choice,_ it's down to a past he _repressed,_ and agency is impossible in response to something that is not perceived.
Pike's depicted trauma _emphasizes_ his sense of agency, as he faces every opportunity to make a choice with some degree of foreknowledge, and he chooses his course deliberately. The Oracle in The Matrix said "the true measure of a choice is whether we would make it again, knowing full well what it costs." Pike makes his choices knowing their true measure, because that's who he is. Who he chooses to be.
Makes sense that NuTrek always looks back. Fits perfectly into a movie landscape that is single mindedly focused on using the brand recognition of beloved classics instead of creating new ideas.
One thing I love about WoK is that it brings a sense of adulthood to Kirk, through the midlife crisis and through the new knowledge that he has a son. Like Superman Returns, it adds a richness and a reality to the character.
One of my favorite things about TNG was during the second, I believe episode, The Naked Now when Picard, Riker and Data are Googling if anything like what they are experiencing has happened before. Picard reads that something similar did happen on the Enterprise under James Kirk. He read that as if he hadn't heard of Kirk and didn't say "he was required reading at the academy". It was an acknowledgement of what came before but didn't dwell on it. I completely agree that Nu-Trek needs more of that.
And yet the episode basically recycles the original plot, with only minor alterations. But it allows the new characters to do their own thing in a familiar situation. Shows us how different both crews deal with the situation.
This is one of your best and most thought provoking videos. Since you are still pre-middle age, your brain is still working at full capacity for a couple of more years.
I really like Strange New Worlds. I was getting a little concerned that the past trauma of some of the characters was going to fully define them and we were going to flash back every time they were in a stressful situation but I think the writers are just trying to introduce these new characters and their motivations.
I enjoy long story arcs but I have come to realize from watching Strange New Worlds and anthology series like Black Mirror that there is still a place for episodic shows and i hope the trend to create them continues. Like you said, not every story has enough narrative to fill 10 hours of TV.
If you've seen it, I think The Blacklist was pretty good at being episodic while the characters had arcs throughout the seasons. There needs to be a good balance between the characters and the stories, or else we wouldn't connect with the characters or the main plot would be lacking, basically a filler.
I just can't belive Chekov didn't use his gun in this film, I mean it was on the wall and everything.
There's a video elsewhere on UA-cam explaining the concept of "Chekhov's Gun." I commented "If Chekhov's Gun shows up in a Star Trek film, would it be called Chekov's Phaser?"
"Ahh but Kirk.. have you forgotten? I. AM. the space seed!"
*snap zoom to Kirk's crying face*
When Spock dies in front of Kirk, I felt it.However, they give you hope before the credits roll, and leave you with a real anticipation for "The Search for Spock". When "Kelvin" Kirk dies, he's back before the movie's over. I felt nothing. The Kelvin Timeline is just a polite way of saying, "Our writers suck!"
That moment about 13 minutes into this video where you realize you probably relate to Star Trek so much because of your shared traumatic experiences. 😳
Agreed. After TWOK, Kirk became a much more interesting character than he was ever written as in TOS.
I still rate Beyond as one of my top five Trek films of all time. With the other Kelvinverse ones firmly in my bottom five. It just *gets* what makes for a good story that can stand in its own right as well as being good Trek.
Beyond is the best of the Kelvinverse, but it still uses the same plot line as all Kelvinverse movies. Specifically, they are all the Wrath of Khan. Bad guy loses somebody. The Federation is arguably responsible, at least in part. Bad guy gets superweapon and threatens innocents. The Enterprise crew deal with it at significant loss (though sometimes only temporarily).
Funny thing is of the Kelvin timeline my favs are
1: Star Trek 09
2: Beyond
3: Into Darkness
I LOVED 09 because like ST:SNW it gave me a look at what Enterprise was able to do.
TOS never had the capability visually to SHOW YOU how good the Flagship vessel was, Kelvin timeline & Strange New Worlds did/is doing that.
That's what I love about "NU" Retro Trek... SHOW ME why everyone on every Enterprise was the top 5% of Academy Cadet assignments and the elite of Starfleet.
Their is a reason we stuck with the Enterprise for so long before going to DS9, VOY, ENT, DIS, SNW (LD is more of a "what about the rest of the fleet" series that I agree with Steve, it can use A LOT fan service that only deeply in invested fans know..which hinders it from being a great show).
It's because they can pull off the impossible and they run into so much because the universe knows they an handle it and doesn't back away.
For me to visually see that (SNW ep 102 is a great example of this) the pilot and crew of Enterprise move the ship & resolve it in the way that they did.
That gets my Trek "Bonner" up...I'm still thinking about the musical scene where Uhura earns respect by showing off her almost Omnilinguistic abilities and solving problems that only she could have done.
No shootout between the Enterprise and its adversary, a simple trading of weapons fire to further the plot.
That's what I love about "NU" Trek, however the total destruction of Enterprise in Beyond did irk me to a point of whining about it because, why did you have to be that reckless?
After ST: Beyond Kirk would not get Enterprise-B if Enterprise-A took the same fate.
It's one thing to get put down by a superior opponent from the future, that's impressive.
To get beat like they did with Into Darkness...understandable but I could have done without the Khan cut & paste stuff. That said I would have reprimanded Kirk for acting as irrational as he did, had the opponent not ben Khan....Kahn character effects everything about that movie.
Now by the time ST: Beyond came around I was sick of the Enterprise getting trashed like it did, no respect for the ship itself was given & I loved seeing a new villain and again the Enterprise crew solving a problem with the talent they have and a ship that can handle it.
That's what ST:09 & ST:SNW are doing right for me among the new shows. It's given me the OG crew and showing me why they are as legendary as they are.
Every series mentioned and new Trek has that element to it (not factoring in nuances like promotions, plot holes, length of time, etc.) minus Lower Decks.
Only that Ship/Station could have pulled off what they did. That's why we get those stories/series to me.
P.S. I want my USS Prometheus show & I'll die on that hill.
P.P.S. I hate that LD had Bolimer get to Titan like he wanted then made his character a bish for plot sake and fan service.
Bolimer deserves better & I don't need "The Mariner Show" when you have characters like Tendi, Rutherford & Bolimer. The are CONSTANTLY being used to push Mariner character growth (if you can call it that) and its frustrating, especially when 6 out of 10 episodes are about Mariner.
Sorry for the Book, but I agree about your point on NU Trek.
Thank you. I really enjoyed Beyond and it was so crazy how much everyone didn't like it. I'm sad that Elba probs won't do more Trek cause he already did Beyond, would love him as an Admiral
(lol nah I get why everyone didn't like it. it's so hard to watch anything after Into Darkness. which I would have liked except for it being Khan and the klingons and the multi solar system transporter. And Quinto yelling Khan. and the gratuitous underwear scene. fuck that movie was rough watching)
Ricardo was utterly fantastic. ST2 isn't my fav of the movie franchises, but Khan set the bar so high for antagonists. It's such a joy to watch this movie just to bask in the over-the-top character of Khan.
he's absolutely menacing
I love listening to your Star Trek takes because they are nuanced and so reflecting of big picture stuff. I think you have changed my mind when it comes to retconning lore in order to tell a better story 🤯
I do remember one easter egg from Wrath of Khan that, I think, was well employed. It's when Chekov and Terrell are investigating the shelter, Chekov finds something saying Botany Bay on it, remembers the name, and freaks out. Terrell, like I did when I first saw this film as a kid, wonders what's gotten Chekov so scared, but anybody who'd seen Space Seed remembers. This starts building tension for the ultimate reveal of our main villain- seeing Chekov so frightened and either left guessing, or knowing, why.
I know this is referring to canon, but we know from the original show that the Federation had a robust treatment system for mental illness. Having Picard's mother at home makes no sense.
I love your analysis. It always comes from a critical view of the writing and production and delves just the right amount into the fictional world without getting cannon crazy. I'd LOVE to see you do some retro reviews. I recently rewatched TOS: A Taste of Armageddon and followed that with TNG: First Contact. It was a fascinating combination and there were some interesting contrasts between Kirk and Picard's leadership styles and the crew's behavior as well. But I'd love to see you break something like that down. Thanks for all the videos!
This is one the best examples of constructive criticism I have come across in my 42 years of pre-middle age. I applaud you, a prime example of an incredibly thoughtful video essay. I can only hope that some one from this phenomenal universe see this, takes it to heart, and we get even better Trek stories in the coming future.
The issue with Chekov not appearing in Space Seed (or in any season 1 episode) was explained by the following excerpt from the novelization of Star Trek II (published in 1982, just before the film was released), when Chekov is captured by Khan on Ceti Alpha V: “Oh, no. . . ." Chekov whispered. He remembered Lieutenant McGiver. She had been tall and beautiful and classically elegant, but, more important, kind and sweet and wise. He had only ever had one conversation with her, and that by chance-he was an ensign, assigned to the night watch, when she was on the Enterprise, and ensigns and officers did not mix much. But once, she had talked with him. For days afterward, he had wished he were older, more experienced, of a more equivalent rank … He had wished many things.”
Excerpt From
Star Trek: The Original Series - 007 - The Wrath of Khan
Vonda N. Mcintyre
This material may be protected by copyright.
Vonda was the best.
I know this isn't Trek but the first five minutes of this vid totally explained why I was so disappointed with the return of Star Wars, especially The Force Awakens because they didn't do anything new at all, they just rehashed the first movie and fans lapped it up for the nostalgia. I started to get uncomfortable feelings the moment the secret plans here hidden in the droid.
But going 30 years on and things having changed so little was a let down, but I am loving a lot of Trek doing more with its original basis and exploring that more, especially Strange New Worlds. Of course I do also admit that TWOK is my favourite movie.
I thought that the Kelvin timeline movies were OK, but I don't love them. My problem with the films was with the way they portrayed Chris Pine's young Kirk. As a kid they made him a juvenile deliquent with him stealing his step-dad's classic Corvette and running it off a cliff. Then as a young man, he was just a "rebel without a cause" punk that just got into fights with other cadets and that he didn't want to necessarily join Star Fleet. He had to be persuaded by Chris Pike to do so. Going back to TOS James T. Kirk, it was established that all he ever wanted to do was be the captain of a starship. In the Kelvin timeline Trek movies, we did not see a studious Kirk whose historic hero was Abraham Lincoln or read Shakespeare, all things we know Kirk did. Where was the Kirk in the Abrams version of Kirk who could recite word for word The Declaration of Independence. The Kelvin timeline Kirk knew nothing or could care less about history. He was just a disaffected young man that got his ass kicked in bar fights. I think it was this portrayal of Kirk in those films that led William Shatter to say that in those films, "they took the humanity out of Star Trek. "
Star Trek Beyond is proof positive that franchises are best when written by fans of the franchise. Simon Pegg penned a great story
Hey Steve, while agree with some of your points and disagree with others, I always appreciate your constructive criticisms of the franchise. Your videos are always a pleasure to watch my man.
“which makes me premiddle aged.” Whatever you tell yourself to sleep at night Steve.
Fathom events is doing a classic Trek theater run. Took my kids to The Motion Picture couple weeks ago and they loved it. Can't wait for Kahn in September.
Being 58, which makes me "WAY Middle Aged" (I am just glad I lived this long and have been able to see the things I have, including all the Treks) Wrath of Khan is by far the best movie, and it was based on a mediocre episode from the TOS, "Space Seed". All the movies, and series (except Discovery) have been awesome!
Very well put, thank you!!! As for me, I have given up on Star Trek. 2009 is acceptable on its own terms but it is more Star Wars-ey than ST-TOS-ey. For me it went downhill from there. I can appreciate your point about Beyond, but everything else about it turned me off. I have seen enough reviews about ST-D and Picard to be at peace with my decision to stay away and the newer stuff will not get me back. I am comfortable with my DVD collections of the old adventures. Plenty to keep me entertained in my old age.
I do appreciate your perspective on storytelling vs. fan service and the interesting take on trauma as an element vs. a defining feature. This clip is REALLY GOOD!!! Thank you.
I saw The Wrath of Khan on its opening day in a giant old theater that seated around 500 including a huge balcony. It was the first and only time I have experienced people standing and cheering in the middle of a movie. So glad I was there, what a memorable event.
I wonder if the Lower Decks approach of "Hey, remember this thing from the old shows?" could be employed in the way Wrath of Khan did with Space Seed. Not as an easter egg or callback, but as a starting point for 'sequel' stories.
Don't they already?
The main reason they don't more is they like to shine the spotlight on smaller things when possible.
Surprised they didn't point out Project Dropby or whatever could have prevented Wrath of Khan.
Man, as a 53-year old science fiction enthusiast and Trekkie since birth, I really nerded out on this video and agree 100% with the breakdown. Strange New Worlds is the only new product of Trek that has worked for me since JJ’s first Trek reboot.
I like your statements, here. You have done the research and made good points. So far, I think Strange New Worlds is hitting the right notes. I just hope they don't pull-in Kirk too early. Anson Mount is excellent, and the pass-off to Kirk should happen in the final episodes. This is Pike's series and we have seen plenty of Kirk. (BTW Kirk is my favorite captain, but Pike is great as well.)
My biggest gripe with Discovery is that, while I like most of the characters, it gets bogged down in trauma therapy for 1. a disproportionate amount of time , 2. among characters that are often tertiary at best, and 3. always at the WRONG time. It never fails when there's a countdown to a breach or a detonation or some other ship-destroying event, two of the characters will suddenly start having an vulnerable-empowering-but-not-so-urgent weepy/smiley conversation that lasts an agonizing five minutes during a supposedly 30-second countdown. It makes me yell at the TV, "Can you not hear the computer? There are three seconds left! You can be a better ally AFTER you push the button!"
I mockingly explain it as a Monsters, Inc. situation, where future Starfleet has learned to harness emotional catharsis as a dilithium alternative.
No one who watches your videos would think you are complaining about NuTrek being "woke" or that you even hate the whole of Nutrek.
Don't forget JJ Trek is an alternet time line.
For me, gotta say the height was First Contact. That being said, I guess I have odd tastes -- I've been loving Star Trek: Picard, where every comment section I've ever encountered has someone assailing it with insults. Meh. Enjoy it for what it is. Picard, as "NuTrek" goes, is a good example of a case that goes against the grain of the video. It's all about the old getting older, with the galaxy moving on regardless, and is a great reflection of how characters change. There was a time when Picard would have expressed precious little personal emotion, but the events of his life have taught him not to devalue family and to seize his chances to tell the people around him (even Q) that for him, that's what they are. See the end of the second season, or his relationship overall with the Enterprise crew before them. Picard's life was a life of various traumas before the Picard series, and nobody turns out as repressed as he is during TNG without some life events to cause it. The growth beyond it is very rewarding for me, as a fan, to see.
Very well thought out and delivered analysis. I agree with you 100% and am very pleased that Star Trek SNW is setting its own course Storytelling-wise. I still think that the inclusion of Sam Kirk went a bit too far, and I did roll my eyes at La’an being set up as Khan’s great, great whatever . . . but at least they are trying to make a point of it with the Federation’s absolutist position on augments thru her relationship with #1, so I’ll cut them some slack for it.
Prequel stuff is always a hard sell with me, regardless of franchise, but I'm especially burned out on the past in general with Trek. (Love seeing the different aesthetic presentations for the period, but that's a whole other Twitter fight.) Despite that, SNW has kept me hooked and left me eagerly awaiting each new episode every single week.
To quote Spock:
"Canon is the beginning of wisdom, not the end."
OK, so I'm paraphrasing.
Canon is a tool in obtaining wisdom, not the ultimate result.
"...fourth film in development..." 🤣
"...the minimal backstory necessary to establish context..." Khan-text!!
"Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again" - Jean-Luc Picard, The Inner Light
With regard to "looking backward", I think what's changed is that the rise of home video (and now streaming, and snarky reviews and memes on the Internet) has dramatically increased the assumptions people can make about what you might already be familiar with, for better or for worse. When "The Wrath of Khan" came out, home VCRs were still pretty new and not everyone had them; if they did, they probably didn't have an extensive tape collection. In most cases, you could only see an old TV episode if you happened to catch it when it was on. Star Trek had been a hit for years in syndicated reruns, and they could assume many viewers had general ideas about what the show was, but they couldn't safely assume you'd seen "Space Seed" and could recall anything about it. It would have been pointless to load the movie with winking references to original-series episodes--only the absolutely most hardcore of Trekkies would get them. It was kind of an Easter egg just to have Khan in there--that was about as deep as it could go.
These days, many viewers can actually go and watch the original episode any time they want. And even if they don't, if they're curious, they can summon an "Easter Eggs Explained" video from some UA-camr telling them what they missed. But just because you can get away with it doesn't mean you should.
The ultimate in this regard might be the Marvel Cinematic Universe: it's hard to imagine how something like "Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame" could even be popular in a world where you can't call up existing media on demand. The assumption would be that nobody would know what the heck was going on. The place where that kind of thing DID happen even decades ago was superhero comics, where you might actually be able to get hold of some of the old issues that some convoluted crossover was referring to, or have them in your existing collection. In fact, this might be one of the reasons that superhero media is such a dominant force on screen today after spending so long in the wilderness: movies now exist in a more comics-like media environment, thanks to new viewing technology that allows engaging with the past.
A fine overview here. I've been frustrated with the constant attempt to recreate WoK to the point that it has almost degraded the movie. Thanks for bringing the focus back on the WoK as a standalone unique experience. I remain annoyed with too many revenge-centered Heavies in Trek movies, like Nemesis.
This video essay is the antidote to modern day writing. Thank you for making it.
I kind of feel like it's worth bringing up Star Trek: Enterprise here. That was a good series with some good ideas and good actors, but it kept getting bogged down in this constant need to remind you that it was Star Trek and try and connect it with the rest of the series, not simply by setting up the basis for later elements like any sequel would, but gratuitously rolling in them at the worst of times, even throwing in a random and out of place time travel plot where some guy comes back from the future to tell Archer that he needs to found the Federation or whatever. That was something that the producers were obsessed with, especially in the first two seasons, and it wasn't until the fourth season that they finally got down to writing an actual prequel, with things ranging from establishing the events that led up to the Romulan War and the subsequent founding of the Federation, to exploring entirely new concepts, like Terra Firma and the general unrest against humanity becoming part of a galactic community.
Trying too hard to connect it with everything else is one of the things that brought Enterprise down a peg, when it was otherwise a solid Star Trek series with potential to get into some really cool things.
I haven't seen everything of Star Trek: Enterprise but from what little I've seen of it (which is a smattering of episodes from the first three seasons & most of season 4) season 4 should've been the outline of Star Trek: Enterprise and leave out the Xindi & Temporal Cold War stuff.
Wrath was the pinnacle of Trek, with the whales film and Undiscovered Country worthy contenders.
I always wish Carol Marcus had been a character that we saw in TOS. Nu Trek would have laid that foundation.
“Laid that foundation…”. Now THAT’s funny!
A funny thing I heard at one of the ST Conventions was Chekov was onboard, after Khan stated that he was going back to his room because the food didn't agree with him, he headed to the washroom which was occupied by Chekov. In which Khan threw Chekov out of the stall and did his business. (This was at a convention shortly after The Wrath of Khan was released) So don't shoot the messenger.
Sprinkling old characters in order to hope that the love for them will transfer over. That is an issue with Disney Star Wars.
Look it is Boba Fett/Luke/Ahsoka/Obi-Wan/Rex/Sabine/Pellaeon, surely you will love this!
When you decanonize the stories that birthed the characters and made them memorable in the first place, you can't expect them to still work outside of their contexts.
I immediately started thinking of Red Letter media when you was describing people who hate on the new Star Trek and what they look like lol
I will say Uhuras “I ran to star fleet to run away from dealing with my parents death in a shuttle accident” had all the hallmarks of Picard season two but it was done so I got lil and so differently to set up her arc that is rather compelling of someone trying to find their place… strange new worlds did amazing for a first season
It seems to me that OG Trek (through Enterprise) was great sci-fi stories set in an optimistic future and populated with diverse people. Nutrek is diversity stories doing Star Trek cosplay and set in a self loathing, sarcastic future.
Some years after the film Ricardo Montalban appearing on an interview tv show was asked about his character being evil and seeking wrath in his KHAN portrayl. His reply was, "KHAN did it for the love THE LOVE of his lost wife! THE LOVE!"
I like the new Star Trek stuff a lot. Specially Strange New Worlds. But Discovery is a bit too emotional. Sometimes feels like a soap opera. Everyone is crying about their relationships aaaallll the time. Feels annoying.
That's the reason why I leave that show in the middle of the second season. Everyone crying... Boring and annoying
That's the best part for me, though. I like relationship drama.
For me, it wasn't because it was too emotional, it was because they had no idea how to properly integrate those emotional scenes into the narrative. They'd be in the middle of a crisis and such a moment would be dropped in out of the blue and interrupt all the action. It was clumsily added like a parenthetical.
Star Trek II had some very intensely emotional scenes, e.g. Spock's death, but they felt fully and properly integrated into the story.
Agreed. Discovery's characters often seem to act like they've just been dumped and it's closing time on a Tuesday at the most dramatic gay bar in the galaxy.
(I say that as an LGBT person, and I've spent a fair amount of time at gay bars listening to people complaining about exes).
I have to agree, to much emotion and not enough professionalism. When you're at the mission at hand and in need to see it through, the last thing you need at that moment is someone around having meltdown or a sensitive homemark moment. All the time in this series, someone is or about to cry. Comparing old trek to new trek is like comparing the old NBA to the new. Back then the competition wanted to kill the other team, now they all want to join the other team with greetings of hugs and kisses... Lol 🤮
Live long and Prosper, fellow child of 1980 weened on TOS reruns before a Next Gen adolescence led us into the golden age of sci-fi (DS9, B5, SG1, Farscape, Xena, Buffy and culminating in the genius of the BSG remake).
With such inspiration how could we not be the Greatest Generation!?
On the pacing comment, I just read an article that the Khan TV series had finished its base story. But it was only a couple hours long and was going to be extended a bit. It rhymes, like poetry.
I have a large set of comments and bits of discussion written up, but because of the aggression of the youtube comments section in general, and I don't feel like enduring that, I'm just going to say well put together and considered. Some parts I agree with, some I don't. Thanks for doing what you do, Steve.
I think it's ironic that the same people who complain about new Trek not keeping with "Roddenberry's vision" are the same people who praise TWOK as the high point of the franchise. Roddenberry hated TWOK because it was too nautical and militaristic. He loved the foofy emotional "human condition" stuff.
And yet I can't but wonder if the nautical and the militaristic elements that were a large part of Star Trek even before TWOK would have even been there if not for Roddenberry himself. He must have drawn inspiration from those very things to even conceive of Star Trek. Also, people are allowed to enjoy more than one facet of Star Trek, you know?
Roddenberry used Hornblower, as his example to follow, for playing the ship's captain. I also found him to be a bit hypocritical, as he made starfleet the military branch of the federation.
I, too, just recently turned 42. LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING, BABY!!!
I'm one of those fans who appreciate adherence to canon -- but only up to a point. (For instance, I didn't sweat out Chekov not appearing on "Space Seed." For all we know, Chekov was on the ship by then. They never referenced when he arrived). But I do appreciate getting the big stuff right.
That said, excellent analysis and you're so right.
As someone who probably falls into “woke” (or proto-woke considering my Gen X cohort), little has frustrated me more than the diametric social debates over NuTrek since 2017.
Star Trek is probably as close as I get to “guilty pleasure”. I’m fond of what I learned earning my literary degree and what I’ve taught. Sadly, Discovery has perpetually pushed buttons that make me want its writers to go back to school.
No, again, not because of the message. Not because of the balanced casting, but because… well… it wears *all* its subtext in its sleeve. At least some should be kept in the breast pocket near the beating heart. Besides diminishing the drama, it means that rhetorically it can be (to some) condescendingly on-the-nose for people who agree.
By the same turn it can feel hostile to those who disagree. I’m not saying it should be “both sides’d”. I’m saying that there are techniques that nudge those who disagree to accepting the legitimacy of things they disagree with. This is the slow path to going from intolerance, to tolerance, to acceptance, to “we used to get pissed about THAT?”
I get that there’s need for both strategies. The less direct and the agit prop, but the legacy of Trek is - for all its laughably unsubtle episodes - that it leads with allegory. I get that Discovery has a different “mission” and I couldn’t genuinely be happier about all the people (such as Jesse Gender) for whom the representation is so essential that it makes other writing issues less prominent. Fair enough. It’s why even what I don’t like about the series I accept as “others need this message that I don’t.” I’ve aged out of some of it.
I suppose Lower Decks and to a degree Prodigy are better bridges between “Nu” and old (“Auld?!) but I suspect Discovery isn’t a good jumping off point for people to acclimate to the older series. That’s a page or two I can’t write thumb typing on a phone.
I’m among those who think that had this been set in the far flung future to begin with then the show would have met less criticism. That’s not on Kurtzman. That was Fuller’s choice. So was making Burnham Spock’s sister. I like to think Fuller would have been more subtle integrating this show with existing canon. If so, that would’ve eased a lot of the “canonista” anger. I’d welcome that. I like continuity a little more than you, but a lot less than many. I do have lines though - particularly Unification III when with an offhand line we’re told Burnham was an essential inspiration to Spock. It seems a pretty lazy (and somewhat tone deaf) way of bolstering a character by resting a legacy one on her shoulder. I don’t mean this as “a fan.” I mean this as someone who writes and has taught writing.
There are other such instances and plenty of “Easter eggs” - some completely harmless, some too clever by half. Some distractingly eye rolling. You’re right that STII did well by not winking. It also added emotion without compromising the stoic nature of the series. I like that NuTrek has more emotion. I do. I dislike how it’s handled. When we’re told a character’s trauma when we first meet them then that becomes our lens. That happens a lot on Discovery.
Sometimes that’s because characters have barely any attention so when they finally do, that trauma is introduced because it is an efficient means of adding “complexity” and relatability. But it’s one note that’s been played over and over. Worse still, rarely do we discover it through behavior within a plot. It becomes a speech. Sometimes at the most absurd moment of tension. Shoehorning like that can take an audience out immediately, especially when there are cut and paste qualities. Which there are. Often.
Jesse Gender, who I like and found through here, does something that may be generational or just a different school of thought than fits with me. They equate back story with the fullness of character. I think that’s a very modern view and one that doesn’t hold water. Backstory belongs in series bibles so that writers have a foundation to keep consistency within a character until it further develops on screen. The depth should reveal itself through the course of narrative. When done how NuTrek does it, we are actually robbed of drama.
The ten episode format makes that a more tempting and arguably necessary shortcut. Or maybe not. I’d say the distribution of development on Discovery is shockingly old fashioned. We live in a golden age of ensemble casts that are free from the pure “triumvirate” lead structure. Anything from Better Call Saul to Watchmen demonstrates how distribution of action between characters enriches narrative and can be done within the confines of a dozen episodes.
And even if not, the beauty of Trek on streaming is that episodes don’t have to be 42 minutes. More than that, shooting dialogue-driven scenes is comparatively cheap. It’s hard to believe that they don’t excise and condense dramatic scenes to keep runtimes. Yes, some of that is pacing… but some of it is shortsighted. Even Burnham’s character could be richer and more organic if instead of using these shortcuts they let the drama breathe.
But I know that’s not realistic. And yet, Strange New Worlds has already given us more rounded supporting characters in just four episodes than we’ve arguably gotten out of four years of Discovery. Yes, that’s a bit of hyperbole… but only a bit.
This has been a choice. And episodic vs. serialized is not at the core of the issue. It’s about other choices made at the top end of production. It seems that the switch may still have been essential just to shake up the template.
It’s refreshing because Strange New Worlds feels - derivative though it may be to us Olds - a stepping stone for new viewers to actually understand and enjoy the allegorical nature of the series. That’s been gone arguably since before the reboots. As such, while I have a harder time imagining someone going from Discovery to any of the older series, SNW feels like a portal to enjoying the older shows even if they’re stagey, slower, and their sociopolitical stances are outdated. SNW shares the DNA.
It’s too bad that it relies so heavily on pre-existing characters. I like the new Uhura (and am disgusted by some of the troglodytic criticisms online), the new Chapel, and even Noonian Singh. But I wish they all had different names. Not because “don’t mess with my characters!” but because it shrinks the universe yet again. Lt. Kirk may be the most annoying of those! But you know what? I’m okay with it. Because the characters have been historically underdeveloped and I’m glad to see that corrected. It’s a compromise. It’s toughest with Singh because genuinely like the character and the actor - but utterly resent the lack of creativity in tying her to canon this way. I trust they’ll do it okay, but the history of Enterprise keeps feeling smaller and smaller and smaller in a universe free to be bigger and bigger and bigger.
Anyway. I hope this holds together. Phone typing isn’t my strength and the UA-cam app is miserable for scrolling to edit. So there are my own actual trek thoughts, actually.
Live long and all that! Kerplunk! Or k’plach. Whatever. You know what I mean.
No, your comment is incredibly insightful, and it words well why I still can't get anywhere close to clicking with Discovery, but it's nice to have some insight from someone who also feels this way as to why it works for other folks.
Re: trauma: I do think it's also a matter of how that trauma is handled. Having seen the abysmal way in which Picard S2 handled trauma, it was stunning to go back to DS9, which I have been rewatching as I introduced my mom to Star Trek with it, and seeing just how well that series handled events like Odo's actions in "Things Past".
To me, it would have made more sense to have Sulu on the Reliant, both because he was actually in the episode and as a step to him gaining his own command.
Lt Saavik could be at the helm.
It seemed odd to me that all the original Bridge crew seemed to have made Cmdr at the same time, Checkov had made it to Lt in TMP and although a decade takes place between that and TWOK I'd have thought he might still be a Lt Cmdr, after all it took Worf 7 years to make Lt Cmdr and Troi 7 to make Cmdr.
I realise that none of this matters . it's just thoughts.
Tasha Yar’s trauma always bothered me. Probably because my dad had to explain “rape gangs” to me as a little kid. Even as I got older tho. The thought of a rape gang bothered me. As though there would be gangs dedicated solely to rape. I’m sure rape happens in gangs but it’s not usually the gang name ya know. They are usually named for how they make money. Like drug smuggling gangs or gun smuggling gangs or even human trafficking gangs. Rape gangs. Ugh. Just no.
One of my biggest grievances with Modern Trek is the combat, it's too Star Wars-like, I mean I love Star Wars, but the combat style is not what Trek does. Starships shouldn't be fighting like fighters, they should be like the submarines in Red October.
Chekov being captured by Khan was because actor Walter Koenig was TOS's best screamer. Why he got injured in Trek movies I, II, & IV.
Troi or Geordi were the sufferers in TNG.
Kira or O'Brien were DS9's.
Harry Kim's scream in Voyagers pilot made him the go-to guy to suffer for Voyager.
Well said. The layers in this film were brilliant. Sure, it's a Star Trek story. But it's also a story about a man growing old and coming to terms with that. With reconciling his past. With looking back at the choices he made -- sometimes with regret. And with the loss of friends who have been close to him throughout his life. (That's why Spock needed to die at the end. The story would have fallen flat without that.)
Also, there's the spectacle of two grand battleships squaring off against each other. Brilliant film.
I watched Wrath of Khan as a child years before I managed to catch Spaceseed on reruns. I still loved the movie.
When I saw the title, I legit sighed and said "wtf, another one of these videos..." then saw it was your video, and I was at first confused and then intrigued.
That is one of the best well balanced criticism to nu trek.
Tastes may differ, but one real problem is, in my view, the excess of fan service and unnecessary repetition.
Thanks Steve! 🖖
My favorite explanation for the Khan-Chekov issue is Khan's study of the ship's technical manuals, a fairly important plot point in Space Seed. He asks to read them, Kirk says he has "200 years of catching up" to do, and then later Khan talks about what he read in the manuals. Well, he could fairly easily have seen something like the ship's roster (listing Chekov as a lower decks type) or a transfer order for Chekov's upcoming arrival on Enterprise, or even a Starfleet Academy yearbook with Chekov in it. Khan read and learned quickly, with a souped-up memory and intellect, so he remembered Chekov year later.
Or it's an alternate universe because TMP and TWOK are both reboots--TMP rebooted TOS, TWOK rebooted TMP, then TNG rebooted again...
UA-cam kept trying to make me watch this video, and I got annoyed, assuming it WAS one of those reactionary videos by people who clearly never understood Trek! Took we a while to realize that it was one of your videos, and thus obviously worth watching!
After watching this I have a new take on WoK. After years of serialized ST we have become used to this idea of season long plot lines where problems arise, get worked out, and stretched or not, in general we can at least feel that the problem has actually been solved.
In TOS and TNG we find that almost every episode is case closed, everyone has warm and fuzzies, I'm sure it all worked out, no consequences next week. That is almost the bane of adventure television fighting the monster of the week. And to me there is a tongue in cheek brilliance of WoK telling us that consequences catch up with us eventually.
Steve finishes recording, goes and gets in his red convertible and drives off. No mid-life crisis here.
I got really excited when I saw this video pop up since I had been leaving various commentary elsewhere about the similarities and difference between Wrath of Khan and Momento Mori, the most recent SNW -- since they have a lot of the same aims. I was speculating on why that episode, while fine, never reaches the greatest than Khan did. To summarize, I believe that it has do with pacing, deflating rather than building tension, tonality issues, and trying to juggle too many independent story threads. You took the discussion to altogether different places especially since you are largely arguing in favor of SNW, but I really appreciate your points about honoring canon without being a slave to it, the over-reliance on trauma to prop up the drama, and the importance of building on legacy to move the story forward rather than repeatedly going backwards.
You forgot to mention Christopher Pike's storyline, Steve (though I do believe you addressed that in another vid), in which, via DISCOVERY, Season 2, "The Valley of Shadows," the Captain sees his fate.
Although it was "fan-servicey," it didn't feel like that, and now, as Anson Mount continues his role as Pike, it gives him the ability to undercut Chris's character with "shadows" of darkness and fear.
I love it, because without that "fear factor," Christopher Pike is just another heroic Starfleet Captain.
P.S.: I will be VERY UPSET if the producers/writers change that particular canon!!!!!!!
This is a video that is needed. There is so much hollow fan-service these days which is used often times as a smoke-screen for how poorly written and ill-thought-out the scripts are. As someone who has seen your reviews where you've enjoyed NuTrek episodes, it's nice to see you view NuTrek through a critical lens in this video.
Agreed.
I still want to see a comparison between WoK and the first Nu Trek film. Seeing as how they have the same basic story line (which is why I never understood everyone saying "now do Wrath of Khan!" when they'd just _done_ it), I think the analysis would be worth it.
Dr. Evil: "Remember when I told you 'We're not so different, you and I'?" "We're not so different, you and I." "See, I did say that." I don't know if it tickled my nostalgia bone, but it was pretty funny.
The thing about how Picard season 2 handled Picard and honestly, even season 1, is that they don't seem to understand the character. Season 2 is the worst offender by far here, where the revelations just don't make any sense with who we see in TNG and the movies.