Sunday, May 28, 2017

Optimism about Discovery

By which I mean, the new Star Trek series. I've been waiting for this for a long time, and I was really excited to see the first trailer.



I've been seeing a lot of complaints across the internet about this, which I understand is in accordance with the prophecy that Star Trek fans (Trekkies or Trekkers, depending on your own personal taste) will heap hate on any new series or movie until they wind up arguing about how it's truly the best part of the whole franchise. Still, because if I don't write these counter-arguments down they'll just stay in my head and bug me, here they are!

Take #1: It looks too futuristic! Why doesn't it look like "The Cage" (the original Star Trek pilot) which took place at a similar point in the timeline? What about continuity?

I'm all for the nostalgia of revisiting early Trek. One of my favorite things to come out of the internet in the past few years has been the proliferation of Star Trek fan films expanding on the original series. Star Trek New Voyages, Star Trek Continues, Prelude to Axanar, Starship Farragut, these have all been a lot of fun to watch in lieu of having official new Trek, and I can't commend them enough. All of these productions do a marvelous job of recreating the look and feel of the original series, and building onto it in exciting ways. But they're still fundamentally tied to art direction decisions that were made 50 plus years ago, and it's entirely unreasonable to expect that a modern, high budget television production is going to try to paint inside the same lines. Plus, we've already seen a modern take on those uniforms and ships in the Kelvin timeline movies, so this show has to distinguish itself in some way.

50 years ago, the bridge of the Enterprise looked sleek and futuristic, today it looks like something from an Buck Rogers adventure serial. Which is cool! It's just a product of its time, much like this show will be. And for those who'd complain that this ship seems too dark, and the uniforms too military, it's worth noting that one of the primary creative forces behind this is Nick Meyer. His first contribution to Star Trek was Star Trek II, and he's the reason why the bridge was darker, the uniforms went from bright tunics to maroon jackets, and the interior of the ship looking more like a submarine than a promenade.

As for continuity, I really hope they hire Bruce Greenwood and Zachary Quinto to do a single scene on the bridge from the Nu-Trek movies as Pike and Spock in the Prime universe, dressed in the same uniforms as the Discovery/Shenzhou crew, just to clearly state "this is how it looks now". They can just answer a hail, say they're going to Delta Vega, and then we'd never see them again.

Take #2: A species "determined to detect the coming of death" sounds dumb!

Well, it's not any less dumb than telepathy, telekinesis, dream-invading, or spontaneously evolving into a being of pure energy, all of which has happened at some point or another in Trek. Let's see how this plays out! Plus, Lieutenant Saru is played by Doug Jones, who is pretty great.

Take #3: They've ruined the Klingons! Look at them!


Let's look at the evolution of Klingons through the history of Star Trek.


The last one there is the new Klingon that has been generating so much controversy. It's different from the others, sure, but there's clearly been a whole lot of variance in the appearance of Klingons through the years. We might be looking at a big change in the visual design, but it's nowhere near as big as the jump from the original series to the first movie.

Take #4: Seth McFarlane's new show, The Orville, looks way more like Star Trek than Discovery!

Well, yeah. It does! It seems to be drawing a lot of its visual inspiration directly from TNG, so it'll look very much like that. I'm excited about the idea of functionally having two Star Trek series this coming fall, even if one is a goof on the premise. From watching the trailer, it seems like the comedy will largely hinge on the bumbling main character, which I'm a little tired of as an organizing premise.

Star Trek can be hilarious, but it's usually a character-driven humor, putting well-established characters into situations in which they're uncomfortable. I'm mostly thinking of Picard trying to deal with children, which was always a hoot to watch.

Take #5: Bryan Fuller left the show! All is ruined/lost!

I'm super stoked that Bryan Fuller was involved in Discovery, but it was unlikely that he was going to be able to run both American Gods & Star Trek Discovery. Given that they originally both had release dates in May, it was almost impossible that Starz was going to let their prize showrunner off to produce another network's flagship product at the expense of their own. We're getting a show for which Bryan Fuller wrote the core outline, and the first couple episodes in their entirety, which sounds like a pretty great show to me. It's a bummer that he isn't involved with the show going forward, but I'll take a show he had a hand in creating with no complaint.

It's worth mentioning there's been a response to the trailer which has run something like 'where are the white dudes? Why aren't they in charge? The SJWs are ruining my Star Trek, arghbarghlarghargh!' To these people, I recommend they watch Star Trek again. I think they'll find it means something different than they thought.

No comments: