Ah, yes, the new child of "modern" Trek.
What mess have they made...
Honestly, both STD, STP and the new Lower Decks have been on my mind as of late, not only because I consider myself a Star Trek fan, worried about the future of his franchise, but also from some professional curiosity, observing the philosophical implications of current ideologies expressed in culture and media. That said, I am disappointed both in the direction of this new revival of the franchise and in its failure of being what it so intently tries to be.
Unlike a large portion of fans, I don't have aesthetic problems with the show, although the way in which that new aesthetics narratively influences the show(dark military type of bridge instead of the well lit white/beige textures from the past, inducing the feel of a ship made for war, not exploration) is troubling. I can even welcome this attempt at critique of the old Star Trek, presenting a dark dystopian themed exploration of its universe. For once, the "final frontier" is supposed to be dangerous and unforgiving. Often, no amount of ingenuity can save the ones facing that unknown from disaster. Space holds insurmountable dangers, but Star Trek has always tried to rub off the edges of that realization. STD and STP, however, are not really trying to be "dark" and they most certainly are not trying to critique and explore the utopian themes of the previous franchise. They are inducing senseless cruelty, in an unsuccessful attempt to be surprising and really... nothing more that that. The show runners are trying to reproduce the glory of Game of Thrones, only to show a total lack of understanding about both it and Star Trek. What made the violence in Game of Thrones so effective was that it was never truly random. It was always presented as a narrative thread binding the fictional world of the series. When Joffrey became king, starting to use and kill people on a whim, it spoke not only about his character, but about the cultural Zeitgeist of the feudal society, which put him there in the first place. What did the senseless and brutal killing of Icheb or Hugh tell us about the world of Picard (other than the misconceived attempt of the writers to empower female characters)? That there are some bad people in it ? Well BOOO-HOOO ! In the twin episodes of "Year of Hell" from VOY, we were presented with a genocide on a level which would make Hitler look like a dumb schoolyard bully! It seems that doing a proper job as a sci-fi series, by presenting the implications of ideas and technologies under the control of people with different morality standpoints, is obviously seen as too boring or intellectually challenging for the audience, which definitely means that STP and STD are taking their cues from the wrong shows.
If the writers really wanted to make a substantive critique of Star Trek, they would have first understood the main driving force behind the narrative of the show, which is curiosity. The Federation was never utopian on the basis of some particular technical or political magic fix. ST tried to establish that space exploration, the curiosity toward the unknown and the different, can ennoble us as a species, much like the vision of Carl Sagan in his phenomenal "Cosmos". But there is no curiosity in the new Trek, no passion for exploration, dialogue and understanding, other than a forcefully induced or a preached one. There is no real narrative role for science and discovery other in a few isolated examples in STD, or awkward forced comments in the style of Spock's "I like science". This is why, I believe that the new franchise fails to stand up to the challenge and the name of its predecessor. It also fails to inspire the next generation of scientists and intellectuals as well, as the previous one did.
