Strange New disappointments
Straight New Worlds
Strange New Worlds

I frickin' loved the first season of SNW. The second season included one of my all time favourite episodes of Star Trek (the Lower Decks crossover). I was so hyped for season three...and, like, it was bad? So bad that I was like...did I hallucinate this show ever being good?

Thus follows a brief list of my gripes about S3 of SNW:

1. It's not funny. I agree with the reviewer who said that this season desperately wants to be Lower Decks, except the writers don't have the comedy chops, so you end up with a season that is 50% "comedy" episodes, culminating in the episode Four and a Half Vulcans a thuddingly unfunny episode of television that was nonetheless teased at comic con last year, like they inexplicably thought that was them putting their best foot forward.

2. Speaking of Lower Decks, the nostalgia bait of LD worked because sometimes it was super weird, and sometimes it was a deep cut, but it always felt like it was written by people with a deep knowledge and love of Star Trek, while the callbacks in SNW all feel like they were written by people who vaguely remember having watched The Original Series as kids.

Like, at the end of the episode Terrarium, actually one of the better episodes of the season, the freakin' Metrons turn up to monologue, all like, "We have trapped a human and a Gorn together on a planet, and we will do it again!" And, like, we all remember the episode with Kirk and the Gorn. It's a very famous episode! They made fun of it in Galaxy Quest. And, like, anyone who doesn't know, doesn't know who goshdarn Metrons are either!

3. The overwhelming, bordering of offensive, heterosexuality of SNW is not new - I've said before that making a big ensemble show in the 2020s with not even a token queer character feels like a very deliberate choice has been made - but it did feel like it's stepped up a gear this season. There was a trailer for S3 that went like: "All New Worlds! All New Adventures! All New Relationships!"

And, like, Sorry? What? Pardon? Who is watching Star Trek for the romance?

This gripe has sub clauses, y'all

a) I did not especially care for the Spock/Chapel ship in the first two seasons, it felt like it took over the show slightly, and turned what was basically 'two co-workers have a weird vibe because one has a crush on the other and maybe they had an inadvisable snog at the work x-mas party' into an interminable story of star-crossed lovers. Then they dropped it like a hot potato, because it felt like the writers belatedly realised that the ship as written didn't jibe with turning SNW into the Original Series.

b) I didn't actually hate Spock/La'an; it was low key, didn't overwhelm the show the way it felt like Spock/Chapel had, made sense for both characters. It was just that it fit into a pattern this season of the writers having no interest in their female characters beyond deciding which dude's tongues they were going to shove into their mouthes.

c) I like Patton Oswald, and I'm usually happy to see him pop up, and I might have disliked this less if I felt like I had learned anything about Una this season other than she's definitely straight y'all.

d)Beto Ortegas--

Hang on, this sub clause has addendums

i. Erica Ortegas has a brother, doubling her number of known character traits to 1) flies ship, and 2) has brother.

ii. That brother is the pivotal character in an episode called What is Starfleet? which concludes that Starfleet is a bunch of people who almost do a warcrime and then decide not to at the last minute.

iii. Said brother has a stilted, awkward, and unconvincing romance with Uhura. I mean, it wasn't like they were doing anything else with the iconic character of Nyota Uhura, right?

iv. There is an episode where Erica is lost on a hostile planet and Uhura is orders of magnitude more upset than the rest of the crew which would have made a bajillion times more sense if Erica and Uhura had been the ones to have the flirtation/relationship.

I know writers who use compulsory heterosexuality, they are all cowards.

4. Captain Pike has a love interest named Captain Batel. She nearly died at the end of S2, he was very sad about that; at the end of S3 she turns into a statue, and Pike is very sad about that too. I have no idea what Marie Batel thinks about this Nu Who ass ending because the show cares about her character so little that it can't even be bothered to decide what her job is, over the course of her guest appearances she is 1) a starship captain, 2) a courtroom lawyer, 3) a starship captain again, 4) on the supreme court, I guess.

Anyway, she's a statue now.