Taking a look at Star Trek: Strange New Worlds series

I am a Trek fan, but I couldn’t help myself laughing at this sketch.

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I love this.

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Alistair Beckett-King has become quite the YouTube star, hasn’t he? I know him from his podcast as a comedian with an obsession with folklore but it’s good to see he’s doing well.

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Someone didn’t watch DS9.

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Personally, I prefer my Trek a little less grimdark, which seems to be the current path for the main Trekverse. Feel free to make pointed commentary on the human condition, but give us a way out/forward pls. ST:LD is more of an Orville take on the Trekverse, but I could use some levity lately.

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And I’ll point out that even though DS9 and the more modern trek dealt (deals with?) darker themes and the very real problems of a hegemonic culture like the Federation, it also fully embraces the ideals laid down in the original ST. I’d argue that by highlighting the ideals against the reality, it showed that progress is not some simple thing you can take for granted, but rather it’s uneven and can slip backwards when people who claim to profess those ideals don’t live up to them.

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DS9 was darker, sure, but it didnt lose the thread of Starlet being a quasi-military organization or the Federation being a civil union of vastly different cultures that shared the same ideals. New Trek (Picard) jettisoned even Roddenberry’s essential root of Earth evolving into an egalitarian society, because, you know, drama. Picard isn’t even a diplomat anymore. He’s just a doddering android spouting Hallmark platitudes under the delusion that Data was his best friend.

Picard finding a way to bring the android society that was thought to only be a threat and was being exterminated into a union with the Federation was just an update of the Horta story.

That the future has old people and they’re valued should be seen as some of that hopeful future and egalitarianism. Unless ageism is what you’re seeking in that future.

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This is not taking into the fact the amount of trauma that the Federation and Earth has taken over the last 30 years. The Borg, The Dominion War, even something as small scale as the Maquis effected it (showing cracks in the system as it were). Then the Romulan exodus. This is where what @anon61221983 said earlier of “can slip backwards” occurred. Earth of the late 2300s is struggling and Picard puts that on display.

EDIT: a tweet I saw the other day sums up Star Trek pretty well for me: “Star Trek has always been a mirror. How you react to that reflection that is the important part”

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Fair point there, but as I was reading what you wrote I thought that it’s ok to make a distinction between making silly stuff up (psychic aliens, magic crystals…) and just plain dropping a clanger in terms of existing knowledge.

For instance there’s the TNG episode where the Enterprise is in dry dock and they’re doing a sweep to remove all baryon particles from the ship. Baryons are a class of particles which includes both protons and neutrons, so I’m not sure what would be left of the Enterprise once they’d all been removed.

The Galactic Barrier was silly too - galaxies stay together because of gravity, not because they have a crunchy shell. Discovery is still fun though

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Perhaps in the 24th century science has evolved an expanded its view to what a baryon particle actually is? ::

Blame TOS for that one as it’s been in the canon since the beginning. Don’t forget not only does the milky way have a galactic barrier, it’s also got a barrier at the center where godly prisoners are sent to be stuck on barren planets.

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