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At some point it might be fun to examine Star Trek’s in-universe future and its three major timelines, Classic, Prime, and Kelvin, Yes, I treat Kurtzman’s Trek as a different timeline because things don’t make sense even by Star Trek continuity standards–though still more sense than Kingdom Hearts or Doctor Who. Alex Kurtzman’s vision of Star Trek, which he stated himself is less about making Star Trek and more using Star Trek to “send a message”, has not exactly been a hit. The preview stream of the Starfleet Academy pilot on YouTube was outdone by Nerdrotic streaming a static image of a Leonard Nimoy Spock sitting on host Gary Buechler’s computer chair without anything else until he realized he was getting a bunch of Super Chats and responded to his viewers.
(I think it was more protest and a glorified chat room than actual entertainment, but it still happened. Now Buechler owns one of the shuttle chairs from the show, not the biggest trophy but he probably made more from that stream than the show did for Paramount Plus.)
Of the Paramount Plus and rebooted movie periods only the final season of Picard, in which Kurtzman was forced by scheduling to take a backseat while an actual fan of the franchise gave fans what they wanted the past two seasons, ever made a positive impact. Four live-action series, two animated series, and a TV movie originally intended to be a TV series, all otherwise hit a deflector screen with a thud that could be heard in space. Now the sets are coming down or already down, only completed filmings of Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy‘s final seasons are yet to come out, and few tears are shed outside of the creative teams, performers, and people of a certain political viewpoint who wanted to “own the chuds” with something they probably weren’t watching given viewer stats.
Book & Film Globe has a good politics-free breakdown of why the Kurtzman shows didn’t work on a technical level and never felt like Star Trek… as in Enterprise understood the assignment better and between them and Voyager that’s a low bar to duck under. Pretty sure you could win a limbo contest making it under that bar. Full disclosure if it matters to your perspective so I don’t waste your time: I can tell you that I saw the first episode of Discovery when it aired on CBS and wasn’t impressed enough to want to see more, having already passed up those other two I just mentioned and the movies, which Kurtzman was also part of when he was still with Bad Robot versus his own Secret Hideout company.
I also saw the first episode of Lower Decks and wasn’t impressed because Rick & Morty wasn’t my style (it’s where the writers came from) and the focus seems to be on the worst character because her VA is also one of the writers (who also wrote herself a bit part in Starship Academy as the new Dax host). I went through the first episode of Prodigy with lukewarm interest that I never had a chance to follow up on. That went ignored by everyone else because cartoon while the other shows had such bad scene by scene reviews that even if I had Paramount Plus or it came up on Pluto TV I really wanted nothing to do with it. I didn’t even need that to tell me Starfleet Academy was going to be bad because the promotion itself told me they didn’t have a clue about making good Trek…and it turns out they couldn’t even make good TV according to reviews. I even thought Discovery looked okay standalone but lousy as Star Trek, and it proved me wrong as the series went on.
So this is more of an outside prospective and not review on each series. You just saw how much of it I was exposed to, and even with that caveat somebody on X-Twitter or Tumblr gets mad at me for daring even mention it because of it. Maybe if I made money reviewing the slow demise of my childhood like Buechler does or could make fun of bad media like SF Debris I’d have reason to devote my limited time to something that doesn’t appeal to me that I could be spending watching good Star Trek. You know, like the original and animated series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or reading the novels and comics like I’m doing right now with The IDIC Epidemic. Instead we’re talking about where Gene Roddenberry’s creation is going to in a post Kurtzman world with the announcement of a new movie. Will it help the franchise? There are too many questions to be sure.
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Sounds like a lot of elitism going on. Hall H goes to the “right” people over the fans. Actors and directors act like they created the characters, even if they existed before the actor or director was born, producers who are openly hostile to the fans, and a Studio runner who doesn’t want to admit events forced them to change plans and they couldn’t adjust while sticking to the formula. Why should I care what the “cool kids” are making when they’re doing it out of things other people liked, as if they stole the nerdy kid’s lunch money?
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Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as a read-along book club.
In our last chapter we checked in on the plague planet for a bit of a tease to the cause. Not much to say besides it’s getting worse.
This chapter goes back to Vulcan and Sorel. When I first read this book I didn’t read The Vulcan Academy Murders yet, but it’s been so long since I’ve read this novel that I don’t know what level of interest I had in this part of the story. In the first book, Sorel was one of the murder victims, which gave us an idea about how Vulcans grieve, at least in Jean Lorrah’s rendition. The novels are not canon unless they’re worked into the show or movies, the official source material versus the usually unofficial material like the novels, comics, audio dramas, and video games. So how Vulcan telepathic linkage might not work officially as it does in this story.
These were new characters to me, because Sorel, Dr. Corrigan, and T’Mir were Lorrah’s original characters, and as far I currently know never appeared outside of these two novels, or at least ones she made. Dr. M’Benga might as well have been new as he made so little impact compared to Dr. McCoy or even Pike’s doctor in “The Cage”, Boyce, because he was part of a character moment scene for Pike as well as his later appearances in the Early Voyages comic, a better take on Pike’s time as captain of the Enterprise from what I’ve seen of Strange New Worlds. No Spock with mental issues and no Klingon boy bands. As to whether I had any interest Lorrah’s original characters alongside the main cast I couldn’t tell you. It’s been too long. We’re also introducing more new characters that may or may not be important. We’ll see as the book goes on but we should get to the chapter now.
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I can relate to Kyle here. An overdue cleaning of the bathroom knocked me out this week. Even splitting the work up between days didn’t help, as the most exhausting part was done on Friday. I was wiped on Saturday. It’s why I didn’t get a comic review done this week, just after starting the new schedule of course. It’s why there’s no Jake & Leon, and why Friday gave us the next My Transformers Universe (finished that just in time) instead of talking about the latest Star Trek news, which I won’t get to until Tuesday since I’ll be doing the Chapter By Chapter review of a different Star Trek, The IDIC Epidemic, in the usual Monday slot.
Meanwhile, The Clutter Reports finished looking at G.I. Joe Vs The Transformers by reusing my old review of the last miniseries from Devil’s Due.
So we have the Star Trek news to go over on Tuesday unless some breaking news happens. Otherwise we’ll see what’s coming up when it comes up, and hopefully I’ll have a finished comic strip for next week. I just wasn’t able to work on it. At least the bathroom’s clean. Hopefully I can make sure it never needs that much work at once again along with the other dusting I still need to do. Maybe wait a few weeks on that one so I can focus on other stuff. Have a great week, everyone!
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Sorry, folks, but cleaning my bathroom, even splitting it up over a few days, still kind of drained me. Dusting, cleaning the toilet, tub, sink, and floor (I swept that thing like three times and washed it), just kind of drained me. Getting the brain going to do the Golden Age comic review or find a Saturday Night Showcase entry just didn’t happen today. I’m still trying to get my new “work” schedule into gear, and these two series I don’t have a buffer for.
Hoping to get this week’s Jake & Leon done in time but I also have guests coming. I just can’t focus tonight. So please forgive me. I’ll try to work to keep this from happening again. I guess if you want to find something interesting you’ll have to check old Showcases and Daily Videos, or do what you usually do. I’m just not up to anything. I really need get some working out into my schedule. Have a great night. There will either be a comic or a programming note tomorrow and I did have one last buffer for The Clutter Reports. I’m getting there, folks.
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