WACKY'S REVIEW OF SEASON 3
Episodes ranked in order of goodness (can't be bothered looking up the actual titles.)
1) Kirk versus the trash-eating people - Best of the season, feels like a proper episode of tv. Weird that even though it's doing "look, it's Kirk interacting with Spock and Scotty and Uhura!" thing it didn't annoy me, possibly because it still told a story. Nice twist ending too.
2) Indiana Jones rip-off where Gamble dies and gets possessed - The stuff with M'Benga and Gamble was the strongest dramatic stuff of the season. The stuff with Spock and plas stuck in a Shrine from Breath Of The Wild was decent.
3) Ortegas makes a Gorn friend - Solid "enemies trapped on a planet" episode. Probably not better than the one with Geordi and the Romulan, has a weird ending where La'an guns down Ortegas' friend right in front of her then they don't talk about it and it doesn't come up in the finale. I liked the gorn puppet or costume or whatever.
4) Zombie episode - I guess? The top three are easy to rank, after that the episdoes all have pretty major issues, sadly. Like this one was entertaining but in the end the whole zombie thing was completely pointless. The worst part though was that it just glosses over M'Benga revealing to Pike that he commited murder last season, on the Enterprise. Should surely have been a bigger deal?
5) Season opener - It was a standard second part of a two parter. Nothing too wrong with it.
6) Trelane - Of the three outright comedy episodes this was the funniest, I thought. Not as good as comedy episodes from previous seasons though.
7) Finale - Again, not sure, but the more I think about it the worse it seems. 'Inner Light' bit did work well enough but the whole episode felt rushed and weird.
8) Documentary - DIdn't think much of it, sorry.
9) Holodeck episode - The cast get to dress up and do funny voices. Fun for them, but could have done with a better story. Basically spends 40 minutes on a murder mystery then the details don't matter because actually the episode was about La'an discovering she wants to hook up with Spock. Insubstantial.!
10) Vulcan comedy shit - It sucked.
Season one of Strange New Worlds was a breath of fresh air after Discovery and Picard. I enjoyed it a lot. It's one of the strongest, if not the strongest, first seasons of a Trek show. It was lighted in tone than what had gone before, yes, but I don't think I foudn that annoying at the time. My feeling was probably that subsequent seasons would improve in all area, that we'd get more dramatic, classic episodes and that even the comedy would become more sophisticated and refined or something! Season 2 probably was about the same quality as season one. I liked it, again. I still had good vibes after the first season, and the other disappointing Trek shows were still fresh in my mind. I was a bit disappinted that it still didn't have its 10/10 classic episode (I think the Lower Decks crossover probably came closest.) And the musical episode especially did make me a bit worried: I thought it was kind of bad and was disappointed they'd waste an episode on that. But yeah I was still positive about the show after season 2 despite some warnings...
Three seasons in though and I can't just keep saying "well, at least it's better than two shows I didn't like!" It has to just be judged as a show and I judge it as a disappointment! Not only did it not improve over the first two seasons, I think it was worse than them. 30% of the episodes were pure comedy and at least one of them was absolute shite. I used to think SNW would never drop below a 6/10 in terms of quality, just because of the basic level of competence it always maintained, but I was wrong! My worries from season 2 were proven right...but let's talk about the characters first, espeically the ones I think the show failed.
Una's only storyline all season was frothing at the gash for Patton Oswalt. That's bad. Okay, she had one episode where she clashed with Ortegas but it was resolved right away. With just ten episodes a season, I can understand why Scotty didn't get one solely focused on him and the actor did do good. But he felt more like a guest star than main cast. M'Benga's a weird one: he gets two episodes (and arguably the finale) where he's very important to the story, but at all other times he seems to faded into the background and not interact with the rest of the cast much. It's a shame because Babs Olusanmokun is very good at acting. Maybe controversial but I found Pelia a bit too...Pelia, at times. I'd have liked more moments where her age came in useful (she doesn't have to be Guinant, but she should know stuff) but it was 95% wacky one-liners about doing coke with John Belushi or whatever (not literally that.) Chapel was sadly the character most poorly served this season: rightly or wrongly people didn't like how she showed up again with Korby without warning Spock first, and after that she was paired up with Korby most of the time she was on screen. The problem being that the show didn't do much to make Korby likable and we all know he's going to turn evil eventually, so she looks dumb for being in love with him. In the first two seasons she got nice female friendship moments with the other girls and there was none of that here.
It still annoys me that EVERY Spock moment is played for comedy. Maybe an exeggartion but he certainly never got anything dramatic. Even the moment where he mind melds with Kirk - A HUGE FUCKING THING TO HAPPEN I'D SAY - is just a throwaway "look we're doing a Trek thing!" moment again. It's infuriating.
On the plus side, Uhura had a very good season, I thought. La'an seems to be a favourite of the writers and you can see why as Christina Chong is a delight. And Anson Mount remains a strong lead...when he's not playing a Vulcan anyway.
The cast are great, possibly the strongest Trek ensemble of them all, and the show looks great. So it's the writing that's the issue! I just feels a bit cowardly, at times. Like they'll go for VIBES but not actually say anything. It's all "this week we're doing a zombie/holodeck/Inner Light episode!" rather than actually trying to write a strong story. I feel like the thing with M'Benga confessing to murder in the zombie episode is still the best example of this: why not let him and Pike clash? Because it doesn't fit the sunny tone of the show, I guess. You can't have it both ways. You can't make one of the character the world's deadliest war doctor then just pretend that wouldn't be a big deal. Or look at something like the Spock/La'an relationship. I have no problem with Spock casually hooking up with another crewmember, but why not get some drama out of it? Or some character scenes? Have them discuss the differences between human and Vulcan relationships. Have Spcok talk about his mixed marriage parents to La'an. Something! It's all just completely superficial.
Maybe I'm asking too much and I should just expect this is a light-herated tribute to Star Trek most of the time. I can still enjoy that stuff. There was only one episode of the season I outright hated (but four or so others I felt were a waste) and I still like the crew. I'm still hopeful for season 4...even though it's already been film and they can't take feedback into account and it might be even more of what I don't want the show to be (the puppet episode isn't promising.) I just know I'm not going to be posting "at least it isn't DiscoPicard!" anymore.
