Strange new worlds is finally out

Star Trek Adventures
21

Unfortunately so far I am not impressed. The new additional characters are tropey or even worse something that your first year English teacher will tell you not to write. We have the quirky hotshot template trope character, old McGrizzled engineer, and to top it off the female character who is defined by background trauma that laces every scene she is in with emotional pathos to the point you wonder how she ever past the psychological test in the academy and but did not receive a real independent personality. Even worse they double stacked the angst on that character with being cursed with a tarnished namesake. I don’t like how they made Chapel stand out by simply making her odd. Not defined, not interesting, just odd.

Now I give Kudos to Jess Bush pressing her charisma to the max doing a lot with what little they give her and I hope that they develop her Chapel character better.

Anson Mount is giving a wonderful performance and carries the show.

Ethen Peck I think is doing the best he can do with what the writers are giving him but as the third rendition of Spock he can’t help but be compared to the excellent performances that were before him.

Unfortunately the stories so far are old scripts from older Star Trek and other Sci Fi shows thrown in a blender and then poured out onto the screen. And for us that know anything about physics some episodes, especially the fourth one, will snap you out of Sci Fi and directly in to magical high fantasy. Sprinkling every cheesy drama trope is not helping the scripts either.

While visually looking good, I still don’t like the grimdark lighting and accents on most of the visuals that marks the live action Kurtzman Trek. The contrast really stands out when you compare how beautiful all the backgrounds, scenes and ships look in Lower Decks compared to the scenery and ships in Strange New Worlds. I would like my Star Trek to look like Star Trek not like an alternate timeline that spun off into the universe of Warhammer 40K with a little bit of chrome trimming and neon lights.

That being said, you can tell a lot of the actors are giving it their all, and it shows in their performances, but I can’t help feeling that bad writing is impairing them and this show from being a good Star Trek series. But as another user stated earlier in the thread, TNG took some time to find it’s footing. It too retread ground that TOS had traveled and I don’t hate Strange New Worlds. I didn’t like Lower Decks out of the gate but I think season two of lower decks is some seriously awesome Star Trek even with all the silliness that goes into it being a comedy. I hope Strange New Worlds does the same thing. All the ingredients are there, if the writers could just step it up a notch or two they could have something good, and maybe even awesome.

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22

If it weren’t tropey as hell, it wouldn’t be Star Trek.
ALL star trek shows have the wunderkind (Checkov, Arek, David, Wesley, Kes, Rom, Nog, Sato, Tilly, Rutherford, whole cast of Prodigy, and anyone played by Isa Briones.)

Most have a cranky engineer, not always as the chief, who works miracles… Scotty, Argyle, O’Brien, B’Ehlanna, Trip, Rios… Even prodigy with the both a medusan and a Tellarite.

The Alien outsider Science Officer trope… Spock, Data, Both Dax hosts, Dr. Phlox, Saru, 7 of 9, Tandee.

Star Trek operates on strong tropes - both embracing and subverting them.

Even TOS has the PTSD character… guest stars… LtCdr Finney coming to mind. Original Chapel probably qualifies by end of initial run. Spock definitely does, based upon later behaviors. Just about all of the Discovery crew. B’ehlanna, Paris, Neelix, and Seven. After his time on Vulcan, Archer probably counts. We know that the effects of Spock’s Khatra are profound even after being decanted back into regenerated Spock, so Archer probably does. Spock also has his own tells in later appearances. Picard and Dr. Crusher both have trauma in their backgrounds. Riker’s got a hostile and overbearing parent. Yar’s a survivor of a failed society. Troi has a parent so overbearing as to be a wandering monster encounter level badness. And Wesley nearly kills his mom by accident with a warp bubble. Reed (Ent) has a bit of family drama, too.

Fundamentally, it’s not bad because of tropes. It would be bad if it weren’t applying them to moving stories and making stories moving.

The Can I Help? gag in Ep 1 pays off… it’s also a standard trope gag… and we see it paid off. Brilliant subversion of the cranky engineer. He’s more than a gifted engineer - he’s also a competent leader and teacher. Subverting the trope.

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24

I’m not going to even say what I agree or disagree with in your comments here. I just want to give you props for clearly stating that your opinions are opinions and not objective facts. I see far too little of this on the internet, and I believe the lack of it is an significant contributor to unnecessary miscommunications and conflicts.

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I liked the EV suits as well. Something about them evokes the suits from “The Tholian Web” for me, but without the '60s tinfoil look and the visual field-reducing helmets. I think it’s that colored front plate that does the job.

27

Production Briefing:
A: - Writers want to put some alien Gorns in the story. They want them to be scary and powerful
B:- we can use old costumes, this will reduce the costs
A: - You know nothing about fans B. you’re fired
C: We can use Digital SFX, in Gorn’s episodes. In all episodes, it will be even better than the dragons of GOT.
A: The budget will explode. Even in GOT they had to choose between Wolves and Dragons. You’re useless, you’re fired. I will give you a letter of recommendation to the MCU team.
D: (a young guy or girl) When I was a kid my dad took me at a theater to see JAWS on a big screen, he explained to me that they had problems with the mechanical shark. They use music instead. we even don’t see the shark. Only the music and it was scary as hell. Maybe if we don’t see them but just hear them they can be really scary. And it’s budget friendly
A: D you’re in charge.
Some lessons were learned well.

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Yes, that’s a sucking chest wound of a business decision.

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It’s still not as bad as pulling Discovery Season 3 from Netflix only 4 days before it was due to launch over here. :rage:

I think there is a way to get it, but you have to jump through hoops to get it that I haven’t bothered with. :disappointed:

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I think hearing but not seeing the Gorn was a good decision so yeah, person D in your example was really really smart.

Honestly, I love everything about Strange New Worlds. It feels Star Trek. I love the characters, Captain Pike is awesome. I like the stories we have seen. So much potential. Makes me want to get back into the universe again. It also makes me want to play Star Trek Adventurers.

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SNW is really the best Trek series since the end of DS9, and that’s the reason I find this SNW bashing unfair. To be fair all this bashing of most of the new Trek series is unfair.

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I don’t like it when people’s opinions are called “bashing” just because they are not identical to your own. Is that really necessary? Why can’t we just accept that some people don’t like a particular Star Trek show without trying to invalidate their opinion?

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Sorry, but some comments here are pure bashing.

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Two thoughts:

First, having an opinion and seeking out a public forum to air your opinion are two different acts. Truthfully, I don’t like Abrams-trek. Until now, where I’m bringing this up for explanatory reasons, I’ve never felt the need to talk about my dislike of Abrams trek. The act of showing up to hate on something is a choice that is different than not particularly liking a flavour of Trek.

Second, not all opinions are created equal. Some opinions come from a place of bigotry. There are, for example, legitimate reasons to dislike Discovery (I have mixed feelings, myself). But there are a lot of opinions that seem to boil down to “I can’t stand that Discovery is too q u e e r, too black, and puts too many women in leading roles.” Is it a coincidence that an earlier post in this thread singles out the straight white guys for praise but calls everyone else a trope? I can’t know 100%, but in poker there’s often a statistically correct way to bet.

Edit: Huh. Apparently some this forum software wants to block the word q u e e r.

BC

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35

Some people feel the need to express their opinions publicly. And by using your logic, if you should not publicly show your “hate” for something, you should not publicly show your “love” as well. That seems quite boring.

Also you didn’t have to share your opinion on my opinion. But I’m glad you did. It gave me a reason to reflect on what I wrote and it made be appreciate other people whose opinions differ from mine.

True enough, I won’t deny that there are these toxic fans out there. But it’s dangerous to assume that it comes from a place of bigotry if people only like the two straight white guys. Actually, assuming this could also come from a place of bigotry. There may be many reasons why people like particular characters. Pike and Spock where featured prominently in Discovery and have naturally experienced more character development than any other SNW characters.

Anyway, sorry for derailing this thread. To get back to topic: I don’t love SNW (yet). I like the characters and the Enterprise exterior. The stories are theoretically good, but somehow they are not really thought-out till the end. But then again, I have 7 seasons on TNG, DS9 and Voyager to look back to, and neither of them where really great after 4 episodes. SNW definitely has potential if they polish it a bit.

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No, I think you’re mistaking my position (but, to be fair, I was probably unclear). I think if one says, “You’re just bashing this,” that’s a statement of “I think your choice to come here and criticize this thing is coming from an ill-intentioned place.” That’s not a response to “opinions”; that’s a response to the choice to make a big deal of publicly criticizing.

I’m not saying that people should never express dislike; I think a lot of fruitful stuff can come out of exploring different analyses of works like Trek. But, to quote Lorca, “Context is for Kings.” If you’re ignoring the very clear truth that so much criticism of modern Trek is coming from a place of bigotry… well, that’s a choice you get to make, but not a choice that I’ll pretend to respect.

Well, I have a different opinion on this than you: I think it’s dangerous to ignore red flags when people start dropping them.

I disagree but, please, show your work.

BC

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38

I think what people need to do is separate the objective criticism from the personnel enjoyment. For me the unpopular Trek Series I love is Enterprise. Now I have had people explain to me the objective both technical and writing weaknesses of the show. And I agree the show has those weaknesses but it does not reduce my enjoyment of the series. I am very fond of Scott Bakula and enjoyed his performance as Captain Archer, I think Enterprise as some of the best episodes in all of the Star Trek Series. However objective criticism is still valid and if someone lets objective criticism effect their enjoyment of something the one has to ask, what did you enjoy on that first viewing.

For example I have never seen Avatar again since it played in theaters, and that is because I, personally, found the story very weak to the point of near pain. But the visual experience in 3D Imax was an experience that I enjoyed a lot and was worth my money, as well as the joy seeing it with my friends. But I know that if I see Avatar again it won’t have that same experience so I haven’t watched it again. There are several movies that I tell people that they should see, but they are also movies that I would never own, because you can only watch them once because whatever impact they have is lost in a second viewing.

Personally, I think the writers for Strange New Worlds should creep into some online games of STA and see how STA Players deal with things, because my players had not seen episode 4 and I just gave them just the setup in the opening scene and in seconds they would have derailed the entire episode because their opening reactions just won’t have allowed the events to unfold like they did in the episode. Which makes me proud because for most of them before playing in my campaign the only other Star Trek content they had seen was the Abrams movies and would have had zero ideas on what to do in that opening situation.

And I am so excited for Season three of Lower Decks. :smiley:

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Personally I didn’t start the thread to ask people what they hated about the series or how its not hitting for them right now, i posted it because I wanted a fun place for people to talk about the positives of the new series, and how it opens up the setting for STA adventures with new interpretations of tech and new characterizations.

I get that people have opinions, and many of them might be interesting to talk about. But I have a feeling many folks feel the same way I do when confronted by a lot of the criticism that Trek gets these days. We are super tired of long negative diatribes about every single new iteration of everything. it’d sure be nice if people were allowed to discuss things they think are neat without people deciding to come in and fill that space with half page posts about how a new show or thing is awful actually.

the fact Modiphius had to tell people not to jump in the Disco book unboxing and post about how much they hate the show kind of speaks to that.

Not trying to ■■■■ anyone off here, but I did want to emphasize that I personally am not interested in reading a lot of posts in my thread about how much a thing I like sucks.

11 Likes
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Something super fun from this weeks episode is the concept of Enterprise Bingo… which could work well in any lower decks style campaign or adventure. Enterprise Bingo is a fun way for Jr. officers to relive boredom and build rapport with other crew.

Listed below…

Use the transporter to reflavor gum

Phaser stun duel

Turbolift two floor shout challenge

Set the universal translator to Andorian

Gravity boot hang challenge

Medical tricorder challenge Vulcan marupial

Food replicator challenge Durial fruit

Sneak a tribble into the transporter buffer

Sit in the captain’s chair

EV suit challenge: unsanctioned spacewalk

Sign the scorch

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41

Other neat game ideas, the R’ongovians, the idea of a culture who embraces radical empathy and opposite position taking before doing stuff is interesting, especially when they end up mimicking their diplomatic counterparts… which we can extrapolate as an interesting cultural trait,… something like cultural mimicry would be super useful in the federation and would make R’ongovians great managers, therapists, and diplomats.

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This could also cause issues with cultures that don’t want to be mimicked and view it as insulting or weakness. That could cause an interesting situation. Most certainly a fun idea.

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43

This episode wasn’t like the best to me but I still very much enjoyed it.

I super liked the fact that after the ■■■■ events of last episode they went back to dock for repairs. This bit of continunity - which could have been a line said by the captain - is super enjoyable to me.

I thought the R’ongovians were a very interesting race and I think as a future Federation member there is much potential in them. So that element was super fun.

The Enterprise Bingo element was hilarious and cool and a very nifty thing. I also like how it brings to the forefront something mentioned but not detailed in previous episodes. So that was cool.

The Scorch is an awesome, AWESOME, idea. Its very awwww too. A bit of the hull kept untouched so that the history of the ship remains intact. So cool.

Great episode. The characters were great.

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