I recall Voyager having an episode late in its run regarding universal health care. The Doctor was forced to work in a hospital where only the wealthy could get proper care and the poor were left with the scraps.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
- Thread starter SHIELD Agent 47
- Start date
Off hand the most memorable Voyager episodes for me are
Tuvix
Distant Origin
Year of Hell
Living Witness
Equinox
Blink of an Eye
Critical Care
Friendship One
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Obviouslty they aren't all social commentaries but those are the ones I remember liking a lot. Yes, even Tuvix.
Tuvix
Distant Origin
Year of Hell
Living Witness
Equinox
Blink of an Eye
Critical Care
Friendship One
Latent Image
Obviouslty they aren't all social commentaries but those are the ones I remember liking a lot. Yes, even Tuvix.
That's quintessential Trek; taking a real, modern-day problem and telling a story about it with aliens.
I stay out of Picard discussions because I didn't watch it, which only seems fair. But one of the main reasons I didn't watch it is the impression I got that they were tackling these kinds of issues on 24th century Earth.
And it was a Pike episode that would have been the stealth pilot for SNW if they'd planned it all along. And it also manages to be the one episode that contradicts the big reveal of the main plot later on. I'm glad they decided to make more stories like that, specifically a whole show about it.
If your one episode was "New Eden", I mean. Mine was.
There are certainly some cynical parties who are only interested in profiting off the optics of seeming inclusive, but I'd generally associate that with the ones who don't follow through. Like how Disney manages to get articles talking about the first queer character in the Disney lineup every other movie they do, because someone kisses someone in the background of a shot that's going to be cut for China. And the next one always still gets to be the first time again, precisely because all of the other ones so far were exactly nothing.
Thing is, movies still have China and TV shows still have Trump moms. Companies want to seem progressive, but they still don't want to poke the wrong bear and end up with people burning their Nikes. So for shows like the recent She-Ra cartoon to exist, it was actually a constant struggle between the creator and higher-ups just how much they were going to be allowed to include. In that kind of situation, it's in everyone's best interest to market the hug out of how progressive they're being. The company, again, wants to look progressive. If they're worried they're too woke for a boomeral audience, they're going to double down on trying to draw in as many progressive viewers as possible with the idea of inclusion, while keeping the actual content as generally milktoast as possible. The creators we're worried about tend to be more progressive than the networks or studios, so if they want more inclusive stories and characters in their story, the best bet is to motivate the audience to show support for it. That's why that Buzz Lightyear leak happened, because one of the creatives knew that audience backlash about the company cutting an explicitly gay scene would be enough to make them regret or reverse it.
When it's something like Disco having the first literal and explicit trans characters in Star Trek ... yeah, you're going to have to market that jive. Because the company knows it's taking a hit from one audience in hopes of picking up another one, and it's going to want to see its RoI. (And of course, Blue Hair and Pronouns have been handled poorly in some aspects, but surprisingly not to do with their literal transness. Adira's pronouns scene and Gray's mole scene were just about the only places it's come up in the script, and both were pitch perfect. They crashed and burned on Gray's also-metaphorical trans thread and a part of me will never stop cringing about "truly seen", but I chalk that up to Discovery's general badness intersecting with its general diversity mandate, not the diversity itself enabling badness.)
I mean who didn't watch Tuvix and go "wtf". I'm still traumatized by it. It was brutal. And I still love it.
Voyager had wonderful stand alone episodes (by design) and definitely swung for the fences. Even bad Voyager episodes were at least wild and sometimes crazy. Voyager just failed its original premise, but its got some really great to wonderful stuff mixed in there.
Realted, I would have loved to have seen what
Discovery and even Picard could have looked like if they had approached Star Trek like SNW has. You don't even have to change the overall plots (okay, maybe with Picard you could...) just write them like what we are getting with SNW.
Its just, SNW has already given us so much content in four episodes. Imagine if Detmer or Owosekun, got a similar treatment to what Uhura is getting. I guess there's always season 5.
Discovery and even Picard could have looked like if they had approached Star Trek like SNW has. You don't even have to change the overall plots (okay, maybe with Picard you could...) just write them like what we are getting with SNW.
Its just, SNW has already given us so much content in four episodes. Imagine if Detmer or Owosekun, got a similar treatment to what Uhura is getting. I guess there's always season 5.
That was totally the first two episodes of Discovery S2 (Brother/New Eden). Nearly standalone adventures with energy, and character moments, and actual fun and adventure. Perfect? No, but there was so much potential.
Then the rest of S2 happened.
(Totally tangential, but does the start of SNW ep 1 overwrite the final scene on the Enterprise in Discovery S2?)
Detmer and Owo aren't really comparable to Uhura though. Uhura's Tilly. If you're going to compare them to anyone on SNW so far, it'd maybe be Sam Kirk
Fair to Uhura being more in the Tilly role, but you could easily compare either one of them, especially Detmer, to the other pilot, Ortegas, who I feel has already gotten more attention and chances to show who she is and what she can do than Detmer, who has only really started to get to those chances in the most recent seasons.
Yes! More of that. She was easily that episodes strongest parts. I do feel Discovery tried to do these things the most last season. Really, the premiere of Disco season 4 was very much a show I wanted to watch, until the episode came to a close.
Man, I loved this new one. Just wall-to-wall Vulcan 'dad jokes'.
Loved the diplomacy stuff, loved Enterprise bingo, loved the DS9 and Enterprise references, loved Pike's "Kirk Season 2" uniform. Even La'an, who's been one of my less favorite characters, did it for me here. Thanks in no small part to her great chemistry with Number One.
Still don't love Nurse Cliche, I mean Chapel, but that's fine.
Loved the diplomacy stuff, loved Enterprise bingo, loved the DS9 and Enterprise references, loved Pike's "Kirk Season 2" uniform. Even La'an, who's been one of my less favorite characters, did it for me here. Thanks in no small part to her great chemistry with Number One.
Still don't love Nurse Cliche, I mean Chapel, but that's fine.
Nurse Chapel is such an odd case. Her character in TOS was pretty nothing. Notable for swooning over Spock (who is basically the character Majel Barrett was going to be before Number One was merged into Spock) and being occasionally ogled by various male characters, but I don't remember her having much prominence in the series.
This new rendition is definitely an improvement, in that she actually exists as a person and has a defined personality, but she does seem ever so slightly just on the edge of being a little too nonsense for the tone of the show.
I do kind of love her, though. She is to medicine as Scott was to engineering XD
This new rendition is definitely an improvement, in that she actually exists as a person and has a defined personality, but she does seem ever so slightly just on the edge of being a little too nonsense for the tone of the show.
I do kind of love her, though. She is to medicine as Scott was to engineering XD
I'm torn. As you say, TOS Chapel had rather little to her, so I'm pleased to be given more to work with. On the other hand, it's been difficult for me to reconcile this Chapel with that one. I kind of have to treat her as a different person entirely.
Old Chapel was kind of the archetype of the "tragically resigned, sadly destined to be a spinster woman" from an old Western, because she's fallen in love with "someone who can't love her back." And that's all she was.
That's something they would do in a show from the 60s that absolutely and rightly wouldn't fly today. The new Chapel is quirky and fun.
-ZacWilliam, as a kid I liked the old version because she loved Spock and that was great, but you can see why this one would be interested in Spock without her being a sad stereotype and she's got potential for more fun interactions with him.
That's something they would do in a show from the 60s that absolutely and rightly wouldn't fly today. The new Chapel is quirky and fun.
-ZacWilliam, as a kid I liked the old version because she loved Spock and that was great, but you can see why this one would be interested in Spock without her being a sad stereotype and she's got potential for more fun interactions with him.
Hijinx are always appreciated!
Also, Pike's hair was having one of "those days" again...
Also, Pike's hair was having one of "those days" again...
Yeah, I'm all about this Chapel. As long as these characters are consistent in this series, that's all I care about. Again, that kind of continuity rework just (surprisingly) doesn't bother me anymore.
Again, I think Disco and Picard left their mark here. If they want me to pretend Spock has a sister and Klingons always looked like that, I can reimagine Chapel as having this wonderful personality.
I haven't watched this weeks ep yet, but I love looking forward to Star Trek again.
Again, I think Disco and Picard left their mark here. If they want me to pretend Spock has a sister and Klingons always looked like that, I can reimagine Chapel as having this wonderful personality.
I haven't watched this weeks ep yet, but I love looking forward to Star Trek again.
Yeah, this is very much a different timeline, even if they want to pretend otherwise, so the direct correlation with previous iterations of the characters aren't as big a deal.
My only 'problem' with Chapel is that she sometimes mildly clashes with the tone of the show, in my opinion anyway. She's great fun otherwise.
My only 'problem' with Chapel is that she sometimes mildly clashes with the tone of the show, in my opinion anyway. She's great fun otherwise.
Yeah, I like her, but she is another girl with the same name. She'll probably die on an away mission.
There are things you just have to expect from a prequel, especially a prequel to something made so long ago. I don't blame a modern-day female character for not being written like she's going to naturally turn into a dowager from a 1960s show. Nor do I find fault with Uhura being so incredibly impressive right from the start as a cadet, given that she will eventually be relegated to answering Captain Kirk's phone calls.
My only thing is that, while I really enjoy up-and-coming Cadet Uhura, Chapel feels like she should be the best friend of a slightly neurotic main character on a slice-of-life show set in the present day.
My only thing is that, while I really enjoy up-and-coming Cadet Uhura, Chapel feels like she should be the best friend of a slightly neurotic main character on a slice-of-life show set in the present day.