andi

@mcc

glitch girl

she/her
dryad.technology/

Avatar by @girlfiend

Also on Bluesky
Also on Mastodon.

andi @mcc7/12/2022, 10:36 PM

My opinions about "Star Something" streaming shows

Note: All of these shows are by gross, NFT-selling megacorporations that don't deserve your money or support. But, given that…

Star Trek: Discovery (2017-present)
Season 1: Good
Season 2: Very very good
Season 3: Absolutely incredible
Season 4: Miserable, no redeeming qualities at all

Star Trek: Short Treks (2018-present)
Season 1 (shorts 1-4): Very very good (especially Osunsanmi's short)
Season 2 (shorts 5-10): Mediocre

Star Wars: The Mandalorian (2019-?)
Season 1: Absolutely incredible
Season 2: Pretty good

Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020-present)
Season 1: Absolutely incredible
Season 2: Very very good

Star Trek: Picard (2020-present)
Season 1 and 2: Ugh. Both seasons are the same. They start out with an interesting premise, effective suspense and an engaging mystery; then about four to six episodes in they first lose steam, then go off the rails and just lose completely whatever magic property makes storytelling work. Overall I regret watching season 1 and I don't think I regret watching season 2, so I guess I'd say season 2 is better, but I don't feel good when I think about either.

Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett (2021-?)
Season 1: Deeply boring. Episode 5 only is watchable; the rest has occasional snatches of good material especially in the last episode, but it really does not justify the time investment.

Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022-?)
Season 1: I think this show made me not like Star Wars anymore. I didn't even make it halfway through the first episode. Nothing is happening and the things that are happening are not happening for any reason. Visually I admit it's stunning but I just can't see any justification for this to exist.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022-?)
Season 1: Very very good. Though I do wish they had sunk a bit more budget into the (otherwise great) last episode (Compare DS9 "Trials and Tribble-ations", where they put incredible work into making the time-travel bits look like TOS. I'm not saying they should have done that exactly, but I think either they should have tweaked things to make the SNW world converge on the TOS world or otherwise given us a sense of seven years passing in an eyeblink. Nobody looks older! Uhura hasn't even changed her haircut! There's just a whiffed chance for some kind of visual inventiveness there).

#star trek #STAR WARS #Media monopolies #AndiBlogsMini

You must log in to comment.

in reply to @mcc's post:

@margot7/12/2022, 10:38 PM

totally agree re:uhura, her appearance in that episode was one of the most jarring moments in the series for me

andi @mcc7/12/2022, 10:47 PM

Like, they really belabor over the course of the season that Uhura's arc is that this uncertain kid is going to grow into the confident, actualized person we saw in the original shows and movies. So like, when we timeskip, I want to like… see that! This is Uhura at the end of that process. The actress sold it but I wish they'd done anything visual at all to make it concrete and giving her an Uhura wig would have been a fun way to do that. They got this same thing right with La'an.

Also I wasn't impressed with the new Kirk, but whatever. Maybe they'll get a chance to sell us on him next season.

@margot7/12/2022, 10:50 PM

same feeling with kirk to an extent, altho i'm fine with it just because i prefer them dwelling on TOS stuff as little as possible-- i don't mind using it to mine story ideas from but its way less interesting to me than when they get into newer stuff (at least from what i can tell as someone who hasn't watched much TOS stuff)

andi @mcc7/12/2022, 11:00 PM

We did pull up the original TOS episode on Netflix after watching the SNW version and from a writing perspective it is pretty great how the two versions of the story mesh together. Like, the "maybe in another reality, we could have been friends" line is actually in both episodes. Poor dude is fucked in every reality and doesn't even know it

Sherliz Holmes @JhoiraArtificer7/13/2022, 1:12 AM

I don't blame you for missing it (and they maybe should have given her a wig) but they did put her in her iconic TOS green earrings and evolved her skant into something very clearly echoing her unique TOS one. Other than that, very agreed on the Kirk front. Just... No thanks

Shel @shel7/12/2022, 11:35 PM

I mostly agree with you on all of this except that I really liked Picard S1 the whole way through and was unable to finish Picard S2 because it was one of the worst pieces of television I've ever experienced

andi @mcc7/13/2022, 12:03 AM

Picard S1 definitely started strong. I'm not sure I can really say now exactly how it lost me. I think I wish either it had been shorter or much longer.

I am absolutely not going to defend Picard S2.

Con @conor7/13/2022, 6:38 PM

This is pretty close to how I feel about the current crop of Star Trek shows, except I’d maybe rate Disco S3 a little lower and S4 a little higher. S4 is mostly just lacking in ambition; say what you want about Disco, but they usually take pretty big narrative swings, even if they often don’t pan out. S4 lost this spirit I feel, and ended up uncharacteristically tame and routine.

Pinned Tags