Star Trek Recap
I have been working on getting through every Star Trek series and movie. It has been a long road, but I am at the end. By the time this is posted, I will be close to finishing the final season of "Star Trek: Discovery," which is still airing. In essence, I have finally caught up.
Star Trek: Enterprise
This is my least favorite "Trek." It was the hardest to get through, and I got the least out of it. This series takes place before the United Federation of Planets, but there was a Star Fleet. This is the first Enterprise that ever flew through the stars, and a lot of the show is "here is how this thing came to be." Stupid stuff, too, like the term "red alert" when the ship is under attack.
There were a few interesting characters, but Commander Tucker (Conor Trinneer) was the only one I really cared about. Earth is attacked at one point in the series, and his sister is killed. He loses his way to grief, and his journey back is the show's best storyline.
Star Trek/Star Trek Into Darkness/Star Trek Beyond
I have much to discuss, so I will combine the recent movies. I like the movies, even if the two sequels never live up to the first one. The first one does a great job of introducing different versions of Kurk, Spock, and the rest of the crew; this is set in a timeline different from the shows. My biggest gripe with "Into Darkness" is that the big reveal was obvious. "Beyond" was a ton of fun, but the story was never as interesting as the first one. There has been talk of a fourth or even a new movie series for many years. I'd like to see what they do with the franchise next.
Star Trek: Discovery (Seasons 1-4)
The initial idea behind "Discovery" was an anthology show. It would start in the same period as the original series and would move ahead in time with each season. What it became was one of the best "Trek" series. It was hard for me to get into the show. Michael Burnham, played by Sonequa Martin-Green, is a tough character to get behind. She is abrasive and humorless, but over that first season, she becomes a more likable character in her interactions with the other crew members on Discovery.
After season two (which heavily features characters from "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds"), the show makes a massive time jump into the future where Star Fleet is fractured after a cataclysmic event. This was where the show was at its best. It no longer had to deal with the technology limitations of what the original series had (no holodeck, for instance) and could become its own thing. I am very much looking forward to finishing the series.
Star Trek: Lower Decks (Seasons 1-4)
"Star Trek," but a 30-minute cartoon! I was not that impressed with the first season of this show. When I got to season two, I loved it. The show is hilarious and balances reverence for the series with a skewering of its many tropes. The show follows a ship called the USS Cerritos, a ship not at the forefront of space exploration; the show's first episode is called Second Contact because this ship and her crew are not tasked with making first contact with alien species. The main focus is the lower-deck crew, the crew members tasked with the menial work and don't go on away missions. The show is a ton of fun, and in the four seasons (a final season is set to air later this year), it has become a love letter to everything "Star Trek" stands for: exploration and making a family on the ship.
Star Trek: Picard (Seasons 1-3)
I wish this series was better. It is basically Picard, Seven of Nine (from my favorite series, "Voyager,"), and a bunch of random people going on an adventure. Season three might be the strongest season, but it leans hard into nostalgia (and not just because the entire cast of "The Next Generation" is in it) for me to call it a good season. It was watchable, and I didn't dread getting through its ten episodes.
The second season was borderline unwatchable for me. It involved two of my least favorite villains from "The Next Generation:" Q and The Borg. Whenever Q showed up, it would either be a fun or incredibly annoying episode (mostly irritating, in my opinion), and I found most Borg stories boring. Those stories always unfolded the same way: The crew would be in dire straights, and all hope seemed lost until some magic moment when they figured something out and beat the Borg.
Overall, the show was a good send-off for the Next Gen crew.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Season 1-2)
My biggest complaint about some of the other series is that they are focused on the past, but this show handles that really well. This follows Captain Pike (Anson Mount), who captained the Enterprise before Kirk (he's actually the captain in the "Star Trek" pilot). The show never feels limited by being set in "Trek's" past.
A lot of that has to do with how much fun the show is. Where a lot of the new shows tend to feel a bit darker and deal with heavier issues, "Strange New Worlds" feels like the original series in that it sticks to Enterprise, goes to a planet, and solves problem-type storytelling. There are elements of serialized storytelling, but overall, the show is episodic. Season three has been announced, and I look forward to watching it this week-to-week when it comes out.
