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4thofelevenIn which the Cage finally gets picked up for a full series.
So I've seen almost unanimously positive reviews, and a lot of people are really happy with this show, in contrast to the fairly divided reception that Discovery and Picard got. And I'm glad people are enjoying it... but I have to say, my reaction was a bit more mixed.
Don't get me wrong, I like the cast, I like the look of the series, I love the new title sequence – but none of that counts for much compared to a remarkably weak story. It's an old-school Star Trek morality play, but everything was so vaguely sketched out that it felt patronising rather than interesting – not helped by the fact that I found myself questioning whether I actually agreed with the message being presented.
Part of the problem is that this story wears its influence on its sleeve – it's very much inspired by The Day the Earth Stood Still. And that's a film I have to say I've never been much of a fan of. When you get down to it, Stood Still is a fundamentally authoritarian story; it presents the only option for survival to be submission to Gort's people, and that humans cannot be trusted to govern themselves. Peace is more important than freedom or autonomy.
Now, this story isn't quite that bad – Pike, at least, has a responsibility to intervene in the Kiley situation once it becomes clear that Starfleet has inadvertently disrupted their society. But it's still a story where a superior society lectures a less advanced society about their foolish violence while failing to bother to learn anything about their actual civilisation or conflict. The Kiley get no chance to speak for themselves or justify themselves; none of the Kiley even get names! We don't know what they're fighting over, how close they actually are to open conflict, or what intractable differences have forced them to this point.
And for all that it was a bold choice to use actual footage of the January 6 Capitol Attack as part of Pike's presentation on the events leading to World War III, the actual presentation of those events is the most mealy-mouthed centrist interpretation of history. 'Competing ideas of liberty' is an elegant way of avoiding taking a side, of sidestepping having an opinion. Is fascism worse or better than liberalism? Does it matter who's fighting and why? Should we, perhaps, actually learn what is going on before offering platitudes about the need to negotiate and find common ground? Who knows, the important thing is that we maintain decorum and avoid any difficult questions.
(It also felt very strange to be emphasising Star Trek's post-apocalyptic elements so heavily, coming right off the Picard finale, which treated the 2020s as a dark time but still a hopeful one. Did Guinan and Rios stick around long enough to see a third of humanity wiped out and the ecosystem devastated?)
Fundamentally, though, it's not just that I politically disagree with the message, it's that it's a failure of storytelling if a situation can be resolved so simply. When the dilemma is simply “Should we blow up our own planet or not?”, you're going to struggle to tell an engaging story. There needs to be complexity, there needs to be more to it than just our heroes lecturing the foolish aliens about the blatantly obvious.
In many ways, this reminds me of what I consider modern Trek's weakest episode, “The Sound of Thunder”, where again Pike and the crew blundered into a potentially complex situation and then just ignore that nuance to tell an immensely one-dimensional story.
Now, I've still got high hopes for this series – God knows, Star Trek's barely fifty-fifty when it comes to decent first episodes. But the quality of the storytelling is going to have to radically improve if it's going to keep me engaged the way other series have.
So I've seen almost unanimously positive reviews, and a lot of people are really happy with this show, in contrast to the fairly divided reception that Discovery and Picard got. And I'm glad people are enjoying it... but I have to say, my reaction was a bit more mixed.
Don't get me wrong, I like the cast, I like the look of the series, I love the new title sequence – but none of that counts for much compared to a remarkably weak story. It's an old-school Star Trek morality play, but everything was so vaguely sketched out that it felt patronising rather than interesting – not helped by the fact that I found myself questioning whether I actually agreed with the message being presented.
Part of the problem is that this story wears its influence on its sleeve – it's very much inspired by The Day the Earth Stood Still. And that's a film I have to say I've never been much of a fan of. When you get down to it, Stood Still is a fundamentally authoritarian story; it presents the only option for survival to be submission to Gort's people, and that humans cannot be trusted to govern themselves. Peace is more important than freedom or autonomy.
Now, this story isn't quite that bad – Pike, at least, has a responsibility to intervene in the Kiley situation once it becomes clear that Starfleet has inadvertently disrupted their society. But it's still a story where a superior society lectures a less advanced society about their foolish violence while failing to bother to learn anything about their actual civilisation or conflict. The Kiley get no chance to speak for themselves or justify themselves; none of the Kiley even get names! We don't know what they're fighting over, how close they actually are to open conflict, or what intractable differences have forced them to this point.
And for all that it was a bold choice to use actual footage of the January 6 Capitol Attack as part of Pike's presentation on the events leading to World War III, the actual presentation of those events is the most mealy-mouthed centrist interpretation of history. 'Competing ideas of liberty' is an elegant way of avoiding taking a side, of sidestepping having an opinion. Is fascism worse or better than liberalism? Does it matter who's fighting and why? Should we, perhaps, actually learn what is going on before offering platitudes about the need to negotiate and find common ground? Who knows, the important thing is that we maintain decorum and avoid any difficult questions.
(It also felt very strange to be emphasising Star Trek's post-apocalyptic elements so heavily, coming right off the Picard finale, which treated the 2020s as a dark time but still a hopeful one. Did Guinan and Rios stick around long enough to see a third of humanity wiped out and the ecosystem devastated?)
Fundamentally, though, it's not just that I politically disagree with the message, it's that it's a failure of storytelling if a situation can be resolved so simply. When the dilemma is simply “Should we blow up our own planet or not?”, you're going to struggle to tell an engaging story. There needs to be complexity, there needs to be more to it than just our heroes lecturing the foolish aliens about the blatantly obvious.
In many ways, this reminds me of what I consider modern Trek's weakest episode, “The Sound of Thunder”, where again Pike and the crew blundered into a potentially complex situation and then just ignore that nuance to tell an immensely one-dimensional story.
Now, I've still got high hopes for this series – God knows, Star Trek's barely fifty-fifty when it comes to decent first episodes. But the quality of the storytelling is going to have to radically improve if it's going to keep me engaged the way other series have.
no subject
on 2022-05-19 03:37 am (UTC)I have been baffled by the uniformly positive reviews of this show whereas for me, it didn't really seem that groundbreaking or new. Just the same old stuff, leaning into nostalgia. And I could *not* get past the "sexy Vulcans" because that undermines everything about who Spock is.
no subject
on 2022-05-21 07:53 pm (UTC)I recently re-watched part of B5 season 2, and that episode with the Drazi seems like the platonic form of this kind of story. Why are the Drazi fighting? No reason at all! It's just their custom to randomly divide into green and purple factions periodically and fight! No need for any talking or understanding or negotiating--all you have to do to solve it is grab the leader sash and order them into the brig, because there really is nothing behind this other than rigidly following customary rules, and the whole thing is slightly comical and kind of like wrangling toddlers! I'm sure we all wish it were so easy, but having your protagonists "solve" this kind of bizarro-world "problem" does not make them look like morally superior political geniuses.