Hey everyone, happy Friday! How's it going? I'm pretty good. So, I'm back for the final Star Trek pilot/premiere episode review, in terms of both what I have access to, and the fact that SNW was the last Star Trek series to premiere up to this point. Of course, I already have a review for this episode up on the blog from when it originally aired last year, but this review will focus on things that I noticed upon my rewatch of the episode last night. So, let's get into it.
Television hasn't really changed for me much over the years. I usually don't revisit shows after I've seen them, unless I have them on DVD or Blu-ray. One of the reasons TNG was one of my favourite shows is because I had a decent amount of episodes on VHS, both retail releases, and episodes taped off the TV, so I could rewatch them even if I didn't have access to reruns of the show. Same goes for other shows that I grew up watching. And even though the majority of new shows I watch are Disney+ shows, or Hulu shows that come out on Disney+ here in Canada, my brain hasn't quite grasped the fact that, as long as the shows are still on Disney+, I can go back and rewatch them whenever I want. And I think that's just because most modern shows are a single story told over six, eight or ten episodes that make up the season. But with SNW, which I have the first season of on Blu-ray, the series is episodic. So I can pop in disc 2 of the Blu-ray and watch "Spock Amok", as an example, whenever I want, without having to do a full season watchthrough. But with something like Goosebumps, Ahsoka, Only Murders in the Building or The Mandalorian, it's alot harder because each episode is only a piece of the story.
Up to this point Star Trek has had a rough go of it since Discovery debuted in 2017. The first couple of seasons of both Discovery and Picard were almost nothing like Star Trek. They were gratuitously dark, gritty, pessimistic, with mostly undeveloped new characters, and in the case of Picard, out of character legacy characters. Lower Decks resorted to crude humour and general meanness to attract an audience and it worked because Lower Decks is, unfortunately, the Star Trek with the most mass appeal. Prodigy suffered from Nickelodeon's stupid scheduling pattern and all of the problems that plagued the Nickelodeon era of Power Rangers in the 2010s. Then came SNW and it was a huge breath of fresh air because, well, it was Star Trek. Sure, modern day TV drama beats were present, but the characters actually liked each other, and generally had good outlooks on life. Except for La'an. But, given what we know about her now after two seasons and twenty episodes, she has a reason for being the way she is. And the show was episodic, though each character had an overarching story that carried throughout each season of the show, and they all grew and developed as characters in a way that seemed to elude the characters of Discovery. Though that show did get better as it rebooted itself by sending the USS Discovery and her crew into the future, effectively ending the prequel series it started out as, it still suffers from the same problems that Michael A. Stackpole's Star Wars: X-Wing novels suffer from, an ensemble cast of characters, that doesn't work as an ensemble cast of characters.
Something I noticed upon rewatching the first episode of SNW for the first time since it aired, without commercials I might add, is that La'an and Pike's conversation at the end of the episode doesn't actually make sense. La'an apologizes to Pike for not informing him that she and Una had known each other prior to the mission on Kiley 279, as if it was a secret she'd been hiding from the crew. Except, the way the episode is written, from the point where Pike and Spock meet La'an on the Bridge, to when they find Una and the astrophysicists that had been on the Archer with her, La'an had never given Pike a reason not to trust her, and there was no indication to us, the audience, that she was on the Enterprise for any reason other than Starfleet had assigned her to the ship as her chief of security, and had assigned her to replace Una as First Officer until they recovered her. It was as much a twist to me, as a member of the audience, as it was to Pike in the show, when it was revealed that La'an and Una knew each other and that it was Una who had rescued La'an after the Gorn had killed La'an's entire family. So that whole conversation didn't make sense within the context of what we were given earlier in the episode. But, it is a good way of seeing how La'an and Pike interact with each other.
I thought it was funny at the end of the episode when Admiral April told Pike and Spock that Starfleet was changing General Order One to the Prime Directive and Pike replies, "That'll never stick". I laughed, both times I saw this episode, because in TOS they still call the Prime Directive General Order One and use the two names interchangeably, but by the first season of TNG, which is set in 2364, it's simply the Prime Directive. I wonder if Pike's line was meant to be a tongue in cheek nod to the interchangeable term in TOS on the part of Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, and Jenny Lumet, the three writers of this episode.
Also, seeing where Pike ends up by the end of this season, and by the end of season 2, I think it makes his story here even more solid. And seeing how the crew gels with each other is cool. While Ortegas, Spock, Una, and Mitchell have been there for a while, M'Benga, Chapel, La'an, and Uhura are new, yet they all work together as if they've always known each other. Despite the fact that Uhura and Chapel meet for the very first time in this episode. Of course, we find out in season 2 why M'Benga and Chapel work so well together.
SNW was one of Paramount's worst kept secrets. After seeing how popular Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, and Rebecca Romijn were as Pike, Spock, and Una in season 2 of Discovery and season 2 of Short Treks, the rumour that Paramount was developing a series starring those characters started circulating even before the second season of Discovery had ended. At the same time though Paramount wasn't acknowledging anything of the sort, until they suddenly did at the end of 2020. And, honestly, I didn't think this series would be very successful. Pike was an unknown character to most casual viewers of Star Trek, because despite having numerous novels and comic books dedicated to his time as the captain of the Enterprise, none of them are considered to be canon, and other than "The Cage", which didn't air until 1988, "The Menagerie", which was the original audience's look into the Star Trek that could've been since it used footage from the unaired pilot as flashback material, and the 2009 movie, set in a parallel universe and Pike being in the hands of the Romulans from the future for the vast majority of the movie, audiences didn't have much of an exposure to the character of Christopher Pike.
There are millions of Star Trek fans around the world, however as we saw with DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise, if the general audience isn't onboard, the show simply won't be successful. And that's true with any franchise in any medium. I just did not think that setting a Star Trek series on the original Enterprise during Pike's tenure as Commanding Officer would appeal to an audience that would be big enough to justify Paramount's faith in it. Especially at the time this show was announced, when Paramount+ was still CBS All-Access. They did the restructuring not long after SNW was announced. Because, let's face it, Star Trek hasn't really been that popular with the general audience since TNG went off the air in 1994. The box office numbers declined as each TNG movie came out, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise all failed to gain a new audience during their original runs, and the alternate reality films didn't even come close to making the kind of money Paramount had lost when the MCU moved from Paramount and Universal to Disney/Marvel Studios. Not to mention the current slew of shows all started on a barely surviving streaming platform.
No matter what franchise you're looking at, and no matter how big of a fanbase that franchise has, the ultimate goal of these shows and movies is to bring in a wide enough audience in order to sustain them financially, because a studio, a network, or a streaming service won't want to finance a show or series of movies if said show or movie doesn't warrant it. That's one of the reasons so many shows never make it past their first season, and why TOS was canceled back in the '60s. While there was a small, dedicated, fanbase during the show's original run from 1966-1969, the audience wasn't big enough to warrant Paramount and NBC to renew the show at the end of the third season. Especially because syndication wasn't a thing yet. Episodes would air during the season, maybe air one more time between seasons, during the summer, but that was it. Plus given the amount of negativity surrounding the other then current live action Star Trek shows on at the time, I had no faith in SNW.
I am extremely glad that I'm wrong. SNW is a fantastic show. It's my favourite of the modern era of the franchise, and it's my second favourite behind TNG. And this episode came out swinging in terms of the quality of the storytelling. I mean, we got a Prime Directive episode right out the gate, and a strong one at that. Which is a far cry from the series premieres of both Discovery and Picard. I'm also glad that Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Meyer are the showrunners because they are Star Trek fans themselves. And not just TOS fans, but they're fans of everything Star Trek. I've said this many MANY times over the last year and a half since SNW started but I'll say it again, I am very certain that they're fans of Star Trek: Early Voyages and the few novels that take place during Pike's time as the captain of the Enterprise, because there's so much in this series that I swear came from the comics and novels, which are pretty obscure.
I love SNW, and this first episode holds up extremely well, a year and a half later. It's a solid introduction to the characters, both new and legacy, and it leaves things for future episodes to build upon. We got so many dense and interesting characters, written a great group of writers, and played by an awesome cast. "Strange New Worlds" is tied with "Emissary" as the best of these pilot/premiere episodes for me.
Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I might be back with a review of Hocus Pocus 2 tomorrow, or I might wait until next week to do it. I haven't decided yet. So until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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