Star Trek: Strange New Worlds reminds you filler TV is fantastic
In the age of thunderingly loud blockbusters and hyper-serial prestige television,
Star Trek
has struggled.
The J.J. Abrams films tried to reinvent
Star Trek
for the mega action film era, and
Star Trek: Discovery
tried to reinvent it for serial TV.
And others, like
Picard
and
Lower Decks,
have just tried to play to the fans with intense nostalgia and in-jokes.
They’ve all been
Star Trek,
but they haven’t had quite the same impact as the original series
or the
Star Trek
series of the ‘90s. Watching
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
feels
like watching
The Next Generation
or
Voyager
or even
The Original Series
. It’s
Star Trek
updated pitch
perfectly for 2022, and that’s in large part because it knows what we want: filler episodes.
The franchise is enormous at this point — as big as
Star Wars
or
Doctor Who
,
but it often feels like it has been at odds with itself and kind of embarrassed by its own existence in a way those other franchises aren’t.