This season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is going in all directions. Is Star Trek slowly but surely drifting away from me as a true Trekkie? Over 930 episodes! I repeat, 930 episodes were made of Star Trek. I've seen them all. In fact, there are a few shows I've seen twice. If that doesn't make you a Trekkie, I don't know what is. Some shows are better than others. For example, I prefer Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: Picard to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But I still enjoyed the lesser shows.
It therefore pains me to conclude that season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds completely misses the mark. The storyline's continuity, in particular, leaves much to be desired. It jumps around like crazy. The first two episodes focus on the battle with the Gorn. After that, it goes off in all directions. The absolute low points are the episodes "A Space Adventure Hour" and "What is Starfleet." I watched these two episodes with my jaw dropped. What an annoyance, and what incomprehensible choices the writers made.
Meanwhile, we see Spock performing ridiculous dances with La-an
The pretentious Chief Engineer Pelia, played by Carol Kane, gets on my nerves. What's the point of this role? Is it meant to be funny? Meanwhile, we see Spock performing ridiculous dances with La-an. The other actors don't excel in exceptional performances either. An exception is Ethan Peck, who plays Spock. He's not only convincing in his performance, but also has a striking appearance.
There are also a lot of coming-of-age elements in this season. I need to delve into that a bit more. I'll be blowing out the 63rd candle soon. Maybe I should tone down my conservative anti-woke commentary in my columns and reviews. I can imagine that coming-of-age elements and the abundant diversity and inclusion will resonate with younger generations.
This is a review, not a column, so I'll limit myself to substantive criticism. The last Star Trek series I watched before Strange New Worlds was Star Trek: Discovery. I wrote a review of it that was mostly positive. That's precisely why it's so disappointing that, in my opinion, Strange New Worlds doesn't live up to the high Star Trek standards. The older Star Trek series, in particular, took viewers to uncharted territories with strange creatures. It sparks the imagination.
Strange New Worlds has some comedic elements. It's funny to see part of the crew transform into Vulcans in episode eight, "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans." Pointy ears included. But after that, it descends back into uninteresting conversations and trivialities. A bright spot is the final episode of this season, "New Life and New Civilizations," which stands head and shoulders above the rest.
My final conclusion is that this season doesn't really deserve to be called Star Trek, with the exception of episode ten. But as mentioned before, I might be losing touch. Rumor has it that the upcoming series Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will delve even deeper into the coming-of-age theme. I fear the worst.
Mike (1995) has been a member of MySeries since 2016 and is mainly active on the English version of the site. Since 2018, he has been actively translating news articles, columns, reviews and basically everything that ends up on the Dutch site. The original articles, columns and reviews were actually written by others. During the week Mike can be found at IKEA, where he is a national systems specialist and occasionally also in the classroom to teach an English lesson. In addition, Mike logically enjoys watching series and has actually been spoon-fed this from an early age. The genre doesn't matter, there is a place for everything in the otherwise busy life.
Not so much the last episode, but the one Ortega was stranded in before. An episode like this is a familiar structure in many series, but it's well-developed in this Star Trek.
True, but the development of that episode was reflected in the final episode, and I even found it moving. A wonderful episode. But in contrast to that, there are those two (in my opinion) completely misplaced episodes.
