I tried. Discovery has some interesting things going for it, convoluted and epic plots, high budget action, etc. But it's marred by overly saccharine and forced scenes, characters that become caricatures of themselves and what they represent, etc.

Tried Picard as well, its selling point was Patrick Stewart but they had to bolt on a lot of stuff to sell it - injected nostalgia with characters nobody knows yet but they portray it like they go way back, and forced nostalgia that does not advance the plot with some old TNG cast. And a forgettable story. They tried to make something new with an unremarkable cast, then boost it with forced nostalgia. It didn't do it for me. I mean funny to see some of the old actors again, but they already played that card with some of the films that take place after the TNG series. They should have let it rest.

They should have let the whole franchise rest, for that matter. A recurring trend is recasting and reinventing Spock over and over again.

> They should have let the whole franchise rest, for that matter.

I disagree. Lower Decks and The Orville are both proofs that it's possible to make good Star Trek. Discovery and Picard just aren't good - and not in the same way TNG wasn't seen as good Trek when its first season aired; the new shows are completely disregarding everything that made the previous ones work.

> A recurring trend is recasting and reinventing Spock over and over again.

Wonder what's the franchise owners' obsession with Spock. In my perhaps generationally biased sampling, Star Trek fans would likely appreciate TNG-era shows more. But then, I guess Star Trek producers had a long-standing tradition of purposefully ignoring the fans. I guess it worked, at least for as long Berman and Braga were involved.

> characters that become caricatures of themselves and what they represent, etc.

New Trek definitely lost what made Trek attractive in the first place, and replaced it with drama, action and expensive SFX. Maybe it's what the current market wants, although I doubt it.

Old Star Trek has self-contained episodes, and it wasn't afraid to dedicate a whole episode to a single character. Discovery and Picard are serialized, yet we know little about the characters and their motivations. Most characters are cartoonish, and the moment a random characters gets a backstory, you know it's because he will die with long and dramatic close-ups very soon.

When TNG's Picard was caught by that admiral in Captain Picard's Day Picard Day, and he says "It's for the children. I'm a- I'm a role model", we knew exactly how he felt without having his face full-screen because his character was well established.

When Picard's Picard reacts, you have to wait to be spoonfed his sentiment, because his character is inconsistent, not only with his canon, but with his current characterization.

We should mention The Orville here. Of all modern sci-fi, including the Star Trek series', it's the most comparable.

I'd agree with that. Once you get past the Seth MacFarlane "humor"[0] it is obvious that they have a better understanding of what people liked about Star Trek than the Abrams movies, Discovery, or even Picard.

[0] Which actually does manage to be funny on occasion. The leg gag, the cigarettes, a few others come to mind.

Anything JJ Abrams produces is entirely made to be visually effective, rather than philosophically interesting or even internally congruent.

Occasionally, I want to watch something more for the visual and coolness factor, and I can appreciate when productions don't take themselves too seriously.

However JJ takes it too far, and I've ended up despising everything he has ever had a hand in writing and producing. Aside from the visuals, every single story element is so devoid of any logical coherence, that they are an affront to the mind or anyone who would care about things making sense.

Take a look at some of the amusing "pitch meeting" videos on JJ movies, and you'll quickly see the common thread of nothing ever making any sense. He's a great visual composer, but his story writing abilities is worse than that of an average 10 year old.

> Anything JJ Abrams produces is entirely made to be visually effective, rather than philosophically interesting or even internally congruent.

There is one exception. Probably the only one, or at least the only one I know of. JJ Abrams was an executive producer on Person of Interest series, which is to date the best coverage of AI in television[0]. I was shocked when I noticed JJ's name in credits, because the show is very good in the cerebral sense, unlike everything else I've seen his name on[1].

I'm not denying his film-making skills. He's sharp. But his specialty is action and visuals, not deep plots.

--

[0] - It starts pretending to be a run-of-the-mill crime solving drama with a sci-fi twist - the protagonists receive tips of possible violent crimes from an AI. But very quickly it turns into a discussion of AI ethics, state surveillance (the show managed to depict Snowden revelations before they happened!), information security, pros and cons of black-box vs. glass-box algorithms, and AI control/alignment problem. That's on top of good character development and regular (but not overdone) firefights that keep things interesting.

[1] - Most notably Westworld, which, like PoI, was created by Jonathan Nolan, and had a chance of being a spiritual successor - but it became a repetitive, violent action series from 2nd season on, with a plot that serves mostly as an excuse for characters to murder each other.

Thanks for the heads up of Person of Interest. It sounds right up my alley, and I'm sure I would have given it a pass if not for that.

I agree regarding Person of Interest. I just love the show.

I think if Seth had been allowed to run a "proper" Star Trek, it'd have helped temper his humour a little and he'd have had a really positive impact on the universe. Recent Star Treks have taken themselves far too seriously, and he could have reversed that.

However in some ways perhaps it's a blessing that he got to do his own thing with The Orville - without the pressure of being in the official universe he has been free to capture the feeling of Star Trek, rather than retreading the same path.

Yeah, I'd argue he was overdoing humor in The Orville on purpose - I think he wanted the show to be classified as a parody of Trek-style shows, and not a Trek derivative, in order to avoid intellectual property issues. You can see that as the show established itself, the jokes were toned down a lot - season 2 of The Orville is much more serious than the first one (I'd describe it as TNG, but with the drama/humor proportion of StarGate SG-1), and manages to cover some deep political and ethical topics.

Spoiler of the topic that impressed me (rot13, spoils a topic from S2):

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As far as I remember, Star Trek never ventured that far. United Federation of Planets did not make such compromises.

I've been telling my friends who, like myself, miss old Trek that the Clone Wars animated series is a fairly good fit for a contemporary Trek.

It has a similar structure with 7 seasons 20+ish episodes each, and compelling and diverse characters that grow throughout.

Each episode deals with some ethical or moral dilemma that is often addressed with clever solutions.

There certainly are flaws but the strengths feel very old Trek.

> I'm all about the episodic setup that worked so well in the 90s

Apparently, "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" will be in episodic format.

TBH I'm thinking "Strange New Worlds" is going to be more "let's dragg up old TOS ideas".

I think Discovery in a time far far into the future had a better chance at exploring "strange new worlds" and they screwed it up with "same old stuff just written even more poorly".

I don't understand the obsession with prequels outside of recycling known characters. It's set ten years before TOS, with Pike as captain, and it will mess the canon because it's made by people who ignore it.

For all the hate it got, Enterprise was a prequel that respected canon, expanded it sensibly, and brought new characters instead of reusing old ones.

You'd just get bored. As great as ths writing is on TNG I cant sit through it again even though I barely remember the stories. I guess wonder works easier on kids brains since they are seeing the stories for the first time.

I'm in the same boat. Every now and then I'll dip into an episode or two of an old series I liked whether on DVD or streaming. But I don't watch a lot of video generally and really can't imagine sitting back through the 100+ hours of video that made up a typical network drama series.

And I get tired of universes too. I've enjoyed some of the newer Star Wars material (esp. Rogue One and the Mandalorian) but, for the most part, I'm pretty done with it even if individual stories are interesting. You can only be so fresh within an existing universe.

That said, I understand if not fully appreciate that some/many people are perfectly happy to rewatch familiar settings and characters whether literally or in new plots.