Watched three episodes of Starfleet Academy, one of them this one, one the following Giamatti ep, one the premiere. I’m glad this show exists and is going for its own thing, the Trek universe is a really fun one and I enjoy any attempt to explore it more.
This cast is also very good, the costumes and sets look fucking fantastic (and are well-lit for once), and simply having this variety of species around in every scene kicks ass. Gives me DS9 sometimes in the thoughtless diversity of a future society.
I’m alone on this but I like The Burn as a concept, despite how poorly it was handled. I think it puts the Federation in an interesting situation where they have to rebuild and reshape and evolve. I like that they have pirates and pillagers rampant, things like the Emerald Chain, countless isolated societies that must be sold on the premise of the Federation. It makes the galaxy unknown again, which, at the end of Picard, seemed so so thoroughly explored and studied and it held no more surprises.
All that said, I don’t reeeeeeeeeally enjoy watching the show much - the humor doesn’t land, the story is pretty blah, the drama is too obvious, the action feels bad - but there’s a ton I do like scattered about, and I think most importantly it has fun and tries shit, there’s experimentation here. Like Discovery, everything is in place here to tell a good story, it just requires a good script to be allowed to survive the vetting process. My worry is that, like Discovery, they have some directive to keep it a light action show, and thus you’ll never get a decent story told.
One thing I struggle with is the vibe of this, Discovery, S31, the Abrams movies, that really really prioritize keeping everything moving at all cost. I feel like there is this belief by the brand owners that “Star Trek is boring” and they have overcorrected by never having two characters interact in one place for longer than a 30 seconds. This means we get really blunt characterwork and there is zero room for subtlety, and I just gotta accept that that’s what this show is.
I’m going to continue keeping an eye on reviews to see if any eps are particularly well-regarded and just watch those. With that in said:
Thoughts on Episode 1, 'Those Damn Kids' (spoilers)
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Holly Hunter is very good! I’m still real pissed about Mary Wiseman being sidelined but Hunter does do a great job. She captures the energy of this show nicely while having in my opinion the best scenes, where she’s allowed to have an adult conversation with someone and it sorta feels a little Star Trekky for a bit. Her being quirky isn’t overdone (yet) and just generally adds a little flavor.
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I chatted with @iguferon about how I was a little worried about what I’d heard of Giamatti’s performance - how it sounded like he didn’t take the role/show seriously - but I liked it, it feels right that the character loves to hear himself talk and berate and argue, which is very tellerite. Holly Hunter has great chemistry with him, lot of fun to watch. The heaping dollop of toxic masculinity feels right for him too, also very piratey. Like with Hunter, he meets the energy of the show well.
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I like Sam’s whole deal, particularly that she’s an AI that is excited to explore other forms of life. She has Data’s curiosity. The idea of creating a 17 year old teenager mired in self-doubt and anxiety for the purposes of exploring is very thoughtlessly cruel to Sam, which is very funny and revealing of how little the AI understand organic life. Great idea.
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I like Kraag a lot, Karim Diane has a really nice way about him that makes it real fun to watch. I like the idea of his character, something I’ve wanted from a klingon character for a while, one who interprets the tired klingon tropes in a different way. We got a dab of this with J.G. Hertzler’s lawyer character in Enterprise, of strength and bravery and honor being applied outside of warfare.
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Like with Discovery and S31 the intro sequence and song don’t do a ton for me, they’re really meandering and overburdened. I feel like if you can’t hum it it might not be a great theme.
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Liked that moment where the Doctor appears after having seen that everyone’s “catecholamine stress levels were spiking” and appeared to see what was going on. Something that is very Trek in that the technology of monitoring everyone’s biology at all times is incredibly dystopian in the wrong hands, but this is a society build foundationally on trust, and thus it can be used to ensure everyone is protected while also being free. I doubt this will ever be explored to any degree but whatever, it’s a great detail.
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Caleb is to me a blank slab whose entire deal is his trauma and I dunno, I just am not super interested. Kira and Ro were buried in trauma but that wasn’t everything they were, they wanted things and tried things. I’m sure that will develop with him in time but ugh, boring.
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The Venari Ral marauder rocks, cool-looking future ship, same with the Athena. That said you get one clearish shot of the marauder and then never again will you be able to parse anything about either ship in this episode. Very Discovery in that way.
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Lura Thok is fun to watch, Gina Yashere as expected nails it. Any time you’re in doubt that Star Trek has the worst wastoid fandom you need simply look up their current hysterical talking point and yep, they’re extremely wrong again. Particularly enjoyed her scene in sickbay.
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Their idea to modulate an actor’s voice, ever, under any circumstances, is insane and always a bad idea.
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It is fucking cah-razy that the Athena just blows up the marauder with a trio of cheery quips, vaporizing all hands. Very Voyager.
Thoughts on Episode 5, 'Series Acclimation Mil' (spoilers)
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Cirroc Lofton absolutely kills it, worth watching for his scenes. He and the writers did a good job with this, and it’s a very fraught subject for Trek everyone was nervous the brand would fumble. They wisely let Tawny Newsome and the writer’s room take this and go their own way with it. She was also quite good in this episode as a professor, looking forward to seeing more of her.
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The drama in this one with Sam is rough, they have a very threadbare storyline about how she is considered an “Emissary” between the AIs and the organics, and how she has to understand what that means in relation to Ben Sisko’s whole thing with the Prophets. I loved DS9 but I definitely did not like 90% of the Emissary plotline, particularly later in the game, so I wasn’t nuts about that being a lot of the focus rather than everything he built throughout the show that was real. It’s hard to say Emissaries have no choices when so much of the DS9 Emissary plotline was “oh we don’t really know what the Prophets mean so I guess we should just do what we feel like”. Also god, I can’t believe the Pah Wraiths happened.
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Loved that little scene in the hall with the other AI going up to Sam with reverence, pretty interested in what’s going on with them, since AIs are rarely something Trek takes an interest in beyond being a Monster of the Week.
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I liked the whole dynamic between the stuck up dude and Holly Hunter, I theoretically liked the scene with the forced truths but didn’t like any of the comedy. He also just acts dumb so drama can happen. One of those moments where I started getting pulled in by a good exchange between them and the show immediately reminded me they don’t do that kind of shit here.
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The spoon-feeding is DIRE. There’s a ton of lore to have to dump on the audience for them to understand all this DS9 biz but goddddddddddddddd scene after scene of words flying around to make a storybook depiction of a seven-season show, targeted at teens, with every interaction being summarized and re-stated to make sure the viewer paying 20% attention got it, gets it, ugggh. The constant need to say what just happened clearly, then say it once again, is very hard to suffer through.
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The visual noise suckssss this is part of what makes this show kind of unpleasant to watch for me, shit never stops moving.
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The decision to make Sam get wasted is fun, but I think the writers thought was way way funnier than it was. Just make her 50% wasted and let her slip a bunch, that’s way better for character work, since she’s not just slurring nonsense she’s saying stuff without inhibitions.
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Sorta sucks that The Doctor is nothing but an occasional comic relief. Hopefully they change that as they go, I suppose they will, but they’re in no rush to do anything like that. Jet Reno is sadly in the same boat.
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The AI overlords are grating because they’re so dramatic and crazy and unreasonable, a little depth would be nice.
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Largely like the flirting, especially with Klaarg and Genesis. This is something you don’t get much of in Trek and it fits real nicely in this show, as it did in Lower Decks.
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Love that really shitty vulcan dude and his romulan friend from the War College. I skipped a bunch of episodes so they might be worse than they seem but they’re a good bit of sour energy to this.
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Hearing Avery Brooks was a gut punch, loved it.
Thoughts on Episode 6, 'Come, Let's Away' (spoilers)
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As corny as the scene between Caleb and the betazoid Tarima was, I liked that it involved her psychic powers and the issues of privacy that bring without doing what TNG would’ve done and explaining it to death before having incredibly wooden romance.
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Sets and costumes look amazing.
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Giamatti is a complete delight, love watching him deliver this dialogue. He actually feels like he is of this universe. He is believably cruel and ugly in his manner of doing shit. Watching him turn the knife whenever given the option, again, he loves to hear himself talk. Very piratey, great fit for the post-Burn world.
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The camerawork in this makes me want to die, as does the decision to superimpose a floating ghost head over on the main alien’s face, just have some confidence in the prosthetics. Also, if you’re on a dark scene, that doesn’t mean it has to be pitch black with big-ass spotlights randomly placed around the background.
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Even in individual conversations the camera is shifting in and out of focus and zooming in and out and aaauggghh fucking stoppp
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Action is pretty viscerally unpleasant to watch. Lighting is too dark, camera cannot frame anything, shit’s too tight and close, you don’t get any sense of the room or the space before the combat happens, so you’re just drifting through random spaces in time.
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These evil cannibal aliens, the Furies, suuuuuuck, reminds me of how boring and sci-fi channel-ass the Drakh were in Babylon 5 when they showed up late in the run. I remember Discovery doing this all the time, like with Saru’s homeplanet, where the bad guy aliens are actual fucking wraiths or orcs, come on guys. I know Trek has a history of bad guy aliens but christ, please, put a little work into it. They are described as “always being in pain” and “splooging it over everyone” which like, I’m supposed to take these guys seriously? The problem with reavers like this being all over the place in the post-Burn universe is that there’s just not much too them.
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The Klaarg / Unnamed Handsome White Guy romance is very cute still. It’s incredibly obvious and heavy-handed but whatever. There is no fucking way this guy does not die tragically for some small modicum of drama before the season’s out.
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Nice seeing a betazoid getting something cool to do, always felt like they should’ve expanded their powers out a bit, since there’s so few psychic species in Trek.
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The vulcan dude, B’Avi, continues to be one of the MVPs for me.
Update from end of the ep:
