Having recently subscribed to Paramount+ due to the missus wanting to watch a series that we were half way through before Paramount made it an exclusive to their (new to the UK) streaming service, i've ended up with access to all the Star Trek stuff as well.
Lower Decks - Seasons 1-3 - Quite entertaining, but aimed at a younger target audience to this Gen-Xer.
Strange New Worlds - S1 - Really good! Despite the (early seasons) Discovery crossover, it comes across very much like the original series rather than say Next Generation or Enterprise and is set in a timeline between the two. Anson Mount makes for a charasmatic Captain Pike, like a prototype James T Kirk, which makes perfect sense. Like most other Star Trek series in that its socially 'of our time' without pushing it down our throats. Which leads me to...
Discovery - Season 4 - I'd moaned about this not being shown on UK TV, unlike S1-3, in the Discovery thread last year before Paramount+ was available with them eventually backing down due to fan pressure and showing it on some crappy obscure live streaming service which no doubt satisfied no one. I almost gave up after 3 episodes of this season due to it's overt, dare i say, 'wokeness' which is just so heavy-handed and sentimentaly cloying. Now Star Trek has always been socially awake for its time, but its always been done in a matter-of-fact way. Yes we have black female bridge crew, so what. It's the 23rd century for gods sake, of course we do, but Discovery has to make such a huge deal over everyone being anything other than a straight, white male charcter - of which, off the top of my head, by the time the 900-years-into-the-future season 3 started, there were none. Zero. Which of course is completely fine, but they are, as a group, very notable by their absense, even in the diverse world of Star Trek. Many of the main characters are far too earnest for their own good - Captain Burnham in particular stands out for this. Not only is she from 900 years in the past by this point in the timeline, but she's surrounded by Star Fleet's greatest contemporary scientific minds yet always manages to come up with the winning solution to an issue. Star Trek crews are all about the collaboration. The joint effort of the greatest minds in their fields. People working together under great pressure, but this captain seemingly needs no one, she can do it all herself - but she does it without the bravardo of other Star Trek captains. She does it all with an annoying level of humility which is at odds with the fact that she rode roughshod over her crew's suggested solutions in the first place.
Having said that, as the series rolled on and the main story thread started to really kick in, it just got better and better and has probably ended up as the best season so far. Certainly the most cohesive and least confusing to follow. The last few episodes borrowed heavily from some other well known scifi films, but can be forgiven since it was done so well. The production values continue to be amazingly high as they use similar tech to the Mandalorian's 'volume' video wall which makes the sets appear seemless with the CGI used to make alien enviroments so vast and varied.
Had it not been for the xmas break, i'd have probably given up on s4 Discovery after the slow and irritating first few episodes but i can't wait for season 5 now. But i guess there'll be a season 3 of Picard before that though and i might have to give Prodigy a look too!
www.yahoo.com
