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For anyone who hasn't watched and is trying to keep track: Lower Decks is animated mostly-comedy made by Star Trek fans, for Star Trek fans, about Star Trek fa

• plextoria 4y ago
  I enjoyed Picard's first season a lot. They should have ended it there, though.
• Jack000 4y ago
  Strange new worlds is great, I wouldn’t put it in the same category as the other new treks. I want to give Orville a chance, but Seth Macfarlane humor and star trek matches about as well as stinky tofu and ice cream.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    I hear you, but by the second season things get much better in that regard. Also, the first season had at least two legitimately hilarious jokes.
    • esperent 4y ago
      I'm sure there's quicker way to find two genuinely hilarious jokes than watching an entire series of a TV show filled with otherwise bad jokes.
    • rmckayfleming 4y ago
      Yea. The last half of season 1 it starts to become more just Star Trek. Season 2 and 3 are straight Star Trek. I really enjoyed them.
  • archi42 4y ago
    Orville, imho: The first season tries hard with some poor jokes (what you seem to be afraid of), but already has some very TNG worthy material and great ideas. It improves from there, and now it's occasionally funny but in a more mature way that fits much better. Just give it a try, and endure some cringe - I think it's worth it. And as sibling says, some moments are actually pretty hilarious and/or spot-on. Though of course YMMV.
    • hotpotamus 4y ago
      Millenia ago, Roman soldiers toured the then known world and left writings/graffiti, some of which survives to this day - a lot of it is dick jokes. Mozart wrote some of the most transcendent music of his era, and also a song that he enjoyed called "Lick My Ass" (music appreciation classes tend to skip that one for some reason). So that is to say that based on the history of humanity as a species, the engineers running the starships of the future are probably going to still enjoy scatalogical humor which makes think MacFarlane's vison will probably be a bit more likely than Rodenberry's. Also, Lower Decks is easily my favorite Trek running today.
      • Y_Y 4y ago
        Leck mich im Arsch is a fine song, but really Mozart's lyrical mastery comes out in Bona Box, which is not only a series of puns in five languages, it also contains the following lines (translated): Good night, good night, Shit in your bed and make it burst; Good night, sleep tight, And stick your ass to your mouth
    • nytesky 4y ago
      Pretty sure SM wanted to do the more straight TNG sequel, but since he is known for over the top comedy he pitched it as an over the top comedy/parody of Star Trek — and then pivoted to a homage mid season 1!
      • rmckayfleming 4y ago
        My impression was more that he just wanted to do Star Trek but the studios were like "it'll be funny right???". And so he went along with it at first, but dropped it as time went on. On a related note, I've been rewatching Enterprise and I didn't know Seth MacFarlane made 2 cameo appearances in the series! (In two different seasons too.)
  • tzs 4y ago
    > I want to give Orville a chance, but Seth Macfarlane humor and star trek matches about as well as stinky tofu and ice cream. A lot of critics dismissed it early for that reason, assuming it was just going to be some kind of Family Guy in Space show. They were wrong. There is humor in The Orville but it is not really like Family Guy humor (about which I think South Park nailed it in "Cartoon Wars"). On The Orville the humor is just a minor part of the show. They are not going for a comedy in space. They are going for science fiction drama with some comedy tossed in, when appropriate. I think AnIdiotOnTheNet was wrong though to call it basically a new ST:TNG. It is much more a new ST:TOS. Seth Macfarlane thought that TOS had an optimistic outlook on the future that subsequent ST series had lost. The later series were in a darker future, and he wanted a series that brought back that TOS feel. It's basically ST:TOS but with a few more jokes (mostly good ones), and instead of being set on the flagship of the fleet, crewed by the very best of the best, it is set on a ship that isn't expected to ever do anything important crewed by people whose careers have gone nowhere where they are expected to finish their terms of service in continued mediocrity. The first season was OK. It has some pretty good ideas. The second season continued having many good ideas, and the writers and actors had really figured things out so things really came together well. I haven't watched any of the third season yet.
• ianai 4y ago
  Orville happened because SM has a lot of pull and is a fan and made it happen. And I’m grateful. TNG had the last sparkle of Gene Roddenberry's vision of utopia. It got preachy at times. The sad thing with Picard is just how dark and violent it gets. TNG and the rest were plenty dark, but not the same. I’m frankly pretty sick of the gore nowadays. But if Picard is the only way I get to visit that universe, I guess sign me up. Picard flopping at all isn’t going to stop that only dark/gore crap gets made anymore. Seems no writers or viewers can really do utopia anymore.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    If the writing and story telling of Discovery and Picard weren't so terrible so much of the time I'd be willing to consider them on their own merits as though the rest of Star Trek never happened. I will say that the mirror universe episodes of Discovery were actually a lot of fun. Their writers may be hacks, in my considered opinion of course, but the mirror universe worked well for them. I think they should have done a spinoff that takes place entirely in that universe.
  • WeylandYutani 4y ago
    TNG was a 90s show when the cold war was over and the economy was good. The real world influences writers and creators. Nobody believes in Utopia anymore.
    • Schiendelman 4y ago
      Your username really underscores that sentiment!
    • Jtsummers 4y ago
      TNG started as an 80s show and went into the 90s. It first aired in 1987, still during the Cold War, and had 4 seasons out before the Cold War is usually considered as ended. Three seasons aired after the Cold War. It was utopian even before the Cold War had ended, not just after and not because of its ending.
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
• sdflhasjd 4y ago
  Strange New Worlds was much better and I really wanted to like it, but I found the characters exhausting. Every other line of dialogue is a Whedonesque quip. The writers are laying on the "dark backstory" trope too thick to the point that by episode 3 it seemed like everyone was an alcoholic abused orphan.
• 015a 4y ago
  I'm going to counterpoint a bit. There's a LOT of nostalgia for TNG in these comments; nostalgia primarily for the storylines and world, which the writers of Picard clearly didn't pick up on, and went with the "nostalgia for the characters" route + grimdark, and I'm not here to defend Picard. Season 1 and 2 were written like crap, Season 3 will probably also be written like crap, I'll watch it because of the characters, it won't really be remembered as "Good Trek" in ten years. But talking about "Good Trek" is one of my passions, because: There's a LOT of Bad Trek in its canon. I'm a massive fan of the series, and I'll fully admit that there's probably as much or more Bad Trek than Good. But even for the series that were regarded as Good; there's plenty of grimdark, and a ton of peoples' favorite episodes or episode arcs could very easily be described as 90s grimdark. DS9 spent loads of time on the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, the slavery and persecution of its people, and war with the Dominion. The Voyager was fighting Borg every third episode. The Trekian Utopia concept more often pushed with TNG was extremely scarce in these two series; after all, as soon as literally the series after TNG the writers said "ok, but what if we take a Trek crew and tell stories far away from the safety of core Federation Space" (I don't remember if DS9 or Voyager came first, but it doesn't matter, because both of these series do that; and then Enterprise ALSO does that, but I'd rather not get into that hot topic). And: We love them. Maybe DS9 more than Voyager, but In The Pale Moonlight is quoted up there among Measure of a Man as Trekies' favorite episodes, and ITPM is literally about Sisko betraying every Federation value he holds to conspire to commit a false flag to win a war the Federation is extremely close to losing. It is Grim; it is Dark; and its a great episode with great writing. Point being, I think the article and other comments' criticism of "new Trek is bad because grimdark" is really misguided; I interpret criticism like that really more-so as complaining about lensflares and bad writing. Well, the lensflare modern cinamatography is what it is, not an interesting argument for me, fine. But I really think complaining about the bad writing is surface-level criticism of New Trek, which articles like this one attempt to "make deep" by throwing "grimdark" into it, even though that's also bad criticism; all of that ignores the ugly fact that Trek has a lot of bad writing in its history, and has a lot of grimdark in its history. New Trek's bigger problem is that seasons only contain 8 or 10 episodes of content. That's not a Trek problem; that's just an industry thing, which unfortunately doesn't work all that well for Trek. You could go to any season in any series of trek and find a half-dozen episodes with roughly the writing quality of Picard. Go back to TNG and just marvel at the holodeck episodes, pretty universally disliked by the trek community (and they're bringing Moriarty back for Picard Season 3, so...), or how often the vast majority of the drama is derived from "we can't contact the Federation". Looking at the body of work as a collection, Old Trek oftentimes feels like throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks, and in retrospect we really only remember the stuff that stuck; New Trek is just throwing less stuff at the wall. And, again, I don't think that's a Trek problem; its an attention span problem. Studios can't do 24 episode seasons of anything anymore because by episode 11 people are moving on to the next Netflix release. Its not a problem Trek created; its a problem the Tech Industry and social media created. Which I only point the finger at because I love the indirect, delicious irony in how correlated tech workers and "likes Trek" is; we destroyed our favorite TV series (and pushed adderall prescription rates to historical highs, certainly much bigger problems out there than Bad Trek) because Money. But even considering that: Lower Decks is pretty good. Strange New Worlds is really good, and easily ranks among the best Trek out there. Discovery Season 2 is genuinely good, and its worth making it through Season 1 to watch it. That's, like, half of All New Trek; which is good in my book. If I were a studio executive running Star Trek, I can't say I wouldn't do something very similar to what is happening in Trek right now. We've made a lot of good content, that feels to me like a modernized, quality take on Classic Trek. But we still can't do anything right. Maybe funding an series with a return of the original characters we know people love? There's nothing wrong with that; it just went wrong in how that nostalgia was applied, which is a mistake any and every writing team has made.
• jeroenhd 4y ago
  Can't they just hire Seth McFarlane for the inevitable Picard season 4, assuming they can get him to drop the silly jokes? I love Orville for its surprisingly solid sci-fi universe but I cringe at many of the attempts at humour. Every actor behind a major Star Trek character have already played in Orville anyway (except for the bridge crews of TOS and TNG, I suppose). Discovery and Picard have their moments, it's not all bad. The underlying story line is "government bad, humans suck" but there are some good characters hidden away deep inside. A new TNG would flop. Monster-of-the-week (or in the case of trek, political-philosophical-pondering-of-the-week) doesn't keep people entertained anymore. TOS is boring and unwatchable for most, TNG is often doable but many some stupid episodes, especially in the earlier seasons (why on earth did they have to include "rape gangs"? and a "say no to drugs" episode? that episode where Crusher has space sex with the holo ghost of her ancestor?). Even more modern, more ST franchises like Voyager and DS9 would flop. I'll be controversial and say that I'd like modern trek to be more like ST Enterprise. I think Enterprise struck a nice balance between classic trek and more modern TV, even if it's two decades old at this point. There was an overarching story line to keep people watching, but there was also plenty of time for going down to a random planet and ponder about space AIDS/mind meld disease and the associated prejudices. I love the Star Trek universe, but the older shows simply don't warrant all of the nostalgia; I recognize that they were an important part of TV and science fiction history, but the media landscape doesn't allow for philosophical pondering and space western TV anymore.
• remarkEon 4y ago
  >Discovery and Picard is grimdark and made by people who, in addition to being bad writers and story tellers, are aware that Star Trek exists and has fans, but have no idea why. I have a "friend of a friend", we'll say, who is an exec at Paramount and they're well aware that Discovery and Picard are creative trash. They do not care: it drives tons of subs every time a new season drops. Eventually you'd think that pattern would depress a bit but it hasn't thus far, allegedly.