I liked the musical episode a lot - but I went in with an expectation of it being silly to a degree and not super serious.
Also, if I had nickel for every sci-fi franchise I had that mentioned a character doing Gilbert and Sullivan, I’d have two nickels - which isn’t a whole lot, but it’s weird it happened twice.
There seems to be quite a tug of war going on in the IMDb ratings. 20% of users voted the episode a 1 out of 10 stars. I mean, sure you might not like musicals. But all the talent that went into creating this show surely doesn’t warrant a 1. 🤷♂️
Once upon a time, a prominent YouTuber released an entire video rant about the fan backlash he was receiving.
He had spent years building up his channel and producing quality content of a very specific type. He had almost a million subscribers, and he was previously received very well.
Then one day he decided to spend months producing and releasing content of a closely related – but different – type. At first it was mostly received well, but it ultimately wasn’t what people wanted from his channel. And it just kept coming.
Enter the rant. The short of his argument was that he was producing quality content with high production value. And that should be good enough for his fans.
But it wasn’t. Because it wasn’t the content that they wanted.
And he kept going. So his views went down. And his subscribers went down too. And he got so frustrated that he ended up just walking away for months.
This week’s episode of Strange New Worlds was objectively good. It was well written and well performed.
But I still squirmed through it. And if I hadn’t suspected that it might be very important to the long-term plot, I probably would have just skipped it altogether. I’ll certainly skip it on any rewatch.
And that’s okay. We’re allowed to like some things and not like others. Strange New Worlds seems to be on a path du jour, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But when people give a simple star rating, they aren’t leaving a professional review. They aren’t considering production value. They’re saying they liked it, or they hated it, or something in-between.
From IMDB instructions on leaving ratings:
Our ratings are on a scale from 1 - 10. 1 meaning the title was terrible and one of the worst titles you’ve seen and 10 meaning you think it was excellent.
That’s it.
That’s why you’re seeing those one-star reviews. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Frankly of the 19 episodes released so far, this is the only one I can say that I really didn’t like. All in all, I think that’s a pretty good average.
I would somewhat agree with you if we were just talking about ranking Star Trek episodes specifically. If Subspace Rhapsody is among the worst Star Trek episodes you’ve ever seen, then sure, give it a 1. That makes sense on Star Trek specific review websites like jammersreviews.com.
But we’re talking about IMDb which ranks all TV shows and all movies, so the ranking scale encompasses everything you’ve ever seen on screen. And now tell me again with a straight face that a well-produced well-written well-acted episode of a franchise that we love ranks in the same 1-star category as the worst non-scripted reality trash TV you’ve ever seen.
It’s brigading to gatekeep their vision of Trek unsullied by franchise content made to appeal to other tastes. It seems many of them wish TOS were never made, or I don’t know how they can view episodes like The Naked Time or TNG’s Naked Now.
I’m highly skeptical that that many of them even hate-watched the episode.
The folks who gave it 3s to 5s seem more likely to be considered views.
One thing that I loved is that the fact that that is so WEIRD is actually one of the major parts of the plot. I know other places like Buffy have done similar, but I feel like poking fun at the tropes of musical theater kind of enhances it for some people like me (I don’t HATE musicals, but I don’t love them either.)
The Enterprise crew even mentioned bunnies, Anya-from-Buffy’s nemeses, which was amazing!
I watched it twice, and I found it was better the second time! I think I needed the first watch to get over the cognitive dissonance. And then when I could settle in and shift my mental frame, I could just really enjoy it. That said, I also do like musicals…
While I think it was too early in the run for a musical episode, they pulled it off pretty well. Generally speaking, series should wait until at least season 5.
I suspect that there will be new characters and small subplots that will arise in future seasons that will never be set to music.
Ugh.
I was hoping the ST revival with all these shows would produce just one Alien of the Week shows like TOS and TNG. No season long arcs, no dramas where the events in the episode are less important than the character development. One show out of all of them where it can be tossed into syndication and I can catch a random episode and not have to remember anything else in the series.
SNW was supposed to be that and yet we get this kind of nonsense. /facepalm
Alien of the Week shows like TOS and TNG. No season long arcs, no dramas where the events in the episode are less important than the character development […] SNW was supposed to be that
I remember that during SNW’s development one of the producers explicitly stated that while the stories would be episodic, there would be character arcs that ran through the season. So SNW was never intended to be as standalone as TOS or TNG were.
Yeah I kept hoping when they said that they meant more like VOY or TNG but now that we get half as many episodes it’s just a natural result that the arcs are more prevalent. Sadly that was not the case.
I think it’s as alien of the week as we can get while still having meaningful character growth. Each episode is pretty well contained and can be enjoyed in a vacuum. Yes, you get more enjoyment from seeing the payoff of character arcs and relationships, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Even classic 90s Trek had season long arcs and rewarded viewers who joined in every week.
I think you’re missing that TOS and TNG were written as an episodic show and not typically as a serial. Aside from the faintest of arcs, that came via arc specific episodes, you could pick a random episode in syndication and it wouldn’t matter if you could name the previous or next episode as there wasn’t no need to connect them together. Many episodes were written by single episode writers who had the faintest notion of the show and that was all the was needed.
I don’t agree about the payoff for arcs in shows like SNW because the arc is both too controlling of the episodes while also never really being the point of the episode. If you’re going to do an serial drama then do that. Picard was that, you must watch in order and not miss any.
The arcs of TNG were sooooo faint you only knew about them if you chose to dig in deep to a handful of episodes in the season that specifically pushed the arc along. Otherwise you could take the middle 80% of episodes and scramble their order and absolutely nothing would change. Instead with SNW every other episode drops a new plot point for Pike’s dooms day, or Spok’s love life or what character died or went to another dimension, etc.
Character development in TNG was more about us learning about them than it was about having the characters grow. Again, you don’t have to see all the episodes in order to understand the intricacies of a character to understand why they acted the way they didn’t in a TNG episode. At best the growth was seasonal but even then it wasn’t massive. In SNW the character development is probably the biggest tie back to previous episodes.
The reason why I wanted another episodic ST was that I feel none of these shows have any rewatch abilities. We can binge the seasons before the next season starts but I don’t think it’s ever be sitting in a hotel room and turn on the TV and find an episode of SNW and care to watch it on its own. Though I guess that type of TV just doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe it’s just me who likes to flip on the TNG station on Pluto or turn on cable when I’m visiting my parents and watch a random episode and enjoy it without all the extra baggage. I need to finish the last season of Picard and I doubt I’ll ever watch it again. Same with Discovery.
Hey thanks for the well thought out and detailed reply.
As much as I don’t want to just say “well I guess we like different things” and just leave it at that, I think it does come down to how one defines episodic and rewatchable.
I think your hotel room example is a perfect example of this. I’d be very happy to put on a random episode of Strange New Worlds or Lower Decks in the same way I would with TOS, TNG, or VOY. The other shows (like Prodigy, Discovery, or Picard) I would want to rewatch the whole season to get the satisfying story (like DS9 or ENT).
I also think that you’re correct that character development in TOS was more about learning who the character was, rather than watching them grow. I feel TNG had character growth episode-to-episode but, like you said, I can see how it’s much more prevalent and important to the episodes in SNW.
Like I said, I hate saying this, but I think it just comes down to preference. I think I could watch a random episode of SNW and enjoy it the same way I would TNG or VOY. Maybe because I’ve already seen the episodes so I’m enjoying the alien of the week knowing that I don’t need to see the resolution of the season long arcs. For the same reasons, though, if I recommend TNG to a friend, I always recommend watching it in order, even from the really bad first couple seasons.
