Strange New Worlds – Season 3

Well that was something of a mess. I gather that the production of this season was heavily impacted by a strike in Hollywood and a certain amount of pantsing on the part of the production team was required. The result was a highly episodic season with each episode having a very distinct flavour. Weird one-off episodes have been a thing in Trek for a long time, but in this season they became very much the main thing.

The trouble with this sort of thing is that if every episode seems like it comes from a different show, just with the same cast, then almost everyone is going to find something in the season that they really dislike. Personally I hate the Holodeck, and I also very much disliked what was done to poor Dana Gamble. Your mileage may differ.

There was some continuity and character development, which seemed to work. Both Kirk and Scott are learning a lot about working in Starfleet, and becoming friends, which works well within the remit of Strange New Worlds. I’m disappointed that we haven’t seen anything of McCoy yet, but there is another season to come.

The other character arcs worked less well. I was unimpressed with the Marie Batel saga, and I am very confused by the Ortegas-Gorn thing which was set up to be something huge and then seemed to get forgotten.

The ‘Four and a Half Vulcans’ episode was particularly silly, relying as it did on the idea that Vulcan character is somehow encoded in Vulcan DNA, and that anyone injected with Vulcan DNA would immediately take on the worst aspects of Vulcan culture. However, the suggestions I saw on social media that this episode was intended to me some sort of metaphor for trans people seems equally silly. The whole TERF argument is that, no matter what you inject trans people with, you can’t change their fundamental nature.

Anyhow, I cancelled my Paramount+ subscription after Bari Weiss was put in charge of CBS. There are further Star Trek shows planned. At least we should get season 4 of Strange New Worlds, and the new Starfleet Academy show. But given the current political climate in the USA I suspect that they will not be much like the Trek we know and love.