Recent Treks

We’re just entering the third month of a three-month deal on Paramount+ - once again, I took out a subscription to catch up on the various Star Trek series, timed to coincide with the new season of “Strange New Worlds”. (We also took the opportunity to watch two other films, one of which was okay and the other was disastrously poor.)

Looking at those new Treks, then…

Discovery

The oldest of the three, and indeed the reason we first subscribed to Netflix back in the day, “Star Trek: Discovery” had its fifth and final season. Which is fine, all apart from the finale. That final episode was an utter mess, although in fairness to them that seems to be a consequence of an unexpected cancellation – the final episode of the season turned out to be the final episode of the series.

I know Discovery is not generally regarded all that well these days, but I’ve always found it okay – it suffers from starting with a glimpse of a show I’d really rather watch, but does well in presenting the show itself. That said, it’s the weakest of the three seasons I’ve been watching.

Lower Decks

The fifth and final season of Star Trek’s animated series continues in the rich vein of form of this series. I suspect this was a good time for the show to end, as various things were starting to wear a bit thin. But this was a strong season to go out on. And, unlike Discovery, they had plenty of time to construct a finale that does a really good job of wrapping things up.

Strange New Worlds

I don’t have much to say about this season (which is still ongoing), except to note that SNW remains uniformly excellent. This is the show that justifies the subscription to Paramount+. Good stuff.

Section 31

Conversely, this made-for-TV movie is just terrible. Which is a real shame – while I’m no great fan of the whole concept of S31 in-universe, I am a big fan of Michelle Yeoh, and her turn as Empress Philippa Georgiou is usually a lot of fun. But the abridged runtime here really doesn’t give the story any time to breathe, the rest of the characters are really not great (and the presence of Rachel Garrett is especially grating). Such a shame.

All in all, Star Trek has been doing pretty well lately, though I do note that three of the four things I list are ended, while the fourth is ending soon. And I find I’m really not struck by any of their upcoming projects, be they in film or TV, and the prime, mirror, or Kelvin universes.