It was alright

Let me be clear: the second season of SNW was a step backwards. It did some things right. It expanded Rebecca Romijn’s Una Chin-Riley, a character that was essentially a non-factor in the first season. And Paul Wesley appears to be stepping into the role of James T. Kirk admirably. But showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Meyers ultimately dropped by the ball by trying to do too much.

Don’t get me wrong, Star Trek, in many ways, encourages genre-hopping. That’s the wonderful thing about science fiction. It can be a courtroom drama, western, musical, etc. and no one will bat an eye. The problem is that old Star Trek use to air 900 episodes a season. Current Trek can only do 10. It’s disorienting to have one episode establish a main character as a war criminal and then make the next episode an over-the-top musical.

Moreover, there’s the problem of Captain Pike and Starfleet competency. I understand that they want to make Pike a more laidback Captain as compared to other Starfleet legends like Kirk and Picard. But Trek fans like seeing their Captains be competent and fully in charge. There’s a reason why Captain Shaw from Picard was such a hit. That dude was a hardass disciplinarian. We LOVED watching him put Picard and Riker, two beloved heroes in the Trekverse, in their place. Pike isn’t Shaw, obviously, but it would be refreshing to see Pike be a more commanding presence (which is why it might be a mistake giving Kirk an expanded role in the series).

With Kirk, Uhura, Spock, Chapel, and Scotty now introduced to the show, it’s now only a matter of time before McCoy, Sulu, and maybe Chekhov are brought on. So it’s gonna piss me off if they try to remake TOS, UNLESS they skip over those three years and go straight on into The Ongoing Mission, which finishes up Kirk and Spock’s original five-year mission then leads right up to The Motion Picture. In fact, this will almost certainly happen.