The Disco Era is Still Reverberating

I’ve seen a few videos and articles going around bitching about the current state of Star TrekOriginally conceived as "Wagon Train in Space", Star Trek was released during the height of the Hollywood Western film and TV boom. While the concept CBS originally asked for had a western vibe, it was the smart, intellectual stories set in a future utopia of science and exploration that proved vital to the series' long impact on popular culture.. This all has come about because of the release of Star Trek: Section 31, the new made-for-streaming film that also has the distinction of being the lowest rated Star Trek production ever released. It’s apparently so bad, so poorly written, so awful in execution that all of the internet has joined together (when not discussing fears about the Trump administration) to kick this stupid little film while it’s down. If you can’t spend all day hating Trump, and need a change of pace, may as well go hate on Star Trek.

I’m not here to defend Section 31, nor am I here to hate it. I still have yet to watch the thing, in part because I can’t seem to find the motivation just yet to spend watching something I know is going to be bad (especially as I spend all my time already doing that watching terrible The Land Before Time sequels). But the fact of that master is that for all its high points – Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks – the franchise as a whole has been wildly uneven in the DISCO era. We’ve seen five series and two shows, with another proposed series and a prequel film supposedly in the works. The franchise feels a touch rudderless, maybe a little too wide and meandering, and the question becomes: how do you right the ship?

Well, there are a couple of ways to do it. The first is simply to focus on the shows that actually did work and find ways to continue the series in the right direction. Right now we have two winners from the DISCO era (i.e. Discovery production era) that were great and could be continued in some way. One of the two, Lower Decks, might seem some kind of loose continuation with series star Tawny Newsome supposedly working on a Star Trek comedy series. Maybe it’s a Lower Decks continuation, maybe it’s just a comedy set in the universe. Not much is known about that just yet, but we shall see.

The other successful show is Strange New Worlds and, honestly, the ability to continue onwards from that show is hard. It’s a prequel to The Original Series that is very much bound in place by plot constraints. At a certain point Captain Pike (played by Anson Mount) has to die so the ship is passed off to Captain Kirk. And we’ve already seen Captain Kirk’s adventures in The Original Series and beyond. Unless they do some weird time travel shenanigans (which they kind of already are, but not to that extent) then we know how things will end and that the show can’t go on past a certain point.

Now, you could do the same kind of show just with a different ship and crew. Maybe the continuing voyages of the Enterprise-B after Star Trek: Generations. Or you could cover the early adventures of the Enterprise-C before it appeared in The Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. I actually would have suggested that without hesitation, except a young version of her captain, Rachel Garett, shows up in Section 31 and is apparently so poorly written that I don’t think any fan wants to see her again anytime soon. A pity, really, as I think you could get a similar “we know where this is going so let’s see how the tension of the inevitable end plays out” vibe that could have added an interesting element to an Enterprise-C show.

Of course, a different way to play it is to do a full reboot. Supposedly Paramount has one of those in the works, with a Star Trek: Origins that might retell the first contact between Earth and the Vulcans and spin out a new set of adventures from there. Of course, we already discussed in the past how that’s a truly stupid idea as we basically already have that story and it’s called Star Trek: Enterprise. Meanwhile, if you do a full reboot set in a different universe, then you already have the Kelvin universe that could be fully explored on its own since we’ve only had three movies set in that universe (with maybe a fourth at some point if Paramount ever greenlights it) and a whole range of places that film series could go. Why reboot when that universe is still there, ready to be explored?

It really does feel like the team in charge of Star Trek, specifically Alex Kurtzman who has been working on the franchise since he was a writer on the Star Trek 2009 reboot, doesn’t really know what the hell they’re doing. They have one success they’re proud of, Strange New Worlds, and a second that they supposedly hated, Lower Decks (which is that that series, despite being cheaper to make and having a loyal audience, was canceled). Nothing else has landed with the same audience and fan approval as those two shows and, now, they have an outright failure on their hands with Section 31.

It’s hard to state just how incredibly poorly that film actually performed. It has a 17% critics score and an even worse 16% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s actually an impressive feat for a few reasons. The first is that, generally, audiences are more forgiving than critics, so for the viewers to hate it even more than the paid professionals actually says something. Beyond that, its ratings put it below every other Star Trek show and movie, even the ones that were, at the time, considered the worst. Star Trek: Nemesis out-performs with a 38% critics and 49% audience score. Enterprise has a 56% critic and a whopping 80% audience score. While those have been out while and so their scores could get better over time, while Section 31 is new and getting shit on left, right, and center, it’s still hard to see how that film can manage to get up to either of those shows, even just for the audience scores.

Reportedly it’s also not doing well when it comes to actually watch ratings. People aren’t tuning in, and those that do tune regularly don’t finish it. Supposedly the film had a budget of two streaming Star Trek episodes, which would put it between $15 Mil and $20 Mil to produce, and even if that’s lower than what it would cost to make a full blow, theatrically released film, that’s still got to be a hit to Paramount, their bottom line, and their ambitions. Other films, like a Picard spin-off movie, were proposed by Kurtzman for streaming, and now it’s doubtful that those films will take off, let alone any Section 31 sequels that no one asked for. And all this for a budget that could have made another two, three, or more seasons of Lower Decks. It does make you wonder just what the creative heads behind this project were thinking.

Kurtzman. I’m looking at you, Kurtzman. You were dedicated to this project, desperate to get a dark and gritty Star Trek: Section 31 series into production, and everyone at Paramount (reportedly) was cold to the idea, only warming up to it once Michelle Yeoh won an Oscar and was suddenly a bankable A-list star tied to a Star Trek contract. You should have listened to them early on and just dropped this whole idea instead of trying to cram it into a poorly made, poorly written film. It seems like no one wanted this, and the results speak for themselves.

So we go back to our original question: where does Star Trek go from here? I don’t think we need to reboot as we have plenty of time in two different universes that we could explore without having to deal with legacy characters, rebooted storylines, or anything like that. The U.S.S. Discovery jumped from the 23rd century into the 32nd, and that means that even if we leave all of the 24th and 25th centuries behind, so as to avoid any legacy characters whatsoever, we still have a span of 500 years we could play in and document the franchise. Sure, if we try to avoid “The Burn”, which destroyed most of the Federation in 3069 AD, that’s still well over 300 years that could have so many new shows and concepts put together for fresh ideas and forward looking adventures. Ir we could jump even further ahead, to the 33rd century and beyond. There are possibilities that could write themselves.

Plus, again, the whole Kelvin universe is there for the taking. Over on the podcast we discussed doing more stories set in the Kelvin universe, with maybe a set of films exploring Bajor, perhaps contacting the Federation earlier than in the main timeline, looking for protection from the Cardassians. That’s a storyline with potential to reexamine a storyline we know from a new, fresh perspective, and I’m sure creative people could find all kinds of other stories like that set in the Kelvin universe. Its very existence allows for all kinds of potential ideas that, so far, Paramount hasn’t been bothered to even come up with. If two dude fucking around on a podcast could come up with cool Kelvin ideas, surely paid writers with the studio could.

Star Trek is full of potential, but more than anything it’s clear that Paramount needs to get new people with new ideas to tap into the franchise properly. A new creative team, allowed to explore their own version of the universe, free of continuity constraints (either by setting the show in an unexplored time period or over in the Kelvin universe) could do wonders. But stop with all the crap that isn’t working. Keep Strange New Worlds going since it’s a success, drop all of Kurtzman’s other terrible ideas, and bring in a new squad to work their magic. Honestly, it couldn’t be much worse than the tragedies were getting now and, likely, it would be a lot better.

In the meanwhile, I’ll find time to finally watch Section 31. I’m sure it’s going to be an absolute chore. Stay tuned…