Star Trek: Strange New Worlds just started.
Only 2 episodes in, but I really like what I'm seeing so far. Epic stakes of civilizations being wiped out and wars being started, but the crew handles it all with calm professionalism in way that reminds me of the classic Star Trek shows, and has been missing from the more recent series.
I love this new incarnation of Trek. It's very understandable (to me) that they'd whiff a little with Discovery -- it really just needed to do better than Enterprise did, and so far it's succeeding in that. There's a lot of things that I like and dislike about Disco.
BUT
I'm a 60s-Star-Trek-only kind of jerk and it's because they made episodes that spoke to real problems that people were having at the time that the show was written. Also because of the bizarre camp and costuming that pervaded the series. I was really worried that they would take
Strange New Worlds and use it as an opportunity to not have queers and Black people and women on their show anymore, but that hasn't happened. They are going for broke and pushing the envelope regarding the kinds of stories they want to tell and the things they want to do, PLUS the show has humor, PLUS there's even a little camp. As a treat.
Additionally, they ended up making Una heavily trans-coded via the Illyrian story line and showed some of the emotions that go with that on the screen in a relatable way. I was so grateful and happy because they managed to talk about the problem in a way that wasn't going to net the ire and disruption of displaying an actual trans actor, but still showed they had learned a lot about writing trans people from Disco.
I thought I was gonna hate it, but man ... it's my new favorite thing and I'm willing to pay for a subscription indefinitely if they'll keep making it for me. $2.50 a week to see Cadet Uhura and friends go on adventures? Anytime! Anywhere!
I normally pay as little as possible for TV but I'm committing to stop mainlining media that teaches me to hate myself, which sometimes means you're going to have to fork over some funds. Yes. I dunno. It's a huge relief to have an hour every week that I'm excited about.