So, when I was growing up corporations were taking over major studios, and the formulation of film and TV went from showing how to behave, to showing how mental health was the cause of all problems, to hos not to behave, to how domestication was the solution for everything.
It's why soap operas are all but gone It's why original 1960s Star Trek and other TV shows and films had stronger stories. It's why there's so much junk produced today.
That includes this show. Huge production values but another complete trashing of what had been established in the form of a kind of reboot, but with a lot of female domestication flourishes to make the thing watchable by couples and even some single females. There're a lot of emotional flourishes here that really have absolutely nothing to do with the story.
I shouldn't get too upset. Film and TV are all about visual deception to tell a story, and so you get producers who keep thinking that if you dump more money and art direction into a project that that'll sell a show to a veteran and newer audience both. Make it look pretty and all will be forgiven. Make it sound good too and they'll love you.
In shows like Time Tunnel, I dream of Jeannie, Adam 12, The Rockford Files and so forth, the story took precedence over character. Men did not speak in hushed tones in a mock attempt to seduce the ladies, they spoke in clear tones. People who had issues either held it together for the sake of other characters or just let it out to further the actual plot and story, they didn't have their own dramatic moments to accentuate anything that might be afflicting the audience members.
And that's the difference not just between the old Star Trek TV show I loved in reruns in the 1970s and early 1980s, but the huge shift in media emphasis or story focus. In Strange New Worlds we have a female officer in the ship's luxuriant galley that looks like something out of Architectural Digest issue commenting on how delicious a slice of cake is, and talks to the captain in between mouthfuls. And again the plot is secondary. It's the personal issues of individual characters and their relationships that is the focus.
Oh sure, the uniforms look better, the actual ship has all kinds of detail touchups, but it's just mental health TV when original Star Trek was about addressing problems and plots that were the actual story, and any character issues were derived from that, they were not their own thing and given their moment in the spot light so that individual audience members with similar issues could feel momentarily important, nor so that older fans who stuck with this garbage could feel that their show was important; i.e. An ego-boost from a rebooted good looking show that was just the same old trash re-invented by sociologists.
And the reason I keep trashing more iterations of what used to be my favorite media property is because Star Trek was an adventure show whose emphasis was on solving plots, and presented what people thought a practical future might look like, not a future that people would like to see, complete with commentary on slices of chocolate cake made in the galley.
To me "Strange New Worlds" is just more therapy TV. Older TV shows showed people who had personal issues as part of the story, not as a tapestry of interpersonal interactions where every character had their moment for attention, and not the focus for a plot driven show.
Why on Earth these people just can't go back and make a simple adventure show with the old story format I'll never know. A good part of it is to cater to demographics, especially now since females have taken up what in my time would be called non-traditional roles; i.e. There're more female police, soldiers, even fire fighters and construction workers. But if a producer feels the need to alter an adventure show's format to make it more open to emotional interpretation, then maybe that show isn't worth making in the first place.
The first several minutes of an old school Star Trek TV show you knew the threat or dilemma Kirk and Crew were facing, even if it involved Captain Pike on some level. With this show I couldn't tell what the story was about until a full ten minutes into the thing, and by that time my eyes were heavy and I wanted to fall asleep.
Again, why people continually give praise to gloss is beyond me. The truth of the matter is that I understand that they are taken in by the costumes, the nebula in the space ships shots (which I made popular by fan fic I posted on the net), the sets, the delivery of dialogue ... but that's still not strong nor solid story material. It's gloss meant for all of the aforementioned reasons I put in this commentary.
Well, I've had enough of trying to give this media property second chances. I guess I'm all Trekked out. One of the many reasons I quit film and TV was because I did not understand the continued deception for formulating story material. As it turns out all of film and TV are mental health exercises. And where that's sort of always been kind of the case, prior to the corporate takeover in the 1970s emphasis was on story, not aggrandizing personal emotions and relationships. You took care of the problem first, and then relaxed with your favorite people afterwards.
In short, I can't take this junk anymore. At least it's not shot a-la Shaky-cam style to give it a faux documentary feel, that would have had me putting my foot through my TV.
