By Chris Snellgrove
| Printed 10 seconds in the past
Star Trek followers have all the time loved the franchise’s techno-powered socialist utopia, so it’s solely becoming that the cancellation of Decrease Decks has revealed the largest lie of capitalism: should you construct it, they are going to come. That’s, we spend our lives being advised that being profitable is only a matter of demonstrating your expertise and doing an superior job. For this Star Trek fan, Decrease Decks was a virtually good present, however its cancellation reveals two bitter truths: being nice doesn’t translate to being worthwhile, and fashionable Trekkers merely do not know what they need.
Do Followers Need Star Trek: Decrease Decks?
Paramount has been understandably detest to debate the numbers that motivated them to prematurely cancel Star Trek exhibits Discovery and Decrease Decks, each of whom unexpectedly needed to make their fifth seasons into last seasons. The chief assumption about Decrease Decks is that, although it’s far cheaper to supply than exhibits like Unusual New Worlds, it wasn’t getting sufficient views or driving sufficient new subscribers to Paramount+. And whereas Paramount’s poor dealing with of the NuTrek space is partially accountable, I can’t assist however suppose my fellow followers simply don’t know what they actually need for this franchise.
Star Trek characters like Michael Burnham are fond of kids’s tales like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, so I believe it’s solely becoming to view Decrease Decks by way of one other kiddie fable: Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Whereas Discovery ended sturdy, it initially put new followers off by focusing a lot on outdated lore that it disrupted current canon relating to every part from the Klingons to Spock’s tangled household tree. Put merely, early Discovery stumbled as a result of it tried to focus an excessive amount of on acquainted characters and occasions quite than making an attempt one thing new.
By comparability, Picard had the other drawback. Patrick Stewart himself reportedly needed this present to keep away from too many connections to The Subsequent Technology, which is only one purpose why the primary two seasons had been a sizzling mess. Solely after the failure of these earlier seasons did Paramount and Stewart give the followers what they needed, remodeling season 3 right into a TNG reunion. Earlier than that killer last season, although, Picard’s largest failing was that it saved making an attempt to do one thing utterly new as an alternative of specializing in what made its titular character so nice within the first place.
The subsequent main Star Trek sequence was Decrease Decks, and it managed to seek out the Goldilocks stability followers craved. Each season was stuffed with hilarious callbacks to beloved characters from Q to Harry Kim, and the present all the time had nice Easter eggs for older followers to understand (I nearly spit my drink out after I noticed the giant-sized skeleton of Spock Two, an obscure Animated Sequence character). On the similar time, the present launched wonderful new characters like Boimler and Mariner, proving that Decrease Decks, like Goldilocks’ most popular mattress, was “excellent” in its potential to deal with one thing outdated and one thing new on the similar time.
So A lot Potential
One other factor the present received “excellent” was discovering a candy spot between delivering foolish comedy and creating killer canon. Every episode of Decrease Decks delivered its share of lighthearted laughs, however the present was by no means afraid to alter canon up in massive methods (I significantly beloved the return of Nick Locarno). And the sequence finale ended with Starfleet having a steady wormhole to the multiverse, which is kind of an open invitation for future Trek writers to go completely wild with all that juicy narrative potential.
As a Star Trek fan who fell in love with the franchise in the course of the authentic run of TNG, “potential” is the phrase I most affiliate with Decrease Decks. The present lived as much as all of its potential after which some, combining side-splitting comedy with thrilling tales that stretched the boundaries of this franchise. Truthfully, if Star Trek is all about Infinite Range in Infinite Combos, Decrease Decks deserves a everlasting place in Stovokor for being the one NuTrek present (sorry, Unusual New Worlds) to totally embrace this Vulcan preferrred.
Sadly, the untimely cancellation of the present signifies that the fandom both doesn’t recognize the most effective that NuTrek has to supply or, worse but, has no thought what it actually needs from this venerable franchise. Star Wars understandably will get warmth for its failure to ship what followers need, however the common assumption is that Disney execs are (for no matter purpose) ignoring a confirmed, fan-favorite method in favor of cramming their very own model of motion figure-optimized content material down our throats.
Nonetheless, Star Trek is now in a far worse place the place seemingly no person is aware of what they need from this franchise, and a world the place followers have rejected Decrease Decks is one the place the franchise is doomed to die a gradual dying. Hopefully, Paramount will carry Mike McMahan’s pioneering present again in a single kind or one other to be able to get our favourite sci-fi universe again on monitor. In any other case, the phrase “Star Trek Into Darkness” received’t merely describe the franchise’s worst movie. It’ll additionally describe precisely how Gene Roddenberry’s universe dies within the fingers of careless executives who can not cease failing the fandom.
