You know…
I grew up with TNG; it’s always been my Star Trek; I spent much
of my childhood obsessed with it. And there I was, watching what
promised to be the Last! Appearance! by the TNG Crew! Ever!,
and I felt
nothing at all.
Nothing had any weight. The Borg Collective got blowed up real good,
but they’d already got blowed up real good 20 years ago, and last
season set up another, vastly more interesting version of the Borg
anyways if only anyone had bothered to mention them or anything else from the first two seasons,
so it means nothing. Nothing had any weight. No one even died. No one
even got meaningfully assimilated. Apparently you can just peel Borg
implants right off your face without, you know, bleeding to death or
ripping out a chunk of your brain. Someone should probably tell Seven of
Nine about that.
And now I’ve had a few hours to reflect upon it and what occurs to me is: I think I hate it. Yes, that sounds right. I hate it.
I mean, Nemesis gets a lot of sh*t, much of it deserved, but like…I actually cried during Nemesis. Nemesis
also had a fascinating nature-versus-nurture theme, which admittedly,
was a come-down from “All Good Things’…” promise of human transcendence,
but at least it was something! This just felt like empty
nostalgia calories, wrapped it a blanket with bathetic MCU quips. No
thought-provoking science fiction. No exploration of the human
condition. Just…bloodless violence for an hour.
And then I thought back to how this series started, my beautiful, flawed, Star Trek: Picard; and here I must admit that I’m one of those sad, lonely freaks who actually really liked the
first two seasons. I liked the weighty themes of living in the
cognizance of death, and the serious engagement with transhumanism.
Above all, I liked the characters. Elnor, Soji, Rios, and especially
Agnes. And then I thought: what an absolute Insult this season is! You
dump all of the characters and you can’t even be arsed to namedrop them. I mean, shit, there’s a reference to Chekov in
the first five minutes, but you can’t be arsed to reference any of the
characters whose series you hijacked? You have Raffi sparring with Worf
and she can’t even mention that her adopted son is a Romulan
swordsmaster? You have the Borg invading, and “no one’s seen them in
over ten years!” and you can’t be arsed to clarify why that Borg Queen
that we all saw Jurati turn into last season doesn’t count? Literally
the only allusion, anywhere, to any of the characters from the first two
seasons other than Raffi is Shaw telling everyone to “Forget that weird
shit on the Stargazer.” That weird shit. Yeah. One of the only
characters in all fiction that I’ve ever meaningfully identified with.
Thanks, Terry!
But, at the same time…what a gross insult to TNG! TNG, with
its humanist utopia and moral conundra and scientific grounding. TNG,
which, at its best, showed us what humanity could be; which challenged
us to see the world in new ways. Reduced to this. This hollow, plastic pile of rubbish.
But, hey; the reviews are positive! The series is in the top ten for
streaming! And a billion YouTube comments have already informed me that,
finally, REAL Star Trek is back! Forget “all that weird bullshit,” this is
what we, the fandom, wanted all along!
Anyways, can’t wait to see the next exciting installment of Star Trek: Funko Pop
