Talking Sci-Fi — The Week That Was…
A few observations on the latest offerings from the teams behind Star Trek-Strange New Worlds and The Orville.
--
So far, I’ve enjoyed what I’ve been seeing from the new Star Trek series Strange New Worlds. The visuals are compelling, the stories are generally interesting on the whole and the acting is first rate. Even the background actors are worth their salt; whereas in the Original series, they’d be little more than attractive blocks of wood, set pieces to compliment the Kirk-Spock-McCoy holy trinity. This week though, I had a really hard time watching SNWs. I had to pause the video several times owing to how annoyed I was at the episode overall. I made it through despite that, however, but I just can’t abide when lack of imagination on the part of writers and producers leads to a rehash of tired and unimaginative tropes. I didn’t like it when Enterprise riffed on zombie movies in the third season nearly twenty years ago and I’m not happy that this week we were given what is essentially a retread of Ridley Scott’s Alien.
The Gorn are a fairly mysterious race as far as the visual side of Trek is concerned. Apart from a meager handful of appearances and references over the decades, very little on-screen information has been divulged about this particular reptilian species. So you can imagine how much of a revelation it is to finally learn that they reproduce by spitting on a chosen host organism, first, and then gestating inside the unwilling host until bursting through the skin to play a power game of dominance with their post-natal embryonic brethren before maturing into the monsters Kirk was forced to fight way back when in the glory days of bad acting and rubber costumes.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I can’t get into horror enough to appreciate the concept. That said, to me it’s just fucking lazy and I find it an insult that they used this particular trope to trim so much fat from the cast in the penultimate season 1 episode rather than making it the finale. It would have sucked either way but I can handle shit when it’s the last stinking barfly out the door… If it lingers before close, that’s no good.
The Orville was a much better, more emotionally relevant show this week. For one, it was near feature-length…
