Media

The Capstone of Star Trek

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I haven’t been interested in anything Star Trek in years. I mean, we’re kinda Voyager here. Yes I’ve heard great things about Discovery, I can appreciate the ideas behind Strange New Worlds retro-forward work. It’s just that I’m tired of Star Trek despite the fact that like many a geek, it was formative in my life.

But now Trek seems over-saturated and overdone. I mean it’s not Star Wars level and definitely not Marvel, but you know, haven’t we kind have done all of this? Do we have to keep rehashing things? What the hell is up with the various Spock plots and time travel? Can’t we, I dunno, move on for awhile?

So you’d think I’d be incredibility indifferent to the animated Trek dramedy, Lower Decks. I mean I even tried to get into it twice, and though I appreciated it, the show just didn’t do it for me. Well, didn’t do anything until a friend got into it, and I gave it one more spin.

Then I was hooked. On a Star Trek show.

If you’re not familiar with Lower Decks – and maybe you are, it’s fine – it’s an animated half hour show set in “recent” Star Trek continuity, the 24th century of the imagined future. The show doesn’t involve glamorous front-line flagships, but the Cerritos, a class of starship used for support, transport, “second contact” and less spectacular activities. The story also focuses on four friends who are “Lower Deckers,” relatively new spacefarers of low rank stuck with uninteresting and menial tasks, even if those drag them into adventures.

It’s Star Trek from the bottom up, but it doesn’t stop there.

The show is steeped in Trek lore, sometimes carrying concepts and even entire past episodes to their logical-if-ridiculous conclusions. People are used to strange energies evolving others into insane gods or temporarily switching bodies. First contact with aliens has to be followed up by someone doing the real work of shuffling around annoying diplomats and hooking planets up to communications network. For that matter, what do you do with all those monomaniacal computers endlessly plaguing alien civilizations – oh and has anyone checked up on those societies lately?

It’s every Trek trope and plenty of obscure lore falling on capable-if-neurotic shoulders of the Lower Deckers and the Cerritos crew. In many ways it’s akin to the Venture Brothers, which seemed to be a parody of cartoons, but was more of a heartfelt homage. Lower Decks just operates with a more defined property, the entire Star Trek janky extended universe.

It’s probably the most Star Trek of any Star Trek if you get my drift. I enjoy it because it’s not just another Star Trek show but an extrapolation by some talented writers.. The decades of continuity sort of roll downhill to the back-of-the-line Cerritos and the Lower Deckers.

It’s a kind of capstone for Star Trek, summing so much if it up in a way both funny and sometimes touching.

However, when it is done, I also can’t see Star Trek interesting me again. Lower Decks really does feel like a capstone, that there’s nothing more to do beyond this. Maybe that’s why the fact there’s even a Lower Decks RPG resonated with me – it feels like Trek has been done so often it’s best in everyone’s hands.

Thus I approach Lower Decks with a kind of bitersweet sadness. I’ve got the same Trek rush I got with TOS and Net Gen – but also it’s the end of that as well. I also know people will try to keep Trek going as its an institution – I just won’t be interested.

But I’m glad to have Lower Decks as a way to rediscover and close out a love of Star Trek.

Steven Savage

Well At Least It’s Done And Quiet

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I’ve discovered some interesting “minichannels” online, New Ellijay and Retrostrange.  New Ellijay serves a local town as well as carries various shows and music.  Retrostrange digs into weird films, instructional videos, and more.  Both also carry old films and serials that are easy to get ahold of and broadcast due to being public domain, etc.

I find such things interesting because old and historical and odd media fascinate me.  However something else struck me about watching old movies and long-ago-ended television series.

They’re done.

The movies will not be part of a gigantic sprawling cinematic universe that both requires a flowchart and requires you to navigate angry fans wanting a director’s cut.  Oh they might get remade or something, but they’re done.

The television shows are over.  They’re not going to continue forever.  They’re not going to jump from streaming service to streaming service with their future uncertain.  You know what you’re getting, even if it’s frustrated at a sudden stop.

(My friends who are on a Columbo marathon probably appreciate this).

Right now in an age of remakes, cinematic universes, reboots, streaming-jumping, and more knowing something is finished is a great comfort.  You’re getting a certain predetermined experience then you can go on – you can even check online info to find what you’re getting into.

They’re also not being hyped.

You’re not listening to endless commentary about these old shows and films – unless you run into an obsessive fan.  You’re not facing trailers of trailers to remind you of trailers.  There’s no breathless news and updates about the properties dropping into your social media.

It’s refreshing to see things that aren’t being endlessly tossed against my consciousness like fastballs.

I get the other benefits of these channels and other services with older, “finished” properties.  It’s not just history and culture and curiosity, it’s a lack of some very annoying elements of our culture.

Steven Savage

Wondering How Long We’ll Care

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

We’ve got the SAG-AFTRA strike.  Big Studios and groups like Netflix seem to be very interested in replacing real people with AI – and we know they won’t stop no matter the deals made.  Ron Pearlman and Fran Drescher are apparently leading the Butlerian Jihad early.

As studios, writers, and actors battle I find myself caring about the people – but caring far less about the media produced.  There’s so many reasons not to care about Big Media.

You’d think I’d be thrilled to see Star Wars, Marvel Comics, and Star Trek everywhere!  But it’s so many things are omnipresent it sucks the oxygen out of the room.  Even when something is new, it can be overhyped.  If it’s not everywhere, it’s marketed everywhere and I get tired of it all.  Also damn, how much anime is there now?

The threat of AI replacing actors and writers removes that personal connection to actors and writers and creators.  There was already a gap anyway as groups of writers created shows and episodes, abstracting the connections with the creators.  The headlong rush into AI only threatens to make me care less – I can’t go to a convention and shake hands with a computer program or be inspired to write just as good as a program.

We have plenty of content made already anyway.  I could do with a good review of Fellini, maybe rewatch Gravity Falls again, and I recently threatened to watch all of One Piece for inexplicable reasons.  Plus of course I have tons of books.

Finally, there’s all sorts of small creators new and old I should take a look at.  Maybe I don’t need the big names anymore.  Hell, the small creators are easier to connect with.

Meanwhile all of the above complaints are pretty damned petty considering the planet is in a climate crisis and several countries are falling apart politically and economically.  I’m not going to care about your perfect AI show when the sky turns orange because of a forest fire.

I have a gut feel I’m not alone in the possibility of just kind of losing interest in the big mediascape.  We may have different triggers for giving up, but there’s a lot of possible triggers.  Plus, again, potential world crises create all sorts of possibilities.

Maybe that’s why the “Barbenheimer” meme was so joyful, with people discussing these two very different films as a kind of single phenomena.  It was spontaneous, it was silly, it was self-mocking.  Something just arose out of the big mediascape (and two apparently good films), a very human moment it seems we’re all too lacking.

Maybe it’s a reminder we can care about our media.  But it the chaotic times we face in a strange era of media, I wonder if we’ll remember it as a fond exception.

Steven Savage