By Chris Snellgrove
| Revealed
Star Trek followers have at all times loved the franchise’s techno-powered socialist utopia, so it’s solely becoming that the cancellation of Decrease Decks has revealed the most important lie of capitalism: when you construct it, they may come. That’s, we spend our lives being instructed 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 trendy Trekkers merely don’t 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 reveals Discovery and Decrease Decks, each of whom unexpectedly needed to make their fifth seasons into closing seasons. The chief assumption about Decrease Decks is that, regardless that it’s far cheaper to supply than reveals 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 youngsters’s tales like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, so I feel 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 previous lore that it disrupted present canon concerning all the pieces 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 somewhat than attempting 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 Era, which is only one cause why the primary two seasons had been a scorching mess. Solely after the failure of these earlier seasons did Paramount and Stewart give the followers what they needed, reworking season 3 right into a TNG reunion. Earlier than that killer closing season, although, Picard’s largest failing was that it stored attempting to do one thing utterly new as a substitute of specializing in what made its titular character so nice within the first place.
The following main Star Trek collection was Decrease Decks, and it managed to search out the Goldilocks stability followers craved. Each season was full of hilarious callbacks to beloved characters from Q to Harry Kim, and the present at all times had nice Easter eggs for older followers to understand (I nearly spit my drink out once I noticed the giant-sized skeleton of Spock Two, an obscure Animated Sequence character). On the identical time, the present launched wonderful new characters like Boimler and Mariner, proving that Decrease Decks, like Goldilocks’ most well-liked mattress, was “good” in its potential to deal with one thing previous and one thing new on the identical time.
So A lot Potential
One other factor the present acquired “good” 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 huge methods (I notably cherished the return of Nick Locarno). And the collection finale ended with Starfleet having a secure 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 through the unique 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. Actually, if Star Trek is all about Infinite Range in Infinite Mixtures, Decrease Decks deserves a everlasting place in Stovokor for being the one NuTrek present (sorry, Unusual New Worlds) to totally embrace this Vulcan excellent.
Sadly, the untimely cancellation of the present implies that the fandom both doesn’t recognize the most effective that NuTrek has to supply or, worse but, has no concept what it actually desires 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 cause) ignoring a confirmed, fan-favorite system 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 convey Mike McMahan’s pioneering present again in a single kind or one other with the intention to get our favourite sci-fi universe again on monitor. In any other case, the phrase “Star Trek Into Darkness” gained’t merely describe the franchise’s worst movie. It would additionally describe precisely how Gene Roddenberry’s universe dies within the arms of careless executives who can not cease failing the fandom.
