Calm Down Cody | May 2024 |Make Star Trek Legacy, You Cowards
Editor’s Note: There is extreme irony in this being the topic Cody chose to write about and be published on “May The Fourth [be With You]” but hey, that’s Cody for you. Live Long and Prosper!
It has been a year.
Make “Star Trek: Legacy”, you cowards.
I have not been as thrilled with any Geek-Based Franchise as I was with “Picard" Season 3 since Luke Skywalker went down that hallway in “The Mandalorian.” It is hard to believe that it has already been a year since the Cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” went on one last ride, but I recently rewatched the finale, and dang:
It still holds up.
We live in the age of Franchise Storytelling.
So many of the financial underpinnings of TV and film have been under attack thanks to the streaming revolution, and traditional studios are increasingly reluctant to greenlight any projects that do not have a built-in audience. It is why two of the tentpoles of Disney+ are Marvel and Star Wars. Max is recommitting to the Harry Potter Franchise. Paramount has put effort into the Star Trek Franchise, and "the Kevin Costner is an Angry Cowboy TV Universe" (Yellowstone, if you do not get the joke).
Look, as much as we complain that it degrades the art of cinema and TV.... at the end of the day, these companies are businesses. They are there to make money, and if something works, then why not? I think too many people forget the hard reality that those who steward our favorite stories have a fiduciary duty to make a profit first and foremost. It is not “bad” or “good”; it just “is.”
With that comes dangers. A danger that Star Trek was one of the first to learn back in 2005: Franchise fatigue.
When you play in the same sandbox for so long, you start churning material for contractual obligation, not for the passion that initially animated the creators. Trek first experienced that at the tail end of “Voyager” and certainly through “Enterprise.” We are seeing that again and again in the industry. Star Wars seems to be sputtering; Marvel is directionless; Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts fizzled out when the magic chicken-deer bowed before Dumbledore (more on that on Potter+).
When Trek came back in 2009 with the JJ Abrams films and then to TV with “Star Trek: Discovery,” they were met with mixed results among the fandom. 2009's Star Trek was basically JJ's Demo Tape for “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens,” and all the Trekkies saw right through that. (I loved it for that reason, but I am a “Wars” guy above all). Generally well received with mass audiences, panned by the hardcore fans.
2017 gave us the return of Star Trek to the small screen with “Discovery,” and well... there is a reason my first post was geared towards encouraging you to avoid social media. Regardless of what you think about “Discovery,” that cast does not deserve the abuse they receive online. I got back into Star Trek with “Picard” Season 1 and kept with it through Season 2 because I love seeing Patrick Stewart do his thing. But my throughline with those seasons is this: they were great movies unnecessarily stretched to ten episodes. Star Trek had only been back for 3-4 years by then, and even then, they felt rudderless.
It was not until Anson Mount captained a Pre-Kirk Enterprise armed with a winning smile and amazing hair that the Paramount+ era of Star Trek started to "feel" like Star Trek. Watching “Strange New Worlds,” I started to understand what was missing from this new era of Star Trek.
It had been decades since we had seen Trek do some trekking in a way that actually moved the story forward.
So long that the original recipe, if you will, feels fresh.
Since “The Next Generation” went off the air in 1994, we had “Deep Space Nine,” which is notable because it DID NOT do trekking. “Voyager” was Star Trek, where instead of boldly going out, they were boldly going home. “Enterprise” was a prequel that unfortunately suffered the curse of prequel writing (see Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Hobbit for further examples).
“Picard” Seasons 1 and 2 was notable because it was the first Star Trek story since 2002 that moved the timeline forward. But it was an experimental story where they were NOT trying to make “TNG” Season 8; frankly... did not work. There was good stuff to be had (the death of Q 😭😭😭😭😭😭), but it was frankly a muddled mess that a lot of these streaming shows fall victim to. Season 3 has been accused of being fanservice.
Sure, but as a fan... I did not care 🤷🏻♂️
Seeing the Enterprise D again, the crew around a conference room, the gorgeous theme from Jerry Goldsmith, and seeing that old crew go on one last ride together after being denied the proper send-off in Star Trek Nemesis was exquisite.
[This might be another post in the making, but Season 3 did what Star Wars episodes 7-9 should have done. It no longer tried to "deconstruct" the heroes; it let them be heroes one last time and pass the baton to the "NEXT Next Generation." What deconstruction there was (cough Crusher cough) was successfully rebuilt because when that crew is together, they become the best versions of themselves.]
How Star Trek Picard ended, with the son of Picard boarding the Enterprise-G ready to go boldly like his father before him, is the PERFECT way to move the Star Trek story forward.
For those of you who do not know, “Star Trek: Legacy” is the proposed spin-off of Picard that would follow many of the children of the TNG crew (as well as new characters) under Captain "Seven of Nine" from Star Trek Voyager on the USS Enterprise-G. Terry Matalas - Picard's showrunner - ended “Picard” Season 3 by begging Paramount to let them make it.
It gives us the tentpole Enterprise story - Star Trek's bread and butter - which has not been seen since 1994.
It is looking forward instead of looking backward, like Strange New Worlds, while still paying respect to the past.
If Star Trek is going to survive, it needs to move forward with the timeline instead of trying to fill in unnecessary gaps. “Strange New Worlds” only has a limited runway. Eventually, we have to get to the original series timeline. “Legacy” is the most obvious story to tell in the streaming era of Star Trek, which has all of it at our fingertips. The fact that it was not greenlit the day “Picard” Season 3 ended is absurd.
With “Legacy,” the universe is open to us once more, and I think it is time to boldly go where no one has gone before, once more.
-Cody, calmer.
