Let's face it, apart from nostalgia, season 3 was also pretty bad. I couldn't believe they did the long-lost son thing for the third time (Kirk, then Picard, then Picard again), then did a bait-and-switch Borg thing which still doesn't make sense. It was nice to see some of the Enterprise D crew reunite and give the fans some closure, even if the writers ignored years of character development, in some cases.
It was the season that convinced me Kurtzman era trek is inherently problematic. Despite not enjoying Discovery I never really considered the era bad or anything, it was just stumbling blocks and such. Somewhere in that second season, as the credits rolled on an episode, it all hit me: I don’t like Kurtzman Trek and it’s all been a somewhat deeply felt disappointment to me.
That being said, I think Kurtzman era has the opposite curse from Burman … the first seasons are the best.
I think, apart from the spore drive stuff (seriously, I tried a rewatch and couldn’t get passed it’s proper introduction) Disco S1 kicks ass.
And Picard S1, or at least its premise and first few episodes, is the best new-Trek that’s been made, by a long shot. Unfortunately the season faltered because it tried to do too much and made some unfortunate mistakes (British Romulan seduction plot, evil British romulan sister, romulan spy as admiral, more Raffi and less Laris, unfortunately I think Raffi is at the heart of the shoe going wrong … she and laris should have been folded into a single character). But otherwise, it brought Trek forward into a new direction with enough nostalgia to get us oldies into it.
SNW is great, but ultimately, since S1, it’s becoming a TOS prequel verging on reboot now. For that reason, however good S2 was, I feel like on rewatch I’m not going to be able to ignore the amount of Kirk in it. And even apart from that, and I’m saying this as someone who loves it, it’s ultimately more nostalgic than Picard. Returning to the tried and true vibe isn’t a good sign IMO. Think of DS9 and even TNG and what they did relative to what came before.
I didn’t like Discovery or Picard right from the beginning I admit, I’ve never been a huge fan of NuTrek, but SNW, Lower Decks and Prodigy are decent shows, but nowhere near TOS and TNG era Trek IMO
Oh lower decks is a different beast all together. It’s great, and not coincidentally Kurtzman doesn’t have anything to do with it, AFAICT. Haven’t seen prodigy apart from first couple of episodes. But I can see it being good in ways different from the rest of Kurtzman trek.
Prodigy gets more star treky later on and actually has the most coherent season arc of the Kurtzman era (it introduces an actually interesting new species)
SNW is leagues better than other nuTrek, but I still find myself wishing that it would dial back the quirky millennial dialog.
When somebody in Star Trek says “cool” they’d better be talking about a temperature.
I found it really weird in the Lower Decks crossover episode how the LD characters lampshaded how slowly everyone in the SNW era talks, because the SNW characters don’t have that slower stage acting delivery that’s been throughout the rest of Trek.
Otherwise, I do appreciate mostly SNW’s design choices. I like M’Benga being an actual character (even if I think the details are sometimes mishandled) and I like the complete re-imagining of Nurse Chapel.
Number Two openly being an augment in Starfleet so early in the timeline feels really weird. I know it was supposed to be uplifting, but it makes Bashir’s problems in DS9 so strange.