Comment on "Star Trek is dying." How would you sell it to a younger audience?
ICastFist@programming.dev 1 week ago
Star Trek was never a show for kids, so it’s not surprising kids don’t know about it. Star Wars and Harry Potter were for kids
Star Trek has always been more about solving things without violence when possible, which means action sequences don’t happen often, so a significant portion of people won’t find any interest in it.
To me, personally, Trek fails at simply not having “anything really going on”. I don’t know about more recent Trek shows, but there’s never anything that feels like a real threat, or any threat that goes beyond 2 episodes. Some of the exploration feels like “Oh, we’re just fucking bored, I guess, let’s see what we can find over that star system”, everything feels unbelievably safe. Sure, Kardassian assholes might capture you and torture you for shits and giggles, you never know when something with literal godlike powers might decide to show up and challenge the crew out of boredom, but that’s not a risk you’re at while exploring a weird world or solving a Sherlock mystery in the holodeck. For comparison: Battlestar Galactica had a permanent worry about (lack of) resources, being a fleet on the run with a single military ship to protect it against an overwhelming enemy and an “anyone could be a sleeping agent of the enemy” conflict. Not everything BSG did was good, but that overall setting and premise permeated everything.
Put another way, what would be the most common answer to “What is Star Trek about?”
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
I’d say it’s about a lovely utopia where everyone is equal, money and poverty are gone and progression of humanity itself became the main driving force of everyone.
Besides that it’s about many encounteers with new species, discoveries, ethical and moral questions that are (tried to be) solved for the good of everyone. It’s conversation, not conflict. It’s discovery, not extinction. It’s fairness, not exploitation. Et cetera.
And I’d counter your argumrnt. There always is some looming threat. Voyager has a gazillion of enemies, the ever hanging threat of never coming back home and being stranded for good. TNG had…well…the Borgs? Sure, there are many soap-opera-moments, like the sherlock Holmes holodeck filler-episodes, but they’re not defining elements I’d say.
Star wars is like a western in space. Pew pew instead of bang bang. No wonder it’s so much more loved than trek.