Star Trek: Discovery

It's been a long time since I last posted here. To think that it all began because I was conducting my own personal philosophical research, since I used to study philosophy at university. It all culminated in the decision that I had nothing to contribute. I had original contributions that had been recognised in my Honours and Masters theses. But I think you need to be in that sort of thing full-time in order to contribute, and employment prospects in that field are bleak. At least they were when I enquired near the end of my Masters thesis, and I can only assume they still are now.

It helps me justify the time I spend reading and watching videos online if I write something about it. Writing something about it will help me know what I think of it. It's easy for me to love something but then have no defence against it when other people start talking about how bad it is. There are other things that I find are very popular but I cannot justify the high rating some websites give them. It's easy to think that other people writing things do not know what they are talking about. Maybe I will have more of an opinion, and can defend it better, if I write a few things myself.

Take Star Trek. I was utterly dismayed to read that Star Trek is not cool, and I regard the rebooted films as an attempt to make it more cool, in the process completely blanding it out. To me the original series was always a show about ideas, but these are all just other movies, Melrose Place in space. That to me is not cool. I'm sure they could make more money out of it if they chanked it through the same sausage factory as most soulless Hollywood movies in this day and age. But I prefer something that actually makes you think. And I'm hopeful enough to think that you can make money out of doing that, even if it's not obscene amounts of money. 

So I viewed Star Trek: Discovery with a great deal of anticipation. Not because I was a diehard fan of the TV series before it. I loved the original series when I was a child, but I loved Gilligan's Island when I was a child too, so that doesn't mean anything. I liked The Next Generation, and I definitely got the Star Trek experience from watching it, but it was easy to find fault with it if you wanted. For me, Deep Space Nine was easily the best of the Treks because of its depth and complexity. I enjoyed about the first half of the Voyager series before stopping watching it out of boredom. I gave Enterprise a try over a few episodes, but I decided it was blanded out, and I hated the theme song. 

But this is the Golden Age of Television. I have noticed ever since Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and House of Cards that television is generally better written and produced than the movies. This was echoed in an interview with Kevin Spacey:

“I was lucky to get into film at a time (the 1990s) that was very interesting for drama,” Spacey said. “But if you look now, the focus is not on the same kind of films that were made in the 90s. When I look now, the most interesting plots, the most interesting characters, they are on TV.”

They are for me too. The most movies I see are when I go out with a friend to see one, but it's more to engage with him than because the film is much more than a feast for the eyes. My brain gets stimulated far more by the television I watch.

And that's why I can't wait to see what the Golden Age of Television does with Star Trek. CBS All Access has the budget to do the science fiction justice. I just hope they have the writers that can do so as well.