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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Star Trek
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I watched the first season and liked it. The fan service didn't feel so bad (I enjoyed it!). Season twos portrayal by half way through of an old enemy felt too casual to me and I tapped out. Is season 3 worth a whirl of two stopped me?
Season 3 is literally just fan service. They reused the V'Ger sound/theme for the enemy. They brought back a character from another show in the franchise. They brought back a character who appeared in two whole episodes of TNG. Large parts of the sound design were lifted from the TNG-era series. Seriously, almost as much fan service as Lower Decks.
Honestly with the train wreck that was Seasons 1 and 2, going full fan service was about the only path forward for the last season. I liked Season 3, but it certainly was NOT original.
As for Lower Decks.....brah.....how is Lower Decks fan service? There are references and stuff, but its got its own vibe now going on.
To be fair, I haven't watched the latest season of LD, but up to that point, it really was "get this reference? See? Giant Spock's skeleton! Remember this energy being that escaped the Enterprise-D?" However, I went into LD knowing that that was what I was going to be getting, and while I won't say it's my favorite nu-Trek series, I do really enjoy it.
It definitely has some inside jokery going on and references to other shows, but I'd argue it's more organically done than just calling it "fan service". It's also a comedy SciFi, so I feel like it has more leeway than I'd give most shows, though.
The show has progressively become it's own thing as each season progresses, though.
Oh I in no way meant it as an insult. I love that about LD. I did not love that about PIC.
The reason I think Lower Decks does a fine job with its "fan service" is that none of those "get this reference? See?" moments matter. They're just stuff that's going on in the background, where an ordinary non-Lower-Decks Star Trek show would simply put a bunch of random meaningless gizmos or whatever to fill out the scene. The story that's being told in the foreground works perfectly well if you don't "get" any of the references. Often the story is enhanced by those references, but if you watch Lower Decks without any knowledge of the previous shows (aside presumably from a general gist of how shows like Star Trek work) you can still enjoy it.
Exactly! Which is why I like LD, but not PIC S3.
@VerseAndVermin @FartsWithAnAccent I'm among the few who didn't like S3. I could not care less for "the chosen one" thing, which is just annoying and a tired trope.
Season 3 wasn't amazing, but it certainly wasn't as awful as Seasons 1 and 2. The scene with the D reveal and the fighting inside the cube was pretty dope, but I'll admit it was full fan service start to end.
Seasons 1 and 2 of Picard left me going "WTF how did this story make it out of the writer's room with approval?" With some editing and reworking it COULD have been good.....but it wasn't.
And don't get me started on Discovery. That show has been a Trainwreck forever.
The third season isn't as good as 1 but its clear and away better than 2 by a huge margin and has some extremely fantastic emotional payoffs.