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Star Trek — Let it Be: Star Trek celebrated its 60th anniversary with a failed TV series
The large—scale, expensive, long-awaited series "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" began airing on Paramount+ and has already appeared on the Runet with professional dubbing. This show has been waiting for seven years, it is positioned as a new look at the cult universe and an opportunity for the younger generation to get acquainted with the franchise. New characters, new plot — and the old form, old mistakes. Izvestia has watched the available episodes and explains why the series disappoints both fans and newcomers. And also — they offer a much more worthy alternative.
Where did the new series come from
If the copyright holder of the "Star Trek" franchise, Paramount, just wanted to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the cult series with a new show, then he did it well. Even the screen saver of each episode screams about the 60th anniversary, so that everyone can immediately see that the story was long and confusing.
A shot from the TV series "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy"
Starfleet Academy is the 12th series in the Star Trek universe, which is known to include many more feature films, video games, books, comics, and cartoons. Few people would have passed the examination for knowledge of the entire canon in its entirety, too much time would have to be spent. And the Academy has a lot of Easter eggs for those who have been on the topic for a long time.
But the fact is that the creators of the Academy, first of all Alex Kurtzman, who has been leading the creative work on Star Trek in recent years, are positioning this series as a door for those who still don't really know anything about this fictional world. That is, as an entry point for future adepts. Therefore, the series is about a space school for teenagers, and the action has been postponed, for reliability, so far into the future as not to look for familiar characters there. Simply put, this is a "reboot", it's not for nothing that the work on the series took a total of seven years — it was first discussed in 2018. So, if it's not a cabbage patch (and it's not), but a "new breath", then it's worth saying that so far it doesn't seem too fresh.
A shot from the TV series "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy"
This is not the first attempt to revive the franchise, which, despite all its charm, is distinguished not only by its heaviness due to volume, but also at times seems completely decrepit and unviable. The best and brightest stage in the history of the franchise was the stage at which the copyright holders dared to invite the young and daring director J.J. Abrams and give him complete freedom of action. By that time, he had already shot "Lost" and "Mission Impossible 3", he easily and gracefully threw all the mothballs into the trash and in 2009 released the full-length blockbuster "Star Trek" — without any numbers, everything from scratch. And that was the best thing that happened to the franchise in the 21st century.
A shot from the TV series "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy"
What was Abrams' secret? The fact that he showed how the crew of the ship Enterprise was formed, made the future Captain Kirk and his friend Spock young at that time and threw them right into the heat. All this was shot with all the power of the IMAX format, and Abrams at the same time achieved from massive cameras that it sometimes looked like a report from the scene: nervous, fast, barely keeping up with the characters. If a new entry point was needed, it happened then, although after two sequels the series was somewhat blown away.
What happens in the series "Starfleet Academy"
It is difficult to say why the creators of the new series, in order to attract a young audience, completely despised the lessons of the past. Their logic is generally clear. What does Star Trek consist of, they asked themselves? From the distant future, a large spaceship and its crew, numerous inhabited planets, flights and a combination of adventures with personal relationships within the team. And if that's the case, then you don't have to go far. Here's a distant future for you. Here's a spaceship for you. Here, as a separate bonus, is the futuristic San Francisco, where the academy itself is located - next to the Golden Gate, so that it's beautiful. And here is a new team that is also a course of very promising young people recruited from all over the galaxy. At the head is the charismatic Nala Eik, played by Holly Hunter. Strong, having seen a lot in her over-the-top human age, she likes to sit in the captain's chair with her legs tucked under her, and she can come barefoot to an official visit, scandalizing others.
A shot from the TV series "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy"
A young man named Caleb stands out in her team — Nala was once imprisoned by his mother and still feels guilty about the guy, forgiving him for all sorts of antics. The mother, by the way, is played in a short appearance by the brilliant actress Tatiana Maslany, not so long ago we talked about the Osgood Perkins film, read this interview in Izvestia.
So, Caleb's biggest dream is to find his mother, who escaped from prison, and for this he enrolled in the academy. Here he meets other students and learns their stories, as well as meets his first love, an aristocratic girl with an artificially modified sense of empathy and beautiful open dresses. And there is also a space pirate looming on the horizon, who once saved him and his mother from starvation in the most unpopular ways. He is played by the main star of the series, Paul Giamatti, but he was given little screen time in the first two episodes. Western critics were shown six episodes, but for some reason they don't write much about Giamatti, apparently his showrunner saved for the finale: there will be ten episodes in total. A little over an hour each.
Why is it a failure
It's strange to make a series for a new generation and not take advantage of all the advantages that this excuse provides. Don't play with a handheld camera, don't come up with blogs for the characters, don't create conflicts that didn't exist before in the series. On the contrary, the creators are doing something that some academy teachers abuse: pouring new wine into dilapidated wineskins. The authors of the show decided that since it's an academy, let's do it academically. The slow pace, the traditional way of storytelling, everyone wears uniforms and sometimes they rebel a little bit, although it's immediately clear to everyone that these guys will end up making their beds in the morning. It would be possible to play an "All-metal shell" here, and there is such a hint here, but everything quickly turns to a polite exchange of witticisms and rare gags.
A shot from the TV series "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy"
In order for young people to finally realize that this was all done for them, the classic song masterpiece San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) is set to the finale of the first episode Scott Mackenzie 1967, and in the second, the characters are forced to sing a piece of Mozart's "Magic Flute" in a duet. Again, it was possible to modernize the narrative at the musical level, but none of this happened.
But that's not the main disaster of the series. For some reason, its authors decided that the coolest thing to do would be to build the most gigantic set in the history of the franchise with an area of more than 4,000 square meters for the academy. But both the first "Star Trek" and all the best subsequent ones were based on the cast and bright characters. Let's remind you who J.J. Abrams invited to his relaunch: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg. Brilliant artists of their generation, personalities that were needed to make the images of their very thoughtful characters even more prominent.
A shot from the TV series "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy"
The multinational cast of the Academy consists of grey personalities played by grey actors. I don't want to remember any of them, including Caleb. Two hours pass, and you still haven't connected to anyone, and you'd give a lot not to know what's going to happen to them next. It's not normal that in a film about young people, it's interesting to watch only the age-related characters Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti.
Someone once wrote about Okudzhava at the dawn of its popularity: "Girls won't follow a poet like that." Not true. We went for just such a thing, and we would have gone again. But for this series, "girls will not go." Because it wasn't made for them, or for us, or perhaps for the "veterans" of Star Trek. It seems that after all, Paramount just had to master the budget allocated for the celebration of the 60th anniversary. It was done at the proper technical level, but if you want a really fresh look at Star Trek, review the J.J. Abrams film. He's probably the best in his career, too, after another relaunch, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," the highest—grossing film in the history of American distribution.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
