The Patreon Letters - July 29, 2017 (Patreon)

Hi everyone, Jackson here with this week's Patreon Letter! I've been spending an above average amount of time this past week (even for me) watching, reading and talking about Star Trek so, unsurprisingly, that's what I've sat down to write about.

A week ago, the big trailer for Star Trek Discovery dropped at comic-con, and the reaction in my circles has been somewhat muted. I've seen a lot of takes of people disappointed it seems to be - if not in the Kelvinverse - at least stylistically and thematically aligned with it. I've seen takes from people sad at how action driven it appears to be in trailers, and I've seen takes from people who really don't want another prequel. And all these varied muted reactions got me thinking about what people want from Star Trek, because it's a somewhat unique beast in pop culture, and so it's an interesting question to explore.

To me, one of the things that separates Star Trek from other, similar pop culture icons of genre fiction is its lack of central focus. It's a franchise that has been defined and re-defined by a long line of different creative teams, constantly in conversation with itself about what it is, and what it wants to stand for. This isn't unique in and of itself, it's basically what's been happening to every single superhero for the past fifty or seventy years, but combined with the lack of central plot or character focus across its lifespan, it means that Trek is a franchise defined more by iconography, theme and worldview than almost any of its peers. They can replace him and send him to the end of time but eventually, Batman will be Bruce Wayne. Star Wars has an expanded universe, but it's also the story of one really bad family disagreement. Trek has no equivalent core.

Which has ultimately led to one of the most vibrant and interesting sci-fi universes. The wider universe doesn't exist to provide flavour to an existing story, or to reflect the world of any central character or cast. It's just the result of a series of stories stacked one on top of another, this weird mess that could only have come through decades of episodes from different eras of television. Despite reputations, and due to its episodic nature, Star Trek has always been a universe more concerned with texture than with the progressing political state of the galaxy, and definitely more than "What Happened Next To Your Favourite Characters?"

All of which is to say: I don't quite understand the reaction against Discovery being in the time period it's in. I asked twitter last night to those who were disappointed what their ideal show would be, and got a bunch of interesting responses, which tended to fall into one of two categories: 1) Star Trek should be a show about a ship going into the unknown, and a prequel isn't the unknown, or 2) I want to see what they do next with [insert cultural or political thing from the lore].

Both of which I understand, but ultimately can't get behind, because for 1) Trek has experimented with this paradigm a fuckton between DS9 and Enterprise and ultimately expanding this has only allowed the series to tell more interesting stories, and for 2) that's why we're reading these books. Doing SOS has been great for letting go of the very expensive and production fraught TV-Shows as the only way these stories can exist, and I'm very excited to read all the indulgent lore bullshit that could never - should never - be the focus of a television show.

Personally, I'm heading into Discovery with a sense of quietly increasing excitement. I think the cast is excellent, as is the production design (those uniforms are beautiful), and there's every possibility that it will end up being great. Star Trek Beyond being great convinced me that the fact that it's (probably) in the Kelvinverse is ultimately fine with me and also literally every Trek thing ever has a garbage action-filled trailer, it means nothing one way or the other. It could still be total garbage, but I don't think there's any way to know until we actually watch it ourselves.

Anyway! That's some light Trek Thoughts for this letter. I'm gonna get back to reading the book for SOS. I love that podcast a lot, I'm glad I have a stable way to experience this bullshit because otherwise I'd like read three books in a month and burn out. 

See you out there,
Jackson