Trek’s crossover attempt between Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds left a sour taste.
While it may be a dissenting opinion, we have to be honest, the Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds crossover was lacking. Let’s be clear, it’s not a “bad” episode of Star Trek, we have plenty to pull from; looking at you Threshold. But it wasn’t good either. It certainly wasn’t worth the hype of the summer, nor was it an idea that ever truly would’ve or could’ve worked. Regardless of who was behind the project.
Strange New World’s first season was impressive, its second season has been anything but, as the writers are doing more and more trope-filled ideas to try and generate headlines. Clearly, the show has gotten desperate and is afraid they’re next on the block, otherwise, they wouldn’t be taking so many big swings this season.
And when it came to the quality of this specific big swing, it wasn’t great, and it was never going to be for one simple reason; the energies of the shows don’t match.
Star Trek can’t just smash together different genres and expect it to work
Strange New Worlds was when it won over fans, a standard and quality show that focused on telling good stories, just like the Star Trek we all grew up on. Lower Decks is an over-exaggerated version of that premise, with characters that don’t act like normal people. It’s supposed to be grandiose and over the top, as that’s the energy of the show.
So bringing in characters from a show where people don’t act like normal people, into a show where people do act like normal people, and trying to meld the two dynamic forces was never going to work. Either Strange New Worlds had to be more bombastic and focused on humor, or the Lower Deck characters would need to be toned down.
They went with the former, with the episode feeling more like a Lower Decks episode than anything, with people behaving in a way that was odd, and out of character; specifically Spock. The serious nature of Strange New Worlds, and its crew did not meld with the ‘nothing-matters’, ‘perpetual-chaos’ of Lower Decks.
This was never going to work, and why should it? It’s like putting Freddy Kruger into My Little Pony. Those are just too different to work.
The only thing that Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds have in common is the “Star Trek” before their titles. Trek never had these issues before, because Trek never had different genre shows before. This is the problem with having an animated comedy that doesn’t take the idea of Star Trek seriously; it can’t work outside of its bubble (and it barely works inside of it).
The crossover was an abject failure and yes, people will defend it. For now. That’s only because we’ve come to a place within our society where people are steadfast from admitting the truth about a situation, just so they don’t look wrong in the moment. So they’ll defend the crossover because they’re more worried about defending the brand from criticism than they are about admitting the brand isn’t perfect.
Star Trek has to be held accountable for its failings so that the people in charge don’t keep making boneheaded decisions. Unfortunately for Strange New Worlds, the second season is only going to get further and further from the center.
So buckle up.