Star Trek - Strange New Worlds

I'm quickly ploughing through this new Star Trek series in the 7 day free trial of Paramount+.

The original series of Star Trek  (TOS to Trekkies) was national viewing in my childhood and aside from the later series of Next Generation the producers have struggled to match the viewability of the early series.

Then a lot of modern TV series insist on a commitment from the viewer with long and complex story arcs overlaying episodes - and when those story arcs are designed to cover multiple series and then the series gets cancelled, I'm reluctant to commit to viewing a series. Picard was overly complex and tried to be too clever, Discovery had to have a couple of goes to find its feet (which reminds me, have I got time to check out the new series of that with my freebie).

So it's been a really pleasure watching the new series. They've successfully rewound to a lot of what was good about TOS - these are not super-humans, they are a bit argumentative and silly, but the main goodie is we have a series, with individual stand-alone episodes, there are a couple of longer term threadlets but they are minscule, unlike Discovery. Pike is quite in the role of Kirk, bonding with aliens in the bedroom (not just a snog now) and showing off his torso.

It's the best of the recent efforts.