Monday, June 30, 2025
“Strange New Worlds” perfect feel-good summer series
I often spend my summers rewatching old Sci-Fi movies from my youth in what I call my ’80s Sci-Fi Flashback and review them to see how they have, or in some cases, have not held-up over the years.
Among the films I re-watched and reviewed last year were “The Final Countdown,” “Blue Thunder,” “Battle Beyond the Stars,” “Ice Pirates,” “Starcrash” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.” I posted my thoughts about them on my personal Facebook page. (I might repost some of them here later this year).
Some like “The Final Countdown,” and “2001” held up really well while a others, like “Starcrash,” not so much.
But this summer, I decided to try something a bit different. I went back and rewatched the first episode of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.”
When I first saw it a couple of years ago, I was a bit cranky about some of the choices and visual changes they made to my beloved franchise, especially to the interior design of The Enterprise and some of the changes they made to the characters. And I think it may have negatively colored my opinion of the show.
So when I saw YouTube was offering it free tonight, I decided to give it another watch, this time ready for those changes, and able to view it on its own merits.
I have to say I really enjoyed it and like many other “Star Trek” fans, I think it is perhaps the “truest” to the feel of the original series. It has the same mix of an optimistic future combined with allegorical storytelling that doesn’t come off as too preachy.
I also found it ironic that when the original series aired at the end of the 1960s, the United States was going through a turbulent time and was sharply divided along both racial and political lines, and here we are again, some 60 years later, with another “Star Trek” show airing, going through the same thing. Maybe that’s why this time its message of hope and its belief that reason, science, and logic can prevail when facing our problems resonated with me more than it did a few years ago.
Especially now, when the nightly news seems to be filled with stories about yet another war, social unrest and how our society seems to be falling apart. I needed a break from all that doom and gloom and was looking for some light, summertime fare to make me forget our troubles for a while.
It's nice to see that not all of today's Sci-Fi is all grim-dark and dystopian and I don't always have to retreat into the movies of my youth to recapture that feeling of escapism and fun.
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