Dystopia is old hat because the world we live in is already shittier or equal in shittiness compared to many dystopias that have been dreamt up.
Half of them have flying cars and lasers for fuck's sake.
The really fucked up dystopias have also been done to death so... yeah.
When they rumored about a bunch of new Star Trek series, I wasn't terribly optimistic, as Discovery has been uneven to say the least. But it's hard not to be excited for anything involving Picard.
I think
Discovery was fucking great. A breath of fresh air for the franchise. It was nice to see a
Star Trek that had some polish, that didn't pander to its audience (T'pal or whatever her name was pissed me off in
Enterprise, Seven of Nine too, but to a lesser extent because she was so good at rinsing the cretins on Voyager).
Discovery's protagonist is probably my favourite of them all. Bit of a Mary Sue but that's standard really. She wasn't thencapt
The second half was a bit rushed though... I mean from the moment the emperor was revealed. After and including that moment I felt they got the pace a bit wrong, they were obviously keen to put a lid on that arc in time for the finale — I think it could have been done with more finesse.
The conclusion especially... it was pretty much pure garbage, I would say. The biggest problem was that the ethical quandary of eradicating a species to save one's own species was completely avoided with a cop out ending. I suppose it was a bit like
Mass Effect.
But, like
Mass Effect, Discovery was pretty fresh and it definitely left me hungry for more.
I'm a bit of a hipster in that I grew to like DS9 a lot, and I thought
Enterprise season 3 was dank and made up for how bad the rest of it was.
Discovery needs to have a few more seasons before I can call it my favourite
Trek, but if it stays consistent or improves, it will be.
That said, TNG sequel is phenomenal news and I'm genuinely shocked Patrick Stewart signed up for it, I guess he figured out that Shakespeare is dead and being remembered as Xavier would be a worse legacy.
Don't get me wrong, love Shakespeare, but there are other authors and playwrites whose work simply never graduates beyond the stage.