If you haven’t seen the sponsored posts and the PR drip feed did you know there is another Star Trek show called Lower Decks? It takes its name from an episode of TNG that was thoughtful and kinda heartbreaking when the lead guest character sacrificed her life for a shot to prove herself and sure I guess that’s fine for an animated comedy where the lead character gets hysterically suckled by a slobbering space spider beast.

It’s hard to know what to say about any of this that I haven’t thought or said or that other people haven’t thought or said - that this isn’t storytelling anymore, its just content to keep people’s eyeballs glued to and wallets wide open for CBS to pretend like it has anchor franchise, even though I’m reasonably convinced it’s the same few hundred thousand people - maybe a cool mil? - watching Trek in any incarnation these days. Who would know though, because no streaming service shares numbers - 30 million people watching a minute of a thing equals RECORDS SMASHED AS *SERVICE* DEBUTS MOST WATCHED FILM EVER so maybe Trek is huge, I just can’t tell - who can?

But I do know that Lower Decks is not exciting or new, it is fan service served replicator-perfect warm. There hasn’t been exciting or new Star Trek since Deep Space Nine, a show that had some great people behind it and truly built its own worlds with complex antagonists, new civilizations (remember those?), deep characters with challenging points of view. It used the Star Trek toolkit to tell timeless stories, and was as unconcerned as possible with how many of its in-universe elements translated into easy merch opportunities (no Ops playset for you, twelve-year-old me). It was also a TV series that ended, thank god it ended, and I remain ever grateful that if you ignore the Section 31 graverobbing no one has bothered trying to revisit it or convince a septuagenarian Avery Brooks that what fans really want is to see an entire series about old Sisko with a hard-drinkin’ new crew and there’s beheadings and eye gouging and Romulan siblings asking each other who they’ve fucked.

I grew up with this stuff, which somehow means Trek is umbilically linked to my core being and also talking about things without seeing them is shitty so here I am watching Lower Decks. But outside of some quick laughs, the pilot of this show - definitely like Picard, kinda like Discovery, a little less like Short Treks - just isn’t enough fun. Trek’s current powers that be talk a good game about how we need it more than ever because TRUMP and everything sucks right now. And yeah - they’re probably right, in as much as there’s nothing like great, inspiring, aspirational art to help you through tough times. But that’s not what any of this era of the franchise is. Until someone at the helm can chart a course for something beyond brand expansion uber alles, Star Trek is just another length of the unceasingly dark tunnel we’re all navigating right now, instead of the light guiding us through.