(dramatic music)
- Do it!
- I killed my dad first.
- Who the hell are you?
- Killed my people for centuries.
- When I was younger, my best friend got sick.
- My town was wiped out by a hurricane when I was five.
- He was my boyfriend.
- Is it truly inevitable?
- What's happening here?
- Wasted, wasted.
- Your past does not excuse unethical
or immoral behavior sir.
- What's the point of a star Trek TV show?
You can ask some trekies and they'll tell you that
the point is to provide humanity with hope,
set a course for our future
and essentially change the world.
That sounds more like a religion
than a television franchise.
But the reality is that Star Trek really means
that much to so many but the cold hard reality is that
the point of a Star Trek show
or any show for that matter is to entertain their viewers
and make them come back again.
You know, when you are so engrossed into something
you are watching that everything around you disappears
and for a short period of time,
all that exists is you and your show.
You are totally immersed and anyone watching you
will probably see a slight smile on your face.
The world has slipped away
and you are on the bridge with Captain Pike.
- You gonna say the thing?
- Hit it.
- Lost in the Delta Quadrant with Captain Janeway.
- You know, as well as I do that fear only exists
for one purpose, to be conquered.
- Or having Earl Gray tea
with Captain Becard in his ready room.
- Tea, earl gray, hot.
- That beverage has not been programmed
into the replication system.
- For many of us, the escape into Star Trek is just that,
an escape from real life where we are worried
about bills, that big pile of tasks at work
and whatever else is resting heavy on your mind.
- Did captain Janeway kill Tuvix?
How many lights were there?
- 12 lights.
- But what happens when the path of your escape
is suddenly blocked?
Now, instead of getting away, your path to another world
is blocked by a giant mirror.
And instead of slipping into the decontamination shower
with Trip and T'Pol,
you were forced back into your own world
to contemplate your part in everything wrong with society.
- Is this really necessary?
- So when Star Trek Discovery season four
and Picard season two gave us a year of mental health
and 13 characters all with mental health issues,
we wanted to know why, and what we found may surprise you.
So you don't wanna miss this episode.
And if you haven't already subscribed to our channel,
please do so now and give us a thumbs up
if you want more inside knowledge about your favorite shows
and make sure you stay tuned to the end
to see how to get this awesome star Trek NX-01 inspired
graphic design from the amazing artists at mixedtees.com.
It's important to note that we aren't suggesting everyone
who watches television to escape,
is suffering from severe mental health issues,
like the characters from Discovery in Picard.
Like your physical health,
mental health has a range from good to bad.
For most of us it's hills and valleys.
Most of those valleys might be a hard day at work,
a fight with a loved one
or taco bell running out of mild sauce.
- Why can I only get hot spiciness?
How am I gonna have Taco Tuesday?
- These minor set backs are often offset curled up
on the couch or lying in bed
with your favorite Star Trek show,
just you, the remote and a pine of rocky road.
It's also important to note that socially aware storylines
are important and can elevate a story when it's subtle
and a part of whatever the problem the Star Trek crew
is trying to solve each week.
Whatever ideology the writer and director want you
to recognize, should cover you like a warm, comforting,
barely noticeable blanket
but during Star Trek's year of mental health
it felt like we were being smothered by that blanket.
There you are in your comfortable place,
ready for that pinch of optimism with a dash of hope.
But if you are watching Star Trek in the early part of 2022,
that is not the ingredients or the recipe you were getting,
it was more like a cup of hopelessness
combined with two tablespoons of despair
wrapped in a tortilla of depression.
- Are you feeling all right?
- No.
- And while we can't pilot all on these two seasons,
the whole of Picard and Discovery
have been anything but uplifting.
Excuse me, waiter, I'll take two years of quarantine
and chase it with a dark matter anomaly,
wiping out entire planets by beings who found us
too insignificant to even be aware of.
And Picard you aren't off the hook either,
after ending season one being nearly wiped from existence
by mass effect aliens from another dimension,
we get to romp through a contemporary Los Angeles
and be reminded how we trash our cities,
beat up on immigrants, destroy the environment
and make us run through underground tunnels with Picard Jr.
and his mom for an entire season,
seemingly because Q doesn't wanna die
before getting a hug from John Luke.
Although that was one hell of a hug
and there wasn't a dry eye in the room.
- See you out there.
- The point is, it was impossible to stay immersed
into a story when the writers are constantly hitting you
over the head with reality.
- Gone, no trial, no paper trail.
- Oh my God, it's so dumb.
- John Luke's mother has mental issues.
His cousin Renee is having mental issues
and can't fly her mission.
Raffi is having mental issues after losing Eleanor.
Q is having mental issues and dying.
And finally Picard is having mental issues
over the trauma of feeling like he killed his own mother.
Forget the Rocky Road,
it's time to get out the Johnny Walker.
And how about Discovery season four?
Who on that ship isn't reeling from
some type of mental trauma.
When the computer needs a counselor to keep it from
destroying everyone on board because Zora is having
a mental crisis, you know you're in some other weird
Star Trek land.
- Zora?
- Yes Commander.
- I know you mean well, and I know you.
- Booker is insane with guilt
and putting everyone in danger.
Tilly is unsure about her place on the ship.
Ruon Tarka is overcome at the loss of his partner.
Saru is trying to mack on the Vulcan President
when he should be doing his job.
Hughe is trying to play counselor to everyone on the ship
when it's apparent he needs counseling for feeling guilty
of the new life he now has.
There's more but frankly, it's a drain just repeating it.
The real question is why,
why create such a depressing, hopeless experience
for fans to watch,
not to fight and overcome something to make yourself better
but to wallow in the mire and cross your fingers
that the end result is not your annihilation.
Give us drama, intrigue, and conflict
but lace it with optimism and let us know there's a light
at the end of the tunnel and for the love of God,
stop grabbing us by the face and forcing us to look
at what you want us to see.
Make your point interesting and curious
so that we cannot look away.
The alien is half black and half white
while the other one is half white and half black.
The audience can see the silliness right away.
They look the same to everyone else.
No need to say anything,
the audience is smart enough to figure it out.
- Listen to me, you both must end up dead
if you don't stop hating.
- But on Discovery, Michael or Saru or someone
would proclaim loudly, what we have here is racism.
Do you not all see it?
Unfortunately, now we can't see anything else.
We aren't taking that last bite of Rocky Road and thinking
well, that was interesting.
We are finishing our whiskey and asking,
why am I a terrible person?
Why do I feel so awful?
Why does the future feel helpless?
This isn't hyperbole folks.
This is why it's frustrating to watch these shows
and why so many fans are frustrated and criticize them.
One mental issue, two mental issues fine.
But when nearly the whole discovery crew has
some sort of emotional trauma happening in an episode
or more than one episode, at what point do you say enough?
So why did this happen?
What's the point and who's really responsible?
Let's start with showrunner, Michelle Paradise.
She has writing credits for two episodes
and she has her fingers in everything obviously.
What does she have experienced writing?
A smoldering teen CW spinoff of The Vampire Diaries
and X's and O's starring Paradise,
who is a lesbian documentary filmmaker
looking for Miss right and navigating lesbian dating life.
Her next step is obviously the flagship show
of the biggest science fiction series of all time, right?
(woman screaming)
There are 12 writing credits for the show
and while some of the writers have sci-fi experience,
their experiences are generally on darker serious dramas
that don't lend themselves to a lot of hope,
with the exception of Anne Coel Saunders,
who wrote episodes for Battlestar Galactica and Smallville.
The majority of writers on Discovery have experience
in the teen angst CW variety of shows
and this comes through very clear in Discovery.
How about Picard?
Like discovery, there are 12 writing credits.
With the truly experienced writers of Akiva Goldsman
and Terry Mattas starting the series and Goldsman providing
cleanup duty in the finale, the seven episodes in between
were handled by writers with very little experience.
And as a result, the season dragged on telling us things
instead of showing us
and punching us in the face with why our world
is so screwed up.
They told us a story in seven episodes
that could have been told in three.
Their combined experience told us
that Borg can eat car batteries
without it dissolving her face
and a dinner party at NASA will require
James Bond level security with facial recognition.
But honestly, can you blame inexperienced writers
or do you hold their boss accountable?
Akiva Goldsman should be lauded for making
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds happen
but allowing Picard season one show runner Michael Chabon
to help craft the story for season two is just a travesty.
What started out as a really cool story
in the second season ended up flat lining
as the season progressed with nearly every character
suffering from some sort of mental health challenge.
With Mattois focusing on season three
and Goldsman trying to get Strange New Worlds rolling,
Picard season two seemed to be left
with inexperienced writers in charge.
And it's obvious as we are continuously taken out
of the story with so many things that just didn't make sense
or storylines that felt forced and uncomfortable.
The point of Star Trek is to be an entertaining vehicle
where the future is hopeful, the characters are interesting
and the story makes us feel like
we've had a vacation from reality.
If we've learned something along the way,
then that's up to us.
Perhaps streaming services don't care
as much as networks used to
about whether we come back or not.
The networks needed the advertisers to keep paying
and that means they needed us to watch.
Streaming services just needed to trick us into paying
for a subscription we'll mindlessly keep paying for.
It's the definition of click bait.
Why did Star Trek just give us a year of mental health
that didn't feel anything like Star Trek?
It's because the message has become more important
than telling a good story.
The satisfaction of telling a great story
that people will love with the hopes that maybe
they have also learned something along the way
has been replaced with telling a story that people
might like as long as they primarily crammed a message
or ideology into those people's heads first.
We got a year of mental health on Star Trek
because that's what young writers have been trained
to give us, soap opera, serialized television,
where everyone has deep emotional trauma
and one solution is quickly followed by
an even worse despair.
This can only be stopped when the fans say enough is enough
- Not good enough damn it, not good enough.
- Strange New Worlds is a great example of someone saying,
we are going to make Star Trek
the way it was intended to be made.
Are lessons still being learned?
Yes.
Are fans enjoying watching Star Trek
without wallowing in the misery of all the characters?
Yes.
Perhaps the Year of Mental Health
will be the last despairing Star Trek we have to watch.
All we can do is hope.
What do you think?
Was the Star Trek: Year of Mental Health a wake up call?
Are the writers at fault or has the media and society
taught them to be this way?
Which Trek do you prefer?
Is Trek an escape for you or did it used to be?
Let's talk about it in the comments below.
Also check out this awesome Star Trek NX-01 inspired
graphic design, get 20% off your purchase
by using coupon code THE PODCAST.
The link is in the description below.
- Everything else that we see is so pessimistic and so dark
and so nihilistic, and this shows a positive portrayal
of what could be in the future.
And I think people need that and want that.
(intense dramatic music)