I often hear people bemoaning how everything is a prequel these days, and my gut reaction is always like, “So what? What’s wrong with prequels?” and like, I often do find myself wondering what happened earlier in a story and thus wanting to see a prequel or thinking it would be cool if something had a prequel. But there is, or at least can be, something wrong with prequels, from their very nature - we know what is coming. Unless a prequel is non-canon or chooses to become non-canon with respect to the thing it is prequelling, we know that we have to end up at the state of affairs that was true at the start of the original. How much this matters depends a lot on the state things were at the start of the original and when the prequel is set and what the prequel is about. For instance, I would personally say it doesn’t matter THAT much for House of the Dragon - its set several hundred years before its source material, and while we do know broadly “The Targaryen Dynasty will fall,” that amounts to roughly the same amount of info one might have walking into the show Breaking Bad - the shows title tells you the main character is going to become evil/a criminal/a bad guy, the shows premise for House of the Dragon is a corrupt royal’s family’s decline, not a big deal. Ignoring the fact its based on a book, the writers are free to do what they want within that very broad space and thus the viewers can reasonably be surprised by what happens in it.
Strange New Worlds is of course going to be my main counter example, but Discovery too can serve as a reasonable counter example, although it is less affected by these issues for various reasons. Since Discovery is set before the Original Series, that means that things must be like TOS by the time it gets there if the series to stay consistent - or, at least, fans will expect it to. Discovery actually initially seemed rather unconcerned with that fact, which is why Spock suddenly has an adopted human sister no one ever heard about before, Starfleet has an instantaneous form of travel no one has ever heard of before, everyone communicates via volumetric holograms, a technology never before seen on Star Trek, why Klingons look so different than before, why uniforms and ship design looks nothing like classic Trek, etc. Then, of course, the writers reconciled those differences in various ways - Discovery left to the future and the existence of Spock’s sister and the Spore Drive were classified, Pike is seen vocally complaining about volumetric holograms, Burnham compliments the new uniforms, Klingons grow their hair back, and so on. Now, some, like Steve Shives, who I mention a lot simply because I watch and like his videos despite not always agreeing with him, might argue that these kind of details don’t matter as long as they serve the story and writers shouldn’t bother reconciling them, fans should suck it up, but I honestly disagree. I think lore consistency is an important contributor both to immersion and just to quality writing in general - while world building for its own sake may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it can and does enhance storytelling no matter how jaded and uninterested in creating a believable fictional world you are - a more fully fleshed out world enables telling more complicated, nuanced stories, even if it fleshing out a world does not automatically create such a story. As such, while I do think that writers should not feel overly constrained by these sorts of restrictions, good writers know that you violate them at your peril, and if you completely ignore them, like S1 of Discovery did, you absolutely will annoy a lot of fans and it will make the story you are telling worse, so you better be confident its good enough to overcome those downsides.
Strange New Worlds is a prequel, but I honestly did not immediately clock it as necessarily suffering from this as a problem. Unlike Discovery, it did not seem interested in completely rewriting the Star Trek lore - honestly its just a fundamentally less ambitious show, and given that I think Discovery’s worse parts were its most ambitious parts, I’m fine with that. Discovery was trying to revive what was basically considered a nearly dead franchise at the time, Strange New Worlds was at most a slight course correction responding to criticism of Discovery by making a more classic style Trek, so of course its not in the business of upending long established lore… except when it is. And honestly thats kind of its problem in some ways. Strange New Worlds is at its best when it does not try to be a prequel, but increasingly it seems like it is less interested in being its own show and more interested in leaning into prequel status even if it harms the show or the consistency of the Star Trek timeline.
I’ve already talked about how I hate how the Gorn were handled in it. A difference now, though, is now I have seen the TOS episode they are from. And having seen that episode… like what the fuck? The Gorn in SNW are not technically inconsistent with TOS, but only because we know almost nothing about them prior to Strange New Worlds, merely that they are intelligent and super strong. Both are seemingly true in Strange New Worlds as well. However, its also strongly implied Kirk had never encountered the Gorn before, as he did not recognize them or their ship, whereas they are all over Strange New Worlds, and while I’m not confident Kirk is actually in any of the Gorn episodes (I’m not gonna go back and double check) you’d certainly think he’d have at least heard of them. And given how there is basically zero overlap between their SNW portrayal and TOS portrayal…why are they Gorn at all? You could have just called them something else in SNW, and then you’d have no lore inconsistency. Honestly I think they suck as a plot-line and should have just been cut, but they’d be better if they weren’t Gorn, because 1) Starfleet could reasonably be unsure if they are an intelligent race. We are told both in TOS and SNW they are, but no direct communication happens with them in either, and if they were unsure, the SNW crew’s willingness to kill Gorn babies at birth would seem less genocidal. That coupled with consistent lore is enough reason for me to wish they weren’t called Gorn in SNW, but they were, because SNW wants to be a prequel, even if it makes it a worse show. They want you to see the Gorn and be excited because its a reference to TOS, even if it creates lore inconsistencies which weaken the believability of the plot and even if doing so makes the show feel less Star Trek like.
The show also keeps putting Spock and Kirk, Spock and Uhura, Spock and Kirk and Uhura, Kirk and Scotty, Kirk and Spock and Uhura and Scotu and Nurse Chapel together, and you can always sort of feel the show yelling at you, “Look at them! They are together! Be excited!” And everytime they do it I’m just like, this feels so pandering. I don’t need some perfect shot of them together, okay? Its weird and artificial. It pulls me straight out of the show. Plus, like, what is this even building to? Are people really super excited to see them all on a crew together? Cuz they can just watch TOS for that. Plus, I’m watching TOS for the first time now, and honestly I don’t get the impression they all know each other that well at the start. Uhura flirts rather aggressively and hostiley with Spock in early episodes of TOS, including by singing an extremely racist song at him that implies he wants to rape all earth women, and to me it reads like they do not know each other that well and she is trying to provoke him because he is a curiosity. Similarly Kirk and Spock in early TOS often feels like they are bonding for the first time - as opposed to Bones, who clearly has known Kirk for a long time. Yet Bones isn’t even on SNW, but Kirk already is bonding with Kirk and Uhura. Again, its not inconsistent, but it feels weird, and it also kinda feels like it undermines TOS and makes that show feel less real.
But thats just vibes. The real problem is information. We know that Spock, Kirk, Uhura, Scotty, M’Benga, Nurse Chapel, Una, Pike, and Dr. Korby all cannot die, because all of them appear in later TOS episodes. We knew that Nurse Chapel and Spock cannot work out when they were dating, because Spock is engaged to T’Pring again at the start of TOS, and Nurse Chapel is estranged from her ex-fiance, Dr. Korby - so we also know that relationship will proceed that far and then also won’t work out. We also know not to trust Dr, Korby, cuz he is a creeper on TOS, although the fact he is her professor and sleeping with her is evidence enough. We likewise know that La’an and Spock cannot work out, because La’an never appears and is never mentioned in TOS. We also know that Pike and Captain Batel’s relationship cannot work out (and in fact I am pretty sure she is written out at the end of the season) because we know Pike will in the future choose to retire in fantasy land and hook up with the horribly disfigured lady there, and that would be mighty weird to do if he had a half-Gorn girlfriend he nursed through a major health crisis waiting for him back at home, What, she gets sick and you stay by her but you get sick and you abandon her? This show is rife with plotlines we know are dead ends becaus of its status as a prequel, and that sucks? Like honestly it makes me wonder why they even want to write it this way when they know their spinning their wheels and nothing can amount to anything.
I want to take a second to call out another inconsistency that really doesn’t matter at all but does amuse me. Una has now been retconned to being an Illyrian, and I generally liked what they did with those plotlines, so I’m fine with that. But it does mean that when Pike gets trapped on Talos V, why did the Talosians think Una could be a reasonably choice for a human partner for him to mate with? Couldn’t they tell she wasn’t human? I mean maybe not, just seems odd to me.
But yeah, anyway, the worst issue of these altogether is Pike’s accident in ten years. It looks over the show like a cloud and everytime it’s brought up it makes the show worse. I know they are trying to use it thematically about making your time worthwhile, making the sacrifice count, living life to its fullest, etc, but as a plot device I don’t like it and it doesn’t feel Star Trek. Star Trek shouldn’t have fate, and it fucks with the timeline so much the idea the timeline is unchangeable feels ridiculous and contradictory. Janeway fucking retconned her whole journey home! SNW often feels obsessed with recreating TOS, expecting that everyone is just gonna explode with excitement when on Episode 10 of Season 5 Kirk stands on the Enterprise with his Captain’s pips, when I just want to see more Strange New Worlds. If this shows characters all had different names and you took out all the set up for TOS it would just be straight up improved, and thats kind of a problem for it, especially when more and more all it seems to want to do is copy its predecessor.
Honestly even something like the wedding episode was fun and light and I enjoyed it, one of the better episodes, until I then watched the Trelaine episode of TOS and realized it was just a straight rip off. Why? Make up your own goddamn quirky alien god! You did it with M’Benga and the fable in Season 1. Unless that too is just a reference to TOS I haven’t gotten to yet. Not everything needs to connect to everything else, and if the show would just be its own show and not worry about TOS, it’d be much more compelling, and would make more sense - if all the challenges the TOS crew encounters were faced by many of those same crew members ten years earlier under Pike, why were they so surprised in TOS by them?
I honestly do like Strange New Worlds, and I am sure all these references are being mandated to at least some degree by management. They think this is what people want, and hell, maybe it is. I like lore and world building, and would love to see things get more fleshed - I think the only reason DS9 could tell so many of its great stories is the time it took to build up Bajoran, Cardassian, Klingon, Trill, Dominion and Ferengi cultures and worlds. Enterprise did so with the Andorians, Discovery with the Breen to some degree, and I think SNW was trying with the Gorn, but it was a misfire, and now instead of building out anything or fleshing out anything - which, to be clear, they could create whole new aliens to flesh out, they need not be tied to existing aliens - they just pointing at existing things. And that weakens the show a lot, because we can just watch TOS. Make your own show.
I don’t think it had to be this way. In the original TOS pilot with Pike and Una and Spock, those are the only legacy characters we see on the Enterprise, and two of them, Pike and Una, never appear again. It was the SNW teams choice to put Uhura and M’Benga and Nurse Chapel and Kirk and Scotty and Dr. Korby on the show too, and its their decision to keep making episodes that basically just serve as fan service of “Look, we did the thing!” There is no reason a largely episodic Star Trek show set literally anywhere in the Star Trek timeline HAS to slavishly reference another show, the Star Trek universe is big. Hell, even if it does, like Lower Decks, Lower Decks tells its own stories and isn’t setting up anything, its resynthesizing those references in new and fun ways. And there isn’t even anything to set up! TOS has happened. Unless they plan on remaking TOS after SNW is cancelled, we don't need to set it up. As long as you don’t directly contradict it, you’re gold, but the more you reference it, the more likely you are to contradict it. But sure, yeah, lets just keep tossing the whole TOS crew together and winking at the camera.
Anyway, as I said, I like SNW, but I hope it decides to be its own show again. Or for the first time really, since while this is getting worse, it’s been there since Season 1. Obviously since it’s cancelled (I think? My understanding is it is canceled but there are two unreleased seasons still in development that will eventually release) it will only get so much time, but still. Maybe if it does it will get uncancelled.
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