I really must agree! While an occasional cinematic outing can be enjoyable, Trek is at its best on the small screen!
Edit: incidentally, for as much as I love the OT, I feel the same applies for the Star Wars franchise. Dave Filoni and John Favrau have done more with that franchise that Lucas ever could!
@gregorum I enjoy the excitement and spectacle of the original trilogy, but I agree that some of the SW TV shows have been excellent, and told stories that movies couldn’t.
Guilty pleasure: I really loved all of the boring political intrigue of the prequel trilogy and learning how the government of the Galactic Republic worked and how Palpy maneuvered into power and then overthrew the Republic and reorganized it into The Empire. I found all that boring shit fascinating, even as those films were, to their purpose, boring failures amd their stories told terribly. Because I’m a filthy neeeeeeerd.
For the PT, I was more interested in the story than the plot, and then relied more on Close Wars for coverage of the era, for Anakin story/plot, and, of course, Ahsoka.
@gregorum I was actually ok with the political aspects of the prequels. I just thought that, personally speaking, the writing was pretty clunky and heavy-handed. I think Andor showed there’s plenty of room to do political intrigue in the Star Wars universe.
Yeah, the plot of the PT and the characters were just so dull and weird. Lucan can’t do dialogue.
But Andor really shines with its political intrigue and that’s what I love so much about it. Seeing inside the ISB is awesome! that and how it tells such a deep, human story that’s as much about the characters as it is about the universe it’s in.
See, that’s the thing about Andor that really stands out from even The Mandolorian (although there’s a good deal of it there): these don’t feel like characters a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Lucas wrote stories based on character archetypes from ancient mythology. Filoni and Favrau write characters and storylines based on allegory and metaphor for people here and now, today and in timeless social and political struggle and strife. They’re relatable, so their dramas, their struggles, their hopes and aspirations for freedom resonate with us on a much closer level. They become personal. We identify with them. And, as a result, we become personally invested in their journey and their fate.
@gregorum Great analysis!
Filoni and Favrau have learned how to leverage the development of the personal relationship of fandom and tie it to the development of quality long-form storytelling in prestige television for streaming. And they’re passionate about the franchise and material.
Terry Matalis showed a great capacity for this when he took over PIC S03, as have the showrunners/producers of Prodigy, especially how they’ve held their shit together during the whole debacle that’s been going on with the production of that show. Ya know… Trek’s greatest asset WRT storytelling was decades of both the 26 episode/season allowance plus the episodic format. It gave so much breathing room to explore the Trek universe and to develop characters. Today, we have galaxy-sized budgets, but the space and time we have to tell these stories has shrunk so much that Trek hasn’t really adapted to it still. And it has suffered for it.
Trek needs to remember that it’s relationship with its core fandom is one of its greatest assets and to leverage that to start developing much more personal stories and storylines rather than flagrantly flipping us the bird to chase ever-diminishing profits by producing shows that are all flash and no substance, run and written by people with no knowledge of Trek, if not open contempt for it.
