I keep seeing the Star Trek franchise make attempts to capture a younger audience. A cartoon 4 kidz (Prodigy) and now a sexy teens show (Starfleet Academy).

It's not that I'm mocking the premise of these shows, it's just that it seems really obvious to me how Star Trek became generational in the first place and what made TNG such a big hit that the rest of the franchise is trying to recapture those heights.

Namely, TNG was family-friendly enough that kids to watch it, but still adult enough to interest adults, so you had all the old TOS fans watching it with their kids, who then became interested in the rest of the franchise. I mean, that's how I was introduced to Trek.

Once again, TNG was not a kid's show--in fact, the "look, kids, it's you!" character was, ahem, not the best--but it was appropriate for a child audience. The sexuality was matter-of-fact and nonexploitative, the violence was infrequent and usually limited to someone getting blasted by a Phaser set to stun, and the language was just Picard saying merde.

Now, you compare that to the mainline Trek entries being made today: Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds. I think SNW is pretty good on this account, but otherwise...

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www.ditl.org

Jesus! Would you want to watch this with your kid? From a few reviews I've read, Starfleet Academy is supposed to have sex scenes, which I'm sure everyone loves watching with their parents. And the thing is, there's no real need for this. They're not making a show about the Holocaust or something else that cries out for graphic imagery. It's the same space adventures as ever, they're just putting a bunch of foul language and gruesome violence in there to be edgy. Which is their prerogative, sure, but don't do that and complain that kids aren't watching your shows. You're the ones making shows that no reasonable parent would want their kid to watch!

georgettekaplan

To be fair, I'm not so nostalgic as to pretend this didn't start with Voyager, Enterprise, and the Abrams movies throwing in hot babes in their underwear willy-nilly, trying a bit too hard to make Star Trek sexy. But at least that was good fanservice, you know? Jeri Ryan did look good in a catsuit.

Nowadays it's like "we're not going to have a hot lady in a skimpy outfit, that wouldn't be very woke, but we're still going to be weirdly inappropriate."

And it just really wouldn't take that much effort, in my mind, to practice some restraint. In the Icheb example, for instance, you could cover him in bandages, use camera tricks to make him look like an amputee, and we'd understand the bad guys have harvested his organs without having to shove the audience's nose in it like we're watching a Saw movie. Have the horror come from Seven's reaction to his condition instead of how gross all the gore is.

I know there are bigger issues with Picard the show than everyone swearing all the fucking time, but isn't it weird to imagine watching TNG with your twelve-year-old, which is all appropriate for younger viewers, then you watch the movies, which are all PG-13 action adventures, then you come to Picard and...

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