Okay. I've watched the pilot episode.
Three times.
Yes, it's that good.
It's about as
Star Trek as Star Trek gets. Everything you love about ye old timey Trek?
It's got it. In spades. And shovels.
Even got
conflict that's about to wipe out an entire civilization - and it's solved, peace is restored. By a Starfleet captain giving a big inspirational speech involving some recent personal insights he's had.
And it's even family-friendly.
@Mk3, I believe you had been concerned about that, with newer Trek.
Yes, you can sit your kid down and let him watch it, no...
well, okay.
There are maybe three minutes a kid maybe shouldn't be confronted with. Not on their lonesome.
One of the crew has a
dark backstory.
Remember Tasha Yar's backstory, from TNG season 1?
Darker.
So, maybe, watch this one with your kid. At timecode 41:00 to ~ 42:20, and again at 47:30 to 48:00 (not counting commercials), we learn the backstory of chief Noonien-Singh (or Lt. Noonien-Singh, according to Memory Alpha).
Short and
intense young lady in a red shirt.
The Gorn. And their reproduction. And everybody she ever knew and loved.
I mean it when I say it's darker than Tasha Yar.
So there are maybe three minutes that I wouldn't think are suitable for children.
Of course, what the fuck do I know. Near as I can tell, by the time kids finish elementary school these days, they probably have seen more weird porn and brutal shit than I had by the time I dropped out of uni.
Anyone who refuses to believe that their child can lay their eyes on internet pron will have to concede that they probably have seen
real, not staged, deaths. And not accidents.
Suicides and murders.
Endless news videos of police shootings. People are fucking streaming their suicide on facebook and tiktok. Or are streaming a spree shooting. When it's local daytime, when the Russian army can fight, I believe there is a plethora of live-streams of people being ripped apart by gunfire and shells in Ukraine.
So for all I know, the average 9 year old has the mental fortitude to watch (trigger warning: most awful method of execution I know off, just for illustration)
a person being executed by sawing right in front of them.
So if Tasha's backstory was, to my mind, maybe just about child-appropriate because children watching free-to-air TV in the 1980s would have had no clue what the
rape gangs she spoke of were supposed to be, except obviously really, really scary.
...not sure that chief Noonien-Singh's description of
the entire population of her colony ship, including her entire family, being either eaten alive, or slit open and used as breeding-sacks. How she had to watch it all, still a child herself. And how she was chosen as a "survivor". Spared - to die slowly and alone in a spacecraft chucked into the void.
wouldn't be plenty easy to understand and visualize for a kid.
Three minutes I'd call PG.
The rest?
Awesome, Trek for all ages. And Spock in
Now, as a Trekkie, I gotta speculate on what the show is gonna do with what it's got. The unique situation of Pike, in particular.
So. Pike knows when he's going to die. Or at least when the person he is will die, something else remaining.
Not when someone has scheduled it, is planning to kill him. Not when he might die. Not even when he'd probably die.
That is just so chock full of possibility!
He's got a firm appointment. Nothing he can do, or don't, that will affect the timing.
Nothing he can do. Will change. The time of that event. Nothing. So for about 10 years to come...
...he can draw his sword and challenge the gods! is the best way I can put it.
NOTHING can change the timing of his death. NO crazy stunt, NO suicide mission, NO NOTHING!
If he was a Klingon, well. Obviously.
I'm trying to picture what kind of mission Starfleet might send him on where he could use his guarantee to defy death, defy it every single time, before his horrible appointment.
Maybe he can challenge whoever governs the Gorn to a fight to the death, for the prize of Pike then getting to order all Gorn to stop using sentient beings for food or breeding sacks?
Or Klingons, actually. Maybe he can bring a quick end to a conflict with them by fighting a smooth-headed (recall, the smooth heads are still canonical according to DS9 and Enterprise) petaQ?
We know, and he knows, he's gonna walk away from them all. Has to, to make that appointment.
There's a deep well of philosophical ideas in there. And some insane stories they can tell!
If there were absolutely anything to be afraid of, don't you think I would have worn pants?
I said I have a big stick.