I’m sure this’ll get some fans riled up, but I’ve been impressed with the cinematics and storyline in WoW’s various subplots, particularly the Ysera / Tyrande / Malfurion arc concluding (?) in Ardenweald. Weaves together a bunch of threads that didn’t seem related at first. I haven’t played in more than two years but I can watch those cinematics and think that they’ve brought those characters right back to where I knew them from Warcraft III and early WoW.
I admit that video game plots have a much lower bar for me than television. But in contrast, Star Trek: Picard continues to hobble along, butchering characters, slinging mud on the title character and making us feel sorry for him more than enriching his legendary role. Did he really just sit there in a bar eating a plate of fish by himself with six or seven adoring cadets pelting him with questions, only to conclude with a glass smile “Starfleet is the only family I’d ever need?” Picard always had that aspect to his character, and it’s happening in these very schizophrenic flashbacks to add flavor to his present-day situation, but come on have the writers even thought about what that would be saying to these young aspiring officers? Why should they clap when he says that? And how much more character development are they going to do in a bar? They even wasted a few lines explaining why they can do a holodeck simulation of a bar as the ship is running out of juice for life support.
Also, what’s this with conjuring a child for Riker, born off camera, died off camera, and put a rift his family in the process? It’s not like what we saw in Season 1, which was all of three years ago.
There’s a villain (or, wait, it’s a network of villains) stuck in there–the central persona is now revealed to be little more than a pawn of greater powers, themselves a mere echo of the sinister and surreptitious foes they were in Deep Space Nine. Set beside the futuristic narcotic use which the writers have attached to another character (played by a veteran actor who we are supposed to root for) Picard’s new foe reminds me of a heroine addict. I am subscribed to Paramount+ for the duration of Season 3 for the intellectual masochism.
At least the got Worf about right. And, Strange New Worlds is doing well, keeping the Trek spirit alive. Ironic that the endearing story of the Enterprise’s first voyages is a spinoff of Discovery, a vessel whose five-year mission seems to be diluting three generations of lore by twisting an episodic adventure with allegories into a lurching opera where characters all but break the fourth wall to deliver overt political messaging.
In contrast to Trek’s crumbling legacy, with some woodblock animation, the right camera angles, creative storytelling, and adequate voice acting, WoW has produced some pretty moving episodes. Granted, the Warcraft movie was a mixed bag–but it’s not why I ever played. In game, the very pretentious N’Zoth kill and underwhelming collapse of the Black Empire was disappointing, and I know Shadowlands had its problems, but I’m tempted to be charitable and chalk a lot of that up to the pandemic (planning for Shadowlands would have been happening at the start of the lockdowns). And yet, still, they managed to pull out a couple of good storylines and set up for the authentic and compelling story in Dragonflight, all under the constraint of making this happen in the context of gameplay mechanics.
It’s long been said that games are the next big medium of art, and the fact that Christie Golden has written for Star Wars and Star Trek says a lot to me. Is she a career ActiVision contract at this point? It also says a lot that the voluminous literature in both those franchises has been given little more than some Easter eggs, although I have heard that the new Trek shows are borrowing a lot of lore from the video game franchise, which I can only imagine is pretty bad.
The latest Star Trek installments strike me as what happens when you try to make a TV show take after a video game. The WoW saga strikes me as what happens when you take veteran writers and promise them that the game engine will make a faithful, albeit modest, rendition of their script.
