Anson Mount is a Delight

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I’m really enjoying rewatching “Star Trek:Strange New Worlds” (SNW) and I put it down to Anson Mount and the writers using him to his best.  STSNW is almost purely fan-service, that thankfully works as plain ol’ TV space opera.

Wait, less “Space OPERA!” than Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and the pit of despair Star Trek: Discovery.  If you liked any/all of those, I have absolutely no beef, I’ve really, truly enjoyed bits and pieces of all of them.  Star Trek:Voyager seems a bit of an outlier in the franchise, perhaps it paved the way for SNW.

I think I’ve written about this before here, I also don’t want to disparage “fan service” as there are some excellent examples.  Pretty much all of Deadpool.  I think “4th wall violations” might be a strong signal for any fan service content.  But SNW does it by having a brash, bold, comedic, and intuitive leader of a diverse band of characters who each takes a subset of those qualities to a local extreme.

Of course, this makes them all terribly suited for the role of space explorers, but that matches up with their absolutely inadequate technoloigy.  Oh sure,  warp this, pew-pew that, shiny, bloopy, etc.  But even a most basic understanding of…anything…starts to render the plot devices as glaring back-filling.

Somehow, throughout SNW, this doesn’t seem so bad.  It’s slight lean towards updating the original series (TOS) allows a small “forgiveness advance” that lubes the sticking bits somewhat.  At least for me.  This might be all the common semiotics: the uniform colors and cuts of TOS, the interiors have details fron TNG—some I hate, lighting and photography from Discovery.  The result is that we get to the usual TOS story-arcs in every episode coupled with the seasonal stuff the later creations made popular.

If ever Mr. Mount reads this, please do not be too upset with my choice of accompanying photo.  I’d assume he, of all people, know what his assets are, and an almost cartoon-like handsomeness is way up front.  I’ve listed several of his other movies to my watchlist.  I look forward to seeing him practice his craft on different productions.

But really folks, a fireplace? There are times I want to hear these production meetings.