Star Trek: Picard

[DaveSumm]

I’m doing a Voyager re-watch currently, I’ve got into the habit of rating each episode out of 10 with my girlfriend after we watch them. I find it quite healthy to try and praise stuff about an episode when it deserves it, it seems so much harder than negative points.

Season 1 wasn’t so bad, we’re about 10 episode into Season 2 and I’m praying for something interesting ... even a really bad one just so we stop handing out 5/6/7s all the time. It never seems to be as bad as TNG’s lows, but man it’s just so flat a lot of the time. I kinda respect that they tried to give each cast member something to do (especially in light of seasons 4/5/6/7 when it becomes the Seven / Janeway / Doctor show), but there’s just too many duds in there. Paris hasn’t really been fleshed out beyond ‘womaniser’ yet, Neelix is still jealous pretty much every episode, Kim ... cannot act, bless him. The episode where he wakes up in San Francisco in another reality, he’s home, great! But oh no, someone went in his place! And Paris is a mess ... quite a rollercoaster for an actor. Garrett Wang goes for ‘completely neutral face the whole episode’.

I’ve been looking for a rewatch blog but I can’t find much, for DS9 there was Keith deCandido’s on tor.com, nothing for Voyager though. @Werthead you haven’t ever tackled it have you?

[Junsner]

Couldnt get away with Voyager, Next Gen was a bit inane through out but with some exellent standout episodes.  loved DS9 at its darkest and Enterprise was good too apart from the dim last episode. Discovery was just like some horrid crack dream! but I had to watch just to see wtf they would say and do next!

Patrick Stewart was a bit too self obsessesed in his role and needed strong writing to give his best. The overall feel of Next Gen was " Social Workers in space" symptomatic of the era I suppose.

[Werthead]

On 9/25/2019 at 3:58 PM, Wolfgang I said:

The Prophets  probably "destroyed" more Dominion ships than any other faction during the war and their existence alone prevented further Dominion reinforcements from the Gamma Quadrant.

One idea, which the producers had at the time, was that even the Prophets might balk at obliterating a fleet of 2,800 starships, presumably with millions of personnel on board, so they didn't destroy the ships. Instead they spat them out somewhere else in space. Star Trek Online (non-canon) came up with the idea of the Prophets simply suspending them in time, and at some future point they allowed them to complete their journey, which resulted in 2,800 Dominion ships boiling out of the wormhole about 35 years after the end of the Dominion War, causing mayhem.

[Luzifer's right hand]

26 minutes ago, Werthead said:

One idea, which the producers had at the time, was that even the Prophets might balk at obliterating a fleet of 2,800 starships, presumably with millions of personnel on board, so they didn't destroy the ships. Instead they spat them out somewhere else in space. Star Trek Online (non-canon) came up with the idea of the Prophets simply suspending them in time, and at some future point they allowed them to complete their journey, which resulted in 2,800 Dominion ships boiling out of the wormhole about 35 years after the end of the Dominion War, causing mayhem.

The main problem with that is that it would still kill the Jem'Hadar once they run out of white. Sending them to the future is a nice idea though.

I hope the Picard show will gives us some updates on the Dominion. 

[Werthead]

On 9/27/2019 at 1:19 AM, Daniel Newhouse said:

I only saw one season of Voyager.  I forgot about Seven of Nine.  Does the Federation essentially have an allied Borg cube?  I still suspect the new Asian wonder girl is a Borg-Klingon.  

I just ordered up the last couple of Voyager episodes on Amazon.

It does look like the new show is centred, at least partially, on rehabilitated Borg drones. No allied cube though. The trailer makes it look like that the Romulans - presumably an imperialist faction (any chance of a Sela cameo, maybe?) - have captured a cube and are repairing it.

Voyager, along with the entire franchise at the moment, is available to watch on Netflix I believe.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Daniel Newhouse said:

Will the Federation be divided into pro and anti Romulan revolutionaries?  Did they beat the Borg?

We'll find out when the show airs, which at the moment looks like it's going to be in January or February.

[Corvinus85]

 

 

[RumHam]

Still looks good, but he looks way to frail to be fencing.

I don't think it's been mentioned here but it seems Worf will to be in this too. Someone tweeted a signed clapper board and someone else spotted Dorn's signature on it. 

[Crazydog7]

Man the years have not been kind Riker you should have taken Q's deal eternal youth in the continuum doesn't sound so bad. 

[Jaxom 1974]

Damn it. They still have me wanting to see how this will work...even though I hate the idea of Romulus being blown up...

[Rhom]

1 hour ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Damn it. They still have me wanting to see how this will work...even though I hate the idea of Romulus being blown up...

I get all the other problems with the JJ Trek movies... but what is the issue you have specifically with blowing up Romulus?  Especially if we think this is still the Prime timeline?

[Jaxom 1974]

40 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I get all the other problems with the JJ Trek movies... but what is the issue you have specifically with blowing up Romulus?  Especially if we think this is still the Prime timeline?

I think it was dumb.  It didn't need to be Romulus.  For one, they'd already done the blowing up thing with Praxis in VI.  For another, it takes the Romulans, possibly the greatest Trek adversaries, and reduces them to a hodge podge of groups, seemingly right now, as no better than the Xindi in a way.  A cohesive, political maneuvering, militarily strong Romulus is a better foil and adversary for the Federation.  

Sure it wouldn't have given JJ his dramatic yin and yang of Vulcan dying in his terrible movie, but not having Romulus be the reason for Picard's apparent failed mission would leave the Kelvin timeline firmly in it's own Shatnerverseque pocket universe.  For this new show, blow up a lesser world, still have the same potential impact, and maybe raise up a alien species or group that hadn't had a chance to be explored well yet...I think that makes sense...

 

Oh, and I'm not really addressing the move in JJ's movie so much as making that situation true canon in the Prime Universe, I guess...

[Jace, Extat]

14 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

I think it was dumb.  It didn't need to be Romulus.  For one, they'd already done the blowing up thing with Praxis in VI.  For another, it takes the Romulans, possibly the greatest Trek adversaries, and reduces them to a hodge podge of groups, seemingly right now, as no better than the Xindi in a way.  A cohesive, political maneuvering, militarily strong Romulus is a better foil and adversary for the Federation.  

Sure it wouldn't have given JJ his dramatic yin and yang of Vulcan dying in his terrible movie, but not having Romulus be the reason for Picard's apparent failed mission would leave the Kelvin timeline firmly in it's own Shatnerverseque pocket universe.  For this new show, blow up a lesser world, still have the same potential impact, and maybe raise up a alien species or group that hadn't had a chance to be explored well yet...I think that makes sense...

 

Oh, and I'm not really addressing the move in JJ's movie so much as making that situation true canon in the Prime Universe, I guess...

It's also written by Alex Kurtzman. He who wrote The Mummy (2017), Amazing Spiderman 2, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

But look! PICARD! Shell out your dollars you fucking rubes! Eat some more shit because there's sprinkles on top!

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

I think it was dumb.  It didn't need to be Romulus.  For one, they'd already done the blowing up thing with Praxis in VI. 

It didn't actually blow up though, it was consumed in a singularity. 

Edit: My mistake, it was wiped out by it's star going supernova. Spock and Nero got sucked into the artificial singularity Spock created trying to contain the supernova. Next time I should really check Memory Alpha Before I post. That movie is just so forgettable. 

1 hour ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

It's also written by Alex Kurtzman. He who wrote The Mummy (2017), Amazing Spiderman 2, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

But look! PICARD! Shell out your dollars you fucking rubes! Eat some more shit because there's sprinkles on top!

This has already been covered a couple pages back, but he's an executive producer and as far as we know not writing for the show. (He's busy with Discovery.) The showrunner is Chabon.

You could have done a similar thing with Akiva Goldsman though, who is a writer on the show and wrote Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, among other shitty things. 

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, RumHam said:

It didn't actually blow up though, it was consumed in a singularity. 

This has already been covered a couple pages back, but he's an executive producer and as far as we know not writing for the show. (He's busy with Discovery.) The showrunner is Chabon.

You could have done a similar thing with Akiva Goldsman though, who is a writer on the show and wrote Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, among other shitty things. 

Oops, my bad. Because producers have no input.

[RumHam]

1 minute ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Oops, my bad. Because producers have no input.

You know I never said they didn't. I was responding to your claim that he wrote the thing. 

"Executive Producer" can be anything from a vanity credit to someone who is really hands on. In this case Kurtzman is busy with Discovery for most of Picard's production so I doubt he had time to hang out in the writer's room pitching terrible ideas. But who knows. 

[Jace, Extat]

19 minutes ago, RumHam said:

You know I never said they didn't. I was responding to your claim that he wrote the thing. 

"Executive Producer" can be anything from a vanity credit to someone who is really hands on. In this case Kurtzman is busy with Discovery for most of Picard's production so I doubt he had time to hang out in the writer's room pitching terrible ideas. But who knows. 

Color me skeptical.

[Werthead]

Quote

You could have done a similar thing with Akiva Goldsman though, who is a writer on the show and wrote Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, among other shitty things. 

Goldsman was a writer and Kurtzman the co-creator on Fringe, which was surprisingly excellent. Neither was involved as showrunner though.

The primary creative force on Picard is Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Award, Hugo Award-winning novelist and sometimes cited as one of the greatest living American authors, and who's already proven his Star Trek chops by writing possibly the best episode of the franchise since DS9 ended (Calypso). It's impressive they managed to get him to come down to working on a TV show, but he's an old-skool Trek fan.

[karaddin]

Just read this long interview with PatStew from back in December and I'm sure the direction of the show will sound encouraging to some (like me) and not to others who don't want to see The Federation having faltered.

https://variety.com/2020/tv/features/patrick-stewart-star-trek-picard-cbs-all-access-1203459573/

[Toth]

Quote

“The world of ‘Next Generation’ doesn’t exist anymore. It’s different. Nothing is really safe. Nothing is really secure.”

Yeah, that sounds super promising! Sure Alex Kurtzman is the guy to make such a premise work... /s

This is just diplomatic speech for "The writers are taking a dumb on canon, completely miss the nature of the setting and all this because they want to do their own thing without having to adhere to the name of the franchise they have been hired for". I am also really antsy about them emphasizing the humanist messages of past Star Trek and then saying that instead of that they want to focus on how awful the world right now is. That might just be the interpretation of the interviewer, but it still makes me highly uneasy that there is truth to this. How exactly do you think the original Star Trek intended to change the world, to change society? Not by portraying the future as just as bad as the present day, but to show that people can do better for crying out loud! That is Star Trek and always has been in its best moments! I say fuck everyone who wants the world of Star Trek to be miserable and bleak JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER FUCKING SHOW.

Ugh... I hate to be always this guy, but given how awful Discovery was from start to finish and how flimsy of a reason there is for this Picard thing to exist, I just.... I just can't make myself not be super pessimistic about this. It will likely just become another soulless piece of nonsense that I have to mentally exorcise from the canon of a big franchise that deserves better.