Star Trek Thread: Set Picard to Stun (spoilers)

[Toth]

4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Guys, seriously, there are episodes in TOS and TNG where you can see that nobody is hitting each other in a brawl, and when people (mostly Klingons) are stabbing each other in DS9 there is no blood - neither at the so-called 'wound' nor at the weapons involved.

That's not something one can take seriously in our day and age.

This is the same show with the world's most inept assassins who prefer a fistfight when they have the technology and the government help to just beam their victim into a concrete wall.

This is the same scene where a doctor who is solely interested in making a buck from selling Borg implants doesn't use anesthetics for shits and giggles despite of risking the damage of these implants through his struggles. This is the same scene where we are left to wonder why Six of Ten has to kill Icheb when she seems to have already rescued him and it should be easy to fix him up with late 24th century medical tech. The same scene where she had the villain of the episode at her feet and then just forgot to deal with her so that she could take revenge on her in the current episode.

Please don't choose "BUT REALISM!" as the hill to die on, because that's a loosing battle.

[Lord Varys]

11 minutes ago, Toth said:

This is the same show with the world's most inept assassins who prefer a fistfight when they have the technology and the government help to just beam their victim into a concrete wall.

This is the same scene where a doctor who is solely interested in making a buck from selling Borg implants doesn't use anesthetics for shits and giggles despite of risking the damage of these implants through his struggles. This is the same scene where we are left to wonder why Six of Ten has to kill Icheb when she seems to have already rescued him and it should be easy to fix him up with late 24th century medical tech. The same scene where she had the villain of the episode at her feet and then just forgot to deal with her so that she could take revenge on her in the current episode.

Please don't choose "BUT REALISM!" as the hill to die on, because that's a loosing battle.

I'm not talking about realism within the fictional world, I'm talking about how things are depicted on the screen. And there the old shows just suck when compared to modern shows.

And, no, we really don't know whether ex-Borg can be patched up when crucial implants have been removed. I mean, there is likely a pretty good reason why they retain said implants rather than give them up, no?

[DaveSumm]

25 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Guys, seriously, there are episodes in TOS and TNG where you can see that nobody is hitting each other in a brawl, and when people (mostly Klingons) are stabbing each other in DS9 there is no blood - neither at the so-called 'wound' nor at the weapons involved.

That's not something one can take seriously in our day and age.

So there are no intermediate steps between those examples and graphic eye removal?

Violence aside, the more I think about the episode the weaker it seems. They aimed for a comedy team-up caper, but there was too much else to get done and so it fell flat. Picard has about two lines in his french accent, and the reasoning for dressing up at all didn’t really land. The mixed up chronology didn’t really seem necessary and it ended up looking like a weak Ocean’s 11 attempt, and the scene with Raffi’s son was out of place and fairly poorly acted. I guess I miss Picard being in charge, he didn’t seem like he was all that necessary to the episode.

[sifth]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Guys, seriously, there are episodes in TOS and TNG where you can see that nobody is hitting each other in a brawl, and when people (mostly Klingons) are stabbing each other in DS9 there is no blood - neither at the so-called 'wound' nor at the weapons involved.

That's not something one can take seriously in our day and age.

And you know what, I liked those episodes. I don't need A Game of Thrones level violence to enjoy my shows.

You know there's hardly ever any blood in the MCU and the original Star Wars films and I like them quite a lot as well.

[sifth]

42 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I'm not talking about realism within the fictional world, I'm talking about how things are depicted on the screen. And there the old shows just suck when compared to modern shows.

And, no, we really don't know whether ex-Borg can be patched up when crucial implants have been removed. I mean, there is likely a pretty good reason why they retain said implants rather than give them up, no?

Please, this is Star Trek, don't tell there aren't work arounds to this sort of thing. They were once able to save a characters life on Voyager, by simply giving him a set of holographic lungs.

[Lord Varys]

4 minutes ago, sifth said:

And you know what, I liked those episodes. I don't need A Game of Thrones level violence to enjoy my shows.

You know there's hardly ever and blood in the MCU and the original Star Wars films and I like them quite a lot as well.

Well, I guess you are getting old then. I'm not saying that you cannot like stuff you liked as a kid, but it makes no sense to expect that newer audiences have the same preferences. Star Trek is thankfully not getting stuck in the 1960s nor the 1990s.

5 minutes ago, sifth said:

Please, this is Star Trek, don't tell there aren't work arounds to this sort of thing. They were once able to save a characters life on Voyager, by simply giving him a set of holographic lungs.

Well, obviously this wasn't such a case, or else Seven wouldn't have killed the guy, no?

Overall, Star Trek is perhaps the worst franchise to expect internal consistency from.

[sifth]

13 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, I guess you are getting old then. I'm not saying that you cannot like stuff you liked as a kid, but it makes no sense to expect that newer audiences have the same preferences. Star Trek is thankfully not getting stuck in the 1960s nor the 1990s.

Well, obviously this wasn't such a case, or else Seven wouldn't have killed the guy, no?

Overall, Star Trek is perhaps the worst franchise to expect internal consistency from.

More like the writers of the show just wanted a graphic and emotional death with as little thought put behind it as they could get. 
 

At least back in the day they focused on good storytelling and not trying to make Trek as violent and graphical as possible. If you like murder porn, that’s fine; I personally love Robocop and Aliens myself. However I hate seeing it in Star Trek, where it just feels out of place.

I also used the MCU as an example of a series that doesn’t use extreme violence to tell good stories. Rather interesting that you ignored that part of the post.  If anything I think a show like Mando, should be as dark as Trek should get.

 

[Lord Varys]

2 minutes ago, sifth said:

More like the writers of the show just wanted a graphic and emotional death with as little thought put behind it as they could get.

Well, to be sure, I didn't recognize the guy they killed and I didn't even remember the character (I never watched the last season of Voyager because that was a very bad show).

2 minutes ago, sifth said:

At least back in the day they focused on good storytelling and not trying to make Trek as violent and graphical as possible. If you like murder porn, that’s fine; I personally love Robocop and Aliens myself. However I hate seeing it in Star Trek, where it just feels out of place.

I guess you have forgotten how often Troi was mind-raped...

Violence was always a crucial part of Star Trek - just rewatch the later seasons of DS9. Depicting it realistically is not wrong.

[Toth]

1 minute ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, I guess you are getting old then. I'm not saying that you cannot like stuff you liked as a kid, but it makes no sense to expect that newer audiences have the same preferences. Star Trek is thankfully not getting stuck in the 1960s nor the 1990s.

Well fuck, THIS is the problem. Or at least faceless executives who think like this are the problem why we can't have nice things anymore. This kind of circular reasoning sickens me because it makes all our media the same bland goo, continuously copying from what's currently popular in order to make 'safe' money.

We only get reboots or the riding of long dead horses because people seem to pay money for nostalgia. Forgetting why these old franchises had become popular in the first place.

We only get both grimdark and horribly lit shows because dark shows like Game of Thrones seem to be popular. Even though deconstructions are only good when they offer a different view on downtrodden tropes, it doesn't work when the deconstructions are the new normal.

We only get big cinematic universes because the MCU seems to be popular. Often forgetting that you need a lot of creative control to pull something like this off.

We only get strongly serialized shows behind a paywall streaming website because Netflix is making cash with that. Though it's absurd to think that more than the most dedicated fans will subscribe for yours when there are 20 bazillion streaming services around and pirating shit is still cheaper anyway.

We only get angry women constantly belittling Picard because pretending to be woke seems to attract all the media buzz, forgetting that it often rings hollow when it is just a marketing move and dishonest in execution (has anyone noticed that almost all the women on the show are villains? If that's some kind of empowerment message, they are doing a horrible job with it).

This has nothing to do with what audiences want from a STAR TREK show, it has everything to do with what companies THINK the lowest common denominator for the broadest casual audience is by looking at what's popular and making their STAR TREK show exactly the same. And the moment you start to approach your writing like this, the question what kind of story would expand upon the legacy of the highly influential franchise you are sitting on will come up dead last.

I recently saw the review of Redletter Media in regards to Star Trek The Motion Picture. The difference of then and now is not what the audience expects of Star Trek, it's the balls of the writers for making a cerebral movie made of very slow shots creating a sense of mystery and wonder. A movie where there was not a single firefight that could be called as such, but instead just a journey, allowing the movie (and therefore the still young franchise) to be its own thing, not the copy of something else. And this is the movie that kicked the Star Trek franchise back into life.

So... the originial topic was graphical violence in Star Trek, eh? I apologize that I focused mostly on WHY we had to endure torture porn in this episode instead of the HOW. I found that a lot more interesting. Because the HOW deeply depends on the WHY. It was cheap emotional manipulation pulling at all kinds of strings to make viewers feel bad and therefore have some superficial attachment to Seven's nonsensical revenge plot.

Yes, violence and torture had been in Star Trek before, but at its best it was to drive in a moral point. Case in point: THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS! That was good Star Trek and its intention was to make you think, not to just squick you out and then feel bad.

[RumHam]

11 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, to be sure, I didn't recognize the guy they killed and I didn't even remember the character (I never watched the last season of Voyager because that was a very bad show).

I guess you have forgotten how often Troi was mind-raped...

Violence was always a crucial part of Star Trek - just rewatch the later seasons of DS9. Depicting it realistically is not wrong.

Plus Geordi was tortured by his best friend Data. Riker(?) had his arm sawed off and reattached, though they didn't show it. Picard got hung naked and tortured for days. I remember Kirk being tortured too at least once. I'm pretty sure the Doctor gets reprogrammed and tortures someone on Voyager but I don't remember the details. 

[sifth]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, to be sure, I didn't recognize the guy they killed and I didn't even remember the character (I never watched the last season of Voyager because that was a very bad show).

I guess you have forgotten how often Troi was mind-raped...

Violence was always a crucial part of Star Trek - just rewatch the later seasons of DS9. Depicting it realistically is not wrong.

I've watched the final season of DS9 many times. I love that show and please tell me where was all this extreme violence you speak of? Sure people were shot and stabbed and ships blew up, but that was pretty much it. The only thing I can think of that comes close to what we saw this week was when Nog lost his leg and even that happened off camera.

Tell me how graphical was it when Nog got his leg cut off? Did we actually need to see it or was it just told to us after the fact. Did that make his pain any less real? Was it any less emotional, because we didn't see all of the blood and the stump where his leg use to be? I mean the episode where Nog recovers from the trauma of this experience is one of my favorite episodes of Trek and it has no violence at all in it.

btw: While I was running earlier today, I suddenly remembered that 7 of 9 had a means of bring dead Borg drones back to life in Voyager. I believe she uses a modified version of this to bring Nelix back to life. So yea, I'm going to say it again, the writers of this show are not Trek fans and probably haven't watched more than a handful of episodes.

btw: Don't feel bad for not recognizing Icheb. They didn't even bother getting his original actor back. For this very reason I didn't notice either, until his name was mentioned.

[sifth]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

Plus Geordi was tortured by his best friend Data. Riker(?) had his arm sawed off and reattached, though they didn't show it. Picard got hung naked and tortured for days. I remember Kirk being tortured too at least once. I'm pretty sure the Doctor gets reprogrammed and tortures someone on Voyager but I don't remember the details. 

Again, it's all about how far you're willing to take something. What your describing is about as graphical as you'd get in a show like The Mandalorian, which to me is as dark as Trek should ever get. What we saw this week was basically A Game of Thrones level of violence. Babylong 5 has a main character tortured and one of his eyes gets plucked out in the process, but notice how we didn't need to see it happen, yet it felt more real and emotional than the violence pron this week's episode gave us.

BTW: The Doctor tortures 7 of 9 and the "torture" you speak of was him mostly just injecting her with stuff that causes her pain. I will admit that it was much more emotional and better acted than what we saw this week; I mean the two characters are really good friends on Voyager after all. In terms of violence however, it was about as graphical as getting a shot in the doctors office.

[Mindwalker]

Really, "as graphic and violent as possible" is just hyperbole. If you feel like that, fine. But "Game of Thrones level"?! Please. That's just insulting.

[RumHam]

14 minutes ago, sifth said:

btw: While I was running earlier today, I suddenly remembered that 7 of 9 had a means of bring dead Borg drones back to life in Voyager. I believe she uses a modified version of this to bring Nelix back to life. So yea, I'm going to say it again, the writers of this show are not Trek fans and probably haven't watched more than a handful of episodes.

True, but I also remember a plot where her "cortical implant" or whatever was malfunctioning and it was a death sentence.  They had to do some super dangerous borg salvage mission to obtain a new one or she would have died. So if that was what was removed from Itchy, (which I assume is the case cause I believe it's the only implant they could never remove from borg who aren't picard) it makes sense to me that he was doomed. 

7 minutes ago, sifth said:

Again, it's all about how far you're willing to take something. What your describing is about as graphical as you'd get in a show like The Mandalorian, which to me is as dark as Trek should ever get. What we saw this week was basically A Game of Thrones level of violence. Babylong 5 has a main character tortured and one of his eyes gets plucked out in the process, but notice how we didn't need to see it happen, yet it felt more real and emotional than the violence pron this week's episode gave us.

Ah. I guess I should have stayed out of this conversation since I haven't actually gotten to it yet. Three more eps of TNG! Then the movies I guess, which are all pretty bad. I think it was @Toth who asked earlier in the thread why people liked First Contact so much and I think it's just because Generations, Insurrection and Nemesis really suck. 

[sifth]

4 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Really, "as graphic and violent as possible" is just hyperbole. If you feel like that, fine. But "Game of Thrones level"?! Please. That's just insulting.

So you think it should have been even more violent and disturbing I suppose? That makes for quality tv in 2020?

[sifth]

5 minutes ago, RumHam said:

True, but I also remember a plot where her "cortical implant" or whatever was malfunctioning and it was a death sentence.  They had to do some super dangerous borg salvage mission to obtain a new one or she would have died. So if that was what was removed from Itchy, (which I assume is the case cause I believe it's the only implant they could never remove from borg who aren't picard) it makes sense to me that he was doomed. 

Ah. I guess I should have stayed out of this conversation since I haven't actually gotten to it yet. Three more eps of TNG! Then the movies I guess, which are all pretty bad. I think it was @Toth who asked earlier in the thread why people liked First Contact so much and I think it's just because Generations, Insurrection and Nemesis really suck. 

I wont spoil it for you, but the Picard show has a pretty easy way to fix that issue as well. I'll let you discover it for yourself though.

 

btw: I hope you enjoy the final episodes of TNG; All Good Things is one of my favorite episodes of Trek.

[RumHam]

4 minutes ago, sifth said:

I wont spoil it for you, but the Picard show has a pretty easy way to fix that issue as well. I'll let you discover it for yourself though.

 

btw: I hope you enjoy the final episodes of TNG; All Good Things is one of my favorite episodes of Trek.

I'm wierd I don't really mind spoilers I've been reading reviews and this thread. and yeah I'm looking forward to comparing All Good Things with Picard. 

Edit: Just saw this article that is kinda relevant. I remember reading about how they planned to decapitate Wesley years ago. 

Quote

 

They also discuss their original ending for [Yesterday's Enterprise], which would have included just about every member of the Enterprise-D bridge crew dying brutally in the standoff with the Klingons. 

Though Behr recalled that the show did shoot death scenes for characters like Data and Wesley Crusher, the massacre was cut short by executive producer Rick Berman, who thought it would be "too violent" and "too depressing for the fans," even though the characters all ultimately survived.

"My memory is that Rick Berman pushed back on that and didn't want to see everyone on the bridge die," Moore said. "So I pulled back on what my original intention was, but [writing it] was a ball."

 

 

[Mindwalker]

11 minutes ago, sifth said:

So you think it should have been even more violent and disturbing I suppose? That makes for quality tv in 2020?

Those are two very different questions, even though you make it sound as if one followed from the other. Your first question also misrepresents what I said. Your style of arguing is not what I would call "in good faith".

1. It could have been more violent and disturbing. GoT is more violent and disturbing.

2. No, the level of violence does not constitute quality, neither good nor bad.

As you wilfully misrepresent the points made, I won't engage in further discussions with you.

[Datepalm]

Blah why is everything so stuck? Picard somehow seems to be trying to be Star Trek's Firefly, only its been 20 years since Firefly, y'all.

[Werthead]

Just worth pointing out that TNG's Conspiracy in its first season was way more graphic than this episode of Picard (exploding heads ahoy!) and Wrath of Khan was not far off. Blood/gore is relatively rare in Trek but certainly not unprecedented, and the earlier series would have had more blood and violence if they could have gotten away with it (RDM was always deeply frustrated they couldn't show the impact of violence more realistically, and bemoaned how sanitised and safe Trek often was, even a supposedly violent episode like The Siege of AR-558).