Star Trek: Attack of Shatner's Toupee Tribble

[Denvek]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Was season 2 of Picard just Picard’s fever dream then?

If it doesn't make sense, blame it on Q.

[Werthead]

19 minutes ago, Denvek said:

If it doesn't make sense, blame it on Q.

"Any time you see anything like that, the explanation is that a wizard Q did it, or we've gone into one of the parallel universes from Parallels, or a time-travelling Captain Kirk did it, or we've accidentally used an Andromeda script. There's always an explanation."

[DaveSumm]

Sorry but that post credit scene really spoilt it for me. In the same way Endgame didn’t have a post credit scene, this really needed the aerial shot of the poker table to be the concluding shot. It was so jarring to suddenly cut to “oh and one last thing, we’re shitting on our second season even harder than before k bye now”. But even the poker scene was just the same as TNG with worse writing. Nothing approaching the economic elegance of:

”I should have done this a long time ago.”

”You were always welcome.”

Is this seriously going to be the premise of the spinoff? The exact same one as TNG, Q badgers a Picard? I guess I should be grateful that we’ll get a show about a Starfleet ship set in time period Discovery should always have been set in (said it many times, it’s what Trek and Wars don’t have and Marvel does; a present. Universes need a present.)

[Lord Varys]

Will and Deanna no longer have a daughter now, right? Else she would have been fucking mentioned - or had shown up.

Really liked the post-credits scene there ... because, well, that death made absolutely no sense, so turning it into a joke does make sense. Although, of course, what the joke that was this season was supposed to be I never got...

Finale was emotionally not bad ... but plot-wise a joke. Why on earth would the Changelings work with the Borg? They are living gods in the Dominion, so if they were to do anything they would work with Jem'Hadar of their own making, taking possession of some Dominion resources.

Spoiler

Was this the remnant of the Borg from the defeat in Voyager? I imagine it would have been, but if so, then Janeway should have shown her face, too. It was her victory, after all.

Actually enjoyed the shooting and the action to a point, although, of course, the fact that the absence of the signal would magically reverse transformation into Borg which were based on genetic imperatives is absolute nonsense. Also, of course, the fact that Jean-Luc finally got a family again. Killing off his brother and nephew was always silly, and I really hated that.

This was actually the kind of finale were a Q Ex Machina moment could have worked. I mean, if you write a god into your story, then using it once in a while could make sense. Especially in context of this 'humanity is on trial' thing which was never resolved. This could have been the moment where the right convictions, actions, morals, etc. triggered a positive intervention on Q's part.

Have to say I really liked Ed Speelers in the role of Jack. They clearly cast a guy there who has a great physical likeness with Patrick Stewart and who often enough copies his mannerisms so you really see a family resemblance there. Also him as the cocky and flirty and somewhat hot-headed youth could work really great in a successor show - he would be pretty much like young Picard was before his near death experience.

In the end, though, this show was just a huge failure. The final season shows what they could have done if they had written a proper outline, had actually thought about the characters from the shows of the 90s and where they would be ... and if they had included reasonable character and historical development. The one good thing, I think, was the Federation really being troubled by the collapse of the Romulan Star Empire and the refugee situation. But it shouldn't have had that effect.

- Synth ban and secret Romulan anti-synth organization -> nonsense

- Robot deities being kind of evil -> badly written clichéd plot

- Weirdo Romulan sibling couple doing stuff leading nowhere -> waste of time

- Head of Starfleet security/Romulan ring leader commanding a Federation fleet to kill synths -> utter horseshit

- Ex-Borg not being welcomed back by their people -> nonsense because people would want their family and friends back

- Data dying all the time -> silly

And so on and so forth.

Season 3 showed that throwing a lot of characters together could be fun. They should have done that from the start - or slowly worked towards that, say, by having Picard slowly reconnecting with the old guard through the seasons - starting, as he did, with Will, Deanna, and Data in season 1.

[Jaxom 1974]

Read somewhere they apparently cut a line or two of dialog between Riker and Troi suggesting their daughter had started at the Academy...? 

Here's a pretty good article on the finale by a somewhat prolific Trek writer...

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Read somewhere they apparently cut a line or two of dialog between Riker and Troi suggesting their daughter had started at the Academy...? 

Here's a pretty good article on the finale by a somewhat prolific Trek writer...

The article summed up my feelings quite nicely…

[Jaxom 1974]

12 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The article summed up my feelings quite nicely…

Though it isn't a negative article. 

[RumHam]

30 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Though it isn't a negative article. 

It seemed more negative than positive.

Did they really not use Wesley? So Many baffling decisions. Especially when you consider they filled this season right after the last

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Though it isn't a negative article. 

I didn’t dislike everything.  I just think it could have been… a lot… better.  It’s like getting store brand vanilla ice cream when you haven’t had ice cream in three years.  It tastes good… but there is a lot better stuff out there.

[SpaceChampion]

Just realized that Terry Matalas named a planet M'talas Prime.      

Todd Stashwick wasn't the only actor from 12 Monkeys, also were the Vulcan and Ferengi crime lords, Kirk Acevedo & Aaron Stanford respectively.  He might have had Emily Hampshire play the Borg Queen in Season 2, if she had been available.

Matalas did an AMA on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/12u907s/im_terry_matalas_showrunner_and_executive/

 

 

Edited April 22, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[williamjm]

12 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Will and Deanna no longer have a daughter now, right? Else she would have been fucking mentioned - or had shown up.

In the first episode of the season Riker says that Deanna and Kendra are both glad to have him away for a while.

I think the finale, and the rest of the season reminded me of many of the recent Doctor Who episodes where they want to have scenes that look cool, regardless of whether they make any sense. It was often fun to watch, and it was great to see the cast reunited again, but it did require too much suspension of disbelief. I think it is the best season of Picard, but still a bit of a missed opportunity.

Spoiler

The most egregious example is having us believe that the Enterprise can fly through to the middle of a Borg cube. I think if it had been a shuttlecraft doing it I might have been willing to suspend disbelief, but a Galaxy class starship is going too far.

Is this the first time Deanna has sensed something actually useful on an enemy starship?

[Rippounet]

13 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Here's a pretty good article on the finale by a somewhat prolific Trek writer...

I tried to ask myself about the taste of that "meringue."
Well, it's really one of those cases were the more you think about it the worse it is.

Spoiler

This has to be the show with the most continuity problems I've ever seen. Which makes it impossible to take seriously from the start. How do you even think about a show that never cared about its own writing? It's as if the writers never even tried.
So the writing is objectively dreadful. But did we get any cool moments from the show? A few. Picard/Stewart got to make some grand speeches, Worf became... enlightened (?) and funny, and Seven got to captain her own ship. Maybe Data having fun at the helm counts (though it really annoyed me that Geordi of all people wouldn't trust him).
Uh, ok, but that's not much to show for three 10-episode seasons...
Space stuff maybe? Well sure, we got to see lots of ships and nice CGI images... but for each cool scene (the Enterprise facing the Borg Cube inside Jupiter, the Titan in the nebula, the Nostalgia Museum... ) there were a handful of problems (why are there so many lights on that huge empty ship? The single class of starship at the end of season 1, that ridiculously small fleet at the end of season 3, the obvious StarWars ripoff... ). Or, to put it differently, they couldn't even get that right.
I find myself concluding that this show has indeed been a dismal failure. A few nice moments in the third season just can't make up for the amount of ridiculousness we've had to deal with for close to 30 hours. If anything, those few nice moments feel like salt in the wound: they had the budget and the actors to do much much better.
Now there's a world in which them not even trying can be seen as respect: they knew they would never reach the depth of the best TNG episodes (and satisfy the fandom), so not trying and betting on nostalgia was "safe" and "respectful." And sure, they won't get the same amount of flack as the writers of Rings of Power (for instance).
But conversely, their avoiding any kind of genuine risk means the whole thing can (and should) be easily forgotten. Even the animated shows bring more to the Trek universe than Picard did. They went for "single-use" (/single-watch) material, because they didn't know how to build something that would stand on its own two feet... Which ends up being a waste of talent (at least Stewart's).

Anyway, what does the "meringue" taste like? Disappointment, I think. And I guess it was always going to be disappointing, but I find myself giving more points to the shows that at least try to build something. I'll give Rings of Power a second chance, but Picard I can now forget for good.

[Rippounet]

Damn, double post..

Edited April 22, 2023 by Rippounet

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

52 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

give Rings of Power a second chance

The moment ROP turned into wildly uncannonical fan fiction (compressing the events of thousands of years in mere months… Galadriel swimming Beleaguer… it lost me…

[Mosi Mynn]

Interesting snippets about what Matalas might want from a Legacy show.

I particularly like this (from the bottom of the article):

Spoiler

 If the Matalas-coined Star Trek: Legacy series does eventually get a green light at Paramount, it would of course follow Captain Seven on the new Enterprise-G. Matalas knows what would happen next. He knows what Jack Crusher’s future is after that post-credits scene with Q. He also has a very surprising way that Todd Stashwick — Captain Liam Shaw himself — could return, although he remains tight-lipped about the specifics.

“I know quite a few things,” Matalas says. “I’ve known exactly how Todd [Stashwick] is involved or would be involved if we should ever be so lucky to come back. Todd knows. and we’ve always known. And Jeri [Ryan] knows and it’s the coolest thing ever.”

 

[DaveSumm]

Starfleet on Seven: Hmm, she was Borg years ago, better not let her in straight away.

On Jack, who voluntarily waltz into the Borg lair to be a conduit for the destruction of earth: FAST TRACK THIS MAN

All seems a bit weird on Legacy, acting like they aren’t sure if it’s happening when they just very clearly teed it up. Surely Paramount / Kurtzman / whoever wouldn’t sign off on that ending if it wasn’t happening.

Also, Stashwick: ECH?

Also also: did Seven / the Titan actually achieve anything in this episode? I may have missed some line of dialogue, but they attempted to distract the fleet … surely failed, cos it’s a fleet for pete’s sake, and then Picard saved the day anyway?

Edited April 22, 2023 by DaveSumm

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I’m finally getting around to watching Discovery.  Just got to season 3.  The second half of Season 2 was really quite good.

[Mosi Mynn]

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Also, Stashwick: ECH?

I'm not sure if I need to put this in spoilers as it's speculation on a series that might not happen, but I'll err on the side of caution:

Spoiler

Emergency Command Hologram?

I can see how the new Starfleet will need many of these, as the young Borgified officers killed many (most?) of the senior ranks (including Shaw).  That's a lot of trauma to deal with (but probably won't be), and  a lot of lost experience and leadership.

This could be an interesting take on Starfleet - young crews dealing with the Borg trauma and trying to re-build their world and lives, and explore at the same time.

This is the one scenario where the fast track promotion of someone like Kelvin Timeline Kirk would make sense!

 

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, Mosi Mynn said:

 

  Hide contents

Emergency Command Hologram?

 

Yup. I’m entirely guessing of course.

[Werthead]

8 hours ago, williamjm said:

Is this the first time Deanna has sensed something actually useful on an enemy starship?

I reached The Royale earlier on today in my rewatch and there's an interesting thing there where Deanna's link with Riker allows her to determine his location and mood, so knows he's okay even when they can't communicate or lock on transporters (which happens fairly often!). It doesn't come up that often though, and is the only time I can think of it other than her finding him on the Borg cube.