Star Trek: Picard (CBS All-Access)

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, Mommar said:

I was going to say DS9 is actually the only Star Trek series that hit the ground running.

I'm not sure it necessarily hit the ground running, but it stumbled a lot less off the line than TOS, TNG, VOY, or ENT.

STD tripped over its own feet at the starting line, and STP seems to be limping in entirely the wrong direction.

[Lolicon]

2 minutes ago, Mommar said:

I was going to say DS9 is actually the only Star Trek series that hit the ground running.

Only because the other Trek series fell flat on their faces at the start. I wouldn't characterize season 1 DS9 as "good" so much as "less sh***y" than the first seasons of the other shows. 

[Mommar]

3 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Only because the other Trek series fell flat on their faces at the start. I wouldn't characterize season 1 DS9 as "good" so much as "less sh***y" than the first seasons of the other shows. 

Outside of the usual actors/writers finding their footing with the characters the stories are better right out of the gate.

 

Though it is easier to find your bearings when J Michael Strazynski already wrote up your outline...

Edited February 10, 2020 by Mommar

[Lolicon]

"Move Along Home" is my favorite DS9 episode. 

[azrael]

6 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Only because the other Trek series fell flat on their faces at the start. I wouldn't characterize season 1 DS9 as "good" so much as "less sh***y" than the first seasons of the other shows. 

Yeah. In fact, I don't even remember the first 2 seasons of DS9 outside of the series premiere and the 2nd season finale. TNG had good episodes sprinkled during its first 2 seasons but with DS9, I can't recall an episode from the first 2 seasons that stuck with me.

[Mog]

Duet

In the Hands of the Prophets

Both are standout eps from Season 1 and considered some of the best for the entire run.

[pengbuzz]

BTW: I believe that the last name for Hugh has been revealed:

Spoiler

"Morris"

 

[Lolicon]

1 hour ago, Mog said:

Duet

In the Hands of the Prophets

Both are standout eps from Season 1 and considered some of the best for the entire run.

TNG season 2 had Q Who and The Measure of a Man, both are which are amazing episodes and some of the best of TNG. However, the season as a whole still is pretty crappy. The episode immediately after Q Who is the one where Geordi gets kidnapped by the slow aliens of the short yellow starship. 

What makes season 1 TNG so much worse than season 1 DS9 isn't just the bad stories, it's also the sanctimonious "holier-than-thou" attitude of the humans. "We're so evolved and perfect we don't even get headaches anymore! All you less evolved species must listen to us for we are always right!"

Short version: Gene's vision sucks.

[azrael]

1 hour ago, Mog said:

Duet

In the Hands of the Prophets

Yeah, literally had to look up those 2 episodes...and they're gone.

21 minutes ago, Lolicon said:

What makes season 1 TNG so much worse than season 1 DS9 isn't just the bad stories, it's also the sanctimonious "holier-than-thou" attitude of the humans. "We're so evolved and perfect we don't even get headaches anymore! All you less evolved species must listen to us for we are always right!"

Q, literally, has eternity to smack that "holier-than-thou" attitude out of humans.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

BTW: I believe that the last name for Hugh has been revealed:

  Hide contents

"Morris"

 

And here was me suspecting it'd be "Mann".  Hugh Mann.

That's the quality of writing we're looking at here in Star Trek: Picard.

 

2 hours ago, Lolicon said:

TNG season 2 had Q Who and The Measure of a Man, both are which are amazing episodes and some of the best of TNG. However, the season as a whole still is pretty crappy.

It took TNG a while to find its feet after that disastrous first season.

 

2 hours ago, Lolicon said:

The episode immediately after Q Who is the one where Geordi gets kidnapped by the slow aliens of the short yellow starship. 

Geordi pioneered what O'Brien had to go through... engineers must suffer.

 

2 hours ago, Lolicon said:

What makes season 1 TNG so much worse than season 1 DS9 isn't just the bad stories, it's also the sanctimonious "holier-than-thou" attitude of the humans. "We're so evolved and perfect we don't even get headaches anymore! All you less evolved species must listen to us for we are always right!"

Short version: Gene's vision sucks.

Gene's vision is problematic when it's not strained through the filter of capable writers.

He was fine as long as he had DC Fontana and the others holding his leash.  A good idea man, but a complete hedonist who was a little too in love with moralizing, paradoxically enough.

To wit, there's nothing wrong with Gene's vision... the problem was with Gene's writing.

[CoryHolmes]

2 hours ago, azrael said:

Yeah, literally had to look up those 2 episodes...and they're gone.

Q, literally, has eternity to smack that "holier-than-thou" attitude out of humans.

It wasn't until much, much later in life that I realized just what Q was doing in that episode.  At first I hated watching Picard grovel, but now I absolutely love it.  And that character growth is one of the few things that remained constant in an episodic series without much continuity.

[Lolicon]

27 minutes ago, CoryHolmes said:

It wasn't until much, much later in life that I realized just what Q was doing in that episode.  At first I hated watching Picard grovel, but now I absolutely love it.  And that character growth is one of the few things that remained constant in an episodic series without much continuity.

Hear hear! It was a humbling and illuminating moment that the pompous ass Picard of that period really needed.

Gene's vision and his writing are not separate and distinct parts that exist in a vacuum independent of each other. His writing sucked because his vision sucked. His vision was sterile and boring and stood in the way of good storytelling. Fortunately, we had many talented folks come in and dispense with his BS.

Nick Meyer: F*** Gene's vision. Starfleet is a military organization.

Ira Steven Behr: F*** Gene's vision. Sisko is a soldier.

Ronald Moore: F*** Gene's vision. Also, f*** you Rick Berman and Brannon Braga! I'll write my own sci-fi series about humans lost in space trying to find their way to Earth! And it's going to be dark and gritty and way more hard hitting than your sanitized Voyager crap! 

[CoryHolmes]

54 minutes ago, Lolicon said:

Ronald Moore: F*** Gene's vision. Also, f*** you Rick Berman and Brannon Braga! I'll write my own sci-fi series about humans lost in space trying to find their way to Earth! And it's going to be dark and gritty and way more hard hitting than your sanitized Voyager crap! 

Also Ronald Moore: And while I'm at it, Imma promise everyone that there is a giant plan that we're all following, so much so that we're going to put in the opening credits and then I'm going to forget all about it and just pull things out of my exhaust port! 

[Lolicon]

19 minutes ago, CoryHolmes said:

Also Ronald Moore: And while I'm at it, Imma promise everyone that there is a giant plan that we're all following, so much so that we're going to put in the opening credits and then I'm going to forget all about it and just pull things out of my exhaust port! 

LMAO

Yeah they stumbled towards the end there, but still so much better than Voyager.

[Seto Kaiba]

14 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Gene's vision and his writing are not separate and distinct parts that exist in a vacuum independent of each other. His writing sucked because his vision sucked. His vision was sterile and boring and stood in the way of good storytelling. Fortunately, we had many talented folks come in and dispense with his BS.

I disagree... there's abundant evidence that Gene Roddenberry was a pretty mediocre writer going back to well before he ever conceived Star Trek.  His style never really grew beyond its origins, writing for hammy 1950s sponsored serials like The Kaiser Aluminum Theater and Goodyear Theater.

Like George Lucas, he was a good idea man but he needed good writers to distill a good concept into something you could actually write about.

Star Trek only really ran into problems with his vision when they took him off the leash in TNG Season 1.

 

 

14 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Nick Meyer: F*** Gene's vision. Starfleet is a military organization.

Even Roddenberry was going back and forth about that in TOS... "is Starfleet a military or isn't it?" is one of the oldest inconsistencies in Trek.  

 

14 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Ira Steven Behr: F*** Gene's vision. Sisko is a soldier.

Also Ira Steven Behr: the Federation is an idealistic, money-free utopia and even in time of war they hold its ideals of peace, equality, and the dignity of life sacred ad freaking nauseum and even the Very Bad People who don't uphold those ideals still respect them and seek to preserve them (e.g. Section 31)

 

14 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Ronald Moore: F*** Gene's vision. Also, f*** you Rick Berman and Brannon Braga! I'll write my own sci-fi series about humans lost in space trying to find their way to Earth! And it's going to be dark and gritty and way more hard hitting than your sanitized Voyager crap! 

Ronald Moore: "I have a colossal twelve-foot boner for TOS and show it at every freaking opportunity."

Also (literally) Ronald Moore: "The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based, and if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform."

 

13 hours ago, CoryHolmes said:

Also Ronald Moore: And while I'm at it, Imma promise everyone that there is a giant plan that we're all following, so much so that we're going to put in the opening credits and then I'm going to forget all about it and just pull things out of my exhaust port! 

Also Ronald Moore: F*ck executive meddling, we had a f*cking plan and you bastards ruined it.

[Dynaman]

16 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

  A good idea man, but a complete hedonist who was a little too in love with moralizing, paradoxically enough.

 

I find the two seem to go together for often then not.

[CoryHolmes]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

IAlso (literally) Ronald Moore: "The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based, and if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform."

 

Also Ronald Moore: F*ck executive meddling, we had a f*cking plan and you bastards ruined it.

I hated First Duty when it aired, and it took me years to appreciate all the subtle things that went into that episode.  I now absolutely love how Picard has to steel himself before that meeting with Westley because he knew it was going to be hard for them both.

 

What's that about executive meddling?  I'd like to read about that.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, CoryHolmes said:

What's that about executive meddling?  I'd like to read about that.

Ah, Star Trek: Voyager... the show that got made and the show that the producers had planned, developed, and auditioned actors for was a very different creature to the Star Trek: Voyager the network let them shoot.

Star Trek: Voyager was originally going to rely much more heavily on Deep Space Nine's serialized storytelling format instead of the episodic formula that The Next Generation had depended on, and it was going to be a fair bit darker than was typical for Star Trek.  You could say that the Voyager episodes "Worst Case Scenario" and "Year of Hell" are surviving bits of the original series concept for Star Trek: Voyager.  They were going to have the Starfleet and Maquis crews aboard Voyager being suspicious of and hostile to each other, with Janeway and Chakotay essentially being rival captains constantly at odds with each other over how to do things (Janeway being the by-the-book Starfleet officer, and Chakotay being the "screw the rules, what works works" guy).  Voyager itself was also going to sustain persistent damage the more fights it got into, with the gradual deterioration of the ship's systems being part of the cause for the drama as niceties like holodecks and replicators break down with no way to repair them.

UPN didn't like that idea, so they forced A LOT of rewrites on the show until the concept was essentially TNG 2.0 and the various logistical and moral dilemmas of being a ship stranded alone and far from home that were to be the focus of the drama had been all but completely excised from the story.  Several of the actors were quite upset that their characters were rewritten to declaw them for the new, friendlier take on Voyager.  Robert Beltran (Chakotay) was so incensed he phoned in his performance for seven seasons, and concessions had to be made to other characters whose roles were significantly hampered by the elimination of the hostile setting, leading to things like the Tom-B'Elanna romance and dropping characters like Lt. Carey who had originally been set up and auditioned for as rivals to other characters.

[Dynaman]

Same thing happened to Enterprise.  The whole first season was supposed to be strictly on Earth with the Enterprise being finished at the end of the season.

I'm not sure either show would have worked as originally conceived though.  Voyager was trying to be what Galactica ended up being but that just didn't fit in Star Trek at the time - the reception for Discovery shows it still is not generally accepted.  

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Dynaman said:

Same thing happened to Enterprise.  The whole first season was supposed to be strictly on Earth with the Enterprise being finished at the end of the season.

Which, IMO, could have been amazing... if it weren't for the show deciding to make the Vulcans so adversarial in ways that agitated even the cast.  It wouldn't have been anywhere near as weird or potentially problematic as some of the stuff planned for the unproduced season five, like introducing the Kzinti from Star Trek: the Animated Series as a new antagonist (and yes, those are Larry Niven's Kzinti from Known Space... he rewrote The Soft Weapon for use as a TAS script).

 

Quote

I'm not sure either show would have worked as originally conceived though.  Voyager was trying to be what Galactica ended up being but that just didn't fit in Star Trek at the time - the reception for Discovery shows it still is not generally accepted.  

Personally, I'm inclined to suspect that audiences would've been a lot more receptive of a more unconventional Star Trek series with a more conflict-heavy narrative back when Star Trek: Voyager was on the drawing board.  Star Trek had been on the air continuously for eight years when Voyager premiered, and audiences were starting to get burned out on the episodic "strange planet of the week" story format.  I think Voyager as originally planned would have been a much easier sell back then.  Instead, they stuck religiously to the TNG formula and it cost them in the form of a steady ratings decline across all seven seasons that even the introduction of a Miss Fanservice failed to arrest.

Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard are running up against the same problem in reverse.  Dark, gritty, unpleasant, conflict-heavy sci-fi became the norm while Star Trek was off the air, so this awful new brand of Star Trek is just another squirt in an overcapacity crowd rather than the breath of fresh air that many Star Trek and sci-fi fans were hoping for.  That's why there was such praise for The Orville... it delivered what Star Trek was supposed to, but didn't.  It doesn't help that Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard are trying to have their cake and eat it too, clinging to classic Star Trek tropes and characters while doing a terrible job of trying to be dark, gritty, and action-packed.  We're watching the franchise's emo phase and it is CRINGEWORTHY.

[Lexomatic]

On the flip side for Voyager, if you can enjoy it for its own merits rather than get hung up on "too much of the same, too soon" or "how are they resupplying on photorps and shuttles" or "Kazons are bargain-bin Klingons, har-har!", it's got a lot of solid, character-driven storytelling. Veteran Trek author Keith R.A. DeCandido has recently started a series re-watch on Tor.com.

Naturally, it's a lot easier to skip the dreck in our modern streaming era than in ages past, when we necessarily consumed the series via linear-TV, VHS or DVD.

Edited February 13, 2020 by Lexomatic

[Seto Kaiba]

51 minutes ago, Lexomatic said:

On the flip side for Voyager, if you can enjoy it for its own merits rather than get hung up on "too much of the same, too soon" or "how are they resupplying on photorps and shuttles" or "Kazons are bargain-bin Klingons, har-har!", it's got a lot of solid, character-driven storytelling. Veteran Trek author Keith R.A. DeCandido has recently started a series re-watch on Tor.com.

Yeah, Star Trek: Voyager can still be a lot of fun to watch because despite all the executive meddling they still ended up with a couple sets of characters who had really great chemistry like Paris and Torres, or The Doctor and Seven of Nine.  The network execs plans to turn it into TNG 2.0 succeeded at least in that the crew of the USS Voyager seemed to be a crew of competent professionals who actually liked working together.  

Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard are a lot less fun to watch because the protagonists do not enjoy their lives.  They're miserable, broken people who are seemingly committed to remaining as miserable as possible.  They are, to borrow Julian Bashir's term, The Ambassadors of Unhappy.  The only people in Star Trek: Picard who seem to actually enjoy life are Laris and Zhaban, who think the whole main plot of the show is a boondoggle (and I'm inclined to agree).

[pengbuzz]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, Star Trek: Voyager can still be a lot of fun to watch because despite all the executive meddling they still ended up with a couple sets of characters who had really great chemistry like Paris and Torres, or The Doctor and Seven of Nine.  The network execs plans to turn it into TNG 2.0 succeeded at least in that the crew of the USS Voyager seemed to be a crew of competent professionals who actually liked working together.  

Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard are a lot less fun to watch because the protagonists do not enjoy their lives.  They're miserable, broken people who are seemingly committed to remaining as miserable as possible.  They are, to borrow Julian Bashir's term, The Ambassadors of Unhappy.  The only people in Star Trek: Picard who seem to actually enjoy life are Laris and Zhaban, who think the whole main plot of the show is a boondoggle (and I'm inclined to agree).

So is there a concept/ formula/ idea that would revitalize Trek? Or would it just be best to let it lie fallow for a decade or so? My view at this point is the latter: just leave it be and focus on something else. They've run it as far as it will go for the moment.

Edited February 13, 2020 by pengbuzz

[Sildani]

CBS/Paramount oughta just buy Axanar and let Alec Peters finish it. That’s been the Star Trek I’ve Ben most excited about in the last ten years. 

[JB0]

8 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

So is there a concept/ formula/ idea that would revitalize Trek? Or would it just be best to let it lie fallow for a decade or so? My view at this point is the latter: just leave it be and focus on something else. They've run it as far as it will go for the moment.

Let it lie fallow and never come back at all.

I'm becoming more certain with every sequel and remake that turns up that the greatest honor that can be bestowed upon a beloved show is letting it die without flogging it for every cent it is worth, each new installment increasingly caricature-ish and tone-deaf, less aware of what made the original great in the first place.

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

So is there a concept/ formula/ idea that would revitalize Trek? Or would it just be best to let it lie fallow for a decade or so? My view at this point is the latter: just leave it be and focus on something else. They've run it as far as it will go for the moment.

It's not that there's one concept/formula/idea that would let Viacom-CBS revitalize Star Trek... there are dozens, even hundreds of concepts that would work if Viacom-CBS were smart enough to do two very basic things:

1. Ditch this dystopian take on Star Trek's setting.
   Science fiction with a dystopian future setting was really edgy and cool forty f*cking years ago... but overuse and abuse of those tropes has made the dystopian space future into the default science fiction setting the way overuse and abuse of tropes from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings became the default fantasy setting.  Unless you've got a new hot take on it, the way Game of Thrones did for fantasy or Black Mirror has for sci-fi/horror, you're just another squirt in a very large crowd.  
   
   Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard's writers are full of that "fake woke" cr*p that's going around Hollywood these days, and they're constantly trying to make obvious and terribly cliched points about how much they think the modern world sucks by making their vision of the future suck even more.  That's not what Star Trek is about.  That's never been what Star Trek is about.  Star Trek is about saying that we can - and will - be better than that.  That the future WILL be better, because we will eventually find the solutions for today's problems and rise above them.  This is such a basic premise that even Futurama's Fry understood it.  Star Trek is about hope for the future.
   
    
2. Get away from the J.J.-Trek visual aesthetic.
   Seriously.  Very few Star Trek fans like the J.J.-Trek visual aesthetic, and it f*cking shows in the fact that J.J.-Trek was a flop at the box office and in merchandising, that audiences largely hated Star Trek: Discovery's J.J.-Trek-derived visual aesthetic to the point that there's virtually no merchandising for the series, and that Star Trek: Picard only managed to secure two merchandising licenses: one for cheap wine branded as Chateau Picard, and one for a cheap replica of Dahj and Soji's necklace.  The J.J.prise is an ugly piece of sh*t, the Discovery is an ugly piece of sh*t, and La Sirena is an ugly piece of sh*t.  Nobody wants to watch this ugly sh*t, and nobody wants to buy merchandise of it.  That it's a dead end design-wise really shows in Star Trek: Picard, where every prop and set piece looks hopelessly generic except for the ones that are explicitly nods to previous Star Trek titles.

 

Frankly, if there's anything at all to the latest round of leaks from generally-reliable leakers inside the Star Trek franchise, this current revolting mockery of Star Trek doesn't appear to be long for this world and the franchise may end up taking an involuntary hiatus.  Viacom-CBS is apparently rather unhappy with the performance of both Star Trek shows, and have been tossing around the idea of dismissing both Kurtzman and Chabon.  Star Trek: Discovery's third season is apparently working with significant budget cuts because Netflix is also very unhappy with how the show is performing, and the third season finale has been reportedly written as a series finale in the event that viewership slips further and the series isn't renewed.  Star Trek: Picard's apparently shaping up to be a one-and-done thanks to fan dissatisfaction with the series's dismal Discovery-esque tone.  They've even claimed that the talk of the Section 31 series being approved is not technically true, with no series order from CBS it's just Kurtzman and Secret Hideout developing it by redirecting staff from other projects.  I can't say I'd be upset if it all turned out to be true... this current brand of Star Trek deserves to be kicked out of the series canon the way TAS once was.

[pengbuzz]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's not that there's one concept/formula/idea that would let Viacom-CBS revitalize Star Trek... there are dozens, even hundreds of concepts that would work if Viacom-CBS were smart enough to do two very basic things:

1. Ditch this dystopian take on Star Trek's setting.
   Science fiction with a dystopian future setting was really edgy and cool forty f*cking years ago... but overuse and abuse of those tropes has made the dystopian space future into the default science fiction setting the way overuse and abuse of tropes from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings became the default fantasy setting.  Unless you've got a new hot take on it, the way Game of Thrones did for fantasy or Black Mirror has for sci-fi/horror, you're just another squirt in a very large crowd.  
   
   Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard's writers are full of that "fake woke" cr*p that's going around Hollywood these days, and they're constantly trying to make obvious and terribly cliched points about how much they think the modern world sucks by making their vision of the future suck even more.  That's not what Star Trek is about.  That's never been what Star Trek is about.  Star Trek is about saying that we can - and will - be better than that.  That the future WILL be better, because we will eventually find the solutions for today's problems and rise above them.  This is such a basic premise that even Futurama's Fry understood it.  Star Trek is about hope for the future.
   
    
2. Get away from the J.J.-Trek visual aesthetic.
   Seriously.  Very few Star Trek fans like the J.J.-Trek visual aesthetic, and it f*cking shows in the fact that J.J.-Trek was a flop at the box office and in merchandising, that audiences largely hated Star Trek: Discovery's J.J.-Trek-derived visual aesthetic to the point that there's virtually no merchandising for the series, and that Star Trek: Picard only managed to secure two merchandising licenses: one for cheap wine branded as Chateau Picard, and one for a cheap replica of Dahj and Soji's necklace.  The J.J.prise is an ugly piece of sh*t, the Discovery is an ugly piece of sh*t, and La Sirena is an ugly piece of sh*t.  Nobody wants to watch this ugly sh*t, and nobody wants to buy merchandise of it.  That it's a dead end design-wise really shows in Star Trek: Picard, where every prop and set piece looks hopelessly generic except for the ones that are explicitly nods to previous Star Trek titles.

 

Frankly, if there's anything at all to the latest round of leaks from generally-reliable leakers inside the Star Trek franchise, this current revolting mockery of Star Trek doesn't appear to be long for this world and the franchise may end up taking an involuntary hiatus.  Viacom-CBS is apparently rather unhappy with the performance of both Star Trek shows, and have been tossing around the idea of dismissing both Kurtzman and Chabon.  Star Trek: Discovery's third season is apparently working with significant budget cuts because Netflix is also very unhappy with how the show is performing, and the third season finale has been reportedly written as a series finale in the event that viewership slips further and the series isn't renewed.  Star Trek: Picard's apparently shaping up to be a one-and-done thanks to fan dissatisfaction with the series's dismal Discovery-esque tone.  They've even claimed that the talk of the Section 31 series being approved is not technically true, with no series order from CBS it's just Kurtzman and Secret Hideout developing it by redirecting staff from other projects.  I can't say I'd be upset if it all turned out to be true... this current brand of Star Trek deserves to be kicked out of the series canon the way TAS once was.

At that rate, I may as well just pitch "Star Trek: Alpha Centauri" to them then (my creation):

At least the ship looks like something halfway decent (there's an in-story reason it looks like a Federation/ Romulan Hybrid), and the story makes more sense IMO. BTW: I began this idea back in 2012.

As to your points: agreed on all counts. They lost their way and started 'flailing", trying everything they could think of.

Edited February 13, 2020 by pengbuzz

[Mommar]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

At that rate, I may as well just pitch "Star Trek: Alpha Centauri" to them then (my creation):

At least the ship looks like something halfway decent (there's an in-story reason it looks like a Federation/ Romulan Hybrid), and the story makes more sense IMO. BTW: I began this idea back in 2012.

As to your points: agreed on all counts. They lost their way and started 'flailing", trying everything they could think of.

Why does it look like a Hybrid?

[pengbuzz]

38 minutes ago, Mommar said:

Why does it look like a Hybrid?

combination Federation saucer/ ToS Romulan ship layout

 

Edited February 13, 2020 by pengbuzz

[Mommar]

50 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

combination Federation saucer/ ToS Romulan ship layout

 

That’s more of a what than a why.

[tekering]

1 hour ago, Mommar said:

That’s more of a what than a why.

I'd say it's a how.  

[JB0]

26 minutes ago, tekering said:

I'd say it's a how.  

All we need now is who, where, and when.

[Seto Kaiba]

So, boys and girls, the fourth episode of Star Trek: Picard has dropped like a turd into a toilet bowl after shotgunning an entire bottle of laxative and here's the postmortem.  Brace yourselves for me to be absolutely candid about "Absolute Candor".

 

The Good

Spoiler

Y'know, even if it's horribly out of character for Jean-Luc Picard, it's actually kind of cute seeing him reading to, and teaching fencing to, the young Romulan street urchin from the space nunnery.

For a minute there, Captain Rios seems to seriously consider beating Dr. Jurati around the head with his hardbound book.  I sympathize, sir.

 

The Bad

Spoiler

So once again, our drunken, shambling mess of a story resumes with an expositional flashback.  This time, it's to the "Romulan Relocation Hub" on planet Vashti.  Let's hope that's just a linguistic coincidence and not a bass-ackward biblical reference. 

It's a bit of a mystery why Starfleet is using shuttle designs that are 130+ years old for this operation... and why planet Vashti is covered completely with a massive green force field.  Since when have planetary-scale shields been a thing?  Also, why splurge and install one on a Romulan colony world?  Is it to keep them in, or someone else out?

We're treated to an idyllic (read "cliched") village of the space elves where Romulans sit around happily playing board games, with street urchins dressed as B-movie ninjas stealing fruit from street vendors and Jean-Luc Picard beaming in dressed in his very best Doug Dimmadome cosplay.  He's taken to some kind of Romulan nunnery where you're obliged to speak completely truthfully at all times even if it means being rude, and has to deal with an obnoxious kid who is very obviously the young version of the Romulan Legolas we saw in the trailer.  It is predictably curtailed by Picard receiving news that Mars has been attacked, a terribly stupid plot device they really ought to stop talking about.

They're still using the J.J.-Trek visuals for warp drive, so it looks more like Star Wars's hyperspace.

Jean-Luc Picard is once again playing the sad old regret-filled man in a shallow bid to manipulate his new "crew".  He wants to stop at Vashti, imperiling his mission and his life, because he might never pass that way again.

So... apparently all that fuss and noise from Romulan historian last episode is about a Romulan doomsday prophecy called the Day of Annihilation in which all life everywhere will be wiped out by "demons" answering the call of The Destroyer (Soji, apparently).  We're ticking Mary Sue checkboxes like mad with this lot.

Picard is back in Rivendell, and now it's got barricades strung up around the place with the Romulans having thoughtfully written things like "Romulans Only" in English.  The Romulans are understandably not happy to see him back.  The nuns are the only ones who even speak to him.

I can't begin to express how narmy it is that what raises alarms aboard the La Sirena and prompts the crew to start prepping to evacuate Picard is that he's trending on the local Romulan social media.  That's right, #Picard is trending on Spacebook!  (F*ck knows it ain't trending anywhere else.)  Meanwhile, La Sirena is about to come under attack from a pirate in his antique Bird of Prey, and Picard just kind of blows off the fact that his ship and crew are probably about to get killed.  I know they suck, Jean-Luc, but that's your one and only ride home from a planet of people who want you very dead.

Seven minutes 'til he can beam out, and Jean-Luc Picard decides the best thing his 94 year old *ss can do to pass the time is to pick a fight with the racist Romulan locals who put up signs like "ROMULANS ONLY".  He's confronted by an angry Romulan man who claims to be a former Romulan senator, gets guilt-tripped again about the evacuation being cancelled even though it wasn't his fault, and then challenged to a duel to the death with what is very obviously a basket-hilted broadsword salvaged from the set of a prior production or ordered from a replica sword maker and then antiqued up with some black ink.

Because this episode apparently wasn't cringe-inducing enough, let's tie this one off with some Romulan incest subtext... the Tal Shiar apparently traded their 80's shoulder pads in on leather dresses.

 

The Ugly

Spoiler

Jonathan Frakes directed this episode... and he did a REALLY f*cking bad job of it.  Like, I'm sorry... this is a disqualifying offense.

Dr. Jurati seems to be Star Trek: Picard's answer to Cadet Tilly from Discovery... baggage in humanoid form, a walking dispenser of some of the worst dialog ever committed to digital media.  She tries to soliloquize about the nature of space to Captain Rios, and comes off sounding like they wrote her dialog by training a bot on Yahoo! Answers and pretentious Twitter posts.  I would not blame Captain Rios for throwing her out the nearest airlock at the earliest opportunity.  I know I would.  

Raffi's first line in the episode is there to remind us that she's a genuinely unpleasant human being, she immediately starts complaining about Picard having asked to take a side trip to Vashti.

Santiago Cabrera is pulling quadruple duty now... his suspiciously well-appointed ship has an Emergency Hospitality Hologram too.  In yet another scene that seems more like a lampshade being hung on how they spent the entire budget on Patrick Stewart's salary and the CG visual effects, they apparently couldn't be arsed to have anyone else play a hologram and couldn't be arsed to build a cabin for Picard on the La Sirena.  He's living in the ship's holosuite, which he's set up as a recreation of his chateau in La Barre.

DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI... oh how I wish she'd get eaten by Cardassian voles.  

Jurati shows up just in time to facilitate Picard and Musiker exchanging unpleasantries, because everyone in this f*cking show hates each other with a passion, and sets up a bunch of exposition with all the subtlety of a brick to the head.

Rios drops a warning that the sector Vashti is in is now a sketchy area, overrun by pirates and so on including one pirate who has been using a vintage Romulan Bird of Prey (now over a century old).  It's just blatant fanservice.

ROMULAN WARRIOR NUNS.  This is a thing that is stated with complete seriousness.  ROMULAN. WARRIOR. NUNS.  That this is retarded is lampshaded IMMEDIATELY.  They're also, conveniently enough, bitter enemies of the Tal Shiar.  How the f*ck do they still exist when the Tal Shiar were basically gifted with unlimited authority to eradicate enemies of the Romulan state (and themselves)?

This dialog is SO F*CKING BAD.  Every time someone says something, Dr. Jurati replies with some varient of "What's that?".  It's like dealing with the Cat from Red Dwarf, but without the humor value.  Who thought this was a good idea?

Now we're back on the f*cking Borg Cube, where Soji is agonizing over the crazy doomsday prophecy lady.  Soji and Narek have some drinks at a bar in the Borg Cube, and discuss the crazy doomsday lady's assimilation.  He takes her to show her "something"... which he claims is a "Borg ritual"... and turns out to be sliding around on the slightly slick floor of a foggy room in their socks while some random laser nonsense goes on in the background.  It's kinda cringe-inducing, and the dramatic music DOES NOT HELP.  This episode is paced so poorly that it feels like it's been going for hours, yet the episode runtime claims I'm only 24 minutes in.

26:30 in the episode, and Patrick Stewart's finally on his hobby horse about the refugee crisis... and it's every bit as ham-handedly forced into the story as you'd expect. This planet is apparently Romulan-owned, Romulan-governed, Romulan-defended, but somehow it's All The Federation's Fault that the Romulans are unhappy in the eyes of the great self-important space boomer Jean-Luc Picard.

"Will you bind your sword to my cause?"  The f*ck is this, The Lord of the Rings?  Picard's recruiting a space elf ninja assassin to help him in his mission, but he's talking like he intends to go dispose of some cursed jewelry in a volcano and is waiting for Gimli, son of Gloin to show up and say that he has his axe.

So, Romulan Legolas shows up to save Picard at the last second and decapitates Picard's assailant with a single blow amidst some entirely unnecessary flipping and spinning... like he forgot he wasn't in a f*cking wuxia film.  Despite the man's head being cut clean off, it's largely bloodless carnage... except that what blood we do see looks like green highlighter ink... the effect is so badly done and so cliche that it screams "we are out of money, out of talent, and out of common sense".  

It took all bloody episode for the antique Romulan Bird of Prey to catch up to the La Sirena, and it immediately starts attacking.  How is this century-old clunker a threat to anything?  Yet another Rios hologram makes its debut, this one is called Emmitt and looks distinctly seedy and hung-over, and is apparently an Emergency Tactical Hologram given that he's summoned up to handle shooting back.  You can tell they ran out of money a long time ago in this episode, given that there's so much old-school leaning left and right, with the stage apparently not being on a gimbal.  Some new ship shows up out of the blue, blows a warp nacelle off the Bird of Prey, and is destroyed.  Surprise! It's Seven of Nine, who looks like cr*p, says "You owe me a ship, Picard", and then immediately passes out.

Next episode's trailer is apparently a massively cringeworthy heist sort of affair, with Picard and co. going to some kind of casino with Rios dressed in a goddamn green sequin zoot suit and Picard all in black with an eyepatch and a beret like an old man from a bad World War II movie about the French resistance.  It will also apparently be the origin of the scene of Seven of Nine two-handing phaser rifles.

 

[pengbuzz]

4 hours ago, Mommar said:

That’s more of a what than a why.

 

2 hours ago, JB0 said:

All we need now is who, where, and when.

 

2 hours ago, tekering said:

I'd say it's a how.  

Ah. my mistake.

Federation/ Romulan project, entered into after the events of ST: Nemesis. Main designer name: Archulus (Romulan).

Tell everyone what: let me re-enable the site I made for it, and y'all can tell me how bad it is (the uniforms, yes I know they suck!):

http://startrekalphacentauri.weebly.com/

(still gotta be better than Discovery or Picard...)

Edited February 14, 2020 by pengbuzz

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So, boys and girls, the fourth episode of Star Trek: Picard has dropped like a turd into a toilet bowl after shotgunning an entire bottle of laxative and here's the postmortem.  Brace yourselves for me to be absolutely candid about "Absolute Candor".

 

The Good

  Hide contents

Y'know, even if it's horribly out of character for Jean-Luc Picard, it's actually kind of cute seeing him reading to, and teaching fencing to, the young Romulan street urchin from the space nunnery.

For a minute there, Captain Rios seems to seriously consider beating Dr. Jurati around the head with his hardbound book.  I sympathize, sir.

 

The Bad

  Hide contents

So once again, our drunken, shambling mess of a story resumes with an expositional flashback.  This time, it's to the "Romulan Relocation Hub" on planet Vashti.  Let's hope that's just a linguistic coincidence and not a bass-ackward biblical reference. 

It's a bit of a mystery why Starfleet is using shuttle designs that are 130+ years old for this operation... and why planet Vashti is covered completely with a massive green force field.  Since when have planetary-scale shields been a thing?  Also, why splurge and install one on a Romulan colony world?  Is it to keep them in, or someone else out?

We're treated to an idyllic (read "cliched") village of the space elves where Romulans sit around happily playing board games, with street urchins dressed as B-movie ninjas stealing fruit from street vendors and Jean-Luc Picard beaming in dressed in his very best Doug Dimmadome cosplay.  He's taken to some kind of Romulan nunnery where you're obliged to speak completely truthfully at all times even if it means being rude, and has to deal with an obnoxious kid who is very obviously the young version of the Romulan Legolas we saw in the trailer.  It is predictably curtailed by Picard receiving news that Mars has been attacked, a terribly stupid plot device they really ought to stop talking about.

They're still using the J.J.-Trek visuals for warp drive, so it looks more like Star Wars's hyperspace.

Jean-Luc Picard is once again playing the sad old regret-filled man in a shallow bid to manipulate his new "crew".  He wants to stop at Vashti, imperiling his mission and his life, because he might never pass that way again.

So... apparently all that fuss and noise from Romulan historian last episode is about a Romulan doomsday prophecy called the Day of Annihilation in which all life everywhere will be wiped out by "demons" answering the call of The Destroyer (Soji, apparently).  We're ticking Mary Sue checkboxes like mad with this lot.

Picard is back in Rivendell, and now it's got barricades strung up around the place with the Romulans having thoughtfully written things like "Romulans Only" in English.  The Romulans are understandably not happy to see him back.  The nuns are the only ones who even speak to him.

I can't begin to express how narmy it is that what raises alarms aboard the La Sirena and prompts the crew to start prepping to evacuate Picard is that he's trending on the local Romulan social media.  That's right, #Picard is trending on Spacebook!  (F*ck knows it ain't trending anywhere else.)  Meanwhile, La Sirena is about to come under attack from a pirate in his antique Bird of Prey, and Picard just kind of blows off the fact that his ship and crew are probably about to get killed.  I know they suck, Jean-Luc, but that's your one and only ride home from a planet of people who want you very dead.

Seven minutes 'til he can beam out, and Jean-Luc Picard decides the best thing his 94 year old *ss can do to pass the time is to pick a fight with the racist Romulan locals who put up signs like "ROMULANS ONLY".  He's confronted by an angry Romulan man who claims to be a former Romulan senator, gets guilt-tripped again about the evacuation being cancelled even though it wasn't his fault, and then challenged to a duel to the death with what is very obviously a basket-hilted broadsword salvaged from the set of a prior production or ordered from a replica sword maker and then antiqued up with some black ink.

Because this episode apparently wasn't cringe-inducing enough, let's tie this one off with some Romulan incest subtext... the Tal Shiar apparently traded their 80's shoulder pads in on leather dresses.

 

The Ugly

  Hide contents

Jonathan Frakes directed this episode... and he did a REALLY f*cking bad job of it.  Like, I'm sorry... this is a disqualifying offense.

Dr. Jurati seems to be Star Trek: Picard's answer to Cadet Tilly from Discovery... baggage in humanoid form, a walking dispenser of some of the worst dialog ever committed to digital media.  She tries to soliloquize about the nature of space to Captain Rios, and comes off sounding like they wrote her dialog by training a bot on Yahoo! Answers and pretentious Twitter posts.  I would not blame Captain Rios for throwing her out the nearest airlock at the earliest opportunity.  I know I would.  

Raffi's first line in the episode is there to remind us that she's a genuinely unpleasant human being, she immediately starts complaining about Picard having asked to take a side trip to Vashti.

Santiago Cabrera is pulling quadruple duty now... his suspiciously well-appointed ship has an Emergency Hospitality Hologram too.  In yet another scene that seems more like a lampshade being hung on how they spent the entire budget on Patrick Stewart's salary and the CG visual effects, they apparently couldn't be arsed to have anyone else play a hologram and couldn't be arsed to build a cabin for Picard on the La Sirena.  He's living in the ship's holosuite, which he's set up as a recreation of his chateau in La Barre.

DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI DOCTOR JURATI... oh how I wish she'd get eaten by Cardassian voles.  

Jurati shows up just in time to facilitate Picard and Musiker exchanging unpleasantries, because everyone in this f*cking show hates each other with a passion, and sets up a bunch of exposition with all the subtlety of a brick to the head.

Rios drops a warning that the sector Vashti is in is now a sketchy area, overrun by pirates and so on including one pirate who has been using a vintage Romulan Bird of Prey (now over a century old).  It's just blatant fanservice.

ROMULAN WARRIOR NUNS.  This is a thing that is stated with complete seriousness.  ROMULAN. WARRIOR. NUNS.  That this is retarded is lampshaded IMMEDIATELY.  They're also, conveniently enough, bitter enemies of the Tal Shiar.  How the f*ck do they still exist when the Tal Shiar were basically gifted with unlimited authority to eradicate enemies of the Romulan state (and themselves)?

This dialog is SO F*CKING BAD.  Every time someone says something, Dr. Jurati replies with some varient of "What's that?".  It's like dealing with the Cat from Red Dwarf, but without the humor value.  Who thought this was a good idea?

Now we're back on the f*cking Borg Cube, where Soji is agonizing over the crazy doomsday prophecy lady.  Soji and Narek have some drinks at a bar in the Borg Cube, and discuss the crazy doomsday lady's assimilation.  He takes her to show her "something"... which he claims is a "Borg ritual"... and turns out to be sliding around on the slightly slick floor of a foggy room in their socks while some random laser nonsense goes on in the background.  It's kinda cringe-inducing, and the dramatic music DOES NOT HELP.  This episode is paced so poorly that it feels like it's been going for hours, yet the episode runtime claims I'm only 24 minutes in.

26:30 in the episode, and Patrick Stewart's finally on his hobby horse about the refugee crisis... and it's every bit as ham-handedly forced into the story as you'd expect. This planet is apparently Romulan-owned, Romulan-governed, Romulan-defended, but somehow it's All The Federation's Fault that the Romulans are unhappy in the eyes of the great self-important space boomer Jean-Luc Picard.

"Will you bind your sword to my cause?"  The f*ck is this, The Lord of the Rings?  Picard's recruiting a space elf ninja assassin to help him in his mission, but he's talking like he intends to go dispose of some cursed jewelry in a volcano and is waiting for Gimli, son of Gloin to show up and say that he has his axe.

So, Romulan Legolas shows up to save Picard at the last second and decapitates Picard's assailant with a single blow amidst some entirely unnecessary flipping and spinning... like he forgot he wasn't in a f*cking wuxia film.  Despite the man's head being cut clean off, it's largely bloodless carnage... except that what blood we do see looks like green highlighter ink... the effect is so badly done and so cliche that it screams "we are out of money, out of talent, and out of common sense".  

It took all bloody episode for the antique Romulan Bird of Prey to catch up to the La Sirena, and it immediately starts attacking.  How is this century-old clunker a threat to anything?  Yet another Rios hologram makes its debut, this one is called Emmitt and looks distinctly seedy and hung-over, and is apparently an Emergency Tactical Hologram given that he's summoned up to handle shooting back.  You can tell they ran out of money a long time ago in this episode, given that there's so much old-school leaning left and right, with the stage apparently not being on a gimbal.  Some new ship shows up out of the blue, blows a warp nacelle off the Bird of Prey, and is destroyed.  Surprise! It's Seven of Nine, who looks like cr*p, says "You owe me a ship, Picard", and then immediately passes out.

Next episode's trailer is apparently a massively cringeworthy heist sort of affair, with Picard and co. going to some kind of casino with Rios dressed in a goddamn green sequin zoot suit and Picard all in black with an eyepatch and a beret like an old man from a bad World War II movie about the French resistance.  It will also apparently be the origin of the scene of Seven of Nine two-handing phaser rifles.

 

"Oh...the horror..." sums it up pretty much...