Star Trek: Picard (CBS All-Access)

[technoblue]

6 hours ago, Sandman said:

What? I haven't seen this being picked up by the usual youtube channels. And they would jump on this kind of news.

It's important to take Seto's new-Trek (JJ-verse?) bias into context, which I can understand. I have a similar blind spot to all topics Enterprise related. 

Anyway, here's Jeri Ryan's quote taken from cinemablend (with a link to their article):

https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2477763/star-trek-picard-had-jeri-ryan-crying-and-freaking-out-over-sevens-new-voice

Quote

Honestly, it was freaking terrifying, and these two [Jonathan Frakes and Jonathan Del Arco] can attest to that! They both saved my ass! I was freaking out. She was a very specific character for four years on Voyager. There was a lot of growth, and all of that. She went from being a machine to learning to be human. But, particularly the way she moved and her voice, that was what I was really hung up on. Her voice didn’t change that much in four years. So, she had a stilted, very formal, very stylized way of speaking, at the end of Voyager. So, when I got the initial script, and from I knew from the original pitch with James [Duff] a year and a half ago, she is not the same Seven. She is much more human. She been on Earth for a long time, she has been through a lot. So, when I saw that initial script and as you saw 'what the hell are you doing out here?' It’s a very, very different voice. And that is what was freaking me out.

IMO, it's less a comment on the show and more a comment on adjusting to how the character has changed since Voyager was on broadcast TV. I'm going to give Picard a chance, the same I did with Discovery, even with all the rumors about how it's a disaster in the making. For me, Disco did not sink to Enterprise levels, so it has that, Pike, and a heavy helping of trope stuffing at least. To date, my favorite Trek series are TOS and DS9 (which I gotta admit, caused me to miss B5's original run back in the day).

[Chronocidal]

Yeah, that's mostly what I assumed the entire thing was about, but you know how sites love sensational headlines.  They're not going to use a truthful headline about someone choked up to see their character growing significantly between series when they can make a clickbait title to grab attention.  

[Bolt]

Now that CBS and Viacom( which includes paramount studios) are getting remarried,  things are going to get interesting for ST..

Edited August 14, 2019 by Bolt

[Sildani]

That’s a Chinese curse, ya know. 

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, Bolt said:

Now that CBS and Viacom( which includes paramount studios) are getting remarried,  things are going to get interesting for ST..

Not really, no... this just means that the Star Trek rights will be united under a single roof again.  It won't do anything to fix the problems with existing developments like STD, Picard, or Lower Decks.  It just means that, when Star Trek: Picard tanks like Star Trek: Discovery did, they can chuck them both (and Lower Decks in the bargain) and produce something that actually resembles real Star Trek again instead of Abrams and Kurtzman's watered-down sewage runoff.

 

1 hour ago, Sildani said:

That’s a Chinese curse, ya know. 

As opposed to Bad Robot, which is just a regular curse.

[mechaninac]

10 hours ago, Sildani said:

That’s a Chinese curse, ya know. 

May Star Trek live in interesting times...

 

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As opposed to Bad Robot, which is just a regular curse.

More of a plague and a physical and mental disability than a curse, but either way it is just as debilitating and leads to unsavory outcomes.

[pengbuzz]

On 8/14/2019 at 9:52 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Not really, no... this just means that the Star Trek rights will be united under a single roof again.  It won't do anything to fix the problems with existing developments like STD, Picard, or Lower Decks.  It just means that, when Star Trek: Picard tanks like Star Trek: Discovery did, they can chuck them both (and Lower Decks in the bargain) and produce something that actually resembles real Star Trek again instead of Abrams and Kurtzman's watered-down sewage runoff.

 

As opposed to Bad Robot, which is just a regular curse.

Yeah.... in many ways, Star Trek has been suffering from an "STD" alright....

[Seto Kaiba]

16 hours ago, mechaninac said:

May Star Trek live in interesting times...

What it seems to be headed for is dying in interesting times...

While the CBS/Viacom re-merger is cause for some slight optimism, I doubt it will have any meaningful impact on Star Trek: Picard or Star Trek: Discovery.  The studio's already sunk a lot of money into Kurtzman's unsuccessful Abrams-ized bleak, depressing, action-oriented vision of Star Trek, and they're practically guaranteed to plow ahead with it regardless in a forlorn hope that it might one day be liked by fans and begin to pay off.  The dearth of Star Trek: Discovery merchandise and the reported walkout of licensees who were solicited for bids on Star Trek: Picard merchandising licenses would suggest this is probably A Very Bad Idea, but some people will cling to a mistake just because they spent a long time making it.

 

Quote

More of a plague and a physical and mental disability than a curse, but either way it is just as debilitating and leads to unsavory outcomes.

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Yeah.... in many ways, Star Trek has been suffering from an "STD" alright....

As polarizing as Bill Shatner has been in recent years, I have to admit I'm with him on one thing... the attempts to make Star Trek into a gritty, sci-fi action series through things like the J.J. Abrams films, Star Trek: Discovery, and now Star Trek: Picard and the persistent-but-apparently-unfounded rumors of a Quentin Tarantino Star Trek movie would have Roddenberry spinning in his grave.  It's the polar opposite of the vision of an optimistic, principled, and inclusive future for humanity among the stars that he conceived in the original Star Trek and in Star Trek: the Next Generation.

To briefly expound on the above, I think the thing that bothers me most about the Abrams/Kurtzman clusterf*ck in Star Trek: Discovery that's being carried forward into Star Trek: Picard is how Star Trek is suddenly treating racism (speciesism?) as something that's excusable, acceptable, or even justified.  In every previous Star Trek show, judging a person by their race/species and generalizations about same was treated as a moral failing and something which wasn't acceptable, socially or otherwise.  Burnham's bigotry is not only treated as completely acceptable in Discovery, it's excused and even treated as justified by making the Klingons almost completely malevolent for much of the story.  I'm rather afraid of how Picard will run with the titular character's known issues with the Borg and Romulans, given the trauma he's encountered at the hands of both.

Edited August 15, 2019 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

What it seems to be headed for is dying in interesting times...

While the CBS/Viacom re-merger is cause for some slight optimism, I doubt it will have any meaningful impact on Star Trek: Picard or Star Trek: Discovery.  The studio's already sunk a lot of money into Kurtzman's unsuccessful Abrams-ized bleak, depressing, action-oriented vision of Star Trek, and they're practically guaranteed to plow ahead with it regardless in a forlorn hope that it might one day be liked by fans and begin to pay off.  The dearth of Star Trek: Discovery merchandise and the reported walkout of licensees who were solicited for bids on Star Trek: Picard merchandising licenses would suggest this is probably A Very Bad Idea, but some people will cling to a mistake just because they spent a long time making it.

It would take (I think) a major "head transplant" here: removing Kurtzman and his cronies from running or having anything to do with the shows from here on out. The "well" is pretty much poisoned here and all that can be done is to put in a fresh team with no connection to the previous.

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As polarizing as Bill Shatner has been in recent years, I have to admit I'm with him on one thing... the attempts to make Star Trek into a gritty, sci-fi action series through things like the J.J. Abrams films, Star Trek: Discovery, and now Star Trek: Picard and the persistent-but-apparently-unfounded rumors of a Quentin Tarantino Star Trek movie would have Roddenberry spinning in his grave.  It's the polar opposite of the vision of an optimistic, principled, and inclusive future for humanity among the stars that he conceived in the original Star Trek and in Star Trek: the Next Generation.

Lately, there is a veritable pandemic of "Grititis": the desire to take something and make it "real" by making it dark and gritty. The problem with that though is not everything lends itself to such treatment, and Star Trek is one of those things. Even real life isn't all "gritty" all the time (the sun does shine on at least a few days), but some think that dark and dank with rough characters and situations means drama. I for one would like to see Hollyweird get away from this kind of thinking, but I'd be mistaken to believe it will happen anytime soon...

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

To briefly expound on the above, I think the thing that bothers me most about the Abrams/Kurtzman clusterf*ck in Star Trek: Discovery that's being carried forward into Star Trek: Picard is how Star Trek is suddenly treating racism (speciesism?) as something that's excusable, acceptable, or even justified.  In every previous Star Trek show, judging a person by their race/species and generalizations about same was treated as a moral failing and something which wasn't acceptable, socially or otherwise.  Burnham's bigotry is not only treated as completely acceptable in Discovery, it's excused and even treated as justified by making the Klingons almost completely malevolent for much of the story.  I'm rather afraid of how Picard will run with the titular character's known issues with the Borg and Romulans, given the trauma he's encountered at the hands of both.

Exactly: in the TNG  episode with Hugh, they made a major point about how Picard's experiences colored his views on the Borg and how he treated Hugh. And in First Contact, his hatred towards the Borg took center stage during the conversation with Lily in the Officer's Briefing Room (where he smashed the ships). It was made clear by the director(s) that Picard's behavior was abnormal and alarming, NOT "justified" by the malevolence of the Borg.

I share your concern that this will be handled poorly on Kurtzman's watch, and leave us with some rather poor portrayals of Picard that i would just as soon not even give any space in my consciousness to register. I hope Sir Stewart has the class and good sense to speak up on any such faux pas' on Kurtzman's part and refuse to "roll over".

[Seto Kaiba]

16 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

It would take (I think) a major "head transplant" here: removing Kurtzman and his cronies from running or having anything to do with the shows from here on out. The "well" is pretty much poisoned here and all that can be done is to put in a fresh team with no connection to the previous.

Unfortunately, a full replacement of the Star Trek creative staff is unlikely to occur until (or unless) CBS decides the current Star Trek projects under active development are performing too poorly to justify continuing to keep around.

Star Trek: Discovery is already performing poorly enough that Netflix only reluctantly agreed to bankroll season two after securing a promise it'd be more like real Star Trek and, unless I've missed something, neither Netflix nor CBS have made any announcements about having resolved their deadlock over the show's future.  CBS's attitude seems to be that Star Trek: Discovery's status as the flagship series of their struggling CBS All Access service and all the sunk costs involved in its development planned to be amortized over seven seasons mean that the series is simply Too Big To Fail.  They're plowing forward with season three development regardless of the ongoing legal proceedings for copyright infringement and Netflix's reluctance to actually give them any money to make it.

Star Trek: Picard seems to be headed the same direction, relying on the same deceptive marketing tactics used in Star Trek: Discovery's second season in the hopes of bringing Star Trek fans back to the franchise long enough for CBS All Access to turn a decent profit.  Amazon was already reluctant to give CBS anything close to the amount CBS wanted for the show's production, so it'll be interesting to see how the curtailment of the budget will impact the quality of CBS's spectacle-before-substance approach to Star Trek.  

 

16 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Lately, there is a veritable pandemic of "Grititis": the desire to take something and make it "real" by making it dark and gritty. The problem with that though is not everything lends itself to such treatment, and Star Trek is one of those things. Even real life isn't all "gritty" all the time (the sun does shine on at least a few days), but some think that dark and dank with rough characters and situations means drama. I for one would like to see Hollyweird get away from this kind of thinking, but I'd be mistaken to believe it will happen anytime soon...

I'm not so sure we don't start to see the end of it in the near future... a large part of the blame for the tsunami of dark, gritty, action-ized, spectacle-over-substance versions of shows cropping up in recent years belongs to Game of Thrones.  Game of Thrones was a license to print money at the height of its popularity and success like that naturally leads to copycat behavior from rivals and partners alike.  The ignoble failure of Game of Thrones's eighth and final season as well as the at-best lukewarm performance of a number of other big ticket properties that tried to imitate its style like Harry Potter's Fantastic Beasts spinoff or the Star Trek reboot films should serve to disincentivize going all-in on the dark and gritty BS in the future.  (That said, I was actually rather surprised to learn that Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of Grindelwald had been poorly received... I'd thought it was rather good since its tone was amply justified by being set in Europe between the World Wars.)

That said, I doubt CBS/Viacom will budge on either Star Trek: Discovery or Star Trek: Picard.  I think they're smart enough to know that no amount of retooling will make Discovery a watchable show and are determined to plow forward with it anyway in the hope that familiarity with it might breed something other than contempt for once.  I don't think that they ever really gave up on making Star Trek: Discovery into Game of Space Thrones, they've just had to change tack after using the Klingons for it didn't pan out with nobody giving any f*cks about L'Rell and Voq because they were a career backstabber and unloveable bigot turned into a subtly racist meme.

 

16 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I share your concern that this will be handled poorly on Kurtzman's watch, and leave us with some rather poor portrayals of Picard that i would just as soon not even give any space in my consciousness to register. I hope Sir Stewart has the class and good sense to speak up on any such faux pas' on Kurtzman's part and refuse to "roll over".

I'm less than optimistic that any objections on Patrick Stewart's part would make any impact on the producers... Star Trek's producers have a long history of not taking complaints by their actors seriously, going back to WAY before Kurtzman.  Nichelle Nichols's grievances almost led to her quitting Star Trek's original series until Leonard Nimoy took Roddenberry to task and Martin Luther King Jr. begged her to stay on the show, Gates McFadden quit Star Trek: the Next Generation and was replaced by Diana Muldaur for a season because she was frustrated at her character's lack of development after having been promised she'd be Picard's romantic foil and Denise Crosby quit because she felt her character wasn't doing anything of significance, Robert Beltran spent seven seasons phoning in his performances in protest of Chakotay being rewritten into Janeway's yes-man on Star Trek: Voyager and Jeri Ryan's complaints about being unable to breathe properly in her original catsuit that were ignored until it started to negatively impact her health on set, and Jolene Blalock spent four seasons protesting the handling of her character and Vulcans in general being inconsistent with previous Star Trek shows to no effect.

[Kanedas Bike]

^The only thing I would counter with is that gritty science fiction became in-vogue with 2004 Battlestar Galactica and not the A Song of Ice and Fire books (1996) or Game of Thrones.

-b.

[tekering]

29 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'm less than optimistic that any objections on Patrick Stewart's part would make any impact on the producers...

Have you read Michael Pillar's book?

As writer, producer, and showrunner for significant portions of TNG, DS9, and Voyager, he nonetheless couldn't get his script for Insurrection approved until he made the requisite changes Patrick Stewart (and Brent Spiner) demanded.  Leading actors clearly had clout in the '90s, at least.

[Seto Kaiba]

42 minutes ago, Kanedas Bike said:

^The only thing I would counter with is that gritty science fiction became in-vogue with 2004 Battlestar Galactica and not the A Song of Ice and Fire books (1996) or Game of Thrones.

Battlestar Galactica's 2004 TV series was a strong performer, but it kind of burned out on its own when its spinoff Caprica was poorly received and got cancelled by SyFy in 2010.

Game of Thrones was what I mentioned because it's the property that's generally credited (or blamed, depending on your perspective) with the spate of dark, action-heavy, highly serialized shows we're currently living with by producers and film pundits alike.

 

10 minutes ago, tekering said:

Have you read Michael Pillar's book?

Can't say that I have, and please tell me that isn't the real cover... that looks like he made it himself in Microsoft Paint during a boring staff meeting.

 

Quote

As writer, producer, and showrunner for significant portions of TNG, DS9, and Voyager, he nonetheless couldn't get his script for Insurrection approved until he made the requisite changes Patrick Stewart (and Brent Spiner) demanded.  Leading actors clearly had clout in the '90s, at least.

Actors have a bit more clout working in feature films rather than broadcast television... though, to be fair, all my examples were supporting actors and actresses raising grievances with the producers.  After seven seasons and two previous feature films as Jean-Luc Picard, Patrick Stewart could kind of hold the project hostage to get any changes he wanted made.  It's not clear if he could do that with Star Trek: Picard.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Seto Kaiba

[Kanedas Bike]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Battlestar Galactica's 2004 TV series was a strong performer, but it kind of burned out on its own when its spinoff Caprica was poorly received and got cancelled by SyFy in 2010.

Game of Thrones was what I mentioned because it's the property that's generally credited (or blamed, depending on your perspective) with the spate of dark, action-heavy, highly serialized shows we're currently living with by producers and film pundits alike.

Well, I'm sure we can credit both to one degree or another.

It's just when I think outer space fiction and "darker/edgier/faster/less science but more action" movies and shows of today I look directly at BSG and even Stargate Universe which absolutely owes it's existence to BSG. I never bothered with Caprica, Razor or any of the others because I didn't "ache" for more BSG and I imagine that was a common sentiment leading to those shows/made for TV movies not having the same success.

Game of Thrones is what's making shows like The Witcher (despite a devote following from books and video games) to Lord of the Rings (also despite books and movies) getting made by Netflix and Amazon respectively. 

Really I'm just boiling it down to genre vs. overall tone.

Right now Star Trek as a property just seems to be all over the place, not unlike DC and to a much lesser extent Star Wars (which at least strives for continuity across movies, books, video games and television shows (animated and planned live action) is suffering greatly from creative highs and lows.

Personally I wish they'd have just stuck with the Kelvin timeline vs. backtracking to the original timeline that doesn't "feel" at all like the original Trek. Push forward with the new and leave the old and beloved alone.

-b.

[tekering]

11 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Can't say that I have, and please tell me that isn't the real cover...

Well, since Paramount prevented its publication a decade ago, Pocket Books was never able to use the manuscript.  Instead, the .pdf was distributed online for free.  It was only after Piller's death that his estate had it printed and bound, but I wouldn't exactly call it a "professional" publication.

Nonetheless, it's a fascinating and informative read, and well worth the time to track down.

[Seto Kaiba]

15 hours ago, Kanedas Bike said:

Right now Star Trek as a property just seems to be all over the place, not unlike DC and to a much lesser extent Star Wars (which at least strives for continuity across movies, books, video games and television shows (animated and planned live action) is suffering greatly from creative highs and lows.

The novels, at least, had a coordinated continuity across the four Star Trek relaunch novel lines and the new TOS novels that were made alongside them.  I'm not sure if the Star Trek: Discovery novels are coherent with them, but the TV series itself borrowed the second season's primary antagonist (Control) from them and the ending of season two seems written to avoid ruling out that the Control AI was actually permanently destroyed.  (Control in the novel-verse was not a malevolent AI as such, but more a very well-intentioned extremist ala Sloan that would take any action, no matter how unsavory, to preserve the Federation and its ideals in a galaxy that didn't share them.  The actual malevolent AI was Control's creator, the AI Uraei, a pre-Federation surveillance AI which created Control and Section 31 to take extralegal action on its behalf... and was deleted by Dr. Bashir a few years after Nemesis.)

Star Trek: Picard poses more problems, being that the Borg apparently are the centerpiece of its plot... while in the novelverse the Borg ceased to exist when the "sufficiently advanced" race that accidentally created them killed the Borg Queen for good and cut off the Collective for good a few years after Nemesis.

 

15 hours ago, Kanedas Bike said:

Personally I wish they'd have just stuck with the Kelvin timeline vs. backtracking to the original timeline that doesn't "feel" at all like the original Trek. Push forward with the new and leave the old and beloved alone.

The whole reason that they went back to developing in the Prime universe was that Star Trek fans largely didn't really care for the Jar-Jar Abrams reboot films and their darker, more action-centric take on the setting, and the films themselves were not really all that successful commercially.  Star Trek: Beyond in particular did very poorly once marketing costs were added in, which led to an exodus of financial backers that killed the fourth movie stone dead.  Because the audience that DID like the films were mostly the casual viewers and the Star Trek fandom's feelings for them hovered between ambivalence and dislike, there was very little in the way of licensing revenue to recoup costs and losses.

Going back to prime universe Star Trek made sense... as in "dollars and".  Bad Reboot still wants to do things Abramsverse-style because that's their take on Star Trek, but because many fans don't care for it at all they keep increasing the percentage of prime continuity references and appearances by characters from previous Star Trek shows in the hopes of making their creative output less unpalatable to the die-hard fans who actually buy the franchise's licensed merchandise.  They're hurting pretty bad because there aren't as many licensees buying licenses and paying royalties because market research shows them that the fans who are paying for merchandise don't like Abrams-era Trek.

[pengbuzz]

On 8/16/2019 at 12:52 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Can't say that I have, and please tell me that isn't the real cover... that looks like he made it himself in Microsoft Paint during a boring staff meeting.

Wow... that looks like something I saw on a fanfic once a few years ago. He didn't even try to correct the darkness on the space backdrop of the galaxy and planet to match the E-D's starfield!

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The novels, at least, had a coordinated continuity across the four Star Trek relaunch novel lines and the new TOS novels that were made alongside them.  I'm not sure if the Star Trek: Discovery novels are coherent with them, but the TV series itself borrowed the second season's primary antagonist (Control) from them and the ending of season two seems written to avoid ruling out that the Control AI was actually permanently destroyed.  (Control in the novel-verse was not a malevolent AI as such, but more a very well-intentioned extremist ala Sloan that would take any action, no matter how unsavory, to preserve the Federation and its ideals in a galaxy that didn't share them.  The actual malevolent AI was Control's creator, the AI Uraei, a pre-Federation surveillance AI which created Control and Section 31 to take extralegal action on its behalf... and was deleted by Dr. Bashir a few years after Nemesis.)

Star Trek: Picard poses more problems, being that the Borg apparently are the centerpiece of its plot... while in the novelverse the Borg ceased to exist when the "sufficiently advanced" race that accidentally created them killed the Borg Queen for good and cut off the Collective for good a few years after Nemesis.

 

The whole reason that they went back to developing in the Prime universe was that Star Trek fans largely didn't really care for the Jar-Jar Abrams reboot films and their darker, more action-centric take on the setting, and the films themselves were not really all that successful commercially.  Star Trek: Beyond in particular did very poorly once marketing costs were added in, which led to an exodus of financial backers that killed the fourth movie stone dead.  Because the audience that DID like the films were mostly the casual viewers and the Star Trek fandom's feelings for them hovered between ambivalence and dislike, there was very little in the way of licensing revenue to recoup costs and losses.

Going back to prime universe Star Trek made sense... as in "dollars and".  Bad Reboot still wants to do things Abramsverse-style because that's their take on Star Trek, but because many fans don't care for it at all they keep increasing the percentage of prime continuity references and appearances by characters from previous Star Trek shows in the hopes of making their creative output less unpalatable to the die-hard fans who actually buy the franchise's licensed merchandise.  They're hurting pretty bad because there aren't as many licensees buying licenses and paying royalties because market research shows them that the fans who are paying for merchandise don't like Abrams-era Trek.

Seto, I have to ask you something: what would make for a good Star Trek series in your opinion (and anyone else's for that matter)? I ask because I had my own ideas, but I'm not sure how well they would stack up.

[jenius]

Star trek, like Star wars, is too long in the tooth, and it's fans too dogmatic. Any new media will trip over itself immediately. Fans want something that is right with the universe but the universe itself was glued together largely of the writing convenience of prior shows. That was the brilliance of the first reboot movie's time shenanigans... It's just too bad the writing around those shenanigans was so weak. 

Edited August 18, 2019 by jenius

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Seto, I have to ask you something: what would make for a good Star Trek series in your opinion (and anyone else's for that matter)? I ask because I had my own ideas, but I'm not sure how well they would stack up.

Really, I think there's a lot of latitude for writing Star Trek stories.  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine proved that a Star Trek story didn't need to follow the Gene Roddenberry "planet of the week" formula to be successful.  You could set a show in a fixed location or indulge in serialized storytelling and still keep that essential Star Trek flavor.  The thing that sets Star Trek apart from other sci-fi produced in the west is that the future it depicts is a fundamentally optimistic, aspirational one.

That's where J.J. Abrams and Alex Kurtzman both screwed up.  Bad Reboot's Star Trek movie trilogy and Star Trek: Discovery both dispensed with the idea that the future would be a bold age of space exploration in which humanity had long since learned how to treat itself (and others) with dignity and respect, and where clever diplomacy was just as potent (and far more preferable) a problem solving tool than violence.  They didn't want to tell that kind of story.  They wanted to make something more generic, the kind of standard space war story where the situation never gets more complex than Lawful Good vs Chaotic Evil and problems are solved by shooting each other with ray guns.  That's why Star Trek '09's story created a parallel world with a more militant, openly nationalistic Federation and Starfleet who see the Klingons and Romulans not as worthy foes or potential allies in the future, but simply hostile aliens to be destroyed.  That's also why Star Trek: Discovery's entire first season was one long war story, against a more bestial, far less civilized Klingon Empire full of cruel, bloodthirsty, warmongering savages who live by no law other than the survival of the fittest.  They've been dehumanized to the point that they're not people, they're just space monsters the heroes can kill without remorse or complaint.  There's no code of honor... they're just rapists and murderers and terrorists and every other kind of immoral thing you could think of.  Star Trek: Discovery's second season was little better, with a few optimistic plots before the rot set in and they introduced an omnicidal enemy who wanted to exterminate all life and therefore diplomacy was never an option so massive ray gun battles and grisly combat deaths could be the norm.  That's where I fear Star Trek: Picard is headed.  Picard had issues with dehumanizing the Borg drones already, but now we're going to see the Romulans as irredeemable villains who're just keeping the Borg drones in gulags to torture them.

You can write almost any story in that general setting and call it Star Trek, but without that optimistic, principled future it won't feel like Star Trek.  That is the most important thing for writing a Star Trek story... that the future is a better place, that humanity and its allies have principles, and that differences are celebrated rather than shunned.  That vision of the future is the quintessence of the Star Trek setting.  Everything else is negotiable.

[JB0]

*applauds*

Everything I wanted to say. Attitude matters a lot more than continuity or setting.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Really, I think there's a lot of latitude for writing Star Trek stories.  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine proved that a Star Trek story didn't need to follow the Gene Roddenberry "planet of the week" formula to be successful.  You could set a show in a fixed location or indulge in serialized storytelling and still keep that essential Star Trek flavor.  The thing that sets Star Trek apart from other sci-fi produced in the west is that the future it depicts is a fundamentally optimistic, aspirational one.

That's where J.J. Abrams and Alex Kurtzman both screwed up.  Bad Reboot's Star Trek movie trilogy and Star Trek: Discovery both dispensed with the idea that the future would be a bold age of space exploration in which humanity had long since learned how to treat itself (and others) with dignity and respect, and where clever diplomacy was just as potent (and far more preferable) a problem solving tool than violence.  They didn't want to tell that kind of story.  They wanted to make something more generic, the kind of standard space war story where the situation never gets more complex than Lawful Good vs Chaotic Evil and problems are solved by shooting each other with ray guns.  That's why Star Trek '09's story created a parallel world with a more militant, openly nationalistic Federation and Starfleet who see the Klingons and Romulans not as worthy foes or potential allies in the future, but simply hostile aliens to be destroyed.  That's also why Star Trek: Discovery's entire first season was one long war story, against a more bestial, far less civilized Klingon Empire full of cruel, bloodthirsty, warmongering savages who live by no law other than the survival of the fittest.  They've been dehumanized to the point that they're not people, they're just space monsters the heroes can kill without remorse or complaint.  There's no code of honor... they're just rapists and murderers and terrorists and every other kind of immoral thing you could think of.  Star Trek: Discovery's second season was little better, with a few optimistic plots before the rot set in and they introduced an omnicidal enemy who wanted to exterminate all life and therefore diplomacy was never an option so massive ray gun battles and grisly combat deaths could be the norm.  That's where I fear Star Trek: Picard is headed.  Picard had issues with dehumanizing the Borg drones already, but now we're going to see the Romulans as irredeemable villains who're just keeping the Borg drones in gulags to torture them.

You can write almost any story in that general setting and call it Star Trek, but without that optimistic, principled future it won't feel like Star Trek.  That is the most important thing for writing a Star Trek story... that the future is a better place, that humanity and its allies have principles, and that differences are celebrated rather than shunned.  That vision of the future is the quintessence of the Star Trek setting.  Everything else is negotiable.

 

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

*applauds*

Everything I wanted to say. Attitude matters a lot more than continuity or setting.

Thank you both for your opinions on this; I really appreciate it.  

I ask not just because I have my own opinions on Star Trek, but because as a fan and as a creative, I did not want to simply sit there and criticize the works of others without knowing something about what one goes through to create such a story. Admittedly, I have created in the past my own "treatment" for Star Trek; I will say that my "season 1" for it is guilty in many ways of being what Seto describes as hunting "space monsters that kill without remorse or complaint"; it's when "season 2" starts that  things become more than just that and the "monsters" are not just that.

But I digress.

Getting back to the discussion at hand you definitely have an excellent basis for Trek, Seto: the bright, optimistic future that humanity and the rest of the galaxy looks forward to. "Gritty and realistic" is anything but, and we have more than enough of that in real life. At least for me, sci-fi should have some way of going not just to another world where any technology is possible, but any hope of a brighter future is as well. Socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically, etc. And I think one thing about Star Trek is that it strives to show humanity as more noble than it is now, seeking to remain that noble, and is committed to striving towards the betterment of itself as well as other races.

[sketchley]

 

2 hours ago, JB0 said:

*applauds*

Everything I wanted to say. Attitude matters a lot more than continuity or setting.

Fully agreed.

 

This quote of a quote pretty much sums up that attitude:

Quote

 

At a press conference about Star Trek: The Next Generation, a reporter asked Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry about casting Patrick Stewart, commenting that "Surely by the 24th century, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness." Gene Roddenberry had the perfect response.

"No, by the 24th century, no one will care."

https://boingboing.net/2015/07/08/star-trek-creators-perfect-c.html

 

 

[JB0]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

 

I ask not just because I have my own opinions on Star Trek, but because as a fan and as a creative, I did not want to simply sit there and criticize the works of others without knowing something about what one goes through to create such a story. Admittedly, I have created in the past my own "treatment" for Star Trek; I will say that my "season 1" for it is guilty in many ways of being what Seto describes as hunting "space monsters that kill without remorse or complaint"; it's when "season 2" starts that  things become more than just that and the "monsters" are not just that. 

That can work, honestly. Those which we think are alien, unrelatable aggressors can be much more than that. But that payoff needs to be there, the moment when everyone realizes that the monsters are just another race, and they can be communicated with, negotiated with, and worked alongside,

More than one episode did that within an hour. The one which springs to mind is the misleadingly-titled Devil in the Dark, where a stock horror movie plot tips over on its side as the muderous monster is simply protecting her children, which federation miners have unknowingly been slaughtering with reckless abandon.

Edited August 18, 2019 by JB0

[sketchley]

55 minutes ago, JB0 said:

That can work, honestly. Those which we think are alien, unrelatable aggressors can be much more than that. But that payoff needs to be there, the moment when everyone realizes that the monsters are just another race, and they can be communicated with, negotiated with, and worked alongside,

That sounds a LOT like Macross (well, the better Macross.  Make whatever you want of that.)

[JB0]

9 minutes ago, sketchley said:

That sounds a LOT like Macross (well, the better Macross.  Make whatever you want of that.)

There's some strong similarities between the two franchises.

Maybe Uhura should've tried singing to the klingons...

[pengbuzz]

11 hours ago, JB0 said:

That can work, honestly. Those which we think are alien, unrelatable aggressors can be much more than that. But that payoff needs to be there, the moment when everyone realizes that the monsters are just another race, and they can be communicated with, negotiated with, and worked alongside,

More than one episode did that within an hour. The one which springs to mind is the misleadingly-titled Devil in the Dark, where a stock horror movie plot tips over on its side as the muderous monster is simply protecting her children, which federation miners have unknowingly been slaughtering with reckless abandon.

So as long as that race's other attributes are shown (or brought out from suppression or oppression), as opposed to being simple one dimensional "monsters", right?

In what I'm working on, the "monsters" turn out to be a subjugated race (think along the lines of the Borg, when Hugh and his group were no longer with the main collective) that is under the control of a smaller group of "masters".

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, sketchley said:

That sounds a LOT like Macross (well, the better Macross.  Make whatever you want of that.)

There were a fair few Star Trek fans among Macross's creators... and the Tatsunoko Production staff too.  

 

41 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

So as long as that race's other attributes are shown (or brought out from suppression or oppression), as opposed to being simple one dimensional "monsters", right?

In what I'm working on, the "monsters" turn out to be a subjugated race (think along the lines of the Borg, when Hugh and his group were no longer with the main collective) that is under the control of a smaller group of "masters".

The Star Trek: Titan novelverse series did a plot a lot like this, tying into the aborted arc involving the crystalline entity from TNG's Data/Lore backstory, the space jellyfish from Encounter at Farpoint, and a few other giant space monsters from old Trek.

Both were, in Star Trek: Titan, essentially invasive species by dint of having ended up outside their natural habitat.  Captain Riker's USS Titan stumbles into their natural habitat well outside Federation space and discovered the jellies being preyed on by a violent humanoid species who turn their corpses into organic starships.  Riker being Riker, they interfered immediately and later came to understand the species they'd assumed were cruel, inhumane hunters were more along the lines of the space DNR engaging in a vital ecological management program to keep these organisms alive in their natural habitat while also preventing them from the planet-destroying shenanigans they got up to in the TV shows.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

There were a fair few Star Trek fans among Macross's creators... and the Tatsunoko Production staff too.  

 

The Star Trek: Titan novelverse series did a plot a lot like this, tying into the aborted arc involving the crystalline entity from TNG's Data/Lore backstory, the space jellyfish from Encounter at Farpoint, and a few other giant space monsters from old Trek.

Both were, in Star Trek: Titan, essentially invasive species by dint of having ended up outside their natural habitat.  Captain Riker's USS Titan stumbles into their natural habitat well outside Federation space and discovered the jellies being preyed on by a violent humanoid species who turn their corpses into organic starships.  Riker being Riker, they interfered immediately and later came to understand the species they'd assumed were cruel, inhumane hunters were more along the lines of the space DNR engaging in a vital ecological management program to keep these organisms alive in their natural habitat while also preventing them from the planet-destroying shenanigans they got up to in the TV shows.

Nothing new under the sun I guess...lol

[TehPW]

Oh man... he's actually happy for once...

[Seto Kaiba]

On 8/18/2019 at 5:15 PM, pengbuzz said:

Nothing new under the sun I guess...lol

Yup... ancient graffiti has revealed that "Yo momma" jokes were alive and well during the Roman Republic, and the oldest surviving English language joke is a dick joke.

That doesn't mean a new take isn't welcome, or sometimes eminently necessary... as with that godawful Star Trek: Titan story.

 

59 minutes ago, TehPW said:

Oh man... he's actually happy for once...

 

 

EDIT: ... can't seem to reproduce his results in Google Trends though.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Seto Kaiba

[JB0]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yup... ancient graffiti has revealed that "Yo momma" jokes were alive and well during the Roman Republic, and the oldest surviving English language joke is a dick joke.

Saw translations of the graffitti in Pompeii once, and large swaths of it are "Soanso was here" and "for a good time call"

[Seto Kaiba]

Did s'more messing around in Google Trends and I still can't reproduce the results Doomcock is crowing about.

Star Trek: Discovery definitely wasn't a hot search term after the show started airing and word got around what a turdburger it was, and Star Trek: Picard seems to have worn out its novelty surprisingly quickly, but they definitely trended above TNG for a while.

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Did s'more messing around in Google Trends and I still can't reproduce the results Doomcock is crowing about.

Star Trek: Discovery definitely wasn't a hot search term after the show started airing and word got around what a turdburger it was, and Star Trek: Picard seems to have worn out its novelty surprisingly quickly, but they definitely trended above TNG for a while.

No surprise: I think Doomc*ck's results may be less of actual research and more wishfull thinking.

[Mazinger]

8 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

No surprise: I think Doomc*ck's results may be less of actual research and more wishfull thinking.

Doomc*ck and Nerdrotic's YouTube uploads seem to be strangely gleeful about any possible bad news for Trek, and really other things they comment on.  Sort of like a "if it bleeds it leads" mentality.

While I acknowledge that a lot of what they present as fact has some basis in reality, it seems like they both go to lengths to extrapolate a conclusion to the events that you wouldn't want to bet money on.

They both seem very quick to jump on any murmur or internet speculation to produce content to monetize on, much like the Disney fan theory videos my kids are into.