Star Trek: Picard (CBS All-Access)

[Dynaman]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Star Trek fans were quite vocal about a prequel series being a bad idea when UPN first floated its plans for Enterprise, and even members of the cast expressed disquiet with how the efforts to make the setting edgier would alienate devoted Trekkies.

It tanked because it was a show nobody asked for, and the fans hated it because of all the liberties it took as a prequel.  Star Trek: Discovery's in the same boat, though it may end up being Too Big To Fail thanks to CBS massively overspending on it in their desire to make it the next Game of Thrones.

 

It tanked because ST fans had gotten FAR too picky about what was "acceptable" and that was the problem the reboot was trying to handle.  Sadly for Trek the old fans are not accepting of anything and there are not nearly enough new fans to make up for it. 

[Chronocidal]

31 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

It tanked because ST fans had gotten FAR too picky about what was "acceptable" and that was the problem the reboot was trying to handle.  Sadly for Trek the old fans are not accepting of anything and there are not nearly enough new fans to make up for it. 

See, while there is some truth to this (because the Trek universe is such a fifty theme pileup as to be nearly unmanageable) , it's also extremely dismissive of some of the rather valid complaints against what they did to adjust the universe.  This is also the central fallacy to the entire ideal of "appealing to a wider audience."

When you take a property with a niche fanbase, and attempt to broaden the appeal to be not so niche, you take a big risk, because you're far more likely to come out at a net loss when you lose more original audience than you gain new.

There really is no easy solution for this, but for all of the "niche" genre material we're getting made into blockbusters these days, you'd think someone would figure out that, yes, it is possible to make things like comic books, hard science fiction, and medieval fantasy appeal to a wider audience.  You have to respect the material that inspired it, and build on it.

What we keep getting instead is people deciding that building and improving on what came before is too hard, so they have to tear it down instead.

Edited January 23, 2020 by Chronocidal

[Seto Kaiba]

28 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

It tanked because ST fans had gotten FAR too picky about what was "acceptable" and that was the problem the reboot was trying to handle.

Personally, I think you do the fans a disservice by trying to pin this on them being "picky"... it really was the show NOBODY asked for.

Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, the executive producers, didn't even want to make Star Trek: Enterprise.  They wanted Star Trek to go on hiatus.  They warned Paramount that general audiences were feeling the fatigue of fourteen straight years of Star Trek on TV, manifesting in the gradual decline of Star Trek: Voyager's ratings despite all corrective efforts, and that the best thing for Star Trek to do was to take a step back and let the air clear for a few years before launching a new series.  Paramount ignored their advice and demanded they begin work on the series that became Star Trek: Enterprise.  Thanks to Star Wars, entertainment's cup was running over with prequels at the time and general audiences saw Enterprise as just another bloody prequel and another bloody Star Trek show while fans were busy being upset about its potential for f*cking up as a prequel.  Ratings continued to fall, and the viewers who stayed were the die-hard fans... it was the casual audience walking away from a premise that'd become old and a show that was increasingly incoherent as the network execs got more and more interference-minded trying to fix the ratings problem without acknowledging its origin.

The network oversaturated the market with Star Trek, and then acted surprised when audiences turned their back on something they'd had too much of.

 

28 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

  Sadly for Trek the old fans are not accepting of anything and there are not nearly enough new fans to make up for it. 

What new fans?  J.J. Abrams' Star Trek soft reboot didn't create any new fans.  It was a forgettable trilogy of so-so popcorn movies that didn't leave a lasting impression because they were sci-fi/action movies so generic you could practically see the barcodes.  Star Trek: Discovery got existing fans talking again, but it doesn't seem to be endearing itself to anyone if the absent merchandising is anything to go by.  

The old fans are a surprisingly easy-to-please bunch... that CBS can't please them is more a measure of their complete ineptitude than anything.  They just want Star Trek to feel like it's Star Trek.  They'll forgive a multitude of sins as long as the tone is right.  The tone, specifically, of Gene Roddenberry's utopian vision of the future.  A more hopeful future where humanity got its sh*t together and was able to not only live in peace with itself, but with its many alien neighbors.  The reason Star Trek fans turned away from the reboot films and recent efforts like Discovery is that they're dystopian in nature.  Bleak futures full of hate, fear, and senseless killing created because the showrunners wanted to fill screen time with expensive VFX spaceship battles and tense fight scenes.  Its vision of the future isn't hopeful, it's the same sh*t we're living with right now... and the whole reason Star Trek struck the chord it did with audiences when it first debuted was that it defiantly declared we could be better than that as a species.  You don't get that in new Trek.

From what I've read, Michael Chabon seems to actually understand that reality to some extent.  Fans will give Star Trek: Picard a shot because Jean-Luc Picard was a beacon of that optimistic future, but I suspect they'll turn away from it just as they did Discovery and the reboot films because they've indicated on no uncertain terms this is another sad, dark, and dystopian take on Star Trek's setting.  

[JB0]

1 hour ago, Dynaman said:

It tanked because ST fans had gotten FAR too picky about what was "acceptable" and that was the problem the reboot was trying to handle.  Sadly for Trek the old fans are not accepting of anything and there are not nearly enough new fans to make up for it. 

Enterprise also just wasn't very good, and followed a show that also wasn't very good.

It had nothing to do with being diffrent. It was more traditionally Trek than Voyager, but also more maligned. And Voyager was more traditionally Trek than Deep Space 9, which is fairly popular(Sisko is best captain).

[jenius]

Man, taking the public's temperature before making creative projects seems like an imprecise science... the kind of thing you look at after a project succeeds or failed to say "I told ya so" rather than being anything you can use constructively beforehand.

[Mazinger]

Hot-take:  Strong opening. Obviously more than a bit of fan service.  Many questions brought forth.

Let's go!

[Dynaman]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Personally, I think you do the fans a disservice by trying to pin this on them being "picky"... it really was the show NOBODY asked for.

 

I won't put a large post on it but ST fans are far too picky and condescending.  They are the worst batch of whiners I've ever seen.  Get things exactly right (in other words, exactly what they want) or get lambasted.  To the point where any change of any kind was heresy.  As for Enterprise not being what they wanted.  No matter what would have been done it would not be what the fans wanted.  No two of them could agree on what they wanted.

[Dynaman]

Voyager and DS9 were Trek to the core.  DS9 tried to be edgy and backed off it so quickly it would make your neck snap.  Voyager dumped what made it "different" in the pilot episode.   By the end of that episode everyone was one big happy family.  Sure they kept the pretense for a bit of the first season but it was an afterthought at best.

[Seto Kaiba]

So... first episode of Star Trek: Picard.

Y'know, I really have to hand it to CBS.  The All Access app has come a long way... it committed honorable suicide in an attempt to spare me the horrors of this awkward, stumbling mess of a pilot.  Maybe Control isn't so bad.

For what little it's worth, it's a slightly better start than Star Trek: Discovery... but only slightly.  All in all, the production values feel a lot lower than what I would expect from a show that cost so much to produce.  There are some bush league editing mistakes and loads and loads of scenes that were clearly shot against a green screen with the backgrounds none-too-skillfully composited in.  I would not have credited the rumor that Star Trek: Discovery season 3 made off with a chunk of Picard's budget before watching it, but now I think they might be onto something.  There is a scintilla of old Trek optimism here, but it's mostly buried under the woe-is-me start the show gets off to.

 

The Good

Spoiler

The all-CG USS Enterprise-D looks pretty good, what little we get to see of its exterior.  The interior is another matter.

Chauteau Picard seems to have a pair of surprisingl loyal, apparently Romulan, minders.  I do like that the Romulan makeup in this case appears to be modeled on the TNG/DS9/VOY makeup for the most part, though the ears are the more pronounced ones made for Discovery and look too much like iffy-quality cosplay props.

The recreations of the TNG uniforms in Picard's second dream sequence are quite good... though I almost wish they'd used the same de-aging CG on Patrick Stewart that they used for Brent Spiner so their ages are respectively correct in the dreams.

There's some nice memorabilia in Picard's vault at the archives.  Models of the USS Stargazer and the Enterprise-E's Captain's Yacht, a real Bat'leth (not the cruddy design from Discovery), a recreation of the Captain Picard Day banner from TNG, and a few other odds and ends.

So they're NOT following Star Trek: Countdown after all... Jean-Luc Picard never became Ambassador to Vulcan, and B4 was never able to become a new body for Data.  That's good-ish, I guess.  I was rather expecting them to Star Trek III Data back to life, but it appears death isn't the revolving door it used to be.  Nobody tell Harry Kim, I don't think he could take the stress.

They killed the Mary Sue in the first episode... unfortunately, someone packed a spare.

 

The Bad

Spoiler

It's on CBS All Access... one of the worst-designed, least capable streaming platforms conceived by man.

The recreation of Ten Forward in Picard's dream sequence at the start of the episode is either a very badly constructed set or a laughably bad CGI backdrop.  I am inclined to suspect the latter.

The OP is more Star Trek: Discovery-esque CG clipart.

The Picard interview opening is... clipart.  Promotional photographs from previous, and much better, Star Trek shows.  Not even cleaned up scans, it looks like it's taken neat from Google Images.

The makeup on the Trill camerawoman is REALLY appallingly bad.  Like, worse than cheap cosplay bad.

Jean-Luc Picard is now a bitter old man who, despite rising up against injustice committed by those in authority time and time again throughout his tenure in Starfleet, just decides to f*cking quit because he's angry Starfleet didn't have the resources left to evacuate Romulus.  The real Picard would have rounded up a bunch of ships with captains either too in awe of him to say no or of similar moral caliber and gone anyway.

What's with all the prophetic dreams?  Jean-Luc Picard is not psychic.

The Starfleet Archives, with the exception of Picard's safe there, is another laughably bad CGI backdrop that looks to be just a darker colored copy of the Jedi archives from the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

If Patrick Stewart is too old to do stunts, don't have him do stunts, m'kay?  That jerk harness maneuver for the phaser on overload explosion looks terrible.  Like, as bad as the deliberately bad one when they demonstrated the jerk harness on that "Blown Away" episode of MythBusters.

Set design at the Daystrom Institute is also really, REALLY bad.  Just a bunch of cheap desks from Staples, some computer carts, shelf units, and random classroom-grade graduated cylinders and beakers full of what is clearly water and food coloring like it's a third grade science classroom.

The entire idea that you can clone an android from a single cell is kind of dumb on the face of it, considering they don't have those and the idea that smallest possible element of Data's brain contains the working pattern for the entire thing and all of its code is even sillier.  Y'could've just had Maddox succeed in getting Lal started up again instead of resorting to this.

Also, whatever happened to "Data is not the property of Starfleet?".  Why was the Federation mass producing androids after a messy legal battle that determined that was pretty much slavery and therefore illegal? 

Even the Borg cube the Romulans have somehow captured and converted into a space station manages to look somehow under-detailed and unconvincing compared to visual effects from decades ago... which is really f*cking weird.  The shuttles coming and going from it are so generic-looking that it's hard to tell which end is up... which is itself kind of unusual for the Romulans.

 

The Ugly

Spoiler

Within two minutes of being introduced, it is painfully obvious that Dahj is another Burnham-esque Mary Sue.  The very first thing we see her do after three men beam into her apartment, beat her, and put a bag on her head is that she kills all three in ten seconds flat using their own weapons and without removing the bag.  Then she starts hallucinating Jean-Luc Picard for reasons...?  She literally didn't even make it to the OP before outing herself as a Mary Sue.

What it is with this current crop of Star Trek creators and racist black women?  The interviewer in the Picard interviewer is a Federation citizen, Earth hasn't had a war with Romulans in over two centuries, and she's literally acting like Romulan life has no value.  Is this a post-retirement time traveling Michael Burnham?

There's that dystopian bullshit rearing its head.  Starfleet assembles a grand armada to save the Romulan people, with Jean-Luc Picard at its head, and it's destroyed by a LOLRANDOM bunch of robots who not only destroy this fleet for no reason but destroy the Utopia Planitia fleetyards, kill almost a hundred thousand people, and apparently Mars is permanently on fire now despite planetary weather control networks being a thing they've had for over a century.  There were exactly zero Starfleet ships in the Sol system that could've stopped this?  They were able to round up a small fleet when Voyager showed up at short notice.

Dahj is on a mission to tick every box on the Mary Sue litmus test.  She "just knew" how to automatically kick the asses of a group of apparently trained assassins and mysteriously "just knows" Jean-Luc on a deep, personal level.

Oh god, the CG in the fight scene on the rooftop... there is literally one scene that looks like someone took the outline tool in Photoshop, cut Dahj out, and then just recorded themselves dragging the cutout across the frame.

 

Edited January 24, 2020 by Seto Kaiba

[Seto Kaiba]

24 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

I won't put a large post on it but ST fans are far too picky and condescending.  They are the worst batch of whiners I've ever seen.  Get things exactly right (in other words, exactly what they want) or get lambasted.  To the point where any change of any kind was heresy.

I can't say that's been my experience with the fandom.  Most of the fans I know are quite openminded and a good deal less cynical than I am, and looked forward to each new series with cautious optimism at worst.  I've known only one such nitpicky trekkie, one of my college roommates, and he was still broadly supportive even of Enterprise.  The only parts of it that really upset him were it breaking continuity in major ways like introducing the Borg and Ferengi centuries early with flimsy excuses like neither identifying their species.  I remember him being quite cross about Phlox curing Borg Assimilation by late 24th century Borg on his own in a matter of hours where people from 200 years in the future couldn't manage.

 

Quote

As for Enterprise not being what they wanted.  No matter what would have been done it would not be what the fans wanted.  No two of them could agree on what they wanted.

Pick any two random people off the street and they won't agree on everything... that's just humans being human.  

 

22 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

Voyager and DS9 were Trek to the core.  DS9 tried to be edgy and backed off it so quickly it would make your neck snap.  Voyager dumped what made it "different" in the pilot episode.   By the end of that episode everyone was one big happy family.  Sure they kept the pretense for a bit of the first season but it was an afterthought at best.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was a very convention-defying Star Trek series.  I mean, hell, it's set in a static location and dealt a LOT with topics like religious fundamentalism, war crimes, and other dark topics that would never have made it in other Trek.  Instead of a crew of consummate professionals, its cast were a pack of weirdos and eccentrics kept in line by Sisko's force of will.  It flirted with serialized storytelling where other Trek before and after was episodic only.  It still maintained the optimistic spirit of Star Trek even while it was examining and partially deconstructing Gene's utopian ideals... but it was very much out of the usual Star Trek mold.

Star Trek: Voyager, yeah... what got made was NOT what was planned.  What the producers put together was the story of one little ship traveling home across a vast distance, and her crew making do and keeping it together as best they could being a mixture of Maquis terrorists and Starfleet officers.  What the network twisted it into was TNG 2.0... with all the resource problems and moral dilemmas softened significantly in order to achieve a similar lightness of tone to Jean-Luc Picard's flying hotel from TNG.  All that executive meddling made the cast quite upset, which is why Robert Beltran phoned it in so hard.  He signed up to play Janeway's dramatic foil, not her doormat.  When being TNG 2.0 proved to be too stale for the general audiences, they tried to spice it up with the Borg and so on, but all that really did was set off the Borg's badass decay until Janeway had made the Borg Queen her b*tch so often it was impossible to take them seriously.

Edited January 24, 2020 by Seto Kaiba

[CoryHolmes]

Just watched it.  I enjoyed it enough to check out the next few episodes.

 

Haters gonna hate, but I enjoyed watching Picard coming to his senses at the end.  Even his voice changed.

[JB0]

39 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

clone an android from a single cell

What.

That has to be the dumbest piece of anti-science to ever show up in Star Trek, and that says a LOT.

[Chas]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So... first episode of Star Trek: Picard.

Y'know, I really have to hand it to CBS.  The All Access app has come a long way... it committed honorable suicide in an attempt to spare me the horrors of this awkward, stumbling mess of a pilot.  Maybe Control isn't so bad.

For what little it's worth, it's a slightly better start than Star Trek: Discovery... but only slightly.  All in all, the production values feel a lot lower than what I would expect from a show that cost so much to produce.  There are some bush league editing mistakes and loads and loads of scenes that were clearly shot against a green screen with the backgrounds none-too-skillfully composited in.  I would not have credited the rumor that Star Trek: Discovery season 3 made off with a chunk of Picard's budget before watching it, but now I think they might be onto something.  There is a scintilla of old Trek optimism here, but it's mostly buried under the woe-is-me start the show gets off to.

 

The Good

  Reveal hidden contents

The all-CG USS Enterprise-D looks pretty good, what little we get to see of its exterior.  The interior is another matter.

Chauteau Picard seems to have a pair of surprisingl loyal, apparently Romulan, minders.  I do like that the Romulan makeup in this case appears to be modeled on the TNG/DS9/VOY makeup for the most part, though the ears are the more pronounced ones made for Discovery and look too much like iffy-quality cosplay props.

The recreations of the TNG uniforms in Picard's second dream sequence are quite good... though I almost wish they'd used the same de-aging CG on Patrick Stewart that they used for Brent Spiner so their ages are respectively correct in the dreams.

There's some nice memorabilia in Picard's vault at the archives.  Models of the USS Stargazer and the Enterprise-E's Captain's Yacht, a real Bat'leth (not the cruddy design from Discovery), a recreation of the Captain Picard Day banner from TNG, and a few other odds and ends.

So they're NOT following Star Trek: Countdown after all... Jean-Luc Picard never became Ambassador to Vulcan, and B4 was never able to become a new body for Data.  That's good-ish, I guess.  I was rather expecting them to Star Trek III Data back to life, but it appears death isn't the revolving door it used to be.  Nobody tell Harry Kim, I don't think he could take the stress.

They killed the Mary Sue in the first episode... unfortunately, someone packed a spare.

 

The Bad

  Reveal hidden contents

It's on CBS All Access... one of the worst-designed, least capable streaming platforms conceived by man.

The recreation of Ten Forward in Picard's dream sequence at the start of the episode is either a very badly constructed set or a laughably bad CGI backdrop.  I am inclined to suspect the latter.

The OP is more Star Trek: Discovery-esque CG clipart.

The Picard interview opening is... clipart.  Promotional photographs from previous, and much better, Star Trek shows.  Not even cleaned up scans, it looks like it's taken neat from Google Images.

The makeup on the Trill camerawoman is REALLY appallingly bad.  Like, worse than cheap cosplay bad.

Jean-Luc Picard is now a bitter old man who, despite rising up against injustice committed by those in authority time and time again throughout his tenure in Starfleet, just decides to f*cking quit because he's angry Starfleet didn't have the resources left to evacuate Romulus.  The real Picard would have rounded up a bunch of ships with captains either too in awe of him to say no or of similar moral caliber and gone anyway.

What's with all the prophetic dreams?  Jean-Luc Picard is not psychic.

The Starfleet Archives, with the exception of Picard's safe there, is another laughably bad CGI backdrop that looks to be just a darker colored copy of the Jedi archives from the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

If Patrick Stewart is too old to do stunts, don't have him do stunts, m'kay?  That jerk harness maneuver for the phaser on overload explosion looks terrible.  Like, as bad as the deliberately bad one when they demonstrated the jerk harness on that "Blown Away" episode of MythBusters.

Set design at the Daystrom Institute is also really, REALLY bad.  Just a bunch of cheap desks from Staples, some computer carts, shelf units, and random classroom-grade graduated cylinders and beakers full of what is clearly water and food coloring like it's a third grade science classroom.

The entire idea that you can clone an android from a single cell is kind of dumb on the face of it, considering they don't have those and the idea that smallest possible element of Data's brain contains the working pattern for the entire thing and all of its code is even sillier.  Y'could've just had Maddox succeed in getting Lal started up again instead of resorting to this.

Also, whatever happened to "Data is not the property of Starfleet?".  Why was the Federation mass producing androids after a messy legal battle that determined that was pretty much slavery and therefore illegal? 

Even the Borg cube the Romulans have somehow captured and converted into a space station manages to look somehow under-detailed and unconvincing compared to visual effects from decades ago... which is really f*cking weird.  The shuttles coming and going from it are so generic-looking that it's hard to tell which end is up... which is itself kind of unusual for the Romulans.

 

The Ugly

  Reveal hidden contents

Within two minutes of being introduced, it is painfully obvious that Dahj is another Burnham-esque Mary Sue.  The very first thing we see her do after three men beam into her apartment, beat her, and put a bag on her head is that she kills all three in ten seconds flat using their own weapons and without removing the bag.  Then she starts hallucinating Jean-Luc Picard for reasons...?  She literally didn't even make it to the OP before outing herself as a Mary Sue.

What it is with this current crop of Star Trek creators and racist black women?  The interviewer in the Picard interviewer is a Federation citizen, Earth hasn't had a war with Romulans in over two centuries, and she's literally acting like Romulan life has no value.  Is this a post-retirement time traveling Michael Burnham?

There's that dystopian bullshit rearing its head.  Starfleet assembles a grand armada to save the Romulan people, with Jean-Luc Picard at its head, and it's destroyed by a LOLRANDOM bunch of robots who not only destroy this fleet for no reason but destroy the Utopia Planitia fleetyards, kill almost a hundred thousand people, and apparently Mars is permanently on fire now despite planetary weather control networks being a thing they've had for over a century.  There were exactly zero Starfleet ships in the Sol system that could've stopped this?  They were able to round up a small fleet when Voyager showed up at short notice.

Dahj is on a mission to tick every box on the Mary Sue litmus test.  She "just knew" how to automatically kick the asses of a group of apparently trained assassins and mysteriously "just knows" Jean-Luc on a deep, personal level.

Oh god, the CG in the fight scene on the rooftop... there is literally one scene that looks like someone took the outline tool in Photoshop, cut Dahj out, and then just recorded themselves dragging the cutout across the frame.

 

O.K. After reading all that I wanted to see how bad it was so Yes I watched it (pirated) and it really wasn't that bad. I should say that I'm not a stickler for effects so everything I saw was fine, sure some of it could have been better, but the only bit that really stood out was the leap on the roof, otherwise it all looked fine.

Spoiler

As for the girl being a Mary Sue, sorry but I've got to call foul on that one, The reasons for her abilities are quite clear even before we get the explanation. There is enough set-up in her introductory scene for us to understand that there is something special going on with her (and there are enough hints given to figure out that she is more than human and likely a 'synthetic' or part 'synthetic'). So no I don't think that quite fits with the idea of a Mary Sue. Nothing she does is miraculous or un-grounded. Her abilities are I think the exact opposite. They are all grounded in the story and her place in it - even the reason for her visions of Picard  are given somewhat of a grounding. ( although, one needs to get over a pretty unbelievable explanation in order to suspend enough disbelief for it to work, but hey this is SF after all and the experimental cloning of an android doesn't seem like it would have too negative an impact on the world building that has existed in (the old Star Trek )

As for the set design of the institute. It is purposefully simple and barren, and the reasons for that are given when Picard first enters it. Given the explanation it makes perfect sense for it to look the way it does.

As for Picard's bitterness toward Starfleet, and why the feds were making more androids if it was supposed to be illegal, well I think that's mainly down to the 'dystopian'  grounding of the story. However, Picards grumpy cynicism could also be there as the starting place for his charactrers growth arc. I mean if he starts off as the Picard we all came to know in TNG, then really where is there to go from there? Plus that would indicate that his character hasn't grown or changed at all in the intervening years. With what they have done it shows that in those years some pretty serious stuff must have happened to turn the character we knew into what we see, and this allows them to show us how he grows and changes back into that great man. I'm not sure that this is where they are going with the character, but if they are they have a good start with what the have done.

I think that addresses all of what I see as the serious criticisms from your post.

Now with all of that said did I like it . . . yeah it wasn't that bad I kind of enjoyed it. Am I interested in seeing more? . . . hesitantly, trepidatiously yes. Excited? most certainly not.

 So what does that mean. Well it's difficult to put into words, but I have this vague, haunting feeling that the plot is going to get very, very complicated ( a-la Discovery) with lots of wondering  if this new character or that is good or bad, and wondering what the next big reveal is going to be. There is also the feeling that we are likely going to get a few magic mcguffins along the way to smooth things out. So, while I expect that I'll be watching more episodes, I am also fairly certain that at some point (likely before the end of the first season) it will all become too much for me and I will bail out.

[azrael]

Not bad a start. It pulled some TNG-lore has oddly been showing up in my Youtube feed. Stupid Youtube algorithm.

On the bright side, at least they acknowledge that Picard ain't a young man anymore and should not be running around.

Spoiler

I wonder if they chose Isa Briones because she does bear some resemblance to Lal.

 

[myk]

4 hours ago, JB0 said:

What.

That has to be the dumbest piece of anti-science to ever show up in Star Trek, and that says a LOT.

The Star Trek team figures if Disney can  come up with asinine stuff for Episode 9, then why not the same for Picard.

Anyway, production values aside, I'm willing to give this show a chance.  I for one, am glad to see at least a residue of the Star Trek that I grew up with (TNG), back in some form.  I really don't know what some of the heavy handed critics are expecting from this show.  I mean, the entire premise of Star Trek and the universe they've built up over the years has plenty of laughable, cringe-worthy elements to it; this is no different.  The focus here is on Jean Luc PIcard-a legendary character, and I want to see why he is where he is, political sentiments from Patrick Stewart about the state of current global affairs notwithstanding.

But....next week there better be some ship porn.  I'm also in this for the ship porn.  A little skin from the robot girl wouldn't hurt, either...

Edited January 24, 2020 by myk

[Mazinger]

11 hours ago, azrael said:

 

  Hide contents

I wonder if they chose Isa Briones because she does bear some resemblance to Lal.

 

I'd imagine so.  Man they went straight for the heart strings, straight to the jugular with that plot choice.  Couldn't have hit me faster, harder.

[Dobber]

Watched it as well from a friends account. Sorry CBS, not signing up for 1 freaking show.

I enjoyed it. As some else said, I’m interested to see more but not necessarily EXCITED....mainly because I’m waiting for “the other shoe to drop” thanks to Mr. Stewart’s interview comments.

now for my Trekkie observations/nitpicks:

1) In Picards first Dream sequence on the Enterprise D, nice to see the old girl again even if so briefly, why were they in the Grey and black Jumpers? Those weren’t introduced until First Contact. They never EVER wore those on the D. They did were the early DS9 and Voyager utilities in Generations but the ship was lost in that movie. I can play it off as it was a dream but they did show the TNG uniform in the second dream so it just seemed like an odd choice to me.

2) Why is it the Federations responsibility alone to save the Romulans. I’m all for the Humanitarian aid and assistance but it is the Romulan Star EMPIRE. Romulus and Remus will be destroyed but their Empire is as vast as the Federation. Surely they have many many other planets as well. Also where is their Fleet...don’t they have ships and ship yards as well to transport their populations. Why did a new Fleet need to be built by the Federation? Why not use the ships and freighters ect to help do it? Maybe they are all still recouping the losses from the Dominion War but it still seemed odd that this MASSIVE fleet needed to be made by the Federation. This is probably why I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop because it smacks a bit much like the immigration caravans to the US issues. Heavy handed and one sided in the show. The Romulans are not some small poor little “country” They were an Empire that Rivaled both the Federation and the Klingons at the same time.

3) Also noticed that they sort of are and aren’t following Countdown as Data/B4 is not the captain of the E-E bit the events of Star Trek ‘09’s future has still happened...I’d the Super Nova. So....I wonder if Vulcan is gone or still around. I guess it depends on how the show wants to depict time travel. Does everything change because of what happened in the past or is another timeline/reality branch off and nothing done in the past will change our timeline? Trek has traditionally shown the former.

Chris

[Seto Kaiba]

23 minutes ago, Dobber said:

  Hide contents

2) Why is it the Federations responsibility alone to save the Romulans. I’m all for the Humanitarian aid and assistance but it is the Romulan Star EMPIRE. Romulus and Remus will be destroyed but their Empire is as vast as the Federation. Surely they have many many other planets as well. Also where is their Fleet...don’t they have ships and ship yards as well to transport their populations. Why did a new Fleet need to be built by the Federation? Why not use the ships and freighters ect to help do it? Maybe they are all still recouping the losses from the Dominion War but it still seemed odd that this MASSIVE fleet needed to be made by the Federation. This is probably why I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop because it smacks a bit much like the immigration caravans to the US issues. Heavy handed and one sided in the show. The Romulans are not some small poor little “country” They were an Empire that Rivaled both the Federation and the Klingons at the same time.

That right there is what they call a "plot hole".

The original reason the Romulans were depending on the Federation for a save was that the macguffin that created artificial black holes was owned by the Vulcan Science Academy, and they needed to use it to stop the supernova because it was a magical supernova that could somehow destroy the whole galaxy if not contained.  That, of course, was stupid... if they're walking that sh*t back, I am 210% behind it.  Even then, there was the nagging question of where the Romulan military was that they didn't attempt to evacuate the planets.

Now that they seem to have changed this to an event that was less unexpected and had less widespread effects, it's even weirder that the Romulan military wasn't involved in large-scale evacuation operations... they did take a massive beating in the Dominion War twelve years earlier and were said to need decades to recover from it, as were the Klingons.

Spoiler

Some novelverse stories blame the supernova itself on the Romulans... that the Tal Shiar and Romulan military had been carrying out covert testing of banned subspace weapons and one of those tests was what triggered the supernova and made it vastly more rapid and destructive than it would have otherwise been.  If that is still true in Picard, then the Federation's reluctance to help the Romulans may be explained as a "got what was coming to you" for violating the Khitomer Accords ban on subspace weapons (to which the Romulan Star Empire was a signatory).  Their fleet may have taken a pounding in the subspace weapon detonation that caused the supernova.

I'd assume that Starfleet was probably too widely scattered on missions of exploration and border patrol to converge on Romulus in time without leaving key sectors under-defended or undefended, and press-ganging civilian freighters into service is probably illegal under Federation law.  A lot of interstellar shipping seems to be done by Starfleet itself anyways... the privately owned freighters seem to be something of an exception or an eccentricity.  That said, Starfleet probably didn't have a chance of evacuating even a fraction of the people on Romulus on their own power... most of their ships are nowhere near as big as a Galaxy-class, and the Galaxy-class's maximum emergency passenger capacity (incl. crew) was only 15,000.  Starfleet would have needed (at typical crew sizes) approximately 100,000 Galaxy-class starships to evacuate Romulus.  They built twelve, and no more than nine were still in service in 2387... and they're some of the very biggest Starfleet ships.  Starfleet's also probably the most prolific shipbuilder of the major galactic powers, thanks to a multitude of major shipyards like Utopia Planitia, so they were probably the only ones with the capacity to build on that scale... and the Klingons certainly weren't about to take mercy on the Romulans.

Mind you, it's also possible the Romulans needed Federation help because the military did a runner like their leaders did in Star Trek: Countdown before they were all murdered by Nero.

 

23 minutes ago, Dobber said:

Spoiler

3) Also noticed that they sort of are and aren’t following Countdown as Data/B4 is not the captain of the E-E bit the events of Star Trek ‘09’s future has still happened...I’d the Super Nova. So....I wonder if Vulcan is gone or still around. I guess it depends on how the show wants to depict time travel. Does everything change because of what happened in the past or is another timeline/reality branch off and nothing done in the past will change our timeline? Trek has traditionally shown the former.

Yeah, it was rather surprising - and more than slightly gratifying - that they've opted to largely ignore Star Trek: Countdown.  

Paramount and CBS's official stance on the Star Trek reboot films is that they take place in an alternate universe timeline that was created when the artificial black hole Spock created in the Prime universe to stop the Romulan supernova accidentally sent his and Nero's ships back in time to the early 23rd century.  The so-called "Kelvin timeline" of the reboot films is an entirely self-contained alternate reality that is completely separate from the "Prime" timeline that contains all the Star Trek TV shows and the first ten Star Trek movies.  None of the events in the reboot films occurred in the history of the Prime timeline.  Vulcan is still very much around the 2399 of Star Trek: Picard.  

[Mazinger]

31 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

  Vulcan is still very much around the 2399 of Star Trek: Picard.  

Actually, we have yet to see the planet Vulcan in any post-Kelvin timeline produced media.  It exists in Discovery because that is prior to the original ST timeline, but nothing has been made yet post that supernova.

While I hope Vulcan does still exist, I'm not gonna hold my breath.

[Chronocidal]

19 hours ago, JB0 said:

What.

That has to be the dumbest piece of anti-science to ever show up in Star Trek, and that says a LOT.

Not a single cell.. a "positronic neuron", if the comments I've read are to be taken as reliable.

Yes, they grew a computer by copy-pasting a portion of the hard drive.

Far as the tone of the show goes though..  The thread I'm hearing from various directions is that people are getting tired of seeing their escapist fiction portraying a better, more hopeful future get shat on left and right with the modern day real world issues they are trying to escape from in the first place.  People like the idea that we can do better.  Why do they think the original show did so well in the middle of Vietnam and the Cold War?

Edited January 24, 2020 by Chronocidal

[Seto Kaiba]

28 minutes ago, Mazinger said:

Actually, we have yet to see the planet Vulcan in any post-Kelvin timeline produced media.  It exists in Discovery because that is prior to the original ST timeline, but nothing has been made yet post that supernova.

While I hope Vulcan does still exist, I'm not gonna hold my breath.

... what you're saying here doesn't make sense.  Paramount and CBS were quite clear that the events of the reboot movies have no bearing or impact on the Prime universe and its timeline.  The Prime timeline is, officially, the one that follows on from the eight TV series and ten original movies.  Vulcan is very much present in those, well after the date of its destruction in the Kelvin timeline. 

There is no reason whatsoever to think that Vulcan doesn't exist now.  

The Kelvin timeline is, officially, its own entirely self-contained disaster zone completely separate from and very definitely not equal to the Prime universe setting.  Events in it have no more bearing on the Prime universe than events in Star Wars do.

[Dobber]

Also.....and I’m legit asking as I did like the premiere overall....but am I correct in understanding that Picard’s disillusionment with Star Fleet and even the Federation is because after they spent the time and resources to construct a massive fleet to help the Romulans, which was then destroyed by terrorists (along with a major fleet yard and MARS costing tens of thousands of lives), he is pissed that they aren’t willing to do it again? REALLY?? With what I mentioned in my post above and *IF* this is the show’s reasoning, then Picard is freaking nuts. Again....IF......this is what Stewart and the show runners are equating to conservatives, Trump, and BREXIT...then these people are nuts.

Chris

Edited January 24, 2020 by Dobber

[Chronocidal]

30 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... what you're saying here doesn't make sense.  Paramount and CBS were quite clear that the events of the reboot movies have no bearing or impact on the Prime universe and its timeline.  The Prime timeline is, officially, the one that follows on from the eight TV series and ten original movies.  Vulcan is very much present in those, well after the date of its destruction in the Kelvin timeline. 

There is no reason whatsoever to think that Vulcan doesn't exist now.  

The Kelvin timeline is, officially, its own entirely self-contained disaster zone completely separate from and very definitely not equal to the Prime universe setting.  Events in it have no more bearing on the Prime universe than events in Star Wars do.

To be entirely fair, I don't find it that hard to doubt the official line from the studio.  Yes, this is supposed to be a follow-on to the events after Nemesis, where the star blew up and Romulus was destroyed.

However..  I thought that's what Countdown was?  And they seem to be ignoring that, soooo....

I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but it occurs to me that, while unlikely, they could theoretically portray this as the post-Nemesis TNG timeline from the Kelvin timeline.  Frankly, I think it would make the entire thing slightly easier to swallow, because so much of the universe and events feel slightly off from the old standard.

[azrael]

36 minutes ago, Dobber said:

Also.....and I’m legit asking as I did like the premiere overall....but am I correct in understanding that Picard’s disillusionment with Star Fleet and even the Federation is because after they spent the time and resources to construct a massive fleet to help the Romulans, which was then destroyed by terrorists (along with a major fleet yard and MARS costing tens of thousands of lives), he is pissed that they aren’t willing to do it again? REALLY?? With what I mentioned in my post above and *IF* this is the show’s reasoning, then Picard is freaking nuts. 

Think of this as a Praxis-moment/Khitomer Accords but with the Romulans. Two+ centuries of hostilities could finally come to an end. 

[Seto Kaiba]

10 minutes ago, azrael said:

Think of this as a Praxis-moment/Khitomer Accords but with the Romulans. Two+ centuries of hostilities could finally come to an end. 

That definitely seems to be what Picard was aiming for... the "big gesture" from the Federation that could've turned the Romulans from their oldest enemy to another close ally, esp. since relations had been warming ever since the Dominion War.

 

 

23 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

However..  I thought that's what Countdown was?  And they seem to be ignoring that, soooo....

I suspect they realized they can't exactly tie into a comic almost nobody read, and couldn't succinctly sum up various major plot points from it because those plot points belonged to Paramount before the re-merger.  

 

 

23 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but it occurs to me that, while unlikely, they could theoretically portray this as the post-Nemesis TNG timeline from the Kelvin timeline.  Frankly, I think it would make the entire thing slightly easier to swallow, because so much of the universe and events feel slightly off from the old standard.

I don't see it.  Vulcans and their relation to the Romulans plays way too much of a role in this scenario for them to write the Vulcans out.  The whole reason Romulus went boom was that the red matter from Vulcan didn't get there in time because the Vulcans were uneasy with the prospect of letting such an obviously dangerous technology anywhere near their warlike cousins.

[Dobber]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

Think of this as a Praxis-moment/Khitomer Accords but with the Romulans. Two+ centuries of hostilities could finally come to an end. 

I get that, but it’s not like the Fed’s turned their backs to them like Kirk wanted to do to the Klingons. They did make the effort or “Big Gesture” at great cost in both lives and resources. 
 

Chris

Edited January 25, 2020 by Dobber

[sh9000]

I’ll try to watch it tonight.

[Mazinger]

Off-topic: On a lark, I decided to watch Mr. Plinkett's review of ST:Nemesis, hadn't seen it yet, wow, did that movie suck. Paramount sure didn't do the franchise any favors with the TNG movies.

[Chronocidal]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I don't see it.  Vulcans and their relation to the Romulans plays way too much of a role in this scenario for them to write the Vulcans out.  The whole reason Romulus went boom was that the red matter from Vulcan didn't get there in time because the Vulcans were uneasy with the prospect of letting such an obviously dangerous technology anywhere near their warlike cousins.

I'd have to read back on the history there, since I never really wanted to give it that much thought, but I'm honestly suspicious of the entire "we had time to build a fleet to evacuate the planet" situation.  I didn't get that from the 2009 movie, it sounded unexpectedly sudden.

This one sounds like enough of a rehash of the events previously (not) described by Trek 2009 that I could see it being treated as an alternate take where they slowed the explosion, but the android nonsense wrecked the chance they had.

I dunno really.  At this point, no explanation would really surprise me.  However you slice it, the idea that they had to build an evacuation fleet, rather than just divert every available ship they already had, sounds ridiculous, unless you're talking about literally replicating entire ships en masse within a week or less.

 

[CoryHolmes]

7 hours ago, Dobber said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

2) Why is it the Federations responsibility alone to save the Romulans. I’m all for the Humanitarian aid and assistance but it is the Romulan Star EMPIRE. Romulus and Remus will be destroyed but their Empire is as vast as the Federation. Surely they have many many other planets as well. Also where is their Fleet...don’t they have ships and ship yards as well to transport their populations. Why did a new Fleet need to be built by the Federation? Why not use the ships and freighters ect to help do it? Maybe they are all still recouping the losses from the Dominion War but it still seemed odd that this MASSIVE fleet needed to be made by the Federation. This is probably why I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop because it smacks a bit much like the immigration caravans to the US issues. Heavy handed and one sided in the show. The Romulans are not some small poor little “country” They were an Empire that Rivaled both the Federation and the Klingons at the same time.

 

 

Chris

As for #2, who else in the Alpha quadrant could or would do it?  Cardassia?  The Ferengi?  The KLINGONS???  The only power in the Quadrant who had both the manpower and the willpower to do anything for the Romulans is the Federation.

Edited January 25, 2020 by CoryHolmes

[azrael]

2 hours ago, Dobber said:

I get that, but it’s not like the Fed’s turned their backs to them like Kirk wanted to do to the Klingons. They did make the effort or “Big Gesture” at great cost in both lives and resources.

Kirk, Adm. Cartwright and the rest of them were part of the minority opinion with the Klingons. Also with the Klingons, the Federation and Starfleet maintained a better hand throughout. The minority argument did not have sufficient merit. With the Romulans, this time the minority opinion had more leverage with the burning of Mars and the lost of Utopia Planita. If the Romulans had the resources, they would have never asked for help, but they did.

[sh9000]

I just watched it and enjoyed it.

[Dobber]

9 hours ago, CoryHolmes said:

As for #2, who else in the Alpha quadrant could or would do it?  Cardassia?  The Ferengi?  The KLINGONS???  The only power in the Quadrant who had both the manpower and the willpower to do anything for the Romulans is the Federation.

That’s not my point, of course the Federation could and would be the only neighboring power that would be willing to help but It still doesn’t explain why the Romulans can’t do it themselves. All the Major Powers sufferer horrendously in the Dominion War.  As I said they are still an interstellar Empire that rivaled the Federation and the Klingons. Where is their StarFleet and ShipYards. If there is time enough to build a freaking FLEET of ships why couldn’t existing ships from both governments at least get the evacuation started. Still makes no sense that the Feds are the “Bad Guys” in this scenario. Especially after they legitimately tried to do it and then suffered a great loss themselves.

I still don’t buy that if there is time available to negotiate, order, then build an entire MASSIVE Fleet and crew it, and then apparently do it again before the planets are destroyed, that they couldn’t be evacuated with the time and what was available from BOTH governments. Along with what the Romulans CAN still build with their apparently more limited resources. If the story wanted to say that the Federation wasn’t willing to build a fleet in the first place, similar to what Azrael is comparing with ST6 and the Klingons...then that would make more sense for being angry/disgruntled with Star Fleet and the Federation. You guys keep missing the point that the Federation DID attempt to help, and at great cost. It’s like the show is trying to have it both ways, they help and don’t help. That’s why I find it unbelievable that with all that time they still can’t evacuate the populations.

Chris

Edited January 25, 2020 by Dobber

[sh9000]

[Roy Focker]

1 hour ago, sh9000 said:

This is my biggest complaint.  They show them in classic uniforms that aren't tailored to fit!

I think I'll continue to watch this show just to see Patrick Stewart act.

Not sure if I'll like the show or not.