Star Trek: Picard (CBS All-Access)

[JB0]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Wouldn't that keep them out, though, given that the barrier is so incredibly destructive to ships?

 

Well, the original Enterprise could cross it, and modern ships are tougher. One might fairly assume that the reapers ALSO have advanced their technology and a barrier engineered to keep them out eons ago might now pose less of an impediment now.

 

Who sets these barriers up, anyways? Cocooning false gods at the core, walling out terminators at the rim?

[Dobber]

6 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Who sets these barriers up, anyways? Cocooning false gods at the core, walling out terminators at the rim?

That is actually a fascinating question. That would be good fodder for a series I think. Scientific and philosophical questions with the potential for action and adventure. Damn....I want to see that story now....just not from Kurtzman and co.

Chris

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, JB0 said:

Who sets these barriers up, anyways? Cocooning false gods at the core, walling out terminators at the rim?

The Star Trek relaunch novelverse and the non-canon novels both attributed those barriers to the Q Continuum.  The barrier around the outer edge of the galaxy was set up to keep a malevolent entity called 0 out, and the one in the core was a prison meant to hold the being who presented itself as God in Star Trek V after both were tried and convicted of various crimes by the Q.

(That particular storyline connected the sudden supernova that destroyed the T'Kon empire with Q and four extradimensional ne'er do wells... 0, * AKA the Beta XII-A entity, Gorgan, and The One AKA "God".  A bored Q let them into the universe via the Guardian of Forever, and 0 was the one who first put Q up to the idea of "testing" lesser races for entertainment.  The Q Continuum took a dim view of them blowing up the T'Kon Empire's homeworld with a supernova and arrested Q, 0, and The One.  * and Gorgan escaped but lost most of their powers, to be encountered later by the USS Enterprise, while The One was depowered and locked away on a remote planet behind a barrier in the galactic core and 0 was depowered and punted into intergalactic space with a barrier put up around the galaxy to prevent him from returning.)

 

That said, I have to wonder if this incredibly lazy and apparently incredibly unoriginal Star Trek plot will culminate in these machine people from outside time and space being the machine race that created V'Ger after Voyager VI fell into a black hole.  Since Star Trek: Discovery was stealing ideas from the novelverse it seems likely Star Trek: Picard will too... Control was straight out of the DS9 Relaunch, and the machine race (The Body Electric) were encountered while pursuing a project that would've caused the extinction of all life in the galaxy.

[pengbuzz]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The Star Trek relaunch novelverse and the non-canon novels both attributed those barriers to the Q Continuum.  The barrier around the outer edge of the galaxy was set up to keep a malevolent entity called 0 out, and the one in the core was a prison meant to hold the being who presented itself as God in Star Trek V after both were tried and convicted of various crimes by the Q.

(That particular storyline connected the sudden supernova that destroyed the T'Kon empire with Q and four extradimensional ne'er do wells... 0, * AKA the Beta XII-A entity, Gorgan, and The One AKA "God".  A bored Q let them into the universe via the Guardian of Forever, and 0 was the one who first put Q up to the idea of "testing" lesser races for entertainment.  The Q Continuum took a dim view of them blowing up the T'Kon Empire's homeworld with a supernova and arrested Q, 0, and The One.  * and Gorgan escaped but lost most of their powers, to be encountered later by the USS Enterprise, while The One was depowered and locked away on a remote planet behind a barrier in the galactic core and 0 was depowered and punted into intergalactic space with a barrier put up around the galaxy to prevent him from returning.)

 

That said, I have to wonder if this incredibly lazy and apparently incredibly unoriginal Star Trek plot will culminate in these machine people from outside time and space being the machine race that created V'Ger after Voyager VI fell into a black hole.  Since Star Trek: Discovery was stealing ideas from the novelverse it seems likely Star Trek: Picard will too... Control was straight out of the DS9 Relaunch, and the machine race (The Body Electric) were encountered while pursuing a project that would've caused the extinction of all life in the galaxy.

Don't be surprised if the Whale Probe from ST-IV shows up with a beef against the Federation because it used the whales Kirk brought back for sushi in Sisko's Creole Restaurant.

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Don't be surprised if the Whale Probe from ST-IV shows up with a beef against the Federation because it used the whales Kirk brought back for sushi in Sisko's Creole Restaurant.

... eh, I wouldn't put it past Star Trek: Picard.  Its writers seem absolutely determined to turn Star Trek into another maximally dystopian sci-fi setting like Star Wars, Alien, or Warhammer 40,000 where there is nothing but hate and war and hope is a weakness for those who don't know better.

[Dynaman]

The Q needed a barrier to keep a low level "diety" controlled?  One that a Klingon BoP could kill?  Why didn't they just take his powers away and make him mortal like they did to John D Lancie once?

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... eh, I wouldn't put it past Star Trek: Picard.  Its writers seem absolutely determined to turn Star Trek into another maximally dystopian sci-fi setting like Star Wars, Alien, or Warhammer 40,000 where there is nothing but hate and war and hope is a weakness for those who don't know better.

The should rename it Star Trek: Dante's Inferno.  Ship's motto: "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"

 

[Seto Kaiba]

45 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

The Q needed a barrier to keep a low level "diety" controlled?  One that a Klingon BoP could kill?  Why didn't they just take his powers away and make him mortal like they did to John D Lancie once?

As seen in Star Trek: Voyager, the Q Continuum are surprisingly reluctant to use their powers to (permanently) kill... but see little-to-nothing wrong with the idea of depowering repeat offenders for the purpose of teaching them a (non-fatal) lesson as they did and often threatened to do to Q or simply imprisoning them indefinitely to ensure they'd no longer pose a threat to themselves or others like they did to the suicidal Quinn.

"God" - AKA "The One" - lost most of his powers and was imprisoned for eternity in the great barrier at the galactic core until he either repented for his crimes or the universe ended, whichever came first.  Being shot in the face (though at that point he was literally a disembodied head) by a Bird of Prey didn't kill him, it just pissed him off.  The Q set him up with a near-ideal prison where he was deprived of both the means to cause mischief and anyone to actually hurt via that mischief.

[sh9000]

 

[Mommar]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As seen in Star Trek: Voyager, the Q Continuum are surprisingly reluctant to use their powers to (permanently) kill... but see little-to-nothing wrong with the idea of depowering repeat offenders for the purpose of teaching them a (non-fatal) lesson as they did and often threatened to do to Q or simply imprisoning them indefinitely to ensure they'd no longer pose a threat to themselves or others like they did to the suicidal Quinn.

It is possible given their ability to navigate reality that they are fundamentally a piece of it.  "Killing" one of them outright could potentially damage all of reality and that's why they never do it.

[Seto Kaiba]

Read a WEIRD fan theory online today about this latest identical descendant of Arik Soong... some fans are theorizing that Alton Soong is actually a "skinjob" version of Lore who may have been reactivated by Maddox at the Daystrom Institute.  IMO, it's not a particularly credible fan theory except for the fact that Soong is INCREDIBLY blase about the ancient androids commiting mass murder to protect his double handful of "children" and that he's named all of his androids after less-than-factual forms of written records.

Personally, I suspect he's just another mentally ill and incredibly naive Soong who's inherited the family thesaurus.

[pengbuzz]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Read a WEIRD fan theory online today about this latest identical descendant of Arik Soong... some fans are theorizing that Alton Soong is actually a "skinjob" version of Lore who may have been reactivated by Maddox at the Daystrom Institute.  IMO, it's not a particularly credible fan theory except for the fact that Soong is INCREDIBLY blase about the ancient androids commiting mass murder to protect his double handful of "children" and that he's named all of his androids after less-than-factual forms of written records.

Personally, I suspect he's just another mentally ill and incredibly naive Soong who's inherited the family thesaurus.

Personally, this is the theory I've formulated since I had time to sit down and really think this through:

This is all a feverish dream in Picard's head. He's actually back at his vineyard in France, laying in bed dying, with Dr. Crusher and whatever friends there for him in his final hours. What we're seeing is his last thoughts and wishes in a delirious state, and he's constructed one last "grand adventure" for himself. Keep in mind the symptoms of Irumodic Syndrome:

Quote

Irumodic Syndrome was a degenerative neurological disorder that caused deterioration of the synaptic pathways. The condition caused confusion, delusions, and eventually death. It could take several years to develop and several more before it proved deadly.

(source:)  https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Irumodic_Syndrome

The reality probably is that between Romulus being destroyed by a supernovae and the diagnosis of his then-newly onset Irumodic Syndrome, Picard decided to resign from Starfleet. He most likely felt he had failed somehow, that he should have been able to do something to help. As the years wore on, his mind degenerated slowly, and he began to fantasize (as some who have disabling diseases and infirmities do) that he had to leave Starfleet for some grander reason than over his illness.

Finally, in his dying days, Picard was confined to bed, and constructed for himself one last "mission" in his mind. One that would sing the praises of Jean Luc Picard and wrap up his life in a great adventure that would once again lead him to the stars.

My clues to this? Improbable happenings with the storyline (granted, the writers are idiots, but we're making lemonade with lemon-colored somersetting or another, so bear with me here!), people just happening to be in place where he needs them and going along with his "crusade"; an admiral who at first denies him but grudgingly gives him what he asks for (symbolic of the service that Picard found himself at odds with several times); a great conspiracy that only he could solve; and living in his chateau, even though they are deep in space (requires one holodeck and a whole bunch of suspension of disbelief to work).

But...that's just me and I'm probably disregarding / overlooking a bunch of stuff, got a few somethings wrong and misread/misfired/misfiled/ Miss Moneypenny/ Miss Piggy/ misunderstood something or another...

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

That'd be another way to look at it... though admittedly a pretty sad take on the series as a whole.  You'd think Jean-Luc Picard had a better imagination.

 

I think I see the "out" here for Patrick Stewart.  Picard's going to "die" but they're going to transfer/copy his mind into that "golem" that Soong built, so Jean-Luc Picard the human will die and Patrick Stewart will bow out of the series and they'll continue forward with a new actor as Android!Picard.

Edited March 23, 2020 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

On 3/23/2020 at 11:01 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

That'd be another way to look at it... though admittedly a pretty sad take on the series as a whole.  You'd think Jean-Luc Picard had a better imagination.

 With that kind of syndrome, I wonder if imagination would deteriorate as well?

On 3/23/2020 at 11:01 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

I think I see the "out" here for Patrick Stewart.  Picard's going to "die" but they're going to transfer/copy his mind into that "golem" that Soong built, so Jean-Luc Picard the human will die and Patrick Stewart will bow out of the series and they'll continue forward with a new actor as Android!Picard.

I would consider that even sadder; the only reason anyone is even watching this is because of the OG crew cameos, IMO. On it's own, most of the characters couldn't convince me to shop at 7-11 for a Slurpee.

[Seto Kaiba]

49 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

I would consider that even sadder; the only reason anyone is even watching this is because of the OG crew cameos, IMO. On it's own, most of the characters couldn't convince me to shop at 7-11 for a Slurpee.

Honestly, the biggest problem with Star Trek: Picard's original characters is that they're all blatantly designed-by-committee.

Not an intelligent committee either... that kind of tone deaf, out-of-touch, diversity-minded committee that produced cringe-worthy garbage like Marvel's new superheroes "Snowflake" and "Safe Space" or the SJW robot in Solo: a Star Wars Story.

Cristóbal Rios is a citizen of the Republic of South American Stereotypes, a cigar-smoking, hard-drinking, unkempt, shady, roguish sort of character with a troubled past and nothing left to lose who speaks in an exaggerated accent, curses awkwardly in Spanish, and reads Spanish philosophy books just in case the audience forgot he's South American over the last week.

Raffaela Musiker is a down-on-her-luck Sassy Black Woman™ who developed multiple substance abuse problems after losing her job and her family, who's just trying to go straight and get her kid back.

Dr. Agnes Jurati is a standard-issue Socially-Awkward Nerd Girl whose main character traits are that she's naive, trusting, painfully shy, and more than slightly autistic.  

Elnor's not just a McNinja, he's an effeminate prettyboy, an orphaned kid who sees Picard as a surrogate father, a rebel against his native culture, the exposition magnet whose naive ignorance makes everyone explain things, and a comic relief character whose social awkwardness is played for unfunny laughs.

Fleet Admiral Clancey is the foulmouthed professional woman who is trying too hard to be taken seriously and can't abide having her authority questioned for a second.

Soji is the everywoman, a painfully generic character with no distinguishing traits to speak of except for the fact that she's good at everything... which they try to justify as her being an android.  She's brilliant, skilled in multiple scientific disciplines, speaks multiple languages, is an instant expert on alien cultures, possesses superhuman strength, speed, durability, and reflexes as an android despite being made of flesh, and is instantly liked and accepted by everyone she meets and even gets a man who's been trained from a young age to hate and fear androids to fall in love with her while on a mission to investigate her.  She's a Mary Sue.

[pengbuzz]

52 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Honestly, the biggest problem with Star Trek: Picard's original characters is that they're all blatantly designed-by-committee.

Not an intelligent committee either... that kind of tone deaf, out-of-touch, diversity-minded committee that produced cringe-worthy garbage like Marvel's new superheroes "Snowflake" and "Safe Space" or the SJW robot in Solo: a Star Wars Story.

Cristóbal Rios is a citizen of the Republic of South American Stereotypes, a cigar-smoking, hard-drinking, unkempt, shady, roguish sort of character with a troubled past and nothing left to lose who speaks in an exaggerated accent, curses awkwardly in Spanish, and reads Spanish philosophy books just in case the audience forgot he's South American over the last week.

Raffaela Musiker is a down-on-her-luck Sassy Black Woman™ who developed multiple substance abuse problems after losing her job and her family, who's just trying to go straight and get her kid back.

Dr. Agnes Jurati is a standard-issue Socially-Awkward Nerd Girl whose main character traits are that she's naive, trusting, painfully shy, and more than slightly autistic.  

Elnor's not just a McNinja, he's an effeminate prettyboy, an orphaned kid who sees Picard as a surrogate father, a rebel against his native culture, the exposition magnet whose naive ignorance makes everyone explain things, and a comic relief character whose social awkwardness is played for unfunny laughs.

Fleet Admiral Clancey is the foulmouthed professional woman who is trying too hard to be taken seriously and can't abide having her authority questioned for a second.

Soji is the everywoman, a painfully generic character with no distinguishing traits to speak of except for the fact that she's good at everything... which they try to justify as her being an android.  She's brilliant, skilled in multiple scientific disciplines, speaks multiple languages, is an instant expert on alien cultures, possesses superhuman strength, speed, durability, and reflexes as an android despite being made of flesh, and is instantly liked and accepted by everyone she meets and even gets a man who's been trained from a young age to hate and fear androids to fall in love with her while on a mission to investigate her.  She's a Mary Sue.

I'd pay real money to see you do that entire post as actual dialogue in a ST:Picard episode with the crew as a "Reason you Suck" monologue.

[tekering]

54 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

I'd pay real money to see you do that entire post as actual dialogue in a ST:Picard episode with the crew as a "Reason you Suck" monologue.

I'd pay to see John de Lancie perform it as Q.

[pengbuzz]

11 minutes ago, tekering said:

I'd pay to see John de Lancie perform it as Q.

You know...that would work!

[JB0]

How to get my money into CBS All-Access for a month: An episode of Q just eviscerating ST:Picard.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I'd pay real money to see you do that entire post as actual dialogue in a ST:Picard episode with the crew as a "Reason you Suck" monologue.

I'd pay real money just to hear it read by the intense voice guy from Honest Trailers.

[sh9000]

Looks like there’s a season 2.

Edited March 25, 2020 by sh9000

[Dobber]

9 hours ago, tekering said:

I'd pay to see John de Lancie perform it as Q.

 

8 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

You know...that would work!

 

7 hours ago, JB0 said:

How to get my money into CBS All-Access for a month: An episode of Q just eviscerating ST:Picard.

So much YES to this! Lol

Chris

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, sh9000 said:

Looks like there’s a season 2.

CBS announced their intention to make a second season of the series before the first episode even "aired", but AFAIK there's been no word on if Amazon agreed and as they're holding the project's pursestrings theirs is the say that matters.

[sh9000]

You’re right.  I was only basing it on what Patrick Stewart wrote.

[pengbuzz]

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'd pay real money just to hear it read by the intense voice guy from Honest Trailers.

I was not familiar at all with "Honest Trailers"; had to go look it up on Youtube.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, sh9000 said:

You’re right.  I was only basing it on what Patrick Stewart wrote.

Doug Jones (Discovery's Saru) tweeted something similar about Star Trek: Discovery's next season a while back... and then tweeted out a clarification that the cast hadn't even been contacted about a possible season 4 despite CBS's claims that they'd renewed the series for season 4 and 5.  

The talking heads at CBS seem to be trying to pull off the Tomino Maneuver to protect their investments in Star Trek: Discovery and the Star Trek: Picard series.  Promising a product that isn't even approved, let alone funded, in the hopes of using public pressure to secure funding that wouldn't otherwise be granted.  CBS's announcement that Star Trek: Discovery had been renewed for season 3 was inevitably undermined by the news that it actually wasn't for quite a few months after the announcement, since they had quite a difficult time convincing Netflix to cough up a budget and had to resort to threatening a lawsuit over their lost investments if the series wasn't renewed.  Their strategy now seems to involve announcing new seasons before the current season even airs, though word from the inside is that Discovery season 3 was filmed as a series finale in case it didn't get renewed and I expect Picard's will also end on a note that could be used as a series finale in case it doesn't get picked up for a second go.

The audience doesn't seem to have a ton of love for Star Trek: Picard, and as with Discovery CBS is mysteriously not publishing the viewership numbers for totally unrelated reasons, honest.  

[TehPW]

15 hours ago, tekering said:

I'd pay to see John de Lancie perform it as Q.

I'd Buy that for a dollar!

[Mommar]

33 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Doug Jones (Discovery's Saru) tweeted something similar about Star Trek: Discovery's next season a while back... and then tweeted out a clarification that the cast hadn't even been contacted about a possible season 4 despite CBS's claims that they'd renewed the series for season 4 and 5.  

The talking heads at CBS seem to be trying to pull off the Tomino Maneuver to protect their investments in Star Trek: Discovery and the Star Trek: Picard series.  Promising a product that isn't even approved, let alone funded, in the hopes of using public pressure to secure funding that wouldn't otherwise be granted.  CBS's announcement that Star Trek: Discovery had been renewed for season 3 was inevitably undermined by the news that it actually wasn't for quite a few months after the announcement, since they had quite a difficult time convincing Netflix to cough up a budget and had to resort to threatening a lawsuit over their lost investments if the series wasn't renewed.  Their strategy now seems to involve announcing new seasons before the current season even airs, though word from the inside is that Discovery season 3 was filmed as a series finale in case it didn't get renewed and I expect Picard's will also end on a note that could be used as a series finale in case it doesn't get picked up for a second go.

The audience doesn't seem to have a ton of love for Star Trek: Picard, and as with Discovery CBS is mysteriously not publishing the viewership numbers for totally unrelated reasons, honest.  

There is also the rumor that Shari Redstone thinks Star Trek is still a viable property and she DOES NOT like Kurtzman at all.  And possibly is trying to run out the Bed-Reboot contract.

[derex3592]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

I was not familiar at all with "Honest Trailers"; had to go look it up on Youtube.

@pengbuzz OMG! They are SO great! Watch those along with "Pitch Meetings". You'll laugh yourself silly. 

[Dobber]

4 hours ago, derex3592 said:

@pengbuzz OMG! They are SO great! Watch those along with "Pitch Meetings". You'll laugh yourself silly. 

I absolutely LOVE Pitch Meetings.

 

The Game of Thrones season 8 and Avengers EndGame are awesome!

Chris

[sh9000]

7 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I was not familiar at all with "Honest Trailers"; had to go look it up on Youtube.

HISHE is not so bad at times as well.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Mommar said:

There is also the rumor that Shari Redstone thinks Star Trek is still a viable property [...]

That gets less true every day, unfortunately.

It's not for nothing that Star Trek lost licensees over Star Trek: Discovery and suffered a near-total licensee walkout over Star Trek: Picard.  With ViacomCBS doubling down on every one of the bad decisions that allowed those two shows to be shat into existence in the first place and even making a token effort to resuscitate the fourth movie in the horribly ill-conceived soft reboot Star Trek movie series, it's clear they're not learning.  It'll take a gargantuan effort to repair Star Trek once they finally oust the idiots responsible for the current mess.  

Then again, it's also possible they'll keep doubling down on their mistakes on the basis of a sunk costs fallacy and fly the franchise right into the ground.

 

6 hours ago, Mommar said:

[...] and she DOES NOT like Kurtzman at all. 

At this point, who does?  His work is about as welcome in the average viewer's home as dry rot.

 

6 hours ago, Mommar said:

And possibly is trying to run out the Bed-Reboot contract.

At some point, the networks need to start writing failure-severance clauses into the contracts with these studios.  Y'know, a nice trapdoor clause that lets them get out if the studio just f*cking flies their franchise into the ground the way Secret Hideout and Bad Robot did to Star Trek.

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, sh9000 said:

HISHE is not so bad at times as well.

I've seen them and at times, they are a RIOT!

 

  

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That gets less true every day, unfortunately.

It's not for nothing that Star Trek lost licensees over Star Trek: Discovery and suffered a near-total licensee walkout over Star Trek: Picard.  With ViacomCBS doubling down on every one of the bad decisions that allowed those two shows to be shat into existence in the first place and even making a token effort to resuscitate the fourth movie in the horribly ill-conceived soft reboot Star Trek movie series, it's clear they're not learning.  It'll take a gargantuan effort to repair Star Trek once they finally oust the idiots responsible for the current mess.  

Then again, it's also possible they'll keep doubling down on their mistakes on the basis of a sunk costs fallacy and fly the franchise right into the ground.

 

At this point, who does?  His work is about as welcome in the average viewer's home as dry rot.

 

At some point, the networks need to start writing failure-severance clauses into the contracts with these studios.  Y'know, a nice trapdoor clause that lets them get out if the studio just f*cking flies their franchise into the ground the way Secret Hideout and Bad Robot did to Star Trek.

Here is what they need to do:

 

Edited March 26, 2020 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

12 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Here is what they need to do

Nah, the easy way to do it is to just bring a temporal agent in and announce that those were "bad future" timelines created by the temporal cold war that no longer exist.  They did that in one of the DTI novels, as a way to take cheap shots at several of the incredibly stupid Star Trek pitches that just wouldn't die.

[Lolicon]

Finished Picard season one. I liked it better than Discovery, but that's not saying much.

That last episode was confusing as hell. Don't want go in-depth or spoil anything, so I'll keep it short.

Patrick Stewart was the best part, much like Captain Pike was what I really liked about Discovery season 2.

Suffers from extremely poor pacing, characters that are poorly utilized, and an underwhelming story.

Man, the terrible pacing was what put me off the most.

So, in the end, Picard season one was mostly par for the course for Star Trek. Because most of Star Trek sucks. I say that as a lifelong Star Trek fan who doesn't view past shows through rose-tinted goggles.

But at least this was better than Rise of Skywalker.

Also, Roddenberry's vision sucks.