Star Trek: Picard (CBS All-Access)

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

No surprise there.

At the very least, it explains why ViacomCBS is once again intent on talking up proposals for new Star Trek shows... they're vetting audience reactions to the pitches for Star Trek: Picard's replacement.

Discovery already adapted the Final Frontier series pitch about a future where warp travel was impossible in much of the galaxy, but I see the Star Trek: Section 31 pitch that was tabled back in Discovery's second season has reared its ugly and unwanted head again alongside the old and often-revisited Starfleet Academy series pitch that's been doing the rounds every decade or so since the TOS movies.

[Dynaman]

If Starfleet Academy is still(*) using regular dorm door (with old fashioned style handles) and just making a lame sound effect when someone manually opens them (n the normal way) then at least it will save a whole lot of money.

 

(*) - I guess technically the term should be previously unless the Star Fleet Academy show is set after the Next Gen time frame where the episode with Wesley in the academy used regular doors with stupid sound FX tacked on.

[Roy Focker]

You know what I would like to see?

A Picard prequel based his days on the Stargrazer.  He commanded that ship for 22 years during a period that wasn't covered on screen.  They have to recast Picard of course.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Roy Focker said:

You know what I would like to see?

A Picard prequel based his days on the Stargrazer.  He commanded that ship for 22 years during a period that wasn't covered on screen.  They have to recast Picard of course.

If Secret Hideout is still intent on trying to turn Star Trek into an action series, that might be a good choice.  Picard's command of the USS Stargazer overlaps the Federation-Cardassian border wars in the late 2340s and 2350s.

[pengbuzz]

11 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

At the very least, it explains why ViacomCBS is once again intent on talking up proposals for new Star Trek shows... they're vetting audience reactions to the pitches for Star Trek: Picard's replacement.

Discovery already adapted the Final Frontier series pitch about a future where warp travel was impossible in much of the galaxy, but I see the Star Trek: Section 31 pitch that was tabled back in Discovery's second season has reared its ugly and unwanted head again alongside the old and often-revisited Starfleet Academy series pitch that's been doing the rounds every decade or so since the TOS movies.

I dread any "Starfleet Academy" series, as it would probably just devolve into Dergrassi Junior High in Space (props to anyone who doesn't have to google that reference! lol ). Never been one for that setting, and I recall Harve Bennet proposing that setting around/ shortly after Star Trek V:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_First_Adventure

Anyways, didn't we already get the "academy" thing in the JJTrek™ film, not to mention, Prodigy?

Edited February 6, 2022 by pengbuzz

[sh9000]

 

[Keith]

On 2/6/2022 at 2:04 AM, pengbuzz said:

I dread any "Starfleet Academy" series, as it would probably just devolve into Dergrassi Junior High in Space (props to anyone who doesn't have to google that reference! lol ). Never been one for that setting, and I recall Harve Bennet proposing that setting around/ shortly after Star Trek V:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_First_Adventure

Anyways, didn't we already get the "academy" thing in the JJTrek™ film, not to mention, Prodigy?

And in that TNG with Wesley being pressurred to cover up his classmates screwup.

[TehPW]

When my wife taught me how to use the Roku in our room, i started watching, first, the Mando, then Lower Decks, then Book and now, Prodigy. I actually liked both anime Treks (I vaguely recall, my dismissiveness of the concepts but i blame my opinions of STD and Piccy), actually being shocked that i did enjoy those shows... I'm still loath on the idea of even watching STD, however. maybe, eventually i will but not now...

[Thom]

Liking Prodigy more than STD(😄), though Dal is still too much of a d1ck for me to like at the moment. I'd prefer Gwyndala to be the main character, but oh well...

Edited February 26, 2022 by Thom

[Seto Kaiba]

22 hours ago, sh9000 said:

 

What in the hell did I just watch?

It looks for all the world like Star Trek: Picard's showrunners decided that the best way to promote the series would be to show a bunch of badly-constumed extras coming out of a turbolift, running down a badly lit hallway that looks like something out of Alien: Covenant, and getting into another turbolift.

This looks like a f***ing fan-film.  And not one of the good ones either.

Paramount's supposedly spending ~$8M per episode... where the hell is it going if the series looks this amateurish?  Are we watching Patrick Stewart's Springtime for Hitler?  Was he so reluctant to return that the entire budget is being spent on retaining him, Jeri Ryan, and Lohn de Lancie?

[pengbuzz]

58 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

What in the hell did I just watch?

It looks for all the world like Star Trek: Picard's showrunners decided that the best way to promote the series would be to show a bunch of badly-constumed extras coming out of a turbolift, running down a badly lit hallway that looks like something out of Alien: Covenant, and getting into another turbolift.

This looks like a f***ing fan-film.  And not one of the good ones either.

Paramount's supposedly spending ~$8M per episode... where the hell is it going if the series looks this amateurish?  Are we watching Patrick Stewart's Springtime for Hitler?  Was he so reluctant to return that the entire budget is being spent on retaining him, Jeri Ryan, and Lohn de Lancie?

Either that, or the catering trucks for the executive producers....

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Either that, or the catering trucks for the executive producers....

It's definitely not going to the writers, that's for sure...

Given the badly-rendered CG cyber-tentacles criss-crossing the bridge in that scene, it looks like a very safe bet that we're seeing the Borg Queen hijacking another Starfleet ship.

Given that we know this entire season takes place in an altered past where Earth is evil, that means the Borg Queen likely took it into the past.

It's looking unpleasantly like this is going to be a literally low budget remake of First Contact.

[sh9000]

 

[pengbuzz]

Wow, Stewart looks old... must be in his 80's now...

[Seto Kaiba]

28 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Wow, Stewart looks old... must be in his 80's now...

He's currently 81 years old... so if he looks old, he's earned it.

[Seto Kaiba]

So... Star Trek: Picard now has three tie-in novels out that attempt to explain the show's backstory.  They aren't great, which is expected given that they're basically Fix Fics intended to justify or handwave the dumber bits of writing in Picard season one... ultimately making the story worse, not better.

• The Last Best Hope
  Sets up Picard, Musiker, Maddox, and Jurati's backstories.
  Spoiler

  Picard accepts a promotion to Admiral in order to coordinate the Federation's evacuation of Romulus.  His first officer, Worf, is promoted and assumes command of the Federation flagship after Picard and Sisko shout down Admiral Clancey's objections to his promotion.  

  Opposition to the Federation's relief efforts turns out to be way smaller, and way dumber, than advertised.  It turns out it wasn't actually motivated by enmity towards the Federation's oldest enemy like Picard claims in the series.  Rather, the opposition is centered on a number of small, irrelevant farming colonies that are upset the Federation Council was reallocating resources to the evacuation effort in a way that would temporarily slow the development of their colonies.  That's right, Picard's supposed "greatest failure" is that he was politically outmaneuvered by a Space Karen upset about being inconvenienced.

  For their part, the Romulan Senate seems to have sided with the supernova against their own people.  They do absolutely everything in their mortal power to derail or inconvenience the evacuation effort.  Not only do they repeatedly lie about the immediacy of the crisis, they have the Tal Shiar disappear scientists who point out the truth of the matter.  They KNOW what they're saying is a lie, and that it profits NOBODY to stall the evacuation, but they do it anyway because they're apparently now deeply concerned about looking weak in front of the Federation despite the events of Nemesis?  It's also repeatedly hinted the supernova is artificial in origin, but no explanation is offered as to how or by who.

  Bruce Maddox and Jurati do their terrible, cliched, teacher-student romance subplot and angst about how undignified it is to have to work on non-sentine androids in light of their failures to recreate a system like Data.  

  Mars happens.  Geordi blames Maddox for some reason.  Maddox and Jurati blame themselves.  Picard unsuccessfully lobbies for a resumption of the relief effort and resigns in a self-important huff before having an existential crisis.  After Picard resigns, Raffi Musiker receives a bad conduct discharge from Starfleet because she's an unrepentant junkie who won't stop smoking space crack on duty, her husband divorces her, and takes their kids.  (Yes, that's right, Raffi didn't turn to drugs after losing her job... she was a junkie who got kicked out for refusing to get clean.)

  
   
• The Dark Veil
  Riker and Troi's backstory.  Nothing of any actual relevance happens, really.
  Spoiler

  After the events on Mars, the Titan gets caught up in an incident on the Romulan border involving a Federation ally who are secretly an entire race of androids.  The Tal Shiar dicks around a bunch to no useful end, a Romulan captain teams up with Riker to stop them, there's a show trial on Romulus where the Tal Shiar operative makes such an arse of themselves that Riker and co. are acquitted by a kangaroo court set up specifically to hang them, and said Federation-aligned android race take off for the Andromeda galaxy to escape the Romulans and the Federation's synth ban.

  
   
• Rogue Elements
  Rios's backstory.  It could best be summed up as "All those jokes about him being a walking collection of slightly racist Latinx stereotypes and a terribly obvious ripoff of Han Solo were surprisingly on the nose."
  Spoiler

  This book just erases any pretense that Cristobel Rios isn't off-brand Han Solo with such abrupt totality that it's almost a surprise Disney isn't suing.

  The recently cashiered-out-of-Starfleet Rios, smarting after his crewmates blamed him for Starfleet cashiering the entire crew of the ibn Majid out of the service, buys a tramp freighter and gets wrapped up in the activities of an Iotan crime syndicate and Kivas Fajo, who is basically this story's Jabba the Hutt.  He has a brief fling with a woman who is actually TNG's Vash under an alias, searches for a space treasure, and discovers that being a freighter captain is actually breathtakingly boring unless you're up to no good... in which case it's breathtakingly boring AND stressful.

  Nothing of any real relevance or importance happens... it's such a blatant attempt to make the boring, stereotypical character exciting and dangerous that it's more than a little silly and comes off feeling almost like one of Bashir's holodeck secret agent episodes.  That actually ends up making it the most entertaining book of the three by a huge margin, but it's almost literally doing a bizarre dance and proclaiming itself a filler arc that will matter to nothing and nobody.

 

All in all, pretty disappointing offerings that do more to undermine the show's story than anything.  Only the first book actualy has much to do with setting up the series, and there's precious little in terms of takeaways except that Picard is so self-obsessed that he not only blames himself for things that he had no control over, he blames himself for things that don't involve him at all AND believes that he is so utterly indispensible that Starfleet will buck the orders of the Federation government to do his bidding.  (It really lends something to the criticism of PIC Picard as an entitled old man manipulating everyone with sob stories because he's upset that he's no longer relevant or influential.)  Raffi's tragic backstory turns out to be entirely her own fault, which would actualy have made her arc in the series more poigniant if she hadn't laid all the blame for her actions on "JL".

[Thom]

17 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So... Star Trek: Picard now has three tie-in novels out that attempt to explain the show's backstory.  They aren't great, which is expected given that they're basically Fix Fics intended to justify or handwave the dumber bits of writing in Picard season one... ultimately making the story worse, not better.

• The Last Best Hope
  Sets up Picard, Musiker, Maddox, and Jurati's backstories.
    Hide contents

  Picard accepts a promotion to Admiral in order to coordinate the Federation's evacuation of Romulus.  His first officer, Worf, is promoted and assumes command of the Federation flagship after Picard and Sisko shout down Admiral Clancey's objections to his promotion.  

  Opposition to the Federation's relief efforts turns out to be way smaller, and way dumber, than advertised.  It turns out it wasn't actually motivated by enmity towards the Federation's oldest enemy like Picard claims in the series.  Rather, the opposition is centered on a number of small, irrelevant farming colonies that are upset the Federation Council was reallocating resources to the evacuation effort in a way that would temporarily slow the development of their colonies.  That's right, Picard's supposed "greatest failure" is that he was politically outmaneuvered by a Space Karen upset about being inconvenienced.

  For their part, the Romulan Senate seems to have sided with the supernova against their own people.  They do absolutely everything in their mortal power to derail or inconvenience the evacuation effort.  Not only do they repeatedly lie about the immediacy of the crisis, they have the Tal Shiar disappear scientists who point out the truth of the matter.  They KNOW what they're saying is a lie, and that it profits NOBODY to stall the evacuation, but they do it anyway because they're apparently now deeply concerned about looking weak in front of the Federation despite the events of Nemesis?  It's also repeatedly hinted the supernova is artificial in origin, but no explanation is offered as to how or by who.

  Bruce Maddox and Jurati do their terrible, cliched, teacher-student romance subplot and angst about how undignified it is to have to work on non-sentine androids in light of their failures to recreate a system like Data.  

  Mars happens.  Geordi blames Maddox for some reason.  Maddox and Jurati blame themselves.  Picard unsuccessfully lobbies for a resumption of the relief effort and resigns in a self-important huff before having an existential crisis.  After Picard resigns, Raffi Musiker receives a bad conduct discharge from Starfleet because she's an unrepentant junkie who won't stop smoking space crack on duty, her husband divorces her, and takes their kids.  (Yes, that's right, Raffi didn't turn to drugs after losing her job... she was a junkie who got kicked out for refusing to get clean.)

  
   
• The Dark Veil
  Riker and Troi's backstory.  Nothing of any actual relevance happens, really.
    Hide contents

  After the events on Mars, the Titan gets caught up in an incident on the Romulan border involving a Federation ally who are secretly an entire race of androids.  The Tal Shiar dicks around a bunch to no useful end, a Romulan captain teams up with Riker to stop them, there's a show trial on Romulus where the Tal Shiar operative makes such an arse of themselves that Riker and co. are acquitted by a kangaroo court set up specifically to hang them, and said Federation-aligned android race take off for the Andromeda galaxy to escape the Romulans and the Federation's synth ban.

  
   
• Rogue Elements
  Rios's backstory.  It could best be summed up as "All those jokes about him being a walking collection of slightly racist Latinx stereotypes and a terribly obvious ripoff of Han Solo were surprisingly on the nose."
    Hide contents

  This book just erases any pretense that Cristobel Rios isn't off-brand Han Solo with such abrupt totality that it's almost a surprise Disney isn't suing.

  The recently cashiered-out-of-Starfleet Rios, smarting after his crewmates blamed him for Starfleet cashiering the entire crew of the ibn Majid out of the service, buys a tramp freighter and gets wrapped up in the activities of an Iotan crime syndicate and Kivas Fajo, who is basically this story's Jabba the Hutt.  He has a brief fling with a woman who is actually TNG's Vash under an alias, searches for a space treasure, and discovers that being a freighter captain is actually breathtakingly boring unless you're up to no good... in which case it's breathtakingly boring AND stressful.

  Nothing of any real relevance or importance happens... it's such a blatant attempt to make the boring, stereotypical character exciting and dangerous that it's more than a little silly and comes off feeling almost like one of Bashir's holodeck secret agent episodes.  That actually ends up making it the most entertaining book of the three by a huge margin, but it's almost literally doing a bizarre dance and proclaiming itself a filler arc that will matter to nothing and nobody.

 

All in all, pretty disappointing offerings that do more to undermine the show's story than anything.  Only the first book actualy has much to do with setting up the series, and there's precious little in terms of takeaways except that Picard is so self-obsessed that he not only blames himself for things that he had no control over, he blames himself for things that don't involve him at all AND believes that he is so utterly indispensible that Starfleet will buck the orders of the Federation government to do his bidding.  (It really lends something to the criticism of PIC Picard as an entitled old man manipulating everyone with sob stories because he's upset that he's no longer relevant or influential.)  Raffi's tragic backstory turns out to be entirely her own fault, which would actualy have made her arc in the series more poigniant if she hadn't laid all the blame for her actions on "JL".

So, don't even bother with the books...😉

[pengbuzz]

I think what we need in this is for Picard from TNG to give a "Reason You Suck" speech to Picard from PIC.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Thom said:

So, don't even bother with the books...😉

Not unless you're really really bored.  

As Star Trek novels go, the writing's actually not that bad.*  They're a long way from "great", but the main problem with both The Last Best Hope and The Dark Veil is that the writers (Una McCormack and James Swallow) spent most of their respective books frantically tying the story in knots in their efforts to introduce, explain, and justify the various pants-on-head idiotic parts of Star Trek: Picard's setting. 

The ill-advised decision to not retcon the Kelvin Trek movies out of existence by incorporating the destruction of Romulus into PIC's storyline proved to be a huge mistake in the TV series, but the implications are way worse in the novels.  The only way the writers could justify the infamously cunning Romulan Star Empire being wiped out by the its homeworld's sun going supernova was for the entire Romulan government to be Too Dumb To Live on a level that makes even the dimmest Pakled would find deeply concerning.  The lemming-like determination the Romulan Senate, Tal Shiar, and Zhat Vash show in suppressing and dismissing any concerns about the impending destruction of Romulus by supernova is a truly bizarre thing to behold.  It's so nonsensical that you could be forgiven for wondering if the Romulans actually hate Picard for interrupting some kind of species-wide ritualistic mass suicide.  They know their world is doomed.  They know that it's going to be destroyed SOON.  But even though they're still on the planet that's about to be destroyed, they keep doing everything in their power to hinder their own efforts to evacuate.  The Tal Shiar spends its time abducting and torturing scientists to get them to retract their analyses of the timetable of their star's destruction, while the Zhat Vash launch a major operation to commit an act of war against the Federation and destroy the Starfleet rescue armada that an enormous percentage of their population are depending on for evacuation for the flimsiest possible reason.

In hindsight, it makes both Picard and the 2009 Kelvin Trek movie absolutely ridiculous.  In what way is anything Picard's fault?  The Romulans did absolutely everything they could to kill themselves en masse and succeeded spectacularly.  Nero's complaint now makes NO sense, given that the Federation DID send substantial aid to Romulus and only stopped because the Romulans sabotaged shipyard servicing the humanitarian fleet.

 

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I think what we need in this is for Picard from TNG to give a "Reason You Suck" speech to Picard from PIC.

Personally, I suspect a TNG-era Picard would suspect PIC-era Picard was some kind of alien imposter or a terrible prank being played by Q.

 

* Which is Damned by Faint Praise, at best.  Next to turds like Shatner's The Return**, almost any licensed novel would come away smelling of roses.
** A book that is already terrible for being Shatner's attempt to permanently settle the Kirk vs. Picard debate in his own favor, made worse by the realization that Shatner originally pitched it to Paramount as a Star Trek movie script after Generations.

[sh9000]

I liked Season 2 Episode 1.

 

 

[pengbuzz]

On 2/27/2022 at 8:47 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

* Which is Damned by Faint Praise, at best.  Next to turds like Shatner's The Return**, almost any licensed novel would come away smelling of roses.

Well, at least there they have a good series name:

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, sh9000 said:

I liked Season 2 Episode 1.

 

 

So... if that trailer was meant to entice fans back into watching, then mission failed.

This is enough to make me go sign that petition that's going around to have Paramount classify all Kurtzman-era Trek non-canon.

This looks like ARSE.  Especially that Borg Queen makeup.  The Borg Queen makeup and visual effects from Star Trek: Voyager looked infinitely more convincing and impressive than this sad mess, and that effects technology is now over twenty-five years old!  This Borg Queen looks like costume, makeup, and effects are so unmistakably cheap that they look like they'd be more at home on Red Dwarf IX: Back to Earth or an episode of Power Rangers than a Star Trek series that supposedly has $8 million per episode to play with.  If you told me this was actually a cosplayer who coincidentally wandered onto the set in a costume and makeup of their own design, I'd believe you.  But I guess that's on brand for the Picard series.  The Borg makeup and effects in the first season looked like something out of a mid-90's PC game cutscene too.

The writing clearly says "We remember First Contact was the last time anyone liked Jean-Luc Picard as a character", and the decision to ape First Contact's story with a time travel plot to just after the present day says "we needed to film this season as cheaply as possible".  

All in all, I would be absolutely floored if this series hadn't received a VERY large budget cut between this season and the last.  Either that or they couldn't get a budget approved for season three and are spreading season two's budget across both.  There's no way a show this expensive should look this cheap, unless someone is engaging in some "creative accounting".  (Bialystock und Bloom~!)

[kalvasflam]

stop knocking the Borg Queen, they could afford the effects, they were too busy spending that money on Annie Wersching, she hasn't had a decent role since 24; getting her into the Borg queen custom is the last chance to revive her career... 😅

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So... if that trailer was meant to entice fans back into watching, then mission failed.

This is enough to make me go sign that petition that's going around to have Paramount classify all Kurtzman-era Trek non-canon.

This looks like ARSE.  Especially that Borg Queen makeup.  The Borg Queen makeup and visual effects from Star Trek: Voyager looked infinitely more convincing and impressive than this sad mess, and that effects technology is now over twenty-five years old!  This Borg Queen looks like costume, makeup, and effects are so unmistakably cheap that they look like they'd be more at home on Red Dwarf IX: Back to Earth or an episode of Power Rangers than a Star Trek series that supposedly has $8 million per episode to play with.  If you told me this was actually a cosplayer who coincidentally wandered onto the set in a costume and makeup of their own design, I'd believe you.  But I guess that's on brand for the Picard series.  The Borg makeup and effects in the first season looked like something out of a mid-90's PC game cutscene too.

The writing clearly says "We remember First Contact was the last time anyone liked Jean-Luc Picard as a character", and the decision to ape First Contact's story with a time travel plot to just after the present day says "we needed to film this season as cheaply as possible".  

All in all, I would be absolutely floored if this series hadn't received a VERY large budget cut between this season and the last.  Either that or they couldn't get a budget approved for season three and are spreading season two's budget across both.  There's no way a show this expensive should look this cheap, unless someone is engaging in some "creative accounting".  (Bialystock und Bloom~!)

Frankly, the "Borg Queen" looks more like she escaped from a local nursing home and just needs her meds....

[sh9000]

Looking forward to checking out episode 2.

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, kalvasflam said:

stop knocking the Borg Queen, they could afford the effects, they were too busy spending that money on Annie Wersching, she hasn't had a decent role since 24; getting her into the Borg queen custom is the last chance to revive her career... 😅

Considering they apparently spent big to bring back John de Lancie, I'm interested to know why they didn't bring back either of the actresses who've previously played the Borg Queen in First Contact or on Voyager...

 

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Frankly, the "Borg Queen" looks more like she escaped from a local nursing home and just needs her meds....

... and, for that matter, why does the Borg Queen look old now?  She's not a person, she's an artificial construct that with barely any biological components that the Borg assemble on an as-needed basis.  

[kalvasflam]

Well, with inflation these days, everybody needs more cash.  Even Q.  I mean Stewart probably signed away his appearance so that there can be future Picard shows with his likeness.  This way, he can keep the gravy train rolling whilst he is still in this world.  Ol’ Pat likes his lifestyle, and that kind of lifestyle must be maintained with cash flow.

🤣

Edited March 4, 2022 by kalvasflam

[sh9000]

https://www.startrek.com/news/recap-star-trek-picard-the-star-gazer

[TehPW]

On 2/27/2022 at 8:47 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Not unless you're really really bored.  

As Star Trek novels go, the writing's actually not that bad.*  They're a long way from "great", but the main problem with both The Last Best Hope and The Dark Veil is that the writers (Una McCormack and James Swallow) spent most of their respective books frantically tying the story in knots in their efforts to introduce, explain, and justify the various pants-on-head idiotic parts of Star Trek: Picard's setting. 

The ill-advised decision to not retcon the Kelvin Trek movies out of existence by incorporating the destruction of Romulus into PIC's storyline proved to be a huge mistake in the TV series, but the implications are way worse in the novels.  The only way the writers could justify the infamously cunning Romulan Star Empire being wiped out by the its homeworld's sun going supernova was for the entire Romulan government to be Too Dumb To Live on a level that makes even the dimmest Pakled would find deeply concerning.  The lemming-like determination the Romulan Senate, Tal Shiar, and Zhat Vash show in suppressing and dismissing any concerns about the impending destruction of Romulus by supernova is a truly bizarre thing to behold.  It's so nonsensical that you could be forgiven for wondering if the Romulans actually hate Picard for interrupting some kind of species-wide ritualistic mass suicide.  They know their world is doomed.  They know that it's going to be destroyed SOON.  But even though they're still on the planet that's about to be destroyed, they keep doing everything in their power to hinder their own efforts to evacuate.  The Tal Shiar spends its time abducting and torturing scientists to get them to retract their analyses of the timetable of their star's destruction, while the Zhat Vash launch a major operation to commit an act of war against the Federation and destroy the Starfleet rescue armada that an enormous percentage of their population are depending on for evacuation for the flimsiest possible reason.

In hindsight, it makes both Picard and the 2009 Kelvin Trek movie absolutely ridiculous.  In what way is anything Picard's fault?  The Romulans did absolutely everything they could to kill themselves en masse and succeeded spectacularly.  Nero's complaint now makes NO sense, given that the Federation DID send substantial aid to Romulus and only stopped because the Romulans sabotaged shipyard servicing the humanitarian fleet.

 

Personally, I suspect a TNG-era Picard would suspect PIC-era Picard was some kind of alien imposter or a terrible prank being played by Q.

 

* Which is Damned by Faint Praise, at best.  Next to turds like Shatner's The Return**, almost any licensed novel would come away smelling of roses.
** A book that is already terrible for being Shatner's attempt to permanently settle the Kirk vs. Picard debate in his own favor, made worse by the realization that Shatner originally pitched it to Paramount as a Star Trek movie script after Generations.

Nemesis was in 2002. There was a sh*t ton of books dealing with post Nemesis events prior to JJT 2009. Did the books (the ones still going the main Post-Nem timeline) fill in the blanks after 2009's split of the timelines? Now PICy and STDs entries... pretty much trumps the books (and ignores them) and that's why the stories suck? Ultimately, was the reason the show runners of STDs and PICy did not plan their stories based on existing Book materials (or even STO) because in doing so, they might have to pay royalties to the books?

Edited March 4, 2022 by TehPW
Derpyiness

[Seto Kaiba]

12 minutes ago, TehPW said:

Nemesis was in 2002. There was a sh*t ton of books dealing with post Nemesis events prior to JJT 2009. Did the books (the ones still going the main Post-Nem timeline) fill in the blanks after 2009's split of the timelines?

No.

The Star Trek "relaunch" novelverse that picked up where the various Star Trek TV shows and prime timeline movies ended never got that far.  The last few books released for the TNG, DS9, and VOY relaunch series were set in 2382, five years before the destruction of Romulus that precipitated the creation of the Kelvin timeline and Star Trek 2009.  AFAIK only Star Trek Online, which was its own alternate universe setting separate from the novelverse, actually made it to and past the point of Romulus's destruction with the present day there being in the early 25th century.

 

12 minutes ago, TehPW said:

Now PICy and STDs entries... pretty much trumps the books (and ignores them) and that's why the stories suck?

You have no idea how relieved I am to say that the answer to that is also "No".

Star Wars ran into issues with throwing out its licensed novels, comics, etc. because they were canon or pseudocanon until Disney pitched them and started over.

But for a brief period right after TOS, the Star Trek franchise's official canon policy has always been that only the TV shows and movies are canon.  The licensee-created works like the novels, comics, and video games are non-canon and some unofficially or implicitly style themselves as alternate universe stories (e.g. Star Trek Online).  Few, if any, fans are all that upset that the relaunch novelverse is on indefinite hiatus because of Discovery and Picard.  Most will quite cheerfully admit that a lot of the novels and most of the comics are frankly awful and borderline unreadable unless you're a die-hard fan, infested as they are with terrible fanfic-tier writing.

No, the Star Trek fandom's grievances with Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard are motivated entirely by the quality (or lack thereof) and content of those shows.

I can't imagine there are any Star Trek fans out there on the warpath because Paramount disregarded wonderful story arcs like "Janeway becomes the Borg Queen and destroys Pluto", "Bajoran archaeologists discover atheist scripture (no really) and society loses its collective sh*t", "Will Riker of the USS White Man's Burden", or "Trip Tucker, Secret Agent". 🤣

 

12 minutes ago, TehPW said:

Ultimately, was the reason the show runners of STDs and PICy did not plan their stories based on existing Book materials (or even STO) because in doing so, they might have to pay royalties to the books?

Unlikely, IMO... especially given that Discovery's second season basically borrowed most of its plot from the DS9 relaunch's Control story arc.

I suspect no other motive besides the novels being non-canon already and frankly awful in the eyes of fans and casual readers alike.

[pengbuzz]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... and, for that matter, why does the Borg Queen look old now?  She's not a person, she's an artificial construct that with barely any biological components that the Borg assemble on an as-needed basis.  

Right? That's my complaint; she should be effectively ageless.

 

  

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

No.

The Star Trek "relaunch" novelverse that picked up where the various Star Trek TV shows and prime timeline movies ended never got that far.  The last few books released for the TNG, DS9, and VOY relaunch series were set in 2382, five years before the destruction of Romulus that precipitated the creation of the Kelvin timeline and Star Trek 2009.  AFAIK only Star Trek Online, which was its own alternate universe setting separate from the novelverse, actually made it to and past the point of Romulus's destruction with the present day there being in the early 25th century.

It's sad when the MMORPG is doing a better job story-wise than the actual movies/ shows. O.o

 

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

You have no idea how relieved I am to say that the answer to that is also "No".

Star Wars ran into issues with throwing out its licensed novels, comics, etc. because they were canon or pseudocanon until Disney pitched them and started over.

But for a brief period right after TOS, the Star Trek franchise's official canon policy has always been that only the TV shows and movies are canon.  The licensee-created works like the novels, comics, and video games are non-canon and some unofficially or implicitly style themselves as alternate universe stories (e.g. Star Trek Online).  Few, if any, fans are all that upset that the relaunch novelverse is on indefinite hiatus because of Discovery and Picard.  Most will quite cheerfully admit that a lot of the novels and most of the comics are frankly awful and borderline unreadable unless you're a die-hard fan, infested as they are with terrible fanfic-tier writing.

(snip)

Unlikely, IMO... especially given that Discovery's second season basically borrowed most of its plot from the DS9 relaunch's Control story arc.

I suspect no other motive besides the novels being non-canon already and frankly awful in the eyes of fans and casual readers alike.

Yeah. I've read some of those, and much to my tremendous consternation. :puke

When their best story  idea for the TOS Movie comics (DC) is The Return of Finnegan, that's all the impetus one needs to head for the nearest escape pod and pray that it's Tuesday already (hope someone gets the joke!).

  

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I can't imagine there are any Star Trek fans out there on the warpath because Paramount disregarded wonderful story arcs like "Janeway becomes the Borg Queen and destroys Pluto", "Bajoran archaeologists discover atheist scripture (no really) and society loses its collective sh*t", "Will Riker of the USS White Man's Burden", or "Trip Tucker, Secret Agent". 🤣

Nearly shot soda all over my monitor over the White Man's Burden comment! lol

Edited March 4, 2022 by pengbuzz

[sh9000]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

10 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Right? That's my complaint; she should be effectively ageless.

Really, that much could have been addressed with makeup or just hiring an actor who looked like the previous actors who played the Borg Queen... it's actually kind of weird they didn't, since they went to the trouble for Data and he DID have the ability to age.

 

10 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

It's sad when the MMORPG is doing a better job story-wise than the actual movies/ shows. O.o

... that is highly debatable.

 

10 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Yeah. I've read some of those, and much to my tremendous consternation. :puke

When their best story  idea for the TOS Movie comics (DC) is The Return of Finnegan, that's all the impetus one needs to head for the nearest escape pod and pray that it's Tuesday already (hope someone gets the joke!).

For my money, the best Star Trek comic or novel is How Much for Just the Planet?... which achieves peak TOS flavor by refusing to take itself or its subject matter seriously and going all-in on camp.  (Imagine Kirk and the Klingons visiting a planet where the locals spontaneously break out into choreographed song and dance numbers ala Disney just to mess with you.)

 

10 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Nearly shot soda all over my monitor over the White Man's Burden comment! lol

It's one of the main reasons that the Star Trek: Titan novel series is basically unreadable.

They gave Will Riker the most diverse crew in Starfleet history and any moment not spent on him and Deanna having relationship trouble is spent on him agonizing over whether he's imposing his human beliefs and values on his nonhuman crew.  

Fans breathed an audible sigh of relief when they decided to leave that sh*t out of Picard AND Lower Decks.

[pengbuzz]

27 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Really, that much could have been addressed with makeup or just hiring an actor who looked like the previous actors who played the Borg Queen... it's actually kind of weird they didn't, since they went to the trouble for Data and he DID have the ability to age.

Well, in all fairness: their makeup is most likely coming from Walgreens at this point.

 

27 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... that is highly debatable.

At least they're in the actual 25th century.

 

27 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

For my money, the best Star Trek comic or novel is How Much for Just the Planet?... which achieves peak TOS flavor by refusing to take itself or its subject matter seriously and going all-in on camp.  (Imagine Kirk and the Klingons visiting a planet where the locals spontaneously break out into choreographed song and dance numbers ala Disney just to mess with you.)

Er, yeah... I think I'll just pop in WoK on my pc.

 

27 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's one of the main reasons that the Star Trek: Titan novel series is basically unreadable.

They gave Will Riker the most diverse crew in Starfleet history and any moment not spent on him and Deanna having relationship trouble is spent on him agonizing over whether he's imposing his human beliefs and values on his nonhuman crew.  

Fans breathed an audible sigh of relief when they decided to leave that sh*t out of Picard AND Lower Decks.

Especially since Riker didn't stress out over that on TNG, and that crew, while mainly human,  did have its' fair share of aliens.

On that note: he didn't seem to stress out over "imposing his values" on human members of differing ethnicities either. So thankfully, the books were left out of the shows.

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Well, in all fairness: their makeup is most likely coming from Walgreens at this point.

In all seriousness, it really is bizarre and off-putting how bad the design work is on Star Trek: Picard.

It's hands-down the second most expensive Star Trek series made to date... but where its sister series Star Trek: Discovery's (admittedly hideous) sets, costumes, makeup, props, and visual effects look like they blew the entirety of the show's gargantuan budget on making it look impressive, Star Trek: Picard looks like they could barely spare any money on anything that wasn't on-location filming.  The La Sirena set is so dull and so spartan that it could easily be mistaken for a warehouse if the helm console and chairs weren't in the frame.  Most of the UI is bad CG effects, so the sets look even duller with none of Star Trek's usual backlit displays and blinking lights.  They couldn't even be bothered to redress the one crew quarters set, so Picard has to live in a holosuite that's conveniently recreating his home so they could film on location at that cheap winery in Santa Ynez.  Costume choices are regular contemporary clothes that look like they came out of the actors own closets for the most part.  The props - especialy the phasers - are unmistakably cheap.  The La Sirena's armory is full of what appear to be completely modern rifles and pistols with some plastic bits glued to them to disguise their shapes a bit.  The new uniform for Starfleet in the first season was clearly a rush job and so poorly tailored it didn't fit anyone properly.  Now we've got a new season set in almost the present day, so the props are mostly off-the-shelf and sets are looking like mostly unmodified location shots.  Combine that with a noticeable dip in the quality of the digital VFX when the Borg Queen beams over to the Stargazer and you have to wonder where all the money went.

 

10 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

At least they're in the actual 25th century.

So is Star Trek: Picard now.

Season two's opener is set a year and a half after Picard's death and the Federation's last second gunship rescue of Coppelius.  That means it's in mid-to-late 2400, before they go back in time.