Star Trek: Picard (CBS All-Access)

[pengbuzz]

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Edited April 10, 2022 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, David Hingtgen said:

Is anyone else less "concerned" about 2024 having drone-based force-fields, and more by the fact that it was turned off about 5 secs after she was injected?   Genetic lung/skin defects cured before a single cell had time to replicate?  Heck of a stress-test too.  Instead of being in a dark room with filtered air, and slowly seeing how she reacts to increasing exposure----just throw everything at her at once, and hope she lives!

Instantaneously-effective medication is kind of a Star Trek gimmick... all the jokes about instant sedation and the so-called "off button" hypospray, y'know?

It is a bit out of place in the modern day, though, but I'm so used to it in regular Star Trek that I guess it sailed right past me.

 

 

3 hours ago, Magnus said:

I've given up trying to argue with people about Kurtzman Trek.  I often feel like i'm on crazy pills actually.  What seem to me to be glaring plot-holes, poor characterization and nonsensical writing doesn't seem to matter to the people who are fans of this show.  When I point them out they're dismissed - is this what gaslighting is?  I truly do not understand how these shows are as successful as they seem to be, or what the fans of these shows love so much about them.  I'm not trying to be an a-hole, I genuinely do not get it.  

Of late, I feel like we've reached the point where Kurtzman Trek has alienated everyone it's going to alienate - which is to say, most of the established fandom - and the ones left to talk about it with anything more than the morbid fascination of a rubbernecker looking at a car accident they're driving past are the ones who'd gushingly praise the series with no regard for its content or quality.  The J.J. Abrams movies didn't really resonate with most Trekkies, and especially not the die-hards who were driving the franchise's merchandise empire.  Discovery's first season drove most of the fans away from the franchise, and everything since has been a desperate attempt to recapture that lost audience as licensees and investors desert the franchise because most of the fanbase has moved on and it's no longer profitable.

If they're just denying that your complaints are valid, I'm not sure that's gaslighting by the accepted definition... gaslighting would be insisting those problems don't exist at all and trying to make you question your sense of reality.

The thing is, the investor disclosures Paramount Global (fmrly. ViacomCBS) is required by law to make and guarantee the accuracy of paint a much less rosy picture of the entire situation.  Paramount+ is losing over $1B/year (US) on Paramount+ right now and that amount is expected (by Paramount) to increase until at least 2024.  Kurtzman's Star Trek is supposed to be Paramount+'s flagship property, but it's not proving to be the draw they hoped it would be.  They've gotten in trouble in the past for inflating the subscriber counts for Paramount+ by including "free trial" subscriptions bundled with other companies services.  Merchandising apparently isn't much help to cover the shortfall, since sales have been slow and the exodus of licensees between Discovery's first and second seasons hindered things somewhat as well.  The sudden move to take Paramount+ global and their decision to raise $3B with a massive stock sell-off that tanked their share price may have been motivated by Netflix's third, final, and ultimately successful attempt to terminate their involvement in Discovery as its financial backer in light of the show's ongoing poor performance on their service in international markets.

Picard is reportedly set to end at just 30 episodes, Discovery is limping badly, and Strange New Worlds is an unknown quantity that investors were reportedly not terribly happy with when demo reels were shown.

While I'm sure there are some fans who are undeniably stoked about various bits of production-related celebrity news... a lot of the business-side news definitely seems to be not-so-positive.

[pengbuzz]

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Edited April 10, 2022 by pengbuzz

[Magnus]

43 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The thing is, the investor disclosures Paramount Global (fmrly. ViacomCBS) is required by law to make and guarantee the accuracy of paint a much less rosy picture of the entire situation.  Paramount+ is losing over $1B/year (US) on Paramount+ right now and that amount is expected (by Paramount) to increase until at least 2024.  Kurtzman's Star Trek is supposed to be Paramount+'s flagship property, but it's not proving to be the draw they hoped it would be.  They've gotten in trouble in the past for inflating the subscriber counts for Paramount+ by including "free trial" subscriptions bundled with other companies services.  Merchandising apparently isn't much help to cover the shortfall, since sales have been slow and the exodus of licensees between Discovery's first and second seasons hindered things somewhat as well.  The sudden move to take Paramount+ global and their decision to raise $3B with a massive stock sell-off that tanked their share price may have been motivated by Netflix's third, final, and ultimately successful attempt to terminate their involvement in Discovery as its financial backer in light of the show's ongoing poor performance on their service in international markets.

Picard is reportedly set to end at just 30 episodes, Discovery is limping badly, and Strange New Worlds is an unknown quantity that investors were reportedly not terribly happy with when demo reels were shown.

While I'm sure there are some fans who are undeniably stoked about various bits of production-related celebrity news... a lot of the business-side news definitely seems to be not-so-positive.

I get all of that, and this isn't a new phenomenon from what I understand.  Complaints about Discovery etc. have been around since the first season, and I can't tell you how many Youtube videos are out there of people claiming that THIS time Kurtzman Trek will definitely be cancelled, only for a wave of renewals to be announced shortly afterwards.  By all metrics they are hemorrhaging both viewers and money, yet the shows keep getting renewed!  So does that mean, inexplicably, they are actually doing well and making money?  That's the only logical assumption to make, right?   Paramount shareholders wouldn't stand for it otherwise.  This is what's baffling me the most.   

[pengbuzz]

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Edited April 10, 2022 by pengbuzz

[Big s]

8 hours ago, Magnus said:

I get all of that, and this isn't a new phenomenon from what I understand.  Complaints about Discovery etc. have been around since the first season, and I can't tell you how many Youtube videos are out there of people claiming that THIS time Kurtzman Trek will definitely be cancelled, only for a wave of renewals to be announced shortly afterwards.  By all metrics they are hemorrhaging both viewers and money, yet the shows keep getting renewed!  So does that mean, inexplicably, they are actually doing well and making money?  That's the only logical assumption to make, right?   Paramount shareholders wouldn't stand for it otherwise.  This is what's baffling me the most.   

Maybe it’s more that this show is one of the best things on paramount. I don’t have the service, but the other shows don’t get mentioned anywhere other than the sci fi shows that seem to get mostly complaints. The other stuff may be even worse off as far as viewership that people just don’t bother 

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Magnus said:

I get all of that, and this isn't a new phenomenon from what I understand.  Complaints about Discovery etc. have been around since the first season, and I can't tell you how many Youtube videos are out there of people claiming that THIS time Kurtzman Trek will definitely be cancelled, only for a wave of renewals to be announced shortly afterwards.  By all metrics they are hemorrhaging both viewers and money, yet the shows keep getting renewed!  So does that mean, inexplicably, they are actually doing well and making money?  That's the only logical assumption to make, right?   Paramount shareholders wouldn't stand for it otherwise.  This is what's baffling me the most.   

Eh... it is a matter of record that Netflix tried to initiate a de facto cancellation of Star Trek: Discovery by withdrawing its financial support from the series at the end of the show's first and second seasons due to its poor reception among international audiences.  Discovery's second and third seasons got funded anyway because CBS twisted Netflix's arm using the threat of a lawsuit for breach of contract if they bailed early.  Netflix got away with reducing the show's budget, and eventually backed out successfully after the show's third season.  That poor performance also saw Netflix pass on Picard and Amazon offer far less money for it, leading to the show's seasons being reduced to just 10 episodes.

I strongly suspect the reason this mess is allowed to drag on the way it has is that CBS - now Paramount - is a mixture of two factors:

• Star Trek is what's keeping the lights on at Paramount+.  Star Trek: Discovery was created specifically to be the service's flagship original programming, and even years later the Star Trek shows are about all Paramount has to show for its proprietary streaming service.  If they cancel it without a replacement on deck to take over as the service's - what's the TV equivalent of a "killer app"? - main draw then the business case for Paramount+ evaporates and it's just an overpriced library of forgettable sitcom reruns.
• Star Trek shows have a history of doing poorly right out of the gate and being vindicated in later seasons (or by reruns).  While they're massively upside-down on Kurtzman-era Star Trek right now, I think their hope is that if they keep the ball rolling and keep retooling until they find the right stuff that draws the lifelong Trekkies back in they'll get their money back with interest in the end like they did on TNG, DS9, and VOY.

Paramount shareholders are already upset.  That much is VERY clear from the reaction to CBS's big stock sell-off to fund streaming development (and likely cover the money they were no longer getting from Netflix) that erased years of gains in the stock price virtually overnight, the repeated downgrades in the stock's rating, from reactions to demo reels at shareholder meetings, and the very existence of Star Trek: Picard and Strange New Worlds as very calculated attempts to recover the fanbase that was such a rich vein of merchandising revenue done on much tighter budgets and in the latter case recycling the props and sets already constructed for Discovery.

Because this is streaming, and not dependent on ad revenue and Nielsen ratings, Paramount can take more risks with it without immediate consequences.  With Paramount itself funding the production, it's not going to get canceled until or unless the show(s) completely crash and burn or the stars decide they're done with it.  The latter is the reason that we got for why Picard is slated to end after season three... Sir Patrick is apparently done with it and ready to move on.  Otherwise, it might as well be cancellation-proof until they run out of money or the share price falls enough to put them in violation of their merger agreement.

 

1 hour ago, Big s said:

Maybe it’s more that this show is one of the best things on paramount. I don’t have the service, but the other shows don’t get mentioned anywhere other than the sci fi shows that seem to get mostly complaints. The other stuff may be even worse off as far as viewership that people just don’t bother 

As noted above, the overwhelming majority of the Paramount+ library is the collections of underwhelming sitcoms and such that the network airs on broadcast and streaming.  It has relatively few original-to-streaming properties.

[sh9000]

https://www.startrek.com/news/star-trek-picard-announces-the-next-generation-cast-returning-for-season-three

 

Edited April 5, 2022 by sh9000

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, sh9000 said:

https://www.startrek.com/news/star-trek-picard-announces-the-next-generation-cast-returning-for-season-three

 

Remember when Star Trek: Picard's creators said, on no uncertain terms, that the series was not going to be a TNG cast reunion?  I do.

Turns out that statement aged like milk.

[Mog]

Let’s not insult milk like that;  it can be made into cheese.

Maybe we should compare that statement to months old bread.

Or a ripened orange, rotting out in the sun.

[sh9000]

 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Now that the TNG cast is back, will Enterprise E show up.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Hikaru Ichijo SL

[JB0]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

While they're massively upside-down on Kurtzman-era Star Trek right now, I think their hope is that if they keep the ball rolling and keep retooling until they find the right stuff that draws the lifelong Trekkies back in they'll get their money back with interest in the end like they did on TNG, DS9, and VOY.

Funny, two of those perked up due to a change in creative control.

NextGen took off after Roddenberry no longer had control and the crew could stretch their legs, DS9 took off after Berman and Bragga were focusing on then-new Voyager and the DS9 crew could stretch their legs.

...

And Voyager took off after they added a pair of boobs in a catsuit. I don't think that's a ratings silver bullet that works in the modern era.

Edited April 5, 2022 by JB0

[Dynaman]

22 hours ago, Magnus said:

I've given up trying to argue with people about Kurtzman Trek.  I often feel like i'm on crazy pills actually.  What seem to me to be glaring plot-holes, poor characterization and nonsensical writing doesn't seem to matter to the people who are fans of this show.  When I point them out they're dismissed - is this what gaslighting is?  I truly do not understand how these shows are as successful as they seem to be, or what the fans of these shows love so much about them.  I'm not trying to be an a-hole, I genuinely do not get it.  

I've not seen the show yet and won't be for a while but your complaint goes back decades (believe it or not).  Bones created a serum against that aging disease in "Miri" and it worked instantly too.  Shows have been messing with how long something takes since the dawn of storytelling (yes, before recorded history).

[pengbuzz]

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Edited April 10, 2022 by pengbuzz

[Thom]

17 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Yup. in fact, we've got some pretty moldy sour cream going right now....

It makes me wonder where they got the money to afford the rest of the cast?

Well, if they haven't been working all that much...

[Seto Kaiba]

26 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Yup. in fact, we've got some pretty moldy sour cream going right now....

It makes me wonder where they got the money to afford the rest of the cast?

I guess now we know where the season two effects budget went... 

 

[Magnus]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Really good stuff

Thank you.  That's actually the best and most rational explanation i've seen to my question, and that makes a lot of sense. 

8 hours ago, sh9000 said:

https://www.startrek.com/news/star-trek-picard-announces-the-next-generation-cast-returning-for-season-three

 

Ahahaha.  THIS is exactly what i'm talking about!  Why won't it stop?!  We're at such a point now with Trek that my first reaction to news like this is "oh no".   Can't wait to see how they ruin Worf, Beverly and Geordi now.   I feel sorry for Wil that he wasn't invited back, I think that's probably driving him crazy right now given how much of a fan he is of these shows. What a world....

[Seto Kaiba]

On the bright side, at least this means Geordi isn't dead.

There was a very popular fan theory that Picard had killed off Geordi off screen during the Utopia Planitia attack in the Short Treks since he'd been established to be working there in the years Picard was in charge of the Romulan evacuation.

Also, this may confirm what the show's promotional material said about Worf becoming Captain of the Enterprise E after Data's Search for Spock escape clause (B4) was reconned into a red herring.

 

[Mog]

And here I thought Worf was running around with Martok, trying to keep the Klingon Empire in order . . . probably hunting down the last remaining tribbles. 🤷🏽‍♂️

[pengbuzz]

...

Edited April 10, 2022 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

12 hours ago, Magnus said:

Thank you.  That's actually the best and most rational explanation i've seen to my question, and that makes a lot of sense. 

It never hurts to follow the money.

It does, however, hurt to own stock in CBS/ViacomCBS/Paramount.  Quite a bit, in fact.  The damned fools tanked their own stock price to prop this mess up.

 

12 hours ago, Magnus said:

Ahahaha.  THIS is exactly what i'm talking about!  Why won't it stop?!  We're at such a point now with Trek that my first reaction to news like this is "oh no".   Can't wait to see how they ruin Worf, Beverly and Geordi now.   I feel sorry for Wil that he wasn't invited back, I think that's probably driving him crazy right now given how much of a fan he is of these shows. What a world....

I'm probably not going to watch... I really really don't want to see more childhood heroes as depressed old people desperate to relive better days.

 

12 hours ago, Mog said:

And here I thought Worf was running around with Martok, trying to keep the Klingon Empire in order . . . probably hunting down the last remaining tribbles. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Maybe we will finally get an answer to Odo's question... do they still sing songs of the Great Tribble Hunt?

[Big s]

21 hours ago, Mog said:

Let’s not insult milk like that;  it can be made into cheese.

Maybe we should compare that statement to months old bread.

Or a ripened orange, rotting out in the sun.

That rotting orange could save you from your first minor std, and that old bread is just salad toppings 

[Mog]

^^

i ain’t putting any furry blue or grey “bread” on my salad.

Speaking of STD’s (NOT Discovery! ), I wonder how many space herpes McCoy cured, as a result of Kirk boldly going where no man has gone before.

[JB0]

1 hour ago, Mog said:

I wonder how many space herpes McCoy cured, as a result of Kirk boldly going where no man has gone before.

I think you might mean boldly going where quite a few men have gone before.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Mog said:

Speaking of STD’s (NOT Discovery! ), I wonder how many space herpes McCoy cured, as a result of Kirk boldly going where no man has gone before.

Ironically, Kirk's alien hookups were mostly under duress... the poor dude was apparently just man-candy to various flavors of evil space babe.

Mind you, some of the backstory developed for Star Trek: the Motion Picture suggests that Starfleet officers in general have been boldly coming in an irresponsible manner for very nearly as long as Starfleet has been a thing.  First contact with the Deltans - Lt. Ilia's people - apparently ended up as a hookup so good it nearly killed the away team.  That bizarre product of Gene's dirty-old-man-itis managed to find its way into the Star Trek: Enterprise relaunch novels.  IIRC, one of the Starfleet officers who was badly hurt in that impromptu bout of destructo-whoopie was an ancestor of Kirk's.  The first incident is probably Commander Tucker's unknowing fling with that alien girl who got him pregnant in ENT Season One.

That probably has something to do with the later-referenced Starfleet regulations prohibiting intimiate contact with alien races without the go-ahead of the chief medical officer... 

[Mog]

5 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

First contact with the Deltans - Lt. Ilia's people - apparently ended up as a hookup so good it nearly killed the away team. 

One of the RARE times a redshirt would have been happy to be part of an away mission!

[Seto Kaiba]

Let's just cross our fingers and hope Patrick Stewart doesn't decide Picard'll check out the way Curzon Dax did... jamaharon'd to death on Risa.

[CoryHolmes]

I'm very, very, very late to the party, but I got most of the way through Episode 1 last night.  Can I just say how much I LOVE Agnes Jurati?   She's so adorkably awkward, which is extra endearing in a series full of The Best and Brightest TM 

 

The way she kinda slewed around the Bridge, going over the handrail and under the next instead of the long way around is just hilarious.

 

Also?  Guinan with the top-shelf hooch?  Too much fun 😂

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, CoryHolmes said:

I'm very, very, very late to the party, but I got most of the way through Episode 1 last night.  Can I just say how much I LOVE Agnes Jurati?   She's so adorkably awkward, which is extra endearing in a series full of The Best and Brightest TM 

 

The way she kinda slewed around the Bridge, going over the handrail and under the next instead of the long way around is just hilarious.

While I don't care for the character, I'll admit she had one really good self-aware moment when she hangs a lampshade on the fact that the audience usually only sees the exciting bits... and that most of space travel and space exploration is just getting there via very long, very dull spans of straight line warp flight.

 

 

[Roy Focker]

This show is bad.

 

[sh9000]

 

Edited April 12, 2022 by sh9000

[Seto Kaiba]

Yesterday night, I was discussing the direction Picard has taken with a few friends on Discord and it struck me... most of new Trek's problems are because the creators are trying to turn it into something other than Star Trek.  Where I've been wrong all along is that, where Abrams was trying to turn Star Trek into Star Wars, Kurtzman et. al. are trying to turn Star Trek into Dune.

Picard season one's Qowat Milat and Zhat Vash are just halves of the Bene Gesserit.  The Qowat Milat got the Bene Gesserit's elite combatant and will-never-tell-a-lie traits, while the Zhat Vash got their ancient conspiracy pulling the strings of galactic government trait and the task of enforcing their off-brand equivalent of "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind".  The extradimensional synths are nicked from the contested prequel Legends of Dune, specifically the Omnius AIs that were taken into another universe after attempting to enslave or destroy all human life.  Discovery did the same, with the Spore Drive and Stamets basically being knockoffs of the Holtzman drive, spice, and the guild navigators, and arguably based Control on the Omnius as well.

[sqidd]

On 4/7/2022 at 2:00 PM, Roy Focker said:

This show is bad.

 

The Drinker agrees. It's garbage.

 

[Magnus]

18 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yesterday night, I was discussing the direction Picard has taken with a few friends on Discord and it struck me... most of new Trek's problems are because the creators are trying to turn it into something other than Star Trek.  Where I've been wrong all along is that, where Abrams was trying to turn Star Trek into Star Wars, Kurtzman et. al. are trying to turn Star Trek into Dune.

Picard season one's Qowat Milat and Zhat Vash are just halves of the Bene Gesserit.  The Qowat Milat got the Bene Gesserit's elite combatant and will-never-tell-a-lie traits, while the Zhat Vash got their ancient conspiracy pulling the strings of galactic government trait and the task of enforcing their off-brand equivalent of "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind".  The extradimensional synths are nicked from the contested prequel Legends of Dune, specifically the Omnius AIs that were taken into another universe after attempting to enslave or destroy all human life.  Discovery did the same, with the Spore Drive and Stamets basically being knockoffs of the Holtzman drive, spice, and the guild navigators, and arguably based Control on the Omnius as well.

Wow, these are very good observations.  I always had a nagging feeling that STD and Picard were being derivative of SOMETHING but I could never place what it was until I read your post.