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Picard


Tank
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Finished Picard.

I think it started good, I loved the middle, then I feel the end happened much too quickly (although the epilogue left like it would never end). Also I am continually surprised how close a story can be to another story and somehow elude litigation. I guess Paramount’s lawyers are better than EA’s.

Deep Fake Data feels superior to the series, but that’s a quibble. I don’t really know how all that effect work works, or how hard it is to do, whether deep fake or practical or digital. What I do know is, disregarding what could be or not, that I enjoyed the performance we got.

I liked that the “broken” crew felt like they are stand ins for us fans/irl people today, lead by Picard, the leader many of us might admit to wishing were real. In that manner, even tho the series was emotionally heavy and as equally dark as Trek has been for these past decades, it also somehow felt hopeful as well.

All in all, it’s not the Star Trek that I know, but I wouldn’t mind getting to know this Star Trek a little better.

 

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You're being kinda to it than I was.

I liked Picard. I liked it when the TNG era was revisited. Liked the arc with Seven and Hugh.

I hate space Legolas. Hate hipster Romulans. Hate the new crew. Hate the overall plot.

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I am positive that if I let myself loose on Picard then I’d be negative about it. I’d do that thing where I flip to the absurd and I would laugh at least. I think maybe the healthiest way for me to look at it is that it isn’t the Star Trek I know, but it is a Star Trek? lol

If I could have a “Star Trek I know” series it would be more traditionally episodic, but with less “everyone forgot what happened last week because it’s now this week”.

I will admit that the stuff I liked the most was everyone’s cool hairstyles. LOL There wasn’t a monoculture style among them.

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8 hours ago, Tank said:

It’s amazing how as an animated comedy manages to nail Trek better than either of the live action shows.

Lower Decks and The Orville are both better Trek than the canon shows. At some point they lost sight of the idea that live action Star Trek should be fun.

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We never had a Lower Decks thread here but each and every time I'd see an episode I'd tippy-type my thoughts on it and left 'em in a Word doc. Here they are now :

 

The pilot

 

It's not good but it's ... not bad!? Even as it accomplished much of what a pilot is supposed to do the pilot still didn't really feel like the pilot for an actual television show. More like the memory of a nightmare in which an extremely eager to please child hopped up on Red Bull® threw action figures at my face while manically repeating the same phrases over and over at increasingly higher speeds & volumes!? It was apparently twenty-six minutes long but the length of it felt more like one of those eleven minute Adult Swim shows.

 

The not bad of it :

 

  • The premise, setting, and even three out of four main characters are sharply defined!

  • V. hornt!

 

The bad of it :

 

  • Wait, the main guy's name is Boymler and the main girl's name is Mariner!? Change one of their names! (No, it's not the same thing as Kirk & Spock!)

  • Less funny jokes than stuff from twenty five years ago, or fifty three years ago! Actually, nearly no jokes at all! Mostly just having something happen and then immediately after it happens a character comments on it happening and then a little while later they comment again! The closest comparison that comes to mind for me are the recordings of an improv troupe who are also Trekkers that put out their little skits online probably a decade or so back by now --- I imagine the contemporary equivalent nowadays would be a Let's Play of them RPGing or what-have-you!

  • A lot of the humour of Star Trek comes out of a stable of skilled & talented character actors, acclimated to delivering lines from behind monster masks or to other folks wearing 'em, who show up on set and do their shtick alongside a main cast of practiced veterans. It comes from the people being together in a place and talking to one another! Putting a single individual in a voice booth and having them say their lines 'faster and more intensely' doesn't deliver that kind of effect!

  • Much like Enterprise (2001-2005) this pilot inexplicably chooses to abandon Star Trek's legacy of pseudo-progressive depiction. After it's been established that 'this series is going to star a black guy' and 'this series is going to star a woman' going 'well, THIS series is going to star ... a white guy. again!' and ever since then it's been downhill for that aspect of Star Trek, a few peaks every now and then but mostly valleys. Maybe one day we'll look back and see Ensign Boymler's starring role as a blow to discrimination against mauve-haired men everywhere but for the moment it seems kind of dumb that he isn't ... I don't know! Muslim? Gay? Trans? NB? Something other than so generic whitebread he was literally birthed from Meg Ryan!? Maybe the Captain should've been gay married to her gay wife!? No, no points for having the Tawny Newsome character! And it's not enough that there's clearly something up w/the green girl and/or the cyborg boy! Those two are closer to being secondary characters! Having the rest of the main cast of a Star Trek be like a Benetton ad is par for the course, the complaint I'm making here revolves around protagonists/captains only! (Probably the best solution would have been to switch the cast around and have Tawny Newsome in the hot seat and Jack Quaid riding shotgun, or swap Eugene Cordero in at the top and have Jack Quaid play a white guy with cybernetic organs who sometimes spouts catchphrases the cocaine addled execs of Hulu half-recall and presume the audience will respond to!)

·         The animation style or lack of same. The core four and the main crew and the aliens down on the planet each feel like they come from three different shows, or maybe from three different eras of animation.

·         Like nine other things bothered me while watching but are as of now eluding my memory and I don't have the wherewithal to dredge up each and every particular aspect of my many grievances!

 

Envoys

 

Second episode. Worse than the first!

 

The not bad of it :

 

  • I noticed that they've got the episode titles on screen for this show! Yeah! If only they'd put the inconsistently abbreviated ranks & names of the characters in the title sequence!

 

The bad of it :

 

  • Are the opening sequences going to be completely sitcom style, disconnected from the main plot of the episode entirely? Or did I miss something and they used the purple-striped tricorder!? Or what?

  • If it's an ensemble-style episode why is green girl so shortchanged!?

  • Where are the jokes? I counted maybe one in the entire episode? Mostly they'd just do half a joke then do that same half a joke again either immediately afterwards or w/some interval passing between the two halves! They do the half-a-gag thing of having Eugene Cordero's co-workers being super supportive of him switching uniforms again and again and again!

  • GILLIGAN'S ISLAND STYLE CUT-AWAY GAG TOWARDS THE END WHY

  • if her whole deal is all just set-up for an upcoming reveal that Ensign Mariner has literally experienced this timeline before, on possibly multiple occasions, and is now just kinda vibin' her way through life Groundhog Day style ... well, I'm going to reserve judgment on whether or not that works depending on how/if it's pulled off!

 

Temporal Edict

 

Episode 3 :

 

I guess this is the first of 'em that didn't feel actively worse than the last one. We're plateauing!

 

The not bad of it :

 

·         The final ending gag is the first time the show's li'l drips and drabs of familiar Trek lore for comedic effect really hit home for me. Every other instance so far it hasn't felt quite apropos but this time around it worked!

·         The invading badguys from the secondary or tertiary plot getting pushed down the hole in the deck created by the acid inadvertently spilled during the A-plot --- well, that's just good ol' fashioned craftsmanship right there!

·         oh wait I just remembered the repeated bit of Ensign Boymler humming the TNG theme tune to himself when he's alone

 

The bad of it :

·         geeze all of the banter still feels way too improv-y.

·         Opening pre-credits sequence is yet again entirely disconnected from this week's story. And is the sort of thing that a sleep deprived person would come up with if they had to try and illustrate the dynamics between the characters on short notice. And didn't realize that they forgot Ensign ... Rutherford? I'm pretty sure the name of the character voiced by Eugene Cordero on this show is Rutherford. No, not going to bother looking it up.

·         wait it's Boimler not Boymler?

·         Having the main crew of the ship routinely cuss feels like a misstep to me. But I guess it's easier than actually writing a ****ing joke!

-

 

Moist Vessel

 

Fourth episode

 

The not bad of it:

 

  • first proper opening teaser since the pilot!

  • UH OH THIS WAS KIND OF A GOOD ONE. Everything gelled properly, even the lack of plot for Rutherford didn't feel remarkable. Plenty of decent gags. Some stuff felt like a little bit of a retread but otherwise a fairly solid piece of work. B! B+ even!

 

Cupid's Errant Arrow

 

Fifth episode

 

Okay, I'm warming up to the show. I guess it helped that there was no cold open this week!

 

Terminal Provocations

 

Sixth episode

 

Ugh, it's back to being bad again.

 

The good :

 

  • J.G. Hertzler as the trash scavenger captain! Jack McBrayer as a 24th century Clippy!

  • Opening teaser exceptionally solid! Best one yet!

 

The bad :

 

  • Jokes that are just ... straight rip-offs? Someone goes "Fix it fix it fix it!" just like Fry in the Star Trek parody episode of Futurama. Does that count as a reference more than a rip-off? Clippy's final words are from one of the Lethal Weapon sequels?

  • The entire A-plot just seems like a way of trying to square the circle of 'how can there bad people on a starship in an idealized future?', the ol' Roddenberry / Ellison standoff from all the way back in the first drafts of City on the Edge of Forever. I don't think it's necessary, I don't think it was successfully executed, and I didn't have a fun time watching it.

  • B-plot is caused by the A-plot but does not itself resolve the A-plot!???? Or return to it in any way? Why not have Fletcher be forced into training sessions with the Clippy thing? Or have his promotional reward be tied to a fake explanation of it, something like "When a rogue holodeck program malfunctioned and caused the isolinear core to gain animate sentience while the ship itself was engaged in battle Ensign Fletcher bravely solved all three of these interconnected problems in a single swoop!"

  • I do not like the idea of Bajoran Worf and Cat Crusher as a couple!

  • And I think six episodes is too long to go with pretty much every pairing being identical, at some point we gotta see Eugene Cordero and Tawny Newsome solving a space problem while Jack Quaid and ... Orion Girl? Tendi? solve some other space problem. There's gotta be a boy's night out and a girl's night out, gotta get the Orion Girl and Mariner on an away mission and Rutherford and Boimler doing something or other (wait, I think that was in the preview for next week, okay, this is probably not a fair complaint. I'm getting what I want tout suite!)

 

Much Ado About Boimler

 

Seventh episode! Great! No notes! An entirely enjoyable aesthetic experience w/o nitpick or qualm! Quite possibly the best episode of the franchise since ... the Enterprise (2001-2005) Mirror Universe two-parter!? Better than that, even! If I were making a list of one hundred best episodes of Star Trek ever it could very well crack its way into the mid-nineties! Absolutely solid piece of work!

 

Veritas

 

Eighth episode! I kind of think this one uncomfortably skirted the line towards parody the show's mostly managed to stay fairly clear of so far. This felt way more like an episode of Hyperdrive (2006-7) or Other Space (2015) than Lower Decks (2020-2063). I also never like it when a show just sort of chews over and digests internal and/or presumed critical arguments about what it is, what it means, and then regurgitates it back out all over itself in the form of a plot. This is a bad one! It's back to being bad!

 

Crisis Point

 

Ninth episode! Omigosh they did a good Holodeck episode! First good Holodeck episode since ... DS9's seventh season semi-finale "Badda Bing Badda Boom"? I liked it a lot!

 

The season finale

 

Season finale was ... the first episode I'm actually undecided about whether or not it was good?

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I have gone over my feelings about Picard, and Kurtzman Trek in general. I just can't get on board with any of it.  I gave Disco a chance for 2 seasons, and it just got steadily worse.  Picard is one of the most disappointing follow ups of classic characters, Trek or not, that I have ever experienced.  I've said it before, and will say it again: Picard should have been about getting the original TNG crew, along with other TNG-VOY era actors back, with a Star Trek 3-like plot to save Data.  I could have lived with them not being successful, or Data making a final sacrifice, but I HATED the new crew.  They tried to cram tropes from other genres into a Star Trek setting, and it just did not work for me.  I won't be back for a season 2 of Picard, or any Kurtzman/Abrams Trek for that matter.  As tempted as I am to watch Strange New Worlds, and as much as I like Anson Mount as Pike, I just know Bad Robot/Secret Hideout will absolutely FUCK that up, too.  There is no evidence thus far to the contrary. 

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I really like Discovery, even tho if I never again hear of ‘Section 31’ it will be too soon. I’m several episodes into Season Three now and I am enjoying this new setting a lot.

I do have quibbles, the biggest of which being that I didn’t like Discovery’s use of constant subtitles for the Klingons. They felt pretentious.

“That’s the biggest of which?” You might ponder. 

Yep. I’m watching Discovery as if it is like a James Bond reboot. I know the world, so to speak, the basic set up for the characters, and heck those characters might even reference something from a prior incarnation... but I can’t give any fucks if anything lines up with canon. Canon is dumb.

That said, like Picard, Discovery isn’t the Star Trek I know... but it is a Star Trek.

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Well, they keep threatening a Section 31 show starring Michelle Yeo. 

My POV is that if they had sold Discovery as a hard reboot, or, better yet, a prequel to the JJ verse, it might have went over a lot better for a lot of folks.  But they (Secret Hideout) keep doubling down and insisting it's the prime universe, and the same one as TOS/TNG/VOY, but there are too many differences for me to make that mental leap.  However, I can buy Star Trek Enterprise being the show that connects classic Trek with Disco and Picard.  Heck, the Discovery writers should have done direct connections to Star Trek Enterprise to explain a lot of the timeline issues, since that show actually had a Temporal Cold War story arc to explain the tech and aesthetic differences. 

Don't get me started on Picard, but if you like it, good on you. It's just not for me.  Neither is Discovery, or the JJ films, for that matter.

As for me, Star Trek's story is done.  It began with TOS, and ended with ENT.

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8 hours ago, zambingo said:

but I can’t give any fucks if anything lines up with canon. Canon is dumb.

Oh no! When did you have a stroke? 
 

Changes in personality are scary.

 

8F5CCC15-40EC-455A-9322-93AEBC26BC9F.jpeg

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 3/17/2021 at 5:10 AM, Zathras said:

Well, they keep threatening a Section 31 show starring Michelle Yeo. 

My POV is that if they had sold Discovery as a hard reboot, or, better yet, a prequel to the JJ verse, it might have went over a lot better for a lot of folks.  But they (Secret Hideout) keep doubling down and insisting it's the prime universe, and the same one as TOS/TNG/VOY, but there are too many differences for me to make that mental leap.  However, I can buy Star Trek Enterprise being the show that connects classic Trek with Disco and Picard.  Heck, the Discovery writers should have done direct connections to Star Trek Enterprise to explain a lot of the timeline issues, since that show actually had a Temporal Cold War story arc to explain the tech and aesthetic differences. 

Don't get me started on Picard, but if you like it, good on you. It's just not for me.  Neither is Discovery, or the JJ films, for that matter.

As for me, Star Trek's story is done.  It began with TOS, and ended with ENT.

Season 3 of Disco tied together the time ships from Voyager and the Temporal Cold War from ENT with their time time jump.

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9 hours ago, Tank said:

Season 3 of Disco tied together the time ships from Voyager and the Temporal Cold War from ENT with their time time jump.

Didn't watch, and never will watch seasons 3+ of Discovery, or Picard season 2+ for that matter.  JJ-Kurtzman Trek is lost cause, as far as I am concerned.  I was spoiled as much, but seems more like a retcon throw away line(s) than the actual the actual DNA of the show.   I've just considered real Star Trek dead since 2005, and what we have now is Trek In Name Only. 

 

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I get that-- but you said you wished they'd do a thing, and they did a thing. It was just in the stuff you've decided to not watch. :)

I'm basically where RobinTorchBingo is-- I just don't have to do the mental gymnastics to comfort myself. The thing that kills me is that while none of these new Treks have been great, they all have moments of coming so close it's frustrating.

I have hopes for the Pike series. He was one of the great things about Disco s2, along with their nods to The Cage. If they can capture that and not destroy continuity any further they might have a chance at pleasing old school fans./

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Fair enough, but what exactly do you find near great about Disco or Picard?  You lost me there.  

I SOOO want to be into Strange New Worlds, but like I said in the Obi Wan thread, I have been burned 1 too many times.  JJ trek, Disco, and Picard all disappointed me to the point of disgust, and quite frankly I am not convinced it SNW will be ANY DIFFERENT than those previous shows.  

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Did you see the teaser trailer for Season 2?
 

The trial is never over Picard! That should bring a bit more fun into it!

Finally finished series 1 last night after a long break between episode 6 and 7. Those final 4 episodes were a bit more like it - struggled with the show initially.

I liked Santiago Cabrera as Rios (couldn’t believe how long ago it was that we saw him in Heroes!), and his other hologram crew mates - they kept me amused.  But that was it for the new crew. 

Storyline, as someone said above, felt lifted from elsewhere, and just sort of ended abruptly with everyone happy when really the potential threat is still real - they know where to go, so just turning off the beacon is enough to end that story? No, didn’t get on with that.

But hopefully series 2 can be a bit more fun!

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6 hours ago, Darth Krawlie said:

You knew he had to show up sooner or later. In fact, that's how you knew Picard didn't really die in the first season--Q wasn't there.

I'd argue the original, organic Picard DID die.  What we have left now, is a synthetic android facsimile.   I am sure Q will hand wave stuff, though. 

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