Star Trek: Picard - Amazon Prime [** POSSIBLE SPOILERS **]

I'm fully intending to re-watch Picard. Oh no, that means I'm delusional!

AtomicHorror wrote: »

All this does is remind us what bad and lazy writing really looks like in Star Trek. I'm dry-heaving even thinking of that clip show abomination.

It's what writing looks like in the middle of a Writers Guild strike, it's not a fair comparison to any other series or episode except maybe one being produced during something like peak coronavirus lockdown.

Writing should be like effects, better in the 20's than the worst examples of the 80's.

Was Brent Spiner type cast after Star Trek ? I was always surprised that he wasn't a bigger actor..... I remember he appeared in the Aviator... that was about it

Evade wrote: »

He was in both Independence day movies and Threshold. Looking at his IMDB he seems to do a lot of voice work which isn't surprising since he can imitate people well enough to fool their wives over the phone.

He was great in Independence day... thought that performance would have gotten him some more big movie roles

I agree Brent Spinner is an excellent actor and should have had more roles but maybe he was just happy with the odd role in film and like Patrick Stewart probably preferred acting on stage.

California Dreamer wrote: »

Wasn't a fan of Alison Pill but only because I found her character in The Newsroom to be really annoying so I was trying to seperate that.

Yeah I'm with you on that.

You know that thing where everyone raves about an actor/musician/"beautiful" person and you just don't get it? Alison Pill is one of them for me.

People talk about how good an actor she is but I find it hard to seperate most of her characters. That Trek Doctor just felt like Maggie in space. Nobody wants that surely? Her mannerisms don't change, the stilted goofy way she talks and that derpy smile she gives. It's all the same. On paper these characters should be leagues apart.....but I dont see it.

I always see her as the drummer in Scott Pilgrim.

WE ARE LA SIRENA, ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!

Patrick Stewart will be on Graham Norton tonight, *ahem* beaming in from home...
https://www.thejournal.ie/sofa-watch-chat-shows-whats-on-tv-tonight-weekend-5076830-Apr2020/

Just finished watching ST Picard. It's in the same style as STD, visually, pacing, editing, overt focus on tedious plot exposition at the expense of a slower paced unfolding of character and through that, the narrative. As one review put it, the show explores corrupt and evil parts of the known galaxy rather than an voyaging into the unknown. And that's the last part that really irritates me, Star Trek is about discovery, science and rational morality, it is about rising above the barbarism of our current era in history right now rather than playing into it.

This fixation on being "dark" and "edgy" is really conformist to the absence of hope and the knuckle dragging pragmatism of our current time period right now. Contrast it with TOS era Trek, there was massive racism in the US and elsewhere, less civil rights etc but there was hope for a better future, which was the zeitgeist within the public consciousness and TOS reflected that. Now the zeitgeist is "everyone is scum and the world is a horrible place". Yes, couldn't agree more but there's no solution offered, it's just accept the status quo through nihilism, well fck that. This is my problem with modern Trek and with Picard (although in fairness Picard's speechifying and point of view is ultimately validated, just about).


The plot is basically ripped from Battlestar Galactica. I'm getting bored of the idea that AI is our enemy. The worst enemy of the human race thus far has been the human race. I doubt AI could do any worse than us, we're going to go extinct anyway unless we have a Ray Kurzweil singularity event where an AI magically invents a solution to the climate change crisis. It would ultimately be a great thing if humans were to evolve into synthetic life forms with less primitive emotional drives and governed by advanced logic.

I didn't particularly enjoy Data's fate, although I guess it grants closure to the events in Nemesis but I find it dubious that death gives meaning to life. These were however the best scenes in the show, the few philosophical discussions which reminded me of old TNG in that they weren't rushed and the characters weren't merely in the service of plot points.

The outcomes for Echeb and Hugh annoyed me, horrible endings for likeable characters, the torture and murder scenes were contrary to the vibe established in TNG and Voyager. Apparently there are a group of writers in Hollywood who basically write all the scripts for TV shows, which is why they're quite similar, this would be comparable to the music industry; there are essentially just a few song writers who produce all that mass manufactured pop crap. I think could Picard fit into that quite a bit as it's more like Game of Trek, ditto for STD.

I rank Picard above STD, which is one of the worst shows ever produced. If there is a season 2 bringing Q into the mix is a necessity. The show should not be about how awful people are (I get reminded about that on a daily basis), or about the corruption of various factions. It should be about as Q puts it "exploring the unknown possibilities of existence". Or secondary to that, exploring positive and rational solutions to political crises like in The Undiscovered Country. That is Trek, not this pandering to the demands of the lowest common denominator audience for conflict and action with added cynicism/nihilism to reinforce their unimaginative world view. Screw that. I want cerebral Trek back.

The good things about the show: reuniting characters, Picard's speeches which were always on point, the cast were likeable enough, some effort made at characterisation (but not enough)

The bad things: Marvel-esque editing/plot pacing, too much focus on plot/lore building, not enough on the characters (a feature of a lot of shows and movies these days), being dark and edgy at the expense of Trek's real purpose, exploration, too much swearing.

Edit: Further to that, I don't believe this took place in the prime-verse. The aesthetic obviously points to the Abram's retcon, ergo just as with STD, we are watching a Picard who exists in a parallel universe set in motion by the events of Abram's Trek. Star Trek as we knew it lasted from 1966-2005, this is zombie Trek in the same way that zombie Simpsons started with the Armin Tamzarian episode. The Simpsons lasted from 1989-1997, anything post Armin Tamzarian is not canon in my opinion. Therefore, I do not consider anything post Ent to be canon. Data's fate remains open to speculation.

Secondary edit: What happened to Seven's dermal regeneration suit? She almost died when her ocular implant began to fail and she needed a backup on from Icheb, so how could she survive without the outfit the Doctor designed for her?

Rawr wrote: »

+1 on your summation of Picard. Nicely done

Regarding Seven's suit. I had always assumed that repairing her skin was one of the easier jobs to de-Borgify her, but that heavy duty modifications such as her Cordical Node could not be replaced. My guess is that in-universe, the cat-suit was more of a choice after the first couple of years as an ex-Borg.

But production-wise, I think I read once that the cat-suit was so tightly put onto Jeri Ryan that she'd have a lot of difficulties during shoots, possibly even resulting in her fainting on some occasions. I'd understand with them doing away with a costume what was primarily geared towards into turning this new character into eye-candy. She's well established now as a character in her own right.

Much like T'pol should have after she had joined Starfleet, I feel like Seven should have probably switched from her catsuit to a standard Fleet uniform once it was possible (I think she was officially a "Crewman" / NCO on Voyager)

Hahaha, yeah, that makes sense. I didn't know she fainted though! I always thought the catsuit was ridiculous, in the same way that Troi's was, T'Pol's was a bit more subtle as I remember it.

Another thing Picard did well, was something that could be called "late style". Insofar as I understand it, a lot of writers when they get really old start to have a "late style" where they contemplate mortality, the way the world is vs what they wanted it to be in their younger days, their life's work etc and it's coloured by melancholy. I think Picard is really about that and although I wonder why Data can't just be downloaded into a new body or why he actually wanted to die because he somehow concluded life only has meaning through death (there's no reason to think this), I thought his send off was a resolution to what went down in Nemesis.

The show conveyed a kind of continuity/legacy aspect to the generational dimension of humanity. Picard et al used to be the "next generation", they tried to improve their universe and they're kinda bowing out now for the next generation but not until they've "taught them lessons by example". That's another positive, they actually have good new characters to work with, vastly better than those in STD, but to realise their full potential there needs to be a better show runner who has respect for Trek canon and principles and who is also talented, not a hack and listens to the fans.

ST: Picard was basically a Star Trek movie told slowly. If they had made another film after Nemesis, I could easily expect it to have a lot of the same story as this series. "The Search for Data", essentially.

In that context I think it was fine. It was a decent Star Trek TNG movie plot.

Problem is that even the best Star Trek TNG movie plots, and even the TOS movie plots, just don't compare to the series. They never have. I think everyone acknowledges that Star Trek works best on the small screen. Episodic adventures. New worlds. New discoveries. Some variety each week.

Now, very unfortunately, we do have Star Trek back on the telly – but it's movie Star Trek, just told slowly. Discovery is pretty much the same.


My other major complaint is that I bloody well liked the "no conflict among the crew" and idealised utopia of TOS and TNG. I know DS9 gets a lot of praise but I think it was the first one to really break the mould on that. And you see some of the great Trek writers like Ronald D. Moore scoffing at Gene's no-conflict rules and how liberating it was to abandon those... but **** it, go write a different show then (and he did, in fairness! BSG!).

DS9 was a good show but I really missed that vision of what we could become, as unrealistic as it might have been. The movies never cared about that because there wasn't enough time for it in the ~2 hour blockbuster. And these new series are less interesting for having abandoned it altogether.