Star Trek: Picard - Amazon Prime [ POSSIBLE SPOILERS ]

AMKC · 17-05-2020 08:57PM

pixelburp wrote: »

The complete absence of any news or traction (AFAIK), makes me wonder if the Section 31 show has been quietly shelved in favour of the Pike one.

Maybe it has. Be no harm as I don't think anyone wanted it and it would be s huge flop. He would be a smart move if thay have dropped it and decided on the StarTrek:Stange New Worlds instead

Inviere · 18-05-2020 07:29AM

pixelburp wrote: »

The complete absence of any news or traction (AFAIK), makes me wonder if the Section 31 show has been quietly shelved in favour of the Pike one.

Fingers crossed anyway.

Brian? · 18-05-2020 07:51AM

Ballso wrote: »

The Mandalorian gave us some episodic style eps, alongside a series long story arc, similar enough to how DS9 did it. Mandalorian was MILES better than either of the recent Trek shows

I don’t even like Star Wars much and loved the Mandalorian.

I’m a huge fan of Samurai films and it has the same feel as early Kurosawa, which I’m sure was ok purpose.

Brian? · 18-05-2020 08:02AM

Stark wrote: »

Honestly, I liked a lot of things about Discovery but the hatchet job they did of section 31 was not one of them. Have zero interest in watching that show. The section 31 series and Pike series should be called "Discovery: the bad parts" and "Discovery: the good parts" respectively.

Section 31 are sceptically bad outside of DS9. I want them killed with fire.

AMKC · 20-05-2020 03:29PM

Brian? wrote: »

Section 31 are sceptically bad outside of DS9. I want them killed with fire.

They were done well in Enterprise as well but that's it.

Goodshape · 20-05-2020 06:28PM

Mr. Plinkett's (long) review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwF1iri1GjQ

Fairly spot-on as usual. You might call it cynical if it wasn't so well argued and backed up.

silverharp · 23-05-2020 09:58AM

Picard was made by hacks who hate Star Trek ….Change my mind

Nody · 23-05-2020 02:12PM

silverharp wrote: »

Picard was made by hacks who hate Star Trek ….Change my mind

Don't proscribe malice what simple incompetence can explain. They don't hate Star Trek but they simply did not give a damn if it was Star Trek, Star Wars or Barbie the magical kingdom; all they wanted was to show how woke they can be with female empowerment and males are stupid. It's an exact continuation on the likes of Harley Quinn whatever it's called these days, remade Ghost buster movie etc. and it's built on the same exact false premise; take a big name, make it all women and show how equal you are as a director/writer. The problem is it does not matter if the cast is male or female if the writing is **** and all it does it alienate the potential audience who'd see it and cast a general bad name on the series, the ideals and the director in general.

Then we get the bitch party afterwards about how more people should have seen it but males hated it (even in cases such as Quinn it turned out more male than female saw it at the cinema) and everyone who disagrees are misogynist pigs etc. The simple fact is if it's a ****ty movie/series it's a ****ty movie/series; the fact they made it all about female empowerment in a way a 5 year old would does not change the basic movie in and of itself and suddenly make it good. You can tell a good story with female empowerment, black empowerment or any empowerment story you wish to tell; but if you can't tell a story in the universe and lore that exist/you created in the first place no matter what message and empowerment you wish to provide it will fall flat. And that's the part that's been flying over the makers and their ilks heads for years now and create the classic go woke, go broke meme. Tell a good story first; worry about the cast gender or sexual orientation later but they reversed that and said if we get females it will be female empowerment and show the world without thinking on "Well who are we actually making this show for? Who's going to see it and are we telling a good consistent story here?". Hence back to the original answer; incompetence rather than hate for the franchise.

Stark · 23-05-2020 02:48PM

Jesus, who even gives a **** what gender the characters are. Really. Grow up.

Series fell flat in the end for sure but it wasn't because "too many wimmin".

Nody · 23-05-2020 03:08PM

Stark wrote: »

Jesus, who even gives a **** what gender the characters are. Really. Grow up.

Series fell flat in the end for sure but it wasn't because "too many wimmin".

I'm guessing you're responding to me and I'd suggest you re-read my post because that's exactly the point. A ****ty show is a ****ty show; the cast's gender does not change that. However that was the premise for a lot of shows/movies which was it's about the gender and not the quality of the writing instead which goes back to the question I responded to. Did the writers/directors hate Star Trek? No; they simply thought if they go female cast that will somehow magically solve that they wrote a ****ty show without taking into account the existing lore, characters and pretty much anything else. Solve the writing and the rest flows into place but that's not the approach taken. It would not fix anything if they had switched every gender in the series and filmed it with the same script or made them gender neutral jelly blobs; the problem is the writing yet their approach to fix it was to tinker with the genders.

pixelburp · 23-05-2020 05:49PM

As someone who writes a little in his spare time, I always find this "just write the story, forget the politics" argument a bit funny. It's all fiction, it's all contrived and this idea of writers as objective plot machines is false. Every author has bias, an angle of human experience to plough. Balance is rare, and often dramatically inert. Good writers just hide their biases better. Or don't: no writer went hungry penning books amounting to "I hated my parents".

This repeated loop always makes me think of Supergirl, possibly the most overt, unapologetic show about female empowerment and sisterhood on TV - but I guess cos the character writing is solid nobody moans about it (mostly, its plotting can be horrendously childish). The bedrock however is about sisterhood, and a fairly liberal point of view. The tone is 100% first and foremost, you'd struggle to miss it. Mad Max Fury Road, a stone cold modern classic, had an incredibly feminist voice in its story but it sat quietly behind the frontage of car carnage. And what characters there were, worked.

TBH I don't agree that Picard has some empowerment angle - its chief villains were an ice Queen bitch, and a scenery chewing bitch respectively - another was a weepy trainwreck hopping from one lover to another. Rafi is a Bad Mother cliché. If you had to fix the story, it wouldn't require grinding axes removed. Its women were terrible people, it's just some were the protagonists so were allowed win (the Barry Allen problem lol)

The writing is poor, but not because of some impulse to have female voices - but because Kurtzman writes Big Cinematic Moments without any emotional groundwork and (presumably) backfills. It's not that he doesn't get Trek - I just don't think he knows how to structure characters, regardless of genders. His colleague Abrams has the same problem, albeit putting his Big Swings at the start and leaving other writers to fill the gaps

TheValeyard · 24-05-2020 09:35AM

Stark wrote: »

Jesus, who even gives a **** what gender the characters are. Really. Grow up.

Series fell flat in the end for sure but it wasn't because "too many wimmin".

I still feel calling a female character Michael was a bit silly.

Stark · 24-05-2020 12:36PM

Yes, though that was a particular affectation of the original showrunner (Bryan Fuller). He liked to give his lead female characters male names in everything he did as a "signature" of sorts.

https://www.thewrap.com/star-trek-discovery-female-lead-mans-name/

Justin Credible Darts · 24-05-2020 06:33PM

TheValeyard wrote: »

I still feel calling a female character Michael was a bit silly.

For me calling her a mans name was not the issue
The character being a woman was not the issue
she being black was not an issue.

The issue was the character sucked because the whole show seemed to evolve around her, and how she appeared better than everyone, and everyone else, ever her superiors seemed to be portrayed as less.
Minimal character development for others. Her mother had to be the red angel, her brother had to be spock, it got ridiculous.

Thankfully Anson mount made his presence felt, and he leaving will be an even bigger void in discovery , a show that already sucked .

Whilst I can see Strange New Worlds being a superior show

Rawr · 24-05-2020 08:09PM

Justin Credible Darts wrote: »

The issue was the character sucked because the whole show seemed to evolve around her, and how she appeared better than everyone, and everyone else, ever her superiors seemed to be portrayed as less.
Minimal character development for others. Her mother had to be the red angel, her brother had to be spock, it got ridiculous.

I still believe that it was possible to do a character-driven show within the Star Trek universe. But for that to work you'd have to structure it as a story where we mostly followed that one character, and for the audience to relate to that character in some way.

But they botched it. They attempted to make it a character driven story, but instead went for a bizarre mix of a standard crew-driven Trek show where the plot would somehow "funnel" towards Michael automatically. Michael herself cam across as cold and unlikeable. Thus it was difficult to want to spend time in her story when you started to be more interested in what Saru or Lorca were up to.

I would have loved Discovery to have been about a down on her luck Lieutenant who has been blamed for starting a horrible war. That she has to slowly regain her identity as a fleet officer while we follow her trying to come to grips with everything. Drop the whole Spock stuff and have her earn her place in the war, eventually proving to everyone (and especially the audience) that through bravery in the heat of war she could show that despite past screw-ups, she was still Starfleet and still deserved to be on a starship.

That might have worked I feel.

Justin Credible Darts · 24-05-2020 09:21PM

In Ds9 you had the "o brien must suffer" episodes, the shows that focused on worf, the odo kira relationship, etc....and the main actor who was sisko would play minimal parts in these.
He was still the main figure in the series, the captain etc but did not hog the pivotal scenes in every episode, he was more a support character for those episodes, hence why others grew character wise.

In discovery when it was a show about Tilly, who was guiding her...yep burnham
When Saru had problems....yep...,Michael was there again...I got sick of seeing her, she was not only irritating, she reached the point where I could not stand her.
She became like the know all prick in love with themselves you see in some jobs where you just tell them to **** off.

Brian? · 24-05-2020 09:33PM

Star Trek has always been “woke”. Especially before the term “woke” existed.

The problems with Picard had nothing to do
With forced diversity and a lot to do with bad writing.

Evade · 24-05-2020 09:40PM

There is a trend to use "look how woke we are" as marketing and "you still don't like x you must be an (insert appropriate prefix)ist" as a deflection when other criticisms are brought up.

Stark · 24-05-2020 10:04PM

I'd be happy if discussions stuck to those other criticisms. Then we could have an actual discussion. When the totality of a criticism post is some gender ratio bean counter complaining that there are "too many wimmin" (despite there being fewer women than men on the show, just more women than they are used to seeing in a typical male majority genre), then they can **** off.

Evade · 24-05-2020 10:22PM

How often do the threads here devolve into "too many women?"

Justin Credible Darts · 24-05-2020 10:26PM

Evade wrote: »

How often do the threads here devolve into "too many women?"

not sure, but there is a case of not so much too many women but too few men.

The main "men" on the show were Lorca....gone
Pike....gone
Spock...gone
Saru...he plays an alien
Stamets is really the main male character going into season 3....not sure if ash is still involved.

I think season 3 needs more stronger characters, another season of nothing but michael michael , michael, will see ratings plummet more as SNW will do better

pixelburp · 24-05-2020 10:47PM

Evade wrote: »

There is a trend to use "look how woke we are" as marketing and "you still don't like x you must be an (insert appropriate prefix)ist" as a deflection when other criticisms are brought up.

Where? Not being glib but the most I've seen has been Stewart talking about Trek in times of Brexit or Trump, neither of which are "woke". Political yes but can't be conflated with so called "identity politics". Last case I've seen over using "woke" to deflect from criticism was Oceans 8, which nobody have a shít about anyway. I'm talking either members of the production team or even respectable outlets. Cos Twitter is to debate what the Comments section are to news websites. Has Kurtzman, Chabon or Paradise made defensive comments to that effect?

Brian? · 25-05-2020 09:24AM

Evade wrote: »

There is a trend to use "look how woke we are" as marketing and "you still don't like x you must be an (insert appropriate prefix)ist" as a deflection when other criticisms are brought up.

I don’t agree. I haven’t seen any marketing of Picard based on diversity, all the trailers were focused on Picard. The characters just happen to be diverse and the political messaging was a little heavy handed at times, but that’s nothing new for Trek.

The actual problem I see is that their is an anti PC online sentiment at high alert for what they see as “PC gone mad” which has evolved into the more subtle “Anti wokeness”.

There are legitimate criticisms of both Discovery and Picard, but the fact that the casts are diverse or the gender/colour/name of the main character is “woke” should never be one of them.

The writing on both series wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t care less if the main character was a purple unicorn.

pixelburp · 25-05-2020 09:53AM

If there was ever a lingering flaw regards representation, it has arguably been the lack of proper alien cultures - only lately addressed with Saru. Presumably forced by budget constraints in the past - and the reluctance for most actors to spend 4 million hours in makeup every shoot - but for a glorious Federation where all races club together, the ships have always been noticeably a humans-only club (and the Mirror Universe in many ways skewered this Terran centric makeup).

Discovery at least had the wriggle room to have a few more properly alien heads knocking about the bridge, which made for a nice change. Some really interesting designs in those various reaction shots (with the most striking, Airium, even graduating to having some lines & a plot focus)

Stark · 25-05-2020 10:09AM

To quote Star Trek VI: "Human rights.' Why the very name is racist. The Federation is no more than a 'homo sapiens' only club" :pac:

It's quite odd when you think about it. Earth is the capital/headquarters for everything despite the Federation having 3 other founding members on equal footing (and Vulcans being the most advanced of the 4 at the time the Federation was founded). Things like Earth being in "Sector 001" or the alpha/beta quadrant dividing line running through the Sol system. A more realistic setup would have the pillar institutions of the Federation split across the 4 founding worlds at the very least.

Rawr · 25-05-2020 03:01PM

pixelburp wrote: »

Discovery at least had the wriggle room to have a few more properly alien heads knocking about the bridge, which made for a nice change. Some really interesting designs in those various reaction shots (with the most striking, Airium, even graduating to having some lines & a plot focus)

That's one of those things I kind of really liked in Discovery and felt like a call back to The Motion Picture where they got adventurous with the various non-human species of the Enterprise crew (thanks to a bigger budget no less)
I guess that's part of why I liked Saru. Having exotic aliens don the uniform felt more "Starfleet" than yet another generic human from Earth.

Picard could have done with another alien in the crew. It was a very human affair, and they certainly had the budget to make one of them an interesting alien species. Maybe even a member of Saru's race...since they know how to do that makeup from Discovery.

TheValeyard · 25-05-2020 03:49PM

I really like Saru and he has such an interesting background.

Not to mention it seems his species are edible.

Justin Credible Darts · 25-05-2020 05:14PM

Stark wrote: »

Things like Earth being in "Sector 001" or the alpha/beta quadrant dividing line running through the Sol system. A more realistic setup would have the pillar institutions of the Federation split across the 4 founding worlds at the very least.

This has always annoyed me, yes, its a tv show and not to be taken serious, but you have to wonder how or why the humans get sector 001.

If we are to believe trek and the other founding members like the vulcans were traveling space long before the humans, what did the vulcans call that sector.

Have earth as sector 001 makes no sense.

Evade · 25-05-2020 08:31PM

Looking at Enterprise Humans were instrumental in bringing the other races together, they were overtly hostile to each other before Archer. Creating a new unified system for navigation would be politically easier than everyone adopting the Vulcan system for example. Since Earth was so instrumental in the founding and could be seen as the most neutral making it the defacto capital planet and having Starfleet HQ, the council, and the office of the President there doesn't seem unrealistic.

Rawr · 25-05-2020 10:16PM

Evade wrote: »

Looking at Enterprise Humans were instrumental in bringing the other races together, they were overtly hostile to each other before Archer. Creating a new unified system for navigation would be politically easier than everyone adopting the Vulcan system for example. Since Earth was so instrumental in the founding and could be seen as the most neutral making it the defacto capital planet and having Starfleet HQ, the council, and the office of the President there doesn't seem unrealistic.

I had the old Star Trek Technical Manuals, and although they weren’t cannon, they did illustrate the Federation having an artificially built Capital space-station, which housed Starfleet Command and all of the other trappings of Federation Government.

Seemed like an interesting idea, sort of place it at a logistical crossroads of Federation space with fair representation of all member worlds.

I was kind of surprised to find Earth to be the capital when they reveal this in the TNG era. It just seemed odd that Earth would be the center of absolutely everything in the Federation. Would have been more interesting if Vulkan or Alpha Centari was the capital, with Earth just being the hub of Starfleet.

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

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Star Trek: Picard - Amazon Prime [ POSSIBLE SPOILERS ]