The Star Trek Thread

[Mothra]

Literally the most disheartening singular image I've seen from this whole venture so far. Each new trailer introduces more and more Nemesis-like white-knuckle dark-and-dreary action and christ am I not interested in that again.



N-nooooo





NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Thad]

I think me rolling my eyes at Seven dual wielding incredibly oversized prop plasma rifles while her narration says "I help people who have no one else to help them" and my deep, giddy excitement when I recognized Riker's voice accurately sums up my mixed feelings about this show

Yeah, I have to figure that part of the appeal that's got so much of the old cast to come back isn't just the paycheck but the opportunity to work together again.

Course, Frakes is already involved in new Trek; he's directed episodes of Discovery.

[Friday]

Literally the most disheartening singular image I've seen from this whole venture so far. Each new trailer introduces more and more Nemesis-like white-knuckle dark-and-dreary action and christ am I not interested in that again.

the goddamn of it too is that a Seven and Picard pairing has some interesting character development potential; after all, they share the unique trait of having been a Borg Drone.

But instead they're making Jeri Ryan lug around dual plasma phaser props like some sort of idiotic bullshit 80s bad movie hero.

I guess we could get both schlock and interesting character. That's the absolute best I can hope for, because holy god the bad shit is clearly already there.

[Thad]

Speaking of Next Generation reunions, you know what '90s TV series I want to see revived? Gargoyles.

But only if Weisman can pull double duty and keep working on Young Justice.

[Mongrel]

I don't want to watch that trailer at all, do I.

[Büge]

I think me rolling my eyes at Seven dual wielding incredibly oversized prop plasma rifles while her narration says "I help people who have no one else to help them" and my deep, giddy excitement when I recognized Riker's voice accurately sums up my mixed feelings about this show

[Thad]

I don't know if Picard is good, but I enjoyed it. I'm not so sure about the material (would it make more sense if I'd seen Nemesis? I mean I'm still probably not going to watch Nemesis, but would it?) but Stewart could hold my attention reading the proverbial phone book.

Anyway it's better than Discovery.

So far.

[Grath]

[JD]

Picard is slow to get going. It's spent two episodes just setting things up, and Picard hasn't set foot on a starship yet. Episode 1 is a series of fight scenes that resolves itself. Episode 2 is Picard in meetings, characters introducing themselves, and people talking plot exposition at each other. Nothing's actually happened yet.

Because Picard is in the show, it's easy to come in expecting something like TNG: Picard is a strong and capable leader, episodes have an A-plot where they overcome a challenge or solve a mystery and a B-plot developing a character, and the camera tends to follow the good guys on their adventure. The Picard series so far is about a grumpy old man constantly being stymied by the system, with occasional cameos by old friends who won't be with him on his adventures, which haven't actually started yet.

Compare it to the feature-length final episode of TNG, which has the same runtime and premise as these two episodes. Despite devoting only part of the episode runtime to future-Picard, they manage to catch us up on all of the bridge crew, take us on a ship to the Neutral Zone, have a battle and finish a mission. It's taken new Picard as long to decide he wants to go investigate a mystery, do some paperwork and get denied.

[Büge]

I mean, they have to stretch the plot out to fill a whole season.

[Bal]

[zaratustra]

Out from the shadows of God knows what dimension steps the oldest starship captain in the books, the Admiral Picard. He is clearly a powerful beast and walks with dignity despite his age and attire.

Stewart should compete in senior weightlifting, after all the training he got carrying this script. HEYO

[Mothra]

Hoooooooooo mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn I did not like episode 2 very much!!!!

I think every single scene revolved around some baffling Syfy series-caliber plot point. I've reached the point where I've stopped asking why this is this way or why that is that way, and it's the second episode in.

Based on what we're seeing here, this is my prediction for the remainder of the series. I want it noted that I'm making these at episode 2, so if it turns out I'm correct, god damn:

• The romulans somehow created the Borg in their distant past, which is the deep dark horrible secret they kept talking about in this one. This is why they've banned the use of AI for "thousand of years."

• The romulans recently realized they could still control their own creations, and somehow, inexplicably, all synthetics, in a way that will never be explained.

• The romulans triggered the synths on Mars to destroy the Federation shipyards in preparation for a "Borg attack" that will in fact be controlled by the romulans.

• Furthering the point above, the borg cube they're working on is an abandoned cube they're going to reactivate and take control over using their ancient borg trigger word.

• Potential fake-out of the romulans triggering the attack on Mars to "protect" the Federation from experiencing another robot uprising, like they had, by causing the humans to hate synths. That one seems far-fetched, though.

I super duper duper hope I'm wrong about all of these, because it's the shlockiest, most pessimistic thing I can imagine, but I'm also certain I am correct.

[JD]

[Thad]

God are you in for a treat as you continue to plow through season 2 of Disco. It is a wild and baffling ride.

Please continue to hit us up with writeups as you slowly spiral into madness.

Sorry to disappoint, but on finishing the rest of the season my overwhelming reaction is a shrug emoji. Yes, it was bad. Yes, there are a lot of things that I could criticize at length. But...just why? It's not even fun to complain about.

If I *did* start going off, it would probably be an extended rant about the scripts being written by people who don't understand how words work. If anybody else but Spock had said "The one thing we can't predict is the future," I would have assumed it was a Yogi Berra quote and they were joking. And there was one episode with no fewer than three instances of characters saying variations on "It's not [x], it's [a synonym for x]."

That's not even good snark. I can't even muster good snark about Discovery. It just makes me feel deflated.

Whatever Picard's flaws (and they are many), at least I'm having fun so far.

[Mothra]

Yeah, Discovery was miserable. There's like four characters I like a lot, but nobody ever gets the time needed to actually develop, they just rocket from hyper emotional scene to hyper emotional scene, one after the other, at such an unearned pace that you quickly become numb to everything. I think I actively disassociated throughout that entire final two-parter.

Anyways, Ep 3 of Picard is better than 2. It's not great, but, I love Hugh in this. He looks cool (as if he got some non-Federation back-alley borg tech removal surgery), his demeanor is warm, and the actor has this air of authenticity I really dig. Excited to see more of his arc in this.

The new crew is also promising, I like basically all of them. Annoying it took this long to get here, but, whatever, we're here.

Everything else is, as usual, eye-rolling and shlocky. I love Raffi taking a fat rip of cotton off her vape pen and saying, "Protip? For future reference, on your next top-secret synthetic girl rescue? Try not telling Starfleet exactly what you’re doing.”

The idea that a GamePro reference buried its way so deep into the cultural consciousness that it survived a world-ending war and three and a half centuries is :chefkiss:

[Friday]

shoot the borgcube until it dies

[JD]

Picard episode 3: How does some guy have an unregistered uncloaked ship in orbit around Earth and Starfleet hasn't noticed? How come they talk about how expensive its captain's services will be, when TNG established that there's no money in the 24th century? How come they're still using plastic carrier bags in the 24th century? How come people still say "Oh God" in Star Trek's largely post-religion future, or know what Sunday school is? Why does Picard say "engage" if he's not the captain of the ship? Why does it take 2 hours and 15 minutes to introduce three crew? How come we never see anything happen (other than choregraphed fight scenes), but learn all our information from either Picard/Asha telling someone, or someone telling them?

[Mothra]

Picard episode 3: How does some guy have an unregistered uncloaked ship in orbit around Earth and Starfleet hasn't noticed? How come they talk about how expensive its captain's services will be, when TNG established that there's no money in the 24th century? How come they're still using plastic carrier bags in the 24th century? How come people still say "Oh God" in Star Trek's largely post-religion future, or know what Sunday school is? Why does Picard say "engage" if he's not the captain of the ship? Why does it take 2 hours and 15 minutes to introduce three crew? How come we never see anything happen (other than choregraphed fight scenes), but learn all our information from either Picard/Asha telling someone, or someone telling them?

This is the stuff I'm talking about where I've just reached that Discovery point where I stop asking questions, and am trying to focus on whether or not of the dramatic stuff is landing.

God... the fact that they started talking about how much money a captain cost... what the fuck, guys.

I didn't even register the Sunday school line.

One thing that super duper bugs me about this and Discovery (so I guess all "modern trek") is that they constantly tell the audience what they're supposed to be feeling at all times, like we're absolute cromags.

The final scene of this episode shows this perfectly, where Dr. Jarate surveys the crew, exclaims how excited she is to be part of this ride-or-die renegade crew, briefly interacts with Raffi, says out loud to the camera “what is the story with this mysterious woman?!”, then turns to Picard in time for Picard to Say The Thing, cut back to reaction shot of her being excited that he Said The Thing. Christ. Would anyone who wasn't part of the Enterprise crew even know that this was a thing he does?

[Büge]

One thing that super duper bugs me about this and Discovery (so I guess all "modern trek") is that they constantly tell the audience what they're supposed to be feeling at all times, like we're absolute cromags.

That makes me feel angry!