The Star Trek Thread

[Mongrel]

YouTube pioneered the "make them watch to the end" metric, AFAICR.

[Mothra]

Okay they revealed what was in the box in this, the second-to-last episode, and it was even lazier than I had braced myself for.

FOLKS, IT'S THE BORG AGAIN. THEY'RE BACK BABY.

This is explained by saying that, of course, when Picard became Locutus, his nutt was also assimilated, and they "didn't have the technology" at the time to understand that his jizz contains "organic programming" that rewrote the DNA of his biological son, Jack Crusher. This retcons his Iromatic Syndrome to be the Borg organic programming that was going to kill Picard, but wouldn't kill Jack, because he's younger.

They also revealed that the Changelings put this organic programming into the "DNA template" of all transporters in the fleet. It is revealed pretty hastily that teleporters do not actually molecule-by-molecule transport you. Instead, they clone a body using sort of "baseline DNA", that is then added to by your teleporter stream. The Changelings changed this baseline body code to include Borg organic programming that, when activated by a signal, turn all the Youngs in the fleet into regular Borgs, who rise up and kill the 25-and-older Olds. I guess notably, they do not attempt to assimilate anyone, they just kill them. They actually say in unison, "Eliminate all unassimilated."

Shelby from Best of Both Worlds makes an appearance as an admiral commanding the Enterprise F. She's made to be this sort of reckless fool that Riker - strikingly, strangely - hates? In defiance of his entire story arc in BoBW? The only thing these writers seem to have watched, yet somehow missed the point of? And who interlinked all Starfleet ships together "for defense", in a plot point out of BSG, which Picard comments on as being "ironic in how Borg-like it is", in an incredibly awkward piece of dialogue that is intended for dipshits. The Youngs then rise up against her, and like all non-core-cast TNG characters that have returned to this show, she is instantly gunned down for... no reason. It then shows the entire Federation fleet in a wide angle with the Borg chanting - I am not making this up - "Starfleet now is Borg."

On the run, the Olds get into a "maintenance shuttle" in an "abandoned section of the Titan". The only good new character, Shaw, is quickly and pointlessly killed off so that Seven can be made captain, because every returning character must become a starship captain.

As the Olds arrive at the starship museum and discuss the problem, Picard says that they need "something older, analog," that isn't affected by Shelby's interlinked spaceship thing. They then discover that for all these years, Geordi la Forge has been tinkering with the junker of the Enterprise D in his front yard, fixing it up. They then board the darkened modern version of the Enterprise D bridge, and take her out to go directly to Sector 001 and presumably battle the entire top-of-the-line modern Starfleet fleet with one ship. Real nice seeing the D again though! That ship still looks amazing.

I think when someone says that they are enjoying this season, they are maybe going through some kind of psychotic break as Star Trek Nemesis II unfolds before their eyes in extremely slow motion. Or maybe people liked Star Trek Nemesis, and wanted more of that direction? I think that might be it too. In any event, Picard is Star Trek Nemesis II, it is exactly what would've happened if that movie had not bombed hard enough to mercy-kill the franchise. This show is what would've been the next, somehow-even-shlockier, somehow-even-lazier action movie in the TNG movie series.

Anyways, for positives, the actors really sell this stuff, it's impressive. It's the same kind of insane actor charisma work that Sonequa Martin-Green deploys in every episode of Discovery, to get it over the finish line. God bless em. The good moments of this show are the old crew interacting with each other, in the moments between braindead CBS drama plot developments.

[Crick]

"We called it the Picard Beyond project."

[Mazian]

So then the final ep is where they'll reveal it was Palpatine all along

[Mongrel]

He'll also provide them with a huge fleet of soggy Constitution-class ships which he's been keeping in his pool.

[Friday]

Somehow, the Duras Sisters returned.

[Mongrel]

It's a testament to the state of Trek that they died on-screen and yet I'm still not quite sure if you're kidding or not.

[Mothra]

Well, the finale of Picard was essentially two parts:

1. A series of delightful character moments between the TNG cast, making you wonder why this wasn't the entire TV show "Star Trek Picard"

2. Theeeeee absolute shlockiest, most braindead Syfy-channel ass horseshit you could possibly imagine.

I think this was certainly the most enjoyable episode of Picard, barring possibly that ep with Riker's family way back in season 1. I know the answer is probably cost, but I cannot imagine why they did not get this gang together during the first half of season 1 and let them go through this incredibly dipshit Rick Berman-ass adventure together. This cast could've saved so, so much of this show, in much the same way the Disco cast saves 99% of Disco.

Looking back on the entirety of Picard, I am still in absolute stunned disbelief at the way this series fell down a staircase during episode 1 and never stopped tumbling, at full speed, all the way up to the final moments of this farce when it gives up and literally turns into Star Wars. I legit cannot believe how bad TV like this can get. Nobody involved in this show, Michael Chabon included, should ever be allowed to touch any creative property ever again.

All that said, the core cast is genuinely delightful to watch, and what good there is to find here comes from these actors just being Olds together. Watching Old Riker and Old Troi giving each other shit, watching Old Geordi tending to his new family, watching Old Worf be both a badass and a clown at the same time, watching Old Beverly actually get something to do for once, it's great. And Patrick Stewart is still delivers some great performances, at 82!

So, in closing, by far, by far, the worst thing to ever come from Star Trek. A massive embarrassment for a beloved franchise, that is somewhat cushioned as it lands on the floor in its final moments. They have a sequel show coming out about Picard's son, Jack Crusher that I'm certain will be even worse than this, since they don't have the TNG cast or Frakes to carry this thing like Atlas upon their shoulders.

Thoughts on "The Last Generation" (Spoilers):

⇳ Click to Expand Summary

• OKAY THEY FUCKING DO THE ENTIRE RETURN OF THE JEDI DEATH STAR SEQUENCE WITH THE ENTERPRISE D. THEY BLOW UP A BUNCH OF TURRETS ON THE SURFACE OF THE DEATH STAR, THEN FLY INSIDE AND DODGE A BUNCH OF METAL BARS UNTIL THEY BLOW UP THE CORE OF THE BORG SHIP. THIS IS HOW THEY RESOLVE THE MAIN THREAT OF THE SEASON.

• It's fun to see that the showrunners also do not understand what's cool about the Enterprise D, at all. They make it into this fast-moving strike craft like the Millennium Falcon, when in TNG it's like a battlestar-style megacarrier, a stoic city in space. It's huge and broad and powerful! That's the cool part! It's not that it flies really fast shooting phasers in all directions, threading the needle and dropping hundreds of photo torpedoes everywhere!

• Okay the Borg Queen reveals her plan: She says that Picard "left her along and isolated on the edge of the galaxy", which I don't remember happening, but could either be from a book/tie-in novel, or is a reference to what Old Janeway did in Endgame. Either way, the borg were left completely impotent after this, and withered away, sucking life from their aging drones, until the Borg Queen picked up the signal (?) from Jack Crusher. She started talking to him in his mind (these were the voices he heard) and then organized this plan with the Changelings at some point that happened off-screen. She then says that the borg shouldn't assimilate anymore, instead they should "annihilate" (the humans, for revenge) and that their EVOlution now is to like infect the Youngs and "procreate" with them. They don't explain this but I think this plan is that the mind-controlled Youngs would fuck, have babies, then the babies would be put through the teleporter? To become borg? If so, I don't see why this wasn't something they couldn't already do doing the TNG or Voyager eras.

• The Borg Queen lives on a single giant cube that has a big Death Star energy core, that when blown up by the D, stops the signal to the whole fleet and results in an instant solution to the entire arc of this season.

• Seven of Nine and Raffi have this extremely weird sub-plot where they try to harass the mind-controlled fleet using the Titan and it's cloaking device. This doesn't really do a whole lot except sort of distract a few ships, which then turn on the Titan, damage it so bad it loses all its system, then turn back to what they were doing before. Thankfully, then the signal gets shut off and everything is fixed.

• Worf falling asleep in the chair was great.

• I kinda liked Picard/Jack's talk, mainly for Picard re-framing his time on TNG as him having walls up and slowly letting them down. But then it moves on to what happened in THIS show's continuity and it of course doesn't add up or make much sense, character-wise.

• I've got mixed feelings about how nobody died. I guess I would find it annoying that they again killed off a great character in the worst, shlockiest way, like in Nemesis. But, without it, none of this has any teeth. I think I'm more happy they didn't kill off someone over this bullshit than not.

• It is revealed in a ADR voice line by my boi Bester, Walter Koenig (which was well-delivered!), that the current sitting President of the Federation is the SON OF CHECKOV, "[url="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Anton_Chekov"]ANTON CHEKOV[/url]", in a bit of nepotism that really feels out of place in Star Trek.

• Anton Chekov seemingly got killed in this ep! His transmission cuts out with a line about how they have to "get to the life pods"

• When are these people ever going to learn that watching an entire fleet of spaceships sit still and shoot at something absolutely sucks shit and they should never do it. Every single season finale of modern Trek has had one of these and it has never been good. The least worst was the Prodigy one because at least there were ships moving around chasing them through the wall of phasers!

• Dorn's delivery of "Swords are fun" was extremely good.

• Because they killed Shelby for no reason THE USS TITAN WAS RE-CRISTENED AS THE ENTERPRISE-G and they then set up a spin-off for this show starring Jack Crusher, Seven, Raffi (!) and a bunch of random helmsoids that like Disco we'll never actually get to know. They never say what happened to the Enterprise F we saw one episode ago but I guess it got blown up.

• During the setup for the spinoff, Q is inexplicably back after having "died" in season 2. Jack Crusher asks him if he's here to put humanity on trial again. He says that "Picard's trial is over. But YOURS it just beginning!", implying that [A] these were trials for Picard, not humanity? And [B] Jack has some kind of cosmic density, so again, love to see a good ol' Chosen One plot in my Star Trek of all places.

• The very notion of ever going back to the Titan aka the Enterprise G makes me want to die. I hate how dark and dull that ship is. And just look at the Enterprise in SNW! It looks amazing! It's lit up! Everything looks cool! Goddddddd okay that's all

[Mongrel]

Saw this and thought of your review.

[Friday]

all the way up to the final moments of this farce when it gives up and literally turns into Star Wars.

I didn't read the spoiler part of your review because at some point Brentai and I are going to sit down and subject ourselves to this nonsense, but this exact sentiment is what I've been saying for years about New Trek.

Actually, hold on.

Star Trek is a 2009 American science fiction action film

Okay, for over a decade.

And it's not even that Trek is now Star Wars. It's new Star Wars.

The feeling of watching Rise of Skywalker and Season 1 of Picard with Brentai was... the same feeling. Most of my dislike for both things stems from the same problems. They both feel rushed and dumb, but when they actually do slow down to have a scene with just some characters talking, that's even worse, because nothing anyone says or does makes any sense and everything is this incredibly overwrought emotional bullshit where there's just endless infighting and then retracing the exact same infighting over and over. It makes all the characters look childish and stupid and actually makes you miss the mindless, bullshit action scenes where there's so much going on on the screen that your brain cannot possibly keep track of it all.

Yes, I want to say that again, because it's important.

The horrible, overdesigned, ten-million moving parts action scenes in modern Trek and Wars are preferable to me when compared to like 95% of their character moments.

That's insane.

I cannot stress enough how insane that is.

Jesus Christ.

And to be fair, I don't want to throw all of new Trek and new Wars under the bus here. Andor proved to me that new Wars can be legitimately great, and while I haven't personally seen anything good Trek has done, I hear maybe like STD season 2 is okay? I dunno. Does the Orville count? I hear the Orville is good, but it's not Trek, it's Trek with the serial numbers filed off, so maybe it doesn't count or maybe it does.

The point is that New Trek and New Wars can have good things, but are mostly shit. Mongrel in a post a while back summed up my feelings about New Wars: The OG trilogy (New Hope, Empire, Jedi) was about our friends going on adventures. I don't know what the fuck the prequels are about, but I'll concede that they had some decent ideas. The Disney sequels attempted to recapture that "motley band of adventures" that the OG trilogy had, but failed because... well, a lot of reasons, and while Rey was a Mary Sue, it wasn't all her fault like the react misogynistic youtubers want you to think.

Overall I think the biggest contributing factor to why New Trek and New Wars fail is corporate meddling and decrees. Nobody can get their vision done when Disney is breathing over your shoulder about creating their version of the MCU. Likewise, you can't just tell a good story in Trek anymore, now it has to have all of this stupid fanservice and the Borg every .2 seconds.

I've been rewatching VOY and I'm near the end, and they do overuse the Borg, it's true. Everyone fucking blames Enterprise for the Death of Star Trek or whatever but that take is now quaint and out of touch. VOY and ENT look shiny and fun compared to New Trek's dour bullshit.

I don't know, man. I wish they got better writers and I wish the corpos would leave people the fuck alone so they could tell stories.

[Mongrel]

The dumbest fanservice in the new trek is something so seemingly tiny, yet which says so much about who's making this shit now.

Picard shows a bunch of new Enterprises, which Mothra explicitly wondered what the point of was. Well, as it turns out there are now nine iterations of the Enterprise, seven of which have a prefix letter.

So not only did stupid fanservice demand that SEVEN OF NINE is now captain of the Enterprise, it had to go agonizingly out of the way to make it the seventh of nine Enterprises.

[Thad]

while I haven't personally seen anything good Trek has done, I hear maybe like STD season 2 is okay? I dunno.

I did not care for Discovery season 2, but I liked 3 and 4. They weren't perfect, but they were good.

Strange New Worlds is good, and so are both cartoons. Really there's a lot more good than bad at this point.

[Mothra]

Did a Thad-length summary of my thoughts on Picard elsewhere, and some of it is a re-tread of what I've already posted, but I'll post it here as well for the sake of closure.

Picard Thoughts (Spoilers)

In general, I think the cast did great work across the series, despite really rough material, and it can't be understated how far a good actor to elevate a character. We've seen it a lot in Discovery, and the same power-of-charisma was on display through every season of Picard.

I think overall, just a lot of the story didn't hit, and it really has to make sense story-wise for me to feel something. By contrast, the recent ending to His Dark Materials - a 3 season show - had me completely sobbing, because lord, that show earns it.

Picard did have a lot of good ideas - Hugh rehabilitating the XBs is something I loved, a refugee crisis with the Romulans was perfect for Jean Luc, Riker and Troi's losing a son was perfect for Frakes and Sirtis - and though they weren't done well, I was happy to see them, and hope to see some of them followed up later.

Bleak Future for the Federation

There’s this continuing throughline to all Picard - particularly S1 and S3 - about like, how the Federation is completely unwilling and/or unable to do good in the galaxy, and it’s up to rogue groups like the ex-borg Fenris Rangers or Section 31 or even medical supply/arms sellers (like Beverly) to make any difference out there.

2400 Earth is 2023 America, right down to it operating and condoning an ICE-like secret agency that is accountable to nobody. Lord almighty, that is a bleak place to put Star Trek. I caulk this up to this, in essence, being a CBS drama that isn't really about Star Trek, it's a vehicle for Patrick Stewart to explore a tortured character who was maybe meant to be in the modern era, and having that idea sorta awkwardly wrapped in Star Trek.

The part that really drives me up the wall with this is that like, every other Trek show, even the good ones, all now have to operate under the lore that, no matter what kind of universe they build in Lower Decks or SWN, it’s all doomed to come apart in the 20 or so years between LD and Picard, as the Federation collapses into ignornace and fear and conservative isolationism. Feels bad!

Villains Want Revenge

Picard and Discovery have been operating off the formula that you always need a villain to drive the action of a story, no exceptions. That villain has to die or be completely defeated by the end for the heroes to succeed. I think, in both DS9, TNG, and other sci-fi shows I've enjoyed like Babylon 5, there aren't clear-cut, mustache-twirling villains that are the main boss monster for each story. There are certainly antagonists - Gul Dukat is a great example of a Trek villain, a banal, fascistic strongman politician who the cast must work with and work against time and time again, just like in real-life politics.

As much as it would rule to blow Ted Cruz up with a photon torpedo, it's not going to unravel the entire conservative death cult we have today. It's just boring and pointless for a usually heady series like Trek to pretend that having Seven of Nine shove Rizzo off of a ledge to her death, or big dogging Commodore Oh into running away with a big warship fleet, solves any actual problem in this series, or would satisfy anyone.

Kill Your Enemies, Win the Day

The stories in each season of Picard has been really mind-numbing shlock, and since Trek is a series you tend to come to for the story, that sucks.

The first season had some kind of promise with the Romulan factions possibly going somewhere interesting, or the synth factions going somewhere interesting, but instead, the Romulans were, once again, the bad guys, and the Federation was in fact shown to be 100% justified in abandoning their humanitarian mission after the Mars attack, because the Romulans are indeed always scheming to destroy the Federation and were responsible for the attack.

Now, a better show would've shown some internal politics to the Romulans and possibly expanded on the difference between the Romulan Free State and the Tal Shiar (are they the same organization, for example? Using Star Trek Online lore doesn't count), but Picard got pulled down two separate rabbit holes and lost the plot completely. Anyways, the Romulans are revealed to be scheming, a Federation fleet shows up to show them that having a massive standing military is great because you're always going to need it to fend off the latest fate-of-the-universe existential threat, and we come away from this season with the lesson being "always have a gigantic military" and "don't trust the refugees".

As a side note, I can imagine a vastly better version of Picard that is just about Jean Luc leading the effort to protect and resettle the refugees during the Romulan supernova crisis. It would've taken everything he has learned, every relationship he has built up, to navigate this political hellscape, establish alliances, fend off rivals coming to strike the Romulans while they're down... it would be a perfect story for this series to explore.

Season 2 of course was about how Q wanted to mend Picard's unresolved issues with his mother, so he created a vast, doomed alternate universe, where thousands of years of suffering occurred, then were blinked out of existence. I think we're supposed to imagine this as not having any weight or not being "real", which, if that's true, makes it just not seem like a plausible threat to the Trek universe. About halfway through the season, we're introduced to Brent Spiner's character, who is a mustache-twirling bad guy that tries to kill an innocent woman so he can be famous in the far future, long after his death. When they defeat him, the driving action of the season is resolved.

Season 3 was about changelings justifiably wanting revenge for being tortured by Starfleet at Starfleet Intelligence's Federation-sanctioned black site. Picard and Beverly then try to execute their prisoner (as Raffi and Worf did earlier), which sorta makes you realize that, yeah, the Federation are pretty evil in this. All the other races should indeed fear them, as they do indeed keep a vault of all the worst, most illegal weapons they've ever encountered, presumably to refine them into weapons and deploy them upon their rivals. This was the stated purpose for the changelings they were experimenting on, and I had to image the purpose of rebuilding Data.

Anyways, Vadic is killed, the changelings are all killed, solving that war crime and making it so nothing is needed to be done to account for or address this great sin of the past. We are then introduced to a second villain in the final two episodes - the Borg Queen - who is at her weakest, is desperately lashing out in revenge for the second biological weapon the Federation has deployed on their enemies. I actually recall that Geordi and Data came up with this same idea back in the ep that introduced Hugh, and Picard decided it was immoral, and did not use it. But! This war crime is put before Picard this season, and he proceeds to blow up the Queen and all remaining Borg, and that is our solution to all problems this season. The moral is, "you have to kill everyone who is aware of your war crimes".

I dunno, this is all to say that I don't really blame most of the villains for wanting revenge on the Federation, and that's kind of a big problem, especially if you don't intend on having any kind of apology or consequences or restitution for these great sins of the past.

Raffi

Not entirely sure why this character was in the show. I think the actor did a great job, it was just, looking back on her arc, he was disappointed with Picard for S1 and S2 for his fairly insane decision to leave the Romulan refugees on Planet Sad Hooverville to turn himself in to the cops, get stripped of his rank, and get exiled to his vineyard.

This is never really resolved. Picard feels regret, but he feels regret that the Federation has being a Fox News-brained conservative organization that does not assist their allies or fight evil in the universe.

You'd think this tension would be the subject of an episode, or a story arc, but it's just sorta forgotten. Raffi is then moved into a strange, unearned romance with Seven, then into a similarly unearned maternal role with Elnor, then into real reckless action hero stuff for the rest of the S2 and S3. I guess she's supposed to be the take-no-names badass now? Just seems so random.

Picard

While Patrick Stewart does fantastic work as always, his character arc is just so strange. He has never, in TNG or the movies, been a character filled with regets. I think we actually see all of his existing regrets resolved or addressed within TNG and its movies, and he sure as hell doesn't seem like he's got any regrets in Nemesis. So when we see him in Picard just constantly overwhelmed with a lifetime of failures, well, it's very unearned.

The big regret he has is that he let the Romulan refugees down when they got dropped off a Planet Sad Hooverville. He then went to Starfleet HQ and turned himself in, and got stripped of his command, so he couldn't go back and help them. So that was a pretty big fuckup on his part, but, the show doesn't seem to present that as being his mistake. Instead, it presents his mistake as having, I dunno, gone against the will of the Federation? And that's why everyone's mad at him? Or in Raffi's case, she's mad at him for going against the will of the Federation and then leaving the job half-done and getting fired.

Beyond that, what does he have regrets about? There's the unresolved trauma of his mother dying, and then... I think that's it. There's the stuff with Beverly but he wasn't aware of that until the middle of S3.

So, looking into the interviews with Patrick Stewart, he wanted to do a version of this character that was different that we'd seen on TNG, and he wanted to show Picard wracked with doubt and regret.

I turned it down at first. And then I thought about the offer and decided I would do it, but I made two conditions. I didn’t want to wear a uniform, and it must not be a series that is fundamentally a sentimental reunion of “The Next Generation.”

I looked forward to those scenes where Picard was not just anxious but actually frightened. Or confused. Or not knowing what to do. I got great satisfaction out of playing those things, because they allowed me to investigate, and release, aspects of Jean-Luc that had really never appeared in “Next Generation.”

There are moments when I look at scenes in “Picard” and think, “Poor guy, [laughing] he looks terrible. He’s having such a bad time.” That wasn’t my intention, but that was what was being communicated. Anxiety, stress, irritation.

And we do see that, it's just, they never come up with a good reason as to why he's feeling this, and without the reason, it really does not hit at all, beyond what the actor to push on charisma alone.

The takeaway here is, "please do not let your actors drive the story"

Data Dying 3 Times

Look nobody liked his death in Nemesis, and we all wish he got a better send-off, but every time they revive him, it just makes it hard to take seriously, because he keeps coming back.

He got "clones from the single neuron" in S1, existing on a hard drive, so Picard was able to visit his clone and give him a pretty nice sendoff. While a little shaky, it was nice to undo that bit from Nemesis.

But, he gets brought back again in S3, and they don't really come up with a reason/source for Data's mind this time around, and yeah, the S1 death just doesn't hit at all anymore now that he's back in S3.

I did like the Data/Lore merging though! And it's fun having Brent Spiner back all the same.

Terminator-ass Seven

I am really not sure where the writer's got this idea that Seven of Nine loves to be a take-no-names action hero badass who vaporizes people all the time. Her entire arc in Voyager is about her having BEEN a murderous, dispassionate killing machine for the Borg, and finding her humanity. It was a great story!

I truly cannot believe that this series saw that story arc, and decided the direction Seven should go was "more bitter" and "more gritty" and "more cold", because like, she started cold! That was her thing! And then she warmed up with her found family! It was great!

I don't think this writing team knew how to write someone who was both strong and not bitter or not tortured, and that hurt the character.

Sorta chalk this one up to the writers not knowing much about Seven of Nine as a character.

Shaw

Looooved this actor, loved the potential this great character had. He is a dick and a professional and I just loved watching him on-screen.

Clearly the show never wanted him to be anything more than a grumpy guy that deadnames Seven and gets killed off so she can become captain.

TNG Character Deaths

So, any time a non-core-cast TNG character shows up in Picard, they are killed off. This happens every time. It sucks!

Maddox: Died screaming when he lover, Jurati, shut off the machine that would've saved his life.​
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Icheb: Famously tortured to death by having his eyeball torn out of his skull, and all borg parts peel from his body, in a gruesome cold open to an ep where Patrick Stewart puts on an eyepatch and does a goofy french accent for yuks.​
​
Hugh: Tortured to death by Narissa, a character the show forgot was the main villain. Hugh was forced to watch his fellow XBs first executed one by one before his eyes, then collectively vented into space, ensuring none of the work he struggled for all this time amounted to anything. Thankfully, Seven had an ADRed-in line after killing Narissa that said "this is for Hugh".​
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Q: Died for reasons that were never explained, which made it hard to feel anything but confused when he's spending his last moments with Picard. But! Then he came back, and he was old there, so it wasn't him from before his Picard adventure, so I guess he didn't die? Alright, good story with that "I'm dying" thing in S2.​
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Ro: Ultimately forced to suicide bomb her own ship after having it overrun with changelings. This was caused by the Federation allowing Section 31 to perform war crimes on the changelings during the war, and then never doing anything to address it, instead covering it up until it killed Ro and like half a million people during Picard.​
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Shelby: Shot twice in her gut by her own bridge crew, confused and shocked.​

There were pretty bad! Not sure why the show really wanted to do this.

Mass Death Events

Because Picard needs to have big end-of-the-world stakes each season, there's quite a number of high-casualty Wolf 359-type events in this show. It really puts it at odds with this "fun adventure" vibe they keep trying to go with when the tone whips between that and "spectacular numbers of people died here".

For yuks, I came up with some numbers for the mass-death events in this show:

Mars and the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards: 92,143 dead as the Romulans blow up their own rescue fleet and activate all androids to bomb (?) the planet and wipe out the shipyards.​
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Cause: The Romulans have an ancient cult that discovered an ancient artifact called the Admonition that drove them to suicide if they ever touched it. They saw visions of synthetics, so they decided to kill all synthetics. As a result, apparently, the Romulans never use AI. The use of Maddox’s synths on Mars made them attack.​
​
In truth, the artifact was meant for artificial minds, and it described an ancient synthetic civilization that could summon a Reaper from Mass Effect will come through a portal and wipe out all organic life. So, the Roms were kind of right! The Reapers get summoned but are then immediately sent away so it’s not a big deal.​
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The Venting of the XB Borg Cube: 179,000 XBs died when their cube was intentionally opened to the cold void of space.​
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So there was this odd sub-plot where a borg cube had assimilated a member of the Romulan cult that had seen the visions, and “the weight of their despair” caused the “matrix to collapse,” leading to an inert borg cube. The Romulans they started recovering the borg, now called XBs for Ex-Borg. This project was helmed by Hugh.​
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Cause: Seven of Nine decided to sneak onto the borg cube, plug herself into the “Queen Chamber” where the queen would typically be, and this caused a bunch of fail-safes to kick in to stop the borg cube from ever re-activating. This killed like… everybody that show has introduced us to up until that point. They later flew this ship into a planet so I don’t actually know why they needed to cube at all.​
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The Creation and Destruction of the Confederacy Universe: Trillions of lives are brought into being and then snuffed out as a disastrous fascistic timeline is created and then ended.​
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Cause: Q makes a doomed alternate universe in order to get Picard to deal with the time his mom hung herself. I'm gonna take this out of the equation because Q might've already done this that one time he showed Picard an alternate universe where he didn't get stabbed in the heart.​
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Changeling Infiltration: Hundreds killed through sabotage of the transporters and through replacement. I’m gonna say 200.​
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Cause: During the Dominion War, Starfleet let Section 31 perform grisly torture experiments on the changelings in order to make “the perfect weapon” that would be “deployed onto the planets of our enemies”.​
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Frontier Day Uprising: For the starbase, that’s 15,000 officers and 35,000 civilians. For the fleet, it’s EVERYONE ON EVERY SHIP ABOVE THE AGE OF 25.​
​
So that’s like, there’s 250ish ships in that big wide shot they have (“The entire fleet”), and each ship has like, roughly, 820 crew members on it (using the Sovereign-class as a baseline), so that’s 205,000 people, which I’ll cut in half, based on the fact that age doesn’t seem to really matter much in the Federation ships we’ve seen before, so let’s say that there are 102,500 over-25 Olds on these ships.​
​
That would put us at 152,500 total killed during this season finale.​

Cause: The Borg Queen wanted revenge on the Federation for when Janeway injected her with that bio virus and doomed her race.

92,143 + 179,000 + 200 + [I’m not counting the doomed universe] + 152,500 is…

GRAND TOTAL DEATH COUNT FOR PICARD: 423,843 DEAD DUE TO PICARD MISADVENTURE

Conclusion

I don't want to imply I didn't love seeing the core cast back in S3, that was wonderful, particularly Dorn and Frakes. I do really wish the show had started there, even if it wasn't what Patrick Stewart wanted.

Seeing the D back was also moving, and though it wasn't really used well (it was turned into the Millenium Falcon for a re-do of the Return of the Jedi scene), it's a cool-ass ship and it was great what they did to bring it back.

Riker, and everything his character did in this show, was a real delight for me, and reminded me how much I love that actor.

So, there were things here I enjoyed, I just feel that overall, this team should not be involved in any future Trek projects, hopefully. I think the best-case-scenario is, like Strange New Worlds, a Star Trek Legacy series could be handed off to a series of writers for episodic stories, with Goldsmith coming in to present an incredibly underwhelming finale episode from time to time. Obviously, we all pray Berman never has anything to do with any Trek series again.

My hope is that the success of Strange New Worlds will show to CBS that there is a big appetite for good, tight, well-told stories that carry an impact. I think if those lessons are taken from SWN's success, Legacy would be in a good place.

[Thad]

Thad-length summary

this is about my ten consecutive posts about the x-files finale, isn't it

[Friday]

I mean I love longform content from both of you and just in general, so. Keep waxing on about X-Files and Final Fantasy 7, Thad.

In today's madcap world of Tiktok and soundbite shitposting in general, it's nice to have something really meaty to bite into and chew.

Can you tell I've been watching longform video essays on youtube about leftist subjects lately

[Mongrel]

Overall I think the biggest contributing factor to why New Trek and New Wars fail is corporate meddling and decrees. Nobody can get their vision done when Disney is breathing over your shoulder about creating their version of the MCU. Likewise, you can't just tell a good story in Trek anymore, now it has to have all of this stupid fanservice and the Borg every .2 seconds.

I've been rewatching VOY and I'm near the end, and they do overuse the Borg, it's true. Everyone fucking blames Enterprise for the Death of Star Trek or whatever but that take is now quaint and out of touch. VOY and ENT look shiny and fun compared to New Trek's dour bullshit.

I don't know, man. I wish they got better writers and I wish the corpos would leave people the fuck alone so they could tell stories.

I agree with a lot of that overall post, but I have THOUGHTS about this bit and I kind of have a post about it, but it is a MONGRELPOST and I dunno if I want to just dump it in this thread or somewhere else because it's as much about Star Wars and other franchises as it is about Trek.

EDIT: a few more posts I see.

[Mongrel]

Thad-length summary

this is about my ten consecutive posts about the x-files finale, isn't it

Kind of brutal to have Mothra call it Thad-Length rather than Mongrel-length.

[Mazian]

Thad-length (U.S. customary units)
Mongrel-length (metric units)

[Büge]

I have THOUGHTS about this bit and I kind of have a post about it, but it is a MONGRELPOST

gopher it

[Mongrel]

Okay, so just to be straight up, corporate meddling is 100% a problem to be sure, for both Star franchises, and so many others. This is a disagreement of degree rather than of type. But ultimately, even though the buck does not in fact stop at the actual writers/showrunners/directors who have a franchise placed in their hands,I still think they usually bear most of the blame, at least in the current media environment, and I think the root problem isn't so much the money as it is ego.

Y'all have probably seen me describe the recent takes on Trek or Wars as big-budget fanfiction, but it took me a little while to unravel that thought beyond just "It's written like shit, yo", and I think the main thing that makes them read that way to me is that inflated sense of self-importance that you also see in so much fanfiction.

I don't want to slag on fanfiction too much; fanfic writers are just ordinary folks, for good or for bad. Fan works can be a good starting place and great practice for any artist, Kirk-is-an-Ocelot-and-I'm-on-the-bridge-crew notwithstanding. But fanfiction writers for the most part work alone. They don't have editors, certainly, and they may be too embarrassed about writing fanfiction to even speak to anyone else for advice, even the ones who aren't mad horndogs. So sometimes you get this pot of liquid shit someone's been boiling up all day that just gets dumped out on the table for everyone to smell. Rather than a case of too many cooks, there was only the one, but hoo boy that one was enough!

Sometimes you get the badly disguised editorializing. Sometimes it's that goddamned trope that refuses to die, where only a grim and gritty story can be considered MATURE, I'M AN ADULT NOW DAD! But most insidious of all, there's the ugly situation where someone has convinced themselves that the story they loved from their childhood is perfect, except for this one small thing, and not only do they assuredly know that they're just the person to fix that one small thing, this implicitly means the thing they don't like is objectively Wrong and Bad in the first place. I'm gonna make my own Star Trek! With Blackjack! And hookers! (everyone say hi to Sybok).

I'm gonna take a minute here to add that Fanfic communities are not really a solution in many cases. Even if you're not trying to compete with someone else or erase their work, they may still try to do the same to you, and the smaller the community, the faster that shit gets personal (and tribal). With dozens or even hundreds of writers who all have just that one little thing to fix, and with every single one of them knowing what's best, you have the horror film blob-thing of fan zealots spitefully working at cross purposes, vaguely shaped like a bunch of dorks, sled dogs furries, and way too many keyboards (they're all writing about Kurt Russell's ass. In Captain Ron)¹. Okay, that's like, worst-case, but still, fanfiction communities are not a great source for editors in most cases and the editing people are willing to offer may not be, uh, very helpful, which can often reinforce the notion that only the writer themselves knows best.

But that's all fan shit, right? No money, often small communities, blah, blah, the corporate media world is different, it's all about the bottom line, so you get nothing but confused pandering. Right? Well, yes, but you ALSO get ego-driven trainwrecks, which can include pandering because the writer is essentially pandering to themself.

Do you get that situation due to corporate meddling? No. Well, okay, yes, actually you do, but not in the obvious and direct way.

Corporations can be meddlesome as fuck, but are also actually kind of gun-shy about beloved franchises at times, fearful of fan backlash and a disaster release, because of all these situation where the fans have ended up hating the studio, so they get into this weird mode where they're just like "Let's just find the BEST DORK and let them do all the work!" and hey, "Find someone who is actually good at this shit, and pay them to do it right." is not necessarily a bad idea! It's a very good idea even! But when these random-ass gaggles of execs find the BEST DORK via corporate committee (as they do so often) that's where it all goes to hell.

That's just the sort of situation which led to the Abrams/Johnson nightmare where we ended up with two cooks who are normally good (or at least okay-ish) but who were more obsessed with trying to out-stink each other's pot of shit. Neither of them thought "Hey why don't we work together?" even though they were literally working on the same story. At least not long enough to make a real and genuine effort at proper collaboration. Even when Mark Hamill - the guy who'd been there all along, who went through it all, the ups and the downs, and kept his chin up and learned to have a good attitude about having his entire life being bent around the big gnarly horrible fandom - talked to them about his misgivings about the sequels, he was ignored because They Knew Better (and then Mark did it all anyway because he's a consummate pro, who did not put his ego first). No Mark, now you are cranky and bitter Luke, who fucked up horribly and maybe sorta tried to murder a child because like father like son or something, and now the Galaxy is RUINED so we can save it again from, uh... the Empire. Including Palpatine.

Which brings us back to that fanfic writer conceit, which comes up so often: I'm the guy who can touch up the otherwise perfect franchise, and I don't want any interference, because we need VISION.

Corporations see that and buy it because they don't know shit. Fans see it and buy it because the guy did Other Stuff that was good or okay and usually hasn't fucked up yet. The creators buy it because of COURSE they're the Guy! Look at me! I'm The Great Bird of the Galaxy! They ALL buy it because they're huffing that godly creator myth shit.

If that pattern seems familiar, it's the same one we know is back in vogue all around the world: Collaboration is for the weak! Collective action is dead! We, the people fans, need a Saviour! A Strongman! A Genius to save us from the grubbers and the grabbers and filthy bureaucrats! Jilted fans want someone "big" enough that the corporation can't push them around. Or, y'know, impose one of those dastardly Editors who might, y'know, help your plot actually make a lick of fucking sense.

You know what else fits with that bullshit? A nostalgia for an imagined past which never was.

Now this one, this is more on the fans than on the storytellers, but with these big media franchises, fans have gone on to be writers and have done so in many cases without ever getting past the fatal misunderstanding about how the stories were created or were even made in the first place.

Trek had Gene Roddenberry of course, but much of the original show's lasting appeal comes from fondly remembering the best episodes, and sorta forgetting or playing down the corniest ones (and I don't mean "Kirk fights that Gorn, lol", I mean like A Piece of the Action "Welcome to Gangster Planet, cos we had no budget for this ep, lol"). But those memorable and special episodes weren't just Gene writing everything down himself, a whole crew of writers this weird kinda-new concept together - bold new frontiers², if you'll pardon the expression. That gets lost in the telling too often.

Then in the TNG era and beyond you had Berman selling the idea that he was Roddenberry's anointed "successor" for so long, even though anyone who actually looked closely realized that was hogshit, as if Star Trek was some sort of goddamned monarchy. We all know it only got worse the more control that unreconstructed fuckhead had³.

Star Wars is even more a severe case because of course George Lucas was even more beatified than Roddenberry was, at least until the prequels, when really Star Wars '77 should have been equally credited to a team of at least 4-5 people, and if any name should have gone first it should have been goddamned Marcia Lucas and not George and I will die on that hill, because she was the editor, that unsung hero who makes everything in a story WORK with little or no credit. Star Wars is an objectively well-told story because someone was there to make sure George's shit actually made sense. It's tight. It flows well and the transitions are basically seamless. It shows an entire universe often with few words. Dialogue is classic and quotable. Everyone has a satisfying arc. There are no giant plot holes to sit there and "but, but..." about. Yes, Marcia did get an Oscar for film editing in this case, but let's not pretend she was treated the same as George, then or even today. Haha a GURL made Star Wars? What? You're cracked, bro. Only GUYS know how to make REAL sci-fi.

We saw the kind of stories George tells on his own: Interesting ideas buried in tedium, dumpster fire plots, wooden dialogue, pacing like a drunk falling down stairs, and at times, some really icky creepiness.

I do agree corporate demands for fanservice exist, absolutely, and there certainly are many notorious accounts of disastrous executive micromanagement, but I think that direct meddling as a part of the overall problem is overstated. We remember the famous cases, but for the most part a lot of corporate heads don't know enough about the details to even know about who even wears those danged schoolgirl outfits, much less demand specific panty shots. I doubt anyone at Paramount asked for anyone to put in that stupid 7 of 9 is in the 7th of 9 wink, wink.

The good news is that when the stakes are lower, it's a lot easier for people to just put something together without getting all pissy about it. Oh Lower Decks? That's just some cartoon for kids. Oh Andor? that's just some story filler nobody covered yet. Yeah, we can make a series about those, sure, that'll make a few bucks, get someone to sort it out will you? Of course the Big Man might reassert themselves once the "unimportant" side project gains fans (Garak ;__;), but on the whole it's an escape hatch, a way good things can still be made. In a way that's some of the best fanfic: Don't worry about retelling the story that's already been told, write a new one in the same universe.

Anyway, don't write alone, take this: Good editors are your friend and probably worth several times their own weight in gold. Literally. Even a life-size statue of Marcia Lucas (which would weigh much more) wouldn't even come close to equaling the money Star Wars has made over 45-odd years.



¹ Yes I am pandering to Friday with a Thing reference. Mary sue me.
² "Frontier" was apt on so many levels - "Wagon Train to the Stars" indeed.
³ No, but tell us how you really feel about Rick Berman, Mongrel.