The Star Trek Thread

[Crick]

Oh boy, it certainly isn't up to that at all. I just desperately miss smart, self-contained scifi stories that aren't, like, Black Mirror, you know?

[Mothra]

Does anyone have thoughts on Strange New Worlds? I'm sort of on the fence. I bailed on Discovery after most of seaosn 1 and Picard after the pilot.

There are parts of SNW that seem like steps in the right direction, but I'm hesitant to, like... hope, I guess.

I really loved this first ep, definitely getting my hopes way up for this series.

Real good cast, sets actually look like a place people live and work in, fun TOS tech, and the story resolves.

I think my only quibbles are that the story on the planet is like, "we see you have a horrible stalemate where you cannot compromise on your values, what you must do is, have more arguments, debate, and reason" and then they draw a direct parallel with the US in 2022, to say, "the reason things are this bad is that we don't talk to each other anymore!!!".

Like, as much as Trek is about finding peaceful solutions to problems, it is such a both-sides type thing, where the two "differing ideas of liberty" are considered equal for all intents and purposes.

Beyond that, though, great stuff. Looking forward to the next one.

[Grath]

Picard finale, from a friend of mine:

[Crick]

I think my only quibbles are that the story on the planet is like, "we see you have a horrible stalemate where you cannot compromise on your values, what you must do is, have more arguments, debate, and reason" and then they draw a direct parallel with the US in 2022, to say, "the reason things are this bad is that we don't talk to each other anymore!!!".

Like, as much as Trek is about finding peaceful solutions to problems, it is such a both-sides type thing, where the two "differing ideas of liberty" are considered equal for all intents and purposes.

Beyond that, though, great stuff. Looking forward to the next one.

Yeah, beyond some sketchy transporter stuff and some weak dialog this is my worry. A similar situation to this ep was handled by TNG and I feel was more thoughtful and sophisticated. It could be that this is simply a byproduct of also setting up the characters and stakes as well as the self-contained conflict in under 60 minutes.

I still have this nagging feeling that the Kurtzman creative direction is incapable of actual science-based scifi (though, I know Trek has never been truly hard scifi) and is disinterested/unable to write more optimistic or, I guess, egalitarian messaging.

All that being said, I don't feel completely dissuaded like I did with the other shows I've seen.

[Thad]

Picard finale, from a friend of mine:

I said earlier that Picard season 2 was better than season 1. That was because I'd been tricked by the one good thing that happened the entire season, which was having ICE as the villains. That part was great! The rest was not.

There were a few good ideas in there -- I like the idea of a new, all-volunteer Borg -- but it was totally fucking unearned. It wasn't an arc so much as a series of mood swings. There was no flow, no buildup.

Nothing anybody did made any sense or remained consistent from one scene to the next. Picard is so concerned with preserving the integrity of the timeline that he sacrifices his own mother, but then in the next scene Rios is like "I'm staying behind" and he's like "Okay cool see ya." The cast spends like 3/4 of the season telling each other that hopefully Elnor will be okay once they fix the timeline, but then when he is they act like this development was totally unexpected. It's one of those things where the plot beats are written and then shit gets written around them to serve them whether it makes any sense or not. Why does whatsername have to disguise herself as Renee Picard and let Soong kill her instead of, like, just hitting him in the head and knocking him out? Why does everyone freak out about how the drones are going to explode if they try to tamper with them instead of, like, throwing a rock at them and then teleporting the fuck out of there, because they have fucking teleporters? And the entire idea of having every character from season 1 who doesn't travel back in time be double-cast as a different character in the 21st century is, like, high school play shit. Like that production of Robin Hood I did freshman year where I was Cruickshank the soldier and Cootie the town drunk. It is bemusing. I am bemused by it.

Picard's tragic backstory is insane and built entirely around the premise that people only have access to mental health services from the time period their house was built in. The story is obsessed enough with obscure Trek continuity that it's timed to be concurrent with "Past Tense", but not enough to acknowledge that Jean-Luc used to have a brother. And then at the end it turns out the entire season arc was motivated entirely by Q wanting to get Picard laid.

You know, I think on balance I did like it better than season 1. It was complete fucking insanity, but at least it wasn't boring. On the other hand, season 1 had Riker.

...haven't watched Strange New Worlds yet but I'm looking forward to it. And if they really follow through with their promise that it'll be episodic instead of arc-based, that should at least mean that if you don't like any given episode, there's always next week.

[Crick]

Like that production of Robin Hood I did freshman year where I was Cruickshank the soldier and Cootie the town drunk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boasting

[Crick]

And then at the end it turns out the entire season arc was motivated entirely by Q wanting to get Picard laid.

This is the part that's the most mind boggling for me. I watched the clip of the monologue. It's so... small minded? Like, I'm all for Q having some personal attachment to Picard, I'm all for character connection, but it feels beneath them in a way. Q was a vehicle to explore super lofty ideals. He's all-powerful, that's the stage he presents. Like, he says "why do the stakes have to be astronomical" or something, and it's like... because you did the time crime, man. YOU set up the whole conflict, YOU used the timeline and trillions of lives as a greeting card to say "open up more".

[Thad]

They do actually throw in a galaxy-threatening yadda-yadda in the last act that somehow nobody noticed and now they're able to overcome because of stuff they did in the past. But it's a half-assed afterthought that doesn't really make sense.

At any rate, I watched Strange New Worlds and enjoyed it unironically. No real notes beyond what everybody else has already said. I like the little touches like Peck really emphasizing the -or at the end of "sensor" like Nimoy used to.

[Mothra]

Agree on the Picard S2 finale, like, this season was technically better than the absolute shitshow that was S1, in the sense that this season was so fucking bonkers it was consistently very funny.

So like Thad said, Q wanted to get Picard laid.

To this end, he traveled back to 2024 so that he could manipulate Data's distant ancestor into killing Picard's distant ancestor, so that a hellish totalitarian alternate reality would be created, in which all the genocide and whatnot DID HAPPEN for four hundred years, all with the goal of sending Picard back in time to his childhood chateau on a raucous adventure, specifically to help Picard overcome his childhood trauma. Now he didn't like, teleport Picard into a void or anything like he normally would, he created hundreds of years of a doomed alternate universe to do this. Millions upon millions suffered unimaginably for this, only to be obliterated by the ending of their timeline.

This accidentally resulted in the Borg becoming reformed, though they presumably still commit mass genocide as we've seen in Voyager and First Contact, etc, as history seems unchanged. This later helps save the entire galaxy from a big anomaly that is introduced in the last 10 minutes, which shoots out a single fairly ineffective spaceship-sized beam that they block with a bunch of ships.

Now with 400 years of time, it feels like Jurati could've just assembled more borg ships that could do this, but I guess she couldn't and needed more Federation ships.

We also learn that Wesley, the boy, is in charge of the Gary 7 people, whose stated job is to protect the timeline, which they themselves are shown to fail at spectacularly (along with Guinan), requiring the help of a dotting old man to first realize the problem exists, then solve it. Why even have these timeline defenders like the El Aurians or the Watchers if they don't realize when the timeline is fucked up and in crisis?

Anyways at the end, as y'all pointed out, Picard chooses to seal the key into the wall, ensuring the suicide of his own mother, to ensure the stability of the timeline. But then he just lets Rios leave and start a family in 2024, unopposed, which thanks to his son's new connection to Renee Picard, leads to his son SOLVING GLOBAL WARMING FOR THE PLANET. This definitely wouldn't have happened without Rios. This also is an easy quick-fix for humanity for a problem that they created by not giving a fuck about the environment, so through this temporal prime directive violation, humanity is now denied that lesson and evolution, and instead learns that they can recklessly consume and exploit, and that all problems caused by this will be solved by expansion into space to find magical space organisms like the one on Europa.

Also it's revealed Q is indirectly responsible for Khan, for curing Soong's daughter, who flees her father and deletes his data, making him turn to the Khan project. So Q made the Eugenics Wars happen, which again, is a huge timeline violation that either the Watchers or the El Auriens should address, but they don't notice or care.

I'd like to note as well that we never learned by Q is dying, that show just kind of forgot about that major plot point.

Just wild shit. I hope S3 tops it.

[Crick]

[Mongrel]

So is it over?

Like, just tell me it's over.

[Mothra]

Picard finale thoughts

Okay I added more, there's a lot here in terms of the implications of the timeline fuckery that really makes my brain hurt. Rios' actions alone are utterly catastrophic to the very idea of the Federation.

[Mongrel]

This is 100% bad fanfic.

No, really, this an identical quality to a shit fanfic posted to myspace in '03.

I mean... fuck me... the Trek novels written by Shatner were better than this. By a LOT.

[Thad]

So is it over?

Like, just tell me it's over.

No, halfway through season 2 they posted a teaser to reassure everyone that season 3 will be the show we actually wanted.

(Narrator: It would not.)

(NOTE: The narrator is Clint Howard.)

[Mongrel]

lmao

[Thad]

Picard's tragic backstory is insane and built entirely around the premise that people only have access to mental health services from the time period their house was built in.

Like, this is the part that I can't stop thinking about. CW for suicide, and for really terrible ways to deal with someone who is suicidal, for the remainder of this post.

Picard's mother is suicidally depressed and his father's solution to this is to lock her in a room by herself for the night. Nobody at any point says anything suggesting that people in the 24th century have access to more sophisticated mental healthcare than this; it's like we're just supposed to buy that people in a 19th-century house only have access to 19th-century mental health options.

Now, TNG did establish that Picard's father was something of a luddite and didn't allow technology in his house. So maybe there is better healthcare available but they don't have access to it because they don't have a fucking phone. But again, this is not actually stated anywhere in Picard; if you're going to make that jump, you have to rely on cherry-picked exposition from a decades-old show (be sure to ignore all the parts about Picard having a brother).

And TNG never said anything about Picard's father being a luddite and using that as an excuse to deny access to life-saving emergency services to his wife. That paints him in a pretty different and very unflattering light, if you actually bother to think about the implications for even one second, which this show does not. It does not suggest that their failure to call medical professionals, a suicide prevention hotline, or anyone at all when Picard's mother is on the brink of suicide is unusual or notable at all.

So maybe mental health services in the future just still fucking suck? That's the one I'm inclined to go with. Seeing as apparently Picard's had a repressed memory of his mother's suicide for the last eighty years and this has somehow never come up in any of the psych evaluations he's presumably had over the course of a decades-long career making life or death decisions for hundreds of people serving under him.

Or any of the counseling sessions we know he's had. What the fuck, Troi?

[Mothra]

Now, it goes without saying, this happens because Stewart wanted to do a thing about his childhood in the early 50's, so that's why everything plays out like it would in the 50's.

In the context of Star Trek, holy shit is it depressing to see that, even in the year 2401, mankind has made zero progress on the early detection or treatment of mental illness. Are you telling me these people never see doctors? Ever? And that those doctors don't have the means to tell when there's a mental illness manifesting?

Ugh, it's just a really bad fit for this show. And to make it such a massive element of Picard's character, it's just, such a deep misread of the entire franchise.

[Thad]

Now, it goes without saying, this happens because Stewart wanted to do a thing about his childhood in the early 50's, so that's why everything plays out like it would in the 50's.

I did get a whiff of that, but I feel like if the major thrust had been autobiographical he would have made Picard's father a lot less sympathetic.

Which, again, would have been really easy to do; just pause to provide a logical explanation for literally anything that's happening.

But Dad doesn't come across as damaged, controlling, and abusive like Stewart's described his own father being, even though that would have been a much more sensible explanation for why their environment is what it is; he seems like a well-meaning guy who's doing his best and is overwhelmed, and he comes back to Picard in a vision not to torment him but to help him.

[Crick]

You know, the psych eval is a great point.

If they don't have great medical tech, they trusted the starfleet flagship to a guy with a family history of severe depression and suicide? Even if it's "just the women" or whatever?

I just don't believe the tech sucks. They can grow back skin in seconds and, in Voyager, can bring you back from full-on death after a few minutes. They have to have a way to "surgically" fix the physical causes of depression and/or treat the purely psychological ones.

[Sharkey]

I was joking you motherfuckers.

But yeah, what y'all said, coupled with the frustrating fact that the most godawful series is the one that pointedly didn't both-sides our current fascist problem with the ICE thing, while the actually watchable one went ahead and did that with their "different ideas of liberty" horseshit.