Star Trek: Picard

JRS

JRS

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ed:

Not going down this rabbit hole again.

You know, the email that the forum software auto-generates regarding replies includes the pre-edit text right? ;)

And hey, you keep right on moaning about a "hardcore contingent [of Trek fans] spanking it furiously" with regards to story and visual continuity. Just know that you're probably going to have to stick me on your ignore list 'cause I'm not about to stop holding the showrunners in this franchise to a reasonably high standard in many respects, continuity being one of them :)
 
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You know, the email that the forum software auto-generates regarding replies includes the pre-edit text right? ;)

And hey, you keep right on moaning about a "hardcore contingent [of Trek fans] spanking it furiously" with regards to story and visual continuity. Just know that you're probably going to have to stick me on your ignore list 'cause I'm not about to stop holding the showrunners in this franchise to a reasonably high standard in many respects, continuity being one of them :)

So you hold the show runners to a high standard by complaining on a forum they likely have never heard of? Makes sense..
 

JRS

JRS

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So you hold the show runners to a high standard by complaining on a forum they likely have never heard of? Makes sense..

I complain on a forum they likely have never heard of because it amuses me and annoys people who don't agree with me, which as a happy byproduct adds to my amusement ;)
 

JRS

JRS

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So you're trolling? Pretty sure that goes against the rules.

'Trolling' would be a strong way of putting it IMO. But hey, there's a 'report post' function and a Forum Content Discussion section if you want to have a mod look at any post of mine that you find objectionable :)
 
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Yup completely agree. I'm really disapointed, there is so little here of what I liked about Star Trek. Romulans don't look Romulan, they had the ship above Earth yet no signs of any other ships in orbit, no infrastructure. A massive missed opportunity for some cool Starfleet vessels / outposts in orbit. The Starfleet officals we've met so far have all been angry for seemingly no reason - there's no impression of it being this massive interstellar organisation. They should have shown Voyager in a museam or something that Picard walked past.

The scene set on Mars when the sinthethics kicked off..was like something from the early Red Dwarf's.

It's just very meh. Lens flares have made a comeback again which I hate, and this stupid rotating camera views for no reason.

So many opportunities missed.

Only three episodes in so seems a bit picky? If you're after an adventure of the week on a federation Starship then I don't think this is going to be the show you're after :(
Don't think Picard is about to be in command of a Starfleet vessel any time soon.

Some of the Romulans do look like the tng era and some don't. Nicely explained about them being 'thick headed northerners'. Actually kind of helps continuity between ToS and tng if anything.
Sure, they don't all have the same extreme bowl haircut but what does that matter? The show has a bit more money to spend on hair stylists than tng had!

I think we got to see lots of nice 'extras', the transporter door frames, the archive, huge floating space stations in low orbit, all the machinery at the vineyard. And all of it external shots as opposed to a soundstage with a matte painting in the background! Also got to see lots of infrastructure around Mars where the shipyards actually are... before it all went bang.

I'm also much happier Picard walked past a hologram of the Ent-D than voyager out in the car park. We've also only spent about 5 minutes with two high ranking Starfleet bods so seems a bit early days to be getting too worked up about Starfleet as a whole. Although it is different to when Picard was a Captain, that's kind of the plot/point of the show.
 
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'Trolling' would be a strong way of putting it IMO. But hey, there's a 'report post' function and a Forum Content Discussion section if you want to have a mod look at any post of mine that you find objectionable :)
For what it's worth, I enjoy your posts and haven't seen anything I'd consider trolling.
 
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Yup completely agree. I'm really disapointed, there is so little here of what I liked about Star Trek. Romulans don't look Romulan, they had the ship above Earth yet no signs of any other ships in orbit, no infrastructure. A massive missed opportunity for some cool Starfleet vessels / outposts in orbit. The Starfleet officals we've met so far have all been angry for seemingly no reason - there's no impression of it being this massive interstellar organisation. They should have shown Voyager in a museam or something that Picard walked past.

The scene set on Mars when the sinthethics kicked off..was like something from the early Red Dwarf's.

It's just very meh. Lens flares have made a comeback again which I hate, and this stupid rotating camera views for no reason.

So many opportunities missed.
Patrick Stewart himself said it's not going to be TNG part 2. It's going to be a totally different show.

I am totally enjoying it so far and ep 4 is where it starts getting going. 1-3 were really all just the lead in to the story.
 

JRS

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For what it's worth, I enjoy your posts and haven't seen anything I'd consider trolling.

In fairness I'm absolutely certain that I've skirted the trolling line :D

Patrick Stewart himself said it's not going to be TNG part 2. It's going to be a totally different show.

I've said it before I know, but it stands repeating.

When the studio set out to make Enterprise, they chickened out on changing much at all. Phase cannons and photonic torpedoes acted exactly like weapons did later in the timeline. Hull plating acted exactly like shields. The grappler exactly like a tractor beam. The transporter was just as quick and about as reliable as models shown 200+ years later in continuity. Hell, they even reused the K'T'inga (updated D7) Klingon ship design, stretching the limits of credibility for that ship class lifetime to breaking point.

STD comes along, and they decided not to repeat that mistake by making whole new ones instead. One of which being to set it in a time period already seen on-screen (it's set between the first Star Trek pilot "The Cage" and the second "Where No Man Has Gone Before") which was always going to be hopeless for maintaining any kind of visual continuity with the technology shown in TOS. To compound that by radically altering the Klingon makeup, changing how characters who appeared in TOS were portrayed, and adding a whole adopted sister to the history of a character who lived through every incarnation of the series up until STP...

STP is striking a nice balance IMO. It helps of course that they've set it in a time period that hadn't been explored on-screen yet so they can change up stuff and not violate the established framework. And yeah, they can show a Federation that isn't Gene's happy-clappy one. There's a bit in "Insurrection" where Ru'afo is talking to Admiral Dougherty about the state the Federation was in by that point:

"Look in the mirror, Admiral. The Federation is old. In the past twenty-four months they have been challenged by every major power in the quadrant. The Borg, the Cardassians, the Dominion. They all smell the scent of death on the Federation. That's why you've embraced our offer. Because it will give your dear Federation new life."

Is it so hard to believe that after another 24 years ("Insurrection" is set in 2275) things might have changed for Starfleet and the Federation even more from the TNG days, and not necessarily for the better?

I am totally enjoying it so far and ep 4 is where it starts getting going. 1-3 were really all just the lead in to the story.

Quite. And at least this time, what happened in those first episodes needed to be told at the start of the series. STD's prequel two-parter might as well have been told in flashbacks throughout the first season for all the sense that it made.

@james.miller - love you too, snookums :)
 

JRS

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Episode 4 - "Absolute Candor"

1) Again with the recap...at what point did CBS decide that the audience have the memory capacity of goldfish?
2) Into the Beta Quadrant we go.
3) And it's another flashback. A planet that served as a hub (or was going to) for the relocation of the Romulan people.
4) Ethnically diverse Romulans then. That's somewhat new, but we've seen black Vulcans before so it's not really an issue. Just figured I'd mention it before someone else did.
5) I guess 'bite me' is a pretty universal insult in this galaxy.
6) Picard beaming in, looking like a tourist on a safari trip in the 1950s.
7) Seems like they've fleshed the Romulan language out some for this production then.
8) Backstory is getting filled in more and more. And another "hooray for continuity!" moment - Picard's (oft-noted in TNG) discomfort around children is mentioned, a discomfort that he seems to have gotten over in his older age.
9) Guess this kid grows up to be the man we see in the trailers, the swordsman Elnor.
10) Man, that's cute on a couple of levels. One, the Romulan boy Elnor listening to Jean-Luc Picard in full flow and being enraptured. Two, the kid playing Elnor listening to Patrick Stewart in full flow and being enraptured.
11) I'm not far behind either.
12) And then he gets the news about Mars.
13) And there's a promise that the Federation and Starfleet end up not letting him keep.
14) Beaming up while walking. I know the transporter has never been consistent about that sort of thing (Saavik was even able to continue a conversation with Kirk in "Wrath of Khan" before beam-up had been completed). Still, shows that the technoology has moved on a bit since TNG - in "Darmok" Picard was unable to move to help the Tamarian captain Dathon when the Enterprise was making their attempt to beam him back up.
15) Jeri Ryan getting her 'guest appearance' credit now. Unless that's been there all along, and the dull nature of the intro theme made me miss it.
16) Just me who misses the full-on rainbow light show of the jump-to-warp effects in the early movies?
17) Another cavernous ship interior that makes precious little sense. Oh for the days of Matt Jefferies designing stuff with at least one eye on how to explain it rather than just making it look 'cool'.
18) Jurati is bored. I guess when you've grown up with FTL space travel being a fact of life that could happen. Speaking as a guy born in 1983 though, you'd never chisel the grin off my face :D
19) Another new 'in-warp' effect seen out of the front window. Sort-of JJTrekish.
20) Recite a whole bunch of numbers so the audience know that you're a scientist!
21) Rios can't be all bad though, he has a catalogue of Klingon opera.
22) Hey, look STD showrunners - well-written dialogue delivered by two actors who don't murder the material. Bet you wish you had that, huh?
23) Enter Raffi, peeved that the ship isn't headed for Freecloud.
24) Because Picard needs to make a stop at the planet seen in the teaser.
25) Man who was desperate to get back into space, using a holomatrix to bring rural France with him.
26) Another hologram (and also played by Santiago Cabrera), a hospitality one. We've come a long way from the days of the EMH Mark 1.
27) Annoyed Raffi is annoyed.
28) Rios pointing out that things have turned to worms in this part of space.
29) Aha, the antique Bird of Prey from the trailers gets a mention.
30) Backstory.
31) Jurati as audience surrogate here, marveling that "Romulan warrior nuns" are an actual thing.
32) Picard calls them the "most skilled single combat fighters" he's ever seen. And he's hung out with Klingons, so he ought to know.
33) Episode title getting name-dropped a bunch.
34) Kind of like the anti-Vulcan way then. No filter on emotion at all.
35) Shift scenes to the Borg ship. And now Soji is playing the space jigsaw.
36) Video of Ramdha when she was rather closer to lucid. And Soji looking up at the mention of "The Destroyer".
37) Soundtrack going ominous.
38) Back to the La Sirena, out of warp and orbiting Vashti.
39) Amusing reaction from Picard at being told by Raffi that the people down below weren't exactly welcoming him with open arms.
40) "A cash gift is always appropriate." Another thing that Trek has never been overly consistent with, currency!
41) Though he clearly had something, because he's beamed down.
42) Bit less welcoming than 14 years ago.
43) At least the nuns haven't immediately turned their backs on him.
44) "You got old, Admiral Picard." There's that absolute candor in action.
45) And there's Elnor, all grown up.
46) That was the moment that this episode shouted from the rooftops that it was directed by 'Two Takes' Frakes. That push-in on Picard to end the scene. *chef's kiss*
47) Back to Soji and Narek, as Ramdha gets looked at.
48) Medical drone!
49) Soji trying to figure Narek out. Wondering if he's Tal Shiar. As Zhaban and Laris noted in an earlier episode, outsiders to Romulan culture leap at thinking of the Tal Shiar as the Romulan secret police. Hooray for continuity!
50) In other respects she is pretty genre-savvy though. Got to hand it to her.
51) "Come on, I want to show you something." Best not be your trouser department Narek, this plotline needs to keep up the momentum :p
52) A Borg ritual? Hmm...
53) Ah. Not so much a Borg ritual as a way to flirt with Soji then.
54) Humming 'Careless Whisper' to myself, an in-joke with a friend who I often watch films and TV shows with.
55) Welp, you might have screwed that one up Narek.
56) Nice save.
57) Star Trek: Picard, a series where people go boldly and drink various things in different locations.
58) And our retired Admiral is trending on space Twitter.
59) Bird of Prey incoming. And a "hooray for continuity!" moment as the showrunners resist the temptation to change it up much from the TOS appearance. Who would'a thunk that it was possible? ;)
60) Picard seems awfully sure that Rios and his ship can take a(n almost certainly) heavily refitted BoP. Raffi...not so much.
61) Zani filling in Picard on the last 14 years out here.
62) Trek As Social Commentary part 686.
63) Picard has a keen grasp of where he failed, allowing 'I want a flawless victory' to become the enemy of 'well, at least I did something'. Though Zani is being somewhat unfair in heaping it all on him IMO - being constructively dismissed from Starfleet is going to make anyone throw their hands up, say "to hell with it all" and go retire to a vineyard.
64) So Elnor has completed his Jedi - sorry, Qowat Milat - training. But he can't be a Qowat Milat because he's a man. Trek As Social Commentary part 687 :p
65) To get Elnor to join his cause Picard has to tell a story. So at least he'll be in his element there.
66) "I had a friend, called Data." "It's usually a sad story." "He died." Yes Elnor, it is indeed a sad story. On a personal note, one of the few things I hated about the premise of this series was it in any way validating bits of the plot of "Nemesis". Hey ho.
67) Hooray for continuity! Spot getting herself a mention.
68) Elnor is a perceptive young man, with his note that Picard does need someone but why him specifically?
69) Nice.
70) Will I ever tire of that joke? All signs point to 'no' :)
71) Picard well aware of the limitations that him being in his 90s places on him. Presumably if the showrunners had set out to make TNG part II with this then he would have looked Worf up for this role.
72) Past mistakes biting you on the backside.
73) Seven minutes might be about six minutes too late there Rios...
74) Especially if Picard is going to do some provocation. Entirely in-character of course, ripping down a 'Romulans Only' sign. But might not be the smartest thing he did all day.
75) Yeah, this isn't going to go brilliantly.
76) More backstory being filled in.
77) Sounds about right. Blame him for not trying harder, also blame him for trying at all. Very...Romulan.
78) Well, that went south for the former senator real quick! Guess he should have...*puts shades on*...kept his head. *YEEEAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!*
79) Picard has himself a qalankhkai then after all.
80) Picard speech :)
81) And another one, also a very Picard moment. Glad that he's alive, furious that someone else had to die for that to be so.
82) Elnor explaining his motivation for coming back to join Picard, and I'm getting flashbacks to a TNG episode "The Defector". Picard's line from that show: "If the cause is just and honourable, [his crew] are prepared to give their lives." Elnor finds Picard's story - his cause - just, and honourable, and worthy of him joining. Because it's absolutely a lost cause. And so was one Galaxy class starship against three Romulan warbirds. But we know how that story turned out.
83) Jurati rather less impressed at the idea that this is all a lost cause, mind!
84) Back to the creepy brother-sister relationship.
85) Ah, Romulan paranoia. Gotta love it.
86) Rizzo still hitting the villain tropes hard. Bit like !Georgiou in STD.
87) And we rejoin Picard with a space battle getting underway, as the Bird of Prey warps in firing.

Pausing here to work out the size of the La Sirena. That's a Bird of Prey quite like the one Kirk and the Enterprise faced down in "Balance of Terror". In the final draft of the script for that episode the ship was described as being similar to the primary (saucer) hull of the Enterprise, but modified. Fanon popularly assumed for a long time that this meant it was about the same size as the Enterprise saucer, maybe slightly larger since it was a single hull design, so around 150m long. The Star Trek Encyclopedia depicts it as even longer, around 190m. And other sizes are offered around too by various sources - the Michael McMaster blueprints from 1977 have it as just 68m long, a size that I always felt might make it just too small to be a credible threat to the Enterprise even with the cloak and the plasma torpedo weapon. But then a lot of the features on the ship (for example the windows, or the promontory on the hull where the cramped bridge is) support that smaller size. The studio model itself was 2.5ft wide, compared with the main studio model for the Enterprise at around 11ft long. Enterprise at 289m length and BoP at ~70m do kind-of work.

When the BoP comes warping in here both ships are flying across the screen at a fair old rate of knots. But it does look a good bit bigger than the La Sirena. Plus, if the 'cockpit'/forward section of Rios' ship is anything to go by I'd put the vessel at being a bit larger than a Starfleet Danube class (the runabout from DS9), which is 23m long according to the DS9 Technical Manual.

88) BoP has got a pair of disruptor cannon by the look of things. Probably a smart move fitting them in place of the powerful-but-slow plasma torpedo.
89) This planetary security grid that they're so concerned about is clearly manned by imperial stormtroopers, because it couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
90) Emergency Tactical Hologram!
91) The cavalry, perhaps? And if you haven't guessed who's piloting that ship, you really ought to have. Especially when Jeri Ryan was named in the opening credits...
92) Bird of Prey, say goodbye to your starboard nacelle as it drifts away from you.
93) Still firing, though. It's only a flesh wound ;) And scoring a bad hit on the other ship.
94) Picard reverting to captain mode there before remembering that it's not his ship :D
95) New ship blowed up good as it smooshes itself against the defence grid. But Raffi is quicker on the transporter. Hello Seven of Nine!
96) "You owe me a ship, Picard." And she faints. So not quite the Seven of Nine from the Voyager days, and not just because she changed her hair. Ah, Jeri Ryan. And her huge...tracts of land ;)
97) Hell of a way to end the episode.
98) "Next time..." Sparks fly as the crew play dress-up, Jurati snarks about it and Seven goes guns akimbo.

Well now.

This is the first episode that gets the whole main cast together at last. And not only that, but it took until the very end of this fourth episode to do so. If I have any serious criticisms about STP so far, one of them is that I can't help but think that these first four episodes could have been done in three without losing anything particularly precious.

Another is the Zhat Vash pairing of Narek and his sister. Narissa Rizzo is a cardboard cutout bad guy from the Mirror Georgiou school of moustache-twirling villainy. Narek is basically a chew toy for her, having accomplished next to bugger all so far apart from sleeping with his 'enemy' and possibly, potentially having "planted a seed". But then Rizzo's list of accomplishments is hardly stellar anyway - and now Picard is in space, on a ship, chasing down the mystery. Nice job fixing it, villain!

So, as I say this is the first episode with the whole band together. First Elnor (who I keep wanting to call Elrond!) played by Ian Nunney as a child and by Evan Evagora 14 years later in-story. As a child he's pretty much exactly as you'd expect a young boy surrounded by women to be - the first man to enter his life he clings to. And so it is with Picard, who reads to him and practices fencing with him. The young Elnor is very clearly enamoured with Picard, and terribly disappointed when the synth attack happens and Picard has to leave. That Picard never came back for him hurt, and continued to hurt as an adult. Evagora's introduction to the episode is a great moment - walking in and looking almost as if in disblief that Picard is standing there. Evagora plays him early on as if he was a sullen teenager, snarking at Picard about how the story told to get someone to bind themselves as a qalankhkai usually is a sad one when Picard opens by telling him about a friend, Data. On Picard's "He died" Elnor immediately changes and you can see that he's really listening to him. He's still angry and bitter about Picard leaving him there, though. When he asks Picard if he ever missed him, you can tell that he's not sure if he believes the answer. The scene ends on him walking away from Picard who at these stage genuinely thinks that that's it, Elnor isn't coming.

Elnor's return to save Picard from the Romulan former senator is handled nicely. He offers the guy a way out, asking him to "choose to live". When the answer is negative, he responds quickly and brutally as befitting a warrior. Picard's response - to apologise to the Romulans for what happened 14 years ago, and back on the La Sirena to quickly chew Elnor out for killing the Romulan is entirely fitting. He establishes the boundaries quickly as well, firmly telling Elnor what the deal is. Evagora plays Elnor there as someone who found out where the line is and is grateful for the lesson.

And right at the end, the pilot of the other fighter craft that came in to help against the Bird of Prey is 'revealed' (in all honesty it was pretty bloody obvious!) to be Seven of Nine. As I noted earlier, this is not Seven as she was on Voyager. And not just because she let her hair grow. You can't really imagine Seven as she was in those Voyager episodes ever cracking wise about being owed a new ship before keeling over. But it's been a looooong time since we last saw her in-universe, around 2378 so 21 years ago. Time enough for her humanity to reassert itself some more.

Alison Pill, Michelle Hurd and Santiago Cabrera continue to impress. Cabrera gets to play another two holograms this time out, first the hospitality one and later one to help out at tactical. I have to admit to being quite in love with this idea that he has holograms for various shipboard functions all physically patterned after himself :) Isa Briones is still great as a young woman trying to figure out what the hell is happening around her. And the supporting cast were good as well, the 'nuns' and the other Romulans down on Vashti. I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to meet Kar Kantar, the warlord whose Bird of Prey got slit up by Rios' ship and Seven's. Maybe the series will revisit him though.

Lots of little Jonathan 'Two Takes' Frakes direction moments throughout. The best one for me being Elnor's arrival when Picard returns to Vashti - the camera lingering on him looking Picard up and down, then pushing on Picard's reaction at seeing the young boy grown up. That was a nice touch.

Overall a very enjoyable episode. Some little issues still to solve - it sort-of felt like the Soji side of the story mostly came to a shuddering halt while they got Elnor into the plot, they really need to close up the distance between the plot strands if they want to keep that from happening. The end of the next episode will mark the halfway point of the season, so my hope is that the crew will be getting close to finding some answers by that point. Otherwise the back half of this season is going to be as rushed as the first half was a slow burner.

***edit***

I'm watching the "Ready Room" recap show now. I turned the first of the STD aftershows off in disgust way back at the start of STD's first season when it turned out to be nothing more than the showrunners gleefully tossing each other off and gushing about how awesome their new show was :rolleyes: Hopefully this isn't like that.
 
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Soldato
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Flashback at the start was a bit long-winded and again they've managed to make a full episode where all that actually happens is essentially one move forward on the board... but sufficiently entertaining to just avoid it testing patience. If it could be binge-watched in one go it'd probably work better but alas, it's a once-a-week jobbie.
 

JRS

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Still with the exposition and setup? We're nearly half way though the series!

With all these people complaining about the weekly release cycle, the trollish part of me has a sneaking hope that this first season doesn't end up resolving everything and we have to wait until the second season for everything to become clear :D
 
Soldato
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With all these people complaining about the weekly release cycle, the trollish part of me has a sneaking hope that this first season doesn't end up resolving everything and we have to wait until the second season for everything to become clear :D

At this rate, it is not going to have time to resolve anything :D
 
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