Star Trek: Picard

Soldato
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Except he didn't watch the half hour or so explaining that the whole God damned thing is purely about saying a proper goodbye to Data! :p

There's some window-dressing, sure. And they tidied another couple of threads while they were at it (Picard's degenerative disease, the nonsense left over from the setting up of the JJTrek universe, etc). But the series isn't really about them - it's about Data wanting to actually live, by dying.

It's a mess. A series called Picard, supposedly staring Picard, where Picard DIES. but it's really about data. Who was dead, then wasn't, but wanted to die again. Presumably with some finality this time. Maybe.
 

JRS

JRS

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Well, Data's storyline has very assuredly run its course. The last remaining threads from "Nemesis" and the setup to JJTrek have been dealt with. Picard no longer has the degenerative brain disorder to look forward to. So now they can go do something different and new.

Don't misunderstand me guys. I'm well aware that this season had issues. It was either four episodes too long or ten too short. It had the same occasional 'we pulled this out of a certain portion of our anatomy' BS from the writing staff that STD massively suffered from. Too many times they resorted to killing a character for shock value which ended up cheapening their sacrifice (Hugh's death was particularly egregious in that regard, at least Maddox dying was vaguely necessary to the plot thread). Most of the bad guys (Oh, Narissa, Narek...) were badly written and not really elevated by their respective actors. The episodes leaned too hard on flashbacks and vast swathes of exposition from characters to explain where the galaxy was. And there wasn't nearly enough of Zhaban, Laris and especially the pitbull.

But it was still better than STD has been so far. A lot better.
 

JRS

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Take out the nostalgia from actors and I completely disagree.

If anything I am annoyed at what they did to Picard.

At least the season didn't end on them handing control of a gigantic bomb to a sworn enemy and trusting it to luck that nothing bad would happen*. Or with an entire starship and crew (including the adopted daughter of one of the Federation's most prominent ambassadors) simply being handwaved out of existence in order to ham-fistedly 'respect' Trek canon.

***edit***

* - that one only turned out okay because the writing staff apparently forgot all about the enormous world-ending bomb in question...
 
Soldato
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Take out the nostalgia from actors and I completely disagree.

If anything I am annoyed at what they did to Picard.

I'm inclined to agree.

It was painful to watch, the Picard of old was wise, confident, authoritative.

The Picard of the the latest series came across as a doddery old man that everyone ignored half the time, which would have been fine given proper context, instead we were to believe he was the hero of some sort of weird action sci-fi despite this.

The nostalgia of seeing some of the old crew was great, but beyond that it was just a mess that didn't know what it wanted to be.
 
Soldato
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The one thing that really disappoints me about all modern Star Trek stuff is the focus on action and explosions, at it's best Star Trek very very rarely resorted to cheap thrills explosions and violence. It relied on a more thinking inclusive approach to space exploration even fights with the classic old enemies like the klingons were few are far between. It just seems over time they have decided that action is the best way to cover up the plot holes and poor writing... I enjoyed picard but the last episode or two were totally meh and felt like some just said ok we need an ending we've got 30 minutes to tie up the loose ends and loads of special effects budget go!
 
Soldato
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It reminded me of cheap imitation programmes which came out around the same time as TNG, like Far Scape or early Babylon 5 (yeah I know that got better). Like someone copied star trek but got much of it wrong.

Farscape was actually really good. Some of the best storylines and characters ever. I won't have you putting Farscape in the same breath as Picard. <stamps feet>
 
Soldato
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It was.

Andromeda on the other hand...which makes it rather worrying that season 3 of STD appears to be trying to emulate it (read: is going to wholesale rip it off) :p

That it the Kurtzman/Abrams way. Maybe they don't want to get sued again, so they will rip off another Roddenberry show. It wasn't a very good one though. I do strongly believe this will be the last series.

I wonder what they will do with Picard, because I was reading something about a film production (can't remember which one, might have been Picard) that couldn't get insurance for their older cast member, especially now with Covid19 about.

Maybe I was thinking of Andromeda lol. I never saw Farscape either though. I think how bad Stargate became when the two main actors from that joined it tainting me against it.

Andromeda was like a kids cartoon gone live action. It was okay in places, but it could never rise above that, and really lost it's way in the last couple of series. Shame, because some of the actors were good, but they didn't have the material to work with. It didn't have many coherent storylines like Stargate did.
 

JRS

JRS

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Yeah, but if they did that kind of thing now reviewers would be up in arms.

"It spoils the pacing, get back to the main story!"
"It's just pandering to fans of the old show!"
"Where's the action?"
"I don't get it because [reasons]."

:rolleyes:;)
 
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