Star Trek: Picard

PlacidCasual said:
I absolutely agree they were defintiely platforms but I don't remember watching them as a kid in the 80's and thinking someone was trying to pour their political beliefs down my throat.
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I dunno man...early TNG was very preachy!

PlacidCasual said:
Also they were presented as a reflection of politics in often good sci-fi form. Modern Trek TV seems a lot more judgemental with it's politics in that regard. It doesn't show that we have move beyond these things and the future is better, apparently we're still struggling with early 21st problems and hiding how horrible we are.
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I think that Nick Meyer had it right when he said that all works are a part of their time. And we're in incredibly cynical, angry, bitter times right now - mostly at, and due to, media and politics. So politicians don't come out well in STP (Clancy, the Federation leadership), and neither do news media personalities (the one that gets shredded by Picard in the first episode). The people who do come out better are the Picards and Rikers and Hughs and Sevens of the universe - people who will take a stand for the values that the Federation was created to uphold.

In-universe it's ~30 years past TNG. 20 years past the (chronologically) last film. The Federation has been through a lot since TNG. Plus, we're also not seeing it from the 'enlightened' perspective of a Starfleet ship and crew. Does it not make sense that things would be a little less neat 'n tidy?
 
I don't have a problem with a "message" as long as its not clearly all the episode is about, where characters and everything just points at that "message" rather than actual things the characters would do or say as part of their established character and its all about pushing the "message" in an obvious, out of place unnatural way..
 
I think if everyone is at least vaguely honest, the show lands between either of these viewpoints:

Allnamestaken said:
This show is just utter trash, the whole season felt like a glorified quest to pick up your team mates in a game lmao.

It was just **** poor and the acting was horrific.
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jonneymendoza said:
it was amazing. better than many trash tv series .

One of the best and better than the captain kirk reboot. that was shockingly bad
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It wasn't actually perfect. It wasn't actually trash. It was a season of television that needed a few ounces more thought regarding tone, execution and plotting.

I was pondering on this last night with some mates over WhatsApp, and we reckoned that the 4th film was what they probably should have tried to emulate. Not the comedic tone of that film necessarily, but that there wasn't really a bad guy in it (beyond humanity as a whole for allowing humpback whales to be hunted to extinction). Trek has proved pretty much since Star Trek: First Contact that bad guys are hard to write well - the Son'a in Insurrection didn't really work, Shinzon was a whiny little *****, Nero was pretty underbaked, NotQuiteKhan and Edison a criminal waste of their respective actors (Benedict Cumberbatch and Idris Elba) and the less said the better about every bad guy in STD so far.

A Picard series without a defined bad guy character could have been really good. Let's say the Hobus supernova happens (it has to anyway to set up the JJTrek 'verse), the rescue mission fails due to sabotage by the Zhat Vash, the Romulan empire gets decimated. Starfleet knows that the Zhat Vash did it but can't prove that to the Federation because [reasons]. What's left of the Romulan culture is bitter at Federation reliance on synthetics, feeling that this is what doomed them. Other races in the Federation feel the same way. The Vulcans take in the remaining Romulans and announce their secession from the Federation if synthetics aren't at least temporarily banned. The Federation bows to the pressure.

Synthetics are shut down but some turn out to be more advanced, go on the run and are hunted - the Federation has the Fenris Rangers do the job as they want to keep Starfleet's hands clean. One of these advanced synthetics is Soji, who goes to a retired, ailing and deeply bored Picard for help, revealing her connection to Data. Picard assembles his off-the-books crew who all have links to the incident (told in flashback) and are invested in finding out what happened. After a series of adventures, including one where Seven (who has been pursuing them) has a change of heart brought on by a Picard Speech™, they find the planet where Maddox created Soji and her ilk. Data's consciousness is there along with the proof regarding the Zhat Vash interference. Picard gets his goodbye with Data, takes the evidence and presents it to the Federation Council, synthetics get to live and the Federation comes out stronger. The strain of the adventures accelerates Picard's decline but a cure is found within the synthetic brain of Soji-type androids.

Maybe I'll write it as fanfic one day :D
 
JRS said:
It wasn't actually perfect. It wasn't actually trash. It was a season of television that needed a few ounces more thought regarding tone, execution and plotting.
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I think part of the problem is its obviously low budget by modern standards, that and the throwing in of too many unnecessary characters elf boy for one, but I think I read its been green lighted for a season two and apart from the first all trek franchises the initial season is the poorest, guess the real question is how long Patrick Stewart can hold up he's looking rather frail these days.
 
I felt the last couple of episodes were a rush to wrap it up in case there was no 2nd series. I thought it was ok other than that.

I think it would have better without Picard the plot struggled to keep him relevant.
 
It was so bad

I got to the 7 of 9 episode.. Obviously.. But couldn't take anymore

Off out didn't have the trek name I'd have lasted 2 episodes

Trash.
 
JRS said:
It has always been a platform. Right from the days of TOS and Gene using fistfights, rayguns and incredibly short skirts to disguise the liberal humanist thoughts he was getting onto TV screens - anti-war messages ("A Taste of Armageddon"), anti-racism messages ("Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"), musings on the replacement of man by machines ("The Ultimate Computer"), finding common ground with an enemy ("Day of the Dove"), anti-slavery messages ("The Gamesters of Triskelion")...

Which message in STP is it that you object to?
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Previously they were general principles no? A utopia of sorts. This series felt it was more of straight copy of current trending social media issues.

Was watching Back to the Future and one Jarring moment was the simulacrum of Reagan and Iranian Leader insisting McFly try the hostage special. It's just too much politics shoved down your throat.
 
OspreyO said:
Previously they were general principles no? A utopia of sorts. This series felt it was more of straight copy of current trending social media issues.
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You're not going to tell me that, for instance, anti-war thoughts weren't straight up what was being debated in American society during the original run of TOS :p I mean, there was this minor fracas going on at the time in Vietnam, perhaps you've heard about it?

Like I said in another thread:

JRS said:
Normal for the US at the time was the pointlessness in Vietnam raging on, an all-conquering fear of communism (that one hasn't changed much...), a fledgling space program that had killed three astronauts in 1967 and reminded everyone that just getting into space was dangerous let alone wombling around up there, and social unrest. 1968 in particular was a deeply unsettled time - anti-war and civil rights protests, the assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King, the Pueblo incident, some of the worst battles of the Vietnam war, Nixon being elected ;):p). And in the midst of all that, here's this TV show that says "we're going to survive all this and go out into the stars to make friends with people who are different to us".

The utopia thing is something that really came in with early TNG. TOS was more about fistfights, rayguns and short skirts to divert the attention of the Standards & Practices department and allow Gene to express the occasional liberal thought (stuff like "hey, maybe we shouldn't have wars", anathema at a time when the US was having their little adventure in Vietnam).
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JRS said:
You're not going to tell me that, for instance, anti-war thoughts weren't straight up what was being debated in American society during the original run of TOS :p I mean, there was this minor fracas going on at the time in Vietnam, perhaps you've heard about it?

Like I said in another thread:
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Tbh I've never watched much of the original series. Never liked it. But anti war themes are a common trope in ScFi and fantasy genres. How many have a theme of future society having eliminated all these things.

Also when I watched it 70s-80s there was always a war going on, arms race, fear of nuclear war, that's the context for me.

So you are right it that it referencing the conflicts of it's time. But I just think it was more generic than Picard. Maybe I'm wrong.

I enjoyed Picard, but the whole media stuff for me was just background noise to the main plot. I thought the whole thing was lightweight and not the greatest writing either. But I wasn't getting hung up in it.
 
While I'm warming to the topic - what was the sixth movie about if it wasn't a combination of Chernobyl and the fall of the Berlin Wall? Absolutely nothing generic about it, the explosion of Praxis ("their key energy production facility" as Sulu noted) was a direct analogue to the Chernobyl power plant going critical, and they even named the Klingon leader Gorkon as a reference to Gorbachev! Gorkon's assassination was a reference to Anwar Sadat (third president of Egypt until he was killed by fundamentalist army officers).

You may not agree with the topics and thoughts that the writers are drawing inspiration from this time, but don't try and claim that it's anything new because it's been happening in Trek right from the original series :)
 
JRS said:
And bore everyone on here more than I already do?

Don't tempt me :p

***edit***

4th movie is all about the environmental movement ;)
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Well its a discussion forum, anyone bored doesn't have to read it.

I'd be curious is there always some social commentary on current issues.
Or is it just these are just common themes in all movies and series.

Even the AI aspects, were very general. They could have brought in about voting, and bots, and people out of work due to AI etc.
 
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