Star Trek: Picard (CBS All-Access)

[sh9000]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Tonight on See? BS All Access... what we fondly hope will be the series finale of Star Trek: Picard, the Star Trek show so bad even Star Trek: Discovery fans can't stand watching it.

At the very least, I can rest somewhat easy after tonight knowing that the series has flown into the ground so hard that Star Wars writers will use it as inspiration for their next lightspeed ramming attack sequence.

 

The Good... haha like there's any of THAT to be had here.

Spoiler

At least it's over now... watching this show has been like passing a golf ball-sized kidney stone wrapped in barbed wire.  Truly an unpleasant experience to even contemplate, but assuredly even worse to actually undertake.  

One good thing came of it.  We now have a perfect litmus test for trolls.  Anyone who attempts to seriously defend this trainwreck MUST be taking the piss.  There's no other rational explanation, unless the dimension of the Cenobites has internet service (and if they do, it's probably AT&T U-Verse so they're streaming this in 320p).

 

The Bad... and getting worse all the time.

Spoiler

We open with a recap of the Star Trek: Picard series thus far... and boy are its flaws even more obvious in digest form.  Writing-wise, this is right down there with 11:59, Tuvix, or Code of Honor.  The sad part is, Star Trek's creators and actors realize those episodes were turds.  Patrick Stewart is PROUD of this skidmark he's left on the franchise in his own quest for self-aggrandisement and in the name of his personal politics.  He should perhaps consider sticking to more laudable pursuits like his pitbull rescue or philanthropy.

There's a beautiful shot of coastline at sunset that is completely ruined by a lovingly shaded view of the kind of terrible CG model of The Artifact.  It doesn't really look like it's a Borg cube when you get a good look at it, the surface texture is all wrong.  This looks more like a brutalist-style apartment building someone's covered every square inch of in rusty automotive radiators.  It's kind of sad, because some VFX artist clearly put a LOT of love and effort into the shading here but the CG model looks awful.

Also... how is The Artifact just kind of sitting in the ocean a few feet from the beach?  This thing fell from freaking orbit, it should be in the middle of an impact crater.

When DiscountSpock enters the cube through the hull breach(?) that's acting as a door, the interior looks just as cheap and poorly made as ever.  Like, if this show weren't so damned serious about itself it'd be excusable cheap set design... but some parts of this set are visibly just rumpled-up cardboard boxes spraypainted black or silver.

Our wonderfully insensitive RomuLegolas innocently suggests that the Ex-Borg should just kill themselves because the have no home and don't belong anywhere.  Beautiful.  I think I saw Jeri Ryan visibly gag a little as she delivered Seven's rebuttal, contemplating suicide-by-phaser.  The camera pans past them and a really bad CG something or other lit all in green to DiscountSpock sneaking around even though literally nobody is paying a blind bit of notice, only for his creepy sister to sneak up on him and put a knife to his throat... then hug him.  In a desperate attempt to be edgy, she asks if he's f*cked any of the androids and he plays along with the terrible attempt at edginess.  He confirms he did kill one android while escaping, and his sister smilingly invites him to see her totally obvious "hiding place".  

We get to watch Patrick Stewart interact with a badly CG'd butterfly in a sequence that looks like it was shot for an old 3D movie.

Miss Generic 2399 comes to give Jean-Luc Picard another The Reason You Suck speech about how he's trying to run everybody's lives, and while she's at it immediately echoes the bigotry evident in the obvious villain model Sutra.  Despite her having a pretty damned good point, Picard essentially dismisses the fact that their very existence is illegal in the Federation, that they're not welcome in the Klingon Empire, that the Romulans want to exterminate them, and any other major power would do nothing to protect them or exploit/destroy them itself by claiming their statement that they have no choice in life is a failure of imagination.  This comes off as a particularly tone-deaf bit of writing from a very sheltered actor, since it's basically the same sentiment as a rich person telling a homeless person "just stop being poor".

DiscountSpock is seen packing a duffel bag full of grenades with a goal of blowing up the flowers that were used to down the La Sirena and The Artifact, presumably to protect the Romulan invasion fleet, and in the process of his little motive rant we learn he's a Zhat Vash washout and the family black sheep.  Ironically, given that the androids are now actively attempting to commit a galaxy-wide genocide via proxy, DiscountSpock and his sister are now arguably the heroes of the story despite also being genocidal bigots who at least have a VERY good reason for being so.  The story indicates The Admonition was a warning TO androids about organic bigotry but in truth the Romulans weren't actually wrong... the Admonition was a warning that androids wouldn't hesitate to commit a genocide.

We get some incredibly forced conviviality between SpaceDruggie and Captain Ricky Spanish about the magic tool they were given by an android, as they attempt to repair his ship's warp reactor.  Admittedly, the technobabble is actually wrong... if the intermix chamber were compromised, that would mean the matter-antimatter reaction was now not enclosed by the warp core.  That's called a warp core breach, and that makes ships explode rather violently because antimatter is dangerous go juice.

THE CHEAP LIGHTNING EFFECT FROM TNG SEASON ONE IS BACK!  The magic tool just sprouts a bunch of spindly little spider legs that shoot lightning.

Dr. Soong and Dr. Obnoxious have a brief conversation about how they don't have much time to study Dr. Maddox's work on mind transfer, and he makes some rather cold remarks about what an amazing act of self-sacrifice it is on her part to die for his androids... presumably while he moves on to inhabit the golem.  Dr. Obnoxious apparently is planning to betray the androids after all and since genocide seems to be the theme this week probably intends to do something to kill them all.

DiscountSpock gets Ricky Spanish's attention by... throwing rocks at his ship, and fairly mentioning after being called on it that if he were really out to do them harm he would have used the very powerful molecular dispersion grenades he's carrying instead of throwing rocks.  He makes a bid to recruit them in his plan to sabotage the defenses the androids are mustering against the Romulan fleet.  Their meeting, where DiscountSpock is being the very model of civility and actually Explaining Things Properly is interrupted by RomuLegolas showing up and threatening him, to which he immediately and sensibly responds that he's prefer to live, thanks.

Dr. Soong and Dr. Obnoxious meet again, while Soong is extracting the dead android's memories as a memento for her sister... and doesn't seem to think anything of the fact that 1. an android was somehow killed by a very shallow stab wound to the eye and 2. that the memory files themselves were somehow corrupted.. by a very shallow stab with an ornamental brooch.  Dr. Obnoxious comes to telegraph that she's up to no good, asking him to help decrypt some files on Maddox's computer.  She does something rather squishy sounding to the "corpse"and apologizes?  The whole thing is just badly-acted... it's like watching a veteran actor slum with a high school drama club.

Why are they having a campfire... in the the completely operational La Sirena which has a fully functional mess with replicators?

Wait, what?  Did the writers of Star Trek: Picard do such a cr*p job they literally forgot what Romulans are?  DiscountSpock claims the legend of the Romulan apocalypse dates back to before their ancestors arrived on Vulcan.  It's the other way around, guys... the Romulans are Vulcans who emigrated from their planet after losing a nuclear world war there and migrated to a new star system to start over.  Did they forget what planet this guy was even from?  Talk about sloppy.  The rest of his story can best be summed up in the phrase "Doom Eternal becomes a documentary".  He apparently believes the Romulan apocalypse myth is history, not myth, and that history is repeating itself.  

The Romulan warbird design for this series ain't great.  I can't get past the way it looks like a xenomorph skull with a visor on the front.  I see the Romulans are still real big on pleather though.  Not oil-on-water iridescent rainbow pleather this time, though.  They apparently lack Praetor Shinzon's fondness for looking like a reject from a BDSM club or a Hellraiser movie.  I am oddly amused that their uniforms have big shoulder pads still.  Garak was right, the Romulan Tal Shiar really are in dire need of a good tailor.

How the hell did Doctor Obnoxious remove an (apparently organic) eyeball from an android completely intact?  That's one dark borrowed biometric key.  She uses it to break into Picard's room, and Picard seemingly gives no f*cks.  He literally doesn't even question how she's in his (formerly Maddox's) room.

Meanwhile, Dr. Soong is finishing preparing his golem and the visual memory download from the dead android coincidentally finishes at the same time... which clearly shows that DiscountSpock did not kill anyone, Miss Generic Evil Ver. did.  Dr. Soong somehow drops in on the team trying to sneak up on and destroy the transmitter without being seen or heard by an actual secret agent, two former Starfleet officers, and a Romulan ninja.  I have to conclude that everyone on this show is an idiot.

The way the scene on La Sirena is shot, it really draws a line under what a bad idea this holographic UI design is.  By just projecting translucent holograms into the air, you're essentially at the mercy of any kind of glare from other light sources... worse even than a conventional computer monitor.  The light coming in through La Sirena's windscreen is bright enough to wash out the orange holograms almost completely.  Dr. Obnoxious straight-up calls Picard on the idea that protecting the androids literally means that they're now free to call up the ancient androids who will commit a galaxy-wide genocide utterly unimpeded.  Picard throws a temper tantrum and then launches on another cliche and stilted speech.  He jumps in the pilot's seat and launches La Sirena... apparently to attempt to stall the Romulan fleet with one beat-up freighter. 

Dr. Soong does the stupidest possible thing.  Instead of showing everyone the recording of Miss Generic Gold Edition murdering a fellow android to frame DiscountSpock for the crime and justify a galactic genocide, he tries to confront her with it on his own.  I'd say he's too dumb to live, but apparently this version thought to bring a stungun that can incapacitate androids with him and knocks her out before she can threaten him.  

Dr. Obnoxious literally breaks the fourth wall to ask if Picard is trying to build suspense or just doesn't know WTF it's doing.  Good for her, but it's a bit late for the show to be self-aware.  She's come over a bit sarcastic about the whole affair, which is surprisingly welcome but also too little too late.

The writers really can't seem to decide if androids have super strength or not.  On the one hand, they seem to die hilariously easily to a poke in the eye with a ceramic bird and we see them getting beat up by ordinary people.  On the other, mere seconds later we see Miss Generic limp-arm throw a bomb into hundreds of yards into the air with all the physical exertion one would expect from a toddler throwing a ball two or three feet.  It makes the whole fight scene look simply ridiculous... like did you all forget that you had superpowers?  

Seven interrupts DiscountSpock's sister as she attempts to use The Artifact's weapons to shoot La Sirena down,  Seven disarms her, and they have the apparently obligatory chick fight involving an evil girl in tight leather pants improbably doing totally out of place kung fu against someone who seems to be superhumanly durable all the sudden for no clear reason.  

Sci-fi writers have no sense of scale.  These Romulan ships are visibly VERY small by Star Trek standards... maybe a hundred meters or so end to end... yet despite being in a high orbit they're somehow clearly visible from the ground to the extent that their shapes are discernable.  How?  Unless this planet's atmosphere is only a few thousand meters tall, those ships shouldn't be visible at all.

Seven wins the totally gratuitous and unnecessary chick fight by kicking DiscountSpock's sister over one of those No OHSA Compliance railing-less balconies that seem to be everywhere on Borg ships.  

All in all, we get a rather boring space fight scene where the Romulans lose a few ships shooting down the orchids, but it's mostly a static shot of Romulan ships shooting the nearly-motionless orchids.  They literally break the drama of the scene for the sake of an in-joke about the Picard Maneuver, saying if he can find a way out of this one they'll name it after him.  It's INCREDIBLY forced.  This show is clearly desperate for fan approval, like the metaphorical red-headed stepchild it is.  Picard takes time out in the middle of a shooting war to call Miss Generic and beg her not to do the thing.  He announces his intention to die for them.  

The Romulans sterilize planets so often they have multiple strategies to do it?

I think the writers forgot that every shot that misses La Sirena or one of the holograms of it is going to hit the planet anyway... because they really seem to think that having the Romulans shoot at La Sirena and its fleet of fakes is somehow protecting the planet.  The misses are still going to hit the bloody planet.  He fails to distract the Romulans more than a minute or two, and Miss Generic predictably activates the beacon anyway, dooming all sentient life to extinction.

Starfleet shows up just in time to maybe stop the Romulans from destroying the planet... but oh god the CG models for these ships look like CR*P!  It's like they weren't even trying.  Like, you literally had a dozens of art assets leftover from the TNG movies that would look fine... but instead, we get what looks like ship designs from an early 2000s computer game.  I think these might actually BE ships from a PC game like Star Trek Online.  The best part of this cheap scene is that it's INCREDIBLY obvious that they used maybe two or three CG models and just copy-pasted them relentlessly to make the fleet.  There's a shot from behind the arriving fleet where every single ship in the shot is obviously the exact same CG model.  The worst part?  Acting Captain Will RIker to the rescue!  He looks simply awful in a poorly tailored costume commanding the USS Zheng He.  He claims it's the toughest, fastest, most powerful ship Starfleet ever put into service in a bit of dialog that definitely sounded a lot cooler in the writer's head.  He then announces nothing would make him happier than an excuse to start a shooting war?  WTH?

Just as things are getting dramatic, Picard decides now is the time to start dying of whatever syndrome.  Dr. Obnoxious seems to have forgotten the ship has a freaking EMH, and starts scanning Picard with an old medical tricorder instead.

Picard gives another one of his pleading, manipulative speeches while trying to persuade Miss Generic to shut down the beacon... and just as the obviously sinister but generic looking glowing red robot tentacles start coming through the portal, she "destroys the beacon" by... tapping a console with her fist?  I mean, she didn't destroy the beacon at all she just punched a computer lightly.  But whatever, the Romulans decide to back off.  Kind of takes the idea that the original characters matter and scatters it to the winds, since the Big Damn Heroes moments were all had by characters from previous Star Trek shows... Picard, Riker, and Seven of Nine.

oh no, Picard's space tinnitus starts acting up and he falls over... leading to him repeating the same dreams he had in the very first episode.  They seem to keep forgetting that Dr. Obnoxious isn't a MD, she's a PhD.  Miss Generic beams them down, so Picard can die on the ground or something?  There's sixteen minutes left of this episode, and there seems to be no story left.  Patrick Stewart really hams it up with this death scene... and with 16 minutes left on the clock, Jean-Luc Picard appears to be dead.

There's a very boring attempt by Seven and Ricky Spanish to commiserate over how awful their lives are and how sad they are that the creepy, grouchy, manipulative old man who was central to the plot died.  Other characters pair up and attempt to have quiet drama scenes that are equally uninteresting because these underdeveloped characters didn't have anything to do with the actual story.  We don't care who these people are or what they're about, they aren't characters they're background decoration.

Picard shows up in... Chateau Picard, but everything's been spraypainted navy blue?  Data shows up, and informs Picard it's not a dream it's a massively complex quantum simulation (why?).  Data asks why he's wearing the clothes he died in, and confirms Picard died.  The afterlife as a navy blue sitting room is kind of an unimaginative idea.  Data insists he doesn't remember dying.  They double down on the idea that somehow all of Data's memories were stored in a single positronic neuron, even though we know that that's not how (or where) Data's brain stored memories.  The dialog gets REALLY awkward, then Data reveals that Picard is both dead and not dead, since his mind was scanned into the "golem" that Soong built.  Data then asks Picard to kill him, or rather this instance of him that Dr. Soong created from his stored memories.  

And now Android!Picard wakes up in the lab.  Like, why make him spend eternity as an old man?  They confirm his new body has no superpowers, and that he isn't immortal or anything like that.  He'll live for the same number of years he would've lived without irumodic syndrome.  

Data lies down on the sofa in his imaginary quarters and Picard shuts down the computer running the recreation of Data's mind, so we have to watch Data slowly die inside of the simulation.  

The Federation apparently revoked the ban on synthetic life offscreen and it's mentioned only in passing... and the series ends with everyone on the bridge of La Sirena as it warps out of the system.

 

The Ugly... facing the reality that Star Trek is very dead, and its corpse is being puppeted by someone's bad Mass Effect fanfic.

Spoiler

Now THAT'S just insulting... the first few seconds of the video are an advertisement for the 3rd and hopefully final season of Star Trek: Discovery, showing that sh*tstain Michael Burnham standing next to and holding a tattered Federation flag as if she had any right to be anywhere near the damned thing as the single most evil human character in all of the Star Trek franchise.  Yes, she is WORSE THAN KHAN.  Even Khan managed some moral consistency... she's a racist, sexist, bigot who wears her bigotry like a goddamn medal.

This series is surprisingly inconsistent even with its own terrible plot devices.  They pursue this whole thing on the assumption that Data's two "daughters" are precious, unique constructs that must be protected... and we find out nothing couple be further from the truth.  They're disposable agents sent into the Federation to spy and nobody seems to give a damn that one was killed.

It's actually kind of horrible how often this show's main character is at odds with his own purported message... Patrick Stewart made this his personal soapbox to protest Brexit, isolationism, and nationalism and yet he's echoing the same clueless sentiments that the very same people who pushed for those things do.  We literally have to watch him try to argue that it's the androids own fault they're persecuted by every major galactic power, because of their "lack of imagination" regarding their situation.  The Romulan fleet headed to destroy their planet doesn't seem particularly like a failure of imagination, more like actual violent racial discrimination they did nothing to encourage or incite.

 

 

Well, that was AWFUL.  Please, Amazon... don't renew this one.  Let it die.  Kill it if you have to.  No Star Trek fan wants more of this.

[Bolt]

Wow. You really hated it ,my friend..and after reading all that , i do too.

I'm morbidly curious, but it's just not a priority to watch. As much as i loved the TNG and Picard back in the day. When was the last time we saw a good Star Trek story..?

Edited March 27, 2020 by Bolt

[Atheonyirh]

The number of people in this thread that seem to be hatewatching is kind of weird, honestly. If you have this much contempt for the show just turn it off. Discovery turned into something decent, Picard was decent even if not amazing, and there's like 3 more shows coming on top of, what, 28 seasons of existing Star Trek to watch beyond that and 10 movies?

[JB0]

10 minutes ago, Atheonyirh said:

10 movies?

Thirteen. Or do we not speak of the parallel universe?

[Atheonyirh]

Just now, JB0 said:

Thirteen. Or do we not speak of the parallel universe?

Oh, right. No, I just legit forgot about 'em in the moment. And I actually like those, aside Into Darkness screwing itself over by pandering so hard to WoK fans. But, well, the sort of people that are hating on Discovery and Picard are the sort that aren't going to like the Kelvin Universe movies anyways.

[tekering]

4 minutes ago, Atheonyirh said:

If you have this much contempt for the show just turn it off.

Ah, that's no fun.  Criticizing Star Trek is the primary motivation for watching it, and has been since its heyday.  Even as a teenager, my friends and I bitched and whined about every new episode of The Next Generation, because we cared.  It's only fans dedicated enough to nitpick every flaw that are truly appreciating the show.

Casual viewers like you are understandably confused by our vitriol, I'm sure.  

42 minutes ago, Bolt said:

When was the last time we saw a good Star Trek story..?

Enterprise was cancelled before it finally found its feet, but much of Season 4 was good.

3 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Thirteen. Or do we not speak of the parallel universe?

We do not.

1 minute ago, Atheonyirh said:

But, well, the sort of people that are hating on Discovery and Picard are the sort that aren't going to like the Kelvin Universe movies anyways.

Precisely.  Star Trek fandom is no longer enough to sustain a Star Trek series, so they've adapted to service a more mainstream audience... and failed to satisfy either group, it would seem.  

[Bolt]

Such is life everyone's entitled to an opinion in my world. Even if they're wrong.

[Seto Kaiba]

18 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Wow. You really hated it ,my friend..and after reading all that , i do too.

Yeah... to say that it was not an enjoyable viewing experience would be putting it mildly.

To be frank, the main problem with Star Trek: Picard is that it isn't a Star Trek story.

It would probably have been a much better series if they took the Star Trek elements out of it, to be honest.  The execution reminds me a lot of Ridley Scott's Prometheus.  One of those occasions where a creator pitched an original science fiction story and was told that it wasn't good enough or interesting enough to be a success, but instead of polishing the concept a bit more they just pitched the same story again almost unaltered under the name of an established sci-fi franchise in the hope that sequel power would cover its deficiencies as a stand-alone work.  It's not like Star Trek is the only property where Patrick Stewart plays a crotchety, manipulative old man on the verge of death (see Logan).

They need to stop doubling down on J.J. Abrams's mistake.  Let Star Trek be Star Trek, a vision of a brighter and more hopeful future for humanity, and let the dystopian sci-fi be its own thing.  Each have their own merits, but all you get for trying to mix oil and water is a mess and possibly a bill from the EPA if you do it on a big enough scale.  Abrams's soft reboot, with its action-centric dystopian future, produced a few serviceable but ultimately forgettable popcorn flicks that barely broken even at best and at worst lost millions at the box office.  Star Trek: Discovery copied those same mistakes, and while it briefly scored some points with the Twitter and Reddit SJW crowd for crowing about its diversity it was so poorly received that the network had to do a major rework of the series after season one, season two was carried mostly by a pre-existing character (Pike) and ending with the TV series being thrown out of the Star Trek setting entirely and an in-universe promise that we never speak of this again on pain of death, and the sponsors and licensees were so very unhappy with it that the network had to threaten to sue its own sponsor in order to secure greatly reduced funding for the third and possibly final season.  Now we've got Picard, a poorly-paced, wandering mess of a series that seems to have undergone a similar rework to Discovery's... but in the middle of production, forcing the original characters that were meant to carry the series into the background in favor of increasing the importance of legacy characters the audience might actually like and then restoring the setting's optimism retroactively and offscreen in the literal last minute of the final episode in a desperate author's saving throw.

Like, it's nice that Picard's writers seem to realize the magnitude of their error at the last minute and tried to end on a proper Star Trek note... but it's so much of an afterthought it doesn't do much to fix the rest of the show.  If they'd done this a few episodes in, when it became apparent the Romulans were behind everything, it'd have worked a lot better... especially if it got more attention instead of coming out of basically nowhere.  "Oh by the way, remember that policy that was central to our entire plot?  Yeah, we reversed that but it wasn't worth mentioning until ten seconds before the credits roll."

 

 

18 minutes ago, Bolt said:

I'm morbidly curious, but it's just not a priority to watch. As much as i loved the TNG and Picard back in the day. When was the last time we saw a good Star Trek story..?

IMO, Star Trek: Enterprise season 4.  

Thanks to executive meddling, it took some time for Star Trek: Enterprise to find its feet and start feeling like a proper Star Trek show again after they tried to action-ize seasons 2 and 3 with the nonsensical Temporal Cold War schtick.  Season 4 had a lot of promise, but unfortunately general audiences were burned out on Trek after fifteen years of continuous episodes and the less-than-stellar writing of seasons 2 and 3, so the show never got to build on that promise in season 5.  The unproduced stories for season 5 contained some interesting ideas, a few really terribly cringeworthy ones, and a few that could honestly have gone either way.

Some of the stuff that was planned for season 5 and 6 went into the Star Trek: Enterprise relaunch novels, and were actually quite enjoyable reads.

[Mog]

5 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

IMO, Star Trek: Enterprise season 4.  

Thanks to executive meddling, it took some time for Star Trek: Enterprise to find its feet and start feeling like a proper Star Trek show again after they tried to action-ize seasons 2 and 3 with the nonsensical Temporal Cold War schtick.  Season 4 had a lot of promise, but unfortunately general audiences were burned out on Trek after fifteen years of continuous episodes and the less-than-stellar writing of seasons 2 and 3, so the show never got to build on that promise in season 5. 

It didn't help that Berman tried to sell the Season 3 Xindi arc as the first time Trek would do continuous story arcs.

Umm. . . DS9 had ALREADY done that MULTIPLE times years before.

[Seto Kaiba]

43 minutes ago, tekering said:

Precisely.  Star Trek fandom is no longer enough to sustain a Star Trek series, so they've adapted to service a more mainstream audience... and failed to satisfy either group, it would seem.  

Are we sure about that?  Most of Star Trek's woes from the J.J. Abrams soft reboot on stem from those new Star Trek developments being unable to sustain themselves with just casual viewers. 

The Abrams TOS soft reboot movies eventually tanked at the box office because they just didn't make any impression or create new fans, and both Star Trek: Discovery and Picard have found themselves facing slashed budgets and the prospect of imminent cancellation because the fans don't like them and they're not generating merchandising revenue because Star Trek's merchandising partners correctly predicted the fans wouldn't like them and didn't bother licensing them.

They've tried mocking the fans (Discovery S1) and largely ignoring the fans (Discovery S2 and Picard) aside from in-jokes, references, and cameos... but they haven't really tried making something that actually appeals to the fans yet.  The fans are voting with their wallets, and Star Trek is on the brink of going under because of it.

 

[Lolicon]

Like Star Wars, most of Star Trek is also not that great, aside from the outlier that is DS9.

Picard falls squarely into the middle "meh" part of the Trek bell curve, elevated a bit by Stewart and Spiner's performances (as Data, not the other dude).

[Atheonyirh]

DS9 best Trek crew representing. I'd go so far as to call it the most consistently well written, possibly the only consistently well written, series of the entire franchise.

[Lolicon]

Here's how I view Star Trek as a whole.

TOS: A couple of good episodes, but otherwise mostly crap.

TNG: Seasons 3, 4, and 5 were the peak of the show, but the cracks were showing by season 5, and 6 and 7 are a lot of garbage with an occasional good episode.

DS9: Slow start like all Trek series, but once it picks up steam it becomes by far the best and most consistently well-written Trek show.

Voyager: Mostly garbage. Seven is one of the most interesting characters in the show, but marred by that stupid catsuit. And her under-utilization in Picard was borderline criminal.

Enterprise: Almost entirely garbage, but it did finally start to get interesting in season 4... then they pulled the plug.

Movies: Only 2, 4, 6, and 8 are good. I also really like 5 and Nemesis, but in a "they're so bad they're good" kind of way. 

Star Trek II is still the best movie. Why was it great? Because they wisely chose to ignore Gene Roddenberry.

TMP and Into Darkness are the worst and I honestly can't decide which one is the crappier movie.

TMP is what happens when you let a self-deluded egomaniac take the reins.

[tekering]

43 minutes ago, Lolicon said:

TMP and Into Darkness are the worst and I honestly can't decide which one is the crappier movie.

Well, if you thought TOS was "mostly crap," I'm certainly not going to change your mind about TMP.  

But consider the thematic concepts, the ingenious visual effects work, and the soaring Jerry Goldsmith score...

Now compare the themes, visuals, and music from Into Darkness... and remember how it treated the legacy of Star Trek II.

You'll soon realize which one is the crappier movie.

44 minutes ago, Lolicon said:

TMP is what happens when you let a self-deluded egomaniac take the reins.

I thought that was Star Trek V.  

[Lolicon]

1 hour ago, tekering said:

Well, if you thought TOS was "mostly crap," I'm certainly not going to change your mind about TMP.  

But consider the thematic concepts, the ingenious visual effects work, and the soaring Jerry Goldsmith score...

Now compare the themes, visuals, and music from Into Darkness... and remember how it treated the legacy of Star Trek II.

You'll soon realize which one is the crappier movie.

I thought that was Star Trek V.  

TMP is an unwatchable movie just like Into Darkness. It doesn't matter how great the individual parts are if the whole is garbage.

You can have the finest ingredients available to you, but if you're a crappy chef, you're still going to get an inedible mess.

[Dynaman]

TMP - The signs of what could have been a great movie are there but it fell flat on its face so I have to disagree with it being the worst.  I often read with it on in the background - granted that is not a ringing endorsement.  The true atrocities of the Trek movie world are STV and Nemesis.  I do not find Into Darkness as bad as those two.  A couple minor alterations could have made it a much better film, those being no Khan (saying it was Khan made no real difference to the character) and getting rid of Spock's "Khan!" moment.

[sh9000]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Like Star Wars, most of Star Trek is also not that great, aside from the outlier that is DS9.

Star Trek's various shows are products of the times in which they were made, and most if not all were considered great.

Some of the content, understandably, did not age well... or was freaking terrible to begin with like "Code of Honor", "11:59", "Tuvix", or that one episode of TOS with the space hippies.

DS9 as the high-quality outlier... that's an unpopular opinion in the Trek fanbase.  One I share, mind you, but an unpopular one nevertheless.

 

4 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Picard falls squarely into the middle "meh" part of the Trek bell curve, elevated a bit by Stewart and Spiner's performances (as Data, not the other dude).

I'd put it a good deal lower, mostly on the basis of the writing.  The actors are clearly doing their best with what they've been given, but as the saying goes "garbage in, garbage out", and there are a bunch of moments where the Star Trek veterans are clearly having the Ford reaction "You can write this stuff, but you can't say it".

 

4 hours ago, Atheonyirh said:

DS9 best Trek crew representing. I'd go so far as to call it the most consistently well written, possibly the only consistently well written, series of the entire franchise.

Also the most realistic cast... a bunch of eccentric weirdos on a space station in the middle of nowhere who were very humanly flawed.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Lolicon said:

TMP is an unwatchable movie just like Into Darkness. It doesn't matter how great the individual parts are if the whole is garbage.

I won't deny it, Star Trek: the Motion Picture is an editorial disasterpiece... it's too glacially slow to be enjoyable even as high-concept sci-fi thanks to the film's obsession with its own VFX.  TBH, I might actually rank TMP below Into Darkness on that front.  Into Darkness was crap, but it was at least a serviceable popcorn flick.  

[pengbuzz]

And with this... I declare Star Trek deader than dead.

Congratulations CBS/ Amazon/ Paramount... you managed to do what no alien of the week ever could. Just let Trek molder in it's grave, TYVM. And do the world a favor: join it.

[Bolt]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Star Trek's various shows are products of the times in which they were made, and most if not all were considered great.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/mar/27/star-trek-picard-is-the-dark-reboot-that-boldly-goes-where-nobody-wanted-it-to

[Roy Focker]

Maybe instead of 10 hour long episodes they should have made this a 3 hour Picard TV movie.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

And with this... I declare Star Trek deader than dead.

Congratulations CBS/ Amazon/ Paramount... you managed to do what no alien of the week ever could. Just let Trek molder in it's grave, TYVM. And do the world a favor: join it.

Deader than dead... maybe once Secret Hideout's contract is over, we can Search for Spock this franchise and wrestle it back from the grave.

 

2 hours ago, Bolt said:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/mar/27/star-trek-picard-is-the-dark-reboot-that-boldly-goes-where-nobody-wanted-it-to

Nice of The Guardian to finally catch up to what Star Trek fans were saying from the moment the first bits of information about the series were teased... this was a series nobody asked for, full of unlikable generic "badass" characters, terrible cliches, and the arrogant self-interest of one old actor who thinks the franchise is his personal political soapbox.

[Dynaman]

I'm wondering where ST will go in the age of a pandemic.  We have not had one since 1918 and that was quickly forgotten.  Will ST become darker or will it get back the feeling of hope that the original strove for?  We could use that in entertainment about now.

[Mog]

Anyone got a spare Genesis Device, something that can work on an Alpha Quadrant-sized area?

Something that can reset the Alpha Quadrant back to right after the Dominion War and wipes out the Kelvin timeline?

100+ years should have improved the device, right?

[Chronocidal]

1 minute ago, Mog said:

Anyone got a spare Genesis Device, something that can work on an Alpha Quadrant-sized area?

Something that can reset the Alpha Quadrant back to right after the Dominion War and wipes out the Kelvin timeline?

100+ years should have improved the device, right?

I'd go with a full galactic retcon device actually, since I think you'd have to revert all four quadrants to undo all the stray plot threads with the borg that landed the timeline in this quagmire.

I'm good just so long as everything post Insurrection gets erased.  I wouldn't be heartbroken over that one going as well, but I never saw it as any worse than an extended TNG episode, and I would absolutely miss that particular soundtrack.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

Wow,   I only got 1 episode into Star Trek Piccard and it didn't seem like something I would care about.

I even gave Discovery a viewing of its first season and never went back.

 

Oh well.... guess Trek is dead.

 

[Mog]

“It’s dead, Jim.

I couldn’t resurrect it, even if I infused it with fluids from a Tribble that I injected with genetically superior blood from some British guy claiming to be Khan.”

[blackconvoy_D01]

I enjoyed it. Slightly rushed ending and very different; but still good.

Edited March 27, 2020 by blackconvoy_D01

[pablumatic]

I'm going to be a nattering nabob of negativity as well and throw more shade on the show.

Picard definitely felt like a sequel to Nemesis, in that both are bad and depressing. So I guess it has that going for it unlike the Star Wars sequels which took a previously happy ending and crushed it. I wasn't stricken so harshly by what I saw.  It was more of a "Oh this again." feeling.

 

Everything in this show about Data was weird and creepy. Which is not how I wanted to remember the character (or Picard for that matter). 

Oh well.

 

Edited March 28, 2020 by pablumatic

[pengbuzz]

2 minutes ago, pablumatic said:

I'm going to be a nattering nabob of negativity as well and throw more shade on the show.

Picard definitely felt like a sequel to Nemesis, in that both are bad and depressing. So I guess it has that going for it unlike the Star Wars sequels which took a previously happy ending and crushed it. I wasn't stricken so harshly by what I saw. 

 

Everything in this show about Data was weird and creepy. Which is not how I wanted to remember the character (or Picard for that matter). 

Oh well.

 

Old weird creepy people' kind of like the "Starfleet Retirement Home for Aging Cliches".

[sh9000]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

21 hours ago, pablumatic said:

Picard definitely felt like a sequel to Nemesis, in that both are bad and depressing.

Even Nemesis wasn't that dark or depressing... courtesy of the movie still largely sticking with the TNG-era Federation as an optimistic organization that jumped at the chance to further improve diplomatic relations with Romulus and at least part of the Romulan military coming to the Enterprise's aid against Shinzon.

 

[pengbuzz]

31 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Even Nemesis wasn't that dark or depressing... courtesy of the movie still largely sticking with the TNG-era Federation as an optimistic organization that jumped at the chance to further improve diplomatic relations with Romulus and at least part of the Romulan military coming to the Enterprise's aid against Shinzon.

Heck, ST:P makes Nemesis look downright cheery.

[sh9000]