Star Trek Appreciation Thread

[Gunstar Green]

As long as we get a memorable ensemble cast, a positive message, and thought provoking science fiction I'll be happy. I'm really tired of doom and gloom science fiction and miss the optimism in Trek.

Oh, what naive fools we were. Two seasons of Discovery later and now Picard, I think it is safe to say that whatever Star Trek used to mean to people is gone and replaced by melodrama, awful writing and purposeless action. More fool me for watching it as well.

Picard's finale was, like its entire run, not really about its namesake but rather another doomsday device/blue laser in the sky/prophecy coming to pass that hacks like Kurtzman, Orci and their ilk thrive on (while ripping off Mass Effect of all things). There was a moment when I wanted the bad guy plan to succeed as I was more interested to see which bit of Trek fanservice would come pouring out of the hole in space rather than what was actually supposed to be happening. I think it was the Doomsday Machine, not sure.

I'm disappointed Patrick Stewart came back for this turkey but I also feel it was sold to him on false pretenses (also he isn't above a paycheck). The supporting cast is so weak I genuinely had to google the Captain's name (he is very pointless though in my defence) and the other characters, Raffi aside, are devoid of reason and morals. The actual Picard would have Agnes and Soji in jail not on his crew and he would have just left Elnor behind to think on his actions. But this isn't Picard it's an approximation of him seen through quick scans of the TNG movies and Big Bang Theory references.

They also ruined Seven of Nine and further ruined the Borg so that's nice as well. A classic destroy and exit from Kurtzman and the gang. And there was a lot of weird eye related gore as well. Why?

Pretty much said most of what I would have. I didn't like it. I actually, using the word loosely, liked season 1 of Discovery more which I didn't think was likely.

[Sload Soap]

Such a weird ending as well. What happened to the Romulan guy? The one who was the baddie for almost the entire season. he just kind of left. What happened to Dahj's evil sister after Arik Soong turned her off? What's to stop the remaining synths from just, you know, turning the portal back on once Picard leaves? Neither the Romulans or Starfleet left anyone behind. So, Picard gets a new body but Data gets essentially uninstalled? How's that fair? Why even set that up? That scene where Picard says he wuvs Data and always has made my skin crawl. Bleh.

It's not just nitpicky stuff like that though with Disco and Picard. The screenplays are often atrocious. In this last action packed episode, the first 20 mins had three consecutive scenes of Rios, Raffi and Romulan guy sitting around talking about the stakes and what they should do. In the final episode. I thought Disco entering the timewarp AFTER solving the crisis with Control was bad but Chekov's robot golum will take some beating in the "this truly is the nadir" stakes.

Both series also just have characters who are walking macguffins but serve no other purpose so they bog shit down. So Ash Tyler in Disco and Dahj/Soji in Picard. Both of these characters have served their purpose as plot points but for some reason get kept around. Really lousy stuff.

The problem with Disco and Picard is that they are season arc based TV shows so unlike TOS or Next Gen they aren't built structurally to absorb the hit of a few bad episodes. As mentioned in another thread, in season one of Next Gen you get shit like Code of Honor and Angel One but they aren't enough to topple the whole thing. Your brain is set up with serialised TV to accept each episode as a mostly stand alone story and that the slate gets wiped clean once the credits roll.

Conversely, in Disco and Picard each bad bit of writing or out of character moment compounds into the next and the viewer has to either make the decision to ride with it or rebel. We see this with the backlash against Game of Thrones; you can't tell me Danyrs is the villain when you haven't showed that. With Picard, you can't tell me synths are cool when all we've seen is them rampage and kill people. Just cos Data was good then they all are? Data's dead, he blew up on the Scimitar, I watched it happen, I saw it happen, don't tell me it didn't happen. He isn't in Picard, at least not properly. And also if we expand on that, what about Lore? There were literally two androids in the entire galaxy and 50% of them were evil. So maybe the crazy Romulans are right? What is this show even trying to say?

What a mess this Nu-Trek is, not just as Star Trek but as a TV show. BLEH.

[samsonlonghair]

I'm not here to apologize for Star Trek; I'm just trying to add a little perspective. Every single time a new Star Trek show came out, there was a huge backlash. Trek fans hated Next Generation when it first came out -- Granted, season one is kinda rough -- but now Next Generation is seen as the gold standard. I remember Trek fans saying that Deep Space Nine was just a worse version of Babylon 5. I remember Trek fans complaining that Voyager was either not dark enough, or that it was too dark depending on which way the wind blows. We all hated Star Trek Enterprise until it was cancelled; then we all claimed to love Star Trek Enterprise -- all except the last season anyway. The J.J. Abrams movies were divisive when they came out too.

Trek fans love the Borg, but we hate when anything about the Borg mythos changes or expands. Same thing with Q. We all love Q, just so long as he never changes or grows as a character. Trek fans love seeing the Klingons, but we like to pretend that Klingon appearance didn't change every single time the makeup budget changed. The latest complaint is to call Star Trek "too woke". Hey, I get it. I don't like when a TV show condescends to me either. Let's not pretend that Star Trek hasn't always been progressive.

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I'm just gonna roll with it from now on. Whatever Star Trek throws at me next, I'm just gonna kick back and watch. You want to take my favorite characters and change them? Cool. You want to change established rules of canon? Cool.

The Sacred Cow is already dead. Let's have some barbecue.

[Gunstar Green]

It's not the changes that really bother me most (though in general the changes towards being violent and gritty are definitely at the top of my list for why I can't get into it). I don' t care about the "woke" arguments people are making because those don't apply to me. I just don't personally find the shows themselves entertaining or good (as Sload said, I don't really like it as a TV show let alone a Star Trek). I'm happy for everybody who's fine with it, it's just not for me.

I can't speak for, nor do I care about the opinions of the fanbase at large, love or hate, I can only feel what I feel and people who enjoy it can only feel what they feel. I kind of wish the Internet would try to stop forcing everybody to have the same opinion but hey, it's the Internet.

I gave Discovery a chance and didn't return for season 2. I gave Picard a chance and I'll be doing the same. Maybe I'll try that Lower Decks cartoon when it comes out, at least Kurtzman isn't writing it, but I'm feeling really ambivalent about the franchise at this point so probably not.

[Sload Soap]

Yeah, I guess, though I think between two seasons of Disco and a season of Picard it's safe to say that Nu-Trek is not new anymore. I also don't feel that the argument that "well, Next Gen didn't get good until season 3" really holds much water as there are a lot of very decent episodes in the first two seasons mixed in with the bad ones and the same goes for Voyager and especially DS9. Even Enterprise has a few bright spots although I generally agree it got better in season 3. That said, it was still cancelled early so it's never been popular. I wasn't ever really aware of, nor cared much about, the general fan reaction so was never part of any backlash. I mean, I was 2 when Next Gen first aired and we didn't get it in the UK until 1990. And as I said, those shows were set up in a way that mitigates the effect of poorer episodes anyway.

For Nu-Trek I think the only good stuff was the mirror universe excursion in season 1 of Disco and...that's it. Even then, I really only enjoyed that as it was campy nonsense. 4 episodes of good (not great) material out of 36 with the rest being either bang average to bafflingly bad is not a great ratio and far worse than anything any prior show has given us before.

My main issue isn't necessarily that Disco/Picard are bad Trek, although they absolutely are, it's that first and foremost they're bad TV. With Disco it's stuff as basic as the lead character Michael Burham being the blandest, most milquetoast member of the cast. In Picard it's as simple as the show not actually being about its eponymous hero. Both shows have nothing to say and if they were stripped of the Trek license would probably be cancelled at the pilot stage.

So, the only new stuff Disco/Picard are throwing at me as far as Trek goes is a cast of underwritten and generic characters, a thorough misunderstanding of the universe the shows are set, a 5 year old's understanding of science, season long arcs that don't go anywhere and a general feeling of purposelessness. Oh, and a crappy proprietary app that you can't get outside of America. I think a backlash in this case is kind of justified really.