Star Trek: Picard

[Ben Kirkham]

I loved the first episode! So far, everything I hoped it would be. It’s gorgeous, nostalgic yet very fresh and new. And Stewart is as stunning as ever.

Topic

[Dave]

Disappointed by this week’s episode. Just as it seemed like we were building some forward momentum at the end of last week, this episode killed all that.

I really would rather it had been about a bar crawl. That might have at least been entertaining.

Again, I think this wouldn’t be so bad if it had been released as a Netflix style ‘dump’ of all the episodes at once, as you could have raced through these first four episodes in an evening. But as a weekly show it’s really dragging.

[Ben Saunders]

There are plenty of people who dislike First Contact and how it handles the Borg and Picard, and there are even more people who dislike what Voyager did with the Borg, turning them into a relatively easily defeatable recurring enemy, whereas in their first appearance they were nigh unstoppable. Giving the Borg a queen is arguably necessary to do an entire movie about them, and I thought Picard’s rage was pretty well done, and is (relatively) true to how ptsd works.

Fuck Picard (the show), I didn’t bother watching the latest episode. Let me know when literally anything happens.

[tombow]

I’ve just remembered that the fantasy nexus or whatever it was in Generations seemed really similar to Better than Life to me. In fact on first viewing I was reaching for the phone to call Rob and Doug’s lawyers when something happened to make my cry, and it was certainty not something that would have happened on the classic 60s show. I think soon I had “got” what TNG films were and I was soon crying all the time.

[Ben Saunders]

An interesting note with Generations being canon – that means that Picard went back to the vineyard in which his family fucking burned to death horribly to live out his retirement. And he dreams about Data, instead of his brother dying horribly in the house he doubtless had to have repaired and the charred corpses of his family taken away.

[Nick R]

So far I’ve been enjoying the bits of this focused on Picard; less so the Borg Cube sections; least of all the SECRET BADDIES CONSPIRACY stuff.

But as Dave says above, episode 4 killed a lot of the momentum. Hopefully Space Legolas’s resemblance to, er, Legolas will become less distracting as the series goes on.

[Plastic Percy]

I kinda understand the need for the Borg Queen in the film. You need a villain to explain their plans, set up their motivation and provide a climax to the film. Its a bit like how one of the criticisms for ‘The Motion Picture’ is that there’s no real villain – V’Ger is just sort of there with its own agenda that isn’t really explained in any great detail until the last ten minutes of the film. Even the Ilia duplicate is fairly vague about what V’Ger actually wants.

I think it might have been interesting to watch ‘The Best of Both Worlds, Part I’ in context. As I understand it, there was a popular rumour that Patrick Stewart wasn’t going to return for the fourth season due to his initial three year contract being up. Picard would have died, Riker would assume command and Commander Shelby would step in as first officer.

Its also quite interesting that the initial plan for Picard’s time as Locutus would leave a physical mark. His arm would have been amputated to accomodate Locutus’ cybernetic claw, and there was an idea to suggest he’d received an artificial limb in the form of makeup. This can be seen best in Rick Sternbach’s concept art here: http://i.imgur.com/rt3SzQj.jpg.

[Ben Saunders]

Episode five is a bit better, particularly towards the end, slight spoilers ensue:

1) It’s really weird to have a recast Maddox mingling with all these actors reprising their roles from 30 years ago

2) There is on VERY Star Trek scene in this episode, which I loved, with a lovely little musical sting… which is kind of ruined by the following scene reminding you that this isn’t actually Your Dad’s Trek

3) I called what happens at the end of this episode about three weeks ago. Very obvious

[Dave]

Oh, that’s a shame that Maddox has been recast. I watched his previous appearance recently and was expecting the same actor to return.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

That was a much more interesting episode than anything that came before it. Actually felt like it had a purpose and progressed the stroy along.

Love seeing Jeri Ryan back in the role of Seven, and seeing how 20 years back from the Delta Quadrant has changed her. All of Seven and Picard’s interaction were really nice, especially at the end when they have a brief moment discussing their humanity post Borg.

It is interesting how the rest of Picard’s “crew” think of him as having used to have been Borg, like he was a Borg for several years and not just a couple of days.

Really sad to see Seven have to kill Icheb, wish we’d got just a little more time with them two before it happened.

Love Picard pretending to be a one eyed French criminal/priate/trader. That was fun. Sort of showed a mellowing out of Picard post Star Fleet.

I do not give a fuck about Raffi and her son. That scene felt like it was reaching for an emotional reaction that it just hadn’t earned yet.

Interesting also that we’ve had the “Anges is a planet” reveal already. Didn’t expect that until later on. And to dispense with Maddox so quickly, considering they’ve spent 5 episodes setting up finding him, kinda felt he’d be more integeral to the overal plot and resolve.

No scenes on the Borg cube either, which is good because if they’d tried to squeeze them into this episode it would have been to its detriment.

Reference to Quark’s on Free Cloud which is cool. Though as Ben pointed out to me last night, would have been nice to see some Ferengi working for Vajazzle or whatever he name is, Bejazel? Seemed a perfect opportunity for them.

Few janky bits here and there. Vajazzle/Bejazel really felt like they wanted to hire a naked Lady Gaga and couldn’t. Some awkward editing choices which meant the flashback and return to present day wasn’t clear. And Vazazzle knowing “the famous Admiral Picard” but not fucking recognising him because he is wearing an eye patch is some Lois Lane level stupidity there.

More of this sort of thing please. I wish we’d gotten this sooner so we hadn’t had to sit through 4 hours of tedious nothingness.

[Ben Saunders]

Agnes is a planet? Now that’s a twist.

[Dave]

Yep, the latest episode was the best episode yet, for me. Lots of fun, a proper story and not afraid to be a bit silly and hammy for the sake of a good yarn.

Although I did end up wishing the show was following the guest character rather than the regular cast, which maybe isn’t the best.

[Ben Saunders]

Watching episode six.
Why is there so much SEX in this show? Why do we see so many FEET? We even see the feet of a little girl. Why?

[Ben Saunders]

These fucking incestuous romulans are some of the most uninteresting characters in anything
All of their interactions are the same!
Why does she get shocked when she hits her? He’s done it 11 times!

[Ben Saunders]

spoilers

1) Why would you gas an android, just use a disruptor bro. To avoid exactly what happens in this episode.
2) What the fuck did Elrond or whatever his name mean by “I won’t need a few minutes”. That doesn’t make any sense in context, the writer’s just thought it sounded cool.

[Ben Saunders]

also

The only reason hot Romulan boy gased Shoji instead of shooting her with a disruptor is explicitly so that she doesn’t die immediately and can escape. Stupid.

[Dax101]

>Why is there so much SEX in this show? Why do we see so many FEET? We even see the feet of a little girl. Why?

There is less then there was in Star Trek: Enterprise. They spent alot of time oiling each other in that show..

Then again this is Star Trek. you seen some of the outfits in the 60s show? DS9 was fairly open to alot of cleavage and whatever.

[Ben Saunders]

You can’t defend something new by pointing to something old that was specifically heavily criticised for the exact thing you’re attempting to say was the norm/ok back then. The sexual shit in Enterprise was always obviously a ratings ploy (which didn’t work), and nobody liked it back then. DS9 had Dabo Girls but they were just window dressing, TOS was made in the 60s so of course women looked feminine and sexy, but again it was mostly window dressing. Here we have entire scenes of attractive young people whispering into each other’s ears and getting all horny, and we have those incestuous Romulans getting all touchy-feely and BDMS-y. It just makes my skin crawl. The sexualisation of women in older material is an unfortunate by-product of the times the shows were made in, but for the most part it was just background stuff and we had absolutely nothing like what we get in Picard now. You could argue that it’s because of old timey censorship laws preventing them from doing this stuff, but that’s a dishonest argument because it assumes that they would have had constant steamy sex scenes on TNG if the network execs would have just let them, which I don’t believe is something you can just go ahead and say.

[Dave]

I didn’t find this week’s quite as entertaining as last week, but at least stuff happened. Some nice little scenes and once Picard got on the cube it felt like things really got going. Bit of a flat ending though.

[Ben Saunders]

Literally as soon as you saw that the guy was trying to gas Soji rather than just shooting her or stabbing her, you knew how the rest of the scene was going to play out, so there was no real reason to extend it for as long as they did. But that’s Picard in a nutshell – there’s no need to extend it as much as they are.

[Dax101]

I assume he didn’t shoot her because he knew she had to die, but he didn’t actually want to be the one to kill her. he did not look particularly pleased with himself after he shut her inside.

[Ben Saunders]

That’s classic Obi-Wan/Anakin shit – you don’t want to kill them, so you stand there and watch them burn horrifically for several minutes while feeling bad about yourself, because the plot requires you can’t actually kill them.

[Ridley]

“First, take this.”
*noms*
“It’s a suppository.”

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I kinda really enjoyed this weeks episode, for somewhat obvious reasons.

It basically stopped the entire story in its tracks and didn’t move forward any at all, but it was really really nice to see the old gang back together. Seeing Picard, Riker and Troi back together and interacting and just having conversations was so good. And really, it sort of highlights what’s wrong with this series over all. Picard on his own with a bunch of mavricks flying from one plot point to another, from one action sequence to another, isn’t what I want to see week in week out.

Seeing Picard sit down with people he trusts and talk through the situation he is in, be offered good sensible advice and all that stuff, that’s what this series should have been about.

And this episodes proves they can do it, they just absolutely chose not to.

Frakes and Sirtis haven’t lost it at all. I immediately felt Riker and Troi in their performances. You wouldn’t think it had been nearly 20 years since they last properly portrayed these characters (end of Enterprise aside). The dialogue felt true to them too. Especially Troi who gets her counselling on.

I’m glad too that we got a lot of their history and what they’ve been up to the last 2 decades. Having a kid who grew up on a starship but unfortunately died. Having another kid who seems absolutely super cool and awesome (though perhaps knows way to much about Data having never actually met him).

I love how their house is this nice idillic cabin in the woods, but then RIker is right at home on the bridge shouting shield commands at the computer and to scan for vessels etc. That’s something we’ve never really seen in Star Trek before. Starship tech used in domestic households and it totally makes sense for a top of the line security system point of view.

I know this is something of an issue with episodic tv, and the episode did deal with this, but Soji has literally, only minutes ago, found out she is a Synth, and yet seems quite happy to go along with this idea. There’s very little denial. She just accepts it, whilst being extremely skeptical of everyone else around her … but also not! She has a heart to heart with Troi about how she can’t trust anyone, even Troi. Struck me as a bit of because it seemed like the sort of conversation one would only have with people they trust.

What’s telling so far is that I haven’t mentioned any of the Borg Cube or Rios/Raffi/Agnes stuff. And that’s because I could not care about it one bit. Of course they fucking killed Hugh. No character in this show is safe. Icheb, Maddox, Hugh, Doji … there is just a trail of dead bodied and everywhere Picard goes.

I’m still really not seeing the point of Elron. He is very much a character only in the show to do some sword fighting. Getting left behind almost as soon as he got picked up.

When did writers forget how to and stop writing interesting reveals as part of story telling, and just start dumping expositional scenes and flash backs onto us? That opening flashback told us little more than we already knew anyway, and only served to the writers catching us up with something they knew we needed to know now, but hadn’t already explained earlier because … why I don’t know.

One bit that did genuinely make me laugh, was the EMH. “Please explain the nature of the medical emer…oh bloody hell”

So yeah, really good episode mostly because it does everything the other episodes don’t. Nice respite from a tedious series so far and I know we’ll be back to that shit for the last 3 episodes.

At least for whatever reason I want to go back and watch it each week despite not liking it much. I actually gave up on Discovery 3 or 4 episodes into a season 1 and only watched through it all just before season 2 started. And I still think (Mirror Universe storyline aside) that season is the worst thing Star Trek has every produced.

[Plastic Percy]

Soji’s denial of reality – everything around her is an illusion or a trick – sits fine with me. Nobody can predict how any one individual will respond to learning in the space of a few hours that they’re not Human, their past is a lie, their boyfriend is their executioner, their sister is dead and they’re an outlawed form of life considered obscene in the eyes of most civilisations.

[Dave]

I just caught up with the last couple of episodes. It really is two hours of plot squeezed into ten, isn’t it? So slow and long-winded.

And yet I’m still watching for some reason – partly sunk cost at this point, but I am still genuinely interested to see how the story plays out.

[Ben Saunders]

I was on holiday so I’m two episodes behind now and not sure I’m ever going to bother catching up.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

theres just enjoy vaguely interesting things happening each week to keep me watching, even if overall I think it’s all a bit crap.

I’m enjoying things like Seven of Nine and Riker and Troi etc to see what they have in store next.

The fact there are those things still keeping me going, and I haven’t given up yet, tells me I at least think this is better than series 1 of Discovery, which I quickly gave up on and then had to catch up with (at great pain) before series 2.

Hopefully, as with Discovery, series 2 will be infinitely better. Which would be true of a lot of Star Trek. Poor start but better once it finds its feet.

What I do worry about however, is where the series goes once this synth story is done. Discovery, being a ship and a crew could do anything it wanted. Picard, a lone character, being dragged into yet another mystery he alone has to solve could be too much. One thing that does worry me is that it becomes a Picard and Data buddy show (much like how the films did) as I fully expect a human synth Data to be found at the end of all this.

[Dave]

It does feel like a Data of some sort is coming, doesn’t it.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Yeah, there’s two things that lead me to think that.

1. we see a flash of him in the end of the world/universe scenes the Romulan’s see.

2. why would these two synth sisters, Doji and Soji, be modelled after Data’s painting? Why would Maddox do that? It much more likely, if he has access to a part of Data, that’d he’d bring Data back to life. And then in time, Data – having always wanted his own children – would build the two girls based off of his painting.

[Dave]

I also feel like the show wouldn’t go to the trouble of bringing him back just for the brief earlier cameos we saw.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

yeah 100%. Patrick said he’d only return to Picard for the right story. I can imagine that story being “Picard goes on a mission and ends up finding his friend Data alive and well”

Also, given Seven has come back for a second episode, I can’t help but think Riker at least will make a second appearance. Probably called into reserves as part of the fleet that being sent to help Picard.

[Dave]

Is it me or did Riker look like a giant next to Picard? Maybe it’s just the relative frailty of Patrick Stewart now, but it was almost Hagrid-level.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Frakes has been a big man for years now. Certainly end of Enterprise he was growing outwards.

No-one would have guessed it was Dr Song’s son they would find, because no-one would have ever said Soong would have a son!!

[Dave]

At this rate I’m half expecting the final episode to see the cast turning to camera and explicitly telling the viewer “I’m sorry you wasted ten hours of you life on this, I promise the next season will be better.”

[Ben Saunders]

And then it won’t be.

[Plastic Percy]

I don’t think the story has been about saving Data, more about preserving his legacy.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

The series has been about a phat pay cheque for Stewart et al

[Ridley]

[Ben Saunders]

Episodes 7-9 of Picard are much better than the earlier shit – I have nothing better to do in light of this virus bullshit so I thought I’d skip through them. I still maintain that you could easily chop 4 episodes’ worth of runtime from this whole thing and not actually lose anything. The whole thing with the synth planet feels really bizarre and a little confusing, as well. For anybody else who has abandoned this show – you can just start the entire show at episode 7 since they recap everything that’s happened thus far several times. But I’m not even sure I’d recommend doing that, unless you’re just morbidly curious like I am.

[Ben Saunders]

>That’s something we’ve never really seen in Star Trek before. Starship tech used in domestic households
I’m almost certain there’s an episode of DS9 with something like that

[Pete Part Three]

i stalled on this for weeks and then resumed on hearing about the Riker and Troi stuff. I found that relatively wathchable but then it was just back to the same old plodding shite. I switch it on and then struggle to take any kind of interest in these awful characters and glacial plotting. Then there’s a cliff-hanger that’s moderately interesting and I’m back for the next episode. Buh.

[Dave]

Plodding shite with moderately interesting cliffhangers sums up the show perfectly.

I often find myself literally falling asleep during the back half of the episodes and having to force myself to watch to the end.

[Ben Saunders]

Just finished the series.

What the fuck was that shite?

[Ben Saunders]

Why did Kurtzman and company think anybody would want to see that?

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I fucking hate this show. I fucking hate I watched all of it.

10 hours of self fulfilling prophecy and all it takes is one brief Skype chat between Picard and Soji where he basically says “don’t do it” to resolve the entire situation. And then like that the ban on synths is lifted to no fanfare.

Absolutely fuck off and do one. URGH!!!

[Ben Saunders]

Star Trek — dead
Doctor Who — dead
Star Wars — dead

Me — still watching this SHITE

[Ridley]

And then like that the ban on synths is lifted to no fanfare.

It’s not like Picard now being one could be conductive to drama or anything.

I don’t have much invested in this franchise so meh. I did like the Data stuff but an episode or so ago I realised I’d rather the show mostly revolved around Rios and a crew of himself for story around a ban on artificial people.

[Dave]

Yeah, this was a poor ending. Obviously they wanted their big Picard/Data scene, and that’s fine (other than Data now looking like something out of a horror movie for some reason – the eyes!) but then everything else seemed to be resolved with a handwave.

The entire plot gets sorted out with a quick chat and the big nasty threat goes away somehow, the ban on synths is suddenly lifted with no explanation because there are only minutes left in the episode, and Picard is now in a robot-Picard body that everyone just shrugs off as though nothing has really changed. Oh, and Riker is suddenly captaining a spaceship again.

Nothing really feels like it mattered for this whole season. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.

[Ben Saunders]

I did have my little boomer fan moment of sheer ecstasy seeing Riker turn up commanding a starship, to be honest — before I realised I hated the bridge design, and something about the way it was shot/visual fidelity made it look like a fan film

[Dave]

For boomers the big fan moment would have been seeing Kirk turn up.

I look forward to him turning up next season in a robot body too, and him and Picard referring to themselves as The Good Robot Us -es.

[Author]

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