Comment Stream

Re: SNW S1: Strange New Worlds

I decided to watch "Strange New Worlds". nuTrek has killed all my fondness for "Star Trek", and the awfulness of "Disco" and "Picard" have demythologized and robbed "TOS"/"TNG" of much of their mystery and power, but I'm out of classic "Twilight Zone", "X-Files" and "Dr Who" episodes to watch, and I need a Scifi fix. So here I am.

nuTrek tends to open its seasons with promising episodes, and "Strange New Worlds" is no different. Despite being written by Akiva Goldsman, this is an excellent pilot. Indeed, having seen all the other "SNW" episodes, I'd argue this is the show's best script; it's lean, covers much ground efficiently, and is unpretentious in the way it makes its points.

Watch, for example, how the episode opens with a first contact situation in which advanced humans meet destructive, "primitive" aliens. This is recontextualized minutes later when Captain Pike watches "The Day the Earth Stood Still", a film in which advanced aliens who belong to a "federation of mutually beneficial races" meet primitive and destructive humans. This echoes the end of this episode, when Pike invites the aforementioned aliens into the Federation.

The destructiveness of atomic warfare hangs over all these sub-stories, and it hangs like a cloud over Pike himself. He's long learnt that he's destined to die at a certain time and place, but despite this - this threat of being disconnected from life - he chooses to embrace and hang on to others.

This act of embrace becomes a metaphor in the episode for not only the way the Federation extends a hand of friendship toward other planets, but the way Pike governs his crew: he's warm, inviting and chummy with them. To paraphrase Stanley Kubrick, no matter how vast the darkness, Pike and the Federation have resolved to always supply a light.

So Akiva's script efficiently conveys a certain utopian impulse. And it does this in an unpretentious, matter-of-fact way, without all the crying, back-patting and cloying speeches that mar similar gestures in "Discovery" and "Picard".

What's also interesting is that Pike only gets away with inviting the aliens into the Federation because he exploits a loophole. And it's a clever loophole for Akiva to have noticed, and one which he cleverly uses to justify the subsequent invention of the Prime Directive. It's a neat bit of writing.

Aesthetically, the episode is above average. The new Enterprise has lovely corridors, a nice sickbay and a nice bar, but the engineering room looks like an obvious green screen, the bridge is too glossy and Pike's quarters and ready room are too large, leading to framing problems (characters struggle to fill the widescreen).

The show's production design is attempting to merge the aesthetic of TOS, "The Motion Picture" and the JJ Movies, but this leads to an aesthetic that is a bit contradictory. The universe of TOS felt wild, lawless and dangerous, and its Enterprise felt small, vulnerable, cramped and outmatched, like a 1950s American gunship lost behind enemy lines and stalked by dangerous shadows.

But "Strange New Worlds" doesn't convey this sense of danger. Its Enterprise is big and glossy, with bright interiors and advanced technology. Its crewmen aren't New Kids on the Block tentatively stepping out into the unknown, they're confident, sassy wise-asses without much care in the world. Pike himself loses all his anxieties about death after episode 2 of season 1, and becomes a caricature every bit as juvenile as his crew.

So as good as the Enterprise's interiors look in "Strange New Worlds", they're a bit wrong for this period of Federation history. The Enterprise should be a bit more cramped, a bit darker, a bit colder, a bit less hospitable, and its crew should be more attentive and competent. They should respect the cold of space, they should be knee-deep in endless drills and checklists, the should be up to their necks in department routines, and they should be wary of the dangers of space travel. Instead, they act like Masters of the Fratboy Universe centuries before the Federation was a Super Power.

In terms of characters, I thought most were well sketched and efficiently introduced in this episode. Uhura is instantly likeable, and remains loveable throughout the show. Spock also manages to respect the towering legacy of Leonard Nimoy; he has good camaraderie with Pike and Kirk throughout both seasons, though his dialogue with T'Pring and Chapel is consistently awful and hacky.

Number One is a mixed bag. After the wonderful female leads in "DS9", "Voyager" and "Orville", she's a bit unimpressive. M'Benga is more interesting, feeling like a guy right out of a 1960s blaxploitation movie. His accent is a great choice (too thick in some scenes), and he gets one near-great episode, but also lots of melodramatic cheese and generic sickbay speak.

Though she's fine in this episode, I personally thought La'An Noonian-Singh was poorly written and acted throughout the two seasons (a generic tough, damaged girl, again done better recently in "Orville"), and I dislike her surname. The TOS universe keeps shrinking beyond the point of believably.

I also found Nurse Chapel to be poorly written and acted. She's far too manic, quirky and quippy. Ortegas likewise. Together both characters are responsible for most of the incongruous dialogue in the show ("I'm gonna mess with your genome!", "You boss a rocket ship!", "Like, you know, we're going all simplistic here!", "Five by five!""). This trait mostly appears, and gets worse, in subsequent episodes, but it ruins a pivotal moment in this episode as well: Pike delivers the iconic "to boldly go where no man has gone before" line, and in response a crewman yells "Cool!"

Things like this kill all immersion. On the plus side, Pike gets a classic Captain's Monologue in this episode, gives an optimistic speech worthy of mid-tier Picard ("We can go forward together!") and has a nice moment where he essentially compares trees growing in zero-gravity biomes to Starfleet and the Federation, a nice bit of symbolism on Akiva's part.

I thought the show's opening credits were well done, and beautifully scored, though the CGI ship models look off to me throughout the show. The beautiful ivory-white hulls of the Meyers films are gone, replaced with overly busy CGI skins that constantly get garbled by lighting algorithms. Most of the ship battles throughout the next two seasons also seem farmed out to FX houses that put little creative thought into the work, and there's often no sense that the Enterprise sets exist in the same universe as her CGI models or the models she zaps or zips away from. In a sense, Kurtzman-Trek has always been this way: his is Trek via Ikea, a bunch of soulless pre-fab pieces slotted together without much artistic thought.

Akiva's script in this episode, however, is thoughtful. You sense that he cares about the source material, and has a firm idea and point he wants to get across. He may be responsible for some of the worst big-budget films of all time ("Batman and Robin", "Batman Forever", "I Robot", "Transformers", "The Da Vinci Code", "Rings") but with this he channels the functional tone of his John Grisham adaptations ("The Clint", "A Time to Kill"): unpretentious pulp, done competently.

8/10

Re: TOS S3: The Enterprise Incident

Bird said: "I am watching the entire remastered version of TOS for the first time, on a big screen HD tv. I haven’t seen many of these episodes in over 20 years. It has been visually amazing."

I first encountered TOS in HD, several years ago, and the expressionistic lighting and set design were also what made me fall in love with it. The first season in particular has wonderfully evocative lighting.

Re: TAS S2: The Counter-Clock Incident

I always thought this was one of the best TAS episodes due to its sheer pacing. It's got massive plot holes (the alternate universe gives birth to old people who turn into kids? Are the kids then reproducing?), but I remember it moving better than most other TAS episodes, which could at times be sluggish or repetitive.

I haven't seen the episode in years, but I distinctly remember it as a well-oiled machine. Little themes and points are set up, knocked down, and then the episode briskly resolves.

Re: PIC S3: The Last Generation

I've been thinking about this season; does its main plot even make sense? Why would the Borg forget how to build the technology they put into Picard 30 or 40 years prior? And why do they need to get this tech from Picard's body? Why not just make it again or put it in another assimilated human?

And why do the Borg still need Jack? They've already got Picard's body. At first I thought they need Jack to control the DNA-borg things, but the Queen can control them without him, so why bother with Jack at all?

And why would the nu-Changelings side with the Borg. The Borg are surely precisely the type of solids they fear.

Re: PIC S3: The Last Generation

I just binged the season, and thought it peaked at episode 4, and then increasingly got worse.

Like most of nu-Trek, it's also essentially Star Wars. This is a season in which a kid is seduced to the dark side by an evil Empress who is ultimately defeated by the power of love, sword fights and a Death Star trench run. The whole thing then degenerates into a scene in which goodies and baddies exchange Saturday Morning Cartoon-level dialogue, the pantomime villain literally yelling “Nooooo!” as she explodes in a fireball.

Yes, the season has lots of positives: it's the best directed season of Discovery or Picard. There's a nice vein of comedy. The ships and sets are photographed and framed well. The cat-and-mouse games between starships are mostly excellent. The season at times captures the nautical feel of TOS/TNG. Most of the cliffhangers work well. There are countless little scenes which are rousing, crowd-pleasing or emotionally touching. Seven brings us to tears at least twice (when she earns a promotion and when she spots Voyager). The season photographs space well (at times majestic, at times ominous). The music is outstanding. The season makes Raffi tolerable. Riker oozes charisma. Worf is a hoot. There are a lot of little aesthetic decisions which are done well (the fonts, the ship designs, the LCARS displays, the musical cues etc). And Terry Matalas is arguably the best Trek showrunner since Ira Behr, and he clearly put a lot of thought into the season, and accomplishes a lot on a tight budget and with few shooting days.

Despite all this, though, the underlying ideas of the season are all hacky or bad.

It's a bad idea to give Picard a son. It is a bad idea to have Beverly keep news of this son from Picard. It's a bad idea to again bring Data back. It's a bad idea to again make Data fight Lore. It's a bad idea to resurrect the Enterprise D and give it a Death Star trench run. It's a bad idea to have Picard's son be seduced by the Borg (this stuff was already a cliché when Voyager was doing it). It's a bad idea to give Picard's son superpowers (like Luke/Boomer/Soji/RiverTam/William from The “X-Files” etc etc). It's a bad idea to climax with a “destroy the signal to save the day” plot. It's a bad idea to roll out a Changeling/Borg tag-team like a King Kong vs Godzilla/Mothra cartoon etc etc etc.

For every nice moment in the season, there's a massive cliché. And for every heart-warming moment, there's a dollop of murder, or stabbing, or snarky/ironic quips, or swearing, or over-the-top melodrama, or a hostage situation, or torture scenes, or beheadings, or amputations etc etc.

Is the season's payoff worth it? I would say no. And I would say, like most of nuTrek, which leverages a message of “connection”, “family”, “community” and “Federation values” - seemingly the only theme every season of nuTrek is interested in – the season's themes only exist to cover-up how anti-social, myopic, fragmented, broken, cannibalistic and violent it all is. With nuTrek, the aesthetic and the purported message are always at odds. Or, you might say, the message is there to facilitate a form of denial: the show, the writers and the audience aren't really interested in "family" or “Federation values”. They're interested in disharmony. And I dislike how dishonest each of these seasons always feel to me. While a franchise about scientists, philosophers and explorers, this is actually no longer a franchise interested in being interesting.

IMO most of the season's mistakes could be fixed by reversing every big decision Matalas makes. So instead of closing on Federation Day, you open on Federation Day. Instead of climaxing with a Borg invasion, you open with a Borg invasion. Instead of Starfleet being caught off guard, you have Starfleet utterly and competently besting the Borg. Instead of Picard trying to convince Starfleet to fight the Borg, you have Picard trying to convince them to be less gung-ho. Instead of the Queen seeking out Picard, have Picard seek out the Queen as part of a negotiation team. Instead of the Borg seeking to seduce Picard, have Picard brokering a peace treaty with the Borg (perhaps even granting them a provisional Federation membership). Instead of the Borg trying to assimilate the Federation, have Picard successfully assimilate the Borg into his Federation fraternity.

Picard's a mediator/ambassador archetype. That's the stuff he should be doing.

Re: PIC S3: Dominion

Dr. Andre said: "Well that is some historical revisionism at its finest. You can disagree with the use of the atomic weapon. It's your right to be wrong. The use of the bomb also hastened the surrender of Japan, minimised allied loses and granted a complete unconditional surrender"

IMO, you're promoting revisionism. America's leading Army, Airforce and Navy Generals at the time, as well as top ranking intelligence personnel, and at least 2 US presidents, overwhelmingly disagreed with using nukes. You can find countless quotes by them stating this plainly.

And nobody in the uppermost echelons at the time thought they were dropping nukes to "avoid further bloodshed". And even if that were the case, one would be hard pressed to morally justify nuking civilians for this reason (simply drop a ring of nukes in the waters around Japan if you wish to flex your power to Russia or Japan- it's what Picard would have done).

Relevant quotes from history:

"I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'." - Dwight Eisenhower

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." - Dwight Eisenhower

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." - Admiral Leahy (Chief of Staff to the President)

"The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul. The Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945 up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the bombs." - Herbert Hoover

"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." - Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet

"Certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. [...] Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands would have even been necessary." - Vice Chairman of US Strategic Bombing, Paul Nitze

"The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all." - Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command

"The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. It was a mistake to ever drop it." - Fleet Admiral William Halsey

"General MacArthur [...] saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." - the biographer of General Douglas MacArthur

Joseph Grey (Under Secretary of State), John McCloy (Assistant Secretary of War), Ralph Bard (Under Sec of the Navy), Lewish Strauss (Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy), Ellis Zacharias (Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence), General Carl Spaatz (in charge of all Air Force operations in the Pacific), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer in charge of intercepting Japanese cables) and countless other high-ranking people in charge at the time, agreed that dropping the bomb was unnecessary.

You will notice intellectual defenses of the bombings tend to come from other places, usually gung-ho figures like Churchill, or various scientists, citizens, low -ranking folk and so on. But the key generals, admirals and high ranking guys in command at the time never believed the nukes were necessary.

Re: PIC S3: The Last Generation

MajorGrin's Picard S3 vs Star Wars video: https://youtu.be/2R-9YXppw44

Re: PIC S3: Vox

I'm still only on episode three, waiting to see if Jammer and you guys think this season nails the landing.

Reading Jammer's review, and the comments here, I'm wondering if this season addresses the Borg stuff in season 2. Is Jurati's "Good Borg Collective" mentioned at all?

Re: PIC S3: Surrender

What's the consensus so far on season 3?

Is the show doing the usual "Picard"/"Discovery" thing and collapsing, after a decent intro, under the weight of cameos, violence and bad plotting?

Re: PIC S3: Seventeen Seconds

Regarding Beverly's anxieties about bringing up her son around Picard, here's an excerpt from Roddenberry's TNG Bible:

"Community and family: as humanity probes deeper and deeper into space with ten-year or longer missions becoming the norm, Starfleet has begun encouraging crewpersons to share the space exploration adventure with their families. Twenty-fourth century humans believe that life should be lived, not postponed. Previous experiences in space exploration have underscored the lesson that people need people for mental and physical health. Starfleet encourages its people to participate in family and community life and bonding. Although non-crew spouses and children are rarely seen in the duty areas of the vessel, the sophistication of starships now includes a variety of single and group family modules, various levels of schools and study facilities, a large selection of entertainment, sports and other recreation forms, and contests (electronic and other) of a thousand kinds."

Also relevant:


"Avoid treating deep space as a neighborhood. Too often, script ideas show characters pouncing from solar system to solar system, planet to planet, without the slightest comprehension of the distances involved or the technologies required to support such travel."

and

"STAR TREK is not melodrama. Melodrama is a writing style which does not require believable people. Believable people are at the heart of good STAR TREK scripts. [...] Our people are the best and the brightest, and our technology is tried and proven. Likewise, our characters are very committed to their ship, their crewmates, and their mission."

Re: PIC S3: Seventeen Seconds

Bryan said: "all the characters are just making stuff up as they go along. Like there's Beverly making inane excuses, then there's the whole thing about Picard's mother's suicide holding him back from romantic relationships, which he nonetheless had like FIVE past dating attempts with Beverly that all annoyingly happened offscreen, and NOW suddenly the thing supposedly holding him back from being a father -- at least accordingly to Beverly -- was his own TERRIBLE father whom I thought was somewhat vindicated in the previous season...*deep breath* and so on."

IMO every season of "Picard" misjudges what a show about Picard should be about. A Picard show shouldn't be an internal character study which attempts to psychologically explain and psychoanalyse its hero. Just give the guy an admiral's uniform, stick him in a diplomacy plot, and let him deliver righteous monologues. Picard's a closed off guy whose values are broadcast via his deeds and actions. And you understand best his interior life from these actions.

TNG rarely let us into Picard, but via little subtle things he did, we nevertheless understood his interior world. And that's more powerful than huge melodramatic plot points.

There's also a cloying, self-pitying aura around the Picard of this show. It's as though every attempt to "deepen" and "explain" the character makes him more self-absorbed, broken, wounded and hurt. The Picard of TNG was never so fragile and self-pitying. He had a GET ON WITH IT attitude (very British, very stiff-upper lip).

Incidentally, does anyone think the Picard of TNG would react the way he does in this episode, upon learning he has a son? In this episode, Picard storms out of a room and doesn't even speak to his son. He just walks right past the guy. The Picard of TNG would walk up to the kid, formally introduce himself and say something considered and tactful. It may be unintentionally cold and rude, but he'd make an effort to sympathize with the kid, and make a genuine effort to help and amend bridges. This Picard, however, just walks past the kid.

Similarly, TNG's Picard would never speak to Bev as he does in this episode. He'd say something like: "A son? Wonderful! That's great news! You must've gone through so much, and I'm sorry and hurt you felt like you couldn't trust me, but I'm here now, and I'll use my giant bald head to get us out of this predicament. Quick, to the bridge! You can help me sedate Riker!"

Instead he just wallows in self-pity. There's a myopic, navel-gazing tone to this Picard. (In this episode's defense, it's part of a serialized tale. For all I know, Picard doesn't actually stew in his own pity for very long.)

Re: PIC S3: Seventeen Seconds

Booming said: "Beverly's explanation makes no sense in any way and her behavior is pretty inexcusable. "

Hi Booming, long time no see,

Yes, you can feel the writers struggling to justify this plot point. They know it's unbelievable, derivative and nonsensical, and you can feel them getting themselves in a tangle to make it seem convincing.

Kirk's separation from his son in TOS made sense. Federation ships like the Enterprise didn't have families on board. And Kirk was young, a careerist, loved his bros and ship more than settling down, and he had a sense of cockiness and adventure that Picard never had. More than this, Carol Marcus was a woman more headstrong than Kirk. She always did things on her own terms, and was a believable frontier scientist who briefly hooked up with a guy and decided to have a child alone. She didn't have the long history - and romantic history - that Bev has with Picard.

Mosley said: "Had a rewatch of various episodes lately. It has aged surprisingly well. "

I rewatched "Voyager" during lockdown. If you take the best episodes in every season, and put them together, you get a really great story IMO. The best episodes can go toe-to-toe with the best of the other shows.

Mostley said: "- "mild Worf" is of course super silly. "

I thought this episode wrote Worf well. Worf's always been silly, and the object of ridicule, and this episode used him well as a vehicle for light jokes. I'd have hated if the episode took him too seriously.

Booming said: "Let's not even think about the fact that she was 57 when she got pregnant. Perhaps Bev was taking fertility pills?"

Maybe this stuff is normal in the future. Perhaps Bev didn't even carry the child (artificial wombs?).

The "Bev had Picard's child" subplot is really strange. It's a really bad and unconvincing idea, but Bev's acting is very good, Picard's kid works reasonably well as a character (you'd expect this guy to be an annoying drag), and the subplot leads to some decent, understated moments, like Riker standing against the bulkhead wordlessly watching the kid pace, or Riker smiling privately as he figures out that this is Picard's son, or Bev's wordless acknowledgement that the kid is Picard's.

You might say it's a bad BIG idea which leads to some really good SMALL character moments.

Re: PIC S3: Seventeen Seconds

Part of the reason "Discovery" and season 1 and 2 of "Picard" are so bad, is that they're super pretentious. These shows are constantly patting themselves on the back for things they believe are artistically audacious, smart or profound, but which are actuality very awful.

Part of the reason season 3 is an improvement, is that knows its limitations. This is just a Goodies vs Baddies story about dudes fighting in a cloud. There are some minor mysteries and character work, but mostly this is a straightforward, old-fashioned story. So on that level it's much less annoying than most of nu-Trek. There's a functional, archetypal quality to the season so far.

Another reason this season has been an improvement, is its sense of momentum. Each episode has been mostly structured well, and each flows well into the next. There are no elaborate narrative gimmicks or tricks, just old-fashioned thriller writing.

The early reviews touted "Seventeen Seconds" as a great episode, and from what I've read, most people expected this to be on the level of "Wrath of Khan" or "Best of Both Worlds", both of which feature ships hiding and fighting in a nebula. IMO "Seventeen Seconds" doesn't come anywhere near those past Trek stories. It's on the level of a mid-tier Voyager action episode, perhaps a bit below "Night", an underrated episode which saw Janeway in a sorta nebula thingy.

In terms of positives, I thought Worf was written well (lots of great jokes), Beverly acted her heart out, Frakes as always elevates every scene he's in, Picard's son continues to (surprisingly) work, and most scenes set on the bridge of the Titan were strong.

Nevertheless, I thought this episode had more minor flaws than the previous one. I don't buy that Beverly would hide a son from Picard, and I don't buy her explanation that Picard is a dangerous, reckless man to be around. Picard is not Kirk. He's not some wild adventurer constantly hounded by warlords and assassins. This is a reading of Picard that focuses too heavily on the movies and ignores TNG.

The episode's misjudgement of these characters continues with Riker. I don't buy his feud with Picard on the bridge of the Titan. Riker would not speak to Picard that way; this is a seasoned captain, and he'd find a more tactful and forceful way to turn Picard down and stick to his own instincts. Similarly, I do not buy Picard's oddly aggressive attitude. Why's he so hell-bent on fighting? And if he sees a tactical advantage in doing so, wouldn't he sell his belief better to Riker? Their entire feud feels forced and unconvincing.

The other usual nu-Trek flaws remain: too much swearing, too much physical violence and torture, Starfleet officers continue to be obnoxious and unlikable (other than Laforge, is there any new Starfleet character who isn't an abrasive person? NuTrek makes Starfleet seem like such a horrible institution), and too many contemporary phrases ("Cool!", "...it's a bitch!" etc etc) which ruin the immersion.

I also thought this episode would have benefited from more scenes with Amanda Plummer's Vadic. We needed to see her ranting and taunting from the bridge of her ship. She should be delightfully toying with her prey like a cat with an injured mouse, but we get virtually nothing from her.

Still, there's something gripping about this story so far. By episode 3 of season 1 and 2 I was ready to check out, but this season hasn't started to majorly annoy me yet.

Incidentally, does anyone else think nuTrek portrays Earth's cityscapes in a dull way? In "The Orville", Earth's cities seem bright, architecturally interesting, imaginative and utopian. In nuTrek, Earth looks like outtakes from a Christopher Nolan movie.

Re: PIC S3: Disengage

Regarding the lights on the Titan, IMO the ships are darker because they're emulating "Wrath of Khan". Nick Meyer thought the "Enterprise" bridge was too bland, so he redressed it, dimmed the lighting and painted the walls darker colors.

Dirk said: "As a science fiction writer myself I had to wonder, as someone else did, are they hiring? Because they really need somebody who can say..."

I doubt we'll get any serious science fiction in this season. IMO this is a TNG version of "Wrath of Khan". It's an attempt to make a "TNG movie" - an action blockbuster - that fixes some of the problems in films like "Nemesis".

I think we'd all prefer a serious, modern version of TNG, which pushes the science/politics/utopianism of TNG even further, but no writer capable of delivering this is likely to get near the franchise nowadays. IMO the best we can expect from Terry Matalas is a resurrection of the nautical tropes that made some TOS and TNG episodes so fun.

Re: PIC S3: Disengage

This episode was so good, it made me reassess my negativity toward the first episode of the season. The first episode felt like a typical nu-Trek episode, dangling mystery boxes and gimmicks that one suspected would, in typical nu-Trek fashion, take forever to go nowhere interesting in particular.

But this episode immediately starts paying off the threads introduced in episode 1. The writing has an intent, purpose and authority that we've never before seen in "Picard". It feels more propulsive, and it has a certain clarity about it. You don't feel as though new showrunner Terry Matalas is cynically jerking you around. Instead, everything fits snugly and moves with confidence.

In this episode, I thought virtually everything on the SS Eleos and the USS Titan was excellent. Matalas' version of Picard feels more intelligent and tactical than the Picard we saw in season 1 and 2 (witness, for example, how he anticipates the need for transportation blockers, and how he uses the blockers to determine the villain's true target).

And the new villain, Vadic, is excellent from the get-go. She's a big, scenery-chewing pantomime villain in the vein of Khan and General Chang. Of course we've seen countless Trek stories try to re-produce a villain evocative of Nicholas Meyers' operatic villains, but they never ever work. And yet Matalas seems to get it right immediately. His Vadic is so delightfully mad.

I thought Picard and Riker's conflicts with Captain Shaw were mostly good. Their friction worked for me. I'm not sure I buy Shaw's immediate change of heart toward the end of this episode, but it nevertheless made him immediately sympathetic as a character.

I thought Seven was mostly excellent. She felt like the Seven from Voyager. As for Jack Crusher, this episode opens with a very weak scene with him, which had me ready to hate him and the awful writing he'd undoubtedly be saddled with. And yet by the episode's end I was buying him entirely as Picard's son, and I like the way Matalas highlights both father and son's nobility and sense of ethics; Jack is ready to give himself up for his mother, and Picard and Riker are similarly adamant that it's against Federation values to give even a criminal up without a trial.

(Does anyone understand how Jack gets out of the brig?)

Terry Matalas promised "classic shipboard action" with this season, and I thought this episode delivered on that promise (presumably the next episode will as well). We get a nice cat-and-mouse showdown, and the ships are all photographed well, and look much better than in the previous episode; Crusher's SS Eleos in particular looks great now that we understand how small she is (in relation to the Titan). And the villain's ship, the Shrike, somehow turns old visual cliches into something menacing.

In terms of flaws, I thought Raffi's first scene was somewhat weak (a long monologue with a viewscreen), and I thought her dialogue scene with her husband was far too "contemporary", the husband's phrases, accent, and manner of speaking all poorly selected. Raffi, meanwhile, is still a big of melodramatic cliches. Still, this episode IMO features the best Raffi we've ever seen. Her history with drug addiction, and her past, seems to have real weight.

I thought the flashback sequence with the smugglers which opens the episode was similarly poor, mostly due to the style of line-reading allowed by the director. Trek is not a space opera in the vein of "Star Wars". You can't be having snarky smugglers and mercenaries as you would in a Marvel or Disney show. IMO these guys should all be talking like, I don't know, 17th century gentlemen.

But these complaints are very minor. Prior to this episode, I've only ever liked 2 episodes of "Picard" (bits of "Nepenthe" and "Penance"), and IMO "Disengage" is stronger than both.

Re: PIC S3: The Next Generation

How does the Titan makes it to the “edge of the Federation” in the span it take the Captain to have a short nap? And if the distance is so short, why doesn't Beverly simply warp to Earth?

Also, when Raffi figures out what the Red Lady means, why does she travel to the location and then warn the planet/building of an incoming attack? Why not transmit her warning the moment she figures out where the attack will be, thereby saving time?

Re: PIC S3: The Next Generation

I thought this was poorly written. The show has gone from being full of cliches, to being full of the precise cliches done by its previous season premieres. And so...

1. We open with another gun fight

2. We have another season which begins with an old timey song ("Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" in season 1, "Time is On My Side" in season 2).

3. We then jump to another on-the-nose Laris/Picard conversation in which we juxtapose the need to "settle down" with "the pull of space".

4. We then have the generic mystery box message which pulls Picard away from his chateau and into his adventure.

5. We then have the usual "Picard is a rogue now" and so "functioning outside of Starfleet" scenes, mingled with the usual "Picard assembles his team to go on his mission" tropes.

6. Like the previous two premieres, we then have the "Picard leaves Laris behind" cliche. She's the only interesting and well-acted original character on this show- why do we keep leaving her behind?

7. Meanwhile, Raffi's in her own little mystery box ("Who's the Red Woman?").

8. Elsewhere you have little cliches sprinkled about, like the generic terrorist attack (seemingly pulled from "Into Darkness"), the cliched "Blade Runner" planet, the cliched baddies with villain masks, the cliched "spies wearing cloaks" (yet blatantly stating that they're Starfleet Intelligence Agents whilst out in the open), the cheesy Bev-being-a-badass-with-a-shotgun scenes, or Bev's secret son, or the generic villain ship (huge and darkly painted, of course, and looking like Nero's ship)...and on and on it goes.

IMO classic Trek could get away with such hokiness because it was theatrical and very abstract/metaphorical in tone. The decor was as stylized as everything else. "Picard", though, is simultaneously silly and going for gritty realism. It's incongruous.

9. Meanwhile, as is typical of nuTrek, our heroes are all a mess. Riker's an alcoholic and split from his wife and kids. Beverly's not spoken to her friends in 20 years and has been hiding a child all this time. 7of9 hates her life and hates working for a Starfleet captain who is an awful bigot. Even Picard seems out of character; early in the episode he says he "misses adventure", but Picard's never been a guy interested in "adventure". He's a by-the-book Starfleet officer who cares about duty and responsibility foremost.

10. And of course, like previous seasons of "Picard", the dialogue continues to be too modern and contemporary ("I'm all in, man!", "Guess I can't expect more from a junkie!", "Tired of taking this sh*t!" etc).

This episode is over 50 minutes worth of cliches and tropes. Nothing much happens, and there's little here but teasing and nostalgia. Yes, it's all executed better than the season 1 and 2 premieres - it flows better, moves better and is less cheesy - but by dint of being 3rd it suffers from going through the very motions its predecessors did.

IMO, like the Borg scenes conned people into thinking the season 2 premiere was good, Jonathan Frakes singlehandedly makes this episode work. He personally elevates everything, has that Shatner charisma, and adds a lighthearted, jovial tone to the episode. He turns the whole episode into a lark.

Re: TNG S3: The Most Toys

I'd forgotten how good "Most Toys" is. It's a bit similar to Voyager's "Think Tank", another episode I'd underrated.

The episode is also a bit like "Plato's Stepchildren", or a number of TOS episodes really, in the sense that the goofy, campy quality of the villain distracts you from noticing how dark, and psychologically truthful the writing is.

This is also one of two episodes which shows a painting Data's been working on in his quarters. The painting is simply a depiction of a long, dark blue tunnel, which when I first saw it decades ago I'd immediately found disturbing. I don't know what the show intended for this painting to mean, but my initial reading was that this was glimpse into Data's psyche; it's as though he's trying to look inward and find something personal to put in his art, but finds only a kind of machinic, soulless emptiness; as though his interior life is a long dark tunnel, going, he fears, to nowhere.

Of course this is just my biassed interpretation. But I remember distinctly thinking it was a very sad painting, and a sad comment on Data, when I saw it so many many years ago.

Re: Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Peter said: "My point is that it misunderstands the purpose of the Trek property and therefore underserves the characters."

That's funny, because I remember thinking to myself a few days ago that the film plays well if you pretend it's not a Trek film. It almost feels like a live-action version of Arthur C Clarke's "Rendezvous With Rama".

Maybe it's even more a Robert Wise film than a Trek film. I've seen a lot of his films, and while I wouldn't call him an auteur interesting for his pet interests or themes - IMO he's one of those workmanlike directors who lucked out into making a handful of classics - he did seem to keep revisiting stories about first contact with aliens ("The Day the Earth Stood Still", "Andromeda Strain", "TMP"), and he did seem interested in shipboard life ("Run Silent Run Deep", "Hindenburg", "The Sand Pebbles") and the sort of ghostly death and rebirth we see at the end of TMP ("The Haunting", "Audrey Rose, "Wanda June", "Curse of the Cat People").

Regarding your "underserves the characters" comment, I think I mostly agree with you. Still, some of the character scenes hit me powerfully last time I watched it. Granted they were all between Kirk and Spock - the film sort of forgets about everyone else - but these little moments got the characters perfectly IMO. Kirk's friendship shone through powerfully for me, it's just conveyed differently to the other movies, with little glances, or subtle gestures.

Re: PIC S2: Farewell

PM said: "Like 90% of the commenters on this site, the Engadget Picard S3 review is click-bait-toxic-negativity for the sole purpose of click-bait-toxic-negativity."

Here's another negative review:

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/the-third-season-of-picard-is-star-treks-rise-of-skywalker/

It's by Darren Mooney. People may know him from his fairly in-depth analyses of past Trek shows, X-Files and so on. He has a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of Trek and scifi.

Re: Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Peter said: "...requires us to both admire and root for the ships themselves."

And the film is aware of this. Characters outright say that the Enterprise is a "living entity". As Spock explains to us, machines and ships are viewed, by the alien race, as "living beings".

Peter said: "it seems to miss its own point by mostly being fascinated by the machines and how they look"

Part of me thinks Robert Wise does get the tone of the picture wrong. The TOS script is actually a brilliantly pulpy, fast-moving thing, and had Roddenberry directed the film it would probably play like a TOS episode.

But a larger part of me thinks Wise read the script, understood its message, and employed an austere, cold tone as a deliberate part of the film's strategy.

Yes. the film is aloof and distant for most of its running time - like the aliens, it is drawn to machines and regards corporeal beings as furniture - but the gaps between everyone are nevertheless constantly shrinking as the show progresses, until it climaxes with everyone closer and people touching.

Watch how when Ilia becomes a probe, she touches Decker's face intimately. Later the film climaxes with Vger hugging Decker. And when Spock goes EVA, he essentially mind-melds with and so touches an alien race. When he's adrift in space, it is then Kirk who goes EVA and intimately holds him close (while the Enterprise looms over his shoulder like a protective mother) which I believe is their first touch in the picture. Spock is then taken to sickbay. A concerned Kirk hugs and holds him close, and its only then that Spock's coldness cracks and he begins to feel like the Spock from TOS. "For all its logic, Vger is barren" and cold", Spock says, and then explains that Vger is essentially "yearning to do this" , and reciprocates Kirk's hugs by holding Kirk's hands in tight friendship.

The film is cold, but IMO that's only because it's building up to all the touching in the final act. And its initial coldness only makes those little acts of closeness more powerful. They're like little burning flames, surrounded by the frigid darkness of space.

So I think the aesthetic of the film is fitting. It's a cold film about cold, rational, machine people in the future who have been separated for a long time - watch how the separation of the TOS crew echoes the separation of Vger from Earth, and the separation of we the audience from our heroes, and the separation of Kirk from the Enterprise, and Ilia from Decker etc - and who are very slowly learning to come together.

So I'd say BEING close and together is not what the film is about. It's about the distance, the loneliness, and the eventual act of touching. The actual warmth comes later, which we see in the subsequent films.


Peter said: "And McCoy, who was always Spock's equal and opposite in the contest for the human soul, is scarcely even provided with a justification for being on the mission once the ship is underway."

Yes, this is one big problem with the flick. Bones is missing a big monologue or dramatic moment in the final act. He doesn't do much after the trio meet in the lounge.

Re: Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Rewatching the film several days ago, the "oath of celibacy" scene struck me as odd too. It's a very clunky line.

But it does fit in with the themes of the film: Spock begins the film hoping to "purge his emotions". He's become a cold, distant, machine-like person, much like Ilia, who won't let herself get emotionally or sexually close to anyone. You might say Kirk is the same way; he seems hard and bristly since being cut off from the Enterprise.

All this dovetails with Vger, who was reprogrammed by a race of cold machines, but wishes to connect, touch, see, f*ck, and feel the Creator. This typically gets read from a "religious" angle - Vger wanting to find God - but it works better on a simpler level. Vger wants companionship, and to assuage a sense of loneliness. If Vger's made in God's image, after all, then God must be like Vger. One becomes Two, One is no longer alone.

"The Motion Picture" gets touted as a "cold", "Kubrickian" picture, but it's ironically the one Trek film which is thematically about closeness and community. The human Decker and the cold Ilia learn to have weird techno-sex. The machine Vger mates with fleshy humans. The "rational" Spock turns his back on the Kolinahr - the ritual by which all remaining vestigial emotions are purged - in favor for hanging with the Bones and Kirk. And the jovial Kirk gets a ten minute sex scene with the Enterprise.

The film was made at a time when science fiction was obsessed with the idea that "technology" and "modern society" were "turning men into machines". Nowadays this is seen as a false dichotomy - humans are machines, and what passes for "reason" is both bound to emotion, and rational only within contexts that are themselves irrational - so there's a kind of naivety to the film's clean demarcations. But there's a kind of truth to it too. There's a kind of truth to the way it shows how humans conceive of themselves, and how they oscillate between, or yearn to master, (animal) flesh and (machine) mind.

Like Kubrick's "2001", there's a theme of transcendence here. What's ironic is that the transcendence runs the other way. In Kubrick's masterpiece, lowly human touches Super Advanced Alien God and evolves into a StarChild. In "The Motion Picture", we see the opposite: lowly humans are God and Super Advanced Alien touches them to achieve transcendence. Enlightenment, in Trek, is thus to retain some kernel of "humanity".

As much as I love Nicholas Meyer, "The Motion Picture" is the only Trek film to be directed by a legitimately great director. Yes, Robert Wise was probably too old and out of touch to really get Trek or science fiction, but there's a compositional masterly to countless scenes in this film, and almost all the sets are gorgeously photographed and framed. The Enterprise in particular feels like a real ship, and there's a real tangible, spatial feel to her interior.

People complain about "The Motion Picture's" pacing, but IMO most of the damage is actually done by that awful "asteroid sequence". That scene looks hokey, kills the momentum of the film, and stalls its transition from its first act to second. Remove that sequence, and trim a couple of the Vger flybys, and you have a pretty great and streamlined "Hearts of Darkness" narrative, the Enterprise going "up river" into the wild, lawless, mysterious Unknown. With a few tweaks, this is a genuinely haunting and scary plot, pregnant with foreboding. And allow yourself to forget that she's a NASA probe, and Vger really does feel alien, and the machine race which "rebuilt her" like something dark and almost Lovecraftian.

Speaking of aliens, too often people forget that Vger didn't "evolve by herself". She contacted something big and horrible (and friendly?) out there at the edges of the galaxy. Trek is filled with alien races, and science fiction with what authors call BDOs (Big Dumb Objects), but "The Motion Picture" is IMO the only time Trek has actually crafted an alien that feels alien. The machine race in this picture retains some semblance of grandeur and unknowability (I'm reminded of the unseen aliens in "Forbidden Planet").

I've seen "The Motion Picture" about four times, and every time it goes up in my estimation. Nowadays I'd probably put it only behind the Nicholas Meyers films. The visuals are rightfully praised (that drydock sequence is special), but IMO Spock, Bones and Kirk are pitch-perfect too. Once you remember they've been separated for a while, and it's been a while since their Five Year Mission, everything just clicks.

Re: ORV S3: Future Unknown

I rewatched every season, and found myself liking almost every episode even more than I did the first time.

One thing a rewatch pulls into particular focus, though, is the Claire and Isaac relationship. Once you know the show ends with them getting married, you begin to spot the little clues in season 1 and 2 as to why this was actually inevitable. Indeed, I'd bet Seth planned that marriage way back in season 1, because Claire's hots for anyone who bends over backwards to protect her kids is hammered home there as well.

It also becomes apparent that Isaac isn't a "toaster with no emotions". He just expresses and processes emotions differently, and in many respects is akin to a neurodivergent or "autistic" person.

Re: TNG S5: The Game

Every time I rewatch "The Game" and "Perfect Mate" I like them more. They both dupe you into seeing a fairly simple story, while the real story remains hidden right in front of you.

So in "The Game" you have a surface story about tech addiction (games, computers, smartphones etc) and a crew that is blind to their "brainwashing".

Meanwhile, almost every scene is about how we're socialized to not see certain types of biological "addictions". Like Troi and her ice-cream at the start, or Riker having sex on the pleasure planet, Wesley throughout the episode is in a biochemical game of his own. He's as sucked into his little lover's simulation with the Ashley Judd character, and is as oblivious and blind to this as Picard and company are to their Game.

And the episode relentlessly emphasizes how humans "overlook" or are "blind" to this sexual game. The opening line is the sexually charged "don't make me come after you". When Wesley beams onto the ship he immediately starts talking about Miles' baby. Data then mentions the Sadie Hawkins dance, where "females choose men". Then Picard mentions failing "organic chemistry" because of a girl whose name he carved into a tree.

And on and on it goes. The episode ends with the crew escaping the grip of The Game, but Wesley remains unaware that he's locked in his. IMO this all echoes Picard in "A Perfect Mate", where our stoic, enlightened captain naively believes himself existing outside the "romantic simulation" conjured by an alien woman.

Incidentally, the aliens who programmed the game in this episode seem to direct their "captured ships" to the Cleon star system, which seems named after a famous star system in Asimov's Foundation series.

Re: ORV S2: A Happy Refrain

I'm rewatching the show to see how the Isaac/Claire romance plays knowing where it ends up, and so far all their episodes have worked extremely well for me.

Upon first watch, I couldn't understand why Claire fell for Isaac, but it's actually consistently explained: the guy's a sex god, is constantly protecting her kids, and she's been burnt by flesh-and-blood men.

Isaac's workings, meanwhile, also play better on rewatch. Upon first watch, I pegged Isaac as a machine with no biological drives and no capacity for what we term love. His fondness for Claire therefore seemed like nonsense. But I now think the show's writing Isaac on a much simpler level. He's like Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory, a socially incompetent guy with no relationship experience and an almost autistic or overly literal or logical understanding of others. Isaac's primarily written as a emotionally stunted human, with some "technobabble" inserted to sell the idea that he's a robot.

I think when you accept that this isn't a serious attempt to write a robot/human relationship, but a lowbrow, comedic romance between a "generic genius" and a "ordinary chick" it all plays better.