Comment Stream

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@James White.

Yeah, there are plenty of shows that are different than TNG and suck. And many that don't. And even a whole lot of TNG sucks. But when a review basically states that "this episode is wrong. It isn't Star Trek." Then the reviewer, IMO, in the context of what this show is a direct follow up to, if not a sequel, is saying its a bad episode because it isn't TNG.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Booming

I get it you are obsessed over Kurtzman. I could care less who's running the show. When Picard becomes a bad show, I'll be the first to bail just like I did with every single Rick Berman product at some point. But the fact that this show is not TNG 2.0 doesn't make it a bad show by default no matter how many demerit points it gets for not kneeling to the Berman era, the same way I'm sure you don't think Berman's products deserve demerit points for not kneeling to TOS.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Booming

TNG broadened the appeal of Star Trek by standing on the shoulrders of TOS, which did all the heaving lifting for 20 years and making the most milquetoast and unchallenging version of the franchise that could possibly be constructed. It was about thinking for its audience, providing them comforat and reinforcing that comfort. I get it why any devote would have trouble with the first generation of Star Trek and the recent generation of Star Trek, because they don't off that kind of comfort food that devotees of the Berman Era expect.

All you seem to be able to offer is the most superficial readings, and I undertand that, because that's all that watching TNG taught you Star Trek is capable of offering.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Booming

you see the thing about producing a TV series for grown ups is that it's different than past Star Trek series. Past Star Trek series were didactic. It was about the lesson, and to make sure it got through you had to tell the audience what to think about what they were seeing. Hence, in TNG there's the infamous last scene where you get a sober reflection on the episode and a run down of what the lesson is to be learned for those who still don't get it.

Dicscovery and Picard don't do that. They, for the most part leave the audience to figure out what the point is, to ask why, and then examine what they are watching to figure out the answer. So its a lot more demanding on the audience, and yeah, there's a tendency for those who expect the show to do their thinking for them to throw their hands up and say, "This is not my Star Trek!"

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Booming

Torture porn, like all porn is an end unto itself. That's not what's happening here.

So, I wouldn't call it shock, I'd call it horror. I think it's meant to inform us and have the viewer empathise deeply with what drives 7 to be who she becomes as the version of 7 Picard meets. it's meant to be something that stays with the viewer over the course of the episode carrying us with 7 to the end of what she does, and why she does it.

Its easy, if you want to hate something, to limit yourself only look at it superficially. That way you don't make the mistake of deriving anything out of it but derision and start wondering if all your hatred is justified.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Booming

Chain of Command might be problematic for the kiddies as well, don't you think? Or do you let it off the hook because it's TNG?

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Booming

Yeah, my mom was freaked out by the Ceti eel scene from Wrath of Khan for a good time after watching that Star Trek nugget way back when.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Tommy D.

I kind of see Picard in some ways as this generations version of what TNG did with TOS characters like Scotty, Sarek and Spock when they decided to bring them back, with Scotty and Spock viewed as 'relics' of a different time to be looked down upon by more sophisticated modern folk. Or we got Sarek finding he is no longer in control of his carefully controlled world, desperately needing Picard to swoop in with his better than a Vulcan mental discipline to provide Sarek one last hurrah.

Side note: I don't think Agnes is a synth, and I can imaging young folks in the 24th century to never be exposed to baking, and even not knowing how it works, since they get all their food from a replicator. I also think that the cookie scene was a metaphor for his approach to recreating what Soong accomplished. In this metaphor, Data is the cookie, and you can't make a cookie from a cookie, you have to put together the ingredients in the proper proportions and then bake to replicate the cookie you just ate.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

"We have strayed to far," says Jammer.

Strayed far from TNG, yes i will agree. And where has that lead us? Right back to where Star Trek started from: The kind of Frontier stories that TOS had aplenty. Anyone who watched TOS growing up will recognize a lot of Picard and also folks who have watched a lot of Film Noire, where Picard of course got his Dixon Hill kick from.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@John Harmon

Sorry you don't know the difference between nostalgia and deconstruction. If these were series built around nostalgia there would be beige sets, color coded uniforms everywhere and episodic recapture of the good old days you so dearly miss.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Eric Jensen

I know we want our favorite characters to be perfect in every way and in control in every way. But there's a whole lot of ways 7 could have made that mistake after returning to the Alpha Quadrant. There have been a whole lot of clever and intelligent people in this world who've done stupid things where it comes to love.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Eric jensen

Right. Because people are 100% in control about people they fall in love with, especially if their experience of being in love as an individual is as limited as it is for someone who grew up as a drone in a big bio-mechanical machine.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Hank

You cannot keep a fanbase alive over multiple generations solely via nostalgia.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Nolan

In all honestly, Nolan, Compared to how BSG reinterpreted the original Battlestar Galactic, Discovery and Picard make sweet love to what came before. And in my opinion that's not at all hyperbole as both someone who's watched Star Trek from TOS and both versions of Battlestar Galactica from the moment they were launched. But no, I'm not a devotee of Star Trek because of its formula, set design, costuming, how much of a perfect utopia the Federation should be. I am interested in character, because stories are about people, and I view additional angles on people to be a good experience even if it isn't a happy one. The difference between what BSG did and what Disco and Picard are doing is vast but IMO it comes down to this, BSG as far as I could see was about annihilating the characters it adapted. It did it in different ways, but annihilation was the goal, not just death. Discovery and Picard has been about expanding the characters they adapt. And even if the do kill characters such as Icheb, he wasn't annihilated as the characters from Battlestar Galactica were. Argue as you might, you won't convince anyone reasonable that Discovery or Picard are excercises in nihilism. I don't think the same can be said about BSG.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Nolan

The same reason people treat episodic and serial as an either/or is the same reason people choose novels/short stories as an either/or.

For me, modern trek isn't flailing at all. It's made the leap. The flailing is going on in an entirely different arena.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Dan

People with open minds like yourself and me certainly do exist. TrekBBS continues to be a forum for those who aren't consumed by outrage that Trek didn't stand still when their vision of what Trek is allowed to be came to a hard stop.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@dave

just to offer a rebuttle, I've been a fan of Star Trek for over 40 years, and I've been enjoying Discovery and Picard immensely and look forwards to this era's Trek going forwards. I won't argue that it's not the simplistic stuff that the show used to be mostly comprised of. Me, I'm happy to see Star Trek that is built in such a way that it reminds me of the 300+ page Star Trek novels I read back in the 80s. As a reader of often complicated works of science fiction, I'm loving that Star Trek has actually tackled the long form in my lifetime.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@John Harmon

Why do statments of fact read to you as cynical? Why are you again complaining that anyone who doesn't have a completely ideological view of the Federation aren't Star Trek fans? Anyone who has watched Star Trek has seen that there are many worlds outside the confines of the Federation, even in TNG days had problems. And even those within had populations which were unsatisfied with what the Federation had to offer. Tasha Yar's world even left the federation and descended into chaos, and the Federation stood by and did nothing. PIcard warned in Drumhead that there was always the threat of the kind of McCarthysim and needed to be guarded against (and the victim was a half Romulan). When a single Changeling got to Earth, a coup was narrowly averted.

People have sworn on Star Trek, on TV and in the movies. There has been blood and gore and violence across the series. Data did attempt to murder Kiva Fajo. Worf only got a reprimand for his revenge killing of Duras. No one was prosecuted for the attempted genocide of the nanites or the attempted genocide of the Founders or the blowing up of a Romulan ship to get them ally with the Federation against the Dominion. Was all this only done to seem edgy for kids who were 14 year olds in the 1990s?

There was a lot of action in TOS, as it was viewed as an action series. Not so much in TNG, more in Discovery. Times change. Each generation gets their own Trek, and there's nothing wrong with that. In twenty years there probably will be a different take on Trek because there already has been 3 in the past 50 years.

And IMO, there's nothing wrong with that, and it doesn't mean that one is more deserving of the title because of how it juggles the formula.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Rahul

There is nothing done in this episode that hasn't been done before in Star Trek. Gore, yep. Revenge, yep. Casinos, yep, heists, yep, betrayal, yep. The list goes on and one. And I find it especially amusing the complaints about bringing back 'classic characters' - is Voyager now considered 'Classic Star Trek?' and not treating them with the 'veneration they deserve'. Its as if they don't remember how a number of TOS characters got their lest than respectful 'send offs' in the TNG era.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Trent

No definition of random fits the way you are using it.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

Unhappy about this ep? maybe 7 of 9 will do what Harry Kim and what Captain Janeway did and find a time machine and fix everything like magic so that all these bad things never happened. I mean, that worked for Voyager many a time, right?

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Trent

I don't think you know what the word Random actually means. Maybe find a word that actually means what you think you are describing.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Trent

You may not have liked payoffs in Discovery, but they were highly specific and foreshadowed in both seasons. Calling them random is ridiculous.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

That's certainly as dark a place as Star Trek has ever gone - Wrath of Khan and First Contact territory at least.

Re: PIC S1: Absolute Candor

@Booming

Nonetheless, most large organizations do not pick their best and brightest for receptionist duty.