The Official Star Trek Thread

[Middle-aged Europe]

SPOILERS





After having watched the series premiere I think my main beef with that show is the extremely unoriginal backstory with the artificial intelligences rebelling against their creators and  subsequently being outlawed and/or persecuted. We already know that story from Blade Runner, reimagined Battlestar Galactica, and the new Westworld.

Aside from that I think I liked it. They tried to build and expand on previous events like Data's death or the destruction of Romulus and showed us the repercussions. Patrick Stewart's acting abilities alone probably make that show superior to Discovery, and it's nice to see Picard back in action again. I also found it very pleasing that it wasn't overloaded with action sequences, quiet drama being in the forefront instead.

Like I said, at first glance it's better than Discovery and probably better than Voyager and Enterprise as well.

[Middle-aged Europe]

One thing they seem to have adopted from Discovery btw is the gradual introduction of all main characters over the course of several episodes. Discovery had introduced half its (Season 1) main cast in Episode 1 and the remaining half in Episode 3.

Picard's series premiere also featured only four of the main characters, with one of them only briefly appearing in the final scene. This has actually a lot of advantages, since many serieses' pilots are suffering from the problem of having to do stuff too much exposition into a single episode.

[Middle-aged Europe]

While a single episode probably isn't nearly sufficient to rate an entire series, I will give the first episode a "B".

If it holds this level of quality, I'd place the series somewhere in the middle field below TOS, TNG, and DS9, but above VOY, ENT, and DIS... well, perhaps on par with DS9.

[Middle-aged Europe]

SPOILERS





After having watched the series premiere I think my main beef with that show is the extremely unoriginal backstory with the artificial intelligences rebelling against their creators and  subsequently being outlawed and/or persecuted. We already know that story from Blade Runner, reimagined Battlestar Galactica, and the new Westworld.

Aside from that I think I liked it. They tried to build and expand on previous events like Data's death or the destruction of Romulus and showed us the repercussions. Patrick Stewart's acting abilities alone probably make that show superior to Discovery, and it's nice to see Picard back in action again. I also found it very pleasing that it wasn't overloaded with action sequences, quiet drama being in the forefront instead.

Like I said, at first glance it's better than Discovery and probably better than Voyager and Enterprise as well.

There's also another hidden reference to the current (or past) refugee crisis other than the Romulan one resulting from the Supernova IMO:

The attack on Mars by the artificial intelligences are similar to the attacks on 9/11 carried out by Muslims.

Trump's travel ban on Muslims are similar to the ban of A.I. by the Federation.

Since Dahj is some kind of human/A.I. hybrid, she could be seen as some sort of Muslim refugee using todays standards.

That's essentially the same what BSG did with regards to the Cylons. Except that it was more relevant back then because it had only been a few years since 9/11.

[Middle-aged Europe]

While a single episode probably isn't nearly sufficient to rate an entire series, I will give the first episode a "B".

If it holds this level of quality, I'd place the series somewhere in the middle field below TOS, TNG, and DS9, but above VOY, ENT, and DIS... well, perhaps on par with DS9.

DS9 is the best Trek series to date, tho not as good as B5. TNG depended on the quality of the season. Had it not had the Trek name, it never would've made it to a second season.

True, but applies to DS9 as well.

[Middle-aged Europe]

SPOILERS







So, apparently the Romulans have some ancient taboo against the use of artificial intelligences, androids and so forth. And there's a millenia-old secret organization which both "loathes and fears" AIs, making sure that this taboo is upheld. At that point, I was inclined to yell at the screen: Because of the BUTLERIAN JIHAD???

(We also learned that episode that Picard reads Isaac Asmiov. So far no direct reference to Herbert though.)

I also started to wonder if and when events from Discovery's second season would come into play in Picard. The former had recently dealt with a rogue AI after all. Maybe a remnant of "Control" was responsible for the synths going haywire in Utopia Planitia??


Speaking of which.... Worf's name was also dropped in dialogue, making me wonder: If Michael Dorn were to appear on the show, would he know wear the make-up of the Discovery Klingons?? I sure as hell hope not. To redesign the Klingons for DIS was one of the most stupid decisions ever. Sure, their outlook had already been redesigned once during the 80s, but back then they only had been recurring villains. Now, two main characters (Worf/B'Elanna) and numerous important recurring characters (Gowron, Martok, Lursa & B'Etor, Kurn, Alexander and so on...) come from that race. I guess the existence of Star Trek: Picard wasn't really anticipated when Discovery was first developed.


The gradual introduction of the main cast continued in the second episode. This time: Michelle Hurd as Raffi Musiker. According to the trailer for next week we're finally gonna see Santiago Cabrera's character for the first time then. And also THE SHIP.

[Middle-aged Europe]

One can tell that you're really a bit obsessed with Muslims, right?

Btw, the doctor's name was "Moritz Benayoun".... Benayoun is a traditionally Hebrew/Jewish name which is indeed most prevalent among North African Jews and - due to heavy immigration from North Africa - among French Jews as well. Don't know whether it is a coincidence that the actor who portrayed him, David Paymer, is Jewish too - albeit not one of North African descent.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Well, on Battlestar Galactica Kara Thrace was the "Harbinger of Death" so I'd imagine it's some similar hogwash. Seriously though, I have no idea.

Notable events in this episode:

- After a 26-year-absence from the Trek universe Jonathan Del Arco from the classic TNG episodes "I Borg" and "Descent" returns as the former Borg drone Hugh, now serving as the Executive Director of the Romulan Reclamation Project. Followin, Picard and Data he's the third previously established Trek character to appear on this show (as we know from the trailers three more are to follow this season).

- The Big Damn Heroes (Picard, Dr. Jurati, Rafi, and Captain Rios) are finally united on their show and are engaging the warp drive. Picard does indeed say "Engage" for the first time in the show, although he does have to relinquish the captain's chair to Rios. Since pretty much everybody on that show seems to have a dark and troubled past, Rios is no different. I wonder what his secret is and whether it ties in with the other plot lines on the show.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Episode 3 was stronger than Episode 2, I thought.

Yeah, agree with this. I'd rank the episodes like this: 1 > 3 > 2.

[Middle-aged Europe]

This episode had two noteworthy fanservice moments with a TOS-era Romulan Bird-of-Prey appearing and Seven of Nine finally returning.

With Elnor and Seven on board the crew also seems to be complete for now. We'll have to wait and see whether Soji and Narek will join them too eventually, Narek's loyalties at least seem to be a bit conflicted. I think I like the running gag of Rios' multiple holographic doppelgängers. I wonder how many of them will pop up eventually.

Today I also had a bit a feeling to not watch Star Trek anymore, but a cross between Star Wars and Firefly. That Western-like Romulan refugee planet certainly remained me of Firefly. With Rios I also got a bit of a Han Solo-vibe and according to the trailer for next week Freecloud will turn out to be a "casino planet".

[Middle-aged Europe]

Here btw is an article on the similarities between Star Trek: Picard and Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope:

https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-trek-picard-spoilers-star-wars-luke-skywalker-new-hope

Picard is essentially Obi-Wan Kenobi, Rios is Han Solo, and Soji is Leia who needs to be found and rescued from the Death Star Borg cube.

[Middle-aged Europe]

At first I thought that Bjayzl was Deanna Troi, because both women look almost completely identical.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Picard is... not good. The writing is just godawful.

Personally, I thought that the premiere episode was the strongest and this week's episode was the weakest so far. So overall the show is getting worse, unfortunately. I hope that downward trend stops at some point, be it with its already greenlit second season. Discovery'a second season was also a bit better than its first IMO.

It's noteworthy that Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner Michael Chabon is Picard's showrumner and was to some extent involved in writing four of its five already released episodes. Go figure. Writing novels and writing a TV show are fundamentally different things, I guess.

[Middle-aged Europe]

After the recent downward trend it seemed like this show finally managed to get its sh**t together again this week. Possibly the best episode since the premiere.

In retrospect, maybe the problem was that they wasted too much time on the "the crew gets together" stuff which took the entirety of the first four episodes. Picard should have arrived at the Borg cube in Episode 3, not Episode 6 IMO.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Second solid episode in a row, I'm keeping fingers crossed that this means that the show truly managed to get its act together now.

Bringing Riker and Troi back means a hefty portion of nostalgia, in an episode that almost exclusively consists of quiet drama (except for a brief action sequence on the Borg cube) similar to the series premiere.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Final verdict:

Star Trek: Picard remains a mixed bag. Some episodes are good (specifically #1, 6, 7, and 8 ), others suffer from the same flaws Discovery does. The incoherent script quality puts it all over the place. I hope they'll be able to work out the kinks in Season 2.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Final verdict:

Star Trek: Picard remains a mixed bag. Some episodes are good (specifically #1, 6, 7, and 8 ), others suffer from the same flaws Discovery does. The incoherent script quality puts it all over the place. I hope they'll be able to work out the kinks in Season 2.

With further consideration I'd like to add that Picard seems to be at its best when it focuses on "quiet character drama" (e.g. the episodes Remembrance, Nepenthe).

The farther the show deviates from that formula the likelier it is that it turns into an incoherent mess filled with worn-out action movie clichés (see the stupid Seven/Narissa catfight in the final episode). Picard really isn't that good doing action episodes.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I haven't posted in this thread before, but I did watch the show, and mostly liked it. I enjoyed most of the characters, although some (such as Narek) really started to piss me off eventually. I know a lot of lifelong Trekkies (I'm not one, although I like what I've seen of the other shows) really felt disoriented and even betrayed by the premise of Starfleet being infiltrated by a xenophobic hate group and the Federation taking an isolationist turn because of it, but I thought it was timely, and the show has plenty of characters in whom the Federation's ideals still live (from Picard himself on down).

I agree that the finale was kind of a mess, but it introduced some interesting ideas. Maybe the second season will do more with them.

Yeah, Starfleet apparently went full Trump/BoJo due to Russian Romulan infiltration.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Tender swap?

[Middle-aged Europe]

I'll probably never become much of a fan of this show. It's not that bad of a series, but also not a particularly good one. Kind of... average.

Season 2 was for the most part an improvement over Season 1. The new season seems to be largely ripping off Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda plot-wise, although it will probably turn out to be a tad better than its spiritual precursor (not that this is a particularly high bar, consdidering what a trainwreck "Sorbo Trek" had been.)

This Season 3 premiere had two particularly cheesy, cringe-worthy segments: Burnham being drugged and the overly pathos-laden Federation flag-raising scene at the end. The introduction of the new character (and obvious Burnham love interest) Book was an interesting subversion of long-standing tropes though. In the beginning he seemed like a kind of Han Solo, a smuggler and thief without any moral code or compass. Turns out he's sort of an 32nd century environmentalist who's acting rough because he's operating in a rough world (I guess that accounts as an application of the "Good All Along" trope: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodAllAlong).

The worst Star Trek I have ever seen.

The season premiere was hardly worse than And the Children Shall Lead, Shades of Gray, The Muse, or Threshold.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Star Trek in general hasn't been very good since the 20th century, IMHO.

Enterprise was pretty solid, IMO.

It's last two seasons anyway... but by then most viewers had already turned off.

[Middle-aged Europe]

when do you guys think was "peak" Star Trek.  Mid to late Next Generation is my favorite, but I haven't seen much DS9 or Voyager.

Seasons 3 and 4 of TNG was Star Trek's overall high point IMO. 5 and 6 were also relatively strong, but by the 7th fatigue had set in.

Depending on who you ask, DS9 was also pretty strong, but very different in style, tone and structure from the shows that came before and immediately after. That's why I wrote "depending on who ask", because that show also managed to divide traditional fans of the franchise: Darker, less utopian, more conflicts (both among the crew and between the powers of the galaxy), increasingly serialized structure, mostly space station-based rather than on a starship, topics and issues that so far hadn't really been touched by the franchise like religious faith or large-scale warfare. Seasons 1 and 2 of DS9 were still pretty bland and sometimes outright boring. So, it's a bit hard to get through them, but by the 3rd season the show managed to find its footing, with the introduction of a new enemy and a new starship.

Voyager is overall weaker than any of its precursors. Most of the time it tried to emulate TNG, but with more action-driven plots and somewhat weaker scripts. For a long time, I just regarded it as a dumbed down version of The Next Generation, although considering what the franchise has put out in most recent years it's now more in the middle of the franchise quality-wise rather than at the bottom. Seasons 4 and 5 - and maybe 6 - were probably Voyager's high point. Voyager's specialty were the two-parters, of which it did a total of twelve during it's seven-year run. These two-part epsiodes usually told grander, more epic stories and used the show's more action-driven formula to the fullest extent. Commonly held opinion is that the best of these were Scorpion (probably THE best Voyager episodes as well as two of the best episodes in the overall franchise), Year of Hell, and Dark Frontier.

Much of what I just wrote about Voyager also applies to Enterprise, at least in its first two seasons and maybe in a somewhat blander fashion. With declining ratings, it took a hard turn in its second half though. Season 3 somewhat resembles DS9 by introducing a new, dangerous enemy and suddenly switching to a military conflict-driven serialized structure out of the blue. For most part, the quality of the show noticeably improved during that year. Season 4 is then a bit of an oddball. For the most part, it's essentially a 20-episode long hommage to TOS, picking up plot points from the earliest show in the franchise, building and expanding on them and giving a more modern look and feel than TOS had. Season 4 also had the most unusual structure of any season of Trek, since it almost exlusively consists of two-parters and three-parters. Like in Voyager's case that gives the episodes a much more epic feel.

The most recents incarnations of the franchise, Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks were overall probably weaker than all the shows outlined above, but I'm gonna refrain from doing a lengthy review of them right now.

[Middle-aged Europe]

After having seen 10 of the 13 episodes now I gotta say that the third season of Star Trek: Discovery is not only this series' worst season so far, but probably one of the weakest in the entire franchise's history, right up with the first seasons of TNG or DS9.

During its second season, I had the impression that Discovery managed to work out some of the kinks and started to improve itself. The first couple of episodes of the current Season 3 also continued to show some promise. But it peaked with and then suddenly fell apart after the fifth episode ("Die Trying"). Everything that came after that point - episodes 6 through 10 - has been just atrocious.

One of the main issues with the season's plotting is obviously that they solved the initial mystery of "what's left of the Federation and where are they hiding?" way too quickly, because that one was quickly checked off with the aforementioned episode "Die Trying". And then everything went downhill.

They are now somehow looking for the "cause of the Burn", an apocalyptic event in the Federation's history that led to an almost complete collapse of Starfleet. Seemingly sounds interesting at first glance, but sometimes they're getting totally distracted from that supposedly significant issue with inane and pointless subplots. But even when they manage to stay on course with the main arc for a week or so I often wonder why I should care about finding the "cause of the Burn". The way it was presented so far, it just didn't catch my interest. Characterisations also seem all over the place, with most characters having become incoherent cardboards chewing out cheesy and clichè-ridden lines of dialogue.

Kill that show already, put it out of its misery. Unfortunately, it has already been renewed for a fourth season. So, this leaves me with the choice of hoping that it manages to pull itself together again somehow or just stop watching it. There's also the new Captain Pike spin-off Strange New Worlds incoming. I hope that one won't turn out to be a similar trainwreck. At least Anson Mount with his "easygoing yet competent" portrayal of Pike had charisma and screen presence.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Episode 11. The "cause of the Burn" is finally revealed and it turns out as lame and illogical as the preceding search for it.

There's a planet which - for some reason - consists entirely of Dilithium. And on this planet there's also for some reason a malfunctioning Holodeck entraping you in gothic horror/haunted house-like scenarios. And in this malfunctioning holodeck lived an orphaned child who for some reason mutated due to the extensive Dilithium "radiation" around him, giving him the ability to make all the Dilithium in the galaxy simultanously explode in sort of a temper tantrum. Which led to the apocalyptic collapse of almost the entire Federation more than 100 years ago. On top of that, all of this was presented and told in a very tedious and boring story.

The child is now an adult, but obviously not quite right in his mind given where and how it grew up. But, attention is quickly shifted to other things then, namely that the crew of Discovery now needs to fight the thugs of the Andorian-Orion organized crime syndicate which for some reason had been the entity filling the power vaccum following the collapse of the Federation.

Somehow I had the feeling that I was watching an episode of the cheesy and ludicrous Space: 1999 from the mid-70s. If I'm not too busy maybe I'm gonna watch Season 3's final two episodes too and then I'll probably gonna quit on Discovery.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I remember the first season of Picard as a pretty uneven, mixed bag. They did the "quiet drama" episodes reasonably well (e.g. the pilot episode or the Riker/Troi one), but as soon as they aimed for action-adventure stuff they quickly collapsed to current Discovery levels of stupidity. Maybe that shows that TNG - or a TNG spin-off for that matter - was never supposed to be an action show.

It's a shame what this once proud franchise has come to since it had been revived with the launch of Discovery a couple of years ago. First and foremost, CBS probably should have looked for more capable writers and showrunners. The Mandalorian, The Expanse, The Orville... they're all waaaayyyy better than this trainwreck. By now even the formerly much-maligned "bastards childs" of Trek, Voyager and Enterprise, look like friggin William Shakespeare.