so, they're just lifting plot points whole cloth from Wrath of Khan, then
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Star Trek: Picard - Make It So Engage Earl Grey Hot
- Thread starter SpoonyBard
- Start date
It's messed up, but we don't really know anything about the situation to know if it was warranted or not. What we do know, is that in the alternate All Good Things... timeline, they got married but it didn't work out in the long run, so there's already a potential incompatibility there. Picard has already said things didn't end on the best of terms with Bev, being very vague in the private shame way Picard has always been characterized as having. Add that to the S2 where they explored Picard's emotional hang ups with his mother and I can kinda assume how things would have gone south. As much as it would potentially over-echo Wrath of Khan, Bev going off-radar to keep her son away from his father's world make sense. If she'd kept in touch with the rest of the gang, I doubt all of them would respect her decision and not let the info get back to Jean-Luc. The other thing is, ghosting in the 24th Century has gotta be a two way street, right? Like, they pulled up Jack Crusher's history with a swiftness when they wanted it. If Picard wanted to track Beverly down, even just to see what she was up to without intervening, he could have very easily. But he let her go. (Which btw is probably the right, ethical thing to do.) So I dunno. I'm interested in seeing where things go here. At the very least, it's been a great recipe for some great drama already. And it plays into Picard's character in ways that feels pretty authentic, pulling from the very beginning when we were first introduced to him, rather than just some shoe-horned in plot for cheap drama that doesn't really make any thematic sense.
I dunno, I think it makes sense to me. In S2, Raffi hadn't really "gotten better" - she just replaced one dependency with another. (Being manipulative and controlling with Elnor.) Her arc in S2 was about coming to terms with the idea that she needed help and couldn't just brave-face and bullshit her way past her problems. She had to be willing to face them. Going back to do regular Starfleet things was a mistake, so now she's trying a different route that plays more to her strengths as an intel agent, but she's still not over the emotional trauma, and still feels the addict's yearnings.
I've read a decent amount of hate on the internet for the character and her storyline this season. I'm left wondering if it's just blind hatred, or if people are just impatient with something they don't like, or if there's real merit there. To me, the story with her ex makes sense, but I needed to read a bit in the margins of what was going on. The implication of the scene with her ex wasn't just her paranoid delusions leading to addiction and thus being a bad mother/parent. I think there's a real resentment to being an absent wife/mother that comes from even before that. The telling thing to me is that A) her ex lives on this god forsaken planet vs somewhere safer and easier, implying that they're from here, and Raffi escaped The Life to join Starfleet. And B) her ex said she chose Starfleet over her family, which wasn't even part of the equation post her getting drummed out of the service and subsequently spiraling. That part was probably just the cherry on top to a broken relationship. Where like, you choose Starfleet over us, and in the end it only ended up biting you in the ass, but you kept spiraling and trying to be a part of that life even after they didn't want you, instead of moving on and being there for your family. I've seen this kind of dynamic play out all the time IRL, where family members are too close to the source to really be able to dispassionately step back and stomach dysfunction because The Greater Good. I don't blame her family for feeling the way they do.
Sort of. Like yeah, if you wanna be reductive about it, yes. And the showrunner is on the record saying the TOS movies were one of his primary inspirations since they are his Star Trek and what defined the franchise to him growing up, so it was very obviously a conscious decision to take that plot point and run with it. But you can do reductively the same thing and still put a unique twist on it, or have the framework of something familiar be fertile ground for some good performances. Like, being reductive, Data is just a clone of Spock. The emotionless, purely logical, non-human through which the show explores aspects of humanity through his juxtaposition. But I don't think anyone would charge Data as being a lazy copycat at this point. Because good writers and a great performer turned a familiar blueprint into something unique and special.
So while the root idea is something we've very obviously seen before, I think there's still fertile ground to do something interesting and original. At the very least, Carol Marcus was a non-entity before and after Wrath of Khan, and David Marcus was more a plot point than an actually realized character. And while Kirk and Picard both share the same basic Horatio Hornblower framework of being stoic men who secretly lament being married to their jobs and the detriment that causes their familial aspirations, that fascet of Picard has been explored and fleshed out much more thoroughly and to me means a whole lot more to further explore, on top of his already established dynamic relationship with Bev. And they'll ostensibly be exploring the idea much more thoroughly through the course of a 10+ hr TV season, versus very briefly over the course of a 2hr film. And so far the execution of the same basic idea has been handled even better and much more interestingly than the original, so I'm excited to see where it's going.
It's also very nakedly part of a backdoor pilot to a potential Next Next Generation show, and I would be totally down for a show where Captain Seven of Nine bosses around a Picard Jr and teaches him the ropes of being a responsible, respectable officer. I am however not quite as sold on a Crash LaForge being a part of that yet, but we've got 80% of the season left for the show to sell me on that one.
Sprite
(He/Him/His)
Gonna put my thoughts behind a pop so it's not just a sea of black.
I think there’s definitely a lot more going on with Beverly and Jack than we know. I suspect a lot of what Jack says is blatant lies. He says he’s “equal partners” with his mom but we don’t see her in the flashback from two weeks ago, and I’m not clear on whether “the marked woman” hunting Jack in that flashback is Vadic or Beverly. I don't think he's lying about the two of them being renegade frontier doctors, but I get the feeling something went down that put a wedge in their relationship.
I hope the reason for her getting out of Dodge is simple and human and screwed up. Picard probably wasn't in the best headspace after killing his clone-son, and I could see that giving way to angry rantings about legacy and the end of his family line. Maybe he said something that spooked pregnant Bev and made her want to skip town, finding an excuse with this renegade doctor thing. Her family's association with Picard hasn't exactly worked out well for her, with her husband killed under Picard's command and her son turning into Doctor Who and only coming back for weddings. I could absolutely see her becoming terrified of the pressure Picard would put on Jack and deciding she's better off just cutting ties.
I hope the reason for her getting out of Dodge is simple and human and screwed up. Picard probably wasn't in the best headspace after killing his clone-son, and I could see that giving way to angry rantings about legacy and the end of his family line. Maybe he said something that spooked pregnant Bev and made her want to skip town, finding an excuse with this renegade doctor thing. Her family's association with Picard hasn't exactly worked out well for her, with her husband killed under Picard's command and her son turning into Doctor Who and only coming back for weddings. I could absolutely see her becoming terrified of the pressure Picard would put on Jack and deciding she's better off just cutting ties.
I prolly shoulda done the same, oh well. Agree with most of your second paragraph, not so much on the first but we'll see! I keep going back to one of the trailers where Bev is very anxiously talking to Picard about how there are always going to be people with vendettas trying to get revenge on Picard, and I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to extricate their son from that environment
I'm a little behind, but I just watched the first episode and very little of it worked for me, which is about what I was expecting.
I was going to type up a whole list of complaints but honestly I can't be bothered. But Riker meets Geordi's daughter and the first thing he does is humiliate her in front of her crew? Fuck off
Sprite
(He/Him/His)
I would love this, though I worry with streaming services finally starting to contract this bubble of Star Trek content might be set to burst soon.
You're not wrong. But that's kind of been Riker's entire M.O. They even made a whole episode about it in TNG lol.
Star Trek pulls pretty good numbers for P+ I'm pretty sure, and even people who *hate* the new stuff, still tune in to watch, so they're making money either way. The streaming bubble might burst or is bursting, but streaming won't go away. It's still the future of media, and they won't just close up shop. Corporations just need to find the right balance. And while companies like Netflix is on the downward trend, that could work to CBS's benefit as people leave a place they perceive having no value, for a service like P+ that actually has a lot to offer IMO. P+ is just beginning to roll out in Europe, and they're consolidating Star Trek onto the service, which should be a big boost for their subscriber numbers given the historic popularity of Star Trek over there. They even recently paid Netflix a bunch of money to undo their exclusive distribution agreement in some Euro markets of some of the new Star Treks, so they clearly see tons of value in the franchise and nuTrek in general. They might decide to spend less on making Star Trek at some point, but that could come in multiple different ways like reducing budget for these shows rather than axing shows/show orders all together. But for whatever reason, and for now, CBS/Paramount sees Star Trek as one of its tentpole franchises and keeps supporting it like that as well.
So yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about nuTrek suddenly disappearing or anything in the near future. The possibility of getting a spinoff of this I think is relatively high, depending on a few factors. I think the biggest worry is a PIC spinoff having to compete with other project proposals. Kurtzman has already said they're limiting the amount of shows concurrently in production to 5, so now that PIC is over, they're probably hard at work discussing what will slot into there. They fast tracked SNW simply from the immense fan support for Pike/Spock in Disco S2. If PIC S3 does well, I can see a spin-off from that getting greenlit in short succession. Of course that will probably depend on how the season closes out. But it still has to beat out other in-development shows we know are on the board, such as the rumored Starfleet Academy show, and the Michelle Yeoh vehicle they insist is still coming. That is unless one of the other four shows gets canned. Which could happen for sure, but who can say. LD and SNW seem like they're locks for the foreseeable future. Prodigy and Discovery are probably in the more precarious positions. Disco S5 didn't get a renewal until after S4 ended, which was late and broke the pattern of continual instant renewals. Which to me said the show was in a precarious position going into S4, but S4 finished well enough that they decided to renew it anyways. Disco has only gotten better which each season, so if this upward trend continues I think they can keep going. Prodigy I think is in the most precarious position, simply because they're dependent on being in Nickelodeon's good graces to keep going, and we all know how smart Nick is in their programming decisions.
So yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about nuTrek suddenly disappearing or anything in the near future. The possibility of getting a spinoff of this I think is relatively high, depending on a few factors. I think the biggest worry is a PIC spinoff having to compete with other project proposals. Kurtzman has already said they're limiting the amount of shows concurrently in production to 5, so now that PIC is over, they're probably hard at work discussing what will slot into there. They fast tracked SNW simply from the immense fan support for Pike/Spock in Disco S2. If PIC S3 does well, I can see a spin-off from that getting greenlit in short succession. Of course that will probably depend on how the season closes out. But it still has to beat out other in-development shows we know are on the board, such as the rumored Starfleet Academy show, and the Michelle Yeoh vehicle they insist is still coming. That is unless one of the other four shows gets canned. Which could happen for sure, but who can say. LD and SNW seem like they're locks for the foreseeable future. Prodigy and Discovery are probably in the more precarious positions. Disco S5 didn't get a renewal until after S4 ended, which was late and broke the pattern of continual instant renewals. Which to me said the show was in a precarious position going into S4, but S4 finished well enough that they decided to renew it anyways. Disco has only gotten better which each season, so if this upward trend continues I think they can keep going. Prodigy I think is in the most precarious position, simply because they're dependent on being in Nickelodeon's good graces to keep going, and we all know how smart Nick is in their programming decisions.
It's a weird line, but it makes... sense?? The more you think about it? Consider:
It kind of is how time works, actually. Consider our frame of reference of where we live, Earth. We have time zones, because depending on where you are on the surface, our frame of reference - the rate of spin of our planet and thus how long we are exposed to sunlight - changes. But we still base all of our time keeping off of one specific timezone: UTC. Every computer on the planet tracks time based on UTC.
Now on the surface, the time of day - and thus the time - changes depending on where you are. Our civilization as it currently stands, is locked to our mother planet. But in a Star Trek future, where there are people living on space stations in orbit, on the Moon, on Mars, around Jupiter, on Titan, etc, etc, but still intimately interconnected, you still need a common frame of reference of time, despite nobody experiencing the same Earth daytime cycles. For example, night lasts for 14 days on the Moon. Or on a Starship, we repeatedly hear them use time of day references despite flying around in the far reaches of space. Setting your mostly Earth ship, and the rest of the Sol System to something akin to UTC timing standard makes sense for logistical purposes.
And it especially makes sense when Earth time is not the only time standard out there. For example, Bajor, and thus DS9, operates on a 26hr day. So making a distinct reference to the Sol System for time keeping in contrast to some other civilization's time keeping makes sense.
Now on the surface, the time of day - and thus the time - changes depending on where you are. Our civilization as it currently stands, is locked to our mother planet. But in a Star Trek future, where there are people living on space stations in orbit, on the Moon, on Mars, around Jupiter, on Titan, etc, etc, but still intimately interconnected, you still need a common frame of reference of time, despite nobody experiencing the same Earth daytime cycles. For example, night lasts for 14 days on the Moon. Or on a Starship, we repeatedly hear them use time of day references despite flying around in the far reaches of space. Setting your mostly Earth ship, and the rest of the Sol System to something akin to UTC timing standard makes sense for logistical purposes.
And it especially makes sense when Earth time is not the only time standard out there. For example, Bajor, and thus DS9, operates on a 26hr day. So making a distinct reference to the Sol System for time keeping in contrast to some other civilization's time keeping makes sense.
(Full disclosure: I originally wrote a nastier version of this post and then deleted it, and I apologize if anyone saw it.)
In those cases (I assume you mean Lower Decks, but also there's his relationship with Ro Laren in general), they were officers directly under his command who needed a push for one reason or another. Not the daughter of a friend, on a ship he has no longer has anything to do with. Ro came onto Riker's ship with a huge anti-authority chip on her shoulder; all Sidney La Forge did was smile at him and he destroyed her. It's an awful, embarrassing scene, and if the writers were referencing "Riker is tough on ensigns" as a character trait from those above examples then I think they really misunderstood those episodes.
I really, truly believe this is ten times more thought that the writers put into that stupid line. These being the same writers who later in the same episode had Jack Crusher described as an "intergalactic fugitive." How many galaxies has he been to, do you suppose?
I'm glad you're enjoying this show and I wish I could see it through your eyes. I know I've only pointed out a couple of issues so far in this thread but my problems with it are absolutely wall to wall; I can't bring myself to spend the time picking it all apart because it'll just put me in a worse mood. I'm having a wretched, frustrating time with Picard, but I can't stop hatewatching because TNG was such a huge part of my childhood.
Anyway, maybe it's best I just stay out of this thread until it's over as I don't want to bring the mood down for those who are enjoying it.
In those cases (I assume you mean Lower Decks, but also there's his relationship with Ro Laren in general), they were officers directly under his command who needed a push for one reason or another. Not the daughter of a friend, on a ship he has no longer has anything to do with. Ro came onto Riker's ship with a huge anti-authority chip on her shoulder; all Sidney La Forge did was smile at him and he destroyed her. It's an awful, embarrassing scene, and if the writers were referencing "Riker is tough on ensigns" as a character trait from those above examples then I think they really misunderstood those episodes.
I really, truly believe this is ten times more thought that the writers put into that stupid line. These being the same writers who later in the same episode had Jack Crusher described as an "intergalactic fugitive." How many galaxies has he been to, do you suppose?
I'm glad you're enjoying this show and I wish I could see it through your eyes. I know I've only pointed out a couple of issues so far in this thread but my problems with it are absolutely wall to wall; I can't bring myself to spend the time picking it all apart because it'll just put me in a worse mood. I'm having a wretched, frustrating time with Picard, but I can't stop hatewatching because TNG was such a huge part of my childhood.
Anyway, maybe it's best I just stay out of this thread until it's over as I don't want to bring the mood down for those who are enjoying it.
I am behind everyone here mostly. I've finished season 1 a few weeks ago and I'm only on episode 3 of season 2 now. But I can absolutely see where Vaeran is coming from: this show is written in such a way that makes it feel like any typical main network drama show, just with a Star Trek skin placed on top of it. Does it do some neat things with TNG characters? Sure. But mannnn is the writing consistently questionable, both plot-wise and moment-to-moment. I am enjoying it so far, but only because I have adjusted my expectations pretty far down after trying to watch it when it started airing and hating it.
John
(he/him)
I'm mostly enjoying the new ones, and am not invested too much to get hung up on the minutia. My wife did have a feeling of disgust at the writers when Riker implied that his home life wasn't great right now. "They're Imzadi, a bonded pair, they're not supposed to have problems", which sure, but Riker still finds ways to show he's an asshole, like with LaForge. He's now the creepy uncle at Thanksgiving, and I'm sure Deanna's tired of his shit.
I agree with the reviewer over at Ars Technica who said that even though it's presented as a TNG show reunion, it's actually a TNG movie reunion. Shaw talking up Picard & Riker's crazy hijinks as reckless cowboy stunts was probably more accurate to the Movie versions of the characters, but wasn't what the show was about. It's not realistic to expect the characters to be static versions of themselves from TV 30 years ago, but also not from the movies 20 years ago. Put in that light, I think it's fine that everyone's evolved a bit, especially Worf turning into a samurai jedi instead of a clumsy oaf.
I agree with the reviewer over at Ars Technica who said that even though it's presented as a TNG show reunion, it's actually a TNG movie reunion. Shaw talking up Picard & Riker's crazy hijinks as reckless cowboy stunts was probably more accurate to the Movie versions of the characters, but wasn't what the show was about. It's not realistic to expect the characters to be static versions of themselves from TV 30 years ago, but also not from the movies 20 years ago. Put in that light, I think it's fine that everyone's evolved a bit, especially Worf turning into a samurai jedi instead of a clumsy oaf.
FelixSH
(He/Him)
Due to negativity, I'll put this behind a spoiler-pop thingy.
Still open for the idea of a whole season, where the most exciting thing to happen would be "Picard loses his favourite chess set, so he looks at different places to find one, taking along Riker", or "Picard wants to enjoy a nice day in the sun, but on every planet he tries, it's rain season". Oh, I know, give me an episode where Picard tries to write a book, but every time he starts, someone annoys him with a petty request. Let every original member appear, including Wesley, who REALLY wants to hang out with his sorta-dad, and Picard remembers what fatherly love is, and that people are more important than books.
I really should get back to Strange New Worlds, whose first two episodes I adored, but then kinda forgot about, for whatever dumb reason. That one really hit me, and was probably my favourite new Trek thing, aside from the glorious Lower Decks.
Yeah, I dunno. It feels like what I (very vaguely) remember the movies being like? Like, yeah, I kinda recognise the characters, but it also doesn't feel, at all, like TNG, the show, to me? I simply couldn't help but groan, when we are again having some giant crisis, endangerig the whole of, uh, Earth, or the Federation, or something. Yeah, sorry, I didn't pay as much attention as I should have.
I loved Worf. He was cool. Didn't like, at all, that Riker and Dianna are having trouble. I don't buy it. Yeah, it can happen, I still don't buy it. Also, I wished we could get Dianna too, for that season, I miss her.
I realized that I don't care about Raffi, at all. Have nearly completely forgotten her backstory, and I just don't care? Makes me sad, I should care for a character, whose journey I have followed for two seasons.
I really hoped we would get some more lighthearted romp, something more low-key. Not without it's troubles, of course, but just less intense. Dunno, let Picard get bored of his life on Earth, and make him learn about an artifact on a strange planet, that has been forbidden, and show me how he travels there, following clues, going planet by planet, and learn about some intrigue, or whatever, on the way. And the others join him, because it just sounds fun. For whatever dumb reason, I expected something similar (not this, that came to me just now, but something less intense), a last chance for Picard and his old crew/friends to have some fun together. Plus Seven, of course, because I love seeing her, every time.
I guess I'll adjust my expectations, and go with the flow, because I can't not watch it anyway. Won't annoy the rest in here with my complaints all the time, I'll probably just keep quite for most of the time, if I don't get more into it.
I loved Worf. He was cool. Didn't like, at all, that Riker and Dianna are having trouble. I don't buy it. Yeah, it can happen, I still don't buy it. Also, I wished we could get Dianna too, for that season, I miss her.
I realized that I don't care about Raffi, at all. Have nearly completely forgotten her backstory, and I just don't care? Makes me sad, I should care for a character, whose journey I have followed for two seasons.
I really hoped we would get some more lighthearted romp, something more low-key. Not without it's troubles, of course, but just less intense. Dunno, let Picard get bored of his life on Earth, and make him learn about an artifact on a strange planet, that has been forbidden, and show me how he travels there, following clues, going planet by planet, and learn about some intrigue, or whatever, on the way. And the others join him, because it just sounds fun. For whatever dumb reason, I expected something similar (not this, that came to me just now, but something less intense), a last chance for Picard and his old crew/friends to have some fun together. Plus Seven, of course, because I love seeing her, every time.
I guess I'll adjust my expectations, and go with the flow, because I can't not watch it anyway. Won't annoy the rest in here with my complaints all the time, I'll probably just keep quite for most of the time, if I don't get more into it.
Still open for the idea of a whole season, where the most exciting thing to happen would be "Picard loses his favourite chess set, so he looks at different places to find one, taking along Riker", or "Picard wants to enjoy a nice day in the sun, but on every planet he tries, it's rain season". Oh, I know, give me an episode where Picard tries to write a book, but every time he starts, someone annoys him with a petty request. Let every original member appear, including Wesley, who REALLY wants to hang out with his sorta-dad, and Picard remembers what fatherly love is, and that people are more important than books.
I really should get back to Strange New Worlds, whose first two episodes I adored, but then kinda forgot about, for whatever dumb reason. That one really hit me, and was probably my favourite new Trek thing, aside from the glorious Lower Decks.
The 'afternoon in the Sol System' bit doesn't bother me (too much), it's easy to imagine the writers meant Federation standard time but wanted Vadic to give a bit of a flourish. Someone really should have pointed out that said flourish didn't make much sense though, yes.
As for 'intergalactic fugitive', I dunno, that one seems a bit nitpicky to me. I feel pretty confident if you go back and re-watch the entirety of Star Trek you'll find multiple uses of the term 'intergalactic'.
As for 'intergalactic fugitive', I dunno, that one seems a bit nitpicky to me. I feel pretty confident if you go back and re-watch the entirety of Star Trek you'll find multiple uses of the term 'intergalactic'.
Re: Riker - Yeah, but I'm also just talking generally to his character and how he comports himself. He's a jokester who jokes, even when it's inappropriate or makes someone very uncomfortable. Like when he threw Worf a surprise party despite Worf very clearly hating parties and surprises. Or when he put Picard into a position to get sexually solicited ad nauseum on Risa, despite Picard being very uncomfortable with the situation and disapproving of it all. I've read a few modern reexaminations of Riker as a character, with the thesis that he kinda sucks. And while I still find the guy endearing, I can't really argue against that interpretation either, it's fairly valid.
Re: assumptions of the thought put into the script - I dunno. I don't really like to presume the intelligence or effort that professionals put into things. (I say this as someone who is prone to doing so, but I try to make the effort to catch myself when I can.) This forum does a pretty good job of keeping in mind how video games are collaborative efforts where tons of hard working professionals come together to put a lot of sweat, tears, and blood into them and are all adding their personal touches. Television shows are the same. These scripts get put through writers rooms, get passed through the hands of science advisors, directors, producers, actors, and editors all have a level of input on them as well, etc. Sometimes there are errors, sometimes actors flub lines, sometimes things are intentionally dumbed down for broad audiences, sometimes they really are thinking things out to the extent that I did. And in the worst case scenario, if it really is an embarrassing flub and I shouldn't be giving them the benefit of the doubt... that puts PIC in the company of... *checks notes* the rest of the franchise lol. TOS and TNG especially, had much more lose writing standards than even the more modern Star Treks, where they'd continually contradict each other from episode to episode, or forget that this or that had been already established. It's easy to forget that this is the case as a fan I think, but to me it's always amusing the propensity of the fandom to hold new entries of the franchise to a standard of excellence that the beloved classic shows could never actually live up to.
Re: writing issues/childhood expectations -
I'm a pretty big Star Trek nut myself. I grew up on it, it's my favorite franchise, it helped form a lot of my ethics and worldview growing up, it means a lot to me. The first Halloween costume I ever asked for as a kid, I asked to dress up as Jean-Luc Picard. I have put myself into a cycle where I have been constantly watching Star Trek uninterrupted for close to two decades at this point as well, where I start at the beginning of the franchise, and then just watch every single episode/film until I get to the end, and then I start all over again, all in my free time. It is not always on my mind, but I expend perhaps an unhealthy amount of time thinking about it, and I dare say my knowledge of the franchise is fairly exhaustive. So believe me when I say that I get where you're coming from here, and that your perspective and attitude used to be me once upon a time, long long ago.
The way you look at nuTrek (or maybe not all of nuTrek, but certainly Picard) is the way I used to look at the post-TNG spin-off shows. I was a lot younger, so my criticisms weren't as thought out and considered, but I found myself nitpicking the spin-off shows to the point where they were just upsetting and uninteresting to me. I used to get upset at how DS9 was stuck on a stationary space station and betrayed the ethos of Star Trek where it would be about exploring new, exotic locales on a regular basis, or how Voyager's design seemed kind of derpy, or how Sisko was just a Commander and not a Captain, or how the early seasons of all the post-TNG shows felt very mid compared to the sustained excellence of TNG. After a while, complaints settled into biases, and I would find new reasons to be upset at the shows despite in hindsight those things not really mattering. I hated that they dumped Kes (an objectively boring character) for Seven who I thought was just there for crass sex appeal, even though she might be one of the best characters in the whole franchise, for example. I never delved into full hate-watching, but there came a point where I stopped religiously watching the show and not really caring if I missed an episode here or there. And eventually, I got to the point where I just stopped watching them all together. Disappointment, disillusionment, betrayed expectations, as well as moving into high school and attempting to kind of distance myself from a lot of my more nerdier hobbies and tendencies in order to fit in, led to disengagement and borderline disavowment of the franchise. I stopped watching DS9 and VOY in their 6th/7th seasons (came back for the finales but felt very meh about both) and dropped ENT towards the end of the first season all together.
Time passed, and after finding myself in a rut post-college, I found myself watching a few stray Voyager episodes with a really good friend from HS who, unbeknownst to me at the time, was also a big Star Trek fan. Voyager was *his* Star Trek though, in the way TNG and especially the TOS films were *my* Star Trek. Free of expectations of what I wanted this show to be (more TNG) and that this show had to carry the burden of carrying on the franchise (which was dead at this point), and allowing myself to open up to the infectious enthusiasm my friend had for it, I found myself really enjoying it, and missing Star Trek in general a whole lot. So I went about rewatching TNG and VOY with my buddy (we were roommates at the time) and it became really potent comfort food that helped me get through some personally dark times. (That phrasing might be overly dramatic, but certainly helped me keep treking along through some potent/sustained bouts of depression). And after finishing watching those shows again, with my passion for the franchise renewed, but faced with a dearth of new content to the franchise, I entertained a curious notion - what if I went back and rewatched the rest of the franchise that I'd neglected or thought poorly of? Maybe the change in perspective that led me to enjoying Voyager more, might be true of the rest of the franchise that I hadn't held much care for previously.
And you know what? Turns out, everything else was pretty damned good too. DS9 ended up being way better than I remember it ever being. I remember thinking the CGI on the show (like Odo's shape shifting) looking kind of cheap back in the 90s, but a good decade removed and my expectations adjusted, I wasn't bothered by that. Or by the conceit of the show. Instead of being disappointed I wasn't watching more of TNG, I really made it a point to try and approach each show based on its own merits and what it wanted to be. That, and new perspectives like being older and seeing the Jake/Ben relationship from the perspective of an adult vs the perspective of a child, suddenly I kinda got what they were going for. Being settled on a space station wasn't a con, it allowed for telling different kinds of stories and perspectives that TNG/TOS's format never allowed for. And knowing generally where things went and how things turned out, freed myself from the anxiety and expectations of watching it live as it was happening, not knowing if any of it would end up going in the right directions or paying off well.
And that adjustment of expectations, as well as recentering my perspectives on things, really helped adjust my attitudes towards all of the old shows. ENT ended up doing really interesting things as a prequel/sequel and had really strong acting performances/lovable characters. The 'bad' parts of TOS were their own kind of fun, and the good parts held up better than they have any right to. Even The Animated Series - which I was always told as a child was a bliteringly, stupid, repulsive, waste of time, ended up being hilarious at worst, and had a few really strong episdoes and conceits. And the self-reflection and discovery of just how wildly expectations can affect our perceptions was really rather eye opening to me as an individual as well.
I'd always known that was the case intellectually, but it's different to really just sit down and analyze methodically/logically how much it really does affect our thought processes and how illogical it all is. When you begin to expect something to be bad, you tend to go into it setting yourself up for failure. You dwell on all of the things that you perceive as wrong, even if logically speaking, there isn't anything actually wrong or different. And when your emotional state is so charged with negativity, it's hard to really focus on giving the thing you're engaged with a good faith try to see all of the good and interesting things it might also be doing at the same time. And the same is true if you go into something too eager or with high expectations as well. Especially if it's stemming from something you really enjoyed in the past. When we look back at TNG as this masterclass of a show, we remember all of the good things about it, and all of its best moments. Because in our lizard brains, it triggers happy memories and endorphins. Those are the instant, subconscious emotions that get evoked. We forget all the nitty gritty details about episodes that were true travesties like Code of Honor, or all of the times Troi was physically and metaphorically assaulted, or all the times Geordi was a creep, or all the times TNG flagrantly disregarded TOS canon, or even its own events. We might know intellectually those things happened, but they don't affect our love for the show because we aren't looking at things rationally.
And just being mindful of that, and taking that perspective into the new shows, has really helped me better appreciate nuTrek for what it is. I made the mistake before of not giving older Star Trek shows fair shakes, I wasn't going to make that mistake again with nuTrek. So I go into each new Star Trek show, and while I will definitely notice how they aren't like the shows I grew up on and loved, or doesn't live up to certain expectations, I will sit and practice mindfulness and ruminate on those feelings and ask myself, "Are these feelings logical? Is this actually different, or is it just my perception? What is the show trying to do and say, and is that interesting in and of itself?" So take Discovery S3 as a case example.
There's a twist towards the end of the season that answers a season-long mystery. Without spoilers, I'd gander to say most people do not like the answers to that twist. My first and immediate gut reaction was one of confusion and quite honestly disgust. The season had built up such an interesting and compelling premise and the answer just seemed... lame. But was this a failing of the show? Were the writers stupid or something? What could they have done for an alternative answer that would have been more satisfying/interesting? Were the writers trying to say something specific with how this twist was answered that I'm not really giving them credit for? The more I thought about it in a detached and analytic way, the more things started to make sense to me, and the more I began to appreciate what they'd done. It didn't really make sense for the writers - who had done a really good job up to that point - to suddenly just become dumdums. I mean, it happens, but was this likely here? Not necessarily. Could I think of an alternative answer that would have been more interesting? Not really. The answer they thought up turned out to be pretty unique, and most TV shows would have settled for some lame techno-macguffin that was pretty devoid of meaning. And the more I thought out the scenario, and listened to interviews from the actors/writers/showrunners, it began to click with me what they were aiming for thematically. Which was actually a pretty potent moralistic theme the more I thought about it, that weaved its way into almost every single individual story arc that had been addressed in the season up to that point.
I still think the answer of Disco S3's mystery plot wasn't the best. But I'm not mad or disappointed about it. I see the merits and value of it, and actually appreciate it now. And after having just rewatched the season as of a day or two ago, I actually started considering additional layers of meaning that I don't think is coincidental and is actually kind of low key fantastic:
The entire Su'Kal story seems so silly at face value, but I'm pretty sure one part of it is that he's supposed to be a surrogate for angry nuTrek haters. He's a literal man-child, with stunted emotional growth and an inherent incapacity to relate to others or to even acknowledge the sentience and perspective of other people. He's trapped in a virtual world, and his wails of anguish and fear literally destroyed the Star Trek universe. Like, that can't be a massive coincidence, right? This kid is basically Superboy Prime. And it would have been really easy for Discovery to punch down at the stand-in for detractors of the show/terminally online haters. And yet, the characters in the show treat him with immense compassion and patience. They work hard to try and empathize with him, understand where he came from, find ways to communicate with him to put him at ease and help gradually open his mind to new ideas he steadfastly refused to confront. They see themselves in him, and put their lives on the line to help him, when it would have been much easier to simply fire a phaser at the guy. And when they do make the connection after multiple episodes of hard work, they're able to figure out what his hang ups were, to help him confront them and move past them through empathy, and begin to help him take the first steps into true adulthood and seeing the real world in all its marvel and majesty. And this ability to like, really, truly connect with others, feeds back into the entire literary theme of the whole season, and into Star Trek in general. Where connecting with one another is how we truly move forward and solve our problems with finality in order to reach the utopian vision of Star Trek. And it's not even done in a patronizing way either, the characters are just being themselves - good people doing their job and doing what comes natural to them.
Like, I don't know if the show was able to pull it off 100%, because clearly it didn't exactly land with most people (or even myself the first time around). But it's actually low key... amazing!? Like, actually peak Star Trek??? It was not just something nobody has really ever done before, but it took a risk to do so, and just really stuck to it guns to deliver its message. And like, I can't fault that. The more I think about it, the more it just really feels like a genuine spiritual successor. Like, S3 of Disco is the TMP of nuTrek. Flawed, but fascinating and really embodying the ethos of the franchise in unconventional and divisive, but ultimately laudable and commendable ways. And the message itself is a very commendable one, and not just in a "isn't that quaint" kind of way, but actually went through the effort to model to the audience how to actually carry out its morals rather than just telling you about them.
The way you look at nuTrek (or maybe not all of nuTrek, but certainly Picard) is the way I used to look at the post-TNG spin-off shows. I was a lot younger, so my criticisms weren't as thought out and considered, but I found myself nitpicking the spin-off shows to the point where they were just upsetting and uninteresting to me. I used to get upset at how DS9 was stuck on a stationary space station and betrayed the ethos of Star Trek where it would be about exploring new, exotic locales on a regular basis, or how Voyager's design seemed kind of derpy, or how Sisko was just a Commander and not a Captain, or how the early seasons of all the post-TNG shows felt very mid compared to the sustained excellence of TNG. After a while, complaints settled into biases, and I would find new reasons to be upset at the shows despite in hindsight those things not really mattering. I hated that they dumped Kes (an objectively boring character) for Seven who I thought was just there for crass sex appeal, even though she might be one of the best characters in the whole franchise, for example. I never delved into full hate-watching, but there came a point where I stopped religiously watching the show and not really caring if I missed an episode here or there. And eventually, I got to the point where I just stopped watching them all together. Disappointment, disillusionment, betrayed expectations, as well as moving into high school and attempting to kind of distance myself from a lot of my more nerdier hobbies and tendencies in order to fit in, led to disengagement and borderline disavowment of the franchise. I stopped watching DS9 and VOY in their 6th/7th seasons (came back for the finales but felt very meh about both) and dropped ENT towards the end of the first season all together.
Time passed, and after finding myself in a rut post-college, I found myself watching a few stray Voyager episodes with a really good friend from HS who, unbeknownst to me at the time, was also a big Star Trek fan. Voyager was *his* Star Trek though, in the way TNG and especially the TOS films were *my* Star Trek. Free of expectations of what I wanted this show to be (more TNG) and that this show had to carry the burden of carrying on the franchise (which was dead at this point), and allowing myself to open up to the infectious enthusiasm my friend had for it, I found myself really enjoying it, and missing Star Trek in general a whole lot. So I went about rewatching TNG and VOY with my buddy (we were roommates at the time) and it became really potent comfort food that helped me get through some personally dark times. (That phrasing might be overly dramatic, but certainly helped me keep treking along through some potent/sustained bouts of depression). And after finishing watching those shows again, with my passion for the franchise renewed, but faced with a dearth of new content to the franchise, I entertained a curious notion - what if I went back and rewatched the rest of the franchise that I'd neglected or thought poorly of? Maybe the change in perspective that led me to enjoying Voyager more, might be true of the rest of the franchise that I hadn't held much care for previously.
And you know what? Turns out, everything else was pretty damned good too. DS9 ended up being way better than I remember it ever being. I remember thinking the CGI on the show (like Odo's shape shifting) looking kind of cheap back in the 90s, but a good decade removed and my expectations adjusted, I wasn't bothered by that. Or by the conceit of the show. Instead of being disappointed I wasn't watching more of TNG, I really made it a point to try and approach each show based on its own merits and what it wanted to be. That, and new perspectives like being older and seeing the Jake/Ben relationship from the perspective of an adult vs the perspective of a child, suddenly I kinda got what they were going for. Being settled on a space station wasn't a con, it allowed for telling different kinds of stories and perspectives that TNG/TOS's format never allowed for. And knowing generally where things went and how things turned out, freed myself from the anxiety and expectations of watching it live as it was happening, not knowing if any of it would end up going in the right directions or paying off well.
And that adjustment of expectations, as well as recentering my perspectives on things, really helped adjust my attitudes towards all of the old shows. ENT ended up doing really interesting things as a prequel/sequel and had really strong acting performances/lovable characters. The 'bad' parts of TOS were their own kind of fun, and the good parts held up better than they have any right to. Even The Animated Series - which I was always told as a child was a bliteringly, stupid, repulsive, waste of time, ended up being hilarious at worst, and had a few really strong episdoes and conceits. And the self-reflection and discovery of just how wildly expectations can affect our perceptions was really rather eye opening to me as an individual as well.
I'd always known that was the case intellectually, but it's different to really just sit down and analyze methodically/logically how much it really does affect our thought processes and how illogical it all is. When you begin to expect something to be bad, you tend to go into it setting yourself up for failure. You dwell on all of the things that you perceive as wrong, even if logically speaking, there isn't anything actually wrong or different. And when your emotional state is so charged with negativity, it's hard to really focus on giving the thing you're engaged with a good faith try to see all of the good and interesting things it might also be doing at the same time. And the same is true if you go into something too eager or with high expectations as well. Especially if it's stemming from something you really enjoyed in the past. When we look back at TNG as this masterclass of a show, we remember all of the good things about it, and all of its best moments. Because in our lizard brains, it triggers happy memories and endorphins. Those are the instant, subconscious emotions that get evoked. We forget all the nitty gritty details about episodes that were true travesties like Code of Honor, or all of the times Troi was physically and metaphorically assaulted, or all the times Geordi was a creep, or all the times TNG flagrantly disregarded TOS canon, or even its own events. We might know intellectually those things happened, but they don't affect our love for the show because we aren't looking at things rationally.
And just being mindful of that, and taking that perspective into the new shows, has really helped me better appreciate nuTrek for what it is. I made the mistake before of not giving older Star Trek shows fair shakes, I wasn't going to make that mistake again with nuTrek. So I go into each new Star Trek show, and while I will definitely notice how they aren't like the shows I grew up on and loved, or doesn't live up to certain expectations, I will sit and practice mindfulness and ruminate on those feelings and ask myself, "Are these feelings logical? Is this actually different, or is it just my perception? What is the show trying to do and say, and is that interesting in and of itself?" So take Discovery S3 as a case example.
There's a twist towards the end of the season that answers a season-long mystery. Without spoilers, I'd gander to say most people do not like the answers to that twist. My first and immediate gut reaction was one of confusion and quite honestly disgust. The season had built up such an interesting and compelling premise and the answer just seemed... lame. But was this a failing of the show? Were the writers stupid or something? What could they have done for an alternative answer that would have been more satisfying/interesting? Were the writers trying to say something specific with how this twist was answered that I'm not really giving them credit for? The more I thought about it in a detached and analytic way, the more things started to make sense to me, and the more I began to appreciate what they'd done. It didn't really make sense for the writers - who had done a really good job up to that point - to suddenly just become dumdums. I mean, it happens, but was this likely here? Not necessarily. Could I think of an alternative answer that would have been more interesting? Not really. The answer they thought up turned out to be pretty unique, and most TV shows would have settled for some lame techno-macguffin that was pretty devoid of meaning. And the more I thought out the scenario, and listened to interviews from the actors/writers/showrunners, it began to click with me what they were aiming for thematically. Which was actually a pretty potent moralistic theme the more I thought about it, that weaved its way into almost every single individual story arc that had been addressed in the season up to that point.
I still think the answer of Disco S3's mystery plot wasn't the best. But I'm not mad or disappointed about it. I see the merits and value of it, and actually appreciate it now. And after having just rewatched the season as of a day or two ago, I actually started considering additional layers of meaning that I don't think is coincidental and is actually kind of low key fantastic:
The entire Su'Kal story seems so silly at face value, but I'm pretty sure one part of it is that he's supposed to be a surrogate for angry nuTrek haters. He's a literal man-child, with stunted emotional growth and an inherent incapacity to relate to others or to even acknowledge the sentience and perspective of other people. He's trapped in a virtual world, and his wails of anguish and fear literally destroyed the Star Trek universe. Like, that can't be a massive coincidence, right? This kid is basically Superboy Prime. And it would have been really easy for Discovery to punch down at the stand-in for detractors of the show/terminally online haters. And yet, the characters in the show treat him with immense compassion and patience. They work hard to try and empathize with him, understand where he came from, find ways to communicate with him to put him at ease and help gradually open his mind to new ideas he steadfastly refused to confront. They see themselves in him, and put their lives on the line to help him, when it would have been much easier to simply fire a phaser at the guy. And when they do make the connection after multiple episodes of hard work, they're able to figure out what his hang ups were, to help him confront them and move past them through empathy, and begin to help him take the first steps into true adulthood and seeing the real world in all its marvel and majesty. And this ability to like, really, truly connect with others, feeds back into the entire literary theme of the whole season, and into Star Trek in general. Where connecting with one another is how we truly move forward and solve our problems with finality in order to reach the utopian vision of Star Trek. And it's not even done in a patronizing way either, the characters are just being themselves - good people doing their job and doing what comes natural to them.
Like, I don't know if the show was able to pull it off 100%, because clearly it didn't exactly land with most people (or even myself the first time around). But it's actually low key... amazing!? Like, actually peak Star Trek??? It was not just something nobody has really ever done before, but it took a risk to do so, and just really stuck to it guns to deliver its message. And like, I can't fault that. The more I think about it, the more it just really feels like a genuine spiritual successor. Like, S3 of Disco is the TMP of nuTrek. Flawed, but fascinating and really embodying the ethos of the franchise in unconventional and divisive, but ultimately laudable and commendable ways. And the message itself is a very commendable one, and not just in a "isn't that quaint" kind of way, but actually went through the effort to model to the audience how to actually carry out its morals rather than just telling you about them.
I laid all of this out because you said you wished you could see the show the way I see it, and I wanted to take that at face value. I don't think you have to sequester yourself from the discussion, I'm at least pretty open to discussing the flaws or shortcomings of this and other nuTrek shows, and won't take it too personally that you see it differently. I just will retort from time to time when I disagree or see things differently, and it's not personal, it's just how I see things and trying to engage in dialog. If that sound unappealing, or listening to be blather sounds/is painful, I don't blame you, but if you're open to these discussions I am.
Not to ummakshually your wife, but
this is TOTALLY in character for the two of them. They were Imzadi in the very first episode of the show, and yet canonically speaking, they separated before the show even began because Riker put his career above the two of them, and then with distance the two drifted apart. Like, it is literally the core foundations of their relationship in TNG. Where they're estranged, mystically bonded lovers who separated and are trying to navigate each other in a professional capacity, but they keep kind of falling back on each other as emotional support and eventually strong friends again as time and proximity heals over old wounds. This dynamic gets explored all the way through the end of the show, culminating in Thomas Riker and again in Admiral Riker's regrets in the alternative All Good Things timeline.
We haven't seen yet what the deal is with the Trois, but from what I've seen regarding cast interviews, trailers, and what they've shown and said in the show, what I imagine is happening, is that when Riker got roped back into Starfleet to save Jean-Luc's butt at the end of S1, he stayed in Starfleet, and thus has been absent from his family. Troi got back together with Riker in Insurrection and Nemesis because - and this is just reading between the lines - because Riker was finally committed to Deanna fully. I don't think it's a coincidence that Riker moved on from the Enterprise to his own command at the same time as his wedding. Riker's entire character arc in TNG was about how he started out as this ambitious, daring, career-minded person, who eventually and inexplicably to himself, settled into a comfortable career-rut or holding pattern that was directly against his initial characterization. TNG never directly answers why that is the case, and we know the real reason is because they were lampshading the fact that one of their star actors had to stay on the show in the same position. But I like to think it's because he was still drawn to Troi, and increasingly comfortable with the idea of Family due to the found-family he was bonding with on the ship. Especially considering Riker's history with his own family often leads to men having relationship/family issues IRL.
So when Troi and Riker go from being genuinely happy retired people living on Nepenthe, to suddenly having marital problems where Riker is back at work and Troi and their daughter are nowhere in the picture, it just screams to me that Riker is backsliding into wanderlust and it's hurting his family. And it probably kills Troi, who - let's remember - has lost family to Starfleet before, and has already lost a son (who probably only caught his fatal illness because they were raising a kid in a dangerous environment of a starship), and now her husband is off being an absentee father after they managed to settle down and build the kind of life Troi seems like she'd perhaps always wanted.
We haven't seen yet what the deal is with the Trois, but from what I've seen regarding cast interviews, trailers, and what they've shown and said in the show, what I imagine is happening, is that when Riker got roped back into Starfleet to save Jean-Luc's butt at the end of S1, he stayed in Starfleet, and thus has been absent from his family. Troi got back together with Riker in Insurrection and Nemesis because - and this is just reading between the lines - because Riker was finally committed to Deanna fully. I don't think it's a coincidence that Riker moved on from the Enterprise to his own command at the same time as his wedding. Riker's entire character arc in TNG was about how he started out as this ambitious, daring, career-minded person, who eventually and inexplicably to himself, settled into a comfortable career-rut or holding pattern that was directly against his initial characterization. TNG never directly answers why that is the case, and we know the real reason is because they were lampshading the fact that one of their star actors had to stay on the show in the same position. But I like to think it's because he was still drawn to Troi, and increasingly comfortable with the idea of Family due to the found-family he was bonding with on the ship. Especially considering Riker's history with his own family often leads to men having relationship/family issues IRL.
So when Troi and Riker go from being genuinely happy retired people living on Nepenthe, to suddenly having marital problems where Riker is back at work and Troi and their daughter are nowhere in the picture, it just screams to me that Riker is backsliding into wanderlust and it's hurting his family. And it probably kills Troi, who - let's remember - has lost family to Starfleet before, and has already lost a son (who probably only caught his fatal illness because they were raising a kid in a dangerous environment of a starship), and now her husband is off being an absentee father after they managed to settle down and build the kind of life Troi seems like she'd perhaps always wanted.
Oops, this turned into an effort post and it's 5am. Yikes.
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Thanks for the thoughtful post, WH.
As far as modern Star Trek goes, I watched and mostly enjoyed S1 of Discovery, and was able to roll my eyes at its narrative missteps and keep watching because it was largely its own thing. (I do intend to continue on with it eventually, but I got distracted by other things.) But since ST: Picard stars and purports to continue and/or conclude the stories of my childhood heroes, it's much harder to maintain that degree of detachment from it, and I start becoming hyperaware of what I perceive as its flaws. The first two episodes of S3 honestly put me in a bad mood that lingered for a while after watching, which I admit isn't a terribly mature way to consume entertainment media. I'll try to mentally reset a bit and give the next episode more of a chance.
As far as modern Star Trek goes, I watched and mostly enjoyed S1 of Discovery, and was able to roll my eyes at its narrative missteps and keep watching because it was largely its own thing. (I do intend to continue on with it eventually, but I got distracted by other things.) But since ST: Picard stars and purports to continue and/or conclude the stories of my childhood heroes, it's much harder to maintain that degree of detachment from it, and I start becoming hyperaware of what I perceive as its flaws. The first two episodes of S3 honestly put me in a bad mood that lingered for a while after watching, which I admit isn't a terribly mature way to consume entertainment media. I'll try to mentally reset a bit and give the next episode more of a chance.
I really like Discovery, warts and all. It's a very odd show, and kind of emblematic of this new era of Star Trek, where it wants desperately to be its own thing, to grow and evolve what Star Trek is and can be, but to also try and stay true to an inner core of what Star Trek's brand of idealism is. It's wild to read internet discussion of the show charge the production and its producers as not understanding Star Trek, or what fans want out of Star Trek, but then to simultaneously watch the show reinvent itself season-over-season, very obviously taking in fan feedback and bending over backwards to try and placate critics while still trying to maintain true to its own core conceits. I liked Season 2, but it is a very different animal from S1. And the same with S3 following it. If you ever get back to it, I'll be interested in seeing what you think of it. I thought S2 was fun, but was also very disjointed because it is being two very different things at once - a backdoor pilot to Strange New Worlds (an excellent show in its own right) while also being a hasty, interstitial transition to what the show very obviously wants to become in S3 and 4.
...from the very onset, all the actors and the producers involved all hustled their asses off in the press trying to get out in front of the show - in hindsight - trying to tamper and adjust the audience's expectations of what this was going to be. They obviously were using TNG and its main character as a selling point to rope in eyes and generate excitement. And expectations are always going to be what they are. But they worked very hard to underscore the idea that this was not a sequel to TNG. That it would not share hardly anything with the original show, beyond a shared universe and a main character who had gone though quite a bit of very human change during the off-screen interstitial years. Patrick Stewart infamously had no interest in ever coming back to the franchise, and only did so under the promise of something rich, and different, and new versus playing the exact same character and role that he had exhausted for a decade and a half previously. And the show, being headlined by a Nobel Prize winning author, had clear aims for the mantle of prestige TV versus anything overly sentimental, nostalgic, and retro in its designs.
Now, I wouldn't blame anyone for going into PIC S1 and 2 cold, being thrown for a loop or being upset that the whiplash of how tonally and formatically it is different from the thing they originally enjoyed. I also don't think it should be really necessary to dig deep into the weeds of promotional material in order to be fully prepared for a thing either, pieces of media should stand on its own and make a good argument for itself and not assume things about the audience. And as much as I liked PIC S1&2, they are absolutely flawed in ways that I wouldn't blame people for being put off by. PIC S1 and 2 do very interesting things to me, but they also stumble and fail as often as they triumph.
The detachment I come into these things with isn't true detachment, I'm still amped and gets swept up in things when these shows manage to start firing on all cylinders or really nail a good scene. It's more a holitisic attitude of acceptance, if that makes sense? Star Trek's history is covered in warts, but I still love the franchise as a whole despite (and sometimes because of) those warts anyways. When I was a kid, I would eagerly sit down to watch new episodes of TNG with my mom, where the sky was the limit and anything was possible. Sometimes that included clunkers of episodes. For every time Worf and Alexander have a whacky wild west escapade, they also had a dull parent-teacher-conference-power-hour. Episodes could be disappointing in a moment-to-moment, or episode-by-episode basis, but I wouldn't dwell on it any longer than that evening, and then moved on with my life. Because next week, they'd be back with a new adventure, and for all I knew, that next episode would be as spectacular as the last one was disappointing. And while that same attitude isn't as easy to have with a show whose plot is serialized, I still try to come at it with the same perspective. Just narrowed down to a moment-to-moment basis, or character-by-character, or if the overarching themes being played here are of any interest. My thing I love can have bad parts to it, but it can have good parts too, and it feels like a shame to let dwelling on the bad parts and letting it overwhelm any possible joy there could be had from other parts of the show.
Especially given the context that I truly, in my heart, resigned myself long ago to accepting the franchise as dead and buried. Like, I went through an actual mourning process lol. So this new era of Star Trek to me is not just enjoyment to me, but like an incredible miracle. It's like having a family member you thought died in an accident a decade ago, suddenly resurface as if they'd been marooned on a deserted island the entire time, and just now got rescued. Tom Hanks came home, and he's a little weird now. He sleeps on the ground, his best friend is a volleyball, and he's clearly gone through a lot and has changed since we last saw him. We all have changed. I could continue mourning how he's returned to my life and is not the same person anymore. But that doesn't particularly feel productive or wise. I'd rather try and greet my long lost friend, reacquaint myself, give them patience and understanding as they try their best to reorient themselves and get back on their feet, and celebrate that they're even here and doing their best to get back to fighting form. Do not mistake my acceptance as turning a blind eye either, I have been just as aware of how different or how many missteps these shows have made. But compartmentalizing and analyzing those aspects has also let me be able to see the nature of those missteps, and how they've been addressed and how the shows have grown over the past 6 (!!!) years. And I'm very excited to see where everything is going because by my eye, the franchise as it exists now, has very much been trying to grow, adapt, take in fan criticisms/feedback, and really engage in what Star Trek means and ought to be in good faith. This new season of Picard to me has been dynamite. It's doing a whole lot of interesting things with the characters and the setting that, while it might make for a poor TNG Season 8, feels like a very worthy chapter/bookend to an epic saga that primarily existed in the margins of the show and thrived in my imagination for decades.
Now, I wouldn't blame anyone for going into PIC S1 and 2 cold, being thrown for a loop or being upset that the whiplash of how tonally and formatically it is different from the thing they originally enjoyed. I also don't think it should be really necessary to dig deep into the weeds of promotional material in order to be fully prepared for a thing either, pieces of media should stand on its own and make a good argument for itself and not assume things about the audience. And as much as I liked PIC S1&2, they are absolutely flawed in ways that I wouldn't blame people for being put off by. PIC S1 and 2 do very interesting things to me, but they also stumble and fail as often as they triumph.
The detachment I come into these things with isn't true detachment, I'm still amped and gets swept up in things when these shows manage to start firing on all cylinders or really nail a good scene. It's more a holitisic attitude of acceptance, if that makes sense? Star Trek's history is covered in warts, but I still love the franchise as a whole despite (and sometimes because of) those warts anyways. When I was a kid, I would eagerly sit down to watch new episodes of TNG with my mom, where the sky was the limit and anything was possible. Sometimes that included clunkers of episodes. For every time Worf and Alexander have a whacky wild west escapade, they also had a dull parent-teacher-conference-power-hour. Episodes could be disappointing in a moment-to-moment, or episode-by-episode basis, but I wouldn't dwell on it any longer than that evening, and then moved on with my life. Because next week, they'd be back with a new adventure, and for all I knew, that next episode would be as spectacular as the last one was disappointing. And while that same attitude isn't as easy to have with a show whose plot is serialized, I still try to come at it with the same perspective. Just narrowed down to a moment-to-moment basis, or character-by-character, or if the overarching themes being played here are of any interest. My thing I love can have bad parts to it, but it can have good parts too, and it feels like a shame to let dwelling on the bad parts and letting it overwhelm any possible joy there could be had from other parts of the show.
Especially given the context that I truly, in my heart, resigned myself long ago to accepting the franchise as dead and buried. Like, I went through an actual mourning process lol. So this new era of Star Trek to me is not just enjoyment to me, but like an incredible miracle. It's like having a family member you thought died in an accident a decade ago, suddenly resurface as if they'd been marooned on a deserted island the entire time, and just now got rescued. Tom Hanks came home, and he's a little weird now. He sleeps on the ground, his best friend is a volleyball, and he's clearly gone through a lot and has changed since we last saw him. We all have changed. I could continue mourning how he's returned to my life and is not the same person anymore. But that doesn't particularly feel productive or wise. I'd rather try and greet my long lost friend, reacquaint myself, give them patience and understanding as they try their best to reorient themselves and get back on their feet, and celebrate that they're even here and doing their best to get back to fighting form. Do not mistake my acceptance as turning a blind eye either, I have been just as aware of how different or how many missteps these shows have made. But compartmentalizing and analyzing those aspects has also let me be able to see the nature of those missteps, and how they've been addressed and how the shows have grown over the past 6 (!!!) years. And I'm very excited to see where everything is going because by my eye, the franchise as it exists now, has very much been trying to grow, adapt, take in fan criticisms/feedback, and really engage in what Star Trek means and ought to be in good faith. This new season of Picard to me has been dynamite. It's doing a whole lot of interesting things with the characters and the setting that, while it might make for a poor TNG Season 8, feels like a very worthy chapter/bookend to an epic saga that primarily existed in the margins of the show and thrived in my imagination for decades.
Pivoting to today's episode, holy cow.
I don't know if this show and its character work will... work for everyone, but it sure is working for me. The entire protracted confrontation between Picard and Bev in this episode was just magic I thought. There's a certain level of retconning happening here, but it's a soft retcon that doesn't really change anything from the show or films, but fills in obvious off-camera voids in ways that as a fan - who was heavily invested in this specific relationship to begin with - felt very natural and to be frank, overdue. And the acting was just... wow! Really underscores how lucky TNG was as a show, and how so much of its appeal stemmed directly from it capturing lighting in a bottle by scoring so much incredibly talented actors to play its crew. I was a little apprehensive with how they'd handle this, and I feel almost relieved more than anything that it came out so well. I know for certain people, they won't be able to detach this season with the criticism taht this is just going over already tread ground with the Wrath of Khan. But even if it's just the same idea, it isn't the same idea warmed over. There's real substance and weight and consideration here. Kirk's reunion with Dr Marcus was all of a handful of lines, and was very one-sided. It was a scene that was over before it began, and involved a character whose entire history with Kirk was an unknown to the audience. When Bev starts discussing their history together, and Picard airs his grievances, there's just more... oomph to it. There's real substance. Because it's with a character we as an audience have history with and who we know. When she pleads her case and her POV as a mother, it just makes sense because we've seen how much of a lioness she is about her family in the past. Just great stuff.
The Worf & Raffi stuff I also think works pretty well, and I can see being able to tie in pretty effortlessly into the main plot thread with Picard & Riker in due time. I know Raffi isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I like her. And I think she has some chemistry with Michael Dorn. The revelation in this week's episode that the Big Bad of the season is a splinter cell of Founder terrorists is pretty interesting, and I'll be even more interested in seeing how this ties in specifically to our main cast. This episode filled in some previous, and glaring blanks of Picard and Crusher's relationship, and I wonder if we'll get to see some more blanks filled in down the road regarding something fans have clammored for for ages - what the Enterprise was up to during the Dominion War
The best meat of the episode to me however, was the dynamic on display between Picard and Riker. Just really, juicy, fascinating dramatic material. I also don't expect that to go over well with everyone, but eff me in the bum it works for me. And it really makes a whole lot of sense too. I expect to read a lot of internet complaints about how this isn't how they would act or treat each other, but I will steadfastly disagree, and I believe I can make a really strong argument to the case as well. It's 100000% in character for both.
The only thing I don't think worked all that well was Geordi's daughter. The writing for her is pretty stilted. I don't think she's had a set of lines yet where she hasn't name-dropped her dad, and that just feels awkward and also kind of inappropriate for a character who even professed in this episode to having trouble getting out of her father's immense shadow. And the line about her dad having a hard time making friends didn't feel right either? Geordi was a very likable guy on TNG. He had trouble making girl-friends, but never friends. Just a weird misstep when everything else in the season so far has been, IMO, very strong and on-point, or easy for me to explain/reconcile.
The Worf & Raffi stuff I also think works pretty well, and I can see being able to tie in pretty effortlessly into the main plot thread with Picard & Riker in due time. I know Raffi isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I like her. And I think she has some chemistry with Michael Dorn. The revelation in this week's episode that the Big Bad of the season is a splinter cell of Founder terrorists is pretty interesting, and I'll be even more interested in seeing how this ties in specifically to our main cast. This episode filled in some previous, and glaring blanks of Picard and Crusher's relationship, and I wonder if we'll get to see some more blanks filled in down the road regarding something fans have clammored for for ages - what the Enterprise was up to during the Dominion War
The best meat of the episode to me however, was the dynamic on display between Picard and Riker. Just really, juicy, fascinating dramatic material. I also don't expect that to go over well with everyone, but eff me in the bum it works for me. And it really makes a whole lot of sense too. I expect to read a lot of internet complaints about how this isn't how they would act or treat each other, but I will steadfastly disagree, and I believe I can make a really strong argument to the case as well. It's 100000% in character for both.
The only thing I don't think worked all that well was Geordi's daughter. The writing for her is pretty stilted. I don't think she's had a set of lines yet where she hasn't name-dropped her dad, and that just feels awkward and also kind of inappropriate for a character who even professed in this episode to having trouble getting out of her father's immense shadow. And the line about her dad having a hard time making friends didn't feel right either? Geordi was a very likable guy on TNG. He had trouble making girl-friends, but never friends. Just a weird misstep when everything else in the season so far has been, IMO, very strong and on-point, or easy for me to explain/reconcile.
There hasn't been enough Worf in my life recently.
Rock Bottom!
Rock Bottom!
"Chill hangout show at the TNG retirement home" is basically all I've ever wanted and it's frustrating that this is what we get instead. Riker and Picard talking about growing vegetables while doing fuck-all is easily the best that Picard has ever been.
To my surprise this worked, and I had rather a better time with episode 3 than the first two. Now I'm going to very deliberately not think at all about what I just watched and hopefully my brain won't figure out what I've done until next week.
EDIT:
Maximum agreed. The TNG cast have a warmth and a chemistry together that is fifty times more interesting and enjoyable than whatever hokey outsized sci-fi peril I'm supposed to care about instead. Giant robot snakes from another universe, here to end all organic life? Nah. Give me a whole season of these nerds just hanging out and talking at Riker's place, where the most exciting thing that happens is, like... someone's dog wanders onto the property in the finale and they all have to put down their cocoa and go catch it.
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Fun little bit of trivia this week: did y’all notice that in the scene where Picard goes from the bridge to sickbay towards the end of the episode, that journey following Picard through the turbolift and the hallways took 17 seconds? Two Takes Frakes still gots it
Happy to hear you liked this episode more. And I'm also in agreeance here with this. I would have loved for the show to actually dig into those hokey scifi perils, but the show itself (at least in S1 and 2) clearly didn't actually care about those things when they got to unceremoniously swept under the rug and never followed up on again. That's actually something that happened all the time back in TNG (you'd figure finding a Dyson Sphere near Federation Space would be an event that would change the whole Star Trek universe) but it was easier to excuse during an episodic show where they're zipping rapid-fire between planets each week. And it's just weird to do the same thing in a serialized show where they build up to a big plot even that doesn't actually lead anywhere. So yeah, the show is very clearly first and foremost focused on the character work and interactions. So when I'm focused on that stuff, I tend to have a way better time with PIC. Because the character work is actually pretty decent on average, and has some real strong highlights from time-to-time. And so far, the character work in S3 is phenominal.
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FelixSH
(He/Him)
This was an amazing episode, probably the best (or at least my favourite) of this show. It felt way more like an episode of a series, than part of a movie, taking time to explore character dynamics that were just plain interesting to see.
Short version: I pretty much agree with WH. That was a lot of fun.
I don't care much for the idea of Picard and Beverly as a romantic couple, but using it the way it was done here was great and works so, so well (basically, I agree with what WH said about it).
Worf and Raffi are a ton of fun together. When I said that I don't care for her, I didn't mean that I dislike her, just that she simply doesn't matter to me. But here, this was great, she works very nicely as the bad cop to Worfs good cop. Also, enlightened Worf is my favourite, I adore him. He really has earned it, with the trials he has been through. Really hoping, that he doesn't regress in some way - I don't need any more character development from him, just let him act as a fountain of wisdom or something, with a serving of humor.
Also agreed with WH on Riker and Picard. It absolutely makes sense, that such a role reversal in such a dangerous situation would lead to conflict very quickly. And while I think Riker is generally kind of a jerk, at least in TNG, this isn't part of it. It's just a complicated situation, played out great.
The Founders. The Founders! I want to see more of them. Any chance of meeting Odo again? Does he even still live? I don't remember. Also some Kira, please, I miss her so much. Damn, now I want an episode that shows me what the DS9 crew has been up to, that was an excellent bunch.
Worf and Raffi are a ton of fun together. When I said that I don't care for her, I didn't mean that I dislike her, just that she simply doesn't matter to me. But here, this was great, she works very nicely as the bad cop to Worfs good cop. Also, enlightened Worf is my favourite, I adore him. He really has earned it, with the trials he has been through. Really hoping, that he doesn't regress in some way - I don't need any more character development from him, just let him act as a fountain of wisdom or something, with a serving of humor.
Also agreed with WH on Riker and Picard. It absolutely makes sense, that such a role reversal in such a dangerous situation would lead to conflict very quickly. And while I think Riker is generally kind of a jerk, at least in TNG, this isn't part of it. It's just a complicated situation, played out great.
The Founders. The Founders! I want to see more of them. Any chance of meeting Odo again? Does he even still live? I don't remember. Also some Kira, please, I miss her so much. Damn, now I want an episode that shows me what the DS9 crew has been up to, that was an excellent bunch.
Short version: I pretty much agree with WH. That was a lot of fun.
As far as I know the character Odo is still alive in canon, but sadly Rene Auberjonois passed away in 2019. I think Worf's reference to getting a message from "an honorable man" in the Great Link (or whatever his exact words were) are all we're going to get on that front.
Goddamn that was good. Picard has always done the character moments well, even next to the worst parts of the first two seasons, so it was a treat to get basically an entire episode that was all that. Picard/Beverly, Picard/Riker, Worf/Raffi, just all good stuff.
And man! Worf! After the glimpse we got of him last week it was so damn good to see him in action properly. Really feels like Michael Dorn just slipped back into character effortlessly. Probably helps that he has more hours spent playing his character than anyone else in the franchise. If there is a new series following Picard that takes some of these characters forward I hope Worf gets to play a part just so he can keep padding his episode count.
And regarding the spoiler above, I was really happy to see the shout out to Odo, though a bit bittersweet given Rene Auberjonois' passing. I got to meet him the year before he passed, he was absolutely charming in a gruff kind of way, as you'd expect. I'd have loved to see him back as Odo as well, but I'm happy the episode still made a point to reference him even though we'll never see him.
And man! Worf! After the glimpse we got of him last week it was so damn good to see him in action properly. Really feels like Michael Dorn just slipped back into character effortlessly. Probably helps that he has more hours spent playing his character than anyone else in the franchise. If there is a new series following Picard that takes some of these characters forward I hope Worf gets to play a part just so he can keep padding his episode count.
And regarding the spoiler above, I was really happy to see the shout out to Odo, though a bit bittersweet given Rene Auberjonois' passing. I got to meet him the year before he passed, he was absolutely charming in a gruff kind of way, as you'd expect. I'd have loved to see him back as Odo as well, but I'm happy the episode still made a point to reference him even though we'll never see him.
Sprite
(He/Him/His)
Wow wow wow, that episode cooked. I’m glad I was wrong about the character stuff I was wrong about and right about the stuff I was right about. Bev’s motivations were perfect.
I also think it’s great that with the introduction of the Changelings, this season now has crucial elements of all three 90s shows. If they stick the landing on this it will be a fantastic send-off of that era.
I also think it’s great that with the introduction of the Changelings, this season now has crucial elements of all three 90s shows. If they stick the landing on this it will be a fantastic send-off of that era.
I always used to think that that Captain Worf show he was shopping around for years sounded dumb, but after seeing how good he is here, I'm all for it. He is easily my second-favourite character from this show (after Patton Oswalt's talking cat).