The Other Worlds Shrine

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  • Star Trek Picard

  • Your favorite band sucks, and you have terrible taste in movies.
Your favorite band sucks, and you have terrible taste in movies.
 #171755  by Julius Seeker
 Sat Feb 22, 2020 10:52 am
It kind of plays out like a mish-mash of Bryan Fuller and Ronald D. Moore getting their way. While it respects the canon and history of Star Trek Voyager and Next Generation, it is not the style of either. It's grittier, it's not at all episodic, and it is thick with drama and has a slight non-linear approach (mostly flashbacks and dream sequences).

So far, the episode "The Measure of a Man" from TNG, Star Trek Nemesis, and Star Trek 2009 are probably good things to watch before Star Trek Picard, especially if you are hazy on them. Otherwise, having a general knowledge of Star Trek Voyager and Star Trek TNG are good too, as the series is a sequel to both. It might also help to watch the TOS film "The Undiscovered Country" which, while not linked by plot, is interesting for being a thematic antithesis of Star Trek Picard.

An interesting note is that the Romulans in Star Trek Picard feature both TOS style ridgeless heads and then there are those with head ridges similar to TNG through Enterprise; although the head ridges are less pronounced, and they vary from character to character. Romulans play an important role in the series, so I am guessing they wanted to give them far more variety.

New Romulan designs:
Image

(NOTE: the one on the left in the below image is human, this is just the best pic I could find featuring two more Romulans.
Image

There is A TON of exposition in these early episodes, so if you consider these spoilers, then skipped the rest of my post. Otherwise, I'll not go outside what we know from the trailer, but the background info might give enough to infer some of the events.

BACKGROUND SPOILERS BELOW






The plot reminds me A LOT of Xenosaga in the Star Trek Universe, which gives it all a very Ronald D. Moore feeling (which also had tons in common with Xenosaga). Like Xenosaga, decades earlier a scientist began developing synthetic human lifeforms - in Star Trek, it is scientist Bruce Maddox from the TNG episode "The Measure of a Man" cast as the Joachim Mizrahi - the scientist who developed the Realians. The Synthetics are the Realians. The Mars crisis where the Synthetics massacred the planet is identical to the Miltian crisis, even the cold eyes and blank expressions of the Synthetics match those of the Realians. This crisis is at the core of the conflicts going on with the franchise. Lastly, there is a female android who is a prophesied Destroyer, who, when activated, is able to kick all sorts of ass; two of them were made - although that's where the similarities end with the two (and we get into some spoiler territory if I explain the differences). Also like Xenosaga, there are a number of organizations involved, and even more secret organizations behind these organizations; one of them originated in TNG - the Tal Shiar, but others are new.

Lastly, I wanted to talk about the Romulan situation. Back to the Undiscovered Country.
In the Undiscovered Country, when Praxis (The Moon around the Klingon homeworld) exploded and destroyed the core of their civilization, the Federation successfully brought the Empire in. With the Supernova described in Star Trek 2009, the Federation under Picard began relocating the Romulans, but the Mars conflict occurred and the Federation commanded Picard's mission to end, as well, Spock didn't deliver the red matter on time, and as a result of Federation members threatening to leave if the Romulans were brought in: the Romulans were abandoned, and the Star Empire collapsed. This is why I called it the antithesis of the Undiscovered Country.
 #171756  by kali o.
 Sat Feb 22, 2020 6:00 pm
I believe I watched up to ep 3 (so 2 behind)...I'm not sure how I feel about this yet but my initial feelings:

- I don't like a feeble old Picard. It makes me feel old and really railroads the action to peripheral characters (granted, that can easily change once/if Picard is back in the captains chair).

- the plot feels off / unfilled so far. Between the AI issue, the Romulans, the state of Starfleet and the twins, everything feels vague and poorly explained - and I'm pretty damn familiar with ST (NG, Voyager and DS9 at least).

We will see if watching more eps clears up some of my current issues. That said, I like that it appears pretty committed to canon and I am interested to see where it goes. It is certainly already way better than Discovery.
 #171757  by Eric
 Sat Feb 22, 2020 9:35 pm
This seems to be going in the direction that the Romulans made the Borg, not sure how I feel about that. -_-
 #171759  by Julius Seeker
 Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:25 am
I think the show will pick up in later. They're doing some abnormally heavy exposition in these opening episodes.

Normally in these story-arc series, especially when they're scheduled programming, begin season 1 with a lot of episodic content and integrate the exposition more as the Act 1 of the episodes. Season 1 is the "Universe building" phase, and then the story arc proper begins in season 2 or 3 (See Babylon 5, Farscape, and Stargate).

This show reminds me a lot more of what Caprica did, and failed at. Just as long as they don't do something stupid like put a 4-5 month gap in the middle of the season before resolving anything.
 #171761  by kali o.
 Thu Mar 05, 2020 2:38 am
I caught up. I'm still not sure what to think but I gotta say....

I don't know who is doing the writing here, but they need to be replaced. The dialog is extremely clumsy, and it's becoming more and more apparent the more I watch (particularly as they try to establish characters / motivation in these early episodes). Not just one character - EVERY character (with the exception of maybe Picard).
 #171766  by Julius Seeker
 Mon Mar 09, 2020 4:28 pm
That's a shame. I'm holding off on the last half to binge through when it's complete or watch when I have a very down and am looking to veg out. I left off at the Seven of Nine episode. I'm not afraid to admit, Seven of Nine was the character who I began watching Star Trek in a serious way for. I understand a lot of the hardline fans despise her.
(And before I forget, never, ever, use the "veg out" idiom around a Brit).

The guys that wrote most of it are a couple of Hollywood film writers, one guy that did Spiderman 2 (the original Spiderman 2, I think there's like four of those now). He also wrote John Carter. The second guy wrote A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, The Davinci Code + Angels and Demons adaptations, and the I am Legend adaptation.

But, in my experience, sometimes the writers are not at all to blame. I know that Ronald D Moore was repeatedly frustrated with the executive producers in the DS9 days, and he had a lot more creative freedom with Battlestar Galactica. Anyway, executive producers include the writers, as mentioned above and Kurtzman, along with Patrick Stewart.

It's all headed up by Alex Kurtzman, who is pretty much Mr. Star Trek Creative Director, now. Johnathan Frakes also had some degree of input. He did a lot of work on TNG behind the scenes, too. No doubt, the whole "Data's child" angle came from him since his very first episode of TNG behind the Director's Chair was Offspring, one of my personal favourite episodes.
 #171768  by Eric
 Tue Mar 10, 2020 10:31 am
Alex Kurtzman kinda sucks.