Picard ended up having a pro-Trump message about refugees.
The Romulans were responsible for the attack on Mars. They put themselves in the situation they are in. The Federation tried to help and the Romulans blew up Mars and killed 90,000 people. The Federation never should have tried to help in the first place. And one of the highest ranking members of Starfleet is a Romulan spy who's been sabotaging them and conducting assassinations on earth. The Federation was foolish to be open and benevolent. If they had listened to the isolationist and xenophobic voices among them, Mars wouldn't have been destroyed and tens of thousands of Federation citizens would be alive.
Ok I seriously can't be sure if you're being sarcastic here or not.
The Federation didn't know that the Romulans burned Mars. They thought synths did it on their own, hence the synth ban.
It was absolutely the right thing to try and save the Romulans as a race and the show makes that point repeatedly. The fact that it turned out that an extremist faction did something horrible is not an excuse to write the entire race off or become xenophobic.
The show makes it very clear that the failure of the Federation was in letting the burning of Mars cause the ban on synths and thus abandon the rescue effort. It's like the exact opposite of a pro-Trump message.
I think some folks in this thread need to realize, not everyone thought this season was terrible.
It's okay if you didn't like it! These things are subjective. If you didn't enjoy this season, I won't try to convince you you're wrong, because it's largely a matter of opinion.
Some folks here though seem to be operating as if "This season was awful" is objective fact, and that anyone who had a good time is somehow wrong and needs to be convinced.
It's fine if you didn't personally enjoy it, and it's fine for you to talk about what you didn't like, and what you wish they had done differently. Coming in though with an attitude that anyone who liked it is wrong is just silly though. I don't think anyone here is saying this show was up there with the best of the best Trek, but for some of us, there was enough to like that it was worthwhile. You're allowed to disagree, but you need to allow for the fact that not everyone agrees with you on this either.
Listen, this isn't like "I don't like horror movies", this is "that's a poorly made horror movie". If you happen to like bad horror movies anyway, and God knows I have plenty of friends who do, that's fine and no one is saying you're "wrong" to do so but it doesn't change the fact that the horror movie is bad.
Personally I'd be happy if the recent Star Trek series apologists, for STD and STP both, kept it to "I like it despite its flaws" rather than trying to pretend there are no flaws or that the flaws are OK because shows made 30 years ago had flaws, too. No one is asking that you stop liking the things you like, but let's not pretend there aren't problems.
On the flipside, we have people asserting that we should be able to make a Trek with no flaws, because television is just better now.
(Insert TNG S1 speech about "outgrowing all those petty etc etc" here. )
Picard ended up having a pro-Trump message about refugees.
The Romulans were responsible for the attack on Mars. They put themselves in the situation they are in. The Federation tried to help and the Romulans blew up Mars and killed 90,000 people. The Federation never should have tried to help in the first place. And one of the highest ranking members of Starfleet is a Romulan spy who's been sabotaging them and conducting assassinations on earth. The Federation was foolish to be open and benevolent. If they had listened to the isolationist and xenophobic voices among them, Mars wouldn't have been destroyed and tens of thousands of Federation citizens would be alive.
Ok I seriously can't be sure if you're being sarcastic here or not.
The Federation didn't know that the Romulans burned Mars. They thought synths did it on their own, hence the synth ban.
It was absolutely the right thing to try and save the Romulans as a race and the show makes that point repeatedly. The fact that it turned out that an extremist faction did something horrible is not an excuse to write the entire race off or become xenophobic.
The show makes it very clear that the failure of the Federation was in letting the burning of Mars cause the ban on synths and thus abandon the rescue effort. It's like the exact opposite of a pro-Trump message.
Except
they clearly showed that the Zhat Vash wasn't just some secret extremist faction when the Romulan Free State fleet at the Borg Cube all went with them to eradicate the synths. The only stable Romulan government they've established is shown to fully support the Zhat Vash.
And yes, the Federation did think the synths destroyed Mars on their own. But now the truth will be out, the blame will be shifted on the Romulans. All those people who opposed helping the Romulans will be proven right.
Personally I'd be happy if the recent Star Trek series apologists, for STD and STP both, kept it to "I like it despite its flaws" rather than trying to pretend there are no flaws or that the flaws are OK because shows made 30 years ago had flaws, too.
Maybe I haven't been reading the thread carefully enough, but I haven't seen anyone going beyond, "I like it despite its flaws," keeping in mind that "I like it despite it's flaws," and "flaws are okay because a 30-year show old had flaws too" are not mutually exclusive stances. (Nor, frankly, is it anyone's responsibility to do so to make someone else feel better.)
It doesn't seemed to have de-escalated the disagreement in any way.
I think some folks in this thread need to realize, not everyone thought this season was terrible.
It's okay if you didn't like it! These things are subjective. If you didn't enjoy this season, I won't try to convince you you're wrong, because it's largely a matter of opinion.
Some folks here though seem to be operating as if "This season was awful" is objective fact, and that anyone who had a good time is somehow wrong and needs to be convinced.
It's fine if you didn't personally enjoy it, and it's fine for you to talk about what you didn't like, and what you wish they had done differently. Coming in though with an attitude that anyone who liked it is wrong is just silly though. I don't think anyone here is saying this show was up there with the best of the best Trek, but for some of us, there was enough to like that it was worthwhile. You're allowed to disagree, but you need to allow for the fact that not everyone agrees with you on this either.
honestly i think this is just part of how we have to navigate internet fandom's these days. It's not a unique to trek thing. The lovers think the haters are claiming it's all bad. the haters think the lovers are claiming it's all good. the rest hover on the fringe of the conversation not wanting to wade into that. Opinion statements are interpreted as though the opinion haver is stating something as objective fact. Some times bad faith opinion havers ARE stating their opinion as objective fact. A lot of people have tied these things into parts of their own sense of self, so when they engage with a "bad" version, it becomes an attack on that self.
I know I'm wildly unqualified to detangle all of this mess so i'm just discouraged from participating. Honestly, enjoyment or lack of an entertainment property is just a personal decision, so for me, I've largely accepted that I need to just engage with the content myself and not really give a damn about the fanbases.
to the show, I feel that Picard obviously showed a lot of love and care for the franchise and character work, and the conflict resolution was just the most JLP thing ever, but made some odd choices in plotting and I'm pretty sure could have entirely removed the sister villain without changing anything. So that's where I'm at. It's flawed as an individual plot, but largely fun and showed a lot of care toward franchise stewardship (aye!)
Listen, this isn't like "I don't like horror movies", this is "that's a poorly made horror movie". If you happen to like bad horror movies anyway, and God knows I have plenty of friends who do, that's fine and no one is saying you're "wrong" to do so but it doesn't change the fact that the horror movie is bad.
Personally I'd be happy if the recent Star Trek series apologists, for STD and STP both, kept it to "I like it despite its flaws" rather than trying to pretend there are no flaws or that the flaws are OK because shows made 30 years ago had flaws, too. No one is asking that you stop liking the things you like, but let's not pretend there aren't problems.
I don't feel the need to list every problem I could possibly have with a show. I really loved Star Trek Picard. It gave me everything I wanted from this show. There was absolutely nothing that struck me as a flaw worth dwelling on. Was it the perfect television show others should aspire to? No, of course not. No show is. Every bit of art ever created has flaws. The phrase I like it despite it's flaws is redundant because art cannot be flawless.
This is all predicated on some objective measure of what a show is which makes no sense to me. Assuming we can somehow achieve objective truth (which I do not think is possible) then it would still be irrelevant. I am not watching Star Trek Picard as a person devoid of my entire life's experience. I am watching it from my perspective. I am watching it with my biases and personal interpretations.
As an example, people are annoyed by the general lack of effort in the ship combat area which I can see. I just don't care because I don't focus on those parts nor do I want to watch a story that will. For some this harms the episode in a real way, but for me it's background noise. A way to set-up the parts I like more so let's just get through it. Both ways are valid and good ways to watch because art is ultimately experienced on the individual level.
This isn't to say we can't discuss and dissect art and over analyze it up our own collective butts. Just that others just enjoying the show and sharing that joy are also equally valid so let's all be cool with that? Or not I guess. I mean you do you in the end.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
I enjoyed this a lot.
I don't care if some of the stuff was fanservice. It's a show doing Star Trek stuff and pulling from decades of established canon and bringing a bunch of familiar folks back in the room. By its very nature it had to be fanservice.
I loved everything about
Data. Like. Everything. That conversation in the quantum "dream", and the funeral, and Picard being there at the end was just delicious.
Also, I love that we had a massive fleet of Romulan ships and a fleet of starfleet megaships staring each other down, and ultimately diplomacy deescalated the situation and the fleets departed without conflict. Most Trek ever.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
edited March 2020
Oh God, has this thread reached the, "if you liked this then you are wrong and bad" part of fandoms? Maybe since we're Star Trek fans who believe a better world is possible than the one we currently live in, we can try to be better humans than that.
You can hate the show without that, "it's objectively bad by any measure!" Nonsense. Art doesn't work that way, and empathy requires that you understand that other people can have different perspectives than you but it doesn't make their perspective "incorrect."
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I'm going to refer back to my note about tone causing an issue. People saying "this is bad" should be interpreted as "my opinion is that this is bad". I think that's just a blanket assumption we can all make here, otherwise literally every other statement is going to be prefaced with "I think" and "I feel" and "my opinion is" and "well I totally respect that but from my perspective". We've all been here for a hot minute. Respect for other people's opinions and their right to have them, regardless of what someone else thinks, can probably be safely assumed. This is the D&D forum. One of the D's stands for Debate.
If someone says "This show is great! I love it!" I disagree in my head but I don't engage that post with, "No! You can't say it's good! Ranking is subjective! Past Star Trek shows were shitty, too!"
Unless I actually want to have the discussion about what subjective priorities we have that cause us to have such differing assessments. In which case, we point out things like "There's a lot more stuff out there now, and a lot of it is better, so I'm holding this show to an admittedly higher standard because I honestly have better things to do with my time" or "I was a stupid kid then, I'm older now and my tastes and expectations have changed" or any number of things or "I see your point, maybe I am being unfair or uncharitable because there definitely were shitty Star Trek shows/episodes in the past."
But I'd prefer to actually have that discussion instead of having to constantly have these proxy disagreements about whether or not putting "well, this is just my opinion and you are entirely welcome to have your own but..." in front of every other sentence. Or having someone prop up a straw man meta-argument about whether or not objective rankings exist for subjective assessments (protip: they don't) that no one actually made.
I don't care if some of the stuff was fanservice. It's a show doing Star Trek stuff and pulling from decades of established canon and bringing a bunch of familiar folks back in the room. By its very nature it had to be fanservice.
I loved everything about
Data. Like. Everything. That conversation in the quantum "dream", and the funeral, and Picard being there at the end was just delicious.
Also, I love that we had a massive fleet of Romulan ships and a fleet of starfleet megaships staring each other down, and ultimately diplomacy deescalated the situation and the fleets departed without conflict. Most Trek ever.
Agreed, mostly:
On the second bit, I'd rather have seen about half as many ships, which might soften the complaints of "and whose ass did both sides pull those out of?" and "there's 'high stakes', and then there's 'just silly/stupid'", and more varied models.
(I'm informed that the latter is at least partially due to the VFX people only finishing a week before broadcast, due to COVID-related stuff on top of the usual time pressure.)
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I don't care if some of the stuff was fanservice. It's a show doing Star Trek stuff and pulling from decades of established canon and bringing a bunch of familiar folks back in the room. By its very nature it had to be fanservice.
I loved everything about
Data. Like. Everything. That conversation in the quantum "dream", and the funeral, and Picard being there at the end was just delicious.
Also, I love that we had a massive fleet of Romulan ships and a fleet of starfleet megaships staring each other down, and ultimately diplomacy deescalated the situation and the fleets departed without conflict. Most Trek ever.
Agreed, mostly:
On the second bit, I'd rather have seen about half as many ships, which might soften the complaints of "and whose ass did both sides pull those out of?" and "there's 'high stakes', and then there's 'just silly/stupid'", and more varied models.
(I'm informed that the latter is at least partially due to the VFX people only finishing a week before broadcast, due to COVID-related stuff on top of the usual time pressure.)
Re: This scene
It felt like a microcosm of my issues with the plots in this season. It would've been high-stakes enough to literally just be about a planet of sentient synthetic life, where a small covert Romulan fleet was on its way to destroy a hidden planet with pacifist androids. If Starfleet sent just a small fleet, or Riker managed to call in some favors to get one or two ships to mosey on over, or Picard's plea went out and a couple of ships showed up of their own volition (not even Starfleet! could've been anyone! the Borg XB ship!), the stakes would've made sense and been just as meaningful, if not more. Because they would've been able to focus on the characters and their motivations, and not have to waste time on the stupid super-secret Romulan plot.
I don't care if some of the stuff was fanservice. It's a show doing Star Trek stuff and pulling from decades of established canon and bringing a bunch of familiar folks back in the room. By its very nature it had to be fanservice.
I loved everything about
Data. Like. Everything. That conversation in the quantum "dream", and the funeral, and Picard being there at the end was just delicious.
Also, I love that we had a massive fleet of Romulan ships and a fleet of starfleet megaships staring each other down, and ultimately diplomacy deescalated the situation and the fleets departed without conflict. Most Trek ever.
Agreed, mostly:
On the second bit, I'd rather have seen about half as many ships, which might soften the complaints of "and whose ass did both sides pull those out of?" and "there's 'high stakes', and then there's 'just silly/stupid'", and more varied models.
(I'm informed that the latter is at least partially due to the VFX people only finishing a week before broadcast, due to COVID-related stuff on top of the usual time pressure.)
Re: This scene
It felt like a microcosm of my issues with the plots in this season. It would've been high-stakes enough to literally just be about a planet of sentient synthetic life, where a small covert Romulan fleet was on its way to destroy a hidden planet with pacifist androids. If Starfleet sent just a small fleet, or Riker managed to call in some favors to get one or two ships to mosey on over, or Picard's plea went out and a couple of ships showed up of their own volition (not even Starfleet! could've been anyone! the Borg XB ship!), the stakes would've made sense and been just as meaningful, if not more. Because they would've been able to focus on the characters and their motivations, and not have to waste time on the stupid super-secret Romulan plot.
Captains Riker and Geordie, with a few others there at the behest of the 1st officers would have been a much nicer touch
I'd have to begrudgingly admit that Picard's first season is arguably below average as a show. But I think at its heart it was still a good show that gave me mostly what I wanted out of it. Also this quote from Chabon really sort of puts criticism of new Star Trek shows in perspective.
So you’re familiar with the ways that “Trek” fans can respond to new iterations of “Trek.”
I actually went back and looked on Google Groups, which acquired Usenet, so you can look through the old Usenet groups and watch what people said about “Deep Space Nine” and then about “Voyager.” They f—ing hated it. They lacerated it. I mean, plenty of people liked it and loved it. But the criticisms that are being leveled against “Deep Space Nine,” and then against Janeway, female Captain, black Vulcan [Tim Russ’s Tuvok] — all of the things that were problematic for certain contingent of so called “Star Trek” fans back then, the way that they attack each other and the way they attack the show — it’s identical to now. They could just turn them into 140 characters or whatever it is now on Twitter and you could make tweets out of them and it would still work just as well for “Discovery” or “Picard.”
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I'd have to begrudgingly admit that Picard's first season is arguably below average as a show. But I think at its heart it was still a good show that gave me mostly what I wanted out of it. Also this quote from Chabon really sort of puts criticism of new Star Trek shows in perspective.
So you’re familiar with the ways that “Trek” fans can respond to new iterations of “Trek.”
I actually went back and looked on Google Groups, which acquired Usenet, so you can look through the old Usenet groups and watch what people said about “Deep Space Nine” and then about “Voyager.” They f—ing hated it. They lacerated it. I mean, plenty of people liked it and loved it. But the criticisms that are being leveled against “Deep Space Nine,” and then against Janeway, female Captain, black Vulcan [Tim Russ’s Tuvok] — all of the things that were problematic for certain contingent of so called “Star Trek” fans back then, the way that they attack each other and the way they attack the show — it’s identical to now. They could just turn them into 140 characters or whatever it is now on Twitter and you could make tweets out of them and it would still work just as well for “Discovery” or “Picard.”
Ha ha, I figured this would be the case.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I suppose I should be clear too, I am not insinuating anyone in this thread is doing what Chabon is saying people were doing about Janeway and Tuvok. I'm only pointing out that criticism of Star Trek may not be all that different than those old arguments about the best SNL cast is usually the one you grew up with.
Honestly, I think that while what Chabon says may be true, it’s also self-serving BS. Some of the criticism of Discovery and Picard may be “It’s different and therefore it’s bad”, but a lot of it is “It’s bad at what it’s trying to do”, and that’s not the same thing at all, and presenting them as the same strikes me as pretty disingenuous.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I'd also like Season 2 to actually deal with the issue of artificial life in the vein of Data, designed to live amongst humans and be as human as possible but also still a fullspeed AI.
How do you balance their desires and rights as people with the fact that they can just outperform regular humans. And what do humans do in response?
Picard, programmed to die at some random moment 'at his appointed time' clearly doesn't count. Especially knowing that you can overclock androids in time of stress
And how do we get the Star Trek answer, where everything is kind of OK?
Oh man, this quote from Chabon sort of breaks my heart though, cause fuck I would have loved this version of the show.
You know, personally speaking, my own tastes and inclination, I always said when we were in the earliest versions of the room for this show, if we could have just done a whole show about Picard and the dog on the vineyard in France, with no starships, no phasers, the only Romulans would be those two Romulans who work for him on the vineyard, and no politics — just, like, there’s a funfair down in the village and they all go, and maybe Picard solves a very low stakes mystery in the village, like, someone has stolen the antique bell out of the bell tower, or something like that? I would have loved to write that show. Um. I don’t think the world’s quite ready for a “Star Trek” show like that, and there’s probably maybe not that big of an audience for a “Star Trek” show like that.
Oh man, this quote from Chabon sort of breaks my heart though, cause fuck I would have loved this version of the show.
You know, personally speaking, my own tastes and inclination, I always said when we were in the earliest versions of the room for this show, if we could have just done a whole show about Picard and the dog on the vineyard in France, with no starships, no phasers, the only Romulans would be those two Romulans who work for him on the vineyard, and no politics — just, like, there’s a funfair down in the village and they all go, and maybe Picard solves a very low stakes mystery in the village, like, someone has stolen the antique bell out of the bell tower, or something like that? I would have loved to write that show. Um. I don’t think the world’s quite ready for a “Star Trek” show like that, and there’s probably maybe not that big of an audience for a “Star Trek” show like that.
That would have been heartbreaking. Picard accepts that he failed the Romulans, that Starfleet failed him and just goes to the funfair as an addled old man? And we're just - yeah, why not? Who gives a shit about anything?
I can see why Patrick Stewart was reluctant if it was just going to be a nostalgia cash in that advocated surrender.
Oh man, this quote from Chabon sort of breaks my heart though, cause fuck I would have loved this version of the show.
You know, personally speaking, my own tastes and inclination, I always said when we were in the earliest versions of the room for this show, if we could have just done a whole show about Picard and the dog on the vineyard in France, with no starships, no phasers, the only Romulans would be those two Romulans who work for him on the vineyard, and no politics — just, like, there’s a funfair down in the village and they all go, and maybe Picard solves a very low stakes mystery in the village, like, someone has stolen the antique bell out of the bell tower, or something like that? I would have loved to write that show. Um. I don’t think the world’s quite ready for a “Star Trek” show like that, and there’s probably maybe not that big of an audience for a “Star Trek” show like that.
That would have been heartbreaking. Picard accepts that he failed the Romulans, that Starfleet failed him and just goes to the funfair as an addled old man? And we're just - yeah, why not? Who gives a shit about anything?
I can see why Patrick Stewart was reluctant if it was just going to be a nostalgia cash in that advocated surrender.
I suspect if that was the kind of show they went with, the stuff about the changed star fleet and romulans and all that likely wouldn't have been a part of it. And even if he had given up on life, a show about him re-finding that spark, even if from just a simple local mystery would still be worth it to me. Granted there would have to be a lot more going on with that type of show then the few things Chabon lists though.
I'm sorry, but I loved it! I was even kinda disappointed...
...they didn't go further with the reaper stuff. They could have done a reversal where these reapers never gave a shit about saving the AI that organics developed, what they really care about is wiping out AI competitors. So after they fucked everything up in the last purge to stop AI development in our galaxy, they spawned this meme that develops a secret Romulan cult that is hellbent on preventing an AI singularity type event, but it also serves to beckon the AI towards them, so just in case the Romulan cult fails they are called in directly at the point of the potential singularity and then they come to extract data, do another purge, and iterate on the meme and set it in motion again.
The whole thing as just an automated anti-virus program that runs across multiple galaxies, treating foreign AI as the virus.
In fact, I'm just going to think that this is what happened and it was just never confirmed.
But yes, I am also sad that slow Trek is no longer a thing. Even Star Trek got rolled into this trend of everything having to be high-stakes to the point of being always apocalyptic. But, Trek kinda started that trend in TV, so I can't really complain as a fan. But if you want that drip drip drip then just go over to what Ron D. Moore is working on with For All Mankind on appleTV. It is pretty awesome.
Oh man, this quote from Chabon sort of breaks my heart though, cause fuck I would have loved this version of the show.
You know, personally speaking, my own tastes and inclination, I always said when we were in the earliest versions of the room for this show, if we could have just done a whole show about Picard and the dog on the vineyard in France, with no starships, no phasers, the only Romulans would be those two Romulans who work for him on the vineyard, and no politics — just, like, there’s a funfair down in the village and they all go, and maybe Picard solves a very low stakes mystery in the village, like, someone has stolen the antique bell out of the bell tower, or something like that? I would have loved to write that show. Um. I don’t think the world’s quite ready for a “Star Trek” show like that, and there’s probably maybe not that big of an audience for a “Star Trek” show like that.
That would have been heartbreaking. Picard accepts that he failed the Romulans, that Starfleet failed him and just goes to the funfair as an addled old man? And we're just - yeah, why not? Who gives a shit about anything?
I can see why Patrick Stewart was reluctant if it was just going to be a nostalgia cash in that advocated surrender.
I suspect if that was the kind of show they went with, the stuff about the changed star fleet and romulans and all that likely wouldn't have been a part of it. And even if he had given up on life, a show about him re-finding that spark, even if from just a simple local mystery would still be worth it to me. Granted there would have to be a lot more going on with that type of show then the few things Chabon lists though.
I reckon that's just writer gumpf to say that I want to write "serious things not just spaceship stuff". So no background from Picard the character or Star Trek - given that the Romulan Catastrophe is already in the movie timeline. "No Politics" is the key bit there - it'd be like really wanting to do a movie about W Bush, but wanting to use the pet portraits thing to explore the man, free of politics and any preconceptions.
Oh man, this quote from Chabon sort of breaks my heart though, cause fuck I would have loved this version of the show.
You know, personally speaking, my own tastes and inclination, I always said when we were in the earliest versions of the room for this show, if we could have just done a whole show about Picard and the dog on the vineyard in France, with no starships, no phasers, the only Romulans would be those two Romulans who work for him on the vineyard, and no politics — just, like, there’s a funfair down in the village and they all go, and maybe Picard solves a very low stakes mystery in the village, like, someone has stolen the antique bell out of the bell tower, or something like that? I would have loved to write that show. Um. I don’t think the world’s quite ready for a “Star Trek” show like that, and there’s probably maybe not that big of an audience for a “Star Trek” show like that.
That would have been heartbreaking. Picard accepts that he failed the Romulans, that Starfleet failed him and just goes to the funfair as an addled old man? And we're just - yeah, why not? Who gives a shit about anything?
I can see why Patrick Stewart was reluctant if it was just going to be a nostalgia cash in that advocated surrender.
I suspect if that was the kind of show they went with, the stuff about the changed star fleet and romulans and all that likely wouldn't have been a part of it. And even if he had given up on life, a show about him re-finding that spark, even if from just a simple local mystery would still be worth it to me. Granted there would have to be a lot more going on with that type of show then the few things Chabon lists though.
I reckon that's just writer gumpf to say that I want to write "serious things not just spaceship stuff". So no background from Picard or Star Trek - given that the Romulan Catastrophe is already in the movie timeline. "No Politics" is the key bit there - it'd be like really wanting to do a movie about W Bush, but wanting to use the pet portraits thing to explore the man, free of politics and any preconceptions.
You're not wrong. I'll admit I'd probably watch Picard do the laundry and clean his house for an entire episode and be happy with it because well..it's Picard.
Well...no I take that back, I actively disliked the 2nd to last episode and even Picard couldn't really save it for me. So I do have limits.
Dark_Side on
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
On a completely different note, I found a fan theory on Twitter that I like and think I might make into my headcanon.
Part of the story is the crew influencing Zephram Cochrane to be the hero they knew him to be from the history books.
Shame we don't know how that would have gone had the Borg and Enterprise never intervened.
Except... maybe... we do. /
Y'all
I think this might be the Prime Star Trek Universe.
The one that isn't changed by time travel. The actual path humanity was on.
I think... I think that the Federation universe might be the alternate one. /
Zephram Cochrane is a drunk scavenger in a dog-eat-dog world immediately after the third world war and the eugenics wars.
And the Enterprise crew put a *lot* of work into him. Like, that's the whole B plot of the move.
In the ruins of post-war, super militaristic America. /
Y'all.
All I can find against this is a few characters saying things like "The Empire has existed for centuries" or "We banished those weaknesses millenia ago."
It's a fascist dictatorship.
The first thing they do is manipulate history to support the regime.
See: Bushido. /
We know that Cochrane was the pivotal moment.
But maybe it wasn't the flight.
Maybe that's not the change they made, 'making sure it happened.'
Maybe it's the work they put in to showing this man a future with the potential for peace.
The Federation... IS ITS OWN GRANDPA. /
The mirror universe isn't an alternate dimension where everyone is evil.
It's the prime dimension.
The Federation Universe is an alternate dimension where, due to space and time fuckery, an impossible hope exists. /
The thread continues from there, going even deeper down this hole, but I think I'm going to cut it off there. There isn't an "evil mirror universe" but the actual primary timeline and this crazy offshoot due to space/time technobabble that caused itself, which is such a very classic Star Trek sort of thing.
For all that I've been known to rail against the "one and done" approach, "ha ha, actually humans are utter bastards and history is a lie" is not the Star Trek take I want.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Is it actually "humans are utter bastards" or "humans will be utter bastards if we don't try to be better"?
Which brings us right back around to the heart of TOS that people loved - it's not that people are inherently better in that Star Trek future, but people try to be better. Make one person better, and it's the difference between a horrible oppressive dystopia and a utopia (sorta, for a while, until people stop trying to be better out of fear). Maybe a bit too simplistic? Too overly dependent on crazy technobabble? Well, that's Star Trek, baby.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
To be honest I feel like people who talk about "prime" timelines as though there is some kind of default state of the universe are missing the point.
Except Discovery established that Mirror humans are literally afraid of the light like some evil troglodytes because their eyes are extra photosensitive.
I can't say I like a lot about Discovery in general, but I think it still made the best use of the mirror universe since TOS. This is mostly a statement on how much I absolutely hate the mirror universe episodes of every other series. Discovery at least did something with it other than a look how EVIL we are. I mean Discovery definitely did that as well but then tried to go other places as well which I respect. Probably just a reflection of my desire for more serialized stories in general, and my enjoyment mostly coming from character growth over time which is mostly just not what a mirror universe episode is remotely interested in trying to be.
Edit: Also worth noting I don't have any great idea of what happens in Discovery season 2. So dunno if that would change my mind on their use of mirror universe. I tried to watch season 2 but about halfway through the first episode I gave up.
I'd also like Season 2 to actually deal with the issue of artificial life in the vein of Data, designed to live amongst humans and be as human as possible but also still a fullspeed AI.
How do you balance their desires and rights as people with the fact that they can just outperform regular humans. And what do humans do in response?
Picard, programmed to die at some random moment 'at his appointed time' clearly doesn't count. Especially knowing that you can overclock androids in time of stress
And how do we get the Star Trek answer, where everything is kind of OK?
It might encourage the Federation to make genetic modification legal in order for humans to compete with synths.
But I think the most important thing for season 2 is that the writers need to stop writing the show like it's for an audience from the 80's.
30 years ago, most people didn't know that much about computers, AI, or philosophical questions about consciousness and sapience. But audiences are much more savvy today. There have been decades of hugely popular sci-fi shows, movies, games, books, etc. that have dealt with these issues.
They can be more sophisticated and deal with these issues on a deeper level. They can delve into things like the emergent properties of consciousness and all the grey area there is with concepts like sapience and free will. They didn't need to make it as simple as, "synths did bad, Starfleet bans all synths." They should have had a lot of debate over the issue instead of just having a blanket synth ban. The synths on Mars didn't even appear to be that smart. They didn't seem like they were even capable of sapience. Hologram AI's on the La Sirena were clearly much more intelligent. They should have developed that much more. It would have been easy for them to establish that the Mars synths were specifically built to be less intelligent and lacking in sapience precisely to avoid all the thorny issues involved in the morality and ethics of using sapient beings as laborers. Then they can blame the synth revolt on emergent properties of the positronic net. They could say that the positronic net itself has certain inherent capabilities for self growth and development so that no matter how primitive they made it, it would still evolve and learn. The ban could be put in place because they don't want to create simple AI's for labor that would eventually evolve to become sapient and begin to view itself as a slave.
Now the synth ban is lifted, they can discuss all those issues in season 2. How advanced can they make a synth without making it sapient? Is it unethical to use synths that are on the verge of sapience as tools? What about other races developing synths? The Federation may be able to regulate its citizens and prevent them from making slave synths but that won't stop other races. What's to stop the Orions from making sapient slave synths with strong safeguards against rebellion like the how Dominion made slave species that are programmed to worship the Founders or addicted to drugs?
On a completely different note, I found a fan theory on Twitter that I like and think I might make into my headcanon.
tweets tweets tweets
So Star Trek: First Contact, right?
Part of the story is the crew influencing Zephram Cochrane to be the hero they knew him to be from the history books.
Shame we don't know how that would have gone had the Borg and Enterprise never intervened.
Except... maybe... we do. /
Y'all
I think this might be the Prime Star Trek Universe.
The one that isn't changed by time travel. The actual path humanity was on.
I think... I think that the Federation universe might be the alternate one. /
Zephram Cochrane is a drunk scavenger in a dog-eat-dog world immediately after the third world war and the eugenics wars.
And the Enterprise crew put a *lot* of work into him. Like, that's the whole B plot of the move.
In the ruins of post-war, super militaristic America. /
Y'all.
All I can find against this is a few characters saying things like "The Empire has existed for centuries" or "We banished those weaknesses millenia ago."
It's a fascist dictatorship.
The first thing they do is manipulate history to support the regime.
See: Bushido. /
We know that Cochrane was the pivotal moment.
But maybe it wasn't the flight.
Maybe that's not the change they made, 'making sure it happened.'
Maybe it's the work they put in to showing this man a future with the potential for peace.
The Federation... IS ITS OWN GRANDPA. /
The mirror universe isn't an alternate dimension where everyone is evil.
It's the prime dimension.
The Federation Universe is an alternate dimension where, due to space and time fuckery, an impossible hope exists. /
The thread continues from there, going even deeper down this hole, but I think I'm going to cut it off there. There isn't an "evil mirror universe" but the actual primary timeline and this crazy offshoot due to space/time technobabble that caused itself, which is such a very classic Star Trek sort of thing.
It's a really cool idea, though a reply to the bit about Empire propaganda kinda seals it as "cool idea but not accurate until a show or movie says otherwise" for me.
Except it's not false history; it's history as it is presented to the viewer. The characters might buy the propaganda, but there's no reason for the creators to deceive the audience on that front. Again, this is not to say I'd be opposed to a show or movie saying as much, and using "obviously the video was doctored" to explain it, but as it is now, it doesn't hold up.
Shadowen on
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
so the entire reason Riker's son is dead is because of the synth ban. This only exists due to a massive Romulan plot and was proven to not be necessary. Spearheaded by Double Agent Commodore Oh. And Riker just lets her go and doesn't even mention it or seem emotional compromised at all. Also also why in the world would Starfleet just fucking stick him as the Acting Captain of the current flagship due to this situation. NOTHING IN THE SHOW MAKES SENSE and once again this is just the writers trying to pull a emotional string in an early episode without thinking about how it should pay off a few episodes later
god this show is just straight up bad and it gets more bad the more I think about it. ugh, such a squandered opportunity.
It also made no sense why
Oh would reveal herself to be a double agent. Starfleet doesn't actually have any evidence that Oh is a spy other than the word of Picard and Jurati. They have no physical evidence of any kind and Picard is out of favor and Jurati is a murderer.
And it made no sense why Oh wouldn't just point to the portal with Reaper tentacles coming out and tell Riker, "hey, dumbass! Those are genocidal super robots coming to kill all organics in the galaxy. The synths are calling it and we're trying to stop them."
The Zhat Vash also makes no sense. They were established as a super secret organization that even the Tal Shiar thinks is a myth. But now they can just take over a fleet of 200 ships? And what exactly is their plan after this? They've been exposed. People are going to know about them and what they did. The Federation will tell the Romulans that Oh and the Zhat Vash were responsible for the destruction of the fleet meant to save 900 million Romulans. How does Oh plan to survive the hundreds of millions of Romulans who are going to try to murder her for what she did?
uuuuuugh this show keeps getting stupider the more you think about it
Also that Chabon quote is such fucking bullshit. Yes of course people hated DS9 and Voyager for shitty racist reasons or dumb "how can you have star trek on a space station" except those are not the complaints about Picard (and Discovery honestly). The issue with these shows is that the actual plot logic makes no god damned sense.
Was it super cool to see 250 romulan warbirds facing off against 250 fedration ships? ya sure, it was neat! was it tonally logic with what the show earlier in the season presented about the state of the romulan empire and the zhat vash? noooooooooooooooooooooooope. Nothing in the show makes sense in that regard, it feels like the writers just didn't give a shit. Here's a pic from a discord I'm in:
2 of my friends loved the show, they were all aboard for every episode and Riker saving the day meme made them so happy. But it's gaaaaaaaaaaaaaarbaaaaaaaaaaage. Like if this is the quality of the show they intended to make then fine, but really? This is the best they could do?
If you like the show than I'm glad for you, I wish I could have liked it but I just wanted something different.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Also that Chabon quote is such fucking bullshit. Yes of course people hated DS9 and Voyager for shitty racist reasons or dumb "how can you have star trek on a space station" except those are not the complaints about Picard (and Discovery honestly). The issue with these shows is that the actual plot logic makes no god damned sense.
Those are not your complaints with Picard or Discovery (or any sane person's), but if you don't think there are people out there mad and complaining about a black woman as show header, or an Asian woman as captain, or how Picard has too many women in important roles, then welcome to your first day on the internet.
I 100% believe that "how come Star Trek is doing this LIBRUL shit with a black main character/woman main character, I want the OLD Star Trek back!" is something that was said of DS9, Voyager, Discovery, Picard, and will be said of every new Star Trek that gets made forever (perhaps the next one will be "how can the main character be GAY uggg LIBRULS!")
That isn't saying there aren't legitimate complaints too, that's just saying that there's a contingent of people who will always be mad that an under-represented group gets representation in Star Trek, as if Star Trek hasn't been about that shit since day one.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
Also that Chabon quote is such fucking bullshit. Yes of course people hated DS9 and Voyager for shitty racist reasons or dumb "how can you have star trek on a space station" except those are not the complaints about Picard (and Discovery honestly). The issue with these shows is that the actual plot logic makes no god damned sense.
Those are not your complaints with Picard or Discovery (or any sane person's), but if you don't think there are people out there mad and complaining about a black woman as show header, or an Asian woman as captain, or how Picard has too many women in important roles, then welcome to your first day on the internet.
I 100% believe that "how come Star Trek is doing this LIBRUL shit with a black main character/woman main character, I want the OLD Star Trek back!" is something that was said of DS9, Voyager, Discovery, Picard, and will be said of every new Star Trek that gets made forever (perhaps the next one will be "how can the main character be GAY uggg LIBRULS!")
That isn't saying there aren't legitimate complaints too, that's just saying that there's a contingent of people who will always be mad that an under-represented group gets representation in Star Trek, as if Star Trek hasn't been about that shit since day one.
sure but I don't give a shit about those complaints and nobody on these forums has leveled them. Chabon's quote is bullshit in relation to what I think are actual writerly deficiencies of the show, which is what my post was about.
Except Discovery established that Mirror humans are literally afraid of the light like some evil troglodytes because their eyes are extra photosensitive.
The worst of it is how unnecessary that change was. They could just have said the captain and empress got eye injuries while crushing a Klingon uprising. It would have made more sense in the Mirror Universe and given the characters a bit of backstory. Instead, they went with the stupid idea and made a universe of human troglodytes,
Posts
Ok I seriously can't be sure if you're being sarcastic here or not.
It was absolutely the right thing to try and save the Romulans as a race and the show makes that point repeatedly. The fact that it turned out that an extremist faction did something horrible is not an excuse to write the entire race off or become xenophobic.
The show makes it very clear that the failure of the Federation was in letting the burning of Mars cause the ban on synths and thus abandon the rescue effort. It's like the exact opposite of a pro-Trump message.
It's okay if you didn't like it! These things are subjective. If you didn't enjoy this season, I won't try to convince you you're wrong, because it's largely a matter of opinion.
Some folks here though seem to be operating as if "This season was awful" is objective fact, and that anyone who had a good time is somehow wrong and needs to be convinced.
It's fine if you didn't personally enjoy it, and it's fine for you to talk about what you didn't like, and what you wish they had done differently. Coming in though with an attitude that anyone who liked it is wrong is just silly though. I don't think anyone here is saying this show was up there with the best of the best Trek, but for some of us, there was enough to like that it was worthwhile. You're allowed to disagree, but you need to allow for the fact that not everyone agrees with you on this either.
Personally I'd be happy if the recent Star Trek series apologists, for STD and STP both, kept it to "I like it despite its flaws" rather than trying to pretend there are no flaws or that the flaws are OK because shows made 30 years ago had flaws, too. No one is asking that you stop liking the things you like, but let's not pretend there aren't problems.
(Insert TNG S1 speech about "outgrowing all those petty etc etc" here.
Except
And yes, the Federation did think the synths destroyed Mars on their own. But now the truth will be out, the blame will be shifted on the Romulans. All those people who opposed helping the Romulans will be proven right.
Maybe I haven't been reading the thread carefully enough, but I haven't seen anyone going beyond, "I like it despite its flaws," keeping in mind that "I like it despite it's flaws," and "flaws are okay because a 30-year show old had flaws too" are not mutually exclusive stances. (Nor, frankly, is it anyone's responsibility to do so to make someone else feel better.)
It doesn't seemed to have de-escalated the disagreement in any way.
honestly i think this is just part of how we have to navigate internet fandom's these days. It's not a unique to trek thing. The lovers think the haters are claiming it's all bad. the haters think the lovers are claiming it's all good. the rest hover on the fringe of the conversation not wanting to wade into that. Opinion statements are interpreted as though the opinion haver is stating something as objective fact. Some times bad faith opinion havers ARE stating their opinion as objective fact. A lot of people have tied these things into parts of their own sense of self, so when they engage with a "bad" version, it becomes an attack on that self.
I know I'm wildly unqualified to detangle all of this mess so i'm just discouraged from participating. Honestly, enjoyment or lack of an entertainment property is just a personal decision, so for me, I've largely accepted that I need to just engage with the content myself and not really give a damn about the fanbases.
to the show, I feel that Picard obviously showed a lot of love and care for the franchise and character work, and the conflict resolution was just the most JLP thing ever, but made some odd choices in plotting and I'm pretty sure could have entirely removed the sister villain without changing anything. So that's where I'm at. It's flawed as an individual plot, but largely fun and showed a lot of care toward franchise stewardship (aye!)
I don't feel the need to list every problem I could possibly have with a show. I really loved Star Trek Picard. It gave me everything I wanted from this show. There was absolutely nothing that struck me as a flaw worth dwelling on. Was it the perfect television show others should aspire to? No, of course not. No show is. Every bit of art ever created has flaws. The phrase I like it despite it's flaws is redundant because art cannot be flawless.
This is all predicated on some objective measure of what a show is which makes no sense to me. Assuming we can somehow achieve objective truth (which I do not think is possible) then it would still be irrelevant. I am not watching Star Trek Picard as a person devoid of my entire life's experience. I am watching it from my perspective. I am watching it with my biases and personal interpretations.
As an example, people are annoyed by the general lack of effort in the ship combat area which I can see. I just don't care because I don't focus on those parts nor do I want to watch a story that will. For some this harms the episode in a real way, but for me it's background noise. A way to set-up the parts I like more so let's just get through it. Both ways are valid and good ways to watch because art is ultimately experienced on the individual level.
This isn't to say we can't discuss and dissect art and over analyze it up our own collective butts. Just that others just enjoying the show and sharing that joy are also equally valid so let's all be cool with that? Or not I guess. I mean you do you in the end.
I don't care if some of the stuff was fanservice. It's a show doing Star Trek stuff and pulling from decades of established canon and bringing a bunch of familiar folks back in the room. By its very nature it had to be fanservice.
I loved everything about
Also, I love that we had a massive fleet of Romulan ships and a fleet of starfleet megaships staring each other down, and ultimately diplomacy deescalated the situation and the fleets departed without conflict. Most Trek ever.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
You can hate the show without that, "it's objectively bad by any measure!" Nonsense. Art doesn't work that way, and empathy requires that you understand that other people can have different perspectives than you but it doesn't make their perspective "incorrect."
If someone says "This show is great! I love it!" I disagree in my head but I don't engage that post with, "No! You can't say it's good! Ranking is subjective! Past Star Trek shows were shitty, too!"
Unless I actually want to have the discussion about what subjective priorities we have that cause us to have such differing assessments. In which case, we point out things like "There's a lot more stuff out there now, and a lot of it is better, so I'm holding this show to an admittedly higher standard because I honestly have better things to do with my time" or "I was a stupid kid then, I'm older now and my tastes and expectations have changed" or any number of things or "I see your point, maybe I am being unfair or uncharitable because there definitely were shitty Star Trek shows/episodes in the past."
But I'd prefer to actually have that discussion instead of having to constantly have these proxy disagreements about whether or not putting "well, this is just my opinion and you are entirely welcome to have your own but..." in front of every other sentence. Or having someone prop up a straw man meta-argument about whether or not objective rankings exist for subjective assessments (protip: they don't) that no one actually made.
Agreed, mostly:
(I'm informed that the latter is at least partially due to the VFX people only finishing a week before broadcast, due to COVID-related stuff on top of the usual time pressure.)
Re: This scene
This is a stellar line and I'm totally stealing it to casually drop at parties and wow people with my big brain power.
Ha ha, I figured this would be the case.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
How do you balance their desires and rights as people with the fact that they can just outperform regular humans. And what do humans do in response?
And how do we get the Star Trek answer, where everything is kind of OK?
That would have been heartbreaking. Picard accepts that he failed the Romulans, that Starfleet failed him and just goes to the funfair as an addled old man? And we're just - yeah, why not? Who gives a shit about anything?
I can see why Patrick Stewart was reluctant if it was just going to be a nostalgia cash in that advocated surrender.
I suspect if that was the kind of show they went with, the stuff about the changed star fleet and romulans and all that likely wouldn't have been a part of it. And even if he had given up on life, a show about him re-finding that spark, even if from just a simple local mystery would still be worth it to me. Granted there would have to be a lot more going on with that type of show then the few things Chabon lists though.
The whole thing as just an automated anti-virus program that runs across multiple galaxies, treating foreign AI as the virus.
In fact, I'm just going to think that this is what happened and it was just never confirmed.
But yes, I am also sad that slow Trek is no longer a thing. Even Star Trek got rolled into this trend of everything having to be high-stakes to the point of being always apocalyptic. But, Trek kinda started that trend in TV, so I can't really complain as a fan. But if you want that drip drip drip then just go over to what Ron D. Moore is working on with For All Mankind on appleTV. It is pretty awesome.
I reckon that's just writer gumpf to say that I want to write "serious things not just spaceship stuff". So no background from Picard the character or Star Trek - given that the Romulan Catastrophe is already in the movie timeline. "No Politics" is the key bit there - it'd be like really wanting to do a movie about W Bush, but wanting to use the pet portraits thing to explore the man, free of politics and any preconceptions.
You're not wrong. I'll admit I'd probably watch Picard do the laundry and clean his house for an entire episode and be happy with it because well..it's Picard.
Part of the story is the crew influencing Zephram Cochrane to be the hero they knew him to be from the history books.
Shame we don't know how that would have gone had the Borg and Enterprise never intervened.
Except... maybe... we do. /
Y'all
I think this might be the Prime Star Trek Universe.
The one that isn't changed by time travel. The actual path humanity was on.
I think... I think that the Federation universe might be the alternate one. /
Zephram Cochrane is a drunk scavenger in a dog-eat-dog world immediately after the third world war and the eugenics wars.
And the Enterprise crew put a *lot* of work into him. Like, that's the whole B plot of the move.
In the ruins of post-war, super militaristic America. /
Y'all.
All I can find against this is a few characters saying things like "The Empire has existed for centuries" or "We banished those weaknesses millenia ago."
It's a fascist dictatorship.
The first thing they do is manipulate history to support the regime.
See: Bushido. /
We know that Cochrane was the pivotal moment.
But maybe it wasn't the flight.
Maybe that's not the change they made, 'making sure it happened.'
Maybe it's the work they put in to showing this man a future with the potential for peace.
The Federation... IS ITS OWN GRANDPA. /
The mirror universe isn't an alternate dimension where everyone is evil.
It's the prime dimension.
The Federation Universe is an alternate dimension where, due to space and time fuckery, an impossible hope exists. /
The thread continues from there, going even deeper down this hole, but I think I'm going to cut it off there. There isn't an "evil mirror universe" but the actual primary timeline and this crazy offshoot due to space/time technobabble that caused itself, which is such a very classic Star Trek sort of thing.
Which brings us right back around to the heart of TOS that people loved - it's not that people are inherently better in that Star Trek future, but people try to be better. Make one person better, and it's the difference between a horrible oppressive dystopia and a utopia (sorta, for a while, until people stop trying to be better out of fear). Maybe a bit too simplistic? Too overly dependent on crazy technobabble? Well, that's Star Trek, baby.
Edit: Also worth noting I don't have any great idea of what happens in Discovery season 2. So dunno if that would change my mind on their use of mirror universe. I tried to watch season 2 but about halfway through the first episode I gave up.
It might encourage the Federation to make genetic modification legal in order for humans to compete with synths.
But I think the most important thing for season 2 is that the writers need to stop writing the show like it's for an audience from the 80's.
30 years ago, most people didn't know that much about computers, AI, or philosophical questions about consciousness and sapience. But audiences are much more savvy today. There have been decades of hugely popular sci-fi shows, movies, games, books, etc. that have dealt with these issues.
They can be more sophisticated and deal with these issues on a deeper level. They can delve into things like the emergent properties of consciousness and all the grey area there is with concepts like sapience and free will. They didn't need to make it as simple as, "synths did bad, Starfleet bans all synths." They should have had a lot of debate over the issue instead of just having a blanket synth ban. The synths on Mars didn't even appear to be that smart. They didn't seem like they were even capable of sapience. Hologram AI's on the La Sirena were clearly much more intelligent. They should have developed that much more. It would have been easy for them to establish that the Mars synths were specifically built to be less intelligent and lacking in sapience precisely to avoid all the thorny issues involved in the morality and ethics of using sapient beings as laborers. Then they can blame the synth revolt on emergent properties of the positronic net. They could say that the positronic net itself has certain inherent capabilities for self growth and development so that no matter how primitive they made it, it would still evolve and learn. The ban could be put in place because they don't want to create simple AI's for labor that would eventually evolve to become sapient and begin to view itself as a slave.
No one could tell the difference between the two siskos it's true
It's a really cool idea, though a reply to the bit about Empire propaganda kinda seals it as "cool idea but not accurate until a show or movie says otherwise" for me.
Except it's not false history; it's history as it is presented to the viewer. The characters might buy the propaganda, but there's no reason for the creators to deceive the audience on that front. Again, this is not to say I'd be opposed to a show or movie saying as much, and using "obviously the video was doctored" to explain it, but as it is now, it doesn't hold up.
uuuuuugh this show keeps getting stupider the more you think about it
Also that Chabon quote is such fucking bullshit. Yes of course people hated DS9 and Voyager for shitty racist reasons or dumb "how can you have star trek on a space station" except those are not the complaints about Picard (and Discovery honestly). The issue with these shows is that the actual plot logic makes no god damned sense.
Was it super cool to see 250 romulan warbirds facing off against 250 fedration ships? ya sure, it was neat! was it tonally logic with what the show earlier in the season presented about the state of the romulan empire and the zhat vash? noooooooooooooooooooooooope. Nothing in the show makes sense in that regard, it feels like the writers just didn't give a shit. Here's a pic from a discord I'm in:
2 of my friends loved the show, they were all aboard for every episode and Riker saving the day meme made them so happy. But it's gaaaaaaaaaaaaaarbaaaaaaaaaaage. Like if this is the quality of the show they intended to make then fine, but really? This is the best they could do?
If you like the show than I'm glad for you, I wish I could have liked it but I just wanted something different.
Those are not your complaints with Picard or Discovery (or any sane person's), but if you don't think there are people out there mad and complaining about a black woman as show header, or an Asian woman as captain, or how Picard has too many women in important roles, then welcome to your first day on the internet.
I 100% believe that "how come Star Trek is doing this LIBRUL shit with a black main character/woman main character, I want the OLD Star Trek back!" is something that was said of DS9, Voyager, Discovery, Picard, and will be said of every new Star Trek that gets made forever (perhaps the next one will be "how can the main character be GAY uggg LIBRULS!")
That isn't saying there aren't legitimate complaints too, that's just saying that there's a contingent of people who will always be mad that an under-represented group gets representation in Star Trek, as if Star Trek hasn't been about that shit since day one.
sure but I don't give a shit about those complaints and nobody on these forums has leveled them. Chabon's quote is bullshit in relation to what I think are actual writerly deficiencies of the show, which is what my post was about.
The worst of it is how unnecessary that change was. They could just have said the captain and empress got eye injuries while crushing a Klingon uprising. It would have made more sense in the Mirror Universe and given the characters a bit of backstory. Instead, they went with the stupid idea and made a universe of human troglodytes,