There's a blooper on YouTube where Geordi and Worf unintentionally do a synchronized shirt tug and the whole scene falls apart and they high five over it.
It is a bit odd that Worf and Geordi don't have more scenes together. Maybe it's because they're the two kids in class that are not allowed to sit together lest they high five every five minutes.
I was kind of up and down on the episode initially. I loved Tendi and Rutherford's plot, as usual, and I loved a lot of the gags that were going on in Boimler and Mariner's story, but I was very confused about Fletcher.
Not by his introduction. His introduction is classic sitcom 101, the character who's introduced as a longtime friend/acquaintance of one of the leads even though this is our first time seeing them ever. Lower Decks is very deliberately pouring Star Trek into a classic sitcom mold and I am on board with that.
But I didn't really get Fletcher as a character, or where he was coming from. His personality felt like it shifted from scene to scene - I got that he was too good to be true, but a couple of the swerves just felt random.
Then a friend pointed out to me that Fletcher is an appeaser. He's the guy in the office who wants to be everyone's friend for the actual reason that he's incompetent and knows it and is terrified. All of his moves are to try and save face or to call in the chips he's earned with other people by being buddies with them so they'll get him out of jams.
Idk, people might have their own take, but after hearing that I felt a lot better about the episode overall, though I still wish the show would make up its mind about the bridge crew - are they well-meaning goofs, or venal idiots, or what. Overall, though, I still very much like the trajectory this show is heading in.
I also felt like Fletcher was a conscious callback to a, I don’t know if it happens quite often enough to be a “trope”, but it seems to me there’s a pretty strong lineage of antagonists/villains in Trek whose initially-seen positive qualities are a side-effect or symptom of whatever negative qualities end up making them a problem. Fletcher is, in my opinion, 100% one of these antagonists.
Generally when you see a "[Period of Time] Later" card, you expect to see something insane or over-the-top. I fully expected to see a Luna-class starship spinning wildly out of control or its weapons systems go offline in the middle of a firefight with Riker losing his shit. Seeing Fletcher face-timing Mariner and Boimler to tell them he got fired was anticlimactic.
Finally got through Picard. It was okay until episode 8, and then it just nosedives off a cliff. It's also needlessly, laughably dark sometimes. The ending was just baffling.
Why was Oh leading the fleet?
What happened to Narek (or whatever lover boy's name was)? He apparently just disappeared after he was held down in the plaza.
Soji changing sides every 5 minutes was incredibly annoying.
Why the fuck is the murder doctor still part of the crew???
That was probably the most boring and pointless space fight I've ever seen.
I was hoping we'd get something that was an allegory about our treatment of foreigners, but instead we got Mass Effect 3. Which is a shame, because the few times the show dug into Romulan culture was pretty cool. But I still feel like I know more about Klingons, Vulcans, Cardassians, and shit, even Andorians than I do about Romulans. I wanted more with Picard's house crew.
That said, Elnor is my boy. He's unabashedly a 13 year old's fan fiction character, and I love him for it.
Random thoughts about the darkness of the show:
Icheb and Hugh felt like cheap ways to generate viewer interest/anger/sympathy. It's just so blatantly cynical.
I think my biggest gripe, however, is the Rikers' dead son. It literally added nothing. You could take it out of the story, and everyone involved - Kestra, Deanna, Will - would be exactly the same. It doesn't provide motivation. It doesn't add anything. It's just more tragedy for sake of it.
EDIT: I'm not even mad about
There being another Soong that just appears out of nowhere. I mean, it's really dumb, but I can forgive it for more Brent Spiner.
Same with me. The Romulan stuff was very interesting, then they dropped it for their end-of-the-universe silliness and they lost me. At this point I have zero interest in season 2. Same with season 3 of Discovery - aside from a general curiosity of whether they're compressing all five seasons of Andromeda into a single season or making the future the new setting of the show, I have no interest in it.
Lower Decks sounds fun from reading the comments here. I might check it out once the season is over.
I love that with Elnor they’ve inverted the Spock archetype. On every other Star Trek show there’s a character who repressed their emotions (or has none in the case of Data), while Elnor’s Way of Absolute Candour is all about having complete awareness of and embracing your emotions.
I think Picard is full of a lot of great ideas and characters, they're just interspersed with some really shakey storytelling and an unnecessarily dark tone
Also I totally disagree regarding Riker and Troi
The tragedy obviously informed the feelings of Riker and Troi regarding the synth ban and Soji. It also gave Kestra the grounds to sympathize with Soji, which helped her overcome her recent emotional trauma. I thought overall that aspect of the show and that episode was really well done.
Finally got through Picard. It was okay until episode 8, and then it just nosedives off a cliff. It's also needlessly, laughably dark sometimes. The ending was just baffling.
Why was Oh leading the fleet?
What happened to Narek (or whatever lover boy's name was)? He apparently just disappeared after he was held down in the plaza.
Soji changing sides every 5 minutes was incredibly annoying.
Why the fuck is the murder doctor still part of the crew???
That was probably the most boring and pointless space fight I've ever seen.
I was hoping we'd get something that was an allegory about our treatment of foreigners, but instead we got Mass Effect 3. Which is a shame, because the few times the show dug into Romulan culture was pretty cool. But I still feel like I know more about Klingons, Vulcans, Cardassians, and shit, even Andorians than I do about Romulans. I wanted more with Picard's house crew.
That said, Elnor is my boy. He's unabashedly a 13 year old's fan fiction character, and I love him for it.
Random thoughts about the darkness of the show:
Icheb and Hugh felt like cheap ways to generate viewer interest/anger/sympathy. It's just so blatantly cynical.
I think my biggest gripe, however, is the Rikers' dead son. It literally added nothing. You could take it out of the story, and everyone involved - Kestra, Deanna, Will - would be exactly the same. It doesn't provide motivation. It doesn't add anything. It's just more tragedy for sake of it.
EDIT: I'm not even mad about
There being another Soong that just appears out of nowhere. I mean, it's really dumb, but I can forgive it for more Brent Spiner.
Some thoughts on tragedy:
I actually quite like what they went for with Riker and Troi's son. That their disease could have been cured had a positronic matrix been available. Because it shows us not just the universe shaking consequences of bigotry and kneejerk policies. It takes the stakes out of the end-of-the-world for a moment, and says that the choices the Federation makes have direct, personal consequences. That those consequences can be personal, and terrible, and affect people that we, the audience, care about. It's exactly the sort of intimate stakes we've been saying in this thread that we want. It hurt when Riker had to explain that, and I thought it was a very effective bit of writing.
Jurati...is slightly weird. Because I like Jurati. And she's clearly tortured by what she's done. And arguably did so under duress, and as a direct consequence of a terrible crime committed by Oh. But also, she killed someone. But also also, this would hardly be the first time that someone in Star Trek got drugged/possessed by a dead alien civilisation/nano-probes/neural parasite (ha!), killed someone, and walked it off. I suspect they'll either have her be tried and let out on her own recognizance, as long as she promises not to be mind-flayed by a Romulan operative again any time soon. I think Jurati 's rebuilding of self, as a victim whose victimhood made her a murderer, is going to be a really interesting journey for the show.
I think that other thing...
Yeah, a Sudden Soong Appears is a bit daft. But they needed someone else to be working with Maddox. And it being Soong is thematically appropriate. They're always on the run from an overcautious Federation, doing sketchy experiments in backalleys. And, yes, more Spiner, which lets me give it a pass either way.
I'm not in a rush to watch season two - partly because of personal stuff, and partly because I actually liked how they wrapped season one, I can let it lie for a while before I go back to it. And, partly, if I'm honest, because I don't want to pay for CBS All Access. But I do want to watch it.
I think Picard is full of a lot of great ideas and characters, they're just interspersed with some really shakey storytelling and an unnecessarily dark tone
Also I totally disagree regarding Riker and Troi
The tragedy obviously informed the feelings of Riker and Troi regarding the synth ban and Soji. It also gave Kestra the grounds to sympathize with Soji, which helped her overcome her recent emotional trauma. I thought overall that aspect of the show and that episode was really well done.
Yeah, the Riker/Troi stuff made sense in terms of brute force moving narrative pieces into place. It was just incredibly hamfisted.
+1
Options
MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
I love that with Elnor they’ve inverted the Spock archetype. On every other Star Trek show there’s a character who repressed their emotions (or has none in the case of Data), while Elnor’s Way of Absolute Candour is all about having complete awareness of and embracing your emotions.
I like the idea of that inversion. Mindfulness is hugely different than repression and the depictions of the Vulcan logic-training hew to the latter in ways that are borderline abusive. So having a Trek show explore a different way that doesn’t require Vulcans / Romulans to sit inside the extremes of Repressed-Assholes-Who-All-Undergo-Conversion-Therapy and Sneaky-Duplicitous-Villains is great. The execution... well they literally named the character meant to embody that idea ‘Star Elf’ in Quenya... and they basically just had him as Space Legolas (Peter Jackson edition). So really not a fan of the follow through.
I'd have to grudgingly agree. When they finally kiss on the promenade it's pretty awesome, but after the show has answered the will they or won't they question, it didn't seem like there was a whole lot of meat left on that bone for the writers, or the actors. The only real test of the relationship comes later when that hipster changeling gives Odo a relationship crisis that ends with a really quite lame scene of him turning into a mist while his girlfriend awkwardly pretends she's in ecstasy. Worf and Dax just work way better, I think mostly because whereas Odo is an immature puppy dog, Worf and Dax are equals, and they fight about petty shit. They have a few scenes where it's just the two of them in a shuttle, and those couple of scenes arguably grow the characters and their marriage more in just a few short minutes than most characters on the show would see over the entire course of all the seasons.
I think there's no meat on the bone because there was never really anything to do with the idea. It was interesting as a character point for Odo that he was pining for Kira and they built some interesting things around that. But I just think they don't really work as a couple once they get them together, either in terms of chemistry or in terms of generating many really interesting story beats. The only really interesting thing it ends up doing is giving Odo something to leave behind in the final episode. And yeah, I think a part of the problem is also that they never get Odo past the puppy-love crush stage of his relationship with Kira.
Worf and Dax are better but I think not a ton better. I've always liked the wedding episode but fundamentally all the points that get brought up in that one about why the relationship won't work have the audience going "I mean, yeah. All of this is correct. Their attitudes as displayed throughout most of the series make them a terrible couple.". It seems like they threw them together based on a pitch and never really re-evaluated if it actually ever made sense as depicted. I really don't think it's the actors though. In that episode where they go on the mission together and then Worf abandons the operation to save Dax's life, they gel super super well. It's like for that one episode they got someone writing the script that understood how the relationship could work and the actors could sell it the second the writing was there. But most of the time it's not imo and the two characters come off as a pair that doesn't make much sense. I think a big part of it is the way they often write Dax as kind of immature.
shryke on
0
Options
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
Finally got through Picard. It was okay until episode 8, and then it just nosedives off a cliff. It's also needlessly, laughably dark sometimes. The ending was just baffling.
Why was Oh leading the fleet?
What happened to Narek (or whatever lover boy's name was)? He apparently just disappeared after he was held down in the plaza.
Soji changing sides every 5 minutes was incredibly annoying.
Why the fuck is the murder doctor still part of the crew???
That was probably the most boring and pointless space fight I've ever seen.
I was hoping we'd get something that was an allegory about our treatment of foreigners, but instead we got Mass Effect 3. Which is a shame, because the few times the show dug into Romulan culture was pretty cool. But I still feel like I know more about Klingons, Vulcans, Cardassians, and shit, even Andorians than I do about Romulans. I wanted more with Picard's house crew.
That said, Elnor is my boy. He's unabashedly a 13 year old's fan fiction character, and I love him for it.
Random thoughts about the darkness of the show:
Icheb and Hugh felt like cheap ways to generate viewer interest/anger/sympathy. It's just so blatantly cynical.
I think my biggest gripe, however, is the Rikers' dead son. It literally added nothing. You could take it out of the story, and everyone involved - Kestra, Deanna, Will - would be exactly the same. It doesn't provide motivation. It doesn't add anything. It's just more tragedy for sake of it.
EDIT: I'm not even mad about
There being another Soong that just appears out of nowhere. I mean, it's really dumb, but I can forgive it for more Brent Spiner.
I love how even people new to the show not hate watching it with others, not feeding on negative discourse week by week, etc, have all the same complaints months later lol. Clearly shows that Picard had some major problems.
The most baffling thing to me was that they introduce The Three Musketeers, a book filled with themes of camaraderie, class struggle, revenge, secrets and conspiracies... and then do absolutely nothing with it. Even the Romulans all had Rapiers on them, which when I first saw them I thought 'oh that's cool, maybe they're like a gang of crime fighters inspired by the writings of Dumas' but no, they just had historic earth weapons for no reason what so ever.
For a franchise that is endlessly trying to remake Wrath of Khan they seem to forget that a huge part of the story was playing with the themes of Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities.
I know it didn't sound like a Romulan name but my brain didn't even connect it across genres. That's the kind of idea you get from a genius character in a story written by an idiot.
The most baffling thing to me was that they introduce The Three Musketeers, a book filled with themes of camaraderie, class struggle, revenge, secrets and conspiracies... and then do absolutely nothing with it. Even the Romulans all had Rapiers on them, which when I first saw them I thought 'oh that's cool, maybe they're like a gang of crime fighters inspired by the writings of Dumas' but no, they just had historic earth weapons for no reason what so ever.
For a franchise that is endlessly trying to remake Wrath of Khan they seem to forget that a huge part of the story was playing with the themes of Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities.
I'm sure those were space rapiers, or Romulan specific rapiers.
I mean, the basic humanoid form only has so many ways it can move naturally, it makes sense that weapons of other humanoid races would be roughly analogous to Terran weapons.
And a rapier is just natures way of saying "I want to put holes in you, but I don't want to carry much weight to do it".
The most baffling thing to me was that they introduce The Three Musketeers, a book filled with themes of camaraderie, class struggle, revenge, secrets and conspiracies... and then do absolutely nothing with it. Even the Romulans all had Rapiers on them, which when I first saw them I thought 'oh that's cool, maybe they're like a gang of crime fighters inspired by the writings of Dumas' but no, they just had historic earth weapons for no reason what so ever.
For a franchise that is endlessly trying to remake Wrath of Khan they seem to forget that a huge part of the story was playing with the themes of Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities.
I'm sure those were space rapiers, or Romulan specific rapiers.
I mean, the basic humanoid form only has so many ways it can move naturally, it makes sense that weapons of other humanoid races would be roughly analogous to Terran weapons.
And a rapier is just natures way of saying "I want to put holes in you, but I don't want to carry much weight to do it".
They're called Tan'qalanq, which is probably just Space Sword in some damn language after Elnor. They're also not a rapier, more of a straight katana (which has a correct name but fuck if I can remember) with a cup hilt. Single edge with a short taper at the point. You don't take a dude's head off and baseball it across the room with a rapier.
But, yeah, it makes sense that species with the same bodies would have similar weapons. Humans went through a lot of weird shit but even isolated cultures fell into fairly similar forms. Shit like the Klingons and Andorians have looks more alien, but unless you've got extra joints or 360 swivels in your wrists or something, most of them aren't really workable. A Star Elf with a sword is going to beat an Andorian with what is basically a sharpened brass knuckle.
His terminal illness really didn't serve much purpose. It was there in episode 1, then dropped until, what, episode 9 when suddenly it's yet another race against time (as though facing off against 218 copypasta'd Warbirds wasn't enough). An older, frail, obviously nearing the end of his life Picard is an obvious choice given Patrick Stewart's own age. That in itself makes it compelling IMO. There's no need for the not-so-terminal illness.
he's already known to have a disease that will slowly erode his mind, getting tipped off to it early might have bought him time (hence why he's better off in Picard's 2399 than All Good Things' 2395) but there was no cure and reasonable that there still wasn't.
Even more reason not to need an extra clock ticking.
Hey, the punch dagger is a perfectly fine (human) weapon.
But yeah, compare the bat'leth (which was clearly designed to look strange and alien and 'cool') to the mek'leth (which was designed to be functional and comfortably wielded).
The most baffling thing to me was that they introduce The Three Musketeers, a book filled with themes of camaraderie, class struggle, revenge, secrets and conspiracies... and then do absolutely nothing with it. Even the Romulans all had Rapiers on them, which when I first saw them I thought 'oh that's cool, maybe they're like a gang of crime fighters inspired by the writings of Dumas' but no, they just had historic earth weapons for no reason what so ever.
For a franchise that is endlessly trying to remake Wrath of Khan they seem to forget that a huge part of the story was playing with the themes of Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities.
I'm sure those were space rapiers, or Romulan specific rapiers.
I mean, the basic humanoid form only has so many ways it can move naturally, it makes sense that weapons of other humanoid races would be roughly analogous to Terran weapons.
And a rapier is just natures way of saying "I want to put holes in you, but I don't want to carry much weight to do it".
yeah the one thing Star Trek is known for is practical swords
I love how even people new to the show not hate watching it with others, not feeding on negative discourse week by week, etc, have all the same complaints months later lol. Clearly shows that Picard had some major problems
I think across the board, even the most ardent Picard super fans have admitted the show had a litany of problems and buckets of missed opportunities. I think it will age fairly well in greater Trek universe, but will ultimately be concluded to have been a victim of being underfunded from the get go, causing an abbreviated episode count and a pernicious sense of cheapness to pervade most of the scenes, which put a spotlight on the writing problems.
I love how even people new to the show not hate watching it with others, not feeding on negative discourse week by week, etc, have all the same complaints months later lol. Clearly shows that Picard had some major problems
I think across the board, even the most ardent Picard super fans have admitted the show had a litany of problems and buckets of missed opportunities.
Example
The AI Cataclysm being a result of Whale Probe syndrome would have been far more interesting and in line with Trek ideals than just "oh there IS a super invincible and inevitably hostile AI group out there."
I also agree with
The Brain Disease. It was
2- "you have a brain disease"
7- "I know about your brain disease"
9 - "By the way I have a brain disease"
10 - "Oh no, the brain disease! Never mind, he's okay now"
As a ticking clock it didn't really tick. It just went straight to the alarm.
I still love the show's high points. But it was really inconsistent.
His terminal illness really didn't serve much purpose. It was there in episode 1, then dropped until, what, episode 9 when suddenly it's yet another race against time (as though facing off against 218 copypasta'd Warbirds wasn't enough). An older, frail, obviously nearing the end of his life Picard is an obvious choice given Patrick Stewart's own age. That in itself makes it compelling IMO. There's no need for the not-so-terminal illness.
This actually really bothered me, because I was pretty damn sure that..
Picard would not have just been like whatevs and rolled with it. Like this is the kind of life altering stuff TNG made entire episodes out of. But thinking more on it, I think they planned to kill him at the end of the season if they didn't get renewed for a second. And the golem was just a hacky short cut to quickly bring him back if they did get a second season.
This popped up in my Youtube feed and I felt like sharing with the thread. Throwback to when people could have disagreements and communicate effectively through them without looking like they are on the verge of crying, loopy camera work, and constant lens flare: https://youtu.be/vMKtKNZw4Bo
is this better than anything on Discovery I've watched so far?
I mean maybe but also my brain pathways were probably partially forged by TNG so I'm not a neutral judge
While I could have gotten on board with the “more alien aliens” look of the Klingon makeup in Discovery, the Klingon costume and ship design I found one of the real weak points of a visual language update I generally found pleasing, bold, and charming. Dark Eldar cosplay: Not In My Trek, etc.
This popped up in my Youtube feed and I felt like sharing with the thread. Throwback to when people could have disagreements and communicate effectively through them without looking like they are on the verge of crying, loopy camera work, and constant lens flare: https://youtu.be/vMKtKNZw4Bo
is this better than anything on Discovery I've watched so far?
I mean maybe but also my brain pathways were probably partially forged by TNG so I'm not a neutral judge
I mean, you haven't reached Season 2 and seen all the stuff with a certain new character introduced that season, which I would say is on par with that. But Season 1? Yeah, probably. Although I'm definitely a big Ensign Tilly and Lt. Stamets fan.
This popped up in my Youtube feed and I felt like sharing with the thread. Throwback to when people could have disagreements and communicate effectively through them without looking like they are on the verge of crying, loopy camera work, and constant lens flare: https://youtu.be/vMKtKNZw4Bo
is this better than anything on Discovery I've watched so far?
I mean maybe but also my brain pathways were probably partially forged by TNG so I'm not a neutral judge
I mean, you haven't reached Season 2 and seen all the stuff with a certain new character introduced that season, which I would say is on par with that. But Season 1? Yeah, probably. Although I'm definitely a big Ensign Tilly and Lt. Stamets fan.
Yes Tilly and Alan Tudyk lite are cool with me. Also Sonequa Martin-Green is great.
STO has mad me come around half way on the Klingons, but what they did really can't be reconciled with the show.
Gowron has a nightmare hybrid of a grandfather who's half regular, quarter TOS, quarter Discovery, and 100% bug eyes.
See this is fine. Anything that reels them back in a little bit from space orks with rigid armor nobody could actually fight in
They have those, too (you can see J'Ula in the background, she's the Snape to grandpa's Voldemort). The ones from Into Darkness are kicking around, too. Im more referring to an official RP they wrote up to explain why the shows go TNG>TOS>DIS>TOS>TNG in the makeup style and explain all three being around in 2411.
STO has mad me come around half way on the Klingons, but what they did really can't be reconciled with the show.
Gowron has a nightmare hybrid of a grandfather who's half regular, quarter TOS, quarter Discovery, and 100% bug eyes.
See this is fine. Anything that reels them back in a little bit from space orks with rigid armor nobody could actually fight in
They have those, too (you can see J'Ula in the background, she's the Snape to grandpa's Voldemort). The ones from Into Darkness are kicking around, too. Im more referring to an official RP they wrote up to explain why the shows go TNG>TOS>DIS>TOS>TNG in the makeup style and explain all three being around in 2411.
I do not envy the folks who have to write in continuity in Star Trek Online to try to patch all of this shit together.
STO has mad me come around half way on the Klingons, but what they did really can't be reconciled with the show.
Gowron has a nightmare hybrid of a grandfather who's half regular, quarter TOS, quarter Discovery, and 100% bug eyes.
See this is fine. Anything that reels them back in a little bit from space orks with rigid armor nobody could actually fight in
They have those, too (you can see J'Ula in the background, she's the Snape to grandpa's Voldemort). The ones from Into Darkness are kicking around, too. Im more referring to an official RP they wrote up to explain why the shows go TNG>TOS>DIS>TOS>TNG in the makeup style and explain all three being around in 2411.
I do not envy the folks who have to write in continuity in Star Trek Online to try to patch all of this shit together.
the official canon for all of the above is "we don't talk about it"
STO has mad me come around half way on the Klingons, but what they did really can't be reconciled with the show.
Gowron has a nightmare hybrid of a grandfather who's half regular, quarter TOS, quarter Discovery, and 100% bug eyes.
See this is fine. Anything that reels them back in a little bit from space orks with rigid armor nobody could actually fight in
They have those, too (you can see J'Ula in the background, she's the Snape to grandpa's Voldemort). The ones from Into Darkness are kicking around, too. Im more referring to an official RP they wrote up to explain why the shows go TNG>TOS>DIS>TOS>TNG in the makeup style and explain all three being around in 2411.
I do not envy the folks who have to write in continuity in Star Trek Online to try to patch all of this shit together.
The wacky thing is they've done a better job than CBS. I don't give a shit about what's-his-name and the Light of Kahless but I'm all in on what STO is doing with it, even though it means I had to keep dragging Michael Fucking Burnham through an Excalbian morality test.
STO has mad me come around half way on the Klingons, but what they did really can't be reconciled with the show.
Gowron has a nightmare hybrid of a grandfather who's half regular, quarter TOS, quarter Discovery, and 100% bug eyes.
See this is fine. Anything that reels them back in a little bit from space orks with rigid armor nobody could actually fight in
Listen, those spine plates had a very important function, it protected them from rogue barrels. They as a culture learned a lesson long ago that an isolated Klingon like Worf had to learn the hard way.
Posts
"I am laughing" - Dorn
Your Ad Here! Reasonable Rates!
And NOT reassigned to Starbase 80.
I mean, it was lampshaded at the start of the episode as StarFleet's dumping ground, and they just straight fire him? Booo!
What happened to Narek (or whatever lover boy's name was)? He apparently just disappeared after he was held down in the plaza.
Soji changing sides every 5 minutes was incredibly annoying.
Why the fuck is the murder doctor still part of the crew???
That was probably the most boring and pointless space fight I've ever seen.
I was hoping we'd get something that was an allegory about our treatment of foreigners, but instead we got Mass Effect 3. Which is a shame, because the few times the show dug into Romulan culture was pretty cool. But I still feel like I know more about Klingons, Vulcans, Cardassians, and shit, even Andorians than I do about Romulans. I wanted more with Picard's house crew.
That said, Elnor is my boy. He's unabashedly a 13 year old's fan fiction character, and I love him for it.
Random thoughts about the darkness of the show:
I think my biggest gripe, however, is the Rikers' dead son. It literally added nothing. You could take it out of the story, and everyone involved - Kestra, Deanna, Will - would be exactly the same. It doesn't provide motivation. It doesn't add anything. It's just more tragedy for sake of it.
EDIT: I'm not even mad about
Elnor really should not work, his concept is so silly, but he does.
Lower Decks sounds fun from reading the comments here. I might check it out once the season is over.
Also I totally disagree regarding Riker and Troi
Some thoughts on tragedy:
Jurati...is slightly weird. Because I like Jurati. And she's clearly tortured by what she's done. And arguably did so under duress, and as a direct consequence of a terrible crime committed by Oh. But also, she killed someone. But also also, this would hardly be the first time that someone in Star Trek got drugged/possessed by a dead alien civilisation/nano-probes/neural parasite (ha!), killed someone, and walked it off. I suspect they'll either have her be tried and let out on her own recognizance, as long as she promises not to be mind-flayed by a Romulan operative again any time soon. I think Jurati 's rebuilding of self, as a victim whose victimhood made her a murderer, is going to be a really interesting journey for the show.
I think that other thing...
I'm not in a rush to watch season two - partly because of personal stuff, and partly because I actually liked how they wrapped season one, I can let it lie for a while before I go back to it. And, partly, if I'm honest, because I don't want to pay for CBS All Access. But I do want to watch it.
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
Yeah, the Riker/Troi stuff made sense in terms of brute force moving narrative pieces into place. It was just incredibly hamfisted.
I like the idea of that inversion. Mindfulness is hugely different than repression and the depictions of the Vulcan logic-training hew to the latter in ways that are borderline abusive. So having a Trek show explore a different way that doesn’t require Vulcans / Romulans to sit inside the extremes of Repressed-Assholes-Who-All-Undergo-Conversion-Therapy and Sneaky-Duplicitous-Villains is great. The execution... well they literally named the character meant to embody that idea ‘Star Elf’ in Quenya... and they basically just had him as Space Legolas (Peter Jackson edition). So really not a fan of the follow through.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
I think there's no meat on the bone because there was never really anything to do with the idea. It was interesting as a character point for Odo that he was pining for Kira and they built some interesting things around that. But I just think they don't really work as a couple once they get them together, either in terms of chemistry or in terms of generating many really interesting story beats. The only really interesting thing it ends up doing is giving Odo something to leave behind in the final episode. And yeah, I think a part of the problem is also that they never get Odo past the puppy-love crush stage of his relationship with Kira.
Worf and Dax are better but I think not a ton better. I've always liked the wedding episode but fundamentally all the points that get brought up in that one about why the relationship won't work have the audience going "I mean, yeah. All of this is correct. Their attitudes as displayed throughout most of the series make them a terrible couple.". It seems like they threw them together based on a pitch and never really re-evaluated if it actually ever made sense as depicted. I really don't think it's the actors though. In that episode where they go on the mission together and then Worf abandons the operation to save Dax's life, they gel super super well. It's like for that one episode they got someone writing the script that understood how the relationship could work and the actors could sell it the second the writing was there. But most of the time it's not imo and the two characters come off as a pair that doesn't make much sense. I think a big part of it is the way they often write Dax as kind of immature.
I love how even people new to the show not hate watching it with others, not feeding on negative discourse week by week, etc, have all the same complaints months later lol. Clearly shows that Picard had some major problems.
For a franchise that is endlessly trying to remake Wrath of Khan they seem to forget that a huge part of the story was playing with the themes of Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities.
Wait, what? Seriously?
I know it didn't sound like a Romulan name but my brain didn't even connect it across genres. That's the kind of idea you get from a genius character in a story written by an idiot.
I'm sure those were space rapiers, or Romulan specific rapiers.
I mean, the basic humanoid form only has so many ways it can move naturally, it makes sense that weapons of other humanoid races would be roughly analogous to Terran weapons.
And a rapier is just natures way of saying "I want to put holes in you, but I don't want to carry much weight to do it".
They're called Tan'qalanq, which is probably just Space Sword in some damn language after Elnor. They're also not a rapier, more of a straight katana (which has a correct name but fuck if I can remember) with a cup hilt. Single edge with a short taper at the point. You don't take a dude's head off and baseball it across the room with a rapier.
But, yeah, it makes sense that species with the same bodies would have similar weapons. Humans went through a lot of weird shit but even isolated cultures fell into fairly similar forms. Shit like the Klingons and Andorians have looks more alien, but unless you've got extra joints or 360 swivels in your wrists or something, most of them aren't really workable. A Star Elf with a sword is going to beat an Andorian with what is basically a sharpened brass knuckle.
Even more reason not to need an extra clock ticking.
But yeah, compare the bat'leth (which was clearly designed to look strange and alien and 'cool') to the mek'leth (which was designed to be functional and comfortably wielded).
yeah the one thing Star Trek is known for is practical swords
I think across the board, even the most ardent Picard super fans have admitted the show had a litany of problems and buckets of missed opportunities. I think it will age fairly well in greater Trek universe, but will ultimately be concluded to have been a victim of being underfunded from the get go, causing an abbreviated episode count and a pernicious sense of cheapness to pervade most of the scenes, which put a spotlight on the writing problems.
that is all
Example
I also agree with
2- "you have a brain disease"
7- "I know about your brain disease"
9 - "By the way I have a brain disease"
10 - "Oh no, the brain disease! Never mind, he's okay now"
As a ticking clock it didn't really tick. It just went straight to the alarm.
I still love the show's high points. But it was really inconsistent.
This actually really bothered me, because I was pretty damn sure that..
Gowron has a nightmare hybrid of a grandfather who's half regular, quarter TOS, quarter Discovery, and 100% bug eyes.
is this better than anything on Discovery I've watched so far?
I mean maybe but also my brain pathways were probably partially forged by TNG so I'm not a neutral judge
Your Ad Here! Reasonable Rates!
See this is fine. Anything that reels them back in a little bit from space orks with rigid armor nobody could actually fight in
Yes Tilly and Alan Tudyk lite are cool with me. Also Sonequa Martin-Green is great.
They have those, too (you can see J'Ula in the background, she's the Snape to grandpa's Voldemort). The ones from Into Darkness are kicking around, too. Im more referring to an official RP they wrote up to explain why the shows go TNG>TOS>DIS>TOS>TNG in the makeup style and explain all three being around in 2411.
the official canon for all of the above is "we don't talk about it"
The wacky thing is they've done a better job than CBS. I don't give a shit about what's-his-name and the Light of Kahless but I'm all in on what STO is doing with it, even though it means I had to keep dragging Michael Fucking Burnham through an Excalbian morality test.
Listen, those spine plates had a very important function, it protected them from rogue barrels. They as a culture learned a lesson long ago that an isolated Klingon like Worf had to learn the hard way.