I can see it now, how do I keep missing this? You'd think I'd start recognizing "Slightly odd tan" as "GREEN, you idiot!" by now, but nooo.
(Lessee, there was Kirk's hookup in Abram's 2009 Star Trek, Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy, Five's hair in Dark Matter ... probably more.)
Anecdotally, Picard is divisive in our house; I think the earlier episodes are lo-fi character studies and draw you into the world, and the Mrs thinks they were unconscionably dull and kept asking when things would happen.
I think that's why Picard failed for me as a show. It could have been a great introspective show with character studies and cultures fleshed out and criticism of racism etc. TNG had many great episodes tackling these themes. Or it could have been an action show. Big fleets, battles, fights between characters, advances against an existential foe, etc. DS9 did it to great success with the Dominion War.
The problem is, it tries to be both. It starts off as an introspective show, then halfway through ditches all introspection and kicks into high gear fighting an existential foe. So all the introspection and world-building ends up meaning jack shit and having zero payoff, and the fighting is rushed and lacks any believable stakes.
Take DS9 again. No one watching the show believed the Dominion would defeat the Federation and take over the Alpha Quadrant. But because the war was spread over several seasons, you could have victories and defeats. You could see Bethazed get occupied, Earth get bombarded, and DS9 get abandoned to enemy forces. You could see desperate fights to hold on to communication hubs and capture enemy ships. You could debate the morality of shady tactics like deploying a plague to wipe out the enemy or murder a senator or have a Starfleet coup of the Federation as means to the noble end of making the war end faster and easier. And all this really serves as a backdrop to the real story, the lives of the main cast on DS9, how they live through the war and adapt to it. Picard tries to do an entire war for the Federation's survival in 4 episodes. So not only do we not believe it for one second, but we get nothing but a straight line to victory for our characters with no side stories, no stakes, no setbacks or sacrifices or questions, and most of all no personal impacts on them.
Meanwhile, take TNG. Most of the great episodes were introspective. The Inner Light, Darmok, Q Who, Drumhead, Measure of a Man, I Borg, Tapestry, Yesterday's Enterprise, I'd even include All Good Things in this category, since the world-destroying threat in that one was really just a catalyst for introspection rather than the point of it. But all of those had payoffs, the characters involved learning something about themselves or the world by the end of the episode. Picard's story-arc structured allowed them to push off the payoff instead of having it per episode, but then they dropped it completely. We had no payoff on the Romulan culture payoff, on the xenophobia, on surviving the destruction of Romulus in small dirt colonies, on the Sisterhood thing, on the Federation's failure to help the Romulans, nothing.
In trying to do everything, Picard fails to accomplish anything.
I think Picard has a very TNG message - we choose to be who we are. We choose our own actions. Evil, darkness, etc. aren't inevitable.
The problem is that it's muddled. There's these half-formed arcs about trust, and family, and societal values, and aging and death, and how we treat refugees, and a bunch of other things that could work as their own seasons individually, but they're all crammed into 10 episodes so none of them actually get fleshed out at all. And on top of that you have almost random darkness strewn about.
Picard really needs better editing at the writing stage. Less cruft.
I know what you mean when you say there's a cost demand for CG/makeup/sets, and it is true. Yet bitterly ironic when some of the best Trek out there is little more than 2 people in a room talking to each other.
and sometimes 3-5 lights.
+1
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Finished Picard last night. Could've been better, could've been worse, but I liked how it placed talking and giving agency and choices above shooty bang bang at the end. It often felt like something that wasn't Star Trek at all, with a bickering and broken crew, but I dunno if I'd have enjoyed something that was hammering my nostalgia button like a whack a mole.
I think I preferred it to the constant emotional incontinence of Discovery. I'm also watching Voyager right now on maybe my third attempt to get through it and claim my long service badge, and it's better than that. Although I seem to have hit a reasonable patch of episodes at the end of season 2.
Emotional incontinence - definitely going to use that one in the future.
Finished Picard last night. Could've been better, could've been worse, but I liked how it placed talking and giving agency and choices above shooty bang bang at the end. It often felt like something that wasn't Star Trek at all, with a bickering and broken crew, but I dunno if I'd have enjoyed something that was hammering my nostalgia button like a whack a mole.
I think I preferred it to the constant emotional incontinence of Discovery. I'm also watching Voyager right now on maybe my third attempt to get through it and claim my long service badge, and it's better than that. Although I seem to have hit a reasonable patch of episodes at the end of season 2.
Thing about Voyager, unlike what's come since, it was still willing to take chances and didn't just sit in it's comfort corner for it's entire run. It gambled and lost more than it won compared to DS9, but it still won. It has legit 10/10 episodes.
Compare to Enterprise, which took no real chances and was just consistently mediocre. It's best episodes are maybe 7/10 but TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager all have worse episodes than Enterprise's worst.
Discovery is even less willing to leave their corner, though they try to make it look like they're taking some huge gamble all the time they're really just doing the same thing in a NEW PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN SETTING.
Anecdotally, Picard is divisive in our house; I think the earlier episodes are lo-fi character studies and draw you into the world, and the Mrs thinks they were unconscionably dull and kept asking when things would happen.
I think that's why Picard failed for me as a show. It could have been a great introspective show with character studies and cultures fleshed out and criticism of racism etc. TNG had many great episodes tackling these themes. Or it could have been an action show. Big fleets, battles, fights between characters, advances against an existential foe, etc. DS9 did it to great success with the Dominion War.
The problem is, it tries to be both. It starts off as an introspective show, then halfway through ditches all introspection and kicks into high gear fighting an existential foe. So all the introspection and world-building ends up meaning jack shit and having zero payoff, and the fighting is rushed and lacks any believable stakes.
Take DS9 again. No one watching the show believed the Dominion would defeat the Federation and take over the Alpha Quadrant. But because the war was spread over several seasons, you could have victories and defeats. You could see Bethazed get occupied, Earth get bombarded, and DS9 get abandoned to enemy forces. You could see desperate fights to hold on to communication hubs and capture enemy ships. You could debate the morality of shady tactics like deploying a plague to wipe out the enemy or murder a senator or have a Starfleet coup of the Federation as means to the noble end of making the war end faster and easier. And all this really serves as a backdrop to the real story, the lives of the main cast on DS9, how they live through the war and adapt to it. Picard tries to do an entire war for the Federation's survival in 4 episodes. So not only do we not believe it for one second, but we get nothing but a straight line to victory for our characters with no side stories, no stakes, no setbacks or sacrifices or questions, and most of all no personal impacts on them.
Meanwhile, take TNG. Most of the great episodes were introspective. The Inner Light, Darmok, Q Who, Drumhead, Measure of a Man, I Borg, Tapestry, Yesterday's Enterprise, I'd even include All Good Things in this category, since the world-destroying threat in that one was really just a catalyst for introspection rather than the point of it. But all of those had payoffs, the characters involved learning something about themselves or the world by the end of the episode. Picard's story-arc structured allowed them to push off the payoff instead of having it per episode, but then they dropped it completely. We had no payoff on the Romulan culture payoff, on the xenophobia, on surviving the destruction of Romulus in small dirt colonies, on the Sisterhood thing, on the Federation's failure to help the Romulans, nothing.
In trying to do everything, Picard fails to accomplish anything.
I don't think it would solve all the problems with the show (there's a lot of them imo), but just like:
remove the Reapers coming to kill us all, consequently find a more grounded and less ridiculous motivation for anti-sythn prejudice and reduce the Romulan fleet to 1 Warbird and the Federation response to 1 ship
and I think the whole thing would feel a lot more coherent and less silly. The stakes would feel more appropriate and less ginned up.
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.
picard:
Not to mention the hideously clumsy way that arc was closed out:
9.5 - completely out of the blue, let's talk about how we have an android body that is just waiting for a mind to be stuck into it
10.5 - oh no Picard, the star of Picard, has died, guess the show's over now, cue lots of shots of sobbing grieving characters and overwrought music as the audience taps its foot impatiently waiting for the show to remember that it is called PICARD and just stuff his mind into that android body already
like, if you're going to kill off a major character and exploit it for pathos, I can't think of a better way to short-circuit the drama than this
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.
picard:
Not to mention the hideously clumsy way that arc was closed out:
9.5 - completely out of the blue, let's talk about how we have an android body that is just waiting for a mind to be stuck into it
10.5 - oh no Picard, the star of Picard, has died, guess the show's over now, cue lots of shots of sobbing grieving characters and overwrought music as the audience taps its foot impatiently waiting for the show to remember that it is called PICARD and just stuff his mind into that android body already
like, if you're going to kill off a major character and exploit it for pathos, I can't think of a better way to short-circuit the drama than this
I liked the suggestion
That Troi and Riker's son's positronic treatment could have been the Chekhov's Gun. That of course a Soong has positronic gear lying around to attempt such a thing on the fly, and this can even still give you the Picard Data meeting, which was still great.
we don't actually know what will happen when the Reapers come. The admonition doesn't actually say - it says they destroyed their own creators on that world, but they didn't purge the galaxy.
We have only the assertions of a group of Romulans who couldn't see the Admonition in its entirety and were so bent on killing synthetics that they launched an assassination in the capitol of the fucking Federation during peacetime to kill a RANDOM CIVILIAN.
Perfectly compatible possibilities that aren't even worth caring about:
-They will purge the planet as they did at the site of the Admonition, meaning the space flowers and Dr. Soong die.
-They will only kill the creators, meaning Dr. Soong dies.
-They will only kill *enslavers*, meaning they'll fuck back off because the synthetics aren't slaves why the fuck did you even call us?
-They will enforce terms of equality, which the Federation will likely agree to but the Romulans will resist and get blown up.
-They will take the synthetics away to robot heaven (bye!)
-They will enforce independence, but they are already living free and undetected, perhaps the Reapers will install a defense system to protect that and the Federation will fuck off and not care while the Romulans will fight and get blown up.
-Its a trap and they'll kill the synthetics and brofist the Romulans before going home with a case of top vintage kalifal.
Honestly I find most of these more plausible than what the show insists is going to happen.
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.
picard:
Not to mention the hideously clumsy way that arc was closed out:
9.5 - completely out of the blue, let's talk about how we have an android body that is just waiting for a mind to be stuck into it
10.5 - oh no Picard, the star of Picard, has died, guess the show's over now, cue lots of shots of sobbing grieving characters and overwrought music as the audience taps its foot impatiently waiting for the show to remember that it is called PICARD and just stuff his mind into that android body already
like, if you're going to kill off a major character and exploit it for pathos, I can't think of a better way to short-circuit the drama than this
The even bigger problem imo is:
all the characters through whom we are supposed to feel the grief just fucking met the guy. This isn't the TNG crew mourning him, it's some fuckos he met last weekend. It completely kills any potential emotional weight the scene can have because we have no investment in the relationships they are leaning on to make it work.
It's a pure "Cumberbatch saying he's Khan" style moment. Trying to force an emotional reaction via things you haven't bothered to establish within your own work and are just stealing from another one without doing the work to import that association.
the giant evil robotic tentacles were actually good guys
none of my thoughts require them to be. It's just absurd to assume that they're going to purge the entire galaxy, considering they appear to have stopped at one the first time (the date range given puts it during the Iconians' height but tens of thousands of years before their downfall) and because there now an alliance of synthetic life and not just the single faction anymore, they have acted more than once and have not purged the galaxy any of those times, either.
All they require is that, hey, maybe the fanatical assassin's who can't read the message and were never on the receiving end of its response might not be the authority on what it does.
That is probably the part that annoyed me the most. A group of secretive (even by Romulan standards) assassin spies tell people that there's a rogue AI plot and we need to destroy all AI to stop it, and everyone is 100% on board with murder and genocide no questions asked.
the giant evil robotic tentacles were actually good guys
none of my thoughts require them to be. It's just absurd to assume that they're going to purge the entire galaxy, considering they appear to have stopped at one the first time (the date range given puts it during the Iconians' height but tens of thousands of years before their downfall) and because there now an alliance of synthetic life and not just the single faction anymore, they have acted more than once and have not purged the galaxy any of those times, either.
All they require is that, hey, maybe the fanatical assassin's who can't read the message and were never on the receiving end of its response might not be the authority on what it does.
it's extra funny when you realize that the only way Androids pose a threat is if they ever touch the beacon. So the only real threat is that beacon and any of the morons dumb enough to touch it.
Also I assume everyone in the order has a Shutterstock watermark permanently imprinted in their brain.
DanHibiki on
+2
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
The best part is Data would say that in total sincerity, not realizing it's a joke.
Oh god, now I'm thinking about the episode where Data tries to learn stand up comedy. Woof. TNG had some stinkers.
I do enjoy that that, and other not-so-great Data episodes, almost inevitably make out that rather than an android trying to discover a soul he's seen more as that clueless dork who tells you about his Pokemons whether you want to hear about them or not. There's a certain amount of truthiness to that version of Data too, I think.
0
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
On the other hand, the one where he programs a small talk subroutine and the crew train him at the annoying starbase commander is great
I have reached the Tuvix episode. I'll never understand why the crew didn't simply bring just Tuvok back and never mention Neelix again. Suspension of disbelief broken forever.
Mulgrew commented on one line ("At one point did he become an individual and not a transporter accident?") that nobody actually knew how to not make sound like shit, but that's the only cast comment I've ever seen.
Except for the guest star who actually played Tuvix, he's said quite a bit. Phillips was originally going to be Tuvix but they brought in Tim Wright fairly late. Wright couldn't get any solid input from the writers, the directors, and barely any from the rest of the cast. He read the script and was just tossed on the stage in a rubber face to wing it, which he hated. He didn't have anything negative to say, but aside from McNeil helping him with technobabble and a really flowery opinion of Kes that he was always eager to share not much positive either.
Take DS9 again. No one watching the show believed the Dominion would defeat the Federation and take over the Alpha Quadrant. But because the war was spread over several seasons, you could have victories and defeats. You could see Bethazed get occupied, Earth get bombarded, and DS9 get abandoned to enemy forces. You could see desperate fights to hold on to communication hubs and capture enemy ships. You could debate the morality of shady tactics like deploying a plague to wipe out the enemy or murder a senator or have a Starfleet coup of the Federation as means to the noble end of making the war end faster and easier. And all this really serves as a backdrop to the real story, the lives of the main cast on DS9, how they live through the war and adapt to it. Picard tries to do an entire war for the Federation's survival in 4 episodes. So not only do we not believe it for one second, but we get nothing but a straight line to victory for our characters with no side stories, no stakes, no setbacks or sacrifices or questions, and most of all no personal impacts on them.
Take DS9 again. No one watching the show believed the Dominion would defeat the Federation and take over the Alpha Quadrant. But because the war was spread over several seasons, you could have victories and defeats. You could see Bethazed get occupied, Earth get bombarded, and DS9 get abandoned to enemy forces. You could see desperate fights to hold on to communication hubs and capture enemy ships. You could debate the morality of shady tactics like deploying a plague to wipe out the enemy or murder a senator or have a Starfleet coup of the Federation as means to the noble end of making the war end faster and easier. And all this really serves as a backdrop to the real story, the lives of the main cast on DS9, how they live through the war and adapt to it. Picard tries to do an entire war for the Federation's survival in 4 episodes. So not only do we not believe it for one second, but we get nothing but a straight line to victory for our characters with no side stories, no stakes, no setbacks or sacrifices or questions, and most of all no personal impacts on them.
I really need to watch DS9
Much as I want to claim the credit for the above, even the bits I disagree with, and you do need to watch DS9 (it’s great! It’s on Netflix!), pretty sure @Richy said all of that above quote!
I have reached the Tuvix episode. I'll never understand why the crew didn't simply bring just Tuvok back and never mention Neelix again. Suspension of disbelief broken forever.
When they took the Neelix out of Tuvik they had to put it somewhere and no one was willing to openly suggest the airlock.
Kes was still around at that point and the crew actually liked her, and she actually liked Neelix. It was kind of like keeping Harry Kim because he had a really cool cat.
Really great episode. Probably the most Trek of the lot so far and was actually a good example of what you can accomplish with animation that would be expensive as hell otherwise with live action.
+5
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Mulgrew commented on one line ("At one point did he become an individual and not a transporter accident?") that nobody actually knew how to not make sound like shit, but that's the only cast comment I've ever seen.
Except for the guest star who actually played Tuvix, he's said quite a bit. Phillips was originally going to be Tuvix but they brought in Tim Wright fairly late. Wright couldn't get any solid input from the writers, the directors, and barely any from the rest of the cast. He read the script and was just tossed on the stage in a rubber face to wing it, which he hated. He didn't have anything negative to say, but aside from McNeil helping him with technobabble and a really flowery opinion of Kes that he was always eager to share not much positive either.
That's a pretty depressing comment. Not even a strong "It was shit!" vibe, just a 'meh, whatever'.
The Voyager experience just must have been so dispiriting.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
The Voyager experience just must have been so dispiriting.
I do hope that this improved over time, because I would hate to imagine any team working together for seven years without getting at least *some* enjoyment out of the process.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Most of the regular cast have had good things to say, and most engaged with the fans for some time (several still do, particularly Garret Wang, whose opinion seems to be that it wasn't great but just getting to be on Star Trek made up for it to him).
The big exception was Robert Beltran, who has called Voyager "penance for all my sins." He did get dragged into the virtual Trek con recently and he's very resistant to reprising his role (supposedly he'd been approached for Picard) and has a very derisive opinion on his fellow Voyager actors who have appeared on Orville or Star Trek Online, even had stuff to say about Janeway having, "Nothing to do," in Nemesis.
Most of the regular cast have had good things to say, and most engaged with the fans for some time (several still do, particularly Garret Wang, whose opinion seems to be that it wasn't great but just getting to be on Star Trek made up for it to him).
The big exception was Robert Beltran, who has called Voyager "penance for all my sins." He did get dragged into the virtual Trek con recently and he's very resistant to reprising his role (supposedly he'd been approached for Picard) and has a very derisive opinion on his fellow Voyager actors who have appeared on Orville or Star Trek Online, even had stuff to say about Janeway having, "Nothing to do," in Nemesis.
Sounds like he just has a negative attitude towards the whole thing. Which I understand since, well, he had to play chakotay for several years....
I'd be pissed too if my best known role was playing a racist caricature on a poorly written spin off.
He didn't even know about Jamake Highwater until years after, either - he was trying to get killed off halfway through season 2 because he didn't get as many scenes as Frakes did. Which is also pretty fair, because we see Janeway filling the role as both Picard and Riker and Chakotay filling a role closer to Troi, sitting next to the captain and stating the obvious.
At some point after his favorite writers left he came up with a rule that unless he got to be the main person in one scene that didn't involve Mulgrew and wasn't on the bridge, he was just going to be a dick on the set for that episode, and it's kind of impressive that he's apparently a naturally nice enough guy that he only ruined the experience for himself and not those around him.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for Beltran in light of how Jeri Ryan was treated, or how any of the women were treated for that matter. The writers shafted Chakotay, but at a certain point you either have to walk off the set or just enjoy being employed.
Beltran basically had the opposite of Garrett Wang's deal. While B&B clearly hated Wang with a passion and wanted so badly to kill him off, Beltran couldn't get killed off no matter what he did. He asked for more money and they just kept giving him more money.
On an unrelated note, I'd definitely add Lt. Jr. Grade Picard to my roster. Seems like a reliable guy regardless of Q's misgivings about playing it safe.
Beltran basically had the opposite of Garrett Wang's deal. While B&B clearly hated Wang with a passion and wanted so badly to kill him off, Beltran couldn't get killed off no matter what he did. He asked for more money and they just kept giving him more money.
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Again!?
Stupid colourblindness.
I can see it now, how do I keep missing this? You'd think I'd start recognizing "Slightly odd tan" as "GREEN, you idiot!" by now, but nooo.
(Lessee, there was Kirk's hookup in Abram's 2009 Star Trek, Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy, Five's hair in Dark Matter ... probably more.)
Okay, back to actual Trek talk.
I think that's why Picard failed for me as a show. It could have been a great introspective show with character studies and cultures fleshed out and criticism of racism etc. TNG had many great episodes tackling these themes. Or it could have been an action show. Big fleets, battles, fights between characters, advances against an existential foe, etc. DS9 did it to great success with the Dominion War.
The problem is, it tries to be both. It starts off as an introspective show, then halfway through ditches all introspection and kicks into high gear fighting an existential foe. So all the introspection and world-building ends up meaning jack shit and having zero payoff, and the fighting is rushed and lacks any believable stakes.
Take DS9 again. No one watching the show believed the Dominion would defeat the Federation and take over the Alpha Quadrant. But because the war was spread over several seasons, you could have victories and defeats. You could see Bethazed get occupied, Earth get bombarded, and DS9 get abandoned to enemy forces. You could see desperate fights to hold on to communication hubs and capture enemy ships. You could debate the morality of shady tactics like deploying a plague to wipe out the enemy or murder a senator or have a Starfleet coup of the Federation as means to the noble end of making the war end faster and easier. And all this really serves as a backdrop to the real story, the lives of the main cast on DS9, how they live through the war and adapt to it. Picard tries to do an entire war for the Federation's survival in 4 episodes. So not only do we not believe it for one second, but we get nothing but a straight line to victory for our characters with no side stories, no stakes, no setbacks or sacrifices or questions, and most of all no personal impacts on them.
Meanwhile, take TNG. Most of the great episodes were introspective. The Inner Light, Darmok, Q Who, Drumhead, Measure of a Man, I Borg, Tapestry, Yesterday's Enterprise, I'd even include All Good Things in this category, since the world-destroying threat in that one was really just a catalyst for introspection rather than the point of it. But all of those had payoffs, the characters involved learning something about themselves or the world by the end of the episode. Picard's story-arc structured allowed them to push off the payoff instead of having it per episode, but then they dropped it completely. We had no payoff on the Romulan culture payoff, on the xenophobia, on surviving the destruction of Romulus in small dirt colonies, on the Sisterhood thing, on the Federation's failure to help the Romulans, nothing.
In trying to do everything, Picard fails to accomplish anything.
The problem is that it's muddled. There's these half-formed arcs about trust, and family, and societal values, and aging and death, and how we treat refugees, and a bunch of other things that could work as their own seasons individually, but they're all crammed into 10 episodes so none of them actually get fleshed out at all. And on top of that you have almost random darkness strewn about.
Picard really needs better editing at the writing stage. Less cruft.
Emotional incontinence - definitely going to use that one in the future.
Thing about Voyager, unlike what's come since, it was still willing to take chances and didn't just sit in it's comfort corner for it's entire run. It gambled and lost more than it won compared to DS9, but it still won. It has legit 10/10 episodes.
Compare to Enterprise, which took no real chances and was just consistently mediocre. It's best episodes are maybe 7/10 but TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager all have worse episodes than Enterprise's worst.
Discovery is even less willing to leave their corner, though they try to make it look like they're taking some huge gamble all the time they're really just doing the same thing in a NEW PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN SETTING.
I don't think it would solve all the problems with the show (there's a lot of them imo), but just like:
picard:
9.5 - completely out of the blue, let's talk about how we have an android body that is just waiting for a mind to be stuck into it
10.5 - oh no Picard, the star of Picard, has died, guess the show's over now, cue lots of shots of sobbing grieving characters and overwrought music as the audience taps its foot impatiently waiting for the show to remember that it is called PICARD and just stuff his mind into that android body already
like, if you're going to kill off a major character and exploit it for pathos, I can't think of a better way to short-circuit the drama than this
I liked the suggestion
We have only the assertions of a group of Romulans who couldn't see the Admonition in its entirety and were so bent on killing synthetics that they launched an assassination in the capitol of the fucking Federation during peacetime to kill a RANDOM CIVILIAN.
Perfectly compatible possibilities that aren't even worth caring about:
-They will purge the planet as they did at the site of the Admonition, meaning the space flowers and Dr. Soong die.
-They will only kill the creators, meaning Dr. Soong dies.
-They will only kill *enslavers*, meaning they'll fuck back off because the synthetics aren't slaves why the fuck did you even call us?
-They will enforce terms of equality, which the Federation will likely agree to but the Romulans will resist and get blown up.
-They will take the synthetics away to robot heaven (bye!)
-They will enforce independence, but they are already living free and undetected, perhaps the Reapers will install a defense system to protect that and the Federation will fuck off and not care while the Romulans will fight and get blown up.
-Its a trap and they'll kill the synthetics and brofist the Romulans before going home with a case of top vintage kalifal.
The even bigger problem imo is:
It's a pure "Cumberbatch saying he's Khan" style moment. Trying to force an emotional reaction via things you haven't bothered to establish within your own work and are just stealing from another one without doing the work to import that association.
That's what hentai has taught me.
All they require is that, hey, maybe the fanatical assassin's who can't read the message and were never on the receiving end of its response might not be the authority on what it does.
Also I assume everyone in the order has a Shutterstock watermark permanently imprinted in their brain.
Oh god, now I'm thinking about the episode where Data tries to learn stand up comedy. Woof. TNG had some stinkers.
I do enjoy that that, and other not-so-great Data episodes, almost inevitably make out that rather than an android trying to discover a soul he's seen more as that clueless dork who tells you about his Pokemons whether you want to hear about them or not. There's a certain amount of truthiness to that version of Data too, I think.
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I'd assume Tim Russ and Ethan Phillips were both fine with not being replaced by another actor? :P
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Except for the guest star who actually played Tuvix, he's said quite a bit. Phillips was originally going to be Tuvix but they brought in Tim Wright fairly late. Wright couldn't get any solid input from the writers, the directors, and barely any from the rest of the cast. He read the script and was just tossed on the stage in a rubber face to wing it, which he hated. He didn't have anything negative to say, but aside from McNeil helping him with technobabble and a really flowery opinion of Kes that he was always eager to share not much positive either.
I really need to watch DS9
Much as I want to claim the credit for the above, even the bits I disagree with, and you do need to watch DS9 (it’s great! It’s on Netflix!), pretty sure @Richy said all of that above quote!
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When they took the Neelix out of Tuvik they had to put it somewhere and no one was willing to openly suggest the airlock.
That's a pretty depressing comment. Not even a strong "It was shit!" vibe, just a 'meh, whatever'.
The Voyager experience just must have been so dispiriting.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
The big exception was Robert Beltran, who has called Voyager "penance for all my sins." He did get dragged into the virtual Trek con recently and he's very resistant to reprising his role (supposedly he'd been approached for Picard) and has a very derisive opinion on his fellow Voyager actors who have appeared on Orville or Star Trek Online, even had stuff to say about Janeway having, "Nothing to do," in Nemesis.
Sounds like he just has a negative attitude towards the whole thing. Which I understand since, well, he had to play chakotay for several years....
I'd be pissed too if my best known role was playing a racist caricature on a poorly written spin off.
At some point after his favorite writers left he came up with a rule that unless he got to be the main person in one scene that didn't involve Mulgrew and wasn't on the bridge, he was just going to be a dick on the set for that episode, and it's kind of impressive that he's apparently a naturally nice enough guy that he only ruined the experience for himself and not those around him.
On an unrelated note, I'd definitely add Lt. Jr. Grade Picard to my roster. Seems like a reliable guy regardless of Q's misgivings about playing it safe.
The horror!