Whenever someone tells the transporter operator something like "two to beam up" and there are five people around, how does the operator know who to beam? Do they try to determine who's standing the most rigidly or who's closest to person who called in the transport?
Doesn't seem that way and sometimes the person saying "one to beam up" is actually speaking for another individual instead of themselves. How does the operator know?
The TV show cuts the 4-5 guesses it takes to get right
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
edited August 2021
There'd be five or so extra minutes of "Oh no, not me, I'm still supposed to be back there doing the thing" "Oh right, my bad, let me bring you and you down" "No, wait not-"
It'd surely be a gag in the Orville, if their ship had teleporters.
So, after getting caught up on Discovery I'm now rewatching Picard for the first time since release. I'm also reading a lot of the recaps/chatter from when it aired.
A lot of the flak seems to be that Picard isn't the guy we last saw at the end of TNG, how could he have checked out for so long, etc.
I don't get it.
First, he was out of Starfleet. As a regular citizen, not exactly simple to get back out to Vashti, etc. Let alone in a way that could affect change.
Second, I think the folks saying this stuff haven't been through major life events or trauma.
Picard got assimilated. He almost destroyed everything he dedicated his life to. He then got out. And actually managed to piece himself back together.
Then Mars, and Starfleet's retreat. Then his resignation gambit. Everything he believed in fell apart a second time.
Do you know how hard it is to keep it together after your life gets completely shattered not once, but twice? Its nearly impossible.
Its a testament to the character's perseverance that he hasn't eaten a phaser or withered away in bed.
There are plenty of problematic things in the series, but Picard's characterization isn't one of them.
So Picard really is the only thing holding the entire Federation true to its stated ideals, and when he takes a couple of decades off, nobody does anything without him?
His "sheer fucking hubris" is looking more and more justified.
The last time we saw an interstellar society whose actual nature was so at odds with its myth (and so utterly dependent on a handful of paragons), Ezri Dax said that it deserved to die.
I loathe Paris. He's a resentful, petulant little shithead. Even in later seasons he's still a tool, like a teenager's idea of what a cool guy would be. He's like the anti-Riker.
I loathe Paris. He's a resentful, petulant little shithead. Even in later seasons he's still a tool, like a teenager's idea of what a cool guy would be. He's like the anti-Riker.
I don't loathe Paris as a character and I don't think he's a tool but I the series gave him way too much stuff to be good at while ignoring the characterization of almost everyone else. I don't understand how anyone could see him as the best character on Voyager. Maybe it's like when I watched the reboot of BSG for the first time, and for a good stretch of seasons I thought Apollo was my favorite character. I took me a while, but I finally realized he is kind of a whiny shit and I only thought of him as "best" because of Jamie Bamber's square jaw and blue eyes.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Generally speaking, characters are 'supposed' to remain the same as when we last saw them. The idea that they were subject to decades of character developing events that we didn't get to see is seen as an affront.
The Federation was never as perfect and utopian as it claimed to be (count the admirals that show up, and count how many of them betray the ideals of the Federation. It's not quite a 1 to 1 ratio, but it's close).
But it makes sense that Picard is a true believer in it, which is the exact reason he was put in command of the flagship. It's the same reason they have someone who really believes in the idea of America carry the vibranium shield, while his bosses betray his ideals all over the place.
But there's going to be a point where the mental exhaustion from having your expectations proven wrong is too much.
Kes was a decent character. Warm and empathetic, kind, patient. Her character was crippled by the romance with Neelix and then shoved out of the show unfairly.
The love triangle with Paris hurt worse than the romance with Neelix by itself.
If they had to do that, they should have actually tried something unusual and made it Tuvok, since her telepathy practice had her spending a lot of late nights alone in his quarters with the lights off by candle light, discovering an exciting new side of herself she never knew before.
Tuvok certainly wouldn't have wanted to be a part of the mess, but the jealousy monster they made Neelix should have seen him as just as much a threat as Paris, and it almost seems to make sense that Kes's reassurances might ring hollow given the relationship there.
The love triangle with Paris hurt worse than the romance with Neelix by itself.
If they had to do that, they should have actually tried something unusual and made it Tuvok, since her telepathy practice had her spending a lot of late nights alone in his quarters with the lights off by candle light, discovering an exciting new side of herself she never knew before.
Tuvok certainly wouldn't have wanted to be a part of the mess, but the jealousy monster they made Neelix should have seen him as just as much a threat as Paris, and it almost seems to make sense that Kes's reassurances might ring hollow given the relationship there.
Or just not have that plot point at all since it was dumb, toxic and kind of boring.
Oh shit I just summed up most of Voyager in three words.
The love triangle with Paris hurt worse than the romance with Neelix by itself.
If they had to do that, they should have actually tried something unusual and made it Tuvok, since her telepathy practice had her spending a lot of late nights alone in his quarters with the lights off by candle light, discovering an exciting new side of herself she never knew before.
Tuvok certainly wouldn't have wanted to be a part of the mess, but the jealousy monster they made Neelix should have seen him as just as much a threat as Paris, and it almost seems to make sense that Kes's reassurances might ring hollow given the relationship there.
Or just not have that plot point at all since it was dumb, toxic and kind of boring.
Oh shit I just summed up most of Voyager in three words.
You forgot "creepy". Every time they mention how she's less than/only/barely two years old (still working through S2), and then have people lusting after her, it's pretty frikkin' squicky. With Paris we know the biology, Talaxians are a different matter, but he's at least early 20's when he appears on Voyager (metreon cascade that kills his family is 2355, Voyager arrives 2371).
Don't care that her race physically matures at a ridiculous rate. Don't care that she apparently emotionally matures at a similar rate. She's been alive for at most, about a year when she first met Neelix.
I dunno who suggested that the first main cast to be in a romantical relationship in the Delta Quadrant be someone who's only been alive for several hundred days, sorry, I can't get past that, and I think the writers who came up with it should maybe be on a watchlist.
So Picard really is the only thing holding the entire Federation true to its stated ideals, and when he takes a couple of decades off, nobody does anything without him?
His "sheer fucking hubris" is looking more and more justified.
The last time we saw an interstellar society whose actual nature was so at odds with its myth (and so utterly dependent on a handful of paragons), Ezri Dax said that it deserved to die.
I think this is really overstating the Federation's flaws in Picard, especially given how the season ends.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
The new Lower Decks is excellent. They've really hammered out the pacing issues and the whole thing flows so much better. We get an A- and B-plot and even a C-plot and they all feel like they have room to breathe and find interesting, funny resolutions. And there's a lot of genuinely good little character moments.
The other shows really really need to take a page from LD, not just in terms of attitude (though I recognize that's probably a lost cause) but also in the brisk, efficient worldbuilding. In about seven minutes of run time we learn as much or more about
I loathe Paris. He's a resentful, petulant little shithead. Even in later seasons he's still a tool, like a teenager's idea of what a cool guy would be. He's like the anti-Riker.
see I always saw him as like, the shitty boomer's ideal of the perfect son
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
I loathe Paris. He's a resentful, petulant little shithead. Even in later seasons he's still a tool, like a teenager's idea of what a cool guy would be. He's like the anti-Riker.
see I always saw him as like, the shitty boomer's ideal of the perfect son
Given that he was doing time in Space Leavenworth when the series started I think that's a bit of a stretch
I loathe Paris. He's a resentful, petulant little shithead. Even in later seasons he's still a tool, like a teenager's idea of what a cool guy would be. He's like the anti-Riker.
see I always saw him as like, the shitty boomer's ideal of the perfect son
Given that he was doing time in Space Leavenworth when the series started I think that's a bit of a stretch
I dunno if that's really an issue. He almost immediately becomes an upstanding member of the crew, almost as if some hard discipline was all it took to put him on the straight and narrow.
Not sure I agree with Aioua's perspective (still working through), but Paris being in prison isn't an argument against it.
Ace pilot
Loves hot rods and old tv
A "bad boy" but only in the safest, most conforming ways
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Paris has a pretty underrated arc over the course of the series.
After
they start the romance arc with B'Elanna
he goes from "what pop culture's version of Kirk would really be like" to "endearing dork." It reads as someone who chafed against the expectations set for them and rebelled, yet continued to define themselves by what others thought of them.
Paris acts like an arrogant failson at the start because that's what people expect—just look at how he responds early on when asked about Caldik Prime. Janeway and Tuvok are the only ones who see through his bullshit. Over time, he becomes self-confident enough to be his own person.
Of course, don't give the writers too much credit for this—I think it was mostly letting Robert Duncan McNeill be himself. Berman probably thinks early Paris is genuinely cool.
paris is the best character in the show
The Doctor and 7 are the best. Paris ,Tuvok and Janeway are the only others besides them with any personalities at all
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Whenever someone tells the transporter operator something like "two to beam up" and there are five people around, how does the operator know who to beam? Do they try to determine who's standing the most rigidly or who's closest to person who called in the transport?
Doesn't seem that way and sometimes the person saying "one to beam up" is actually speaking for another individual instead of themselves. How does the operator know?
The transporter operators are watching the episode along with the viewer so they always know who to beam up.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Whenever someone tells the transporter operator something like "two to beam up" and there are five people around, how does the operator know who to beam? Do they try to determine who's standing the most rigidly or who's closest to person who called in the transport?
Doesn't seem that way and sometimes the person saying "one to beam up" is actually speaking for another individual instead of themselves. How does the operator know?
The transporter operators are watching the episode along with the viewer so they always know who to beam up.
Basically this
There are TOS episodes where the bridge crew is literally watching the episode on the main viewer. Where the fuck is the camera? Who is capturing this imagery? Why is the camera man not helping Kirk fight the Gorn?
I would have had less of a problem with Picard's characterization if they had even tried show his rage and pain and shame at his failure over the years, but without that he's just a narcissist asshole. The scene where Raffi gets them into the cube is genuinely chilling, although the show seems to think it's a hero moment.
So Picard really is the only thing holding the entire Federation true to its stated ideals, and when he takes a couple of decades off, nobody does anything without him?
His "sheer fucking hubris" is looking more and more justified.
The last time we saw an interstellar society whose actual nature was so at odds with its myth (and so utterly dependent on a handful of paragons), Ezri Dax said that it deserved to die.
I think this is really overstating the Federation's flaws in Picard, especially given how the season ends.
Yeah, everything works out in the end. After literal decades of just sitting around in the ashes and letting the problem(s) persist and fester, rather than (other) people waking up the next day and getting to work on fixing it. The scale of that waste, those years of wallowing in failure, the pointless suffering of untold trillions, because no one else could or would address it.
Look, I get the dramatic necessities (and real-world reasons), why a show named after the character requires him to be the only one with real agency, the Great Man who will Save Everyone. And I don't blame him, per Raynaga above, for being deeply traumatized by what happened. But if he had been crushed by that trauma, and/or simply remained in seclusion at the vinyard until he died... is that it? Is the fate of the Federation, a polity with hundreds of member worlds and years of history, so dependent on the actions of less than a dozen? We've been told since the start that people in the future are better than that - maybe not always, not every day, but on the average; was that always a lie?
I'd like to see, or at least imagine, a Federation that is capable of getting off its ass and saving itself rather than waiting for a Magical Frenchman to come along and do it for them.
"Unhappy is the land that has no heroes."
"No, unhappy is the land that needs heroes."
Commander Zoom on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Whenever someone tells the transporter operator something like "two to beam up" and there are five people around, how does the operator know who to beam? Do they try to determine who's standing the most rigidly or who's closest to person who called in the transport?
Doesn't seem that way and sometimes the person saying "one to beam up" is actually speaking for another individual instead of themselves. How does the operator know?
The transporter operators are watching the episode along with the viewer so they always know who to beam up.
Basically this
There are TOS episodes where the bridge crew is literally watching the episode on the main viewer. Where the fuck is the camera? Who is capturing this imagery? Why is the camera man not helping Kirk fight the Gorn?
The Camera People of Opticon IV take an oath of non-interference as the price of having all access to everything everywhere. It's considered a huge offense to look directly at them, though.
Also, those Gorns carry salmonella, nobody wants to deal with that.
Whenever someone tells the transporter operator something like "two to beam up" and there are five people around, how does the operator know who to beam? Do they try to determine who's standing the most rigidly or who's closest to person who called in the transport?
Doesn't seem that way and sometimes the person saying "one to beam up" is actually speaking for another individual instead of themselves. How does the operator know?
The transporter operators are watching the episode along with the viewer so they always know who to beam up.
Basically this
There are TOS episodes where the bridge crew is literally watching the episode on the main viewer. Where the fuck is the camera? Who is capturing this imagery? Why is the camera man not helping Kirk fight the Gorn?
It's a holographic recreation of the events based on scanner data collected by the ship and Tricorders edited by the ship's computer to best be projected on a 2d view screen. The real question is, who inserted the commercial breaks?
My theory is that it's an invasive computer virus created by the Ferengi.
So Picard really is the only thing holding the entire Federation true to its stated ideals, and when he takes a couple of decades off, nobody does anything without him?
His "sheer fucking hubris" is looking more and more justified.
The last time we saw an interstellar society whose actual nature was so at odds with its myth (and so utterly dependent on a handful of paragons), Ezri Dax said that it deserved to die.
I think this is really overstating the Federation's flaws in Picard, especially given how the season ends.
Yeah, everything works out in the end. After literal decades of just sitting around in the ashes and letting the problem(s) persist and fester, rather than (other) people waking up the next day and getting to work on fixing it. The scale of that waste, those years of wallowing in failure, the pointless suffering of untold trillions, because no one else could or would address it.
Look, I get the dramatic necessities (and real-world reasons), why a show named after the character requires him to be the only one with real agency, the Great Man who will Save Everyone. And I don't blame him, per Raynaga above, for being deeply traumatized by what happened. But if he had been crushed by that trauma, and/or simply remained in seclusion at the vinyard until he died... is that it? Is the fate of the Federation, a polity with hundreds of member worlds and years of history, so dependent on the actions of less than a dozen? We've been told since the start that people in the future are better than that - maybe not always, not every day, but on the average; was that always a lie?
"Unhappy is the land that has no heroes."
"No, unhappy is the land that needs heroes."
Are we REALLY revisiting this same argument? It's entirely possible for a society to be hit with a major crisis or series of crises that causes it to get shaken to it's very core so hard that it loses track of where it's going.
As to "PIcard" solely fixing the situation, it's pretty obvious he's just the catalyst for a lot of other folks doing the things that need to be done. IE: Being that beacon that calls Starfleet Command back to their mission, but the Admirals/etc are the ones who actually get stuff done. How much of the results had to do with his impact on the people he talks to throughout the series (Riker for instance) and inspiring them to do things? We don't know, we don't see it, but I think you are ascribing way more agency to Picard himself than the show did.
As memory serves, Stewart really wanted to do this series to show there CAN be light in the darkness based on what's been happening the last decade or so in the real world.
So Picard really is the only thing holding the entire Federation true to its stated ideals, and when he takes a couple of decades off, nobody does anything without him?
His "sheer fucking hubris" is looking more and more justified.
The last time we saw an interstellar society whose actual nature was so at odds with its myth (and so utterly dependent on a handful of paragons), Ezri Dax said that it deserved to die.
I think this is really overstating the Federation's flaws in Picard, especially given how the season ends.
Yeah, everything works out in the end. After literal decades of just sitting around in the ashes and letting the problem(s) persist and fester, rather than (other) people waking up the next day and getting to work on fixing it. The scale of that waste, those years of wallowing in failure, the pointless suffering of untold trillions, because no one else could or would address it.
Look, I get the dramatic necessities (and real-world reasons), why a show named after the character requires him to be the only one with real agency, the Great Man who will Save Everyone. And I don't blame him, per Raynaga above, for being deeply traumatized by what happened. But if he had been crushed by that trauma, and/or simply remained in seclusion at the vinyard until he died... is that it? Is the fate of the Federation, a polity with hundreds of member worlds and years of history, so dependent on the actions of less than a dozen? We've been told since the start that people in the future are better than that - maybe not always, not every day, but on the average; was that always a lie?
"Unhappy is the land that has no heroes."
"No, unhappy is the land that needs heroes."
Are we REALLY revisiting this same argument? It's entirely possible for a society to be hit with a major crisis or series of crises that causes it to get shaken to it's very core so hard that it loses track of where it's going.
As to "PIcard" solely fixing the situation, it's pretty obvious he's just the catalyst for a lot of other folks doing the things that need to be done. IE: Being that beacon that calls Starfleet Command back to their mission, but the Admirals/etc are the ones who actually get stuff done. How much of the results had to do with his impact on the people he talks to throughout the series (Riker for instance) and inspiring them to do things? We don't know, we don't see it, but I think you are ascribing way more agency to Picard himself than the show did.
As memory serves, Stewart really wanted to do this series to show there CAN be light in the darkness based on what's been happening the last decade or so in the real world.
Some people are inspired by that, I suppose.
Others are (more) inspired by a story where things were never allowed to get that bad in the first place, because when things start to slide back or sideways, people of conscience step up and stop(ped) it.
The latter, I submit, is the kind of story(s) that Star Trek has been telling and/or selling for most of its (and my) lifetime.
... okay, maybe I'm not actually "inspired". Maybe I'd just rather spend a few hours living there rather than here. *sigh*
Commander Zoom on
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
I loathe Paris. He's a resentful, petulant little shithead. Even in later seasons he's still a tool, like a teenager's idea of what a cool guy would be. He's like the anti-Riker.
I don't loathe Paris as a character and I don't think he's a tool but I the series gave him way too much stuff to be good at while ignoring the characterization of almost everyone else. I don't understand how anyone could see him as the best character on Voyager. Maybe it's like when I watched the reboot of BSG for the first time, and for a good stretch of seasons I thought Apollo was my favorite character. I took me a while, but I finally realized he is kind of a whiny shit and I only thought of him as "best" because of Jamie Bamber's square jaw and blue eyes.
paris being my favourite character (because he actually had. y'know.. growth) shows you HOW BAD the rest of the characters are and how terrible the writers treated them.
I loathe Paris. He's a resentful, petulant little shithead. Even in later seasons he's still a tool, like a teenager's idea of what a cool guy would be. He's like the anti-Riker.
No way, he watches vintage looney tunes on a 50s vacuum tube TV while eating cereal. COOL GUY#1
So Picard really is the only thing holding the entire Federation true to its stated ideals, and when he takes a couple of decades off, nobody does anything without him?
His "sheer fucking hubris" is looking more and more justified.
The last time we saw an interstellar society whose actual nature was so at odds with its myth (and so utterly dependent on a handful of paragons), Ezri Dax said that it deserved to die.
I think this is really overstating the Federation's flaws in Picard, especially given how the season ends.
Yeah, everything works out in the end. After literal decades of just sitting around in the ashes and letting the problem(s) persist and fester, rather than (other) people waking up the next day and getting to work on fixing it. The scale of that waste, those years of wallowing in failure, the pointless suffering of untold trillions, because no one else could or would address it.
Look, I get the dramatic necessities (and real-world reasons), why a show named after the character requires him to be the only one with real agency, the Great Man who will Save Everyone. And I don't blame him, per Raynaga above, for being deeply traumatized by what happened. But if he had been crushed by that trauma, and/or simply remained in seclusion at the vinyard until he died... is that it? Is the fate of the Federation, a polity with hundreds of member worlds and years of history, so dependent on the actions of less than a dozen? We've been told since the start that people in the future are better than that - maybe not always, not every day, but on the average; was that always a lie?
"Unhappy is the land that has no heroes."
"No, unhappy is the land that needs heroes."
Are we REALLY revisiting this same argument? It's entirely possible for a society to be hit with a major crisis or series of crises that causes it to get shaken to it's very core so hard that it loses track of where it's going.
As to "PIcard" solely fixing the situation, it's pretty obvious he's just the catalyst for a lot of other folks doing the things that need to be done. IE: Being that beacon that calls Starfleet Command back to their mission, but the Admirals/etc are the ones who actually get stuff done. How much of the results had to do with his impact on the people he talks to throughout the series (Riker for instance) and inspiring them to do things? We don't know, we don't see it, but I think you are ascribing way more agency to Picard himself than the show did.
As memory serves, Stewart really wanted to do this series to show there CAN be light in the darkness based on what's been happening the last decade or so in the real world.
Some people are inspired by that, I suppose.
Others are (more) inspired by a story where things were never allowed to get that bad in the first place, because when things start to slide back or sideways, people of conscience step up and stop(ped) it.
The latter, I submit, is the kind of story(s) that Star Trek has been telling and/or selling for most of its (and my) lifetime.
I respectfully disagree and think you are using some rose colored glasses there. The Federation/Starfleet in TOS was very clearly a somewhat idealized version of the 60's US, down to the point that Kirk and crew would mix it up with the Klingons, even when the local populace asked them not. I mean heck, even early on in TNG, we get federation scientists wanting to take data apart, against his will. Then there is the whole situation with the Baku (and it's hard to claim this is a one off with all the Admirals we've seen... I mean what, the first regularly good one was Sisko's boss during the war?). We see during DS9 how the Federation handles just the threat of a changeling on Earth. So on and so forth. You have some counter episodes where the cast is laying down the good side of morality, but you can't ignore the flip side too, and it's not like it's isolated to later Trek, it's been there since virtually the beginning.
I loathe Paris. He's a resentful, petulant little shithead. Even in later seasons he's still a tool, like a teenager's idea of what a cool guy would be. He's like the anti-Riker.
I don't loathe Paris as a character and I don't think he's a tool but I the series gave him way too much stuff to be good at while ignoring the characterization of almost everyone else. I don't understand how anyone could see him as the best character on Voyager. Maybe it's like when I watched the reboot of BSG for the first time, and for a good stretch of seasons I thought Apollo was my favorite character. I took me a while, but I finally realized he is kind of a whiny shit and I only thought of him as "best" because of Jamie Bamber's square jaw and blue eyes.
paris being my favourite character (because he actually had. y'know.. growth) shows you HOW BAD the rest of the characters are and how terrible the writers treated them.
Paris is one of the few people I believe would have really truly had a chance of not losing his marbles being stuck on Voyager as long as they all were. He had and indulged in a lot of interests.
So Picard really is the only thing holding the entire Federation true to its stated ideals, and when he takes a couple of decades off, nobody does anything without him?
His "sheer fucking hubris" is looking more and more justified.
The last time we saw an interstellar society whose actual nature was so at odds with its myth (and so utterly dependent on a handful of paragons), Ezri Dax said that it deserved to die.
I think this is really overstating the Federation's flaws in Picard, especially given how the season ends.
Yeah, everything works out in the end. After literal decades of just sitting around in the ashes and letting the problem(s) persist and fester, rather than (other) people waking up the next day and getting to work on fixing it. The scale of that waste, those years of wallowing in failure, the pointless suffering of untold trillions, because no one else could or would address it.
Look, I get the dramatic necessities (and real-world reasons), why a show named after the character requires him to be the only one with real agency, the Great Man who will Save Everyone. And I don't blame him, per Raynaga above, for being deeply traumatized by what happened. But if he had been crushed by that trauma, and/or simply remained in seclusion at the vinyard until he died... is that it? Is the fate of the Federation, a polity with hundreds of member worlds and years of history, so dependent on the actions of less than a dozen? We've been told since the start that people in the future are better than that - maybe not always, not every day, but on the average; was that always a lie?
"Unhappy is the land that has no heroes."
"No, unhappy is the land that needs heroes."
Are we REALLY revisiting this same argument? It's entirely possible for a society to be hit with a major crisis or series of crises that causes it to get shaken to it's very core so hard that it loses track of where it's going.
As to "PIcard" solely fixing the situation, it's pretty obvious he's just the catalyst for a lot of other folks doing the things that need to be done. IE: Being that beacon that calls Starfleet Command back to their mission, but the Admirals/etc are the ones who actually get stuff done. How much of the results had to do with his impact on the people he talks to throughout the series (Riker for instance) and inspiring them to do things? We don't know, we don't see it, but I think you are ascribing way more agency to Picard himself than the show did.
As memory serves, Stewart really wanted to do this series to show there CAN be light in the darkness based on what's been happening the last decade or so in the real world.
Some people are inspired by that, I suppose.
Others are (more) inspired by a story where things were never allowed to get that bad in the first place, because when things start to slide back or sideways, people of conscience step up and stop(ped) it.
The latter, I submit, is the kind of story(s) that Star Trek has been telling and/or selling for most of its (and my) lifetime.
You mean like that TNG episode where the heroes forcibly relocate Native Americans to serve the interests of the state? Or that DS9 story arc where the main hero instigates a false flag assassination in order to drag a sovereign nation into war?
This is why that particular criticism of Picard confuses me. The Federation's mistakes in that show are no different or worse than what we've seen before; it's just that Picard focuses on it while past series made it a problem of the week or a passing story arc.
Like, if you dislike portrayals of the Federation as a flawed society, that's fine, but it's weird to single out Picard for it when it's in no way a foreign concept to Trek.
So Picard really is the only thing holding the entire Federation true to its stated ideals, and when he takes a couple of decades off, nobody does anything without him?
His "sheer fucking hubris" is looking more and more justified.
The last time we saw an interstellar society whose actual nature was so at odds with its myth (and so utterly dependent on a handful of paragons), Ezri Dax said that it deserved to die.
I think this is really overstating the Federation's flaws in Picard, especially given how the season ends.
Yeah, everything works out in the end. After literal decades of just sitting around in the ashes and letting the problem(s) persist and fester, rather than (other) people waking up the next day and getting to work on fixing it. The scale of that waste, those years of wallowing in failure, the pointless suffering of untold trillions, because no one else could or would address it.
Look, I get the dramatic necessities (and real-world reasons), why a show named after the character requires him to be the only one with real agency, the Great Man who will Save Everyone. And I don't blame him, per Raynaga above, for being deeply traumatized by what happened. But if he had been crushed by that trauma, and/or simply remained in seclusion at the vinyard until he died... is that it? Is the fate of the Federation, a polity with hundreds of member worlds and years of history, so dependent on the actions of less than a dozen? We've been told since the start that people in the future are better than that - maybe not always, not every day, but on the average; was that always a lie?
"Unhappy is the land that has no heroes."
"No, unhappy is the land that needs heroes."
Are we REALLY revisiting this same argument? It's entirely possible for a society to be hit with a major crisis or series of crises that causes it to get shaken to it's very core so hard that it loses track of where it's going.
As to "PIcard" solely fixing the situation, it's pretty obvious he's just the catalyst for a lot of other folks doing the things that need to be done. IE: Being that beacon that calls Starfleet Command back to their mission, but the Admirals/etc are the ones who actually get stuff done. How much of the results had to do with his impact on the people he talks to throughout the series (Riker for instance) and inspiring them to do things? We don't know, we don't see it, but I think you are ascribing way more agency to Picard himself than the show did.
As memory serves, Stewart really wanted to do this series to show there CAN be light in the darkness based on what's been happening the last decade or so in the real world.
Some people are inspired by that, I suppose.
Others are (more) inspired by a story where things were never allowed to get that bad in the first place, because when things start to slide back or sideways, people of conscience step up and stop(ped) it.
The latter, I submit, is the kind of story(s) that Star Trek has been telling and/or selling for most of its (and my) lifetime.
I respectfully disagree and think you are using some rose colored glasses there. The Federation/Starfleet in TOS was very clearly a somewhat idealized version of the 60's US, down to the point that Kirk and crew would mix it up with the Klingons, even when the local populace asked them not. I mean heck, even early on in TNG, we get federation scientists wanting to take data apart, against his will. Then there is the whole situation with the Baku (and it's hard to claim this is a one off with all the Admirals we've seen... I mean what, the first regularly good one was Sisko's boss during the war?). We see during DS9 how the Federation handles just the threat of a changeling on Earth. So on and so forth. You have some counter episodes where the cast is laying down the good side of morality, but you can't ignore the flip side too, and it's not like it's isolated to later Trek, it's been there since virtually the beginning.
Yes, and we see it stopped, nipped in the bud before it take root.
What we don't get is "the Federation has gone to shit, and it's been shit for twenty years without anyone having the will and/or ability to do much about it."
I submit this is a significant difference.
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Doesn't seem that way and sometimes the person saying "one to beam up" is actually speaking for another individual instead of themselves. How does the operator know?
It'd surely be a gag in the Orville, if their ship had teleporters.
* allegedly
or, if you prefer, [citation needed]
More technologically advanced?
A lot of the flak seems to be that Picard isn't the guy we last saw at the end of TNG, how could he have checked out for so long, etc.
I don't get it.
First, he was out of Starfleet. As a regular citizen, not exactly simple to get back out to Vashti, etc. Let alone in a way that could affect change.
Second, I think the folks saying this stuff haven't been through major life events or trauma.
Picard got assimilated. He almost destroyed everything he dedicated his life to. He then got out. And actually managed to piece himself back together.
Then Mars, and Starfleet's retreat. Then his resignation gambit. Everything he believed in fell apart a second time.
Do you know how hard it is to keep it together after your life gets completely shattered not once, but twice? Its nearly impossible.
Its a testament to the character's perseverance that he hasn't eaten a phaser or withered away in bed.
There are plenty of problematic things in the series, but Picard's characterization isn't one of them.
His "sheer fucking hubris" is looking more and more justified.
The last time we saw an interstellar society whose actual nature was so at odds with its myth (and so utterly dependent on a handful of paragons), Ezri Dax said that it deserved to die.
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I don't loathe Paris as a character and I don't think he's a tool but I the series gave him way too much stuff to be good at while ignoring the characterization of almost everyone else. I don't understand how anyone could see him as the best character on Voyager. Maybe it's like when I watched the reboot of BSG for the first time, and for a good stretch of seasons I thought Apollo was my favorite character. I took me a while, but I finally realized he is kind of a whiny shit and I only thought of him as "best" because of Jamie Bamber's square jaw and blue eyes.
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I insist Michael McKean's clown character be inserted above Kes
The Federation was never as perfect and utopian as it claimed to be (count the admirals that show up, and count how many of them betray the ideals of the Federation. It's not quite a 1 to 1 ratio, but it's close).
But it makes sense that Picard is a true believer in it, which is the exact reason he was put in command of the flagship. It's the same reason they have someone who really believes in the idea of America carry the vibranium shield, while his bosses betray his ideals all over the place.
But there's going to be a point where the mental exhaustion from having your expectations proven wrong is too much.
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If they had to do that, they should have actually tried something unusual and made it Tuvok, since her telepathy practice had her spending a lot of late nights alone in his quarters with the lights off by candle light, discovering an exciting new side of herself she never knew before.
Tuvok certainly wouldn't have wanted to be a part of the mess, but the jealousy monster they made Neelix should have seen him as just as much a threat as Paris, and it almost seems to make sense that Kes's reassurances might ring hollow given the relationship there.
Or just not have that plot point at all since it was dumb, toxic and kind of boring.
Oh shit I just summed up most of Voyager in three words.
You forgot "creepy". Every time they mention how she's less than/only/barely two years old (still working through S2), and then have people lusting after her, it's pretty frikkin' squicky. With Paris we know the biology, Talaxians are a different matter, but he's at least early 20's when he appears on Voyager (metreon cascade that kills his family is 2355, Voyager arrives 2371).
Don't care that her race physically matures at a ridiculous rate. Don't care that she apparently emotionally matures at a similar rate. She's been alive for at most, about a year when she first met Neelix.
I dunno who suggested that the first main cast to be in a romantical relationship in the Delta Quadrant be someone who's only been alive for several hundred days, sorry, I can't get past that, and I think the writers who came up with it should maybe be on a watchlist.
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I think this is really overstating the Federation's flaws in Picard, especially given how the season ends.
The other shows really really need to take a page from LD, not just in terms of attitude (though I recognize that's probably a lost cause) but also in the brisk, efficient worldbuilding. In about seven minutes of run time we learn as much or more about
than we have in the previous 50 years!
see I always saw him as like, the shitty boomer's ideal of the perfect son
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Given that he was doing time in Space Leavenworth when the series started I think that's a bit of a stretch
I dunno if that's really an issue. He almost immediately becomes an upstanding member of the crew, almost as if some hard discipline was all it took to put him on the straight and narrow.
Not sure I agree with Aioua's perspective (still working through), but Paris being in prison isn't an argument against it.
Loves hot rods and old tv
A "bad boy" but only in the safest, most conforming ways
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
The transporter operators are watching the episode along with the viewer so they always know who to beam up.
Basically this
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
There are TOS episodes where the bridge crew is literally watching the episode on the main viewer. Where the fuck is the camera? Who is capturing this imagery? Why is the camera man not helping Kirk fight the Gorn?
Yeah, everything works out in the end. After literal decades of just sitting around in the ashes and letting the problem(s) persist and fester, rather than (other) people waking up the next day and getting to work on fixing it. The scale of that waste, those years of wallowing in failure, the pointless suffering of untold trillions, because no one else could or would address it.
Look, I get the dramatic necessities (and real-world reasons), why a show named after the character requires him to be the only one with real agency, the Great Man who will Save Everyone. And I don't blame him, per Raynaga above, for being deeply traumatized by what happened. But if he had been crushed by that trauma, and/or simply remained in seclusion at the vinyard until he died... is that it? Is the fate of the Federation, a polity with hundreds of member worlds and years of history, so dependent on the actions of less than a dozen? We've been told since the start that people in the future are better than that - maybe not always, not every day, but on the average; was that always a lie?
I'd like to see, or at least imagine, a Federation that is capable of getting off its ass and saving itself rather than waiting for a Magical Frenchman to come along and do it for them.
"Unhappy is the land that has no heroes."
"No, unhappy is the land that needs heroes."
The Camera People of Opticon IV take an oath of non-interference as the price of having all access to everything everywhere. It's considered a huge offense to look directly at them, though.
Also, those Gorns carry salmonella, nobody wants to deal with that.
It's a holographic recreation of the events based on scanner data collected by the ship and Tricorders edited by the ship's computer to best be projected on a 2d view screen. The real question is, who inserted the commercial breaks?
My theory is that it's an invasive computer virus created by the Ferengi.
Are we REALLY revisiting this same argument? It's entirely possible for a society to be hit with a major crisis or series of crises that causes it to get shaken to it's very core so hard that it loses track of where it's going.
As to "PIcard" solely fixing the situation, it's pretty obvious he's just the catalyst for a lot of other folks doing the things that need to be done. IE: Being that beacon that calls Starfleet Command back to their mission, but the Admirals/etc are the ones who actually get stuff done. How much of the results had to do with his impact on the people he talks to throughout the series (Riker for instance) and inspiring them to do things? We don't know, we don't see it, but I think you are ascribing way more agency to Picard himself than the show did.
As memory serves, Stewart really wanted to do this series to show there CAN be light in the darkness based on what's been happening the last decade or so in the real world.
Some people are inspired by that, I suppose.
Others are (more) inspired by a story where things were never allowed to get that bad in the first place, because when things start to slide back or sideways, people of conscience step up and stop(ped) it.
The latter, I submit, is the kind of story(s) that Star Trek has been telling and/or selling for most of its (and my) lifetime.
... okay, maybe I'm not actually "inspired". Maybe I'd just rather spend a few hours living there rather than here. *sigh*
paris being my favourite character (because he actually had. y'know.. growth) shows you HOW BAD the rest of the characters are and how terrible the writers treated them.
No way, he watches vintage looney tunes on a 50s vacuum tube TV while eating cereal. COOL GUY#1
I respectfully disagree and think you are using some rose colored glasses there. The Federation/Starfleet in TOS was very clearly a somewhat idealized version of the 60's US, down to the point that Kirk and crew would mix it up with the Klingons, even when the local populace asked them not. I mean heck, even early on in TNG, we get federation scientists wanting to take data apart, against his will. Then there is the whole situation with the Baku (and it's hard to claim this is a one off with all the Admirals we've seen... I mean what, the first regularly good one was Sisko's boss during the war?). We see during DS9 how the Federation handles just the threat of a changeling on Earth. So on and so forth. You have some counter episodes where the cast is laying down the good side of morality, but you can't ignore the flip side too, and it's not like it's isolated to later Trek, it's been there since virtually the beginning.
Paris is one of the few people I believe would have really truly had a chance of not losing his marbles being stuck on Voyager as long as they all were. He had and indulged in a lot of interests.
You mean like that TNG episode where the heroes forcibly relocate Native Americans to serve the interests of the state? Or that DS9 story arc where the main hero instigates a false flag assassination in order to drag a sovereign nation into war?
This is why that particular criticism of Picard confuses me. The Federation's mistakes in that show are no different or worse than what we've seen before; it's just that Picard focuses on it while past series made it a problem of the week or a passing story arc.
Like, if you dislike portrayals of the Federation as a flawed society, that's fine, but it's weird to single out Picard for it when it's in no way a foreign concept to Trek.
Yes, and we see it stopped, nipped in the bud before it take root.
What we don't get is "the Federation has gone to shit, and it's been shit for twenty years without anyone having the will and/or ability to do much about it."
I submit this is a significant difference.