What will new Picard show be about?

"There's a bathroom on the right...."

 

My hope is that it s a smaller, more intimate type of story. Nuanced and personal with no cameos. An element of romance would be good.

 

Love that song!

 

And those were pretty silly moments for exactly that reason. The V'Ger one is fair enough, because it was a one way deal - they specifically state that it's V'Ger calling to Spock, not him calling back. And the wall one? I can buy that the effect can extend a foot or so outwards, with much reduced capability. Extending it a trillion times further than that with much increased capability, though?

No, it's really not. This is one of the irritating things about Discovery. If it came across to me as a show that likes Star Trek and wants to be true to the spirit of it, if they looked at the huge tapestry of Trek and wanted to expand on it, that would be great. But instead it comes across as a show that really hates Star Trek and is constantly looking for excuses to break that spirit. They look at the tapestry and try and find any flaw - and of course there are plenty of flaws in Trek. And whenever they find one they yank on it as hard as they can to try and rip the whole thing apart.

So we get "Spock once managed to communicate a single thought through a wall - that means mind melds can do literally ANYTHING we want them to!" Christ, why not just turn Burnham into a Q, then, with powers of total omnipotence. Why not? Spock managed to get a word through a wall once, so it's just more of the same!

This is at the core of the frustration many (probably most) fans feel about Discovery. The show owes its very existence to the franchise that preceded it, but they constantly display an attitude of utter contempt for that franchise - whilst constantly lying about it because they think we're too bloody stupid to notice or too indifferent to care.

Though in fairness, they are at least somewhat right about the indifference thing.

Perhaps. And you may be underestimating it.

Well, it has now.

 

I gotta ask, though: Do you seriously think that TNG would have been a better show if it had featured TOS-style Klingons? Did DS9 or VOY or ENT show contempt for TOS by not sticking to the original makeup created for "Errand of Mercy"? Did fans reject TNG because Worf didn't look like a TOS Klingon?

For what it's worth, I was there in 1979 and I don't remember my Trekkie friends or Seattle fandom in general getting bent out of shape over the new TMP Klingons. And it certainly didn't stop us from swarming to THE WRATH OF KHAN a few years later or cause us to boycott the THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK because Christopher Lloyd had ridges on his head. We understood that sometimes new-and-improved make-up effects are just . . . new and improved make-up effects.

And as for the folks behind DISCO secretly "hating" STAR TREK or thinking that the audience is "stupid," I'm always leery when critics and commentators claim to be able to read the minds of filmmakers, writers, etc. The way I see it, the actual work is fair game, but assuming you know the creators' motives is usually a dicey proposition.

 

It's always a weird idea anyway - 'I'm a successful professional - I'll spend multiple years working on a franchise I secretly hate'.

Who knows maybe the showrunner watched Trek as a child and hated it and then spent years getting to the stage where they were running it so they can destroy it from within.

 

Kinda like the undercover Russian spies in THE AMERICANS?

"And then we will embark on our master plan to deliberately assassinate the characters of beloved sci-fi icons!"

 

Not to sound cheeky, but it should be about Picard.

Character centric instead of action centric. With Picard as the lynchpin. In Starfleet or not. Pulled back in to save the planet/fleet/galaxy, or not. At the Academy, or not. With other TNG/DS9/VOY cast, or not.

 

The difference now being we recently (the 12 years ago version of recently) had a 2-parter explaining the difference between TOS and RestOfTrek Klingons, which is now being explicitly ignored.

 

I wonder if CBS would have the cojones to give us a Picard... who isn't in Starfleet anymore!!

 

Logically, they kind of have to. Assuming it's set roughly 20 years after we last saw him in Nemesis (which was set in 2379), and they stick with Picard's established date of birth (July 13, 2305) it would mean that he'd be either 93 or 94 years old in the timeframe of the new series. Even if humans routinely live beyond 120 or even 130 years old in the 24th century, at the age of 94 Picard is probably too old to be gallivanting around the cosmos in command of a Starship, or even being retained in active service as an Admiral.

 

You say that like it's a bad thing.
Anyhoo, didn't they mention a House of Antaak? There's a reference right there.

 

Just like them to reference the continuity breaking thing

 

They do not speak of it to others.

 

I was assuming they're doing an 80-ish being the equivalent of 93-ish in The Future, which would make Picard suitable for a Starfleet Consultant Emeritus, if not a Vice Admiral for Special Projects (HE'S BRINGING BACK THE SPORE DRIVE, YO! Kidding.)

 

Picard and Worf escort a young girl, who is the rightful heir to the Romulan throne, across a galaxy full threats to a place of safety.

 

I reckon Picard is retired but some sort of catastrophic event (crippling Starfleet) means he needs to come back to serve. I want the universe the show is set in to be huge, but the show and its scope to be small and intimate.

 

Picard witnesses the end of humanity as the sun goes supernova and then he wakes up on another ship, he realizes the entire 7 season of TNG and all his friends were just part of an implanted memory from a probe

 

There are two distinct issues here. There's an absolutist position that any change whatsoever is verboten, and then there are those who object to the execution of said change.

TMP introduced three major changes to Trek (besides Shatner's rug). The Enterprise, the uniforms, and the Klingons. Out of the three, the uniforms faced the most lingering backlash. Why? Because objectively speaking, THEY LOOK LIKE CRAP.

It's often hard to articulate why something looks like crap. It's a visceral thing. You know it when you see it. While not everyone agrees on what constitutes crap, usually the average sentiment bubbles to the top and it's fair to just stick a label on it, like a thumbs up/down.

Objectively speaking, the TMP uniforms were crap.

Likewise, the Disco Klingons look like crap, as does other stuff like the half-collar uniforms.

I get what they're saying about all the different clans or blood-lines and all. From a canonical perspective, that's fine. But when it comes to sitting through long scenes of Klingon dialogue with subtitles, it doesn't work. The masks just don't allow the actors to emote enough. The faces have shifted too much into grotesque territory that you can't really empathize with them. They're all creepy Nosferatus.