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Spoilers Picard Prequel "Children of Mars"

At this point, it is agree to disagree. The "discourse" would rather accuse the production team of apathy than consider alternatives and focus on the VFX than things actually enjoyed.

That's fine. VFX sucked, Mars sucked and Picard will suck. There, got that out of the way...:sigh::weep::wah:
Picard might be good. I just hope it isn't all doom and gloom and has at least some era-appropriate ships. I still don't get why it has to be TV-MA. Just because it's not on TV proper doesn't mean it needs to be mature. The majority of Trek you were able to watch with your family. It's a shame they don't feel that way anymore.
 
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For a brief time Starfleet decided to renumber ships in certain sectors to be based on an octal system, which is of course indicated by a leading 0. The Kelvin was actually NCC-322

Actually, the Kelvin was originally meant to be 000322, so they could order the numbers better in the future when they got to the 6 digit registries. But the SF Procurement Dept. decided to save money on paint and dropped two of the leading zeroes.

Imagine the effect three leading zeroes would have on some people (*cough* @The Wormhole *cough*).
 
Being in San Francisco, no, not at all.
Maybe it's San Fransokyo.

In fact, I've no idea how one or two people [in this thread] have used Children of Mars to justify unhappiness with how they think Picard is going to turn out...
[...]
I didn't spot any other aliens in those sequences, but may be going blind! If the co-lead was in fact the only alien there, might we suspect that there was some xenophobia going on?
It's the first, and so far only, indication of late 24th century post-NEM pre-PIC designs we got, so of course it's the only basis we have (in addition to trailers, of course) for how PIC is gonna look.
One of the teachers/guards had a pattern on his cheeks like the Shenzhou bridge officer. One boy also looked alien, but he was blurry in the background.

Yup. Was super confused whenever an Excelsior ship or Bird of Prey showed up as to what era.
Did they ever appear by themselves with no era-specific ship?

I think the complaint is more about the ship talk dominating the discussion to such an extreme, when the story wasn't really about the tech and hardware.
I think most people -- especially the ones who are complaining -- didn't notice either. Then someone pointed it out and that's when other people saw their opening to jump in. Tearing apart a story about two girls who are rivals but come together through tragedy will make them look like total jerks. The optics of that aren't very good. "Ick! I don't want to talk about feelings! Girls have cooties!" But canon is their bread-and-butter. "Wait a minute? STD ships in Picard! Yes!!!!! You see?! They don't care about canon! Yeah!!!! Let's get this party started! Let's rip those four seconds right apart! Let's do it!!!" That's something they can grab onto. So they did.
Most people seemed to like the story itself and how it was executed. But it was very simple story and there really isn't much to talk about beyond, 'yeah, I liked it and the song worked.' And I don't think the ship talk would have become nearly as dominant if number of people wouldn't feel the need to defend this questionable if minor production design choice and belittle the people who noticed it and didn't like it.
You need to come up with bizarre excuses for the thing you didn't care about anyway in the first place, and belittle people who do care. [...] Yeah, I get that you don't give fuck about visuals, but how about you just accept that to some people aesthetics and visual continuity matter instead of mocking them for having standards?
I was looking forward to maybe seeing the first new ships and props post-NEM. Of course I looked at the ships featured there very closely. It can bother people when their expectations aren't met and excitement turns to disappointment. And era-specific or completely new ships are a reasonable expectation. I am with Longinus here: There seems to be broad agreement that the story was nice, the whole thing was shot nicely, I also think the acting was great, especially considering that they're kids and still showed such layers. Discussions only get long and heated when different opinions collide and are fought with exchange after exchange, and sometimes circle after circle. The 'shippers' continued because the 'whocarers' questioned their opinions, taste, priorities, when they could simply accept that it everyone is free to care about whatever they care about ;)

Wouldn't the death toll be higher on Mars, considering how much of the planet's surface is impacted by orbital bombardment? In non canonical sources, Mars has a population of 133.8 million. So, shouldn't have the casualities been much higher, much more than the 3000 reported?
Remember how the tsunami death toll in 2004 kept rising and rising for days? Live news is by nature inaccurate.

Riker and Troi were announced before either of the actors even filmed their scenes.

I believe it was at Vegas last August.
SDCC in July.

Why would I be watching Short Treks at all if it wasn't for the advertising? How on Earth could I be watching Short Treks and not be familiar with Picard, even if I didn't post on boards like this?
There are new fans that only know Disco and/or the Kelvin movies. Picard is only familiar to them from memes (sadly). I can see how they'd be confused here.

Does Klingon opera count as classical music? :)
Neelix thought so! XD
But Sabotage was classical music in Beyond...

Why wouldn't the shuttle bus driver not wait? She was clearly on the grounds. Even my old drivers would wait for stragglers.
My impression was the pilot couldn't see her behind that field in that tunnel or whatever entrance it was.

By gum that is a Kelvinverse Enterprise! Did they throw in R2D2 and a trout as well?
Vreenak has something to say about that XD
 
With lifesign detection a thing, I imagine the "3000" figure (almost certainly an approximation) to be fairly accurate. The Rogue Synths did seem to do over a dozen bombardments, visible from some orbit and some multiple times, but for such a low figure, it must've been targeted sites and maybe the Federation has quick evacuation plans.

Perhaps there was some form of notice, like a half hour or so, in order to evacuate as much as possible. Maybe the Synths have a fundamental respect for life and their terrorist attack had a necessary goal in mind (destroying the defense perimeter? wiping out some sort of android research centers at shipyards? No idea, really).

The colonies, where the millions live, were probably avoided, as we only see attacks (on the ground) at shipyards. Two types of attacks are visible: the orbital bombardment that produces massive explosions bigger than Tunguska, and the strafing attacks by the kite ships on certain facilities seen by the news cameras. Presumably, they also attacked our favorite Magee ship and her friends, but we don't see that, so maybe not.

So, I will assume that the orbital bombardments weren't focusing on people, but taking out unmanned power stations or underground facilities (given the power of the weaponry involved) in order to accomplish their objective with a minimal loss of life. If they are truly terrorist (as in, inflicting terror on us evil humans), then the visual of 20+ Tunguskas, even on barren land far from any observed city, may be what they were going for.

The strafing attacks may have been the true goal, or at least aided by the power station bombardments. That's probably where the death toll lies, given how indiscriminatory they seem, but given that this is Data-level AI, I assume that they're far more surgical in nature, crippling perhaps only the shipbuilding and nothing else. Kima and Lil's parents may have survived.

So given all the assumptions I made, 3000 may actually seem a little high. Discovery introduced us to robots, and the idea that they may have always been around. Shipbuilding isn't done by 10,000 Kima mothers, rather Kima mothers oversee 10,000 robots who do the grunt work (note: not synths, but actual working, non-sentient robots). Lil's father was Quality Assurance, so an inspector of some kind who probably just tested random parts. They both worked (or called) out of the Mons Olympus Station, even if they worked for two different employers (Utopia Planitia Shipyards and Mars Orbital Facility), suggesting interactivity between the two. Maybe UP makes the ships, and the MOF makes sure they're good to go before shipping out. Or something. Or maybe Mons Olympus is just where the workers live before taking the shuttle to their destination (in orbit or to Utopia Planitia, which is thousands of miles away from Olympus Mons).
 
Data's loop message reactivated itself and he led an attack to kill a 3 with 3 zeros number of people. Better open the shuttlebay...

But Data or a similar Soong-type being behind the attack reminds me of INS. His ethical program took over and he attacked the hidden base, the people trying to stop him, and the Son'a ship. In TNG, he was about to kill Fajo. A slight malfunction similar to the evil EMH from Equinox or that Jekyll & Hyde episode could turn him into a ruthless and precise killer. Now imagine Maddox's thousands of Datas with such a malfunction...
 
At this point, it is agree to disagree. The "discourse" would rather accuse the production team of apathy than consider alternatives and focus on the VFX than things actually enjoyed.
Thing is, your 'alternative' explanations are not actually explanations. They basically amount to 'they did not have enough time/money.' That is indeed quite possibly the case, but someone assigned that time and money. It is not like CBS literally is out of cash and couldn't spare couple of grand extra or whatever for this if they wanted. It also seems pretty unlikely that they honesty did their best but at the last minute dog ate their Nebula class.

That's fine. VFX sucked, Mars sucked and Picard will suck. There, got that out of the way...:sigh::weep::wah:
Yeah, that's totally what I was saying...*eyeroll*
 
In weird way having all these dated ships make sense. Starfleet never has ships nearby guarding Earth or the solar system. How many times was the Enterprise the only ship in the area? In "Best of Both Worlds" all they have was those crappy automated ships. Maybe Starfleet keeps all the old junk ships nearby for crap duty while the good stuff is out their exploring and doing important missions. Also the fleet might not be built back up after the Dominion War.

Jason
 
About the only way this works in-universe is that the Dominion War depleted Starfleet so badly that even a decade or so later the fleet is still rebuilding and having to reactivate and upgrade a lot of mothballed ships from previous decades and even generations to fill in the gaps while the shipyards crank out the newest designs or new ships from recent classes we saw on DS9 and VOY. Other than that the only acceptable explanation is these are quick and cheap placeholders for an eight-minute short that had a minimal budget to play around with.
 
About the only way this works in-universe is that the Dominion War depleted Starfleet so badly that even a decade or so later the fleet is still rebuilding and having to reactivate and upgrade a lot of mothballed ships from previous decades and even generations to fill in the gaps while the shipyards crank out the newest designs or new ships from recent classes we saw on DS9 and VOY. Other than that the only acceptable explanation is these are quick and cheap placeholders for an eight-minute short that had a minimal budget to play around with.

The shot should've just had a ship or two that was recognizably newer in addition to the Discovery-era ships. Even if they were in the background, so they didn't have to be as well defined.
 
So Star Trek BSG now! LOL

Also, when the hell it the Federation ever going to learn to have a defense fleet in sector 001? This goes back to the Xindi weapon days. Somehow though, in Voyager Endgame, they had a bunch ships converge on the transwarp aperture near earth. Looks like back to old no fleet around days now.

To be fare though, we don't now what the resistance to the Synth ships was (if any), guess we will find out soon!
You can't have the plot element "Earth/Mars is in danger" if you have a huge fleet around. That has been a trope of Star Trek from the very beginning :)
 
Saw it this morning.

Eight minutes... four of which were two school-age girls fighting. :rolleyes:

The final minute or so was the credits. :rolleyes:

I hope the show is better.
 
Thing is, your 'alternative' explanations are not actually explanations. They basically amount to 'they did not have enough time/money.' That is indeed quite possibly the case, but someone assigned that time and money. It is not like CBS literally is out of cash and couldn't spare couple of grand extra or whatever for this if they wanted. It also seems pretty unlikely that they honesty did their best but at the last minute dog ate their Nebula class.
Productions still have budgets. So, even if they are not "out of cash" it doesn't mean that money was allocated for it.

Again, there is a long line of possibilities to get to apathy. We simply don't have enough information to conclude one way or the other. Apathy isn't a real explanation either. It's just a dig at CBS.
Yeah, that's totally what I was saying...*eyeroll*
Didn't say you said that. This isn't me putting words in your mouth so stop taking it personally. :shrug:
Did they ever appear by themselves with no era-specific ship?
Pretty sure they did. At least the Birds of Prey for sure.
 
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