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Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x05 - "Stardust City Rag"

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Cap'n Calhoun said:
Or maybe we wouldn't get a mixed impression if the CBS didn't promote the show with videos of a 7-year-old watching and reviewing the first two episodes:
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Thank you very much!
Especially this contrast between the target audience for a Trek show with such a cold opening is what makes me fume. I watch Star Trek with kids. Because I think Picard and Kirk are great role models, in amazing adventures for all age groups.

If I watch something called "Battlestar Galactica" that is advertised as a gritty show, I would be completely fine with the exact same scene.

Star Trek has done murder before. And this episode was a solid revenge-plot around it.
They just fucked entirely up what they are.

I would be equally as angry if something like that would havbe happened on "The Mandalorian".
 
Cap'n Calhoun said:
*sigh*

Okay, want to know what might keep us from "acting surprised"?

Maybe if the producers didn't keep making comments that indicated that they were just pushing the envelope a bit and 'playing it safe' by marking them TV-MA, those of us with more sensitive sensibilities wouldn't feel as upset when it happens. Though most (if not all) of the comments coming to mind were made in reference to Discovery, they're most often from Akiva Goldsman, co-creator of Picard, who is in the habit of saying things like:

"We are pretty dedicated to being able to watch the show with our families. Having said that, in [“Context Is for Kings”] we had some swirled up bodies. They were not entirely palatable to my ten-year-old daughter. So, it is those kind of reasons. We are very thrilled about the new boundaries that are offered to us by streaming, but not because we can do a lot of sex and violence. It is because we can do more serialized storytelling. We can do deeper, more emotional stories. On occasion if those take us into territory that feels a little bit more risky than would typically be seen on network TV, we just stamp it [with TV-MA]. It is always stamped for the most extreme. It is Star Trek, so for us that means we want to be able to have your whole family talking about it after."—Akiva Goldsman
https://trekmovie.com/2017/10/11/ex...to-2017-and-why-star-trek-discovery-is-tv-ma/

“We are not particularly swear-y or naked or violent. We’re still Star Trek and we’d like everybody to be able to watch together. We’re trying to go as deep as the original series did, but because we get to do it for longer the hope is you don’t have to reset your emotions every time the credits roll.”"—Akiva Goldsman
https://www.wired.com/story/star-trek-discovery-cbs-business/
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Again, these specific quotes are in reference to Discovery, but I haven't seen a lot of producer comments as to what to expect from Picard, and Picard co-creator Goldsman expresses this as his view on Star Trek as a whole. (Aaron Harberts made additional similar quotes about Discovery. Since he's not involved with Picard [or Star Trek at all at this point] I won't cite them here, but I'll include them at the bottom as a point of curiosity.)

Or maybe we wouldn't get a mixed impression if the CBS didn't promote the show with videos of a 7-year-old watching and reviewing the first two episodes:
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Or if the TV ratings system were a little more consistently scaled it might create less confusion. I personally take an R rating seriously and avoid it, but I've seen material that was PG-13 or even PG in my mind and then later saw it marked as TV-MA. E.g., Short Treks tends to fall pretty firmly into PG or maybe PG-13 category, but it's often marked with a TV-MA, sometimes apparently due to profanity that might appear in a PG film. So, in practice, TV-MA is an almost useless rating when it comes to setting expectations since, depending on who is applying it, it can cover anything from a strong PG to NC-17. (And that's in comparison with the sometimes-inconsistent MPAA ratings. Conversely, I've occasionally run into material rated TV-14 that felt like a clear TV-MA to me.)

Or if the show wasn't creating a mixed impression due to gradual escalation (both series started with TV-14 episodes), leading content monitoring sites like Common Sense Media to rate both Discovery and Picard as "Common sense selection for families with teens". https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/star-trek-picard

Or if Short Treks wasn't creating further a mixed impression by following up two family-friendly animated episodes with the (unrated but PG in my mind) prelude to Picard, which starred a couple of kids.

Or if softening of Discovery that led IMDb to change the overall series rating from TV-MA to TV-14 didn't lead some of us to infer that Star Trek was going back to being a little more family-friendly. (Other than "Point of Light", season 2 was relatively family-friendly IMO.) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5171438/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_9

So, yeah, some of us are genuinely surprised and even feel a little betrayed when the producers keep pushing the envelope further for a franchise that they describe as a franchise "to have your whole family talking." And if we can't express it on a Star Trek forum, then where?

"Let us redefine progress to mean that just because we can do a thing, it does not necessarily mean we must do that thing."
​
(Just to be clear, not upset at Racefuel in particular, but as you've probably guessed this has been bugging me. Thanks for taking the time to read my rant. Even if you don't agree with it, I hope it helped you understand my perspective a little more.)


Here's the Harberts quote referenced above. Keeping it separate due to his lack of involvement in Picard, but for some of us it still helped set the tone of what to expect:

“Every writer’s impulse when you get to work on the streaming shows with no parameters is to go crazy. But then you look at things like: How does nudity play on Trek? Eh, it feels weird. How does a lot of [profanity] on Trek? Not so great. Are there moments where it merits it that we’re trying to push here and there? I would say we’re trying to push more by having the type of complicated messed-up characters who aren’t necessarily embraced on broadcast. I’m not saying we’re not doing some violent things or doing a tiny bit of language, but what’s important to the creative team is the legacy of the show — which is passed down from mother to daughter, from father to son, from brother to brother. We want to make sure we’re not creating a show that fans can’t share with their families. You have to honor what the franchise is. I would say we’re not going much beyond hard PG-13.”—Aaron Harberts
https://ew.com/tv/2017/07/28/star-trek-discovery-nudity/​
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Again, there is nothing in PIC - or DSC for that matter - that I as a 7 year old wouldn't have watched. I know they 80s were a different time and all that, but honestly, if we could cope with that back in the day, kids can cope with that now too. So what, a little swearing, a little sex a little gore, but nothing too extreme, all relatively harmless compared to other shows around. I honestly don't get that complaint at all.
 
Yistaan said:
I was just thinking they could just have made Bjayzl Naomi Wildman to mess with fans. That would have made the betrayal felt by Seven massively more believable (and the show even darker).
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Naomi Wildman was an angel. It would have been completely out of character to make her do something like that.
 
Hythlodeus said:
Again, there is nothing in PIC - or DSC for that matter - that I as a 7 year old wouldn't have watched. I know they 80s were a different time and all that, but honestly, if we could cope with that back in the day, kids can cope with that now too. So what, a little swearing, a little sex a little gore, but nothing too extreme, all relatively harmless compared to other shows around. I honestly don't get that complaint at all.
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I hid as a kid during Palpatine frying Luke in ROTJ.
 
Are you kidding me? I meet 7 year olds who have watched rated R films. I have noted people letting their kids watch "Alien" before under the age of 10. More and more kids I meet are exposed to more and more than I ever was as a child.

It may not be my preference but I'm not going to pretend that this somehow new.
 
Discofan said:
Naomi Wildman was an angel. It would have been completely out of character to make her do something like that.
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Wait until she turns out to have been behind the Zhat Vash all along.

Also Control. It's a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
 
Discofan said:
I have no problem with a change of actors but the character Icheb was very likable regardless of who played him.

It's like say, Zorro. Many actors have played Zorro but if it turned out that one of them was a child rapist that wouldn't be a reason to stop playing zorro would it? Maybe just stop showing the episodes with that actor in them...
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maybe, but Manu was very outspoken when it came to his desire to return to this role. Killing Icheb off was a well deserved FU to him. I'm glad they did that.
 
Hythlodeus said:
Again, there is nothing in PIC - or DSC for that matter - that I as a 7 year old wouldn't have watched. I know they 80s were a different time and all that, but honestly, if we could cope with that back in the day, kids can cope with that now too. So what, a little swearing, a little sex a little gore, but nothing too extreme, all relatively harmless compared to other shows around. I honestly don't get that complaint at all.
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I have watched horror movies as a kid as well. But I knew what I was getting into. It wasn't thrown into my face on a family shown and treated as "to be expected" when watching media.
 
fireproof78 said:
Are you kidding me? I meet 7 year olds who have watched rated R films. I have noted people letting their kids watch "Alien" before under the age of 10. More and more kids I meet are exposed to more and more than I ever was as a child.

It may not be my preference but I'm not going to pretend that this somehow new.
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Oh yes, Alien. another childhood favourite of mine.
Always hated Aliens, though.
 
Hythlodeus said:
maybe, but Manu was very outspoken when it came to his desire to return to this role. Killing Icheb off was a well deserved FU to him. I'm glad they did that.
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Ok, but I still liked Iched and I don't confuse him with the actor who played him. After all actors and roles are very different things. For example, Martha Hackett is not a psychopath!!!
 
Hythlodeus said:
Again, there is nothing in PIC - or DSC for that matter - that I as a 7 year old wouldn't have watched. I know they 80s were a different time and all that, but honestly, if we could cope with that back in the day, kids can cope with that now too. So what, a little swearing, a little sex a little gore, but nothing too extreme, all relatively harmless compared to other shows around. I honestly don't get that complaint at all.
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The only scenes I was too scared to watch as a kid where the melting Nazis and Donovan's rapid aging in Indiana Jones. I managed to defeat my aversion to the nazis since the scene became a meme, but I still leave the room whenever I see Donovan drinking from the wrong chalice and won't return until the crusader has said "He chose poorly."

But other than that, I practically went to bed every night watching The X-Files.
 
Discofan said:
Ok, but I still liked Iched and I don't confuse him with the actor who played him. After all actors and roles are very different things. For example, Martha Hackett is not a psychopath!!!
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To be fair, I don't think they would have gone out of their way to kill him if it didn't conveniently serve Seven's story.
 
Yistaan said:
They've done intense torture scenes before without graphic mutilation. Chain of Command. That was just as impactful to the story there if not more.

They didn't need that here if they didn't need it in Chain of Command. Chain of Command is a classic episode without it. Arguably it would have been more relevant to Chain of Command as we all know in a realistic scenario Madred would start lobbing off body parts every time Picard said "four lights".
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Yes. I think doing someting such intense in a story requires to answer two questions:
  1. Is this level of violence and malevolence by characters needed?
  2. Is this level of graphic depiction needed?
No. 1 was kinda' needed for this story - it's a brutal revenge plot in fancy clothes (that's it's own discussion), so there needs to be an appropriate extreme inciting incident.

No.2 is also appropriate some of the times - it's a realistic result for the aforementionted mushroom-drive experiments/transporter malfunctions. And quite honestly, I think attacks by weird space monster or aliens could be sometimes more gruesome than how they were shown on prime-time tv in the past.

But really - if you combine the two - that shit should be rated R, and has no business in a family show.
 
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