Picard: "Just Like Other Sci-Fi"

[Phily B]

Do people really think the Federation or Starfleet are all that different to what we have seen in the past?

The only difference we're seeing is the perspective. We've already seen people calling the Federation tyrannical and opposing membership. We've seen them forcibly moving populations to please stronger powers. Picard was always relatively isolated, but even in TNG a lot of the Admiralty seemed to have a different morality to him.

 

[plynch]

I was expecting better writing with Chabon at the helm. There's good-for-Star Trek good, and really-great-writing good.

I thought it would be more a drama, less an action-Trek-drama. My problem for having expectations, as always.

It does seem a lot like other sci-fi.

I was shaped as a child by TOS: good people going about doing good. It's an ideal, I know. And, yes, I know, "Go watch the Orville." Ok, I will.

I like PIC ok, certainly better than DSC. It does seem there is no basic IS-ness to things called "Star Trek" other than a shared continuity/univerese, which of course gets changed every time a smarter-than-the-previous-regime showrunner gets the reins.

Be well.

 

[Longinus]

S31 isn't trying to hide at all in DIS. It is impossible that the Federation and Starfleet is not aware of them. There were Starfleet Admirals on that space station of them, Pike was aware of them and again they were not hiding at all. They even have badges indentifying them to everyone.

And actually we didn't see much of the war with the Klingons. The Discovery was mostly absent from any fights and for a number of episodes not even in the same universe. Instead of it they made friends with genocidal Georgiou and then let her run around free pretending to be the original Georgiou in their own universe and even hired her after the war ended. Not to mention their actions were not just against the Klingons. They tortured the poor tardigrade and planned to torture more of them and in this case the main characters we follow did the torturing.

In DIS the main problem of the Federation is the acceptance of Section 31. Drastic measures against the Klingons I could have even understood when they were close to losing especially if they would have bothered to show anything of the desperation of war instead of going to the mirrorverse. But they have no problem with S31 and Georgiou at all and that just tarnish them. And I won't forget what the characters we follow did to the poor tardigrade. At least none of the nicer PIC characters have done anything so abhorrent yet on screen.

All of this is true, but that's Discovery. The Federation on Picard seems to be more realistically flawed rather than cartoonishly stupid evil.

 

[Jayson1]

What's a Mayweather?

It's a ship the Purtians used back in the day to get to America.


Jason

 

[Hythlodeus]

It's a ship the Purtians used back in the day to get to America.


Jason

You're kidding right? Everyone knows that was the Wallflower

 

[Jayson1]

I would suggest that it turned back to a more cynical one. The original source material got pretty cynical and I don't really see either Discovery or Picard being significantly more cynical than TOS could get. We aren't talking Space 1999. Blakes Seven, Babylon 5, BSG 2K, Firefly, Killjoys or Expanse cynical. IMO, It's more like TOS, DS9, level cynical.

A lot of people who are angry at the latest episode maybe don't seem to think that bad things don't happen in the Star Trek universe, but prefer those bad things to be kept at a comfortable distance. They don't react well to Star Trek being uncomfortable ever to watch at any level. Star Trek is supposed to be perfectly comfy almost all the time, I think, to most people, and the more uncomfortable it is, the more they think it isn't Star Trek.

I think this is true. Star Trek while always exploring issues and being about something other than pew pew has also been escapism and comfort food entertainment. I do wonder how many are actually angry though. I actually love the Picard show but I also can't see it as something that can substain the franchise for long. Has anyone noticed that the franchises that tend to endure the most are ones that tend to be very positive and pure escapism where as the ones that are darker like Aliens,Terminator movies etc tend to run out steam very fast and don't have quite the longevity to a point where the movies they make or shows tend to stop appealing to people.

I think that is because positivity has a big impact on rewatchability. People tend to not to return to sad experiences over and over even the good kind of sad experiences you can get in a well made but edgy movie or tv show.

Jason

 

[FederationHistorian]

I don’t think that the series is like other sci-fi. Sure, something like Freecloud would be just another futuristic cyberpunk environment in a different sci-fi show. But its different in Trek. The Federation is supposed to be a paradise free of all major problems, but is withdrawing into itself as it is currently struggling to maintain that paradise, and letting down those that believed in the ideals of the Federation in the process. PIC is able to tell that story because of the hundreds of hours of Trek that provide a backstory. It’s not a starting point like other series; PIC is somewhere in the middle of their journey.

Would you rather watch Neelix and Harry Kim? Or Mayweather and Hoshi?

a) Who says that Captain Harry Kim of the USS Rhode Island is the same as Ensign Harry Kim of the USS Voyager?

b) If it was mirror Mayweather and mirror Hoshi, sure.

Section 31 has been a part of three series and I really hope they abandon the idea for a Section 31 series.

I actually though that Discovery was going to be the Section 31 series (as there were subtle signs that it was), until I found that it was going to be a completely separate series.

 

[Hythlodeus]

Captain Harry Kim

are you suggesting that Kim is no longer Ensign?
But...but...*gasp* Berman's Vision!!!!!

 

[Longinus]

I think this is true. Star Trek while always exploring issues and being about something other than pew pew has also been escapism and comfort food entertainment. I do wonder how many are actually angry though. I actually love the Picard show but I also can't see it as something that can substain the franchise for long. Has anyone noticed that the franchises that tend to endure the most are ones that tend to be very positive and pure escapism where as the ones that are darker like Aliens,Terminator movies etc tend to run out steam very fast and don't have quite the longevity to a point where the movies they make or shows tend to stop appealing to people.

I think that is because positivity has a big impact on rewatchability. People tend to not to return to sad experiences over and over even the good kind of sad experiences you can get in a well made but edgy movie or tv show.

Yeah, you might be onto something there. Of all the trek shows TOS and TNG are the most iconic, well known and enjoyed by a non-niche audience. And they're the most optimistic ones. Now one could argue that despite the ship's supposedly dire situation, Voyager is pretty optimistic too, and indeed despite being mostly utter nonsense with characters that are either annoying or boring, it probably is more well known than DS9 which purely quality wise is easily superior.

I like really Picard, but I must accept that I'm still longing for more escapistly optimistic Trek show. I hope that we eventually get one, either in a form a show set after Picard has done fixing the Federation or perhaps the Pike show.

 

[Cake]

All of this is true, but that's Discovery. The Federation on Picard seems to be more realistically flawed rather than cartoonishly stupid evil.

The Federation in PIC is really flawed just like governments and supranational organizations of the present which was obviously the goal. They want to mirror present day with the Federation. And I am just not a fan of it, because when the future is kind of like the present with more tech I just don't find its depiction optimistic. The Federation in PIC reaches at best moral mediocrity like nicer real life countries which might try at least to provide their on citizens a somewhat happy life, but do not much for others. And as the Federation is huge and has a lot of resources and technique, that they are not doing much to help weighs heavier against them than against real world countries for me.

And it is just the overall tone of the series which is just kind of depressive. The overall state of the Federation/Starfleet and other parts of the galaxy, the graphic violence, so many characters having some huge regrets or a sad past which they still suffer under. Picard also has some illness which will kill him soon. It is just very far away from rainbows and sunshine.

I do think that overall PIC is an improvement over DIS though both go way too much in the dark and the future is bad direction for my taste. But at least the PIC characters are better written and more likeable on average. Optically PIC also looks better. DIS was simply very often also literally very dark. The Discovery could have used some more lightbulbs for example. La Sirena is better lit and they had many scenes on Earth and Vashti during the day and there is also Picard's home on the holodeck. It is at least optically not all gloom and doom all the time.

PIC also avoid these super big twists and changes in direction DIS made all the time like on a big level in season 1 going from Klingon war, to mirror verse, back to Klingon war. Or in season 2 setting up this big mystery about the seven lights and then later on it is suddenly mostly about Control. And on a smaller level things like the reveal of Lorca being from the mirror which practically had no meaning and consequences in the nex episode. Or the Tyler/Voq reveal which was lame and so on. The small reveals PIC had so far seem to be better connected to the overall plot.

I guess if PIC would not be a Star Trek series, but a generic science fiction series I would still be watching it, but I definitely wouldn't describe it as a must see. I think the biggest writing problem is that the storyline progress at a snail's pace. The season is half over now and it just doesn't feel like much has happened yet. But there aren't so many new science fiction series with a lot of aliens and planets and spaceships out there, so I can't be super choosey if I want to watch a science fiction series like that. Still as it is a Star Trek series I was hoping for more. It is not perfect for what it is, the writing could be better, and I wish it would also be something else than it wants to be. I just always thought that Star Trek showing a better future was its best attribute. Abandoning that is just a shame in my opinion.

 

[Arpy]

The cynicism/optimism discussion isn’t a valid one. Cynicism is just as bad. It’s about being realistic in depiction and hopeful in pursuit.

 

[Longinus]

The cynicism/optimism discussion isn’t a valid one. Cynicism is just as bad. It’s about being realistic in depiction and hopeful in pursuit.

But the cynics cannot tell cynicism and realism apart.

 

[Jayson1]

Do people really think the Federation or Starfleet are all that different to what we have seen in the past?

The only difference we're seeing is the perspective. We've already seen people calling the Federation tyrannical and opposing membership. We've seen them forcibly moving populations to please stronger powers. Picard was always relatively isolated, but even in TNG a lot of the Admiralty seemed to have a different morality to him.

The Federation and Starfleet seem to be pretty consistent with what we have seen before but of course the show is built around people no longer or never was in Starfleet. We sort of got that on DS9 with Kira,Odo and Quark but of course you still had Sisko and Starfleet presence around as well to help keep the show from go to far away from the traditional Trek POV. I think DS9 was basically the first Trek show to challenge traditional Trek storytelling but I remember what Behr or Moore said. The show bended the rules but didn't break them. While Picard hasn't broke all the traditional rules it's basically tood what DS9 and escalated it a little bit more. It's at the very least the darkest of all the Trek shows we have had.

What I have noticed ironically is the show has tended to criticize Picard more than it has the Federation which was what everyone was worried about with the Federation going evil and all that. At times it even feels like the show doesn't really respect Picard beyond pitty as if everything Picard use to believe in was a lie. The truth is the real world was never as positive or hopefully as he made it seem to be on TNG. It's trying to teach Picard a lesson to be more cynical I think instead of him trying to use his hopefulness to break down the cynicism that has come about. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. Will Picard's hope be vindicated in the end in some fashion.


Jason

 

[The Old Mixer]

At times it even feels like the show doesn't really respect Picard beyond pitty as if everything Picard use to believe in was a lie.

I think that's a tad harsh. I think the idea is to bring Picard down to earth and humanize him. Show what he's made of when he's not at the top of the game with all the advantages.

 

[AlanC9]

The overall state of the Federation/Starfleet and other parts of the galaxy, the graphic violence, so many characters having some huge regrets or a sad past which they still suffer under. Picard also has some illness which will kill him soon. It is just very far away from rainbows and sunshine.

Is the Federation proper actually in bad shape? It looks to bedoing pretty well to me. The rest of the galaxy has some crapholes, yeah, but such was always the case.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Is the Federation proper actually in bad shape? It looks to bedoing pretty well to me. The rest of the galaxy has some crapholes, yeah, but such was always the case.

The unexplained Cylon attack on Mars was pretty bad.

 

[Donker]

I honestly just believe at this point the writers don't actually get Star Trek or Gene's vision for the future and I think it's actually deeply rooted in the political outlook of the writers and Showrunners.

Gene blatantly had a Socialist-Communistic vision of the future and wanted to explore that with TNG and TMP, there were a lot of new age ideas that Gene also wanted to explore in TMP which didn't make it to the final cut, but have been watered down a bit for TNG. Even if B&B didn't hold Gene's political views, I think they probably understood it and thus the heart of those views continued through all the shows under their watch. This is why the writers on Voyager who resented writing for Star Trek, still I think captured the positive outlook of Star Trek, because Berman was there to keep them in line. (Genes Communistic views in the 70s/80s were also confirmed by Marjel)

The political outlook of these shows is just inherently different and it was most obvious on Discovery. They take a far more Centrist Liberal outlook on politics and thus you get in Discovery the Federation making the same arguments for violent, brutal regime change you would get from someone like Hillary Clinton or Samantha Power in their justification for what they did in Libya, Syria or Yemen. You also just don't get that positive vision of a future. The future presented in these new Trek shows just seems to be Neoliberalism 2.0, which again plays into the "End of History" worldview of Centrist Liberals when it comes to Neoliberalism. The "progressive politics and philosophy" of Discovery and Picard seems to be literally nothing more than extremely shallow, performist identity politics done purely for aesthetics "Oh look we have a gay and a black woman, we're so progressive!", which again, to me screams centrist liberalism.

Honestly I was disappointed, but overall meh on the lack of imagination and vision of how humanity is portrayed in Discovery because it was the TOS era. But on Picard how the Federation is being presented is extremely grating and frankly depressing. It's not only that as well, both Disco and Picard seems like it's more inspired by Mass Effect than it is Star Trek itself, with Star Trek only really being used for branding. The core DNA of the franchise has completely changed. Honestly the only Star Trek since ENT that has seemingly really captured the positive vision of Star Trek was Yorktown in Star Trek Beyond.

 

[Hythlodeus]

Gene's vision

Bingo!

 

[fireproof78]

My bingo card just broke.

 

[Donker]

Bingo!

What bingo is that? That you guys can't actually address criticisms of these new shows without instantly resorting to derailing and ad hominems?

Seriously this nonsense was tiring after you lot defended S1 of Disco as the greatest piece of Star Trek writing and television ever until suddenly S2 was the greatest piece of Star Trek writing and television that somehow fixed the "Flaws" that you all denied existed while S1 aired.

Also Gene's vision is a real thing, it's one of the major draws of Star Trek for huge portions of the fanbase and the constant lame attacks against his character that are repeatedly made here don't change that.