• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Star Trek Picard is not Star Trek

Can I be completely honest for a moment?
If it wasn't for the smoking and vaping, I'd probably enjoy Picard. Sure there are other elements I have some problems with, but I could live with that if we didn't have a cigar chomping captain and a vaping....whatever Raffi does... as two of the main characters.

I am 100% aware that that's a "Me Problem" I'm mentally ill (I'm serious, I actually am, I spent the last four years in an out of mental institutions), nicotine smoke is a very bad trigger for me due to my personal history and I can especially not abide it on TV or in Movies (especially not in a SciFi setting. If it was set in historical times, maybe), that's why I can't enjoy the show.

Form what I've managed to watch (and form what I've followed through friends who watch and through reading here), the Show isn't half bad. I don't have any problems with the Federation being portrayed as flawed, I don't have any problems with a person in the future living in trailer (it seemed like that's where she wanted to live,and hey, nice big trailer in the desert without any noisy neighbors, doesn't look that bad or poor to me...), I don't have any problem with Picard being called "JL" (it seemed natural considering their relationship and Raffi's personality, Beverly and Deanna both called Picard "Jean-Luc") I don't have any problem with what happened to Icheb or how it happened (or how Seven reacted to it, that was actually quite badass honestly and understandable) and I think that Elnor is pretty interesting and had a hella cool design (in general I think this show is doing a lot of good for Romulans) I even think that a "fall of the Utopia" is a natural point to take the Franchise after the Dominion War. Utopia is easier to achieve than to maintain.
I still think it's Star Trek, arguably quite a more in line with the 90s shows than Discovery and maybe even Enterprise was. Even in TNG they showed that Starfleet can be shady and that there was a sort of sketchy underbelly to Federation society, the only difference it that the show dives into that like neither TNG nor DS9 could because their characters were still Starfleet.
And honestly Picard isn't even *that* dark. Sure there's bad and unsettling stuff happening, but some people act like it's Battle Star Galactica... which it really isn't

I just can't enjoy the show for very personal reasons. I'm not saying the show runners are bad or evil for including smoking in their show. They have the right. I do think it's unnecessary and that their "justifications" are boolpoop, but they have the right to include whatever they want in their show.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. Just wanted to get that off my chest because it's been there since I tried watching Picard and just to make clear that I'm not a "hater" and don't decry Picard as "not Star Trek" I just have very personal, reasons why I don't like it.

Personal reasons for not liking something are certainly valid.
 
Now that I've actually caught up mostly and seen the first five episodes and I don't have to rely on other people's descriptions oh, I can definitively say that the card IS Star Trek.

As I've said in other threads on this, primarily regarding Discovery, Star trek is composed of two halves.it's the stuff that makes it different from other science fiction. First, the federation needs to have a utopian ish society. And Starfleet needs to be part of that. Second, it needs to have stories with meat and meaning. Not all of them hey, what's up. And Picard taps into the both of those.nearly everything we're seeing right now in Picard is tapping back into season 3 of The Next Generation. This extends from The Measure of a Man, The Offspring, and Best of Both Worlds. And it goes all the way through to Star Trek Nemesis. It has that utopian component that was key to Gene's vision. It's digging deep into meaningful stories. It has a message to say. And like most good science fiction, it has some pretty good action adventure as well.

I have been very hard on Discovery because I have not seen that slice of utopia the Gene instilled in the original series. It has plenty of the action-adventure that NBC wanted at the time oh, but not the other stuff. It did do a good job with addressing social justice with casting and characters and the like, but not that key piece that Gene saw that humans could be better. The dream that we would be better. To me without that it's not Star Trek. And in Picard we have a character who is filled with that dream. You see it in every episode. Sure the stories are darker there's some swearing there some gore, but at its core it's the same. We saw gore on Next Generation on TV and there were plenty of darker episodes. But this is the same Picard that we saw in Best of Both Worlds and The Inner Light. He's on the same sort of quest. The stakes might be higher, might not.

I still vehemently maintain that Discovery is a reboot... at best. But so far Picard has proven to me that it is Star Trek.
 
If I could hate Voyager, that would be an improvement, then it would manage to evoke at least some sort of an emotion in me. But it is too bland and boring to even be properly hated.

Any New Yorkers here? I remember the Village Voice review when VOY debuted. The tl;dr was that the show was really boring but the reviewer was going to watch it anyway. The headline: "Phasers on Stun."
 
I enjoyed Star Trek 09 and its sequels, especially Beyond, as well as Picard far far far far more than anything in Voyager and Enterprise. The only stuff I enjoyed in Enterprise was the later seasons where they seemed to basically enjoy being Star Trek for about 4 or 5 episodes.
 
I still vehemently maintain that Discovery is a reboot...

There was a time when TNG was considered 'not star trek'

Discovery is Star Trek. It's just Star Trek that you don't like. There were plenty of examples of the Discovery crew 'being better', the entire final episode is about them preventing the Federation from committing an act of genocide. And before you say that the Federation of TNG would never do that, Starfleet put Picard under orders to use the virus that was proposed to be used on Hugh to wipe out the collective when the opportunity next presented itself.

You don't have to like Discovery, and I certainly don't think Discovery is perfect, but to claim that it is somehow not Star Trek when it's done nothing that other series haven't done is ridiculous.
 
Tell that to the fanficcers at places like Archive of our Own. :guffaw:Unlike our fanfic forum here, which tends heavily towards the classic ship-and-crew formula.

Oh, I agree. But, cross my heart, I've been hearing folks insist that sex and relationships (which they often dismiss as "soap opera") doesn't belong in STAR TREK for decades now . . . at the same that erotic Trek fan-fic has been a hot ticket as well. :)
 
Last edited:
I must say, the positivity for this show I'm seeing on these forums is really bizarre. It isn't at all what I would expect from watching the show itself. I can only make sense of it by assuming there's a level of self-selection bias here. STD and STP are pretty much the main considerations for subscribing to CBS All Access so this forum primarily consists of people who like the show enough to pay to watch it. The nay-sayers are people who are just committed to seeing it through or, like me, simply know someone with a CBS All Access account. That could explain why youtubers who claim to be old school Star Trek fans reviewing the show seem to hate it because their semi-obligated to watch and review it to provide content for their channels. My favorite example is RedLetterMedia. Their Picard reviews should be at the top of this list: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ_TJFLc25JSmtBkyIYqgD5KabbU57yzY. They have some Discovery reviews as well.

I see people defending this show by pretending it's par for the course by making all sorts of faulty comparisons to the previous series and misrepresenting the nature of the backlash they received. I suspect there are also some people who don't care if a story is properly set up, adheres to any sort of internal logic, has consistent characterization, etc. If the writers want us to accept something that happens on screen, however contrived, that's good enough for them.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dix
I must say, the positivity for this show I'm seeing on these forums is really bizarre. It isn't at all what I would expect from watching the show itself. I can only make sense of it by assuming there's a level of self-selection bias here. STD and STP are pretty much the main considerations for subscribing to CBS All Access so this forum primarily consists of people who like the show enough to pay to watch it. The nay-sayers are people who are just committed to seeing it through or, like me, simply know someone with a CBS All Access account. That could explain why youtubers who claim to be old school Star Trek fans reviewing the show seem to hate it because their semi-obligated to watch and review it to provide content for their channels. My favorite example is RedLetterMedia. Their Picard reviews should be at the top of this list: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ_TJFLc25JSmtBkyIYqgD5KabbU57yzY. They have some Discovery reviews as well.

I see people defending this show by pretending it's par for the course by making all sorts of faulty comparisons to the previous series and misrepresenting the nature of the backlash they received. I suspect there are also some people who don't care if a story is properly set up, adheres to any sort of internal logic, has consistent characterization, etc. If the writers want us to accept something that happens on screen, however contrived, that's good enough for them.
Nope
 
I must say, the positivity for this show I'm seeing on these forums is really bizarre. It isn't at all what I would expect from watching the show itself. I can only make sense of it by assuming there's a level of self-selection bias here. STD and STP are pretty much the main considerations for subscribing to CBS All Access so this forum primarily consists of people who like the show enough to pay to watch it. The nay-sayers are people who are just committed to seeing it through or, like me, simply know someone with a CBS All Access account. That could explain why youtubers who claim to be old school Star Trek fans reviewing the show seem to hate it because their semi-obligated to watch and review it to provide content for their channels. My favorite example is RedLetterMedia. Their Picard reviews should be at the top of this list: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ_TJFLc25JSmtBkyIYqgD5KabbU57yzY. They have some Discovery reviews as well.

I see people defending this show by pretending it's par for the course by making all sorts of faulty comparisons to the previous series and misrepresenting the nature of the backlash they received. I suspect there are also some people who don't care if a story is properly set up, adheres to any sort of internal logic, has consistent characterization, etc. If the writers want us to accept something that happens on screen, however contrived, that's good enough for them.
Bender laughing, Luke's 'everything's wrong' speech, so many gifs and memes to chose from but the result is the same with:

No.
 
I must say, the positivity for this show I'm seeing on these forums is really bizarre. It isn't at all what I would expect from watching the show itself. I can only make sense of it by assuming there's a level of self-selection bias here. STD and STP are pretty much the main considerations for subscribing to CBS All Access so this forum primarily consists of people who like the show enough to pay to watch it. The nay-sayers are people who are just committed to seeing it through or, like me, simply know someone with a CBS All Access account. That could explain why youtubers who claim to be old school Star Trek fans reviewing the show seem to hate it because their semi-obligated to watch and review it to provide content for their channels. My favorite example is RedLetterMedia. Their Picard reviews should be at the top of this list: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ_TJFLc25JSmtBkyIYqgD5KabbU57yzY. They have some Discovery reviews as well.

I see people defending this show by pretending it's par for the course by making all sorts of faulty comparisons to the previous series and misrepresenting the nature of the backlash they received. I suspect there are also some people who don't care if a story is properly set up, adheres to any sort of internal logic, has consistent characterization, etc. If the writers want us to accept something that happens on screen, however contrived, that's good enough for them.

Or perhaps it’s as simple as people having a different opinion than yours.
 
I must say, the positivity for this show I'm seeing on these forums is really bizarre. It isn't at all what I would expect from watching the show itself. I can only make sense of it by assuming there's a level of self-selection bias here. STD and STP are pretty much the main considerations for subscribing to CBS All Access so this forum primarily consists of people who like the show enough to pay to watch it. The nay-sayers are people who are just committed to seeing it through or, like me, simply know someone with a CBS All Access account. That could explain why youtubers who claim to be old school Star Trek fans reviewing the show seem to hate it because their semi-obligated to watch and review it to provide content for their channels. My favorite example is RedLetterMedia. Their Picard reviews should be at the top of this list: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ_TJFLc25JSmtBkyIYqgD5KabbU57yzY. They have some Discovery reviews as well.

I see people defending this show by pretending it's par for the course by making all sorts of faulty comparisons to the previous series and misrepresenting the nature of the backlash they received. I suspect there are also some people who don't care if a story is properly set up, adheres to any sort of internal logic, has consistent characterization, etc. If the writers want us to accept something that happens on screen, however contrived, that's good enough for them.

Excessive and convoluted rationalizing is always so adorable.
 
I must say, the positivity for this show I'm seeing on these forums is really bizarre. It isn't at all what I would expect from watching the show itself. I can only make sense of it by assuming there's a level of self-selection bias here. STD and STP are pretty much the main considerations for subscribing to CBS All Access so this forum primarily consists of people who like the show enough to pay to watch it. The nay-sayers are people who are just committed to seeing it through or, like me, simply know someone with a CBS All Access account. That could explain why youtubers who claim to be old school Star Trek fans reviewing the show seem to hate it because their semi-obligated to watch and review it to provide content for their channels. My favorite example is RedLetterMedia. Their Picard reviews should be at the top of this list: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ_TJFLc25JSmtBkyIYqgD5KabbU57yzY. They have some Discovery reviews as well.

I see people defending this show by pretending it's par for the course by making all sorts of faulty comparisons to the previous series and misrepresenting the nature of the backlash they received. I suspect there are also some people who don't care if a story is properly set up, adheres to any sort of internal logic, has consistent characterization, etc. If the writers want us to accept something that happens on screen, however contrived, that's good enough for them.

Nah, dude. We're just a community of Trekkies/ers. Some of us love these new shows. Some of us have mixed feelings. Some of us dislike them, but we're a community based on respect and our shared love for Star Trek.

We don't come here to do drive-by insults to say how stupid/deluded we think everyone else is, because that would be lame.
 
I must say, the positivity for this show I'm seeing on these forums is really bizarre. It isn't at all what I would expect from watching the show itself. I can only make sense of it by assuming there's a level of self-selection bias here. STD and STP are pretty much the main considerations for subscribing to CBS All Access so this forum primarily consists of people who like the show enough to pay to watch it. The nay-sayers are people who are just committed to seeing it through or, like me, simply know someone with a CBS All Access account. That could explain why youtubers who claim to be old school Star Trek fans reviewing the show seem to hate it because their semi-obligated to watch and review it to provide content for their channels. My favorite example is RedLetterMedia. Their Picard reviews should be at the top of this list: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ_TJFLc25JSmtBkyIYqgD5KabbU57yzY. They have some Discovery reviews as well.

I see people defending this show by pretending it's par for the course by making all sorts of faulty comparisons to the previous series and misrepresenting the nature of the backlash they received. I suspect there are also some people who don't care if a story is properly set up, adheres to any sort of internal logic, has consistent characterization, etc. If the writers want us to accept something that happens on screen, however contrived, that's good enough for them.

I have my problems with both PIC and DSC. I don't let either off the hook without scrutiny and repeated analysis for consistency and entertainment value as well as adherence to continuity. That said: you're wrong.

I like PIC in spite of its faults. You're generalizing and that's one way to get off on the wrong foot with people.
 
Or perhaps it’s as simple as people having a different opinion than yours.
Yeah, I love these posters who cannot back up their own opinion (except for "XY/ youtube/ millions of fans think the same! See!"), so they need to discredit those of others. This behaviour i all over the internet. In rea life, you wouldn't get away with it. This one is almost semi-original because it's basically about "cognitive dissonance".

Maybe we should collect all these "arguments" in the first post of these threads. Let's see, off the top of my head... (Of course, everyone who dislikes the show is above any such influences and motivations.)

1. stupid/ ignorant
2. paid by CBS
3. cognitive dissonance (they pay for it, so it must be good!)
4. They don't know what Trek is/ Gene's Vision etc.

What else?
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top