Well, its nice to know I can still surprise people.
Star Trek Picard is not Star Trek
- Thread starter AnotherGalaxys
- Start date
Well all stories are the result of circumstances.
If we got a thinly veiled Vasquez aboard the Enterprise who disobeyed her Captain's orders, and was a trash talking, Spanglish-speaking Latina I'd be critical of that too. It doesn't matter who came up with it.
Roddenberry didn't come up with the Vulcan nerve pinch, apparently it was Nimoy.
It was far superior to "Dawn," that much is sure. At least "Darmok(TNG)" tried some daring and somewhat original things. The ENT episode was decent enough but it was basically that movie on a rocky planet with scorching sunlight and a far more limited series of sets.
I'm not so sure about that. It could be, I'll grant, but it could also have been inspired by any number of other similar preexisting stories. The episode sites such a mythological story within itself, self-referentially as a plot point.
The UFO episode "Survival" from 1970 has a similar idea of two aliens who cannot communicate learning to cooperate, although, if you stack it up against TNG episodes, "Survival" plays much more like "The Enemy" than "Darmok."
I agree. Full disclosure - for that it's one of my favorite TNG episodes.
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The way Narek is being treated by his sister really reminds me of the very unhealthy and manipulative relationship between Zuko and his sister Azula on Avatar: The Last Airbender, but it somehow never occurred to me that Chabon might be ripping off a cartoon, even if it's a quite successful one. I also reacted to all the comparisons between Picard and Luke in The Last Jedi with a disinterested shrug because I simply couldn't see that connection beyond the most superficial basics. But generally, if A reminds me of B, I usually just feel pleased to have found a relation.
We don't really have anything in TOS that contradicts Merik's thoughts on the matter. I do imagine that there are other "starships" though I doubt they have the capabilities of the Constitution-class, as both a science/exploration platform and outright warmaker. We know that the Enterprise was on the front line of both the Neutral Zone in "Balance of Terror", and at Organia in "Errand of Mercy", we know that the Constitution class was serving as the testbed of the M-5 experiments in "The Ultimate Computer", and the Enterprise was seen as quite the prize in "The Enterprise Incident". Just from my perspective, there's no doubt that the Connies were intended to be the top of the line in TOS.
Of course, part of it was that it just made good use for the Connie to be top of the line and involved in every big engagement as it simplified the production process for TOS.
And in Bread and Circuses Uhura is very familiar with Christian beliefs. Even beyond the obvious implication that she might be Christian herself or least know people who are, her lines are written in such a way that she literally expects everyone on the bridge to immediately understand what she's talking about without any further context. That's not something that can be explained away with 'historical interest'. So I'd say there pretty much have to still be practicing Christians somewhere in the Federation and in large enough numbers that the average Starfleet officer usually has at least as much of a basic understanding of Christianity as the average American today has of Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism.
I'm not so sure about that. It could be, I'll grant, but it could also have been inspired by any number of other similar preexisting stories. The episodes sites such a mythological story within itself, self-referentially as a plot point.
The UFO episode "Survival" from 1970 has a similar idea of two aliens who cannot communicate learning to cooperate, although, if you stack it up against TNG episodes, "Survival" plays much more like "The Enemy" than "Darmok."
I agree. Full disclosure - for that it's one of my favorite TNG episodes.
The Enemy is always the first episode I think of when people talk about Trek doing Enemy Mine. Granted it didn't have the communications barrier, but everything else (on the planet) seemed spot on. Even the environment. Not to mention the name.
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Translation: the criteria you outline in a post are not important when you have been debunked.
Aw common,
Picard?
What would Kirk make from scrap he found on the ground to defeat the Gorn? Oh.. missing an n.Can we ban "canon," too? Pretty please!
Isn't canon usually made from left behind scrap?
Yeah i saw enemy mine for the first time after seeing the enemy and was like "wow TNG straight ripped that off"
I guess it was more of a homage, but still.
Enemy Mine is itself based on a much repeated trope: two people trapped on a deserted island, or otherwise isolated, who come to understand one another. The two that come to my mind are the Twilight Zone episode, "Two," and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison.
Enemy Mine was based on a stunningly good short story by Barry Longyear. It appeared in the September, 1979 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction and was far better than the movie that spun from it. "Kiz da yuomeen, Shizumat!"
Of course, I am not claiming that Enemy Mine is not without creativity. However, it takes familiar elements as frameworks for its story, not unlike Darmok. Creativity does not rest in make every element in the original, and indeed, it often is found in how the work relates to those that came before it.
If you change PIC to a 4:3 aspect ratio, keep the camera completely steady, make the civilian clothing look terrible, and have Dennis McCarthy, Jay Chattaway, or Ron Jones compose the musical score, but keep the writing exactly the same (just replace "fuck" with "foul" ala Leah Brahms)... then the people who are saying "It's not Star Trek!" would be defending it to the core.
I wonder if CBS would pay to de-res the episodes.
Other than characters who are synthetic I'm not seeing much of a connection between Picard and Blade Runner. Maybe there is one with BR2049, but I actually don't recall much about that film.
Let's also admit that Picard has more going on than a binary relationship between biological and technological lifeforms. It also includes other types of outsiders: cybernetic and refugees, putting four types of beings in relation to one another. (I also believe that Picard's dismissal of Asimov was more than casual.)
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