Spoilers Let’s talk about the destruction of Trek utopia…

While in today's Star Trek, the stories don't value much life, killing violently is the norm and I don't think the stun setting exists anymore. There was a time when killing was a last resort while in Kurtzman's Trek "Killing" is the only resort!

 

This is just confused. Stun setting are used often in DSC and PIC. It seems that the PIC showrunners expected too much of the fans, though. While Seven switched to stun rather than massacring the guards in "Stardust City Rag," as evidence by the beam colors, this was too subtle for many viewers. (And utterly unreadable for anyone who hadn't watched DSC.)

 

This thread is about Picard not DISCO, my comments was about the series so far in general, AlanC9. 7 vaporized the main bad guy in the episode, there was no restraint there with her BTW.

 

Bull.

 

I don't think there's much Star Trek in this series.

 

Bjayzl was a monster who deserved to be put down like one. I think seven went easy on her. She made Jay's death quick, something never afforded to her victims

 

The human adventure is star trek:

 

And back then, somebody older than you thought your music sounded like nonsensical racket too. Remember that guy? Don't be that guy.

 

I think a lot of modern music sucks. I would also put Green Day and Weezer up against any band from the '80s and my childhood for consistent quality and how fun they are to listen to.

New isn't always bad and old isn't always good.

 

I really think you guys bitching about how Star Trek has "changed" really need to go back and watch TOS.

In TOS, it was a miracle if only one red shirt died. Kirk & Co didn't always have the "right" answers to a situation, but they did the best they could; and sometimes things worked out for the best, and sometimes things didn't. And usually after an episode where a number of crewman died; Kirk, Spock, and McCoy usually ended the episode with some off humor, and a big laugh.
^^^
That was quintessential Star Trek.

 

A lot of older music sucked too, it's just not remembered. We tend to hold up the best things of a certain period - music, movies, books, cars, architecture, etc - and forget about all the crappy stuff. And there's ALWAYS lots and lots of crappy stuff.

 

Case in point: the glories of "Must See TV" on Thursday nights on NBC in the '90s. At best two of those shows were worth watching. Three on a good Thursday.

 

I agree with both of these things, and I think one answers the other. To me, one of the pleasures of Picard has been that it sits with the consequences of Starfleet decision-making, which Trek in general hasn't. I mean, TNG was optimistic in a way I adore, but it was often an unearned optimism made possible by the nature of episodic television, which allowed stories to ignore things like imperialism, political fallout, and other complexities when the credits rolled.

In contrast, I find that this series earns its optimism. Picard takes eight episodes to explore politics, culture, and trauma in the wake of the kind of Starfleet decision-making that we've seen so many times throughout the franchise's history. Only then do we get to a point where Picard is allowed to wax poetic about "openness, optimism, and the spirit of curiosity."

 

And when "back in my day" meant the '50s, '60s, and '70s, I wasn't around for it, so I couldn't really counter anything they said. But now that "back in my day" means the '80s, '90s, and '00s, now I can counter it. Now I actually can call them on it.

People who hate Picard love "Stardust City Rag", despite what they say, because it gives them what they want. They want to say "Picard is this, this, and that!", and all these horrible things, and they'll pin up this episode as their Prime Exhibit. No other episodes of Picard exist, because they mess up the argument they want to have.

How nice and pleasent Riker and Troi's planet they're living on is, or the interactions between Soji and Kestra, mess up their argument about how "horrible" and "violent" Picard is because they don't want to admit or acknowledge that the show has any other type of qualities. How slow the first three episodes are flies in the face of the non-stop action they love to paint Kurtzman Trek as. Picard being upset at what Starfleet has become flies in the face of the image they want to paint how bad everyone is now. If he were as horrible as they like to pretend he is, Picard wouldn't be upset about any of this at all. He wouldn't have quit Starfleet on principle at all because they're trying to paint the image of a man who no longer has any principles whatsoever. They deliberately ignore qualities of the show that don't match the simplified criticism they want to level against the show and hope that no one who actually likes Picard will point it out.

Let me ask those people something. (Turning around directly to them) Why do you think someone like myself would like either Discovery or Picard? Do I strike you as someone who would blindly like a show that I honestly thought had no merit? Do I strike you as some sort of bottom-feeder lowest-common denominator, no-IQ, "turn your brain off" type of viewer? Let me assure you that I'm not. I'm absolutely none of those things. If I thought either of these shows were total shit, I would not defend them at all. I don't do this for my health. I legitimately think you've misread these shows.

 

I was a child of the 1980s and early 1990s. For every MacGyver, The Golden Girls, Perfect Strangers and Amazing Stories on television there was an AfterMASH, Cop Rock, Joanie Loves Chachi and Small & Frye.

That last one was basically a show about Darren McGavin solving crimes as a private detective with a sidekick shrunken by a scientific experiment gone haywire. The sidekick could shrink or grow back to normal size without warning.

 

Untrue.

Picard didn't want the Romulans who attacked him in his home dead. Only stunned, disabled, presumably so they could be brought to justice. Those Romulans chose to kill themselves.

Picard himself chastised Elnor who killed that Romulan and told him not to do it again. Elnor is a teenage kid who doesn't know any better. Picard was most certainly not in favor it, though.

Rizzo went on a killing spree on the Artifact in cold blood, but she's a villain. That's what villains do. In both: the "good old days" and now.

Seven getting revenge on what's-her-name was out of passion. After how they brutalized Icheb before killing him. If they hadn't tortured Icheb, she won't have gone after them like she did. That's hot-blooded and thus not the same as cold-blooded.

For the record, though: I'm not too thrilled with Jurati killing Maddox. So I'm not going to defend it. I kept hoping Oh did something to her and that she wasn't acting of her own free will. But it looks like, unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

 

You have terrible taste and I don't want to be your friend.

I find this statement really puzzling. It's a bit like saying, "Yeah, Hamilton is a good show, but there's little else besides the musical." Or like saying, "Yeah, The Godfather is a great film, but there's little else besides the movie." Or, "Yeah, M. Butterfly is a great show, but there's little else besides the play."

Like, Picard is its serial storyline. That's the point. Season One of Star Trek: Picard is essentially a novel for television, with a beginning, middle, and end that are marked by unity of story.

Serialized television is just a fundamentally different genre than episodic television; each has things it can accomplish that the other can't, and it's not really fair to either genre to demand that they do things they can't.

Star Trek, and, yes, art in general, has always been political. TOS did not have half-white, half-black aliens in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" or Kirk and the Klingons waging a proxy war on a pre-warp planet in "A Private Little War" because it wasn't taking a side. ("Battlefield:" "racism bad." "Private Little War:" Pro-Vietnam War. Yes, TOS took a side, and it didn't always take the right side.)

And yes, art and storytelling have always been political. Henry V is one of the greatest plays in English-language theatre. It's also a piece of Tudor propaganda on par with anything ever put out by North Korea in terms of how it promotes a cult of personality for a political leader. Like, Henry V literally launched a war of aggression against France that gets thousands of people killed for his own personal enrichment and power-lust, but that play wants us to think of it as a good thing.

Hell, the very first motion picture blockbuster was a film that depicted the Ku Klux Klan as noble modern aristocrats defending "civilized society" from scary black men. (Yes, this is a political stance. It is racist and evil, and it is also a political stance.) The biggest names in early-to-mid 20th Century visaul art were mostly social democrats, socialists, and communists like Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera whose works reflected their beliefs. Superman comics were essentially a deliberate attempt to use fascist iconography for anti-fascist political messages. Even Norman fucking Rockwell painted The Problem We All Live With.

I am so goddamn tired of this idea that art didn't used to be political. It was always political; you just didn't pay attention.

I honestly always thought of Earth's position in early ENT as being more akin to the attitudes seen in countries trying to free themselves from imperial or neoimperial rule. I don't think Earth in ENT is the United States under Bush; I think Earth in ENT is more like Bolivia under Evo Morales or the D.R. Congo under Lumumba, escaping from under the thumb of American or Belgian (Vulcan) hegemony.

Pure nonsense. If anything, modern Trek values life more because it doesn't pretend that people who die violently are nobodies whose lives don't matter the way TOS so often treated Enterprise security officers.

TOS literally killed so many supporting characters that the term "Redshirt" was invented to describe its systematic dehumanization of supporting characters who would die violently in order to manipulate the audience into feeling tension for the primary characters.

PIC at least has the decency not to pretend that violence is something that can be sanitized or bowdlerized.

 

Well she was brainwashed by Oh's mind meld, though it was more like propaganda than making her an automaton acting against her will. And she's facing consequences of her choices both in her own mind and with the society. Which is a point for Picard, in previous Treks incidents like this were often shrugged off, "she was brainwashed, she wasn't responsible for her actions, let's forget it and move forward."

 

Like sloppiness around "Mary sue"?

 

Seven killed one person who couldn't be brought to justice any other way, yep. You did see the TNG ep. The Most Toys, right?