Spoilers Star Trek - Picard: The Last Best Hope by Una McCormack Review Thread

Why can't we just get back to exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where nobody we know has gone before?

(And leave full-season and multi-season arcs to JMS and the other nice folks who gave us B5.)

 

Perhaps that's what Discovery will do next season. Or Lower Decks, or the rumored Pike series. There's a lot of Trek coming our way; it'd be pointless for every show to be the same.

Except that all of JMS's attempts to do B5 sequels kinda sucked.

 

1996 called; it wants its post about DS9 back.

 

Attempts? There was more than one?
I actually rather liked Crusade, and thought it should have at least had its first season produced and aired in its entirety.

 

There was the Legends of the Rangers pilot movie in 2002 and the direct-to-video The Lost Tales anthology pilot in 2007. Neither was well-received.

And yeah, Crusade wasn't that bad, and a lot of its problems were due to network meddling. But it wasn't on the level of B5, and JMS has never been able to capture lightning in a bottle a second time, except in the novels.

 

Granted.

 

Another thought I just had... The Last Best Hope is a well-written book, I don't mean to imply otherwise. In that regard it's better (IMO) than the Picard: Countdown comic.

However, because the comic introduced us to Raffi, and more importantly, Laris & Zhaban, and helped me understand their relationships with Picard, I feel like, in a way, I got more out of those three 20 page issues than I did a 300 page novel,

 

I actually kind of liked Legend of the Rangers, at least its characters and their interactions. The main plot, and the threat of "The Hand" that "makes the Shadows look like nothing," was utterly pants, though. But as for why it died when it did, the problem wasn't that it was reviled. Much like the Doctor Who TV movie, it actually did well in the ratings on one coast, but was up against a major sports event on the other, so the overall outlook wasn't good enough for the network to want to produce more.

Likewise, IIRC, The Lost Tales was actually well-received by fans, and sold better than WB had anticipated. But the studio's response to this was to offer JMS less money to do another installment rather than more, so he declined. It wasn't about the quality of the story, at all.

Of course, none of that is to say that either was of Babylon 5-quality. They simply weren't. But to say they weren't "well-received" is too absolute, and somewhat inaccurate, of a statement, especially in the case of The Lost Tales.

 

After watching the first Lost Tales, I couldn't imagine them trying to do ones with less money, it already looked like it had about a $100 budget to begin with.

Because very, very, very few shows do stand alone episodes these days. The only shows I can think off hand that do standalone episodes are The Orville and a few sitcoms.
There was no way Trek was going to go back to standalone Planet of the Week stories, when they are waiting them to be prestige streaming series that can compete with things like Stranger Things, The Man in the High Castle, or Handmaid's Tale, which tend to have some of the biggest, most complex serialized stories.

 

Unfortunately, thus far, their attempts to do big, serialized stories have ended up dull and uninspired.

 

To you, perhaps, but that feeling is far from universal, so please, try not to speak as if you represent all of fandom.

 

Whenever you say something is good, do you always preface it with it only being your opinion? I seriously doubt it. Of course anything I post is my opinion.

 

I finished reading this book last night and thought it was well written.I didn't like the F bombs in the book.

 

Actually, for the most part, I do, when I'm writing online, for just this reason. An "I think that" or a "for me, this was" can go a long way to better communicating tone, but it's part of my natural speech pattern anyway. It's staved off a lot of people getting mad because it's clearly personal, rather than potentially sounding like I was telling them they were wrong for feeling different than I

 

Meh, if one is posting something, it should be obvious what they are posting is their opinion. But I guess Trek fans are so enslaved to the idea of Canon that they can not canonically accept one is stating their opinion unless it is canonically stated on screen that it is indeed their opinion. Which seems a bit silly. Canonically IMO, of course.

 

Yes, it *should* be obviously just one person's opinion, but so often people do feel that their opinion is actually "fact," or is so universally-held that it might as well be. How many times have we seen people with the "true fans would agree with me, so if you don't you're not a real fan!" attitude? It's the internet, that attitude is everywhere, especially on social media. So over the years, it's become habit for me to make it clear I *don't* think that way, especially when I'm being critical of something someone else is invested in.

 

JD didn't offer a view

Statement 1) "Because very, very, very few shows do stand alone episodes these days. The only shows I can think off hand that do standalone episodes are The Orville and a few sitcoms."

I think that's objectively true

Statement 2) "There was no way Trek was going to go back to standalone Planet of the Week stories, when they are waiting them to be prestige streaming series that can compete"

Perhaps more of an opinion, but not one that JD said he agreed or disagreed with. It does seem that Discovery and Picard, like it or not, have taken that view to heart.

Lower Decks might not, but I was watching a fairly recent scooby doo recently (kids), and even that has ongoing story threads throughout the season.

IMO, a 24 episode arc like in many series of Arrowverse get tiring. Drop them down to overlapping 8-12 episode stories and it's much better.

 

TJ was responding to BillJ, not to JD. (Lots of Js around here...)

 

Thank you, Christopher, you beat me to it.

 

That doesn't make it a good thing. Personally, about the only current television I pay any attention to any more is Jeopardy. Everything else strikes me as one "monument to Kitman's Law" after another.