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

[Sci]

Haven't they played the "it's hard to tell them apart" card on multiple occasions when trying to pick a Vulcan out of a bunch of Romulans?
They mention the subtle differences between Vulcans and Romulans in the very episode

And mentions Vulcans being on board

And the compatibility issue

Nonsense gobbledeguck plot contrivance to create a situation where Worf is the only character who can save a Romulan without having to construct a story taking place away from the standing Enterprise sets. Thankfully all rendered irrelevant by DIS S3 firmly establishing that Vulcans and Romulans are the same species.

 

[fireproof78]

I just took it as a poorly constructed blood donor analogy. Or like how pig parts can be used in humans, if I recall correctly.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I just took it as a poorly constructed blood donor analogy. Or like how pig parts can be used in humans, if I recall correctly.

Yep, the dialog/gobbledegook established that many humanoids are compatible in certain areas. It's just a matter of finding the right two humanoids.. A wider range of possible donors might have found an Andorian, a Cardassian or even a Romulan that matched. It also supports the idea than Vulcans and Romulans are very similar.

 

[cooleddie74]

As far back as 1967 we learned that Rigellians and Vulcans could share blood and were similar in biology but not similar enough for a Rigellian to donate the blood that would save Ambassador Sarek. Trek's been playing the "humanoid races are similar enough in many ways to even share blood" card since TOS.

 

[Nerys Myk]

In my head canon (some) Rigelians are an off shoot of the Vulcan race, but have never used a bowl to cut their hair.

 

[cooleddie74]

Given there are at least three inhabited planets in the Rigel system they're probably from Rigel X seen in ENT. The seventh is the pre-industrial planet with the Kaylar and the twelfth is the arid mining planet with only Federation miners and their settlements.

Intelligent life gets around in that system.

 

[dupersuper]

I'm sorry, but no, you didn't watch him "grow up from a teen."

In all, Intiraymi appeared as Icheb in 11 episodes over the course of one year, three months.

That's an important amount of time in your teens.

You did not "watch him grow up from a teen." You watched a 21 year old man playing a character already in his late teens become a 23 year old man playing that character still in his late teens.

The actors age doesn't factor in to the emotional impact of the stories. At least not for me.

It wasn't entertaining for me either! Art is not always about "entertainment." Sometimes it's about deriving aesthetic pleasure from an artistic confrontation with difficult or upsetting themes that causes us to think about our values and our relationships.

I would barely call Picard season 1 art...

And Thad was part of Will's, Deanna's, and Kestra's backstories when we meet them in PIC! It's no different from Will's mother or Deanne's father both being dead already when we first met them in "Encounter at Farpoint."

Of course it's different. We hadn't connected to Will and Deannas dead parents for 15 years of adventures before jumping forward to the Enterprise D.

No, killing Thad is not the same as Jimmy Olsen. Jimmy Olsen is a character who is intended as a vital and active part of Clark's life and the Superman ensemble cast. Thad is like Jor-El and Lara: He is a character meant to be already dead, important because of how his death has impacted the actual main characters.

Kids in fridges...

Now you're moving the goalposts. Originally you were just complaining about PIC depicting Will and Deanna as having a deceased son. Your exact words: "(or learn their child died a preventable death because of said Federation stupidity)?" Now you're complaining about an entirely different set of characters you did not mention before.

I'm not moving the goalposts. My main problem with Picard is how soul crushingly depressing it is. The large amount of killed pre-exiting characters is a significant part of that.

Yeah, those were sad scenes. It is a convention of modern television that characters we like do not have plot armor anymore. This gives television programs whose primary dramatic stakes are life and death more verisimilitude and in general makes for better writing, since actions have real consequences.

Opposing view: it gives hacks an easy way to up drama with cheap deaths.

I promise you, very, very, very few audience members were emotionally attached to the asshole who tried to kill Data from "The Measure of a Man." Hell, you weren't even attached to him enough to spell his name correctly![/QUOTE]

Data was. His girlfriend was.

PIC is a show about coping with death. It rationally follows that death is going to be a recurring theme in the show.

Fair: I guess that's just not what I want to deal with for 13 episodes of Star Trek. I know death sucks, and Brexit was bad. I'd like some optimistic space opera, please.

I'm not sure what planet you're talking about. The one that had the transwarp projector thing? Nothing indicated the entire planet had been assimilated, only that that technology had been assimilated from them.

Yeah, because Borg are notoriously nice like that.

Whether or not you think "Author, Author" (which first aired in 2001) was an abomination, the fact of the matter remains that it was canonically established that the Federation was using slave labor from sentient

Well, it was established that former EMH's were miners. I might be desperately clinging to redeemable Star Trek, but I like to think they were just working a job, one they took voluntarily because they felt it was a good use of their lack of need for life support equipment and they can quit any time, and were passing around the holonovel because they were pissed off about the ruling in the hearing we saw, which clearly went against the legal precedent set in Measure of a Man. I like to think there were protests. Maybe boycotting that publisher (however that works in a society with publishing houses but no money). Head canon I know, but please leave me a Federation that's not pure evil.

Okay, this response makes me angry. It's actively disrespectful of you to respond that way, for two reasons:

1) A work of art's possession of thematic content is entirely separate from whether you like it or whether it has high quality. Art is a form of communication, and it is disrespectful to the artist(s) to pretend that their work lacks thematic content because of your subjective enjoyment. It is entirely fair to say, "I don't think it was well-written because X." It is entirely fair to say, "I did not enjoy it because Y." It is disrespectful to claim that it lacks thematic content just because you don't enjoy it. I can't stand Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, but I respect him enough as an artist to acknowledge that he has thematic content in his film.

2) It is especially disrespectful to react this way towards PIC S1, because showrunner Michael Chabon literally wrote the show around the time his father died. I am not clear on if his father died before writing commenced or after, but Chabon's essay makes it clear his father's health had been declining for some time -- the death of his father, whether impending or recent, was clearly on his mind when he wrote PIC. That's why the entire show, from start to finish, is about coping with death, grief, and mortality -- because Chabon was going through that at the time.

I didn't know about his father, so I do apologize for any offense, but I still don't respect the show...maybe just understand its unfortunate mood better.

 

[Sci]

I'm sorry, but no, you didn't watch him "grow up from a teen."

In all, Intiraymi appeared as Icheb in 11 episodes over the course of one year, three months.

That's an important amount of time in your teens.

1) Intiraymi was not in his teens.

2) 17-to-18 is honestly the least interesting part of your teens. It's the part where you're just waiting for high school to end and your real life to start.

3) In spite of your attempts to shift the rhetorical goal posts, you still did not "watch him grow up as a teen."

I would barely call Picard season 1 art...

Then you're being deliberately obtuse, because all of Star Trek is art. All television programs are art. Good or bad is an entirely separate question. (PIC is good.)

Of course it's different. We hadn't connected to Will and Deannas dead parents for 15 years of adventures before jumping forward to the Enterprise D.

We hadn't connected to Thad for 15 years of adventures before jumping to 2399! Thad's role is not meaningfully different from that of Will's mom or Troi's dad.

Kids in fridges...

Weird way to appropriate a term used to criticize the misogyny inherent in creators almost always killing female characters to provide emotional motivation for male characters. Hell, PIC isn't even guilty of only having kids around to kill them -- Kestra, Soji, and Elnor are all right there!

Now you're moving the goalposts. Originally you were just complaining about PIC depicting Will and Deanna as having a deceased son. Your exact words: "(or learn their child died a preventable death because of said Federation stupidity)?" Now you're complaining about an entirely different set of characters you did not mention before.

I'm not moving the goalposts.

You were absolutely moving goal posts. (You do that a lot.) First you complained about PIC depicting Will and Deanna as having a deceased son, and then you started complaining about an entirely separate set of characters.

My main problem with Picard is how soul crushingly depressing it is.

I have rarely seen a television series as genuinely life-affirming and inspirational as Star Trek: Picard. PIC is a show that brings us to dark places and then leads us out of them. That's far more inspirational to me than a show where bad things just don't happen. I mean, hell, the show literally ends with Picard descending into the underworld a la Orpheus to say give the proper goodbye to his beloved adopted son one he hadn't had in NEM, before being symbolically reborn to new life!

Yeah, those were sad scenes. It is a convention of modern television that characters we like do not have plot armor anymore. This gives television programs whose primary dramatic stakes are life and death more verisimilitude and in general makes for better writing, since actions have real consequences.

Opposing view: it gives hacks an easy way to up drama with cheap deaths.

That opposing view is poorly thought-out. Which is cheaper: A death that affects you and reminds you of how unjust it is when people are cut down before their time, or a show like TOS that kills characters all the time but whose narrative frames their deaths as unimportant because you didn't learn the character's name?

I promise you, very, very, very few audience members were emotionally attached to the asshole who tried to kill Data from "The Measure of a Man." Hell, you weren't even attached to him enough to spell his name correctly!

Data was. His girlfriend was.

Data and Jurati are fictional characters. I did not talk about fictional characters. I talked about audience members.

Please, tell me what percentage of Star Trek fandom was emotionally attached to the character of Bruce Maddox.

Fair: I guess that's just not what I want to deal with for 13 episodes of Star Trek. I know death sucks, and Brexit was bad. I'd like some optimistic space opera, please.

We're operating from two different definitions of "optimistic." I think PIC is optimistic. Because PIC still believes that in spite of it all, there can be new life and redemption for the past.

I get that what you're looking for is a show that doesn't go to dark places before the light, but that's not the story the creators of PIC wanted to tell. You might as well say you want Singin' in the Rain to be a dark noir thriller or that you want The Godfather, Part II to be a zany romantic comedy or that you want When Harry Met Sally to be a harrowing war epic.

And the world isn't lacking for lighter fare. There are 178 episodes of TNG, still sitting there, along with 172 episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, 98 episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, 10 new episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks, multiple seasons worth of Doctor Who, two seasons' worth of Pandora, and two seasons' worth of The Orville. And! Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Prodigy are both coming up.

Yeah, because Borg are notoriously nice like that.

They don't have to be nice to have assimilated a ship or space station without assimilating a planet. All we know canonically is that they've assimilated the tech -- there's no indication yet that they must have also assimilated the culture that produced the tech.

Well, it was established that former EMH's were miners. I might be desperately clinging to redeemable Star Trek, but I like to think they were just working a job, one they took voluntarily

"Author, Author" made it absolutely clear that they had not taken on the job voluntarily and were being used for compulsory uncompensated labor out of a false belief on the UFP government's part that they were not sentient beings.

The UFP's attitudes towards AIs in PIC is a logical outgrowth of their treatment of AIs in VOY and TNG.

Head canon I know, but please leave me a Federation that's not pure evil.

The Federation is not pure evil, even at its worst! But even in TNG, it was a deeply flawed society -- TNG just didn't frame it that way. But if you think about its behavior objectively, the UFP in TNG is pretty screwed up.

I didn't know about his father, so I do apologize for any offense,

It's cool.

but I still don't respect the show...maybe just understand its unfortunate mood better.

I think you should consider the possibility that a work of art can be worthy of respect even if you don't enjoy it. I can't stand Mad Men, but I recognize high quality and respect it for that even as I don't enjoy it.

 

[IRW Bloodwing]

DS9 pretty much abandoned Gene's "vision" and was all the better for it.

I disagree that it "abandoned" it, just showed how it was an ideal to strive for, even if there were places where it hadn't been achieved yet.

 

[IRW Bloodwing]

Fair: I guess that's just not what I want to deal with for 13 episodes of Star Trek. I know death sucks, and Brexit was bad. I'd like some optimistic space opera, please.

Unfortunately, times (and tastes) have changed. People would complain that it was "unrealistic and unrelatable".

As a side note, I don't object to Picard (or Trek in general) being topical and political, but for God's sake don't be blatant about it, especially in the media. That was the mistake they made with Discovery.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Unfortunately, times (and tastes) have changed. People would complain that it was "unrealistic and unrelatable".

As a side note, I don't object to Picard (or Trek in general) being topical and political, but for God's sake don't be blatant about it, especially in the media. That was the mistake they made with Discovery.

TOS was way more blatant in its political messages than anything on DSC. Most of the obsession over 'politcalness' in DSC isn't on screen at all, it comes entirely from trekkies trying to read between the lines, which has produced various obviously bs ideas like how T'Kuvma is really Trump or Boris Johnson (he has almost nothing in common with either) or how DSC is somehow anti-men just because it features a lot of female characters (it still has just as many men, usually in larger roles than most of the women, Burnham excepted). A small amount of it comes from behind the scenes discussions like the whole 'The Future is Female' line, but that's pure marketing with little to no real relationship to the actual content of the show.

 

[IRW Bloodwing]

which has produced various obviously bs ideas like how T'Kuvma is really Trump or Boris Johnson (he has almost nothing in common with either) or how DSC is somehow anti-men just because it features a lot of female characters (it still has just as many men, usually in larger roles than most of the woman, Burnham excepted). A small amount of it comes from behind the scenes discussions like the whole 'The Future is Female' line, but that's pure marketing with little to no real relationship to the actual content of the show.

You'd have a stronger case if it weren't for the VERY public statements by the production team and some of the stars.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

You'd have a stronger case if it weren't for the VERY public statements by the production team and some of the stars.

Those statements are not in the show. Judged by actual content, DSC is one of the least political shows I've seen this decade. And it's certainly far less political than TOS or TNG.

 

[IRW Bloodwing]

Those statements are not in the show. Judged by actual content, DSC is one of the least political shows I've seen this decade. And it's certainly far less political than TOS or TNG.

You can't divorce the content from the creator that way. The way the show is received by modern audiences is directly influenced by the authorial intent.

 

[dupersuper]

1) Intiraymi was not in his teens.

2) 17-to-18 is honestly the least interesting part of your teens. It's the part where you're just waiting for high school to end and your real life to start.

3) In spite of your attempts to shift the rhetorical goal posts, you still did not "watch him grow up as a teen."

I'm not shifting goalposts. You can post all you want about how late into his teens he was, or the age of the actor; we still started watching him early enough that I feel we met him as a kid, and my feelings matter when discussing why I was put off by watching him get tortured to death.

Then you're being deliberately obtuse, because all of Star Trek is art. All television programs are art. Good or bad is an entirely separate question.

Congratulations: you are technically correct, which we all know is the best kind of correct.

We hadn't connected to Thad for 15 years of adventures before jumping to 2399! Thad's role is not meaningfully different from that of Will's mom or Troi's dad.

Clearly not to you; I obviously disagree.

You were absolutely moving goal posts. (You do that a lot.) First you complained about PIC depicting Will and Deanna as having a deceased son, and then you started complaining about an entirely separate set of characters.

No, I don't. You're the first poster on this board, I believe, who has ever accused me of doing so. My complaint about Thad was part of a larger complaint that the show was depressing. The other dead characters obviously also contribute to that.

I have rarely seen a television series as genuinely life-affirming and inspirational as Star Trek: Picard.

I shudder to think what you're watching.

PIC is a show that brings us to dark places and then leads us out of them.

That leading us out - to me - feels completely unearned.

That opposing view is poorly thought-out. Which is cheaper: A death that affects you and reminds you of how unjust it is when people are cut down before their time, or a show like TOS that kills characters all the time but whose narrative frames their deaths as unimportant because you didn't learn the character's name?

Kirk never thought the deaths were unimportant.

Please, tell me what percentage of Star Trek fandom was emotionally attached to the character of Bruce Maddox.

What would be a high enough percentage for you to accept their views as valid?

I get that what you're looking for is a show that doesn't go to dark places before the light

Or that I want it done better than Picard did...

And the world isn't lacking for lighter fare. There are 178 episodes of TNG, still sitting there, along with 172 episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, 98 episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, 10 new episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks, multiple seasons worth of Doctor Who, two seasons' worth of Pandora, and two seasons' worth of The Orville. And! Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Prodigy are both coming up.

Completely off topic, out of debate question: is Pandora any good?

"Author, Author" made it absolutely clear that they had not taken on the job voluntarily and were being used for compulsory uncompensated labor out of a false belief on the UFP government's part that they were not sentient beings.

I know, but I need to sleep at night.

The Federation is not pure evil, even at its worst!

Slavery's pretty damn close...

But even in TNG, it was a deeply flawed society

We may have watched different TNGs...

I think you should consider the possibility that a work of art can be worthy of respect even if you don't enjoy it.

I acknowledge that, but just don't think it applies much here (beyond some FX technical competency).

Unfortunately, times (and tastes) have changed. People would complain that it was "unrealistic and unrelatable".

People: always ruining everything.

 

[fireproof78]

We may have watched different TNGs...

What kind of society produces admirals who invariably end up on the wrong side of the heroes? How does a failed colony from that society end up having rape gangs? How is O'Brien still welcome in Starfleet while harboring racist attitudes towards Cardassians?

I'm not saying that TNG didn't do what shows do; resolve things in a neat and tidy way at the end. But, as positive as the Federation was it still had flaws, it still had people ruining everything. Picard went darker but that doesn't make worse than what was portrayed before.

I can see not liking it, clearly that is the case. But, PIC ends on an optimistic note like TNG or TOS did, especially after the heroes go through a difficult time and suffer loss.

Kirk never thought the deaths were unimportant.

Just have a sensible chuckle about near rape at the end of the episode and it's fine. Or telling a Klingon commander "Cest la vie" about his crew's deaths.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

You can't divorce the content from the creator that way. The way the show is received by modern audiences is directly influenced by the authorial intent.

A) 90% of the audience has never been and will never be exposed to the 'authorial intent'. Most people don't actually watch or read all this behind the scenes stuff.

B) Of course I can divorce them. If I couldn't, then TOS would be unwatchable because Gene Roddenberry was a misogynistic asshole using a highly inconsistent vision of optimism to get rich and famous while stealing lots of other people's credit. And even on the very narrow path of 'creator intent', no creator ever actually has the right to tell people how their work must be interpreted. Once you put the work out in the world, it speaks for itself warts (or accidentally ommitted intentions) and all.

 

[cooleddie74]

Gene also said that TFF and parts of TUC were apocryphal and he didn't recognize them as official. Yeah, not going that way, Gene. Just because you didn't like something doesn't make it non-canon.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Gene also said that TFF and parts of TUC were apocryphal and he didn't recognize them as official. Yeah, not going that way, Gene. Just because you didn't like something doesn't make it non-canon.

And he still cashed the check.

 

[cooleddie74]

Yep. If he hated both movies he should have demonstrated his noble vision.


Oh, wait.


He did.