These pictures are amazing.Sorry if already posted, currently at page 86/109
https://variety.com/2023/artisans/news/star-trek-picard-enterprise-d-bridge-set-1235580496
Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x09 - "Võx"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
Rick Berman was a chauvinist and homophobic, his approach to trek is not something modern trek should ever aspire to.
I think I'm at six or seven. Not counting TOS, I only saw it piecemeal as kid but eventually saw them all. Gave up on Voyager, completed it a few years ago.
My impression is that the Queen can probably be restored from iCloud backup if the hardware is broken. I mean, even Seven acknowledges that there's no such thing as "death" in the collective.
From "Mortal Coil" (where Seven revives Neelix from the dead):
SEVEN: Human attitudes toward death are perplexing.
TUVOK: How so?
SEVEN: Too much importance is placed on it. There seem to be countless rituals and cultural beliefs designed to alleviate their fear of a simple biological truth. All organisms eventually perish.
TUVOK: I take it the Borg have no fear of that biological truth.
SEVEN: None. When a drone is damaged beyond repair, it is discarded. But it's memories continue to exist in the Collective consciousness. To use a human term, the Borg are immortal.
TUVOK: You are no longer part of the Collective. You are mortal now like the rest of us. Does that disturb you?
SEVEN: My connection to the Borg has been severed, but the Collective still possesses my recollections, my experiences. In a sense, I will always exist.
TUVOK: Fascinating. That must be a great relief.
SEVEN: Yes, it is.
Picard Season 3 aspires to the Berman era and holds it up, as per Terry Matalas himself.
And it's incredibly well received.
It’s a stretch to think that Seven is so thoughtless and cruel, if she had studied the late Data’s heritage enough to know he prefers “android” over “robot”.
It is meant to be ironic. Humans are ironic creatures, even ex-Borg.
I rate this episode a 7 for everything except the Borg and Changeling story, I give that part a 1.
Things I didn't like
- Borg are back, again and in a totally nonsensical way.
- This way of assimilation in the episode goes against the way assimilation has worked throughout the entire franchise. It even goes against WHAT a Borg is. A Borg is a cybernetic organism, a fusion of technology and biology. It's the technology like nano probes and implants that convert humanoids into Borg. According to this season Borg no longer need to assimilate, they can just transport you and BAM you have Borg DNA and transform into a Borg. This is totally rubbish.
- How the heck is Jack detecting and controlling changelings? From what i understood is they have the Borg DNA too. This is even more outlandish. No way a changeling can have DNA. This also goes against everything we know about changelings like Odo.
- They did a crap job of explaining why only the 'young' officers were able to be converted to Borg leaving the old officers immune. I didn't even bother rewatching it to find out because I didn't even care at this point. The writers totally ruined it for me.
Things I didn't like
- Borg are back, again and in a totally nonsensical way.
- This way of assimilation in the episode goes against the way assimilation has worked throughout the entire franchise. It even goes against WHAT a Borg is. A Borg is a cybernetic organism, a fusion of technology and biology. It's the technology like nano probes and implants that convert humanoids into Borg. According to this season Borg no longer need to assimilate, they can just transport you and BAM you have Borg DNA and transform into a Borg. This is totally rubbish.
- How the heck is Jack detecting and controlling changelings? From what i understood is they have the Borg DNA too. This is even more outlandish. No way a changeling can have DNA. This also goes against everything we know about changelings like Odo.
- They did a crap job of explaining why only the 'young' officers were able to be converted to Borg leaving the old officers immune. I didn't even bother rewatching it to find out because I didn't even care at this point. The writers totally ruined it for me.
This season is nothing like the Berman era story telling.
To be fair, it's pretty consistent with 7's characterization. She is often angry and brutally blunt.
Jack has been the only one that made her smile and laugh.
They used real human biology science to explain it. It wasn’t crap
The Borg are all about adapting to their situation. This is just another form of adapting.
We weren't talking about storytelling methods specifically. As a mystery-box streaming series, Matalas mentioned that he had to do it in this way. However, he said he would love to do an episodic exploration series akin to 90s Trek (in that interview where he talks about Legacy).
Jack wasn’t controlling any Changelings. Not sure why you think he was.
Plus all the changelings we saw this season are not Odo-like changelings. They were modified by Section 31 and Vadic
It hasn’t been explained how they’re back yet.
Last edited:
So Rick berman's chauvinistic and homophobic attitude is what we should go back to?
That’s not what they’re saying. He just means the episodic story telling style of that era.
How about you read the actual context of the conversation before butting in. I was specifically responding to Terrytreks comments regarding Jessie gender's video which was not about 'the writing' and about Berman's conservative approach to representation
I absolutely think Season 3 Episode 4 (when they're in the nebula and have to find a way out before they die) was a backdoor pilot of sorts for what Star Trek: Legacy would be if Matalas could do it in a ship and monster-of-the-week format. It was the most classic of the episodes of the show, had a very Berman-era vibe and solution, and a big focus on new characters. It was the most self contained episode of the entire season.
Personally, I think that Streaming Trek is kneecapping itself on its CGI budget. Discovery and Strange New Worlds have had absolutely lavish CGI. Yeah their "Volume" 3D set is more obvious than the Mandalorian (though notably, Mando S3, Book of Boba Fett and Andor took a big step backwards in quality usage of Volume compare to Mando Seasons 1 and 2). But the shows are just flooded with pricy CGI at every corner.
Then there is Picard, which has done 9 episodes of mostle bottle shows, leaned on a modular Starship design for the 2401 era, a lot of medium-detail Star Trek Online ships, and "good enough" quality Space scenes. Why did it do this? It's budget had to go into actor pay and Changeling CGI, which was limited. By Matalas's own mouth, they were back to counting phaser shots this season.
Star Trek in the late 1990s early 200s had very impressive CGI compared to other shows like Babylon 9, and Stargate SG-1 (until it got very good CGI around Season 4 or 5). But to do 26 episodes a season, there was an economy to that CGI that is entirely missing from Discovery and Strange New Worlds.
Streaming services are bleeding money and costs are being cut left and right. CGI plays a huge role in it, because it vastly increases the cost of shows, but these shows commonly get less viewership than 20 year old reruns.The economics just make no sense. And runs are short because series have seized on doing 10, 8,6 and now 5 episodes, down from 15-18 as recently as 2017.
I think the way forward for Trek is really to look at Picard. Picard looks terrific, but the nature of its CGI makes it have a comparatively lower fidelity than the crazy stuff SNW and Discovery do. And that's fine! Do, basically, Star Trek Voyager-esque CGI, but with Star Trek Picard level fidelity. The show will be economical, production pipeline faster, and the'll probably be able to make more than 10 episodes a year again.
What really did this by the way, was two things. First was Game of Thrones, because for a show that had pretty humble beginnings as a VFX show, it went absolutely nuts in the last 3 or 4 seasons. Suddenly everyone wanted to be that level. Secondly was the MCU shows on Disney+. But folks forget that these are basically $250 million MCU movies that they pile on a lot of cheap filler into, and amortize the VFX cost over 8 episodes.
Starfleet Academy will probably build directly on Discovery, but with penny pinching abound for streaming services, particularly in modest ones like Paramount+, I think it's a damn trap for any show. Matalas could have a very compelling case for Legacy if he highlights that, minus the substantial TNG-era actor pay for every episode (specifically Patrick Stewart and Jeri Ryan most likely), this show was done very affordably, very modestly, and pulled in the biggest viewership of any Trek show yet. So if Paramount were to give him the same budget, he could do a lot more with the same money.
I think I'll make the last pic my desktop for the week. Thanks!
Correct. Assimilation at first was tech only, not sentient beings (“The Neutral Zone”). Then humanoid babies were being fitted with Borg parts (“Q Who”). Then they took a human as speaker (“Best of Both Worlds”). Later, assimilation was via a drone’s injectors (“First Contact”)...
I can see that.
As much as I'd miss the visual variety, I'm forced to agree that this is the best way to put out Streaming Trek economically.
Reading this now, it just occurred to me that Discovery could become a training vessel. It saves them from having to build new sets. And, effectively, it would be kind of like DSC Season 6 but not. I think instead of having new series that start completely from scratch, one series will transition into a replacement series. DSC becomes SFA. PIC becomes LEG. I'm really not liking typing "LEG" but I'll go with it for now.
Assuming the Titan survives, it looks to me like Seven would the Captain. Though I think Jeri Ryan probably doesn't cost as much as Sir Patrick Stewart, and she'd be the only character from Old Trek who'd be a regular. I think they can have one without breaking the bank. But the entire TNG cast back and Seven, like with PIC Season 3? Something had to give. I think it's actually pretty amazing what they've pulled off this season, given how much they probably had to pay to get everyone back and also recreate the Enterprise-D set(s).
Last edited: