Why not use the Stargazer?

[F. King Daniel]

Because fuck season 2. It's literally in the text: "Not that bullshit on the Stargazer!"

Season 3 wanted no part of 1 or 2.

 

[Danja]

When you live in an era of nigh-limitless resources such things are not considered. Consider how disposable our current culture is. Now imaging being able to go to a replicator and change devices at the drop of a hat.

Voyager was building hull plating in the middle of the Delta Quadrant!

 

[Scionz]

been thinking the same thing.
when you have to jump high to pull the rug out from under the other people standing on it

In a lot of ways, Picard Season 3 was inevitable. The Pocket Book series followed a similar path years ago. They were once fairly scattered but in the post Nemesis-era, when it was clear new 24th century stories werent going to be made (for a while), it allowed for a years long reassessment and clean up of both the canon-24th century stories from TV and the non-canon pre "relaunch" books. What worked from prior books was kept, what didn't was discarded. With the TV/movie productions, what worked was focused on and what didn't was retconed or de-emphasized.

At some level most conversations about Star Trek ever are some version of this process to. We all have things we like, and things we don't like, and choose to emphasize the former while downplaying the latter. But it was all locked in time to the post-First contact, post-Voyager, post-Nemesis, post-Dominion War status quo. First Contact Uniforms, section 31 lurking about, Sector 001 ships, the Dominion War ending relatively recently and the Borg Status a mystery. Licensed works moved past it inconsistently, but there was never a unified vision of the world past 2379. And that allowed a lot of rot to set in, as I see it.

So many of the plot, "fixes" and even visual design choices in Season 3 seem like, finally, the canon-TV expression Berman-era creative talents going through an assessment process to build that post-2379 world. Emphasizing what worked, de-emphasizing what didn't.. From Matalas roping together the Borg and Changelings (a very "Pocket Books" esque crossover that Berman never would have done), to Okuda getting to do what he always imagined with LCARs to John Eaves finally developing a canon post-2370s ship design language (consider all the other attempts, including the Star Trek online direction). Even David Blass's marching orders to his production staff for sets were "Nemesis, 20 years later, optimized for 4k".

24th century Trek needed to have that process to clean up decades of content added to it. There is still that more that needs to be done (including the political status of the Alpha, Beta and Gamma Quadrant powers, post-Voyager technologies, status of Holograms) but Picard Season 3 did I'd say, 75% of the job that needed to be done in clean up.

I think at a personal level the shift in tone is important. I, like many people loved First Contact, but in our minds the 24th century never really moved past Nemesis and the Dominon War, as if it was recent history. But those are 20 and 25 year old stories. Content (like the upcoming Star Trek Resurgence) still comes out in the late 2370s or early 2380s era. First Contact ships and uniforms are still used. It's great, but it's also 1990s. Why? Because nothing new had been made since 2002. When i started playing Star Trek Online, first thing I did? Enterprise-E and First Contact uniforms, like tons of other people.

Picard Season 3, thematically, was putting this entire era to bed. The new uniforms, the ship designs, the status of TNG era characters, the tying up of loose ends like the Borg and some of the Dominion and Section 31. The 37 year crisis that began in 2366 is over and now it feels like, in 2402, there is an open field about what Starfleet is and what stories can be told in a way there hasn't been within universe since 2366, and in the real world since 2002.

I think Matalas realized this. A lot of his tweets make me feel this way. To make 24th century Trek relevant, he had to bring to closure much of what was left unclosed in the 1990s and 2000s and draw a line under it, while allowing the best aspects of it to move forward.

I was not a huge Seven of Nine fan, but I think making Seven of Nine the Enterprise-G captain is a brilliant, brilliant move to that effect. She was the last major new regular character of the 24th century era. Her personal history pre-Picard was linked to two of the most important 24th century stories (the Borg and Voyager). She has had a clear character development arc. Jeri Ryan is willing, and of the right age and activity level to both lead a show and captain a ship. She would provide an bridge from the past Berman era to the future of the 25th century. It's very, very clever. He could have done it too with Ezri Dax (which the Pocket Books did with the Adventine), but Seven had more development and a better long term story connections.

The question ahead of Matalas and co, if they get Legacy, is if this story telling cleanup they did gives way to "24th Century++" - a resumption of the Berman era with modern production values and story telling, or they use it as a spring board to a distinct "25th Century Star Trek" that is as distinct from the Berman Era as the 23rd century SNW is from Picard Season 3 and Discovery Seasons 3-4 are from everything else. There are compelling cases for both, and I'm not sure what the right call is.

But in the final analysis, I think it's a good sign people are interested in Ships like the Stargazer, the Titan, the Intrepid, the status of the Odyssey class, and not fixated on 27 year old classics like the Akira, the Saber, the Steamrunner and the First Contact Uniforms. It's really past time to evolve past those and if Trek never ended in the 2000s, we would have. Better late than never!

 

[DarKush]

It's interesting to consider how they would have approached it if the Luna-class Titan had never appeared in STLD. Most likely a far more conventional refit.

At the same time, for the beginning of season 3's plot to work, Riker had to be familiar with Shaw, realize Shaw would be a foil they needed to navigate, with another structural waypoint being that Picard had never met him.


I almost think of it as succeeding films in a series, where the writers/directors involved are likely to be very different creatives. I'm really not into horror, so I saw the Alien films in reverse order very gradually from Prometheus. But the swings in that franchise is the only comparable genre example I can think of for PICARD. Just cross it with a bit of Star Wars sequel trilogy.

How much of a foil was Shaw to Riker though? They didn't have that much interaction really throughout the series. Shaw was more opposition to Picard.

I mean, they could've also had Shaw's ship be a refit of the Zheng He, the vessel Riker took command of in Picard's first season finale (a ship that had more relevance to the Picard series). Titan had a name and legacy, and the more general fan might know Riker once commanded a ship named Titan (due to Nemesis or Lower Decks), but there was nothing written in stone that Titan was Riker's only command, or even his best or most notable one. If any ships need redemption in Trek, it's those Inquiry-class vessels, and they could've kept the Titan exclusive to Lower Decks, which appears to be about the only place we will see Captain Riker's adventures on it. Maybe he'll wind up on an episode or two of Prodigy too hopefully.

 

[DarKush]

In a lot of ways, Picard Season 3 was inevitable. The Pocket Book series followed a similar path years ago. They were once fairly scattered but in the post Nemesis-era, when it was clear new 24th century stories werent going to be made (for a while), it allowed for a years long reassessment and clean up of both the canon-24th century stories from TV and the non-canon pre "relaunch" books. What worked from prior books was kept, what didn't was discarded. With the TV/movie productions, what worked was focused on and what didn't was retconed or de-emphasized.

At some level most conversations about Star Trek ever are some version of this process to. We all have things we like, and things we don't like, and choose to emphasize the former while downplaying the latter. But it was all locked in time to the post-First contact, post-Voyager, post-Nemesis, post-Dominion War status quo. First Contact Uniforms, section 31 lurking about, Sector 001 ships, the Dominion War ending relatively recently and the Borg Status a mystery. Licensed works moved past it inconsistently, but there was never a unified vision of the world past 2379. And that allowed a lot of rot to set in, as I see it.

So many of the plot, "fixes" and even visual design choices in Season 3 seem like, finally, the canon-TV expression Berman-era creative talents going through an assessment process to build that post-2379 world. Emphasizing what worked, de-emphasizing what didn't.. From Matalas roping together the Borg and Changelings (a very "Pocket Books" esque crossover that Berman never would have done), to Okuda getting to do what he always imagined with LCARs to John Eaves finally developing a canon post-2370s ship design language (consider all the other attempts, including the Star Trek online direction). Even David Blass's marching orders to his production staff for sets were "Nemesis, 20 years later, optimized for 4k".

24th century Trek needed to have that process to clean up decades of content added to it. There is still that more that needs to be done (including the political status of the Alpha, Beta and Gamma Quadrant powers, post-Voyager technologies, status of Holograms) but Picard Season 3 did I'd say, 75% of the job that needed to be done in clean up.

I think at a personal level the shift in tone is important. I, like many people loved First Contact, but in our minds the 24th century never really moved past Nemesis and the Dominon War, as if it was recent history. But those are 20 and 25 year old stories. Content (like the upcoming Star Trek Resurgence) still comes out in the late 2370s or early 2380s era. First Contact ships and uniforms are still used. It's great, but it's also 1990s. Why? Because nothing new had been made since 2002. When i started playing Star Trek Online, first thing I did? Enterprise-E and First Contact uniforms, like tons of other people.

Picard Season 3, thematically, was putting this entire era to bed. The new uniforms, the ship designs, the status of TNG era characters, the tying up of loose ends like the Borg and some of the Dominion and Section 31. The 37 year crisis that began in 2366 is over and now it feels like, in 2402, there is an open field about what Starfleet is and what stories can be told in a way there hasn't been within universe since 2366, and in the real world since 2002.

I think Matalas realized this. A lot of his tweets make me feel this way. To make 24th century Trek relevant, he had to bring to closure much of what was left unclosed in the 1990s and 2000s and draw a line under it, while allowing the best aspects of it to move forward.

I was not a huge Seven of Nine fan, but I think making Seven of Nine the Enterprise-G captain is a brilliant, brilliant move to that effect. She was the last major new regular character of the 24th century era. Her personal history pre-Picard was linked to two of the most important 24th century stories (the Borg and Voyager). She has had a clear character development arc. Jeri Ryan is willing, and of the right age and activity level to both lead a show and captain a ship. She would provide an bridge from the past Berman era to the future of the 25th century. It's very, very clever. He could have done it too with Ezri Dax (which the Pocket Books did with the Adventine), but Seven had more development and a better long term story connections.

The question ahead of Matalas and co, if they get Legacy, is if this story telling cleanup they did gives way to "24th Century++" - a resumption of the Berman era with modern production values and story telling, or they use it as a spring board to a distinct "25th Century Star Trek" that is as distinct from the Berman Era as the 23rd century SNW is from Picard Season 3 and Discovery Seasons 3-4 are from everything else. There are compelling cases for both, and I'm not sure what the right call is.

But in the final analysis, I think it's a good sign people are interested in Ships like the Stargazer, the Titan, the Intrepid, the status of the Odyssey class, and not fixated on 27 year old classics like the Akira, the Saber, the Steamrunner and the First Contact Uniforms. It's really past time to evolve past those and if Trek never ended in the 2000s, we would have. Better late than never!

Agree with a lot of what you said here, though I don't want to ditch the 90s ship designs like the Akira, Saber, Steamrunner, Prometheus, Nova, etc., just yet because they never got much screen time in the past. Further, I really wish more was done with the Nemesis warbirds. That was such an awesome design. I hope we get to see them again. I also hope we to get see the TNG warbirds. An aside, I would like to see Ferengi Marauders as well.

I still prefer the First Contact/Dominion War Starfleet uniforms, though I'm finally pleased with the Picard era Starfleet uniforms. I thought the first season were uninspired, but I've liked what they've done since. (I did like the 2380s flashback uniforms and wished those had been the main uniforms for season one).

Whatever happens in the future, I do hope the starship designs introduced in new Trek get more screentime as well.

 

[The Wormhole]

there was nothing written in stone that Titan was Riker's only command,

Indeed, season 1 seems to indicate Riker did command other ships. When talking about Thad never having a homeworld, Deanna says he "grew up on ships." Ships, plural. Which shouldn't be the case of Riker only commanded the Titan.

Granted, it could also mean Deanna was at one point assigned to another ship and Thad split time between the two ships, but somehow the impression I got was when that line was written the writer was probably referencing the fact that in the real world, Captains of navy ships tend to be transferred to another ship every two to three years.

though I don't want to ditch the 90s ship designs like the Akira, Saber, Steamrunner, Prometheus, Nova, etc., just yet because they never got much screen time in the past.

The Akira class did get a lot of screentime for a non-hero ship. And no, I'm not making a snide comment about "because it was turned into the NX-01." The Akira was the only Starfleet ship besides the Enterprise E and the Defiant in First Contact to have a full CG mesh done (the others were "CG dummies") and indeed, it gets used in one of the movie's "signature shots", we see it flying by the exploding Borg cube, a shot which was reproduced for many of the movie's promotional material. The Akira class then got a lot of prominent shots in various Dominion War battles in DS9 and was even featured quite prominently in Voyager's Message in a Bottle.

I really wish more was done with the Nemesis warbirds. That was such an awesome design. I hope we get to see them again.

It was in the most recent season of Lower Decks.

 

[Dukhat]

You didn't like Picard season 3?
Knowing now that the ship will become Enterprise makes me want to rewatch the season again.

The design of the ship and what it was renamed to has nothing to do with whether I liked or disliked the show.

It's not convoluted. They renamed a relatively recently commissioned ship to honor one of the most famous and important ships in Starfleet history.

This is only a problem because some folks don't like the Enterprise-G. It's that simple.

Wrong. The design for the ship could have been the greatest thing ever, and it still would have gotten the name in a convoluted way.

 

[firehawk12]

I'm in the minority when I think Rios should have stayed in the show and been the 'Shaw' of this season, so I would have been fine if it was the Stargazer instead of the Titan. lol

 

[The Wormhole]

I'm in the minority when I think Rios should have stayed in the show and been the 'Shaw' of this season, so I would have been fine if it was the Stargazer instead of the Titan. lol

As much as I like Rios, I doubt he could have filled Shaw's role in S3. After all, if Picard and Riker had gone to Rios, he'd probably be inclined to help them out, regardless of orders. Therefore, for dramatic purposes, they'd need someone new like Shaw.

 

[firehawk12]

As much as I like Rios, I doubt he could have filled Shaw's role in S3. After all, if Picard and Riker had gone to Rios, he'd probably be inclined to help them out, regardless of orders. Therefore, for dramatic purposes, they'd need someone new like Shaw.

You write around that though and make the XO or someone else disagree with helping Picard. Maybe this officer lodges a complaint and that tips off the Changelings at Starfleet Command that Picard is on a clandestine mission.

It also makes more sense, because they wrote Riker choosing the Titan for no other reason than it was a ship he used to Captain. He had no relationship with anyone on board and didn't even know that Geordi's daughter was on the ship IIRC.

 

[Elias Vaughn]

It's a reasonable extrapolation. We know the Enterprise E was still in service in 2379, that's when Nemesis is set. And I doubt they rebuilt the ship at the end just to decommission it. Based on information from season 1, Picard was still commanding the E right up until his promotion in 2381. So, even if the E's fate which isn't Worf's fault happened later in 2381, the F probably wouldn't have been launched any earlier than 2382, which would mean it it only had nineteen years of service before it was decommissioned, only three years longer than if you accept the Matalas tweet. So no matter how you look at it, the Enterprise F did not have "a long career of its own."

Do we know the -F was a new ship? Maybe it did something massive and got renamed, the same as the Titan did, which means it could have been in service much longer.

 

[JediKnightButler]

it was right there.

Yeah. I was sort of confused because of how I thought I remembered that S2 ended with Seven Field promoted to Captain of the Stargazer because Rios didn't go back with them. By S3E1 it's like it never happened. Was there an explanation and I missed it (I know there was some acknowledgment of it in regards to the Borg)? Or was it that Starfleet just still wasn't good with having an Ex-Borg as a Captain, at least until the end of S3, of course.

 

[James Cole]

So many of the plot, "fixes" and even visual design choices in Season 3 seem like, finally, the canon-TV expression Berman-era creative talents going through an assessment process to build that post-2379 world. Emphasizing what worked, de-emphasizing what didn't.. From Matalas roping together the Borg and Changelings (a very "Pocket Books" esque crossover that Berman never would have done), to Okuda getting to do what he always imagined with LCARs to John Eaves finally developing a canon post-2370s ship design language (consider all the other attempts, including the Star Trek online direction). Even David Blass's marching orders to his production staff for sets were "Nemesis, 20 years later, optimized for 4k".

Have you tried PRODIGY? The first few episodes are a little rough, but after giving it two hours to check off all the boxes the executives wanted them to hit, they really dive into Star Trek lore and follow up some plots from VGR that are such deep cuts you'll need to look them up on Memory Alpha and then wonder how they even escaped notice in the novel line.

The question ahead of Matalas and co, if they get Legacy, is if this story telling cleanup they did gives way to "24th Century++" - a resumption of the Berman era with modern production values and story telling, or they use it as a spring board to a distinct "25th Century Star Trek" that is as distinct from the Berman Era as the 23rd century SNW is from Picard Season 3 and Discovery Seasons 3-4 are from everything else. There are compelling cases for both, and I'm not sure what the right call is.

Hopefully, why not both in a semi-serialized structure mixing old and new?

How much of a foil was Shaw to Riker though? They didn't have that much interaction really throughout the series. Shaw was more opposition to Picard.

I mean, they could've also had Shaw's ship be a refit of the Zheng He, the vessel Riker took command of in Picard's first season finale (a ship that had more relevance to the Picard series). Titan had a name and legacy, and the more general fan might know Riker once commanded a ship named Titan (due to Nemesis or Lower Decks), but there was nothing written in stone that Titan was Riker's only command, or even his best or most notable one. If any ships need redemption in Trek, it's those Inquiry-class vessels, and they could've kept the Titan exclusive to Lower Decks, which appears to be about the only place we will see Captain Riker's adventures on it. Maybe he'll wind up on an episode or two of Prodigy too hopefully.

Riker's history with the Titan, and familiarity with Shaw to foreshadow potential problems for the audience, launched the season. Matalas also likes the Titan name, using it in both 12 MONEKYS and his 2/3rd of a season of MACGYVER.

 

[Tuskin38]

Because fuck season 2. It's literally in the text: "Not that bullshit on the Stargazer!"

Season 3 wanted no part of 1 or 2.

Season 3 referenced Season 1 several times, and Season 2 once.

 

[The Wormhole]

Do we know the -F was a new ship? Maybe it did something massive and got renamed, the same as the Titan did, which means it could have been in service much longer.

The Enterprise F was larger than every other Starfleet ship built to date, and does look like a logical "next step" from the Sovereign class. Even if it had been around with a different name before being renamed Enterprise, I doubt it could have been around any earlier than the 2370s.

Yeah. I was sort of confused because of how I thought I remembered that S2 ended with Seven Field promoted to Captain of the Stargazer because Rios didn't go back with them. By S3E1 it's like it never happened. Was there an explanation and I missed it (I know there was some acknowledgment of it in regards to the Borg)? Or was it that Starfleet just still wasn't good with having an Ex-Borg as a Captain, at least until the end of S3, of course.

Seven was not field promoted to Captain. Picard simply placed her in command of the Stargazer for the duration of that crisis. Presumably after the whole thing with the transwarp corridor was averted and the truce was made with the Jurati Borg, Seven turned command over to the Stargazer's XO.

 

[FederationHistorian]

Speaking for myself, but as a fan, I did want to see the Titan, the Luna-class one in live-action. I had no real desire to see a brand-new Titan. I hadn't considered them keeping the Stargazer around, but now that the question was raised, I think it as much sense as bringing in a new Titan. Granted, Matalas wanted a Constitution-class vessel and that was his call, but the new Stargazer wouldn't have been a bad option, and Seven had already been an acting captain on that vessel. That little backstory could've added another dimension to her tensions with Shaw.

The Luna-class Titan would have been preferable if we were going to see the Titan. I get the idea of the Titan-A - old software (Titan) put into new hardware (New Constitution) – but the Luna-class Titan was what fans had been anticipating for years. Otherwise, they could have just kept using the Stargazer, since the interiors are virtually identical.

At least we saw the Titan in action in LD.

 

[Sci]

It's not convoluted. They renamed a relatively recently commissioned ship to honor one of the most famous and important ships in Starfleet history.

This is only a problem because some folks don't like the Enterprise-G. It's that simple.

I like the Enterprise-G, but the whole thing where they go to all the trouble of introducing a new Stargazer in S1 and putting PIC characters on its crew, but then don't use the Stargazer as the hero ship in S3, is weird. It's like introducing Chekov's Gun but then firing an entirely different gun later on.

Also, the whole thing where Matalas wanted the hero ship of S3 to have a history with Riker and be called the Titan, but he also wanted it to be a new design but not a new ship, so he decided to establish that Riker's Titan had been put out of service and recycled to produce the Titan-A, was just weird. Like, if it's a different ship, it's a different ship -- drop the "I had to purge the computer of your music" bits, because it just doesn't make sense. (Why the hell wouldn't the computer core have been given a factory reset when the ship's parts were recycled into the new one?)

Personally, I think it would have been a better idea to have the hero ship of S2 also be the hero ship of S3, and not to name that ship as Stargazer. I get that Matalas wanted to preserve the idea of Picard and co. being honored at the end of S3 by rechristening the ship the Enterprise-G, but you risk hitting the same emotional beat if you have Picard also feeling honored at the start of S2 because the ship was christened Stargazer. So I think it would have been a better idea to establish that it was a new starship in S2 and give it a name that had no prior connection to or attachment from Picard or Riker -- maybe even name it for a character that the audience would have been previously primed to dislike, so that there's a feeling of happiness when it's renamed Enterprise and no feeling of sadness or disrespect for the previous name lineage. Maybe the USS Alynna Nechayev or the USS Edward Jellico or the USS Kirsten Clancy.

 

[valkyrie013]

just wished a hire up said "No" more oftern to Terry.
I want to use the Titan
Ok..
I don't like the Luna, I want a new design.
Sorry, No, its already a Luna, so if you want to use it, its the luna class.
But I want a new ship?
Okay, you can have a new ship, but certain ships have been spoken for, chose your own name if you want to go your own route.

Oh I also want to change it to the Enterprise at the end.
Are you going to decomission the E? there's already an F Class
I don't like the Oddessy class, I want my own.
Huh? No, if you decon the E, its the F Oddessy class, and were not going to short change the E or F. for future stories.
Just come up with your own name, Star trek doesn't have to be on an Enterprise.

Nothing wrong with the Stargazer. .. a ship you already introduced.

 

[Racefuel]

just wished a hire up said "No" more oftern to Terry.
I want to use the Titan
Ok..
I don't like the Luna, I want a new design.
Sorry, No, its already a Luna, so if you want to use it, its the luna class.
But I want a new ship?
Okay, you can have a new ship, but certain ships have been spoken for, chose your own name if you want to go your own route.

Oh I also want to change it to the Enterprise at the end.
Are you going to decomission the E? there's already an F Class
I don't like the Oddessy class, I want my own.
Huh? No, if you decon the E, its the F Oddessy class, and were not going to short change the E or F. for future stories.
Just come up with your own name, Star trek doesn't have to be on an Enterprise.

Nothing wrong with the Stargazer. .. a ship you already introduced.

Higher ups dont care about things like that. All they care about is saving money and getting viewers.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Higher ups dont care about things like that. All they care about is saving money and getting viewers.

That's how they get and keep their jobs in Hollywood.