Picard was speaking French the whole time, in every episode.
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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So that's what, TNG?
Sacre Bolia!!!
Also not something Sacred and Holy.
Just an '80s/'90s TV series, four movies (one good, three so-so), and a new streaming show that just ended.
I have seen the parallels top and find it amusing given the more secular appeal of Trek to some.
I wish! He was simply utterly unconvincing as a Frenchman. They should've made him British and been done with it. Now, if he'd been of French birth but for some reason raised in England by an English family, or even if his family had sent him to England to be educated, his adoption of English cultural mannerisms would've been more understandable. According to canon French is an archaic language in the 24th century so that his family spoke English at home, but that still doesn't explain his cultural Britishness.
I could say that his personal settings on the Universal Translator were set to British, but in season 2 of Picard, Jean Luc said that the Picards left France for England during World War II and did not return until after World War III.
My "denomination" is that I'm a Three Timeliner. I'm just not very vocal about it. This is why I didn't have a problem with DSC changing things up during first two seasons or SNW changing things up now. Some things I like better about the TOS version of the Mid-23rd Century, some things I like better about the Early-DSC and SNW version. Outside of the Mid-23rd Century, everything else is the same between those two versions, making the difference everywhere else no difference at all.
Then there's the Kelvin Timeline which, according to Kovich in DSC Season 3, eventually became not just different but wildly different. The Butterfly Effect really spread out over there.
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Still doesn't explain his English accent. WW3 is 300 years before TNG. Just pretend Picard had a French accent, and pretend Uhura, La Forge and Worf did not sound like US citizens
Ah, a Legend of Zelda fan. Respect.
I'm with you on the 3x Timelines being the most logical conlcusion:
Having the 3x Time-Lines explains away ALOT of in-consistencies built-up over the years and blatant contradictions.
It really explains away all the incongruous historical factoids w/o damaging any of the existing shows while making historical incongruities flow more smoothly due to time-travel creating a new time-line that explains away the contradictions.
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Everyone in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and France speaks English in the 24th Century. There are a few isolated villages were some French is spoken, mostly older people.
I think three timelines works decently well in broad strokes, but ultimately in my view chasing down details to try to put together some sort of actually coherent set of timelines would result in more than three and is ultimately not worth the effort.
Anyways, controversial opinion = Data's really not that impressive as an AI. The positronic hardware is impressive and has medical uses, as seen in DS9 where Bashir uses positronic implants to compensate for brain damage - though I don't think we know if that technology comes from Soong's research or not. I think in chasing the goal of replicating humanity with this very human-like hardware ended up being a bit of a false start. The Doctor is much more impressive as an AI, and he runs on standard starship hardware.
Anyways, controversial opinion = Data's really not that impressive as an AI. The positronic hardware is impressive and has medical uses, as seen in DS9 where Bashir uses positronic implants to compensate for brain damage - though I don't think we know if that technology comes from Soong's research or not. I think in chasing the goal of replicating humanity with this very human-like hardware ended up being a bit of a false start. The Doctor is much more impressive as an AI, and he runs on standard starship hardware.
I'll have to agree to disagree. Data is way more impressive as an AI.
The ability to strive to be human while maintaining some of the best parts of Humanity and what a AI Android can do makes Data Super Impressive.
I go with the view that it's all canon, it's all Star Trek, but it's not connected. They're different translations of the same source (e.g., King James Version, New International Version, New American Bible, etc.), where they all share the same basic characters, settings, and institutions, but the details can be slightly or very different because they're not the same text.
Both Discovery and Strange New Worlds are Star Trek, but I think there comes a point where you have to say it doesn't have a real connection to The Original Series. Both shows are their own thing that you can't really see as prequels to TOS. Instead, they are series that are "inspired" by TOS, and use it as a jumping off point to do their own separate thing.
For example, Akiva Goldsman gave an interview just a few days ago where he was asked about the Gorn in Strange New Worlds and the problems of lining up what they've done in Strange New Worlds with TOS's "Arena," and he gives an answer that indicates his interpretation of the Gorn is arguably the exact opposite of what Gene Coon intended with "Arena."
TREKMOVIE: So the question is: why the Gorn who have some tricky canon issues instead of using the opportunity to create your own whole new villain species?
AKIVA GOLDSMAN: Because for me, storytelling beats canon. And that may not be popular, but it’s the truth. So when they can go hand-in-hand, great. But when I was writing the pilot, I was looking for something that was just monstrous, that was Cthulhu-like. Something that was unthinking. Our shows are empathy generators and I wanted to have an element which was in relief of that. I wanted something that you couldn’t identify with, something that was utterly alien, something that was all appetite and instinct in ways that we couldn’t quite understand. And I also wanted to signal place and time in a way that personally I found interesting. So you should definitely blame me for this one.
AKIVA GOLDSMAN: Because for me, storytelling beats canon. And that may not be popular, but it’s the truth. So when they can go hand-in-hand, great. But when I was writing the pilot, I was looking for something that was just monstrous, that was Cthulhu-like. Something that was unthinking. Our shows are empathy generators and I wanted to have an element which was in relief of that. I wanted something that you couldn’t identify with, something that was utterly alien, something that was all appetite and instinct in ways that we couldn’t quite understand. And I also wanted to signal place and time in a way that personally I found interesting. So you should definitely blame me for this one.
Part of the twist of “Arena” is realizing the whole mess is a misunderstanding. The Gorn aren’t “unthinking.” They are not monsters, savages, animals or facehuggers on LV-426. They’re people making bad choices in a misunderstanding over defending their home. Instead of not being able to identify with the Gorn, the entire episode is built around a future where humanity is able to find empathy for something alien, even giant lizard men that have killed a bunch of colonists, in order to recognize that maybe the entire situation is a giant mistake. Goldsman's use of the Gorn is the exact opposite intent of what Coon was getting at.
And if you have a situation where two series conflict, are we going to say well since Strange New Worlds is newer it has primacy and retcons TOS? Or does TOS have primacy since it's the source? Or do we sit here and tie ourselves in pretzels spending more time trying to make two TV shows fit together than some of the people who make them do? I just think it's easier to say it's all Trek, but they're not connected to each other.
There are too many classes of starship. If you're doing a new Trek series set anywhere between the 2250s and 2380s there's already a huge number of canon and fanon classes to choose from, we don't need another one without a bloody good reason. Lower Decks is a good example of this – part of me wishes that they'd used the New Orleans-class, Freedom-class, or Cheyenne-class instead of inventing a whole new class of never-before-seen-but-apparently-ubiquitous starships.
Memory Alpha:
Picard explains that the Nazis used the house as a base of operations when they occupied France during World War II, and his ancestors had hid in the tunnels below the house before making their escape to England. It remained in the family, under various caretakers, but the Picards did not reside in it for generations.
That's enough time to adopt English as the family language.
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What about Moriarty?
Excellent on all counts. Why does any of that say "Gorn"?
Beautifully put.
I keep hearing "storytelling beats canon". I have yet to see the story that was both unavoidable and just really the best best best story that it just HAD to contradict something from a previous show. La'an's story and all of the Gorn episodes would have been just as gripping, if not more so, if the Alien-wannabe's were called the Ri'y-Sc'tts or something.
It's also super-condescending. "Oh, you silly Trekkies with your 'canon' and your 'rules'. You don't understand we're just trying to tell STORIES." Yes. And again, you don't have that many things that you have to avoid. Erica Ortegas is terrific. And they have clear skies to write her pretty much any way they want.
Maybe this season La'an and Kirk can find the Botany Bay. Storytelling beats canon after all.
I agree with you on that, especially about the Doctor. Data's firmly stuck in the uncanny valley of looking fairly human, but not human enough to fool anyone. Evidently most Federation citizens find it easier to embrace differences than 21st century humans do, but I suspect that the uncanny valley issue contributed to the problems that were settled in Measure of a Man, Data's personhood. I don't think Data's goal of becoming more human is particularly admirable, although I get it that he wants to improve on his original programming, as that was something Soong programmed into him. Understanding emotions is important because he has to work with sentient humanoids who experience emotions, but does he really need to emote himself?
I don't know if holodecks are popular on starships and space stations because they have access to very powerful computers and need something to break the tedium of long space missions, or if they're equally popular on Federation planets, but in any case I expect that most Federation citizens take holograms at face value.
Kira is Dukat's (step) daughter, and he treated her as if she was his daughter, since the pilot of DS9.
No, he was never hitting on Kira, you're just terrible at recognizing paternal affection, when you see it.
No, he was never hitting on Kira, you're just terrible at recognizing paternal affection, when you see it.
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