Fan is short for fanatic.
We're all guilty of it, and I shall apologize for my part and work to reign in my hyperbole
We're all guilty of it, and I shall apologize for my part and work to reign in my hyperbole
"Star Trek: Picard" Scores at Saturn Awards!
- Thread starter Danja
- Start date
How? How is it anything like the Berman Era?
MATALAS: Boy, wouldn’t you want to check in with the Klingon Empire? Wouldn’t you want to check in with Deep Space Nine and The Doctor [from Voyager] and everything that went on with the Berman-verse? So that’s kind of where I see is to explore the galaxy and sort of get back to the Next Gen roots of storytelling is what I would see as a kind of version of Star Trek I’d like to see, with this group of characters that we’re seeing.
If you look at a lot of the reviews for season 3, they specifically talk about it feeling like a continuation of TNG in tone, and for the people that liked it I would argue that's part of why they liked it. It was the continuation of the stories of familiar characters in a form of Star Trek that looked and felt familiar. For those people that didn't like seasons 1 or 2, or have had issues with the other Paramount+ series, this is as close in tone and fidelity that any of the Paramount+ series have come to feeling like those 90s era Trek series.
From The Hollywood Reporter:
“It was important to me to give these characters and the fans an adventure that felt not only like Star Trek, but also like the best Next Gen movie we never got to see. That they deserved to have,” Matalas tells The Hollywood Reporter in an interview prior to the Feb. 16 season three premiere, “The Next Generation" ...
Matalas and his collaborators looked at the best of the Berman era of TNG, as well as that of the Star Trek feature films starring The Original Series crew, to give Picard’s final mission its biggest stakes yet.
Matalas and his collaborators looked at the best of the Berman era of TNG, as well as that of the Star Trek feature films starring The Original Series crew, to give Picard’s final mission its biggest stakes yet.
That "actual story content" being Spock's love life, how can we get Uhura to sing again, and Kirk making yet another unconvincing excuse to be on the Enterprise this episode?
And yet the story content is pure nuTrek.
So, basically, it sounds like wanting the TNG wallpaper on nuTrek, which is baffling to me.
And Pike wrestling with knowing his fate, M'Benga struggling with trauma, La'an making piece with her ancestry, and such.
So, yeah, character stuff I can sink my teeth in to.
Not even close.
Strange New Worlds gets closer than Picard Season 3 did. Since it's actually episodic for one.
I should amend my post and take a step back and ask a question: What is a TNG feel? What does that mean to each member who find more value in that, specifically @cal888 @Lord Garth and @Citiprime?
Genuine question here since I enjoy TNG in very small doses and don't know what the feel is?
Genuine question here since I enjoy TNG in very small doses and don't know what the feel is?
And Riker and Troi dealing with grief and the strain it's put on their marriage, Data returning from the dead and discovering he's now far more human than he dreamed he could ever be, Geordi getting to deal with the death and resurrection of his best friend, Picard coming to grips with discovering he's a father, Seven of Nine dealing with her own demons and questioning her place in Starfleet... and they managed it all without a song-and-dance routine. But waaah, memberberries.
And I'm sure they don't think of their equally 'cultist' anti-cult as a cult
Well, no, poorly plotted story and mystery box that led me wanting in terms of connecting with characters.
The drama is there but surface level for me. The focus on Jack, and profoundly unlikable characters in Shaw and Beverly, and the return of the Borg sadly overshadow that drama.
Except TNG felt like it was set in the same universe as TOS. Picard season 3 feels like it's set in the same universe as TNG, TOS and everything else that came before.
Strange New Worlds doesn't.
To me, it's its own thing that its own version of Star Trek that doesn't feel connected at all to TNG, DS9, Voyager or most importantly TOS. And I'm fine with that, but when I watch an episode of Strange New Worlds I don't feel like the story is connected to anything else except Discovery (*and Lower Decks).
I didn't know that nuTrek had sole claim to season/series-long story arcs with character driven storytelling, since that's been a thing since Deep Space Nine and Enterprise. Characters finding out they have long, lost children has happened since Wrath of Khan. Characters returning to the Enterprise family changed with emotional issues or unhappy with how their life is going has been an element since The Motion Picture.
These are common story themes and elements the franchise has touched on over its history.
Since people are lobbing bombs at the writing of season 3, let me just say the Khan episode of SNW is one of the dumbest episodes of recent Star Trek I've seen, with an awful motivation for altering Trek's timeline. For an episode so concerned with making sure the Eugenics Wars remains believable, it has the story not making any damn sense as far as believability in a modern setting. How do characters check in to a hotel without an id and credit card? Chess money. How do characters jump back and forth across an international border without a passport? Chess money and a cab.
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Not especially ...
Was the Enterprise in TMP a memberberry? Was Spock showing up? Was Bones beaming in? Or hey did it start with Klingon battleberries? 
Or I guess Khan himself was a berry, and Sarek showing up in SFS, Amanda in TVH, etc.
In my POV, the only case where the term applies is when it's there without a purpose. I could see Shelby as a berry, because it was just a brief appearance with no further meaning. Even the Queen at the end could be seen as such a berry, because her only function was to scream Noooo like it's the other franchise
But all the 'old returning' elements that are so criticized by the anti-berries, including much more developed Beverly, Worf, Geordi, back to full form Riker, the majestic D, a completely new version of Data that integrates all Soong droids, and the intriguing return of Ro, were much more than just berries. The fleet museum ships popping up for 5 seconds could be berries (except the Bounty, which had an essential story purpose). 'Member the Defiant? Here it is! But who cares about 5 second berries? If you don't like them, ignore those 5 seconds, just like the Kirk skeletoberry can easily be ignored if you don't care. Even what seemed to be the berriest berry in the trailer, Moriarty, had a purpose in the story and wasn't just a random old thing popping up just for the sake of popping up.
Or I guess Khan himself was a berry, and Sarek showing up in SFS, Amanda in TVH, etc.
In my POV, the only case where the term applies is when it's there without a purpose. I could see Shelby as a berry, because it was just a brief appearance with no further meaning. Even the Queen at the end could be seen as such a berry, because her only function was to scream Noooo like it's the other franchise
But all the 'old returning' elements that are so criticized by the anti-berries, including much more developed Beverly, Worf, Geordi, back to full form Riker, the majestic D, a completely new version of Data that integrates all Soong droids, and the intriguing return of Ro, were much more than just berries. The fleet museum ships popping up for 5 seconds could be berries (except the Bounty, which had an essential story purpose). 'Member the Defiant? Here it is! But who cares about 5 second berries? If you don't like them, ignore those 5 seconds, just like the Kirk skeletoberry can easily be ignored if you don't care. Even what seemed to be the berriest berry in the trailer, Moriarty, had a purpose in the story and wasn't just a random old thing popping up just for the sake of popping up.
I will hard disagree with you there. TMP and TNG felt completely separate from TOS.
I didn't say they were not. I said they were not well used.
Which is something I get told a lot regarding Discovery using well worn tropes from other Trek, and then called "grimdark."
Imaginary conversation:
Person A: Star Trek has done these before. It's not bad.
Person B: It is when it's used as badly as Show X did!
Person A: Yeah, but that's Star Trek.
Person B: Doesn't make it ok.
And so on.
Indeed, yes. I am ok with limited or no Klingons.Not especially ...
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I think at least one fundamental fracture around PIC S3 is this:
Matalas and Monfette both talk about the importance of the past, about the idea that Star Trek's age means it's appropriate to have a season of television that is very preoccupied with nostalgia and with the past. There's even a line in "The Last Generation" that basically spells this out, where Picard, Riker, and LaForge are aboard the Enterprise-D as it's being returned to the Fleet Museum again, and Picard remarks that the ship is evidence that "the past mattered."
If you're fixated on the past, if you find change threatening, if you're just trying to re-create that same feeling you had in like 1993 or whatever, well, sure, that probably appeals to you.
But if you want something different, it's probably not gonna be as emotionally satisfying.
Which... I'm sorry, but for me, the past matters, but PIC S3 feels like it wallows in the past. Like it's so preoccupied with the idea of trying to recapture old glory days that it's not really living in its present anymore.
There's always a place for nostalgia, but when it takes over your storytelling ethos so completely, I do think there's a problem. Life, and stories, are like sharks -- they gotta keep moving forward. And if your story is partly built on nostalgia, I think it also needs to be about those characters taking that nostalgia and then letting it go. Which is basically what Nicholas Meyer did in both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Nostalgia were both heavy elements of those films, but neither one wallowed in it the way PIC S3 does. Neither one feels the need to depict society as collapsing because young people are taken over by evil-doers and we need old folks to save the day from those foreign-controlled youngins', like some weird Baby Boomer fantasy. And neither film feels like it's necessary to tell the audience, "The past mattered, goddamnit!"
In fact, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country practically refutes that entire mindset:
"What is the meaning of this?"
"It's about the future, Madam Chancellor. Some people think the future means the end of history. Well, we haven't run out of history quite yet. Your father called the future 'the undiscovered country.' People can be very frightened of change."
"You have restored my father's faith."
"And you've restored my son's."
Matalas and Monfette both talk about the importance of the past, about the idea that Star Trek's age means it's appropriate to have a season of television that is very preoccupied with nostalgia and with the past. There's even a line in "The Last Generation" that basically spells this out, where Picard, Riker, and LaForge are aboard the Enterprise-D as it's being returned to the Fleet Museum again, and Picard remarks that the ship is evidence that "the past mattered."
If you're fixated on the past, if you find change threatening, if you're just trying to re-create that same feeling you had in like 1993 or whatever, well, sure, that probably appeals to you.
But if you want something different, it's probably not gonna be as emotionally satisfying.
Which... I'm sorry, but for me, the past matters, but PIC S3 feels like it wallows in the past. Like it's so preoccupied with the idea of trying to recapture old glory days that it's not really living in its present anymore.
There's always a place for nostalgia, but when it takes over your storytelling ethos so completely, I do think there's a problem. Life, and stories, are like sharks -- they gotta keep moving forward. And if your story is partly built on nostalgia, I think it also needs to be about those characters taking that nostalgia and then letting it go. Which is basically what Nicholas Meyer did in both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Nostalgia were both heavy elements of those films, but neither one wallowed in it the way PIC S3 does. Neither one feels the need to depict society as collapsing because young people are taken over by evil-doers and we need old folks to save the day from those foreign-controlled youngins', like some weird Baby Boomer fantasy. And neither film feels like it's necessary to tell the audience, "The past mattered, goddamnit!"
In fact, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country practically refutes that entire mindset:
"What is the meaning of this?"
"It's about the future, Madam Chancellor. Some people think the future means the end of history. Well, we haven't run out of history quite yet. Your father called the future 'the undiscovered country.' People can be very frightened of change."
"You have restored my father's faith."
"And you've restored my son's."
That's a great line too. TUC is very much a movie about both how great the older generation is, but also about their flaws. Those of their generation who overcome their flaws, who are able to live in that brave new world, are those who are willing to let go of the past and embrace the future (Kirk, Azetbur, Gorkon, McCoy, Scotty, etc). And those who can't let go of the past -- Cartwright, Chang -- are the ones who could get everyone killed.
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In fairness, PIC S3 is not totally without this theme. The Borg Queen is obsessed with the past and unwilling to let go of the old social order she enjoyed. Picard is only able to become a whole and complete person by accepting his son into his life and overcoming the fear of intimacy that had been paralyzing him since his mother died. But it's muddled by the whole "hey, stop disrespecting your elders, young laddie, we need them to save the world from young people" subtext.
So does SNW
Indeed. I've never had a problem connecting SNW to the rest of the franchise, especially TOS.
