Was pretty excited for this show.. but ultimately underwhelmed...

It seems like you have some serious philosophical problems with a lot of the core concepts of transhumanism. What is consciousness? What kind of physical substrate does it require? You write as if there were clear and obvious answers to these questions, but there aren't. And that's precisely the territory that a lot of cutting-edge SF is exploring these days (has been for years, in fact). I'm glad to see Trek following suit in thought-provoking ways, rather than pretending these themes and tropes don't exist.

 

Quite so. It is a nice exploration of tech that has been demonstrated before in Trek but ignored. So, now we are grappling with fundamental questions of humanity and technology and where they intersect.

Yes, these are exactly the question and concepts Trek ought to be exploring right now.

 

Watching them take 10 episodes to get to the finale of data dying again was too much. Watching Picard explore his new body would first be weird and second it would waste precious episodes to tell us a new unique exploration story of a strange new world.

 

Being in a new body is a a strange new world.

 

The strangest strange new world possible, in fact.

 

Just saw a DS9 episode that kind of dealt with that, called Life Support.

A crew person got severely injured to the point where they required mechanical replacement parts.

It got to the point where the rest of their brain would have to be replaced. They (the crew and his friend) ended up having to deal with whether or not they (the injured man) would be the same person if they didn't have that last part of their brain left.

It honestly reminded me of where things are in Picard now to a point.

 

I think Soong's developments in artificial intelligence were probably far ahead of where Bashir's were. It seems like by 2399, they can copy the essence of someone, whereas they couldn't in 2371. I figure the technology Soong was developing is extremely cutting edge.

If any part of Picard's consciousness was preserved and transferred to the new body, like I said, I'd consider it the same person. My take on it was they couldn't do that with Bariel.

No doubt this will spark a lot of debate in the Federation.

 

Even if Picard died and is an identical perfect synthetic copy now, what's the difference?

This is a very sci-fi question and since Trek is science fiction...

 

Yeah, and that's exactly the reason, why I was pretty excited for the show and then again, while I really love some of it parts, very underwhelmed: PIC is a great character show and the way, they've characterized JL, was very strong for me. But while TNG wasn't that strong in drawing the characters, it showed a lot of "Science Fiction" and a very interesting world - in PIC, it's now just the other world around. The "Sci-Fi-worldbulding" lacks a lot for me.

 

Could Trek just please be done with "he/she's dead; . . . JK" now? It has no dramatic effect. You know they're not gonna stay dead. Unless it really demolishes the other characters, that would be something. Like Spock in Day of the Dove or Kirk in WOK. It was beyond silly in STID. I laughed out loud in the movie theater at nu-Spock's yell.

I find it ironic Spiner didn't want to play Data anymore, so he had them kill him off again (?) so he came back and . . . played Data some more.

But really, it just gets old. As did the killing people off for shock value in PIC. No main characters (that would have been real-ish, and actually shocking), just ancillaries we liked.

I wrote an earlier post my kindle fire erased, but I was really disappointed in PIC, esp with Chabon as showrunner. I thought it would SOAR. It was merely ok. But isn't it usually our expectations that cause future pain? And dang it, my hopes are crazy high for "Pike."

 

But I've always known in Trek.

 

I volunteer to explore Jean-Luc's new body. I shall report on whether it differs from the previous one.

On a more serious note... I have zero issues with him being in a new body. I mean it even looks exactly like the old one. It's not much of a leap. But then, I've never had issues with this kind of thing. I'd love him all the same if they had given him a female body, for example. Or no body at all and he'd been a blue cloud represented by a P on an LCARS display. All fine with me.

 

I'm so glad you brought up Mandalorian because it really drives home my biggest issue with Picard. It's boring. Pure and simple. Good serialized shows keep me wanting to watch the next episode to see what happens next.. Mandalorian hooked me from the beginning just like The Walking Dead did. After four episodes of Picard I simply gave up. There was nothing compelling,nothing that made me say, "Wow, what a great episode!" I had no desire to watch the next one because I didn't care about anyone but Picard, and that was only due to the many TNG episodes and movies. After four episodes we're still grounded trying to unravel the mystery woman. By this point I don't care anymore. I'm not a huge fan of DISC, but I was at least entertained through one season before they threw everything down the shooter to tell Pike and Spock stories. At least that felt like a Star Trek show.

 

Yup. I couldn't remember what the quest was half the time. Find somebody? Why? Because the first one got splatted with Romulan acid on his watch. The whole premise was kind of a who cares, to me? I know there were greater plots that finding dhaj would answer, but all kind of convoluted. It got very generic civilian action-adventury. I honestly thought it was going to be just a drama. Dumb, I know. I better adjust my hopes for Pike and fast.

 

It's funny to hear other people's experiences. Nothing about the Mandalorian hooked me. Picard surprised me.

 

Yeah. The whole thing felt very cheap and the story was not good at all. It also felt like they changed direction 4 episodes in. The whole Romulan nova subplot was just dropped and the Borg stuff lead no where.
The robot story didn’t make sense as well. Maddox left to make a planet full of robots but then leaves to start a facility someone else which is funded by a loan shark and discovery by Romulans. Why not just stay on the robot planet?

 

yeah he was successful in his endeavor to make androids even more superior to data and he leaves. The Borg cube made no sense. When did the romulans capture a cube? Was it hughs cube? It made no sense to the story.

 

I just watched a interesting video on youtube from EC Henry about the holograms in Picard and how they actually made the show look less advanced than the previous shows. I loved his solution to the problem.

 

Usually I agree with Mr. Henry but this one that I didn't. I didn't mind his solution, since he is very innovative, but I guess I didn't see it as a problem.

 

Why? What possible difference could the number of episodes make if you’re enjoying the show?