Ron Moore and Ira Behr have spoken about how unpleasant and artificial it was to write characters in TNG. I find TNG quite hard to watch now; so many of the interactions are sterile and mechanical. I’d happily watch the average Picard episode over the average TNG episode.
Spoilers How to save Star Trek's 'Legacy' entering the 25th century!
- Thread starter Mr Bambostic
- Start date
So baffling.
Why?
Prepare to be further baffled, then.
Picard is a super-human symbol of virtue in TNG. He's a walking-talking-breathing-tea drinking idealized Roddenberry's Vision embodiment. Flawless, unflappable, always available to give some self-righteous speech about "the truth" or about "evolved humanity" or some other such pretentious bullshit. Q was sometimes there to knock him down a peg or to shine a light on his sheer fucking hubris, but it wasn't really until Lily Sloan called him out in FC that he started looking like an actual real human character to me, and not some infuriating embodiment of Roddenberry's Vision.
In fact, over the years, I've come to believe that if you look at TNG Jean-Luc Picard seriously, in the context of "Star Trek is a real thing," he comes off as having an almost unhealthy and totally bloated/unrealistic cult-like believe in the ideals of the Federation and Starfleet. And he could always be counted on to do exactly the right things. Always. There's never a doubt in the viewer's mind that no matter how morally and ethically challenging the situation, Picard's virtue and honor will shine through in the end (and we'll get a very on-the-nose speech about it, where you can be assured that any other option/decision is derided as primitive unevolved drivel).
It's off-putting, unrelatable, unrealistic and uninteresting.
I love PIC, particularly S1, because it takes his relationship dynamic with Lily from FC and expands upon it, with his bullshit being called out left-and-right, and him having to face the real world....not able to hide behind being in his prime, in command of a starship, with the flawless and adoring crew of the Enterprise-D surrounding him and nodding at every order he gives, every soliloquy he spouts.
PIC as a series has made me appreciate the character much, much more than I did during the original run of TNG, where I gravitated much more toward Worf and Riker, who often felt like real, flawed, unsure people at times, which was a rarity for that series.
Exactly so for me as well.
Yes, the pompous and arrogant Picard of TNG never really appealed to me that much as a character. To be fair, I think it was worse in the early seasons, and he felt a little more humanized by the end of the series. And then the movies gave us his midlife crisis 'action hero' phase which came out of left field. I haven't watched PIC S2 yet, but I that that the character seemed like more of a real human being in S1. At the same time, I felt like S1 turned the tables on him a little too much, as it seemed that everyone was being hostile toward him and dismissing him as the obsolete old guy throughout many of the episodes.
Kor
Kor
Good point. I just have a general dislike for stories in which nobody wants to listen to or believe the protagonist.
Kor
He was a learned man, passionate explorer, accomplished diplomat, greatly involved in archeology/anthropology, haunted by his assimilation, alternate life in The Inner Light and Cardassian torture, he was intensely private and uncomfortable around children, he had unexpected instances of unexpected often dry humour, was a true believer in the Federation and Starfleet, had a strained relationship with his family...sure felt like a full, well rounded character to me.
IDIC indeed. It's like we watched completely different shows.
But we aren't talking about well-rounded, we're talking about real, aka someone you could see knowing in real life. And Picard is a caricature of the perfect man, not a real character. When you have actual writers from the show talking about how artificial it was to write TNG characters, that's a clue. He feels artificial. His "humor" you refer to are at best cringey Dad jokes. Yeah, later on he got marginally better, but Picard has made him far more of a human being in his day to day behaviors than he ever felt on TNG.
Sorry, saw the date and thought of this song:
Indeed. Picard reminded me a bit of Harmon Rabb Jr. from JAG, but lacked a measure of warmth. Harm initially was very much a caricature who was capable at everything. Picard was framed the "evolved human" in perfection. He lack that genuine warmth at times because he was always to be proven right about his beliefs about his evolved status.
It got marginally better but the overall warmth of a human seemed to always be missed.
And the beauty is there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Personally, I loved Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing and the characters on it. I thought they were fantastic and fun to watch. But they didn't feel "real" to me, they felt like characters because of his style of dialogue. People just don't speak like that in real life, or even typically react to things the way they do. It doesn't make me love that show or those characters any less, but I can recognize that they were highly stylized personas.
Last edited:
Would some one in the 1500s watching a play about one of us consider us "real", I wonder.
Indeed. Even Shakespeare was a bit of an elevated reality that drew attention because it felt stylized but processed through familiar themes people could (and still can,,) relate to.
But, that doesn't automatically make warm characters.
But that isn't the problem, that he's from the future and may act different. He is a British man...that they made like drinking tea....and Gilbert and Sullivan and speaks in quasi-formal almost Shakespearean language. They couldn't have made him more of a British stereotype if they had named him Sir Richard Brantigham, the first Earl of Fop.
I think ‘Mr. Bambostic’ got his feelings off his chest with his little essay. But despite that, I don’t think he will be saving Star Trek any time soon.
