Production Quality Of Picard
- Thread starter TRON JA307020
- Start date
Indeed. Riker really sold that moment. The fleet was not my worry and it did the job it was supposed to do.
Hopefully there will be more ship imagery to satisfy all comers next season.
They might not have been available.
I hope we'll see some of the fallout of having her in that position... will Clancy's head roll? Will SF Security be investigated for more moles? We never really see any consequences in modern movies (like STID where the head of SF must have violated every single rule in the book), but here we should.
All I see is 3 bus seats. Where's Jake?
We’re clearly already done, chief. No need to pretend you’re the one who shut us up.
@Mark 2000 please drop the subject and belligerent attitude good day----comments to PM
Not going to read through the whole thread, but it seems like people are confusing production quality or value with production design. Picard has the same issue as Discovery: The production quality is excellent. The production design is very mediocre.
Think of it as a mid-priced sedan or saloon. It has the build quality of a luxury car but the same homogenous looks as a budget vehicle. You can put 300,000 miles on it, but park it between two similar low-end cars at the shopping center and you can hardly tell them apart. Picard is a Honda Accord.
The thing is, since Berman took over (And even a bit before that.), the production value of Star Trek has been pretty high. Enterprise especially. The thing is, going all the way back to TOS the design concepts have always pushed the envelope and have even been trendsetters. But the Kurtzman era stuff just lacks that extra spark of inspiration and creativity. It's boring. Generic.
Think of it as a mid-priced sedan or saloon. It has the build quality of a luxury car but the same homogenous looks as a budget vehicle. You can put 300,000 miles on it, but park it between two similar low-end cars at the shopping center and you can hardly tell them apart. Picard is a Honda Accord.
The thing is, since Berman took over (And even a bit before that.), the production value of Star Trek has been pretty high. Enterprise especially. The thing is, going all the way back to TOS the design concepts have always pushed the envelope and have even been trendsetters. But the Kurtzman era stuff just lacks that extra spark of inspiration and creativity. It's boring. Generic.
I never said that! I would never say that about any person, real or not.
Circling back a bit, I do think it's fundamentally the wrong take to have Star Trek characters just be "contemporary" people dropped down into the far future. If you want a sci-fi show like that, there are plenty of near-future sci-fi shows to choose from. The whole purpose of setting a show centuries in the future is to show how humanity can change over generations. While I admit there's something really unappealing about the "evolved" humanity introduced in early TNG, at least it was something somewhat culturally alien to our way of being. Setting this up as the norm also made characters who departed in some way (O'Brien, Ro, Tom Paris, etc) stand out a lot more.
Where I think Berman Trek went wrong however is they seemed to depict future human culture as an absence. It wasn't contemporary, but once you got past Federation ideals, it basically was defined by the lack of any of the interesting cultural quirks that the Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Ferengi, etc had. Sure there was some weird future fashion here and there, but the shows made you think - for example - there was not a single piece of human literature, art, or music since the late 20th century. Aliens get to be interesting, humans get to be boring (unless they're some weirdo splinter colony somewhere).
Where I think Berman Trek went wrong however is they seemed to depict future human culture as an absence. It wasn't contemporary, but once you got past Federation ideals, it basically was defined by the lack of any of the interesting cultural quirks that the Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Ferengi, etc had. Sure there was some weird future fashion here and there, but the shows made you think - for example - there was not a single piece of human literature, art, or music since the late 20th century. Aliens get to be interesting, humans get to be boring (unless they're some weirdo splinter colony somewhere).
I'll echo the fact that the production values are extremely high. For the most part, the show looks magnificient, as did ENT and DSC before it. The copypaste fleet was a bit shoddy, but it's not on the screen for very long, I understand cost-cutting in that area.
Clothing-wise: I much prefer the choice made in Picard to some prior choices in TOS, TNG and DS9.
Someone compared Jake Sisko's clothing to a bus seat, and that was on point (not to mention hilarious). Black (fake) leather jackets and simple sweaters > weird spandex, overabundance of wild colours (TOS), pajamas and onesies (TNG, DS9) or dressing everyone like a mechanic (ENT).
60s shows were trying too hard to look futuristic, forgetting that some things don't change that much. No reason to think practical clothing is going to be fazed out, only the more impractical clothes used for ceremonial reasons. Silly hats (mitres being the silliest of all) are more likely to be on the way out than jeans and (fake) leather jackets.
Give me boring clothes over ridiculous ones.
Clothing-wise: I much prefer the choice made in Picard to some prior choices in TOS, TNG and DS9.
Someone compared Jake Sisko's clothing to a bus seat, and that was on point (not to mention hilarious). Black (fake) leather jackets and simple sweaters > weird spandex, overabundance of wild colours (TOS), pajamas and onesies (TNG, DS9) or dressing everyone like a mechanic (ENT).
60s shows were trying too hard to look futuristic, forgetting that some things don't change that much. No reason to think practical clothing is going to be fazed out, only the more impractical clothes used for ceremonial reasons. Silly hats (mitres being the silliest of all) are more likely to be on the way out than jeans and (fake) leather jackets.
Give me boring clothes over ridiculous ones.
I don't know if we need to see all of that, because PIC is not (at this time) a show about people in Starfleet. But we should definitely hear about it, and see at least some of the consequences.
Personally, if I'm the Federation President in 2399 and all this goes down? I'm going to want Admiral Clancy's resignation, I'm going to order Starfleet Intelligence to launch an investigation into every single high-level officer in Starfleet Security, and I'm gonna want a complete investigation into all of Oh's activities and associates. I'm gonna want a goddamn timeline of every single step she took, every transmission she ever made, every word she ever uttered, since infiltrating Starfleet. And I'm gonna want the Starfleet Commander's head on a platter.
I would also want to get some clarification from the Romulan Free State about the situation. It's unclear if the RFS leaders know about the Zhat Vash and its infiltration of their Tal Shiar. They may well want to charge Oh with depraved passive genocide for manipulating the Federation into denying evacuation assistance to the Romulans... Or they maybe 100% on board with the whole thing. Either way I'm gonna need to know what my counterparts in the Free State want, because I need to know if they're my allies or my enemies.
The production design is not mediocre. It is just not to your taste. Honestly, it's not entirely to my taste either. I'd prefer something a bit closer to the production design of The Orville, TBH -- maybe try to synthesize that design and the more sophisticated cinematography and lighting design of DIS and PIC. But being not to personal taste is not the same thing as being mediocre.
I don't really know if we can compare production values at this point. TNG, DS9, and VOY were made for an era of television characterized by what is now very low-definition television sets; episodes were composited on videotape, and all the images are very low-resolution by today's standards.
They were also made before the advent of cinematic-style lighting and cinematography became common and cost-effective in television. That's why, say, the bridge of the Enterprise-D looks so much brighter static in TNG than it does in Star Trek: Generations.
In a lot of ways, I think comparing production values from TV pre-high def to today, is a bit like comparing production values of, say, Friends to the production values of I Love Lucy. There's a point where the technologies involved are so fundamentally different that it's not a fair comparison.
I don't think they're boring or generic. If anything, they seem to me to be extensions of the John Eaves aesthetic -- straight lines, harsh angles, darker colors. My personal taste is the John Eaves aesthetic mixed in with the Rick Sternbach aesthetic -- like what we got in the Enterprise-E or DS9 sets. But it's not bad, either; it's just not to my taste.
I always really liked the First Contact 2060s costumes.
The special effects looked rushed. The Dominion space battle in DS9 looked far superior and that was done 20 years ago. The federation ships looked clunky and the interiors looked like discovery styled ships. All the warmth and charm of the late 24th century ships isAis gone.romulan and starfleet bridges look more alike then ever before.
Last edited:
At the risk of not adding anything that hasn't said before...
I think the costumes in Picard are much easier on the eyes than the ones from TNG, be it the ridiculous gray onesie from Deja Q or the bus-seat patterned waistcoats everybody seems to wear in DS9. Stop pretending the TNG-era costumes don't scream "late eighties-early nineties" just as much as Picard's costumes look contemporary. Granted, no costume stands truly out, but they all look like they were designed to be unobtrusive and to complement the personalities of the characters rather than to explore late-24th century fashions. I find it better to have them wear clothes that look practical and something actual people would wear than to dress them in funny-looking space clothes just for the sake of looking different.
Still... to claim that the costumes look off-the-shelf? Picard's outfit that he wears when visiting Starfleet Command looks reasonably like a 24th century version of a suit jacket or a blazer, and the costumes on Freecloud have a look of unhinged extravagance, even reminding me of The Fifth Element a bit.
As for the starships... Starfleet was never the focus of the series. Why would the graphics artists spend weeks upon weeks designing something that would only be seen in a few minutes of distance shots in one single episode? They aren't the Galaxies, Intrepids and Excelsiors of the previous series. They're the Frankenstein Fleet model kitbashes of DS9 or the low-rez Sabre, Steamrunner and Norway classes from First Contact. Those weren't beauties either. Using the Discovery bridge? Of course, why build a new one for a single scene, especially if the actor you need for it is already there directing an episode of a different series using the same set? Unless you know what to look for, it doesn't even look like the Discovery bridge, more like just a nondescript bridge background. At any rate, it's still better than the Berman era custom of a plain wall with a backlit Federation/Alien logo on it.
I think the costumes in Picard are much easier on the eyes than the ones from TNG, be it the ridiculous gray onesie from Deja Q or the bus-seat patterned waistcoats everybody seems to wear in DS9. Stop pretending the TNG-era costumes don't scream "late eighties-early nineties" just as much as Picard's costumes look contemporary. Granted, no costume stands truly out, but they all look like they were designed to be unobtrusive and to complement the personalities of the characters rather than to explore late-24th century fashions. I find it better to have them wear clothes that look practical and something actual people would wear than to dress them in funny-looking space clothes just for the sake of looking different.
Still... to claim that the costumes look off-the-shelf? Picard's outfit that he wears when visiting Starfleet Command looks reasonably like a 24th century version of a suit jacket or a blazer, and the costumes on Freecloud have a look of unhinged extravagance, even reminding me of The Fifth Element a bit.
As for the starships... Starfleet was never the focus of the series. Why would the graphics artists spend weeks upon weeks designing something that would only be seen in a few minutes of distance shots in one single episode? They aren't the Galaxies, Intrepids and Excelsiors of the previous series. They're the Frankenstein Fleet model kitbashes of DS9 or the low-rez Sabre, Steamrunner and Norway classes from First Contact. Those weren't beauties either. Using the Discovery bridge? Of course, why build a new one for a single scene, especially if the actor you need for it is already there directing an episode of a different series using the same set? Unless you know what to look for, it doesn't even look like the Discovery bridge, more like just a nondescript bridge background. At any rate, it's still better than the Berman era custom of a plain wall with a backlit Federation/Alien logo on it.
Similar threads
