Production Quality Of Picard
- Thread starter TRON JA307020
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To their credit, at least they didn't try to pass this one off as a standard Vulcan uniform like the previous one from seasons 1-2... a standard uniform that she was literally the only character to ever wear.
I mean -- you do realize that buttons as ornaments have been used on clothing since the 29th Century BCE, and have been used as fasteners since the 13th Century CE, right?
Seems like it would be really weird for humanity to just abandon this incredibly useful item that's been used in clothes for a thousand years by TOS's era.
It was a bad rule. The idea that "brighter, optimistic future=clothing that's less practical," is... counter-intuitive.
Plus they just always looked bad. Trying to do "fashion but future" is a fool's errand; better to just have clothing that doesn't draw attention to itself.
No, they really didn't. Ever try to introduce ST to someone who's not already a fan and get to a scene with those outfits? Civilian clothes in TOS and Berman-era productions read to the vast majority of people as camp. It undermines the verisimilitude of the show for most people.
Maybe so, but that's not been the conception of clothing in the Star Trek universe since 1966. My point was simply that it's a radical and inconsistent departure when compared to what's come before.
Whether or not the absence of buttons on clothing is realistic is kind of a moot point, since virtually nothing in Star Trek is a realistic projection of our future.
You don't see many contemporary people in catsuits.
That’s completely different from the point I was making. In this example, the producers of the show Ryan was starring in purposely had her wear clothing that was sexual in nature in order to pander to their audiences’ lowest common denominator. There was no need whatsoever for her to wear that outfit, just like there was no need whatsoever for a Vulcan to wear a catsuit either.
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Insert cell phone argument here
Also, a central conceit is that Star Trek is about our humanity. Having buttons is ok.
I'm not sure I agree here. People's favorite characters in Trek have generally been the aliens and misfits. Spock in TOS. Data and Worf in TNG. Quark, Odo, or Garak in DS9. Seven and The Doctor on VOY. Hell, we could even include Saru on DIS. People most identify with the weirdo outsider characters, who are absolutely not constructed to be the relatable "everymen" of the shows.
Speaking more broadly, once again, if you want to just have "modern people" in a SF scenario, there are better fictional universes for it than Star Trek. You could have a near future setting like in most episodes of Black Mirror. Or you could go the route of Farscape/Guardians of the Galaxy, and have the protagonist be the one "normal dude" who's thrust into a weird universe. I just don't really see the point in setting a show hundreds of years in the future without putting at least a little thought into the flavor of future music, fashion, literature, art, cuisine, etc.
While not known for really outre costuming, I'd argue The Expanse has done a better job displaying the future as being culturally alien than Trek ever has. The Belters are openly constructed to be alien, having their own patois, haircuts, tattoos, styles of food, etc. Its much more lowkey when it comes to Mars, but the show does get across they are much more militaristic/respectful of centralized authority than modern-day westerners. Even if you're looking at Earth, it's portrayed in a way which is much, much more multicultural than Trek ever has done, which helps you to feel like you're not just seeing a bunch of bland 21st century Canadians cosplaying future humanity.
While not known for really outre costuming, I'd argue The Expanse has done a better job displaying the future as being culturally alien than Trek ever has. The Belters are openly constructed to be alien, having their own patois, haircuts, tattoos, styles of food, etc. Its much more lowkey when it comes to Mars, but the show does get across they are much more militaristic/respectful of centralized authority than modern-day westerners. Even if you're looking at Earth, it's portrayed in a way which is much, much more multicultural than Trek ever has done, which helps you to feel like you're not just seeing a bunch of bland 21st century Canadians cosplaying future humanity.
But those aliens just represent other aspects of humanity. Because we’ve never actually met real aliens, we have no way to know what morals, mores, or values an extraterrestrial has. Plus, real aliens would not even look or speak like Star Trek aliens do.
Insert obligatory response concerning the necessity of cell phone towersInsert cell phone argument here
Broadly speaking, this is true. Doing "real aliens" right is common in written science fiction, but really hard in filmed media for various reasons. One is it's hard to have part of the narrative be from the alien POV and be convincingly alien. Literature can have all sorts of internal monologues which work quite well but simply don't translate well onto the screen. The other sort of "starfish alien" stories are those of first contact. These can - theoretically - be done right in filmed SF (Arrival is a great example) though the aliens aren't really characters per se (neither is the Child of Tamar in Darmok for that matter). In order to be a character there needs to be understanding of motivation, and in order to understand alien motivation a lot of background needs to be established. It would take the better part of a season, to be honest, and it might not be the most gripping TV.
To give one concrete example, while humans have few children and care for their offspring deeply, there are lots of species which have thousands of offspring and are totally indifferent to their survival (in some cases even eating them). Some science fiction books have elucidated what this could mean for alien psychology. Star Trek has not, however, taking the parent-child bond for granted even in startlingly different lifeforms (see the Horta), in part because the bond between a parent and a child is one of the most, if not the most, emotionally moving for us as humans. Introducing a race which did not care if its own children lived or died would be interesting, but it would require a lot of background explanation to make it clear they were not meant to be "evil" just different.
That said, while the "outsiders" in Trek do not have plausibly alien psychologies, they are more culturally alien to the viewer than the "boring humans" of Star Trek. Perhaps more akin to the differences between human cultures overall, but some work is taken to show that they don't have identical points of view to any other character, which is due to some combination of their physical state (as in the case of Data) and culture. Therefore, I don't think you can say that having relatable characters is as important as having interesting characters when it comes to Star Trek.
All I can tell you is that when I try to introduce people to Star Trek, the ridiculous civilian clothing pulls people out of the show every time. It's always a thing that they report as damaging their suspension of disbelief and registering as camp.
I get that. But since the traditional conception of civilian clothing in Star Trek is, well, bad, and since it does absolutely nothing to hurt the essential ethos of the show, I just do not see the relevance. Sometimes changes are very good ideas, and reintroducing buttons to the 24th Century is a very good idea.
There's a big difference between an "Everyman" and a character who's essentially a modern human.
Like, let's talk about Spock. Let's talk about how Spock is essentially a symbolic representation of people who are caught between cultures that have conflicting values. Let's talk about how Spock is arguably a symbolic representation of the conflicts that arose from the transition from the more restrained cultural mores of America of the early 20th Century to the more open and expressive late 20th Century. Let's talk about Spock is coded as Jewish and how in some way he represents the conflicts Jewish Americans feel when living in a Gentile-dominated America.
Let's talk about Data, Odo, the Doctor, and Seven as essentially representations of neuroatypical people. Let's talk about Worf and Quark as characters (played by an African American actor and a Jewish actor, respectively) who feel looked down upon as somehow more primitive than their (mostly white, mostly Gentile) coworkers because of their cultural/racial identities. Let's talk about Saru as a somewhat insecure immigrant who is performing a certain class identity with his choice of accent in his new culture.
All of these characters are really modern people beneath a sci-fi wrapping. (Well, except when they're unintentional racial stereotypes whose desire to behave aggressively or irrationally plays into the white writers' subconscious biases, i.e., Worf.)
In fact, their status on the show as non-Human characters ironically often allowed them to be more like modern people with realistic psychologies, since the Human characters on TNG were often portrayed in a psychologically unrealistic manner -- and those characters are frankly largely forgotten because they never spoke to people as strongly as those "outsider" characters who really reflect realistic psychologies and modern cultural conflicts.
I would say Star Trek from TNG to ENT often featured a mix of these "outsider" characters with memorable internal lives and problems, and blander "brighter future" Humans whose psychologies were depicted as two-dimensional in pursuit of chasing that Gene Roddenberry Vision (TM) of a brighter future with no character conflict. The exception to that was DS9 -- and DIS and PIC are both written more in the DS9 vein than the TNG vein, in that they have abandoned that latter character type. Everyone on DIS and PIC has the kinds of problems and internal conflicts Spock and Odo etc had on the old shows.
I agree here. I wish we got to see more cultural diversity within ST Humanity. And not just real cultures -- I'd love to see fictional Human cultures that developed in space, the way the Space Boomers could have been on ENT, and the way the Belters and Dusters are on The Expanse.
Insert obligatory response concerning the necessity of cell phone towers
Listen, all I'm sayin' in, Captain Kirk's communicator would work in an elevator, damnit.
Also what gives about the bridges on the romulans war birds and the federation ships? The viewscreens look identical as well as bridges layout. The romulans have green neon everywhere and the federation red. Someone either stole technology or the production crew were cheap and uncreative and just used one crappy discovery set and redressed it twice. Terrible.
Someone stole tech.
So they did exactly the same thing as they did in Star Trek: Nemesis, where the Valdore-class Romulan ships were the Enterprise-E bridge with green instead of blue graphics?
I'm guessing it was okay then, but somehow isn't now?
Remember when they passed off a Klingon bridge set as the Enterprise torpedo room by simply changing the lighting and taking out all the chairs? Or how the Defiant bridge set seemed to portray every single alien bridge on Voyager and Enterprise with sometimes as little as the computer graphics being changed?
Welcome to Star Trek Picard where doing the same thing as past Trek is wrong.
He’s just grasping at straws at this point. I’m not entirely sure he even believes half of what he posts anyway.
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