Yes.
Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x09 - "Võx"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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I always wondered why we never at least got those LCAR panels on the sides that cropped up in Alt-universe episodes. But then thinking about how the set had glare issues on the back consoles, and used black cardboard in the early seasons to block it, maybe that's another reason they remained as those gray lockers.
Yes, although I assume the entire plan hinges on having a giant attack fleet ready to blow up Earth.
I mean, it's a silly plan to me when there are so many easier ways to take over the Federation or more nefarious ways to hold the entire Federation hostage. So I'm trying not to interrogate it too much. lol
Re: The Enterprise-D bridge. I would have liked to have seen it in its Star Trek: Generations configuration too, but if their remit is to hit the nostalgia button, then of course they're gonna go for its classic TNG S3-S7 configuration.
Well... That's true of this season. But season one of Star Trek: Picard was very much anti-nostalgia. It was a loving but skeptical deconstruction of Jean-Luc Picard as a character and of his society. Which is why so many who love the nostalgia fest of S3 hated S1.
These are very fair points, and I think they point to why S3 works even for those of us who conceptually disagree with its premises.
Well... That's true of this season. But season one of Star Trek: Picard was very much anti-nostalgia. It was a loving but skeptical deconstruction of Jean-Luc Picard as a character and of his society. Which is why so many who love the nostalgia fest of S3 hated S1.
These are very fair points, and I think they point to why S3 works even for those of us who conceptually disagree with its premises.
I wrote a megathread about this a long time ago but I agree with it.
Through production limitations (expense of new motion controlled models, expense of new CGI, use of AMT models to make kitbashes) the production of Trek in the 80s and 90s accidently created an incredibly logically design lineage flowing from the 2250s to (now) the 2400s. The below is all incidental from canon. It wasn't planned It just worked out that way.
In the late 2260s Starfleet developed the Constitution-refit design that took the modular components pioneered in the original Constitution and advanced them, and importantly allowed for modular configuration. This served Starfleet (and saved the Federation) for over a century. Because we got the Soyuz class, the Reliant class, the Miranda class, and countless variations of Connie-refit designs of midsized ships that were quick to make with enough volume to do all sorts of missions, from exploration to cargo to defense.
Fast forward to the 2280s, and they try to do it again with the Excelsior class design, first by pioneering a lot of new technologies, some of which succeed and form the foundation for really the next 80 years of Starfleet. Excelsiors start being built in the early 2390s and variants start showing up (such as the Excelsior-refit) in the the middle of the decade and the 2300s. If you look at Starfleet around 2320, it's largely Excelsior and excelsior-class variants and Connie-refit variant, specifically Miranda and Reliant style.
So what happens next? The Road to Ambassador class, which is in service by 2340, so let's say that's a 2330s program. After 30 years of success of the Excelsior and 40-ish of the Connie refit, they decide to take the next step in ship evolution. But the Ambassador class didn't live up to it's billing. It wasn't that much of an advance over the Excelsior class. Much of the tech was retrofitted into modernized Excelsiors and Mirandas, giving them decades more of life, but very few Ambassadors were built, and like one variant.
In the early 2340s Starfleet begins the long road to the Galaxy class. To not repeat the failure of the Ambassador class, which was an excelsior-style "top-down" system development, that road begins a bottom up approach. So they pioneer the technologies in smaller, simplier ships that prototype the systems that eventually are integrated in the Galaxy class (a recurring plot point that came up in TNG). The various 2340 and early 2350s ships you mentioned - New Orleans, Challenge, Cheyenne, Freedom - are all part of that effort. These classes were rare. They never had large production runs. Maybe only a few ships and kept to core systems duties (which is why they were so close to Wolf 359, they were essentially developmental prototypes). But they matured the technology that would be used in the late 2350s/early 2360s on the Galaxy class.
As a whole, the "road to the Galaxy class" worked as planned because when launched they were that quantum leap forward above the (upgraded) Excelsiors that was hoped for and that Ambassador failed to reach. And they were able to create a configuration variant in the Nebula class. But they were all very resource intensive and time intensive to build due to their size and state-of-the-art complexity. Even the Enterprise-D was essentially unfinished when it launched and spent much of the first 3-4 years receiving major upgrades.
Where the Galaxy class fit in Starfleet policy and the political situation of local space is interesting. With the Romulans isolationist since the 2310s, the Klingons friends and the biggest security crisis being the infrequent ow intensity border skirmishes with the Cardassians, to explore space beyond the reaches of these local powers, larger ships that had more amenities for larger voyages, and crucially, saw the introduction of families and civilians, was considered a sensible policy. Some older ships were modified to pioneer this purpose (like the Saratoga), but only the Galaxy and Nebula class were purpose built around the idea. One of the liming factors of this is that while ships got far faster between 2151 and 2284, since the development of the Excelsior class (especially improved versions in the 2310s), ships hadn't got much faster. Warp 9 gets you much further than Warp 7, but Warp 9 still means years-long voyages to unexplored space.
This entire way of thinking was obliterated by the rolling crises of the 2360s and 2370s which ended the "Long Peace" that began at Khitomer in 2293, perpetuated by Romulan isolationism, that made it possible. First was the end of Romulan isolationism in 2364, And then first contact with the Borg in 2365 and the Borg Invasion of 2366 (Wolf 359) ended it for good. The entire families-on-ships thing and with a small number of massive, hard to build ships was sidelined and Galaxy class construction ended.
What succeeded it would be know as the "Battle of Sector 001" era ships. The Akira, Sovereign, the Norway, the Steamrunner, the Saber, the Nova and of course, the Defiant. These grew out of of the post-Q Who plan to stand up a new Federation Battlefleet for the first time since the 2290s.They would be smaller, highly integrated, highly maneuverable, heavily armed ships and low profile ships. They could be built quicker than the galaxy class, but had a very defense-oriented design to fight the Borg. And they did that, successfully, in 2372 at the Battle of Sector 001 when 20-something ships did what the ships of 2366 could not do, and heavily damaged a Cube.
The Intrepid class fits in weirdly into this. It is not a 'Battle of Sector 001" design. It was supposed to be the cruiser design of the late 2360s/2370s that would replace the Excelsiors... a modernization of Galaxy technologies in a smaller, easier to build package. The Borg threat and later the Dominion first contact changed that plan and the ship (ironic given Voyager's survival) did not have the defense-first design of of the Battle of Sector 001 era ships. So production ended at three ships - Intrepid, Voyager and Bellpheron, and all had a very short service span (Voyager having the longest, at 7 years). Even during the Dominion War, the Bellpheron did mostly diplomatic duties and not combat or exploration. They represent, in a sense, the road not taken. The Intrepid class represents a dead end, in a sense.
One difference though compared to the ships of the 2290s era is Starfleet was doing highly integrated designs that had no room for modular componentization, even with the Intrepid class. There was no "underslung" variant of the Sovereign class (i.e. what the Nebula is to Galaxy or the Miranda to Constitution-refit). The closest version of that was Akira, which was very different. This made the ships complex to build in a different way. The designs were powerful and advanced, but highly specialized. This proved problematic during the Dominion War when the Federation needed to replace massive losses quickly. It needed, in Naval terms, "Combat mass" to hold back the huge number of Jem Hadar fighters and production capacities of Dominion shipyards.
Starfleet turned to producing modified Connie-Refit and Excelsior-class designs alongside a large number (but fewer) of the Battle of Sector 001 era designs. They did this because they could build components rapidly and combine them into ship types for specific purposes, and produce barebones versions of them that had little more than power systems, weapons, engines and crew quarters. They even applied this principle to the unused Galaxy and Nebula class space frames to get more combat mass out there (per DS9 producers) beyond the original 6 galaxy class ships..This worked for those two technology bases, but it wouldn't work for the Battle of Sector 001, which were so highly integrated they needed to be fully furnished, and as such were more work intensive to build (it still takes crews to build ships, even with replicators).
Starfleet lost an enormous number of ships in the Dominion War of all designs. But by the time it was over, it had pretty much burned through its capable production and modernized / reactivated Excelsior/Connie-refit variant legacy fleet. It would spend the next 20 years slowly building an entirely new fleet as the Galaxy class aged out, the Excelsior/Connies were not replaced by new Excelsior/Connies of the same build, and as the 2380s bore on, the Battle of Sector 001 era ships started to retire rather than face refurbishment in favor of more modernized designs. It tried integrated one more time with the Odyssey class (Enterprise-F) but seemingly only build a few of them, which, due to their size and complexity, we can surmise combined the issues of both the Galaxy-class design and the Battle of Sector 001 era.
Which brings us to 2401 and an entirely new design language for ships, that's actually an old one in a sense. Starfleet has turned its back on on highly integrated designs like Akira, Odyssey, Steamrunner, Sovereign or Defiant back to a Connie-refit / Excelsior style highly modular design. Common nacells, necks, pylons, saucers. Even aspects of the secondary hulls (which are the biggest point of difference). WIth a handful of common components, they've been able to make 6 different ship classes that serve different purposes. And they all use advanced technology in a form that isn't so big that its extremely time consuming to build, but not too small to be mission limited. It is almost as if they looked at the 2270s Constitution class and said "that, but modern". This advantage of this? It allowed the outward looking Starfleet to grow its fleet rapidly again post-2399 policy changes, and if it needed to build a large battlefleet, it could do it again, but this time not lean on 23rd century designs.
So that's how things have gone, organically, with some logical leaps and basing conclusions on producers statements. It's just really amazing how what Terry Matalas wanted for the look of ships in the 2401 era in Season 2 and Season 3 fit so perfectly with Starfleet learning a big ship building lesson from the Dominion War: "If we relied on just Galaxy class and its direct forebearers,we would have been boned. The 2370 era ships were powerful but hard to build and mission limited comparatively. Our collective asses were saved by how ships were thought to built 90 years ago... modularly. We'd be dead if it wasn't for the Mirandas and Excelsiors. So let's do that, but modern." And that's how we got the retro-modern 2401 look, and also explains why there is a clean break from and between the Galaxy class, the Intrepid class and the later Battle of Sector 001 designs.
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Picard's premise going in was that this wasn't going to be a reunion show, Picard wasn't going to be in Starfleet, and I heard Patrick tried to veto the Borg in S1 until they made the ex-B allegories of refugee/war victims.
Picard Season 3 is a reunion show, Picard has spent basically the entire season in a Starfleet ship doing Starfleet things, and the events of this season practically guarantee that, in-universe, ex-B will be more feared and hated than ever and Hugh died for nothing.
Yeah it was Drexler, not Curry. My bad. Wrong person.
I think the themes come through much better in the other Trek shows. Prodigy in particular does the found family thing much better, but SNW, Discovery, and even Lower Decks just feel more cohesive.
Even the nostalgia doesn't work for me because of how they are ignoring all the work done to Worf on DS9.
I was on board with series one quite a bit, I don’t even think it’s a deconstruction — but it left a sour taste because it was narratively dishonest in a lot of ways (Chekhov’s positronic particle for a start) and felt like someone couldn’t make up their mind writing it. Ironically, if you have read Michael Pillers “Fade In” this is exactly what crippled the writing of that film — which was still more cohesive than anything Picard has given us until now, ironically.
The same disjointed process is on show in series 2, which was rather a shame, because the new crew and characters were more interesting and better acted than anything we saw written for them in so many ways. I, for one, would rather have dropped the entire somewhat silly Gary Seven homage with Picards family past and focussed on Rios’ story. He’s the only one who got out in a well enough manner. Elnor and Soji/Dahj/the other one were the most ill served, particularly in series two.
This series is much more joined up in its thinking, no doubt helped by the fact these characters are more understood and rounded to begin with.
What work?
Picard Season 3, the Strange New Worlds cut.
Picard: Geordi, I thought you said you rebuilt the Enterprise D bridge to original specs! What is this place? I don't remember the bridge being a shiny Apple iPhone store with holographic displays and--
Geordi (waves hand): The bridge always looked like an iPhone store.
Picard (repeats blankly): The bridge always looked like an iPhone store.
Troi: But the Paramount Plus subspace channel shows that the bridge did NOT look like an iPhone store and he can watch that anytime he wants. You don't expect your Jedi mind trick to actually work?
Geordi: If it doesn't, a horde of fans on the subspace net insisting that the bridge always looked like an iPhone store will get him mumbling it always looked like this. THIS is how you brainwash someone, not zapping them and asking them to tell you there are five lights, that's so crude and obvious.
That's what the novels are for.
Seriously, we've been following up on those original 79 episodes and pulling on those plot threads for at least half a century now.
Depends on how they resolve the Borg.
My guess is they're going to do a riff on Star Trek Destiny (the books). Jack, as a Transmitter, is going to have is "soul saved" (so to speak) by his parents and wrest control of the Borg from the Queen, who he destroys. He turns the Borg into something else, and he and Beverly, back to their frontier-medicine "help people in need" role, will take the Cube (which will probably be changed to look not like Fortress Evil) to the Delta Quadrant to liberate the Borg there. It's not gonna go the book's Catatoms route, but it's possible that by the series end, there could be no-XBs in a sense.
My gut feeling, considering that the Borg seem to be gone by the 32nd century since the Federation controlled most of the galaxy before the breakup, is that next episode is going to finish the job that Endgame began, and deliver a cure to what;'s basically been a virus infecting the galaxy for millennia.
This was heavily foreshadowed in Episode 9. Beverly has spent all season lamenting that she "lost Wesley" and reiterate that point when she said she kept Jack close and didn't see what was happening, and lost him anyway. He's not the type that is going to join Starfleet and follow in Dad's footsteps. He already ruled that out. So I'm guessing it's back to the frontier, with new purpose, and the final split of the Enterprise D crew is that Beverly finally does what she couldn't do with Wesley, and follow and help Jack. This also free Picard to move on with his life and reunite with Laris rather than put that aside to rekindle things with Beverly.
One last point: shame on Wesley Crusher for not checking in on his widower mom in over 20 years. Being a Traveler is no excuse. And in true Star Trek fashion, if that is "too human" for the Traveler code or something, to hell with the the value of being a Traveler.
Why didn't Geordi give the Ent-D a power wash from the outside, still has a lot of Veridian grime on it
I would imagine that came from Roddenberry wanting to distance TNG from TOS, and not having the exact same things repeated, or too many things repeated, aside from the PSI 2000 virus. I think there was a strong push to go away from TOS threads, and treat the galaxy a bit more like a blank slate. And then it swung the other way to revisiting Spock, and Scotty and Sarek and so on. But, I think those little one offs are going to be ignored, save for Greg Cox and other authors having fun with it.
I keep seeing this mentioned and no one can ever quantify what Worf did in DS9 beyond get married and become a widower.
Nothing in Nemesis or Picard contradicts or reduces any of that
I am sure I also read it in some behind the scenes stuff at the time. I cannot get to that part of my archive at the moment though. I think Zimmerman may have said it.
It was to make it clear that this has been a work in progress and to make it painfully obvious that this is still the same ship (at least 50% of it) that was in TNG and Generations.
Worf is perfectly in keeping with his DS9 self.