Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x09 - "Võx"

[Sci]

Picard Season 3 aspires to the Berman era and holds it up, as per Terry Matalas himself.

And it's incredibly well received.

PIC S3 is using the TNG cast and some of the aesthetics of the Berman era. But let's be clear here -- the structure of the season, with heavy serialization and a "mystery box" that doesn't get solved until near the penultimate episode followed by an action-packed finale that serves as structural climax of the entire season, would absolutely never have been allowed during the Berman era. Even DS9 S6-7 and ENT S3 never got that heavily serialized.

Nor, I should mention, would Berman ever have allowed the kind of incisive, character-focused scenes we saw this season on TNG or VOY (Ira Steven Behr and co. got away with it on DS9). From Jean-Luc confronting Beverly for abandoning him and not telling him about Jack, to Jean-Luc's fear of fatherhood and emotional awkwardness with Jack, to Jack's sense of fury and alienation, to Will telling Jean-Luc about what it felt like to fear losing his son, to Deanna and Will's grief, to Geordi's conflict with Sidney. The TNG characters are all recognizably themselves, but they also all much more flawed than they ever were on their original series. Berman would never have gone for that.

Oh, and there are queer characters. Berman would never under any circumstances have allowed that, period.

I really should start watching The Expanse.

Yes. It's amazing.

"Remember the Cant!"

 

[SolarisOne]

Sometimes I really want to write that fanfic (and goodness knows if there was a slush pile at pocket, I would change my mind about trad publishing very fast) but it always feels… wrong. Like something I have been taught I shouldn’t do.

DO IT. You can post to Archive of Our Own (AO3). It's not taboo anymore.

 

[SithHappens]

Yes. It's amazing.

I must retry, i watched the 1st episode a couple of years ago and found it really slow and it didnt grab me. But lots of people have said its great.

 

[thribs]

While I like seeing the Enterprise F, I think it would have been better if that was the E. Then you would have the D vs the E. The ultimate fan overload.

 

[SolarisOne]

Okay. I just waded through all 112 fucking pages of this thread. Sleepy time now...

 

[NCC-73515]

RR is on fire, of course!

 

[thribs]

Did they build anything else or is it just the bridge?

 

[NCC-73515]

Look at those details!

Spoiler: not very spoilery pics from E10

I can almost see the early TNG model wall in the conference room

 

[Scionz]

Did they build anything else or is it just the bridge?

Unknown yet. But given the extreme expense, time and difficulty of recreating the bridge, I wouldn't be expecting a run down to Engineering or a Transporter room. Maybe a corridor, but the Enterprise D saucer corridor isn't the most complex design.

 

[Jarvisimo]

The internet holds fanfic back sometimes — I regret never writing more than the smallest bit (and not even Trek!) because for the longest time it was sometimes looked down on. (as indeed is genre in general) I’ve studied writing, knocked out a couple of anonymous novels, and never once considered writing about Trek or any universe I love. But hey, maybe it’s me — I also only self publish because I don’t fancy the stress.
Sometimes I really want to write that fanfic (and goodness knows if there was a slush pile at pocket, I would change my mind about trad publishing very fast) but it always feels… wrong. Like something I have been taught I shouldn’t do.
The closest I got was a couple of pastiches as assignments in uni.

It sounds like you should read more about @Una McCormack 's experience going from fanfic writer to published author because of her fanfic, to Arthur C Clarke prize judge, and a creative writing professor, and then full time writer..

Fanfic is a legitimate starting point or indeed legitimate form of expression without going onto something else. Well worth exploring. Great to hear you publish too @jaime

 

[Scionz]

RR is on fire, of course!

I'm gonna guess that the minor differences in things like the width of the red border or the color of the wall panels is entirely due to difference of the lenses of a 1990s camera that produce a picture that was scanned into a computer, versus the lenses and photosensors of whatever digital camera was used to take a picture of the modern bridge.

But damn, does the Enterprise D bridge look amazing with LED monitors instead of backlit panels with transparencies. It gives it a sharpness and quality that just jump out at you. And you know what I just noticed, after all these years? The bottom of the Enterprise D back wall screens are curved. It's not a 90 degree angle. The curved corner of 2401 ships was... annoying. But really, it is just a bigger version of what the Enterprise D did in 1987.

I love every aspect of this show, good lord. And as for Wil, I haven't seen RR yet, but I can only imagine how emotional it was for him. He spent a lot of his adolescence in that room. That room arguably created the life he knew. Even more than the adult actors from TNG, for him, it must have been like returning to a recreation of his childhood bedroom.

 

[NCC-73515]

Bev was supposed to sit in that little side seat!

 

[Scionz]

It sounds like you should read more about @Una McCormack 's experience going from fanfic writer to published author because of her fanfic, to Arthur C Clarke prize judge, and a creative writing professor, and then full time writer..

Fanfic is a legitimate starting point or indeed legitimate form of expression without going onto something else. Well worth exploring. Great to hear you publish too @jaime

I agree with this fully. But you know whats funny? Sometimes fanfic has to stay fan fiction because when brought to reality it doesn't work as well.

Case in point in the 2006 or so I wrote a concept fanfic to hard reboot Star Trek in a more gittier, Battlestar Galactica inspired vibe (I was in my 20s, it was the hot thing, Enterprise was canceled, give me a break). A reboot sounded great at the time. It anticipated things like a more militarized style in the vein of Kelvinverse or Discovery Season 1. It anticipated a more alien "new look" Klingon like we got in Discovery Season 1. It had 23rd and 24th century characters all living in the same time period together (it was a reboot, so it didn't matter if Kirk and Picard were contemporaries). The Romulans were an unknown faceless enemy nibbling at the fringes (no Balance of Terror-incident yet). The Klingons were the chief adversary. The Borg would have shown up eventually.

It looked so good in a text file and seemed to make so much sense in my head. But then coincidentally later productions have since done similar ideas here and there, and they were roundly unpopular and often walked back on (like the DiscoKlingons). If all of my ideas were actually turned into a new show instead of a fanfic, I think Trek fans would have rioted outside my house!

But I learned a lot from writing it and even more from looking back over the years and thinking "what the hell was I thinking with this". It matured me as a writer, especially for my original ideas.

 

[NCC-73515]

I finally caught up with this thread!

But damn, does the Enterprise D bridge look amazing with LED monitors instead of backlit panels with transparencies. It gives it a sharpness and quality that just jump out at you. And you know what I just noticed, after all these years? The bottom of the Enterprise D back wall screens are curved. It's not a 90 degree angle. The curved corner of 2401 ships was... annoying. But really, it is just a bigger version of what the Enterprise D did in 1987.

Okuda even explains that they recreated the backlit imperfections with LEDs

We need a Enterprise J show.

With a Congo upgrade!

They should make 1701-D shirts that say "Big D" on them.

D, The Fat One.

I love these. Thank you so much for sharing them.

I think I'll make the last pic my desktop for the week. Thanks!

My absolute pleasure - but thank Variety There are also more pics in the article, these are just my favorites

They used real human biology science to explain it. It wasn’t crap

Frontal lobe development taking until about 25 is real, it's just not entirely plausible that Borg stuff couldn't overcome that and deal with fully developed brains (cause it always could when adults were assimilated), but it's so much more grounded in real science than the dilithium-shattering child scream

 

[Danja]

Terry Matalas may well have brought the Prime and Kelvin universes closer together.

Now, given the circumstances, the idea of a twenty-year-old Captain may no longer be as bizarre as it was in 2009.

 

[Scionz]

Bev was supposed to sit in that little side seat!

One of the things I always laughed at in the first few seasons of TNG is they couldn't freakin decide on a design for the side seat.

The 2364 bridge really had a lot of weird shit going on.

It really took them a while to sort that area, even in Season 1. They got rid of the benches, changed the consoles.

 

[Weyoun 251]

No. Not a recon. He died, and Fury drug him through an agonizing experimental medical procedure to resurrect him.

But he was dead. For DAYS.

What I meant was that they only went back and added this part to the story because they saw how popular he was and that a show around him would draw money.

Maybe not technically a retcon but certainly in the spirit of the poster who I responded to's point

 

[Scionz]

What I meant was that they only went back and added this part to the story because they saw how popular he was and that a show around him would draw money.

Maybe not technically a retcon but certainly in the spirit of the poster who I responded to's point

This is accurate. Furthermore even during the pre-Disney+ era, it was unclear if Agents of Shield was MCU canon or not. While the Season 1/2 hydra reveal and storyline was GENIOUSLY done and did an extremely memorable and well done integration between TV and film (Captain America: The Winter Solider), that was pretty much the end of it. They fetched the Helicarrier that Fury showed up with in Age of Ultron, and that was the last real time they played a role, and the MCU films never highlighted Coulson again until Captain Marvel.

This reason for this? Joss Whedon said at the time, on the record, in his mind and creative intent for his MCU works, Coulson was still dead. That kind of broke the unspoken code of Marvel to play it cagey to keep people watching, but Joss wasn't going to pay a lick of attention to the AoS. It would be up to them to make themselves compatible with his film vision. This despite the fact he helped create the series, directed the first episode, and his brother was the showrunner. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.He was the guy who, inc reating AoS, brought coulson back, and then turned around and said in so many words "not my sandbox, not my concern".

Shit like this wouldn't go down now because that all was before Kevin Feige basically became the Rick Berman of the MCU. Which is something I think needs to be said a lot more by the way. Rick Berman (and his team), for his many faults and failings, was doing a very consistent TV-Film cinematic universe 15+ years before the MCU. The rules and practices he built around Star Trek's fictional universe, which did not exist before he took over, created much of Trek as we know it. Something like the Agents of Shield/Coulson situation. would never be a question to canonicity or consitency under him, and now, under Kevin Feige.

Slight aside, this is why I like Alex Kurtzman as Head of Trek now, despite my gripes with some of his creative choices. Multimedia fictional universes need a Master Chef overseeing the kitchen. Trek has Kurtzman, MCU has Feige. Star Wars has Filoni and Favreau (and seriously, consider what a mess Star Wars was in the inept hands of JJ Abrams saying fuck-all to the rules of the fictional universe). Franchises are generally just better for it. As David Blass said on twitter, he told his production staff to approach Picard as a period piece about the future, which means implimenting previous styles and concepts and looks, not putting a personal spin on it. The name of the game is that that kind of top-level consistency makes these fictional universes not haphazard.

It's absence gets you, well, Picard Season 1, Discovery Season 1, the Star Wars Sequels, and the Agents of Shield situation (and I liked AoS!).

 

[jackoverfull]

Apologies for not reading an 89 page thread. I’m a little confused, and hoping someone can explain.

The Borg altered Locutus’ DNA so he could produce offspring that would become Vox. Then Locutus was taken from them and became Picard again. Picard didn’t produce offspring for over a decade. And the Borg… just waited?

Since they had lost control of Locutus, why not just start over with somebody who was still under their control? What was so unique about Picard/Locutus that they couldn’t just do the same thing with somebody else?

another reason the plan makes no sense: they had thousands of humans assimilated yet they rely on Picard having a son one day?

 

[Qonundrum]

Do you feel the same way when Data cheered the deaths of the Klingons in Generations?

I always perceived that scene as Data being excited that the 1701-D crew survived the attempted mass murder by those Klingons' assault? The Duras sisters were the remorseless aggressors...

another reason the plan makes no sense: they had thousands of humans assimilated yet they rely on Picard having a son one day?

Truth can be stranger than fiction.