Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x10 - "The Last Generation"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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Discovery's original sin is always going to be how it morphed from an anthology show set in after Star Trek VI into a prequel show, with Bryan Fuller pushing a full-scale visual/thematic/storytelling refresh on the scale of the TNG launch. I've said this before, but imagine if your only Trek experience is TOS, the first 4 TOS movies and the animated series. And then suddenly you get this new show with an older captain who wears red not gold, a bridge that looks like a hotel lobby, an android regular character, a klingon on the bridge, a ship that looks little like the Enterprise-A, the "Last Outpost" Ferengi, and nary a Vulcan in sight? It is every bit a disruption Discovery was. Discovery actually had it harder because TNG Season 1 could build on sets and makeup from the first four movies, and Discovery was the first Trek TV series since 2005 and was a much cleaner break. But really note for note, from design decisions (make-up for aliens, bridge design, ship design, uniform colors) and writing / casting /story telling decisions, it's almost a 1:1 retracing of the differences TNG took with respect to TOS. The similarities are really remarkable. On top of that, the dysfunction of Discovery's Season 1 production, which got sorted over the course of Season 2, was every bit as bad as TNG Season 1s drama.
Discovery spent years getting away from a start that was always going to be very rough because it had the misfortune of being the first and being in the hands of people who were still figuring out what they wanted the show, and Star Trek in General to be. I cut it a very, very wide berth because of that. I don't know if any show could plausibly had an easier time doing what it did. SNW got off to a much better start than it otherwise would because much of its growing pains was worked out already in Discovery Season 2.
I really think Discovery going to the 32nd century liberated the show and revitalized it. I've really enjoyed Season 3 and 4 in the new setting. It is the show Discovery arguably always should have been. I think when all's said and done, the story of Discovery within context of the franchise will be "it was going to be a nasty job, but someone had to do it. And in the end, it recovered itself". That's a good legacy to go by.
On an side note, I'll say my original vision for "how to fix Discovery" in season 1, which is incompatible with what subsequently happened in Picard, is that it took place in the 2410s rather than the 2250s. You rip out of the Sarek/Spock stuff and add the backstory of "Martok failed to reform the Klingons and was overthrown by traditionalist T'Kuvma in 2409, who took them back to basics and utilized genetic alterations to the Klingon Augment virus to make them more potent warriors than ever" and pretty much everything from Season 1 works. Even the Spore drive, which is now just the latest in a post-Excelsior Transwarp sequence of new technologies to do better than Warp Drive. It may be stupid, but it makes much more sense in time because Warp Speed only doubled between 2293 and 2375, when it increased many, many times over between 2155 and 2293.
But think about. Almost every continuity problem with Discovery S1 is solved if they decided to set it 40 years after Nemesis... a "Next, Next Generation". Instead, the succumbed to prequelitus and gave Spock a random human sister.
Chef is the canon Morgan Primus (Star Trek book deep cut).
I mentioned the Titan once. Once. You're incapable of a having a proper discussion. You're so blinkered that you're just on the prowl for one moment where your perceived targets have a lapse in their argument. You don't care about what they're ultimately trying to say. It's so boring, seriously and there's quite a few like you on this forum.
It was a nice homage, as was the gas cloud anomaly thing from the tng opening credits
mercifully there’s very few like you and they get fewer by the day
I was also expecting it to do more.
In retrospect I wonder if this was a Star Trek Online demand for agreeing to hand over their digital assets. This has to have helped their sales.
What else would you have cut from the show to make that possible?
The only way this worked at all is because the Titan/Stargazer sets were built on Season 2 budget, which was stretching immersion already, it only works because Starfleet design is relatively monotone.
The Shrike being the lower deck of the La Sirena was a stretch to far.
We got more then I expected. I was expecting the horse shoe and the two front consoles to be physical with everything else being CGI. My jaw dropped when I saw that they built a full 360 deg set. That must have been ~10% of the total budget.[/QUOTE]
It's still extremely subjective, which was the original point. And I believe you know that.
Otherwise all art would be by the numbers and never have a failure. Which, isn't what storytelling is all about.
YMMV. IDIC
And maybe find enjoyment, entertainment and dare I say the "F" word with our supposed favorite media franchise.
Completely agree, but I also know that this season has been so lacking in anything that comes close to a coherent plot that I can't just cheer for TNG crew and accept it. They deserved better. Man, it was horrific. Not just horrible, horrific.
Nope
Again, you have nothing to say to me other than dismissing me.
It just looks better and future Trek designers should take notes that the Star Wars style "Hyperspace" look is just not to the final productions benefit.
I generally like *most* of Streaming Trek and accept design decisions as what they are - the creative ideas of talented people. But some of them are just objectively the wrong choice and its weird nobody in that room stops to say "hold on, maybe they had it right for a particular reason 40 years ago".
Reminds me so much of the Transformers films. It took 5 films and a new director before someone realized that folks wer fine with blocky robots, which looked great and fluid on screen, and the gunmetal grey alien-bug-piles-of-trash were only imaginative takes in the 2007 movie, but by the 2009 sequel, they were an eyesore.
I expect SNW to continue its stylized comic-book action look, But I hope if we get Legacy, they stick to the look we got in Picard Season 3.
Alpha Quadrant Tinder - "fascist anti-Federation species seeks same."
Didn't the Dominion War start after Voyager left the Alpha Quadrant? I honestly can't remember if it ever came up.
IIRC, this was a rights issue at the time. Note how there was always very little crossover from the movies into the series.
Thank Gene's divorce from his wife Eileen for this one. She owned half the rights to TOS, so any time it would be brought up on TNG, Gene wouldn't reap the full benefit, thus the moratorium on any TOS references. It's the inverse tactic from how he screwed Alexander Courage out of half the royalties on the TOS theme.
I'm just glad they weren't stuck with the F. It was an ugly, bloated ship. I admit, I've never been super fond of the 1701-D either, but from some angles it always looked great and they worked the daylights out of those angles the last two episodes.
I could get used to the G. It's fine.
I could get used to the G. It's fine.
Because when an actual counterpoint to one of your “critiques” is brought up instead of conceding a point , you handwave and deflect. You have shown to have no intellectual integrity and willingness to admit when you’re mistaken or wrong.
There is plenty of space for disagreement and discussion on this forum, we’ve been having them all day and yesterday. Plenty of us are willing to say “I was mistaken” or “I was wrong”
But not you
Having a story where the Enterprise is kind of an underdog and isn’t able to effortlessly overpower the majority of foes would make for better stories, IMO
Stupid divorces. Ruining great SF franchises!
Yeah, I know. Over and done, stipulations, but it all went out of the window so quickly...
It's a shame in a sense. We will never get this cast together again and while I feel PIC S03 goes a long way towards righting the perceived wrongs of the movies, it also exacerbates the general problems that the show itself has.
I think Season 1 is a grand, if flawed show. It tried to push well worn elements like the Romulans and the Borg in new directions in a post-NEM world. It used cameos in a way that felt organic and brought in new characters who all had potential.
I think I need to watch Season 2 again. I don't know if it was crap or if I just wasn't in the mood for it, but I remember being bored in the main and didn't feel the urge to seek it out each week as I did Season 3.
So, Season 3... I like it. I really do. I think anyone who has held this crew in their hearts for so long would get something from watching this season.
It itches me though, and anyone can try to 'educate' me on this if they like, though I understand it perfectly well, but it really itches me that:
Season 1) The people of the Alpha Quadrant rehabilitate the remnants of the Borg.
Season 2) The Federation makes steps towards integrating an evolved Borg.
Season 3) Oh, but there's a group of Borg who are still evil so 'gotta kill 'em all'.
I know the Jurati Borg are different Borg and they are off doing something else. But narratively the JB are thrown under the bus to be replaced with the exact thing that they replaced in the first place. To close out this little Borg trilogy by reverting them to type and then destroying them just feels so... I dunno? Dull?
So finally, it was all about getting the band back together and not much else.
There's a part of me that feels like it's a surrender on the part of the creatives. But there's another part of me that thinks that this reunion lap was inevitable and earned. It's the final season and a final opportunity for a cast who to this day regard each other as family to reunite. It's not a cash grab like Beltran on Prodigy. We are fortunate that the whole cast is alive and willing, and I guess whether or not the Season is a case of creative surrender is besides the point.
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I agree. One thing I liked about NX-01 was at it often WAS a technological underdog to most things around it.
Enterprise G just needs better lighting, and maybe find a way to tap into that endless holodeck power.
You're actually hilarious. Are you for real? I'm genuinely bored. Seriously bored. You've answered nothing. You're argument is the Titan. Do you think that's all that I said? Do you know how daft that sounds? I'd be hopeful that at this stage you realise that I don't just spout inane words out in the hope that others agree with me and we become a mob.
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