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Star Trek Picard is not Star Trek

The same can be said of Star Wars, IMO.

People trash the sequels/prequels because they don't get the same "spiritual experience" that they did from A New Hope. :shifty:
Indeed and it is becoming painful to deal with that insistence that films capture something that is impossible to capture. I'm seeing it more and more on the Internet, with so many comic book adaptions and the insistence that they capture a feeling that is difficult, if not impossible, to capture on screen.

Not only is it nearly impossible, but it creates such a hostile environment for others to actually enjoy the product. I mean, isn't life too short already without adding in watching things that are not enjoyable?
 
Even when I was a teenager I didn't buy that the Star Trek universe was an antiseptic and utopian reality free of religion and war.
Kirk says as much in A Taste of Armageddon. He's a barbarian and ready to nuke the planet. War is avoided only by choosing to not go there. He later sets up a proxy war with the Klingons in A Private Little War. These are not utopian solutions just very human ones in awful situations that had no easy answers.
 
The fact that TOS was and remains so flawed helps me enjoy the series in the franchise that I don't like as much. If my all-time favorite Star Trek series had an inconsistent and often muddled message and internal continuity I'm less likely to hold TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, DSC or PIC to the fire as abominations because they make mistakes.
 
The same can be said of Star Wars, IMO.

People trash the sequels/prequels because they don't get the same "spiritual experience" that they did from A New Hope. :shifty:
I saw it at 18, just on the cusp of being out of the range for a "spiritual experience". But nothing beats the first time a Star Destroyer "flies" over your head. :techman:
 
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Plus, TOS depicted 23rd century humans as, well, human. Kirk could threaten an entire planet with destruction, McCoy could call Spock bigoted nicknames and officers argued and fought amongst themselves because no matter what the human race goes through in terms of war, scientific development or philosophical evolution we're going to remain impulsive primates that lose our tempers and judge others as being not up to our standards - standards we ourselves often don't manage to live up to but pretend we do.
 
I completely agree with you Forever94, in the first post in this discussion. ST:PIC is Dystopian Trek and not Roddenberry Trek (which I also call True Trek), which I feel largely ended with his passing. Gone is the hopeful future where humanity has matured far beyond its current state and for the most part as Forever94 notes where "humans live in peace, respecting all forms of Life, aspiring to be better persons and know the universe we are surrounded by, surpassing racism, arrogance, hate, war..." and use technology responsibly. The Federation is now xenophobic and withdrawn, and the synth attack represents technology out-of-control and/or easily subverted - and also suggests that humanity has once again embraced slavery in a new form. This is outrageous and at complete odds with true Star Trek values, where humanity has evolved far beyond that possibility. ST:PIC is potentially valid as a cautionary tale, but True Trek has generally featured humanity's responsible mastery of technology and the resolution of current problems, not its most terrible failures. So instead of a Trek that embodies a hopeful future to which we can aspire, we are left with a perpetually depressing series infused with failure on almost every level. Instead of featuring the wonders of the universe, productive and mutually enriching cooperation between intelligent species, and wondrous technological development, we are provided with a morbid space soap opera featuring characters filled with angst. I consider ST:PIC a complete failure of the franchise, and a depressing outcome for the Picard character, in spite of spectacular production values, and in spite of the fun of seeing characters again that we have missed for some time. I also consider the recent wave of movies to be devoid of the Roddenberry spirit, and little more than mundane conflict drama acted out by people in appropriated Starfleet uniforms. I also completely reject the "Kelvin Timeline" as Fake Trek. There was no need to destroy Vulcan, etc. That was done merely for cheap shock value. But I digress. It seems that we will never see True Trek again from the powers that be, though it will still be possible in Fan Fiction, which I encourage. True Trek fans can still keep the spirit alive through their own story writing, regardless of what the franchise controlling powers, interested primarily in profit and speaking to the lowest common denominator, dictate for the rest of us.
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Plus, TOS depicted 23rd century humans as, well, human. Kirk could threaten an entire planet with destruction, McCoy could call Spock bigoted nicknames and officers argued and fought amongst themselves because no matter what the human race goes through in terms of war, scientific development or philosophical evolution we're going to remain impulsive primates that lose our tempers and judge others as being not up to our standards - standards we ourselves often don't manage to live up to but pretend we do.
Lord, I've seen people argue that General Order 24 wasn't supposed to be an actual thing because they didn't believe Kirk would order the destruction of a planet to make a point. He would. He did.
 
There's nothing like a fan lecturing me on "real" Star Trek when I've been watching it since I was barely old enough to remember seeing a television in the late 1970s. If you're going to claim that Utopian Nice Manners Trek is "real" Trek you're going to be shot down and repeatedly.

I still remember being told that I wasn't a "real" SUPERMAN fan by some guy who probably wasn't even born when I was watching George Reeves on our old black-and-white TV.
 
And I refuse to believe that Starfleet in TOS wouldn't have such a regulation on the books to threaten a potential adversary in a life-or-death situation. In our real world during the Cold War both we and the Soviet Union had a policy of Mutual Assured Destruction wherein two societies who claimed to care about innocent life and noncombatants would proceed to utterly destroy one another's cities and very foundations of civilization if a war ever escalated to a global nuclear exchange.

Spare me the "but the future will be a peaceful paradise" routine. Even Roddenberry didn't seem to believe it at times.
 
The idea of a perfect utopia is very believable for someone who was seven when TNG started. By 14 and the end of the series, I wasn’t buying the utopia concept nearly as much as I did.
 
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