Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
That's the fatal flaw in Matalas Trek -- their bad 10-episode seasons could have been condensed into a really good 2-2.5 hour movie.
Star Trek Picard season 3
- Thread starter CaptainWacky
- Start date
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
This seems to be the real problem. Ever since Discovery started the various writing teams over the series have shown they can't craft an intelligible 10 or 13 episode season arc. The exception might be Strange New Worlds because it's more episodic. The weekly release schedule doesn't really help either, things might hold a bit better together if it was bingeable. Regardless, s2 of Picard seemed like it was the worst of the lot and I'm not sure how much of that has to do with writing/filming at the height of Covid or that it just kind of would have sucked anyway.
The Question
Eternal
God, remember when a season of a television series was actually a season long instead of just a miniseries?
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
If you look at TNG over the course of the seasons it really came a long way from things like the worst of s1 (Planet of the Jogging Nymphomaniacs, for example) up through its prime from probably s3-s5.
The Question
Eternal
Yeah, I know it's probably Trek Nurd sacrilege to say this, but... Gene Roddenberry's latent Commie tendencies really did make for some goofy-ass television. Yes, it's aspirational, to a degree, the whole "we've evolved past that" on some things -- race, sex, species -- but in other things, it's just pure cringe.
People are always going to need a personal, and tangible, incentive to achieve. I think this was best encapsulated in the First Contact version of Zephram Cochrane:
"You wanna know what my vision is? Dollar signs — money! I didn't build this ship to usher in a new era for humanity. You think I wanna see the stars? I don't even like to fly! I take trains!"
That's... relatable. That's real. Picard's drivel about "We strive for the betterment of ourselves..." Pffft. I hope he ain'st sellin' that, 'cause I ain't buyin' it.
People are always going to need a personal, and tangible, incentive to achieve. I think this was best encapsulated in the First Contact version of Zephram Cochrane:
"You wanna know what my vision is? Dollar signs — money! I didn't build this ship to usher in a new era for humanity. You think I wanna see the stars? I don't even like to fly! I take trains!"
That's... relatable. That's real. Picard's drivel about "We strive for the betterment of ourselves..." Pffft. I hope he ain'st sellin' that, 'cause I ain't buyin' it.
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
It's pretty clear to me at least that the whole Zephram Cochrane thing in First Contact was meant to be an allusion to Roddenberry, or at least a dig at him. Dollar signs and casting couches, that was Gene's Vision™.
The Question
Eternal
That's how I took it, as well: as a direct counterpunch to Picard's "we don't work for material gain" blather.
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
Oh yes. It wasn't immediately clear on first viewing, but in retrospect? Yes.
StarMan™
Active Member
I reckon S3 had the best hit rate. If I were to pick the best of the bunch:
-The Survivors
-The Defector
-Déjà Q
-Yesterday's Enterprise
-The Offspring
-Sins of the Father
-Sarek
-The Best of Both Worlds
Nearly every third episode was a home run. And the middle of the pack stuff is perfectly watchable as well. Ménage à Troi & The Price were probably the only legit stinkers. That's pretty fucking impressive for a 26-episode run.
These sorts of lists are easy to rattle off when recalling Trek from '66 to '05. I could name a couple of dozen more episodes between TOS - VOY that I'd consider classics.
I've watched every episode of live-action NuTrek and honestly can't think of a single "classic" I'd enjoy popping on in the background. It's all eminently forgettable save for whatever the mystery box of the season was (Mysterious Red Angel. Oh, It's Burnham. Ooooo, THE BURN. Oh, it was a crying Kelpian kid).
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
People bag on things from TNG s2, like "Shades of Grey". You know. The clip show. But I'll still watch it now and then because it is so bad it's kinda good.
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
And as far as this goes, yes. More good than bad, though I'd probably throw the Robin Hood episode up there somewhere as well.
The Question
Eternal
The problem with KurtzmanTrek is the same problem that hang-dogged Enterprise Seasons 1-3. It isn't specifically and uniquely Star Trek. It's just generic sigh-figh with the nameplate tacked on in a cynical bid to get fans to tune in.
The problem with trying that shit is obvious: If you want fans to tune in, you'd better deliver shit that the fans you're selling it to will approve of.
If you want to deliver a weepy Space Jesus bitch facing off against fish-headed aliens, okay, just give it its own name and sell it as what it is. But if you want to bill it as Star Trek, then you need to deliver fucking Star Trek. How hard is that? How controversial a statement is that? Just deliver what you're selling, or don't sell it as something it isn't. Honesty. How is fucking honesty controversial?
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
At this point I think I'll just reiterate what a good friend of mine said around 1990 or 1991: "They gonna milk this cash cow until it's DONE. No milk left."
I was thinking the same thing! They've stretched the script for a movie into 10 hours and instead of filling it with interesting little things, they just drag it all out.
The Question
Eternal
Well, considering the collective age of the cast is somewhere in the neighborhood of three or four centuries... the pace is probably factoring in naps, Bingo, and pudding.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
It's the thing where someone criticises Picard or Discovery and one of the defenders replies with "WELL DS9 DID A SIMILAR DUMB THING ONCE" and it's like so what? Are you agreeing that this new episode was dumb and saying that's okay because Quark dresses as a woman once? Nobody even mentioned DS9! No wonder the polls are always 95% 8/10+, anyone who doesn't agree has been driven away.
StarMan™
Active Member
Yeah, pretty much. It sucks - it used to be more balanced. At least when I took potshots at what I didn't like, I felt like I had allies.
Also, I'm generally inclined to compare modern Trek to modern shows, not old Trek. All too often - as you say - people cite other Trek shows as a defence. Okay, but how does it stack against the best drama & sci-fi currently on the air? Shall we compare NuTrek with, say, Better Call Saul? Or any number of HBO shows? What would the 10/10 crowd give those shows - 10,000/10?
The Question
Eternal
I do compare NuTrek to classic Trek. You slap the nameplate on it, you slap that weight on it. You want the legacy for the purpose of putting asses in seats, well, you'd better be prepared to measure up to that legacy. If you can't, then fair dinkum, ya rip the nameplate off that bitch and sell it as its own distinct thing.
But I think they knew, going in, that nobody was going to tune in to watch a Negress blubber all over a generic Sci-Fi set every week while a bulbous-headed Lurch lookalike motherfucker blinked huge alien eyes at the spectacle. So they slapped 'Star Trek' on it as a cynical ploy to get Star Trek fans to tune in -- and then commenced to immediately disrespect those fans. On purpose. Repeatedly.
Fuck 'em.
But I think they knew, going in, that nobody was going to tune in to watch a Negress blubber all over a generic Sci-Fi set every week while a bulbous-headed Lurch lookalike motherfucker blinked huge alien eyes at the spectacle. So they slapped 'Star Trek' on it as a cynical ploy to get Star Trek fans to tune in -- and then commenced to immediately disrespect those fans. On purpose. Repeatedly.
Fuck 'em.
