Amazon : Star Trek: Picard

[Stephen]

Wwll the new cast won't be erased. I think it will be a last hurrah for the TNG cast and they'll go on one last adventure together to do something 'important'

This season could have been great but they wasted too many episodes on things that should have taken 10 mins.

They have too much to resolve in a single episode. That it will be rushed and meaningless. Q being unwell has been totally forgotten about and to me was the main reason for the time travel and setup.

[General Maximus]

Exactly, this season could have been fantastic just dealing with Q and Guinan with a side of Data but instead we had to have all the other nonsense.

It baffles me how we can see it but the muppets in the writers room can't.

[Stephen]

Not only that but the amount of time they wasted on Picards mother and the flashbacks is ridiculous. Which also ignores TNG in that his mother was seen as an old woman, also where was Picards brother in all of those flashbacks? Did they forget about him?

[General Maximus]

I am glad to see your realism factor is alive and well




I have tried to explain it a thousand times without any luck and this is what it is all about. Does what we are seeing and being told make sense within the confines and parameters of the established universe and what (if any) we already know.

[Stephen]

There is no realism factor for me. But simply put there are decades of Trek history and lore that's just being ignored. Ship and tech designs that are being changed and replaced. It's just bad writing.

I can’t even. Why do you even bother watching it?

This show’s interest in psychology is entirely consistent with TNG. Entire episodes were devoted to Data’s dream state (cellular peptide cake, anyone? It has sugar frosting), Riker’s brainwashing (or was it a play he was rehearsing for in 10-Forward?) and Picard’s will-he-won’t-he-break-under-torture (THERE ARE FIVE LIGHTS). The show’s entire musical score is built out from an episode that dealt with a computer-induced dream state.

Guys, much as I love chewing over sci fi with you all, I am deeply thankful you’re not allowed anywhere near the writers room. With the greatest of respect to you, if you had written this show it would have looked like the repetitive, one-trick fanwank that litters YouTube rather than a credible continuation of the franchise.

[Stephen]

I simply disagree with that. I love every iteration of Trek so much and have seen enough to know what makes a good episode or story.

However writers now are focusing too much on entire season arcs of 8-10 episodes. When in the past this kind of story could be done in a 2 part story.

They often feel dragged out and filled with so much fluff just to make the story track to a full season. Rather than the serialised single self contained stories that we used to tune in for.

You could honestly watch episode 1 and 2 then watch the last one and you wouldn't have missed much.

Where as any old Trek season you could watch any episode and know that that story would be done by the end of the episode.this is not treally a credible continuation of the show at all. Its trying too hard to be fanwanky and getting it so so wrong.

Serialisation is just what happens now on streaming services. It doesn’t matter which universe we’re in and whether it’s a new one or a well established one like Star Trek. You’re just not going to get a season full of stand-alone episodes. The nearest you might get in the forthcoming SNW series is an arc that is nearer the foreground in some episodes than others, and then only if they’re being uber-traditional and resisting the logic of streaming services which strongly favours binge-watching (even shows that are premiered weekly, because they remain on the service indefinitely afterwards).

The vast majority of TNG episodes have an ‘A’ plot and a ‘B’ plot. Even the stories that are remembered for being action-heavy are actually quite well diluted with introspective sub-plotting (so in “The Enemy” for example, Picard facing off against Tomalak in orbit over Galorndon Core is balanced by Geordi riffing off Enemy Mine on the surface with a crashed Romulan scout). The touchy-feely introspection in Picard really is nothing new. Nor is variation in the pace of the storytelling.

It seems you don’t know what “fanwank” means - by definition it isn’t anything new or challenging. It’s mindless porn, designed to appeal to the basic cravings of unimaginative fans who demand the same old egg and chips week in, week out. It’s exactly why fan-made episodes of TOS are almost universally awful (with the possible exception of Star Trek Continues, which manages to steer just far enough away from tribute act territory, some of the time at least, to make it possible to simply enjoy the detailed recreation of the look and feel of the original despite the derivative plots and the not-in-game-footage acting). Whether you like Picard or not, it absolutely isn’t fanwank in any shape or form.

[General Maximus]

Originally Posted by Stephen

However writers now are focusing too much on entire season arcs of 8-10 episodes. When in the past this kind of story could be done in a 2 part story

exactly, and that is my problem with stuff like Boba Fett. Instead of saying "we need to tell this story/adventure/part of his life and it needs to take 3 episodes" and then move onto the next chapter/natural story progression, they take one little thread and needlessly pad it out to (I am not going to say a season because 10 episodes isn't a season) 8-10 episodes, finding rubbish to pad it out rather than doing a quality few episodes and focusing on a new story.

Working my way through Dial the Gate over the last couple of months has really made me appreciate how blessed we were with Stargate and how rare the writing was. Somebody needs to make a one-off documentary for the next Star Wars/Star Trek/Marvel season and have two rooms of writers with cameras in recording everything. One room with the normal peeps in, showing their thought process and the drivel they come up with and a second room with a proper team of skilled writers in from either something like Stargate or DS9, see what they come up with story wise and how it differs in richness and episodic length. There is a clear class divide in old school Star Trek and the creative team behind it and the new stuff and it isn't going to get any better. Every time I see Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman attached to something I cringe. If you watch the DS9 documentary What We Left Behind you will see what proper writing is all about.

Originally Posted by Chris

It seems you don’t know what “fanwank” means - by definition it isn’t anything new or challenging. It’s mindless porn, designed to appeal to the basic cravings of unimaginative fans who demand the same old egg and chips week in, week out. It’s exactly why fan-made episodes of TOS are almost universally awful (with the possible exception of Star Trek Continues, which manages to steer just far enough away from tribute act territory, some of the time at least). Whether you like Picard or not, it absolutely isn’t fanwank in any shape or form.

so you are happy with what they have done with Q this season and don't feel they could have made more of it or the season would have been better if they had spent more time with him and gone into his story a bit more and cut out something else? Like Stephen said above, there is too much to cram into the finale next week. Why is Q dying, why did he send everyone back in time and what did he hope to gain from it? That is an episode in itself at the minimum without wrapping all the other characters up and dealing with this Europa space shuttle launch. They ruin the series by dwelling on naff and trivia and not spending the time on the characters that they need to. It just baffles me. They introduce these potentially rich story lines which would go down a treat and then just throw them to one side ignoring them, laughing at the audience and slapping them in the face.

[Stephen]

I think it's the fact the claim to have writers who love Trek and know everything, and yet they get historical things that happened in the show wrong or 8gnore what they want to invent new things for 3xisitng characters etc. They did the same thing in Discovery by inventing a sister for Spock and totally ruining the history and design of the klingons it's just the simple things seem so hard for them.

[General Maximus]

Exactly





All the points you have made this evening is what my realism factor is all about. You can call it whatever you want but we are on the same wavelength.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

Why is Q dying, why did he send everyone back in time and what did he hope to gain from it? That is an episode in itself at the minimum.

There is still an episode left…………..

---------- Post added at 09:00 ---------- Previous post was at 08:58 ----------

Originally Posted by Stephen

Not only that but the amount of time they wasted on Picards mother and the flashbacks is ridiculous. Which also ignores TNG in that his mother was seen as an old woman, also where was Picards brother in all of those flashbacks? Did they forget about him?

There’s been that many timelines and resets, who knows, or cares.

Originally Posted by Pierre

There is still an episode left…………..

---------- Post added at 09:00 ---------- Previous post was at 08:58 ----------



There’s been that many timelines and resets, who knows, or cares.

[General Maximus]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

Like Stephen said above, there is too much to cram into the finale next week.

Originally Posted by Pierre

There is still an episode left…………..

There is still a Season left