Star Trek ruminations

Inquisitor Peregrinus

Master Member
RPF PREMIUM MEMBER
What with the three JJ-Trek films, all the Enterprise discussion on the occasion of its anniversary, the questionable future of Discovery, and the ongoing trainwreck that is Axanar, I've been finding myself pondering: What makes good Trek good Trek -- or, even less frequently, what makes good Trek enjoyable to anyone watching? I've watched anything and everything from TOS up to the new films with friends who are Trek fans, friends who aren't, friends who like the new stuff better than the old, or vice versa, or like each for their own merits, and so forth.

So.

This post was spurred by a couple comments I just read in the thread on Star Trek: Beyond.

For me the movies are just entertainment. I understand the fact that they'd be off-putting to people that are looking for more exploration and adventure, and maybe even a bit more science...but for me, I get enough science from my weekly listens to Dr. Tyson's StarTalk podcast and things like that.

What made the good bits of TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY good were when they were about the characters, not the science. I have always cringed inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) when the technobabble starts flowing fast and furious to solve the problem. More time and dialogue needed to be spent on the characters' coming up with the solution, and less on talking out loud the method they'd use to implement it. One of the good points Gene brought up back in the day was that Kirk didn't take time to explain how a phaser worked -- he just picked it up and used it. The audience is smart -- they can figure out the rest from context.

It's good for scientific plausibility to be involved. It makes things feel more real. TOS consulted with Isaac Asimov and the Rand Corporation, among others. The TNG era saw consultation with physicists, astronomers, mathematicians, etc. All well and good, but the stories shouldn't dwell on that. Trek is about the human condition, not a science lecture.

When done right, the science is there in the background, but the foreground is Our Heroes working together to overcome The Situation. There might be some preliminary disagreement on the approach to take, but ultimately the Captain says "this is how we're going to do it" and they do. As professionals. Conflict between the characters can be appropriate when it's Starfleet vs. alien or Starfleet vs. civilian, or in a "less-evolved" present-day series/movie, but in Trek, among the main characters, it's weak. Lazy writing. I've said elsewhere that, for all the problems the writers' strike caused, the second season of TNG is my favorite out of that series. Meanwhile, Ron Moore praised the season 3+ portion as "when it really got good". Yes, there are good episodes through the latter five seasons of the series, but about as many that I find infinitely rewatchable as in season 2 alone.

This is, I think, because season two was when the actors started getting their characters, the writers (despite the massive turnover and dysfunctionality at the senior levels) had a handle on the characters, and we got some good character growth, some good exploration, and it was largely what in gaming terms would be PvE -- player-versus-environment. The conflict largely came from without, and Our Heroes would band together to overcome it. The interpersonal conflict Ron Moore liked is what we'd call PvP -- player-versus player. The conflict comes more from within, seeing Our Heroes at odds over what the right course of action is, who gets to make the call, etc. It can fly in other properties, but is bad for Trek. Sure, Our Heroes can disagree -- but they can do it professionally and still have it be interesting and engaging and exciting.

So... For a new Trek series (and I say series, because, while it's gorgeous to look at on the big screen, Trek needs longform storytelling that movies don't provide -- not even episodic stuff like Star Wars), the most important thing anyone behind it needs to sort out is where the conflict is going to come from. Enterprise, I think, would have been better without the Vulcan antagonism. Starfleet had only been created about twenty years before from all the various Human system fleets. I'm sure there's still some strong feelings about that. And then, all such considerations are suddenly rendered obsolete when we run into the Romulans, and all the people who had been decrying Starfleet as empire-building the day before would now rally behind it for protection. Even with all the anachronistic elements, I would still have found that more engaging than the bickering and sniping and Temporal Cold War and such.

Axanar was going to be dealing with skirmishes with the Klingons in the 2250s-ish. Discovery might do the same (if the time period's right). Before things settled in for a long, cold war. The Romulans went from being enemies pre-Founding to sporadic adversaries in TOS to allies in the movies. Then there was the Tomed Incident in 2311, that cost thousands of lives and the Romulans sealed their border for half a century. That Incident has been addressed in the novels, but in a fairly unsatisfying way. There are a lot of Prime-timeline things that have been referred to but never seen that would be ripe for development.

• The "disastrous" first contact with the Klingons around 2220 that led to "decades of war". Lead-up, contact, aftermath. I imagine there's much drama potential there. All the way up to the First Battle of Axanar and the "Axanar Peace Mission" in the 2250s that a young James Kirk participated in.

• The evolution of the relationship with the Romulans between TOS and TFF. What happened with the Romulan Commander Our Heroes captured? Did she see we weren't the boogeymen their propegandists painted us as, and when released back to her people told them so? Maybe that was how Spock found Saavik, and when the three powers collaborated to found the joint colony on Nimbus III. So what led to the breakdown of relations to the point of the Tomed Incident?

• The entire first half of the 24th century. The Klingons fighting the Romulans (Narendra III and the loss of the Enterprise-C, Khitomer and the loss of Worf's family, etc.), the Tzenkethi War, the Cardassian War, the Talarian Conflict. The loss of the Excelsior, the loss of the Enterprise-B... There's a lot there.

• Something comfortably post-Voyager, but what? And when? At the end of DS9, Odo went back to his people as a sort of ambassador from the Solids, to show them, by his first-hand experiences via the Great Link, that they had more potential than whomever the Changelings had encountered early on that had impelled them to their philosophy of mistrust and conquest. Maybe some years on, we receive a distress call from him. Some former subject races saw the Dominion's defeat at the hands of the Alpha Quadrant powers as an exploitable weakness and now rebellion has erupted in the Gamma Quadrant. Starfleet sends an expeditionary force to assist. Story ensues. One possibility. Or maybe...

[again regarding Beyond...] At first I was thinking "Great, the ship is gone, now we're going to see what kind of survival training the federation offers" But, nope, they just found another ship. What the heck was the point of that? Lets take away thier tech . . . for a few minutes . . . then we'll just give them back tech. No survivalist training on strange planets needed.

...This reminded me of one of the things as we got into the DS9/VOY era. The Intrepid class is capable of sustained warp 9.975 travel. That's a massive improvement over the capabilities of TOS, and even TNG. Add in quantum-slipstream and transwarp and whatnot, and the galaxy gets a lot smaller. I'd toyed with the idea way back then of "what happens if something takes that away?"... Something Happens (weapon, natural phenomenon, cosmic event, whatever) that renders subspace basically inaccessible over a largish chunk of space. Ships within that region are stranded. Anyone trying to fly in gets yanked out of warp on the fringes. Anyone plipping in via wormhole finds themselves stuck. And so forth. FTL communications don't work, FTL-boosted computers run sluggishly at best, and like that. Maybe pick up a couple generations on from the Event. The crew of a smallish ship was surveying a planet and decided to make it permanent. They've made regular trips up to the ship to maintain it in a low-power mode and see if the situation has changed. And then, one day, the fog lifts (so to speak) and their grandchildren strike out to see what they can find.

Equal measures whodunnit as they try to figure out what happened and to what extent, and the personal journeys as they try to live up to the their birthright with only what their families and the ship's computer could teach them. Not exactly the Academy, but it had to do. Only low-warp trips viable at first. The effect hasn't cleared, just lessened. They find derelict ships, stations that have been abandoned, pockets of survivors, etc. Could get back to real unknown territory sorts of stories, with a bit of suspense thrown in for zest.

So now we find ourselves here. With Axanar dead in the water thanks to A.P.'s ego, with Discovery looking iffy at best, with a fourth JJ-verse film a coin-toss... But mostly with repeated demonstration from the rights-holders that they don't grok the I.P. CBS doesn't get Trek, and never has. They passed on it in the early '60s and gave us Lost In Space instead, which was what they thought Gene was pitching to them. Paramount doesn't get Trek. They've just been fortunate enough to have people in creative positions on the shows and movies who got it right more often than not until fairly late in the game. Heck, even Gene didn't get Trek. His conception of what Trek was changed drastically from the '60s to the '80s. So who "gets" it? Who should get it? Maybe a fixed-length fan-short contest, voted on by the whole world via the internet, finalists to do a longer fan-film, and then vote for the winner, the prize being permission and a budget to make the new Trek? Couldn't be worse than what we've been given recently, and at least then we'd have some say in the matter...

--Jonah
 
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I'm a Star Trek fan, but not one of the hardcore kind.
I don't know the geography of the Enterprise, or the differences between the different movie versions.
I didn't watch DS9, or Voyager, or Enterprise.
I dug the original series as a kid, TNG as a young adult, and enjoyed the movies until they started the TOS/TNG crossover stuff.
To me, Trek isn't about technobabble and pseudoscience.
To me, Trek is best when it raises questions - when it challenges our accepted morals and ethics.
Like you said - human condition.
That's why the new JJ Trek just doesn't appeal to me. There's no challenges. No questions.
Crew fights bad guy, crew saves day. Happy ending.
The original series had a kind of Twilight Zone / Outer Limits feel to it - the best TNG episodes also did.
Star Trek, to me, isn't "turn-your-brain-off" entertainment - it's "turn-your-brain-ON".
JJ Trek is about as Trek as The Expendables or The Transporter.
Event Horizon was more Trek than JJ Trek...

Not sure where you were going with this thread, but there's my 2 cents.
 
One of the problems with Trek shows is that the writers often forget things or simply ignore things when convenient. One example of this is on Voyager, the reason given for the Voyager's swinging nacelles was because of issues with tearing the fabric of time & space (or whatever) due to damage caused by warp drives, but it was never part of the show, it was simply a neat effect for whenever the Voyager went into warp; I'm not even sure if the reason for the swinging warp nacelles was even addressed in the show at all.

Then there's the whole ignoring of previously established canon whenever it suited, not just esoteric information found primarily in the shows' bibles but stuff that had been mentioned or established in previous episodes of the show. I don't have any good examples off hand but I know that they've ignored and/or contradicted their bibles many times on all 4 TNG era Trek shows, other times they just do things that make no sense. Take Enterprise and how they established that Q'onos is only a few days away at low warp speeds, if the Klingon homeworld was really that close to Earth then how did Earth manage to not get conquered by the Klingons who were much more advanced than Humans were at that time?
 
I didn't watch DS9, or Voyager, or Enterprise.

Deep Space Nine. That raises so many questions and it takes risks. To quote my fave, 9 times out of 10, DS9 took risks. 9 times out of 10, Voyager played it safe. 9 times out of 10, Enterprise thought it took place in the TNG era. Also, the writers may have mistakenly wrote Archer as a villain without realizing he was supposed to be the good guy.

Seriously, if you like the idea of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine goes all out. It focuses on areas that truly make the franchise unique without making you feel dumb. And unlike Voyager, Enterprise, TNG and even Voyager, Deep Space Nine LOVES the original series!
 
Not sure where you were going with this thread, but there's my 2 cents.

Just found myself wanting to vent about the directions one of my most cherished universes has been being taken, and the other Trek threads didn't feel appropriate to it. I wanted to start discussion to see how others feel about it... Maybe even get some ideas into the zeitgeist that could take hold and become something. The best way to make sure something never happens is to keep it to oneself.

And I agree with pretty much everything you said there. And that bit about not being hardcore, but still being able to tell when something was off? That's somethign I consider essential -- Trek can and has been written in a way that can be enjoyed on multiple levels. And once that's been demonstrated, I feel it does the property a disservice to then fall short of that -- especially as drastically as it has far too often of late.

One of the problems with Trek shows is that the writers often forget things or simply ignore things when convenient. One example of this is on Voyager, the reason given for the Voyager's swinging nacelles was because of issues with tearing the fabric of time & space (or whatever) due to damage caused by warp drives, but it was never part of the show, it was simply a neat effect for whenever the Voyager went into warp; I'm not even sure if the reason for the swinging warp nacelles was even addressed
in the show at all.

It had been Rick's intention that the nacelles shift position slightly at warp, or have different angles for higher warp speeds, but that was outside the budgetary realities of the show. Following the second-season premiere, I wished further that the nacelles were up all the time and only lowered to horizontal when the ship landed -- so it could have been something exciting and new to hold onto for later in the show. Ditto the Delta Flyer. I would much prefer that the Aeroshuttle had been unfinished and mounted there for hull integrity, and then Tom got it into his head to finish it with B'Elanna's and Seven's help.

I'm frustrated that CBS/Para has priced the TNG Remastered collections so high and that sales were so low. It effectively guarantees that they'll never tackle DS9 or Voyager, and making Voyager's engines more dynamic is something I'd love to see. *shrug*

Then there's the whole ignoring of previously established canon whenever it suited, not just esoteric information found primarily in the shows' bibles but stuff that had been mentioned or established in previous episodes of the show. I don't have any good examples off hand but I know that they've ignored and/or contradicted their bibles many times on all 4 TNG era Trek shows, other times they just do things that make no sense. Take Enterprise and how they established that Q'onos is only a few days away at low warp speeds, if the Klingon homeworld was really that close to Earth then how did Earth manage to not get conquered by the Klingons who were much more advanced than Humans were at that time?

That, among many other things. Enterprise was way too scattershot as far as who the bad guys were. Depending on season, episode, and even different parts of a single episode, it was Xindi, Future Guy, Archer, the Vulcans, the Andorians, the Klingons, the Romulans, the Ferengi, Starfleet Command, or even the good old alien-of-the-week. For a seven-year show arc, the overarching antagonists need to be kept to only about three or so, and they need to evolve -- not just appear, disappear, and reappear as deemed necessary by the showrunners. To build on what Jeyl says above, in DS9 all the villains were complex and had good (at least to them) reasons for what they were doing -- including, at times, Starfleet itself. The Bajorans evolved, the Cardassians evolved, the Ferengi evolved, the Dominion evolved. No one ended the series as they had started. Not even Morn.

DS9 also maintained continuity better than the other series -- continuity of fact as well as continuity of story. What I mean by that is, like... With TNG, the pilot told us the Enterprise-D was starting at the edge of known space and getting ready for a long mission into "the great unexplored mass of the galaxy". Andy Probert, Rick Sternbach, Herman Zimmerman, and Gene Roddenberry had come up with a ship that was meant to be out in the unknown away from fleet support for up to a decade and a half. This was why there were so many amenities, and familiies, and all of that. This was going to be the only home a thousand people would know for quite a few years...

...But then, by the end of the first season we'd already been back to Earth once, and proceeded to bounce erratically from core Federation worlds to new and unexplored sectors from that point on, including way too many trips back to Earth, in particular. It breaks the premise of the series and never establishes a new one.

To say nothing of Voyager's "Gilligan's Island in space" premise of the first couple years. Too many "we found a way home!" that didn't work episodes. Let them do what they said in the pilot -- point toward home, but in the meantime, let's see what's out here! -- for longer before giving them their first false hope or distance-trimming windfall.

--Jonah
 
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For me, star trek is about life. it's about the choices we make, and trying to make the RIGHT choices to make it good for not just you, but everyone around you.
It's stories about people just trying to find their way through life...and hopefully having fun while doing it.


The new JJ movies are just flashy fluff. There really is no sense of science, or sense of self or sense of AWARENESS.. I guess, in them. they come off as shallow entertainment designed for the masses who just want to be entertained for 2 hours and nothing more than that.


That is part of the reason why hollywoods summer blockbuster season felt so shallow. no one tries to add that extra spark to make something special.

It's all throw away entertianment.


Even corporate star wars doesn't even have to try. Look at episode 7. just ANOTHER retelling of Episode 4 almost beat for beat and people said 'wow, this is the best thing ever!'

sure, it was fun, and more lively than the prequels, but was it GOOD STAR WARS?

Same goes for the new Ninja Turtles show. the people behind it don't really get what makes turtles special. and at least to me, it feels shallow and wanting and kind of boring in some places.


The problem with all these reboots and re imaginings is that people arn't taking the time to figure out what is good for the property and the reboot they are trying to do. They are all trying to put their own stamp or special spin on someone elses idea, and like Star Trek/Fast Furious Beyond, it ALWAYS falls flat!
 
The best Trek for me is the mind against mind (poker if you will) aspect. The submarine against the depth charging warship tactics are also appealing to me -- again mind against mind. The morality plays (Westerns as example) also hold my interest. Don't over complicate the story just a good solid foundation. "Action" should be a spice not a main ingredient in Star Trek. Tension and suspense are more important than action. Take The Wrath of Khan as an example, real basic (solid) plot, but mind against mind AND a submarine battle --bingo! The better original Trek used these elements. Throw in a funny episode once in a while like "Bonaza" did to great effect and it balances out. I think going back and looking at the better old TV Westerns is a good place for writers to get/steal solid foundations for story telling.
 
Characters, character interaction is what it's about indeed. Not flashy pretty things to look at.

Episodes like TNG's "Lower Decks", Voyager's "Good Shepard" are some of my personal favourites. Which do not feature big flashy space battles :p
 
^^^ Heck, TNG's "The Measure of a Man" is one of my all-time favorites, and most of it is scenery-chewing in one room. I watch and re-watch "Samaritan Snare" purely for Picard and Wesley in the shuttle.

One of the nice things that TNG proved, @NeilT, was that it was possible to revisit Trek again and again with new characters and settings without it being a reboot. It was a big enough sandbox for a lot of people's stories... So long as The Powers That Be don't choke on the worldbuilding or drop the ball on the characters. I'm looking at Voyager and Nemesis, primarily, as I consider Enterprise and JJ-Trek an alternate universe. That's why I started this thread! *heh* Ongoing frustration that the people responsible for continuing the story understand what they've got less and less. Generations was gorgeous, but TPTB felt the Enterprise-D didn't look good on the big screen and so ordered its destruction. The Enterprise-E is a massive design step backward. They really, really need to stop doing time-travel stories. And Generations, First Contact, and Insurrection don't suck... They just feel like overlong TV episodes -- and some of the less-memorable ones, at that. I think the only people who've gotten how to present Trek on the big screen have been Bob Wise, Harve Bennett, Nick Meyer, and Leonard Nimoy. And if a new show were to get going, I wold want Ira Behr and Maurice Hurley running it.

--Jonah
 
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Three and a bit years on from when I started this thread, I am much more frustrated than I was then.

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I knew from the first promo art for Discovery that it was another Enterprise or Trek'09 -- purporting to be part of the original continuity, but just not. Like Heinlein said, "Calling a tail a leg does not make it so." Since then, Discovery has been an assault on not only Good Trek, but good basic storytelling. And Picard, while also suffering from Idiot Plot™, has gotten under my skin with a thousand microaggressions. I don't know whether it's obliviousness on the parts of the showrunners, or deliberate provocation of the fans... And I honestly couldn't tell you which would be worse.

Most recently it was the recasting of Maddox and Icheb. Both actors are AAA (Alive, Active, and Available). Brian's only acting sporadically these days, but is still involved in the biz, having been the director of the CalTechTheater for something like twenty years now. But near as I can tell, there was no attempt to even see if he still existed, let alone wanted to reprise the role. For all I know, he would have declined, given how the character is in this take on the setting, and what happens to him.

Icheb is more problematic. While Manu is indeed AAA, as I say above, there were social-media issues around the time of the Kevin Spacey scandal that still haunt him, even though the principals have long since resolved things amicably -- because Internet. *shrug* I don't know if the showrunners would actively avoid hiring him because of that. Or if they just didn't bother to even check to see if he still existed. More problematic is that the showrunners seem to have forgotten that Icheb is the bestie of a nigh-omnipotent/omniscient entity who was, at one point, prepared to die to save his friend. I don't think Q Junior would ignore his best friend
being tortured and vivisected
.

Even more than before it's obvious to me that current "Star Trek" is being made by people who don't know (or care to know) Star Trek, and the people who work under them who do aren't challenging their bad calls. Keith de Candido was at ECCC last year and listening to him tell naysayers that Discovery totally is part of the original-canon setting, citing the "Previously on Star Trek" bit with Talos IV and Pike as an example, made me physically queasy in disgust. He was one of the authors from the '90s who I felt got Trek better than most, and did a lot to flesh out the Klingons in the TNG/DS9 era. To the point his initials (K. R. A. D.) got used to create a Klingon named after him (K'Rad). He knows better. Only thing I can think is that he's jammed his conscience in a deep dark corner for the sake of a steady paycheck.

I was thinking earlier about what I'd mentioned in my posts here and over in the Picard thread, about people involved with the i.p. over the years who have gotten it better than others, and the rewatchability of TNG season 2, and about Maurice Hurley in particular. A lot of the writing staff hated working under him, hated being rewritten by him, etc. But he was following Gene's directive, and making sure the scripts adhered to the showrunner's vision. Where he got fed up and left was when Gene was contradicting himself, and Maurie got tired of getting scolded by Gene for doing something Gene had told him to do prior.

What got me here was thinking about Legolas the Romulan and how they seem to have cured their half-century-long pandemic of Bumpy Forehead Syndrome. The transition from TOS to movie Klingons was okay, because that trait wasn't pertinent. Though I do prefer the old ancillary explanation, derived from Gene's comments, over the now-canon one ("We do not discuss it with outsiders.") -- that the TOS Klingons were the "Southern" Klingons, and now we were seeing the more rugged "Northern" Klingons. DC even did a lovely graphic novel about the power struggle between the two.

But Romulans looking like Vulcans was relevant to the story in "Balance of Terror". They continued to look indistinguishable from Vulcans all the way up to their final canon appearance in 2291, in the form of Ambassador Nanclus. And that film was made well into TNG's run and the establishment of their TNG-era look.

Some people know about the ultimately futile struggle Maurey had trying to convince higher-ups to let him do an ongoing story arc. Conventional corporate "wisdom" at the time was that audiences couldn't or wouldn't follow them. The episodes needed to be self-contained and the status quo restored at the end of each so they could be viewed in syndication in any order. Never mind that most syndication markets just aired series in sequential order out of convenience. Never mind all the mini-series in the '70s and early '80s proving people could and would follow an ongoing story. Never mind that TNG had even taken its title from one of those (Roots: The Next Generations). It was years more before Ron and Ira convinced the suits to let them even do the degree of ongoing story they were allowed in DS9...

The new look of the Romulans would have actually been relevant. What got set up in "The Neutral Zone" would have continued into a larger macrostory in season 2. The temporal vortex in "Time Squared" was going to have had something to do with Q. The tease of his history with Guinan was going to be a thing. O'Brien and Sonya Gomez and Dr. Selar were going to be regular additions to the supporting cast, to give more familiar faces on the ship outside of the main command ensemble.

Between the writers' strike and the recalcitrance of the execs, I mourn what might have been -- and how TNG might have changed not just Trek, but how we perceived episodic fare going forward. Just from the snippets I've been able to glean over the years... The return of the Romulans, in ships twice the size of the Federation's biggest Explorer class, looking like they've been fighting something nasty; the mystery of the Neutral Zone outposts of both parties having been wiped out by forces unknown -- forces that brought the Romulans' attention back to this side of their space in a damn hurry; the mystery of Guinan, her origins, her history with Picard, her abilities; the return of Q and his apparent preparing Picard and the Enterprise for something, his run-ins with Guinan, the first encounter with the Borg, the revelation that's who the Romulans were either fighting or preparing to fight over on the other side of their space -- and why the Tomed Incident happened, to cow the Federation into not risking crossing the border so they could focus elsewhere...

And now that ongoing story arcs are the standard rather that an outlandish deviation, now that Trek is doing it, too... This is what we get. And on top of it all, the changed appearance of the Romulans is undone with as little fanfare or explanation as it was done in the first place.
 
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Wow- you're one of the few people to admit to liking any pre 3rd season TNG.

I am one of those people who did indeed enjoy the cooperation between the main players, and how they got along so well with each other. I always felt that from the start, that they seemed right together, even though the actors hadn't fully gelled yet. They just felt good to watch. Season 1 (that a lot of people hate, and 2) were the transition from the recognizable TOS trek to the new Trek. It made me feel comfortable because it WAS familiar, and eased me into what was to be something immensely different. Not that I had any resistance to TNG at all, ever.

While post season 2 was so incredibly different, the players were the same likable people. The conflicts were almost exclusively external with none of that lazy infighting ********. I liked how they were moving into more modern story telling without losing what they were. Star Trek. Ya, the technobabble was irritating at times, but that's what it was and it wasn't that bad.

I admit that some of the first couple of season episodes have become difficult to watch, with the very early 80's colour and music influences that 3 on started to leave behind.

It's funny how Discovery isn't even on radar any more, and sad, because I want Star Trek! And Picard is just such lazy Lost mystery and dark and dystopian feeling. It's teetering for me.
 
I always felt that from the start, that they seemed right together, even though the actors hadn't fully gelled yet.
Yeah, there were a lot of growing pains the first half of the first season. The actors and writers were all getting to know the characters, they were trying to make it familiar, yet not a repeat (and failed hard, a couple times, with seriously heavy-handed callbacks -- I'm looking at you, "The Naked Now"). Few of the writers or directors had any idea what to do with Wesley. The women were largely ignored. Picard spent too many episodes being a grouchy martinet, yelling at people when they didn't give him the answers he wanted, and the new Big Bads™ -- the Ferengi -- ended up fizzling and needing a lot of reworking to make them viable later...

But there were glimmers of what it could be, even early on. And by mid-season they were starting to get to some solid Trek. "The Big Goodbye" had some good existential philosophy, and has the mixed honor of being the first malfunctioning-holodeck episode. "The Battle" has some seriously good acting from Sir Patrick, most engagingly when he boards the Stargazer for the first time and is obviously having some hard feels, and also when recounting the Picard Maneuver to the command staff, with hand gestures -- you can tell he's seeing it in his head. And for all the weird Prime Directive stuff with even contacting the Edo, "Justice" really marks the beginning of the shift toward quality. Picard asks for advice from his staff, and then actually listens and considers, instead of berating. The discussion between him and Data in sickbay about how to resolve the situation is basic-level ethics material, but well-written, well-delivered, and with the added gut punch of the fact that they're pragmatically weighing Wesley's life right in front of his mother.

The whole middle of the season is inconsistent, with a lot of good ideas and good moments, but still falteringly presented. But by the time we get to the last three episodes, we've hit cruising speed. I'm glad they got it before the end of the season. And, also, this is why I prefer that approach to making a series. They learned and adjusted over the course of nine months or so, and by the time the season ended they had things largely dialed in.

Whereas if you film the whole season and then release it after -- all at once or weekly -- you can only apply any feedback or lessons learned to following seasons. If any get ordered. This was why pilots existed in the first place. See if the premise gets any attention. Then refine it through the first few episodes or first season. Then you're good. With the current approach, they have to have the characters mapped out and all problems foreseen and headed off before filming starts. They can't respond to feedback on the first episode of Discovery or Picard and adjust things for the fourth or fifth episode before it films, because they've already committed and are well past that. So if they're going wrong, they can't correct. Rather than a bad episode, we've got a bad season.
It's funny how Discovery isn't even on radar any more, and sad, because I want Star Trek!
Ditto. I don't understand why Good Trek™ seems to be so hard for The Powers That Be to figure out. I wanted to like the TNG films. I wanted to like Enterprise. I wanted to like Discovery. I wanted to like Picard. I wanted to like JJ-Trek... It's a near-lifelong love and one of my four dearest-held intellectual properties. I'll put up with a lot (not "Threshold", though), even when the plot makes no sense, or characters are acting out of character, or the writers utterly reinvent a character or alien race. It takes a lot for me to nope out.
 
They may very well be intending to expand on the subterfuge between the Romulans and Starfleet in the upcoming seasons of ST: Picard. I know that they have asked Whoppi Goldberg to return as Guinan in Picard, so that is a good sign. They’ve set up a scenario that could explore the complex events between The Borg, Q, Guinan’s race and the secretive sections of the Romulan and Federation (Tal Shirar/Zhat Vash and Section 31), so maybe you shouldn’t just write it off as yet.

I really like ST-Picard. It feels like Trek to me, unlike Discovery and JJTrek. A few things may irk me of course, but that has been true with all of the series and movies. I’m not going to nit-pick every detail at this stage in the game. The perceived bugs often disintegrate upon repeated viewing and additional story-lines. This is still an excellent show, good, modernized Trek tech and I’m very hopeful that it with enmesh in my expectations of the Trek verse. Thumbs up for me so far.
 
Ditto. I don't understand why Good Trek™ seems to be so hard for The Powers That Be to figure out. I wanted to like the TNG films. I wanted to like Enterprise. I wanted to like Discovery. I wanted to like Picard. I wanted to like JJ-Trek... It's a near-lifelong love and one of my four dearest-held intellectual properties. I'll put up with a lot (not "Threshold", though), even when the plot makes no sense, or characters are acting out of character, or the writers utterly reinvent a character or alien race. It takes a lot for me to nope out.

Because the powers that be aren't making Star Trek, any more than they're making Star Wars. They are making films and series with an agenda, to which they have simply stapled the Star Trek and Star Wars name.
 
I am someone who does not realy check into crossing realities or timelines of different series. I enjoy or dislike them for what they are.


Reading OP the idea of a aftermath to the dominian war and chaos around odo's homeworld could be a rather interesting series. Never thought of that.
 
They may very well be intending to expand on the subterfuge between the Romulans and Starfleet in the upcoming seasons of ST: Picard.
I hope so. We've been primed for it since the conspiracy in TUC. I just wish it were all handled/presented better.
I know that they have asked Whoppi Goldberg to return as Guinan in Picard, so that is a good sign.
Well, they kinda had to after Sir Patrick so publicly asked her to return when he was on The View. *lol*
They’ve set up a scenario that could explore the complex events between The Borg, Q, Guinan’s race and the secretive sections of the Romulan and Federation (Tal Shirar/Zhat Vash and Section 31), so maybe you shouldn’t just write it off as yet.
Oh, I haven't. I'm really hoping it gets better. There have been so many sour notes over the first few episodes, it has literally turned my stomach. But if I can endure the Temporal Cold War and Gilligan's Island In Space, I can deal with anachronisms, breaking of lore and canon, and awful characterization for at least a bit of season 2. Then we'll see...
I really like ST-Picard. It feels like Trek to me, unlike Discovery and JJTrek.
This is what I wish people could more quantitatively convey to me. There's some, yes, but it's immersed in much more anti-Trek. At least, to these eyes.
We see both kinds of Romulans on Picard, and they have been given the Northern/Southern explanation that the Klingons used to have.
I had noticed both, yes. But I hadn't realized there was any discussion of it. Where did I miss it?
 
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