Star Trek: Picard
- Thread starter renaissance_man
- Start date
I wonder...will the Red Angel from the Future tie into the Picerd series?
Hopefully the new Picard series has nothing to do with Discovery.
I would rather we had a continuation of the post Nemesis timeline and let Discovery exist in its own technologically anachronistic pocket universe.
One can only hope.
What I'm really worried about is having Picard go back in time to interact with the already established characters and timeline of STD1.
Can't. I really recommend watching the video kalkamel posted over in the Disco thread. After the Viacom split in '06, Paramount has had to license Star Trek from CBS, like any other licensee. CBS holds the rights to all the old canon up through Nemesis and Enterprise. And they get all the licensing revenue from that content and those likenesses. This is why Paramount had to create new looks and new tone starting with Trek09 -- they get the licensing revenue from the new stuff they make. So it's not in their interest to put in much that draws from the old body of canon, as CBS gets any money that makes, not them.
Even the "Prime Timeline" is an artifact of this license. The term didn't exist before Trek09, and serves as Paramount's way to distinguish any new "just different enough" interpretation of old-canon content from the stuff that is wholly their own. That latter would be the "Kelvin" and "Discovery" timelines, BTW. Which are not each other, nor the Prime timeline, nor the canon timeline. So there's only so close they can get things to what we know from TNG, DS9, VOY, and Nemesis before they can't merchandise it. Expect it to look different. Expect minimal cameos from his old crewmates And, when/if those happen, expect the characters to be noticeably different from how we last saw them. But I don't expect much of that. Cynical pragmatism derived from knowing how they do business, and the current state of rights and such tells me this is, as with saying Discovery is part of the Prime Timeline, even though it isn't, an attempt to bring back old-guard fans who feel alienated by CBS-Trek to this point. It will feature a version of Picard, but isolated and removed from the familiar setting of Starfleet and the Enterprise so they can do whatever with him.
It might be good on its own merits... But with Kurtzman as the showrunner, I don't have much hope. Not saying he's a bad writer. He and Orci have done some good work over the years. But they need to stay far away from Star Trek and Transformers, because they just don't get it. He (and CBS) are still scratching their heads at why Discovery failed to bring people (and by "people" I mean Trekkies) flocking to CBS All Access. And if the copious legitimate critiques out there haven't given him a clue (doesn't take much to sift out the chaff of the trolling clickbait) after Transformers, Star Trek, Revenge of the Fallen, and Into Darkness, I don't expect him to suddenly have a flash of insight now. Discovery has felt like the people running it keep going "Oh... They didn't like that. Um, okay, how about if we tweak... this! Now is it Star Trek? Guys?" while continuing to completely miss the point.
Riceball
Master Member
Personally, I think that both CBS and Paramount should distance themselves from the Prime/Canon timeline and just admit that their projects are the reboots that they really are. Sure, people don't like reboots in geneal but I think that many fans would have an easier time accepting both the JJ verse and the DISCO verse if their producers would just admit that they're really reboots. They're not doing themselves any favors by trying (and failing) to convince fans that their productions are really part of the same timeline that we've seen on TV and in movies up until the first JJ Trek movie.
kalkamel
Master Member
As an addendum to that video, I would suggest watching the one linked below as well. In that video, Robert Meyer Burnett weighs in with his thoughts on Midnight Edge's take based on his experiences of working with CBS on various Trek projects.
For those unaware, Burnett directed the indie cult movie Free Enterprise starring William Shatner some 20 years ago. He also produced the Star Trek TNG Blu-ray remasters and set up the cast interviews in the special features section of those discs. Most recently, he played a major role in the abandoned Axanar fan project, until his falling out with Alec Peters.
I've only recently become a big fan of his YouTube channel, The Burnettwork, as his knowledge in Star Trek and his overall views on pop culture makes for an amazing listen. If you're a fan of Trek, I would suggest watching his videos.
I think they'd do better creating their own new thing. They want to do more action than thinkpiece, which I consider, really, anti-StarTrek (and, really, anti-Transformers, but that's not germane here). So go nuts and do action and don't call it Star Trek. *shrug*
Then, maybe, if Shari Redstone manages to bring the divided house back together, we can revisit Star Trek. There are indications I don't want to get too hopeful about that a nonzero chunk of why she wants to, and part of why she spoke up to get Les Moonves out of CBS (definitely not all, but a contributing factor) is because she does like Star Trek. Either on its own merits, or because she has seen what it can bring in monetarily when it's done right and the fans are happy. Or both. Cynically, I presume the latter, but I can acknowledge a glimmer of excitement.
I'd hope and suggest she get people involved with it who get it, and give then a few years to figure out what they want to do. Rod Roddenberry (he recently-ish discovered what it was that made Star Trek so special -- watch his documentary)... Ira Behr (the half of the DS9 creative team I respect far more)... Melinda Snodgrass... Michael Jan Friedmand... Kieth deCandido... Peter David... I'd say Maurice Hurley, but he died a few years ago. People like Rick Sternbach and Mike Okuda and Doug Drexler and Andy Probert and Herman Zimmerman.
Maybe not for the long term, but at first, to help establish the new Rules, figure out a tone and look and direction and maybe even the first story arc or two. Maybe for All Access, maybe for a movie franchise a la Marvel -- but, regardless, something considered and building on its roots rather than ignoring them -- never mind how good the reasons for ignoring them might be.
Me, I'd love it if, as I've maintained for a long time now, due to the tonal dissonance of the movies from First Contact on, everything after Picard went into the Nexus (for the Enterprise-related content) has been Picard's Nexus fantasy. The main reason I'm stubborn about that is that I still utterly resent the destruction of the Enterprise-D by studio heads who thought it looked too boring on the big screen... Compounded by its replacement by a ship that was a huge step backward in design philosophy and intent. This year coincides -- if we do a one-to-one correlation -- with the future setting of "All Good Things...", and even if Picard's awareness of that potential outcome gave them warning to head off some of those things, I want Riker to have the Galaxy-class Enterprise, dammit. Between that and "Endgame", I want to see a bit more in that time period of the late 2390s through the early 2400s. It would make a good anchor and starting point to reorient everyone in the actual canon and then go forward.
jts1031
Sr Member
But it can be done. Look no further than Star Trek:Online, which has included every aspect of Trek including Kelvin and Discovery. And that's a game that has been free for several years. I can't imagine they can pull it off, but a producer wouldn't do it because of financial constraints.
And ST:O is a result of Cryptic Studios getting a license from CBS. They can -- and have -- put whatever they want into it. Paramount can't say boo. Apart from Cryptic's cut from sales, CBS gets any money the game makes. There's not really any ancillary merchandising. So, not the same thing at all as Paramount trying to make some money in merch sales off the Trek they've been making since '09.
patrickivan
Sr Member
Picard already got an STI in insurrection. Poor guy. I hope he's not getting Space Herpes with STD crossing over with Time Bandits.
I’m not sure if we really want Patrick Stewart to have story input / approval on this new series...
Well, he is the reason we got Picard the action hero in the movies. Never mind the drastic tonal shift that gave the character. The dune buggy chase in Nemesis was his input.
Strikerkc
Sr Member
You know. I like both Picards. I like the TNG Picard, and I like the later-movie Picard. It's just the fact they're supposed to be the same person that's weird.
For me, it's more that the way it was written was very jarring. A skilled writer would have been able to weave in a throughline of him not coping well with losing his brother and nephew, of having that compounded by his PTSD from the Borg getting poked hard by their return, and evolving into a sort of midlife crisis where he gets the girl and punches up the baddies. As soon as they knew Nemesis was going to be the last outing for that cast, that would've been a great opportunity for him to finish out that arc, having grown, and maybe retaining some of those character elements, but more organically melded into his personality, and no longer lashing out.
And that's retaining the rough plots we got, rather than my preferred interpretation that scraps everything after the Nexus hits Viridian III.
The Brahma Bull
Sr Member
I hope the new series will be as far away from TNG as possible. Without Stewart ST would have been dead and if I look back to 80% of TNG, 90% of DS9, 100% of VOY and 50% of ENT that probably would've been the best for the franchise. I like STD, but I hate the ST Canon. There's so much bs in it. Bad writing, for reasons of low budget or missing technology by the time of production.
Similar threads
