Star Trek: Picard

I swear, they are trolling their audience....

In this week’s episode of “Shut Up, Wesley!” at the 10:50 mark, in an interview with Michelle Hurd, Wil comments:

“I love that because she’s so FLAWED!! I can’t remember the last time when we saw a character in Star Trek, where we’re all, like ‘no—we’re the best of humanity’... I think it is terrifically inspiring and validating to flawed people...”


I am trying to picture Riker in the same position as Raffi...if Picard had offered his resignation in protest, Riker would have proudly offered his resignation as well and stood with his captain.

Raffi, on the other hand, threw a tantrum and exclaimed: “You resign and I get FIRED!!!”

So far, I see nothing particularly “inspiring” in this flawed character.
 
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I don't know if anyone mentioned this but I did not like that they filmed at Vasqueze Rocks, like they were giving a nod to TOS, and then stated on screen it was Vasqueze Rocks. That place always represented an alien landscape in TOS so to identify it as what it really is in a show that is supposed to follow on from TOS & TNG is just another slap in the face of canon.
 
AJK001 said:
I don't know if anyone mentioned this but I did not like that they filmed at Vasqueze Rocks, like they were giving a nod to TOS, and then stated on screen it was Vasqueze Rocks. That place always represented an alien landscape in TOS so to identify it as what it really is in a show that is supposed to follow on from TOS & TNG is just another slap in the face of canon.
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Add it to the list of things that Kurtzman and co are "trying but not hitting the mark" Trek.
I tried to give this 3rd episode a chance but it's more of the same strange disregard or possibly misunderstanding of what came before and them trying to give us Star Trek. Sadly a lot of it is just hollow lip service.

It saddens me to think that this is what Star Trek has become.
I really hoped Picard could inspire the Bad Robot/Secret Hideout team to be better.

I wish they had the humility to end their license with Paramount, CBS, Viacom whoever it is that owns Star Trek after all of the corporate rubbish that got us to this point and let a true visionary take the reigns. Don't be in it for just the money, be in it because you care, have passion for this rich universe. Have the creativity to work within a utopian vision of the future not distort to suit an ideal that you feel is "relevant" to this post-modern idea that TV has to be dark to be interesting. By changing core principles you change what makes Star Trek unique.
If you can't do that, then get the hell out of Dahj ;)

I think it may be time to move on.
 
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AJK001 said:
I don't know if anyone mentioned this but I did not like that they filmed at Vasqueze Rocks, like they were giving a nod to TOS, and then stated on screen it was Vasqueze Rocks. That place always represented an alien landscape in TOS so to identify it as what it really is in a show that is supposed to follow on from TOS & TNG is just another slap in the face of canon.
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Wow, I thought it was a random nod to Aliens. Vasquez screams "Lets ROCK!" in the film, all that. :)

The smoking, kind of like the swearing, just feels off in Star Trek to me. But, people are going to do self destructive things no matter the century. Paris maybe had no exposure to it, or maybe never met anybody in starfleet who smoked, or maybe he just meant the vast majority of people.

Even if they have tech that allows people to smoke with no ill effects, somebody is going to reject that though and smoke whatever they want, however they want. She was smoking some kind of flower she had just picked, so maybe that's a healthy plant to smoke. ;) IDK.

Overall, I have a feeling this series is going to be about Picard "saving" starfleet from the Romulan spies, and re-establishing it as the starfleet he loved. Just a hunch. But with these producers, who the heck knows.
 
They also told Mark Twain that smoking had been abolished. Twain considered it a reasonable trade off for abolishing poverty.

But I could overlook that easy enough. Sometimes it's best not to get TOO bogged down by the past, especially in a franchise with this much content. DS9 had a hard time contending with the idea that there's no money in the Federation. They mostly dealt with it by ignoring it as much as possible. But, all the little changes can work if you get the tone right, and even the tone can be overlooked if it's adds enough to justify itself. Ultimately what I'm seeing here is that it's just not good enough. Changes are fine if there's a reason for them, but "because it would be cool" just isn't enough of a reason.

Also one of the reasons most previous shows spent very little time on Earth is because even though it sounds really great, if you actually examine the society described it's SUPER dystopian. Ownership has basically reverted to Fuedal system except even worse because there's no possibility of change. Picard owns a vinyard in France. That sounds nice. I might enjoy that, but...whooops, too bad because all the vinyards are already owned. Could I work hard and buy one if I want it bad enough? No, there's no money and none will EVER be available again, since the current owners don't need to do anything at all to keep them forever. I could work FOR him, as a vinyardless serf, but he'll always be in charge. it's his. I wont get paid, but he might let me live there, under his rules. Maybe.
 
Noeland said:
Even if they have tech that allows people to smoke with no ill effects, somebody is going to reject that though and smoke whatever they want,
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That tech would be the ability to cure cancer easily, so yes they could smoke whatever they want with the ill effects being easily healable. Besides we can't take blanket statements by characters as scientific fact. Really Paris, there's no human in the entire galaxy that smokes? Anywhere? A fair bit of the evolved human talk is propaganda for the benefit of other species, even if some of our main characters really do talk the talk and walk the walk.
 
AJTaliesen said:
Also one of the reasons most previous shows spent very little time on Earth is because even though it sounds really great, if you actually examine the society described it's SUPER dystopian. Ownership has basically reverted to Fuedal system except even worse because there's no possibility of change. Picard owns a vinyard in France. That sounds nice. I might enjoy that, but...whooops, too bad because all the vinyards are already owned. Could I work hard and buy one if I want it bad enough? No, there's no money and none will EVER be available again, since the current owners don't need to do anything at all to keep them forever. I could work FOR him, as a vinyardless serf, but he'll always be in charge. it's his. I wont get paid, but he might let me live there, under his rules. Maybe.
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As I said, I don't want to get into the economics of Trek on here, but that's not how it works. There's money. There's an economy. There's just no cash on the core worlds, because it isn't needed. Any transfer or shifting of "credit" is done in the background, more or less automatically and independent of the people conducting the transaction. With the elimination of population pressure and material need, a lot less importance is ascribed to the accumulation of things for their own sake. And, with replicator technology as refined as it is, the caché is for authentic historical or handcrafted items, original creative works, etc.

Your example is flawed, because the Picard vineyard has been in the family for centuries. Since before the Federation, since before Starfleet, since before Human spaceflight. The Federation isn't Communist -- people aren't forced to give up what they have for some communal pool or whatever. Picard's great-grandfather wasn't disabused of his ancestral home because ownership isn't allowed any more or some other twaddle. Who says all the vineyards are owned? And even if they are, wait a few years. Jean-Luc is the last Picard. His brother and nephew are dead. His brother's widow seems to have moved away. He's in his 80s. When he goes in another thirty or forty years, there'll be a vineyard up for grabs. How it's determined who gets it, I don't know. But that's an extreme case, for a historic property, that requires specialized knowledge and skills, and is associated with a personage of contemporary celebrity. For all we know, there's a macabre waiting list a mile long for Chateau Picard. In today's world...? I dunno, maybe Club 33 is a decent example. The exclusive Disney thing. The last time I checked, the waiting list was over a decade, and the only way in is dead man's boots. It doesn't matter whether you can afford it -- you can't get in until a space is vacated.

I'm going to leave off here. There's a few thousand more words I could say just sketching in basic premises, but I'll have pity.
 
Inquisitor Peregrinus said:
As I said, I don't want to get into the economics of Trek on here, but that's not how it works. There's money. There's an economy. There's just no cash on the core worlds, because it isn't needed.
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you don't want to get into it, but you will, at great length, before washing your hands of it and moving on?

Not one word of what you said countered my point.

Yes, they got to keep it. Forever. Until the family line dies out, unless he chooses an heir, which he might. It's all the bad of capitalism with none of the good. A permanent hereditary position that cannot be lost unless the family dies out or abdicate. I'm not sure if you've read any history, but that IS the essence of feudalism.


Also, where are you getting your info about credits? I couldn't find anything, though I did find several references that money no longer exists.
 
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AJTaliesen said:
you don't want to get into it, but you will, at great length, before washing your hands of it and moving on?
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No, really. That's not even scratching the surface. That's barely even marring the clearcoat. :p There's a lot that's been written on the nature of the Federation economy -- deduced and speculated. The Federation has credits. It's referenced from TOS through at least TNG, specifically. There are a lot of instances of Federation-to-non-Federation and a few of Federation-internal transactions up through Voyager.

The general conclusion reached was that the Federation definitely has money, but Humans and most of their worlds and institutions (like Starfleet) don't, and hadn't since before the Federation. But Humanity has assets, which anyone can draw on when needed, but most of the time it isn't.
Yes, they got to keep it. Forever. Until the family line dies out, unless he chooses an heir, which he might. It's all the bad of capitalism with none of the good. A permanent hereditary position that cannot be lost unless the family dies out or abdicate. I'm not sure if you've read any history, but that IS the essence of feudalism.
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This baffles me. If I have a house and leave it to my children, I can. It isn't taken away from me. If they want to leave it to their children, they can, etc. I mean, unless there's financial mismanagement and it needs to get sold to pay the estate, and all that crap, but generally speaking. As far as I know, Chateau Picard keeps no serfs. I'm not sure if vineyard workers live on the property, or if it's automated outside of the family members who live there. Never seen anyone besides Robert and, later, Jean-Luc tending the vines. And the Picards haven't had title for centuries, if ever. For it to be feudalism, someone would have to be pledging fealty to the Picards and paying them taxes, and the Picards then on up to their lords, etc.

People leave houses and possessions to descendants and family members all the time. I don't see much hue and cry about how it's a debasement of capitalism, or calls for those items to be surrendered so someone else can have a go at them. As someone who grew up during the Reagan-Bush Era, leaving your house to your kids seems more like a cornerstone of the capitalist dream than its antithesis...
 
Sluis Van Shipyards said:
They're saying Picard is in the Prime timeline though.
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Which is a BS excuse and still has nothing to do with actual Star Trek (1966 - 2005).


renaissance_man said:
John Eaves would beg to differ. He was working on Discovery and was told to make things 25% different.



Here's a quote from the comicbook.com site.

"Back in April of 2017 the task of the Enterprise making an appearance came to be and work was to start right away,” Eaves says. “The task started with the guideline that the Enterprise for Discovery had to be 25% different otherwise production would have most likely been able to use the original design from the 60's but that couldn't happen so we took Jefferies original concepts and with great care tried to be as faithful as possible".



And the link.

25% difference in JJ Trek
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Should also be mentioned comicbook.com is owned by CBS ;)
 
rps20200209_110617.jpg
 
The Terminator said:
Which is a BS excuse and still has nothing to do with actual Star Trek (1966 - 2005).






Should also be mentioned comicbook.com is owned by CBS ;)
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Exactly and if CBS are willing to publish that on their own site then it just backs up the whole 25% different aspect of Kurtzman/JJ era Trek.
I can't believe they wanted to wipe the slate clean just so they could scoop the profits from their brand of "Star Trek".

No way they are getting my money. Sorry CBS/Paramount/Bad Robot/Secret Hideout, I'm not giving you a penny for this dumbed down rubbish.
 

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