Star Trek - Picard show

[Malcy]

How many episodes are left? Going to slog out the season, then never again bother.

2 more.

[Blumf]

Fucking hell, are they going to literally Deus ex Machina their way to a conclusion?

[Lemming]

Boring episode. The show is seriously such a slog to get through every week at this point. Seven came back for virtually no reason, and goes against literally everything she believes in with almost no protest and no apparent consequences.

[Cortez the Surfer]

Thought there might have been some sort of narrative about how the Federation essentially treats the Synths as slaves, so no wonder they fucking kicked off. But no, it looks like they're just going with an "AI will inevitably become evil" storyline. Yawn.

Not sure that's what's going on. In that last episode they seemed to be inferring that the synths are just a trigger and when they reach a certain level of sophistication and there's x amount of them, a bunch of super powerful beings show up and effectively reset that bit of the universe by exterminating all the sentient life.

Which is of course litigiously similar to the underlying plot from the Mass Effect games.

[Chairman Yang]

I'm so uncomfortable with the online reaction to Seven becoming a Borg Queen. It's not 'awesome' or 'cool', it's awful. A slave becoming a slaver. Everyone's 'yassss Queen, slay!'... fuck me.

What is this fucking show?

[beanheadmcginty]

Worst episode of the series for me. Could not give a single toss about anything that happened in it.
Also, does this mean that captain beardy cigar is actually closely connected to the android plot purely coincidentally?

[Lemming]

I'm so uncomfortable with the online reaction to Seven becoming a Borg Queen. It's not 'awesome' or 'cool', it's awful. A slave becoming a slaver. Everyone's 'yassss Queen, slay!'... fuck me.

What is this fucking show?

Unbelievable right? The ethical ramifications of what she attempted to do were fucking massive and they were basically glossed over. I can't believe their treatment of Seven in this show has been to have her murder an unarmed person and then enslave an entire cube of Borg, and we're meant to cheer at both.

Worst episode of the series for me. Could not give a single toss about anything that happened in it.
Also, does this mean that captain beardy cigar is actually closely connected to the android plot purely coincidentally?

Yep, the random guy they hired just because he was Raffi's mate turns out to not only have met one of the ultra-rare androids, but also be connected to her in a way that directly relates to the Epic Tragedy that defined his entire life.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Worst episode of the series for me. Could not give a single toss about anything that happened in it.
Also, does this mean that captain beardy cigar is actually closely connected to the android plot purely coincidentally?

Yeah, we're into Star Wars level of inbreeding there. Everyone has to be related to something or someone else that we've already seen or they have no right to exist.

[Chairman Yang]

I'm beginning to think Michael Chabon might some kind of moron.

Picard desperately wants to be modern and edgy and like... OK, sure, if you insist; but nobody seems to want to do the intellectual lifting to explain why everything is so shitty all of a sudden. The story just takes place in a generic amoral sci-fi reality.

Some people are just 'poor' now, right? Because that's a dramatic concept people can understand. No authority exists to deprive them of their needs and no there's meaningful way to hoard any resource, but people are just abstractly poor. So here's a show that claims to be an indictment of contemporary politics but refuses to make any accusation against any particular target. Sinister, or merely very stupid?

Characters act arbitrarily, without concern for the consequences of their actions because the show doesn't admit moral thinking into its philosophy. People are shitty and bad, heroic actions transcend mortal comprehension and individual personalities are just thin shells wrapped around manifest destiny. Now is that also just because it's really easy to write bad action stories? Or is it a deliberately corporate-y story form?

I don't know, just wanking about a naff show with some old fuck in it.

Edit: Or option 3, this is like... obviously just Mass Effect fan fiction.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Also, is Soji still made from Data now or not?

[Lemming]

There's like a race of Sojis on this planet we're going to. Maddox made them all. Who knows anymore.

Also did anyone else absolutely howl at "black flag directive"? Rios (a man who, let's remember, was introduced by pouring alcohol on a bleeding shrapnel wound) was on a ship that received a BLACK FLAG DIRECTIVE from STARFLEET SECURITY telling them to SHOOT TWO PEOPLE or their SHIP WOULD BE BLOWN UP.

I mean it's fucking terrible. It's atrocious. I feel bad for the poor bastard Memory Alpha editor who's going to have to make the page for "Black Flag Directive" and try to work in some kind of explanation.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Also did anyone else absolutely howl at "black flag directive"? Rios (a man who, let's remember, was introduced by pouring alcohol on a bleeding shrapnel wound) was on a ship that received a BLACK FLAG DIRECTIVE from STARFLEET SECURITY telling them to SHOOT TWO PEOPLE or their SHIP WOULD BE BLOWN UP.

Do you know what the worst part is? That didn't register with me. Such is the level of desecration of Starfleet that's gone on, I'm just used to it.

[Chairman Yang]

They're all so horny for violence aren't they? They can't get enough of fucking secret orders and torture and murdering people it just gets them ROCK FUCKING HARD. Imagine watching any Star Trek and going: "Ah yes, a police state is what this is!" Idiots.

[grainger]

On a more basic level, the set design is terrible. The space prat's ship consists of a vast, empty, hangar-like room with the bridge console and an unspecified number of chairs at one end, because...? Then there are other rooms which are pitch dark with super-bright pinpoint lights all over the walls.

Overall, it just doesn't feel like a place I can understand on any level. Not only isn't it a ship I'd like to be on, it's not a ship I can possibly imagine being on, as there's nothing to imagine.

This is made worse because I don't even know what the ship looks like on the outside. I mean, I don't need a ST: TMP-speed approach to the ship, but at least let us get a decent look at it every episode. If it gets into a battle, I swear I won't know which ship it is.

The beardy guy's ship just isn't a space anyone would sensibly design. It feels like it exists only in cyberspace. So when the show wants to do weird or disconcerting, it has nowhere to go, because the baseline ship - not weird for any plot or thematic reason - is totally out there.

Contrast with TNG or TOS, where the ship had a sense or personality that we got right from the opening shot. We only saw a fraction of the ship's interior, but the rooms we did see made sense. Or even something like Farscape where again, the interiors made sense and the exterior was instantly recognisable. Or any number of other SF shows or movies.

How large is the ship? How powerful? What are its main capabilities? Who cares, because they the showrunners will just make it do whatever it needs to do in whatever episode it does some shenanigans. The crew can't impress us with their abilities, getting more than they ought to out of the ship, because the ship can and will magically do whatever is needed in any given scene.

And that's also a problem with the entire show. Most of them can pull whatever abilities are needed out of the hat in any scene, for the sake of cool. So they can never impress us, because they have no constraints to rise above.

And to add to the vaping, we get vinyl hipsters too. Maybe that's the reason the ancients are going to come back and kill everyone.

[grainger]

They're all so horny for violence aren't they? They can't get enough of fucking secret orders and torture and murdering people it just gets them ROCK FUCKING HARD. Imagine watching any Star Trek and going: "Ah yes, a police state is what this is!" Idiots.

It's all the Section whatever they were called from DS9 isn't it? They've taken the darkest bits from past Trek and run with it, probably because those bits are most like other contemporary drama.

[grainger]

So here's a show that claims to be an indictment of contemporary politics but refuses to make any accusation against any particular target.

Yes, I'm not sure what the allegory even is here. How does any of this relate, in any way, to our world? Apart from "things are less nice than they used to be". I know Picard was all "you've got to be optimistic" this week... is that it? Is that the show's point? It took all this time to say that?

[Wonderful Butternut]

It's all the Section whatever they were called from DS9 isn't it? They've taken the darkest bits from past Trek and run with it, probably because those bits are most like other contemporary drama.

Section 31. I hated Section 31 Fanbois from day fucking one, and now it looks like they're in charge. And there's the excuses: Violence was in Star Trek before, so it's okay to have it everywhere now. We're just being realistic. Humans are naturally aggressive creatures anyway blah blah blah.

Maybe the final standoff will involve Picard throwing his excrement at Oh, Narissa, whoever because he's a human, and humans are basically just evolved monkeys.

[Chairman Yang]

I know people criticise TNG for being a very early-90s, sexless, American liberal utopia but if all Picard has to say is 'people are mean to each other nowadays and everything sucks' then... Jesus.

[oy vey]

I know people criticise TNG for being a very early-90s, sexless, American liberal utopia but if all Picard has to say is 'people are mean to each other nowadays and everything sucks' then... Jesus .

Who takes on Q. I'm liking this.

[Lemming]

Yes, I'm not sure what the allegory even is here. How does any of this relate, in any way, to our world? Apart from "things are less nice than they used to be". I know Picard was all "you've got to be optimistic" this week... is that it? Is that the show's point? It took all this time to say that?

Romulan refugees = literal real refugees? It's a mystery, especially since they basically ditched that and now the message is about how "fear" has led to a ban on human-like androids, which is a really biting issue in reality of course.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Also did anyone else absolutely howl at "black flag directive"? Rios (a man who, let's remember, was introduced by pouring alcohol on a bleeding shrapnel wound) was on a ship that received a BLACK FLAG DIRECTIVE from STARFLEET SECURITY telling them to SHOOT TWO PEOPLE or their SHIP WOULD BE BLOWN UP.

Picard apologist says: That's okay for Starfleet to do because the Omega Directive, which can apparently be equated with a credible threat to summarily execute an officer for not following orders, and take his ship and crew with him as collateral damage, existed.

(Sorry to quote this twice)

[beanheadmcginty]

Looking on the bright side. I've always preferred Shatner anyway but always found it hard to justify, in much the same way that I prefer Roger Moore to Sean Connery. But now Picard has been in this load of shit, his copybook is blotted forever. It's 100 times worse than Star Trek V.

[grainger]

Picard or Stewart? Picard's character is one of the few things doesn't come off too badly in this show, IMO.

I mean, it doesn't make any sense that it's the same Picard we saw in TNG, because the entire world he's in isn't remotely compatible[nb]Yes "things change", but there are too many differences that must have been around at the time of TNG.[/nb], but Picard himself comes out of it relatively unscathed. It's been a long time since I saw the TOS movies, but Kirk must surely have made a bigger arse of himself in one of them.

[Blumf]

Picard or Stewart? Picard's character is one of the few things doesn't come off too badly in this show, IMO.

Really? This Picard is a dithering idiot, continually whining and apologising (half the time for stuff that isn't his fault).

Instead of the skilled diplomat, this guy wanders into a bar, deliberately antagonises the locals, and starts fight which leads to someone's needless death. The guy who patronises a (supposedly) old friend and colleague when she destroys one more bit of her already ruined life. An insensitive sod who jerks around a woman who's just discovered her whole life is a lie (gets to apologise, to someone else, for that)

Irumodic Syndrome has really done a number on the poor sod.

[oy vey]

It's been a long time since I saw the TOS movies, but Kirk must surely have made a bigger arse of himself in one of them.

Nah, he was a bit of a twonk to Captain Nonce for 2 minutes in TMP, but otherwise he was boss. Even the first 15 minutes of Generations is more compelling than anything afterwards thanks to Kirk.

[Poobum]

Which is of course litigiously similar to the underlying plot from the Mass Effect games.

I thought I'd misunderstood that, for one, that would be stupid, it was stupid in Mass Effect; two, Raffi seemed to infer it from absolutely nothing but third hand knowledge of alien mindfuck machine. The writing is just so poor, with characters saying and knowing things that only make sense if they've read the script to the end.

I did miss the stupidity of Rios having met another Soji synth. The "oopsie in I a wrong un?" reaction of murderer doctor and everyone virtually shrugging it off was a bit odd. Maddox did seem to die in quite some agony.

[Cloud]

I actually didn't mind this one.  There were all sorts of things popping up in my Google Now feed along the lines of "Worst episode of Picard so  far!" and the reception here hasn't been brilliant but it seemed to me to answer a few lingering questions and bring a few things like Blondie's big murder to the surface (I don't care enough about her to remember her name, admittedly).  It was a bit hard to follow at times but that's my only criticism really and goes for a lot of modern Trek - in big contrast to The Orville which is comically easy to follow in comparison.

[Wonderful Butternut]

You know it occurs to me that since Maddox was in Starfleet and in a position to object to Data entering the Academy, he must be about 80 at the time Picard is set. No age is given for Jurati, but she's played by a 34 year old actress, and honestly comes across as younger than that. And they were fucking.

Someone likes her Grandad porn.

[JamesTC]

You know it occurs to me that since Maddox was in Starfleet and in a position to object to Data entering the Academy, he must be about 80 at the time Picard is set. No age is given for Jurati, but she's played by a 34 year old actress, and honestly comes across as younger than that. And they were fucking.

Someone likes her Grandad porn.

Also they were together in 2385 as he went on the run after the mars attack. Meaning it was 14 years before the events of Picard. So she would have been 20.

Maddox you dirty dog you.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Also they were together in 2385 as he went on the run after the mars attack. Meaning it was 14 years before the events of Picard. So she would have been 20.

Maddox you dirty dog you.

Now unless Jurati is meant to be older than Alison Pil, and has just spent her whole life in research labs hence why she seems so 'green'. That would also allow her to have had some sort of short career with synths before the ban. But her being anything over 40 is pushing my suspension of disbelief a bit. And I think the only human main character in Star Trek significantly older than the actor is Picard himself, who's consistently been around 15 years older than Stewart.

Now obviously I'm overthinking and it's likely it didn't occur to the writers how old Maddox must be, which is not entirely unreasonable [nb]Brian Brophy was 30 when he played Maddox in TNG. But Data entered the Academy in 2341, and Maddox was at that stage being consulted on Academy admissions. So he was hardly a fresh 21 year old graduate in 2341 himself. Add on 20+ years until the TNG episode, and Maddox realistically has to be at least in his mid-40s by "The Measure of a Man", likely older. Then add on about 35 years or so to Picard[/nb], but they couldn't possibly have had him pegged at less than his mid 60s.