Re: Star Trek: Discovery

[KMR]

Aw man, I was really hoping Picard would be good! What was so bad about it? Same kind of thing as the earlier Discovery, or new kinds of bad?

A bit of both, honestly.

Over-emphasis on action and fighting. Has that darker, grittier tone. Has too many contrived and convoluted plot-lines it tries to juggle. Incorporates elements of Trek lore in a way that feels like pandering. Picard himself doesn't really feel like the same character at times, and also seems to take a bit of a backseat in favor of new characters in his own show for some reason. The Federation seems to have turned its back on some of its core ideals for the sake of setting up various conflicts the show wants to have. And just overall not very well-written, in my opinion.

[Enail]

Oh, boo, that sounds exactly everything I didn't want it to be

[bomaye]

Just finished Episode 1 of Picard.

I'm offended as fuck tbh. Who's this sad old man in this sad old timeline with this sad old Starfleet where we pretend that JJ Abrams' Star Wars dress rehearsal is canon and actually happe- oh hey, that looks like a Borg Cube

On to Episode 2.

[bomaye]

"And the replicator will ding like it was a microwave xD xD xD xD"

Nope, I'm not watching any more of this today

[bomaye]

Actually I just needed to eat lunch, back on it

[bomaye]

Picard E2

Spoiler:

[Enail]

The thing that makes me mad about it is that I actually did hope this one might be decent in spite of myself, I guess I thought Patrick Stewart being on board was a good sign.

[bomaye]

I flipped my shit watching the third episode of Picard because they're talking about money as if it's a real thing and I'm like EARTH DOESN'T USE MONEY. I shut my brain off to watch this and I can't stupid myself down enough to let things like that slide.

I hate everything new and wish they would stop injecting young people shit into it. Picard turned me into a Boomer

[KMR]

Yeah... welcome to the rage-inducing experience that is Star Trek: Picard. I got five episodes in before I quit, and that was pushing it.

The only thing that was kind of keeping me going was that I was watching Red Letter Media's reviews of the show as I was following it and their ranting was amusing and cathartic. Then I realized that I didn't actually need to keep subjecting myself to the show and decided to just watch their reviews and get a more filtered view of just how dumb the rest of this season got.

[Enail]

[bomaye]

Picard S1E4

The space battle CGI is spectacular. I'm always going to miss the practical effects models but god damn, Discovery had incredible space-battle CGI and it's made its way into Picard too.

Spoiler:

[bomaye]

Picard E5

Torture porn doesn't belong in Star Trek, thanks.

Spoiler:

Something about the setting I'm really missing here and I don't remember if it was mentioned earlier (Serious, not babby-whining that this isn't muh Trek)

Spoiler:

[bomaye]

I'm on Episode 6 and Jean-Luc just gave rapturous applause to a strung-out former officer who just burned a long-time friendship to get them diplomatic credentials for 24 hours. Like this woman is fucking up her life and he's all "HELL YEAH, YOU HELPED MY MISSION OUT"

I know Picard was considered a little uptight and arrogant in the TNG days, but this self-absorbed dude is not Jean-Luc Picard. The only time he ever gets effing weird is about children and The Borg.

[bomaye]

Took me about Partway through Episode 7 into Episode 8 to be properly stockholm syndrome'd into the fanfiction handling of the setting the overall storyline

Spoiler:

[Enail]

They're making another Star Trek show?! They need to chill before they run Star Trek into the ground for the next 50 years. And it's a Pike-based prequel with Spock, so it's almost guaranteed to be fan-pandering and fucking up old details and cameos all the way.

[bomaye]

Paramount, please stahp. Please.

[bomaye]

Finished Picard

I saw someone else on the internet say some of this, but it's like if you took the worst sensibilities of Voyager and Nemesis, used the JJ Abrams Star Wars dress rehearsal Star Trek as a base, sprinkled in the goofier elements and tip-top-notch CGI of Discovery (holy SHIT, some of that Episode 10 CGI), and then you don't actually like TNG but they made you use the TNG stuff so you went "UGH, fine" and out popped Star Trek: Picard.

If you excised all the TNG elements, then it's dumb but it's fine in the same way Discovery is dumb but it's fine. They're trying to pull Millennial dorks back in and dangle something Zoomers might get into, but you can't mix Boomer, Gen X, Millennial and Zoomer all together and then shit on the Boomer elements of it (we can forget about Gen X because everyone does anyways )

So my final rating on a 10 scale is a Watch-The-Expanse-Instead/10

[Enail]

Wouldn't Boomer be TOS, though? TNG seems like Gen X.

[bomaye]

Small kids or teenagers at most when TOS came out, adults and young adults when TNG came out.

[Enail]

Isn't the range of Baby Boomers end of WWII - ~1965? The early ones could have been in their 20s by TOS, 60s by TNG, so Boomers as a whole would be leaning hard on the older end of adult for TNG. And the early Gen X would have been in their late 20s by TNG. So TNG seems like it'd have more of an effect on Gen X culturally, not that 60-yr-olds don't watch Star Trek, but it's hard to see them as the main audience.  And if Boomers get TNG, then Silent Generation would have to get TOS, and there aren't even too many of them left anymore, so I'm gonna argue in favour of Gen X getting TNG (and that way as a borderline Gen X/Millenial I can get both TNG AND DS9 )

[bomaye]

So you're saying it was the young, hip Generation X crowd who were watching Star Trek TNG in prime time and not the starting-to-creak 35+ crowd who just got home from work and are flipping channels to see what's on?

[Enail]

Most people I knew who watched it were pretty solidly Gen X (moreso than me, I mean). But  then, that might be because I was a kid/teenager and most people I knew were too  I went to a big event for the TNG finale at the Skydome, and the people there seemed to be largely in their 20s, maybe 30s, for what that's worth, though visible fandom participation is a different thing from viewership, so it's probably not worth much.

Also, now that I think about it for TOS, the fandom was heavily based in housewives, which I assume would mean some older Boomers but more Silent Gen, so maybe Boomers do steal TNG from Gen X and Gen X can just be forgotten and cynical about it.

[bomaye]

I'm too busy imagining radical young teenagers in the late '80s and early '90s with ripped jeans at the roller rink looking at their watches and going "Gee whillickers, gang, Star Trek is almost on, we gotta jet!" and then busting it home because all the cool kids with their boom boxes are gonna be talking about Worf and Data tomorrow at the jungle gym

[Enail]

Oh my god stop being so young

[KMR]

Most of the people I know who are TNG fans are now in their 30s and 40s, so I'm gonna go with Enail on this one. Of course, that could just be a function of "most of the people I know are in my general age range" and not necessarily indicative of a representative sample.

Out of curiosity, bomaye, did you grow up watching TNG and other Trek series as a kid/teen, or did you get into it later in life?

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