Was TNG (or most of Star Trek in general) really "about" exploration? A lot of the series involved diplomatic or hostile disputes with cultures that already had established relations with the federation.
Sometimes I feel like marketing or light sanitized retrospectives can distort the actual content of what's being referenced.
Exploration was largely something that took place when the intent and focus was on something else. The amount of time really spent on pure exploration is pretty low in the end. There are episodes dedicated to it in Next Gen and TOS but rarely has it been the primary or overwhelming focus of Star Trek. The mandate that gets spoken has very often differed from what actually takes place in Star Trek.
I know this will fall on deaf ears but we don't have to bash Discovery simply to praise Picard. You can like both. You can like one or the other but it doesn't have to be at the expense of the other show just to do so. Just something to think about going forward so this thread at least doesn't become an unwelcome place the way so many OT and EtceEra threads end up becoming.
agree so much with this. It's possible to like this, discovery, and Orville. And (gasp) elements of JJ verse trek. I just love Trek . Well, maybe not the TNG movies...
agree so much with this. It's possible to like this, discovery, and Orville. And (gasp) elements of JJ verse trek. I just love Trek . Well, maybe not the TNG movies...
Hey First Contact was a great action movie atleast, the rest... yeah... :P It's funny since I grew up with TNG I could never get into TOS since it was "too old-fashioned" for me but I absolute like the Kirk-Era movies.
I did read the OP but was confused by the wording. I was under the impression that those US/Canada times were only the premieres and that it would be available everywhere else 24h after, kind of like timed exclusivity on CBS
I had kinda higher expectations in the first place since I figured the script/concept would have to be good to get Patrick Stewart to sign on. It ended up blowing my expectations away!
I did read the OP but was confused by the wording. I was under the impression that those US/Canada times were only the premieres and that it would be available everywhere else 24h after, kind of like timed exclusivity on CBS
Goldsman encourages fans to stay tuned to get the whole story: "For us, the first three episodes are the pilot… By the end of Episode 1, you've met maybe two-thirds of the cast. We're starting these relationships, and over the next couple of episodes, they will at least solidify in the earliest form… So the first three episodes of our ten are really the first act."
I very much enjoy how thoughtful and deliberate this episode was. It really savored setting the stage with Picard himself. At first it was hard to see Picard instead of Patrick Stewart. I've seen Patrick age to his current appearance, I haven't seen Jean Luc do it. But slowly over time I see Picard more and more.
It just felt so soothing and homey and I've been looking forward to...looking forward (beyond nemesis/09)....for a long time. And it's a very intriguing premise so far. Data is my favorite Star Trek character so I can't complain about the plot basically revolving around him. And it's cool how crucial the supernova from 09 is to the state of the galaxy in the prime universe.
They pulled off Dream Data pretty well. They fixed his hairline compared to earlier teasers, which was the biggest problem. Weird that his hair is CG at all when wigs and hairpieces exist but I don't know their reasoning. If you pay attention you can actually see his hairline subtly shifting between shots. He looked best when painting outside. I do hope they have more of him for us down the road, I'll take any I can get.
There was just one moment where it got too chunky for me. Lady dies in the same episode she's introduced, picard knocked out, he wakes up on another continent, lady's twin sister is introduced to take her place in the narrative. Gave me some major narrative whiplash there and it kinda sucks to open the show developing this new character and this discarding her so hastily.
It also felt a little clumsy to be like "yeah btw all of data could be restored from a single positronic neuron plus for some reason androids need to be made in pairs." Okaaaay. That's a lot to expect me to just swallow no questions asked. I'm rolling with it but that's a big chunk to scarf down.
I didn't say we agree with that logic. People do stupid stuff all the time but they have their stupid reasons. It's the same with Star Fleet, they do not do things at random. They always had their reasons aka motives. Those reasons being flawed or not is a different discussion. They often enough are.
I'm talking about stupidity that is at times deeper than just "they have flawed reasons".
I don't want to build an exhaustive list but here's two very quick examples:
1. In Star Trek Generations, the reason that the Enterprise-B (on its maiden voyage) answers the distress call is that there's no other ships around. The distress call is coming from a ship 3 light years from Earth. Any Federation starship would be better positioned to answer that call, so if there's nobody else in range, then there's no other ships within the Sol system or within a few light years of it. There's no possible explanation for that which doesn't boil down to "Starfleet are stupid".
2. Starfleet joins the position of tactical officer with the position of security officer. That means that the person in charge of defending the ship from external attack is also the person in charge of internal security within the ship (Worf, Tuvok). This is a division of focus that makes no sense and there have been several occasions where a chief of security's attention has been divided by these separate functions. It's believable that Starfleet merged these positions as some kind of weird misguided trial. It's stupid for them to have stuck with that decision.
Sorry, a clarification about this, the first example is from Voyager, the second is from DS9.
I could provide more examples that show that the Prime Directive is applicable to more than just pre-warp civs, but as I say, it's not really related to my argument, so I'm just making the point that, canonically, it's been cited as a restriction on interfering with warp-capable civs.
Maybe it is a different time now? Maybe the society in ST is supposed to be closer to our own time? It sure as hell tried to be better in TNG, DS9 and Voyager. We can throw examples of the federation being utopic and flawed for ages. In the end I think 900 million lives is not something the Federation would just ignore. Let's also not forget that the Federation is not just mankind, but also the vulcans, andorians (though they certainly don't like romulans) and many other species. I think the show runners needed an easy to understand reason why Picard left Star Fleet and I think you put more thought behind it than they did.
I agree the show needs to spend more time justifying this. What we have now is a few sentences of explanation. However, there's 9 episodes left, so there's time to do that, and the explanation we have is, for now, within believable boundaries.
I really hope that I haven't put more thought into this than the writers but if I have then that's a problem. For now I'm happy to see where they're going with this.
I hope not. Janeway's extended vacation from the Alpha quadrant was because she didn't like the idea of leaving the Caretaker Array in the hands of the Kazon who would use it to wipe out the Ocampa. That might not have had the most solid narrative justification, but in the end, she placed the lives of the Ocampa over the safety and convenience of her crew. Janeway's far from my favourite captain but she deserves better than to be villainised.
I like the whole approach, but something's not right...
Is it me, or has the trek universe shrunk? Since when does the vast Romulan Empire need someone to come to its rescue? We're not talking about ten planets... and since when is Romulus only home to 900 million people?!
The population of Romulus was given as 18 billion at one point (though not on-screen so that might not be reliable).
I suspect it was at least in the multiple billions, and also that there was never going to be any chance of rescuing the entire population - that 900 million was the most the Federation could hope to evacuate. Even that amount would be right up there with their most impressive feats - 900 million people on starships is the carrying capacity equivalent of 60,000 Galaxy-class starships.
I assume the Romulans were evacuating as many people as they could using every single hull that had a non-zero chance of getting people away from the supernova. They just wouldn't have been able to do that for the whole planet.
Picard is established as having been born 2305 from TNG proper, so by 2399 he is 94. The character has always been older than Stewart was, though exactly how much was only really firmly decided later on, I would say. So yes, when we first meet him in Encounter at Farpoint? He is meant to be just shy of 60 (Encounter at Farpoint taking place 2364).
That doesn't address that person's complaint of thinking what was listed only applied to where it premiered. You should just make it:
US - Thursdays, starting on Jan. 23 at 12:01 AM PT only on CBS All Access
Canada - Thursdays, starting on Jan. 23 only on CTV Scifi Channel, streaming only on Crave on Thursdays
Everywhere else outside of the US/Canada- Fridays, starting on Jan. 24 only on Amazon Prime Video
That doesn't address that person's complaint of thinking what was listed only applied to where it premiered. You should just make it:
US - Thursdays, starting on Jan. 23 at 12:01 AM PT only on CBS All Access
Canada - Thursdays, starting on Jan. 23 only on CTV Scifi Channel, streaming only on Crave on Thursdays
Everywhere else outside of the US/Canada- Fridays, starting on Jan. 24 only on Amazon Prime Video
Just came in to say that I really enjoyed the first episode. Big Star Trek fan here who basically falls asleep with it every night. This felt like meeting an old friend again after many years. This is Star Trek, yet different, and so it feels so good!
I enjoyed that more than I was expecting after some of the late info coming out.
Definitely off to a better start than Discovery, though that's hardly a high bar to beat Trek-wise, it's like saying Wrath of Khan is better than Insurrection.
The one thing that did confuse me though was the attack on Mars by a bunch of Androids/"Synthetics", like that just seems to have come out of nowhere? I assume there's a little bit more info in the Short Trek (that nowhere but the US has gotten because reasons) but it seems like there's a lot more backstory needed there than what you can fit into a short Trek timeslot.
All we got was "Oh yeah they were built by the Daystrom Institute on Earth", then nothing on why they suddenly decided to go rogue, how they were able to take down the entire Mars defence grid with nobody knowing or where they got the ships capable of not only destroying the Utopia Planitia Shipyards but basically rendering the entirety of Mars uninhabitable and basically setting the entire planet on fire.
My initial thought had been that it may have been Holograms. We already saw some groundwork for Holograms starting to push for rights and independence in Voyager and I could easily see that being something that started to gain traction as Holograms became more and more advanced (There was even a Voyager novel set after their return to Earth where Holographic rights was one of the sub-plots). But then we saw a Hologram, seemingly as alert and aware as an EMH, in the Starfleet Archives so it seems the ban on Synthetic Life Forms only extended to those with a permanent physical body such as Androids and not Holographic life forms?
That doesn't address that person's complaint of thinking what was listed only applied to where it premiered. You should just make it:
US - Thursdays, starting on Jan. 23 at 12:01 AM PT only on CBS All Access
Canada - Thursdays, starting on Jan. 23 only on CTV Scifi Channel, streaming only on Crave on Thursdays
Everywhere else outside of the US/Canada- Fridays, starting on Jan. 24 only on Amazon Prime Video
Picard was born in 2305 and the show takes place in 2399.
I like the whole approach, but something's not right...
[SPOIER]Is it me, or has the trek universe shrunk? Since when does the vast Romulan Empire need someone to come to its rescue? We're not talking about ten planets... and since when is Romulus only home to 900 million people?! The same goes for the Federation: the war against the Xindi killed seven million people, now we're talking about 90,000, and the Federation is giving up... WTF?[/SPOILER]
It's a bug bear of nearly all sci-fi for me that planetary populations are often in the millions instead of billions. Yes, colony worlds don't need to be that densely packed but even alien homeworlds are often given as sub 1 billion.
It's a bug bear of nearly all sci-fi for me that planetary populations are often in the millions instead of billions. Yes, colony worlds don't need to be that densely packed but even alien homeworlds are often given as sub 1 billion.
It's a badly designed plot point. If the show runners want to show a flawed, corrupt Star Fleet. Do it, but put some work behind it. Make it understandable and do not pull it out of nowhere because we live in a world where people devolve and start to believe that the world is flat.
Take care of the source material and do not simplify it even more. It wasn't very complex to begin with.
Don't pay much attention to IMDB ratings. It takes one click for anyone to rate something they haven't seen. I just gave episode 3 a 10 and I ain't seen shit.
Don't put any stock in IMDB ratings. IMDB is full of people who give shit 1 star ratings if they're offended by seeing a woman or person of color on the screen even in Star Trek.
There should be a listing of the various Southern California Landmarks that have stood in as Starfleet Headquarters. JJ Trek liked using the Getty Institute.
Fun Fact for those interested: In the Picard Countdown comic, the ship the Admiral is commanding during the Romulan crisis seems to be an Odyssey class called the USS Verity. His first officer on that ship, Raffi Musiker, seems to be a character that will be playing a role in this upcoming season.
The Odyssey class originated from Star Trek Online, where it was also the class utilized for the Enterprise F.
(Though of course STO is very questionably canonical in the first place and even these direct tie-in comics are only canon until they're not, as was the case with 09's countdown.)
I'm really glad they did not do the whole "your main protagonist is old now so that means he's a broken shell of the person he used to be and is depressed or even borderline insane all the time" thing.
Yes, and it's that event that caused the creation of the Abrams timeline to begin with. Spock was thrown back in time while trying to stop the supernova with science magic.
The movies were fun on their own and I was ok with the 'alternate timeline' (they really fucked up the Star Trek timeline), but it's not just an alternate timeline any longer. Now it affected the Prime timeline, which really irritates me.
