Amph "Engage!" - Star Trek: Picard Discussion Thread [Paramount+/CraveTV]

Yeah, I feel like this is a situation like:


Blade Runner (formerly "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep")
Minority Report
Total Recall (formerly "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale")
The Man in the High Castle

All Dick works. He has a ton more but those are probably the biggest.

 

Yeah, but if you were to ask "what are regular themes and sequences in the work of Philip K Dick?" I wouldn't know.

Besides, isn't The Peripheral based on a Gibson novel?

 

Was it? Man, that's way worse... have you read Neuromancer? lol...

 

See prior post, I said loads of classic authors unread and I meant loads.

 

Which was a change mostly because of criticism the show received.
Yes it wasn't billed from the start as TNG sequel/reunion series, but I think that's what many fans wanted and they weren't interested in the new story that the creators tried to tell. So now they're going back to telling a story where Picard and his old crew are the focus, which so far has improved the show immensely IMO

Or at times even Star Trek

Though that's a problem with a lot of franchise properties now

 

Lighting seemed normal on my monitor, darker than TNG by a long shot, but not hard to see the action.

I'm still not loving this season, although it's still consistently better than 1&2. Some of the Picard & Riker stuff didn't feel right to me. I know they're a lot older and have grown in different ways, but I felt like some of their interactions shifted too far and too fundamentally from who they had once been.

 

I really liked this episode. Shaw remains the stealth MVP so far. As we said "I love to hate him"...

Spoiler

And he once again proves why he's actually a good Captain -- he hates everything going on around him, and things being not Just So, but give him an actual problem with his ship (i.e. a Changeling, warp nacelle repair, etc.) and he's immediately switching gears to fix it.

It took a surprisingly long time to get to the "if it's bioelectric energy and it's consistent, we can tap into it to repower ourselves" though. Also, you'd think if they needed every spare ounce of power, the separate power core used for the Holodeck would be cannibalized, especially for life support, if they knew they were going to die if the plan didn't work.

And, of course, Riker throws an asteroid.

 

Picard season 3 has been a hit for me. They have done justice to the next generation crew if you ask me.

 

Yeah but Discovery had too many whiners, annoying characters & weird plots.
I'm really not a fan of Trek having a single season story, the episodic format has always worked better and that's why Lower Decks is so good.

This episode of Picard was much better, I feel like it should have been released at the same time as last week's because it works well as a two-parter

 

For those of you who didn't get enough Worf this week, Wil Wheaton's ready room has a clip from next week's episode that features Worf prominently, and he's going to interview Michael Dorn next week. I'm looking forward to that.

 

Easily the best episode so far. Not without the weaknesses of the series - its tone being leaden and dour - but the level of total arse was lower, especially its finale.

Spoiler

Shaw and Seven starting to sort out their relationship was good. Neat changeling transfornation effects. A smart asteroid navigation bit. Oh and Riker royally ****ing the Shrike over with an asteroid. Pity they neglected to show Vadic's warp core assisted immolation.

If it can stay with its second half / finale tone for the rest of the series, then it could be seriously good. I might even end up liking the dip**** from Chicago.

 

Again though...

Spoiler

Shaw immediately respected Seven for a) immediately shooting the Changeling with no hesitation when she got the wrong answer, and b) getting the wrong answer because she was familiar with her crew, which is exactly an XO's job. He may not like her, and even hate that she was a former Borg, but he's a good Captain.

 

Hhn....You miss the bit where I said I liked that section?

 

No, just making you like the dip**** faster...

 

Not going to work, Captain Dip**** has to deliver in future episodes.

And that name is definitely going to stick.

 

People know well enough by now that anyone who is assimilated is not in control of themselves. Why continue to use Wolf 359 as a stick to beat Picard with? That wasn't him.
If people can accept Seven for who she is now without any problems, despite the fact she used to be a Borg, the same should be true for Picard.

Holding grudges is so 21st Century

 

I can't believe I wasted time doing this, but to actually see how bad things are I went through first episode of this season and counted the swears.

Combined there 14, with the majority being swears that are fairly tame and common in Star Trek and not anything the characters that say them hav'nt said before, and the two worst ones being almost exclusively uttered by Shaw and Raffi.

There's no issue here, people.

Those francise that refuse to evolve die; Star Trek would not exist today if it was made with the mentality of "it should remain as it was"

As for things fitting established characters, A) I would argue the swears do (at least largly) and B) I would ask how you even know when swearing more often/explicitly is OOC vs when it was in-character but was'nt able to manifest becuase of the tv restrictions of yore?

Picard's not saying a made up swear, though, he's saying a real one; French or not, the word is a geniune cuss, not made up gibberish from Farscape.

Additonally more then just Americans watch Star Trek, and not understand a word does'nt make it any less vulger.

I would actually agree with your take on s1/2, but the whole narrative of "TCW is for kids, lol" has always bothered me.

Okay, I tried to ask this before, but you guys just sidestepped the questions.

• A) why do you think the synths being used by the Federation in the flashback not having rights is an issue? Perhaps I'm wrong here, but they clearly were not sentient.
• B) why do you keep leaving out that same Voyager episode your using as an example to argue that Picard is breaking some sort of established lore with how it treats said apparently non-sentient synths stright-up ended by showing us the Federation uses explicitly sentient synths as a a labor force.

Seriusly, this is really bugging me. I don't want to sound rude but the argument seems very dishonest here.

Your *really* overestimating how irrational truama can make a person and how willing someone suffering from it (and grief) can be to externalize it on to anouther person who may not necesserly deserve the blame.

But Shaw does'nt accept Seven.

 

****ing hell K2, we had the ****ing swearing discussion done, then you open the box dip****.

Since it has been re-opened, however, there's a separate point to how well it flows. In the Discovery ep with Stamets and Tilly, it did. With "dip**** from Chicago" it did. "10 ****ing grueling hours" it felt more forced. Do it properly, get a swearmaster in and get it right so it always flows well.

The synths stuff I'll leave to those who actually remember the details. Still think a more full on set of AI changes would have been an aid to s1's main story.

 

Franchises evolving is not a problem, franchises changing to the extent the only thing recognisable from the past is the name is where the problems start to arise.
It's possible to do a new story for a new audience and still capture the essence of what made the original so beloved by fans. The Mandalorian is great at that, it has the rusty old school Star Wars space western feel that ANH had and you feel as though it takes place in the same timeline.
Other shows have not grasped this well, like Book of Boba Fett where they got the tone wrong (shiny coruscant biker gang looks completely out of place on dusty Tattooine).

Too much of new era Trek feels like it belongs in the Ambrams timeline, yet we're told it is supposed to be a companion to TOS.
Some would say (and have said regularly on social media) that the Picard we see now is like Sequel Trilogy Luke Skywalker, someone so different to the person we saw previously that they're no longer the same character.