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I like the things they're trying to do with this show, but holy poo poo we're at episode 4 and the story hasn't moved on from 'Picard needs to find the girl'.
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Feb 15, 2020 23:57
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FuturePastNow posted:Everyone doing the Kobayashi Maru knows it's a training sim. But by that point, they're 3-4 years into the Academy (and Saavik was a Lieutenant, so she was in like a post-graduate command class), the cadets feel smart as hell, and have done hundreds of such sims with scenarios they could always resolve and "win." So you throw someone in a sim they can't beat and see if they get angry, if they give up and leave the freighter to die, if they go out guns blazing, etc. And nothing is really the wrong answer so much as a direction for further training and study. Having worked with the military, I've realised that the real terror of the Kobayashi Maru is the cadets are being placed in a simulated command role that they might be expected to be ready for in twenty years, but their potential to reach that rank is being decided now.
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Feb 16, 2020 01:17
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:Picard had been in Starfleet for over 75 years at that point. He didn't know how to function without Starfleet. I think the last bit is backwards. He susses Rios out immediately as someone playing at Han Solo but is really just acting out because they are bitter at something Starfleet has done.
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Feb 16, 2020 12:17
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I liked the bit on the casino planet where they achieved that thing that was relevant to the rest of the story
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Feb 16, 2020 12:55
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just another posted:The Picard parts of the last episode felt very video game-y to me, like it's being written by people who learned about storytelling from playing World of Warcraft. I'm pretty sure I've played the "Absolute Candor" mission in many different games over the years. The show is currently a heist film, except where in Oceans 11 you have a montage with a 10 second cut introducing the crew members, here we get a full episode for each one.
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Feb 17, 2020 01:35
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Lizard Combatant posted:I'd say aesthetics are the smallest part of it. I like this post and while I agree totally with it I've never quite had the words before to articulate what I think the difference between sci-fi and fantasy is so I'll be stealing these words in future.
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Feb 17, 2020 09:10
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I think they've dropped enough info on the cast that theres potential for all of them, but the show hasn't even begun to dig into any of them yet. Everyone is clearly haunted by the trauma of the loss of someone they cared about (the pattern is so clear that you can tell this week we'll learn about chakotay's death). The story feels a bit like its moving at the pace of The Witcher - at the end of the season the only thing that will have been achieved is the cast being united.
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Feb 17, 2020 13:42
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I think it's more likely they bring back Soong than Lore. But Brent Spiner is only credited one episode so its be a hell of a move.
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Feb 18, 2020 13:29
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I regret we never got a mirror universe TNG episode.
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Feb 18, 2020 13:31
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RLM having 10 minutes on how Star Trek showed people can come out of the collective perfectly fine and traumatised only worked because they ignored that immediately after BoBW TNG had an episode that was just Picard crying and having PTSD on the family wineyard from his experience and 7 of 9's entire character arc was about trying to become a real person again.
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Feb 19, 2020 09:18
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I think I'll also say that I'm fine with Picard overtly or implicitly retconning past Star Trek. Firstly, inconsistent with past trek isnt necessarily a retcon, secondly every single series of trek has had a slightly different spin on things. The Borg have been different every time they show up. In this case, I think the reclaimed Borg in Picard might represent Westerners who went off to fight for ISIS in Syria and are now in detention camps there because nobody is quite sure if deradicalisation works. They used to be us, they're damaged, we want to bring them back but arent quite sure if it would be safe.
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Feb 19, 2020 14:09
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The moral of ST:Picard is not going to be 'actually you are right to be worried about the 5th column of people who live among us but you think could turn into terrorists at any moment'.
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Feb 20, 2020 20:51
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Snow Cone Capone posted:Our sun is ~8 light minutes from the Earth. The next 9 closest star systems are between 4-10 light years from us. A supernova's blast radius is in the range of 30-40 light years. A supernova's blast also travels at fractions of a the speed of light so you'd have centuries to get ready if you weren't on Romulus. If this were a real supernova. This is all trying to make sense of 'JJ Abrams doesn't understand how space works' though but also this is star trek so there's nothing wrong with saying this was a special supernova for reasons. The story requires us to accept that the Romulan Empire suffered a disaster damaging enough that it essentially caused total state collapse. The rest of the detail is irrelevant if it isn't important for the purposes of the story, which it isn't.
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Feb 20, 2020 23:49
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Senor Tron posted:
Still literally a decade. But it's a magic star trek supernova, they had some warning but not years of warning. It's something that's okay to accept given everything else Star Trek has us accept.
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Feb 21, 2020 00:30
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'Nobody wrote an episode about this' is not inconsistency. Maybe theres a story about how the federation has an advantage from being able to salvage and research two exploded cubes on Earth's doorstep and the Klingons and Romulans are upset about this, but nobody wrote that story and the star trek universe isnt a real thing that exists independently of the stories that have been written, so we'll never know.
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Feb 21, 2020 13:46
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I'm starting to get a bit of a Culture novel vibe from the series. A glacial plot, a couple of seemingly unconnected plotlines, a group of protagonists from a utopian society having to interact with their less than utopian neighbours. Feels a little bit Consider Phlebas, a little bit Hydrogen Sonata. Not as good, but I think I can see how you could take the initial script treatment and instead make it a culture story.
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Feb 21, 2020 18:51
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FlamingLiberal posted:It drove me crazy that they did this in the recent Star Wars trilogy and it’s just as annoying now No I think this is fine. The Romulan Empire suffered a massive disaster and is in collapse. The Federation suffered a disaster and turned inwards to deal with it. This isn't even actually new ground for Star Trek. The back story to ST:Picard is literally Star Trek 6, except this time the Admiral Cartwright faction in Starfleet wins. That's massively different to Star Wars's 'oh you thought the good guys won? We'll just drop you into a world where the Empire is still around and the most powerful force without ever really explaining that'. e: In fact actually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqGnAIgzUTY Star Trek 6 even establishes that something can blow up in space and because 'subspace' the shockwave can travel really fast and far. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Feb 21, 2020 |
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Feb 21, 2020 21:38
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I would not mind if in the penultimate episode where all is lost and Picard is about to give up hope, John De Lancie pops in for a quick scene. "I can't intervene in what's going on, but there's still hope" Just that.
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Feb 22, 2020 00:25
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Eiba posted:drat this thread moves fast. So many people are saying so many ridiculous things about this show that I want to address, but who's got the time? It's also important that Seven calls Picard out for deciding to step back and retire the moment he didn't have the option of massive institutional weight behind his justice. Absolute best moment in the episode was the dialogue between Picard and Seven on whether it's possible to fully regain your humanity. This season is a bit messy in themes, but recovery from trauma is the big one and that was a well written and very well acted moment.
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Feb 22, 2020 01:15
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I'll say it again, the premise of Picard is 'what if the exact events of The Undiscovered Country happened again, except Starfleet goes with the 'let them die'' option'. Trek is inconsistent on lots of things depending on what series/film you are looking at, but almost every time the issue has come up the Federation has actually always been depicted as two missed meals away from 'gently caress it, genocide is now acceptable policy'.
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Feb 23, 2020 00:52
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Drink-Mix Man posted:Well, for starters, I think they are ignoring movie-era Picard (as they should). In both instances he arguably deliberately sets in motion both events. He sets up the confrontation at the cafe, and then, aside from going "yeah take those two phaser rifles you've told you me you need for... reasons" and looking right at Seven as she visibly charges them up, he's operating the transporter controls as he beams her back into the room where Bjayzl is. It's weird because Stewart doesn't play either scene as if Picard is acknowledging responsibility for this violence, but the script absolutely makes it clear he has to know what he's complicit in.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:38
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Lizard Combatant posted:Wait... So you do actually think when someone talks about how a character is framed they're literally talking about how the camera operator/DP composed a shot? Either you are being trolled or you are accidentally bullying an autistic person, either way I think you should probably disengage.
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Feb 23, 2020 21:25
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Open Source Idiom posted:
It's worse because the whole premise of that plan turns out to be wrong. The Discovery Crew are loving morons.
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Feb 25, 2020 11:50
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Yeah the Klingon war was terrible despite having promise in the first two episodes ended up being the season B-plot. The only 'war story' that's left for Star Trek to tell is the one that Enterprise was inching towards by the end, which is this idea that the genesis of the Federation comes from Starfleet forming a coalition to punch the Romulans hard in the face. There's a story there that's difficult to tell while being relevant and maintaining Star Trek's optimism, but there's some kind of WW2-leading-to-UN allegory you could draw out being forced to work together builds trust and so on and so forth.
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Feb 26, 2020 15:56
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Snow Cone Capone posted:
Yeah I was a bit two ways on this, but ultimately I think the earnestness gives the show that 90's tv show Star Trek feel to it. I'm happy with a world in which McFalane is doing 'remember the optimism of the 90's?' and Stewart is also doing 'remember the optimism of the 90's' but in two very different ways.
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Feb 26, 2020 18:07
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Longbaugh01 posted:No comment on the Orville or Disco ones, but just off the top of my head: Battle Of Sector 001, Battle Of Endor, Retaking DS9, Falcon Asteroid Field Pursuit, at least a few from new BSG, some from Babylon 5 (with the tech/budget they had), I’m sure there are other obvious ones I’m blanking on. I'm going to pick out your first example to draw out 'what makes a good space battle?'. First Contact's space battle contains maybe 20 seconds of graphics of ships shooting at each other. It's good because the event is all about the effect the battle has on the characters. There's the excellent tension on the bridge of the Enterprise as they have to sit and listen to the battle start. Then we have a cut to the cube and it is clear that the battle is not going well. Worf is about to commit himself and his crew to a kamikaze attack. Picard asserts himself and we get some important exposition dump that his connection with the borg isn't psychosis, there's something lingering and real there. The cube blows up but even in successfully blowing it up we see some Federation ships get caught in the explosion The point is that in the first 5 minutes of the film we establish that the Borg are an appalling existential threat that our heroes the Federation is willing to accept casualties it wouldn't accept in any other context to stop. The battle sets up the mood for the rest of the film. The Orville battle sequence is just several minutes of laser beams.
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Feb 27, 2020 01:57
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Snow Cone Capone posted:Sometimes space battles are shooty lasers, it happens No it doesnt happens because none of these space battles are real, they are components of a story someone is trying to tell. If your space battle is minutes of shooty lasers then that means you are filling time because your story is crap and you are a bad storyteller. Another example; theres that one battlestar galactica episode that's entirely based around one dogfight between starbuck and the scarred raider, but the space action bit isnt good because its shooty lasers, it's good because it's also invoking Starbuck's inner struggle on whether she wants to live.
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Feb 27, 2020 11:53
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Panzeh posted:Battle damage is when everyone decides to sway a bit and Worf talks about what the percentage of shield it is. They way I've come to rationalise it is that impacts on shields cause bits of a ship's energy grid to burn out as it surges to stop weapons fire getting through. So shield integrity dropping is really the underlying machinery burning out through stress (which is why it doesn't just immediately recharge to full). A big enough hit causes fuses to blow all over the ship, which is why your bridge console explodes. Hull armour isn't a thing, but if the plot doesn't require you to explode then in Star Trek a forcefield that keeps air in is apparently trivial enough to do that you don't actually need much of a hull to do it (see that early Discovery episode where Burnham's room gets blown up). Obviously it's all just make believe, but I think it's actually pretty consistent that a direct hit to engines means suddenly exploding, whereas anything else is either superficial or disabling. That seems to be the writer's code.
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Feb 28, 2020 02:53
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After that episode I'm still pretty much on the 'the ex-borg are an analogy for the ex-ISIS detention camps in Syria'. There're full of people who used to be part of a totalitarian regime, the rest of the world wants nothing to do with them and certainly isn't interested in seriously rehabilitating them, and their prison guards are themselves internally displaced persons in a near-failed state.
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Feb 28, 2020 16:32
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Lovely Joe Stalin posted:I think a lot of people who consider themselves fans of Trek are managing to ignore that the Federation, and most of their neighbouring powers, were brought to their knees by the Dominion war. The problem is the show doesn't say any of that, which is a bit unforgivable given they spent three entire episodes on Earth not moving the plot forwards an inch. There was plenty of time to have one scene between Picard and some Starfleet contemporary who stayed in where they argue the decision out. Picard talks about moral obligation and the other guy says there were a dozen crises within the Federation and the fleet had still been shattered by the Dominion War and when Mars burned and there were no more ships coming there were tough choices to be made. It's a five minute scene at most. But it would have added conflict and nuance rather than make everyone who opposes Picard look like a dumb racist.
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Mar 1, 2020 02:12
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I'd buy that the producers want a show that anyone can start watching and doesn't rely on established knowledge of Star Trek continuity, except for each episode being absolutely crammed full of call backs to previous trek, to the extent of bringing back characters from decades ago that Picard never interacted with. They spent three episodes clicking their heels on Earth, a single scene that says 'twenty years ago the Dominion war almost cost us everything' and actually putting some colour on what's happened to the Federation would not have been a problem. e: and I don't mean do a full future-history info drop, the show just need to do more work to explain why android terrorists leads to gently caress-the-romulans. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Mar 1, 2020 |
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Mar 1, 2020 11:13
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socialsecurity posted:You uh aren't going to like this season then. You also, ironically, won't like the season if you like science.
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Mar 2, 2020 08:59
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I oh totally buy this part of Star Trek. I presume that a replicator meal is a really good version of a ready meal that tastes homemade. But it's going to be one very specific version of that recipe and it'll be identical every time. Sure there's Jambalaya in the database, but it won't be made the way Sisko's dad makes Jambalaya. Also maybe you like the experience of cooking, maybe you want the taste of cooking, maybe in a utopia of the future where nobody has to work someone wants to spend their time cooking good food for other people and other people want to eat out. e: the culture series uses this as a touchstone example as well. In a future where nobody has to work, some people, possibly even most people will choose to spend time doing something that makes other people happy.
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Mar 3, 2020 21:06
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Lizard Combatant posted:By contrast, the Mars workers aren't complaining about their pie not being quite how momma used to make or even getting coke zero instead of sugar, they're getting microwaved Hungry-Man Dinners #13B for some reason. No it's not a massive deal in isolation, but it could just as easily have been a scene where the small talk is about Chief What's-his-face adding his famous ragu to the menu or something. I'm more skeptical of this scene since all the characters in it are also framed as casually racist, blue collar schmoes, so maybe we're supposed to cheer (just a little) when the Android puts a mining laser through their necks. Yeah. The thing is, if the show just made the Dominion War a parallel to WW1 and had a couple of scenes to that effect in the opening episodes I'd be fine with it. Say that Starfleet lost 90% of the pre-war fleet, the professional core was hollowed out and a huge proportion of Federation citizenry who volunteered to fight because they're patriotic and the Fleet needed warm bodies are traumatised from having watched their friends get carved up by genetically engineered killing machines. The fleet is a shadow of what it once was, half the Federation core worlds have various Dominion-caused disasters that will take years to rebuild from, and nobody wants any more foreign adventures. There, I can buy into the premise of Picard now.
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Mar 4, 2020 00:19
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This show has a million threads in the background it isn't going to do any of the work to meaningfully pull together, Vulcan/Romulan secret unification is absolutely one of them.
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Mar 7, 2020 16:41
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I would consider it a good wink at the camera if O'Brian gets a cameo and he's literally the only character well adjusted and loving life.
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Mar 7, 2020 22:49
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The saddest thing being that Season 4 is where they start to get a bit more serious with the character arcs, and you can start to feel the narrative arc of what the show should always have been about, which is how Earth went from being the new kids on the block to the centrepiece of this 'Federal UN in space'.
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Mar 8, 2020 21:03
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Lizard Combatant posted:Yeah that's what I assumed they were going for. Except it's a wonky metaphor since there's no accompanying ethical debate. Its wonky because the real metaphor is androids are the Muslim ban, except that analogy would be incredibly racist if you thought about it too much. The hamfisted point is that if you shut out immigrants then you lose access to the benefits their brains can provide you. In Star Treks case literally.
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Mar 9, 2020 13:22
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This was the first episode where I really bought that Stewart was playing an old man Picard and not just himself.
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Mar 13, 2020 14:05
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Even though it's background filler that absolutely won't be followed up on, I like the idea that the secret breaks the minds of the Borg. It works that the collective would be unable to handle being confronted with knowledge that pursuing its biological/technological merging objective too far triggers a response from something so awfully powerful that resistance would be futile.
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Mar 13, 2020 16:51
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