Star Trek: Picard - Amazon Prime [** POSSIBLE SPOILERS **]

Flinty997

I think Patrick Stewart is a fantastic actor. But his character is not working for me in Picard.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119019007#Comment_119019007

And normally I'd be the same but when there's so much good TV out there, "not that good" is a crying shame for something that, on paper, could have been a knock out. Picard has 20+ producers and it shows; and while I was grateful just to have any Trek on TV for a time, there's a point where dissatisfaction should be expressed through taking my eyeballs away from Prime (and Paramount, by extension).

Patrick Stewart is a legend, and a top class human being. His friendship with Ian McKellen warms the cockles of my heart and when Stewart passes I'll be genuinely disconsolate. Same with Tom Baker, who is still working away age 88, if we're talking legends of Sci-Fi (though a somewhat more prickly individual than Genuine Nice Guy Stewart). But I don't believe this show is doing the legacy of this most famous(?) character any good, instead leaving a bit of an aftertaste.

It's the frustration of loving something, seeing where with just a few tweaks, we could have had a good 'un.

Greyjoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119018704#Comment_119018704

RLM are usually so cynical about stuff that it was always refreshing to hear Mike & Rich talk with affection for TNG. I was genuinely saddened to see Mike admit that his love for TNG had now been corrupted by his disappointment in Picard. This show is essentially a swan song for a beloved tv character so while I wouldn't share Mike's reaction (I'll be back for S3 to see the crew reunion if nothing else) I could absolutely understand how it has now cast TNG in a different light for him. It's definitely frustrating that perhaps if we'd gotten this series 10 years earlier (to let PStew have a more active role in the story) and a better set of writers it would have given Jean-luc the send off he deserved.

Evade

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119018815#Comment_119018815

You're lucky then. It's not that it's ruined more like sometimes when I throw on an episode of TNG I'm reminded that ST:Picard exists and is a massive disappointment.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119019902#Comment_119019902

It seems the only dropped their usual cynicism to talk with affection about something because they want to use that affection to tear something to shreds with bag loads of cynicism.

faceman

Well I’m definitely out. No season 3 for me. After episode 2 things took a nose dive each week and I found myself saying each episode “well at least next week’s episode can’t be this bad”. And it was.

The writing is gutter terrible. Stewart isn’t acting, he’s like Sean Connery at this stage.

LLMMLL

It's not that its just "not that good" in an age of good to great TV. It's just plain bad. There are many bad things about it but the ones that annoy me the most:

1. The writers seem to be focused on "wouldn't it be cool if..." Moments which are just silly and ridiculous. Like wouldn't it be cool if the new Borg soldiers had green laser sights on their guns without any reason for those sights to be green. That would be a minor niggle on its own but there's one every 10 minutes. Wouldn't it be cool if guinan summoned queue with a magic bottle? No. Wouldn't it be cool if Q slapped Picard? No. Wouldn't it be cool if this random watcher looked exactly like Picards romantic interest? No.
2. Everything has to be tied to a human emotion. And usually in the most trite, superficial way. The Borg queen is just a lonely old cat lady. It's my major gripe with discovery as well. The burn happened because a child was upset. We communicate with season 4 aliens through love. Etc.

The show is trash. But like someone said earlier I can just erase it from my mind. As far as I'm concerned it's just some bad fanfiction. Though they are doing their best to ruin the Borg for me.

AMKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119018455#Comment_119018455

In fairness though the ending of DS9 built up enough mental scars to allow them endure most bad episodes since then.

DS9 has one of the best endings of any Star Trek far better than what we got for Voyager and Enterprise and just as good as "All Good Things" for TNG.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119030403#Comment_119030403

Fire wraiths and religion didn't do it for me.

Evade

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119029212#Comment_119029212

Like wouldn't it be cool if the new Borg soldiers had green laser sights on their guns without any reason for those sights to be green

To be fair to the series those sights are either red or green so it's not much of a stretch.

TheValeyard

If episode 10 was episode 5 or 6. The season would have worked very well.

Evade

The bridge of whatever ship they're on in season three.

The wheeled chairs in the background seem out of place for the bridge (unless that's the observation lounge) and it's very shiny. Taken from here https://trekmovie.com/2022/05/08/star-trek-picard-showrunner-drops-clues-about-season-3-featured-ship-and-more/

Spear

I don't like it, it's far too much like a Vegas casino foyer.

fritzelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119034236#Comment_119034236

That can't be real? It looks horrendous - why would you have so many steps on a spaceship????

Evade

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119034274#Comment_119034274

A video clip of the set

https://twitter.com/TerryMatalas/status/1522948287904419840

fritzelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119034282#Comment_119034282

Someone's gonna break their neck, even the ramps to the side are pretty steep

CastorTroy

With the amount of times people get thrown about the place, that just looks completely unsafe.

flazio

"Game show set" was my first thought when I saw it.

pixelburp

Jesus and of course the comments under the Twitter video are so fawning. Are we watching the same show? Maybe I overestimate people and they are are just satisfied with this drek for "smart TV". Some vaguely poetical gobbledegook from Akiva Goldsman and gosh, so profound.

That set looks horrendous. Totally over-designed, utterly impractical and no deference to the world in which it exists. Maybe it'll look better when it's not overlit and the final lighting is in.

TheValeyard

So, ship shakes or rumble rumble, you fall down the steps and break your neck.

CastorTroy

I can't see Picard going up and down those steps too often

Nody

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119035700#Comment_119035700

They will do a musical episode with people tap dancing up and down; calling it now... Only reason I can see for all the gold and lights or someone went "What if we Trumpify a starship with all gold would that not be cool?".

everlast75

I am a long time fan of Star Trek and watched this season, hoping it would be better than the first.

It wasn't.

Good points - Guinan, Brent Spiner and of course, Q.

Bad points - Rafi suddenly being a maternal figure to Elnor, zero chemistry behind Rafi and 7 of 9's "thelma and louise" action storyline, action sequences in general were very poor, and wtf was the kiss between 7 and Rafi about? it looked terribly awkward before and afterwards and made absolutely zero sense.

Will i watch the third? Probably. But to me it beggars belief that something like Star Trek, with the wealth of material and budget can churn out what is in essence a mediocre drama.

Flinty997

For me it feels like the writers don't know much about star trek other than the very basics and are trying to write a drama show that they wished they got instead of this gig.

paulieeye

I tapped out half way through this season. Its just too bad to keep up. It was Jurati singing that put me over the edge. I lasted longer that Discovery, didnt start S2 with that.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119036424#Comment_119036424

Exactly this.

TheIrishGrover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119034274#Comment_119034274

That is incredibly ugly. Is the captain's chair in... Is that a passageway to the officer's conference room/Captain's Ready-room? It looks like there is a wall around it almost (Just the angle I suppose). That is hideous.

eadrom

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119037206#Comment_119037206

Oh, that's what that is back there! The conference room. On full stupid shining display right behind the captain's chair. I 'member the conference room!

I don't think the captain's char is in the passageway though. It's out in front.

pixelburp

It also doesn't feel very Starfleet; generally bridges are flat layouts with everyone at their station. Having the captain and number 1 raised about the rest feels a little too authoritarian.

TheValeyard

So here is your choice

1) death by exploding console

2) death by stairs.

Edit:

3) death by exploding console, sending you flying down stairs.

Rawr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119041773#Comment_119041773

Or 4) Death by crazy space magic :D

Rawr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119034236#Comment_119034236

Steps or no steps, but is anyone else getting kind of sick of the overly polished reflective surfaces we've been getting in Starfleet vessels ever since the JJ-Movies and now also in all of these Discovery-era shows? Almost always very polished dark surfaces with lit-up borders. Makes many of the starship interiors we've been seeing a bit of a visual mess. In Star Trek 2009 it was an interesting twist / novelty, but for regular shows it's getting a bit exhausting to watch.

Evade

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119049957#Comment_119049957

Bring back the beige

Rawr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119050532#Comment_119050532

At least bring back some matte surfaces. I think it might be a lot easier to show what is going on if the background isn't actively drawing attention away from the actors or the action in the foreground. That, and get photograpy directors who know their stuff & can pull off scenes without resorting to shaky-cam or flinging the camara around in crazy angles. (Picard wasn't too bad in this department tbh)

Stark

Came across this on Youtube recently, thought it was quite funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjfTReHjbiU

Evade

Leak of Picard season 3 uniforms

https://youtu.be/AosuU6y_FGE?t=18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119034274#Comment_119034274

Some poor Ensign is going to spend a helluva a lot of time beaming Picard in and out of that chair.

flazio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119050881#Comment_119050881

Ensign Molly O'Brien, or maybe the second child, what was his name?

Stark

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119050900#Comment_119050900

"Kirayoshi". (I had to look that up).

corkie

@AMKC

I am curious do was there ever a future Enterprise shown in it at all?

What letter are they on now and is it on You-Tube anywhere?

From here.

I will answer that here because more relevant to this thread, a future enterprise wasn't shown on discovery.

https://trekcentral.net/is-a-new-enterprise-on-the-horizon/

it’s time for some theories. It would not be a long shot for the new starship in Star Trek: Picard Season 3 to be the USS Enterprise. Additionally, what if this new ship is the USS Enterprise-F? A ship that is regarded among some Trekkies as the next Enterprise was brought to life via Star Trek: Online, the MMO video game.

Star Trek Online | USS Enterprise | NCC-1701-F

315,270 views 5 Feb 2019

fritzelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119052996#Comment_119052996

Too much like Voyager

pixelburp

Eww. Enterprise F looks like crap. Not a fan of many of these post Nemesis designs TBH; they all lack ... something. Coming from someone who loves the Miranda class more than any other design though, that mightn't amount to much 🤓 They kinda come across like someone trying to design a non copyright-infringing spaceship. Star Track!

Evade

The neck is too thick.

AMKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119053200#Comment_119053200

What neck? I just they the tail is too thin but that otherwise it is a nice ship. More like an evolution of the Enterprise-E Soverign class than Voyagers Intrepid class as someone else mentioned Voyager above.

Evade

That bit

corkie

NOTE: - The F is a 2011 fan design submitted in a competition!

The Enterprise-F is not the focus of Star Trek Online, and its Andorian Captain Va’Kel Shon is not a character that its customers can usually play as. It was introduced into the game in 2012 (although Shon had already featured) and its design was, in a brilliant piece of fan engagement, the result of a competition on StarTrek.com, won by fan Adam Ilhe, whose original winning design (above) and the renders made from it can still be seen here. It’s lovely, all swooshy and forward thrusting, influenced by, but also an improvement on the Enterprise-E

https://www.herocollector.com/en-gb/Article/star-trek-voyages-of-the-enterprise-f

The USS Enterprise-F | Star Trek Explained

431,682 views 3 Jan 2020

Rawr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119053137#Comment_119053137

It often felt that these later varients of the Enterprise were just attempts to rehash the wonderfully balanced design of the Enterprise E. The later designs all screamed of "What if I just take the Enterprise-E and add (insert bad idea here)".

I somewhat fear that the Enterprise F would probably go that route since the Copy / Paste fleet in Season 1 came out "all Sovereign Class" (As Cpt. Freeman would likely say). I hope not, since it does look like they can pull off some good designs. I really did like the new Stargazer. If I were them I would try to do something other than an overweight Sovereign Class clone and work on an Enterprise design with it's own character.

If they were smart about this (a BIG ask with Kurtzman in the room) they would put the work into designing a proper hero-ship like they used to do before. No more phoning it in with the Crossfield Class or whatever the hell La Serena was supposed to be, but a proper Enterprise that we can get to know. And then if they were smart (glaring at Kurtzman again), Picard Season 3 might be a really good setup for a new Enterprise F show.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119056003#Comment_119056003

Oh I take your point and there's always hope (even if it's the thing that kills you), but that photo of the stairs is proof enough - alongside the existing production design - that the creatives in control of design with nuTrek are a bunch of hack fools. At least the JJ Enterprise intentionally wanted something that looked like an Apple Store, the exterior like a hotrod spaceship. Both aspects you could see in the final products; what are these nuTrek supposed to resemble? LaGenerica in Picard is presumably riffing on the Rocinante but it's so badly done.

At least Strange New Worlds has the baseline of trying to riff on 60s Trek to keep itself focused - it'll be interesting to see what the "new" designs in that look like; ships or aliens that didn't exist from TOS. that'll be the telling part.

Rawr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119056124#Comment_119056124

There is that. Whatever talent they had back in the day for design has clearly not been replicated, and that teaser image does make my heart sink a bit.

I was thinking the other day how forward-thinking and clever the TNG era designers were. I'm wondering if they had somehow managed to predict the rise of simplifed Dark Themes on computer displays with their Okudagrams and LCARS layouts. Just like contemporary dark themes, they seem to be a lot easier on the eye and very easy to take in. Clearly the Okudas knew their stuff, even back then. It could of course be a fluke that their designs remind me of what came to pass, but my gut tells me that they were simply very good at their jobs and cared about readability & quality.

Lately we don't seem to have an Okuda couple involved in Trek. Instead we have a new batch of designers who seem to have very little grasp of good UX design and have a bizarre fixation on transparent light-up displays which just adds to the visual soup of current Trek shows. Gone are the days were we too would get a couple of seconds to see the LCARS display reporting on what was happening, and instead we get rotating shaky-cam while the cast breathlessly scream information dumps at us. Hopefully they can get their act together at some point.

Evade

I don't think the TNG era displays predicted dark mode. I think they were a continuation of the TMP displays which seemed to be based on the green text on black background displays of the 60s to 80s.

Another advantage of LCARS was being able to date the ship by the diplay. Multicoloured LCARS meant a relatively new ship, mostly greens and blues were at least 50 years old without a refit