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Re: Star Trek

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 11:20 pm
by Sparky Prime
Shockwave wrote:Does the Vulcan in that case just see a bunch of 1s and 0s?
There was no Vulcan involved with it... It was an android and a human.

Re: Star Trek

Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2020 6:10 am
by andersonh1
I do like that they've found a way to involve Brent Spiner again, and once again he's playing
Spoiler
a Dr. Soong
. I haven't seen much of the show so far other than the first full episode and clips from the others, but at some point I'll either get the free trial and watch all ten episodes, or else I'll just wait for blu-ray or DVD release. But I have been keeping up with the story and developments. I've been disappointed that Data's only been in the first episode, given how much I enjoy Spiner's performance, so seeing him turn up again makes up for some of that.

Re: Star Trek

Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2020 10:54 am
by Sparky Prime
I have a theory....

Spoiler
I think Altan Inigo Soong is actually Lore.

They still haven't established how they were able to get a "single positronic neuron" from Data to "clone", which would be virtually impossible to even find after he got blown up in Nemesis. And B-4 was established to have suffered a neural network failure. Yet they haven't said anything about Lore as far as I'm aware, and he's the only known intact Soong-type android. And the clips I've seen of this Altan Soong... He seems to resent Data, telling Picard that Noonian Soong had him, he went on to make Data, which is how Lore felt about Data. And as I mentioned before, TNG established Noonian and Juliana never had children of their own, they considered the androids their children.

Re: Star Trek

Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2020 12:53 pm
by andersonh1
That's certainly plausible.

Re: Star Trek

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 4:50 pm
by Shockwave
They've also established that Data (and presumably Lore as well) are capable of altering their appearance to make it look like they age.

Re: Star Trek

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2020 1:35 pm
by Sparky Prime
So the Picard finale is... a thing.

Spoiler
Picard confronts the Romulan fleet along with the giant flower planetary defenses, stalling for time until Starfleet arrives, under the leadership of Captain Riker. Honestly, best scene of the whole series. But I with the fleet of Starfleet ships looked better... It's a fairly generic looking design, that they just reuse the same model for the entire fleet. There is a slight difference with some of their nacelles to add a little variety, but honestly, it just feels a little rushed and lazy.

Picard dies. But predictably, they scan his brain and download him into the "golem" body A.I. Soong had created for himself. As far as I've heard, nothing else is revealed about Soong, which is disappointing.

Seven of Nine and Raffi apparently are a couple now. Which... I'm not sure the two ever interacted with each other before, so where did this come from?

Re: Star Trek

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 7:25 am
by andersonh1
Since when did Seven go to bat for the other team? All her love interests in Voyager were men. There was the guy from Unimatrix Zero and at the end of the series, Chakotay. Did I miss something? She even propositioned Harry Kim in one episode, asking him in her unique Seven of Nine manner "do you want to copulate?" I guess things changed in the 20 years since Voyager got home from the Delta Quadrant.

Re: Star Trek

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 10:33 am
by Sparky Prime
andersonh1 wrote:Since when did Seven go to bat for the other team? All her love interests in Voyager were men. There was the guy from Unimatrix Zero and at the end of the series, Chakotay. Did I miss something? She even propositioned Harry Kim in one episode, asking him in her unique Seven of Nine manner "do you want to copulate?" I guess things changed in the 20 years since Voyager got home from the Delta Quadrant.
Yeah. I really don't get what the writers were thinking on this. And according to Michael Chabon, she apparently also had a relationship with Bjayzl... You know, that woman that killed former Borg drones for their implants to sell on the black market, like Icheb. The same woman that Seven killed in this series for what she did to Icheb.

Re: Star Trek

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 4:37 pm
by andersonh1
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/202 ... plnews_d-1
Yet the idea that the grittiness of shows such as Picard makes it mature and relevant, while the ethos of yesteryear Star Trek is now naive or too old-fashioned to survive, feels misjudged. The hope, optimism and sincerity of the original 60s series was in itself a radical act: a way of portraying the future as it should be (a multiracial cast in a time of civil rights struggle; peace and cooperation in a time of nuclear terror), rather than merely wallowing in things as they were.

In the 90s, the darker spin-off show Deep Space Nine pre-empted Picard’s themes by 27 years, asking what happens when the principles of the Federation are compromised by war. The difference was that Deep Space Nine, much like the best of Star Trek, managed to balance its meatier themes of PTSD, faith and wartime atrocities with episodes where everyone got dressed up to visit a holographic version of 60s Las Vegas.

It is this, more than anything else, that is fundamentally lacking from modern Star Trek: a sense of tonal texture, a spirit of curiosity about different worlds and cultures, and the crackling chemistry of a warm and interesting crew. Instead, as is the case with Picard, its new characters have felt like broadly drawn “badasses” at best and, at worst, downright cold and unlikable. The prime example being Michelle Hurd’s new addition Raffi: the wise-cracking ex-Starfleet officer who insists on calling Picard “JL” (instead of Jean-Luc), and can often be seen vaping.

The limited length of the series, which – like so much streaming TV – plays out almost as one 10-hour story, is also a factor. The benefit of 20-odd-episode seasons in which a crew of characters is faced with a different problem every week lies not only in the soap opera-style comfort of coming to think of a crew as family, but also in the potential to experiment with a variety of different stories and themes. The focus of Picard and Discovery tends to be so narrow that the universe ends up feeling smaller, less alive and less interesting.

Re: Star Trek

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2020 3:15 pm
by andersonh1
Since CBS is giving a month of free access, I signed up so I could watch Picard, and my wife will likely catch up on NCIS while we've got access. I watched the first four episodes and there's honestly a lot to like about them, while there are things I dislike as well. Overall, four episodes in, I'd say it's more positive than negative, though one of the problems with arc based television rather than episodic is that a whole season rises or falls together. On TNG, if an episode was bad, you always know you'll get something entirely different the next time. On a show like Picard, it's all tied together, and to some extent all rises or falls together.
- I liked Picard seeing his old doctor from the Stargazer, and the recurrence of what is presumably the Irromodic syndrome from TNG's last episode.
- I have to give the writers credit: they know 90s Trek well, with a lot of references to the various shows that usually fit nicely into the story.
- I wish they would clean up the language and tone down the violence. My kids would have enjoyed seeing Seven of Nine again, but there's no way they can watch most of this show. It wouldn't take that much to have made it more family friendly. A lot of it is reasonable story and action for Star Trek.
- I don't think we've ever seen the Romulans used this extensively in Trek, and I like that we get good and bad, friendly and unfriendly. Even the return of the "Jolantru" greeting from "Unification." Along the same lines I really like the Romulan housekeepers/bodyguards that live with Picard. Great, down to earth characters.
- It is different to spend so much time in the Trek universe not in the company of Starfleet, though we see them in the series. A "civilian Star Trek show" is something different, certainly. Seeing Picard operate without the support and authority that his rank and position in Starfleet gave him casts him in a different light, and not always a very flattering one.
- Data rarely shows up in person, but in some ways the whole show is as much about him as Picard.
- I do find it sad that Picard seemingly cannot get past his guilt or sorrow from Data's sacrifice for him. At the same time it's touching to see how close they had become.
- Not sure about the new characters yet, like Jurati, Rios or Raffi. They're pretty broadly drawn so far. Okay, but time will tell how much staying power they have.

I'm enjoying the show, for the most part. I just wish it was more "all ages" friendly. A Star Trek where the characters say "F***ing" and "G**D***) and where Romulans get their heads cut off on screen has less appeal for me. And of course poor Icheb really has it bad.