Star Trek: Picard

I reserve the right to judge the timeline by counting lens flares.

mh, yr no-prize is in the mail

I reserve the right to judge the timeline by counting lens flares.

fair

This was pretty ok!

I like the vibe so far - kind of Raymond Chandler in space, with Picard as the dishevelled ‘tec, stumbling from encounter to encounter, endangering his friends and getting lightly beaten up in the process.

I like Pill. The twin and the weirdly accented handsome on the cube ship were... less good.

This was okay, I liked that it had the more relaxed tempo of the '80s/'90s series instead of the more modern/actiony vibe of Discovery. I still think it was silly that they had to bring back Brent Spiner for fanservice though, as even the digital manipulation and choice of angles couldn't hide the fact he'd become chubbier and his face had changed with age. I guess his two scenes being dreams made it a bit easier to digest, but still... IIRC it was Spiner himself who wanted Data to die in the TNG movies, as it was obvious he couldn't be playing an ageless android for decades. Well, this episode proves he was right, and his presence here was really superfluous, they could've done the same plot with using only footage from TNG or something.

Also, the references to "The Offpsring" here made me at first excited and then disappointed. Because after seeing that episode, I always wondered why Data wouldn't try to create another daughter after Lal... Obviously losing her was traumatic to him, but in real life people still have kids after losing one, and you'd think traumatic loss wouldn't affect Data to the same extent as with humans? So when they first implied Dahj was his daughter, I was like, cool, he did build another child after all! But then it was revealed Dahj/Soji were only made after Data's death, so the question of why he never wanted another offspring remains. I get it that they didn't want to tie this series too much into old episodes of TNG, but on the other hand, the Picard wouldn't even exist if people weren't nostalgic for that series. So I do hope the following episodes will have some deeper connections to the lore than just fanservicey appearances of TNG actors.

deeper connections to the lore

i see what u did

Haha, that was actually unintentional!

They did seem to refer to Data/Lore with Allison Pill's weird comment about how androids are always made in pairs... Which I don't recall ever being a thing in TNG, IIRC the Soongs built Data to improve on Lore, not because there was some weird rule that you have to build two?

pill seemed to be implying that there was a biological reason for having to grow/build two at once, the ones in question being indistinguishable from human beings down to some level or something

Maybe yeah, but it was still a weird comment, because she didn't explain what the reason for building them in pairs was, she just stated it like it was an obvious thing.

if i cared enough, maybe i'd go back and see if it made sense how pill started with 'short answer, impossible; long answer, still impossible' and ended up with 'hey, maybe there's two of them'. also seems bad that a dozen romulan assassins can beam onto the roof of starfleet hq undetected, and the mom's ~slip-up~ mentioning picard was really ham-handed. it's fine, still liked it

Also, the references to "The Offpsring" here made me at first excited and then disappointed. Because after seeing that episode, I always wondered why Data wouldn't try to create another daughter after Lal... Obviously losing her was traumatic to him, but in real life people still have kids after losing one, and you'd think traumatic loss wouldn't affect Data to the same extent as with humans?

Data got into serious trouble with SF for creating Lal and only avoided punishment because of what ultimately happened to her. And he probably felt that unless he was able to create another android with better odds of survival, he wasn't going to try again.

Also, there's a quick line where Dr. Jurati surmises that the twins were created by Maddox. Don't know if that's meant to throw us off the trail, though.

Data got into serious trouble with SF for creating Lal

I like how this can mean Starfleet, San Francisco or science fiction, and they all more or less work.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/generationfleet/images/9/9b/BruceMaddox.jpg

I love the costumes in this so much

earl grey with no milk is the beverage of a sociopath

it’s highly disturbing

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, January 25, 2020 10:30 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

earl grey with no milk is delightful

in fact i don't like it with milk tbh

I really enjoyed this even though 'you can't make new androids without Data/but just a single neuron would do/oh they come in pairs' was all rather convenient - I know TNG was all about the handwavey pseudoscience but unlike Discovery it never fully jettisoned logic just to tell a cool story bro. I hope this doesn't end up going that route.

I was a bit thrown when the librarian said "the painting is called... Dodger!" - I had thought the girl was called Dahj but maybe it was Dahja, I mused. It later became clear. Rewatched, still sounds like that.

I spent about ten minutes assuming that this meant that Dahja was Picard's daughter

all the tea is upsetting me, tea is horrible and shd not be depicted on-screen

lol yeah! tea is just some foul aberration for when you've run out of coffee!

Kathryn Janeway otm

Now THAT was more like it.

I think just having a sassy, overqualified Romulan housekeeper question Picard about having all his marbles is all I need to be happy. Though more seriously, it's nice to see that things aren't going to be easy for JL and that other characters are allowed to have their own agendas and personalities.

I'm sure that Starfleet is thrilled about that living arrangement -- and I kind of wonder if some SF intelligence officer thinks that Picard's Romulan friends have turned him.

Also I really liked the Vulcan(?) Commodore.

I was a bit confused, was she supposed to be Vulcan or Romulan? Because her mannerisms and the fact that she's running the Federation's secret police (presumably built on the foundation of Section 31?) implied she's Romulan, but OTOH there's no indication the Romulan Free State (or whatever it's called) has joined the Federation.

One, i think she's more specifically intelligence, not Section 31, since she wears gold (ops/security).

Two, I think she's meant to be or pass as Vulcan, since the first thing we see of her is a box with the IDIC insignia, and her stilted speech sounded more Vulcan to me.

Pretty sure she's Vulcan

Sorry, mean Romulan

Arrgh, fucksake, thought you were on about Laris.

Oh is Romulan pretending to be Vulcan.

important critical observation: lol data's terrible painting

lol, proof that having an IQ of 6million maketh not Egon Schiele

you'd thought at least he would have been capable of doing a super-humanoid pastiche of a good painting!

folks, this show is good and i like it, even if narek looks like he should be playing guitar in romulan razorlight instead of doing dick-first spycraft in a decommissioned borg cube

it pleases me that it is now canon that there is a space dublin

all paintings in TV shows are terrible and doubly so when they're representational

good arm patches

My biggest problem w Narek that the dude has a full head of glossy black emo hair & then that NASTY brown facial hair that looks like pube trimmings

since i'm watching ds9 rn too it's really noticeable how the aliens have hairstyles in this. any deep space 9 alien species with hair all has the same gross boring hair, no personality.

xp I feel personally attacked

i thought we had a thread abt paintings in movies but if we do i can't find it -- i don't think it's as cut and dried, as ALL ARE BAD, tho representative ones are all bad (and always look as if they've been painted by the same person as well)

Do you mean paintings created for movies? Or would Solaris count?

TV show paintings are always bad. Movie paintings vary but if they are part of the plot they are always bad paintings.

The case could be made that I need to watch better movies though.

I have a soft spot for https://d33c33.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/elwoodandharvey.jpg

ok this topic deserves its own thread, if one does not exist

o shit take my money

https://www.goodfellaspainting.com

itt: paintings that are plot-points in movies and TV that are terrible paintings (or excellent ones if there are any)

Is that Harvey? Why is he wearing a belt without pants?!

pooka pig style

I suppose this is where I show my old age because the Treaty of Algernon is complete bullshit and should never have been signed with that provision intact. Section 31 sucks for not bothering to reverse-engineer cloaking tech anyway and Star Fleet sucks for not demanding that Section 31 does - even if it means installing an "in case of emergency, invoke Section 31" button on every NCC-* bridge (surprise, by doing so - you're now a Section 31 ship!) That alone would be a more interesting plot than - oh no, another page or two of script burned on the fucking cloaking device instead of something interesting.

I'm annoyed with how this all wrapped up because the first half was just good enough to encourage my own runaway imagination to expect something better than another Borg story (story made even lazier because now there's a kid). The fact that we're all talking about better spin-off fantasy shows whether it's Star Trek: Enterprise-G with Captain Seven or Star Trek: Kung Fu with Worf just magnifies how inert Picard is - even with all the end of the world stuff going on outside the viewscreen, the show (and him) seem strangely reactive. This isn't the first time this has happened with Star Trek or any other heritage IP bogged down by the weight of its own nostalgia. See also: the Obi-Wan series, most dalek episodes of nuWho.

There’s a single line in the RLM vid where Mike inadvertently summaries a lot of the modern ST content as missing the point with the writers/showrunners wanting more grimdark as presumably more real/relevant/realistic: “here! Here’s a sweet to wade thru!” rather any sort of utopian idea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g63G1l41Wp8

Dammit. “Here’s a SEWER to wade thru”

I gave up on this show but wife has been rewatching it and I'll say this much: great theme song.

Captain Shaw memes are still the best:

https://i.ibb.co/LYpT7nd/FB-IMG-1678630684510.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Z0QpfNj.jpeg

https://gizmodo.com/star-trek-picard-movie-patrick-stewart-paramount-2024-1851144813

"the actor, Patrick", said Patrick Stewart

I remember that Stewart went through a "refers to self in third person" phase in the late 90s or early 00s, maybe this was a deeply buried tic that resurfaced.