Topic: Picard Series

[Brush Wolf]

It offends me.

I am finding that Discovery offends me - as I expected - but as long as I think of it as goofy fan fiction I am enjoying it for what it is.

Picard I found to be much more enjoyable.

When TNG first came out I was pretty offended - and the first season is still pretty hard to watch - but they did recover nicely. I don't see new Trek recovering nicely anytime soon - and I think the video games are going to be the most faithful to Roddenberry's original concept going forward.

Yeah, Discovery would be decent science fiction if they stripped everything Star Trek from it but as Star Trek it is an abortion. Picard has Patrick Stewart going for it and at least deals with a very Trek question, what is life.

[TAnimaL]

By your parameters Nemesis, you could argue that TNG is not ST, or DS9, etc, and these arguments were made ad nauseam back then too, and equally false. This is why I am so done with the complaining about this or that new series. "Oh, Berman has ruined ST!" "TOS said women shouldn't be starship captains!" "ST can't be a cartoon!" Blah blah blah said the grups. The painful truth is fans do not own ST, or any show, and it is and always was someone else's creation.

Roddenberry had serious issues with ST II & III - do you consider those not "real" Star Trek? Frankly, past the first half of TOS season 3 it was no longer the "work of the original creators." Again, Nemesis, what you consider ST is probably not what I consider it, and both are equally invalid, at least until the IP owners pay  you or me to make a show or movie. If it "offends" you BrushWolf, why are watching it? And if you are watching what I did, I saw a lot more of what i consider ST in Discovery than, say, the JJ movies, but I bet our versions of what is ST are different.

I find it mildly amusing that some fans get so worked up over the series and movies, but what happens in ST books, comics and games is ignored. Obviously they are the higher profile and are the only things considered "canon," but there are so many variants of ST, SFC included, where a fan could be "offended" but you mostly just ignore it, without any histrionics.

And, I for one am offended by your obviously homophobic analogy Nemesis, and I am also done letting obnoxious statements go by.

[Nemesis]

With TNG most (not all) of the changes were able to be justified because of the time between.  The biggest complaints I have with TNG are 1/ total change in the Klingon personality.  2/ forgetting the Prime Directive is PROTECTIVE of DEVELOPING cultures with no knowledge of warp travel and made it an absolute allowing Picard to stand by watching the death of a civilization by outside forces beyond their control.  But Picard did open contact with at least one such civilization with not a peep about violating it (the one where Wesley was sentenced to death).  Outside that not a lot of violation of what goes before.  Even with the Prime Directive they could have noted it as a change from the original but they didn't that I know of.

How often did TNG rewrite what was established by TOS? 

DS9 messed with the Trill that were established as a newly known species in TNG to make it one where Dax was nostalgic about Kirks time and was part of the Federation well before TNG as witnessed by his friendship with Sisko.  Mostly though again other than the Klingon personality change most things are time justifiable. 

Voyager I've seen very little of and so can't really comment.

Enterprise messed with A LOT.  The Interstellar Alliance founded when the Federation was supposed to be.  Contradicts TNG on the details of the TNG episode Pegasus (Rikers old ship with the illegal cloak).  First contract with the Klingons at the wrong time.  According to TNG it was supposed to lead to decades of war yet it had Earth actually help the Klingons and NO WAR for at least the next 10 years.  The Earth Romulan War should have happened between the last 2 episodes but nothing said about it.  Cloaks EVERY WHERE when Kirk and co had NO CLUE about them.  Ferengi deep inside the future Federation.   And so on and so forth.

Discovery apparently is going whole hog with changing stuff, haven't seen it myself. 

As to homophobic - you are wrong (see this thread).   I would object to a gay Captain Kirk because it goes against the totally heterosexual womanizer that Kirk is established to be.  Recently however when I watched a bunch of the fan videos I had no problem at all with the gay nephew of Kirk or his male fiance.  These don't mess with the history as there is nothing I know of before that which it contradicts.  I would have no problem with a show between TOS and TNG with this gay Nephew being a Starfleet Captain. 

With the Mona Lisa example the issue would be with changing the existing work of art into something totally different that the original artist certainly would not have created. 

If someone is gay/bi/trans I DON'T CARE so long as they don't try and make me act that way as I'm not, I have had bi friends one of whom was a transvestite and it didn't matter.  Hell I objected to Black Lives Matters trying to hijack the Gay Pride Parade in Toronto because historically one of the groups that fought hardest against gay rights was the black community and now they want to FORCE the Gay Pride people to support them?  HELL NO.  That doesn't make me racist either as I definitely am in favour of equal rights with no legal discrimination based on race, gender or sexual orientation.  When I discriminate it is against an individual or organization based on their BEHAVIOR to others.

[Tulwar]

Everything after the original series contradicted it.  The original series even contradicted itself!  The Motion Picture started out with the Klingons firing photo torpedoes from their main sensor!  Still, that movie filmed the two most beautiful spaceship models ever conceived, so who cares what the director screwed up for dramatic effect?

The only movie that had a descent plot was The Wrath of Kahn, and, with that being the only exception, all the movies were badly written.  The writing for the show might have been excellent for 1966, but when it restarted in the 1980's, it was pretty average for television.  The technobable was usually pretty weak.  While Deep Space Nine presented an enjoyable episode nearly every week, the writing was just good enough to push along the story arc, and that was fantastic!

Beginning with Voyager, a lack of improvement in writing caught up with the franchise.  Babylon 5 had already demonstrated exciting space battles, while Voyager was, well, I could change channels during ship to ship combat.  It was all bland, with aging special effects technique.  As I stopped bothering to turn on Voyager, Star Gate caught my attention, and there I superior script writing of several orders of magnitude.  Star Trek just looked stupid!

Voyager took it's sweet time dying, and then there was Enterprise.  The quality of the writing still didn't improve, but as long as they kept to an unseasoned crew bumbling about the galaxy, it wasn't that bad.  They just had to make it the center of galactic history, and the bad writing took over.

Star Trek needed a reboot, and they hired JJ Abrams.  From here, mediocre dove into insulting.  The 2009 was a farce, making anybody that ever loved any part of Star Trek feel sick.  Even the model of the Enterprise was hideous!  The second JJ Abrams movie was more of the same.  The 3rd, I never saw.  From what I've been following on YouTube, the STD and STP series are being produced under the JJ Abrams licensing limitations and necessarily have to differ from the previous incarnations of Star Trek.  From the portions CBS has uploaded to YouTube, these shows are as ugly as they are stupid.  If the studios can make money from this kind of filth, they will never make anything enjoyable.

[Clark Kent]

Picard and STD are products of a spin off company from Bad Reboot, Secret Hideout.  There is actually quite a lot going on behind the scenes that  has been ripping Trek apart for a very long time.  First, JJ has been planting people working for him all around Hollywood and commandeering one franchise after another and doing what they did to Trek and Star Wars.  Then there is the licensing arrangement.  BR/SH are unwilling to let go of Trek, and even after licensees are willing to walk away from all their old merchandise (which is still selling) when forced to choose between the old Trek and new (which is NOT selling), they still won't give up. 

Also, you will notice the intentional differences when they do bring in old stuff.  Again for license agreements.  STD and Picard are NOT part of original Star Trek canon.  Legally, they are intentionally different and not beholden to the same canon as TOS, TNG, VOY or ENT.  This is intentional because they are working with a split license between CBS and Paramount.  Remerging might have changed some things, but then retardoflu comes along and we'll see if Viacom even continues to own Star Trek at this point.

One thing that old Trek was, was it was intellectual, and philosophical.  When you watched Trek, you could tell it was written by intelligent, well read individuals and even when there was a misstep, there was an optimism about it, even when they delved into deeper, and sometimes darker topics.  Some people say "it was always political" and I disagree.  It was intelligent, if flawed, and it was philosophical.  The new stuff IS political, which is to say I meant that in the crass, vulgar sense that you see on the likes of CNN.  Then we rebooted in 2009 and got Kirk proclaiming "I WAS BORN IN SPACE THUNDERSTORM!!"  This new stuff is so nihilistic and narcissistic.  There were plenty of flaws in the old- I'm not a fan of how they wrote female characters for the most part for instance, but it was largely consistent enough to swallow and be entertained.  This new stuff?  I don't even need to go into the clips I've seen of current cast members whining at conventions and scolding fans because old Trek was so bigoted and now "muh diversity!!"

I have not watched STD or Picard.  Everything I have seen from them was enough to make me say "this is not Trek."  Space autististic Spock telling the crew "I like science."?  What the crap.  I am on STO and they recently had a featured mission with Seven of Nine.  No jumpsuit, but ok, that's fine.  Nice to see her again in the game, or in general.  One line of dialogue in to her voice over and I was immediately like "this is NOT Seven of Nine."  Completely different character with different traits and quirks.  Everything I have seen from 2009 and on?  I just can't disengage my brain down t a low enough level to enjoy it.

It's a train wreck and they've driven out well over half the fan base.  that by itself is not Star Trek.

This isn't the same debate as days of old over what is canon and what isn't.  You can't even consider the new series to be canon if for no other reason than the license Secret Hideout is operating under won't allow it to be canon.  They are just keeping quiet on it because they need to keep up the illusion for marketing reasons that it's all under the same umbrella, but from every stand point, this stuff has almost nothing to do with the original Star Trek.  It's more like comparing Star Wars with the original Battlestar Galactica.  It's obvious that they were desperate to cash in on the Star Wars craze, so they just took as much as possible and then allowed studio exec meddling to separate it enough for their own poor tastes and to avoid getting sued.  Same thing here.  SH wants their own mercandise and their own cash cow to milk for 50 years, but they are struggling with the original bovine, who is still alive and kicking, despite how many times they try to kill it off for their own greed.

[Lono]

Clark,

An excellent analysis!

I am disappointed to hear they have allowed the changes (to 7 of 9) from the Picard series to spill over into STO - although I am hardly surprised.

[Nemesis]

How about “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”?

Link to full article

[Clark Kent]

Hmm... Interesting.  Well, that version of Spock is the one that has space autism and says "I like Science." 

So, this is interesting for several reasons.  One is that I'm surprised Anson Mount would sign on.  There was an altercation while he was filming STD and supposedly blows were traded.  He's also implied that he did not enjoy working under this regime and not interested in going back.  second is Rebecca Romain.  She's really expensive, which is probably why she was in so little of STD which was insanely over budget.  Third, CBS is in dire financial straights right now, like many studios and SH has crapped the bed multiple times now.  next, Kurtzman is reportedly not someone that the higher ups at CBS are happy with right now, especially Sheri Redstone.  SH has all but destroyed the steady franchise income they've enjoyed from Trek, and Netflix and Amazon have made it clear that they are really unhappy with JJ trek and that whole aesthetic and they've been going out of their way to try to get out of the contracts they have over streaming this show.

Next, CBS all access is falling apart.  Not sure how long that service can keep going as it is, so there's that.  There have been a number of announced trek movies and spinoffs as of late that have been announced and then fizzled into nothing.  SH also has a habit of announcing things in what looks like a bid to try to stoke attention and pressure CBS to fund it, but they always come in behind schedule and over budget with mediocre to failed viewership.  I guess I am skeptical about this.

Finally, assuming it does come to fruition: it's not Star Trek, not like those of us who have spent our lives fans of this franchise think of as Star Trek anyways.  It will still be a mismatched license that is a minimum of 25% different from the series we all watched for so long due to legal reasons and the desire to force new merchandise sales that none of the merch creators will touch with a ten foot pole, since JJ Trek and SH have eviscerated the fan base (and with Star Wars as well.  Seems like at least 60% of their fanbase has walked away too).  They also still have the same habits of hiring soap opera writers and openly scowling at the thought of hiring staff that know and want to build off of the original franchise.  Also, when they do get good writers like Walter Mosley, (a black writer) they get shoved out when white colleagues turn him into HR for racist comments against African Americans.

It's a very toxic work environment.  I know TNG was extremely difficult to work on, but that set seems like a paradise compared to SH.

[Tulwar]

This sounds like what I've heard on Midnight's Edge and Doomcock's channel.  Secret Hideout is just making nowhere plans for shows that nobody is stupid enough to invest in.  These people are eventually going to lose control over Star Trek, but not quickly and not easily.  Eventually a real Trekie, like Seth MacFarlane is going to get a hold of the franchise.  I don't know if I'd like what MacFarlan had in mind, but at least, I wait until a commercial to change channels on his shows.  I watched 10 minutes of Lost, and I could see that was going nowhere.

[Clark Kent]

I won't lie, I watch both of those channels and they are important sources for me.  I'm definitely Fandom Menace.  I wish there were more trek fans in the group, but there are enough to get some pretty in depth information about what's going on.  Hail Tulwar!  Hail Doomcock!

[Tulwar]

I'm definitely Fandom Menace.

Hail Clark Kent!

That firmly puts you in the category of the one of the people that used to make these sci-fi franchises profitable.  JarJar Abrams and company are interlopers trying to make money, without providing us with anything of value.

There is an invisible propaganda empire that runs the United States, England, and many other countries.  Naom Chomsky has described it in the Manufacturing of Consent.  It was created when the banks feared Britain and France would never pay them back if the Central Powers won the First World War.  The studios are run by the banks, and the banks want to control what we think.  I just don't know what they are doing by cramming this phony feminist misandry down our throats.  Just because CBS and Disney are hemorrhaging money, one shouldn't get their hopes up.  This is propaganda with a purpose, and the people running it have Trump and Pelosi on speed-dial.  The best we can hope for is that the license arrangements become so unprofitable that they don't sue us for making something that's actually fun.

[Clark Kent]

Well, I'd rather not get into that level of discussion.  I'll just say that it's not so black and white as what you are painting out.  It's a lot more complicated, and some might say a lot more sinister as well.  The one thing I will say is that debt from the great war is still there.  People don't realize this.  We NEVER pay back the debt.  It's mathematically impossible.  People always forget to factor in that the entire monetary system IS debt.  It even says so on every dollar bill in your wallet.  Go ahead and look up what a "note" is in financial terms.  We NEVER pay off the debt, because doing so means getting rid of the money.  We only service the debt.  Nothing more.  That is, we break our backs working to pay nothing but the interest on the debt for our entire lives, and every generation after us.

[Tulwar]

I was not referring to US debt, or even that owed any central bank. Had England and France lost WWI, American banks would have had some serious problems. Only central bank debt creates money.  All other debt is an economic rent, which the neo-liberal/neo-classical/neo-bullsh*t economics, taught in American business schools doesn't recognize.  That's making money, and that why we're studying economics!  This is off the subject.

It's the media structure put in place to get the American people on board with WWI that is to be feared.  All mass media is provided for the purpose of advertisement.  While corporations might try to inject some morality in their material, along with the sales hustle, the show makers are trying to help the advertisers, and the show and the commercial become intertwined.  Add to that the involvement of think tanks, with their cadres of social psychologists, and how they poke an prod us to think the right way, and it's impossible to discern reality from the ravings of a lunatic.

[Age]

Going down a black hole as a good Stat Trek series hasn't been made since the last Century. Bring back Kirk alive