Tag Star Trek Picard

Star Trek Picard: A Belated Review

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This is really late, and nothing I say here will be terribly original, but I have to be honest.

I hate this show.

Not just because it’s low-quality, but because it actively, purposefully takes a massive dump on Trek and its fans. STD was bad in just about every way besides sfx (and even those often looked bad, but that was art direction, not poor quality), but Picard was worse. The writing is bad, the effects were not great, the directing was often poor, and the story itself is garbage.

It’s too bad, too. The show didn’t exactly start strong, but it wasn’t terrible either. But taking a full 30% of the show on the basic set-up (without leaving Earth) was a bad move, even if that stuff was some of the best stuff in the show (a low bar, to be sure). And that wasn’t even the end of the set-up, either. No, four of ten episodes happened before the adventure proper starts.

And then things go downhill, fast. The entire fifth episode was a joke which feels more at home in a SyFy original than Star Trek (moreso than the rest of the show). That would have been bearable, if they didn’t literally destroy the legacy of Trek out at the end of the episode. And things got even worse after that. With only one sort-of quality episode after the third (unsurprisingly, the one where we get good guest-stars, and the one without the vast majority of the Picard-original characters), the show just goes from one mess to the next.

It doesn’t help that this show feels cheap. Despite being supposedly one of the most expensive shows in the history of television (there are rumors that a bunch of funding was diverted to STD S3, which I can believe), things seem so simple and basic. The space shots are sparse. The sets, especially the main ship set, are cheap. The props are even more out of place than the sets, especially as the show goes on (they literally use a standard, unmodified park table as the “meeting table”). The lack of ship designs in a Star Trek show is atrocious – in any large fleet scene, there are three separate ship designs, even the one time there are two opposing fleets!

Also note the standard, unmodified folding park chairs in the background.

As far as the overall story goes, it’s pretty trash. The initial mystery is fine, if starting with an incredibly dumb premise. Having the two stories, one of the Picard gang, and the other on the Borg ship, was fine in concept, but the execution didn’t work, because the characters in the Borg plot were not the sort that people want to watch: you have an alien ship, in alien territory, with lots of ethical implications as to what they’re doing, and yet that is all just background to soap opera drama.

Actually, that’s a good illustration of the entire show: all this possibly-cool stuff going on, and it’s all merely non-context to poorly-written melodrama. This didn’t need to be Trek: it could have been any modern sci-fi drama if you changed the names. Hell, change it to fantasy, just replacing the spaceships with waterships, and Borg with zombies (that would actually fit the state of the reclaimed Borg better…). Literally the only stuff that requires some knowledge of past Trek is the Borg stuff, and the characters of Locutus, Riker, Data, and Troi. (Maddox and Picard may as well be completely different people.) And as far as the character knowledge goes, the only Trek you’d need to watch was the movie Nemesis – it’s clear that’s the only Trek any of the main writers watched in full (they skimmed First Contact too, for the Borg stuff). All the rest of the Trek references could have been gleaned from wiki articles.

All of that is sad. I had some small hopes for the series at first, but they were all dashed to pieces. It’s dreck, and insulting to fans like me on top of that. STD could at least be slightly excused by being a prequel, but this is a direct sequel to Nemesis, and should have at least been somewhat respectful of that. It was marketed to TNG fans, and yet there’s nothing there for them.

Alex Kurtzman Says Something Correct, For Once

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I was reading an article about how Star Trek Picard is no good, very bad, and awful (which is true), and something towards the beginning really stuck out. It quotes Alex Kurtzman, destroyer of franchises, currently showrunning (into the ground) the Star Trek franchise. And, to my great shock, the words quoted actually were true! Just about had a heart attack, I did. So, what did he say? For those of you who didn’t click through and read the article:

If you really want Star Trek to reach people, then you’ve got to start young.

This is 110% true. Star Trek is a dying franchise. Almost literally: the bulk of the fanbase – or at least those willing to spend money – are 50+. There’s a reason the conventions are so expensive. There’s a reason there’s Star Trek: The Cruise. It’s all old folks. I figure I’m at the lower end – and I’m in my 30’s! To avoid the inevitable end of the fanbase, it needs to be replenished. You do have to start young.

Most of those old guys still going to conventions? They started young. Many with syndicated reruns of OG Trek, or with the old movies. People of my generation probably started with TNG. I’ve been watching since I was a baby: my parents were both into it, and were watching TNG as it started. My dad even had (almost) the complete collection of the TOS VHS collection, back when that was really expensive (buying physical copies of Trek shows has always been quite expensive for some reason). I still have some of those Micro Machines ship toys.

HOWEVER, that’s not what Kurtzman is actually doing. When he talks about young, he’s not talking about kids. He’s talking about folks in their 20’s. Adults. You can’t build a strong fanbase out of adults, not for something like Trek. It almost requires starting from very young. That was the thing with old Trek: it was for the whole family. Kids could watch and enjoy. So could their parents, older siblings, and everyone. Modern Trek is for people in their 20’s and older. It’s the exact opposite of family friendly. You can’t get small kids watching and enjoying this. (And really, most adults wouldn’t enjoy it either.)

That’s a big problem with Trek right now: it’s looking for a new fanbase, when what it needs to do is grow its fanbase. Current Trek is not for kids, and it’s not for old fans. The creators actively spit in the faces of old fans, yet don’t create a quality product that will actually get them that new fanbase they’re desperately hoping to get.

And even then, they’re chasing the wrong demo. Trek, like many franchises, lives on its merchandise sales. Have you seen any real STD or Picard merch? Or heck, even the stuff from the most recent movies? No, not really. Certainly not in stores, not even the specialty stuff. I remember being in university, going to Wal Mart, and seeing Trek stuff. No longer. Any merch still being sold is of the older Treks. Companies now won’t even license stuff, since it won’t sell. The old guys with money don’t want it, and the new audience – such as it is – isn’t the sort to buy that kind of stuff. Kids of course don’t want it, since they don’t even know the franchise exists.

So, Kurtzman said the right words, but he didn’t mean them in the right way. Indeed, his idea, as usual, was completely wrong and backward.

How To NOT Do Holograms: Star Trek Picard

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Among other, much more important things (like story, characters, dialog, etc.), one of the things that really bugged me about Star Trek Picard is how the show uses holographic interfaces. In short, it’s bad. Like, really bad. I know what they were going for: “This isn’t your daddy’s Star Trek; this is the future now.” (Implicit in the statement is that it isn’t for Daddy, ie the people that actually are Star Trek fans (the average age for Trek conventions is…not as young as anime conventions, to put it gently), but that’s besides the point.)

Now, not everything they do with holograms on the show is bad – just most of it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having Picard’s room on the ship, where they had the “conference” scenes in the first part of the show, be a holographic recreation of his office on Earth (and the fact that it lets the show reuse the set is a bonus). The whole point of the holodecks in the show was that you could do that kind of stuff. Heck, they could have had the whole bridge be a holographic bridge. Probably should have done that, actually, instead of what they did (and they should have kept using Picard’s room for conferences later, instead of the park tables of later episodes). The bridge set was already pretty similar to Voyager’s or DS9’s holodeck sets; I kinda expected them to go that route, at first (especially since they already have a holographic crew…).

No, where they go wrong is everything else. Look at that. Looks cool, right? Well, it’d suck to actually use it. Look how dim it is. Compare that to, say, Mass Effect:

Easy comparison to make.

A proper interface would be easy to see. In STP everything would be hard to see. In ME the interface is bright, easy to see. And it’s got a dark background, while STP has whatever is behind the hologram, every time. Which is usually something not much darker than the hologram itself. How are you supposed to read anything like that? There’s a reason ereaders and phones these days have high-contrast modes.

Also, specific to the interface used for piloting the ship, that interface tracks head movements. But you’ll notice that it’s a lot larger than a human’s field of vision, let alone the useful field of vision. Remember, the useful field of vision for anything like this is only a few degrees, not even five. If what you’re looking at is only a little bigger than that (like a single computer screen), you only have to move your eyeballs, but if it’s as big as Picard’s interface up there, you have to move your head. Not a huge problem…unless it tracks with head movements. This is shown multiple times in the show (including that above scene) – this would be supremely annoying to use. And of course the center part is completely empty of information, despite the fact that that’s exactly where you’d want to put the most important stuff.

A hologram inside a hologram…

Of course, the reason this was done was purely because it “looks cool”. Sure, the interface makes absolutely no sense from an actual human perspective. But you don’t need “tacky” flat screens, no touch screens that need to be on-set. You can just film the actors waving their hands around, poking at the air, and then try to make what they do make sense in post. It’s yet another example of modern Trek (and Hollywood in general) not thinking things through, but merely doing what is cool and easy.

Quick Thoughts: Star Trek Picard

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This is going to be really short, because I don’t have the time or energy for a full review (which is coming, to be sure), nor the screenshots I thought I had. But, to be quick about it:

This show sucks. Like, seriously, it sucks.

At first I thought it wasn’t too bad. And it wasn’t. Just a bit slow, and nonsensical. But still watchable. But then it got worse.

It was never Star Trek, really. Sure, it had some characters that were in Star Trek, in the past. But the show itself is just some random sci-fi show that they slapped a Trek skin on.

And it’s not even a good random sci-fi show. The plot is so full of holes, it makes swiss cheese envious. The dialog was generally very bad, especially as the show went on. The editing isn’t very good. The effects are passable, barely, and don’t even feel Trek-like. Everything is anachronistic.

Just a sucky show.

February in Review, March Anticipated

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Pretty boring month, I’d say. At least for gaming, for me. Only two posts the entire month!

What did I even do?

  • Murkmire event in ESO. In anticipation, I got my newest character (a Nord nightblade) all the way through the faction story, up to the point where the faction stories merged. I’m not doing Coldharbor again. But did the event enough to get the slime pet. Murkmire is an interesting zone, but very small and short, with not a lot going for it. And the event itself is bloody boring. I actually haven’t logged on in a couple days, it’s that boring.
  • Started playing Fallout Shelter again. I mean, it’s not like there’s a lot to do there, so no real time commitment there. I played it when it first came out, and stuff has changed. I was inspired by MATN’s playthrough; I’d otherwise completely forgotten it exists.
  • Princess Connect had its anniversary event. Well, not so much “event” as “free stuff!”. Which is fine; I don’t even know Japanese, so all the events are pretty much the same for me. But I did get the units I was shooting for, so that’s nice I guess.
  • Granblue Fantasy also started its anniversary event. I know a lot of people were disappointed in it, but that’s mostly a failure of expectations: they were expecting something EPIC!, but we got just a normal event. Fine by me: every character (except maybe the main character) acted exactly as they always do, the setup is something that isn’t out of place, the events flow as they should, and it actually resolves one of the plotlines that should have been taken care of a long time ago.

In Star Trek news, Picard continues to be bad, perhaps even getting worse! I haven’t written any reviews (or even put mini-reviews on twitter) because I really don’t care anymore. It remains watchable to me, but that’s a rather low bar: I only drop a show like this if it actively makes me not want to watch, even if it’s otherwise a good show (and Picard isn’t). While the end of ep 5 did quite annoy me, it was just emblematic of nuTrek, so I couldn’t say I was surprised.

As for next month, I actually have a goal! I’m going to finish one game off my backlog. I don’t know if I’ll go full-in on #MabyeInMarch, since I haven’t been feeling like playing a game where I need to follow a guide to not miss a bunch of stuff, which is very possible in Radiata Stories; also, the gameplay is really clunky in that game. And, I can’t really play next to my computer, which is a turnoff. But I’ll try to clear some game out of my backlog, for sure! Mabye…

A Quick Update

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Just a quick update, since I’m not dead. January gaming was just basically ESO, with dailies in Dragalia Lost and playing the events in STO and Granblue Fantasy. Made a new character in ESO (2H/S+B Nightblade Tank), kinda on a whim (since some bloggers I knew were talking about how ESO’s combat was kinda not satisfying, which wasn’t my experience – but I’ve only played ranged until now, which has a completely different feel than melee; so I wanted to see what was up with that). So yah, that’s what’s up there.

In terms of “posts I’ve been meaning to do but haven’t because REASONS,” I have watched the last two episodes of Picard. The second episode was somewhat better than the first, but the third was the worst so far. Long story short, I just don’t care about the characters or the world that’s been set up. I’ll keep watching for now, since this is the end of the pilot, so to speak; or the first area of an RPG. But it’s been almost 1/3 of the season (3/10 episodes). This wasn’t necessary, and everything could have been done in one episode, maybe 1.5. And it would have made me happier, since a lot of the stuff that annoyed me could have been cut without any repercussions to the overall story. Not all the annoying stuff, but most of it.

I’ll have another post tomorrow about Love Your Backlog Week – but I need to get my backlog organized! (Hopefully GOG’s unification of my stuff will help.)

Star Trek Picard: Ep 1 Review

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To put it right at the front: I didn’t like it. I’m going to put a short version of my review that I’ve placed elsewhere (I believe in recycling!), then go into more detail:

In short, if you’re looking for a generic sci-fi show, this isn’t too bad. Not good either, but not terrible. 4/10, mostly brought down from the apparent need to have absolutely minimalist dialog to get to the next scene (like a second-year writing student heard for the first time “brevity is the soul of wit,” and applied that to almost every single scene). Most of the sjw propaganda isn’t too much on display at this point. The apparent Mary Sue co-protagonist at least has a reason for being a sooper-speshal butt-kicking waif. I’m thinking most of the stuff from the trailer is going to be in the next episode. 

As a Trek show, it’s pretty bad. Not STD bad, but still bad. Even the worst episodes of proper Trek gave you time to think about whatever thing was on offer. Even if what they were describing was dumb, they at least gave time to try to give an explanation, not just expecting the audience to hear some thing and just accept it, before instantly moving on. And, continuing the JarJarTrek pattern that’s been going on the last decade, it’s like the people that wrote this only knew about Trek from memes and scanning Memory Alpha articles – and I include Patrick Stewart in this (apparently, he’d never even watched his own show until a couple years ago). There’s a whole memberberry vault too (though, fortunately it’s kept mainly to the one scene). I never got the feeling that Data was Picard’s BFF (I’d say that he was closest to Worf, of anyone besides Crusher), but apparently that’s the case, and it’s the thrust of the plot, even though that was 20+ years before the events of the show.

But, at least it completely invalidates the idiots that thought a comic was canon. That’s nice. 

Yes, I know this is about the haters, but I filled it in about the episode itself.
  • Data doesn’t look too bad, but still weird. It’s obviously a dream, so that’s fine.
  • Weird editing all around. Like, bad enough that even a know-nothing non-kinophile like me can notice.
  • Credits are dumb and boring.
  • Holy crap, could the scene with the boyfriend be any more [Current Year]? This would literally fit in any CW drama. The only thing that makes it sci-fi at all is the fact that the guy is an ayy lmao. (And I guess he mentions the replicator.) A cringeworthy CW drama to boot. So awkward.
  • Ah, and Dadge/Dajh/whatever (it’s Doge now) is now a fellow at Daystrom in TWO fields! So smart and STEM! Slay queen! I like science!
  • No Russian Speak English! I guess it makes sense that not everyone on Earth would necessarily have universal translators. And the alien who might have had one is dead, so his probably turned off, if he had one.
  • Let’s not knock her out, or beam her up, or whatever, now that we know that she’s safe to handle. No, let’s put her in more conscious danger by putting a bag over her head (wouldn’t want her to know the transporter path back to our hidden base/ship)!
  • Are the Romulan couple refugees themselves? I think that’s supposed to be the implication. Are they random people that Picard invited to live with him? Are they specifically hired as caretakers (doing job no Earthman would do)?
  • “They said they wouldn’t ask about [thing].” They’re definitely going to ask about [thing].
  • The interview is the exposition dump. This is literally the only thing that explains what happened between Nemesis and this show. Very awkward and jarring.
  • Why did they have that light and camera setup? Even in Enterprise they had cameras and lights that the reporter could just wear on their face.
  • “Romulan lives.” “No, LIVES.” Wow, so powerful!
  • I’m not going to hate on the 900M people thing. I figure that the Romulans were using their own ships (and maybe the other powers helping out) in the lead-up to all that. I mean, if Picard thought he had time to build 10,000 ships, there was obviously a lot of warning. Enough time to evacuate billions, probably. Just the unlucky plebs that got left behind.
  • Why is this a huge (potential) refugee crisis, for the Federation? It’s the Romulan STAR EMPIRE. They have other planets.
  • The whole “Synths did it, so we’ll outlaw synths and also turn insular and not help out” was really forced. Not only is it not TNG-era Federation/Starfleet AT ALL, but it just doesn’t make sense. At least with the Augment thing there’s reason, however dubious. This is just for setting up a fake moral dilemma to set up the plot the creators wanted (particularly Stewart).
  • At least they got one thing right: Picard wouldn’t shoo away some crazy girl that shows up at his house uninvited, at least not without listening to her story. Even considering her story, he’s seen much weirder stuff.
  • PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THE NECKLACE. I mean, talking about it would be a good way to calm someone down in a crisis (and Picard is good at that), but it’s so bloody obvious that this pretty boring and normal necklace is going to come up later for some reason.
  • OK, the first dream sequence was fine. But now Picard is having prophetic dreams.
  • I like how it’s morning in France, and late-night in Boston. At least someone writing this had a brain.
  • For some reason Picard uses the Starfleet Archives as his safety deposit vault. And for some reason he keeps his ship models and sword there. It’s obviously supposed to be some kind of display area, but for some other reason only Picard is allowed in it. And why does the computer take more than an instant to search out his very simple queries?
  • It says Quantum, so you know it’s advanced! I like science!
  • So she’s a synth, and she’s tied to Data somehow (and now has superpowers), so naturally that must mean she’s Data’s daughter. Which he always wanted.
  • Why not just carry the old man, since you have super powers?
  • Why are you running to the roof, where it would be very hard to escape from?
  • How does she know “they” are coming? It seems like she can hear them, but then they beam in, which means they were on a ship.
  • So is she a proper robutt, just human on the outside (like the Borg were doing to Data in First Contact)? Because then her superpowers would make sense. But the Daystrom lady and Picard make it seem like she is basically in effect an augment; while they are strong and smart and whatever, they weren’t Avengers.
  • A 91-year-old man (who could barely get up the stairs, so he isn’t some future-science fit dude) was thrown 40 feet by an explosion, and all he got was a bump on the head. Lucky!
  • The entire Daystrom scene was bad. Dialog and pacing were terrible, the worst example of what I was talking about up at top.
  • Why do they come in pairs? This isn’t a mystery box thing. Real Trek would have at least given a cursory explanation (and Voyager a long-winded, terrible, technobabble explanation) for all of this mess.
  • Good thing she has a twin, so we don’t lose our Mary Sue protagonist.
  • Oh look, ROMANCE!
  • Also, Borg Cube. If I hadn’t played STO for years, this would have been a negative; but Romulans playing with Borg stuff is a plot point in the game, so I’m used to it.

Not a promising start. It could get worse or better from here, but signs point to worse.