Star Trek: Picard Season 2

[Al-1701]

You're throwing around a lot of words without understanding the meaning. S1 Picard wasn't about the Federation being bigoted, it was about it being isolationist. They had been burned (literally) in their attempt to help the Romulans, and just withdrew from the rest of the galaxy. They weren't being evil, they were being cowardly. Which ended up matching current American politics which had elected many isolationist and "America First" politician including the president.

Now we get human culture that's hyper-nationalist and bloodthirsty more like the Neocons of the naughties and the white supremacist groups that are trying to take power now. Interesting that this take on Earth fits Q's description of humanity in "Encounter at Farpoint" that when they discovered aliens they stopped fighting each other and started fighting them instead.

Star Trek has always reflected the political landscape. In TOS, the Federation was the United States, the Klingons were the Soviet Union, and the Romulans were China. In TNG, they predicted the fall of the Soviet Union as now the Federation and Klingons were in a developing alliance though with a sense there were those within the Empire who wanted to go back to the good old days.

The U.S. has been dealing with an enemy within for much of the 21st century, those unhappy with the social progress we've made and bent on turning it back. Many writers had wanted to add wrinkles to the course of the Federation, but Gene stamped them out. That's how we just the body snatchers in TNG Season 1. Since his death, we've had "The Undiscovered Country" and DS9 and "Nu Trek" to give us the bumpy road any longstanding government travels.

I ask you this. What villain do you want? Do go the lazy route of "I don't write the show", you do nothing but come on here and complain. Outside of bringing back the Andromedians from that one TOS episode, you're either treading old ground or having to create something that can threaten the Federation out of whole cloth when most of the galaxy is already known. Even when they did create a new legitimate threat, you still did nothing but complain.

[Mabus]

You're throwing around a lot of words without understanding the meaning. S1 Picard wasn't about the Federation being bigoted, it was about it being isolationist. They had been burned (literally) in their attempt to help the Romulans, and just withdrew from the rest of the galaxy. They weren't being evil, they were being cowardly. Which ended up matching current American politics which had elected many isolationist and "America First" politician including the president.

The Federation was quite bigoted against the Romulans and Androids (sorry, "Synths"), as seen in the episode with the Martians not liking the worker androids because I guess no one ever saw an android before. And the Not!FoxNews reporter was also bigoted towards the Romulans with the way she talked, which was meant to highlight the general attitude in the Federation against the Romulans. Which was bigotry. And after the Mars attack, despite still having two years to remake the shipyards and solve the mystery as to why the androids rebelled, they instead decided to sit on their butts for two years, during which Mars kept burning (lmao, really) and still burned 14 years later, you know, right near Earth, and no one ever did anything because I guess no one would ever suspect that the Starfleet security never did their job. Clearly in a massive attack like that, there's no way there could have been infiltrators, nope, everyone just bought the story that the androids rebelled on their own. That can only happen if the Starfleet brass were secretly bigoted against the Romulans ("maybe the Romulans did it, if so, screw 'em!") as if they were pushing for isolationism, they won't have wasted months building ships that they weren't sure if they should use them.

And the last time isolationism was brought up in Trek, it was done by Terra Prime, which was had a massive hate boner for any non-human. So bigotry is the main cause.

Now we get human culture that's hyper-nationalist and bloodthirsty more like the Neocons of the naughties and the white supremacist groups that are trying to take power now. Interesting that this take on Earth fits Q's description of humanity in "Encounter at Farpoint" that when they discovered aliens they stopped fighting each other and started fighting them instead.

Star Trek has always reflected the political landscape. In TOS, the Federation was the United States, the Klingons were the Soviet Union, and the Romulans were China. In TNG, they predicted the fall of the Soviet Union as now the Federation and Klingons were in a developing alliance though with a sense there were those within the Empire who wanted to go back to the good old days.

The problem with this change is that it's never given a very clear reason why there was still an anti-Romulan sentiment in the Federation. Being the oldest foes doesn't cut it since the Klingons were even older. Last time the Romulans were quite helpful during the Dominion War and the last time they tried to attack Earth that was done by a clone of Picard with the help of Remans, which the Romulans eventually rose against. So if something bad happened during that time, they should have mentioned it one way or another, but they didn't.

The U.S. has been dealing with an enemy within for much of the 21st century, those unhappy with the social progress we've made and bent on turning it back. Many writers had wanted to add wrinkles to the course of the Federation, but Gene stamped them out. That's how we just the body snatchers in TNG Season 1. Since his death, we've had "The Undiscovered Country" and DS9 and "Nu Trek" to give us the bumpy road any longstanding government travels.

Well to be fair, some of the attempts to make the Federation darker was just there for the sake of it. The Admirals are plotting to overthrow the Federation. Why? Don't know. But it sounds cool I guess. At least in DS9, the attempted coup made sense given the Changeling paranoia threat, it was something they haven't faced before and they were scared shitless. And in TUC, ignoring the real-life reference, Klingons were almost in complete opposition to the Federation ideals, everybody knows that no culture changes overnight, so the more extremist factions of Starfleet decided to make sure they don't try some sneak attack, with the Klingon side having a similar idea, and the only reason they even worked together is because war is the only thing they knew it was working (especially with the Klingons loving war a bit too much). And the dark elements in the JJ films were a bad joke that I'm not even gonna discuss.

I ask you this. What villain do you want? Do go the lazy route of "I don't write the show", you do nothing but come on here and complain.

Why should this be my problem though? Last time I checked, Paramount is the one holding the IP, they're the ones wasting 8-10 million dollars per episode, they're the ones deciding to hire like 60 producers per season, they have the entire Star Trek IP at their disposal, they have access to the best CGI companies out there, they seem to be able to throw around millions of dollars on creating new shows, they can bring in almost any actor they choose, they can decide how to promote their show the best. They have everything they need at their disposal. And yet, the quality of the show varies between awful, unintentional hilarious or cringe, the writing feels like it never left the first draft of the script, the editing is godawful, camera work is a joke (they do overhead cameras in blockbusters, let's do that too) and the sets are often very cheap looking.

If the NuTrek series had a lower budget, and didn't even bother to pretend like they're doing the greatest show ever, that breaks new ground, and everything about it is amazing I would have treated it less harsh, but as it is I am not going to let it pass.

If the studio claims that you're making the greatest show ever and they claim that everything about it is great and you spend lots of money to advertise it as the best thing ever, then OWN UP TO IT! Don't pretend to make something good then call out the people who dislike it "they don't get it" or "they're hateful" or "it's not for you", because all that says is that you (the producers) have nothing besides big words. If they claim this is the best product ever, I'm going to treat it as if it was. And if it's not, I'm not gonna lie and pretend that it is. Because in that case I'm just lying to myself first and foremost. Why shouldn't I complain if something doesn't live up to its hype when they told me it will?

Outside of bringing back the Andromedians from that one TOS episode, you're either treading old ground or having to create something that can threaten the Federation out of whole cloth when most of the galaxy is already known.

The Federation or the entire galaxy being threatened AGAIN for the Nth fucking time? There are other ways to write antagonists that doesn't require a universe-scale threat. You can always go for a seemingly extinct enemy that returned. Or some former Federation member that went rogue. Or someone found an alternative FTL tech and uses that to bring former Federation members to their own little empire and plans either to conquer the Federation by turning its members against the leadership or just become a regional power that competes with the Federation, but not in a morally bankrupt way. Or someone finally cracked the Changelings' ability to shapeshift and for some reason decided to give everyone that ability (reasons could be "with shapeshifting anyone can do almost anything and we'll all be happy" or "intelligent life needs a massive upgrade anyway" or something like that), but since many individuals don't have the moral compass to use it for good, they'll abuse it, and this leads to conflicts between Federation members, what to do with that ability, as well as conflicts regarding privacy and security. Or someone finds a moon made entirely of latinum, and everyone scrambles to destroy it, since if latinum becomes worthless, then the only other currency available would be dilithium (dilithium was used as currency in both oldTrek and Discovery) and with the Federation controlling the only seemingly available source of dilithium, they worry that the Federation will basically now be able to do control the economy on other planets, and this presents a dilemma, as it's either let the aliens destroy the latinum moon and thus prevent the Federation from having near-monopoly on the most valuable currencies out there or stop them and thus allow latinum to become worthless but then the Federation becomes a near-monopoly on any valuable currency. Or some other extra-galactic species arrives in our Galaxy curious as to why the Galactic Barrier exists and what is it supposed to contain, only to learn that it's harmful to them and it's a race against the clock to send them back home before they die for good. Or you can go even smaller scale and have the nebula with the dilithium planet become much harder to mine and the Federation has to find safer ways to mine the planet, while other species decide to use expendable workers to mine the planet instead, against the wishes of the Federation, and this leads to a conflict, if you really must do a green aesop.

I came up with these ideas in like 30 minutes, surely others can come up with better ones. So it's not hard to come up with a new threat... BUT DO IT PROPER! Don't just ripoff some other famous work(s), add some cheap drama, cheap CGI, have Burnham solve the problem or at least be crucial in solving the problem, and then at the end the enemy is either defeated via some stupid plot contrivance or it was never actually evil just misunderstood.

Even when they did create a new legitimate threat, you still did nothing but complain.

Oh you mean that lazy Heptapod/Ringbuilders ripoff? Who only show up at the end of the season and weren't even a threat in the first place, they were just misinformed? And what was the reason they had that stupid field in the first place? To isolate themselves from what exactly? From asteroids? What, they don't have planetary forcefields? Cause they never explain that, all I got was some lazy anti-isolationist aesop. That sounds like well written antagonists?

[Al-1701]

Which makes me think even if they did use the ideas you suggested, or something else, you would still come on here, complaining. Why are you even a Star Trek fan? It's not like borrowing from other works, contrived plots and solutions, nonsensical aliens, and political commentary are recent developments in this franchise.

[CharlesPhipps]

I mean, the entirety of the argument is they're sick of big spectacle arc stories and previously told Star Trek stories.

Which...doesn't leave a lot of room left.

It's also exactly the opposite of what Patrick Stewart wanted from the show he was producer of: which was socially relevant stories about the current problems he saw in Britain and America.

[Mabus]

Which makes me think even if they did use the ideas you suggested, or something else, you would still come on here, complaining. Why are you even a Star Trek fan? It's not like borrowing from other works, contrived plots and solutions, nonsensical aliens, and political commentary are recent developments in this franchise.

Is that what you understood from what I said? That I just complain about everything just because? I complain about the quality of the show because they keep repeating the exact same mistakes, bad writing, poor characterization and lazy storytelling as they did in the past. And when they try something new, they seem to be incapable of doing anything but a lazy ripoff. Also, NuTrek is not serialized like OldTrek (maybe Strange New Worlds will be different, I hope), it's even more serialized than DS9, meaning that every single mistake or bad decision has a direct effect on future episodes, while in old Trek you can ignore bad episodes like "The Outrageous Okona" or "The Royale" because there's always "Contagion" or "Q Who" to wash out the bad taste.

And again, the people in charge on the NuTrek are Hollywood writers and producers with 10-20 years of experience, so they should know that they're doing, but the fact that they can't produce better episodes than most TNG rookie writers, it should be a sign that the current writing staff is way over their head, not qualified for the series and should be replaced by other more talented people, who actually love and understand sci-fi. Who? I don't know, is there no one in Hollywood that knows how to write proper scifi, cause I'm pretty sure there are many eager to take their place. But instead of pulling an ENT S4, as in removing the old guard (Berman and Braga) and bringing in someone who knows how to write (Coto), Paramount instead decided to extend Kurtzman's contract by a few more years, and double down on how great NuTrek is. Even freakin' Warner Bros eventually grew a pair and replaced Snyder from DCEU (and as seen with the new Batman film, this was the right choice), because they too realized that he was no Kevin Feige and nearly killed off the DCEU with the second film in the franchise. Wow, it's almost as if you replace incompetent people from leadership with more competent people you start to see improvements! Who could have guessed? Meanwhile, the uber-genius Alex Kurtzman managed to almost single-handed kill off the Dark Universe from the first film in the cinematic universe! Surely that's the guy we need for the next decade to handle our franchise!

And for the record I'm not that much of a Trekkie as others, but I did grow up watching TNG, so it's still a part of my childhood. Seeing the current shows turning Trek into nothing but a soulless husk does break my heart a bit. But at the same time, there are moments of unintentional comedy that keep me entertained, and I find a bit of entertainment in laughing at how bad the writing and cinematography is. Reminds me of Another Life, that too had such an atrocious level of writing and storytelling, that it became hilarious to watch.

[Frustration]

Again, real totalitarian regimes aren't all that interested in nuance. It was also just meant to be a hellhole for our heroes to escape from and fix.

Which is one of the reasons why it's so stupid - the world must be as obviously horrible and evil as possible so that no time is spent wondering whether the timeline should be altered. It's something that happens because of realworld bad writing, rather than something plausible within the fiction.

[Al-1701]

And I still come to the same conclusion. You have this expectation of the new Star Trek series that the franchise has never lived up to, and complain they don't live up to them. And who would replace Kutzman and the people they have right now, and what would these new people summoned from the cornfield do differently?

Again, real totalitarian regimes aren't all that interested in nuance. It was also just meant to be a hellhole for our heroes to escape from and fix.

Which is one of the reasons why it's so stupid - the world must be as obviously horrible and evil as possible so that no time is spent wondering whether the timeline should be altered. It's something that happens because of realworld bad writing, rather than something plausible within the fiction.

*Looks over to Russia* Yeah. Totally not plausible at all.

[CharlesPhipps]

Which is one of the reasons why it's so stupid - the world must be as obviously horrible and evil as possible so that no time is spent wondering whether the timeline should be altered. It's something that happens because of realworld bad writing, rather than something plausible within the fiction.

But if it wasn't horrible....why would you want to change it?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

New opening theme rendition is a banger!

This last episode was okay. I'm lucky I only set my rowing session for 6 miles because I'm used to 50+ minute episodes. I finished right before the scene where Q's losing his 1%er magic.

[Mabus]

Episode 5:

-Tallinn? Really? That's the name you gave to your alien guardian? What's next? Bucharest? Moscow? Jakarta? Detroit?
-So you can't tell me that the Borg Queen didn't see porn when she connected to the Internet. MajorGrin will have a filed day with that scene.
-And God damn, they have a freaking Borg Queen on board, who already hooked in the ship's systems, and the only security they add to prevent her from accessing stuff she shouldn't is voice recognition? Picard knew that Data could easily fool that system, so clearly the Borg could do that too, yet no one thought of maybe adding another level of biometric security?
-Apart from yet another pointless bickering scene between Raffi and Seven which will lead to nothing, there's no way Homeland Security won't be investigating that incident with all their manpower. And there's no way they didn't already alter the timeline with that incident, especially with releasing those illegals. Who knows, maybe 1 or 2 were actual criminals that had to be deported, and now they fucked up everything. Unless, of course, the entire season arc is one pre-destined paradox somehow. Also, as I predicted, the Rios subplot literally went nowhere, for now they even forgot about that doctor. It only exists to beat you over the head with the message "ICE IS EVIL!". What a waste of time.
-Gary Seven! TOS Reference! Weee! Wait, shouldn't the Capital of Estonia recognize that name, she barely blinks at it. Sure, maybe they're all compartmentalized, but still, she should know something.
-Well, gee, no wonder your daughter is sick, you forgot to sterilize the needle! Twice!
-What's with the French cop not bothered by English speakers? Do NuTrek writers know that France and UK aren't the same country just because they're close?
-Wait, why does Soong have shielding technology? I get that the timeline in Trek is slightly different than our world, but shielding tech? In 2024? When Malcolm introduced the tech in 2150s, it was supposed to be a big deal. 130 years prior it already exists somehow? Maybe they just block sunlight somehow (not sure why, but whatever), but it's a huge leap already.
-"Air gapping. It's primitive, but effective" Ahahahahahahahaha, you don't get to say that! Not after you forgot to isolate the Borg Queen from the ship's systems or add more security besides voice recognition, which could be defeated by an android. That line there proves just how dumb computer security in Trek really is. And by "dumb" I mean almost none, they don't even have basic computer security! If "Contagion" was peak dumb computer security, this is a whole new level. Sure, as Tuvok shown in VOY, a tricorder could easily connect to any modern PC, but that's because tricorders are much more advanced than modern tech, and I assume that shielding against tricorders is something that should be possible, since they have been fooled in the past.

So, let's sum up. There are at least two major timeline divergences at play here: Renee Picard's Europa flight and Adam Soong's genetic experiments. I'm getting the feeling that in the original timeline, that microorganism from Io was brought back to Earth and maybe Soong will experiment on it illegally, which allowed him to cure his daughter? Or solve global warming? Human arrogance? Since if the timeline is changed, and Renee doesn't convince the captain of the mission to go to Io and collect that organism because she's not in the mission, then how would the lack of Io microorganism have a negative effect on Earth?