Star Trek Picard and Trek Taking on Modern Politics

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well......you know.....Borg technology WAS built by emotionless cyborgs Just saying.....

That's never been proven.

[Jonathan]

Is this thread just about the political aspects of the show or are we relatively free to riff on whatever? I was thinking of starting a Star Trek: Picard general as I've just seen this and another thread kind of covering particular things, but then is it worth another whole thread anyway. I was just wondering if anyone has a handle on what was going on with the ending of The Impossible Box, why they don't just beam back to Rios' ship rather than go to the Borg Queen's chamber to space hop? Presumably it can't be because there's some kind of jamming involved, because after all Elnor beamed over some time after Picard, and unless the Queen's cell was conveniently near to where Picard first beamed aboard and the Romulans left that area accessible to external transport even after Picard arrived, then Elnor must have been able to track Picard's location and beam near to him.

I have been making my own YouTube videos reviewing and analysing Star Trek: Picard and talking about tangential nerdy Trek stuff (I just uploaded the one for episode 6 a few hours ago – https://youtu.be/9b11xuACEj8 – which includes the aforementioned issue and others), though I would guess making a thread for my own video reviews on another guy's forum dedicated principally to his video reviews would be going a bit too far. I make a few gags along the way, but my joke rate isn't up to Chuck's either!

[Al-1701]

You have to remember Best of Both Worlds and even Voyager were decades ago so the cube could still be relatively old and yet new to us.

And that's what I'm talking about. In TNG, they did whatever they could with what they had. In First Contact and Voyager, when they had the technology and budget, they seemed more interested in making Borg tech seem horrific and grotesque with the green lighting, random stuff, the heat and humidity being so high. In Picard, the cube feels cold, sterile, and utilitarian.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I always figured they just used updated makeup for the borg as a standard set by the movies that had higher budgets. The sets didn't look any impressive, but the borg looked more detailed. Perhaps they did spend more on makeup.

[Mecha82]

To be fair IMO cold, sterile and utilitarian does fit Borg really well.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Awesome Neelix is cooking at Riker's house.

[Mecha82]

That hedgehog is still alive? From all characters to choose from why did they bring back Neelix.

[MrL1992]

Kestra might be one the most likable child characters I've seen on Star Trek. Granted, she doesn't have a ton of competition.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Wow so it feels like a bunch is going to be happening now lol.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I'm sure this thread has gone in a lot of directions beyond the opening question, but a couple generalized thoughts regarding that. This isn't in judgment of Picard itself because I haven't seen it yet.

- Going topical is fine, and to some extent what's expected of Trek. But I'd also say that there's a smart way and a dumb way to go about it. The dumb way is often creating a 1:1 allegory. Better to extract the principle you want to talk about and build a story around that theme.

- TNG in particular can be preachy, and there's been a lot of pushback against the unrealism and naivete of Roddenberry's utopian vision. Not to mention it's incompatibility with drama. My own view of human nature doesn't really agree with Star Trek's view of it, so I do like to see competing points of view from Battlestar Galactica.

- With that said, I do feel like a truly optimistic show would be countercultural at this point. Nu-BSG was great as a counterpoint to Trek and a great show in its own right, but it feels like every sci-fi franchise has adopted the BSG outlook and embraced miserable, depressed, broken characters. I don't have to 100% agree with Trek's outlook myself to believe that it's a point of view that's worth keeping, especially considering the tone of pop culture as a whole. A bright, cheerful sci-fi show would be genuinely refreshing. It would be braver and arguably more "important" to make such a show in 2020 than it was in the already naturally optimistic and hopeful (in the U.S. anyway) 1990s.

Honestly, it was disappointing for me to see Discovery premiere as yet another in a long line of grimdark shows.