excalibur wrote: ↑Mon Apr 06, 2020 2:05 amAnd why is he an "acting" captain at the end? Why not a regular captain? or an Admiral?
Acting captain isn't a sub rank like junior lieutenant is to lieutenant. Anybody that is commanding a ship is referred to as captain regardless of Starfleet rank.
Actually, the crew will refer to the commanding officer of the ship as "captain", the CO will still state his or her rank when addressing others. We've seen this before.
If you say so.
Anyways looks like he was captain for upto 17-18 years. Not too bad.
It's a little late for it now I know, but I am working on a review of season one as a whole atm. It's late because it took me time to fully review the last episode (if anyone's interested the url is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anCcuRdT3eg and contains all my analysis on the conclusion; worked out to be 40 minutes long!). The post-Nemesis Star Trek universe must be one of the most enticing opportunities in fiction for whoever got to work on it but the level of potentiality is perhaps part of the problem; whatever you do has so much to draw on, but also has to be accessible for casual viewers. Perhaps it's tough to have Star Trek in a purer form now. The in-universe politics have taken over, and with all four quadrants now quite detailed, the chances of having a ship out there exploring strange new worlds ever again are low.
With that in mind, there is logic to doing a serialised story the way they did, and I do appreciate some of the impulse. Picard and Data were the main characters of TNG by far, and this was a Picard and Data show mixed with Alpha Quadrant politics and sprinkled with various familiar things. The big issue is that the story wasn't remotely tight enough; they had one big opportunity to get this right as someone else remarked quoting Chuck, and they just had a mess of ideas that couldn't make a coherent narrative. As such there are multiple inconsistencies, stupendous coincidences and then not really a conclusion so much as nothing happening and trying to pass that off as a twist in itself. What's more, with how slow it was in developing, it's hard to imagine casual viewers would have found it that compelling, while Trek fans such as myself were frustrated instead. In the old days of Star Trek, if you got a dud episode a new one would be along the next week, every week for half a year, and there was always something new and the occasional gem even in the shows' poorer stretches. Picard though was a 10 episode dud, the only 10 episodes we'll get this year and so our first return to proper Star Trek in 15 years was wasted. There won't be many more opportunities to do this right.
-Jonathan from Headhunters Media
Star Trek Picard 1x10 Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 Review & Analysis video: https://youtu.be/anCcuRdT3eg
Full Picard review playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZZl1sq6hElGp0YRsGI8BitpUI1GbE35j
Lets not quite say that, Jonathan. The number of stars in the Milky Way is 250,000,000,000 give or take a hundred billion, by my quick check of the latest estimate. If only 10% of those have planets, and if 1% of those with planets have life (and there's a lot of life in Star Trek's universe!) then we're still looking at a solid 250 million planets with life on them. And we know Star Trek life is extraordinarily abundant. We've had multiple cases of planets where several sentient species arose at once, and cases where multiple planets in the same system had intelligent life.
In short, if we've seen 100,000 species, that's still not even a fraction of a fraction of what could be in the Milky Way. Voyager didn't so much explore the Delta quadrant as go on a sightseeing jaunt. It's like taking a three week bus tour of America and thinking you've seen it all. And other quadrants (except Alpha) are probably similar levels of explored. There could be a borg out there that controls one billion suns, and they just haven't bumped into the Federation yet, because 1 billion suns isn't actually that many in the grand scheme of things. Imagine how many places the Enterprise visited. 5,000? 7,000? Lets make it an even 1,000 per season, and we only saw the highlight reel of their 1,000 systems explored every season. 250,000,000,000. You could make a couple seasons. Even if they've had 100 enterprises exploring for 100 years doing 1,000 systems a year they still wouldn't have explored ONE PERCENT of the galaxy.
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I suppose they've made the galaxy feel smaller than it should by introducing the quadrants. I don't know if any are actually approaching canonicity, but we've all seen the maps showing the Alpha coloured in a mix of blue and red, the green Romulan part stretching into the Beta. The Gamma is monolithically 'Dominion' in our minds perhaps reasonably as they were powerful enough that just with the ships and resources they'd got in before the minefield to give all the major AQ powers together a run for their money, and so their holdings on the other side must be vast. Credit should perhaps go to Voyager then for showing us a new range of peoples every week, it certainly made it feel expansive, even with the implication of a vast Borg territory.
I suppose the thing is that while there are surely lots of little planets and phenomena that can be checked out, it doesn't feel like there could be anything big and major left in our galaxy or it would have come up already. The Breen were the last big potentially game-changing power introduced; there are potentially lots of things out there, but anything big enough and you'd wonder why they haven't been known to have given trouble to people we've heard of already.
-Jonathan from Headhunters Media
Star Trek Picard 1x10 Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2 Review & Analysis video: https://youtu.be/anCcuRdT3eg
Full Picard review playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZZl1sq6hElGp0YRsGI8BitpUI1GbE35j
Ok, halfway through the show now, and it's gotten worse in my opinion. Waaay too much time spent picking up new crewmembers one at a time while moving the story forward at a snail's pace. Most of the plot's development has all been revealing what's in the past.
What I really disliked was the stream of torture and murder in episode 5. The darkness really comes across like try-hard edgelord stuff. You remember that semi-regular character from Voyager, Icheb? Well, enjoy a graphic scene of his eye being slowly pulled out of his socket! I don't really have qualms with violence, I can have fun with Rambo and John Wick, but this was totally unnecessary and disrespectful toward its audience. Protagonists murdering people was apparently the theme of the episode. I don't insist that the heroes be perfect, but this is a serious overcorrection.
So, my judgment through 5 is vile and boring, which is not a great combo.
I see Picard as problematic, but overall entertaining and had that Star Trek feel in the end. I hoping, now that they got the dark and edgy itch scratched, they can go into the 25th century as a brighter note. Though, I think Picard and his band of merry men will continue to go where angels fear to tread. Even if the Federation has its head on straight again, there is plenty of mischief to be had in the galaxy.
As for the "acting" captain thing: Riker is retired. He was made an acting captain so he could take command for a single mission without needing to completely re-up for a full tour.
Something that I had been thinking about is they missed an opportunity with the ancient synthes. They could have tied them into into the race that gave V'Ger it's ship. I mean, a civilization of machines that had been so for so long they had forgotten organic life had originally created them.
Anyway, I liked Soji being put in a similar position Kirk was in the climax of "The Arena" in position to destroy a perceived enemy, but ultimately choosing "I will not kill today". That was perhaps the most Star Trek moment of the entire series.
ChiggyvonRichthofen wrote: ↑Thu Apr 09, 2020 7:25 pm
What I really disliked was the stream of torture and murder in episode 5. The darkness really comes across like try-hard edgelord stuff. You remember that semi-regular character from Voyager, Icheb? Well, enjoy a graphic scene of his eye being slowly pulled out of his socket! I don't really have qualms with violence, I can have fun with Rambo and John Wick, but this was totally unnecessary and disrespectful toward its audience. Protagonists murdering people was apparently the theme of the episode. I don't insist that the heroes be perfect, but this is a serious overcorrection.
Picked this up yesterday due to being stuck in on a bank holiday weekend - agree with that view. It all felt rather cruel and unnecessary to the plot too (haven't got further in yet). If it's going to go down the "pick past names to kill off" line then no thanks. Whilst no-one ever dies other than cast member just introduced for it lowers any sesne of risk and suspense "who's going to die next?" just makes it depressing and routine (and I think there's at least one more).
And finished it (that was a bit of a binge-watch). I'm not going to go into depth with anything but it was OK, I'd like to see more (and I do like badass Seven). Certainly has its flaws but nothing that can't be built on and improved (pick up the pacing - and I normally complain about things being too hectic - and stop bringing back old characters just to kill them!) Tighten up the plot if it's going to be another season-long plot (although if you're redoing Mass Effect don't do ME3 for heaven's sake!) and it'll be something to look forward to.
BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 3:07 pm
How does everyone feel about the ship interior? I'm personally indifferent to it, though I liked the holograms and wish there was more involving them.
Gotta say I don't care for it. I had to look up the name of the ship (La Sirena) and I probably couldn't recall its exterior two minutes after looking at it.
What I really don't get is the bridge. The stark metallic look is boring but ok, but why is the bridge so huge? It's not like there's a bunch of stations (it can apparently be run by one guy) or equipment, it's just big empty spaces. I guess it'd be one thing if this was supposed to be a cheap freighter with bare-bones design, without a full crew complement or privacy being prioritized. But we're shown that the ship can handle itself just fine, and the people on board have private meetings all the time, so I don't get the purpose in utility or aesthetic.
