#503937
The sufferings of a Star Trek fan - An unbridled rage against the mess that is Star Trek: Picard
For 18 long years fans had to wait for a Star Trek show that plays post Nemesis and draws from the enormous character pool of the TNG era.
After an unwanted prequel (Enterprise), a mostly hated action-reboot (The Kelvin timeline) and the colossal clusterfuck that is the Discovery abomination one had to at least be apprehensive about Picard (given that as with Discovery, franchise-killer Alex Kurtzman had his untalented hands at the wheel).
However I have to admitt that I was incredibly hyped by the prospect of a sequel placed in the post-TNG era.
I love TNG and DS9! To me those two shows are the epitome of Star Trek. I grew up on those shows and I know most of their episodes in and out.
Jean-Luc Picard is one of my greatest childhood heroes!
Star Trek: Picard however not only manages to completely destroy the character Picard but also to throw the complete Star Trek universe into the dumpster.
The once utopian world view of the federation and starfleet, whose most important goals have always been to explore, seek out new life and new civilizations, understand new cultures, build bridges and self improvement is pushed aside to be replaced by a dark, bloody, hateful dystopia.
Gone are the times of exploration and building bridges. Instead they have retreated from the rest of the galaxy and represent xenophobic views.
And all of that because of a terror attack on Mars by mass produced androids, 14 years before the main story sets in.
They want to feed us a narrative in which the Federation, which in the last 30 - 40 years overcame the borg invasion, terrorist attacks by the Founders and the Breen and the wars against the Klingons and the Dominion (which claimed billions of lives), betrays all of it's principles because of a nebulous act of terrorism by androids.
RIDICULOUS!
Parallel to that story Romulus suffered the fate known from Star Trek 2009 and STO. The Hobus supernova caused the destructin of the planets Romulus and Remus. (Why the vast Romulan star empire wasn't able to overcome that destruction is beyond me but Star Trek always tackled important social issues so the writers obviously felt it neccessary to hit us over the head with a refugee crisis which however in context with the story makes absolutely no sense.)
Now the Federation has to deal with hordes of romulan refugees which they themselves left to their fate. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? The United Federation of Planets, the most humantitarian institution of the alpha quadrant refuses to help with the rescue of billions? SHEER FUCKING HUBRIS!
And this is only a small precursor to the violations this once so great franchise had to endure.
Not even Q could've come up with such a disastrous reality to fool his favorite human Picard. (A part of me still hopes that all of this is just a nightmare which will end with a snap of Q's finger.)
The extremely far fetched main storyline is about an aging, disillusioned Picard who, because of the atrocious decisions of the federation/starfleet has retired to his Château on earth
In spite of his achievements, which go beyond anything any starfleet officer has ever accomplished, he is all of a sudden a universally (rather pointlessly) hated man.
One day a mysterious, young woman shows up on his doorstep on account of visions. She is being pursued by an ominous group and asks Picard to help her.
It turns out that the girl is Data's... wait for it... "clone" (yes, that's how bad the story is)! But even with Picard's help, she eventually gets killed.
However it turns out that she has a "twin sister".
Because he seemingly never overcame the loss of Data and also doesn't have anything better to do, good Jean-Luc goes on a quest to find the sister and save her from any harm that might come to her. (Which hopefully includes watching this show.)
To accomplish that goal however he doesn't call upon his loyal crew from back in the day but a cheap Guardians of the Galaxy rip off which consists of a bunch of completely unlikable sociopaths.
It's mind boggling how shows this day in age can have such enormous budgets that they can audio-visually compete with blockbuster movies and yet the people behind them have no clue what to do with them.
Instead of exploring strange new worlds or contemplating questions of philosophy or ethics, they throw everything over board that made Star Trek what it is. (Or what it was, rather) And for what?
For the benefit of a pointless shameful mystery story á la Lost which is on top garnished with a lot of action, death and genocide, dumb dialogues and placative political messages.
There is only good and bad, they shoot their way out of situations on general principle and the decisions of the characters at no point make any sense!
On top of that there is drinking, smoking and cursing that makes you want to throw up.
Logic and mind are replaced by faith and fatalism which degrades Star Trek from Science-Fiction to just Fiction.
Beloved characters get ruined. Especially the great Jean-Luc Picard who gets depicted as sort of a 90 year old half-wit who blindly throws himself into the heart of action without rational thought.
There is not the slightest comparison to the epitome of authority that Jean-Luc Picard once stood for. He has nothing to do with the legend that TNG once turned him into.
To me this is the worst blow that this god aweful show has dealt to the franchise.
The new characters in the show are almost all unlikable and completely forgettable. Even at the end of the season I can hardly remember any of their names.
The "strong" women in the show are despisable characters who keep talking down on Picard even though they have nothing to show for.
The annoying Dr. Jurati, who tests the audience's patience with her dumb (space is boring) gibberish, sadly gets reinforced by the completely broken Raffi who, like every other character in this damn show, has a completely unfounded grudge against Picard.
This dumb junkie, who dares to call Picard casually J.L. (J.L.!!!) believes all the bad luck that has befallen her comes from Picards decision to leave starfleet. This is by far the worst character in the history of Star Trek! (Even Wesley Crusher was a beacon of sympathy compared to her!)
Data's daughter/clone boringly fades into the background along with all the other pointless characters but obviously she's the main part of a romulan prophecy.
Does anybody remember the good female characters? Tasha Yar, Kira Nerys and Jadzia Dax who were just badass. Even Janeway with all her flaws was worlds better than the female representations we get served here.
Or Seven of Nine... good old Seven... another character that gets dragged through the gutter here.
As a guns blazing, wrecked archangel she roams romulan space as a space-ranger (?)
Of course the question comes to mind why Seven of all people cares about the fate of the romulans. By her explanation somebody had to do it because Picard couldn't. Which obviously doesn't make sense because Picard
was the one starfleet officer who tried to save the romulans but whatever... The main thing is she's out for revenge because she feels responsible for Icheb's death.
Which obviously has to be depicted very graphically. Icheb, one of the beloved characters from Voyager gets torn apart, screaming in pain and in the end Seven gets to end his suffering.
Yes, exactly what I hoped for in a new Star Trek show... It is simply disgusting!
And it doesn't get any better with the male characters as well.
The sword swinging samurai romulan (dubbed Romulegolas) is an unworldly, naive brat who grew up with romulan warrior nuns and without further ado decapitates a former romulan senator after Picard himself provoked the confrontation.
And of course he's mad at Picard because he feels betrayed and left behind by him. Because it turns out 14 years ago Picard overcame his child-phobia and became sort of a father figure for Romulegolas. Urgh...
The most likable character I'd say is Captain Star Lord but even he (like everybody in this damn universe) gave up.
Everything is dark, broken and hopeless. Within just a few years everything went down the gutter. Even though just a few years before everybody furiously fought for everything the federation stood for.
Weak, Mr. Kurtzman. Very, very weak.
Nothing looks like Star Trek or feels like it. Even though they keep trying to appeal to your nostalgic feelings with tiresome (and sometimes blatantly wrong) references to things, events or characters.
Mainly though they try to appeal to the broadest possible audience.
Instead of giving the fans what they want, they're serving us weak sauce that makes me rather eat dead Gagh.
The name Star Trek is still on the building but the interior is rotten to the core.
In closing:
The show looks amazing, for sure. But what does that matter when there's no substance to it?
The score is ok. It mostly just rolls along until there's a nice hint to a classic Star Trek theme.
The performance of the actors though is mostly meh. Astonishingly Patrick Stewart is really bad in some parts. Especially the ones where he plays the fool. So sad.
I could go on and on and on about the little things that bug me about this show, there's breaches of logic, lore and canon in almost every episode.
It's truly a shame what Star Trek has become.
There are countless fan-productions that are better than everything we got served under the official banner for the past 11 years.
In my opinion Star Trek: Picard deserves the golden Picard-Face-Palm-Award!
For 18 long years fans had to wait for a Star Trek show that plays post Nemesis and draws from the enormous character pool of the TNG era.
After an unwanted prequel (Enterprise), a mostly hated action-reboot (The Kelvin timeline) and the colossal clusterfuck that is the Discovery abomination one had to at least be apprehensive about Picard (given that as with Discovery, franchise-killer Alex Kurtzman had his untalented hands at the wheel).
However I have to admitt that I was incredibly hyped by the prospect of a sequel placed in the post-TNG era.
I love TNG and DS9! To me those two shows are the epitome of Star Trek. I grew up on those shows and I know most of their episodes in and out.
Jean-Luc Picard is one of my greatest childhood heroes!
Star Trek: Picard however not only manages to completely destroy the character Picard but also to throw the complete Star Trek universe into the dumpster.
The once utopian world view of the federation and starfleet, whose most important goals have always been to explore, seek out new life and new civilizations, understand new cultures, build bridges and self improvement is pushed aside to be replaced by a dark, bloody, hateful dystopia.
Gone are the times of exploration and building bridges. Instead they have retreated from the rest of the galaxy and represent xenophobic views.
And all of that because of a terror attack on Mars by mass produced androids, 14 years before the main story sets in.
They want to feed us a narrative in which the Federation, which in the last 30 - 40 years overcame the borg invasion, terrorist attacks by the Founders and the Breen and the wars against the Klingons and the Dominion (which claimed billions of lives), betrays all of it's principles because of a nebulous act of terrorism by androids.
RIDICULOUS!
Parallel to that story Romulus suffered the fate known from Star Trek 2009 and STO. The Hobus supernova caused the destructin of the planets Romulus and Remus. (Why the vast Romulan star empire wasn't able to overcome that destruction is beyond me but Star Trek always tackled important social issues so the writers obviously felt it neccessary to hit us over the head with a refugee crisis which however in context with the story makes absolutely no sense.)
Now the Federation has to deal with hordes of romulan refugees which they themselves left to their fate. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? The United Federation of Planets, the most humantitarian institution of the alpha quadrant refuses to help with the rescue of billions? SHEER FUCKING HUBRIS!
And this is only a small precursor to the violations this once so great franchise had to endure.
Not even Q could've come up with such a disastrous reality to fool his favorite human Picard. (A part of me still hopes that all of this is just a nightmare which will end with a snap of Q's finger.)
The extremely far fetched main storyline is about an aging, disillusioned Picard who, because of the atrocious decisions of the federation/starfleet has retired to his Château on earth
In spite of his achievements, which go beyond anything any starfleet officer has ever accomplished, he is all of a sudden a universally (rather pointlessly) hated man.
One day a mysterious, young woman shows up on his doorstep on account of visions. She is being pursued by an ominous group and asks Picard to help her.
It turns out that the girl is Data's... wait for it... "clone" (yes, that's how bad the story is)! But even with Picard's help, she eventually gets killed.
However it turns out that she has a "twin sister".
Because he seemingly never overcame the loss of Data and also doesn't have anything better to do, good Jean-Luc goes on a quest to find the sister and save her from any harm that might come to her. (Which hopefully includes watching this show.)
To accomplish that goal however he doesn't call upon his loyal crew from back in the day but a cheap Guardians of the Galaxy rip off which consists of a bunch of completely unlikable sociopaths.
It's mind boggling how shows this day in age can have such enormous budgets that they can audio-visually compete with blockbuster movies and yet the people behind them have no clue what to do with them.
Instead of exploring strange new worlds or contemplating questions of philosophy or ethics, they throw everything over board that made Star Trek what it is. (Or what it was, rather) And for what?
For the benefit of a pointless shameful mystery story á la Lost which is on top garnished with a lot of action, death and genocide, dumb dialogues and placative political messages.
There is only good and bad, they shoot their way out of situations on general principle and the decisions of the characters at no point make any sense!
On top of that there is drinking, smoking and cursing that makes you want to throw up.
Logic and mind are replaced by faith and fatalism which degrades Star Trek from Science-Fiction to just Fiction.
Beloved characters get ruined. Especially the great Jean-Luc Picard who gets depicted as sort of a 90 year old half-wit who blindly throws himself into the heart of action without rational thought.
There is not the slightest comparison to the epitome of authority that Jean-Luc Picard once stood for. He has nothing to do with the legend that TNG once turned him into.
To me this is the worst blow that this god aweful show has dealt to the franchise.
The new characters in the show are almost all unlikable and completely forgettable. Even at the end of the season I can hardly remember any of their names.
The "strong" women in the show are despisable characters who keep talking down on Picard even though they have nothing to show for.
The annoying Dr. Jurati, who tests the audience's patience with her dumb (space is boring) gibberish, sadly gets reinforced by the completely broken Raffi who, like every other character in this damn show, has a completely unfounded grudge against Picard.
This dumb junkie, who dares to call Picard casually J.L. (J.L.!!!) believes all the bad luck that has befallen her comes from Picards decision to leave starfleet. This is by far the worst character in the history of Star Trek! (Even Wesley Crusher was a beacon of sympathy compared to her!)
Data's daughter/clone boringly fades into the background along with all the other pointless characters but obviously she's the main part of a romulan prophecy.
Does anybody remember the good female characters? Tasha Yar, Kira Nerys and Jadzia Dax who were just badass. Even Janeway with all her flaws was worlds better than the female representations we get served here.
Or Seven of Nine... good old Seven... another character that gets dragged through the gutter here.
As a guns blazing, wrecked archangel she roams romulan space as a space-ranger (?)
Of course the question comes to mind why Seven of all people cares about the fate of the romulans. By her explanation somebody had to do it because Picard couldn't. Which obviously doesn't make sense because Picard
was the one starfleet officer who tried to save the romulans but whatever... The main thing is she's out for revenge because she feels responsible for Icheb's death.
Which obviously has to be depicted very graphically. Icheb, one of the beloved characters from Voyager gets torn apart, screaming in pain and in the end Seven gets to end his suffering.
Yes, exactly what I hoped for in a new Star Trek show... It is simply disgusting!
And it doesn't get any better with the male characters as well.
The sword swinging samurai romulan (dubbed Romulegolas) is an unworldly, naive brat who grew up with romulan warrior nuns and without further ado decapitates a former romulan senator after Picard himself provoked the confrontation.
And of course he's mad at Picard because he feels betrayed and left behind by him. Because it turns out 14 years ago Picard overcame his child-phobia and became sort of a father figure for Romulegolas. Urgh...
The most likable character I'd say is Captain Star Lord but even he (like everybody in this damn universe) gave up.
Everything is dark, broken and hopeless. Within just a few years everything went down the gutter. Even though just a few years before everybody furiously fought for everything the federation stood for.
Weak, Mr. Kurtzman. Very, very weak.
Nothing looks like Star Trek or feels like it. Even though they keep trying to appeal to your nostalgic feelings with tiresome (and sometimes blatantly wrong) references to things, events or characters.
Mainly though they try to appeal to the broadest possible audience.
Instead of giving the fans what they want, they're serving us weak sauce that makes me rather eat dead Gagh.
The name Star Trek is still on the building but the interior is rotten to the core.
In closing:
The show looks amazing, for sure. But what does that matter when there's no substance to it?
The score is ok. It mostly just rolls along until there's a nice hint to a classic Star Trek theme.
The performance of the actors though is mostly meh. Astonishingly Patrick Stewart is really bad in some parts. Especially the ones where he plays the fool. So sad.
I could go on and on and on about the little things that bug me about this show, there's breaches of logic, lore and canon in almost every episode.
It's truly a shame what Star Trek has become.
There are countless fan-productions that are better than everything we got served under the official banner for the past 11 years.
In my opinion Star Trek: Picard deserves the golden Picard-Face-Palm-Award!
Last edited by monty42 on Fri Mar 20, 2020 8:56 pm, edited 3 times in total.
HARD TIMES CREATE HARD MEN
HARD MEN CREATE GOOD TIMES
GOOD TIMES CREATE WEAK MEN
WEAK MEN CREATE HARD TIMES
HARD MEN CREATE GOOD TIMES
GOOD TIMES CREATE WEAK MEN
WEAK MEN CREATE HARD TIMES
![[KCA]](https://www.trekcc.org/forum/images/smilies/icon_alliance.png "Klingon/Cardassian Alliance"){kind=icon}
- By Kaiser
- By The Ninja Scot
- By phaserihardlyknowher
- By Psionic Hobo