DS9. Just do it.
I hate to say it in a thread where people have some optimistic feelings about the new shows, but I personally don’t think new trek is worth engaging with. Especially if you’re not a dyed in the wool super fan.
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Yes, watch DS9. You won’t regret it.
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Okay, Deep Space Nine it is.
There’s one episode of Strange New Worlds that I really didn’t care for. The one where they get caught in a children’s book. The actors are obviously having fun but those performances are like everyone constantly using megaphones to remind you that they’re actors, so don’t even try to get carried away in the storyline and forget that. The captain especially. And in my mind that kind of bleeds into the other episodes.
One episode that I was afraid would descend too far into silliness was the one with the pirates. It did get silly but the Angel character carried it. It was pretty obvious they were going to end up betraying the Enterprise crew one way or another, but the personality shift was still a fun surprise.
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The only star trek show I’ve seen in full is Lower Decks and I don’t recommend it.
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The odd part is that, it inserts Picard’s borg DNA into the person’s body when they re-formed on the transporter pad.
So it adds things? Or it changes how it builds you? That’s the thing that makes me think it is definitely not a machine that just re-builds you, it’s making something using a template and then like “layering” you onto it.
Anyways, none of Picard is worth watching, but S3 is the least worst.
I’d say S2 of Discovery is pretty decent in parts, definitely the best season overall. I don’t enjoy Disco tbh but there were parts of S2 that were fun.
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I can make that consistent with my compression interpretation: if the sender and receiver both have a distinct (but normally identical) copy of the human DNA templates, they could alter only the receiver-side templates.
(The part that doesn’t make sense at this point is that a lot of transporter activity involves only a single unit somehow. But that’s basically just magic in all respects anyways.)
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The end of this trailer will give everyone in this thread a conniption.
I re-itterate I am not a Star Trek Fan and I am so mad and confused right now.
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Yeah we all know he’s from Iowa
He only works in space.
Well, the finale of Picard was essentially two parts:
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A series of delightful character moments between the TNG cast, making you wonder why this wasn’t the entire TV show “Star Trek Picard”
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Theeeeee absolute shlockiest, most braindead Syfy-channel ass horseshit you could possibly imagine.
I think this was certainly the most enjoyable episode of Picard, barring possibly that ep with Riker’s family way back in season 1. I know the answer is probably cost, but I cannot imagine why they did not get this gang together during the first half of season 1 and let them go through this incredibly dipshit Rick Berman-ass adventure together. This cast could’ve saved so, so much of this show, in much the same way the Disco cast saves 99% of Disco.
Looking back on the entirety of Picard, I am still in absolute stunned disbelief at the way this series fell down a staircase during episode 1 and never stopped tumbling, at full speed, all the way up to the final moments of this farce when it gives up and literally turns into Star Wars. I legit cannot believe how bad TV like this can get. Nobody involved in this show, Michael Chabon included, should ever be allowed to touch any creative property ever again.
All that said, the core cast is genuinely delightful to watch, and what good there is to find here comes from these actors just being Olds together. Watching Old Riker and Old Troi giving each other shit, watching Old Geordi tending to his new family, watching Old Worf be both a badass and a clown at the same time, watching Old Beverly actually get something to do for once, it’s great. And Patrick Stewart is still delivers some great performances, at 82!
So, in closing, by far, by far, the worst thing to ever come from Star Trek. A massive embarrassment for a beloved franchise, that is somewhat cushioned as it lands on the floor in its final moments. They have a sequel show coming out about Picard’s son, Jack Crusher that I’m certain will be even worse than this, since they don’t have the TNG cast or Frakes to carry this thing like Atlas upon their shoulders.
Thoughts on "The Last Generation" (Spoilers)
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OKAY THEY FUCKING DO THE ENTIRE RETURN OF THE JEDI DEATH STAR SEQUENCE WITH THE ENTERPRISE D. THEY BLOW UP A BUNCH OF TURRETS ON THE SURFACE OF THE DEATH STAR, THEN FLY INSIDE AND DODGE A BUNCH OF METAL BARS UNTIL THEY BLOW UP THE CORE OF THE BORG SHIP. THIS IS HOW THEY RESOLVE THE MAIN THREAT OF THE SEASON.
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It’s fun to see that the showrunners also do not understand what’s cool about the Enterprise D, at all. They make it into this fast-moving strike craft like the Millennium Falcon, when in TNG it’s like a battlestar-style megacarrier, a stoic city in space. It’s huge and broad and powerful! That’s the cool part! It’s not that it flies really fast shooting phasers in all directions, threading the needle and dropping hundreds of photo torpedoes everywhere!
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Okay the Borg Queen reveals her plan: She says that Picard “left her along and isolated on the edge of the galaxy”, which I don’t remember happening, but could either be from a book/tie-in novel, or is a reference to what Old Janeway did in Endgame. Either way, the borg were left completely impotent after this, and withered away, sucking life from their aging drones, until the Borg Queen picked up the signal (?) from Jack Crusher. She started talking to him in his mind (these were the voices he heard) and then organized this plan with the Changelings at some point that happened off-screen. She then says that the borg shouldn’t assimilate anymore, instead they should “annihilate” (the humans, for revenge) and that their EVOlution now is to like infect the Youngs and “procreate” with them. They don’t explain this but I think this plan is that the mind-controlled Youngs would fuck, have babies, then the babies would be put through the teleporter? To become borg? If so, I don’t see why this wasn’t something they couldn’t already do doing the TNG or Voyager eras.
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The Borg Queen lives on a single giant cube that has a big Death Star energy core, that when blown up by the D, stops the signal to the whole fleet and results in an instant solution to the entire arc of this season.
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Seven of Nine and Raffi have this extremely weird sub-plot where they try to harass the mind-controlled fleet using the Titan and it’s cloaking device. This doesn’t really do a whole lot except sort of distract a few ships, which then turn on the Titan, damage it so bad it loses all its system, then turn back to what they were doing before. Thankfully, then the signal gets shut off and everything is fixed.
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Worf falling asleep in the chair was great.
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I kinda liked Picard/Jack’s talk, mainly for Picard re-framing his time on TNG as him having walls up and slowly letting them down. But then it moves on to what happened in THIS show’s continuity and it of course doesn’t add up or make much sense, character-wise.
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I’ve got mixed feelings about how nobody died. I guess I would find it annoying that they again killed off a great character in the worst, shlockiest way, like in Nemesis. But, without it, none of this has any teeth. I think I’m more happy they didn’t kill off someone over this bullshit than not.
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It is revealed in a ADR voice line by my boi Bester, Walter Koenig (which was well-delivered!), that the current sitting President of the Federation is the SON OF CHECKOV, ANTON CHEKOV, in a bit of nepotism that really feels out of place in Star Trek.
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Anton Chekov seemingly got killed in this ep! His transmission cuts out with a line about how they have to “get to the life pods”
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When are these people ever going to learn that watching an entire fleet of spaceships sit still and shoot at something absolutely sucks shit and they should never do it. Every single season finale of modern Trek has had one of these and it has never been good. The least worst was the Prodigy one because at least there were ships moving around chasing them through the wall of phasers!
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Dorn’s delivery of “Swords are fun” was extremely good.
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Because they killed Shelby for no reason THE USS TITAN WAS RE-CRISTENED AS THE ENTERPRISE-G and they then set up a spin-off for this show starring Jack Crusher, Seven, Raffi (!) and a bunch of random helmsoids that like Disco we’ll never actually get to know. They never say what happened to the Enterprise F we saw one episode ago but I guess it got blown up.
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During the setup for the spinoff, Q is inexplicably back after having “died” in season 2. Jack Crusher asks him if he’s here to put humanity on trial again. He says that “Picard’s trial is over. But YOURS it just beginning!”, implying that [A] these were trials for Picard, not humanity? And [B] Jack has some kind of cosmic density, so again, love to see a good ol’ Chosen One plot in my Star Trek of all places.
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The very notion of ever going back to the Titan aka the Enterprise G makes me want to die. I hate how dark and dull that ship is. And just look at the Enterprise in SNW! It looks amazing! It’s lit up! Everything looks cool! Goddddddd okay that’s all
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so glad i managed to get so pissed off that i gave up halfway through s3 this sounds so dumb
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Wow they really did try to find all the absolute worst things about tv and movies from the last 20 years and do ‘em all in one place with a beloved cast and setting
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Glad Jack got to do a mass murder just like his dad.
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honestly in hindsight, now that the show is over, the sheer number of returning side characters who are unceremoniously murdered is a pretty funny running gag
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I actually can’t think of a returning side character that didn’t eat it during this show.
I am stuck in a lightless bunker in Arkansas this week for work so I’m going to just write up a ton of shit here:
PICARD KILL LIST (Spoilers)
Maddox: Died screaming when his lover, Jurati, shut off the machine that would’ve saved his life. Jurati was apparently put under psychic compulsion to do this by the secret Rom in Starfleet Command, Commodore Oh, despite Oh having no reason to believe that Picard would whisk Jurati away on a space adventure to find Maddox.
Side note here, he apparently created the two mystery box androids in this season, Soji and Dahj, and sent them on a mission to “discover the truth” about the Mars attack by the Federation slave androids. But! He made it so they did not know who they were or that they were androids, for reasons that are never explained.
Icheb: Famously tortured to death by having his eyeball torn out of his skull, and all borg parts peeled from his body, in a gruesome cold open to an episode where Patrick Stewart puts on an eyepatch and does a goofy french accent for yuks.
Hugh: Tortured to death by Narissa, a character the show forgot was that main villain. Hugh was forced to watch his fellow XBs first executed one by one before his eyes, then collectively vented into space, ensuring none of the work he strugged for all this time amounted to anything.
Marta Batanides: Was actually oddly noted to have died by Picard.
Q: Died for reasons that are never explained, which sorta makes it hard to feel anything but confused when he’s giving his last moments to Picard.
Ro: Ultimately forced to suicide bomb her own ship after having it overrun with changelings.
Shelby: Shot twice in the gut by her own bridge crew, confused and shocked. It’s really hard to explain how dumb this looked and how unnecessary it was, but this clip should help:
Sidney Get Assimilated - Star Trek Picard Season 3 Episode 9 - YouTube
Also just want to list the mass-death events that happen during this adventure:
PICARD MASS DEATH EVENTS (Spoilers)
- Mars and the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards: 92,143 dead as the Romulans blow up their own rescue fleet and activate all androids to bomb (?) the planet and wipe out the shipyards.
Cause: The Romulans have an ancient cult that discovered an ancient artifact called the Admonition that drove them to suicide if they ever touched it. They saw visions of synthetics, so they decided to kill all synthetics. As a result, apparently, the Romulans never use AI. The use of Maddox’s synths on Mars made them attack.
In truth, the artifact was meant for artificial minds, and it described an ancient synthetic civilization that could summon a Reaper from Mass Effect will come through a portal and wipe out all organic life. So, the Roms were kind of right! The Reapers get summoned but are then immediately sent away so it’s not a big deal.
The Venting of the XB Borg Cube: 179,000 XBs died when their cube was intentionally opened to the cold void of space.
So there was this odd sub-plot where a borg cube had assimilated a member of the Romulan cult that had seen the visions, and “the weight of their despair” caused the “matrix to collapse,” leading to an inert borg cube. The Romulans they started recovering the borg, now called XBs for Ex-Borg. This project was helmed by Hugh.
Cause: Seven of Nine decided to sneak onto the borg cube, plug herself into the “Queen Chamber” where the queen would typically be, and this caused a bunch of fail-safes to kick in to stop the borg cube from ever re-activating. This killed like… everybody that show has introduced us to up until that point. They later flew this ship into a planet so I don’t actually know why they needed to cube at all.
The Creation and Destruction of the Confederacy Universe: Trillions of lives are brought into being and then snuffed out as a disasterous fascistic timeline is created and then ended.
Cause: Q makes a doomed alternate universe in order to get Picard to deal with the time his mom hung herself.
Changeling Infiltration: Hundreds killed through sabotage of the transporters and through replacement. I’m gonna say 200.
Cause: During the Dominion War, Starfleet let Section 31 perform grisly torture experiments on the changelings in order to make “the perfect weapon” that would be “deployed onto the planets of our enemies”.
Frontier Day Uprising: For the starbase, that’s 15,000 officers and 35,000 civilians. For the fleet, it’s EVERYONE ON EVERY SHIP ABOVE THE AGE OF 25.
So that’s like, there’s 250ish ships here (“The entire fleet”), and each ship has like, roughly, 820 crew members on it (using the Sovereign-class as a baseline), so that’s 205,000 people, which I’ll cut in half, based on the fact that age doesn’t seem to really matter much in the Federation ships we’ve seen before, so let’s say that there are 102,500 over-25 Olds on these ships.
That would put us at 152,500 total killed during this season finale.
92,143 + 179,000 + 200 + [I’m not counting the doomed universe] + 152,500 is…
GRAND TOTAL DEATH COUNT FOR PICARD: 423,843 DEAD DUE TO PICARD MISADVENTURE
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New interview with Patrick Stewart on Picard. Confirms some stuff we’d heard as to Why It’s Like This: Mainly, Stewart just wanted to do a different show, and the network was willing to give him a ton of money if he agreed to make that new show a Star Trek one.
I turned it down at first. And then I thought about the offer and decided I would do it, but I made two conditions. I didn’t want to wear a uniform, and it must not be a series that is fundamentally a sentimental reunion of “The Next Generation.”
And there were some things about “Picard” I was uncomfortable with, when I thought it was nudging its way toward being a reunion show.
I looked forward to those scenes where Picard was not just anxious but actually frightened. Or confused. Or not knowing what to do. I got great satisfaction out of playing those things, because they allowed me to investigate, and release, aspects of Jean-Luc that had really never appeared in “Next Generation.”
There are moments when I look at scenes in “Picard” and think, “Poor guy, [laughing] he looks terrible. He’s having such a bad time.” That wasn’t my intention, but that was what was being communicated. Anxiety, stress, irritation.
Explains the very strange “a broken man full of regrets” character we saw in this show.
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I get the impulse, but it’s tricky to pivot to King Lear from the starting point of “Captain Hornblower in post-scarcity society”
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Leave old men alone
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Late but the only episode worth skipping in DS9 is Profit and Lace. The rest are all at least watchably good. Plus there’s a lot more character development in the monster-of-the-week episodes in DS9 compared to other trek shows, so it’s worth sticking with it.
I personally like to watch 1-2 episodes a day whenever I do a rewatch. It’s a nice pace.
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the episode skipping guides will tell you to skip move along home because they are FILTHY LIARS
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yeah ds9 was the first one star trek show I watched where it was like oh yeah I shouldn’t skip any of this, there are some dire ass tng eps
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