Star Trek: Picard - Season One - CBS All Access - starring Patrick Stewart (1 Viewer)

[Josh Steinberg]

Thanks @joshEH - I am enjoying it in the little chunks that I’m able to get to. It’s wacky and weird and doesn’t fit the canon but it’s entertaining so far in its own right. It’s amusing to see how far Roddenberry goes in some directions freed from the practical constraints of 20th century productions.

 

[joshEH]

This had me fooled also, it wasn't until after the episode, the Ready Room segment that I realized what we were seeing.

You forgot it too.

This wasn't some damned stupid idea to make her look cool vaping.

Raffi is the crew person with addictions.

Spoiler

There is a ton of backstory that Ready Room ep 3 covers where Wil is interviewing Hurd. She fills in the blanks. Raffi pre-Picard (14 years ago and longer) is a person who struggled with addictions. Picard gave her a mission, a focus and straightened her out. Then when he played the resignation card and it backfired, she relapsed. He also never checked on her. That is why she is so pissed at him in ep 3.

Yeah, it seems to me like Raffi's hardship is not due to financial matters as much as her discredited reputation and outcast-status (and drug-use), and that it's as much by choice as anything else.

After all, Vasquez Rocks is a county park and a tourist attraction, yet she was able to build her house right in the middle of its most heavily-trafficked public area, right under the famous cliff. Could a poor person today get away with that? (Having Vasquez Rocks play itself is cute and made me laugh out loud, but it's deeply implausible in this context, given what a landmark it is.)

As for the economics, even in a society where money is no longer needed, there will probably still be an economics of prestige and reputation. Everybody's guaranteed the food, medicine, housing, etc. they need to live comfortably, but how willing people are to give you optional stuff beyond that, or to cooperate with you in an ongoing joint undertaking like running a vineyard or operating a spaceship, could be a function of your reputation and social standing.

Picard's reputation is great enough to survive the setbacks he suffered after the Mars attack and Romulan supernova, but Musiker's was not, and she ended up trashing it still further through her subsequent behavior. So in the reputation-economy, she's much "poorer" than he is.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I hope she doesn’t get crap for smoking weed while Picard is winning awards for making wine.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

I hope she doesn’t get crap for smoking weed while Picard is winning awards for making wine.

Raffi's "Baby Beluga" strain won all the awards at the 2392 High Times awards.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Raffi's "Baby Beluga" strain won all the awards at the 2392 High Times awards.

I nearly fell out of my chair laughing at that. You’ve won the Internet for today.

 

[joshEH]

On a different note...Jesus, Rob:

Such a melodramatic drama-queen now. What the hell happened to this guy, anyways? All the stupid tinfoil-hat CBS conspiracy theories he encourages and marinates in on his Twitter-feed, too...

 

[Nelson Au]

To quote Spock: Specifics, Doctor. Labels do not make arguments.

Mr. Burnett cites 11 years, then he’s referring to the Kelvin era and the works of JJ Abram’s company. So for me, I can see his disappointment with some of the elements in those films. But I don’t understand his dislike of Picard. Maybe because it’s under the guidance of Alex Kurtzman whose from the Bad Robot camp.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

On a different note...Jesus, Rob:

Such a melodramatic drama-queen now. What the hell happened to this guy, anyways? All the stupid tinfoil-hat CBS conspiracy theories he encourages and marinates in on his Twitter-feed, too...

Remember... this is the guy who, along with some other perfectly upstanding and not at all deceitful folks, thought it was totally cool to take millions of dollars from fans in a for-profit bid to illegally use intellectual property they didn’t own, who told people that only their bootleg project was real Trek and that the actual copyright holders deserved to be ripped off.

This individual behaved in an entirely unethical manner while demonstrating the worst impulses of the gatekeeper mentality among people in any fandom.

You weren’t really expecting anything close to maturity or introspection here, I hope

 

[Bryan^H]

He sure did love writing about the ladies.

And I read this book and leaned he was kind of scum concerning women in real life. Womanizing swine. I leaned rule #1 concerning your celebrity heroes. They are no better than you, or me, and if you think so, you will be disappointed.

 

[Brian Kidd]

And I read this book and leaned he was kind of scum concerning women in real life. Womanizing swine. I leaned rule #1 concerning your celebrity heroes. They are no better than you, or me, and if you think so, you will be disappointed.

Yeah, he was an incredibly creative, but deeply-flawed human being.

 

[Brian Kidd]

On a different note...Jesus, Rob:

Such a melodramatic drama-queen now. What the hell happened to this guy, anyways? All the stupid tinfoil-hat CBS conspiracy theories he encourages and marinates in on his Twitter-feed, too...

Wow. I mean, Episode 2 was a little inert for my tastes, but it apparently slaughtered baby seals in front of him and then made him wear their skins. That's the only thing I can think of that could justify this level of vitriol.

 

[Sam Favate]

Burnett is nuts. So far, Picard has been terrific, and I can see why Patrick Stewart was inclined to come back to it after all this time. I credit the superb writing to Michael Chabon, and hope his hand continues to guide the show, even if he won't be showrunner next season.

I can see being disappointed in some or all of the Abrams films, and even the beginning of Discovery, but I think Discovery really improved by the end of its first season, and its second season was great.

Thanks to Picard, I feel as good about Star Trek as I did in the high points of TNG and DS9.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

And I read this book and leaned he was kind of scum concerning women in real life. Womanizing swine. I leaned rule #1 concerning your celebrity heroes. They are no better than you, or me, and if you think so, you will be disappointed.

And realize, you came away feeling like this after reading an AUTHORIZED biography, so reality is likely 10 times worse.

 

[Francois Caron]

Yeah, it seems to me like Raffi's hardship is not due to financial matters as much as her discredited reputation and outcast-status (and drug-use), and that it's as much by choice as anything else.

After all, Vasquez Rocks is a county park and a tourist attraction, yet she was able to build her house right in the middle of its most heavily-trafficked public area, right under the famous cliff. Could a poor person today get away with that? (Having Vasquez Rocks play itself is cute and made me laugh out loud, but it's deeply implausible in this context, given what a landmark it is.)

Vasquez Rocks is extremely popular today because it was frequently used for location shoots for the "Star Trek" franchise. But in the "Star Trek" Universe, "Star Trek" doesn't exist. So Vasquez Rocks is very likely nowhere near as popular in that Universe as it is in our Universe.

 

[Philip Verdieck]

Not at all, me and Josh Dial also have similar suspicions.

Yeah, I read your suspicions, but I think its a bit of a twist to fit those in with existing canon on cross breeding since we have seen Human-Vulcan and Human-Romulan.

 

[Philip Verdieck]

Definitely read it -- it's a work that hugely shaped my perception of Star Trek back in the early '80s (when I came across my dad's dogeared copy on a shelf when I was in grade school), back when it was much tougher to revisit movies before home video became more widespread. Although the only part written in first-person from Kirk's POV was the preface -- the conceit of the book being that it was published in the 23rd Century based on actual events, and Kirk was asked to write something to introduce it. Admiral Kirk regards it as yet another one of those factually-inaccurate, dramatized accounts commissioned by Starfleet's Public Affairs Office of the type he complains about in his preface.

Basically, Roddenberry's ST:TMP novel attempted a degree of futurism that the subsequent movies ignored (because Nicholas Meyer was pretty aggressively anti-futurist, and tried to pretend Star Trek was set in the 19th century), and that TNG mostly avoided as well (because it didn't have the budget). For instance, TMP-novelization Kirk and Ciana have what they consider a routine holo-conference of the sort that DS9 treated as a novelty in episodes set 100 years later.

It's not just the comm-implants and the holocom -- there's the "New Human" movement on the verge of evolving into a collective consciousness, and there's an evolution in cultural mores as well with the year-long marriage contracts (a popular bit of futurism in the SF of the period). There's a ton of stuff in the book that just doesn't fit the Trek universe portrayed in any other work -- not even Roddenberry's own later work on TNG, but damn if it still isn't a hugely-entertaining read in its own right.

I need to go check this out. I am pretty sure I already have a copy from when it came out...

Its been so long since I originally read it that there is no way I would remember those details.

 

[Sam Favate]

Episode four is another great one. So much in it made me smile.

I love the way the show is filling in the details of Picard's life since we last saw him. I'm also impressed that I want to see even more of the new cast and their stories.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I’m giving up on pairing each episode with a TNG one; that worked really well for me with Discovery but has been harder to pull off here. The issue isn’t the show itself but rather how I’ve been watching it: around 3am when it first goes up. When it’s over, I’m bed ready. Instead, I’ve been filling the time from when my wife goes to bed to when the new episode goes up with whatever Trek thing is on my mind, and not worrying about making direct connections. My wife and I just finished Season 1 of Discovery, so I ended up watching some Discovery bonus features and Mirror, Mirror while I waited.

This was another great episode that moved the story along, deepened our understanding of the characters, and didn’t waste a single precious moment of airtime. Jonathan Frakes, as always, is able to direct within the established framework/style of the show while giving his actors support to do great work. Over years of seeing things he’s directed, I’ve really come to admire how well he’s able to jump into someone else’s sandbox without missing a beat. I remember when the project that became Star Trek Beyond was in need of a director and Frakes jokingly offered to do it and no one took the idea seriously - watch his episode here, watch his Discovery episodes - he could have done it. It’s a major credit to him that he can take his craft from 90s era episodic directing to today’s high concept, high budget serialized stories not only without missing a beat, but evolving with the times.

 

[Bryan^H]

Episode four is another great one. So much in it made me smile.

I love the way the show is filling in the details of Picard's life since we last saw him. I'm also impressed that I want to see even more of the new cast and their stories.

I feel the same. It is funny to say that Picard has matured so much from TNG years (he was no spring chicken then either), but he has, and the way the character is written makes it apparent. He is so much more kind, and emapathetic than we have ever seen him, and I love that about this series. Also I wasn't the biggest fan of the intro music when first I heard it, but a few episodes in, and I like it quite a bit now. Sweet, delicate, and melancholy, it fits Picard more, and more with each episode.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Ugh, I need to learn to not open things when people who should know better email me fake stories like the one Sam mentioned early.

I’d really like it if Trek fandom didn’t turn as toxic and insanely reality-denying as Star Wars fandom.