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

[Nelson Au]

It was in the Day of the Dove where they brought up the idea of intraship beaming. It’s a dangerous and risky procedure as precision was necessary. You might end up in a bulkhead. I’m sure it was a simple writer’s trick to raise the suspense. They beamed onto other ships directly to the bridge without trouble for example, The Tholian Web, IIRC.

 

[Sam Favate]

This is the card that the Romulan woman said pertained to Soji and Dahj, and made her call Soji "the destroyer."

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I feel like Freiberger really wasn’t paying much attention to long term continuity at that point. It’s something that would apparently frustrate some of the cast with regards to their character portrayals and they’d have some clout to overrule him but most things stayed as they were. With most of the writing staff and production staff that developed the show gone, with budgets and shooting time slashed, I think just about every third season production was a brutal race to the finish line and that Frieberger would have to beat less than perfect scripts into submission just so that there was something to film. So if the transporters needed to be able to do one thing one week, and then couldn’t do it the next week, I don’t think he was going to allow the imaginary rules of a made up device on a show that was guaranteed to be canceled to torpedo his attempts to just keep the trains running on schedule.

 

[Sam Favate]

Here are some pretty awesome concept paintings from the show. Possible spoilers, although we don't know will be used and what won't.

https://www.thetrekcollective.com/2...uhPnIM2sLlU7PNFwB4CUGSgM293FH6LnYdeZIFRBC0xUg

Many more images at the link.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

It was in the Day of the Dove where they brought up the idea of intraship beaming. It’s a dangerous and risky procedure as precision was necessary. You might end up in a bulkhead.

It makes sense to me that beaming between two autonomous moving objects would be more difficult (and therefore more dangerous) than beaming between one autonomous moving object and a planet in a predictable orbit.

Likewise, it seems to be me that beaming between two points on the same planet would be easier (and therefore less dangerous) than beaming between a planet and a starship.

 

[Nelson Au]

I don’t mean to further the diversion of this transporter discussion, I was thinking we’ve often seen on TOS that they often did transport from one transporter chamber to another chamber. For example, Court Martial and Trouble with Tribbles, they beam from the Enterprise to a receiver on the other end on the starbase or Space Station K-7. So like wi-fi or Bluetooth, the devices is spraying a signal out and a receiver is able to gather the signal’s data and reintegrate the original at the other location. So those site to site transporters on Picard makes sense as quick and efficient transport from place to place on Earth. I would prefer to travel that way if it’s safe. I agree Adam, beaming from a ship to a planet surface without a receiver could be pretty dangerous. I recall an argument in the olden days of Star Trek fandom where there was an argument that transporters disintegrates you into a mass of data of the original. And then sends that data to another location and re-integrates the data into a facsimile of the original since the original was destroyed. So the transporter is like a Xerox machine. But hopefully without the degradation.

 

[Nelson Au]

Josh, agreed, Freiberger was mainly trying to get a TV show made under difficult circumstances, so any contrivances he might have made were made to get the story to work.

 

[Nelson Au]

Sam, thanks for posting that artwork, I love seeing that conceptual work. I also looked at the Trek Collective site while there and nice to see some of the upcoming model kits. And the it’s interesting to see how fast they are marketing stuff from Picard such as the image of the card the Romulan was using to tell the “news”.

 

[andySu]

Watched in about 4 mins on Amazon and not again. It ended with Nemesis.

 

[mattCR]

Am I the only one getting a distinct vibe that part of the reason the Romulan group is so anti-artificial life is going to turn out very much

Spoiler

Like Battlestar Galactica? I keep imagining that some of these people weren't able to integrate and the borg ship went astray because there is a strain of Romulan or whatever that is basically cylons who don't know it - ok, maybe not, maybe a wild theory, but it keeps coming to me as I watch

 

[Josh Steinberg]

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

 

[Francois Caron]

Josh, agreed, Freiberger was mainly trying to get a TV show made under difficult circumstances, so any contrivances he might have made were made to get the story to work.

In an old Space 1999 documentary, Martin Landau had some choice words to describe Freiberger.

(I'll post a link to the video once I find it again.)

As for the transporter, the problem that was described in "The Day Of The Dove" was that the transporter's target was too close to the source. Apparently, the transporter systems at the time couldn't reliably transport anything to a target that was located within the ship itself. I'm guessing that, after 100 years, the problem was corrected.

 

[Sam Favate]

Interview with Michael Chabon who is now one of my favorite people:

Smoking. Vaping. Snakeweed. Alcohol abuse. Swear words! That Admiral lady used the F-word! Chabon, what the f–

CHABON: Listen. No human society will every be perfect, because no human will ever be perfect. The most we can do — and as Star Trek ever reminds us, must do — is aspire to perfection, and work to make it so. Norkon forden perfectunun, as a wise Yang once said.

Until that impossible day, shit is going to continue to happen, And when it does, humans are going to want to swear. The absence of swear words in Star Trek was never a matter of Federation principle, it was a matter of FCC rules.

Writers of previous eras had no choice. They were censored. Swearing is one of humanity’s most ancient, sensible, and reliable consolations. Personally, I would consider any society that discouraged, banned, or abandoned the use of curse works to be a fucking dystopia.

http://blog.trekcore.com/2020/02/michael-chabon-answers-star-trek-picard-fan-questions/

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The Chabon books I’ve read (and I’ve not read them all) have all been awesome. And while I haven’t read it, “Wonder Boys” is based on his novel and it’s my second favorite movie of all time.

Speaking of novels and such, I’d like to hear from anyone on this but especially @joshEH - on a whim I got the audiobook version of Roddenberry’s novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Read it? There’s a preface that’s meant to be written by Kirk and it’s so cringeworthy. It’s almost like a random meme generator or Mad Libs version of the worst Roddenberry gobbledygook.

 

[Philip Verdieck]

I feel like Freiberger really wasn’t paying much attention to long term continuity at that point. It’s something that would apparently frustrate some of the cast with regards to their character portrayals and they’d have some clout to overrule him but most things stayed as they were. With most of the writing staff and production staff that developed the show gone, with budgets and shooting time slashed, I think just about every third season production was a brutal race to the finish line and that Frieberger would have to beat less than perfect scripts into submission just so that there was something to film. So if the transporters needed to be able to do one thing one week, and then couldn’t do it the next week, I don’t think he was going to allow the imaginary rules of a made up device on a show that was guaranteed to be canceled to torpedo his attempts to just keep the trains running on schedule.

Yeah, but you could say that about the entire run of TOS.

There was a ton of YATIs during the original run (Yet Another Trek Inconsistency).

http://www.ditl.org/yati-list.php?Series=TOS&ListID=ListLists

 

[Brian Kidd]

The Chabon books I’ve read (and I’ve not read them all) have all been awesome. And while I haven’t read it, “Wonder Boys” is based on his novel and it’s my second favorite movie of all time.

Speaking of novels and such, I’d like to hear from anyone on this but especially @joshEH - on a whim I got the audiobook version of Roddenberry’s novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Read it? There’s a preface that’s meant to be written by Kirk and it’s so cringeworthy. It’s almost like a random meme generator or Mad Libs version of the worst Roddenberry gobbledygook.

Yeah, that novelization is crazy, but uniquely Roddenberry. He sure did love writing about the ladies. Not sure he'd survive in today's world. I really enjoyed the book once I decided to accept it on its own terms. But, wow, is it... different.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Major epic eye rolls caused by the introduction from the in-universe “author” discussing why he’s making a career out of chronicling the starship Enterprise. I haven’t even gotten to the damn cloud yet!

 

[Sam Favate]

Lots of rumors on Twitter about Kurtzman and Viacom, and it all sounds like bullshit. For some reason, there are a lot of Star Trek trolls out there, trying to say Discovery and Picard are failures and that there's all this turmoil behind the scenes. I don't believe any of it. Someone is out to hurt Star Trek.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Lots of rumors on Twitter about Kurtzman and Viacom, and it all sounds like bullshit. For some reason, there are a lot of Star Trek trolls out there, trying to say Discovery and Picard are failures and that there's all this turmoil behind the scenes. I don't believe any of it. Someone is out to hurt Star Trek.

It is all bullshit.

CBS and Paramount are rejoining in no small part because of Star Trek and the unlimited potential that a shared theatrical and television platform can offer. They are all in on Star Trek now. They are also all in on Kurtzman, having just awarded him and his production company additional non-Trek shows to develop.

Discovery got off to a rocky start when CBS put their faith in Bryan Fuller, and that rocky start continued when Fuller was fired but his acolytes remained in charge. Once his people were let go, fired for cause after an HR investigation revealed that they were physically and verbally abusive to staff members, Alex Kurtzman was placed fully in charge and the show’s production has continued without incident. Picard’s production has been smooth, and the network was so happy with what they saw that they not only renewed it for a second season before the first one even began airing, but also provided funding to begin developing a third season. CBS has committed to making an animated Trek sitcom for adults for All Access, and an animated program aimed at children for Nickelodeon. All of this under Kurtzman’s watch.

But if you want instant proof beyond the above that it’s bullshit from so-called fans stuck in the 1990s, the twitter thread that seemed to have started this says that Ronald D. Moore is moments away from being named chief Star Trek overseer. Now, I love Ron Moore and he’s done great work both on Trek and after... but Moore and his production company is in the beginning of an exclusive, multi-year with Sony and he’s simply not available. You don’t even need to think about whether or not he’d be interested, which I highly doubt... he’s not available and any legitimate publication would know enough about production deals to see that as a giant red flag.

 

[joshEH]

I think it's because EMH's are simply computer programs with a sophisticated user interface. They can only function in a limited area outfitted with the proper light-emitting equipment and can also be caused to "cease to exist" with a command. Synths are hyper-strong and intelligent physical entities that can be dangerous if something goes haywire with their programming. Heck, even Data, the most sophisticated of all synths ever created (up to now) became erratic and dangerous a few times during the TNG era. It's a miracle they didn't get rid of him after the first time he went nuts and took over the ship.

Clearly the ban on "synths" has not affected emergency holograms. Seems an odd double-standard; they're both AIs, and Trek holograms can be just as solid, and thus just as physically dangerous, as androids -- even more so, since they can become intangible at will (c.f., the Ghost in Ant-Man and the Wasp for why that's an advantage).

If anything, the 24th Century shows have demonstrated that it's far easier for holograms to become sapient than Soong-type androids -- see Moriarty, the Countess, the EMH, possibly Vic Fontaine (though he might just be a very sophisticated interactive emulation), etc.

Also, there's no reason the body should matter where the mind is concerned. There's no reason you couldn't install the EMH's consciousness inside a synth-body, say. He got uploaded into Seven of Nine once, after all. Sapience is software, not hardware, so logically a ban on AI-sapience should apply equally whether that sapience runs on a synth's positronic brain, a holomatrix, a starship computer-core, or anything else. But of course, the ban was enacted out of fear and prejudice, and thus is not rational.

Am I the only one getting a distinct vibe that part of the reason the Romulan group is so anti-artificial life is going to turn out very much

Spoiler

Like Battlestar Galactica? I keep imagining that some of these people weren't able to integrate and the borg ship went astray because there is a strain of Romulan or whatever that is basically cylons who don't know it - ok, maybe not, maybe a wild theory, but it keeps coming to me as I watch

It kinda bugs me that Hugh said that "these" Romulans, the crew of a single ship, were the only Romulans ever assimilated, which flatly contradicts the backstory from the TNG episode "The Neutral Zone," not to mention the appearance of Romulan Borg-drones in Star Trek: First Contact and in at least one Voyager episode. Sure, he said "as far as I know," but presumably he’s been interacting with the Federation and Romulans for some time, probably years, and has had plenty of time to learn about those two powers' history with the Borg.

As for the Borg cube, "the Artifact" appears to be in or near Romulan space. I'm sure the Romulans would've wanted to take control of it as soon as it became evident it was inactive. Indeed, since it went dead shortly after it assimilated the Romulan ship Shaenor, it's reasonable to suspect that the Romulans were behind its collapse in the first place. With regard to exploring it fully, it's huge, and apparently still has parts that are dangerous. Also, the supernova happened about four years after its collapse, and even before the supernova, the Romulans were apparently busy preparing for the evacuation. So they would've had limited attention and resources to devote to the Artifact.

The Chabon books I’ve read (and I’ve not read them all) have all been awesome. And while I haven’t read it, “Wonder Boys” is based on his novel and it’s my second favorite movie of all time.

Speaking of novels and such, I’d like to hear from anyone on this but especially @joshEH - on a whim I got the audiobook version of Roddenberry’s novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Read it? There’s a preface that’s meant to be written by Kirk and it’s so cringeworthy. It’s almost like a random meme generator or Mad Libs version of the worst Roddenberry gobbledygook.

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.