Octopus Overlords

hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:43 am

Rumpy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 18, 2021 12:14 am Yeah, I figured you would disagree, but It's my opinion and everyone is entitled to an opinion on how they feel about something.

I would hope you'd be okay with my opinion being the opposite of yours then.

Of course. Just don't try to squash mine. I have valid reasons for disliking current Trek.

Sudy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 18, 2021 3:25 am I guess I just struggle with how infrequently Picard and Discovery stop to take a breath.

And that's definitely part of it. I like dark shows, but I need breathers. And I guess how a season is plotted is another issue, due to the nature of serialization. Once a show is underway, a plot arc can absolutely make or break a show and its details are made important and engagement is crucial. For Discovery for instance, I'd given it a fair chance, but I wasn't feeling engaged by midway into the first season, and I felt it didn't give me a good first-impression. I have limited TV viewing time and anything that doesn't engage me gets dropped. Sorry Expanse, sorry Discovery.


I guess one major issue I have with Picard is that aside from character moments, it has precious little else. I'd have expected the world-building to be much better than it was given its legacy, but it felt quite generic. Add in the shocker-death of Icheb and then the death of the doctor in its wake, and I found the journey wasn't all that great. The whole storyline with the Borg wasn't all that well done either, besides why does it have to be the Borg, again?

That said, I do plan on checking out Strange New Worlds. I'm a fan of Anson Mount and while I didn't see his turn in Discovery, I feel Strange New Worlds more appealing in its concept.

well...valid to you, at least.

<just teasin'. no actual ill will over this>

also, i didn't think i was trying to squash anyone's opinion. that wasn't my intent. I was simply explaining why i disagree with you in hopes that you would eventually come around to my way of thinking and we could set up a Star Trek Discovery marathon some day soon. You would, of course, be in charge of bringing the beer.

A Marathon? Pfft, never in a million years. Keep your skirt on.

Oh, beer? I'd make sure to bring the best stuff we have, not the stuff Jeff thinks we only have.

Oh, that's right....you're Canadian.

Never mind.

You can bring the back bacon. I'll handle the beer.

My favorite thing about Discovery is the characters. They really did a great job making them more real, distinguishable people as opposed to what Trek can sometimes devolve into, which is stuff like "Starfleet officer who is cerebral", "Starfleet officer who is horny", etc. On Discovery the characters seem more like real people than most Trek shows manage to achieve.

hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Jun 18, 2021 2:59 pm Oh, that's right....you're Canadian.

Never mind.

You can bring the back bacon. I'll handle the beer.

I can bring the bacon AND the beer. I in fact picked up a Maple beer recently.

Molson makes a maple beer?

No, It's definitely not Molson. Craft beer all the way.

Wait....are you telling me that Canada has developed beer making technology and no longer is restricted to just Molson controlling that entire market???

Yes, that is it exactly. Wait, did you think we were somehow undeveloped? Our craft beer market has grown considerably within the last 15 years. Yeah, there's still Molson and Labatts, but those are mainstream and is very much not an accurate representation of what the industry is like at the moment. I think you'd be very much surprised what we have on offer now.

So the Discovery wants to visit Earth without revealing that they have FTL capability. They use the spore drive to materialize near Saturn, then proceed to Earth on impulse power...and arrive a few seconds later. It takes light more than an hour to travel that far. Since the internet tells me that impulse speed is 0.25% of light speed, that's a four hour trip at least. Of course I don't expect them to spend the next four episodes getting there, but a quick "time passes" trick would've been easy to insert there and omitting it made me spew beer.

They really should have inserted a minute of the bridge crew twiddling their thumbs.

Or everyone could have taken the time for a nice dinner and a nap. You could advance any of a dozen subplots/development scenes in the minute that bridges four hours of everyone else taking naps.

They should have just stuck to real time and made the episode 5 hours long.

The one thing that's really been missing from the show is small talk. "So.... Ceru... read any good Kelpian novels lately?" "oh yeah, yeah, a couple things." "So...how 'bout that weather?" "We're on a space ship." "Right, right..."

If this bothered Kraken, I can only imagine the amount of brewskis he spewed all over his place during Game of Thrones (if he watched it). They'd routinely make 3 month trips in about 27 minutes.

Mental note: suggest to Kraken that he switch to less expensive beers in order to save money if he's going to continue watching television. What's Blatz going for these days?

hepcat wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 10:17 am If this bothered Kraken, I can only imagine the amount of brewskis he spewed all over his place during Game of Thrones (if he watched it). They'd routinely make 3 month trips in about 27 minutes.

Mental note: suggest to Kraken that he switch to less expensive beers in order to save money if he's going to continue watching television. What's Blatz going for these days?

Plus they built a fleet of 1,000 ships in a couple weeks.

In a village of a few hundred people.

In a land with no trees.

Jaymann wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 11:57 am

hepcat wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 10:17 am If this bothered Kraken, I can only imagine the amount of brewskis he spewed all over his place during Game of Thrones (if he watched it). They'd routinely make 3 month trips in about 27 minutes.

Mental note: suggest to Kraken that he switch to less expensive beers in order to save money if he's going to continue watching television. What's Blatz going for these days?

Plus they built a fleet of 1,000 ships in a couple weeks.

In a village of a few hundred people.

In a land with no trees.

I don't expect fantasy stories to conform to reality, although GoT got really laughable about it. I do expect sci-fi to make more of an effort, even if that effort is just some hand-waving that says "we reversed the polarity!" ST will never be The Expanse and isn't trying to, but they could try not to embarrass themselves. Along those lines, I hope they'll offer an explanation for what happened to all the dilithium instead of just sticking with "Welp, that happened and nobody knows why." They have dropped some hints that I expect them to come back to.

Could be worse. I've been watching anime for the last few years and the shows I watch seem to have a habit of announcing something is going to take place in ten minutes and then spend the next six or more 22 minute episodes detailing that ten minutes.

To be fair, even The Expanse (as great as it is) sometimes sacrifices accuracy for the sake of the story. I doubt there’s any science fiction or fantasy show in existence that doesn’t do so at one point….or many points, to be more precise.

As far as mistakes go, the one you mention doesn’t even register as a blip on my radar. I own a copy of The Postman, for Christ’s sake. I’ve seen mistakes that would make you shudder.

All spaceships move at the speed of plot.

hepcat wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 10:23 pm To be fair, even The Expanse (as great as it is) sometimes sacrifices accuracy for the sake of the story. I doubt there’s any science fiction or fantasy show in existence that doesn’t do so at one point….or many points, to be more precise.

As far as mistakes go, the one you mention doesn’t even register as a blip on my radar. I own a copy of The Postman, for Christ’s sake. I’ve seen mistakes that would make you shudder.

Well sure, science fiction can't chain itself to science fact, although I like when it anchors there. Saturn to Earth in 30 seconds at impulse just set me off. At least respect me enough to reverse the damned polarity.

Well lookee here - a thread I started sixish years ago is still alive and kicking! Damn.

There's no chance I'm going to try to catch up on 20 pages of history on this thing, but I'll say that I've enjoyed Discovery immensely and am looking forward to the next season. It's not perfect, but it's "Star Trek imperfect" which has always been good enough for me. I also enjoyed Lower Decks quite a bit, though I was seriously underwhelmed by Picard and don't really care whether they make any more of that series or not.

Now back to the ether I go. As you were.

There have been 800(!) episodes of Star Trek.

Odin wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 5:16 am Well lookee here - a thread I started sixish years ago is still alive and kicking! Damn.

There's no chance I'm going to try to catch up on 20 pages of history on this thing, but I'll say that I've enjoyed Discovery immensely and am looking forward to the next season. It's not perfect, but it's "Star Trek imperfect" which has always been good enough for me. I also enjoyed Lower Decks quite a bit, though I was seriously underwhelmed by Picard and don't really care whether they make any more of that series or not.

Now back to the ether I go. As you were.

Discovery finally clicked for me in S3, and I was disappointed to find out that S4 isn't in the bag yet. For some reason I thought it was. I'm also starting to get into Lower Decks since they've started doing more callbacks. "That was one of my favorite things from TOS." "What's TOS?" "That's what I call the Kirk Enterprise days -- Those Old Scientists."

io9 is reporting, via @StarTrek on Twitter:

Annie Wersching (Runaways, The Vampire Diaries) has been cast as the Borg Queen in the second season of Picard, taking over the role from Alice Krige (First Contact, Voyager season seven) and Susanna Thompson (Voyager seasons five and six).

Ughhhh... please, no more Borg. We concluded Picard's Borg arc in First Contact. Seven can do her borg stuff, that's fine... it's her identity. But we already had a major Borg subplot in the first season. Please don't let this be the main plot/villain. If it's a mini-arc, sure.

I was really hoping this wouldn't be Star Trek: Fan Service Wankery: The Series.

Maybe spoilers

Sudy wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 11:13 am io9 is reporting, via @StarTrek on Twitter:

Annie Wersching (Runaways, The Vampire Diaries) has been cast as the Borg Queen in the second season of Picard, taking over the role from Alice Krige (First Contact, Voyager season seven) and Susanna Thompson (Voyager seasons five and six).

Ughhhh... please, no more Borg. We concluded Picard's Borg arc in First Contact. Seven can do her borg stuff, that's fine... it's her identity. But we already had a major Borg subplot in the first season. Please don't let this be the main plot/villain. If it's a mini-arc, sure.

I was really hoping this wouldn't be Star Trek: Fan Service Wankery: The Series.

Meanwhile, Star Trek Lower Decks became Star Trek: Wankery, in the the last episode

Sudy wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 11:13 am io9 is reporting, via @StarTrek on Twitter:

Annie Wersching (Runaways, The Vampire Diaries) has been cast as the Borg Queen in the second season of Picard, taking over the role from Alice Krige (First Contact, Voyager season seven) and Susanna Thompson (Voyager seasons five and six).

Ughhhh... please, no more Borg. We concluded Picard's Borg arc in First Contact. Seven can do her borg stuff, that's fine... it's her identity. But we already had a major Borg subplot in the first season. Please don't let this be the main plot/villain. If it's a mini-arc, sure.

I was really hoping this wouldn't be Star Trek: Fan Service Wankery: The Series.

Yeah, agreed. I have a feeling that since time-travel is involved, that they'll go back to First-Contact. Or mayhaps their first contact with the Borg that Q engineered.

Have to say, I felt the Borg storyline in the first season was one of the least interesting aspects, in the sense that aside from a few mentions of Locutus, and an in for Seven, they weren't used much at all. At the same time, this could be the result of them feeling like they've been overdone and not much place to with them.

Come to think of it, when I was doing a re-watch of TNG to introduce Mrs. Nym to it almost a decade ago, Picard's borg arc really gets a nice wrap-up in the series itself. I forget the details/episodes now, but when we finally got to First Contact, many of Picard's reactions actually felt out of place, like the writers had re-opened a wound that had long since been demonstrated to have healed.

Though I guess you can argue that a supposed trauma like that never fully heals, and TV series that progress to film always tinker with the canon for the sake of storytelling. But the scene of Picard going berserk with the Tommy gun on the holodeck just feels so out of place. Or the scene with Alfre Woodard in his ready room. Fabulous acting though.

Yeah, Picard's trauma as Locutus I'm sure has stayed with him.

But overall, the movie version of Picard is a action movie star with things pumped up to 11. The Picard series is more of that and trying to visit some of the TNG familarities, but with none of the ... shall we say, charm? It's so by the numbers. And a big issue in revisiting the Borg at this point is that it's Post-Voyager Borg that just aren't interesting anymore. I honestly felt the parts with the Borg in season 1 dragged on.

I rather liked the Borg angle they pursued in Picard season 1. A whole industrial complex built up around one abandoned cube, and playing out alongside the humanitarian mission to save the members of the collective still held within that cube.

The concept itself was good. They just did so little with it.

I thought they did quite a bit with the Seven of Nine story and the Borg reclamation. However, at the end of the day, Picard was about an aging captain near the end of his life trying to rediscover his faith in a federation that he feels abandoned its principals.

I think they failed to properly convey what caused him to lose that faith, and they ended the first season with a ridiculous deus ex machina that still makes me cringe, but I’m hoping the second season addresses those issues for me.

Agreed with that. I was hoping for a bit more explanation, given that the show is named after him afterall. I really hope they continue to revisit that. It deserves exploring given they made such a big deal of it.

But I guess I didn't really care for the whole Seven storyline.

I wasn't impressed with Picard S1 and am not waiting for S2 with bated breath, but I'll watch it just for John Delancie. Don't disappoint me, Q.

Well... I have deeply conflicting feelings about this. Right now they're mostly... disgruntled. But I hope I'll enjoy it.

The plot seems to recycle a lot of on-the-nose tropes. World transformed into a totalitarian hellscape? (Oh how timely?) Travelling back in time to the present day? (I mean, I guess it hasn't been done for a while at least.)

But I'll excuse it all for Picard getting crochety on Q.

Sudy wrote: ↑Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:56 am But I'll excuse it all for Picard getting crochety on Q.

I only have the context of the trailer, but that may be my new favorite Jean Luc Picard quote.

And just a personal thought (because I know there are many here who are really enjoying Discovery now), but I wonder if I'd be happier with the Picard crew (sans Picard) as the main new series. It's easier to try to accept them as successors to a legacy when they're not standing in Stewart's shadow or competing with the "main" series. And I think I'd have less of an issue with a dark, dystopian modern Trek if it wasn't so deeply associated with TNG's optimism or frequently mixing in TOS-era references.

It's been renewed for season 3. I kind of hope when/if Stewart does decide to hang it up that they allow these characters to live on, perhaps bolstered by the addition of other alumni to the crew. But that seems pretty unlikely when the show's called Picard.