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Lizard Combatant posted:That's a shame, but I wasn't too excited for it and it's odd they didn't pick another book by the same author for their anthology. Seems like such a weird choice to make up something completely unrelated. Should have left it at one season, but yes luckily it's a completely self contained story. I can understand the desire to do it, and the relating of "folk monsters affecting outsiders" concept but it just fell flat. Not only is Season 1 fantastic in terms of writing, plot, acting, etc. but it's also probably the moodiest, most evocative thing I've seen in forever. I literally felt cold and alone at points.
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Feb 20, 2020 18:51
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Snow Cone Capone posted:I can understand the desire to do it, and the relating of "folk monsters affecting outsiders" concept but it just fell flat. Not only is Season 1 fantastic in terms of writing, plot, acting, etc. but it's also probably the moodiest, most evocative thing I've seen in forever. I literally felt cold and alone at points. Same. It's drat effective.
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Feb 20, 2020 18:57
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Back on topic, I rewatched and the horrible secret pretty much has to be synths trend towards collectives and the Romulans were the first to find out because their synths became the Borg. I feel like a lot of the earlier speculation focused on Jurati being controlled by the Zhat Vash, but I think it's pretty clear that the Commodore's mind-meld with her showed her the truth. It definitely wasn't a Manchurian Candidate-style "I'm crying because my will is being overridden to kill Maddox," it was "the Zhat Vash are not exaggerating, this secret really is loving horrifying enough that I'm going to kill my lover of my own free will to keep it." I wonder if at some point Jurati will either kill herself or be assassinated by the ZV now that Maddox's loose end has been tied off.
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Feb 20, 2020 18:57
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Watching this new episode rn. What the gently caress is this poo poo? drat is it really hard to make tv or something? Does Netflix just buy up all the talent?
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Feb 20, 2020 19:28
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Delthalaz posted:Watching this new episode rn. What the gently caress is this poo poo? drat is it really hard to make tv or something? Does Netflix just buy up all the talent? There is definitely a limited amount of talent in the industry, yes. And that's where a good producer comes in, by getting the best talent to make the product great. Alex Kurtzman seems to have more pull with production level people than writing talent. Picard seems to be going through the same issues that Discovery is - I think there are decent ideas here but the way they are presented is muddled and confused. In many ways it does remind me of early TNG. We do tend to forget that the best years of 90s Trek came about 4-7 years into its development. And things gradually slid downhill from that peak, too. At the same time, we as viewers have good reason to expect more from shows these days. And right now, this isn't delivering the goods. The Star Trek name and franchise popularity are working to give it enough momentum that right now, it's still a moneymaker and driving people towards CBS's streaming service, which is why these shows aren't going away in the near future. One hopes that, if nothing else, they'll fall into doing better like TNG did. I'm watching, and I don't hate it, but that's entirely subjective. I mean, I hate Westworld, and it more or less has the same problems. But the last thing I want to see is more 90s Trek, so there's nothing appealing to me about the Orville. I never was a Star Wars guy, but after finally watching the Mandalorian...I'm still not a Star Wars guy. I don't think the Mandalorian was significantly better than Discovery or Picard has been, but it's not trying to reinvent the wheel like Picard and Discovery seem to be doing, so it's working. I dunno. Last week's Picard was the first episode that I felt like I was watching without it feeling like an obligation. This one had moments, but even with no Borg cube stuff, it still felt kind of stand-offish towards the viewer. I can't say why I felt that way without a rewatch.
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Feb 20, 2020 19:58
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How would the assumed secret reveal work, anyway? How would synths become the Borg? The Borg aren't synthetic people, they're biological beings with cybernetic implants. Which is really loving different. Like, would it be synths who decided all of humanity needed "upgrading", and by now all the old synths have died out and only bio Borg remain? That...doesn't really seem like a logical series of events, and certainly shouldn't be seen as the "natural end result of synths".
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Feb 20, 2020 20:00
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thrawn527 posted:How would the assumed secret reveal work, anyway? How would synths become the Borg? The Borg aren't synthetic people, they're biological beings with cybernetic implants. Which is really loving different. Like, would it be synths who decided all of humanity needed "upgrading", and by now all the old synths have died out and only bio Borg remain? That...doesn't really seem like a logical series of events, and certainly shouldn't be seen as the "natural end result of synths". One of the main points about Dahj and Soji is that they're organic synths - they have android brains and levels of cognition (and as we've seen, android levels of strength and reflexes) in bodies that could pass a medical scan. It wouldn't be a massive stretch (the idea has been done a bunch of times before) that, as androids who have evolved from regular robots to organics with synthetic brains, their next logical step of 'evolution' would be a collective consciousness, and from there you could make the jump to the next step being absorbing all other consciousness into 1 galaxy-spanning entity. It's actually not too different from some depictions of regular humanity's far-future evolutionary path. The cybernetic implants would be the proto-Borg adding on bits that aren't necessarily as good as any organic version they find/assimilate. Remember, their intro in both Voyager and First Contact includes "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own" so I could see that being the reason. Snow Cone Capone fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Feb 20, 2020 |
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Feb 20, 2020 20:05
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Westworld season 1 was so good. Westworld season 2 was so bad. The puzzlebox concept, even if it works, I've never seen sustained.
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Feb 20, 2020 20:08
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Snow Cone Capone posted:One of the main points about Dahj and Soji is that they're organic synths - they have android brains and levels of cognition (and as we've seen, android levels of strength and reflexes) in bodies that could pass a medical scan. It wouldn't be a massive stretch (the idea has been done a bunch of times before) that, as androids who have evolved from regular robots to organics with synthetic brains, their next logical step of 'evolution' would be a collective consciousness, and from there you could make the jump to the next step being absorbing all other consciousness into 1 galaxy-spanning entity. It's actually not too different from some depictions of regular humanity's far-future evolutionary path. Fair enough, I forgot about Dahj and Sojji being organic synths.
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Feb 20, 2020 20:12
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Snow Cone Capone posted:Back on topic, I rewatched and the horrible secret pretty much has to be synths trend towards collectives and the Romulans were the first to find out because their synths became the Borg. I can see the first part being the Big Secret - not like super stoked about that but I could live with it. It gives me some pretty nasty Mass Effect 3 flashbacks but I'm reasonably confident Chabon can make that line up in a more interesting and impactful way than those poor doomed bastards at Bioware managed.  The second bit... I dunno. I was pretty solidly convinced they were gonna pull that trigger with Section 31 and the time suit last season on Discovery and they didn't. I think the production team knows some things shouldn't be messed with... but then again the guy in charge of the franchise at the moment thought the Tom Cruise Mummy movie was a good idea, so who fuckin' knows?
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Feb 20, 2020 20:13
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also lol that Dr. Maddox mentioned he had been working with Soong recently, Spiner appearance #2 confirmed. Wonder how they'll retcon that!
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Feb 20, 2020 20:14
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The Tom Cruise Mummy movie was a good idea except for the part where it was about Tom Cruise of the United States Avengers instead of being about the loving mummy
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Feb 20, 2020 20:16
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Snow Cone Capone posted:also lol that Dr. Maddox mentioned he had been working with Soong recently, Spiner appearance #2 confirmed. Wonder how they'll retcon that! I took that more to mean he was building upon the works of Soong, not personally working with him. Standing on the shoulders of giants and what not. Isn't Soong long dead at this point?
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Feb 20, 2020 20:25
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thrawn527 posted:I took that more to mean he was building upon the works of Soong, not personally working with him. Standing on the shoulders of giants and what not. Isn't Soong long dead at this point? Yeah, that's why I said I wondered how they'd retcon that. He does specifically say "I did it; Soong and I" but you're probably right tbh
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Feb 20, 2020 20:31
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After watching episode 5 of I think for season 2 I'm going to wait for the season to finish a sub for a month instead of watching it week to week. I'm just kind of not a fan of how modern prestige trek is turning out.
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Feb 20, 2020 20:38
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This episode was written by Kirsten Beyer, who was responsible for the worst episode of DIS’s first season, and also the Voyager relaunch novels. Here’s the thing though - Star Trek novels are almost uniformly terrible, fan-service-y, fan-fiction-y messes. But even more so, Beyer only started writing for television with Discovery. I really think she’s struggling with the transition from book to television. And I hate to say it, but I think Chabon is struggling as well, being more of a novelist than anything. They’re two completely different fields, where something may work on the page while feeling really stupid on screen. Basically, you have Kurtzman helming two novelists and dune-buggy Stewart, and it’s all coming off super awkward. That said, I don’t hate it, but it’s not what it could be.
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Feb 20, 2020 20:43
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The idea that a super-smart, super-strong android with a body made of alloy and polymers could pass a medical scan as human was one of the dumber conceits of TNG season 7 and I'm glad they didn't bring it back.
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Feb 20, 2020 20:45
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ashpanash posted:Alex Kurtzman seems to have more pull with production level people than writing talent. Honestly if you were an established writer with good work under your belt, would you want to work under the story telling direction of this guy? I know it's fashionable to bash Kurtzman but he really is a deeply mediocre writer, bordering on flat out untalented (The Mummy, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, Transformers, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, Hawaii 5-0, Mission Impossible 3, Cowboys and Aliens, The Island + an equally unimpressive list of producing credits). This is just the stuff I've seen, if there's a genuine diamond in the rough, I'd be interested to know what that is. So to me it's not really surprising to look at the writing team for Discovery and see 90% have no credits or are coming from other network pulp. It feels like they're just writing to order and that this is very much under his control. I don't know how much influence Chabon ultimately had on the overall story for Picard, but based on credits alone it seems like he's fairly heavily involved? The show is not what I wanted and I even find many of the ideas deeply repellent, but whatever, chalk that up to personal taste. But the bafflingly poor structure and overall tone has Kurtzman's finger prints all over it. If I had to cynically predict a new show by him, this is pretty much exactly what I'd describe.
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Feb 20, 2020 20:45
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I started off with this show really excited but I've been sitting at "meh" ever since. Mostly because the episodes keep ending right when I'm getting interested in seeing what's happening. Hopefully they reveal the terrible secret of space soon.Lizard Combatant posted:I've been watching season 1 of The Terror (since I read the book the first season is based on, no idea what season 2 is since its apparently unrelated) and by 4 of 10 you are well into the weeds of the plot with a huge cast of characters, plenty of flashbacks and a lot of well dramatised exposition to establish a time and place that's probably not too familiar for most viewers, and that's a relatively "slow" paced show that's also extremely bleak. I enjoyed the show for a bit but it jumps off the deep end towards the end of the season and I started to really hate it. But I really hate (terror spoilers) things where the monster is magically invulnerable and nothing can be done to it. It no longer becomes scary, it just becomes stupid and I start fast forwarding until the scene with the monster ends, because it's not like anything in that scene will matter if they can't fight it.
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Feb 20, 2020 20:49
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Cojawfee posted:I started off with this show really excited but I've been sitting at "meh" ever since. Mostly because the episodes keep ending right when I'm getting interested in seeing what's happening. Hopefully they reveal the terrible secret of space soon. I don't really remember that ever being an issue; tbh when I tried to think of an example the first one that came to mind was when the Tuunbaq and that one guy were up on the mast and they shot at it with a cannon, it was pretty clearly hurt and ran away IIRC
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Feb 20, 2020 20:50
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The moral of ST:Picard is not going to be 'actually you are right to be worried about the 5th column of people who live among us but you think could turn into terrorists at any moment'.
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Feb 20, 2020 20:51
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I like how spam planet knew Raffi was a stoner.
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Feb 20, 2020 21:02
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4000 Dollar Suit posted:I like how spam planet knew Raffi was a stoner. tbh Amazon, Facebook and Google all know I'm a stoner
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Feb 20, 2020 21:04
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Cojawfee posted:I enjoyed the show for a bit but it jumps off the deep end towards the end of the season and I started to really hate it. But I really hate (terror spoilers) things where the monster is magically invulnerable and nothing can be done to it. It no longer becomes scary, it just becomes stupid and I start fast forwarding until the scene with the monster ends, because it's not like anything in that scene will matter if they can't fight it. (terror spoilers) The monster is a metaphor. It's the lead in their lowest bidder provisions that's slowly poisoning them, it's the imperial arrogance of the expedition itself, it's the crushing indifference of a brutal environment and it's the fear and callousness of men in the most desperate of situations. Those men would have been just as dead without the Tuunbaq.
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Feb 20, 2020 21:05
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The Bloop posted:I've never had a problem with the Borg queen Believe you me, I've repeated the same thing basically every time bees or other eusocial insects come up. The beauty of super-organisms like bees is that each "individual" bee is just a functioning cell for the greater swarm. The very name "queen" is counter-productive. No monarch in history has ever done in their reign as much as a "queen" does in a single day for the colony it is a part of. I don't think the show read to me as them being clever about hiveminds, it seemed they ascribe to the mythical bees that have a queen who is "in charge" instead of "perpetually giving birth to new hive members and nothing else." However, I think I'd enjoy the Borg and Borg Queen much more with your interpretation. Really, in the light of her being a hubris-tic rounding error kind of thing, or just a legit super-organism and the queen is just a face for the party and is quirky because it's emulating our species -- it's kind of cool. And gently caress it, even if that wasn't their intention, Star Trek is always best if you punch it up for them.
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Feb 20, 2020 21:11
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Lizard Combatant posted:(terror spoilers) I haven't watched it in a few months, but I was gonna say. Isn't it framed in such a way that there's never any actual concrete evidence that it's not simply a combination of hallucinations and 1 or 2 actual polar bear attacks? One crew member is visibly injured (the one who has his leg amputated) but everyone else it kills with no witnesses, IIRC
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Feb 20, 2020 21:23
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Snow Cone Capone posted:I haven't watched it in a few months, but I was gonna say. Isn't it framed in such a way that there's never any actual concrete evidence that it's not simply a combination of hallucinations and 1 or 2 actual polar bear attacks? One crew member is visibly injured (the one who has his leg amputated) but everyone else it kills with no witnesses, IIRC (still terror spoilers) I mean you could read it that way and it's definitely a manifestation of the rot in the expedition, but I don't think we're supposed to think it's not actually a real presence. You could also read it as 100% literal monster too and that's fine as well. But their fates were sealed the moment the ice closed around the ships and before it even shows up.
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Feb 20, 2020 21:29
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Arglebargle III posted:The idea that a super-smart, super-strong android with a body made of alloy and polymers could pass a medical scan as human was one of the dumber conceits of TNG season 7 and I'm glad they didn't bring it back. Are you referring to Juliana Tainer? I thought there was a line about her positronic net purposely built to send out false bio readings to trick medical devices?
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Feb 20, 2020 21:33
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Lizard Combatant posted:(still terror spoilers) Oh definitely, they were hosed even before the temperatures started dropping. Crozier warned them in like, the first episode.
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Feb 20, 2020 21:36
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Snow Cone Capone posted:Oh definitely, they were hosed even before the temperatures started dropping. Crozier warned them in like, the first episode. No one does oppressive doom like my man Jared Harris.
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Feb 20, 2020 21:39
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I don’t know who looked at Star Trek ip and thought “I know what people want: a grim, violent future with brutal eye gouging, murderous capitalist space business, greedy and cowardly assholes, class tension and resentment, deeply rooted corruption. Beloved character Seven of Nine murders someone in cold blood for revenge? Where the gently caress is the deal with this dumb gangster planet anyway? It’s decidedly not in Romulan space. Are we supposed to think it’s inside the Federation? Why is Picard ripping off Babylon Five with this Ranger b.s. They’re vigilantes ? Outside what law — Federation law? Yet more discussions of money, financial services, etc. This whole thing was really a perversion of what Star Trek is about. And that’s all without getting into the horrendous writing, pacing, sound mixing, directing, maudlin melodramatic writing.
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Feb 20, 2020 21:48
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I can't stop laughing at how bad that episode was, I wish I could see what their market research is telling them because holyshit lol
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Feb 20, 2020 21:49
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I have no clue where the hell this show is trying to go and it's moving in the most boring way possible.
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Feb 20, 2020 22:05
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I think one characteristic of the Romulans that they should have retained from DS9 and TNG is how they have zero time for human bullshit. Every time there's a Romulan ally trying to explain things to a human in 90s Trek their attitude is like: "LISTEN UP rear end in a top hat THIS IS HOW IT WORKS"
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Feb 20, 2020 22:09
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Panzeh posted:I have no clue where the hell this show is trying to go and it's moving in the most boring way possible. They're trying to show us that better things aren't possible
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Feb 20, 2020 22:20
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ashpanash posted:There is definitely a limited amount of talent in the industry, yes. And that's where a good producer comes in, by getting the best talent to make the product great.  Hollyhock posted:So making TV is, like, a full-time job?? Then why is it so bad!? I just assumed people weren't trying.
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Feb 20, 2020 22:28
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That was my least favourite episode up to now, which surprised me since I was really looking forward to it from the preview. I think a big part of it is that they are building a whole arc around intrigue and conspiracy, that there may be things about the Trekverse that are different to what we expect. Fine, that can be great. For it to work though there has to be a sense that this is still taking place in the universe we previously knew. All the talk of investments, loans, ship hire fees, and money is building a very different society to that one. That could easily turn around for me though. It seems like the implication is that Free Cloud is outside Federation space, perhaps even in some unclaimed wild west region. If so then it could all fit together. People are free to leave the Federation, to pursue alternative paths, but choosing to not work together for the greater good is inherently destructive. People want to live in a region run by capitalistic rules? Sure, no-one will stop you, but here is a look at the inevitable consequences of such a wild west frontier and how it can damage people, with Seven as our reference point for what it does to people. If something like that is what they are going for then awesome. They need to give a sign of that though, because at this point it's also equally possible that next episode they could retcon all the Federation is using money now and that's how it has always been.
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Feb 20, 2020 23:20
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They made it seem like Freecloud was in the DMZ between Federation space and the Romulan Empire. So they were never really part of the Federation which is why they use money. And once Romulus was destroyed and the Mars shipyards were attacked, there was no one to patrol it so it became sort of like the wild west.
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Feb 20, 2020 23:32
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I think it’s been more or less clear everything dealing with money in the show has taken place outside the Federation, so I don’t have an issue with it. Rios is a freelancer, Freecloud and the Romulan planet are outside the Federation proper. Rafi’s living situation seems to be her own choice and her comments about Picard giving up and living a cushy life seemed to be more of a stab at his willing irrelevance instead of jumping to action and taking a moral stand like he would have in the old days. Nothing in the show so far screams “the future sucks now and it’ll never get better” to me. If anything, the show for the most part has been Picard and the others actively trying to make things better. No one writes off Measure of a Man or Homefront/Paradise Lost after Act 2. You have to introduce the problems first before your heroes take a principled stand against them in Act 3/4. We still have 5 episodes to go.
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Feb 20, 2020 23:34
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I’m not sure if it’s directly stated in the episode, but I thought Freecloud was outside the federation.
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Feb 20, 2020 23:35
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