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I like how there was one episode of lower decks where an evil lovecraftian alien takes over a ship and eats it from the inside out and then at the end they were all "Look it was just a baby trying to feed and hatch, no hard feelings" and watch it drift off prettily, and the B plot of the episode is all these space-injured and space-crippled starfleet people on a ship to the recovery planet who are starting to think that it's all a lie and they're being shipped off to nowhere out of sight, but then it turns out they were just taking the long way around and the recovery planet is a super-nice resort with lots of resources being poured into fixing them and giving them massages while they wait. It was just like SPACE IS EVIL AND THERE'S A DARK EVIL UNDERBELLY OF THE FEDERATION nah just kidding it's all good.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2020 04:51
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MikeJF posted:I like how there was one episode of lower decks where an evil lovecraftian alien takes over a ship and eats it from the inside out and then at the end they were all "Look it was just a baby trying to feed and hatch, no hard feelings" and watch it drift off prettily, and the B plot of the episode is all these space-injured and space-crippled starfleet people on a ship to the recovery planet who are starting to think that it's all a lie and they're being shipped off to nowhere out of sight, but then it turns out they were just taking the long way around and the recovery planet is a super-nice resort with lots of resources being poured into fixing them and giving them massages while they wait. It was just like DARK EVIL UNDERBELLY OF THE FEDERATION nah just kidding it's all good. I was seething for most of the episode until that reveal and it really won a lot of points with me for Lower Decks.
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Oct 5, 2020 04:55
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Diorama posted:I mean. is there any element of 'it's so bad it's good' at all? like, can you enjoy the awfulness in and of itself, or is it just poo poo? Just watch it and form your own opinion. I really liked most of it. There is way worse Trek out there by a long shot.
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Oct 5, 2020 05:16
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Automatic Slim posted:Picard missed an opportunity when they didn't make the nasty interviewer Jake Sisko. Why did you kill my mom at wolf 359? 
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Oct 5, 2020 05:36
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Drink-Mix Man posted:Just watch it and form your own opinion. I really liked most of it. There is way worse Trek out there by a long shot. code of honor is marginally more racist but otherwise not really
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Oct 5, 2020 05:43
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On my voyager grind through, im up to the one in which Seven gets in a child custody dispute and it's depressing the poo poo out of me
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Oct 5, 2020 05:45
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The next one has an unreliable Bajoran. Glad we're back on familiar ground.
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Oct 5, 2020 06:40
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Lmao an affirmative action bajoran
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Oct 5, 2020 06:45
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blatman posted:my ideal star trek is a show that focuses 100% on Quark's Bar, Grill, Gaming House and Holosuite Arcade and the antics therein with no gritty dark plotlines the same bar, but with a minigolf course
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Oct 5, 2020 12:27
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Nefarious 2.0 posted:it really annoys me when people talk about shows that arent star trek in the star trek thread. first it was babylon 5 and now its discovery and picard Please do not besmirch the former by association with the latter. Thank you.
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Oct 5, 2020 13:22
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I've recently checked out Amazon Prime Video, and there are a couple of 90s sci-fi shows I never heard about. Farscape and Andromeda? Farscape is kinda fun, tbh, while I'm not yet convinced of Andromeda. Maybe it gets better later on, but those herculean powers didn't really transfer over (the Hercules actor is the main guy, forgot his name).
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Oct 5, 2020 13:35
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busalover posted:I've recently checked out Amazon Prime Video, and there are a couple of 90s sci-fi shows I never heard about. Farscape and Andromeda? Farscape is kinda fun, tbh, while I'm not yet convinced of Andromeda. Maybe it gets better later on, but those herculean powers didn't really transfer over (the Hercules actor is the main guy, forgot his name). Try out Space Precinct.
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Oct 5, 2020 13:40
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busalover posted:I've recently checked out Amazon Prime Video, and there are a couple of 90s sci-fi shows I never heard about. Farscape and Andromeda? Farscape is kinda fun, tbh, while I'm not yet convinced of Andromeda. Maybe it gets better later on, but those herculean powers didn't really transfer over (the Hercules actor is the main guy, forgot his name). Kevin Sorbo. Andromeda is incredibly bad, in general. Farscape is good and pretty weird, and very much not Star Trek. Drink-Mix Man posted:Just watch it and form your own opinion. I really liked most of it. There is way worse Trek out there by a long shot. Worse than Picard? Can you name it? e: This isn't hyperbole, I'm genuinely curious. Picard fundamentally rejects the basic premise of Star Trek, so it's pretty easy to argue it's "the worst" at being Star Trek. It's also a terrible show in general, but it's especially bad at being part of the Star Trek franchise. Other Star Trek shows have sucked, but to my knowledge they all at least acknowledged the premise of the Federation as a post-scarcity (near)utopian society. infernal machines fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2020 14:07
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andromeda was never particularly good, but it had some potential in the first couple seasons. then sorbo started taking increasing control over the show, and he's an rear end in a top hat religious fundamentalist and libertarian. the show eventually became entirely about what sorbo wanted to say, and nothing he has to say has any merit.
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Oct 5, 2020 16:51
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yeah, first season or two there was some promise but it's not worth watching even for that
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Oct 5, 2020 17:08
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Watch Farscape it is good for two and a half seasons, takes a bizarre nosedive midway through season 3 (you'll know when it happens) before rebounding with a solid season 4 and a great two part finale.
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Oct 5, 2020 17:31
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Don’t forget to give LEXX a watch! 
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Oct 5, 2020 17:59
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i've watched all of lexx twice and i still can't figure out if i actually like it or not
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Oct 5, 2020 18:27
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Remember to dig up the surrealist Lexx mini series that originally aired on HBO. It's hard to find though. edit: apparently it's the first 4 two hour movies that were originally aired in canada? I just remember first seeing them on hbo. Washout fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2020 18:30
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Its cool how they had an organic ship, I heard each season gets worse than the last, theres a weird shower scene Thats all I know about Lexx
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Oct 5, 2020 18:32
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For the curious, here's my understanding of Picard. Spoilers, in case for some reason you really want to ride this roller-coaster. The Federation is now 21st century America, not-Fox News is mad at Picard because he wanted to help Romulans. Romulans who were forced to evacuate their home planet because their sun was going to explode. (sure, whatever) While tooling up for this evacuation project, which the Federation was at the time on board with, synths, who are slave labour in the Federation, went nuts and blew up the shipyards on Mars. Somehow, this turns sentiment against the Romulan evacuation project (no, this is not explained)*. The project is scrapped and the evacuation already in progress stops in some undefined way, with some displaced Romulans settled on other Romulan worlds. At some point Bruce Maddox discovers how to build incredibly advanced Soong-type androids. He does this for a bit, because why not. Some of them get murked for no particular reason. He then decides to make two who are indistinguishable from human, who will go out into the galaxy to maybe discover the truth behind the incident at the shipyards. Maybe. This too is unclear because they have no know knowledge of this themselves and are just loving around when we meet up with them. One lives in an apartment on earth, the Romulan Mossad try to do something to her, poorly, and she "activates" and decides she needs to find Picard because of implanted memories or some poo poo. Ultimately this ends in a huge fight on the roof of a Starfleet building on earth, resulting in an explosion and a handful of deaths. Absolutely no one cares that this happened and the matter is dropped. Picard decides he's going to go find the other indistinguishable-from-human android, for some reason, and gathers a rag-tag crew to do so, having been told to piss up a rope by Starfleet. Here we meet Poverty McVapesalot and Captain Alky. Next stop is to pick up a sword elf who Picard induces to kill a Romulan senator on the backwoods shithole they migrated to. Everyone is real mad at Picard for everything, including having helped with the evacuation and not having helped with the evacuation. Next we go looking for Bruce Maddox. Along the way we meet Seven of Nine, who kills people now, because they're bad. There's a wacky lighthearted adventure that ends in Seven of Nine murdering about a dozen people in cold blood. Maddox is found and relays some incoherent contradictory nonsense before being murdered too. There is a Borg cube. The other human-android lady works there, for some reason. The cube is being "reclaimed" by the Federation and the Romulans. The two groups the entire premise of the plot is based around not cooperating. The Romulans have resources to perform incredible high tech "humanitarian" work despite also being a decimated poverty stricken diaspora. No, this is never explained. The reclamation project that android lady works at seemingly exists so that the Romulan Mossad could get close to her, but also it's unclear that they knew she existed before she started working there. When their plan is exposed they just start killing all the people who have been saved, so clearly it doesn't exist for any other reason. Also, Borgs die in space now, I guess. We go visit Riker and Troy for no real reason. They provide a touching backstory about the death of their son that makes no sense, but whatever. This seemingly exists so that we can have Riker, who is retired, commanding a Federation battle fleet in the finale. Your Suburban Dad Riker sucks at using his new outdoor kitchen. Troy gets into the wine. At some point in all of this we learn that the Romulan Mossad discovered the plot to Mass Effect 3 and decided that an endless war of genocide was the best recourse. They caused the synthetic revolt on Mars that resulted in their empire being blown to the winds* (except when it's not, for plot reasons). They were of course correct, because the remaining human android decides to call the ancient ones and destroy all life in the galaxy. Then she stops because Picard dies near her. The Romulan and the Federation fleets just gently caress back off into space, and no one cares about this world of incredible Soong-type androids 30 seconds after the end of the battle. Finally, in the most pointless twist in the history of television, Picard is resurrected as a human-android with a built-in kill switch, so that he doesn't have to live forever. He also probably doesn't have android super powers like the rest of them, but maybe? Oh, and no mention of his twin. There's a lot of melodramatic interpersonal drama, but not much in the way of exploring any of the sci-fi themes they call upon. Every single problem in the show is solved with violence. There is no deeper introspection whatsoever. And the plot is a lot of just-so nonsense contrived to move you between set pieces until the end. Washout posted:Remember to dig up the surrealist Lexx mini series that originally aired on HBO. It's hard to find though. AFAIK this was just the original season of the show, done as a miniseries. e: To be clearer, I think the Canadian "movies" were just the miniseries re-cut as films. infernal machines fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2020 19:01
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Based on that synopsis I have decided I hate Star Trek Picard
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Oct 5, 2020 19:39
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Dark Matter, while only three seasons is actually not bad and has way more personality than nuTrek. Go Canadian science fiction!
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Oct 5, 2020 20:25
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Picard was awful but I can point at a couple of things you might have missed.quote:synths, who are slave labour in the Federation, went nuts and blew up the shipyards on Mars. Somehow, this turns sentiment against the Romulan evacuation project (no, this is not explained)*. quote:Some of them get murked for no particular reason. quote:resulting in an explosion and a handful of deaths. Absolutely no one cares that this happened and the matter is dropped. quote:Picard decides he's going to go find the other indistinguishable-from-human android, for some reason quote:There is a Borg cube. The other human-android lady works there, for some reason. quote:The Romulans have resources to perform incredible high tech "humanitarian" work despite also being a decimated poverty stricken diaspora. No, this is never explained. quote:Oh, and no mention of his twin. Everything else is about right
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Oct 5, 2020 20:53
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Point of clarification, it’s not Romulan Mossad but Ancient Romulan Doible Super Secret Mossad That Has Been Wholly Inactive For At Least 200 Years And they work by sending motorcycle thugs at you. Just a few at a time. And they always lose, even to Basic Romulan Old Squad Mossad. It’s pretty great.
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Oct 5, 2020 21:10
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I am so curious what the gently caress they're going to do for season 2. Rip off a different game? Ignore the first season entirely? Somehow build a plot off of it? Try to delay the writing and filming of the season until the people involved can just cash out?
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Oct 5, 2020 21:15
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Lister posted:He wouldn't have a twin because that only happens when you make a new brain from data's robot brain cells. The picard robot body is just an empty shell that they imprint his brain onto? It's still dumb as gently caress but not for the twin reason. This is incredibly dumb, but not in a way I expect them to expand on in this show*. The twin thing is just my favourite theory for "the dumbest conceivable twist" they could come up with for a later season. *What is his brain being imprinted on, if not a positronic android brain? What are the twins if not also positronic android brains? Who cares? It's Picard! The rest of those are correct, but also incredibly thin papering over the plot contrivances, it's funnier to just go with "for some reason" infernal machines fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2020 21:16
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I want picard to find a stargate...with 10 chevrons??!
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Oct 5, 2020 21:19
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piratepilates posted:I am so curious what the gently caress they're going to do for season 2. Rip off a different game? Ignore the first season entirely? Somehow build a plot off of it? Try to delay the writing and filming of the season until the people involved can just cash out?
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Oct 5, 2020 21:23
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infernal machines posted:Kevin Sorbo. I mean, I would categorize all the the bland, formulaic, pointless, and fanservicey episodes of Enterprise and Voyager that we enjoy dunking on as way worse than Picard. Episodes like "In a Mirror Darkly," the Klingon forehead arc (lol), or most of Enterprise season 1. All that stuff about the Borg children, or the Enterprise and Voyager episodes about the Ferengi. These installments are about mostly nothing, featuring embarrassing checked-out performances, phoned-in writing, Maxim Magazine-level juvenile sexuality, existing for no reason except to just keep regurgitating a worn-out formula. Star Trek V and Insurrection are way worse than "Picard" in my book. I mean, the charms of the campfire scene and all that... but in my heart I'd be way more embarrassed to show those hokey, tepid movies to a non-Trekkie than "Picard." That's just me speaking, of course. Personally I think it's worse to be repetitive than to be faithless to your spinoff's source material. Of course, maybe you thought "Picard" was boring and formulaic in its own way. Maybe it was and I just haven't seen all the things of which people thought it was derivative. I also disagree with this notion that Picard "rejected" the premise of Star Trek, but that's a whole essay probably. Drink-Mix Man fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2020 21:23
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Drink-Mix Man posted:I also disagree with this notion that Picard "rejected" the premise of Star Trek, but that's a whole essay probably. Feel free to write it, I'll read it even if no one else does. Drink-Mix Man posted:Of course, maybe you thought "Picard" was boring and formulaic in its own way. Maybe it was and I just haven't seen all the things of which people thought it was derivative. I thought it was ill conceived, overly contrived melodrama that lacked any elements of a "Star Trek" brand show save for the names of a few characters. If you want to watch that show, that's cool, but it's not really a "Star Trek" show so much as a generic space adventure using the Star Trek brand. Star Trek as a franchise has a few basic concepts that underpin it, one of which being the Federation is a post-scarcity near utopia that has largely outgrown its baser instincts. Even DS9 acknowledged that while writing stories around the characters' struggles to reach those ideals. Picard rejects all of that to give us some very tired tropes that were better explored in BSG and the Expanse. infernal machines fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2020 21:24
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Diorama posted:I want picard to find a stargate...with 10 chevrons??! Please don't make them bring more Iconians into this
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Oct 5, 2020 21:31
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I watched 3 seasons of SG:Atlantis a decade ago; should I finish it?
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Oct 5, 2020 21:57
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infernal machines posted:This is incredibly dumb, but not in a way I expect them to expand on in this show*. The twin thing is just my favourite theory for "the dumbest conceivable twist" they could come up with for a later season. I took "new brain" to mean "new individual personality" Like if you look that the slave bots, they have brains except they don't work well. The bodies are the easy to replicate part. Drink-Mix Man posted:I also disagree with this notion that Picard "rejected" the premise of Star Trek, but that's a whole essay probably. Picard said he left star fleet because it wasn't star fleet anymore. Star fleet abandoning the premise of star trek seems about the same to me. By the end of the season, there's no reason to think the whole organization has fixed itself. Lister fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2020 22:01
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Diorama posted:I watched 3 seasons of SG:Atlantis a decade ago; should I finish it? Watch A Dog's Breakfast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmN6u8iYFlI It's also got Christopher Judge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBDCVdFi-xg
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Oct 5, 2020 22:04
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infernal machines posted:I thought it was ill conceived, overly contrived melodrama that lacked any elements of a "Star Trek" brand show save for the names of a few characters. If you want to watch that show, that's cool, but it's not really a "Star Trek" show so much as a generic space adventure using the Star Trek brand. Star Trek as a franchise has a few basic concepts that underpin it, one of which being the Federation is a post-scarcity near utopia that has largely outgrown its baser instincts. Even DS9 acknowledged that while writing stories around the characters' struggles to reach those ideals. Picard rejects all of that to give us some very tired tropes that were better explored in BSG and the Expanse. What kills me about modern Trek and Picard in particular is that the show is keen to sell itself as being "about serious issues" like depression and substance abuse, but then completely shits the bed on these things. *Gestures wildly at Raffi* what the gently caress was this character? Everybody on this show drinks because the writers saw them do it on BSG and they think that their cargo cult writing constitutes some kind of mature statement on the nature of mental health or something. I actually have some of these problems and I can tell you that if I lived on 24th century Earth, the last thing my crippled rear end would do is park in a shed at the Vasquez rocks and slam brews while playing hash hockey all loving day. And then there's the plagiarism. I always come back to that because to me it's completely damning. At least some of the other writers had to have known and recognized what was happening; nobody cared or had enough pull to stop it. I'm not even invested in the thing they so poorly and brazenly ripped off; it's just so loving galling. And nobody who is so inclined to apologize for this kind of cash in garbage would even care.
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Oct 5, 2020 22:06
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nuTrek has decided that the Federation was pretty fascist for most of its history except the middle bit. Early on wiping out the Klingon homeworld with a volcano bomb was totally fine. And later on letting Romulan babies get incinerated is a cool thing that is awesome.
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Oct 5, 2020 22:08
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infernal machines posted:Feel free to write it, I'll read it even if no one else does. I guess my disagreement boils down 1) feeling that Star Trek is about the message, not necessarily the setting, and 2) thinking the evidence presented by fans that the Federation is no longer a post-scarcity utopia (for those inside its jurisdiction) has been kind of weak. The show barely takes place within the setting of the Federation, so it's kind of hard to make a full assessment. Its crime as depicted isn't that it stopped being post-scarcity (despite however you want to interpret a handful of lines), but that it stopped helping those outside its walls as much as it should have. I'll grant the "scared into xenophobia by 9/11" theme has been beaten to death and beyond already, but I thought "Picard" was the most emotionally resonant Trek touching on it in recent years. Moreso than, say, Discovery, for me because it was less about seeing the big knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 and more about watching the gradual erosion of your institutions' values over the years. And it's about how should we, as individuals, act on a small scale when that happens as opposed to watching a starship crew heroically turn the tides of an entire civilization. (At least that was what it was about up until it's rushed, cheesy ending which was the show's biggest flaw in my book.) Drink-Mix Man fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2020 22:13
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Star Trek used to have something of a progressive, even occasionally subversive streak and now it's just ineffectual liberal propaganda
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Oct 5, 2020 22:15
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Drink-Mix Man posted:I guess my disagreement boils down 1) feeling that Star Trek is about the message, not necessarily the setting, and 2) thinking the evidence presented by fans that the Federation is no longer a post-scarcity utopia (for those inside its jurisdiction) has been kind of weak. The show barely takes place within the setting of the Federation, so it's kind of hard to make a full assessment. Its crime as depicted isn't that it stopped being post-scarcity (despite however you want to interpret a handful of lines), but that it stopped helping those outside its walls as much as it should have. Well, there's Raffi's entire existence and the whole bit about Picard's vineyard and his heirloom furniture, but also the implied reason for scrubbing the Romulan evacuation support. In both cases, pretty fundamental to the plot of the series. Like it or lump it, poverty exists, on Earth, in Picard's Federation of planets. There's like a dozen clips I could link of OG TOS, TNG, and DS9 explaining how mankind had eliminated poverty by the 23rd/24th centuries, so I think we have to accept that one as part of the premise of the franchise. Drink-Mix Man posted:I'll grant the "scared into xenophobia by 9/11" theme has been beaten to death and beyond already, but I thought "Picard" was the most emotionally resonant Trek touching on it in recent years. Moreso than, say, Discovery, for me because it was less about seeing the big knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 and more about watching the gradual erosion of your institutions' values over the years. And it's about how should we, as individuals, act on a small scale when that happens as opposed to watching a starship crew heroically turn the tides of an entire civilization. (At least that was what it was about up until it's rushed, cheesy ending which was the show's biggest flaw in my book.) I'm inclined to disagree about "emotionally resonant" just because, to me, it comes off as hamfisted and manipulative, but also incredibly shallow. There's a lot of very intense seeming emotional moments that are completely meaningless, they don't matter to the story, they're just there for the characters to tear up making impassioned speeches at each other. As far as America and 9/11 goes, I don't know why Kurtzman and co keep trying to tell that story, but DS9 did it better in 1996
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Oct 5, 2020 22:29
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