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All the xB stuff just feels like a flimsy excuse to justify Seven’s presence, and even then they still do next to nothing with it. Season 1 is still miles better than 2 (boring and bad) or 3 (infantile and insulting) though. Which isn’t saying much, but 
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Mar 10, 2024 23:17
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DavidCameronsPig posted:Was it though? Because it started being a story about saving Data's kids and ended on something about robots trying to open a portal to a monster dimension with a space laser. Also there was Borg for some reason, and a Romulan dude trying to have hate sex with his own sister, and the sister had a karate fight with Seven of Nine for no reason. Oh and Durati murdered Measure of a Man guy but I don't remember why and then everyone forgave her because she was like super stressed when she did it and honestly who can't relate to murdering their boyfriend during a stressful work day, let he without sin cast the first stone and all that. Fundamentally its a classic Star Trek story about hope being better than fear and intolerance. It is messy, weirdly violent, has lots of plot threads that come out of nowhere and go nowhere, but at the end we've come full circle and learned that Romulan paranoia and intolerance is what created a self-fulfilling threat of synthetics.
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Mar 10, 2024 23:43
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blastron posted:Also, when I originally dropped the series back when Season 2 was wrapping up, I posted a few notes on Twitter, and the terminally online Terry Matalas himself jumped into my mentions to defend his work from the opinions of me, some random poster on the internet. The man hasn't changed at all. This is how I know Matalas isn't a goon because he'd have long since melted down in this thread defending the honour of his shitshow mess from all comers and the mildest of criticisms.
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Mar 10, 2024 23:45
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I would almost be willing to pay for the account myself if I knew he’d actually use it. Best  I’d ever spend if it meant he’d actually have to interact with Trekkies who were immune to blatant and lazy nostalgia-bait and wouldn’t just kiss his rear end.
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Mar 10, 2024 23:47
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One thing I really dislike about the Star Wars sequels is that in bringing back the old characters, writers so often feel like they have to kill (some of) them off because they have to establish stakes. It always ends up making the Star Wars universe feel smaller than it really should be because yep Han Solo is back again and wouldn't you know it, he's facing the same bullshit as the last time we saw his character. Star Trek had been pretty good prior to Picard at bringing back old characters and giving nods to the fans with clever cameos, but it usually felt like it was done as a celebration of the past, not just a reference to show that the writers had also seen a Trek once maybe. Sulu and Rand in Voyager is a great example of this, and Barclay himself as well. Actually, maybe Voyager was just better at cameos? But you also have Riker in DS9 and that was loving brilliant. Regardless, these are one-off little moments are meant to be a treat, and not major drivers of the plot. If you miss the Riker episode of DS9, not much really changes. Bringing back Hugh and the Maddox just to kill them off makes the Star Trek universe feel so much smaller. It makes all of the events that came before them feel trivial because whatever conflicts were dealt with and overcome are now pointless, those episode's previous resolutions a footnote to Picard's galaxy-threatening stakes. The characters are then dead and what lessons may have been learned died with them. Plus, we just never mention them again and try to pretend the whole thing didn't happen. To me, this has always been just as bad or worse than a prequel. Just tell a knew story. Let the old characters go. Not everything has to be perfectly connected. There are more than four characters in the universe.
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Mar 11, 2024 00:51
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Look up the Shaw Wolf 359 speech from Picard S3. It's literally the only good scene in the whole show. The throwing an asteroid at another ship was pretty good and something we haven't seen before in Trek
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Mar 11, 2024 01:08
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Atlas Hugged posted:One thing I really dislike about the Star Wars sequels is that in bringing back the old characters, writers so often feel like they have to kill (some of) them off because they have to establish stakes. It always ends up making the Star Wars universe feel smaller than it really should be because yep Han Solo is back again and wouldn't you know it, he's facing the same bullshit as the last time we saw his character. And then later they go on twitter and say that, actually, that person who got impaled through the chest and shot several times and then the ship exploded is fine, they just couldn't film the scene due wasting all the budget
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Mar 11, 2024 01:23
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Mooseontheloose posted:The Lore/Data mind find was pretty good too. The concept was ok but the execution was bad. All the characters reacting watching like "Oh no Data is 99% gone, he is going to be erased forever!" While it was completely obvious to any audience member what Data was doing and what the plan was.
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Mar 11, 2024 01:31
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Lizard Combatant posted:Those idiot changelings just lacked confidence, why were they even working with the Borg still? They'd already stolen a super weapon and so thoroughly infiltrated Starfleet that they were hacking the transporters to change people's DNA. Like, forget the lovely Borg cum plan my dudes, you got this - nuke the cube with your teleporter gun and take over on your own terms. This is some Palpatine hiding under ground when he's got an entire imperial fleet already built and manned poo poo. Just go for it! They were dying, insane, and cut off from the Great Link. That's why they go along with a plan that makes no drat sense. Putting at least one changeling on every single ship in the fleet is not how Founders work. That would take thousands of them. At the very least hundreds of them. Where did all those changelings even come from? Did the mutants make a bunch of baby changlings? Because there's no sign the Dominion was involved at all.
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Mar 11, 2024 01:35
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Facebook Aunt posted:They were dying, insane, and cut off from the Great Link. That's why they go along with a plan that makes no drat sense. Here's a hint: you've asked more questions about how this was supposed to work than anyone in the writer's room bothered to.
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Mar 11, 2024 01:39
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John Wick of Dogs posted:The concept was ok but the execution was bad. All the characters reacting watching like "Oh no Data is 99% gone, he is going to be erased forever!" While it was completely obvious to any audience member what Data was doing and what the plan was. The only thing missing in that scene was Lore having a Snidely Whiplash mustache, going "nyah, haha" as he took each ~treasured memory~. You know Spiner would've done it, too. Happily. And energetically. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Mar 11, 2024 |
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Mar 11, 2024 01:40
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blastron posted:I went back to watch it after Picard S3 because I was curious about exactly this thing. Season 1 was actually pretty good, but it was also the only season that had a lot of existing source material to draw on. Everything after that was a mess in exactly the same way Picard's S2 and S3 were. Season 2 was fun but kinda rambling, and then seasons 3 and 4 were incoherent in exactly the same way Picard S2 and S3 were. Villains were reduced down to one note, rules were broken to make protagonists more special, there were mystery boxes everywhere that all had big dramatic visuals. If you couldn't stand the Red Door in Picard S3, you're not going to like 12 Monkeys past the first (or maybe second) season. Lower Desks
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Mar 11, 2024 01:45
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blastron posted:I will die on the hill defending Picard S1 as being a pretty okay, watchable show that you can maybe have fun with if you like its vibe. First time in decades that the Borg were scary again. The cube being a haunted house was A+.
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Mar 11, 2024 06:20
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pik_d posted:lmao Holy gently caress! I've never finished season two of Picard, is that actually what Alison Pill Borg looks like? LMAO!
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Mar 11, 2024 15:33
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Stick your head in the cutout and get a picture of yourself as the borg queen!
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Mar 11, 2024 16:07
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Big Mean Jerk posted:All the xB stuff just feels like a flimsy excuse to justify Seven’s presence, and even then they still do next to nothing with it. Season one wasn't great but it did give us eyepatch Picard with an outrrrrrrrrrageous French accent so that elevated it a bit.
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Mar 11, 2024 16:37
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PriorMarcus posted:Holy gently caress! I've never finished season two of Picard, is that actually what Alison Pill Borg looks like? LMAO! Briefly. Initially she had a full face mask because when you are asking the federation for help it's important to look as weird as possible. Or trying to avoid a time paradox or something, I guess. SPOILERS!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DUbAbxQG0I I think it's supposed to show that borg2 don't lose as much of their humanity. Her skin tone is closer to what it was before assimilation and they've avoided disfiguring facial prosthetics.
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Mar 11, 2024 20:43
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that's something I never really understood about the Borg. if they have nano-machines, why do they also need implants that obviously cause fear and revulsion amongst organic species? wouldn't it be easier to min-max their MAU (monthly assimilated user) KPIs if they spent a miniscule amount of effort on superficial aesthetics for their infiltrators or organic "liaisons" I guess what I'm saying is the Cylons seemed to understand that part better
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Mar 11, 2024 21:20
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PriorMarcus posted:Holy gently caress! I've never finished season two of Picard, is that actually what Alison Pill Borg looks like? LMAO! Counterpoint: 'allison pill picard red dress'
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Mar 11, 2024 21:30
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Jason Sudeikis last week mentioned Prodigy on Comedy Bang Bang and seemed really happy it was on Netflix now rather than Paramount+. Normally that show is all jokes, but Jason seemed pretty sincere that he thought the show was on more stable ground now.
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Mar 11, 2024 22:17
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corona familiar posted:that's something I never really understood about the Borg. if they have nano-machines, why do they also need implants that obviously cause fear and revulsion amongst organic species? wouldn't it be easier to min-max their MAU (monthly assimilated user) KPIs if they spent a miniscule amount of effort on superficial aesthetics for their infiltrators or organic "liaisons" Revulsion is irrelevant. From Seven we learn all they care about is the pursuit of perfection, which seems to mean efficiency and accumulating information. Perhaps the clunky implants are in some way more efficient than the nanoprobes. Their nano tech could depend on a rare resource, which is why they are still using drones rather than going grey goo on the universe. Or maybe the production team thought it looks cool. It makes the brutality dehumanization obvious as shorthand to explain that these are the bag guys.
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Mar 11, 2024 22:19
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corona familiar posted:that's something I never really understood about the Borg. if they have nano-machines, why do they also need implants that obviously cause fear and revulsion amongst organic species? wouldn't it be easier to min-max their MAU (monthly assimilated user) KPIs if they spent a miniscule amount of effort on superficial aesthetics for their infiltrators or organic "liaisons" The Borg have always had problems that nuBorg legitimately finally addressed, even if how we got to nuBorg was stupid bullshit (that they might've retconned in s3 already I forget who cares). The Borg would be much better assimilated with honey over their general approach of terror. They way Trek usually approaches the Borg is very UnTrek, clearly born out of fear and anxieties of selfish individualists from a selfish culture and economy that literally cannot conceive of or tolerate any existence besides their maximal individualist drive, with the ironic twist if any are known then they are to be pitied, exploited, and converted. They fear the collectivist doing to them what individualism does to all. The Borg finally assimilated the lessons of kindergarten books and could make peace with other species while enticing individuals into a higher state of collective consciousness. And then they were naw gently caress that let's kill most people in the dumbest way using stupidest Borg plot yet
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Mar 11, 2024 22:35
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I like how Alison Pill’s big arc in season 2 can be summed up as “no it’s actually good and correct to sacrifice your own unique identity and agency in order to finally fit in and find purpose”
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Mar 11, 2024 22:35
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Big Mean Jerk posted:I like how Alison Pill’s big arc in season 2 can be summed up as “no it’s actually good and correct to sacrifice your own unique identity and agency in order to finally fit in and find purpose” Again, Prodigy just comes along and eats Picard's lunch on the dual topics of making the Borg terrifying again and using the Collective as a cure for mental health issues (to which Prodigy's response is the opposite of Picard Season 2's, being "gently caress you, you insane machine cult".)
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Mar 11, 2024 22:52
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Big Mean Jerk posted:I like how Alison Pill’s big arc in season 2 can be summed up as “no it’s actually good and correct to sacrifice your own unique identity and agency in order to finally fit in and find purpose” My big takeaway of her arc was 'car batteries are yummy'
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Mar 11, 2024 23:03
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DavidCameronsPig posted:My big takeaway of her arc was 'car batteries are yummy' Yum yum
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Mar 11, 2024 23:15
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I think the Borg Queen was the big mistake that ruined the concept of the Borg over time. If she'd been like a queen bee or ant it might well have worked by expanding what the Borg are while giving them the figurehead antagonist the writers desperately wanted, but having someone who is extremely individual and unique and also clearly wants to remain as such, but also leading what is meant to be a singular collective, just doesn't really mesh. And all the nonsense that entails from that contradiction just spins the whole thing out of control until you have to kill them off.Khanstant posted:The Borg finally assimilated the lessons of kindergarten books and could make peace with other species while enticing individuals into a higher state of collective consciousness. Case in point. You can have them as this inhuman terror that doesn't share any goals or aspirations that are compatible with individualist existence, or you can have them attempt to learn to understand and exist alongside individualism from a collectivist perspective, but if you try to marry the two then it inevitably falls apart and you have to kill them all anyway and you haven't really proved anything or made a salient point along the way.
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Mar 11, 2024 23:53
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Khanstant posted:The Borg have always had problems that nuBorg legitimately finally addressed, even if how we got to nuBorg was stupid bullshit (that they might've retconned in s3 already I forget who cares). It's always bugged me that Star Trek always sat on the fence on whether it felt nice to be in the collective or not, like are they an evil computer virus had just turns people into more hardware to run on, do they just think this rocks and come round on it really quickly or are they just overwhelmed by the rest of the collective who do enjoy it? Like unless it's literal brainwashing I figure they have to like it otherwise they'd just hit a critical mass of people who don't like being Borg and the collective would just vote to disband
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Mar 11, 2024 23:55
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Voyager did cover that, the Borg Queen roots out the unbelievers and kills them to avoid contamination. But that just goes back to the issue of how your interconnected collective now relies on one person's continued existence and individualism to maintain itself and you suddenly don't have any idea what the Borg are anymore or why they're actually doing any of this. It turns the Borg from a collective into a one-woman cult. Doctor_Fruitbat fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Mar 12, 2024 |
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Mar 12, 2024 00:03
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Nichael posted:Jason Sudeikis last week mentioned Prodigy on Comedy Bang Bang and seemed really happy it was on Netflix now rather than Paramount+. Normally that show is all jokes, but Jason seemed pretty sincere that he thought the show was on more stable ground now. Do you mean Jason Mantzoukas? Or is Ted Lasso just a big fan/future guest star?
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Mar 12, 2024 00:20
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:I think the Borg Queen was the big mistake that ruined the concept of the Borg over time. If she'd been like a queen bee or ant it might well have worked by expanding what the Borg are while giving them the figurehead antagonist the writers desperately wanted, but having someone who is extremely individual and unique and also clearly wants to remain as such, but also leading what is meant to be a singular collective, just doesn't really mesh. And all the nonsense that entails from that contradiction just spins the whole thing out of control until you have to kill them off. Pretending they did the queen bee thing, that would still be the same problem of imposing individualist fears bourne from what individualists will actually do when allowed, projected onto collectivism. It would also add the new problem of how misleading "queen bee" is and how they would of course use it. Queen Bee invokes a monarchy and leader, but an actual queen bee is nothing like that, they aren't ruling over anything or making executive calls. Functionally a queen bee is the reproductive organ of the superorganism, the queen is the uterus and birth canal, delivering new eggs until death. If the queen does or the colony gets big enough, they can make more queens. Any larvae can become a queen if they feed it enough junk food. Frustratingly this actually offers a truly alien system of organization to us as living under capitalist control during an extinction event literally planned by our civilization's dedication to selfishness. The Borg queen becomes a figurehead like for any opposing forces, it's comforting to pick out one evil person to represent the sins of a nation. It's lazy and stupid and antithetical to the conceit of Borg. The logical thing would be to emphasize the fear the Federation has when dealing with a collective entity that has no single figurehead. The federation functions of chain of command, people can voice objections but they generally fold and do as ordered. The federation hinges on a super government that's really nice and good and inexplicably dedicated to usually positive stuff any sensible humanistic person would support. It usually resolves it's biggest conflicts by assimilation, less violently than the Borg, but still insisting superiority as a way of existence, violent, backed by the explicit threat of potential scale of violence, and enforced through forcing assimilated cultures to be more federationy. The federation will force dissenters to be sacrificed or ignored when expedient, they are dedicated to the notion that an arbitrary2 majority rules unilaterally with token efforts to sometimes not totally gently caress over the dissenting (or some plot contrivance where it all works out for everyone somehow despite unresolved logistical and philosophical conflict). The federation against a decentralized Borg, truly a collective consciousness where the Borg simply do what the Borg collectively agree to, provides a much more interesting conflict template than sticking a couple of bald people in an hr giger escape room to argue about their differences. The federation doesn't really have to deal with the notion of each individual actively mattering on the way a collective consciousness actually does.
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Mar 12, 2024 01:05
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swickles posted:Do you mean Jason Mantzoukas? Or is Ted Lasso just a big fan/future guest star? Yeah sorry, my brain went away for a moment. Particularly hosed up because I'm a big fan of Mr. Heynongman and all of Comedy Bang Bang. Regardless though, I'm hoping there's more seasons of Prodigy after this one. And I'm hoping if/when Paramount+ collapses, SNW, LD, etc get similar pick ups.
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Mar 12, 2024 01:05
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They had to contrive the Borg queen hunting down dissenters because the writers cannot conceive of a solution besides one of their own philosophy and history: simply killing those who do not agree with whoever is presently wielding the most violence.
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Mar 12, 2024 01:09
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:Voyager did cover that, the Borg Queen roots out the unbelievers and kills them to avoid contamination. How many true believers do you get when your main method of assimilation is scooping up large groups of unwilling people and forcibly sticking technology in them lol.
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Mar 12, 2024 01:49
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"You know, this really isn't on." *horrible mechanical whirring and electrical zaps* "Vorg is best, baby! Love to be Vorg!" *zap* "Borg, I mean!"
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Mar 12, 2024 01:53
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DavidCameronsPig posted:My big takeaway of her arc was 'car batteries are yummy' Those jerks at pep boys secretly lying just offshore with in scuba gear, pilfering the batteries you threw in the ocean so they can eat them themselves
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Mar 12, 2024 03:32
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No the pep boys are busy trying to steal the secret treasure of Babboon
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Mar 12, 2024 04:00
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSxkSLQ2UX0 I love that he's still doing these, and has started doing the new shows too.
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Mar 12, 2024 10:01
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I love all the SNW cast unabashedly. 
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Mar 12, 2024 10:44
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The Borg queen should have been just a variant on Locutus - some representative the Borg spits out every now and again because they need a figurehead to talk to other races. Heck, I'd even be on board with the Borg producing queens as an experiment in singular leadership - every other species has some sort of hierarchy, maybe we should try that too. Oh look it's all gone horribly wrong and we are now insane and all our cubes are fighting each other, let's not do that again.
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