[BlueFlames]

Star wars TV shows inlcludes the 80s cartoon Droids I hope 👍👍

The Holiday Special is the highest level of Star Wars canon, and that which does not conform to it is to be stricken from the record.  More wookies.  More cocaine.

A lot of people would rather a franchise dies than having to watch the ****e in order to remain part of a community.

And those people can eat ****.  Seriously.

I tuned out while Abrams was helming the Star Trek films, and now I'm back for Discovery and Picard, and I'm glad the franchise wasn't killed off just because it was temporarily going in a direction I didn't care for.

[Luis Dias]

The direction is basically the same, as far as I can tell: full blown TV soap drama over writing quality.

Episode 2 has some good scenes, I especially enjoyed the one between Picard and admiral Clancy, where the drama actually has a set up (last ep) and a good dramatical payoff, but the romulan "deep state" plot is so "bad guys within the system from the 90s shows" it hurts, even their overly machiavelian tones.

 Patrick has a great way of under-selling it, under-acting which works very well. I wished the rest of the cast would do the same, but they don't and just end up being like cardboard characters with no personality behind "act mischieviously".

Apart from Laris and Picard himself, I don't find myself caring about any other character in the show. And that's not a good sign.

And don't get me started on that particular plot point of Clancy going directly to Commodore Oh with that particular concern. It's beyond stupid, unless she was feigning it.

[The E]

And don't get me started on that particular plot point of Clancy going directly to Commodore Oh with that particular concern. It's beyond stupid, unless she was feigning it.

I'm sorry, I find these objections of yours too funny to ignore. Yes, Starfleet's Chief of Naval Operations contacting the officer in charge of security to order her to follow up on something a former senior officer brought to her "just to be sure", really is "beyond stupid". No responsible official would ever do something like that in reality. It's completely unthinkable that something like that would ever happen, in fiction or reality.

[Luis Dias]

well idk if I would relay a conspiracy theory about secret undercover romulan agents to a romulan person, but I guess she thought she was Vulcan. My mistake, I read her as her true self from the get go, and not her disguised self.

[Colonol Dekker]

Is her cover vulcan?  Her acting was pretty wooden/emotionless for a rommie.

[The E]

Is her cover vulcan?  Her acting was pretty wooden/emotionless for a rommie.

She was acting vulcan, her establishing shot had a decorative thingie on her desk that prominently displays the vulcan IDIC symbol....

[Colonol Dekker]

I only caught the episode in passing.  Thanks for clarifying 👍👍

{lol @idic}

[Blake00]

Apparently CBS has posted the first episode of Picard on YouTube for a limited time. So, if you dont have All Access and want to check it out, you have til Feb 7 to watch it for free. Naturally it's region locked though urgh.

Episode 2 of Picard seen. Glad it explains some of the mysteries & fan complaints about the first episode.

Spoiler:

A few fans complained about the weird Starfleet HQ 'rooftop cleanup' job & leave Picard on his couch with no questions asked scene jump moment in ep 1 but now we see the Commodore reviewing the battle cleanup footage (questioning it's effectiveness) and discover this fascinating Starfleet conspiracy with secret Romulan sect plot. I remember people in the past getting so upset about the English writing in the Romulan Borg research post but there are a lots of humans there which explains that one.

We see that the Androids that destroyed Utopia planitia were 'hacked' presumably by this secret synthetic hating Romulan faction. And holy moly they actually acknowledged Picard's Irumodic syndrome that afflicted him around now in the alternate future seen in TNG finale All Good Things. I'm impressed with their attention to detail (regarding old Trek events), which makes me hope the writers haven't forgotten Lore & Lal after all.

The only real gaff I saw was Laris saying Romulans never had a cybernetic program which contradicts the awesome TNG S3 ep the defector where Admiral Jarok tells Data that he knows a number of Romulan cyberneticists that would love to get their hands on him. Although then again maybe its not a gaff as we saw Romulan experts pulling apart dead Borg. You cant really study Borgs without some good cyberneticists lol. Probably just more Romulan secrets lol.

[theperfectdrugsk]

Hahahah. I watched these. As long as I think of it as pulpy sci-fi it's pretty enjoyable. All the the bad things folks have to say about it are absolutely true, but I'm not a hardcore enough Trek fan to be super upset by it (opposite of my feelings on that other scfi-fi franchise). It's fine. It's not good. It's not terrible. It's just fine. Definitely worth paying for the CBS All-Access that I definitely subscribed to. /s.

[Det. Bullock]

Saw the other two episodes and I think I sense the stench of pseudo-9/11 truther style plot, I hope they don't go with that.

On actual topic, I didn't see anything in Picard that set off 'bad writing' alarm bells, but they mostly haven't gotten to space yet.  There is one continuity break with the comic prequel to 'new star trek' where B4 actually did eventually 'become' Data, and was captain of the Enterprise.  I can't tell them they did it wrong in person, but it does make me sad, because Data as captain of the Enterprise would have been pretty special.  That itself is a little odd because Romulans working with Borg technology actually was in that prequel comic.  I skipped the 'this season on Picard' preview because I like being surprised by things, so I don't have any real speculation on what's coming.  Since we know Hue and Seven of Nine are coming back, I'm guessing the synthetic life angle will feature heavily.

Star Trek, like Star Wars, has always operated on a "only the tv shows and films are canon, everything else is irrelevant" basis (and even there, ST was always very lax about enforcing canon or sticking to a "universe bible")

Well, now Star Wars isn't like that anymore though but they manage by mostly keeping the stories small and only loosely related to the movies.

On actual topic, I didn't see anything in Picard that set off 'bad writing' alarm bells, but they mostly haven't gotten to space yet.  There is one continuity break with the comic prequel to 'new star trek' where B4 actually did eventually 'become' Data, and was captain of the Enterprise.  I can't tell them they did it wrong in person, but it does make me sad, because Data as captain of the Enterprise would have been pretty special.  That itself is a little odd because Romulans working with Borg technology actually was in that prequel comic.  I skipped the 'this season on Picard' preview because I like being surprised by things, so I don't have any real speculation on what's coming.  Since we know Hue and Seven of Nine are coming back, I'm guessing the synthetic life angle will feature heavily.

Star Trek, like Star Wars, has always operated on a "only the tv shows and films are canon, everything else is irrelevant" basis (and even there, ST was always very lax about enforcing canon or sticking to a "universe bible")

Hm, didn't George Lucas declare all of the EU Comics and books Canon roundabout 10-15 years ago?
I remember reading About it, a lot of 'fans' started a small riot because the EU stuff was for the most part Pretty bad back then (there are exceptions like Zahns trilogy) and contradicted the movies to some extend or gave stupid explanations to Events/myth in SW (even dumber then midichlorians).

Not really...?
I mean, I remember him saying he didn't care for those even if he sort of respected that people liked them, they had to convince him to keep the name "Coruscant" for the capital of the old Republic when he did the prequels.
Only now technically most stuff is canon but they are usually careful in not making it huge or galaxy-shattering (like, in the old EU you got an epIX-style plot every three novels) to avoid crossing into the movie stuff unless they are made as explicit tie-ins.

[Blake00]

My thoughts on what's led to some peoples frustrations with ep 1 & ep2 (once again has spoilers):

Spoiler:

It's funny. Am involved in a number of Picard forum discussions around the net and I see some people complaining about too much exposition yet I see others complaining about being confused due to not enough info lol. Makes me think they probably should have just done Ep 1 & 2 together as a pilot movie (that would have avoided some of the anger about confusing things in ep1 that were explained in ep 2) then they could have had the big trailer at the end of the 2hrs showing that the adventure kicks off next episode. Instead we got a ep1 that confused people and an exciting trailer at the end of it that implied the adventure was about to begin when in reality the next ep was still farting around on earth lol. So yeah I reckon a combined double ep pilot would have pissed off/confused far less people.

Anyway I'm still enjoying the show but am still unsure as to whether I actually really really like it or not. Still need to see how story pans out lol.
Episode 3 seen: (spoiler alert)

Spoiler:

Not thrilled about how they continue to make Picard look slow, weak & frail. You watch him on talk shows and he zips around just fine lol! But I love the fact that in ep 3 it appears writers are trying to address one of those funny never explained issues from old trek.

When I was young it always annoyed me how in TNG supposedly a Borg who got his individuality somehow broke a friggin cube and caused a rebellion on it of sorts when assimilating individuals is what the Borg do lol. Voyager & FC ended up adding a lot of info on how the borg worked, how they connect, and made it pretty obvious that assimilating ex borgs (eg 7 of 9, the borg kids, locutus etc) back into the fold wasn't going to break anything lol, in fact they wanted them. Yes Hugh was a Borg test tube baby and not a previous individual unlike those others I mention but it shouldn't really matter HOW they became an individual when you're grabbing someone and pumping nanites into their blood and connecting them to the hive lol.

However it looks like the new trek writers are carving a story where in reality, Hugh went back to the Borg they reassimilated him no probs but then a few hours later on the trip back to delta they found a nice little yummy Romulan intelligence vessel on the way to assimilate, they start 'processing them' and then 'something' goes wrong (Romulan virus? weapon? racial nanite rejection like the Denobulans?). Hugh presumably wakes up and pops out of his alcove again thinking its somehow caused by him (hence why he later tells Picard in Descent that it was his fault), all the other borgs who don't know how to be individuals start goin nuts and they kick off a nice little rebellion which then at some point Lore arrives on the scene and takes control of them and they escape on the light cruiser which we see in Descent (small borg ships inside big borg ships is nothing new). In fact this new obvious Romulan ex-borg fears of Dahj's sister (ie synthetics) could very well be relating to trauma from what Lore did to many of them when he took over things which once again gives me hope Lore will somehow come into this new story at some point. Probably a long shot though haha..

Am I way off.. we shall see haha.

[Luis Dias]

I liked episode 3.

Spoiler:

There's an issue regarding the romulan secret killer squad on how ****ing incompetent they are. They failed three times their mission by now, an astounding number given how they are built up as this amazing mythical group of elite stuff, and then they botch an attack against people they should be sufficient informed about, have all the time to attack, they have the surprise factor, etc., etc.

By the third time, it should really start to make me mad, but then the scientist comes out from that door blasting the last romulan and I get it. Ok. It's an infiltration mission. The scientist is no scientist at all, she's someone else. This is still unresolved in my head, but it's the only way I will ever forgive these idiots' incompetence.

Then there's the ship captain, that I've seen complaints online about how he's just blatantly stolen from the Expanse. I laugh at that, I can see it, but come on.

I like the ship, I like his doctor, I liked the episode. Best one so far.

[Blake00]

Episode 4 seen (belated).. WE'RE OFF!:

Spoiler:

Well things have finally taken off! Enjoying the fact we're back in space.. loved the look of the Romulan refugee colony (particularly in the flashback sequences) with the giant 'world tree' background, although in the opening planet shot I wish we'd seen the Enterprise E approaching (considering they made some interesting modifications to the D I'd be interested to see what they do with the E). Backstory of the Romulan Samurai dude & his history with Picard was interesting, although Picard now walking around with a Elf looking dude that slices off heads feels a bit weird lol, but no doubt they'll be some big fun action bits with him down the track (which will aggravate oldschool trek purists to no end I'm sure haha).

Enjoyed the space battle, sure enough it was a classic 22nd century Romulan Bird of Prey (nice tip of hat to old Trek), retrofitted for lawless system warlord related activities lol. Interesting to see all these different hologram crew member variants captain Chris has. 7 of 9 has arrived! Will be very interesting to see how much they delve into her past and backstory post Voyager return. Also the holodeck stuff explains why she's in Patrick's 'home' in the trailers. I know people were complaining/making fun of the Picard sword scene in the original trailer, but it was fine, they even made him took kinda tough before he did the expected 'I'm not fighting you/playing your games' thing. Although his comment about having bad knees annoyed me, I don't care if you're 95yrs old, it's 24th century, people aren't gonna have 'bad knees' lol (we're already getting into 3D printing/replicating joints & cartilage now so it's only a matter of time), would rather they just continue to try and hide any difficulties RL Patrick might have, although I still maintain he seems to zip around just fine in real life on talk shows and stuff though lol.

Anyway we're already off to another planet in the teaser for the next ep so things are definitely moving along now lol! Although I'm a little worried about all that silly dress up stuff.. I swear to god if the next ep is like the Casino planet sequence in Ryan Johnson's cr*ptastic Star Wars film and black eye patch gangsta Picard is throwing dice with cheesy overly excited cgi aliens I'm gonna throw my Tv lol.

Oh and I'm probably off the mark with the Lore theory previously posted.. sounds like they're going for something bigger.. harbinger of doom stuff lol!

Guess I better hurry up and watch Ep 5 now instead of reading comments as that's just asking for spoilers haha.

.

[Jethro Grey]

Can someone post a Synopsis (basically a Tl;Dr ) in spoilertags pls?

[Luis Dias]

That throat grabbing scene in the end of ep4 was so badly executed it made stop watching for a couple of minutes.

[Colonol Dekker]

I spotted Aggies

Spoiler:

sinister twist

a mile off.

[The E]

In more general Star Trek news:

[Luis Dias]

gotta love mikey, can't wait for his second instalment.

[Blake00]

Yeah.. episode 5.. wow.. If people here disliked it you don't have to worry about me arguing with you on this one guys. As this episode broke me too, or more precisely it broke my enjoyment of the show. I didn't enjoy that at all. I thought maybe if I sleep on it I'd feel better but nope, today I'm even grumpier about it haha. Up until now I've only had little nitpicks and have really enjoyed show and have defended it when people have complained about it "not feeling like star trek" but there was next to nothing Star Trek feeling about Ep 5. Those people who complained about past eps not being star trek are gonna looooooove this one lol. I don't wanna walk away from a Star Trek episode feeling frustrated and miserable. When they played the exciting trailer for the next ep and all the cool Borg stuff at the end I didn't even give s***. I was like.. whatever. They're gonna have to work hard in the next few eps to undo the damage that one just did. I can only hope that they had to go that dark and callous to setup the audience to be brought back to the light and happy ending lol. But I can't help but think that if it turned me off that badly then all those people out there who's really not been that into the new show and were barely holding on will probably be like "stuff this!" and be done with it after seeing that ep lol.

Spoiler:

For starters the acting felt a bit weird and wooden in this ep. Picard & 7 scenes felt weird, felt more like the actors were catching up more than the characters haha. 7 felt a little too different and Patrick didn't feel very 'Picardy'. His french gangster over acting rouse was funny but just didn't feel like something Picard would do, felt like I was watching one of Patrick's stage plays lol. For a French born character his french accent was pretty bad haha!

Can't remember what forum I was talking in but there was a guy who was all annoyed about how upset Raffi was about loosing her security clearance lol, well he's gonna love this ep and it pretty much says she turned into a alco & drug addict and messed up her family after that incident lol. Messed up drug addicts and alcoholics on earth, I'm sure Gene would love that lol. But hey I'm sure she'll have her recovering addict redemption story a happy ending with her dr son at some point and people will wonder if they're watching an episode of Chicago Med & not Star Trek lol.

But lets get to the real jewel of the episode.. I liked Voyager a lot but its not my favourite old trek show, probably more 3rd fav behind TNG & DS9. So considering how much this ep annoyed me I feel bad for all the super Voyager fans out there. You're NOT in for a good time here guys, I REALLY do feel bad for you guys and say sorry. Pretty much straight off the bat poor old (now grown up) Borg kid Icheb is utterly and brutally tortured/dissected and then murdered. Obviously the former was by the 'bad guys' but the later was by his Borg mum 7 of 9! Yes that's right, die hard voyager fans who love 7 of 9 and have been waiting for her return will literally get to see her shoot her own adopted son in the first 20 seconds of seeing her lol. He does the whole "im too far gone, put me out of my misery" thing everyone's seen a million times and she obliges. Get f****** mate! I get it, he's probably missing a few vital cybernetic organs but if he bleeds out or dies on route so be it, but at least try to throw him over your shoulder and carry your sons ass out of there. I mean I'm sure she didn't exactly have a nice state of the art medical bay next door ready to go or a big starship to beam up to but still it.. just.. felt.. wrong. Oh and apparently she just left him there too giving the black market guys EXACTLY what they wanted anyway as the crime lord chick brags later in the ep about dissecting him. Wtf?????

But don't worry Voyager fans there's more character assassination coming for your enjoyment haha. 7 of 9 is definitely not the one you know anymore lol.. now she's PTSD Aragorn ranger'ing around the galaxy shooting lots of people vigilante style.. in fact I think they even call her a vigilante in one scene lol. You know all those boring episodes of Voyager where we got endless Janeway and 7 of 9 scenes (funny now considering how much the actors disliked each other) handcrafting her into a civilized 24th century human being? Well say goodbye to that folks cause now she's a messed up Bourbon drinking badass assassin for hire! She's helping those in need who can't help themselves and is more than happy to kill a few hundred people in the process if they get in her way *cue dramatic 80s action music* lol!

So what now then.. I mean in her final scene she lies to Picard, beams back down and offs the crime lord chick and then starts mowing down the place and it cuts away. The end! So that's answers the question of will she be a regular.. nope.. she's gooone. Maybe she'll come back later? Maybe she's return in a future season? Maybe they'll even be a nice happy ending redemption story for her down the track too (although that doesn't bring poor Icheb back does it lol)? Or maybe not lol and that'll be the end of her story and every time Voyager fans re-watch the old show they'll be like "oh look there's Icheb, when voyager gets home he joins starfleet and gets brutally tortured and murdered for spare parts.. and oh look there's 7 of 9, she's the one that kills him and leaves him there to be dissected for said parts lol, and spends the rest of her life miserable and shooting up half the galaxy in revenge." It's likethe new Star Wars films.. I don't enjoy seeing my favourite childhood characters being brutally murdered in front of me. Because now when I re-watch the original stuff I just see their cheap deaths. Data's death in Nemesis had a similar effect on me so that's why I was so happy about this show as it gave me hope that they'd "do a star trek 3" and find a way to resurrect him. But now I find myself wondering how many other beloved characters are gonna get killed or messed up on the road to that happy ending, assuming thats even what happens, we may not even get that lol.

Anyway sorry.. back to the slaughter.. Bruce maddox.. they found him.. and he was all a messed up stressed alcoholic too of course.. cause everyone's messed up these days.. aaaaaaand then he was dead. All he bloody did was tell them her name and that shes at the cube and next thing we know he's getting offed by his own girlfriend (20 or so years younger than him I might add, yeeeaaahhh way to go on office romance bro! pulling those youngers chicks aint easy bro.. high 5!) giving us our innocent clumsy girl is actually working for bad guys shock moment at the end of the episode.. fake gasp.. yeah.. like I said before I was already completely disconnected by that stage and just didn't even care.

Urgh.. end of rant. Breath Daniel.. Just breath... lol

Like I said.. they're gonna need to work hard to undo the damage this episode did. I think I'd rather rewatch most of the episodes in discovery season 1 than ever watch that episode again lol.

Everywhere I go so far I've seem pretty horrified responses to ep5. I've seen a couple of dudes say they loved ep5 though, I was like WAAAT lol.

Spoiler:

I will pay the episode one compliment though.. their attention to detail on past Trek events once again is impressive. Eg they acknowledged Picard's Borg past which I was worried they wouldn't. They mentioned Quark in the bar sequence. And the biggest one would be during the horrible Icheb torture surgery scene where the lady callously says "where's your cortical node buddy?" as shes ripping stuff out of him. In season 7 of Voyager Icheb risked his life and gave his to 7 of 9 when her failed and they realised she couldn't survive without one while he might, which of course he did.

Meanwhile some self appointed comedian just thew this hand grenade into a Voyager facebook group. I'm sure you can image how well that went down with them lol. Too soon? Yeah just a bit lol.

Rest In Pieces Picture

.

[The E]

I liked this episode. The only thing I have trouble believing is that Seven was unable to kill Icheb's murderers for 13 years.

But hey, I'm a weirdo in that I generally like all of the new Shows; I do still miss some of the storytelling foundations that TNG and DS9 were running on and I really, desperately would like to see a show that has more of a space navy kind of feel (and no, Orville does not scratch that itch for me), but I like these shows for what they are.