Confession: Early in pandemic, while everyone was working on their sourdoughs, I lost my mind over how much I hated Picard S1. Literally spite-scripted screenplays for a series that used the same elements in service to something that felt more "Trek". (Hey, we all coped differently. 🙃)
I didn't watch S2 & S3, while my fellow #Trekkies hatewatched. I plan to pour my love of Trek into more new SF material, but... I think this review also neatly sums up the ongoing problem:
https://observer.com/2023/04/star-trek-picard-finale-review-to-not-so-boldly-go-backwards/
And a taster - opening scene, episode one, with Rina Ketty's J'attendrai serving as a perfect blended intro that, in every episode, was to be paired with the visual depiction of a different process - most taking place in otherworldly settings, but this one of course starting on one special vineyard. :) I would have been a fun writer for Trek in another universe, I tell you what!
Imagine this song playing as we bear witness to various production processes - on space ships, in alien monasteries, on vineyards: all of it. All the elegance of Jean Luc Picard - explorer, classist, Frenchman in affectation if not in proper accent - taken stylishly into outer space (again)!
It's okay, though. I have new SFF work in progress that'll heal all my Trekkie wounds. 🙃
https://youtu.be/QeFf8CCh3Hw
*classicist. Sheesh. Always a typo somewhere. Anyway, back to work! Happy Saturday! #AmWriting
@MLClark i've been rewatching some of the episodes from the various series and not finding them as involving as in past viewing. they seem cliché and proposing directions that no longer resonate.
maybe i'm just getting old and disillusioned by the promise of the past that obviously never materialized, except some technologically, while we face an alternate world that has come about by ignoring the insights and experiences that could have made an entirely different outcome possible.
@holon42 I wouldn't call that disillusioned! The flaw of Picard was nostalgia. Art is meant to build on the past, not linger in it.
E.g., I was underwhelmed when I first saw Soylent Green, because the concept had already informed so much else I'd watched before it that the ending *couldn't* shock me as it did its first audience, freshly experiencing the idea of people being indifferent to their food source.
You're exactly right not to glorify the past. Trek *should* be something we build upon.
@MLClark yes, you're right about that, but it's disappointing when i can, for example, find ever new and currently relevant interpretations of, for example, Hamlet, which shed light on today's world in a fresh way, while too many Trek messages remind me of Polonius, pompous and superficial.
perhaps i just expected too much from tv writers.
I too gave up on "Picard" after two episodes. Have not been temped to finish. I have some hope for season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. But we will see. The only Trek I have been watching is "Lower Decks".
@MLClark I walked away from Star Trek way back in 2002. Nemesis did me in. I never looked back after that. And Kurtzman trek has done nothing to court me back, just reenforce to me why it was a good decision to take my leave. Star Trek used to be cutting edge storytelling, but now it’s nothing more than petty soap opera 3D nonsense that’s boring at best and insulting at its worst. Can it be saved? I believe it can be but not by the current “talent” at the helm.
@Siren_six Nemesis broke me, too! The soap-operating nonsense continues to break my heart. When you go back to TNG and DS9 you see an era when theatre still deeply informed TV series design, and required robust writing. The *scripts* on these latest outings are awful - & the franchise has also lost the ability to hold ideas in tension, which used to be a core feature of a Trek outing. Current "talent" has made such blatantly cynical choices... but also, too many are fine with them. So it goes.
@MLClark Yeah I’m pretty convinced at the point the studios just don’t want to make money anymore.
Excellent thread, and it's nice to see a similar neuroses in a compatriot. Lol 11/10
@BosmangBeratna Ha ha! Yes! Neurotics (for the power of sci-fi to change worlds *when done right*) represent!
@MLClark I liked Picard S1, in the most part. I didn't like the end, so didn't watch S2 or S3 yet.
I probably will at some point, perhaps have to reinstate date night with the wife, she's a ST fan too.
Proof of me losing my damned mind. :) The series was called JEAN LUC. I had art for it, as well as intro music picked out. (You like how I made the wine shelves look vaguely Borg? 🙃) I had four full scripts written before I remembered I could just pour my energy into my own SF projects instead. Last time I went this hard was a "fan-fix" for Prometheus, which drove me nuts for mucking with Alien. I rewrote that script in three days.
😂 I, ah... I get a little intense about the SF that made me.