Utopia Talk / Politics / The Picard returns

State Department Member	Sun Aug 05 11:06:01 Patrick Stewart is to reprise his role as Jean-Luc Picard in a new series of Star Trek. The character, who featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation and a handful of films, will return in the new CBS All Access series, which will reveal the next chapter of Picard’s life. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/04/patrick-stewart-to-reprise-role-as-star-treks-jean-luc-picard Uhhh...wow.
State Department Member	Sun Aug 05 11:06:20 http://www...-as-star-treks-jean-luc-picard
murder Member	Sun Aug 05 11:09:12 In this next chapter, he's fathering little Borg babies.
Aeros Member	Sun Aug 05 11:24:06 If these hacks try to reimagine Picard, deconstruct his character or undermine our expectations, I may consider physical violence.
hood Member	Sun Aug 05 11:33:23 This is dumb. As amazing as Sir Patrick Stewart is, he passed the captain's torch long ago. Move on. Don't sully the mostly great reputation of tng and Picard. Then again, their attempt at new was pretty terrible, so I guess it's the old Hollywood trick of bringing back the used and familiar to squeeze more blood from it.
Rugian Member	Sun Aug 05 11:38:30 "Don't further sully the mostly great reputation of tng and Picard." FTFY. Those last few TNG movies were rough, dude.
Aeros Member	Sun Aug 05 11:38:59 There attempt at new was terrible because it was not "new". They decided to do a prequel 10 years before TOS, but then completely what on the canonical timeline, and reimagined the entire premise and setting. So right out the gate they missed off anyone who cares about continuity or story and the overall grand narrative. Then they filled the entire story with social justice trash and made the main protagonist a Mary sue that gives Rey a run for her money over how perfect and flawless she is at everything, because as well all know, women and POC can have no flaws. Also love how they memory holed Captains Janeway and Sisco in order to pump up their virtue signalling credibility about how progressive they are. Now these same hacks are going to give Picard the Luke Skywalker treatment.
Rugian Member	Sun Aug 05 11:39:11 But yeah, talk about something that nobody really wanted.
Aeros Member	Sun Aug 05 11:47:55 I have to wonder why they insist on doing prequels, direct sequels, or reboots of the old stories people like, rather then making something new "in universe" completely independent of the other stories. Like Star Trek: Voyager. Yes, it had the star trek logo and all the trappings, but it was placed in a completely different part of the galaxy, completely independent and unrelated to everything else. On the one hand, Kurtzmann and his crew could be unimaginative hacks who can't write an original story to save their lives, and so need to cannabilize an existing story to have any coherence. On the other hand, I think it's far more likely they hate the old stories because they are not #woke, and they hate the RACIST NERDS who make up the fanbase. So they deliberately set out to make the story they want to see, and force their politics into all of it.
Rugian Member	Sun Aug 05 11:50:30 Aeros, DS9 was problematic in that it conveyed the message that, no, not all cultures are capable of coexisting with one other, and Voyager committed the unforgivable sin of having a Native American character be portrayed by a non-indigenous person. It is only proper that we formally strike both series from the collective consciousness and prop up Discovery as the actual harbinger of diversity to Star Trek.
hood Member	Sun Aug 05 11:57:42 "FTFY. Those last few TNG movies were rough, dude." I thought the "mostly great" had covered it. "I have to wonder why they insist on doing prequels, direct sequels, or reboots of the old stories people like, rather then making something new "in universe" completely independent of the other stories." Well for starters, Voyager wasn't completely new. They carried on a lot of old Trek stuff into the new quadrant. But to go further with this, sometimes stories are enhanced by adding new entries. There's nothing inherently wrong with sequels (prequels are somewhat difficult, but Rogue One is an example of how prequels can go well), it's just a matter of effort. But the key is actually telling a different story.
OsamaIsDaWorstPresid Member	Sun Aug 05 16:33:10 Picard neds 2 get himsalf sum blue alien pussie and haev hiz half humin half ferengie luv child try 2 asasnaite him in da midel of sex 4 beein a absent fathar bcos he wuz flyin around getting alien pussie around da galaxie but than hiz cardasian luv child saves him and rapes da ferengie luv child wile picard finishis havin da sex wit da blue alien
obaminated Member	Sun Aug 05 23:24:56 Be warned ye who enter this thread, it be full of star trek nerds and star trek jargon.
Dukhat Member	Mon Aug 06 01:40:33 Goddamn do all of you just see things from the perspective of the culture wars. Star Trek has always been a progressive tv series full of "virtue signalling." They had the first interracial kiss kn TOS that caused quite a stir at the time. And sisko was the most badass captain and janeway was meh because of the bad writing but a believable captain nonetheless. And lol at rugian for bringing up chakotay who nobody cares about till this day. The issue people had with voyager was that it was wildly inconsistent and stopped just short in the episodes and story arcs that were actually good. Anyways, I'm willing to give it a chance. I love sir patrick stewart. Dude has plenty of money and could live a quiet retirement but came back. People idolize TNG but the first 2 seasons were hot trash. Stop being such snowflakes and enjoy the ride.
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 02:20:13 This is great news, people. Picard imo is the best Trek character of the entire franchise and Stewart is a top-notch actor AND person whose legacy is 100% secured no matter how bad CBS tries to fuck up this new series. "Those last few TNG movies were rough, dude." There were four. Generations was totally watchable. First Contact was great. Insurrection was just an extended TV episode (that borrowed heavily from previous Trek episodes), but otherwise pretty good. F Murray Fucking Abraham. Nemesis was kinda meh. "Be warned ye who enter this thread, it be full of star trek nerds and star trek jargon." Kill yourself, please.
Seb Member	Mon Aug 06 02:52:35 Wasn't First Contact where they turned Picard into a gun wielding action hero motivated by rage and fear? I mean, I get it, yes, that's appropriate motivation and worked quite well as a film where the audience expectation required more realistic characterisation - but please lets not have a dark and gritty re-imagining of Picard. It was bad enough when Michael Bay turned Optimus Prime into an authoritarian war criminal.
Seb Member	Mon Aug 06 02:52:54 I can't remember the last two well, I recall they were pretty poor.
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 05:16:05 "Wasn't First Contact where they turned Picard into a gun wielding action hero motivated by rage and fear?" First Contact was the movie where the Borg go back in time to prevent Earth from deploying its first warp drive. Meanwhile, yes, Picard is haunted by his TNG season 3-4 assimilation, which traumatized him a bit. So he's got a bit of an axe to grind and is motivated by rage (a bit) and fear (a lot). "I can't remember the last two well, I recall they were pretty poor." They weren't great, but Insurrection may warrant a re-watch if you think it was poor. Just a recommendation. Basically just a long episode that rehashes previous episodes, but the cast is great and it's cool to see the higher production values. And Frakes does a good job as director. "but please lets not have a dark and gritty re-imagining of Picard." Let's hope not. But I don't think Stewart would reprise the role unless it was pretty true to the original Picard. I don't see him as someone who would whore the character out. He respects the role too much. Ofc, at the same time he's an old dude (who has aged extremely well, btw...he's not all fat and jaded like Shatner) and he might not GAF, who knows. Either way, I'm totally willing to give this a chance. I'm going to go watch "The Inner Light" right now.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 06:55:20 I didn't care much for TNG. I do have the complete first series on DVD though. Plus the first four ST movies and the two new ones where they explored Kirk as a young man. Too bad the young Scotty Died. I was liking those new ones. (One was better than two though.)
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 07:00:51 There's three new Trek movies, shit head.
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 07:03:27 "Too bad the young Scotty Died." What in the name of fuck are you talking about? How can you be so wrong about everything all the time? Just go away. Die.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 07:07:19 What is the third one? I thought they stopped making them when the actor that played the young Scotty died in an accident.
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 07:10:10 "I thought they stopped making them when the actor that played the young Scotty died in an accident." That's because you are stupid. First of all they never stopped making them. Second, it wasn't Scotty, it was Chekov. Third, the actor died AFTER the third film was made. Stop being a fucking dumbass. You have access to the Internet, a vast collection of knowledge right at your fat-ass entitled fingertips. Fucking use it. Stop being factually incorrect about everything 100% of the time.
hood Member	Mon Aug 06 07:11:37 The Russian, Chekov died. Scotty is perfectly healthy.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 07:35:10 "Star Trek: Beyond (2016)" So there is a third on. I had not seen a single mention of this new movie anywhere and I have not watched the first two in that new series for a couple of years now. When I saw that kid had died I, wrongly, tied him to Scotty because all I remembered of him was solving a problem that had a mechanical solution to it and that is what stuck in my memory. Or maybe it did not have a mechanical solution. Sorry, my memory is not what I would sincerely like it to be, but it is just about what it should be for my age. sd, I sincerely hope your memory is better when you are 79 unless someone kills you sorry ass before then, but I doubt it will be. BTW, thanks for the heads up about the third movie. I am going to see if it is on E- Bay yet.
hood Member	Mon Aug 06 07:37:56 The issue is not your memory. The issue is that you recognize your memory is a pile of shit, and yet you trust it implicitly, without question, to a high degree of inaccuracy.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 07:38:09 Thanks, hood.
Wrath of Orion Member	Mon Aug 06 07:57:59 Yes, every other person I've encountered with bad memory takes steps to mitigate its effects. Mainly, as hood mentioned, by checking the information before speaking/posting. But as you've said to us before, you're just too lazy to bother with that.
Seb Member	Mon Aug 06 08:16:25 Smart dude: I felt first contact Picard acted in a way that was out of line with his (yes, very unrealistic) character on the show who had already interacted with the borg after being assimilated without going all dark grity. So, while it probably made the movie better, it's probably not what is want to see. We have the Expanse and ST Discovery to be the House of Cards to Picard West Wing. ---- Jeez cut hot rod some slack. Getting an actor confused is hardly a capital offence .
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 08:23:55 Thanks to you people I found 'Star Trek: Beyond (2016)' on E-Bay for $8.29 brand new and free shipping. My movie collection thanks you.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 08:33:45 SD, hood, and woosfb, you do know that you have the option not to open my threads or read my posts, don't you? I know that is a very difficult concept for you three to comprehend, but the option is there. Because I do intend to rely on my memory because in spite of your opinions it really is better than most people my age. Thanks Seb, but they don't know any better. Actually, I enjoy telling them they have the option to ignore me every time they go on a rant like the above one. I think I have told them that about two dozen times now, but I guess the concept is just too much for them to assimilate.
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 08:33:59 "Jeez cut hot rod some slack. Getting an actor confused is hardly a capital offence." Yeah, yeah, sure. Getting an actor confused is totally reasonable. But we're talking about a fuckhead who literally starts a new forum thread to call out someone for making a fucking typo (see: For Our Less Fortunate Posters).
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 08:34:55 "SD, hood, and woosfb, you do know that you have the option not to open my threads or read my posts, don't you?" I guess ignoring you would be about as easy as it is for you to ignore facts.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 08:39:27 LO, again. The reason for the little poster in that thread is to give them a guide to go by. It is no sin to confuse those two words, it is a common error. I have a friend that does it too and I do not think any the less of her when she makes it. Sorry to see that you think Aeros is some kind of stupid for making that simple error though.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 08:44:03 *-LOL, again.
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 08:47:48 "Sorry to see that you think Aeros is some kind of stupid for making that simple error though." Really, what kind of delusional world are you living in? You're the one who made the thread. You're the one who assumes Aeros doesn't know the difference between "there" and "their." And I'm the one who thinks Aeros is stupid? "It is no sin to confuse those two words, it is a common error." Yeah, it's called a typo. You've made at least two typos in this thread already.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 09:15:41 Not really a typo. "typographical error noun an error in printed or typewritten matter resulting from striking the improper key of a keyboard, from mechanical failure, or the like." The word is not an error in striking the wrong key or mechanical error. It is by confusing the words because they sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. Like I said, it is no sin to make such an error. It is common. sd - You're the one who assumes Aeros doesn't know the difference... I clearly stated that it is a common error and does not involve any kind of a stigma to it. You are the one bring up the problem being that Aeros does not know the difference. Of course, he knows the difference. It is just a common error that many of us make from time to time. The purpose of that little poster is a simple way of remembering which spelling to use for your purpose. I hope this explanation helps you, I put a lot of time on it.
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 09:20:38 "The word is not an error in striking the wrong key or mechanical error." Oh, so he didn't strike the wrong keys? Huh, that's interesting. Then why did the word come out wrong? Two possibilities: 1. Aeros doesn't know the difference between "there" and "their." 2. Aeros made a typo. The probability of the first is almost zero. But I guess we need Aeros to come in here and enlighten us. I'll wait.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 09:25:38 "It is by confusing the words because they sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. Like I said, it is no sin to make such an error. It is common." So you see, it is not a typo.
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 09:26:34 Did this fuckhead just quote himself?
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 09:28:43 smart dude - And I'm the one who thinks Aeros is stupid? You said it, I didn't.
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 09:29:50 I said it? Oh my, I guess I have dementia. Could you please show where I said that? Thanks, buddy!
hood Member	Mon Aug 06 09:44:44 I expect the new Picard to go about as well as this thread has.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 09:45:18 Why am I not surprised that you missed this in my last post? "smart dude - And I'm the one who thinks Aeros is stupid?"
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 10:00:18 Another basic reading comprehension fail. The dementia runs deep.
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 10:02:35 "Sorry to see that you think Aeros is some kind of stupid for making that simple error though." -Hot Rod This is what you said BEFORE I asked that question. My post was a RESPONSE to that. You are really just fucking stupid. You don't even remember your own posts.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Mon Aug 06 10:37:14 I do and I responded by adding a forgotten comma to my post and explained it in detail. Sorry, you missed it, but it is still there if you want to put the bottle down and look.
Seb Member	Mon Aug 06 11:11:45 Hmm, I made it as an analogy, but Picard starring in the Martin Sheen role of a star trek version of West Wing is amusing. Instead of space hijinks, he's having to sort out all the mess that Kirk-wannabes are constantly causing across the galaxy and deciding how Star Fleet / Federation is going to sort out the problem. And it would fit as the natural evolution: about half of all screen time of in star trek TNG appears to be board meetings in spaaaaaace. Every so often Q turns up and creates scenarios that are utterly intractable within the scope of star fleet regulations to mess with him. [This is not a wholly serious post, before Hood comes to correct me on points such as the captains senior officers not being a board and that actually it was only 35.8% of all screen time]
Seb Member	Mon Aug 06 11:12:56 Half of the show is his officers ballsing things up, then he sweeps in at the last minute and chairs a meeting where he dispenses wisdom in the form of folks homilies and all is resolved.
smart dude Member	Mon Aug 06 11:13:42 It's 32.4% you fucking ignoramus.
Seb Member	Mon Aug 06 11:26:24 DenofGeek did a retrospective on every single TNG episode, noting specifically: 1. when actors played different characters 2. The cumulative additions to phaser settings - "stun, kill, melt flesh, heat rock, vaporise bolder, blow up aqueduct" 3. The all important "Time to first meeting" key performance metric. Sometimes we were lucky and an episode would open to a meeting. Very occasionally we would be unlucky - say one of those terrible "personal character piece episodes where individual goes off for long exciting adventure on their own" episodes where there was no meeting at all.
Seb Member	Mon Aug 06 11:31:44 There is even a meeting in the episode where Picard has been assimilated and the borg jet off and destroy half of starfleet or whatever. It's all about the meetings. http://www...he-best-of-both-worlds-part-ii
CrownRoyal Member	Wed Aug 08 23:31:12 Between ruining the legacy and pure excitement, I choose excitement
Seb Member	Thu Aug 09 05:09:49 Or maybe, it's like, Picard has retired to his rural french community where he has a vineyard, but every week there is a murder which he has to investigate as an amateur sleuth. Midsommer Murders.... in Spaaaaaace (ok Earth, in the future).
Seb Member	Thu Aug 09 05:11:59 Every so often Q turns up to create impossible "dead man in locked room scenarios" just to annoy him.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Aug 09 05:17:40 Sorry I am going to let y’all finish but, Star Trek Enterprise was the greatest Star Trek of all time, OF ALL TIME!
Seb Member	Thu Aug 09 07:05:32 Didn't that end with it all turning out to be a game played by Riker on holodeck?
Hot Rod Revved Up	Thu Aug 09 07:59:59 I received 'Star Trek - Beyond' yesterday and I watched it last evening. Not bad. smart dude, thanks for the heads up about the movie.
Rugian Member	Thu Aug 09 08:00:09 Still better than the DS9 ending where a secondary antagonist suddenly turned into an omnipotent supervillian who tries to blow up the universe with a bunch of religious gobbledygook, only to be defeated when Jesus-figure Sisko throws him into a fire. God DS9 was such shit.
hood Member	Thu Aug 09 08:23:49 "Didn't that end with it all turning out to be a game played by Riker on holodeck?" Not a game. Riker was studying history. Hence Troy asking him if he got what he needed.
smart dude Member	Thu Aug 09 09:54:26 The only Trek finale that is any good is TNG's.
Wrath of Orion Member	Thu Aug 09 09:58:31 "God DS9 was such shit." I think they had some good stuff in the early seasons, but it got progressively worse after that. And yeah, I agree that by the end it was total shit.
Dukhat Member	Thu Aug 09 10:07:00 We know Rugian would hate DS9 to start because of the black captain. Didn't need to confirm your racism yet again.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Thu Aug 09 20:49:17 This one ended just fine. The new ship they are building is built to thrive in that nebula. It is the next Enterprise.
Seb Member	Fri Aug 10 02:26:21 Hood: I prefer my interpretation. It was all Ruler goofing off.
hood Member	Fri Aug 10 07:14:08 Whatever boats your float.
Wrath of Orion Member	Fri Aug 10 08:34:08 Riker was examining history (at Troi's urging) to help him make his decision during The Pegasus episode from TNG.
Rugian Member	Fri Aug 10 22:28:21 Dukhat Member Thu Aug 09 10:07:00 "We know Rugian would hate DS9 to start because of the bad actor captain." FTFY. But please, feel free to go ahead and explain how a B-rated soap opera that's defined by long and meandering pauses from the plot constitutes "so dark and complex, maaaaan." OMG, DS9 has so many CGI ships blowing each other up, that's like, so cool bro! Fuck off.
Rugian Member	Fri Aug 10 22:44:02 Hey everyone, I'd like a version of Star Trek that's completely devoid of any sense of idealism and wonderment. I'm more interested in things like love triangles and mindless CGI action. If you could wrap that all up in a braindead war narrative, that'd be great. No need for any compelling characters, they can be as wooden or insufferable as you like. Just don't forget to include that engaging Bajor plotline! -Every DS9 fanboy ever
smart dude Member	Sat Aug 11 00:44:21 "Wasn't First Contact where they turned Picard into a gun wielding action hero motivated by rage and fear?" "Didn't that end with it all turning out to be a game played by Riker on holodeck?" Seb is doing that annoying thing people do. They put their statements in the form of the question so that they can simultaneously (1) assert their distance from something that is uncool and (2) come across as knowledgable. It doesn't work, buddy.
smart dude Member	Sat Aug 11 00:50:24 DS9 was kinda meh overall. The most striking aspect of it is how terrible an actor Avery Brooks is (though to be fair he does improve over the course of the series). A real precipitous drop from Shatner and Stewart. I understand the appeal of DS9, though. It was a deliberate attempt to break from the standard Trek formula, which makes sense because it aired alongside TNG. Unfortunately television in general just sucked back then. There were some good DS9 moments but overall I don't much care for it.
smart dude Member	Sat Aug 11 00:53:31 Oh, inb4 "SD is racist because Sisko is black." I think Sonequa Martin-Green has done a great job (though Discovery's writing isn't so great). And Mr. Reading Rainbow is one of my favorite Trek characters of all time.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Aug 11 04:35:45 When the conflict in DS9 kicked in, it got interesting to me. I like interstellar conflict and things that blow up in space. I have little draw to the new ST movies, even though they were entertaining, they were no longer my Star Trek.
Seb Member	Sat Aug 11 06:41:30 Smart dude: That wasn't actually the effect I was looking for actually. In the first instance, I was broaching indirectly that first contact does exactly what I think would be really bad: essentially do a dark(er) and gritty(er) version of Picard. (these being relative terms: star-trek in TNG painted in pastels, and the shows that are wedded to its continuities struggle with that - the moral and logical structure of the world of TNG just doesn't really work with realistic characters of even a modicum more depth, I'll come back to that in a second). In the second one I am blatantly faux-trolling - I wanted to like Enterprise on the basis it was an attempt to get out from under the TNG continuity (and I loved quantum leap) and getting back into but then they fucked it by embedding it deeply in the continuity minutiae which to me misses the point of star trek, up to the point of the last episode summing up its inability to really get out of the skirts of TNG and it's immediate successors. It wasn't terrible, but it was ... just meh. I drifted away from it fairly quickly, particularly as their attempt to capture the zeitgeist of the post 9/11 world with the whole alien threat thing was just really off beat for the structure and tone of star trek - and next go BS5 (with all it's plot issues) it just failed. Much as DS9 really doesn't stand up next to anything but the first season of B5 (which was pretty bad), because the world is somehow painted in more shades that make the only marginally more complex characters of B5 work where they simply wouldn't work in Star Trek. So, if there was any doubt, no, I do not think I am "too cool" for star trek. I am a massive sci-fi nerd, but I must say star-trek doesn't really grab me. The really well done episodes that do the wonderment stuff well, it is good. When it becomes bogged down in detailed continuity (as in continuity of the world rather than the characters, but the two are inherently linked) porn, it is very bad. And that continuity of tone tends to limit any show that cleaves to continuity established by TNG. Particularly when it tries to do politics and grittiness, it dies on it's arse in my view. The exception is Discovery, which I enjoyed, which just somehow managed to inject a slightly more complex (not hugely) pallet into the world the characters inhabit in a way that allowed everything to gel in the way that B5 works and DS9 just doesn't as a mildly complex, moral/ideologically driven war story in space.
Seb Member	Sat Aug 11 06:43:17 BS5 = BSG.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Aug 11 08:01:20 I was about to give you an ear full, for bad mouting Babylon 5, which is still to this day, the best sci fi series ever made. The expanses has potential of rivaling it, if someone picks it up. I always liked TNG the least, everything was so very clean, even the dirt was clean in that show. ”the whole alien threat thing was just really off beat for the structure and tone of star trek” The only off best thing was story archs stretching more tha a couple of episodes. Things that people now love in GoT and west world, complex long narratives. Alien conflict have always been central in Star Trek. Almost all the original movie circle around this theme. Even TNG had to introduce the Borg, which remained a central antagonist in Discovery.
Seb Member	Sat Aug 11 13:00:20 Nim: B5 Is awesome in being one of the first exquisitely plotted five year arc, both plotting and character, but the first season is actually terrible and it hasn't aged well. The sad thing is I think in tone it was held back a bit by what sci fi being perceived as a kids show. I think a BSG reboot of B5 would work very well. Re alien threat, I meant the whole thing with the aliens that attack earth and then they spend a season or two going all dark and gritty and "we are at war and there are marines" and it ends up being just ... off. Neither utopian age of discovery. Like Disney tries to do battlestar Galactica. Stargates attempt at apeing battlestar worked a bit better, but because it broke the tonal continuity lost the core audience. Honestly, it's hard with a franchise to do reinvention and basically everything since TNG until discovery has suffered by tying itself too closely in tone and continuity to it I think. Discovery is the first to break away and it feels refreshing (and revels in upsetting continuity nerds with holographic displays, totally redone Klingons etc) Expanse has been picked up Amazon btw. Who are also making an Iain M Banks adaptation which judt might be utterly awesome... I think they are doing Consider Phlebas, but think they'd be better doing Use of Weapons (though that would need radical restructuring to work as a series). Or go non culture and do Against a Dark Background
Seb Member	Sat Aug 11 13:07:09 I could see a rebooted B5, with the budget and production values of BSG being your GoT in space.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Aug 11 13:29:57 "I meant the whole thing with the aliens that attack earth and then they spend a season or two going all dark and gritty" Yes, an alien probe attacking earth (looking for extinct whales) is the premise for ST 4. And the animosity between Kirk and Klingons, the killing of his son in ST 3, very gritty for the time and Star Trek. It may have been something in the air after 9/11, but the elements were not new and out of place for Star Trek. Only TNG tried to do away with the classical (to story telling) antagonist, which lasted until the Borgs came and wiped out Star fleet. And really Enterprise being gritty even within the cannon of TNG, makes sense, since these are the very early days of the Federation, before the galaxy became so fucking clean! I remember liking this as opposed to the insides of hospitals I had to watch in TNG. The federation was so powerful in TNG that the antagonist had to be space spirits, whatever the fuck Q was and solving social problems on some backward planet. Mmmhm, shut the fuck up and fire the photon torpedoes, Nr 1. I think people have talked about this here, the appeal of TNG for many was the wide range of topics, because it ran like the original series without an arcing story narrative. It was easier to watch TNG, because it was like a soap opera, you missed 4 episodes, it is fine. Remember this is back when there were limited options to view missed episodes.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Aug 11 13:39:20 Earlier I said Discovery when I meant Voyager. The Borgs carried over as the main antagonist, since they became an instant hit. Discovery has potential, because it aims to be a great show with both complex and long story plot as well as character development driving the story. I find the main character constipated and uninteresting because she is perfect, even her failings are morally unquestionable for the viewer. I hope she develops some flaws, because she is fucking boring me.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Aug 11 13:45:48 "I could see a rebooted B5, with the budget and production values of BSG being your GoT in space." You had me at reboot. I fainted at GoT in space.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Aug 11 13:56:16 An interesting thing Re B5, the series Crusade which began after B5 and the movie Call to Arms it only lasted 1 season. The premise was that the Earth is infected with a virus that will take 5 years to adapt and start mass killing. Space ship Excalibur and crew must explore the galaxy for a cure. I remember back then thinking, ah Babylon 5 is Star Trekking.
hood Member	Sat Aug 11 14:11:52 "Babylon 5, which is still to this day, the best sci fi series ever made." B5 is great (although I've never seen season 5, since they "concluded" the show after 4 since they thought they were canceled). But Farscape > all.
Seb Member	Sat Aug 11 15:26:02 Nim: The issue I have is not "omg an attack on earth is tonally wrong". The attack on earth was a thinly veiled "aha, let's capture the zeitgeist: 9/11 America at war, and let's try and ape battlestar Galactica which is getting all the ratings". The result was, in my view, terrible. Star Trek - at least with the TNG continuitys flavour - just can't handle it. Gritty here not being about dirt or Ralph McQuaries dirty lived-in universe visual aesthetics for star wars rebels - its a statement about tone - i.e. edgier. Star Trek TNG continuity tying to do edgy just fails horribly. Humans in TNG and derived series just don't behave like that, and when you try to create the circumstances and characterization it's like you've dropped a person into a cartoon. It just creates fault lines between the setting and the plot. I wanted to like crusade,not least because I liked the lead having just finished American Gothic (which was awesome) but yeah, it seriously dumbed down in my view. The crew were very obviously a DnD party... again, felt off beat to the tone the main series set.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Aug 11 15:32:45 >>and let's try and ape battlestar Galactica which is getting all the ratings"<< But BSG was tapping into the zeitgeist of the Iraq war, not even thinly veiled. You personally even talked about it on UP at the time. Shows do that.
Seb Member	Sat Aug 11 17:44:46 Nim: Yes and doing it ok, and was conceived to do so or at least fit much better. Star trek, as a universe, just isn't tonally set up to do that, and I think only did so because of the pressure to follow BSG. And if not, it's a bad idea for the show - it just brutally exposes the unrealistic elements of the characters motives and morality and the whole settings in a way that makes them look naieve rather than utopian. Take the ds9 bit when sisko is complicit in blowing up a romulan to get them to ally with him and agonised over it for an episode. It's impossible to cart off: in the context of star fleets ethics etc this should be shattering for him - and should have lasting repercussions for him, yet it is forgotten in a few episodes. In the context of being on the losing side of a total war, this should be fundamentally as unrealistic as a captain of the RN having serious agonies about wet ops designed to bring the US into the war in ww2. And what he ought to have been agonising himself over is the terrible fear the romulan find out and ally with the Dominion. But, it has to be this way because the federation is set up as this unrealisticaly benign organisation with impossible morality: so the dissonance must be addressed as long as continuity of the universe is to be retained - that sisko is in the same organisation and universe as Picard - but the price is the sense of reality. Too much light is let in on the magic and you have to work hard to suspend your disbelief. The federation/starfleet/universe of TNG works great for Cerebral moral dilemmas, and Picard as a kind of rationalist hero is brilliant. But it's not a setting for exploring the darkness and amorality of a complex conflict of incompatible ideologies on a grand scale and the impossibility of retaining your values in an all or nothing stakes.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Aug 11 19:46:08 In DS9 but not in Enterprise, there are no complex ideologies involved, just your usual alien from another quadrant. And all of these things you mention are true in TNG, the benign and matured federation. It's not like Enterprise was a Dark Knight re-imagining of Star Trek, but in relative terms it was more, human. The people felt like people, like Kirk. Kirk had flaws and one of the memorable moments is his hatred for Klingons, since they killed his son. Likewise Archer is flawed, he does not trust Vulcans initially and later on he goes full blown extrajudicial. Anyways to me it all made sense viewed as the natural progression of the Federation. Things were rough in the early days, nothing was given, sacrifices had to be made to survive. Remember prior to the Vulcans arriving, life was terrible on Earth. The closer you get to that starting point, the less TNG you have and the more it resembles human affairs as we know them. But I understand your point, TNG was very successful and it set the expectations for what Star Trek was to be, Enterprise ran up against that.
Wrath of Orion Member	Sat Aug 11 23:20:40 "Anyways to me it all made sense viewed as the natural progression of the Federation. Things were rough in the early days, nothing was given, sacrifices had to be made to survive." Janeway actually comments (pretty much says the same thing) on this in one of the Voyager episodes.
Seb Member	Mon Aug 13 10:18:30 I think my point is that if you do want to explore the fallout of 9/11 and the GWoT, you actually need to have a tone similar to the dark night. Star Trek, in so far as it wants to remain "the same show" as TNG just isn't able to sustain that. (When Star Gate tried it, they did a better job of it, but so alienated the expectation of the audience it flopped.) Two seasons of Enterprise doing the diet coke of battlestar galactica was a bad idea. The flipside is also true: in BSG, Adama in one episode passed up (inexplicably*) the opportunity to try and use a plague to kill all the cylons on purely ideological grounds. Which I did not buy for a minute. Compare this to DS9 - where the same idea is actually carried out. It's a disaster for the show.As a piece of classic sci fi in the vein of Clarke or Asimov, TNG is mostly about exploring and playing around with some key assumptions. One of which is "what does a future look like when humanity has perfected much of it's attitudes". The bioweapon used on the dominion requires the introduction of a plot breaking secret black opps unit, undermining the central conceit of the show (the Federation is not a utopian society, it exists largely because of a nasty ideologically unacceptable faction that does the dirty work) but which we will largely be invited to ignore going forward where they would otherwise be expected to pop up and commit genocide. And we also have to sort of wuss out by selling the cure for the plague they unleashed in exchange for peace, because actually genocide the enemy is too dark for the show to even pretend to be the Federation/Star Fleet that it was previously, even if now canonically it is only pretending to be so and is only successful as a liberal, open, utopia in as much as it pretends to be. If Sci-Fi differs from fantasy it is in being true to the world building and rules it sets out. This DS9 example is what I mean by the limitations the show has in areas it can explore. To explore all out war and the role of genocide, they end up introducing plot elements that violate a core element of the world building to sustain the scenario; and water down the scenario to the point where it's not even treating the issue that seriously and being rather superficial about it. *In fact there are clear external plot requirement reasons that this option couldn't be explored: if successful it would end the show, if attempted it would need at least another episode to explore as the attempt and it's failures ramifications need to be taken seriously. It is bad plotting to introduce a mcguffin for one episode you cannot resolve - and the basic idea of the thing is silly: in BSG, absolutely yes, there is no dilemma in the near-extinct remains of humanity, all of whom have lost the bulk of their friends and families to a nuclear holocaust, would have the slightest reservation in committing genocide on their aggressors.
Daemon Member	Sun Aug 19 16:33:11 http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=318&v=a9NSj6jXOwE After many years of intense detailed translation work I am eventually reay to proudly announce that my Klingon translation of The Little Prince is completed and will be available in book stores starting october 2018. This short film project will show that even a constructed language like Klingon can be used to translate some of the most famous dialogues of literature history.
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