Dizagaox
Member
https://deadline.com/2018/08/patric...es-jean-luc-picard-cbs-all-access-1202440156/
The rumours were true!
The rumours were true!
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
CBS All Access announces Star Trek: Discovery spinoff starring Patrick Stewart
- Thread starter Dizagaox
- Start date
zombie_gamer87
Member
picard and the original crew is a lot more interesting than discovery ever was.
Redneckerz
Those long posts don't cover that red neck boy
I love Patstew. News of the summer.
Fox Mulder
Member
I still don't think they know how to make good Star Trek anymore, hopefully this is decent.
Last edited:
infinitys_7th
Member
Red Crayon Aristocrat
Member
Cool, I like the sound of this.
My username is an Americanized version of the name Jean-Luc-Picard fyi.
My username is an Americanized version of the name Jean-Luc-Picard fyi.
Wheeljack539
Member
Considering his age it'll back to tv Picard by default I would imagine.
TheShadowLord
Member
he's in pretty good shape but I still worry because of his age and when/if this new show is supposed to come out.
TheSadRanger
Banned
Orville is pretty much the closest thing formula wise to TNG on tv atm. Which is a shame that McFarlane gets a bad rap because it's actually a pretty good show overall.
Catphish
Member
And here all this time I thought you were an assassin in training.
haxan7
Banned
Stop lyin.
mild sriracha
Member
Picard is the best.
watch from 2:17 mark
watch from 2:17 mark
Dizagaox
Member
Production-wise, it's a spinoff. The same crew are doing all three announced shows. Visually it'll probably be in the refreshed Prime timeline. And narratively, it may be a spinoff too, depending on Season 2's big mystery.
I'm new be nice
Member
I'm going to go on a bit of a rant here and talk about Deep Space Nine for a second. A lot of people consider DS9 the best Star Trek, and I would say they are technically correct. The writing is phenomenal, the characters are at their most human (even the painfully stilted Worf finally starts to gain some dimension as a character once freed from Gene Roddenberry's extremely strict guidelines), the set design is beautifully lived in compared to the nearly sterile Enterprise, and the conflicts are literally all out war.
It's everything people wanted Star Trek to be. They watched TNG and wanted it to let loose a little bit. You'd get Riker being a little risque, Worf would want to fuck shit up, in extremely rare instances the Enterprise would have no choice but to enter conflict, but it was extremely few and far between. And that's the way Roddenberry wanted it, because it was supposed to be a depiction of the future, a better future. A future where not only was the technology more advanced, but so too was the society and its people.
The writers were incredibly frustrated with how restrictive TNG could be because of this, and when they moved over to DS9 you could tell there was a newfound excitement and freedom that wasn't there with TNG. And it was awesome. But it was also kind of the beginning of the end. It was inevitable that it would happen, but eventually Star Trek started to become War Trek, and just like with porn, sometimes it's better not to go there even if it seems like it might be fun at the time, because you pay for it down the line.
Media is filled to the brim with dystopian futures, and that's because they're so darn interesting, but Star Trek was different from that. Star Trek was a depiction of what our society could be one day, it was a shining beacon of light in an otherwise treacherous and uncertain world, and I think as a society without those kinds of hopeful depictions all we have is nihilism and fear.
It feels like more than ever we need a return to form from Star Trek, and i'm afraid its been so long since we've had one that nobody even remembers what it should look like.
They need to release more details about this particular show before I write it off, but I could not stick with Discovery and I don't have high hopes for this. Its already been proven to us through the movies that producers have no problem ruining Picard's character by making him a shitty B tier action star (and even in his old age they can still make him yell "fire all weapons!" like a jackass), so i'm not in the least bit swayed by his inclusion. The only thing keeping me interested is a potential return to the Star Trek universe that I enjoyed. But without the hopeful writing it won't be enough for me.
It's everything people wanted Star Trek to be. They watched TNG and wanted it to let loose a little bit. You'd get Riker being a little risque, Worf would want to fuck shit up, in extremely rare instances the Enterprise would have no choice but to enter conflict, but it was extremely few and far between. And that's the way Roddenberry wanted it, because it was supposed to be a depiction of the future, a better future. A future where not only was the technology more advanced, but so too was the society and its people.
The writers were incredibly frustrated with how restrictive TNG could be because of this, and when they moved over to DS9 you could tell there was a newfound excitement and freedom that wasn't there with TNG. And it was awesome. But it was also kind of the beginning of the end. It was inevitable that it would happen, but eventually Star Trek started to become War Trek, and just like with porn, sometimes it's better not to go there even if it seems like it might be fun at the time, because you pay for it down the line.
Media is filled to the brim with dystopian futures, and that's because they're so darn interesting, but Star Trek was different from that. Star Trek was a depiction of what our society could be one day, it was a shining beacon of light in an otherwise treacherous and uncertain world, and I think as a society without those kinds of hopeful depictions all we have is nihilism and fear.
It feels like more than ever we need a return to form from Star Trek, and i'm afraid its been so long since we've had one that nobody even remembers what it should look like.
They need to release more details about this particular show before I write it off, but I could not stick with Discovery and I don't have high hopes for this. Its already been proven to us through the movies that producers have no problem ruining Picard's character by making him a shitty B tier action star (and even in his old age they can still make him yell "fire all weapons!" like a jackass), so i'm not in the least bit swayed by his inclusion. The only thing keeping me interested is a potential return to the Star Trek universe that I enjoyed. But without the hopeful writing it won't be enough for me.
Last edited:
infinitys_7th
Member
Age has nothing to do with letting him drive a space dune buggy around.
Seriously, though, based off Discovery I just have this feeling we will be getting movie Picard instead of TNG Picard, which would be an absolute travesty.
JimboJones
Member
Can't wait
infinitys_7th
Member
Don't forget the hateful, terrible woman masquarading as a MC who has a man's name for some reason.
A woman who literally killed the far more interesting female character, her captain, because her pride got hurt.
Dizagaox
Member
You're not going to like the show if you're an dickhead. You might prefer something on NRA TV.
Not sure what makes Burnham hateful. She also didn't kill Georgiou. Georgiou died offscreen, eaten by Klingons.
Cleared_Hot
Member
Mostly exited to see the level of sophistication due to the maybe leave forward in time from the new movie series and the new show
infinitys_7th
Member
She knocked her out and caused her to be killed to take over her ship. It's Burnham's fault.
Ulysses 31
Member
Maybe we'll finally get to see what he was doing during the Dominion War. >.>
Zog
Banned
Zog
Banned
Damn, you guessed it.
Actually, I don't remember what it was about, it was forgettable. I tried to go back and watch it again the other day but I changed my mind about 10 minutes in. You know what's good though, The Orville.
Dizagaox
Member
She knocked her out because Georgiou wouldn't go with Sarek's "attack first" plan.
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
I actually would expect him to be an admiral at this age, which probably would limit the action potential, though.
I am mildly optimistic. Stewart is a great actor, Picard a great character and Kurtzman does not seem to be writing. I hope that Stewart gets a bit involved into making sure this is true to the spirit of his character.
In a way I get your "DS9 turned Star Trek into War Trek", but on the other hand, later Star Trek series did not even try to capture what made DS9 such a great Star Trek series. While the supremely positive look into the future was put aside in DS9 - and I'd agree it should usually be at the core of Star Trek - it did a tremendous job at discussing the question of "when do you destroy your own paradise by protecting it forcefully?". It was very well-planned, looked at it from various angles and was one of the strongest aspects of Star Trek overall. I have no idea what risks you run at with porn production in terms of going somewhere at a cost (not exactly my favourite genre of film), but in terms of Star Trek I must say that yes, they should have went where DS9 went. But Voyager should have been much more TNG in spirit than just aping the structure and throwing Borg like confetti. And don't get me started on boomb bang Star Trek that is Discovery.
DiscoJer
Member
I think DS9 just had good characters. A lot of the show itself was actually kinda, well, silly. Like the Bajorans worshiping the prophets, apparently thinking they are actual gods, and not just super aliens like Q or Space Liberace or the Organians, the ones from the Cage, The Traveler/Wesley, etc. And Sisko being the alien messiah.
To a certain extent, you see this with the Klingons, too. A science fiction show should not be dominated by religious fanaticism. At least in TNG, they went into it with Kahless being cloned. If anything, you'd think an intelligent race would feel misled and/or patronized by space aliens pretending to be gods
I only watched the first episode of Discovery they showed on free TV. To me, that seemed not very Star Trekish, from lizard Klingons to holographic technology that lets the projected person sit on the viewer's furniture, ships that don't look like Federation ships. And what has filtered in from Star Trek Online doesn't help. Organic ships? Spore drives?
Though with that said, nothing could possibly be worse than Enterprise. Every time I watch an episode of that I am convinced it's meant to be a parody
To a certain extent, you see this with the Klingons, too. A science fiction show should not be dominated by religious fanaticism. At least in TNG, they went into it with Kahless being cloned. If anything, you'd think an intelligent race would feel misled and/or patronized by space aliens pretending to be gods
I only watched the first episode of Discovery they showed on free TV. To me, that seemed not very Star Trekish, from lizard Klingons to holographic technology that lets the projected person sit on the viewer's furniture, ships that don't look like Federation ships. And what has filtered in from Star Trek Online doesn't help. Organic ships? Spore drives?
Though with that said, nothing could possibly be worse than Enterprise. Every time I watch an episode of that I am convinced it's meant to be a parody
I'm new be nice
Member
I actually didn't mind that element of the show!
It makes sense that 4(5?) dimensional creatures would appear as gods, because they essentially are. They literally have the power to end the universe.
There's something kind of quaint about the religious element of the show, like no matter how advanced a civilization can get people will still find a way to harken back to the old ways. I even thought it was kind of neat that Sisko, being the first to make contact with them, would be seen as a messiah.
I was even okay with Sisko being a "product" of the aliens. The only problem I had with it is that it all kind of went nowhere. I had been expecting them to bridge the war plot line together with the prophets, but instead it ended up being two entirely different plots. And in the end the prophets ended up just feeling like an afterthought, and they just kind of ended the war and then the writers were like "oh yeah what are we supposed to do about the prophets?".
It all boiled down to Sisko fighting Dukat in some random cave in the middle of nowhere. Lame.
And yeah, Discovery is just... not Star Trek.
Star Trek, at its best, is basically just theatre, really.
captainraincoat
Banned
i hope its sort of like a bring a retired captain back or something like that....and he ends up taking over the ship he is on as the real captain is killed
Thats the only thing i can think of
But TNG is the best trek series imo ...hopefully this will do it justice
Redneckerz
Those long posts don't cover that red neck boy
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
What propaganda?
thequestion
Member
Is this just going to be Star Trek with special appearances by Picard or is this full blown Picard adventure? Will other TNG members be with him? I have doubts that the finished product will be something I actually want to see. Hope this series doesn’t tarnish my love of his character...
ResurrectedContrarian
Suffers with mild autism
Discovery is ideologically very narrow and covertly fanatical, and not in line with prior outings in the franchise.
It will claim to carry the spirit of the franchise forward just by lazily identifying as "progressive," and reading all prior series as fitting vaguely under that undefined word, but the meaning of the term has changed in fundamental ways that aren't part of the same vision. Progressivism's biggest deceit is that it always retroactively tries to claim the mantle of all forward-looking ideologies from the past (and all defiant figures of the past, etc), as if time is linear and all progress is equal and pointing in a single direction, when it most clearly is not, and what counts as progress in one century might be the exact inverse vision of the human good from what constitutes it in the next century -- and many of the defiant or visionary figures of the past would look at today's progressives and rightly consider them the precise kind of people their own radical efforts in the past tried to prevent from ever coming into existence. The dreams of Roddenberry et al are betrayed and coopted by those who tend to use the "progressive" label today --there is no continuity, just "progressivism" as a dominant and cynical branding strategy of our era, that makes a few naive people in a certain social class feel good about their pop culture products, with no legitimate claim to by anything but corporate at this point.
For more specifics... the mode of writing and signaling on the show is devotedly entirely to the new pop-culture-synthesis of, on the one hand, trying to be dark and militaristic (a betrayal of Star Trek already, at this point), while at the same time putting all their "progressive" emphasis on the set of narrow issues and identities that constitute diversity as it is now defined by advantaged Western elites. That's about all the show has to offer -- inversions of identity that play well to that crowd. Fearless captain and first office in pilot? Make them female and recognizable minorities, and heavy-handedly emphasize the precise set of traits one doesn't expect from female characters. A case of abuse in the past? Make it sexual abuse of a male, because again, mindlessly inverting things is our only way to think ourselves clever. Put a gay character in prominent situations with his partner in such a way to grab a few LGBT headlines. It's just like a 101 class in corporate branding of pop products without remainder or innovation... and without any genuine moral issues tackled the way TNG did in so many of its better episodes.
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
@ResurrectedPropaganda I agree that the writing of Discovery is bad in the way that it does not care for what makes Star Trek Star Trek and is way to action-oriented. Indeed, it is following pop culture trends over following its own path way too much. On the other hand, this does not qualify as propaganda, it is just bad work. Wrt social progessivism, I can understand your point somewhat, though the point with female characters is obsolete, because DS9 (Kira and Dax), Voyager (Janeway and Torres) and Enterprise (T'Pol) already had very strong female main characters. The gay characters in a way were pandering, but they also did not hurt, I have seen worse in terms of love stories in Star Trek.
Even though it might be en vogue to have strong female characters and gay characters on the show, and I strongly disagree with the former showrunner's mantra that one should put all possible social groups we have today into the series, the series does not appear to be pushing this narrative much. In fact, I'd argue philosophical issues are way underrepresented. No equivalent to Who Watches the Watchers, The Measure of a Man, In the Pale Moonlight or Dear Doctor, and instead brainless phaser shooting. This is very sad from my point of view.
Even though it might be en vogue to have strong female characters and gay characters on the show, and I strongly disagree with the former showrunner's mantra that one should put all possible social groups we have today into the series, the series does not appear to be pushing this narrative much. In fact, I'd argue philosophical issues are way underrepresented. No equivalent to Who Watches the Watchers, The Measure of a Man, In the Pale Moonlight or Dear Doctor, and instead brainless phaser shooting. This is very sad from my point of view.
Shai-Tan
Banned
That is a common criticism of the "diversity industry" from a marxist perspective. One of the reasons Star Trek: Enterprise was so clumsy was how they put a "reverse marxist" spin on stories lifted from TNG episodes just to be counter-intuitive - not to say anything interesting. The Orville is at least trying to think through some issues thematically in the spirit of TNG despite not being ambitious enough to not make the characters essentially us
Last edited:
Dizagaox
Member
It's what CBS and Secret Hideout want it to be. If you feel it doesn't fit with your beliefs, that's not going to change. I guarantee you all 5 series they're making will be "narrow".
ResurrectedContrarian
Suffers with mild autism
Agreed that a semi-Marxist direction would mostly be resonant with the franchise's roots, at least where economics is concerned, because the idea of moving beyond economic conflict to some sort of universal provision / peace has been featured in the writing for ages -- but the pop-woke diversity signaling in Discovery, driven by contemporary identity fads, is not consonant with Trek at all. The idea of a morality-based "Western in space" was meant to unify high & lofty goals (better provisions & peace in the future for humanity) with the very ordinary human qualities and differences (gender, etc) that it had no interest in deconstructing, but just in using as part of the recognizable ongoing human drama.
The interaction between Spock, Bones, and Kirk has no genuine parallel in the new show, because they don't just let characters be who they are... they're instead writing all characters backwards from various faddish goals to "subvert" this or that, which is incredibly boring. If they put that trio in the new series, Spock would undoubtedly be a woman (because logical is "subversive" for women), McCoy's southern aphorisms would be shown to have some dark or bigoted side (because we must subvert the idea of gentleman, naturally), and who knows what they'd do with Kirk, but he certainly wouldn't retain his current mix of rogue-ish cowboy and genuine-if-a-bit-comic human. There's an enormous gulf between giving characters recognizable qualities so that we see our existing humanity and our existing patterns redeemed in a better world, and, on the other hand, merely trying to tear down all tropes / patterns as a game of mindless reversal, when you don't know how to build anything hopeful anymore, just rearrange it cynically and call yourself clever.
Last edited:
I'm new be nice
Member
ResurrectedContrarian
I agree. The entire show feels like modern Disney productions: decisions made in the most surface-level way without any concern for what it actually means for the characters.
These kinds of thing can't really be talked about without first recognizing that every opinion on this subject is going to intersect on itself and cause contradictions, so i'll start with that caveat.
The general philosophy that I've recognized in all of these modern productions is this: All of these people you used to see as the outliers are just like you. And so, when they write these characters, they are written with the typical archetypes overlayed on top of them. They can do all the things you can do! See? They're not so different.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, and in a lot of cases flipping the archetype can be a powerful tool in storytelling. And this why you start to run into contradictions, and why the conversation has gotten so muddied over the years.
The characters can fill traditional archetypes, but it's much more interesting, and much more powerful, if they don't. These characters are unique, they can offer unique perspectives and new ways of thinking. But instead their diversity is actually erased entirely! They're sucked into a grey hole and all of their individualism is stripped away.
I've often cited Queer as Folk as my personal favorite depiction of Gay characters, because the show gave me new insights into what it means to be a Gay man: facing your fears, learning to accept yourself, understanding your own imperfections, moving beyond a family that can't accept you, moving past hate and anger... I could go on and on. What I get from these modern productions is... what exactly? What am I supposed to feel? None of these characters display any traits unique to being LGBT. They never talk about their own internal struggles with it, how they're relating to others around them. Nothing. You could strip that entire trait away from them and they would still be the same character. It's like chekhov's gun, you can't just put something in there without doing something with it!
Again contradictions. You might argue, "the point is to show that this trait doesn't define them", and again you are stuck with contradictions, "if this doesn't define them, then why bring it up?". "Because it doesn't define them...".
See where i'm going with this? This is why the conversation is muddied, and why it can be difficult to spot manipulative storytelling in the vein similar to how you described it.
So I once again cite chekhov's gun as a tool for spotting this kind of ideological manipulation. If there's no setup, and there's no payoff, it's most likely a corporate decision. This wonderful scene from DS9, featuring i believe the first female on female kiss in Star Trek, dedicated an entire episode to the buildup, and was a clear display that to Dax Gender had no bounds. It didn't matter if she was a woman or a man, either of them! There was a setup and a payoff. And it was rightfully earned.
I'd love to see any of these current hack productions write something half as good as that episode.