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Picard Episode 7 - Liking the Borg queen buddy comedy.

But am I the only one thinking this should have been set a bit further forward? 2034 at least.

I mean this is supposed to be OUR present, not an alternate 2024 so the idea of manned (womaned? co-eded? crewed!), ahem a CREWED mission to f'ing Europa is nonsense. That's like an order of magnitude further than Mars and we're no where close to Mars yet. We can't even get to the moon ATM.

Its not our time, just the same year-ish in the Star Trek timeline. DS9 set up the Bell Riots in 2024 the same way Back to the Future 2 thought we'd have flying cars in 2015.

Can we please hear more about Picard's mom and dad?

I find it so much more interesting than time travel and space battles!

How can a 10 season show feel so padded? Given the number of reoccuring actors I suspect the whole thing will end up being a false reality.

 Gert wrote:
Its not our time, just the same year-ish in the Star Trek timeline. DS9 set up the Bell Riots in 2024 the same way Back to the Future 2 thought we'd have flying cars in 2015.

And don’t forget the eugenics war/WW3 in the 1990s according to TOS and Wrath of Khan, but is that still in the timeline with the voyager and enterprise time travel episodes? Doesn’t really fit with the Voyage Home either…..

The Enterprise and Voyager time travel episodes all got wrapped up by the Time Police.
So, for example, the Na'khul went back in time to help Nazi Germany win WW2 but then Enterprise got involved and fixed the timeline so the effects of the Na'khul going back didn't affect the timeline properly. It still happened but only the Time Police and the crew of the Enterprise remember the events.
The Xindi one where the Reptilians went back and abducted humans did happen though as there was no clean-up by the Time Police but nobody knew it was the Xindi cos the only human who met them was declared insane.

SNW established that (as of now) the 2nd Civil War (a new addition to the timeline I believe), Eugenics War, and World War III are still coming for us. And Picard establishing Adam Soong as the father of the enhanced of Khan Nguyen Singh backs that up.

Something to look forward to I guess

Thinking about it... I would LOVE a Trek prequel set in the early days after First Contact. Post WWIII rebuilding, nations are still at war, the enhanced are still out there, we have to persuade the Vulcans to stay involved, other aliens are sniffing around... And somehow out of that a united peaceful Earth emerges. That would be pretty inspiring.

Instead we got Enterprise.

Enterprise started on the right path and then got distracted with the whole time war thing. I loved how it started with Vulcans having that element of mystery and superiority that we really don't get after Original series (and even then its mostly more in the films than in the series itself). By the time we hit Voyager Vulcans are just "oh they are super serious and sometimes read minds; and once every so often the males go a bit nuts for mating".

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
SNW established that (as of now) the 2nd Civil War (a new addition to the timeline I believe), Eugenics War, and World War III are still coming for us. And Picard establishing Adam Soong as the father of the enhanced of Khan Nguyen Singh backs that up.

Those three events are apparently all follow-ons. The 2nd American Civil War started, then the Eugenics Wars begin which leads to WW3.
The biggest problem with any sort of modern time travel stuff for Trek is that the show started in the 1960s. They were expecting fully manned space vessels in the 90s (which is where the SS Botany Bay comes from) and super-men (Khan).
The showrunners of Picard had to address the whole "no Eugenics Wars in the 90s" thing by saying that:
A - Spock was wrong.
B - WW3 messed records up badly and people lost track of history.
C - Possible ripples from the Temporal Cold War.
Personally, B is fine for me as cataclysmic events do tend to have that effect on things.

Thinking about it... I would LOVE a Trek prequel set in the early days after First Contact. Post WWIII rebuilding, nations are still at war, the enhanced are still out there, we have to persuade the Vulcans to stay involved, other aliens are sniffing around... And somehow out of that a united peaceful Earth emerges. That would be pretty inspiring.

Yeah but then it isn't exactly Star Trek is it? Plus, most of what is going on is just Earth uniting, which takes nearly 100 years from Cochrane's Warp flight. Humanity colonises Mars and stuff but not a whole lot actually goes on Trekking-wise.

Actually even way back in Original series the whole "WW3 messed up records" was used. I recall it being rolled out when Scotty was justifying giving some materials technology to a development firm in order to trade it for the material to build the whale enclosure. They basically risked giving a firm a technology that they knew was developed "around that time" to a random firm for what they needed; with the hope that it wouldn't change all that much.

I'm happy to assume that the Trek-verse is now on its 12th timeline what with time travelers mucking stuff up and counter time travelers fixing stuff as best they can.

The Eugenics Wars thing could be hand waved as Adam Soong started his experiments in the 90s so people count that as the start of the 'Eugenics Wars era' kind of like saying the Global War on Terror did not start on Sept 11, 2001 but in the 80s or the 70s, or the 60s, but that Sept 11 launched a new phase.

As for a dark political Trek prequel, yeah it would be hard to make it about ships and discovery and pew-pew, but it could be done. Make the focus on the emerging United Earth Government trying to launch their first interstellar mission (and why not, let's name that ship Enterprise too, NCC-0001) while nationalist groups, isolationist groups, Martian separatists, secret enhanced supermen, aliens et al are messing around causing trouble. Main characters can include the Captain-to-be, the visionary politician, the Vulcan Ambassador etc.

Man, Orville this week is really good this week. Mostly action this go around. It really feels like a season finale but there’s still one more episode to go. Really hope they get picked up for another season.

Multiple sources are reporting that Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) has died.

Oh fething hell.

89 is a good innings though.

Lower Decks Season 2

Sigh...

In-house parodies are always hard, you can't really hit too hard when you're also supposed to be romoting the property. But Lower Decks seemed to be creating some good characters. But then S2 brings back a dead character, they get a cute joke out of it, but that's it. Also Boimler's promotion is undone and he's returned to the ship (though again they get a cute joke from it). Keep in mind that Boimler's whole character arc was wanted to get promoted and move to a bigger ship. There's a bit of growth there, Boimler realizes he wants to do science and stuff, not just fly around and shoot stuff.

But the lesson I walk away with is no one will die, and nothing will change. Which makes it really hard to continue to care about the characters.

3/5 stars

So, OK, rewatch SNW then I can cancel Paramount till next year.

Oh wait, Disco S4, is that out?

Disco Season 4 is out, yes.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
How can a 10 season show feel so padded?

Oh... it uhh... it gets worse (don't watch that until you've seen the final episode).

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

But the lesson I walk away with is no one will die, and nothing will change. Which makes it really hard to continue to care about the characters.

I mean that's pretty standard for Star Trek.
I don't recall any of the main crew being killed off in Original Series; Tasha was killed off in TNG and I think she was the only main character that was killed (1 doctor and Wesley also left). DS9 the vast majority of the cast survived and that was through a massive war. Voyager was the same, very few actually died.


Star Trek has generally had a super low instance of death; and its really only in DS9 that we see people getting promoted and moving around in their positions. Even then a lot of that hinges on Nog and Jake, with many of the core cast remaining in their respective positions even if they develop those positions. O'Brian is still chief engineer; Bashieer is still medical, Quark still runs his bar, Sisko is still Captain. Heck most of them only change roles in the final.

Well, loads of Crewman Anonymous tend to snuff it of course.

But the only deaths of consequential characters would be….

Tasha Yarr, Jadzia Dax, Tora Ziyal, Gowron, and that’s all the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Oh sure, Original series killed off at least one or two redshirts most weeks.

Kes also dies; which apparently wasn't a good thing behind the scenes as her actress was well liked by the cast and when they replaced her, the actress for Seven got a rather cold reception from some.


Also I believe Jadzia wasn't even a planned death in the series.
They are so rare that most of the time I think that, for key characters, they are more the result of actor and show parting ways than they are a part of the plot put there intentionally.

Sito Jaxa (TNG Lower Decks) is one that sticks with me - she was slightly above Crewman Anonymous, but it was done well.

Didn't Harry Kim die (and get replaced by another dimensions version) ?

And Trip, but rightfully nobody remembers that ham fisted finale so he lives !

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Didn't Harry Kim die (and get replaced by another dimensions version) ?

Yes, along with baby Naomi Wildman.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Disco Season 4 is out, yes.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
How can a 10 season show feel so padded?

Oh... it uhh... it gets worse (don't watch that until you've seen the final episode).

The people in charge of Star Trek don't understand Star Trek, or even sci-fi. I've been saying this for almost 15 years now.

It used to be that "nerd-stuff" was a niche, but with the mainstreaming of it, the people who lovingly crafted it and consumed it for years have been pushed out and ignored.

Disco Season 4

3 episodes in, and yeah, I don't like this show.

And I really don't like the Romulan ninja nuns. And especially that Burham's mom is apparently one of them. I'd totally blocked all memory of that storyline. Meh, I paid for a month, I'll watch it.

The new uniforms are nice.

I just got Paramount + with a Sky package and honestly I'll watch SNW and that's it. I've got all the other Treks on Netflix and Lower Decks on Prime so it's not a service I can see myself regularly using.
I did attempt to watch Halo but I lasted 30 mins, so let's hope SNW does better.

Can’t wait for new season of Lower Decks later this month!

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Disco Season 4

3 episodes in, and yeah, I don't like this show.

And I really don't like the Romulan ninja nuns. And especially that Burham's mom is apparently one of them. I'd totally blocked all memory of that storyline. Meh, I paid for a month, I'll watch it.

The new uniforms are nice.

Are you a Halo fan? That show is on there as well in case you want it to glass your nostalgia too.

On the bright side, at some point Top Gun 2 will pop on there as well though I don't know when.

Well that was a nice casual season finale for Orville after last week’s action packed episode. Just a couple good character stories and a lot of exploring the Prime Directive. Good humor, nothing super serious, just nice. Do hope they get renewed for a forth.

Returning to Egypt today. We will see if P+ still works...

And... not available here.

Now I may never know what happens to that guy with the thing who all that stuff happen.

No VPN in the land of the Pharaohs?