Star Trek: Picard

[Vee]

 

Seems likely! But I hope it's just Lore lol.

They are already talking up a continuation of this 'story' with some other series so I suspect there may be a Titan show with Seven/Raffi, etc.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Vee

[Vee]

A wonderful NYT interview with the cast (archived here).

[AdelaideCate007]

I've been guessing Lore or maybe Worf lol. I can't see them killing off Riker, Crusher, or Picard. The show runner said on twitter that we don't lose Deanna so I'm guessing that means she's safe too. I guess there's always Raffi or Seven but I think they want them for a spinoff. So basically that leaves Worf or Lore.

Also, adding in fuel to the fire about what the villains could be involved in and someone we could see, I saw people mention that the show runner and the cast mentioned Preemptive Strike as an episode to watch to "prepare" for this season.  

[dragonflies]

From TV GUIDE ROUSH REVIEW 

 

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[janea4old]

Wil Wheaton interviews Ed Speleers on the Ready Room.  (Whether you like Wheaton's interview style or not, this episode is great.)
The first 8 minutes is the ship design/production crew, showing how they created the enemy ship The Shrike. 
Then great interview with Speleers that lasts about 18 minutes. Beverly's two sons LOL. but mainly Speleers talking about his experiences. 
Then about 4 or 5 minutes of how they created the set and props for "District 6" the sleazy district where Raffi was looking for answers, and interesting tidbits about set pieces borrowed from the sets of other Trek series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2dt8t4VZZk

That youtube is geoblocked outside US but if you can't see it,
try here:
https://www.startrek.com/videos/the-ready-room-picard-ed-speleers-jack-crusher

 

Edited February 26, 2023 by janea4old

[Vee]

I was very happy with Worf's reintroduction, clipped by someone here:

I had expected it was him as Raffi's handler, but it was a great moment and a great remixing of Jerry Goldsmith's classic Klingon theme.

The show is up and down for me tonally but I am really enjoying it much more than the first season. I am glad the new season is being well-received and that so far the crazy hardcore who reject almost any Trek after Nemesis are not baying for its blood (yet). My relatively minor issues stem from the fact that a number of scenes - Shaw with his people on Titan, Vadic's banter, some of the exposition and discussion with Raffi and the now-deceased Ferengi crimeboss (beautiful updating of the Ferengi makeup BTW) - seem to have tried a bit too hard to modernize the way people talk on Star Trek. It's just a little too quippy and a little 2020s for me in places. That's fine for the Abrams Trek stuff which is a specifically different universe, and fine for Lower Decks. Strange New Worlds is also a distinctly lighter show than some of the others but still maintains a baseline for deeper discussion that comes from the older shows. Discovery, well, is Discovery. And I don't expect or want people to talk like they did in syndication 25-30 years. But I do think there's sometimes a forced quality to the banter element in the dialogue to make sure it doesn't sound 'too' old-fashioned or 'too' tech-driven, especially when the show's stars are an 80 year old and his other senior citizen co-workers. Amanda Plummer is daffy enough onscreen without making her dialogue really flighty. And Shaw is clearly an alcoholic and damaged but every other line he has does not need to be a bitter quip to get the point across.

Don't get me wrong: S3 is a major improvement so far, and a lot of it is quite good. Some scenes are also very good (like Picard's confrontation with Jack). But I would like to see some of the dialogue go up a notch in the maturity level and depth as opposed to often seeming to reflect the continuing push from Paramount to seemingly need to prove to people every week in the tonal shift that "Star Trek is just not for nerds anymore". Star Trek is very successful for them on streaming today with multiple hit shows and more in development, they don't have anything left to prove.

@janea4oldThe Speleers interview and his wonderful remembrance of watching TNG as a kid is really a universal experience.

[AdelaideCate007]

I really loved Worf's introduction too and I'm happy that didn't drag out. He was never my fave back in the TNG and DS9 days but oddly enough, he's been the one I've been most interested in seeing again based on the trailers. I feel like he could have a really cool story this time around. 

@Vee I agree about the tone issues with the first two episodes. I'mr really enjoying but it does seem a little disjointed and off at points. The dialogue is a little rough in some places but that seems to an issue, at least for me, across most modern Star Trek outside of Lower Decks and sometimes SNW. It's a minor issue for sure but it's there. I wonder if the tone is a little all over the place because of filming inconsistencies. It sounds like they shot the first three or so episodes over time because half the cast couldn't shoot the first six weeks. They didn't even start filming with Plummer till the fifth episode and had to add in her scenes to the episode. Same with a couple of the others. I could be off base, but it's just a vibe I got. I enjoyed Amanda Plummer here though a lot. I still think she's just the face or the front person for something much bigger.

My other minor quibble is how old Jack looks. I think Ed Speleers is doing a great job and I get why they wanted to have an older actor since it seems like there's going to be a lot of heavy acting. They also obviously want him to be a big part of the franchise going forward. If that was the case, then I don't know why they didn't do another time jump and make it closer to 30 years. Them pretending he's 22/23 and born right after Nemesis is a stretch when he not only looks much older, but then having Picard list off all the trouble he's been in makes it sound like he's been at this for years now. It's a minor thing and Star Trek has been rapidly aging kids for decades now, but still kind of oof when they keep repeating how it's only been 22 years or whatever since they saw Beverly. I saw people say that they didn't think he knew Picard was his father till he heard it on over the comms, but I think he already knew and just didn't say anything? The way he was reacting during the interrogation scene when Picard asked about the father, the part where he knew about the vineyard and him being a captain, the part of where he said 'it was nice to finally meet you' when they thought they were dying. I think we were supposed to assume he knew.

Going off the description of the next episode, they're clearly doing some sort of parallel between Beverly and Picard's alive son and Troi and Riker's dead son. I just hope that they don't just have it be Riker and Picard dealing with that. I hope Beverly and Troi get some scenes out of that story and get to react to the situation at hand too.

Also, still definitely getting a vibe that they want to do a next Next Generation show on the Titan with Seven, the new bridge crew, and all the TNG kids. It's a little small world syndrome but I think it could be a cool concept.

[Vee]

I'd be all for it.

Speleers is very handsome still (years after the dreadful Eragon) but looks a little old for the timeline on Jack, yes. Still, after so many years of over-aged youth on Trek he's not too bad.

I never fully appreciated Worf until DS9, where I think his arc and stories with Gowron, Dax, Martok, etc. really gave him his due. Michael Dorn has not lost a thing after spending decades wanting to play the role again.

I think the insistence either by Paramount, the creatives or all of the above to make stodgy old Trek seem as hip and current as possible is a recurring issue with the dialogue and behavior at times. It's not nearly as bad here as it's been on DSC which, while I still enjoy it as a silly romp and love Sonequa and a lot of the cast, is just unending nonstop 2010s-onward-esque therapy sessions and monologues to me, ll handholding and the power of friendship. It's mawkish and a bit embarrassing. And when you try to make older actors, or some of the new actors who are supposed to be professionals sound like they're on Grey's or Chicago Fire or 911 or whatever it grates. I'm all for loosening up the style and tone of the extremely antiseptic Rick Berman years, but there is a happy medium to be found between two extremes. And there was a lot of great character work in those shows without having to make sure the audience for younger shows can relate to these 60-80s year olds.

[janea4old]

And they're in STARFLEET (yes I'm shouting, LOL),  I mean really, they are supposed to be the best of the best of many planets.   They would have been required to have resolved their deep psychological issues before becoming officers on ships with important missions!

The season two Picard with the trauma of repressing his mother's suicide.  Come on? Really the Starfleet psychologists never uncovered this before?  Totally unlikely.

Edited February 27, 2023 by janea4old

[AdelaideCate007]

@Vee I'd be for it too. Raffi isn't always my favourite character, despite Michelle Hurd being a great actress and giving a good performance, but they could toss her on there too. Again, it'd be very small universe syndrome, but they could even bring on one or two of the DS9 or Voyager kids that are floating around out there.

I'm a Discovery fan also but yeah, the dialogue can be very 21st century cringe sometimes. I don't know what the answer is but there definitely has to be an in between there.

[Vee]

I love Michelle Hurd's work on the show - I've always been a big fan of hers going back to SVU or earlier and am so glad she's found a space to showcase her talent years later, and has seemed to be embraced by the Trek fandom. I think many of the stories for the new characters from S1-2 on Picard (much like DSC) are a bit tryhard and overwrought but Hurd plays it to the hilt with so much feeling and heart. I'd love to see what she could do on a more stable show a la SNW, which ideally a Titan show would be.

I've just accepted that a lot of DSC is cringe at this point and embraced the silliness as a feature and enjoyed what I can of it. I'm far more invested in SNW and LD.

Speaking of the non-Discovery/DSC shows: I think it makes sense that the recent generation of Starfleet officers (Shaw, Raffi, Seven, etc.) are much more damaged and cynical people - they are coming off stuff like the Borg, the Dominion War, the synth ban, etc. You see echoes of this even with the animated characters like Mariner on LD who we know served in the War. I think it's refreshing to see that no, they're not all alright after the fairly sanitized episodic utopia of some of the '90s years where so much was swept under the rug. And ideally you then present characters like Picard, etc. as being able to help them rise to the occasion despite their issues. But I do think some of the dialogue needs a touch-up and someone needs to put Shaw (a drinker and clearly a traumatized dude) in his place a bit more. The way he treated Picard and Riker when they came onboard his ship would not have flown at all in the TNG/DS9/VOY era. Even Janeway didn't treat visitors like that out in the Delta Quadrant, and those people weren't even Starfleet who outranked her like Picard and Riker.

The constant therapy-speak and emotional orgies of Discovery OTOH, I'll pass. (Of course, TNG had plenty of therapy-speak for its time...)

Edited February 28, 2023 by Vee

[Dion]

Wow.

 

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[Vee]

I should have seen it coming. (I am also not spoilering this since it's been days.) Even after they showed the way that crewman's face reacted I wasn't sure it was the Founders.

I am all for the callback and very excited, but I'm slightly hesitant if only because I think the multi-season Dominion War on DS9, which was built up almost from the beginning of the series, was kind of the ultimate story for the changelings and it's hard to top or even be a successor for that. If they want to tell a huge new story with the Founders as the big bad again then it needs to be something really wild. Still, we're 3 eps in and I highly doubt we have the full story or scope of events yet. Worf's brief mention of Odo was touching, and very poignant as Rene is no longer here.

This to me was the strongest ep so far. The scenes with Picard and Crusher were excellent, and beautiful work from both actors. The script did not skimp or play it too coy or witty. That said, I am curious about the exact timeline of their on-off relationship - Picard says they got together and broke up 'five times' before the final break. I would have to assume this on-off affair began during the run of the TNG movies, not just after Nemesis. I did mostly buy Beverly's reasons for staying away. The Romulan refugee mess was very dangerous for Picard.

That being said, I am now onboard with what others have suspected about Riker from the jump: That he is a ringer. I don't believe he'd ever talk to Jean-Luc like he did. That's a changeling.

Surreal to see Thomas Dekker back in Trek, BTW, after playing Picard's imaginary child as a small boy in Generations.

Also: The subplot material with Seven, Jack and LaForge Jr. screamed backdoor pilot for a Titan show and I am all for it.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Vee

[janea4old]

Did you notice the closing credits for Season 3 (so far)? 

The regulars are:
Patrick Stewart
Jeri Ryan
Michelle Hurd
Ed Speleers 

Credited as Special Guest Stars:
Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis 

Credited as Guest Stars in episodes 1, 2, 3:
Todd Stashwick
Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut (Sidney La Forge)

Additional guest stars

Episode 1 
Orla Brady (Laris)
Anthony Azizi (the Orion drug dealer)

Episode 2
Amanda Plummer
Randy J. Goodwin (Raffi's ex-husband Jae Hwang)
Robert G. Morgan (a Ferris Ranger)
Aaron Stanford (Sneed - the Ferengi)

Episode 3
Amanda Plummer
Thomas Dekker (the Changling posing as Titus Rikka)

Edited March 4, 2023 by janea4old

[janea4old]

I love Raffi and Worf teaming up!