Star Trek: Picard

Copper Bezel

Revenge against God for the crime of Being.
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TheSupernova

How did we get so dark?
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Bill Krause is such a talented starship designer! Of course, I love the TOS movie shop aesthetics, so I might be a tad biased. Ha ha ha!
 

Monique

Guess whos back
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Ended up binge watching this season in one day after hearing it was great. Definitely lived up to the hype. Soooo so sad that Shaw died however, I ended up loving that bastard and wanted to see more of him in the future.

I mean... I guess if Lower Decks is actually supposed to be canon to the lore... Maybe Shaw could just get better.
 

Kalidor

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Ended up binge watching this season in one day after hearing it was great. Definitely lived up to the hype. Soooo so sad that Shaw died however, I ended up loving that bastard and wanted to see more of him in the future.

I mean... I guess if Lower Decks is actually supposed to be canon to the lore... Maybe Shaw could just get better.

It was really well executed. I think back to the first 2 seasons and remember how disjointed the pacing was where pretty much 2 episodes worth of story were dragged out over 6 episodes then a bunch of new conflicts were added in the last episode tried to tie everything up and it was just a mess.

I didn't really expect any different from this season but after about the second episode I knew something special was happening.
 

Copper Bezel

Revenge against God for the crime of Being.
Citizen
Yeah, for me episode three coming around and anticipating my commentary and actually containing subtext made me sit up and pay attention. Any writing that was happening on anything more than a superficial level and conscious of what I would be thinking as a viewer was something new for Picard, and the snark just stopped connecting. I've never been hatewatching a show and had to say "wait, is this actually .... good?" in quite as sharp a turn as that. It's incredible that mostly the same group of people could produce something so drastically different in ... well, quite a lot of things, over a season break.

Hell, Discovery and Picard both started in this all-serial format that someone seemed to think was the way to do new Trek, and now Picard is over, Discovery has been softening that format and has one season left, and SNW doesn't use it at all. Neither Picard nor Discovery ever stuck the landing before on one really cohesively written continuous story over a season - even when Discovery started getting better in S3, it was on the strength of standalone episodes and certainly not the season plot. And now somehow Picard pulls this complete success out of the all-serial format at the last opportunity.
 

Axaday

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The 'Neo-Conny" class bothered me. It looked good, but using an update of an older design for a HERO ship? Admittedly there is only so many times you can do the Saucer/body/Nacelles look before becoming derivative.

Something that bothers me about it is that so many classes have been as much like Constitution as this really. To call it NeoConstitution is really fan service. What are the things that this has in common with Constitution, but not others? Ambassador-class is very much a larger Constitution. Admittedly, NeoConstitution looks more like Constitution than it does Excelsior, but not by a lightyear because of the little neck and the nacelles going so much to the side. It looks a lot like Nova and Enquiry with its non-round Saucer.
 

Copper Bezel

Revenge against God for the crime of Being.
Citizen
There's absolutely some Excelsior in there - Matalas mentions in the article that the Excelsior lines of the secondary hull combined with Constitution parts were what jumped out at him about the Shangri-La. But if you're asking what a new Excelsior Class would look like and how that would be different from the Neo-Constitution, there is apparently an answer to that question.

The round saucer with those particular concave curves isn't unique to the Constitution refit, and neither are the boxy, forward-pitched Bussard collectors, because those things were kitbashed into the Miranda and things. The round shuttle bay doors look more like the Sovereign's combination of features from the Constitution and Constitution refit. The stance is lower than the Constitution's with a lot less neck and nacelle pylon, again like the Excelsior. The shape of those pylons is pretty similar to the Connie refit, but they've added some curves in there. And there are a lot of ships with paired, trapezoidal impulse engines at the top of the neck, and the Titan A has twice as many of those! There are even other ships with a neck that ends in a thin strip at the front edge that stretches out under the saucer section in a cheeky little flourish. And lots of ships have little round glowy things at the bottom of the saucer, the Shenzhou even put the bridge there. Not even the right number of spotlights in front of it!

In terms of the raw number of distinctive features working as cues here, though? I don't think there's going to be any one ship that has half as many. I'm not sure that there's a another canon ship class that borrows as many elements from any one preexisting ship class without being kitbashed from it. It's honestly more than a typical comeback car. If the resemblance to the Constitution refit was never mentioned, you can bet your sweet bippy people would have noticed it and assumed someone at Starfleet must have been feeling sentimental.

There is an oddity though that the Shangri-La class itself is apparently implied to have existed. So if it did, this is decidedly really a Neo-Shangri-La. But I'm going to say Starfleet decided to favor the name recognition.

I'm more concerned with why Starfleet is doing comeback cars at all, because they don't have to sell their starships based on nostalgia. That's the fanservice I'd be concerned about. But you know, when they're doing it to bring back the most charming elements of the single best ship design in the history of Starfleet, instead of making more pointy potatoes? I can't complain....
 
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The Predaking

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I don't think so. That is post arc. He recommends that she become a Captain when they get back to dock.

It was confirmed that Shaw recorded that before they left at the start of the season. They were after all scheduled for a cruise before the big celebration, Seven just changed the destination. They talked about that on the last Ready Room episode.
 

The Predaking

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I wish they would have separated the saucer section and used the battle bridge.

The Show runner mentioned the budgetary restraints a lot for the season. He said that at the beginning of the season that they had to decide what bridge to make. They could make the Enterprise D, E, or F's bridge. They thought that the F's bridge wouldn't be important to people(although you do see a bit of it when they show Shelby), and while the E's would have some meaning, they knew that the Enterprise D would have the most nostalgic effect. They spent their entire budget on that bridge recreation, and it took the entire production schedule to get it done, and ended up only have two days to film on it.

So sadly, iconic sets like the battle bridge, Sick bay, the holodeck, etc, were never going to get shown.
 

The Predaking

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They wanted to bring back Ro (among others) for the final episode and ran out of money. I would imagine a Whoopi cameo would have been lower priority than showing Ro was still alive.
They originally wanted Walter Koenig to appear on camera and they had to change that to audio only after running out of budget.
 

The Predaking

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Ended up binge watching this season in one day after hearing it was great. Definitely lived up to the hype. Soooo so sad that Shaw died however, I ended up loving that bastard and wanted to see more of him in the future.

I mean... I guess if Lower Decks is actually supposed to be canon to the lore... Maybe Shaw could just get better.


He must climb the Black Mountain! I love that idea!
 

The Predaking

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Yeah, for me episode three coming around and anticipating my commentary and actually containing subtext made me sit up and pay attention. Any writing that was happening on anything more than a superficial level and conscious of what I would be thinking as a viewer was something new for Picard, and the snark just stopped connecting. I've never been hatewatching a show and had to say "wait, is this actually .... good?" in quite as sharp a turn as that. It's incredible that mostly the same group of people could produce something so drastically different in ... well, quite a lot of things, over a season break.

Hell, Discovery and Picard both started in this all-serial format that someone seemed to think was the way to do new Trek, and now Picard is over, Discovery has been softening that format and has one season left, and SNW doesn't use it at all. Neither Picard nor Discovery ever stuck the landing before on one really cohesively written continuous story over a season - even when Discovery started getting better in S3, it was on the strength of standalone episodes and certainly not the season plot. And now somehow Picard pulls this complete success out of the all-serial format at the last opportunity.

I think for me it was episode 2 when I started to realize that this season wouldn't be like the first two. That silent moment on the bridge between Beverly and Picard, it was absolutely perfect and presented in the perfect way. That it was going to be different. I really think that this season showed us what Star Trek can be and that the fans will love good Star Trek when they get it.
 

The Predaking

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A few thoughts:

The 'Neo-Conny" class bothered me. It looked good, but using an update of an older design for a HERO ship? Admittedly there is only so many times you can do the Saucer/body/Nacelles look before becoming derivative.

I feel the Q scene would have more fitting with Q Jr. LOVE DeLancie but he closed his book in S2. They could (later) flip the script and have Q Jr constantly trying to HELP Jack and the crew only to get lectures about choice and consequences and yadda-yadda-yadda.

Why did Geordi mention only the nacelles came from the Syracuse? Being an engineer he would have specified "Star Drive section", unless it was literal and other pieces were taken from another ship(s). Did the warp nacelles look bigger to anyone else?

Had to check, but Crash did get a promotion.

Not having Whoopi Goldberg in the last scene was bad, especially since Riker said she was in the room! A shot of her rolling her eyes and throwing her hands up in annoyed frustration when Picard whips out the poker cards was missed.


Neo-constitutional ship class itself doesn't bother me, especially as a hero ship. It being underpowered compared to the Odyssey class does kind of bother me though.

The Q scene works perfectly. Q doesn't go through time in linear order. The Q we see in season two is literally his last hurrah. So this Q is from earlier in Q's lifetime. The show runner immediately asked Delancie as he finished up his scenes in season two to do this. The idea is that all of this season is what Q was starting to tell Picard at the end of All Good Things and I love that THE TRIAL NEVER ENDS!

Yup! Laforge is now a junior Lieutenant, just like her sister, and now is hopefully out of her Lower decks style bunk.

I really didn't like that part either. Couldn't even get a voice over of her telling them to lock up when they are done as she left.
 

The Predaking

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Looks potentially good. Can't wait to see how they squander all that potential.

I am curious to what you thought of the season now that its over. I too shared your sentiment of skepticism based on the first two seasons, but was quickly won over by this new season.
 

Axaday

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The Q scene works perfectly. Q doesn't go through time in linear order. The Q we see in season two is literally his last hurrah. So this Q is from earlier in Q's lifetime.
I mean...he died in 2024 right? That is the second earliest time that we ever saw him. So it shouldn't bother anyone for him to show up in 2401. We'd already seen him at around that time on "All Good Things..."
 
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The Predaking

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Also, remember that Q is called the "god of lies", so its not like he couldn't have been just fine at the end of season two. However, he seemed genuine with Picard at the end. My theory on him just being the younger version of himself in season 3 makes more sense to me.
 

Kalidor

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The only reason Q would look like that would be due to his interactions in season 2. I would also say that applies to him knowing he told Picard the trial was over for him.

We don't really know what happened to him after he snapped them back to the future or how he may or may not have interacted with the Continuum from that point on. Or if he actually "died" at all.

It's much more believable to me that he simply didn't die for no reason than him dying in 2024 is some kind of fixed point and he's just running around like Clara Oswald in the interim
 

Copper Bezel

Revenge against God for the crime of Being.
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Like Axaday, I think the text is unambiguous - he scolds Jack for thinking linearly because the Q don't live a linear existence; his apparent age is always a choice, as is everything else about his appearance, and he's spent time all over our past and future. He just chose to travel back to meet with Picard in his last days, and he spends much of that time in the 21st century anyway. It doesn't take a god, either; Arthur Dent and Marvin the paranoid android have seen the end of the universe by the time they each die near our present day. Q's just the one who left that final message to the universe for them.

Q knowing what he's going to have said to Picard near the end of his own life appears to add a wrinkle, and I think it does complicate the character as written in S2. But I also think it's unavoidable. It's very difficult to be omnipotent without becoming omniscient as a side perk. It doesn't matter when in the timeline Q dies, he can always have traveled there and seen it, as an inevitable reality of his not being bound to any one point in the timeline. I don't think this is something anyone considered during S2, and writing for gods is hard. But it certainly does explain his certainty in S2 about his inevitable death if he's simply seen it - his struggle to accept his death in S2 does not have a bargaining phase; he hasn't experienced what's coming firsthand and felt himself running out of time, but he unambiguously knows what it is and when it's coming.

So it's exceptionally convenient for us as viewers and for the VFX team as a department with a budget that Q appears the same age as John DeLancie again, and extremely convenient for us and the writers that he remembers the events of last season that he hasn't experienced yet. But I think that's definitely what they're telling us happened in the show. And unless the Q have some kind of anti-paradox field that prevented them from seeing the future of their own personal worldlines, I think the fact that he knows about last season is actually an inevitable consequence of everything else we've been told about them; if his future self chose to ultimately die on 21st century Earth, it'd be hard for him to miss before the last time he got there. (Branching timelines would pose a wiggle but Star Trek is deliberately ambiguous and self-contradictory about whether time travel follows the A or B theory of time travel every time it comes up. Changing your own past and being an inevitable part of it are both always on the table.)

The simple fact that John DeLancie looks old is not an inevitable consequence of Star Trek's reality, but, well, time is the fire in which we burn, unfortunately.
 

Lobjob

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Its like Picard becoming a robot. It doesn't really matter until they decide it does.

I am very happy picard being a synth mattered for the plot this season. At least they made it "worth it".
 

Copper Bezel

Revenge against God for the crime of Being.
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I think it only mattered in S2 when he died. Like, for it to matter again would be for a future story to reveal that Q doesn't know his own future or fears for his own death by another cause, at which point they'd have to iron out a continuity snag. The Q that experienced dying is kinda ... dead, and unlikely to see further development on the issue. I do think that S2 could have left someone with the impression that Q "simply died for no reason" as Kalidor put it, as if that was the next point in Q's story after we saw him last, and emphasizing the idea that he might have another thousand, million, or billion years of life ahead of him for all we know as of All Good Things or Voyager (and now) elevates the concept a bit in S2 of a very old Q coming back to see Picard before he goes.

Picard's body was making apple juice from lemons. I'm still amazed at that. It technically doesn't matter even in this season that Picard is a synth, because it was a plot device designed to be irrelevant from the moment it happened in S1. But turning Picard's "irumodic syndrome" into an audience clue and a big point in the relationship between Jack and Picard, and then using Picard's old body as another audience clue as things heated up, and finally revealing why Picard could hear the Borg in First Contact but not now? Pure unfiltered continuity porn poured into the mold of pro-strats mystery writing.
 


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