Kirsten Beyer is a producer and co-creator of Picard. She has also written every Voyager novel since the relaunch of the line, and every book utterly embodies the Star Trek ideals of restraint, understanding, diplomacy, empathy, and truthfulness that we expect from the series. Either she is getting drowned out (which doesn't seem likely, since she was promoted from script writer for Discovery), or there are pressures on them from higher up. Maybe that's just a conceit, as I like her books a lot and her Discovery episode "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum" failed the basics of storytelling so badly it's emotionally dissident for me to say they came from the same person unadulterated.
I understand Patrick Stewart didn't want to come back to just play the same character on the same show again, but I would have thought there would have been a way to do that while keeping the spirit of the original show intact. Picard was the ultimate diplomat. From where I presume the show is headed after the premiere, that's not going to be the focus here. What's really bothersome to me is you could have done these types of shows in universe without just saying "all right, Starfleet is the bad guy". Want to have a show where a returning lead has to stop rogue forces from turning his people into an isolationist, unhealthy society? Set it on Qo'noS, staring Ambassador Worf. Want a Game of Thones type show in the Star Trek universe? Set it on wherever the new Romulan homeworld is, and follow the various factions fighting to become the new leader of what's left of the Romulan empire. Add dealing with the Remans. How about a secret organization that infests the government? Do the Obsidian Order. I'd watch the shit out of those shows. It would be something different, but still fit in the canon.
Not sure how you do a Star Trek show with Picard like previous shows since it's only a 10 episode season. They're not going to do a story of the week flying through the galaxy series. I totally believe the premise of Starfleet being the bad guy though, we've seen glimpses of this in every series since TNG. I'm one of the opposites in this thread, I'm actually enjoying Picard a great deal. Still don't care for Discovery at all though.
I,ve enjoyed it also and it is a good deal better than the first 2 episodes of Discovery. Of course I've also accepted that any Star Trek that comes out now is only Star Trekist not Star Trek.
And why does every US TV series need to have their 9/11 moment as some sort of background story moment from when everything want downhill? See attack on Utopia Planetia?
Did I mishear Jurati say that "there are three billion stars in our galaxy"? This is the stuff that they used to get right. Even lowball estimates have the Milky Way at 100 billion stars and there are others that have it in the hundreds of billions.
I really liked the first two episodes, it's not TNG or anything like the old style of Star Trek, but it was good. The last two episodes I've liked a bit less. Now that they're in space and have most of their team assembled, I'm still on board to see where it goes. It's MUCH, MUCH better than Discovery.
It shares with Discovery a total lack of Trek's optimism. I also don't really recognize some of these characters. Though the argument against that would be, time has moved on, so why would they still be exactly like you remember them?
Other than Picard, Seven, Troi and Riker there's really not a lot to recognize with the characters. And time has moved on and things have affected people so why wouldn't they change. I've been kind of eh, of the 8 episodes aired so far I've REALLY liked 3, 1 was meh and the others I am kind of whatever on. It's time to realize that Trek isn't going to be the way it used to be anymore. Which is a shame, but it's what it is.
Ive picked it up again and I think it is "ok". Discovery is two levels above it though. Hopefully, "Star Trek: Pike" will be something
I was a bit disappointed with the finale, for a variety of reasons. After seeing the latest teaser and images for Disco, I have even less faith in the series.
Started listening to this audiobook over the weekend. Clearly one of the best recent novels together with "Fire with Fire". Kinda wish the plot was used for the tv show instead