New Picard trailer just dropped

[Blake00]

Any one else pumped for this?? As the creator of Star Trek TNG vs the Borg ZDoom clearly it should be no surprise that I am haha!

Data, 7 of 9, the Borg, Hugh (borg guy from TNG), and apparently Riker & Troi too.. all back!!

CBS region locked the trailer surprise surprise but I found a amazon international one:



EDIT: CBS trailer for US (which I can't play):


.

[Trance]

Star Trek: Discovery demonstrated to me that CBS doesn't understand or care what Star Trek is. They've signed on Alex Kurtzman as one of the 8 (!) executive producers for the show -- Kurtzman, who co-wrote the script to Star Trek: Into Darkness. That showed me that he doesn't understand or care what Star Trek is. Five more of the executive producers -- Heather Kadin, James Duff, Rod Roddenberry, Akiva Goldsman and Trevor Roth -- were recycled from Discovery's also-astoundingly-long producer list.

Executive producer Michael Chabon, who has had zero television production experience until last year when he wrote two of the Short Treks in-between seasons of Discovery, was previously involved with helping write the screenplay for the box office flop John Carter. He occupies himself mostly with writing novels about Jewish identity and has had very little involvement in sci-fi.

Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry, jr., Gene Roddenberry's son, purposely avoided getting involved in his father's work until after Gene's death. That isn't a surprising turn for a famous figure's kid; it happens all the time. But Rod had no hand in the development of the franchise until after Paramount gave up on it, Nemesis and Enterprise having contributed to the public losing interest in Star Trek. It is sad, though, to consider that the guy responsible for Family Guy seemingly understands and appreciates Gene's vision better than his own son does.

Of the showrunners revealed so far, the ONLY one in the list with any significant experience in what I guess we now have to call the "old days" of Star Trek... is Patrick Stewart, who is probably thrilled to be getting the money.

What does all this mean to me? It means that I can't even pretend to be optimistic about ST: Picard. When JJTrek came out and everybody was hyped except me, I was called a sad nerd who couldn't appreciate what it was about to do for the franchise. Imagine: a discussion about Star Trek seeing "nerd" used as an insult. And the tired old point of "If you want the old Star Trek, you can just go back and watch the old Star Trek, it still exists" was thrown at me throughout the run of the new films, on into Discovery's premiere.

It isn't that I just want the old Star Trek stuff to be endlessly repeated at me. I want new Star Trek stuff, within the spirit of what came before. I want Star Trek to FEEL like Star Trek. And for the last decade, it just hasn't done that. The franchise is now vapid Hollywood action-schlock. It is some other creature, dressed up like Star Trek to capitalize on the brand. And Picard is being brought back for exactly the same reason. Are we going to get a show that feels like TNG? Hell no. We'll get a faceful of references, you can bet on that, but what we won't get is a Star Trek show that can stand on its own merits.

Patrick Stewart may have been a major player on the TNG cast, but he did not carry the series on his back. A show of that enduring quality requires competency from every department, ESPECIALLY the writing, directing and producing. And if Discovery didn't have it, ST: Picard certainly won't.

Sorry, hard pass.

[Graf Zahl]

It is sad, though, to consider that the guy responsible for Family Guy seemingly understands and appreciates Gene's vision better than his own son does.

This is so true...

[Enjay]

Lots of pessimistic stuff.

I seem to be less invested in the franchise than you (in fact, I generally find Star Trek to be a bit up its own ass with all its pseudo science and prime directive stuff - but I still enjoy it). So I'm just happy to see another sci-fi series being made. If it's good, I'll probably enjoy it, if it's not, I can just walk away: no harm, no foul. Patrick Stewart alone means, to me, it might be worth watching. The man has a phenomenal stage/screen presence.

[Graf Zahl]

Discovery does not deserve the name "Star Trek". It not only misses the tone of the franchise by lightyears, far worse is that it constantly tries to rewrite history.
With that it is very much in line with the recent ST movies which also have little in common with the TV series.

Trance is 100% correct when saying that "The Orville" far better understands Star Trek than Discovery.

[Trance]

Yeah, Enjay, you undoubtedly are less invested in Star Trek than me. And as such you won't understand where I'm coming from. What you call pessimism I call experience. I want so badly to be proven wrong, but I know I won't be.

I'm sick of being dismissed as the angry fanboy who's stuck in the past. It's just a deflection and a way to excuse the garbage being shoveled through the brand. Ten years of this is surely a long enough time by now that Trek fans can complain about the direction of the franchise without being told to just wait and see how it turns out.

[InsanityBringer]

yeah, I kinda agree heavily with that last point, tbh. Sure, I do like good sci-fi and I'll be happy if they emit something good, but I'm really not too fond of otherwise unrelated and unremarkable shows being shoehorned into a well known brand.

[Caligari87]

Yeah, Enjay, you undoubtedly are less invested in Star Trek than me. And as such you won't understand where I'm coming from. What you call pessimism I call experience. I want so badly to be proven wrong, but I know I won't be.

I'm sick of being dismissed as the angry fanboy who's stuck in the past. It's just a deflection and a way to excuse the garbage being shoveled through the brand. Ten years of this is surely a long enough time by now that Trek fans can complain about the direction of the franchise without being told to just wait and see how it turns out.

Okay, so i feel this is needlessly personal and aggressive. However big a fan you are, Enjay is allowed to have an optimistic outlook just as you're allowed to have a pessimistic one. His quoteback was an (accurate IMO) summary for sake of space, not a dismissal or attack. Also note that if you act like the "angry fanboy who's stuck in the past" people will be more than happy to treat you like one, so please take the chip off your shoulder. Remember that you are not the be-all-end-all arbiter of who gets to enjoy Star Trek.

That said, I tend to agree with your assessment. Even as someone who kinda liked JJ Abrams version, it's clear the franchise, thematically, is a mere shell of what it was. I'm cautiously optimistic for Picard but so far it is looking like it'll be mostly familiar-face fan-service with a heavy does of nu-Trek action-focus. First Contact showed Patrick Stewart is definitely willing to just play the script instead of pushing for character consistency, unfortunately.

If not with this, maybe sometime in the future we'll see a proper classic-Trek revival or continuation. Fingers crossed, I suppose.

[dpJudas]

I've reached the conclusion it is best to accept all those old sci-fi shows in the 90's died. Just like there's only three Indianna Jones movies and one Matrix movie.

That said, I'll be checking out the first episode of this new show just to see what they came up with. It won't be old star trek, it won't have that idea about an idealized society and how that would compare to ours. Maybe if we are lucky, it will have something new and interesting. If it is full of pointless back references to the old shows as a gimmick I'll stop watching real quick though.

[Enjay]

His quoteback was an (accurate IMO) summary for sake of space, not a dismissal or attack.

Oh! Definitely that. I had no intention of dismissing Trance's point of view or belittling it by the way I referenced his post. I just wanted to make it clear that I was responding to his post, but saw no need to repeat the entire thing because it was only two posts above mine.


I understand the upset and frustration of being a fan of a franchise and either seeing it misinterpreted, misrepresented, changed in direction or tone or just suffering from sub-standard products over and over again.

However, my stand on Star Trek is still the same, I enjoy it, but I'm not invested in it. There are a lot of barriers to me not falling particularly in love with the franchise. I find the way they adhere to the prime directive frustrating, I don't have any strong attachment to Star Fleet, I find the near-utopian future civilisation cold and sterile, I find it trite how Miles O'Brien (or some other significant character) always has a nice little domestic story going on that strangely mirrors the main bigger plot going on in that episode, I don't get the James T. Kirk worship (or care that he sidestepped the Kobayashi Maru), I find the pseudo-science technobabble slow and annoying (especially when it dominates an entire episode but is ultimately nonsense), I find holodeck (or Q-controlled alternative reality episodes*) sleep inducing and I really couldn't care less if I never saw Q's face again. A lot of the time, I simply don't find it gritty or nasty enough. It's all a bit too neat, tied up and tidied up and everyone is "nice", even the bad guys are usually "safe" bad guys.

But, I do like it. I've watched just about everything in the franchise (many episodes multiple times) and I've enjoyed a lot of it; some of it has been fantastic. Hey, I've even got a TNG officer's shirt hanging in my wardrobe (seriously). However, I'm just not that big of a fan. If the franchise is heading in a direction that people who care about it more than me don't like, it's a shame for them (and I do really get that) but it's pretty immaterial to me.

If it's still a good bit of sci-fi but not in the sprit of how the fans feel Star Trek should be, it's a pity for them and I can empathise, but it doesn't bother me one little bit. Selfish? Maybe. Either way, I'm optimistic about Picard. I think it looks quite good but I also suspect it will be reasonably disposable.


*however, one particular episode can almost be forgiven because it gave us this great moment:

---

but that episode also had just about everything that I despise about Q episodes.

[SouthernLion]

Q stuff.

Q was the ... entire point of The Next Generation. Picard's arrogance but courage and compassion and the risk of the unknown and how infinitely little we know as a species and ...... I feel like you missed something in your Star Trek: TNG watching. lmao (I mean this in no bad way.)

[Enjay]

Nah, I didn't miss that, I just didn't really like it or care about it or at least that's true when they dealt with it by using a childish god-like creature who could do things that were basically just cheesy effects that (to me) usually just smacked of "we've got actors, cameras, a studio, costumes and make-up, so what scenario can we do today". Usually very false and felt cheap IMO (regardless of actual cost). And, the Q character himself was, to me, utterly unlikable and silly. I guess that's probably intentional to a certain extent but I don't care; I just found his inclusion detracted hugely from the overall thing. So, Q is a god-like being who pushes Picard, puts him in to difficult situations, stresses him, tests him and makes him question himself and, as a result, helps him further himself - so what? He's still a dick and I find him tedious to watch. I watch the show for fun. Hours of a posturing dick just being annoying and acting like a spoiled child was simply not fun for me. Also, my least favourite character archetype is the unbeatable recurring nemesis.

Like i said, I'm not that invested, so I don't really care about a many-seasons long arc about one character's arrogance if it starts to dominate the whole show to the point of nothing else mattering - and with Q that's where that happened IMO. And I always felt that it did so in a horribly forced, crass, preachy, blatantly obvious "writer's thought experiment" kind of way. There were other times where it was dealt with much better. Much as it pains me to say it, sometimes Picard's interactions with Wesley were a better way of handling it IMO.

[edit] Probably worth saying, that one of my best friends is a huge Star Trek and Q fan. According to him, Q is one of the best things about TNG and most of the Q episodes are on his frequent re-watch list. Not sure why he's my friend actually. [/edit]

[Graf Zahl]

Also, my least favourite character archetype is the unbeatable recurring nemesis.

I can't disagree here, which is why I find most horror films thoroughly unappaling, because in their endless lack of ideas the unwritten rule is that the enemy always returns, and returns and returns and...
.. and if he is beaten, he still returns through some idiotic plot device.

Yes, Q is of the same kind, just far more annoying.

[Chris]

I can't disagree here, which is why I find most horror films thoroughly unappaling, because in their endless lack of ideas the unwritten rule is that the enemy always returns, and returns and returns and...
.. and if he is beaten, he still returns through some idiotic plot device.

Unfortunately it's that way because that's what audiences want. There was the one time where the Halloween series tried to move away from Michael Meyers being the killer and make it more of an anthology series where each film would focus on a different halloween-themed horror story. That resulted in Halloween 3 being a massive flop (despite it being, as I understand, a rather decent horror flick in its own right). Other series have tried similar things over the decades with similar results. Change too much of what consumers expect and, even if what you make is good, there's a high chance people won't buy into it, so they go back to doing the same old thing.

[Trance]

Okay, so i feel this is needlessly personal and aggressive. However big a fan you are, Enjay is allowed to have an optimistic outlook just as you're allowed to have a pessimistic one. His quoteback was an (accurate IMO) summary for sake of space, not a dismissal or attack. Also note that if you act like the "angry fanboy who's stuck in the past" people will be more than happy to treat you like one, so please take the chip off your shoulder. Remember that you are not the be-all-end-all arbiter of who gets to enjoy Star Trek.

You're free to feel that way, but that isn't what it was. I had hoped, given the amount of time I've been in this community, that I've earned a measure of benefit of the doubt from the moderating staff. I didn't take Enjay's response personally, nor did he take my follow-up personally.

-----

It's clear that Enjay and I see the franchise in very different ways. One of the three typical arguments I encounter on the subject of rebooting a franchise incompetently is "well the stuff that came before wasn't that great anyway". Naturally, that's not a line of argument with an objective endpoint; humanity has a massively diverse range of tastes in entertainment and there will always be some people with whom any show, even Star Trek, doesn't resonate. That leads into the second of the three arguments I encounter: "If there are people watching the new stuff, why even care that it's not like the old stuff?"

In New Trek's case, there is a veritable glut of its kind of shallow action-drama to be found elsewhere on TV and in the theaters. Every couple months, the Syfy channel is cranking out another one of those, and your average Marvel movie will scratch that itch on the big screen while being better-crafted besides. So it's not like New Trek was filling some gap in the market. The only reason the Star Trek brand was used was to give the new movies and shows a marketing edge, trading in the brand's reputation to boost ticket sales and CBS All-Access subscriptions.

Star Trek had always had a value beyond just spectacle. When it was good, it introduced thought-provoking sci-fi scenarios and philosophical dilemmas that made for interesting discussions among the viewers afterward. When it was good, plotlines were written coherently and sensibly, they didn't lean on escaping situations with technobabble, and character interactions were a compelling watch and full of charm (and most importantly, they made decisions that made sense within our understanding of their character). And up until DS9 ended, Star Trek was good much more often than it wasn't. The shows set up an expectation of quality writing, which is why those times when they didn't live up to that expectation are so noteworthy (TOS Season 3, some choice stinkers in TNG, Star Trek V, for a handful of examples).

Fans like me aren't hallucinating or awash in nostalgia here. I know that Star Trek used to be good. Me and some others from this community are rewatching TOS from the beginning currently. Though we get a barrel of laughs from the cheesy '60s aesthetics and special effects, when the dramatic thrust of the episode hits and the characters really begin to interact with each other and with the situation, our commentary stops, because at that point the show has sucked us in and gotten us interested in where the story's going.

(And I love Q. His transition from villain to prankster to teacher was a satisfying one to me. He, as a character, made possible two of my favorite episodes of the whole series: Q Who, which introduces the Borg and presents them in their most alien and least relatable form, and Tapestry, a story about Picard confronting his past that puts me in mind of A Christmas Carol and never fails to make me break out in a big smile toward the end.)

So why am I not happy that the new stuff is getting viewers? Well, apart from me not being able to enjoy it, because it's crap, it's giving off the impression to franchise newcomers that this is what Star Trek is about. Someone who might otherwise get hooked big-time on Star Trek's original vision might never give themselves the opportunity when they turn on Discovery and go "oh god, barf", and shut it off. And those who retain their All-Access subscription are only used to fuel CBS's notion that this is what the people want Star Trek to be. The new films and the TV show, being official and canonical Star Trek productions, represent the franchise while simultaneously being totally unrepresentative of it.

Despite Patrick Stewart's captivating and impressive body of work, he's certainly not above agreeing to be in some fairly stupid shit for money. I have no illusions about his ability to save Star Trek single-handed.