Picard Season 3

[trappedslider]

But yeah he wasn't anywhere near as lively or diverting as Archer as he was as Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap. I put a lot of that on the writers not really having much of a conception for the character nor any key conflicts or relationships with other officers though. I haven't seen his other big lead role in NCIS: New Orleans so I can't comment on that, but it feels like all NCIS lead roles are kind of more about a vibe than really acting!

I couldn't get past his attempt at an accent

 

[ART!]

That's the issue Bakula had - back in the 60s through 90s, being in a big hit/iconic genre show (cop, SF, whatever) could, unless you got kind of lucky or had done a ton of work before it, really just end your career. It still seems to happen a bit - but I don't think anywhere near as badly. He seems to have been doomed to appear in TV movies endlessly until ENT.

But yeah he wasn't anywhere near as lively or diverting as Archer as he was as Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap. I put a lot of that on the writers not really having much of a conception for the character nor any key conflicts or relationships with other officers though. I haven't seen his other big lead role in NCIS: New Orleans so I can't comment on that, but it feels like all NCIS lead roles are kind of more about a vibe than really acting!

God I kind of wonder what it would be like to rewatch Quantum Leap now. It was already a show that, as a kid in the '80s and 90s, seemed focused on the past - mainly the '60s. That's got to be a real trip now.

Yup. Like, I could tell you more about the apparent personalities of some one-off or rarely-seen TOS characters than I could any ENT character who wasn't Phlox.

I mean, shall I try? Character and personality.

Archer - His personality is "mild-mannered captain", that is his entire personality. I guess maybe he's a bit distractible?
T'Pol - Her personality is "generic vulcan". I wish I had anything to add to that. Being hot is not a personality trait unless you really lean into it and she didn't.
Reed - He does have slightly more personality because has this massive "up to no good" vibe and generally seems pretty sketchy for a security officer (Yar had some of this vibe too), but it's still not much.
Mayweather - His personality is "also on the bridge".
Sato - Her personality is "anxious and also on the bridge". I guess at least there's a personality descriptor there.
"Trip" - His personality is "dude who keeps ending up at sexual harassment and anger management trainings and doesn't learn anything and yet doesn't suffer any consequences for reasons".

What's sad is that these lot make VOY's crew look extremely well-developed by comparison. I mean, were they as annoying as VOY's crew? No. The lack of Neelix, Paris, Chakotay, and Torres means that I didn't actively want to turn the show off because the characters are so irritating, but at least I remembered those characters, and Seven of Nine and Emergency Medical Hologram were genuinely good characters, and Janeway eventually became good. Tuvok was absolutely fine too and not just "generic vulcan" (albeit a lot of that was in Tim Russ' subtle acting, particularly eyebrow-acting, but still! Good job Tim!).

Indeed, and that's why I saw it as the obvious next show (rather than an Star Fleet academy show which most people expected).

Annnnnnnnnnnd they just basically did VOY stuff.

I didn't hate it, but I felt like it was missing some element of spin or verve that would take it to an actually-interesting place, aesthetically. Also the NX-01 looked just way too much like later ships. It was a HUNDRED YEARS before Kirk, even, and the ship looked like it was maybe the previous generation from the Constitution class, more like 20 years before. I mean, compare ships from 1923 and 2023, and whilst general configurations may be somewhat similar, the specifics and styling and surfaces and stuff are just hugely different.

I wonder if part of the problem was changing approaches to acting and directing, especially in Trek production circles.

At the time of TOS, being animated and expressive was kind of the way you did things. Part of that is stage training, which was more common back then, part of it was working in a medium shown on a small screen, part of it was a holdover from the earliest motion picture and Vaudeville days days, and exaggeration was just how you got and kept attention.

In my experience, some people raised on more modern shows watch that old stuff and find it ridiculous and hard to watch, because they grew up in an era when a lot of actors and directors try to keep motivations and actions more...mysterious? Patrick Stewart is a great example of this, where his performance as Picard involves very subdued expressions and reactions. Many a commercial break was preceded by a close-up of him or anyone else in the cast with a fairly blank expression on their face, which we as the audience were meant to use contextual clues to interpret as we saw fit.

Combine that approach with ENT's lifeless characterizations and zzzzzzzzzzzzz......

 

[Ryujin]

I wonder if part of the problem was changing approaches to acting and directing, especially in Trek production circles.

At the time of TOS, being animated and expressive was kind of the way you did things. Part of that is stage training, which was more common back then, part of it was working in a medium shown on a small screen, part of it was a holdover from the earliest motion picture and Vaudeville days days, and exaggeration was just how you got and kept attention.

In my experience, some people raised on more modern shows watch that old stuff and find it ridiculous and hard to watch, because they grew up in an era when a lot of actors and directors try to keep motivations and actions more...mysterious? Patrick Stewart is a great example of this, where his performance as Picard involves very subdued expressions and reactions. Many a commercial break was preceded by a close-up of him or anyone else in the cast with a fairly blank expression on their face, which we as the audience were meant to use contextual clues to interpret as we saw fit.

Combine that approach with ENT's lifeless characterizations and zzzzzzzzzzzzz......

Shatner did Shakespearean Theatre. Stewart is stage trained. Probably more about changing moods in media, than stage training.

 

[Vael]

I'd hate Archer less if he had just been "generic captain", but the attempts to characterize him made him the worst main captain we've had. First, this chip on a shoulder / racist attitude towards the Vulcans because they didn't tell his dad how to complete the Warp 5 Engine meant he came across as a Nepo baby with entitlement issues. Second, the less said of his Jack Bauer impression in S3, the better. I get that 9/11 warped everyone, but complaining Discovery or Picard are too dark (figuratively, not the lighting) after S3 of Enterprise are definitely not watching the same show. Third ... the complete character assassination that was A Night In Sickbay. Finally ... I have to give Berman and Braga props for managing to suck all the charisma and charm out of Scott Bakula, it was a feat of Star Wars prequel proportions.

And I like Bakula in other roles, but he was so utterly without charm and had that stick so firmly up his butt ... Picard gave me a lot of flawed characters I found compelling. I'd have watched the Star Trek series helmed by Seven, Shaw or Rios, but I don't care to revisit Archer and the NX Enterprise.

 

[Bagpuss]

I get the nostaglia, and I'm certainly not immune to it. But I'm a little annoyed to see Laris put on a bus. Part of the strength of the first two seasons was the new cast members and it's sad to see nearly all of them jettisoned for the TNGers.

They seemed to ignore the conclusion of season two as well as the characters.

 

[Ryujin]

They seemed to ignore the conclusion of season two as well as the characters.

They "Enterprised it." Gave what people wanted in season 1, in the last season.

 

[Morrus]

Part of that is stage training, which was more common back then,

I thought stage was booming these days!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Stewart is stage trained.

Yeah, but he learned his craft along side BRIAN BLESSED.

 

[Ryujin]

Yeah, but he learned his craft along side BRIAN BLESSED.

And you can see it when Picard declares his love for Lwaxana Troi, in order to get her back from the Ferengi

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I wonder if part of the problem was changing approaches to acting and directing, especially in Trek production circles.

I mean, I think this was an issue, but I don't think the audience was the problem.

In my experience, some people raised on more modern shows watch that old stuff and find it ridiculous and hard to watch, because they grew up in an era when a lot of actors and directors try to keep motivations and actions more...mysterious? Patrick Stewart is a great example of this, where his performance as Picard involves very subdued expressions and reactions. Many a commercial break was preceded by a close-up of him or anyone else in the cast with a fairly blank expression on their face, which we as the audience were meant to use contextual clues to interpret as we saw fit.

I don't think acting styles have fundamentally changed that much from 1980s to now. We appreciate subtlety a bit more, but many successful shows are basically nothing but overacting even today.

TOS was jarring when I watched in the early-mid 1990s, even, I'd note. Even compared to other 1960s shows, Shatner's performance was... unusual. Like, I could watch something like Ironside (1967) and it just seemed like a TV show - actually kind of a modern one in some ways in the early 1990s (forward-looking in several ways - no doubt it'd get called "woke" today for featuring a wheelchair-bound detective). Whereas TOS seemed like something truly from another era.

Combine that approach with ENT's lifeless characterizations and zzzzzzzzzzzzz......

I think ENT's problems did reflect a real problem with approaches to acting/directing.

I think the issue was more though that they didn't have enough of a vision of how they wanted the show to be, how they wanted the characters to be, so all the actors essentially reverted to rather downplaying things - "safe mode" as it were - except Billingsley - he's an experienced stage actor and I don't think his default mode is the "safe" mode!

And I do think that reflected the era a bit - because the general approach to TV acting back then was to be restrained but not in a subtle way - which is why I think that was the default. And that is no longer the general approach to TV acting.

It's notable that VOY, for all its many, many faults didn't have the same problem. Instead pretty much everyone was at least trying for a strong/distinctive performance. And that sort of thing comes from the showrunners and the culture of the show, not from the actors.