Picard Season 3

[Snarf Zagyg]

And what does David Cronenberg have to do with this?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And it's not like Burnham didn't have potential to be interesting. A human raised by Vulcans? Are they going to be buttoned up and embarrassed by emotional outbursts? Or are they going to rebel and be an oversharing highly emotional practical joker? No, they are going to be emotionally muted and dull.

Yeah this is on the writers, very solidly. It's like, if you're saying "Be a human raised by Vulcans, who wants to live like a Vulcan, but is conflicted", you're asking a goddamn lot, and you'd better be prepared to back that up with some fairly stellar writing for the actor to work from. And they just didn't give her that material, so they basically spent two seasons messing around before going "Okay I guess just have her stop being like that?", and yeah she is better since she stopped but sheesh.

Also I have to agree with "boring hetro" re: Michael, because like, you can non-boring hetero characters/relationships, it's been done plenty of times, but there's are certain kinds of relationship which is very boring, and they managed to drag out two of them for Michael. It was actually kind of 1990s, when I think about it - Michael has first this super-angsty eyeroll-inducing deal with Ash Tyler (who was quite well acted but argh the writing), and then we have The Blandest Rogue In The Galaxy, somehow making Chris Pratt's Starlord look edgy as hell, Booker.

But when I see the vituperative antipathy directed toward it, I often wonder why it gets singled out.

There's zero doubt that much of the really angry stuff has come from people with bigoted views (some just from the usual "angry at new Trek series" mob who auto-spawn whenever a new Trek show appears too of course), but a lot of the frustration I've seen has come from people who are part of the communities its representing - I've never seen much excitement for Michael on Black Twitter for example - whereas SNW Uhura and Doctor M'Benga absolutely did get some. Bury Your Gays has been mentioned, and Adira is representation, but not a particularly compelling character (and at least the couple of NB Trek fans I know were keen to point this out to me). So the accusations of tokenism don't ring entirely hollow, though I'd say they're not quite right, either. And the problem with Michael as lead was she wasn't actually "in charge" until what, S3? S4? I forget, which made the show following her around when she wasn't a terribly interesting character (entirely the fault of the writers totally fumbling the ball on her portrayal) a bit of a... well... choice. They did manage to improve her though.

I think mostly it gets singled out because it's new. ENT is clearly much worse if we're ranking Trek shows, and VOY arguably is too though a lot of people are ride-or-die for Seven and EMH.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ah. That was at least a fun and interesting character. Probably.my favorite on the show.

Also, a great way to use a meme to communicate. Finally!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah this is on the writers, very solidly. It's like, if you're saying "Be a human raised by Vulcans, who wants to live like a Vulcan, but is conflicted", you're asking a goddamn lot, and you'd better be prepared to back that up with some fairly stellar writing for the actor to work from. And they just didn't give her that material, so they basically spent two seasons messing around before going "Okay I guess just have her stop being like that?", and yeah she is better since she stopped but sheesh.

Also I have to agree with "boring hetro" re: Michael, because like, you can non-boring hetero characters/relationships, it's been done plenty of times, but there's are certain kinds of relationship which is very boring, and they managed to drag out two of them for Michael. It was actually kind of 1990s, when I think about it - Michael has first this super-angsty eyeroll-inducing deal with Ash Tyler (who was quite well acted but argh the writing), and then we have The Blandest Rogue In The Galaxy, somehow making Chris Pratt's Starlord look edgy as hell, Booker.

There's zero doubt that much of the really angry stuff has come from people with bigoted views (some just from the usual "angry at new Trek series" mob who auto-spawn whenever a new Trek show appears too of course), but a lot of the frustration I've seen has come from people who are part of the communities its representing - I've never seen much excitement for Michael on Black Twitter for example - whereas SNW Uhura and Doctor M'Benga absolutely did get some. Bury Your Gays has been mentioned, and Adira is representation, but not a particularly compelling character (and at least the couple of NB Trek fans I know were keen to point this out to me). So the accusations of tokenism don't ring entirely hollow, though I'd say they're not quite right, either. And the problem with Michael as lead was she wasn't actually "in charge" until what, S3? S4? I forget, which made the show following her around when she wasn't a terribly interesting character (entirely the fault of the writers totally fumbling the ball on her portrayal) a bit of a... well... choice. They did manage to improve her though.

I think mostly it gets singled out because it's new. ENT is clearly much worse if we're ranking Trek shows, and VOY arguably is too though a lot of people are ride-or-die for Seven and EMH.

I'm one of those ride-or-die folks for those two characters. The Doctor is my favorite character in all of Star Trek. That being said, ENT is definitely behind DISCO in quality. VOY had a lot of bad storytelling habits, but also a lot of strong concepts, and did imo a great job of pushing the morals, meanings, and messages thing that Star Trek has often focused on from the beginning. I would place it above DISCO for that reason, and on the strength of the two best characters.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

There's zero doubt that much of the really angry stuff has come from people with bigoted views (some just from the usual "angry at new Trek series" mob who auto-spawn whenever a new Trek show appears too of course), but a lot of the frustration I've seen has come from people who are part of the communities its representing - I've never seen much excitement for Michael on Black Twitter for example - whereas SNW Uhura and Doctor M'Benga absolutely did get some. Bury Your Gays has been mentioned, and Adira is representation, but not a particularly compelling character (and at least the couple of NB Trek fans I know were keen to point this out to me). So the accusations of tokenism don't ring entirely hollow, though I'd say they're not quite right, either. And the problem with Michael as lead was she wasn't actually "in charge" until what, S3? S4? I forget, which made the show following her around when she wasn't a terribly interesting character a bit of a... well... choice. They did manage to improve her though.

The problem with the issues re: tokenism is that this isn't the real issue.

Representation matters. What most people are saying when they says, "Blergh, TOKENISM!" is that they don't understand why TEH GAYZ (or the trans, or the asexuals, or the women, or the {insert group here}) are in the show.

They'll try to gussy it up ... "I don't care that the character is gay (I'm using this as a stand-in for whatever trait they are complaining about). I just HAVE TO STRONGLY COMPLAIN ALL THE TIME about how they reference the fact that the character is gay! C'mon, this is writing 101! Either you have to make it Call Me By Your Name, so I know not to watch it, but is all about the gay, or you just don't mention it because then it's TOKENISM!!11!!!!"

Which ... no. That falls into the same tired idea- that all characters are either "normal" (white, hetero) and that any deviations must be justified ... or that you can just have other types of characters, which can be as good (or as bad), as fully written (or as equally ineptly written) as the characters we grew up watching!

Just think about how hollow this looks if we look at the past- Uhura, for example. Sure, having a communications officers that did very little on the bridge of the Enterprise was ... wait for it ... TOKENISM ... but it was also important to see black characters (and black females) represented (cue the famous MLK anecdote).

I think most people are happy having a baseline of representation ... and then we can judge all the various characters for the people that they are. I think that, overall, we are seeing this done much better - for example, I think that Jesper is definitely a breakout character in Shadow and Bone, but I don't find that the communities in question are worried about tokenism, because they are far too aware of the issue of representation; like everyone, they always want characters to be better.

The struggle, as I alluded to be before, is that these characters (the so-called "Tokens") are judged by the same metrics as all the "standard" characters- as good or bad as characters.

I think mostly it gets singled out because it's new. ENT is clearly much worse if we're ranking Trek shows, and VOY arguably is too though a lot of people are ride-or-die for Seven and EMH.

Not just because it's new. Although that's a big part of it- the trouble with almost all fanbases is that they are inherently conservative, and want to be given the same things over and over and over and over again.

It's why taking the helm of a lot of these franchises can be a bit of a poisoned chalice. I'm somewhat thankful that Lindelof got removed from Star Wars.

 

[Ryujin]

So long as S5 sticks the landing I'm sure in the longer-term it'll have fans - probably more fans than ENT. I mean, what can we say ENT even gave us?

Jolene Blalock in a catsuit.

 

[Ryujin]

DS9 did that for me.

Before people's heads explode: for whatever reason, somewhere in season 6 I felt like I was just watching it because it had "Star Trek" in the name. I just had lost interest. Go figure.

But!!!

A few years later a friend sold me on finishing up the series and loaned me his VHS (?!?!) tapes to do so. And I dug it!
I'm still not the DS9 fan that a lot of people are, but at least now I get it.

This is objectively not true. Over the years I've seen an awful lot of fan adulation for this show, on social media. It began the new tv era of Trek. I'm not crazy about the show myself, but it has a lot of fans.

I had a similar experience with "Voyager." On the first watch it pretty much uniformly annoyed me. Captain "Ramming Speed" Janeway should have arrived home with an empty ship, after spacing her mutinous crew. And there was the "Borgwatch" factor of Seven of Nine being put in one skin tight leotard after another. Then, on later viewings, I got past the physical depiction of Seven and realized that her stories were asking the most interesting philosophical questions. The rest was still a dumpster fire, but at least I could appreciate that.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Imagine it without the TNG characters. All you have left is an extremely mundane and rather slow plot, resolved with a virtual Deus ex Machina.

That is a pretty meaningless exercise. Without the TNG characters, you can't tell a story about it, because it involves knowing how they used to be and where they are now, how they and their relationships with each other changed. That doesn't make it weak!

Very likely if someone were to tell a similar story without the TNG cast, they would tell the story differently, because they need to establish these characters when they were younger and contrast it with today. (And it's not like such movies or shows don't exist either.)

 

[AnotherGuy]

The problem with the issues re: tokenism is that this isn't the real issue. ...(snip)...

like everyone, they always want characters to be better.

Yes.
So I've said this before Sonequa Martin-Green came off IMO a terribly unlikeable character in TWD to star in another terribly written character in DISCO. And the "writing" team made things worse by giving that character the majority of the screentime when there were far more interesting characters around her. And I'm not talking about Tilly because she came across more annoying than cute.
Then you get the mansplaining episode early in S2, the sassy new cheeky engineer which one didn't quickly warm to and more of Michael Boring and you have to wonder is this show was about tokenism & agendas or good-ol' fashioned Trek.
I'll add, the Klingon change didn't help. And if they wanted buy-in for the Spock history change they needed to write a better Burnham. They messed up on the protagonist.

For me there were far more interesting characters or at least moments where the "writing" team got it right
- Saru, Stamets & Culber, Lorca (even though they dropped the ball on him I felt), Captain Pike, the interesting looking crew I wanted to know about on the bridge, and Michelle Yeoh's character, Phillipa.

I might someday watch the rest of DISCO, but I have no interest to right now.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I had a similar experience with "Voyager." On the first watch it pretty much uniformly annoyed me. Captain "Ramming Speed" Janeway should have arrived home with an empty ship, after spacing her mutinous crew. And there was the "Borgwatch" factor of Seven of Nine being put in one skin tight leotard after another. Then, on later viewings, I got past the physical depiction of Seven and realized that her stories were asking the most interesting philosophical questions. The rest was still a dumpster fire, but at least I could appreciate that.

IMO they should have got rid of Chakotay and Neelix a long time ago if they were going to focus so much on Seven. Harry Kim was due a promotion. And some spotlight was needed for Paris and B'Elanna Torres, particularly the latter who sadly got the rough end of the stick in the later seasons.