Star Trek Picard SPOILERS thread

FitzTheRuke · Apr 2, 2020

Dire Bare said:
I'm definitely a Star Trek fan!

Me too! I didn't watch all of Voyager originally, but eventually I worked my way through it. I'm working on Season Four of Enterprise now, finally. It's not great, but it's watchable. I've seen all the movies. I've watched Next Gen and DS9 multiple times. I own them on DVD. I used to watch TOS as a kid in syndication.

But I've never been to a Star Trek Convention. I don't own any merch (I don't care about merchandising for anything at all, and I'm a comic-book guy, so I admit that I'm unusual that way - it's just all unnecessary junk to me. I absolutely make no judgement against people who like it. Heck, I sell the stuff at work.)

So I suppose some people would consider me not a "true fan", but whatever. Gatekeeping is silly.

cbwjm · Apr 2, 2020

I actually thought enterprise was one of the better series, I think I loved it because it was at the birth of star fleet and their tech, while still advanced, was still in development compared to other series so they couldn't just rely on it to solve everything.

Plane Sailing · Apr 2, 2020

Janx said:
Oh, another thing. Who the frak has multiple targeting programs for destroying a stationary settlement on a planet, let alone FIVE of them. Her correct line should have been "Destroy the target."

I couldn’t help remembering that when the Romulans were first introduced in TOS, they specifically had a weapon which annihilated planet side installations (and which the enterprise could only resist by running away from it as fast as possible).

In any RPG scenario where the Romulans were being played by PCs, dusting the planet would have taken place 5 seconds after arrival. It wasn’t especially clear why in the huge fleet wouldn’t do just that.

DammitVictor · Apr 2, 2020

S'mon said:
Re Picard's alluding to current events (Romulans = manipulative Russians or hapless Syrian refugees, Federation = Trump's America) - well they did that in TOS too, often with less subtlety! In itself I don't see that as a bad thing at all, it depends on how well it's handled.

The real key to Star Trek's moral politics is that the Romulans don't stand in for any real-life peoples or political factions, and the Federation doesn't stand for any real-life peoples or factions. We're not the Federation, and our enemies-- or our "enemies"-- are not the Romulans. They stand for the principles and philosophies that have-- in combination-- driven all of the real-world interactions between real-world organizations.

Star Trek doesn't talk about people much. Everything it has to say about real life people, it says by asking us to examine for ourselves the reasons we make the decisions we make-- and how we might make better decisions in the future, if we made it a habit.

Morrus · Apr 2, 2020

FaerieGodfather said:
the Federation doesn't stand for any real-life peoples or factions. We're not the Federation

I don’t think that’s true. Starfleet, at least, is specifically American in design. And there were lots of cold war allegories in TOS.

Hussar · Apr 2, 2020

Yeah, I gotta say, ST has always been pretty strongly allegorical. And, very much a product of its time. 90's Fernengi, 80's Glasnost and the Klingons, so on and so forth. Then again, all good SF is allegorical.

Hussar · Apr 2, 2020

Plane Sailing said:
I couldn’t help remembering that when the Romulans were first introduced in TOS, they specifically had a weapon which annihilated planet side installations (and which the enterprise could only resist by running away from it as fast as possible).

In any RPG scenario where the Romulans were being played by PCs, dusting the planet would have taken place 5 seconds after arrival. It wasn’t especially clear why in the huge fleet wouldn’t do just that.

This is one of the reasons I tend to shy away from SF RPG's. Players are far, FAR more pragmatic than any SF writer could ever be. I mean, seriously, what self respecting PC would go on an away mission in what is, for all intents and purposes, a track suit? No armor? No night vision goggles? So on and so forth. Given ST level technology, an away team could carry a truly frightening level of offensive and defensive capabilities.

Heck, look at the original discussions in this thread about evacuating the Romulan home world. The Romulans fielded 2 HUNDRED star ships. According to Memory Alpha, the older style Romulan Warbirds could carry a crew of 1500 plus officers, crew and troops. So, figure 3-5000/warbird if we're cramming people in there for an evacuation. That means they could ferry a million people with this one fleet. I'm going to assume that this fleet wasn't the entire Romulan fleet, only the Zat Vash (or however it's spelled). Why did the Romulans need any help evacuating their homeworld if they could field this kind of fleet on their own? And, never minding that, why are Romulans living in squalor if they have the capabilities of fielding this size of a fleet? If you have the production capabilities to build a fleet of this size (and remember, this isn't the only Romulan fleet out there), you can certainly rebuild your planets to have paved streets and actual houses.

For Reference: D'deridex class

Dire Bare · Apr 2, 2020

FitzTheRuke said:
Me too! I didn't watch all of Voyager originally, but eventually I worked my way through it. I'm working on Season Four of Enterprise now, finally. It's not great, but it's watchable. I've seen all the movies. I've watched Next Gen and DS9 multiple times. I own them on DVD. I used to watch TOS as a kid in syndication.

But I've never been to a Star Trek Convention. I don't own any merch (I don't care about merchandising for anything at all, and I'm a comic-book guy, so I admit that I'm unusual that way - it's just all unnecessary junk to me. I absolutely make no judgement against people who like it. Heck, I sell the stuff at work.)

So I suppose some people would consider me not a "true fan", but whatever. Gatekeeping is silly.

Hah! I'm doing the same thing, doing a rewatch of Next Gen inspired by ST: Picard! And I just finished Season 4! There are some really good episodes in each season (even Season 1), but I find even the mediocre episodes comforting, like a warm bowl of mac-n-cheese!

Dire Bare · Apr 2, 2020

Hussar said:
This is one of the reasons I tend to shy away from SF RPG's. Players are far, FAR more pragmatic than any SF writer could ever be. I mean, seriously, what self respecting PC would go on an away mission in what is, for all intents and purposes, a track suit? No armor? No night vision goggles? So on and so forth. Given ST level technology, an away team could carry a truly frightening level of offensive and defensive capabilities.

Heck, look at the original discussions in this thread about evacuating the Romulan home world. The Romulans fielded 2 HUNDRED star ships. According to Memory Alpha, the older style Romulan Warbirds could carry a crew of 1500 plus officers, crew and troops. So, figure 3-5000/warbird if we're cramming people in there for an evacuation. That means they could ferry a million people with this one fleet. I'm going to assume that this fleet wasn't the entire Romulan fleet, only the Zat Vash (or however it's spelled). Why did the Romulans need any help evacuating their homeworld if they could field this kind of fleet on their own? And, never minding that, why are Romulans living in squalor if they have the capabilities of fielding this size of a fleet? If you have the production capabilities to build a fleet of this size (and remember, this isn't the only Romulan fleet out there), you can certainly rebuild your planets to have paved streets and actual houses.

For Reference: D'deridex class

Instead of running an "official" Star Trek RPG campaign (or any other franchise) . . . . I prefer the alternate universe approach where not only can I change events and characters as I see fit, but "fix" the silly things in the franchise. In my future alternate Star Trek campaign, the PCs will be an away team without any bridge officers, and they will be appropriately geared for the hazards they might face! I know that might not make superfans happy, but it's the only sane approach, IMO!