Topic: Ten Forward - The Star Trek Topic

@KALofKRYPTON i was talking to my dad about it yesterday and he said they should do a proper series with him in command

or at least a few films

on a side note here is what the 2999 uniforms look like in game if anyone is wondering

anyway todays Star Trek Picard and i thought it was a good one not going to say too much here but it's finally getting down to the nitty gritty plus it was nice to see Picard and Hugh interact after his dis-assimilation

also does anyone else think Narek (or as we learn his real name is Hrai Yan) is gonna switch sides because it seems like it, he looked genuinely heart broken when he left Soji in that room to die

regardless of how you feel about Discovery this is sad news

so i see @RogerRoger is back with us, welcome back and have you been keeping up with Picard because if not there are spoilers about this thread

anyway welcome back

@FullbringIchigo Thank you, that's quite the welcome! Hope you've been keeping well?

I am watching Picard, but this week's episode will have to wait a couple days (might even save it for next week and watch a double bill). I've only been skim-reading posts around here, and moving rapidly on whenever I see keywords I'd rather avoid, but thanks for the warning all the same.

Mostly, I've been loving the show. I wasn't the biggest fan of what they did to Seven, but also have to admit that she's the best candidate for having a darker side, given her tenuous grasp on her humanity and her backstory on Voyager... and that's even before you get to the gratuitous slaughter of Icheb, which I was a teensy bit insulted by but again, hey, that's just me. Everything else has been brilliant, Patrick Stewart is going from strength to strength (as though he's being rejuvenated by being "back in the saddle" as much as Picard's character is) and I'm getting interested in the comings and goings of his new crew. It'll live or die by its payoff, and I hope it's a good one, but for now I'm just happy to be along for the ride.

@RogerRoger they just have the Enterprise-E show up at the end and the fanbase will lose their marbles, it wont but it would be awesome

but yeah they have been doing well so lets hope they stick the landing

So the final episode of the current series of Doctor Who is today, anyone watching it live?

@FullbringIchigo Doctor Who wasn’t awful. I still can’t really warm to the storytelling and leaving it on a cliffhanger until Christmas/New Year feels a bit annoying given that it’s only just March. I do appreciate a good montage/flashback though as Doctor Who doesn’t acknowledge its past too often anymore. The main twist was guessed by pretty much all of us in this thread so failed a bit but Dhawan is a really good Master and is endlessly watchable. I just think the companions are rather pointless in this incarnation, other than Bradley Walsh’s funny(?) one liners. Maybe I’m just over Doctor Who, it’s been dying for years now and could possibly do with a longer hiatus and eventual revival.

@nessisonett
I put my initial thoughts in the TV show thread.

The montage with the music was awfully directed and put together I thought, it was almost 4th wall breaking.

I hope this is the end of Dhawan's Master. He's.... Well, he's crap. Two dimensional, and despite hamming it up at every opportunity, quite boring to watch. I think Michelle Gomez's Missy has ruined the Master as a straight up villain character.

Missy was actually brilliant, and advanced the character brilliantly. Her interplay with 12 was genuinely engaging, almost every scene with them was golden.

There's something off about JW and 13 anyway, but the her and SD never come across as though Missy and 12 happened.
They can't I suppose, give the shallow incarnation of SD's Master.

@nessisonett @KALofKRYPTON personally i enjoyed it, it wasn't perfect but i liked it, i also liked some of the ideas such as Time Lord Cybermen, the idea of those are terrifying an Cyberman that can never die, take it out and it regenerates makes it unstopable

and for the first time in decades we don't know who the doctor is or where he/she came from, why was she on that planet as a child, why can she regenerate, what species is she (she is still a Time Lord though because they created them selves from her so in a sense she is the first Time Lord) so the title of the show is once again true "Doctor Who?"

what was annoying was ending on a cliffhanger when the special isn't out until xmas or new year, it's only March and that's a long wait

@LN78 it was a improvement over the past series to be sure and i wouldn't say it destroyed canon just turned it on it head a bit (although lets be honest Doctor Who has always ran lose with canon)

i would say that at best this last series hit about as high as the early Smith era but it did have a few dud episodes

as for Picard it's better than Discovery by a long shot BUT it does still feel like Disocvery in terms of it's style and the way it flows but strangely i think in this case being a more singular character driven story it seems to work better than Discovery does, Discovery tried to be a single serialised story set over many episodes but also still try to be a traditional ensemble series and it didn't work

basically this series of Doctor Who is worth a watch and Picard is going OK for now but it still has a few episodes left so it's unknown as of now if it can pull everything together at the end

@FullbringIchigo
It's a bit of a shame that the CyberMasters were dealt with so swiftly. Had my fill of Dhawan's Master though, so I hope he's done with.

@LN78 Improvement... yes, significant - no.
As for Picard, mileage may vary. It isn't terrible, but sometimes it isn't all that good either. It has awful pacing, and I'm yet to really give two-hoots about any of the new characters or even the situation presented.
Seven showing up has so far been the highlight. Worth a watch if you have time - but I wouldn't pay a Prime sub just to watch it.

@KALofKRYPTON yeah they are probably the best "upgrade" to the Cybermen in years, such an interesting concept done away in less than an episode

i'm kind of hoping at least one got away somehow and lets be honest it wouldn't be hard to write for Doctor Who, i can think of 3 ways off the top of my head

used a Transmat
one had already left through the gateway
the Cyberium protected one

@LN78 Having still only seen the first season of The Expanse, I'm sure it's worth it for more of that. I'm a little dubious on Hunters, but if it gives you a reason for the sub, more's the better.
There are glimpses of the Picard we remember and can see from the TNG era, but make no mistake - this is still very much a Kurtzman thing - while only occasionally feeling connected to Star Trek by way of settings and visuals.
Few of the characterisations ever feel like people from Starfleet - and of course, people mostly aren't allowed to have anything resembling a good time unless they're taking drugs, drinking or having sex.

There are moments though; as I say, Jeri Ryan was great - and I think Frakes and Sirtis is this week.

@FullbringIchigo
This episode is probably the one time that it's quite useful having Chibs be so crap at writing a fully realised concept

so i have heard people going on about how the last episode of Doctor Who broke canon concerning the last episode of Matt Smiths Doctor,The Time of the Doctor and about the Doctor growing up with the Master but i have a few ideas (posting in a spoiler tag)

@FullbringIchigo It doesn't break canon other than adding to the Doctor's and the Time Lord's origins as far as I can see.
13 states/asks in the episode whether she was forced back to childhood.

Besides, The Doctor was ostensibly human for most of Hartnell's run - I don't think Galifrey or the Time Lords are even mentioned until Troughton regenerates and Pertwee takes over, and there have been plenty of nonsense bits of 'canon breaking' plot points over the years.

@KALofKRYPTON yeah if i remember right the first time we see the Time Lords is in The War games, Troughton's last story

and you're right there has been but you know what people on the internet are like, always finding something to complain about

WARNING contains spoilers

The Timeless Child revealed, this is what is causing the fandom to explode right now

There was something else about Who that I thought about and forgot to mention.

This unseen Cyberwar - which no doubt would have been quite expensive to film and would probably have been better to use as the entire second half of the series - that The Doctor directly instigated by giving up the Cyberium; not only do we not get to see it, it wipes out almost all of humanity, billions of lives spread across the stars- and The Doctor chooses to travel to the end of it to continue the adventure...

@KALofKRYPTON well we never saw the Time War either so it's par for the course