majestic

Those were Federation colonies awarded to Cardassia. Territorial concessions to end the war. Hence them staying under Cardassian jurdisdiction, which even in TNG is implied to be a little on the arse side of things. The Klingons were a Soviet stand-in TOS and The Undiscovered Country about the fall of the Soviet Union. Reflecting real life events or issues isn't wrong for Star Trek at all, it's a good thing, as long as it's not as badly handled as it is in Picard. The difference is that in The Undiscovered Country, a group of people not capable of letting go of their grudges on both sides conspire to spark conflict, and our heroes are trying to prevent a devastating war. If the Undiscovered Country was set in Star Trek Picard's setting, there'd be a group of heros fighting against the Federation's idea of letting the Klingons die because they all suck and like 2% of their member nations threw a hissy fit about maybe helping them. The difference with the Maquis being that the Federation would give up territory for peace because there's enough territory in space for everyone, just a stubborn group of people not wanting to leave and then being unhappy with how they're governed. The real meat of the story and ideas are then shifted to the Bajorans later in TNG and in DS9 anyway. Star Trek Picard's Federation would run supplies and weaponry to the Maquis to keep the Cardassians off-balance. See the... difference? Yes, more modern Star Trek played with the edges of Gene Roddenberry's vision, poushed it to its limits and maybe even saw it break once or twice (Paradise Lost two parter in DS9) but it never fully crapped on it the way Alex Kurtzman did.

It's by far and large the easiest way to have a fish out of water character that can serve as justification for any and all exposition you want dumped on the viewer. There are ways to make that work within a universe without reincarnation or transporting someone to the alternate reality of course, but that's a good deal more difficult. More difficult, but also more satisfying, especially if the exposition is organic but still followable. Watch 魔法少女リリカルなのは StrikerS (can't believe I managed to type that without any typos on my first try ) for a really decent way to do that. For the most part, at least, somewhere near the end the season falls apart a bit and it just has a regular exposition dump episode for no reason.

Yeah, that doesn't really explain how Spock can try to save everyone with his red matter. If there's enough time for him to come and try save Romulus, then there's enough time to prepare exit strategies as well. Jar Jar just doesn't care about minutiae like that, so in addition to the premise not making a whole lot of sense, we also get a villain who has the hardest hitting, most advanced ship in the quadrant at the time, and he just patiently waits 20+ years for Spock to come through a time portal to take his vengeance, instead of heading back to his people and make sure they conquer the galaxy - or at the very least prevent the supernova in some fashion. Then the film continues to have plasma blast drills that hang perfectly perpendicular to the surface in relative weightlessness even though they emit a stream capable of drilling a hole through the crust of a planet and creating stable tunnles down to the core. Never mind the red matter and how it even works, and yes, that's exactly the sort of nonsense that would not bother me if the film wasn't basically a stupid action film set in the 'Trek verse. Inversely, I know people had similar problems with First Contact, however while First Contact began with the stupid idea that Picard would be of no use in a fight against the Borg and they send the presumably most powerful Federation starship off on patrol instead of temporarily relieving him of command, the rest of the film was fine enough, and in a way the events of the film justify him not being in command of the battle group facing the cube. And, eh, unlike Star Trek: Picard's second season, it references a clearly established traumatic event in Picard's life to justify some rather dark moments, like him killing half-assimilated crewmembers. The film has some other problems, but overall, they don't matter as much for me as the issues of Generations, Insurrection and later Nemesis, all of which were much worse films. Insurrection in particular, what the hell Admiral Dougherty. Well, but the track record of Star Trek's film offerings is spotty at best. There's a big difference here, especially with the Maquis. The colonies forming the Maquis simply aren't a part of the Federation any more after the treaty with the Cardassians, as such it's much easier to justify, and the Starfleet personnel supporting or joining them are individuals, not the entire organisation. One also can't help but notice that you really did not follow DS9 much, because there's much worse than the Maquis going on in DS9. Federation officers condoning an assassination, the Federation having a secret intelligence wing that's arguably on par with the Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order in efficiency and ruthlessness (by the way, if you keep watching Enterprise, a part of that won't make sense without the frame of reference from DS9) and one of the crew members going off on a Klingon vengeance quest. However, all of that is presented in a way you can accept the drift from the ideals, in particular because the setting and story background of DS9 is kind of unprecedented. The characters are strong, the acting and direction in generally is good, even if Avery Brooks is hilariously hammy at times and it is simply much easier to accept him taking a shortcut after watching the events unfold over several seasons. Rather than just saying "Hey Romulan refugees that aren't an issue in this kind of setting at all cause the Federation's ideals to collapse in on itself, just because we said so"!. Granted, Section 31 is a tough cookie, but there we are again with the actual argument brought forth - DS9 is strong enough to be able to withstand such an element, and the episodes with Section 31 are tightly plotted and interesting, so it is much easier to forgive. I've always assumed that Starfleet Academy gives cadets broad training in every branch and you simply pick a specialisation at some point, in the same way medical school shares a base course with veterinary medicine (well, it does so here, at least) and just branches off before further specialization. Troi was a staff officer who found herself to be the ranking officer during an emergency that saw a complete lack of line officer guidance, and proceeded to eventually take the education necessary to move to said occupation. Well, and to be promoted to a higher rank. Trek's always been a little unclear with how the command structure works, so there's... well... enough leeway. It's not the best setup, but Troi's promotion was a decent follow up to her inability to cut losses and leave during Disaster, which realistically was a nonsense decision and could have killed everyone if the plot hadn't decided to do otherwise. I'm guessing there are way to change between branches and apparently it's possible to take courses like Troi did, however, you're right. It wasn't handled that well, much like a lot of things in season seven. She should have gone through a lot more training than that, really. It clearly detracts from the episode in question. But, again, given TNG's other strenghts, it's less problematic and therefore no real reason to nitpick it to death. Which goes back to @Bartimaeus' post on the subject.

I think it was, and the base point is simply because it ties in to nuTrek. I'm not going to pretend otherwise, Picard lost me directly after the opening scene because it was a load of horse manure, and it only went downhill from there. The first episode wasn't over, and any goodwill I might have mustered because it has Patrick Stewart in it all but evaporated. Not only does it follow the nonsense established in Star Trek 2009, it tried to remake Star Trek's Federation into Trump's America because someone probably told them that Star Trek used to be brainy entertainment, not terribly acted and directed character drama with bad writing and stupid action scenes. Ultimately, nothing good can follow from such a rotten basis, and in the end all I did was nitpick everything about the show, much like @Bartimaeus talked about in the earlier post here. I should have the good sense to just stop watching in any such cases, but I don't. Granted, that's a point I can give you. Star Trek Picard sure was never boring. I wish it would have been, then we'd just have a lower end episode of Star Trek: TNG or one of the lower end episodes of TOS. Alas, it was worse, it was infuriating from start to finish, poorly plotted, terribly paced, and - the worst offense - utterly stupid. I don't entirely know why, but it is what it is: If things don't make sense within an established universe, for me, at least, everything falls apart. I've already said after the first few episodes that Discovery suffered from being tied to the brand name, and Picard does so as well, although of course you can't have Picard without Star Trek, so that's entirely moot. Back then I couldn't have known that the first season of Discovery would end up being its best, and that the show will continue on to be terrible in every which way. You curiously forgot to mention an uppity kid saving the ship ten times over which is about a hundred times more annoying than Worf being bad at his job to demonstrate to the audience how dangerous a situation is, or the writers not really knowing what to do with Deanna other than putting her in revealing clothing. The fact that these points don't bother me speaks to a the strength of the series, even with it's less than stellar (nicely put) opening seasons. Not that it's fair to compare a show that has 178 episodes to one that hopefully won't exceed 30, but who knows how long this will keep on going. Although Patrick Stewart sure looks like he's ready to call it quits. The thing is, even if you just take the first season of TNG, with it's Wesley focused offerings born out of the writing strike or the episodes with the laughably terrible racist subtones, it's still better than anything in Star Trek: Picard. Troi undergoes command training for a promotion, by the way. Just to nitpick a little. That's why she needs to learn the important lesson of being able to send people to death if it saves others. Still, even if we accept the point that TNG had lots of out of character moments, the characters, on average, where somewhat consistent. The Picard characters barely resemble their originals, and yes, while people change, if you want me to accept that change, then it needs to be shown, or at least properly explained. Picard having a sad because the Federation does something the Federation would never in a million years actually do, namely abandon people in need over political quibbling, well, I'm sorry, that might be an explanation, but it is a poor one, and you can't expect me not to be soured on the entire premise just because of it. In particular this one is even worse, because in itself it is based on Jar Jar Abram's utterly stupid idea that the Romulan Empire would be incapable of evacuating Romulus on their own or notice that their sun will go supernova, which just happens to be a stellar event millions of years in the making. It would be a stretch to accept that premise in the dumbest of sci-fi shlock, but there it would be at least appropriate. If Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog can show the proper transformation of Billy from a goofy but entirely misunderstood 'villain' to Dr. Horrible, member of the Evil Leage of Evil in 45 minutes of runtime in a garage project because everyone invovled was bored out of their minds during another writers strike, then for crying out loud, at least do something to justify the god damned premise. Something that's not basically screaming 'WE WANT TO BE RELEVANT TO CURRENT EVENTS SEE HOW INTELLIGENT OUR ENTERTAINMENT IS' in the dumbest way possible. Much like The Last Jedi wanted to yell WE DON'T CARE ABOUT STAR WARS as loudly as possible. Well, mission accomplished. So do I. The themes are there, they're just built on a foundation so rotten that I just don't care what they were trying to do. It's funny because this discussion is a reverse of what I sometimes do, most recently when talking about either Bubble with @Lexx or about In This Corner Of The World with @Bartimaeus. Rafi should not even be a problem in the Star Trek setting, at least not when she's a Federation citizen. We've left that sort of stuff long behind us. That may or may not be a constraint in the setting for the writers, but it's not one that's hard to work around. There's a reason for all those forehead aliens in the Star Trek universe. None of these people should get any sort of command spot like they do in season two, by the way, minor spoiler, sorry. They should be locked away for being dangerous nutjobs, much like Janeway, but we're not complaining about Voyager here. I don't even want to talk about Space Legolas. Nothing about the Borg plot makes sense, so I don't really blame you there. It's an entirely superflous element in a series that already has an issue with tying plot points together in a timely and satisfying manner, and nobody on the writing team and nobody of the producers or editors or whatever else were on set checking what is going on had the good sense to tell them to streamline the storyline into something that's at least not resolved in a serioulsy dumb way in the last second, and what do you know, because it was so great, they get to do exactly that in season two as well. Heh. In season two everyone is working again. They sure earned being back in Star Fleet. Hey, even Space Legolas gets to be in Starfleet because he joined the 1.5 year short course. Oh, by the way, want to guess how relevant Rafi's open issue with her son is to anything? You're allowed one guess with no lifelines. That's putting it mildly, I thought I was going crazy after the first four episodes because I didn't just not hate it, I actually enjoyed watching The Vision of Escaflowne even though Van starts out as the worst sort of dork possible and it has cat girls. The example from Jay is funny because unless I remember wrong, he said that during their Skyfall review, a movie I hated so much I wanted to throw the Blu Ray into the trash. At least I stopped wasting money on theater tickets after A Quantum of Solace, a dumpster fire of a film that rivals Star Trek: Into Derpness. But yeah, it is definitely easier to overlook the less well made parts if the rest is good enough. However, as is the case with pretty much all of nuTrek except for Strange New Worlds (caveat, I haven't watched the most recent episode yet, but it is called Spock Amok, which makes me hate the episode even before watching it, so that one's working from a whole lot of baggage just from the title alone), and Strange New World is only fine for now, and I'm sure if it keeps sticking to the formula of having to have at least 5 minutes of AWESOME COMBAT AKSHUN per episode, I'm eventually going to grow bored of it, and from that, the resentment I harbored for the first episode will creep back in. Regarding nuTrek, it might seem completely silly, but back in 2009 directly after Spock's opening narration, I was sitting in the theater, and looked at the friend I was watching the film with and said: "I already hate this." That was just right after the first two or so minutes, and the rest of the film did nothing to change my mind. It didn't even try. Pretty much. The easiest thing to point out is writing quality from a standpoint that is almost objectively measurable, when character motivations make no sense, plots are left open or resolved in poor, unsatisfying manners, then that's somewhat easy to point out. Even so, and this goes hand in hand with the above points made by @Amentep, TNG had its fair share of bad writing and episodes that did not truly make sense or repeated plot points that came before, or tried to ape the original series for no reason and ended up not working. These episode are, however, weighed against the average quality of the episodes, and that comes out positive for the show. It doesn't for something like Picard, arguably of course also because once a bad TNG episode it is over, it is over. The rotten foundation Picard is built on doesn't go away after an episode. It permeates everything. The actual nitpicking then follows as an extention of being unsatisfied with the series. There's a rushed plot resolution for Allen in The Vision of Escaflowne as well, and the ending could have done with more of a setup, but the series was cut down a third of its runtime. Still, it ended up not mattering too much. Picard on the other hand had this abortive Borg plot, and here I am complaining about it. Discovery worked in a similar way for me to a point where I started complaining every time the writers thought it was a good idea to give distances and they were hilariously inaccurate. Like putting a Klingon fleet at the Federation's doorstep and being close to winning the war, with coordinates somewhere in the Oort cloud. That's the Federation's back yard and the Soviets are storming Berlin. Steiner ain't going to stop that no matter what. Guess someone told them to not always just use light years for some reason, and so they started using astronomical units and got that wrong too. Yay. Forum almost killed my post. Yay!

Not that this is related at all, but every now and then there's a really terrible looking documentary on TV where we can see a day in the life of an Australian customs officer doing their job, and I have to say, every time I'm accidentially exposed to one of these for a short time before I can switch the channel, the only thing that comes to mind that yes, these people are only doing their jobs, but really, either all of them are arseholes or they only follow the arseholes around because it makes for more interesting TV. Probably the latter. edit: The trial wasn't so hard to avoid. Not living in an English speaking nation and not bothering with social media helps a whole lot, though.

I have one comment: I haven't watched any of the videos, read anything about the trial, followed any tweets or happend across any other social media post of or about that trial, and the only thing that coiuld save me from being called a troglodyte by Ms. Lewinsky was reading a headline on the verdict the other day in the paper, and I do not think that counts against her definition. She then goes on about how everyone who is not a troglodyte in her eyes is guilty of making the world a worse place. So, dear forum posters, which one are you? Are you a troglodyte, like me, living in a cave, being of a lesser ethnicity than Ms. Lewinsky, or are you a voyeur guilty of making the world the most toxic of places?

Did you cry butterfly tears too? That was by far and large, maybe not a joke, perhaps, but also not really a serious posting. Given your other reactions to Star Trek, and Discovery, I did not expect you to hate it, although in my own little world I don't quite understand how anyone can watch the entire first season an not feel at least a whole lot of disdain for the complete nonsense that was pulled out of Alex Kurtzman's arse, because while I thought that Discovery was just plain terrible, Star Trek: Picard redefined bad TV show writing. Everyone and their pet dog is out of character, then there's the ludicrous plot stolen straight from Mass Effect, an ending rivaling the nonsense happening at the end of the Mass Effect storyline, a mechanical space Cthulhu and a Borg plot that goes nowhere and has absolutely no point, and that is all simply something where we're not yet even looking at a complete disregard for Star Trek lore and canon, something that grinds my gears in particular. Borg do not die when exposed to the vaccuum of space, that was shown before, you absolute hack frauds, but we need to Seven of Nine to have a sad over something, and we had the idea to include the Borg in this show although we have no idea why they should be there, but fans like the Borg, so let's put the Borg in! They don't do anything, they have no point, there's nothing except the desire to have Seven of Nine yell THIS IS SPARTA at a Romulan and kick her down a shaft in a Borg cube that followed Star Wars' design philosophy of having absolutely unsecured yawning chasms. Someone should tell Alex Kurtzman that nobody forces him to set his storyline into an existing franchise if you don't like it, and they even wizened up a little by setting the second season in a parallel reality/alternative timeline. Which turned out to be hilariously terrible all on its own, with terrible writing to match, but at least Picard gets to tell flowery dialogue that used to be a joke on TNG played on the Ferengi, and now actually meant seriously, and Q just joins in. Welcome to the end of the road not taken, indeed. The road not taken. Except it never ends up being about a road not taken, that was just some flowery pseudo-cool dialogue thrown in there so Q can sound all mysterious and ominous, and then Picard doesn't borrow from Mass Effect, but from Tiberian Sun. The beauty of Star Trek is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!

Yoda's explanations in Empire and the whole point of being an enlightened, illuminated part of the force is completely moot when a baby of his species that's unable to talk or otherwise express anything is so powerful in the force it stops oncoming massive animals dead in their tracks and does whatever else is necessary from the little force user bugger. Hastly added explanation at the end of season two that he underwent training already doesn't help. So basically Yoda just told Luke a bunch of nonsense, because none of what he said is apparently a requirement for being able to lift X-Wings out of swamps. He was just born with that ability. /rant But hey, at least the series didn't resurrect Palpatine and took a major dump all over Vader's redemption. No, I didn't mean the fact that he just wears his helmet all the time, that's just silly, but then again, it's Star Wars, so a little base silly is fine. I mean close ups and long takes of Pedro Pascal wearing his helmet. These really don't work without facial expressions, but as I said, this is apparently a very me thing. Then there's also the little detail that the series tried hard not to be all about fanservice, but what fanservice does happen is even more ridiculous than the one in Rogue One. You're dead to me, old man.

Some (all?) of them have English subtitles.

I thought the Mandalorian was brought down by trying to ape spaghetti westerns but with a guy in a helmet, thus lacking an integral part of what made Leone's long takes on faces work, but I have found that this is something that did not bother anyone else I know who watched the show. I also hated how baby Yoda basically invalidated the real Yoda from Empire, but again, that apparently was also only a "me" thing. On prequels, I definitely did not enjoy watching Better Call Saul because all the interesting parts of the show were forgone conclusions. Prequels are generally a bad idea unless they can answer questions that are actually interesting, or are set very far in the past in a setting that's detailed enough that certain points can be of an in-universe historic interest. Point in case, I really liked the Silmarillion. Yes, even with the dry, more textbook like writing. That's because Middle Earth was interesting and detailed enough to want to know more about it's history. Meanwhile, in Star Wars, for instance, I never once asked myself the question "How did Palpatine become the Emperor?" because who cares, and likewise, who cares how Jimmy McGill became Saul Goodman?

I forgot to mention that I of course watched last week's Komi Can't Majestic-ate. As far as episodes go, this one was okay. The first part was almost completely silent, and lo, the series works much better without that horrible voice acting in it. I really should just turn off the sound when watching. That said, with each passing week Komi's ongoing predicament(s) become(s) more and more ridiculous. One step forward, ten steps back. Just let her at least talk to Tadano. Sigh.

You're far too optimistic. Fitting for watching Star Trek, I guess, just not for that Star Trek.

Nah, he is no Gibbs. In case anyone has not seen the clip:

My father called and told me someone's remote controlling his computer. A minor heart attack and some blame-throwing later I went over and was properly confused that someone would hijack his computer to play Trailmakers on it. Turns out it was my nephew who used Steam's Stream-Play feature. Heh.

Reboot: The Guardian Code was one of the funniest series I've ever watched, but none of the comedy was intentional. The Sourcerer is villain of the century material though, and it has Nicholas Lea in the second season.

This trailer feels an awful lot like this:

No, El getting bullied over her country bumpkin presentation.

Stranger Things 4, Episode 1: Had to pause in the middle for a bit. Stuff hits a little too close to home there.

Blocked for copyright reasons. Oh, wait, that is probably just me.

A pity I'm going to watch this eventually anyway. *sigh*

Maybe, I barely paid attention to little Picard's little family drama scene. In that case I'll take the comments back and apply them to something else that was pretty stupid in the show, there's plenty of it.

I don't remember it mentioned at all in the second season, so that's either fans making excuses for a dumb show being dumb, or the dumb producers and writers are making dumb excuses for their dumbness. I'm fine with both explanations, really. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, episode 4. The entire episode was an exercise in rehashing old plot points. Anyway, show continues to be okay enough for me to not hate it. It's the best it can do anyway, so... guess job well done so far.

No, you're not. MI2 is one of these things that an avid film connaisseur simply must have watched. It must be experienced to be believed. Or in other words, I have no idae how this became a film series after the second film. That was so bad it should have ended the series and derailed Tom Cruise's career, but curiously enough neither did happen.

Fixed that for you.

No, I don't. Guess that was still too difficult. Okay let's try this some other way. This is a Mars bar. A Mars bar will last you for roughly half an hour worth of cardio exercise. Now, on to something our McDonald's sells here in Austria. Yeah, so this is a bowl of, well, lettuce and carrots. This actually weighs more than the Mars bar (70g vs. 51g), but will last you for... oh, well, walking to the toilet and back, basically. Now keep in mind that we're not talking about McDonald's Big Ceasar's Salad here, because that one will last you for an hour of cardio and you're better off eating a burger. Yes, they do, and they exercise upwards 30 hours a week, and are amongst the fittest and strongest athletes in the world. So, apparently, it can be your job to exercise and participate in competitions, and still have a good deal of body fat through eating habits alone. Hence, now, one very simple question: Why? Should that not be impossible by this magical exercise = weight loss formula that's been spouted here? The answer: Because consuming energy is much easier than exercising it off. You cannot fix obesity by making someone excercise, because in order to become obese in the first place, your kaloric intake per day must exceed your energy requirements by such an amount that you cannot realisticaly expect someone to exercise it off, let alone lose weight by exercise alone. Hence: Exercise helps, but not without fixing the underlying issue. Eating properly is how you prevent becoming obese. Changing your nutritional habits and going hungry is how you lose weight when you already are obese. Exercise can help with both, but it's not going to fix any ongoing issues without changing your eating habits. It will, however, improve your health and wellbeing in the long run, and as such is a good idea, regardless of anything else. Exercise will only help you burn off excess body weight if you're in the process of gaining a little and it's enough to whack your energy balance back to normal, or a little under your daily energy requirements. That's a very narrow corridor, and even that is better fixed by fixing what you eat, not how you burn it off. Can't change physics. That's the thing with math and numbers, you know.