https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/im-gonna-start-dating-her-even-harder
Alternate version for Picard S3 fans:
/c/TenForward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!
Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Remember that diversity and coexistence are Star Trek values. Any post/comments that are racist, anti-LGBT, or generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 3. Use spoiler tags.
Use spoiler tags in comments, and NSFW checkbox for posts.
This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.
~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon'
~ 8. No Political Upheaval. Political commentary is allowed, but please keep discussions civil. Read here for our community's expectations.
Fun will now commence.
Sister Communities:
Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!
Creator Resources:
Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)
Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)
All of nu-trek seems to have lost the hope of a post-scarcity utopian society.
We have plenty of gritty dystopian stories. Star Trek lost what made it special
That’s honestly why I like The Orville so much. It really captures the hope part.
The Orville is the best Nu-Trek.
To be fair, the post-scarcity utopia was most present in TNG. TOS was more focused on the cosmic horror encountered in deeps space, and far less idealistic. DS9 really dove into how much that utopia would comprise when faced with an existential threat, while ENT tried to show how a flawed society would strive reach that utopia.
The difference is that everything after TNG was responding to that utopia, either by affirming it or challenging it, while New Trek just...forgot it was a thing. I remember watching season 1 of Picard, and Raffi is living in trailer in the desert because Admiral Picard ruined her career and thinking, "Wait, why are you poor? You guys don't even use money anymore."
I think it all comes down to capitalists own the star trek franchise and post-scarcity is a scenario that really challenges the core ideas of capitalism, especially when they show this advanced utopia, even if it was a bit frayed at the edges and some had a hard time relating to the idea that the crew of the various Enterprises were pretty much all doing it as a hobby rather than a job (albeit with military-level organization).
Well DS9 did the whole "section 31 exists this shit is a violation we do not do this" and nu!trek explicitly keeps going to that well as protagonists so yeah, there's a big difference there
Damn, that is the most perfect distillation of the problem I've ever heard.
A lot of nu!trek keeps cherry picking DS9 plot points and using them in the stupidest fucking ways imaginable.
All of them still felt more optimistic than nu Trek. And purely stylistically they were filmed in a very different way that felt comforting whereas these new shows want to be as grimdark as possible
Yeah, their was far too much spent on style and too little on substance. Everything is highly cinematic, and they clearly spent tens of millions of dollars per episode, so they feel they have to make, "epic," stories that reflect that scale. The thing is, that's never what made Trek great. Chain of Command said more about war with a cheap set and four spotlights than all of season one of Discovery said on a $100 million budget.
I always assumed that she was living in a trailer in the desert to get away from people, and just dug the isolated vibe of it... It didn't seem like it was awful or nuthin. Maybe trailers are nicer in the future lol
Well, she also says something to the extent of, "we don't all have a family vineyard to live on." The implication definitely seemed to be that PIcard was a, "have," and she was a, "have-not," which seemed very antithetical to the universe established in Old Trek.
TOS is inconsistent about it, talking about "credits to donuts" and the like. TNG gets into it more and applies only to people on Earth as far as I remember. Resources outside still need to be bargained for or paid with latinum. Still doesn't explain why he maintains the family estate and Raffi's in a trailer.
I only remember latinum from DS9. I remember Riker/Picard offering outside civilizations federation credits a few times, but they were vague about how those were used. I know Earth is the only explicitly post-currency civilization, but it's hard to imagine any civilization with replicators and energy abundance still being capitalist. It could be that federation credits are just sort of an IOU for non-Federation groups.
I imagine the Picards are sorta like stewards of a historical landmark. Like, their family has been making wine for generations, so they let them continue doing that, but if they every run out of Picards that want to grow grapes the government would relocate them so another wine expert could take over. That's basically the head cannon I came up with, but I wasn't even thinking about it until Picard made it an issue.
Many of the best TNG episodes feature the darkness creeping back in, with Picard acting as the guardian of the light they have worked so hard to create. The big example I have in mind is Drumhead. Picard recognizes fascism for what it is and immediately moves to counter it, delivering one of the best speeches of the franchise.
This wasn't a show that shied away from dark subject matter; there were multiple murder investigations, an entire two-parter about Picard being tortured at the hands of space nazis, two separate episodes about ordering crew members to their deaths...this show could handle weighty subjects, subjects weightier than "this character is being mean to that character." And it could do it with the fucking lights on.
"Marketing Division says this script is what's hot. Reproduce it in as many different skins as possible while appropriating all the major franchises you can get your grubby hands on."
Counterpoint: Lower Decks and Prodigy.
Imo if we have to slum to family content or Family Guy-style gag humor, what are we even doing here?
Early LD may have leaned a bit heavily that way, but as it went on, they do explore and occasionally tackle issues. Not to mention, Trek from TOS has gag humor and family content. It's always been silly.
Prodigy, while family friendly, starts off much more serious. By the 10th episode, it becomes the best of the newer series. If you can "find" it, give it an honest try.
While I get what you're saying here,
That's an ask. That's a bit over 4 hours, and to me exemplifies one of the biggest problems of modern T.V. - you can't jump into it where it gets good without missing important stuff.
When I introduced my partner to TNG, we started with season 3, and they LOVED it.
Later on I was doing a rewatch and was part way through season one or two and they sat down on our couch "oh, nextgen. Nice." And was silent for about 15m and then said "what is this shit and why don't I remember it?" And later after another early episode and discussion "good thing you didn't try to get me to watch season 1, I would have noped out of the show before they got good."
I don't want to slog through 10 episodes of shit to get to the good stuff...and, for me anyway, discovery would do exactly that over and over. 8 episodes of shit and 2 or 3 good ones...and for me, needing to invest that much time into a show for such a poor reward is very... disenfranchising.
Unfortunately, every Trek variation is like that. TNG is literally the reason the phrase "grew the beard" came into being. By season 2, when Riker gets rid of the baby face, the show comes into its own. Voyager by 4 and DS9 by the end of 3. Those are hour long, 26 episode seasons. A block of 10 episodes at 22 minutes is peanuts.
They're all a commitment of time and patience, especially with DS9. As the first serialized attempt, it's a slow burn, but worth it for the character building. If that's not for you, that's just fine. Certainly no shortage of other media to consume these days.
I didn't feel that way about DS9, tbh. Voyager, yeah - but again, it was mostly episodic and you don't need to watch the shit in order to enjoy the good stuff.
If you skip any Disco episodes then you are missing story and/or character development.
I kinda wonder in retrospect if they shouldn't have done Voyager and Enterprise the other way around, make Enterprise first, then do the stranded far from home thing.
Voyager's premise lends itself to being told as one continuous story, because...it IS. One trip, back from the Delta quadrant. Except in the late 90s they still wanted to make adventure of the week episodic TV. Especially early in the show, they ignored the premise almost entirely.
Enterprise's premise is a return to the weekly adventure format; a ship named Enterprise wanders around and encounters shit, now with 38% more obvious thirst. That's suited to episodic adventures, but it's the early-to-mid 2000s, the era of TiVo and DVD box sets, the heyday of binge watching. Serialized TV was soon to become all the rage, Paramount knew it, which is why they tried to have not one but two overall plots. The first two seasons had the "temporal cold war" which I'm still convinced someone in a writer's room blurted out without thinking through what it meant. The resulting plot was a bad guy and a good guy kept showing up to explain to Archer why they couldn't explain to him what they were doing. That wasn't working so they went full Starship Troopers. "I'm from Pensacola, and I say KILL EM ALL."
The prequel Enterprise would have done better in the late 90s and the stranded far from home Voyager would have done better in the 2000s.
I'll admit I haven't tried any Prodigy. Maybe I'll give it a shot based on this recommendation.
I despise Family Guy, yet I will fight you over Lower Decks.
I feel as though that was a comparison made by someone who has never actually been forced to watch Family Guy, and is just using it as a byword for "mainstream comedy they don't like" because wow... no.
The more apt comparison would be Rick and Morty, because they took one of its writers. Really comes through in the first season, which thankfully got toned down.
Yeah, they for sure owe a great deal to the revolution in adult animation that R&M brought out. Like you say, after the first season I'm glad they moved away from it and forged their own identity.
I didn't even mean it as a value statement, just a reference to tone.
Regardless of whether Lower Decks is good or not, or is Family Guy-esque or not, it's still just tonally what I personally am looking for from a Star Trek show. If others are, that's great, I hold no illusion that my opinion is the only one or more valid than anyone else's, but I can only speak of and to my own opinion. For me, I love gags in my Star Trek, but I don't want it to be a vehicle for gags first.
Dude, you described it as slumming.
Into which you are reading too much. I regularly enjoy slumming in other ways/fields/regards. I am making content suggestions, yes, but boiling it down to simply value is reductive.
I suppose this is a semantic difference - in my experience, slumming used non-ironically describes poor or impoverished behavior or actions (or rather, ones that are stereotypically associated with the poor and impoverished in the culture they're drawn from), so from several directions you're making a quite literal value based statement here.
If you're familiar with the concept of "prestige tv," I think Old Trek is vastly more similar to "prestige" than Nu-Trek. That's what I meant.
There are countless "prestige" shows I think are terrible, and likewise countless low-brow shows I think are tremendous.
But again, what I personally want from Trek is more on the prestige side. That's it. That's all I meant.
Legit question: have you ever actually watched LD or family guy?
Yes. I am not saying the two are literally interchangeable, but both are irreverent adult animation comedies. Someone said I should have said Rick & Morty but Jesus fucking Christ they're the same kind of show and you people are splitting hairs.
Yes, LD has a more or an arc while FG is episodic gags, but the point is that they're both irreverent adult animation comedies.
Hey, you're the one who said "family guy style gag humour"
FG and LD are nothing alike save both being animated. The comedic styles, tone, joke matter and targeting are completely different. LD doesnt and wouldn't have a four hour chicken suit fight, rape jokes or a character literally eating shit.
You made a bad comparison to an incredibly lowbrow and offensive show, don't throw your toys out of the pram when people challenge it as a consequence
I'll give you the first season of Lower Decks relies too much on gag humor but as the show goes on it gets a lot better. It's a lot less laughing at Star Trek and much more laughing with Star Trek fans. Like when whole plots from TNG turn into a joke because now they can solve the problem easily and it's just an inconvenience to the crew now. Really thought it's about Merriners (sp) growth from a screw up officer, through her imposter syndrome and anxieties about responsibility to become a stand up officer.
That's fine, and I see the value in reveling in the fandom. But imo that's something I want from fandom spaces, not Star Trek itself. It is okay if this is not how you feel or what you want from Star Trek, but I can only speak for myself.
That was only explicitly so half of season 1. It gets much better. And the possible advantages of rhythm and speed were very much showcased in the crossover episode of LD with SNW.