https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/im-gonna-start-dating-her-even-harder
Alternate version for Picard S3 fans:
Picard writers doubling down on criticism
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/im-gonna-start-dating-her-even-harder
Alternate version for Picard S3 fans:
118 Comments
Vespair@lemmy.zip · 73 pts · 2d
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
pjwestin@lemmy.world · 51 pts · 1d
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."
jpreston2005@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 1d
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
pjwestin@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 1d
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.
ummthatguy@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1d
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.
pjwestin@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 1d
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.
Taleya@aussie.zone · 6 pts · 1d
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
pjwestin@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
Damn, that is the most perfect distillation of the problem I've ever heard.
Taleya@aussie.zone · 4 pts · 1d
A lot of nu!trek keeps cherry picking DS9 plot points and using them in the stupidest fucking ways imaginable.
dreamkeeper@literature.cafe · 5 pts · 1d
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
pjwestin@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
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.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 14h
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).
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 44 pts · 2d
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.
ummthatguy@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 2d
Counterpoint: Lower Decks and Prodigy.
Vespair@lemmy.zip · -15 pts · 2d
Imo if we have to slum to family content or Family Guy-style gag humor, what are we even doing here?
ummthatguy@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 2d
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.
deltapi@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
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.
ummthatguy@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1d
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.
deltapi@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
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.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 1d
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.
Vespair@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 2d
I'll admit I haven't tried any Prodigy. Maybe I'll give it a shot based on this recommendation.
Killer57@lemmy.ca · 15 pts · 2d
I despise Family Guy, yet I will fight you over Lower Decks.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 2d
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.
ummthatguy@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 2d
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.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2d
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.
Vespair@lemmy.zip · -3 pts · 2d
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.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 2d
Dude, you described it as slumming.
Vespair@lemmy.zip · -2 pts · 2d
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.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
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.
InputZero@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2d
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.
Vespair@lemmy.zip · -2 pts · 2d
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.
richieadler@programming.dev · 3 pts · 1d
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.
Taleya@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 1d
Legit question: have you ever actually watched LD or family guy?
Vespair@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 1d
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.
Taleya@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 20h
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
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 14 pts · 1d
"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."
ramble81@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 1d
That’s honestly why I like The Orville so much. It really captures the hope part.
Vespair@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 1d
The Orville is the best Nu-Trek.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works · 33 pts · 2d
I'll never watch it.
Picard, like Shymalan's Avatar and Game of Thrones Season 8, is best viewed through savage YouTube takedowns.
And it doesn´t bother me that Picard is dark and moody. In fact, the cheery optimism of TNG is my least favorite thing about that series and the grittier DS9 shows that Star Trek can get legitimately dark. My complaint about Picard is that it is multidimensionally stupid.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 2d
Watched Angela Collier's video and wouldn't so much as pay for the time and electricity to watch an episode of this show.
BenReilly97@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 2d
Exactly, there's so much great Star Trek content to watch. No point in wasting time on something like Picard.
pulsewidth@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
I started watching this and after a few (enjoyable) minutes I noticed the top comment notes, "For the first hour I've been waiting to disagree with her but just couldn't.." and then I looked at the runtime..
Holy moly.
Critique in length that rivals the Lefttube greats, I'll save this one 'later'.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 1d
I liked season 1 personally. Holy hell did it start off with a ton of potential. I did not like season 2 at all. Season 3... Meh, I gave it a shot but wasn't vibing after the first episode.
I'll now watch this near 4 hour video to confirm my suspicion on season 3 being shit as well. I don't care if it's better rated than S1 on IMDb. I'll pretend only S1 exists, because I don't feel like watching S2 again which my brain would require me to do before watching S3.
Starf4rged@reddthat.com · 12 pts · 2d
Good way of putting it, the stupid surrounds you from multiple angles, not matter how much you lower your expectations, it still takes you by surprise.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works · 23 pts · 2d
That sentence used to be a lot longer, but it all does boil down to stupidity.
I heard a theory on the Adam Conover show recently that said product people--that is people that understands products and their customers--no longer run companies. Instead, we have finance people that know how to talk to investors and see their products as conglomeration of characteristics, maximized for mass appeal, and see their customers as numbers on a spreadsheet.
I find this a very compelling theory and you can see it across all forms of media--from movie, to TV, to games. The root cause of this problem has been unstated, but I see it as somehow a result of wealth inequality and concentration of power. Bad decisions can continually be made because competition is limited, at the same time, being "in" with powerful people is career insulation from constant failure.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
There's currently much more money to be gained from attracting investment than there is from generating profit, so companies that don't prioritise selling to investors over selling to customers just won't get as big, and the feedback loop ensures that investors who invest in things that other investors will invest in later will have more money to reinvest later than investors who invest in companies that can make a profit. Historically, investors who invested in companies that couldn't become profitable lost their money, so couldn't invest in other things in the future. The system kind of does do what it's intended to, and efficiently allocate capital to where it generates the most return, but that's become decoupled from the implicit goal of most effectively providing goods and services.
If I had to guess at the root cause, a good candidate would be that after the 2008 financial crisis, when quantitative easing was (successfully) used to stop nearly everyone losing their livelihoods by ensuring investors had access to enough money to avoid feeling pressure to pull out of all their sane investments and in doing so collapse all major employers, because it was never undone through quantitative tightening, there was enough excess money sloshing around afterwards that investors could afford to risk investing in dumb shit, and dumb shit could attract enough follow-up investment later that the early investors were rewarded.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d
I don't understand how what you're saying applies to movies. Do earlier rounds of investment get a higher return? The idea is there is a budget and you don't start the movie until you've raised the money. In that case, the only two things that matter is that there are enough investors to start the project, and that the project is a success.
But it's all a bit shortsighted, whatever is happening, because all the profit maximization is actively alienating customers. Console gaming is flat-out dying because games suck. Though, in the case of Microsoft, there is an investment angle, because they bought a lot of companies and saddled themselves with debt, so they can't afford to take risks... but refusing to take any risks across an entire ecosystem is a guarantee of failure...
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
It only applies to movies and because they're expensive enough to make that the major titles almost all are things funded by a few major producers, and the investor-first approach has been pervasive long enough that the major shareholders of the studios are that kind of investor, so they pick people to be on the board who agree with them, and the board selects C-suite staff that are good at talking to investors rather than that are good at making their company produce good movies. The kind of movie they then want to make is the kind of movie that costs a lot so they can tell investors that it's the most expensive ever and therefore the best ever and therefore will make a morbillion dollars (and also says nothing so it offends no one and can be marketed to everyone) rather than making lots of mid-budget movies that might make many times what they cost or might barely break even or might become a timeless classic that makes a profit for decades. If their morbillion dollar movie flops, but the share price is higher than before it was made because investors expecting it to do well invested, the company's still considered to be better off, and they'll happily do it again.
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 1d
Well I guess you're very dedicated towards being negative towards things you don't even watch. That's something I guess.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 1d
i like how they drop the borg alliance in the 3rd season, and gave us some nonsense, like changelings, and a "borg that was supposed be dead at the end of Voy endgame"
ramble81@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 2d
Season 1 was okay.
Season 2 I skipped after a few episodes.
Season 3 has actually been pretty good
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 2d
What draws you to Star Trek in general?
People watch shows for different reasons.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 1d
TNG, and specifically space(physics,astronomy, although i never was good in school for these subjects, because these were hard class at the basic levels)
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 1d
season 3 was far the weakest one, 1 was pretty bad. 2nd couldve had a good setup with the friendly borg. the nostalgic arc is so poorly written.
SatyrSack@quokk.au · 3 pts · 1d
I don't get why people often prefer the third season. It mostly relied on referencing old stuff from previous series, even more than it did in the first two seasons. Then again, some people like that about Lower Decks.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 1d
LD was kinda better than the live action ones, so was prodigy. picard like the other 2 live action was all over the place what is with the showrunners obsession with teasing romulans/borg threat and then never mentioning them again.
abc@suppo.fi · 2 pts · 2d
Somehow it seems that the RLM boys liked Picard season 3. I almost want to watch it.
spip@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
They talk like they 'like' it in the same sense that an abuse victim 'likes' a week in which they're only abused a little instead of a lot. The approval comes from comparison to the rest of new Trek. They also liked it better than the TNG films, which I dunno if I'd say that.
I didn't like Picard, but I don't agree with this meme. I found season three to be the most digestible of the three servings of slop.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 2d
Lt. Angela Collier's savage YouTube takedown, Season 3 time stamp
richieadler@programming.dev · 2 pts · 1d
As they say, fractally stupid.
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works · 25 pts · 1d
I've had trouble watching all the latest Star Treks SAVE FOR ONE.
Lower Decks is fucking amazing. It captures the vibe perfectly while also adding genuine comedy.
They did what Seth failed so miserably at, and they animated it of all things (and then UNANIMATED it for one episode.)
Taleya@aussie.zone · 13 pts · 1d
SNW started off well but now it's primarily just shitposting. Ugh.
tiramichu@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 1d
I feel this so much.
It was great when there was the occasional oddball episode, but the main focus was on the story.
But this last season has been absolutely nothing except weird comedy episodes, every single week.
Made SNW go from one of my most-liked Trek outings to among the worst.
Perhaps I should rewatch Season 1 to recover.
Taleya@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 1d
I've been doing a trekculture binge (building a mass of servers for work, good background) and Sean really nailed it when he said that s1-2 and 3-4 feel like entirely different shows - and that SNW has no real identity of its own
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1d
I haven't seen it, I don't watch TV anymore, but did I hear they've done for real everything SG-1 did in the episode 200 as a shitpost?
Taleya@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 1d
Worse. 200 was at least novel and fun
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1d
SG-1 said "wouldn't it be stupid if we did this?"
Discovery did it
Taleya@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 1d
this isn't about Discovery
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 1d
Or whichever show it was. Star Trek: Mandalorian And Grogu.
SatyrSack@quokk.au · 2 pts · 1d
Stargate Universe did it. Specifically, just about everything in the "younger, edgier" bit from "200" ended up occurring unironically in Universe.
ripcord@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I haven't seen any of the latest episodes, what does this mean? How can a show like this become "shit posting"?
thal3s@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1d
Let’s put it this way: they turn into Muppets in 1 episode this season, so yeah.
It’s starting to feel like GoT season 8.
Taleya@aussie.zone · 7 pts · 1d
love how someone downvoted you for that. That muppet ep was objectively shit. The only darkly funny thing about it was watching Sean Ferrick's soul leave his body doing the ups and downs on it. They're trying to rip off the Angel ep Smile Time but Smile Time worked because they had plot, they had premise and they had stakes. The muppet ep had none of that. Hell, even the Trek musical ep worked because they set up premise. Level-Five Transporter Accident was just a bunch of stupid shit happening "for the lulz" and they didn't even achieve that
mimavox@piefed.social · 2 pts · 1d
Yes, I gave up on it. It's unwatchable.
Taleya@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 1d
They are just posting shit.
Tattorack@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 1d
Lower decks is cheap as fuck humour, with Boimler being a literal memberberries mouth-piece.
I clocked out early in season two when the day was saved with a joke of repeatedly kicking the first officer in the balls.
It's Star Trek with the Idiocracy treatment.
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1d
You seem way too mad about this. Like, somehow this is personal, and we aren't clued in lol.
Tattorack@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
It's the Star Trek name plastered over garbage and it's been going on since STD. What more do you need to get mad?
Taleya@aussie.zone · 0 pts · 1d
As opposed to pushing a rock on him?
OctopusNemeses@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 1d
9/11 killed the optimistic sci-fi. American culture was deeply wounded. It went emo. It wasn't a phase.
They're too scared to be happy.
Taleya@aussie.zone · 11 pts · 1d
SGA, Lower decks and the orville beg to fucking differ
dreamkeeper@literature.cafe · 6 pts · 1d
Game of thrones is when I really noticed that almost everything became dreary and pessimistic. It's gotten to the point where apparently kids these days can't get on board with concept of the good guys even existing because every show both-sides all the characters.
Media like LOTR where the villains are unabashedly bad and the good guys are genuinely good will slowly die out. We lost the little bit of moral compass we had. Sometimes I wonder if Hollywood did it deliberately.
cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
The old guard of Hollywood were a bunch of people who had absolutely no problem with saying people that act like Nazis are bad. Those people are gone or nearing retirement/irrelevant. Also, writing is now done by committee so it never has any over-arching narrative, it's just a bunch of different writers trying to be noticed instead of creating a good plot.
Doom@discuss.online · 0 pts · 1d
What about anime? They're gotten goofier and brighter in my opinion. Popular stuff used to be Inuyasha, Fullmetal Alchemist. Then you had Death Note, Bleach, Naruto. These are all on a scale of pretty moody with tads or dapples of sunshine and goof.
Now there's animes like "I was turned into a hedgehog and my girlfriend isn't sure how to respond!" It's wayy fucking goofier and brighter.
What happened was people knew the world wasn't good guys and bad guys, it became clear that morality was grey and for good reason.
dreamkeeper@literature.cafe · 2 pts · 1d
In regard to your last paragraph, I'm sick of hearing this. It's now used as an excuse to justify any kind of horrible behavior. Sure I killed a puppy but my neighbor got caught smoking meth by himself so he's just as bad. It's bullshit.
Yes people are complicated, yes morality is complex, but acting like everyone is equally good or equally bad so no one can ever hold the high ground is such an intellectually lazy, dishonest, and destructive position to hold.
Lotr had it right. The villains are complex characters who have a path to redemption but mostly ignore it, and what they do to the world is unambiguously destructive.
Modern media feels like it exists to excuse and enable selfish behavior no matter the cost.
Doom@discuss.online · 1 pts · 1d
LOTR did not have complex villains in the slightest? They were bad period. Morgoth is literally evil incarnate, Sauron was evil af appreciating craft doesn't make him good, Saruman was considered completely fallen, Gollum did not have a path to redemption he had moments of humanization. They were pretty straight forward. You could argue depth was added in the Silmarilian but there wasn't really a humanizing element to call them complicated or morally complex, they were morally simple and some had a reason they fell to corruption.
Smaug, the Goblin King, Shelob. Evil as hell.
I guess some of the corrupt humans were more morally ambiguous but it never left you feeling unsure if someone was good or evil, it is pretty crystal clear.
What modern media enables selfish behavior no matter the cost? Breaking Bad is literally about the cost, Game of Thrones is about everyone is basically not a good person.
The best morally complex character I can think of is Magneto. He's not a good guy, he's not doing good things but in his position you'd ask yourself "what would I do different?" he's trying to prevent trauma he's already experienced and he unashamed about it.
SirHery@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Uh, well i think it's always about winning over some great trouble. I wouldn't say Star wars is all happy and sunshine and that was before 9/11.
crowcore_explorer@piefed.blahaj.zone · 16 pts · 2d
as a dc comics fan, i have no problem with dark and moody. i just think the newer trek has a writing problem. there might be a few good episodes, but so much just feels like mediocre fan fiction. i think trek peaked with ds9 and with paramount's new leadership i don't think that's likely to change.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 14 pts · 1d
the NU-MOVIES style of CINEMA, making dark scenes to hide the fact the props are so bad in the show and the poor writing.
SippyCup@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
Props have gotten bad because all of the skilled prop masters have left the industry. So much is CGI now, it's become gig work and nobody wants to pay the rates these guys command.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 15h
Though to be fair, higher resolutions have made what used to be decent props into shitty looking ones, so the bar is higher these days, too.
RipLemmDotEE@lemmy.today · 10 pts · 2d
Unpopular opinion; Picard is not actually a Stark Trek show, it just stars a former Star Trek captain.
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 2d
I just think that the writing team are caught in the massive gravitation pull of a black hole
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 1d
Its like we're not allowed to have stories with hopes or dreams, only hurt and suffering.
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 2d
Picard S3 is basically just the Star Wars sequel trilogy, but instead of killing off a beloved character in the middle part, they brought a beloved character back to life.
But it's essentially the same plot. Picard has an estranged son. Somehow the Borg Queen returned. Cool to see the
Millenium FalconEnterprise D back in action!I enjoyed it. But then I also enjoyed the Star Wars sequel trilogy, except for the middle part. With Picard S3 it's like they looked at what worked and what didn't work in Star Wars and made an improved version of it.
Same as with Star Wars, I wish they would continue to move the story forward, but as with Star Wars, they just seem to only want to make prequels.
OnyxRex@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 2d
The only good part of season 3 was Seven's arc. The rest was just the cost of getting to watch it.
its_kim_love@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 2d
Use the top image from the first one and the bottom image from the second. It really drives the joke home.
SatyrSack@quokk.au · 15 pts · 2d
I considered making it a four-panel comic, with the first two panels colored normal and adding two panels of "What does that mean?" "You know what it means" in darker color
EDIT:
Or should just the last panel be dark?
its_kim_love@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 2d
I love both of these!
13igTyme@piefed.social · 5 pts · 2d
Can just not watch new trek. Writing seems to be consistently terrible.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
Careful what you wish for, or you'll get nothing but wacky gimmicks.
Tattorack@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
It's like the NuTrek writers have just two modes:
Mode 1: "I'm 13 and this is deep".
Mode 2: Star Trek, but you only know it through the memes.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 35m
And the thing is, they're both just fine in moderation. But the first two seasons of SNW were so good and the last two have been almost all comedy gimmicks. I was happy to see a badmiral episode this season instead of "Star Trek but [gimmick]." And it was a pretty by-the-numbers badmiral episode.
And Disco and Picard were continuing storylines, so if they decided to have a long stupid trudge through the mirror universe, the audience that didn't leave were stuck with it for a whole season.
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 2d
I loved the tone and art of Picard it felt salient with the last season of TNG, all self reflective and kind of deconstructive. I just wish the writers weren't Netflix hacks
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 1d
Keep the things that are criticized and change the other things.
usernamefactory@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 2d
Nah, seasons 2 and 3 were dramatically lighter in tone than season 1. They even stopped cussing! I, for one, miss Admiral F-Bomb.
SatyrSack@quokk.au · 6 pts · 2d
Just did a grep of the scripts. There were fewer instances of the word "fuck" after season 1, but many more instances of the word "shit".
usernamefactory@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 2d
You're right, after I posted I remembered Picard telling Q he was "sick of his bullshit". Didn't realise there was much more. But "Shit" seems less offensive than "Fuck", so maybe that still counts as toning down the swearing, even if there was more of it? 🤷
Silly language critiquing aside, I do remember season 1 feeling much gloomier than the subsequent ones.
SatyrSack@quokk.au · 3 pts · 2d
If you actually care, here is a table. Keep in mind this is probably from an imperfect subtitle OCR transcript or something.
::: spoiler shitty fucking table
usernamefactory@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 2d
Okay, I'm convinced, if anything they upped their swearing game. Especially since they still pulled out an F-bomb for "fucking solids" in season 3, which I really should have remembered. Solid data gathering!
Nouvellalia@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
I stopped the moment 7 was holding someone's eye, spaghetti gore a-dangling, for a full screen shot, a-squelching and a-jiggling like some 14 year old's revenge-gone-raw, mad-mamma-mario, overly-hyphenated, underground, VHS, convention shock-schlock.
I don't have a problem with gore, but why are we doing Troma as if it's serious? If she'd have looked at the screen and asked "why was 6 afraid of 7?" Then taken a bite saying "because"
squelch
"7"
squelch
"ate"
squelch
"eyes"
gulp
that would have been promise. Instead it just gave desperation and hack.
From what I've read and seen it was just "hey! Remember this guy!" Over and over while they all performed some kind of brooding emotional lens flare, written by a second gen Hollywood producer getting fluffed while trying to sketch out what "the common old man" wants to see in the era of failing social support systems.
richieadler@programming.dev · 3 pts · 1d
My hopes started to falter when the female romulan villain, even when I found the actress insanely sexy in the role, delivered lines extracted directly from a manual for stupid over the top cartoonish villains. And the lost opportunities were painful (Hugh reuniting with Picard for two scenes and then Hugh being killed; Seven being the (a) Borg Queen for 30 seconds...) So much waste.
And the less told about 'assimilation-via-transporter but only for young people', the better. Even more stupid than the transporter commbadges.
Nouvellalia@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
But the kids are a-teeming with WOKE! We must save them with imagined grit and toughness of soft Hollywood cowboys! Johwn Whayneeee!
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
They've moved from stories about us in relation to the objects and world around us to stories about ppls egos, traumas and emotional journeys. Hard to do if the federation gave most people a good childhood.
mimavox@piefed.social · 2 pts · 1d
God, I hate emotional journey in Star Trek.
cholesterol@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
You know what it means.
Soleos@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I remember thinking oh, they're doing First Contact vibes, I enjoyed that for them. And the end credits music ever gets old hehe. But honestly, I don't remember S3 much beyond that 🫤