How Star Trek: Picard Ruins Star Trek
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I watched the entire video, but I timestamped the link to where I believe it matters most for any comrade that ever liked Star Trek, liberal idealistic and quasi-militaristic flaws and all, and would like to see a succinct and thorough summary of what they might have already felt, may have already inductively collected for themselves, but got it drowned out by “well the TNG gang got together by the end of Picard Season 3 so just enjoy it like a popcorn movie, 4/5” or even worse brainworms like “section 31 is based and it’s just cold hard reality that such an agency would have to exist for the Federation to exist, just like in based Deep Space 9 which was totally about wars and genocidal biowarfare plots and how cool and necessary they are.”

The Trek fandom site in the Lemmyverse is loaded with insufferable liberal/libertarian brainworms and a fair amount of Thermian Arguments that justify anything that was presented on screen as not only good, but necessary if they were done by protagonist characters, and not just the flaws, weaknesses, and (for lack of a better term) sins of characters that weren’t intended to be infallible, let alone blindly emulated, no matter how cool it was when Sisko punched Q or whatever.

TL;DR: I hope comrades find value in this concluding section of a much larger video, or maybe even watch the whole thing, which I also think is worthwhile. Also, I fucking despise Section 31 apologists because they make the Lemmyverse’s Trek site unbearable for me. If Kurtzman gets his way (especially with that Section 31 series he keeps jerking off about), Trek will become increasingly murderfucky gory edgy black ops obsessed bootlicking schlock with a vague and redundant nostalgia flavor.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    15·
    3 months ago

    “I have the super-duper Q-clearance for top secret cool spy stuff!!!”

    Black ops jagoff is also a convenient writing trick because if it’s all super duper maxi extreme double secret things can just pop in or out of frame with only as much explanation as the writer feels like giving to justify it.

    It’s like those really pretentious “genius serial killer” movies from years back where the laziest possible writing move is “HE’S SO SMART HE PREDICTED EVERYTHING WE DO! WE’RE JUST PLAYING HIS GAME!” soypoint-1 hypersus soypoint-2

    • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      14·
      3 months ago

      Yeah, its lazy writing. At least in Deep Space 9, you get the sense that while Section 31 has enough connections to keep itself hidden, it wasn’t all powerful. If I were gonna pick up the plot threads, I’d have it be what it was first stated to be: a small group of essentially vigilantes, high on their own mythology and exploiting the gaps and shadows of a huge organization like the federation.

      I think in some ways, Star Trek let liberals indulge in American Exceptionalism. Like, here’s all the values we purport to hold, being evangelized by a good democratic federal government and its space-navy! Yes, they’re socialist; but its because of replicators! Don’t worry about it! Obviously, this varied across episodes and writers. Some might be more explicitly socialist, some might have a little more yankee-brainworms. But New Trek feels like its all in on the American Exceptionalism. So now Section 31 is just Federation CIA and they do “critical work” whatever that means

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
        11·
        3 months ago

        Yeah, its lazy writing. At least in Deep Space 9, you get the sense that while Section 31 has enough connections to keep itself hidden, it wasn’t all powerful. If I were gonna pick up the plot threads, I’d have it be what it was first stated to be: a small group of essentially vigilantes, high on their own mythology and exploiting the gaps and shadows of a huge organization like the federation.

        Bashir’s encounter with them made them seem like a few assholes that were propping up a more menacing front with more resources than they actually had access to, and pretty much just criminals with too much clearance.

        Theeeeeeeen NuTrek gave them le epic drone armadas and le scary AI cliches with “Control.” And for some reason massive drone swarm battles where it’s hard to tell what’s even fucking happening and it’s all smeared and pewpewpew in a boring way.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI6QQs8ImWg

        Compare that to, say, the Battle of Dollyworld in Orville where I find myself actually caring because the stakes emotionally matter and it isn’t just a bunch of copy-paste wanking and one-upmanship special effects:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caBzvF9hwkI

        I think in some ways, Star Trek let liberals indulge in American Exceptionalism. Like, here’s all the values we purport to hold, being evangelized by a good democratic federal government and its space-navy! Yes, they’re socialist; but its because of replicators! Don’t worry about it! Obviously, this varied across episodes and writers. Some might be more explicitly socialist, some might have a little more yankee-brainworms. But New Trek feels like its all in on the American Exceptionalism. So now Section 31 is just Federation CIA and they do “critical work” whatever that means

        That was my experience with the smuglords of the Lemmyverse Trek site. “Believe whatever you want but this is all about sports teams and of course the coolest seeming team is the bad guys but don’t call them bad guys because it’s totally more complicated than that. We’re the adults in the room.” It’s that “Grey Jedi” power fantasy from Star Wars all over again where a fandom conjured up a bullshit escapist way of having cool dark side powers without being dark siders.