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RedLetterMedia |OT| Very Cruel.
- Thread starter Skiptastic
- Start date
It's been almost 10 years now since I watched every episode of Star Trek, but the out of context shots of random episodes amaze me cause its hilarious how they know to pick those clips out and how I remember some but completely don't others.
On the first thing, yeah, it's part of the mystery. Maybe the Tal Shiar are responsible for sabotaging Picard's armada, who knows.
On the second, I don't think it's established that Picard is constantly dreaming of Data, just that he likes his dreams a lot of times.
In fact, we get the sense that Picard is also surprised by the dream, and that it coincides with the anniversary of the Mars catastrophe. We are meant to understand that this dream is the start of Picard's reawakening to do something about these past traumas.
And
Some fans are theorizing that Data's deck full of Queens in the dream sequence means Q is behind Picard's prophetic dreams
In my opinion, i's not about things being rosy. Things weren't rosy back when Star Trek first aired and they certainly weren't rosy when TNG first aired. It's about believing in the good of humanity, its ability to evolve and look past its issues towards a brighter future. Believing that at our core we are better than this isn't handwaving society's serious issues, I think it shines a spotlight on the fact that we are wasting our true potential by being dragged down by them.
Rich's mention of the Abraham Lincoln episode is a fantastic example of how you can criticize current society issues through the lens of an enlightened future society. Examine it at surface value by making the Federation a direct allegory of the US of that time and you could easily reach the conclusion that "the writers are pretending that racism doesn't exist". Yet looking at it through the prism of what the intention actually was, for the Federation to be an allegory for what the US and the world in general should aspire to be, you get the intended message that in an enlightened society (which is what we should be striving to eventually become) racism would be considered such an utterly ridiculous concept that we have completely removed it from our thought process.
I'm not saying that an interesting story can't be told in STP's way, nor do I have any issue with people who will enjoy this new show for what it is. I will keep watching it and hope for the best. I just find it a shame that Star Trek's unique characteristic, its optimism, seems to be going away.
Not knowing anything about Discovery other than the trailer they showed a while ago, I guess you could see Picard as a prequel for Discovery S3 and what happened to the Federation over several hundred years.
I think as a whole they're prepared to do the "fall of Rome" allegory, so the slow descent of the Federation into racism and xenophobia makes sense in that case I suppose.
I think as a whole they're prepared to do the "fall of Rome" allegory, so the slow descent of the Federation into racism and xenophobia makes sense in that case I suppose.
Yeah, I just listed them among the stuff I understand/don't understand. I very much assume that the show will be exploring the Synths/Romulans as it goes along. At the moment, I don't get it, but I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to.
In the opening dream, Data notes that Picard is stalling for time, and Picard pretty much says straight-up that it's because he doesn't want the dream to end. And then the dream takes a swerve into a Mars-catastrophe nightmare, which wakes Picard up.
Picard's aides note that he's been sleeping badly, and ask if it's nightmares (plural), and Picard counters that the dreams are "lovely", so much so that he doesn't want to wake from them. One could conclude that he's just running from reality/drowning himself in the dream world in general, but I think it's more likely that this reaction has to do with it being Data specifically. When he's asleep, Data's alive, but when he wakes up, Data has to go back to being dead again.
I think this is supported by Picard's next sleep being another Data dream, and then when Picard gets KO'ed he gets a bunch of Data flashbacks. It's like, Picard's dreams in the first episode are 3-for-3 focused around Data, and he's had more dreams in the runup to the first episode, so I think it's safe to assume they were all about Data.
That didn't really bother me when I was watching the episode (I was just glad to see Stewart and Spiner acting again as Picard and Data, on the Enterprise-D, and like Picard, I didn't want the dream to end), but since RLM pointed it out, it does seem a little weird. If the dreams were specifically triggered, like if Picard started getting them after his first meeting with the daughter, then I think it makes sense, or maybe it also would if your suggested theory pans out.
Oh and, since I don't think I've said it yet, I'm fairly positive on this first episode, and interested in watching more. I'm just fine with critiquing it, and fine with other people critiquing it.
On that note, one thing I noticed in Mike and Rich's discussion was that they thought it was weird that Data somehow predicted his eventual daughter's physical appearance, and they thought that Kurtzman wouldn't follow through on that. But Kurtzman already did. He said (suggested?) that Bruce Maddox (a Data fanboy) created the daughters, and that Maddox patterned their physical appearances off of a painting that Data had once drawn, which Data had named "Daughter". Data didn't predict his positron-clones (or whatever the heck is going on). Data just drew a painting (likely based on Lal), and mad science decided to turn that dead robot's fantasy into a reality.
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Yeah, the twins being modeled after Data's painting is explained in the episode. Data imagined another daughter and Maddox just took that as inspiration for his experiments. Things like these are a reason why I don't enjoy RLM's critiques of a lot of media anymore.
Anyway, I don't know if this has been posted here yet, but composer Jeff Russo has confirmed he used a piccolo in the main title theme as a homage to the Ressikan flute from Inner Light.
Pretty great vid here about it:
Not even seven minutes into this Picard review and I'm already already having issues. Nemesis was forgettable, sure, but they don't remember Data's sacrifice at the end? "To absent friends?" And in the clips they showed with Data kind of losing his shit and turning on the crew, the last one was Lore.
Continuing on...
Continuing on...
Usually Mike's TNG game is on point, but the clips in this one came across as super nitpicky and non-related. I think he is really wedded to his idea that Picard was a super private man to the point of being a hermit with no friends, but he was never that. He was the captain and needed to keep a certain distance from his crew for appearances, yes, but one-on-one he was happy to spend time with them or play a big part in their lives, even before the finale. Shakespearing it up on the holodeck with Data. Being Worf's most trusted advisor. Having breakfast on the regular with Crusher and actually wanting more. These are not trivial relationships.
Watching all of those clips of Next Gen make it look like a very cheap soap opera. I haven't actually watched the show since I was a kid so I didn't have any memory of it looking as bad as it does.
lol, but specifically:
edit:apparently i can't clip a specific time stamp within the "media" tags. https://youtu.be/bIxKTd3N8PI?t=279
My brother has seen pretty much every episode of Star Trek, from TOS to TNG and DS9 and Voyager and Enterprise, and even a couple of the Animated Series episodes, as well as all of the movies, all of the TOS movies, all of the TNG movies, all of the JJ movies, and I'm pretty sure he's even up-to-date on Star Trek Discovery (I bailed after the pilot). He's seen more Star Trek than I have.
We were watching Picard, and he says to me "Wait... Data's dead? When the fuck did that happen?"
And I'm like "Uhh... Star Trek Nemesis? You know, it was the big end of the movie?"
And he's like "Which one was Nemesis?"
I say "It was the last TNG one. Picard's evil Romulan clone had a super-ship, and the only way Picard was able to beat it was with ramming speed, but then the clone tried to use his ship's self-destruct, so Picard used his last transporter to beam over and start punching Romulans, and then Data remembered that he doesn't need air to breathe, so he jumped over to help Picard, and beamed Picard back, and then blew himself up instead."
And my brother's like "I literally have zero memory of any of that, but it sounds incredibly stupid."
A couple days later, we watched the RLM review, and he says "Wait... TNG and the JJ movies are the same thing now? I thought the JJ movies were a reboot?"
I laugh and I'm like "Are you fucking around with me?"
And he says "No?"
So I say "Old Spock in the JJ movies is from TNG. TNG-Romulus blew up, and Spock tried to stop it, but he accidentally made a black hole and got sucked back in time to the time of Kirk's father, which made a branch timeline where Vulcan got blowed-up instead. The JJ stuff is an alternate timeline."
And he says "I can't process this, so I won't even try."
i mean the last 20 years have been pretty dire when it comes to star trek
i think beyond was the only thing ive liked from it
the only reason i know either of those things is discussion on this website, I'd have completely forgotten them otherwise
Mike is just going to hyperbole levels with clips for laughs, like the Fistful of Data's and Lore clips. He knows.
I mean, I get the "Data and Picard aren't friends" reel is a bit of a joke. But they're using it to bolster an already tenuous argument about Data and Picard's relationship, and people who don't know better and don't realize the context of these clips will take it as authoritative because it's well-produced. So it's still kind of dishonest, especially when there are so many clips you could use that go the other way.
That would be quite the collab.
Anyone on patreon know if there's been any updates recently?
Lately I've been feeling like there's been a bit of a quality lull, so hoping for a botw or a proper hitb soon. It might just be me though.
Is there much they can do for HITB now other than 2019/Oscar catch up? Releases for the first half of the year might also lead to a bit of a lull for HitB content. I dunno if they will do Birds of Prey since they hated Suicide Squad and are more than willing to skip big comic book movies now. Maybe they will do the Blumhouse Invisible Man just to see how the idea of a smaller horror film inspired by the oldies plays out.
I mean it's kind of genius. Gather 3 infamous so bad it's good directors to make a movie everybody in the community buys.
I honestly wonder if Breen can co-exist with other directors. Like I'm sure Len and Tommy would work fine together, but I'm not sure about Breen.
Whichever of the guys that can do the best Cameron Mitchell impression.
We got a new wrinkle on the 8-year old joke about Rich Evans needing to be cool about fire safety because he almost burned down his grandmother's house making fries.
Apparently he was 22 at the time.
Edit: Oh my god this last video is some lunatic Christian fundie Black Mirror shit.
Edit2: Just finished. Great video. It turns out the best way to get something good out of Tim and Mack is to pair them together with a bunch of booze.
Apparently he was 22 at the time.
Edit: Oh my god this last video is some lunatic Christian fundie Black Mirror shit.
Edit2: Just finished. Great video. It turns out the best way to get something good out of Tim and Mack is to pair them together with a bunch of booze.
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"How isn't this different from abortion exactly?"
Great observation Rich.
get him on the show already fuckos.
we really gotta get Mike and Rich to watch the Expanse first.
I thought Tim started off slow, as he usually does, and got better the more he was drunk.
I don't think The Expanse will give them the rage that fuels them. Too damn good.