Well I'll be damned. This winter, I was pleasantly surprised by The Mandalorian seeming to pull the Star Wars franchise back from the brink of the abyss. And now I'm also pleasantly surprised to see that perhaps Star Trek might be pulled out from circling the toilet bowl as well. The first episode of CBS All Access' new Picard series was surprisingly "not bad".

Now, I do still have some serious reservations about the directions that I think the show might be going later in the season. And I'll get to that later. But first, I want to sit and bask in the delight of having just watched a new piece of Star Trek media that I didn't hate. After slogging through the first season of Discovery (I have yet to watch the second season), I was left with zero faith in CBS's ability to re-capture the spirit and soul of Star Trek.

Picard shows some good faith right from the start by opening with a clip of the Enterprise-D. Not some re-designed Franken-ship monstrosity like the "original" Enterprise in the 2009 Trek reboot, or as seen in Discovery. But the honest-to-goodness Galaxy-class Enterprise-D, pretty much exactly as we remember and love her -- and looking mighty gorgeous, might I add! We then zoom into Ten Forward, where Picard is playing a hand of poker with an unconvincingly digitally de-aged Brent Spiner reprising the role of Data. This scene pays homage to the beautiful final scene of the Next Generation finale "All Good Things...", and Picard laments that he's stalling going all-in against Data's hand because he "doesn't want the game to end".

Picard is a return (and continuation) of Star Trek as fans knew it almost 20 years ago.

We didn't want the game to end either...

The first few scenes of the episode then go on to show Picard giving brief (but impassioned) speeches about the decline of Starfleet ideals, the civil rights of sentient androids, and the moral imperative to provide aid and relief to the Romulan refugees whose home planet was destroyed by the [somehow unexpected?] supernova of the Romulan sun. And he's also trying to do some social justice for pit bull dogs, which (as my choice of pets should suggest) is something that I approve very strongly of. It's respectful and faithful (and reverent) to what came before. "Holy shit", I thought, "this is actually looking and feeling like the Star Trek that I know and love."

For a moment, I thought the soul of Star Trek is there, in those early scenes, even though it is shallow and lacks the idealism that has always underpinned Trek.

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Don't worry, I'm almost done venting my frustrations with Star Trek: Voyager. The first post was about how the show failed to build on its foundations, and the second post was about how the show was a Next Gen copy-cat. This will be the third (and last) post exclusively dedicated to bashing on Voyager. If I decide to write anything further about Voyager, it will probably be about the things that I actually like about the series. I want to re-emphasize that I don't hate Star Trek: Voyager as a TV show. I feel that it was very mediocre, and I'm disappointed that it failed to deliver on its potential.

Even though I don't hate the series as a whole, the one thing that I actually do absolutely loathe about the series is its finale: "Endgame".

Voyager's "Endgame" is a lazy, contrived, cop-out of a finale.

Endgame is one of the worst episodes of Voyager, and might very well be one of the worst episodes in all of Star Trek! OK, it's not "The Omega Glory" or "The Alternative Factor" or "Sub Rosa" bad, but it's pretty terrible! I honestly do not understand how it keeps making lists of "best Voyager episodes". About the only redeeming factor of this episode (in my mind) is that the inclusion of Klingon Captain Korath (and his possession of a time-travel device) indirectly cannonizes Star Trek: the Experience -- and kind of indirectly canonizes me!

"Endgame" is a schlocky action adventure that basically perfectly represents all of Voyager's weaknesses as a show. It's too dependent on its TV-budget CGI Borg special effects. It makes Seven of Nine out to be the most important character on the show (she is the most important character, but the show doesn't have to continually force it down our throats). It's selfish and pretentious. It's fan-servicy.

The inclusion of Captain Korath's time travel device indirectly canonizes Star Trek: the Experience.

"Endgame" is too concerned with its gimmick to really care much about the characters. So much so that it literally manifests a significant (but ultimately arbitrary) romance between two main characters out of nowhere with no build-up at all and in complete contrast to any development that had already been happening. Even the actors thought this romance sub-plot came out of nowhere and blindsided them!

Lastly, "Endgame" is also a rehash of an earlier Voyager episode: "Timeless" (in which Harry Kim goes back in time to save Voyager from crashing), while at the same time trying to be a lazy rehash of TNG's brilliant and beautiful finale "All Good Things..." -- but without the brilliance or beauty.

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In my last post, I vented some of my frustrations with Star Trek: Voyager. Primarily, I ranted about how the series mostly failed to follow through with its central premise of being about the ship being lost and isolated on the other side of the galaxy. But I still have more complaints with Voyager. A side effect of the show not following its "lost and alone" premise to its logical conclusion, the show ended up feeling like it was trying too hard to be a Next Generation copy-cat.

Steve Shives also brought up this complaint in his Youtube video "What's My Problem With Voyager?", and I echo the criticism. Voyager had the frustrating habit of retelling stories that had already been told (usually better) in Next Generation. Star Trek shows have always repeated archetype characters, but TNG and Deep Space Nine were very good about paying homage to the earlier shows, without outright copying them.

Many characters feel like slight variations of characters from TOS and TNG.

For example, it could be argued that Data in TNG is a copy-cat of Spock. Dr. McCoy, after all, frequently referred to Spock as a "computer", and Mr. Data is [literally] a computer. But Data isn't a copy-cat of Spock. He's actually more a reflection of Spock (though, admittedly, Spock's arc in the movies and in "Unification" does paint him as being more similar to Data). Spock (in the Original Series) derided his humanity and fought very hard to subdue and quell it. Spock was like a Dr. Jekyll who thought his human half was the monstrous Mr. Hyde. Data, on the other hand, inverts this concept and is more of a Pinocchio (which Riker explicitly spells out for us in "Encounter At Farpoint").

Data wasn't a copy of Spock, he was an inverted reflection.

Also, Spock was dueling with his human half throughout the Original Series and into the movies. That's a dynamic that isn't present in Data at all. That dynamic is present, however, in Worf! Then, of course, there's the whiz kid element of Spock's character, which was transcribed onto Wesley in TNG. So TNG took inspiration from the Original Series' most popular character (Spock), but instead of copying him with minor variations, it split Spock's attributes into multiple characters.

A couple years ago, I wrote about the show that I wish Star Trek: Enterrpise had been. Enterprise completely dropped the ball as a prequel and as a bridge between our time and the time of the original Star Trek, by screwing up at fundamental levels of its conception and design. But Enterprise wasn't the first Star Trek series to do this. Its immediate predecessor, Star Trek: Voyager had already started this trend, which has sadly carried onto into all incarnations of Star Trek since.

I rarely talk much about the reasons that I think Voyager is an inferior show to Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. The closest I've come so far was my rant about the Borg, a brief retrospective as part of the 50th anniversary, and a few off-hand jabs at Voyager in some of my other Star Trek posts. This past summer, Steve Shives published a video on Youtube called "What's My Problem with Voyager?" in which he vents some of the same complaints that I have. Steve has some pretty excellent content on his channel, and I highly recommend checking him out if you enjoy my Star Trek content. Anyway, his video inspired me to vent some of my own frustrations with Voyager that he either didn't cover, or for which I feel I have additional insight.

Just like Steve, I want to start by stressing that I don't hate Star Trek: Voyager. I don't think it's as good as its predecessors, but it's perfectly watchable.

When I first started drafting this, it was going to be a short list of complaints. However, as I re-watched the show, the post ballooned with examples. As such, I'm going to split this into several parts. This first part will probably be the longest (so bear with me please) and will focus on what I perceive as a failure of Star Trek: Voyager to adequately build upon the foundations of its premise. The next post will be about how I perceive Voyager as a lazy copycat of The Next Generation.

At a conceptual level, Voyager begins with two foundational pillars: the ship is stranded on the opposite end of the galaxy; and a quarter of the crew has been replaced by Maquis freedom fighters and terrorists instead of trained Starfleet personnel. The show almost completely whiffs on both of these concepts. I would say that there are also two other foundational pillars of the show, but each of these only lasts for half the series. In the first half of the series, a major source of conflict is the fact that Voyager possesses technology far superior to the races and civilizations that it encounters; thus, bringing the Prime Directive into sharp focus and testing the crew's resolve to obey the Directive in such desperate circumstances. In the second half of the series, we have the Borg (which I will be discussing again).

Voyager is isolated and alone, without the resources of the Federation or a starbase.

All four of these are very strong concepts and well worth exploring. Unfortunately, Voyager almost completely abandons its two initial foundations, and (again) completely whifs when it comes to the Borg (though, admittedly, a big part of that is Star Trek: First Contact's fault). The only concept that Voyager really sticks the landing on is the idea of technological disparity between Voyager and its foes in the first couple seasons.

Oh boy, there's been a lot of Star Trek news and rumors over the past half year or so. They've been coming in so rapid-fire that it's been hard to take any of them seriously. But now we actually do have confirmation from CBS that new Star Trek projects (aside from Discovery) are in the works.

While it might sound nice to have new Star Trek in the works, the news isn't necessarily good. If you're like me, and did not like the direction of Star Trek: Discovery, then the news of new Trek projects from CBS is probably not very promising. In fact, it may all sound like a train wreck waiting to happen.

Discovery still can't get its shit together!

Let's start with the show that already exists: Star Trek: Discovery. The production of season two has so far been just as rough as the production of season one. CBS fired the showrunners mid-way through filming the second season. The studio claims that the showrunners were causing the show to go overbudget, and that they were mistreating staff. However, it's also the case that there were extensive reshoots (which apparently involves giving the Klingons their hair back), which may imply that the studio was meddling in the production, and that there were creative differences between the showrunners and the studio execs. Sounds a lot like season one all over again.

Discovery is going through a major pivot, and it's production is not going well.

The series is apparently trying to course-correct and is pivoting hard by bringing in the original Enterprise as a last-ditch effort to try to win back the support of long-time fans. But, as a long-time fan, I don't want to see the Enterprise again. I especially don't want to see any extensive, canon-breaking retcons to the characters or history. However, it looks like that's what we're going to get.

I'd rather see Star Trek go to new places and try new things, as long as they are consistent with the established canon, and are consistent with the cerebral, hard science fiction theme of the series. Basing the entire series on magic trans-dimensional fungus that allows instantaneous teleportation to anywhere in any universe is consistent with neither.

I want to see Discovery explore new ideas; not retcon Original Series characters and history.

It isn't just Star Trek that's in trouble, the CBS corporation has also gone through its share of troubles this year. Its chairman and CEO, Les Moonves, was forced to resign after accusations of sexual improprieties. Moonves was one of the core champions of Star Trek: Discovery, who saw the series as the flagship program for CBS' All-Access streaming service. Moonves also notoriously doesn't like or understand science fiction -- let alone Star Trek -- and it was creative disputes between Moonves and original showrunner Bryan Fuller that resulted in Fuller being fired, and in the direction of Discovery pivoting to what it was.

With Moonves out, Discovery might not have the protection of the CEO of the company anymore, which might result in budget cuts and other limitations in the show's production that will almost certainly reduce the quality of the product. The high production qualities were pretty much the only thing that Discovery had going for it (as far as I was concerned). Things are not looking pretty for the future of Star Trek: Discovery.

Patrick Stewart is back as Jean-Luc Picard

The big news, however, is the announcement of two new Star Trek series. The first and foremost is a new series featuring Patrick Stewart in the role of Jean-Luc Picard.

Had the writers even started planning Picard's
show prior to announcing it?

It's unclear, however, what this show will be about. In fact, it looks like the writers didn't even start thinking about that until after the series was announced. That isn't promising. It means we have a studio grasping at straws, without a clear vision for what they want to create.

Apparently, Stewart (or Alex Kurtzman) suggested that Picard may not necessarily be the captain of a starship in this new series. This lead to an early rumor that Picard may instead be an instructor at Starfleet Academy. I can't find any links to this rumor, so maybe it was my own idea that I'm mistaking for a rumor...? In any case, I would much rather see Picard be more of a cameo character in a show that isn't squarely about him. Making him a professor at the Academy, teaching cadets who are the main characters actually sounds like a half-way decent idea with a lot of promise. Rumors of CBS being pitched ideas for a Starfleet Academy series have been circulating for a couple years now, so maybe this gives them an opportunity to finally pursue that idea.

Another interesting idea that I had would be to make Picard to have retired from Starfleet and taken up a new career as an archaeologist. The character had a profound interest in archaeology throughout the series, and even gave lectures about the subject in at least one or two instances.

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