Patrick Stewart Does Not Want Pandemic Storyline For ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 2

The Star Trek: Picard finale is just over a week behind us, but the show is still making some news and we have gathered all the latest bits in this Picard summary for the first week of April.

Stewart doesn’t want to see pandemic influence season two storyline

Sir Patrick Stewart spoke with the CBC this week and the interview turned to topical issues and how they have been addressed on Star Trek: Picard. The show’s star talked about how dealing with issues of the day was a longtime Star Trek tradition and felt that the first season of Picard was able to “reflect our times,” pointing to the Romulan refugee storyline as an example. But when asked if he thought the current global pandemic crisis should be the basis of a season two storyline, Stewart (who is also an executive producer) explained why he thought that was a bad idea:

I would not encourage that. This is a disturbing and frightening and sad time for many thousands of people. I would feel feel uncomfortable if we were to make this a theme of the second season of [Star Trek: Picard]. It is too sensitive, too upsetting, too frightening, than some of the other issues that we have dealt with, which are much more of a political nature.

Goldsman’s coronavirus log for Picard

While it isn’t likely to end up on the Picard series, executive producer Akiva Goldsman has put some thought into how Admiral Picard would deal with the pandemic. In a feature this week on Vulture, a number of TV executive producers and writers were asked to offer up ideas for “If I wrote a cornonovirus episode,” and here is what Goldsman came up with for Picard:

“Admiral’s Log. The quarantine stretches on. Essential systems continue to fail. And though many of us are used to long periods of isolation, the prohibition on physical contact, not to mention our inability to leave the ship, is beginning to wear on even the most seasoned members of the crew. Remote communication flourishes — still I am reminded there is no substitute for a direct gaze or the reassurance of a friendly touch. I am emboldened by the crew’s resilience. Despite the hardship, they continue to work their stations; productivity and routine can be an excellent balm on fear. And fear they do, how could they otherwise? The threat we face is real with no immediate end in sight. But that does not make it endless. On the contrary, this period of darkness will end, as surely as it began. Fear will fade to memory. We will survive, stronger, perhaps more aware of the profound connections we have always shared. And a time will come when we once again right this ship and sail forward together into the future, that bright unknown.”

Jean Luc Picard not social distancing in season one’s “Absolute Candor”

Cast reacts to the season finale

Over the week CBS has posted a series of video clips featuring the Picard cast talking about their reactions to the dramatic events of the season one finale.

Picard needs concept artists

Director Hanelle Culpepper helmed the first three episodes of Star Trek: Picard and in a new interview with Newsweek, she talks about the challenges of launching a new Trek show. When discussing the design for the Daystrom Institue (first seen in Picard), she revealed the show has had a shortage and could use some help.

I worked with the storyboard artist and art department to develop the visual effects part of it and the concept art. So once we found our location for the Daystrom Institute, then the art department came up with some ideas about how that building would then fit into the overall look. A little side note for the fans: There’s actually a shortage of concept artists out there. If anyone loves drawing and wants to get into sci-fi, there’s work to be had. That was probably one of our biggest challenges on Picard, was finding the right concept artists.

Daystrom Institute as seen in the Picard series premiere

Assessing the science of Picard

The web series Science vs Cinema took a look at Star Trek: Picard, talking to the stars and executive producers about staying true to science. The episode also features prominent experts discussing scientific topics from the show including supernovas, winemaking, Mars’ atmosphere igniting, and quantum consciousness.

Picard your Zoom meeting

One last thing to help people who are using the popular app Zoom for remote meetings via video conferencing. CBS has posted some Picard backgrounds you can use to beam into your next meeting from 2399. (They also posted some Star Trek: Discovery backgrounds.)

The season finale of Star Trek: Picard is available now on CBS All Access. If you haven’t yet subscribed, you can get a free month: CLICK HERE to try CBS All Access FREE for 1 month. Use code ALL to redeem. 


Keep up with all the Star Trek: Picard news at TrekMovie.

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Typo on the Culpepper part. I thought this was about a story on a new website called NEWSEEK that I might want to write for, didn’t realize it was a typo till I clicked.

Don’t believe that part about concept artists, there are tons of incredible pros out there, if CBS isn’t hiring the right ones that is on them.

Agreed that the statement seems odd as phrased, given e.g. the huge number of self-styled concept artists seen on DeviantArt and in the pages of _ImagineFX_ magazine. Perhaps the emphasis should fall on “finding the right [for us] artists”, where the hiring criteria are portfolio/style, software experience, U.S. working papers, positioned to work in Hollywood.

Related, I’ve developed a corollary to Occam’s Razor vis-a-vis disappointing SF cityscapes:

“If a future city looks like Hong Kong with more holograms and aircars, although the technology should enable something else, it’s not because the milieu’s architects have forgone said technology; it’s because the artists were too rushed to think it through.”

You should have been around earlier to help Arthur C. Clarke formulate more of his ‘laws’ — that corollary is dead-on.

The footnote to that could be something along the lines that all creative artwork is subject to producer non-think. An awful lot of great concept art bites the dust or gets subverted by producers who can’t understand or think it will be too complicated for a viewer. Think about Probert Romulan ship that got rotated 90-degrees to keep it all flat rather than tall, or battle scenes that go something other than on the X-Y left to right axis for the longest time.

Interesting. So could the Probert Romulan ship have been rotated to better fit the horizontal view screen of the Enterprise? Was that their reasoning?

It was my understanding the creator just wanted to do something different. But was underminded somewhat when he was forced to rotate the design.

Right, but I was asking WHY he was forced to rotate the design. Did the higher-ups think a horizontal design would better fit the view from the Enterprise?

If you want an idea of how Andy wanted it, all you have to do is look at the Minbari ships in B5 — the Rom WarBird in TNG would have presented very much in that fashion (and I’ve often wondered if Steve Berg and/or the B5 VFX team had seen Probert’s design, or it could just have been ‘great minds’ or presenting in a more accepting environment.)

That same thinking would have brought Worf’s station down relative to Capt’s chair, since framing-wise you don’t put your tallest actor at the topmost part of the set, so that’s too logical to apply with regard to TNG.

I think it was Berman wanting to be conventional (again, he nixed z-axis moves throughout TNG — vfx supe Ron Moore (the OTHER Ron Moore) mentioned to me that they had designed an ‘elevator’ move for the -D where it would boom up through frame and the producers shot that down, along with other z-axis moves. Wasn’t till late in DS9 that you saw any of that happening, and even then it was pretty tame.

Or it could have been Berman rejecting and tweaking Probert because that sounds like what the guy just did. You can see Probert’s pretty eval of the situation in a Starlog mag called SPECIAL EFFECTS vol 4 that is sometimes on ebay. It not only has a ton of concept art from him, but it is — according to a conversation I had with him 22 years ago this month — just about the only time that his work has been reproduced using his captions and using them correctly, instead of mixing them all up. (The Pocket Books making-of books have tons of errors like that — their PHASE II book has an image of the final approved v’ger from TMP identified as a rejected design from phase II, to give you one non-Probert example.)

Disappointing future/speculative cityscapes are those that have been reduced to symbols (exaggerated skyscrapers, exaggerated advertising, flying cars, monorails) and as I see it, symbols arrive from two directions:

* Artists (and directors who approve the art) who don’t have a deep knowledge of architecture and urban design (“why”), so they revert to clichés.
* The cityscape is used as an establishing shot, and the directors don’t want the audience to spend much effort processing the visuals.

Now, given Trek’s enabling technologies (super-materials, force fields, solid holos, antigravity, transporters), you could have hovering buildings (saw a few of those outside Daystrom-Japan), that aren’t merely pillars (consider the Beijing CCTV building), with surfaces that aren’t windows. Or maybe you wouldn’t — land prices, KISS-for-safety, historical preservation, architectural fashion — but those are the “extraneous assumptions” that Occam’s Razor argues against.

They could do a pandemic storyline but it has to be done in a realistic and respectful way. Patrick Stewart does have a point on how it’s affecting people and doesn’t want to cause any trouble.

IMHO it’s really a case of “too soon” it’d be like doing a terrorism plotline immediatrly after 9/11. you can’t do something like that properly because it’s just too soon

Brian 9/11 and this pandemic are two different things. This pandemic will kill millions of people in the end. Yes, like you said it is a case of “too soon” but it could be done.

Respectfully disagree. By the time the 2nd season can start filming, go thru post and air? Most likely, viewers will have been directly or indirectly affected by this virus. Were I a CBS suit, I’d worry about the bottom line on subs. If it hits too close to home, some people might not renew or even cancel their subscription.

I’m living it. Don’t want to see it in shows on TV.

What we experience and endure now is an act of compassion to the part of society that is more in danger. we all are, but the older, the more in danger. People are dying. Most of us has family i guess, older and younger. We isolate for them.

Apart from this, there is no need for a covid 19 episode. infection, epidemic and illness was covered in star trek enough.

and covid, frankly, dr. crusher would have dealt it a deadly blow in 45 minutes. but in reality a whole planets medical scientists are working on medicine and vaccine and while medicine might be selected in the next few days to weeks, abiding by ethical standards means a vaccine will no tbe ready until next year as we dont do dangerous experiments on people anymore, which is a good thing. our knowledge is not deep enogh of complex biological systems and our computers not fast enough to simply and correctly simulate the outcome.

but quarantine, maybe one bottle episode im willing to stomach, else let get through this IRL. tv is already full of homeoffice shows and videoconferencing, so i gladly pass on star treks take on this.

Yeah, I’m agreeing with Mr. Stewart here — I’m not a fan of a pandemic story line… feels like too much of a knee-jerk reaction to me.

And doing something that parallels brexit isn’t?

I only say that because that is what was reported as we headed into the show. Fortunately it is not what we got.

ML31 you mentioned Brexit. Well, Britain left the European Union. That was sad but it happens. Probably take years before they’re back in the club of nation’s sharing common democratic values.

You call leaving a tired club of “elites” that failed its citizens again and again and again, by means of a democratic referendum and election, “undemocratic” (oh, the irony!) I call it butthurt :P

And I agree with ML31. If there’s one thing that surpasses the current crop of content creators’ partisan zeal, it’s their ineptitude to write anything resembling a deft political allegory the likes of “Star Trek VI”. Their metaphors are so crass and crude, from cannibalist Klingons over genocidal mirror Space Hitlers to organ hunters gourging out eyeballs, nobody can take them seriously!

Only immature 12-year-olds use terms like “butthurt,” and immature 12-year-olds lack the intelligence to discuss adult issues.

I’m usually on board with you, but I wouldn’t call TUC’s political allegory ‘deft.’ Heavy-handed, obvious and somewhat timely, but not deft.

Yeah, the bureaucracy at the EU did a great job and forcing Italy to keep her borders open with Iran in China that it could end up being the first hot spot of COVID-19. That national referendum in the UK should have been totally overridden by the bureaucracy to have ensuring that could have been the UK in the spirit of democracy. Get the analog, the AI bureaucracy is so stagnant, you’ll be wishing the synths ran it.

The point is that leading into the Picard series it was reported that it would be an analogy to what was going on in the world today. Like Brexit. I was not commenting on if Brexit was a good idea or not. Only that Picard, before the show streamed, was compared to it. The only opinion I offered was that I felt it was good that no such comparisons occurred in it.

Picard had a referendum on Picardexit and Raffi was on the losing side. Raffi the remainer, who got thrown out anyway. Awkward.

I fail to see how that compares to the Brixit situation.

I thought bio-filters onboard ships are always neutralizing any airborne microscopic lifeforms. So the crew would not need to be separated while aboard. I think Goldsman forgets Star Trek takes place in the future.

explain the de-evolution virus that spread throughout the ship in an episode of TNG? if trek wants to do a pandemic on a ship it’d be easy eneugh to simply say “the tech doesn’t work on it!”

Bio-filters are a component of the transporter and protect against infections being *introduced* by that route, but there’s no mention of something similar in the onboard air circulation (hence outbreaks of nanites or Barclay’s Protomorphosis Syndrome where the pathogen *originates* onboard), nor any check for infection if they arrive by shuttle or gangway, apart from a visit to Sickbay.

I’m pretty sure they could reverse techno babble their way through it….

“It is too sensitive, too upsetting, too frightening…”

So, pretty much everything immigration is NOT, eh?

These “elites” need to get out of their walled mansions and take a walk through lower class neighborhoods every once in a while. Perhaps then, they would understand why the prospect of foreign masses pouring into one’s country is just as upsetting and frightening as the prospect of global pandemic. :P

A few slight differences. For example, immigrants aren’t randomly killing thousands of people every day.

He was talking about a pandemic not illegal immigration. Immigrants are good people, society can do better.

You do realize those “foreign masses pouring into the country” are PRODUCING FOOD for us, right?

Which could just as easily be done by documented workers. Both employer and employer choose to break the law, both should be punished.

The only way documented workers can make up that particular workforce is if the general workforce gets slimmed down massively by ‘something’ and HAS to take more menial low-paying jobs. Basically force lower-mid and mid- out into the fields to do the dirty work. Why, that would require so many aspects of the country to crash that — oh, hmm.

“So, pretty much everything immigration is NOT, eh?”

Not to them, Boze. It’s the first time in a long time that the privileged in class and wealth actually are affected by a big calamity (and maybe even more so than us socially isolated outsiders, thanks to their virulent social networks), while waves of mass immigration and all the other disasters that befell Western citizens in the past 20 years – losing their jobs, losing their houses, seeing their savings devalued, faced with the constant threat of Islamic terrorism and soaring crime – did nothing to those who decreed these injustices upon the people! “Not in my backyard”!

So yeah, there is a certain hypocrisy in Stewart decrying this as “too sensitive, too upsetting, too frightening” (being in the prime risk group) while deliciously twisting his tone-deaf dagger on all these disasters that hurt a whole lot of more people (so far)!

Only hate-fueled, xenophobic bigots worry about “foreign masses.” How someone like you would ever like STAR TREK is beyond me.

Please, Please get rid of Mister Goldsman, his is just bankrupt as a writer and the f*ing hubris is that he still directs episode… He is even more bad as a director than a writer.

I’m starting to agree about Goldsman. He seem to be the one that made some of the worst decisions on both Discovery and Picard. And this doesn’t sound like a pretty bad idea as well. So happy Stewart is against it, so it has no chance of happening.

“Hey, if we can’t do this on Picard, then there’s Discovery… or Lower Decks…” – Goldsman (not an actual quote; just humor to make a point)

Akiva does need to be shown the door. He is not a talented Director, nor Writer. Moreso egomaniac.

Tiger2, I’m moving further and further towards a sadly negative view of Goldman too.

I’ve been trying to give Goldsman every benefit of the doubt, but after listening to him on the Star Trek podcasts on Deadline as well as the features on the official site, I find so many of the things he says cringe-worthy and off-putting.

It’s hard to know exactly how much power or influence he’s had, but the best I can say is that the episodes he’s directed were not the best, and he’s decidedly not a good spokesperson.

All that said though, the thing that is really giving me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach is the rumours that Goldsman will be leading development and showrunner of one of the new live action series, specifically the Pike show.

Just no…please

I’m not fan of Goldman either. But to be fair the episodes he directed had a lot of problems that a better director would not have been able to overcome.

Myself, I’m slowly moving to the side of thinking that the deal with Secret Hideout is the problem more so than Goldman himself. I’d like to see the deal with them annulled and see what someone else can do with the IP. I don’t think it is in good hands now at all.

I remember the time Goldsman was giggling like a teenage child in an interview when the concept of the double penises of the klingons came up. (Wasn’t this also his idea?) Anyway, we are talking about the guy who wrote Batman and Robin here. I rest my case.

He was also showrunner on Fringe, which was decent scifi melodrama.

Was he the showrunner in all of the seasons of Fringe? I think the best years of Fringe had some other showrunners.

Fringe was fair but I would not say it was anywhere near good stuff. I did record it and watch it but for some time I would consider removing it from the DVR record list. By the time I opted to the show was coming to an end anyway so I stuck it out.

Personally, my interest in Fringe was mainly due to Leonard Nimoy’s involvment and it being one of the last TV stuff he has ever done in his career.

A great idea on how they could do a virus-related storyline Trek already has a storyline they could adapt…in the Homecoming novels for Star Trek Voyager after the Voyager crew returns home a virus is released throughout the Federation that causes people to randomly turn into Borg with no assimilation

Maybe not this season but next season they could adapt that storyline to fit in with Picard…perhaps in re-activating the Borg Cube, this virus was released and dispersed throughout the quadrant.

OR if the rumors are true and they are concepting an Admiral Janeway series this would be a perfect storyline for that as well, perhaps the Borg have finally after all these years recovered from the damage done to them by Voyager and release this virus…

If you’d like to see the pandemic narrative in a comedy, watch Medical Police – especially the first four episodes. It was filmed last year but it’s all there. On Netflix.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m stoned or not, but I was really surprised by how good Goldsman’s suggested Captain’s Log was. I do agree, though, that’s it’s a LITTLE too soon to cover the pandemic as soon as next season. It would seem opportunistic, not reflective, this soon.

Give Dr. Crusher thirty minutes, she’ll whip up a cure.

That was something annoying about Trek – why would the Enterprise be dispatched to some Warp capable society with some cure to a plague on board, when all Starfleet needed to do was just transmit the recipe to the locals so they could just whip of a batch of medicine themselves?

You have to ask the writers of the episodes that question. And maybe even ask whoever approved of those stories…

Goldsman’s work on the finale was absolutely terrible. He has zero clue how to direct and edit action.

Not trying to cut Goldsman any slack here (I think he is godawful in pretty much everything he does, so at least there’s consistency, and Braga is a lameass writer turned director too, though at least he was riding a better script with one or two of his ORVILLEs), but even seasoned directors seem to foul up trek, and that’s a tradition going at least back to TNG’s first seasons. Then again, I find a lot of contemporary tube stuff to be filled with useless movement, like cameras tracking past refractive elements while shooting close views, I guess just to enliven the image. Not just a SF thing, my wife was watching some show about Washington politics (SCANDAL maybe?) a few years ago and it was the same thing, just useless and unmotivated camera moves, along with defacto hysterical cutting.

I don’t object to superfast cutting on principal, it is a very effective tool, but not when you trot it out for everything. Overcutting a stunt scene undermines the impact of the actual stunt, and can actually work against being convincing (Bourne climbing a wall in the first BOURNE is my classic go-to on that, along with a fight in a bank — I remember pretty much rejecting the movie just on the basis of those bits, because it seemed like a movie where they failed to get it right while shooting and resorted to editing to hide all the countless flaws (if Clive Owen hadn’t been in it, I probably would have walked out.)

Thanks for this analysis kmart.

It helps me frame a number of things that have been bugging me.

And thank God for that! Remember when Trek was an escapist safe place for imagining a better world and not this misrepresentation of a “mirror of contemporary society” that Kurtzman came up with? When Trek did metaphor, it was in an abstract, nuanced and tasteful way, and it certainly didn’t do so every episode of the season, of which where were 26 and not just 10. Still totally eludes me why people want to see all the bad and base stuff that happens to them on a daily basis, just in the future! It’s called science FICTION, not political documentary ;)

And to add to that VS… When Trek DID do the more “in your face” episodes they were always badly done. Even when the message was something everyone could easily get behind. They were just bad mainly because the analogy was so childishly obvious.

“ …Trek was an escapist safe place for imagining a better world and not this misrepresentation of a “mirror of contemporary society” that Kurtzman came up with? ”

Er, Gene Roddenberry came up with that.

And wasn’t everyone here bashing the Abrams Trek movies for *not* being a metaphor for modern issues?

It was a bad metaphor. Despite being IN YOUR FACE does anyone get Starfleet firing photon torpedoes from the neutral zone at Q’onos while being mean to Kahn was a metaphor for George W Bush? No? So not only did this not get the (senseless) point they wanted to make but in trying to do so it blew major holes in Kelvin universe story telling – i.e. why not beam to the next planet like Kahn, Kahn is a poor abused guy just trying to save his family, why is Q’onos like right next to Earth, why can’t the 1701 last 10 seconds in combat? So political analog zero, storytelling zero – a total zero all around. Kind of like Picard, in trying to force BREXIT on Picard you end up with AI = life where everyone now can live forever, no one gets sick, AI life can be engineered to breath in space and no one really gets the analog at all anymore.
Dare we compare that to the pro-Vietnam “A private little war”. It makes for a good story (Klingons vs. Federation on a primitive world with tons of ethical dilemmas) while also being a good easy to understand analog (Fed = USA, Klingons = USSR, primitive planet = Korea or Vietnam). Same with Star Trek VI (Fed = USA, Klingons = Russia). So yes Trek can be a political analogy but only when the writers have a clue.
I’m going to say some of these analogs are “natural” when they relate to a frigate in the 18th century and some are “unnatural” and that’s what makes the difference.

I was wondering if Khan can beam from Earth to Q’onos then why send the Enterprise to fetch him? Why not just lock onto him and beam him back directly into a brig?

Eh, not a single bit of Into Darkness holds together from a logic or motivation point of view. It’s basically not even worth asking. Nothing makes sense.

That is correct but a lot of it could have been fixed pretty easily. For example, Khan could have been beamed to a cloaked ship in orbit and bolted immediately for Q’onos. Easily fixed that does not include beaming from one star system to another. Although I do know they did something like that in Trek ’09. Which did play fast and loose with galactic geography. Something I did not like in a film I otherwise enjoyed.

I suppose that both sides of this argument are generally well represented here.

Thank you!!! Basically what I’ve been saying. I have people in my life I can’t escape from so don’t want to turn the TV on to run into them there!! We invest ourselves in these characters then our hearts are wrenched because someone thinks having “bad and base stuff” being done to beloved characters would add more drama or pathos. Guess if I want happily-ever-after I’ll be told to go watch The Waltons or something like that. Which maybe might be a good idea. Maybe I should stop watching Star Trek. Look out, guys. You might be pushing loyal fans away. Do I have to watch the sun set on Star Trek and say good-bye while these guys take it in a dystopian direction? Meh. It’s only a TV show after all.

Easy answer to any pandemic story line – build golumns and upload into them that no one gets sick. Or has Picard decided not to share that tech? Anytime anyone is going to break down, build another, upload them. If they blow up, keep some particles to upload into a golum.

Although CBS and folks here have cited episodes across the series as having epidemic/pandemic plotlines, I really don’t think any series has done justice to the psycho-social feel of a pandemic.

Our ensembles of heros never had to deal with the unwinding things that we know now as a hallmark of pandemic.

Bob Orci popped in a couple of weeks ago to ask whether we really thought pandemic had been covered. Most of us said no. I suspect that it’s because most of the pandemics in Trek happened to some aliens of the week, not the ensemble we care about. We were never confronted by the feeling of powerlessness that so many feel in this crisis and challenged to find the hope beyond.

While I agree that it will be too raw for a year or two, I suspect that our societies will want art and entertainment to reflect what happened. Perhaps entertainment will finally turn away from post 9/11 grimdark to determined hopepunk.

If I had a sci-fi book on pandemics to recommend in the meantime, it’s the Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. It manages to counterpoint the confusion, unintended failures, and things falling apart elements of pandemic with determination and faith. And the optimism does win out.

Forgive my amusement, but the average Joe has been feeling “powerless” and “challenged to find hope” a whole lot longer before this crisis that finally affects all, rich and poor. So maybe now is a time when all classes of society come together in unity once again, for being able to relate to each others’ plight at last, as it is the same?

Also, I find the way this “hopepunk” has been done by the current guard – by crudely and violently amplifying the negativity – to be not healing at all. Finding hope in a burnt down house teeming with cannibals and eyeball-scraping sickos is a tough order.

Maybe they will realize that Star Trek is about an optimistic future, made to counterbalance what is happening in the real world. It was created during the Cold War after all.

People say that, but it doesn’t really hold up. Pretty much every time Kirk ever ran into anyone else from Starfleet or the Federation brass, he or she was rude, angry, insane, murderous, or violating the Prime Directive.

Picard looks like a first-rate English gentleman in that White suit and hat! Doesn’t look French at all!!!

So, if this happens on a starship, I guess the first thing to want wouldn’t be toilet paper but time on the holodeck. No need for isolation with computergenerated people.

Btw, what happens if you use a toilet on the holodeck?…

Results are probably repurposed as snacks while in there.

The rules of the hollodeck seem to have never been nailed down in any way shape or form. Sometimes the items are just photons and force fields. Others they are real solid objects. Sometimes characters are only as real as a painting other times they are sentient and argue they should all have rights. I’ve wondered what happens if you eat hollodeck food when you leave the room. Does it vanish from your stomach? Did you feel satisfied eating it to begin with? And who cleans up Quark’s hollosuites given the unsavory activity that has been eluded to take place in them? It has arguably been the most inconsistent piece of tech on the show.

I always wondered how the drinks with umbrellas on Voyager’s holodeck could have been real when everyone was on replicator rations.

Ethical question … if you have a cannibal onboard and he gobbles a holo version of his species, is it murder or is it dinner?

And if you’re right and you don’t get carbs from the meal, you could starve to death in the holodeck like the tribbles did with the poisoned quadro-triticale.

Essentially are crimes committed in the holodeck against holo-characters in holo-environments still crimes?

Probably the same thing that happens when you get done getting busy with a holo-hooker. They send in a Ferengi with a mop and a bucket to clean it up….

Ferengi ear wax/whacks. (I can’t get a ‘real’ warning for that, this is about the holodeck.)

AI life golumn benefit (in addition to super strength, breathing in space) = no need to use a toilet if you are powered on energy. TP is obsolete.
Let’s get that engineered life ASAP.

That opens up a Data question… He said he was “fully functional”. Does that mean he expels waste as well? Why would he even need to?

I’d rather have a story about how media hypes up everything,even this corona thing,and not in a preachy way. I don’t want preachy stuff in my entertainment,it’s not why I watch it. If I want preachy stuff I’ll see a priest. lol!

I don’t want to be preached to, either. The worst episodes were when they preached to the audience. I also don’t want shows that are only there to reinforce producers or actors opinions on things. If such takes are a part of the show then they need to present multiple takes on issues without being judgey.

Yes,exactly! I also watch Doctor Who and other shows……yes,there ARE other things to watch than Trek,lol!….and DW had two incredibly preachy episodes this season. I rewatched them over the weekend since I was incredibly bored watching them the first time and though they were better second time around,they were still too preachy. My least favorite episodes this season. And yes,there are preachy Trek episodes,but they don’t always go overboard on the preachiness,it’s more subtle.

Or not take a side at all. SYMBIOSIS was all over the place, esp w/ the token ‘just say no’ speech from Tasha, but the one part of the ep that resonatedd with me was the end, when Picard just wants to get away, disgusted by the whole business. As close as TNG came to the haunting end that made up for most of A PRIVATE LITTLE WAR, when Kirk says “Serpents for the garden of Eden. We’re very tired Mr. Scott – beam us up home” and they just split that scene.

“Or not take a side at all.”

That too. But such a thing was indeed rare.

Agreed, I will again give the example of the episode “Duet” from the dreaded first season of DS9. That is one solid episode that looked at the issue from both sides and didn’t preach in anyway. It is still one of my absolute favorites.

I have to disagree strongly. From what two side do you speak? From where I stand there are two pespectives presented but they are pretty much on the same side. Ät least we have to admit that there is a third side and that side is daemonized for a good cause.

It looked at the problem from both Cardassian and Bajoran perspective and how not all Cardassians were monsters. The obvious third side was the “war is hell” plot which is of course the demonized bit, but they could have easily taken the Bajoran or the Cardassian side. They opt to let us make the judgment.

Unless they get rid of every single writer and producer who works on the show, and find better replacements, I don’t want a season two at all. I wish season one would somehow just wink out of existence, and take “Discovery” with it.

Yeah I’m inclined to agree, sadly. ST: Picard started off strong, and then turned into an unfocused mess. Just like Discovery. It was nice to see Patrick Steward as Picard again, but unless something can be done with the writing, Season 2 is not something I will be anticipating.

I would think this would be interesting to people here, something I would never have known if i wasn’t spending too much time online. The same actor was considered for both Obi-Wan and Dr. Noonian Soong!

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0525601/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Such a story line would a little too “on the nose”. “The Last Ship” did it well, though. Any how, and not to make light of current events, this is Star Trek and we’ve seen them deal with this before: “Dr. McCoy, there’s sickness everywhere.” McCoy: “Hold my Tranya.” If only it were that easy.

I just found out today that the actress who plays “Commodore Oh” was the same actress who played Daniel Larusso’s girlfriend in Karate Kid II in 1986.

Holy smokes.

Am I the only one who didn’t know?

I knew her from the BABYLON 5 pilot, Laurel Takeshima I think was the character name, she was succeeded by Ivanova in the series, but JMS hinted early on he wanted to bring her back, because he ‘knew’ she was in on the whole plot, though apparently not too willingly. I think an altered version of that storyline wound up being what brought Pat Tallman’s Lyta back late in s2.

The next season should be about a gang of Pakled thieves who steal Picard’s golem and leave “Picard” in a dusty old brain in a jar.

Whilst the crew are trying to help Brain Jar Picard, the Pakled leader goes joy-riding in the Picard golem, trying to convince different species to give him “nice things” because he is “That Picard human”

Starfleet becomes concerned that Picard is giving away Federation secrets to different species, including the Romulans, and puts together an elite team to capture him.

Unfortunately Pakled-Picard is so (stupidly) unpredictable the team fail to capture him and end up being captured themselves by the Romulans.

Pakled-Picard decides to return the Golem to Picard after starting a war between two species and expecting Picard to sort it all out. Season ends with Picard laughing and everyone looking confused.
“Sometimes you just have to bow to the absurd.”

Season 1 didn’t really have any of those current event themes that were alluded to prior to release. There might be identifiable circumstances (like Romulan and Borg refugees), but they were largely circumstantial to the story and were left unexplored. There were glimpses of it buried in dialogue (such as Starfleet taking the position that it was trying to serve the greater good), but it was not revealed through storytelling and was not integral to the plot.

I bring that up because ultimately I don’t think you can expect them to tell an allegory based on current events even if it becomes part of the show’s narrative.

It’s not even that it’s too soon, it would appear as some way to profit off of a horrible occurrence with no clear message other than “This was bad, there is no message, we just wanted to use current events to push our product.” I’m glad this isn’t the direction Patrick Stewart would like to go.

100 percent agree with Sir Patrick. CBSAA needs to tell Goldsman to come up with an extraordinarily good original story for S2, not some lazy idea generated from the pandemic. If Goldsman can’t some up with something great, then maybe its time for someone else to step up. If I want some alien virus story, I will go dig up an old copy of the Andromeda Strain haha. Btw, I was under the impression Chabon already pitched something to Patrick months ago. I wonder what happened to that story?

Why do I get the feeling that Chabon was overruled in most of his decisions regarding Picard behind the scenes. Reading between the lines, I think there was just too many cooks in the kitchen and everyone seemed to have a different idea where the show would go. I think this has been the biggest problem of Secret Hideouts handling of Trek. They don’t seem to trust a singular vision for their Trek series. Everyone wants a piece of it. Or maybe I am just misreading it.

Hard to say. I think Chabon had the authority for S1 but as soon as he moved onto his other project (and understandably so), perhaps Goldsman is trying to pull rank. As for the too many cooks idea, yeah that may be so. Apparently Matalas is a new EP for the show – how many exec producers does a show need? Oh well, let’s see what they come up with, maybe Matalas is exactly what the show needs.

I like what Matalas did with 12 monkeys, but that show was kind of his singular vision. He didn’t had anyone up from him telling him what to do, apart from Syfy. I am cautiously optimistic about him being the new showrunner, but I was feeling similar when Chabon was announced for season 1, so I don’t believe Matalas would have the same amount of freedom under both Kurtzman and Goldsman.

All the more reason to do one then. Stewart’s overweening pride and influence is one the main reasons Picard was so diabolically bad.

I mean, if there’s an interesting story to be told, I see no real problem. But judging from the first season, they don’t really know how to tell a story or making out, what their story is even really about. Plus it would be kind of reacative, which isn’t really what scifi as a tool for story telling is for …

Not being insensitve or disrespectful is a nice sentiment, but since when is that a concern for Discovery or Picard? … theres decapitated babies, Tits, Piss-jokes, Swearing and much much more left and right … and that’s not even counting Picards absurd bodycount …

Please don’t. We already have too much reality as it is.

By any chance, does anyone know where I would go to apply for one of those concept art positions (assuming there are still any)?

So I messaged her and apparently there was a misunderstanding. When she said there was “work to be had”, she was talking about the genre as a whole. Picard does NOT currently need concept artists.

Sorry, but the series Picard is absolutely crap.