holy crap the first episode of picard is so good

[solarbird]

I kind of want to get this down somewhere before I go to bed.

Picard's first episode really surprised me with how good it is, how Star Trek it is without being more of the same old.

And I think it's because it cares about stuff.

Star Trek needs to care about stuff. To work, I mean. it needs to care about stuff - big stuff that matters, not small shit like how clever the writer thinks they are or how cool this space battle looks or whatever.

And this one hour of Picard cares more about stuff that matters than everything J. J Abrams has ever done combined, including the work he's done that I actually liked.

That's... that's what's going on. I think. For me.

Comments

[redsixwing]

That's a solid recommendation.

I am so VERY done with 'everything must be bleak! and reboots! everyone is bad and the bad guys win!' and was dreading Picard being more of the same.

[solarbird]

I'm not talking about tone. (It's not that, but it's too early to talk about overall tone.) I'm talking about caring about something, kind of an...

Okay, original philosophical nihilism wasn't "don't care about anything because nothing matters," it was "you have to make your own meaning in life because there isn't one innately," and those are very different. But in common parlance, the former definition is what's used, so I'm going to use that here.

And there's a lot of nihilism in that sense around in politics and in media. That's not the same as bleakness; Battlestar Galactica was bleak as fuck but was not nihilistic, even as it played with philosophical nihilism! South Park isn't bleak at all, but is nihilistic as fuck, saying you have to be stupid to care about anything, c.f. South Park Conservatism.

And Picard, the series?

It cares about shit, and it thinks that's important. At least, that's what it's demonstrating so far, after one episode.

That is what I mean.

[oh6]

I've been seeing posters for this around lately. Looking at the Wikipedia page... well hey, I'm not familiar with most of the creators, but I can easily imagine that Michael Chabon has concerns of some consequence.

[sistawendy]

Star Trek needs to care about stuff.

Yup. That's the difference between Real Trek, i.e. the Trek that made Trek great, and Bro Trek, the debased version.