What was good about Star Trek Nemesis? The Riker/Troi wedding, the few other character moments and the snazzy new teleporter animation. Oh and the line about how the plan to use Shinzon against the Federation was abandoned when the Romulan government changed. That got a chuckle out of me.

What was bad? Basically everything else. The crew is old, tired and there weren't any new or interesting ideas or concepts in this one. The ending of all 4 TNG movies is the same: Picard gets in a fist fight with the bad guy. The only thing worse than action Picard is action Riker. At least Patrick Stewart is shredded. Riker looks like he's full of shredded cheese. No one else really had anything to do. Crusher had maybe 5 lines in the whole movie.

I can see the thinking behind the origins of the movie. The previous film, Insurrection, was helmed by Trek veteran Jonathan Frakes and written by Michael Pillar, who deserves credit for saving the show in season 3. It ended up being terrible, so they decided to go the opposite route for the sequel: Newcomers to Trek. Just like Wrath of Khan! And somehow they also decided to rip off that story as well. But instead of people who understood Trek to make a great Trek film, they tried to make some generic story about clones and shoehorn Trek into it and this was the result.

Star Trek is about exploring space, encountering new civilizations, having an optimistic view of humanity, ethical dilemmas, interesting characters. This movie had none of that. Well there was supposed to be some kind of nature vs nurture argument there with the Picard and Data clones but it was hard to find under the bog standard B-level action and plot.

I'm surprised they were actually able to salvage parts of the story of this when they made Star Trek 2009 and then Picard. I wouldn't mind seeing the "actor's cut" version of the film that includes all the cut scenes. But I doubt that would've saved the movie since you can only put so much lipstick on a pig.

Onto Picard next!

My summary of the 4 TNG movies:

Generations - Flawed
First Contact - Great
Insurrection - Boring
Nemesis - Bad

1 for 4. Ouch, it's such a shame they never figured out how to successfully put TNG on the big screen.

I really like Masks. It's a good anthropology episode. I just watched it a month ago and i think

Picard and Scotty having a drink on the bridge of the original Enterprise was amazing stuff tho

Yes, it was very sweet

ST TNG S6E06: True Q

Something I thought I'd never see, a humdrum episode with Q. At's all about a Q-changeling who's trying to work out her own powers.

Very very average, though I like the bit where Q turning a nagging Crusher into a whining dog lol.


5/10

You're going to need a lot more lipstick.

Is Picard really that bad? Ugh. I saw the first episode when they put it on youtube and thought it was fine.

True Q was a decent episode. The worst Q episode was the Robin Hood one. It felt exactly the same as a "holodeck gone wrong" episode. Oh wait the actual worst Q episode was the one where he gave Riker his powers or something. I barely remember it but it was a typical first season clunker.

Picard is better than Discovery, but that's not saying much.

It's generally OK.

Unpopular take: I'm generally lukewarm at best to nearly all the Q episodes. The only really great one is Tapestry.

De Lancie absolutely owns that role, and every scene with him and Stewart is a joy, but the episodes themselves...not so much.

Picard episode 1 is mostly setup and exposition. The plot is a complete ripoff of Blade Runner. A class of robots that go haywire and then are banned is the exact same backstory. And there are robots with implanted memories who don't know they're robots. And it's a bit odd that robots are suddenly the centerpiece to a Star Trek story.

Yes we had Data/Lore/B4 but they were one of a kind Soong robots that no one else could replicate. But robots didn't really seem to be part of the Star Trek universe, especially not mass produced worker (slave?) robots. And now they've apparently been there all the time and are the cause of a giant catastrophe that shakes intergalactic politics. It feels incongruous.

But once you get over that retcon or whatever you want to call it, I enjoyed the episode.

The beginning of episode 2 feels like I'm watching Blade Runner again. The rest of the episode is slow and full of exposition. I'm digging it but hope the pace picks up soon.

Done with episode 3. I'm hyped up to go to space with Picard's new crew now. I've gone back in the thread and seems like there was a lot of criticism of the show. I like it. It feels like modern Star Trek with a bigger budget. Not dumb like the Abrams movies but not super cerebral like some TNG episodes.

And people were confused that the admiral was a Vulcan but the first thing they showed when she appeared was an IDIC symbol on her desk, so I thought it was obvious that she was a Vulcan. Or at least she is supposed to be Vulcan. Maybe she's really a Romulan or a robot or has some other kind of secret identity.

The show is kind of dragging at this point. I thought they were done with new character introductions. Is there anything I need to know about Seven of Nine, other than that she was an ex-Borg character introduced to Voyager to boost ratings? I've never seen an episode of that show with her.

Halfway done with the show. It's...fine I guess. The serialized format isn't working too well. There are too many secrets and conspiracies and I think every single episode has started with a flashback. The 5 episodes probably could've been condensed to 4 or even 3. I feel like the payoff is going to be disappointing, especially since the show is going for at least another season.

Wait till you get to the crazy one where Picard affects an outrageous French accent. I was expecting him to say 'your father smells of elderberries' at any point.


Edit: ah, just checked, that was episode 5 so you've already seen it. Dragging? Okay, it doesn't get on with the story much but it's fun.

Yay stuff finally happened in episode 6. When the plot moves ahead and/or there is emotional stuff happening, like Picard dealing with his past assimilation, the show is good.

It's interesting that the TNG theme is credited as the Star Trek: The Motion Picture theme. I wonder if that was due to cost or rights issues or they wanted to throw a really old reference in there.

The show would be better if they didn't have the mystery/conspiracy/secret plot where the fate of the galaxy is at stake. The Picard/Troi/Riker reunion featuring Soji dealing with her lack of humanity is 10x more interesting than all that other nonsense. Marina Sirtis was doing Marina Sirtis rather than Troi but these actors have such good chemistry that it doesn't matter. It's such a contrast to all the new actors. Or maybe it's just me as the audience has a connection to the old actors but not the new.

They should've done a low stakes drama rather than an action/adventure where the main character can't do any action. I doubt Patrick Stewart would've come back if that was the case, nor do I think that the CBS execs would greenlight such a series.

It also feels like The Inner Light, Lore and Lal have all been retconned out of the show.

And these Blade Runner-esque synths along with Romulans' hatred of AI and robots have been retconned in.

They finally answered all the mysteries and looks like the plot will be more straightforward from here. Just the final 2 episodes left.



The 2nd half of the series has been really good. The first half was plodding.

I give the series a solid 3 out of 5. They wrapped up the story completely so it'll be interesting to see where they go with season 2.

On to Lower Decks next.

Lower Decks gets a 4 out of 5. It's silly and very meta and self referential but it's a classic Star Trek series with episodic adventures based on exploration with great characters.

It makes me wish they did a straight up cartoon Star Trek series instead of a comedy. But I guess Strange New Worlds is supposed to be doing the classic Trek formula. I'm really looking forward to that now.

Is Discovery worth watching? With TNG it was worth it to slog through the early, bad episodes to get to the good stuff but I don't think I have the energy to do that again with another series. I guess I'll give the first few episodes a shot and see how it goes.

I started watching Discovery. The first two episodes are pretty good. It feels like they're going for a lot of low hanging fruit here: War with the Klingons, Sarek and Vulcans are prominent and I hear that soon appearing will be Mudd, Section 31 and in season 2 the Enterprise with Pike, Spock and Number One.

What ever happened to boldly going where no one has gone before? I guess that's what happens when you make yet another prequel, and yet another heavily serialized show. I'm intrigued though and looking forward to the rest of the season.

Star Trek Discovery is not Star Trek. Just like how Star Trek 2009 is not Star Trek. Star Trek 2009 was a generic hero's journey sci-fi movie using the characters and universe of Star Trek. Star Trek Discovery is a generic sci-fi action/adventure series using characters, events and settings from Star Trek. Especially with all the silly character twists. I thought the first one was bad but the 2nd one is even worse.

That being said it's not a terrible show and I am enjoying it. But the rehash of Trek tropes like the Klingons, Mirror Universe, Harry Mudd (Rainn Wilson was pretty good), Sarek and the Vulcans combined with the generic story and no thematic depth at all severely limits it.

And I still have 3 episodes to go in the 1st season.

I made it 2-3 episodes into S2 before I bailed. It's an awful show with virtually no redeeming features.

Can't think of a ST character I like less than the lead for ST. They should have made it about Michelle Yeoh.

The only good things in S2 is Pike and Number One, and Yeoh imo

The fishy guy is ok too.