#I was PISSED when Q showed back up at that little end scene in Picard

[youngpettyqueen]

I was writing last night so I didnt liveblog my thoughts on it but! I am officially all caught up with Discovery, until s5 premieres later this week. gonna discuss my thoughts below, so spoiler warning!

overall, I really like Discovery! I love the characters, I love the dynamics between all of them, and I think the plots each season have been fun. sure, some of them are a bit convoluted, but hey its Star Trek so I expect that

I think jumping 930 years into the future helped with some of the issues I was having with the first 2 seasons, in that it was really hard to see this series as a prequel. ive talked a lot about how while the writing and everything made it clear this was a prequel, it just didnt look like a prequel. now, it doesnt have to, and the writing isnt held back by having to be a prequel, so we get to see and do some really cool shit. the new species introduced were awesome, ive loved seeing the federation come together, ive loved seeing different species we already knew and loved but so far in the future. I think the choice to go so far into the future was, overall, a good one

I think my biggest gripe overall with Discovery is that so many characters just. dont stay dead. I think this was fine with Hugh, I thought how they did it with him made as much sense (as much sense as anything in Star Trek makes) and it was pulled off really well, and I was satisfied from a writing standpoint and from an emotional standpoint. with Gray it was... fine. it was well-explained, but a bit of a cop-out. still, fine. Book's made me roll my eyes. im sorry, his was stupid. here's why I think so

I like Book. im not super attached to him, but I like him. I liked the conflict with him in s4. and I thought his death was actually done really well. it was sudden, and jarring, but you also realized pretty quickly that yeah. it was always going to end this way. Michael did everything she could, but she was never going to be able to save him. for a brief moment we think maybe he's saved, and then he's gone. it was harsh, but it was good (lemme give a shoutout to Sonequa Martin-Green's acting again cause her crying is VISCERAL) and then its immediately undone because Book is miraculously saved by 10-C. so, now, on top of having a cop-out resurrection, we also have an established pattern of Discovery being unwilling to kill characters and keep them dead

this isnt true with every case, of course. Discovery has absolutely no problem with killing villains and minor characters, and even killing characters we're familiar with but who dont play major roles. but now that we've done this resurrection thing multiple times, its going to affect how I view s5 and any situation they present where a major character might die. the emotional stakes just won't be there, because im gonna sit there and think about how we've been here before, and its never stuck. ill have a hard time taking any of those situations seriously, because ill be wondering how theyre gonna bring them back this time

that said, im still excited for s5 and cant wait to see what it has in store. of the newer Treks ive seen so far, Discovery is definitely one of the better ones. its absolutely better than Picard. I have a hard time comparing it to Lower Decks, since theyre such vastly different shows, but ive enjoyed it just as much as I enjoyed Lower Decks. from what we saw of the SNW cast in Discovery, im now cautiously optimistic that ill at least enjoy the characters in SNW, even if I have to deal with. another prequel

I probably won't liveblog Discovery s5 when I watch it, just to avoid spoilers. so, see yall when I start SNW tonight!

[v-e-l-v-e-t-g-o-l-d-m-i-n-e]

   I don't usually read Star Trek comics, but I've spent a good chunk of tonight reading The Q Conflict. It's a big crossover comic between TOS,  TNG, DS9 and . The official summary is this:

When a dispute between godlike beings threatens the galaxy, it will take all of Starfleet's best captains to stop them. James T. Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard, Kathryn Janeway, and Benjamin Sisko must go head-to-head in a competition rigged by the arrogant Q and his nigh-omnipotent cohorts.

   I, of course, read this hoping for some Qcard moments. There ain't many lmao but some comments below the cut (spoilers for the whole thing, as well as a few images)

   There's some very wacky space phenomena happening all around, and Picard finds evidence that Q is involved. He gets very mad and yells for Q to give an explanation, and Q shows up to talk with him.

   I like that Q shows some... consideration... sort of? In explaining things for Picard, but I love how big mad Picard gets, and that Q's reaction is immediately to escalate like, oh, do you want to try something different? FINE

   That's when the whole thing with the other godlike being happens, and they set up a sort of competition with humans representing them. Trelane gets Kirk to represent him and Q, of course (of course) gets Picard to represent the Q.

   Janeway wins the first round, and Q gets very pissed that Picard was outsmarted by Riker, of all people (lmao) and I love this interaction between them, feels very natural, and I love the others commenting on them. Even Spock is like, are they always like this or...?

   I love how well Riker knows Picard and also... outside people viewing them arguing together lmao I deeply enjoyed these scenes

   Then ehhh i'm not going to talk much about the rest of the comic but it's pretty entertaining, I have a weakness for messy Trek crossovers likes this and is enjoyable to see these different characters coming together

   In the end, with the help of Amanda the Q and Wes Crusher, the Captains manage to fight back against Q, and Q is forced to try to find a diplomatic solution for their conflict, so this is what happens.

   But what I really love is the last page - when Q comes to see Picard after all the mess is sorted out.

   I enjoy this ending a lot, because Q spends most of the comic acting like his TNG s1 big jerk self, putting off a show of being childish and petulant and annoying. Kirk is wary of him, Sisko is out of fucks to give, Janeway knows him a little but she's careful in trusting him, and Picard doesn't trust him either and spends the whole time wondering what the hell does Q really want, and in the end? Q was trying to find a less bloody way to solve things but knew very well he couldn't simple suggest a diplomatic solution for the Continuum, because the Continuum wanted a war. He had to give a show first and fail espetacularly, and that's what he did and ahhh I just love that this was his main motivation ~~

   I also really love that Picard isn't surprised by this development and speaks fairly calmly with Q when it's just the two of them like this.

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek: Ranking the Stories Set in the Present Day

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So the new Star Trek: Picard trailer has dropped and among the big plot twists it revealed are the fact that Picard & Co are going to be travelling back to Earth, circa 2022 AD. We’re looking forward to exciting scenes of people from the 24th century being unable to drive cars (despite the pretty lengthy car chase we saw in the last episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks), Q and Picard sparring again, and wondering how Guinan fits into all this. My personal theory is that after her adventures with Picard and Mark Twain in the 19th century, Guinan decided to stick around on Earth, eventually posing as an actor called Whoopi Goldberg.

This is far from the first time Star Trek has travelled back to the present day – even if “present day” is pretty broad for the 55-year-old franchise. We have no way of knowing why the series keeps returning to this setting that doesn’t need the manufacture of any new props, sets or costumes, but it seems like a good time to look at when Star Trek has done this before and ask “Who wore it better?”

6. Assignment: Earth

This episode would prove to be a particularly tricky one for nearly every single time travel episode that has come since, in that it shows time travel for the Federation is so easy and routine that the Enterprise can just nip back to the Cold War to see why we never Great Filtered ourselves out of existence. Unfortunately, in this episode Kirk and Spock don’t get to see much of 20th century Earth, or indeed do much of anything.

‘Assignment: Earth’ was conceived as a backdoor pilot for a new series about Gary Seven, a human bred and raised by aliens to act as a secret agent on Earth and protect us from our own capacity for self-destruction. This means Kirk and Spock’s role is little more than to sit around and say “Wow, this looks like a great idea for a television show!”

Still, I can’t help but wonder about a Star Trek franchise in the parallel universe where its first spin-off was a spy show set in 1968.

5. Carpenter Street

This episode of Star Trek: Enterprise stands out because it is perhaps the only episode on this list where they decided the present day should be filmed any differently from the space future. The lighting, the camera work, the whole episode feels much more like Angel, or a cop show from the period than the Star Trek style that had been uniformly adopted since The Next Generation.

Usually when Star Trek comes back to our time it is to take us on ‘a romp’, where people point out Starfleet uniforms look like pyjamas and the crew go around misunderstanding pop culture references. This, however, feels like Star Trek invading a much grittier show.

Unfortunately, you can tell that this is a network science fiction show trying to show how adult and gritty it is, because within the first ten minutes of the episode we see a sex worker abducted. Maybe one day science fiction shows will find a way to show that they are proper grown-ups without a drive-by or disposable sex worker character appearing in the first ten minutes, but ‘Carpenter Street’ is not that show.

The other thing Star Trek’s forays into our century do is emphasise how far humanity has come, or still has to travel. This is where ‘Carpenter Street’ really falls down. Because this was Enterprise’s dark, post-9/11 Xindi storyline, we see Archer literally beat information out of someone – not for the first time in this season. It’s a scene that highlights everything that’s wrong with this version of Star Trek.

It’s also the bringer of bad news, as at one point T’Pol asks about fossil fuels to be told that “It’s not until 2061 that…”

The sentence is left incomplete, but that sounds like bad news for our 2050 emissions targets.

4. Tomorrow is Yesterday

This is Star Trek’s first trip back to the 20th century, and it sets the rules for so much that comes later. Agonising about changing the future, having modern day characters remark on how silly everything is, Star Trek characters being taken prisoner and taking the piss out of their interrogators. The formula is refined in many ways from here on, but the ingredients are established here.

It also establishes, as ‘Assignment: Earth’ later confirms, that any ordinary warp-capable ship can perform a manoeuvre to travel forward or backward in time at will, a plot device most of the Star Trek canon has heroically stuck its fingers in its ears and shut its eyes to avoid.

The main reason this entry doesn’t rank higher is that the action is almost entirely confined to US military bases, denying us the fun of seeing our favourite Starfleet officers wandering around our day-to-day world as if it’s the Planet of the Week.

Read more

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Star Trek: Enterprise – An Oral History of Starfleet’s First Adventure

By Ed Gross

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Star Trek: Picard Season 2 is an “Encounter at Farpoint” Sequel

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3. Future’s End

This Star Trek: Voyager two-parter, on the other hand, gives us that in spades. It knows what the fans want and it is here to give you a big steaming bowl of it. Neelix and Kes watching daytime soaps? Check. Tuvok having to ensure he wears a beanie at all times? Check. Paris getting his 20th century history and slang hilariously wrong? Check. An oddly jarring turn by a young, pre-comedy stardom Sarah Silverman? Okay, maybe you weren’t asking for that, but check!

It even throws us some subtle continuity porn to argue over. In Sarah Silverman’s office we see a model of the launch configuration of a DY-100 class ship- the ship used by Khan Noonien Singh to escape justice following the Eugenics Wars that were supposed to happen in the mid-nineties.

This is more than just an Easter egg (unlike, we’re assuming, the Talosian action figure on Sarah Silverman’s desk). Over the course of the episode we learn that the entire microprocess revolution that created the world we know and love was the result of stolen 29th century tech.

Does this mean history was changed? That all Star Trek following this episode takes place in a divergent timeline where the Eugenics Wars never happened? This has some fascinating connotations that we will touch upon later in the article, and which I will explain to you at length after precisely one and a half pints.

The episode does have its weak points however – Voyager being seen on national television never seems to go anywhere, and neither does the whole subplot where Chakotay and Torres end up prisoner in a survivalist compound for a bit.

As we’ve already mentioned, there’s also a lot of agonising about how Voyager will get to the present, when we already know that they just need to whip around the sun at warp speed and boom, the series is over.

Oh, and this is an extremely minor gripe, but Janeway tells us she has no idea what her ancestors were doing in this time period – despite subjecting us to the tedium of her story in ‘Millennium Gate’ which was set only four years after this.

2. Past Tense

This episode might be considered a cheat, since at time of broadcast it was technically set in the future. However, since it (along with Irish Reunification) is supposed to take place three years on from now, I think we can say it counts.

This Deep Space Nine story is decidedly not ‘a romp’. Yes people make fun of the characters’ clothes, and Kira and O’Brien’s jaunts through history raise a smile, but more than all but a select number of Star Trek stories, this is about just how far our reality is from the hoped-for future of Star Trek.

Bashir lands some lines that hit quite a bit heavier now than they did in the nineties, from “The 21st century is not one of my strong points – too depressing” to the plaintive “How could they have let things get so bad?” at the story’s conclusion.

And while it is set over twenty years in the future from the perspective of the broadcast date, it wasn’t far off. Stories evocative of the sanctuary districts are easy to find, and as writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe says, “We weren’t being predictive. We were just looking out our windows in the ’90s.”

Only two things really mark this episode out as an anachronism. One, the technology looks painfully 90s – our technology looks far closer to the 24th century than the bulky monitors seen everywhere in this. But then again, this episode was broadcast prior to ‘Future’s End’, so maybe Henry Starling hadn’t kickstarted the microprocessor revolution in this timeline yet.

The other, far grimmer element to have dated is the idea that one innocent black person being shot by police could be enough to cause the sea change this episode says it does.

1. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

There wasn’t ever really going to be any debate over this, was there? Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is hands down the one to beat if you’re writing Star Trek characters travelling to the present day. The film itself was something of a departure for the franchise. Rather than Robert Wise’s epic, sombre, proper science fiction in The Motion Picture, or the bombastic action of Nicholas Meyer’s Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home was helmed by a director who would be best known for the cult comedy, Three Men & a Baby.

This 20th century feels far more inhabited than other portrayals, with screen time being given over to casual conversations between bin men, and workplace arguments independent of the former Enterprise crew.

Of course, by now the crew of 1701-no-bloody-A-B-C-or-D should be old hands at Earth in the 20th century. This is their fourth trip here, not counting planets-that-mysteriously-resemble-Earth-in-the-20th-century.

But these fish are never more out of water than they are in this film, and the results are charming. Kirk explaining swearing to Spock, Kirk observing people “still use money”, Chekov standing in the middle of the street asking for directions to the “Nuclear Wessels”, Scotty’s “Hello Computer!” and Kirk Thatcher getting nerve-pinched for listening to his own music on a ghetto blaster. Plus countless more zingers, sight gags and throwaway lines that I’m still finding new ones of after many, many re-watches.

And the cast are clearly having the time of their lives. Shatner’s comic talent was always on display, but in this movie he is really allowed to cut it fully loose giving reaction shots that make you feel bad about every time you mocked his acting.

But no matter how silly it gets, this film knows, more than any other, the point of sending Star Trek characters into the modern day. It is to show us the difference between our ideal selves and where we are – and it does it no less starkly than ‘Past Tense’. With a light comic touch, Kirk and co. encounter capitalism, the spectre of nuclear war, and most of all, the devastating environmental impact we’re having. Even if we reach the ideal Star Trek future, this film says, we could still lose things we can’t replace along the way.

Star Trek: Picard is going to have to work hard if it wants to walk in its footsteps.

Honourable Mentions

While not taking place in the present day, it’d be remiss of this article not to mention ‘City on the Edge of Forever’, which refined ‘Tomorrow is Yesterday’s formula and is just one of the all-out best Star Trek series ever, and ‘Little Green Men’, which twists the usual Starfleet-in-the-20th-century formula by having the Ferengi arrive in the 20th century and find humans far more brutal, greedy and stupid than even they suspected.

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Also, I don’t want to alarm you, but by the end of this decade we’ll be closer to the events of Star Trek: First Contact than we are to the release of Star Trek: First Contact.

The post Star Trek: Ranking the Stories Set in the Present Day appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[sttngfashion]

True Q - 6.06

Oh, Q, you rake, you scalawag. You’re so mischievous that you’ve snuck into one of these mostly-unis episodes like the scoundrel you are. Also I believe this episode title, much like Return of the King, contains a spoiler within the title. But we’ll get there.

“Don’t even try to out cheekbone me, girl. I’ll eat you for lunch.” —Bev

This blondie is Amanda Rogers (and boy does she look like an Amanda Rogers), and she’s an... intern? She’s 18 years old and is eventually supposed to go to Starfleet Academy but has somehow beat out a bunch of other youngsters for the opportunity to work on the Enterprise before she goes to study. She’s perky and a know-it-all and wears colors that must have been picked out by a girl who grew up idolizing Glinda the Good Witch. She’s rocking that square neck that we’ve seen before, but it’s doing a weird thing with that waffle undershirt she’s wearing, and I’m not convinced any of these colors works with her skin tone. 

RIKER, SHE IS EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD. Get out of her personal space.

Riker is showing her her quarters which, to be fair are pretty lush for someone who should be preparing for the horrors of dorm life. On the other hand this room is definitely not meant for youngsters.

Yes that is a tall skinny bottle of curaçao with matching glasses on the coffee table.

Anyway, after Riker is all up in her personal space, he leaves Amanda alone and suddenly... puppies appear. No, really.

Is it just me or is she wearing Jellies?

Who cares, PUPPOES! They are so floppy and foldy and adorbz central. (Side note: that desk chair is def from Staples.)

Behave? More like BeeHIVE, amirite?

I don’t really understand what is happening here as for most of the rest of the show her hair looks normal. Maybe her hair just got excited by the PUPPOOES!

So after these puppies mysteriously appear, she tells them to disappear, and they do, though kind of reluctantly. And that’s the end of the Teaser. That’s right: after the last puppy disappears, we get the DRAMATIC MUSIC because DISAPPEARING PUPPIES. I may have guffawed.

Okay, plotdump: later on, Amanda saves Riker from getting bonked on the head by a falling barrel or something, and then after that, stops a warp core breach with her hands. WHAAAAAT? Also, this is hand motion she makes when she saves Rikes.

Oooh, I love shadow animals! What is it... an elephant?

Anyway, because this GIRL has magically SAVED THE WHOLE GODDAMN SHIP there needs to be a MEETING.

“Her hooters were like, this big.” —Geordi

Sorry, sorry, I’m being base. Have Deanna’s eyebrows always looked like they were made out of smoke?

Obviously though, this meeting is dumb because we know who’s behind this.

Who decided to design the conference room chairs with an omnipotent douchebag recline setting?

I mean, you gotta give John de Lancie his due: no one can do all-powerful schmuck quite like he can. But he’s only wearing his “I’m crushing so hard on you, Picard” command red uni, so blah.

How’s the rest of the senior staff feel about Q’s arrival?

From left to right: not having it, pissed, I can’t believe this, are you kidding me, and uuugggghhhhhhhh

Everyone is earning their episode rate in this shot, but Beverly and Geordi are owning it.

So it turns out that this girl is Q, but Q has been sent to find out if she is TRUE Q. I think if she’d turned out not to be, the episode would be called True Q? or Untrue Q or FALSE Q. But you know now how it’s going to end.

Still, we have to go through the motions.

Okay, Q, now you’re really in her personal space.

I suppose there might be some perfect metaphor of discussing Q-privilege but frankly I don’t think I’m smart enough to do it.

OH NO NOT THE DECORATIVE PLATE AND BOWL!

Also it’s amazing the extent to which this is clearly a stunt double. Also also: no more decorative spotlight on the artifacts. The computer was able to sense what was coming, I guess.

I can’t remember exactly what happens here but Gates just looks so awesome and sassy that I had to put it in.

Sorry guys, it’s a low-fashion episode. Oh, but hey, here’s a fashion!

Ghost Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamsweater.

It’s hard to make out exactly what’s happening here, but as best I can see, from left to right again: block gray, block plum, block grape, block grilled peach, block mocha, AMAZING SWEATER OF ALL YOUR MOST BEAUTIFUL COLORFUL DREAAAAAMMMZ. 

These are Amanda’s parents, who it turns out were Q also? I can’t remember what the release of information is like in this episode but basically the Q Continuum MURDERED Amanda’s parents because they wanted to live in Nebraska or something. Which, like, that’s not nice, but also... Nebraska? They were killed by a freak tornado which was engineered by the Q but also IT COULD HAPPEN.

In other news, I have four nostrils and this one dope chain.

Also, this individual has Bea Arthur’s hair. I am 100% not mad at it.

Oh man, I’m really murdering the plot of this ep... these people need help of some sort and Amanda and Q are NOT HELPING. There’s a whole thing where Q wants to take Amanda on Q lessons and so they speed up some experiment that Bev has Amanda doing, but that ruins the experiment or something? I wanted to be like “listen, Q, either you’re doing omnipotence wrong or the writers are” but I love this show so I kept quiet.

What’s Q lessons mean, btw?

WE’RE STANDING ON THE BACK OF THE SHIIIIIIIP

So this is one of those shots that I have basically remembered pretty much exactly since childhood because WHAAAAAAAAT. Looking at it now I’m skeptical as to whether they’ve gotten the scale right, but I guess they’re Q so they can be big as they wanna be or whatever.

Speaking of other things they want.

Welcome to my weird Pride and Prejudice fantasy, complete with gazebo

I mean, everyone is entitled to their own fantasy, but you are wearing lacy pink things and the strangest tartan belt ever seen, and your hair seems to be fashioned after those vines growing up alongside that latticework. Who’s your Mr. Darcy?

WORLDS COLLIDING

Where to start? The velour jacket is great, but the fancy lapelwork there is something I’d more expect to see alongside the jacuzzi that Lwaxana Troi and Worf’s son Alexander were hanging out in. Really the only thing that’s okay about this scene is how uncomfortable Rikes looks in it.

Of course, since the first scene with Riker and Amanda we’ve all been feeling that if anyone is feeling some kind of way about anybody, it’s Riker for Amanda (ew). Still, though, he does the this is not appropriate routine, until she realizes the full potential of her Q-ness and makes him fall madly in love with her.

Disclaimer: I am a gay man. But what is happening to her breasts.

I mean, that just cannot be comfortable. Also, bless Frakes for being like “well, I guess the script calls for me to get all up on this 18 year old.” Anyway, she knows that it’s not real so is not into it. Unanswered question from the episode: DOES RIKER REMEMBER ANY OF THIS?

Okay, so basically it comes down to: does Amanda stay and finish her internship or does she go with Q to join the Continuum and basically become a god? Let’s take a look at Amanda one week after her internship starts:

This job has destroyed me

So first of all, why she gotta always wear unitards with weird textured minidress operations on top? Second of all, though, at least this color is not quite so bubble-gum flavored. This is a lima bean and overdone spinach combination here, which, okay, not super appetizing, but at least she doesn’t look like she just jumped off the Candyland gameboard. Also, those tendrils of hair! That’s how you know she is not playing around anymore.

This planet is burnt

Listen, you guys, some other stuff happens, but I had several glasses of wine while watching FEUD so I’m just gonna wrap it up with this little side-by-side: this is the planet 4-nostrils Bea Arthur was from and that the Enterprise was trying to help, and Q is basically like “Amanda, if you can stop using your Q powers then you don’t have to come be part of the Continuum, oh but here’s a planet with a whole lot of people that are about to die, SHRUG.”

I mean, of course she saves it. The show didn’t have enough budget for an intern character.

UGH FINE I GUESS I’LL GO BE A GOD.

Still, she gotta say goodbye.

“Good luck girl, but don’t ever come for me the way Q comes for Jean-Luc. Because I will own you so hard.” —Bev

Have a great week, everybody!