Why the new Picard series from Alex Kurtzman is going to SUCK

[Overmind One]

The new Picard series currently in development and headed by Alex Kurtzman is going to SUCK. We already know this in advance, before even the tiniest teasers are even released, because the articles already published in advanced are all telling us the same thing:

The Picard series is going to happen in the Kelvin timeline, not the prime timeline. The new Picard series is going to show us a "radically different" Jean Luc Picard, which shows us a Picard "we may not recognize".

https://www.space.com/42988-picard-trek-series-movie-timeline-link.html

Excerpt:

The destruction of the Romulan homeworld in 2009's film "Star Trek," Kurtzman said, was a defining event in Picard's career, one that sets up the role Stewart will play on the still-untitled new show.

"Picard's life was radically altered by the dissolution of the Romulan Empire," Kurtzman explained. He added that Stewart himself loved the show's new premise once he saw how different his reprised role would be.

"He [Stewart] threw down an amazing gauntlet and said, 'If we do this, I want it to be so different, I want it to be both what people remember but also not what they're expecting at all. Otherwise, why do it?'" Kurtzman said.

Did you guys see what he did there?

The destruction of the Romulan homeworld in 2009's film "Star Trek," Kurtzman said, was a defining event in Picard's career, one that sets up the role Stewart will play on the still-untitled new show.

The destruction of the Romulan homeworld in 2009's film "Star Trek" is perhaps the most defining mistake made to Star Trek to date. It was the very moment that gave us the original Leonard Nimoy his first introduction into the reboot movie, and it also means that red matter is a thing, magic tribble blood, portable transporters, British pale Kahn, the Beastie Boys, just UGH.

So, this show is going to suck. It will suck not because of Patrick Stewart being in it, but because the premise of the show sucks. It validates the Kelvin timeline in the same way they employed the living Leonard Nimoy to glue the Kelvin timeline to the prime timeline. Patrick Stewart is alive and available, and so are many of the other TNG actors. I think Kurtzman thinks that just having the actors in the show will make fans want to watch it. That is a mistake he has already made well in advance, but he is too dimwitted to see that so the show will have to actually bomb before he realizes his mistake.

Why doesn't CBS look at the trajectory of those kelvin films and see the decline in interest? Why don't they line that up with the failure of Star Trek Discovery, and realize that the common factor is Alex Kurtzman? WHY?

 

[Overmind One]

I don't know why this bothers me so much other than knowing in advance they are going to destroy Picard in the process. If Romulus was destroyed in the timeline of the new Picard show, that means that all of the events of the 2009 movie will be validated (big mistake). It will mean that Kahn Noonien Singh is a pale white British guy, and that he invented a portable transporter capable of transporting people from earth to Quo'nos or other planets in the Beta quadrant. It will mean that there is such thing as magic tribble blood and red matter. It will also mean that there really was a starship Discovery and a Michael Burnham.

The sense I am getting from my closest Star trek fan friends is that they are not at all looking forward to loving the new show, but will watch it just to verify what we already know: it is going to suck. No doubt we will see teasers or trailers before the show is released, likely action packed scenes with 'splosions and edgy dark sets and locales. They will likely invent some new characters/aliens to throw in there, and enough stuff salvaged from Discovery to try and tie the two shows together in some way. There are a little more than 100 years between the events of Discovery and the TNG-era events, and this will be post Nemesis. The Enterprise E should still be in service as well.

But this ship will never be seen in the new show because it will have to be 25% different. They will be able to create an Enterprise F if they want. I think that Picard's life will mostly be on the ground. Who knows? Kurtzman is still clueless about what Star Trek is supposed to be. He is taking the approach that it is his and he can take it in any direction he wants. He can do that, but that does not mean the fans will follow, and right now the original fanbase which made Star Trek a valuable IP have rejected all Kurtzman created Trek.

 

[Overmind One]

So now, the Picard series will be a "limited series" and not ongoing. Ten episodes are planned. What does this mean? Will it mean that they are going to kill off Picard at the end of the series to close off prime canon for good? Nothing about the new series seems promising. Alex Kurtzman is at the helm, Picard will not be a Captain on his own ship, and he will exist in the Kelvin timeline and not the prime timeline. Why should we watch it? This comes from Trekmovie.com which is wholly owned by CBS so it has to be considered shill journalism. But the information we need is still there:

https://trekmovie.com/2019/01/30/pa...rek-picard-series-will-be-like-10-hour-movie/

Excerpt:

A 10-hour movie, with more a possibility

Stewart also indicated that the show will be ten episodes, in a serialized arc, telling Yahoo:

They are writing a 10-hour movie.

One of the questions regarding the series is whether it will be a limited series or an ongoing series. Initial assumptions were that the show would be limited, with Stewart’s comment about a 10-hour movie seemingly confirming that. A recent report in Variety also indicated the show would be a limited series. However, at NYCC in the fall, executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Heather Kadin told TrekMovie the show is being planned as an ongoing series with hopes for multiple seasons. In the new interview with Yahoo, Stewart added some clarity to all of this, saying:

We’re hoping for more than one season.

 

[Lord Ba'al]

There's also apparently going to be a Picard animated series.

 

[Overmind One]

There's also apparently going to be a Picard animated series.

I think the only reason for this is because the fans still love Picard, and Nimoy is unavailable and William Shatner would be too demanding. Watch, and they will come for Sisko and Janeway too.

 

[Overmind One]

Doomcock says that his source told him the Picard series is on hold until April, as is the STD crew. I believe this, and the real clue was the unusual release of the Discovery Season 2 premiere on YouTube for two weeks with the comments section left open. The scenario is that Kurtzman's team embedded at CBS All Access has been talking off the ears there, shutting out any negativity and claiming that the fans love their show and that they deserve to be renewed for another season, as well as to go forward with all the other 25% Trek they keep talking about. Meanwhile, CBS is struggling to keep All Access afloat, and they have anchored it's success on Star Trek. Thing is that they don't really have Star Trek, they have this other thing that is unrelated to Star Trek calling itself Star Trek, much like the Kurtzman folks named their Kelvin-esque timelines "prime" to confuse and misrepresent. The release of that premiere episode gave CBS an opportunity to hear the fans without being filtered out by Kurtzman's people. Over at Rotten Tomatoes, Discovery is still holding at a 29% audience rating, which is dismal.

Things are looking good for a reunification of Viacom and CBS which means that the 25% license will become null and void (and so will Kurtzman's fake Trek). Even if this happens, there will need to be some canon repair and erasure of the alternate timeline completely. They could use many Star Trek devices for that, including The Traveler, Q, The Guardian of Forever, or even the holodeck. There can never have been a spore drive or a tardigrade or a Michael Burnham or Klingorcs. They can just ignore the alternate mirror universe completely without explaining it because it just wasn't memorable. No Captain or Emperor Giorgiou, and no Shenzhou. Overall, I don't see needing to save anything at all from Discovery except the excellent CGI team. Fire the ADD camera guys.

 

[Overmind One]

2389? WTF? Prime Canon? Prime Timeline with the Kelvin Time running parallel

The Kelvin timeline IS the "prime" timeline. The audience came up with the Kelvin name, Paramount has now officially named that timeline the Prime™ Timeline. Actual Star Trek is in the CANON timeline.

 

[Overmind One]

I'm not following you Overmind. If its set after the destruction of Romulus does that not place it in the original timeline?

No, because the destruction of Romulus and also of Vulcan and also of Spock coming through a rift because of Red Matter is part of the Abrams/Kurtzman alternate timeline. Nothing in the 2009 movie is in the canon timeline, despite the attempt at connecting them through that event.

 

[Overmind One]

But I thought they did connect them through that event. Original Spock tried to stop the destruction of Romulus in the original timeline. He failed and was thrown into Abrams newly created timeline.

Surely that means Romulus was destroyed in the original timeline?

Personally I think they should dismiss it all as parallel universes and go back to the original canon, leaping forward another century again.

It was entirely a creation of Kurtzman and Orci and Lindelov to initiate a new timeline. Only the Spock actor and his character name are from canon. The actual character is not our Spock. There is no theoretical science to explain "red matter". That was pure magic, and they should have gone with a temporal rift or something familiar. Still, all of that is 100% contained inside the Abrams/Kurtzman "Kelvin" timeline. The connection is an illusion. That Kurtzman and Abrams think that they can fool Star Trek fans is amusing. Neither one of them watched Star Trek, and frankly they lack the intellect to understand what it was supposed to be. Discovery and those awful reboot movies is the best they can do for Star Trek? Really?

I totally agree about the parallel universes, and fortunately Star Trek has given us well established Deus Ex Machinas to use. We have the Q, the Guardian of Forever, The USS Relativity, the Prophets, we even have the possibility of the Talosians having created all of it as an illusion. We have temporal rifts, and slingshot time travel. If Viacom and CBS merge, the Paramount 25% different alternate license will be null. We will be able to get Star Trek back. Viacom (formerly Paramount or Viacom Paramount) will have to literally rebuild part of the canon to put everything back on track. It will have to be something where they can show that all of the designs and locales and aliens are back to normal.

 

[Overmind One]

The Picard series was delayed for a week past the announced filming sate, and things are still not going great:

 

[Overmind One]

Its a major fuck up so Overmind one.

That could be a good thing in the long term for fans of the classic iteration of Trek however. NuTrek has TPTB worried about money. They are running a business so they may go back to a model that they know is workable.

Although I'm starting to thing that we will never see Picard on screen again. That's unfortunate.

I'm impressed with the production of STD myself, particularly in Season Two. It looks more filmlike than any Trek series before it, but the bridge is too dark and the tech is too incompatible with TOS. Star Trek Enterprise did a much better job of prequel sets what with its submarine like setting and not too advanced looking displays.

The stories in STD are shallow though. For me this was exemplified in the Season Two episode New Eden. We barely got anything but a cursory look at the culture on that planet compared to previous series and very little written of the moral implications of interfering like we got in TNG Pen Pals or TOS Bread And Circuses.

I agree with you on many points. The production values are exceptional. Discovery is the most visually beautiful Star Trek production to date, and this includes the reboot movies. But that's as far as it goes for me. The writing is exceptionally banal and is as shallow and simpleminded as a Saturday morning cartoon (no insults intended for Saturday morning cartoons!). The characters are convoluted and not well developed, there is no ensemble cohesiveness, no science or logic in the storytelling or situations this crew finds itself in, etc. These writers have just decided they don't need to follow canon.

 

[YJ02]

The destruction of the Romulan homeworld in 2009's film "Star Trek" is perhaps the most defining mistake made to Star Trek to date. It was the very moment that gave us the original Leonard Nimoy his first introduction into the reboot movie, and it also means that red matter is a thing, magic tribble blood, portable transporters, British pale Kahn, the Beastie Boys, just UGH.

nay, i thought it was pretty clear

Romulus was destroyed in the Prime timeline.

its destruction caused Nero to hunt down Spock, during that hunt, both of them --somehow-- moved into a alternate universe- the Kelvin

so, Picard we know and the destruction of Romulus, happened 'here (prime)' and all of that silly stuff happened 'there (Kelvin)'

though i get your point, why couldn't Khan be British? there are many, many people of south central asian ethnicity in the UK today. like this guy, Afzal Khan
a British PM i believe:

khan is Turk-Mongolian in origin and is used today in areas that came under mongol control. due to the extent of mongol conquest, khan could have easily become a title/name used by many europeans like Russians, Balts and Poles

in fact, both the Bulgars and Magyars (Hungary) used the title as well. and they are pretty much pasty white as well

 

[Overmind One]

nay, i thought it was pretty clear

Romulus was destroyed in the Prime timeline.

its destruction caused Nero to hunt down Spock, during that hunt, both of them --somehow-- moved into a alternate universe- the Kelvin

so, Picard we know and the destruction of Romulus, happened 'here (prime)' and all of that silly stuff happened 'there (Kelvin)'

though i get your point, why couldn't Khan be British? there are many, many people of south central asian ethnicity in the UK today. like this guy, Afzal Khan
a British PM i believe:

khan is Turk-Mongolian in origin and is used today in areas that came under mongol control. due to the extent of mongol conquest, khan could have easily become a title/name used by many europeans like Russians, Balts and Poles

in fact, both the Bulgars and Magyars (Hungary) used the title as well. and they are pretty much pasty white as well

You ignore the obvious. Abrams created that event in the Prime™ timeline for his 2009 movie which is not in the CANON timeline. It was a sly, but still very obvious tack on. Hiring Leonard Nimoy to play Prime™ Spock was slick, but that Spock is still not the CANON Spock. The ship he was flying, the existence of Red Matter, and the notion that this Red Matter created a rift for Spock, but destroyed his planet Vulcan is ridiculous. For casual viewers who know nothing about black holes or Star Trek's universe, this might get a pass. But not for longtime science oriented fans.

As far as Kahn, the guy you show in the picture would have been acceptable. His appearance is still not pasty British white. Also, it isn't just Kahn, it is Kahn Noonien Singh...a Hindi name. So, no he could NOT be British. Especially in the context of the original Kahn during the Eugenics Wars (1992–1996). Ricardo Montalban was a Mexican. But he was brown, and that does make a difference. The idea was to portray a Sikh Indian, none of which have ever been white. I imagine that people compromising in this fashion are the reason there is a white Jesus today.



Why are you trying to make excuses for NuTrek? I am not going to stop you, but you have to realize that many fans of Star Trek have been fans of it for more than FIFTY years (like me). There is not much I am going to miss when it comes to Star Trek canon, and I am just one guy and I am not even among the most rabid of Star Trek fans. NuTrek does not have the heart of the fandom, and we are all waiting until real Star Trek comes back around. Do you have any idea why The Orville is being called The New Star Trek? To understand that, you have to understand that it is the presentation, the style of storytelling and the way the characters are developed that are making it the new Star Trek. The ensemble cast, the nuanced social mirroring that stops short of political soapboxing, and the subtle comedic elements. Nothing with the Star Trek name has that right now.

 

[Overmind One]

This show has lost half of it's North American viewers from Ep 1 to the Finale for Season1.



The show is horrible, and now Picard is DEAD. The character they are calling "JL" in this show is now a robot. Why should anyone be interested in it? Cancel it before wasting money on Season 2.