Picard
Reply
Was a great first episode.
Yep, best Trek since the DS9 finale.
Yeah, loved it.
Not wanting to be facetious at all, but does one need to watch any star trek before this? I've watched none (apart from the weird bit with whales 30 years ago)
Yeah, parts of it won't make much sense and a lot of it is going to fall pretty flat otherwise.
Findus Fop wrote:
Not wanting to be facetious at all, but does one need to watch any star trek before this? I've watched none (apart from the weird bit with whales 30 years ago)


Yes. I think the next generation will be needed.
Findus Fop wrote:
Not wanting to be facetious at all, but does one need to watch any star trek before this? I've watched none (apart from the weird bit with whales 30 years ago)


Yes, but you definitely don’t need to watch all of it.
This is a pretty good abbreviated viewing guide.
https://medium.com/maxistentialism-blog ... 4a6762cbd3
You need to watch most of Star Trek, and (mostly) in release order, imo.

Can probably skip Enterprise, and Voyager is lesser Trek but seems like it will be quite relevant to Picard. You need to watch TOS, TNG and DS9 for sure though, and ignore any "episode guides" that tell you to skip *most* episodes. There are some stinkers, but you really do need to watch it start to finish to really get the whole character arcs and stories imo.

It's all on Netflix I think.

Edit: I got a list, bolded and underlined for unskipable (imo). This is in the right order, too.


Star Trek: The Original Series (1966 to 1969)
Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973 to 1974)
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 to 1994)
Star Trek Generations (1994)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993 to 1999) (although technically the beginning of DS9 is before the end of TNG).
Star Trek: Voyager (1995 to 2001)
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

Star Trek: Enterprise (2001 to 2005)
Star Trek (2009)
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Star Trek Beyond (2016)
Star Trek: Discovery (2017-)
Sta Trek: Picard (2020 -)


Into Darkness and Beyond are irrelevant trash, and Discovery is mixed but doesn't really lead into Picard whatsoever as far as I can see.
TOS is very much skippable. Most of it is garbage.
Honestly that is like a million years of TV as prep work. Fuck that noise.
Counter suggestion. General public awareness of Star Trek is high enough that you don't need to watch anything else at all. In fact based on ep1, the only real backstory you need is already provided for you.
Hopefully it will hold up by itself and be worth watching but a lot of what I enjoyed the most about that first episode would have far less meaningful without that attachment to a decades long saga. I guess it would be like watching The Mandalorian having never seen any Star Wars, there would be a lot you're missing out on even if it's nothing more than background to the story at hand.
Voyager is great, fewl.
Grim... wrote:
Voyager is great, fewl.

:this: I just wanted to watch the whole series again when I saw the
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
Borg cube
I'm working my way through Voyager at the moment... There's some dreadful episodes in there to be honest but I'm sort of enjoying it all the same.

I haven't encountered the Borg yet though so I imagine the best is yet to come (hopefully).
ugh, Nemesis was so shit I couldn't make it to the end. Do I really need to watch that? I've already seen all TNG (many eps multiple times round) plus some DS9 and a bit of Voyager from when they were released
Sir Taxalot wrote:
ugh, Nemesis was so shit I couldn't make it to the end. Do I really need to watch that? I've already seen all TNG (many eps multiple times round) plus some DS9 and a bit of Voyager from when they were released



I don't think you do.
Sir Taxalot wrote:
ugh, Nemesis was so shit I couldn't make it to the end. Do I really need to watch that? I've already seen all TNG (many eps multiple times round) plus some DS9 and a bit of Voyager from when they were released


Plot wise it does appear to be pulling from Nemesis quite a bit.

The '09 movie, too.

I agree Nemesis isn't great.
LewieP wrote:
Sir Taxalot wrote:
ugh, Nemesis was so shit I couldn't make it to the end. Do I really need to watch that? I've already seen all TNG (many eps multiple times round) plus some DS9 and a bit of Voyager from when they were released


Plot wise it does appear to be pulling from Nemesis quite a bit.

The '09 movie, too.

I agree Nemesis isn't great.


Maybe I'll just read the plot summary of Nemesis :metul:

I really quite enjoyed the Star Trek movie reboots, they were fun re-imaginings. I loved TNG on telly but to me it felt like *something* didn't really translate well into their movies.
Enjoyed it.

Only really watched the original Kirk Trek and STTNG and I’m good with that.
LewieP wrote:
You need to watch most of Star Trek, and (mostly) in release order, imo.
"Want to watch the new thing? Here's five hundred hours of homework first."

I mean, maybe you're right. But if you are, it's a terrible failing on the part of the Picard writers.
How much do you think Endgame was improved if you knew your MCU, though?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think there's a certain level of assumed knowledge for entertainment that never really used to be the case.

Is Picard a whole new show, or is it Star Trek season 20?
I think that's slightly different though - TNG ended in 1994, so that's a 16 year gap between him being a part of the universe (although I think he had roles in some of the movies after that??)

There wasn't anywhere near that level of "nothingness" in the MCU, at any point.
If it's done well it will be like LOGAN which was enjoyable even if you hadn't watched any X-Men films and knew nothing about them.

I haven't watched the vast majority of Star Trek and even the stuff I have watched was yonks ago (TNG I watched in the late 90s).

I reckon Picard will be fine.
Grim... wrote:
How much do you think Endgame was improved if you knew your MCU, though?

Somewhat, yes, for sure. But

(a) I don't think it hopelessly didn't work if you'd only half-watched the MCU to that date [1]
(b) I don't think anyone was saying "you absolutely must watch these 50 hours of films first"
(c) "all the the MCU to date" is at least an order of magnitude less stuff than "all the Trek to date."

[1] Citation: MrsDoc
I would say S4-7 of TNG and the TNG films are recommended watching before Picard.
I think they did a good job of explaining what has happened to Picard since the enterprise. I am hoping the narrative of the series tells the story... I suppose it is more like Dr Who than MCU, you don't have to have watched all of Dr Who to just start watching now.
I've seen a fair amount of Star Trek over the years, but only in passing when it was on telly.
I know who the Borg are, I know who Data is, I know he had an evil brother. I've watched some episodes of TOS, over half TNG, a couple of Voyager, a little bit of DSG, and the recent reboot films (although couldn't tell you what happened in them).

I didn't have any problem understanding what was going on in Picard, (maybe I missed a couple of references, who knows?) and thoroughly enjoyed it.
The show literally sits down and explains to you the parts of TNG and the films that are presumably relevant to the series plot in the very first episode.
Cras wrote:
The show literally sits down and explains to you the parts of TNG and the films that are presumably relevant to the series plot in the very first episode.

Hence I said recommended and not essential
If Picard is your first Star Trek, then your doing Star Trek wrong.

But hey, I'm not the fun police. More of a fun PCSO.
Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
LewieP wrote:
You need to watch most of Star Trek, and (mostly) in release order, imo.
"Want to watch the new thing? Here's five hundred hours of homework first."

I mean, maybe you're right. But if you are, it's a terrible failing on the part of the Picard writers.


I kinda also just mean that you should watch all of Star Trek.

Not many series like this with one single consistent continuity over so many tv series/films, and it all builds on what came before.
Apart from when they trashed all the continuity
Cras wrote:
Apart from when they trashed all the continuity


To the best of my knowledge, that has never happened. The JJ Abrams movies primarily focus on an alternate timeline, but they also depict the events that created that alternate timeline, and as we see now in Picard the original timeline continued.

It's a soft reboot, "soft" because it exists within the same continuity.
Showing the same events with a different outcome because of an alternative timeline is the same thing as trashing the continuity. That's what continuity means, to the viewer.
LewieP wrote:
Not many series like this with one single consistent continuity over so many tv series/films, and it all builds on what came before.

Even the racist ones? Or the other racist ones?
Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
LewieP wrote:
Not many series like this with one single consistent continuity over so many tv series/films, and it all builds on what came before.

Even the racist ones? Or the other racist ones?

Don't forget the sexist ones!
Trooper wrote:
I know who Data is, I know he had an evil brother.

He did?

He didn't seem evil in the movie.
Grim... wrote:
Trooper wrote:
I know who Data is, I know he had an evil brother.

He did?

He didn't seem evil in the movie.

You don't know your Lore
Ah, it was B4 in the movie.
Grim... wrote:
Ah, it was B4 in the movie.


Everything was B4. Now we are at the present. Then it will be the future, but we will call it now.
I watched the first episode, it wasn't very Star, and there was only a little bit of Trek, despite that I quite liked it.

I've previously watched most of TNG (as originally broadcast on bbc2) and all of the film's (at least 3 times each, 4+ for most of them), but very little ds9 and voyager.

I couldn't quite recall how it all ended. So it was a bit annoying, but not sure if missed other bits due to poor memory and lack of back story.

Interesting to see where it goes next.
Cras wrote:
The show literally sits down and explains to you the parts of TNG and the films that are presumably relevant to the series plot in the very first episode.


Yep, and I thought it did so fairly nicely too, as well as getting the viewer back up to speed it showed Picard's motivations, emotions, strengths and vulnerabilities well. It was a really good episode and I'm very keen to see how it goes.

I really enjoyed seeing some of the mementos in Picard's archive, especially the obvious one
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
the banner from the kids


I put on some TNG afterwards, it was nice to revisit. I watched S1E1 and man, Picard was a gruff git in the early days.
Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
LewieP wrote:
Not many series like this with one single consistent continuity over so many tv series/films, and it all builds on what came before.

Even the racist ones? Or the other racist ones?

Yeah they have made a bunch of miss steps. The writers and cast regularly clashed with producers over this kind of stuff.

One example is the script called for Guinan to explain human romance to Data, and said "when a man and woman love each other", but Whoopi refused and said "when a person loves another person".

A lot of it can be attributed to Rick Berman, and you can see there's more examples of questionable judgement on the stuff he had more control over (Voyager and Enterprise), and less of it in stuff he's not had much of a hand in (DS9).

But yeah I think you have to take every episode as part of the whole. Warts and all.
I've watched loads of Star Trek stuff over the years but couldn't tell you about much of it off the top of my head (certainly I couldn't tell you shit about the plot of Nemesis or any of the JJ films). I watched the first episode of Picard last night and it was totally fine.
Bamba wrote:
I've watched loads of Star Trek stuff over the years but couldn't tell you about much of it off the top of my head (certainly I couldn't tell you shit about the plot of Nemesis or any of the JJ films). I watched the first episode of Picard last night and it was totally fine.


I wouldn't say that there's a lot that you won't understand at all in it if you have a passing familiarity of Trek.

I would say that there is a lot of nuance and subtleties that you would miss if you are not more familiar with Trek.

They're very clearly touching on and building from themes that they've touched on before. Lal, B4, Bruce Maddox, Daystrom Institute.

Then just things like the TNG poker games, the Picard vineyard, Data's paintings, history of the Romulans and The Federation, the Borg etc.

Feels to me like skipping straight to Picard would be like flicking through the first half of a book and starting half way through.
Err no, there’s fan service and Easter eggs but nothing that is essential to the plot.
Agreed. If you've seen the rest will you see things you know and recognise? Yes. Can you watch Picard without having seen any of the older shows? Also yes, from what we've seen so far.
C.R.A.S. - The BEEX member who likes to say yes.
It’s like saying you can’t watch the Mandalorian without seeing 11 films and the Clone Wars/Rebels cartoons. Yes there are some cool nods to the lore and returning characters, but can you enjoy it just on its own merits? Yes.
Page 1 of 3 [ 139 posts ]