Star Trek Picard and Strange New Worlds

[FunkMonk]

I think that's also because Patrick Stewart loosened up over time. When he first joined he had a very no-nonsense attitude to acting. When the rest of the crew was goofing around between takes or otherwise tried to make the long days a bit lighter he would admonish them and tell them to behave like adults/professionals. He eventually became a lot more relaxed.

I saw an interview with him a while back where he said that the cast and crew of TNG saved him, because he was quite a miserable, stodgy person to be around and that he learned from them to be more in the moment and just have more fun in life.

Very interesting, I didn't realize that. Makes sense now. Thanks Syt.

[Syt]

Very interesting, I didn't realize that. Makes sense now. Thanks Syt.

I tried to find the original snippet, but it seems to no longer be on YouTube. He commented a few times how he learned to loosen up over time, and the specific one I was thinking of was on Conan:

https://redshirtsalwaysdie.com/2017/03/13/patrick-stewart-says-star-trek-helped-learn-silly/

Patrick Stewart wasn't the fun loving Twitter using lovable guy we all know now when Star Trek: The Next Generation started. He was a serious Shakespearean actor and was on set to do a job, not have a good time. At least that's what Stewart told Conan O'Brien.

On a recent episode of Conan Sir Patrick was discussing his final film in the X-Men series Logan when he mentioned his time on TNG. It's not that Patrick Stewart wasn't any fun, his concern came from worrying about the crew and others working on set. He didn't want to waste anyone's time with fun.

"I was so boring and tiresome. I had this thing about discipline and I felt that the cast, my fellow cast members on Star Trek, were a little unruly at times."

This isn't the first time Patrick Stewart has said that he thought the rest of the TNG cast were cutting up too much, he also said as much on the Nerdist Podcast.

In the end though it seems Jonathan Frakes, Denise Crosby, and the rest of the TNG crew wore him down and made him learn to have fun on set.

"I think they made me live longer. I think maybe I wouldn't be here, if it had not been for them teaching me how to laugh more."

Without him learning to cut loose a bit, not sure if we would have him on Family Guy or American Dad, as a cameo in Extras, or if he would have written the foreword for one of the volumes of Transmetropolitan. s

[celedhring]

I have started watching this with my mom (we always watch a show when I visit them on the weekends). First episode was... good and intriguing? (I've avoided the spoilers in this thread) but I had good laugh about

1) The fact that they use teleporter technology to harvest grape (no way that's more economically efficient than regular mechanical methods).
2) That young Picard for some weird reason dresses like a boy from the 1930s.

[Josephus]

2) That young Picard for some weird reason dresses like a boy from the 1930s.

LOL>..Yeah, I wondered about that. It's like they're telling us, "See this is young Picard, he's dressed in old fashioned clothes."

[crazy canuck]

Didn't the Vulcans first take notice of Earth later than that?

[viper37]

Didn't the Vulcans first take notice of Earth later than that?

"Notice", yeah.  But they Knew about Earth and surveyed it since at least the early 2000s (see Enterprise).
First Contact was officially much later though, once they "noticed" Earth was capable of achieving warp speed.

[Syt]

Didn't the Vulcans first take notice of Earth later than that?

"Notice", yeah.  But they Knew about Earth and surveyed it since at least the early 2000s (see Enterprise).
First Contact was officially much later though, once they "noticed" Earth was capable of achieving warp speed.

The Carbon Creek episode has a few Vulcans stranded on Earth in the 1950s. It's  a decent episode. One of them "goes native". And stays behind when they leave. I've seen it mentioned in comments that on that episode the Vulcans said the next mission was supposed to stop by  in 20 or so years. So the scene with young agent Wells could have been in the 70s (and his visible age wouldmatch,  I guess). I suppose Vulcans did covert observations (think what Starfleet does in TNG's Who Watches the Watchers, or at the start of the movie Insurrection) before they caught Cochrane's warp flight. Also leaves the question of what happened with the Vulcan who stayed behind in the 50s, or if any observers are on Earth in 2024.

[viper37]

Didn't the Vulcans first take notice of Earth later than that?

"Notice", yeah.  But they Knew about Earth and surveyed it since at least the early 2000s (see Enterprise).
First Contact was officially much later though, once they "noticed" Earth was capable of achieving warp speed.

The Carbon Creek episode has a few Vulcans stranded on Earth in the 1950s. It's  a decent episode. One of them "goes native". And stays behind when they leave. I've seen it mentioned in comments that on that episode the Vulcans said the next mission was supposed to stop by  in 20 or so years. So the scene with young agent Wells could have been in the 70s (and his visible age would match,  I guess). I suppose Vulcans did covert observations (think what Starfleet does in TNG's Who Watches the Watchers, or at the start of the movie Insurrection) before they caught Cochrane's warp flight. Also leaves the question of what happened with the Vulcan who stayed behind in the 50s, or if any observers are on Earth in 2024.

You have a much better memory than mine

[crazy canuck]

 

[Syt]

You have a much better memory than mine

The episode came up a lot on Twitter accounts etc. that I follow, which helped jog my memory.

[Syt]

Well, I assume there's going to be some irate fans after this episode.

At any rate, I didn't expect this callback in a short line from JLP:

[viper37]

It hasn't aired yet...!
Well, over here

[Syt]

It hasn't aired yet...!
Well, over here

 

[Tamas]

This episode really showed how very profound the creators think the dialog/monologues in this series are. Sadly, they are not.

And the hippy collective Borg twist is awful.

[Syt]

And the hippy collective Borg twist is awful.

It's hippie, not hippy, unless she has a particularly impressive hip.

After initial hesitation I didn't hate it. It called back to classic Trek (and the Kirk/Picard speeches that would sway societies), so this isn't without precedence. And I think you can argue that the Borg Queen reduced to a collective of one or two for the first time in who knows how long, undergoes some re-evaluation/realization of herself. It's been established that the Borg can sense other timelines and that things never end well for them. So her having such a profound epiphany, while a huge departure from what we know, is not completely implausible to me. Jurati/Queen and their interactions have been a highlight of the series for me, so I'm generally on board with this. Further, in Voyager we saw a commune of former drones who retained their collective link and thrived on it. So we had a glimpse of something like that before. While I'm tempted to reduce it to "the Borg were evil because they were lonely" I feel a better view is that they engaged in a very misguided attempt to find a "human" connection - the intent might originally have been benevolent and ended up being the extreme assimilators we know from older shows.

(And to be fair, the twist was fairly telegraphed ever since it became quite likely that Jurati would be Borg Queen somehow and be the one requesting to join the Federation in the first Episode.)