The Downfall of Star Trek has been long and ugly. The once amazing show is now boring, confusing, pandering and stupid. The current terrible creators cant make a coherent hour of television and haven't managed to do so even by mistake. Its not even an enjoyable Hate-watch.
These new Star Trek shows are just not enjoyable and have very few fans as a result. Star Trek Discovery's horrific ratings are richly deserved for Crimes Against The Fandom. They've given us nothing but low quality meandering tales of allegedly interesting characters so bad that you stumble to the end horrified and relieved to turn it off. Picard is equally horrible. New creators are needed now before more damage can be done.
Lets look back at the last horribly wasted years of Star Trek and how things got this bad.
JJ THE DESTROYER OF WORLDSThe real problems start in 2009 when fans were outright lied to by JJ Abrams and Bad Reboot. JJ managed to make one ok but Non Rewatchable movie in 2009 and as always fell way behind schedule while going way over budget. Promised TV shows never see a lick of attention and die on the vine. Then horrible movie Star Trek Into Darkness keeps right on poisoning the groundwater in 2013 with Star Treks version of The Rise of Skywalker.
After 10 minutes upfront that felt like Star Trek the story fell off a cliff with Bones and Jim. The sloppy movie was too cute by half and dumb as could be. It begins the tradition of JJ Abrams being laughed off a franchise after boasting he would save it. He leaves like he leaves Star Wars, by destroying the movie side of the franchise. Despite moving on from JJ things got worse anyway.
KURTZMAN THE TALENTLESSAlong comes talentless and terrible Alex Kurtzman, whose shows plumb the bottom depths of irrelevance and unpopularity all over the CBS Moniker. He's reduced Star Trek to the LOWEST RATED SCRIPTED SHOW on CBS, far behind one of his other terrible reboot shows, deservedly canceled MacGyver. And then a host of other cancelled shows precede it on the 2020-21 ratings. Reruns of the Masked Singer regularly beat it handily. The CW's Batwoman also beats it sometimes.
Kurtzman and Secret Hideout poach other peoples safest, most TV friendly time proven ideas without any sentiment for the fans or reverence for the characters. This makes no one happy and its not like they can tell an amusing story. So naturally all they do is fail. And fail. And then fail some more. All they care about is staying rich. He's a fitting successor to JJ in that regard I suppose.
When Kurtzman is bought on (instead of a willing Quentin Tarantino) he and his hacks unleash a torrent of stupid stories even less amusing than lowly Space:1999! The shows that came out were uninteresting and unfit for regular TV. Now we're awash in terrible stories with preposterously high stakes.
TERRIBLE CHARACTERSAlong for our nightmarish and terrible journey are the kind of broken characters you would expect from a show called 'Star Trek- Penal Colony'. No one, human or alien, has any sense of time or place. Inappropriate reactions, nonsensical dialogue and an absence of any appearance of competence are the Hallmarks of the characters of the new shows. We're forced to endure everything from idiotic Emo Vulcans, Klingons who look like melted bubble gum and Romulan's who were right all along but get attacked and kind of lose anyway.
There's nothing but contrived plots, unresolved Mystery Boxes, constant failed injections of action, key jangling, pandering and a total lack of substance in these stories that are thrown out with no real effort, professionalism or set up.
AWFUL PREMIUM PRICED TEN HOUR STORIES
Discovery stumbles out of the gate first on now defunct CBS All Access and is just hard to watch. If it wasn't Star Trek it would be long gone, and the writers know this. More and more it seems like these no talent hacks seem to be trying to sabotage and complicate Star Trek so they can keep it.
The characters on awful Discovery have no depth or humanity- even ones that came with a backstory like co-opted Spock or Pike. When people die no one cares, but emotions get wrecked up and crying ensues all the time for reasons considerably less profound. These are Good Characters?
The new, terrible Star Trek has already destroyed one streaming platform and is on its way to killing another. The franchises Facebook page has about many fans as a third tier WNBA team. The content is nonstop deeply insincere Diversity Signalling and angry comments as well as censorship of all critcism by the CBS minders.
The new stories are sub-awful and can't really be discussed for advertising because its nonsense that doesn't even make for an interesting trailer. So their bad characters are just there front center engaging in nonsensical plot-less stories that take TEN JOYLESS HOURS and always use the same ending- stopping a genocide.
Gone are the days of caring about any one character enough for that to be considered story worthy- the fans would be pleased to see any of these characters killed off and the actors released from their pain.
PICARD- CHARACTER ASSASSINATIONAs bad as the new characters are the handling of the legacy characters feels spiteful, disrespectful is too mild. As Discovery fails behind a paywall the return of Patrick Stewart gives Star Trek jolt from the paddles of life that Kurtzman immediately squanders. Fans were initially intrigued when the show debuted.
For a moment Picard seemed to be promising. Patrick Stewart is beloved so for a the first 2 episodes they sort of fool us. Then episode 3 falls apart and the series implodes.
The idiotic decision to turn him into a despicable robot also just make it a show about Picard Robot, effectively making this title a bait and switch as far as chazrcter- even though Patrick Stewart has an extended cameo in each episode after we get done de-establishing him.
The Detective Picard and his Irish Romulan sidekick story is complete nonsense. They use a DNA scanner that can reconstruct past events- We all know thats not how DNA works!
The entire rest of the story hinges on the information the magic bullshit machine gets them. It consists merely of video and audio. They could simply have hacked security cams instead. When the characters in a sci-fi show have less tech and science awareness than my middle school niece? It's not unfair to call this just stupid, bad writing.
Throughout the shows dismal ten hours Picard gets yelled at, infantilized, has no dignity, makes immoral decisions and gets increasingly dumber. He's very much C3P0. He's unsettled and makes useless intellectual observations whenever theres a conflict or problem. He seems unfamiliar with space. Picard is indecisive and in the way as a mere passenger on an ugly new ship.
This begs the question 'Why appropriate Jean-Luc Picard; one of the greatest Sci-Fi characters of all time; just to subvert him into C3PO?' And while we're asking, why send him on a humiliation tour to be yelled at for 10 hours? Its Elder Abuse in space!
The shows next 7 cringe-worthy, horribly paced hours feature threats as preposterous as killer rabbits. Was there ever a plan for this Deranged Recycled World? Did they have a half finished 7 of 9 show and run out of ideas? Was the Picard show a mashup? On set informants claim the ending was re-shot as the initial episodes aired. It's since been changed again (more on that later).
The shoddy story had its first pilot recycled into the horrible DNA Detectives episode (after the initial decision it wasnt good enough to air?).
If I make excuses for the writers- and some needs to their work is so bad, it seems this project was changed mid-production and re-themed when Patrick Stewart was thrown a lot of cash for an extended cameo. The title is all but a Bait and Switch. A couple of the episodes feature very little Patrick Stewart.
7 of 9's story just crashes into the main Picard story- literally! These two characters have never met and now they're just thrown together. You'd think this would be a chance to hear an interesting conversation but 7 doesn't care for Picard either. She's also newly hard, worldly and cynical. She splits in short order to go on a revenge killing spree where she talks about someone killing her son in a not so clear way.
Then shes engaged a some solo side-story that's just nonsense on a captured, paertially destroyed Borg Cube that the Romulans have- despite now being refugees in the Federation.
On the Borg Cube we are shown 7 cares deeply about the other former Borg- til most of them die horribly. When that happens shes unmoved. She doesn't react and makes no mention of it. This part of Picard is just welded on to the rest of the story and is almost unrelated to the main plot. Then its just dropped. The problems really pile up as we go on through all the scattered plots.
We end up with a boring, disengaging story. It was absolutely low effort and lazily written. Another genocide tale; for the third time in a row between Picard and Discovery. All 30 hours of both shows were idiotic, needlessly complicated politics between the same two or three factions which often dead ended and never made any sense.
Characters we thought we knew and loved were now weak and broken like Luke in The Last Jedi. Picard is a panicky robot. Riker and Troi are horrible parents. Data is fatalistic and suicidal. Brent Spiner can no longer really pass for the ageless android but they do it anyway and its worse than you'd think. In his new role as his creators descendant he's good then evil then good again on successive whims.
ENDLESS SUBVERSIONThe ending of idiotic Romulan Conspiracy inside a Conspiracy aspect of Picard is a wreck of what can only be called extreme moral ambiguity that was never intended!
The Romulan cabal, a needlessly complicated secret group inside another secret group, was as hard to follow and stupid as could be- but the allegedly evil bad guys are actually RIGHT and their goal is nothing less than to save all life from extermination at the synthetic hands of homicidal robots! In their way- Picard and the idiots of the Federation led by Portly Pizza Chef Riker! How are the Romulans not the good guys in this scenario? No one seems to have thought this through at all.
The robots on the planet everyone converges on had fired up a genocide machine just as the Romulans feared, yet the Federation is ready to fight for their right to do it?
Picard, who has already blown off a murder, spends the climax of the story in his room- where the robots sent him for being an annoying old man. He plays no role in the robots sudden decision to turn their genocide machine off. They simply turn it off just cause. It's just just insane to leave them there with the ability to change their minds again, turn it back on and genocide everyone. They change their disposition on killing all organic life no less than three times just in the time since Picard met them, going so far as to build a genocide machine and call in a cyber cthulu that almost makes it through a vortex before they turn it off. That's just what they do though. The robots are nice now and they won'tturn the genocide machine back on. That's that.
This ending is botched every single way. Picard is out of the action a lot of time. The bad guys were right, theyre million year mission, oversold throughout the series- was dead on correct. They blow it off with little protest though. They had built a religion and killed their own to prevent this but they do not even fight despite being a match for the Federation at least long enough to destroy the genocide machine. The Federation we knew would warn the robots to clear away and then promptly destroyed their ability to end all life in the universe.
When the bad guys are right but lose and things just work out anyway for no real reason? That's not a good story. It's a series of kind of related events more than a story. Thankfully it ends- or seems to - like a poorly tuned car it just keeps going for a while until it sputters to a stop.
Next out of nowhere we get a weird nonverbal interaction between 7 and mother-hen and druggie, Rafi. A lot has been made of it, its could be anything the way we got it.
Who knows what the Hell it really was? There's again no set up or context. It seemed thrown in just to distract from the bad ending. It was poorly done and pandering- as well inconsistent with season upon season of Star Trek Voyager as well as some dialogue from earlier in the Picard series.
I don't object to any of the political, social or identity implications at all- but I do hate how they just hard reboot the 7 characters traits after seeming to reaffirm them earlier. Rather than bulding to this or explaining it we get it out of the blue after an ending that was completely flawed. I'm sure this was a reshoot done later. This didnt have to make no sense, but it doesn't, which is why I think it was a pandering distraction. It was cheaply thrown in.
The ending was so bad they've the confrontation between the Federation and Romulans has been enhanced since we paid to see it the first time, so they knew it sucked and just put it out anyway. The original Federation fleet were nameless numberless generic cut and paste ships that barely move. Many more have been added. Its shows how little they understand Star Trek. They have no concept of the fact we loved the show even in the 60's when you needed to be forgiving about special effects - because the stories were good!
INCOMPETENT WRITING MOVESThe worst part of Picard is after the plot flops the writers are well aware it sucks; so they just start just doing things. Picard is killed off then he has a boring talk in Tech Heaven with Data. Data Speaks for the audience and begs to be killed. So Picard deletes him and thats that.
Out of nowhere Murderer Alice has a new weak robot body that will die soon anyway and dumps Picard's consciousness into it. So he's back and we just move on. This was a good story?
While we had that mess of a show to consider they drop out another genocide oriented ten hour Discovery 'story' and then the latest insult - Star Trek Lower Decks, which is an Upper Decker on the fans in the spirit of a derivative take on Futurama in a bad cartoon. The volume of material really goes up as quality fades into the distant past with unwatchable Short Treks. These really seem to be sabotage.
In these terrible 7 minute canonical riffs the writers seem to be trying to give Star Trek a Crack smoking habit or something. The nonstop use of contrivances to stumble through a meaningless poorly made awful story is predictable and exhausting.
Non Stop subversion of characters the writers never liked or understood is non entertaining and deeply annoying.
Spock has already been destroyed. Spocks father, Pike and The Guardian of Forever as well. Who will be next? The very worst thing to do would be to help Kurtzman and his lackeys keep the Franchise. If they do it will degenerate for years more in obscurity as they keep ruining classic characters. On Twitter the shows rarely trend as well as the classic shows and movies. Deep Space 9 outperforms Discovery regularly on social media.
There's no solace from the idiocy and mediocrity of the stories. Even moribund Star Wars has The Mandalorian to help fans cope. Theres no Civil War at CBS with a better faction of writers like seems to be case at Lucasfilm. Instead theres an organized insurgency of scared writers desperate to not lose another gig. They came to terms with having no talent years ago and feel entitled destroy Star Trek so they can crank out bad comics and novels to agitate to have terrible scratch takes become shows too in the form of Strange New Worlds. Another bait & switch title about a show that's allegedly filming but somehow is completely different and changes with every fresh wave of criticism. We can only hope its never released.
ABANDON SHIP!The few fans of these shows literally have no taste. Well, I have a stake in Star Trek as a fan. All of us do. Fan feedback saved DS-9 when the writers listened and added some more characters and gave them a ship.
Now fans are baited and lied to. I refuse to simply accept this like some character in a Dickens novel who has no choices. The time has to come to boycott Star Trek and CBS. We deserve better. Star Trek Fans- ABANDON SHIP! Its the only way to get a chance to restore quality to this poorly served fandom. Sorry Gene Roddenberry- looks like your great grandchildren might actually have to get a job. Star Trek is now meaningless, bad, divisive TV that depresses people and increases intolerance.
I will not pay to subsidize terrible Star Trek anymore.
Computer Set auto destruct. Fans - Abandon Ship!
Categories: Tags: Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, JJ Abrams Star Trek, Secret Hideout, Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, star trek discovery flaws, Star Trek Picard Star Trek Discovery Fan Review, Star Trek Discovery Season 1, Star Trek Discovery Season 2, Star Trek Picard Review, Star trek TOS, The Single Biggest Flaw Killing Star Trek Discovery * *
