StillPaisleyCat

Here’s another take.

We know that everything was reshaped to flatter and entice Patrick Stewart to come back and play Picard.

He kept refusing and keep on insisting on Picard’s life should be a reflection of his own.

But the suits at ViacomCBS (and later Paramount) put priority on greenlighting anything they could get with Picard as a character.

So, whatever initial concepts with and without Picard were all sacrificed in the end in order to indulge Stewart enough to play the role.

It’s absurd. Our kids ended up playing Star Trek with Playmobil’s space and ‘Future Planet’ planetary exploration lines. (I doubt these even still exist.)

When the Star Trek line finally arrived it was only TOS.

All of which begs the question “How is it that Jeff Goldblum has not yet appeared in the Star Trek franchise”

And this is why Discovery and other new shows are only getting 5 seasons.

Contracts are for 7 calendar years not seven seasons.

With problems launching new shows, COVID-related slowdowns and a writers strike, Discovery managed to produce 5 seasons in 7 years.

The sale is supposed to last until the end of today September 15th. Usually, that would be until midnight Pacific time.

Suggest trying through the link on the officials Star Trek website to follow through to Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/StarTrekDaySale

We picked up 3 copies of Resurgence the evening of the 14th from Canada.

We’ve tried most of them over time.

Star Trek Resurgence has consistently excellent reviews. It’s about a 25 hour role play where the player makes choices for two different crew - a senior bridge officer and an NCO in engineering. It’s well done and one of our teens and I are enjoying it a lot. Great value for the sale price. My patience on this one was reinforced by its initial release being exclusive to Epic - but on Steam and on sale it’s worth it.

Bridge Crew is an older game. I have had it for a couple of years, and took advantage of the sale to pick up copies for each of our kids Steam accounts. One of them got really into it right away.

Timelines is also older. It held their interest for a bit in middle school but doesn’t seem to be one of the better tie-ins.

Star Trek Online is a long running massively multiplayer game that starts out free but then can cost a lot for in-game purchases. One of our teens is into it, and got fairly far without purchasing much, but the Steam sale is a good opportunity for them to buy things they’ve had on their wish list.

As a parent, I find these better than the endless number of Star Wars mods on Roblox that one of ours got into for a while.

The colours are unrepentantly psychedelic 70s fashionable and so are a few of the plots.

It’s always a good time to do a watch through of TAS.

The thing is that while the technobabble is just that, the process represents how engineering gets done better than most other ‘serious’ SF, albeit at compressed speed.

Voyager did a better job than any at showing how the thinking and problem-solving work gets done - which to me is more the point.

All this criticism seems to come from folks who’ve never seen nerds working in teams being nerds. They seem to want science FICTION to be locked down to concepts that someone with a mid 20th bachelor’s degree in science would know.

Whereas the real life scientists and engineers in my circle react more like Erin Macdonald did when she was working on her physics PhD and saw Voyager. She recognized the process and thought it was cool that some of the newer concepts in gravimetrics were referenced but didn’t sweat the small stuff.

Glad to have you mention that here.

So many fans of the older shows assume that Lower Decks isn’t accessible to new viewers who don’t get the references, but it’s quite the opposite. Gen Z and younger viewers are into animated comedies and it’s a successful entry point. And with the number of middle schoolers who got into manga and anime during the pandemic, the portion of the audience that prefers animation as a medium is only going to grow.

Our teens were fans of the Voyager when they were in middle school, and sampled the rest of the classic shows. Despite that they seem to be split on the animated vs live action new shows, and none of them would watch Picard.

It’s a real shame that there won’t be any new animated Star Trek after this season of Lower Decks.

Star Trek Prodigy is the true sequel to Voyager. It’s all ages / family rather than the ‘kids show’ many fans take it for. I would watch that with your GF next.

Because Prodigy is designed to be an entry point for new viewers, it introduces many of the key legacy characters and much of the lore. It has a Star Wars vibe in the pilot, mainly to draw in viewers from other franchises, but it settles into being some of the Trekiest content ever by the 6th short episode of season one.