I think it's brave of PICARD to take the things that define STAR TREK, like the idea of crews of highly trained utopians using science and diplomacy to solve problems in a bright and shiny future, and just completely jettison all that to focus on people bickering in various underlit locations.
One of the benefits of episodic TV is characters have to quickly identify and solve problems because there simply isn't time to do much else in the space of an episode.
Serialized TV avoids having characters solve problems because then the storyline is over.
But watching characters not solve problems is both boring and aggravating. Especially in a franchise like STAR TREK, that spent hundreds of hours showing us how good these characters are at identifying and solving problems.
I know making art is hard and I've really been trying recently to not shit on other people's art but I love the STAR TREK franchise. It had a huge impact on me growing up and it hurts to watch new versions of it be made by people who not only don't seem to love STAR TREK, they don't even seem to like it all that much.
@Livingmarble try Lower decks. It's the most humanized version of star trek to date. It makes the universe much more relatable and pokes fun at itself at the same time.
@KaidaFox, I'd say Lower Decks includes exactly the elements that @Livingmarble calls out, especially the highly trained part.
The characters bumbled through arguing among each other with a completely collapsed chain of command to accidentally arrive at solutions despite their incompetence, cracking bad jokes all along instead of seriously exploring the human condition and such.
But mainly, the cartoon simply failed at being particularly funny or clever.
I know multiple people that I showed it to had the same reaction I did: how did not a single joke from the whole episode land?
@volkris @Livingmarble I enjoyed it and had no issue with the humor. Neither did any of my friends. We enjoyed it for what it was, rather than expecting it to be something else.
They're not meant to be the perfect bridge officers that are usually depicted. They're meant to be the working class, exploring the day to day side of the star trek universe, rather than the big picture stuff.
I actually love it.
Picard, not so much. Especially the last season, was much harder to watch.
Like I said, and I know there's really no point in responding but whatever, the major issue is that all of my friends just did not find it funny.
The show had nothing to offer except humor. It didn't explore the human condition or whatever, it didn't solve puzzles, it just had nothing to offer except humor.
And all of the folks that I watched it with, we watched it, and at the end of the day we all kind of looked at each other like, there wasn't a single funny joke in that. It was just stupid.
And yeah like I said, I know you found it funny and that's great. I'm glad some people did. But just for the record, just to share other experiences, I know a lot of people who watched a few episodes of the show and just did not find it one bit funny.
I wish the show was better and offered humor that more people would laugh at.
@volkris @Livingmarble yes I did hear you specifically go out of your way to tell me you don't like the thing I like, even though I was talking to someone else at the time. Honestly, I'm kind of getting tired of people online doing that.
You're entitled to have a different opinion. I just wish people understood that just because they don't like something doesn't mean other people want to hear it constantly. It is okay to let other people enjoy things.