Thread by @Mr_Sarahsaur

Okay. I'm sorry, but I need to express my "admonishment" of @startrekcbs and the absolute travesty of a show that is #Picard.

It's a terrible program, and it's NOT STAR TREK. How? Let me count the ways...

1/22

1. The Federation has ALWAYS been the uncompromising leader for unity, tolerance, and peace. It is the cornerstone of Trek. Sometimes a few pigheaded admirals go off the rails (Measure of a Man, Paradise Lost), but we always return to the ideals of Trek.

2/22

#Picard shows no such respect. Starfleet now resides under the auspices of the Tal Shiar, fear and racial prejudice run amok, and synthetic lifeforms are banned. Banned. For allegedly destroying Mars. Since when does the Federation behave in this manner?

3/22

There is never any attempt to even define or examine the ideals of the Federation, much less give them any legitimacy. We see a galaxy that looks like the Wild West. Anything you don't understand, kill it or banish it. What are we, Romulans?

4/22

2. Seven of Nine kills some person in cold blood. Seven of Nine. Yeah right. Where the hell is Janeway? Surely Picard has not outlived her. She would smack Seven upside the head. She did not free her from the collective so she could go around slaying more civilians.

5/22

3. Seven mercy kills Icheb (lol wtf)... because he lost an eye?? How many times has he had that happen by now? It's totally superfluous shock and gore, and Voyager fans should be appalled. Icheb was an innocent, a beloved son of that show. Shame.

6/22

4. What the hell is all of this fucking teen-ass CW bullshit?! Show us the science fucking fiction. The SF could have been great. The ideas are high-minded. Instead they decided to reveal the show's great mystery like it was a recap on Dawson's Creek.

7/22

5. None of the characters is explored in any substantive way. Cpt. Rios is okay. But all the rest of them, Picard notwithstanding, are hollow shells, flat two-dimensional cutouts of modern drama queens. It's a motley crew à la Guardians of the Galaxy, but not even as good.

8/22

Who the hell is Elnor and why should we care? Why does Dr. Jurati, a galactic-level expert in cybernetics, sound like a vapid, simpering fangirl when she talks to synths? Why is Raffi even on this mission, and why should we care about her son?

9/22

All of the characters are poorly motivated. Their stories are treated with less-than-half-assed inserted reshoots, leaving us no time to get to know these people, much less reflect on their actions. We waste almost half of the season on Soji and Narek's pitiful "romance".

10/22

We receive nothing for our time. There are no lasting repercussions, no continuity of character, and...

6. There are no choices. Typical of the zeitgeist, we see characters who are just kind of drawn into a bunch of stuff, but who don't actually make moral decisions.

11/22

Life just happens to these characters. Everything is obligatory, obvious, the "only choice". Everything is merely survival. I recently got into it with someone on twitter claiming that there were "great moral dilemmas" in Ep. 9. Where? What are they? I asked.

12/22

Instead, I was told to fuck off, you filthy casual, because I refused to prove that I had read a completely unrelated @FriedmanMJ book. This is toxic fandom. I've watched the show, I've read the books. I've lived in it my whole life. I fucking know what Trek is.

13/22

And #Picard is not Trek. Do I get to decide this? Yes. Because I am. @startrekcbs doesn't get to decide what Trek is. @Alex_Kurtzman doesn't, @berman_rick doesn't, not even the truly legendary @IraStevenBehr, who is among the few I would count on par with Roddenberry.

14/22

The great writers, the creators of this franchise, the artists and designers like @MikeOkuda, the actors who gave their careers to this visionary world, they all bow before the IDEA. They do not *control* the idea. They *serve* it, they develop it.

15/22

Trek does not *belong* to fucking anyone. And I'm sorry to say that over the last decade, a number of high-profile Hollywood producers have decided that making their buck and having their name on shit means they can just do whatever they want.

16/22

Well, yeah, they sure as shit *can*, I guess. But I won't be watching it anymore. I won't be paying @CBS to watch a show that has run on free network television for half a century before being bought out by money-grubbing celebrity poseurs.

17/22

I have the utmost respect for @SirPatStew and @JeriLRyan for their dear and indelible service to Trek. But to every week watch their talents sidelined in favor of petty, empty adolescent drama is heartbreaking.

18/22

This show could be exploring, just for example, the nature and stuggles of the recovered Borg, the politics between Romulus and the Federation, Seven's life and work, the hardships of common life in the Alpha Quadrant, the complexity of the public fear of AI.

19/22

And what have we got instead? A show with virtually nothing but filler. A mystery with no mystery. A comedy that's all tragedy. Needless, wanton suffering, because we humans in the present day have lost our ability to retain optimism.

20/22

We need Trek. Now more than ever. It lives in the fans. It lives in those of us who refuse to give up dreaming. Will we see it again? Will we go back to building Roddenberry's road?

I hope so. In the meantime we must decide to *be* that future.

21/22

Just like real life, and unlike with the characters in #Picard, Trek is not something just happens to you. It *is* you. The showrunners do not decide what Trek is, what life is, or who you are. Life is not TV.

Roddenberry showed us that. Let's act like it.

22/22