Picard Will Lead "Radically Altered" Life in New Star Trek Series

sfsuphysics said:
Damn all the cover up makeup in the world can't hide Brent Spiner's wrinkles
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Well the dude is 70 yrs old. They should have spent some extra cash and used de-aging CGI like they do in the movies. Even Picard looks like an old wrinkled raisin now, I guess time finally caught up with him too. Isn't he like 80 or some shit now?
 
5150Joker said:
Well the dude is 70 yrs old. They should have spent some extra cash and used de-aging CGI like they do in the movies. Even Picard looks like an old wrinkled raisin now, I guess time finally caught up with him too. Isn't he like 80 or some shit now?
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Good de-aging CGI would be pretty expensive, unless you want him to look like the horrifying de-aged Xavier from the end of Wolverine Origins. Also, you're close. Patrick Stewart is 79.
 
I have really mixed feelings on this. The CGI bits, especially with the old Romulan ship, look so.. freaking.. bad. It literally looks like a cheap fan film. Then there's Seven of Nine dual wielding laser rifles and going pew pew pew... Ugh. I'm still reserving judgement until I watch it, but these are not good omens.
 
Derangel said:
Good de-aging CGI would be pretty expensive, unless you want him to look like the horrifying de-aged Xavier from the end of Wolverine Origins. Also, you're close. Patrick Stewart is 79.
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Too bad they couldn't have pulled this together a decade or so earlier.
 
hopefully they strike the right balance between nostalgia and moving the story forward...it's great seeing all the past crew members from the various ST shows but hopefully they don't overdo it
 
5150Joker said:
Maybe they don't really own it but are allowed to live there and produce wine. Plus by then the federation has dozens of planets they own so real estate isn't likely at a premium.
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Still have billions of people on earth. Pretty sure they don't have big estates for everyone who wants one, any more than we do today. This no money thing is one of the sillier Utopian fantasies in ST.
 
Snowdog said:
Still have billions of people on earth. Pretty sure they don't have big estates for everyone who wants one, any more than we do today. This no money thing is one of the sillier Utopian fantasies in ST.
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The perks of being a decorated SF officer.

No money is not such an utopia as many people think. Of course it's not possible for everyone to have a winery, but it is possible for everyone to have they needs met and a roof which would be considered upper middle class housing by today's standards, without money. But if you're an active contributor to society then you can get more than the standard issue housing.

I don't get it why people reject the idea so vehemently without even considering it. It has more to do with traditions and the fear of the unknown than actual impossibility.
 
M76 said:
The perks of being a decorated SF officer.

No money is not such an utopia as many people think. Of course it's not possible for everyone to have a winery, but it is possible for everyone to have they needs met and a roof which would be considered upper middle class housing by today's standards, without money. But if you're an active contributor to society then you can get more than the standard issue housing.

I don't get it why people reject the idea so vehemently without even considering it. It has more to do with traditions and the fear of the unknown than actual impossibility.
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So what happens when you decide to get rid of money/wealth, and 5% of the population owns 80% of the land? You stack the majority of the population in dense apartment buildings and a privileged few own most of the world in perpetuity?

Who the hell decides who is worth more? That just sounds like another form of currency, except put into the hands of people determining worth.

It's unworkable nonsense.
 
Yeesh, I hope they're not banking on a second season. Stewart has always appeared exceptionally hale and virile for his years, but the frailty and infirmity of old age are really starting to show: the weak voice, the rheumy eyes, and the elderly gait.

Still, it isn't quite as bad as Mike in "Better Call Saul". At least Picard is supposed to be old. Jonathan Banks is obviously an elderly guy who can barely move, but he's supposed to be several years younger than the spry Mike we saw in "Breaking Bad". I love the show, but whenever Mike is on screen, it kills my suspension of disbelief. But I digress.
 
Snowdog said:
So what happens when you decide to get rid of money/wealth, and 5% of the population owns 80% of the land? You stack the majority of the population in dense apartment buildings and a privileged few own most of the world in perpetuity?

Who the hell decides who is worth more? That just sounds like another form of currency, except put into the hands of people determining worth.

It's unworkable nonsense.
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  1. Create a theory based on your own misinformation
  2. Say it's nonsense
  3. Think you've won an argument
Works every time. Except you win the argument against yourself.

This is too off topic to go into detail here, but in a post scarcity post money society nobody owns anything, especially not land. They are only temporary caretakers of the land they occupy.
 
Well, I lived the first four years of my life in a society where no one owns anything and let me tell you, there is nothing "post-scarcity" about it - quite the contrary, actually.

I also dispute the term "post scarcity" which not really applicable to anything not replicated (and even then, the total energy production of the Federation is most definitely not infinite) - there is clearly a limited amount of land in Normandy, and even less land suitable for grape vine cultivation. Since demand of land in Normandy, given its cultural significance, probably outweighs supply even under the United Federation of Planets (which has been shown on screen to value cultural sophistication), there must be a mechanism by which land is allocated to Picard and not to other people.
 
M76 said:
  1. Create a theory based on your own misinformation
  2. Say it's nonsense
  3. Think you've won an argument
Works every time. Except you win the argument against yourself.

This is too off topic to go into detail here, but in a post scarcity post money society nobody owns anything, especially not land. They are only temporary caretakers of the land they occupy.
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Your 1-2-3 is known as a straw man argument. Point out the straw man, Don't just generically complain about straw man.

There was no straw man. I asked questions, you failed to answer them and instead tried to hand wave them away with misapplication of straw man.

The "nobody owns anything" philosophy you are describing is essentially communism, which has proved completely unworkable in practice.

In TNG, Clearly the Picards effectively own their vineyard which the family has apparently been living on for generations. There is still wealth, of the inherited land form, if nothing else.
 
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Snowdog said:
Your 1-2-3 is known as a straw man argument. Point out the straw man, Don't just generically complain about straw man.

There was no straw man. I asked questions, you failed to answer them and instead tried to hand wave them away with misapplication of straw man.

The "nobody owns anything" philosophy you are describing is essentially communism, which has proved completely unworkable in practice.

In TNG, Clearly the Picards effectively own their vineyard which the family has apparently been living on for generations. There is still wealth, of the inherited land form, if nothing else.
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A strawman argument is deliberately misrepresenting someone elses position. Not making assumptions based on misinformation about a social system. Your biggest mistake was assuming that people own the land. I clearly pointed that out, so I don't know how I failed at answering.

I have less hairs on my head than the times I've heard "but that's communism".
I've lived under communism, I've been to communist countries recently, I'd be crazy if I thought that is a model to imitate.
In communism somehow people still owned things. The communism we had, and the one currently being in effect in china and vietnam and such places are forms of capitalism.

As for TNG it is clearly not a blueprint for how an actual money less society would work. I just pointed out that a money less society is not an utopia. The money system is self defeating because it is predicated on infinite growth, which is impossible on a finite planet. We are running at a brick wall, and accelerating, and whoever wants to slow down are called communists immediately.
 
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M76 said:
As for TNG it is clearly not a blueprint for how an actual money less society would work. I just pointed out that a money less society is not an utopia. The money system is self defeating because it is predicated on infinite growth, which is impossible on a finite planet. We are running at a brick wall, and accelerating, and whoever wants to slow down are called communists immediately.
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It didn't say that a money less society was a utopia.

I said it was a Utopian fantasy. Which is pretty much the opposite.

It's much like Communist fantasy of collective ownership.

Fantasy = nonsense in this context.

The problem with these fantasies, is that they fail to account for human nature.

There will always be currency of some form as long as there are humans.

We may do away with in some far flung transhuman/posthuman future, but TNG was not a transhuman/posthuman story.

And you never answered the question about who decides who get extra perks. As in "The perks of being a decorated SF officer"

Perks sound an awful lot like payment.
 
polonyc2 said:
Star Trek: Picard | NYCC Trailer

premieres: Jan 23 2020 on CBS-AA

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That was a good trailer. While Steward is certainly showing his age, I found it interesting that in voice, he sounded quite elderly and frail for what would be the early sequences, but regained some vim and vigor as things progressed. I hope that is an intentional direction, as it would make at least the pilot episodes quite emotionally engaging.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I don't care for this.

One of the reasons I liked TNG was because of who his character was. I was excited when I heard he was coming back, but now I'm just rolling my eyes.

The idiots they out in charge of writing Star Trek shit these days just can't get out of their own way. They feel the need to make shit "their own" rather than stay within existing boundaries. Fuck that

If you want to make something your own, start your own goddamned series. There shouldn't not be any creative freedom at all in Star Trek.
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I wholeheartedly agree. The current batch of Star Trek writing is total garbage. The problem with making prequels is stepping on established canon. They probably should have started with moving the story line forward. It's good the story is finally moving forward, however, with the current batch of writing .... it's gonna be bad.
 
Not something i'm interested in.

Swords? really? When I watch ST I want to seen ingenious uses of tech, not LOTR in space.
 
Legendary Gamer said:
I wholeheartedly agree. The current batch of Star Trek writing is total garbage. The problem with making prequels is stepping on established canon. They probably should have started with moving the story line forward. It's good the story is finally moving forward, however, with the current batch of writing .... it's gonna be bad.
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The "new" Star Trek movies (the remakes) should have never happened. Period. They should have just skipped them entirely if they couldn't figure out a new storyline without jumping the shark by using a lame ass time travel event to rewrite the story.

I only know one show where that works and its precisely the premise of the entire show...and even there it doesn't always work as the show has lately become trash.
 
kju1 said:
The "new" Star Trek movies (the remakes) should have never happened. Period. They should have just skipped them entirely if they couldn't figure out a new storyline without jumping the shark by using a lame ass time travel event to rewrite the story.

I only know one show where that works and its precisely the premise of the entire show...and even there it doesn't always work as the show has lately become trash.
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And yet they were as good, if not better than all but 1 TNG movie (First Contact) and not worse than 1/2 of the TOS movies (that'd be 1,3 & 5), which is saying something, because, as I recall, one of the new movies being nothing more than an inferior remake of Wrath of Khan. Then again, so was TNG's Nemesis...but as I recall, it was even worse).

That said, so far, this doesn't excite me. I get the impression that the other TNG characters are mostly guest roles and while I don't dislike that, it doesn't excite me either. But we'll see how it goes. I can't imagine that Patrick Stewart is going to allow a shit show to be made. If he does, it's on him. He's an Executive Producer and I have to believe that his contract gives him a lot of sway over the story (if not individual scripts).
 
Snowdog said:
It didn't say that a money less society was a utopia.

I said it was a Utopian fantasy. Which is pretty much the opposite.
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Then you're mistaken on the concept level. Every utopia is a fantasy. As an utopia is the best there can be. But there is no such thing as the ffnal version of anything. New technology and ideas will always crop up so there is always room to do better. Everything can be improved upon, therefore utopia = fantasy.
If you think you come up with the 'best ever' version of something you're already mistaken.

It's much like Communist fantasy of collective ownership.
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As I've said I've never seen collective ownership in practice in any communist countries. They were all capitalist first.
Fantasy = nonsense in this context.
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I know you think it is nonsense, but that is your unwillingness to think outside the box talking.

The problem with these fantasies, is that they fail to account for human nature.
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Human nature is a scapegoat. It's a good excuse for the lazy and indifferent to say: "Let's not even try to change or better society cause of human nature"
There is no such thing as human nature, humans aren't inherently evil, cruel or envious. They are made that by circumstances.

There will always be currency of some form as long as there are humans.
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No, but there will always be some form of currency as long as there is scarcity.
We may do away with in some far flung transhuman/posthuman future, but TNG was not a transhuman/posthuman story.
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You don't have to be trans-human to do away with the artificial scarcity that we have now.

And you never answered the question about who decides who get extra perks. As in "The perks of being a decorated SF officer"
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In the Star trek world? I have no idea. In the real world? I have no idea either. If I knew how to achieve and run a post "work for food" society I'd already be working on implementing it. Universal basic income seems like an obvious first step, but there is a lot of pushback cause "nobody should get anything for nothing!"

Perks sound an awful lot like payment.
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Yes, they are payment, but I'd call them rewards. Except in that ideal post scarcity society you don't have to work for a living. And when I say post scarcity I only mean food, and housing, not literally everything. Wouldn't you say it's a better model where everyone automatically has their basic needs met, and only have to work if they want more than that? Of course you can'T take the people conditioned in today's society and drop them into such a scenario and expect it to work. As I've mentioned, you have to think outside the box. If we ever going to achieve anything similar it will be trough slow and gradual social and political changes.
 
M76 said:
Yes, they are payment, but I'd call them rewards. Except in that ideal post scarcity society you don't have to work for a living. And when I say post scarcity I only mean food, and housing, not literally everything. Wouldn't you say it's a better model where everyone automatically has their basic needs met, and only have to work if they want more than that? Of course you can'T take the people conditioned in today's society and drop them into such a scenario and expect it to work. As I've mentioned, you have to think outside the box. If we ever going to achieve anything similar it will be trough slow and gradual social and political changes.
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That right there skewers the "no money/wealth" argument. Calling payments rewards/perks doesn't make mean you don't have currency, you just have another form of currency/wealth.

Also don't conflate something like Guaranteed Basic Income, with there being no money/wealth/currency. The former is potentially workable (possibly even required in a generation or two), while the latter removes incentives, commerce, trade, etc....

I could definitely see a future, where basic needs are met, and people work for extras. More people are free to pursue their passions in art, music, literature, architecture, etc... But they would still want to be rewarded/paid for their work.

Hell, look at today. Check any Multi-millionaire artist. Do they stop charging for their work, even when their basic needs are met 100 times over? Not on your life. They fight tooth and nail for every dime, even with multiple-millions (even hundreds of millions) in the bank.

Post-scarcity does NOT equate post-currency/commerce.
 
Snowdog said:
That right there skewers the "no money/wealth" argument. Calling payments rewards/perks doesn't make mean you don't have currency, you just have another form of currency/wealth.

Also don't conflate something like Guaranteed Basic Income, with there being no money/wealth/currency. The former is potentially workable (possibly even required in a generation or two), while the latter removes incentives, commerce, trade, etc....

I could definitely see a future, where basic needs are met, and people work for extras. More people are free to pursue their passions in art, music, literature, architecture, etc... But they would still want to be rewarded/paid for their work.

Hell, look at today. Check any Multi-millionaire artist. Do they stop charging for their work, even when their basic needs are met 100 times over? Not on your life. They fight tooth and nail for every dime, even with multiple-millions (even hundreds of millions) in the bank.

Post-scarcity does NOT equate post-currency/commerce.
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If you don't own the rewards there is no wealth accumulated. As long as people can own things there will always be a concentration of wealth and therefore inequality. You get the reward, but if you loose your privileges or die it is not inherited by your relatives, but goes to the next person eligible for such a reward.

As for UBI, it is absolutely necessary, but if you are automatically given an income, for just existing, why not just be given a house/food instead? Why the need for money?

As for commerce, that thinking is based on market players rivalizing.It will be made obsolete if what is manufactured and how is determined by necessity and sustainability instead of profitability.
 
Snowdog said:
It didn't say that a money less society was a utopia.

I said it was a Utopian fantasy. Which is pretty much the opposite.

It's much like Communist fantasy of collective ownership.

Fantasy = nonsense in this context.

The problem with these fantasies, is that they fail to account for human nature.

There will always be currency of some form as long as there are humans.

We may do away with in some far flung transhuman/posthuman future, but TNG was not a transhuman/posthuman story.

And you never answered the question about who decides who get extra perks. As in "The perks of being a decorated SF officer"

Perks sound an awful lot like payment.
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I think the federation does use money and even gives a stipend to starfleet officers. That's how you see Riker, Bashir and the others buying stuff or gambling--they couldn't do that if the feds didn't give them latinum. There are probably perks too such as if you're a colonist, you get to "own"/lease the land if you develop it. With replicators and technology that's more advanced than fusion presumably, they likely have ways of generating more than enough energy for everyone's needs in the federation. So you can be a janitor or doctor and live in a nice high rise apartment that was probably built entirely by machines and if you want to be a world class engineer you probably do get perks that others don't (plus they do it for social standing and praise) but you won't be a billionaire with your own moon.

They've shown humans in star trek that chose to live in the pursuit of money and luxury (eg vash) but it seems the majority enjoy being able to do what you want in life while living comfortably but not wealthy. Comparing the federation to systems on earth today isn't realistic because we live in a very resource limited world unlike the federation and have far inferior technology.
 
5150Joker said:
I think the federation does use money and even gives a stipend to starfleet officers. That's how you see Riker, Bashir and the others buying stuff or gambling--they couldn't do that if the feds didn't give them latinum.
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Yup. Remember Scotty mentioned that he "just bought a boat" at the beginning of ST: VI.
 
M76 said:
If you don't own the rewards there is no wealth accumulated. As long as people can own things there will always be a concentration of wealth and therefore inequality. You get the reward, but if you loose your privileges or die it is not inherited by your relatives, but goes to the next person eligible for such a reward.
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It looks very much like the Vineyard-estate came to the Picards from their parents. So it was inherited.
 
Yup, the farm was inherited. Been in the family for generations. His brother and nephew died in a fire there.
Thats why some people here are going full communist; thinking if money is abolished then everything of value has to be redistributed evenly, or you will be stuck with exactly what you/your family owns at the moment currency was abolished.
 
nilepez said:
And yet they were as good, if not better than all but 1 TNG movie (First Contact) and not worse than 1/2 of the TOS movies (that'd be 1,3 & 5), which is saying something, because, as I recall, one of the new movies being nothing more than an inferior remake of Wrath of Khan. Then again, so was TNG's Nemesis...but as I recall, it was even worse).

That said, so far, this doesn't excite me. I get the impression that the other TNG characters are mostly guest roles and while I don't dislike that, it doesn't excite me either. But we'll see how it goes. I can't imagine that Patrick Stewart is going to allow a shit show to be made. If he does, it's on him. He's an Executive Producer and I have to believe that his contract gives him a lot of sway over the story (if not individual scripts).
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But they were generic shoot 'em ups with details from TOS salted into them. That's their problem. Detail your generic shoot 'em ups with some original thought and don't drag other properties into your movie which someone felt couldn't stand on its own.
 
M76 said:
As for UBI, it is absolutely necessary, but if you are automatically given an income, for just existing, why not just be given a house/food instead? Why the need for money?
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Getting money and being expected to buy food and housing with it enables the recipient to make choices about which food and which housing in a more transparent way. With assigned housing, a trade will develop for prime units, and probably associated corruption of the process to assign those units. It's easier and more fair to give everyone the same money and let each individual pick the tradeoffs that work for them.
 
Snowdog said:
It looks very much like the Vineyard-estate came to the Picards from their parents. So it was inherited.
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A remnant of the old system? The least painful way of redistribution of previously accumulated wealth.would be that if the last direct heir dies their property is assimilated into the collective :)

But any value created using the earth's resources moving forward from a point wouldn't be owned by anyone.
 
M76 said:
A remnant of the old system? The least painful way of redistribution of previously accumulated wealth.would be that if the last direct heir dies their property is assimilated into the collective :)

But any value created using the earth's resources moving forward from a point wouldn't be owned by anyone.
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Talk about making up your own pet theories.
 
toast0 said:
Getting money and being expected to buy food and housing with it enables the recipient to make choices about which food and which housing in a more transparent way. With assigned housing, a trade will develop for prime units, and probably associated corruption of the process to assign those units. It's easier and more fair to give everyone the same money and let each individual pick the tradeoffs that work for them.
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You just give a bunch of money to people and hope that they spend it on the thing that it's meant for? There shouldn't be such a thing as prime units. I cannot re-iterate enough, in such a system even the worst housing would be as good as or better than what you consider an upper middle class home now.
 
Snowdog said:
Talk about making up your own pet theories.
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You wanted a real world example of a system never implemented yet or what? Talk about moving the goal posts.

You act like a "theory" in itself is a bad thing. Everything is a theory, only practice / experiments can tell if it is a working theory or not.
 
M76 said:
You wanted a real world example of a system never implemented yet or what? Talk about moving the goal posts.

You act like a "theory" in itself is a bad thing. Everything is a theory, only practice / experiments can tell if it is a working theory or not.
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You attacked me for merely asking questions, claiming I was making up theories to shoot down, yet you are free to theorize away with impunity?

Your theorizing mimics communism with collective ownership, and your special perks, and dispensations are examples of how unworkable communist theory, leads to corruption once actual people get involved.

The Star Trek system doesn't even rise to the level of Marxism. It is just a bunch of inconsistent episodic content, brought up by individual show writers that harped on some point they wanted to make at the time.

Looking at the overall effect, Picard looks like a massive hypocrite when he gets on his high horse moralizing about the non existence of money/wealth, when he benefits from inherited wealth and perks.
 
M76 said:
You just give a bunch of money to people and hope that they spend it on the thing that it's meant for? There shouldn't be such a thing as prime units. I cannot re-iterate enough, in such a system even the worst housing would be as good as or better than what you consider an upper middle class home now.
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Yeah, if I give you money for housing and food and you spend it on hookers and blow, hopefully you'll figure it out next month. If you can figure out how to eat and have a roof over your head for less than other people, you'll have some room in your budget for hookers and blow. Micromanaging this leads to more expense and waste than just providing money, at least, that's the theory behind UBI. Providing money directly completely avoids potential issues with people trying to turn the provided goods into money.

Some unit is going to have a better view or less noise or be closer to the holodeck or otherwise be more equal than others; I'll trade you my sweet unit for yours, if you give me half of your soylent green every friday.
 
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