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Comment by morelisp | Hacker News Reader

IIRC (it's been a while since I watched it) RLM's take is very different than the parent's "great actors like Stewart, Spiner or De Lancie" - RLM places a significant amount of Picard's failure on Stewart being given far too much latitude to chew scenery and bounce around heroically.

Edit to reply to both replies below:

Go read up on Stewart's influence on e.g. Starship Mine or Captain's Holiday - he never cared about maintaining (at least what OP says is) the spirit/lore of TNG.

Is it really surprising that the guy who loved Starship Mine would, when given more creative reign, push something like Picard? It ain't coming (only) from the writers... Chabon for sure can do the genre-heavy psychodrama just fine.

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Agree - I couldn't understand how Stewart could agree to take part in this - surely he must have read the script.

The only thing I can think of is that he's 80 something and getting out of the house, being part of a bigger project again, acting, meeting your old friends etc - it's exciting. So he compromised.

These shows don't always write the scripts ahead of time, so he might have only see the pilot, which wasn't that bad.

For "Picard", I wholeheartedly disagree.

Supposedly, Picard was kicked out for a "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" level speech that pissed off EVERYBODY in Starfleet Command.

That they never showed.

You have an actor practically synonymous with Shakespearean scenery chewing and you never have him deliver the actual speech that supposedly kicks off the whole series?!?!?!

That should be an unending shame to the series writers.

Furthermore, had the writers created that speech, it probably would have created a much better series as it would have set up the boundaries of the world properly for the series writers to operate within.

Agree that missing speech really left a bad taste. My guess was it must have been years ago to explain why the series was beginning when Picard was at such an advanced age.

You never know what goes on behind closed doors and what he was lead to believe.

Eg The Witcher series it seems Henry Cavill signed on for a different portrayal of the world then what was delivered.

He's a producer on the thing and has given input on the direction of the story. Patrick Stewart famously insisted on having Picard drive a dune buggy in Nemesis. He's never been in tune with what Star Trek ought to be.

> He's never been in tune with what Star Trek ought to be.

What ought it be? What about insisting on driving a dune buggy is problematic?

I get your point. I really do. But proof is in the pudding, and the Picard show is really missing the mark. I don’t think it’s growing the brand, and I don’t think it’s pleasing fans either.

To get to the point, I think neither the people who want dune buggies nor those who want space utopianism are too happy to see weak it's-a-metaphor-but-literal-but-a-metaphor daddy issues.

"Starship Mine" and "Captain's Holiday" are both great episodes, though. I think the more damning anecdote is that he was apparently responsible for the dune buggy stuff in Nemesis.

I think a critique of e.g. "it's very action-oriented" is only damning to the degree someone demands Star Trek be a particular kind of weak-tea Posadism. Most of Picard is bad, but not because of insufficient Roddenberry Juice, let alone some of these very personally-focused comments. I just think it's totally unfair to blame (let alone hate!) e.g. Kurtzman exclusively for this when someone doesn't like it, when Stewart's been singing this same tune since the 90s.

Let's agree to disagree about "Captain's Holiday" (for a "fun" episode IMO it really clunks along, e.g. a whole predestination paradox for what is ultimately a MacGuffin), but yes, I also liked "Starship Mine" - but it's utterly unlike the TNG so many fans claim to remember. Like, critique what's actually there both then and now, not your own nostalgia and disillusionment!

Agreed. FWIW, I liked the direction Picard goes in for both seasons. Exploration of what happens when Starfleet fails to live up to its ideals, and how decisions people make determine who they are determine the decisions they make, were quite fun.

I thought RLM's take was Steward didn't care at all about maintaining the spirt/lore of TNG but just cashing a check?

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