From CNET: “The galaxy was mourning, burying its dead, and Starfleet slunk from its duties,” Picard barks, a nod to the destruction of Romulus that sets off the chain of events from the J.J. Abrams-directed Star Trek film. He calls the Federation “downright criminal.”
“I was not prepared to stand by and be a spectator,” Picard said.
Only for you.
Only for you, my beloved readers was I willing to resubscribe to CBS All Access and then pull the plug again after only one episode because I sure as fuck am not paying for that stink hole of streaming.
The blitheringly incompetent Bad Robot productions is producing Picard, so it takes place in the Kelvin timeline, because everyone wanted more of that! Kurtzman is running it so you know it was born as a festering boil covered abomination. And he has admitted that Picard is NOT a canonical sequel to Star Trek: The Next Generation.
You heard that right. The much ballyhooed Picard is more J. J. Abrams fanfic!
And it’s been written by Avrika Goldman who wrote A Beautiful Mind (Wait! Stop! Don’t get your hopes up) as well as Batman and Robin, Batman Forever, plus the Lost in Space movie. When Goldman is only in it for a paycheck he is the living embodiment of phoning it in.
And phone it in he did!
Starting off a Star Trek series with a anti-Nationalist political rant was a bad enough start, but following that with an action scene let all of the Star Trek fans know upfront that this one is on the fast track to ST:D-ville.
Meet Dahj, a young woman in the 24th century who is the Special One…briefly. A black armored assassin team beams into her apartment and kills her boyfriend. They throw her to the ground, scanning her and yelling, “is she activated yet?” I sighed in boredom because I immediately knew she was going to activate. Which she does and the worst tactical team the 24th century has to offer is pixie-ninjaed to death,
Off to Picard, she goes because she has had dreams of him, despite never having met him. Picard has Romulan migrants working on his vineyard. Romulans are the new…uh…Muslims? I think? Anyway, it is supposed to provide Picard with virtue signaling points. The reason I think they are supposed to be Muslim immigrant stand-ins is that Dahj’s would-be terrorists were Romulans.
Starfleet didn’t want to let the Romulans to migrate into Federation Space after Romulus was destroyed. So Picard resigned in protest. The Globalist sentiment here is surprisingly stark. Sure they lost their home planet but the Romulans had an entire damn empire of their own. Why do they need to move into the Federation?
Anyway, Picard has been having dreams himself, about a CGI de-aged Data. Which compels him to go look in some storage facility for a portrait that Data had painted and sure enough this portrait from decades ago looks like Dahj.
Dahj, as it turns out, is Data’s not exactly daughter. She is a flesh and blood human but, (buckle up for this one boys), she has a positronic brain that was cloned from one positron of Data’s brain. If you need time to let the galloping stupidity of that one sink in I’ll give you a moment. I’ll still be here.
*foot tap*
*foot tap*
*foot tap*
*foot tap*
All better now? Good! Let’s go on.
Picard decides to help Dahj and she promptly gets killed by a Romulan assassin (sigh) who spits his acid blood on her. However, she has a twin sister somewhere and Picard sets off on a quest to find her. Just as I set off on a quest to find the unsubscribe button.
Now, I know what you are thinking, but Data already had a daughter. Lal? Right? Yeah, Lal and she lived and died all in one episode. You are correct but I am one hundred percent certain that neither Goldman or Kurtzman knew about Lal when they came up with this ingenious premise. Because neither of these guys are Star Trek fans. Or at least they are not superfans.
Superfans are not casual fans. They’ve spent hour after hour in their chosen universe and really fleshed it all out in their heads. Superfans want to live there. Give them a couple of hours in the universe as they have imagined it and they will turn out for you big time.
Doctor Who had superfans. But now there is an SJW tourist in charge and the superfans have fled in droves just like they did when Luke tossed his lightsaber over his shoulder and the Ghostbusters started making queef jokes.
Do not piss off your property’s superfans.
Believe me, I learned this the hard way. My first book was a zombie apocalypse story that “subverted expectations” of the ZA fanbase. They did not turn out for Dark Winter and the reviews from them were seething with hatred for me and that had nothing to do with the book’s politics. It was because I hadn’t followed the rules of the Zombieverse.
Honestly, not pissing off the superfans has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with common sense marketing.
Producers who are tourist-fans are only going to produce crap like this. They are bored with and disengaged by that universe, so they try to turn it into something that they can get into. If I was handed the keys to Harry Potter I guarantee that the Harry Potter superfans would hate everything I came up with.*
I think my biggest disappointmet was with Patrick Stewart. An actor in his position is the custodian of his character. When Mark Hamill signed the contract, he had no idea of the horrors that lay in store for Luke. He didn’t have anywhere near enough pull to save his character.
Sir Patrick Stewart, on the other hand, has the pull. He is a somebody. He has the power of, “no,” and he didn’t use it. He let Picard get dragged through the mud. He could have stopped it but the reason he didn’t was so Picard become his anti-Trump, anti-Brexit avatar. He has now wiped out thirty years of goodwill and destroyed his legacy.
Globalist Anti-Nationalism is the big social message with Picard.
“You chose Romulan lives over human lives,” a reporter interviewing Picard sneers at him.
In case any of you were wondering, yeah, it sucks.
* Since you are curious. Harry Potter becomes headmaster of Hogwarts after he is medicaled out of the Aurors because he was critically injured by a Grue. He has a limp now to prove it. Magic it turns out is based on a Mana system. The words of a spell don’t matter so long as the spell is clear in your head. Longbottom’s son keeps saying “expectorant patreon” and his patronis is invariably much more powerful than Harry’s. Wands don’t matter in the least as they are just a focal point. Harry proves that by using a twig after his own wand breaks. A scene follows where all the students of Hogwarts are seen throwing their wands into the fireplace.
Jenny Nicholson, if you are reading this, this is why we all hated the Last Jedi.
The Dark Herald 
* Raises a glass of Saurian brandy in salute. *
Brave man.
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Long time lurker on your old blog.
Found you after discovering Vox
and the Rabid Puppies.I really enjoyed Dark Winter and was
very disappointed that there it ended.Found it a fresh take on the Zombie Apocalypse,loved the characters,back story and everything except those two
saddest words,the end.Good handle(history buff).The best laid plans etc.
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Thank you very much.
I may try a relaunch of the series if this year goes well.
In retrospect, I realize that what I had written wasn’t a ZA story but a Medical Thriller. When I relaunch, that is the market I will be courting.
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That makes a lot more sense, now. Robin Cook made bank on medical thrillers.
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I just wish I had understood how I was screwing up at the time.
Failures are only complete failures if you can’t learn from them
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I think Stewart was happily jumping in the mud with Kurtzman and Goldman. To Stewart’s credit, he is a consummate professional. So, he’s never going to come out and directly trash the character he is known for playing. However, I don’t think he really ever enjoyed playing Picard. (His agent told him to take the gig because the show would only last one season, two tops.) He’s the one who got the infamous dune buggy scene in Nemesis because he wanted a more action oriented character. Rumor has it he didn’t want any of the old cast in this show. Sadly, I think Stewart is part of the problem.
JJ bad fanfic is a great description of what Bad Robot and its minions have created.
You need more than Saurian brandy.
* Slides over Romulan Ale *
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Bad Reboot strikes again
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If Stewart were a worse actor, we could assume he was a lot like Picard, because bad actors can really only play themselves or one character they find in themselves. But he’s a very good actor, so he gave the directors the performance they wanted. On TNG the TV show, that meant a careful diplomat and humanist. In the TNG movies, that meant a quipping action hero (we’ll call him Larry). He’s going to give these directors the Picard they want, and it will not be good.
As far as his own feelings go, he probably liked the TV Picard in the 90s when Clinton was in office and liberal globalism was on the rise, so talking things to death meant they always get their way eventually. Now, in the Age of Trump, he would probably agree more with the movie Picard who snapped the Borg Queen’s neck when she was defeated and helpless.
If it feels like fan-fic, like the Star Wars movies and all the other reboots being made in this century, that’s because it is, in every way except one: it’s being produced by the owners of the property. In every other way, it’s fan-fic: it’s being written by people who didn’t make the originals, who have their own ideas about how to do it better, and who aren’t beholden to continuity with what went before, as a real sequel has to be.
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Not really surprised they dicked it up, much harder to do a good job but they’ll never realize that. And if it doesn’t smell right they’ll piss on it some more until it belongs to them.
Is your book Dark Winter available anywhere? I’ve looked by title and author and can’t seem to find it anywhere. Thanks.
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I took it down. I’m going to have to massage it before I can relaunch the series. It had formatting issues and grammatical errors.
It will relaunch on Amazon under the title The Great Divide Game: Dark Winter.
Dark Winter as a title proved to be rather problematic. After the first 30 days on Kindle, you had to wade through six pages of Bondage Pornography before you got to my book.
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Star Trek is the definitive object lesson in how to take a telefantasy franchise and do everything possible wrong with it.
However, I think having “superfans” in charge is part of the problem. Doctor Who had Steven Moffat in charge for six years and he spent most of the time putting the show up his ass and masturbating with it.
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I watched a YouTube video by Nerdotic (sic?) recently where he mentioned that Patrick Stewart never liked his character, Picard, or the Star Trek universe and its fans. This is why out of the TNG cast, he very rarely attended conventions, avoiding them if he could. He never cared enough about Picard to want to protect him as Hamil wanted to do with Luke.
Also, Stewart’s interview indicates he fully supported the goal of the project, namely to stick it to nationalists especially Trump and Johnson.
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I think he did like the character. I recall a story where he stomped off the set of the Today Show because the weatherman was wearing the Captain’s Uniform. He found that extremely disrespectful.
What this Shakespearian actor really dislikes is the quality of fans.
What he wanted from his fanbase was men in formal white tie and tails, (waistcoat extending over the vest of course), saying respectful things like, “well done Sir Patrick. Brilliant performance! Just brilliant!”
Instead he got 300 pound Gamma males dressed up as Klingons, (reeking of body odor because they never wash the costume), shouting, “Make it so!”
Picture Alan Rickman at the convention in Galaxy Quest and you will see Sir Patrick’s relationship with his fans.
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I understood nothing about Harry potter
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It was a very well constructed series. I have to give Rowling that.
A series of Toff School Mysteries beginning with a decent stand alone first book and the rest of the series acting as the kind of inciting incidents you would use in a three act play.
She got lucky and the first movie was produced by someone who actually got what made the property hot with kids. And John Williams delivered the absolutely perfect theme music for Harry Potter.
If only she wasn’t such a cunt.
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On tour Harry Potter, Up until the pimping and the suicide I thought that actually could be good.
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Fair enough.
There is always some editing that has to be done to a first draft.
And perhaps this second version proves my point better. Because there is no doubt in my mind that Harry Potter fans would still hate it with every fiber of their existence.
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Probably but then again you might be better loved than “A Cursed Child”.
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Now Cursed Child is the perfect example of not following tropes.
CC was a time-travel and alternate history story. And Harry Potter books have always been mysteries.
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Casual Trek fan at best here, so I was never going to watch this anyway. But it seems awful.
It’s like the entire entertainment industry is pissed at the deplorables for not electing Hillary and trying to avenge her by slaying their sacred cows and shoving woke BS in their faces at every opportunity. It’s pretty much the same thing that happened when Fox News started eating the MSM’s lunch. They dropped the mask and turned into a leftist propaganda outlet. Not that they weren’t that already, but pre-Fox News they were a lot smarter and sneakier about it.
A smart businessman would see an opportunity there, but they’re driven by ideology. The only way to win this game is to walk away from the table, but even then I doubt they learn anything. I mean, just look at Star Wars. The Mandalorian rules and the super fans love it? That’s great. Let’s pass Favreau over and put Abrams’s female understudy in charge because it looks bad to fire a woman, especially such a woke and progressive one like her. Idiots.
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