I suppose I am like many, kind of a nostalgic completist. I watch the new Star Trek show hoping to feel some of the pleasure I felt watcing them for the first time, in my own relative youth. I was in my mid-twenties when TNG began and my thirties for Voyager and DS9. Like many of the older fans, my memory of TOS was reruns, cartoons and movies.
Putting aside nostalgia, one of the reasons I considered Picard to be my favourite Enterprise captain was the interesting combination of rationality and emotion and of reserve and physicality. Almost tied was Sisko, who brought together such qualities in a different but equally impressive way.
Nostalgia is fine and I enjoy looking back. I appreciate some of the changes that have come over the years with experience and maturity. But I know that my prime has passed and the decline accelerates each year.
Which takes us to Star Trek: Picard. I watch this not because I think it to be the equal of its predecessor. I watch it for the sake of nostalgia. Patrick Stewart is a shadow of his former self, his physicality shrunken and his voice that of an elderly man. But my memory of the original endears him to me. Unfortunately, his character seems to have changed. Not just far more emotional but also a person who prizes his own personal desires above his duty. Many of the themes that made Star Trek so enjoyable have disappeared.
Putting aside nostalgia, one of the reasons I considered Picard to be my favourite Enterprise captain was the interesting combination of rationality and emotion and of reserve and physicality. Almost tied was Sisko, who brought together such qualities in a different but equally impressive way.
Nostalgia is fine and I enjoy looking back. I appreciate some of the changes that have come over the years with experience and maturity. But I know that my prime has passed and the decline accelerates each year.
Which takes us to Star Trek: Picard. I watch this not because I think it to be the equal of its predecessor. I watch it for the sake of nostalgia. Patrick Stewart is a shadow of his former self, his physicality shrunken and his voice that of an elderly man. But my memory of the original endears him to me. Unfortunately, his character seems to have changed. Not just far more emotional but also a person who prizes his own personal desires above his duty. Many of the themes that made Star Trek so enjoyable have disappeared.