"The Enterprise D bridge scene was the most expensive shot in the series"- Patrick Stewart "Of course it was... you had to actually hire a lighting team"- My reaction.

I'm glad you emphasized the trauma of the Dominion war and it's effects on Starfleet. We only saw the Enterprise-E after, which has purposely sat out the war entirely. Starfleet has lost hundreds, possibly thousands of ships during the conflict and millions of people, only to end it with a tentative peace that many felt could be broken at any time. This would of been the first time since the Xindi and Romulan wars centuries ago that the Federation was existentially threatened and that has dramatic effects. Combined with continued Borg incursions in the era, things were far from certain. It will be interesting to see what Starfleet does after this, especially since the Romulans, Klingons, and Ferengi are all in the mist of major reformations to their cultures.

The whole "Fleet Formation" ability in ep.10 was clearly full of problems, even given a degree of paranoia by Starfleet due to recent events. It makes me think that much of the guidance, safety and behind the scenes advocacy for the technology had the Changelings behind it, providing false safety reports, whispering in the ears of prominent admirals, and in general pushing the technology because they planned to use it to hijack the fleet all along.

The portrayal of Starfleet in Picard Season 1 strikes me as very much of a piece with Dominion War era DS9 Starfleet, just with 20 years more for the institutional rot to really set in.

Dominion War made every other Conflict Starfleet had since prior to its existence look like minor skirmishes

I didn't really enjoy a lot of Picard. Starting with the brutal death of Icheb it felt like it was very mean towards what came before it and it felt like it wanted to turn the optimism of Star Trek's world into a pessimistic reflection of current issues in the real world. There are ways to explore darker tone stories and the nature of people in Star Trek without losing what feels quintessentially Star Trek to me. Deep Space Nine for example took a lot of stuff and gave us a look at some darker sides of it such as Section 31. Plus there were certainly enough villainous admirals in TNG in general. All of this is my own emotional response to the three seasons of Picard though, I can enjoy Prodigy and Lower Decks and let other people enjoy Picard.

hopefully the newly optimistic starfleet can turn up the lights! Health and safety knightmare!

Wow! This is probably the best way I've heard explain the horrendous writing from Kurtzman from season 1 and 2. Well done! That's not an easy feat

I wondered if the Fleet Formation Technology (FFT) might have been planted into the minds of Starfleet by early Changling imposters within the command ranks. As more ranking Starfleet types get replaced, the idea takes root - laying the groundwork for the Changling revenge courtesy of the Borg Queen.

in Star Trek Lower Decks you essentially find out that ensigns like Beckett Mariner basically came out of the academy all starry eyed expecting to go and meet new races and study black holes were instead handed a phaser rifle, shipped off to the likes of Deep Space 9 to fight in the Dominion War, it makes sense that those that survived it and became commanders and captains in the following years would have a much more jaded view of the Galaxy and had seen first hand how unprepared Starfleet was for a conflict of such scale.

I wish Star Trek as a franchise actually acknowledged the Dominion War as a super huge major event that affected billions, but everyone still talks about Wolf 359 because that's what the more casual viewer might have heard of (and a considerable number of Star Trek fans have never watched DS9 and likely never will).

The biggest problem i had with the Picard story was how the Federation reacted after the synth attack. It makes no sense that they wouldn't have come up with a solution and started using them again. Plus, just because it happened to robots built and used on Mars that EVERY Federation world and EVERY member species would have to ban them, and life saving tech that wouldn't involve even making a "conscious" or functional android or robot🤷🤦

Nice breakdown of post Dominion War history. There's no question in my mind that the Borg and the Dominion changed Starfleet and the Federation. Maybe not for the better, but it's hard to see the blissfully smug arrogance of pre-Borg encounter Starfleet as anything other than dangerous. Also, I would tend to argue that long periods of peace tend to be about exploration less than those periods are about near stagnation. Starfleet seemed to be stagnating in the early 23rd C before the 'Four Years War' or whatever analog with the Klingons took place in 'canon'. TOS was taking place in an era of cold war with the Klingons and the reemergence of the old Romulan nemesis. The movie era ends sort of with a sense of 'Our true enemy are hard liners within our own ranks', I'm not sure one can call that good or not. But, again, there was a long period of peace, but while folks have called this a 'Golden Age of Exploration', a lot of the adventures were uncovering mysteries that had remained undiscovered at the Federation borders or even well within their own back yard.. For decades, the most advanced ship class being the Excelsior or Excelsior derivatives. Even when larger and more advanced ships were made, they seemed more for crew comfort or utility reasons, very much 'office buildings in space'. It had been so long since the Federation had encountered a civilization or threat that might even rival them, that they had put themselves on a pedestal. They became so bad at warfare that Starfleet had issues with the Cardassians, and much worse, the Tallarians. A fleet consisting of old and very old ships, or advanced and new 'utility ships' isn't a good starting point, but worse was arrogance, high handedness, and a seeming inability to even think of real threats in the unknown, or to even wage war on enemies that should be pushovers. It's not such a wonder that Q decided to intervene.

I think the biggest change was in DS9. I never understood reddit's claims that the UFP was fascist until I watched it. And indeed, when you see videos defending this theses, 90% of the scenes are from DS9 and later. They took Roddenbery's humanized, necessary military and made it into a necessarily militarized humanity.

The Romulan Star Empire was one of the largest powers in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants and its remnants have formed the Romulan Free State which still operates under old Empire treaties with the Federation since Riker was able to use the Treaty of Algeron in the Picard Season 1 Finale meaning it's not some illegitimate body of government. The Free State has a Fleet and is running scientific projects like the Borg Cube restoration and former Borg rehabilitation. So why does the Federation get all the blame for the failure of the evacuation of Romulus and for the later state of the Romulan people shouldn't the blame be on the Romulan Government both in its past and current forms? I'm not defending the Federations decision not to help I hate it and see it as a violation of what the Federation and Starfleet are meant to represent in both the Star Trek Universe and in the real world. But in Universe the blame should be mostly on the Romulan Government not Starfleet or the Federation.

I'm surprised and a little disappointed that the futuristic reactive (or whatever) armor Voyager brought back was never installed on other Starfleet ships. You'd think they'd have researched the hell out of it and would start using it on a wide variety if not at least several classes of ships. In my head around the mid 25th century there's a 2,000 (or so) meter long Enterprise H that has it, but more like a Neutronium "smart matter" armor 😅

The fleet should remain armed to the teeth or they will get caught off guard again. All they need to do is make sure each new ship design can act as a floating science station and task them with science missions to get back on track whilst not becoming complacent again.

You know, up until now I've actually had a difficult time accepting the Constitution III and in a way the Duderstadt Class of ships. The jump back to design cues felt strange to me. But I really enjoyed your framing of it, and viewing it in context of the constant threats to the very existence of the UFP. Season 3 was proof of how powerful nostalgia can be, so it makes sense that Starfleet would look to recapture the positive spirit of an earlier time by emulating the iconic designs of that time. Thanks!

This is a great overview. Thanks.

Great video! Very well done. ❤

A very well done video, and it suited my forgetfulness regarding the timeline. Thanks!

A fascinating breakdown; thank you.

This was great, thank you!

Thanks Rik - love it 🖖🏽❤️ While I'm not crazy at all about the latest additions to this timeline, this has summed it up nicely so I can consider what happens now. I think you're due for a promotion 😉

Love the videos Ric keep going my fellow Brit

Q saw how complacent the Federation was, unprepared, so he ensured Picard and his crew encountered the Cube. When the Dominion war began and ended it makes sense Starfleet and the Federation were tougher, less trusting and paranoid. I think you've captured this well, but it would be interesting to know what Janeway thought about this new version of Starfleet.

Picard ended on a surprisingly high note, as long as you don't consider the ramifications of every junior officer in Starfleet murdering their superiors, something they are shown to remember doing, which would mean an entire generation of officers with deep psychological scars (hopefully mental healthcare returned to TNG era levels, not what was shown in Picard season 2, or those people will all be seriously messed up) and a couple generations of seasoned officers almost completed wiped out.

Great synopsis. As a life long Trekker, I always enjoy hearing other peoples perspectives; especially ones like yourself. A true fan and someone who understands the show :) Great video!

One thing that annoyed me about Picard is that we didn't see the Voyager tech from Endgame show up. That armor that could resist Borg cubes? C'mon, that would have helped!

One of the things that bothered me the most about post TNG starfleet (starting around s3 DS9) was that it was no longer a future we should be aspiring towards and was instead a metaphor for modern conflicts. The idealism that used to be ubiquitous throughout the Federation got collapsed down into the hero characters who had to continuously rescue the Federation from its own worst instincts. Pre-DS9, the future was a place we should all have wanted to live in. Post-DS9 and forever after, it was a grim future of conflict and compromising of values that didn't look any better than the present. The sad takeaway was that humans, after centuries of supposed advancement, had really failed to better themselves in any meaningful way.

This was a very good and detail in depth breakdown. I can't wait to see what happens with the Seven of Nine and crew adventures.

Great explanation. Can't wait to see your take on 32 nd century.

Very concise. Thank you

Starfleet should be divided into two different corps -- Starfleet itself, focused on exploration, science, and all its traditional values, and the Federation Navy, which focuses on defense. Both are necessary, but require completely different mindsets from their leaders and it seems most admirals have either one mindset or the other. I'd see Jellico and Sisko, for example, as ideal Navy captains, and Picard and Janeway as more traditional Starfleet. With the vast resources of the Federation, both *should* be able to be funded, and be able to co-exist.

The problem with all of this is that it wasn't very explicit in the show but rather had to be inferred. I would have rather seen a new crew of a new yet unfinished Enterprise, but exact nature of the ship still being decided by Starfleet: a battleship that could eat the Scimitar for breakfast or a new trans-galactic exploration vessel with quantum slipstream and an updated trans-galactic comm from Voyager. I hope that Legacy would be something like that.

I'm fascenated to know if the loss of romulan power means that beta quadrent exploration and cloaking tech are now on the table?... I mean, do we even know if the Titan/Enterprise G actually returned that cloaking device?!? Could it become Starfleets first official cloak ship???

What is wrong with Starfleet having some battleships? Why could they not have exploration and battleships? It makes complete sense to have both, even from a defensive standpoint. I see nothing wrong with having that "NCC-86500 Command Battlecruiser".

Nice analysis

Thank you Rick.

I feel like we need to know more about what it going on in the galaxy. What are the Cardassians up to? Have they resumed their imperialism or did they change their ways? What is their Legacy?

I can say much, but in short. Well said from start to finish.

The best thing Starfleet and The Federation can do to regenerate itself to its core ideals is to rebuild the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards The illustration of fleets of starships under construction as seen during VOYAGER episode "Relativity" Where Admiral Patterson is handing over U.S.S. Voyager to Captain Janeway None of this dark bridges. Getting back to the first principles of Starfleet

Sometimes I think Starfleet should be split into two separate fleets, one focused on exploration and the other focused on the protection of the Federation. Attempting to do both with the same ships and crews doesn't seem to do justice to either mission.

Something I like about Star Trek ship design is how you can see the affect of previous events on it. They didn't just start rebuilding Galaxys and nebulas after war but still kept up the militarized factions as the idea that the war could come again. It's like how the US tried to keep its military small till after WW2 when the US realized that it could not stay isolated and expect the world to leave it alone. Now the US has the largest military ever just to keep war away from its shores.

4:40 Somewhat like how Pike was sidelined in the 1st Klingon War?

I love this entire analysis. It's exactly what I've been thinking about Starfleet for years now. Particularly about Voyager acting as a time capsule of Federation values, unsullied by the trauma of the Dominion war. We see this paradigm emerge again in season three of Discovery when the crew travels forward to the 32nd century, discovering (pun not intended) a Starfleet even more extremely affected by multiple brutal & costly wars. Voyager and Discovery both challenged the scars of cynicism & fear that wartime brutality inflicted. They caused the welcome rebirth of hope & reignited the passion for scientific exploration. Idealistic hope never dies, but is all too often obscured by those who do not share those values (or at least, not immediately). It's hard to maintain realistic idealism when you've got a gun to your head. But it's not impossible to eventually recover given time & re-embracing the values that set things in motion in the first place. Cynicism is never undefeatable. ❤😊🖖🏼

You make very good points and I do agree with several of the comments that say you should still arm the ships.. it's not always friendly nor always welcoming.

I still have a hard time with the trajectory the new trek took and their portrayal of Starfleet in this new trek. Not for me.

Bravo

Please do a vid on the Reliant-Class. It’s an amazing successor to the Miranda

Well put together and thought out. Future Trek writers would be doing themselves a service by watching this occasionally.

Starfleet was basically just a Star Trek Online player... Sure, you START OUT with a science or engineering officer, but in the end you're dumping all your skill points and energy credits into combat 😆

Only thing I don’t like is the going back to old ship designs that aren’t armed to the teeth. If I served in Starfleet, you bet your booty I’d hope to be stationed on a tough as nails ship like the Enterprise-E or Akira over something like the Titan-A. Yes they are out there to explore, but knowing all the dangers, always better to be prepared.

I do think that the way starfleet was portrayed was a logical progression of the normal, non kelvin timeline. The battle of wolf 359 and the founder infiltration changed starfleet. They almost staged a coup. Picard’s conflicts with Admiral Nachyev speaks volumes about the political upheaval in the ranks. Behind the scenes this could best be understood by Berman’s creative disputes with Roddenberry. I think the writers inevitably did a good job of balancing the arguments. If you want to perfect example of how Roddenberry viewed this though… look no further than the V’ger incident. The federation could’ve launched an all out assault but Spock knew that intelligence in the raw sense would inevitably save Earth. And we have to take a pause and think about that in our own world… we think in such two dimensional terms with conflict- appeasement or standing ground. When really… we rarely think of the scientific alternative. Food for thought.

Fleet Formation without easy override for individual ships is a terrible idea. What if... 1. your ship is on the edge of the formation and you see that you are being flanked by the enemy. The command ship or officer is too focused on their objectives to notice. If you had control of your ship you could turn and defend the flank. But as you don't have control, your ship, crew and other ships near you are in serious danger. 2 same sort of scenario but you are on the attack this time. You could have pushed an advantage or attack on an enemy weak point. Breaking a line of defence or flanking the enemy. The idea of uniformity in battles and wars was dropped around the 1860's in favour of more flexible tactics where individual initiative could be used to great advantage.

I actually would argue that fleet formation could of been super useful in the TOS era. After all how many times did the Enterprise come across sister ships with 0 crew left that would need to be taken home for repairs and a new crew? I could see a ton of small uses for fleet formation like that but i think it comes with many flaws that need to be addressed before it should of been used.

Tldr: they wanted to do an Expanse meet Mass Effect knock off instead of Star Trek, then they evaluated and finally gave us a balanced modern Trek with season 3.

They are still better armed than before. Better shielding and weapons.

I just want Mars fixed. And a Captain Boimler :)

Although he only appears in one episode title (the changing) I was wondering if you could do nomad the probe that looks for perfect beings.

If Mars is completely uninhabitable now... why not Genesis 2 the thing?

04:53. How could the Voyager be considered LOST just prior to their return home, when Voyager contacted Starfleet via the Hirogen relay network? That episode where the hologram Doctor met his replacement hologram Doctor version on that sparkling new prototype multi-attack vector mode starship? :P

I'm pretty sure. Federation starship in tng . Era had the fleet linked for communications and stellar or navigation. Reasons snd the subspace communication system. Automatically connected the fleet and allowed command to track the fleet ?

Anton Chekov

4:55 Yeah, pretty much.

Good video.

I suspect starfleet especially starfleet command had changed very little. It's just that when picard became an admiral his view of starfleet changed and so did ours. That's why command had such assholes as admirals.

"I'm ORDERING YOU to divert ALL AVAILABLE RRRRRESOURCES to CAPTURING THAT HEDGEHOG!"

Article 14 section 31 of the Star Fleet charter . The survival of the Federation. Star Fleet required a perminant fast reaction force navy that remained in fire bases in the Federation so a large task force can be quickly deployed anywhere in it .

Good work in trying to make what nuTrek has presented us fit into what we knew of canon. I have two questions though: 1) why would the lesson Starfleet took from Voyager’s return be “if we stick by our morals, we’ll be just fine” and not “holy fuck! Look at this badass future technology that we can use to beat the Borg even!” and 2) whatever happened to the super long range transporter tech that Spock introduced to Scotty in Star Trek 09? Like wouldn’t that have been a way better way to set up an evacuation of the Romulan homeworld?

4:55 And the occasional bit of light war crimes. :P

Of course Star fleet was scarred. This hawkish and protectionist attitude makes perfect sense

What Picard symbolizes is getting over the fear and paranoia of the pandemic. Moving forward afterwards

I hope STO upgrades Spacedock after what we had seen in ST Picard S3.

I love the Titan-A, but man was it not battle-worthy. Starfleet can have exploration vessels, but stop making them so woefully unprepared for a fight. You can be optimistic about the future without being unarmed. Even Voyager added various weapons advancements during its journey.

I never undestood, does the UFP have/use transwarp, slipstream and other technologies tnat Voyager brought back?

1:34 that banner between the two levels looks pretty sus

The fleet formation idea was just stupid. Whoever thought up this idea must have forgotten about what happened on the BSG remake. Inviting vulnerabilities instead of strength of independence 🖖

This is why I prefer the Star Trek Online cannon instead of Picard

Starfleet always should have had at least two divisions; maybe three. Defense, Exploration, and Intelligence. Also, Picard forgot about Laris.

Ok looks like im playing sto later

I wonder how Earth was able to defend itself against its own fleet so effectively towards the end of Star Trek: Picard, yet Starfleet HQ was obliterated by a Breen fleet, towards the end of the Dominion War? The Breen couldn't have used their energy dampening weapon during the attack, or Starfleet wouldn't have been surprised by it during the Second Battle of Chin'toka. Surely, Earth would have been immensely better defended during the Dominion War than during a time of prolonged peace. Granted, the Breen fleet was eventually annihilated during the attack, but they still made it past Earth's shields.

You see how dark the interior of the 25th century ships are? Then they show the Enterprise D and how bright it is. The setting is depressing and those low level lighting from the control panels must be hard on the eyes for x amount of hours.

🖖

Hello Rick

I have a question, will it be a new season of ST Picard?, because i want to see the "good borgs" again

Its surprising that the Klingons havent made a move. Within the ST Picard continuity, they were clearly the most powerful now after the Synth and Borg attacks on the Federation and the Romulan supernova

+1 for saying "galactic scale war" in the 1min in or so, instead of the wrong usual people say, "intergalactic" as "intergalactic" means "between galaxies", the opposite to "inter" is "infra"

What happened to the five year missions?

I had such high hopes for Picard, then I saw some character wearing a silly sword Ike he’s a Ninja Turtle. Weird shit.

That's what you get when Warhawks take over the Great Bird's little bit of eutopia.

I would like to know how the Klingon are doing?

And then a whole ass century or so later Starfleet turns tail and folds inward again.

Behind the scenes, Gene Roddenberry had died in 1991 and his influence that was maintaining Star Trek's bright and optimistic future grew fainter as the years went on. Thankfully, Seth McFarlane had the same vision as Gene Roddenberry and while he was unable to attain the rights to Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry's vision and spirit now lives on in The Orville.

I miss Trek when it was still Trek.

an American president once observed "There's nothing wrong with exploring the forest Make sure you take a rifle with you when you do."

When Picard went to the Romulans why was he dressed like Colonel Sanders 🤨

and then the burn happens and everything is for naught

4:51 except when they euthanized Tuvix against his will

Picard accidentally or purposefully created another "Lost Era" by virtue of their time skipping.