POLL - Do you Like "STAR TREK: PICARD" so far ?

I'm not hating it, but I'm not exactly over the moon either. And I do kind of hate the fact that after four episodes in, out of ten total for season 1, the show hasn't given me enough to say whether I like it not. I get that they're taking a slow burn approach, but Jesus tap dancing Christ, get to the fucking point. Four episodes in and they're still introducing main characters; and they're starting to retread certain things, like the stuff with Soji and Narek - two characters who, despite occupying rough half of the last two or three episodes, in scenes that are becoming increasingly redundant, I still had to look up both of their character names.

If you're going to serialize a story, pacing is essential; and it's somehow become a lost art. Back in the day Star Trek writers would have been able to tell the story Star Trek Picard has taken four episodes to tell and tell it in two; and it probably would have been a fucking delight.

As much as I like a good f-bomb, clearly, it does seem kind of dissonant hearing that kind of language in Star Trek.  I have mixed feelings about that, because on the one hand, it probably shouldn't be out of place; and certainly 300+ years from now, fuck should have about as much weight to it as "egad". 

At the same time, it's obviously still somewhat of a big deal for modern-day audiences; maybe not as big of deal as it used to be, but in the grand scheme of things the dialog is written more for our benefit than it is a prediction of how people will talk in the future.  That's perhaps why I've never taken an issue with the conceit that some ambiguous plot convenience allows us to understand everyone under all circumstances; it's not about realism, it's about accessibility and finding a balance between futurism and familiarity.  The latter helps us relate to what's happening more easily, which is why I don't think we need to hear characters speaking Klingon or Romulan.  I'm tired of having to fucking read subtitles just to watch Star Trek.  If they're going to be that hyper-realistic, then they also need to start changing the human dialog, because English isn't going to be our English nearly 400 years from now, anymore than what we speak now is the same English spoken 400 years ago; never mind the effect the mingling with alien species and the influence their language will on our language.

But more to the point, the use of "fuck" just feels forced so far for me; like they've thrown it in their for shock value and because they can and not because it was actually organic dialog that you'd hear.  It's kind of like that moment in Generations when the Enterprise-D saucer is about crash and Data exclaims, "Oh, shit."
That might have been a natural thing to hear Geordi or Riker in that moment, but it kind of comes off more gimicky having Data say it; because he hadn't really earned the natural development of that sort of expression.  Add to that that it was probably the first time, to my knowledge, that "shit" had ever been said on screen in the Star Trek franchise (remember when saying "shit" in a movie, much less a tv show was a big deal?); and having someone who was arguably the last person to say that under any circumstance, just makes its use stand out more as a "look at what we got to say" moment than anything else, which I feel is the same thing with Star Trek Picard and their use so far of "fuck"

Then there's that whole rabbit hole (or wormhole?) of the nature of swear words and what a Star Trek-esque future holds for them, if we become less angry, more progressive or permissive people as we spread out into the galaxy.  Do expletives still serve a purpose in a society like the Federation? Do they still exist?  Would there still be words that, by design or etiquette evoke the same level of shock or discomfort that swear words do today?  And in that context, just how bad are the bad words in such a society that the most open minded people might object?  I mean, a lot of them would conceivably turn out to be racial slurs, perhaps; which kind of makes you wonder about O'Brien throwing the word "Cardi" around, all things considered.
You've also got shows inventing swear words, like smeg, frak and frell; which were of course designed to side-step conventional television standards, but we'd probably adopt words from other cultures that have those types of connotations or develop our own new ones over time.  If memory serves, Battlestar managed to use frak fairly effectively, though it perhaps got a bit shticky as time went on; and it's definitely lame when shows like Arrow or Flash try to throw "frak" into their dialog when they really want to say "fuck" and can't.

The whole thing also does make me think of Star Trek IV and Kirk's befuddlement of being called a dumb ass, "well, double-dumb ass on you."  It's always conjured this idea to me that certain types of swearing might have fallen out of the human lexicon and was such a foreign concept to the likes of Kirk, et al, that they had no idea how to respond to it.  
That or the phrase "dumb ass" is so quaint and archaic by the standards of Kirk's 23rd century life, it's the sort of language you might hear children innocently use to taunt each other on the playground; which fits perfectly with Kirk's own juvenile retort.

I haven't watched it and I probably won't.

I have watched a few videos on Youtube and from them I can't say it looks good.

Well the understanding of swearing in Star Trek was not consistent.
Kirk had to have known about 20th century swearing from his reading and he used "let's get the Hell out of here" etc..
They decided to make it a joke in the movies but its not realistic. Kirk would have known "you dumb ass" and what it meant.

And in another one Geordie didn't know what "taking a leak" meant which is also unlikely.

it's not though

it's in the Original timeline, TOS through Nemesis ( 1966-2002 )