Practicing for the CGI/robo-horse remake of National Velvet.

Im going to agree with you. However, her charisma and star power were on point and her presence elevated the film to totally higher level. And think of all the Oscar wins by non-people of color who coaster on their star power: Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, Paul Newman...just off the top of my head. Surely, JLO…

This man can do it all: play a dog, play an ape, and legalize your documents for a small fee

ABSOLUTELY AGREED. The show is rote, and cruel, and shallow, and cliched. I don’t say this lightly, but after this episode, I can confidently conclude that Picard fucking sucks. And it breaks my heart, because I love, love Trek.

For the record, Toy Story 4 is pretty great. It gets flack for being the worst Toy Story sequel...but outside of Toy Story it’s their best sequel and it’s great.

Yeah, it’s weird. This entire show is a nostalgia-play, and they go out of their way to reference the old shows (this week it was Rios’ fake reference “Mr Quark from Ferenginar”) and then they do weird stuff like “recast Bruce Maddox for some reason”. And that’s after they bothered to bring back Hugh for like a bit…

I get why we shit on the Cars sequels but people seem to forget how terrible the Good Dinosaur is.  Like the Cars movies are bad for Pixar, which means that even they have at least some watchable moments.  The Good Dinosaur feels like dark ages Disney or some crap Dreamworks put out between Minions sequels

Yup. It fails at that timelessness that Pixar is so good at, and seems like it's trying to be "cool" or "hip," something DreamWorks always appears to be chasing

Woah now, I was with you to a point, but the original Finding Nemo and all of the Toy Story films are pretty fantastic. I wouldn’t call them dumber by any means.

Yes. I think I saw the trailer for this 3 times (I have kids, so I see a lot of kids’ movies) before realizing it was a Pixar product.

To be fair, Pixar only bats it out of the park about 1 in 3 these days. Their Sequels (Toy Story Aside), Prequel, Brave, Good Dinosaur, and apparently this have all been shades of decent but unremarkable.

It looks like a Dreamworks Movie that snuck into the Pixar Studio. 

I’m surprised you didn’t mention Ricardo Montalban.

I find it hard to disagree with anything you’re saying, but it’s Star Trek and I’m going to watch it no matter what. Very disappointed that Seven and Maddox aren’t really that important to the plot, as both seem like they should have been important elements. It’s getting to Discovery-level deep cut references, but no…

This film is just such an outstanding explosion of creativity and imagination, even compared to Star Wars, especially compared to every other Star Wars movie created since. I’m showing my age, perhaps, but I feel like it’s the best looking Star Wars- on the cusp of the 70's/80's divide so that it retains some of that…

WTF indeed. I think the Tal Shiar are manipulating the reviews of this show. It’s soooo bad. The emotional moments are unearned, the jokes fall flat, there are too many characters to care about, and it does not have a kernel of Star Trek magic. Why is there a mute samurai on a space ship? Right when Seven of Nine…

Sometimes people can pull it off. David Lynch even got some people out of long term acting retirement like Everett McGill for the Twin Peaks revival.

It’s not like it would be unusual for Star Trek to bring back a one-off guest star for a cameo decades later. I can think of a half-dozen examples off the top of my head.

Aye, they apparently recast Brian Brophy with John Ales. Very disappointing.

“There’s a thirty second conversation late in the episode where Seven asks Picard if he was able to regain his humanity after he was de-assimilated, and he says yes—then she asks him he never has doubts, and he says no.”