Sunday Screening: “I Still Hate You” from Star Trek: Picard

Spoiler embargo off! Last week’s Star Trek: Picard featured an unexpected cameo from a familiar face. Kirk Thatcher reprised his role as the “Star Trek punk” from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. You remember him, playing that song “I Hate You” on his ghetto blaster, before Spock gave him a neck pinch?

Picard season two is a time travel story with several beats lifted from The Voyage Home, First Contact, and the original series.  As it turns out, the punk on the bus still rides the bus, still sporting the same hair, and still wielding an 80s ghetto blaster.  This time though, things go a little different when Seven of Nine asks him to turn it down.

Yes, this sort of thing is the very definition of “fan service”.  Does it matter?  Let me put it to you this way.  My 80+ year old dad laughed his ass off.  That’s all that matters.

Thirty-five years later and nothing much has changed,
Those in charge are living large,
The rest are all deranged,

‘Cause I still hate you,
Can’t wait to eviscerate you,
‘Cause I still hate, all of you.

The temperatures are rising,
The sea level as well,…

 

 

40 comments

        3. I’ll tell ya. We never saw movies during the first couple weeks. I lived with the novelisation in my head, which was sooooo much better than the movie. I was so disappointed when my dad and I saw it in the theater. It was missing half the detail and 90% of the special effects. Ah well!

          Liked by 1 person

  2. I hadn’t heard that term before, Fan Service, but I like that attention to detail. Sort of like in Back to the Future II, when they had the same ‘drunk’ in an alternate timeline.
    But that was only about 4 years apart rather than about 4 decades, so really good for them here!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. A lot of people throw terms around like “fan service” when they see a callback or cameo from the past that doesn’t make sense or service the story. You could argue it’s highly unlikely that the bus punk is still riding the bus blasting the same song on an 80s ghetto blaster. Highly illogical even. But like I said, the smile it puts on my dad’s face makes it 100% worth it for me! So I’m all for it.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

        3. “material in a work of fiction or in a fictional series that is intentionally added to please the audience”

          So there you go. Punk guy is fan service.

          Like

        5. “often” not “always”. Can we drop the semantics please? If you have a better word, please advise, otherwise let’s just drop it please.

          Like

        6. I do, ‘fan fiction’. I’m not trying to be semantic. That’s why I said to just look it up and let you decide for yourself. I’m just trying to help. Whatever, its your blog.

          Like

        8. Yes, it is amateur writing. So I would say adding Punk guy is ‘like fan fiction’ as an insult. ‘Fan service’ is Leia in a bikini in Jedi.

          Like

        14. I somehow got through all of season one of Disco. I’ve sampled an episode or two of the rest. None of it is for me. I’ll try this one it with an open mind because it is Star Trek.

          Liked by 1 person

Rock a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s