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Professor X helps boost His Dark Materials in China, but the country is baffled by Picard

China reacts to the trailers of The Witcher, Westworld Season 3, His Dark Materials and Star Trek: Picard

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Not even Captain Jean-Luc Picard can get Chinese audiences to engage with Star Trek. (Picture: CBS)
This article originally appeared on ABACUS

While Trekkies in the West are rejoicing at the return of Sir Patrick Stewart to the iconic role of Star Trek’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard, TV fans in China remain baffled. They don’t know what Star Trek: Picard is or why they should care.

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“Star Trek: Professor X,” said one popular Weibo post.
“When I first read the news, I thought it was about Pikachu,” another Weibo user wrote.
Not even Captain Jean-Luc Picard can get Chinese audiences to engage with Star Trek. (Picture: CBS)
Not even Captain Jean-Luc Picard can get Chinese audiences to engage with Star Trek. (Picture: CBS)

While fans around the world celebrated new trailers for big-name TV shows from San Diego Comic-Con, the reaction in China was very different. Picard means nothing in a country where Star Trek: The Next Generation was never seen.

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On the flipside, emotions run higher for something like The Witcher, the Netflix show based on a series of books and games from Poland. The most recent game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, was a huge hit among Chinese gamers, earning publisher CD Projekt the nickname “The Dumb Polish Donkey” -- not as an insult, but as a mark of respect for the amount of quality content they produce.
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