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- This time the TNG ep I watched before the new one was 'Aquiel', from Season 6. It's generally regarded as something of a clunker, by fans of the series and even by the team who made it, and little more than yet another among a string of episodes focusing on Geordi's lovelife that ends unhappily for all involved. I don't think I've ever seen it before. It's solid stuff! It could easily have been nothing but a dismissible rip-off of an old movie (the wiki told me it was Laura from 1944, and even still, I mean, it's not like that's too bad of a thing for a Star Trek to be; half of TOS was just dismissible rip-offs of old movies) but it's actually pretty good. It's a murder mystery but what's been murdered here isn't really a person, per se, it's a concept. That concept is what the Enterprise kind of stands for, open and honest communication among a community of equals, and so probably the crux of the episode is the scene where Picard effortlessly manipulates the Klingon governor into co-operating with the investigation. The coalescing organism that did the murder is an exploitative and imitative model of this mode of communication, one that destroys memories, destroys trust, and so when Riker tries to pressure Geordi into disbelieving in Aquiel's innocence, when the Klingons bluster and threaten, and, yes, when Picard uses his status as Arbiter of the Rite of Succession to make the Klingon governor do what he wants, they're acting more like the shapeshifting tomato sauce thingmabob than themselves. Geordi's choices in this episode are seen as aberrant, by both the audience and his fellow crewmembers, but he's openly and enthusiastically trying to right a wrong, uncover the truth, and care for the abandoned. The worst thing he does is towards the end, when he offers to put in a good word for Aquiel so she can transfer aboard, thus potentially elevating her above other worthy candidates for the post. She rightfully says she wants to get there on her own merits, which is both correct on the face of it and maintains the status quo to boot. In fact, I think she makes a way better candidate for a hypothetical long-term future relationship for Geordi than Doctor Leah Brahms, who can be inferred as his wife in the possible future shown in "All Good Things".

 

- This week was just terrible. An unceasing explainasaurus, just characters discovering things and explaining them to each other over and over again. What actually happened in this episode? Most of the main characters are on the ship, on their way to Place #1, they change their mind and head towards Place #2, then eventually decide to give in and go back on their way to Place #1 instead. The two main characters who aren't on the ship spend the episode in a dark room looking at and manipulating holograms. The remainder of the episode is taken up by the villain whose flashback opens the episode and who spends the majority of her time just shooting people again and again. I found it all less compelling than an episode of TNG whose highlight were the two times Jonathan Frakes pets a dog! Nobody pets a dog in this episode! Reg E. Cathey doesn't guest-star in this episode (it'd be a miracle, too, considering he's been dead for a year or two by now! I didn't recognize him in 'Aquiel' under all that Klingon make-up but that was him. Tommy Carcetti's politico from The Wire did a Star Trek!)!

 

Predictions :

- I've been trying to figure out how the show would interrelate its seemingly unending supply of male-female Romulan pairs and I guess it's clear by now that Narek (absent from this week!) & Narissa are going to end up being the kids of the two Romulans who Picard has been playing house with for all these years. It's exactly dumb and obvious enough for this dumb and obvious show to do!

 

- Captain Worf of the Enterprise to the rescue in the season finale, please, thank you. I don't want it to be Worf in control of a Klingon fleet or anything like that. I want to see the Enterprise again and I want it to be with Worf as her captain.

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We're not gonna see Worf. I can promise you that.

 

I keep wondering of Sela is going to show up.

 

I agree with you mostly-- but we should mention also that the one random not-Han Solo pilot that Picard hired just so happens to have met Daj/Soji's mother (who was their prototype?) and saw her assassinated by the same conspiracy they now face, only 15 years ago, by complete and total coincidence?

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I hold out hope for Worf nonetheless. Not you, not your promises, not the nerd Internet, not CBS All Access itself can take the hope of Worf away from me. (... I guess if we don't get him this year then they have to dole out him and Geordi for one of each of the upcoming seasons, respectively, in order to dovetail w/the abbreviated list of the TNG cast offered by Picard's houseguest/lifepartner in the 2nd episode.) (... Then again, of course, there's probably not going to be another season of this show. Or of any TV show. Well, maybe it's best to just optimistically assume a healthy delay of at least a year for any imminent expensive popcultural products not already mostly completed.)

 

I don't think it's a coincidence! I accept it as a given that the characters are being manipulated by some sort of emergent AI system. This is textual within the show itself because something is clearly communicating with Robot Girl disguised as Her Human Mother and it prompted her to go back to Picard in the pilot and that same something deepfaked a 'Picard' to Rafi to get her to realize Maddox was on Freecloud. And it's extratextual because they need to string together the show's implausible plotting and overly laboured connections in a way that satisfices so it's going to be Robot God Of Her Robot Planet Is Responsible For Bringing Them All Together.

 

What I found more coincidental/implausible than this guy being involved in this thing from the very beginning is that this guy and this guy's five extant holographic semi-sentient consciousnesses, what, they all never saw a picture of the Robot Girl they've been going after for this entire season in any way, shape, or form!? The show makes a point of having the ship scan the Borg Cube with such a degree of fine detail that Rafi (the actress plays every one of her scenes like she's a completely different person in each; could probably be chalked up to the fact the character's a recovering junkie but even accounting for that, still, no consistent performance) spots the Stupid Clue Symbols scrawled on a piece of paper but it doesn't see ... like all those photographs Robot Girl had of herself in her room that were so important to a previous episode!? The ship makes a holo-replica of Picard's château which includes his records from thirty years ago but doesn't include the painting hanging on the wall w/her face on it (no, wait, there was a whole thing in the first episode over there being two paintings - one w/her face that was only in San Francisco, one w/it hidden that Picard kept in his château; okay they might have actually given this more thought than I assumed, sorry, sorry for doubting the creative prowess of one highbrow novelist and one work-for-hire jobber and two guys w/a string of bad nerd projects between them)!?

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Brent Spiner returning to the franchise's narrative twice over mostly just to play relatives of Data's creator is kind of a neat choice. Assuming there isn't a twist coming and he's going to be shown next episode to be literally and not merely figuratively Data then this is actually one of those rare times the show managed to upend my expectations in a way that I also found really fitting, apropos. Put him in a wig and heels next time [1] and have him be Mrs. Soong!

LOL @ them establishing Narissa as the threat for the last episode and now having the Romulan commodore be there instead for the end of this one. LOL @ them ending two episodes in a row in quasi-identical fashion, with the sight of a Romulan snakehead going after our heroes last week and now with the sight of a fleet of Romulan warbirds going after our heroes this week!!!!!

I liked Raffi and Picard's conversation. I do think that Jean-Luc Picard genuinely does feel something akin to love for his second in commands, for his Number 1s (Numbers 1???). Jack Crusher, Will Riker, the kid in the episode where he gets stuck in an elevator and treats 'em all like his crew, her, I think they all matter to him.

Predictions :
- I don't know who the unfinished golem is going to be. Maddox, undoing the murder and alleviating the pain of what Agnes has done? Data/Soong? Picard? Is Picard going to go from being a living man with a machine heart to being a machine man with a living heart? I'd naturally lay my odds on Maddox, I assume everyone else would to (certainly makes sense if they want to keep Alison Pill a part of the main cast) but I think the other two possibilities are more enriching.

I wonder if adding a laugh track to STP would help with watch-ability?

 

 

I actually really like the sound design / scoring for this show! The music is really nice, the theme is good (the opening credits are, uh, garbage otherwise), even the ambient noises and little boops & bleeps by devices have the right feel to 'em. Much better than Discovery, at least, which fails on this level while succeeding at others Picard hasn't managed so far.

 

If I were suitably aphasic and had no ability whatsoever to comprehend spoken language and thus couldn't parse the dialogue's meaning, and if I shut my eyes while watching the show, I bet I'd really enjoy it. Kind of like those mental patients in an asylum who'd watch Reagan give press conferences on TV and laugh at his punchlines (wait, did that really happen? Or was that just in a novel I read?). Patrick Stewart's calming tones!!!

 

[1] Like there's going to be a next time. Well, one can always hope. Still, Brent Spiner is 71 years old! Stay safe! Avoid the Crystalline Entity!

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Meanwhile, Viacom, who owns Paramount restructured the company, and decided they needed Trek to launch their streaming service. Abrams had moved on to Star Wars, so there was longer an overall EP to shepherd things. A ton of high profile showrunners pitched to get the new Trek show. The winner was Bryan Fuller, who had planned a true Prime-verse prequel with Discovery. But in the development phase he and CBS had differences of opinion. which lead to him bailing.

Interesting approach from Viacom as it this Paramount's plan back in 70's with their own channel and "Phase II."

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Gonna be tough to do Season 2 of this thing when, what, probably Patrick Stewart, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, Jeri Ryan, Brent Spiner, Orla Brady, Tamlyn Tomita, and Kurtzman himself are all, like, dead or hooked up to a makeshift ventilator. And even if they all make it through alive and in good health (an outcome that I naturally want and wish for) good luck squeezing in pre-production, shooting, and post into one of the few six week periods of intermittent relaxation of suppressive measures over the next year'and'a'half!

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Technically there's a next time, Season 2 is a green light, and the room has been completely wiped save for Kurtzman. So there will be more-- you know, if Hollywood ever starts up again.

Great. The ONE GUY they need to get rid of is back for season 2.

 

Pass.

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Terrible! Fumbling towards profundity and failing at it miserably (sole possible exception : The Tempest quotation) in nearly every instance.

 

• Why introduce a magic fix-it machine and have scenes elaborating upon how the magic fix-it machine works and not bother to include a single line about how the one thing we all REALLY need to fix can't be fixed with the magic fix-it machine? Either have Raffi & ... Rios (?) (I literally forgot the character's name for a minute there, I can remember that Doctor Julian Bashir scuttled his number one spot at graduating from Starfleet Medical School because he deliberately confused a preganglionic fibre for a postganglionic nerve but I can't remember the name of a guy I've spent the last seven weeks watching) talk about it in the scene where they're repairing the ship or have Alison Pill's character mention it in the Picard Manoeuvre scene!

 

• What happened to Narek? Did they leave him on the planet? Wait, is the version of Isa Briones who is eeeeevil now dead or just knocked unconscious? Are all the remaining Borg still on that planet? Did they leave Doctor Soong's pervert son in control of this nascent civilization that has just experienced its first intracommunity act of murder? Is Narissa still on that planet or are we expected to believe she's dead for real dead even though we didn't see her dead body? Wait, how did Narissa know Seven of Nine's backstory?

 

• The whole thing hinges on whether or not Isa Briones' character, Soji (Sohji?), chooses to trust humanity or not. She eventually decides to do it. Why? What makes her stop moving holograms around on the planet's surface? Because ... Picard moved some holograms around on the ship? This is the sort of thing TNG inter alia used to spend its final moments of each episode wrapping up in a nice neat li'l bow and this show just decides to outright ignore instead. It's not enough to have Picard talking about the rights & responsibilities of being alive, it's not enough to have him deliver a few lines to her over Zoom, this is what everything's been building towards and it can't be given short shrift.

 

• Why is everyone so inexplicably chummy at the end? Is Raffi bisexual? I'm perfectly fine with a major new character of this here Star Trek being a paranoid drug addict conspiracy theorist bisexual grandma who is now girlfriends with Seven of Nine but I'd like to have had that particular element established prior to the final moments of the season, y'know. Why are Rios and Alison Pill's character making out? She murdered her ex while brainwashed, buddy, you gotta give her some space!!!

 

• omigosh the thing with the order of nuns who have taken the exact opposite of a vow of silence being secretly tied into an evil ancient conspiracy (which is what the Qowat Milat are, we see in the opening flashback of episode 8 that everyone who goes to Secret Planet With Eight Suns are women!) is just a rip-off of a gag from Pratchett & Gaiman's Good Omens. You gotta get better things to rip off if you're doing a Star Trek! TOS is classic movies & the stage, TNG is anime and, yeah, still classic movies, DS9 is probably the most original Trek per volume, VOY & ENT have a lot of horror in 'em, DSC, uh, I guess gets kind of anime in its second season. PIC is just ripping off nerd stuff, really prominent nerd stuff the audience is probably familiar with already, and that combined w/its approach to self-reference within the franchise itself is part of what keeps it all stultified and lifeless and boring.

 

What was the moral of the story? I can't decide what the moral of this Star Trek story is! I've narrowed it down to maybe four choices!
a) don't summon a giant metal octopus. If you're ever tempted to summon a giant metal octopus, then, DON'T.
b) you can not trust refugees. Or, uh, halfbreeds!?
c) it's good to die.
e) all of the above?

 

[Edit: Wait, the climax of this whole story was just an identical fleet of ships helmed by a character we barely saw up until now facing off with, sequentially:

 

* an identical bunch of flowers
* an identical bunch of mirage'd spaceships
* an identical bunch of real starships

 

until she and they gave up and went home! Just some goddamn StarCraft level plotting, spawning zergs, Command & Conquer type BS, Picard & Co. mined enough tiberium to field just the right amount of troops to force the baddies into a draw! Dumb!]

 

Predictions:
- there's an obvious unattempted fix to the Doctor Agnes Jurati, Murderer problem that they could have gone with and is still available for the future. But in order to do it from now on they'd have to continue the plot of Season 1 into future seasons and I get the feeling it'll be a real Armin Tanzarian situation for nearly everything they covered so far. (More generously : every season as a whole will be kind of like an individual episode of Star Trek, one single story in a string of stories; so next season will be a new plot, this gang of adventurers dealing with something new, and they'll try to avoid any focus on the details of who killed whom for what reasons years ago.)

 

- That being said, well, Season 2 of Picard is maybe gonna star Angus Imrie (the guy who played a Young Patrick Stewart in Joe Cornish's The Kid Who Would Be King), open with a shot of Sir Patrick Stewart sitting at home on his couch saying the words, "I remember when I was a young captain on the Stargazer" (his wife will hold the phone), and the rest of it will be filmed entirely in Iceland with a crew wearing hazmat suits.

 

- Look, the very real prospect of me and mine spending our final days on this here earth empty-eyed, febrile, and coughing our lungs out is somewhat diminishing my ability to speculate and/or hope for what comes next on Star Trek : Picard. Maybe some Klingon stuff!? I'd love an episode that was just Picard trying and failing repeatedly to return to his long abandoned habit of doing a captain's log, sort of a Secret Honor (1984) deal, a one-hander where Patrick Stewart really got to show his stuff for an hour. But, far more than that, I'd love for everyone I love to. not. die. just. yet.

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People are picking this thing apart. It may be time to just accept that the way movies and TV shows are made has changed, and Star Trek is no exception. Really, there were just as many flaws in the old shows we love so much. Sometimes it's easy to let our criticisms of all the negatives cloud our judgement to the point where we can't see the overall beauty of something. Some things are truly terrible, for sure, but this series is not one of them.

With that said, I loved the season finale. It made me tear up a bit. Data's character finally got the sendoff he truly deserved, which was lacking in Nemesis.

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People are picking this thing apart. It may be time to just accept that the way movies and TV shows are made has changed, and Star Trek is no exception. Really, there were just as many flaws in the old shows we love so much. Sometimes it's easy to let our criticisms of all the negatives cloud our judgement to the point where we can't see the overall beauty of something. Some things are truly terrible, for sure, but this series is not one of them.

 

With that said, I loved the season finale. It made me tear up a bit. Data's character finally got the sendoff he truly deserved, which was lacking in Nemesis.

So, we just throw our hands up and accept crap? I don't want to ever, ever read about you complaining about the ST/Disney era Star Wars ever again, if that is what you are saying. The way you feel about the EU being wiped from continuity, and the crap that is the ST (which I agree is crap, BTW) is how some of us Star Trek fans have felt since 2009 about the sh*t writing coming out of Star Trek these days under Bad Reboot and Secret Sellout. Us long time Trek fans have a right to express our frustration over the nonsensical writing coming from cBS.

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The difference being that nothing was wiped from continuity in Star Trek. Apples and oranges.

I'm not talking about everything that has come out of this franchise since 2009; I am speaking specifically of Picard and nothing else. I agree with you about the Abrams films, and I've never seen Beyond so I can't speak to that.

 

My point still stands: visual media is evolving. They don't make shows like The Next Generation anymore, just like they didn't make shows like the original series when TNG was made. Go back and watch the shows your parents grew up with and you'll know what I'm talking about. This is a change, a shift. It's always happening. Film making is in constant flux. The quality of said shift can be debated, and everyone has their right to their opinions (I myself don't care for the ultra left-wing messages permeating nearly everything in entertainment these days); but Hollywood has changed since we were kids. That is my point.

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Dude, I KNOW movies and TV are made differently. But in the case of Star Trek, a show that used to make you think, has now become a show where you now have to literally turn off your brain to roll with it as evidenced by both Discovery and Picard. MY complaint is the writing. It SUCKS. Star Trek USED to be cutting edge and character driven, or at least able to present concepts we've seen before with a unique and interesting bent to them. Picard has been nothing short of taking a bunch of tired, well trodden sci fi tropes we have seen since the 1980s (Hell, technically the 1930s if you count the AI component seen in Metropolis) thrown into a blender, swallowed and excreted into a dumbed down steaming pile of fecal matter.

 

1. The opening episode establishes Starfleet has become isolationist because of a terrorist attack by synths (THAT ALONE could have been worthy of 10 episodes, but episode 10 wipes out that concept with no satisfying resolution). After the Mars incident that left us with, well, MARS IS STILL ON FIRE SO WE MUST BAN SYNTHS, the ban is lifted all of a sudden?

 

2. And why was the ban lifted? On Synth Eden, the synths contact a race of Matrix sentinels to sterilize the ENTIRE EFFING GALAXY! why lift a ban at that point. You have the entire Starfleets of both the Federation AND Romulans there. Would it not make more sense at that point for the combined fleets to destroy Synth Eden for having called the Synth Gods to destroy all organic life in the galaxy? And, by the way, How did RIKER manage to get to Earth, put together an armada and travel half way across the galaxy to show up in the nick of time? Ditto on Admiral Oh, a Romulan Double Agent, do the same thing with the Romulan Fleet. That is even MORE INSIPID than Star Trek 2009's failed attempt to save Vulcan, where warp travel takes seconds from Earth to Vulcan. SPACE IS BIG, PEOPLE!

 

3. The scene with Data and Picard saying farewell was great. But if you examine it further here is the breakdown. Data is basically Skynet now. His brain exists in a way that Maddox could have got what he wanted and you could download Data's brain into every Federation Starship. He is beyond body. He could exist as a hologram in every ship. Even RIOS shows this is possible. Yet they pull the plug on Data? He's on Synth Eden. Why not just put his consciousness into another body played by Spiner without makeup (Data has always been on a quest to be human...why not make him HUMAN? A better use of Spiner instead of Altan, IMHO). Or, a hologram or virtual reality, Data. Or another actor if Spiner didn't want to do it? Data consciousness downloaded into another Sutra perhaps? What. The. EFF?

 

4. Picard. So he is dead. His consciousness is put into a synth body now. For a COUPLE YEARS? WHY? Not that I want Picard dead, but that makes no sense. Why not let him die. He's old. And for what? a couple more years. In a body that is old? Are we going to get an episode where Picard travels to Q and screams "I want more life, F***er!" or some such?

 

5. Finally, this show is named Star Trek Picard, but it LITERALLY is not about Picard. All Picard has been is along for the ride and observes things around him but is treated with no respect, and the occasional speechifying by P-Stew.

 

I could go on. And on. And on. AAAANNNDD ONNNN.

 

You see, none of that gobbledygook makes any effing sense. Star Trek Picard has literally had DOZENS of great ideas, any ONE of which could have been expanded into 10 episodes alone. But instead we get this schizoid mishmash of idiocy.

 

It's not that movie or tv production has changed. It's that the MOST EXPENSIVE Trek show ever has the stupidest writing ever.

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My problems with Picard were, in order:

 

1. The cast. I just hated most of the characters. Space Legolas did literally nothing. Raffi is a terrible actress. Rios is so not-Trek he bugs me. The characters I did like-- the Romulan caretakers, Hugh, Seven-- were shunted to the background. I can't help but think if Seven was a regular part of the crew, and the Romulan couple that used to be spies went back into action it would have been more interesting. I loved the end scene with Data, but it made me realize that in my heart, I wanted this to be an actual TNG reunion story. Kind of like how the TOS crew was in TSFS and TVH, off books-- working as a team even though they were no longer fully Starfleet. All the love between Picard and Data at the end made me mad that Geordi wasn't there, he was Data's best friend. They could have done this story with the TNG crew and I would have been a lot happier. It sort of ruins the idea of the family they became byu not having them come together for Data's sake.

 

2. The Romulans. Completely wasted and useless as enemies. Oh literally gave the order to "prepare to do the thing" like 6 times. Narek's drive and motivations switched constantly for plot convenience, and his sister was just there to push him and to give Seven somebody to kick down a hole. In general, there was no driving antagonist in this story. Having a concept be your bad guy with a few choice minions to push things along, doesn't work in short form storytelling.

 

3. They stole a LOT from Mass Effect. Granted, Mass Effect itself stole from Trek first-- but no so blatantly. Mass Effect took the most fun parts of Star Trek, Star Wars, Starship Troopers, and a crap ton of other franchises to be a sort of uber-scifi tale-- but the idea of society shunning AI, ancient tentacled synthetic Gods designed to destroy, a chosen harbinger-- all of that was Mass Effects core storyline.

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I noticed the Mass Effect similarities, too. Honestly, it could be coincidence. After all, the whole "old gods" or "old ones" being summoned from the void is a recurring theme in modern fantasy, and even sci-fi now. Mass Effect took it and turned the gods into machines and the void into dark space. Picard may be drawing from the same idea.

Or it could have been a blatant rip-off, I don't know. This is coming from a guy who is very skeptical of coincidences (looking especially at what the new Star Wars sequels have pilfered from the EU they said they got rid of to allow for more "creative freedom").

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My problems with Picard were, in order:

 

1. The cast. I just hated most of the characters. Space Legolas did literally nothing. Raffi is a terrible actress. Rios is so not-Trek he bugs me. The characters I did like-- the Romulan caretakers, Hugh, Seven-- were shunted to the background. I can't help but think if Seven was a regular part of the crew, and the Romulan couple that used to be spies went back into action it would have been more interesting. I loved the end scene with Data, but it made me realize that in my heart, I wanted this to be an actual TNG reunion story. Kind of like how the TOS crew was in TSFS and TVH, off books-- working as a team even though they were no longer fully Starfleet. All the love between Picard and Data at the end made me mad that Geordi wasn't there, he was Data's best friend. They could have done this story with the TNG crew and I would have been a lot happier. It sort of ruins the idea of the family they became byu not having them come together for Data's sake.

 

2. The Romulans. Completely wasted and useless as enemies. Oh literally gave the order to "prepare to do the thing" like 6 times. Narek's drive and motivations switched constantly for plot convenience, and his sister was just there to push him and to give Seven somebody to kick down a hole. In general, there was no driving antagonist in this story. Having a concept be your bad guy with a few choice minions to push things along, doesn't work in short form storytelling.

 

3. They stole a LOT from Mass Effect. Granted, Mass Effect itself stole from Trek first-- but no so blatantly. Mass Effect took the most fun parts of Star Trek, Star Wars, Starship Troopers, and a crap ton of other franchises to be a sort of uber-scifi tale-- but the idea of society shunning AI, ancient tentacled synthetic Gods designed to destroy, a chosen harbinger-- all of that was Mass Effects core storyline.

Godammit, all that!

 

I HATED Rios and his merry band of holograms the most, but Raffi sickened me as well. Hated Dr. Murderer too. The funny scene a few episodes back with comedy relieve from all the Holo-Rioses...was not so much. Goddamn that was dumb.

 

For years, I was hoping for a post Nemesis mixed cast show or movie. I would have preferred a TNG reunion with more of a Star Trek 3 like rescue mission to restore Data, featuring at least most of the TNG crew. I would have been fine if a few didn't show, like DR Crusher (I read Gates M has been pretty unhealthy for a while), Guainan, and Wesley. I would have been fine with a few other cast members from other Trek shows (DS9/VOY, hell even ENT if there were a plausible time explanation) making appearances, like Seven did (well not really the WAY they depicted). I would have been fine if the twist was Data ended up not being saved, because Spiner pushed to kill Data off in Nemesis, which they did. And did again. And the way Data was brought back, and cloned....just did not seem interesting, and was kind of dumb.

 

Geordi and Worf not showing up were very glaring omissions. Initially I thought Space Elrond was going to be a stand in for Worf, but he was actually useless. Is he still fighting off Borg in an alcove somewhere? Who cares. He was useless AF. I mean if they had made him comic relieve/running joke and just ended every single episode with someone asking "Where's Elnor," with the rest of the crew shrugging, then getting distracted by something else and forgetting about him again. Then cutting to Elnor still in the borg alcove, with him beheading another borg or 2, and swearing in Romulan wondering where the eff everyone else is and when they would rescue him, it would have been better than what they did with him in this show.

 

Romulans were my bar-none favorite TNG antagonists. Even more than the Borg. Partly because of their Vulcan connection. Vulcans with Roman-like stoic warrior codes and unchecked passions practically write themselves as interesting antagonists. How the hell do you flub that up? And how do you NOT bring back either Donatra, or Sela for that matter!

 

As for rip offs, I think they pretty well ripped BSG quite a bit. I can see the Mass Effect rip too, now that you mention it. But a host of hot, duplicate Asian female androids...OK Boomer. Synths seeking to kill off organics. By your command. A synth paradise...seems eerily similar to occupied Caprica (the original Caprica). Jesus if you are going to steal from a franchise like that, just re-hire Ron Moore and do it right (I know I know, couldn't be done for reasons, but still). I know Tank and I went over all that a few pages back, but still doesn't change how I feel.

 

I think most of all was Picard sitting in his chateau for 14 years. It never occurred to him to become an ambassador a la Sarek and Spock (he did mind meld with them both, so part of them must still be in his mind)? An archaeologist (would have been far more interesting that instead of Synth Gods, the big bads were the Iconians) with Picard unraveling an archaeological mystery a la The Chase? But even if we got moody Chateau Picard, it could have been done better. Romulan spies or whatever they were, are his servants? Because why?

 

This show was nothing but a bunch of missed opportunities to do it right. In fact, there is no way it could have been even worse.

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I would have preferred a TNG reunion with more of a Star Trek 3 like rescue mission to restore Data, featuring at least most of the TNG crew. I would have been fine if a few didn't show, like DR Crusher (I read Gates M has been pretty unhealthy for a while), Guainan, and Wesley. I would have been fine with a few other cast members from other Trek shows (DS9/VOY, hell even ENT if there were a plausible time explanation) making appearances, like Seven did (well not really the WAY they depicted).

 

See-- this is the perfect pitch. THAT'S what they could have done. You know any of the cast able to join would have. (I also heard Gates McFadden isn't super healthy, and Michael Dorn was reportedly offered a cameo of some sort in Discovery but the pay was so insulting he refused and soured his relationship with this team of producers).

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I would have preferred a TNG reunion with more of a Star Trek 3 like rescue mission to restore Data, featuring at least most of the TNG crew. I would have been fine if a few didn't show, like DR Crusher (I read Gates M has been pretty unhealthy for a while), Guainan, and Wesley. I would have been fine with a few other cast members from other Trek shows (DS9/VOY, hell even ENT if there were a plausible time explanation) making appearances, like Seven did (well not really the WAY they depicted).

 

See-- this is the perfect pitch. THAT'S what they could have done. You know any of the cast able to join would have. (I also heard Gates McFadden isn't super healthy, and Michael Dorn was reportedly offered a cameo of some sort in Discovery but the pay was so insulting he refused and soured his relationship with this team of producers).

 

That's a shame because what a missed opportunity for a finale surprise....imagine Riker's fleet outnumbered by Oh's, then like the Defector, the Klingon fleet led by Supreme Chancellor Worf uncloak to even the odds! That would have been badass.

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Not that Spiner isn't a welcome site, because I like him as an actor, but it seems most of his Soong incarnations, especially Arik and Altan just seem to come off as Brent Spiner playing Brent Spiner. Even Lore to a degree, but being a villain, he seems more like Anti-Data, than Brent Spiner.

 

And while on that subject, in this show, Patrick Stewart had some good moments, but it sometimes seemed to me more like Picard was doing a Patrick Stewart impersonation.

 

I also wonder if B4 will end up showing in Season 2, but after this season, I kind of don't care. There will need to be a LOT of genuine good buzz to pull me back in. I think Star Trek Picard is a bigger disappointment to me than the Star Wars PT, ST and Discovery, actually. Discovery, I half expected going in for it to be small screen JJverse, which it largely is, even if it isn't the same timeline. Star Wars ST disappointed more than the PT, but since it concluded the skywalker saga, and I can just simply ignore it as head canon, it doesn't affect me too much anymore.

 

But I have been a fan of Star Trek since I was 4 or 5, and this was before there was even such a thing as Star Trek TMP. I had high hopes of Picard making up for the JJ verse and Discovery. It only made matters worse for me.

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  • 4 months later...

I think I got as far as the Rikers and I called it. This was awful and totally unnecessary. When does Mass Trek: Discovery come back? It's the only show produced post-TOS that actually was consistently entertaining in it's freshman and sophomore seasons. People just need to recognize that television's landscape has changed AND a portion of the audience also needs to recognize that they haven't paid attention to a single moment of Star Trek for the "SJW" snowflake remarks I see with EVERY anti-DISCO rant I've seen. Like, what have these incels been watching the last 54 years?

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  • 7 months later...

Just started watching this, and except for Data being better as a Deep Fake, I love this show so far (only seen up to about episode 5 or 6).

Planning on giving Discovery a shot after this, but mostly because I’m excited for the seeming optimism of the Strange New Worlds spinoff series rather than an apparently Section 31 heavy TOS prequel-prequel that I guess Discovery is.

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