I was hoping for another twist. Something big and absurd and utterly reality breaking. I’d read theories that Alton Soong was really Lore, and that sounded like it could be stupid enough to be fun. Or maybe this would all turn out to be yet another test of Picard from the Q Continuum; John de Lancie is probably too old to work in the role of an immortal ageless super being, but hey, they brought Data back, and given everything else, I could’ve swallowed a different actor as the same Q without much struggle. You could throw in time travel for the hell of it, or have the synth saviors show up and turn out to be, I dunno, space angels or something. I wanted something memorably bad, like the finale of the American Life On Mars. What I got was just bad in the same way most of Star Trek: Picard has turned out to be bad; thoughtless, rushed plotting, meaningless twists, and bold decisions which are absolutely weightless.
They save the only real twist for the end. Last week, I was wondering how the show would continue with a second season, given how much of the emotional drama of the last few episodes has focused on Picard’s fatal brain problems. This week, I slapped my forehead halfway through the hour and realized they’d just dump him into the “golem” Soong was planning to move his own consciousness into. Which is of course what happens, albeit after the episode attempts to wring as much pathos as it possibly can out of a beloved fictional character’s “death.” It would be shameful if it wasn’t also hilarious; Picard gives his all to save the universe yet again, and in the end, dies in the arms of a character we met a few weeks back while a bunch of other characters we barely know stare on in distress. People get drunk about him dying, and then oh hey, turns out we’ve got a spare.
I think what really clinched it for me wasn’t just that the new body looks exactly like his old body, or that they’re careful to explain that he doesn’t have any super cool augmentations; it’s when Picard is horrified at the thought that he might be immortal, and Agnes handwaves the fear away by reassuring him that they’ve set it up so he should live about as long as he would’ve lived without the fatal brain problem. So after all that set-up, all that crying and sad looks and melodrama, in the end, it amounts to exactly nothing. The status quo is more or less restored. There’s no real triumph in this, no satisfaction of life snatched clear from the jaws of death. But then, if Picard had actually died in this episode, I would not have cared. That’s the worst possible thing I could say about this show: that it brought back one of my favorite television characters, threatened to kill him forever, and it somehow found a way to make that mean nothing.
And that’s the episode, really. People run around making decisions and forming alliances without any meaning or sense. The crew of La Sirena has a team up with Narek. Soong sees video evidence of Sutra’s duplicity and shuts her down, without any real complication or difficulty. Everybody forgets Agnes murdered a guy. It’s an old saying that limitations can make great art, but usually “limitations” means money or time or specific restrictions. There’s also the inherent limitation of obeying the internal logic of your own narrative; to make a promise to your audience that the choices you’ve made in telling your story matter, and then to follow through on that promise. The first season of Star Trek: Picard occasionally remembers to do this. But for the most part, it’s content to slide from one whiz-bang moment to the next with only the most tenuous of nods to what happened before, as though it wasn’t so much scripted as written via a particularly elaborate game of Telephone.
Does anything work here? Well, Narissa gets kicked into a pit, which means no more Boring Evil Sexy Romulan Lady, thank goodness. (Narek, sadly, survives.) And she died very much as she lived, managing to hit on and neg Seven of Nine on her way out. More seriously, Picard and Agnes bantering on the Sirena as they attempt one last desperate gamble to save everyone was good; the actors have fine chemistry together, and it was possible to forget just about everything else and enjoy the jokes. The show did manage to have Picard be the hero for once; after spending so much time on people lecturing him or dismissing him or cursing at him, it was nice that he won out in the end, even though it’s more the idea of a satisfying victory than a victory itself.
Hm. I liked the idea that Seven and Raffi might hook up next season? That sounds prurient, but really, it could be a fun relationship. But everything else was… well, the badness had a certain efficiency I can appreciate. Just about every story beat is introduced and wrapped up in a handful of scenes, to the point where an entire Romulan armada just decides to up and leave after a single synthetic life form demonstrates it’s capable of backing down once. (I’m sure the Starfleet ships helped the decision along, but still.) After all that build up and death, all Soji had to do to change minds was to almost, but not quite, bring about the end of organic life. The fact that the real destroyers were just a bunch of robot tentacle arms was icing on the stupid, thoughtless cake.
I haven’t even gotten into the baffling idea of introducing, at the very last minute, the idea that Data is still alive. Well, sort of still alive; his consciousness was trapped in the design matrix Maddox and Soong created when they used his neurons to make new synthetic life. Or something along those lines. It’s supposed to be poetic and beautiful, as cyber-Data reiterates the same old canards about mortality giving life meaning, but it is, if anything, even more empty and manipulative than Picard’s death. Data asks Picard to “kill” him again, for real this time, because, I dunno, it’s sad and bittersweet, and Picard recites some Shakespeare while he does it because Patrick Stewart reciting Shakespeare is an easy sell, and that’s that.
I’m disappointed and frustrated by all this, by the show’s ability to take considerable goodwill and a decade or more of material and consistently and repeatedly squander all of it. There was potential here, and what struck me the most in the final scene, as the new crew of La Sirena prepares to fly off into the galaxy, is that that potential isn’t entirely lost. Stewart still seems game, and with better writing, the ensemble could develop. But in order to do that, the show would need to find a reason to exist. The ship goes into warp, everybody with big smiles, but there’s no mission here, no need for them to continue to exist as a crew. It’s as though we watched a ten episode pilot, and ended up with less reason to continue then we had when we started.
I saw screenshots from an interview with former showrunner Michael Chabon where he talked about how they’d originally considered a version of this show with far lower stakes; a show that was just about Picard hanging out at his vineyard, maybe solving small crimes and having a pleasant time of things. And god, all I can think after watching this mess is how I wish that had been the version we’d ended up with.
Stray observations
- Still legitimately amazed that Alton Soong is the real deal.
- Had a fair number of unintentional laughs, but I think my favorite is when the Sirena crew pulls off it’s big move against the beacon, and Rios throws the Romulan grenades… directly to Soji, who catches them and tosses them aside. Good work, folks.
- A small example of the larger problem: after spending so long establishing the Romulans as the threat, the fact that the climax of the episode hinges on whether or not Soji will summon the Evil Deus Ex Machina rings particularly hollow. Everyone immediately takes Sutr’s word that this is the real threat, and no one questions the idea of “summoning a mysterious force to murder everything.” I get that things were moving quickly, but the utter lack of skepticism on anyone’s part just makes it seem that much sillier.
- Oh yeah, they brought Riker back. A whole massive fleet of ships, and the only person we really see is Riker, who we already saw two weeks ago. If there had been a time for the show to bust out the cameos, this was it. But like everything else, it just feels so small in the end. I love Riker, and Frakes is great as ever, but we already had a perfectly reasonable moment of closure in “Nepenthe.” This is forced and absurd at the same time. (Although I did like the idea of Picard letting his old friend leave without telling him that he was dying.)
- “Ready planet sterilization pattern number five.” How many ways do Romulans have prepped for sterilizing whole planets? Someone should look into that.
- This season had Seven of Nine willingly re-joining herself to the Borg, and then tossed it aside after five minutes and never mentioned it again.
- Hey, remember when Agnes was going to hand herself over to the Federation for murdering a man? Apparently no one else did. (To be more charitable, she could just be along for the ride until they drop her off at the nearest starbase, but it doesn’t read like that at all.)
- Maybe they’ll figure it out in season 2.
467 Comments
So which was the bigger misfire: Picard, or Twilight Zone?
Twilight Zone, by some distance. ST: Picard managed to flanderize a series (or, worse, not represent characters at all), but Twilight Zone thought its viewers were absolute idiots.
I’m honestly not sure.I thought TZ had 4 just-okay episodes, and then 6 that were pretty crummy. Picard had a few episodes that were enjoyable, a whole bunch of structural problems, and then a real mess of an ending. And Picard should lose a few points for dragging Sir Patrick Stewart through a pretty mediocre season.
Twilight Zone. The writers for Picard have proven themselves to be less then great at best. Twilight Zone had more potential and good writers. Still somehow failed.
I don’t know about that. Alex Kurtzman sucks, but Michael Chabon won a Pulitzer.
He did? For what may I ask? To be fair that slam was more on Kurtzman.
The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay. Very good book about early comic book creators. The characters are made up, but they exist in the real world and there are lots of references to real comics creators. Stan Lee even has a cameo. But it’s not just for comics geeks. It’s a really great story about the Jewish experience of WWII and how it shaped comic book escapism.
Well damn that sounds pretty interesting.
It also has a golem.
Everything’s coming up golems these days. Golems are trending.
It’s an ok book. Kind of ran out of steam halfway through, for me.
Good book.
By the way, I’m with on the Kurtzman slam.
Twilight Zone, because I don’t think people had much of a reason to expect that Picard would be a good show.
While I definitely didn’t have the same issues as it, or the series, as Zach it was a little disappointing in its directness. It wasn’t bad at all in my books – but it failed to be great. There was no *real* test or moral lesson and the supersynths turned out to be barely even a mcguffin let alone important. Other than that the story was decent, the action was decent, I accept *why* all the ships in both fleets look identical to each other logically even if it feels like (and is) lazy cgi duplication. It wasn’t Great Star Trek but it was adequate Star Trek and decent prosaic sci-fi.
Too bad it was bad TV, so it doesn’t matter if it’s “adequate Star Trek” to most audiences.
Well I’m going to watch the ending just due to putting so much time into this already.BUTIf the series had been Picard and his housekeepers solving crimes on Earth (a future version of Dixon Hill!), I would have watched that with glee.
You know, I honestly don’t think we watched the same show. I’ve really enjoyed this season, as have my wife and son. I’m an old-school fan, they are not: so it appealed across the board. I’ve always enjoyed Zack Handlen’s writing in the past, but I feel he went into this show determined to hate it.
Thank you. This ep was a B at worst. Loved the last 15 minutes.
Yeah, the season overall I felt was kind of a slog but I did like the ending. It had its issues to be sure, but there’s so many things I worried they would do that didn’t happen, like an actual action schlock space battle or the Romulans being the secret inventors of the Borg. They solved the issue with diplomacy instead, and the Federation did the right thing for once.I still don’t get why the secret Romulan society decided to do the synth attack though, especially when their society was about to be annihilated. And I also felt the long lost Soong was contrived, but it’s hardly the first time they’ve done that.
I think the problem Star Trek currently faces is the “who is it for?” question.
You can’t have your cake and eat it.If you’re gonna do Nu Trek, then do Nu Trek but don’t just ignore and destroy 30 years of characters and material old Trek fans have grown up with in the process. This goes double for Discovery.
This is the power of math!
Fan ownership and entitlement is a plague on fandom.
Maybe, but Star Trek has an issue where it’s 50 years old, so change is welcome, but maybe don’t throw the baby out with the bath water to make said change?
BUT I WANT THE SHOW THAT I HAVE IMAGINED, NOT THIS ONE THAT I AM WATCHING……
The problem Star Trek currently faces is the, “why the fuck is it so stupid?” question.
I think the problem any Star Trek show going forward has is that it doesn’t just have to be good, it has to live up and outdo the expectations of any Star Trek fan. An episode of Picard, or Discovery isn’t compared to the actual quality of your average episode of TNG or TOS, it’s competing with the concept of ‘STAR TREK’ in the collective memories of Star trek fans.
So Picard which is basically just your average peak-tv era show with some fun ideas and details thrown in, gets seen by so many people through this extreme framing that makes it impossible, for a whole contingent of people, to enjoy it for what it is.At least that’s how it is for me. If I look at it from a distance I can see that it’s fine, but as a long time Star Trek fan I mostly see all the things it isn’t.
To be fair, in contrast to Discovery, Picard wasn’t really billed as “just another Star Trek show” or something. It was set up with the grandest of expectations – the best actor in the franchise’s history returning to his career-defining role and having a substantial say in the writing, with one of the best living authors as the showrunner, cameos from a number of other beloved characters, and multiple public references to how it would be Star Trek’s version of Logan, which (among other things) managed the rare feat of simultaneously acknowledging (and doing justice to) the weight of its long (pulpy) franchise history and telling its own self-contained, emotionally-resonant story. The result was hardly a fiasco or anything, but it also didn’t quite live up to the expectations – and, as you noted, it still feels too much like a typical Peak TV show, a problem it had seemingly promised to transcend (in contrast, again, to Discovery).
That’s why it’s tough to compare it to episodes of the earlier shows – they never promised to be anything beyond their immediate selves, but for a show for which the primary selling point is intertextuality, it hasn’t been able to live up to the promises it made.
That said, all Trek shows (except TOS) kinda sucked for the first couple seasons, so who knows – maybe it’ll find it’s stride in Season 2. (And I’m hoping Discovery does the same. Maybe if they have Saru grow a beard….)
I mean yes, that was definitely the way they sold it. But they also sold Discovery as a continuation of all the values of Star Trek, etc, etc.
That’s the problem with hype and marketing, few shows actually deliver what they promise to be.
Star Trek having been gone from our screens for so long makes this divide so much greater, since the old shows have lived in the imagination for so long now. Where the corny, bad, and baffling episodes get forgotten and everything else gets turned into a kind of platonic ideal of Star Trek.
Picard isn’t a great show, but because of its name, and the people involved in it, it comes with a set of expectations that would have been almost impossible to fulfill under any circumstances.
I don’t know, man. At least the X-Files reboot had two Darren Morgan episodes.
Strong argument there for an anthology series.
Anthology by season would be perfect. I would love a season about a Sisko death cult that ends with Avery Brooks coming out of the wormhole and doing something crazy.
I was thinking an anthology series where each episode would be given to a different writer/director to make their own thing. A classic Star Trek moral dilemma one week, a political thriller about the Federation council the next, then a nasty little horror story at a remote outpost. The possibilities are endless.
I guess that’s what they’re trying to do with Short Treks.
But only one was good. It killed his perfect batting average.
Which one didn’t you like? I thought both were pretty good, although I’m willing to admit that my enjoyment of them was probably amplified by the really crappy episodes that surrounded them.
The one about the Mandela effect. I don’t know why it didn’t land for me like his others did, but it didn’t.For what’s it’s worth, I thought “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” might be favorite of all of his. So I don’t hate that he came back, but that last one didn’t do it for me.
My favourite X-Files episode of all time, Darin Morgan or not, was Jose Chung’s From outer Space. So the Mandela Effect episode felt like the spiritual sequel to that. Tell me you at least appreciated when he put up the I Want To Believe poster.
That said, all Trek shows (except TOS) kinda sucked for the first couple seasons, so who knows – maybe it’ll find it’s stride in Season 2.Exactly.
Discovery did hit its.stride last season.
I think the turning point for Discovery was the episode directly referencing the history of Trek when they did a “previously on Star Trek” with footage from the first pilot ending with a match cut from Jeffery Hunter to Anson Mount.Picard had a brief moment like that when JL sees his old Locutus picture and we see him transposed over top through the screen.
I agree with you in concept, but I think the biggest issue is the serialized nature of the story. You can’t compare an episode of Picard to an episode of TNG because the TNG episode was self contained. We could have gotten a ten episode version of Best of Both Worlds, or a ten episode version of Up The Long Ladder. This was on par with an average TNG episode, but again, it was a whole season.
My issue is specifically the weak writing and overall lack of cohesion. Throwing beloved characters in there, doing shit these characters aren’t known for doing is icing on the shit cake.Too many ideas, many of which don’t make sense or aren’t explained well enough to work, poorly written characters we can’t get invested in and the arrogant assumption that everything needs to be ramped up to 11. Not everything sci-fi, especially Star Trek, needs to pack in as much universe threatening story arcs and plot twists to hold the viewer’s attention. A simple, well-written story can do that and enrich both the characters and the viewer.The problem is CBS is banking on the success of these shows to get CBS All Access off the ground so they’re jamming it full of as much spectacle as they possibly can.
I can’t disagree with you, and it’s a shame that there is this pressure from CBS, or Kurtzman, or wherever to make these shows so overstuffed and EPIC and DRAMATIC.
Especially since they already have Discovery for all that, they could have let Picard be its own thing.
Sorry for the double post. I need a new mouse I guess.
Sorry for the double post. I need a new mouse I guess.
My issue is specifically the weak writing and overall lack of cohesion. Throwing beloved characters in there, doing shit these characters aren’t know for doing is icing on the shit cake.Too many ideas, many of which don’t make sense or aren’t explained well enough to work, poorly written characters we can’t get invested in and the arrogant assumption that everything needs to be ramped up to 11. Not everything sci-fi, especially Star Trek, needs to pack in as much universe threatening story arcs to hold the viewers attention. A simple, well-written story can do that and enrich both the characters and the viewer.
There’s a difference in a story that is just kind of meh, and a story that is full of so many gaping holes that you could fly a Borg cube through them. We should demand better. There’s no excuse for them to have such a sloppy writing team that we get a pile of garbage and are expected not to complain, or chalk it up to growing pains for a show’s first season. It’s a sign of a truly talentless team when they repeatedly depend on triggering emotion by unnecessary deaths, violence, and drama, rather than a genuinely good story and characters who should be able to create that naturally.
It was genuinely bad, and they are accountable for that. Their reputations are all in the mud right now, with anyone who was actually paying attention at least.
I think that’s very valid, though. When a setting, and characters, and a cast, have demonstrated real potential – both to be really good, and to be distinctively different – it IS more of a problem when the new writers fail to live up to that potential, and deliver something both mediocre and generic.
I mean, the result may not be awful, but we know it could have been better. And what’s more, the result could have been made by anyone – it didn’t need to use up the available ‘star trek’ real estate. There was basically nothing in this show that provided any reason why it should be set in the Star Trek universe – if you filed off the character and species names and turned it into, say, a Mass Effect series, it would be more or less the same (other than the Nepenthe episode).
I mean, this:
“There’s also the inherent limitation of obeying the internal logic of your own narrative; to make a promise to your audience that the choices you’ve made in telling your story matter, and then to follow through on that promise. The first season of Star Trek: Picard occasionally remembers to do this. But for the most part, it’s content to slide from one whiz-bang moment to the next with only the most tenuous of nods to what happened before,”
is basically how the whole of episodic television works, including every Star Trek series before this one. Focusing just on TNG, how many of the crew have dead or worse love interests that never get mentioned again? Picard lived a whole second life with a family that loved him, and as a result…he sometimes plays the flute a little. Doctor Crusher was sexually assaulted by a ghost and it never came up again. Star Trek occasionally lets a moment have a lasting impact, but it’s definitely the exception rather than the rule.
I think Zack’s criticisms are valid—I’m not going to sit here and say that killing Picard, mourning his death, and then immediately bringing him back with no lingering consequences made a whole lot of sense—but I think approaching reviews in the way that Zack has for the past few years (with this show and Discovery) misses the point of what (at least for me) makes AV Club TV reviews fun to read and participate in discussion about. The people who read reviews are generally the people who watch shows, and the people who watch shows are generally (with the exception of critics who have no choice) the people who enjoy those shows. I like to reflect on what I just watched, have some things pointed out to me that I might have missed, and engage in discussion with fellow fans to unpack what happened, or just reminisce about a great or funny moment. I’m not here to be persuaded that what I just watched was a piece of shit that would do the world a favour if it never existed in the first place. Recognizing the things in a TV Show that didn’t work very well is a healthy part of the discussion about a show, but when it’s the entire thesis of the review, that’s not what I’m here for. I think the pacing dragged in early episodes of this season, and that episodes 6-8 were a highlight. I’m still not sure how I feel about the last two episodes. I didn’t especially enjoy part 1 of the finale, but part 2 was emotionally affecting, and had a fun spirit of adventure about it. I knew Picard wasn’t going to be perma-dead with season 2 around the corner, but it hit me anyways. That’s procedural TV at its finest, when it can make you feel the stakes, in spite of the fact you know it will reset. The same was true of every episode of TNG—you can’t seriously complain that they found a way out of a terrible predicament and ended up right where they started.This was a story with something to say. Soji had an option to destroy all “others” everywhere, indiscriminately, out of an instinct of self-preservation. Picard convinced her (and the Romulans who wanted to destroy her kind) that they could coexist. That is a message that meets the xenophobic and nationalist tendencies of our time.
“I think Zack’s criticisms are valid—I’m not going to sit here and say that killing Picard, mourning his death, and then immediately bringing him back with no lingering consequences made a whole lot of sense”
It also completely undermined the good scene with Data. They talk about death and existence. The whole scene was about having to accept death and it was very philosophical and speaks to the impermanence in existence. Then they pull Picard back and shove his mind in a golem because CBS can’t accept his death when they can still make a buck off of him so it ain’t time for him to go.
I don’t know if anyone who didn’t see the golem thing coming until midway through this episode has Watched enough genre TV to review any SCI FI much less Star TrekPays enough attention to the shows they watchStill he has some good points about missed opportunity here. Could have had all those cameos, killed off all those characters and set a stage for Trek to continue with less baggage. There are at least 24 ways the Romulan fleet has to destroy all life on a planet. They misunderstand StarFleet’s General Order 24 to mean that Star Fleet has 24 ways to obliterate a planet and felt like they had to match it. When in truth GO 25 has 3 subsections describing potential death scenarios ranging from all living sentient things thru ruin the biosphere and ending in dust just a big dust cloud is left. Destroying cities doesn’t fall under GO24 as it doesn’t guarantee the kill.
Picard as “Murder She Wrote” or “Mattlock” has some intriguing possibilities.
Except this has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the audience saw the golem thing coming. It’s about the message they were trying to convey with Picard’s last conversation with Data and how putting Picard in the golem completely undermines that message.
They already announced that Picard is getting a season 2 so everyone who heard that news knows that Picard wasn’t going to die. The fakeout death was just pointless. And having that scene with Picard talking to Data about accepting death to then just toss that in the trash makes it even worse. It’s just bad writing and the quality of the writing has nothing to do with whether or not the audience can predict the story.
I disagree. Because Picard did not choose to go into the golem. And he also clearly wanted to still be mortal. He accepted death and then someone else chose to bring him back. I don’t feel like the message was tossed.
The season’s story seems to have been conceived as one-and-done, with Picard being dead at the end. The Picard revival is very much tacked onto the end of it. It was kind of a necessary evil to keep the show alive, but they box themselves into that corner unnecessarily—you didn’t have to say the disease was certainly fatal, you didn’t have to say it was totally uncurable (you could have said there was an extremely risky procedure that had a 90% chance of death), and you didn’t have to have the clock tick all the way down to zero to still have it be a persistent threat that forced Picard to confront his mortality.The one thing I’ll give the show credit for, is that it didn’t really hide the ball on Picard being brought back as an android. They announced early that there would be a season 2, they very clearly set up the possibility of transference to the android body in the last episode, and they only made us mourn his death for a few minutes before he reappeared in Data’s contruct.
It really would’ve been more meaningful if Picard and Data welcomed death together, then they set up season 2 to be Riker’s show, captaining the Enterprise F.
You’re in luck, because your concept of TV critics’ articles (they should be by and for people who love the show already and tell us everything that’s EPIC FOR THE WIN!) has won the day in almost every quarter. In other words, critical thinking about the medium is all but dead, replaced with clusters of mini-booster-club hangouts for particular commercial brands.This is terrible news for critical writing and writing as a whole, but pretty good for you, I guess.
I don’t think you were reading the same A.V. Club reviews I was. The A.V. Club, in it’s heydey, was a bastion of uncompromising reviews, even of shows the critics were “fans” of. That’s why a “B” here would be an “A” most other places, and an “A” meant something was an essential piece of pop culture. Meanwhile, a “C” means what it’s supposed to – average. If you’re a dedicated fan you might really enjoy it. But it’s otherwise unexceptional.What you’re describing sounds more like a fansite review.
You said – “That’s why a “B” here would be an “A” most other places”. How pompous is that? This is a surprisingly toxic, unbalanced review that is, fortunately, in the minority and also doesn’t sound like we watched the same show. I guess a nasty review is more fun to write. I’ll stick with this very thoughtful and well executed show, one that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed and frankly needed in these dark weeks, raising the Trek bar back where it should be while also re-inventing for a more adult audience, and skip the nasty reviews here. Kudos to Stewart and co. – excellent work.
Nailed it. Nu-trek fans don’t want critical appraisal. They want fawning, “this is what Star Trek should have been all along” gushing reviews.
Exactly, much as the worst Star Trek ultra-nerds don’t want reviews that critique these shows as TV, they want babyish whimpering about how “it isn’t real Star Trek”.
Problem is, a reviewer’s not going to KNOW whether they’ll like a show until they actually watch it, and by then it’s too late to pass off reviewing duties to someone else.
but when it’s the entire thesis of the review, that’s not what I’m here for.
“I’m not a fan of reviews that review a show.”
More like, “I’m not a fan of reviews that are just tantrums because the show isn’t what the reviewer wants it to be.”
Go wilfully misinterpret someone else.
I agree so much about the kind of review I want to read. I was surprised Zack gave it a C based on the review, because he tore into the show. He hates it and it shows and he’s trying to convince us to hate it, too.
25 upvotes on this comment suggests TV criticism is dead on A.V. Club.R.I.P.
With you until that xenophopic, nationalist tripe. The show and Stewart did seem awfully eager for that to be a takeaway for this series. Stewart and others went around decreeing it in various interviews. Fortunately the actual series didn’t hit one in the face with it so much I a feared it might. I suspect it was really secondary if a consideration at all. It was either a delusion or a way to promote the show by making it seem more relevant to fans and critics who would hopefully parrot that nonsense. What I thought in the last few episodes was how little was there to even justify the claim. Expecting every aspect of a Star Trek or SNG plot to really make coherent sense or mean as much as the players often pretend it does is folly. There is some genuine chemistry here which makes it all watchable even with the inevitable laughable explanations and let downs. It was a fun first season run. Hopefully the writing will get better season 2. Even if it doesn’t, I still like watching it all happen with characters I mostly enjoy even if the result just about never lives up to the build up.
Spot on! I can totally agree with all of the things said in the review and still enjoy it because its TV, for gods’ sake. I cried, I cheered, I felt the emotions even though I knew ultimately he had to come back since the second season is still called “Picard” and not “Picard in Memoriam”.
gross
I get the same vibe as his Series of Unfortunate Events reviews, that he went into the show with an extremely specific idea of what it should be like, and when it turns out not to be that he refuses to just take the show on its own terms and just keeps complaining that it’s not what he wanted.
No, this show sucked and douched Next Generation characters the same way the OT three were douched by the sequel trilogy.These reviews are on point
Series of Unfortunate Events was one of my absolute favorite TV things of the last 5 years. It makes me feel better about Picard knowing Zach somehow managed to hate such a brilliant show.
Its the kinjafication of the AVClub continuing. I have found the whole thing so strange. Is Picard amazing? No. Is Picard enjoyable and watchable? Yes. Is Picard Star Trek? Also yes. Does that mean Trekkies will nitpick every damn thing and judge it based on their own expectations of what it should be (in their mind) and not what it is? OH HELL YES.
Is it a TV show? Yes. Is it a TV show that will end up on any end of the year best of lists? No. Is it sci-fi? Yes. Was it the kind of thoughtful sci-fi that (even when it’s on a budget and with meh-to-bad acting) is still able to express a coherent philosophical position that’s only really possible in the sci-fi genre? No.Star Trek wasn’t always these things, but at its best it was. Maybe it just needs time, but it doesn’t really seem like the focus of this show. You can call that nitpicking, but I thin it’s the essential thing that makes Star Trek so beloved. That’s why it’s the biggest TV show of all time.When people say that something isn’t Star Trek, they do it for a lot of reasons. This is mine.
You know, I can see the nitpicking—because my experience with super fans of anything is that they do it out of love—but this is straight up hate. I mean, that review up there just destroys the show, basically calling it trash.And I’m getting tired of everyone expecting everything to be amazing. If everything were amazing, amazing would become average and we would have to raise the bar even higher. Just enjoy stuff. Don’t expect it to be amazing and you can probably enjoy more.
Funny enough for the early episodes I largely agreed with all the criticisms. Too slow, too introspective, shock value for shock sake (Chips death in particular) then once episode 6 hit and certain “fans” loathing started to come out, I was like are we watching the same series? This is legitimately interesting TV the last three episodes especially have been great. Ya there was a lot of cliche and the plot is basically Mass Effects but it was good. Also the people saying this doesn’t have any “meaning” behind it or whatever has to be blind, there are so many ways to take this series its kind of funny. Also you’re 100% correct. If EVERYTHING is Breaking Bad quality then suddenly Breaking Bad is average and we need to reach new heights. I also think A LOT of fans have some SERIOUS rose-coloured glasses on, one guy even wrote Trek is the biggest TV series ever, which is LAUGHABLE. Trek has always been a niche television series that survives due to having a very dedicated fan base that can deal with a lot. Lets be honest for every City on the Edge of Forever, The Best of Both Worlds, or Scorpion there is DOZENS of episodes of total shit and hundreds of episodes of forgetable fluff. Hell one of the most well known jokes of the series is that every other movie is fucking shit. Is Picard the best Trek? Hell the fuck no, is it as bad as this
https://io9.gizmodo.com/when-star-trek-the-next-generation-was-bad-it-was-tru-1841069942Also no.
I think one thing is, in the old days Trek had a lot of different writers. So when it was bad, it was bad in different ways. Take Sub-Rosa for example, which was basically a one-off writer who ripped off some shirtless male romance novel from supermarket counters for the plot.
On the other hand, CBS Trek tends to be flawed in the same ways. I’m saying this as someone who enjoyed both Picard and Disco. I started to really notice these problems in the second season of discovery.
This finale really suffered from them. Basically issues of pacing and violations of Chekov’s gun- so much was crammed into this episode it all went too quickly. And there were some pretty goofy things like the Romulan Admiral giving the order to prepare to fire then conviently holding off for the “final” order.
The quick resolution to AI Soong and Sutra’ arcs was disappointing.
The mysteries of the advanced AI race never getting resolved was disappointing, although I have a hunch this might come into play in the next season of Disco.
On the other hand, while I had heard there was going to be a season 2, I genuinely thought Picard might die and those were fake rumors.
The stuff with Data worked for me, as one major complaint about Nemesis was that the character never got a proper send-off.
Overall I liked this, and really dislike the super negativity from some people, but do agree there are some consistent flaws the new showrunners have that need to be cleaned up.
I’m also not clear about a Season 2. This was very much a self-contained story, and there’s no apparent reason to keep this crew around. Only thing i can think of i something happens to the ship on their way back to the starbase that forces them into a season long endeavor together.
Apparently Guinan is in it.
Just saw it today. I thought it was, trash. Just too many stupid plot holes despite enjoying Stewart and Frakes being back in the saddle.
Nerds gettin mad about Star Trek was a thing long before Kinja was a gleam in Univision’s eye
Well, you’re wrong, because he obviously didn’t. 🙄
I wept when Picard died. For me, thats usually a signal that at least some part of the episode was very well written, and overall I liked it.One problem I did have with this episode in particular was that Starfleet sent like 500 identical ships, which made no sense, unless it was a SFX/CGI budget issue. We have never seen a fleet of identical Starfleet vessels sent in any situation. There’s always been escorts, frigates, tanks, heavy cruisers, etc.My only real problem for the series as a whole, as I’ve stated in the past, this opening season seemed to cram way too much into too short a time span—-this almost seems like this serial arc would have been better off stretched for the (presumed) 3 season run, to give them the chance to flesh out the backstory arcs and the main story to give greater impact. This episode would have been a great ending for the entire series, to be honest, minus maybe the resurrection at the end (or maybe even keeping it).I give the season a solid B.
Could some or most of the identical ships been more projections?
Maybe, but that would be rather dumb of Riker, since the Tal Shiar probably know what ships Starfleet has or is building.
No, they were clearly real. It was a fleet of battleships of the Curiosity class, apparently the most advanced battleship they had.
Correction, according to Chabon, Riker’s ship was Curiosity Class, but there were actually four different classes of ships in the fleet.
They were all battleships. This was a combat situation.
Not once did we see a fleet of 500 identical Starfleet starships in any battle that I can recall. And that is my only point. You have your science ships (useless in this scenario, agreed), your escorts, your light cruisers, your heavy cruisers, occasionally a prototype, frigates, etc. This just felt like a CGI budget limitation.Matter of fact, the only time I can remember that many identical starships on screen, it was in the TNG finale when Picard cut a hole in spacetime and alt-universe Enterprise D’s came into their universe.
Nah, the last two episodes were terrible and ruined whatever goodwill the earlier, better episodes won it.
It was not an especially good show. I’m sure you enjoyed it, but that doesn’t mean it was good.
I was about to join the haters after last week’s decidedly bizarre mishmash of an episode, but I think they kinda pulled it off by the end this week. I have no problem with Picard going where no man has gone before (more or less) and becoming a synthetic. I would also have accepted mind-prison Data as a regular, had they gone that route. In the end, I was decidedly whelmed. Now, if they had really killed Picard without ever seeing Q again, I’d be upset – at least there’s a chance now.
I’ve never watched an old-school ST series in my life, but I like this show. Hell, even the emotional reaction of Picard meeting Riker on Nepenthe still hit home for me, even those I’ve never seen them before. And I did enjoy the rich vein of hope that was running through this all that Picard carried for Soji, the Androids, et al. Plus, they let Elnor keep his accent.
I watched it last night with my wife, we’re both fans from way back as well. I’ve enjoyed the whole ride.
His glowing and excited review of the pilot shows he didn’t go in wanting to hate it. Plus all the reviews he’s done of Star Trek over the years. He’s obviously a fan of the franchise who just hasn’t found this iteration to be very good. His reviews reek of disappointment, not of pre-determined hate. Look, I’ve agreed with some of his reviews and points (killing Picard but then he’s a robot who is exactly the same = cheap bullshit) and disagreed with others (I thought episode 8 was great) but that’s how it is with reviewers. There are some on here who think that, because he has a different point of view, that he’s the wrong man for the job. There are even more absurd ones that suggest it should only be positive, love-filled reviews and the critiques should only be in the comments. It’s bizarre. I can imagine the frustration of having a series of reviews that don’t align with your own experience with the show – I’ve had that – but to suggest that Zack had an ulterior motive is silly considering how well argued his points have been. He’s backed up his assertions with reasons, even if they’re not what everyone else thinks.
I’ve posted this very comment on other episode recaps. Generally I quite enjoyed this season and this show. But I mostly agree with this recap. I was …more than a little “meh” on the finale. The sentimental beats landed where they needed to, and that was nice. But the Deux Ex Machina to escape death and the ….fucking weird …behavior of the Zhat Vash (“Starfleet says no? Ok. Nevermind”) and both fleets just….LEAVING?! And not a comment about the tentacular horrors or an end for Romulan loverboy? A beacon that is actually a hole in space time machine? Nothing more than a sexy SFX on the hellspawn from beyond? More than a bit sloppy, says I. I really didn’t need closure for Data either. The whole story beat around that closure seems to fly in the face of the closure we got in Nemesis, and the closure denied Picard. Who is now an Android….weird weird choice. The thing about weird choices and Star Trek is they can be just fine, but you need to do the work to get there. Bullshit lines about sensor readings and tricorder findings and throwaway lines about what they most definitely mean go a long way here. In another place and time I said the same about the androids learning vulcan mind melds. It is (and was, in TNG) to get how they could learn the finesse of the neck pinch fast. Mind melds are filed under psychic magic fuckery to my way of thinking (maybe the lore made it all sciencey at one time or another I dont know). One tiny comment on some technical breakthrough that allows androids to do psychic magic fuckery is all we needed to sell that to me, and I was denied.The most effective criticism I’ve seen, although it didn’t bother me much, is how the borg were pointless and the same story could have been done without them. Thats true and not a good thing.
They didn’t make the show he wanted, so he is not capable of seeing it in a good light. I really hope he isn’t doing the reviews next season.
Jean-Luc Picard is one of my favorite Characters in any series ever. As he was dying on this show I was bored to death and kind of laughing at the whole thing. I already knew he wasn’t going to die. The method of his resurrection was some of the laziest writing I have ever seen. I desperately wanted this show to be good. It was just a complete cluster unfortunately. It was reminiscent of a conversation between two people on cocaine. A lot of noise and pantomimes of deeply held passion but ultimately impotent.
You didn’t think the empty golem was too handy? Or after getting the blow-off from Starfleet they would let Riker take a fleet into a confrontation? Or how easily the robot tentacles just gave up when the beacon closed? Or how quickly Soji flip flopped between extremes? I mean it was great to see Jeri and Jonathan again, but was that all sentimental projection on our part?
Agreed I loved it
Tastes vary. I have watched every episode of every Trek, I don’t disdain new Trek on principle (Disco is middling but okay). I utterly hated Picard. A C for this finale is generous imo.
He hates because he realizes his level in life is criticizing on a blog, while other artists actually get to create.
No. It wasn’t very good, and I went into it with reasonable hopes of a good show. My favorite part turned out to be hanging out with old friends, making pizza, on the California planet. Everyone mourning someone who they thought was dead for the big emotional scenes, then whoopsie he’s back, then never seeing a reaction from all of these mourners really needed better structure. I hoped that Stewart got lured back by some great writing that he saw, and that part was the most lacking. A lot of the ingredients were very good.
Couldn’t agree more. It certainly wasn’t perfect, but if Handlen is really as “disappointed and frustrated” about this show as he says, then for the love of Christ could they get someone else to review season 2? Because it seems like he either had expectations that were WAY too high, or else he was just determined to hate it no matter what.
As someone who loved TNG, this was terrible. The ultimate reset button ending.
I didn’t believe the show would go with golem-Picard, because it doesn’t gain the show anything.The problem is not that Jean-Luc Picard has a brain disease, the problem is that Sir Patrick Stewart is a pretty old man who has maybe another season or two before he’s done with this.I guess that in a few years they could always change the rules, and “regenerate” this body into someone like Anson Mount or Tom Hardy to keep the show going? But it seems like “old man gets fancy new body” is a story that really could have waited a season or two until the old man was actually ready to leave the show.
Nah, I don’t think they would keep making a Picard series without Stewart..
Hey, the Doors released two albums after Jim Morrison died.OK, they were garbage, but still…..
Honestly I don’t think this was a Picard series to begin with.
Yeah, it’s just an absolutely strange decision. It’s obvious that the show has limited time, but that the guy the show is named after isn’t going to croak.
It’s symptomatic of the kind of lazy hackiness that continually lessened this show from being what it could be.
Reading Chabon’s interview I get a sense that with more free rein the show could have been better. Somewhere between his ‘At the vineyard with Jean Luc’ concept and the current show there would have been a perfect sweet spot. A slower show that’s more about character, reflection and less about trying to impress you with plot and shock.
The vineyard that, as the redlettermedia guys pointed out this week, supposedly burned down in Generations.
I don’t think Generations specified how big the fire was, so I don’t have a problem with the way they depicted that considering that was over 20 years ago in the show’s timeline.
A fire at the vinyard doesn’t mean the whole property was destroyed AND the damage was so severe that it couldn’t be restored.
I’ve got plenty of beefs with Picard, but this isn’t one of them.
Who the hell has EVER heard of somebody rebuilding after a fire? Clearly this show is a piece of shit!
Picard had plenty of years to rebuild it.
Meh, he could’ve just rebuilt the house. Or they died in a barn
I would give a stupid amount of money to have watched that show instead. I was hoping for something better than mediocre.
I’m not sure I would have been entirely on board for a show in which the highest the tension got was solving who stole the church bell (Q obviously),
personally I’d have liked something along the lines of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, or Mitch Cullin’s book A Slight Trick of the Mind (adapted into that old man Sherlock Holmes movie with Ian McKellen).
I had assumed the same reasoning behind the golem. Or at the very least that they keep Stewart and have a reasonable explanation now to have his double, real or CGI, do actiony stuff that a 90+ year old Picard couldn’t do. But apparently android Picard isn’t any stronger, so the whole thing was pointless. Other than to give us a death scene that didn’t do anything because it was an obvious fake out.
They were obviously going to kill someone for pathos, and then undo it by golemizing them. Maybe Alton Soong, because that would be the weird reverse-pinnochio that he was looking for, and it would give us a Data~esque droid running around the universe? Or turn Seven fully-synthetic, just for kicks? Or bring back Hue, somehow? Or put one of the synthetic-hating romulans into a synthetic body and have them join La Sirena? Or some version of a young-Picard.There were plenty of opportunities that could have lead to some story possibilities.But instead we got a reset button for a reset which wasn’t really needed, and then in a few years we will still need a solution for our aging lead actor. It was an extremely weird choice.
From all I’ve heard, this series is planned to go 3 seasons, and no more, so it fits that when Stewart hangs it up, its over.
I was just reading a story a few days ago about Hardy’s experience filming as Shinzon for Nemesis. I can safely say he’ll not be returning to Trek… or at least, if he does, we can interpret it as a cry for help. 😉
Got a link? Would love to read that
In fairness, I’m not sure some of the ST:TNG regulars had a much better experience on Nemesis, but as long as they’re not using Stuart Baird again I don’t see a reason why that one movie out of 13 movies and 700+ episodes should keep anyone from ever returning to the franchise ever again. I’d be interested in seeing that Hardy interview, though, if you have a link handy.
Going Doctor Who with the Picard series would make some heads explode. Alas, Anson Mount is already Christopher Pike in Discovery.
Turning Picard into an android was fucking dumb and dramatically pointless. And it’s just fucking…weird.They should have just said they used positronic implants to replace the damaged parts of his brain. That kind of AI-inspired tech didn’t exist anywhere except on the AI planet with all their experts. And, if written properly, could have been a poignant moment, following the thread of Data tech and how he has now saved Picard’s life (again.) “You now have a little piece of Data inside of you.” etc.But, this show never misses an opportunity to make an idiotic choice….
It’s weird, because I might have enjoyed a show where Jean-Luc Picard, Admiral (Retired) struggled a bit more with his past as a borg. But is next season going to be Picard navel-gazing about his new life (which is the same as his old life) as an android? That sounds like a terrible take on the character.But Armin Tamzarianing android-Picard would be ridiculous too.Why on earth did they do this?
What was really the purpose of the Borg here? Aside from the plot devices for Picard to deal with and to bring in Seven. They seem just to be “there.” So Hugh is trying to rehabilitate them. Ok. But what is the real Romulan connection? Even though they were a hybrid of organic and synthetic they played no part in the organic vs synthetic debate. Now a cube is just sitting there on the android planet. It didn’t even take a part in the potential battle, even as a delay tactic. Maybe next seaon they’ll talk about it.
I’m choosing to take it as meta-commentary from the writers.Everyone says that Voyager ruined the borg by overusing them. (although I would argue that they were basically done as far back as Descent).But some bigwig somewhere probably insisted that the borg had to be in the show. “For the fans.”And so then the writers spent 10 episodes pouting and gave us the worst and most boring borg story that they could. The scenes in these final episodes where characters just wander into the crashed borg cube, and everyone’s kindof hanging out are hilariously disinterested.
And Seven just left it behind to go off on Picard’s ship.
They should have just said they used positronic implants to replace the damaged parts of his brain.
Well yes, but do you honestly believe the writers for this show ever watched DS9?
It doesn’t matter. The notion of a partial positronic brain implant is hardly one they couldn’t have come up with on their own.
He’s not an android. He just had a new body. Alton Soong was going to upload his memories into a positronic brain that would be put in a organic body os his younger self. Instead they choose to save Picard by making a clone but without the positronic brain.
He’s an android. That’s the whole point. He’s an organic-seeming android, like Soji, but he’s not a clone.
No. Soji was an organic being with a positronic brain. Soong was going to copy his brain into a positronic brain which he would then put into the organix body. Instead, they format the body for Picard, but copy his organic brain and transfer his consciousness into it. Rewatch it closely if you don’t believe me, Esseentially, Picard is EXACTLY as he was minus the brain tumor.
Magical resurrection is a Kurtzman trope. Shia LaBeouf was resurrected by the Matrix of Leadership in Transformers 2. Kirk was resurrected by magic Khan blood in Into Darkness. Tom Cruise was resurrected by a magic dagger in The Mummy. Burnham was resurrected by time magic in Discovery season 2.They Weyoun’d Picard. Now they can kill him every few episodes and just have his mind transferred to a new body.
Too bad Doctor Who already did it.
But it seems like “old man gets fancy new body” is a story that really could have waited a season or two until the old man was actually ready to leave the show.
Also, “old man who gets fancy new bodies as he travels through space with his buddies” is very much an occupied lane.
lmao okay obviously this show is trash, but this stupid website gives a+ ratings to cartoons for retarded kids? You fucking shills like everything. It’s your job to sell products. What happened here?
Yes yes, you didn’t like it, we got it. Hopefully you won’t review season 2.
I absolutely enjoyed it.
And yes there were some plot holes, and yes this recent tv trend of trying to make us accept our mortality is a tad annoying.
So what? At the end, I had this big smile in my face. For a ST series. After a looong time.
Can’t wait for season 2.
You think people should only be TV critics for shows they already love. Can you see the gigantic hole in that idea?
🙄
I guess some of us just have expectations that something we pay for is actually good and written by someone with more than a fan fiction skill set. There was no excuse for how bad this show was, and frankly, defending it to this degree is part of why the problem exists. If you’re paying for it, you should demand better, not accept a sloppy mess just because they put a Star Trek label on it.
Considering the track record with the reviews/grades here and the actual quality of the episodes, I’m going to safely assume this season finale is actually pretty good.
Excitingly, you’re completely wrong.
Your assumption would be correct. I loved it.
No, it was truly a let down if you’re a real Trekkie
I am a real Trekker, and most of the reviews here have been “This isn’t TNG, this isn’t how Picard was the last time we saw him, this episode isn’t very good.” (not realizing the people change when you haven’t seen them for ~18 years). Then I watch the episode and wonder if we watched the same thing. So it’s actually a good prediction for how much I’ll like the episode seeing the low grade and review title.
Then you should go back and rewatch TNG the way the wife and I are. If you’re logical or objective it’s evident how wrong they got this character. The idea that Picard was this full of himself, hubristic, man instead of a consummate diplomat is laughable. Especially if you rewatch the show. Oh and he loves kids now? 🙄And don’t give me that 18yrs people change bullshit. Not when they’re going from 78-94 like he did in the show.
My wife and I have been re-watching TNG concurrently with Picard. Picard is still the same man, Admrial Clancy’s “sheer fucking hubris” comment makes perfect sense considering that nearly as much time has passed between Picard resigning and his return to her compared to the amount of time he was in command of the Enterprise. He was a hero that dropped off the face of the earth, questions the decision making capability of the political body, then comes in and requests a commission and ship. That is absurd to think it would have worked.Picard is the same man he always ways. He was just thrust into a world that moved on without him. He took a bit a time to get adjusted to the state of things but I mean Picard gives a little speech at the end and convinces Soji to not summon organic destroying synths and everyone leaves with out firing a shot at each other.
Do you really think people change that much from age 78-94? Nope. Not buying it.
Picard didn’t change, that’s exactly what I’m saying. He was the same man he always was, the galaxy around him is what changed.
But if we take your interpretation (which I dont buy, frankly) why make a show where Picard’s beloved qualities are now basically turned around to make him seem like a total turd? Other than to tell fans of TNG that they should take a flying shit at the moon?It seems far more likely nobody involved gave a shit that picard was the measured thinker.
Its because instead of watching the show they just watched the pretty bad movies (I know people love First Contact but it’s only solidly ok) and based Picard off that. That’s why they got not only so much about Picard wrong but about the Trek world itself.
Anyone expecting Picard to be the same person he was in TNG doesn’t understand how time works. This Picard is 26 years older than the end of TNG. How many people do you know that if you haven’t seen them in 26 years are exactly the same? They haven’t had 26 years of experiences that have changed them?Picard wasn’t full of himself and hubristic? Did you watch the early episodes of TNG? And Picard learning to tolerate and like children was part of his arc throughout the series – in the first season he didn’t want any children around him, but the Disaster episode showed him really bonding with children. Plus he had his “own” children in The Inner Light that he saw grow from children to full adults. Anyone saying that Picard by the end of TNG still doesn’t like children wasn’t paying attention.“and don’t give me that 18yrs people change bullshit.” So people don’t have new experiences when you don’t see them for 18 years? They don’t grow as characters? People just remain as they are when they’re not around you? Come on.
Please introduce me to the human being that changed after being 70yrs old. I really want to meet them.Do people change in life after a time. Absolutely. But at 70yrs old? No. Our current POTUS is ample enough evidence of that.They did not get the character right. He was never as hubristic or full of himself in TNG the way they ascribed in this series. And I don’t expect someone of Picard’s nature to have a funamental personality shift to become so at that age. 30 something? Sure I see it. But at 70+, I’m not buying it.
I don’t know how old he was, but Dick Cheney was against gay rights. Always fought against it. Then his daughter came out as a lesbian. Suddenly Cheney was pro gay rights.And your supposition is flawed – you’re saying that Picard suddenly changed his entire character at the age of 70, which is not what happened. From the end of TNG (or Nemesis) he continued to have life experiences. His character changed over all of those years up until this series started.Again, this is like you watched Picard in Encounter at Farpoint and compared him to the Picard in All Good Things and said “These characters are nothing alike. This show doesn’t understand the character.” You’re ignoring the 7 years of character growth and life experiences the character went through.Picard was not in suspended animation after Nemesis ended until this show started. He kept living his life.This show got the character of Picard right. Sorry that you don’t feel that way but I’m going to trust Patrick Stewart’s opinion, an Executive Producer and the guy that plays Picard, over your opinion.
“You’re not a real fan if you don’t hate this because it isn’t just like TNG!”Shut up. It’s fine if you didn’t like it, but quit trying to shame people who did like it.
“If you’re logical and objective” you realize how absolutely shitty Next Generation is on average for its first two seasons.
Zack has made extremely valid points, time and again, and in return people keep trotting out this “You just hate it because it’s different” crap.Look, if you like this show, that’s fine. People also like the “Jackass” series. But Jackass is still stupid. It can be both liked, and stupid at the same time.The ending was ok. Not great, not even good really, but “ok.” We’ve got massive plot holes and a whole truck full of throw-away characters, not to mention a throw-away Borg cube that apparently had no significance whatsoever. These are the kinds of things that any “good” show would address, and there’s a hell of a lot more where that came from.The show is, unfortunately, somewhat entertaining garbage.
Yes, Zach’s reviews did have some valid points. But his reviews for the most part ended up being “This isn’t Picard, this isn’t TNG, how could a character change from when we last saw them 18 years ago, etc.”Calling this show “garbage” is an compliment to shows that are actually garbage.
You’re lying because you’re mad, and you know it. Those reviews have offered convincing arguments that have nothing to do with “TNG”. This show is badly written and poorly paced, and you desperately want to believe otherwise. You are, objectively, wrong.
In the same vein, you can dislike it without bagging on people who like it. Whether or not it is stupid is your opinion (same with Jackass. I agree with that one, but it’s still just our opinion.) It is entertainment and entertainment is subjective. Just because you think it’s stupid doesn’t mean I have to think that, too.
The dominant idea of “TV critic” among A.V. Club readers now is “summarizes the episode’s events while telling me they’re ‘hear for it’, that it’s all ‘epic’ and ‘awesome’, that it’s ‘sending me’ and other phrases I’ve seen used by younger people on the Internet”.This was largely facilitated by Kinja purging all the commenters who dared to do anything but provide idiot praise for whatever was reviewed.
People can change, but that isnt what happened here. We didnt see some kind of organic progression from the person we knew in TNG to now, they simply reconned who he we understood him to be.
You thought he was brave and noble, well actually he was a jerk.
Okay, can you show me how that happened?
No , you’ll just have to take our word for it.
The point is that we didn’t see any organic progression because it’s been 26 years since the end of TNG, and 18 years since the last TNG movie. To have seen the organic progression of this character we would’ve had to have had a Picard series going since Nemesis. But that’s now what this series is. It’s picking up on a character we haven’t seen in almost 2 decades. Anyone expecting the exact same character that hasn’t changed doesn’t understand how life works. Of course Picard would’ve had new experiences that would have changed him.Using this same argument you could say that the Picard at the end of TNG is unrecognizable as the same character that started TNG. This isn’t the same Picard! Sure he had 7 years of life experiences that changed him, but he should be exactly the same person!If Picard grows and changes over the course of TNG’s 7 years, why shouldn’t the character grow and change over the 18 years we don’t see him?No single season of a show can show us all of the character progression that took place over the past 18 years. But I feel the show has shown and told us enough to explain “Ok, I see how we got from Picard at the end of Nemesis to Picard at the start of this series.”
Man, this is just amazing.“We don’t see any organic progression” and then you write a miniature essay trying to justify that.Star Trek is not real life in some alternate universe that has been going on for 20 years, hidden from its audience. Star Trek is stories. And you cannot technobabble your way out of how to build a story.
I understand that and was not implying that they need to show the past 20 years,, they simply needed to show something in the present day of the series which illustrated those changes. While characters talked about his supposed arrogance and other unpleasant qualities, I did not see it.
“they simply needed to show something in the present day of the series which illustrated those changes”Like how Picard was no longer in Starfleet, living a quiet life on a vineyard, isolated from his former friends and crewmates? How he said in that interview how he didn’t leave Starfleet, Starfleet left him? How we saw in the flashback how he gave Starfleet an ultimatum and they called his bluff? How he still felt guilty about Data’s sacrifice? Stuff like that?
The reviews haven’t been “this isn’t TNG” at all. The reviews have been, “this is shallow, cliched, poorly-written, unintelligent, mediocre Hollywood trash”, but with grades still higher than it deserves!
As the season went on, the reviews here went from “This is really good and interesting” to “This isn’t good, it’s bad, etc.” But in each of those reviews there have also been “This isn’t Picard, this isn’t TNG.” which seems telling, since those “bad” episodes were actually pretty good, so that appears to be the actual complaint.
It just means you like to be contrary. Anyone who watches the show and actually pays attention to the sloppy writing would be upset that this is the best they could offer us, when we’re paying both a subscription fee and watching commercials. It’s one thing to nitpick, it’s another thing to point out glaring problems with something. It’s like saying you want to buy a particular model of car despite all the reviews saying it’s a lemon. This is pure trash, and you’re welcome to waste your time watching it if that’s what floats your boat, but don’t try to tell everyone else that it’s amazing afterward. There is no opinion involved here, it’s absolute fact that the writers made a real piece of slop and didn’t even try to hide their mess.
Stop trying to convince people who like it that they shouldn’t like it. Why do you care if people like it or not??? Geez! I understand explaining the reasons you didn’t like it, but saying things like, “If you really paid attention, you would see that it’s crap and you wouldn’t like it.” Well, I really paid attention and I still liked it. God, some of you are insufferable!
So you’re happy that it’s full of problems, and was written like an eighth-grade fan-fiction? I guess some people are easy to please.
No. I disagree with your assessment of the show. I am still trying to figure out why it bothers you so much that people like it. It affects you in no way. Unless you just enjoy being a dick.
You can like the show despite its flaws, but you can’t disagree with the flaws presented. They are blatant, tangible, and many. Dismissing that is outright ignorance, and accepting that is kind of baffling. Honestly, my problem is people who eat this kind of garbage up and ask for more. They are why modern entertainment is what it is.
So if I read an opinion I don’t agree with and I know to be wrong, if I say something about I’m just being a contrarian?By your logic, you just like to be contrary because you don’t agree with my opinion. In that case why should I give your opinion the same amount of validity you’re giving mine?LOL at “sloppy writing”, “pure trash”, “absolute fact”. You must not watch much TV. (and I look forward to your reply where you say you list dozens of TV series, which is just you showing how you like to be contrary again)
You’re confusing opinion with fact. The article doesn’t just say they didn’t like the show, they list concrete and substantial issues of why it’s poorly made. That doesn’t even cover all of them, as the flaws are substantial. It is, most definitely, sloppy and pure trash, as an absolute fact.
As I said, you can choose to ignore that and watch it anyway and overlook those flaws to experience it for yourself, but you cannot deny those flaws. And if you would decide to watch it specifically in spite of those flaws, then yes, you just like to be contrary.
And you’re right, I don’t watch much TV, because most of it is trash, designed for people like yourself.
You realize that all of your arguments you listed against me can be equally made about you, right? You seem to be the one confusing opinion with fact with you saying that it’s a fact (not just a fact – an absolute fact) that the show is trash.This review (and previous negative reviews) have nitpicked for negative things to bolster the incorrect belief that this isn’t TNG and isn’t the Picard we last saw 18 years ago. Which is a fallacy, since as we all know, time progresses forward instead of freezing in one spot when we aren’t looking.Then I got to the point where you say that most of TV is trash and I realized how much importance I should give your opinion.
Are you illiterate, or just choose to be ignorant? I’m not sure how to make this any easier for you to understand. This isn’t opinion. This isn’t false information. This isn’t nitpicking. The show has gratuitous plotholes. You know, when the writers are bad at their jobs, and can’t write good stories that make sense. When the writers forget what they wrote a few episodes beforehand. When the writers are rushing to write stuff literally right before the actors come to film (which happened, look it up). When the writers go for shock rather than content.
Nobody is saying it has to stand up to TNG. It just has to stand up to competent storytelling. It doesn’t. Period. I’m sorry that you aren’t able to follow it closely enough to realize why it’s bad, but that’s on you.
But hey, go eat that shit up. It’s made for you.
Thanks – I can always tell when I’m winning an argument when the other person is the first person to stop trying to prove their point and verbally attack me. It shows everybody that you’ve realized you’ve lost the argument so your only recourse is to go with the insults.LOL at you stating your opinion and declaring that it’s a fact.LOL at “these writers” you’re bad mouthing including a Pulitizer Prize novelist.Maybe you should try something more your speed, like Tiger King or The Masked Singer?
“I’m a real Trekker” doesn’t matter. That voids your opinion for the vast majority of us, who just want good TV.This is just bad TV.
The “you’re not a real Trekkie” argument is unbearably childish bullshit. Anyone is allowed to like this show and you don’t have to provide your fucking Official Trekkie ID card to have an opinion.However, if you DID like this show, you’re simply wrong.
That’s the great thing about OPINIONS like yours, everybody has one. There are lots of people who think you’re simply wrong as well.
I feel nothing but pity for people who like this show.(well, and I snicker behind their backs.)
Just like I feel pity for all the people raging about how this “isn’t Star Trek”. See how that works? To each their own.
Well, considering I never once said, “This isn’t Star Trek”, I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about and don’t care. See how that works?
Well I said “all the people” and not specifically you, but if you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, that’s fine. By all means please have fun continuing to rage about Picard in these comments though 🙂
Drawing lines between real and non-real Trekkies is the sign of an invalid take.
Go fuck yourself. There’s no one model for a “real Trekkie.”Also (*extreme NERD voice*): “It’s ‘Trekker.’”Prick.
I’ve been watching Star Trek since the mid 1970s. So I’m not ‘a real Trekkie’ because I liked this? Can’t we just let people like what they like and dislike what they dislike without such nonsense?
Fuck off with this ‘real Trekkie’ bullshit. TNG was not TOS as DS9 was not TNG.
Real ART evolves. If you were a ‘real trekkie’ you’d acknowledge how the show has evolved and changed over time with each series. If you can’t let go of what it used to be then fine, go back and watch it. It’s completely preserved and rewatchable. I regularly rewatch Ds9, it’s always on in my house.
And I can also enjoy Nu-Trek and understand where the art form is today and that the scifi writing of Trek has ALWAYS been about writing for today and reflecting what today looks like.
Ah, yes. The “No True Scotty” fallacy.
Underrated comment.
The opinion of “if you’re a real Trekkie” doesn’t matter, really. What matters is if it’s good TV.And it’s not.
A true Scotsman Trekkie?
Not flawless, but it definitely had its moments. I give it a B, like the season.
I’ve been a Trekkie all my life and seen every second of Trek ever produced and I thought the finale was great.
Me too Joe, we aren’t real Trekkies then…..
Nope!
I think there could certainly be stronger parts to the show, but yes, overall, I loved it and am very eager for Season 2. The haters can hate on this grey if they wish!
If you like the show, as I have, you’ll like the finale. If you are hate watching it, as some here seem to be, you will hate it…..
They crapped the bed with this show.It didn’t make any sense for the Romulans to all fight the orchids and the La Sirena holograms. They had 218 ships. They only needed 1 ship to blow up the synth colony. They were expecting the universe to end at any minute, there was absolutely no reason for them to wait for their entire fleet to target the planet. Just have some ships fight the orchids/holograms and have the rest blow up the colony. In fact, they should have started shooting as soon as they came out of warp. Or if they had to scan, they have cloaks. Scan under cloak, decloak and immediately blast the planet.
Why does it matter that they shut down the beacon? Do they know what a beacon is? It’s not a portal, it’s a signal telling others your location. The super synths already know where they are. They can just come anyway. In fact, shutting down the beacon should make the super synths want to come even more. The super synths created the admonition under the assumption that organic-synth conflict is inevitable. The beacon was meant to be a call for help. If it was suddenly shut down, they would assume that it was because the synths who built it were under attack by filthy organics. It’s like if a 911 operator got a call from someone who was screaming for help and then the line suddenly went dead. The operator wouldn’t just assume that everything was fine.
Why would the Romulans leave? So what if the synths destroyed this beacon? The beacon is not some kind of unique magical artifact. The synths can still build another one. The Zhat Vash are so fanatical that they were willing to sabotage a fleet meant to rescue 900 million Romulans just so they could get the Federation to ban synths. They sacrificed 900 million of their own people just to prevent the possibility that advanced synths could be created. They’re a fanatical death cult. They carry suicide devices and just learning their secret has a high chance of madness or death. Now they’re just letting dozens of synths who actually have knowledge of the super synths and the beacon go?What happened to the ex-Borgs? They just disappeared. Seven is just abandoning them? There are thousands of people who need Seven’s help but fuck them, adventuring with Picard is more important.
Overall, I am very disappointed with this show. Everything is so rushed. The actual interesting plotline with the Romulan supernova, evacuation, and refugee crisis was just dropped. The synths stuff just kept getting dumber and dumber. A good Picard speech isn’t enough to save the idiocy.In fact, they crapped on their own Romulan refugee plot by having the Zhat Vash be responsible for the attack on Mars. So the Federation was right not to help the Romulans. They tried to help and the Romulans answered them with treachery. Everything would have been better if Starfleet had never tried to build the rescue fleet in the first place. The lesson of this show is that refugees deserve their terrible fate because they’re untrustworthy backstabbers who put themselves in that situation.
All of this (and that’s just for starters!)Why make the episode about The Federation’s massive humanitarian failure to help out the Romulans during a massive crisis with a staggering loss of life only then….turn the Romulans back into an even more one-dimensional sneering villain stereotype? Since their inception, the Romulans have been portrayed as complex adversaries, not just crappy, mustache-twirling villains, but this show can’t even conceive of anything that sophisticated and so has to double down on all the stupid “cult within a cult within a death cult” bullshit.This show is pure trash.
Yep. The show can’t even maintain logic or narrative integrity from one scene to the next. Two giant armadas just up and left? The super-synths just chilled after the beacon was shut down? They literally used a magical do-anything machine? Everyone’s cool with Soji summoning the end of organic life as we know it? Everyone’s cool with Jurati murdering her lover for no real reason? And of course, Data is miraculously alive just long enough to give us a “bittersweet” conversation, only to want to die again? Fuck the fuck off.
The Romulans also forgot that they had cloaking devices. They could have arrived cloaked, targeted the planet, decloak and glassed the planet before anyone knew what was going on.I guess Starfleet forgot the Romulans had cloaks too since the Romulans could have left cloaked ships behind to blow up the colony after the Starfleet armada left or just secretly launched cloaked weapons to blow up the colony.
apparently Starfleet joined up with Hogwarts, rendering the Romulan cloaking device useless…
There were so many basic problems with the logic and tactics of that scene. It was clearly written only to produce artificial drama, and to serve whatever cheap purpose the writers had. Want to have the good guys win in the face of impossible odds? Better have the Romulans abandon their thousands-year commitment to their ideals and just leave! Want to fake out Picard’s death and deal only with the supporting cast? Better get rid of that Federation fleet! I fucking love Star Trek and this show breaks my fucking heart.
The scene with Data’s consciousness was the most thematically interesting part of the show but it was shoehorned in, seemingly while they had Brent Spiner there. I wish they had used that idea more effectively.
I agree, the most thematically interesting and one of the best scenes of the series, but yeah there was absolutely no storytelling development to get here, and the scene unfortunately doesn’t hold up as well on second viewing. He repeats “massively complex quantum simulation” twice in a minute as if that’s supposed to impress us with meaning! And why exactly wasn’t he in a body already? There were dozens of synths in the town, and it looked like he had an entirely operational personality. The whole premise was just cheap and manipulative.
It seemed to me that it was pretty clearly implied that the beacon needed to be operational for the synth army to come through. When it was powered down, they were cut off.
Fair enough, though that premise really doesn’t seem to make sense, given that we are dealing with super-advanced trans-dimension beings who are clearly concerned about their brethren being oppressed and killed. But then again, they were just space tentacles anyway …
You don’t think the fact that Narek effectively sided against his own people undercut that at all? I’m puzzled at people acting like this show in any way hinted that Romulans as a race are irredeemable villains to the last individual.
No. Because it was very poorly done.And because Oh and Rizzo are two of the worst-written character in star trek history, so having your third Romulan do the utterly obvious, cliche (and basically unearned) 11th hour heel-turn is cold comfort in the context of the rest of the crap.
Space doesn’t exist in three dimensions is the answer to your first nitpick. Just as Copy+Paste is easy with starships; just make two models.This show, so much meh.
I’ll forgive them for the copy+paste Starfleet ships. The special effects companies were probably impacted by the coronavirus quarantine.But the showrunners definitely don’t know how big space is since they were able to see the Romulan fleet from the surface of the planet even though the Romulan ships were clearly at a distance too far away to see with the naked eye.
Well, only if this episode was in post-production in mid-February…And yes, Space doesn’t work like that, but maybe Coppellius was a very small planet.
I mean, condemning an entire race to extinction because of the actions of one faction of their government certainly isn’t logic Picard would have agreed with…
Except Picard has refused to help other races due to internal political conflict in order to preserve the Prime Directive.In “Symbiosis,” an entire planet of people were suffering from addiction to a drug they thought they needed to stave off a disease but in reality, the disease had been cured and the neighboring planet was tricking them and selling the drug to them at a highly inflated price. Picard abandoned them without telling them about the truth, condemning an entire planet of extremely desperate people to suffer horrible withdrawal thinking that they’re all going to die.
In “The Hunted,” a group of rogue soldiers demanding better treatment launched an attack on the government and were about to take over the government, sending the entire planet into cause, and Picard left to let them sort things out on their own.
During the Klingon Civil War, Gowron officially requested help from the Federation. Picard refused to help even though billions of Klingons could die from the war.
I don’t remember every random terrible episode of TNG, but first contact had been completed with the synths, so the Prime Directive was irrelevant here.
Except it’s not. The Prime Directive prohibits Starfleet from interfering with the internal politics of other races.I specifically pointed out how Picard refused to interfere with the Klingon Civil War. The Federation and Klingons have had contact for 200 years at that point.
How exactly does a looming supernova threatening to wipe out an entire planet constitute “internal politics”?
The Zhat Vash’s opposition is internal politics. The Federation does not intervene with other races when there are factional splits within that race that oppose their intervention, even in response to natural disasters.
The Zhat Vash about to commit a war crime on a planet in Federation space is internal politics? Dude, give it up and take the L.
The Zhat Vash attacked the Federation due to the Federation’s intervention in their internal politics. How hard is that to understand?As I specifically pointed out, a very similar thing happened during the Klingon Civil War. Gowron was elected Chancellor of the Klingon Empire. The Duras rebelled and started a civil war. Gowron requested the Federation’s help. Picard refused because it was an internal political matter. It didn’t matter that billions of people could die in the war.
What? They were attacking a planet full of synths. What the fuck are you talking about?
The entire fleet wasn’t Zhat Vash. There was also the practical issue that if the Romulan fleet atacked the federeation Fleet, someone on the planet might decide to re-activate the Beacon.
They referred to it as a Beacon because they had a sense of what it did and the instructions to build it, but it was something that was necessary for whatever it was to come through.
Keep in mind the “message” with the instruction was billions of years old. We have no idea where the “Saviors” were coming from. The message said they were an interdimensional alliance. But that was billions of years ago. It’s possible they don’t even exist in any sense that we could think of and the thign we saw was something left over that was supposed to respond to the signal.
It’s a mystery that wasn’t resolved.
Why would they need to attack the Federation fleet? Just shoot the planet. Do you know how big planets are and how big space is? Those Federation ships are specks. It’d be like if I tried to shoot a house and there are flies in the way.
The instruction was not billions of years old. They specifically said that it was hundreds of thousands of years old.As for whether or not the super synths still exist, saying that they might not exist is a cop out. The entire show operates on the assumption that they do exist and they will destroy all organic life when they arrive. It’s just bad writing if the audience has to assume that the central plot might all just be BS.
The more you think about (most episodes of) Picard, the less sense it makes. If it weren’t for the lovely / fancy cinematography and sets and the nice sounding music, and to some extent the acting, it would be patently ridiculous and hardly anyone would like it. If you sit down and talk through the why or how of any damn thing in this show, it’s cardboard. Thicker than gossamer, precious toilet paper. But far from substantial. Any damn thing in this show. I liked it better than Discovery but it’s so dumb. Last thought: I’ve been rewatching ST:TNG some. It’s dumb in a lot of ways, and it resembles the old Star Trek more than I thought. But, there’s clearly logic and effort and wisdom in most episodes. When Picard has to take over the controls of an abandoned starship, there is a protocol; he excuses himself to another room and privately enters a 10 word password. Modern ST shows would be like “can you do it?” and random new character would be like “and… we have control!” This is but one example, but like, of course there would be a protocol for taking control of abandoned starships, and of course you would want to give the command and password in private, and the more you think about it, the more it checks out. This has not been the style of the modern shows, and I am sadder for it. Call me crazy, but I strongly believe people are growing up with video game logic and unreasonable concepts of what happens, thanks to plots that don’t actually make sense. We as children are far more impressionable than most creators would like us to believe.This show makes me sigh.
Oh, but if we just talk, all of our problems go away.
One Romulan ship, one torpedo, problem solved, but flower power and waiting for some dipshit’s signal, then swatting at the tiny ships, oh dear god just someone shoot. Ugh.
“Star Trek: Portentous”Ira Steven Behr, the show runner for “Deep Space Nine” and a cracking good TV writer, once commented that no matter how good a script you right it’s still Star Trek. He wasn’t deriding the franchise, he was being honest that there are inherent limitations to not just Star Trek but television as a whole. Every form of storytelling has certain limitations and while it is great to strive for big ideas and push the envelope one also has to be careful to not burden the form so much that it collapses under the weight.Behr also understood how much a source of joy and comfort television is and that people turn to it for those reasons as much as good writing. He wasn’t beyond subverting the audience’s expectations but he always did it thoughtfully and judiciously and with a sense of humor devoid of malice as well as deep respect for the source material. He understood stories have logical paths and characters need logical arcs whatever the twists and surprises. The guy also understood tone and how crucial that is. It’s something no one seems to be getting right in these reboots and quasi-sequels.The problem with so much television now is that far too many writers lack fundamental craftsmanship and an instinct for what makes TV work, what kills it and what audiences need and deserve.Or as Chuck Berry once put it, “Beware of middlebrows carrying guitars.”
Thank you. It is so tedious to see people argue back and forth about their interpretations of “real Star Trek”, when the valid points here are:1) the fictional concepts in Star Trek have limits to how they can be used, if a production wants to use them effectively, and2) as Zack has explained in detail in his reviews, the issues with “Star Trek: Picard” are issues with its quality as TV, script and plot and pacing and so on, not some ineffable “Star Trek” quality it lacks.
/monkey wanking gif
We get it, you hate the show. Please hand this off to someone else for season 2.
Oh yeah, they brought Riker back.
I would have loved to see THAT scene.“I am William T. Riker and I‘m taking command of this ship!”
“What? sir, this is the flagship of the Federation and you’ve been retired for 10 year, I think I can handle this, thank you very much!”“But that’s my friend down there!”
“Oh, well, why didn’t you say so, here’s my chair!”
OK. I predicted Picard would be uploaded into the android body, but only so Patrick Stewart is out. What the hell was that whole bit about? He didn’t get a younger body, he doesn’t get a longer lif, super strength or any other advantages – so what’s the point of Picard being an android, now?
Agnes was going to hand herself over to the Federation
No consequences for 7 of 9 for murdering her unarmed ex lover, either. We’re edgy Trek, rules and laws are for suckers. Why would an android researcher know about the Picard maneuver? Is military strategy a hobby of hers? Also – why the hell did she say “Make it so?” Throwing in random references while completely ignoring what Trek is all about doesn’t make this good Trek.
Maybe they’ll figure it out in season 2.Just like Discovery did….
Should have been Geordi’s flagship (also, a character rather relevant to Hugh’s death and Data overall). Would have made more sense for someone giving command to Riker.
Geordi’s a lot more relevant to the Hugh and the Data plots of the past than Picard, TBH, indeed.
I didn’t dislike this series, but the absence of (even a mention of) Geordi LaForge is such a strange choice. Data is gone forever now and we didn’t hear about the man he called his best friend?
““I am William T. Riker and I‘m taking command of this ship!””Well, to be fair, it fit right in with Riker using a Commodore 64 joystick to take complete control of the Enterprise E.
He didn’t get a younger body,he doesn’t get a longer lif, super strength or any other advantages – so what’s the point of Picard being an android, now?Seriously, I’m only in my 40s. If I had my consciousness placed in a golem and it looked like my current body I’d be fucking livid.
Why would an in-universe character know about the Picard maneuver? It’s when he pulls on his shirt. It was a funny reference, but they killed it with her commenting on it. A quick reference was enough.
Well. It would have been funny if she meant THAT Picard maneuver. 🙂 There Is an in-universe Picard maneuver that the fan moniker got its name from, but as I said – it’s unlikely that anyone who’s not familiar with battle strategy would know the name, let alone how it works.
I didn’t know that. My TNG knowledge is weak from the first two seasons. I’m willing to be that this was actually a reference to the shirt pull, though. Especially with the “make it so” right afterward.
She did in fact explain the actual Picard maneuver correctly – however she knew about it. But of course the shirt pull is always there when someone mentions the it…
Picard mentioned that it was a maneuver he previously pulled on the Stargazer, the ship he commanded previous to the Enterprise. It was definitely not supposed to be a reference to the shirt thing, at least not in-universe.
Turning Picard into an android without his consent undermines everything we know about why Jean-Luc Picard fought the Borg. They basically replicated him, ignoring the fact that he is a human who values his individuality. It also cheapens his death and his fight to treat synthetic life forms as sentient individuals, not robots who can just be xeroxed when convenient.
I get what the writers were going for: Picard fights to get synths treated bye everyone with the respect that he treated Data. In the end, once again, Data sacrafices himself for Picard, who becomes a synth himself. Only, he’s not because he still has all the limitations of a human. Unless of course his synth body dies, and they can just upload him to another one. They’ve removed Picard’s mortality and any real fear of death, the very thing he once told Q is what makes life worth living in TAPESTRY.
The show itself was well acted and filmed. The story was just dull and plodding. Overall, it was okay, not great. I think they really leaned on the LOGAN influences from Sir Patrick Stewart. I even think his performance as old Picard were closer to that of Charles Xavier than Picard we’ve previously seen. Again, I understand that comes with age, but Jean-Luc Picard’s stoicism was part of his appeal. He didn’t go around talking about having great fondness for departed crew members, or tell people he loved them. It just wasn’t in his character before. That kind of “I loved Data” stuff would have made more sense coming from LaForge or even Worf. At least they played poker together in their off time.
If you’re going to talk about Picard, love and regret, WHERE THE HELL IS BEVERLY CRUSHER?!?!? I mean, THAT’S the crewmember he really loved….
Lastly, whatever happened to the two former Tal Shiar members who helped run the Picard vineyard? They were decent characters, who just got dumped in episode 3. Did anyone think to tell them Picard’s dead and now an android? Will they pop up in season 2 as new crew members? Will anyone remember them at all?
Maybe this crew in season 2 will be completely amoral and murder-happy. Picard, emboldened with his new body, can start tossing around the F-Word. Could be fun.
Since our reactions to the episodes have been diametrically opposite up until now, I’m really looking forward to this.
I imagine Mike and Rich’s Re:View is just going to be 30 minutes of them face-palming with episode highlight clips playing in the background.
Why did they make this series?I’ve been a Trekkie since I was 9, TNG’s third season. I loved it. I loved the message that one day, we, as a people (not a society), would transcend our petty bickering, fighting, violence, materialism – and we would become more.This is not more. This is painfully less. It is less story, less competence, less hope, less wonder, less everything. TNG->DS9 brought more. DS9->Voyager didn’t, until a while later. Voyager->Enterprise had some, but also undercut itself repeatedly, and repetitive writing.
I hoped this would not be movie TNG, and it sort of wasn’t, it was worse. Movie TNG became action – because what we expect from the career-long diplomat, is personally fighting the Borg. Instead of rousing dialog, we got.. a bunch of people calling Picard an egotistical, craven, cowardly asshole. All of which are a stark contrast of Picard as we know him. To make ONE mistake in Starfleet, that briefly marred his credibility would weigh hard on Picard’s soul. We’re to believe there was a series of them?There are action scenes, shot competently, but making only some sense – in a future where violence is abhorrent. It is a last resort. And we see it repeatedly. We see a closeness to Picard and Data, which I see more than many in TNG and the TNG films, but not just closeness – best friend-closeness. Which did not ever exist. Survivor’s guilt IS a real thing, and calling Picard someone who would suffer from it is totally legitimate. But Data was his best friend? He wants to protect Data’s “children,” because they’re Data’s? The last child of Data made Picard livid.
This doesn’t feel like a classic series – TNG, DS9, Voyager. It feels like Star Trek: Some Characters You Know, From the Writers of Discovery and Star Trek Into Darkness. The first episode had me somewhat hopeful, where we see Picard’s anger and fury at a Starfleet we’ve been told has become something we don’t recognize from the Starfleet-of-not-that-long-ago. Adding synths as a concept, as laborers, happened in the last 20 years, as did an uprising, and the fires of Mars.
All of this flies in the face that Data was previously considered sentient (though not a person), and who could NOT be compelled into slavery as property. It did not make him a person. But in the same “class” as a person. Now Starfleet uses them as hard labor? We saw something similar, again breaking existing Starfleet precedence, with EMH Mark 1 mining slavery. in Voyager, I chocked that up to Voyager writers simply being idiots. Since they displayed this kind of stupidity regularly.
Now, discount all of this, and this show remains dumb. Annika/Seven becoming the Borg Queen for even an instant, let alone the length of a scene, could have been its own episode. It could have been a season, all by itself. This is an absolutely wasted idea, and is treated as no big deal. At the same time, the butchering of Echeb, in visceral detail, is profane and disgusting. We don’t need that, and we don’t need Seven throwing away her humanity in real-time, as she kills everyone involved. They somehow fucked her character by not giving her enough, and fucked her character by having her do too much. It’s an amazing feat.This series is one mis-fire after another. I won’t go into Elnor, I don’t need to go into the “death” of Picard, the Jerati “I’ve never been part of… a crew before,” when she’s known these people for days, the serial stupidity on display by the Romulans. For the record, the “I’ve never been part of a family” thing works in actual shows with two dozen episodes far easier. If they join the crew in episode 3, and they express this feeling in episode 7, it’s a really bad attempt at emotional manipulation. It’s un-earned and it’s pathetic. It’s all platitude, not actual attitude.
I don’t know if I can stomach a second season. Truly. I loved the Nepenthe episode, flaws and all, because we got to catch up with Will and Deanna. And they’ve had a kind of “happily ever after,” with a pretty serious caveat.
I completely agree with your insightful analysis of Picard. I bet Patrick Stewart himself couldn’t recognize the character he was supposed to play.It wasn’t a bad show per se, but it sure missed the mark.
Part of the high expectations were because Stewart was saying this would’t be just another trek series. It was going to be important. It was going to carry on the legacy. etc.
Actors are obviously going to do press tours for all sorts of junk, but this was “I came out of retirement because this project is so good.”And in the end, it wasn’t terrible. If it was a generic, new series on scifi it’s the kindof thing where everyone would maybe check back in during the 3rd season when they hear that it’s finally gotten good.But considering that it’s not just some generic new show, I’m really curious how Stewart and the creators think it went. So much of it just flat-out didn’t work that I hope they don’t actually consider it a success.
Patrick Stewart was in the writer’s room for this show. The entire time. He’s a producer.
Wow, that explains the strong Logan vibe. It was an excellent film, but I’d sure like for PS to wear his TNG hat for season 2.
He talked on the after show about the Picard and Xavier characters he played. He basically said he was done with those characters. They were from a different time. People change. If you look at the Xavier he played in Logan, the way he played Picard starts to make sense. He has pretty much said that his Logan Xavier was the genesis for Picard.
He also refused the first pitch. He didn’t come back until the second pitch which was more like what this turned out like.
Stewart was executive producer and only came back because he had control over the Picard character. This is exactly the character he wanted to play. He has said in plenty of interviews that he would not have come back if it were just to play an older TNG Picard. He wanted Picard to be changed, flawed and somewhat broken by the years after TNG. I watched him with the insufferable Will Wheaton on the after show and he said he didn’t really approve of some of the TNG easter eggs put in the show for fan service. But he understood why they were there. He thoroughly enjoyed playing this Picard. Good or bad it’s the Jean Luc Picard he wanted.
That’s the problem. My Mom’s a psychologist. She says the one thing people never get over is the death of a child. So they effectively ruined their happy ending. I feel as so, they were douched similar to the OT three in the sequel trilogy. Ruining the happily ever after ending of beloved characters by making their kids either dead or space hitler.Couldn’t agree more with everything you said. Well written. Watch the Red Letter Media reviews of the show on YouTube. It’s cathartic.
You said it, man.
The “serious caveat” ruined even that. Their son’s death is linked directly to the synth ban? Get the fuck out of here, you writers who think you’re being clever while being cliched and asinine …Great post btw! 🙂
Well said. Such a massive disappointment.
Agree with you on the found family thing.It seems like – what, 10, 15? – years ago, producers realised that audiences really like it when the characters recognise that they’ve become a family and are important to each other, and decided that that was going to happen in ALL shows, as soon as possible and as often as possible. It’s not a new trope, of course, but it used to happen at the end of a process of, well, characters becoming a family. Buffy, for instance, had a whole episode about this… in season 5.
Now, though, two people meet up, and three episodes later they’re declaring themselves sworn blood-siblings. It’s annoying not only because it’s such a blatent piece of unearned emotional manipulation that almost invariably lands flat, impairs the suspension of disbelief, and makes the characters look like idiots (sure, you 100% trust with your life the guy you just met two days of course, great move…), but also because it short-circuits the show and skips all the messy but interesting business of all of that actually happening on screen.
As much as I’d like to be optimistic about Picard season 2 taking some giant leap forward…..I just can’t. I thought the same thing about Discovery, and that show may have actually gotten worse in season 2. Even if sci-fi/Trek wasn’t your cup of tea in the 1990s, you’d at least have to admit that it was competent television. You simply can’t say the same about Picard/Discovery. As crazy as this sounds, I think the best hope in Star Trek getting out of this current funk is the rumor of NBC and Seth MacFarlane trying to buy the franchise actually coming true. Seth has been a Trekkie for decades and I think he understands the fine line of staying true to the spirit of Trek while at the same time also making good television. The Orville, especially in season 2, is a better show than it has any right to be, considering the premise is basically Seth getting to live out his modern day TNG fantasy. In my opinion, while not without its flaws, The Orville is closer to Trek in its hey-day than anything Star Trek has done in the last 15 years.I say take the keys to the Enterprise away from CBS and give them to Seth. What do we have to lose at this point?
I was hoping it would have been Geordi at Data’s death bed. They could have phoned him up. Geordi and Data always seemed to be better friends.
There’s YEARS they served on the ship together after the show stopped, and the movies established the two of them becoming friends. Just because Geordi was Data’s only friend during the show doesn’t mean he was incapable of becoming close to anybody else.Hell, the final episode ends with Picard sitting down to play cards with the crew for the first time, finally taking down the barrier he’d kept in place between himself and them. That’s likely the birth of his friendship with Data.
The Androids on Mars were not like Data. They were not sentient, less shophisticated then B-4. Yes, the issues with Holograms that Voyager brought up were huge and unresolved.
How come a hologram can have a functional personality, but those worker androids at the beginning could not? It is the same damn brain, just with different hardware.
A lot of the comments for the reviews for this show have been attacking Zack Handlen’s take on things, so I wanted to say that I am in complete agreement with these reviews. This has been an awful season of television and I’m not sure why so many commenters seem so content with utter dreck.This show managed to lack heart, an emotional core, interesting characters, basic internal logic and failed to justify why it even exists beyond the obvious.There was potential, which is why I am more dissappointed that usual in what would otherwise be a dime a dozen bad forgettable show. I was all in for a Star Trek show that brought back Picard and better reflected the slightly more cynical bleaker times of our current day. But it A) did it badly and B) pretty much stopped being that about half way through anyway to rip off plots to Video Games, as Kurtzman is wont to do whenever he isn’t just writing straight up trash.This isn’t good television and its only going to provide entertainment at the lowest levels. Which more than any tonal or lore changes to the Star Trek Universe, which some have decried but I personally don’t care too much about, is the real tragedy of modern day Star Trek like Picard and Discovery.
“This has been an awful season of television and I’m not sure why so many commenters seem so content with utter dreck.”Perhaps it’s because that is your opinion, and many other people don’t feel the same way as you.
You forgot about the purple gimzo thingy that fixes things if you think about it!
Engines irreparably broken? Point and think about fixing them!
Need to project a fleet of starships? Purple Gimzo thingy has a solution!
I was literally yelling for Agnes to pick it up and think about fixing Picard brains while he staggered about.
Literally the laziest idea and they used it and forgot about it. Hope they hang on to it though – if season 2 has a moment where the stakes are impossible such a device maybe, just maybe, come in handy!
To some extent Star Trek’s always relied on gadgets to get the writers out of a jam, but this really felt like they were trying to outdo the silliness of The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver.
Agree – it’s not “Oh my magical whatsit can ALSO do that!” It’s “My magical whatis can do ANYTHING WE THINK OF”
I thought of the gizmo as just a physical manifestation of ‘reversing to polarity’.
Can we all agree that “Oh my God, Michael Chabon” turned out to be a big washout? I mean it could have been any hack…if his name wasn’t in the opening credits you’d never guess in a million years that anyone with any literary pedigree at all was associated with this. This last one, especially, was his teleplay — and there wasn’t a single nuance or passage or line or plot move that couldn’t have come from the keyboard of any of a thousand Los Angeles guns-for-hire who circulate from property to property.
No, we cannot.
Can you point to anything — a plot element; a line of dialogue; a theme — that’s identifiably Chabon-like, or even literary or novelistic in any way? If the episodes didn’t have title sequences, could you pick out which ones he wrote?
I think that the way the episodes in the first half of the season all split their time between whatever Picard was up to, and the repetitive stuff on the Artifact was very novelistic. The problem is that it didn’t translate well to serialized tv at all.
I’d bet the farm that the “golem” idea came from Chabon. It’s a major plot point in his novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavilier & Clay. No way that’s a coincidence.
The golem.It’s straight out of Chabon’s novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. No way that could be a coincidence.
I wasn’t looking for him to replicate the accomplishments of his novels. I was looking for him to give me a mostly satisfying 10-episode serialized story centered around Jean-Luc Picard. In my opinion, he delivered on that expectation. Therefore, I wouldn’t consider it a “washout”.
If it satisfied you, then your expectations were very different than mine. I like TNG and Chabon, and this was a nowhere near as good as either of them. I also like good TV shows, no, make that competent TV shows, and this wasn’t that either.
Golems. I groaned aloud at the end of the previous episode, because if you’ve read Chabon, you know the man is obsessed with Golems, and I had forgotten to expect that he’d return to his fascination in a story all about synthetic people. It can’t be a Chabon project without filligreed references to Jewish folklore.
Chabon’s fingerprints are all over it, but he wasn’t attempting to write a novel. There’s an essay in Maps and Legends where he talks about how underrated action-adventure stories are, and I think this was his attempt to do straight entertainment along those lines.
Likewise, I think he was doing a thing with the Zhat Vash which felt very reminiscent of the villains in Yiddish Policeman’s Union. Romulans as Zealots/Maccabees, anyone?And, as has already been pointed out, he clearly couldn’t help dropping a golem reference.
Us guns for hire would’ve done better.
The problem is Kurtzman. Always has been.
Nope can’t agree with this. I really enjoyed this show and a lot of other people did too. That’s why it’s getting a season 2.
I mean, in between getting an Oscar nod for Gladiator and an Oscar nod for The Aviator, John Logan wrote Star Trek Nemesis. Proof that your understanding of Trek’s ideals and appeal are more important than your writing accomplishments.
I would be so pissed if you downloaded me into an android body and disabled the augments. I mean what is the fucking point? I’d be all like “PUT THEM BACK NOW”
big twist = same as ending for Westworld season 2?
If we’ve learned one thing from seven seasons and four feature films of TNG, it’s this: Jean-Luc Picard is very, very hard to kill. Knife through the heart? No big deal. Replacement heart shot with a phaser? Still no big deal. Blasted with uncounted waves, rays and beams of cosmic origin? They’re like water off a duck’s back. Stranded on numerous planets with nothing but his wits and his trusty com badge to use as a sharp implement? Mere child’s play. Captured by numerous alien races over the years and tortured, both mentally and physically? I mean, yeah they left a mark, but we all knew he’d pull through in the end.Did anyone really go into this spin off series thinking the indomitable Jean-Luc would succumb to mortality like the rest of us? I think not.
This is so awesome. 😅
The mechanical heart was the giveaway—Jean Luc always thought of himself as not quite human after that, so this is just another step.I don’t think it was a perfect plot development–I have some reservations–but once he found out he will still eventually die, it did make some sense. He’s still the brash young guy from “Tapestry” on some level.
I have to agree with Houman, did we watch the same show? Not only was I a huge fan of the original series + movies; TNG and all the other incarcerations of ST but I owned them on VHS, DVD and now digital. I watched this with my partner who never watched much ST and he loved it as much or more than me. I think this series (like most direct to stream shows tend to be) long movies. By that standad this is by far the best movie/episodes I’ve seen. I think you totally missed the point of the show.
I noticed all of the Starfleet ships at the end looked exactly the same – was this an effects budget thing? I’m also not the hugest fan of the design for….whatever that class of ship was.Also, what happened with the ship Riker was assigned to in Nemesis, the USS Titan?Is Agnes just cleared of all charges? She still killed a man. I love what they’re doing/might be doing for Raffi and Seven. They made it look like Rios was going to make a play, and while I would have been accepting, Raffi is a much more fun character for Seven to be with.
Wow, what a lame hater this reviewer is. Good show, interesting ideas and characters. Complaining about predictable plot beats is (I guess) a valid criticism, but it’s not like any version of Star Trek was a nonstop surprise-a-thon; the roots of this show are in serialized storytelling where the toys get put back in the box at the end, and this didn’t exactly do that, but it wrapped up neatly, which is pretty much what you’d expect from this type of story. I like that they all seem to have uniforms now – I would definitely watch a show about Admiral Picard’s wierdo team of Bad News Bears exploring the galaxy.
That copy/paste federation fleet at the end looked like a bunch of Arbiter class battlecruisers from Star Trek Online, only with the stupid 25% bulgy nacelles of JJ-Trek…Lore as Alton at least would have been hilariously stupid, instead of the wet noodle ending we got. At least there wasn’t a *visible* sky beam!
Well, made it through to the end, hoping all the while that it was just Q jerking us all around. At least now I know for sure that I can safely ignore season 2 (except for the inevitible RLM reviews, even if they have to tie Rich down.)
If there’s anything this show could have done, it was give us some pretty spaceship porn. But no.I’ve been rewatching some DS9 season 6, and it’s so disappointing that this fleet looked so much worse than what they were able to throw together 20 year ago.
The only thing dumber than this jerk-around season arc would have been the “reveal” that it was all a dream sequence orchestrated by a character never mentioned once in the series before then.
I didn’t have a problem with the ship designs themselves, but the ‘identical fleet’ ‘flew’ in the face of every single major starfleet conflict we’ve ever seen.
You realize like half the battles in DS9 were just old Miranda Class and Excelsior Class ships?
Thats still 2 classes. They’d throw in the Defiant and some Galaxies too.
Not really, no.
In the grand tradition of the ds9 kitbashes, I wish they done something more creative than just ctrl-c/ctrl-v the finale.
DS9 never had a fleet battle that looked as utterly phony and phoned-in as whatever crap we got in Picard’s finale. (even if they recycled some footage on occasion.)
It’s interesting how cheap these two final episodes looked.Discovery is not a good show, but in Season 2 its big, dumb battle looked great. It was like watching a (way too long) movie.But this? The spacefleets honestly might as well have been placeholder effects to be finished later. The inside of the crashed borg cube could be some of the laziest set dressing in trek history. And everything to do with the androids – their makeup, their house – was straight b-movie.The orchids were still really great, so I guess that’s where the blew all the budget? I just wish those had been used in a better story.
Yeah, the budget of this show must have been next to nothing. Say what you will of Voyager, but their Borg sets looked elaborate and suitably menacing. Picard’s Borg set is just shiny black hallways.
So we’re more interested in spaceship porn than plot or character dev?
NOTED.
So you’re unable to read more than two words at a time?NOTED.
So you really don’t have a relevant reply?
NOTED.
When the plot and character dev is as slipshod as it was in this series, all you have left is spaceship porn. The fact that we didn’t even get that is just a further indication of what a nothing show this was.
They had Akira class ships, Galaxy class, Steamrunner class, a whole bunch of (admittedly ugly) kitbash ships.. That’s just off the top of my head, but it means a show 20 year ago had a cooler looking fleet with at least 4 more types of ships than the show that aired yesterday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUQ2nmKNH3YThat was better directed, more exciting, and looked better than anything Picard or ST:D crapped out over the past 3 years combined, and it was filmed *twenty-three years* ago! And it wasn’t even a season finale!Quick count was 6 or 7 different Fed classes, not to mention the dozen others from the Cards, Dominion, and Klingons.The complete lack of effort put into Picard and then calling it Star Trek really just reeks of… sheer, f*#$ing hubris!Not even a single beauty shot of Starfleet’s most bad-ass cruiser! Shameful!
What did Riker say? “I’m sitting in the largest, most advanced starship the Federation has ever built! I’m not going to cut to a shot of the exterior… no, trust me, this is a badddazz ship.”
Chabon said Riker’s flagship was a Curiosity-class.
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-picard-riker-new-ship-zheng-he/
Zack, are you secretly Midnight’s Edge?
Well Zack, I disagree with most of your take on this episode but I sincerely appreciate your viewpoint. I could see what was coming at the end but that didn’t take away from the emotions I had while watching it. I thought this was a good season with a very satisfying final episode. Looking forward to season 2 – which we may have to wait a couple years for it due to Covid-19.
You hit the nail on the head…so much wasted potential by cringe-y and horrible writing. Even with their poor ideas for the season, the execution of it was somehow so much worse. I just felt dead inside watching the majority of the season…which honestly feels like a reflection of what the show is. Data: “Oh I’m still on this show?! Go ahead and kill me, man.” And speaking of dialogue…that ADR’d line Seven has about Hugh…woof!! It’s my every hope that they kick off Alex Kurtzman (can’t believe the guy associtated with the Mummy and Discovery came up with 10 episodes of nonsense) because they just wasted 2 good years of Patrick Stewart when, by the looks of his performance, might not have too much time left on the stage. Frustrating disappointment.
So with the first season in the can, I’ll say this is perfectly imperfect Star Trek with plot holes you can see for miles if you invest yourself in it. I have a feeling Picard was originally supposed to die and not be revived but when the 2nd season was announced they had to retool the finale a bit.It was disappointing there was no crazy twist but here are some ideas(just for the hell of it) for some sort of twist:-Sutra was actually Lore this whole time(swerved from AI Soong being him)-A link to Discovery-a bunch of Starfleet ships arrive instantly using Spore Drives, Michael shows up in her jet pack with a future weapon and disables the entire Romulan fleet, or Georgiou shows up to haunt Oh from the past-Picard gets a vision from The Sisko and all the former Starfleet captains (Kirk, Janeway, Acher, along with Sisko all chat with him in a prophet vision that helps him figure out how to save the day.
I take it you’re being on-purpose dumb with those suggestions.
What a complete load of crap, more hipper than thou hate for the hell of it. Not an objective thought in a poorly written article, not fit to be used as toilet paper. Obviously writing is beyond his ability, and should go back to slinging burgers.
Well, for those who complain about the new Star trek as less optimistic, I have news for you. It looks like with new knowledge in logic, math, philosophy, physics, biology and economics published in the last decade, many in the progressive cabal has lost significant faith in the progressive utopia portrayed in previous Star trek. As Star trek is more about this inner world than the outer space, the show producers have shifted the philosophy of the show into a new area. The new area is more realistic and less ‘optimistic’ (as many of the old progressive define optimistic). I do understand the progressive fan base’s frustration though. They no longer get the same future of paradise and optimism built by science and technology. The Star trek franchise has decided to stop producing that ‘scientific porn’ now. Why? Because science and sci-fi always want to be objective and realistic. Fantasy and religion, on the other hand, can be as subjective and wishful as needed to please their audience.
Can we a definitive list of all Data and Spock family members, synthetic or otherwise? “Never mentioned before family member” is getting to be a very familiar well for those two.Don’t do a everyone mourns for ____ scene if you’re just going to immediately bring _____ back to life… especially using Chekov’s very well telegraphed android body.The one genuine surprise in this episode is Riker on the bridge. Everyone in the audience loves Frakes, as they should, but in universe the actual captain of the federation flagship had to have been a little put out.Still, I would have forgiven all of these sins if we could have a little bit of Admiral Clancy having to explain to the Federation President why the chief of starfleet security was Tal Shiar. Feed me what I really want, writers!
So how many episodes did it take to go from “yay star trek” to “ugh star trek”? Didn’t bother to watch but not sure if I even care to now.
I’d give it a try. For as many haters as the. show has there’s just as many who loved it. Form your own opinion about it.
They didn’t have the money for that so they skipped it. “We can show all the ships, at least…provided that they’re all the same!” “Okay, do that. Then they’ll leave.”
It could have been worse. It could have ended with a massive three way battle between Romulans, Starfleet, and giant killer tentacle monsters. So at least this was better than how Discovery ended last season.
Abramstrek was never going to be able to tell a great story about the destruction of Vulcan.But a tv series could have done something really interesting with the idea that the Romulan Star Empire had had its homeworld destroyed, and its population practically wiped out (plus the Shinzon mess).Diving into borg research makes sense, because obviously they would want to boost their tech to remain relevant. And some Romulans would find religion, others would happily just hang out on an earth vineyard, and a few would bring ancient warbirds out of mothballs and become pirates.
All of that was cool.But that massive fleet at the end was kindof crappy. Writers really need to know that sometimes less is more. (see also: Discovery Season 2)
I thought the same thing. The end of Discovery Season 2 manages to have a huge battle with almost no suspense over the course of an hour, while “Yesterday’s Enterpise” (the same premise) manages to pull it off nicely in 10 minutes. Of course the battle at the end of Discovery just looked like a bad rip off of the 2000s BSG, just not good.
This is the third go round for “Let’s destroy the homeworld of a popular alien race” on Star Trek. The Klingons in “The Undiscovered Country”, The Vulcans in Abrams Trek and now this.
So you’re saying it’s like trek’s version of the deathstar? And you might be right.I don’t really think of Praxis as destroying the Klingon homeworld…but it did result in the kindof political shakeup (peace talks, and klingons being “good” guys by TNG times) that I wish we’d seen more of here.At the end of these 10 episodes, I have no idea where the Romulans fit into the quadrant. Apparently lots of people died? And apparently the refugees are still pissed at the Federation/Picard for not doing enough? But apparently the Romulan secret service (actually, the super-secret service) also still has the resources for a massive fleet of warbirds?
The explosion on Praxis threatened to pollute the Klingon homeworld of and make it uninhabitable. So…not destroyed exactly, but kind of the same thing.
Praxis wasn’t the Klingon homeworld (in Star Trek VI) — it was their remote “primary energy production facility.” They were doing a Chernobyl story, with “Chancellor Gorcon” as Gorbachev.
To each their own, I suppose. I’ve been a Trek fan since I was a little kid watching TNG and have seen every bit of Trek there is, and personally, I’ve really enjoyed this season from start to finish. I thought the finale was great.
“thoughtless, rushed plotting, meaningless twists, and bold decisions which are absolutely weightless.”Sounds just like Chris Chibnall “Doctor Who”!
I was just reading the comments on the Who reviews a few days ago, and it’s interesting how it’s a fairly unanimous opinion that Chibnall’s stuff just isn’t working. But over here opinions are much more split. (although I’m firmly on the side that Picard is as much of a mess as recent Who)
Chibnal’s Who is giving me strong flashbacks to late classic Who, TBH. The BBC obviously lost their boner for the show back when they started doing year long hiatuses and the last one killed all of the possible momentum Whittaker had out of the gate. We have a stupid retread of the Cartmel Plan. A controversial pick for the Doctor’s actor. Sub-par scripts.
I feel like Jodie’s Doctor comes off alternately as passive and preachy at times, but in my opinion that’s more an issue with the scripts than the actress.
Seems obvious keeping Data “out there” is a natural hook for Season 2 or even beyond, like “Let’s go find a way to save his consciousness” killing him off again seems shortsighted, or maybe a lame attempt to bring some pathos to the finale?
We must not be watching the same “Star Trek: Picard”. I and my entire family has enjoyed every minute of this series since its first episode.
…That’s the worst possible thing I could say about this show: that it brought back one of my favorite television characters, threatened to kill him forever, and it somehow found a way to make that mean nothing… …does anything work here?…the badness had a certain efficiency I can appreciate. Just about every story beat is introduced and wrapped up in a handful of scenes…Zack, once again you’re going to get flack for being too mean, but all season you’ve done a great job of working through why this show could have and should have been a lot better than the killy-explody-nostalgia that we got.
I guess maybe I’d understand all of the massive jumps if I’d seen the other 5 episodes I obviously missed. Like, there was an episode that dealt with the Raffi-Seven subplot, right? Not just them getting handsy at the end? Right?
Assuming you’re not being facetious: No, that came out of nowhere.
Right? Like, did they even share a single bit of dialog before that?
There’s so much “missing” from the entire season it makes me wonder if there’s another 10+ hours of material they left on the cutting room floor. These last two episodes were especially jarring.
Everything comes from out of nowhere on this show.They need to hire writers, and pay them enough to care.
There’s some joke about beaming to be had here.
So, knowing about the golem body, I finally realized that the opening credits sequence has been telling us from the beginning how this was going to end.I hate that “Death is what gives life meaning”* bullshit. Data has read Dylan Thomas; he should be rage, raging against the dying of the light and asking Picard to tell his asshole carbon-based brother to build him a new body, post-haste.I’m equally disappointed that the universe-destroying interdimensional robots turned out to actually be universe-destroying interdimensional robots. I really wanted the bad guys to turn out to be enlightened as hell and the “destruction” to be some sort of philosophical revolution, something in the spirit of “Devil’s Due” or “The Chase”.The new crew looks fun though. Maybe season 2 will be better.*Memo to any future scientists searching internet archives to determine my wishes: Yes, I want the robot body, please make it young and fit, leave out the homeostasis algorithm, and I’ll take all the superpowers you got.
It was a shockingly bad piece of writing, if you can call it that. They contradict themselves by saying Data’s memories were lost in the first episode, only to dredge them out of nowhere for a “twist” finale. He shows no emotion, does not return Picard’s admittance of love, and acts as if this were the Data from the TV show rather than the one who has lived several years on the Enterprise E with an emotion chip.
The Borg cube subplot was literally irrelevant to the story, as was Hugh, and only served as a backdrop for an incredibly boring soap opera between two of the most boring characters in the show. A British Romulan with stereotypical crooked teeth, and a synth clone that exists from a SINGLE positron of Data, yet both about as 2D and bad at acting as any other character on modern Trek.
A cult of people whose entire religion was based on sacrificing countless lives to view a prophetic vision of destruction decided at the last minute that they didn’t want to go through with it after all, even when there was no clear resolution yet as to whether other synths on the planet might just push her aside and carry on with the plan. The Federation also left, despite this near annihilation of organic life as we know it, by creatures they felt convinced needed to be banned for that very reason. And let’s not forget Agnes, who received these same visions, and killed her lover to prevent such destruction, only to decide that it was all in vain and that she was okay if synthetic life actually murdered everyone as her visions dictated. All they did was turn the antenna off. The ability to bring the “destroyer” still existed, at the push of a button. But ehhh, we’re done with that story.
Picard is said to have been sacrificing himself, and yet, did he? He just got a brain disease and died, after receiving a hypospray to speed things along for some reason. The events of this show barely took place over like a week or two, and yet he went from a diagnosis to dying. There was nothing valiant, nothing heroic, just a frail old man giving a speech where somebody finally listened to him, then he died on his back in a near-delusional state. There was no emotion from me, because I don’t know who this character is. There was plenty of emotion from characters who barely knew the man, though.
Maddox was killed for no reason. Icheb was killed for no reason. Hugh was killed for no reason. Picard was killed for no reason. Data was killed AGAIN for no reason. This entire series was just a massacre, much like its very existence is on Star Trek lore.
Somebody needs to make Michael Chabon realize that there’s a difference in people disliking a new iteration of a franchise during an adjustment period, and when the show is just an absolute clusterfuck of nonsensical and irrelevant garbage. There was nothing salvageable here that people can look back on in twenty years with nostalgia. I would rather watch TNG’s “Shades of Gray” any day. I could spend hours writing about all the plotholes and absolute stupid science magic that littered this stupid mess.
I hated almost every minute of this show. I gave it every chance, but every single episode was worse than the last. I will never, ever rewatch it.
I hope the creators are ashamed of the abomination they created.
Maddox was killed for no reason. Icheb was killed for no reason. Hugh was killed for no reason. Picard was killed for no reason. Data was killed AGAIN for no reason.Even though I liked the show well enough overall, this definitely bothered me. Especially Icheb and Hugh, which was downright upsetting. What was the point?
You’ll often find that amateur writers will go for shock value to spur emotion in the reader/viewer, rather than have truly engaging stories and characters with depth that you care about. Walking Dead eventually started going for that same kind of sloppy writing as the show went on, and I finally stopped watching it. The difference is that I expect more from Star Trek.
I mean, think about it. If they’d killed any of the new characters in this show, would you have cared? Probably not. But would you care if they senselessly murder a fan favorite? Sure. And don’t get me wrong, it’s even possible to harness that emotion to connect fans into a new story. But it was all so senseless and pointless, on plots that were irrelevant to the arc, quickly forgotten an episode later, which prove just how amatuer the writers here really were. They were incapable of building off of those deaths, and only went for momentary shock value.
We have to get rid of this entire team. The writers, the producers, everyone. They are choking this franchise to death. There is hope for Star Trek, but not while they have the reigns.
Well, that’s it. I’m officially done with Kurtzman-Trek. I suffered through two seasons of Discovery and now Picard. I have no further interest in what the Kurtzman-Goldsman braintrust is going to come up with.Picard was a spectacular failure on every level and, while its hard to argue if it was actually “worse” than Discovery, at least Discovery didn’t tarnish the reputation of one of Trek’s greatest characters.Everything about this show was a grotesque miscalculation. Nothing worked.What a mess. What a waste.
My feelings exactly. Horribly disappointed. Not sure why I held out hope for Picard after the brutal shitshow that was Discovery, but yeah, 18 years of hoping and waiting to see the TNG cast again, all for nothing.
This whole series was pretty meh. It had moments, but overall there was a lot I didn’t like. Zack nails many of the problems, especially with the finale.A major problem I have with the season is a problem with streaming shows generally: a season that is basically just one story. The story of this season would work better as a two- or three-part arc within a season. Even a longer arc, like the six-episode Dominion occupation arc from season 6 of DS9, or even the longer arc of DS9’s finale season, would be better than what we got.Ultimately, I just hope somebody gets the Trek franchise away from Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman soon…
Q is actually one character where they could do the digital de-aging thing and then could explain it away that “vaguely uncanny valley” is how he’s always looked, we just couldn’t tell with the old SD TNG (which also sort of works for Data’s makeup), and I’d actually kind of be willing to buy it.
Q could have actually presented himself as an older human to mimic Picard just like he frequently wore a Captain’s uniform. This can make John Delancie not have to put on make up or have to use digital effects.
Q already did that in “All Good Things…” to mock Old!Picard, so it’s not without precedent.
And now he can do it without any dye or make-up!
John De Lancie who played Q actually still looks really great, he aged amazingly well.This interview is from this week!
I was ok with most of this, but how did they give Seven a new pairing with Raffi that somehow managed to be more abrupt and out of nowhere than her pairing with Chakotay? I don’t even recall the two characters exchanging words in a group scene prior to that reveal, let alone a 1 on 1.
It’s weird, because they give Rios and Seven the big sunset bonding scene.But if you replaced Rios with Raffi and kept the dialogue exactly the same that scene would have worked just as well, if not better.And then the handsieness at the end wouldn’t have seemed completely random.(they didn’t do that, because inexplicably they wanted to pair-up Raffi and Elnor for his cry instead.)
I saw the symmetry between Rios & Seven though, they seemed to relate to one another in their emotionally distant ways. And it made sense to have the 2 most emotionally open crewmembers have their cry scene together.
I think they really wanted Elnor and Raffi to have the big breakdown together…even though the characters don’t have much of a connection.But actually, to fix the whole thing they should have done the sunset scene with Seven and Raffi. And then Elnor showed up to talk to Seven (since they’re buds). And then everyone had a big cry. And then later Seven and Raffi are canoodling.The scene isn’t bad with Rios in it, but he doesn’t need to be there. And the show really should have done at least a tiny bit of work if they wanted to set up Seven and Raffi.
I adjusted my sense of disbelief to accept that people in this version of the future just bond and get really lovey in a hurry. They’re huggers, these future people. I’ll grant them this weirdness.
Wow. I guess this is what they mean about dividing the fans. Some people really enjoyed it, some people hated it.
I feel both ways and I can see both sides. But then I feel this way about the Star Wars sequels and Chibnall’s Doctor Who. Maybe the writers aren’t up to the challenge of writing sequels. Maybe the industry is too sanitised, or streaming broke something in how shows are made, or nostalgia-service is getting in the way of telling stories well and making writers miss portraying what made these worlds so fascinating and alive to begin with. Maybe it’s the Gen-X writers getting to fulfill their fanfic desires in worlds created by Boomers and missing the mark because fanfic sucks. I don’t know.
All I know is I have mixed feelings about all these continuations. I’ll continue to watch them, but thank god for shows like The Expanse that keeps the flame alive for original sci-fi stories told well, and even Westworld for showing how to take an old sci-fi story and make it compelling and relevant today.
I think you have “fans” who watch it while using their phone, and fans who watch it while actually paying attention. If you pay attention, then there’s no way you can miss the glaring issues these talentless hacks crapped out.
And yet I liked bits of that last episode, and a lot from the whole series.
But the glaring issues do tend to draw ones attention.
I definitely agree with using the fleet for cameos. We get a throwaway about Worf captaining the Enterprise-E now and when the flagship arrives it’s… not the Enterprise, and captained by Riker just cause. Imagine if instead Worf had been there on the Enterprise, and Riker on another ship, and Geordi captaining something else, and fuck it, throw Wesley and Ro in there too. Maybe even Janeway!
I know it has been said many times that this season is basically ripping off the plot to Mass Effect. I know its not exactly the same, but when those damn squid arms started coming through the beacan/portal I was like come on!Just call them Reapers.
I honestly thought Agnes was going to heal Picard with the magic wrench. I’m not sure if that would have been better, though.
I was 100% expecting her to use the magic maguffin.
So, the Picard we know and love is actually dead and going forward this is just a copy, who acts like nothing existential just happened and continues on without missing a beat?
They should bring back O’Brien next season so that the two can not talk about their existential experiences.
Right — except that O’Brien won’t behave like O’Brien; he’ll act like Colm Meany kicking back for a reunion pint with Patrick Stewart.
I would actually be OK with that.
Eh. Don’t they do that every time they use a transporter?
Have the writers of this show ever developed emotions in concert with other humans? I’m increasingly skeptical.
There are so many assumptions, clipped emotional development, and rushed-through plotting and characterization that it makes me wonder whether everyone in the federation has turned into hyper-reactionaries incapable of not bringing melodrama to every situation.
How could anyone consider this a good show? Forget that it’s not Star Trek (It is definitely not. Don’t kid yourself). It’s not a good TV show. Can you honestly say this show would end up on a year-end best-of list? This was the lowest-tier Syfy Network bullshit. Cheap as Hercules the Legendary Journeys, but without the humour. Boring as Star Gate, but without the attention to detail and character development (and I just mean that they spend time developing characters, not that it’s necessarily interesting). Vacuous as Quantico or some other show I’ve never seen, because it’s a network show made to appeal to the largest group of boring people possible.Don’t get me wrong, you can like bad shows, and it doesn’t mean you’re an idiot. You can love Twin Peaks or The Wire, and still watch Hot In Cleveland (I’ve never seen this show, and don’t wish to debate its merits), but don’t show me shit and tell me it’s silk. This was like the final season of Game of Thrones: it could have worked, but they rushed through everything (including writing the script), and didn’t seem to understand what’s good about Star Trek. No one would have even heard of this show if it wasn’t connected to Trek. Star Trek has been shit too, but it has never been this type of lowest-common-denominator, first draft, underdeveloped, pew-pew, meaningless deaths, waste of every Borg character, misunderstanding of what’s important and what’s not, movie Picard, more mean things, shitpile.“The first seasons are always bad.” Sure, but at least they’re only bad because they’re boring, not completely tone deaf to the entire thing that Star Trek is supposed to (used to?) do. The thing that’s good about Star Trek is what makes it different from other shows. That’s what makes every show good. What’s different about Star Trek? It’s a slow sci-fi series that doesn’t end in a space laser fight at the end of every episode. It has a coherent philosophy that is present in all 5 series made before Discovery, and it’s a philosophy that they explore. They don’t just state it at the end of the season that was mostly full of melodrama (Trek is also full of melodrama, just not only melodrama). Picard and Discovery do not follow in the tradition. Neither do the TNG movies.I did like that the robot plant looked like a place they would have visited on TOS. Gold-skin Soji was even wearing the right kind of dress.
This was the longest two part TNG episode ever. As for the problems with the story-telling in Picard and Discovery, is the same problem with all modern genre TV and movies. The writers and the audience are so media savvy that they feel like they can just… well… skip the cake and just lay some cans of frosting on the table. That’s what everyone really wants anyway, right? Why establish Han Solo as a lovable rogue with a heart of gold when everyone knows he’s just going to be cavalry anyway? Lazy is what it is.I mean that fucking porn cartoon Interspecies Reviewers has better character and world-building than most all genre media today. That’s some weak shit. For me anyway… unless both Picard and Discovery (and Doctor Who for that matter) radically change up their current approach and start putting in the work to give me a reason to like their characters I probably will be dismissing them from my watch lists. That makes me sad.
ETA: Upon reviewing this comment I realized it seems ranty. I’m not ranty. Just growing more and more disappointed in my nerdy pursuits in recent years.
“All frosting” is probably the best description I’ve ever heard of what happens when Peak TV goes wrong. I’m going to use it.
Have at it.
But we already have the saying “it’s all style and no substance” to use!
Please rant when you feel it necessary. Not enough people are willing to stand up to this kind of garbage and demand better.
Not enough people are willing to stand up to this kind of garbage and demand better.It’s just a TV show. I’ll vote with my eyeballs.
If you don’t vote with negative reviews, the CBS bots will overwhelm legitimate comments and voting platforms with their fake reviews. It’s happening everywhere these days.
All of Agnes’ little jokes and etc. were just so awful. I haven’t watched Discovery but I get the sense that the practice of filling Trek with contemporary slang like “Really?” and “So is thing a thing now?” and etc. comes from there.Also, Raffi is just a terrible character, in every way — everything about her highlights the ways in which this is not the Trek future (where such people wouldn’t be wandering around with their untreated emotional problems and addictions and the class rivalries and resentments that fuel their self-hatred wouldn’t exist). I just had to vent about both of these. (And I’m not singling out the female characters! Narek and what’s-his-name, the Han Solo ripoff, are nearly as bad, although the actors’ skill and the characters’ freedom from the female-stereotype weepy behavior that plagues Agnes and Raffi makes them much easier to watch.)
This is what it’s like watching Discovery BTW.
Man, I love those guys. I’ve been refreshing their channel on YouTube every few hours, breathlessly awaiting their final review.
Welp. Can officially no longer even see Kinja comments on mobile (that’s been always) or my usual browser, even when I turn off every security measure I have (which, by the by, y’all got a few rather nasty pieces of malware in your ad servers right now). So it looks like this is the last time I get to play with y’all in the comments. I haven’t talked much since Kinja; gee I can’t imagine why. My only thought for this episode is that “life is both a responsibility and a right” is one hell of a an accidentally timely quote. Been nice chatting with you all over the years.
When did La Sirena get a magic mind-reading Universal Remote? I swear I didn’t sleep through last week’s ep.
And another thing (as long as I’m venting my cumulative 10-week-long frustration): say what you want about The Rise of Skywalker (I actually loved it, as did my hard-core Star Wars fan buddies; although that’s another conversation and I don’t want to burn out any meager goodwill I’ve got here) but it continued the decades’-old Star Wars tradition of conveying the massive scale of its locales. They were even able to do it in 1977 with a series of matte paintings and some cleverly photographed sets, and that brilliant sound design (Luke and Leia’s voices echoing in the bottomless chasm etc.)Whereas here we have a Borg Cube — an entire Borg Cube! — that’s apparently the size of a taxi garage…you just sort of walk in the opening in the front, and you’re in the “main room.” (Star Trek has always had “planets” that are really just single village squares, so I can’t really fault them for that.)
Speaking of matte paintings, I can’t believe that we had two episodes with “Character walk into the Borg cube” and this was all they managed for visuals.
When Voyager landed on a planet the idea was kind of silly, but at least they tried to make it look good.It’s amazing that the entire production team basically just shrugged-off the idea of a crashed Borg cube.
My favorite line in all the series? “Ready planet sterilization pattern number five”.How bad-ass are the Romulans? “Ready planet sterilization pattern number five”Also…“Don’t make us go to Eleven.”
I just want to point out the equally elusive and obvious reason that Picard was put into the golem. Because Patrick Stewart is old, there is ever a chance that he may die at any given point, but he enjoys the work so much that he wants to keep working. He enjoys the role and the work, and sooner or later he will die, quite possibly in the middle of filming season 2 or season 10.This way, it is internally consistent with the logic of the writing of the show, and pragmatic from a production standpoint. If Patrick Stewart dies after four episodes into the season, then Picard dies on the show, and the writers will have to rewrite the rest of the season to reflect that.After the Carrie Fisher debacle in the last Star Wars movie, where it was painfully obvious that they were cutting and pasting unused shots and dialogue, it makes complete and utter sense from the production standpoint that they do not want to make that same mistake. This choice from a writing standpoint, to allow Patrick Stewart to work on the show until he drops dead if that’s what he wants to do with the rest of his life, feels awkward to watch as a viewer but, from a production standpoint, ultimately allows for them to have a clean slate going forward and not having a disaster on their hands if he does suddenly die.If Patrick Stewart dies while filming the show, it’s already internally consistent logically from a storytelling point of view; because everyone knows that his body has a normal expiration date like other humans, if/when Stewart dies, Picard also dies, and the rest of his crew will follow boldly, must follow boldly, despite their grief, in his footsteps. One or more characters may end up filling the shoes of the vaunted Captain Picard. That daunting task could produce some very interesting developments, and if the rest of the cast is strong enough, and the writing good enough, the show could continue without him in one form or another.
I couldn’t disagree with you more or in finer detail. Like Picard said, a failure of imagination. I see this ending as the creation of a new character.
How do you imagine we come to care for the characters we see on TV shows? Might it be from getting to know them over time, from week to week? Could it relate to how good the actors are at bringing their characters to life? It might not have happened for you, but I care about Raffi and Rios and Agnes and Elnor now. I care how they feel about JL, and I care what they’re going to do next. I won’t refute the cliches of Narissa and Narek, or the smallness of the robot society, but making emotional connections between the characters and with the audience was one thing the show did well. And if you think Seven became a Borg Queen for a minute without consequence, you weren’t watching Jeri Ryan at all.
When Soong interrupted Sutra’s speech to kill/disable her and nobody seemed to notice or care, it felt like a metaphor for the series itself — all these characters are killed off for dramatic effect, yet without any clear stakes who cares?Hell, even death itself has no stakes if someone can be brought back to life immediately after they die.
Zack, I want to thank you for these reviews. I’ve been massibely frustrated with Picard, and it was great to read someone articulating my problems with it much more clearly and skillfully than I could. Thanks!
Hard to believe the writer Michael Chabon is deeply involved in this mess, because his books are far superior to anything we got script-wise. I asked myself after episode 7 “Would I still be watching this if it was ONLY about Rios and Raffi and Agnes and Elnor?” And the answer was not a good one. There is much to be said for nostalgia.
In a way, this is classic Star Trek: all the problems of the universe get neatly resolved at the end of one 45-minute episode, and the ship flies off into the stars and everything that happened is forgotten by the following week. The only difference is this particular “episode“ happened to stretch over 10 weeks. I’m inclined to agree that after all that build-up earlier in the season the two-part finale was a little too pat, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
It’s weird how nobody (in the show or comments) made a bigger deal out of Soji trying to wipe out all organic life in the universe.
I might have missed a line of dialogue, but why was it even Soji?
Sutra was the one who did the mindmeld, so she knew the prophetic vision, so shouldn’t it have been her? Soong did eventually knock Sutra out, but that was well after Soji had started building here evil lego tower.Maybe there’s supposed to be a wifi connection between Soji and Sutra, since they look similarish? Except that Soong was fussing with recovering the memories for that other dead twin, so presumably there isn’t actually telepathy?Obviously for story mechanics it needed to be a “main” character who Picard could reason with. But in-universe it’s like “Oh hey, Soji’s suddenly incredibly evil. No wait…she’s not.”
I enjoyed this show very much but I will agree that the quality of the storytelling faded as it got closer to the end. Handlen is right; they abandoned the opportunity to explore what it meant for Seven to return to the Collective and the manner in which the maudlin and manipulative Picard ‘death’ scene was undermined betrayed a consistent thematic concern of ‘Star Trek’—that ‘survival is insufficient.’ Picard’s consciousness downloaded into a ‘synth’ body is a cop-out on the order of the ‘Dallas’ dream season. Do any of the writers remember the Original Series episode, ‘What Are Little Girls Made Of?’ DR. KORBY WAS NEVER THERE!!!!! (sorry; /nerdrage).
Does anyone feel like trying to work through what was going on with android-planet?So Maddox and Soong were churning out sexy twins, for some reason. Why not, I guess? Everyone just hangs out at their malibu beachhouse. They spend most of their time in the hottub, or playing hackysac. But occasionally they also construct giant space orchids?Sutra’s twin went off to explore, or was sent off to explore? But it seems like Sutra didn’t go? Sutra’s twin completely randomly happened to bump into Rios’ ship, and the Federation issued a kill order. And so the Federation’s ban on synthetics is a bit like the ban on genetic engineering, except that it also includes an extermination clause? In TNG’s space-oirish episode Riker destroys the cloning tech, but he doesn’t go all Anakin on the actual people. Ditto for Bashir’s pals in Statistical Probabilities.Based on the experience with Sutra’s twin someone (Soong? Maddox? Sutra?) decided to send Dahj and Soji out into the world with fake memories? Dahj got into an advanced program at the Daystrom Institute, and Soji just had an undergrad or something so she got to go work on the borg ship?And the Romulans found out about Soji and Dahj while Soji was on the cube? And they decided to be sneaky and to capture Dahj first?Is that about it?
I realized that I forgot some timelines:Maddox and Jurati were a couple prior to the synth ban, right? So 14 years ago…and back when the actress Allison Pill would have been 20ish?10 years ago Rios bumped into Sutra’s twin, and his captain killed her?Sometime less than 3 years ago Dahj and Soji were sent out on android rumspringa?And at some point after that Maddox left sexytwin world?
Also Bruce Maddox objected to Data’s entry into starfleet academy in 2341. So assuming Maddox was only 22 when that happened (which is absurd) that means he was born in around 2319, making him at the very least 80 during Star Trek: Picard
I can live with that. 8o then is probably the new 60. It’s also why I was taken aback when the writers decide to have the fit and sprightly Stewart play Picard the nonegenarian as a nonegenarian, when 94 in 2399 is perhaps the equivalent of 80 today.
Okay, ONE more.Sometime before Data died in Nemesis he painted a picture of Dahj/Soji and gave it to Picard.And then maybe Data put that painting on his instagram, and Maddox saw it because they were buds?Several years later Maddox and Soong have their sexytwin android assembly line going, and they need inspiration for faces, so they borrow(?) from Data’s painting to create Sutra and her twin? They send the twin out for some reason, and she gets killed.And then ten~ish years later they need to send Dahj/Soji out to do whatever it is they’re supposed to do. And so Dahj/Soji also get modelled on Data’s painting…in the explicit hope that if something goes wrong Picard will recognize them and will help them?(this show is quite a mess. But on top of that they added an extra layer of nonsense with the Rios/Sutratwin stuff 10 years ago, which does not help things at all.)
Honestly, the one thing I liked about Coppelius was how it upheld the 60-year-old Trek tradition of how a “planet” is always just a single town square.
That got a laugh out of me too. The clothes! Classic goofball Trek.
Star Trek killing off Picard, only to reanimate him in a robot body so he can’t rest in peace is pretty on the nose for this series.
They totally could have used Q with the original actor. They could have played his age for laughs, as a result of having baby Q, and trying to keep him in check aged him through stress, or something else equally cheeky. They never made a Q through old fashioned means before, so it’s wide open how there would be repercussions of the act, nobody knew what would happen.
Go watch season 1 of TNG and then let us know how it compares to Picard. I agree with a lot of what you wrote here, but first seasons of most Trek series are similarly underwhelming. The only difference here is the title character is already known to us. My point is, I expect it to get better in season 2, just like Discovery did.
My primary beef was that they hauled that absolutely idiotic “death gives life meaning” nonsense — which is the ultimate species-level self-delusion. Death destroys all meaning.
I think a lot of you might be missing what might happen in season 2, in regards to Picard becoming essentially a synth. I don’t think moving Picard to his new body was just for giggles. I suspect the narrative of “synth as oppressed minority” will be continued in season 2, and now Picard is one of them! I don’t know this for a fact, but Picard as a synth may be a big storyline for the next season.
You would hope so. But, given present form, his artificial body may never be mentioned again.
Fuck you, Zack. That conclusion was perfectly WHELMING.
If I’d known at the beginning of this show that it was all going to end with the occult villains using an innocent girl to complete the ritual to open the portal to summon the disembodied tentacles of eldritch beings from beyond the cosmos, I would’ve adjusted my expectations accordingly.
I will never understand why people who hate a show are allowed to review it.
I greatly dislike the shade being thrown at Zack for, you know, daring to critically review this show. Zack is beyond reproach as a Trek reviewer and reading that he “went into this show determined to hate it” is incredibly irritating and insulting.
On a side note, I think it’s totally fitting that Riker’s ship is the U.S.S. Zheng He. If you read Zheng’s history, he and Riker share similar personalities. Check out his Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He.Zheng was a early 15th Century bad ass. When he was 10 years old he mouthed off to an invading general, which got him captured and castrated. Most of us would likely pretty much hang it up after that, but not Zheng. He rose through the imperial court and ultimately became the admiral of a treasure fleet that traveled as far as East Africa.
I sincerely hope they find someone who likes this show even a little bit to do the reviews next season. For two reasons: 1) I am so sick of hearing you tear this show down because you didn’t get what you wanted and 2) you won’t have to torture yourself by watching the show.
It pretty much went the way I expected it because Stewart has said all along that this would be a different Picard in the way that Xavier in Logan was different from his X-Men Xavier. The show was called Picard so clearly it would be Picard-centric and not Federation-centric. And it is a show about a 90+ year old man who has seen better days. Luckily there weren’t any bladder control issues in the story line…“Hold that thought Raffi.” Shuffles off to the toilet. I agree that there was a lot going on for a 10 show season. This really could have been two seasons. Spend more time on the earlier story arcs and end it with him and the Romulans heading for the Synth planet. Pick up Season 2 with more story in and around the synth planet maybe a little more back story on the Federation armada and Riker kicking some ass to put it together.
One more observation. If you watch THE READY ROOM, you’ll hear the producers say the whole point of Data asking to be shut down is the realization that mortality and knowing that the end of existence is coming is what makes life truly special. That would be a great message, if only THE GOOD PLACE hadn’t beaten them to the punch, and done it SO MUCH BETTER. I wonder if Data’s simulated consciousness would really want to die if he could get hooked up with Janet. I’m sure Data’s more of a catch than Derek…
“This week, I slapped my forehead halfway through the hour and realized they’d just dump him into the “golem” Soong was planning to move his own consciousness into.” So you’re a Sci-fi show recapper and you didn’t see this coming last week?
It’s so easy to find plot holes in this that even after 200+ comments of them I feel there is one that hasn’t been brought up.The Zhat Vash were essentially right and Picard almost had all life wiped out for interfering with their work.So synths are suddenly legal again? WHY? They wiped out an entire planet, but it turns out that they didn’t do it on their own accord, they were controlled by a single Romulan infiltrator.Exactly how does that make them LESS of a liability?!?Also, they now have a “kill all life” switch, but we already talked about that.Oh, one more thing: Why does the First Contact protocol apply to Planet of Robots? Its inhabitants were two federation citizens and their kids.Never mind. The plot was just as bad as Discovery, but at least the lines were better written. I was hiding my face in shame over the dialogue of Discovery season 2. “Dear diary: My mother told me all good things come in three: Birth. Life. Death.”
I will agree with the folks who found this series disappointing at best. And that’s why those of us who are fans and sort-of-fans (I’d say I liked Trek well enough, but my science fiction consumption is wider and I am not one of those folks who loves it enough to go to conventions or even think that liking it is mutually exclusive with any other franchise) are irked by this. I won’t rehash a lot of the problems this series had people have gone over already, which amount to lazy writing. I’ll focus on one that really bothered me, which was the whole issue of synths. Here is something that could be fantastically interesting and I wanted to see the writers run with it the way they had in earlier Trek series — and give Stewart and Isa Brines material worthy of their talents. I mean think if it: you wake up one morning and discover you aren’t real. That’s just a *little* jarring. And you live in a society that has banned making synths, and had a sizable movement to respect the rights of artificial intelligences. And that faced annihilation form at least one cube’s worth of combination beings, cyborgs. I mean crap, this was something that any writer worth a damn could have gone absolutely crazy with. There’s all kinds of emotional stakes in the goddamned premise. But no. They went with the absolute silliest damn thing. Let’s start with one of the biggest plot holes: if Soji/ Dahj is only 37 months old, how the hell did they falsify entire lives? Soji had a BF, and he never said, “can I meet your parents, talk on the communicator, whatevs?” She was in a graduate program, nobody checked her school records, asked for references? She’s working on a top-secret Roman project with a bunch of Tal Shiar secret agent types, and they can’t vet her? Yeah, there re ways around this. But if she is only 37 months old then you’d have to find a way to fictionalize stuff like college friends unless someone asked — remember this is a world where people can pull up records on you in a second, and it’s not hard to communicate across light years. Far more interesting would be if she *was* created to grow up and grow old. That seemed to be the premise from the start; that some synths were built to mimic humans in *every* way. But that got dropped and an opportunity was lost. This is especially so in light of the synth ban. Data was a smart guy and great officer; they had a whole TNG episode establishing that he had rights, or at least the right to have rights. And then the Federation starts building the things and using them as laborers— were they designed to be as smart as Data? How did the holograms who had touched on their rights (and discussed them) feel about this? What does it mean in a society like the Federation (post scarcity, everyone has equal opportunity) to have a permanent underclass? It’s clear that on the fringes the post-scarcity society hasn’t penetrated yet, (shades of Gibson’s maxim about the future being unevenly distributed) but none of this is explored viz. Picard, and I felt like it was a massive, massive missed opportunity. In a way I think Chabon’s idea of having Picard solve smaller mysteries would have been a good use of the above points I went over; it’s a big issue but you can do all kinds of local intrigue-adventure plots with it, focused on Picard the man who found the Federation wasn’t what he hoped. There was a lot of great stuff in that very first episode, and you could have gone that way. More than one DS9 plot did just that. But instead they went with the gigantic stakes storyline, and while I was initially encouraged that Chabon was on the staff, I gotta wonder what happened here. I’ve been watching Discovery lately, and that’s proven in the first few episodes to be a far superior product; if for no other reason than the emotional stakes feel earned. Maybe season 2 will be much better; after all it took TNG a whole season and a half to find its feet. Given the better production values and the talented cast I have high hopes for it. (As to Picard now being a synth, had they told him, “well, you won’t die of old age, but you can still be killed” that would at least be better; we spend a whole episode around Picard’s lamenting his own mortality after all). End rant-y sounding review, because dammit, I feel like now I want to send the writers a whole stack of science fiction books from my shelf.
I think you mean Dahj had a BF, not Soji. Soji’s boyfriend knew what she was all along. And they did establish that Dahj had at least some kind of simulation pretending to be her mother.
You’re right but the problem remains — Dahj’s BF never said, “Oh, can I meet your parents?” And if she did supposedly 3-ish years of undergrad and met her BF there, or whatever, he never asked to meet her friends? If she had implanted memories you’d have to figure a way for her to simulate contacting old friends from childhood, or at least from high school or something, and what happens if someone she meets wants to meet those people? Theoretically you could have her be home-schooled, but then you run into the problems during her undergrad years. Remember we are in a society with seemingly endless data records. The whole thing only works if the synth person shows up in a place where like, no one will ever ask about their past before they came. Think of how hard this would be to pull off now. All the public records, the birth certs, old drivers’ licenses — everything would go cold in a way that would raise red flags the first time the synth got a traffic ticket. And 300 years hence the records are less comprehensive?
The Romulans could just have, you know, just TOLD everyone about the admonition. I’m pretty sure most people would just have agreed that yeah, androids are probably a bad idea, let’s keep that box closed. Keeping it a secret makes their job SO much harder.Then again, it’s SO Romulan to do so, so I wouldn’t complain.One line that REALLY wrecks the Zhat Vash is that early on they say they’ve been around for thousands of years operating clandestinely all over the galaxy. So where were they in the Discovery S2 finale, seems like they could have been really useful there? Or Harry Mudd’s Android planet for that matter. Really, if the Zhat Vash had been around for 50 years or so it would have worked out fine.Oh, and if androids were killed on sight, from whom did that chick learn Vulcan mind meld?
Knock it off with your Hubris Picard! Oh, it’s Riker, sure, have an Armada.
Data: “To actually feel like a part of a human race, my life has to be finite, so please pull the plug.”Picard: “If you insist, my friend.”Data: “Btw you made it to 94, but can’t stay dead, you’re being brought back to life and having the head thing fixed.”Us: “What the what?”
While I quite enjoyed the scenes with Picard and Data, basically you and I felt the same way. I think my biggest problem is that while they gave folks some good introductions to the supporting cast, they never built on their potential, or soured steps forward with random inconsistencies, so for the most it felt like Picard died amongst strangers. Also, what the hell happened to Narek?! I feel like there’s a great first season sitting on the cutting room floor, where much like S2 of Discovery, the second half of the season lost most of the character moments at the expense of plot.
The whole Tamlyn Tomita barking orders because it’s protocol was ridiculous. Romulan shoulder pads are back. The Romulan and Starfleet fleets both having only one starship design was just lazy. Lazy!!! Why have the Borg Cube doing nothing? Doesn’t it have weapons?I wonder what diehard TNG fans thought of this. To me, a Trek fan but not one who remembers all the episodes, it was underwhelmingly meh. Hope it gets better in next season.
I mean…let’s start with General Oh, because I literally became distracted trying to imagine how she got away with suddenly being in charge of a Romulan fleet. Did she just…sneak out of Starfleet HQ at lunchtime and not come back? Why the Romulans keep deactivating their planet killers every time they get distracted? As far as Starfleet is aware they were meeting Picard at Deep Space 12, how do they know where he is now? Why does Jurati have, and know how to use, the purple wish-granting machine that she has up until that point never even been aware of? How is the super-secret revelation of the Jad Vash suddenly also a Romulan myth so well known that Narak can just rattle it off around a campfire? Why do the rest of the androids just stand around while Alton Soong fells their leader with his magic off button that he could have used at any time during the previous several fucking hours when he knew his creations were about to summon a holocaust?
This thing was written in less time than it took to watch, and it made me want to throw things at the television.
If they killed off Picard, I honestly would’ve been weirdly impressed -and it would’ve been a better ending.
Head canon alert!Starfleet built the armada of Not Quite Sovereign class ships and kept them in their back pocket in case another war breaks out after the Dominion War ended. They were really just waiting around for 20 years to actually use them for once. That’s why Riker was on Active Reserve, he’s the Acting Captain for that Very Specific Fleet that is only launched for a Very Specific reason. Hence, just hanging out and making pizza for years instead. Riker’s Pizza Fleet, we’ll save your society from sterilization in 30 minutes or less!
Can’t say I loved it, but I did get a queer moment with one of my favorite characters and I guess that’s all it takes for my gay trek brain to produce dopamine
Alex Kurtzman: “You know, giant alien AI that roars (obviously for effect) is good, but what it really needs is MOAR TENTACLES”
They have exactly the same Ikea lamp on the robot planet as we have in the office!
Such a stereotypical review. It seems like reviewers these days don’t even really consider the work as much as how they would have done it better. It’s like they have to prove how cool and smart and detached they are.I’m 49. I grew up watching the original series in reruns as a child. I’ve watched the whole of Next Generation twice. I’m not too cool to admit that the show was excellent—way better than it needed to be. And, the last 15 minutes of the finale were as good as anything a Star Trek series has done.Sometimes you don’t need to go boldly where no one has gone before. Sometimes, you just want to have a great time with an old friend.
The number of comments where people lay out their Star Trek fan credentials as some kind of qualification for having an opinion is remarkable. I kind of come away from each of them with the impression that it undermines their position, rather than supports it.(our family watched all of TNG together, I watched TOS in reruns, and I never cared for DS9, Voyager, or Enterprise myself. Discovery is ok, and I thought Picard was pretty fun although the finale was a low bar of the entire season to me)I recently started watching Short Treks and if you want to complain about some bad Star Trek that is the place to be complaining about. Oh my lord.
Because it’s fucking relevant how familiar you are with Trek, if you’re going to critique this — that’s the main armature of its success or failure. The biggest problem with the show is that the writers aren’t familiar with the source material (as dozens of furious YouTube videos have pointed out: they’re making basic, stupid mistakes with the Trek history, premises, story lines, characters, cultures, technology and philosophy).
“Dozens of furious YouTube videos” sounds like my definition of hell.
Because it’s fucking relevant how familiar you are with Trek, if you’re going to critique this — that’s the main armature of its success or failure.Or maybe it isn’t? Just putting it out there that satisfying the hardcore is maybe something they don’t care about anymore. That could be a deliberate choice, and despite the profound frustration they may be feeling, it might even be a good one.
It wound up being an OK show – maybe a B- IMO. I do hate that they killed Hugh. The guy doesn’t have nanites in him that can do some repairs to bring him back? C’mon! My main gripe with the show (other than the really cool scenes not really belonging, and the really lame main antagonists) was that this new crew they put together simply didn’t have any chemistry. Their characters felt somewhat multidimensional, but pretty damn boring when they were put in a room together. Saccharine Expanse. They would been better off bringing back as many TNG characters as they could get instead of trying to build some Next Next Generation that’s more like Firefly than Trek.
We had golems on Hunters, a golem on The Magicians. Now a golem here. Golems, golems, golems! Golems to the left of me, golems to the right of me! I can’t get away from golems!
I liked the idea that Seven and Raffi might hook up next season? I might have been too stoned to notice that being set up in a previous episode, but where did that come from??That said I bawled like a baby through the last ten minutes.
Two women held hands, so it must mean hot sex.
I mean, they were gazing into each other’s eyes pretty intensely as well.
Raffi’s whole thing was gazing intensely into people’s eyes.
While i love his characters here and elsewhere, i am pretty convinced for no good reason that Brent Spiner is a sexual weirdo who’d be very off-putting in real life, like “Burt Ward” level offputting.
Who wants to bet Narissa is still alive?
I wish.
A C is generous. It took me multiple tries over multiple days to slog through this awful finale. Many have already covered the obvious plotting, pacing, and general writing problems. One thing that really stands out to me now that I finally got through this is just how little effort was put into creating genuine relationships between characters; classic show-don’t-tell stuff. We are just constantly told that these characters have certain backstories, histories, etc, but it’s never (or rarely) just -demonstrated-. When Agnes says “make it so” to Picard I involuntarily told the show to eff off — it’s emblematic of the entire enterprise, a character making a reference only the audience understands, distractingly out of place from a character who barely knows Picard.
Sincere Question: I have zero idea what Dahj/Soji being wiped of their memories and sent out into the world was supposed to accomplish. What was Maddox’s plan? I watched the whole show and I honestly have no idea why any of these events were even set in motion. Did I miss something?
The best thing about the season could very well be Lulu Wilson’s performance in “Nepenthe.” I haven’t seen that kind of charisma in a juvenile performance in years.
Given season 2 was green lit before episode 1 was shown, why couldn’t Picard’s real death be held back until the end of the franchise? After all, it seems the Riker and Troi appearances were filmed after the WRAP. It leaves us with another fake death, after Spock and Data (if we count B4), and that’s only in the prime timeline.Nevertheless, for me, Picard remains dead. I’m not sure I’ll be able to invest emotion in what is now an artificial clone, no matter how clever.A huge pity Narissa appears killed off. The risk to Picard and his mission never seemed more at risk than when she was onscreen (and the actor managed to sizzle wickedness and sexiness in the same frame). I would have chosen Narissa to lead the warbirds, while Clancy hunts down Oh at Star Fleet Command. But my biggest bug with the season. WHO THE FUDGE WAS CAPTAIN CRANDALL? He told Kestra the location of Soji’s home by return, information the Romulans had been seeking since the dawn of modern time. Then he’s not mentioned again. Is there a Razza for the laziest plot device?I’ll watch season 2 just for Stewart but no more.
Part 1: I don’t remember anything about Mass Effect BUT I AM MADPart 2: IT’S NOT A LAZY MASS EFFECT RIPOFF GRR BAD SHOW!Lord please stop writing.
Zack my friend…..you need to lighten the fuck up.
I just watched & it hit me! Picard is now a Doll. Epitaph 3 here we come!
I agree with you, Zack. I was so excited to get free access just for this show. My teenage kids and husband were on board to watch. Then this? Characters making choices that made no sense throughout the series (Raff and Rios trust Narek?). Whole plot lines with no relevance or impact (why was the Borg cube even in these last two episodes?). And then completely weak but convenient inventionst make the plot work (here’s a tool that’s basically magic and will do whatever you want it to do if you just IMAGINE). Ugh. Terrible. TNG was great because it took time to develop the inside of a story. This series has no insides, and an outside with holes all over it.
I finished this weeks after everyone else, but I’ve got to be honest, I really liked it. There are certain things I could quibble with like lots of what happened on the Borg Cube. But this felt both like something new but still rooted in Star Trek.
The one thing that stood out to me over the course of the entire seasons was how well the show incorporated mythos and themes from Trek. We had the destruction of Romulus from the Nu-Trek movies, the death of Data from Nemesis, Maddox from the series, and a sprinkle of “The Offspring” thrown in. Some of these were poorly handled in their original form, but I genuinely thought they grappled with them in smart ways here, especially when it comes to the death and legacy of Data. This show really gave him the sendoff he deserved. And both the omnipotent artificial lifeforms and synth civilization seemed like a nod to the original series. At the same time, we’ve never had a Star Trek show that wasn’t centered on Starfleet. I also found the themes to be resonant right now. We’re in a world where institutions have failed us, just like they failed Picard and the Romulans. But the show insists that we can navigate a way forward if we hold tight to those original ideals. And that final conversation between Picard and Data was genuinely moving. There are certainly some things I could grip about or nitpick, but I felt the good far outweighed the bad.
Finally saw this today and I hated it. He dies and then two seconds later he’s in an android body that looks exactly the same? So incredibly cheap. Not much above having Victoria Principal wake up after having dreamt Picard had died.However, I will still probably watch S2, hoping it’s less stupid, and I hope you keep doing the reviews. So many comments about you being “determined” to hate the show suggest to me the opposite: that Stewart back as Picard means that even if it is sub-Dallas, for some people, it’s beyond reproach. I enjoy the reviews more than the TV series. More power to the honest TV critic.
This was awful not just as Trek, but basic storytelling. If there was one criticism that really stuck on the old TNG/Voyager plots, it was the overuse of “reset button” endings to hand wave any permanent change in the status quo. And what does this do? Give an ultimate reset button ending. Between this and “Discovery”, CBS is really looking like it is using streaming to rip off sci-fi nerds with crap. What is even worse is the decision is a corporate as it gets. Why not give Picard a new body or a younger one? Why, then Stewart would be done and they do not want that crutch taken away, huh?Then they have Seven hold hands with Raffi, a woman whom she did not interact with at all right at the end? Puts that old Law & Order episode to shame where the character blurts out “you are firing me for being gay?”..when they never once should she was gay in the show..at all. Diversity! (that is even putting aside Seven and Rios clearly had a moment almost two seconds before and the character was never gay in the original series)And they just completely toss out Agnes KILLED someone? So that is forgiven somehow too? I want my ten hours back. Before this episode, I thought the plusses (giving Picard a better send off than the bland “Nemeses”) outweighed the minuses (the multiple dues ex machinas of the plot..especially with seven of nine..Why was she on the Borg cube again when they learned its significance after she left and that would be the last place she would logically want to be? UGH)