Star Trek: Picard

I think that this show needs to be on the CW. At least the CW makes no excuses for minimizing ageing actors and moving great looking "cheeky" villains to the front.
 
Why wasn't it Soji who discovered the true nature of the Admonition?

I understand on a plotting level why she didn't, because her position in the story would have made it odd if she hadn't uncovered it sooner than the finale, but on a character level it's clumsy. Soji was supposedly undercover to find out the true reason for the synth ban, and it ended up being Soji who took the lead on calling the ancient synths. It would make sense for her arc for her to be proactive in finding out what Agnes knew. (And for those who have a problem with a synth being able to mind-meld, it would make more sense, too, Soji being partly organic and all.)

I had assumed Sutra was thrown into the mix to fill the role of the Destroyer and Soji would oppose her, but Sutra ended up being entirely redundant. She went down like a punk and Soji carried on without her.

So...why wasn't it Soji who found out the truth about the Admonition?

PIC has a real problem with the main characters being pushed around and maneuvered by secondary characters (who die as soon as they've served their purpose) and I don't understand it. Soji could have been active and making choices throughout all of this, but instead it played like she got sucked into some sort of cult for one episode before changing her mind based on the power of Yet Another Picard Speech™. It makes her look really inept, less like a fully-formed character and more like a plot contrivance who does whatever the writers need her to do that week.

And, with apologies to everyone who found this finale moving, I found the sentimentality so overdone it was ridiculous. Data's death scene almost had me, but then they laid it on so thick with the speech and the slo-mo and the music that I started laughing. Ditto Agnes and Rios and Elnor weeping uncontrollably after Picard died. Just ludicrous, and completely unearned by the preceding 9 episodes. Not to mention that Agnes knew they had a backup Picard, right? Or did she only start work on that after he'd been dead a while?

I don't feel like any of these characters were close enough to warrant such a strong reaction. I barely even got the sense that they spent much meaningful time together at all. (You know who I would buy as weeping that hard? Laris and Zhaban, who had the sort of warm, lived-in relationship with him that would make me believe it. Too bad they disappeared from the show, never to be seen again this season.)

Picard turned out to be a super uneven show, and I don't know that the highs were high enough or numerous enough to outweigh the considerable lows.
 
Seeing Riker as a captain was nice

Besides that.


My god....

They had to throw in “I love you!”

Why would Picard LOVE Data?

Kirk never told Spock he loved him.
 
Awwwwww.
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Yeah, Riker was cool. We should start a petition for a ST: Riker !

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Seeing Riker as a captain was nice

Besides that.


My god....

They had to throw in “I love you!”

Why would Picard LOVE Data?

Kirk never told Spock he loved him.

Rich Evans was right...Picard LOVES
Data: The Android and that’s all that matters.

The show runners stuck the landing on this series like a flaming garbage truck with no brakes headed over a cliff at 90 MPH.

Bravo!!

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Bring on season 2!
 
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(You know who I would buy as weeping that hard? Laris and Zhaban, who had the sort of warm, lived-in relationship with him that would make me believe it. Too bad they disappeared from the show, never to be seen again this season.)

Picard turned out to be a super uneven show, and I don't know that the highs were high enough or numerous enough to outweigh the considerable lows.
I had forgotten that those characters were left behind. It's too bad, because I actually liked them and wanted to see more of them. I think it would've made more sense for them to go with Picard on his mission rather than Raffi or Elnor.
(Edit: now that I wrote that, I realize that the reason was probably for demographics - Raffi and Elnor hitting different target audiences than two white, middle aged actors.)
 
Raffi: "Ah...what's happening?"
Cristobal: "Nothing that makes any sense."

I'm surprised no one has posted this yet as a commentary on the whole Picard series.

As I posted before, I was enjoying the show, but it wasn't without problems. Unfortunately, I felt the season finale was a mess. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, but I've kind of been lost as to what the plot was, why Picard and Soji were going to the planet of the androids. Sone of that's on me, but I think it's a bit of a failing in the storytelling as well.

I wasn't clear on what or why the beacon was being used. So, I understand the androids, Soji now included, are mad at the universe and want revenge I guess? The beacon opens up some portal to a thing with tentacles that will bring about the Romulan ragnorok? I'm genuinely confused, and I suppose I should rewatch to figure out what I missed.

Getting back to the quote I used, Cristobal and Raffi using the "magic imagination device" to fix the ship is just to setup it's use later for "the Picard maneuver." I guess that's the definition of a MacGuffin, isn't it? There's no other reason for it to exist, and has no real explanation for how it works, so it's pretty much just lazy writing.

I felt things wrapped up too quickly. They had nine episodes to set up this final conflict, yet the confrontation between the Romulans, the androids, the Federation, and Picard was almost over before it began.

Also disappointing: seeing Riker in the captain's chair was great, but every federation ship was exactly the same (I think the Romulan ships were too, but I'm not 100% sure). Not only does that seem lazy, but also unrealistic, based on prior Star Trek battles. And the number of ships on both sides seemed way too much. It's another example if lazy writing to just have a bigger, more numerous, more powerful enemy (it was also one of my problems with "Rise of Skywalker" and it's massive fleet of death star ships).
 
Just more proof that Star Trek died a horrific death in 2005 when the Berman era ended a JJ/Kurtzman dug their sticky claws into the legacy.

I genuinely don't understand how anyone can watch this show and see it as a logical progression to any Star Trek that came before it.

It is a disgrace that Star Trek has ended up where it is.
Everything is just lip service and easter eggs, nothing is earned.
They throw in lines, like "choose to live" or whatever Elf boy says, yet every episode features gratuitous death scenes or mass murder.
Everyone has to have an edge or sad backstory because you can't possibly SHOW a good character who has their s#@t together and can demonstrate inspirational, hopefully, positive influence over the series, instead it's just unearned hollow "i love you" lines and telling you everyone is fearful and bad.
You don't instigate change by reminding everyone of the negative, you inspire and demonstrate your positivity and motivate people through your actions.

The series is a thin concept that has been drawn out over 10 episodes.

See below a direct quote from Michael Chabon in a recent Variety article and tell me THAT'S a man who truly understands Star Trek.

"Sometimes you’re motivated to have things simply because it’s possibly going to piss off or provoke people who seem to have missed the memo about just what exactly “Star Trek” is and always has been all about."

Star Trek has become a joke.
Long live The Orville.
 
"Ready planet sterilization pattern number 5" - Someone actually wrote that line.

Plot wise, the following scene of the finale sums up the problem with the entire series. - Robot tentacle arms crawling out of another dimension.

The real reason Data wanted to die is because they uploaded this awful series into his quantum virtual world.
 
Sheer ****ing hubris.

Exactly. They probably didn't even realise the irony of including that line which is being mirrored back at the show, which itself has the sheer @@@ing hubris to treat the legacy of the previous series and also the fans with contempt.
 
"Sometimes you’re motivated to have things simply because it’s possibly going to piss off or provoke people who seem to have missed the memo about just what exactly “Star Trek” is and always has been all about."
Excuse me, but what? I've been watching Star Trek, in one incarnation or another, for more than forty years now (probably longer, because my parents were first-generation Trekkies in college and part of the letter-writing campaign and all that). A friend of mine recently-ish encountered Star Trek via the 2009 film and its sequels, and was curious to delve into what came before. She utterly loves Next Gen and is working on Voyager right now. She loves it all, and I won't argue with her enjoyment, even if I can't imagine how that can happily coexist in her mind. I've begun a gradual guided tour into TOS. So I've been revisiting "what Star Trek is and always has been all about" in navigating the growing pains of early TOS, as well as in the TNG appreciation thread on here.

The TOS crew were human and flawed -- but not @$$holes and not trendily broken. They were professionals who had their differences, but suborned them to a higher purpose in working together against a hostile environment. The Prime Directive, "risk is our business", and all of that. Jonathan Frakes' presence in STP is especially evocative and... well, I guess contradictory, for lack of a better word -- as one of the things that Gene told him that really got him in the feels and encapsulates "what Star Trek is and always has been all about" was when Gene explained his world as "There is no hunger, and there is no greed, and all the children know how to read". The man was no saint, and I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I've studied Star Trek's creator almost as much as his creation, and I feel that he'd be disgusted by what Trek has been over the last decade, that he'd see STP is a debasement and undercutting of the characters and setting he laid down in 1986, and that if he'd been in the room when Chabon had the gall to say that, he'd've fed him his tie.

Apologies to those who are enjoying it.
 
Say what you will about Rick Berman, that man was a professional and did his best, maybe he didn't nail it every time but he learned what Star Trek was directly from Gene and tried to preserve the legacy.

Orci threw a hissy fit and insulted a fan telling them to "f#@ off".
Now we have Chabon deliberately instigating divison in Star Trek fandom all the while preaching how much he knows and loves the series.
As for Kurtzman, this is all just space magic that pays his bills whether he tries or doesn't.

Thank the Prophets we still have TOS to ENT to enjoy.
 

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