Is rocky…
So Picard season 2 ended around the same time as Season 1 of Strange New World’s kicked off. Watching both episodes was a rollercoaster ride of contrasts.
I talked about my feelings about Discovery already. They’ve not changed and I cut all ties with the show. I’m glad people enjoy it, I couldn’t get over the things I didn’t like.
Picard Season 1
I slogged through Picard Season 1 remembering that most Trek takes at least a season to find its footing, often more. S1 was pretty dumb. I won’t lie, I watched because I didn’t want to walk away in the middle. Every slow paced, plodding episode built up to a final battle that not only lasted maybe 5 minutes with very little drama, but also was against some horrible CGI space-kraken, and blurry low quality CGI Romulan and Starfleet ships. The story wasn’t engaging, and would hint at some great backstory, then run away as fast as possible toward some overblown personal drama.
Things that I wish the show delved into.
- How did the Romulans get the borg cube?
- What were the recovered Borg doing?
- Pretty much anything around this woulda been cool.
- What was the Federation like in the time of lots of Datas running around?
- What was it like after the Mars attacks?
- How did Picard come to have two Tal’Shiar agents as house staff?
- How’d they meet?
- Pretty much anything around this woulda been cool.
- What was the Romulan relief effort like?
- Where did the whatever Rangers come from and do?
- Where’d that one-off bad guy get a hundreds of years old Romulan ship?
Things I didn’t give a fig about
- How did Data create biological children that were androids but not
- Why did Data do this (somehow without the slightest hint in TNG TV or movies)?
- Picard’s winery
- Riker and Troi’s family drama
- I’d kill for a show focused on them aboard the Titan, but no. So yeah screw that.
- A secret colony of androids, and their pet killer space orchids
- Why TF was data’s creator there?
- The crazy anti-AI cult.
- The crazy speak blunt truth cult.
(Fool me once)
Picard Season 2
Then season two started and I knew going in it was time travel (laziest of tropes) so was prepared for that.
Oh, you say Starfleet gave Rios a ship? He wasn’t in Starfleet at that end of S1, they just toss out ships like prizes? Oh, you say Romulan kid is in Starfleet now too? Raffi as well? Even though she rage quit with Picard way back, but it’s all good now?
Oh look in the past we also get to have Data’s creator. Was Brent Spiner just hard up for cash? Did he have photos of Kirkman somewhere? Oh good, data’s android child is here too, but as a wholly different character, but pretty much similar, except she’s a vampire.
Guinan, Q, and Wesley were neat cameos. But of course used like blunt objects, barely moving the plot along.
And like S1, our final battle is four minutes long (I’m glossing over the stupid time travel hand-waving and retconning the borg entirely, and Q’s whole story line. We’d be here all week), and written by someone who doesn’t get how big space is, in the slightest.
(Fool me twice)
Picard Season 3.
There will be no third fooling.
Strange New Worlds
And then we got something different. At least I hope. SNW didn’t start with some massive season-long big bad arc. I love a good season-spanning arc, but Discovery kinda beat that horse to death, revived it, and repeated the process. SNW gave a single episode that was quippy, bantery, and fun.
I do hope the entire season isn’t Pike being terrified of reflective surfaces, that’ll get old.
Some of Trek’s best is when it’s being episodic scifi fun. The SNW team seems to have realized this. I hope at least. Maybe this is a big setup for episode 2 forcing the Enterprise to chase a space angel to let Pike single-handedly save the galaxy. I mean Michael Burnham does it all the time…
I’m optimistic about Trek on TV for the first time in like 5 years. I hope it’s not misplaced.
If you’ve made it this far and are about to comment about how much you love Picard and Discovery, and they’re true trek, and whatever else. I’m glad you enjoy them and hope you continue to do so. I don’t need to be convinced. You enjoy.
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