So while I was pretty sure I was going to dislike the finale, and despite a lot of writing issues, it actually turned out quite beautiful, in its own weird way.
The space battle with the orchids was just beautiful through and through, probably one of the most visually impacting space battles I've seen on video in a long time. Though I could have did without the copy paste of all the ships...you cheap bastards. Riker showing up was magnificent, and it sort of made me sad in a lot of ways that the most compelling, interesting characters on the show turned out to be Riker and Seven. Though a lot of that is because the writing for everyone else is really unreliable.
Generally, for a finale it took forever to get going, but when it did it had my attention. Data's death I thought was pretty poignant and well done. I would have liked it more if they had shown all of his friends from the enterprise around the couch during his final scene...but the uniformed Picard was still a great touch. As was the moment when Data asked Picard if he regrets sacrificing himself for Soji. The bad was that the terrible hairpiece they used for Data looked like it came straight from the Steven Seagal collection and if they'd put a gross looking goatee on Data I'd think I was watching one of Stevo's latest terrible straight to video efforts.
While on the macro level I felt the show managed to wrap things up with an interesting and fun final episode, the hand waiving and fridge logic moments were everywhere, and given the crazy nature of the plot they had to tie together, not surprising. It's kind of hilarious how they give the evil sister a final death but just flat out erase Narek and evil Soji from the show. Everyone packing up and going home once the beacon is destroyed kind of makes sense, as I could absolutely see Oh making the strategic calculation that they couldn't defeat the federation fleet today nor afford the war now that the Federation had guaranteed the planet's safety, but the plot demands they have to move on quickly so you get this bizarre scene of everyone just nope'ing out of the system, including the Federation fleet that would be crazy not to at least leave a garrison and ambassador envoy to the planet. And the Borg cube is also erased from the plot, as is the fact that they were heavily hinting guiding the xB's in that cube was going to be Seven's new mission in life - instead she just bails on the cube to join Picard's new crew.
Picard's death was just about perfect. And it would have been great if they left it that, but obviously you can't do that, so instead Picard becomes a synth which I'm pretty sure he might have an actual moral issue with instead of just happily going along with it. And all that bullshit basically ret-con'ing him to be human by not giving him super strength and programming a special algorithm so he'd die when they figured he normally would...it's just this big giant handwave that restores the show to exactly where it started the season and I find that a little bit annoying. However, it was still done decently enough that I'll just take the good from those scenes and am looking forward to the next season.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
I don't really buy that
Data would want to die/stay dead. His life can still be finite even if he is revived, and his life can still have meaning, possibly more meaning, if he's alive to keep making a difference in the universe. It's an illogical argument unbefitting of Data.
narok, the evil romulan spy brother? they just kind of forgot about him or somehow i missed it in the final episode
also, dr jarati (synth doctor) is just forgiven?
I had the same question. I've rewatched it a few times thinking I missed something.
He's last seen being held down by a synth. Then not even the slightest mention. I am assuming the synths are holding him and Sutra prisoner? Would have been nice to have like a 3 second shot of that. Details!
At the very end, they show Raffi and Seven of Nine playing handsie and gazing lovingly at each other.
Did they ever in the entire season have even a one on one conversation before that? "Picard" has very much been my dual screen experience, so it's possible I just missed something entirely.
Yeah the whole thing just reeked of someone in the writer's room going "Well TROS just had a gay couple that no one knew or cared about kiss randomly in a scene at the end, we gotta one up that pointless randomness"
I think the "Star Trek is dead" reaction goes way too far. We still have Wrath of Khan. We still have Best of Both Worlds. We still have Duet and the Thaw and City on the Edge of Forever and The Inner Light and The Visitor and Spock's Brain and All Good Things. I don't think disliking the most recent Trek thing negates the good stuff. Otherwise we'd have all been here after Into Darkness. You can not like Discovery or Picard or anything else, but you can still appreciate what drew you to this show in the first place. Careful with ending up like the other Star thing, and maybe have a "better luck next time" attitude.
I didn't say "Star Trek is dead". I said "Star Trek is dead TO ME." And in context it was pretty clear that I meant the current and future franchises. It's entirely possible for me to reminisce about the things I enjoyed in the past while criticizing the shitty way they have handled the property since.
Also, we all have a finite amount of time available. Why should I give any Star Trek television my time just because stuff that happened literally 20 years ago happened to be good? The last four shows in a row have been everywhere from mediocre to actually mind-numbingly bad. This latest series had a handful of good moments through hours and hours of television. Sorry, but I have better things to do with my time when the people making these shows have proven that they can't make a good one to save their fucking lives. Consider how much worse this show likely would have been had Patrick Stewart not gotten so heavily involved. It's very likely that it would've been orders of magnitude worse than Discovery, which is actually saying something given how poorly that show is written.
The exact same thing happened with the Marvel Netflix shows. After both Iron Fist and Defenders I refused to watch any future seasons because they showed that they did not value my time. Frankly, I should've quit about 2 episodes into IF but I gave them the benefit of the doubt. That is literally dozens of hours of my life that I can't get back, and I'm supposed to say, "Oh well, better luck next time!" and give them even more of my time? Fuck that noise. Your next show gets exactly zero seconds of consideration until you have proven that it's worth watching.
There's so much good television and media and video games and books and everything else out now that is worth your time and money. Go do that stuff instead. And if actually want to send them a signal that this kind of thing is unacceptable, then nothing speaks more loudly than the deafening roar of nobody giving a shit.
Data would want to die/stay dead. His life can still be finite even if he is revived, and his life can still have meaning, possibly more meaning, if he's alive to keep making a difference in the universe. It's an illogical argument unbefitting of Data.
the writers seem to be really terrified of living longer than absolutely necessary. Why all this fear? Like, fucking relax. Live as long as toy like and if you get too bored to live just put a phaser to your head.
I'm a bit worried that if Guinan showed up she'd be all suicidal.
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
edited March 2020
oh no I just remembered something about Riker
so the entire reason Riker's son is dead is because of the synth ban. This only exists due to a massive Romulan plot and was proven to not be necessary. Spearheaded by Double Agent Commodore Oh. And Riker just lets her go and doesn't even mention it or seem emotional compromised at all. Also also why in the world would Starfleet just fucking stick him as the Acting Captain of the current flagship due to this situation. NOTHING IN THE SHOW MAKES SENSE and once again this is just the writers trying to pull a emotional string in an early episode without thinking about how it should pay off a few episodes later
god this show is just straight up bad and it gets more bad the more I think about it. ugh, such a squandered opportunity.
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David_TA fashion yes-man is no good to me.Copenhagen, DenmarkRegistered Userregular
so the entire reason Riker's son is dead is because of the synth ban. This only exists due to a massive Romulan plot and was proven to not be necessary. Spearheaded by Double Agent Commodore Oh. And Riker just lets her go and doesn't even mention it or seem emotional compromised at all. Also also why in the world would Starfleet just fucking stick him as the Acting Captain of the current flagship due to this situation. NOTHING IN THE SHOW MAKES SENSE and once again this is just the writers trying to pull a emotional string in an early episode without thinking about how it should pay off a few episodes later
god this show is just straight up bad and it gets more bad the more I think about it. ugh, such a squandered opportunity.
That seems like a conflation of what we the audience knows and what Riker the character knows. From the time it's figured out by Raffi in episode 8 that the Romulans were behind the Mars attack and when Riker shows up in episode 10, the only communication between the crew and the Federation was Picards priority request/SOS, which didn't mention Mars. Again, I could be missing something, but I don't think anyone outside of Picards crew (and the Romulans...) knows the truth about Mars at that point.
I think the biggest issue I have with this show is the same I have with a lot of short or single season shows, the John Mulaney Happy Birthday sign situation.
They spent an entire season weaving story threads and then the last episode was just a weird, curly Y because now everything had to be wrapped up neat and tight for the second season and they had, oh, 40 minutes to do it in.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
edited March 2020
They had at least 3 seasons' worth of stuff to explore - and I'm talking 20+ episode seasons - and they decided to cram everything into 10 episodes instead.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
They had at least 3 seasons' worth of stuff to explore - and I'm talking 20+ episode seasons - and they decided to cram everything into 10 episodes instead.
To be fair, had it been TNG that would have all be synthesized into two episodes at most.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
They had at least 3 seasons' worth of stuff to explore - and I'm talking 20+ episode seasons - and they decided to cram everything into 10 episodes instead.
Before the launch, CBS All Access renewed Star Trek: Picard for a second ten-episode season.
Man, while all the complaints I've seen have validity to be sure, I feel like some of you are being very hard on Picard. It feels like there's nothing it could do that would be good enough.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Man, while all the complaints I've seen have validity to be sure, I feel like some of you are being very hard on Picard. It feels like there's nothing it could do that would be good enough.
Speaking for myself, I just don't have the patience for "barely adequate" or "mediocre" anymore. There's way too much content out there, and a lot of it is amazing, and I simply will not live long enough to be able to consume all of it. So for someone to take something that was such a big part of my formative years and churn out a third-rate failed video-game plot with more holes than Janus VI, it's pretty frustrating.
Have you seen what's on TV right now? Can you honestly say that Picard holds up to anything other than whatever is on the CW right now?
If they didn't want to be held to a higher standard then they shouldn't be using the franchise. If this show didn't have Star Trek on it I would've treated it like any other middling television show and ignored it entirely. They used this franchise to get me to watch it and give it a chance, and I found it wanting. So much so that they can no longer use the franchise to get me to watch anything. Frankly, I'm surprised I lasted this long given the track record for Star Trek television over the past 20 years.
So first thoughts reflecting on this season.
It was flawed, but enjoyable. I'm glad I watched it, and I'm interested to see where they go from here. There are certainly things I'd change, and there were things I didn't like here and there. But overall, I found the ride worthwhile.
Man, while all the complaints I've seen have validity to be sure, I feel like some of you are being very hard on Picard. It feels like there's nothing it could do that would be good enough.
Speaking for myself, I just don't have the patience for "barely adequate" or "mediocre" anymore. There's way too much content out there, and a lot of it is amazing, and I simply will not live long enough to be able to consume all of it. So for someone to take something that was such a big part of my formative years and churn out a third-rate failed video-game plot with more holes than Janus VI, it's pretty frustrating.
Have you seen what's on TV right now? Can you honestly say that Picard holds up to anything other than whatever is on the CW right now?
If they didn't want to be held to a higher standard then they shouldn't be using the franchise. If this show didn't have Star Trek on it I would've treated it like any other middling television show and ignored it entirely. They used this franchise to get me to watch it and give it a chance, and I found it wanting. So much so that they can no longer use the franchise to get me to watch anything. Frankly, I'm surprised I lasted this long given the track record for Star Trek television over the past 20 years.
Yeah, the "you're being too hard on the show" argument would hold water if they hadn't made so many mistakes that even a first year film student wouldn't make. If they hadn't used shutterstock? if they hadn't used copy and paste ships? (saw a comment on a video where someone called the ships a Xerox-class ship, that made me laugh) If they hadn't cribbed from a plot that almost every sci fi nerd would know. If the writer didn't follow a pattern of cribbing from other media in the past with his previous show so much so that there was a lawsuit? I mean damn, if season 2 is about a....tricorder.. that holds a mysterious power source that gets found by a pakled, and the federation council puts together a....cabal... of 9 of the galaxy's finest from all the various factions. romulan, klingon, starfleet, and the pakled's dear friend Reginod that helps him fight temptation to use the tricorder for evil and helps him travel to the replicator on planet doom so that they can recycle it properly
I liked the general thrust of the season, personally. The last episode was admittedly weak, mostly I think due to the very slow start of the season suddenly transitioning into breakneck wrapping everything up in a two-parter. It probably should have had an extra couple episodes to let it develop a bit more. But, overall, I still liked it and will watch season 2. Hopefully, now that we have the cast, the next season can be a bit smoother in pacing.
It's good, sometimes great, and definitely has some serious problems. Like almost every other Trek series and movie.
Finale Spoilers
I figured Trek would go for the Green Ending.
I liked the end point we reached, but I think the episode sort of fell apart in the third act. There just...aren't any consequences. Gold!Soji gets knocked and the fact that she's the synth's first murderer is never addressed. Oh just goes home, with apparently nobody in the Federation concerned that she knows literally everything about Starfleet and their security is hopelessly compromised. Picard dies, gets a new body that's basically the same as the old one—so now he just has the normal ticking clock, instead of the slightly more urgent ticking clock introduced earlier.
I want to pick at that last bit for a moment. Death fakeouts don't work most of the time, but this one was especially weird. Because..why? It served no narrative purpose. You could cut from Riker's departure to Picard et. al. setting off for the next adventure and you wouldn't lose a thing.
Maybe it could've worked if the abnormality had been a constant presence, but they only busted out the dramatic headaches/pepper up drugs at the eleventh hour. It could've worked if he'd died, stayed dead, with resurrection as a plot hook for the next season. But the execution here just did not work.
I get the copy & paste Starfleet—they definitely blew the budget on the Space Flowers. They were awesome, so it was worth it. The ship nerd in me is a little disappointed; I wanted more ship classes to drain my wallet in STO! It was, however, awesome to see Captain Riker in action. Hopefully he and the other TNG alums show up in later stories.
All that aside, I'm pleased with it overall. All of the new characters landed and, unlike Discovery's bridge crew, they're fleshed out.
Anyway, here's to season 2 of Star Trek: Mass Effect.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Man, while all the complaints I've seen have validity to be sure, I feel like some of you are being very hard on Picard. It feels like there's nothing it could do that would be good enough.
It's far more that times have changed and TV has changed enormously in the many years since TNG ended. There's no excuse anymore for bad or mediocre seasons, especially when a show is trying to cash in on a much-beloved franchise with well-developed characters. The Expanse was excellent right out of the gate. Orville had no problem at all starting the first season on firm footing. The Dark Crystal did amazing work with both the source material and adding to it. The Mandalorian is pretty much the best live-action material to come out of Star Wars since the original movies.
There's too many options out there these days for people to have any need whatsoever to tolerate having the material they like handled like a low-effort cash grab. And you definitely aren't going to be able to get away with swiping disappointing stories from other disappointing scifi franchises and reasonably expect people to be happy with the results. That goes double for a franchise which is, and they lay it out in the opening, supposed to "boldly go where no man has gone before", not "double back and rehash some really prehashed ground".
Man, while all the complaints I've seen have validity to be sure, I feel like some of you are being very hard on Picard. It feels like there's nothing it could do that would be good enough.
It's far more that times have changed and TV has changed enormously in the many years since TNG ended. There's no excuse anymore for bad or mediocre seasons, especially when a show is trying to cash in on a much-beloved franchise with well-developed characters.
I haven't finished watching Picard yet, but this statement really befuddles me. There's no excuse anymore for mediocre or worse seasons sounds like you're from Lake Wobegon where "everyone is above average". You literally can't have TV without some seasons being bad or mediocre. By its very definition, there must be some TV that is just that! Furthermore, art isn't like a 8th grade book report that you can just keep rewriting and making it better every time. Each TV series is different people, trying to do different things. There is no template that people can follow about how to make this particular idea for a TV show "good". Just because one show, using their own template was a success for you, doesn't mean another show, trying to follow even as close as possible to that other show, would make it good.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Yeah but none of those bad or mediocre things have to be connected to the Star Trek franchise.
The existence of a descriptive mathematical curve does not mean that we should accept a mediocre show.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Man, while all the complaints I've seen have validity to be sure, I feel like some of you are being very hard on Picard. It feels like there's nothing it could do that would be good enough.
It's far more that times have changed and TV has changed enormously in the many years since TNG ended. There's no excuse anymore for bad or mediocre seasons, especially when a show is trying to cash in on a much-beloved franchise with well-developed characters.
I haven't finished watching Picard yet, but this statement really befuddles me. There's no excuse anymore for mediocre or worse seasons sounds like you're from Lake Wobegon where "everyone is above average". You literally can't have TV without some seasons being bad or mediocre. By its very definition, there must be some TV that is just that! Furthermore, art isn't like a 8th grade book report that you can just keep rewriting and making it better every time. Each TV series is different people, trying to do different things. There is no template that people can follow about how to make this particular idea for a TV show "good". Just because one show, using their own template was a success for you, doesn't mean another show, trying to follow even as close as possible to that other show, would make it good.
No, you can absolutely have objectively bad seasons. Bad writing, bad editing, bad acting, whatever. There absolutely are templates and basic levels of acceptability that go with making a show start at a decent level of quality, and there's just no reason anymore to start a show off with a bad season unless the parent company just doesn't give a shit.
That's a whole different beast from a show where the first season is merely weaker than the others. Voyager starts bad and stays bad. DS9's first season is weaker than the others but it isn't a bad season, it just can't compare with the later buildup of a story over multiple seasons. The first few episodes of SHIELD are rough, then the rest of the season is great and the show stays consistently good. The Expanse improves as the series goes on because the writers have a handle on the material and the actors own their roles more, but the first season of The Expanse is still very good.
So yes, you literally can have good shows where the entire series is good but some parts are better than others, just as you can absolutely have shows with outright bad seasons. The baseline quality of a show has justifiably gone up quite a bit in the last couple of decades, and there's no reason at all that a Trek anything should be excluded from that. Better seasons don't make other seasons bad, bad seasons make seasons bad.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
One factor which is probably causing my visceral dislike for this season of Picard is that it feels like they remade all the same mistakes as Discovery, especially at the tail end of the season. I'm also likely even more disappointed because the show started off so well and then jumped off the deep end entirely.
Man, while all the complaints I've seen have validity to be sure, I feel like some of you are being very hard on Picard. It feels like there's nothing it could do that would be good enough.
It's far more that times have changed and TV has changed enormously in the many years since TNG ended. There's no excuse anymore for bad or mediocre seasons, especially when a show is trying to cash in on a much-beloved franchise with well-developed characters.
I haven't finished watching Picard yet, but this statement really befuddles me. There's no excuse anymore for mediocre or worse seasons sounds like you're from Lake Wobegon where "everyone is above average". You literally can't have TV without some seasons being bad or mediocre. By its very definition, there must be some TV that is just that! Furthermore, art isn't like a 8th grade book report that you can just keep rewriting and making it better every time. Each TV series is different people, trying to do different things. There is no template that people can follow about how to make this particular idea for a TV show "good". Just because one show, using their own template was a success for you, doesn't mean another show, trying to follow even as close as possible to that other show, would make it good.
Don't be ridiculous, there isn't some scarcity of quality and for some shows to be good, others must be bad. All media, all art can and should be excellent and as an audience we shouldn't compromise irrationally. If the artists didn't have the money or the time or were otherwise interfered with (e.g. "executive meddling") then ok, fine. If something is obviously well made but it's a genre or format you personally don't enjoy, then ok fine. This isn't any of those situations.
They had everything they needed to make a great series and everyone commenting on it in this thread is exactly the target audience, it's just another missed opportunity.
The first 10 episodes of TNG had: The Naked Now, Code of Honor, and Justice. DS9 had Move Along Home. I'm perfectly willing to cut them some slack.
I guarantee you that the next season of Picard will not have less of the things people are complaining about because Discovery was the same way. They think that is how you have to make a TV show.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
The first 10 episodes of TNG had: The Naked Now, Code of Honor, and Justice. DS9 had Move Along Home. I'm perfectly willing to cut them some slack.
I guarantee you that the next season of Picard will not have less of the things people are complaining about because Discovery was the same way. They think that is how you have to make a TV show.
Season 2 of TNG wasn't great either. TNG didn't hit it's stride until the third season. And even then it wasn't like they never did a bad move every again. (what season was Sub Rosa?)
There's this weird sense with modern TV that if every episode and character isn't pitch perfect then it fucking sucks forever and can't compare to 90s TV. I feel like no one actually remembers what 90s TV was actually like.
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"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Man, while all the complaints I've seen have validity to be sure, I feel like some of you are being very hard on Picard. It feels like there's nothing it could do that would be good enough.
It's far more that times have changed and TV has changed enormously in the many years since TNG ended. There's no excuse anymore for bad or mediocre seasons, especially when a show is trying to cash in on a much-beloved franchise with well-developed characters.
I haven't finished watching Picard yet, but this statement really befuddles me. There's no excuse anymore for mediocre or worse seasons sounds like you're from Lake Wobegon where "everyone is above average". You literally can't have TV without some seasons being bad or mediocre. By its very definition, there must be some TV that is just that! Furthermore, art isn't like a 8th grade book report that you can just keep rewriting and making it better every time. Each TV series is different people, trying to do different things. There is no template that people can follow about how to make this particular idea for a TV show "good". Just because one show, using their own template was a success for you, doesn't mean another show, trying to follow even as close as possible to that other show, would make it good.
No, you can absolutely have objectively bad seasons. Bad writing, bad editing, bad acting, whatever. There absolutely are templates and basic levels of acceptability that go with making a show start at a decent level of quality, and there's just no reason anymore to start a show off with a bad season unless the parent company just doesn't give a shit.
That's a whole different beast from a show where the first season is merely weaker than the others. Voyager starts bad and stays bad. DS9's first season is weaker than the others but it isn't a bad season, it just can't compare with the later buildup of a story over multiple seasons. The first few episodes of SHIELD are rough, then the rest of the season is great and the show stays consistently good. The Expanse improves as the series goes on because the writers have a handle on the material and the actors own their roles more, but the first season of The Expanse is still very good.
So yes, you literally can have good shows where the entire series is good but some parts are better than others, just as you can absolutely have shows with outright bad seasons. The baseline quality of a show has justifiably gone up quite a bit in the last couple of decades, and there's no reason at all that a Trek anything should be excluded from that. Better seasons don't make other seasons bad, bad seasons make seasons bad.
I don't understand your distinction between "weaker" vs. "bad" vs. "mediocre", or why that makes a difference to your original statement. Even if all tv shows could somehow become objectively "better" as time goes on, a "weaker" episode would still be mediocre compared to better episodes, or bad seasons, yes?
My point is exactly that there will always be all of those things. Shows that start bad and stay bad, shows that start good and stay good, and every mix of in between. A show may be bad for all number of reasons (bad writing, bad management, a vision that just wasn't fleshed out enough). I mean, you said that a show has no excuses for being bad anymore, but what exactly has changed between whenever it was that shows had an excuse for being bad and now, when apparently there are no excuses?
Don't be ridiculous, there isn't some scarcity of quality and for some shows to be good, others must be bad. All media, all art can and should be excellent and as an audience we shouldn't compromise irrationally. If the artists didn't have the money or the time or were otherwise interfered with (e.g. "executive meddling") then ok, fine.
Isn't this exactly what Ninja said isn't acceptable? I'm saying that is certainly a reason for a show to be bad, and I think that artists certainly can point to this as an excuse why their art didn't live up to what their vision was.
I want to reiterate that this wasn't specific to Picard. Like I said, I haven't watched the whole thing yet, I may very well think that it wasn't all that great. But to focus my argument a bit more, I just don't understand arguments like "its 2020, why is there still bad/mediocre TV?" like somehow art is somehow always improving and that at some point we've "evolved past" having bad/mediocre TV (credit to Zoom there).
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
The issue isn't with the mere existence of below-average television. The issue is that Picard falls within that bucket.
Holding something to a standard doesn't mean that you suddenly no longer believe that things can be subjectively ranked.
Am I not allowed to point out that Donald Trump is a shitty President just because "bad Presidents are bound to show up once in a while"?
However having just finished Picard the fact that you're comparing the quality of Picard as a show to the quality of Trump as a President tells me that your barometer for what is an acceptable level of quality in a show might just be a littlefantastically out of whack.
Picard wasn't the best show I've ever seen in my life. It doesn't even make the top ten but calling it mediocre, or below average, or CW quality is just, I um, I guess agree to disagree?
The first 10 episodes of TNG had: The Naked Now, Code of Honor, and Justice. DS9 had Move Along Home. I'm perfectly willing to cut them some slack.
I guarantee you that the next season of Picard will not have less of the things people are complaining about because Discovery was the same way. They think that is how you have to make a TV show.
Season 2 of TNG wasn't great either. TNG didn't hit it's stride until the third season. And even then it wasn't like they never did a bad move every again. (what season was Sub Rosa?)
There's this weird sense with modern TV that if every episode and character isn't pitch perfect then it fucking sucks forever and can't compare to 90s TV. I feel like no one actually remembers what 90s TV was actually like.
It's an invalid comparison because the Discovery and Picard teams think that the things I think are bad are good, so it's never going to have less of them. I'm not telling you to stop liking Picard, but talking about people whitewashing 90s Trek is irrelevant when my point is that Picard S2 will 100% have a bullshit overall plot with a rushed wrap up. I would compare recent Trek to Chibnall Doctor Who.
so the entire reason Riker's son is dead is because of the synth ban. This only exists due to a massive Romulan plot and was proven to not be necessary. Spearheaded by Double Agent Commodore Oh. And Riker just lets her go and doesn't even mention it or seem emotional compromised at all. Also also why in the world would Starfleet just fucking stick him as the Acting Captain of the current flagship due to this situation. NOTHING IN THE SHOW MAKES SENSE and once again this is just the writers trying to pull a emotional string in an early episode without thinking about how it should pay off a few episodes later
god this show is just straight up bad and it gets more bad the more I think about it. ugh, such a squandered opportunity.
It also made no sense why
Oh would reveal herself to be a double agent. Starfleet doesn't actually have any evidence that Oh is a spy other than the word of Picard and Jurati. They have no physical evidence of any kind and Picard is out of favor and Jurati is a murderer.
And it made no sense why Oh wouldn't just point to the portal with Reaper tentacles coming out and tell Riker, "hey, dumbass! Those are genocidal super robots coming to kill all organics in the galaxy. The synths are calling it and we're trying to stop them."
The Zhat Vash also makes no sense. They were established as a super secret organization that even the Tal Shiar thinks is a myth. But now they can just take over a fleet of 200 ships? And what exactly is their plan after this? They've been exposed. People are going to know about them and what they did. The Federation will tell the Romulans that Oh and the Zhat Vash were responsible for the destruction of the fleet meant to save 900 million Romulans. How does Oh plan to survive the hundreds of millions of Romulans who are going to try to murder her for what she did?
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
However having just finished Picard the fact that you're comparing the quality of Picard as a show to the quality of Trump as a President tells me that your barometer for what is an acceptable level of quality in a show might just be a littlefantastically out of whack.
Picard wasn't the best show I've ever seen in my life. It doesn't even make the top ten but calling it mediocre, or below average, or CW quality is just, I um, I guess agree to disagree?
That wasn't the argument being made. chrono_traveller has repeatedly brought up that you can't hold Picard to a standard because, by definition, there are things which exist which will always fall on the "below average" portion of the spectrum. Yes, there are bad television shows. Yes, half of all television is, as a matter of semantic necessity, below average. That does not preclude someone from being able to have the opinion that Picard is below average, mediocre, bad, or [insert term here].
That's the argument that doesn't make sense. And that's the argument that I'm refuting when I extend that logic to Trump and the Presidency. I'm not comparing Picard to Trump. Anyone who has bothered to actually read the posts that people are writing instead of viscerally reacting to tone or negative opinions and throwing up straw men would understand this.
However having just finished Picard the fact that you're comparing the quality of Picard as a show to the quality of Trump as a President tells me that your barometer for what is an acceptable level of quality in a show might just be a littlefantastically out of whack.
Picard wasn't the best show I've ever seen in my life. It doesn't even make the top ten but calling it mediocre, or below average, or CW quality is just, I um, I guess agree to disagree?
That wasn't the argument being made. chrono_traveller has repeatedly brought up that you can't hold Picard to a standard because, by definition, there are things which exist which will always fall on the "below average" portion of the spectrum. Yes, there are bad television shows. Yes, half of all television is, as a matter of semantic necessity, below average. That does not preclude someone from being able to have the opinion that Picard is below average, mediocre, bad, or [insert term here].
That's the argument that doesn't make sense. And that's the argument that I'm refuting when I extend that logic to Trump and the Presidency. I'm not comparing Picard to Trump. Anyone who has bothered to actually read the posts that people are writing instead of viscerally reacting to tone or negative opinions and throwing up straw men would understand this.
If you weren't meaning to compare Picard to Trump you had a very odd way of going about it, Inq.
Picard ended up having a pro-Trump message about refugees.
The Romulans were responsible for the attack on Mars. They put themselves in the situation they are in. The Federation tried to help and the Romulans blew up Mars and killed 90,000 people. The Federation never should have tried to help in the first place. And one of the highest ranking members of Starfleet is a Romulan spy who's been sabotaging them and conducting assassinations on earth. The Federation was foolish to be open and benevolent. If they had listened to the isolationist and xenophobic voices among them, Mars wouldn't have been destroyed and tens of thousands of Federation citizens would be alive.
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This is the problem with applying the "killer app" strategy to a subscription service. At least HBO had Chernobyl.
An even further problem is I would have paid $30 for the season, specifically so I wouldn’t have to sign up for another damn subscription service.
CBS really doesn’t want more of my money.
Generally, for a finale it took forever to get going, but when it did it had my attention. Data's death I thought was pretty poignant and well done. I would have liked it more if they had shown all of his friends from the enterprise around the couch during his final scene...but the uniformed Picard was still a great touch. As was the moment when Data asked Picard if he regrets sacrificing himself for Soji. The bad was that the terrible hairpiece they used for Data looked like it came straight from the Steven Seagal collection and if they'd put a gross looking goatee on Data I'd think I was watching one of Stevo's latest terrible straight to video efforts.
While on the macro level I felt the show managed to wrap things up with an interesting and fun final episode, the hand waiving and fridge logic moments were everywhere, and given the crazy nature of the plot they had to tie together, not surprising. It's kind of hilarious how they give the evil sister a final death but just flat out erase Narek and evil Soji from the show. Everyone packing up and going home once the beacon is destroyed kind of makes sense, as I could absolutely see Oh making the strategic calculation that they couldn't defeat the federation fleet today nor afford the war now that the Federation had guaranteed the planet's safety, but the plot demands they have to move on quickly so you get this bizarre scene of everyone just nope'ing out of the system, including the Federation fleet that would be crazy not to at least leave a garrison and ambassador envoy to the planet. And the Borg cube is also erased from the plot, as is the fact that they were heavily hinting guiding the xB's in that cube was going to be Seven's new mission in life - instead she just bails on the cube to join Picard's new crew.
Picard's death was just about perfect. And it would have been great if they left it that, but obviously you can't do that, so instead Picard becomes a synth which I'm pretty sure he might have an actual moral issue with instead of just happily going along with it. And all that bullshit basically ret-con'ing him to be human by not giving him super strength and programming a special algorithm so he'd die when they figured he normally would...it's just this big giant handwave that restores the show to exactly where it started the season and I find that a little bit annoying. However, it was still done decently enough that I'll just take the good from those scenes and am looking forward to the next season.
I had the same question. I've rewatched it a few times thinking I missed something.
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I didn't say "Star Trek is dead". I said "Star Trek is dead TO ME." And in context it was pretty clear that I meant the current and future franchises. It's entirely possible for me to reminisce about the things I enjoyed in the past while criticizing the shitty way they have handled the property since.
Also, we all have a finite amount of time available. Why should I give any Star Trek television my time just because stuff that happened literally 20 years ago happened to be good? The last four shows in a row have been everywhere from mediocre to actually mind-numbingly bad. This latest series had a handful of good moments through hours and hours of television. Sorry, but I have better things to do with my time when the people making these shows have proven that they can't make a good one to save their fucking lives. Consider how much worse this show likely would have been had Patrick Stewart not gotten so heavily involved. It's very likely that it would've been orders of magnitude worse than Discovery, which is actually saying something given how poorly that show is written.
The exact same thing happened with the Marvel Netflix shows. After both Iron Fist and Defenders I refused to watch any future seasons because they showed that they did not value my time. Frankly, I should've quit about 2 episodes into IF but I gave them the benefit of the doubt. That is literally dozens of hours of my life that I can't get back, and I'm supposed to say, "Oh well, better luck next time!" and give them even more of my time? Fuck that noise. Your next show gets exactly zero seconds of consideration until you have proven that it's worth watching.
There's so much good television and media and video games and books and everything else out now that is worth your time and money. Go do that stuff instead. And if actually want to send them a signal that this kind of thing is unacceptable, then nothing speaks more loudly than the deafening roar of nobody giving a shit.
I'm a bit worried that if Guinan showed up she'd be all suicidal.
I think the biggest issue I have with this show is the same I have with a lot of short or single season shows, the John Mulaney Happy Birthday sign situation.
To be fair, had it been TNG that would have all be synthesized into two episodes at most.
Speaking for myself, I just don't have the patience for "barely adequate" or "mediocre" anymore. There's way too much content out there, and a lot of it is amazing, and I simply will not live long enough to be able to consume all of it. So for someone to take something that was such a big part of my formative years and churn out a third-rate failed video-game plot with more holes than Janus VI, it's pretty frustrating.
Have you seen what's on TV right now? Can you honestly say that Picard holds up to anything other than whatever is on the CW right now?
If they didn't want to be held to a higher standard then they shouldn't be using the franchise. If this show didn't have Star Trek on it I would've treated it like any other middling television show and ignored it entirely. They used this franchise to get me to watch it and give it a chance, and I found it wanting. So much so that they can no longer use the franchise to get me to watch anything. Frankly, I'm surprised I lasted this long given the track record for Star Trek television over the past 20 years.
It was flawed, but enjoyable. I'm glad I watched it, and I'm interested to see where they go from here. There are certainly things I'd change, and there were things I didn't like here and there. But overall, I found the ride worthwhile.
Anyone want to watch someone talk about the TNG episode Symbiosis?
Yeah, the "you're being too hard on the show" argument would hold water if they hadn't made so many mistakes that even a first year film student wouldn't make. If they hadn't used shutterstock? if they hadn't used copy and paste ships? (saw a comment on a video where someone called the ships a Xerox-class ship, that made me laugh) If they hadn't cribbed from a plot that almost every sci fi nerd would know. If the writer didn't follow a pattern of cribbing from other media in the past with his previous show so much so that there was a lawsuit? I mean damn, if season 2 is about a....tricorder.. that holds a mysterious power source that gets found by a pakled, and the federation council puts together a....cabal... of 9 of the galaxy's finest from all the various factions. romulan, klingon, starfleet, and the pakled's dear friend Reginod that helps him fight temptation to use the tricorder for evil and helps him travel to the replicator on planet doom so that they can recycle it properly
Then will you say that the show has a problem?
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I'll be taking no further questions.
i didn't know Gordon reviewed Star Treks.
It's good, sometimes great, and definitely has some serious problems. Like almost every other Trek series and movie.
Finale Spoilers
I liked the end point we reached, but I think the episode sort of fell apart in the third act. There just...aren't any consequences. Gold!Soji gets knocked and the fact that she's the synth's first murderer is never addressed. Oh just goes home, with apparently nobody in the Federation concerned that she knows literally everything about Starfleet and their security is hopelessly compromised. Picard dies, gets a new body that's basically the same as the old one—so now he just has the normal ticking clock, instead of the slightly more urgent ticking clock introduced earlier.
I want to pick at that last bit for a moment. Death fakeouts don't work most of the time, but this one was especially weird. Because..why? It served no narrative purpose. You could cut from Riker's departure to Picard et. al. setting off for the next adventure and you wouldn't lose a thing.
Maybe it could've worked if the abnormality had been a constant presence, but they only busted out the dramatic headaches/pepper up drugs at the eleventh hour. It could've worked if he'd died, stayed dead, with resurrection as a plot hook for the next season. But the execution here just did not work.
I get the copy & paste Starfleet—they definitely blew the budget on the Space Flowers. They were awesome, so it was worth it. The ship nerd in me is a little disappointed; I wanted more ship classes to drain my wallet in STO! It was, however, awesome to see Captain Riker in action. Hopefully he and the other TNG alums show up in later stories.
All that aside, I'm pleased with it overall. All of the new characters landed and, unlike Discovery's bridge crew, they're fleshed out.
Anyway, here's to season 2 of Star Trek: Mass Effect.
It's far more that times have changed and TV has changed enormously in the many years since TNG ended. There's no excuse anymore for bad or mediocre seasons, especially when a show is trying to cash in on a much-beloved franchise with well-developed characters. The Expanse was excellent right out of the gate. Orville had no problem at all starting the first season on firm footing. The Dark Crystal did amazing work with both the source material and adding to it. The Mandalorian is pretty much the best live-action material to come out of Star Wars since the original movies.
There's too many options out there these days for people to have any need whatsoever to tolerate having the material they like handled like a low-effort cash grab. And you definitely aren't going to be able to get away with swiping disappointing stories from other disappointing scifi franchises and reasonably expect people to be happy with the results. That goes double for a franchise which is, and they lay it out in the opening, supposed to "boldly go where no man has gone before", not "double back and rehash some really prehashed ground".
I haven't finished watching Picard yet, but this statement really befuddles me. There's no excuse anymore for mediocre or worse seasons sounds like you're from Lake Wobegon where "everyone is above average". You literally can't have TV without some seasons being bad or mediocre. By its very definition, there must be some TV that is just that! Furthermore, art isn't like a 8th grade book report that you can just keep rewriting and making it better every time. Each TV series is different people, trying to do different things. There is no template that people can follow about how to make this particular idea for a TV show "good". Just because one show, using their own template was a success for you, doesn't mean another show, trying to follow even as close as possible to that other show, would make it good.
The existence of a descriptive mathematical curve does not mean that we should accept a mediocre show.
No, you can absolutely have objectively bad seasons. Bad writing, bad editing, bad acting, whatever. There absolutely are templates and basic levels of acceptability that go with making a show start at a decent level of quality, and there's just no reason anymore to start a show off with a bad season unless the parent company just doesn't give a shit.
That's a whole different beast from a show where the first season is merely weaker than the others. Voyager starts bad and stays bad. DS9's first season is weaker than the others but it isn't a bad season, it just can't compare with the later buildup of a story over multiple seasons. The first few episodes of SHIELD are rough, then the rest of the season is great and the show stays consistently good. The Expanse improves as the series goes on because the writers have a handle on the material and the actors own their roles more, but the first season of The Expanse is still very good.
So yes, you literally can have good shows where the entire series is good but some parts are better than others, just as you can absolutely have shows with outright bad seasons. The baseline quality of a show has justifiably gone up quite a bit in the last couple of decades, and there's no reason at all that a Trek anything should be excluded from that. Better seasons don't make other seasons bad, bad seasons make seasons bad.
Don't be ridiculous, there isn't some scarcity of quality and for some shows to be good, others must be bad. All media, all art can and should be excellent and as an audience we shouldn't compromise irrationally. If the artists didn't have the money or the time or were otherwise interfered with (e.g. "executive meddling") then ok, fine. If something is obviously well made but it's a genre or format you personally don't enjoy, then ok fine. This isn't any of those situations.
They had everything they needed to make a great series and everyone commenting on it in this thread is exactly the target audience, it's just another missed opportunity.
Season 2 of TNG wasn't great either. TNG didn't hit it's stride until the third season. And even then it wasn't like they never did a bad move every again. (what season was Sub Rosa?)
There's this weird sense with modern TV that if every episode and character isn't pitch perfect then it fucking sucks forever and can't compare to 90s TV. I feel like no one actually remembers what 90s TV was actually like.
I don't understand your distinction between "weaker" vs. "bad" vs. "mediocre", or why that makes a difference to your original statement. Even if all tv shows could somehow become objectively "better" as time goes on, a "weaker" episode would still be mediocre compared to better episodes, or bad seasons, yes?
My point is exactly that there will always be all of those things. Shows that start bad and stay bad, shows that start good and stay good, and every mix of in between. A show may be bad for all number of reasons (bad writing, bad management, a vision that just wasn't fleshed out enough). I mean, you said that a show has no excuses for being bad anymore, but what exactly has changed between whenever it was that shows had an excuse for being bad and now, when apparently there are no excuses?
Isn't this exactly what Ninja said isn't acceptable? I'm saying that is certainly a reason for a show to be bad, and I think that artists certainly can point to this as an excuse why their art didn't live up to what their vision was.
I want to reiterate that this wasn't specific to Picard. Like I said, I haven't watched the whole thing yet, I may very well think that it wasn't all that great. But to focus my argument a bit more, I just don't understand arguments like "its 2020, why is there still bad/mediocre TV?" like somehow art is somehow always improving and that at some point we've "evolved past" having bad/mediocre TV (credit to Zoom there).
Holding something to a standard doesn't mean that you suddenly no longer believe that things can be subjectively ranked.
Am I not allowed to point out that Donald Trump is a shitty President just because "bad Presidents are bound to show up once in a while"?
However having just finished Picard the fact that you're comparing the quality of Picard as a show to the quality of Trump as a President tells me that your barometer for what is an acceptable level of quality in a show might just be a littlefantastically out of whack.
Picard wasn't the best show I've ever seen in my life. It doesn't even make the top ten but calling it mediocre, or below average, or CW quality is just, I um, I guess agree to disagree?
It also made no sense why
And it made no sense why Oh wouldn't just point to the portal with Reaper tentacles coming out and tell Riker, "hey, dumbass! Those are genocidal super robots coming to kill all organics in the galaxy. The synths are calling it and we're trying to stop them."
The Zhat Vash also makes no sense. They were established as a super secret organization that even the Tal Shiar thinks is a myth. But now they can just take over a fleet of 200 ships? And what exactly is their plan after this? They've been exposed. People are going to know about them and what they did. The Federation will tell the Romulans that Oh and the Zhat Vash were responsible for the destruction of the fleet meant to save 900 million Romulans. How does Oh plan to survive the hundreds of millions of Romulans who are going to try to murder her for what she did?
That wasn't the argument being made. chrono_traveller has repeatedly brought up that you can't hold Picard to a standard because, by definition, there are things which exist which will always fall on the "below average" portion of the spectrum. Yes, there are bad television shows. Yes, half of all television is, as a matter of semantic necessity, below average. That does not preclude someone from being able to have the opinion that Picard is below average, mediocre, bad, or [insert term here].
That's the argument that doesn't make sense. And that's the argument that I'm refuting when I extend that logic to Trump and the Presidency. I'm not comparing Picard to Trump. Anyone who has bothered to actually read the posts that people are writing instead of viscerally reacting to tone or negative opinions and throwing up straw men would understand this.
If you weren't meaning to compare Picard to Trump you had a very odd way of going about it, Inq.
The Romulans were responsible for the attack on Mars. They put themselves in the situation they are in. The Federation tried to help and the Romulans blew up Mars and killed 90,000 people. The Federation never should have tried to help in the first place. And one of the highest ranking members of Starfleet is a Romulan spy who's been sabotaging them and conducting assassinations on earth. The Federation was foolish to be open and benevolent. If they had listened to the isolationist and xenophobic voices among them, Mars wouldn't have been destroyed and tens of thousands of Federation citizens would be alive.