Wow a rare posting from someone with one of the best avatars on the board. I haven't seen it yet but your endorsement is encouraging and that TOS feline with the penetrating stare is still way cool. Glad it lived up to your expectations. I like history and want to see Star Trek use its history while telling new stories and also bringing in a new generation of characters. This show is going to do that. I know it is just one episode but did recently rewatching TNG add to your enjoyment of this pilot? Did it bring home the enormity of revisiting (after almost twenty years) a character with a big history in the franchise? Did Seven appear yet and if so did she seem more human and adjusted to her post Borg life? Seems to me that she should. Actually nevermind about Seven it must be too soon for her to appear.
I hate Discovery but it probably had the best pilot episode apart from "Where No Man Has Gone Before". It set up what the series, such as it is, would be about from the outset just like TOS did in both of its pilot episodes. The Picard pilot did pretty much the same thing so I'd rank it highly as a first episode. That's not to say the other spin offs didn't set up their premise effectively in their pilots but they were pretty clunky in comparison to the debut episodes of TOS, Discovery and Picard. "The Man Trap", the episode of TOS that actually aired first, did a pretty good job of setting the series up too.
I feel like those "other" pilots you mention actually had a much harder job. One of the things that chafes me about a lot of modern day shows is the "this is just a ten part story" approach! It makes the individual episodes not matter. Everything is just a chunk of a larger story. In many ways, it' s much easier to write the first episode of Picard as all you have to do is set stuff up and not pay off anything. You can just tease a few storylines, you can have stuff that doesn't get resolved. You can introduce far fewer characters. "Farpoint" is arguably not a good episode, but the pilots for DS9 and VOY (even though I strongly disliked the latter show) were both pretty good and had a much higher degree of difficulty. They had to introduce an entire cast of regular characters, make them distinct and specific and set up the important relationships. They had to tell you the premise of the show and make it clear what the series was about. And they also had to come up with an actual plot with a beginning, middle and end that existed alongside all of those other considerations and supported the goals of setting everything up. That's a VERY hard thing to do and professional writers talk all the time about how pilots are usually the hardest episode of any series to write. But Picard doesn't have a pilot at all, it just has a "first chapter." Entirely different situation.
I see your buttock and raise you another. Seriously though, a solid A. This was the closest to a perfect premiere episode that Trek has ever had.
But is it really a debut? Or actually just a long-overdue continuation of TNG? After all, this leans heavily on the history of Picard and Data. Even previous premieres like DS9 and TNG only had brief appearances by previous characters, while this brings back characters and keeps them in the center of the story. Still, it was quite enjoyable. Certainly not the dumpster fire that so many doom and gloom prognosticators on YouTube swore it was going to be. Definitely good to be back in the Prime timeline. First Trek I've enjoyed since before Enterprise premiered.
I'd say yes, since everyone behind the camera never had anything to do with TNG. They were fans just like us in 87. So to be able to pick up 20 years later is a credit to them as much as the actors sliding back into their roles.
On IMDb, it currently holds a rating of 8.6 which means it is tied with TNG for the status as the best-rated Trek series ever. Personally, I think this is a bit of a hyperbole. Based on its first episode I'd place it somewhere in the middle field below TOS and TNG, but above VOY or DIS. IMO, possibly the best Trek series since DS9 but it's a bit too early to tell.
A very good start. A fascinating story has begun. Amazing production values. I'm not the biggest TNG fan (I think it had some solid gold episodes, but surrounded with lots of mediocre dross) but I loved it. Fingers crossed it continues this way.
I'd have to say yes. All the characters except Picard are new in the first episode, but I felt like I knew Picard while watching. Whereas if I didn't go through all of TNG again, it would feel more like "Here's this guy I remember from way back when!" I'd say someone not familiar with TNG or who had never seen it would be able to get by, and would still be able to enjoy it, but they'd be doing a lot more gap-filling in their head in trying to get a grasp of who Picard is. But after re-watching TNG, there's a moment in "Remembrance" where Picard speaks up and there's zero doubt this is Picard from TNG except older and in different circumstances. This isn't a typical first episode of a new Star Trek series. It's an extension of TNG without actually being TNG. I told people in another thread I thought this isn't TNG II so much as it's "90% new, 10% high school reunion". It's different, so it has to be treated differently. But it does have its own unique feel. Separate from both TNG and DSC. She hasn't appeared yet. It sounds like Seven won't be appearing until the fourth episode. I'm expecting the core character to be the same but in different circumstances. I think she'll be more Human but not less post-Borg. I think the fact that she'll be part of this adventure instead of sitting on the sidelines, like Riker and Troi seem to be, shows that she hasn't settled down to live a regular life. Seven, Hugh, and others like them have probably made a home for themselves in the "in-between" range. But we'll know for sure in a few weeks.
But that's kind of like saying TWoK isn't a sequel to TMP because the director, producers, SFX, makeup, etc. are all new crew, the gap in time notwithstanding. Agreed. About the only episode I actually care to watch nowadays is "The Inner Light." Coincidentally, Sir Patrick is looking a lot like his Kamin character. Rather good predictive aging there.
It's fair to call it a sequel. Ripley was the only character from Alien to make it to Aliens. Picard is the only main character from TNG to be a main character in PIC. Hugh was only a guest character before and Seven is being imported from VOY. But the way the show is written, produced, and feels, it's very distinct from TNG. I would not say it's anything similar to the Berman Era in general either. It has its own flavor. The story is a continuation, even if we're only really continuing with one of the main characters, but it's definitely not the Star Trek from 1987-1994. It's a Star Trek for 2020. The new characters bear this out even further.