Season 1 as a Whole

So you denigrate the person who watched Picard and determined it was garbage, for watching it. And you denigrate the person who didn't watch Picard and determined it was garbage, for not watching it.

You're not fooling anyone into thinking you're making a good-faith argument.

 

Wheres the denigration?

 

Your use of denigrate is really inaccurate. @fireproof78 has respected that people do not like Picard. However, there are general inconsitencies when it comes to people who claim it was excrutiating to watch, yet somehow made it through the whole season. Sometime my responses to posters like this are acerbic, but sometimes necessary to get down to the poster's actual opinions and motivations for not just watching but contributing their particular opinions.

 

6
It's just ok. It's not the series I thought it was going to be. I wasn't expecting TNG 2.0 but I was expecting a Picard show that focused more on the man than all this nonsense plot of AI mythology, bad acting Romulans and a romance plot on a Borg cube.
Most of the cast were boring

The plot explanation was never clear. Soji is Data's daughter, no wait she was created by Bruce Maddox, no wait she's from a planet of AI, no wait she was built on a planet of AI by Maddox, no wait Data's human brother helped create her! Why can't they just say something in a simple and clear way.
Same with the admonition. A bunch of blah blah the darkness is coming to get us. What happened to reason and science?

Anyway. I will be tuning in for season 2.

 

Started great, the ending would have been flawed but satisfactory without the resurrection bullshit. That pretty much ruined the show.

 

Just take the average for Episode 1 and double it. It's crude, but I don't think it would be too much off from how it would've been if it were a 10-scale. It would get you in the ballpark.

 

My disappointment with this show is - it built a whole set of new characters, plots and whatnot. Which is great!

And yet - the most emotional scene in the finale - was the death of a character that didin't even appear in this entire show, except for in a short flashback in the beginning, and who has already died. In another movie. And already GOT his emotional good-bye scene!

And yet, they felt the need to kill him again, because none of their own characters was developed enough to make his or her demise an emotional gratifying scene. That's sad. Imagine TNG's first season's built-up was only to bring back Spock, to kill him again, for an emotional reaction for the TOS crowd.

That we had two (!) undeserved, emotional death scenes (if you resurrect the character, it doesn't count either) is the cherry on top... I really wonder who`s idea that was.

There are talented people behind and in-front of the scenes, who were all passionate about the project, all around. Something, somewhere must have gone wrong...

 

Well I’m a bit late to this thread but I bloody loved this series. All of it. Not a dull moment or filler. There was no hype to blight the ending. It was just a lovely engaging series full of cosy trek moments. More please.

 

Passion doesn't always equal good decisions.

 

I’m still working through my thoughts about Star Trek: Picard’s first season. Forgive me if this all comes out in a jumble. I gorged on the series, due to CBS All Access’s free month offer, and now that I’ve seen the finale, I’m still trying to process my overall thoughts about it. I don’t think the series is the abomination that some of the You Tubers I listen to review it, is. I don’t think it’s a great series-yet-or that it is even close to my top three (DS9-TNG-TOS) but Patrick Stewart’s performance-at times uneven-was still resonant, the production values were mostly good, and the ensemble cast was better, and faster, developed than in Discovery. It was also great seeing Data, Riker, Troi, and Hugh (didn't like how his character was treated, or Icheb either for that matter) again, and learning tidbits about what happened after Nemesis.

I was happy that JJ/Kurtzman Trek isn’t as afraid to use the Romulans as I felt Berman Trek could be sometimes. I also liked that they used the TOS Romulan look again, and that we got a mix of TOS and TNG Romulans. I do wish we had gotten more prominent TNG Romulans though and I didn’t love the somewhat indistinct ‘northerner’ look, I wish there had been more of a v-shaped brow. I was iffy on the Romulan uniforms. They weren’t bad, but too generic. I also was iffy on the Romulan starships. The designs didn’t do it for me, though I was happy to see more Romulan starships. However, I wish we had gotten the Valdores (that design is too cool to just be in one film) and the D’deridex-class warbird is one of my favorite starships and I would’ve loved to see that again. I did like the 23rd century bird-of-prey. Seeing more of them would’ve been nice as well.

I also liked the focus on Romulan culture and mythology even if I didn’t care what they did with it necessarily. Perhaps the Picard series will be like how TNG fleshed out Klingon culture or DS9 did for the Cardassians, Bajorans, and Ferengi.

I thought Zhaban, Laris, and Number One were cool characters, and it didn’t make sense to push them to the side. I think they would’ve been invaluable to Picard and I think it might have helped the ensemble congeal faster. With them, the side quest to Vashti wouldn’t have been necessary, but perhaps they were too knowledgeable, or should’ve been, that it would’ve stretched credulity to even have the first season run 10 episodes. As it stands, I don’t think the story or relationship with the Romulan swordsman really worked. I did like his childlike, or innocent reaction and wonder at times, but then it felt strange juxtaposed to his deadly fighting skills. And I don’t think the relationship with Picard was built up well, with Picard basically, and selfishly coming back mostly because he needed him (if even underneath he was just wanting to see him one last time; he didn’t really tell him that), and then the series separating them too much. I actually thought him breaking down and Raffi hugging him was a good scene. He needs a parental figure and she is missing her son and they both could be surrogates for each other.

I’ve seen some dislike of Narissa, but I liked her. I’ve liked the actress in other things, and I thought she did fine here. I didn’t care for the weird vibe between her and Narek, but I did like how toward the end she placed her trust in him. I also liked the scenes with her aunt. Narissa was not a one-dimensional villain. I didn’t have a problem with Narek either. Neither are my favorite Trek villains, but neither are my worst.

When it comes to Picard’s crew, I thought the La Sirena ensemble was better developed compared to the Discovery ensemble in Season 1. But if Picard wasn’t part of this crew, would I care that much about them as a whole? I would say no, but if Picard wasn’t there, the writers might have spent even more time developing them.

The writers did give them all flaws or challenges. Unfortunately, I think the short season and also the focus on one overarching story didn’t allow for the kind of episodic storytelling where you could devote an episode to each of them. So, we got snatches, with the best being Raffi’s tortured reunion with her son, and to some flashback stuff with Jurati and Maddox. Rios’s painful past was left just to exposition. Despite this small crew, perhaps there were too many characters still.

It took a while for me to settle with the crew, and that’s still not done. I liked how Raffi displayed more emotion and we saw her hardened edifice crack as the season went on. I don’t think Rios got enough focus but there was stabs at getting to what makes him tick. Less so with Jurati (who reminded me of a less annoying Ensign Tilly at times), and the swordsman was like a babe in the woods. I did like the growing bonds of affection between Picard and Soji, though I do think that was rushed. I liked when Soji admitted that she didn’t trust Picard, Troi, Riker, or even Kestra (to be honest Kestra was annoying to me, there I said it), but then they glossed over having her learn how to trust them.

It was great seeing Seven of Nine again, but I’m iffy on what they did with her after Voyager. In Kurtzman Trek there’s a whole lot of badassery, hard drinking, and swear words going around (this from the guy who just wrote badassery I know). I could’ve easily seen a Dr. Annika Hansen working at the Daystrom Institute in the place of Jurati. Just like I could’ve seen Ro or Tom Riker in the role of Rios. Ro could’ve also been in the role of Raffi. I also could’ve seen Janeway, Nechayev, or Shelby in the Clancy role. It might have screamed small universe, but I would’ve loved to see Picard play off some of these old familiar, beloved characters. For me, seeing the old characters, even in these new roles, I would’ve cared more and that would’ve freed more time to work on the story because a lot of the character work, the relationships had been established. They would just have to be reintroduced instead of built from scratch.

I also think the short season forced them to just speed through things. There were times, at the end, where Raffi had all this information, had figured all this stuff out, and I was like, how did that happen. Or the scene where they are all sitting around the table and explaining what the Admonition, etc. are all about. Or how they speed through Sutra’s villainy, Alton’s change of heart, and his shutting down Sutra (but no one intervenes? This storyline was played out better with Arik and the Augments on Enterprise).

I thought the climax with the La Sirena facing the Romulans was well done, and it was great seeing Riker on a starship as captain, though I wish we had seen different kinds of starships, and the Enterprise. The stuff happening on the planet wasn’t as well executed. The Borg were wasted, after there was some promising stuff about the xBs. I also wasn’t a fan of the space tentacles, but seeing Chabon’s name for them, the “Alterity”, that’s cool. I just wish more ambition would’ve been placed in designing them, but also more ambition when it came to storytelling overall.

I also think the lack of worldbuilding impeded my enjoyment. I would’ve liked to have gotten more comics or novels, at worst, to lay out why the Federation had become more isolationist and its denizens more rough and tumble. Besides the cursing, I didn't like how just about everyone upon meeting Picard insulted him, cursed at him, or cut him down to size in some way. Even Riker said that Picard was an 'arrogant' person. Certainly there was some arrogance during the TNG years, but Q famously disabused Picard of that in "Q Who", and being arrogant wasn't really Picard's thing. Also, when an android pushes a 90-year-old man, Troi said he deserved it. Really? Being upset with Picard, understandable, but physically pushing a frail senior citizen? Come on.

Speaking of the Federation, and Starfleet, I wasn’t a big fan of the 2399 Starfleet uniforms, though they looked better in live-action. I like the Star Trek Online take on the 2399 uniforms and hope Season 2 of Picard takes heed. I actually liked the 2380s uniforms and would’ve been fine if those were still being used in 2399. Regarding starships, I thought La Sirena was a nice looking starship, but didn't really say "Trek" to me. I don't think it felt iconic enough. It was a starship you could see in just about any other science-fiction series.

I thought the finale really helped hammer home the idealism, optimism and Trek feeling, even if getting there was haphazard, and led to some great Picard speech making. I didn’t care for them making Picard an android, even though I enjoyed Data’s goodbye a heck of a lot more than I did in Nemesis. I wish that Star Trek: Picard had just ran one season and that this was it for Jean-Luc. It felt too much like Terminator: Genisys for Picard to be reborn, but in a new body. Granted, this new body will supposedly die at some point, so the Picard golem is still mortal. However, I didn’t buy the idea that it wasn’t Picard’s time yet. How can any of them know that? If both Picard and Data had said good bye together, that might have been a nice way to go, and a second season-if necessary-could’ve been about Picard’s legacy.

 

The Good: It was surreal seeing Picard back on TV in 2020 and it was a fun ride.

The Bad: The story felt a little weak. Or maybe my expectations were way up with all the talk about them wanting to do something that was socially relevant. I kept waiting for that to come along and it never really did. If the human rights issue was what they were going for then it took a while to come into focus and even now it's still a little blurry. Still a fun ride though and I look forward to seeing more.

The Ugly: No Brian Brophy.

I give it a 9. Not a perfect season but the good outweighs the bad.

 

One thing I'm glad they didn't do is blurt out what happened to everyone in TNG, DS9, and VOY and the state of everything since TNG, DS9, and VOY all ended. They only focused on what had to do with the story they wanted to tell. They avoided a trap they could've fallen into.

I went to my 20-year high school reunion a few years ago. And I ran into someone who wanted to know what I've been up to and, before I knew it, they were asking me "What about during those years? What were you doing before ___?" It was as if they wanted an account of everything I'd done from 1997 to 2017. Yeah, sorry, thanks but no thanks.

All that matters is where are you now and what's relevant to how you got there. Forget about the rest, because it has nothing to do with what's in front of you.

 

7. Not perfect and far from even ideal some weeks but just enough outstanding quality in some of the episodes to push the overall season past "satisfactory" and into "pretty good." Definitely better to me than Season 1 of DSC.

 

Overall I'm very pleased.

Also happily surprised the season didn't end on a cliff-hanger. It feels self-contained and I like that.

 

yeah - 'i paid for it' needs to be the silliest argument mankind ever came up with. when i find out i wasted money on sth why waste time too on it? that's a masochist's prerogative.

 

I give it a 7 out of 10.
PROS
Great acting by Sir Pat Stew, and most of the new regulars.
Good pacing.
Unexpected in places - I did not see Hugh's death coming.
Good characters (aside from the villains)
Fundamentally built on a solid story.

CONS
The finale felt rushed, I hated the death fake out.
Many of the visuals felt perfunctory or rushed - take the reuse of DISCO shuttles, the lame copy and paste Starfleet Ships.
Some strange choices - 231 warbirds, instead of a small cadre of ships. That didn't make much sense.
Too many pantomime villains like Georgiou (Narissa and Oh).
Whilst built on a solid story, said story wasted ancilliary characters like Picards Romulan housekeepers.
Seven of Nine's inclusion felt like fan service.
I get why Riker had to come to the rescue, but it'd have made more sense if it had been Admiral F******G Clancy leading the armada. That whole sequence felt predictable and rushed.

So it may seem like a lot of CONS, but they are minor when the over-arching story works well. This was leagues ahead of Discovery.

 

gave it an eight but might change that after a scotty style binge on the weekend. does anybody know how long the changing option is there?

 

I hadn't thought about Picard in that way. Good points. And they had just killed off Hugh, Icheb, and Maddox so easily during the season. I could see Hugh's death being more resonant than what we got. Certainly he's no Data, but he did mean something to Picard and to TNG fans, and the Picard series actually found an interesting and organic way to bring him back; I liked what became of his life more than what they did with Seven or Picard sulking about his vineyard for almost 20 years.

I enjoyed the final Data-Picard scene a lot, and it was a better good bye than in Nemesis. But I still would've been okay if we hadn't gotten that scene. I also wasn't a fan of what became of Picard. I would've been more okay with a finite story. That his role was done after he had succeeded in bringing the Federation back to its compassionate senses.

An aside, but looking back over the season I feel like the Romulans were sort of cheated again, like they were in Nemesis. With both Nemesis and Picard Season 1, it appears they will focus on the Romulans as the main antagonists, that they would finally get their due in a major way, only for them to be shunted to the side for the real antagonists (Shinzon/Remans and the Synth). Even the Romulans turning out to be on the good side (in Nemesis) or sort of good (Narek) or at least right was another similarity. Picard Season 1 did explore Romulan culture more than just about any other Trek series or movie did, so there is that.

 

I agree to a point. I am hoping the Romulans take full center stage next season rather than just early. I think there is so much to unpack with what was presented in Picard (refugees, Tal Shiar, Zhat Vash, Qwat Milat, as well as the various religious beliefs). I really want that all to be explored.