Was pretty excited for this show.. but ultimately underwhelmed...

and disappointed by the end.....and not because of chairs or clothing.(sorry Pubert)

Finally watched the show during the lockdown. I haven't been posting much on the bbs for several years but every so often something brings me around. Picard is one of those things.

I did not hate the entire show. There was lots to like. I am glad that we have a forward moving trek again set in the prime universe. I will start with what I did like.
Favorite episode was NEPENTHE, not just because it had the Rikers. But it had so many great character moments like what we got in TNG. It was very well done. I also like that Picard no longer works for Starfleet and has essentially become part of a ragtag group of outcasts. I also love the design of the La sirena.
Loved the return of Hugh and Seven. Seven has now gotten most of her humanity back and is no longer "robotic" in her speech and actions. She is changed and I liked the change. Loved the dialogue between her and Picard about their "shared" experience as part of the Borg.

I have no issues with the crew of the La Sirena. Except maybe Agnes. Her reason for killing Maddox was very lame imo and she should be in the brig...lol.

So what I didnt like. Not too much in love with a 10 episode story arc. I would like to see that cut down to 5 eps at least. Ds9 had a great balance between Arc and serialized episodes.
But overall I enjoyed the show up until....yes...episode 10. Like many I just didnt like that Picard died and YES his conscious was copied (per the dialogue IMPRINTS and than TRANSFERRED) so in my mind we are now watching a robot copy of Picard. It was a little disheartening. The writers clearly thought it was a great unique idea. But other shows have done it better. Killing off major Charcters but not Killing them off. My two favorite Examples....Voyagers Deadlock and Farscapes: Out of their Minds. Both well done episodes where everyone dies but dont die. On Voyagers you really dont know if they are all originals or copies or just split and both originals like on Farscape. On Farscapes they were all equal and original. Twined. With Picard. It's different. He is just an android. No getting around that unless they write something to change that.. Hopefully we will get more info on what really happened and they will clarify. But my guess is we won't.
The show also had pacing issues and some plot devices didnt sit well with me. The scanning device used at a crime scene and the magic imagination device used on the last episode.

Anyhow I hope the show gets better. I hope seven becomes a part of the crew. Which reminds me. They should not have killed Hugh. He would have been another good addition to Picards new crew.

 

Yeah Picard Android is not the Picard we know. It’s just a copy. Real Picard is dead. Also hey let’s give the copy of picards essence a frail old body that will live about as long as the real human Picard would have lived. It was sloppy writing. They could have just cited his condition and got in with it. Episode 10 made Kirks death in generations seem well done in comparison now. At least the Kirk we always saw was a good old fashioned human not a copy. They should have left well enough alone.

 

If you think real Picard is dead because it's a copy then they're all dead from using the transporters. And they died 100 other times when crazy space anomalies duplicated or the timelines slightly changed, not to mention phase shifting and body transformations in TNG.

 

For me, PIC and DSC have the same point: They both show us, that ST can also work "today". They have characters I care for, they have high production values and for me, the dialogues are very well-written. At the same time, PIC and DSC show, that ST doesn't work as a serial for me.

While I really liked the balance between a forward-moving background story and the mix of different episodes (e. g. Ferengi, Section 31, Garak and so on) in DS9, there is a lack of rewatchebility in PIC or DSC for me. Many of the given hints in the first episodes just don't make it and when you really think about the told stories in PIC season 1 and DSC season 2, there are much more (narrative) connection errors than a serial should have in my eyes.

Don't get me wrong: For me, it's great, what they did with Jean-Luc himself in PIC and the characterization is great, and I like a lot of things about DSC, too, but I can just repeat myself: They lack a lot in rewatchebility.

 

I agree 100% that serialised stuff is harder to rewatch since it's an investment of 10-15 hours (or a lot more in DS9's case) rather than 45 minutes and life doesn't always allow that. But I still enjoy modern TV for what it is.

 

I'm of the opposite view. I can watch serialized shows more easily because I can go from one to the next. I want to see what will happen next.

With a bunch of episodic stories, I watch one, I feel like I'm done, and oftentimes I don't feel like going onto the next episode or I'll just stop wherever I am and not feel the need to continue.

 

What I love about the Mandalorian is it managed to tell a serialised storyline in 8 episodes but each episode also had its own completely standalone mini-story. It makes it easy to think back and go "I loved that chapter in particular!" (also the non-convoluted storyline without a million plot holes helps too). With Picard (and Discovery) all the episodes kind of blur into one, so I find it hard to do that, with exceptions like Nepenthe.

As for Picard dying... my issue is it was completely pointless. They introduced the idea at the very beginning, then again in the season finale, killed him then brought him back to life. Why?? If it was to have him speak to Data, a more technobabble answer could have been found like their magical device that makes your dreams come true.

 

I view Picard's death in the finale as the culmination of the main story about a sick, old man trying to do something good in his final days. The rest of the story, while more prominent, is just window dressing.
The plot bears out a sort of unintentional bucket list. He attempts to recapture his youthful energy in Stardust City, says goodbye to old friends, etc. That said, his death was a bit rushed, but the imagery of a dying man choosing to shorten his time to protect the innocent justifies it in my mind.
His resurrection, or copy, does seem to evoke reincarnation. It is clear Picard died, yet he wakes up into a new life where he can improve himself further.

 

I keep getting a kick out of people who are furious that "Picard is dead" but at the same time never bat an eye at the fact that they put Jean-Luc's consciousness into a body they re-created out of thin air from his transporter pattern in the first season of TNG. It's being furious about the death/resurrection of someone whose body was basically a copy already. (If you don't take the whole "every time someone uses the transporter they're being copied" thing into account, of course.)

 

Star Trek Picard solves death. No one needs to die anymore because you can just make a copy of them.

Great work writers.

 

How do you feel about Spock's resurrection in TSFS? How is it any different and how is it any better?

And how do you feel about Sargon's plan in "Return to Tomorrow" (TOS)?

On the plus side, look at it this way: whatever Picard does in the series from here on out, you can always say, "That's not my Picard!" and technically, you could make an argument for it.

I see Picard's death and rebirth as a metaphor for the Star Trek franchise. It was dead, then it was resurrected, and now we have 1) some people saying it's been granted a new lease on life, and 2) other people saying it's not the same as it was or it shouldn't have come back at all.

 

The trouble is Star Trek was cutting edge and set the standard in a lot of ways, now it's been overtaken by other shows and franchises. It's pretty sad to see.

 

No, it's not. Star Trek set the stage and other shows are able to flourish because of it.

I'm excited to see it not sad.

 

I really don't like to do the "No it's not!" "Yes it is!" "No it's not!" "Yes it is!" thing. It's just a constant back-and-forth "my opinion versus yours" that goes nowhere. Kpnuts has an opinion as do others, I disagree with it, they disagree with me, and that's that.

 

Unfortunately I have to say I feel the same. To me it feels like the real Picard is dead and has been replaced by an artificial fake. I don't know why the writers did this since the whole series was supposed to be about an elderly Picard's last hurrah where he was to go on one last adventure and go out in a blaze of glory.

Now he's just an android and the 'death' of the fake android Picard when it happens won't have the same impact.

 

Star Trek solved death. No one needs to die anymore if they ever used a transporter because you already have a copy of them.

Great work writers.

 

Fair point.

For me, the fact that Star Trek is no longer the cutting edge is not upsetting, nor do I find it upsetting. I am trying to find a reason for it to be upsetting. As much as I want to be empathetic, there is a part of me that recognizes that many other shows are available now thanks to what Star Trek has done.

No more death and no more aging.

 

Didn't we already solve death in The Search For Spock and aging in TNG's Unnatural Selection?

 

Pretty much, yes.

 

FWIW, I'd love a Trek that embraced and remembered all their universe-changing gimmicks. Combine transporter immortality and cloning with the commbadge-sized transporter from Nemesis and then combine that with Old Spock's transwarp formula and you can go anywhere.... it's almost humanity taking it's first steps toward being a technology-assisted proto-Q.