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Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x01 - "The Star Gazer"

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It was a bad scene that did nothing but give us redundant discussion of things we already knew from the earlier scene, in a much more heavy-handed and obvious way. And Picard gained no new knowledge or insight from his visit, Guinan had literally nothing of value to offer. He came away from the scene with nothing.

It honestly felt like the scene was added in long after the episode was written, just as a "fun" cameo for Guinan, but needed to be standalone and, as such, was unable to actually move the ball forward in the arc in any way. It was completely superfluous and useless.

I don’t know… I suspect ‘that ship has sailed, I watched it leave’ may come back at some point.
 
This episode was pretty good. Much, much better than all of the first season. It felt like Star Trek again to me, albeit the TNG movies more than the TNG series, but I'll take that.

I like Laris and wish she was involved in the action more, for both seasons it seems, but when it comes to romance, I really want Picard and Beverly together. I hope Gates McFadden is on this season. While I never got the impression that Jean-Luc was a lonely, unlucky in love guy on TNG, PIC is a different series, and with time comes change and sometimes regret, so I can live with that. I'm much more okay with deconstructing his love life than his reputation as a Starfleet officer and icon.

I also liked the subtle changes to the Picard/Raffi relationship. While there was still warmth and informality there, gone was the "JL" nickname that annoyed me to no end. I liked a lot of the changes made to the characters overall from the first season. Even Jurati wasn't grating. And Captain Rios seems like a pretty cool guy in command. I wouldn't mind a Stargazer spin off series, if the starship survives this season, or they name another one Stargazer. I really enjoyed the cameos, and I thought Q's return was excellent, just the right amount of screen time and mysterious, teasing dialogue.

I really like the new Starfleet uniforms. While I didn't love the starships we got in this first episode, I didn't care for the green glow caused by the Borg ship for one, but still I liked them much better than the Starfleet starships (or rather starship) in the first season. And I really liked the variety. So far, I'm liking the redesign for the Borg, and I loved how Rios's expression changed when he heard that familiar Borg voice. That was really neat.
 
Picard's mum having an English accent was a bit of a retcon, but it explains Picard's accent so perfectly that I'm happy to let them get away with it.
Maurice Picard had an English accent in Tapestry. Obviously Robert, Marie and Rene did too. I just always assumed it was the way the universal translator worked or something. And there’s obviously a conceit in something like Family, where they would all really be speaking French to each other.

On the other hand, the illusion of Yvette Picard in WNOHGB did have a comedy French accent, so who knows? Maybe she developed an accent later in life!
 
I'm guessing it's only a matter of time until we see Klingons on SNW - L'Rell and Ash are there for the taking.
 
First, I would like to apologize that I have no time to read the previous 37 pages.
I absolutely loved this one. There were some minor issues, mostly the whole family trauma/abuse for young Picard, but overall this was a great season premiere. I gave it a 9.
It is really impressive how "Picard" manages to do things so much better than Disco. Is it the previously established universe from the TNG series that helps? I don't know, but the 10mins or so that we spend in the bridge of Stargazer, were enough for me to want to know more about its crew and definitely like the idea of a Stargazer spin off. I mean for 3 seasons (haven't watched the 4th) Disco treated its bridge crew mostly like an awkward part of the bridge decoration.
Anyway, let's hope that the rest of the season will be as good as its premiere.

Mon Capitaine!! :)
The bridge crew on Disco are supporting cast and they have gotten more screen time in the last 2 seasons. You cannot honestly say that Disco has not fleshed out more prominent cast like Burnham, Saru, Tilly, Stamets, etc. Just because it is not exactly the same as prior Trek, doesn't mean they don't fill you in on the characters. Picard also spent a few minutes with each cast member not on the Stargazer to start, showing where they were and what was going on in their lives since we last saw them. So your characterization of getting more in 10 minutes on the bridge than all of Disco is way off mark. And yes, 7 Seasons of ~ 25 episodes of TNG and Movies plus S1 of Picard makes you invested in him and the last 4 seasons of Voyager and S1 of Picard make you invested in Seven in ways that you will not get for characters you had about 40 episodes with.

Picard looks promising for sure. This was a slow intro episode that kind of 'sucks' in as a weekly release. It just started getting interesting after a lot of catch up and some really awkward Picard relationship / past struggle stuff. I think it will work much better for people who can immediately start watching episode 2 when they finish.
 
About the Klingons, I'm just glad that the Klingons we see in Disco end up eventually looking like the regular Klingons we've seen from ST: TMP and beyond since Lower Decks showed the regular looking Klingons we are all used to. I don't need to see Klingons in Disco, Picard, or even Strange New Worlds ever again since they've been done to death by this point.........................though I would love to see Worf in Picard!
 
Now this was an interesting tweet: https://twitter.com/SIScreens/status/1500092735533068289

Mostly because it shows us a different looking LCARS navigation display of a couple of well known Starfleet vessels, and what looks like Klingon insignia on the right side too. Likely a mock-up, as that's a very different looking Stargazer to the one we got :D:

FNFlkPFX0AY4Izc
 
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I also can’t believe how well produced this show is. It looks and sounds like it has 10x the budget of Discovery, and Discovery isn’t even poorly produced either.

The cinematography is movie quality and the opening credits are as good as you’ll find in any Marvel movie. Russo really brought it musically too.
 
While I get it was to remind us that 'Picard is bad at relationships' with his 'blowing' it with Laris, I like to think that maybe Picard didn't want to get involved with a late friend's wife. That was actually what I first thought when I saw his reaction to Laris's obvious flirting. Even if he is attracted to her (and though she is attractive, finding someone attractive does not necessarily mean you want to screw them or get romantically involved), given his previous distance to Beverly Crusher, also the widow of a dead friend of his, it makes perfect sense whether Picard has intimacy issues either way.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like connecting his intimacy issues to something fundamental and traumatic, but the idea that Picard automatically should be involved with Laris is pretty annoying. It falls into cliché attitudes about how men are all about getting sex and OF COURSE a man would want to have sex with a friend if she were willing.
 
I have to say, after watching a second time, that as much as I like Orla Brady as Laris, that little lampshading expository line about how Romulans deal with losing a mate was the clumsiest moment in the episode. On top of anything else, it was a total "as you know, Bob..." moment.
 
The bridge crew on Disco are supporting cast and they have gotten more screen time in the last 2 seasons. You cannot honestly say that Disco has not fleshed out more prominent cast like Burnham, Saru, Tilly, Stamets, etc. Just because it is not exactly the same as prior Trek, doesn't mean they don't fill you in on the characters. Picard also spent a few minutes with each cast member not on the Stargazer to start, showing where they were and what was going on in their lives since we last saw them. So your characterization of getting more in 10 minutes on the bridge than all of Disco is way off mark. And yes, 7 Seasons of ~ 25 episodes of TNG and Movies plus S1 of Picard makes you invested in him and the last 4 seasons of Voyager and S1 of Picard make you invested in Seven in ways that you will not get for characters you had about 40 episodes with.
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I am talking about Disco's bridge crew, now Saru, Tilly or Stamets. I am talking about these people that their only use was to show reactions on what was happening on the bridge. I can't get it how they managed to make them look so indifferent. Was it the weird camera angles? bad directing? bad casting? the writing? Dunno.. but in "Picard" they made the unknown crew of Stargazer (not Picard or Seven or Rios) look much more interesting and intriguing.
 
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