Is Picard Season 2 a failure? Or: How I am disappointed by Picard Season 2
So, first off, pardon the longish rant, but I wanted to discuss the season overall and see if other people feel the same way I do about Season 2. I read a couple of reviews recently that crystalized some of my opinions about the show that I was really trying to hide from acknowledging.
· Some good points about Picard being more like some subpar “edgy” sci-fi drama than anything Star Trek:
https://www.thegamer.com/star-trek-picard-is-garbage/
· Picard’s pacing, among other things, are major issues:
https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-trek-picard-season-2-episode-8-review-mercy/
I thought episode 1 was great and what Picard should have been all along. Episode 2 was pretty great, with great performances and a less silly “mirror universe”. So I was really digging this season at the start. Since then, for me, it has devolved into barely watchable, boring, and meandering Discovery-level Trek.
Positive points:
· Jeri Ryan acting more like Seven, and less like the too-human version of her in season 1
· John De Lancie playing up a great, darker version of Q, even though the actual part is small/less than impactful
· Ito Aghayere’s portrayal of young Guinan
· Stewart getting a couple of Picard speeches (even if the justification for them was very slight)
Negative points (just about everything else, where to start?):
· Pointless fetch quests for our crew in the 21st century (Rios, Seven, and Raffi) where they achieve nothing but wasting time (why was the music so dramatic when Seven was driving, when absolutely no one was chasing them?)
· Waffling back and forth about whether Renee is ok or not; once Picard gives her his little speech she is fine, but only really noted in offhand dialog an episode or two later, but then suddenly they worry about it again and desperately need Picard back up and functioning again to address absolutely no problem with Renee
· Meandering storylines in every episode that just go on and on: Jurati/Borg Queen, Rios and the doctor, Soong and his daughter
· Our heroic crew seems very uncaring regarding security of the Borg Queen, the likely greatest threat to the survival of the entire planet:
o just hook her immediately in to the ship; don’t worry about a security field; don’t worry about implementing any security on the computer systems; leave her alone in the ship while you traipse off to the Chateau (for no reason); leave her Borg tentacles and nanoprobes intact and functional; leave her in the care of the not-at-all-unreliable and already compromised Jurati; once she and Jurati combine, don’t pull out all the stops to find her, just send 2 of your crew to kind of look for her 8 hours later and hope they don’t get their butts kicked
· Non-stop plot holes/lack of justification in practically every episode
o Q’s plan for Adam at the party was to alert security, then Adam walks off assuming everything was fine; security does zip; and then Adam repeats his failure with the out-of-the-blue attempted car homicide thing; and why were all 5 of the crew there again? Only Jurati and Picard did anything at all.
o Everything with Picard’s injury; he’s fine until he is not, then the doc just walks out, then non-Laris has magic mind-meld tech, then it’s crucial that the doctor holds the stabilizer instrument over Picard’s head when neither of them knows what they are doing and it requires no medical skill at all; and apparently all along non-Laris is an ancestor of Laris’s (at least there is some explanation)?
o Q, Adam, the Borg Queen; they all seem to go about their plots (whatever they actually turn out to be) in needlessly circuitous ways (almost like they are trying to pad out the running time of a 10-episode serialized show). Why does Q become a fake psychiatrist? Why does he try to get her to quit? Why doesn’t he just report that she is psychologically unfit for service? Why doesn’t he just kill her? Why does he recruit Adam to do nothing at all (other than to get Spiner and Stewart in a scene together)? If he can impersonate a doctor as part of the Europa mission or a FBI agent, why does he need Adam for anything? If Adam has access to advanced cloning technology, and money, and mercenaries, what does he need permission from some stupid medical board for? If he’s willing to do illegal genetics experiments and clone people, run down heroic astronauts or random nonagenarians with his car, and hire mercs to do whatever, what does he care if some board gives the stamp of approval for his work?
World building issues
· No references to the apparently very impactful (given Soong’s storyline) eugenics war storyline (other than a reference, maybe, to some treaty or agreement). I get that the writers seem to not want to touch that rail, but then why have a genetics/eugenics storyline if you are afraid to address it?
· They seem to be going out of their way to make the 2024 setting to be exactly like current reality, so it feels weird that the only differences are elements specifically needed for the plot lines, with no outside impacts or changes.
o ICE is just like in our reality, re: immigration and poor treatment of prisoners/suspects; but no sci-fi trappings like different uniforms, technology, or organizational title
o There are background references to sanctuary districts and 1 reference to homelessness among wealth, but no other impacts
o There are advanced space missions (Europa) and advanced genetics (cloning?) but no impacts on any day-to-day life: no clothing differences, dialog differences, nothing
· It just all feels very small; maybe this is all impacts from covid restrictions, but every scene (minus the party scene which had more people) feels like the scenes were all designed to take place in closets where we don’t have to see any historical, social, or technological differences; where our characters have stilted dialog talking all around the actual topic at hand until they have ultra-direct pointed discussions resulting in insightful and life-changing revelations over the course of 10 minutes. Rios on a whim shows the doc and her kid all the future tech; Picard reveals the entire plot re: being from the future, to some random FBI guy.
o [Noted that Voyager’s visit to the “present” in “Future’s End” was similarly underwhelming with some of the same issues re: eugenics, and sci-fi differences, but it felt like it was trying harder. DS9’s visit to the 21st century in “Past Tense” actually felt like science fiction.]
[And yes, I realize that we can all bend over backward to come up with some tortured justifications to paper over the holes in logic and motivation, but that doesn’t mean the show isn’t bad.]
I guess I have to face it: Picard season 2 is no real improvement over season 1 in any of the ways that really matter. It still has bad pacing. The mystery box approach to the individual plotlines is still boring/unengaging. And in some ways it is worse: the plotting (logic, character intentions and decisions) is even less justified than in season 1, with episodes lurching from point to point with little support other than that is what the episodes call for at any given minute. Raffi is seriously underserved both in storyline and in giving the actress not much real to contribute. And none of our crew members feel like the heroic best-of-the-best Starfleet types that we were led to believe they were back in season 2 episode 1 (after they had supposedly gotten their mojo back as a result of their work/success in season 1).
So, I will still be looking forward to the reunion of the TNG cast in season 3, but I don’t have any real hope for this season to be good and will likely just complete it to see how the plot ends (like I did season 4 of Discovery). Such a let down from the promise the start of this season.
So rant over. Anyone else feeling similar?
