Oh, yes ... The writer behind S1's magical wish-granting ocarina.
Even so-called "great" writers have been known to turn out the occasional clunker.
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Spoilers Is Picard season 2 a failure?
- Thread starter Ometiklan
- Start date
Oh, yes ... The writer behind S1's magical wish-granting ocarina.
Even so-called "great" writers have been known to turn out the occasional clunker.
I tend to evaluate seasons pretty quick. But, then again, I'm also more a lot more fair than most people. Even with Trek shows I like less, where I've ranked the seasons in relation to each other doesn't usually fall out of line with what most fans of a particular Trek show think.
True. I think trek fans tend to be very critical of shows when they air and then get softer later. I remember fandom was super critical of Voyager when it first aired, especially the latter seasons. Fandom was also super critical of the first seasons of Enterprise. Now, fans look back on Voyager and Enterprise with nostalgia. I think for some fans, whatever is new is automatically "bad".
What is interesting is that the nature of the criticisms have not really changed. Fans criticized Voyager and Enterprise for poor writing and plot holes, just like some are doing now towards Picard and Discovery. And the fans who criticize Picard and Discovery for poor writing are longing for the "good old days" of classic Trek that they used to criticize for poor writing. I would not be surprised if in 10 years, critics of the new Trek point to Picard and Discovery as the "good old days" when Trek was good.
I think it's so ridiculous. "We want the 24th Century back!" turned out to really mean "We want the '90s back!"
Do you want to know what I'm nostalgic for? Life before Covid. That's what I miss. Even better would be life before a certain someone came down an escalator. Early-to-mid-2010s. That was a good time.
True! Look at the initial critical response to something like the film Starship Troopers, or Speed Racer, versus the way they are viewed and discussed in film critics circles now. Both were panned, as inane action warhawk nonsense, and empty childish spectacle, when they were originally released, but now seen as movies with greater depth, and appreciated as working on levels that general audiences and film critics alike had largely missed initially.
Over time nuance, shifts in people’s views, and fresh eyes and new perspectives can make things that were once widely mocked into crictial darlings.
Back when men were men, women wore catsuits and corsets, and vexing problems were easily resolved in two-part episodes.
</sarcasm>
I'm grateful to Covid for granting me the capacity to handle appointments over the phone
that would've once necessitated me trudging downtown to the doctor's office. (I'm talking about painfully routine appointments).
Typical pre-Covid appointment:
Them: "Has anything changed?"
Me: "No."
Them: "Here's your prescription. See you in three months. NEXT!"
Some things I'd just as soon rather not have come back.
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I hated… HATED Kelvin films at one point in my life. A decade on and they are my favourite of the lot.
Someone was on a soapbox the other day on here saying the likes of Picard or Disco would be forgotten in 20 years and they won’t have the staying power of TNG. What bollocks. As long as people like us exist, no Star Trek show will be forgotten.
Someone was on a soapbox the other day on here saying the likes of Picard or Disco would be forgotten in 20 years and they won’t have the staying power of TNG. What bollocks. As long as people like us exist, no Star Trek show will be forgotten.
Star Trek is not part of our timeline anymore. There's a whole thread about that in the General Trek discussion.
That's a feature, not a bug. It is not TNG. Nothing will be TNG, for a long, long, list of reasons.
Time travel, mind reading, nanobots, and spaceships. This is the weirdest Western I've ever seen.
More seriously, yes, this is science fiction, perhaps a bit softer but science fiction none the less.
For me, sci-fi is: "If X were different (new tech, new social view, new anything), how would we be different, how would we react?" So far, this season hasn't really done this for me. It's just been running from plot point to plot point. The closest we have gotten is the Soong storyline, but we don't have any idea of what its goal is nor why it matters, so it feels very hollow.
Jurati's story with the Queen is ok, hopefully leading to some kind of understanding with the Borg. That could be a good science fiction-y storyline: the roboticist being a bridge to a previously hostile species. It's just so drawn out. I realize that I am not the best target audience for serialized storylines, but it just seems to take forever for these showrunners (and those on Discovery) to tell these stories for so little payoff at the end - and they are told fairly boringly at that.
The time travel is only necessary to get these characters into this time frame, but outside of Raffi's initial commentary about the state of the 21st century they haven't actually done anything to consider the differences in the timeframes or to examine how to learn any lessons from the 21st for their future.
The mind reading plot is still undecided because it is so new they haven't had a chance to really explore/conclude it.
I guess while this is sci-fi, it is the more action-oriented sci-fi and I am always wanting a little more think-y sci-fi. It reminds me very much of Matalas's earlier project, the 12 Monkeys show. Which shouldn't be surprising. I had heard wonderful things about it, but I couldn't finish it. I got about 2 seasons done (I think), but just got tired of it all. It too was just a bunch of running around, overcoming the next physical obstacle to whatever the character goals were. I just never felt like they were using the time travel technology to actually "say" something or explore any ideas. Kind of like the old show "Sliders" - it generally devolved into having to simply overcome some physical obstacle to retrieve and use the remote instead of actually examining the different world they slid into.
I didn't mind the darkness of season 1. I appreciate they were trying to do more with the characters and settings, to dig into this world ~20 years evolved from previous TNG. I just think they need much better plotting and writing. And the "institutionalism" is kind of baked into Trek - trusting people and what they are working toward collectively is the spirit of Trek. These are the best of humanity working for the betterment of humanity. You can still question things, and have individuals fail (see DS9 for numerous outstanding examples of this done well), and learn that we must keep striving and improving and not just settle for how it is. But it's a bit of a stretch to impugn the whole organization and everyone in it. Yeah, it is for dramatic purposes, but as a better example of the same we can look at DS9’s “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost”. There they don’t pull down the whole organization despite an actual civilization-ending threat (the Founders and the Dominion); there they show that individuals can fail and can manipulate the system, but that doesn’t mean it’s all bad.
I guess I would say that Season 1 was a necessary journey (it just could have been told better), but that "The Star Gazer" is what season 2 should have been like throughout.
I guess you could assume this. But the characters have spent zero time examining, discussing, or doing anything to show that that is the point. The characters have not done anything to build upon the couple of initial comments they made, there has been no follow up, no lessons learned, nothing the characters will remember or plan to do in the future to make things different or better. If our characters aren't treating these things as important or aren't learning from them, then the audience isn't either. I guess they could wrap these storylines up with a “chuckle on the bridge” scene at the end of the season, but that is not good writing to me.
I am not questioning Renee's mental progress. I am questioning the show's wobbly plot. If anything, the show has treated Renee's issue too succinctly. She clearly has a long-standing, significant issue to deal with. She probably shouldn't actually be on the mission. And one well-performed speech from Picard (while totally Star Trek of them), shouldn't actually serve to fix the problem. If they wanted to really address mental illness, they should probably cover it more thoroughly and with less finality.
The problem I have is that the show doesn't seem to actually know what is going on with the Renee storyline. Maybe this is another problem with the pandemic affecting the production. The characters report that Renee is ok and ready to go on the mission, but it feels like the showrunners realized they had goofed and not told the audience what was going on and so they added that bit in an ADR line (I haven't gone back to check and see if it was actually given "offscreen"). But then later on, Rios says they need Picard up and active to help them deal with Renee. Well which is it? Is she ok, or is she not? It isn't depicted as Renee is still unsure, just that the show's writers are unsure.
The actors are wonderful, agreed. But the story is not. Rios suddenly can't get enough of "real food"? I understand this is a long running plot point in Trek that replicated food isn't the same. But real food is readily available. You just can't get a lot of it when serving as a captain on a starship out in deep space.
Rios suddenly cares more for this one doctor and her clinic than everything Starfleet is doing? Yeah, she is attractive and a good doctor and person, but is she so much different than the thousands of people dedicating their lives to Starfleet to make the galaxy better? I can understand having Rios love this particular character, but it seems like he suddenly cares more for this one lady, than for all of the future, for his crew back home, for his current mission.
So Rios, decides to bring them to the ship? For what possible reason? To me that is the meandering part. There is no clear motivation for his decisions, no clear purpose.
Practically every ship we have ever seen (TNG and later) has had internal security fields. I would think they would be especially prominent in Confederation ships. And given that the crew has limited resources, then the last thing I would expect them to do is do almost nothing to safeguard the biggest threat.
By all means, be safe with the production. But if you are going to have the characters split up, or even if you are going to have the characters be together (like in the gala scenes), have them doing something that actually contributes to the story/mission instead pointless quests and just hanging around. Pandemic safety doesn’t mean the plot has to be hollow fetch quests. In fact, the extra time for writing should have made the stories better.
But that is the problem. You are “presuming” that he needs equipment and money. But why? Everything else shows that he has money, technology, and resources to do whatever he wants. He carried out some kind of cloning experiments for decades. He has super advanced medical and genetic technology. He made a sudden, very significant donation to the Europa mission. He can hire mercenary groups in the middle of Los Angeles on a moment’s notice. If he can do all these things, then SHOW me why he needs some medical/oversight board to do anything. If this justification isn’t given, that is a plot hole. A “hole” in the plot that contradicts what else has been shown.
This is not a show for newcomers (that is Prodigy). This is a show that is a spin off from a show that went off the air 26 years ago (TNG), with a plot line that follows a character who has been in Trek for 35 years (Picard), with adversaries who have been in Trek for 35 (Q) and 33 (Borg) years (or the Queen at 26 years), who faces a new adversary (Adam) who is the ancestor of a series of Trek characters who have appeared in multiple series (3?) over the past 35 years.
That said, the showrunners have said that they didn’t want to try to address the Eugenics Wars, but why include a genetics storyline set 28 years after the war if you weren’t willing to address it? That is annoying to me.
The problem is this is supposed to be science fiction but there isn’t any fiction/world building here. They only things changed are the two elements needed for this exact storyline, and nothing else. Soong’s inventions are too secret and the Europa mission is too novel for the setting. Just one guy can do all this cloning by himself over the course of decades and no one knows? There is no one else doing related work? Nothing he has built on? Nothing that has affected society in any way? If so, it's not shown at all.
And the Europa mission. If, like you say, this world is very similar to our own, we go from the last moon landing in 1972 to an ISS and shuttles, suddenly to a manned mission to Europa? There is nothing in between? A mission to Mars? (Voyager showed an ongoing manned missions to Mars by 2032.) Again no societal impacts? Where are the technology differences that show a manned mission that far out is possible? Is the public not going through a “space craze” like the real earth did in the 60s? We have a single gala for the mission and that is it. Like the Eugenics Wars piece, the writers just don’t care about actually exploring the impacts of any of the storylines they are promulgating, so they don’t write them into the story. It leaves the stories very isolated and not feeling very science fiction-y.
But the isolation isn’t just the physical in terms of the actors and the production – which I am totally on board with. It’s that the plots themselves are totally isolated. The storylines don’t affect each other, there aren’t parallel structures or meanings. In the best Trek episodes, if there were ‘A’ and ‘B’ storylines, they would have something to do with each other. They would be reinforcing or show different aspects of the same or related issues. The storylines in Picard don’t even affect the world they are set in -the reality of the present 2024- beyond what is strictly required to service the plot, let alone affecting each other. That is what frustrates me.
Maybe the creators thought that a present day setting would be easier during covid. That way they could just film a couple of actors with a few props on a location in the modern day without much set dressing or other background changes. I guess if that was their reasoning all along, they have succeeded. It just doesn’t make for a very effective science fiction setting, for me, if they aren’t even going to invest in making their setting changes immersive.
If that is their goal – a supposedly fundamental conceit of this season – then I am not seeing it. Has one character mentioned such a possibility? Has one character learned any lesson from seeing this present which is apparently balanced on a knife’s edge? I would say, so far, no.
Maybe as the “fear” storyline is concluded and Picard realizes (as looks likely to happen) that we all have to move through our day-to-day lives rejecting fear and rejecting those “safe” actions that could be taken in response to fear, then that would be a valuable lesson. It just seems like 10 episodes to get to that one conclusion is a long way to go for little payoff. Where do we see our characters facing these decisions on an episode to episode basis? Seven is kind of not having to face the fear of others that she is an Ex-Borg. Jurati is kind of facing the fear of being alone by forcibly being joined with another entity. It’s just so poorly connected/written.
Sure, ok, I can see trusting the FBI guy as Picard’s solution to the situation - it is very Trek-like. But can you explain to me “why” Rios shows the doctor the ship, etc.? He doesn’t need to show her. There is no imminent threat or risk that must be addressed by risking the entire mission and future by doing so. He just really liked her?
Ah, but that is my point. What is included currently is the “bullshit” if it comes without any support. Manned missions to Europa and decades-long human cloning experiments are the main two plot lines in 2024 and don’t have any apparent supporting history or logical consequences in that reality. They are just dropped in whole hog. That to me is “bullshit”. If the setting were 1924 earth and the same things were added to the timeline – manned missions to deep space and human cloning – wouldn’t you expect something else to be different in 1924? Wouldn’t there need to be some other accompanying sci-fi “bullshit” to make such changes reasonable? Space men or time travelers bringing the technology? Without those things, you would think the story was just badly written. To me, dropping these storylines into the 2024 setting without any other logical changes is unreasonable, as is dropping them into the 1924 (just to a lesser degree than that would be).
Huh. "Peddling"? But that is Star Trek. The whole point is believing in people, that they can and will build for a better future. If you want shows where people aren’t fundamentally good, maybe Star Wars is a better franchise for that. Or maybe you would prefer a series about “Star Trek: the Orion Syndicate” or “Star Trek: Section 31”? But this is Star Trek: Picard. Named after probably the greatest, most idealistic, best of humanity, most moralistic character Trek has.
As for the rest of the crew, sure they can all be a little broken, but I still want them to be their best possible selves inclusive of that damage. Maybe Seven or Jurati don’t have to be, but Rios, Raffi, and Picard are current members of Starfleet (and two are commanding officers) and were presumably cleared to return to service. They don’t have to be perfect, but they are responsible for the lives of hundreds of people under their command, as well as the worlds that depend on their diplomacy, exploration, and defense. I expect them to be heroic and of the humanist tradition. And that goes for Starfleet as an institution. It can make mistakes, because it is dependent on the people in it and the rules they have created. But I still expect Starfleet in a Star Trek show to be, in general, heroic and representative of the best of humanity.
I personally don’t care about the show’s ratings (like you said, as long as it gets renewed). I don’t care about what audiences in general think about the show. All I care about is if I think it is good or not. It could continue being bad, in my opinion, for 7 years as long as I get more of the show and the potential for more greatness one day. But currently it is not succeeding for me. So, “failure” for me would be its current state of not being very good sci-fi or Star Trek. But I realize, maybe a better descriptor than “failure” would be “disappointment”. Though that is a little light because there are many levels of disappointment. Maybe “major disappointment” would be more apt.
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And that's completely fair. I just think it is scifi even if it doesn't work through it all. We are literally watching technology unfold in front of us in Picard and how it could impact probably futures and that's not scifi enough?
I'm not a Picard fan but what?
That strikes me as more appropriate than failure which implies nothing of redeemable value. Which is far from the truth.
Renee is a pawn between Q and Picard.
Getting her away from Q no doubt worked wonders (he was aggravating whatever problems she may have been suffering from).
I haven't watched the show since TNG S1 35 years ago.
It's NOT the greatest thing since sliced bread. It's had its share of clunkers ("Sub Rosa", "Code of Honor").
The fact is newcomers ARE watching Picard.
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I never said a non superfan could not write good Trek, and I never said a superfan of Trek could not write bad Trek. Re-read what I wrote again. I wasn’t gatekeeping at all.
Interestingly enough, the superfans are the ones that have written the strongest episodes of the season.
Dude, I’d never give away my actual ideas away for free. I’m way too smart for that. But feel free to judge something that was never intended to actually be aired somewhere. And if it did, believe it or not, it would go through an editing process to make sure its of higher quality to be even made in the first with the goal to reach to a wider audience.
Being an ENT superfan yourself, I think you take that example a bit too personally and literally as to what an ENT revival script would look like. Since I literally forgot this post even existed and even I would toss it in the trash for something better. And IIRC, it was a concept of sorts and not even a full script. You can’t even discern what the plot is to explain the stilted dialogue. And this is what you get upset over? lol.
But you should take heed of your own words regarding bad writing when critiquing anyone’s writing.
Every professional writer I know of says that "ideas" are not valuable. Ideas are the cheap, easy part of writing. They're a dime a dozen. Execution is what makes a piece of writing good or bad. "It's not what it's about, it's how it's about it."
I think all the changes and goings on behind the scenes accounts for the less "tight" second half of the season so far. Piecing together what has been said in some interviews, it appears Chabon and Akiva had begun working on season two (with, as you stated, Chabon having written or drafted the first two episodes) before Charbon moved out of the showrunner position and Terry Matalas was brought in.
Matalas was the one who suggested a time travel element, but there were likely some elements already in place that Patrick Stewart, Chabon and Goldsmith had previously agreed to: e.g. exploration of Picard's love life, his relationships with his parents, bringing Q and Guinan back etc. It also sounds like that before Matalas came in, LeVar Burton and Gates McFadden had been approached to reprise their roles in season 2 but that changed (likely because Matalas wanted to do a full blown TNG reunion).
Added to that, when Matalas came in they basically hired a whole new writing staff, so I think they ended up meshing together some of the original ideas with Matalas' new ones and it might have created a bit of a mess..which might explain why there's so many seemingly disjointed plot lines.
COVID also played a role. Goldsmith has said that the changing situation (e.g. health and safety regulations) meant they had to change plans to accommodate a fluid situation like how many people could be on the soundstage at any given time etc. This is fairly obvious in early episodes when the cast all seems to be spread apart from each other during ensemble scenes.
Finally, Matalas also confirmed that he actually was only directly involved in the first three episodes of season two and then he began writing season three and Goldsmith took over the writers room. But Goldsmith was also running the writers room for SNW season 1 and I think it meant he and Matalas were juggling too many balls and handed off too much to less experienced writers. I mean the only writer left from the first season is Kristen Beyer.
10 episodes or 13 doesn't matter. You can craft good character-based stories in any length of time. (Though really short stories can be tough. But Trek doesn't have to worry about that because all the background you might want to be able to tell a really short story is available in over 700 hours of previous Trek).
I personally would love to have a show where characters sit around and talk about issues. That was actually what I thought PIC's creators were going to make when they promised this would be a "slower, more contemplative show" compared to Discovery. Which I guess it is to a tiny amount.
Ditto.
Yes, but why not both. This reminds me of the scene in "Sarek" where Picard sits and emotes for X many minutes. Is that not a great scene? Why couldn't that be what we get here?
The scene with Picard's dad was almost that, but I just didn't think James Callis (or maybe it was how the dialog was written?) was very good in it.
True. People do often miss what is really going on ("Last Action Hero" is another example that more people should/could/are reevaluating). I think it is likely that fans will appreciate Picard more overall in a few years. What it tried to do that was different. That it didn't succeed as much as originally hoped might become less important to history than that it tried at all.
Yeah, i would put in in with sci-fi, just not good sci-fi. The technology may be unfolding, but it isn't doing anything once it unfolds.And that's completely fair. I just think it is scifi even if it doesn't work through it all. We are literally watching technology unfold in front of us in Picard and how it could impact probably futures and that's not scifi enough?
I'm not a Picard fan but what?
That strikes me as more appropriate than failure which implies nothing of redeemable value. Which is far from the truth.
I don't personally feel failure implies "noting of redeemable value". There are always "silver linings" with failures. Failures can be "beautiful" and still be failures.
Agreed, Q was pushing her in the opposite direction, so getting her away did help. So, at best, we can say she had an underlying issue, but we can't really say if it was serious enough to impact the mission. But if the writers are trying to confront a mental health storyline (since they do seem to be doing that with Mama Picard), that would be something they might want to address.
And yes, i am sure new viewers are watching Picard. I just disagree that this show was geared toward them in any significant way.
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I've noticed that with the credits, but this seems odd to me. Was there some turmoil behind the scenes that led to a new writing staff? Just weird they would get rid of the season 1 writers and hire writers who don't have much experience instead. The following writers did not return for season 2: James Duff, Nick Zayas, Samantha Humphrey, Ayelet Waldman, and Chabon did not write or co-write an episode - just has one early story credit.
Also, according to articles and interviews the season 2 story was broken down by March 2020, but they were still writing for the season when filming started in February 2021. Since they were going to start filming in June 2020 before the pandemic, the story breakdown they had in March 2020 had to have been after Matalas was already on board and the time travel story was already planned (Since Chabon has a story credit for 2.2 it seems like the Confederation plot was always part of the plan).
My question is, what happened in between the story being complete in March 2020 and February 2021 when filming started? They had a whole year to work on the scripts and it seems like they still hadn't settled on what they were going to do (With Goldsman stating that he didn't know if they had learned their lessons from season 1 and writing still taking place during filming). DeLancie commented about multiple shutdowns affecting season 2 - were there things planned that couldn't be filmed? I would really like to learn what happened behind the scenes, because they had over a year to get a strong story together and it still seems like they couldn't pull it off.
I thought Matalas said he wasn't involved as showrunner in the second half and didn't give an episode number when he stopped. He also didn't state if he was just not involved as a showrunner once they started filming (and all the major and time consumign responsibilities that come with that role) or did he also not review/rewrite scripts anymore?
A fair distinction. One I do not make usually but your clarification is appreciated.
I'm thinking of the very basic structure of the season.
Episodes 1-3: Setup for the season, introduce the problem and the stakes. (Q changed the timeline) Start making steps to fix the problem (timeline)
Episodes 4-6: Find someone who can help the crew fix the timeline, find the cause of the change (Q convinced Renee not to go on her flight), Find Renee and keep the launch happening, which will presumably fix the timeline (seemingly accomplished in 6)
Episode 7-8: While still in the past, Picard is in a coma where we learn his mom suffered from mental illness. Then he is arrested by an FBI agent looking for aliens.
Throughout all this Soong created clones and Q is helping him and his clone (we don't know why)
So with the timeline seemingly fixed in episode 6 from the character and audience point of view (of course the launch hasn't happened and of course there will be complications), it's no wonder that episodes 7-8 feel kind've directionless. Other than the thread of the borg stuff (which was all but absent in 7 anyway), they felt so far removed from the main issues of the season. Also, from a Q/Test/Trial perspective, it all seems rather superficial so far. He changed the timeline by convincing Renee she wasn't cut out for it. Picard told her she was so Renee changed her mind...and then??? That's it? (I know the season isn't over)
Let's look at how little importance some of the character's have had to the overall plot since they arrived in 2024:
Rios: Injured in a clinic, arrested, then escaped, right after that went to a party and had a good time - had no influence on the mission to help Renee, after the party he took Picard to a clinic where he started falling in love with the clinic Doctor. Took the doctor to his ship so she would believe he was from the future. (episodes 3-8)
Seven/Raffi: Tried to find an alien signal. Didn't. Then tried to find Rios. Couldn't. Stole a police car and found his location in the car's computer. Let Rios go. Went to a party and did nothing - had no influence on the mission to help Renee, Tried looking for Agnes. Found out she was the Queen- fought her and lost. (episodes 3-8)
Episodes 1-3: Setup for the season, introduce the problem and the stakes. (Q changed the timeline) Start making steps to fix the problem (timeline)
Episodes 4-6: Find someone who can help the crew fix the timeline, find the cause of the change (Q convinced Renee not to go on her flight), Find Renee and keep the launch happening, which will presumably fix the timeline (seemingly accomplished in 6)
Episode 7-8: While still in the past, Picard is in a coma where we learn his mom suffered from mental illness. Then he is arrested by an FBI agent looking for aliens.
Throughout all this Soong created clones and Q is helping him and his clone (we don't know why)
So with the timeline seemingly fixed in episode 6 from the character and audience point of view (of course the launch hasn't happened and of course there will be complications), it's no wonder that episodes 7-8 feel kind've directionless. Other than the thread of the borg stuff (which was all but absent in 7 anyway), they felt so far removed from the main issues of the season. Also, from a Q/Test/Trial perspective, it all seems rather superficial so far. He changed the timeline by convincing Renee she wasn't cut out for it. Picard told her she was so Renee changed her mind...and then??? That's it? (I know the season isn't over)
Let's look at how little importance some of the character's have had to the overall plot since they arrived in 2024:
Rios: Injured in a clinic, arrested, then escaped, right after that went to a party and had a good time - had no influence on the mission to help Renee, after the party he took Picard to a clinic where he started falling in love with the clinic Doctor. Took the doctor to his ship so she would believe he was from the future. (episodes 3-8)
Seven/Raffi: Tried to find an alien signal. Didn't. Then tried to find Rios. Couldn't. Stole a police car and found his location in the car's computer. Let Rios go. Went to a party and did nothing - had no influence on the mission to help Renee, Tried looking for Agnes. Found out she was the Queen- fought her and lost. (episodes 3-8)
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