I feel like it's more that TNG season 8 was the story TPTB wanted, it wasn't the story Sir Patrick wanted, and so we got two seasons of the showrunners trying to navigate between the two to muddled results.
Spoilers Star Trek: Picard General Discussion Thread
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I feel like it's more that TNG season 8 was the story TPTB wanted, it wasn't the story Sir Patrick wanted, and so we got two seasons of the showrunners trying to navigate between the two to muddled results.
Paramount has just spent $270 million to get a sequel to Nemesis!
I can't say I blame Sir Patrick (he did seven seasons of TNG plus four feature films).
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I'm not put out that he pushed for something new, not least because, for as many complaints as I have about the writing, pacing, and whathave in S1, it also introduced some of my fave characters and bits of lore in the modern Trek era. But I do wish one side or the other would have committed more fully to the idea of this series either being a TNG coda or its own thing entirely before we got three seasons in.
The original story they pitched to Sir Patrick and the one that made him agree to do the show wasn’t even the one they ended up with, at least not for the first season. (I think Sir Patrick mentioned the only thing that remained was the story element about the Romulan refugees.) For the second season we had Akiva Goldsman and his weird obsession with explaining why JLP had never settled down even though TNG had a literal episode (that everybody seemed to have “forgotten” all of a sudden) where JLP had a wife and two kids and had settled down pretty well after some adjustment. (It was not exactly real, yes, I know, but it was real to HIM, that’s all that matters.) It was a completely unnecessary detail to explore for an entire season. No wonder people weren’t exactly interested. They WERE interested in Q’s return, however, and in some more legendary P/Q bickering… and then got like two or three big scenes with JLP in ten whole episodes and that was it. THIS is what they should have been focusing on, especially after they spent months hyping things up and talking about how important Q was to JLP’s life.
In essence, there were a lot of stories. A lot of ideas that muddled things. From everyone. The studio interfered as well. There was a pandemic going on. And in the midst of all this were the fans who stubbornly kept expecting TNG season 8 and wanted nostalgia despite everybody saying right from the start that it wasn’t going to be that.
It’s no wonder things turned out to be as chaotic as they did. There was a massive discrepancy between expectations and actual results.
In essence, there were a lot of stories. A lot of ideas that muddled things. From everyone. The studio interfered as well. There was a pandemic going on. And in the midst of all this were the fans who stubbornly kept expecting TNG season 8 and wanted nostalgia despite everybody saying right from the start that it wasn’t going to be that.
It’s no wonder things turned out to be as chaotic as they did. There was a massive discrepancy between expectations and actual results.
I think that the entire TNG cast would only be back for PIC Season 3. If (emphasis on if) they did a fourth season, I think it would be something else, just like all the other seasons. I never thought Picard would become the type of series where it would be a collection of season-length anthologies, but here we are.
I remember in November 2015 when they first announced Star Trek was coming back to TV, and they said it would be like Prestige TV. I love DSC, but during the first season I saw it less as "Prestige TV" and more like "Battlestar Galactica", and by the second season it felt like neither of those. I still like DSC just as much as before, but it became something else. Then along came PIC. The first season of Picard actually felt like Prestige TV to me. It felt like what I thought Star Trek would feel like when it came back. And, in fact, PIC Season 1 is my favorite season of New Trek. As much as I'm looking forward to PIC Season 3, I wish the series in general had continued more in S1's direction.
What does it say about Picard, as a series, that they ended up replacing the majority of the cast in Season 3? In no other Star Trek series has that ever happened. And I don't even have to wonder what the reaction would've been if that level of cast turnover had happened in any of the other series.
I actually hope that whatever replaces PIC, if the next series is a PIC Replacement, will take the best parts of Picard's three seasons and combine them to make a new series with a more solid identity and a stable cast.
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It all depends on what Seven's arc is in S3. Since I really liked the Fenris Rangers idea, and if she becomes a captain of a Starfleet ship by the end of the season, I'm not sure how they get back to Fenris Rangers Seven in a way that it does not seem like a step backwards for her.
They definitely did not do enough with the Romulan refugees. It feels overlooked, though maybe they intend to follow up on that with a Seven of Nine series.
I think the fan interest in Picard settling down boils around Beverly and why that never happened after NEM, which S3 will address. S2 deciding to address Picard not settling down due to a past family trauma wasn't the story PIC viewers were looking for. Goldsman missed the mark there.
The one thing that salvages that season is that its an allegory of being stuck in the past. Though the significance for the rest of the La Sirena crew outside of Picard just seemed to be brushed aside.
Which was a highlight of S2.
Being aware that there was only three seasons to tell every story left about Picard meant some stories would get smashed together.
That there was fan backlash to the first season also meant that they thought they had to retool the show, instead of continue on with the threads that they had developed for the show.
She left the Fenris Rangers for a reason. (She nearly got assimilated again in S1 and she was nearly killed in s2. Where were the Rangers then?)
There was also the Covid-19 lockdown in S2. THAT threw a monkey wrench into things.
I doubt they’re anything alike. Plus presumably the SFA show is live action
No, we’re not. Terry has said that fans expecting TNG S8 will be disappointed.
Variety.com last week they were talking about the Tony Hillerman series and mentioned Jeri Ryan was going to be in an episode of the series promoting the return of season 2 on Amc. They film the series in New Mexico and she was there filming a show long since Picard season 3 finished filming. Last summer .
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Jeri Ryan has also said that the pitch for her character to return was not what ended up being part of the story. It seems like they retooled the season 1 story from the original concept, and then retooled it again as they were filming. The writers have famously said they didn't know what the season's ending would be when they started filming.
They 'forgot' Inner Light, but used it as the theme
My headcanon says that he slowly forgot that whole experience like a dream just fades away cause it's hard to keep memories of two lifetimes.
Q's return was a disappointment because it was never explained why this immortal guy is now dying, and what the whole season was supposed to be about. Is the lesson learned from the Confederate timeline and unlocking childhood memories simply: leave the key where it is? That's what the season was about?
And I was so excited about Guinan, and possibly more details on her relationship with Q, why they said what they said in Q Who, and what do we learn instead? Drink and scream and you can make a Q appear.
I learned...not to trust Q.
I already knew that.
I already knew that.
We'll have a live-action Starfleet Academy series when flying cars become commonplace. SFA is something that's been in the background since 1990. I think it'll always be the series or movie that almost gets made.
Yeah, it's supposed to be "TNG's Star Trek VI". That doesn't sound like TNG Season 8 to me anymore than TUC (or the TOS Movies in general) would've been TOS Season 5. "Season 5?," someone might ask. I think of TAS as essentially TOS Season 4...
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Yup, can confirm. It always makes me want to
when I see people going on about “Stewart helped to come up with that stupid ending for Picard’s character in season 1, how COULD HE” - lolwat, he didn’t even KNOW. He said he was made aware of the ending when he saw the final script. Nobody had bothered to talk to him about it. Imagine making a major decision like this for the lead character of the show (and a legacy character of the whole Trek franchise) without even talking to the actor who plays him. At first Sir Patrick was confused and thought they’d booted him from the show. Then he turned a few pages and “oh I’m still here”. So no, he definitely did not come up with this and I sincerely doubt he’d have been able to do anything about the ending as a whole if he had protested. He has even hinted at how not really helpful he thought the synth thing was. He doesn’t really seem to like it when people bring it up but he’s too polite to slam it completely. (Well that and still being under contract, I guess. Wait a little while tho. Like with Nemesis. He used to say it was amazing. Then the contract expired. 
)He put in a few funny remarks into PIC season 1 because he felt it was needed for JLP to have some of his dry humor still. That was him. The rest was writers doing their thing. In this case, something completely different than what they had pitched at first.
Even Terry Matalas isn’t fond of the synth body decision they made for JLP. He said in a recent interview - and he was clearly trying to be diplomatic about it, he really seemed to struggle for words - that he “would not have made this decision for this particular character”. Which, in non-diplomatic showrunner speech, basically means “I think it was plain stupid”.
We have a saying here in Germany that basically translates into “lots of cooks spoil the porridge” (if you want to be British about it), basically meaning that too many people with too many ideas working on a thing will mess up the thing. I always think of this saying when I think of PIC. So many showrunners, producers, ideas… combined with studio interference and impossibly high fan expectations due to the popularity of JLP… and it didn’t get any better in the second season. On the contrary - to make it all even worse we got a pandemic on top of it.
I truly wouldn't be so down on the idea of Picard in a synth body if any of what Chabon said about it being a matter of Picard putting his money where his mouth is wrt the value of synthetic life had actually made it to screen. On paper, it's an interesting concept, especially given Picard's recent bond with Soji. The execution was awful, though - a cheap get-out-of-death-free card that Picard had no say in, and the next season dropped Soji completely anyway, making it doubly pointless.
The synth body idea is a fantastic thing to think about and to discuss and to interpret etc. It’s great for fic writing. So many possibilities. I quite like it. I don’t mind it either as an idea, on the contrary. I also don’t mind that this is JLP now. It makes no difference about the way I feel when it comes to him.
However (and here we go). The execution of the idea on screen was… let’s say it left a lot to be desired. TNG would no doubt have made an entire episode about it. And that’s the problem - on PIC it was yet another idea they seemingly randomly shoved in without really going into it. I’m saying seemingly because I think this part in particular is a typical problem that arises when you hire a novelist as the showrunner/writer tho. They do have the most wonderful ideas… on PAPER. It’s no wonder Chabon was so eager to answer season 1 fan questions on Instagram after the season had ended; when you read his detailed answers it was absolutely clear that he had thought things out wonderfully in his head and that they would all have made a whole lot more sense… if season 1 had been published as a novel and not a television show. I would be very interested in hearing Chabon’s take on the show in a few years when nobody has to be polite about it anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s like “they butchered my ideas beyond recognition” or something.
In a way things mirror the show for Sir Patrick - nobody talked to him about the synth body decision and nobody talked to JLP about it on the show either.
Yup. It’s reduced to a footnote and a basis for jokes (I think they said Riker will joke about it). I don’t think that’s what Chabon intended with it. I’m guessing the writers simply figured “whoops, we kinda butchered that and now the fans (and the actor) hate it, let’s ignore it”. If they hadn’t butchered it and had treated it with a lot more attention and more “this is a moral dilemma” I don’t think people would dislike it the way they do now. On any other franchise I’d have been like “ok whatever, move on”, but this is Star Trek. You can’t have a massive moral and ethical question like “is it okay to put this man’s consciousness into a synth body without really even asking him” and then gloss over it in like ten minutes or less. This does NOT work on Star Trek where moral dilemmas like this are the core of entire episodes and space court scenes and whatnot. And especially not with JLP, THE posterboy for moral dilemma episodes.
She was also a Fenris Rangers for a reason – the Federation are scared of Xbs, even with major figures like Janeway supporting them. While the Fenris Rangers accepted her into their ranks.
It did, and working around Stewart’s age was very important.
At the same time, DIS and SNW also worked around the conditions created by the pandemic as well, and their respective seasons were better received than PIC.
Clearly not, considering they let Icheb in.
Picard's new body is flesh and blood, artificially created, but still biological. He'll also have a normal life span and no enhancements.
I'm not sure why it really needs to be brought up again. He's still Picard, with a new (old) body.
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