Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x10 - "The Last Generation"

[Bad Thoughts]

Q dying never made sense. They are omnipotent and exists in non linear time. Was a nice surprise.

I don't find the notions of Q dying and being able to continued to interfere in human events are incompatible. His death makes sense in the context of the Q's understanding of causality and sequence of events, not ours. It does require some suspension of disbelief, granted.

 

[Racefuel]

About Laris, it wasn't stated in the Shuttle scene that Picard and Crusher are a couple. People are assuming that, unless I missed an overt line.

Their relationship seemed more friendly coparenting rather than a romantic attachment.

 

[eschaton]

Again, the biggest single frustration I have with the episode (and the season as a whole) is while it works just fine as a coda to TNG, it actively undermines everything regarding Seasons 1/2.

• Soji? Doesn't mean shit to Picard, or Data it seems. Not even mentioned.
• Elnor? Possibly dead, they don't care.
• Q's "death"? Undone by the mid-credits scene
• Agnes's "reformation" of the Borg? Meant nothing.
• Season 2's whole arc about getting Picard to be open to a relationship? Didn't amount to shit, since Laris was written out after 15 minutes.
• Riker's grief regarding Thad goes from something mostly dealt with to a fresh, open wound. They actively undermine everything in Nepenthe.
• The death of the "other Data" in Season 1 is pushed aside as being meaningless with little fanfare.

As I said, Raffi's arc was the only thing that got payoff.

Do I think this is a better season than 1 or 2? Yes, overall. But I feel like one of the basic rules of serialized TV is that the decisions characters made in the prior seasons have to mean something in order for the ultimate payoff to be worthwhile. As flawed as the previous seasons were, Season 3 actively makes them worse, because the entire emotional cores of both seasons are rendered totally meaningless by the choices that Matalas made here.

 

[Yistaan]

And it bothers me that the scale of it is just handwaved away once the crisis is over.

Me too. The tone is all happy because the main characters survived. In-universe, thousands are dead, the spacedock crewed by thousands are all dead, etc. It's not even really clear how Tuvok survived to be honest. Chances are practically every DS9, VOY, LD, and PROD character not said to have explicitly left Starfleet are dead.

This catastrophe is arguably worse than Wolf 359 and realistically characters should be furious about it for decades in-universe the way Shaw and Sisko are about Wolf. Beverly realistically wouldn't be made head of Starfleet Medical, she would be facing endless questions for the rest of her life on how she could've missed the Borg DNA in her own son (she had early warning with the childhood visions), and why it took her TWENTY years to get him to your friendly local Betazoid (or even Deanna Troi) who could've had a look into his mind (and prevented this catastrophe), all over a petty feud with her ex-boyfriend.

Seven being called by Shaw to be captain in the presumably 3 months she was under him--not only is that already nonsensical, but wasn't the Titan under refit most of those 3 months??

There's no way they'd rename the Titan to Enterprise also, that'd just remind people of this catastrophe. Yes the Enterprise saved the day but they arguably helped cause the problem to begin with, as Shaw himself earlier lampshades "With saving the galaxy you two have a real chicken and the egg thing going".

Raffi's stint in Starfleet intelligence didn't last long did it? A year at most?

So Raffi's son wants to talk after she saved the Fed from the Borg? Saving the synth race from genocide in S1 wasn't enough it seems. I'm beginning to think maybe he's the jerk in this situation.

So Q shows up to remind us that the Picard family is special. Trek wasn't about magical bloodlines back in the day, that was the domain of that other Star franchise. And quite frankly I think most Fed citizens would be happy if they never heard from any of the Picards ever again.

 

[Lord Garth]

So, it looks like the Borg Borg are defeated once and for all? "Never say never", but as far as Picard is concerned?

One of the things I like about PIC Season 3 is that it showed that an enemy who's hard to defeat won't go down so easily. Applicable to the Borg and the Dominion. We have the Rogue Changelings and a Borg Queen who'll go to any extreme rather than be defeated. "What You Leave Behind" and "Endgame" shouldn't have been the end any more than Nemesis was.

Now I see why they went with a different Borg Queen in PIC Season 2. They were saving what happened after "Endgame" for here.

 

[Commander Richard]

SEVEN OF NINE. IS CAPTAIN. OF THE ENTERPRISE.

Not a fan of the Enterprise-G right now or how it came about, but this, I like. Who would have thought we'd ever see that.

 

[Racefuel]

Again, the biggest single frustration I have with the episode (and the season as a whole) is while it works just fine as a coda to TNG, it actively undermines everything regarding Seasons 1/2.

• Soji? Doesn't mean shit to Picard, or Data it seems. Not even mentioned.
• Elnor? Possibly dead, they don't care.
• Q's "death"? Undone by the mid-credits scene
• Agnes's "reformation" of the Borg? Meant nothing.
• Season 2's whole arc about getting Picard to be open to a relationship? Didn't amount to shit, since Laris was written out after 15 minutes.
• Riker's grief regarding Thad goes from something mostly dealt with to a fresh, open wound. They actively undermine everything in Nepenthe.
• The death of the "other Data" in Season 1 is pushed aside as being meaningless with little fanfare.

As I said, Raffi's arc was the only thing that got payoff.

Do I think this is a better season than 1 or 2? Yes, overall. But I feel like one of the basic rules of serialized TV is that the decisions characters made in the prior seasons have to mean something in order for the ultimate payoff to be worthwhile. As flawed as the previous seasons were, Season 3 actively makes them worse, because the entire emotional cores of both seasons are rendered totally meaningless by the choices that Matalas made here.

• 
  
  If you're thinking linerally and not applying the idea that this Q is one who is coming from a period before his ..death or whatever it was in Picard S2.
  
  Q exists outside of normal space time and can move freely within it (until he couldnt). The implication is that while Picard and company are doing their thing in S2, when Q isn't on screen, he's still messing around in the prime timeline with Jack and such.

 

[Yistaan]

• Soji?

Terry just said that a meeting with Soji and Data was scripted but they couldn't get it to happen (budget or something) Exclusive: Star Trek Picard Showrunner Terry Matalas Says Working on the Last Two Episodes Nearly Killed Him (movieweb.com)

 

[fireproof78]

Me too. The tone is all happy because the main characters survived. In-universe, thousands are dead, the spacedock crewed by thousands are all dead, etc. It's not even really clear how Tuvok survived to be honest. Chances are practically every DS9, VOY, LD, and PROD character not said to have explicitly left Starfleet are dead.

Well, as long as you have a sensible chuckle and a quip at the end life is good.

Very TOS.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

About Laris, it wasn't stated in the Shuttle scene that Picard and Crusher are a couple. People are assuming that, unless I missed an overt line.

Their relationship seemed more friendly coparenting rather than a romantic attachment.

They could just be proud parents.

 

[Commander Richard]

That's a nice thought: Q could've died in the year 3 million for all we know

And went all the way back to the 25th century just to see Picard.

3 million years of more Q ahead.

 

[Lord Garth]

About Laris, it wasn't stated in the Shuttle scene that Picard and Crusher are a couple. People are assuming that, unless I missed an overt line.

Their relationship seemed more friendly coparenting rather than a romantic attachment.

That's the way I read it.

 

[Racefuel]

They could just be proud parents.

Thats the way I took it, proud parents but not necessarily romantically involved again.

I suspect what happened is people read the spoiler AMA on r/picard where *that* viewer interpreted it as a renewed romatic relationship and are substituting that as fact when it was really that own viewers subjective opinion

 

[Yistaan]

The changelings killed Laris offscreen just like they did to Zhaban. They haven't forgetten what the Tal Shiar did to their first homeworld. Picard couldn't even be bothered to go to the funeral.

 

[SG-17]

They initially wanted even more Voyager alum, but not a single DS9 alum. It is a selfish nit pick on my part, but it irks me that they wanted even more VOY alum, but not a single DS9 alum.

That makes me like Matalas even more.

 

[fireproof78]

I don't find the notions of Q dying and being able to continued to interfere in human events are incompatible. His death makes sense in the context of the Q's understanding of causality and sequence of events, not ours. It does require some suspension of disbelief, granted.

Not really. Star Trek previously establishes the Q are mortal, in so far as they can eventually die, otherwise "Death Wish" and "The Q and The Gray" are completely wrong and ignored.

 

[firehawk12]

I mean, yeah, 90s Trek is over. PIC is very much a send-off for that Berman-era vibe.

I guess that's my point, even in that context, it didn't do much for me because in my mind I've already said goodbye.

I mean, it's not that Earth leaving the Federation would lead to its downfall. It's that if Earth falls, the entire Federation Council, Supreme Court, and President, and Starfleet Headquarters, are all down there -- so we're talking the decapitation of the entire Federation government in one day. And, the entire Starfleet fleet is apparently all in Earth orbit -- all 7,000 ships -- so the only defense the rest of the Federation would have would be whatever member world space forces remain outside of Starfleet's org chart (the Vulcan Defense Force, the Andorian Imperial Guard, etc.) and whatever civilian ships they can press into service.

That's a very different thing from United Earth legally seceding and the Federation government and Starfleet Headquarters moving off-planet.

If Washington DC was destroyed, presumably the US government has enough redundancies to withstand losing its entire political structure. It's not like every other planet just decides to lay down and literally die by getting assimilated because Earth is gone, any more than if DC is destroyed California would just surrender to whoever made that attack.

I mean, listen. The show is Star Trek: Picard, not Star Trek: Janeway, and Star Trek: First Contact already established that the Queen had a fixation on him. It's fine for her to blame the Federation collectively for Janeway's neurolytic pathogen and to take that anger out on Picard.

No, I get it, I just think it's an odd omission to not mention in dialog, considering how many times they said "Admiral Janeway" on the show before.

We don't know how many rogue Changelings were at play. It could be only a hundred or so. Being able to remotely hack into Starfleet transporters to reprogram them to insert Borg DNA is not something that requires the physical presence of a Changeling aboard every affected starship and station.

It went from a handful being experimented on at Section 31 to an indeterminant number. I forgot if Changelings can just reproduce easily, or if as someone suggested, they went back to Gamma and convinced the Odo-Changelings to join them... in which case you'd assume that's an act of war.

Of course they do. But this episode isn't about that. You might as well be upset that "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" didn't focus on the trauma of the survivors of Wolf 359.

But they also are responsible for the structure of this season. There's no reason why the last episode couldn't be "Family" and deal with the consequences. Instead they skip over all of it with a time jump. It's not my fault that the first 8 episodes were about Vadic.

Yeah, that was disappointing. But her character was mentioned fondly, and it was great to see her in S2.

It is what it is I suppose. It was just odd to mention her being in the room angry at them for keeping her in the bar but not show her giving them the side eye. lol
They could have done an out of focus shot of a woman in Guinan's costume angrily wiping down the bar top or something.

Honestly I didn't like the idea of Jack joining Starfleet. I get a little tired of the way Star Trek acts like out of 150 planets across 8,000 light-years, the only career of any value is becoming a space cop.

Yeah, it's too bad that the only way he finds himself is to basically do what his father did. At least Wesley figured shit out.

Yeah, I didn't like that part. But as far as I'm concerned, they're back together.

I can't remember if Starfleet has a rule about being in a relationship with someone under your direct command. I guess Picard was able to do it. lol

I'm not really clear what the meaningful distinction would even be between a miniseries and a season of PIC.

I found a lot of the first eight episodes to be drawn out and unfocused, particularly Vadic being wasted as a villain in favor of the Borg Queen.
If they were building toward this finale anyway, they could have just made "First Contact 2" and structured the writing - and the budget - around that premise instead.

 

[IMC Headquarters]

Again, the biggest single frustration I have with the episode (and the season as a whole) is while it works just fine as a coda to TNG, it actively undermines everything regarding Seasons 1/2.

• Soji? Doesn't mean shit to Picard, or Data it seems. Not even mentioned.
• Elnor? Possibly dead, they don't care.
• Q's "death"? Undone by the mid-credits scene
• Agnes's "reformation" of the Borg? Meant nothing.
• Season 2's whole arc about getting Picard to be open to a relationship? Didn't amount to shit, since Laris was written out after 15 minutes.
• Riker's grief regarding Thad goes from something mostly dealt with to a fresh, open wound. They actively undermine everything in Nepenthe.
• The death of the "other Data" in Season 1 is pushed aside as being meaningless with little fanfare.

As I said, Raffi's arc was the only thing that got payoff.

Do I think this is a better season than 1 or 2? Yes, overall. But I feel like one of the basic rules of serialized TV is that the decisions characters made in the prior seasons have to mean something in order for the ultimate payoff to be worthwhile. As flawed as the previous seasons were, Season 3 actively makes them worse, because the entire emotional cores of both seasons are rendered totally meaningless by the choices that Matalas made here.

This is all valid. It feels like this series exists alongside a different timeline/timetrack than the prior ones. Which is why I was hoping it was simply a holoadventure Laris created for Jean-Luc. Though as events progressed that looked decidedly less likely.

Taken individually, the episodes were entertaining and enthralling. Yet, as a whole, the season did sweep too much under the rug, which resembled one of the headless bodies left behind by Worf. Key points of which are mentioned here.

The contrast of Borg/Jurati smiling in familiarity and hope presented against the rotting Old Queen screeching in full tantrum mode was striking, to say the least.

 

[Racefuel]

However, it seems clear that the only being that can "Kill a Q'" is another Q.

Q and the Grey and "Death Wish" both establish that the only beings that can facillitate Q-cide is another Q.

 

[Yistaan]

However, it seems clear that the only being that can "Kill a Q'" is another Q.

Q and the Grey and "Death Wish" both establish that the only beings that can facillitate Q-cide is another Q.

Maybe the continuum got fed up with Q's antics and decided to execute him, with a little time provided to settle affairs. Did S2 ever say the entire Q race was dying, or just that Q?