I'm not a hater, I'm not. People like things. As I've said (and will again) I love it when people like stuff. Even stuff I don't like! I would probably just accept it as 10 episodes of TV that kept me mostly entertained (WORF! WORF! WORF!) but I'm hearing this hailed as "Star Trek finally done right". Or "This makes up for the last two seasons." Or even "This is the apology for Nemesis." Have you lost your Vulcan mind?
The D was lovely. She was underappreciated even back in the day. Frakes and Sertis were marvelous (except when poor Will's dummy card came up.) I cannot gush about Worf enough. (I wanted him to mention Jadzia SO much. Just say her name? Pleeeeeease?) I may have discovered that there is such a thing as too much Goldsmith. (I know!) But the music was wonderful anyway.
Picard has taught me an interesting lesson. I don't love spaceships. I don't love cool sets and brilliant futuristic design. (I mean, I DO.)
I love Starfleet. I love the people that are in it and work in it and make it go. I love smart people doing their jobs to do really cool things. I might have problems with Disco but it does that. I have no problems with SNW and it does that like crazy (even if it's not as formal as TOS or even TNG were).
Picard was a mess in this department. I am amazed that I enjoyed it as much as I did. And I did. But not as good Star Trek. It was a vehicle to bring back actors we liked and let them do... Stuff.
I wanted to like Shaw so much. I wanted him to be the new Jellico. But he never acted like he could get a crew to go to 7-11 for smokes. When he showed up in Ten Forward the crew acted like "Does anyone know who this guy is?" And at the end we're supposed to love him because he was smart enough to not hate 7 of 9?
You can't make a major underpinning of the show "love of family and our connections and the loss they can bring" and then write off Will and Deanna's REMAINING KID. Is she hanging out with Chuck Cunningham?
Why are we shocked that Elizabeth Shelby would make the entire fleet ready made for the Borg? Because she wouldn't! Even TV writers could see it was a single point of failure, let alone the finest strategic minds in the Federation.
It was a big ask to believe that James Kirk and his Merry Band could walk off with a whole starship. Now Geordi LaForge has his own Matchbox collection that apparently nobody visits or knows about?
This was 10 episodes of a bunch of TV stuff. Two months to Strange New Worlds!
I love Starfleet too. I gotta disagree with you about Picard though. While we may not have seen Shaw be an impressive Captain (who knows what he was like without Picard and Riker around), I felt the crew of the Titan were as Starfleet as you could get and I liked what I saw of them (and would be happy to see more).
I was a bit miffed too that Kestra was mentioned
once (in prison on the Shrike) and then never again. She's obviously driving the Changling!Riker nuts on Nepenthe.
I could see Shelby being arrogant enough to think Starfleet could do the connected ships thing without any issues, but more likely I think she was just there for the Big Day Speech and other (arrogant) Fed mucketymucks decided to connect the fleet.
Geordi doesn't have a matchbox collection, just one '69 GTO he's restoring.
I don't think this was "a bunch of TV stuff." It was IMO a loving sendoff for a crew many of us grew up with in a way that only could be done in Star Trek. (Even the missteps were very ST missteps. Borg Queen invites Picard in just to screw with him? Very Trek IMO.)
(The Lights of Zetar was the first episode aired while I was alive?!? Ewwwww!)
It appears that A Private Little War was the first episode to air after my birth.
::snickers:: You actually *bought* one of those?
During TOS, when Gene Roddenberry was first creating it, they were making it up as they went along. TMP was after all of TOS had been made, there was a decade to reflect on it, and Star Trek had an actual budget. Early-TNG is where Gene Roddenberry let his idea of what Star Trek should be get in the way of the actual execution of it. Which is why I think TNG became better after he wasn't as involved.
Very well said!
I enjoyed this season. It did what it was intended to do and I had fun while watching it. Does it hold up to deep scrutiny? Not so much, but neither do a lot of shows I enjoy. Back when John Scalzi was working on Stargate: Universe, he said at Con that his job was to make sure you weren't taken out of the story while you watched it. If you had trouble with things afterwards, that was okay, as long as you enjoyed the ride while you were on it. And I enjoyed the hell out of this ride.
