Spoilers The legacy of Star Trek: Picard?

[Uhura's Song]

I couldn't give 2 sh!ts about Titan being renamed Enterprise. I think it is kind of cool that Seven has a ship that is both Riker's AND Picard's legacy.

 

[fireproof78]

I think the vision for Trek is to have different types of shows for different folks. DISCO was darker & edgier to start. SNW is the episodic exploration/optimism show. Prodigy is for kids. LD is adult satire. IDK what the Academy show will be like. But my point is that they are not gonna make 3/4/5 types of the same show.

I only hope that you are correct.

 

[ReddishAlert]

I think the vision for Trek is to have different types of shows for different folks. DISCO was darker & edgier to start. SNW is the episodic exploration/optimism show. Prodigy is for kids. LD is adult satire. IDK what the Academy show will be like. But my point is that they are not gonna make 3/4/5 types of the same show.

I really hope they do approach it like that going forward. I think there are a lot of different stories you can tell which resonate with different people. That’s why I don’t trash talk the shows I don’t like much. Because I think it’s great that they are telling different stories in different tones that different people can relate to on different levels.

 

[ToddCam]

What if TNG had ended after three seasons? Besides ending on a cliffhanger, it would have felt quite uneven to say the least. Perhaps if Picard had another 4 years it would feel more cohesive.

 

[Tosk]

I think the legacy might be "reflected glory". Almost everything that will be brought up about it in a positive light is a hold-over or reference to previous work. The season one attempt to break the character into a new space (no pun intended) will be overshadowed by the ten layers of nostalgia that season three (not exclusively, but primarily) heaped on.

I'm not pretending to know, that's just how I feel today. I'm projecting!

 

[Eddie Roth]

...

S1 was in many respects more radical than anything Discovery did. S2 couldn't decide what it wanted to be. S3 gave up and just gave the people what they want. To extend the Star Wars analogy, S1 and the first half of S2 were TLJ, and S3 was TROS.

Yes, that Star Wars analogy is spot on. Also I suppose as far as reception goes. TLJ was hugely divisive among fans, some think it's the greatest ever, others hate it with a passion. TROS I dare say still has many detractors, but overall it seemed to me that fans felt placated, at least those who disliked TLJ. Big difference though: TROS received rather mediocre reviews from critics, while reviews for PIC S3 were pretty pretty solid.

 

[Eddie Roth]

A lot of the issues with S2 is because it was in the heart of Covid and had to struggle with those challenges. S1 being a pre-covid production didn't have those challenges and S3 being semi-post Covid didn't either.

Hmm, was it though? Seasons 2 and 3 were filmed back to back, so how could one be classified as "in the heart if Covid" and not the other? I don't think that works as an explanation. These two seasons must have been scripted at around the same time. That's part of why I wonder about the HUGE changes between 2 and 3, which included not only a change of showrunner, cast turnover, but also removing the main title theme (the main title sequence even!) etc etc. This was deliberate - and had good results, so not complaining. But the transition could've been smoother for sure.

 

[Eddie Roth]

What if TNG had ended after three seasons? Besides ending on a cliffhanger, it would have felt quite uneven to say the least. Perhaps if Picard had another 4 years it would feel more cohesive.

I hadn't even thought about that analogy, but there's something to that: S1 seen by many/most as uneven at best (although I think PIC 1 was much more cohesive than people give it credit for, and a much better season than TNG 1), S2 overall still unpopular in retrospect, although it is a lot of (sometimes campy) fun episode to episode - same could be said for PIC S2. And S3 is when things got turned around. Both TNG and PIC, incidentally, ended their 3rd season on a big Borg episode that is the best-rated (e.g. on IMDb) for the respective show.

Now that would make Michael Chabon the Gene Roddenberry of PIC. Akiva Goldsman is Maurice Hurley. And Terry Matalas is Michael Piller? Why not? Now the lesson - and the legacy of PIC that we're discussing here - could be: make a follow-up show that now builds on the strengths of what the show has become. The still-hypothetical Star Trek: Legacy could then be the equivalent of TNG seasons 4-7. I'd take that.

 

[donners22]

I see the three seasons as largely similar. Good ideas and some wonderful moments, but let down by poor pacing, missed opportunities, and problems pulling the story threads together.

I prefer each to most of the Berman era, and would happily re-watch them for those great moments, but I'm left a bit disappointed by what might have been.

S3's legacy may be seen very differently in years to come; it's so heavily dependent on love for TNG. Without that, its flaws are more glaring.

 

[Arpy]

The Enterprise-G thing didn’t make sense unless the service records or scandals surrounding the E and F were bad enough that Starfleet had chosen to retire the name.

For me that’s not so bad if we get that story in say a book if not in Legacy itself. This is a job for a Christopher L. Bennett or Una McCormack.

 

[Quantum21]

I'm sure over in the general discussion thread, there will have been some posts addressing this point, but I feel it merits its own discussion now that the show is over. It's been a long time since we last completed a ST show and can now look back on it as a whole. I wonder how you all feel (although I have guesses what you might say): what will the legacy of Star Trek: Picard be as a series?

I will say upfront that I enjoyed this show tremendously from day one and while criticism has been valid, I never understood why the early seasons attracted such vitriol. Season 1 (and later seasons as well to some extent), to my mind, suffered from two interrelated things:

• wanting to be a movie, i.e. buying into the apparent common sense these days that a watercooler-worthy show has to be fully serialized, which had never been the way ST was done. (That is despite DS9's serialization, which however always presented as links between episodes that could still be watched on their own and had their own identity.)
• the "mystery box" approach to serialized storytelling. There have been shows in which this worked splendidly, but as fans of shows like The X-Files or Lost know - there had better be a good resolution in place when you tease a mystery.

Now IMO, the resolution of the story arc of Season 1 was satisfying, but while all of the aforementioned shows unraveled their mysteries over many seasons and always included more standalone episodes or respectively aspects to each episode that stood on their own, PIC tended towards its episodes as "chapters" in a larger story, moving from narrative obstacle to obstacle while always playing its cards somewhat too close to its chest. On first viewing, which happened with a week's break between episodes, it soon became very hard to follow. They threw so many balls into the air (the XBs, the Romulans including not only the Tal Shiar, but an apocalyptic cult offshoot to that organization, Data's legacy and Picard's grief over his death, Picard's illness, the question of what exactly Dahj and Soji were, the story of Picard's resignation from Starfleet, the mystery of the synth rebellion, not to mention the Qowat Milat etc etc). Lots of stuff, which as it turned out on a second (binge) viewing, do work together rather well. But there might probably have been a more economical way of telling such a story without making it so labyrinthine.

That said, PIC Season 1 ultimately became one of my favorite seasons of ST ever, because where it succeeded, it probed deeply into the characters, old and new, and ended in such a moving way when Data finally achieves humanity by actually dying in consciousness as well, while Picard in turn is reborn as an android of sorts. Although Season 3 retconned that ending somewhat, it also didn't erase it and further underlined how Picard and Data, (who were played here as the central axis of TNG, which I suppose in truth they never were back then to that extent), are now ontologically one and the same. In a show that investigates, throughout its run, how man and machine and interlinked - and by now inextricably so - I see this as an instance of classic ST optimism. The imperfect bodies and identities of both Picard and Data, marred by having been infested by Borg assimiliation as well as disease and age, and respectively by being an android without emotion, have been 'cleansed' of these flaws and reborn into a more perfect version. Quite the (trans)humanist statement.

It was because I saw such depths in Season 1, and in fact it informed my own Ph.D. research, which was all about transhuman identities in mythopoeic science fiction (Trek and Star Wars), that Season 2's approach paled by comparison. Clearly they had heard fan criticisms about the first season's somber tone. So where Season 1 is a less-triumphant TSFS narrative, what follows is obviously their version of TVH: a fun romp, more lighthearted. And I did think it was fun, but the depth of S1 got reduced while still playing much by the mystery box book of storytelling. And if it was possible, S2 was even more labyrinthine. To this day, I still don't know if I understood the mechanics of it all - or even what set off the plot. Was it Q trying to say goodbye, thus engineering the whole ordeal? Was it him saving humanity through his universe-shifting tactics that ended up producing the thing (Jurati Borg Queen) that would save the day in the 25th century? And why did it matter to the big picture that Picard confront his mother's death?

Even on second viewing, I gave up trying to figure it all out. But episode to episode, I also had a great deal of fun with these characters, all of whom had grown on me. Which is why my one gripe with the third season, which is obviously the most fulfilling of the bunch, is the fact that all of the new characters except Raffi (and Laris, if you count her inconsequential cameo) were so unceremoniously dispensed with. They all got good endings, yes, but in terms of the identity of this show, it's odd in retrospect that you would replace basically the entire cast for the final season. It feels like the admission of some sort of defeat. Certainly, the majority of fans would prefer the TNG cast over the original PIC cast (and if given a one-or-the-other choice, I would make the same decision), but there might have been a way I'm sure to give Jurati and Soji at least a guest appearance to maintain the cohesion of the series as a whole.

The final season of course was such a success because it fully articulated what the earlier seasons had done only for Picard (and Data, Riker, Troi in their short guest appearances): reunite us with these characters we so loved, and be bold in doing so by demonstrating how time changes people. Neither entirely for the better, nor for worse, just different. There's a sense of reality in this that the TNG crew hadn't gotten before. Where the TOS crew had a decade before we were reunited with them in the movies, TNG transitioned directly, which may have been part of the reason why their movies so often felt just like extended episodes. PIC Season 3 (and by extension the earlier seasons too) finally provided that sense of people who grow and change that GR wasn't much interested in during TNG (and which was of course not the way TV shows were made at the time) or their film series. Especially the final poker game, if compared to the "All Good Things" ending, drove this home. Where the final TNG scene was heartwarming, but still a somewhat formal/awkward affair because it was Picard's first time joining the game night and because he was still their boss, the final PIC scene showed us seven people who are all equals and joined together because they're friends and family and don't have anything to prove to one another. Beautiful.

And I take that as the legacy of this show: who is the hero after his hero's journey is over? How do the glory days of the past still affect him, haunt him even? And can one reinvent oneself even in old age, make peace with the past, embrace it even, but still set out on a new journey of discovery? A resounding yes, according to the show. I love that.

How about you all? Will you rewatch the show from the beginning, give the early seasons another chance, and do you expect that your judgment of them will change in light of how the series ended? Or is PIC sort of an inverse TOS to you: three seasons, two of them universally acclaimed, one seen as a letdown (in PIC's case two lambasted, one acclaimed)? Is PIC ultimately a transitional series that serves to wrap up the Berman era once and for all while setting the stage for a ST: Legacy (or whatever it may be called) which will FINALLY bring the right balance to a modern-day Trek show?

Season 3 won't be very rewatchable. They were small, intimate episodes that go over well on first watch due to surprise and Easter eggs but not much else.

 

[XCV330]

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[Uhura's Song]

Season 3 won't be very rewatchable. They were small, intimate episodes that go over well on first watch due to surprise and Easter eggs but not much else.

The re-watchability of all the serial shows is lower than the episodic ones.

I just re-watched the finale and actually liked it better the 2nd time.

 

[Eddie Roth]

The Enterprise-G thing didn’t make sense unless the service records or scandals surrounding the E and F were bad enough that Starfleet had chosen to retire the name.

For me that’s not so bad if we get that story in say a book if not in Legacy itself. This is a job for a Christopher L. Bennett or Una McCormack.

Well, there must be some sort of break for the Enterprise name on occasion anyway. While the original, the A and the B were in uninterrupted service, we don't canonically know when the B was decommissioned and the C launched. But there were several decades between the C and the D. No Enterprise. And at the rate that they seem to be going through these ships, the H and I may not cover the entire rest of the 25th century before there's the J. But whatever...

I actually noticed on the recent shows, PIC too (and kinda don't like it), that they make a big point of the letters now. In the past, the Enterprise was the Enterprise. Sure, happened to be e.g. the D, but that wasn't like part of the name. But I guess if you show three, no four! Enterprises in the course of the season, you should perhaps specify...

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Season 3 won't be very rewatchable. They were small, intimate episodes that go over well on first watch due to surprise and Easter eggs but not much else.

It'll provide great short clips for YouTube and probably some gifs.

 

[The Wormhole]

It's already given birth to the Captain Shaw "No" meme.

 

[gvn2fly]

Neither did the people making it. The way it all works in the finale completely contradicts the original set-up.

The entire events of the season were so Picard could let go of his trauma. Q was angry at Picard for never letting someone into his life for a prolonged period of time (due to his trauma) and engineered events to transpire that would allow Picard to accept the past.

 

[gvn2fly]

That's where the writing came in, and how they didn't do enough world building to make me understand why Picard would just quit like that (that's the same gripe I had about Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi). It goes beyond simply people change with time

From what I recall, I got the sense that he was bluffing when he threatened to resign but Starfleet called his bluff and accepted. He didn't truly want to leave Starfleet.

 

[Racefuel]

From what I recall, I got the sense that he was bluffing when he threatened to resign but Starfleet called his bluff and accepted. He didn't truly want to leave Starfleet.

Correct.

He was banking that Starfleet was going to go "oh no Jean Luc you're right we won't do this" and they instead went "okay"

 

[gvn2fly]

Correct.

He was banking that Starfleet was going to go "oh no Jean Luc you're right we won't do this" and they instead went "okay"

There's been lots of complaints since 2020 about how Picard would never resign from Starfleet (including in this thread) and I always felt like people miss that. He wasn't planning to resign - he thought Starfleet would do what he wanted and deny his resignation.