Rewriting Picard from the start

[Qonundrum]

How I'd do it?

• Do a bit of season three style of setting up a big multi-season arc where the other TNG cast got something big and cool to do, all while...
• ...letting Jean-Luc have his own standalone stories, with story developments built up more smoothly. The idea of Picard being explored and his own show isn't bad, but TNG was always ensemble. And, IMHO, no single character could really carry it. Season 3 is great, but feels like a last minute turn - rather than built up across the years. Then again, I'm a fan of Babylon 5 - the first series to try such a massive concept and, having existed at the time of its fourth season as well, understand why it's not the best plotting device either, so I'm ultimately on the fence on having any arc extend between seasons where multiple months or even years might be a void of content
• For the one or two characters we got prior to season 3, no bunnicorn and other sort of crap would be introduced. Kudos to the actors for not corpsing, unless there's a dozen retakes on the cutting room floor because nobody could begin to keep a straight face while saying "bunnicorn pizza" or whatever - now, yes, Trek has always had children in the audience, but this naming convention is a tad much to really swallow (no pun intended)
  • That said, check this out, though I might use tofu instead of Bugs - the other ingredients definitely sound great: Bunnicorn Pizza inspired by Star Trek: Picard — Binging With Babish
• Keeping closer to late-24th century dialect but with some changes as vernacular inevitably changes (Season 3 had me getting used to the informal use of dialect a bit easier)
• Not do the "Picard mind in android body" and have him the be object of Vadic and the Borg -- more on why keeping the Borg isn't a bad idea in a moment
• No pottymouth unless it had substance to it (seasons 1 and 2 just seem to do it in an attempt to look all adult)
• Not take big leaps with the Borg (season 3 pretty much got it right)
• Casual viewers or casual fans, if season 3 could fold back in old characters and ideas, then there's no way they couldn't reintroduce and get casuals up to speed on the "Conspiracy" crawdads. TNG's biggest open-ending deserved a robust closure, and season 3 had all the right ingredients there - even the Shrike ship would have fit in perfectly. Plus, there's no bunny to be found anywhere, too - indeed, just have the Borg assimilate the neon pink/purple fritters and their never-seen-onscreen parent species, since the Borg were originally to be insectoid life forms and could still be related anyway
  • That info oddly made me appreciate the 1987/88 strike that much more; a big race of big insects hadn't been seen since "Battlestar Galactica" and the chances of the insectoid species in TNG falling flat would have been higher. What we ultimately got are the cybernetic terrors, who start good if not a little rough, but are so strong in concept that it'd be harder to blow it, but I'm babbling again - but I try not to ramble without some reason, unless there's none. But Season 3, which was great, missed a great opportunity to bring in the unused plot idea and help show the Borg recovering and rebuilding with them...
    • (hey cool, it's a little cube now!) Indeed, Vadic started out great but ended up feeling superfluous to the story.. The Changeling inclusion wasn't bad, but I would have given more time to her development along with the other elements I'd brought up. With three seasons' worth of story building, it wouldn't be impossible (but difficult, true... it's easy to see and agree as to why they went the direction they had, but part of me still thinks the Conspiracy critters could have been cannibalized into the Collective.)
      • Oh good grief, and noting it's just another cube again, I just outdid myself with alliteration and I don't like it
• Not do the hipster JL, XB, EIEIO stuff - it's worse than "bunnicorn" (the series pretty much did so and feels so much more authentic as a result)
• Not do the "synth" subplot at all, it didn't feel authentic, and to do so would require...
• ...more Brent Spiner in yet more and different roles. Every time he came back as one of Soong's relatives or otherwise be involved with Data, the universe seemed to shrink another 47%. The universe is now so small that one can walk to the street corner and, oops, the universe just ended and Dalan Quaice is standing there waving "Howdy, partner!" Granted, Spiner is one of the most underrated character actors of all time, as Mr Wheeler, his presence on "To Tell the Truth", Data, Lore (Especially, since Brent steals the show!), and a slew of other characters on other shows quickly prove, but Data's family tree did get to be too much a crutch for TNG's latter half, never mind B-4.
  • To be fair, season 3 somehow managed to take a gigantic checklist of Data bits and create something genuinely engaging out of it. That's pretty huge, and impressive. It's not fanservice, it's a sequel and taking care in mopping up loose ends and in brilliant ways
• Use an ordered list instead of this unordered one because numerals and letters look better than spheroid blobs
  

 

[Tuskin38]

Not do the hipster JL, XB, EIEIO stuff

How is any of that 'hipster'? Making a abbreviations is a natural part of language.

(seasons 1 and 2 just seem to do it in an attempt to look all adult)

I disagree, the usage in Picard felt very natural.

 

[dswynne1]

Ultimately, PIC should have three elements: something new, something closed and a revisit. Picard dealing with life 25 years after "All Good Things" would focus on meeting new challenges and people, while revisiting old plots that need to be resolved. The parasites from TNG's "Conspiracy" should have been used in S3. I know that it is unpopular around here, but Sela should have been the big bad for S1: Romulans, post-Horbus Star Disaster, gets revenge by exploiting the weakness within Synths, whom they see as a military advantage of the Federation. Further infiltration within the Federation puts the fear of Synths in the public eye, so now it's up to Picard to save Data's legacy, in the form of Soji and her people. No need to have the Borg in this season. The entire Borg reclamation sub-plot could have been jettisoned. And Q, being Q, with a particular interest in humanity, gets involved in Picard's life ("The trial never ends...").

More thoughts for this thread later...

 

[FederationHistorian]

I know that it is unpopular around here, but Sela should have been the big bad for S1

If they wanted to subvert expectations, Sela could have defected to the good side, and originally gave Dahj shelter from Zhat Vash after an ideological split with Commodore Oh. Or she could have shown to have been working alongside Altan Soong on Coppelius at the end of the season.

 

[Brainsucker]

I would have gone for a similar story for season 1. The set-up was a traditional one. Old good guy retires embittered, someone appeals to them for help, OGG refuses then something happens to make him change his mind. OGG rounds up a group of people to help including old sidekick who's sunk into substance abuse and self-pity, guy with problems with RL and a mysterious person who seems to want to help but who may have another agenda. Scrap Data and the thing-from-the-dungeon-dimension. The Romulans could easily be a rogue luddite section opposing synths (like opposing AI - they have genuine worries about how this will go). Scrap Picard's synth body. Don't have people return to SF at the end.

Season 2. At the end of season 1 we have our crew already to set out on their next adventure. Let this be a problem in the edge space that Seven has been policing with the Fenris Rangers. Perhaps gangs are fighting over planets and resources and innocent settlers are getting caught in the middle. Perhaps Beverley and Guinan are operating a medical relief centre and they are the people who ask for help. Let the problem NOT be something universe- or galaxy-threatening. Don't shed our new characters.

Season 3 then becomes a similar "someone asks for help" situation... The Picard crew are still operating but this time, they need the help of the old Enterprise crew... Scrap Jack. At the end, Picard says "Right. I'm too old for this. I'm off back to the vineyard to live out my remaining years with Laris". Happy ending for him. Old Enterprise crew equally disperse to their happy endings handing over to the new kids on the block.

And there's your sequel series: Raffi, Seven et al policing the badlands...

Oh, and don't bring people back just to kill them!

Nope, I don't like your idea. Remember, this show is called Star Trek Picard. It's all about Picard. Not Seven, not Rios, not anyone else.So who care about Fenris Ranger. They don't have connection to Picard.

The First Season is all about Picard and Data. The Second Season is all about Picard and Q. While the third season is the conclusion of what Picard really wants in his life, a legacy. He wants a family. He wants children, like what he dreams in Star Trek Generation. And when that dream is actually happen, he has to fight to protect his legacy. So the third season is really all about Picard and Jack or whoever son / daughter that Picard has.

So I like Jack.

 

[Brainsucker]

I would've added two more seasons to Picard. Not after Season 3. Anything after that is Legacy, as far as I'm concerned. I would've added a season between PIC S1 & S2 and a season between PIC S2 & S3, to show how characters got from where they were at the end of one pre-existing to season to where they were at the start of the next.

For a season between S1 and S2: How does Rios go from being Captain of La Sirena to Captain of the Stargazer? Let's get a chance to see Seven and Raffi together. Let's see Jurati cleared. Let's see Elnor get accepted into the Academy and have to deal what he'd have to face being a Romulan in Starfleet. He's going to face some prejudice. What the Hell happened to Zhaban? He seemed perfectly healthy in S1 and then he just dies? That requires a little bit of an explanation besides, "He died!" Then the obvious one, any exploration of what it's like for Picard to be syntho-organic and how he's perceived.

For a season between S2 and S3: Why does Seven leave the Fenris Rangers to join Starfleet? She's been with the Fenris Rangers for 15 years by this point, give or take. She may have wanted to join Starfleet after VOY, but that was a long time ago. Why would she want to join them now? Plus how and why do Seven and Raffi break up? Maybe some background into why exactly Shaw chose Seven to be his First Officer. Or, if he didn't choose her, why did Starfleet assign her there? If Seven's going to be the Captain in Legacy, they should've gone into all this. Although, if Legacy actually does happen, I'm hoping it'll be a second chance to go into all of it this time.

For an epilogue before the final season rolled credits: At least a scene with Data and Soji. If you're going to have the father/son aspect with Picard & Jack, and the mother/son aspect with Beverly & Back, have the father/daughter aspect with Data & Soji. And show if Laris stays with Picard or not. And, whether or not Laris & Picard stay together, show what Laris thinks of Crusher. I don't know what all of this would've done to the runtime of the final episode, but it's the final episode, so go for it!

In a dream world of mine: All five seasons, as I have it, would've come out one after another from 2019 to 2023. So, yeah, like I said, there's a ton I would've added. As much as I like Picard, I feel like we got the quick-and-dirty version of something that could've been more fleshed out if they had more seasons to work with to cover the same amount of ground.

I like the idea of Data to meet Soji.

The problem of the in-between seasons that you propose is, that they don't involve Jeanluc Picard / Patrick Stewart. Basically what happen in the in between season don't really need PIcard. But the problem is that the show is too heavily focus on Picard, because it called Picard.

For Seven and Fenris Ranger, they can come in Star Trek Legacy, when Seven become the main lead. But I don't know for Rios etc in the in between S1 - S2.

The things that I want to change from Season 1 to Season 3 in Picard are :
1. To not kill all the legacy characters who come back to Picard. Well, they can kill some, but they need spare the others.
2. They shouldn't kill Rios as a character. I means, he should return to 25th century. So even if they don't use Rios anymore in Season 3, it's okay. There is no problem for it. Rios can re-appear in Star Trek Legacy or whatever another 25th century Star Trek. Like Soji that doesn't appear anymore in Season 3.

I don't really mind with the galaxy threatening problem that appear at the end of season 1 and 2. It can become a story that the next 25th century Star Trek to solve.

 

[fireproof78]

To not kill all the legacy characters who come back to Picard. Well, they can kill some, but they need spare the others.

Kill Icheb, spare Maddox and Hugh.

 

[dswynne1]

I like the idea of Data to meet Soji.

Me, too. Data should have returned in S1.

2. They shouldn't kill Rios as a character. I means, he should return to 25th century. So even if they don't use Rios anymore in Season 3, it's okay. There is no problem for it. Rios can re-appear in Star Trek Legacy or whatever another 25th century Star Trek. Like Soji that doesn't appear anymore in Season 3.

I don't really mind with the galaxy threatening problem that appear at the end of season 1 and 2. It can become a story that the next 25th century Star Trek to solve.

The same. Rios' "demise", while lame, could be reversed in the future.

 

[evilchumlee]

I think I only make some mild tweaks, mostly keeping a somewhat coherent "big bad" through it all.

My biggest change is I take a riff off something, where Trek shows tend be named after the ship/location. I don't give Picard the golem body. Picard can actually just die at the end of S3, saving Jack and resting easy that he has left behind a legacy.

The reveal at the end then is that rather than Enterprise-G, Titan is rechristened as "USS Picard".

 

[Alexander Corrino]

If Fic Writer Me got the chance to rewrite the show I would toss the entire show and write the entire thing entirely differently. I'd change every single thing anyway, I wouldn't bother trying to salvage anything. Sometimes the best idea is to just toss it all and write a new story.

The only thing I'd probably leave in as a basic idea is the final conversation between Jean-Luc and Q and maybe also the evil universe with Jean-Luc's collection of skulls. I liked that concept. Everything else tho I'd toss out the window.

 

[fireproof78]

If Fic Writer Me got the chance to rewrite the show I would toss the entire show and write the entire thing entirely differently. I'd change every single thing anyway, I wouldn't bother trying to salvage anything. Sometimes the best idea is to just toss it all and write a new story.

The only thing I'd probably leave in as a basic idea is the final conversation between Jean-Luc and Q and maybe also the evil universe with Jean-Luc's collection of skulls. I liked that concept. Everything else tho I'd toss out the window.

Be curious to hear what you would do.

 

[Cr0sis21]

Part of the problem is that Stewart had his own ideas that, really, killed the series in the crib. No offense to Stewart, he's a great actor, but he's no writer. His creative influence also helped tank the TNG films as well.
But, keeping at least some of his ideas:
Season one has a similar plot. I like the idea of the Romulans working on the Artifact. A Romulan / Borg crossover has a lot of potential. The idea of the Romulans fearing / distrusting AI works pretty well too, as does their turning Starfleet's reliance on it against them. Soji works as a character. Data's "death" being redone works well, too. Just...remove the AI tentacle things coming to kill us all. It's stupid and not needed. Also not needed? Picard's "death".
Season 2: Scrap the whole thing. What utter garbage. Have a Q and Guinan story, sure. Want to do an alternate universe story? Pop them into the Mirror Universe for a few eps, like Prodigy is doing. You can have Q do it for the same reason, to teach a lesson. No need to have Q "die", either, he could just want to give Picard a gift before his friend passes on. They undid Q's death anyway, so what the hell. And leave the Borg out of this one, for God's sake. It was silly and it's being ignored anyway. I doubt anyone will ever revisit it. You wanna write off Rios and Jurati? Have them run off together on La Sirena.
Season 3: Pretty much spot-on in every way. I don't see much that needs to be changed. Except, can we just put Elnor in there? He never even got a chance to do anything interesting, but he COULD have been.

 

[Cr0sis21]

If they wanted to subvert expectations, Sela could have defected to the good side, and originally gave Dahj shelter from Zhat Vash after an ideological split with Commodore Oh. Or she could have shown to have been working alongside Altan Soong on Coppelius at the end of the season.

I love this idea. It really works, especially considering her history with Data, both through her mother and in Unification. It's perfectly in character for her to change her views on AI later in life thanks to that experience, and feel a need to help save Data's "daughter".

 

[Alexander Corrino]

Be curious to hear what you would do.

I worked on my own personal JLP future idea for years, way before anyone ever thought of PIC. (I know I sound like a hipster but I don't care, lol.)

Like PIC, it's a series - the bottom line is I tried what PIC did not do (could not do, I know, written works are different than television, you have much more room to maneuver in a written work) - I actually showed how Jean-Luc slowly turned into the man he is now, many years after Nemesis. In my story he slowly changes from the captain we all know into a family man (who still remains associated with Starfleet by being an ambassador, there are a few moments here and there where there's tension with Starfleet because I always knew he'd get into trouble with them at some point but never anything as serious as in PIC). Despite it being so different from PIC I still stand by what I wrote. My story does share one characteristic with PIC, and that's the fact that Jean-Luc ends up in a completely different place in his life than he was at the end of Nemesis. And that he has a kid. Okay, maybe there are more similarities than I care to admit, but hey, if so, MY series was here first!

 

[fireproof78]

Season 3: Pretty much spot-on in every way. I don't see much that needs to be changed. Except, can we just put Elnor in there? He never even got a chance to do anything interesting, but he COULD have been.

Definitely no.

Don't make Shaw an acerbic prick. It's not endearing at all.

Don't have Jack be Picard's son. Have Elnor as a surrogate son, who maybe learns from Worf.

No Moriarty. Soong can have been assigned to the museum to archive AIs and he was working to restore Data in the process.

Do not do the running joke with the Enterprise E. Do not have Worf as a captain of the Enterprise.

Okay, maybe there are more similarities than I care to admit, but hey, if so, MY series was here first!

I support this

 

[Alexander Corrino]

I support this

Why thank you! I guess maybe one day I'll work out the similarities and differences between PIC and my take on things (especially the epilog I wrote as a little addition to my series seems to share some general characteristics with PIC since Jean-Luc is much older in it as well, like he is on PIC) but for now I'm still too frustrated by PIC and what a mess it was/made in more than one way to even think about this. But, alas... one day, maybe.

 

[Cr0sis21]

Definitely no.

Don't make Shaw an acerbic prick. It's not endearing at all.

Don't have Jack be Picard's son. Have Elnor as a surrogate son, who maybe learns from Worf.

No Moriarty. Soong can have been assigned to the museum to archive AIs and he was working to restore Data in the process.

Do not do the running joke with the Enterprise E. Do not have Worf as a captain of the Enterprise.

It was a running joke? I thought they just mentioned it once. But regardless, I like the idea of Worf being captain of the Enterprise. If they were going to undo him being an ambassador, it might as well be for that.
I actually really liked Shaw. And based on his reception on the Star Trek cruise, and demands for a Shaw series, a lot of other people did too.
Elnor doesn't need to be Picard's surrogate son. He's interesting enough as the first Romulan in Starfleet.
And Moriarty, I thought, was a pretty harmless little callback. I'd much rather have him than more Soong.

 

[fireproof78]

It was a running joke? I thought they just mentioned it once. But regardless, I like the idea of Worf being captain of the Enterprise. If they were going to undo him being an ambassador, it might as well be for that.

No. Just, no. It was a stupid running joke and left a better designed ship on the sidelines in the name of a gag.

I actually really liked Shaw. And based on his reception on the Star Trek cruise, and demands for a Shaw series, a lot of other people did too.

He's completely unevolved for the period. Completely inappropriate.

Elnor doesn't need to be Picard's surrogate son. He's interesting enough as the first Romulan in Starfleet.

He can't be both?

And Moriarty, I thought, was a pretty harmless little callback. I'd much rather have him than more Soong.

Agree to disagree. Annoying, self-important character is annoying.

 

[Cr0sis21]

No. Just, no. It was a stupid running joke and left a better designed ship on the sidelines in the name of a gag.

Personally, I'm glad it was the D. A much more iconic ship. And yes, not my favorite design, but I thought the E was fairly bland in general.

He's completely unevolved for the period. Completely inappropriate.

Is he? How so?

He can't be both?

Elnor can, but why? If we go that route, I'd rather bring back Wesley, who would fit much better.

 

[fireproof78]

Personally, I'm glad it was the D. A much more iconic ship. And yes, not my favorite design, but I thought the E was fairly bland in general.

Yes, but to make it a joke is a terrible choice, bland or not. And the D is bland too. Yet, it gets used like a hot rod.

Is he? How so?

One, he snipes at Picard and Rike throughout. While understandable on one hand, his inability to let go of the Borg, while having Seven as his first officer, and sarcastic comments throughout make him insufferable.

Elnor can, but why? If we go that route, I'd rather bring back Wesley, who would fit much better.

As part of Picard's making peace over his decisions with the Romulans.