Spoilers So, what do we think of Season 2 now that it's done?

What the hell was that and why does it seem the majority liked it?

That's my reaction

 

I think most people thought S2 was overlong for its screenplay, but a watchable jaunt.

 

Pretty much, yep. Overall, it was very enjoyable. It was well acted, well produced, and generally fun. It had its flaws…but what Trek doesn’t. I’m looking forward to rewatching when SNW is over.

 

One thing that's been bugging me is how Berman era diehards, so use to spending many, many years watching Trek bridges looking like 1994 era hotel lounges or 2001 era Circuit City (with direct lighting and soft pastel colours) seem to heavily dump on the ship set designs in NuTrek (too dark or bright, with shiny floors, etc).

 

Mock outrage at trivialities and mundane details.

 

I'm not outraged as you put it, but the flame throwers on the bridge in DSC were laugh out loud funny, much like the 'tardis like' turbo lift scenes. DSC certainly ditched the traditional Star Trek aesthetic. Gigantic quarters with masses of head room also seems a little strange. I always liked the flat and even TV lighting that TNG especially had. I disliked how they darkened everything up in Generations. The D was like this huge hotel, where enlightened people lived and worked. Everything was clean, ordered and problems could be solved with science (mostly). The warship element from the movies was played down and the ship rarely saw combat. After Gene died, the naval battle cruiser aspect kind of took over and they were less 'scientists exploring the galaxy' and more 'officers on a ship defending/fighting various aliens'. Enterprise seemed to be a conscious effort to get back to exploration, but quickly turned into an action/adventure show - and was all the better for it.

Watching Picard, I was struck by how strong the colour correction was, they really cranked up the orange and teal.

For me, the problem with nuTrek isn't the lighting or the effects, or the acting, which are all pretty good. It's that it somehow doesn't 'feel like Star Trek to me'. As intangible a notion as that is. And I'm not sure why.

 

That was unavoidable since they had to use the TV series sets which weren't suitable for movie quality cameras.

You do realize Roddenberry himself often criticized TOS scripts for not being "military enough" right? Regardless, despite everyone getting on their high horses and claiming TNG was all about pacifist scientists engaging in peaceful exploration, the fact remains TNG's most popular episodes are Yesterday's Enterprise, which is set in an alternate timeline where the Enterprise is legitimately a warship, Starfleet is legitimately a military, and TBOBW, where the Enterprise must defend the Federation with the Fate of Everything hanging in the balance. Those are the episodes the fans revere and get all the attention, that's why the franchise has shifted focus the "battle cruiser element" as you put it.

 

That's a point that I find myself going back to a lot. The idea that Star Trek is about peaceful exploration sounds good until one realizes that the most popular Trek episodes and films are heavily action and combat and conflict driven. Balance of Terror, Best of Both Worlds, TWOK, and DS9's Dominion War are all things I see held up as "how to do Star Trek." And while I think Star Trek can do a variety of story types it's quite odd to me the objections I see of Star Trek doing too much ation when those things are the most popular.

 

Because we had 700 episodes of stuff that felt exactly the same from 1987-2004 (DS9 was at times an outlier to this), so we're conditioned to think that Star Trek has a "feel," when the greatest advantage of the franchise is that it can be so many different things.

 

Season 2 was a disappointment. I hated Season 1, but I don't feel as strongly about the second season. I'm like on the ledge of disappointment veering over into a chasm of disinterest.

I thought the opener, "The Star Gazer" was great, but as the season went on, I became less enchanted and I felt they were just wasting time because they had too little story to stretch over 10 episodes, a common ailment when it comes to new Trek. I didn't find Picard's childhood trauma all that compelling or even a necessary insight into the captain of TNG.

I also felt that the fan service, while sometimes welcome, was also awkward, and more thrown in to just get people oohhing and ahhhing instead of it necessarily being germane to the story. And the nostalgia was also misused-but not as egregiously as it was sometimes in the first season.

I thought the production values, characters, and writing were better than the first season. But ultimately the big story was lacking. I plan on looking at the next season because I do want to see a TNG reunion, though I imagine they'll find a way to mess that up as well.

I know ST: Picard is being spun as this profound series, but I don't find it to be that at all. It's lackluster to me. Every now then the potential shines through, but overall, it's mostly meh.

 

One of my biggest problems with Picard and this serialized format is that everything is of galactic or, at least, Earth shattering importance. Season 1 dealt with genocidal synths and/or tentacle wielding aliens that threatened to destroy the Federation (or Romulans bent on exterminatimg all synths). Now season 2 was about either a time altering event that created a distorted dystopian Confederation or a galaxy threatening energy pulse that even scared the Borg. I'm sure there is a way to tell a 10 part gripping intriguing story that isn't about saving the Earth, Federation, or the Universe.

Sadly, this is also a complaint I have with all 4 DISCO seasons.

Another complaint was the use of the same actors in different roles. It made Picard feel like some traveling theater company that use the same actors to put on different plays. Did we really need Brent Spiner this season? Did Isa Briones really need to play yet another character or couldn't we have had more development for Soji? It's like they guaranteed the actors 2 seasons but couldn't think of a way to keep the same characters.

 

I think Trek's serialisation essentially works, but scale back on the stakes after Picard wraps up. If a Seven Of Nine series happens, etc, make it relatively small scale serial storylines in the vein of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul (linked by episodic mini-arcs).

S1 was multiple problems in 3 arcs, S3 was more a fish out of water situation and mainly picking up the pieces after a galactic catastrophe occurred, and S4 was about dealing with yet another major threat in a much more refreshing way - I thought Season 2 in its second half was genuinely OTT.

Remember becoming too formulaic in SW gave us the Sequel Trilogy ending on a somewhat tired/sour note with Rise Of Skywalker and the very workmanlike, unintentionally funny Book Of Boba Fett.

 

The debate seems needlessly infinite regarding "serialized" vs. "episodic."

I maintain, and will always maintain, that if the story is good, it doesn't matter what format is used. Star Trek could be (and has been) an excellent show with a serialized format. It has also been an excellent show with an episodic format.

And, of course, it's produced some embarrassing garbage in both formats.

The FORMAT isn't the weakness. It's simply telling "good stories" that we all want (and that's subjective based on different people's preferences and expectations).

 

The problem with Star Trek's serialized story arcs is that they're always about one of two subjects, war or the galactic apocalypse. There are other things that could take up a ten episode season. Hell, I've often thought a more serious take on the "second contact" featured on Lower Decks could be a perfect for a ten episode arc, with the ship spending ten weeks with a newly contacted planet hashing out all the relevant details about their relationship with the Federation and getting into all sort of adventures related to that. In fact, to fuel the interest in shared universe worldbuilding that's so en vogue these days, they could say do an episode of SNW with the Enterprise visiting this planet and making contact with the inhabitants, do the weekly adventure, then go off on the next adventure, then have a spin-off about the second contact ship heading to that planet, and have their season story arc go from there.

I mean, hell, for all people love to got on their soapboxes and insist Star Trek is All About Exploration, why is it exploration stories are only one episode long? The two-parters are almost always action adventures, and the multi-episode arcs are war/apocalypse. Even the movies usually only feature exploration as an ancillary plot point or side story to be handled by the "guest star" starship, with no movie being truly about exploration, with the only two which come close having that exploration be the result of countering a threat (in TMP) or because the ship was hijacked (in TFF).

 

Sadly they tried to do Picard's mental health and that went over like a lead balloon even with people who liked the season

 

That's what it's always been about, though.

 

As are Trouble with Tribbles, Court Martial, Voyage Home, Measure of a Man, Family, Drumhead, Inner Light, I Borg, The First Duty, Lower Decks, Emissary, Progress, Duet, The Visitor, Far Beyond the Stars, Rules of Engagement, Death Wish, Home, Lower Decks, Prodigy...

 

They could do a story where they have a first contact in Strange New Worlds and second contact in Lower Decks and then third contact in Picard. And uh, fourth contact in Discovery. Or just maybe first and second.

 

It said more about Picard's dysfunctional, overly prideful, and luddite fixated family than it did about Picard himself (with a preventable suicide witnessed by child Picard and then a avoidable house fire decades later).

And saving the galaxy is getting tiresome (even though it felt more toned down in DSCO S4 and PIC S2).

 

There's room for multiples, but when I see top lists it's TWOK and Best of Both Worlds. What message does that send?