Spoilers Is Picard season 2 a failure?

[Sci]

For all the critiques regarding not hiring superfans, at least superfans would have at least tried to aim for stronger writing.

I will never understand why some fans are always convinced that professional writers somehow aren't aiming at writing the strongest possible scripts. Do they really think people spend years of their lives honing their craft and trying to break into a notoriously closed-off industry so they can half-ass it?

And of course, most such fans, when they try their hand at writing something themselves, churn out schlock.

Largely because superfans tend to be critical of Trek in order to have a deeper understanding of the stories and characters presented to them. And consider how to create more challenging situations and critical dialogue to challenge what been established so far.

Nicholas Meyer might disagree that one needs to be a "superfan" to do that.

 

[dupersuper]

I'm enjoying it more than season one.

Then again, I hated season one.

 

[donners22]

I think this is an example of Trek fans needing to remember that this show is also being made for people who are not hardcore fans who remember or care that "Space Seed" in 1966 established the Eugenics Wars as happening from 1992-1996. The writers are handling this bit perfectly: It's not strictly important to the PIC story so they're not overtly referring to it, but if you know the backstory it adds a nice bonus to seeing the scenes.

Space Seed also says that the Eugenics Wars were the last World War, so there's already a contradiction in canon by the subsequent introduction of WWIII. Plus of course Voyager's crew dropped right into the era of the Eugenics Wars with not a single mention. It would be silly to put a focus on it.

For all the critiques regarding not hiring superfans, at least superfans would have at least tried to aim for stronger writing. Largely because superfans tend to be critical of Trek in order to have a deeper understanding of the stories and characters presented to them. And consider how to create more challenging situations and critical dialogue to challenge what been established so far.

This is a bizarre criticism. Firstly, what is a "superfan"? Plenty of the major writers/producers are long-established fans - Chabon, Goldman, Beyer and co for starters. Beyer's episodes have been the worst of the lot IMO, and I'd take an established brilliant writer like Chabon over any "superfan".

Nor do I understand why it is assumed that a "superfan" is in the best position to recognise and challenge the weaknesses of Trek. Ira Behr and Ron Moore weren't "superfans", but they hated writing for TNG and came up with a show which (in the eyes of some, including me) improved upon it by pushing the boundaries. Nicholas Meyer was certainly not a "superfan", and he came up with the best of the original films by far.

 

[Starkers]

I didn't mind season one but it's pacing was off. It was very slow burn and then raced through it's final couple of episodes. I've enjoyed S2 way more than Season 1 but I have to say that after a strong start it sagged a little in the middle before resurging a little more in the last episode or two (To be clear I've enjoyed even the saggy episodes). It does feel a little meandering at times and as one of my friends says, what has Rios done other than fall in love with a woman from the past and tell everyone he meets that he's from the future?

Orla Brady is great but the twin role things doesn't make much sense (at the moment!)

I can't figure out Q, he's been malevolent yet in the last episode this seemed to shift and maybe he's not behind this situation? (at the end of the Day Q's always been mercurial so I don't see this as a huge issue)

I like Raffi and Seven, but they don't remotely act like lovers, who people who were lovers, I just don't remotely get that kind of chemistry from them.

The Agnes/Borg Queen stuff is great, loving it (but yeah hooking the Borg Queen into your ship, how is that going to end any other way than badly)

Picard feels a little more like Picard than he did in S1

After all the trouble Picard went to to calm Renee's nerves, what has there been no acknowledgment that seeing Picard run over in front of her might be exactly the kind of trauma to send her back over the edge?

What's the deal with a manned mission to Europa in 2024?

Is any Soong in the past not a monster of some kind?

Callis as Picard's dad and the 'twist' about his mum was good (but we've been old more is to come so things might not be as they appear)

Loved the slightly Mulder'ish FBI agent.

TLDR It's enjoyable enough, let's see if they stick the landing.

 

[Campe]

Is it a failure? No.
Is it not everyone’s cup of tea? After sifting through five pages of this thread, obviously.

Look, not everyone is going to come to a consensus on this. There’s a whole spectrum of fans from: “ I love everything Star Trek and will watch it all” to “This is the worst shit ever! But I watch anyway!” (There are those who gave up on the show too of course.) Me? I’m more of a “I’m enjoying myself but can definitely see this season ain’t perfect.” Much like Disco, like Prodigy, like Lower Decks. Like every Trek I’ve watched since I’ve been able to look at it critically.

As long as there are those on the spectrum who see it positively, it absolutely cannot be considered a failure.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Is Picard season 2 a failure?

Who the hell cares? The only time that should matter to a member of the audience is in whether the show you like is going to be renewed or not. If you don't like it, then it should be none of your concern unless you want to be a jerk and gloat about something other's enjoy being canceled. This show has already been renewed for the next season, so it's a moot point.

There are way too many navel gazing, clickbaity, cynical, or trolling posts, threads, online articles, and YouTube videos of this nature (not including the OP in this, just as a general trend) that baselessly speculate on things that should only be the purview of studio execs, showrunners, and bean counters. All we as fans have to do is decide whether we like something or not. Leave the failure analysis where it belongs.

 

[eschaton]

I do have to say, thinking about it more, I'm just not sold on the idea that there's not enough "story" here - that they're telling a two-parter across 10 episodes.

Instead, the issue seems to be that they're trying to do plot-based writing when the season calls for character-based writing.

I mean, when you look at an accomplished fully-serialized genre show in the mid-season - say The Expanse, early Game of Thrones, the Magicians, etc. - you will find a lot of episodes where the season arc moves ahead by inches, and people sit around talking in rooms. But it works, because the focus of the episodes is on character - it's on putting two (or more) people in a scene, letting us know what they're feeling, and the status of their relationship.

Picard has mostly failed to do that, barring Jean-Luc himself, since examining his childhood trauma was hinted at in the first episode and an important part of the seventh. I suppose there's been some little asides about Jurati's loneliness, about Raffi's pain and regret, etc. But the scripts tend to make explicit and clumsy mentioning of them, and then move on, with the characters themselves fairly static. It also doesn't help that the scripting has been quite...rough...in places. Two people sitting in a room discussing their feelings is only compelling drama if the lines are well written, and for the most part, the dialogue is just workmanlike.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Won't render final judgment until the end of the last episode.

But man oh man, if a show ever needed to 'roll the hard six' to salvage itself at the end of a season, this is the one.

 

[Danja]

Translation:

"He/She isn't a fan" = "I hate it"

I know what I like. I realize not everything on screen is necessarily going to be tailored to my taste.

“Canon is only important to certain people because they have to cling to their knowledge of the minutiae. Open your mind! Be a ‘Star Trek’ fan and open your mind and say, ‘Where does Star Trek want to take me now’.” -- Leonard Nimoy

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I do have to say, thinking about it more, I'm just not sold on the idea that there's not enough "story" here - that they're telling a two-parter across 10 episodes.

When you condense a story down into two parts, a lot has to be cut out.

Instead, the issue seems to be that they're trying to do plot-based writing when the season calls for character-based writing.

I mean, when you look at an accomplished fully-serialized genre show in the mid-season - say The Expanse, early Game of Thrones, the Magicians, etc. - you will find a lot of episodes where the season arc moves ahead by inches, and people sit around talking in rooms. But it works, because the focus of the episodes is on character - it's on putting two (or more) people in a scene, letting us know what they're feeling, and the status of their relationship.

You're asking Picard to accomplish in ten episodes that which The Magicians was given thirteen eps to do.

How many fans would be complaining that the show was dragging if the show had characters sitting around and talking for extended periods?

Witty repartee and exquisitely-crafted dialogue that may work well on the stage doesn't always translate well to the screen. (I'm looking at YOU, Aaron Sorkin!)

A great many GOT fans are up in arms about THEIR show (ESPECIALLY the final season). The grass isn't always greener in someone else's yard.

 

[fireproof78]

What's the deal with a manned mission to Europa in 2024?

SPOCK: Poor choice of words on my part. I neglected, in my initial run-through, to correlate the possible contributions by offspring. I find, after running a crosscheck on that factor, that your son Colonel Shaun Geoffrey Christopher headed, or will head, the first successful Earth-Saturn probe, which is a rather significant
CHRISTOPHER: Wait a minute. I don't have a son.
MCCOY: You mean yet.
SPOCK: The doctor is correct. Unless we return Captain Christopher to Earth, There will be no Colonel Shaun Geoffrey Christopher to go to Saturn.

 

[Starkers]

SPOCK: Poor choice of words on my part. I neglected, in my initial run-through, to correlate the possible contributions by offspring. I find, after running a crosscheck on that factor, that your son Colonel Shaun Geoffrey Christopher headed, or will head, the first successful Earth-Saturn probe, which is a rather significant
CHRISTOPHER: Wait a minute. I don't have a son.
MCCOY: You mean yet.
SPOCK: The doctor is correct. Unless we return Captain Christopher to Earth, There will be no Colonel Shaun Geoffrey Christopher to go to Saturn.

Fair enough but there's a difference between TOS predicting something to happen in (what 30+ years time?) and Picard predicting something like that happening in two years time. I know there's issues around the timeline re the Eugenics War and WWIII but realistically the Trek universe is supposed to be set in our future rather than an alternate universe, isn't it?

 

[gvn2fly]

Saw a post above about how the middle of the season was turned over to 2 writers who didn't have a lot of good writing credits (it won't let me quote that poster for some reason). Well, check out the writing credits for the next episode... Matt Okumura & Chris Derrick. Pretty much nothing.

What I don't get is that they seemingly had almost an extra year before filming started due to the COVID delays. This should have led to a tighter season. What happened? Did they just change things on the fly due to Covid? What happened to Chabon's episodes? What was the original plan?

 

[eschaton]

You're asking Picard to accomplish in ten episodes that which The Magicians was given thirteen eps to do.

I don't think that's a big difference, TBH. And the first four seasons of Game of Thrones all had 10 episodes and great character writing. Not to mention The Expanse had 10 (or less) episodes in every season besides 2/3.

How many fans would be complaining that the show was dragging if the show had characters sitting around and talking for extended periods?

If it was well done? Not many. Lots of the best episodes in Trek history are characters talking for extended periods of time, without much plotting or action at all, like Duet, The Inner Light, Family, Chain of Command, The Visitor, ect.

A great many GOT fans are up in arms about THEIR show (ESPECIALLY the final season). The grass isn't always greener in someone else's yard.

I said early Game of Thrones for a reason. When the showrunners ran out of books, they fell back into plot-based writing, which is why the last four seasons (particularly the final two) are so much worse than the beginning of the show. Characters no longer have agency within the story, they wait around and do nothing (to keep fan favorites involved) or have the character arcs which the show originally set up utterly forgotten.

 

[gvn2fly]

If it was well done? Not many. Lots of the best episodes in Trek history are characters talking for extended periods of time, without much plotting or action at all, like Duet, The Inner Light, Family, Chain of Command, The Visitor, ect.

I would have much rather had a well acted and emotional scene where Picard discusses his past trauma with Talinn or Laris or whoever instead of 20 minutes in his mind with monsters. You wouldn't need 20 minutes, we would have actually had greater insight into the character, and it could have been a memorable scene.

 

[eschaton]

Matt Okumura & Chris Derrick. Pretty much nothing.

Not sure where you got this? Looking on IMDB, Derrick is a staff writer, and Okumura an executive story editor. They had similar credits on earlier episodes as well, so it doesn't seem to signify anything in particular regarding their role this week.

Derrick doesn't seem to have much of anything. Seems like he styled himself as an aspiring director up until getting this job. Okumura at least has some genre-ish experience (wrote a Smallville episode back in 2003, worked as a producer on both Into the Badlands and the Shannara Chronicles). Regardless, his job is more or less to oversee the writers, working as a low-level supervisor.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I will never understand why some fans are always convinced that professional writers somehow aren't aiming at writing the strongest possible scripts. Do they really think people spend years of their lives honing their craft and trying to break into a notoriously closed-off industry so they can half-ass it?

And of course, most such fans, when they try their hand at writing something themselves, churn out schlock.

Interesting you should say that as said member once produced this exposition heavy, unfilmable, unspeakable ‘script’ as their idea for how Enterprise should be brought back:

Ok. Here's a go.

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Setting: Starfleet HQ, San Francisco, 2178

Journalist: Councilman Archer, may I have a word?

Archer: I still haven’t gotten used to that. I was just getting used to being called ambassador.

Journalist: I’ve been in the process of getting interview for a piece on the NX-01 crew. I just finished interviwing both Mayweather and Reed. And I did stop by in Iowa last week. I see why you chose the chef you did.

Archer: Like I always say, a ship runs on its stomach.

Journalist: I also talked to Mr. Tucker’s family. I had no idea how diverse they were. Or how funny.

Archer: Their sense of humor rubs off on people. It did with Trip and definitely has with T’Pol. I still think the Neo-Transcendentalism they practice is a bit eccentric, but they are quite welcoming and friendly. And surprisingly more progressive and open minded than Malcolm’s family. I had no idea that Malcom had to go through what he did growing up.

Journalist: The only ones left aside from you I want to interview are Hoshi Sato and Phlox.

Archer:Well, good luck trying to talk to Hoshi. She grown to really like her privacy. I remember when we went to a baseball game to Japan, over ten years ago, at the behest of her husband who’s big fan. It was game seven of the Nippon Series. At the end of the game as we were leaving, someone overheard her husband mention that she was a descendant of Buck Bokai. And considering that Japan is the last place on Earth that follows baseball and Buck Bokai is a massive legend over there, everyone crowded around us so fast wanting to talk to Hoshi and get autographs. I haven’t seen a mob of people that large since we returned from the Xindi mission. Even though she hasn’t said anything, I think that the real reason she retired from Starfleet, since she never really adjusted to the fame that came from our mission as I did. She was actually quite happy working on Earth at Starfleet, at least when I was chief of staff there, and at the very least was open minded to the implementation of the Prime Directive. I think she’ll be more interested in surfing or her hikes in the Amazon, when she isn’t studying languages or looking after her kids. But you’re free to try and get an interview with her.

Journalist: And Phlox?

Archer: You should stop by the Academy next week. He’s delivering a guest lecture I understand on Denobulan medicine. Should be interesting for the cadets to learn a non Starfleet perspective. He has many interesting stores to tell, before, during and after his time on Enterprise. May I ask in what way are you trying to interview all of us?

Journalist: I’m just trying to see what made the NX-01 crew the crew everyone knows and became household names. What makes them tick, as it were. In what way were you shaped into who you are growing up?

Archer: Well, both my parents were from Canada. I was conceived on Vulcan, as my father went there to learn about how Vulcans developed faster warp drive. After a few months living there, my mom wanted to return to Earth, and had me in between the journey back. Due to the work on at the warp five complex was about to begin, and the transporter was still in the early stages of development, they settled in upstate New York. My parents made efforts to get me into their favourite sports growing up, lacrosse and hockey, but were not as successful as they hoped. It was after those efforts that I got in water polo. It’s been my favourite sport ever since.

Journalist: Have you even thought about where you would be, if you didn’t join Starfleet and took a different path?

Archer: I’ve had nearly two decades to think about it. I still haven’t wrapped my head around that in a different universe that I could have been living the space boomer life in playing board game tournaments, have dealing with Orions and having to learn to swim on Alpha Centauri on the go like Travis. Or that I would be skilled enough at kal-toh to possibly end T’Pol’s ongoing undefeated streak had I lived on Vulcan while doing a bunch of case studies for one of their ministries. Instead of joining Starfleet and having the career I’ve had. Despite the various crises I’ve faced as a captain, I don’t think I would have done it any differently.

Journalist: Councilman, why didn’t you join the freighter life? Mr. Mayweather said you had a story about that, that you once considered it but changed your mind.

Archer: I’ve told this story about three times now. Long story short, it involved the Duvalls and Kzinti.

Journalist: Wait, the Duvalls? As in the Captain Duvall, of Shenandoah fame?

Archer: The same one. It was the moment I decided to get lightyears away from the Duvalls and join Starfleet. Of course Duvall followed me and joined the following year.

Journalist: To be fair, anyone would follow you into Starfleet and join.

Archer: Look, I’m running late for my regular meetings with the Federation Council. Can we resume this later? We can go to one of the jazz clubs or comedy clubs T’Pol likes. They have their own stories that you’d enjoy.

Journalist: Yes, Councilman.

---------
This is only about 2-3 minutes at most. Which is plenty of time for the plot, and to further develop characters in later episodes. But you are already learning about the characters in terms of what they’ve been up to since the show ended and the depths of their characters now.

Good Lord. People are free to criticise whatever they want, but there’s an example of why “superfans” don’t necessarily make great writers.

“Bad Writing” is just a canard people turn out when what they mean is “writing I don’t like”.

 

[Starkers]

Interesting you should say that as said member once produced this exposition heavy, unfilmable, unspeakable ‘script’ as their idea for how Enterprise should be brought back:



Good Lord. People are free to criticise whatever they want, but there’s an example of why “superfans” don’t necessarily make great writers.

“Bad Writing” is just a canard people turn out when what they mean is “writing I don’t like”.

Hello Basil Exposition.

 

[captainmkb]

Is Picard Season 2 a failure?

No, by all accounts they wrapped filming and post-production is complete too. Seems like a complete success.

 

[Danja]

I would have much rather had a well acted and emotional scene where Picard discusses his past trauma with Talinn or Laris or whoever instead of 20 minutes in his mind with monsters. You wouldn't need 20 minutes, we would have actually had greater insight into the character, and it could have been a memorable scene.

This is STAR TREK.

Why spend twenty minutes TALKING about monsters when you can put them on the screen?

Interesting you should say that as said member once produced this exposition heavy, unfilmable, unspeakable ‘script’ as their idea for how Enterprise should be brought back:

Good Lord ...

They probably think Lord of the Rings suffered from too much editing.

(And Peter Jackson cut out a LOT. He cut a 50-page sequence in the book down to a few seconds of screen time! )

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I think even after the final episode drops it's too soon to judge it. These things sit in fandom being appraised and re-appraised for decades. A lot of dust has to settle before it can be judged properly. How many episodes previously disliked have we come back to years later and liked, or vice versa?