Connecting with the characters is always a win for me.
Spoilers Is Picard season 2 a failure?
- Thread starter Ometiklan
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I like Rios. He's changed a bit since the first season and I would like to see him as a captain on the star gazer. But yeah i agree with you
I'm just reacting to the actual show itself. And yeah, if you're a 59-year-old person who is not asexual or aromantic, who yearns for a marriage and children, and whose career does not preclude marriage and children (as Starfleet does not), but you've never had a serious long-term relationship as far as we know? That tells me there's something messed up about you. Jean-Luc Picard has in my view had an attachment disorder for literally the entire time we've seen him.
Beats me. But the fact that the man is in his 60s and 70s and is still playing weird mixed-signals games with Beverly for twenty years is, again, pretty messed up.
Perhaps we're operating on different definitions of "traumatized," but I do not believe that that is true. Trauma is like death and taxes.
I think that Jean-Luc and his culture are loads better at dealing with trauma than we are today. Most people today would not be able to continue functioning at a high level after the amount of mental traumas Jean-Luc has been subjected to: the death of his mother; emotional abuse from his father and brother; the sudden, unexpected deaths of his captain and first officer and elevation to command of the Stargazer in his late 20s; the destruction of the Stargazer; mind melding with the mentally unstable Sarek of Vulcan; assimilation by the Borg; the absorption of Kamin's memories from the Kataan probe; torture by the Cardassians; finding out he has a clone, then being targeted for murder by said clone before he dies; the death of his ersatz son Data; his failure to save millions of Romulans from their supernova.
He's been through a lot! And yet he's still remarkably functional most of the time. If the unhealthiest coping mechanism out of all that is that he repressed the specific memory of discovering his mother's dead body, then I think that's significant improvement over the mental health habits practiced by most people today.
No, it's not debatable. This is Star Trek -- it says so in the opening titles, and it's from the company that has owned Star Trek for decades now.
This is coming dangerously close to that Onion video where the Trekkie bashes the ST09 movie by asking, "Where's the hackneyed metaphor?"
Again, these are not lazy writers.
You know what this is?
These are hardworking writers who had to re-structure the entire season after contracts had been signed and budgets worked out, in order to design a story that would allow them to silo off the cast and do a lot of outdoor shooting so as to mitigate against COVID-19 while still producing a TV show whose star is an 80-year-old man. That's not laziness.
You, on the other hand, are a rando on the Internet who clearly does not know what they're talking about.
I mean, TNG-style utopianism has been deconstructed since DS9 so I don't know why you're still holding that part up.
This is a really weird level of hostility to the idea of using Star Trek to address contemporary political issues. But you're also exaggerating the amount of time spent on that; most of the season has been taken up by plotlines unrelated to examining the faults of 2020s America.
That's not a matter of "not creative enough." It's a matter of, that's not the story they wanted to tell. Not every Star Trek series has to fit into the same formula over and over again.
Who's "we?"
And that's been present throughout the season.
As someone who is a bit skeptical of the triumphal institutionalism Star Trek has been peddling for much of its history, I was a little disappointed to see "The Star Gazer" go back to depicting Starfleet in this unquestioningly positive light. I really appreciated PIC S1's decision to frame Starfleet as a fallible institution that doesn't necessarily look all that benevolent if you're not on the inside.
I'm not sure what that means, but the characters in "The Star Gazer" weren't behaving outside of their normal paradigms from S1. The difference is that "The Star Gazer" had a lighter tone and you responded to that tone by projecting things into it that weren't actually present.
Yes, Star Trek as a franchise often evinces a belief in the effectiveness of diplomacy.
I mean, you seem to be framing "character is going through some stuff" as a mental health issue. Which is not wrong but is a weird way to frame "character is not perfect and has problems." Everyone has pain and trauma, but that's not the same as everyone having an outright disorder like Jean-Luc. Raffi's been dealing with the grief of losing Elnor -- remember, for her it's only been a few days. Seven's got some intimacy issues she's working through, but frankly they're not enough to amount to a disorder like Picard has. Jurati has always been a neurotic, awkward person, but she's also clearly someone responding to extraordinary circumstances with a great deal of courage and compassion. Elnor and Soji seem not to have had mental health issues. And to frame the conflict between Adam and Kore as "a mental health issue" seems an inaccurate way to frame things. Several characters don't seem to have any mental health challenges at all -- Rios, Teresa, Tallinn, Laris, and Guinan all seem like they're just fine, frankly.
No, he just recognizes that he needs to be flexible about how he approaches the Temporal Prime Directive if there's going to be a 25th Century to get back to.
First off, I'm not sure how that would be any different from how TNG depicted how awful the 19th Century was, or how "The Neutral Zone" was an entire episode built around how terrible the 1980s were.
Secondly: Dude, it was one subplot across two episodes, a couple of scenes with Seven and Raffi in one episode, and one scene with Guinan in another episode. You are extremely exaggerating the amount of time spent on this. Most of the season has been about stopping Soong and the Borg Queen.
Possibly the greatest moment in Star Trek history, don't @ me.
"Too sad to do her job" is a profoundly ignorant and offensive way of characterizing clinical depression and extremely disrespectful of people who deal with it.
He was already a deeply traumatized man with attachment issues. PIC just acknowledged this instead of pretending he was an ideal hero.
Then you have terrible taste and I don't want to be your friend.
I mean, how broadly do you want to define "has a tragic past?" They've all got shit they've been through, but that was true of the TNG, DS9, and VOY casts too.
Rios seems to have found a large measure of peace after having the horrible events Oh inflicted upon the crew of the Ibn Majid exposed, yeah. Jurati was clearly not in the best place mentally, but she wasn't exactly crippled by the events of S1 either, and Borgati seems to be at peace with herself and the universe. Tallinn and Guinan, as far as we know, aren't dealing with any traumatic pasts. Elnor and Soji seem to have been doing fine.
Yup. But not liking it doesn't make it bad.
Look at Riker's response to the survivors in "The Neutral Zone."
I do wonder what show some people in this thread are watching, I've really enjoyed Picard season 2. But comments like, "save an astronaut too sad to do her job" and complaining that the social injustices pointed out aren't wrapped in enough alien makeup pretty much cements that they've missed the point.
What points have we missed about season 2?
Essentially, a lot of people aren't getting the message of the season which is, "Don't lose faith." Picard season 2 is a lengthy story about overcoming trauma, social injustice, and maintaining a belief that things will get better. It's not about wallowing in misery, but believing that misery can be overcome and the world will become a better place if you stick with it.
It is one of the most powerfully optimistic Star Trek shows because it says, "yes things suck now but you can get better and we will get better."
The entire point of Star Trek
Social injustice? Trauma? This is the 25th century now. The flashbacks to the 24th and 2400 are looking more like the 21st century. Picards dads solution to his moms depression is to lock her in a room even while we all know 24th century tech could easily had cured her. Picard supposedly hid his trauma for 80 plus years. It's a badly done retcon to make Jean Luc a more traumatized individual then what the borg only did to him. Social injustice? Where was that at? The few bits with ICE and basically showing them as rotten people? They dropped the ICE story quick after they got the message out that they suck. I really doubt any of these writers live on the Texas/Mexico border. That all aside I'm not getting any positive vibes from this season at all.
And those things still exist in TNG.
1. Yes, which is why it's about the 21st century. A fact you know and thus renders the question bizarre.
2. Yes, Maurice Picard royally screwed up and his wife died.
3. And?
4. Lots of people in RL and Star Trek have past trauma. Kirk survived Kodos, Deanna's mom and Kestra, Worf and his family getting slaughtered.
5. Trauma is hardly something to be ashamed of and shaming it is awful.
6. And yes, there's lots of stuff where they talk about lack of medical care, immigration reform, Guinen worrying that things are getting worse than better, and the doctors story about struggling to help as many people as possible.
I'm enjoying Picard season 2 a great deal and am sorry you are.
I liked the first episode and it kind of fell off a cliff for me after that. Yeah so they are going from a 21st century viewpoint here but I don't understand why they only look at it from one political point. Let's admit it here the democrats are no better then the Republicans and have had total control over most of the government and foreign affairs, the economy right now and the border problem are worse then ever. So there is a lot if blame to go around on both sides of the political spectrumm. Blaming just ice was pretty weak. But I'm glad your enjoying the whole show. I mean I don't doubt some people enjoy it. As for me I don't need to be clunked over the head with political messaging all the time. Even TOS gave us a breather on social commentary in many eps. STP and STD tend to build their whole seasons and storylines around it. It gets a bit heavy handed for my taste.
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Even though I've been enjoying the season on an episode by episode basis I can see its flaws and agree with everything you wrote in your post. In the end I think I feel the same way I did about season 1 - it was entertaining for me, it was ok to good, but it could have been so much better. The potential was really there and you really laid out why 2.1 felt so strong. At this point I really wish Chabon had stayed onboard for season 2 instead of handing the reigns to Terry Matalas. The time travel story was his idea and it really just didn't work for a whole season. The Picard trauma was Akiva's idea and I think it was actually a good idea/plot and I liked it in 2.9, but the way it was presented throughout the season didn't work. It wasn't worthy enough of being a mystery box throughout the whole season.
At this point I think the Picard trauma (mainly the hints in 2.1 and the resolution in 2.9) and the Borg queen stuff is the strongest part of the season. The stuff about the Europa launch, finding a microbe on Io, Soong and his daughter, Rios and the doctor are all very uninteresting. We still don't know why Q changed the timeline (or are even sure if he did or what kind of paradox it is).
I'm much more excited for SNW right now than I am for the resolution of Picard season 2. The cast is great and I just feel like they deserved a lot better than this story.
No commentary on your selections, just using it to set up mine:
PIC Season 1: The worst season of Trek I've seen (and that includes TNG's first season).
PIC Season 2: Loved the pilot, but as the season progressed, my hopes in the series declined greatly.
DISCO Season 1: Quibbles aside, I thought this was a mostly tightly put together first season, one of the better first Trek seasons. It had a tacked on ending, but still, the two major story arcs were compelling.
DISCO Season 2: I liked the second arc more than the first. I thought the inclusion of Pike was a major plus.
DISCO Season 3: Started off very intriguing. Really liked the inclusion of Book and what role he plays in the audience getting to see another side of Burnham. But I thought the cause of the Burn was ridiculous and the Emerald Chain was wasted.
DISCO Season 4: This is the season I started giving up on DISCO. There are several middle episodes I still haven't seen and have no desire to go back to look at once I resubscribed and saw the season finale. The mystery was just dragged out too long, and I really wish we had gotten even more worldbuilding to explore this new Federation instead. There's a lot of good things about DISCO, and I can say the same for PIC, but it's like the ingredients aren't always stirred correctly or the meal is undercooked (more for PIC than DISCO).
LD Season 1: I think the humor is a bit much at times, and sometimes all the Trek Easter Eggs hit you like a spigot, but I thought LD had the best character development of any new Trek first season.
LD Season 2: It felt like the season is maturing nicely and we didn't get hit with so many Easter Eggs as fast or furious as in the first season. One of the best new Trek episodes period for me was the LD episode about the other Lower Decks crews.
PROD Season 1: Still looking at this one. It's shiny and polished, like all new Trek, but I'm not that drawn into the stories.
Short Treks: I liked them for the most part. I wouldn't mind getting more. Could be a good way to bring back some Berman Trek television series veterans, Chekov and Sulu, also catch up with Harriman and Demora Sulu, or even give us a Robert April story.
A shame, Season 1 is one of my all time favorite Treks. I'm sorry you weren't able to enjoy it or its worldbuilding.
As far as Trek first seasons go it may actually be my second favorite behind TOS. A lot of that is probably because the bar is so low for first seasons but that's where I'd place it.
I wouldn't say it's terrible, but it's not an amazing show by any stretch. I'd give anything to get a Star Wars live-action show with even half the depth and sophistication of Star Trek.
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I mean, maybe terrible is too strong a term. I just am not engaged with the characters. I know many like Din and Grogu but I don't. They feel very hollow ciphers vs. full characters for me to find an emotional attachment too.
That's not to say there are not high points, but it's all very surface level stuff, like seeing Imperial Remnant forces, or New Republic Security droids, or a sense of Outer Rim politics. Like that's fun stuff but it isn't engaging stuff.
Star Trek is always a mix bag too for me, but Picard at least draws me in with the ideas it has.
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