Poll Rank the Picard Seasons
- Thread starter DonIago
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3 is definitely the best. After being in that terrible chateau learning his mom committed suicide in was a relief to get back to a starship. Season 1 was not much better. Kind if what happens when producers let stars dictate the story. We wanted s next gen reunion not people we don't care about and no starships.
I can understand the hate for Season 2, but at least Season 1 tried so many different ideas and stuff, love it or hate it (even though it's relatively sad Season 3 kinda backtracked and in parts was fanfiction on steroids).
Season 1 eeks out for me because it tried something new and felt like a reasonable conclusion for all the crap that had happened to the Federation since we first were introduced to Picard and company.
Season 1 was the most intelligent and original, but not as exciting and fun as 3. The less said about 2 after the first couple of episodes (and even they weren't all that great) the better.
Exactly this. I would have been very happy if they had continued on with the status quo established in season 1 for all three seasons. Season 3 was good and a lot of fun for what it was, but it hardly broke new ground or said anything new. Season 2 was a disaster.
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If season 1 had a couple fewer episodes, was a touch less dark (narratively speaking), and had the spirit of season 3 backing Michael Chabon's ideas and execution, it would be one of the best seasons of the franchise.
Yeah, Season 1 has much going for it still years later, even if Chabon's ideas and script got kinda lost in translation (he's a novelist not a seasoned TV script writer).
Picard's main problem is that Season 2 is objectively inferior to Seasons 1 & 3 (either due to Patrick Stewart's ego bumping in like in the dull late 90s slop Insurrection, COVID, or the massive switch over in the writer's room, etc).
Picard's main problem is that Season 2 is objectively inferior to Seasons 1 & 3 (either due to Patrick Stewart's ego bumping in like in the dull late 90s slop Insurrection, COVID, or the massive switch over in the writer's room, etc).
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I'll die on the hill that while it's the worst season of PIC, S2 isn't bad. PIC S2 is still better than the entirety of DSC, and stands right about with mediocre seasons of other Trek.
Exactly (Season 2 of PIC is better than Season 1 of DSCO at least), S2's several decent or exciting enough episodes book ending general "meh" episodes (though the rambling ICE subplot sadly came true in RL like DS9's time travel episodes with the dystopian corporate mini-dictatorship). Plus Seven and Raffi are a nice couple.
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Season 3 wasn't PIC, as much as it was a cobbled together reunion 8th season of TNG. They should have just called it that.
A lot of people wanted that and love it for that. If they think it's good, good for them. Discovery tried to do something different and didn't always succeed, but often did. Picard s3 tried to boldly go where it had been over and over, and didn't stick the landing. Picard season 1 started off interesting and rotted on the vine. Season 2 was, to quote Edward Larkin, DUMB.
Well as the saying goes, "that was a strange hill to die on, but at least you're dead".
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Maybe, but it still focused around Picard, so it was fitting.
I don't think there's a problem with either approach. I think it's quite welcome... I fall on the opposite end of the spectrum a bit there though, in that Discovery tried to do something different... sort of... not really... and didn't always utterly fail, but it mostly did.
PIC S3 wasn't trying to break any new ground. It was trying to be a love letter to TNG and a fun last romp for the crew. It works spectacularly well as that.
PIC S1 is where we actually got Star Trek trying to be something different... and people did seem to largely hate it. I thought S1 was fantastic. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough that I can excuse some of its shortcomings.
DSC... didn't REALLY try do much in the way of new. It's "doing something new" was just randomly changing how everything looks while still, somehow inexplicably, trying to rely on nostalgia for alot of it and generally telling fairly standard Star Trek-type stories just in the modern serialized format. I keep seeing people saying "Discovery did things different!", but all that was really different were the visuals. And I guess some swearing and Klingon breasts.
Season 2 of PIC... ACTUALLY did something different and told a story unlike really anything we have seen in Trek. I had mixed feelings on the first run. On a second watch, it's actually a great story, presented well, and overall a solid season of Star Trek. It's just... different. This is where point to when people yell "I WANT SOMETHING DIFFERENT"... there you go. There it is. And you hated it. You don't want different, at least not in story. You want "Something that is kind of like Star Trek but with different looking things that aren't really Star Trek". That's Discovery.
one thing PIC and Disco both problematically shared was this idea of the UFP being this super corrupt menacing place where all the top spots were either infiltrated, run by badmirals, or the federation just didn't even come close to its ideals and left its citizens splintered personalities, exiles, or drug smoking burnouts.
It's like they saw what made DS9 so good but didn't really understand WHY it worked and wanted to capture it. But DS9 worked because it was an outlier. It worked because it still had comedy and people who didn't make you want to push them out an airlock. And because, frankly, if you didn't like what it was selling, you could wait later in the week for TNG, or VOY, depending on what year, for a lighter side of Trek. Disco started to pull away from that after the time jump, but then again Disco is like several different shows:
Disco 1: The show that Brian Fuller sorta maybe wanted. Kind of
Disco 2: The Unintended Prequel Season to Strange New Worlds
Disco 3-5: the actual show.
PIC is the same way, each season is so thematically and sometimes visually different from each other they're barely the same show.
It's like they saw what made DS9 so good but didn't really understand WHY it worked and wanted to capture it. But DS9 worked because it was an outlier. It worked because it still had comedy and people who didn't make you want to push them out an airlock. And because, frankly, if you didn't like what it was selling, you could wait later in the week for TNG, or VOY, depending on what year, for a lighter side of Trek. Disco started to pull away from that after the time jump, but then again Disco is like several different shows:
Disco 1: The show that Brian Fuller sorta maybe wanted. Kind of
Disco 2: The Unintended Prequel Season to Strange New Worlds
Disco 3-5: the actual show.
PIC is the same way, each season is so thematically and sometimes visually different from each other they're barely the same show.
Indeed, and no real explanation for anything happening in left it very unsatisfactory. The use of the Borg and the movement for everyone to go towards Starfleet undid one of the major interesting ideas in Season 1.
Couple that with random acts by Q and it falters hard at whatever story it tries to tell
Season 1 is my favorite until the Borg. Season 3 is good until the Borg then it flounders hard because of its mystery box.
I mean, we've seen that since TNG and TUC.
not to that degree. Picard is DARK
Agreed, not to that degree, but the foundation is laid there far earlier. Picard doesn't strike me as much darker, so much as it goes far more extreme.
A cabal to keep Klingons and Federation at war is dark, especially since they assassinated their own leaders. An admiral committing a coup is dark.
At least in Picard leadership has a change of heart.
I do understand that. The thing is while I like PIC S2, I can understand why some wouldn't as much. I do think the season could have been better served spending a bit more time in the future and condensing the past things to 2, maybe 3 episodes of the season. But there were practical issues that kind of forced the hand of the show to do it the way they did it.
I posted this in GTD at one point but my ranking of the seasons for the two shows combined is:
PIC Season 3
PIC Season 1
DSC Season 1
DSC Season 4
DSC Season 5
DSC Season 2
DSC Season 3
PIC Season 2
I haven't seen all of SNW Season 2, and I've only seen SNW Season 1 once. It's not my thing (which isn't the same as saying I think it's bad) and I don't think it's fair to rank a season if I haven't seen all of it at least twice. And especially since the more time passes, the more faded the memory becomes.
As for what I put where, I like different things for different reasons. Simple as that.
PIC Season 3
PIC Season 1
DSC Season 1
DSC Season 4
DSC Season 5
DSC Season 2
DSC Season 3
PIC Season 2
I haven't seen all of SNW Season 2, and I've only seen SNW Season 1 once. It's not my thing (which isn't the same as saying I think it's bad) and I don't think it's fair to rank a season if I haven't seen all of it at least twice. And especially since the more time passes, the more faded the memory becomes.
As for what I put where, I like different things for different reasons. Simple as that.
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