Season 1 as a Whole

[Lord Garth]

I should type a long post. But it's 5:37 AM as I type this and I haven't been to bed yet.

What are your thoughts about the season in general? What did it do right? What did it do wrong? What were your favorite parts? What were your least favoirte parts? How did it compare to TNG? How did it compare to Discovery? Who are your favorite characters? And all that jazz.

I thought they pulled a rabbit out of the hat and I can't wait to see more. Bring on Season 2!

 

[dinzy]

I certainly enjoyed it though there were some things I wished were different. 9, maybe 8. I am still processing and still confused by the lack of a cliffhanger.

I liked that they gave Data a better end, but don't know why they didn't put him in a body. Seems kind of cruel seeing that they had the capability. Keeping him trapped in a simulation for decades is kind of brutal.

Riker was awesome in both appearances. 7 is great as well. I dig the holograms.

I guess overall it will be good to have a cleanish slate next season. I'm guessing the evil uber robots will be back in season 3.

 

[NCC-73515]

Almost perfect.
The good: Data gets the final chapter he deserved for 20 years, Picard grows from a grumpy old man back to a hopeful and compassionate leader, Seven, Riker and Troi returned! Rios and his holograms are great!
The bad: The other new characters didn't get much development yet, the season was too short for that. (Too short a season, a TNG episode! XD)
The ugly: Everything with Narissa and Narek in it. And no Brian Brophy.

 

[JoeZhang]

Started well but went progressively down hill - the AIs were a disappointment and I found the last episode mawish and just plain weird in points...

 

[Gepard]

5.

Overall a disappointment. There were some solid episodes, but it was bogged down by a lot of wheel-spinning, an overarching plot that was somehow both overstuffed and undercooked, underdeveloped character relationships, and – most damningly – passive, incurious main characters who sat on their thumbs all too often while the secondary and tertiary characters made the decisions that actually pushed the story forward. The result was a season that had plenty of incident in it but often felt inert.

There's tons of nitpicky bullshit I could list, but why bother. By the time the big weepy scenes in the finale rolled around, I just couldn't get invested. It's a shame.

 

[CorporalClegg]

I gave it a 7. Some great - amazing even - character stuff. But the underlying plot was completely underwhelming. And the three villains were just a waste of screentime. They were all cardboard cutouts and their motives all arbitrary and ultimately irrelevant. And I always say skiffy adventure shows are only as good as their villains.

I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but I think it was a huge mistake making Chabon the showrunner. His inexperience became increasingly obvious and it was clear he found himself in over his head when he couldn't fall back on his talent.

To put it another way, he's fantastic at the Braga of it all - probably the best the franchise has ever had - but it's quite clear he struggles with the Bernan of it all.

 

[Kzinti]

the show deserve a 3/10 since there was only two truly good episode Stardust City Rag(minus the borg kebab) and Nepenthe because of nostalgia. the rest was either too slow and average or complete garbage and to be honest discovery s1 feels like citizen kane compared to picard

 

[Visitor1982]

I gave it an 8.

It had a bit of a slow start and a few mediocre episodes, but from episode 6 onwards (minus episode 9), the show was great.

To me, the final episode was easily the best of the season.

I did feel that the episodes which included former TNG characters like Data, Riker and Troi, were easily the best episodes.

Not to say I dislike the new characters, but these old characters have such a history together and as actors they are all friends and know eachother through and through. That shines through in their perfomances. It makes for some great and emotional viewing that part of me whishes that Picard would have been The Next Generation Part II.

 

[CorporalClegg]

If they require the use of weaponized nostalgia to deliver any amount of emotional impact, then they're probably not the best episodes.

 

[Visitor1982]

If they require the use of weaponized nostalgia to deliver any amount of emotional impact, then they're probably not the best episodes.

It's normal to have more of an emotional impact with characters we've known for 30+ years than characters with just 10 episodes under their belt. I'm not saying the new characters didn't evoke any emotion, it was just much more stronger with the old cast members if you'd ask me.

 

[thribs]

I’ll give it a 6 out of 10. Felt very slow. Probably could have told the entire story in half that.

 

[MrPointy]

I put 7 on the poll, but it's a 6.5 for me.

Picard S1 feels like a 8-episode story dragged out to 10. The 3-episode 'pilot' is 1 episode too long. The 4th episode has a B-plot that does nothing. The 5th episode could have been really good with some reediting and restructuring. The 9th episode was poop and bum.

But to its credit, I was invested in the show enough to rewatch the episodes over and over again, so it was doing something right. That puts it above most of Discovery for me.

 

[Sakonna]

I really don't know how to judge this season. Episodes 1 - 7 I could not have enjoyed more... I'd basically quibble with the execution of the Icheb death scene, and otherwise, PERFECT.

Episode 8 started to falter, but still OK.

Episode 9 and 10 I found to be a complete collapse, from a plotting standpoint. Of course, along the way there are still many moments of striking dialogue or great acting or impressive production design, but story-wise, it's a complete mess. There's so many reversals it just becomes a hash, plausibility is stretched beyond the breaking point constantly, nothing feels character-motivated any longer, all I felt was chess pieces being forced around the board to execute the pre-planned plot diagram

I'm surprised to see many commenting that Picard felt like it had too MANY episodes, when I would say it had too few. The first 7 episodes were paced correctly, then the last 3 episodes raced through 10 more episodes of story. This season was 17 episodes of story in a 10 episode bag.

I still loved "Picard", but taken all together it was an immensely frustrating viewing experience. Much like "Discovery", which I also love and am driven insane by! "Discovery" distributes it's messiness more evenly, though -- each episode is kind of great and kind of a mess. Whereas "Picard" frontloaded all it's greatness, before collapsing into sloppiness for the climax.

I think a lot of this comes from problems of scale. So far, the stakes in all three seasons of streaming Trek are ultimately the same: save all life in our entire society from complete extinction! This is such a huge mistake creatively. NOT EVERY STORY SHOULD BE THAT BIG.

For one thing, it causes you to really lose the personal stakes that are what make a story involving. This first season of "Picard" would have been stronger with all the universe-threatening stakes removed. It's much more compelling as the story of a man trying to save the lives of a small group of people, brought into this by his personal connection to his dead friend, from a group of enemies that have been so traumatized by their own loses that they have embraced bigotry against those more marginalized than they are. There's a much cleaner, more compelling metaphor there that gets lost in the "ALL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE WILL BE EXTINGUISHED" noise.

 

[thribs]

Unanswered questions:

What caused the supernova?
Is the Spock/Red Matter subplot still a thing?
What was in the grey zone?
How did the Romulans know Dahj and Soji were robots?
Who made that beacon?
What happened to the other scientists on the artefact like the Trill and the Andorians?
Why did Oh wear sunglasses?
Why wasn’t Crusher mentioned when everyone else was?
Why haven’t the Borg attacked since First Contact?

 

[Cyrus]

Loved it. Best first season since TOS.

 

[RobertoRossUK]

I've given it a 4, started well I thought, but there's more plot in an average TNG episode then all 9 put together so far. There's been 3 good episodes in my opinion, though I doubt I'd want to see them again. To top it off, the ship designs have been nonsense.

 

[Attentiveluke]

Gave it a 3. Only new characters I liked were the romulan brothers and sister, Rios was okay, the romulan housekeeper lady was passable but other than that didn’t like anyone else. The last 2 episodes were the only ones that were decent but I didn’t like the lord of the rings extended ending. The series took one of my favourite Trek characters, Picard, and made me dislike him to the point that when he died I couldn’t care less. Making him an Android was dumb but predictable of Kurtzman Trek. If season 2 is Picard and his rubbish crew travelling about in the La Sirena in More serialised adventures, count me out.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

10/10 star trek at it's best.

 

[Jadeb]

Chabon delivered in the end. There were bumps along the way but the final episode had the lyricism and emotional heft I want from Trek. It was the proper payoff I found missing from the previous streaming seasons, and it renews my faith in serialization as a suitable format for the franchise.

 

[Scout101]

Eh. Thought it was decent, but less than it could have been. Took way too long to get going, and didn't take advantage of the fact that it's a streaming show to break out of the 42 minute broadcast model when needed. There was also a lot that didn't go anywhere or matter to the plot, which confuses exactly what story the show was trying to tell.

Nice to see the characters, even if not how we imagined them. Nice to see Data again, and get a better close, although seems they could have given him one of the aging golems just as easily as Picard so he could have lived again but had mortality as a goal; just deleting him was an odd choice.

Last couple episodes were mostly decent, if predictable. Overall, just don't think we got 10 episodes of our money's worth. Could have been cut down to about a 4 hour miniseries without sacrificing much of anything.

Didn't explore most of the things it brought up, just mentioned things and moved on, which is disappointing.

Overall, it was alright, but not amazing. Suppose it left things in a decent place for a continuing story, so maybe better next time, but as a stand alone 'move' story, it was pretty shallow in my opinion.