Well, yeah. That's the reason I used quotations. Not just because it isn't a word I normally use.
Season 1 as a Whole
- Thread starter Lord Garth
- Start date
Well, yeah. That's the reason I used quotations. Not just because it isn't a word I normally use.
Ooohhhhh....Well, yeah. That's the reason I used quotations. Not just because it isn't a word I normally use.
You completely misunderstood the scene. It wasn't meant as a better death scene for Data, since Data was just an AI copy of the original living in a simulation. It was closure for Picard after 20 years. Him saying goodbye and finally letting go.
This show was not about "Picard not being able to let go of Data for 20 years".
The scene in question was. The show itself was about Picard making peace with his past (including, you know, Data) and finding new purpose.
Which is an okay thing to do. But it rings hollow if it it's the emotional climax - because I think it's a bad idea to base the emotional finale of your story around nostalgia for another, older show.
It's the same thing with the ENT finale "These are the Voyages": IMO it would have been a very okay-ish episode set somewhere within the series. As a conclusion to the main story - it's disappointing, because it's essentially sidelining the current characters of this story in favour for weaponized nostalgia for an older, already finished story.
Not impressed. Overall it felt like an RPG adventure, with shallow characters rushing to and fro to gain evidence to solve a mystery, all the while failing to service almost all of the characters in any meaningful way. It tries hard to rise to the level of Westworld or the new Galactica in terms of it's storytelling and character development, but the allure of glitzy science fiction action tropes is too much to resist.
If I have nothing else to do and nothing else I want to watch, I'll check out the second season.
If I have nothing else to do and nothing else I want to watch, I'll check out the second season.
Had the Data scene come out of the blue like TATV, I'd agree. But it's been set up since the very first episode, and constantly brought up during the show. Even if you'd never seen Next Gen, you knew Data was important to Picard and that his death hung over him, so the scene would work.
It could be argued that that’s exactly what it was about.
Indeed, yes. Data became the representation of all of Picard's emotional pain and sense of failure and lost legacy.
As a TOS-era fan, I've always enjoyed TNG at a little bit of an emotional remove. So I was quite surprised how often this show touched me, emotionally. I cried like a fool when meat-Picard died.
Its faults seem similar to Discovery's: too short a season and a tall order of expectation to fill, contributing to pacing problems, resulting in a finale that somehow doesn't quite deliver what all the buildup seemed to be building up to, but still packing a punch. The ninth episode had me worried, but the finale was quite good, considering what it had to work with from the first half, which I found one of the season's weakest episodes.
Much as with Discovery, I feel my gripes with details here and there are far overshadowed by the whole, which for the most part was one of the most entertaining premiere seasons in the franchise. It's simply great to see Stewart back, delivering a wonderful nuanced performance.
Its faults seem similar to Discovery's: too short a season and a tall order of expectation to fill, contributing to pacing problems, resulting in a finale that somehow doesn't quite deliver what all the buildup seemed to be building up to, but still packing a punch. The ninth episode had me worried, but the finale was quite good, considering what it had to work with from the first half, which I found one of the season's weakest episodes.
Much as with Discovery, I feel my gripes with details here and there are far overshadowed by the whole, which for the most part was one of the most entertaining premiere seasons in the franchise. It's simply great to see Stewart back, delivering a wonderful nuanced performance.
Yeah, I get why people might not like that, but that's what the show ended up being about. It's the through-line from the very first scene.
I sometimes wonder if dragging in the Borg and Seven and the Romulan refugees and all that just served to raise fan expectations and set the stage for disappointment.
Yeah, I’m planning on making a separate post about this soon.
I think the reason they included the Borg had more to do with them being TNG's other main enemy besides the Romulans. That's what would've gotten the ball rolling initially.
Then they might've figured after they thought of it, how Picard never got over assimilation. Seven being another such character was someone who could ask Picard point-blank, "What's it like for you?" And she's someone who he knows he can give a real answer to and she'll know what it means, instead of a stock answer to someone else who wouldn't. That's my take on it.
I think Hugh is someone who has no memory at all of life before being a drone. Individuality was something he discovered instead of recovered, so it's not quite the same. He gained something that he didn't think was taken away from him before. Otherwise, "I, Borg" would've gone into it if he could've remembered individuality from before. It looked like a totally new thing to him.
That's why I think Picard and Seven are the only two -- of the previous characters -- who could talk about the experience in the same type of way and know where each other was coming from without explanation.
Then they might've figured after they thought of it, how Picard never got over assimilation. Seven being another such character was someone who could ask Picard point-blank, "What's it like for you?" And she's someone who he knows he can give a real answer to and she'll know what it means, instead of a stock answer to someone else who wouldn't. That's my take on it.
I think Hugh is someone who has no memory at all of life before being a drone. Individuality was something he discovered instead of recovered, so it's not quite the same. He gained something that he didn't think was taken away from him before. Otherwise, "I, Borg" would've gone into it if he could've remembered individuality from before. It looked like a totally new thing to him.
That's why I think Picard and Seven are the only two -- of the previous characters -- who could talk about the experience in the same type of way and know where each other was coming from without explanation.
I now need write nothing. Thank you.
Thematically, their presence makes sense in the context of the man-machine storyline. But they’re just one of many, many elements the showrunners introduced, from the Romulan housekeepers to Raffi’s addiction, that viewers quite reasonably expected to pay off. The more they packed in, the more potential for disappointment, and there was already plenty of room for disappointment even before the show began.
There’s no way the show could have been all things to all people, but I do think bringing in the Borg without a real payoff in mind was playing with fire.
The fact that his Romulan housekeepers didn't get a resolution this season doesn't bother me. They were going to be left behind when Picard boarded La Sirena and began his mission so the fact we didn't see them again in Episode 10 didn't mean anything to me. The Borg, however, were a dropped ball almost from the start and largely anticlimactic. Aside from Hugh and the female Romulan who went crazy after seeing the vision of the Absolution none of the xB's really mattered.
I think it's interesting to see what people latched onto, and how different people view the show differently. I was lucky in that I wasn't that invested in any one element, or even in TNG itself, so I was able to enjoy the show for what it ended up being. In terms of preferences, I'd have passed up more Borg stuff for more Romulan stuff. (As an aside, the incest business was really awful, and the fact that it proved totally irrelevant to the storyline just seems trashy. A real blackmark on the season.)
What I liked:
* Raffi: When she's functional, she's pretty great.
* Rios: Watching somebody kill himself right in front of you, because of the terrible choice he had to make, would tear anybody up except maybe Lon Suder. Especially your beloved captain. (Good noodle incident, this entire Ibn Majid.)
* Brent Spiner's commitment to the character as written originally. This android (don't like the term synth) doesn't age, but Brent ages, and he isn't terribly interested in portraying him in the actor's current state.
* The slow unfolding of the understanding of the Admonition. Also, golden-Soji's interpretation of the message sounds like how a young person with their own agenda would read it. But, could the message be held entirely in an organic mind, so that it could be read completely by somebody later? Are human minds just raw data storage, and the interpretation of the data can be done later by other clients?
What I have no strong opinion on:
* Another Soong. Amusing, but not great or terrible.
* Android colony's outfits. Seems silly, but exactly like some classic Trek.
* Rikers. It was okay seeing them, but who lives in a dinky little rustic cabin, but has shields to summon on demand, and not sensors to tell you humanoids are approaching?! Shields won't do you any good, if a bad guy breaks in first. But, I'm getting too off topic.
* Elnor. He did seem underused in the story, but he's probably just being set up to help run the next seasons. He's a young actor, which do better on TV than old actors over the long run.
What I disliked:
* Raffi. "JL"? Why does she call him that? Nobody else does. To his close friends, he's Jean-Luc. To everyone else, he's Captain (squee!) or Admiral.
* Jurati just gets off scott-free for murdering a dude? I realize he's probably not a Federation citizen in good standing, but that hardly matters to the Federation in a murder investigation. The Federation believes in the right to life (hm, does it?! Have they ever talked about that can of worms?). That even guides the Prime Directive of Starfleet, the (wink-wink "non-")military. Also, she's "Done killing." She's over her (programmed or not) fear of the death of all organic life in the galaxy? What if she learned that another few deaths would save the galaxy? Would she kill then? If I were on the La Sirena, there's no way I would ever go to the sick bay if Jurati's on duty.
* Raffi and Seven. Like many others commented, there's no build-up to that. Also, I'm old-fashioned.
* Bunch of copy-paste, brand-new, bad-ass Starfleet starships? And then they show up, point guns, and leave within 5 minutes?! I actually thought th
* Useless use of Borg. Everywhere. The biggest difference the Borg made was some dark hallways to use for creepy scenes with Narek, and to trans-warp-beam Picard to Nepenthe so we can get an episode blessedly free from most of the less-interesting characters.
* Killed freakin' Icheb. That was the singularly most interesting character from all of Star Trek Voyager. (Data is probably more interesting; the only one of his kind, period, whoops, until this show). Icheb, abandoned by his family, captured by the enemy (multiple times), rescued, taken to the far reaches of the galaxy, now lives as a unique specimen, kinda like Odo. But like Brian Brophy, it wasn't the same actor for Icheb and maybe they can retcon Icheb's death and bring back the real Manu Intiraymi.
* The whole "Save the whole galaxy full of life" trope, in addition to the personal story about Data's not-daughter. Those just seem... entirely on different scales. It's perfectly normal for Star Trek heroes to save the galaxy, and to have personal stories. But in the last episode, they get rid of the robot Cthulhu baddies halfway through the episode and then the focus is just about personal stuff. No mass celebrations we just saved the galaxy as we know it? We'll take the loss of a old, dying man in exchange. It's okay, really. Who wants to live forever? Not Data. Er, "too soon." Plus: if anybody goes to resuscitate me with a new body, it better be a 20-year-old's body, and not a 95-year-old's. Just sayin'.
* Raffi: When she's functional, she's pretty great.
* Rios: Watching somebody kill himself right in front of you, because of the terrible choice he had to make, would tear anybody up except maybe Lon Suder. Especially your beloved captain. (Good noodle incident, this entire Ibn Majid.)
* Brent Spiner's commitment to the character as written originally. This android (don't like the term synth) doesn't age, but Brent ages, and he isn't terribly interested in portraying him in the actor's current state.
* The slow unfolding of the understanding of the Admonition. Also, golden-Soji's interpretation of the message sounds like how a young person with their own agenda would read it. But, could the message be held entirely in an organic mind, so that it could be read completely by somebody later? Are human minds just raw data storage, and the interpretation of the data can be done later by other clients?
What I have no strong opinion on:
* Another Soong. Amusing, but not great or terrible.
* Android colony's outfits. Seems silly, but exactly like some classic Trek.
* Rikers. It was okay seeing them, but who lives in a dinky little rustic cabin, but has shields to summon on demand, and not sensors to tell you humanoids are approaching?! Shields won't do you any good, if a bad guy breaks in first. But, I'm getting too off topic.
* Elnor. He did seem underused in the story, but he's probably just being set up to help run the next seasons. He's a young actor, which do better on TV than old actors over the long run.
What I disliked:
* Raffi. "JL"? Why does she call him that? Nobody else does. To his close friends, he's Jean-Luc. To everyone else, he's Captain (squee!) or Admiral.
* Jurati just gets off scott-free for murdering a dude? I realize he's probably not a Federation citizen in good standing, but that hardly matters to the Federation in a murder investigation. The Federation believes in the right to life (hm, does it?! Have they ever talked about that can of worms?). That even guides the Prime Directive of Starfleet, the (wink-wink "non-")military. Also, she's "Done killing." She's over her (programmed or not) fear of the death of all organic life in the galaxy? What if she learned that another few deaths would save the galaxy? Would she kill then? If I were on the La Sirena, there's no way I would ever go to the sick bay if Jurati's on duty.
* Raffi and Seven. Like many others commented, there's no build-up to that. Also, I'm old-fashioned.
* Bunch of copy-paste, brand-new, bad-ass Starfleet starships? And then they show up, point guns, and leave within 5 minutes?! I actually thought th
* Useless use of Borg. Everywhere. The biggest difference the Borg made was some dark hallways to use for creepy scenes with Narek, and to trans-warp-beam Picard to Nepenthe so we can get an episode blessedly free from most of the less-interesting characters.
* Killed freakin' Icheb. That was the singularly most interesting character from all of Star Trek Voyager. (Data is probably more interesting; the only one of his kind, period, whoops, until this show). Icheb, abandoned by his family, captured by the enemy (multiple times), rescued, taken to the far reaches of the galaxy, now lives as a unique specimen, kinda like Odo. But like Brian Brophy, it wasn't the same actor for Icheb and maybe they can retcon Icheb's death and bring back the real Manu Intiraymi.
* The whole "Save the whole galaxy full of life" trope, in addition to the personal story about Data's not-daughter. Those just seem... entirely on different scales. It's perfectly normal for Star Trek heroes to save the galaxy, and to have personal stories. But in the last episode, they get rid of the robot Cthulhu baddies halfway through the episode and then the focus is just about personal stuff. No mass celebrations we just saved the galaxy as we know it? We'll take the loss of a old, dying man in exchange. It's okay, really. Who wants to live forever? Not Data. Er, "too soon." Plus: if anybody goes to resuscitate me with a new body, it better be a 20-year-old's body, and not a 95-year-old's. Just sayin'.
I will never understand why the "JL" thing gets so many people's panties in a twist.
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