Spoilers So, what do we think of Season 2 now that it's done?

The entire story fell stupidly apart in the middle of the season.

This is worse than the first year, when the internal sense of events held together reasonably well until the last two or three episodes.

Pretty dismal.

 

Yeah, you're really missing out.

 

Better than Season 1, especially through the final two episodes. The middle sagged, meandered, and wandered into a few walls. But overall, enjoyable. 7/10 (or a 4 on the Enhanced Serveaux scale)

 

Very weak sauce overall, and leaving me very skeptical about S3 and this show as a whole, given that there will only be three seasons.

I'm not a lit-verse nut, but I'm guessing that a lot of hard-core lit-verse fans are feeling pretty cheated the way this show resulted in the destruction of the lit-verse. Like maybe the quality here wasn't worth it, or the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, so to speak.

 

Maybe the Queen we see in the first episode is from an alternate timeline where things didn't work out as well, and she's frustrated because she kept having to relive this loop?

 

The decision to nuke the Litverse was by the authors. They wanted, apparently, to do a version of Doctor Who's Time War.

They were still like 10 years before the Hobus/Romulus supernova.

They could have just erased Picard and Beverly's marriage and revealed the Borg had survivors from Destiny. Comic books do it all the time. They didn't have to nuke everything.

Would they have to have tweaked more as TNG cast members returned? Yes.

But that sort of thing happens.

 

The novels were never canon, so I don't see how it could be "destroyed". Any disappointment to that effect is a product of false expectations.

Then again, I'd take pretty much anything over what the relaunch novels did. They drove me away from Trek at a time when I very much wanted new Trek content, which is quite the feat.

 

It does a good amount of wheel spinning and goes off on random tangents, like Picard and Guinan getting arrested. But I thought overall the season was good. A big step up from S1 for sure.

 

I admit I preferred Season One for its worldbuilding. I wanted to see what the aftermath of the Romulan supernova was outside of Star Trek Online.

 

Overall I enjoyed it and gave the season 8/10, slightly better than the first season’s 7/10.
I am looking forward to the third season.

 

Episodes 1,2 and the last 10 minutes of 10 were goof. I'll gibe those a 7.5/10
The rest a 4/10

 

The whole plot seemed to center around Picard being sent back in time to get hit by a Tesla to put him in a coma to confront an event in his childhood where he unintentionally aided his suicidal mother in hanging herself because his dad did not explain to Picard what was wrong with her and why he treated her the way he did so that Picard can act on falling in love with Laris. All of that could have been covered in 3 episodes tops. The majority of the season was filler - the Borg, the Confederation, 2024 , Renee Picard and Europa Mission – none of it was necessary. They should have sped up the plot and have Picard hit by that Tesla in the first episode, and let most of the season be Picard in a comatose state.

The season suffered from a lack of editing and critical thinking . And due to that, poor explanations and missed opportunities are everywhere.

• Zhaban dies, but from what we do not know. Or even by whom’s hands.

• No one thinks to look up the La Sirena historical database to find any discrepancies in the timeline, or figure out if they can create & program holograms with the biobed. The latter of which is probably very useful, and removes the expectations for someone to be awake 24/7/365 to monitor the Borg Queen they don’t trust. Especially since that hologram had its own mobile emitter.

• Adam Soong has connections to private military but its isn’t said who specifically, despite the opportunity to tie it to Colonel Green (either directly or to a relative of Green's), or one of those men that traded “hoods for suits” as Young Guinan put it. Not even Adam Soong agreeing to pay for the future Colonel Green’s college tuition.

• Similarly, there was an opportunity to explain that the Shenzhen Convention is what defines the interwar period between the Eugenics Wars of the ‘90s and WW3 starting in 2026. It wasn’t done.

• There are no changes to the timeline despite the sloppiness of the La Sirena crew. Actually, considering how sloppy the crew were, its surprising that none of them leaked that WW3 was going to happen to anyone.

• Because Picard does not acknowledge WW3 to Young Guinan, Renee or anyone else and subsequently receive backlash for refusing to change the future, he doesn’t have to reflect on anything relating to the Prime Directive either. Like how he dealt with the Boraalans, for instance.

• No Rios confiding in Teresa to process what went wrong with his relationship with Jurati or that he doesn’t belong in his time period, or Teresa thinking that Rios is associated with the Europa Mission and then going into whether she agreed that the mission should be happening or not.

• Teresa in general did not have the impact that Lily did in FC, Gillian in TVH or the 21st century humans that were woken up from stasis in “The Neutral Zone”. And Teresa went from not knowing how to use 25th century medical tech but expected to know how, to then seemingly knowing how to read Romulan on Tallinn’s tricorder and use said tricorder to heal Rios. Hmm?

• Young Guinan exists because the writers forgot that Guinan has children, lots of them.

• Elnor is killed off when he would have probably been able to fit into 2024 LA the most, between the comic book craze, sci-fi conventions and body modification lifestyle. Not to mention his father-son relationship with Picard, which would have been relevant for Picard’s story.

• Soji is made a synth ambassador and left behind when she could have learned more about her origins and met Adam Soong. Or been brought onto the Stargazer to negotiate with the Borg, since she did work on the Borg Artifact. I mean, good if she's preventing the annihilation of all organic life in the galaxy from those extra dimensional synths as synth ambassador, but how is her time on the Borg Artifact just forgotten?

• Rios never thinks to bring Teresa and Ricardo to the future, or ask if Q had the energy to bring Teresa and Ricardo with them, to avoid WW3 and the post atomic horror.

• Seven never bringing up that she also knew Q, that Q had a son, she learned to drive from Tom Paris, or pointing out to Raffi that she lost a son too in Icheb as soon as possible.

• Still not being sure what Q exactly was dying from/why he was moving on.

• Rios & Raffi being made to look like idiots all season, Seven having a blonde moment in the finale – “How does money work?” – despite actually being familiar with money as a Fenris Ranger, and Adam Soong not owning any USBs or external hard drives to protect his work. Someone got off making the characters look dumb this season and I don’t get why.

• Deciding Rios should stay in the 21st century and Seven is a captain of the Stargazer, when Rios could have captained the Stargazer and went his separate way, and Seven doing going her separate way with Raffi with La Sirena.

• Young Guinan summons Q, get Agent Wells – who everyone thinks is Ducane, which makes total sense to think due to the role time travel plays in the story – and a bunch of FBI agent that appear out of nowhere. And neither Wells or the other FBI agents are revealed to be a Q.

• They used the Bajoran tablet in the S2 teaser, and have further DS9 teases even in the PIC intro (golden liquid that resemble a Changeling, vortex resembling a wormhole) and …nothing. Except 2024 which only offers a mention or Brynner in a newspaper, an ICE officer requesting a UHC card for ID and Sanctuary districts in LA and on the border. And Skull Dukat and Martok and mention of a General Sisko. Although tbf, maybe more was planned. All the DS9 references stopped after episode 4. Which is when the season started going downhill and started to drag. Maybe there was supposed to be consequences to those ICE detainees being freed, but they changed their minds.

Aside from the intro, seeing the Stargazer and the 25th century Federation fleet, Picard-Q, Jurati-Borg Queen, the introduction to the Confederation, giving a hitory lesson to a shuttle in ENT's intro, the NX-Refit being made canon, and the Borg joining the Federation, there weren’t many highlight this season. If this was the supposed to the ESB of the PIC trilogy, it was a letdown because someone could not be bothered to edit the script and think critically for this season.

 

I think this season was better than season 1, but:

Elnor was still reduced to the sword-wielding kid..... The most underused character, like in season 1
I can't get used to the fact that the Borg joined the Federation
I was left unsatisfied with Rios´ fate: dying in a brawl whereas he survived all the clashes and space battles in the 25th century was disappointing. On the other hand: Guinan could have told Picard that he died of lung cancer three years after he stayed behind - and this would have been even worse... Alas, Rios is unlikely to show up in other future PIC novels.

Things I did like:

- The scenes and chemistry between Q and Picard, Picard and young Guinan, Picard and Tallin and Teresa and Chris
- Agnes showing sympathy and turning the Borg into something new
- Wesley as Traveller showing up
- easter eggs (teleportation, Punk in the bus etc.)

All good things come to an end. Time to focus on other Trek shows. Season three is still left to be shown. I mostly watched this show because of Sir Patrick Stewart and don't regret it. I'm curious how they handle ....

Spoiler: season 3

...the return of the rest of the TNG cast and wrap everything up.

 

Also:

* So Picard could give a speech to his ancestor so she doesn't chicken out on a space mission that discovers the cure for global warming, ocean death, and presumably radioactive fallout.
* So Doctor Adam Soong can be discredited and doesn't create a fascist future with himself as the Elon Musk/Walt Disney ideological founder.
* So the Borg Queen of an alternate universe can assimilate Jurati so she can become a Borg Queen who is not a psychopath.
* So Jurati-Queen can stop the massive interstellar event that will destroy a sector and kill billions.
* So that Picard can also learn from the event you mentioned and trust Jurati-Queen and thus save billions.

I mean, the fact Picard gets laid out of the experience is nice but it is kind of burying the lead.

It also requires you to DELIBERATELY ignore all of this stuff.

Picard specifically states that the bullet holes from his childhood are on the walls, so you're ignoring this is a predestination paradox. The episode deliberately takes time out to explain this and debunk that it wasn't meant to happen.

The son is going to save humanity and Rios is probably the only reason they survive WW3. This is not a plot hole, this is just fans wanting the show to rip off STIV even more.

She's being sarcastic.

I imagine they are backed up and Kore destroyed those as well given she is his DAUGHTER and a super-genius.

Also, Soong DOES have hard copies. It's just not very good for genetics work.

This is not a mistake. This is a decision.

 

I'll give this Season rating 8/10 I really liked it alot .I really like the characters like Agnes, Rios Raffi and Seven got more to do this season.Also Talinn was a great character and Elnor.I liked seeing the younger Guinan and Rennee Picard. And Q and Adam Soong and Kore was a character I liked alot. And Annie Wersching did a terrific job as the Borg Queen.

 

I thought it started strong, then ended up just okay. I thought there were a lot of good ideas but most of them weren't brought to their full potential. And sometimes I thought, "Why is this even in here?" I liked it, I enjoyed it, but it was flawed.

Rounding it off, I give this season a 7.5.
Also rounding off, I give last season a 9. So it was a bit of a drop, going from S1 to S2.

How does this look in relation to other Star Trek? I think PIC Season 1 was better than any season of TNG or DS9. Should this go in the Controversial Opinions thread? On the other hand, I think half of TNG and most of DS9 was better than PIC Season 2.

 

I would give it a π on the Revised Serveaux Scale.

 

I think for the most part I'm kind of considering season 2 to be a guilty pleasure. The plot was pretty bad and you could make whole lists of nitpicks if that's your thing, but I was okay with that. It was an okay season, I enjoyed it enough, it didn't do anything to really annoy me that I remember. It would've been better if it had a good story to go along with its entertaining characters and slick production, but two out of three isn't bad.

I'm just a bit disappointed as I'd hoped that Terry Matalas was going to give us a really solid season, but then it turns out he vanished halfway through to do season 3. So now I'm back where I was last year, hoping that he gives us a really solid season 3.

 

There was way to much filler that went nowhere which is odd considering there were quite a few interesting ideas they could have fleshed out more. They also really struggled to find uses for all the characters, which is not surprising considering they had to stretch 4 episodes worth of material over 10 episodes.

I also don't think Trek works very well in the present day for very long. Having the entire season take place in 2024 was a structural mistake.

 

If you had told me after episode 1 I'd hold Discovery S4 in higher regard by the finale, I'd have suggested you were madder then Mad Jack McMad. But, here we are.

The story doesn't make a lick of sense when held under any scrutiny. It got off to an incredibly strong start before collapsing into a boring, meandering, incoherent mess.

By virtue of the fact every other season of Trek has had more decent/watchable episodes than Picard S2, I am left with no option but to scornfully rate this as the worst season of Trek.

Congratulations TNG season 1 for moving up a peg after 35 years.