Give Season 4 a try, it's a lot more solid.
Same showrunner straight through, unified story line.
I think Season 3 is the worst season of the series, but loved Season 4.
Spoilers So, what do we think of Season 2 now that it's done?
- Thread starter Charles Phipps
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Same showrunner straight through, unified story line.
I think Season 3 is the worst season of the series, but loved Season 4.
A better ending than Nemesis. It's as simple as that.
While it wasn't something I was seeking, if they're going to offer it, I won't say, "No." NEM isn't a good movie -- despite what Revisionists might say -- and TNG deserves better than to end on that note.
"All Good Things"! Someone will say. No, I disagree. We all knew in 1994 that TNG was going to movies, so we knew the end wasn't really The End. It wasn't a true Final Note and was never intended to be.
NEM wasn't intended to be a true Final Note either. If it had been successful, we would've gotten that stupid Justice League style Star Trek movie with TNG, DS9, and VOY characters. I'm glad that didn't happen.
With PIC Season 3, we're getting a Final Note with the entire TNG cast that's intended to be a Final Note. And, yes, it will be better than Nemesis. The question is will it be up there with the best? I don't know. But it'll be better than NEM for sure.
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Honestly at this point I think I'll shelve that one entirely until the series either ends or is somehow rehabilitated into the pre-existing continuity. It's foundation clashes so so much with what VGR and ENT established about the 29th and 31st centuries while also bringing along all of the baggage of seasons 1 and 2 (especially the spore drive and the red angel suit that can open wormholes to 50,000ish lightyears away).
Right now I'm slowly watching Picard season 1 for the first time to be able to fully evaluate the merits of season 3.
IMO it honestly doesn't.
How?
I mean, Daniels was stuck on the abandoned Earth with Archer in "Shockwave" and using random material was able to move both in time and space to the NX-01 Enterprise in the 22nd century. Braxton's ship was able to open temporal rifts. I haven't seen "Relativity" since the late 90's but I'm pretty sure they could beam people across massive distances as well as through time.
In 3x01, they at least drop a benamite shortage for why quantum slipstream isn't a big deal. Maybe maybe in future episodes they offer fine print hand waves for why other stuff doesn't work, but big picture I was already highly irritated by the spore drive and then magic red angel suit that could basically do what the 29th century Aeon could, but then seeing the state of Earth in 3x03 just broke any further suspension of belief I was able to entertain in that show. They could open an interphasic rift or use the transporter with Smiley O'Brien's formula, access a parallel universe with a lot of dilithium, and stock up there without using alterative forms for interstellar travel. Or they could use 900 year old Romulan development of warp with artificial quantum singularities. And that's just quick brainstorming for 10 mins without a deep dive on Memory Alpha.
I don't want to derail the thread with something without direct links to Picard-the-show, but I will briefly offer this, and, perhaps in the future when I get around to seeing the rest of Discovery and re-watching the VGR eps and I can further provide detail.
Whereas for Picard season 2, at least you have the handwave that Q really was the deux ex machina for the inconsistencies with say Guinan.
They still used dilithium.
Time travel was banned after the Temporal Cold War.
All of this has been covered over in the Discover subforum. There's reasons for everything.
Well, in anticipation of season 3, I opened my Blu-ray set of season 2 and revisited select episodes, including the premiere and season finale. I'm still aghast at how inept and limp this season was overall, it's as if it was written by an AI program that was fed a list of the 20 most popular things Star Trek fans like. It careens from plot point to plot point, constantly adding in new plot threads with no idea how to integrate or resolve any of them. The dialogue is so bland and characters just talk endlessly without saying anything of merit. What the heck was with the detour in the episode taking place in an FBI storage room or something? What the heck happened with this season?
COVID.
I am actually currently rewatching episodes of season 2, and I have to be honest with myself: this season does not get better on a second watch, in fact: I liked it a lot more the first time around. Knowing where it's all going, it's a very dissatisfying season as a whole. I am almost always extremely positive about Trek, -any Trek!- but this season has lost me on several points.
I really dislike the casting of the same actors in different roles, without explaining it properly, or stretching it really, really beyond belief. Adam Soong for instance... I don't really like that there are now 4 ancestors of Data that look EXACTLY like each other... Also, I don't think Brent Spiner was really into it... His acting was really off imo, expecially in episode 8...
Laris/Talinn just was so awkward as well. Raffi did mention they look just alike, but it's never properly explained (besides hinting at 'ancestory')... And then there's Kore...
Also bugging me is Q's plan... Why was he trying to prevent Reneé from joining the mission..? He was even trying to get her killed... Why..?! Wasn't his ultimate goal to grant Picard closure..? How did killing Reneé factor into that..?! It was never explained either...
There are many things that just didn't work. The battle against the "Borg drone soldiers" lacked scale, the color correction of the daytime LA scenes were too yellow, I could go on and on... The direction and production just wasn't tight enough, and that's probably partly due to COVID restrictions.
All in all, it just never focused story wise. That doesn't mean there weren't things to enjoy!
I really loved the opening episode, The Star Gazer. If only a larger part of the series had taken place in the 24th century... I liked the last episode as well, even though it worries me we won't get an answer as to who created the anomaly this episode ends with... I loved the fact that Guinan, Q and Wesley were in it, as well as the 'Punk on Bus'. And I actually liked the whole 'Picard childhood trauma'-story arc.
Maybe in a few years, I will look at this season differently. I hope so. I am just glad we even got this series, and S3 looks like it will be glorious.
I really dislike the casting of the same actors in different roles, without explaining it properly, or stretching it really, really beyond belief. Adam Soong for instance... I don't really like that there are now 4 ancestors of Data that look EXACTLY like each other... Also, I don't think Brent Spiner was really into it... His acting was really off imo, expecially in episode 8...
Laris/Talinn just was so awkward as well. Raffi did mention they look just alike, but it's never properly explained (besides hinting at 'ancestory')... And then there's Kore...
Also bugging me is Q's plan... Why was he trying to prevent Reneé from joining the mission..? He was even trying to get her killed... Why..?! Wasn't his ultimate goal to grant Picard closure..? How did killing Reneé factor into that..?! It was never explained either...
There are many things that just didn't work. The battle against the "Borg drone soldiers" lacked scale, the color correction of the daytime LA scenes were too yellow, I could go on and on... The direction and production just wasn't tight enough, and that's probably partly due to COVID restrictions.
All in all, it just never focused story wise. That doesn't mean there weren't things to enjoy!
I really loved the opening episode, The Star Gazer. If only a larger part of the series had taken place in the 24th century... I liked the last episode as well, even though it worries me we won't get an answer as to who created the anomaly this episode ends with... I loved the fact that Guinan, Q and Wesley were in it, as well as the 'Punk on Bus'. And I actually liked the whole 'Picard childhood trauma'-story arc.
Maybe in a few years, I will look at this season differently. I hope so. I am just glad we even got this series, and S3 looks like it will be glorious.
This really, REALLY bugged me. I kept hoping they’d explain why Tallin was the exact doppelgänger of Laris… I kept thinking SURELY there must be some smart explanation which tied into the story and had some meaning. Same with the identical Soong dynasty, which has really descended into parody now. At the end of the day, there was NO REASON other than the fact they must have been contractually obliged to work in some of the cast. The whole season, from the episode two alternate timeline universe (where the series characters are all in prominent positions of power and influence) to Jurati becoming the Borg Queen, Wesley Crusher randomly showing up, to just everything…was “small universe syndrome” taken to absurd proportions.
None of it made a whit of sense. The writers didn’t have a clue what they were doing. I kept praying they’d somehow explain how Q, as an omnipotent, immortal being, can die. But they didn’t, because they clearly didn’t have a clue themselves. The entire season felt like a badly written first draft.
Oh my goodness, I can’t even talk about this season without getting angry. A season of Trek has never been bad enough before now to make me angry and actually accuse the creative team of incompetence. In the past, what I considered the worst seasons of Trek (say, one or two seasons of VOY and ENT) simply left me hugely unenthused and bored. I don’t think a season of Trek has ever been bad enough to actively piss me off before now. Such a waste of potential, not to mention a fantastic cast.
Q can kill each other, so clearly they're not actually immortal. Quinn also said the Q aren't truly omnipotent.
Exactly so. While TNG let the air out a little bit, VOY demythologized them a bit more, and showed they could die. It's an interesting idea, closing the gap between the Q and mere mortals. But, yeah, Q dying isn't as surprising as perhaps it would have been after "Encounter at Farpoint."
There are different flavors of immortality. There is immortality whereby you no longer fall prey to disease or aging but are just as vulnerable to fatal injury as mere mortals (or in the case of the Highlander, parting ways with your head). At the higher end of the spectrum, you have immortals such as Nagilum or The Prophets that are non-corporeal, naturally immortal and exist beyond the confines our basic three-dimensional plane of existence. As we know in the case of The Prophets – even if their inherent nature is perpetual and self-sustaining, it is still possible to terminate their existence if you know their vulnerabilities and have the means to exploit them. If you keep going, you’ll hit immortality of the big G variety – necessarily immortal, indestructible and eternal - without beginning or end.
So far as the Q, they were very much at the higher end of the spectrum – more so than any other species presented in Star Trek. Arguably, they were the most powerful species in Trek canon – period. By the time of VOY, it had been established it was possible for a Q to be destroyed by another Q (armed with weaponry specifically engineered to harm a member of their own species), or via the collective will of The Continuum. It had also been established (most pointedly in VOY’s Death Wish) that a Q did NOT decay – hell, they weren’t capable of terminating their own existence.
Does that mean this constancy of Q-dom couldn’t change? I suppose not. But if it does change (as was the case in Picard S2), then you’re upending one of The Q's fundamental traits. The egregious part of all this wasn't the change itself, but the absence of any substantial explanation for the change.
So far as the Q, they were very much at the higher end of the spectrum – more so than any other species presented in Star Trek. Arguably, they were the most powerful species in Trek canon – period. By the time of VOY, it had been established it was possible for a Q to be destroyed by another Q (armed with weaponry specifically engineered to harm a member of their own species), or via the collective will of The Continuum. It had also been established (most pointedly in VOY’s Death Wish) that a Q did NOT decay – hell, they weren’t capable of terminating their own existence.
Does that mean this constancy of Q-dom couldn’t change? I suppose not. But if it does change (as was the case in Picard S2), then you’re upending one of The Q's fundamental traits. The egregious part of all this wasn't the change itself, but the absence of any substantial explanation for the change.
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The explanation of the Q is never sufficient. Whatever fans bandy about is more satisfying.
So with Season 3 on the horizon I finally bit the bullet and watched Season 2.
Dissapointed is probably my opinion on Season 2 overall.
The first couple of episodes are so, so promising. The Confederation of Earth is a wonderful alternative that I wish had been explored more deeply as there's wonderful hints to the wider world. But then we saw what happened when they decided to do that in Discovery and it kind of dragged as a storyline concept.
For a series supposedly about Q and his actions towards Picard he's criminally underused appearing so infrequently that I found myself surprised when he turned up again in the police station. More "Cameo by John De Lancie" than an exploration of a character clearly becoming unhinged and unsettled by his impending death.
Way too many episodes spent in 2024 (presumably for budget reasons) and hey, lets you just throw your favourite characters into the modern day. It works for 2 episodes or so as we saw in Voyager, but this dragged on and on and on...
The Borg Queen, while brilliantly acted by the late Annie Wersching feels badly mischaracterised. Species 125 have heightened abilities and mental acuity and so are afforded the priviledge of being the one who brings haromny to the crowd and can even order the collective to new tasks seemingly independantly. They're the closest you get to an evident heirarchy within the Borg and she's basically reduced to a Lonely Cat Lady by Giradi.
Borgrati suck. They suck about as much as I can say without it spinning off into an angry rant that probably will have someone yell at me. Awful concept, pretty terribly executed, Borg Co-operative did it better and they were in like a single episode 20+ years ago.
This is now two seasons in which Picard, a show which was sold when first announced as a deep character study of the character and his life, has instead been about an octogenerian and his crew of misfits speeding around the galaxy solving mysteries like the Scooby Doo Gang. (Ruh-roh Raffi!)
Ok, now to the good. Yes, I know it seems like I'm being relentlessly negative but there's some good stuff.
The Picard's mother storyline was pretty well done. It was interesting and very well shot and executed. Probably shouldn't've been while his house is being riddled with gunfire or while he's trying to desperately find his ancestor but...
The Soong Storyline (and by extension his possible future) brilliantly done, it was nice to see someone lose sight of their morality and it get progressively worse as he realises the stakes are raised and becoming just completely ruthless as a result.
Borg assimilation now being focused on eurphoria is an interesting concept but probably should've been used in a better explained Borgrati. Part of the "appeal" of borg is the whole bodyhorror part and the way assimilation erodes your individuality pretty quickly after the nano probes are injected into you. Cool new effects of assimilation too.
Technical wise, the SFX were great, the directing was pretty tight and cinematography was very well done. Everyone also seemed more comfortable acting in their roles than we saw in Season 1. Special mention to Brent Spiner where his own considerable acting chops are finally getting to fly in Star Trek and I thought Ito Aghayere '12 played a pretty good Young Guinan.
Dissapointed is probably my opinion on Season 2 overall.
The first couple of episodes are so, so promising. The Confederation of Earth is a wonderful alternative that I wish had been explored more deeply as there's wonderful hints to the wider world. But then we saw what happened when they decided to do that in Discovery and it kind of dragged as a storyline concept.
For a series supposedly about Q and his actions towards Picard he's criminally underused appearing so infrequently that I found myself surprised when he turned up again in the police station. More "Cameo by John De Lancie" than an exploration of a character clearly becoming unhinged and unsettled by his impending death.
Way too many episodes spent in 2024 (presumably for budget reasons) and hey, lets you just throw your favourite characters into the modern day. It works for 2 episodes or so as we saw in Voyager, but this dragged on and on and on...
The Borg Queen, while brilliantly acted by the late Annie Wersching feels badly mischaracterised. Species 125 have heightened abilities and mental acuity and so are afforded the priviledge of being the one who brings haromny to the crowd and can even order the collective to new tasks seemingly independantly. They're the closest you get to an evident heirarchy within the Borg and she's basically reduced to a Lonely Cat Lady by Giradi.
Borgrati suck. They suck about as much as I can say without it spinning off into an angry rant that probably will have someone yell at me. Awful concept, pretty terribly executed, Borg Co-operative did it better and they were in like a single episode 20+ years ago.
This is now two seasons in which Picard, a show which was sold when first announced as a deep character study of the character and his life, has instead been about an octogenerian and his crew of misfits speeding around the galaxy solving mysteries like the Scooby Doo Gang. (Ruh-roh Raffi!)
Ok, now to the good. Yes, I know it seems like I'm being relentlessly negative but there's some good stuff.
The Picard's mother storyline was pretty well done. It was interesting and very well shot and executed. Probably shouldn't've been while his house is being riddled with gunfire or while he's trying to desperately find his ancestor but...
The Soong Storyline (and by extension his possible future) brilliantly done, it was nice to see someone lose sight of their morality and it get progressively worse as he realises the stakes are raised and becoming just completely ruthless as a result.
Borg assimilation now being focused on eurphoria is an interesting concept but probably should've been used in a better explained Borgrati. Part of the "appeal" of borg is the whole bodyhorror part and the way assimilation erodes your individuality pretty quickly after the nano probes are injected into you. Cool new effects of assimilation too.
Technical wise, the SFX were great, the directing was pretty tight and cinematography was very well done. Everyone also seemed more comfortable acting in their roles than we saw in Season 1. Special mention to Brent Spiner where his own considerable acting chops are finally getting to fly in Star Trek and I thought Ito Aghayere '12 played a pretty good Young Guinan.
Talinn really bugged me in this. So did the entire concept of the watcher which I found ridiculous and not really making sense. Someone just there watching renees life? For what purpose? What was with the feud between her and Guinan that wasn’t explored?
If they wanted or had to use the same actress they should have just made it one of Qs tricks where she looks like Laris to Picard only (q’s doing) as a message to let Laris into his life.
The entire season being Q’s convoluted plan to help Picard let go didn’t really make sense either and just felt too drawn out for a season long plot. His actions toward Picard in episode 2 where he hit Picard didn’t really fit with his actions and statements at the end of the season.
If they wanted or had to use the same actress they should have just made it one of Qs tricks where she looks like Laris to Picard only (q’s doing) as a message to let Laris into his life.
The entire season being Q’s convoluted plan to help Picard let go didn’t really make sense either and just felt too drawn out for a season long plot. His actions toward Picard in episode 2 where he hit Picard didn’t really fit with his actions and statements at the end of the season.
For me, the most disappointing aspect of Star Trek: Picard, the series, overall is its seemingly irresistible urge to be a series simply about giving things "proper send-offs."
Season one wanted to end the Data story line in a better way than Nemesis did. I'm not saying Nemesis wasn't great, but, I don't really subscribe to the idea that it seems to be universally agreed upon that the movie's ending wasn't good enough.
Whether we love it or hate it, Nemesis ended the TNG adventures. Not as gracefully as Star Trek VI, but it was over. Do I think it could've been done better? Of course. But honestly, I moved on. It wasn't something I ever felt needed to be fixed.
Season two seemed to want to give some proper closure to Picard and Q; despite, in my opinion, All Good Things doing that between them just wonderfully. No, I absolutely did not interpret Q's final words, " [...] and if you're very lucky I'll drop in to say hello from time to time. See you out there," as some ominous warning or telegraphing his possibly appearing again in the future sometime. I simply looked at it as the Q will always be watching.
Having a melodramatic goodbye scene where Q tells Picard how much he matters to him wasn't something I felt was missing or was even necessary at all.
And here we are again with season three. Season three wants to give the TNG cast a "proper send-off" as well. I won't repeat what I said above since it applies here. Granted, I've not seen a lick of season three so maybe I'll be wrong on this point.
Like it or hate it. Agree or disagree. That's just how I feel about this whole affair.
Season one wanted to end the Data story line in a better way than Nemesis did. I'm not saying Nemesis wasn't great, but, I don't really subscribe to the idea that it seems to be universally agreed upon that the movie's ending wasn't good enough.
Whether we love it or hate it, Nemesis ended the TNG adventures. Not as gracefully as Star Trek VI, but it was over. Do I think it could've been done better? Of course. But honestly, I moved on. It wasn't something I ever felt needed to be fixed.
Season two seemed to want to give some proper closure to Picard and Q; despite, in my opinion, All Good Things doing that between them just wonderfully. No, I absolutely did not interpret Q's final words, " [...] and if you're very lucky I'll drop in to say hello from time to time. See you out there," as some ominous warning or telegraphing his possibly appearing again in the future sometime. I simply looked at it as the Q will always be watching.
Having a melodramatic goodbye scene where Q tells Picard how much he matters to him wasn't something I felt was missing or was even necessary at all.
And here we are again with season three. Season three wants to give the TNG cast a "proper send-off" as well. I won't repeat what I said above since it applies here. Granted, I've not seen a lick of season three so maybe I'll be wrong on this point.
Like it or hate it. Agree or disagree. That's just how I feel about this whole affair.
In my opinion TNG ended with All Good Things. The rest is just a fun Q adventure not to be taken seriously.
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