Indeed, I've noticed that phenomenon. Like after the first episode, so many were complaining about the lack of investigation of the attack on Dahj; then the next week they investigate it, and people are complaining that it's too CSI.
Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x06 - "The Impossible Box"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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It's because the people complaining are used to things being wrapped up in a nice, neat little package with 45 minutes or at most a two part episode. 90's trek handed things to the viewer on a silver platter and it sometimes felt like you were being told how to think.
Glad those days are over.
It might be the same reason people post everything they're doing and feeling on social media.
Sorry, but it's possible to have a serialized show which still have individual episodes which feel unique and tell a complete story.
Picard is hardly alone in this particular failure, there are plenty of shows that take the same crappy "ten hour movie" bullshit and therefore have episodes, like the first few in Picard's season, which feel utterly arbitrary in their structure, as they all tell just a tiny piece of a larger story and aren't remotely interesting on their own as actual episodes.
Yup.
Breaking Bad
Bojack Horseman
Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Billions
And, as much as I ended up not liking it on the whole, season 2 of Discovery.
Just to name some off the top of my head. That's not to mention shows like Stargate SG-1, Doctor Who, or The X-Files that had/have a strongly episodic structure that nevertheless have long form story arcs woven through them.
It's not some binary where the only options are either a braindead reset button for babies or whatever it is Picard is doing. Insisting otherwise is nonsense designed to shut down criticism, nothing more.
The Xindi arc in Season 3 of ENT was very serialized yet had individual episodes that felt very standalone and still contributed to the overall story arc of that season. "North Star" and "Carpenter Street" come to mind as being weird detours from the hunt inside the Delphic Expanse and tracking down Xindi technology or supply shipments that were being used to make the superweapon but still contributed to the overall arc of those 24 episodes.
The visits to the Skagaran planet as well as 2004 Detroit had a purpose, and that was to help drive the remaining mission to find and stop the Xindi weapon from being deployed and used.
The visits to the Skagaran planet as well as 2004 Detroit had a purpose, and that was to help drive the remaining mission to find and stop the Xindi weapon from being deployed and used.
Elnor is basically Chris Hemsworth’s character in Ghostbusters ‘16. Adorable cluelessness delivered through an Australian accent. I was here for it then, and I’m very here for it now 
Also yes, good episode. Best so far IMO. The Sikarians though, lol.
And no more incest please, but I’m happy there as no BDSM-themed erotic asphyxiation this time.
Also yes, good episode. Best so far IMO. The Sikarians though, lol.
And no more incest please, but I’m happy there as no BDSM-themed erotic asphyxiation this time.
The problem is Picard is clearly structured like a Netflix serialized show. Which is mostly fine when the show is on Netflix because you get the whole season in one day. It's not perfect - don't get me started on the Marvel Netflix shows.
On CBS All Access or Amazon, you get one episode a week. This is not fun when the first 3 episodes of Picard are the pilot, when it clearly should have been a 2 hour movie, or even just 2 episodes. Or when the Soji/Narek arc was spinning its wheels in episode 4, and we waited for this episode to resolve it.
I don't love Discovery, but both seasons felt like things were happening and pacing was, maybe a little too fast, but there was momentum.
The first half of Picard feels like some of those mini-arcs in Enterprise S4. Like the Arik Soong arc, or the Klingon forehead arc, or even the Romulan drone ship arc, where they were all 1 episode too long because you could clearly see the show had no money. I'm not talking about the successful ones like the Vulcan trilogy or the Terra Prime arc. Stormfront was stupid but I think it was necessary to give it 2 parts to wrap up the TCW. Picard 1-5 is 3.5 to 4 episodes of story stretched to 5 episodes.
Episode 6 is great, probably my favourite of the show so far. And I'm hoping the back 5 episodes stick the landing because I want to love this story they're telling.
On CBS All Access or Amazon, you get one episode a week. This is not fun when the first 3 episodes of Picard are the pilot, when it clearly should have been a 2 hour movie, or even just 2 episodes. Or when the Soji/Narek arc was spinning its wheels in episode 4, and we waited for this episode to resolve it.
I don't love Discovery, but both seasons felt like things were happening and pacing was, maybe a little too fast, but there was momentum.
The first half of Picard feels like some of those mini-arcs in Enterprise S4. Like the Arik Soong arc, or the Klingon forehead arc, or even the Romulan drone ship arc, where they were all 1 episode too long because you could clearly see the show had no money. I'm not talking about the successful ones like the Vulcan trilogy or the Terra Prime arc. Stormfront was stupid but I think it was necessary to give it 2 parts to wrap up the TCW. Picard 1-5 is 3.5 to 4 episodes of story stretched to 5 episodes.
Episode 6 is great, probably my favourite of the show so far. And I'm hoping the back 5 episodes stick the landing because I want to love this story they're telling.
Where did I say that it wasn't? I'm purely commenting on the need for some people to have all the answers in black and white at the end of the episode. Of course you could have self-contained stories that drive the overall narrative forward. Deep Space Nine is a good example of that type of storytelling. But Picard isn't that type of series and that's not the way Michael Chabon wants to tell the story.
Although in fairness to that scene, most of the 'meet-cute' banter was on Jurati's side - Rios mostly just wanted to be left in peace in that scene. He seems to have warmed up to her since, although...
He did side-eye her a few times in this episode, even if he did allow himself to be seduced. Be interesting to see where this dynamic leads.
Soji has known a lot of things that she absolutely should not have known - she's been pinging Hugh's radar for that reason pretty much since their first scene together.
It would line up just fine the right way around too.
You mean like Data choking Picard in TNG, and Spock choking Kirk in ST09?
You mean like Data choking Picard in TNG, and Spock choking Kirk in ST09?
my initial thought was to say ‘yeah but that wasn’t sexual,’ but then I remembered that in Trek, everything is sexual to someone
I give this episode 10 shirtless, sweaty, soccer drilling Rios's out of ten. I felt the actual episode was an 8 but Rios being shirtless and sweaty earned a point apiece.
Technically, I think Rios was playing futsal (a variant of soccer played indoors on a hard surface, a slightly different type of ball is used) but it certainly was a lovely sight to see, and a nice opportunity for Cabrera to show that he's still got the skills - he played semi-pro soccer in his youth.
Rios is the one who vaporises Jurati when she finally turns on the crew.
I'm not so sure she'll end up dead, though. She's regular cast, no evidence that she isn't signed up for season two - my money's on her being redeemed by the end of the season, when all the pieces of the puzzle finally come together.
Funnily enough, I half-seriously considered subtracting a few points for him playing football (or yeah, technically futsal) alone. Simply on an irrational, bad-memories-of-PhysEd-induced principle. But being European, I'm still calling it football even though I hate it, because, again, principle
I don't know if they can make her redeemable after what she did to Maddox. She's either going to space jail, or dying at the end of the series, either as an antagonist or to sacrifice herself. Also, when you kill someone so hard they have Berman Trek face veins at death, that's a bridge too far.
I'm not so sure she'll end up dead, though. She's regular cast, no evidence that she isn't signed up for season two - my money's on her being redeemed by the end of the season, when all the pieces of the puzzle finally come together.
