Picard good?
Picard season 1 is good. Picard season 2 is as bad as it gets. Picard season 3 is brilliant beyond most comparisons.
Starfleet Academy General Discussion Thread
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Picard season 1 is good. Picard season 2 is as bad as it gets. Picard season 3 is brilliant beyond most comparisons.
I compared it to a reunion tour. Getting the band back together and playing all their greatest hits. Fun and nostalgic, but it doesn't add anything new to the legacy. Picard S3 was more of a TNG victory lap than anything else. I would have been happier if they had maintained the S1 status quo throughout, with perhaps catching up with a few other TNG characters (ala "Nepenthe) along the way.
If you like that sort of thing, I guess. I think it was made by flipping through a TrekRef* book and stabbing down a finger on the open page and saying "include that!"
*No idea if "TrekRef" is something I just coined or is an old term.
I thought season 3 of PICARD was the best arc based live action season of the current era. DISCO failed ALL of theirs in one way or another (and in most cases, a LOT of ways). Season 2 of PICARD was the worst in the franchise, and season 1 was only partly good.
Season 3 was the only one that was consistently good, didn't feel like it was too padded, and stuck the landing. But more importantly, it did exactly what it set out to do... overturn NEMESIS and be a better ending for the TNG crew.
Season 3 was the only one that was consistently good, didn't feel like it was too padded, and stuck the landing. But more importantly, it did exactly what it set out to do... overturn NEMESIS and be a better ending for the TNG crew.
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It had a lot of great character moments. The scene between Picard and Ro gave me closure I didn't even know I needed. But then they just killed her off, which brings up a whole other complaint about this show and legacy characters.
A big problem was that the story wasn't being driven by the characters, the characters were being driven by the story -- the above mentioned dot connecting and coloring by numbers. The story they contrived to explain Jack's existence is a perfect example. Crusher had to act totally out of character to have kept Picard in the dark for as long as she did. In the main story itself, Crusher was Crusher, but the backstory that they created was totally story driven and not character driven. And there just wasn't enough story there to justify it.
In the end, the chemistry that these characters and actors have between them is what saved Picard season 3. Even some truly bad episodes of TNG are almost redeemed simply through the poker scenes.
A big problem was that the story wasn't being driven by the characters, the characters were being driven by the story -- the above mentioned dot connecting and coloring by numbers. The story they contrived to explain Jack's existence is a perfect example. Crusher had to act totally out of character to have kept Picard in the dark for as long as she did. In the main story itself, Crusher was Crusher, but the backstory that they created was totally story driven and not character driven. And there just wasn't enough story there to justify it.
In the end, the chemistry that these characters and actors have between them is what saved Picard season 3. Even some truly bad episodes of TNG are almost redeemed simply through the poker scenes.
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Pretty much everyone involved in production has said that Ro's "death" is uncertain.
We don't really know enough about the details of what caused Crusher to keep Jack a secret to judge whether it was out of character or not.
This is the thing that really confuses me about all the people who say this season was 'good fanservice' or 'fixing the terrible ending of Nemesis'.
The season doesn't give a damn about who any of these characters are supposed to be. It awkwardly twists and bends them into every position imaginable just to advance the story a little further. Not one TNG main character got through the season without doing something (or many things) wildly out of character for no good reason, except maybe Troi who was sidelined completely and contributed nothing at all. And pretty much every episode did something blatantly forced.
Add to that how half the story revolved around Jack and Shaw - both completely new characters and both terribly written and drowning in generic fanfiction tropes - and I really don't see how it's even remotely satisfying to anyone who's a fan of these older characters and wanted them to have a better ending. Some emotional closure between Picard and Ro aside, the season offers no actual honest care or affection towards TNG beyond just bringing back actors and ship designs. They'd've produced better fanservice by putting the actors on a stage and letting them talk about their characters while showing TNG highlight reels in the background. And it would've been more worth watching, too.
I feel like you missed the point that the TNG crew were not the exact same people they were 20 years ago.
Sadly, Shaw exists only to make the heroes look good. He's a self described ass for no other reason, verbally abusive and mean spirited.
The TNG cast feel very out of character except in brief moments. Data was great but the Crusher arc was bad. Worf and Raffi were great but then the villain shifts so Worf's experience no longer matters.
At best PICARD Season 3 is middlin'. It started out strong and suffered at the end with a mystery box and unsatisfactory story.
Agreed, if they'd cut the Borg waffle in the last few episodes, it would have stuck the landing.
Did we watch the same show? It was 95% padding. I struggled to get through minutes, much less entire episodes, without rolling my eyes at the amateurish plotting and telegraphed "surprises." The landing was a faceplant preceded by a balance beam to the crotch. Yeah, it was nice to see the old gang again and the D, but neither was well served by the story.
I'm a bigger fan of Season 3 than many here but even I think the Borg Queen's absolutely unnecessary return was idiotic. It just makes future Admiral Janeway's neurolitic pathogen that much less deadly if it didn't kill her off, too, but just left her a zombified husk of her former self for the next 23 years. The Dominion and Changelings were welcome, but the Borg....again??
I get it, they're Picard's ultimate foe and trauma, but enough is enough. The Collective was all but demolished at the end of VOY. We don't need them coming back every few years with some new plot and the statement that, "oh, we're not TOTALLY dead, just mostly."
I get it, they're Picard's ultimate foe and trauma, but enough is enough. The Collective was all but demolished at the end of VOY. We don't need them coming back every few years with some new plot and the statement that, "oh, we're not TOTALLY dead, just mostly."
The Borg Queen's was a distributed computer program stretched across the entire collective.
Something like that doesn't die quickly, it lingers cannibalizing itself for years trying to survive until there's nothing left. Which is exactly what we saw happen.
As to the Borg showing up again, that's inevitable, they controlled over 10,000 light years of space, and at that size Borg remnants are going to be scattered across the entire galaxy.
The point is: we didn't need to see that happen.
All these other great Berman Era villains and powers, and we just get the Borg Queen yet again. Yawn.
All these other great Berman Era villains and powers, and we just get the Borg Queen yet again. Yawn.
And how many of those had meaning to Picard?
It also undid Janeway's work, and Picard's own story from First Contact, never mind the poor use of mystery child.
The Conspiracy bugs are a plot thread that's been dangling since the first season. They still could have done the whole "who can you trust / Starfleet conspiracy" thing and kept the whole story grounded in TNG lore.
I didn't want to see the Borg again, either. But season 3 was still far and away the best arc based season of the Kurtzman Era.
Oh, it might as well be The Wrath of Khan compared to Season 2, but yeah, the Borg at this point have been ludicrously overused for such a once-promising and scary villain.
Only one Borg story since the late '90s has been good, and that was in a prequel show.
Only one Borg story since the late '90s has been good, and that was in a prequel show.
I've read fanfic with better plotting and structure than Picard's third season, which feels like expensive fanfic itself.
