Spoilers The legacy of Star Trek: Picard?

Star Trek: Picard - a show that very admirably explored darker and more cerebral themes about death, mortality, and existentialism at its start but became a show about Getting The Band Back Together in the end.

 

You hate them, which is fair, but I wouldn't say they are generally hated. I still think PIC S1 is the best of the three by some distance.

 

It's all anecdotal, but even here, I would say the vast majority of people think S3 "saved" the series. I've certainly see "best of new Trek", so people think it's better than all the other new shows as well.

I will say, in my view at least, S1 and S2 had ambition but terrible execution. S3 had no ambition but decent execution, and I'm not surprised that people would prefer S3.

 

For me, it's 1, 3 then 2. Season 3 just had too, too many scenes inside the gloomy Titan. We got to see planets and cool locations in Season 1.

 

Yeah, people think I'm crazy when I say that I found the S3 to be boring to watch. But it was an 8 hour bottle episode.

In respect to the production, they clearly budgeted for the last two episodes and it showed.

 

Don't get me wrong, there was a joy in seeing everyone back together and the D being onscreen again was magnificent, but yes, from Vadic's ship, to the Titan, to the Daystrom place... even the planet Worf found Raffia on... gloomy corridors/alleys. In Season 1 we saw Romulan refugee colonies, a defunct Borg Cube, Nepenthe, Soong's world... I found Season 3 to be very claustrophobic.

 

The legacy is secured. All of it was successful. Some Will like the earlier seasons, some will drool over the season 3 retread, but all of it combined will be another milestone for the franchise.

 

I think S3 informed people that modern retellings of classic tv shows and reboots don't have to be a catastrophic mess and that there may be Star Trek shows in the future that are worth checking out - especially if Matalas is at the helm. It revived interest in the franchise and that's not a modest achievement.

I'm not sold on the Legacy idea though but I'd most definately give it a go. I'd really like to see a show set 100 years after TNG. The Next Next Generation with a brand new Enterprise.

 

Unfortunately NuTrek never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. DISCOVERY launched with reservations, but massive goodwill. I think most were out by episode 104 or 105. And then people gave PICARD season 1 a chance, but again it seems like many were out before the season completed.

Maybe this is what DISCOVERY should have been in 2017. But it's now or never for dealing with the legacy storylines of Berman Trek while actors are still acting, the veteran behind the scenes people can still do the production design... My ideal would be a Legacy team mentoring "the next generation", who could then provide a legit Next Next Next Generation. But we can't have nice things, and we're possibly doomed to rebooting TOS every ten years.

For all the accusations that PICARD season 3 was populist, the real "populist" one is SNW...

 

They're both populist. No surprise there.

Picard just didn't start out that way. Which was more interesting. But, I also recognize that people want what they want. But at least be freaking honest about what you want.

 

I'd say the legacy is:

1) It provided a priper send off for the TNG crew. Fixed the sour note of Nemesis.

At the moment, that is it. It was hugely popular, hopefully there is some Trek good that comes from that. Be it greenlighting more series or a direct spinoff.

At the moment, in terms of legacy:

1) TOS
2) TNG
3) DISCO
4) VOY

 

Revived interest? In a franchise which already had five shows running at once before it came along?

 

Except, you know, it's the TNG show that managed to get a TOS actor cameo and now SNW. lol
SNW and Picard are completely different shows when it comes to leveraging fanservice.

 

S3 had tons of ambition... pulling off something most probably didn't consider possible. Matalas had to work a lot of diplomacy to have Patrick Stewart okay the reunion, navigate the office politics, get all the cast onboard, and work within a greatly reduced budget.

I think most NuTrek critics have been open about what we all want. Greater adherence to the tone/continuity/style of pre-2005 Star Trek. Evolution without rupture. Allegory not agitprop.

Well, it did get a lot of disgruntled NuTrek critics back on board and more positive engagement on Twitter.

I want SNW to either somehow fix its tone and continuity problems or just be honest about being a reboot.

 

What's wrong with the tone?
The continuity is fine. Don't miss the forest for the trees.
Nothing dishonest happening.

 

I think that leads to stagnation and ignores what Trek has done in terms of variety of tone and thin allegory. But to each their own.

 

If that was truly the case, why was Enterprise cancelled? It's first two seasons were mostly the same old, same old, and its viewership never recovered. Picard Season 3 was nothing like any season from the Berman era from 1987-2002. It was maybe closer to Enterprise Seasons 3 and 4 from 2003-2005, during which time Season 3 operated like "24" in space, and Manny Coto's Season 4 had multi-episode arcs.

 

I'll agree that managing Patrick Stewart seems to be skill itself, but the storytelling itself was very safe to me, compared to the first two season's efforts to try to expand the lore. It's just unfortunate that S1 and S2 are just bad... from Romulan incest twins or creepy Soongs.

I vastly prefer SNW to Picard S3 so for me there's nothing to fix. lol
Maybe it's because I'm not a huge TOS fan, but the way it worked in the Gorn and Balance of Terror felt a lot more natural to me than how Picard S3 worked in its TNG references.

 

Is the hopeful and excited fun exploration in SNW now problematic?