The Most Disliked Episode of PICARD, Season 2 - 2025 Edition...

[Farscape One]

Welcome to our bi-yearly 'Most Disliked Episode' games! Now that the 'Least Disliked Episode' games hosted by BlueStuff (who inspired me to create these games, so thank you very much for paving the way) have concluded, we can begin the opposite side of that coin.

Here's the game. The basic idea is your standard elimination game. I'll provide a list of the episodes for each season and you need to eliminate your most favorite or the one you deem the 'best.' Please provide an EXPLANATION for why you are eliminating your choice and be sure to copy and paste the list with your choice removed. Finally, leave at least 2 eliminations by other posters before you eliminate another episode.

No tactical voting! You cannot remove an episode because you feel they would threaten your preferred episode's chance to win. Pretty simple. Enjoy!

Hall of Champions (or Failures?)
2023 - "Monsters"


Season 2

"The Star Gazer"
"Penance"
"Assimilation"
"Watcher"
"Fly Me to the Moon"
"Two of One"
"Monsters"
"Mercy"
"Hide and Seek"
"Farewell"

 

[Farscape One]

PICARD season 2... what an unmitigated disaster of a season. For me, without question, this is the WORST season in the entire franchise.

Which is so incredibly surprising given how great the first episode is, which is why "The Star Gazer" is easily my first (and possibly only) save.

This episode really set a high bar, which might be part of why the rest of the season is just so bad.



"Penance"
"Assimilation"
"Watcher"
"Fly Me to the Moon"
"Two of One"
"Monsters"
"Mercy"
"Hide and Seek"
"Farewell"

 

[Seven of Five]

What a boring mess of a season. It started and ended well though, so Farewell is first for me.

The scene where Picard and Q hug was nice.

Penance"
"Assimilation"
"Watcher"
"Fly Me to the Moon"
"Two of One"
"Monsters"
"Mercy"
"Hide and Seek"

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Well I may be in the minority (to quite a large degree) but I absolutely love season 2. It was a brilliant personal journey for Picard in the wrapper of a fun time travel Qventure. So I will agonise over which episode to remove just as I did with season 1. I've chosen Monsters as it encapsulates the aforementioned personal journey and shows us this deep dive into Picard's past and really frames the character he was in TNG. It's kind of interesting when you think about how before this season there isn't really much context to his character and he can just come across as sanctimonious, not that the "evolved human" writing helped much.

God I love season 1 and 2 of this show. The only seasons in my heart.

"Penance"
"Assimilation"
"Watcher"
"Fly Me to the Moon"
"Two of One"
"Mercy"
"Hide and Seek"

 

[Churro Churro Churoki]

What a boring mess of a season. It started and ended well though, so Farewell is first for me.

The scene where Picard and Q hug was nice.

Penance"
"Assimilation"
"Watcher"
"Fly Me to the Moon"
"Two of One"
"Monsters"
"Mercy"
"Hide and Seek"

ahh no thats not how those characters work! I had a real physical reaction to hearing that!

 

[Farscape One]

Voting "Penance" next.

It was an okay episode.


"Assimilation"
"Watcher"
"Fly Me to the Moon"
"Two of One"
"Mercy"
"Hide and Seek"

 

[Sakonna]

I kind of split the difference on season 2.

At first I LOVED it, and I have cooled a bit on that, but I'm still a fan. But there's a lot of problems I noticed the first time, but found easily forgivable, that now bother me.

Even when I loved it, I did think it had more visible construction seams than any other piece of television I have ever viewed. Some subplots feel random, or forced, or don't pay off. The pacing is a mess. There's so much awkward plotting to keep actors in their Covid pods. There are whole episodes where more dialogue is ADRed than properly recorded, and most of it is to awkwardly redirect the plot in editing. Seven & friends have that whole subplot with the drones that's like 98% ADR! On camera, we see a few of them say things like "Wait!" or "Yes", and every other fucking line is ADR.

You do not have to manipulate something this much in editing unless things went VERY wrong all along the way of production.

Also, since I used to work in entertainment, it both 1. particularly pisses me off on a professional level (so many failures of basic craftmanship!), but 2. also gives me extra sympathy for what fucking hell it must have been to produce this thing during Covid (with an increasingly elderly and frail lead!). On one level, it's a miracle it exists at all.

Still, the final product is fairly compromised, and it doesn't become more enjoyable just because of how hard it was to produce. But even through all these problems, emotionally, it really works for me. The arcs of Picard confronting his past and his closed-off nature, the thing with Laris, his dynamic with Q, the story with Guinan, it's all fantastic. Somehow they managed satisfying send-offs for the original supporting cast. The Rios love story was so dumb but also I kind of love a stupid time travel love story. The acting is exceptional across the board. I went from being annoyed we had to do the Borg Queen again, to thinking Annie Wersching was the best to ever do it. Better than Alice Krige!

And one of my favorite Trek tropes is time-travel-to-contemporary-earth, so I was just thrilled to get such a huge portion of that, and production-wise they nailed it. Visually the season is just stunning.

God, writing all this now I need to go rewatch season 2! I didn't expect to fly off into such a big essay...

 

[Sakonna]

I guess I should actually save an episode also!

"Assimilation" A fantastic showcase for Annie Wersching's Borg Queen, which, as I said above, has set the new bar for this role. And a great intro to our 2024 time period.

"Watcher"
"Fly Me to the Moon"
"Two of One"
"Mercy"
"Hide and Seek"

 

[Seven of Five]

As much as thw majority of the episode bores me, Watcher is worth a wat h for the TVH homage.

Fly Me to the Moon"
"Two of One"
"Mercy"
"Hide and Seek"

 

[Detached Nacelle]

I'm going to save Fly Me to the Moon next as so many cast members get a chance to shine here.

"Two of One"
"Mercy"
"Hide and Seek"

 

[Sakonna]

"Two Of One" for the iconic musical number.

"Mercy"
"Hide and Seek"

 

[Seven of Five]

Mercy had Dutch from The Shield in it so its slightly better than the forgettable Hide and Seek.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

I will abstain from the season 3 round. In an elimination game where Im saving episodes I like I will unfortunately have nothing to contribute there and it would be disingenuous of me to just pluck episodes at random purely to get the finals to come around quicker.

 

[Farscape One]

"Hide and Seek" wins season 2.

Thank you all for playing! I will start season 3 very shortly. Hope to see you all there!