I just started this show. I haven’t really liked any Star Trek show since STNG, so I kept putting this one off. Mostly because Picard hasn’t been well received
I am halfway through season one. I am not sure what to say about this show. I don’t love it. Parts have a lot of promise and parts are just so clumsy. It has a serial story, but it is clear that whoever is writing it is still thinking episodically. Things are really sped up and the writers have an obsession with illustrating backstory in the worse way. So many scenes with laborious dialogue.
The show is also a lot more realistic view of the federation than previous Trek products I have seen.
Overall there is enough goodness to keep me watching and again, I don’t love it.
Season 1 is awful. Season 2 is awful. Both have the occasional high point that is pretty much entirely unearned.
Season three is a clunky, but well meaning apology for the previous two seasons and all of the TNG movies. It’s fan service, yes, but compared to seasons 1 and 2 it is Shakespeare. Actors get to act. Some actual drama between characters that never got a real chance to have those scenes before. Like “All Good Things” it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to be a satisfying ending.
Have you watched Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks? As someone who also hadn’t gotten into Star Trek since Next Generation, those were exactly what I wanted.
I have seen SNW. It is 6/10 for me.
I liked it until they started doing a fucking musical.
I haven’t really liked any Star Trek show since STNG.
May I recommend Star Trek Lower Decks?
Yes, it’s animated, but because it’s animated, there’s more alien lifeform representation than in the live action shows. It’s really well written, has character development over the series, and does fan service really, really well.
It also explores some of the less seen (but obviously necessary) aspects of the Federation - what happens after first contact, what do the non-officers do day-to-day, etc.
I started it after Picard, and although I liked Picard (for all the faults highlighted by the OP and other commenters), I fell in love with Lower Decks.
I loved Lower Decks. I grew up watching TNG and reruns of TOS. Plus all the movies. Recently watched the entirety of DS9. Lower Decks had a lot of callbacks that were hilarious.
One of the big issues with Picard is that the original script was with the android being the main character and Picard not even be part of it. Then the studio wanted a big name attached to it, because they didn’t believe it would do well to revive the Star Trek franchise on its own. So they got Patrick Stewart involved, made Picard the main character and basically mangled the show. I think Stewart also wanted a lot of changes to the show and the studio involvement was huge as well. This made the end result pretty terrible tbh.
Ahh that fits.
Season 3 is better thanks to cashing in on nostalgia
It’s more fun, certainly.
But I wouldn’t say it was any better - if that refers to quality.
It was my favourite season of the three, but pulling out the big nostalgia guns made it even more obvious they were really getting desperate.
They had to invent such a contrived and ridiculous plot, all to justify why that nostalgia trip could happen, or make the faintest bit of sense.
By “realistic” do you mean “grimdark”? Cause that’s the only way I usually see it used when in reference to shows showing idealistic things suddenly turning dark and melodramatic.
Sure, I guess.
So not realistic at all, just more likely to be shocking and “the bad guy”.
And thus not really typical of Star Trek (pre-Abrams)
Mostly I didn’t like the first season because it felt like a weird retread of the premise of Mass Effect. Never bothered watching anything beyond that.
Trying too hard to be gritty and serious, when the somewhat campier aspects of TNG are what originally sold me on that series.
TNG had its share of serious and deep plots, but the less serious, self-aware episodes are what give it character.
the most disappointed i’ve been in any trek product. really hoped they’d do TNG justice but it’s just shitty nutrek like everything else.
I had similar thoughts on it, but then I read the prequel novel which fills in a LOT of blanks. The backstory in PIC S1 is only touched on in dialog but I feel like it should have been the first half of the season. It makes so much of the story in the show make sense.
Specifically:
- Why Picard had such a dramatic, passionate, and public split from Starfleet
- Who Raffi is, why she’s actually way more awesome than she was portrayed in S1, and why she and Picard are such BFFs now (and their falling out / why Raffi is angry at Picard)
- How Worf got command of the Enterprise-E (not really relevant until S3 but still good addition to the backstory).
- The full scope/scale of the aborted Romulan evacuation
- The absolute political shitstorm that was happening within the Federation because of the amount of resources being (re) allocated for the effort. In the show, we got one line from Admiral Clancy but it’s a very important part of the backstory that’s covered in detail in the novel.
- Why neither Picard nor Starfleet Command are really in the wrong. The situation was shitty / “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” no matter what way you looked at it. The show clearly takes Picard’s side, but it’s much more complex than that.
All of that context was lacking in the show and only vaguely touched on in either throwaway lines or cryptic dialog.
I read the prequel novel (and the rest in the series that happen between seasons) and am on ep 3 of a PIC S1 rewatch. Everything just makes more sense this time around with all of that in mind.
So if you’re only a few episodes in, do yourself a favor and pause that. Go buy, pirate, and/or otherwise obtain the prequel novel and read it first.
Link: https://www.ebooks.com/en-us/book/209722657/star-trek-picard-the-last-best-hope/una-mccormack/
The series (the first two seasons) was mostly written by Akiva Goldsman. The book was written by Una McCormack, someone who has written a lot of Star Trek tie-in books. That’s most of the reason why her books elevate the property so much.
It’s a shame that book writers are not tapped to write the shows.
I realize there’s major differences between writing a novel and writing a screenplay, but yeah, they should definitely try to involve them. Maybe it’s just cheaper to hire screenwriters than it is to license a novel and adapt it?
Yeah, have television veterans doing the screenplay and directing, but have the story written or at least envisioned by someone who is used to taking an original idea and turning it into a finished product all on their own.
The more “producers” a single episode has, the worse it almost assuredly is.
Another problem is that we found out the hard way that Sir Patrick Stewart is a great actor but a terrible writer.
Thank you so much. I will be starting that book next week.
Awesome. I really enjoyed it as well as the other tie-in novels for PIC.
If you’re planning to buy (you should but I won’t judge lol), here’s a tip if you use ebooks [dot] com. Put everything you’re interested in into a wish list (might need to register an account) and check in on it every few days. Sometimes books randomly go on unannounced sales for $1.99. It’s listed at $13.99 now, but I got “The Last Best Hope” for $1.99 by sheer luck when someone recommended it to me a few months ago.
If a show or movie isn’t good unless you get a supplemental book, then it’s a failure. A story that can’t tell its own story should just be thrown away.
Yeah!
