Star Trek: Picard - Amazon Prime [** POSSIBLE SPOILERS **]

It's hard to judge if the actors are good or bad given the material they've been given. Like if I didn't know better, I'd say Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner were terrible actors on the basis of the last two seasons.

Seen him over a fair few shows and series. Always playing a similar character.

Are we to assume the threat at the end of S2 is now all forgotten about or is part of this season - doesn't seem to be any connection?

Like no talk about what happened

I'm not sure entirely forgotten, they did reference Picards synth body and Raffis relationship with Seven. More I think they're going to refer to it as little as often and move on. I would guess there may be a couple of more brief mentions in the early episodes and then done.

The entire "trust no-one / Starfleet is corrupted" trope feels very played out by this stage. We've had it in the movies, TNG, DS9, Enterprise, Discovery even earlier seasons of Picard have covered this ground before. It feels like a very lazy justification as to why our old heroes have to come out of retirement when Starfleet won't get the job done.

It didn’t even need to be done this time, either. I would totally understand if Beverly had reached out to Picard simply because she knew he’d take it seriously and try to do something about it, and she obviously didn’t have enough time to convince starfleet by herself.

He could have turn called in any old favours to get a decommissioned ship and a crew of old friends to set off to save Beverly.

The way it was done means the federation/starfleet has been infiltrated yet again, and having Picard and Riker steal a ship and risk a crew who wasn’t given an option to save an old flame & crewmate(with practically no other information) makes them seem like incredibly selfish pr*cks that we’re supposed to root for just because we know them.

Generally I think Trek is at its best when it’s a forward looking show, not looking at who we are but who we could be. This latest batch of Trek is constantly looking backwards. Going back to the Kirk era and shoehorning in continuity, focusing on 30 year old characters to sell mediocre stories, putting references front and centre instead of in the background.

Just give me a new ship, new crew and new mission in the 25th century.

Yeah, but a common occurrence throughout Picard is removing Starfleet as an ally or resource from the story.

Season 1 Picard was a pariah and there was a Romulan spy as head of security, season 2 they went back in time and now season 3 we’ve been told they’re not to be trusted.

It just seems to me to be a cheap way to keep the characters in danger and boil the story down to good guys vs bad, or possibly they think it would be too easy for Picard to overcome anything with the full might of Starfleet behind him and would dilute his victory.

I would prefer if Starfleet was just treated in a similar way to how it has been portrayed previously - a politically influenced organisation that Picard has friends and enemies in where he needs to know how best to call on them and when.

I think there's just far far easier and better ways of doing that than continuously turning Starfleet into this entirely corrupted entity too though.

I mean, the fact that Bev's kid is a wanted felon already achieves that. Don't call Starfleet cause he'll be out of the frying pan and into the fire. There's just no need for a 'trust no one' element in there.

I quite like the idea of a post-starfleet Picard, getting into small scale mysteries. The show would only benefit from scaling the problems down imo - the scale we're at right now is fine, saving Bev and son from a localised conflict. But we all know it's going to escalate into something galaxy defining, because that's all these storytellers know how to do.

Ya I agree but don't forget Kurtzmann was co-writer and producer on the JJ movies.

EltonJohn69

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Posts: 3,540 ✭✭✭ 27-02-2023 10:50am

Was Picard season 2 or Rise of Skywalker worse ? both terrible.... might be a draw...i think rise of skywalker is the worse thing star wars ever produced, is picard season 2 the worse thing star trek ever produced ?

Picard season 2 was worse.

I quite enjoyed Rise Of Skywalker in the Cinema.

pixelburp

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Posts: 29,668 CMod ✭✭✭✭ 27-02-2023 12:13pm

GreyjoyFeb 27, 2023

The entire "trust no-one / Starfleet is corrupted" trope feels very played out by this stage. We've had it in the movies, TNG, DS9, Enterprise, Discovery even earlier seasons of Picard have covered this ground before. It feels like a very lazy justification as to why our old heroes have to come out of retirement when Starfleet won't get the job done.

I think it speaks to the broad zeitgeist though, in minimal fairness to the property: trust in institutions has probably never been as low as it is now across the broad period of "the modern era". Whether it's governments, corporations or all points in-between, especially in America there's a resting hostility towards any kind of Power Structure. Compare that with Original Brand Trek when one trusted the government, one had faith in "Freedom".

Stands to reason that bleeds into its pop culture where simple Utopias can't exist anymore - seriously. When's the last time we saw American Sci-Fi have a genuine, no-caveats-based Utopian ideal? It sucks, but it's also not surprising either; even if when done well, it can be compelling and mature TV (oh look, yet another excuse to say how awesome The Expanse was)

I tried to get into the Expanse but not for me. Really did not like it and its certainly not anywhere near as good as Babylon 5 was.

Yeah I watched the first few episodes, thought "this isn't for me", left it for a couple of years then returned to it after hearing the reviews. Gets better as the characters bond and it's not just another dystopian show where everyone are assholes to each other.

RIKER IS ONE COLD HEARTED SON OF A BITCH.