Star Trek: Picard

Ha, Memory Alpha has already been updated with spoilers

Also, yeah, this season has been weirdly paced. They’re doing some reveals that seem like you’d want an additional episode or more to chew on

A lot of the fanservice winks are a little too ham-handed (and I echo Philip's sentiment), but seeing the bridge and hearing Majel Barrett's voice gave an actual thrill.

That said, I was hoping that the red door thing WASN'T Borg-related, because post-BOBW Borg stories, especially those involving the Queen, have generally resulted in middling Trek, and Picard's writers are bad at Trek, and as it turns out two wrongs do not make a right. Also, is Jack the Borg Prince?

I have the same questions as Trayce. If it turns out that the motivation was just petty vengeance, MEH. Also, is Vadik's boss a reconstituted Borg Queen?

Great story about how they put this together (I'm assuming everyone at least knows this much by now):

https://variety.com/2023/artisans/news/star-trek-picard-enterprise-d-bridge-set-1235580496/

Another thing that bothers me about this season's spate of cameos is that they just bring characters back to kill them off, which is really kind of selfish and I dunno, lazy? Selfish because now they're effectively off-limits to other series )(unless there are more secret Soongs with synth bodies that they could get downloaded into), while we have Data killed off three times and Picard once. Lazy because they're barely integrated into the plot beyond, "Hey, here's someone who was on the show 30 years ago, love it, nerds." Shelby could've been anyone, aside from the one line that does a LOT of heavy lifting to remark on how out-of-character the whole dumb plan was. Also not a great look that the ones who've been killed have been women, assuming that Shelby is indeed dead.

No one's ever truly dead in this show while the Q exist tbh.

From pop culture journalist and overall good egg (he was the guy behind the excellent Random Roles column for AV Club) Will Harris with this just now:

Just watched a screener of the series finale of PICARD in preparation for a chat with showrunner Terry Matalas tomorrow and...wow.
That's all you get. Just...wow.

Could mean anything!

I should add I was able to get IMAX tickets for the Wednesday night screening here in SF so bring it on.

Just started watching, from S1, nice to have on whilst working and eating easter eggs.

But S2 started off with a doom scene and then jumped to a "48 hours earlier" made me want to vomit all my chocolate up.

S2 was a mess all the way thru imo

Well that was lovely. And a nice live chat after too.

I didn't care for the main conflict -- fate of the galaxy stories tend to go the way you suspect, not to mention that picard's decisions were questionable, or that selected protagonists can now opt out of the borg hivemind -- but i liked the afterward.

idk -- i didn't hate it, but also it was pretty lame. the shaw arc could not possibly have been more predictable. jack magically absconding with a shuttle, and jack *wanting* to find the borg, and jack magically *finding* the borg was all absurd. if only all those millions of people assimilated by the borg had had a kickass dad!

appreciate the confirmation that it literally takes just seven people -- or merely one, if it's bev -- to run a starship

as for the mid-credits scene -- i would totally watch seven running a ship. i can vaguely envision being interested in Q despite them having done nothing good with him in 30 years. could not give less of a shit about jack

anything stemming from this absolutely requires worf tho

zen worf is a gift

i demand Captain Seven spinoff immediately (plz kill off Jack by ep 2)

i mean really, jack unassimilating because he loves his mom, or because he's hot for geordi's pilot daughter, or because the showrunners thought him charismatic doesn't make much sense

so Agnes and her posse were too busy guarding the mystery transwarp conduit wherever (which is not the conduit seen in this season) to show up and help or...

there's not a lot of between season continuity going on here

There's not even scene-to-scene continuity going on -- didn't Worf just take two full on space laser body blasts? and there's not even an insert of Riker quipping, "shake it off, Worf, it's just a flesh wound" to bridge the fact that he seems perfectly fine 10 seconds later.

Does the Picard golem have a usborg port in his neck? Or was it there from his prior assimilation? I guess all that cyberpunk armor is just for show.

Yeah, Borg stories hopefully are put to bed now because this, like every story following "I, Borg," has made them such stock villains that have almost none of their original alienness -- how banal it was that Queenie (and Vadic) were simply motivated by revenge.

Health and Wellness Worf is still a treasure. Philip, I kind of wonder if Klingon redundant physiology explains why he was able to shake off the phaser blasts.

I did completely hate Will's decision to keep Picard company, dressed up as loyalty but really just a cheap way of amplifying the stakes, in a way that doesn't make sense. He and Troi still have a daughter, or did she get conveniently forgotten?!

But I did like:

The shot of the nebula that's a straight homage to TNG's opening credits
Riker's "I miss that voice."
Poker game at the end -- stud, rotating aerial shot, etc.

I enjoyed the last ep overall as a nicely final-feeling bit of action TV with lots of fanservice. But.

As others already said, wither Jurati? What was the point of her borgifying if they just dropped that story?

If Q is able to recombobulate or whatever explanation befits, he could have done the decent thing and stepped in and stopped the borg thing. Just rude.

Cannot get past Jack and Picard being able to just rip out their borg cabling. ESPECIALLY since the queen specifically said, several minutes earlier, that doing so would destroy their minds. What is the POINT of assimilation if you can fight it that casually. And yeah did Picard just jam the port into his skin? Huh?

On a related note Worf seemed to cope with being shot twice right in the arm/shoulder by a powerful weapon thats been shown to kill people instantly on many occasions. He didnt even seem hurt. OK whatever. I did like the sword/phaser joke though.

i saw someone suggest that worf could survive such things because of his redundant klingon organs . . . which is trying *really* hard

the redlettermedia video pointed out that the last time elron was seen, he was serving on the excelsior. the ending that character deserved.

I suppose this is where I show my old age because the Treaty of Algernon is complete bullshit and should never have been signed with that provision intact. Section 31 sucks for not bothering to reverse-engineer cloaking tech anyway and Star Fleet sucks for not demanding that Section 31 does - even if it means installing an "in case of emergency, invoke Section 31" button on every NCC-* bridge (surprise, by doing so - you're now a Section 31 ship!) That alone would be a more interesting plot than - oh no, another page or two of script burned on the fucking cloaking device instead of something interesting.

I'm annoyed with how this all wrapped up because the first half was just good enough to encourage my own runaway imagination to expect something better than another Borg story (story made even lazier because now there's a kid). The fact that we're all talking about better spin-off fantasy shows whether it's Star Trek: Enterprise-G with Captain Seven or Star Trek: Kung Fu with Worf just magnifies how inert Picard is - even with all the end of the world stuff going on outside the viewscreen, the show (and him) seem strangely reactive. This isn't the first time this has happened with Star Trek or any other heritage IP bogged down by the weight of its own nostalgia. See also: the Obi-Wan series, most dalek episodes of nuWho.

There’s a single line in the RLM vid where Mike inadvertently summaries a lot of the modern ST content as missing the point with the writers/showrunners wanting more grimdark as presumably more real/relevant/realistic: “here! Here’s a sweet to wade thru!” rather any sort of utopian idea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g63G1l41Wp8

Dammit. “Here’s a SEWER to wade thru”

I gave up on this show but wife has been rewatching it and I'll say this much: great theme song.

Captain Shaw memes are still the best:

https://i.ibb.co/LYpT7nd/FB-IMG-1678630684510.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Z0QpfNj.jpeg

https://gizmodo.com/star-trek-picard-movie-patrick-stewart-paramount-2024-1851144813

"the actor, Patrick", said Patrick Stewart

I remember that Stewart went through a "refers to self in third person" phase in the late 90s or early 00s, maybe this was a deeply buried tic that resurfaced.