@@Seal0626 That was my thought as well. Steve brings up a great point - they set up a great premise with the totalitarian human-supremacist society, and comparing it to modern day US. But then they don't actually do that. The ICE episode, the FBI episode - both of those could have been tied into that larger narrative, but nothing comes of either of them. What's-his-name Soong could have also gone that direction, with his eugenics project, but again, doesn't tie to anything. Then there was Picard's personal issues, which was interesting, but doesn't connect to anything. Usually the personal themes tie into the larger themes of the story. Picard's doesn't in any way. Same with the Borg. You can kind of tie it to the authoritarianism theme, and the queen joining with Jerati making a more egalitarian society could parallel the federation, but it wasn't explored, just a last minute Deus Ex Machina. It feels like they had a bunch of ideas for each character to do, rather than a coherent storyline that flows through the whole series. Which I did enjoy each of the individual stories. But it feels like they were trying to tell an epic story with a bunch of episodic vignettes.
One instance of an actor playing a physically similar character would have been expected, considering Brent Spiner plays every single male Soong the writers come up with. It's like Paramount has a Soong Signal on top of their office that they flash after they've created a new one, and Spiner can see it from his house.
The eugenics thing could be an interesting explanation for that. What if he modded himself and has his genetic material overwriting that of the egg, effectively making every one a clone of the OG Soong...
@@Burner-B true true, they introduced the 1996 proper continuity/canon eugenics file cabinet file tease but did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITH IT but could have but look at who is producing it. It would have been a much better main storyline for S2 than alot of the needlessly retconned SJW/woke pretext and screentime-filler-extender-crap they introduced then dropped pointlessly which Steve the consummate marxist-leftist wont say but I will here to counter him: picards mommy issues as deep motivation which makes him an avoidantly-cowardly-weak character not a stronger one(actually sorry Steve did mention that, so I stand corrected on that), Raffi and Sevens useless lesbian relationship (which is actually anti-canon wrt Chakotay but hey they already woke-teased it with seven and B'jayzel the nutbar Stockholm-syndrome master and persecutor and "borg parts human trafficker mobster evil character" of Seven and Icheb that Seven "loved-lusted-after aa she corrupted Sevens characterization"--eek a terrible inference for a strong lead character like seven--but the woke/sjw types and similar minded producer types will love it that she lesbian-bi fooled around with a deviant like B'jayzel (and to my amusement its actually implied that said fooling around with the deviant stockholm-syndrome master B'jayzel was the onset of her bi-lesbian-whatever "identity change", even though ALL THIS SJW WOKE CRAP does zero for the storyline) and the bash ICE as evil-racist but dont even develop THAT storyline for a well-placed trek-appropriately inserted social commentary(steve rightly comments on that too, gotta give credit where its rightly due) and otherwise the generally poor characterization-and-canon-corruption-of-Seven by sicko-trafficker-deviant-B'jayzel and more generally the crap story and plot and character development that Steve well-explains here, largely without his usual hard lefty interjections, that which I appreciated. I was so disappointed they summarily missed the great eugenics war tie-ins and coddled so much sjw/woke/marxist useless retconning...but hey these are the same clowns that made the dumpster-fire-garbage-woke-overrepresented-sjw and retcon-fest of Discovery....that show SUCKS except for Pike. They should have just made Strange New Worlds instead of crap near-worthless STD...great acronym...love it. It is the STD of the trek franchise that just won't go away and we get now 6 seasons/reoccurrences of Sybok2-Michael Burnhams terrible character-retcon. Ugh.
Season 2 is like being promised a gourmet steak dinner, but when you get to the restaurant, they've decided you're actually getting a roast chicken dinner, except it's cold, raw, and every component of the meal is given to you as its own course over the span of half a day.
The main issue that I had with PIC S2 was, given the ultimate motivation of the Borg Queen being innocent, I thought it was bizarre that she had to beam aboard forcefully, commandeer the ship, and then injure several crewmen in order to have someone listen to her long enough to explain.
As you watch this "Enterprise saucer section crashing on Veridian III" of a disaster, it rapidly becomes apparent: They put as much thought into the entire story arc as you or I put into a high school english class essay we got a C on. It is _painfully_ obvious that there was nobody at all in charge of continuity, or if there was they're collecting a paycheck for doing nothing. In any other Trek this kind of plot hole you could fly a borg cube through would get the episode onto worst-of lists. In Picard, it's not even next Tuesday.
Joe Straczynski (babylon5, sense8) talks about this in his book on screen writing. Writers submitting scripts will often have a strange plot point early that "have to be there" so the later plot point makes sense. Good senior producers would send that script back till the early scene makes sense.
If you're going to name your Series "Picard" and feature him at a later stage of his life, you have a short, but wonderful opportunity to close loops, explore how a beloved and familiar character has changed and evolved, and build a bridge for fans of old Trek skeptical of new Trek. Everything was in place for this to have been a masterpiece and Season 2 of Picard wasted it. So frustrating. By the way, I had originally thought the issue with Picard's mother dying by suicide at a young age when Picard had had a vision of her as an old woman in TNG was a mistake - given how lazily they waved that away, I kind of would rather it had been a mistake.
I think they actually dealt with this in a believable way. I'm 44. I lost my Mom when I was 20 to breast cancer. I _often_ wish (and imagine) that I could have a tea and chat with her again.
Disagree! Their explanation for seeing her at an old age even so she had died young was the most clever idea they had imho. It was very believable to me.
Do you like that his whole brother just wasn’t there. I explained it to myself as ‘memory issues’ but Jean-Luc wasn’t an only child. Did this have no impact on his brother and/or relationship with his brother.
Agree. They just have to turn these shows into larger than life action adventure romps, but you don’t need to open up a parallel universe to explore the finer points of morality when you already have interesting characters in the primary universe!! Bad writing, again and again.
"Q set a series of events into motion, bringing your contact with the Borg much sooner than it should have come. Now, perhaps when ready it might be possible to establish a relationship with them." Guinan said this and I think Picard season 2 pays this off and closes Picard's Guinan's, Q's and the Borg saga nicely.
I really appreciated this series for introducing another member of the Soong clan so that Brent Spiner could make an appearance. It really wouldn't be Star Trek without Brent Spiner playing a Soong or two. Looking forward to the Soong Family spinoff in which he plays all the roles, Big Mama style.
It's freaking nuts that the VULCANS somehow messed up a mission that risked First Contact. And the most egregious part of that whole scene...we never found out if young Agent Wells found his dog. WAS MAGGIE OKAY? (Seriously, I ended up caring more about the dog by the end of it.)
Would have been a great tie in to Carbon Creek if it had been Mestral, the Vulcan that had stayed behind, who had done the mind meld. Hell for that matter it would have been a great tie in if he had been the supervisor instead of Talon. There are after all already novels that have him working with Gary Seven, why not make it canon.
The glue for the blonde wig irritated Stewart's skin, so they needed to recast Renee. That extra expense was why they could no longer afford a script editor.
Not the most consequential choice, but my favorite "Butterflies" are the corpses of the Borg Commandoes that are now embedded in the walls of the Chateau Picard cellar.
One of the things that baffled me is that, if they're talking about Picard's family, how in God's name could they forget about his brother and nephew who died in a fire. That was actually traumatic to him and they didn't even mention it!
@@One.Zero.One101 they mentioned Robert, and in the Confederacy timeline, Picard and Guinan couldn't possibly have met. Because Confederacy Picard didn't went back in time in Time's Arrow, where OG Guinan met OG Picard. So now I have a simple question: Why are you pretending to know what you're talking about when you don't know these simple things? Obviously you didn't watch it, or you didn't pay attention, or you simply have no clue about TNG, or a mix of all three. So please. Stop pretending.
I think it's pretty clear what happened with the writing on Picard. Pre-COVID, there was an interview with Michael Chabon regarding Season 2. Among other things, he said "Don't worry, I was in the writer's room the whole time, and I wrote two scripts this season." His two scrips never arrived - he had a story credit only on the first episode, but the second script vanished entirely. The interview was just prior to COVID. What I believe happened is that there was relatively coherent decent Season 2 which was planned by Terry Matalas. Then after the pandemic started, the original plot became for some reason unfilmable due to social distancing (it's well known that the cast was ported off into "pods" for most of filming to limit exposure). Eventually CBS wanted seasons 2/3 to be filmed back to back, which meant that Matalas was taken off as Season 2 showrunner entirely, turning over the show to Akiva Goldsman, who was very clearly labeled by the cast as being the one responsible for the season arc as a whole. I am not someone with a high opinion of Goldsman's writing acumen (though he did a great job with the pilot of Strange New World) but I think he was put in an impossible situation here, much as he was in Season 1 of Discovery when Kurtzman brought him in to help him "fix" the show after Bryan Fuller was fired. Season 2 ended up a slapdash mess because they discarded the original season arc and wrote it on extremely short notice (perhaps even on the fly).
I'm inclined to agree. One reason the show was so disjointed was that Sir Patrick was mostly kept separate from the rest of the cast because the Paramount suits were terrified of what would happen if he caught Covid on set.
Thank you for the background knowledge. It's so true that real world events would have a direct impact on the shows they were producing. I remember being totally horrified and disgusted when some other series I was watching in the past became absolute garbage seemingly overnight because of writer's strikes and protests etc.... Some becoming literally vulgar to the point of being unwatchable, almost as if to protest the continued production of the series. It was so bad. I guess we have to be grateful that the show wasn't scrapped altogether due to the pandemic.
It felt like a bunch of different writers were given the same general brief for the season but then each one could write whatever they wanted with no contact between them. Each having a completely separate ethos & vision for the story.
A dozen monkeys on a dozen typewriters each, each getting to write 1/12 of each episode, randomly determined. That story would make more sense than picard, season 2.
In the defense of Lower Decks, at least they know how to create an impactful and memorable moment without leaning on fan service. Two of my favorite moments of the show, shaz ejecting the warp core and the arrival of the cali fleet, were some of the best executed moments in new trek and things which only relied on things presented in its own show to be memorable.
Until Strange New Worlds came out, Lower Decks was hands down the only contender for "the best Star Trek series currently being made." Lower Decks does an amazing job of picking up where TNG and DS9 left off.
@@dipperjc yeah, but... didn't that one have them disappear BEFORE the doors open? and also... less collateral damage. This one... this isn't a regular butterfly... this is BATTRA.
They actually DID specify why Picard's ancestor needed to go on the mission, but it was so hurriedly delivered and poorly conveyed that it just gets lost in the sauce. Which, imo, is even funnier/worse than if they just didn't explain it. (The absolutely silly reason for the change is Rene's organism discovery somehow is able to solve climate change, but without her doing that, Soong #69 ends up finding a technological solution, the sunshields from the alternate timeline. And his eugenic research gains traction after becoming a hero, which leads to fascist federation)
Why her though? Why wouldn’t another qualified astronaut have been able to make the same discovery? I understand that time travel stories inevitably have plot holes, but this just seemed bizarre. At least in First Contact we know a Vulcan ship will be passing close enough to the Phoenix at a specific time so that’s why the Borg tried to kill Cochrane and destroy the facility. Even then it’s bizarre why they didn’t just go back a few millennia earlier and destroy humanity in the Paleolithic
One thing you didn't mention, that I found annoying, was how the whole setup for the season was that the Borg are here for some reason, and want to join the Federation apparently, but then start assimilating the ship, and the queen seems to recognize Picard. But then at the end, the whole reason comes across as a complete afterthought. "Oh, there's this... anomaly... over here. Yeah, that's it! And we need you to help us... stop it? I guess?" Or as my wife so eloquently put it, "Agnes makes the Borg friendly so they can stop a space fart."
While I can accept the Borg Cooperative (stealing the name of the Friendly Borg faction in STO), the whole anomaly seems like the set up for the next season: a giant wormhole so big that it's opening almost destroyed_______ (can't remember if it was a system, a sector, or the galaxy), and no one knows who or what made it. But nope, next season is gonna be some unknown person with a serious grudge against Picard.
When SNW premiered, I actually questioned whether it was that good, or if I just thought so because S2 of Picard was so bad in comparison. I was very glad to find out that no, it was indeed that good.
Agree with every word of this essay. Steve obviously put a lot more thought into articulating the problems with Picard S2 than I have, but it comes down to the same thing - the "Oh well! Whatever!" approach to the storytelling.
I think that Patrick Stewart wanted to include his own experiences about growing up in a household with domestic violence, and that caused the changes to the character.
Something else that irked me a lot about the season was the plot thread surrounding Elnor's death. It, like so many others, is pointless. He dies, Raffi gets randomly upset about it when she bothers to remember, and then he's fine at the end. And offscreen at that. Star Trek is no stranger to character death and resurrection to be sure, but it's always earned. In The Search for Spock, Spock's death is what drives almost the entire story, and his resurrection is centered around the action of the story. With Elnor both his death and his resurrection seem to be just random afterthoughts, like they couldn't figure out anything for him to do but had to have him for a minimum number of scenes just for contractual reasons. Elnor is also probably my favorite of the original characters from the series and I think he would have brought a lot of enjoyable scenes with his naivete and obstinate optimism were he to be brought back to the bleak and chaotic 21st century. It just all seems like such a waste.
I think they also damaged Raffi's character by letter her get, IMO, unreasonably upset and irrational (considering the implied "fate of the universe" situation they found themselves in) about Elnor's death. We had to taken as given that they had some sort of incredibly deep mother/son relationship established between seasons, because we only ever got the faintest hint of that *maybe* happening on screen.
@@OscarFowler What got me about that - Raffi has deep emotional problems and messed up in raising her own son. But we were robbed of that story, of this damaged Human forming a connection with a Romulan young person, for the BS Picard parent trauma. That pissed me off, even as I admired the acting work of Michelle Hurd.
I was trying to figure out how this all happened when it occurred to me that this might be yet another example of what I call "The Cool Scene" method of writing that produces so many flashy, yet hollow, works these days. Allow me to explain: The Cool Scene method of writing is a technique where a story is built around a bunch of individual moments that the writer or writers think would be cool (or ironic, emotional, or in some way extraordinary.) In other words, story is built around moments that the made the writers say "wouldn't it be cool if..." The writers then awkwardly cobble together a loose structure around those individual moments no matter how disjointed they might be. The problem with this is, of course, that it is entirely backwards. A story works, and actual cool (no scare quotes) moments are in fact cool, precisely because individual moments arise organically out of the story, rather than the other way around. Star Trek Picard is filled with such "Cool" (scare quotes intended) moments. A few that come to mind: The Borg Queen appearing on the Bridge of the Stargazer, Wesley showing up out of nowhere, Rios in Jail/falling in love/loving the 21st century, 10 Forward Street, The Chateau Picard having flying harvesters and future tech set amidst a love 20th century French Villa, and, the most egregious of all, the "Shadows of the Night" song scene, Q asking for forgiveness from Picard. In a better show, each of these moments could have been genuinely exciting, moving and, indeed, cool. But, instead, without the context of a good story, they fall flat.
Yeah...if the pacing is so bad that even I notice it (and I NEVER pick up on stuff like that), there's a serious problem. For me, it hit when Raffi and Seven were trying to rescue Rios. They're waiting for the bus to come, there's a ticking clock set up...aaaand cut to Q with Renee, and the episode ends. The hell?
@@AaronLitz We should just convince ourselves that Picard plays in the same Universe as Disco.and that DISCO is another alternate timeline like the kelvin one..that would make everything atleast tolerable
Couldn't the writers have come up with a "minimum butterfly" way of rescuing Rios? It could have been convoluted. Hell they had a good hour they could have cut from other episodes. And surely leaving him there with all his technical knowledge could have impacted the timeline quite seriously. It would have been more poignant to have him explain to Dr Ramirez why he has to leave - and given options to explore how it affects him in future episodes.
The entire season was like the concept 'exquisite corpse' where someone writes a page or chapter of a story and then another writer takes over and so on and so on. As a new person takes charge they consider what's come before but focus on what they want to, so if someone wants to write a 'searing social commentary' or a 'fancy reception James Bond infiltration with a musical number' scene, they do. It's a fun artistic exercise but makes for a helluva mess writing a TV show...
My guess has been that the whole crew knew from the outset that this was a Patrick Stewart vanity project. He had all the leverage and agreed to the series provided that it was based upon his notes for the character. And as much as I love Stewart as an actor and personality - he is not a screenwriter. Picard's characterization started going off the rails in the TNG movies, where Stewart said he'd star if they crowbarred romantic and action subplots for him, less of that stoicism and thoughtful diplomacy stuff. I see this series as being a logical development from that. It's essentially become Patrick Stewart's fanfic. That was the price of having him back.
I think I may have a potential "why did this happen" explanation - In an interview, Terry Matalas (one of the showrunners) stated that since Seasons Two and Three were being produced back to back, he would handle season three while Akiva Goldsman would handle Season Two. Goldsman has been responsible for writing I, ROBOT, the 1990s LOST IN SPACE movie, and the two Schumaker Batman films. I think Goldsman, as a writer, tends more towards the let's-set-up-for-the-next-action-sequence style of writing rather than tell a coherent script. (Ironically, he wrote the first episode for STRANGE NEW WORLDS, which is my least favorite, but indicates his weakness - hitting the nail on the head when it would require subtlety). But everything you've noted about PICARD S2 is dead on - I got so frustrated with it that I quit after episode 3, watched your recaps, and finished with episode 10. I want to thank you and express my deep empathy for your suffering.
I’m in the camp that feels the fanservice in Lower Decks mostly works, but I think you’re spot on here. Both in why so many people don’t object to it in LD (I already really like LD, so when it does cross the line between joking with fanservice and fanservice as the joke I forgive it) and in how obvious and distracting it is in Picard.
The alley scene with Raffi and Seven was the most frustrating things for me to watch. It starts out as a chase scene where they see that borg queen Agnes has killed someone and is on the run trying to create a borg army and not only do they just let her go but they take all the tension out of the scene by sitting on the hood of a car (feet away from a dead body) and talk about their relationship, which we never even got to see when it was good, have seen nothing but bickering since, and care about way less than the borg queen on the run that they apparently don’t care about anymore. I think the relationships were one of the main issues here. Why did everyone have to have a love interest? Why did Laris want Picard? Why are we doing this story line with him again? He chose starfleet over relationships. He has some regrets but already came to terms with that choice in Generations. The relationship that works best is between Christobal and the doctor. They should have focused on that relationship and left the rest out. Though I agree he shouldn’t have stayed in the past unless it was to right some of the injustices he sees, but then we have possible time line issues.
That sounds like typical current day writing. Why go for the more interesting plot that actually that has some tension in it. Not only is it the wrong moment to talk about a relationship that so far has not come over as convincing. It is so pushed to the foreground that if I did actually watch the show, I would wish that one or both characters died so that we would be free from it.
What troubled me is that I simply did not recognize the Seven character as she appeared on ST:PIC. Yes, I get that she'd "been through some things" and 20-odd years had passed since we'd seen her, but in your life are there people you encounter that you've known for that long whether you see much of them in the interim or not and their overall demeanor, bearing, etc. aren't the same at all? We knew that character for four years on ST:V and she had a certain arc but that's how we got to know her. I wish I knew what it was like at the table reads; had Jeri Ryan sat with the script beforehand and tried to find the character again with the lines she was given, and then come table-read time the director, showrunner, etc. were saying "No, no, Jeri - you've got to lose ALL that; you're just this woman with stuff stuck on her face now?" *We* still remember "Fun will now commence!" How do we, as an audience, find any familiarity with this character? Why is she even Seven; why isn't it some other character entirely, or why not just give the same story mechanics to Raffi?
It is interesting to recall what the first three episodes of season 2 accomplished was often accomplished on TOS or TNG in half an episode, allowing the rest of the episode to resolve the story.
Half an episode? First Contact managed to do the entire plot of Picard season 2 in its 111 minutes. They did the first three episodes of Picard in like...what...five minutes, ten tops?
I don't think we need to spend time in the alternate reality future to establish how bad it is, but I think we need to spend time in the alternate reality future because we enjoy fish out of water doppelganger hijinks. Seeing seven of nine as the president and all the ways that she played off of the other people around her was a treat. I even loved the final reveal where her husband asked her to tell him his full given name. That was a fun moment.
Yes I enjoyed episodes one and two immensely. And besides, it is a Star Trek trope to show us in granular detail how awful we are as humans and how awful we could become. Had no problem with show's opening or ending. The middle was very uneven.
Man…I agree with every word of this. Absolutely every word. Except that there’s _no_ good to be found _anywhere_ in it. I do like the general idea, I think this season could have been a fun two parter the way it was established in the first couple episodes. Nothing we haven’t seen before, but fun. But there’s one scene. Just one. That I adore. When Jean-Luc is talking to Renee in front of the party, that little pep talk kinda thing. I don’t remember a single word of it…but I loved it. He was so damn great in that. For those few minutes…I saw Picard come to life. To me, he suddenly looked thirty years younger, and I could see the uniform on him again. It was absolutely wonderful. I don’t remember the lines…but the intent, and the performance, hit with me so well. And I saw my Captain again.
In addition to the gratuitous fan service you noted Steve, how about this: in the penultimate scene of the season, as Picard’s “family” raise their glasses at Guinan’s bar we hear the iconic Jerry Goldsmith French horn melody from First Contact. Not because it has anything to do with this scene, these characters or any themes of this season-if there were any-but because “hey remember this? From that thing you liked?”
It seems apparent that a LOT of the issues with Season 2 were Covid related, forcing them into bland locations and massive last minute rewrites to accommodate Covid restrictions. Characters splitting up constantly, entire episodes without major character appearances, scenes literally in LA backlots. I don't believe this was the story they were originally planning to tell.
I think the problem with a lot of shows is that they have a team of writers. In Britain, this is less common, we have a single writer who might write a whole drama series. One voice good or bad, but there is no pandering to network executives, just an attempt to tell a good story.
Everything you said about Q resonated with me. My hope, when this season was originally announced, with basically 'Tapesty', to the Nth degree. Let Q guide Picard through the 4 or 5 most important moments of his life, and how slight changes would have changed everything, maybe even changed the Federation itself. That would have been not only more interesting, but would have fit with the whole milieu of 'Old Man Picard'.
What a satisfying rant! I think I actually laughed out loud at the absurdity of the 15 fiasco. With the transition from season 1 to season 3, I started to wonder if they were thinking about turning it into a kind of "monster of the season" thing where each season would put them on a completely different adventure... Oh, well! lol
Honestly, my biggest problem with Picard season 2 wasn't that it was poorly written or that plot threads were dropped or that the whole story ended up being pointless. That's all bad, but it would have just created a bad Star Trek - which there is plenty of. What really infuriated me about Season 2 was Q. The writers claimed Season 2 was a love story - clearly meaning the story between Picard and Q but I have seen more wholesome love stories in porn. Q was never a good guy in TNG and the show, very importantly, recognized that. When Q would appear the crew knew they were in for something awful and when the story was over, they'd tell him to fuck off and please don't come back. In Picard he does the same kind of shit (without any of the charm he exudes in TNG) and Picard hugs him. Picard FORGIVES him. Picard tells Q that he is a good person despite Q never once being a good person in the entire franchise - especially in this show. To end that story where Q rewrites history into a fascist hellscape, tries MULTIPLE times to get Picard killed and ends it by saying "I did it because I love you" with ANYONE accepting that framing is beyond offensive to me. There was no proper response to what Q did other than to tell him to fuck off and die alone because his actions were unforgivable.
Q on Voyager is kind of a delightfully campy frenemy. Q on TNG was both annoying and terrifying because you never quite knew what he was actually going to do. He was like the definition of an abusive parent who says he’s doing it for your own good. If this is a love story it’s a romance horror.
@@Pegasusthewyze I think the real love affair is between Q and the fans. This is his farewell to us (unless Paramount decide to resurrect him which is very possible).
@@Pegasusthewyze you know... I have to wonder.... was this entire season originally framed as a Q-prank? Was there ANY real danger in the original script idea? Because it'd be better if it was. Hell Q could lie to them and claim he's dying so that they are worried about what might happen if they fail to figure out what to do. Honestly having the danger be real in terms of what happens to the cast(but not the rest of the universe) would be fine with me.
I disagree that Q was never a good guy. It's clear from TNG that Q has a certain kind of fondness for Picard, although he is expressing it in a weird way. "Tapestry" is the most obvious example, but there are other instances as well. (Even introducing the Borg to the Enterprise in "Q Who" can be seen in that way, as his action allowed Starfleet to prepare for the Borg - which is more than Guinan did.) The more sympathetic Q from Voyager didn't come out of the blue.
I got the distinct impression the writers had certain ideas but then changed their minds. Take the character of Adam Soong and his daughter. Yes, it was obvious they just wanted an excuse to bring back fan favorite Brent Spiner. I kept thinking we’d learn the reason all the Soongs look the same. That they were actually clones and that this is what ultimately lead Noonien Soong to want to create an android who looked like him, so he could stop cloning himself. Nope. Or the FBI agent who detained Picard and Guinan. They used the same actor who played a time traveler on Voyager. I kept expecting a big reveal where we’d learn the FBI agent was really that character and was trying to restore the timeline too. Nope. I really hope the writers of season 3 don’t just wing it like they did in the first 2 seasons. Map all 10 episodes and don’t abandon ideas after one episode because you lost interest.
I want to defend te Borg Qeen plotline. This was a version of the Borg Queen who saw that she kept being defeated throughout timelines. Every single one was one where she was doomed. They established that unity and togetherness was a thing she yearned for (which, while strange, is a somewhat plausible way to interpret the collective and was pretty well established through the season), and Yurati gives her a new way she can achieve that AND be compatible with her potential enemies. Note, this should only be possible with a very desperate queen, one who was tortured and fully alone, and, in another word, pretty hopeless.
While I don't see wanting togetherness as being a motivation for the borg queen before, if you take it as a thing then yeah Jurati convincing her to try something new and adapt makes some sense. I'm more disappointed it was never followed up on, thrown out for a contrived nostalgia fest instead.
Jurati's pact with the Borg Queen becomes more significant when you understand that no friendship is not magic, but belonging, community, and an intimate understanding is what a lot of people don't have and wish for.
Yeah I had no problem with it either. The Borg have a backstory. They started somewhere, probably with a person or group. Why not with someone who was lonely? Could have been someone who was angry or genocidal. But actually lonely makes more sense. And it just got out of control
The takeaway I took from the season as a whole was that the entire point was to get Picard to find that key and resolve to put it back where his future (younger) self would find it. He had to choose between accepting who he was despite the pain of losing his mother, or intentionally changing his own history. So in a way, the season was a long, drawn out version of the episode Tapestry from TNG. All the dead ends and unresolved issues are ultimately beside the point, if not procedurally (i.e., from a storytelling standpoint) then at least as to the overall "Picard has to choose to forgive himself" overall arc of the season. With that said, I concur with the great majority that a 10-episode season filled with plot holes and unresolved misdirection just to give filler to what should have been at most a two-episode story is extremely frustrating.
The Orville was so deadset on keeping the timeline as it was forced a heartbreaking incident that ripped Malloy away from the happiest he's ever been. I'd say that is a stark difference than how most shows handle time travel.
@@Pegasusthewyze Brave of them to make Ed and Kelly so evil, though I don't think they're altogether aware how evil their behaviour was. They out - evilled Janeway during The Tuvix Incident.
"The Orville" is more Star Trek than the newer Star Trek movies and series. It's so much more than it appears to be, at first sight - a Star Trek copy/parody. They took the original ST and TNG's core essence and moved forward in style.
Agree on the pacing issue; Discovery suffers it too. There was not enough time to devote to any decent exposition so that the payoffs felt either unearned, rushed, or dropped entirely. I liked Season 2 for the nostalgia factor, but I agree on all points with what you said.
What you can say about TNG season 1 is, that it managed to hook me as a small child. Wonder if Picard (season 1 or 2) can do that? Well, no. Can't show that gore to a child of that age. I would have had nightmares.
Different medium. TNG was broadcast on television, which still have very different regulations than streamed content. If it was the same, we would have never been able to hear Tilly say, "Oh my God guys this is FUCKING cool!" =)
The plotline with Picard's mother bothered me for a couple of reasons: 1. Picard's been assimilated by the Borg, tortured by Cardassians, forced to live an entire other lifetime, lost his brother and nephew, and died. It feels dismissive of these terrible events for the writers to go ahead and give him a brand-new source of pain from his childhood and mostly ignore the others. And, also, if they did want to give him family issues from childhood, why not just explore his strained relationships with his father and brother? Difficult family dynamics are enough to give people lasting issues. Picard didn't need an abusive father or a suicidal mother: not getting along with his family would have been enough. That's valid, just like in real life. 2. This plotline feels like a Very Special Episode about what it's like to be the child of someone with a serious, chronic mental illness. Now, that's a serious topic that deserves to be talked about. I'm just waiting for Star Trek's Very Special Episode about actually being the person with the illness. In media, I feel it's too often "my son has autism" or "my mother had schizophrenia" and not often enough "I am autistic" or "I have schizophrenia". We won't get far destigmatizing these things when only other people are allowed to have them. It doesn't help that it's mostly just dumped into a single episode, so Yvette's and Jean-Luc's experience with her condition is kind of just "mentioned" rather than "explored". She's left a 2-note character, I feel: she's a loving wife and mother, she lives with mental illness, and...? Nothing else? Well, I guess that's just a symptom of being someone else's side character.
I only just got round to watching season 2. And I got to binge it at my own pace. I'd say I liked it. It had that Qish vibe of a large plot to make a small point. And its pacing mattered less as I was able to watch at my leisure rather than holding on week for week.
😂 Your spot on! I think it’s sort of a problem with modern writing in general. Not just Star Trek people have big ideas, they want to go from point A to C but seemingly gave no thought to B.
The ability of Picard and Jurati figuring out the meaning of the number 15 reminds me of Batman and Robin solving riddles in many episodes of the 1960's Batman series.
Has it dawned on anyone else that we now have a generation of writers that never learned to read? Not just the technical part of reading/writing. The "I have nothing else to distract me or really anything to do" act of reading. Mix in monopoly media and a complete lack of any will to try something new, and we get jangly keys for our $12 a month subscription.
Guinan doesn't remember Picard in spite of him looking exactly the same and having a notable impact on her life. The punk remembers an incident forty years earlier with a different person in a different city in which he was asked to turn off his music and he was knocked unconscious. Does the punk play his music frequently on the bus? Does he get asked a lot to turn it down and always backs down? Has no one else ever asked him?
Thanks Steve - it doesn't just make us mad, it makes us sad to see so much time, money and effort wasted on productions like these. I'm going to wait for s3 of Picard to totally screen and not bother with an Amazon sub until I know how good/bad it is. Twice Bitten, Twice Shy
I just finished watching season 2, and I think you nailed the reasons why it didn't work. On paper, it seems like a good idea. What it missed was character-driven plot. Did things happen because of character motivations? Or just because the plot needed something to happen? The messages they tried to share fell flat, and a big part of that was because the character motivations were never very clear.
I remember getting to the end of Episode 10 when Q is saying goodbye to Picard and thinking to myself, clearly the show wants me to feel sad in this moment, and I do, but literally the only reason I feel sad is because of John de Lancie's performance. I have no idea *why* I should be sad, since almost nothing has been explained about why Q has done any of this, or why he is even *in* this story, and what little has been explained makes no sense or is self-contradictory.
Ok, if you watch all the Q episodes from TNG, DS9, and VOY Death Wish, and pay close attention, it makes sense why Q does what he does in STP. Q loves Picard. He is dying for some reason, and doesn't want to die knowing that his beloved Jean-Luc is going to die alone like he is about to. Q knows he's out of time to be with Picard, so he wants to make sure his Favorite is being loved and taken care of. Q's methods of going about this are strange and harsh, but Q has nothing but good intentions. Anyone who insists Q is being evil as they claim he always has been has not done their homework.
Sorry (not sorry), Kirk Thatcher's cameo as the Punk is the greatest single cameo in the history of cameos - and there's nothing that will change my mind.
Have to say I love your work and having you on while I work, its like talking to a colleague who doesn't let me get a word in edgeways, but it doesn't matter because I agree with 99% of what he says. Season 2 for the first few episodes was a bit of a guilty pleasure but by the end it was hard work. By the time Wesley Crusher was tying together Gary Seven's supervisors to the Traveller and his own undefined almost Q-like powers recruiting the unremarkable Core, it felt like an SNL skit bolted on to the end. I would also add that Elnor died and returned as visions and a hologram, so a 4th actor not really playing himself in Season 2. Also weird that the Punk remembers the original timeline but Guinan doesn't. The series just fails to operate within its own established rules. Both seasons felt like an emotional end scene was conceived (Picard/Data) and (Picard/Q) and an entire series was retroactively created to service that scene. And its this that makes me wonder if the final season is also based on a preconceived death scene for one or more characters and the ten episodes will be an equally convoluted sequence of "but what ifs". Its a shame because as a fan, I really want to like it, but wow it was tough to watch. It also makes me so pleased that DS9 has escaped the new wave of shows. The last thing I need to see is Nicole De Boer or Cirroc Lofton turning up and doing a Wesley...
"Also weird that the Punk remembers the original timeline but Guinan doesn't. The series just fails to operate within its own established rules. " I didn't even catch that, but that is a very good point. Guinan could not recall the original timeline because Starfleet never existed, thus the events with Data's head in old San Francisco never occurred. Why then would the punk on the bus react the way he did in the future if the events of the past (Spock giving him the neck pinch) never occurred?
AGAIN... I think your analysis was brilliant.... There were things I didn't like about the second season of Picard, but I didn't really think about it enough to articulate them. You did the thinking and articulating FOR me and did a brilliant job of it.. Thank you. you are a; ways a joy to watch and you always give me something to think about... ONWARDS and upwards, my friend.... Live long and prosper... ooppppsss, wrong character...... Ohhh Well...
Even as someone who's a fan of PIC, I completely understand what you're saying about the avoiding butterflies criticism. Given that, and knowing your chops for rewriting episodes which I always particularly enjoy ngl, how would you have presented that particular dilemma? Would you have them talk about butterflies at all?
Simple: do what previous writers did: look at how history was "supposed to be" IE find info on where the bus Rios got stuffed into was supposed to be that day. Then... work with that.
Do you think that in Star Trek IV when Kirk says 'LDS' instead of 'LSD' that writers were actually making fun of Mormons, or the effect of organized religion (or cults) on it's members?
I'm glad I watched it, if only because it caused me to watch Terry Matalas' 12 Monkeys show, and it was cool to see James Callis, Agent Wells etc in that show. It's honestly a great series!
An interesting look at the 2nd season Steve, but I do have two things that you either missed or neglected to mention. 1st off the plot of the second season wasn't just about picard and him mommy issues, it also had the secondary plot of helping him to see his brash move of not stopping to hear out what the borg queen, aka jurati, had to say. If the timeline had been allowed to go on the federation might have suffered it biggest disaster since the dominion war. 2nd, the butterfly thing was kind of redundant as picard stated in the last episode that the bullet holes from the borged mercenaries where there already, this goes to show that, along with borg queen jurati was on the stargazer, proves that the group where already part of the origional time line. Or at least that is my thoughts.
Yes, I would’ve preferred a scenario where Q simply saves the Stargazer crew and shifts them a couple years in the future or so ... demonstrating the impact Picard’s choice had.
I did find it funny that Picard's plan for Jurati, which was Jurati's plan (even in the future men steal women's ideas) was basically a Xanatos gambit. In an episode directed by Jon Frakes.
The FBI tangent one really pissed me off. They could have better used the actor to portray the return of the Ducane character from Voyager, sent back in time from the 29th century to investigate what Picard did to change the timeline and provide help (or try to at least) rectifying the situation.
There are a couple of interesting ideas that could have made for an good two-parter, but it would still have needed to be reworked. Unlike Picard Season 2, Tapestry fleshed out Picard's backstory in a compelling way. It does stand to reason that Q might mess with Picard again to teach him a lesson, but UGH it really needed to be a message that made sense and was interesting.
I felt bad, because I’m a big fan of Patrick Stewart, that I became bored during season two of Picard. Thank you for making me realize that it wasn’t me, it was the writing.
It's like the writers were in a hurry to get through Picard in order to get to writing Strange New Worlds..."Shit, we have 8 hours to write a Picard season - let's get this over with!" Great analysis as usual.
season one should have been a backdoor pilot series for a new firefly-style show in the trek universe. I liked the new characters and found that Picard was the one element that wasn't needed
I agree with you 100% on this as a life long Trekker. I'm not a nitpicking nerd over NuTrek shows. I actually like the 2009 reboot, 2 was meh & 3 was okay. I don't care for Discovery or Picard. I absolutely loved SNW! Back to Trek basics & decent stories to follow on a weekly basis.
Another "hey look who it is cameo fan-service" was Jay Karnes as FBI Agent Wells. He had previously played Time Agent Lieutenant Ducane (from the 29th century) on Star Trek: Voyager, and I thought it would be an interesting tie in for Agent Wells to really be the Time Agent from Voyager sent because in the 29th century they detected a change in time. But the showrunners just wanted to do another "hey look who it is cameo."
i really wanted to love picard. there were some lights in season one. serious potential. season 2 was... a vanity project. thinking about it, i keep coming back to your brilliant analysis about the diminishing returns of ric flair. it was ric flair, wasn't it? sorry, my last wrestling match was around the time goldberg made his original insane run.
Great video Steve. As to your ultimate question about “HOW did this happen?” I’ve thought about it and I really really hate the conclusion I’ve come to, especially as a lifelong hardcore Trekkie. But unfortunately it’s the only thing that makes any sense to me in the slightest. I think in the future we’ll find out that the “how” this happened is in fact, Patrick Stewart himself. Think about it, here you have a legendary actor returning to play one of if not his most important and iconic roles, for what is in all probability the final time, he’s an EP on the show and the show is named after his character. If you were a writer or even another Executive Producer on that show how easy would it be for you to look your hero in the eyes and say “NO!” to his ideas. Why did Orla Brady, Brent Spiner, and Isa Briones come back, because Sir Patrick loved working with them and wanted to do it again. Why did Wil Wheaton make a ham-fisted cameo. Because Sir Patrick wanted to make sure he got a shout out before we head into a new season featuring the entire rest of the TNG cast. Which mark my words will include a similar cringey cameo for Denise Crosby for the same reason. What’s with the sudden Mommy problems, Patrick wanted to play Picard as more emotional, weary, and depressed. The rest of the problems feel like the writers doing their best to try and link all these disparate ideas and wants into as cohesive a story as possible. I love Patrick Stewart and I guess part of why I’m not more angry about the quality of the show is because I too feel like he’s earned the right to do whatever he wants so let him. Let Grandpa take his favorite car out for one more joyride, let him tell that stupid “one who got away” story to you again, let him snort a railroad line of viagra and take that quilting circle to pound town. Why because you love him, you want to see him happy, and you’re probably just about out of chances to do so.
A much better send-off for Q would have been for him to relive his and Jean-Luc's greatest hits in the form of a musical, where Q decides to use the last of his powers for three purposes, done in three acts. First act is out of selfishness: he's not handling his death well, and since he can go back and forth in between time and space, he's going bring ol' Jean-Luc along, but with a revisionist's twist that makes Q seems purely benevolent, and in an alternate reality where everyone (except for the two of them) dance and sing EVERYTHING. Second act is to help Picard figure out what the Borg Queen is up to by having a big chorus number involving many Borg all singing in unison. Make it an ear worm that Picard will never forget after the "show" is done. Third act is to help Picard deal with unresolved trauma by revisiting his role as Locutus, the disconnect from the Borg, the fire that killed family, maybe make the song about "seeing FIVE lights". Make remembering and acknowledging the trauma important for growth. In the end, Q sings a medley showstopper, sheds a single tear, he snaps fingers, disappears, and the curtains closes. Since this would be a turning point in the season and would be PERFECT to be right in the middle... title the episode "Intermission".
I am a big TNG fan. I thought Season 1 was bad and didn't care enough to renew my subscription. My biggest issues was the writing. They killed Picard. That seemed like a good enough ending for me. Sounds like I dodged a bullet.
Agree on pretty much all points. One thing that sticks out for me, talking about the Rios/ICE subplot, is that is highlights a really big problem for just about all modern live-action Trek. While I'm not going to claim that Trek of old was always perfect and didn't often handle real-world issues in a simplistic, ham-fisted way, the trend now seems to be to do nothing other than hold something up and say "look at this. isn't this bad!" and then completely drop it. There's no attempt to create an argument against injustice, racism, sexism, and so on. It just expects the audience to have a specific opinion on the subject, so they can clap and cheer and say "right on!". I'm all for Trek shining a light on real world issues, and think doing so goes right to the heart of what makes Trek what it is and was. But it needs to be capable of handling the subject in a mature, nuanced way. The other kinds of mature content in these new series makes it clear that these shows are aimed at adults, but in this respect it treats its audience like babies. I feel like this is one of the reasons the new series' come in for so much criticism for being 'woke'. The basic message seems clear - if you don't automatically have a certain set of values and political beliefs, then Trek is simply not aimed at you at all. It feels like a real waste.
Steve you hit the nail on the head!! Neither Q nor Picard seem much changed by the events of the show. Not to mention how did all of this tie in with the huge transdimensional rift that would have destroyed half the Alpha Quadrant? I didn't even remember that he was supposed to end up with Laris. How does she feel about Crusher coming back into his life with a kid?
Another frustrating thing about the immigration plot was how one-dimensionally evil the ICE guards were and no other aspect of illegal immigration was touched on. A hallmark of TNG and DS9 was how any time they decided to tackle some social issue, they presented a nuanced analysis by having SOMEONE from the bridge crew take the opposing side and present it during meetings in a thoughtful way. It's silly to pretend that the only problem with illegal immigration is that the ICE guards are mean. But that seemed to be the point on ST:P. I recently rewatched the S1 finale of DS9 ("In the Hands of the Prophets"), and even though they're very clearly doing a story about the evils of religious fanaticism, Kira initially takes the opposing side pointing out how it shouldn't be a non-starter that people's religious views be taken into account in public education. Then when Jake starts bad-mouthing Veddick Winn, Ben tells him to chill out, and that considering other people's views is important, and mindlessly labelling them as 'BAD' makes you just as bad as they are. There seemed to be a very clear right and wrong in this episode, but the writers still made it a point to remind you that not everything is black and white.
I swore at that 10 forward scene again. Deck 10 forward, forward as in the front of the ship, I really hated that. Couldn't have figured out some other way for him to find her if it was totally necessary for the story. The way Q was acting made sense to me. He is dying and can't stop it, going from sad to angry and back again. The Q go through their entire existence being to do whatever they want. I saw it as wanting to help someone he cared for but also railing against whatever was causing his death. Season 2 had a lot of stuff that I was unhappy with but also stuff I enjoyed.
Sometimes when we do role playing, the characters get a bit unfocused. Often people do things that lead to nothing. And sometimes when to much time goes by the game Master just puts the next Plot point in front of the players weather or not they earned it. I Imagine the script is just a session protocol of some role playing group. So far that model sufficiently explains all that happened.
The whole detention mini-arch would have been 110% better if throughout it Rios was torn between wanting to do something about this injustice that was happening not just around him but to him and his commitment to preserving the timeline.
Yes, you need to establish the bleak reality of the alternate timeline, but no, you don't need an entire episode to do that. Star Trek has been establishing bleak futures in five minutes flat for decades. Hell, City on The Edge of Forever established the hellish alternate history with an unanswered communication call! We never saw the dark future that happened because of an apparent Axis victory in WWII, and we didn't need to. The episode left that to our imaginations. And that was brilliant. This is one of the many reasons that episode is still considered one of the best hours of sci-fi ever broadcast.
Pumped for your next video, thats one of my favorite characters from across all Trek. I agree with nearly 100% of what you said about Picard Season 2, as it also genuinely felt worse than TNG fanfiction I wrote in high-school. What an absolute waste of Stewart and the return of Q.
I always got the vibe from this season that somewhere way back down the line this started as an outline for a tng movie back in the early 2000s that sat on a shelf for years and then got stretched and stuffed to last 10 episodes.
Q's lacking plot motive was a real disappointment to me as well. I figured the Borg joining the federation was important to the Q, ergo the destruction of this "new contact" started a temporal cascade that will end the Q. It's way more in line for a dying Q to set up an elaborate means to get Picard to trust the Borg for his own survival/rebirth, than as a good-bye. And would make sense to the repeated overlap of the Q, Borg, and El-Aurian. This would have kept Q's time travel antics (get over yourself or the federation and Q both end) and push Picard to be a better human, with trust and listening to his most hated enemy.
It's actually kind of simple. They had enough story and content for a REALLY good two-parter episode that they stretched out to 10 episodes.
Seemed like the opposite to me. They had too many ideas and potential plotlines and couldn't do any of them justice in the time allowed.
@@Seal0626 That was my thought as well. Steve brings up a great point - they set up a great premise with the totalitarian human-supremacist society, and comparing it to modern day US. But then they don't actually do that. The ICE episode, the FBI episode - both of those could have been tied into that larger narrative, but nothing comes of either of them. What's-his-name Soong could have also gone that direction, with his eugenics project, but again, doesn't tie to anything.
Then there was Picard's personal issues, which was interesting, but doesn't connect to anything. Usually the personal themes tie into the larger themes of the story. Picard's doesn't in any way.
Same with the Borg. You can kind of tie it to the authoritarianism theme, and the queen joining with Jerati making a more egalitarian society could parallel the federation, but it wasn't explored, just a last minute Deus Ex Machina.
It feels like they had a bunch of ideas for each character to do, rather than a coherent storyline that flows through the whole series. Which I did enjoy each of the individual stories. But it feels like they were trying to tell an epic story with a bunch of episodic vignettes.
Totally agree. A two part episode would have been excellent. 10 episodes suuuuuucked.
@@Seal0626 Though I think a lot of the 'too many ideas' came from needing to shove extra fluff in to stretch a full season out of the main plot
You just know someone's going to make a fanedit of this and condense it to only a couple of hours. It might still be bad, but be a lot more cohesive.
“YOU WROTE THIS AHEAD OF TIME! YOU COULD HAVE DONE THAT!” Made my day.
One instance of an actor playing a physically similar character would have been expected, considering Brent Spiner plays every single male Soong the writers come up with. It's like Paramount has a Soong Signal on top of their office that they flash after they've created a new one, and Spiner can see it from his house.
😂
they let the Borg assimilate Karen that's where it went wrong🤣🤣
The eugenics thing could be an interesting explanation for that.
What if he modded himself and has his genetic material overwriting that of the egg, effectively making every one a clone of the OG Soong...
@@Burner-B true true, they introduced the 1996 proper continuity/canon eugenics file cabinet file tease but did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITH IT but could have but look at who is producing it. It would have been a much better main storyline for S2 than alot of the needlessly retconned SJW/woke pretext and screentime-filler-extender-crap they introduced then dropped pointlessly which Steve the consummate marxist-leftist wont say but I will here to counter him: picards mommy issues as deep motivation which makes him an avoidantly-cowardly-weak character not a stronger one(actually sorry Steve did mention that, so I stand corrected on that), Raffi and Sevens useless lesbian relationship (which is actually anti-canon wrt Chakotay but hey they already woke-teased it with seven and B'jayzel the nutbar Stockholm-syndrome master and persecutor and "borg parts human trafficker mobster evil character" of Seven and Icheb that Seven "loved-lusted-after aa she corrupted Sevens characterization"--eek a terrible inference for a strong lead character like seven--but the woke/sjw types and similar minded producer types will love it that she lesbian-bi fooled around with a deviant like B'jayzel (and to my amusement its actually implied that said fooling around with the deviant stockholm-syndrome master B'jayzel was the onset of her bi-lesbian-whatever "identity change", even though ALL THIS SJW WOKE CRAP does zero for the storyline) and the bash ICE as evil-racist but dont even develop THAT storyline for a well-placed trek-appropriately inserted social commentary(steve rightly comments on that too, gotta give credit where its rightly due) and otherwise the generally poor characterization-and-canon-corruption-of-Seven by sicko-trafficker-deviant-B'jayzel and more generally the crap story and plot and character development that Steve well-explains here, largely without his usual hard lefty interjections, that which I appreciated. I was so disappointed they summarily missed the great eugenics war tie-ins and coddled so much sjw/woke/marxist useless retconning...but hey these are the same clowns that made the dumpster-fire-garbage-woke-overrepresented-sjw and retcon-fest of Discovery....that show SUCKS except for Pike. They should have just made Strange New Worlds instead of crap near-worthless STD...great acronym...love it. It is the STD of the trek franchise that just won't go away and we get now 6 seasons/reoccurrences of Sybok2-Michael Burnhams terrible character-retcon. Ugh.
@@raven4k998 😀😀😀
Season 2 is like being promised a gourmet steak dinner, but when you get to the restaurant, they've decided you're actually getting a roast chicken dinner, except it's cold, raw, and every component of the meal is given to you as its own course over the span of half a day.
The main issue that I had with PIC S2 was, given the ultimate motivation of the Borg Queen being innocent, I thought it was bizarre that she had to beam aboard forcefully, commandeer the ship, and then injure several crewmen in order to have someone listen to her long enough to explain.
Welcome to my dating life!
Yup. Fake drama.
As you watch this "Enterprise saucer section crashing on Veridian III" of a disaster, it rapidly becomes apparent: They put as much thought into the entire story arc as you or I put into a high school english class essay we got a C on. It is _painfully_ obvious that there was nobody at all in charge of continuity, or if there was they're collecting a paycheck for doing nothing.
In any other Trek this kind of plot hole you could fly a borg cube through would get the episode onto worst-of lists. In Picard, it's not even next Tuesday.
Joe Straczynski (babylon5, sense8) talks about this in his book on screen writing. Writers submitting scripts will often have a strange plot point early that "have to be there" so the later plot point makes sense. Good senior producers would send that script back till the early scene makes sense.
If you're going to name your Series "Picard" and feature him at a later stage of his life, you have a short, but wonderful opportunity to close loops, explore how a beloved and familiar character has changed and evolved, and build a bridge for fans of old Trek skeptical of new Trek. Everything was in place for this to have been a masterpiece and Season 2 of Picard wasted it. So frustrating.
By the way, I had originally thought the issue with Picard's mother dying by suicide at a young age when Picard had had a vision of her as an old woman in TNG was a mistake - given how lazily they waved that away, I kind of would rather it had been a mistake.
I think they actually dealt with this in a believable way. I'm 44. I lost my Mom when I was 20 to breast cancer. I _often_ wish (and imagine) that I could have a tea and chat with her again.
Disagree! Their explanation for seeing her at an old age even so she had died young was the most clever idea they had imho. It was very believable to me.
Do you like that his whole brother just wasn’t there. I explained it to myself as ‘memory issues’ but Jean-Luc wasn’t an only child. Did this have no impact on his brother and/or relationship with his brother.
Agree. They just have to turn these shows into larger than life action adventure romps, but you don’t need to open up a parallel universe to explore the finer points of morality when you already have interesting characters in the primary universe!! Bad writing, again and again.
"Q set a series of events into motion, bringing your contact with the Borg much sooner than it should have come. Now, perhaps when ready it might be possible to establish a relationship with them."
Guinan said this and I think Picard season 2 pays this off and closes Picard's Guinan's, Q's and the Borg saga nicely.
I really appreciated this series for introducing another member of the Soong clan so that Brent Spiner could make an appearance. It really wouldn't be Star Trek without Brent Spiner playing a Soong or two. Looking forward to the Soong Family spinoff in which he plays all the roles, Big Mama style.
It should be a musical with such catchy tunes that they all become standards and make their way into the great American Soongbook.
It's freaking nuts that the VULCANS somehow messed up a mission that risked First Contact. And the most egregious part of that whole scene...we never found out if young Agent Wells found his dog. WAS MAGGIE OKAY?
(Seriously, I ended up caring more about the dog by the end of it.)
Would have been a great tie in to Carbon Creek if it had been Mestral, the Vulcan that had stayed behind, who had done the mind meld. Hell for that matter it would have been a great tie in if he had been the supervisor instead of Talon. There are after all already novels that have him working with Gary Seven, why not make it canon.
Me 2 ;]
@@camortie at this point in time though, wasn’t the ability to mind meld considered… “unclean”? That’s what’s got me for some reason.
My suspicion is that that scene was a last minute add-on, to justify Agent Wells(the H.G. is silent) as something other than Ducane's alias.
@@Seal0626 that's what I was thinking. An ancestor of Ducane on the Time ship Relativity which was a Wells Class starship
The fact that Patrick Stewart didn’t play his ancestor like all the others seems like a miracle
The glue for the blonde wig irritated Stewart's skin, so they needed to recast Renee. That extra expense was why they could no longer afford a script editor.
@@voltijuice8576 I'm dying from laughter. Couldn't have put it any better!
Not the most consequential choice, but my favorite "Butterflies" are the corpses of the Borg Commandoes that are now embedded in the walls of the Chateau Picard cellar.
@@ANTIStraussian Short Trek: "The Cask of Amontillassimilation".
One of the things that baffled me is that,
if they're talking about Picard's family, how in God's name could they forget about his brother and nephew who died in a fire. That was actually traumatic to him and they didn't even mention it!
It was definitely odd to have no Robert in those flashbacks, as if Jean - Luc had forgotten him.
Yes a throwaway line referencing him only once? Geez.
@@soulstrong continuity is continuity. A one-of throwaway line becomes very important... when it's the only material to work with.
The simple answer is the writers didn't know. Just like they didn't know what Ten Forward was or that Guinan already met Picard in the 1800s.
@@One.Zero.One101 they mentioned Robert, and in the Confederacy timeline, Picard and Guinan couldn't possibly have met. Because Confederacy Picard didn't went back in time in Time's Arrow, where OG Guinan met OG Picard.
So now I have a simple question:
Why are you pretending to know what you're talking about when you don't know these simple things?
Obviously you didn't watch it, or you didn't pay attention, or you simply have no clue about TNG, or a mix of all three.
So please.
Stop pretending.
I think it's pretty clear what happened with the writing on Picard.
Pre-COVID, there was an interview with Michael Chabon regarding Season 2. Among other things, he said "Don't worry, I was in the writer's room the whole time, and I wrote two scripts this season." His two scrips never arrived - he had a story credit only on the first episode, but the second script vanished entirely.
The interview was just prior to COVID. What I believe happened is that there was relatively coherent decent Season 2 which was planned by Terry Matalas. Then after the pandemic started, the original plot became for some reason unfilmable due to social distancing (it's well known that the cast was ported off into "pods" for most of filming to limit exposure). Eventually CBS wanted seasons 2/3 to be filmed back to back, which meant that Matalas was taken off as Season 2 showrunner entirely, turning over the show to Akiva Goldsman, who was very clearly labeled by the cast as being the one responsible for the season arc as a whole.
I am not someone with a high opinion of Goldsman's writing acumen (though he did a great job with the pilot of Strange New World) but I think he was put in an impossible situation here, much as he was in Season 1 of Discovery when Kurtzman brought him in to help him "fix" the show after Bryan Fuller was fired. Season 2 ended up a slapdash mess because they discarded the original season arc and wrote it on extremely short notice (perhaps even on the fly).
I'm inclined to agree.
One reason the show was so disjointed was that Sir Patrick was mostly kept separate from the rest of the cast because the Paramount suits were terrified of what would happen if he caught Covid on set.
Matalas was also busy with developing season 3 where he had full control. He was never really in charge of season 2.
@@ANTIStraussian The Battlestar Galactica effect: "We blew our entire season's budget wad on episode 1, now what?"
@@alanpennie8013 as they should have been.
Thank you for the background knowledge. It's so true that real world events would have a direct impact on the shows they were producing. I remember being totally horrified and disgusted when some other series I was watching in the past became absolute garbage seemingly overnight because of writer's strikes and protests etc.... Some becoming literally vulgar to the point of being unwatchable, almost as if to protest the continued production of the series. It was so bad. I guess we have to be grateful that the show wasn't scrapped altogether due to the pandemic.
It felt like a bunch of different writers were given the same general brief for the season but then each one could write whatever they wanted with no contact between them. Each having a completely separate ethos & vision for the story.
Kinda like another franchise's sequel trilogy.....
A dozen monkeys on a dozen typewriters each, each getting to write 1/12 of each episode, randomly determined.
That story would make more sense than picard, season 2.
That's why Picard says "I have a plan" and it goes nowhere. The handoff between the writers was completely broken.
In the defense of Lower Decks, at least they know how to create an impactful and memorable moment without leaning on fan service. Two of my favorite moments of the show, shaz ejecting the warp core and the arrival of the cali fleet, were some of the best executed moments in new trek and things which only relied on things presented in its own show to be memorable.
yeah, LD KNOWS it's being corny, and is written with that in mind. If it's funny, it's intentional humor... this show is.. jsut... ugh...
Until Strange New Worlds came out, Lower Decks was hands down the only contender for "the best Star Trek series currently being made." Lower Decks does an amazing job of picking up where TNG and DS9 left off.
I actually thought the car chase where they beam away at the end was the worst offender for the butterfly effect.
@@ANTIStraussian If we're going to try and catalogue all the spectacular writing failures in Picard we'll be here all week...
@@dipperjc yeah, but... didn't that one have them disappear BEFORE the doors open? and also... less collateral damage.
This one... this isn't a regular butterfly... this is BATTRA.
They actually DID specify why Picard's ancestor needed to go on the mission, but it was so hurriedly delivered and poorly conveyed that it just gets lost in the sauce. Which, imo, is even funnier/worse than if they just didn't explain it.
(The absolutely silly reason for the change is Rene's organism discovery somehow is able to solve climate change, but without her doing that, Soong #69 ends up finding a technological solution, the sunshields from the alternate timeline. And his eugenic research gains traction after becoming a hero, which leads to fascist federation)
Why her though? Why wouldn’t another qualified astronaut have been able to make the same discovery?
I understand that time travel stories inevitably have plot holes, but this just seemed bizarre.
At least in First Contact we know a Vulcan ship will be passing close enough to the Phoenix at a specific time so that’s why the Borg tried to kill Cochrane and destroy the facility. Even then it’s bizarre why they didn’t just go back a few millennia earlier and destroy humanity in the Paleolithic
@@briangronberg6507 apparently all the other astronauts ignored it. I guess I could see that happening
One thing you didn't mention, that I found annoying, was how the whole setup for the season was that the Borg are here for some reason, and want to join the Federation apparently, but then start assimilating the ship, and the queen seems to recognize Picard. But then at the end, the whole reason comes across as a complete afterthought. "Oh, there's this... anomaly... over here. Yeah, that's it! And we need you to help us... stop it? I guess?"
Or as my wife so eloquently put it, "Agnes makes the Borg friendly so they can stop a space fart."
YESSS!!! An absolute yank back to something that also didn't make sense and the payoff was horrible.
Your wife had it right!!!! 🤞❤😜
While I can accept the Borg Cooperative (stealing the name of the Friendly Borg faction in STO), the whole anomaly seems like the set up for the next season: a giant wormhole so big that it's opening almost destroyed_______ (can't remember if it was a system, a sector, or the galaxy), and no one knows who or what made it.
But nope, next season is gonna be some unknown person with a serious grudge against Picard.
When SNW premiered, I actually questioned whether it was that good, or if I just thought so because S2 of Picard was so bad in comparison. I was very glad to find out that no, it was indeed that good.
Agree with every word of this essay. Steve obviously put a lot more thought into articulating the problems with Picard S2 than I have, but it comes down to the same thing - the "Oh well! Whatever!" approach to the storytelling.
I think that Patrick Stewart wanted to include his own experiences about growing up in a household with domestic violence, and that caused the changes to the character.
Yep.
Sir Patrick's influence on the writing of his character has been a problem since First Contact, a film I really didn't like.
@@ANTIStraussian which is also why Jake is a writer - writers love writing writers
Something else that irked me a lot about the season was the plot thread surrounding Elnor's death. It, like so many others, is pointless. He dies, Raffi gets randomly upset about it when she bothers to remember, and then he's fine at the end. And offscreen at that. Star Trek is no stranger to character death and resurrection to be sure, but it's always earned. In The Search for Spock, Spock's death is what drives almost the entire story, and his resurrection is centered around the action of the story. With Elnor both his death and his resurrection seem to be just random afterthoughts, like they couldn't figure out anything for him to do but had to have him for a minimum number of scenes just for contractual reasons. Elnor is also probably my favorite of the original characters from the series and I think he would have brought a lot of enjoyable scenes with his naivete and obstinate optimism were he to be brought back to the bleak and chaotic 21st century. It just all seems like such a waste.
I think they also damaged Raffi's character by letter her get, IMO, unreasonably upset and irrational (considering the implied "fate of the universe" situation they found themselves in) about Elnor's death. We had to taken as given that they had some sort of incredibly deep mother/son relationship established between seasons, because we only ever got the faintest hint of that *maybe* happening on screen.
@@OscarFowler What got me about that - Raffi has deep emotional problems and messed up in raising her own son. But we were robbed of that story, of this damaged Human forming a connection with a Romulan young person, for the BS Picard parent trauma. That pissed me off, even as I admired the acting work of Michelle Hurd.
@@EMSpdx
I enjoyed Elnor during the first season.
He seemed to be playing the straight man when the rest of the crew were being freaky.
He should have at least been returned as a disconnected Borg drone, and then shown at the end still bandaged up from his deassimilation.
I was trying to figure out how this all happened when it occurred to me that this might be yet another example of what I call "The Cool Scene" method of writing that produces so many flashy, yet hollow, works these days. Allow me to explain:
The Cool Scene method of writing is a technique where a story is built around a bunch of individual moments that the writer or writers think would be cool (or ironic, emotional, or in some way extraordinary.) In other words, story is built around moments that the made the writers say "wouldn't it be cool if..." The writers then awkwardly cobble together a loose structure around those individual moments no matter how disjointed they might be.
The problem with this is, of course, that it is entirely backwards. A story works, and actual cool (no scare quotes) moments are in fact cool, precisely because individual moments arise organically out of the story, rather than the other way around.
Star Trek Picard is filled with such "Cool" (scare quotes intended) moments. A few that come to mind: The Borg Queen appearing on the Bridge of the Stargazer, Wesley showing up out of nowhere, Rios in Jail/falling in love/loving the 21st century, 10 Forward Street, The Chateau Picard having flying harvesters and future tech set amidst a love 20th century French Villa, and, the most egregious of all, the "Shadows of the Night" song scene, Q asking for forgiveness from Picard. In a better show, each of these moments could have been genuinely exciting, moving and, indeed, cool. But, instead, without the context of a good story, they fall flat.
I agree with most of this except that 10 Forward St was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen in Trek
"Writing? Pfftt. Put enough cool moments together and you don't *need* writing."
-- probably more writer's rooms than we want to know --
This is a great post.
I actually liked season 2 but I reckon you've hit on the reason why everything seemed so random.
Picard Season 2 was shot to make “cool” trailers. That’s it.
Yeah...if the pacing is so bad that even I notice it (and I NEVER pick up on stuff like that), there's a serious problem. For me, it hit when Raffi and Seven were trying to rescue Rios. They're waiting for the bus to come, there's a ticking clock set up...aaaand cut to Q with Renee, and the episode ends. The hell?
Raffi is so emotionally unstable there is no way she should have ever been admitted into Starfleet.
@@AaronLitz We should just convince ourselves that Picard plays in the same Universe as Disco.and that DISCO is another alternate timeline like the kelvin one..that would make everything atleast tolerable
Couldn't the writers have come up with a "minimum butterfly" way of rescuing Rios? It could have been convoluted. Hell they had a good hour they could have cut from other episodes. And surely leaving him there with all his technical knowledge could have impacted the timeline quite seriously. It would have been more poignant to have him explain to Dr Ramirez why he has to leave - and given options to explore how it affects him in future episodes.
The entire season was like the concept 'exquisite corpse' where someone writes a page or chapter of a story and then another writer takes over and so on and so on. As a new person takes charge they consider what's come before but focus on what they want to, so if someone wants to write a 'searing social commentary' or a 'fancy reception James Bond infiltration with a musical number' scene, they do. It's a fun artistic exercise but makes for a helluva mess writing a TV show...
My guess has been that the whole crew knew from the outset that this was a Patrick Stewart vanity project. He had all the leverage and agreed to the series provided that it was based upon his notes for the character. And as much as I love Stewart as an actor and personality - he is not a screenwriter. Picard's characterization started going off the rails in the TNG movies, where Stewart said he'd star if they crowbarred romantic and action subplots for him, less of that stoicism and thoughtful diplomacy stuff. I see this series as being a logical development from that. It's essentially become Patrick Stewart's fanfic. That was the price of having him back.
Yeah, it ultimately came off as a vanity project to me as well. The whole season felt like an old man's fever dream to me.
@@kokukokubin6092 He famously has an extensive collection of Beavis and Butthead memorabilia.
I think I may have a potential "why did this happen" explanation -
In an interview, Terry Matalas (one of the showrunners) stated that since Seasons Two and Three were being produced back to back, he would handle season three while Akiva Goldsman would handle Season Two.
Goldsman has been responsible for writing I, ROBOT, the 1990s LOST IN SPACE movie, and the two Schumaker Batman films. I think Goldsman, as a writer, tends more towards the let's-set-up-for-the-next-action-sequence style of writing rather than tell a coherent script. (Ironically, he wrote the first episode for STRANGE NEW WORLDS, which is my least favorite, but indicates his weakness - hitting the nail on the head when it would require subtlety).
But everything you've noted about PICARD S2 is dead on - I got so frustrated with it that I quit after episode 3, watched your recaps, and finished with episode 10. I want to thank you and express my deep empathy for your suffering.
Probably a good idea to watch just the beginning and the end.
This appears to be Q's farewell and we wouldn't want to miss that.
I’m in the camp that feels the fanservice in Lower Decks mostly works, but I think you’re spot on here. Both in why so many people don’t object to it in LD (I already really like LD, so when it does cross the line between joking with fanservice and fanservice as the joke I forgive it) and in how obvious and distracting it is in Picard.
The alley scene with Raffi and Seven was the most frustrating things for me to watch. It starts out as a chase scene where they see that borg queen Agnes has killed someone and is on the run trying to create a borg army and not only do they just let her go but they take all the tension out of the scene by sitting on the hood of a car (feet away from a dead body) and talk about their relationship, which we never even got to see when it was good, have seen nothing but bickering since, and care about way less than the borg queen on the run that they apparently don’t care about anymore. I think the relationships were one of the main issues here. Why did everyone have to have a love interest? Why did Laris want Picard? Why are we doing this story line with him again? He chose starfleet over relationships. He has some regrets but already came to terms with that choice in Generations. The relationship that works best is between Christobal and the doctor. They should have focused on that relationship and left the rest out. Though I agree he shouldn’t have stayed in the past unless it was to right some of the injustices he sees, but then we have possible time line issues.
Also gotta love Borgnes' Harley Quinn (from 2nd Suicide Squad) look. Not.
Someone's gotta stay behind to kill all the butterflies...
That sounds like typical current day writing.
Why go for the more interesting plot that actually that has some tension in it.
Not only is it the wrong moment to talk about a relationship that so far has not come over as convincing.
It is so pushed to the foreground that if I did actually watch the show, I would wish that one or both characters died so that we would be free from it.
What troubled me is that I simply did not recognize the Seven character as she appeared on ST:PIC. Yes, I get that she'd "been through some things" and 20-odd years had passed since we'd seen her, but in your life are there people you encounter that you've known for that long whether you see much of them in the interim or not and their overall demeanor, bearing, etc. aren't the same at all? We knew that character for four years on ST:V and she had a certain arc but that's how we got to know her. I wish I knew what it was like at the table reads; had Jeri Ryan sat with the script beforehand and tried to find the character again with the lines she was given, and then come table-read time the director, showrunner, etc. were saying "No, no, Jeri - you've got to lose ALL that; you're just this woman with stuff stuck on her face now?" *We* still remember "Fun will now commence!" How do we, as an audience, find any familiarity with this character? Why is she even Seven; why isn't it some other character entirely, or why not just give the same story mechanics to Raffi?
Will I watch this show? No.
Will I watch an hour long episode of Steve ripping it a new ass? YES
It is interesting to recall what the first three episodes of season 2 accomplished was often accomplished on TOS or TNG in half an episode, allowing the rest of the episode to resolve the story.
Half an episode? First Contact managed to do the entire plot of Picard season 2 in its 111 minutes. They did the first three episodes of Picard in like...what...five minutes, ten tops?
I don't think we need to spend time in the alternate reality future to establish how bad it is, but I think we need to spend time in the alternate reality future because we enjoy fish out of water doppelganger hijinks. Seeing seven of nine as the president and all the ways that she played off of the other people around her was a treat. I even loved the final reveal where her husband asked her to tell him his full given name. That was a fun moment.
Yes I enjoyed episodes one and two immensely. And besides, it is a Star Trek trope to show us in granular detail how awful we are as humans and how awful we could become. Had no problem with show's opening or ending. The middle was very uneven.
Man…I agree with every word of this. Absolutely every word. Except that there’s _no_ good to be found _anywhere_ in it. I do like the general idea, I think this season could have been a fun two parter the way it was established in the first couple episodes. Nothing we haven’t seen before, but fun.
But there’s one scene. Just one. That I adore. When Jean-Luc is talking to Renee in front of the party, that little pep talk kinda thing. I don’t remember a single word of it…but I loved it. He was so damn great in that. For those few minutes…I saw Picard come to life. To me, he suddenly looked thirty years younger, and I could see the uniform on him again. It was absolutely wonderful. I don’t remember the lines…but the intent, and the performance, hit with me so well. And I saw my Captain again.
Picard is good in a mentor role.
I'm sure he's a big asset to The Academy.
In addition to the gratuitous fan service you noted Steve, how about this: in the penultimate scene of the season, as Picard’s “family” raise their glasses at Guinan’s bar we hear the iconic Jerry Goldsmith French horn melody from First Contact.
Not because it has anything to do with this scene, these characters or any themes of this season-if there were any-but because “hey remember this? From that thing you liked?”
It seems apparent that a LOT of the issues with Season 2 were Covid related, forcing them into bland locations and massive last minute rewrites to accommodate Covid restrictions. Characters splitting up constantly, entire episodes without major character appearances, scenes literally in LA backlots.
I don't believe this was the story they were originally planning to tell.
Whether true or not, this is the story they should probably be telling. 😀
I think the problem with a lot of shows is that they have a team of writers. In Britain, this is less common, we have a single writer who might write a whole drama series. One voice good or bad, but there is no pandering to network executives, just an attempt to tell a good story.
Everything you said about Q resonated with me. My hope, when this season was originally announced, with basically 'Tapesty', to the Nth degree. Let Q guide Picard through the 4 or 5 most important moments of his life, and how slight changes would have changed everything, maybe even changed the Federation itself. That would have been not only more interesting, but would have fit with the whole milieu of 'Old Man Picard'.
What a satisfying rant!
I think I actually laughed out loud at the absurdity of the 15 fiasco.
With the transition from season 1 to season 3, I started to wonder if they were thinking about turning it into a kind of "monster of the season" thing where each season would put them on a completely different adventure... Oh, well! lol
Honestly, my biggest problem with Picard season 2 wasn't that it was poorly written or that plot threads were dropped or that the whole story ended up being pointless. That's all bad, but it would have just created a bad Star Trek - which there is plenty of.
What really infuriated me about Season 2 was Q.
The writers claimed Season 2 was a love story - clearly meaning the story between Picard and Q but I have seen more wholesome love stories in porn.
Q was never a good guy in TNG and the show, very importantly, recognized that. When Q would appear the crew knew they were in for something awful and when the story was over, they'd tell him to fuck off and please don't come back.
In Picard he does the same kind of shit (without any of the charm he exudes in TNG) and Picard hugs him. Picard FORGIVES him. Picard tells Q that he is a good person despite Q never once being a good person in the entire franchise - especially in this show.
To end that story where Q rewrites history into a fascist hellscape, tries MULTIPLE times to get Picard killed and ends it by saying "I did it because I love you" with ANYONE accepting that framing is beyond offensive to me.
There was no proper response to what Q did other than to tell him to fuck off and die alone because his actions were unforgivable.
Q on Voyager is kind of a delightfully campy frenemy.
Q on TNG was both annoying and terrifying because you never quite knew what he was actually going to do. He was like the definition of an abusive parent who says he’s doing it for your own good. If this is a love story it’s a romance horror.
@@Pegasusthewyze
I think the real love affair is between Q and the fans.
This is his farewell to us (unless Paramount decide to resurrect him which is very possible).
I only read this dry summary and I already hate it vehemently.
@@Pegasusthewyze you know... I have to wonder.... was this entire season originally framed as a Q-prank? Was there ANY real danger in the original script idea? Because it'd be better if it was. Hell Q could lie to them and claim he's dying so that they are worried about what might happen if they fail to figure out what to do. Honestly having the danger be real in terms of what happens to the cast(but not the rest of the universe) would be fine with me.
I disagree that Q was never a good guy. It's clear from TNG that Q has a certain kind of fondness for Picard, although he is expressing it in a weird way. "Tapestry" is the most obvious example, but there are other instances as well. (Even introducing the Borg to the Enterprise in "Q Who" can be seen in that way, as his action allowed Starfleet to prepare for the Borg - which is more than Guinan did.) The more sympathetic Q from Voyager didn't come out of the blue.
God's damnit! Why did you make me relive this s**t?
Great commentary as always. Thank you.
I got the distinct impression the writers had certain ideas but then changed their minds. Take the character of Adam Soong and his daughter. Yes, it was obvious they just wanted an excuse to bring back fan favorite Brent Spiner. I kept thinking we’d learn the reason all the Soongs look the same. That they were actually clones and that this is what ultimately lead Noonien Soong to want to create an android who looked like him, so he could stop cloning himself. Nope. Or the FBI agent who detained Picard and Guinan. They used the same actor who played a time traveler on Voyager. I kept expecting a big reveal where we’d learn the FBI agent was really that character and was trying to restore the timeline too. Nope. I really hope the writers of season 3 don’t just wing it like they did in the first 2 seasons. Map all 10 episodes and don’t abandon ideas after one episode because you lost interest.
I want to defend te Borg Qeen plotline.
This was a version of the Borg Queen who saw that she kept being defeated throughout timelines.
Every single one was one where she was doomed.
They established that unity and togetherness was a thing she yearned for (which, while strange, is a somewhat plausible way to interpret the collective and was pretty well established through the season), and Yurati gives her a new way she can achieve that AND be compatible with her potential enemies.
Note, this should only be possible with a very desperate queen, one who was tortured and fully alone, and, in another word, pretty hopeless.
I thought the Jurati arc was pretty well written, unlike most of the rest of the season.
While I don't see wanting togetherness as being a motivation for the borg queen before, if you take it as a thing then yeah Jurati convincing her to try something new and adapt makes some sense. I'm more disappointed it was never followed up on, thrown out for a contrived nostalgia fest instead.
I whole heartedly appreciate all of your content. Thanks, Steve!
Jurati's pact with the Borg Queen becomes more significant when you understand that no friendship is not magic, but belonging, community, and an intimate understanding is what a lot of people don't have and wish for.
I really liked Jurati's arc.
My favourite part of the show.
A curious redemption for the season 1 murderer.
Yeah I had no problem with it either. The Borg have a backstory. They started somewhere, probably with a person or group. Why not with someone who was lonely? Could have been someone who was angry or genocidal. But actually lonely makes more sense. And it just got out of control
The takeaway I took from the season as a whole was that the entire point was to get Picard to find that key and resolve to put it back where his future (younger) self would find it. He had to choose between accepting who he was despite the pain of losing his mother, or intentionally changing his own history. So in a way, the season was a long, drawn out version of the episode Tapestry from TNG. All the dead ends and unresolved issues are ultimately beside the point, if not procedurally (i.e., from a storytelling standpoint) then at least as to the overall "Picard has to choose to forgive himself" overall arc of the season. With that said, I concur with the great majority that a 10-episode season filled with plot holes and unresolved misdirection just to give filler to what should have been at most a two-episode story is extremely frustrating.
The Orville was so deadset on keeping the timeline as it was forced a heartbreaking incident that ripped Malloy away from the happiest he's ever been. I'd say that is a stark difference than how most shows handle time travel.
That episode was so good it could have been an Asimov story or like a vintage Twilght Zone episode.
@@Pegasusthewyze
Brave of them to make Ed and Kelly so evil, though I don't think they're altogether aware how evil their behaviour was.
They out - evilled Janeway during The Tuvix Incident.
The Orville was beyond excellent and I don’t envy Ed and Kelly’s decision
"The Orville" is more Star Trek than the newer Star Trek movies and series.
It's so much more than it appears to be, at first sight - a Star Trek copy/parody. They took the original ST and TNG's core essence and moved forward in style.
@@kadmus78 People love to say this but they've either never seen Strange New Worlds or are in straight up denial.
Agree on the pacing issue; Discovery suffers it too. There was not enough time to devote to any decent exposition so that the payoffs felt either unearned, rushed, or dropped entirely. I liked Season 2 for the nostalgia factor, but I agree on all points with what you said.
What you can say about TNG season 1 is, that it managed to hook me as a small child. Wonder if Picard (season 1 or 2) can do that? Well, no. Can't show that gore to a child of that age. I would have had nightmares.
Different medium. TNG was broadcast on television, which still have very different regulations than streamed content. If it was the same, we would have never been able to hear Tilly say, "Oh my God guys this is FUCKING cool!" =)
Never heard of you, this is the first youtube of yours that I've watched, and I agree with you 100%
The plotline with Picard's mother bothered me for a couple of reasons:
1. Picard's been assimilated by the Borg, tortured by Cardassians, forced to live an entire other lifetime, lost his brother and nephew, and died. It feels dismissive of these terrible events for the writers to go ahead and give him a brand-new source of pain from his childhood and mostly ignore the others.
And, also, if they did want to give him family issues from childhood, why not just explore his strained relationships with his father and brother? Difficult family dynamics are enough to give people lasting issues. Picard didn't need an abusive father or a suicidal mother: not getting along with his family would have been enough. That's valid, just like in real life.
2. This plotline feels like a Very Special Episode about what it's like to be the child of someone with a serious, chronic mental illness. Now, that's a serious topic that deserves to be talked about. I'm just waiting for Star Trek's Very Special Episode about actually being the person with the illness. In media, I feel it's too often "my son has autism" or "my mother had schizophrenia" and not often enough "I am autistic" or "I have schizophrenia". We won't get far destigmatizing these things when only other people are allowed to have them.
It doesn't help that it's mostly just dumped into a single episode, so Yvette's and Jean-Luc's experience with her condition is kind of just "mentioned" rather than "explored". She's left a 2-note character, I feel: she's a loving wife and mother, she lives with mental illness, and...? Nothing else? Well, I guess that's just a symptom of being someone else's side character.
I only just got round to watching season 2. And I got to binge it at my own pace. I'd say I liked it. It had that Qish vibe of a large plot to make a small point. And its pacing mattered less as I was able to watch at my leisure rather than holding on week for week.
😂 Your spot on! I think it’s sort of a problem with modern writing in general. Not just Star Trek people have big ideas, they want to go from point A to C but seemingly gave no thought to B.
Clearly ST: Picard was written by the Underpants Gnomes
I'm convinced the entire series was an extended improv act. I think this fully dawned on me with the Pat Borgatar scene.
Thanks!
The ability of Picard and Jurati figuring out the meaning of the number 15 reminds me of Batman and Robin solving riddles in many episodes of the 1960's Batman series.
Has it dawned on anyone else that we now have a generation of writers that never learned to read? Not just the technical part of reading/writing. The "I have nothing else to distract me or really anything to do" act of reading. Mix in monopoly media and a complete lack of any will to try something new, and we get jangly keys for our $12 a month subscription.
I must admit, I was wondering why everyone was so okay with Jurati being a murderer, and that DID come up again. Like... a lot.
Guinan doesn't remember Picard in spite of him looking exactly the same and having a notable impact on her life.
The punk remembers an incident forty years earlier with a different person in a different city in which he was asked to turn off his music and he was knocked unconscious. Does the punk play his music frequently on the bus? Does he get asked a lot to turn it down and always backs down? Has no one else ever asked him?
Thanks Steve - it doesn't just make us mad, it makes us sad to see so much time, money and effort wasted on productions like these. I'm going to wait for s3 of Picard to totally screen and not bother with an Amazon sub until I know how good/bad it is. Twice Bitten, Twice Shy
Thank you for articulating so much of what I felt was wrong.. I couldn't decide and just found it tedious.
I just finished watching season 2, and I think you nailed the reasons why it didn't work. On paper, it seems like a good idea.
What it missed was character-driven plot. Did things happen because of character motivations? Or just because the plot needed something to happen?
The messages they tried to share fell flat, and a big part of that was because the character motivations were never very clear.
I remember getting to the end of Episode 10 when Q is saying goodbye to Picard and thinking to myself, clearly the show wants me to feel sad in this moment, and I do, but literally the only reason I feel sad is because of John de Lancie's performance. I have no idea *why* I should be sad, since almost nothing has been explained about why Q has done any of this, or why he is even *in* this story, and what little has been explained makes no sense or is self-contradictory.
Ok, if you watch all the Q episodes from TNG, DS9, and VOY Death Wish, and pay close attention, it makes sense why Q does what he does in STP. Q loves Picard. He is dying for some reason, and doesn't want to die knowing that his beloved Jean-Luc is going to die alone like he is about to. Q knows he's out of time to be with Picard, so he wants to make sure his Favorite is being loved and taken care of. Q's methods of going about this are strange and harsh, but Q has nothing but good intentions. Anyone who insists Q is being evil as they claim he always has been has not done their homework.
Sorry (not sorry), Kirk Thatcher's cameo as the Punk is the greatest single cameo in the history of cameos - and there's nothing that will change my mind.
Have to say I love your work and having you on while I work, its like talking to a colleague who doesn't let me get a word in edgeways, but it doesn't matter because I agree with 99% of what he says. Season 2 for the first few episodes was a bit of a guilty pleasure but by the end it was hard work. By the time Wesley Crusher was tying together Gary Seven's supervisors to the Traveller and his own undefined almost Q-like powers recruiting the unremarkable Core, it felt like an SNL skit bolted on to the end.
I would also add that Elnor died and returned as visions and a hologram, so a 4th actor not really playing himself in Season 2. Also weird that the Punk remembers the original timeline but Guinan doesn't. The series just fails to operate within its own established rules.
Both seasons felt like an emotional end scene was conceived (Picard/Data) and (Picard/Q) and an entire series was retroactively created to service that scene. And its this that makes me wonder if the final season is also based on a preconceived death scene for one or more characters and the ten episodes will be an equally convoluted sequence of "but what ifs".
Its a shame because as a fan, I really want to like it, but wow it was tough to watch. It also makes me so pleased that DS9 has escaped the new wave of shows. The last thing I need to see is Nicole De Boer or Cirroc Lofton turning up and doing a Wesley...
"Also weird that the Punk remembers the original timeline but Guinan doesn't. The series just fails to operate within its own established rules. "
I didn't even catch that, but that is a very good point. Guinan could not recall the original timeline because Starfleet never existed, thus the events with Data's head in old San Francisco never occurred. Why then would the punk on the bus react the way he did in the future if the events of the past (Spock giving him the neck pinch) never occurred?
I think Guinan not remembering is b/c it is pre "Generations".
Remember that 10 Forward was named that because it was in deck 10, forward section on the D.
AGAIN... I think your analysis was brilliant.... There were things I didn't like about the second season of Picard, but I didn't really think about it enough to articulate them. You did the thinking and articulating FOR me and did a brilliant job of it.. Thank you. you are a; ways a joy to watch and you always give me something to think about... ONWARDS and upwards, my friend.... Live long and prosper... ooppppsss, wrong character...... Ohhh Well...
Even as someone who's a fan of PIC, I completely understand what you're saying about the avoiding butterflies criticism. Given that, and knowing your chops for rewriting episodes which I always particularly enjoy ngl, how would you have presented that particular dilemma? Would you have them talk about butterflies at all?
Simple: do what previous writers did: look at how history was "supposed to be" IE find info on where the bus Rios got stuffed into was supposed to be that day. Then... work with that.
I guess Picard's brother was away at summer camp during Picard's entire childhood.
I liked when Jurati sang.
Do you think that in Star Trek IV when Kirk says 'LDS' instead of 'LSD' that writers were actually making fun of Mormons, or the effect of organized religion (or cults) on it's members?
Space Mormons, like in The Expanse.
That's what Trek needs.
I'm glad I watched it, if only because it caused me to watch Terry Matalas' 12 Monkeys show, and it was cool to see James Callis, Agent Wells etc in that show. It's honestly a great series!
An interesting look at the 2nd season Steve, but I do have two things that you either missed or neglected to mention. 1st off the plot of the second season wasn't just about picard and him mommy issues, it also had the secondary plot of helping him to see his brash move of not stopping to hear out what the borg queen, aka jurati, had to say. If the timeline had been allowed to go on the federation might have suffered it biggest disaster since the dominion war. 2nd, the butterfly thing was kind of redundant as picard stated in the last episode that the bullet holes from the borged mercenaries where there already, this goes to show that, along with borg queen jurati was on the stargazer, proves that the group where already part of the origional time line. Or at least that is my thoughts.
Yes, I would’ve preferred a scenario where Q simply saves the Stargazer crew and shifts them a couple years in the future or so ... demonstrating the impact Picard’s choice had.
I did find it funny that Picard's plan for Jurati, which was Jurati's plan (even in the future men steal women's ideas) was basically a Xanatos gambit.
In an episode directed by Jon Frakes.
The way they handled the Rios ICE situation, and the state of Earth's climate, came off more like hamfisted propaganda than any effort at commentary.
Kore was pronounced CORE-ay, not CORE (as in warp core). At least that's how it sounded when Soong said it.
When Wil/Wesley addressed her, too.
The FBI tangent one really pissed me off. They could have better used the actor to portray the return of the Ducane character from Voyager, sent back in time from the 29th century to investigate what Picard did to change the timeline and provide help (or try to at least) rectifying the situation.
There are a couple of interesting ideas that could have made for an good two-parter, but it would still have needed to be reworked. Unlike Picard Season 2, Tapestry fleshed out Picard's backstory in a compelling way. It does stand to reason that Q might mess with Picard again to teach him a lesson, but UGH it really needed to be a message that made sense and was interesting.
I felt bad, because I’m a big fan of Patrick Stewart, that I became bored during season two of Picard. Thank you for making me realize that it wasn’t me, it was the writing.
It's like the writers were in a hurry to get through Picard in order to get to writing Strange New Worlds..."Shit, we have 8 hours to write a Picard season - let's get this over with!" Great analysis as usual.
season one should have been a backdoor pilot series for a new firefly-style show in the trek universe.
I liked the new characters and found that Picard was the one element that wasn't needed
I agree with you 100% on this as a life long Trekker. I'm not a nitpicking nerd over NuTrek shows. I actually like the 2009 reboot, 2 was meh & 3 was okay. I don't care for Discovery or Picard. I absolutely loved SNW! Back to Trek basics & decent stories to follow on a weekly basis.
Thank you for articulating my flaws with "JL" so properly!
JL ... Never liked that. Sounds so ... NOT Jean-Luc Picard.
Had to pause the video in order to order a Chateau Picard t-shirt.
Another "hey look who it is cameo fan-service" was Jay Karnes as FBI Agent Wells. He had previously played Time Agent Lieutenant Ducane (from the 29th century) on Star Trek: Voyager, and I thought it would be an interesting tie in for Agent Wells to really be the Time Agent from Voyager sent because in the 29th century they detected a change in time. But the showrunners just wanted to do another "hey look who it is cameo."
i really wanted to love picard. there were some lights in season one. serious potential. season 2 was... a vanity project. thinking about it, i keep coming back to your brilliant analysis about the diminishing returns of ric flair.
it was ric flair, wasn't it? sorry, my last wrestling match was around the time goldberg made his original insane run.
Great video Steve. As to your ultimate question about “HOW did this happen?” I’ve thought about it and I really really hate the conclusion I’ve come to, especially as a lifelong hardcore Trekkie. But unfortunately it’s the only thing that makes any sense to me in the slightest. I think in the future we’ll find out that the “how” this happened is in fact, Patrick Stewart himself. Think about it, here you have a legendary actor returning to play one of if not his most important and iconic roles, for what is in all probability the final time, he’s an EP on the show and the show is named after his character. If you were a writer or even another Executive Producer on that show how easy would it be for you to look your hero in the eyes and say “NO!” to his ideas. Why did Orla Brady, Brent Spiner, and Isa Briones come back, because Sir Patrick loved working with them and wanted to do it again. Why did Wil Wheaton make a ham-fisted cameo. Because Sir Patrick wanted to make sure he got a shout out before we head into a new season featuring the entire rest of the TNG cast. Which mark my words will include a similar cringey cameo for Denise Crosby for the same reason. What’s with the sudden Mommy problems, Patrick wanted to play Picard as more emotional, weary, and depressed. The rest of the problems feel like the writers doing their best to try and link all these disparate ideas and wants into as cohesive a story as possible. I love Patrick Stewart and I guess part of why I’m not more angry about the quality of the show is because I too feel like he’s earned the right to do whatever he wants so let him. Let Grandpa take his favorite car out for one more joyride, let him tell that stupid “one who got away” story to you again, let him snort a railroad line of viagra and take that quilting circle to pound town. Why because you love him, you want to see him happy, and you’re probably just about out of chances to do so.
Just so.
It's like his infamous album of cowboy songs.
Sir Patrick has earned our indulgence.
Season 2 felt like a huge train wreck. I feel like it didn’t have a plan and the writers didn’t understand the source material.
"This isn't a lesson. It's a penance!" [proceeds to spend ten episodes teaching a lesson]
I suspect the problem was that the writers were having too much fun with SNW that they couldn't be bothered with Picard.
A much better send-off for Q would have been for him to relive his and Jean-Luc's greatest hits in the form of a musical, where Q decides to use the last of his powers for three purposes, done in three acts.
First act is out of selfishness: he's not handling his death well, and since he can go back and forth in between time and space, he's going bring ol' Jean-Luc along, but with a revisionist's twist that makes Q seems purely benevolent, and in an alternate reality where everyone (except for the two of them) dance and sing EVERYTHING.
Second act is to help Picard figure out what the Borg Queen is up to by having a big chorus number involving many Borg all singing in unison. Make it an ear worm that Picard will never forget after the "show" is done.
Third act is to help Picard deal with unresolved trauma by revisiting his role as Locutus, the disconnect from the Borg, the fire that killed family, maybe make the song about "seeing FIVE lights". Make remembering and acknowledging the trauma important for growth.
In the end, Q sings a medley showstopper, sheds a single tear, he snaps fingers, disappears, and the curtains closes.
Since this would be a turning point in the season and would be PERFECT to be right in the middle... title the episode "Intermission".
I am a big TNG fan. I thought Season 1 was bad and didn't care enough to renew my subscription. My biggest issues was the writing. They killed Picard. That seemed like a good enough ending for me. Sounds like I dodged a bullet.
Agree on pretty much all points. One thing that sticks out for me, talking about the Rios/ICE subplot, is that is highlights a really big problem for just about all modern live-action Trek. While I'm not going to claim that Trek of old was always perfect and didn't often handle real-world issues in a simplistic, ham-fisted way, the trend now seems to be to do nothing other than hold something up and say "look at this. isn't this bad!" and then completely drop it. There's no attempt to create an argument against injustice, racism, sexism, and so on. It just expects the audience to have a specific opinion on the subject, so they can clap and cheer and say "right on!". I'm all for Trek shining a light on real world issues, and think doing so goes right to the heart of what makes Trek what it is and was. But it needs to be capable of handling the subject in a mature, nuanced way. The other kinds of mature content in these new series makes it clear that these shows are aimed at adults, but in this respect it treats its audience like babies. I feel like this is one of the reasons the new series' come in for so much criticism for being 'woke'. The basic message seems clear - if you don't automatically have a certain set of values and political beliefs, then Trek is simply not aimed at you at all. It feels like a real waste.
Steve you hit the nail on the head!! Neither Q nor Picard seem much changed by the events of the show. Not to mention how did all of this tie in with the huge transdimensional rift that would have destroyed half the Alpha Quadrant? I didn't even remember that he was supposed to end up with Laris. How does she feel about Crusher coming back into his life with a kid?
Another frustrating thing about the immigration plot was how one-dimensionally evil the ICE guards were and no other aspect of illegal immigration was touched on. A hallmark of TNG and DS9 was how any time they decided to tackle some social issue, they presented a nuanced analysis by having SOMEONE from the bridge crew take the opposing side and present it during meetings in a thoughtful way. It's silly to pretend that the only problem with illegal immigration is that the ICE guards are mean. But that seemed to be the point on ST:P.
I recently rewatched the S1 finale of DS9 ("In the Hands of the Prophets"), and even though they're very clearly doing a story about the evils of religious fanaticism, Kira initially takes the opposing side pointing out how it shouldn't be a non-starter that people's religious views be taken into account in public education. Then when Jake starts bad-mouthing Veddick Winn, Ben tells him to chill out, and that considering other people's views is important, and mindlessly labelling them as 'BAD' makes you just as bad as they are. There seemed to be a very clear right and wrong in this episode, but the writers still made it a point to remind you that not everything is black and white.
The ICE sub - plot was one of the more random and one of the least developed elements of the season.
I swore at that 10 forward scene again. Deck 10 forward, forward as in the front of the ship, I really hated that. Couldn't have figured out some other way for him to find her if it was totally necessary for the story. The way Q was acting made sense to me. He is dying and can't stop it, going from sad to angry and back again. The Q go through their entire existence being to do whatever they want. I saw it as wanting to help someone he cared for but also railing against whatever was causing his death. Season 2 had a lot of stuff that I was unhappy with but also stuff I enjoyed.
Sometimes when we do role playing, the characters get a bit unfocused. Often people do things that lead to nothing. And sometimes when to much time goes by the game Master just puts the next Plot point in front of the players weather or not they earned it. I Imagine the script is just a session protocol of some role playing group. So far that model sufficiently explains all that happened.
The whole detention mini-arch would have been 110% better if throughout it Rios was torn between wanting to do something about this injustice that was happening not just around him but to him and his commitment to preserving the timeline.
Yes, you need to establish the bleak reality of the alternate timeline, but no, you don't need an entire episode to do that. Star Trek has been establishing bleak futures in five minutes flat for decades. Hell, City on The Edge of Forever established the hellish alternate history with an unanswered communication call! We never saw the dark future that happened because of an apparent Axis victory in WWII, and we didn't need to. The episode left that to our imaginations. And that was brilliant. This is one of the many reasons that episode is still considered one of the best hours of sci-fi ever broadcast.
Pumped for your next video, thats one of my favorite characters from across all Trek.
I agree with nearly 100% of what you said about Picard Season 2, as it also genuinely felt worse than TNG fanfiction I wrote in high-school.
What an absolute waste of Stewart and the return of Q.
I always got the vibe from this season that somewhere way back down the line this started as an outline for a tng movie back in the early 2000s that sat on a shelf for years and then got stretched and stuffed to last 10 episodes.
Q's lacking plot motive was a real disappointment to me as well. I figured the Borg joining the federation was important to the Q, ergo the destruction of this "new contact" started a temporal cascade that will end the Q. It's way more in line for a dying Q to set up an elaborate means to get Picard to trust the Borg for his own survival/rebirth, than as a good-bye. And would make sense to the repeated overlap of the Q, Borg, and El-Aurian. This would have kept Q's time travel antics (get over yourself or the federation and Q both end) and push Picard to be a better human, with trust and listening to his most hated enemy.