It's been about a year since Star Trek: Picard's first season wrapped. To the shock and awe of absolutely no one, there is no fandom consensus on whether or not it was good. Opinions range from saying it's the best thing Trek has done in ages to calling it a dumpster fire and "Kurtzman's last straw." (Surprise: He has many remaining straws.)
My opinion echoes many others: It's a solid effort and worth watching, albeit with some considerable caveats along the way. Agnes Jurati's redemption feels unearned; the first half of the two-part season finale is rough; too much time is devoted to Narek's Soji faux-mance; Narissa is Space Cersei by way of a Conan the Barbarian sequel. (All right, full disclosure: I enjoy her anyway, albeit ironically.) And while I'm almost never this kind of fan nitpicker (most tech-related complaints completely fly over my head, tbqh), I do find the idea of 200+ Romulan warbirds showing up post-supernova to be... odd.
There's also a lot that I do enjoy. "Stardust City Rag," the Seven of Nine episode that "destroys the integrity of Star Trek" or whatever, is a winner. I don't care that Icheb's final fate is one of the most disturbingly tone-shifting in franchise history -- in context it clicks. Rios and Raffi don't make the best inaugural impression, but I still like them. I really like Soji and don't mind that "Dahj seemed more interesting," as some say. "Nepenthe" is like the one thing about Star Trek: Picard that most agree is a gem and I am right there with them on that one. Elnor is an excellent new addition and I trust he'll have more to chew on next season. I don't even hate the central plot conceit of an AI galactic threat; sure, it's... incredulously akin to Star Trek: Discovery's sophomore plotline, and yeah, we don't need universe-ending stakes every damn time, but I'm mostly OK with it, anyway.
But more than anything, it's this -- the culmination of Jean-Luc Picard's heartaches over the loss of a dear friend. I get the criticisms that the TNG feature films pushed the Picard/Data friendship to an odd degree, given that Data/Geordi was the bigger part of the show. But by the end of the show's run, there was more than enough chemistry and care between captain and android to suit me. Seeing our dear Jean-Luc, once again played to perfection by Sir Patrick, wracked with grief was a twofold winner. Not only did it make for an excellent character arc that gave us a terrific narrative "way in" for Soji; it also directly addressed the fact that most of us (if not all...) were dissatisfied with the fact that Star Trek: Nemesis was our 24th-century "series finale" for 18 years and Data's sacrifice, while it could have worked in a far better flick, is so sudden and unearned.
It is as if Michael Chabon and his fellow scribes, as well as Stewart and Brent Spiner themselves, fully understood that. Though the hand-wave regarding B-4 is hilariously blunt ("oh, uh, yeah, he wasn't sentient after all or whatever"), it was worth pinching Nemesis' narrative nerves in order to give us a story of one man's search for peace following a dear friend's parting.
It might not have worked. We might not have gotten a satisfying conclusion. If that happened, well, that would be a bitter pill to swallow, given that the writers clearly wished to wash away the blot. Instead, they succeeded, and we wound up with one of Star Trek's greatest scenes in all its 54.5 years and counting.
You can stop watching around 3:47 or so if you'd like -- the rest is outside the context of this topic, showing the first seconds following the scene.
Undoubtedly, someone or someones will claim it's hackneyed, silly, dumb, or itself unearned much like the stuff it seeks to "erase." This topic might backfire on me because I've not seen a corner of the net more unified in its Star Trek: Picard apathy and anger than Era's. Hey, whatever. That's OK. I'm sharing my love here. Even if I liked the season less than I do, it all would have been worth it for this. It's goddamn beautiful.
My opinion echoes many others: It's a solid effort and worth watching, albeit with some considerable caveats along the way. Agnes Jurati's redemption feels unearned; the first half of the two-part season finale is rough; too much time is devoted to Narek's Soji faux-mance; Narissa is Space Cersei by way of a Conan the Barbarian sequel. (All right, full disclosure: I enjoy her anyway, albeit ironically.) And while I'm almost never this kind of fan nitpicker (most tech-related complaints completely fly over my head, tbqh), I do find the idea of 200+ Romulan warbirds showing up post-supernova to be... odd.
There's also a lot that I do enjoy. "Stardust City Rag," the Seven of Nine episode that "destroys the integrity of Star Trek" or whatever, is a winner. I don't care that Icheb's final fate is one of the most disturbingly tone-shifting in franchise history -- in context it clicks. Rios and Raffi don't make the best inaugural impression, but I still like them. I really like Soji and don't mind that "Dahj seemed more interesting," as some say. "Nepenthe" is like the one thing about Star Trek: Picard that most agree is a gem and I am right there with them on that one. Elnor is an excellent new addition and I trust he'll have more to chew on next season. I don't even hate the central plot conceit of an AI galactic threat; sure, it's... incredulously akin to Star Trek: Discovery's sophomore plotline, and yeah, we don't need universe-ending stakes every damn time, but I'm mostly OK with it, anyway.
But more than anything, it's this -- the culmination of Jean-Luc Picard's heartaches over the loss of a dear friend. I get the criticisms that the TNG feature films pushed the Picard/Data friendship to an odd degree, given that Data/Geordi was the bigger part of the show. But by the end of the show's run, there was more than enough chemistry and care between captain and android to suit me. Seeing our dear Jean-Luc, once again played to perfection by Sir Patrick, wracked with grief was a twofold winner. Not only did it make for an excellent character arc that gave us a terrific narrative "way in" for Soji; it also directly addressed the fact that most of us (if not all...) were dissatisfied with the fact that Star Trek: Nemesis was our 24th-century "series finale" for 18 years and Data's sacrifice, while it could have worked in a far better flick, is so sudden and unearned.
It is as if Michael Chabon and his fellow scribes, as well as Stewart and Brent Spiner themselves, fully understood that. Though the hand-wave regarding B-4 is hilariously blunt ("oh, uh, yeah, he wasn't sentient after all or whatever"), it was worth pinching Nemesis' narrative nerves in order to give us a story of one man's search for peace following a dear friend's parting.
It might not have worked. We might not have gotten a satisfying conclusion. If that happened, well, that would be a bitter pill to swallow, given that the writers clearly wished to wash away the blot. Instead, they succeeded, and we wound up with one of Star Trek's greatest scenes in all its 54.5 years and counting.
You can stop watching around 3:47 or so if you'd like -- the rest is outside the context of this topic, showing the first seconds following the scene.
Undoubtedly, someone or someones will claim it's hackneyed, silly, dumb, or itself unearned much like the stuff it seeks to "erase." This topic might backfire on me because I've not seen a corner of the net more unified in its Star Trek: Picard apathy and anger than Era's. Hey, whatever. That's OK. I'm sharing my love here. Even if I liked the season less than I do, it all would have been worth it for this. It's goddamn beautiful.
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