Valkrist wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 8:07 am
I'll start off by saying that for a show titled 'Picard', it sure looked like it was really about Data. Not that my fondness for the latter is any less than what I feel for our beloved captain, but it seems now like we spent ten episodes in what amounted to an effort to bring closure to something that happened in a movie 18 years ago, It all began promisingly enough, with enough forward-moving events that finally got us past this obsession with revisiting the past, but in the end that's exactly where we returned. We had dealt with Data's death already. Did we need to go there again? I was beginning to think halfway through the show that we would see Data's return to life in one fashion or another, not a pull-the-plug moment.
I guess they must have felt like Picard's remorse over Data's death had to be a driving factor in his arc for the first season. True, we as fans had dealt with Data's death, and Picard himself seemed to have dealt with it by the end of Nemesis. But apparently like his Borg experience, there are some things he can't quite let go of. And now in the twilight of his life and feeling his own mortality, I think it's realistic for these old feelings to get stirred up. So I don't have a problem with that.
Anyhow, this leads to what for me was the biggest disappointment of all: Picard's death.
There was no twist; no surprise; no shock; no... nothing. The show had been very bluntly telling us for some time that Picard's time was nearly up. Ok. The moment the golem is shown in last week's episode, it all clicked into place and put on display how threadbare the writing is. It was too obvious, but they couldn't keep themselves from showing their hand too early. Oh I know that if we hadn't seen the golem and then they pulled it out of nowhere at the last moment to give Picard a new body, it would've been even worse for the lack of setup. However, the solution would have been much easier: don't kill Picard.
Read here: https://trekmovie.com/2020/03/26/michae ... -season-2/ I knew the golem would be used for one of our heroes, but I thought it would be Data. I mostly expected he would return to life "permanently" by the end of the series. I knew from the earlier references to Maddox' ability to recreate his memories from fractal neuronal cloning that beyond any doubt, at a minimum Data's consciousness would exist in a holodeck, if nothing else. When the golem was introduced (which Picard incorrectly pronounced "Gollum" in the final episode, yes he did, Precious, yes he did), I assumed wrongly that his consciousness would be installed in it. I thought that all the more so since the golem would undoubtedly be configured to look like Data, as it was intended to house Altan Soong's mind. But my ability to correctly prognosticate Star Trek seems to be very limited. Instead, Data asks to die. This was unexpected, yet in keeping with his character and his desire to fully experience what it means to be human. It was also consonant with other sci fi I've read, where AIs ultimately decide they wish to die. But at the end of the day, we lost Data again. I was saddened by this, though in sci fi no one is ever truly dead. He can always be brought back. But after his speech about something being immortal that isn't supposed to be, not being real, any future resurrections would totally undermine that.
The death of a great character shouldn't feel this hollow or inconsequential, especially when its impact is undone in about five minutes or less. Sure it made Soji collapse the portal, but I have my own problems with that. The ease with which Picard's death was handled recalls the similar trend on Discovery where death seems to have no meaning, characters can come back with ease and convenience, and the writers are too afraid to take risks. It's also very hard to feel anything close to sadness or shock when it's announced weeks before that the show had been renewed for a second season, and that they intend to run it for four seasons in total. Were we supposed to think at some point that they would be changing the show's title because Picard was going to die? No. We knew this wouldn't happen and therefore the big event of the finale feels ho-hum.
Then there's the absolutely breezy way in which Picard himself handles it all. For a man deeply in touch with his humanity and who had his existence shattered by his experience with Borg assimilation, something that haunted him until the end, coming back to life in an android body is treated more or less like a "this is so cool!" moment than the rather important existential crisis one would expect him to have. It was just too convenient, easy, and very poorly handled. Picard deserves better writing than that. Patrick Stewart deserves better respect than that. Perhaps they will explore the personal ramifications of this new existence in the next season, but the way in which everything was so quickly, neatly, and conveniently wrapped up in just a few minutes makes me very skeptical of that.
Again, see the link.
I should note that my problem with Picard's shrugging off of something this momentous doesn't come from feeling that he's no longer Picard or 'real'. At first I struggled with that, feeling like I was just looking at a cheap copy and that my Picard was well and truly dead. I suppose in the true sense, he is, but only the vessel that carried his consciousness. As previously established on TNG with the struggles that Data went through, he was considered an individual, and I'm more than willing to accord the new Picard that status. This is fiction, after all, and I didn't view Spock any differently after his atoms were reconstituted by the Genesis effect either.
I would have had a real problem with it for Picard had they not made clear a while back that they had a process to transfer actual consciousness and not just copy over the memories. They didn't mention "soul," but Star Trek doesn't usually deal in souls. However, I felt when Picard was going to leave the simulation containing Data, the light flooding in through the door was a reference to the "tunnel of light" the dying supposedly see. In any event, Picard's consciousness was transferred. He is Picard. Ripley is only a clone with some of Ripley's memories. She is not Ripley.
Onward to the rest, mixing the good and bad as I think of stuff:
- Going back an episode, I'm glad that the awkward "I love you" moment shared between Raffi and Picard went nowhere. I'm sure I was supposed to feel something when it happened, but there was nothing but confusion and "huh?" coming out of me at that moment, followed by a sensation of "seriously"? Nothing inherently wrong with the revelation, mind you, but it felt meaningless to me as the viewer because we have almost no connection to Raffi. We get a bit of background and some insight into her fractious relationship with Picard, but I felt we were being asked to accept that someone we have watched and known intimately for two decades was now going to be romantically attached to someone we barely knew. There's just no investment or believability to it because we've not seen that relationship grow and develop, we just have to accept that it was always there. Obviously there wasn't time, but it helps to provide a connection for us when we see this happen, like Riker and Troi, Worf and Jadzia, and Paris and Torres. I was left feeling like I could care less about Raffi and Picard because of the detachment I felt for her. Luckily, it looks like this will be brushed under the rug as an expression of love between friends rather than something romantic.
I in no way interpreted her "I love you" as an expression of romantic love. That never occurred to me for a second. I think it was simply that she felt she was saying a final goodbye to a dear friend who was about to die, and she was not going to miss the opportunity to tell him she cared. If I thought I was saying a final goodbye to my best friend and thought I'd never see him again, I'd certainly tell him I loved him.
- Following from the point above, was the very rushed and next "huh?" moment for me, when we see Seven and Raffi interlocking fingers on the ship near the end. Say what? At least with Picard, she would have had 14 years or more to develop something, but didn't these two just meet? I'm not so old-fashioned to not believe in instant attraction and acting upon such impulses - I've been there myself - but this felt extremely out of left field, and forced. Again, in this age where inclusion and pandering seem to be overriding everything, I guess they needed to shoehorn a last minute same-sex relationship between characters with zero history together? Lastly, not that it matters, but was there ever any indication that Seven was gay, or at least bi? I seem to recall her spurning Harry Kim's advances, but didn't she end Voyager in a relationship of sorts with Chakotay? I'm sure that likely didn't work out, but I'm always wary of retconning established characters and giving them new traits simply because you feel a need to be up with the times. That bothers me to no end. Introduce all the new LGBTQ characters you want, but please don't force me to accept that characters that we are already supposed to know well suddenly have these major surprises for us. Seeing that simple hand gesture between Raffi and Seven to me was the same as if they'd shown Picard and Rios locking lips. Again, zero wrong with that except that would be a revelation about Picard that I think very few would be willing to accept this late in the game. Seven doesn't have quite as much of a foothold in our gallery of heroes from the past, but she's up there. It felt jarring and again, very forced.
Here's where I zing you. ;-P You were not paying attention in the Freecloud episode, where it was strongly implied that Seven and Bjayzel had had a relationship, and you were not paying attention, or have forgotten, my comment about it when I posted about that episode. Beyond that, although the very friendly finger entwining between Seven and Raffi surprised me just a tiny hair because it seemed a little abrupt, I think it's very realistic for Seven to still be discovering her sexuality. Real women who have never been assimilated by the Borg and have sexual desire eradicated often don't figure out their desires until later in life. So, although Seven did have a relationship with Chakotay, it seems completely natural that she's figuring out she likes women also. Speaking of Chakotay, I was watching a video about Seven on YouTube today, and the YouTuber kept pronouncing his name "CHUCKotay" when obviously we all know it was "chuKOtay."
- Agnes Jurati - so... what happened to turning herself in? Seems everyone has conveniently forgotten she murdered a man, including her.
- Narek - after the failed attempt to destroy the beacon, he just... disappears?
I haven't rewatched the episode yet, but I thought the scene in which Sutra shows Soong over a monitor that she has captured Narek, that she might have splattered his head, because I thought I saw blood spash onto the camera lens. But later I thought I saw Narek alive. So I'm confused if he's alive or not.
- Riker - how utterly awesome was it to see him in uniform again and in command of an armada? His trash-talking swagger was vintage William Riker, and as good as it felt seeing him and Troi again in their homestead, this was the moment I was hoping for. Going back to Picard's death though, I did find it utterly baffling and disappointing that he would let his best friend in the universe just take off like that and not have him be at his side in his last moments. Yeah, yeah... lots going on, timing, and Picard possibly wanting to spare his friend the pain of what was about to happen, but it just felt wrong that Picard essentially spends his last moments surrounded by what amounts to strangers, and not being comforted by the people that have loved and cared for him for most of his life. Having Rios shed tears for Picard was meaningless to me. This was on the level of Kirk dying alone with only Picard present, rather than Spock and McCoy. Obviously you can't time these moments and who is around you, but in this instance, Picard actually had a chance to have Riker be there for him but he didn't cuz... reasons?
This hadn't really occurred to me, and it's kind of hard to argue with you on it. I'm sure they wanted to emphasize the bond with the new crew, but still....
- General Uh Oh - Ok, so Starfleet just lets her take off when she's probably had her fingers in every level of Federation security and state secrets for the past 20 years? Right.
It's not clear to me that Starfleet was ever informed about Oh's double agency. Also, planetary sterilization pattern number five?!? How many ways do the Romulans have of destroying a world of all life? And did it seem like she had about three or four different occasions where there was plenty of time to fire on the planet, yet there's inexplicable pauses that conveniently give time for Starfleet to show up? Bad editing?
A YouTuber pointed that out and attributed it to artificially drawing out the moment to heighten the tension and leave time for intervention. I.e., bad writing.
- CGI makes people lazy? Remember those epic space battles in DS9 when you'd see ships of multiple and varied designs on both sides going at it? Could the Romulan and Starfleet armadas in this episode have looked more generic and computer-generated? Talk about boring. When Riker shows up, I honestly thought for one second they were doing their own version of the Picard maneuver as all the ships looked like mirror copies. But nope. I guess in the years since we last saw Starfleet, they've picked one ship design that works and mass-produced it. Not a bad idea in principle, but I always thought the different ships were designed that way to provide versatility in their missions. I guess what we saw was the military model, and they happen to have 200 of them standing by at a moment's notice. Ok. Things have definitely changed.
This was not a well-staged confrontation, and the in-space CGI on these CBS treks has always been less than stellar.
- Narissa - good riddance, she was annoying, but I'm baffled by something that makes me think I missed seeing it. How did she get on the Borg cube? Last I recall seeing her, she'd fled after the battle with Elnor, gets on one of the Romulan ships, and has all the Borg drones vented out into space before Seven fully gets control of the cube. Then the Romulans warp out and wait for Narek's signal to follow. So... how did she get back on the cube before the rest of the Romulan fleet arrived at the planet??? She never left it.
We never see her leave when the XBs have her down, and in the final episode she says something about having hidden on the cube. I assume she's been there the whole time.
- Seven - she takes the momentous step of reconnecting not only with the Collective, but assumes the role of Queen temporarily. Yet, moments later and for the rest of the season, there's no... nothing? I get this show is not about her, but anyone that knows the character knows how huge and impactful that moment was. But again, there's nothing... no consequences, no thoughts, no comments, no PTSD, just... nothing. Like it was cool to do it for that moment in the plot, and then it doesn't matter anymore so let's pretend and have her act like it didn't happen. Right.
Some followup definitely would've been good. I don't know if she will be in Season 2, so we may never get it. Of course, there's talk of her getting her own show. Because, why wouldn't she?
- Finally, the Synth Overlords, or whatever they go by - they couldn't have made it more obvious that this show ties in with Discovery now. I sincerely hope this doesn't come back to bite them in the rear, but we all know better. That other show's trampling of continuity is now infamous, but now it looks set to contaminate Picard as well. The presence and appearance of the tentacles (exactly like the ones we saw attacking that ship in Discovery) signify - at least to me - that Control is once again behind all this. I'm beginning to think Control is in charge of the writing team for Star Trek at CBS as well. This trend of having to have everything be interconnected and have that one big baddie that somehow has orchestrated everything from day 1, even though the idea of it all was developed on day 24736428, is just being stupid to me. Not everything has to loop back to everything else. Witness how paper-thin and implausible it all felt when they did that with the recent Bond films - exposing that one villain as the mastermind behind the plot of every preceding movie. All that does to me is undermine the originality of things and the knowledge that events can and do happen in the universe that are independent of one another. Let Marvel take the other route: they've perfected it to an art, and I love it, but can we please stop trying to copy them and make everything else that way now? I guess we'll see where this goes, but if the USS Discovery or whatever it's doing 900 years in the future starts to dictate the further events of the Picard show, then I'm losing interest already.
Speaking of the Synth Overlords, and yes I agree it's unfortunately going to be Control, that portal scene looked very familiar. Remember in the first Hellboy when he is opening the portal, and the evil Lovecraftian entities are about to come through? Then he closes it.
Final thoughts - Despite all my negatives, and they are considerable, I still enjoyed this show quite a bit - surprise! I do wonder how much of that was nostalgia though, coupled with the excitement of finally having this universe move forward a bit rather than constantly going backwards as it has of late. Still, I was disheartened that for all of the cool buildup, mystery, and intrigue, the resolution was utterly predictable, and quickly and conveniently wrapped up. The best example I can give is that, did we really think for a moment that Starfleet wouldn't show up at the last moment to stop the Romulans? It was one of the most overused clichés I can possibly think of, and when it happened, I just shrugged and had to accept it because I knew it was coming anyway. They think they are being so edgy with the swearing (which I've concluded I can do without because it continues to feel out of place and needless), yet they can't seem to break the pattern of safety and take a risk or two where it truly matters.
I liked the series overall. I had expectations that certainly were not met, because they were unrealistically high, but I think it was about as good as it could've been coming from the current producers of Star Trek. I am going to hold off on formulating further opinions of it until after I've binge-watched it. I appreciated Discovery a ton more after binge-watching it than I did watching each episode once a week.
Colour me not hopeful for the future of Trek.
I guess I've made my peace with the fact that it's fundamentally different from TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT, but it remains Star Trek enough at its core, at least for me, that I will continue to tune in, and hope.