Reviews of Star Trek: Picard season one

[CharlesPhipps]

http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2020/04/star-trek-picard-season-one-review.html

Here's mine.

Post your own.

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WHAT DID I THINK?

Picard was a series that I was tremendously excited about. Like a lot of Trekkies my age, I grew up on the adventures of Captain Jean Luc Picard rather than Captain Kirk, Sisko, Janeway, or Archer. I watched him and the Galaxy-Class version of the Enterprise deal with everything from Q to the Borg. The Next Generation may not have always been amazing. I slightly prefer Deep Space Nine, but it was a classic that stands alongside the best of the original series or movies. Captain Picard was a stuffier, more idealistic, and less action-focused leader than Captain Kirk. Well, at least when he wasn't hooking up with Vash or doing Die Hard like in "Starship Mine."

I was a bit iffy about Patrick Stewart coming back to do a sequel show to Star Trek: The Next Generation, though. No offense to a classically trained actor and someone healthy for his age, but he's seventy-nine years old and that's an odd time to take on a major career project unless you're going to do the majority of it sitting. Also, I wasn't sure I trusted the current holders of the Star Trek IP to deliver a satisfying look into the future of Roddenberry's vision. Was there still room for that sort of idealistic science fiction in the 21st century? Well, yes and no.

The setting for Picard is a wounded Federation. Some people have said it's a darker Federation but I don't think that's the case. Synthetic life-forms have been banned in the Federation after the Mars colony was destroyed along with its entire population in what appeared to be a robot revolt. This happened during the destruction of Romulus via supernova. As such, 900,000,000 Romulans were not evacuated who might have been during the backstory of the 2009 Star Trek reboot. Worse, Romulan refugees are not appreciated within the borders of the Federation.

I say wounded instead of darker despite the uncomfortable similarities to 9/11, Brexit, and the Trump administration that the creators have said they were dealing with because I don't think it's actually malevolent. It's made some questionable decisions but no overtly evil ones. The Federation has always been slightly behind, sometimes even antagonistic to our heroes, even when they are still the most enlightened people in the Quadrant.

Aside from the endless parade of insane Admirals, there's a never-ending stream of horrifying events that the Federation was willing to let slide because of the Prime Directive. Really, I'm honestly surprised they were willing to evacuate any Romulans given it seemed the definition of an "internal matter" but perhaps they were planning to do Khitomer Accords 2.0. Kudos if you get that reference and aren't on the Star Trek BBS.

The premise homages "All Good Things" with Captain Picard having been forced to retire on his vineyard with no sign of his marriage to Beverly Crusher (though that doesn't mean it didn't happen). He's suffering from the same condition he was there and is living a half-life with only his Romulan workers for company. He also has dreams of Data, still dead after all of these years, that lead him to helping a mysterious young girl named Dahj. Romulan troopers soon attack and he is soon sent on a quixotic quest to find Dahji's sister Soiji.

Picard gathers a small crews of oddballs and misfits from the fringe of both the Federation as well as Romulan space. It's distinctly different from other Star Trek stories because they all have the reserved and professional feel of Starfleet. This is much closer to something like Firefly, Farscape, or even Star Wars to an extent as a ragtag band of misfits is something we haven't really seen in Star Trek before. That isn't to say it's bad but it's something that we haven't seen before in a canon work.

I like Picard's crew of the La Sirena with Alison Pill as Dr. Agnes Jurati, Evan Evangora as Elnor, Santiago Cabera as Cristobal "Chris" Rios, and Michelle Hurd as Rafaella "Raffi" Musiker. They are a robotocist in over her head, a Romulan samurai, Han Solo, and a substance abusing Space Marine. I also appreciate Isa Briones as the android twins Dahj and Soji as she feels like the most "typical" Federation citizen ironically enough. Some people may dislike that the crew seems to have so many problems in the post-scarcity Federation but I feel like this isn't too far from what we saw in Deep Space Nine or the Original Series.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is the large role played by Jeri Ryan, reprising her role as Seven of Nine. She's changed from the emotionally stunted and repressed to becoming Commander Shepard of Mass Effect. She's an butt-kicking, hard-drinking, and utterly take no prisoners action heroine that is also something we've seen before in Star Trek but not from a man. I think of her as probably how Tasha Yar might have been if not for network standards and practices of the late Eighties. Still, it's going to contrast with the memories of many fans.

The villains of the series are a somewhat generic brother and sister pair of Romulans, Narissa and Narek, who are overtly evil. Harry Treadaway does a decent job making Narek seem like he has depths but Narissa is a bit scene chewingly evil. They're both very-very pretty people and that makes them watchable even in their most Cersei and Jaime Lannister-esque moments. The Zhat Vash is a "Tal Shiar within the Tal Shiar" and I don't really think that was necessary to add to Romulan lore.

The plotline is, unfortunately, overly convoluted. There's a story about the banning of synths, a secret Romulan conspiracy, Data having daughters created from his neurons, Borg harvesting rings, a captured Borg cube, and an ancient prophecy that is built around a precursor race's marker. It comes together surprisingly well, much better than either of the two Discovery seasons, but it feels overly packed. Amazingly, I might have thrown out the couple of nostalgia episodes (despite those being the most entertaining in the series), to give the regular cast a chance to breathe.

The show does suffer from an attempt to be darker and edgier. There's gratuitous swearing, sex, and violence. However, honestly, it's not that bad and I do think Star Trek could have been a little less sanitized regarding personal relationships. There's hints Seven of Nine is bisexual, for example, and that nicely retcons away Rick Berman's insistence homosexuality didn't exist for his decades of control over the franchise. In fact, I was kind of annoyed that it wasn't more overt that she had past romantic relationships with women.

The action, special affects, and acting were all solid in this show. Indeed, I think the decision to hire excellent character actors I recognized from other programs was a solid decision. There's perhaps a bit too much reliance on past Star Trek incarnations but Trekkies are the original continuity fanatics. Overall, I really enjoyed this season and while I think they really need to stop being so overproduced in their episodes, I have a real strong hope for Star Trek's future.

8.5/10

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I didn't start the series until recently, although I haven't avoided spoilers. My initial thoughts after three episodes-

There are high points and low points, but for the most part it feels like generic sci-fi to me. The lack of fidelity to Roddenberry's vision of a utopian future hasn't really bothered me like I expected it to. I suspect that the "shapelessness" of the show thus far is what's keeping me from having strong reactions to what's happening. Of course as the plot develops that could change for me.

High points- it's fun to have the budget and technology available to spend a significant amount of time on a futuristic Earth, and overall the look of things feels "right" for this particular spot in Trek continuity. This is the first Star Trek content in a long time that I can say that about. I also like the callbacks, the Data scenes, and those things that remind us of the Picard fans knew and loved.

Low points- The confrontation scene with Admiral Clancy was just embarrassingly awful. Star Trek writers haven't always had the top brass act professionally, but the dialogue here and in a handful of other places were pretty much a new low. The speech patterns and demeanor of all the characters are far removed from the signature Star Trek style (a style that certainly had its downside as well). Some of the dialogue here is not only too obviously "early 21st century Earth", it has that particular bad script feel where you can tell the writers are trying really hard for their characters to say something cool, hip, cute, etc., but they just can't pull it off naturally.

I don't want to comment on the story too much yet, except to say that there are some troubling early signs. The Zhat Vash, for example, are a no-go for me just on the conceptual level.

tl;dr- So far, I'd say it's just OK.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think the question of it not being "utopian" Star Trek is overstated.

Yes, Synths are banned but that's no different than banning Augments and they shouldn't be produced as slave labor anyway.

Yes, they didn't rescue the Romulan refugees but that's only after the fleet to save them was blown up along with Earth's oldest colony.

[GreyICE]

I really liked the core cast. I thought each one was developed excellently, and in interesting ways. Raffi and her antagonistic, surly relationship. Dr. Jurati: naive, having her world shattered, and then putting herself back together. Rios, betrayed once by (he believed) Starfleet and then again by himself, creating holograms to section off parts of his personality as he tries to run away from the person he hates - himself. Elnor just kills it, he constantly kills it, he's a great character.

Soji was... not so good. I think the actress has the chops, but I think it was a case of unclear direction and unclear script writing. Riker mentions that she did the "data head tilt". That's great, it's too bad she does it exactly once. Is she supposed to do it more often? I don't think the directors and the writers went over that with her, and therefore she doesn't. She hasn't really made the character her own, and the writers aren't handing her any help, putting her front and center while not giving her strong clues on her emotional journey.

Patrick Stewart nails it, obviously. Whether he's playing a scheming neo-Nazi without a shred of empathy or a king in a historical period piece, he's on point. He's a veteran actor and every inch of his talent is on display. Although again, the writers are nebulous with him. Is some of his outbursts and oddities supposed to be signs of his mental decay? Or is it just odd writing? Whatever the case, Stewart shows what veteran actors can do with shaky material - own it and make it theirs. He's brought wonderful grizzled character to Picard, someone whose left without crew and authority writing checks with his mouth he desperately hopes he can cash later.

The plot's awful, the villains are cardboard, things happen and then stop happening for various reasons that we're never quite sure of. Ah well. That's not really the point of Star Trek. Star Trek is about the people, and that nailed it. If the plot is both convoluted and really stupid, that's just par for the course. Although it's kinda ripped from Mass Effect in a weird way. I hope where they're going is the USS Picard (this time NOT Discovery) but I'm in for this ride.

[Mabus]

So... time for my thoughts for S1 of STP or PIC whatever people call it.
After rewatching some of the scenes, episodes, and reading other reviews, my verdict on it is as following:
Lazy and mediocre
Now, not to be too harsh, I will first enumerate what I liked:
-I liked that they explained the whole forehead ridge Romulans, and it was a simple explanation: they're just the people from the North, I guess their ridge is like the Human epicanthic fold. And since Romulans topple their government every few years, could also explain why in the TOS there were no forehead ridge Romulans, since it was the Sourthern Romulans in charge back then.
-The planetary shield looks like a planetary shield, although I do feel that for a planet where the most advanced power source was a hamster wheel, it felt too much in a way. Maybe if they saved the shield for the casino planet and also moved the space battle there then everything would have made more sense, but hen they won't have been able to introduce Seven.
-I really liked some of the actors: the actor portraying Rios was good, and the way he portrays his holograms was something I really liked. Although I feel that the script was too weak and he did the best he could with what he was given (I'll talk about that later). It was really nice to see Frakes and Ryan again, and even Stewart more or less. I wasn't impressed by Raffi's actress though and as for Jurati, I feel that her actress did good with what she got, even if most of her lines were weak or she just threw up half the time (probably after reading the script).
-Many continuity nods, which I guess they were alright.
-That random Borg drone calling Picard "Locutus?" out of nowhere, twice, was hilarious, since it felt so bad it's good, felt like a scene from "The Room".
-I liked the way Soong dealt with Sutra, even if it was very anticlimatic. Usually in other films, when that happens, the creator does something stupid while trying to stop his creation from going postal and dies, but here he handled it properly, so I guess it was OK.

Now with that out of the way, let's get into my issues with the series:
-I don't even know where to begin with. I could start with the plot, but that would assume the series has one. In fact, I have a feeling that the producers, namely Kurtzman and Chabon (though based on certain decisions, I'm pretty sure that it's mostly Kurtzman) decided to add a plot after the series was written, since that would explain why there are so many scenes that just feel like they've been added there to fill in the 50 minute length of the episode, as they lead nowhere. So the entire premise of the show is that after another space!911 the Federation decided to Patriot Act the androids (now called "synths" because I guess CBS was under the impression they'd get sued by Samsung if they say the word "android") after they turned eeeevil and went Allahu Akbar on Mars. And of course given that the androids going postal would call for a serious investigation, not only limited to the Federation, but also to its allies, since there were also aliens on Mars, that totally happened and they found that they've been hacked which would mean foul play, right? Right? Umm no, they just banned the synths. Oh and they pretty much told Picard to fuck off I guess. There was no parallel or independent investigation by anyone in the Federation. In fact, there was no mention of any investigation. We're supposed to believe that Oh pulled the strings and covered any foul play. Yeah... not happening. Not with the loss the of the freakin' most important industrial complex in the Federation! Also, wasn't Mars supposed to be partially terraformed by now? 200 years earlier in ENT its atmosphere was thick enough that you only needed a breathing mask, so by PIC time it should have been already perfectly breathable. Oh well. I guess the loss of a very important planet where the Federation invested lots of resourced to make it habitable and right next to Earth is just something nobody cares, because I guess only 92,000 people died, which is ridiculously low, given how huge those Martian explosions were from space.

[Mabus]

-Anyhow, apparently they knew that the supernova that would destroy Romulus would happen in two years. So what did the Romulan EMPIRE that had hundreds or thousands of ships, military or civillian? Oh yeah, they decided to rely on the Federation to save them... the Romulan Empire knew that their homeworld was about to be destroyed and instead of immediately evacuating their own world with their own ships that they have to had since they're still an Empire, they decide to rely on the Federation because... yeah, they don't say why. The Romulan Empire was almost at the level of the Federation and even after the Dominion War, which by this time was almost a decade later they would still have a massive fleet, not to mention new ships, like the Valdore and maybe some Scimitar version (though that model might be too expensive which is why only one was built) that would incorporate the new technologies developed and acquired after the Dominion War. There's no reason why the Romulans would slash their fleet after the DW, especially since with all the other regional powers weakened, they would take advantage of this to expand (I think they mentioned that in a DS9 episode). So the Romulans won't ask for the Federation to help them, not because of pride (this time), but because the Romulans were perfectly capable of doing that themselves. 900 million? There's no reason why an old Romulan D'deridex, which dwarfes all Federation ships mind you, couldn't carry 50-100,000 Romulans per trip, and with say 1,000 warbirds, which they have to had, it would only take them 10-20 trips, which they could do in less than two years. Hell, they could probably also use another 100 warbirds to take apart most of their important infrastructure and haul it away to another planet. See, this is where the whole plot collapses. The Romulans here are supposed to be space!refugees. But... the Romulan Empire is still functional, they have thousands of planets they can evacuate to, dozens if not more unoccupied planets. If the Romulan crisis was supposed to mirror the Syrian refugee crisis, then it fell flat. Because unlike Syria, this was only one Romulan planet that was affected! And Syrians don't have giant spaceships! To translate what PIC did with the Romulan crisis in modern terms, imagine if all of Earth's ice caps were to melt in two years and with Florida about to be lost by the rising sea levels, the rest of US asks help from Mexico, EU, China, Australia to help them with the Florida refug-NOPE! That is NOT gonna happen! The US would not ask help from the rest of the world, not because of pride, but because THEY WON'T HAVE TO! Sure they might receive foreign aid to make things smoother, but they won't ask for foreign help and sit there doing nothing! And if said help all of the sudden be blocked or the other countries change their mind, the US would just sit their and do nothing? NO! There's no reason why the Romulans would just sit on their asses on their doomed planet and not even try to help. To make matters even more ridiculous, that one Romulan senator on the WildWest planet tells Picard they shouldn't have asked the Federation for help because "Romulan ingenuity" was better and they didn't need the Federation, that the Feds took advantage of them to divide them... what? Did the Federation forbid you from evacuating your own planet? What the fuck was that line supposed to be? Did the Romulans give themselves brain damage? Did they not evacuate their own people with their own ships while the Federation was building the refugee fleet? EVEN AFTER SAID FLEET WAS DESTROYED ?? Did the Romulans just abandon their homeworld after the Federation gave up? Did everyone just hide under their beds after Mars happened and didn't even bother to leave the planet? Do they not have ships anymore? Did they block all ships from leaving Romulus? Cause there's no way the Romulus supernova was a secret by now. Especially since we see Picard on that WildWest planet that he himself helped to evacuate. Oh and apparently he didn't have time to find them a better place... TWO YEARS before the supernova happened! So no, Romulans as space!refugees is stupid. And they don't even bother to explain why the Romulans won't help their own homeworld with the evacuation and no one even finds that strange. It can't be because some other separatist Romulan fraction refused to help themselves, since a) they don't mention that in the series and b) the Romulans would not blame the Federation and Picard (more than they usually do anyway), but rather they would have hated their own kind even more. Not to mention that even if that were to happen, it would be civil war between the entire Empire factions. So I'm not buying it. Even before the Zhat Vash reveal. Speaking of...
-So now the Tal Shiar is actually a cover for an even older supersecret cabal that hates AI because they found a planet in an octonary star system that contained a warning that the Reapers will com-sorry, the "Federation AI" will come to cull the orga-sorry, they will wipe out the organic lifeforms if they are deemed as a threat to any emergent AI or something. And since the superadvanced AI Federation budget blew their budget on building said octonary star system or whatever, they had almost no money for their message so they had to buy the cheapest Shutterstock footage they could find and uploaded in that glowy ring pond and used Siri to upload a voice message as well. Oh and said octonary system is no longer available on any star map out there, even though it should have been visible to anyone with a good telescope (even today we know that Nu Scorpii is a septuple system with our primitive telescopes), so this shouldn't have been a secret to anyone not to mention that the whole reason why the 8 star system exists in the first place is so that everyone can find it. Unless the Romulans blew it up, which is stupid, there is no way the Zhat Hash was able to hide the existence of said 8 star system. Also, the ZV are the reasons the Romulans hate AI and only use pocket calculators, even though that Romulan defector mentioned Romulan cyberneticists (which Chabon says they're like Nazis doctors, which is complete horseshit, since AI science is more than just building AIs, but also involves cybersecurity, cyber threat intelligence, espionage - which the Romulans were fond of, cyberwarfare, password cracking, etc.) and back in the ENT days, the Romulans experimented with that drone-ship, which, while it did have a telepathic pilot, it also had a self-repair system that must have had an AI of sorts, since that function was not controlled by the pilot and any computer software capable of doing a very complex activity in a delicate environment is basically AI. So the whole Romulans have no AI is bullshit, especially since all the other galactic powers already have AIs, and not having AIs and AI science in such environment is akin to being a powerful empire that still uses horses and carriages while fighting with very large bows and arrows and throwing very large boulders from very large catapults, while everybody around you moved to mechanized warfare and has state of the art air force. Even the Soviets eventually adopted Darwin's theory of evolution over their own pet crackpot theories, since, shocking, when you are crippling yourself, you are at a disadvantage over your enemies. Just ask the Ming Dynasty how well it worked for them after destroying their own navy. Oh yeah, it didn't. At all. So yeah, the whole supersecret cabal that withholds back the empire because "evil AI" while no one bats an eye is idiotic. The moment the very paranoid Romulans realize they're at a severe disadvantage in cyberwarfare and somehow they keep getting sabotaged, they'll move into conspiracy land and start looking for any conspiracy. And no amount of gov infiltration would help the ZV since when the fate of the Empire is at stake, they won't let a bunch of fanatics have their way at the price of the Empire's security. And why won't the ZV want the AI threat message be known by everyone else? By forcing other civilizations to give up AI science, the Romulans are evening the balance and they are no longer at a disadvantage, so what gives? Why the secrecy?

[Mabus]

-The swearing. I don't have a problem with swearing in films, and while Star Trek was always "family-friendly", I can't say I'm against having more profanity... but for the love of God, can you actually not just throw them randomly just for the sake of it? At least, make them memorable, in a good way? In ST:GEN, Data's "Oh shit" wasn't exactly awful, I for one found it hilarious... problem since the rest of the film was shit, it didn't improve the scene, if anything it just magnified the flaws of the film. And in both STD and STP they don't contribute to anything. While not the best example, since they have a limited use of the F word, in both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, whenever a character uses strong profanity, it's either memorable or well calculated to fit in the plot (or character's mannerisms), but more importantly, the writing and plot of the episode are well done, so the profanity doesn't decrease the value of the scene, it actually increases it. In PIC every time the profanity is used, the scene becomes less intelligent. The infamous "cheeky fueckers" said by that Irish Romulan lady (sorry, forgot her name) is dumb since it's followed by not only nonsense technobabble, but the whole scene was pointless as it leads nowhere. Yes the whole they technobabble erased the magic record particles is meant to show that they are good at hiding their tracks... which wasn't needed since with the Starfleet security being a ZV member, they were hundreds of ways they could have dealt with the crime scene. Then we have admiral "Sheer-fucking hubris" and "Shut the fuck up", whose sole existence is to act as a lame ripoff of the scene from "GoldenEye" where M tells James Bond that he's a "sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War, whose boyish charms, though wasted on me, obviously appealed to that young woman I sent out to evaluate you." which was also dumb, since for the rest of the film Bond uses his "goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus charms" to get to the main villain and M doesn't actually hate Bond. And Judi Dench is leagues over Ann Magnuson, so there's that. Apparently the scene was supposed to point out Picard's "classic arrogance", even though after Encounter at Farpoint, Q Who, Inner Light, Tapestry, All Good Things, Picard is supposed to have grown as a character, to quell his "arrogance", but considering that the whole interview with Federation Outlet X News was there just to have Stewart try to tell his politics (which he failed, cause I didn't understood what he meant there), it's just a cheap shot at a strawman. And the whole "shut the fuck up" was just there because... eh, Picard shouted at her? Whatever. As for the rest of profanity... "I hate that fucking hospitality hologram", "somebody else can find that fucking synth", "sorry I had to fucking ruin it", "have you fucked anything", "then I fucking did it again", none of them have any weight or like in case of Jurati they have no weight since whatever she had to say was either said already or we've already witnessed it... twice. Or in case of the last, we don't care at all about the Romulan sister, so when she says it, it's not hilarious, it's groaning. Basically, it's profanity for the sake of profanity. And speaking of language...
-Why are people from 400 years into the future still using slang from the 2010s and modern words? DS9 and VOY was made in the 90s, yet I don't recall using slang from that era, since, as anyone watching it now after 30 years, it would look outdated as hell. Hot damn, Picard&Rios and the missus are going bushwacking in the dark of space, jostling the scrumptious Seven of Nine and battling the yellow Romula-oh wait, this is slang from the 1890s, I meant slang from the 1990s... yeah, 400 years is a long time for language to change, hell if slang from 20-30 years ago is mostly outdated, in nearly half a millenium you'd have hundreds of new words. And while you'd be tempted to say that "the other ST series didn't have new words", well you're correct, they didn't. But all the other series dealt more with aliens than humans and more with Starfleet officers than with civilians, so we didn't get a clear picture of how the common Federation civilian talked like. If the Star Trek language writers can come up with new Romulan and Klingon words, surely they can throw in new 100 words, right? Or maybe, just like how today all languages borrow words from other languages, surely you can have the future Federation language have borrowed various words from alien languages (Vulcan, Klingon, Betazed, DEnobulan, Tellarite, etc.), or if you're really lazy, like REALLY lazy, just use words from other foreign languages, like say, Spanish, since you already have a Hispanic character? I mean hell, if the Expanse can give us dozens of new words, that they don't even bother to properly translate, since the dialogue pretty much tells you what said word means, then surely PIC writers can be arsed to do it, right? Well, that would imply to series to have good writing, which further leads me to...

[Mabus]

-The writing in this show is just... draft-level. Now I know that Star Trek is not known for having stellar writing or extraordinary dialogue, most of it is bland, nonsense or just dogshit. However, when it was good, the dialogue was just simple enough that everyone would understand what it was trying to convey. In PIC, the character dialogue and the writing feels like it hasn't passed the first draft level. And this is jarring considering that Michael Chabon won a Pullitzer prize as well as a few others, so it's not like he's a bad writers. Problem is, I have a feeling that either CBS really rushed the PIC production to compete with Netflix and Disney+ or to air before DIS season 3 premiers, so maybe the writers weren't able to finish their scripts in time? I could buy that if there wasn't one little detail. Alex Kurtzman. Just before writing this, I watched Nostalgia Critic's review of The Amazing Spiderman 2 (I haven't seen the film myself, I heard it's dogshit), which was also written by Kurtzman, and noticed that the same flaws STP has, are also present in that film: dumb dialogue, stupid plot contrivances, continuous plot holes, gishgallop storytelling, overcrowding the story with excessive characters that aren't developed enough, important moments that are treated superficially and then we're being told to care. The exact same problems also plague The Mummy (2017) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). So I get the feeling that either Chabon doesn't get that writing for films is different than writing books (not impossible, not all writers can also be good producers) or Kurtzman rewrites the scripts Leonard Maizlish-style, or both, Chabon doesn't handle filmmaking very well, so he lets Kurtzman filling in the blanks, only Kurtzman being Kurtzman fills the holes with cement. Either way, the series suffers because of this. Sometimes, the dialogue is just bland, others it's just all over the place. In one episode they keep interrupting the character exposition with nothing of relevance, other times they barely explain anything, sometimes even overcomplicate what would normal be simple dialogue (like in the finale, where instead of telling Rios that the repair thingy works via brain interface, the android tells him to "use your imagination", and then later they just repeat the same crap, which tells us nothing, and later the same device can magically create state of the art warship sensor-fooling holograms, which just comes out of nowhere and also leads to nowhere), while other times it just feels like the dialogue was supposed to be improved in the next draft, but instead the director went with the first draft so it feels like something was missing. Sometimes they don't explain anything (even though a single simple sentence would have suffice), while other times they just throw in a bunch of technobabble that just feel excessive (which again could have been solved with a few clever sentences), like in the second episode with the CSI:Cheeky Fueckers scene where all we learn is that Sushi's sister was in space and everyone is shocked like in STAR TREK, going into space is something amazing (I have a feeling in that scene the Irish Romulan lady was supposed to say "outside of Federation space" or "Romulan space", but since the writers wanted to maintain the mystery, they just removed that part for a generic "came from off-world" line; could explain why Picard originally went to admiral Fuckface to ask for help as opposed to just shopping for a pilot, since this could have lead to a diplomatic conflict, but this was replaced with him getting mocked by a pencil-pushing admiral, and the whole diplomatic credentials scene was given instead to Raffi in episode 6, that's my hypothesis anyway).
-The gore. Seriously, what was the point that Icheb torture scene? Were they trying to pay an homage to Hostel? Was it because the original actor supported Spacey during the MeToo accusations? Because last time I checked, he later apologized for that and changed his stance. And that was before even STP began filming. Most people don't even remember him, so what's the point of this? Or maybe because rumours of him acting like a creep on Jeri Ryan? Since I haven't been able to find any source on that, other than some offhand comments on a forum (so basically cubicle office gossip), while Manu Intiraymi and Jeri Ryan didn't have any known conflicts. Or maybe because Manu joined that fanfilm Star Trek Renegades and since CSB/Paramount decided "No fun allowed" regarding fanfilms, they're punishing him for doing that? Did they kill Icheb just so that Seven can have a motivation to go on a spree kill? Did they really pull a "woman in the fridge" only now they swapped the genders? Because that's lazy writing. And the faux killing of Maddox, followed by his actual slow death, what was the point of that? We knew very little about Jurati, and now all of the sudden she's a killer? And why would she kill Maddox? Because he might create more androids? As opposed to what? The already existing androids? And how would that advance Jurati's character? Cause all she does later is throw up, try to commit suicide and throw up again. Wow, great character development. The Borg drones. Are you telling me they don't even bother to remove the scars from the surgeries? Derman regenerators are fairly common in the Federation, so I'll assume they're cheap. They can't even spare one? What was Hugh thinking? Speaking of. What was the point of his character? Nostalgia? Increase number of viewers? Cause he barely does anything important. The Spatial trajector thingy could have simply been replaced by Rios' ship beaming Picard and Soji away before the cube went into lockdown. And then Hugh sees his coleagues murdered in front of him and nearly cries. Then as he tries to mount a resistence, he fails and dies like a bitch at the hands of a character no one cares. And then Seven arrives after Elnor finds a deus ex Machina, takes his place and then more drones die. More eye murder in Synthville. Blah, blah, blah. What was the point of it? Why should I care?

[Mabus]

-The space battles should be renamed "fun blocking" since the only three space battles from the series (the Mars attack is not a space battle) are just lame: The first one has the nice return of an TOS Romulan warbird, but the battle is just dumb. Rios' ship jumps right in the weapon's firing arc several times, which was very was dumb, same for Seven's ship, especially since the warbird doesn't have aft or side weapons, nor does it spin around, so it should have been very easy to avoid the fixed cannons. And then after severing the warbird's wing, Seven's ship returns back in the warbird's firing arc and gets disabled, which wasn't necessary, as Rios's ship didn't do that. But you gotta give Seven a surprise entrance, so logic be damned. The second battle, just has La Sirena being pounded by a Romulan gunship before getting hit, only for the Spork Romulan somehow magically pulling a hologram out of his ass that Rios' ship can't detect until it's too late, then Seven arrives with the Borg cube to fight the Romulan gunsh-nope, magical anime space flowers, sorry, orchids, slowly catch the ships, and force land them, including a FREAKIN' BORG CUBE... I literally facepalmed at that scene since I can't believe how stupid everything was. The third space battle begins when the Romulan fleet arrives and takes forever to slag the planet, allowing the space orchids to.. get shredded without disabling any Romulan ship... well that was pointless. Then the Romulans once again take forever to charge their planet slagging weapons (even though in TDIC they were able to bomb the planet in seconds), which allows Picard and Jurati to create magical warship sensor-fooling holograms, which last like 5 seconds... and then the Romulans again take forever to charge the planet killing pattern 5 or whatever. But it's OK, because Riker arrives to save the day at the helm of USS Copy-Paste and tells the Romulans to stand down. And the Romulans respond by AGAIN taking forever to charge their planet killing weapons (Gaaaaaah), all while Sushi activates the obelisk, which fires a skybeam while a red moon is visible in the lightning stormy cloudy sky, opening a red portal that summons Ogdru Jahad to bring the Apocalypse, meaning that Hellboy is now Anung un Rama, as foretold by the Romulan horror fairy tale. However, Agent Myers tells Hellboy that he can defy his destiny, and doesn't have to bring the Apocalypse, which causes Hellboy to break his horns, shutting down the skybeam, and causing the space tentacles to disappear... no wait, sorry, that was the ending of the first Hellboy film not Star Trek Picard... I think... Oh and the Romulans didn't try to destroy the obelisk while it was active because I guess hearing Picard's lame speech about fear was more important that, what was Oh/Nedar's line? Oh yeah, "At last, our great work is nearly at an end". So then The Romulan fleet leaves and Riker also leaves, because there's no way the fanatic Romulans would just return back to kill the androids, that would be silly. And apparently the Federation has lifted the ban on synthetics, because reasons. And speaking of Picard's speech...
-Patrick Stewart has said that the series would deal with Brexit, Trump, Boris Johnson, refugee crisis, basically with modern political problems, which is OK in my opinion, Star Trek always dealt with such issues... which is why the series shows us a senile and humiliated Picard, a pseudo-macho Latino captain, a pseudo-tough female character that keeps calling him JL because they were so close in all the 5 minutes of flashback, Romulans being space!refugees that also run The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, andro-sorry "synth" ban because of (another) space!911, holographic pop-ups, eye gouging, Romulan secret conspiracy, totally not-Reapers coming to kill us if the synthetic humans are discimi-no wait, that doesn't work, uugh, banning synthetics is bad mmkay, we have to let them advance until they reach to a point where they can call the totally not-Reapers to kill us all-no wait, still not right, uugh synth ban bad, fear of them bad, yes, yes, better. It's not like fearing the synths nearly lead to them calling the totally not-Reap-Goddamn it, more eye gouging... wait... what was I talking about? Oh yeah Brexit... Uugh... yeah... ummm... 14 Federation members threatened to leave Earth decides to help the Romulans? Fear of... uugh... fear of... fear... of... uugh... FEAR IS BAD! We abandoned the space!refugees on another planet and that's supposed to represent... Donald Trump? Brexit? Johnson? Refugee crisis? But the Romulan refugees did not want to come to the Federation, they wanted to stay on a better planet I suppose, so that can't be a metaphor for the refugees. Oh I know! Icheb getting his eye ripped out without anesthetic while screaming for his life! That's how people felt when Trump and Boris Johnson got elected! Yes... totally... yes... seriously... Or better, have the ditzy female character throwing up, like people did when Trump and Johnson got elected... No, wait! It's Picard playing a cartoonish mysogynistic Frenchman pirate, just like Trump! Yes... it's very accurate... I swear... trust me... Yes, totally... No wait! I got it this time! It's Seven regaining her humanity by killing people in cold blood and being vengeful! And drinking! And ignoring Picard's advice! Yes... seriously... No, no, no I got it! It's telling the FOX news reporter that the Starfleet is no longer Starfleet, you know the Federation is a stand in for EU, now it abandoned th-no,no, it's the other way around, it's... the UK... no... wait... YES! I know Riker's son could have been saved if it wasn't for space!9/11, sorry, space!Brexit... no wait... ummm... I GOT IT THIS TIME! It's Picard's speech about not allowing fear to lead us, since fear will lead us to summon space Cthulhu-you know what? Fuck it! I give up! I GIVE UP! I got nothing! The writers have forgot about this, haven't they? They seem to think that throwing a couple offhand comments that are supposed to somehow mirror the current state of the world is somewhat clever? How? I don't want cryptic words and phrases! If you said the series will involve Brexit, Trump, Johnson, populism, etc, then give me Space!Trump, Space!Brexit, Space!Johnson, Space!populism, don't give me speeches so cryptic I can't understand, this isn't the Soviet Union where you had to make every political message cryptic enough to avoid censors and not end in prison! This is Star Trek! The possibilities are endless!
I want to see a Galactus-sized space!Boris Johnson pulling his space!pants down, bending over and taking a 350 million pound red turd on planet UK, which causes it to split in half, and then a Galactus-sized space!Trump hands him the US Constitution to wipe his arse with, while telling him: "Space!Boris, I forgive you for not helping us during the American Independence War. But it's OK! I like you, you're a great guy! In fact, I think you're a wonderful guy. And take this piece of paper as a friendly gesture, it's useless to me! In fact, it too old and fragile, don't know why would anyone need it. And I know you don't have one, so take it. I know you'll put it to good use." And Space!Boris replies: "Ah, that's nice! How nice of you. You're a wonderful man!", all while tiny Space!Putin gives two thumbs up, in the background.

I get a feeling that the producers didn't originally wanted Picard to be the main character, I think Soji was meant to be the new Michael Burnham, but since Stewart didn't want to do Picard again unless they agreed to his conditions, they had to rewrite most of the main plot since they really needed a veteran Star Trek actor to increase the ratings, and Stewart was the golden goose, they couldn't miss this chance. But since Kurtzman is incapable of writing anything but shit, well, the end result is as it is.

[kingofmadcows]

I found it to be pretty disappointing. The biggest problem is that they didn't develop any of the major plot points very well and they abandoned interesting ideas for dumb ones.

For example, the whole issue with synths was very poorly explained. It seemed like the writers didn't really understand artificial intelligence.

The show established that Starfleet believed the Mars attack happened due to a coding error. Then they made the ban weirdly specific to synths and didn't address the issue with AI's in general. That doesn't make any sense. So they didn't ban synths because they though the androids were becoming sentient and rebelling. They banned synths because of a flaw in the programming. But any computer can have catastrophic programming flaws. A starship's computer can have a malfunction that causes its warp core to overload and blow up. Ultimately, the synth ban didn't really have anything to do with AI's.

They did some interesting things with the Romulans and the refugee crisis. I was with the show in the earlier episodes when they were showing these different Romulan cultures. But then they completely dropped the Romulan supernova/refugee crisis plot and never bothered to flesh out any of the new things they introduced with the Romulans.

What is the Romulan Free State? Are they the main Romulan government now? Is the Romulan Star Empire broken into several major factions? If that's the case, then how do treaties work? How were the Zhat Vash able to take over the entire fleet the Romulan Free State had at the Borg Cube? How is the Tal Shiar still around? Does that mean the Romulan senate survived? But then what's up with that Romulan senator who attacked Picard? How could the Qowat Milat have survived if they were enemies of the Tal Shiar? The Tal Shiar was always shown to be very powerful. They're the secret police and they spy on everyone. They should be able to easily crush a small religious order of nuns who don't use much technology. Did the Qowat Milat hide from the Tal Shiar? How is that possible when they don't lie? Did the Tal Shiar keep them around for some scheme of their own? Has the Qowat Milat just been around for so long that it's ingrained in Romulan culture and the Tal Shiar can't get rid of them? So many questions and not nearly enough answers.

And in the end, they crapped on the Romulan refugee plot by having the Zhat Vash be responsible for the attack on Mars. So the Federation tried to help and the Romulans answered them with treachery. Everything would have been better if Starfleet had never tried to build the rescue fleet in the first place?

It also seemed like the writers lost interest in the ex-Borg plot over time until they dropped it completely in the end. In fact, all the ex-Borg just disappeared in the last episode. Is Seven abandoning them? There are thousands of people who need Seven’s help but screw them, adventuring with Picard is more important.

The storyline they went with was dumb, cliched, poorly written, and just a rip off of other franchises, Terminator, Mass Effect, 2004 Battlestar Galactica, heck, it repeats a bunch of stuff from Discovery season 2.

Overall, the show had promise and established a lot of interesting things in the beginning but it just crapped out in the end.