Star Trek: Picard Season 2

[Riedquat]

Season 1 had its problems but overall I didn't mind it. I've not heard anything in this thread to make me want to watch Season 2 though.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Season 1 had its problems but overall I didn't mind it. I've not heard anything in this thread to make me want to watch Season 2 though.

It's 3 episodes in. It's kind of early for anyone to tell, but yeah it drags lol. I will never be a proponent for the 2-episode introduction. It was bad enough for the Defenders connecting 4 different story lines, but this could be more efficient.

[Mabus]

Season 1 had its problems but overall I didn't mind it. I've not heard anything in this thread to make me want to watch Season 2 though.

The first episode is OK, even if it has some minor issues, and overall it is much better than any episode from season 1, not that it's a high bar. Episode 2 goes into crazy territory, there are a couple of good moments, but overall the massive tone shift from the first episode downgrades the quality of the episode (Oh you liked how we made the Federation more appealing? Not for long! Now here's the Federation doing evil things again! Ha!). The rest of the episodes only seem to go downhill.

Seems like each NuTrek series follows the same trend every season: strong start, then nosedive into a shitty or mediocre conclusion.

[CharlesPhipps]

The first episode is OK, even if it has some minor issues, and overall it is much better than any episode from season 1, not that it's a high bar. Episode 2 goes into crazy territory, there are a couple of good moments, but overall the massive tone shift from the first episode downgrades the quality of the episode (Oh you liked how we made the Federation more appealing? Not for long! Now here's the Federation doing evil things again! Ha!). The rest of the episodes only seem to go downhill.

Seems like each NuTrek series follows the same trend every season: strong start, then nosedive into a shitty or mediocre conclusion.

That's not the Federation, that's the Confederation. It's ridiculous to make that statement.

[Frustration]

And this 'Confederation' is a cartoonish exaggeration of evil, to the point that actual children's cartoons would reject the content as "too on the nose".

Star Trek did a great job of showcasing actual evil with DS9 and the Cardassian Occuptation. Shame they couldn't be that psychologically realistic and nuanced... not that I had much hope of such, but it would have been nice to be proven wrong.

I... don't see Paramount going broke, mind you. They seem to be successfully peddling garbage.

[CharlesPhipps]

And this 'Confederation' is a cartoonish exaggeration of evil, to the point that actual children's cartoons would reject the content as "too on the nose".

The Confederation is actually doing nothing that real life totalitarian groups haven't done. Plenty of fans have actually called for the genocide of the Borg.

[Al-1701]

Again, real totalitarian regimes aren't all that interested in nuance. It was also just meant to be a hellhole for our heroes to escape from and fix. If this was going to be the backdrop of a 20 plus episode season, then we would have dove deeper.

One thing I take issue with is their disgust with the fires. Fires are a natural part of the life cycle in California. They burn away underbrush and dead or weakened trees so healthy trees aren't crowded. Fire is even an important factor in the reproduction of some trees. Them becoming out of control infernos is in fact the result of aggressive suppression tactics that put out all fires immediately and allowed underbrush to become overgrown to the point when they do burn that can ignite healthy trees (then made even worse by the more boom/bust nature to precipitation thanks to climate change). There would be forest and brush fires in the 24th/25th centuries, just a part of nature. Hopefully we'd be smart enough to not build in fire zones, especially buildings made out of wood.

[Mabus]

The first episode is OK, even if it has some minor issues, and overall it is much better than any episode from season 1, not that it's a high bar. Episode 2 goes into crazy territory, there are a couple of good moments, but overall the massive tone shift from the first episode downgrades the quality of the episode (Oh you liked how we made the Federation more appealing? Not for long! Now here's the Federation doing evil things again! Ha!). The rest of the episodes only seem to go downhill.

Seems like each NuTrek series follows the same trend every season: strong start, then nosedive into a shitty or mediocre conclusion.

That's not the Federation, that's the Confederation. It's ridiculous to make that statement.

Should I have written Federation the second time with "" to get my point clearer?

NuTrek writers realized that the bigoted, unpleasant and incompetent Federation they tried to make in season 1 wasn't appealing to people, so instead they decided to change that, now they're in an alternate timeline, where the Federation is now the Confederacy... sorry, Confederation, and it's even more evil, because... I don't know, MAGA rallies where Hillary Borg gets executed, I guess.

It's like they're obligated to make the Federation bigoted and nasty, and even when they seemed to make the Federation more in line to the old Trek in the first episode of season 2, they immediately change their mind and turn it into "Federation".

[CharlesPhipps]

Should I have written Federation the second time with "" to get my point clearer?

NuTrek writers realized that the bigoted, unpleasant and incompetent Federation they tried to make in season 1 wasn't appealing to people, so instead they decided to change that, now they're in an alternate timeline, where the Federation is now the Confederacy... sorry, Confederation, and it's even more evil, because... I don't know, MAGA rallies where Hillary Borg gets executed, I guess.

It's like they're obligated to make the Federation bigoted and nasty, and even when they seemed to make the Federation more in line to the old Trek in the first episode of season 2, they immediately change their mind and turn it into "Federation".

So, what exactly would you argue would be the stakes for the season? Because this argument seems the same as First Contact going, "They hate the Federation so they put the Borg in charge of Earth."

[Mabus]

Should I have written Federation the second time with "" to get my point clearer?

NuTrek writers realized that the bigoted, unpleasant and incompetent Federation they tried to make in season 1 wasn't appealing to people, so instead they decided to change that, now they're in an alternate timeline, where the Federation is now the Confederacy... sorry, Confederation, and it's even more evil, because... I don't know, MAGA rallies where Hillary Borg gets executed, I guess.

It's like they're obligated to make the Federation bigoted and nasty, and even when they seemed to make the Federation more in line to the old Trek in the first episode of season 2, they immediately change their mind and turn it into "Federation".

So, what exactly would you argue would be the stakes for the season? Because this argument seems the same as First Contact going, "They hate the Federation so they put the Borg in charge of Earth."

Don't you think that the whole "evil Federation" or "Evil Earth" has been done to death? It's not my job to find better story ideas, that's on the writers. And if all they can do is regurgitate the same crap, with some modifications, then maybe they should let someone more qualified to handle the job.

First JJ film had the Federation becoming more militaristic due to Nero's attack, then the second film took that to a whole new level with super evil admiral involved in Section 31 with super ship preparing for the war with the Klingons; the third film wasn't written by Kurtzman so it doesn't matter; S1 of Discovery had the War with the Klingons then went into the Mirror Universe, where the Terran Empire is basically an evil Federation; S2 had Section 31 with evil AI that wants to destroy all life in the galaxy; S1 of Picard had bigoted Federation dealing with evil AI that eventually wants to destroy all life in the galaxy; S3 of Discovery involves time travel to restore the Federation and an innocent traumatized alien accidentally causing disaster in the galaxy, killing billions; S4 of Discovery had innocent traumatized aliens accidentally causing disaster in the galaxy, killing billions. S2 of Picard so far can be summed up as "travelling back in time to restore the Federation".

They reuse the same ideas in such lazy and unimaginative ways I sometimes wonder if the studio actually forces them to do that, given that at least in LD and Prodigy they actually try something new, even if it doesn't always work.