Star Trek: Picard Season 2

[Worffan101]

That was, without a doubt, the worst Star Trek season ever.

Yes, worse than Enterprise season 2.

Yes, worse than ENT season 1 where the 4th regular episode is a rape joke.

The theme sucked. The acting was decent but the plots sucked. Jurati is the literal worst and I want her nuked from orbit. I hope her actress never works again.

Briones can't act at all.

Spiner made Shatner look subdued. Horribly directed.

The ICE subplot sucked ass.

The mood was gloomy and miserable.

What they did with the Borg insulted my intelligence as a viewer.

The finale sucked beyond words.

Hurd was used horribly.

Ryan and Cabrera didn't have enough to do, fantastic actors tho.

Wil Wheaton's performance was a mid-range DM explaining the glories of the big hub city in his campaign, and he still out-acted Briones.

Brutal honesty time, Stewart is well into his decline. His skills are there but his voice isn't.

DeLancie was good but the plot of the finale is literally identical to last season's finale.

What an absolute travesty. 2/10 and that's generous.

[CharlesPhipps]

That was, without a doubt, the worst Star Trek season ever.

Yeah....no.

With many-many-many doubts and disagreements.

Enterprise season 1 to 2
Voyager season 1-3
Star Trek TNG season 1
Deep Space Nine season 1
Discovery season 2, Season 4
TOS season 3

The mood was gloomy and miserable.

Yes, The Borg Queen singing "Running with the Shadows" is gloomy and miserable.

The driving scene where Seven displays her Tom Paris skills.

The Borg Queen being taught empathy.

The Punk turning off his stereo.

There's a lot of wacky hilarious moments throughout this season.

[Worffan101]

I mean, christ, even if the rest of the series had been 100% awesome (it wasn't), what they did with the Borg would've killed it stone dead.

< sarcasm mode >

The Borg is no longer an unthinking, unfeeling, omnicidal AI botnet that will scoop your guts out and make you watch as it uses your body to do that to other people before using it for spare parts. It's just a sad lonely little girl, don't you feel sorry for it?

And I guess one heart to heart with tepid dialogue with the worst actress in human history playing the worst character in Star Trek history (yes, Jurati annoys me more than a theoretical character created by juicing Neelix, Wesley, and Okona, then having Archer snort that brew of annoyance) is enough to convince the Borg to be nebulously good now, and assimilation isn't a horrible trauma, but just some experience like going to Kenya for a week and coming back incessantly speaking 3 words of Swahili, which you should EMBRACE because it makes you SPECIAL!!!!!

And I see no reason why the Federation shouldn't just embrace this new Borg that totally swears up and down it's good now and wants to be just another Federation species, aren't we just the most amazing writers ever?

< /s >

Screw this show. It thinks I'm an idiot who's never seen Star Trek before and is allergic to the concept of nuance. It's going to take a LOT of convincing for me to come back for season 3, even if that congenital incompetent Goldsman (he's like Kurtzman without the delusional narcissism, and more of a walking strawman liberal than a delusional neocon pretending to be liberal like Kurtzfucker is) isn't going to be as involved.

That was an epic level failure of a finale, capping off a scattershot and frequently infuriating season that felt like it was written by a New York "I'm liberal which is why I think we should kick the red states out of America for being incurably evil because I read it in a friend's think piece while sipping champagne at a classy event" type who flunked out of college for failing an intro creative writing class. Seven and Rios were criminally underused, Raffi was incoherently written, the ICE subplot was handled incompetently and was completely unnecessary, Picard's new traumatic backstory sucked donkey ass, and Jurati is like if T'Pol and Archer had a lovechild with Wesley Crusher.

There was some not-horrible stuff. Seven sitting in the big chair was good fanservice. Rios's offscreen death felt in character and it's a good way to go. Stewart put in an effort even if his body can't sustain it. DeLancie worked his ass off in the scenes he got, even if they were too cowardly to have Q give Picard a farewell forehead kiss like we all wanted, though at least they made it explicit that Q is gay for Picard (which has been basically obvious since Tapestry at least, don't go after me for saying this).

But none of that outweighs the script's deranged self-importance and blatant contempt for the viewers and our intelligence.

[CharlesPhipps]

The Borg is no longer an unthinking, unfeeling, omnicidal AI botnet that will scoop your guts out and make you watch as it uses your body to do that to other people before using it for spare parts. It's just a sad lonely little girl, don't you feel sorry for it?

*leans over*

*whispers*

I, Borg.

I mean, you're just describing Star Trek, dude. The Horta is actually a mommy protecting its eggs, the Gorn is actually a perfectly normal space captain defending his territory from illegal colonization, and GODS tell the Klingons and Federation to get along.

An implacable Always Chaotic Evil enemy is the antithesis of Trek.

They did the same thing in the novels with the DESTINY books.

[Worffan101]

I'm gonna try to be positive, so aside from turning the walking, "you will be assimilated"-chanting challenge to Trek's ideals into another snarling asshole on the viewscreen, this show did have some good bits.

Jeri Ryan inhabits Seven of Nine to a remarkable degree, to the point that her instincts as an actor and as Seven clash violently with the script's lines.

Santiago Cabrera is awesome and I won't hear a word against him.

Picard and not-Laris's romance, while tepid and nonsensical, is at least not offensively awful.

Alex Kurtzman, the most incompetent delusional narcissistic moron ever to inflict himself upon this franchise, apparently had very little to do with this season. It didn't help, but at least there were no Klingon time crystals.

[Worffan101]

But seriously, I just can't get over how badly they handled the Borg. The Borg isn't a person that can be reasoned with, it's an unthinking, unfeeling omnicidal botnet that will scoop your guts out and use you for spare parts without an ounce of thought or emotion.

"But Seven and Hugh are Borg!" No, Seven and Hugh are FORMER BORG DRONES. They are people who had their guts scooped out by the Borg and had it using their brains as auxiliary processors for so long they had trouble not thinking like the Borg.

the Borg, as it exists post-First Contact (i.e. after the change from "hivemind geth-like consensus that for some vague reason is violently opposed to the Federation/willing to invade and decap it" to "omnicidal botnet") is supposed to be an existential challenge to Trek's ideals, and the exception that proves the rule. Literally every other being in Star Trek up to and including the physical gods can be related to. Sure, they may be racist assholes like the Klingons and Romulans and dominion, or unreasonable jerks like the Kreetassians and most Voyager aliens of the week, or insane ultranationalist whack jobs like the Gorn, or smug jerks with too much power like a lot of the TNG high-tech aliens, but they are, fundamentally, comprehensible and relatable.

The Borg cannot be related to because its sole motivation is the violent assimilation of all other life. The Borg is not a group of people, the Borg is a galactic plague. Letting the Borg Queen guard the Federation from some nameless vaguely defined evil is like the Jews of Germany asking Hitler to defend them from Communism. It's the most moronic idea I've ever heard.

Especially since Jurati is an incompetent moron who talks like somebody downloaded r/meirl and fed it through some kind of scrambling algorithm. You're dealing with a Borg CPU that is also the literal worst most incompetent character ever. Yeah. THAT's who we want "guarding the gates". Sure.

[Worffan101]

youtu.be/PC5EmaBzWTM
I guess that Not!Laris forgot that she could have just taken control of Soong and use him to send his Borg Suicide Squad away from the vineyard, as I assume that she just couldn't order them to attack Jurati-Queen because she "assimilated" them to make sure Soong doesn't turn them against her. I assume this would be the only logical reason, since they get no special abilities after the "ass imilation", so mind control is the only reason she did that. I mean, she could have also taken control of the Borg-ified SWAT and end the fight in 2 minutes, though maybe the Borg modifications would have prevented her from doing that. But I guess the writers kind of forgot that Granny Laris could do that.

JFC I totally forgot that too! It was such a WTF thing.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I can relate to the borg.

[CharlesPhipps]

But seriously, I just can't get over how badly they handled the Borg. The Borg isn't a person that can be reasoned with, it's an unthinking, unfeeling omnicidal botnet that will scoop your guts out and use you for spare parts without an ounce of thought or emotion.

"But Seven and Hugh are Borg!" No, Seven and Hugh are FORMER BORG DRONES. They are people who had their guts scooped out by the Borg and had it using their brains as auxiliary processors for so long they had trouble not thinking like the Borg.

I'm going to stick purely with "I, Borg" here because the thing about Hugh is the fact that they are attempting to deal with a Borg as Borg not actually take him from the collective. Hugh wasn't supposed to be someone that they freed from the Borg but someone that was supposed to bring his individuality back to the Collective.

So there is precedent here.

It's just when Hugh brought his individuality back, they cut him out.

I'll even give some leeway here because the Collective consists of two people: The Queen and Jurati. Hence it's more a contest of wills versus billions of minds crushing the individual.

[Worffan101]

I can relate to the borg.

...

No offense intended, but you can relate to an omnicidal botnet? I really do not mean to offend but I have trouble understanding how that's possible, it just doesn't click for me.