If it plays like a movie, then they're not really reviewing six episodes, they're reviewing the first half of a mega-length film. That's how I look at it.
Early Review of Picard Season 3
- Thread starter Omegaphallic
- Start date
The number of people from mainstream websites and publications, or various Hollywood professionals who have said positive things about Picard S3 is getting rather large at this point.
It isn't just Robservations from the Robservatory and the CHUD Livecast.
I am getting quite nervous about this guy. What does he know and when did he know it? Is the Hungarian Civic Alliance party involved?
The problem is it feels very... surface level becuase we've had very little in the way of those moments to help reinforce what a character likes and does. Culber and Stamets stuck with me because of how well it was portrayed on screen and we had those moments of breathing and character quiet.(They're not on the bridge, so don't count) Saru likes plants and tending the garden in his quarters. Tilly was... ah? And the others? They had uh.... Hrm. Certainly in the first two seasons it all got lost in the storyline of Micheal Burnham: Trek Protagonist.
Meanwhile we know stuff like Worf's exploration of the way of the warrior, Data's humanity exploration, Riker's fondness for Jazz, Picard's love for literature and archeology.
HOWEVER, it should be noted that those episodes also tended to be more bottle in their nature which despite their notoriously cheap ability to make them they've rather fallen out of favour in TV shooting in favour of the shorter seasons.
Lower Decks gets away with it more because the non-command members of the crew have defined downtime and so can see this growth and development.
Strange New Worlds has explored very little off this aside from Chris Pike's love for cooking, Spock's exploration of his "Mixed race" heritage and Una and La'an's lost Academy Fun Days which they compensate for by doing Enterprise Bingo.
I'm white, I'm in my mid 30s and I... like a pint of bitter? Does that count?
Does make some sense, there was a big chunk who definitely got turned off by Discovery's frankly weird takes. They then tried their first stab at getting these folks back by promising Picard to be a deep character study before sneakily swapping it for a action movie. I was certainly ready to walk away from NuTrek after watching so many other IPs get this "reboot" treatment which seemed to mostly consist of hacky writers and arrogant producers spitting repeatedly in the face of existing fandoms and crowbaring in whatever cause of that day was trendy the particular week in Beverley Hills.
It's only by the Grace of Lower Decks have I stayed as it seems someone had finally agreed to hire some people who actually gave a damn with what they were doing. This was followed by Prodigy and SNW for me which is lovely to see.
Like I've said elsewhere, NuTrek has an awfully familiar paint job and evolution not revolution works best for a show with such a thick history behind it.
I think for many Star Trek fans, DISCOVERY will be their most hated TV show.
I mean some shows will botch the landing before ending, like LOST or GAME OF THRONES that could make revisiting them a challenge. Or run themselves into the ground, like THE X-FILES. Or suffer massive executive interference and creative turnover, turning it into a pod person of its former self, like SLIDERS.
But Star Trek is unique in that it's a polycentric franchise (that was) based on core continuity where everything mattered, and anything could come back decades later. It's not just historically a few films a la Star Wars or Alien. It's not sourced from comic books that have been constantly rebooted and spun off into different TV shows and films with very different levels of interoperative continuity. It's not the sliding scale of James Bond.
So when DISCOVERY came on the scene, people stuck with it a lot longer than they would anything from outside the franchise. Let's say you hate some new Netflix TV show. You just stop watching. All you really have to lose is the opportunity cost of not using the time to watch something you'd love. Whereas in Star Trek, you're probably far more invested in the franchise as a whole, more so than one individual component. Plus, DISCOVERY was (ostensibly) canon. Some people jumped ship after the first few episodes. Many screamed they couldn't take any more by the end of season 2. It's no wonder several YouTube channels took off during the "I hate this" phase but before people jumped and were done.
Say what you will about DS9 vs VGR on quality and continuity. The differences between them are vastly smaller than the distance between DISCOVERY and anything pre-2005.
But in having rewatched the first two seasons in the last two years, it's crazy to see just how many times that show jumped the shark. At least there's no real way it fits into the pre-existing continuity, so might as well just be another Kelvin parallel universe.
I'm so glad I didn't try to watch PICARD season 1 in 2020. That year was bad enough!
STLD does start off pretty badly, but then manages to overperform in the final three episodes of the first season. By the second half of season 2 it reaches the point of being more positive than negative. And yeah, PRODIGY is great. I do however strongly dislike SNW haha.
Which hopefully PICARD season 3 will finally be!
I remember when it was Enterprise which fans insisted couldn't possibly fit into the pre-existing continuity
Hmmmm...
Seems more than a pint.
I say this half joking, but honestly people keep treating the producers like they are actively going out there and trying to insult the fanbase. That's not a tenable way to do business. Star Trek has always roped in contemporary issues and made them a part of the show, sometimes successfully, and sometimes extremely forced, or perhaps shoehorned. TOS certainly did that as hard as any other show of the time. So, I don't find the "spitting in the face" and "crowbarring" to be any different with Discovery than any other Trek show.
Star Trek really is. It moves the time scale around as much as any other fictional franchise. TOS, when it goes back to the 60s is very close to our 60s, save for the orbital weapons platforms. Going back in time to the 80s, it's our 80s. 90s in VOY it's our 90s. The idea that there is no sliding scale is a false one, built up by decades of fan and books that tried to bring everything together, tie it up nice and neatly, and create the semblance of a perfect continuity. But Trek doesn't have that. It has a beautiful facade that has worked quite well, even though any differences would be glossed over as simply as possible. Except for big differences like TMP, TWOK and TNG, which had a lot of changes that were quite different from the TOS but were just expected to be accepted.
Nope. TOS is my preference over all other Trek, followed closely by Kelvin Trek, then Discovery, then SNW. I do not care about it as a whole.
That's insulting to the people who worked on those other shows. They cared, they gave a damn, you can tell in the interviews and behind the scenes footage.
So, before they just said "Fuck it, let's do whatever the hell they want with this STAR TRACK show!" Wow, I can't even with the sheer amount of poor assumptions made around those who dared make a Star Trek show outside of what fans would want. It's frustrating as hell.
Though, Picard Season 2 tried to do both. Acknowledge what previous shows said about the early 21st Century.
References to DS9: Past Tense's Sanctuary Districts and other small details from that episode, and the level of space travel technology mentioned/implied in other series, while also combining elements from the IRL 2000s that they couldn't have known would happen like The Department of Homeland Security, and.. Rick and Morty?
If that's not a sign of how confident they are in Season 3, I don't know what is.
I mean more like how each Bond film isn't in perfect continuity with each other. Broad strokes, the recurring supporting characters. But there isn't a film Bond continuity outside the Daniel Craig films, just official and unofficial films. Whereas the Star Trek universe has to diverge from our universe in the 1960s because TOS exists. VGR 1990's has the excuse of an alt timeline that's overwritten, and the Eugenics Wars need not impact North America anyway.
Ok, that's a very interesting point of difference to identify as to why we are coming about this so differently. I'm very much a fan of Berman era Trek plus the TOS films, while TOS is more the backstory and history that can enjoyed on it's own terms.
Dave Cullen makes this specific point on his non-review review.
And well I think I can guess why the thread on "Assimilation" is twice as long as most other season 2 episodes without looking. The uncanny valley...
I get that that's the post episode rationalization but that's not what is presented on screen. The timeline moves. I do appreciate how you made a disticntion from Bond to Trek. In that, yes I see the differences. But, what I have observed repeatedly with Trek over the years is that Trek tries hard to have it both ways, as @Tuskin38 notes. They put just a little spin on it but it still is in presentation our 60s, 80s and 90s. It's still meant to connect to our humanity and its future. Trek has all the little inconsistencies that get glossed over or, rationalized away by fans, because that's what fans do.
To me, all Trek should be enjoyed on its own terms. It's how I made peace with TMP and TWOK not being like TOS, or how I can appreciate TNG or DS9 even though there is little there in the characters that always appeal to me like TOS. Putting it all together is a fun academic exercise but not a requirement for me if I'm watching a show. It used to be. And I was not a fun person to be around. I think the Kelvin films helped me see that difference.
Mileage will vary.
Wow. You got a lot of likes for a racist, sexist, and stereotypical post. Was this ill-advised humor or are you actually serious? Just wondering...
I direct m'learned friend towards the recent He-man reboot, the Velma reboot, the Charlies Angels reboot, the Sabrina reboot, the Ghostbusters (first) reboot, The Witcher Prequel, Star Wars... I'm more talking "general trend" than anything else which seems to result in many shows and IPs burning to the ground usually while whatever hack was put in charge of it yells about it being those dang dirty "toxic fans" rather than general audiences taking one look at it, finding it utter rubbish, and then tuning out. You're right, it's very much a poor way to do business and is probably why there's a sudden massacre of streaming service shows, the bubble's popping.
The most disgusting example of that was Sony actively deleting any resonable critical comments about the Ghostbuster's reboot and only leaving behind the trolls and then proceeding to scream in every outlet they could about that was what they were up against and that's why people should go and see it. Plenty of people who might have given it a shot despite misgivings simply didn't go see it in the cinemas.
Trek's managed to generally avoid this, but early on I was hearing a lot of buzzword laden attempts to up excitement for the show which increasingly sounded like what we'd seen a few times by now with the above trend which began to pick up speed during the mid 2010s.
General rule of thumb for me is if they're talking about anything BUT the show with as many modern catchphrases and buzzwords they can throw into it? It's probably not going to be very good.
So far this has steered me fairly well.
Remember how "utterly proud" the old Ghostbusters were of working with the reboot cast and crew?
'cause I remember Dan Ackroyd's attitude while he was still under contractual obligation and when he wasn't and the difference was night and day.
Heck, I remember how passionate people talked about Nemesis in the BTS bits because I own the darn DVD.
People in the industry are liars by trade. Most BTS crew will be happy to have work again and being able to show off their talents (and for all my critiques directed at Discovery, its largely writing based. Its sound, sets and cinematography will never be any of them, the show is gorgeous). I generally disregard anything actors say while under contract because being relentlessly positive for the show is a very big part of it.
I'm now convinced Game of Thrones' botched ending was entirely an operation by Disney who felt threatened by it. They promised the writers positions at Disney and (allegedly) either Star Wars or any IP they could want, so they utterly rushed the writing of the last 2 seasons and the ending which led to lots of condemnation and Disney yanking their offer during the fallout.
In Discovery's case, hate is always too strong a word, dissapointment is my main thing with it, and it seems reflected a lot in the steadily dying internet chatter and reviewers over the seasons which you can see on Rotten Tomatoes where the reivews in from professionals in S1 are something like 90+ and S4 it's 20. In Discovery's case it felt like they botched the start. Same with Picard. With so much to draw from and be able to sit people down and go "you need to watch these episodes to get a feel of this character" we have at our disposal now it shouldn't be happening.
Discovery for me certainly has gotten easier to watch and get through a season. I remember Season 1 felt like a drag in some places but then this has been the case with other shows which are still clearly finding their feet but when it continued into season 2 and then lagged in season 3...the parade of showrunners didn't help matters one iota either and it rather tarnished the flagship, so to speak. I'm hoping the new showrunners on both Picard and Disco will be able to get to do more things and tell good stories.
I mean, in Discovery's case between 05-17 we've had the rise of different storytelling styles, visuals have changed a lot stuff like the Scandi-drama trend, serious changes in how casting is done, equipment has changed enormously as well.
Updating the visuals was always going to be the right call, but considering they were trying to say it was canon they went a bit too hard in the Kelvin Timeline visuals and even sold this as a positive point early on, before finally doing something different and even made more sense when they kicked themselves out into the 32nd century to truly give themselves the breathing room the show likely needs and began to show during Season 4.
I mean, I hope so too.
Well, yes, but that's a whole other topic due to the sheer amount of BTS drama going on.
So, you want to pay people to watch TV? Even if they do so, they are not going to take away what decades of fans have and built up in their heads over the years. Or, to put it another way, I don't feel Kirk and Spock are the Kirk and Spock of TOS in TMP. Was Roddenberry wrong?
General rule of thumb I have is...watch it. I don't care what the current trends are, nor have I watched Ghostbusters, Velma, Witcher, Charlies Angels or much else. So if you want to use that to burn Trek in effigy then I'm afraid I'm of no help to you. I don't even know where to find the fire much less burn things.
There are plenty of projects which have done this usually to the shows later success, it's about giving a sense of "what this character is" or "what we want to try and do". I beleive the new X-men cartoon is doing the same, either read a selection of comics or watch the 90s TV show and get a "proper feel" of what was so they can do something better but with respect to what came before.
I should also say there's no effigy burning from me! A lot of what I am saying is most definitely in the past evidenced by the rest of my ramble.
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