Riker's cut'n'paste fleet was utterly laughable. Even HD fan videos on youtube showed a lot of custom work that looks
so much more like Starfleet...
The TNG movies did redefine Picard already so it's hard to quarrel against PIC continuing with that.
Then again, none of the TNG movies would dare use slang lingo like "JL", "XB", and so on; it just comes off as being pretentious and silly.
Of course, the idea of "robot made from biological cells" is pretty dumb, too; "Blade Runner" is a tad overrated, or at least works for other reasons. And, yes, there are a number of scenes in PIC that are very worthy. Including scenes hinting at off-screen developments over time. The Picard-sees-Hugh scene being one solid example. The show isn't my thing but there are some good scenes. Individual tastes may vary. Just like Soylent Green, thank you Turanga Leela!
And, again, the acting by all in this show is universally high. The actress playing Raffi, who reminds me of my ex with the booze-n-ciggie problems but actually deserves sympathy, is arguably the best. Hasn't smoking been banned since the 23rd century? There's a miniseries just waiting to be happen, how they smuggle in cigs from-- oh good grief...
Can someone tell me how taking a 1mm x 1mm square of a blank page from one encyclopedia can be cloned into recreating the complete volume set with all printed within? That's as (expletives far more worthy on the show as opposed to being said by characters on it deleted) as saying how Data and his memories were reconstituted. I miss the 1980s/early-90s where they aped Unix instead of today's "magic wand unicorn breeding factory".
Actors in "Nemesis" in a commentary opined Soong may have a biological son and other things PIC pretty much took and ran with.
Picard in the TNG TV show did seem to support individual choice regarding assisted suicide in "Ethics", though how Data became so nihilistic is something else entirely.
JL now being a robot with pre-programmed shutoff subroutine is laughably bad. And everyone acts as if he's still his original organic self. This might work if Picard's mind was frankensteined without his being aware of it... but...
Seven is Ms Terminator, aiming two semiautomatics simultaneously. Loaded with more slang. A person can recover from the trauma she experienced but she seems too far different to really believe into. Not unlike Mickey from Doctor Who, who became super-extrovert after being a crude joke for his first year but finally given hackneyed development in his second (and within the span of a few episodes). The premise "I'm the tin dog" and self-awareness is quite good, but they went from one extreme side of caricature to the other. In a show that was trying to pander to everything "modern day Earth-as-you-know-it".
Riker was the best thing about it, especially in the finale. His weight is irrelevant, it happens to most who age - we're all unique individuals but we're all still human and we all age and we can all gain weight due to a wide variety of circumstances, including those people often don't say as the knee-jerk response. Like medication side-effects or stress.
Weren't the tentacles and big magical space orchids inspired by some video game? (To be fair, Trek has often used space-faring critters... most of which have been just as laughably bad too. Tin Man might be the exception but even then, none of them travels faster than light so they're going nowhere very slowly. And even in the 1960s, they'd know that too. Of course, who was thinking of the big mystery blob with Jefferson Airplane single-cell blob inside as traveling FTL?
The concept and execution did enough to distract from the basic oopsie... which is probably why I'm a fan of "Space 1999" despite how ludicrous the premise was. Overlook that and some individual episodes really pack a punch. "War Games" is a classic... and why aren't I talking about sausage and donut sandwiches?
)
