Spoilers Picard Series Retrospective: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

[fireproof78]

Inspired by the Poll thread around Season 1 vs. 3 and responses to those seasons. A thread to say all we enjoyed, disliked or found utterly bonkers in each season, or the series as a whole.

I do want to lay out a couple of guidelines to help the conversation. One, no Legacy talk. We have threads for that. Two, no BTS drama; only what's on screen. Prefer no scaling to avoid just a bunch of numbers and no qualitative discussion

On to my thoughts.

Season 1:

• The Good: Picard feels like there are consequences to a lot of his actions. He really offers a unique view of the aging process, and finding his place in a much different Starfleet world that he didn't grow up with. Love having more Romulans and the fallout from kind of my favorite Trek films. Elnor is great, Riker's family is a nice movement forward and they all like story appropriate consequences to the crew.
• The bad: the Borg. It's lacking the punch because it feels layered in top of a already convoluted plot. Hugh's inclusion was not additive. It took away from the Romulans.
• The Ugly: Data's death. I am probably one of the few (maybe?) who felt Data's death worked in Nemesis. So the whole "pull the plug" felt repetitive.

Season 2:

• The Good: the Confederation timeline is great. The history feels dynamic, much like the Mirror Universe. Picard's family host offered such a huge insight in to the character that I really appreciated. Many of the character beats landed well. Jurati's Borg was a fun take on a stale concept.
• The Bad: Q and the whole time travel set up. It tries to carry a heavy personal stake for Picard but it's way feels tacked on vs. more organic too Picard. Q is not a guiding force like in previous stories.
• The Ugly: Rios' death.

Season 3:

• The Good: Worf! Him and Raffi work so well, play off of each other really well and create a fun dynamic. Their being Starfleet Intelligence assets and dealing in the fringes is a great callback to Stardust City Rag and the fringes of the Federation. This season really uses the consequences of past Seasons and shows quite well, much like season 1. It has some beautiful moments for Riker and Troi, Geordi and Picard, and picking up the theme of family from both All Good Things and Season 2.
• The Bad: Shaw is not an enjoyable character. He has a point but then becomes a hindrance to actual progress. The portal weapon needed way more screentime. Or even use as opening the transwarp conduit or something.
• The Ugly: the Borg plan and the way there is nothing but mistrust for anyone outside of the Family. It's hard to really invest because outsiders are usually wrong. Jack is not an interesting character, and this season's over reliance on the mystery box is frustrating.

Other thoughts are welcome!

 

[BillJ]

Really like Raffi and some of the things they did in the first season, the second was "there", the third season was just poor. All the memberberries in the world could cover it.

All-in-all? Not the worst thing on TV. Just far less than the sum of its parts. Which is what is the most disappointing thing about it.

 

[Firebird]

Overall, I view Picard as a middling installment. Neither success, nor failure. It simply is.

Season 1 had the best spread of new ideas and I liked that it showed Picard, the Rikers, and even Starfleet have moved on in the last 20 years. Loved seeing Frakes and Sirtis back in Nepenthe, which was a high point of the season. This "matured" version of Seven I liked quite a bit. I loved Michael Chabon's interactions with the fans and the interesting backstories he wrote in various articles and Instagram stories - he clearly had a love for this story and put considerable thought behind it. That being said, however...

Structurally, the season feels more like a novel rather than a TV show, not entirely in a good way. Those first three episodes, which had been meant to be just two IIRC, feel padded out. The first season's reluctance to use previously-established in-universe terminology like Irumodic Syndrome or something as simple as "android" was strange to me. Never got onboard with Picard's death scene surrounded by all these people he'd only just met days before, yet the show tells the audience we're supposed to feel like he's around his closest family - a recurring problem imported from Discovery. Speaking of, did we really need a repeat of the evil AI/robot stuff from season 2 of Discovery? Could no one in the VFX department be bothered to design more than one Starfleet ship for that fleet at the end? The show kinda invents this Seven/Raffi pairing after the only work they did to set it up is one brief shot panning past them while they hold hands in the end montage.

Season 2 is a thing that happened.

Season 3 started strong and devolved into a parade of big, greasy fanservicey Big Kahuna burgers.

You know those characters they tried to make us interested in in the last 20 episodes? Guess what - who cares - we brought the TNG cast back! *vigorously shakes big, shiny keys at the audience* Season 3 practically ignores the majority of the previous two years, cherry-picking stuff that Matalas clearly had to sigh angrily at to include in his long-gestating fanfic idea, and outright undermined the decision and impact to kill of Q in season 2. There's so little narrative through-line from season 1, to 2, to 3, that it's hard even to call Picard a three-season series. It's more like we saw three different shows, with showrunners throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick.

 

[HotRod]

I'll keep it short. I liked Rios. He was a good, interesting, and flawed character. Getting rid of him so we could have 10 more episodes filled with geriatrics we've already seen for hundreds of episodes seemed like a horrible idea.

 

[Dukhat]

S1:

• The Good: Initially seeing Picard again, until (see The Bad.) Seeing Hugh again, until (see The Bad.) Data having a much better death and closure(?) than what he had in Nemesis. The idea that the show was going to be about older Picard and a new cast, rather than retreading TNG 2.0. Rios was probably the most interesting character of them all, and definitely the most likeable. The other characters were much less likeable, but hey, this is about The Good!
• The Bad: The absolutely nonsensical plot, made even worse by the out-of-context Short Trek "Children of Mars." Things that made zero sense: Some Romulan cult who hates robots decides to completely destroy the one thing that will save their entire race, just because there were some non-sentient androids involved. Then even after Romulus is destroyed, the Tal Shiar somehow still have enough power to infiltrate Starfleet at its highest level, while some other Romulans have time to fuck around with a deactivated Borg Cube even though, you know, THEIR PLANET IS DESTROYED. Then Picard, who seems to have turned into a huge asshole after last seeing him 20 years before, has a very heartfelt reunion with a beloved secondary character, who then gets killed for no real good reason. And back to the Borg cube: So we need a character (besides Picard) who was once a Borg (besides Hugh, because, well, he's now dead), so let's bring in a character from a completely different show who has nothing to do with Picard, give her some vague backstory about joining some space vigilante group which is completely out of character for this person (for again, no real good reason,) and make up some contrived BS to get her and Picard together on that cube. Oh, and let's let the audience know right at the end of the season that she's gay too, for, uh, you know...reasons, and is playing handsies with another woman that we didn't even know she knew.
• The Ugly: Romulan brother-sister incest! Why? Beats me. Not like we ever saw them again after S1. Yet another Soong? Why? Plot reasons. A bunch of Data look-alikes? Jurati in a relationship with a guy old enough to be her grandpa? And she kills him without any accountability for her actions whatsoever? Evil Robo-Cthulhu gets defeated even though we really have no idea what it was or why it was there? Yay, the synth ban is lifted, so all those androids can go back to being slave labor again! (as if that plot point was even on Chabon's radar.)

S2:

• The Good: A bunch of new starships! (even if a lot of them were from STO, and not the greatest choices, but hey, still new starships!) Rios in command of the new Stargazer! (which was a great design.) James Callis! Whoopi Goldberg! Old Punk on the Bus! Q's back! (but wait...)
• The Bad: Yet another nonsensical plot made worse by the retcon of Picard's boyhood. So Q is still testing humanity Picard with some silly alternate universe crap where humans are evil and want to subjugate/kill all aliens (gosh, where have we seen that before?), all because Picard's psychologically compromised ancestor doesn't go on some spaceflight to Europa and instead yet another Soong (!) becomes the poster boy for alien-hating despite him never actually meeting any aliens. How these plot points are connected is a complete mystery, but I guess we're just supposed to take Q at his word. And yet more time-travel that makes little sense, Rios acting like a complete noob and staying behind with some chick and her kid he literally met just days before only to get killed in some idiotic future barfight, young Guinan acting completely out of character, a Sanctuary District handwave because it had nothing to do with the plot even though the season takes place in the exact same year as "Past Tense," etc. etc.
• The Ugly: The Agent Wells character had absolutely no purpose to the plot and wasted an entire episode of a very short season. The rest of the cast getting varying amounts of short shrift. The whole Gary Seven wannabes and Wil Wheaton essentially playing himself rather than Wesley Crusher, people resembling other people for no apparent reason, and the entire ending where Borgati and company stop some other evil alien Cthulhu (but not the ones from the first season!) from invading our space for whatever reason they're doing it (since the writers didn't seem to care one way or another what its motive was, as their main goal was to portray Picard's mom as batshit crazy.)

S3:

• The Good: Seeing the Enterprise-D again, as well as the Enterprise-A, the Defiant and Voyager. Initially seeing the rest of the TNG crew. I liked Ed Speleers and his character. I liked the way they brought Data back but was unhappy that we didn't actually see Lore like the trailers hinted at.
• The Bad: Beverly's reasons for keeping Jack a secret from Picard and all of her friends for 20 years made no sense whatsoever, and she was acting completely out of character. The bargain-basement changelings being just red herrings for an even worse baddie. The Starfleet Museum was quite underwhelming. I initially liked Shaw but grew to find him a jerk. Bringing Ro and Shelby back just to kill them off like Hugh.
• The Ugly: The whole Titan debacle and the dumb anachronistic design it was given (based on the far, far better TMP-era fan design by Bill Krause.) Why the Enterprise-F was shown rather than the E to get closure for that ship rather than a stupid joke at Worf's expense. Why the Ent-F was being decommissioned so early despite nothing being wrong with the ship. The Titan becoming the Enterprise-G for no real good reason. Why Frontier Day is the launch of the NX-01 instead of the founding of the Federation, and why the NX-01 is stuck at the Museum when the entire celebration honoring it is being held in Earth orbit (I'm guessing Frontier Day, as well as the actual year the season was supposed to take place in, was changed at the last minute for, again, no real good reason.)

 

[Campe]

Season One
Good: Trying to do something different. The concept of the Qowat Milan. Rios. Jurati. Seven. Raffi. Bringing back the idea of the twin androids from TOS. Seeing Starfleet not as the bad guy but having competing priorities than our hero has. Killing Picard. A better goodbye for Data. Riker and Troi. Kestra. The Fenris Rangers. Laris.
Bad: Space tentacles. Bringing Picard back as an android.
Ugly: Killing Icheb. Wasn’t bad. Just ugly.

Season Two
Good: The confederacy. Q and Picard’s exchanges. Jurati singing. Stargazer. Captain Rios.
Bad: Too many pointless threads. Rios staying back in the 21st century. Borgati. Elinor’s pointless death.
Ugly: Borgati. Yes, listing it twice. The effects were horrible on her.

Season Three
Good: Jonathan Frakes. Michelle Forbes. Jeri Ryan. Worf and Raffi. I’ll admit, seeing Enterprise-D again made me smile. Shaw (at first). The scene between Seven and Jack was touching. Using Deanna effectively. Geordi. Captain Seven. Using Tuvok. Vadic, at least at first. Picard dropping an F bomb.
Bad: Bringing back Data. No sense of real urgency. Making the Titan the Enterprise. The design of the Titan/Enterprise. Using the Enterprise-F as opposed to making it a bit more personal using the E. Making Jack special counselor to Seven. Using the Changelings. Using the Borg. Teaming up the changelings and the Borg. The Enterprise flying like an X-Wing. Reusing way too much dialogue and music. Not using Beverly effectively. Picard and Beverly. Not using Wesley at all (thank you to other shows that have). Jack generally. Geordi’s daughters. Deadnaming Seven. Dropping Laris. Too much needle dropping music.
Ugly: Beheading a Ferengi. Changelings. Borg Queen.

That’s just what I can think of. I’m sure there’s more.

 

[Dukhat]

Not using Wesley at all (thank you to other shows that have).

Spoiler

He was used far more effectively in Prodigy, although the reveal that he knew about Jack's existence and didn't have his mother tell Picard (or tell Picard himself) now makes Wesley look complicit.

 

[Campe]

[later spoiler tagged]

Was trying to avoid writing any spoilers but yes.

 

[Dukhat]

Was trying to avoid writing any spoilers but yes.

There's a spoiler tag for the thread. I assumed that would be enough, but I'll edit my post

 

[Campe]

There's a spoiler tag for the thread. I assumed that would be enough, but I'll edit my post

Thanks. I think the thread Spoiler tag is more for the series the forum is related to not all spoilers but I’d defer to a mod about that ultimately.

 

[fireproof78]

Thanks. I think the thread Spoiler tag is more for the series the forum is related to not all spoilers but I’d defer to a mod about that ultimately.

Yeah, the spoilers are only for Picard, not other more recent productions. Pretty sure that's policy outside a show's sub forum.

 

[Dukhat]

There's so little narrative through-line from season 1, to 2, to 3, that it's hard even to call Picard a three-season series. It's more like we saw three different shows, with showrunners throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick.

That's an interesting observation. I remember a '90's British comedy called Chef! which also lasted three seasons series, where other than the main character, his wife, and the assistant chef, each series had a completely different cast and could have each been standalone one-season series, as the tone of each one was completely different. That's how PIC feels to me.

 

[FederationHistorian]

Season 1

The Good

• The opening scene on the Ent-D between Picard and Data.
• Rios. Jurati. Raffi. Elnor. Laris. Zhaban. Admiral Clancy. An interesting set of character to reintroduce us to the 24th century.
• Riker, Troi, & Kestra.
• Freecloud and Bjayzl.
• Narek, Narissa, Commodore Oh/General Nadar, the Zhat Vash and the Tal Shiar. It was very nice to not have Khan-like antagonists hellbent on a quest for vengeance.
• Returns of Hugh and Seven of Nine.
• Development of Romulan culture.
• Flashbacks to events that occurred between NEM and PIC.

The Bad

• Raffi’s drug addiction. I was not a fan.
• Dahj’s death. I would have liked a few more episodes with her.
• Bruce Maddox. Not so much bad, he was just there, and existed to be killed by Jurati. Not being played by Brian Brophy probably did not help the character.
• Laris and Zhaban being left behind when its known that the enemies are Tal Shiar and they are ex-Ta Shiar operatives. Okay, that still makes no sense.

The Ugly

• The extragalactic synths basically being the Reapers form Mass Effect. Mass Effect feels too recent of a product to be blatantly ripped off, and Trek is not the only party guilty of this. I did not like the film Elysium either for feeling like a ripoff of Mass Effect.
• The copy and paste fleet in the finale. There’s no reason that fleet could not have had some Galaxy class ships mixed in, along with some La Sirena like ships and even some Romulans BoPs (to follow up on NEM) to face down the Zhat Vash. They had the models!
• The death of Hugh. Just senseless and uncessary.
• The demise of Icheb, though that was clearly the point.

Season 2

The Good

• The Confederation of Earth & the Hall of Skulls
• A more diverse fleet for Starfleet
• The Stargazer
• The Borg Queen. Annie Wersching did an excellent job performing as her.
• Picard getting run over by Adam Soong. I like the subversive nature of it.
• Picard & Q scenes
• The high-speed chase with Seven & Raffi
• Initial meeting of Rios and the Ramirezes
• The rescue of Rios from the ICE bus.
• Wesley Crusher cameo.
• Jurati’s singing abilities
• Young Guinan was groovy.

The Bad

• Agent Wells. To bring back the actor that played Ducane and then not have him acknowledge he was Ducane with a simply line regarding Seven of Nine was engaged in unauthorized time travel again was lazy writing. That’s the issue. It’s not the interaction with the Vulcans in the 1970s that’s the problem, since we don’t know much about Ducane’s early life anyways. Being transplanted from the 1970s to the 29th century is plausible.
• The Q and El-Aurian situation. While it was an attempt at an explanation, I do not know if it was a satisfactory one. Especially when considering that the El-Aurians, that stood up to the Q, were later assimilated by the Borg with their civilization destroyed and only a handful of them managed to escape. I do understand the rock, paper, scissor aspect in understanding the Q - El-Aurian - Borg relationship. I'm just not sure if that's the answer we are settling for.
• Rios choosing to stay behind in the 21st century. Dude realizes that there’s no replicators or holodecks, and that the medical care is inferior to the standards of the 25th century? And that there’s some nuclear war on the horizon, that’s to follow a Eugenics War? And the post-atomic horror after? And no time cop was bothered with this either?
• Poorly developing the romantic relationships of Rios/Jurati and Seven/Raffi. The former was not seriously elaborated on as to why they broke up, and the latter did not build on the ending of S1 satisfactorily enough.
• The prolonged stay in the 21st century. If it had been on 25th century Confederation Earth, and that Earth was one that never evolved beyond 2024, that would have been fine. But it wasn’t. And when its combined with the various ENT references (Wells’s encounter with Vulcans, the spaceplane shuttle model at the gala, Adam Soong’s interest in cloning and Augments, the mission to Io, possibly the Ramirezes being an ancestor to Captain Ramirez of the Intrepid), this season was to ENT what Caprica was to Battlestar Galactica. An odd decision, since I thought the focus was on Picard, not ENT.
• Synth storyline dropped entirely. And Q didn’t even give Picard an organic body either at the end of the season.
• The abandonment of Enjor and Soji as Picard’s surrogate children.
• Jurati eating car batteries. ‘nuff said.

The Ugly

• The announcement of the return of the TNG cast for S3. Although an enjoyable and exciting moment as a fan, that fact that it was revealed while the season was airing just showed that even Paramount just gave up on the season as a whole.

Season 3

The Good

• Bringing back episode titles for live action. Highly appreciated.
• Worf and Raffi – they make a great team.
• Shaw – though unlikable for most of the season, he was not put in a situation that allowed for him to be likeable off the bat. If placed in S1 to stand up for Picard to Admiral Clancy during her “sheer fucking hubris” speech, he’d be very likeable.
• Sneed – the type of Ferengi that TNG always wanted as an antagonist, but never got.
• Return of Ro, Tuvok & Shelby
• Dominion War followup
• The Fleet Museum, which allowed us to see the Defiant, Voyager, NX-01, Ent-A, and classic Spacedock, one more time.
• The TNG reunion. This included the ENT-D and seeing the crew on the bridge one more time.

The Bad

• Vadic overstaying her welcome after episode 4. That would have been remembered as an epic ending if it was a movie. Yet they just kept dragging it out to kill her off in a different way. Vadic should have been swapped out for Tom Riker or a Changeling impersonating Kira in the second half of the season.
• Seven not confronting the Borg Queen for the final time. its up there with not having Beverly confront Picard instead of Lily in FC, or Troi not counselling Data through is emotions in GEN and counselling Picard through Shinzon’s appearance in NEM. A massive oversight that doesn’t make sense in the context of the story.
• Not being able to fit in a line that Data has a daughter and there’s a world of Soong synths.
• The Titan-A. Was expecting the Luna-class Titan as seen in LD, instead of what we got. May as well stuck with the Stargazer if they were not going to give us want we wanted.
• Mixing up the date for Frontier Day. Supposedly celebrating the founding of Starfleet, yet it’s a celebration of the NX-01 and Starfleet had already existed for at least a decade in the time of the NX-01. And if they meant Federation Starfleet, then they were ten years off.
• After the effort in S2 to get Picard to open up to Laris -the whole point with that season - Laris disappears in the first few minutes of S3 and is never seen or mentioned again. So S2 is even more pointless than it was.
• M’Talas basically being a Freecloud clone.

The Ugly

• The Changeling that impersonated a black officer being shot. Just felt in bad taste in the wake of George Floyd.
• The dig at S1 during Riker and Troi’s reunion on Vadic’s ship. Unnecessary and left a bad taste in my mouth.
• The Ent-D being called the fat one. Okay, whatever. Seems like a very cheap attempt to be edgy.
• Ent-E destroyed offscreen, and the Ent-F retired early. All to get to the Ent-G.
• Renaming the Titan-A the Ent-G. I don’t care if in universe it was just for PR reasons, it still felt wrong.
• The dreams of jack and the method of communication used by Vadic leading to the Borg. Leading to either Armus, the Great Link/the Female Changeling, the bluegill parasites from “Conspiracy”, Species 8472, a non-corporal and Pah Wraith possessed Dukat, or the Kosst Amojan would have been more creative than what they went with. And the last two would have built upon the appearance of a Bajoran Reckoning tablet seen in the PIC S2 trailer. Point being, even if there was logic behind the final decision, it did not meet expectations.

 

[Tiran O'Saurus]

Agent Wells. To bring back the actor that played Ducane and then not have him acknowledge he was Ducane with a simply line regarding Seven of Nine was engaged in unauthorized time travel again was lazy writing. That’s the issue. It’s not the interaction with the Vulcans in the 1970s that’s the problem, since we don’t know much about Ducane’s early life anyways. Being transplanted from the 1970s to the 29th century is plausible.

Actors can't play more than one character? Tell that to Clint Howard.

 

[fireproof78]

he dreams of jack and the method of communication used by Vadic leading to the Borg. Leading to either Armus, the Great Link/the Female Changeling, the bluegill parasites from “Conspiracy”, Species 8472, a non-corporal and Pah Wraith possessed Dukat, or the Kosst Amojan would have been more creative than what they went with. And the last two would have built upon the appearance of a Bajoran Reckoning tablet seen in the PIC S2 trailer. Point being, even if there was logic behind the final decision, it did not meet expectations.

There really wasn't a logic to it though, was there? We have several instances of the Borg Queen being ended, and then to return? That's not logical. Your list of other ideas are ones I would welcome, especially something like the Blue Gills, or Pah Wraiths, who were always a favorite aspect of DS9 for me.

Actors can't play more than one character? Tell that to Clint Howard.

Jeffery Combs.

Tim Russ.

David Warner (in back to back films no less).

James Doohan.

Marc Alaimo (same species too!)

Mark Lenard (though I'm sure we'd be glad not to have him as Sarek, right?)

 

[Dukhat]

Agent Wells. To bring back the actor that played Ducane and then not have him acknowledge he was Ducane with a simply line regarding Seven of Nine was engaged in unauthorized time travel again was lazy writing. That’s the issue. It’s not the interaction with the Vulcans in the 1970s that’s the problem, since we don’t know much about Ducane’s early life anyways. Being transplanted from the 1970s to the 29th century is plausible.

It's not 'lazy writing.' It's your perceived notion of what they should have done based on the actor they used. That's no different from thinking that they should have made David Warner play Gorkon instead of Gul Madred just because they used the same guy. He was not playing Ducane; he was never meant to be Ducane. He was playing some other guy who wasted an entire episode because he had nothing whatsoever to do with the plot.

Now with that said, the name "Agent Wells" could absolutely have been a subtle clue rather than a red herring. But in all honesty, I doubt they cast Jay Karnes because he played a character in one episode of Voyager over 20 years ago. That wasn't even a thing on their radar. And it really wasn't even a red herring, as that implies that they wanted us to believe he was Ducane even though he wasn't. That wasn't what they did.

 

[FederationHistorian]

Actors can't play more than one character? Tell that to Clint Howard.

It's not 'lazy writing.' It's your perceived notion of what they should have done based on the actor they used. That's no different from thinking that they should have made David Warner play Gorkon instead of Gul Madred just because they used the same guy. He was not playing Ducane; he was never meant to be Ducane. He was playing some other guy who wasted an entire episode because he had nothing whatsoever to do with the plot.

Now with that said, the name "Agent Wells" could absolutely have been a subtle clue rather than a red herring. But in all honesty, I doubt they cast Jay Karnes because he played a character in one episode of Voyager over 20 years ago. That wasn't even a thing on their radar. And it really wasn't even a red herring, as that implies that they wanted us to believe he was Ducane even though he wasn't. That wasn't what they did.

Maybe there’s no issue with Jay Karnes playing a different character on Trek.

Maybe its as simple as timey wimey story should feature timey wimey character that has a history of keeping tabs on Seven of Nine time traveling through history. Basic continuity.

 

[Dukhat]

Maybe there’s no issue with Jay Karnes playing a different character on Trek.

Maybe its as simple as timey wimey story should feature timey wimey character that has a history of keeping tabs on Seven of Nine time traveling through history. Basic continuity.

Except, as I stated above, that was never the intent of the character. There is no continuity. It is just a coincidence that the actor who once played Ducane and the actor who is playing 7 of 9 were in the same episode together. He was not Ducane. He was Agent Wells.

 

[Nerys Myk]

PIC1 Good
PIC2 Bad
PIC3 Ugly

 

[Dukhat]

PIC1 Good
PIC2 Bad
PIC3 Ugly

PIC1 Bad
PIC2 Ugly
PIC3 Memberberries