Rewriting Picard from the start

[Jedi Marso]

I consider the first season to be the single worst season of live action Star Trek set in the 24th century.

So, if I were CBS / Paramount, after the rough cut of the first two episodes came in, I would have shut down production, brought in a dream team from the Berman era (Ira Steven Behr, Manny Coto, Rene Echeveria...) and told them there's $75 million left in the budget. Unfuck this mess.

They might have lost Patrick Stewart had they done that, though. In the beginning, anyway, his express interest was in NOT doing TNG 2.0. That said, I too found Picard generally to be a mess of a show. I thought the third season was okay, if flawed. And I did not need to see the Borg again.

 

[Campe]

Season one starts out promising, almost excellent. By the end of the season, it falls apart. I think the bold, different thing I’d do was to actually end Jean-Luc’s story at the end of the season, reworking some of the last three episodes so it wasn’t so… I dunno… weird. Get rid of the golem. I don’t know, I might even sprinkle in some TNG cameos throughout the season to have the goodbye feel more palatable.l have Beverly be the doctor who tells him about his condition, have Riker have a more prominent part in the Clancy role, have a flashback with Geordi where he has some perceived culpability in the android situation, perhaps even being sacrificed. Small roles, but not overpowering ones. And make it a real goodbye for Jean-Luc Picard.

 

[James Cole]

That can't be true, because it's not Star Trek: Voyager Season Seven.

I'm offering my subjective personal opinion, not trying to establish an objective fact. That said, why VGR season 7 of all the options?

"Remembrance" is quite possibly the greatest series premiere of any Star Trek series. (It faces heavy competition from "Emissary.") And "Maps and Legends" has all of its strengths. Their depictions of long-term grief are genuinely moving in a way one rarely sees outside of Realism/Naturalism.

I'll stipulate that I find "Remembrance" less objectionable than "The Vulcan Hello" or "Strange New Worlds", but don't see how it beats the two TOS pilots, Farpoint, "Caretaker", or "Broken Bow".

Even if one thinks "Remembrance" and "Maps and Legends" are bad, about the best way to make something worse is to combine two incompatible creative visions with one another. I find Zack Snyder's films nearly unwatchable, but his cut of Justice League was better than the Frankenstein's monster that was the theatrical cut combining Snyder's vision with Whedon's. I promise you, even if you don't like Chabon's work, you would almost certainly have hated an attempt to stitch it together with another showrunner's vision.

But of course, your scenario is not how television production works, at all.

PICARD the series was created and initially showrun by committee. "Remembrance" had enough of a rewrite by James Duff that he gained separate "and" credits for both story and teleplay. You also have several writer producers in the opening credits that worked with him on that TNT procedural and spin off that didn't end up writing during the actual season. Akiva Goldsman has said that season 1 was his and Chabon's vision, season 2 his and Terry Matalas, and 3 Matalas. Goldsman has also said they didn't have the end of the season planned when they started filming (although there likely were several other plans that dead ended...).

The original 102 episode was expanded into two parts much later on in filming the season, with additional scenes filmed.

The reason I picked that as a turning point was the season was still "fixable" for me at that point, but once you get to "Absolute Candor" and "Stardust City Rag" the season was off the deep end.

And, changing showrunners / directions mid season happens all the time. Early 1990s had it happen twice with LA LAW... SEAQUEST... more recently DESIGNATED SURVIVOR season 1, FLASHFORWARD, the season 1 of the V reboot... and DISCOVERY season 2 (Pike as a devout Catholic would have been an interesting take...).

They might have lost Patrick Stewart had they done that, though. In the beginning, anyway, his express interest was in NOT doing TNG 2.0. That said, I too found Picard generally to be a mess of a show. I thought the third season was okay, if flawed. And I did not need to see the Borg again.

Maybe they needed someone with past experience managing Patrick Stewart in the mix...

 

[fireproof78]

"Broken Bow".

The others I can see, but I've not turned off and taped over an opener faster. Awful.

Maybe they needed someone with past experience managing Patrick Stewart in the mix...

And convince him to do what? His mind was made up until he had that positive experience.

 

[Vger23]

Kind of a cross between certain concepts in “TWOK,” “ Top Gun Maverick” and “Prodigy”:

It would have been cool see Picard and company field-training the next generation of Starfleet adventurers, facing his own past through the experiences of younger officers, etc. and ultimately getting into crisis / adventures with his students as they all grow together.

 

[Lord Garth]

That can't be true, because it's not Star Trek: Voyager Season Seven.

Not a favorite of mine, but I like VOY Season 7 a bit better than Seasons 5 and 6.

"Critical Care", "Body and Soul", "Lineage", and "Author, Author" bring a lot a lot to the table. "Repentance" tried. "Nightingale" and "Repression" are okay. "Drive" is a guilty pleasure. "Endgame" is a fitting end to VOY, as backhanded as that sounds. Then there's "Prophecy" which was unintentionally funny because of how far Not-Sisko tried to bend things to fit his Holy Klingon Narrative.

"Critical Care" and its scathing take on the medical industry applies just as much to today as it did to the beginning of the 2000s. "Author, Author" becomes more interesting now when juxtaposed against the current Writer's Strike and concerns about AI replacing flesh-and-blood writers.

There's not an episode in the seventh season that I outright dislike. At worst, a lot of them are forgettable. Which is better than Seasons 5 and 6, which had episodes like "The Disease" and "Fury". And I'm sure someone would mention "Fair Haven" and especially "Spirit Folk".

If I had to rate the seasons of VOY, it would go: 4, 3, 1, 2, 7, 5, 6
If I had to rate the seasons of TNG, it would go: 4, 3, 6, 5, 7, 2, 1
For PIC, I don't know. I think I'm ultimately going to go with: 1, 3, 2. This isn't final yet, though I'm sure I'll keep S2 last.

Though I'd still rather watch PIC S2 than most of TNG and VOY. Yeah, I left out DS9, but so did PIC. House Rules.

 

[Dukhat]

I would have made the show like what I had envisioned based on the rumors I heard during preproduction, and scenes from the trailers taken out of context:

1. Plot A: 2387. We would actually see Picard in charge of a fleet of ships devoted to evacuating the Romulan people (and still in command of the Enterprise-E), when the sun goes nova sooner than expected, and the Romulans and the rescue fleet are all destroyed. Picard somehow escapes and now lives with the torment of survivor's guilt, since it was his crew which allowed him to escape at the cost of their lives, and that he failed to save any of the Romulans.

2. Plot B: Starfleet shipyards now use semi-intelligent positronic androids, based on research done with Data and Lore, as essentially slave labor (much like the MK-1 EMHs from VOY's "Author, Author.") They become self-aware, revolt, and destroy all the shipyards, leaving the Federation defenseless other than the remaining active-duty ships that were not being used for the evacuation (as was hinted at in the Short Trek "Children of Mars" but with a completely different context.) The Federation and Starfleet then become more insular and guarded due to their weakened nature.

3. Fast forward to 2400: Picard has retired and is living alone at his vineyard, when he is contacted by a girl who turns out to be a positronic android built by Data, and is on the run from unknown assailants. She tells Picard that she is in contact with the remaining rogue androids, who want equality. Picard is bewildered by this, as Data died twenty years before, not to mention that this girl looks completely human, unlike the androids that went rogue. The assailants are Starfleet Intelligence, who are hunting the rogue 'synths' (a derogatory term coined by them) for what happened at Utopia Planitia and the other shipyards. Girl asks Picard for help, as he served with Data on the Enterprise, and trusts him because he fought for android rights in the past. Since he can't trust Starfleet for help, Picard decides to hire a ship and crew to take them to the planet where the rogue synths are hiding. Mystery about Data ensues while being chased by Starfleet (and the captain of the Enterprise-F who hates Picard and is tasked with hunting him down.)

No silly Romulan robot-hating cults, no ‘fucking hubris’ admirals, no Borg, no brother-sister incest, no ‘not another Soong brother,’ no evil Cthulhu-robot from the 8th dimension, and no Picard being an asshole.

 

[Unicron]

For my part, I don't like the idea of using androids/synths as forced labor. I thought that was one of PIC's sillier elements, like how VOY depicted Mk I EMHs being used this way. It goes against how Picard fought for the right of beings like Data.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

It was a mistake to have everyone rejoin Starfleet between season 1 and 2. It was nice to see characters operating out of Starfleet for once.

 

[Dukhat]

For my part, I don't like the idea of using androids/synths as forced labor. I thought that was one of PIC's sillier elements, like how VOY depicted Mk I EMHs being used this way. It goes against how Picard fought for the right of beings like Data.

TNG set it up, though:

Guinan: Consider that in the history of many worlds, there have always been disposable creatures. They do the dirty work. They do the work that no one else wants to do because it's too difficult or too hazardous. And an army of Datas, all disposable... You don't have to think about their welfare, you don't think about how they feel. Whole generations of disposable people.

Picard: You're talking about slavery.

Guinan: Oh, I think that's a little harsh.

Picard: I don't think that's a little harsh, I think that's the truth. But that's a truth that we have obscured behind a... comfortable, easy euphemism: 'Property'! But that's not the issue at all, is it?

It would have been fascinating to see PIC expand on this conversation with the rogue synths. But that's not what happened at all. The synths were just mindless drones and their use as labor wasn’t even an issue.

 

[Sci]

I'm offering my subjective personal opinion, not trying to establish an objective fact. That said, why VGR season 7 of all the options?

A pointless season full of pointless episodes of a series that was running on fumes, written by creatively burnt-out people beholden to a formula that was by that point almost two decades out of date of then-contemporary television.

I'll stipulate that I find "Remembrance" less objectionable than "The Vulcan Hello" or "Strange New Worlds", but don't see how it beats the two TOS pilots, Farpoint, "Caretaker", or "Broken Bow".

It's more emotionally engaging than any of them. It asks us what happens after the traditional story has ended, what happens to the man who has invested his life in institutions and who has been failed by those institutions. It asks us to think about what happens in the long term to a society that has betrayed its values and kept betraying them for a long time. And it asks us to think about the long-term consequences of grief.

These are much more meaningful, emotionally engaging themes than anything in "The Cage," "Encounter at Farpoint," "Caretaker," or "Broken Bow." "Where No Man Has Gone Before" at least has more dramatic meat to it, since it's at its core a story about what happens when a friendship ends because of mental illness or substance abuse, but there's just not as much dramatic weight to it as in "Remembrance."

The reason I picked that as a turning point was the season was still "fixable" for me at that point, but once you get to "Absolute Candor" and "Stardust City Rag" the season was off the deep end.

"Absolute Candor" and "Stardust City Rag" are wonderful episodes.

And, changing showrunners / directions mid season happens all the time.

Changing showrunners is very different from throwing out every single script after the first two episodes. You're talking about scripts that have already been written, scripts in the process of being written, scripts that have already been shot, and scripts that are in the process of being shot. You can't just set that kind of money on fire at that point. If you want to go in a different direction, you would have needed that ship to change course quite a few steps earlier.

 

[FederationHistorian]

Make the first season a live action version of The Last Best Hope. Let’s see Picard’s struggles with the evacuation.

S1 then becomes S2.

 

[Jedi Marso]

I would have made the show like what I had envisioned based on the rumors I heard during preproduction, and scenes from the trailers taken out of context:

1. Plot A: 2387. We would actually see Picard in charge of a fleet of ships devoted to evacuating the Romulan people (and still in command of the Enterprise-E), when the sun goes nova sooner than expected, and the Romulans and the rescue fleet are all destroyed. Picard somehow escapes and now lives with the torment of survivor's guilt, since it was his crew which allowed him to escape at the cost of their lives, and that he failed to save any of the Romulans.

Are we talking about the TNG crew dying at the front end of this? That would have ruffled some feathers for damn sure!

 

[Dukhat]

Are we talking about the TNG crew dying at the front end of this? That would have ruffled some feathers for damn sure!

Well, no, as Riker & Troi would have already left for the Titan eight years previously, Worf would have gone back to Deep Space Nine, Geordi would have gotten command of the Challenger, and Beverly would have gone...somewhere. I'm hoping that by 2387 none of these people would still be serving with Picard on the E.

 

[Tuskin38]

no ‘fucking hubris’ admirals

But she was the best officer in the Season, and the scene was completely realistic.

 

[Dukhat]

But she was the best officer in the Season, and the scene was completely realistic.

You and I have very different definitions of ‘best,’ then.

Picard goes to her for help after dissing Starfleet on live tv. That was clearly a stupid move on Picard’s part, and the admiral was rightly pissed off at him. But she was completely and totally unprofessional in the way she dealt with him. Why? Because the writers wanted her to be a potty-mouthed generic bitch because Picard is our hero and we’re supposed to be rooting for him no matter how much of a jackass the writers made him out to be. So they had to make her look even worse than him. Oh, and that we can now drop the f-bomb in a Star Trek TV show!!!

 

[fireproof78]

But she was the best officer in the Season, and the scene was completely realistic.

Indeed. Her reaction made sense, she still ordered an investigation and then gave support once evidence proved Picard's position. Picard comes across as entitled in his meeting with Clancy. She responds harshly but understandably.

 

[Tuskin38]

But she was completely and totally unprofessional in the way she dealt with him.

Just like how real military officers would act.

 

[Paul755]

I don’t think the Admiral calling Picard out the way she did was over the line. Him coming in and just naturally assuming he’d get everything he wanted, given the way he left Starfleet did take some balls. Even him offering to take a reduction in rank to Captain as a concession would have me giving him the side eye.

I think people just get worked up over the use of “Fucking”. If she had just said “sheer hubris” I don’t think people would be as bent out of shape.

 

[Dukhat]

Just like how real military officers would act.

Are you in the military?