Would you have liked more episodes dedicated to Picard's Borg recovery?

[tim0122]

Picard is only given one episode to heal from him Borg trauma, and then it's back to business. Given how dedicated Berman and others were to keeping TNG episodic, it's highly unlikely we would've ever gotten multiple episodes dealing with Picard's recovery. But I personally would've like a few. It wouldn't have to be front and center in every one of those. Sometimes it could've been a subplot while Riker and the crew dealt with a problem on the Enterprise while Picard recovered on Earth. And then we could've seen him ease back into being captain, with a sense that it would be different for him and the crew and would take some getting used to for everyone. After all, fear and prejudice still existed, and the crew, even Picard's closest friends and associates, might've had a hard time adjusting back to the idea of "I can fully trust this man again," even if they knew in their hearts they could.

Just think it would've provided some great drama, character work, and messages about trauma and otherwise.

What do you all think? Would you have liked to see more time given to his recovery?

 

[tharpdevenport]

I think one or two more, then some nods here and there would have done it.

It's just too fast, and where are the Starfleet officers who question whether he can ever be fully trusted again, as well. Stories to have told, skipped over.

 

[Finn]

Family worked. He wrestled with his brother in the mud then laughed over wine. It works for the TNG-era Picard.

We watch trek for the space stories.

 

[tomalak301]

Not really. I would have preferred another story immediately after Inner Light but they were running out of season for that. WIth the Borg, they got Family, I, Borg, Descent, and First Contact, not to mention what Picard did. That era was different than now and sometimes I appreciate that more than today, because they don't have to spend so much time dealing with a single thing.

 

[Tosk]

I think we did get more, we just didn't get them back to back. I personally didn't want another episode after Family still about it, but I'm fine with delayed trauma stuff such as what we see in First Contact.
I personally view every time Picard had to deal with his Borg incident as parts of his recovery. I, Borg, Emissary, even Generations to an extent.

 

[Phoenix219]

They should have continued the Captain Riker arc at least a few episodes into the season to pay off all of that progress while Picard is recovering. There should have been an entire storyline point where he finally takes command again.

 

[NCC-73515]

He may have been able to resist Madred's torture and 5x gaslighting because of BoBW. He wasn't able to resist the Borg, admitted that to his brother in tears, who replied he is human after all. Then came Madred, and he was able to resist him! He probably said to himself: this far, no further
And of course FC and PIC deal with the still lingering fallout from his assimilation.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I was pretty amazed that the series actually took an episode to show his recovery as that hadn't been Star Trek's style, but I think the writers made the right choice by only returning to Picard's trauma when they had a story to tell. At least, it was the right choice for me.

It's not great when a character goes through a massive event in their life and then there's no sign of it in the next episode, but I've learned from experience that it's even more frustrating for me when it gets a subplot in the next half-dozen episodes. My sympathy evaporates when I'm exposed to too much repetition and it quickly gets to the point where I just don't give a damn anymore.

 

[DonIago]

I'm looking at the early S4 line-up based on the idea that maybe Picard could have been absent while recuperating and we could have more Captain Riker, but damn, S4 came in swinging hard and it's challenging for me to see how things might have been reordered so as not to feature him.

Maybe move "Future Imperfect" up, but does it lose something if Riker's an acting captain and then in the 'future' is just shown to have remained a captain? It could be rewritten to suggest that Picard never returned to the captaincy and became an ambassador instead?

 

[Phoenix219]

I'm looking at the early S4 line-up based on the idea that maybe Picard could have been absent while recuperating and we could have more Captain Riker, but damn, S4 came in swinging hard and it's challenging for me to see how things might have been reordered so as not to feature him.

Maybe move "Future Imperfect" up, but does it lose something if Riker's an acting captain and then in the 'future' is just shown to have remained a captain? It could be rewritten to suggest that Picard never returned to the captaincy and became an ambassador instead?

That could have been cool, especially if you had Picard wrestling with that option in real life before the episode or as part of the teaser.

 

[Phoenix219]

Wouldn't have mattered for the Data/Lore episode - would have been even better with Data mimicking Picard's voice for an old command code if he wasn't even the Captain in that moment. Suddenly Human, he could have been in his recovery period and still interacted with the kid, maybe more meaningfully. Remember Me is Bev's episode, then we have Tasha's sister, and Keylar..... which the subplot (picard mediating klingon politics) could work with the ambassador storyline. Final Mission also works with Ambassador Picard. I don't see anything that would preclude a Captain Riker/Picard-in-flux / ambassador storyline permeating the first third of the season at the very least.

YMMV.

 

[PicardSpeedo]

I was pretty amazed that the series actually took an episode to show his recovery as that hadn't been Star Trek's style, but I think the writers made the right choice by only returning to Picard's trauma when they had a story to tell. At least, it was the right choice for me.

It's not great when a character goes through a massive event in their life and then there's no sign of it in the next episode, but I've learned from experience that it's even more frustrating for me when it gets a subplot in the next half-dozen episodes. My sympathy evaporates when I'm exposed to too much repetition and it quickly gets to the point where I just don't give a damn anymore.

It was a weird choice by the writers to spend so much time constructing this nuanced and dysfunctional but believable and great family, only to then never show them again and subsequently incinerate them in a fire. Especially when they later on seemed to have been retconned into entirely different characters for Picard. Not sure what happened there.

 

[somebuddyX]

It was a weird choice by the writers to spend so much time constructing this nuanced and dysfunctional but believable and great family, only to then never show them again and subsequently incinerate them in a fire. Especially when they later on seemed to have been retconned into entirely different characters for Picard. Not sure what happened there.

Time is the fire in which you incinerate

 

[Qonundrum]

Family worked. He wrestled with his brother in the mud then laughed over wine. It works for the TNG-era Picard.

We watch trek for the space stories.

^^this

On one hand, exploring the aftermath wasn't a bad idea and it allows the audience to get a little more of Picard's POV as Locutus, since he remembered all of what he saw (while having zero control, which is suitably creepy.)

On the other hand, there's virtually no story but a ton of characters you'd otherwise find in a talk show.

Not to mention, the next seven or so stories are cookie cutter stuff where a crewmember is abducted or has something ripped away and they need to get it back because it's exciting space exploration. Such as:


* Dr Crusher - in by far the most creative example of season 4's newfound trope - is ripped into another dimension (a warp bubble experiment that lasts for 30 seconds from Wesley's point of view but was hours from Beverly's),
* Some kidnapped humans raised as another species,
* Riker's abducted,
* Tasha's sister is a meanie,
* Troi loses her superpowers but regains them 49 minutes later,
* Data is retrieved by Dr Soong, with Lore in tow, all while two kids were playing dumb tricks in an area that the adults could have designed better if children were authorized to go running around there as there are plants producing parasite-infested pods for all the kids running around to get a free meal out of before apparently risking their own deaths and all... sheesh, it'd be like Earth if someone designed shopping mall and put laburnum trees and poison ivy for the kids to hide behind and merrily nibble on all over the place. Maybe add some electric fences on all the public urinal troughs for real dazzle too, good grief... (granted, who designed the mall, which species, where's the kids' chaperone to keep them in direct view in such an environment that may not be good for naive kids to go nibbling on everything that's right there, especially when there's an Orange Julius at the corner as every mall had lots of those...)


and so on...

 

[CoveTom]

Honestly, for TNG, which was made in the era when television was expected to be strictly episodic, I thought it was quite remarkable that they actually devoted an entire episode to doing a follow-up for Picard. "Family" even has the distinction of being the only episode to have no scenes on the bridge. However, it was also one of the lowest-rated episodes of the season (in terms of Nielson ratings), so it seems clear that, at least at the time, the audience just wasn't interested in that kind of story. As was indicated above, we tune in to see the space adventures.

For me, I think it was enough. Is it realistic that Picard is always right back to duty after these traumatic encounters? No, of course not. But this is also a TV show and you have to accept the realities of that. Personally, I wouldn't have wanted to see a bunch of episodes with Picard struggling with his inner demons. I didn't even enjoy that in season 2 of Picard. I think what we got was fine.

 

[DonIago]

I think perhaps it drives home the exceptional horror of the events of BoBW that the show takes the time to breathe and let Picard process what he's experienced. I know we're supposed to just assume characters simply get over what they've gone through, but at some point it really stretches belief that they can be tortured and show no evidence of trauma a week later, and that it's never even casually mentioned again.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Things were starting to change in the 1990's. It wasn't always liek the 1980's where one episode you find the love of your life, get married, and at the ceremony she's murdered and your heart is ripped out and then the next episode: Well, back to normal then!

 

[markoid the android]

I believe the events of Family took place some time after BOBW - weeks or possibly months. Picard said something to Troi about how much he appreciated her help during his recovery and mentioned a timescale that I can't remember now. It wasn't the case that everything quickly returned to normal because the show did mention that there was a period of recovery.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Family was fine and frankly, more than we could have expected from Trek at the time. The episode does the job without labouring the point.

 

[Mojochi]

IMHO the more time you spend focusing on it, the less sense it wound make that he should ever be returned to command duty at all, or that Starfleet would trust him there ever again, & realistically, the type of trauma he endured would take years to recover from. No one was gonna want that bogging down the show.

We did get a follow-up episode (which is more than Star Trek was historically known to give) with a nondescript amount of recovery time, & periodically it did resurface in other stories (which was how they preferred to have their recurring plot points play out anyhow)

I'm content with the way it played out, especially when you consider they'd kind of been written into a corner by Piller. More would've made more of a mess imho