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New Picard Show Surprising…

February 17, 2023 /

Almost Like Next Gen Trek…

Kris and I gave up on Picard season 2 about halfway. Too stupid for words and I have hated “Q” from the very start. I hated buying “Q” stories for the Strange New Worlds anthology series for a decade, but them some writer would write a great “Q” story and make me buy it. Annoyed me every time.

So this year we decided to watch the first episode tonight of Picard when it dropped and shocker!!! It was actually Trek, with the cool ships, the great characters, big bad unseen aliens, and battle scenes. So much fun. Worth watching it. Sort of like Next Gen with a mission to spread gray hair all over the galaxy, and some great and funny lines as well.

And a few surprises that I won’t spoil. (And won’t let anyone else spoil in the comments.)

From an old Star Trek fan with 35 Star Trek books under my different names, and I wrote Frakes’ only novel, and the script for his first directed film, it was fun sitting and watching old Trek once again.

Actually looking forward to the next episode.

 

5 Comments

  • David Alastair Hayden

    February 17, 2023 at 10:40 am

    Picard Season 2… The emotional throughline was fantastic, especially at the end. I am hardly a fan of the Q character, but I liked what they did with him.

    The plot was unfortunately shoehorned to fit the emotional throughline.

    I am certain they sat down and decided what emotional arcs they wanted for Picard and Q, and then jammed everything to fit with that. Hence dumb plot developments and logic.

  • allynh

    February 17, 2023 at 12:46 pm

    Picard is the way to do Star Trek. Instead of having each episode stand alone, it is a ten episode arc.

    – If they had done that for Next Generation, I would remember the episodes.

    I watched Next Generation when it came out, saw all of the series multiple times, yet can only remember a handful of episodes. I can literally bring up a random episode and not recognize it. That means they were not Story.

    If they had done ten episode arcs they would have had a dozen actual stories that I could remember and cherish, rather than hundreds of episodes that have no meaning, no purpose.

    BTW, I also find Q annoying, but watch the last episode of Season two and you will want to go back and watch the whole season again. They basically redeemed Q as a character, but I will not waste my time watching any Q episode on Next Generation.

    – The reason Q fails as a character is that he is a “god” with no gravitas.

    The various “gods” in TOS all had “gravitas”. Trelane, from The Squire of Gothos, was a child of gods, which explains his actions. So Roddenberry should have known better than to create Q.

    Q is too much like the little alien from Superman comics(Mister Mxyzptlk) who would show up, cause havoc until he was tricked into saying his name backwards, then he would vanish.

    • Nathan Haines

      February 18, 2023 at 2:26 am

      Ooh, I disagree here… I think the best way to do Star Trek is definitely what they did in Strange New Worlds: each episode stands alone, but the season has an emotional throughline. (To my delight, this is what they did with Star Trek: Lower Decks to amazing effect as well.)

      With classic Trek (from the original series to Voyager, or let’s even say Enterprise), if you don’t like a story you can just watch a new one next week. With the way they’re handling Discovery and Picard, if you don’t like the story you’re just kind of out of luck for a year.

      But that’s just my opinion, and I suppose when it comes to the fandom, time will tell.

  • Nathan Haines

    February 18, 2023 at 2:21 am

    I was very happy to read this post just before I sat down to catch up on this week’s episodes of Star Wars: The Bad Batch and Star Trek: Picard. I’d read a couple glowing review and a scathing one. So it was nice to go into the episode a little more hopeful thant not.

    I’ll agree with the others: you may want to watch the last episode of Picard Season 2. The endcap of that story about Q is touching. As for me, I struggled through the season, but wasn’t thrilled overall. The Q bits were much more interesting than they were, certainly, in The Next Generation.

    Having now watched the first episode of Picard, I was much more impressed than I expected. And I love all the TNG cast and characters, so I’m looking forward to spending a couple of months with whomever shows up in the show.