Let me state the obvious: This season is better than Discovery's recent season. Picard at least feels like Star Trek and it's well within the established possibilities of this universe (let me be generous here and not start a rant about Klingons).
Despite the doomsday event and the jumping through time scenario, this show isn't full of explosions and FX BS. It's quieter and slower paced for the most part. That's a good thing. It's not as philosophical as many of the TNG episodes, but still not a breathless sequence of action-BS.
Good to see all those guys again: Q, Guinan, Picard, Seven. Part of this is of course fan-service. Still, better than detaching the whole show from everything we are so fond of. You even learn a thing or two about the Borg's perception of time and space, of the Q and Guinan rivalry and about Janeway and Seven.
I like that they depict Picard as a feeble old man. Nothing wrong about an anti-hero. Picard was never an action-hero and in the end (episode 10) his superior intellectual capacity allows him to draw all the right conclusions.
The story told in the first four or so episodes is actually kind of promising. You have all the puzzle pieces to play with. You want to know how the story progresses. The mystery behind all that is still entertaining and suspenseful, You want to know how those puzzle pieces come together, but after episode 4 or 5 this patterns becomes extremely annoying (see my final remarks in the cons section).
The twist in the end which explains some of the more inexplicable parts of the story, is actually kind of satisfying. It certainly doesn't explain everything and won't stop me critizing the convoluted main story, but at least they tried.
Cons:
What's with that jumping through time and timelines? Not just in Picard. In all these new shows. It seems like lazy writing. Writers can't fill the known universe with new stories so they jump to to alternative realities or back in time. Why not jump to a dystopian timeline? But why don't they spend some time in that Terran world? Its implications are intriguing. But before they could explore that universe, they jump back to 2024? 'Cause that's easy done ... (see also my next point) And why don't they have some fun with future characters landing in contemporary California? Why don't they do ridiculous things 'cause they don't know how things worked back then? They have almost no problems to adapt (Remember when the DS9 crew was on their mission onboard the original Enterprise? What fun that was! They even failed to operate the turbo lift properly.)
SciFi shows are supposed to take place in space and in the future. Word! My enthusiasm for real cigars and matches (sth. Rios is very excited about) has its limits. Where are the strange new worlds? Where's cosmology and astrophysics? Where are the engineering marvels? Where's the great unknown?
Why did they select the persons and topics that appear in this season the way they did? It seems like the had a poll which asked for the favorite TNG/Voyager characters. Thus they added Guinan, Q, Data (at least his face) Wesley etc 'cause TNG fans like them (except the Crusher boy of course). That's massive fan service and tbh most of these characters didn't contribute very much to the story most of the time. Of course such a move will create a heart-warming feeling. Seeing them again is awesome but who's next? Spot? Barkley? Likewise the parallel universe and time travel is a fan favorite. I mean, they were always little diversions from the usual TNG/DS9/VOY episodes. It was always fun to jump to another timeline for one single episode and experiment with the setting and the characters. But that's 10 episodes! That's not a little diversion (see also my point above).
Picard's trauma story is pointless. It's simply not very important for the main story (see also my next point). It's told badly (that monster? Gosh!). I don't understand how (or even why) the coma was induced or was that really only an accident only partly facilitated by Q? Nothing (e.g. in TNG) indicates that he had a family trauma. Why not work with the trauma he definitely has: he was Locutus and in this season he is confronted with the Borg. Face to face. Isn't that enough? That's enough to "design" a feeble, old, traumatized, powerless anti-hero. I'd be fine with that.
Too many inconsequential stories that are not necessary for the main story: why the ICE story? Why the FBI story? Why the police car chase? Why Rio's love story? Why befriending this immigrant on the prison bus? Why is Renée a Picard ancestor (does that really matter)? Does Renée ever matter (first she needs protection and help then she isn't mentioned ever again till episode 10). It seems she's just a switch to manipulate timelines. Guinan is mostly fan service - she has some okay-ish dialogues with Q but she doesn't really matter other than she gives a hint where to find the watcher (although she knew all major parts of this story even before Picard and she "first" met aboard Enterprise. As always she keeps her mouth shut until Picard finds out for himself). There's more than one episode that tells only very little of the main story but is caught up in all those unimportant B-plots.
Rios, Seven and Raffi are underutilized. What do they do really? I mean they run around in contemporary LA and France. They do small-talk. They all experience their little adventures but they are not really important to the main story. Nobody except perhaps the Queen, Jurati and Q and perhaps Picard really is important.
It's a shame what they did with Seven. She's one of the most likable, funny and most complex characters in Star Trek. She looses her Borg implants/she didn't have them in the alternate Terran reality. Isn't that worth to explore? How does she fell about being all-human? What's that like? Doesn't she feel weak or disorientated? In episode two, they could have explored how Anika's live could have played out w/o her assimilation. How come that she's still a leader in the Terran timeline? Couldn't she be a totally unremarkable person living a quiet life somewhere on Earth? She's still a strong woman that lives her life as confident, quick and efficient (channeled into mercilessness) as ever. Remember: little Anika wanted to become a ballerina. And here she encounters a Borg queen. Isn't that her biggest trauma? Nothing? Writers don't seem to care. She doesn't behave differently although she has proven in many Voyager episodes that she is a very vulnerable person under that ex-Borg veneer. Other than warning her fellow crew members that the Borg are dangerous and deceitful (and need batteries and adrenaline), she has nothing to contribute in face of the Borg threat. Instead she runs a around in contemporary LA, experiences a few mini adventures or explores her boring relationship with Raffi. Apropos that relationship: It felt like they wanted to tick the "lesbian check box" (I apologize for this term) in last season (just for the sake of checking all the diversity check boxes: Look. At. Us. How diverse we are!). It felt totally unsubstantiated back then but now they have a whole season to tell this story. If they wanted. They had all the time in the world to prove that wasn't just a mere check-box checking scene in season 1. But they don't do this. In episode 10 they can't refrain from ticking this box again.
Why are they reusing the actors? Elnor is back (who cared about his death in the first place?), but in episode 9 it's not him, he's now a combat hologram (say what?)? Data is back, but he's now an ancestor of Soong? Laris is back, but she isn't Laris? Soji is back, but she isn't a robot but a DNA experiment? Why do they do this? Is that for contract reasons? It is super-confusing. Will that ever be explained? Why do people in the 24th century look like their early 21st century "ancestors"? Is there for example a reason why future Soong has designed Data's face like one of his ancestors (an unethical mad scientist btw? Why honor this awful person?). I don't get it.
The Soong story. Don't get me wrong. It's nicely told and all. I don't understand his transformation from being an unethical scientist to a mad super villain and Borg fire team leader though. Why is he even in the show when they don't allot some time to explaining his (and his daughter's) story better? At one point he becomes a useful idiot for Q, at another point he's easily manipulated by the Queen to work for him? Why is it so important that's him anyway who's doing the dirty work? Couldn't Q hire a random hitman (robbing/getting money seems easier than mixing a cure for his daughter w/o his omnipotent powers) to stop Renée? Instead he asks Soong to use his Tesla as a weapon when his shrink plot fails? Really? Can't the Queen assimilate a police precinct to retake the ship if she needed manpower? Instead she asks Soong for help to hire ex-soldiers? And why is so much told about his daughter? Yes, her story illustrates Soong's unethical character. But Q seems determined to "liberate" her. But why? Why do we watch his daughter becoming self-aware of what she really is? And why is that important that she emancipates herself from her daddy creator? Will she perhaps be important in season three?
I don't think the dwindling of Q's powers is very consistent. If he can't use his powers, does that mean he travels by bus in contemporary California (like he suggests at one point), actually hacks all by himself into Soong's computer and breaks into a biolab where he can mix the cure? And how does he access the FBI interrogation chamber w/o his powers? Do you only need an FBI jacket and even Burt Macklin from P&R could have made it? To me it seems that writers switch on and off his powers whenever they feel that's convenient. In the end, he briefly gets his powers back to fling them back into the 24th century and ressurrect Elnor. Very convenient exit for the writers.
My biggest complaint is the main plot though. To start with, I don't like the whole monstrosity of the premise. Why is it again, that the future (and past) of humanity (in perhaps multiple parallel universes) is at stake? That ruined Discovery and Picard's season 1 already. This shouldn't be an action movie plot where you imagine the most menacing threat so that explosions can grow bigger.
Let's talk about the complexity of this show: I'm very generous when it comes to plot holes and mystery elements. That was always part of Star Trek and is partly inherent to the Sci-Fi/mystery genre. I admit that Star Trek was always a fast produced show (they produced 25 show or so per season) with financial constraints typical for the 90s and that always prevented from Star Trek being a flawless show. I understand that a season-long story needs lighter B-plots and a mix of some boring moments interwoven with a more complex main story that is able to entertain longer than just 45 minutes. I get that. But honestly, can you retell the main story? Do you know what happened? It's certainly not simple. It either doesn't make sense or I'm to stupid to appreciate its amazing complexity. After episode 10 the story behind it becomes somewhat more comprehensible, but for the most part it was too obscure and mysterious to be really enjoyable. I mean, authors had enough budget and time to concoct a concise story that is on par with contemporary story telling (not every show is as good and complex as Mad Men or Sopranos but it feels like the writers never tried to teleport the Star Trek franchise into the golden era of TV/Streaming). Instead it feels like writers added complexity buy just adding unlikely turns and twists that nobody could expect or even explain. I have so many questions that feel unanswered. The writers don't seem to care. The story is based on multiple, intersecting plans of various protagonists that I simply don't understand and I don't find very credible:
I tried to explain the story as I understood it in my review about episode 10. No need to repeat this. The interplay between the Borg and Q spans multiple timelines and points in time. It's super complex and I'm still not sure whether it really is plausible. It seems to be an almost circular chain of events where the future effects the past and the past effects the future. Biggest problem: Who wants Renée to launch into Space and why? I mean the Queen wanted that but refrained from this later when Jurati convinced her to become a benevolent factor. But why does the Queen care to stop Renée and preserve the "Terran timeline"? Given what we learn about the Borg's perception of spacetime, aren't all timelines are equally important? Why not conquer humanity in whatever timeline? And if the Borg can travel through time why wouldn't they do that every time they are about to be denied world dominance? Why are the other protagonists that certain that Renée must fly into space? The watcher certainly doesn't know (Well, she provides a transporter and reveals who Renée's shrink is but other than that she's useless with regard to the main story). Do they assume that only because Q seems to have manipulated Renée not flying into space? How can they be so sure? Plus, it's incredible that Picard knows WWII details about his chateau but nobody knows what groundbreaking discoveries the Europa mission with a Picard onboard made? Shouldn't that be somewhere in the database? Why is nobody even trying to find out? And why isn't Renée playing a major role in most episodes after the farewell party of hers? Wherever her high-security quarantine facility is, why is everyone so sure that Q or his proxy Soong won't get access to her (they don't know that Q has lost his powers)? Can they even be sure that extremely powerful Jurati/Queen is not trying to help Q and try to stop Renée? Till the end the La Sirena crew should assume that the Queen is also trying to manipulate the timeline. That's another mysterious part: why does the Borg Queen (voluntarily) brought them back to 2024 where Picard gets the chance to restore the original timeline? I mean at this point she's still evil and doesn't know what benevolent Jurati-Queen will concoct in the 400 years to come. So why is she teleporting Picard and his crew back to 2024? Why not 2124 or 1900? In 2121 (or 1900) they will not able to reverse the timeline and the Queen will most likely find it easy to assimilate mankind. I mean that was her plan before Jurati convinced her otherwise, right? Plus, I still don't buy the fact that insecure and unassuming Jurati - above all persons - is strong enough to persuade a Borg Queen to try another approach to the usual Borg assimilation strategy. The twist that the Queen is a 400 years old Jurati is a surprising twist, but this is based on a almost circular chain of events that is really hard to justify if you think about that.
It's too complex to be entertaining and the story is obfuscated by - what I feel are artificially added story elements - B-plots and unnecessary complex "temporal mechanics". Even after season 10, I still don't get the whole story and I feel the the main protagonists don't have a clue either. Most of the time, they just stumble around and don't really know whether they do the right thing or not. Around episode 4 or 5 writers should have lifted the veil, ended the mystery and stated a clear objective of what needs to be achieved by Picard and his crew. Usually, similar Star Trek episodes end like that: all protagonists admit their confusion and shrug off every trace of flawed logic by stating that they barely passed temporal mechanics at the academy and they don't understand it either. But that's not enough for a show that has 10 full episodes to tell a concise story.
Review by Alexander von LimbergBlockedParent2022-05-02T08:00:51Z— updated 2023-02-17T14:34:53Z
Pros:
Cons:
My biggest complaint is the main plot though. To start with, I don't like the whole monstrosity of the premise. Why is it again, that the future (and past) of humanity (in perhaps multiple parallel universes) is at stake? That ruined Discovery and Picard's season 1 already. This shouldn't be an action movie plot where you imagine the most menacing threat so that explosions can grow bigger.
Let's talk about the complexity of this show: I'm very generous when it comes to plot holes and mystery elements. That was always part of Star Trek and is partly inherent to the Sci-Fi/mystery genre. I admit that Star Trek was always a fast produced show (they produced 25 show or so per season) with financial constraints typical for the 90s and that always prevented from Star Trek being a flawless show. I understand that a season-long story needs lighter B-plots and a mix of some boring moments interwoven with a more complex main story that is able to entertain longer than just 45 minutes. I get that. But honestly, can you retell the main story? Do you know what happened? It's certainly not simple. It either doesn't make sense or I'm to stupid to appreciate its amazing complexity. After episode 10 the story behind it becomes somewhat more comprehensible, but for the most part it was too obscure and mysterious to be really enjoyable. I mean, authors had enough budget and time to concoct a concise story that is on par with contemporary story telling (not every show is as good and complex as Mad Men or Sopranos but it feels like the writers never tried to teleport the Star Trek franchise into the golden era of TV/Streaming). Instead it feels like writers added complexity buy just adding unlikely turns and twists that nobody could expect or even explain. I have so many questions that feel unanswered. The writers don't seem to care. The story is based on multiple, intersecting plans of various protagonists that I simply don't understand and I don't find very credible:
I tried to explain the story as I understood it in my review about episode 10. No need to repeat this. The interplay between the Borg and Q spans multiple timelines and points in time. It's super complex and I'm still not sure whether it really is plausible. It seems to be an almost circular chain of events where the future effects the past and the past effects the future. Biggest problem: Who wants Renée to launch into Space and why? I mean the Queen wanted that but refrained from this later when Jurati convinced her to become a benevolent factor. But why does the Queen care to stop Renée and preserve the "Terran timeline"? Given what we learn about the Borg's perception of spacetime, aren't all timelines are equally important? Why not conquer humanity in whatever timeline? And if the Borg can travel through time why wouldn't they do that every time they are about to be denied world dominance? Why are the other protagonists that certain that Renée must fly into space? The watcher certainly doesn't know (Well, she provides a transporter and reveals who Renée's shrink is but other than that she's useless with regard to the main story). Do they assume that only because Q seems to have manipulated Renée not flying into space? How can they be so sure? Plus, it's incredible that Picard knows WWII details about his chateau but nobody knows what groundbreaking discoveries the Europa mission with a Picard onboard made? Shouldn't that be somewhere in the database? Why is nobody even trying to find out? And why isn't Renée playing a major role in most episodes after the farewell party of hers? Wherever her high-security quarantine facility is, why is everyone so sure that Q or his proxy Soong won't get access to her (they don't know that Q has lost his powers)? Can they even be sure that extremely powerful Jurati/Queen is not trying to help Q and try to stop Renée? Till the end the La Sirena crew should assume that the Queen is also trying to manipulate the timeline. That's another mysterious part: why does the Borg Queen (voluntarily) brought them back to 2024 where Picard gets the chance to restore the original timeline? I mean at this point she's still evil and doesn't know what benevolent Jurati-Queen will concoct in the 400 years to come. So why is she teleporting Picard and his crew back to 2024? Why not 2124 or 1900? In 2121 (or 1900) they will not able to reverse the timeline and the Queen will most likely find it easy to assimilate mankind. I mean that was her plan before Jurati convinced her otherwise, right? Plus, I still don't buy the fact that insecure and unassuming Jurati - above all persons - is strong enough to persuade a Borg Queen to try another approach to the usual Borg assimilation strategy. The twist that the Queen is a 400 years old Jurati is a surprising twist, but this is based on a almost circular chain of events that is really hard to justify if you think about that.
It's too complex to be entertaining and the story is obfuscated by - what I feel are artificially added story elements - B-plots and unnecessary complex "temporal mechanics". Even after season 10, I still don't get the whole story and I feel the the main protagonists don't have a clue either. Most of the time, they just stumble around and don't really know whether they do the right thing or not. Around episode 4 or 5 writers should have lifted the veil, ended the mystery and stated a clear objective of what needs to be achieved by Picard and his crew. Usually, similar Star Trek episodes end like that: all protagonists admit their confusion and shrug off every trace of flawed logic by stating that they barely passed temporal mechanics at the academy and they don't understand it either. But that's not enough for a show that has 10 full episodes to tell a concise story.