Still processing what I've just watched. Satisfied ? Can't say I am.
It would have been better had Picard really died. And I mean that with all the respect and love I have for the character and the actor. What sense does it make to have an emotional last scene and even showing how they all deal with his death and then, è voila, he's back. Then come up with a bunch of explanations why he's still old and why he will die because, that's clearly what he wants. I know he wasn't about to die with a second season already confirmed (althought right now I think it will be a long time before that happens) or that someone else would play a younger version of him (Tom Hardy, anyone ?).
The battle between the Romulans and the flowers really looked awesome but the stand-off with the Federation was a bit of an overkill. To many ships for a TV screen, they were literally just dots. A little bit too much of a wow-factor. And, like the cavalry always does, they arrived in the nick of time. The whole solution of all the problems presented at this point was to easy as everything just conveniently falls into place. They get into the compound, Soong sees the memory and has a little thingy to just shut Sutra down. I expected a little bit more creativity.
All bad then ? No. The scenes between Picard and Data were really great for an old time TNG fan. And even the conversion Picard had with Jurati (who ultimately redeemed herself) about what it means to live - I liked that very much and would have loved to see more of that in general.
The whole story itself would have been great for a 2 1/2 hour (final) TNG movie. Because that is what it felt like in the end. It tries to appeal to a larger audience while using the lore but ignoring the Vision of Star Trek.
Uch what cheesy, convenient garbage. It's like this whole series was written by someone who has never written a sci-fi series before (oh wait, it was). Every aspect of this show is very overtly thrown in as a convenient prop to attempt to fix a plot hole, with no subtlety or layering whatsoever. The core plot about super advanced robots coming to destroy all the humans is such a rip off of other stories like Descender. Throwing in at the end that Seven and Raffi are now lesbians together is a bit ridiculous. Killing off Data like that while replacing Picard with a robot copy of himself yet acting like it's somehow still him is downright stupid. The entire Borg subplot felt completely unnecessary. The convenient speed with which this synthetics ban was lifted was a joke. The laziness of the graphics team that they couldn't design more than one ship at the end for either the Romulans or the Starfleet armadas is laughable (they even had to work it into the script to try and explain why every one of those ships was identical). Also, why was Starfleet initially refusing to do anything and now they're suddenly ready to send one of the biggest fleets we've ever seen in a Star Trek show? Why is Agnes suddenly absolved of murdering Bruce Maddox?
Also the design of La Sirena is so decidedly un-Star Trek — it looks like it was a rip-off of something from Mass Effect.
I really had faith in Patrick Stewart that he was reviving this character for something worthwhile, but instead all we got was this pandering, juvenile trash heap of a show.
Last week I saw a page of a script that was supposedly leaked, where Agnes was trying to talk Rios into beaming down with her so they could be together, and he said he would just have to show her...and, then he deactivated himself.
So, I truly thought Agnes would double-cross A.I. Soong, and that Rios would end up in the golum.
That single bit of mis-direction kept this entire episode blissfully opaque to me, and I had no expectations.
In the end I don't think I've had such a strong emotional reaction to an episode of Star Trek in quite a while. Of course, it's different from those storylines from Deep Space 9 or Voyager (like some involving the Doctor/EMH), but this was saying goodbye to a beloved character.
Dopamine and serial teledramas...it's a very personal equation; just like whether you choose to invest yourself in a poem, or not. If you don't, then you won't enjoy it.
I didn't want to skip the opening credits, and while they played I let myself enjoy the emotions that played across my mind, and the anticipation...even the dread at having to possibly wait another year for the next season, but I took some dopamine accesses while the music played.... Because, "I don't want the game to end."
I feel kinda cheated from that fake out with Picard his death. I don't know why the writers tried to put several high emotional stakes into 1 episode, with several of them feeling unneeded, while neglecting many loose threads.
Overall, this show is very good, but after this episode I have a feeling some of the writers have difficulty with creating overall story structure. With (high budget) series being more and more like movies these days (and this series definitely having the allure of one) I also expect more from the writers to treat the stories and characters with more consistency, and not cram too many different stories to follow or (fake) drama into a show. They chose for a season overarching story instead of an episodic one, so a disappointment at the end like this affects the whole show, not just a single episode (although the cracks started to show in the last episode already.)
It is not just Picard's death fake out. Rios and Agnes matching was dumb (but at least it was a hinted at, although without clear explanation) and made no sense for either of the characters. Seven of Nine and Raffi (which tbh was my least favourite character to begin with) romantic involvement tease at the end felt like I was watching The CW network, and made completely 0 sense. Starfleet (Riker) flying in last minute also looked like a result of the writers getting stuck. Soji her motivation for her choices were remarkably underdeveloped. Why did the Borg cube weapons have to be activated, when it is not used at all, except to get abused by the villain. Why do all the synths just agree with whatever Soj/Sutra/Saga say or want. What are the flowers? So many questions are left unanswered, so why did they introduce all those things so close to the end of the season?
I hoped the evil synth overlords would enter the stage, and turn out to be very different than anyone would have expected. I think that would have been far more interesting, match better with Star Trek themes (curiosity and exploration)
I feel disappointed after having a pretty good run this season, that they ended it like this.
Tbh I find this final episode a bit weak. The ending was beautiful but I don't like the beginning and how this whole situation got handled. My main issue with it is that the synthetics are much less intelligent and much more childish than I thought. I expected more of them but I guess it could be true that the first synthetics would be far from perfect. Although the science/theory behind Star Trek and the AGIs seems way off. However, this might be unavoidable as they have to balance all races in the universe so that not just one is relevant.
Anyway, Narissa being still on the cube/artifact sucked... I thought she was beamed of but I guess she went back? At lest Seven got to kill her in the end. That was a relief and quite satisfying. "This... is for Hugh." I do agree with Seven though that it isn't the right thing. They should've imprisoned her but it movies / TV shows that usually doesn't work as well as in our real life so I'm glad that she should be out of the picture for good (at least I hope so - we actually didn't see her die... :o).
That repair thingy is cool :)
Rios and Raffi letting Narek in seemed very stupid! I was glad when Elnor came and they mentioned that they did at least search and disarm him. Narek is by far not as bad and annoying as Narissa but I wouldn't've minded if Elnor killed him.
Also: Narek seems quite naive in his belief that history always repeats itself.
I'm glad that Dr. Altan did the right thing after he found out that Arcana did it. Although I believe that the right thing would've been to show the proof to all synthetics. They should be confronted with the truth and we didn't even see if he told them at the end and what happened to Arcana (him secretly knocking her out (with something that could be considered a backdoor) wasn't really good either - even though kinda necessary to be sure).
Picard flying was kinda nice.
"My life. Picard out."
Soji's "No!" was surprising though! Why bother if she's kinda about to kill him anyway?!?
Starfleet showing up was of course very nice! Especially to see Will Riker again - as acting captain.
The Romulans bailing out didn't feel right. They went to such extremes and now they just let it go?!? Aren't they brave enough to fight for whay they believe in? :D I guess it was at most a tactical retreat.
Their assessment that Soji "destroyed" the beacon doesn't seem right - it looked more like she simply deactivated it (with a bit of force). But it doesn't really matter anyway since they could rebuilt and use it any time from now on (maybe that'll get interesting in S2? - although I hope they shift the focus away from synthetics vs. organics or at least make it feel more realistic).
Seeing Data in that quantum simulation was very nice! And his discussion with Picard made my eyes wet <3
"Mortality gives meaning to human life."
And finally a few good quotes from Picard:
"Am I real?"
"Me too."
7/10
Should be a 5 at best but I'll cut some slack for this cop-out ending. This show is bad and I mean really bad and the only way it grinded through it's 10 slow boring Garbage cop-out episodes was pure Nostalgia, that's it and I'm sorry not sorry but that just isn't enough not when you have the perfect Phenomenal flawless Masterpiece that is Star Trek Discovery absolutely killing it in every single way and delivering and firing on every level. Honestly a frickin child could have done a better and more interesting, exciting job with Star Trek Picard.
They squander every opportunity from the past and ruined everything that made TNG so awesome and interesting and thrilling. Star trek Picard was just boring cop-out after cop-out bull-crap and I literally had to grind every single episode out.
I'm not even going to go through why this was just utter boring exposition dumping from start to finish. Mass effect story that went nowhere, Borg and 7 totally wasted and nurfed, bloody Agnes I can not stand and her stupid love interest, oh and seems to have got away with outright murder but hey everyone is cool with that. 7 and Raffi now are Lesbian...wait what...
Their were plot holes big enough to fly an armada of Borg Cubes through, no action cop-out battle scenes especially at the end, Picard dies but cop-out doesn't, I could go on and on but the rub is
"Star Trek Cop-Out"
was just painful to grind through and ultimately I waste of my time and I had such high hopes for it to, especially being a long time Trekki but for 95 percent of this terribly put together show I was plain a simply Bord.
X FINAL THOUGHT:
When you have the Masterpiece that is
STAR TREK DISCOVERY
spending over a million dollars per episode and it shows, Star Trek Picard is literally a poor man's Trek
And The ONE Thing I am so happy about is I get now get back to proper Trek, the absolute best Trek ever created which is
STAR TREK DISCOVERY
Because star trek Picard was just bad I mean really bad and just like this show I've ended this long drawn-out series of comments the exact same way I started.
I guess you could call that
"The Picard Manoeuvre"
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-03-26T17:04:36Z— updated 2020-03-27T20:53:21Z
[6.0/10] Oh man, what a crock this is. It is so full of cheats and shortcuts and self contradictions that it's hard to take any of it seriously. Suddenly, we've pivoted to the prospect of mortality and self-sacrifice as the most important theme of the season, despite the fact that those have been, at best, tangential to the ideas the show was exploring up until...last week.
And it's totally contradicted by what the episode actually does! Picard trying to "give his life" to prove to Soji that organics is good would have more weight if we hadn't seen him jump into death-defying situations throughout the season. What makes this one any different? And when he "dies", it's not because the Romulans blast him or really anything to do with his grand stand. His brain abnormality just acts up when it's dramatically convenient, with no apparent connection to his attempt at self sacrifice.
Then the episode just wipes away that sacrifice anyway! I can't tell you what a cheat it feels like to have Picard die, learn a very important lesson about the beauty of life coming from the fact that it's finite, only for him to then immediately cheat death! Then the whole bending over backwards to try to explain that even though he has an android body now, he'll age normally feels contrived and bullshit as hell. It's a dumb plot choice that immediately contradicts the episodes laudable themes about accepting mortality as something inherently human.
It's not all bad. As deus ex machina as Riker's arrival, it's still a cool moment. As weird as Data looks in the "quantum simulation" (oh brother), his death and appreciation for Picard's love is moving. And even if Jurati feels like she's from a different show, her quips and jibes got a chuckle out of me.
Everything in this finale is just so rushed and glancing and ultimately unsatisfying. There's some good ideas here, but they're all shortchanged for a meditation on death that feels out of step with the show's ideas to this point, and a bunch of easy plot fixes and character relationships that haven't actually been developed.
On the whole, this season was a real missed opportunity. Assembling this kind of talent and deploying it only for this wobbly mess of a season is a big shame. I'm a sucker, so I'll be back for season 2, and I hope they'll work out the kinks But after this, I'm not terribly optimistic.