I'd just like to leave this quote from Ira Stephen Behr here: "The idea of fandom is a dangerous thing, and I think one of the worst things about the business right now is the idea of trying to appeal to the fans, give the fans what they want, really play up to the fans. What I used to say on [Deep Space Nine] all the time is 'it's not up to us to give the fans what they want, *_I don't care what they want,_* what we do is we give the fans what we think they need for it to be a good show"
To butcher a quote from Scotty: “Fans are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way, but the important thing is to give them what they need, not what they want.”
The thing that pisses me off about the Enterprise G is the Titan has its own nostalgia. I never read any of the novels but lots of people did, and to them, the Titan is representative of a whole bunch of canon, the best of which might be referenced in a new USS Titan show
I agree the rename felt like an insult to the ship. Like the only good ship in the federation has to be the enterprise so someone has another ship do something incredible, nope ether the ship rots in the fleet museum or gets a rename.
As the son of a merchant marine, I've heard long ago that it's considered bad luck to rename a ship. This came to light for many people when the Exxon Valdez changed it's name seven times before becoming razor blades in 2012, although four of those names were variations of Mediterranean with the company name changing. Anyway, that's my bias. I think they should have built the "G" as a new ship and kept the Titan.
@@TheDawnofVanlife To quote Picard: "There's plenty of letters left in the alphabet....", "I've no doubt this is not the last ship to bear the name "Enterprise",.....and "Let's make sure History never forgets the name: ENTERPRISE!".. Unfortunately in this case it looks like "G" will the last....Picard's prophecy is yet to come true.
even to those that didnt read anything else, this season alone was enough to give the Titan its own value. along with the discussion of Riker being its previous captain. the history of Riker's first command has been wiped out. if they flew passed a repaired Titan at that moment, showing it now also has history, to lead on to the naming of another ship. also i think calling it Enterprise G was a mistake as well. i feel as if it would have been more impactfull to name it the 'USS Jean-Luc Picard'. the enterprise was already always going to be a thing. but naming it after Picard would have had the same effect on the characters, been something new, shows starfleets acceptance and honor of this new Picard, and importantly shown the true retirement of Picard himself, as a character, really giving the feeling that this in an actual ending. although that could have been after his death in the cube... i think if this was done, then still leaving Seven and Jack on the Titan would have been better. would be odd to constantly hear in a possible future series about Jack being on board the Picard...
I liked this season overall. But the ending with Jack in Starfleet highlighted one of my biggest issues with the show, the fact that writers seem to think everyone should be in Starfleet, ironically in spite of Patrick Stewart's no uniforms mandate. Seven, Elnor, and Jack all end up in Starfleet despite either having shown no interest before or having already forged their own path outside of Starfleet. It really makes you appreciate Jake becoming a journalist and Wesley abandoning Starfleet.
I've been wanting to see a Star Trek show that's set outside the world of Starfleet for yonks. Picard sort of started out like that (even if three of the main characters and more of the recurring characters were in or ex-Starfleet), so it was disappointing to see the show revert increasingly to the familiar "Star Trek = Starfleet" trope.
Completely agree and it really impoverishes the world and the stories that can be told. Like them or not I feel Star wars has tried to get away from focussing heavily on Jedi. it's like they tried this with Picard in the first season and then abandoned it all. When i was a child watching DS9 I remember thinking Jake Sisko was mad to not to want to be in starfleet (because what kid wouldn't) but I'd like to think I have a more nuanced view of the world and the cirtues of serving ain a quasi military role now!
Totally agree! Jack can like Star Ships and not want to be in Starfleet. And the way Seven was being treated could have been a good way of showing someone not willing to deal with disrespect for a ‘badge’ and make their own way. Actually, it kind of makes the whole Ro thing annoying now that I think about it. Young Ro was willing to stand up to Starfleet for what she saw as the greater good. Older Ro pretty much fell on the sword of Starfleet to the applause of fans and I would rather imagine her as we left her upon her TNG departure. Finding her own sense of what was right outside of Starfleet.
I actually saw this as a fairwell to the TNG ERA as a whole and not simply TNG. As Picard itself has had Seven of Nine around for all three seasons and included Worf this season, it’s inclusions of lore and characters from all the TNG Era of Star Trek works for me. Most of what we saw was the TNG crew up against is a villian who was new (Vadic) who happened to be a changling, but different and presenting a ‘but why’ (that honestly didn’t pay off since they just decided to forget about Changlings in the end and give a wash-away to their bit of the plot). The difference between this and the Enterprise finale is- the TNG Era (which includes DS9 and Voyager) is a unique Era of the interconnected universe. Unlike the time-jump spin off that was TNG, Voyager and DS9 were direct children of TNG. Enterprise was not and for the finale of Enterprise, An episode OF TNG took over the Enterprise finale. To the point Riker was the main character and our actual cast weren’t even actual characters, but puppets in a holo deck. It also had no connection to the rest of the season, it just popped up as this oddity. In Picard, changlings were just villians from the TNG-Era of sister shows villian bin who happened to be there in Picard season 3. The focus was still on the TNG characters as the ongoing main characters of the season. Even Picard’s steady girlfriend just got forgotten. Not even appearing in the last episode as the now instant-fix family of Picard, Crusher, and young Jack. Withbthe family having a little dropped off of the adult-child at his little Starfleet job at the end. A scene straight from fix-it fan fiction. And when it comes to the Changelings, just when I was celebrating it not being the Borg AGAIN, it became the bloody gosh darn Borg again. Vadic was the best part of Picard season 3 and her being a changling but not Changlings as we remember them gave them a chance to have something unique to play with in this series. And they dropped the ball. At least the end of the season gave me a crew I would actually like to see fly off into their own series and do unique things… hopefully they do. And also get the ship renamed again. Titan was so much cooler then making it another Enterprise Alphabet ship.
I hated the Titan being renamed to Enterprise. It should have stayed the same. The one thing I liked about Discovery and Lower Decks, they are about other ships.
Yeah that’s when I think they really jumped the shark. Nostalgia and just refusing to move forward kind of came together in that one act. The Titan is a hero ship and changing its name to something so well known for other stuff just feels wrong.
What about the poor São Paulo and her crew? And the Yorktown? I don’t see anyone kicking off about those ships? Why this one? Besides, who’s to say there isn’t already a new Titan being/been built and ready for launch? This is another case of a type of manufactured outrage, for want of a better phrase. IMO, that is
The Yorktown was a reward/insult to Kirk. Thanks for saving the planet, have this soon to be retired bucket of bolts. I was frustrated with the San Paulo. The Enterprise typically being a flagship, this felt like a step back. Neo-Constitutions are not flagships. Granted, the A wasn’t a flagship, but the B-F ships established this.
@@1978rharris The São Paulo was originally supposed to be rechristened the Defiant-A, and lose the NX designation, but they didn't have the time or money to change the digital model. At least in that case, it was renaming a ship that was just coming off the line to replace a recently destroyed ship. I don't really have an opinion on the Yorktown being renamed to the Enterprise. The bigger issue is, if they wanted a touching rename, it was calling the Titan-A the Entetprise-G specifically that was an odd choice. The U.S.S. Picard was sitting right there, waiting to be picked up, and there wouldn't be confusion as to why this relatively old, Starfleet equivalent of a destroyer, was being named the flagship.
I mostly agree with you, Steve. But the inclusion of Shelby, Ro and Tuvok are precisely things that tug on my nostalgia *in the right way*. Sure, it could have been any other character, but why not make these cameos a nod to older material? I especially enjoyed the scene with Seven and Impostor Tuvok. She knows they can't trust anyone at face value, so she test him. "Tuvok" answers right, and there is a sigh of relief. But then, just because they need to be absolutely sure, she tries again, and only then he fails. While, as you said, the changeling plot is a whole school of Red Herrings, at this point in the show we don't know that yet, and the reveal that this not the real Tuvok is chilling. Not to mention the fact that Tim Russ plays the scene perfectly.
Tuvok I didn't mind. Both his appearances were short and sweet (or sour, in the case of the first one) and had a story point. Shelby I probably wouldn't have minded if we hadn't already had a dozen other cameos by that point. But we had, and so it became an exercise in more eye-rolling. And I'm not sure if it was supposed to be ironic, cruel or funny that Shelby was celebrating what was, essentially, the Borgification of Starfleet. The appearance of Ro Laren on the other hand I had issues with. Because there was nothing (as far as I can recall) in the preceding two dozen episodes of Picard that suggested that Ro and Picard's parting in TNG season 7 had left such a depth of unresolved feeling to warrant the emotional weight that the episode tried to impart on their reconciliation and her ultimate sacrifice. Quite frankly, the Picard/Ro reuntion felt like something that might have been fine if it had appeared as a piece of fanfic, or even a short story in a Pocket Book anthology, but not as a major part of a key episode in a ten-episode story arc. She comes out of nowhere, they spend a substantial amount of runtime rehashing and working through stuff that happened more than a quarter of a century ago, and then she goes out in a blaze of glory. For anyone not familiar with the Ro/Picard relationship that episode would have had minimal emotional impact. Heck, I _was_ familiar with their relationship and her appearance this episode felt so shoe-horned in that I neither cared about their reconciliation nor her death. Bringing back legacy characters can work - I thought "Nepenthe" was the best episode of season 1 - but unfortunately "Imposters" was not an episode that worked for me.
My main issue with respect to the cameos is that almost *all* of them were done in the service of killing them off for some cheap drama points. If anything, it almost felt hateful (or at least dismissive) toward TNG to me. Maddox, Hugh, Ro, Shelby, Icheb (Granted, he's from VOY, but same era), Q (before they backed off that one a season later, of course...), Lore (technically merged with Data, but still...). Logically, Tuvok should have been dead too until it was decided that the shapeshifters kept him and hundreds of others alive...somewhere? for some reason? Perhaps someone in production finally realized that they've killed or neutralized damn near every minor character to make an impression in TNG and icing Tuvok officially as well would be a step too far. XD
I think you hit the nail on the head: Picard Seasons 1 and 2 tried new stuff, and it went over like a lead balloon. I personally liked all three seasons for what they were, but I'm much happier overall with Discovery, SNW and LD. They're trying new things with new characters and new formats and while it doesn't all hit, it's at least creative.
Went over like a lead balloon to some, but I loved seasons one and two for their ambition and for actually staying true to Trek's themes (unlike PIC season three). I also LOVE DSC, think SNW is competent and delightfully pisses off the bigots, and I think that LDS is good when it remembers it's about underdogs, but I thought it forgot that half the time in season three.
Picard hands down is the worst of all Trek shows i couldn't even stomach season 2 after the first two episodes. Season 1 is the only one i give credit because Season 2's time travel plot with Q even sounded stupid on paper
The reason for Tuvok for being there when Seven is promoted is organic. He is a higher-up admiral at starfleet security debriefing Seven following the events of the borg coup. and the death of her commanding officer as well as many other crew members (and the temporary loss of her ship immediately following her official promotion to acting captain)... there's a lot to unpack there and it makes sense that Tuvok would get that case given his role.
I tend to look at Picard season 3 as the final farewell to the TNG era as a whole, using a few things from DS9 and Voyager to show those shows some love too. Hell, the NX-01 gets a shout-out getting a holiday named after it, not to mention seeing Enterprise itself at the fleet museum. 👍
I got a few episodes in before I just felt like I was being love bombed by a cult. Smothered with nostalgia and in jokes and call backs. I realized if I really want to spend time with my buddies on the Enterprise, I've got a hundreds of hours of them just waiting for me to revisit. And that's enough.
That is exactly why I found it really creepy how a number of people who complained endlessly about "canon" and "wokery" previously all said things like "this is a return to form" and "Trek as it should be" and "an apology to true fans" about this season. I'm like... "you're just a bunch of Pavlovian dogs, huh?" Not that I didn't enjoy seeing Beverly and Troi and Worf, but I did feel sad that almost all the original ideas got dropped in favour of what felt a box-ticking exercise.
Same goes for other shows, why sit through abrams movies, strange new worlds or the first few seasons of discovery, just watch the first 6 trek movies, they have everything you need in a fraction of the time:)
I liked the third season as a fan (except the Borg reveal). But I see your point and think your arguments are very good and I respect them. Thank you for this video! Go on! 👍🏼
Never forget that Terry Matalas wanted to include way more side characters and cameos than just Ro Laren and Tuvok. Close to a "Everyone's here" kind of deal but was told by Alex Kurtzman "This ain't fucking Avengers Endgame, Terry". So basically, Alex Kurtzman actually did to Matalas what you said you'd do if you were in his shoes, just to a version of this show that was even more of what you didn't like about it
Thing is, one of the things I hated the most was the MCU ending to the series. They should have at least switched the Jack meets Q scene with the poker scene. At least let this series finale stand on its own. Frankly, they shouldn't have done the Jack meets Q scene at all. But they CERTAINLY shouldn't have made the very last scene a commercial for a show that doesn't exist.
I see everyone attributing the "this isn't avengers endgame" thing to Alex Kurtzman, but Matalas attributed it to the line producer. A line producer is a studio bean counter, they manage a production and makes sure it stays within budget, both before production and during. Yes Kurtzman is the head of Secret Hideout (who Paramount employs), but he would not have been acting as Line producer on Picard Season 3.
Not only that, but the Changelings decided Tuvok was a special case and decided _not_ to kill him, and Matalas also wrote a scene where Ro Laren was discovered alive and well with Tuvok. He's already said because we didn't stare at Shelby's corpse for 10 straight minutes she's not dead and she'll be coming back, even though we saw her get phasered multiple times at point-blank range. On top of that, it's also been confirmed that Shaw will return in some way, and the two or three fans of Elnor can rest easy because he definitely wasn't on the _Excelsior_ that got vaporised by the rest of the fleet. The guy has absolutely no balls and is terrified of upsetting the man children. Contrast that with Ira Stephen Behr who would routinely tell people on DS9: "It's not up to us to give the fans what they want, I don't care what they want, what we do is we give the fans what we think they need for it to be a good show".
@@thecynicaloptimist1884 THIS THIS THIS! I had a LOT more respect for season two, and absolutely loved season one, because they at least approached it with the Ira Steven Behr philosophy. It didn't occur to me that fear might have been driving Matalas. I just figured it was apolitical* mashing together of action figures and model kits. * Anything apolitical inherently skews toward right-wing oppression.
I am so glad someone else said it. I thought I was going crazy. The entire time I was watching I kept thinking about that South Park episode about member berries. Then I got on forums and people were like "The best Star Trek in decades!" And I was just so confused, because it wasn't something I liked, it was a reminder of something I liked, which made it feel like a waste of time. I've watched most episodes of Star Trek at least ten times. I don't need a reminder. I need more Star Trek.
To me it was Crusher's line “clearly the Changelings have been working with the Borg from the beginning." It sounded so campy, like something out of the 1960s Batman TV series.
Beside all points pointed out in the video, my main complaint about Season 3 was that they basically used Season2 to introduce All New All Different Borg, but instead of doing anything with that, fed us left-over-borg from Voyager, as if Season 2 never happened...
RIGHT! We JUST got good borg with provisional entry into the Federation and NOT ONCE were they mentioned when the main threat was BORG. Like, seriously, we could have had some pretty cool borg on borg conflict, but a single person even ever thought "oh gee, we JUST watched a good friend rehabilitate and entire faction of the deadliest creatures in the galaxy, maybe she could help us here?"
Season 3 of Picard is like driving with the check engine light on in your car. Sure, it stopped smoking and making that really bad grinding noise.. But you probably should have taken it in to the shop.
That's a good analogy. I liked all three seasons of Picard (overall, but most of the nostalgia is doing a whole lot of the heavy lifting for me), but there seemed like some obvious plot points where it should have been improved. For example, if you're going to use the Changelings as the villians and involve the Borgs, why not have them steal borg tech, get it incorporated into the fleet, and then use a variation of the Star Trek virus created by Starfleet to infect the collective in "I Borg", having it disable nearly all of the fleet while the Dominion attacks (or another threat, preferably from TNG)? At least that has some callback qualities and involves a little more of a moral story/quandary ("You reap what you sow" in this case).
they made spocks rebirth work through actually making it a 'rebirth' ... like when spock came back he was more calculating and proper vulcan then he was previously because the previous spock -- the one who had grown to understand and accept his emotions and human half -- had actually passed on
I think my biggest problem with this season was that the moral of the story was that technology is corrupting our youth and only these old people with old ways and old tools can stop it. The old ways are better essentially. Look to the past for your salvation. It was literally the opposite of what gene wanted the show to be, like you'd have to know all the right answers and do the opposite on purpose for it to be this bad.
That's absolutely 100% fair. I'm not sure how deliberate that choice was, but yes; that's the message. "Woke GenZ will destroy us all" is NOT a message anyone left of Breitbart news should send, ever.
It's a particularly sad contrast with Star Trek VI as the last outing for the TOS cast, since that film was all about the reflexive aversion to change amongst the old guard and the fear of abandoning familiar struggles for an unknown paradigm.
It was the modern scanners that detected Picard and Jack's Borg DNA as the older scanner from 30 years ago couldn't. The only thing considered "Bad" was the interconnective systems installed into the Fleet.
There are fans that, in a sense, want their heroes to be forever frozen in amber, to always be the iconic heroes that they remember growing up. But in stories that come back to those characters after many years, those characters, though still icons, have changed and grown. Life goes on. The simplicity of Bones giving Kirk a pair of glasses tells those watching that time has passed. That Kirk is no longer the twentysomething space cowboy starship captain he once was. He is older, and a bit grey, but not too old to make a difference. I wish these new Star Trek shows and movies could get back to those ideas, not just to be Spot the Reference: The Show. Star Trek, at its best, talked about the human condition. To make a difference in Life, and other people's lives, that is the Star Trek that I want to see continue.
PIC season three failed that, but the previous seasons advanced characters and built upon past developments. The theme of the first two seasons was closure. SNW is doing a good job filling in blanks for characters that have been ciphers for nearly 60 years. LDS is fairly egregious with the references, but most of the time it's relatively harmless. When it remembers it's supposed to be a show about underdogs, it's actually pretty great ("An Embarrassment of Dooplers" and "wej Duj'). DSC and PRO are mostly restrained with the references and benefit from that restraint.
Always appreciate your honesty, transparency, and willingness to meet your audience halfway. I liked the off the cuff style and having a point/counterpoint flavor. I did drop off during the first review episode, but not for the reasons many would think. It was clear that you and I had very similar reactions to the episode. There was just something gnawing at me to leave my echo chamber (you, TrekCulture, Trek Central) for the season and give the whole thing a chance on its own without any opinion swaying me throughout. Now that I'm catching up on everyone's opinions...well it was still good to periodically leave the echo chamber. So that's a positive.
I am a Trekkie about the same age as you and I must say it was better than season 2 but as a story season 3 was really bad to watch but what makes it really bad is that it had potential. Big up to you for being true to your opinion.
Hey, remember that time when Picard had a son he didn't now anything about? He's a little bit of a rogue and a lawbreaker, but after some uncomfortable moments, Picard bonds with him and they really start to care for each other? the episode name is "Bloodlines" in season 7.
On the topics of "ignoring new story potential," "undoing things from the past seasons for the sake of nostalgia indulgence," AND "the showrunner's ethos being playing with all the toys from his childhood," can we mention that PIC S2 ended with the Borg Collective applying for provisional membership in the Federation after evolving into a new form with a new mission with Jurati as the new Borg Queen, paying off Guinan's speech about how a day could come where humanity could evolve enough to treat with the Borg as equals rather than be seen as raw material? And how S3 dismissed that entire plot with a single line of dialogue, in retrospect solely to set up THE GLORIOUS OLD-SCHOOL UNSTOPPABLE TNG BORG as the final boss? It's funny you brought up JJ Abrams, because the first thing I thought of when I put that together was Rise of the Skywalker, a film that seeminly exists to be an exercise in trying to erase things its creator didn't like about the previous entry in the franchise.
The question I like to ask with creative decisions like this is: Why say anything of your own, when you can just repeat, sometimes verbatim, what other's have already said?
I think you went a bit hard on Tuvok, he WAS sort of a mentor to Seven for many years on Voyager. A time where she more or less created her humanity, so it makes perfect sense that he would request to be the one to promote her. Otherwise I agree with almost everything, it's a bit scary how you put my thoughts about the series into words, did you read my mind and create a script from it??? xD
Best season of Picard by a long shot, and as long as they're rolling out the classics.... because we KNEW going into it they would be... I'm here for it. About the only thing I can agree with you on is the rogue changelings thing... I do wish it was either the changelings or the Borg as the main enemy, not both. I didn't understand the relationship there, or why they would trust each other.
In this case, I thought overall the third season of Picard was mindless fun. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, it was mindless fun. It was one of the better fan fictions I have seen come to screen, but it was obvious fan fiction. Was it good? Maybe. Was it bad? Maybe. Was it mindless fun, that had me excited to see how far they would take it? Yeah, with the understanding that if I thought about it to much, the whole thing falls apart.
One of my favorite podcasters, popular media, and video game journalists coined the phrase, “More fun than it is good.” That sums up my feeling about P3.
Anyone notice the “Avengers Assemble” like moment with 7 about to say her version of “Engage” like when Captain America almost says it at the end of Civil War?
I hated that next Gen with its lack of story. So they just took all the other series plot and made them super dumb and nothing but fan service and smashed them into pacard. Next Gen had no story, so they took all the other series plots.
Thank you, Steve, for your very thoughtful analysis. While I enjoyed Picard season 3 a lot, I did recognize it for what it was: rather lazy, pandering fan service. Now, of course, as someone who doesn't mind occasionally sitting down to a plate full of Twinkies and Twizzlers, i I don't necessarily object to empty calories. This season of Picard was more comfort food than anything. What I do find fascinating, though, is how wildly different the second and third seasons of Star Trek Picard were both from each other and from season one. Since i have only watched the series once and don't intend to watch it again, my recollection is that at the end of season one the Picard golem was on the La Sirena with Rios, Raffi, Seven, Juriati, Soji, and Elnor, and they were going off to do renegade kind of stuff. That could have been really interesting. However, when we got back to them in season two, Picard was once again on the vineyard where Laris 's husband had died off screen, and she and Picard were now in a romantic relationship, which seemed really jarring. (It almost makes you wonder about husband’s cause of death. Anyway…) Also, all of the La Sirena people now seem to be in Starfleet. What was that all about? And then between Q, Picard’s mommy issues, astoundingly stupid violations of the temporal prime directive, and SO much more, the head spins thinking about all of the character betrayals that occurred in that season. However, as we came back for season three, it's like season two never happened. Now granted, I would be very happy as a fan of Star Trek if season two of Picard had never happened, but what's really weird is that Terry Matalas was the showrunner for both those seasons, and they were filmed back-to-back. Did Matalas realize that he had made a terrible mistake in season two and just decided to ignore it? I mean all the sort-of-vaguely-friendly-Borg-stuff. Gone. Q dying? Gone. Raffi and Seven being in a romantic relationship? Gone. And after one episode of season three, Laris? Gone. I completely agree that Amanda Plummer as Vadic was a sensational, thrilling villain for this series. I also agree that when I found out that she was a Changeling, I felt that it was a huge letdown, a cheat. (Still, it did provide what seemed to me the one vaguely political aspect of this season of Picard, the gross immorality of the exploitation of a vanquished people to be commodified as weapons. Even with this, though, the finale pretty much reverses itself with Beverly’s way of detecting changelings so that they could, apparently, be immediately arrested and imprisoned. If that isn't somewhat chilling in a post 9/11 world, I don't know what it is. Especially for Star Trek.) However, given that, Amanda Plummer was still such a pleasure to watch chewing any scenery she could get her hands on. Of course, then Vadic and her minions are destroyed by the end of episode eight, leaving a hole in the remaining narrative for me. I really wanted them, Vadic in particular, to be present of have a satisfying final showdown in episode ten. Just as dispiriting was the reveal that the Borg were the actual underlying Big Bad of this narrative. Once again, this seems to nullify season two, the Agnes-as-the-friendly-Borg-ambassador resolution to that story. It also raises the question: How did the Borg and the Changelings even form an alliance? Changelings are in the gamma quadrant. Borg are in the delta quadrant. They exist ten of thousands of light years from one another, and as far as i know, they have never been established as having been in contact with one another. To be spending a lot of episode nine as a viewer wondering how that happened, whether there was some previously unknown other stable wormhole between those two quadrants, if the board tried to assimilate the Changelings and were unable to, etc., etc., it's just another one of those things that pulled me out of the narrative and threw off my investment in what would happen I agree that episode four was by far the best of the series with the birth of the nebula babies inspiring a sense of wonder that has always been at the core of Star Trek for me. More of THAT would have been the fan service I would have preferred. Moments of joy, wonder, teamwork, and rather than retreating where we've all been before, going where no Trek has gone before.
You ask me, they should've gone with a completely different main villain for the season. The Borg were played out, and the end of season 2 gave their story more than enough closure. No, they should've gone with someone a little more.... obscure. Maybe a one-off villain who saw their plans crumble to dust at the hands of the Enterprise crew. For them, it was the most devastating moment of their lives, but for Picard, it was Tuesday. A villain whose origins were never fully explained, and whose end left a doorway to future stories that was never opened. An enemy that had all the potential in the galaxy, but was relegated to a footnote in Starfleet's history books. I am, of course, talking about the parasitic aliens from "Conspiracy". They wouldn't even have had to change much to get it to work. They could've been chasing Jack because they were secretly grooming him as the new host for the queen, like Remmick in the original episode. And instead of Borg DNA, the Starfleet personnel could've been implanted with microscopic spores that coalesce into one of those scorpion thingies after Jack gets infected and sends off a telepathic signal or something. I mean, just picture the look of shock and recognition on Picard's face when a tiny spike grows out of the back of Ensign LaForge's neck. Would've been worth the price of admission just for that scene alone....
I was thinking of either that, or the Devil lady from Devil's Due, which ticks off several of the boxes you mentioned (might have been her greatest defeat, but for picard and crew was a footnote, never knew her real origins, etc) There's probably a few other examples that could have been done, and it would have BOTH ticked off the "TNG nostaglia box" AND been something they could have done more with rather than turning to the changlings and the Borg again.
I don't understand why the changelings needed to team up with the borg? I feel like they're powerful enough to take over starfleet on their own. Also, where's borg Jurati? Felt like she could have helped out Jack and help fight the old borg.
The Queen recognised they were prime targets for use as infiltrators in Starfleet and that they were damaged goods and easily coerced into doing what she wanted. The Jurati collective/cooperative are doing their thing and certainly not strong enough to take on a demented Queen in a GIGANTIC cube even at 35% operational. Hope this helps.
Even better would have been if Jurati could have converted these Borg like she converted the Confederation Borg. At the very least, as soon as season two ended, Starfleet should have incorporated her strategy into their playbook for dealing with the Borg.
Season 3 reminded me of the saying that an ambitious failure will always be better than a lazy success. Season 3 of Picard was definitely a lazy success. Heartfelt, ambitious failures are always entertaining on some level.
That's why I liked seasons 1 and 2 more. (I seem to be in the miniscule minority there.) They each had problems, but they were problems of execution, not problems of ambition. My biggest complaints of season 3 were not the pandering fan service. It was that everything about season 1 and 2 were just dropped. In particular: what the hell happened with Jurati's Borg? Season 2 set up this interesting question, spent the entire season in an alternate timeline or the past, then came back to answer that question. And it's all just dropped by S3.
For me Vadic was the one genuine bright spot of this season that wasn’t cheap nostalgia. Even if it frustrated me her motivation wasn’t called out (“oh no, was someone mean to the architects of several genocides - that we know of - who created two species of slave worshippers” ☹). The real shame for me is the overall plot - Borg use Picard to bring about their final revenge in a sorta clever sci-fi way - would have made a great 2 ½ film send off for the TNG cast... about 10 years ago. Alas we got this.
I enjoyed Steve and Jason’s episode-by-episode conversations. I found my thoughts and feelings about the season were usually somewhere in the middle of their two takes.
On principle, I admit I'm a sucker for the fan service, seeing old characters come back and mirrored shots from something that came before. But even I felt a bit on the bludgeoned side with Picard lol. That closing shot for example. I think if fan service was more restrained and kept to one or two references per season or something, it could have been a really inspired move, I enjoy that sort of thing. But as you say, with all the other fan service and rehashings, what should have felt to me like a creative "ah, nice touch" felt instead creatively hollow, only serving to remind people of when it was done better. Very odd feeling. When 7 of 9 showed up I was really excited coz I didn't see that coming, but once the pattern was established it became more of a checklist, "who's left, who haven't we seen yet" rather than "haha, you didn't expect to see them again did you" Always weird to hear an American say wank, but yeah, pretty much
"That closing shot for example"... which one? The Last Generation had like FOUR (all of which were lifts from somewhere (the overhead of the card table from All Good things; the Enterprise D and Titan A side by side from the shot of Excelsior and Enterprise A from Star Trek VI; and so on... and lest we forget Q kicking off Jack's "Trial for Humanity"... didn't realize that every Picard has to do this as a right of passage!). 🤣
The amount of time he spent on Riker etc was a bit much all at once but I really enjoyed "your reputations preceded you so far into the room I guess I started early"
IDIC and all that but personally I thought that scene was horribly over-written and over-acted. It was immediately clear even in episode 1 that Terry Matalas was liberally mining the TOS movies for inspiration. So Shaw in that episode came across as a cross between the feckless Esteban and the arseholey Styles (both from The Search for Spock). Luckily he became one of the most fleshed-out and best characters that season, but it was _not_ an auspicious intro.
Although this season did not have a "political" theme, it still had a strong theme to it. Star Trek II's theme was about accepting inevitability including aging and even death. Star Trek: First Contact's theme was about letting go of the pain of the past and moving forward to the future and Picard Session 3's theme was about the importance of family and connection, fixing the connections of the past and not being afraid of the connections yet to come.
Patrick Stewart is aging out of plausibility for a future reunion, thus they had to allow Picard his chance to relive his glory days now. As a person who is also aging out of life, I can attest that there is a longing to have another grand adventure. And I was quite satisfied with the life I lived. And as a person who felt a deep loss of the characters on TOS, I can attest that having that reunion of those old friends, living that grand adventure vicariously through them, is kind of special because it isn’t something we get in the real world, where people get dead and stay that way, where familiar places are torn down, where you wish you could get back that ‘69 Camaro your mom sold to that annoying friend of your sib you didn’t like. So, yes…it is feeding the fans, but it’s also setting up a next generation that ties back to the last one, just like was done for TNG and DS9 and Voyager; and the prequel SNWs ties forward to TOS, and sideways to Discovery, and poor old Enterprise hangs alone from TOS. Last point, off to the side, crossover of enemies and “new” aliens is constantly going on. Like when Kirk first encounters the Romulans who no one knew about (including the Vulcans), except now everyone in the prequels has already met them, and the Vulcans know exactly who they are. The Ferangis, too… they were new and unknown, even their ships weren’t identified, but then they are suddenly all over the f-ing Federation, and were encountered in the past. Seriously…add in all the timeline changes, there isn’t even a official canon anymore, is there? All the shows have pulled from others, even when it clearly sets aside other facts within the ST universe. What we need now is for Burnham and Discovery crew to come back via time travel and warn about the impending dilithium crisis, with Micheal having a touching reunion with Spock as they invent a work around to warp travel with dilithium. They prediscover the Borg, steal the transwarp conduit tech, have a run in with Ferengis and Romulans, accidently destroy the prophets wormhole, travel back in time and save the Klingons from extinction, become Gods to the past Ferengis forever altering their capitalist system, which disrupts the balance of power in the future as the Ferengis become traveling monks annoying people on space stations everywhere by handing out sacred science manuals. 😂 that was fun! I see why you do what do!
I definitely agree that the changelings felt out of place this season. I asked my Trekkie friends what the point of them were, and they were blinded by the fanservice to give me an answer. If there was even a token reason why they were working for the Borg, I could've forgiven them.
With the villian problem you could have largley the same orveraching plot but instead of the changlings or the borg which are either on the wrong show or been done to death respectivaly have the baddies be the parasite aliens from Conspiracy. A TNG villian that hasn't been overused but which a lot of fans would love to know more about.
In terms of production, I don’t like interview and podcast type conversations. Video essays are my bread and butter, I clean cars and often have you on during my rotation of daily content.
I liked season 3 alot but I still watched this vid. I like your videos in general and even when i disagree with your opinions, I am interested in your thinking about them. You have a keen insight into trek and you are entertaining in your style. I don't need to always watch something that will just parrot my opinions back to me, so go ahead and dissent and i will keep watching and appreciating! Of course i also like when your insights/opinions DO align with mine :)
I love how you walk the fine line of calling people out for being wrong while also being completely happy that they are enjoying the same source material, albeit in a different way. It’s like you know we’re fucking nerds, but deep down inside you know you’re a nerd too, and as long as we all let each other enjoy stuff in our own nerdy way, we can be friends. Love these, keep it up!
I'm one of the nerds who enjoyed the season, but I also always enjoy hearing your perspective. I understand completely why you didn't like it - you're a writer and a storyteller, and seen through that lens the season didn't bring a lot that was original or interesting to the table. For me, first and foremost I want to see great performances, and this season was full of those (as you mention in your open when covering "the good stuff"). When it comes to genre films and television, more often than not I find that I agree with Howard Hawk's assessment about good movies, which I first heard from Roger Ebert: "a great movie is 'three great scenes and no bad scenes'' ", and I think a lot of this seasons episodes had enough entertaining moments to keep me, well, entertained. One thematic thread that they left dangling did really disappoint me, though. Early on, Jack criticizes Star Fleet for being out of touch with and indifferent to what is really happening on the frontier; later in the season Vadic explains to Crusher and Picard how she and the other changelings were tortured and experimented on by the Star Fleet scientist. I thought, briefly, that they might be willing to explore the ways in which Star Fleet had lost its way and had become the architect of its own misfortunes, but clearly that was not an avenue that Matalas was going to go down. I think that might have been interesting, and would have forced Picard to look at certain things from Jack's perspective, which could have worked, it seemed to me.
I love the honest review! A lot of what I was thinking myself. The highlight for me was Jonathan Frakes performance and Riker’s whole character journey through the season, it was the most believable and memorable thing even though it didn’t affect the plot as such. 😅💛
The changelings idea was really cool, but it should’ve gone in a different direction. With some minor adjustments, Terry could’ve made them an AMAZING metaphor for the alt-right. About how the fascists of the past that you think you’ve “defeated” and subsequently taken in can change their faces to become more camouflaged but that ultimately they’re still doing the same things. Probably wouldn’t have been great for a non-DS9-related show, but honestly an inspired baseline concept.
I thought Riker's best scene was working out that "Pop Goes The Weasel" was the "code." Not only was it an excellent callback to Encounter at Farpoint, but also Riker as a musician.
I never watched your episode-by-episode reviews of Picard, but I wish I had, because your views align with mine very, very closely. Both in respect to what worked well in season 3, but mostly in respect to what didn't. Your conclusion sums it up - season 1 and 2 tried tried to explore strange new worlds, even if that exploration didn't entirely succeed. I respected the writers for what they tried to do (in season 1, exploring what it means to be biological, synthetic and holographic life, and in season 2, trying to dig more deeply into Picard's psyche than ever before, while also - in the last episode - fundamentally redefining the most iconic of TNG villains to set up the potential for new and interesting story lines for the Borg in the future). Were these seasons successful? Only partly, to put it mildly. But when you try something new, your chances of failure are that much greater. Season 3 on the other hand was overwhelmed by, defined by, fan service. There were parts of it I liked, because after all I am a fan and parts of it were executed well, but overall, critically, _I did not respect it._ Which I find sad. Some minor points of disagreement: I didn't mind that the Changelings were the (ostensible) villains of the season. I like that the universe of Trek is bigger than a single series, and to me there's a clear difference between having the Changelings be antagonists this season and having the last episode of ENT essentially be a TNG episode centred on the moral dilemma of a TNG character rather than the ENT cast of characters. It helps that DS9 is my favourite - along with TOS - and best Trek show, so in this case introducing the Changelings was an example of fan service that worked for me. And given that Seven had become a PIC series regular by that point it also didn't seem out of place to incorporate some VOY elements (as previous seasons of PIC had done). On the other hand, on the topic of antagonists, what I was hugely, momentously, disappointed by was the (relentlessly, needlessly dragged out) reveal that the "big bad" was... shock, horror, quelle surprise... the Borg Queen. A villain so overused it hadn't even been a full season since we last saw her. On top of the dozen other times she'd been trotted out. And at least in season 2 the Borg Queen was interesting. In season 3 she devolved into a one-dimensional cartoon villain. And, as you pointed out (and I bemoaned all season), that was only one of numerous retcons that undid what the previous seasons of PIC (and other franchise installments) had done. Definitely a case of three steps forward, three steps back. It's interesting you referenced the TOS movies favourably because - as someone who saw each of them in their original theatrical release - the reluctance of Star Trek to push forward has been a bugbear of mine for literally decades. TMP and TWOK did both push the franchise forward in key ways and I admire both for that. (It helps that Trek still has never been better than TWOK.) For example, Spock comes to terms with his human half in TMP. and makes the ultimate sacrifice in TWOK (thereby depriving the franchise of its single most iconic character). Kirk confronts his mortality and legacy in TWOK. But TSFS and then TVH both reversed the key changes introduced in the previous movies. Spock dies in TWOK? He comes back in TSFS. Okay, so Kirk does pay a momentous price in the form of the death of the Enterprise, perhaps the thing he loves most after his best friend. But guess what, she comes back in TVH. A new generation of characters are introduced in TWOK in the form of David Marcus and Saavik? They get killed off, and shipped off to the home for wayward pregnant Vulcans in TSFS and TVH respectively. So by the time we get to TFF we're essentially back to the status quo of the TV series. (Of course, that's not the only reason Star Trek V is a bad movie.) Granted, TUC gave the TOS characters a fitting, graceful, sign-off, but overall the contours of the TOS movies, when measured by their willingness - or unwillingness - to grow and evolve, mirrors the contours of the three seasons of PIC.
I love your take on all things Star Trek, but for some strange and probably stupid reason, I actually liked seeing the old characters on the bridge of the Enterprise D.
Here is a great way to describe why the "cameos" from the other series are bad. They weren't put in to tell a good story. They were only put in to function as member berries to poke at people's nostalgia.
Steve, I agree with your analysis but only to an extent. I completely understand your view as a writer and a creator; I understand that you want something new to sink your teeth into, and I don't think you have a bad vision with respect to what you'd have liked to see in this latest iteration of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm with you, on a lot of it. I do, however, think that this season (while slightly over-seasoned in some aspects) is just the right flavor for those that tuned in - if only - because they really wanted to see something familiar to them about Star Trek. I've been watching, reading, and (VERY) writing Star Trek since TOS was in its FIRST syndication run. These newer incarnations of Trek have been a difficult adjustment and I express this as a lifelong fan of this (now) long-running phenomenon. That said, I've learned to appreciate the newness of This Generation's Trek and the direction that it's going; it's actually pretty cool once I got past the idea that Trek had to be exactly the same as it was. It's not possible to stay the same, so I see this as a healthy evolution of the Trekverse and I've embraced it. It's also made me able to truly appreciate shows like Strange New Worlds and now this LAST season of Picard because , well: all good things..... but it's still nice to reminisce. My point is: I think this season's SOLE purpose WAS for Fan Service... and I think a lot of us appreciated it for what it was. I also think this was smart for TM and The Franchise. TYSM Steve for sharing your thoughts on it all!
Data isn't even "different" for the entire season. Once Lore is eliminated, it's just Data, B4 and the MEMORIES, not personality, just the memories of the Soong guy. And B4 doesn't really have much if a personality, so after Data not being too different from Data for a while, he becomes just plain old Data
The last part about writing new stories and boldly going in new directions reminds me of Handmaid's Tale when Serena says that maybe she was meant to do what Moses' mother did and I thought about how boring it is to repeat the same story over again. She has the chance to make her own story but she wants to just recreate the same classic that everyone already knows. On the flipside of that, we have June constantly fighting and taking control, refusing to accept the story that others are writing for her. Honestly, I loved seeing all the old characters back together for a brief moment but the story just didn't grab my attention
Typing as watching - I thought Vadic was going to be another Reman clone who needed Jack’s DNA to fix their cell defects…and since Romulans had spent decades studying Borg, still could have had the drone takeover
It just occurred to me as you ran through the fan service from each different series that maybe that was the mandate he was given. Terry Matalas is a very competent writer and show runner as he proved on his 12 Monkeys series which I thought was a terrible idea when it first started but came to enjoy it. I have no doubt he could have and should have made something exclusively revolving around TNG. This is pure speculation of course but perhaps he was told that he had to bring in aspects from other series for one of two reasons. Either it was a quick and easy way to try to get fans of DS9 and Voyager, who didn't necessarily like either TNG or Picard itself, to tune in and go out on an artificially high note after squandering the potential of Picard's return in the first two seasons. Either or as well as it was a way to placate fans of the other two shows so they didn't get calls for some sort of continuation of them as well so they can finally move beyond all this. Or, if I'm even more cynical, it's a way to test the waters. Neither DS9 or Voyager came close to the popularity of TNG. They could be trying to discern if some kind of limited series would be worth their money for one or both shows. Having Seven be captain leaves them in prime position to bring back the Voyager crew since that finale isn't exactly remembered fondly and since Janeway is getting an animated resurgence over on Prodigy the audience could be primed. Not so sure about DS9 though since that had about as perfect an ending a show could get, in my opinion. They'd be playing with fire (caves) if they tried to mess with DS9.
IIRC limited series based on specific characters have been an idea that has been floated at Paramount. Cost might be an issue, since if you have sets built you can pad out an ongoing series with bottle episodes, but if you have to build a bunch of sets/do a bunch of locations for a wide variety of limited stories the cost could add up (Also this is why season 3 was basically one big bottle episode; the money was tighter and what was there got spent on payroll and the Enterprise D set).
I think you might be right about a mandate from higher-ups. It is always worth bearing in mind that writers and show runners are answerable to TPTB (the idiots in charge).
This season was more watchable, but the crass dialogue and underwhelming violence/action were still there. I didn’t need it in my life. It was compelling and satisfying to watch Picard and Kirk cope with their losses and regrets in Generations. Then PIC season three comes along with, “Hey, you’ve got a perfectly salvageable family after all; absolutely no lasting damage from your sexual irresponsibility and 25-year absence. And you know you’ll all make it out just fine because you’re the principal cast members in a Trek series.”
I have to say, I normally agree with your analysis but on this occasion I couldn't disagree more. The nostalgia of this season was undeniable, but I found it tastefully and rewardingly so, rather than mere fan service. Character arcs 30 years in the making were paid off, explicitly or implicitly. Yes, it was replete with references, but in the final episodes of a crew in a franchise over 50 years old, would you expect less? Moreover, though they did 'reset' the status quo for a brief moment in the final episode, none of the characters ended up where they started, all were in a new place with new possibilities to come, they simply didn't arbitrarily subvert expectations to be 'edgy' as they did to disasterous effect for the last two seasons. The argument could as easily be made for the end of TMP, ST3, ST4, First Contact or any number of other points in the franchise with equally little justification. Just because something rewards fans for their long love of a franchise doesn't make it shallow or creatively bankrupt. Also, your analogy of the older crew showing the younger crew the way is the biggest reach I've ever heard-and could easily be read the opposite way-that they were 'waking' them from the programming of society's orthodoxy with the benefit of a more diverse and enlightened philosophy based on their experiences. In my opinion, this season was what the show should've been all along-i respect your opinion, but I don't agree this time.
Why did we need a Picard show? Because we can’t have a new show that isn’t either a prequel or fan service because those two things are functionally the same thing. The producers are far to afraid to make something new because it’s not bankable. Star Wars has the same problem.
I'm actually mostly with you here. I'm okay with this season. My feeling is that season 3, which basically sorta functions, is overrated because of how badly season 2 turned out. Season 2 is like a desert and season 3 is the oasis. Sure, the water has a bleach taste, tingles on your tongue, and gives you the trots, but you'll live. Oh, and then you remember you have some (30 year) old flavor packets (fan service) in your pocket. What joy!
I am a bit surprised you did not talk about the Music. I was quite annoyed of how it was used in Picard. I am not sure if this holds true show as a whole but I was just not able to ignore it this season.
See, I buy that Captain Kirk could accidentally have a child with a woman who didn't tell him about it. But the very premise of Jack Crusher's existence is _so out of character_ for both Picard and Dr. Crusher that I could not make myself care about Jack or any part of his story. It was lazy, nonsensical writing.
I'm gonna be real here......this was my favorite season of Picard. Look, I totally get that it is super flawed, but I feel like I'm having a Force Awakens or Season 1 Mandalorian moment, that no matter how meh or bad some parts are it just hits me with nostalgia in such the right way that I forgive it. I mean, I think you and I would both be gushing about this season if Ben Sisko came out of no where and just decked the borg queen................
In improv, the core rule is "yes, and..." which means you don't reject or undo what other inprov-ers do, you take it and say "yes, and" before adding to it. Matalas operates on "no, I don't wanna." He rejected and undid what previous creative had done. With Spock's return, it was the original folks undoing their own creative choices, but with Matalas it's an egotistical single voice undoing the work of others *for no good reason.* Matalas needs to stay far, far away from future Trek.
I’m 36 and I grew up in a Republican family. I’m the 90s you could expect non stop harassment for seeming like a nerd so I didn’t watch Star Trek as a kid. Recently got Paramount plus and binged most things Star Trek. I think because I didn’t grow up with it I was able to enjoy Picard season 3 more. I do feel bad the bigger fans were not happy.
I agree that, thematically, it didn't make any sense having the Changelings be the villains for the first arc. It's like having Batman's final battle being a face off against Lex Luthor and Maxwell Lord - and neither Superman nor Wonder Woman shows up. I get it - there's nothing preventing Batman from running into his fellow 1%'ers, and you could actually have some pretty interesting stuff when you consider that Batman is a trust fund baby and Lex Luthor is a self-made man, but that's a completely separate storyline, not an epic conclusion. Batman's archnemeses will always be dark reflections of himself, in the same way that Picard's archnemeses are dark reflections of him! The Borg are a dark reflection of the Federation as seen in TNG, just as the Dominion is a dark reflection of the Federation in DS9. Dukat is a dark reflection of Sisko, and Locutus is literally Picard turned into a monster. I was seriously hoping that the reason they stole Picard's body was to revive Locutus. Yeah, it would've been weird, but at least it would've worked thematically.
It's not that i don't agree with many pf your thoughts. It's just the relative impact on my mood when watching it and the relative quality compared to MOST of star trek since, well, at least 15 or 20 years. Despite its shortcomings this season had sevral moments and even an episode or two that made me feel hope the future might hold star trek stories that will actually add to what already has been.
Steve, would you have liked it better if Vadic was a Changeling with a heretofore unknown connection to Picard? There's not much established about what Picard's Enterprise did during the Dominion War, so maybe they captured her then and handed her over (unknowingly) to Section 31. Vadic would therefore have a motive against Picard even though he doesn't know who she is (and when reminded of that mission, we could cover it via flashback or exposition). Or maybe (since as written, Picard stumbles into Vadic's pursuit of Jack) Dr. Crusher had some involvement in Section 31's experiments on Vadic or her DNA was used as a baseline for some reason and that's why she and Jack are valuable. Any of these would touch on the continuity of the TNG/DS9/VOY era while still keeping it focused on Picard and his crew, and it would fit with some of the series's earlier themes about Starfleet's failings (with the Romulans, ex-Bs and synth ban). I do understand the production temptation to make an Enterprise-D bridge set (I saw some of the behind-the-scenes about how much it meant emotionally to a lot of the actors), so maybe make that a holodeck program or simulation while Vadic plugs something into Picard's brain to extract information or something? It feels wrong to have the farewell series have a theme other than "nostalgia is nice, but you have to move forward"... but I guess they did.
Thank you so much for this Steve. Seeing the overwhelmingly positive reaction from the fandom for this series has left me thinking I either watched the wrong show or am going mad.
Okay, I thought I was the only one who saw the Star Trek: Wrath of Khan reach around. The themes of Kirk's son and Picard's son hit me in the face like a brick. It was too theme for theme. Upset wife/girlfriend takes son to get away from the father's influence. Son resents his father because of the absence. Oh wow!! And to cap it off, Kirk's body and the Genesis device are in storage.
What did you think of the Seeger Sessions? I really liked the change of pace from Bruce's earlier work. Though I know a lot of fans did not share my opinion.
The fact that Tuvok is in the show, replaced by a changeling, and Seven is in the show, who knows Tuvok so well, and these 2 facts never seem to interact drove me up the wall
Your criticisms are valid yet I focus on the emotion I most often felt during the show: Joy. Chocolate is tasty despite it's poor nutritional content. Pop music gets me dancing despite its (often) unoriginal, uninspired, basic composition. And Picard Season 3 brought me joy despite its obvious narrative and creative failings. So, like chocolate and pop music, I love it.
To repurpose an old adage "the writers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could use the changelings and the borg, they didn't stop to think if they should"
as a Trek fan, I try to pretend that Picard ended with season 1 I'm not saying Season 1 of Picard was good, but i've heard nothing positive about Season 2, and it really just felt like the people who gushed over Season 3 were the same people who constantly complain about Discovery being "too woke" or complaining about the Kelvin films "are not Star Trek." In other words, people whose sense of taste I question deeply.
I think what you are getting at in Chapter 3: "Why is this here" is a good point, and for me is wrapped up in the way the otherwise exvellently portrayed Vadic has an apparently personal animosity against and history with Picard. The way she says his name and seems to toy with him personally seemed to hint that she was something he (and we) had encountered before. It could have disappointingly turned out to be somethign we hadn't seen, like the Romulan backstory in season 1, or excellently in some loose thread from TNG. But it turned out to not be any connection with J-L at all. There was nothing personal to it. It was vengeance for somehing he probably wasnt even aware of. It made the antagonist/protagonist relationship feel like a threatening legal letter had arrived in Picard's mailbox, but it was actually misaddressed or related to a previous occupier.
FWIW, as a 72 year old boomer I agree with you. Not that I don't enjoy nostalgia, but if that's what I'm going for, I will rewatch or reread an old favorite. Otherwise, when I want something new I am looking for just that. I'm expecting callbacks to be necessary to explain to the newcomers (preferably in a creative way)and hoping Easter Eggs won't go beyond a light sprinkling because they are much like a super rich dessert. With a seriously rich dessert, nothing is as good as that first bite which you chase until your mouth starts going numb. Same thing with Easter Eggs: a few are delightful for those who spot them without bothering those who don't. A flood of them is worse than pointless, because it's mind-numbing. That's the last thing anyone, but especially someone my age needs. We need to be to be engaged in the here and now, something to think about, not some comfortable woozy cloud that encourages drifting and too busy living in the past to live truly. Harumph.
Thank you for this review. I think a lot of people are so starved for TNG nostalgia that they'll even take a fecal sandwich and thank Terry Matalas profusely for it. I wasn't as impressed with Amanda Plummer as some, but she did a good job and I like the story payoffs in episodes 4, 8 and 10. Overall, I'm just not impressed with Patrick Stewart any more, and this whole TNG revival series should have been done fifteen years ago, when Sir Patrick Stewart was a little less rickety and a little less feeble (making the necessary changes to the story and plot, of course.) I think fans were just so hungry to see TNG again that they turned a blind eye to the many plotholes and problems with the story, and yes I'm glad someone mentioned how blatantly they were plagiarizing all of the various Star Trek TOS movies like Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home. It was all blatantly a ripoff of pre-existing ideas and stories. Overall, season 3 is a B- for me. It was fun to see, but I'm not going to be singing from the rooftops for this. It was okay, and way better than season 2, but FAR from the A+ that people keep saying it is. Those people obviously don't understand their TNG as well as they think they do.
The Enterprise being rebuilt and using it for a Death Star core assault was the dumbest part of the season. And totally unnecessary. What was wrong with using La Sirena for that with perhaps a holographic bridge overlay against a weakened derelict normal Cube instead of the Giga Cube needed because the D is huge.
My biggest issue with the season was the uneven pacing, though much better then season 1 and 2, some of the flow seemed like hard shifts from one episode to the other…. “Ooo Shaw is an a-hole, now he’s cool, no he’s an a-hole again, oops he’s dead, but he went out cool.” At least we get to see that the crew all moved on to other things (along the lines of your criticism of the first TNG movies static nature of the characters).
My spouse and I continually referred to this as "Mac n Cheese Trek"; that is, comfort food. The thing is, there is nothing wrong with comfort food. It doesn't mean I'm going to eat mac n' cheese every meal for the rest of my life, and it doesn't mean that Star Trek can't go on to do other, more original and risky things. It's all on the menu. The fact that these actors are dear friends in real life definitely added a whole other layer of genuine feeling to the nostalgia that really pushed it over the finish line for a lot of fans. I do think they laid it on too thick with the Borg surprise and Enterprise G rename, but if Trek can survive cameos from Melvin Belli, Spock's long lost half-brother, Spock's long lost adopted sister, and a pasty-faced white guy playing Khan, it can survive this.
G'day Steve, I completely understand your analysis of the Picard series. You are technically correct, however, whenever I watch Star Trek, it makes me happy. I'm a bit older than you (57) and feel great relief when indulging in blatant fan service. Cheers, Dave.
So I watch a number of YT content providers that include ST reviews. Before ST:P S3 came out I watched a vid with 4 or 5 of them in the same vid. All of whom rightly hated on ST:P seasons 1 and 2. But they all said that they had been allowed to watch season 3 ahead of time and swore that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I was suspicious that these UA-camrs had gotten advance viewing in exchange for over the top positive pre-reviews. But, I decided to watch with an open mind. As the they aired, I found the episodes better than seasons 1 and 2 (a very low bar). But not superior to the aforementioned baked good. I appreciated what I found to be your more reasoned reviews of the episodes. I still suspect the sudden fanboys were paid off or somehow encouraged to give GOAT-style fawning praise, though.
1:44 Without actually having watched the rest of the video yet... yes, scripted videos are what I want, even if you're going to go on at length about how much you don't like the show. Zoom calls are great for getting things done at work or just hanging out with friends, but the realities of video conferencing really get under my skin for something like an episode review. Hosts talking over each other due to the lag inherent in something like Zoom, wildly varying qualities of audio and video between hosts, hosts having to ask each other to repeat themselves because Zoom ate the audio in the interest of noise cancellation, stuff like that. It can make a video longer than it needs to be, and while it reflects the reality of how we get to virtually hang out with each other in 2023, a raw Zoom call with little editing can just be difficult to watch.
You are right: I loved the season, and watching you talk about how much you disliked it wasn't great! But, I love your content, and while I disagree with a great many of your points, I do appreciate how rooted in narrative and love of the franchise your critiques are. I hope you're looking forward to Strange New Worlds season 2, and I will see you in the next video!
Fan service is exactly what I would expect from a show titled, "Star Trek: Popular Character You Remember From Your Youth"
I'd just like to leave this quote from Ira Stephen Behr here:
"The idea of fandom is a dangerous thing, and I think one of the worst things about the business right now is the idea of trying to appeal to the fans, give the fans what they want, really play up to the fans. What I used to say on [Deep Space Nine] all the time is 'it's not up to us to give the fans what they want, *_I don't care what they want,_* what we do is we give the fans what we think they need for it to be a good show"
Stan Lee once said, "Never give the fans what they THINK they want".
To butcher a quote from Scotty: “Fans are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way, but the important thing is to give them what they need, not what they want.”
The thing that pisses me off about the Enterprise G is the Titan has its own nostalgia. I never read any of the novels but lots of people did, and to them, the Titan is representative of a whole bunch of canon, the best of which might be referenced in a new USS Titan show
I agree the rename felt like an insult to the ship. Like the only good ship in the federation has to be the enterprise so someone has another ship do something incredible, nope ether the ship rots in the fleet museum or gets a rename.
Yes!!! Quite frankly I think if the name Enterprise is retired for all future ships, it’s fine.
As the son of a merchant marine, I've heard long ago that it's considered bad luck to rename a ship. This came to light for many people when the Exxon Valdez changed it's name seven times before becoming razor blades in 2012, although four of those names were variations of Mediterranean with the company name changing.
Anyway, that's my bias. I think they should have built the "G" as a new ship and kept the Titan.
@@TheDawnofVanlife To quote Picard: "There's plenty of letters left in the alphabet....", "I've no doubt this is not the last ship to bear the name "Enterprise",.....and "Let's make sure History never forgets the name: ENTERPRISE!".. Unfortunately in this case it looks like "G" will the last....Picard's prophecy is yet to come true.
even to those that didnt read anything else, this season alone was enough to give the Titan its own value. along with the discussion of Riker being its previous captain. the history of Riker's first command has been wiped out. if they flew passed a repaired Titan at that moment, showing it now also has history, to lead on to the naming of another ship. also i think calling it Enterprise G was a mistake as well. i feel as if it would have been more impactfull to name it the 'USS Jean-Luc Picard'. the enterprise was already always going to be a thing. but naming it after Picard would have had the same effect on the characters, been something new, shows starfleets acceptance and honor of this new Picard, and importantly shown the true retirement of Picard himself, as a character, really giving the feeling that this in an actual ending. although that could have been after his death in the cube...
i think if this was done, then still leaving Seven and Jack on the Titan would have been better. would be odd to constantly hear in a possible future series about Jack being on board the Picard...
I liked this season overall. But the ending with Jack in Starfleet highlighted one of my biggest issues with the show, the fact that writers seem to think everyone should be in Starfleet, ironically in spite of Patrick Stewart's no uniforms mandate. Seven, Elnor, and Jack all end up in Starfleet despite either having shown no interest before or having already forged their own path outside of Starfleet. It really makes you appreciate Jake becoming a journalist and Wesley abandoning Starfleet.
I've been wanting to see a Star Trek show that's set outside the world of Starfleet for yonks. Picard sort of started out like that (even if three of the main characters and more of the recurring characters were in or ex-Starfleet), so it was disappointing to see the show revert increasingly to the familiar "Star Trek = Starfleet" trope.
Completely agree and it really impoverishes the world and the stories that can be told. Like them or not I feel Star wars has tried to get away from focussing heavily on Jedi. it's like they tried this with Picard in the first season and then abandoned it all. When i was a child watching DS9 I remember thinking Jake Sisko was mad to not to want to be in starfleet (because what kid wouldn't) but I'd like to think I have a more nuanced view of the world and the cirtues of serving ain a quasi military role now!
Federation News Network starring Cirroc Lofton
Totally agree! Jack can like Star Ships and not want to be in Starfleet. And the way Seven was being treated could have been a good way of showing someone not willing to deal with disrespect for a ‘badge’ and make their own way. Actually, it kind of makes the whole Ro thing annoying now that I think about it. Young Ro was willing to stand up to Starfleet for what she saw as the greater good. Older Ro pretty much fell on the sword of Starfleet to the applause of fans and I would rather imagine her as we left her upon her TNG departure. Finding her own sense of what was right outside of Starfleet.
@@ProuvaireJean Yes, for a while I was hoping for a Seven-lead Fenris Rangers spinoff. Alas.
I actually saw this as a fairwell to the TNG ERA as a whole and not simply TNG. As Picard itself has had Seven of Nine around for all three seasons and included Worf this season, it’s inclusions of lore and characters from all the TNG Era of Star Trek works for me. Most of what we saw was the TNG crew up against is a villian who was new (Vadic) who happened to be a changling, but different and presenting a ‘but why’ (that honestly didn’t pay off since they just decided to forget about Changlings in the end and give a wash-away to their bit of the plot). The difference between this and the Enterprise finale is- the TNG Era (which includes DS9 and Voyager) is a unique Era of the interconnected universe. Unlike the time-jump spin off that was TNG, Voyager and DS9 were direct children of TNG. Enterprise was not and for the finale of Enterprise, An episode OF TNG took over the Enterprise finale. To the point Riker was the main character and our actual cast weren’t even actual characters, but puppets in a holo deck. It also had no connection to the rest of the season, it just popped up as this oddity. In Picard, changlings were just villians from the TNG-Era of sister shows villian bin who happened to be there in Picard season 3. The focus was still on the TNG characters as the ongoing main characters of the season. Even Picard’s steady girlfriend just got forgotten. Not even appearing in the last episode as the now instant-fix family of Picard, Crusher, and young Jack. Withbthe family having a little dropped off of the adult-child at his little Starfleet job at the end. A scene straight from fix-it fan fiction.
And when it comes to the Changelings, just when I was celebrating it not being the Borg AGAIN, it became the bloody gosh darn Borg again. Vadic was the best part of Picard season 3 and her being a changling but not Changlings as we remember them gave them a chance to have something unique to play with in this series. And they dropped the ball.
At least the end of the season gave me a crew I would actually like to see fly off into their own series and do unique things… hopefully they do. And also get the ship renamed again. Titan was so much cooler then making it another Enterprise Alphabet ship.
Exactly TNG flowed into deep space, Nine, which had a nice little side adventure Voyager
Which would be fine if that's what it was marketed as. It wasn't.
@@thecynicaloptimist1884 I too was really upset that it was all about Jack and Seven. Just horrible ending for legacy actors who deserved better.
Wow of the few comments about this Star Trek that I actually agree with.
I hated the Titan being renamed to Enterprise. It should have stayed the same. The one thing I liked about Discovery and Lower Decks, they are about other ships.
Yeah that’s when I think they really jumped the shark. Nostalgia and just refusing to move forward kind of came together in that one act. The Titan is a hero ship and changing its name to something so well known for other stuff just feels wrong.
What about the poor São Paulo and her crew? And the Yorktown? I don’t see anyone kicking off about those ships? Why this one?
Besides, who’s to say there isn’t already a new Titan being/been built and ready for launch?
This is another case of a type of manufactured outrage, for want of a better phrase. IMO, that is
Agreed. Plus, the Enterprise-F looked way better than the Titan-cum-Enterprise-G.
The Yorktown was a reward/insult to Kirk. Thanks for saving the planet, have this soon to be retired bucket of bolts. I was frustrated with the San Paulo. The Enterprise typically being a flagship, this felt like a step back. Neo-Constitutions are not flagships. Granted, the A wasn’t a flagship, but the B-F ships established this.
@@1978rharris The São Paulo was originally supposed to be rechristened the Defiant-A, and lose the NX designation, but they didn't have the time or money to change the digital model. At least in that case, it was renaming a ship that was just coming off the line to replace a recently destroyed ship.
I don't really have an opinion on the Yorktown being renamed to the Enterprise.
The bigger issue is, if they wanted a touching rename, it was calling the Titan-A the Entetprise-G specifically that was an odd choice. The U.S.S. Picard was sitting right there, waiting to be picked up, and there wouldn't be confusion as to why this relatively old, Starfleet equivalent of a destroyer, was being named the flagship.
I mostly agree with you, Steve. But the inclusion of Shelby, Ro and Tuvok are precisely things that tug on my nostalgia *in the right way*. Sure, it could have been any other character, but why not make these cameos a nod to older material? I especially enjoyed the scene with Seven and Impostor Tuvok. She knows they can't trust anyone at face value, so she test him. "Tuvok" answers right, and there is a sigh of relief. But then, just because they need to be absolutely sure, she tries again, and only then he fails.
While, as you said, the changeling plot is a whole school of Red Herrings, at this point in the show we don't know that yet, and the reveal that this not the real Tuvok is chilling. Not to mention the fact that Tim Russ plays the scene perfectly.
Tuvok I didn't mind. Both his appearances were short and sweet (or sour, in the case of the first one) and had a story point.
Shelby I probably wouldn't have minded if we hadn't already had a dozen other cameos by that point. But we had, and so it became an exercise in more eye-rolling. And I'm not sure if it was supposed to be ironic, cruel or funny that Shelby was celebrating what was, essentially, the Borgification of Starfleet.
The appearance of Ro Laren on the other hand I had issues with. Because there was nothing (as far as I can recall) in the preceding two dozen episodes of Picard that suggested that Ro and Picard's parting in TNG season 7 had left such a depth of unresolved feeling to warrant the emotional weight that the episode tried to impart on their reconciliation and her ultimate sacrifice. Quite frankly, the Picard/Ro reuntion felt like something that might have been fine if it had appeared as a piece of fanfic, or even a short story in a Pocket Book anthology, but not as a major part of a key episode in a ten-episode story arc. She comes out of nowhere, they spend a substantial amount of runtime rehashing and working through stuff that happened more than a quarter of a century ago, and then she goes out in a blaze of glory. For anyone not familiar with the Ro/Picard relationship that episode would have had minimal emotional impact. Heck, I _was_ familiar with their relationship and her appearance this episode felt so shoe-horned in that I neither cared about their reconciliation nor her death.
Bringing back legacy characters can work - I thought "Nepenthe" was the best episode of season 1 - but unfortunately "Imposters" was not an episode that worked for me.
My main issue with respect to the cameos is that almost *all* of them were done in the service of killing them off for some cheap drama points. If anything, it almost felt hateful (or at least dismissive) toward TNG to me. Maddox, Hugh, Ro, Shelby, Icheb (Granted, he's from VOY, but same era), Q (before they backed off that one a season later, of course...), Lore (technically merged with Data, but still...). Logically, Tuvok should have been dead too until it was decided that the shapeshifters kept him and hundreds of others alive...somewhere? for some reason? Perhaps someone in production finally realized that they've killed or neutralized damn near every minor character to make an impression in TNG and icing Tuvok officially as well would be a step too far. XD
I think you hit the nail on the head: Picard Seasons 1 and 2 tried new stuff, and it went over like a lead balloon. I personally liked all three seasons for what they were, but I'm much happier overall with Discovery, SNW and LD. They're trying new things with new characters and new formats and while it doesn't all hit, it's at least creative.
Went over like a lead balloon to some, but I loved seasons one and two for their ambition and for actually staying true to Trek's themes (unlike PIC season three). I also LOVE DSC, think SNW is competent and delightfully pisses off the bigots, and I think that LDS is good when it remembers it's about underdogs, but I thought it forgot that half the time in season three.
Picard hands down is the worst of all Trek shows
i couldn't even stomach season 2 after the first two episodes. Season 1 is the only one i give credit because Season 2's time travel plot with Q even sounded stupid on paper
The reason for Tuvok for being there when Seven is promoted is organic. He is a higher-up admiral at starfleet security debriefing Seven following the events of the borg coup. and the death of her commanding officer as well as many other crew members (and the temporary loss of her ship immediately following her official promotion to acting captain)... there's a lot to unpack there and it makes sense that Tuvok would get that case given his role.
I tend to look at Picard season 3 as the final farewell to the TNG era as a whole, using a few things from DS9 and Voyager to show those shows some love too. Hell, the NX-01 gets a shout-out getting a holiday named after it, not to mention seeing Enterprise itself at the fleet museum. 👍
I got a few episodes in before I just felt like I was being love bombed by a cult. Smothered with nostalgia and in jokes and call backs.
I realized if I really want to spend time with my buddies on the Enterprise, I've got a hundreds of hours of them just waiting for me to revisit. And that's enough.
That is exactly why I found it really creepy how a number of people who complained endlessly about "canon" and "wokery" previously all said things like "this is a return to form" and "Trek as it should be" and "an apology to true fans" about this season. I'm like... "you're just a bunch of Pavlovian dogs, huh?"
Not that I didn't enjoy seeing Beverly and Troi and Worf, but I did feel sad that almost all the original ideas got dropped in favour of what felt a box-ticking exercise.
@@kaitlyn__L and what "ideas" were they? If people thought the TNG cast could simply walk into "TNG Season 8" then they're watching the wrong show.
Same goes for other shows, why sit through abrams movies, strange new worlds or the first few seasons of discovery, just watch the first 6 trek movies, they have everything you need in a fraction of the time:)
I liked the third season as a fan (except the Borg reveal).
But I see your point and think your arguments are very good and I respect them.
Thank you for this video!
Go on! 👍🏼
Never forget that Terry Matalas wanted to include way more side characters and cameos than just Ro Laren and Tuvok. Close to a "Everyone's here" kind of deal but was told by Alex Kurtzman "This ain't fucking Avengers Endgame, Terry". So basically, Alex Kurtzman actually did to Matalas what you said you'd do if you were in his shoes, just to a version of this show that was even more of what you didn't like about it
Thing is, one of the things I hated the most was the MCU ending to the series. They should have at least switched the Jack meets Q scene with the poker scene. At least let this series finale stand on its own. Frankly, they shouldn't have done the Jack meets Q scene at all. But they CERTAINLY shouldn't have made the very last scene a commercial for a show that doesn't exist.
I see everyone attributing the "this isn't avengers endgame" thing to Alex Kurtzman, but Matalas attributed it to the line producer. A line producer is a studio bean counter, they manage a production and makes sure it stays within budget, both before production and during. Yes Kurtzman is the head of Secret Hideout (who Paramount employs), but he would not have been acting as Line producer on Picard Season 3.
Not only that, but the Changelings decided Tuvok was a special case and decided _not_ to kill him, and Matalas also wrote a scene where Ro Laren was discovered alive and well with Tuvok. He's already said because we didn't stare at Shelby's corpse for 10 straight minutes she's not dead and she'll be coming back, even though we saw her get phasered multiple times at point-blank range. On top of that, it's also been confirmed that Shaw will return in some way, and the two or three fans of Elnor can rest easy because he definitely wasn't on the _Excelsior_ that got vaporised by the rest of the fleet.
The guy has absolutely no balls and is terrified of upsetting the man children. Contrast that with Ira Stephen Behr who would routinely tell people on DS9: "It's not up to us to give the fans what they want, I don't care what they want, what we do is we give the fans what we think they need for it to be a good show".
The Q scene could be fixed with one simple thing: make it Q Junior.
@@thecynicaloptimist1884 THIS THIS THIS! I had a LOT more respect for season two, and absolutely loved season one, because they at least approached it with the Ira Steven Behr philosophy. It didn't occur to me that fear might have been driving Matalas. I just figured it was apolitical* mashing together of action figures and model kits.
* Anything apolitical inherently skews toward right-wing oppression.
I am so glad someone else said it. I thought I was going crazy. The entire time I was watching I kept thinking about that South Park episode about member berries. Then I got on forums and people were like "The best Star Trek in decades!" And I was just so confused, because it wasn't something I liked, it was a reminder of something I liked, which made it feel like a waste of time. I've watched most episodes of Star Trek at least ten times. I don't need a reminder. I need more Star Trek.
"I always swore I'd never rejoin the collective" is such an unintentionally hilarious line.
To me it was Crusher's line “clearly the Changelings have been working with the Borg from the beginning." It sounded so campy, like something out of the 1960s Batman TV series.
Beside all points pointed out in the video, my main complaint about Season 3 was that they basically used Season2 to introduce All New All Different Borg, but instead of doing anything with that, fed us left-over-borg from Voyager, as if Season 2 never happened...
RIGHT! We JUST got good borg with provisional entry into the Federation and NOT ONCE were they mentioned when the main threat was BORG. Like, seriously, we could have had some pretty cool borg on borg conflict, but a single person even ever thought "oh gee, we JUST watched a good friend rehabilitate and entire faction of the deadliest creatures in the galaxy, maybe she could help us here?"
Season 3 of Picard is like driving with the check engine light on in your car. Sure, it stopped smoking and making that really bad grinding noise.. But you probably should have taken it in to the shop.
That's a good analogy. I liked all three seasons of Picard (overall, but most of the nostalgia is doing a whole lot of the heavy lifting for me), but there seemed like some obvious plot points where it should have been improved. For example, if you're going to use the Changelings as the villians and involve the Borgs, why not have them steal borg tech, get it incorporated into the fleet, and then use a variation of the Star Trek virus created by Starfleet to infect the collective in "I Borg", having it disable nearly all of the fleet while the Dominion attacks (or another threat, preferably from TNG)? At least that has some callback qualities and involves a little more of a moral story/quandary ("You reap what you sow" in this case).
the check engine light was working fine.....
they made spocks rebirth work through actually making it a 'rebirth' ... like when spock came back he was more calculating and proper vulcan then he was previously because the previous spock -- the one who had grown to understand and accept his emotions and human half -- had actually passed on
but he didn't understand the computer's question "HOW DO YOU FEEL?".
I think my biggest problem with this season was that the moral of the story was that technology is corrupting our youth and only these old people with old ways and old tools can stop it. The old ways are better essentially. Look to the past for your salvation. It was literally the opposite of what gene wanted the show to be, like you'd have to know all the right answers and do the opposite on purpose for it to be this bad.
That's absolutely 100% fair. I'm not sure how deliberate that choice was, but yes; that's the message.
"Woke GenZ will destroy us all" is NOT a message anyone left of Breitbart news should send, ever.
It's a particularly sad contrast with Star Trek VI as the last outing for the TOS cast, since that film was all about the reflexive aversion to change amongst the old guard and the fear of abandoning familiar struggles for an unknown paradigm.
G
It was the modern scanners that detected Picard and Jack's Borg DNA as the older scanner from 30 years ago couldn't.
The only thing considered "Bad" was the interconnective systems installed into the Fleet.
That’s one way to look at it… another is Sins of the previous generation are seeded and inherited by the next
There are fans that, in a sense, want their heroes to be forever frozen in amber, to always be the iconic heroes that they remember growing up. But in stories that come back to those characters after many years, those characters, though still icons, have changed and grown. Life goes on. The simplicity of Bones giving Kirk a pair of glasses tells those watching that time has passed. That Kirk is no longer the twentysomething space cowboy starship captain he once was. He is older, and a bit grey, but not too old to make a difference. I wish these new Star Trek shows and movies could get back to those ideas, not just to be Spot the Reference: The Show. Star Trek, at its best, talked about the human condition. To make a difference in Life, and other people's lives, that is the Star Trek that I want to see continue.
PIC season three failed that, but the previous seasons advanced characters and built upon past developments. The theme of the first two seasons was closure.
SNW is doing a good job filling in blanks for characters that have been ciphers for nearly 60 years.
LDS is fairly egregious with the references, but most of the time it's relatively harmless. When it remembers it's supposed to be a show about underdogs, it's actually pretty great ("An Embarrassment of Dooplers" and "wej Duj').
DSC and PRO are mostly restrained with the references and benefit from that restraint.
Always appreciate your honesty, transparency, and willingness to meet your audience halfway. I liked the off the cuff style and having a point/counterpoint flavor. I did drop off during the first review episode, but not for the reasons many would think.
It was clear that you and I had very similar reactions to the episode. There was just something gnawing at me to leave my echo chamber (you, TrekCulture, Trek Central) for the season and give the whole thing a chance on its own without any opinion swaying me throughout.
Now that I'm catching up on everyone's opinions...well it was still good to periodically leave the echo chamber. So that's a positive.
I didn’t even realize the echo chamber I was IN until @Steve’s review 🙏🏻😂
I am a Trekkie about the same age as you and I must say it was better than season 2 but as a story season 3 was really bad to watch but what makes it really bad is that it had potential. Big up to you for being true to your opinion.
Hey, remember that time when Picard had a son he didn't now anything about? He's a little bit of a rogue and a lawbreaker, but after some uncomfortable moments, Picard bonds with him and they really start to care for each other? the episode name is "Bloodlines" in season 7.
On the topics of "ignoring new story potential," "undoing things from the past seasons for the sake of nostalgia indulgence," AND "the showrunner's ethos being playing with all the toys from his childhood," can we mention that PIC S2 ended with the Borg Collective applying for provisional membership in the Federation after evolving into a new form with a new mission with Jurati as the new Borg Queen, paying off Guinan's speech about how a day could come where humanity could evolve enough to treat with the Borg as equals rather than be seen as raw material? And how S3 dismissed that entire plot with a single line of dialogue, in retrospect solely to set up THE GLORIOUS OLD-SCHOOL UNSTOPPABLE TNG BORG as the final boss?
It's funny you brought up JJ Abrams, because the first thing I thought of when I put that together was Rise of the Skywalker, a film that seeminly exists to be an exercise in trying to erase things its creator didn't like about the previous entry in the franchise.
Spoiler:
"To Serve Fan"
...It's a COOKBOOK!
The question I like to ask with creative decisions like this is: Why say anything of your own, when you can just repeat, sometimes verbatim, what other's have already said?
I think you went a bit hard on Tuvok, he WAS sort of a mentor to Seven for many years on Voyager. A time where she more or less created her humanity, so it makes perfect sense that he would request to be the one to promote her.
Otherwise I agree with almost everything, it's a bit scary how you put my thoughts about the series into words, did you read my mind and create a script from it??? xD
I liked the off the cuff reviews. I don't even watch Picard and I was very entertained by the interplay between you two.
Best season of Picard by a long shot, and as long as they're rolling out the classics.... because we KNEW going into it they would be... I'm here for it. About the only thing I can agree with you on is the rogue changelings thing... I do wish it was either the changelings or the Borg as the main enemy, not both. I didn't understand the relationship there, or why they would trust each other.
In this case, I thought overall the third season of Picard was mindless fun. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, it was mindless fun. It was one of the better fan fictions I have seen come to screen, but it was obvious fan fiction. Was it good? Maybe. Was it bad? Maybe. Was it mindless fun, that had me excited to see how far they would take it? Yeah, with the understanding that if I thought about it to much, the whole thing falls apart.
As someone who has read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, I can confidently tell you that there is MUCH worse official fanfiction.
One of my favorite podcasters, popular media, and video game journalists coined the phrase, “More fun than it is good.” That sums up my feeling about P3.
Anyone notice the “Avengers Assemble” like moment with 7 about to say her version of “Engage” like when Captain America almost says it at the end of Civil War?
I honestly love how the TNG crew had to deal with the aftermath of DS9 and Voyager.
It was like it was more of a love letter of the whole TNG Era.
I hated that next Gen with its lack of story. So they just took all the other series plot and made them super dumb and nothing but fan service and smashed them into pacard. Next Gen had no story, so they took all the other series plots.
Didn’t everyone from deep space nine end up being killed off-screen or something?
Thank you, Steve, for your very thoughtful analysis. While I enjoyed Picard season 3 a lot, I did recognize it for what it was: rather lazy, pandering fan service. Now, of course, as someone who doesn't mind occasionally sitting down to a plate full of Twinkies and Twizzlers, i I don't necessarily object to empty calories. This season of Picard was more comfort food than anything.
What I do find fascinating, though, is how wildly different the second and third seasons of Star Trek Picard were both from each other and from season one. Since i have only watched the series once and don't intend to watch it again, my recollection is that at the end of season one the Picard golem was on the La Sirena with Rios, Raffi, Seven, Juriati, Soji, and Elnor, and they were going off to do renegade kind of stuff. That could have been really interesting. However, when we got back to them in season two, Picard was once again on the vineyard where Laris 's husband had died off screen, and she and Picard were now in a romantic relationship, which seemed really jarring. (It almost makes you wonder about husband’s cause of death. Anyway…) Also, all of the La Sirena people now seem to be in Starfleet. What was that all about? And then between Q, Picard’s mommy issues, astoundingly stupid violations of the temporal prime directive, and SO much more, the head spins thinking about all of the character betrayals that occurred in that season. However, as we came back for season three, it's like season two never happened.
Now granted, I would be very happy as a fan of Star Trek if season two of Picard had never happened, but what's really weird is that Terry Matalas was the showrunner for both those seasons, and they were filmed back-to-back. Did Matalas realize that he had made a terrible mistake in season two and just decided to ignore it? I mean all the sort-of-vaguely-friendly-Borg-stuff. Gone. Q dying? Gone. Raffi and Seven being in a romantic relationship? Gone. And after one episode of season three, Laris? Gone.
I completely agree that Amanda Plummer as Vadic was a sensational, thrilling villain for this series. I also agree that when I found out that she was a Changeling, I felt that it was a huge letdown, a cheat. (Still, it did provide what seemed to me the one vaguely political aspect of this season of Picard, the gross immorality of the exploitation of a vanquished people to be commodified as weapons. Even with this, though, the finale pretty much reverses itself with Beverly’s way of detecting changelings so that they could, apparently, be immediately arrested and imprisoned. If that isn't somewhat chilling in a post 9/11 world, I don't know what it is. Especially for Star Trek.) However, given that, Amanda Plummer was still such a pleasure to watch chewing any scenery she could get her hands on. Of course, then Vadic and her minions are destroyed by the end of episode eight, leaving a hole in the remaining narrative for me. I really wanted them, Vadic in particular, to be present of have a satisfying final showdown in episode ten.
Just as dispiriting was the reveal that the Borg were the actual underlying Big Bad of this narrative. Once again, this seems to nullify season two, the Agnes-as-the-friendly-Borg-ambassador resolution to that story. It also raises the question: How did the Borg and the Changelings even form an alliance? Changelings are in the gamma quadrant. Borg are in the delta quadrant. They exist ten of thousands of light years from one another, and as far as i know, they have never been established as having been in contact with one another. To be spending a lot of episode nine as a viewer wondering how that happened, whether there was some previously unknown other stable wormhole between those two quadrants, if the board tried to assimilate the Changelings and were unable to, etc., etc., it's just another one of those things that pulled me out of the narrative and threw off my investment in what would happen
I agree that episode four was by far the best of the series with the birth of the nebula babies inspiring a sense of wonder that has always been at the core of Star Trek for me. More of THAT would have been the fan service I would have preferred. Moments of joy, wonder, teamwork, and rather than retreating where we've all been before, going where no Trek has gone before.
You ask me, they should've gone with a completely different main villain for the season. The Borg were played out, and the end of season 2 gave their story more than enough closure. No, they should've gone with someone a little more.... obscure. Maybe a one-off villain who saw their plans crumble to dust at the hands of the Enterprise crew. For them, it was the most devastating moment of their lives, but for Picard, it was Tuesday. A villain whose origins were never fully explained, and whose end left a doorway to future stories that was never opened. An enemy that had all the potential in the galaxy, but was relegated to a footnote in Starfleet's history books. I am, of course, talking about the parasitic aliens from "Conspiracy".
They wouldn't even have had to change much to get it to work. They could've been chasing Jack because they were secretly grooming him as the new host for the queen, like Remmick in the original episode. And instead of Borg DNA, the Starfleet personnel could've been implanted with microscopic spores that coalesce into one of those scorpion thingies after Jack gets infected and sends off a telepathic signal or something. I mean, just picture the look of shock and recognition on Picard's face when a tiny spike grows out of the back of Ensign LaForge's neck. Would've been worth the price of admission just for that scene alone....
I was thinking of either that, or the Devil lady from Devil's Due, which ticks off several of the boxes you mentioned (might have been her greatest defeat, but for picard and crew was a footnote, never knew her real origins, etc) There's probably a few other examples that could have been done, and it would have BOTH ticked off the "TNG nostaglia box" AND been something they could have done more with rather than turning to the changlings and the Borg again.
Someone times I don't agree with your points, but you're so good at explaining them that I always understand and respect where you're coming from.
I don't understand why the changelings needed to team up with the borg? I feel like they're powerful enough to take over starfleet on their own. Also, where's borg Jurati? Felt like she could have helped out Jack and help fight the old borg.
The Queen recognised they were prime targets for use as infiltrators in Starfleet and that they were damaged goods and easily coerced into doing what she wanted.
The Jurati collective/cooperative are doing their thing and certainly not strong enough to take on a demented Queen in a GIGANTIC cube even at 35% operational.
Hope this helps.
Even better would have been if Jurati could have converted these Borg like she converted the Confederation Borg. At the very least, as soon as season two ended, Starfleet should have incorporated her strategy into their playbook for dealing with the Borg.
They didn’t represent the Great Link as a whole. These changelings represent a small group
Different changelings, different Borg.
Season 3 reminded me of the saying that an ambitious failure will always be better than a lazy success. Season 3 of Picard was definitely a lazy success. Heartfelt, ambitious failures are always entertaining on some level.
That's why I liked seasons 1 and 2 more. (I seem to be in the miniscule minority there.) They each had problems, but they were problems of execution, not problems of ambition.
My biggest complaints of season 3 were not the pandering fan service. It was that everything about season 1 and 2 were just dropped. In particular: what the hell happened with Jurati's Borg?
Season 2 set up this interesting question, spent the entire season in an alternate timeline or the past, then came back to answer that question. And it's all just dropped by S3.
For me Vadic was the one genuine bright spot of this season that wasn’t cheap nostalgia. Even if it frustrated me her motivation wasn’t called out (“oh no, was someone mean to the architects of several genocides - that we know of - who created two species of slave worshippers” ☹). The real shame for me is the overall plot - Borg use Picard to bring about their final revenge in a sorta clever sci-fi way - would have made a great 2 ½ film send off for the TNG cast... about 10 years ago. Alas we got this.
I enjoyed Steve and Jason’s episode-by-episode conversations. I found my thoughts and feelings about the season were usually somewhere in the middle of their two takes.
On principle, I admit I'm a sucker for the fan service, seeing old characters come back and mirrored shots from something that came before. But even I felt a bit on the bludgeoned side with Picard lol. That closing shot for example. I think if fan service was more restrained and kept to one or two references per season or something, it could have been a really inspired move, I enjoy that sort of thing. But as you say, with all the other fan service and rehashings, what should have felt to me like a creative "ah, nice touch" felt instead creatively hollow, only serving to remind people of when it was done better. Very odd feeling. When 7 of 9 showed up I was really excited coz I didn't see that coming, but once the pattern was established it became more of a checklist, "who's left, who haven't we seen yet" rather than "haha, you didn't expect to see them again did you" Always weird to hear an American say wank, but yeah, pretty much
"That closing shot for example"... which one? The Last Generation had like FOUR (all of which were lifts from somewhere (the overhead of the card table from All Good things; the Enterprise D and Titan A side by side from the shot of Excelsior and Enterprise A from Star Trek VI; and so on... and lest we forget Q kicking off Jack's "Trial for Humanity"... didn't realize that every Picard has to do this as a right of passage!). 🤣
I actually thought the dinner scene with Shaw in episode 1 was one of the best scenes of the franchise.
Followed closely by the lift scene... 'just... chipper'
Me too!
The amount of time he spent on Riker etc was a bit much all at once but I really enjoyed "your reputations preceded you so far into the room I guess I started early"
IDIC and all that but personally I thought that scene was horribly over-written and over-acted. It was immediately clear even in episode 1 that Terry Matalas was liberally mining the TOS movies for inspiration. So Shaw in that episode came across as a cross between the feckless Esteban and the arseholey Styles (both from The Search for Spock). Luckily he became one of the most fleshed-out and best characters that season, but it was _not_ an auspicious intro.
"I feel somebody was missing"
"Shut up, Wesley."
Poor Wesley has been written out and replaced by this changeling/Borg Jack.
Although this season did not have a "political" theme, it still had a strong theme to it. Star Trek II's theme was about accepting inevitability including aging and even death. Star Trek: First Contact's theme was about letting go of the pain of the past and moving forward to the future and Picard Session 3's theme was about the importance of family and connection, fixing the connections of the past and not being afraid of the connections yet to come.
Patrick Stewart is aging out of plausibility for a future reunion, thus they had to allow Picard his chance to relive his glory days now.
As a person who is also aging out of life, I can attest that there is a longing to have another grand adventure. And I was quite satisfied with the life I lived.
And as a person who felt a deep loss of the characters on TOS, I can attest that having that reunion of those old friends, living that grand adventure vicariously through them, is kind of special because it isn’t something we get in the real world, where people get dead and stay that way, where familiar places are torn down, where you wish you could get back that ‘69 Camaro your mom sold to that annoying friend of your sib you didn’t like. So, yes…it is feeding the fans, but it’s also setting up a next generation that ties back to the last one, just like was done for TNG and DS9 and Voyager; and the prequel SNWs ties forward to TOS, and sideways to Discovery, and poor old Enterprise hangs alone from TOS.
Last point, off to the side, crossover of enemies and “new” aliens is constantly going on. Like when Kirk first encounters the Romulans who no one knew about (including the Vulcans), except now everyone in the prequels has already met them, and the Vulcans know exactly who they are. The Ferangis, too… they were new and unknown, even their ships weren’t identified, but then they are suddenly all over the f-ing Federation, and were encountered in the past.
Seriously…add in all the timeline changes, there isn’t even a official canon anymore, is there? All the shows have pulled from others, even when it clearly sets aside other facts within the ST universe.
What we need now is for Burnham and Discovery crew to come back via time travel and warn about the impending dilithium crisis, with Micheal having a touching reunion with Spock as they invent a work around to warp travel with dilithium. They prediscover the Borg, steal the transwarp conduit tech, have a run in with Ferengis and Romulans, accidently destroy the prophets wormhole, travel back in time and save the Klingons from extinction, become Gods to the past Ferengis forever altering their capitalist system, which disrupts the balance of power in the future as the Ferengis become traveling monks annoying people on space stations everywhere by handing out sacred science manuals.
😂 that was fun! I see why you do what do!
I definitely agree that the changelings felt out of place this season. I asked my Trekkie friends what the point of them were, and they were blinded by the fanservice to give me an answer. If there was even a token reason why they were working for the Borg, I could've forgiven them.
With the villian problem you could have largley the same orveraching plot but instead of the changlings or the borg which are either on the wrong show or been done to death respectivaly have the baddies be the parasite aliens from Conspiracy. A TNG villian that hasn't been overused but which a lot of fans would love to know more about.
I enjoyed Jason and yourself when reviewing season 3! Thank you so much ❤
In terms of production, I don’t like interview and podcast type conversations. Video essays are my bread and butter, I clean cars and often have you on during my rotation of daily content.
I liked season 3 alot but I still watched this vid. I like your videos in general and even when i disagree with your opinions, I am interested in your thinking about them. You have a keen insight into trek and you are entertaining in your style. I don't need to always watch something that will just parrot my opinions back to me, so go ahead and dissent and i will keep watching and appreciating! Of course i also like when your insights/opinions DO align with mine :)
Wait, why are the Borg even using DNA? Wouldn’t it make more sense to use nanites?
I love how you walk the fine line of calling people out for being wrong while also being completely happy that they are enjoying the same source material, albeit in a different way. It’s like you know we’re fucking nerds, but deep down inside you know you’re a nerd too, and as long as we all let each other enjoy stuff in our own nerdy way, we can be friends.
Love these, keep it up!
I'm one of the nerds who enjoyed the season, but I also always enjoy hearing your perspective. I understand completely why you didn't like it - you're a writer and a storyteller, and seen through that lens the season didn't bring a lot that was original or interesting to the table. For me, first and foremost I want to see great performances, and this season was full of those (as you mention in your open when covering "the good stuff"). When it comes to genre films and television, more often than not I find that I agree with Howard Hawk's assessment about good movies, which I first heard from Roger Ebert: "a great movie is 'three great scenes and no bad scenes'' ", and I think a lot of this seasons episodes had enough entertaining moments to keep me, well, entertained.
One thematic thread that they left dangling did really disappoint me, though. Early on, Jack criticizes Star Fleet for being out of touch with and indifferent to what is really happening on the frontier; later in the season Vadic explains to Crusher and Picard how she and the other changelings were tortured and experimented on by the Star Fleet scientist. I thought, briefly, that they might be willing to explore the ways in which Star Fleet had lost its way and had become the architect of its own misfortunes, but clearly that was not an avenue that Matalas was going to go down. I think that might have been interesting, and would have forced Picard to look at certain things from Jack's perspective, which could have worked, it seemed to me.
I love the honest review! A lot of what I was thinking myself. The highlight for me was Jonathan Frakes performance and Riker’s whole character journey through the season, it was the most believable and memorable thing even though it didn’t affect the plot as such. 😅💛
The changelings idea was really cool, but it should’ve gone in a different direction. With some minor adjustments, Terry could’ve made them an AMAZING metaphor for the alt-right. About how the fascists of the past that you think you’ve “defeated” and subsequently taken in can change their faces to become more camouflaged but that ultimately they’re still doing the same things. Probably wouldn’t have been great for a non-DS9-related show, but honestly an inspired baseline concept.
I thought Riker's best scene was working out that "Pop Goes The Weasel" was the "code." Not only was it an excellent callback to Encounter at Farpoint, but also Riker as a musician.
I never watched your episode-by-episode reviews of Picard, but I wish I had, because your views align with mine very, very closely. Both in respect to what worked well in season 3, but mostly in respect to what didn't.
Your conclusion sums it up - season 1 and 2 tried tried to explore strange new worlds, even if that exploration didn't entirely succeed. I respected the writers for what they tried to do (in season 1, exploring what it means to be biological, synthetic and holographic life, and in season 2, trying to dig more deeply into Picard's psyche than ever before, while also - in the last episode - fundamentally redefining the most iconic of TNG villains to set up the potential for new and interesting story lines for the Borg in the future). Were these seasons successful? Only partly, to put it mildly. But when you try something new, your chances of failure are that much greater. Season 3 on the other hand was overwhelmed by, defined by, fan service. There were parts of it I liked, because after all I am a fan and parts of it were executed well, but overall, critically, _I did not respect it._ Which I find sad.
Some minor points of disagreement:
I didn't mind that the Changelings were the (ostensible) villains of the season. I like that the universe of Trek is bigger than a single series, and to me there's a clear difference between having the Changelings be antagonists this season and having the last episode of ENT essentially be a TNG episode centred on the moral dilemma of a TNG character rather than the ENT cast of characters. It helps that DS9 is my favourite - along with TOS - and best Trek show, so in this case introducing the Changelings was an example of fan service that worked for me. And given that Seven had become a PIC series regular by that point it also didn't seem out of place to incorporate some VOY elements (as previous seasons of PIC had done).
On the other hand, on the topic of antagonists, what I was hugely, momentously, disappointed by was the (relentlessly, needlessly dragged out) reveal that the "big bad" was... shock, horror, quelle surprise... the Borg Queen. A villain so overused it hadn't even been a full season since we last saw her. On top of the dozen other times she'd been trotted out. And at least in season 2 the Borg Queen was interesting. In season 3 she devolved into a one-dimensional cartoon villain. And, as you pointed out (and I bemoaned all season), that was only one of numerous retcons that undid what the previous seasons of PIC (and other franchise installments) had done. Definitely a case of three steps forward, three steps back.
It's interesting you referenced the TOS movies favourably because - as someone who saw each of them in their original theatrical release - the reluctance of Star Trek to push forward has been a bugbear of mine for literally decades. TMP and TWOK did both push the franchise forward in key ways and I admire both for that. (It helps that Trek still has never been better than TWOK.) For example, Spock comes to terms with his human half in TMP. and makes the ultimate sacrifice in TWOK (thereby depriving the franchise of its single most iconic character). Kirk confronts his mortality and legacy in TWOK. But TSFS and then TVH both reversed the key changes introduced in the previous movies. Spock dies in TWOK? He comes back in TSFS. Okay, so Kirk does pay a momentous price in the form of the death of the Enterprise, perhaps the thing he loves most after his best friend. But guess what, she comes back in TVH. A new generation of characters are introduced in TWOK in the form of David Marcus and Saavik? They get killed off, and shipped off to the home for wayward pregnant Vulcans in TSFS and TVH respectively. So by the time we get to TFF we're essentially back to the status quo of the TV series. (Of course, that's not the only reason Star Trek V is a bad movie.) Granted, TUC gave the TOS characters a fitting, graceful, sign-off, but overall the contours of the TOS movies, when measured by their willingness - or unwillingness - to grow and evolve, mirrors the contours of the three seasons of PIC.
I love your take on all things Star Trek, but for some strange and probably stupid reason, I actually liked seeing the old characters on the bridge of the Enterprise D.
Here is a great way to describe why the "cameos" from the other series are bad. They weren't put in to tell a good story. They were only put in to function as member berries to poke at people's nostalgia.
Steve, I agree with your analysis but only to an extent.
I completely understand your view as a writer and a creator; I understand that you want something new to sink your teeth into, and I don't think you have a bad vision with respect to what you'd have liked to see in this latest iteration of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm with you, on a lot of it.
I do, however, think that this season (while slightly over-seasoned in some aspects) is just the right flavor for those that tuned in - if only - because they really wanted to see something familiar to them about Star Trek. I've been watching, reading, and (VERY) writing Star Trek since TOS was in its FIRST syndication run. These newer incarnations of Trek have been a difficult adjustment and I express this as a lifelong fan of this (now) long-running phenomenon.
That said, I've learned to appreciate the newness of This Generation's Trek and the direction that it's going; it's actually pretty cool once I got past the idea that Trek had to be exactly the same as it was. It's not possible to stay the same, so I see this as a healthy evolution of the Trekverse and I've embraced it. It's also made me able to truly appreciate shows like Strange New Worlds and now this LAST season of Picard because , well: all good things..... but it's still nice to reminisce.
My point is: I think this season's SOLE purpose WAS for Fan Service... and I think a lot of us appreciated it for what it was. I also think this was smart for TM and The Franchise.
TYSM Steve for sharing your thoughts on it all!
Data isn't even "different" for the entire season. Once Lore is eliminated, it's just Data, B4 and the MEMORIES, not personality, just the memories of the Soong guy. And B4 doesn't really have much if a personality, so after Data not being too different from Data for a while, he becomes just plain old Data
The last part about writing new stories and boldly going in new directions reminds me of Handmaid's Tale when Serena says that maybe she was meant to do what Moses' mother did and I thought about how boring it is to repeat the same story over again. She has the chance to make her own story but she wants to just recreate the same classic that everyone already knows. On the flipside of that, we have June constantly fighting and taking control, refusing to accept the story that others are writing for her.
Honestly, I loved seeing all the old characters back together for a brief moment but the story just didn't grab my attention
Season 3 was like eating a whole Pizza Hut pizza - at the moment it hit your mouth it was like so tasty, but after a while you felt sick
Typing as watching - I thought Vadic was going to be another Reman clone who needed Jack’s DNA to fix their cell defects…and since Romulans had spent decades studying Borg, still could have had the drone takeover
It just occurred to me as you ran through the fan service from each different series that maybe that was the mandate he was given. Terry Matalas is a very competent writer and show runner as he proved on his 12 Monkeys series which I thought was a terrible idea when it first started but came to enjoy it. I have no doubt he could have and should have made something exclusively revolving around TNG. This is pure speculation of course but perhaps he was told that he had to bring in aspects from other series for one of two reasons. Either it was a quick and easy way to try to get fans of DS9 and Voyager, who didn't necessarily like either TNG or Picard itself, to tune in and go out on an artificially high note after squandering the potential of Picard's return in the first two seasons. Either or as well as it was a way to placate fans of the other two shows so they didn't get calls for some sort of continuation of them as well so they can finally move beyond all this. Or, if I'm even more cynical, it's a way to test the waters. Neither DS9 or Voyager came close to the popularity of TNG. They could be trying to discern if some kind of limited series would be worth their money for one or both shows. Having Seven be captain leaves them in prime position to bring back the Voyager crew since that finale isn't exactly remembered fondly and since Janeway is getting an animated resurgence over on Prodigy the audience could be primed. Not so sure about DS9 though since that had about as perfect an ending a show could get, in my opinion. They'd be playing with fire (caves) if they tried to mess with DS9.
IIRC limited series based on specific characters have been an idea that has been floated at Paramount. Cost might be an issue, since if you have sets built you can pad out an ongoing series with bottle episodes, but if you have to build a bunch of sets/do a bunch of locations for a wide variety of limited stories the cost could add up (Also this is why season 3 was basically one big bottle episode; the money was tighter and what was there got spent on payroll and the Enterprise D set).
I think you might be right about a mandate from higher-ups. It is always worth bearing in mind that writers and show runners are answerable to TPTB (the idiots in charge).
This season was more watchable, but the crass dialogue and underwhelming violence/action were still there. I didn’t need it in my life. It was compelling and satisfying to watch Picard and Kirk cope with their losses and regrets in Generations. Then PIC season three comes along with, “Hey, you’ve got a perfectly salvageable family after all; absolutely no lasting damage from your sexual irresponsibility and 25-year absence. And you know you’ll all make it out just fine because you’re the principal cast members in a Trek series.”
I have to say, I normally agree with your analysis but on this occasion I couldn't disagree more. The nostalgia of this season was undeniable, but I found it tastefully and rewardingly so, rather than mere fan service. Character arcs 30 years in the making were paid off, explicitly or implicitly. Yes, it was replete with references, but in the final episodes of a crew in a franchise over 50 years old, would you expect less? Moreover, though they did 'reset' the status quo for a brief moment in the final episode, none of the characters ended up where they started, all were in a new place with new possibilities to come, they simply didn't arbitrarily subvert expectations to be 'edgy' as they did to disasterous effect for the last two seasons. The argument could as easily be made for the end of TMP, ST3, ST4, First Contact or any number of other points in the franchise with equally little justification. Just because something rewards fans for their long love of a franchise doesn't make it shallow or creatively bankrupt. Also, your analogy of the older crew showing the younger crew the way is the biggest reach I've ever heard-and could easily be read the opposite way-that they were 'waking' them from the programming of society's orthodoxy with the benefit of a more diverse and enlightened philosophy based on their experiences. In my opinion, this season was what the show should've been all along-i respect your opinion, but I don't agree this time.
I trust your negative reviews because you back them up with sound reasons. I may not agree with your reasons but I can respect them
"I don't want the new shit to give me the old shit, I want the new shit to give me the new shit." BEST LINE EVER. Put that on a shirt.😂
Why did we need a Picard show? Because we can’t have a new show that isn’t either a prequel or fan service because those two things are functionally the same thing. The producers are far to afraid to make something new because it’s not bankable. Star Wars has the same problem.
The only part of Terry's toy box that felt genuine to me was Seven commenting on Voyager.
That's largely on Jeri's performance, more than anything else. She's really good.
I'm actually mostly with you here. I'm okay with this season. My feeling is that season 3, which basically sorta functions, is overrated because of how badly season 2 turned out. Season 2 is like a desert and season 3 is the oasis. Sure, the water has a bleach taste, tingles on your tongue, and gives you the trots, but you'll live. Oh, and then you remember you have some (30 year) old flavor packets (fan service) in your pocket. What joy!
I am a bit surprised you did not talk about the Music.
I was quite annoyed of how it was used in Picard. I am not sure if this holds true show as a whole but I was just not able to ignore it this season.
See, I buy that Captain Kirk could accidentally have a child with a woman who didn't tell him about it. But the very premise of Jack Crusher's existence is _so out of character_ for both Picard and Dr. Crusher that I could not make myself care about Jack or any part of his story. It was lazy, nonsensical writing.
I'm gonna be real here......this was my favorite season of Picard. Look, I totally get that it is super flawed, but I feel like I'm having a Force Awakens or Season 1 Mandalorian moment, that no matter how meh or bad some parts are it just hits me with nostalgia in such the right way that I forgive it. I mean, I think you and I would both be gushing about this season if Ben Sisko came out of no where and just decked the borg queen................
In improv, the core rule is "yes, and..." which means you don't reject or undo what other inprov-ers do, you take it and say "yes, and" before adding to it.
Matalas operates on "no, I don't wanna." He rejected and undid what previous creative had done. With Spock's return, it was the original folks undoing their own creative choices, but with Matalas it's an egotistical single voice undoing the work of others *for no good reason.*
Matalas needs to stay far, far away from future Trek.
EXACTLY! I loved Chabon's approach much more, which was, "Okay, Nemesis happened. What profound story can we wring from that?"
I know you weren't a fan of series 3 but I enjoyed it and enjoyed your banter with Jason.
I’m 36 and I grew up in a Republican family. I’m the 90s you could expect non stop harassment for seeming like a nerd so I didn’t watch Star Trek as a kid. Recently got Paramount plus and binged most things Star Trek. I think because I didn’t grow up with it I was able to enjoy Picard season 3 more. I do feel bad the bigger fans were not happy.
I agree that, thematically, it didn't make any sense having the Changelings be the villains for the first arc. It's like having Batman's final battle being a face off against Lex Luthor and Maxwell Lord - and neither Superman nor Wonder Woman shows up. I get it - there's nothing preventing Batman from running into his fellow 1%'ers, and you could actually have some pretty interesting stuff when you consider that Batman is a trust fund baby and Lex Luthor is a self-made man, but that's a completely separate storyline, not an epic conclusion. Batman's archnemeses will always be dark reflections of himself, in the same way that Picard's archnemeses are dark reflections of him!
The Borg are a dark reflection of the Federation as seen in TNG, just as the Dominion is a dark reflection of the Federation in DS9. Dukat is a dark reflection of Sisko, and Locutus is literally Picard turned into a monster.
I was seriously hoping that the reason they stole Picard's body was to revive Locutus. Yeah, it would've been weird, but at least it would've worked thematically.
It's not that i don't agree with many pf your thoughts. It's just the relative impact on my mood when watching it and the relative quality compared to MOST of star trek since, well, at least 15 or 20 years.
Despite its shortcomings this season had sevral moments and even an episode or two that made me feel hope the future might hold star trek stories that will actually add to what already has been.
Steve, would you have liked it better if Vadic was a Changeling with a heretofore unknown connection to Picard? There's not much established about what Picard's Enterprise did during the Dominion War, so maybe they captured her then and handed her over (unknowingly) to Section 31. Vadic would therefore have a motive against Picard even though he doesn't know who she is (and when reminded of that mission, we could cover it via flashback or exposition). Or maybe (since as written, Picard stumbles into Vadic's pursuit of Jack) Dr. Crusher had some involvement in Section 31's experiments on Vadic or her DNA was used as a baseline for some reason and that's why she and Jack are valuable. Any of these would touch on the continuity of the TNG/DS9/VOY era while still keeping it focused on Picard and his crew, and it would fit with some of the series's earlier themes about Starfleet's failings (with the Romulans, ex-Bs and synth ban).
I do understand the production temptation to make an Enterprise-D bridge set (I saw some of the behind-the-scenes about how much it meant emotionally to a lot of the actors), so maybe make that a holodeck program or simulation while Vadic plugs something into Picard's brain to extract information or something? It feels wrong to have the farewell series have a theme other than "nostalgia is nice, but you have to move forward"... but I guess they did.
Thank you so much for this Steve. Seeing the overwhelmingly positive reaction from the fandom for this series has left me thinking I either watched the wrong show or am going mad.
Okay, I thought I was the only one who saw the Star Trek: Wrath of Khan reach around. The themes of Kirk's son and Picard's son hit me in the face like a brick. It was too theme for theme. Upset wife/girlfriend takes son to get away from the father's influence. Son resents his father because of the absence. Oh wow!! And to cap it off, Kirk's body and the Genesis device are in storage.
Extra points for the excellent use of "trauma w@nk"
What did you think of the Seeger Sessions? I really liked the change of pace from Bruce's earlier work. Though I know a lot of fans did not share my opinion.
I absolutely loved them, though I haven't thought about them for quite a while.
The fact that Tuvok is in the show, replaced by a changeling, and Seven is in the show, who knows Tuvok so well, and these 2 facts never seem to interact drove me up the wall
Your criticisms are valid yet I focus on the emotion I most often felt during the show: Joy.
Chocolate is tasty despite it's poor nutritional content.
Pop music gets me dancing despite its (often) unoriginal, uninspired, basic composition.
And Picard Season 3 brought me joy despite its obvious narrative and creative failings. So, like chocolate and pop music, I love it.
To repurpose an old adage "the writers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could use the changelings and the borg, they didn't stop to think if they should"
as a Trek fan, I try to pretend that Picard ended with season 1
I'm not saying Season 1 of Picard was good, but i've heard nothing positive about Season 2, and it really just felt like the people who gushed over Season 3 were the same people who constantly complain about Discovery being "too woke" or complaining about the Kelvin films "are not Star Trek." In other words, people whose sense of taste I question deeply.
I'm imagining Steve being dragged away by Paramount goons while shouting "Its a toy box! IT'S A TOY BOX!!!"
I think what you are getting at in Chapter 3: "Why is this here" is a good point, and for me is wrapped up in the way the otherwise exvellently portrayed Vadic has an apparently personal animosity against and history with Picard. The way she says his name and seems to toy with him personally seemed to hint that she was something he (and we) had encountered before. It could have disappointingly turned out to be somethign we hadn't seen, like the Romulan backstory in season 1, or excellently in some loose thread from TNG. But it turned out to not be any connection with J-L at all. There was nothing personal to it. It was vengeance for somehing he probably wasnt even aware of. It made the antagonist/protagonist relationship feel like a threatening legal letter had arrived in Picard's mailbox, but it was actually misaddressed or related to a previous occupier.
FWIW, as a 72 year old boomer I agree with you. Not that I don't enjoy nostalgia, but if that's what I'm going for, I will rewatch or reread an old favorite. Otherwise, when I want something new I am looking for just that. I'm expecting callbacks to be necessary to explain to the newcomers (preferably in a creative way)and hoping Easter Eggs won't go beyond a light sprinkling because they are much like a super rich dessert. With a seriously rich dessert, nothing is as good as that first bite which you chase until your mouth starts going numb. Same thing with Easter Eggs: a few are delightful for those who spot them without bothering those who don't. A flood of them is worse than pointless, because it's mind-numbing. That's the last thing anyone, but especially someone my age needs. We need to be to be engaged in the here and now, something to think about, not some comfortable woozy cloud that encourages drifting and too busy living in the past to live truly. Harumph.
Thank you for this review. I think a lot of people are so starved for TNG nostalgia that they'll even take a fecal sandwich and thank Terry Matalas profusely for it. I wasn't as impressed with Amanda Plummer as some, but she did a good job and I like the story payoffs in episodes 4, 8 and 10. Overall, I'm just not impressed with Patrick Stewart any more, and this whole TNG revival series should have been done fifteen years ago, when Sir Patrick Stewart was a little less rickety and a little less feeble (making the necessary changes to the story and plot, of course.)
I think fans were just so hungry to see TNG again that they turned a blind eye to the many plotholes and problems with the story, and yes I'm glad someone mentioned how blatantly they were plagiarizing all of the various Star Trek TOS movies like Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home. It was all blatantly a ripoff of pre-existing ideas and stories.
Overall, season 3 is a B- for me. It was fun to see, but I'm not going to be singing from the rooftops for this. It was okay, and way better than season 2, but FAR from the A+ that people keep saying it is. Those people obviously don't understand their TNG as well as they think they do.
The Enterprise being rebuilt and using it for a Death Star core assault was the dumbest part of the season. And totally unnecessary. What was wrong with using La Sirena for that with perhaps a holographic bridge overlay against a weakened derelict normal Cube instead of the Giga Cube needed because the D is huge.
I have seen every episode of every Trek series. I thought Picard Season 3 was great. Entertaining and setting up other Trek series.
I enjoy having a thoughtful review, even (or especially) if it differs from my own.
My biggest issue with the season was the uneven pacing, though much better then season 1 and 2, some of the flow seemed like hard shifts from one episode to the other….
“Ooo Shaw is an a-hole, now he’s cool, no he’s an a-hole again, oops he’s dead, but he went out cool.”
At least we get to see that the crew all moved on to other things (along the lines of your criticism of the first TNG movies static nature of the characters).
My spouse and I continually referred to this as "Mac n Cheese Trek"; that is, comfort food. The thing is, there is nothing wrong with comfort food. It doesn't mean I'm going to eat mac n' cheese every meal for the rest of my life, and it doesn't mean that Star Trek can't go on to do other, more original and risky things. It's all on the menu.
The fact that these actors are dear friends in real life definitely added a whole other layer of genuine feeling to the nostalgia that really pushed it over the finish line for a lot of fans. I do think they laid it on too thick with the Borg surprise and Enterprise G rename, but if Trek can survive cameos from Melvin Belli, Spock's long lost half-brother, Spock's long lost adopted sister, and a pasty-faced white guy playing Khan, it can survive this.
G'day Steve, I completely understand your analysis of the Picard series.
You are technically correct, however, whenever I watch Star Trek, it makes me happy.
I'm a bit older than you (57) and feel great relief when indulging in blatant fan service.
Cheers, Dave.
So I watch a number of YT content providers that include ST reviews. Before ST:P S3 came out I watched a vid with 4 or 5 of them in the same vid. All of whom rightly hated on ST:P seasons 1 and 2. But they all said that they had been allowed to watch season 3 ahead of time and swore that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I was suspicious that these UA-camrs had gotten advance viewing in exchange for over the top positive pre-reviews. But, I decided to watch with an open mind. As the they aired, I found the episodes better than seasons 1 and 2 (a very low bar). But not superior to the aforementioned baked good. I appreciated what I found to be your more reasoned reviews of the episodes. I still suspect the sudden fanboys were paid off or somehow encouraged to give GOAT-style fawning praise, though.
1:44 Without actually having watched the rest of the video yet... yes, scripted videos are what I want, even if you're going to go on at length about how much you don't like the show. Zoom calls are great for getting things done at work or just hanging out with friends, but the realities of video conferencing really get under my skin for something like an episode review. Hosts talking over each other due to the lag inherent in something like Zoom, wildly varying qualities of audio and video between hosts, hosts having to ask each other to repeat themselves because Zoom ate the audio in the interest of noise cancellation, stuff like that. It can make a video longer than it needs to be, and while it reflects the reality of how we get to virtually hang out with each other in 2023, a raw Zoom call with little editing can just be difficult to watch.
You are right: I loved the season, and watching you talk about how much you disliked it wasn't great! But, I love your content, and while I disagree with a great many of your points, I do appreciate how rooted in narrative and love of the franchise your critiques are.
I hope you're looking forward to Strange New Worlds season 2, and I will see you in the next video!