...As much as I disagree, I do share the sentiment that STP could've been a lot better if Picard wasn't retired. Without more of a Starfleet presence (or really any major presence outside of the Borg Queen and Q) the show just feels like it's missing something important. There was potential there with the Romulans in the plot, but that was much too short lived. Probably in part because Romulans were drastically overused between TNG and DS9, much like the Cybermen and the Daleks from Dr Who; at some point they stop looking like a threat and start looking pathetic.
I am hopeful for season 3 if we truly get the main bridge crew, hopefully they learned something you can only have an episode like season 2, if you have 5 good seasons after it. I don't really care for TNG or DS9 until season 3... I could say that of many show that became my favorites over time.
I also love the fact that they heavily criticize today's society, but then solve the problem of poisenous air and water, not with any changes in human behaviour, but with a magic organism from Io. Moral of the story: don't change. Problems will solve themselves. 😅 You gotta love these writers....
They didn't even bother to give an explanation worthy of a science fiction show. That alien organism simply "healed" the ocean, probably because nobody in the writers' room bothered to look up any environmental problem plagueing our marine ecosystems today.
Generally the mean of humanity relatively amenable whilst comfortable true test is stoicism while exceedingly uncomfortable. That is a cultural affectation not a sentient revolutionary societal precept. Cultures wax and wane humanities relatively waiver less in alterable. as a core function. sentience through disciplined will obtain not possess higher stage of consciousness. an individual less special tribulation. or detribalization☺️ on an interpersonal relationship level thing. Space Socialism is fake news. more likely dystopic future is as it were to be. hence fantasy? more to the truth if allowed we will innovate the relative social ills away or not.
Well it is written for (and by?) children of Helicopter parents, whose Life experience tells them that you don't have to deal with problems as someone will solve them for you, while you sit in your safespace.
Usual social justice activists who constantly complain and criticise but fail to offer any constructive advice or help in any way. "Do better" is all it takes.
@@andrewjohnson6716 They should watch this so they know how bad they f*cked up this character and the franchise in general. The worst was the defibrillator shorted out since they were using it on Robo-JL. 🙄🙄 Unbelievably STOOOPID.
After watching this video and careful consideration I can say with a high confidence that I have correctly budgeted an hour of my time by watching this summary of the Picard series as opposed to sinking tens of hours into watching the series itself. Thank you for your sacrifice, faceless UA-cam voice.
What about Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, Priodgy? I also think Discovery season 3 is pretty good, season 2 and 4 were decent, it's only season 1 of Discovery that is rough. Picard is the only really bad series of newer Trek.
This whole things just breaks my heart and I’m grateful Dan, who is a fan of TNG, has so succinctly demonstrated an objective and well adjusted understanding of why people have an active dislike of the show.
I did like how in the new Top Gun, Maverick life wasn’t a pathetic unhappy mess. He had his issues, but he was a Captain and test pilot doing what he was good at
Yes, I think Maverick was so well written in the new film, he was more mature but retained enough of his skillful recklessness that he didn't feel like another person. His issues with Rooster had strong basis in the original and they were solved in ways that made sense. Other "legacy" sequels or new entries in franchises with callbacks to old stuff should look at what Top Gun Maverick did and learn from it.
@@lightdarkness precisely he was an extension of the character we saw at the end of the first Top Gun someone still prone to taking risks and living wild but tempered in a way that his mistakes only ever hurt him and no one else.
I am in the process of watching all of star trek, currently at the last season of voyager. Ironically, I started that because I tried the first season of picard and I didn't understand anything. So I've committed to watching the entire canon, chronologically from TOS to picard (which was the latest entry three years ago). The funny thing is, that the more I watch, the less sense Picard makes.
@@Superiorer Overall I liked TNG very much. Since I was watching it back-to-back with TOS, the first couple of seasons probably didn't feel as jarring to me as it did to others (that was the time when they were still largely trying to imitate TOS desite a time difference of 20 years between them). But they really came into their own later on and produced some damn fine television. I'm just sad it devolved into the "Jean-Luc Picard show" during the last season(s). They had a lot of talent on board, but seemed to run out of ideas during that time. Still, most of my favourite episodes are Picard-centric (Family, Chain of Command, The Inner Light), while the others are largely Data-centric (The Measure of a Man, Offspring). The entirety of the Borg, Yesterday's Enterprise and the whole little Bajor-Plot that prepared us for DS9 are my three favourite lore pieces of the show.
I love star trek. Watched it in the 90s when I was a kid with my mom who was a huge fan. She died a few years ago and rewatching star trek helps me still feel connected to her. But I'm really glad she doesn't have to witness this. She'd be so offended that the lore and characters were disrespected like that.
This is how I felt about Jurassic World: Dominion. I had waited 21 years, since 2001 when JP3 came out, to see Ellie and Alan on the big screen again. The film was so poorly handled and the creatives so deeply misunderstood the source material, that I felt an actual wave of grief flood through my entire body when the credits rolled.
Just goes to show how misjudgment can make even the most interesting of reunions run moot. It's why I was never shaken up when the original crew did not get back together in the Star Wars new trilogy films because, let's be honest, would a single moment of the crew together really have made one forget a lackluster product?
@@FEARisCOLD Oh it did, actually. It did feel like a JP movie, but it was JP as told by the Sci-Fi Channel, as the other two in this trilogy was, not as told by Crichton and Spielberg, which was more the first one than the second anyway. The third is it's own thing in my book.
I love how the hour long videos on "How the Picard Show sucks" are more entertaining and better written than the frigging Picard show. And subsitute "The Rings Of Power" "Doctor Who" "Foundation" other "Star Trek" "Star Wars" in place of "Picard" any old time.
@@troffle The Red Letter Media breakdown of the Prequel Trilogy totally makes the existence of the prequels worthwhile. That being said Rings of Power isn't out yet so I dunno what people must be creating hour long diatribes about.
@@hotdangitsdan9986 > The Red Letter Media breakdown of the Prequel Trilogy Erm... prequel trilogy of what, "Star Wars"? I was referring to the sequels. > Rings of Power isn't out yet so I dunno what people must be creating hour long diatribes about. The trailer. The other trailer. The stupid "The Young And The Restless" grade trailer. The taking down of comments from UA-cam. The artificial and dishonest deletion of up/downvotes. Amazon's removal of content from some countries' UA-cam mirrors of the trailer content. The press releases. The Superfans embarrassments and consequent edits. The quality of the idiot filming the Superfans stuff who captured and didn't post-production remove the shot of the guy urinating on the wall. The shots of Galadriel in armour. The shots of Galadriel in armour somehow climbing an ice wall with a single dagger. The writing of the meeting of characters who had been clearly been written to have never met. The repeated comments that Harfoots aren't a subcategory of Hobbits. The cast interviews talking about their activism in the show, in a supposed-Tolkien representation that shouldn't have had activism. The showrunners then trying to tell everybody that there wasn't any activism or politics in the show. The cast interviews continuing to talk about the activism. The shutting out of Peter Jackson. The treatment and unfair dismissal of Tom Shippey for the project. And that's without me mentioning any of the other in-world consistency issues that I'm sure will get badly misreported and misrepresented by others. ... if you really don't know what people must be creating hour long diatribes about, then why haven't you tried WATCHING ANY OF THEM? No seriously, why?
Same. LOL. Though I'm a bit more familiar with Trek than you I haven't watched any of the new shows so there's no investment. But I like these in depth reviews he gives so I watch.
We all Know the Best People to put in Charge of an Extremely Confined area where Any Minor Mistake can Lead to certain Death is someone Who is Suicidality Depressed and filled with Anxiety. They make the best Choices as it keeps them Focused and gives them Perspective. And if they Die its what They wanted Anyway so...
@@ScottyKirk1 But Picard's mother's maiden-name wouldn't have been Picard - so the great-great-great-aunt must be one of Picard's FATHER's ancestors. Which means that Picard's MOTHER couldn't have inherited the depression from her.
I'm glad I'm not the only life-long Trekkie disappointed by this product that took a dump on the legacy of one of the greatest television shows in history. If it weren't for Strange New Worlds I'd be writing off Star Trek completely, but hopefully, if Trek has taught us anything it's that the future can always be better, so maybe we'll find a way out of this creative mire...
Not only are you not the only one, you’re likely in the vast majority in your disappointment. I *have* written it off entirely. It all ended in 2005 for me.
@@LizardSpork You might be surprised. One of my oldest fans thinks Picard is “brilliant” and now no longer really likes TNG because it doesn’t “hold up,” as a result. I’ve disowned him.
Dan is the nicest, most positive movie reviewer I watch, a reviewer who can find positive in Disney SW shows. He talking about the faults of this series for an hour tells me to run.
For those who follow and admire mr. Murrel's work, the length and title of this video speak VOLUMES. I've avoided though since Red Letter Media put out their soul crushing reviews of season 1. Watched the pilot only, and was enough. Such a misunderstanding of the core principles of Star Trek it's disheartening.
For me, it tells me don’t watch. I haven’t yet, usually several months or years behind these days. But I primarily watch things that receive genuine praise from voices I respect, like Dan. I call it a personal filter. I have been disappointed too consistently to watch just anything.
I'm not a huge Star Trek fan, not nearly enough to remember characters to the point that I would have spotted all these things, but I got far more enjoyment out of watching this entire critique than I'm sure I would have slugging my way through season 2.
I have never been so angry at the end of a season as I was with Picard S2 They took what everyone hated with Nemesis and went "Lets do that again but double down"
@@thenotsurechannel7630 picard really liked driving off road vehicles so he made the producers add a car to shuttle craft. The shuttle craft takes the Argo down to the planet and drops it off. The argo is worse than a shuttle craft in everyway possible but Patrick Stewart thought it was cool.
yeah I said before I think the ending episode of the final season of Picard, should be Picard waking up in his Chateau from "All Good Things"; Data and Geordi are sat with him; data with that streak of gray in his hair. Picard's house cleaner is in the background. They mention his cleaner has contacted them about him acting strange and ranting on about the "new Borg queen", "Guinan", "Wesley and the Watcher" - things from his past that have obviously gotten muddled in his mind. They realise he hasn't been taking his Irimodic Syndrome hypos, dose him up and Picard says "Thanks, I feel a lot better, you wouldn't believe the bizzare and horrible nightmares I've been having!" and Geordi says "it's OK, you'll be well enough for the Federation history conference next week" and the series ends. That is the only way this season of nonsense can end and make any sense whatsoever imo.
It's about how Picard /and/ the Borg Queen's pasts have shaped them. Picard's memory of his mother and coming to terms with the fact that if he hadn't let her out she couldn't have hung herself, and the Borg Queen not wanting to feel alone hence the Collective and having it explained to her that she wasn't seeking perfection but company.
@@jeclipse129 I accepted that a long time ago. I waiting for Paramount to accept it. Same with Harrison Ford, to be honest, we don’t need another Indiana Jones film. Create new characters, tell new stories, and let these guys retire with some dignity.
The series becomes all that much stranger upon watching Strange New Worlds, which by all rights is the closest a post-NuTrek title has gotten to being "real" Star Trek. There are certain episodes where you can taste Kurtzman's direct involvement, but the influence is not pronounced like it is in Picard. STD and Picard both are ham-fisted attempts to use the license as a carrier for mediocre social commentary. SNW and Orville are as close as you'll get to TNG.
_Star Trek: Prodigy_ should at least get some acknowledgement. It seems Nickelodeon, having gone in on it, is keeping the pandering and agendas at bay making for a rather nice series -if only they’d get back to it and finish the season already. I consider that a series worthy of inclusion of old legacy.
Orville is far far FAR closer to TNG than SNW. The nu-Trekisms plague that show from the very first episode. I personally had to bow out by episode 3 because my eyes rolled to the back of my skull one too many times at that point.
Putting the typical Rick and Morty humor aside, i really like Lower Decks. It's much more fun to watch, then STD and Picard. And for much, as i know: Patrick Steward WANTED Picard to be this way, because he can work about some kind of childhood trauma... or something like that
@@johnstrawb3521 Your opinion isn't a hard fact my guy. It may not be old Trek, but there's plenty of people out there who like it, so "it isn't remotely Trek" is your personal opinion.
I'm only a casual Star Trek fan but my mind is blow at just how crazy the direction of Picard has gone. What on earth were these hack writers thinking????
Clearly it's part of a massive Social Agenda being pushed via Entertainment. They are loosing money hand over fist but keep pushing. "Starfleet General Order 1", "General Order 1", "non-interference of any culture'' , New Trek , '' Total Forced Diversity"
They purposefully gloated about how they were changing Discovery to be opposite of what Star Trek was. And before this, JJ Abrams proudly declared he didn't like Star Trek and barely watched any of it. Then just made his movies into what he wanted. And you're surprised when the third Bad Robot/Secret Hideout project turned out bad? They're not incompetent. They're making it bad on purpose.
I was so excited for this season because I love John De Lancie, and I’m at least grateful that he didn’t disappoint. Even though nothing in this season made any sense, he gave Q a send off performance that I’m happy to just clip out of the hours of pain that the rest of this season was.
I enjoyed seeing him again. Like many of the actors on the show, he's great. They mostly do the best with what they are given. It's such a shame that the writing is so bad.
That’s what is so infuriating, most of the actors in this deserve so much better. Plus how do you come up with an intriguing premise like Q is dying and squander it so? Imagine if the entire season was about really exploring what that means?! But no, we got probably one of the worst seasons of Trek ever.
This was a perfect breakdown of all the things I was screaming in my head but couldn't convey professionally. It was such convoluted mess with the slimmest of entertaining moments sprinkled in. I suspended my disbelief enough to hate it quite as much as Dan, but your assessment is accurate!
I have tears in my eyes how precise you nailed my feelings on this show by adding so much facts and detail observations. I do know a lot of the canon but despite of that did miss some points. You really filled deep content into my impression on how dissapointing this show really is. Thank you so much from all of my heart!
To them, setting these shows in the Star Trek universe simply equals "futuristic." They don't understand the level of human evolution that comes with that future setting, like an end to intolerance, bigotry, hunger, war, material needs. They have even accepted death and human loss, as your clip showed. The whole point is that (as said in the opening narration to Star Trek) space is literally the final frontier, after all other aspects of humanity had been utterly explored.
TNG showed that even though those "aspects" have been EXPLORED . We must be diligent in our ways...VIGILANT in keeping those freedoms we'd so earned. Starfleet had several officers who were BIGOTED towards a new race (Data and Lore, and Lal) because they'd been "created" by a Starfleet scientist and thusly those bigots felt Starfleet *OWNED* those people. ...Had several people who were willing to denigrate the capacity and question the loyalty of a man, SOLELY FOR BEING TRAUMATIZED BY COMBAT "INJURIES" (Lacutos of Borg)
one of the most important steps in human evolution is to stop watching rat poison crap like this and maybe start watching some west papuan music videos about that genocide for the world's biggest goldmine the americans don't want anyone to know about.
@@abigails4088 To be fair, having had his mind controlled by the Borg does make him a security vulnerability that would have to be assessed. Not doing so would be treason.
@@manictiger indeed, but Jean Luc had already been given a comprehensive medical/psychological debrief a long time before he found himself and his loyalty, NAY THAT OF HIS ENTIRE BRIDGE CREW, being questioned by Norah Satie...at risk of being court martialed for something completely unrelated to the incident with the Borg.
Yeah, what OP described was Roddenberry's ideal that never really materialized - in TOS due to his limited control, and in TNG I think he initially had more control, but still not enough and then Berman took over pretty early; the writers didn't like the whole "they solved all the conflicts and stopped lamenting death" cause they wanted something more human and relatable, so kept resisting these instructions I think. Plus this show happens way after TNG, DS9, and the movies - which all heavily destablized the initial "utopia" within the Fed. So OP's not nuanced enough I suppose lol
Such a great breakdown. Dan put more logical thought into this than the writers did in the show. Would love to watch more of these about any movie or show, when it strikes the right nerve.
Holy shit, Dan. I didn't expect this kind of content from you and, Jesus, what an accurate, constructive, and incredibly inarguable dissection of what went wrong with this show. Bravo, truly.
THANK YOU!!! I didn't merely hate Picard, I was heartbroken by it. It was weirdly soothing to have you meticulously name all the reasons why this season (even more egregiously than S1) betrayed so much of what we loved from TNG. This was extremely satisfying, thank you!
I remember one reviewer said that one of the biggest problems with this series was the Patrick Stewart was playing himself instead of playing Picard, & that he demanded so much change & plot conditions (basically give him writing & directing credits) to even agree to be in the show. I hope he lives long enough to look back on this series & the fandom rift it created with regret, the way I regretted wasting time & money at an art institute instead of going to a real college.
They'd really be better off getting fan submitted scripts at this point. Although I am intrigued by the enthusiasm of RMB about S3 with Brandon Braga's underling taking full control. We shall see if he right.
That's a really good observation. One tends to think that actors who help create a character know the character better than anyone, but sometimes if an actor plays a character long enough, the character actually becomes more like the actor, and I believe that's exactly what has happened with Stewart, and unfortunately the showrunners and writers of the series either hated the character, or they didn't really understand who Picard was either.
Its a problem that actually started way back in the Nemesis movie, if not earlier. That silly action sequence with the off-road vehicle that made no sense in this universe, existed entirely because Patrick Stewart had become interested in off-roading and wanted it in the movie.
I've said the same things... this is JL Picard, this is Patrick Stewart playing Patrick Stewart in a Star Trek show. He acts and handles not how I expect the old Picard to, but how I would expect Patrick Stewart to act and handle things. I just wish this show didn't exist. I was more excited when I first heard they were making this show than I had ever been with any other show or movie in my life... and was crushed so totally and completely by the first season. I had no hope for the second and quit caring a long time ago. New Trek.... YAY!!!
I haven't watched any of Picard, to be fair, but you make a convincing case. Modern Trek writers who have no respect at all for the source material and just do whatever is a huge pet peeve of mine. Continuity doesn't have to be a "prison", but the arrogance of someone deciding that they know better than writers from years past is infuriating.
3:00 Idk TFA did that "dark stuff has happened since" thing really well - that shot of Han and Leia's tearful embrace was a great dramatic moment both in the trailers and the movie; this guy just btching about it seems circlejerky to me, although appr. the complaint makes more sense in the case of Picard's season transition.
"Continuity doesn't have to be a "prison", but the arrogance of someone deciding that they know better than writers from years past is infuriating." Star Trek is a franchise that has never been shy about trampling its own continuity. It's really hard to be a Trek fan and not notice. Sitting around being infuriated over continuity issues is pointless for Star Trek, they change details more often than the crew gets to wear a freshly washed uniform.
I was only able to get through the first two episodes of season one before giving up on the show. It was clear that the producers didn't understand what Star Trek is fundamentally about: exploration, wonder and the belief in a bright future.
i managed to get to episode three before I gave up and just started watching Major Grins reviews, they are a lot more entertaining. I gave season two 3 episodes aswell hoping they fixed some stuff (plus love time travel and alternate realities so was hoping it would draw me in a bit more...its shi* :D
Dont forget how the show was all about finding peaceful solutions and less than 5%of the time violence was used and was always the last resort. Man this new shit is just a HUGE slap in the face
Hey Dan! Just want to take a moment to say thank you for all you do. Been following your journey for quite some time: and you’ve been a consistently thoughtful, passionate, positive person in this realm of movie magic experiencing. Your efforts through this media space certainly have impacted my life positively; and I’m sure many others. We Appreciate you!
Agree with everything here. I had to give up halfway through episode 4. I could have just about stomached the 3rd egregious example of moral grandstanding this season, but to have Guinean not recognise Picard told me these writers have no clue, and worse, don’t care about the franchise.
wasn't watching season 2... it was so off the rails, that I just felt bad. For Star Trek, it's only "strange new worlds" that gives me literal hope and Anson Mount shows the charisma that Stewart had in TnG. Tough times for Trekkies...
"...and Seven's there, too." For some reason that made me burst out laughing, because I felt for a good actor like Jeri Ryan, who doesn't get to actually do ANYTHING. And she was also the only one who actively played against that notion. Everyone else just plays along. God, never have I seen a worse single season of Trek.
@@commonsense6534 Still haven't watched Enterprise (apart from maybe one episode), but that concept I had a lot of hopes for - a gritty, troubled, pre-TOS look at the struggle of dealing with space travel. It's the kind of concept that would have made for terrific entertainment with an imperfect ship breaking down while dealing with the unknowns of space and alien encounters.
@@commonsense6534 She was very cute. I liked those scenes where she was understatedly happy at not having the implants and being treated like a normal person.
This is a very intelligent breakdown of why long-time Star Trek fans ( we used to call them "Trekkies") feel like the show isn't written, directed, or produced by people who loved it as much as we did. It seems cynical, partly because it feels as though lazy executives just want to cash in on existing properties with no respect for the original material, the creator, or canon, as if to say, "cool idea, but I could do it better." It's why reboots typically flop. You can rewrite, reimagine, set in present day, and ballon the budget, but if you don"t understand why "A Nightmare on Elm Street" scared the hell out of me when I saw it in 1985, you also won't understand why the 2010 version had me yawning. Right on, H!tler Data. Right on.
@@brentoutashape9141at least it was the softer version. If you had ended with the hard er, I would have lost it. Got to say though, in response to your comment, it shocks me that it seems like they didn't have a single fan to give it a look over. It's infuriating actually as these issues with are easily fixed with in universe logic once highlighted! I don't understand at all, how were they that confident in their work, especially after discovery.
The problem is that it’s written and directed by people who view each franchise a stepping stone in their career. Barring a few people on any project, they see it as just another job and they give it just enough attention to pass a once-over by higher ups.
@@yegmeshjwp Discovery is for lawyers,after all, so no bridges were burned. They own the property, so canon is whatever they say it is. I pronounced Trek dead at the end of Enterprise, but I don’t’ have a say in it. Buckle up.
That 'bringing people back and making them miserable after they had a perfectly good ending' immediately made me think of Alien 3. What a piss poor decision THAT was!
I found that having the reveal of the fate of Picard's mother as being the main focus of season 2 to be bad and exploitive writing. The writers want to delve into serious issues like tragedy, mental illness, and trauma. But all they're doing is using trauma and mental illness as tools in their mystery box style writing. This show is less about learning to deal with trauma and grieving properly, and more about the reveal of that trauma. They spend episode after episode teasing it, like the MCU teasing the reveal of a fan favorite comic character. And it's not like Star Trek has never dealt with trauma and tragedies before. Worf's parents were killed by the Romulans, Beverly's husband was killed on an away mission, Sisko's wife was killed by the Borg, Kira was a terrorist, several of Voyager's crew were Maquis, Seven was a Borg, Kim was Kim, etc. But old Trek showed that different people dealt with trauma in different ways, and different kinds of trauma affect people differently. A survivor of war wasn't affected the same way as someone abandoned by their parents. They were dramatic when they needed to be dramatic, but they used tact and subtlety when it was appropriate. In Discovery and Picard, no one knows how to handle their trauma. Everyone is crippled by it, their lives are consumed by it. It seems like the writers think that trauma impacts everyone the same way, regardless of the type of trauma or the person being affected. And why do they insist on making the 24th century so crappy? 300 years ago, people sent to lunatic asylums were horribly abused, they were chained to beds, they were put in cells with no ventilation and extremely limited outside contact. Look at how much our methods of treating mental illness have improved since then. And Star Trek takes place 300 years from now, their ways of treating mental illness should be exponentially better than what we have. So why did Picard's mother get treated like mentally ill people from the 1700's? Is it just this one rare case with the Picard family? Then they're basically saying that the Picard family are horrible or extremely ignorant people, they would be the equivalent of religious cultists today who confine and abuse their families.
On the note of trauma as handled in Picard, Discovery, and even parts of Strange New Worlds, I'd say it goes a bit deeper than that into the wrong. The shows seem to suggest, at worst, that if you do not have trauma in some form you will never have the chance to be great.
It took the killing of Bruce Maddox to drop me out of the series. I really didn't pay attention much after that, then the tentacle (not reaper) killer robots
It's the mark of a good reviewer that I'll watch an hour long review of a show I'll never watch in a franchise I don't have a strong connection to. There are still a lot of great insights into the many elements of telling a story.
@@delugesofgrandeur Reviews can be entertaining and educational in a way a lot of modern shows aren't. I mean I don't really expect them to be educational, but I am usually hoping for that first one at least.
Back in 2013, I walked out of Star Trek Into Darkness with a new scene in my head canon. It was a post-credit scene in which the movie was revealed to be a holodeck simulation on Voyager created by Tom Paris and Tuvok begins to admonish Tom for inaccuracies in his depiction of the historical records. Outside of the Discovery pilot that aired for free on CBS, I haven't watched any new Star Trek since then and have decided that only anything produced up to 2005 (the end of Enterprise) is canon and everything afterwards is either an alternate reality or an elaborate fan fiction that I don't have the energy to acknowledge.
Dan, in just the first 46 seconds of this video, you have succinctly and accurately summarized my own feelings about ST: Picard. Many thanks for saving me the trouble of doing it myself. I can't wait to watch the rest of it.
Patrick Stewart was always adamant he was done playing Jean-Luc Picard. He has remained true to his word. Besides the name, the lead character in Star Trek: Picard feels almost nothing like the captain we all grew to love during The Next Generation.
My favourite thing as a writer is seeing such a big character come back and knowing right away that the character will now: 1. Have a dark secret or trauma or both, retconned into the show's lore 2. That dark secret will be as dark as possible, for effect 3. It will never be spoken of again, despite being life altering 4. Viewers will hate it 5. The writer won't learn their lesson and will do it again next season
Lord, experiencing this season in real-time hurt my head so much over all the baffling, illogical writing choices they made. I cannot believe they turned this out thinking they were really on to something. Star Trek has had a lot (and I mean a LOT) of bad episodes and baffling moments but this is the worst the franchise has produced hands down. It’s almost impressive how bad this show is.
So you're saying it sucks big time? I saw season 1 and thought it was slow with a lot of filler episodes but still enjoyed it for the nostalgia of seeing TNG characters again. So is season 2 better?
The streaming formula requires shows with known IP that are tolerable and new shows that get renewed a couple of seasons if they find a decent audience, until renewing actor’s contract costs more then the show is worth. The streaming platform needs more and more subscribers but then does the bare minimum to keep them from leaving.
I don't know why , these days, every old hero gets depicted as a broken man that needs to get chaperon by a young version and get reminded that he was a fuck up and despite some good he did, his wrong doings over shadows his heroic deeds. and he gets the worst treatment with a condescending attitude from new version and I, as viewer, supposed to be empathetic to modern version and hate the old one. It's like they tell me if you liked this guy 20 years ago, you're no good
With a couple of (actually earned) exceptions, I couldn't agree more! Reminds me of when I was little and I'd get nervous if I saw a sequel because it was "ruining the happiness". Out of the mouths of babes, I guess!
They can take that premise and still give us incredible films like Logan and Doctor Sleep. I don’t know why it’s so hard for all the other screenwriters.
Thank you for this. Apart from your dismissal of "Assignment: Earth" (which to me actually was an okish episode) I agree 100%. One thing that I missed in your video though is the question of why the hell Q is supposed to be alone and lonely when he had a family in "Voyager". Because I really wondered what the hell supposedly happened to them - or if the writers either forgot about them themselves, or hoped that the Star Trek-fans did. Bothered the hell out of me. As did all the other stuff you pointed out so eloquently in this splendid video!
Obviously the writers don't know about Q's family because they didn't watch the show. All the excuses they're making on Twitter about the Guinan and Eugenics War canon is just them covering their ass. The real reason they made those canon mistakes is they didn't know, because they haven't seen Star Trek.
We could fill-in-the-gaps for the writer's by saying that Q got kicked out of the Continuum again, or he chose to die, or it's a Q from the end of the universe come back to see Picard - but then why are we doing their work for them, and for free?
At the risk of crossing streams: this is where the fun begins. Like Dan, I'm a TNG fan so this series being so bad breaks my heart too. I fully appreciate going in a new direction but Picard goes hopelessly off course. It's not just lazy writing; the way the story contradicts established lore is straight up disrespectful. I stopped watching before S2 ended because it was starting to taint my memory of TNG. As far as I'm concerned Picard is non-canon fanfic.
I turned it off after the musical number. I don't mind canon breaking. What I mind is sloppy writing. Needless convalesce. That's all this season was. Heck, they've managed to make Seven of Nine, one of Trek's most intriguing and well performed characters to be a love interest with no depth.
@@FlowerChildanddan That was one of WTF straws that broke the camel's back for me. And how about Soong having drones with force field tech in 2024?! And Picard's older brother just vanishing out of existence? And...no, I need to stop reliving the angst.
@@gnomesaiyan1680 it also doesn’t make sense because once again Yesterday’s Enterprise shows that even when her own past is changed she can tell that something isn’t right. So even if she didn’t recognize him for their stupid reason she should realize that not recognizing him doesn’t feel right just like her recognizing Tasha didn’t feel right.
Season 3 of The Orville is some of the best science fiction on “tv” right now! I just finished ep9 and the entire thing was a damn beautiful feature length epic. It’s really come into its own.
@@GothPaoki I respectfully could not disagree more. S3 of The Orville is phenomenal, the entire thing actually feels planned out as opposed to either season of Picard. But to each their own.
holy cow I went into The Orville thinking it was going to be "Family Guy in Space" and to be fair, it was for the 1st couple of episodes but man.. They got their shit together mid-season and been on fire ever since. This season was amazing!
The funny thing is The Orville started out at a parody of Star trek but have morphed into it's totally own thing. And I am kind of happy that they toned back the potty humor from season 1
Ever since I watched this season, my two burning questions about it were "What the heck went wrong here?" and "What's Dan going to say about this?" Fortunately, unlike the show, your review was totally worth the wait, so thanks for the herculean effort putting this together and for sharing your thoughts!
Below Decks & Strange New Worlds are the only modern Trek series that feel like Trek. Darkness and tragedy are fine in small doses but the overall tone should be hope and adventure. If there’s no joy or fun, it’s no different to all the other miserable shows out there.
I so wanted to like this...but you're spot on. I don't like time travel episodes in general, but this one was so nonsensically twisty it was maddening. Absolutely nothing made sense, even taking out all the canon and history breaking.
F'ING NAILED it. I actually found myself talking out loud agreeing with this on almost every point. The one thing you didn't touch on is I THINK the writers were trying to be topical about our lack of human connection between technology and the pandemic hence the recurring "loneliness" themes, which I took as a really dark attempt at combining the legacies of topical commentary with Star Trek optimism... If it had been optimistic.
The fact that I ... someone who grew up a huge TNG fan ... watched the latest Picard S3 trailer and felt absolutely nothing tells you how massively they've dropped the ball with this series. Thank you for making this, Dan. It's a perfect summary of everything that I hate about this show. What a bitter, disappointing way for my favorite Captain/character in the franchise to go out; but at least I'll always have TNG-First Contact to rewatch. Well ... maybe TNG Season 2-First Contact. But definitely TNG Season 3-First Contact.
If anything I would say Picard being so bad has made me appreciate Insurrection and Nemesis way more. Not saying they're the top ranked movies but at least in those movies the characters are mostly who we expect them to be, still on the Enterprise, etc. Insurrection was the most disappointing to me only because that movie should have been a TNG/DS9 crossover movie dealing with the Dominion. Perfect opportunity that was totally wasted.
@@SumDumGy I don't believe anything that is said in their marketing. They will straight up lie and say whatever they think the fans want to hear to try to sucker them into watching at least one episode. Then they can boast about how many people "watched" the show. I'll wait to hear from people like Dan, who I trust to give a fair assessment, before making any decisions on Season 3. But for the time being, I have zero expectations and zero excitement for Picard's final season. *Misread what you typed a bit. I don't know Robert Myer Bernett, but I hope he is right about Season 3. That being said, I'm still reserving any judgements until the Season is officially out and I hear from 2-3 trusted sources. This show isn't getting the benefit of the doubt from me anymore.
@@the7percentsolution Oh, there are definitely Star Trek properties who have benefited from Discovery and Picard changing the grading curve (for the worst). Voyager as a whole, parts of Enterprise, and Nemesis have definitely bumped up the list on the new curve. Insurrection, on the other hand, remains just as terrible as the day I first saw it, in my opinion.
It’s ironic that the explanation given as to why the Kelvin *timeline* is an alternate *reality* (as declared by both Dan and Uhura) defines it as an altered *timeline:* Someone travelled back in time and changed events.
@@stevereynolds5684 Yes, that's what I understand too. It was created by time-travel shenanigans (a wormhole opened and a ship from the future changed the past). The movies can still play fast and loose with canon (after the events that caused the timeline split) because it's a different timeline, if you're a fan of the Prime timeline you can just ignore them, and vice-versa.
@@merafirewing6591 Absolutely :) My point is that one's canon shouldn't affect the other's, even if they aren't different "realities" (like the mirror-universe or the MCU multi-verse). However, some things about the Kelvin continuity make no sense. Because of the nature of the timeline creation, everything that happened in original Star Trek canon before Kirk's birth should have still happened in the Kelvin timeline. For example, Khan not being a pale British dude (I know they needed to get a new actor, but with the rest of the cast at least they tried for similar ethnicities/backgrounds as the original crew).
@@RudyGuillan That’s why I don’t have nearly as many issues with the Kelvin-Timeline Films as with the Shows we’ve gotten since 2017, and why I can kinda enjoy them: they’re practically their own thing and I look at them as such.
Thank you for making this amazing analysis of Picard Season 2; it saves me having to watch it all having bailed after Episode 2 and instead just reading the Wikipedia summaries of each episode. When I got to the line "Q, having taken the role of Renée's therapist, stokes her insecurity with text messages", I knew I'd made the right call. Thank you for taking the time to create such a well written, well edited and entertaining summary. I look forward to your Season 3 analysis. I don't look forward to Season 3.
Thanks for doing this video. I didn't bother with season 2 considering how the first season was so disappointing. I don't understand how they keep finding writers who don't seem to know anything about Star Trek canon or it's general philosophies. There's so much lore to work with it doesn't make sense to make up new stuff that ends up retconning what's already been established. Take season 3 of Discovery. It was established in TNG that warp drive was tearing apart the space time continuum (a parallel to climate change). Instead of using that as a reason warp drive doesn't exist in the future they made up something for more unbelievable instead (a child's scream IIRC). Star Trek has never been the same since Roddenberry died.
Well... I wouldn't go that far back for when Star Trek changed for the worse. Roddenberry died while TNG was still airing and we got plenty of good Star Trek after then. In fact he was largely hands off of TNG from I think seasons 3-5 and those are the strongest seasons. Personally I'd say Star Trek hasn't been the same since 2005 when, arguably, the series died. Since 2009 it's basically been a dug-up corpse desperately trying to come back to life.
i finally just got finished watching season 2 and ive been waiting to watch this! it didn’t disappoint! dan’s take was spot on and even illustrated stuff i didn’t even think of. kudos sir!
Its amazing to me that the show runners of Discovery and picard are the same people who made Strange new worlds. Im my opionion Strange new worlds S1 isnt just great Star Trek but one of best TV shows to come out this year. I even loved episode 8 lol
Some of it... like, 3 episodes of it. We'll see; season 1 of Trek is always hard, but there were so many painfully bad/wrong things in SNW S1 that I'm still skeptical, despite a few very solid episodes.
@@SourDizz how about how the characters interact with each other. I'm sorry, but the way the portray Starfleet Officers and how they talk is just so cringe. ..
@@pt29999 I need more than that. Specific characters, episodes and interactions. The show is not perfect at all but you cant tell me that compared to picard and discovery this is the best star trek in years?
Hi Dan! Sorry this broke your heart. As a fan of both the original series and TNG, I was disappointed to hear all the creative decisions the writers made with this show. I do not plan to waste my time watching this series. Thank you for that. I greatly appreciate all the time and energy (and then some) that you put into making this video.
I feel for you Dan writing this with the shock and dismay that things like canon are completely irrelevant to a current Trek series. This is the present day MO for most franchises. Writers have whole other characters and stories they want to tell but in order to get a greenlight they have to shoehorn it into the closest franchise. Time travel, alternate universe, muti-universe etc... for the most part all convenient plot devices to ignore canon and do what you want.
I really couldn’t agree with you any more than I do, but I didn’t fully grasp your comment until I made it to 5:53 where Dan reveals the “big secret” is that Picard’s mother was depressed and committed suicide (and they went as far as to show her body hanging). I’m really appalled and more than a little offended. Trek, especially TNG, while not perfect was still able to stay abreast of pretty serious personal and social issues and still keep the show light and hopeful. Star Trek IS hope, it’s wonder, it’s triumphing in the face of sci-fi doom. It’s also usually something you can easily watch with the whole family - young and old. But nope. I wouldn’t show my kids this (if I had them) just for the swinging body alone. And I’m sure the episode/series did not tackle the horrible subject with any sense of tact. Never watched this series and thank Q! I would have been mad as hell. Anyway, I wish these writers would grow some balls and campaign their asses off to make their OWN material or, if they’re going to grasp at any monetized straw they can, at least show they appreciate or minimally respect whatever franchise they’re taking on/over even on the most basic of levels. 7/29/22 ☀️ 942
@@randombrokeperson I can just see someone thinking, Taika W. has no tact and he tackled almost the same issue and no one complained, therefore it must be easy! While I understand that there will be periods when it is not possible to get a greenlight that doesn't refer to established product... a lack of a complete story to tell is what ultimately makes things junk. Current writers may have their special issues they want to explore, but they need context. Breaking canon actually makes it harder to create the context.
This so perfectly encapsulates all of the frustration and sadness I felt with this show. And I am Not even as big of a fan as Dan or many others. Thank you!
I have only watched a couple episodes of TNG when I was young and liked it enough, but I never became a Trekkie. However, I do get great joy out of watching you dissect these new shows. :-)
My issue with Picard is that it's bad. Not that it "breaks canon" (don't care about that in the slightest), not that it "disrespects Picard" (I actually like how S1 Picard gets treated, it gives him a redemption arc and a chance to fix a system that ended up breaking, great idea for a theme IMO), not that it "doesn't FEEL like Star Trek" (if that bothered me, I'd still hate TNG out of hand). I hate Picard because it's a badly-written show.
Been waiting for this! Can't wait to watch... And yes, Picard is an awful show - but holy shit, have you been watching s3 of The Orville!? Best sci-fi TV show in a generation.
season 3 wasnt as good as season 2 so far tbh. too much focus on interpersonal drama, throwbacks to older episodes, and giant space battles. season 2 felt a bit more TNG with the alien/planet of the week. maybe the problem is just the short seasons instead of 24 episodes that trek had available. they dont have enough screen time in a season to really veer off the big plot threads they built before so it seems like they have to dedicate all of that to deal with the lose ends they left with previous stories now, since they also dont know if they will get more seasons.
This was an incredibly Cathartic watch. Thank you, Dan. FWIW, I do think SNW is about 100x better than Picard was. If Picard hasn't completely broken you of your Trek fandom, I heartily recommend giving it a try.
Co-signed. Strange New Worlds breathed much needed life into Trek following Picard S2. I do not love every episode, but I enjoy something in every episode (& some episodes are fantastic start to finish). I found myself enjoying Trek again. I am looking forward to SNW Season 2.
@@zaneplatt3533 No, I don’t think so and certainly not compared to Picard S2. SNW is, for the most part, just Trek. Occasionally there are some slight elements that make you guy “but why as this is not plot or relevant” but that is so so rare that it has normally come to me in the moment but not been so big that it lingered over the episode much less the show. They actually just got a great cast, solid writing, respect of Trek lore (but in this front again I’m not claiming perfection), and said “let’s go have an adventure.” Yes, like all Trek topics and concepts are discussed, questions raised, but not in a Picard-style way. Even the darker episodes are more hopeful than any of Picard.
@@zaneplatt3533 it isn't completely clear of SJW influence, and one of the worst offenses happens in the pilot episode, but overall, as the others have said, it's leaps and bounds better than Picard or Discovery. Similarly to what Dan says about breaking canon/continuity while claiming to be in the prime timeline, SNW can't possibly be from the same timeline or universe that gave us TOS. But if you can put that aside, and treat it as a reboot as I do, then SNW has lots to like. Great cast, good chemistry, and incredible visuals. I'm really looking forward to Season 2 as well.
I think this expertly sums up why I sort of enjoyed it, but simultaneously felt it was... wrong. I appreciate the vast amount of effort you put into creating this 🤯
At around 52:00 of how you'd react to Q's gift I expected the scene from DS9 of Sisco punching Q. Also near the end of the final episode when Q and Picard are talking Q says "Must it always have galactic import, universal stakes, celestial upheaval?" which is a nice sentiment about Trek not always having to be high stakes only for less than 10 minutes later the entire galaxy is in danger.
The Picard show should've been about the Stargazer years and how one event during that time leads into the events shown in the future...but we got... this...
I know this is an old video but i grew up on TNG and voyager (wasnt really a fan of DS9) but for someone who hasnt seen the show in 20+ years, i really appreciate the background you give and your explanations for your arguments.
![Wolfram Physics Project: Working Session Wednesday, Apr. 29, 2020 [Finding Black Hole Structures]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SbDzqlOLIZA/mqdefault.jpg)
The two things missing from Star Trek: Picard are Star Trek and Picard.
Thank you!
Truer words have never been spoken
The third thing is good stories. And the fourth maybe intelligence.
Nailed it.
...As much as I disagree, I do share the sentiment that STP could've been a lot better if Picard wasn't retired. Without more of a Starfleet presence (or really any major presence outside of the Borg Queen and Q) the show just feels like it's missing something important. There was potential there with the Romulans in the plot, but that was much too short lived. Probably in part because Romulans were drastically overused between TNG and DS9, much like the Cybermen and the Daleks from Dr Who; at some point they stop looking like a threat and start looking pathetic.
Would have been good to see Picard all we got was Patrick Stewart
I am hopeful for season 3 if we truly get the main bridge crew, hopefully they learned something you can only have an episode like season 2, if you have 5 good seasons after it. I don't really care for TNG or DS9 until season 3... I could say that of many show that became my favorites over time.
Great actor, dumb role.
@@chukwudiilozue9171 he is a good actor, but he also betrayed the legacy of his most important fictional charecter to earn a quick buck it seems.
I also love the fact that they heavily criticize today's society, but then solve the problem of poisenous air and water, not with any changes in human behaviour, but with a magic organism from Io. Moral of the story: don't change. Problems will solve themselves. 😅 You gotta love these writers....
They didn't even bother to give an explanation worthy of a science fiction show. That alien organism simply "healed" the ocean, probably because nobody in the writers' room bothered to look up any environmental problem plagueing our marine ecosystems today.
Generally the mean of humanity relatively amenable whilst comfortable true test is stoicism while exceedingly uncomfortable. That is a cultural affectation not a sentient revolutionary societal precept. Cultures wax and wane humanities relatively waiver less in alterable. as a core function. sentience through disciplined will obtain not possess higher stage of consciousness. an individual less special tribulation. or detribalization☺️ on an interpersonal relationship level thing. Space Socialism is fake news. more likely dystopic future is as it were to be. hence fantasy? more to the truth if allowed we will innovate the relative social ills away or not.
It didn’t resolve itself it was a WAMAN
Well it is written for (and by?) children of Helicopter parents, whose Life experience tells them that you don't have to deal with problems as someone will solve them for you, while you sit in your safespace.
Usual social justice activists who constantly complain and criticise but fail to offer any constructive advice or help in any way. "Do better" is all it takes.
Dude.... you put way too much thought in effort into this. The writers didn't even try this hard. Great work!
🤣 So true! He put more effort into this video than the writers of Picard put into both seasons. Well said.
Amen to that!
@@andrewjohnson6716 They should watch this so they know how bad they f*cked up this character and the franchise in general. The worst was the defibrillator shorted out since they were using it on Robo-JL. 🙄🙄 Unbelievably STOOOPID.
Don't Think just Buy Product then get Excited for New Product.
@@skwills1629 Very hard to get excited about the new product when it sucks so bad.
After watching this video and careful consideration I can say with a high confidence that I have correctly budgeted an hour of my time by watching this summary of the Picard series as opposed to sinking tens of hours into watching the series itself. Thank you for your sacrifice, faceless UA-cam voice.
Simple: TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY AND ENT are all prime timeline. Kurtzman era stuff is alternate reality.
*canon timeline
"prime" is JJ/kurtzman made up BS
Everything since JJ stinks.
Works for me!
Phony star track
What about Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, Priodgy? I also think Discovery season 3 is pretty good, season 2 and 4 were decent, it's only season 1 of Discovery that is rough. Picard is the only really bad series of newer Trek.
I am a huge TNG fan and star trek fan in general. Your breakdown is 100% exactly how I felt watching Picard. Thank you for putting this together!
I still love TNG and I have since high school in the 80s. I watched the first episode of Picard and simply gave up. I just can't.
This whole things just breaks my heart and I’m grateful Dan, who is a fan of TNG, has so succinctly demonstrated an objective and well adjusted understanding of why people have an active dislike of the show.
@@ShaneyBright You and me both dude 😅
So are you saying it's good or not. I kinda enjoyed season 1 but it wasn't as good as I hoped.
same. Its not just bad its sooooo bad
I did like how in the new Top Gun, Maverick life wasn’t a pathetic unhappy mess. He had his issues, but he was a Captain and test pilot doing what he was good at
Yes, I think Maverick was so well written in the new film, he was more mature but retained enough of his skillful recklessness that he didn't feel like another person. His issues with Rooster had strong basis in the original and they were solved in ways that made sense. Other "legacy" sequels or new entries in franchises with callbacks to old stuff should look at what Top Gun Maverick did and learn from it.
Top Gun: Maverick is near perfection for a legacy sequel. 9.5/10 for me and I’ve seen it ten times.
@@lightdarkness precisely he was an extension of the character we saw at the end of the first Top Gun someone still prone to taking risks and living wild but tempered in a way that his mistakes only ever hurt him and no one else.
Top Gun Maverick would be stocked by Big Choice Video. Most current crap would barely find its way into a shitty video store.
@@mattp6089 I go to Big Choice because I want to rent a good movie! Now, about all those independent contractors...
I am in the process of watching all of star trek, currently at the last season of voyager. Ironically, I started that because I tried the first season of picard and I didn't understand anything. So I've committed to watching the entire canon, chronologically from TOS to picard (which was the latest entry three years ago). The funny thing is, that the more I watch, the less sense Picard makes.
That’s because this new show doesn’t not make any sense and doesn’t fit in with the characters and universe established in TNG, DS9, and yoyager
How did you like TNG?
@@Superiorer Overall I liked TNG very much. Since I was watching it back-to-back with TOS, the first couple of seasons probably didn't feel as jarring to me as it did to others (that was the time when they were still largely trying to imitate TOS desite a time difference of 20 years between them). But they really came into their own later on and produced some damn fine television. I'm just sad it devolved into the "Jean-Luc Picard show" during the last season(s). They had a lot of talent on board, but seemed to run out of ideas during that time.
Still, most of my favourite episodes are Picard-centric (Family, Chain of Command, The Inner Light), while the others are largely Data-centric (The Measure of a Man, Offspring). The entirety of the Borg, Yesterday's Enterprise and the whole little Bajor-Plot that prepared us for DS9 are my three favourite lore pieces of the show.
Welcome to the club, man. Whether you're new to Trek, or been watching all your life, this pretty much sums up how it be.
Make sure to also watch Star Trek Continues if you haven't already, and I hope you enjoy Enterprise in the following weeks.
I love star trek. Watched it in the 90s when I was a kid with my mom who was a huge fan. She died a few years ago and rewatching star trek helps me still feel connected to her. But I'm really glad she doesn't have to witness this. She'd be so offended that the lore and characters were disrespected like that.
This is how I felt about Jurassic World: Dominion. I had waited 21 years, since 2001 when JP3 came out, to see Ellie and Alan on the big screen again. The film was so poorly handled and the creatives so deeply misunderstood the source material, that I felt an actual wave of grief flood through my entire body when the credits rolled.
Just goes to show how misjudgment can make even the most interesting of reunions run moot. It's why I was never shaken up when the original crew did not get back together in the Star Wars new trilogy films because, let's be honest, would a single moment of the crew together really have made one forget a lackluster product?
With so much money and updated FX, they still got it wrong. Didnt even feel like a JP movie. Wasted opportunity.
@@FEARisCOLD Oh it did, actually. It did feel like a JP movie, but it was JP as told by the Sci-Fi Channel, as the other two in this trilogy was, not as told by Crichton and Spielberg, which was more the first one than the second anyway. The third is it's own thing in my book.
Although Dominion probably would’ve been elevated if it brought back a certain velociraptor.
The worst thing a beloved childhood franchise can do is release a project with the original cast and you feel nothing at the end of the experience.
I love how hour long videos on “How and why the Picard Show sucks” have become their own genre on UA-cam 😁
I am grateful I never ruined my enjoyment of TNG by watching this filth.
I love how the hour long videos on "How the Picard Show sucks" are more entertaining and better written than the frigging Picard show.
And subsitute "The Rings Of Power" "Doctor Who" "Foundation" other "Star Trek" "Star Wars" in place of "Picard" any old time.
Better than most New Trek movies and shows. Popcorn!
@@troffle The Red Letter Media breakdown of the Prequel Trilogy totally makes the existence of the prequels worthwhile.
That being said Rings of Power isn't out yet so I dunno what people must be creating hour long diatribes about.
@@hotdangitsdan9986
> The Red Letter Media breakdown of the Prequel Trilogy
Erm... prequel trilogy of what, "Star Wars"?
I was referring to the sequels.
> Rings of Power isn't out yet so I dunno what people must be creating hour long diatribes about.
The trailer. The other trailer. The stupid "The Young And The Restless" grade trailer.
The taking down of comments from UA-cam. The artificial and dishonest deletion of up/downvotes. Amazon's removal of content from some countries' UA-cam mirrors of the trailer content.
The press releases. The Superfans embarrassments and consequent edits. The quality of the idiot filming the Superfans stuff who captured and didn't post-production remove the shot of the guy urinating on the wall.
The shots of Galadriel in armour. The shots of Galadriel in armour somehow climbing an ice wall with a single dagger. The writing of the meeting of characters who had been clearly been written to have never met. The repeated comments that Harfoots aren't a subcategory of Hobbits.
The cast interviews talking about their activism in the show, in a supposed-Tolkien representation that shouldn't have had activism. The showrunners then trying to tell everybody that there wasn't any activism or politics in the show. The cast interviews continuing to talk about the activism.
The shutting out of Peter Jackson. The treatment and unfair dismissal of Tom Shippey for the project.
And that's without me mentioning any of the other in-world consistency issues that I'm sure will get badly misreported and misrepresented by others.
... if you really don't know what people must be creating hour long diatribes about, then why haven't you tried WATCHING ANY OF THEM?
No seriously, why?
Have no idea about star trek but here just to support dan and his hard work making this video 👍
I thought so.
Same
Pathetic fanboy
Same. LOL. Though I'm a bit more familiar with Trek than you I haven't watched any of the new shows so there's no investment. But I like these in depth reviews he gives so I watch.
Same. I hate Star Trek but like Patrick Stewart and Dan! Loved him since SJU ^_^
So Picard's aunt was being treated for clinical Depression and Anxiety, but was somehow able to pass her astronaut physical?
Amazing, isn't it?
We all Know the Best People to put in Charge of an Extremely Confined area where Any Minor Mistake can Lead to certain Death is someone Who is Suicidality Depressed and filled with Anxiety. They make the best Choices as it keeps them Focused and gives them Perspective. And if they Die its what They wanted Anyway so...
Great great great aunt? 😨 🤔
@@ScottyKirk1 But Picard's mother's maiden-name wouldn't have been Picard - so the great-great-great-aunt must be one of Picard's FATHER's ancestors. Which means that Picard's MOTHER couldn't have inherited the depression from her.
@@ScottyKirk1 She didn't seem that great to me.... 😜
A great job!!! Thank you. It's sad to realize that the biggest contribution the writers could've given us was not to produce it at all. 😥
I'm glad I'm not the only life-long Trekkie disappointed by this product that took a dump on the legacy of one of the greatest television shows in history. If it weren't for Strange New Worlds I'd be writing off Star Trek completely, but hopefully, if Trek has taught us anything it's that the future can always be better, so maybe we'll find a way out of this creative mire...
You're definitely not alone, everyone who's a devoted TNG fan is horrified by what they done to arguably one of the greatest TV character of all time.
Not only are you not the only one, you’re likely in the vast majority in your disappointment. I *have* written it off entirely. It all ended in 2005 for me.
@@LizardSpork You might be surprised. One of my oldest fans thinks Picard is “brilliant” and now no longer really likes TNG because it doesn’t “hold up,” as a result. I’ve disowned him.
@@SumDumGy This Is The Way
@@LizardSpork This is the way.
Dude, you're gonna give Mr. Plinkett a run for his money. Love the video.
I think Dan and RLM should do some kind if collaboration after watching this lol
@@SourDizz I had this thought exactly.
Yes!!!! A series post-mortem collaboration after Season 3 ends… would be epic!
@@schmidtfam04 @tom o They could do a funeral.
@@schmidtfam04 Im done with picard. None of us should watch the 3rd season we all know its going to be bad lol
Dan is the nicest, most positive movie reviewer I watch, a reviewer who can find positive in Disney SW shows. He talking about the faults of this series for an hour tells me to run.
For those who follow and admire mr. Murrel's work, the length and title of this video speak VOLUMES. I've avoided though since Red Letter Media put out their soul crushing reviews of season 1.
Watched the pilot only, and was enough. Such a misunderstanding of the core principles of Star Trek it's disheartening.
For me, it tells me don’t watch. I haven’t yet, usually several months or years behind these days. But I primarily watch things that receive genuine praise from voices I respect, like Dan. I call it a personal filter. I have been disappointed too consistently to watch just anything.
It's simultaneously incredibly bad and completely forgettable.
I'm not a huge Star Trek fan, not nearly enough to remember characters to the point that I would have spotted all these things, but I got far more enjoyment out of watching this entire critique than I'm sure I would have slugging my way through season 2.
I have never been so angry at the end of a season as I was with Picard S2
They took what everyone hated with Nemesis and went "Lets do that again but double down"
She has a bar called 10 on forward street
I'm honestly curious... What was wrong with Nemesis specifically?
@@thenotsurechannel7630 picard really liked driving off road vehicles so he made the producers add a car to shuttle craft.
The shuttle craft takes the Argo down to the planet and drops it off.
The argo is worse than a shuttle craft in everyway possible but Patrick Stewart thought it was cool.
All of these episodes made sense to me. I just figured Picard is old and this show is about his battle with dementia.
yeah I said before I think the ending episode of the final season of Picard, should be Picard waking up in his Chateau from "All Good Things"; Data and Geordi are sat with him; data with that streak of gray in his hair. Picard's house cleaner is in the background. They mention his cleaner has contacted them about him acting strange and ranting on about the "new Borg queen", "Guinan", "Wesley and the Watcher" - things from his past that have obviously gotten muddled in his mind.
They realise he hasn't been taking his Irimodic Syndrome hypos, dose him up and Picard says "Thanks, I feel a lot better, you wouldn't believe the bizzare and horrible nightmares I've been having!" and Geordi says "it's OK, you'll be well enough for the Federation history conference next week" and the series ends.
That is the only way this season of nonsense can end and make any sense whatsoever imo.
@@mikesully110 This is now canon in my mind. Have a "thumbs up."
It's about how Picard /and/ the Borg Queen's pasts have shaped them. Picard's memory of his mother and coming to terms with the fact that if he hadn't let her out she couldn't have hung herself, and the Borg Queen not wanting to feel alone hence the Collective and having it explained to her that she wasn't seeking perfection but company.
Why don’t people just accept Patrick Stewart is OLD. Picard isn’t going to be a badass all the time.
@@jeclipse129 I accepted that a long time ago. I waiting for Paramount to accept it. Same with Harrison Ford, to be honest, we don’t need another Indiana Jones film. Create new characters, tell new stories, and let these guys retire with some dignity.
The series becomes all that much stranger upon watching Strange New Worlds, which by all rights is the closest a post-NuTrek title has gotten to being "real" Star Trek. There are certain episodes where you can taste Kurtzman's direct involvement, but the influence is not pronounced like it is in Picard. STD and Picard both are ham-fisted attempts to use the license as a carrier for mediocre social commentary. SNW and Orville are as close as you'll get to TNG.
_Star Trek: Prodigy_ should at least get some acknowledgement. It seems Nickelodeon, having gone in on it, is keeping the pandering and agendas at bay making for a rather nice series -if only they’d get back to it and finish the season already. I consider that a series worthy of inclusion of old legacy.
Orville is far far FAR closer to TNG than SNW. The nu-Trekisms plague that show from the very first episode. I personally had to bow out by episode 3 because my eyes rolled to the back of my skull one too many times at that point.
Putting the typical Rick and Morty humor aside, i really like Lower Decks. It's much more fun to watch, then STD and Picard. And for much, as i know: Patrick Steward WANTED Picard to be this way, because he can work about some kind of childhood trauma... or something like that
@@johnstrawb3521 Your opinion isn't a hard fact my guy. It may not be old Trek, but there's plenty of people out there who like it, so "it isn't remotely Trek" is your personal opinion.
"STD" ... Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...
This really helped my process my feelings (of bewilderment and betrayal) about this season, thanks!
I'm only a casual Star Trek fan but my mind is blow at just how crazy the direction of Picard has gone. What on earth were these hack writers thinking????
You assume any sort of thinking took place.... 🤣
It’s all about the feels.
Clearly it's part of a massive Social Agenda being pushed via Entertainment. They are loosing money hand over fist but keep pushing. "Starfleet General Order 1", "General Order 1", "non-interference of any culture'' , New Trek , '' Total Forced Diversity"
About their paycheck.
They purposefully gloated about how they were changing Discovery to be opposite of what Star Trek was. And before this, JJ Abrams proudly declared he didn't like Star Trek and barely watched any of it. Then just made his movies into what he wanted. And you're surprised when the third Bad Robot/Secret Hideout project turned out bad? They're not incompetent. They're making it bad on purpose.
In a vacuum, Q's words to Picard of mattering to him will always give me goosebumps.
Mattering to him as in love him.
I was so excited for this season because I love John De Lancie, and I’m at least grateful that he didn’t disappoint. Even though nothing in this season made any sense, he gave Q a send off performance that I’m happy to just clip out of the hours of pain that the rest of this season was.
I enjoyed seeing him again. Like many of the actors on the show, he's great. They mostly do the best with what they are given. It's such a shame that the writing is so bad.
That’s what is so infuriating, most of the actors in this deserve so much better. Plus how do you come up with an intriguing premise like Q is dying and squander it so? Imagine if the entire season was about really exploring what that means?! But no, we got probably one of the worst seasons of Trek ever.
You should do more video essays like this. Loving this one
Co-sign
Definitely.
Absolutely.
Yeah. I enjoyed it.
Yes pls. Star Wars next coz Hoo Boy!
This was a perfect breakdown of all the things I was screaming in my head but couldn't convey professionally. It was such convoluted mess with the slimmest of entertaining moments sprinkled in. I suspended my disbelief enough to hate it quite as much as Dan, but your assessment is accurate!
I have tears in my eyes how precise you nailed my feelings on this show by adding so much facts and detail observations. I do know a lot of the canon but despite of that did miss some points. You really filled deep content into my impression on how dissapointing this show really is. Thank you so much from all of my heart!
To them, setting these shows in the Star Trek universe simply equals "futuristic." They don't understand the level of human evolution that comes with that future setting, like an end to intolerance, bigotry, hunger, war, material needs. They have even accepted death and human loss, as your clip showed. The whole point is that (as said in the opening narration to Star Trek) space is literally the final frontier, after all other aspects of humanity had been utterly explored.
TNG showed that even though those "aspects" have been EXPLORED . We must be diligent in our ways...VIGILANT in keeping those freedoms we'd so earned.
Starfleet had several officers who were BIGOTED towards a new race (Data and Lore, and Lal) because they'd been "created" by a Starfleet scientist and thusly those bigots felt Starfleet *OWNED* those people.
...Had several people who were willing to denigrate the capacity and question the loyalty of a man, SOLELY FOR BEING TRAUMATIZED BY COMBAT "INJURIES" (Lacutos of Borg)
one of the most important steps in human evolution is to stop watching rat poison crap like this and maybe start watching some west papuan music videos about that genocide for the world's biggest goldmine the americans don't want anyone to know about.
@@abigails4088
To be fair, having had his mind controlled by the Borg does make him a security vulnerability that would have to be assessed. Not doing so would be treason.
@@manictiger indeed, but Jean Luc had already been given a comprehensive medical/psychological debrief a long time before he found himself and his loyalty, NAY THAT OF HIS ENTIRE BRIDGE CREW, being questioned by Norah Satie...at risk of being court martialed for something completely unrelated to the incident with the Borg.
Yeah, what OP described was Roddenberry's ideal that never really materialized - in TOS due to his limited control, and in TNG I think he initially had more control, but still not enough and then Berman took over pretty early;
the writers didn't like the whole "they solved all the conflicts and stopped lamenting death" cause they wanted something more human and relatable, so kept resisting these instructions I think.
Plus this show happens way after TNG, DS9, and the movies - which all heavily destablized the initial "utopia" within the Fed.
So OP's not nuanced enough I suppose lol
Such a great breakdown. Dan put more logical thought into this than the writers did in the show. Would love to watch more of these about any movie or show, when it strikes the right nerve.
Holy shit, Dan. I didn't expect this kind of content from you and, Jesus, what an accurate, constructive, and incredibly inarguable dissection of what went wrong with this show. Bravo, truly.
@@mikejunior211 Fans with valid criticism are never called toxic
The best thing Star Trek Picard gave us is a series of videos melting the minds of two Hacks from Milwaukee.
I'd love to see Dan do a collab with those hack frauds.
A Dan Murrell episode of Best of the Worst? Yes please.
@@pjl626 Dan is family friendly, wholesome. I don’t know if he’d be on a show where a drunk man with dementia points and laughs at people with COPD
THANK YOU!!! I didn't merely hate Picard, I was heartbroken by it. It was weirdly soothing to have you meticulously name all the reasons why this season (even more egregiously than S1) betrayed so much of what we loved from TNG. This was extremely satisfying, thank you!
I remember one reviewer said that one of the biggest problems with this series was the Patrick Stewart was playing himself instead of playing Picard, & that he demanded so much change & plot conditions (basically give him writing & directing credits) to even agree to be in the show. I hope he lives long enough to look back on this series & the fandom rift it created with regret, the way I regretted wasting time & money at an art institute instead of going to a real college.
Or the way I regretted wasting time and money at a real college lol
They'd really be better off getting fan submitted scripts at this point. Although I am intrigued by the enthusiasm of RMB about S3 with Brandon Braga's underling taking full control. We shall see if he right.
That's a really good observation. One tends to think that actors who help create a character know the character better than anyone, but sometimes if an actor plays a character long enough, the character actually becomes more like the actor, and I believe that's exactly what has happened with Stewart, and unfortunately the showrunners and writers of the series either hated the character, or they didn't really understand who Picard was either.
Its a problem that actually started way back in the Nemesis movie, if not earlier. That silly action sequence with the off-road vehicle that made no sense in this universe, existed entirely because Patrick Stewart had become interested in off-roading and wanted it in the movie.
I've said the same things... this is JL Picard, this is Patrick Stewart playing Patrick Stewart in a Star Trek show. He acts and handles not how I expect the old Picard to, but how I would expect Patrick Stewart to act and handle things. I just wish this show didn't exist. I was more excited when I first heard they were making this show than I had ever been with any other show or movie in my life... and was crushed so totally and completely by the first season. I had no hope for the second and quit caring a long time ago. New Trek.... YAY!!!
I haven't watched any of Picard, to be fair, but you make a convincing case. Modern Trek writers who have no respect at all for the source material and just do whatever is a huge pet peeve of mine. Continuity doesn't have to be a "prison", but the arrogance of someone deciding that they know better than writers from years past is infuriating.
Thank you!
3:00 Idk TFA did that "dark stuff has happened since" thing really well - that shot of Han and Leia's tearful embrace was a great dramatic moment both in the trailers and the movie;
this guy just btching about it seems circlejerky to me, although appr. the complaint makes more sense in the case of Picard's season transition.
@@username45739 So I guess anything you don't personally agree with is "circlejerky" now?
@@ZeroKitsune idk lol
"Continuity doesn't have to be a "prison", but the arrogance of someone deciding that they know better than writers from years past is infuriating."
Star Trek is a franchise that has never been shy about trampling its own continuity. It's really hard to be a Trek fan and not notice.
Sitting around being infuriated over continuity issues is pointless for Star Trek, they change details more often than the crew gets to wear a freshly washed uniform.
I was only able to get through the first two episodes of season one before giving up on the show. It was clear that the producers didn't understand what Star Trek is fundamentally about: exploration, wonder and the belief in a bright future.
i managed to get to episode three before I gave up and just started watching Major Grins reviews, they are a lot more entertaining. I gave season two 3 episodes aswell hoping they fixed some stuff (plus love time travel and alternate realities so was hoping it would draw me in a bit more...its shi* :D
Dont forget how the show was all about finding peaceful solutions and less than 5%of the time violence was used and was always the last resort. Man this new shit is just a HUGE slap in the face
Exactly what I did too. ☹️
Hey Dan! Just want to take a moment to say thank you for all you do. Been following your journey for quite some time: and you’ve been a consistently thoughtful, passionate, positive person in this realm of movie magic experiencing. Your efforts through this media space certainly have impacted my life positively; and I’m sure many others. We Appreciate you!
Thank so much for this very well put together video analyzing Picard.
Makes me feel better that I never bothered to watch it.
Agree with everything here. I had to give up halfway through episode 4. I could have just about stomached the 3rd egregious example of moral grandstanding this season, but to have Guinean not recognise Picard told me these writers have no clue, and worse, don’t care about the franchise.
wasn't watching season 2...
it was so off the rails, that I just felt bad.
For Star Trek, it's only "strange new worlds" that gives me literal hope and Anson Mount shows the charisma that Stewart had in TnG.
Tough times for Trekkies...
We do have the Orville though!
This was incredible Dan, I hope to see more longer videos like this in the future. I can't imagine editing this!
"...and Seven's there, too."
For some reason that made me burst out laughing, because I felt for a good actor like Jeri Ryan, who doesn't get to actually do ANYTHING. And she was also the only one who actively played against that notion. Everyone else just plays along.
God, never have I seen a worse single season of Trek.
@@commonsense6534 Still haven't watched Enterprise (apart from maybe one episode), but that concept I had a lot of hopes for - a gritty, troubled, pre-TOS look at the struggle of dealing with space travel. It's the kind of concept that would have made for terrific entertainment with an imperfect ship breaking down while dealing with the unknowns of space and alien encounters.
Well at least we're getting 7 at all. It was great to see her back.
That wasn't Seven. That was Jeri Ryan
@@commonsense6534
She was very cute.
I liked those scenes where she was understatedly happy at not having the implants and being treated like a normal person.
Try watching a full season of Next Gen.
This is a very intelligent breakdown of why long-time Star Trek fans ( we used to call them "Trekkies") feel like the show isn't written, directed, or produced by people who loved it as much as we did. It seems cynical, partly because it feels as though lazy executives just want to cash in on existing properties with no respect for the original material, the creator, or canon, as if to say, "cool idea, but I could do it better." It's why reboots typically flop. You can rewrite, reimagine, set in present day, and ballon the budget, but if you don"t understand why "A Nightmare on Elm Street" scared the hell out of me when I saw it in 1985, you also won't understand why the 2010 version had me yawning. Right on, H!tler Data. Right on.
I can't believe you used the T word in this day and age. Kids might read your comment.
@@yegmeshjwp I know, they don't like to be called that anymore...for the sake of preserving history, I thought is was important to bring it up.
@@brentoutashape9141at least it was the softer version. If you had ended with the hard er, I would have lost it.
Got to say though, in response to your comment, it shocks me that it seems like they didn't have a single fan to give it a look over. It's infuriating actually as these issues with are easily fixed with in universe logic once highlighted!
I don't understand at all, how were they that confident in their work, especially after discovery.
The problem is that it’s written and directed by people who view each franchise a stepping stone in their career. Barring a few people on any project, they see it as just another job and they give it just enough attention to pass a once-over by higher ups.
@@yegmeshjwp Discovery is for lawyers,after all, so no bridges were burned. They own the property, so canon is whatever they say it is. I pronounced Trek dead at the end of Enterprise, but I don’t’ have a say in it. Buckle up.
That 'bringing people back and making them miserable after they had a perfectly good ending' immediately made me think of Alien 3. What a piss poor decision THAT was!
I found that having the reveal of the fate of Picard's mother as being the main focus of season 2 to be bad and exploitive writing. The writers want to delve into serious issues like tragedy, mental illness, and trauma. But all they're doing is using trauma and mental illness as tools in their mystery box style writing. This show is less about learning to deal with trauma and grieving properly, and more about the reveal of that trauma. They spend episode after episode teasing it, like the MCU teasing the reveal of a fan favorite comic character.
And it's not like Star Trek has never dealt with trauma and tragedies before. Worf's parents were killed by the Romulans, Beverly's husband was killed on an away mission, Sisko's wife was killed by the Borg, Kira was a terrorist, several of Voyager's crew were Maquis, Seven was a Borg, Kim was Kim, etc. But old Trek showed that different people dealt with trauma in different ways, and different kinds of trauma affect people differently. A survivor of war wasn't affected the same way as someone abandoned by their parents. They were dramatic when they needed to be dramatic, but they used tact and subtlety when it was appropriate.
In Discovery and Picard, no one knows how to handle their trauma. Everyone is crippled by it, their lives are consumed by it. It seems like the writers think that trauma impacts everyone the same way, regardless of the type of trauma or the person being affected.
And why do they insist on making the 24th century so crappy? 300 years ago, people sent to lunatic asylums were horribly abused, they were chained to beds, they were put in cells with no ventilation and extremely limited outside contact. Look at how much our methods of treating mental illness have improved since then. And Star Trek takes place 300 years from now, their ways of treating mental illness should be exponentially better than what we have. So why did Picard's mother get treated like mentally ill people from the 1700's? Is it just this one rare case with the Picard family? Then they're basically saying that the Picard family are horrible or extremely ignorant people, they would be the equivalent of religious cultists today who confine and abuse their families.
The crazy mother suicide is such a tired and lazy trope I couldn't believe they weren't kicked out of the Writer's Guild for even suggesting it.
@@MariaVosa Probably because of most of the writers in it probably write on the same level of quality these days.
On the note of trauma as handled in Picard, Discovery, and even parts of Strange New Worlds, I'd say it goes a bit deeper than that into the wrong.
The shows seem to suggest, at worst, that if you do not have trauma in some form you will never have the chance to be great.
Star trek has broken my heart, every new interation gives me PTSD. I some times think we are the ones in the bad universe.
I never dreamed that I would hear the train wreck that was Star Trek: Picard, described so accurately, and succinctly. Well done!🙂
It took only one season for "Picard" to break my heart. Anything beyond that became insulting.
One episode for me, this show is garbage.
I checked out at episode 4 of season 1.
It took the killing of Bruce Maddox to drop me out of the series. I really didn't pay attention much after that, then the tentacle (not reaper) killer robots
Six episodes of series one for me.
Same. Star Trek was great partly *because* it rarely resorted to graphic violence, which there's a lot of in just the first few episodes.
That is, hands down, the best expressed critique of modern Star Trek as a whole I have seen or heard. Its like you channelled my brain. Amazing work!
It's the mark of a good reviewer that I'll watch an hour long review of a show I'll never watch in a franchise I don't have a strong connection to. There are still a lot of great insights into the many elements of telling a story.
90% of the reviews I watch, and I watch a lot of reviews are for something that I'll never watch and have no interest. I might have a problem.
@@delugesofgrandeur Reviews can be entertaining and educational in a way a lot of modern shows aren't. I mean I don't really expect them to be educational, but I am usually hoping for that first one at least.
Strange New Worlds is truly a delight Dan, I highly recommend watching it! Might help cleanse your pallet
Yeah I'm gonna go ahead and disagree. If you have issues with ignoring or contradicting established canon that SNW is not the answer.
@@MarvelManMike82 or ripping off writers like D.C. Fontana and not giving them story credit.
Back in 2013, I walked out of Star Trek Into Darkness with a new scene in my head canon. It was a post-credit scene in which the movie was revealed to be a holodeck simulation on Voyager created by Tom Paris and Tuvok begins to admonish Tom for inaccuracies in his depiction of the historical records. Outside of the Discovery pilot that aired for free on CBS, I haven't watched any new Star Trek since then and have decided that only anything produced up to 2005 (the end of Enterprise) is canon and everything afterwards is either an alternate reality or an elaborate fan fiction that I don't have the energy to acknowledge.
It's all been holodeck simulations Riker's doing while trying to make up his mind about how to handle the Pegasus.
Dan, in just the first 46 seconds of this video, you have succinctly and accurately summarized my own feelings about ST: Picard. Many thanks for saving me the trouble of doing it myself. I can't wait to watch the rest of it.
Patrick Stewart was always adamant he was done playing Jean-Luc Picard. He has remained true to his word. Besides the name, the lead character in Star Trek: Picard feels almost nothing like the captain we all grew to love during The Next Generation.
My favourite thing as a writer is seeing such a big character come back and knowing right away that the character will now:
1. Have a dark secret or trauma or both, retconned into the show's lore
2. That dark secret will be as dark as possible, for effect
3. It will never be spoken of again, despite being life altering
4. Viewers will hate it
5. The writer won't learn their lesson and will do it again next season
Failing up is the way to go.
This is what happens when Stalin is responsible for the hiring.
@@han3wmanwukong125 and if you're a member of a certain religion.
@@yellowpete79 That's Islamophobic, bro.
Lord, experiencing this season in real-time hurt my head so much over all the baffling, illogical writing choices they made. I cannot believe they turned this out thinking they were really on to something. Star Trek has had a lot (and I mean a LOT) of bad episodes and baffling moments but this is the worst the franchise has produced hands down. It’s almost impressive how bad this show is.
💯
So you're saying it sucks big time? I saw season 1 and thought it was slow with a lot of filler episodes but still enjoyed it for the nostalgia of seeing TNG characters again. So is season 2 better?
The streaming formula requires shows with known IP that are tolerable and new shows that get renewed a couple of seasons if they find a decent audience, until renewing actor’s contract costs more then the show is worth. The streaming platform needs more and more subscribers but then does the bare minimum to keep them from leaving.
I don't know why , these days, every old hero gets depicted as a broken man that needs to get chaperon by a young version and get reminded that he was a fuck up and despite some good he did, his wrong doings over shadows his heroic deeds. and he gets the worst treatment with a condescending attitude from new version and I, as viewer, supposed to be empathetic to modern version and hate the old one. It's like they tell me if you liked this guy 20 years ago, you're no good
With a couple of (actually earned) exceptions, I couldn't agree more! Reminds me of when I was little and I'd get nervous if I saw a sequel because it was "ruining the happiness". Out of the mouths of babes, I guess!
Well, it is trope filled, lazy writing. They just are really bad show runners.
They can take that premise and still give us incredible films like Logan and Doctor Sleep. I don’t know why it’s so hard for all the other screenwriters.
The ship has been righted in Season 3, better late than never. Thank you Terry Matalas.
Thank you for this. Apart from your dismissal of "Assignment: Earth" (which to me actually was an okish episode) I agree 100%. One thing that I missed in your video though is the question of why the hell Q is supposed to be alone and lonely when he had a family in "Voyager". Because I really wondered what the hell supposedly happened to them - or if the writers either forgot about them themselves, or hoped that the Star Trek-fans did. Bothered the hell out of me. As did all the other stuff you pointed out so eloquently in this splendid video!
Good point on Q's family. Also, love "Assignment Earth".
Obviously the writers don't know about Q's family because they didn't watch the show. All the excuses they're making on Twitter about the Guinan and Eugenics War canon is just them covering their ass. The real reason they made those canon mistakes is they didn't know, because they haven't seen Star Trek.
We could fill-in-the-gaps for the writer's by saying that Q got kicked out of the Continuum again, or he chose to die, or it's a Q from the end of the universe come back to see Picard - but then why are we doing their work for them, and for free?
At the risk of crossing streams: this is where the fun begins.
Like Dan, I'm a TNG fan so this series being so bad breaks my heart too. I fully appreciate going in a new direction but Picard goes hopelessly off course. It's not just lazy writing; the way the story contradicts established lore is straight up disrespectful.
I stopped watching before S2 ended because it was starting to taint my memory of TNG. As far as I'm concerned Picard is non-canon fanfic.
The writers' half assed explanation for why Guinan doesn't remember Picard from 19th Century San Francisco is embarrassing.
I turned it off after the musical number. I don't mind canon breaking. What I mind is sloppy writing. Needless convalesce. That's all this season was. Heck, they've managed to make Seven of Nine, one of Trek's most intriguing and well performed characters to be a love interest with no depth.
It seems more like revenge fiction. No love for the characters, the lore or the uplifting spirit of TNG.
@@FlowerChildanddan That was one of WTF straws that broke the camel's back for me. And how about Soong having drones with force field tech in 2024?!
And Picard's older brother just vanishing out of existence? And...no, I need to stop reliving the angst.
@@gnomesaiyan1680 it also doesn’t make sense because once again Yesterday’s Enterprise shows that even when her own past is changed she can tell that something isn’t right. So even if she didn’t recognize him for their stupid reason she should realize that not recognizing him doesn’t feel right just like her recognizing Tasha didn’t feel right.
I hope Dan catches up with The Orville at some point. That show is thriving. I really hope they renew it for season 4.
Season 3 of The Orville is some of the best science fiction on “tv” right now! I just finished ep9 and the entire thing was a damn beautiful feature length epic. It’s really come into its own.
@@Emanon... Its been an impressive feat! Hulu and Disney better truly recognize what they have on their hands and renew it asap!
@@GothPaoki I respectfully could not disagree more. S3 of The Orville is phenomenal, the entire thing actually feels planned out as opposed to either season of Picard. But to each their own.
holy cow I went into The Orville thinking it was going to be "Family Guy in Space" and to be fair, it was for the 1st couple of episodes but man.. They got their shit together mid-season and been on fire ever since. This season was amazing!
The funny thing is The Orville started out at a parody of Star trek but have morphed into it's totally own thing. And I am kind of happy that they toned back the potty humor from season 1
Picard was such a dumpster fire that Patrick Stewart even seemed disinterested in acting at all, and wanted to wrap it up.
Actually, with Stewarts age and seasons 2 and 3 having been filmed back to back, he probaby got a 3 season contract to begin with.
Thanks Dan, this video was great. Thank you for speaking out!
05:10 I never understood why in Picard season 2... Guinan acted like she never met him, nor that Picard would remid her of the 1800's encounter.
Because the writers never watched Star Trek The Next Generation. They don't like it.
Ever since I watched this season, my two burning questions about it were "What the heck went wrong here?" and "What's Dan going to say about this?" Fortunately, unlike the show, your review was totally worth the wait, so thanks for the herculean effort putting this together and for sharing your thoughts!
I thought Picard was supposed to be good, i heard about so many people having butterfly tears after the season finales.
Ten minutes at the end was good. About fifteen minutes of the rest of the series was good.
As Dan said, there are definitely moments that make you feel things, but it's overpowered by convoluted plot and ignorance of canon.
First two episodes were decent. After that it became a mess
Below Decks & Strange New Worlds are the only modern Trek series that feel like Trek. Darkness and tragedy are fine in small doses but the overall tone should be hope and adventure. If there’s no joy or fun, it’s no different to all the other miserable shows out there.
I so wanted to like this...but you're spot on. I don't like time travel episodes in general, but this one was so nonsensically twisty it was maddening. Absolutely nothing made sense, even taking out all the canon and history breaking.
F'ING NAILED it. I actually found myself talking out loud agreeing with this on almost every point.
The one thing you didn't touch on is I THINK the writers were trying to be topical about our lack of human connection between technology and the pandemic hence the recurring "loneliness" themes, which I took as a really dark attempt at combining the legacies of topical commentary with Star Trek optimism... If it had been optimistic.
The fact that I ... someone who grew up a huge TNG fan ... watched the latest Picard S3 trailer and felt absolutely nothing tells you how massively they've dropped the ball with this series. Thank you for making this, Dan. It's a perfect summary of everything that I hate about this show. What a bitter, disappointing way for my favorite Captain/character in the franchise to go out; but at least I'll always have TNG-First Contact to rewatch. Well ... maybe TNG Season 2-First Contact. But definitely TNG Season 3-First Contact.
if it matters at all to you, Robert Myer Bernett hates this series but he’s seen season three and is praising it as what this show should have been.
If anything I would say Picard being so bad has made me appreciate Insurrection and Nemesis way more. Not saying they're the top ranked movies but at least in those movies the characters are mostly who we expect them to be, still on the Enterprise, etc. Insurrection was the most disappointing to me only because that movie should have been a TNG/DS9 crossover movie dealing with the Dominion. Perfect opportunity that was totally wasted.
@@SumDumGy I don't believe anything that is said in their marketing. They will straight up lie and say whatever they think the fans want to hear to try to sucker them into watching at least one episode. Then they can boast about how many people "watched" the show. I'll wait to hear from people like Dan, who I trust to give a fair assessment, before making any decisions on Season 3. But for the time being, I have zero expectations and zero excitement for Picard's final season.
*Misread what you typed a bit. I don't know Robert Myer Bernett, but I hope he is right about Season 3. That being said, I'm still reserving any judgements until the Season is officially out and I hear from 2-3 trusted sources. This show isn't getting the benefit of the doubt from me anymore.
@@the7percentsolution Oh, there are definitely Star Trek properties who have benefited from Discovery and Picard changing the grading curve (for the worst). Voyager as a whole, parts of Enterprise, and Nemesis have definitely bumped up the list on the new curve. Insurrection, on the other hand, remains just as terrible as the day I first saw it, in my opinion.
@@the7percentsolution I never had a huge issue with either of them, just a few nitpicks.
This is definitely the best S2 Picard analysis I've watched. Excellent work Dan! Such a disappointing and poorly written show....ugh.
It’s ironic that the explanation given as to why the Kelvin *timeline* is an alternate *reality* (as declared by both Dan and Uhura) defines it as an altered *timeline:* Someone travelled back in time and changed events.
It is an altered timeline. If someone went back in time and stopped it then it would revert back to the TOS.
@@stevereynolds5684 Yes, that's what I understand too. It was created by time-travel shenanigans (a wormhole opened and a ship from the future changed the past). The movies can still play fast and loose with canon (after the events that caused the timeline split) because it's a different timeline, if you're a fan of the Prime timeline you can just ignore them, and vice-versa.
@@RudyGuillan But it is an interesting thing to discuss about.
@@merafirewing6591 Absolutely :) My point is that one's canon shouldn't affect the other's, even if they aren't different "realities" (like the mirror-universe or the MCU multi-verse). However, some things about the Kelvin continuity make no sense. Because of the nature of the timeline creation, everything that happened in original Star Trek canon before Kirk's birth should have still happened in the Kelvin timeline. For example, Khan not being a pale British dude (I know they needed to get a new actor, but with the rest of the cast at least they tried for similar ethnicities/backgrounds as the original crew).
@@RudyGuillan That’s why I don’t have nearly as many issues with the Kelvin-Timeline Films as with the Shows we’ve gotten since 2017, and why I can kinda enjoy them: they’re practically their own thing and I look at them as such.
I think season three has got to be the best season. It was refreshing to get back to the roots.
You'd think Beverly Crusher might have noticed his deep dark secret when they shared a mind.
Thank you for making this amazing analysis of Picard Season 2; it saves me having to watch it all having bailed after Episode 2 and instead just reading the Wikipedia summaries of each episode. When I got to the line "Q, having taken the role of Renée's therapist, stokes her insecurity with text messages", I knew I'd made the right call.
Thank you for taking the time to create such a well written, well edited and entertaining summary. I look forward to your Season 3 analysis. I don't look forward to Season 3.
I did something similar. I'd recommend watching Qs scenes though on UA-cam for the send off.
Ok, now I need a Dan/RLM crossover!!
Thanks for doing this video. I didn't bother with season 2 considering how the first season was so disappointing.
I don't understand how they keep finding writers who don't seem to know anything about Star Trek canon or it's general philosophies. There's so much lore to work with it doesn't make sense to make up new stuff that ends up retconning what's already been established.
Take season 3 of Discovery. It was established in TNG that warp drive was tearing apart the space time continuum (a parallel to climate change). Instead of using that as a reason warp drive doesn't exist in the future they made up something for more unbelievable instead (a child's scream IIRC). Star Trek has never been the same since Roddenberry died.
Well... I wouldn't go that far back for when Star Trek changed for the worse. Roddenberry died while TNG was still airing and we got plenty of good Star Trek after then. In fact he was largely hands off of TNG from I think seasons 3-5 and those are the strongest seasons. Personally I'd say Star Trek hasn't been the same since 2005 when, arguably, the series died. Since 2009 it's basically been a dug-up corpse desperately trying to come back to life.
I only watched season 1 and it was ok but not great. So is season 2 worth watching?
@@the7percentsolution more like 2009 is the last breath of a great franchise.
22:49. Also - even if the timeline has changed, it still should not be a younger version of Guinan.
She looked like Whoopi in the1800s!
i finally just got finished watching season 2 and ive been waiting to watch this! it didn’t disappoint! dan’s take was spot on and even illustrated stuff i didn’t even think of. kudos sir!
After this show, I have no idea how I even gave Strange new worlds a chance. So glad I did, as its the Trek we really needed.
Its amazing to me that the show runners of Discovery and picard are the same people who made Strange new worlds.
Im my opionion Strange new worlds S1 isnt just great Star Trek but one of best TV shows to come out this year.
I even loved episode 8 lol
Some of it... like, 3 episodes of it.
We'll see; season 1 of Trek is always hard, but there were so many painfully bad/wrong things in SNW S1 that I'm still skeptical, despite a few very solid episodes.
@@jonchowe would love to know what you thought was bad/wrong about SNW.. im genuinely interested
@@SourDizz how about how the characters interact with each other. I'm sorry, but the way the portray Starfleet Officers and how they talk is just so cringe. ..
@@pt29999 I need more than that. Specific characters, episodes and interactions.
The show is not perfect at all but you cant tell me that compared to picard and discovery this is the best star trek in years?
I thank Dan for his thoughtful, heartful reaction to this strangely boring show. But also for coming up with the "Hitler Data" quip.
Watched this all the way through because I’m not much of a Trek fan, so I don’t care about spoilers. I just love Dan rants.
It is pretty awesome when he does.
Hi Dan! Sorry this broke your heart. As a fan of both the original series and TNG, I was disappointed to hear all the creative decisions the writers made with this show. I do not plan to waste my time watching this series. Thank you for that. I greatly appreciate all the time and energy (and then some) that you put into making this video.
Dan, I love this review so much! You took something so heartbreaking and reflected on it with wit and humor.
I feel for you Dan writing this with the shock and dismay that things like canon are completely irrelevant to a current Trek series. This is the present day MO for most franchises. Writers have whole other characters and stories they want to tell but in order to get a greenlight they have to shoehorn it into the closest franchise. Time travel, alternate universe, muti-universe etc... for the most part all convenient plot devices to ignore canon and do what you want.
I really couldn’t agree with you any more than I do, but I didn’t fully grasp your comment until I made it to 5:53 where Dan reveals the “big secret” is that Picard’s mother was depressed and committed suicide (and they went as far as to show her body hanging). I’m really appalled and more than a little offended. Trek, especially TNG, while not perfect was still able to stay abreast of pretty serious personal and social issues and still keep the show light and hopeful. Star Trek IS hope, it’s wonder, it’s triumphing in the face of sci-fi doom. It’s also usually something you can easily watch with the whole family - young and old. But nope. I wouldn’t show my kids this (if I had them) just for the swinging body alone. And I’m sure the episode/series did not tackle the horrible subject with any sense of tact. Never watched this series and thank Q! I would have been mad as hell.
Anyway, I wish these writers would grow some balls and campaign their asses off to make their OWN material or, if they’re going to grasp at any monetized straw they can, at least show they appreciate or minimally respect whatever franchise they’re taking on/over even on the most basic of levels.
7/29/22 ☀️ 942
@@randombrokeperson I can just see someone thinking, Taika W. has no tact and he tackled almost the same issue and no one complained, therefore it must be easy!
While I understand that there will be periods when it is not possible to get a greenlight that doesn't refer to established product... a lack of a complete story to tell is what ultimately makes things junk. Current writers may have their special issues they want to explore, but they need context. Breaking canon actually makes it harder to create the context.
This so perfectly encapsulates all of the frustration and sadness I felt with this show. And I am
Not even as big of a fan as Dan or many others. Thank you!
The thing with TOS and TNG is that it wasn't about character's personal drama and tragedy.
Good point. It was always about the plot.
I have only watched a couple episodes of TNG when I was young and liked it enough, but I never became a Trekkie.
However, I do get great joy out of watching you dissect these new shows. :-)
I love this so much. I want to thumbs up this 100 times. You are way better than every Star Trek channel I’ve ever been to.
My issue with Picard is that it's bad. Not that it "breaks canon" (don't care about that in the slightest), not that it "disrespects Picard" (I actually like how S1 Picard gets treated, it gives him a redemption arc and a chance to fix a system that ended up breaking, great idea for a theme IMO), not that it "doesn't FEEL like Star Trek" (if that bothered me, I'd still hate TNG out of hand). I hate Picard because it's a badly-written show.
Been waiting for this! Can't wait to watch...
And yes, Picard is an awful show - but holy shit, have you been watching s3 of The Orville!? Best sci-fi TV show in a generation.
season 3 wasnt as good as season 2 so far tbh. too much focus on interpersonal drama, throwbacks to older episodes, and giant space battles. season 2 felt a bit more TNG with the alien/planet of the week.
maybe the problem is just the short seasons instead of 24 episodes that trek had available. they dont have enough screen time in a season to really veer off the big plot threads they built before so it seems like they have to dedicate all of that to deal with the lose ends they left with previous stories now, since they also dont know if they will get more seasons.
It's crazy how there are 5 Trek shows on the air right now and The Orville feels more Trek than any of them
@@Stone7C1 strong disagree! s3 and its longer length episodes has been incredible. Really love what they're doing this year.
This was an incredibly Cathartic watch. Thank you, Dan.
FWIW, I do think SNW is about 100x better than Picard was. If Picard hasn't completely broken you of your Trek fandom, I heartily recommend giving it a try.
Co-signed. Strange New Worlds breathed much needed life into Trek following Picard S2. I do not love every episode, but I enjoy something in every episode (& some episodes are fantastic start to finish). I found myself enjoying Trek again. I am looking forward to SNW Season 2.
@@zaneplatt3533 not at all. It's just good Trek fun.
@@zaneplatt3533 No, I don’t think so and certainly not compared to Picard S2. SNW is, for the most part, just Trek. Occasionally there are some slight elements that make you guy “but why as this is not plot or relevant” but that is so so rare that it has normally come to me in the moment but not been so big that it lingered over the episode much less the show. They actually just got a great cast, solid writing, respect of Trek lore (but in this front again I’m not claiming perfection), and said “let’s go have an adventure.” Yes, like all Trek topics and concepts are discussed, questions raised, but not in a Picard-style way. Even the darker episodes are more hopeful than any of Picard.
@@zaneplatt3533 it isn't completely clear of SJW influence, and one of the worst offenses happens in the pilot episode, but overall, as the others have said, it's leaps and bounds better than Picard or Discovery.
Similarly to what Dan says about breaking canon/continuity while claiming to be in the prime timeline, SNW can't possibly be from the same timeline or universe that gave us TOS. But if you can put that aside, and treat it as a reboot as I do, then SNW has lots to like. Great cast, good chemistry, and incredible visuals. I'm really looking forward to Season 2 as well.
I think this expertly sums up why I sort of enjoyed it, but simultaneously felt it was... wrong. I appreciate the vast amount of effort you put into creating this 🤯
The intentional and easily avoidable vagueness to drive the plot forward is probably the Hollywood trope I hate the most.
At around 52:00 of how you'd react to Q's gift I expected the scene from DS9 of Sisco punching Q. Also near the end of the final episode when Q and Picard are talking Q says "Must it always have galactic import, universal stakes, celestial upheaval?" which is a nice sentiment about Trek not always having to be high stakes only for less than 10 minutes later the entire galaxy is in danger.
I've got an f-n headache realising that Season 2 was even worse than I originally thought.
Well done, fantastic video.
Ha, I just wrote exactly that before I read your comment. What an incredible mess of a season.
The Picard show should've been about the Stargazer years and how one event during that time leads into the events shown in the future...but we got... this...
45:41 you certainly picked the right character for your Clue moment 🤣
that's one of the best scenes in the entire movie
I know this is an old video but i grew up on TNG and voyager (wasnt really a fan of DS9) but for someone who hasnt seen the show in 20+ years, i really appreciate the background you give and your explanations for your arguments.