Picard: The Last Generation

[kathleen_dailey]

Well, I'm glad that's over.

I was going to write at length about the finale of ST: Picard, but selenak and serrico expressed my thoughts very much better than I could have, so I'm just going to point readers to their April 21 posts.

Thank goodness SNW is coming back in June, because right now I feel like I've been kicked out of Trek fandom entirely. Just when I was beginning to feel positive toward Trek again (in most of its new incarnations), along came a third-season Picard showrunner who trashed everything that made the Trek universe interesting, uplifting, and hopeful.

I still love Seven, and the scenes between Worf and Raffi throughout the last few eps have been touching and well acted. And of course I was happy to see Geordi. But the wholesale abandonment of important plot points and characters (especially Jurati, Laris, and Kestra), the willful repudiation of so much that Trek has stood for throughout the years, and above all the abysmal writing (no viewer should be able to yell the next lines of dialogue at the TV before the characters even speak them) all outweigh the season's few good points.

At least one of my wishes came (sort of) true, unfortunately in an Earth-centric way: we finally heard a couple of lines of dialogue from the president of the Federation. I'm glad that Walter Koenig got a VO gig, but it would have been a nice reminder of the multi-world makeup of the Federation if the president had been shown onscreen to be Tellarite or Andorian or just about anything except Terran.

I'm puzzled about why so many viewers loved this season so much. Surely just bringing back our beloved, if superannuated, TNG characters shouldn't be enough to make fans abandon their reasonable expectations and hopes for quality and consistency in writing, plotting, and characterization.

Comments

[selenak]

Re: non-Terran President of the Federation - Star Trek: Discovery in its fourth season offers the intriguing Laira Rillak, whose ancestry is Cardassian AND Bajoran. (Btw, given that we're dealing with a universe full of interacting civilisations who have been interacting for centuries, people who aren't from one world but several in their biology should be far more common.) As a major supporting character. And of course in the s3 and s4 of Disco era, Earth hasn't beeen a member of the Federation for eons and only rejoins at the end of s4, so it's the antihesis of Earth centric. One of many reasons why Discovery is my favourite of the new bunch.

As to the popular acclaim - I do think it's nostalgia, pure and simple. But to each their own. Telling someone they should not enjoy something never works. I just know I won't watch that season ever again.

[kathleen_dailey]

Yes, I'm grateful to the Discovery PTB for giving us Rillak. I just wish the Picard writers had remembered that the neither the Federation nor Starfleet is synonymous with Earth.

IMO, you're right about nostalgia being the driving force behind the widespread praise for the third season of Picard. Sentimentalism (not to say love) can make us abandon all reasoned judgment. :-)

And I'm with you: I will not be rewatching this season.