I really don’t feel like thinking too hard at the moment so I am gonna fall on my old standby, expanding notes I took while watching episodes of Picard into a blog post. First things first, I have a comment from Season 2 I never actually managed to include that I’m gonna dump here, and that is the special forces Borg were so silly and non threatening. Honestly the normal, “I am Borg I am just going to stand here and absorb punishment then use some godawful mechanical device to eviscerate or assimilate you” is way more threatening than these slightly gray dudes doing krav maga or whatever. I understand that from a lore perspective she probably didn’t have the time and resources for a full assimilation and that the visual style of Star Trek fights in the modern shows are much more dynamic and thus this kind of fighting fits the normal style, but it just felt really silly to me and not at all scary. I forget if I mentioned it or not, but in general the fight scenes throughout but especially in the penultimate episode of Season 2, were incredibly tedious and boring. I don’t watch Star Trek for the fights, but I do enjoy fights in other shows, and to be honest I am not entirely sure if its merely because I don’t -want- extensive choreographed fights in Star Trek or if the fights are legitimately bad or boring, but I was falling asleep.
Okay, now on to Season 3. I’ve heard this is “the good” season, although if so, I feel like I haven’t hit the good parts yet. Beverly’s initial depiction felt super out of character for her, but this is apparently intentional, since when Picard sees the footage of her shooting at people, he mentions it too. But I also want to call attention to something I have repeatedly complained about in modern Trek - how often Starfleet officers use weapons which disintegrate their enemies. I honestly feel like those would be banned as inhumane in the Federation. Why would a non-military organization who wants to use nonlethal force if at all possible who has repeatedly been shown to do things like provide medical care to enemies after subduing them or beaming enemies from stranded ships onto their own to save their lives use disintegration weapons? In this instance its actually Beverly who presumably is no longer in Starfleet since she disappeared for twenty years, but given she is a fucking Doctor who has sworn to do no harm, even moreso strikes me as discordant. Thumbs down.
Picard saying he doesn’t want a legacy, he wants a new adventure struck me as funny just because the first two seasons, but especially the first, felt like Picard struggling with his legacy and the fact he had sort of fucked it up in his final years and trying to reclaim it, mirroring perhaps the fact that Star Trek tried to paint a picture of a hopeful future but our actual present kept getting worse, meaning the show itself failed to create a legacy. Again this in some ways feels like a metacomment by the writers bitching at the fact the executives? the audience? rejected their attempts at legacy building in favor of wanting an adventure. But maybe its just suppose to set him up as still not being mature enough to shoulder the coming responsibility of a child, cuz he is still in adventure mode? Unclear.
I find it amusing that Picard and Riker can apparently just fuck around and board a ship with a phony inspection claim and get away with it. Yeah they are high ranking but you’d really think Starfleet would be more regimented than this. Of course Shaw does kinda figure out what is going on but the fact it got as far as it did is honestly wild, and I’m not sure if its indicative of Starfleet being a mess, the show being poorly written, or some third thing. I don’t really think it’s suppose to be that first one but I’m not convinced there isn’t something I’m missing here, and regardless, not a big deal. It would be perfectly believable for Picard to just ask for a command like he did in Season 1 and get it this time since he has redeemed his name, so the fact they want it to be a bit more shenaniganny is not a big deal even if it feels unrealistic.
I wrote down “Are the Picards just genetically British?” given that Renee, Jean Luc, and Jack all have British accents despite Renee and Jean Luc being presumably raised in France and Jack having no contact with his father, but then the show made the same joke. Still a super weird detail though.
I wrote down “Shaw refusing to help rescue Picard and Riker in the shuttle makes no sense,” because guaranteed, if he came back to Starfleet and said Picard and Riker fooled him into thinking there was a fake inspection, then hijacked his ship, stole a shuttle, and died, there is about a zero percent chance that wouldn’t ruin his career. Even if he somehow managed to avoid any official blame - which is unlikely - I feel like it would still read as such an enormous blunder of incompetence all around as to ruin him. The show is in fact one step ahead of me though, and Seven points this out, eventually, and then eventually we find out that Shaw is salty about Wolf 359. I still don’t super like Picard’s tendency (and modern Trek generally, Discovery did this a lot) of hiding character motivations for multiple episodes so they just seem like dipshits until you find out why, but in this case the fact I watched these episodes over the weekend meant I got to the explanation before I had a chance to whine how it was dumb. I do still wonder how his guy got promoted though, he honestly seems like a huge asshole and coward.
Raffi feels like every season she gets reset back to being a conspiracy and drug junky who has ruined her life and it’s getting tiresome. Is it realistic a junky might keep regressing? Sure. But since the regression keeps happening off screen, it just feels dumb. Also, I find it wild her husband is judging her when she is actively working with Starfleet intelligence when he is apparently in some line of work where he thinks the kind if connection she might need is a drug hook up. I don’t necessarily think this is bad writing, mind you - he clearly has an image in his head of her based on her past actions and it doesn’t matter to him what she says about her life, he still sees her as a junky (and, as noted, she does seem to have regressed somewhat where she is at least thinking about drugs a lot and acting manic as fuck) and unreliable, but does he really have a leg to stand on? Basically, this isn’t bad writing, but I kinda want to sock him one.
I find it super weird that the way the decision of whether to turn over Jack went down the way it did. First, is he not a Federation citizen? Shaw claims that protocol here is clear and you always prioritize the life of the crew outside Federation space, and far be it from me to contradict made up regulations, but in real life America goes to ridiculous lengths to preserve the lives of its citizens in foreign nations, and Starfleet has repeatedly been shown to the do the same in prior shows. I think a more Starfleet way of writing this is it simply being a principle that they cannot turn him over to a bounty hunter because he is a citizen - which is even mentioned as also being a regulation, merely one which is superseded by the fact they aren’t in Federation space (but like, would they even encounter a bounty hunter in Federation space? That feels like something that would not be legal in the Federation). But anyway, Picard keeps himming and hawing and refusing to take Riker’s hints that hey, Jack is your son, so eventually Riker wakes up Beverly in the sick bay, who is clearly very injured and over the objection of her doctor, walks her to the bridge, where she stares nauseated at Picard and then he is like, “We refuse to hand him over, he is my son.” Even if the point was that Picard was only going to believe it from her mouth - which feels silly - why couldn’t Picard have come to sick bay? If you say he would have refused, okay, then why did they choose to have her just stare at him? He didn’t even hear it from her mouth, he inferred? it from her nauseated look, I guess? I know they were trying to maximize the drama but to me if just feels like everyone is being ridiculous. Maximizing drama at the cost of good character and plot is not good writing.
Deanna appears exclusively in nagging phone calls in these episodes, even in flashbacks, and I feel bad for her. She was always so short changed in The Next Generation and now she is just Riker’s bitch of a wife. I say that not as a reflection of my opinion of her, but how the show is portraying her. I honestly don’t think the show intended to besmirch her, but rather unintentionally echoed common depictions of love interests of heroic older men, trying to tie them down and ruin their fun. The fact that it is likely unintentional makes it mildly better, but I would definitely have preferred if they’d put in effort to give her something to do other than nag Riker.
Geordie’s daughter claiming she could empathize with Seven because she too has faced discrimination as a nepobaby because everyone expected her to be an engineer like her dad but she is a pilot is so incredibly silly and tone deaf, but I think the show thinks otherwise. I don’t really have anything else to say about that, other than maybe just a general note of Seven standing in as a mild metaphor for trans people with Shaw not respecting her name by Geordie’s daughter doing so is nice, I liked it. They didn’t stretch the metaphor too far or too hard (at least not yet) but made their point.
The scene where Riker keeps trying to escape and Vadic keeps portalling them back is so incredibly silly. It really feels like they should have been able to figure out a way to get away after the first time it happened, but it was comedic gold they kept falling for it, culminating of course with them getting absolutely dunked on when they fire the missiles. Is this a problem? Only because I don’t think they were trying to make it funny.
Jack like nearly dying and them saving him really read as a birth scene. I don’t have anything to add, thats just how it read to me symbolically. I think the idea is Picard really -gets- that he has a son now, and the parallel is intentional, but also, kinda funny.
The whole Raffi trying to torture the guy scene was uncomfortable. Is it in character for her? Honestly, sure, its believable based on how unhinged she has been in the past and in the start of this season. Worf trying to rein her in also was amusing. But as a member of Starfleet, it does kinda feel like it was not depicted with sufficient weight to the truly evil choice she was making. Everytime there has been a similar scene in previous Treks I can think of, it was either an example of that person at their lowest and they come to regret it, or that character was just evil and yet to be revealed as such, like Captain Fake Trump from Discovery Season 1. Maybe that is where this will go, but because Picard is serialized, we just won’t find out for five episodes. Sigh.
Picard, Beverly, and Riker all felt wildly out of character throughout these episodes to me, which is not necessarily a problem if the point is to establish that these characters have been changed in the years since we have seen them last, but what is a problem is that they did not feel internally consistent to this show itself. Like Picard is constantly pushing for aggressive, dangerous action here and saying we cannot be afraid of loss - this being a man who spent the last two decades doing nothing because he fucked up saving the Romulans once, and then went on a huge adventure to save a single life. Picard typically is a more peace and diplomacy guy, not a shoot first guy, and at no point did he become an action guy in the last two seasons - although he was an action guy in the movies, making this season almost feel like it could be set before the other two seasons.
Riker, however, is normally an action guy, and when we see him in Season 1, although he is retired and although it is post the death of his son, he is not afraid at all of the danger Picard brings to his doorstep and insists on helping - and gave the vibe he would have jumped straight into action at the drop of a hat if Picard asks - which he then does at the start of this season! Yet as soon as the shit hits the fan, he is cringing at danger while Picard yells at him to man up, flips out at Picard for pushing him and claims that Picard doomed them all, even though he was the one who ordered the launching of the torpedos which backfired - which again, feels like something Riker would never do - and then has to apologize when it turns out Picard was right. The point that is is all a reaction to his son’s death makes sense, the issue is the fact that its not consistent, which drains the weight of the change.
Beverly, on the other hand, has been going on space adventures her whole adult life. She was definitely one of the most safety conscious members of the crew of TNG, but the idea that she would get pregnant and then immediately cut Picard off because he lives too dangerous of a life feels out of character and like something an eighteen year old girl who got pregnant might do after her boyfriend ships off to war before she can tell him, not like a fifty year old grown woman whose baby daddy is in his mid seventies and who ends up retiring anyway in just a few years. On top of that, she then starts living the life of a pirate doctor outside of Federation lands, stealing medical supplies and giving them to the poor, an incredibly risky lifestyle that guaranteed puts her and her son in far more danger than chilling with Picard on a galaxy class starship or in his vineyard would expose them to. However, she then ends up siding with Picard for endorsing the risky maneuver to escape without undergoing -any- character growth between the scene where she tells off Picard for being a danger junky. Like Deanna, she feels like she is (unintentionally?) echoing misogynistic tropes here and is clearly in the wrong for depriving her son a relationship with his father, but they can’t even keep how she has changed straight or consistent.
I’m gonna end on two minor, silly complaints. First of all, they say that all changelings need pots to dissolve into to rest, as part of a plan where Seven will find the pot, analyze the residue, and then scan for the shapeshifter. The pot that Odo had, however, was given to him by his Bajoran father, and he later stops using it in favor of just flopping in a puddle in his room to rest, and its noted as character growth, him feeling comfortable enough to just be himself, establishing that no pot is necessary. But okay, maybe if they leave residue behind, it makes sense that ones who are hiding might want a pot to contain said residue and limit the chance of them being discovered. But even if thats the case, why would the pot these undercover shapeshifters use look identical to the Bajoran designed one Odo used? I mean, the real reason for that is so we as viewers can recognize it, so, okay, fine, I’ll let it pass. But then, after Seven finds the pot, she just fucking bumps into the shapeshifter?!? Like, why did we even need this whole pot plot point then? Its them tossing in a reference solely for the sake of a reference, but it makes no sense on its face, less sense if you are a lore nitpicker, and then ultimately isn’t even narratively necessary. This should have been cut. Normally I’m forgiving about things like this, saying, well it doesn’t really matter they made a minor lore mistake, but because it doesn’t even make sense in context and was narratively unnecessary, I actually feel this rises to a level of something that outright needed to have been cut or rewritten. Okay, maybe that is an overstatement, I feel silly just saying that, but still.
The other thing I wanted to say was just when they were surfing the energy wave, each and every actor looked like they were orgasming. Was that the stage direction they were given? Because it sure seems like it.
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