Season 01, Episode 02 - Maps and Legends

Season 03, Episode 07 - Dominion

You know, I’m so sad right now about all the wasted potential in the Picard series, but one thing I keep thinking about is that we never really had any interaction between Data and Soji, huh

And I keep thinking about Lal, about how Data was such a good dad to her, and how sad her death was…

And yet no one tells this android man that he has a daughter that is alive and well??

Star Trek owns me money for that.

Anyway this review I read last month about the sixth episode could be applied to the whole season. Grave robbery, indeed, the finale and the decaying Borg cube making it quite literal

You know, the thing that pisses me off the most about the Enterprise finale is not Trip’s terrible death, or that the crew doesn’t even have a proper POV during their finale episode. Sure, these things makes me very angry, but the one thing that makes me see red, you know what it is?

It’s the presumption that if the franchise were to be given a goodbye to a not known lenght of time, the ones who had to send it off had to be the TNG crew and none of the other series deserved this honor, as if the other ones - even the Enterprise crew, the one show doing the goodbye - were not worth it.

I’m having a similar feeling watching the third season of Star Trek: Picard, considering they wrote off the entire cast of the series, with the exception of Raffi and Seven. It does feel like once again the TNG crew is kicking out the cast of the original show to insert themselves in there at the end.

But it’s not the same because it’s a Picard series and Picard was the main TNG character!

Yes, I see this point, somewhat agree with it but. It’s not the same. Because this is Picard twenty years after his captain years, and it’s about who he is now. We saw him make new friends, a new family in the two previous seasons, and this is now all cast out, as if it was all worthless.

And you see, I’m not actually against the inclusion of the TNG crew in Picard’s last season. I think it makes sense to include them; they are Picard’s family, after all, and Nemesis left several loose ends. What I’m against is the exclusion of the original cast, when they should have been kept IN ADDITION to the TNG crew being brought back.

But it’s too many characters to write about!

Deep Space Nine had NINE main characters (Sisko, Dax, Kira, Bashir, Odo, O'Brien, Quark, Jake, Worf), three main antagonists (Dukat, Winn, Female Founder) and a TON of supporting cast (Garak, Damar, Leeta, Rom, Nog, Morn, Keiko, Kasidy, Ziyal, Martok, Weyoun, Vic Fontaine…) and they managed to juggle it all just fine. More than fine.

But they have to work with much less episodes!

I see this point. It’s true; only ten episodes it’s not a lot of time when there used to be 26 episodes per season, but you know what? It’s still a body of work with almost ten hours of duration. This is just a little less than the hours of the LOTR trilogy, and see the size of the universe and the storylines you’re capable of creating with roughly the same timeframe.

If they focused on what matters and if they were to write it well, it is more than possible to juggle many characters and do a good work while you are at it.

Elnor should have been in this season; he could be a foil to Jack, since he sees Picard as a father figure. So should have been Soji, especially now that Data is back; I think he deserves to know he has a daughter. They never should have gotten ridden of Rios. Borg Queen Agnes is very plot relevant, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

I’m glad that Raffi has been in this season and its a joy to see her with Worf, but it leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth that her romance with Seven seems dead to me. Trek has a terrible record with queer characters, and Seven and Raffi are the first lesbian couple in the whole franchise (and the only main ones apart of Jennifer and Mariner in Lower Decks), and even if they had highs and lows, at least season two bothered to give them time together and interactions. They barely were in the same room together during this season.

The constantly barbs to the early seasons like the way Troi and Riker talked about their home life, the way they ignore Borg Queen Agnes whole existence… this season seems do disdainful of its predecessors, and even if they were full of flaws, this seems so unfair to me. Especially when this season have such a a weak plot being held together only by the talent and the charisma of the TNG crew, it’s really not a good look. The story is weak, it’s repetitive, it doesn’t make sense when you think about it for too long.

And you know what it’s sad? Man, I LOVE the TNG crew. In fact I love TNG; apart from Deep Space Nine, it’s my favorite Star Trek series. I prefer it even over TOS. It makes me sad to see them being brought together again so messily, and in detriment of everything the Star Trek: Picard series had previously established, especially when you can see the ways it could have been good.

Star Trek: Picard

Dominion (3x07)

 I spoke about this before in my liveblogs, but I do think that, as sad as it is to witness it, the estrangement of the TNG crew does make sense, in-universe.

In the Trek universe, the two most tight-knit crews imo are the TOS and the TNG. These are the ones who stuck longer together - decades - and had very impactful relationships with each other.

And then we see them again in Picard, and they have this air of estrangement from each other, like they really didn’t get together for a long while, and I get why.

It’s because they lost Data.

Data’s essentially immortal nature was talked about several times in TNG. It was a constantly worry of his, that he would outlive all his human friends and stay alone. Everyone expected Data to be the last one standing, and suddenly they had to face the reality that he was the first one of them to go.

Grief can sometimes pull people closer together so they can share the pain together, but the problem here is that, well, this is not in Picard’s nature.

He blamed himself for Data’s death. Almost two decades later and he kept dreaming about Data, wishing their time together wouldn’t end.

He’s haunted by Data’s death, and spent over twenty years feeling this way.

And ultimately, he was haunted by the guilty of Data sacrificing his life for his own.

And in true Picard fashion, what all this guilty, all these feeligns of grief made him do?

It made him pull away from everyone who had essentially become his family for twenty years.

We saw bits of it before. He couldn’t even remember well the first time he saw Will and Deanna’s firstborn, and apparently he only saw him twice since his birth and him being five.

In this season, we learned that he and Beverly spent over twenty years having zero contact with each other, and Worf also remarked recently about Picard’s distance:

When he first saw Geordi’s daughter, it had been so long that he didn’t even recognized her.

And having Picard distance himself from them like this obviously made something shatter involving everyone else. First they lost Data, and Picard, everyone’s surrogate dad, pulls away; this is the family breaking up.

Will and Deanna had their son and his disease to worry about; Beverly was afraid of having her son involved with the trouble that follows Picard everywhere and pulled away from everyone else in her fear.

Geordi had lost his best friend of well over twenty years and resolved to dedicate himself totally to his work and his famly, too afraid to lose this family like he lost the other one.

It all goes back to Data, and how his death utterly shattered the sense of family they gained over the years, how it made Picard feel guilty and distance himself from everyone else, and how the literal loss of a member and the emotional loss of another made this once tight-knit crew become strangers to one another.

thinking that maybe the Changelings from Star Trek: Picard decided to heed Joseph Sisko’s advice

I liked this first episode, very promising, but we’ll see how the rest of the season goes. I mostly really liked the first season but the second was very frustrating and I hated how they got rid of almost all original characters, so we’ll see how this one develops.

I do think it’s a bit sad how the TNG crew seems to have grow so far apart, like, 20 years? Damn, that’s a long time to cut off contact. And even the rest of them, Picard not recognizing Geordi’s daughter… it’s kinda sad.

My personal theory is that Data’s death was the thing that tore them apart. In the first season, Picard was still very affected by Data’s sacrifice, still dreaming of him and feeling very guilty for the way he died, even so many years later, so maybe instead of being a memory of good times, getting together with the rest of the crew would only Picard that Data was no longer with them and why he was no longer there, so he stopped even trying.