Hey everyone! Happy Friday! How're you all doing today? I'm doing pretty well actually. So I'm going to have two reviews out for you today. The first is this one, where I'm going to be reviewing the second season of Star Trek: Picard now that the season finale has aired/dropped. The second is going to be my review of the pilot episode of the new series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. There will be spoilers for both of these reviews so if you're not caught up on season 2 of Picard or haven't watched the first episode of Strange New Worlds, then don't read these reviews until you do. With that out of the way let's get right into it with season 2 of Star Trek: Picard.
My history with this show has been mixed. Season 1 was good in execution and in premise, I just didn't care for how dark and violent it was. Season 2 was interesting in concept, but failed miserably in execution. Oh don't get me wrong, there are some things that I enjoyed about this season, but as a whole it was bad. Okay, bad might be the wrong word. This season was boring and pointless. Again, there were alot of good ideas in this season, it's just the way it was done with the time travel being the entire season, and how it tried to tie in to an event in Picard's childhood just didn't work.
Time travel has always been an element of Science Fiction that I've disliked. Mainly because it's not consistent from one series to the next. Even Star Trek's various incarnations doesn't have set rules for how the characters travel back through time or how their presence in the past will affect their own present. But, because up until this season, time travel has always been a one to two episode affair in every other Star Trek series and movie ever produced. And honestly, I had hoped that that would be the case this time. It wasn't. The entire season was set either in an alternate timeline, or in the past. And that's not Star Trek.
I don't mean that in the way that the idiots online have been wailing about since Star Trek: Enterprise debuted in 2001. I mean that because of the setting being the year 2024, only two years in the future from now, it feels more like a season of DC's Legends of Tomorrow or the series, Timeless or any other generic Sci-Fi show. And because the season is set in what is basically present day, the mental health stuff they were trying to do with Picard and his childhood trauma of seeing his mother hang herself because she was mentally ill, felt too realistic and not Star Trekkie enough. And I don't mean that to be insensitive. It's just other Star Trek shows, especially the last couple of seasons of Discovery, have handled the topic of mental illness alot better than this show did.
As those of you who have followed my blog for a very long time know, one of my friends committed suicide back in 2007. For those of you who are new to the blog, her name was Sarah and she suffered from severe mental health issues for years. We had been close during my final two years of high school, even after she'd been forced to transfer schools because she was getting bullied so bad and our principal was an idiot who only cared about his own image and success, and didn't care about us at all. And I can say that because I graduated 16 years ago and he's not my principal anymore.
My point in telling that story is that season 2 of Picard handled that poorly. Star Trek has done stories about suicide in the past, most notably the fourth season TNG episode, "Half a Life" where David Ogden Stiers played Timicin, a scientist who was required to undergo ritual suicide at the age of 60 according to the laws of his homeworld, Kaelon II. TNG also tackled suicide in the fifth season episode, "Ethics" where Worf is paralyzed and considers suicide as Klingons believe that disabled warriors are a disgrace to their families as they were not given the honor of dying. In that episode, Worf asked Riker to assist him, but Riker refused, as did Worf's son, Alexander. But here, it felt pointless and felt like Picard's guilt over his mother's death, despite the fact that he had nothing to do with it, could've been resolved in an episode or two at most. Not something to be dealt with over the course of the entire ten episode season. In fact the only episode where that plotline had any impact at all was the episode where Picard was in a coma following Dr. Adam Soong, played brilliantly by Brent Spiner, hit him with his car. And even then it was mostly included to make Picard, and the viewers realize that Maurice Picard, Jean-Luc's father, wasn't an abusive character. Except the way he handled his wife's illness was to lock her in a room by herself, was very much an abusive thing to do to someone with a mental illness. So yeah, that storyline was handled poorly because it's obvious that the writers have no clue about how to deal with mental illness and just forced it in, probably because Discovery did such a good job with that topic in it's third and fourth seasons.
I also didn't really care about Rios's storyline this season all that much. Cristobal Rios was one of the best part of Picard's first season and I got excited when it turned out he was going to get a new storyline this season. Except it turned out to be the stereotypical love story that you'd find on a show that airs on The CW and wasn't all that interesting if I'm being honest.
I realize I've been picking apart everything in this season so far. Because it's crap. But there are things that I really liked this season. Like Seven of Nine and her storyline. While I find it confusing why Starfleet refused to let Seven join on the basis that she's Borg when they let Icheb in, I do appreciate that we finally got the reason why Seven didn't join Starfleet when Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant in the series finale of Star Trek: Voyager, "Endgame". The immediate aftermath of Voyager's return home is such an untapped sector of Star Trek lore since the TV show never dealt with it aside from Janeway getting promoted to admiral, and Chakotay becoming the captain of the U.S.S. Prodigy, as we've seen so far in season 1 of Star Trek: Prodigy. And none of the novels that dealt with it are canon.
I also loved seeing John de Lancie back as Q and Whoopi Goldberg back as Guinan. We haven't seen Q since his appearance in the seventh season Voyager episode, "Q2", which aired a little over 21 years ago, and we haven't seen Guinan since Star Trek Nemesis came out in 2002. So I was glad to see both of them back in those iconic roles because they were both awesome parts of TNG.
I don't have anything to say about Agnes Jurati and the Borg Queen, because that storyline was also boring and pointless. Annie Wersching and Alison Pill did a wonderful job as both of those characters, but they had nothing to do but cause trouble for absolutely no reason at all. Same with Adam Soong, who, as antagonists go, kinda sucks. Even his descendent, Arik Soong from season four of Enterprise was a better antagonist than Adam was.
The big surprise this season happened in last night's finale episode. Wil Wheaton showed up as Wesley Crusher for a scene that didn't last for more than two minutes, and he didn't have any interaction with Picard, but having Wesley back after all these years felt good to me. Especially since next season we're getting Riker, Troi, Beverly Crusher, Worf, and La Forge back, and makes me hope that Wesley will be back again too.
Overall this was not a good season of television for me. Which is really disappointing because I had such high hopes for Star Trek: Picard when it was originally announced by Sir Patrick Stewart himself back in 2018. But for whatever reason neither of the first two seasons have worked for me, with season 2 just being really bad. I am going to watch the third/final season though because the rest of the characters I grew up with are coming back and I'm hoping that it'll be a fun ride instead of a third existential crisis for Admiral Picard. Because that's what this show has been, and it's sucked.
Alrighty that's it for me for now but I'll be back shortly with my review of episode 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Later.
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