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Star Trek: Picard
- Thread starter suspiciouscoffee
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Yes, but sans background sound effects 
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I think it's literally just a multi-splice of the First Contact music. If they haven't released it separately, I'd just align the opening credits track of the First Contact OST until it cuts, and then switch to the end credits music. I'd bet it's only 3 cuts. The starting bit could be the middle of the First Contact end credits, unsure.
This is where I should point out that using a movie-specific opening theme for your show demonstrates a real concerning lack of faith in your own composer. Goldsmith would always do (for end credits at least) Main Enterprise Theme followed by Movie-Specific Theme (in this case First Contact) followed by a reprise of the Enterprise Theme. For them to use a pre-existing Movie-Specific Theme, followed by specifically Goldsmith's Enterprise Theme Reprise, screams to me "We didn't like our old S1 and S2 Picard theme and didn't feel like making a cool new one so we'll just reuse old stuff". Did nobody think they could make a good enough S3-Specific Goldsmith-styled theme? Maybe Goldsmith was just that good.
Disclaimer: I love the First Contact theme, so at least they picked a good one.
This is where I should point out that using a movie-specific opening theme for your show demonstrates a real concerning lack of faith in your own composer. Goldsmith would always do (for end credits at least) Main Enterprise Theme followed by Movie-Specific Theme (in this case First Contact) followed by a reprise of the Enterprise Theme. For them to use a pre-existing Movie-Specific Theme, followed by specifically Goldsmith's Enterprise Theme Reprise, screams to me "We didn't like our old S1 and S2 Picard theme and didn't feel like making a cool new one so we'll just reuse old stuff". Did nobody think they could make a good enough S3-Specific Goldsmith-styled theme? Maybe Goldsmith was just that good.
Disclaimer: I love the First Contact theme, so at least they picked a good one.
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I know what you mean.
What about the opening few seconds though?
Its an immediate 'jump in' which isn't on the OST as far as I am aware? Did they play around with that?
What about the opening few seconds though?
Its an immediate 'jump in' which isn't on the OST as far as I am aware? Did they play around with that?
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The first half appears to be very very close to the opening track of First Contact's OST, but it has either been rerecorded or has an EQ on it to make it sound a little more fanfare-esque. The timpani are a dead giveaway that it isn't from some other OST.
The second half is from something else, either a new recording or some OST I'm not totally familiar with
Edit: I assume we're discussing this one:
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No, the opening credits which they actually put at the end of each episode.
The FC theme segues into TNG film theme, but my question is did they edit or re-record the first few bars to get the 'clean' direct opening straight into the FC theme.
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Comparing 1:40 in the First Contact End Credits to the Picard Season 3 credits, it sounds pretty darned identical. I bet they just added the timpani roll to give it a cleaner start and hide the fade.
Then at 0:30 in Picard it cuts to 2:41 in the end credits track
Then at 1:00 in Picard it cuts to about 4:12 in the end credits track
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(Apologies for jumping in the thread without having read the rest of it.)
S3 Episode 1-2 Thoughts
After trudging through Picard S1, I skipped S2; due to S3's strong reviews, however, I blind-bought its Blu-ray set. After two episodes, however, I'm extremely unimpressed. I hope it gets a lot better, because it's dreadfully dull crap so far. A few specific complaints:
- Beverly sent an encrypted subspace message... directly to an Enterprise D comm badge? Does Picard not have an email of sorts that would catch any incoming message? Otherwise, it sure was convenient he had an old badge in the room, and that it still held a charge! (I know, I know, it was just a cheap excuse to show the old uniform and prop.)
- More JJ Abrams-style insta-travel bullshit: the Titan leaves Earth and reaches the edge of Federation space in... two, maybe three hours? Even at Warp 9.9999 or whatever, this is insultingly fast. Especially when the lot of them had just discussed what an imposing detour the request trip would be.
- I was shocked to hear Captain Shaw call Picard a "former ex-Borg." That would obviously mean Picard had rejoined the Collective? Was that a S2 development? Was the double negative a typo, and no one involved was awake enough to catch it? Or are we supposed to think Shaw's a moron?!
- Oh, kewl, Seven threatened to throw Picard out the airlock, and never look back. The Seven I know from Star Trek: Voyager would have been repulsed to see her future self indulge in such juvenile macho posturing. Now, fine, characters can change over time... but if the current Seven has repudiated her former Borg-like cool-headedness to that extent, why does she not call herself Annika, or some other name? Either have Seven willingly ditch the name Seven of Nine, writers, or else let her retain some semblance of composure, eh?!
- After meeting Beverly's self-professed son, Riker urges Picard to "do the math," given they haven't heard from Beverly in 20 years. I guess Riker needs some of Geordi's ocular implants, because that guy is not younger than 20 years old. (The actor was in his mid-30s during filming.) Or maybe Beverly and Picard's genitals were so old, this new kid was born looking like an adolescent?
- Evil Cackling Lady makes an unmistakable threat of weapons fire against the Titan. Nobody yelled "Shields up!," so I assumed the shields were already raised. But then she used her tractor beam to throw the shuttle at the Titan, and Shaw called for... the shields to be raised. Is this guy supposed to be a moron? And then, after the collision, he asked aloud what had happened, and LaForge had to explain said event. So he is total a moron, right? How did he make captain?!
- Evil Cackling Lady gives Shaw one hour to hand the Crusher lad. Shaw, whose whole deal is that he's obsessively by-the-book, doesn't task his staff to come up with contingency plans for running or fighting. Instead, he just stews around looking pissy, and waits for Picard to have two separate chats with the guy. Shouldn't a by-the-book captain always be asking his staff for plans and suggestions? What a freaking moron!
- So Worf shows up and kills the hell out of a bunch of dudes, including a criminal with lots of underworld contacts. Maybe the building was lined with isodesium or something, and they couldn't all have been transported to a holding facility. But are there no stun grenades in the 25th century? Whatever, slaughter is kewl, I guess.
In short: after two whole episodes, almost nothing has happened, and nearly all that has happened has sucked ass. I seem to recall that on TNG Picard met a son he never knew he had, shared several emotional scenes with him, and then learned it was a false alarm... all in one episode. I don't remember how good it was, but it must have been better than this.
S3 Episode 3-5 Thoughts
Well, after a disastrous first two eps, Picard S3 made a big improvement to mere mediocrity with eps 3-4. So, I set a course for ep 5 ("Imposters") last night, and hoo boy, we're back to the manure chamber again. Picard and Riker forget all about Beverly's admonition to trust no one in Starfleet after taking care of... one Changeling. Really? They should have locked down the Titan and demanded extensive medical/security screenings for the extant crew, not to mention anyone coming on board. But no, everything's cool now, apparently. Shaw has lost several crew members to a murdering infiltrator, but is still making snippy quips about how he can't wait for Picard and Riker to leave, displaying no sense of shock or chagrin at all.
Raffi and Worf go back to the Techno-Grunge Neighborhood set for the third or fourth separate time, hooray. Was the whole season filmed on four or five sets?! Meanwhile, the writing and direction is persistently off - not only does dialogue keep re-explaining the last two spoken lines, whether spoken by the same character or not, but we also frequently get shots of Stewart making a dismayed face a full moment or two after somebody says something they were clearly about to say, which makes Picard look positively doddering.
Then, despite learning that Changelings can evade the simple "lightly cut yourself" test, Picard and Ro manage to send her off in a shuttle with two Changelings, which gets her killed immediately. Great work, professionals! Everybody on this show is an idiot in a dark room, and it's incredibly tiresome.
If not for the fact that I'm still somewhat curious to see how the whole old cast comes together, and what nonsense the writers contrived to drag Spiner and Moriarty back, and that I already bought the Blu-ray set, I'd blast this season and show out the airlock forthwith. I'll stick it out, but I can't imagine not eBay-ing it away as soon as this unpleasant slog ends, even if I only get a handful of beans for it.
S3 Episode 6 Thoughts
I actually kinda liked this episode. It wasn't great, and the lighting is still too damn dim throughout, but it was fairly decent. Finally!
S3 Episode 1-2 Thoughts
After trudging through Picard S1, I skipped S2; due to S3's strong reviews, however, I blind-bought its Blu-ray set. After two episodes, however, I'm extremely unimpressed. I hope it gets a lot better, because it's dreadfully dull crap so far. A few specific complaints:
- Beverly sent an encrypted subspace message... directly to an Enterprise D comm badge? Does Picard not have an email of sorts that would catch any incoming message? Otherwise, it sure was convenient he had an old badge in the room, and that it still held a charge! (I know, I know, it was just a cheap excuse to show the old uniform and prop.)
- More JJ Abrams-style insta-travel bullshit: the Titan leaves Earth and reaches the edge of Federation space in... two, maybe three hours? Even at Warp 9.9999 or whatever, this is insultingly fast. Especially when the lot of them had just discussed what an imposing detour the request trip would be.
- I was shocked to hear Captain Shaw call Picard a "former ex-Borg." That would obviously mean Picard had rejoined the Collective? Was that a S2 development? Was the double negative a typo, and no one involved was awake enough to catch it? Or are we supposed to think Shaw's a moron?!
- Oh, kewl, Seven threatened to throw Picard out the airlock, and never look back. The Seven I know from Star Trek: Voyager would have been repulsed to see her future self indulge in such juvenile macho posturing. Now, fine, characters can change over time... but if the current Seven has repudiated her former Borg-like cool-headedness to that extent, why does she not call herself Annika, or some other name? Either have Seven willingly ditch the name Seven of Nine, writers, or else let her retain some semblance of composure, eh?!
- After meeting Beverly's self-professed son, Riker urges Picard to "do the math," given they haven't heard from Beverly in 20 years. I guess Riker needs some of Geordi's ocular implants, because that guy is not younger than 20 years old. (The actor was in his mid-30s during filming.) Or maybe Beverly and Picard's genitals were so old, this new kid was born looking like an adolescent?
- Evil Cackling Lady makes an unmistakable threat of weapons fire against the Titan. Nobody yelled "Shields up!," so I assumed the shields were already raised. But then she used her tractor beam to throw the shuttle at the Titan, and Shaw called for... the shields to be raised. Is this guy supposed to be a moron? And then, after the collision, he asked aloud what had happened, and LaForge had to explain said event. So he is total a moron, right? How did he make captain?!
- Evil Cackling Lady gives Shaw one hour to hand the Crusher lad. Shaw, whose whole deal is that he's obsessively by-the-book, doesn't task his staff to come up with contingency plans for running or fighting. Instead, he just stews around looking pissy, and waits for Picard to have two separate chats with the guy. Shouldn't a by-the-book captain always be asking his staff for plans and suggestions? What a freaking moron!
- So Worf shows up and kills the hell out of a bunch of dudes, including a criminal with lots of underworld contacts. Maybe the building was lined with isodesium or something, and they couldn't all have been transported to a holding facility. But are there no stun grenades in the 25th century? Whatever, slaughter is kewl, I guess.
In short: after two whole episodes, almost nothing has happened, and nearly all that has happened has sucked ass. I seem to recall that on TNG Picard met a son he never knew he had, shared several emotional scenes with him, and then learned it was a false alarm... all in one episode. I don't remember how good it was, but it must have been better than this.
S3 Episode 3-5 Thoughts
Well, after a disastrous first two eps, Picard S3 made a big improvement to mere mediocrity with eps 3-4. So, I set a course for ep 5 ("Imposters") last night, and hoo boy, we're back to the manure chamber again. Picard and Riker forget all about Beverly's admonition to trust no one in Starfleet after taking care of... one Changeling. Really? They should have locked down the Titan and demanded extensive medical/security screenings for the extant crew, not to mention anyone coming on board. But no, everything's cool now, apparently. Shaw has lost several crew members to a murdering infiltrator, but is still making snippy quips about how he can't wait for Picard and Riker to leave, displaying no sense of shock or chagrin at all.
Raffi and Worf go back to the Techno-Grunge Neighborhood set for the third or fourth separate time, hooray. Was the whole season filmed on four or five sets?! Meanwhile, the writing and direction is persistently off - not only does dialogue keep re-explaining the last two spoken lines, whether spoken by the same character or not, but we also frequently get shots of Stewart making a dismayed face a full moment or two after somebody says something they were clearly about to say, which makes Picard look positively doddering.
Then, despite learning that Changelings can evade the simple "lightly cut yourself" test, Picard and Ro manage to send her off in a shuttle with two Changelings, which gets her killed immediately. Great work, professionals! Everybody on this show is an idiot in a dark room, and it's incredibly tiresome.
If not for the fact that I'm still somewhat curious to see how the whole old cast comes together, and what nonsense the writers contrived to drag Spiner and Moriarty back, and that I already bought the Blu-ray set, I'd blast this season and show out the airlock forthwith. I'll stick it out, but I can't imagine not eBay-ing it away as soon as this unpleasant slog ends, even if I only get a handful of beans for it.
S3 Episode 6 Thoughts
I actually kinda liked this episode. It wasn't great, and the lighting is still too damn dim throughout, but it was fairly decent. Finally!
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S3 Episode 7 Thoughts
Well, after a pretty decent episode six, Picard 3.7 was terrible again. Having the score lie to the audience by playing the Voyager theme when non-Tuvok passes the first test was a cheap, unworthy move, but that's the least of the problems.
No, the episode turns out to be a remake of the wildly overrated and howlingly stupid Skyfall, where Q plugged a known superhacker's computer into the MI6 network, and, surprise! Things went tits up. This time, LaForge plugs Data/Lore into the main Titan network, despite knowing full well he's half Lore. Gee, what could possibly be inadvisable about that?!
As for adapting Skyfall's third-act Home Alone homage, our heroes decide to foil an existential threat to the Federation with... a few force fields to isolate a boarding party. Wow, really creative and thrilling writing, writers. What's even more insulting, from a storytelling perspective, is that this actually pretty much works! As in, if not for LaForge's idiocy, the overall plot might well have had a major turning point toward victory that easily.
And then, no to be outdone, Seven joins in on the Stupid Party by turning her back to a dubiously empty turbolift which, surprise, actually contains more Changelings! Changelings that either poof into non-existence from a single phaser shot or take multiple hits with no apparent effect, depending solely on storytelling convenience!
Arrrrrgggggghhhhhh
My Picard S3 Pitch Meeting
Producer Guy: "So, you have a final season of Picard for me?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Yes, sir, I do! So, we open on a small ship of Beverly Crusher's, who's listening to Picard's log from 'The Best of Both Worlds', in a clever bit of foreshadowing."
Producer Guy: "Why is it clever? Is there a reason Beverly would be listening to this log?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Kinda? She's presumably checking her memory about something called 'Hellbird,' which Riker explains was the extremely metal name they gave to a Borg computer virus that infected the D's navigation systems. But yeah, it's mostly just plain foreshadowing."
Producer Guy: "A Borg computer virus? That must have been a pain to fix."
Screenwriter Guy: "Actually, it was super easy, barely an inconvenience! The virus just added the number 3 after every other integer, so all they had to do was reverse that."
Producer Guy: "That sounds like something Data could do in a matter of seconds. So why'd they give it such a dramatic name?"
Screenwriter Guy: "I dunno, maybe Data was going through a Led Zepplin phase, or something."
Producer Guy: "A very dramatic android!"
Screenwriter Guy: "Yeah yeah yeah! Anyway, Beverly and her late-teenage son (who we definitely shouldn't hire a mid-30s actor for) are wandering, do-gooding medical mavericks, but they're being chased by masked baddies, and-"
Producer Guy: "Wait, Beverly has another son?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Yeah, turns out she and Picard conceived a son sometime after Nemesis, and she was so afraid that his enemies would target him, she completely ghosted him, and all their Enterprise friends."
Producer Guy: "Family and child murder is something Starfleet heroes have to worry about? Isn't that wildly out of tone for Star Trek?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Yeah, just like frequent and gratuitous swearing, apparently people have been trying to kill Picard all the f****ing time just offscreen all along. As in, once every few months, at least."
Producer Guy: "So Beverly just completely dropped off the map, and Picard never demanded any kind of explanation, or sought confirmation she was still alive, despite the fact that he was actively being targeted for assassination, and they were now doing sex to each other?"
Screenwriter Guy: "That's what we're going with, yes. Anyway, the Borg steal Picard's dead human body from a top-secret facility, because, as mentioned in 'The Best of Both Worlds,' they did some genetic modification to him, and now they need that information for a brand-new plot to assimilate humanity!"
Producer Guy: "They don't have that information on file from when he was Locutus? And even if they don't, they've assimilated countless humans over centuries; what makes Picard's genetics so special?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Um... Midichlorians, I guess? Remember, Star Trek is pretty much knockoff Star Wars now, right down to Jack Crusher Jr. being a secret Palpatine, just like Rey, but with the Borg Queen's lineage."
Producer Guy: "Okay, fine, let's just skip to the end. What's the big climax?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Oh, it's super dramatic! Picard faces off with the galaxy's ultimate villain, the Borg Queen! The OG one, not the one from last season!"
Producer Guy: "You mean the one that got killed during 'The Best of Both Worlds' via a retcon, killed again in First Contact, and spanked by the Voyager crew several times, including a time when Janeway got herself assimilated on purpose? The one who has never once killed a main cast member, unlike such one-offs as Armus and Shinzon?"
Screenwriter Guy: "That's her! And she's really dangerous this time, because she can't even walk now!"
Producer Guy: "Um, okay... So, does she kill anyone important this time?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Just Shelby, probably, but we even leave ourselves wiggle room there. Anyway, the Enterprise-D flies through her cube, and blows it up from the inside!"
Producer Guy: "A Borg Cube has enough empty space for a Gala-"
Screenwriter Guy: "Hey, Millennium Falcon, shut up! Don't make me call Praetor Kurtzman on you!"
Producer Guy: "No, please, God, forget I said anything! So, I assume the Queen loses, but does Picard do anything interesting?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Well, he offers himself to the Queen, in order to take Jack's place. It's very dramatic!"
Producer Guy: "Didn't he already do that with Data in First Contact? And wasn't it already a kind of ripoff of Luke offering himself to the Emperor then?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Praetor Kurtz - "
Producer Guy: "Sorry! I'm just kind of worried this sounds like we're just doing First Contact and Return of the Jedi again, with a dash of Rise of Skywalker, too, without adding anything new at all."
Screenwriter Guy: "Yeah, but the old heroes will all do stuff together, and they'll all survive, so the fans will be happy this time! We definitely won't have a pissy Mark Hamill situation on our hands we'll have to clean up with a deepfake later."
Producer Guy: "Wow wow wow wow wow... wow. So, does the former Borg and series main cast member Seven do anything interesting in all this?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Not really, no! She's just kinda there."
Producer Guy: "Okay. And what about Picard's Romulan girlfriend?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Poker Game Finale! That's how the other show ended! Please clap!"
S3 Final Thoughts
Though well-acted all around, the first eight episodes of S3 were a mostly tedious, grimdark slog. Vadic was a genuinely nasty and unpleasant villain, and the extended focus on her gleeful cruelty was just as inappropriate for Trek as the frequent and gratuitous swearing. The two-episode finale was somewhat enjoyable, but absolutely nothing in the season was at all original or thought-provoking. I grew up with TNG, and it's of course great to see the cast still whole hale and hearty, but to what end? They already had a perfect finale with "All Good Things," and, though the movies were of course uneven, I never thought the characters needed another graceful sendoff just to satisfy us fans. Sure, Nemesis was deeply flawed, but it had a charming if too-brief Riker/Troi wedding, and Data's wake was touching and well-done.
The season's inciting incident - Crusher deciding not to tell Picard about his son - is unforgivable, I think. It may not quite be rape, but it's not much different, and it casts a sour pall over the whole shebang. (Just imagine if Picard had used Crusher's DNA to create and raise a child without her knowledge.) Granted, it gave Stewart and McFadden much meatier drama to perform than if, say, Jack had come from a parallel universe and gotten stranded in our timeline, but while that would have been soap opera sci-fi silliness, the overall plot was piffle anyway, and such a gimmick wouldn't have betrayed Crusher's character. (At least in the case of Crystal Skull, one can imagine that Indy and Marion had an unpleasant break-up, or that he ghosted her, before she realized she was pregnant.)
So, what did we get? An eight-hour generic starship invasion/hostage ordeal, followed by a rehash of First Contact mixed with Return of the Jedi, all of which is far less thought-provoking that a single quality TNG episode such as "I, Borg." (Not to mention, "Q Who?" treated the loss of eighteen unnamed Enterprise crew with more gravity and somberness than any of the countless fatalities here.) Given the constraints of scheduling, the need for pew-pew-pew action, and the cast's demands for emotional red meat, maybe this was the best possible result - but if that's the case, I can't say the juice was worth the squeeze. Maybe the cast and their schedules wouldn't have tolerated a much sillier, more light-hearted story, such as, Q's son from "Q2" forcibly re-assembling the crew for "Qpid"-style fun and games, in yet another attempt to measure up to his father, but I'd have greatly preferred such a tale. Grimdark, mindless Trek, even with this legendary cast, is just not something I'm interested in.
Heck, I personally would have preferred something entirely different from the group. Say, they could play senior employees of an elite wedding planning company, arranging the ultimate, epic nuptials for a prince or billionaire mogul, and their roles could reflect, but not be anchored to, their Trek characters. Stewart could be the CEO, Frakes the head chef, Sirtis the lead counselor, Burton and Spiner in charge of construction, Dorn the security guy, McFadden the family doctor, etc. Hijinks and hilarity could abound!
In conclusion, if we count the two-part finale as a TNG movie on its own, Generations is still my favorite, likely followed by First Contact, this in third place, and the other two tied for last. That said, I may eventually look on this finale a bit more kindly if I revisit it again without the bitter aftertaste of the prior eight eps.
S3, episodes 1-8 grade: D
Two-part finale grade: C+
Overall S3 Grade: C-
Well, after a pretty decent episode six, Picard 3.7 was terrible again. Having the score lie to the audience by playing the Voyager theme when non-Tuvok passes the first test was a cheap, unworthy move, but that's the least of the problems.
No, the episode turns out to be a remake of the wildly overrated and howlingly stupid Skyfall, where Q plugged a known superhacker's computer into the MI6 network, and, surprise! Things went tits up. This time, LaForge plugs Data/Lore into the main Titan network, despite knowing full well he's half Lore. Gee, what could possibly be inadvisable about that?!
As for adapting Skyfall's third-act Home Alone homage, our heroes decide to foil an existential threat to the Federation with... a few force fields to isolate a boarding party. Wow, really creative and thrilling writing, writers. What's even more insulting, from a storytelling perspective, is that this actually pretty much works! As in, if not for LaForge's idiocy, the overall plot might well have had a major turning point toward victory that easily.
And then, no to be outdone, Seven joins in on the Stupid Party by turning her back to a dubiously empty turbolift which, surprise, actually contains more Changelings! Changelings that either poof into non-existence from a single phaser shot or take multiple hits with no apparent effect, depending solely on storytelling convenience!
Arrrrrgggggghhhhhh
My Picard S3 Pitch Meeting
Producer Guy: "So, you have a final season of Picard for me?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Yes, sir, I do! So, we open on a small ship of Beverly Crusher's, who's listening to Picard's log from 'The Best of Both Worlds', in a clever bit of foreshadowing."
Producer Guy: "Why is it clever? Is there a reason Beverly would be listening to this log?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Kinda? She's presumably checking her memory about something called 'Hellbird,' which Riker explains was the extremely metal name they gave to a Borg computer virus that infected the D's navigation systems. But yeah, it's mostly just plain foreshadowing."
Producer Guy: "A Borg computer virus? That must have been a pain to fix."
Screenwriter Guy: "Actually, it was super easy, barely an inconvenience! The virus just added the number 3 after every other integer, so all they had to do was reverse that."
Producer Guy: "That sounds like something Data could do in a matter of seconds. So why'd they give it such a dramatic name?"
Screenwriter Guy: "I dunno, maybe Data was going through a Led Zepplin phase, or something."
Producer Guy: "A very dramatic android!"
Screenwriter Guy: "Yeah yeah yeah! Anyway, Beverly and her late-teenage son (who we definitely shouldn't hire a mid-30s actor for) are wandering, do-gooding medical mavericks, but they're being chased by masked baddies, and-"
Producer Guy: "Wait, Beverly has another son?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Yeah, turns out she and Picard conceived a son sometime after Nemesis, and she was so afraid that his enemies would target him, she completely ghosted him, and all their Enterprise friends."
Producer Guy: "Family and child murder is something Starfleet heroes have to worry about? Isn't that wildly out of tone for Star Trek?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Yeah, just like frequent and gratuitous swearing, apparently people have been trying to kill Picard all the f****ing time just offscreen all along. As in, once every few months, at least."
Producer Guy: "So Beverly just completely dropped off the map, and Picard never demanded any kind of explanation, or sought confirmation she was still alive, despite the fact that he was actively being targeted for assassination, and they were now doing sex to each other?"
Screenwriter Guy: "That's what we're going with, yes. Anyway, the Borg steal Picard's dead human body from a top-secret facility, because, as mentioned in 'The Best of Both Worlds,' they did some genetic modification to him, and now they need that information for a brand-new plot to assimilate humanity!"
Producer Guy: "They don't have that information on file from when he was Locutus? And even if they don't, they've assimilated countless humans over centuries; what makes Picard's genetics so special?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Um... Midichlorians, I guess? Remember, Star Trek is pretty much knockoff Star Wars now, right down to Jack Crusher Jr. being a secret Palpatine, just like Rey, but with the Borg Queen's lineage."
Producer Guy: "Okay, fine, let's just skip to the end. What's the big climax?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Oh, it's super dramatic! Picard faces off with the galaxy's ultimate villain, the Borg Queen! The OG one, not the one from last season!"
Producer Guy: "You mean the one that got killed during 'The Best of Both Worlds' via a retcon, killed again in First Contact, and spanked by the Voyager crew several times, including a time when Janeway got herself assimilated on purpose? The one who has never once killed a main cast member, unlike such one-offs as Armus and Shinzon?"
Screenwriter Guy: "That's her! And she's really dangerous this time, because she can't even walk now!"
Producer Guy: "Um, okay... So, does she kill anyone important this time?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Just Shelby, probably, but we even leave ourselves wiggle room there. Anyway, the Enterprise-D flies through her cube, and blows it up from the inside!"
Producer Guy: "A Borg Cube has enough empty space for a Gala-"
Screenwriter Guy: "Hey, Millennium Falcon, shut up! Don't make me call Praetor Kurtzman on you!"
Producer Guy: "No, please, God, forget I said anything! So, I assume the Queen loses, but does Picard do anything interesting?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Well, he offers himself to the Queen, in order to take Jack's place. It's very dramatic!"
Producer Guy: "Didn't he already do that with Data in First Contact? And wasn't it already a kind of ripoff of Luke offering himself to the Emperor then?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Praetor Kurtz - "
Producer Guy: "Sorry! I'm just kind of worried this sounds like we're just doing First Contact and Return of the Jedi again, with a dash of Rise of Skywalker, too, without adding anything new at all."
Screenwriter Guy: "Yeah, but the old heroes will all do stuff together, and they'll all survive, so the fans will be happy this time! We definitely won't have a pissy Mark Hamill situation on our hands we'll have to clean up with a deepfake later."
Producer Guy: "Wow wow wow wow wow... wow. So, does the former Borg and series main cast member Seven do anything interesting in all this?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Not really, no! She's just kinda there."
Producer Guy: "Okay. And what about Picard's Romulan girlfriend?"
Screenwriter Guy: "Poker Game Finale! That's how the other show ended! Please clap!"
S3 Final Thoughts
Though well-acted all around, the first eight episodes of S3 were a mostly tedious, grimdark slog. Vadic was a genuinely nasty and unpleasant villain, and the extended focus on her gleeful cruelty was just as inappropriate for Trek as the frequent and gratuitous swearing. The two-episode finale was somewhat enjoyable, but absolutely nothing in the season was at all original or thought-provoking. I grew up with TNG, and it's of course great to see the cast still whole hale and hearty, but to what end? They already had a perfect finale with "All Good Things," and, though the movies were of course uneven, I never thought the characters needed another graceful sendoff just to satisfy us fans. Sure, Nemesis was deeply flawed, but it had a charming if too-brief Riker/Troi wedding, and Data's wake was touching and well-done.
The season's inciting incident - Crusher deciding not to tell Picard about his son - is unforgivable, I think. It may not quite be rape, but it's not much different, and it casts a sour pall over the whole shebang. (Just imagine if Picard had used Crusher's DNA to create and raise a child without her knowledge.) Granted, it gave Stewart and McFadden much meatier drama to perform than if, say, Jack had come from a parallel universe and gotten stranded in our timeline, but while that would have been soap opera sci-fi silliness, the overall plot was piffle anyway, and such a gimmick wouldn't have betrayed Crusher's character. (At least in the case of Crystal Skull, one can imagine that Indy and Marion had an unpleasant break-up, or that he ghosted her, before she realized she was pregnant.)
So, what did we get? An eight-hour generic starship invasion/hostage ordeal, followed by a rehash of First Contact mixed with Return of the Jedi, all of which is far less thought-provoking that a single quality TNG episode such as "I, Borg." (Not to mention, "Q Who?" treated the loss of eighteen unnamed Enterprise crew with more gravity and somberness than any of the countless fatalities here.) Given the constraints of scheduling, the need for pew-pew-pew action, and the cast's demands for emotional red meat, maybe this was the best possible result - but if that's the case, I can't say the juice was worth the squeeze. Maybe the cast and their schedules wouldn't have tolerated a much sillier, more light-hearted story, such as, Q's son from "Q2" forcibly re-assembling the crew for "Qpid"-style fun and games, in yet another attempt to measure up to his father, but I'd have greatly preferred such a tale. Grimdark, mindless Trek, even with this legendary cast, is just not something I'm interested in.
Heck, I personally would have preferred something entirely different from the group. Say, they could play senior employees of an elite wedding planning company, arranging the ultimate, epic nuptials for a prince or billionaire mogul, and their roles could reflect, but not be anchored to, their Trek characters. Stewart could be the CEO, Frakes the head chef, Sirtis the lead counselor, Burton and Spiner in charge of construction, Dorn the security guy, McFadden the family doctor, etc. Hijinks and hilarity could abound!
In conclusion, if we count the two-part finale as a TNG movie on its own, Generations is still my favorite, likely followed by First Contact, this in third place, and the other two tied for last. That said, I may eventually look on this finale a bit more kindly if I revisit it again without the bitter aftertaste of the prior eight eps.
S3, episodes 1-8 grade: D
Two-part finale grade: C+
Overall S3 Grade: C-
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hbenthow
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@Gaith How many of those issues do you think could be fixed with a fanedit? I know that several people have made fanedits of season 3 of "Picard" (ExuberantRaptorZeta made one that especially sounds interesting), but I'm not sure how much (if at all) any of them fix the issues that you pointed out.
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^ There's definitely a fair amount of minor trimming that could be done to the first eight episodes, IMO, to tighten up the pace and remove redundant dialogue. And one could probably make a movie of the last two eps, minimizing the ultimately unnecessary Seven stuff. Still, all the core problems and limitations would remain.
(I also find it weird that the Blu-ray eps have pauses for commercial breaks. I wouldn't want studios to remove historical pauses from shows that originally aired with them, and for streaming subscribers with plans that include commercials, pauses with fades are doubtless preferable to abruptly jumping to ads. But I'd think that streamers would want to make the ad-free streaming versions (and any Blu releases) without pauses, and keep the versions with pauses for the commercial streaming plans as alternate cuts. But that's a very minor, almost cosmetic, issue, and I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that the Blu-ray sets exist at all.)
(I also find it weird that the Blu-ray eps have pauses for commercial breaks. I wouldn't want studios to remove historical pauses from shows that originally aired with them, and for streaming subscribers with plans that include commercials, pauses with fades are doubtless preferable to abruptly jumping to ads. But I'd think that streamers would want to make the ad-free streaming versions (and any Blu releases) without pauses, and keep the versions with pauses for the commercial streaming plans as alternate cuts. But that's a very minor, almost cosmetic, issue, and I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that the Blu-ray sets exist at all.)
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Just finished the series. So did season 3 just totally ignore season 2?
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From what I've heard, I don't blame them. It sounds like a terrible story. Most of my Trek knowledge is from RLM though...
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They filmed seasons 2 and 3 concurrently and the showrunner had to switch to S3 full time in the middle. Rest of season 2 got made by committee and you really can tell. We didn't even finish it at the time, had to watch the ending of S2 right before S3. Which unfortunately soured the vibe a little. Still, S3 was considerably better even if I don't agree with every choice.
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For the most part, which is fine by me. Season 2 is shit. Best to ignore it.
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Indeed. Terry Matalas worked on the first two episodes and the last episode before taking two thirds of the writers to S3, leaving Akiva Goldsman and Marc Bernardin in charge of the writers that remained. Goldsman split much of that time between S2 and Strange New Worlds, so yeah, lots of committee work.
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Makes sense considering there’s like 30 different producers and executive producers and associate producers credited. There’s definitely a committee at work
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Much as I love the man, the real creative lead on those first two seasons was Patrick Stewart, who mandated "no Starfleet, no uniforms, no TNG reunion." He had big things to say about the dehumanisation of migrants and xenophobia and had those themes worked into S1, and then wanted to explore the childhood trauma he suffered at his father's hands in S2. And for the most part, it just wasn't very good.
S3 has its issues, but it did exactly what most fans were asking for and what Picard should have been all along.
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Jack tells Q he thought Q had died, and Captain A**hole mentions the weird recent stuff with the "not-real Borg." That's all I can think of offhand.
Nah, a well-written show about Picard assembling a rogue, non-Starfleet crew and having adventures without the support and might of the Federation would have been better than the zero-innovation wankfest of S3. I would rather they'd found a way to address Stewart's social issues concerns without tearing down the Federation - say, he could get trapped in some alternate universe, and decide he might as well stick around, and do the most good he can there instead of going back to a utopia that doesn't need him - but the series' mediocre-at-best writing was always its fatal flaw.
I actually did watch the two-part finale again, and liked it even less than the first time around. It's not as awful as the first eight eps, but it's a weak-ass rehash of First Contact and Return of the Jedi (which had already heavily influenced First Contact itself). Insurrection and Nemesis aren't great by any means, but it lacks the adventurous, gentle TNG-flavored spirit of the former, and the genuinely interesting Tom Hardy performance of the latter. As its own TNG movie, I've got to put the S3 finale dead last. It's not terrible, but it's certainly not good, either.
Hey now, why didn't I think of this?! This is intriguing... next step, deepfake Stewart's voice...
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What you propose had already been done in the 2009 movie and in Discovery at that point.
While your issues with S3 are on point, I didn't say anything about what was better, I said S3 was what fans were asking for.
Nobody asked for a pathetic, bitter, dying Picard. Nobody asked for a non-Starfleet crew of misfits and rogues in a spaceRV. Nobody asked for the return of Data to be teased only to have him ask to be euthanised.
All fans ever wanted was to see the old crew have one last hurrah and ride off into the sunset. They were begging for nostalgia and fan service. Whether it was good was optional, it just had to be a more fitting send-off than the crew moping over Data's death.
The results speak for themselves – the then-highest viewing figures of a modern Trek show, the most critically-acclaimed season of a modern Trek show, the second-best fan scores of any modern Trek season on almost every aggregator, and the best-selling season of any modern Trek show.
Does it hold up beyond the nostalgia bait? Not really. It's flawed as fuck. But it did what Star Trek hadn't done – Lower Decks aside – since it returned in 2009 and threw the older fans a bone.