S03.E10: Part Ten - The Last Generation

[supposebly]

21 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

1. If you are a TNG fan, seeing the old crew together again is huge and having the references to their old adventures, the same. Speaking personally, I liked the cast of S1 and 2 well enough but they just didn't have the chemistry of the TNG crew.

2. Although there aren't the sort of gaping plot and logic holes in S3, S2 does quite lag a bit in places.

3. This season has almost no social commentary and a  lot of pew-pew starships fighting. S2 had a lot of social commentary and not a lot of starship combat. So certain fans are going to prefer this season on those fronts.

Thanks for that summary. It sounds I would actually prefer S2 over this. TNG is one of my lower rated Trek shows and I don't really care all that much about that crew, so I don't watch this one for nostalgia, more for Patrick Stewart and even more for Santiago Cabrera 😉. I really liked the new crew in S1 and I don't really care about the pew-pew (lol!) parts of the show. That's not why I watch Star Trek.

To get this back on topic: At the end there, I got really confused how the changelings and the Borg even got together or what the changelings even got out of the deal. Did they get assimilated alongside? Should I care about this stupid plot? Probably not. Granted, I had a hard time paying attention to the speechifying and plot dumping at the end there.

I got really tired of Locutus/Picard being the most special Borg of them all even back then. I always found that irritating since that's not what they were supposed to be about in my mind. I could live with a Borg queen since this seemed more like a bee-like conglomerate but with a super-special drone? Just, no.

So, having a too old son of Picard being the most special Borg of them all, was just....ugh. I'm still not clear, did they want Jack for his DNA or the Queen just wanted another special drone to play with?

I hate that on TV there are so many unwanted pregnancies. And now we get them even in the future! Get better birth control, FFS!

And pet peeve from this linguist, no, accents are not hereditary. Language develops based on input, Beverly! Such a stupid comment.

I could rant more, but I think that would be counterproductive.

[Affogato]

On 4/26/2023 at 9:11 AM, Francie said:

All too often with this show it was the women who were being overlooked and disregarded. Kestra's well-being was treated as an afterthought that had to be clarified on social media. The show runners want credit for creating two "legacy" children, but they put all their focus and effort upon Jack and completely neglected to give Sidney any substance. And I agree, Alandra existed to placate Levar Burton (not that I blame him for wishing Geordi to have a second daughter or his being proud of his daughter's inclusion as the portrayer of that character). 

I think the showrunners thought they wrote the women well because they had 'bad ass' women fighting and being all physical, and Beverly got to launch torpedoes, and Troi got to fly the saucer, and there were a lots of women on the Titan bridge. But the female bridge members weren't fleshed out characters, and being bad ass to me isn't the same as being well-rounded. Seven's story seemed to be limited to her displeasure at being dead-named. (Though she then turned around and called Data a "robot," which was kinda like, 'well, I guess your concern for properly addressing people only goes one way.' But I'll disregard that as bad writing and a cheap joke foisted upon her.)

 

I remember thinking the first season of TNG showed promise, even as it was panned by others. Then Roddenberry passed on and it became the linear, patriarchal show that it remains to this day. Deanna was on the bridge to make coffee and smooth emotions, Guinan is kind of a mother figure, Beverley was mostly valued as a mother and to hand out bandaids, and in general the female characters were not well rounded, were not both flawed and capable of good things, and in general fit into the standard female stereotypes of our age, and it remained a mostly white, male cast, with Picard as a father figure. You would think, in this day and age (and only because it is talked about a lot) that they would have made a stronger effort towards diversity for Picard-the-show. Majel Barret was the only woman that came off really well, and she probably had something in writing. 

I learned to like Worf better in DS9, which was also no paragon of diversity, but managed to make the people it had strong, well rounded characters.

They should have given Troi a bigger role to play over the season, she deserved it, and Beverley could have had a better role, if they were going to call them back at all.

I also kind of felt that when they pulled Data back in Season 2 of the original show it was a shame. We should have had the opportunity to see Spiner show us what it was like to use experience to learn to be a real boy. Not a chip.

So, yeah, I have a lot of issues with the show, considering that it was/is supposed to be a forward thinking show that showcases the best of what humanity might become.

[Francie]

On 4/30/2023 at 11:30 AM, Chit Chat said:

We finally found it on YouTube.  We assumed it could only be seen through Paramount Plus, so we didn't bother to look for it anywhere else.  Thanks again!

You're very welcome. I'm glad I was able to contribute something positive to this board. :)

[millennium]

A lot of this felt hollow, like a big, expensive house with little or no furniture inside.  The endless formations of starships poised to destroy Earth were devoid of menace and seemed about as threatening as Asteroids dropping in an old Nintendo game.

I disliked the low-budget approach to the new Borg look.  Why spend all that money on implant make-up?   Fer chrissakes, just draw some varicose veins on their faces, will ya?   Not Jack though -- put Jack in one of the old-style Borg get-ups with the red laser pointer.  I know it doesn't make sense but fuck it.

Bad, bad form to have Picard say "Guinan has been giving us the side-eye" but not have Guinan in the scene.   He may as well have said, "The waitress is giving us the side-eye."   If they were in Ten Forward, Guinan should have been there and on-camera.

Cringey for Jack to say at the end "Lay in a course for the Matalas system ..."  I mean, really?

I guess we were supposed to feel pumped up when the TNG heroes rallied to save the day, but the only moment I felt something approaching that was when Seven of Nine appeared leading the Titan survivors in a firefight to re-take the bridge.   She was the only true badass on this show.   Give that woman a show all her own, with a brand new cast.   I'll even propose a Season One story arc free of charge -- Seven Of Nine is ordered to hunt down and destroy Michael Burnham and the crew of Discovery.

Riker has developed quite the sense of humor.  He made me laugh twice:  "Do you even hear yourself?" after Worf proposed he would "make it a threesome."  And the unexpected, "He still batshit?"

Raffi did not make me laugh at all.

 

Some further reflections:

Bringing Q in post-credits was another dumb move.   Q was the instrument that introduced the Borg to the Federation.   If this was the final showdown between humanity and the Borg (but not really because Season 2), Q should have been on hand to wrap it up with a nice bow.

Booooo! to the show for billing Amanda Plummer as the big bad, then canning her mid-season.   Although I suppose all her idiosyncratic flourishes might have overshadowed the, um, workmanlike acting of the TNG crew.

Wondering: Does this version of Data have the memories of his death in Nemesis?

[Sake614]

Personally I loved the whole season. Was some (a lot) of it contrived? Ham-fisted? Sure. But it reunited TNG right down to the poker game, so I guess I’m easily pleased.

the one thing that confused me about the Borg is…at the end of S2, didn’t they all agree to work together? The doctor became the new borg queen and they were Allies. So did I blink and miss something? When did it all fall apart and the Borg became the big bad again?

[Prevailing Wind]

9 minutes ago, Sake614 said:

When did it all fall apart and the Borg became the big bad again?

When the writers decided to ignore season 2.

[Sake614]

1 minute ago, Prevailing Wind said:

When the writers decided to ignore season 2.

And the canon of TNG movies where Picard and Crusher were married and divorced.and didn’t have a kid. Although Jack is a cutie 😀

 

[DrBriCa]

On 5/11/2023 at 5:04 AM, millennium said:

Wondering: Does this version of Data have the memories of his death in Nemesis?

He seemed to remember events leading up to it, but presumably not the actual final moments. We know he uploaded his memories into B4 shortly before his death, and those were likely the memories that were then included into the new android body.

On 5/30/2023 at 9:02 AM, Sake614 said:

the one thing that confused me about the Borg is…at the end of S2, didn’t they all agree to work together? The doctor became the new borg queen and they were Allies. So did I blink and miss something? When did it all fall apart and the Borg became the big bad again?

The showrunner answered this in tweets and other media as noting that the Jurati-Queen was not integrated into the main Borg collective and apparently spent her time apart from them until she could emerge for the events seen at the beginning & end of Season 2. (She apparently was very observant of the Temporal Prime Directive!) Her small collective is distinct from the Borg encountered by Picard & Janeway.

On 5/30/2023 at 9:15 AM, Sake614 said:

And the canon of TNG movies where Picard and Crusher were married and divorced.and didn’t have a kid. Although Jack is a cutie 😀

Picard & Crusher were only shown as married-then-divorced in the future Q showed Picard for "All Good Things..." The movies never really touched on their relationship status since the finale and instead favored reuniting Troi & Riker in the last 2 movies.

[rmontro]

On 4/30/2023 at 12:35 PM, supposebly said:

I got really tired of Locutus/Picard being the most special Borg of them all even back then. I always found that irritating since that's not what they were supposed to be about in my mind. I could live with a Borg queen since this seemed more like a bee-like conglomerate but with a super-special drone? Just, no.

That always bugged me also.  I never quite bought into that.  

I finished the series today, I guess that's the end of TNG, with all the included nostalgia most people could want.  I enjoyed it, although I wish the writing had been a little stronger.  I probably found the Worf character to be the most interesting, I liked the way they had advanced his character.

[millennium]

Been thinking about this series lately.   I can't fathom how given a golden opportunity to write the final chapter of an iconic figure like Jean Luc Picard, the writers turned this series into a steaming pile of shit.   I can't understand how or why Patrick Stewart went along with it after all his advance hype about how this Picard would be so very different.   In the end, the only difference was the quality, which was so far below TNG that it felt like a Sci-Fi Channel production.

I haven't watched it since the series ended.   There are no great "moments" that stand out in my memory.   Instead there's Alison Pill belting out "Shadows of the Night" in one of the biggest WTF scenes of the series (seconded only by the young Jean Luc as Oliver Twist episode).   There's the writers' apparent ignorance or blatant disrespect for canon (fake Guinan's bar being called "Ten Forward" 200 years before there was a Ten Forward).  Raffi dulling down every scene she was in.   The casual and unconvincing disposal of main characters (first Dahj, then Soji, El-Nor, Rios, Agnes Gerardi), the lazy lazy LAZY Picard-has-an-unknown-son plotline.   The mind-numbingly-bad storyline of Season Two.  Another asshole Soong.  The squandering of Q's return.   And so on.

Even The recruitment of the TNG cast for Season 3 didn't couldn't save Picard.  All it managed to accomplish IMO was to be a painful reminder of what good Star Trek used to look like.

The ONLY good thing about Picard was the continuing story of Seven Of Nine.

I had looked forward to this show for so long, never content with the send-off Picard received in Nemesis.   I religiously followed all the articles and announcements in the run-up and during filming.   Who could have imagined it would turn into such a shitshow?

I wish Picard had never happened.

[millennium]

Quote

Paramount+ is rumored to have tossed around ideas for you to reprise your role, à la Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: Picard. Is that something you would entertain? 

Leonard [Nimoy] made his own decision on doing a cameo [in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek]. He’s there for a moment, and it’s more a stunt that Spock appears in a future. If they wrote something that wasn’t a stunt that involved Kirk, who’s 50 years older now, and it was something that was genuinely added to the lore of Star Trek, I would definitely consider it.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/william-shatner-interview-star-trek-career-1235851602/

 

Bill, please see my post above.

 

[Affogato]

On 12/26/2023 at 10:05 PM, rmontro said:

That always bugged me also.  I never quite bought into that.  

I finished the series today, I guess that's the end of TNG, with all the included nostalgia most people could want.  I enjoyed it, although I wish the writing had been a little stronger.  I probably found the Worf character to be the most interesting, I liked the way they had advanced his character.

I wish it had not become a TNG nostalgia piece at the end, although that may have been a hail mary save for the show and many people reacted as if that was what they wanted. I am not, in retrospect, finding it a memorable show. 

On 3/18/2024 at 8:00 PM, millennium said:

 

Bill, please see my post above.

 

Personally I’d love Kirk and the old Gorn, playing more video games. 

[millennium]

3 hours ago, Affogato said:

I wish it had not become a TNG nostalgia piece at the end, although that may have been a hail mary save for the show and many people reacted as if that was what they wanted. I am not, in retrospect, finding it a memorable show. 

Sir Patrick gave interview after interview emphasizing that viewers should not expect to see the same Picard after twenty years.   I suppose I let my imagination get the better of me.   I hoped for a retired Picard who is perhaps on some distant world on an archaeological dig, uncovering an artifact of universal yet deeply personal significance, and the journey it takes him on from there.  I was picturing a show with the resonance of Inner Light or Tapestry, in which he's confronted by the choices of his life and the short time he has remaining, with themes like the insignificance of one man against the backdrop of the universe vs. the good that one man can do.  Instead, we got ... Raffi.  And Harry Treadaway.   And a shameless (but not sham-less) redux of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.   Retconning.   Data dying AGAIN.  Preposterous film school psychodrama with little Picard as Oliver Twist.  Yet another iteration of "I am your father ..."   Beverly with a bad haircut.   And in-your-face-we're-gonna-do-this-just-because-we-can fuckery like Shadows of the Night and Kirk's body mothballed in some sad Starfleet facility.

I no longer entertain any illusions that Star Trek will ever be done right again, on Strange New Worlds or anywhere else.   Picard disabused me of that notion but good.

The only positive thing I can say about Picard is that as bad as it is, it still isn't as awful as Discovery.

[Affogato]

35 minutes ago, millennium said:

Sir Patrick gave interview after interview emphasizing that viewers should not expect to see the same Picard after twenty years.   I suppose I let my imagination get the better of me.   I hoped for a retired Picard who is perhaps on some distant world on an archaeological dig, uncovering an artifact of universal yet deeply personal significance, and the journey it takes him on from there.  I was picturing a show with the resonance of Inner Light or Tapestry, in which he's confronted by the choices of his life and the short time he has remaining, with themes like the insignificance of one man against the backdrop of the universe vs. the good that one man can do.  Instead, we got ... Raffi.  And Harry Treadaway.   And a shameless (but not sham-less) redux of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.   Retconning.   Data dying AGAIN.  Preposterous film school psychodrama with little Picard as Oliver Twist.  Yet another iteration of "I am your father ..."   Beverly with a bad haircut.   And in-your-face-we're-gonna-do-this-just-because-we-can fuckery like Shadows of the Night and Kirk's body mothballed in some sad Starfleet facility.

I no longer entertain any illusions that Star Trek will ever be done right again, on Strange New Worlds or anywhere else.   Picard disabused me of that notion but good.

The only positive thing I can say about Picard is that as bad as it is, it still isn't as awful as Discovery.

I agree about Picard.lI like Discovery. Go figure.