Star Trek: Picard Broke My Heart

star trek picard should have been a home run a revival of the legendary star trek the next generation mythology starring one of trek's most beloved captains but after a shaky and i think that's being kind season one picard became one of the star trek franchise's biggest disappointments in season two this time it's an unintelligible jumble of time travel cue magic mirror universe quasi-alternate realities and conflicting showrunner explanations about how it all works picard season 2 isn't just disappointing it's downright negligent and it's storytelling so let's break down this show of a season why it's insulting to the star trek fan base how any of it could have been fixed and why i'm slowly losing hope that anything redeemable will come out of this series this thing you're doing to picard it's how you're hoping to find meaning in your life as you can probably tell i'm a big star trek fan and specifically i'm a massive star trek the next generation fan your resistance is hopeless number one so when they announced a new show starring captain picard back in 2018 jean-luc picard is back i was excited but cautiously so i hope it's great and i love captain picard but there is the uh the part of me that's trekkadacious about this show not doing um what it i don't want it to be not good and that caution turned out to be warranted because i thought star trek picard's season one was as i said my review at the time star trek at its best and worst i thought that i looked appropriately finished there however one of my favorite things about star trek has always been it's until recently lack of cynicism it's a show that embraces the idea that hope and a brighter future are always just a star system away and underneath it all in season one struggling to break free was that hopeful message i love so much the past is written but the future is left for us to write and we have powerful tools reals openness optimism and the spirit of curiosity and that's how season one ended for me i hoped we could leave the grim dark of the first season behind for a new series chock full of hope and exploration oh you sweet sweet idiot part one picard's secret so let's start at the beginning of season 2 where we find jean-luc picard not in space but lonely in his vineyard picard is lonely in his vineyard because the story requires that he be lonely in his vineyard even though at the end of the last season he was rejuvenated and ready to go on more space adventures this is just one part of a larger trend that i absolutely hate looking to bring back legacy characters to your franchise be sure to make their lives as sad as possible like han and leia losing their son to the dark side and becoming alienated from each other in the force awakens or luke skywalker becoming a miserable bastard on an island after his jedi school went up in flames in the last jedi or sydney prescott being menaced twice more by ghostface and screamed for and scream not the original scream but the new one or sarah connor seeing her incredibly important son john savior of humanity brutally murdered in front of her and terminate her dark fate i saved three billion lives but i couldn't save my son all of these are characters who were given perfectly good satisfying endings that were all undone in order to bring them back it's good for the reboot but it also makes any kind of happy ending or ending of any sort hard to believe in any movie or tv show nowadays it's a win-lose situation where the studios win money and the audience loses patience as we've seen over nearly four decades captain picard has had countless close friends and meaningful relationships but he is now apparently afraid to let anyone truly love him because he can't forgive himself due to a tragic secret from his past first of all i refuse to believe that picard wouldn't have told anyone about this life-altering tragedy the first episode even establishes that he's never told this to his closest friend gynon what happened in there that you and i have never talked about i can buy the picard never told his secret to his first officer riker they were close but like weren't close i can maybe buy that he never told beverly crusher his series long potential romantic interest though bonding over loss would have been a huge step forward in their relationship it begins to stretch credibility that he was able to keep this secret from his ship's empathic counselor deanna troy who would certainly have picked up on this grief and trauma in their years serving together and was always very passionate about the importance of confronting your emotions it's all right these things captain it's not all right but i do find it very hard almost impossible to believe that picard would never have told his closest friend about this big part of his past you know an awful lot about me believe me in the future the tables will be turned in order to go forward let's reveal this dark secret that jean-luc picard has carried for his entire life because it is the key to this season's arc as it is as we find out over several episodes jean-luc picard's mother was a huge influence on her son's life but also suffered from clinical depression picard's father tried to keep her from harming herself by locking her in her bedroom but young jean-luc unlocked the door because he thought she was being held prisoner and he wanted to help her picard's mother went on to commit suicide by hanging herself in the family solarium and for his entire life the starfleet legend has blamed himself for his mother's death and subsequently doesn't feel worthy of being loved obviously it seems weird that such a major life event and one of star trek's most iconic characters has never been mentioned but we also don't know a lot about captain picard's mother she's mentioned very few times on the show and the most we really ever known about her is that captain picard took piano lessons to please her you still play no i regret that i gave it up it used to please my mother but she did make one appearance in a season one episode called where no one has gone before as an illusion that only picard can see you look tense jon come and have a cup of tea this does seem to create a problem because yvette picard commits suicide as a young woman in this show but appears on tng as an old woman picard does try to solve this inconsistency i used to imagine seeing her older offering me a cup of tea and asking for a chat wow what a weirdly specific imagination and it still doesn't explain why picard's randomly older imagined version of his own mother speaks with a french accent and not an english one promise me you will ignore the coldness of a dying star as what you say is the end of the universe but this is really systemic of a larger point which is that the writers of picard could have centered this season around any kind of secret it could have even been a return to the guilty feels at the deaths he caused when he was assimilated into the borg collective which the next generation visited powerfully right after it happened if you spit a kill that's a destroyer i couldn't stop them i should have been able to stop them instead the writers decided to go for the cheap and easy stakes of a dead parent a broadly tragic event so heinous that it's the backstory of about 85 of superheroes and it's absolutely needless why cause problems for yourself as a franchise by involving picard's mother which raises inconsistencies with previous canon and requires a major character to keep a secret from even his closest friends when you could have had it be anything this also stands counter to things picard himself has said and done in the past this is from a tng episode called the bonding which is specifically about a young boy who loses his mother it is part of our life cycle that we accept the death of those we love jeremy must come to terms with his grief he must not cover it or hide away from it our time in this universe is finite that is one of the truths that all humans must learn but this kind of thing is a running theme for the season of star trek picard as we'll see the writers create problems for themselves by taking the easiest road available when they could have done much more work to make a richer story without logical or canonical inconsistencies it's a lack of care that moves this season from frustrating to maddening so many wrinkles so many disappointments part two the return of the queen season two really gets underway when picard is called back into space after a rip and space-time opens and begins broadcasting a distress call asking for picard's help an unknown entity that can open and close a hole in space-time wants to join the federation and apparently we'll only talk to you about it now see this is classic trek stuff a mystery in space that needs solving and only one man can do it it's a riff on the enterprise constantly being the only ship in the sector any other ships in that sector negative commander are there any other ships in the vicinity we're the closest you're the closest ship so i want you to go and hear what he has to say so captain now admiral picard goes to space and boards a refit version of his first command the stargazer there's actually been some confusion as to whether this stargazer is the same ship that picard commanded as established in the next generation or a completely new ship with the same name the older these refits get the younger they look unlike myself picard's showrunner terry matalis said in an interview with trekmovie.com that quote it's a massively updated refit we thought of it as a vessel endlessly repaired and upgraded brought in line with current future tech so that somewhere underneath all the lights and polish are the bones of a card's original ship does it make sense i don't know but i sure like the spirit of it as we'll see going forward the phrase does it make sense i don't know appears to have been a common question and answer in the picard season 2 writer's room before picard can get too comfortable on his old slash new ship a borg ship comes through the space-time rift and soon none other than the board queen herself beams on board the bridge so here's a case where something only makes sense the first time you watch it the board queen beams over and she's completely disguised including this helmet covering her face because we later find out that this board queen is actually an alternate future version of dr jaradi who will merge consciousnesses with the old board queen in the course of these time travel hijinks it's important to also note that we find out later that the board queen slash jaradi's purpose is humanitarian in nature to save the galaxy from an impending disaster by our calculations the only way to protect the quadrant is to harmonize the fleet shields with our own that's why you asked for me you needed someone with authority you could trust of course instead of saying any of this the board queen instead phrases things in the vaguest and most threatening terms possible we wish for peace but first we require power keep in mind in addition to transmitting a message asking for picard's help the borg also transmitted the entire starfleet article requesting membership in the federation the balance of the message is the entirety of article 15. there was ample opportunity to explain what was happening but instead the borah queen decided to sound as evil and cryptic as possible and this is one thing that bugs the hell out of me a script that requires characters to be intentionally vague in order for a misunderstanding to occur that the plot requires it's basically the same trope that sets up the third act of every rom-com oh man now i kind of wish this season was a picard-q rom-com we're just friends q nothing more and we're still friends anyway picard sets the star gazer to auto-destruct in order to stop the board queen and then the ship explodes i think it's important to note here that if the omnipotent being q hadn't intervened this would have been the end of captain picard and would have made the next nine episodes really tough to fill but q does intervene because picard finds himself back in his own vineyard in some sort of alternate future same day same time different harvest now if you're not familiar with q he's a godlike being who can make pretty much anything he wants happen with the snap of his fingers he first appeared in the pilot episode of star trek the next generation and was a recurring character through the series and the franchise often putting picard and his crew through a series of tests and trials culminating in a test to determine the fate of all humanity in the tng series finale you accused me of being the representative of a a barbarous species i believe my exact words were a dangerous savage child race he's also played by actor john de lancie who made q one of the most popular star trek villains of all time largely because q is great at annoying captain picard but i feel like celebrating i don't this season may have been a lot more successful if the writers had trusted the time-tested cupid card formula to work but they didn't and instead season two also deals with one of the most complex parts of any science fiction mythology leading us to part three time trouble before we go further it may be useful to stop here and explore the difference particularly in star trek between an alternate timeline and an alternate reality alternate timelines occur when something is changed in the past that changes our character's future all earth history has been changed there is no starship enterprise spock and i will go back into time ourselves and attempt to set right whatever it was that mccoy changed for example in star trek first contact the borg traveled to earth's past and assimilate it resulting in the future of picard's enterprise being changed alternate timelines have to be fixed in order for our characters to return to a normal world but nothing before the time when something was changed is any different think 1955 and back to the future part two our only chance to repair the present is in the past at the point where the timeline skewed into this tangent an alternate reality or parallel universe is subtly different alternate realities exist apart from the timeline our heroes live in like in the original series episode mirror mirror which features an evil version of the enterprise where among other things spock has a goatee parallel universe coexisting with ours on another dimensional plane everything's duplicated or perhaps the most prominent alternate reality in the star trek franchise the kelvin universe which is where the new trek movies take place nero's very presence has altered the flow of history beginning with the attack on the uss kelvin culminating in the events of today thereby creating an entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party an alternate reality you can't fix alternate realities they are what they are you can only hope to escape them and return to your reality it's pretty much the same concept as the multiverse infinite versions of reality that you can hop in between but that don't need to be changed in order for you to return home the reason the new star trek movies have been able to play so fast and loose with established trek canon is because they are smartly set in an alternate reality separate from the main star trek timeline which is often called the prime timeline so is this new world that picard finds himself in an alternate reality that's its own thing or an altered timeline that needs to be fixed um that's a long story the setup in picard season 2 is very similar to what trek has explored many times before as a mirror universe a dark alternate reality here picard is the greatest general in the history of the confederation a brutal earth-based empire that has conquered and subjugated untold numbers of alien species and q offers picard a choice he can stay in this universe and live his life as a murderer or he can use this as a chance for forgiveness forgiveness for what i think you know oh look it's that lazy intentionally vague conversation style rearing its ugly head again what do you want kill oh i could tell you but you're far too clever to listen all of our crew gathers at confederation headquarters for a commemoration of eradication day marking the final victory over the borg and picard is set to celebrate by publicly executing none other than the borg queen the head of the board collective whom picard first encountered in his timeline in star trek first contact and wouldn't you know it it turns out that part of her highnesses borgness is a sensitivity to timeline disruptions the board queen has a kind of trans-temporal awareness it bridges into adjacent times realities what a convenient skill to have always definitely had this also somewhat complicates the show's premise because it establishes that this is not an alternate reality but an altered timeline which the show explicitly states this is not another reality this is our reality he went back in time and changed the present but we just watched picard explode in the timeline that we started the show in which means i guess that q rewound a little bit to undo that part then took the consciousnesses of the different crew members and threw them into the bodies of themselves which are already in the altered future of a past that q had already altered or was going to alter they have to stop q from changing the past basically and if you're asking why in the hell this has to be so damn complicated good question it's storytelling through complication miscommunication and retroactive continuity three of the worst forms of storytelling in my opinion through the board queen's temporal sensitivity which i'd like to underscore was always an ability that she possessed and was definitely not invented for this show she's able to pinpoint where the change occurred in the past that caused this dystopian future and it turns out to be a very budget-friendly era of human history 2024 that is the when where is the where calculating earth in los angeles there is someone there to help a watcher so everyone beams out and makes their getaway but not before eleanor is killed no not eleanor i just remembered who he was romulan legolas right isn't that elenor i honestly think the writers just didn't want to figure out how eleanor would hide his ears for a whole season and they were like eh whatever just kill him so using the slingshot around the sun method of time travel that has long been trek canon welcome to the earth of the 21st century and as this season is set pretty much in modern day and the crew is from a somewhat more advanced future we get lots of references to the ills of humankind hope meets hopelessness you're killing it 2024. yep that's now fire poisons the sky tree's gone water dry hey that's the environment truth is whatever you want it to be facts aren't even facts anymore oh fake news i hope you find him soon for ice makes sure you never do you know those yeah i feel like i do i'm not sure what that means is that are they are the borg ice is that are they the borg and listen social commentary in star trek is nothing new it's actually one of the things i admire the most about this franchise it's sci-fi with a conscience the original series addressed prejudice and racism during the height of the civil rights movement leave any bigotry in your quarters there's no room for it on the bridge the next generation took on gay and trans rights decades before it was commonplace on television or even in many parts of society i do not need to be helped i do not need to be cured what makes you think you can dictate how people love each other and sure the commentary wasn't always subtle i am black on the right side i failed to see the significant difference lokai is white on the rights all of his people are white on the right side but it was also usually seen through the prism of another species allegory and metaphor and i like that because it opens up the possibility that the message could actually get to people who might otherwise be turned off to it even the blatant save the planet message of star trek iv the voyage home is summed up mostly in one simple exchange 200 species to extinction is not logical whoever said the human race was logical and then the rest of the movie is a fish out of water romp through the 1980s double dumbass on you here the commentary is both lazy and thuddingly obvious yes modern society is barbaric by star trek's future standards and this point has been stated many times before but you can't deny that you're still a dangerous savage child race we still were when humans wore costumes like that 400 years ago is it depressing that the decline of civilization in the 21st century predicted by trex seems to be coming true yeah but i don't think that ham-fisted commentaries on ice pollution racism or fake news is gonna change any hearts and minds in short we get it slap on a badge put on a uniform you think you can treat people this way it's also around this time that we get a cutesy reminder that we are in the past of a future that's already sent main track characters back in time with a call back to this punk guy on a bus who got nerve pinched by mr spock in star trek 4. [Music] not only is this the same actor star trek 4 producer kirk thatcher but this mohawk punk seems to remember that he was assaulted in the 1980s by a time traveling vulcan i just like that song okay i'm sorry and this dear friends is where it all begins to utterly fall apart where the what ifs and maybes of whatever the show is trying to be completely dissolve and it becomes an utter mess and it all starts with part four gaining believing guyan to be a watcher the person who holds the key on how to fix the timeline the watcher is the only one who can help us the card seeks her out at the same los angeles bar she was tending in the 24th century at number 10 forward avenue and this is already a problem on star trek the next generation guyan intended bar on the enterprise d at a lounge called 10 forward but she didn't name it that it was called 10-4 because it was in the forward section of the ship on deck 10 and it was named that before she even came on board in season two counselor do you remember when i first came on board the enterprise there was a reception in turn forward i introduced you to wharf now in the future it's actually kind of nice that guyan has a bar at 10 forward avenue it shows that she valued her time on the enterprise and wants to incorporate it into her present but it makes no sense to have her tend the same bar in the past it would really only make sense if it was gainan who had named the bar in the enterprise ten forward in the future which she didn't it's another example of a nice subtle reference made in an appropriate place early in the show being used as a blunt weapon of nostalgia later on it's also yet again very budget conscious to trim down locations and reuse sets in multiple timelines gainen as we've established is an intimate friend of captain picard but not that kind of intimate you weirdos and they didn't just cross paths in the future they actually met on earth in the 19th century in an episode of star trek the next generation called time's arrow the enterprise crew travels back to the 1800s but a past version of gainan is already there and is friends with mark twain your suspicions madame gaiden are undoubtedly based upon your keen observational skills don't ask star trek the next generation established that gainan remembers meeting picard in the 1800s do you remember the first time we met of course don't be so sure so this version of gainan should be meeting picard here for the second time in 2024 right well who the hell are you old man this is where the timeline stuff gets really complicated because the show has confirmed that we are in the prime trek timeline where picard and gainen have already met this is not another reality this is our reality but the timeline alterations apparently wiped out their earlier meeting showrunner terry matalus told inverse quote this gainen wouldn't remember picard because in this alternate timeline the tng episode time's arrow never happened because there was no federation those events did not play out the same okay fine i'll play along by this definition we are in a past where no star trek characters have ever traveled back in time right that's what you're going with because there's just one problem the show already put in the winky cute nod to star trek four where this guy obviously remembers being neck pinched which means kirk and spock did travel back through time and the showrunner's explanation is uh how best can i put this horseshit now and i can't believe i'm saying this but in picard's defense showrunner terrymatalis told trekmovie.com quote technically star trek 4 wouldn't have happened in this alternate timeline but maybe some part of him remembers his encounter with spock in the prime timeline and it made me chuckle that he'd go up against seven of nine or to put it another way does it make sense i don't know and if this was the only hand wavy comment or explanation about something this season i might give him the benefit of the doubt and move on but as we'll see shortly it very much is not one thing that isn't explained though is why gainer needs to be convinced that the timeline has been altered we see that gainan doesn't realize that the timeline has changed until picard triggers something that's never been referred to before off-celt or time sickness a uniquely allorean condition that occurs only when the timeline has been affected but this further proves just how little the show seems to know or care about gainan's character because it's a completely meaningless plot device the guiding that we know and that should still be consistent across all realities and timelines would already know something was wrong because we've seen it in the tng episode yesterday's enterprise something very similar happens an earlier version of the enterprise comes through a rift in time which alters the future turning the federation into a war-like organization and the one crew member who realizes that something is wrong instantly is gaining what's the matter with the bridge it's not right it's the same bridge nothing has changed i know that i also know it's wrong so even granting the altered timeline explanations this bs time sickness thing shouldn't be necessary picard should have walked into the bar and said something's wrong with this timeline and gainan should have said yeah i know i felt it but that method doesn't allow her to wave a shotgun in an octogenarian's face and i'm going to use another word here it's all needless because gainan serves no functional purpose in this part of the story or really any part of this season's story picard thinks that guyan is the watcher he's looking for but she's not i am not your watcher and all she does is basically introduce picard to the real watcher you're looking for supervisor otherwise known as a watcher they're peppered through the galaxy assigned to protect the destiny of certain individuals gainen's only other appearance in the time travel portion of the season is in two later episodes where she and picard are pointlessly captured by the fbi they spend an episode in custody and then are released that's it that's the story it's another sign of the show's maddening dedication to empty fanservice you could have easily just had whoopi goldberg guest star at the beginning and end of the series she's great her rapport with patrick stewart is great the 10 forward reference is great but instead the writers just keep pouring more fan service into the show like kylo ren trying to obliterate luke skywalker if you'll forgive the franchise crossover and it just results in a messy overly complicated insulting confusing inconsistent mess okay all right breathe be like counselor troy and dr crusher doing their space tai chi relax deep breaths okay let's move on part five assignment uh so after the dead end with gainin we meet the real watcher who's actually known as a supervisor and it's picard's romulan quasi girlfriend larys paris well actually it's not you're not larys nope my name is talum but she looks like lariss only she's human except she's actually romulan so she's related to larys you could be an ancestor they they never really explained this talon's mission is to watch over one of picard's ancestors renee picard an astronaut who's about to embark on something called the europa mission where she'll find an organism on jupiter's moon io that's able to clean the ocean and heal the sky somehow they found a way to heal the ocean and clean the sky using an alien organism that his auntie renee discovered during the europa mission strangely it appears this organism was never used by starfleet to fix pollution on any other planet in the future they've managed to pollute their atmosphere pretty badly the only thing the filters can do is keep things from getting worse tallinn is apparently doing the same job as an original series character named gary seven who appeared in one original series star trek episode and some related star trek media kirk's enterprise cross paths with a human called gary seven he too was recruited by superior beings as an agent who would in your words protect the tapestry of history this is where i started to suspect that the show is trying to troll me personally because gary 7 is from what i consider to be one of the worst episodes of star trek certainly one of my least favorite it's an episode called assignment earth and it has one of the best slash worst opening vo plot dumps of any star trek episode ever captain's log using the light speed breakaway factor the enterprise has moved back through time to the 20th century ah you know screw those temporal rules let's just hop back in time to do some research what could go wrong this is actually all an excuse to make what's called a backdoor pilot using an established show to introduce characters that would then go on to have their own show gary 7 was supposed to be the lead character in a spin-off called assignment earth which gene roddenberry wanted to launch because it looked like star trek was going to be canceled after its second season and roddenberry wanted a second show on the air just in case purpose of mission to prevent earth civilization from destroying itself before it can mature into a peaceful society do you remember that episode of the us version of the office when we spent the whole episode on dwight's farm and we met a whole bunch of people in dwight's family that we'd never seen before and would never see again who is that jeb my brother you have a brother that was a backdoor pilot for a spin-off called the farm which never happened same thing with assignment earth it was the second season finale too can you imagine being a star trek viewer and getting a commercial for another show as the season finale it's honestly kind of shocking that trek got a third season at all captain we could say that mr seven and miss lincoln have some interesting experiences in store for them yes i think we could say that i guess it shouldn't be surprising that the writers of picard decided to hinge the entire season of this show on a character who was originally written as a cynical ploy to extend a franchise that was on its last legs because well how much worse could it possibly get a lot worse part 6 lotto rama picard season 2 like most tv shows should have had one or maybe two central story lines across its run but this season decides to introduce what seems like one or two per episode as the season wears on to begin with renee picard suffers from anxiety and depression in the very weakest of tie-ins to the other story we're tracking about picard's mother she too loved the stars and she too struggled and it appears that this is how q changed the past he somehow stopped renee from going on the europa mission which meant no life form was discovered the planet was never healed and the earth eventually became a warlike world that ruled the galaxy as tyrants but it's actually tougher for q than he could have planned because he can no longer do whatever he wants with the snap of a finger and that's because q the omnipotent omniscient all-powerful being is dying you're dying i knew you could kill each other but otherwise aren't you immortal so i believed so let's recap what's going on so far in the future we have a borg ship that seems determined to take over starfleet we have a dystopian future alternate reality slash alternate timeline depending on who you talk to where picard is a tyrant we have a time travel plot involving q picard's ancestor renee and a space mission and we have an unfolding mystery about a terrible tragedy in picard's past and that's not even mentioning rios's romance with a local la doctor rafi's guilt over eleanor's death and sevens there too think that's a lot to keep track of oh there's so much more since he can't make renee quit the space mission with his cue powers hugh first poses as her therapist to talk her out of going that's not a therapist that's cue but as a backup plan he also recruits adam sung an ancestor of nunian soon the scientist who would later build the android data adam soon is a deranged geneticist who's been banned from research because he's essentially been experimenting with eugenics his daughter cory is played by isabrionis the same actress who played several different identical androids last season and showed up as one of those androids earlier this season but is now playing a completely different character because picard seems determined to cast as many of the same actors playing different roles as it can to make this show as hard to follow as humanly possible who the hell are you want even more plot let's also throw dr gerardi into the mix she gets just a little too close to the dying board queen who's able to implant her consciousness inside gerardi's brain so the boar queen is now knocking around the good doctor's head cylon style only able to be seen and heard by jaradi if you don't shut up i will find a way to destroy you how about your pardon no sorry not for you all of this leads to a tragedy of the sixth episode where the show truly and finally falls completely off the rails as all of these disparate storylines collide in a fiery blaze of destruction it all starts at a big gala celebrating the upcoming europa mission which the gang has to infiltrate using mission impossible style tactics q apparently having given up the talk therapy option bribes adam soon to kill renee picard at this gala before she can go on the europa mission soon tries to do this by running renee over with his car but hits john luke picard instead womp womp this sends picard into a self-induced coma that lasts for an entire excruciating episode where he reimagines his own trauma as a fairy tale there was a queen with fiery red hair this is all resolved by the way when tollen uses her doctor who do dad to enter captain picard's mind ironically much like professor charles xavier would do in x-men to help picard unlock the truth behind his mother's death once i gain access to his mind i can hack into whatever memory or thought he's fixated on that is the most embarrassing use of hacking terminology that i've ever heard and i lived in real time through the release of the 1995 film hackers you want to be elite you got to do a righteous hack as if to distract from this horribleness we get the low point of the season and a serious contender for the lowest point in star trek history in order to distract security from apprehending the crew dr jaradi decides to treat the audience to a performance of and i am not messing with you pat benatar's 1982 hit shadows of the night [Music] on the one hand it is encouraging to find out that bangers like shadows of the night and the beastie boy sabotage endure into the 23rd and 24th centuries is that classical music yes doctor it would seem to be on the other hand this is ridiculous how did we get from gritty sci-fi drama about family trauma and preventing a genocidal future to being serenaded by the drummer of sexbabam this is not only embarrassing for the franchise it's pretty disastrous for gerardi because it turns out that endorphins are what allow the board queen to take over girati's body so instead of just having a karaoke doctor to deal with we now have a homicidal borg queen on the loose looking to start a new collective yay another subplot we're supposed to save the future but we might have just doomed it we need the card at this point in the season there are about four episodes left which is when you should start wrapping up stories not beginning new ones but we are past the point of no return here and some story storylines such as you know the main one with q largely take a back seat in favor of the season's new antagonist the borg queen a big chunk of these last few episodes is meaningless time filler involving side quests or new obstacles that must be overcome before the show mercifully comes to an end love can be a curse but always and completely it's a gift if i were going to write a list of people betrayed by this season i'd probably list star trek fans at number one but the borg would be a pretty close second the borg have been the coolest villains in star trek for a very long time because they are simply unstoppable free of human things like emotion or sympathy or reason they're like the terminators of the star trek universe it can't be bargained with it can't be reasoned with it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop ever well like eli cash on a mescaline bench what the writers of picard season two presupposes what if the borg aren't actually ruthless organisms in search of perfection what if the borg queen is just really unpopular this was never about perfection or evolution or any of that it was never enough because you're just like me lonely yep in an attempt to destroy nearly all of the next generation mythology gerardi is finally able to pierce the emotional armor of the board queen and realizes that the borg only want to rule the galaxy out of a desperate desire to be loved to get invited to space parties and make space friends so in order to do what starfleet has never been able to do namely destroy the borg and make them irrelevant girardi proposes merging consciousnesses with the borg queen to set out into the cosmos in an attempt to build a kinder gentler collective build a better board a real collective based not on assimilation but salvation your proposal is absurd yes but not entirely unintriguing no so in addition to being what's the proper word i want to use here uh stupid this is also a terrible idea when it comes to temporal mechanics because it creates a time travel scenario where either there were always two board collectives in the star trek universe and jaradi's was just like over there somewhere or in taking this action picard and company have now drastically altered the timeline which is what they're there to prevent by star trek rules this should affect their future but it doesn't seem to because gerardis borg who initiated the encounter that started this whole season are apparently visiting from an alternate reality parallel to the prime star trek timeline its event horizon caused a massive spike in athlete temporal radiation which means this isn't the prime timeline but an alternate reality except the show has told us many times that that's not the case this is not another reality this is our reality i'm getting a headache but really none of this time travel stuff matters if the crew can't save renee and the europa mission which they do and with renee picard safely up in space we can mercifully begin to wrap things up corey who is cured by q and ditches her psycho nazi dad gets a job offer from none other than inarguably the most popular character in star trek history wesley crusher when last we saw wesley on star trek the next generation he had left starfleet to join a being known as the traveler who could seemingly travel all of space and time i am a traveler of all of space and time so to tie all this mythology together i guess it turns out that the supervisors like talon and failed spinoff gary seven are actually dispatched by the travelers in order to safeguard the universe from annihilation the universe is essentially a grand tapestry yet it is somehow always a threads pull away from total annihilation knowing when to step in that's the tricky part i gotta admit that's some pretty crafty universe building with the retcon on the side or at least it would be if it didn't totally contradict everything the traveler said to wesley years before they must find their own destinies wesley it's not our place to interfere but have faith in their abilities to solve their problems on their own nice try if this were more of a real world critique i'd probably say something about how weird will wheaton's performance is in this scene as if the director instructed him to play the role like a kindergarten teacher giving enunciation lessons but honestly will wheaton's been dunked on by trek fans for close to four decades now so i'll skip it with his genetically engineered daughter gone his research destroyed and his future ruined adam soon decides to brush up on his eugenics leading us to the final destination for seemingly all things star trek part 7. [Music] soon pulls out a folder dated 1996 labeled project khan a reference to khan noonian singh played by ricardo montebon in the original series and the film star trek 2 the wrath of khan and khan was played by benedict cumberbatch in another star trek movie but anyway moving on the character of khan is like the free bird of the star trek universe the song that the franchise plays to really get the crowd going my name is khan khan was a genetically enhanced super soldier and it has been established since the 1960s that he ruled part of the earth during something called the eugenics wars which took place as the file folder states in the 1990s in 1993 a group of these young supermen did seize power simultaneously in over 40 nations so why is adam soon looking at information about a eugenics project that already happened and a group of super soldiers that have already been shot off into space i thought it was just a cheap nostalgia reference to khan until i did a little bit of digging and found out that yet another ancestor of tsung named erik sung appeared in a three-episode arc of star trek enterprise and eric soon was interested in carrying on the work of the eugenics era in the hopes of making a perfect human who wasn't a psychopath like khan was that arc on enterprise ended with soon deciding to dedicate his research instead to cybernetics a generations long process that eventually produced data perfecting humanity may not be possible cybernetics artificial life forms so here we have what seemed at first glance like either cheap fan service or an inconsistency in trek cannon that can actually be explained as a reference to obscure trek lore with roots deep into one of the lesser viewed star trek series and you know what i can roll with that as a matter of fact i respect it at least i did until showrunner terry matalis torpedoed that explanation on twitter instead saying that in fact the eugenics war hadn't yet occurred and that star trek canon was now incorrect replying to a question on twitter he wrote quote we discussed endlessly we came to the conclusion that in world war iii there were several emp bursts that kicked everyone back decades records of that 75-year period the 90s on were sketchy maybe spock was wrong no easy way to do it if you want the past to look and feel like today and i've got to be honest when i read that i had what i like to call a clue moment flames on the side of my face breathing breath heaving breaths heaving so instead of the satisfying solution of a canonical explanation you've chosen violence okay let's go then matalas starts with the hypothetical that starfleet records are wrong due to a non-canonical and never established emp a fact that has never been brought up in any iteration of star trek before maybe spock was wrong the last such vessel was built centuries ago back in the 1990s from 1992 through 1996 absolute ruler of more than a quarter of your world the mid-1990s was the era of your last so-called world war i don't know he seems pretty vulcan confident to me and so does kirk what was the exact date of your liftoff we know it was sometime in the early 1990s and dr mccoy the mid-1990s was the era of your last so-called world war the eugenics wars of course this isn't an explanation it's an excuse for why a star trek show that's set on earth after a massive world war shows absolutely no sign of that war having happened but you gotta give the writers a break i mean they were painted into a corner except they were the ones in charge of painting the room you can paint it in any order you like if it causes so many problems why did the writers choose to set the show in a canonically troublesome part of the past i'll tell you what i think because it's cheap no vintage clothes minimal futuristic set dressing no changes needed to cars or buildings the ability to license stock footage instead of designing new cityscapes and use existing locations the bulk of picard season 2 is set in basically modern la because that's where the studio is that's where most of the actors live and it's less expensive to do it that way and i get it every show and every movie has a budget but if picard needed to cut cost here's an idea maybe cut episodes because this was a six episode story told across a 10 episode season if you take the same budget with four fewer episodes then maybe this season could have shown a little ambition maybe gone to a dystopian alternate earth time period for more than one episode or visited a more interesting period in earth's history the god who fought it trafalgar that sounds cool the picard won the nobel prize for chemistry that's way more interesting the guards who settled the first martian colonies show me that instead the creators of the show took the cheap and easy way out then made up some excuse for why they decided to write their show in a way that interferes with the franchise's chronology star trek fans may be nerdy but we're not stupid and if you're literally offering up the excuse that spock the least wrong guy in the history of star trek was wrong maybe you're doing something wrong on your end i believe my response would be go to hell by the way it does appear that the franchise as a whole has decided that the eugenics wars haven't happened yet because the new series star trek strange new worlds now has it occurring sometime after this season's version of 2024. our conflict also started with a fight for freedoms we called it the second civil war then the eugenics war and finally just world war iii also strange new worlds takes place during original series spock's time in the prime trek timeline you know the one that was apparently ravaged by some mysterious off-screen emp and it looks like the historical records are pretty complete to me pro tip if you want to blame a change in canon on a made-up excuse check with the other showrunners on the same network to make sure they're not shooting holes in it opinion mr spock recommend we proceed captain part eight hughes gift okay uh we're almost done here if you're still watching which you're probably not but first we have to answer the question that i began asking this show about halfway through this season why finish the sentence me why did q engineer all of this after all why go back in time and change history just to test picard why imperil an entire galaxy's future the answer is simpler than you might expect i am dying alone i do not want that for you yep it turns out that the borg aren't the only villains who are lonely so is q and this has all been a gift of favor a chance for picard to forgive himself in order to let himself be loved so he won't die alone and you know what in a vacuum when you just clip this scene out it's exceptionally well written it's a nice farewell between two characters who met 35 years ago in the pilot episode of the next generation in a vacuum every time cue is on screen the show gets better you ask me why it matters it matters to me you matter to me even gods have favorites and you've always been one of mine in a vacuum it works but much like stepping out of a vacuum or even a vacuum cleaner when you look at it closely from the outside it sucks both villains in this season ultimately end up being motivated by the same thing loneliness which seems a little lazy given that it's picard's burden as well and both villains attempt to change the future in the same way independent of each other by using soon to eliminate renee picard also if q intended this to be a gift what a shitty gift one of piccard's friends died and there was no guarantee he was coming back what about elmar who you killed him actually it was other hers idiot husband another one almost became an evil borg queen and wiped out the galaxy and picard himself was hit by a freaking car what if soon had killed him what if the borg strike squad had shot picard in the head what if picard hadn't stopped q from convincing renee not to go on the mission or what assumes multiple attempts to kill renee had succeeded what would you have done then just said whoopsie and died anyway all i know is if i'd gone through all of this garbage and q told me at the end that it was all for my benefit i told you this was about forgiveness yours i don't think i'd react by hugging the guy like picard does i'd probably treat him like everyone else has for the rest of the season of course the real reason why this doesn't seem to make sense is because it doesn't the show sets this up as the continued trial of picard from an angry queue at the beginning when it was needed to set meaningful stakes the trial never ends and turned it into a gift from kind-hearted cue at the end when the show wanted to ring more emotion out of you you chose the jean-luc you are and maybe this time you will even give him the chance to be loved so q and picard hug it out rios decides to stay in the past because when it comes to the timeline at this point screw it and picard and most of his crew wind up well i want to say back in their own time in reality but that's not technically true because we saw the star gazer blow up so at least briefly canonically in the prime track timeline captain picard was blown to stardust which given how this season went may not have been a bad way to go so it's like they're in an altered future for themselves with a girardi who's apparently from an alternate reality but the rest of the timeline isn't altered because everybody remembers rios and you know we've established that none of this makes sense so i i'm just not going to harp on it anymore as i mentioned way at the beginning of this video it turns out that gerardi borg wasn't trying to hurt the federation she was trying to help it you see there's a mystery spirally thingy that's forming that's about to expel an energy beam that will destroy most of the quadrant somehow gerardi was able to detect it from another reality or whatever and so she brought her ship through space-time to commandeer the federation fleet in order to neutralize the energy beam using the fleet shield and save the quadrant of course it would have been a lot easier to say any of this before trying to wordlessly hijack dozens of starships in the first place but the plot required that jorati not reveal herself until the end so she didn't it's lazy writing 101 so q is dead and the borg or at least a version of them are now starfleet allies led by one of picard's most trusted friends wow i'm so glad this show exists to make such important changes we have one final scene with the new picard crew and elenor who's back from the dead yay but do you want to know how easy of a mark i am and how well this show could have worked this tiny moment where picard and gainen silently acknowledge each other and their relationship gets me emotional because of the years of work that have been done to develop their characters and their bond which makes the fact that this show spent an entire season on all of it even more depressing admiral picard ends the season back at his vineyard sharing a tender moment with lariss finally ready to love again which means lariss will probably be written out of the show between seasons or retconned into being a shape-shifter or something because apparently who gives a part nine not so boldly going forward so what have i taken away from season two of picard well instead of looking forward to the third and final season of this show featuring all of the original next generation cast as i was earlier this season i'm now scared to death that they're going to ruin everyone's legacy but in a wider sense i also think it underscores that for all of their talk about launching a new era in entertainment a lot of people in charge of streaming shows are making all the same choices and mistakes as traditional tv producers i guess it's not really surprising this show is mostly produced by people who have been in the industry for decades and i guess it's also not a big surprise that there are so many inconsistencies in the writing because this season has about a dozen credited writers for 10 episodes and i've worked in writer's rooms before it is impossible to get a dozen writers to agree on lunch much less what constitutes a break in canon or how to craft intelligible time travel rules outside of patrick stewart and the tng cast including jonathan frakes who directed two episodes this season nobody involved with the card season 2 ever worked on or was involved with a single episode of star trek the next generation or wrote a full episode of star trek that predates star trek discovery and its shows if you only care about star trek from week to week or season to season that's fine but a whole lot of trek fans don't see these shows as season by season affairs i think star trek is special it's always dared to be different to be hopeful and optimistic to create a tapestry of idealism and a belief in a future history where the galaxy strives to make life great for everybody and in that spirit i've heard great things about strange new worlds and my little trek heart is open and hoping for a great show that i can start once i'm done with this i'm not angry that picard is different i'm not some star trek gatekeeper declaring that only what i watched when i was a kid is good but i do care about things like respecting canon or at least having a logical explanation if you decide to change things so seeing so much of star trek history being shredded or ignored in what seems like a pretty casual way is kind of heartbreaking and i guess that's how i'd categorize this whole season heartbreaking i love star trek but aside from a couple of solid episodes and some glimmers of greatness i hated this season and it's one of the last times i'll ever get to see patrick stewart as my personal favorite star trek captain maybe this show can pull something out of its hat with season three but it was filmed back to back with season two so it's not like they can take notes from the fan response to this season if i were to pick one moment i related to most from season two of picard it'd be this one this is not a lesson it's a penance picard season 2 does feel like a slap in the face and a penance a penance for loving the next generation so much for so many years the good news is i can always just ignore that this show existed and pretend that picard's story ended with star trek nemesis well actually maybe star trek insurrection actually maybe star trek first contact and i guess if you live long enough all of your heroes get exploited and revived especially in this era of subscriber growth and franchise ip the more corporations decide to hijack these beloved shows and movies to feed the content beast the more i realize that to a lot of them people are idiots right on hitler data right on thanks so much for watching this extensive review of star trek picard season two this video took many many hours to make and if you'd like to see how you can help support more like it you can check out my patreon at patreon.com danmerl and hit the subscribe button to get updates from this channel thanks so much for going on this incredibly complicated journey with me let's see what happens with season three and until then live long and prosper [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Dan Murrell

Views: 210,195

Keywords: dan murrell, dan murrell movies, movies, star trek picard review, picard review, picard season 2 review, star trek picard season 2 review, picard season 2, star trek picard, star trek picard season 2, picard, dan murrell picard, dan murrell picard review, star trek, star trek review, picard spoiler review

Id: qKufJoRSr6c

Length: 58min 49sec (3529 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 29 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Straight_Meringue921]

The latest on Star Trek: Patrick --

"Patrick Stewart and Gates McFadden bristled a bit when asked about the season being a “reunion,” telling EW:

Stewart: I don’t mean to disappoint you, but it’s not about a Next Generation reunion. It really isn’t. It’s part of a narrative, a very serious narrative that develops throughout season 3. And indeed, does bring us together, I can say right at the end because you’d like to know that. It’s not just a walk down memory lane, remotely...I think it’s important to say that the third season is much more than a reunion season. Much, much more. It’s intense. It’s personal. It’s social. It’s a family. And it gets very serious."

---

Oh. . . joy.

[u/PermaDerpFace]

100%. If you told me they made a TNG sequel starring the two best characters, based on the best episodes like Measure of a Man, with Borg and Romulans and a whole race of Androids... and it was bad?? I wouldn't have believed it.

How they managed to assemble such a terrible team of writers to fuck the golden goose is totally beyond me. You could say the same about Discovery, but in the case of Picard all the groundwork was laid, it absolutely should have been an easy homerun.

[u/Groundbreaking-Pea92]

lol

"Picards mom killed himself, he blames himself and feels unworthy of love. It's weird that we didn't know this, but we also don't know much about picard's mother."

no just, no is this guy taken seriously as a reviewer? It's not just odd that we didn't know this about picard and of course not knowing much about his mother is an insane justification. It's terrible writing friend, not just hackey and lazy, just terrible.

I hear they're going to bring back Fraiser and we learn his mom was a serial killer, a dr. death and their dad was the cop who caught and shot her. One night frasier mentioned that he had seen mom with strawberry mamilade all over her clothes. and martyy put the pieces together,this left fraiser feeling unworthy of love . It's is odd that this was never revealed in the original series but on the other hand we didn't know all that much about frasier's mom

[u/comox]

I had a bit of a falling out with an old friend when I criticised Picard S1 E5 - the visit to Freecloud - which I found all a bit stupid. (Although I thought that the forced ads as they approached Freecloud was a clever reference to annoying pop-up internet ads.)

I’ve just given up. I can’t bother to figure out what station I need to subscribe to in order to watch this. Or Discovery. Instead I will keep monitoring this sub, hoping for a positive sign of either a satisfying new series or episode which may resurrect my interest in Trek.

I did watch a few episodes of Lower Decks for the first time a couple weeks back, which I enjoyed. What is a Trek fan left to do?

Edit: will check out Strange New Tables.

[u/sjsharksfan12]

Dan Murrell has become one of my favorite movie reviewers and I was shocked he was as hard on Picard as he was. I thought that was only for the Nerdorotic/Geeks and Gamers crowd, but everything Dan said in his review I agreed with. Season 2 started out pretty good (And I had rewatched Season 1 and liked it better the second time around) but the more we got into the season the more incoherent it got. It's almost like they were trying to destroy the Picard character, and I'm not sure what my reaction to TNG will be when I do rewatch the series.

[u/stargazercaptain]

Thankfully I have real alcohol and purged my memory banks after every episode as they each drove me to drink.

Now I've pavlovian trained myself to feel sick when I think of K-Trek.

[u/DonnieNJ]

It would have been a home run if they remembered to include the star trek. It was rather light on the star trekness

[u/pjx1]

Correction second biggest disappointment. Discovery is way more pathetic

[u/Jackmehoffer12]

So what will this broken robot do in season 3……..