If you read my review of Star Trek: Picard, then you know that I was thoroughly disappoint and borderline offended by it. I had so much to complain about in that review, that I didn't have much time or energy left to write about the few merits that were present in the season. Yes, there are some decent ideas in this 10 hours of otherwise-garbage TV. If you were to ask me "Well Mr. smarty-pants self-described-'Trekkie', what would you have done?", then I would say that I would take those few good ideas, and turned them into episodes of Star Trek that are more consistent with the style, philosophy, and character of the show that I know and love.

On a recent recording for the Let's Play channel On the Branch, I spent some time pitching these ideas for a rewrite of the entire series. I had literally come up with the ideas a night or two before that recording session, and so the ideas were not very well thought-out. They were mostly just big-picture concepts. Now that I've had more time to think about them and further flesh them out, I've decided to record them here on the blog for posterity.

You can hear more of my thoughts about Picard in an un-filtered discussion with On the Branch Gaming.

I tried to take the few ideas that I actually liked from the version of Star Trek: Picard that CBS actually put on the air, and use them to construct episodes and a season that I feel would have been more in-line with what I would have expected from Star Trek. So this isn't just me rambling about my own pie-in-the-sky ideas here. I'm actually taking the ideas that Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsmith, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer, and the other writers and producers came up with, and trying to turn them into something that is actually faithful to the spirit of Star Trek, and consistent with the philosophy and characters that we've seen in the TV shows as I understand them.

The good ideas

So first of all, what were the few actual good ideas that CBS's writing staff came up with for Star Trek: Picard. Well, I identified three of them:

  1. Romulans as environmental refugees after nova of their sun.
  2. The Borg Reclamation Project attempting to de-assimilate and rehabilitate former Borg drones.
  3. Data's consciousness being trapped in a quantum computer, awaiting a suitable positronic brain.
The best ideas of Picard involved the Romulans and es-Borg as refugees.

I think there's some genuinely good ideas there for some thoughtful, high-concept sci-fi stories that would fit well into Star Trek's canon and philosophy. It's too bad that none of them were more than minor subplots in Picard that were never thoroughly explored, or treated with any degree of thoughtfulness. These good ideas were sadly squandered by being sidelined compared to the larger, less intelligent plots that dominated the season.

These ideas were certainly better than the apocalyptic plot about conspiracies to destroy all life in the galaxy. Seriously, can we get some smaller, more down-to-earth stakes for our TV shows? There's only so many "end of all life as we know it" plots that can be told before they get stale.

I would stay as far away from apocalyptic, inter-dimensional robot tentacle monsters as possible.

...

[More]

Well I'll be damned. This winter, I was pleasantly surprised by The Mandalorian seeming to pull the Star Wars franchise back from the brink of the abyss. And now I'm also pleasantly surprised to see that perhaps Star Trek might be pulled out from circling the toilet bowl as well. The first episode of CBS All Access' new Picard series was surprisingly "not bad".

Now, I do still have some serious reservations about the directions that I think the show might be going later in the season. And I'll get to that later. But first, I want to sit and bask in the delight of having just watched a new piece of Star Trek media that I didn't hate. After slogging through the first season of Discovery (I have yet to watch the second season), I was left with zero faith in CBS's ability to re-capture the spirit and soul of Star Trek.

Picard shows some good faith right from the start by opening with a clip of the Enterprise-D. Not some re-designed Franken-ship monstrosity like the "original" Enterprise in the 2009 Trek reboot, or as seen in Discovery. But the honest-to-goodness Galaxy-class Enterprise-D, pretty much exactly as we remember and love her -- and looking mighty gorgeous, might I add! We then zoom into Ten Forward, where Picard is playing a hand of poker with an unconvincingly digitally de-aged Brent Spiner reprising the role of Data. This scene pays homage to the beautiful final scene of the Next Generation finale "All Good Things...", and Picard laments that he's stalling going all-in against Data's hand because he "doesn't want the game to end".

Picard is a return (and continuation) of Star Trek as fans knew it almost 20 years ago.

We didn't want the game to end either...

The first few scenes of the episode then go on to show Picard giving brief (but impassioned) speeches about the decline of Starfleet ideals, the civil rights of sentient androids, and the moral imperative to provide aid and relief to the Romulan refugees whose home planet was destroyed by the [somehow unexpected?] supernova of the Romulan sun. And he's also trying to do some social justice for pit bull dogs, which (as my choice of pets should suggest) is something that I approve very strongly of. It's respectful and faithful (and reverent) to what came before. "Holy shit", I thought, "this is actually looking and feeling like the Star Trek that I know and love."

For a moment, I thought the soul of Star Trek is there, in those early scenes, even though it is shallow and lacks the idealism that has always underpinned Trek.

...

[More]
Grid Clock Widget
12      60
11      55
10      50
09      45
08      40
07      35
06      30
05      25
04      20
03      15
02      10
01      05
Grid Clock provided by trowaSoft.

A gamer's thoughts

Welcome to Mega Bears Fan's blog, and thanks for visiting! This blog is mostly dedicated to game reviews, strategies, and analysis of my favorite games. I also talk about my other interests, like football, science and technology, movies, and so on. Feel free to read more about the blog.

Check out my YouTube content at YouTube.com/MegaBearsFan.

Follow me on Twitter at: twitter.com/MegaBearsFan

Patreon

If you enjoy my content, please consider Supporting me on Patreon:
Patreon.com/MegaBearsFan

FTC guidelines require me to disclose that as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made by clicking on Amazon product links on this site. All Amazon Associate links are for products relevant to the given blog post, and are usually posted because I recommend the product.

Without Gravity

And check out my colleague, David Pax's novel Without Gravity on his website!

Featured Post

The Humanity of NCAA Football's In-Season RecruitingThe Humanity of NCAA Football's In-Season Recruiting08/01/2022 If you're a fan of college football video games, then I'm sure you're excited by the news from early 2021 that EA will be reviving its college football series. They will be doing so without the NCAA license, and under the new title, EA Sports College Football. I guess Bill Walsh wasn't available for licensing either? Expectations...

Random Post

Frictional Games finally makes its own sequel to Amnesia, RebirthFrictional Games finally makes its own sequel to Amnesia, Rebirth12/30/2020 The first few minutes of Amnesia: Rebirth had me expecting much more from the game. The first game, The Dark Descent revolutionized and resurrected the horror genre after major publishers basically gave up on horror altogether, and it provided innovative new ideas that have been iterated upon by almost every horror game since....

Month List

Recent Comments

Comment RSS