Star Trek: Picard Season 3
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
301: The Next Generation 2023 February 16
(First watched 2023-02-16) Lots of great character moments in here. For whatever else this show has done good and bad, it's given Picard moments like talking with Riker in the shuttlecraft that are totally unlike anything we got to see from him in TNG when he was acting the confident captain all the time.
I'm writing this after having seen the bulk of the season so my perspective isn't quite the same, but: Shaw totally makes sense here. He's clearly written to be antagonistic, but he's the captain of the ship and keeping things straight for his crew is his priority. Certainly in other shows we plenty of times saw admirals or other authority figures come and try to throw their weight around.
And... a Portal-type portal used as a weapon? Very interesting, and also interesting how in retrospect it's not even the thing people need to be worried about.
302: Disengage 2023 February 23
(First watched 2023-02-23) Big entrance for Worf, and big "conversation" between Dr. Crusher and Picard that uses zero words. I'm still pretty confused by how a _retired_ admiral apparently outranks a captain who's still in the fleet? He's retired!
303: Seventeen Seconds 2023 March 2
(First watched 2023-03-02) The explanation for why Beverly went and hid from the world... that's a real conflict. She was both totally right to feel as she did given the realities of how things related to Picard (or other hero types in the Star Trek universe) go, and he was also totally right to be upset about being totally left out of the loop.
So hey, Thomas Dekker as a changeling. I didn't believe how easily they handled him, though. While trying to maintain cover, sure, makes some sense he would limit himself in what he could do to avoid being caught or to escape. But if he was reaching the point where he wasn't going to be able to maintain solid form anyway, the jig is up. At that point if I'm a changeling, I immediately stab my interrogators with swords that shoot out of my body in a fraction of a second.
304: No Win Scenario 2023 March 9
(First watched 2023-03-09) There are quite a few things in this season that at face value seem a bit silly, but I'm forced to go "OK... it's clearly for nostalgia and doesn't break things HORRIBLY, so I'll allow it." Case in point here, they know they're looking for a changeling on the Titan, and Starfleet's biggest source of changeling information is from its history with Odo. So they bring up the fact that he slept in a bucket, and indeed FIND such a bucket. But I don't recall there being anything special about the bucket Odo was using, just that it was a container. So there's no reason we should believe another changeling would use something of the same shape, if they used anything at all. Later in DS9 as Odo became more comfortable with himself as a shapeshifter, he stopped using the bucket. I know a changeling infiltrator wouldn't want to be conspicuous, but they could've used a drawer or a container holding a plant or any number of things.
(First watched 2023-03-16) Unexpected appearance: Ro! And what a great way to follow up the penultimate episode of TNG, where she left for the Maquis and the episode uncharacteristically just ended with Picard silently fuming in his ready room.
(First watched 2023-03-23) This episode is full of... missing people. Daystrom Station is supposed to hold some of the most sensitive secret tech the Federation has ever had its hands on, I'd have expected some sort of security force beyond just automated systems. Then there's the Fleet Museum. Don't museums usually have visitors? Or what about all of the other people who work there? It can't just be Geordi and his daughter hanging out with dozens of starships and a starbase, but that's all that seems to be there. Maybe Titan was just keeping itself scarce enough to not be noticed and Geordi put a Do Not Disturb sign on his door? Seems like that would only go so far.
Back to the visitors, how would there not be a bunch of people there checking out museum stuff at any given time? I know Frontier Day is happening, but can't be EVERYBODY is going to see that instead. For that matter, we (barely) see the NX-01 (the refit version, even) is at the museum. Considering Frontier Day is a celebration of the beginning of its mission, shouldn't it be part of the festivities?
Cool to see Moriarty again, but boy was his return tiny. I guess the actor must have really enjoyed the prospect of bringing the character back for him to get out of bed for such a small appearance.
They really are going all out bringing in things from all past Treks in here. This season already had something of the feel of the TOS movies, and today we directly see things like the Enterprise-A, a Genesis device, and the stolen Klingon ship Bounty which is important to the plot as they steal its cloaking device.
Data++... well huh. They initially announced Spiner would be in this season as Lore, but the situation is much more complicated. It both totally makes sense that they'd want Data back for this reunion, but also gives big "AGAIN?" vibes considering much of the first season was a search for Data and eventually releasing that version to death.
(First watched 2023-03-30) It's pretty crazy how Picard's Irumodic syndrome, which was a notable character addition for TNG's finale and affecting him during Picard's first season... now turns out to not have been Irumodic syndrome at all, but something much weirder.
(First watched 2023-04-06) The Data/Lore stuff was pretty interesting, and I kind of saw where it was going before Lore did. How do you deal with an AI that refuses to integrate with another or even just play nice? Trick it into integrating by freely giving up the parts of the other AI which it will keep around as trophies. Result: Data+Lore. I'm a bit less certain why Data seems to be such the dominant force in the combination. Is it because he spent more time active and thus simply a supermajority of the combined being's memories come from Data?
TNG crew around a conference table. 👍
(First watched 2023-04-13) Some people have been theorizing this for a long time, but I was... resistant. Jack Crusher is not just Picard's son, but Locutus's son. And so has the fruits of seeds the Borg planted in Captain Picard. This... seems a bit of a stretch to me. The Borg's common weakness as seen in the ~'90s was overconfidence, unwillingness to see other things as threats. Starfleet could just beam onto their ships and they wouldn't react until they actually started harming things. So this overconfident Borg had a long shot backup plan? "What if Locutus gets rescued, and de-assimilated, and goes on to have children?" Really? If it was something they by default had been doing to every drone for a long time, OK, maybe. But at this point there seems to be a fair bit of knowledge about ex-Borg, and this has apparently never been seen before. So either it wasn't done to every drone, or none of the ex-Borg have procreated or done something else that would make this change obvious. Maybe it was something they did to every "Locutus type" on the rare occasions? But as long as it was already developed, why stop there and not give it to everyone?
Secondly, the way the transporter system was used to spread these changes... makes me a lot more nervous about the transporter than I used to be. If it was really taking a person's exact makeup and taking them from one place to another, the plan as described shouldn't work. But apparently for efficiency's sake the transporter does a sort of "lossy transfer" where it assumes members of a given species will share a lot of the same DNA and so just uses that for everyone. So it really is true that people are not the same after going through the transporter, even if they are _functionally_.
So Troi had something to do by helping Jack learn what was behind the door... but the way it was presented she came across as kind of flaky. "Don't worry Jack, I'm here with you. *takes peek behind door* Well, nice meeting you, gotta go!"
OK, so the big ship reveal near the end... very cool, and mostly believable. Absolutely cleanup of Viridian III for Prime Directive purposes is something I assumed happened, so one just has to believe it wasn't immediately scrapped and Geordi and his subordinates took on the sort of cool restoration work they are apparently really into. Of course it needed a new stardrive, but if you've got one ship that's only got a salvageable saucer, makes sense there'd be one that only has a salvageable stardrive. Though it's kind of funny to think of how it might have happened. "We put all our families on the saucer and separated for safety, but they accidentally flew into a sun." Apart from this in-universe talk, it seems like they did a hell of a job recreating the bridge. I wonder if that's the only set they did? I can't expect them to have done much more, but something like the observation lounge or Picard's ready room seems feasible. Very early in the season Picard did decide to send his painting of the Enterprise to Geordi--I can imagine Geordi receiving it and smiling, since Picard wouldn't know it was going to go right back where it came from.
310: The Last Generation 2023 April 20
(First watched 2023-04-20) I don't think any series finale will top All Good Things... for me, but Picard's is satisfying.
Titan becoming the Enterprise-G... it's almost TOO saccharine that what's left of Riker's old ship has transformed into the next of the Enterprise name. But hey. And they're really running through that alphabet. Enterprise supposed the Enterprise-J was a 26th century ship, but at this rate they'll get to it by 2430. I can't help but think the renaming hurts the spinoff chances any time soon, though. I presume Terry Matalas's idea for the Star Trek: Legacy show would be to continue the adventures of the characters on the Enterprise-G. But the Star Trek brand as is right now seems to be going for maximum diversity, so I don't know that they want to have two Enterprise-based ship shows in different centuries at the same time, and Strange New Worlds surely has several more years left in it.
Worf continues to have the best lines, with every other thing he says competing for funniest line of the season. "Swords are fun."
The "TNG ending" part being overhead poker shot, another direct callback to the TNG finale.
Non-Starfleet types sure manage to get some big roles fast. Seven went from not being in Starfleet at all to Commander after a shortened training given her prior experience, and didn't spend much time in that rank before being promoted to Captain. Then there's Jack, who went from no interest in Starfleet at all to a posted ensign within a year--and even an ensign with a special advisory role to the captain.
And surprise-surprise guest voice Walter Koenig as Anton Chekov, presumably Pavel's son based on his speech.
I previously mentioned the Borg in the 90s were overconfident. I guess that comes back in a big way in this episode, because considering how much VICTORY was going on a few planets over, they really gave the Enterprise-D and crew a wide open shot. Letting them into the cube. Letting Worf and Riker roam around until they found the information they needed about the WHAT TO BLOW UP device. The only serious resistance was firepower Beverly was able to outdo and a tricky path they weren't sure even Data could fly through. BUT like Data back from the dead again I guess it makes sense that the Borg would be needed for a proper TNG reunion, since Best of Both Worlds and First Contact are extremely well-known high points. And for it not to be a hell of a bummer of a sendoff, it had to be something these old folks could survive.
One thing that wasn't given enough attention, especially considering it's his series... what about Picard? We seem to know less about his future at the end of the season than the beginning. At the beginning he was ready to move to another planet with his new girlfriend. Now he's got an adult son and is on good terms with the baby mama he didn't know was a baby mama, but what does that mean for him? Is he still going away with Laris? Did the prospect of having a seventh(?) chance with Beverly make him reconsider? Looking at an article where they asked this to Matalas, it seems even he didn't have it firmly in mind and wanted to leave it open.