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[ResurrectedContrarian]

Seasons 1 & 2 of Picard are fucking garbage. Season 3 so far has been great. You can either cling to your understandable hate of the first two seasons, or let it go and enjoy what it shaping up to be a much, much better one - probably the best since Ds9 ended. The holodeck bar is based on the one Guinan opened after TNG, as far as I’m concerned. I never watched season 2, so I don’t have a problem with it.

It's certainly the best thing from the entire Kurtzman era of Trek, with zero competition... but I'm by no means happy with it or willing to accept this as canon.

Things I like:
- Riker feels like himself most of the time, as it's great to see him take charge as captain, feels natural;
- Worf feels mostly like himself, about as well as we could hope in this darker universe;
- the LCARS interfaces of the panels look great, as do the shots of ships in space; all around the special effects design is good
- music is also great
- relatively little trendy chasing after mind-numbingly obvious current-day political fads this time, refreshing after previous seasons

Thing I despise:
- childish use of profanity, with Picard uttering lines he would never speak as the actual character. You can call this minor, but it's extremely offputting. Some of the writers are obviously from the generation that thinks having the F-bomb dropped is just a natural cool thing Picard might do when relaxing and older, but no, it irreconcilably clashes with the original character in every possible way, and it repulses me that such puerile writers are in charge of this character now
- childish use of violence, as if they watched too much GOT or something. It's not nearly as bad as previous seasons, but Worf decapitating the Ferengi was almost the exact same shot and timing as the Elnor decapitation in season 1, so someone on the staff just can't let this nonsense go; and they still glorify violence as being badass in a way that TNG never did, like the camera and general style trying to convince us that Seven and Crusher are empowered women since we see them pulverize multiple people with disrupters
- idiotic forced character drama which doesn't understand the original characters at all. Crusher's whole drama of "I had to keep our son secret since you have a target on your back" was bizarre, irrational, and completely ruins the character. They wanted to bring in a Wrath of Khan story here but failed by assigning it to characters where it doesn't fit. Or take Picard's bizarrely out of character "we must fight, Will!" moment when he insisted on an idiotic tactical move against a more powerful foe; they obviously wrote that out of desire for a conflict between the two fo them, but gave Picard motivations that are completely out of character for him in every possible way.
- really the entire subplot of Picard's son is a mess, I find it implausible and cheap, and even the young actor is giving us nothing of interest here;
- overall, the desire to bring us a TOS-movie production with TNG characters is a mistake, as is their entire orientation towards cheap drama and character conflict which TNG very distinctly avoided
- there are still many hallmarks of Kurtzman-Trek and seasons 1&2 here. Examples include the need for fated mysteries (seek the "red lady" etc) and the whole Raffi underworld subplot, when clearly she has no business being on this season

 

[FunkMiller]

It's certainly the best thing from the entire Kurtzman era of Trek, with zero competition... but I'm by no means happy with it or willing to accept this as canon.

Things I like:
- Riker feels like himself most of the time, as it's great to see him take charge as captain, feels natural;
- Worf feels mostly like himself, about as well as we could hope in this darker universe;
- the LCARS interfaces of the panels look great, as do the shots of ships in space; all around the special effects design is good
- music is also great
- relatively little trendy chasing after mind-numbingly obvious current-day political fads this time, refreshing after previous seasons

Thing I despise:
- childish use of profanity, with Picard uttering lines he would never speak as the actual character. You can call this minor, but it's extremely offputting. Some of the writers are obviously from the generation that thinks having the F-bomb dropped is just a natural cool thing Picard might do when relaxing and older, but no, it irreconcilably clashes with the original character in every possible way, and it repulses me that such puerile writers are in charge of this character now
- childish use of violence, as if they watched too much GOT or something. It's not nearly as bad as previous seasons, but Worf decapitating the Ferengi was almost the exact same shot and timing as the Elnor decapitation in season 1, so someone on the staff just can't let this nonsense go; and they still glorify violence as being badass in a way that TNG never did, like the camera and general style trying to convince us that Seven and Crusher are empowered women since we see them pulverize multiple people with disrupters
- idiotic forced character drama which doesn't understand the original characters at all. Crusher's whole drama of "I had to keep our son secret since you have a target on your back" was bizarre, irrational, and completely ruins the character. They wanted to bring in a Wrath of Khan story here but failed by assigning it to characters where it doesn't fit. Or take Picard's bizarrely out of character "we must fight, Will!" moment when he insisted on an idiotic tactical move against a more powerful foe; they obviously wrote that out of desire for a conflict between the two fo them, but gave Picard motivations that are completely out of character for him in every possible way.
- really the entire subplot of Picard's son is a mess, I find it implausible and cheap, and even the young actor is giving us nothing of interest here;
- overall, the desire to bring us a TOS-movie production with TNG characters is a mistake, as is their entire orientation towards cheap drama and character conflict which TNG very distinctly avoided
- there are still many hallmarks of Kurtzman-Trek and seasons 1&2 here. Examples include the need for fated mysteries (seek the "red lady" etc) and the whole Raffi underworld subplot, when clearly she has no business being on this season

Maybe stop watching?

You're overly angry about stuff that you shouldn't be. Yes, it's not perfect, but then nothing ever is. You seem way too hung up on the issues with the show, and you're ignoring the fantastic stuff they're doing this season.
The Jack Crusher subplot, for instance, is pretty good actually. It's entirely plausible that Picard and Crusher could have conceived a child together, and equally plausible that Beverly would have kept the fact from Picard, for the reasons she outlined very clearly. And Crusher then not wanting anything to do with his father is equally well outlined.

You sound like you're just not going to like any modern star trek, no matter what it does, because of the damage all the other shit has done. Watch something else.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

The Jack Crusher subplot, for instance, is pretty good actually. It's entirely plausible that Picard and Crusher could have conceived a child together, and equally plausible that Beverly would have kept the fact from Picard, for the reasons she outlined very clearly. And Crusher then not wanting anything to do with his father is equally well outlined.

Completely disagree; in fact I would put this particular subplot as the worst part of Season 3 and on equal footing with the writing of the previous 2 seasons. For Crusher to suddenly keep their child a secret (after all that time with Picard being a father figure to Wesley) on the premise of safety and then spend the son's life as a doctor-without-borders going into warzones and high risk... it makes zero sense. Categorically it is clear that Crusher led the most dangerous life of any of the TNG characters over the past 2 decades and yet she's also trying to use the excuse that safety was her concern. She's either delusional or simply an awful person, and there really is no other way to read it. (Oh and despite all that running and keeping him secret, she put him in school on Earth, in London, for enough years that he has a thoroughly English accent).

This writing is as bad as the "Picard can't get close to others because his mother had mental illness and killed herself" plot from S2. They know what emotional beats they want, and let consistency in the characters be damned.

You sound like you're just not going to like any modern star trek, no matter what it does, because of the damage all the other shit has done. Watch something else.

I'm actually having a great deal of fun watching it with my wife. We pause about every 3 minutes and laugh at something. She knows TNG like the back of her hand after all these years of marriage. It's a pretty fun hate-watch, and then there just a handful of actually good scenes once a while, even if they're sandwiched by awfulness.

 

[xandaca]

Episode 4 is the best of Nu Trek.

Still fucking shit compared to old trek.

If we exclude Lower Decks for being an animated show, off the top of my head I'd put eps 1 and 2 from Picard's second season comfortably ahead of this one (S2 E1 is the best episode of Picard so far by a mile), plus the Discovery episode ripping off Arrival, and the Strange New Worlds episode where a severely damaged Enterprise has to take on several Gorn ships. This was the best episode of the season, a welcome upturn after the mess of episode 3 and made Shaw's backstory slightly more nuanced than expected (suffering from survivor's guilt rather than just being angry at losing people), but still more competent (mostly) than actually good.