Star Trek: Picard - Season One

At times this felt like torture to watch.This really isn’t Star Trek. Gone is the hopeful optimistic tone, at it’s heart, while there was sometimes violence and danger Star Trek remained a show about peaceful explorers seeking out new life and trying to broaden their understanding of the universe. Characters were often tempted and faced difficult ethical dilemmas they struggled to resolve, the conflict was as much internal as it was external. While the Federation had it’s share of enemies, even they were humanised to an extent. This new series though resembles a more black and white tale of good v evil. This is like some hellish nightmare version, so much of it is shot in dark, shadowy colourless scenes. Even among our band of heroes they’re the most bland depressed bunch you could meet. It reminds me of Rogue One a bit in that respect.Piccard is now no longer a commander of a star ship nor young enough to be able to get involved in the action anymore, it’s such decline since TNG series. He remains compassionate and so on but he’s now pretty powerless which is disappointing. Rather than set him a suitably low scale challenge to match, instead he’s got to save the universe. The best Star Trek episodes were rarely the ones about all out war or the end of the universe, it was about good writing, personal stakes and character growth. Nobody really grows here, Piccard remains more or less the same good man throughout.This thing just has way too many supporting characters and I found that whenever the focus was on the younger characters I just wanted to skip ahead to get back to Piccard. Some of the acting is also subpar, more so from the younger cast. Each episode series follows a single narrative rather than 10 different stories, the pacing is really slow though, the plot is muddled and the dialogue is really unlike Star Trek. The young characters sound so modern it’s really jarring. “I didn’t know Romulans could be so hot.” Chimes one character. Piccard seems to have lost his wits too, when he realises assassins are coming for him, instead of running inside one of the big federation buildings he’s stood outside for help, he instead tries to run up to a deserted rooftop. What could possibly go wrong up there?The thing is also stuffed with so much exposition too, as well as too many characters. Characters just randomly start blurting out long chunks of their past autobiography for little apparent reason. In one scene in a bar a man just stands up and starts going over the recent past when every single person in that scene would already have known it anyway. I think they could have maybe done with a few more flashbacks instead. Game of Thrones always found a good way to get through the exposition, for example, one character may bring up a piece of history to make a threat or an implied challenge. If all else failed they’d put a couple of naked women on the screen, no such luck here though in Piccard.... Once you get through the 10 minute long exposition scenes, it just kills the pace, the story is literally stopped dead in it’s tracks while we wait for these scenes to play out.It’s clear they badly wanted to turn this into Game of Thrones. It’s full of violence, brooding characters, beheadings, (why are they still fighting with swords in the 25th century?) suggested incest, implied sex, swearing, gore, betrayal, spying. They didn’t seem to realise though it wasn’t these things which made GOT great, it was the writing, the fact it made you care about all the characters, even the less sympathetic ones, and the fact that no character would ever be caught wearing any plot armour for the first 5 seasons.In this though everyone is angry, and miserable, the lighting is stark, the sets are ugly, the tone is bleak. If you want to swap the bright, bold visionary TV show from 1966 for a Star Trek full of, swearing, lengthy exposition and pointless shaky cam action sequences then strap in.

It has been exyremely disappoionting that the hero of The Next Generation turns into this weak shell of a man who doesnt know what hes doing or why. The storyline is all over the place and Starfleet is presented as a war machine.Its definately not what Gene Roddenbury would have wanted and it is just not Star Trek.

If you were expecting Star Trek - The Next Generation, to carry on where it left off, you will be disappointed, as shown by the negative reviews. I was one of TNG’s greatest fans. But this is different. It has to be. It is 10+ years on from the original storyline and Picard has aged and changed since that time. Here you have a more vulnerable Picard, with a more emotive and human character. I find it absolutely refreshing to see “another side” to this man.I’m not going to report on the storyline. Other than it’s brilliant. That has been more than done. But if you want to see real friendship, not just acting, watch the episode where Picard meets with Riker and Troi. It is a pure joy to behold and had me totally believing in their bond, both off-screen and on-screen.The opening music to each episode is refreshing and fits the mood to the series perfectly, with a brief glimpse of the typical “Star Trek” theme at the end. Once heard, I couldn’t get it out of my head: Ear worm syndrome. It reminds me so much of the TNG episode “The Inner Light”, where Picard plays the Ressikan flute and which stayed with him throughout the rest of his life. A nod to that in this series, I think.Basically, I am just blown away. I didn’t know what to expect. But I am certainly not disappointed and I can’t wait for future episodes.

A beautifully written show, and a lovely blu-ray set. I’m glad to finally add this to my Star Trek collection.This isn’t your typical Trek. Even more serialised than the currently airing Star Trek: Discovery, Picard is best described as a novel. Each episode is a chapter, and it truly feels like you are flicking the pages of a book as you go through it.The new cast are delightfully imperfect, a far cry from the perfect crew that we saw set off with Captain Picard at the start of TNG. But then, nothing about this Picard (now a retired Admiral) is perfect, either, making this new cast of characters the perfect group to surround him with in this show.If you haven’t seen this show yet, ignore some of the hateful reviews here. Like most sci-fi fandoms, right now, Star Trek has a vocal minority of haters within its fandom, who blindly hate on any new Star Trek and enjoy spreading false information about those same shows. It’s sad.Watch it, and make your own decision! Definitely be prepared for a show that is not TNG in format, and that really strips back Picard to nothing, so to build him back up again. If you’re accepting of those two things, going in, you’ll love this show.Binge it.