Octopus Overlords

But there sure is that feeling of, "Really, this is what one of sci-fi's most beloved characters has been up to since we saw them last?" Just as there was with Luke in The Last Jedi. Now, I actually liked TLJ more than I disliked it. And the same holds true here. I keep reading that Stewart and the writers didn't just want this to be "TNG part 2". I'm OK with that. It's actually a wonderful meditation on aging. And people have complained about the slow pace? I didn't notice pacing issues at all. My eyes were glued to the screen throughout. I thought a lot of elements actually seemed rushed. But it almost feels like a completely different universe. Everyone on active duty in Starfleet seems to be a bad guy. (Is everyone a Romulan agent?) Which... is probably an apt mirror for this era. But even though there were dark conspiracies in Starfleet before DS9 (e.g. back in TNG season 1), it still feels mercilessly pessimistic. That is, until mothballed Riker shows up at the head of a fleet of x-hundred identical flagships? I'm guessing this is how some pre-TNG Trek fans felt when TNG arrived.

- The non-Starfleet world is gorgeous and compelling. But it's also kind of... generic? I guess we didn't have the technology to easily portray futuristic cities thirty years ago. Everything had a somewhat hollow, claustrophobic set feel. But then we show up at Freeport or Freebase or whatever and it just feels a Blade Runner (or, more recently Altered Carbon) knockoff. And... I loved it. I wanted to spend more time there. But it didn't feel like Star Trek.

- When we got to the android planet, that felt like Star Trek. But... not the good kind. Why are all the androids golden? Because Data's silver-white had already been done? Oh, it's another Soong relative we've never heard of who just happens to build androids? Don't get me wrong; I'd pay to watch Brent Spiner throw up on the sidewalk. But for me, the last two episodes are where things began to fall apart. These weren't the payoffs I was hoping for. And oh, Agnes is off the hook for killing Maddox now? Did I miss something? (And, holy crap, that was the same character as in The Measure of a Man? I thought the name sounded familiar. Different actor, though they do look kind of similar.)

- I'm torn on Data's return. He might be my favourite character in Trek, so of course I wanted to see him. Visually, I think they came close enough to pulling it off excepting the puffy wig. But I feel like there wasn't a big enough build-up in this series for the send-off they gave him. This Data felt a little disconnected from classic Data, but perhaps we can chalk that up to his appearances being dreams or an AI reconstruction in a simulation (nonetheless portrayed as his true consciousness). I still cried though. Having him age was a surprising touch. I was always a little disappointed Data didn't grow more (emotionally) in TNG... but that was back in the era of episodic television. Still, he could have gone further in the movies, similar to Spock. I guess an appropriate rationalization given this series is that Data was only one step in the direction of fully humanlike androids, and his capacity for growth had limits.

- I'm not really clear on Maddox's/Soong's intentions with the Asha androids, or how their memories work. I loved Soji until she arrived on Coppelius... then her motivations seemed arbitrary. Riker alludes to her having Data's "head tilt", but I don't recall seeing it more than once? Don't the A.I. space worms know how to find us now? Were they really going to wipe out all biological life in the galaxy? Wouldn't that have have effects beyond simply saving the synthetics? I guess they're whisking the androids away to the negative zone so it doesn't really matter.

- I don't really care about the F-bombs, but most of them seemed kind of cheap and undeserved, especially when the frequency increased toward the end of the season.

- Did Picard really need to have the brain condition and be resurrected at the end? I feel like there was more than enough already on the line, and his mortality was on full display. Now we're also left with the pedantic question of whether this is the "real Picard" or just a copy of his consciousness. But, I guess we have that problem every time a character is sucked up by a transporter beam.

Anyway, B+. They managed to make it different from known Trek while still cramming a whole ton of Trek into it. The theme and titles are amazing. Jeri Ryan deserves her own show. (Picard makes it obvious that, if they don't create their own, a lot of these characters fall apart without their Starfleet families to hold them up, and I'd be happy for them to explore that further.)

I agree with you on the Picard brain condition. The way that they ended it was kind of dumb and cheap, because it took the drama out of Picard's aging / dying. Also they inadvertently invented functional immortality, which should have *massive* implications for the Star Trek universe going forward but which I know is going to be 100% ignored going forward. I wish they had either not done that storyline at all, or if they had just had Picard die at the end and have each season of the show center around a different character (e.g., spend one season focused on Riker, one season on Seven, etc.).

I also agree that everyone was suddenly super chill about Agnes straight up murdering someone. Again, either they shouldn't have done it, or they should've had Agnes go full-on over to the Romulan side of the story (which can be totally justified, given that the robots do indeed try to get everyone in the universe killed).

The way that they ended it was kind of dumb and cheap, because it took the drama out of Picard's aging / dying. Also they inadvertently invented functional immortality, which should have *massive* implications for the Star Trek universe going forward but which I know is going to be 100% ignored going forward.

THIS was my biggest criticism. It was a cheap and stupid ending that I believe even Stewart didn't agree with (if some of the rumors are to be believed).

And I should have hated the inclusion of Elnor as he's the very model of the VASTLY overused "klingon" role in Star Trek and most Science Fiction shows like it (you gotta have the bad ass warrior in your crew, and he has to have a heart of gold), but the father/son relationship between Elnor and Picard actually made it work for me.