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We watched it so you don’t have to: ‘Star Trek: Picard’ is simply terrible

Why are we doing this?

Why is it necessary?

Why must we suffer. . .in such a specific way?

These are all questions we know the answer to, if logic is applied. 

1) We are not doing this. CBS is doing this. CBS is doing this, because money.

2) It is not necessary, but there is a chance that money will be made from it.

3) We must suffer, because money is involved.

CBS has recognized that it will never win in the streaming wars unless it lugs out the long-dead carcass of various Star Trek properties and brings them back, Frankenstein-style, in an attempt to increase its viewing figures, which is how we ended up with Star Trek: Picard.

It’s working. 

CBS All Access reported the month of January surpassed its prior record in February 2019 for subscriber sign-ups, largely due to the hype for Picard

According to TechCrunch, Picard’s premiere set a new record for total streams and led to the highest volume of subscribers to stream a CBS All Access original series to date. Picard also led to an increase in views by more than 180%, compared with CBS’s Star Trek: Discovery’s previous record for subscribers streaming a CBS All Access original.

We could recap the show, but watching a trailer gives a clear enough understanding of what the story is. Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) comes out of retirement, and there are explosions.

The Alex Kurtzman-created show follows Picard after he left Starfleet for a quiet life on the vineyard, but since this is Star Trek, the quiet life does not stay quiet for very long. The pilot features callbacks to Star Trek: Nemesis, and the series will feature all of our favorite Star Trek actors, such as Brent Spiner, Jeri Ryan Marina Sirtis, and Jonathan Frakes.

The show creators also made the decision to link it to the 2009 Star Trek reboot, because #synergy, so Picard is also handling the fallout of displaced Romulans after the destruction of their home planet. 

So why aren’t we happy about it?

Star Trek: The Next Generation had arguably one of the best finales in television history. There was no happy ending or final battle, characters weren’t getting murdered every 12 seconds, and there was no sense of finality to it.

It did not end with a bang or a whimper, but rather a game of poker. A continuation of the game they had played for years before and would likely play for years to come. Captain Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) joined them in its final moments, a first for the series, and the screen faded to black.

That finale was a promise they would continue the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. There would be more stories, adventures, and visits to the Holodeck for the Starfleet crew, even if the viewer was not there to see them. It was a sweet, sad ending for a sweet, optimistic show, and it was a fitting conclusion after seven seasons.

Picard is back, but not because he needs to be. 

ABC has an entire backlog of Disney content and promotional tie-ins to draw from, while NBC is launching a streaming platform that will feature gems like ER, Parks and Rec, and Cheers. CBS needs an edge, which means there will be a new Star Trek show premiering every year until World War III breaks out, humanity crumbles, and Zefram Cochrane finally gets around to inventing warp drive.

We have reached the transitive property of entertainment. Did you love Spock in Star Trek: The Original Series? Great, here’s the story of his unnamed adopted sister. Were you a fan of Data from STTNG? Well he has a daughter now! Just kidding, she died. But look over there! He has another daughter, conveniently alive and ready to advance the plot! 

It’s so convenient that everyone in these different families decided to pursue a career in Starfleet. Nobody in the Spock family ever thought to take up dentistry? Or copywriting? Or improv? In two years, if Picard doesn’t take off like it’s supposed to, CBS will trot out the untold Starfleet story of Jean Luc Picard’s distant nephew. He’s probably Belgian, and speaks with a Canadian accent, which makes as much sense as Picard’s dialect.

We understand that creating media in this day and age is almost impossible: the amount of funding it takes to get something off the ground requires it to be a success almost overnight, which means that show creators are looking for an easy sell, which means drawing from previous (successful) properties. 

It is getting exhausting to try and keep up. 

Star Wars is just the Skywalker family ruining the rest of the galaxy, while Marvel is little more than a factory of perfectly chiseled actors recreating the plot of lesser-known Stan Lee comics. Jurassic Park will keep on creating CGI monstrosities in what feels like a blatant violation of the Geneva convention, and we’re forecasting that Harry Potter will get the reboot in less than seven years.

Sometimes, a show creator gets it right. Westworld and Watchmen on HBO both come to mind as both a reboot and sequel (respectively) handled perfectly. Each program respected the original material while pushing the story in a completely different direction, but those stories are few and far between.

Until then, we have Picard. A program filled with amazing actors playing classic characters we love, at the expense of anything new.

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Comments
  • Why the holy hell would people watch a series ‘true to the original’? STTNG is 30 years old. TV has come a long way since then. Old shows are generally dated and crappy.

    May 23, 2020
  • Bring back the old format, this gritty dark sjw crap is just pathetic. New show are generally hollow and empty, they rely on sfx, f-bombs, and a bucket of young empty headed diversities to get attention, no wonder they are failing so bad, no one is buying Mary-Sue Burnham action figures. And CBS is trying to sell the dumpster fire they created.

    June 2, 2020
  • Get WOKE, go BROKE.

    October 4, 2020
  • From a prior comment:

    “I’ve watched every series of Star Trek since the first series came out, and I rate this as the best of the lot by far. Take that you whiny little know nothing dumbarses.”

    STNG: Measure Of A Man
    STP: 10 episodes that was already done by STNG.

    How’s that for dumbarses?

    But wait, it gets better, since the one gal has a prior history with males, now goes lezbo, and so what’s the great objection to the notion of conversion when the thing does appear to be mutable? Some have done their best to kill the franchise. You can add Sulu as now gay when even he opposed that notion… But that’s where we’re at, Star Trek: Beyond Stupidity aka Star Trek: For Dumbarses.

    Can someone please tell them to just stop…

    October 30, 2020
  • STTNG was an optimistic show that made me look forward to the future in all its utopian glory. STP went all dark. I am sick of all the darkness on television these days. I’m afraid it will change me as person.
    Make Star Trek great again please!

    December 27, 2020
  • ST Discovery sucks 10Xs worse than Picard, which is really sad.

    March 5, 2021
  • Each episode of Star Trek Discovery Burnham cries and I roll my eyes.

    After each episode of Star Trek Picard I stop watching for several months out of complete and utter disappointment. I’m currently on episode four.

    March 14, 2021
  • This is *peak* toxic fandom.

    May 25, 2021
  • The subscriptions went up because everyone signed up for the free trial week.

    June 23, 2021
  • What’s funny to me is everyone bitching about Wokeness on these shows. Uhm.. did we all forget the firsts the original series had? Black woman in a command position that MLK Jr told her she had to stay when she wanted to quit.. and first interracial kiss on tv? Jesus you people are upset about the wrong things.

    October 14, 2021
    • yeah, that is not what wokeness is. Wokeness is the absence of meritocracy. Without meritocracy we will not get to space. You know what gets you to space, math, you know what math is….racist. According to people like you. It makes no sense to have space woke anything because the very ideology of woketards is anti space. A woke culture cannot and will not make it into space, that is why people dont like woke. Woke has nothing to do with the first interracial kiss, woke is putting a captain from a race which believes math is racist in space when math is what got you into space in the first place. Cognitive dissonance is the heart of wokeness.

      January 16, 2022
  • Money is not what is CBS is making, it has nothing to with money. If it was about money it would be good. this is about social engineering so CBS gets free money from the fed through various and many avenues to make shows no one wants to watch in order to force an agenda down your throat. They do not lose money, in fact if they do not do the bidding of the tribe that controls the federal reserve they will find their own avenues to financing cut off. It has nothing to with making money legitimately. No one watches discovery, people hate it so much they had to make it PPV so the stats wouldnt be out on how few people watch it. So they can make another season without having the abysmal stats of the first season saying how little sense another season makes. Those stats would say it must be cancelled because no one likes it or watches it ….that is social engineering. Making sure you have no where to run and all the good things of your youth are destroyed.

    January 16, 2022
  • It’s nothing but pure woke garbage. All of it. It’s a disgrace to the Star Trek legacy.

    March 23, 2022
  • So much whining, so little time. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. There’s a great adage for this, if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything. Aside from that obvious thing. It’s great to see Patrick Stewart in anything at 80 years old. If you ask me, the whole show is just a great excuse to see these actors and actresses again. Sure it’s new and different, that’s the whole point. It was (Both seasons) great. If you don’t agree, it wasn’t made for you. *Plays STNG theme* fingers up for the haters.

    May 21, 2022
  • Like Discovery, it seems like a platform for woke propaganda or corporate virtue signalling for a favorable ESG score. Probably both.

    “We must suffer, because money is involved.”

    As weird as it may seem, even the products and services you like are there because money is involved. More importantly, no one has to “suffer” through a voluntary experience. Picard sucked on episode one so I just shut it off and elected to stop giving them my money. 🤷‍♂️

    May 31, 2022
  • They made 7 of 9 a lesbian, when she was clearly not in ST Voyager.

    Typical of today’s sick woke garbage. Patrick Stewart has hit a new low.

    April 4, 2023
  • Star Trek has also been mostly been antagonistic/xenophobic/racist talmudic rubbish with the exception of about 20-30 episodes overall. Best alternative: Strange New Worlds.

    July 21, 2023

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