I just started this show. I haven’t really liked any Star Trek show since STNG, so I kept putting this one off. Mostly because Picard hasn’t been well received
I am halfway through season one. I am not sure what to say about this show. I don’t love it. Parts have a lot of promise and parts are just so clumsy. It has a serial story, but it is clear that whoever is writing it is still thinking episodically. Things are really sped up and the writers have an obsession with illustrating backstory in the worse way. So many scenes with laborious dialogue.
The show is also a lot more realistic view of the federation than previous Trek products I have seen.
Overall there is enough goodness to keep me watching and again, I don’t love it.
UPDATE
I bailed out of S1 around E8 it was just terrible. On advice from the thread I skipped to S3 and lasted three episodes. It was terrible. One the comically terrible parts is how all the 70 year olds had 20 something kids.
Season 1 is awful. Season 2 is awful. Both have the occasional high point that is pretty much entirely unearned.
Season three is a clunky, but well meaning apology for the previous two seasons and all of the TNG movies. It’s fan service, yes, but compared to seasons 1 and 2 it is Shakespeare. Actors get to act. Some actual drama between characters that never got a real chance to have those scenes before. Like “All Good Things” it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to be a satisfying ending.
For me season 1 was not awful. It was not good, but it was not awful. Now season 2… was absolutely terrible, the worse we have seen in all the Star Trek universe. Season 3 was better than 2, but it was still not good.
I’d say avoid this show!
I see Star Trek Lower Decks has been mentioned. That is truly a great show!
The most intensely frustrating thing about Picard is that it was so bad it tried to retroactively drag TNG down into the abyss with it
I don’t consider “fan service” to be a pejorative.
Neither do I, but it will put off a group of viewers. Obviously a legacy sequel show should be fan service, but S1/2 were so far off the mark it cones off as jarring in S3.
I thought S3 was pretty great, but admittedly because it gave me everything I was hoping it would. Not perfect. Certainly not something I can recommend to anyone who didn’t see the TNG movies when they were fresh. But to anyone who did suffer through that cast getting trotted out into a series of terrible, grim, geriatric action movies, S3 is fantastic.
But I liked the movies 😭
Admittedly, season three is better, though.