As a lifelong Star Trek fan, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and Prodigy are as good as its ever been. The writing on all three is incredibly tight.
Disco and Picard... have been a struggle.
Disco and Picard... have been a struggle.
I have a feeling it's gonna be like The Orville, just rehashing of good Trek ideas from the past. But I've yet to see it. If some of the critics I trust endorse it, I might.
A bit weird, but it's definitely evoking much more of the Star Trek feeling than the previous seasons did.
Like Season 3 is definitely better than Season 2 and maybe Season 1, but besides the majority of the actors being in Starfleet uniforms on a Starfleet ship, it still feels way more Discovery than TNG. It's just cramming the nostalgia down your gullet so often that you don't have time to not care.
Look, Riker. Yay. Crusher! Yay. Worf's back, yay. He said a non-stereotypical Klingon thing, hilarious, he's not like the other Klingons. Oh. Now he said a stereotypical Klingon thing. He's still got the heart of a Klingon. Ooh. Changelings. Dominion War. Wolf 359. Locutus. Wow. Much Star. Very Trek.
All in all. I'd say Season 3 of Picard would have made for one of the better TNG movies. But considering that most of them were not good, that's not really a high bar to clear.
Lower Decks is the closest thing to old-school Star Trek that is currently being produced. But that's mostly because it wants to be a pastiche of TNG-era Trek.
Only by the time DS9 and VOY came out did they have a well-working formula, but at that time it became a bit too formulaic.
Still, it's entertaining, and there's enough quality there to enjoy it.
And it doesn't. At least no more so than Discovery. It crams in a lot of reference and characters from that era, but it's still an action show set in space.
Even if the first couple of seasons of TNG don't have a lot of bangers, the spirit of the show is still there. I'm also tired of the trope that they aren't good. There's a lot in both seasons that carry through the show. Plus, The Measure of a Man is one of the best episodes of the series.
And that's the thing, when you look to TNG's best episodes, you'll come to episodes like The Measure of a Man, The Inner Light, and Darmok. Where there's either no action or the action really only exists to forward the real central conflict. Episodes which make us question what it means to be conscious, what it means to live a fulfilled life, what it means to be able to communicate with others. You get these meaningful explorations into humanity by forcing the issue through the extremes provided by science fiction.
In this season, we get told that Picard kinda, sorta regrets not being able to be a father to Jack Crusher. But we don't actually get to explore that within the show itself. We're way more concerned with surfing the gravimetric waves. Or the portal gun. Or changelings taking over the crew.
All the real conflict is physical and confrontational. The show is about saving the galaxy, not about what humanity means.
Season 3 of Picard finishes a lot of the story arcs that got left over the runtime of TNG.
Take the storyarc that was begun in TNG S04E02 "Family" and continued in ST:VII "Generations" of the legacy of the Picard family. Both in "Family" and in "Generations" the desire to leave a legacy, to continue the family, is well established. The Jack Crusher storyline continues this very arc.
The show doesn't have to explore those feelings, because they've already been explored, this is just the conclusion of a 33 year old storyline.
I agree though that it'd be awesome if it was just the old TNG, continued, but I doubt that'd run well nowadays. First, the new showrunners obviously took some time to get the feeling of Star Trek - their seasons have improved one by one.
Second, them splitting what made TNG well into multiple shows - Picard resolves the open storylines, Strange New Worlds asks more philosophical monster of the week questions, Discovery explores progressive inclusivity - feels like a deliberate choice considering the fanbase is quite wide, and everyone expects something different.
Personally I really like that it's less pure action, a little more grounded, actions have consequences, Starfleet itself is involved again, it's all going in the right direction. Definitely not there yet, but after so many years of going in the wrong direction, this is good.
It is heavily tread territory. Picard offers nothing really new to it. But it wants to retread it all over again for some reason. It's not really a continuation, it's a poor rehash. It's not even resolving anything. It's reopening something that's been resolved.
Picard Season 2 was considerably worse than Season 1.
It doesn't have to be TNG, but it could at least be closer to Strange New Worlds.
Picard is way more action-oriented than TNG-era Trek. There hasn't been an episode where physical violence wasn't central to the conflict. Now, Picard's structure is different from TNG-era. It is not episodic. Every episode serves a larger storyline. That necessarily precludes any individual episode being about "a thing".
I don't think Picard Season 3 is that different direction. It's just got more window dressing. It's more a continuation of the movies than of the series.
Has Star Trek returned to what made it great now?