Studios also need to stop caving everytime fans whine and bitch too. Paramount blinked w the reaction to PIC S1 and that was part of the reason it felt like S2 switched tracks & why they walked back the premise they sold ppl on to begin with
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I'm not a star trek person, but I enjoyed Picard s1.
aug 10, 2025, 6:14 pm • 0 0 • view
and then S3 did it again
aug 10, 2025, 3:09 pm • 25 0 • view
S3 was trying to clean up the mess of S2 and was a lot better than season 2
aug 10, 2025, 6:14 pm • 1 0 • view
hard disagree there, but we already covered it along the thread
aug 10, 2025, 6:16 pm • 2 0 • view
Picard really feels like three first seasons of three different shows.
aug 10, 2025, 3:11 pm • 54 0 • view
And they're all not very good.
aug 10, 2025, 3:12 pm • 3 0 • view
exactly! we could forgive S1 if they kept on track and delivered on the next seasons, but all we got was "let's forget what happened and deliver another story" and S3 had the nostalgia wanking as a (negative) bonus
aug 10, 2025, 3:14 pm • 5 0 • view
I sometimes feel like I'm the only one in my age bracket (grew up in the Berman era) who wasn't swept up in the nostalgia of S3. Couldn't cover the terrible writing, especially the total betrayal of Trek's "found family" ethos with Picard finally being made whole by having a 2.4 family. Just.. ugh.
aug 10, 2025, 3:17 pm • 8 0 • view
TNG was my first real exposure to Star Trek, at age 12, (other than films). I bathed in the Berman era, it was the definitive Star Trek for me at the time. I fucking despise everything about Picard Season 3 to my very core. I would punch Terry Matalas if I could (and didn't hate conflict).
aug 10, 2025, 3:24 pm • 3 0 • view
Oh good I'm glad it's not just me (8 by the time TNG first made it's way over to the UK). I was sceptical of Picard from the get go, largely because Trek has always been a team cast show so centering it around a single character just felt off. And yeah I feel like I was right about that.
aug 10, 2025, 3:27 pm • 4 0 • view
I liked what the first season was trying to do, even though it wiffed on doing it. I enjoyed Season 2 in spite of it being an absolute mess. Season 3...burn it.
aug 10, 2025, 3:30 pm • 3 0 • view
Season 2 would've been so much better if they'd spent more time in the alternate universe (which I think was the original plan). Cabrera's character expressing his love for the 21st century when he's just been through hell with ICE was... A Choice.
aug 10, 2025, 3:32 pm • 3 0 • view
Yeah that was super weird. A very obvious hand of the writer very clumsily writing out a character
aug 10, 2025, 3:35 pm • 0 0 • view
Discovery works as a focus on a single character because Burnham is a new character and we’re showing the rise of her from her lowest point, Picard could work if it ignored the fans clamouring for a TNG reunion which was always going to be the issue.
aug 10, 2025, 3:30 pm • 5 0 • view
I do think the rest of the cast had a real bearing on the quality of the show. I cared about the rest of the crew too.
aug 10, 2025, 3:35 pm • 3 0 • view
indeed, Discovery ended as Burnham's Journey, but in a good way - she and the crew worked as tokens for the federation at large
aug 10, 2025, 3:37 pm • 2 0 • view
I think Picard was a mistake from conception. Not because it's a bad idea, it isn't. But because of the TNG fans' expectations; it was never going to be what they wanted because what they wanted is stupid and destructive. So I think Kurtzman should've passed on Picard.
aug 10, 2025, 3:33 pm • 2 0 • view
From a short-term business perspective, it was a good decision. Season 3 was hugely popular because most fans wanted nostalgia slop, and that's exactly what they got. It's absurd that it won the Hugo award over Andor From a long-term perspective, Picard ended up being regressive and a waste
aug 10, 2025, 3:39 pm • 3 0 • view
It’s why I hope we don’t get a Star Trek: Janeway, which I honestly think Prodigy already did a better job at.
aug 10, 2025, 3:34 pm • 3 0 • view
PIC had scattershot writing from jump, sure, but there was always gonna be a very loud group of fans that would always hate it for not being the show of their childhood no matter how good the series was
aug 10, 2025, 3:33 pm • 3 0 • view
If I could tell shows one thing it would always be to ignore the fans, just make the show you want to make and let the dice fall where they may.
aug 10, 2025, 3:36 pm • 4 0 • view
I'm 39 and honestly, same. Granted, I am one of the few millennial Trek fans I know who didn't grow up in a Trek family* so I didn't have the TNG nostalgia built in when I stumbled into ENT when it's pilot aired anyway but my God, the Borg AGAIN? Really?! 🤦♀️
aug 10, 2025, 3:29 pm • 4 0 • view
The bait and switch with the Dominion, which had much more potential as a threat, was also just so deeply tedious. Oh and also the secondary good collective out there from season 2? PUH-LEASE. Just so unbelievably weak.
aug 10, 2025, 3:31 pm • 6 0 • view
It's why I don't think Terry Matalas should run another show for a good long while. He needs training in how to write plots.
aug 10, 2025, 3:40 pm • 2 0 • view
*I don't count my aunt allowing TNG to be the only show the family could watch live and getting drilled on philosophy like it's goddamn homework as family viewing. Frankly, it's that kind of srs bzns attitude from fans that turned many ppl off of Trek until LD brought joy back to the franchise
aug 10, 2025, 3:29 pm • 2 0 • view
Each season had some kind of course change and even S3 felt like they realised they could do as much fan service as they wanted, they just went off the rails and threw everything at the screen about half way through.
aug 10, 2025, 3:19 pm • 2 0 • view
And they're all bad (in different ways) as the first season of any Trek show usually is. It's usually an auspicious omen of good fortune for a Trek show to have a bad 1st season, because they get better and better. And good 1st seasons....well...There's SNW.
aug 10, 2025, 3:15 pm • 16 0 • view
that's because SNW 1st season was actually Discovery S2, which was bad in it's own way though I personally think it was justified to correct Disco's course
aug 10, 2025, 3:31 pm • 1 0 • view
I haven't decided yet, but Season 2 is in my running for best Discovery Season.
aug 10, 2025, 3:35 pm • 1 0 • view
I'm still undecided between 3 and 4 2 had a complete story which mostly made sense but I still felt the overuse of both the mirror universe and s31
aug 10, 2025, 3:41 pm • 2 0 • view
Discovery S2 showing what happens when you give organisations like S31 that much freedom makes it work it to me, it showed the dehumanisation that happens in those groups even if they have the best of intentions.
aug 10, 2025, 3:43 pm • 2 0 • view
The fact we got the awful S31 film out of that is *shakes head* I don't get it.
aug 10, 2025, 3:46 pm • 1 0 • view
It’s because they took Boey and Erika’s work, two people who actually wrote for Georgiou and did some amazing episodes, and gave it to a random white guy to cannibalise who wrote one episode of DSC S1 that didn’t even feature the character.
aug 10, 2025, 3:51 pm • 2 0 • view
Ugh. 😟
aug 10, 2025, 3:52 pm • 1 0 • view
S4 will always be my favourite, it felt less like they were making changes to appease fans and more pure DSC. Saying that it’s wild that we got the 10-C storyline where they desperately wanted to understand them, then immediately got SNW where they’re more than happy just shooting the Gorn.
aug 10, 2025, 3:39 pm • 4 0 • view
The writers of SNW are very obviously cribbing from Alien in the backstory of the Xenomorphs. All the elements are lining up. It's horrendous and undercuts the important message of TOS:"Arena"
aug 10, 2025, 3:42 pm • 1 0 • view
Discovery’s course corrections were handled far better too, they don’t feel as jarring as Picards and flow a lot better overall.
aug 10, 2025, 3:33 pm • 4 0 • view
I actually thought seasons 1 and 3 were good on their own merits. 2 sould have been a 90 minute movie. Sad that basically all of the new characters were forgettable, to the point that they didn't bother with most in s3.
aug 10, 2025, 3:45 pm • 0 0 • view
3 is not good by any of my measures, not even close to good. Insulting in fact.
aug 10, 2025, 3:47 pm • 0 0 • view
I'd argue that Prodigy had a great second half of its first season and that even LD's S1 had more hits than missed (the episode I'd consider the worst of that show isn't even in that season) VOY's S1 was easily the best of Berman era Trek & it's not even close
aug 10, 2025, 3:21 pm • 16 0 • view
Oooh that's a nuclear take... I like it (but will also get out the popcorn).
aug 10, 2025, 3:25 pm • 1 0 • view
They're completely correct. Voyager has the best first season of the Berman era, followed very closely by DS9, and then a little further behind ENT, and WAY behind TNG. Doesn't mean they're good, just better.
aug 10, 2025, 3:28 pm • 3 0 • view
DS9 was more slow going than outright bad, but it has so many classic episodes in it. ENT just needed to focus way less on the juvenile horniness aspect but when it leaned into actual unique stuff like mapping comets, a thing that a scanner could do on TOS, it was fine
aug 10, 2025, 3:42 pm • 8 0 • view
TNG....just no. The first time I watched it from the beginning in '04, I was seriously wondering if the fandom had been doing drugs to say THIS was the best show in the franchise until I got to season 3 and got back to back bangers
aug 10, 2025, 3:42 pm • 6 0 • view
VOY tho was surprisingly consistent, where everyone was still getting equal amounts of screentime. I can't even say there was a truly bad episode of the bunch.
aug 10, 2025, 3:42 pm • 6 0 • view
Interestingly I always felt that DS9 was the show that got up and running fastest. The first few episodes are a bit wobbly but then it just takes off (basically the moment Garak appears).
aug 10, 2025, 3:45 pm • 1 0 • view
The "rape accusations are bad actually" episode was pretty horrendous, the episode the Doctor engages in sexual attraction while embodying Seven's body without her consent was pretty awful. Any episode focused on Neelix and Kes or Kes and Paris was pretty bad. I could go on
aug 10, 2025, 3:45 pm • 1 0 • view
VOY just needed to be unshackled from attempting to be TNG 2.0, all the issues that show has stems from that limitation placed on it.
aug 10, 2025, 3:45 pm • 6 0 • view
I would have really liked ENT to be more what it was — the unique stuff, as you said. It wanted to be STAR TREK with constraints, because constraints are how fiction is made interesting. But there was clearly this huge "no! It needs to be more like everything else!" lobby
aug 10, 2025, 4:30 pm • 3 0 • view
That lobby was Berman
aug 10, 2025, 4:31 pm • 1 0 • view
The problem with ENT, especially the first two seasons, was that it was constrained by what TNG was but with horniness because that’s how they tried to solve Trek’s problem of Berman being unable to move on from TNG. It would have been better if it was more modern from the beginning like S4 was.
aug 10, 2025, 4:37 pm • 1 0 • view
Berman struck* gold once and kept trying to replicate that success again and again. And DS9 was there too, somehow. * Piller found the gold, but Berman is a self aggrandising pervert so probably thought he did it.
aug 10, 2025, 4:40 pm • 3 0 • view
TNG S1-2 were just trying too hard to be TOS, the moment they moved away from that the show started to get far better.
aug 10, 2025, 3:32 pm • 4 0 • view
That's why I really like Season 2, it feels like TOS 3.0 in a good way. That being said what TNG ended up becoming is way better than TOS 3.0 so...
aug 10, 2025, 3:34 pm • 0 0 • view
Oh, interesting! I wonder what episode you consider to be the worst, because mine is in the first season (the episode where Boimler has a girlfriend, though that might just be my inherent bias against Trek romantic drama, which tend to be... not particularly good).
aug 10, 2025, 6:26 pm • 1 0 • view
The multiverse, with William Boimler, one is my worst. God I hated that episode, and honestly most of that last season, was not sorry to see it go.
aug 10, 2025, 7:08 pm • 3 0 • view
While I don't hate that episode, I'm glad the show ended when it did rather than burning out it's welcome. If we get a movie, I'll take it but I did not need this to go on indefinitely
aug 11, 2025, 12:57 am • 2 0 • view
Honestly Season 4 to me is the real ending of LD. The whole Novafleet plotline felt like the logical thematic endpoint of the story, and tied everything together nicely.
aug 11, 2025, 1:22 am • 2 0 • view
For me as an enjoyer of the Mariner/Boimler dynamic (platonic & otherwise) & the general friend bonds in the group I didn't quite love season 4 & it was a big reason why I didn't feel like much was lost ending it with season 5
aug 11, 2025, 1:36 am • 2 0 • view
If there's been any show that was truly robbed of its time to shine in this era, within the constraints of the current environment, it's Prodigy by far.
aug 11, 2025, 1:37 am • 2 0 • view
That episode I actually don't mind, especially w the subversion that Mariner wigging out wasn't bc of her feelings for him or bc she doesn't believe he can't catch a hottie (Though I can see why it was a big jumping off point for Marinler's popularity tho bc of that)
aug 11, 2025, 1:02 am • 2 0 • view
I'm glad I read that again, because I thought you meant that VOY S1 was the best in ALL of Berman Trek, and 🤯😅
aug 11, 2025, 1:01 am • 2 0 • view
As for Voyager having the best first season of that era, I think I agree. Overall I think that prize goes to TOS, which just had an incredible amount of bangers right out of the gate. But that's a different question.
aug 11, 2025, 1:04 am • 2 0 • view
TOS is in its own era
aug 11, 2025, 4:00 am • 2 0 • view
I think the unique things VOY excels at, they really, really do well but my overall pic is still gonna be DS9
aug 11, 2025, 1:04 am • 2 0 • view
Prodigy is the exception that proves the rule. Both its seasons are fantastic and really defy expected Trek convention in a myriad of ways to craft an incredible journey.
aug 10, 2025, 3:25 pm • 3 0 • view
As for SNW? Welp :\ That one's just a big ol' bust that's falling apart at the seams like a Shien sweater on clearance. I get the feeling history will not be as kind to it as it has been to DS9, VOY or even ENT.
aug 10, 2025, 3:23 pm • 15 0 • view
As someone who has been pointing out the issues with SNW since S1, I don’t think it was as strong as people think it was. It was just extremely hyped up but all the issues were there all the way in the beginning.
aug 10, 2025, 3:25 pm • 9 0 • view
I enjoyed Pike and a few episodes were pretty stellar, but you're right the cracks were there from the beginning. And now even Pike shits me. PIKE. A character I've loved since I first saw The Cage, who I continued to love in the Kelvin films and Disco S2. SNW ruins him.
aug 10, 2025, 3:27 pm • 11 0 • view
It doesn't help that Pike is a conventionally masculine white dude whose fatherly nature is the core of his character, so for me to trust him, he'd have to be both (1) written better and (2) not played by Anson Mount, whose moral judgment I no longer trust
aug 10, 2025, 4:28 pm • 14 0 • view
Fair
aug 10, 2025, 4:31 pm • 2 0 • view
What’s the deal with Anson Mount?
aug 10, 2025, 6:15 pm • 1 0 • view
Has expressed Zionist sentiments and has seemed very prickly at being given criticism as a result
aug 10, 2025, 6:18 pm • 1 0 • view
Not the exact same kind of communist as they are
aug 10, 2025, 8:32 pm • 0 0 • view
Pike would be better if he was written and performed like he was in Discovery S2, Pike, Spock and Una feel completely different to how they were portrayed in that season.
aug 10, 2025, 4:33 pm • 14 0 • view
THIS. Those characters in Disco made me excited to get to know them better, to know more about how Spock got from Cage to Naked Time, and about his motivations in Menagerie. The twist of Pike knowing his fate made me want to know how he learned to face it and transcend it. Now? Feh.
aug 10, 2025, 5:22 pm • 4 0 • view
Indeed, different showrunners
aug 10, 2025, 4:34 pm • 3 0 • view
One thing about Spock is that TOS portrayed him as an equal. He was clearly an other, but that was as often a position of power as it was of disadvantage. SNW, on the other hand, virtually always structures its stories so that Spock being different is solely a thing to be "justifiably" mocked.
aug 10, 2025, 4:44 pm • 11 1 • view
It’s always interesting to think that Voyager and Discovery have the same number of episodes in their first seasons, 12-15 episodes really feels like a good sweet spot.
aug 10, 2025, 3:24 pm • 2 0 • view
What premise did they sell people for S2? I just thought S2 was a mess. Episode 1 awesome. Episode 10 awesome the ones in the middle were just like one long not very good episode of TNG.
aug 10, 2025, 3:50 pm • 0 0 • view
I was talking about PIC as a whole being about Picard's life post Starfleet and abandoning that for more TNG nostalgia S2 is easily the third worst season of Trek ever produced, no argument there. I wanted to punch my TV in after sitting through that.
aug 10, 2025, 4:08 pm • 11 0 • view
I think it was season 1 but that bit where Picard goes to the like, Romulan restaurant in his all-white clothes and sees a sign that is basically, "no colonizers", throws it down in the dirt, then goes and sits down and gets indignant that no one will serve him pissed me right the fuck off. lol
aug 10, 2025, 4:13 pm • 9 0 • view
It's such a fucked bit of writing. Picard even acknowledges that the Federation abandoned these people to their fate without a single look back - hell, he did so on a personal level with Elnor - then three episodes later, we've got him getting self-righteous over them being bitterly angry about it.
aug 10, 2025, 6:07 pm • 3 0 • view
He literally just acts like an ass and uses people the whole show.
aug 10, 2025, 4:49 pm • 3 0 • view
what two seasons were worse than it?
aug 10, 2025, 7:01 pm • 0 0 • view
TNG 1 and 2
aug 11, 2025, 12:57 am • 1 0 • view
"Q is back!"
aug 10, 2025, 4:02 pm • 1 0 • view
I thought that was a budget thing with s2, where the larger philosophy switch to full-nostalgia was s3?
aug 11, 2025, 12:32 am • 0 0 • view
For most of the 90s, there were firm lines between one Star Trek series, and another and crossovers between either of them were extremely rare and calculated. Now it’s always assumed that everything is a free-for-all. Surely, there has to be some middle ground in there.
aug 10, 2025, 3:48 pm • 5 0 • view
I wouldn't call "Birthright" calculated
aug 10, 2025, 4:09 pm • 0 0 • view
Meh, seemed pretty intentional to me
aug 10, 2025, 4:12 pm • 0 0 • view
Well all writing is intentional
aug 10, 2025, 4:15 pm • 1 0 • view
The point I want to make is, some branches of track can be about striking new ground, and some can be blatant fan service. There is room for both, we just don’t have to feel like we need to do it all at the same time.
aug 10, 2025, 3:49 pm • 8 0 • view
Yes, this! LD felt like a breath of fresh air when it first aired bc it was a novelty. When we had SNW doing nostalgia and TNG season 8 and even DSC itself picking up old TNG plotlines...it's a bit much.
aug 10, 2025, 3:52 pm • 9 0 • view
I get that it’s all one universe, and THAT’S A GOOD THING, but the real goal should be to just make good stories
aug 10, 2025, 3:56 pm • 10 0 • view
There’s also a mountain of Russia bots pushing culture war buttons on social media. Which gives people who’d usually keep their shitty opinion to themselves permission to join in.
aug 10, 2025, 8:03 pm • 2 0 • view
They freaking ruined Picard.
aug 10, 2025, 3:41 pm • 5 0 • view
What is PIC? I’m hoping that doesn’t mean Picard, as my wife and I just finished season 1 and it was incredible.
aug 10, 2025, 6:17 pm • 0 0 • view
it *is* Picard. unfortunately a lot of people don't like Season 2, and Season 3 is extremely, *extremely* controversial
aug 12, 2025, 11:29 am • 2 0 • view
Joy. I mean, we’re gonna watch it anyway.
aug 12, 2025, 11:06 pm • 1 0 • view