Some fuckstick deleted the old thread…
Anyway, I haven’t watched the finale yet. But reviews seem to indicate it wasn’t a shit show. So here we go.
^ Yeah, I thought a bunch of threads got deleted, including the Obi-Wan one. WTF.
Looks like Barry went thru and deleted any thread he created when Nick announced he was shutting the place down.
The finale was strong! Good stuff!
There weren’t any real twists, and the main story wasn’t particularly tense, but the “epilogue” was aces and the character beats all landed for me. de Lancie and Stewart really nailed their moments together.
The cameo wasn’t really needed, but it was fine, and I’m sure it made him happy.
If I hadn’t known there was a season 3, I’d have thought that was the series finale. It tied up almost every plot line and character arc pretty efficiently.
Much better finale than Season 1. Pretty close to sticking the landing. The cameo was weird, both because it was remarkably close to a prediction I made for the Season 3 finale, but also because as far as Kore’s character goes, the offer was entirely unearned.
I’m also having a little bit of a hard time reconciling Q here with Q bitch-slapping Picard in episode 2. But Q being Q I’m more or less okay with justifying it with him just being mercurial.
I’m guessing that the mystery transwarp portal is going to be what Season 3 is all about.
Holy fucking shit…Robert Meyer Burnett actually PRAISING Picard?
2x10 - “Farewell”
I have qualms about this finale – too pat in certain places, and too messy in others. But emotionally, my God, holy shit, the resolution worked EXTREMELY well. And the episode tied up this season’s stories while leaving a big mystery for next season.
Way back in September, 1987, I was in the fifth grade, and had been voraciously consuming not only episodes of TOS (both in syndication as well slightly later via VHS-rentals) since either 1980 or 1981, but also the feature films up to that point (Star Trek III was my very first Trek-movie seen theatrically, having previously seen ST:TMP and TWOK on television, and our car got robbed in the mall parking-lot when we saw Star Trek IV around Christmas '86), as well as the Pocket Books novels in addition to both the Marvel and DC Comics series. And then TNG premiered, and that very first episode gave us both Jean-Luc Picard and Q facing off for the very first time. To say that I’ve had an emotional investment in these two characters for decades now is understating it, to put it mildly.
And this episode works extremely well on an emotional basis: Q, dying alone, wants to spare his friend Picard from the same fate. To do so, he’s willing to risk the whole rest of the galaxy as collateral damage. And Picard rewards Q’s faith in him, by putting the key back under the loose brick, even though he fully knows the heartache it will bring him. That’s an extraordinary moment, basically a declaration by Picard that the entire journey has been worth the pain.
One thing that this show has done beautifully in both seasons, as compared to the more static nature of TNG’s characters, is really explore how Picard is changed by those around him, and how those around Picard are changed by him. At the beginning of Season 1, just about every main character was broken and damaged. Their growth and healing has mirrored Picard’s own. The two characters written out in this finale, Jurati and Rios, were basically fully healed by their exits. Jurati, who was always too influenced by authority, exits as a figure of immense authority. Rios, who was so isolated and alone, finds himself a family.
Wesley Crusher’s return was a really nice surprise, but I’m not crazy about the revelation that the Travelers are behind Gary Seven and Tallinn. For one thing, it seems like a major retcon of their portrayal in TNG as people who, well, travel and explore. For another, I hate the small-universe syndrome of having everything in the Trek universe caused by something the TV audience has seen before. The galaxy is so immense that everything we’ve seen in the past 55 years of Trek should be the most infinitesimal fraction of what’s out there. Not only that, but it’s a weirdly-random way to resolve Kore’s arc.
And then there’s the contradiction of saying they’ve been in an alternate-2024 all along and then saying that their actions created their “correct” timeline to begin with. Fortunately, I remain convinced that what they said about that in interviews not only makes no damn sense logically or narratively (since if the timeline’s already changed, then nothing they do afterward can prevent the change), but is not actually required within the story we see. The only thing it really affects is Guinan apparently not remembering meeting Picard in 1893, but heck, I’ve forgotten plenty of people I’ve met over the years, and it was more than 130 years ago for her.
Adam Soong pulling out a file with the name “PROJECT KHAN” on the front looked like a pretty old file, so I’m going to interpret it as Soong having originally based his own cloning-work on the work done with Khan in the past. After Kore wiped his computer-data, he went back to the original source so he could start again. It also helps set up Arik Soong on Star Trek: Enterprise. (That said, I do have a problem with calling it “Project Khan,” though, because Khan was just one of dozens of Augments who took power worldwide in the '90s. He was the most effective conqueror/ruler of the lot, but still just one of many.)
The one thing I appreciated with that last reveal is that the file was an old hardcopy, which would seem to confirm that Project Khan (and the first generation of Augments) came into being before electronic recordkeeping was common. That in turn would seem to confirm the Nineties-timeline for the Eugenics Wars, without getting bogged down in the differences between the Prime-continuity and our own world.
In this age of social media, 24/7 pop-culture coverage, and so on, the fact that Wil Wheaton’s one-scene appearance as the Traveler Formerly Known As Wesley Crusher™ was kept under wraps until Wheaton approached Isa Briones in what appears to be Griffith Park (the address Kore is given to meet at doesn’t actually exist in Los Angeles, as there is no Lowry Avenue, though there’s a Lowry Road just south of Griffith Park, so I’m assuming) is quite the feat.
First of all, this confirms that Wesley has remained a Traveler, despite his appearance at the Riker-Troi wedding in Star Trek: Nemesis. The original script for that film had an additional scene with Wes reporting aboard the U.S.S. Titan as a junior officer under Captain Riker, but that scene was cut, which means nobody is beholden to it. In the books, one author was actually tasked with reconciling that scene with Wesley remaining a Traveler in the post-Insurrection/pre-Nemesis novel A Time for War, a Time for Peace, since the whole point of TNG’s “Journey’s End” was that Wesley was destined for being something greater than a button-pusher on a starship. To have his remaining so canonized, as it were, is a great relief.
Plus the scene is a delight. We find out that the mysterious benefactors who sent Gary Seven and Tallinn to keep an eye on Earth are, in fact, the very same Travelers like Wes and the guy played by Eric Menyuk in TNG’s “Where No One Has Gone Before,” “Remember Me,” and “Journey’s End.” Wheaton is wonderful as a Traveler who is doing for Kore what the Traveler did for him on TNG, and Briones beautifully plays her response. Kore has been trapped and in danger of dying her entire life, and for the first time she’s free.
But the moment when she realizes that – while sitting in a library having remotely wiped Soong’s entire computer system – she has a look of completely befuddlement on her face. She can do anything, but she has no idea what to do. And here comes this higher being offering her a really cool adventure that will take her all through time and space, after she’s been trapped in the same house her whole life. Of course she says yes!
Brent Spiner plays Adam Soong’s assholishness perfectly, and there’s a certain satisfaction in watching his whole plan fall apart, and not just because it prevents the Confederation from happening. Spiner’s performance is so gleefully evil – from his snotty dismissal of the Europa-mission administrator to his calm murder of Tallinn disguised as Renee – that you really enjoy seeing him lose just for its own sake.
Which is good, because the two people who were set up as the villains of the piece in the early going aren’t so much. One is expected: the Borg Queen we met on the Stargazer in “The Star Gazer” who took over the fleet, who contacted Picard directly, is, in fact, the Jurati Queen. And as hinted at in that season-opener when all the Starfleet officers were just stunned, she’s still the kinder, gentler Borg Queen from four hundred years earlier. She needs the fleet to stop a thing, and she needed Picard there because he was the only one she could trust.
I would imagine that the final season will be Picard tackling whatever lies on the other side of that transwarp-corridor. The first season tackled Picard’s present, this season tackled Picard’s past, which should mean next season is Jean-Luc Picard unencumbered as he dives headfirst into his future.
Some other thoughts:
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I actually liked Soong’s dogged tenacity. What happens when he has presumably countless terrabytes of genetic-data wiped from his servers? He just immediately goes back to his hardcopies from the Nineties. Which humorously means Khan was the early model, and not the latest as well as greatest.
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The visual for the sector-shattering KABOOM was ridiculous, by the way. A spherical englobement around an eruption in all directions would’ve made more sense for something supposedly endangering the whole sector, not just one narrow corridor. Also, people light-years away were able to see it in the sky in real time, apparently.
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There’s some questions to be raised. Was Borgati hiding with her tiny faction of the Borg (like the Cooperative) in the Delta Quadrant this entire time, or did the Borg Queen become evil again (we assimilated the empathy you taught us, Boimler)? In which case, Jurati was offline for 400 years and only returned to power recently? The latter might explain why the Borg have been quiet, as she’s been cleaning up their mess since VOY: “Endgame.”
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As to Rios’s fate, it’s nice that it’s revealed in words from Guinan, who could very easily have said what she thought Picard wanted to hear. The happy ending is there for now, but should a different direction be required, it’s an easy matter to paper over, especially if Rios instructed her not to reveal anything. (I consider it the “It Never Rains In Southern California”-option: “Tell the folks back home I nearly made it…”)
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Seriously, I now want a Christopher L. Bennett Department of Temporal Investigations novel about Season 2 of Picard and their desire to arrest Wesley.
Having Rios die in a bar fight would be a weird lie to tell. Plus, zero chance Guinan would lie to Picard.
It’s probably a lot easier to hide a cameo when the person is already on staff doing your “Inside the Ep” talk show.
de Lancie’s face in that final embrace with Stewart really got me. That was the most emotionally powerful moment I’ve seen in Trek for many years (probably back to the DS9/TNG era).
It’ll be interesting to see who will make the cast for next season, with the old crew taking up significant screen time I assume. Seven’s a lock, but the rest are question marks. Rios is out, save for a possible holographic role. Jurati’s Queen seems likely to be in, but could be a cameo or a big role. Similarly, Rafi could be a bit or a regular role. Same for Picard’s “new” ladyfriend. I’d be surprised if Elnor or Data’s kid had more than a cameo.
It’s kind of a weird spot to be in, since I’d say Picard built the best cast of any Trek post-DS9… but there’s no way you can bring in TNG cast without mostly sidelining the cast without decades of fan adoration.
I believe Seven and Raffi are confirmed for S3. Rios, Elnor and Jurati are all out. No word on Soji and vaguer on Laris. I believe she’s out too based on comments by the actress but who knows.
More in the morning. But I liked the finale. They almost stuck the landing. Not quite but close.
First…Project Kahn…go fuck yourself.
I thought they mostly stuck the landing but they did what all other live action Kurtzman-Trek season finales do, save for Disco S4, and tried to do too much. If they structured things a bit better, we would have wrapped up the Renee and not-Laris storyline in ep 9 and left the fallout/wrap up for ep 10.
The Q/Picard stuff was fantastic. So well done by Stewart and Delancie. I’m sad that Q died, although never say never I suppose.
The Wesley/Kore stuff was so unnecessary. I guess they figure they had to pay the actress anyway and wanted to throw Wheaton a bone since he won’t be there for the S3 reunion.
Rios staying was expected and his death very on brand. But sad that we won’t see the character again. He was fantastic. I did think it was funny the helmsman saying “hey, where’s Captain Rios”.
Full on Queen Jurati felt awkward, didn’t help that her CGI face was terrible. I’m guessing she had a tiny collective that was just kinda out there. Otherwise…more timeywimy implications.
I hope that we do see that Picard has enough juice to make Seven’s field promotion stick.
Overall I liked the season alot. Although there was too much wheel spinning. But the production felt top notch and the acting, a few things aside was outstanding. Of the live action Kurtzman Trek (Disco S1-4, Picard S1-2) this was probably the best full season top to bottom. SNW S1 pending of course.
It’s funny that the weakest part of the season was the -main- plot (the Europa mission)… and yet the season overall still worked! That’s hard to do!
To be sure, the “Project Khan”-file was an old paper document, so presumably it represented the antecedent of Soong’s work. We saw in his first episode that he was disgraced for violating an international convention against genetic engineering. Presumably that convention was established in the wake of the Eugenics Wars, to ensure it never happened again, which is why Soong’s desire to engineer humans was seen as so disgraceful.
As I took it, that last scene didn’t mean, “Okay, now it’s time to start creating Khan.” It meant, “Okay, all my work based on ‘Project Khan’ has been deleted, but I still have the original template I started from, so I can start again and recreate my work, and maybe in about 130 years my lookalike-descendant Arik will be able to carry on from there.”
I appreciate the Picard and Q stuff, just like I enjoyed Picard visiting Troy and Riker the previous season, but goddamn, I wish it wasn’t in such a horrifically bad show. The writing is just so, so bad.
Dude, you seriously need to watch more TV if you think Picard is a “horrifically bad” show. Like, it objectively very much is not. By no stretch of the imagination whatsoever.
I just thought it was an unnecessary easter egg (and lord knows I love my Trek easter eggs) and just made the universe smaller for no real good reason.
A better ending for Soong would have just been with his head down in the lab a broken man.
Soong finding a 1996 document on Khan felt like a retread of when ENTERPRISE had Soong say “artificial life forms, may take a GENERATION or two”
Yeah but that one felt more organic. Especially because that Soong while not a saint wasn’t an evil fucker like Adam. And it didn’t involve something like Kahn.
I saved the old Picard thread because I wanted to read it whenever I got around to watching the show.
Old Worf looks awesome.
Oh man, already? But I just abandoned season 2 months ago!