Why, Dane? Why? :deevee:

Since we’re on the topic, this is one of my favourite endings to any episode of television ever.

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I think it’s exceeded my own expectations so far (I was fearful it could have been a mess). It was never going to be on the same level as peak TNG or peak DS9, but it’s fine for what it is.

TNG and DS9 were shit all after 5 episodes.

Yeah, LOL, you're nuts. I watched AC. I enjoyed the series well enough to be interested in season two. But it's second rate compared to what we've seen of Picard already. In fact the weaker episodes of AC are crap by comparison.

A couple of spoilery things:

The criticism that Picard betrays the ideals of Star Trek isn't the same as saying it's too dark. The darkness in DS9 was different, it showed the cracks in the facade, but it never actually broke it. Picard breaks it. Sure, old Trek went to the "rogue bad admiral" well a lot, but it served a purpose. Starfleet and the Federation were still good, and once the bad admiral was exposed, he was defeated. In Picard it seems like Starfleet is nothing but bad admirals. At least so far.

That said, I am enjoying the show. I'd definitely rather have it than not. And I'm a sucker for the deep cut continuity porn.

I'm not going to disagree with you, Jamie, because I've only watched the first episode, but the "badmirals" have outnumbered the admirals 10 to 1 in Trek for a long time.

One thing I hated about the novel continuity is that they made Section 31 be led by an evil super computer/a.i. Which is kinda lame, but what really sucked is that they retconned a bunch of Federation history so that you find out a good chunk of Trek has all been part of the a.i.'s master plan. So it's been all badmirals and section 31 from the start. I think Discovery used at least part of this concept, but I haven't watched those particular episodes.


Speaking of the novels, this book is supposed to have some backstory on what Picard has been up to:

https://i.imgur.com/CAxqVl3.jpg


No idea if it's any good or not. The author wrote a great DS9 story years ago, but I haven't enjoyed her subsequent novels.

If you haven't read Altered Carbon yet, you sincerely should. The show is good to very good in spots, but the book is fantastic.

Interesting. One of the authors of the Voyager novels, Kirsten Beyer, is involved with the current Trek shows in some capacity. Maybe she's the one incorporating some of the novel-verse stuff into canon.

Yeah, they were plain bad at that point.

Crisis averted.

I agree with you about In the Pale Moonlight, but I actually think the first season of DS9 is very underrated. I think there are only two truly bad episodes in that season. The pilot was strong and Duet is a classic.

Perhaps you are right (the pilot is good enough, I came across it a few weeks back on TV), but Duet was at the end of that season. I'm talking like the first 5-10 episodes or so.