A-****in-men. Worst part of the new Star Trek stuff is the requirement for over-the-top action set pieces. Every series has had some phaser shoot outs, but we don't need all the choppy nonsense.

Underwhelmed by the second ep. When you boil down the constituent ingredients, you have Kurtzman/Abrahams Trek which is another formulaic sci-fi trope branded at Star Trek. Just a bunch of cardboard cutout characters whose names I can't be bothered to remember bumbling into one uninteresting action scene and dumb exposition after another.

The only think keeping the whole thing from collapsing in it's own absurdity is Picard himself, however that's more than enough to keep me watching for now.

For me, the Maddox/replicant plot is the only interesting one - it's a shame they couldn't have just focussed the first season just on that aspect, and save all the other subplots for further seasons.

If they're going to do a lot of token fighting scenes they need to put this in it:

Now that would be incredible

Not sure if it's true or not but I read somewhere that the moves where they began disabling opponents with simple pinches and chops was more due to budgeting and lack of choreography than it was intended as a plot device

Quite possible the original would have ninja stuff if they had to the crew and budget to make it work

Don't like the direction it's heading, worried they're substituting in depth plot for interspecies sex scenes and ninjasg but it's unlikely I'd give up on it due to presence of Picard, which makes me think this is exactly why they are rebranding, they think they can tap into what millienials want while also getting me to watch a star trek in decades at the same time

I can't ever recall Picard engaging in combat but now he's taking out multiple heavily armed special forces units who got the jump on him and he's unarmed...

The show is promising but has some really dumb writing

"Nobody is allowed in this area"
"Oh yeah, why don't we take that up with the man in charge, oh yeah that's me"

"OMG I'm a scientist who just appeared out of nowhere, picked up a disruptor rifle from a dead guy, know how to operate it and just casually decide to use perfect aim to kill the first guy I see who happens to be bad. They trained commandos couldn't land dozens of shots so she's clearly an elite shooter but then she is surprised the guy is dead and throws down the rifle because guns are yucky"

Then it all makes sense, the interrogate the love survivor and it's an overweight middle aged actor... Yeah, the exact person to cast to play an elite special forces commando

The writers are either complete idiots or high level trolls trying to send trek fans to an early grave

Still an enjoyable guilty pleasure that has some potential but best viewed as Picard in the Battlestar Galactica universe than anything at all to do with star trek

Literally all the dialogue tilts me, so out of place for the formal and polite star trek communication style

He seriously kicks some Klingon butt in "Sins of the Father"

Eh, he beat up 1 Klingon. The other Klingon got the best of him but he was saved by the old woman. He's also ~30 years older now.

I'm enjoying it but it's more of a popcorn show than a cerebral one. I agree with most of the criticisms.

Agree. Overall, I think its probably worse than Discovery in terms of plot and pacing, and if it didn't have the TNG links I'd almost certainly bail.

Picard kicked ass here and there.

Out of curiosity I went to Memory Alpha, and if this show is following canon then Picard is 93 or 94. He shouldn't be kicking anyone's ass IMO, let alone someone from Romulan special forces or whatever they are. Notice how winded he was after he and that girl ran up those stairs evading them in the 1st episode?

Didn't even realize that was Hugh at first. Always liked JDA's work as that character.

My biggest problems so far are:

I thought Commodore Oh was just a Romulan somehow in Starfleet command... didn't figure out she was supposed to be pretending to be a Vulcan until way later. I mean, what kind of self respecting Romulan spy would be so bad at pretending to be a Vulcan?

The sister/brother Romulans' acting is just god-forsakenly bad.

Dahj's (whatever her twin sister is called actually) acting is just... immature. Her acting just isn't carrying the weight of her character. It could be I just can't get over her baby face.

As for the non-sensical techno-babble... well, that's just par for the course. Be nice if they at least pretended it was kind of hard though.

Yeah I don't like the choice for actors and don't understand the sexual tension and constant that's between them given they are brother and sister... Just seems off

I too was shocked to find that woman was supposed to be a Vulcan

Just when I was hoping they put the Kung Fu behind them, what do they do but go and include a sword carrying ninja

I am okay with the ninja. He's Worf's stand in basically.

I'm fine with the ninja dude, and most of the complaints I see still strike me as people trying to find reasons to hate a tv show ("Why is Picard being nice to a child, Picard HATES children!!" nevermind that Picard has always wanted his own children and that Picard is now 20 years old when time has a tendency to mellow people...), but man...some of these actors...Grizy is spot on. I find it hard to believe this is the best they could do.

was getting a bit nonplussed by it, but the sudden cast addition at end of episode 4 pulled me right back in tbh

The way they did it just sums up the level of writing though.

"Who is this GUY?"

"HE'S one hell of a pilot!!"

"HE is hailing us...HE requesting beam out."

"HIS shields are failing!!!!"

The whole thing is just a huge mess that reeks of having 5 producers and 17 writers or whatever it was. It actually feels like they had 5 people some up with completely separate storylines and then tried to hold them together with duck tape - Anyway, it's pretty clear we're just going to get strung along for 5 more episodes where nothing really happens and end with a Discovery-style predictable cliffhanger.

Fwiw, I'm going with Lore popping up.

I'm quite enjoying Picard. Just the right dose of self-parody without straying off message.

I am going with Oh is a synthetic and that the "mother" of Soji/Dahj is a time traveling Borg queen. That or Dahj/Soji are the culmination of the Borg's pursuit of "perfection."

Yeah, Oh is almost certainly a synthetic - hence why she wore massively oversized and obvious sunglasses when she met the blonde synthetic expert whatever her name is.

Time-travelling Borg Queen would be perfect because in a script-by-numbers committee meeting "Borg Queen" would not be enough - it would have to be a Time-Travelling Borg Queen.

Yes, Seven would have continued to develop as a person, get more in touch with her humanity, etc. in the years since we last saw her. It would still have been nice if she bore a sliver of resemblance to the character we knew. Other than being Jeri Ryan, nothing about that Seven rang was familiar.

Yeah, this was the first really jarring episode for me. I can handle the occasional issues with technobabble or whatever, that's always happened in Trek, but this version of Seven just didn't seem to have any relationship to the VOY version save for the opener and that last conversation with Picard about humanity. Ryan did a fine job playing a character, I'm just not sure who it was for most of it.

Loved the opener with Icheb though, and the call back to the VOY episode where he gave his cortical node to save Seven's life, which explained the comment about them not finding it. That and Seven's reaction to finding him was heartbreaking.

LOL they're doing it again. The ridge-less Romulans weren't an aesthetic choice by the makeup artists and character designers who decided the new look best fit the show.

No, the new Romulans look different because they are from the southern hemisphere of Romulus, whereas the ridged Romulans are from the northern hemisphere.

Star Trek: Picard Showrunner Explains Why Some Romulans Look Different