My wife and I are rewatching The Next Generation and just finished Measure of a Man, the episode in season 2 in which Data’s personhood is legally debated and his life hangs in the balance.
I genuinely found this episode infuriating in its stupidity. It’s the first episode we skipped even a little bit. It was like nails on a chalkboard.
There is oodles of legal precedent that Data is a person. He was allowed to apply to Starfleet, graduated, became an officer and rose to the rank of Lt. Commander with all the responsibilities and privileges thereof.
Comparing him to a computer and the judge advocate general just shrugging and going to trial over it is completely idiotic. There are literal years and years of precedent that he’s an officer.
The problem is compounded because Picard can’t make the obvious legal argument and is therefore stuck philosophizing in a court room, which is all well and good, but it kind of comes down to whether or not Data has a soul? That’s not a legal argument.
The whole thing is so unbelievably ludicrous it just made me angrier and angrier. It wasn’t the high minded, humanistic future I’ve come to know and love, it was a kangaroo court where reason and precedent took a backseat to feeling and belief.
I genuinely hated it.
To my surprise, in looking it up, I discovered it’s considered one of the high water marks for the entire show. It feels like I’m taking crazy pills.
So as someone who never watched Picard, its a skip?
Picard was fumbled hard overall.
They had some concepts that could’ve been deeply interesting, such as [SPOILERS] a dead Borg Cube in Romulan space, being studied by the Romulans, and looking for Bruce Maddox, the scientist who wanted to study Data in Measure of a Man (S1), Q dying and wanting to engage with Picard before he goes (S2), but they did a really bad job.
Season 3 is a lot better. A lot of the sound and cinematography is great, it feels more like a Star Trek film than a TV show in terms of how it’s presented. That in itself isn’t a good thing or a bad thing, but I personally liked it.
It’s a bit fan-servicey - there were times when I liked that, but also times I rolled my eyes. I’d say Season 3 is worth watching, and you’ll either like it or you won’t. Thankfully, the show pretty much resets itself for season 3, and you don’t really need any info from Seasons 1/2 going into it.
Picard is destroying, it doesn’t add. It should’ve never been made.
Red Letter Media did some youtube videos on all the Picard seasons, you’re much better off just watching them talk about it than actually watching Picard itself. Season 3 is supposedly better, but still not great.
Oh, please skip it. I watched the first season and I wish I could erase that experience from memory.
The final season of Picard is terrific. The others are not so good. But you kind of have to watch the others to understand some of the things in the final season.
It’s mostly just a TNG reunion though.
If the last season of Picard is terrific, then Star Trek Nemesis is peak cinema.
…or we just don’t share an opinion about a TV show.
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