Picard Season 3 Final Rant/Thoughts
Apr. 24th, 2023 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiRecent prestige TV shows seem to follow two different theories of writing. One I’d describe as character driven: the writers construct characters and figure out how they’d react under certain circumstances. Examples of this kind of writing are Andor, The House of the Dragon, and The Last of Us. The other I’d describe as theme or message driven: the writers determine what theme(s) or social message(s) they want to present and construct characters and situations to deliver them. Examples of this kind are The Rings of Power and much of New Star Trek and pieces of Boba Fett and Obi Wan Kenobi.
It’s probably clear that I prefer the former style of writing. At the end of the day, I don’t know what storytelling is about if it’s not about the human experience. Messages only matter because they are part of the human experience. I’ve never really understood the point of placing message ahead of character. In my opinion, that ultimately just blunts the message. (This is approximately what I argued in my long-ago essay on why Buffy Season 7 didn’t work for me.)
I’m not saying having messages is bad or trying to make a backdoor argument about messages being “too woke.” Andor has the message “fight fascism,” and that’s a good one. Buffy S7 has the message “spread the female empowerment,” and that’s good too. It’s about how whether the messages will end up feeling like an insightful illustration of human experience or a simplistic bludgeon. Spoilers follow for Picard, potentially all seasons and warning for disorganized, Covid-induced rambling
Picard: Season 3
Picard: Season 3, alas, like much of NuTrek lands in the second kind of writing, which is a shame because I think a lot of its basic ideas are good, and it even extracted a couple of quite good episodes out of them.
The idea that the Borg and the Changelings might make common cause as collective entities both badly hurt by the Federation is surprising yet makes a lot of sense (the best kind of story zone to be in). I find myself wishing this had been the Babylon 5-like arc plot of all three seasons. It could have had room to breathe that way. As it is, it feels rushed.
The idea of centering the season around Picard having to come to terms with his Borg trauma is also inherently a good one. Again, it could have been the theme of a running three-season arc and would have been more coherent.
But the theme of parental love is not handled well. It has its moments: Geordi and his daughters are fine, if not deep. On the whole, however, it smacks of ramming the message home regardless of whether its plot beats make sense in the ST universe or for the characters.
I’ve argued elsewhere that Jack’s existence is a bad idea. This is a shame because the actor’s quite good and doing his best, and the character, just taken as a person, is not bad. But any promise he might have had is wrecked by his having to be Picard and Crusher’s son. (My complaints about this are here.)
The message-centered writing is also really on display with Riker and his grief over Thad. The problem here is that it contradicts the much better written season 1 episode, which used Writing Theory No. 1 to construct a bittersweet portrait of a family still dealing with the loss of their son despite several years of grieving, processing, and healing. And then the writers threw it out the window to regress Riker’s healing back to “I could never really face it” two years after we saw him doing just that. This is a prime example of message over character.
The lack of will to actually write characters also shows, I think, in the handling of Picard and Crusher’s relationship. Now, I’m a Picard and Crusher shipper from way back. I always had a low-grade frustration that TNG decided to tease their relationship and then forget about it, then tease it again, etc. I really wanted to see their relationship developed in their later years, and it felt like a bit of a slap in the face to the already underused Gates McFadden that Beverly got nary a mention Picard S1 and S2. Where TNG left these two provides a wealth of opportunities to explore their Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon-like feelings of guilt/loyalty/resentment over Jack Prime’s death, contemplation of the nature of relationships, possibly “wasted” time, what makes two people compatible (or not), and does that change over the course of our lives?
Instead, oddly enough, in a season about these two having a son, their relationship gets zero development. After an emotional scene or two about Jack, they’re right back to having the same relationship they had on TNG (friends with some sort of “background”)—and that is literally all we see in 35 years of Star Trek.
Picard has a bad habit of skipping relationships, or “telling, not showing” if you will. It did this with Raffi and Seven all three seasons. We’re told they’re a couple now in S1 by the dubious signifier of holding hands—because a sexual relationship is the only reason two people would ever hold hands, right? Then S2 skips to their being broken up, and they still seem broken up in S3, I guess? Picard and Crusher are similarly skipped—they tried to have a romantic relationship five times (that we didn’t see). And that’s it.
Another sign of message over character, I think, is the almost complete failure to acknowledge Seven’s background with the Borg in a season about the Borg assimilating Star Fleet. It’s the most natural thing in the world that Seven would emerge here as one of the primary characters psychologically affected and one of the greatest sources of information on how to manage the situation. But the message has to be about Picard facing his fear of the Borg and accepting his desire to be a father, so Seven is relegated to just one more character going around being competent.
Speaking of Seven—this is just a pet peeve; it’s not very important, but it’s indicative of why I don’t like message-first storytelling: Shaw’s “dead naming” of Seven as “Hanson.” This is a pretty standard NuTrek allegory: Seven’s choosing the name Seven stands for trans people choosing a gender-appropriate name, and disregarding her choice stands for the disrespect of calling a trans person by their dead name. Now, I know a lot of trans people really liked this plot thread and felt validated by it, and that’s great. I’m happy they’re happy. They got something valuable out of this, and that’s a good deed done.
I still think it’s bad writing, though, because it places messages ahead of character and story. In-universe, Seven’s situation is not identical to a trans person’s. For example, long before she chose the name Seven, the Borg forced it on her, robbing her of her original human identity. Nor in the past have I seen any sign that Seven disavows the name “Hanson” as being any part of her (in fairness, I have not seen all of Voyager). My sense has been more that it’s not her identity now, that it would denying all the change and trauma and growth she went through as Borg to pretend she could go back to her childhood identity. That’s not the same feel as deadnaming a trans person, and it would have been nice to see the nuances discussed.
Moreover, in Star Fleet, I’m not sure how this situation could logically come about. Star Fleet honors diversity and individual choice. Pretty basic to that is honoring people’s chosen names. TNG shows this in emphasizing that “Ro” is ensign Ro’s surname, despite its being placed first. Assuming that Seven has listed her name as “Seven-of-Nine,” I’m not sure how Shaw would be allowed to make her use “Hanson.” I get that his motivation is his own trauma with the Borg, but I imagine that the first time he tried it, she’d quote a Star Fleet regulation at him, and if he persisted, she could bring file a complaint, in which she would transparently be in the right and he'd be reprimanded and have to stop.
The only other angle I can think of is just that Star Fleet has a particular prejudice against the Borg and disallows Borg designations (which would mean there would be a problem with others calling her “Seven” in an official capacity, which is not indicated). But if Star Fleet did have this prejudice, that would be something to actually say in the script and deal with, which doesn’t happen.
All of this predictably wraps around to Shaw calling her “Seven” with his dying breath (and also in his laudatory review of her), thereby showing that he has come to respect her right to her own identity. Aside from the fact that his is hackneyed (like Jack being Picard’s son, it’s predictable 1000 miles away), I’m actually a bit worried about the message this sends. Mind you, I’m all for using people’s chosen names. You may notice I’ve been calling Seven “Seven” this whole post. But I worry about the idea that Shaw can only be redeemed by correcting this one piece of disrespect. What would it mean, for example, if he died heroically, praising Seven, etc., and just never got around to correcting the “Hanson” thing? Would it mean he’s a bad person because, regardless of anything else anyone does in their lives, this one transgression is more important than all the rest? I fear the superficial reading would be that it’s okay to disrespect trans people—and that’s a valid concern, but I do think it’s also something that could be addressed by, well, talking about it, unpacking the hurt and levels of complexity. There’s no complexity in the way they wrote this plotline, and I worry that reinforces the white-hat-black-hat narratives American society is too fond of.
But what about representing trans experience? Well, there are a lot of better ways, in my opinion. ST:P could have a fair number of trans characters being treated as equal members of society, instead of none I could identify. Instead of calling out deadnaming, it could have just shown people being respected with their chosen names. Or, as mentioned above, it could have talked about the dynamics of naming. Maybe Seven could even discuss 21st-century trans experience in explaining to Shaw why this matters to her (by analogy, not allegory). It could even be a fairly painless chance to mention S2, since she's recently been to the 21st century.
To end on some good...
All these complaints notwithstanding, there was quite a bit I liked in this season. On the whole, I liked the dynamics among all the legacy characters, especially later in the season. They clearly know their characters well, and they slipped back into them easily but with a generally good sense of time having passed. The playing to nostalgia was blatant, and I was okay with that. (Reminded me of when I first saw the OST movies.)
Data engulfing Lore and getting Lore’s “humanity” worked well for me overall. It certainly highlighted what a great actor Brent Spiner is, seamlessly parsing original Data, Lore, and New Data, who is both so different and so “Data.” Well done.
Vadic was wonderful right up to her death, which felt cheap and rushed. My partner posited she might not be dead. I think the series indicated she was, but then they did with Q too. I wouldn’t mind if she came back in some later show. (I much would have preferred Vadic somehow, some way as Picard’s daughter. They age difference would be less ridiculous, for one. Oh well, that would have been a very different story.)
Although it happened all too briefly, investigating the understandable (if not wholly just) reasons the Changelings and Borg have to hate the Federation was a good, challenging idea.
While I cannot for a hot minute suspend my disbelief for Seven becoming captain of the Enterprise, like, two or three years after graduating from the academy (yes, I know she's awesome but that's a lot of competition), I do love the idea of getting to see her as captain, and I would not say no to a series about it, even if I did have to hold my nose whenever people mention Jack's parentage.
Overall, my favorite season of Picard remains S1, which I think started quite strong and ended rather weak, but I forgive it much of its weakness because it was clearly doing last-minute rewrites to avoid killing Picard off, and I’m glad he wasn’t killed off.
It’s probably clear that I prefer the former style of writing. At the end of the day, I don’t know what storytelling is about if it’s not about the human experience. Messages only matter because they are part of the human experience. I’ve never really understood the point of placing message ahead of character. In my opinion, that ultimately just blunts the message. (This is approximately what I argued in my long-ago essay on why Buffy Season 7 didn’t work for me.)
I’m not saying having messages is bad or trying to make a backdoor argument about messages being “too woke.” Andor has the message “fight fascism,” and that’s a good one. Buffy S7 has the message “spread the female empowerment,” and that’s good too. It’s about how whether the messages will end up feeling like an insightful illustration of human experience or a simplistic bludgeon. Spoilers follow for Picard, potentially all seasons and warning for disorganized, Covid-induced rambling
Picard: Season 3
Picard: Season 3, alas, like much of NuTrek lands in the second kind of writing, which is a shame because I think a lot of its basic ideas are good, and it even extracted a couple of quite good episodes out of them.
The idea that the Borg and the Changelings might make common cause as collective entities both badly hurt by the Federation is surprising yet makes a lot of sense (the best kind of story zone to be in). I find myself wishing this had been the Babylon 5-like arc plot of all three seasons. It could have had room to breathe that way. As it is, it feels rushed.
The idea of centering the season around Picard having to come to terms with his Borg trauma is also inherently a good one. Again, it could have been the theme of a running three-season arc and would have been more coherent.
But the theme of parental love is not handled well. It has its moments: Geordi and his daughters are fine, if not deep. On the whole, however, it smacks of ramming the message home regardless of whether its plot beats make sense in the ST universe or for the characters.
I’ve argued elsewhere that Jack’s existence is a bad idea. This is a shame because the actor’s quite good and doing his best, and the character, just taken as a person, is not bad. But any promise he might have had is wrecked by his having to be Picard and Crusher’s son. (My complaints about this are here.)
The message-centered writing is also really on display with Riker and his grief over Thad. The problem here is that it contradicts the much better written season 1 episode, which used Writing Theory No. 1 to construct a bittersweet portrait of a family still dealing with the loss of their son despite several years of grieving, processing, and healing. And then the writers threw it out the window to regress Riker’s healing back to “I could never really face it” two years after we saw him doing just that. This is a prime example of message over character.
The lack of will to actually write characters also shows, I think, in the handling of Picard and Crusher’s relationship. Now, I’m a Picard and Crusher shipper from way back. I always had a low-grade frustration that TNG decided to tease their relationship and then forget about it, then tease it again, etc. I really wanted to see their relationship developed in their later years, and it felt like a bit of a slap in the face to the already underused Gates McFadden that Beverly got nary a mention Picard S1 and S2. Where TNG left these two provides a wealth of opportunities to explore their Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon-like feelings of guilt/loyalty/resentment over Jack Prime’s death, contemplation of the nature of relationships, possibly “wasted” time, what makes two people compatible (or not), and does that change over the course of our lives?
Instead, oddly enough, in a season about these two having a son, their relationship gets zero development. After an emotional scene or two about Jack, they’re right back to having the same relationship they had on TNG (friends with some sort of “background”)—and that is literally all we see in 35 years of Star Trek.
Picard has a bad habit of skipping relationships, or “telling, not showing” if you will. It did this with Raffi and Seven all three seasons. We’re told they’re a couple now in S1 by the dubious signifier of holding hands—because a sexual relationship is the only reason two people would ever hold hands, right? Then S2 skips to their being broken up, and they still seem broken up in S3, I guess? Picard and Crusher are similarly skipped—they tried to have a romantic relationship five times (that we didn’t see). And that’s it.
Another sign of message over character, I think, is the almost complete failure to acknowledge Seven’s background with the Borg in a season about the Borg assimilating Star Fleet. It’s the most natural thing in the world that Seven would emerge here as one of the primary characters psychologically affected and one of the greatest sources of information on how to manage the situation. But the message has to be about Picard facing his fear of the Borg and accepting his desire to be a father, so Seven is relegated to just one more character going around being competent.
Speaking of Seven—this is just a pet peeve; it’s not very important, but it’s indicative of why I don’t like message-first storytelling: Shaw’s “dead naming” of Seven as “Hanson.” This is a pretty standard NuTrek allegory: Seven’s choosing the name Seven stands for trans people choosing a gender-appropriate name, and disregarding her choice stands for the disrespect of calling a trans person by their dead name. Now, I know a lot of trans people really liked this plot thread and felt validated by it, and that’s great. I’m happy they’re happy. They got something valuable out of this, and that’s a good deed done.
I still think it’s bad writing, though, because it places messages ahead of character and story. In-universe, Seven’s situation is not identical to a trans person’s. For example, long before she chose the name Seven, the Borg forced it on her, robbing her of her original human identity. Nor in the past have I seen any sign that Seven disavows the name “Hanson” as being any part of her (in fairness, I have not seen all of Voyager). My sense has been more that it’s not her identity now, that it would denying all the change and trauma and growth she went through as Borg to pretend she could go back to her childhood identity. That’s not the same feel as deadnaming a trans person, and it would have been nice to see the nuances discussed.
Moreover, in Star Fleet, I’m not sure how this situation could logically come about. Star Fleet honors diversity and individual choice. Pretty basic to that is honoring people’s chosen names. TNG shows this in emphasizing that “Ro” is ensign Ro’s surname, despite its being placed first. Assuming that Seven has listed her name as “Seven-of-Nine,” I’m not sure how Shaw would be allowed to make her use “Hanson.” I get that his motivation is his own trauma with the Borg, but I imagine that the first time he tried it, she’d quote a Star Fleet regulation at him, and if he persisted, she could bring file a complaint, in which she would transparently be in the right and he'd be reprimanded and have to stop.
The only other angle I can think of is just that Star Fleet has a particular prejudice against the Borg and disallows Borg designations (which would mean there would be a problem with others calling her “Seven” in an official capacity, which is not indicated). But if Star Fleet did have this prejudice, that would be something to actually say in the script and deal with, which doesn’t happen.
All of this predictably wraps around to Shaw calling her “Seven” with his dying breath (and also in his laudatory review of her), thereby showing that he has come to respect her right to her own identity. Aside from the fact that his is hackneyed (like Jack being Picard’s son, it’s predictable 1000 miles away), I’m actually a bit worried about the message this sends. Mind you, I’m all for using people’s chosen names. You may notice I’ve been calling Seven “Seven” this whole post. But I worry about the idea that Shaw can only be redeemed by correcting this one piece of disrespect. What would it mean, for example, if he died heroically, praising Seven, etc., and just never got around to correcting the “Hanson” thing? Would it mean he’s a bad person because, regardless of anything else anyone does in their lives, this one transgression is more important than all the rest? I fear the superficial reading would be that it’s okay to disrespect trans people—and that’s a valid concern, but I do think it’s also something that could be addressed by, well, talking about it, unpacking the hurt and levels of complexity. There’s no complexity in the way they wrote this plotline, and I worry that reinforces the white-hat-black-hat narratives American society is too fond of.
But what about representing trans experience? Well, there are a lot of better ways, in my opinion. ST:P could have a fair number of trans characters being treated as equal members of society, instead of none I could identify. Instead of calling out deadnaming, it could have just shown people being respected with their chosen names. Or, as mentioned above, it could have talked about the dynamics of naming. Maybe Seven could even discuss 21st-century trans experience in explaining to Shaw why this matters to her (by analogy, not allegory). It could even be a fairly painless chance to mention S2, since she's recently been to the 21st century.
To end on some good...
All these complaints notwithstanding, there was quite a bit I liked in this season. On the whole, I liked the dynamics among all the legacy characters, especially later in the season. They clearly know their characters well, and they slipped back into them easily but with a generally good sense of time having passed. The playing to nostalgia was blatant, and I was okay with that. (Reminded me of when I first saw the OST movies.)
Data engulfing Lore and getting Lore’s “humanity” worked well for me overall. It certainly highlighted what a great actor Brent Spiner is, seamlessly parsing original Data, Lore, and New Data, who is both so different and so “Data.” Well done.
Vadic was wonderful right up to her death, which felt cheap and rushed. My partner posited she might not be dead. I think the series indicated she was, but then they did with Q too. I wouldn’t mind if she came back in some later show. (I much would have preferred Vadic somehow, some way as Picard’s daughter. They age difference would be less ridiculous, for one. Oh well, that would have been a very different story.)
Although it happened all too briefly, investigating the understandable (if not wholly just) reasons the Changelings and Borg have to hate the Federation was a good, challenging idea.
While I cannot for a hot minute suspend my disbelief for Seven becoming captain of the Enterprise, like, two or three years after graduating from the academy (yes, I know she's awesome but that's a lot of competition), I do love the idea of getting to see her as captain, and I would not say no to a series about it, even if I did have to hold my nose whenever people mention Jack's parentage.
Overall, my favorite season of Picard remains S1, which I think started quite strong and ended rather weak, but I forgive it much of its weakness because it was clearly doing last-minute rewrites to avoid killing Picard off, and I’m glad he wasn’t killed off.
