Stardust City Rag

Picard arrives at Freecloud.

I mostly enjoyed this episode for the contribution of a great Trek franchise character and the plot moves slightly forward.

In my humble opinion the Seven Of Nine scenes are great and she is as good now as she ever was on Voyager. The writers have taken her down a very dark and different route than her previous captain would have wanted, but the world is a very bleak place at times, which I can't see getting better any time soon, so why shouldn't the Trek universe reflect it. I do however hope the overall narrative for her character ends on a positive note.

As for all the gore and torture that has all the puritanical Trek fans writing their protest reviews, I think the sanctity of the franchise is being taken too seriously once again. I seem to remember one very much loved Trek movie where an insect crawls into Chekov's ear and wraps itself round his cerebral cortex. Admittedly not as visually graphic, but what is implied is equally as disturbing and I would be as unlikely to show that to my children as I would I Borg having his eyeball ripped out.

Saying all that, it was far from perfect overall. I wasn't fussed with the dressing up and 'Allo Allo' style French accent on Picard, plus there were instances of clunky exposition dialogue here and there.

All visuals are great as always and the performances are strong. Jeri Ryan stands out for me.

Two basic principles out the window: no blood and gore. A positive atmosphere. Both are gone in episode 5. It's not that I can't handle blood & gore but it I want to see that I'll put on The Walking Dead. To me ST has a certain vibe that's totally missing in Picard.

I don't like where this show is headed. There is Too much unnecessary violence. Beheading? Showing a person's eye getting ripped out? What's wrong with the creators?

Star Trek has always been about telling a positive vision of the future. Episodes had a moral, they had a STORY to tell.

Episodes like the inner light, the first duty, even family reunion. They all told a story, each of them had a message.

This show is just a dark vision of the future.

And I must say: I don't enjoy watching this anymore.

I don't normally write reviews but after reading the opinions of all these whining trekkies, I thought I needed to balance it a bit. I'm enjoying it for what it is. It's not a continuation of TNG, get over it! It's darker and set in period where there are troubled times and the Federation aren't so supposedly wholesome. Do these people even remember TNG S01E24 - Conspiracy, it wasn't all rosy then was it. Oh and for all the wannabe writers claiming the scripting it so poor, take off your rose tinted glasses, crack out your old VHS box sets and trawl through all of the 80's/90's series'. There's plenty of dodgy episodes amongst them.

I was enjoying the first few episodes. Fine it is darker and more depressing than I like my Trek, but there have been hints that the Federation is rotting from the inside and the violence was done only when it suited to move the story forward, and was generally non-gory. This episode suddenly seems to be a patchwork of Discovery (which I hate), Blunt Talk (which I love, but has no place in the Trek universe) and a Tarantino bloodfest. I am going to give it another week to see if they get back on track, but this one was right on the Negan/Glenn level for tipping me out of watching the show.