'Star Trek: Picard' Season 3 Bait And Switch
Captain Picard's show on Paramount Plus comes to an end. Season 3 starts today and it's a clear case of bait and switch. Two seasons brought us new characters and action, now it's back to the old.
Television shows mystify more than miraculous magician David Copperfield making a bloated herd of pregnant elephants vanish. They can be a deliberately slow creative burn. First seasons - especially its maiden voyage, or pilot episode - can be far different when compared to successive installments. Characters come and go. They’re killed off or jump compulsory into a lamely conceived spin-off. Producers try to rearrange stories or maybe actors demand more money, then suspiciously fall into comas or fall down elevator shafts to be unceremoniously axed.
TV show musical chairs can be emotionally jarring. Ron Howard’s Richie Cunningham’s little sister, Joannie Cunningham on Happy Days, comes to mind. Actress Erin Moran’s character and her true love Chachi (Scott Baio) were whisked away from the top ABC sitcom to star in a mostly forgotten flawed gem, Joanie Loves Chachi. They may have loved each other, but viewers sure didn’t, as it was cancelled after only 17 episodes. Sassy Flo (Polly Holiday) from CBS mega hit show, Alice, got her own series. Flo was told to kiss their grits by disappointed fans. Both spin-offs failed spectacularly, but this doesn’t stop shows from continuing the practice.
Hey, lemme see, wait a minute…. Wasn’t there a spin-off for Matt Leblanc Joey from Friends? Yeah, also a sadly forgotten fail.
This creation formula is nearly always the same: Take stars - or most popular character - from your hit show, move them out of state - in Picard’s case out of space - and plop em into a new mix with new people, aliens, things, and cosmic beings and voila! Magic happens!
It doesn’t. David Copperfield rarely shows up.
Exceptions which succeeded include Maude, Frasier and The Jeffersons. Do you notice a knee slapping pattern here? These are sitcoms, not one hour dramas. Jean-Luc Picard isn’t Archie Bunker - and when sitcom Archie Bunker’s Place launched, there was no confusing it with the stellar, and legendary All In The Family. That show redefined what TV and sitcoms could be and do. Archie Bunker’s Place simply obeyed the spin-off formula balancing into profitable action. Star Carroll O’Connor and producers made a mint - though fans were less than thrilled.
Jean-Luc Picard Returns - Kinda, Sorta, Maybe
With Star Trek: Picard, itself a spin-off of Star Trek: The Next Generation, season three - we’re told - will be its romantic swan song. Supposedly, a few behind the scenes brainiacs want to cook up yet another spin-off where Jeri Ryan’s character of Seven Of Nine will be exploring stuff with others - exactly what, who can know or care. But this is really all about a decadent deception which CBS and Paramount perpetrated on fans when Picard began its less than illustrious run.
Instead of rolling out a full featured, beefy Next Generation continuation to give fans a proper reunion, the powers that be concocted a weepy fuck fest wherein Jean-Luc Picard assaults us as a broken down something or other. You tell me what Picard is in those two silly seasons, because damned if I nor anyone else can say. This former Starfleet Captain and Admiral - or even former human being by some measure - now must recruit a new crew and solve some loopy artificial intelligence Data (Brent Spiner) and his android daughter mystery where Romulans and Borg figure in most dangerously. Blah Blah Blah….
Yeah….. Riiiiiiiiiiiight. Doctor Evil voice.
We can’t blame all the debilitating weakness of Star Trek: Picard - more than a few media critics blasted the CBS All Access, now Paramount Plus streaming show as nonsensical garbage - on the studio or show writers. Picard’s alter ego, Patrick Stewart, forbade CBS brass from serving up a TNG reunion. A recent People interview with Stewart tells of his torturous tale:
Initially, my feeling had been — I had certain conditions attached to signing onto this. Though I was excited about the idea of a Star Trek series called Picard, Next Generation was something I thought we had done great work on, but this now was something very different. So even when we started shooting, there wasn't a plan about the assembly.
TNG Fans Feel Betrayed
So then, let’s mull that one over. The star, the lead, the beloved Captain of Next Generation essentially shut out his own co-stars - characters fans dearly love and yearn to see interact again as a family - in favor of a space born Archie Bunker’s Place where Picard cha-cha’s with an all new cast, yet even the new guys don’t last from season to season in favor of a bizarre exploration of A.I. and or the Borg collective. Feels a little like an ill conceived vanity license plate.
Jean-Luc Picard meet Dr. Frasier Crane. You may need a little therapy and you obviously can’t afford Counselor Troi any more.
Also don’t forget those piggy banks! How much more green would Paramount shell out hiring the entire TNG crew from the start of season one? Yeah, believe it or not, money matters more to studios than fan devotion and love.
Commenting on Patrick Stewart’s People chat quote, here’s a buddy of mine Eddie Steak, weighing in how much he felt baited and switched.
I feel baited and switched in some ways. Ever since the debut of Star Trek: Discovery I've kind of come to expect this sort of thing. And the 2nd season of Picard is also a bait and switch compared to the first season in some ways. So it's just another course correction.
It's just a bigger one this time.
It’s a sad, betrayed feeling many Next Generation fans have felt and vocally expressed loudly and often on websites and in social media. Title says it all on Bounding Into Comics review of the show: Star Trek: Picard, Season 2 Review – Unfathomable Garbage. Yes, you read that correctly - Garbage.
Can one recall another spin-off being so reviled? It’s an easy one to answer, but a hard one to ponder. Star Trek: The Next Generation ranks as one of the most beloved and important TV shows in Hollywood. It literally redefined syndicated television. To say it ranks in a respected, even uniquely royal place in history is no exaggeration.
How then could TNG’s spin-off be so excruciatingly bad?
ST: Picard earns such stinky bad reviews that even the worst TNG episode would never get. Enterprise, the last of the Rick Berman produced shows, nearly universally regarded by fans as the weakest Trek incarnation, seems a masterpiece in comparison now. Scott Bakula, who plays Captain Archer, first Starfleet officer to command Starship Enterprise in the lowly regarded spin-off, must be greatly enjoying Star Trek: Enterprise’s new found appraisal.
Yet, it goes beyond simply bad reviews. Picard, to most all bright, knowledgeable people who watch, is simply incomprehensible. Lazy, inept plotting and inane dialogue boggle any Trekker’s fully blown mind. Its mind blowing, nonsensical narrative remains nightmarish, and disturbs on so many mental, even spiritual levels.
Eddie Steak always has a helluva lot to say about a whole hell of a lot. Check out his YouTube channel for some of the funniest and on target reviews of a range of pop culture stuff. He now continues his silly sense of concerted confusion when it comes to the radical, near unrecognizable Jean-Luc Picard fans met 36 years ago.
I haven't watched all of it, but Discovery has apparently tried to be a different show with each season. So it's kind of what they do with new Star Trek. And I was always nervous about that strategy with Star Trek: Picard ever since I saw Patrick Stewart make his official announcement where he said it's going to be a different Jean-Luc Picard.
Picard Producer Poop
I won’t be watching Season three - least not yet. I have no desire to see more strange twisting of characters I’ve loved and admired for so long. My fan connection to Next Generation goes beyond viewing. I actually wrote for the legendary syndicated show, and so that professional contribution gives me a sense of protectiveness most can’t understand. For me this is a natural, obligatory boycott because no matter how good - and that’s really damn subjective - Picard season 3 turns out to be, I feel so let down from what’s come before, I still have a gross taste in my mouth on the whole debacle.
Rejected just because it’s new? Nah. I eagerly accept new shows, including new Trek. In fact, I love Deep Space Nine and went on to write an episode for that awesomely different Trek. I pitched to Star Trek: Voyager in its first season, meeting with show co-creator Jeri Taylor in her offices at Paramount Pictures. When ST: Enterprise launched I was curious and felt strongly boosted by the strength of Trek’s seemingly boundless creative potential. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has energized me. It’s off to a bang up, exciting start.
With Star Trek: Picard something, well really absolutely everything, is vastly different.
In name only? Fair enough. Even logistics and distribution have changed. It doesn’t air on broadcast and you must now pay to watch. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Such variables could make it The Sopranos, Yellowstone or Westworld of Paramount Plus, but it’s simply not even close to that quality, by fan reaction and critical reviews.
And why not more of an enormous fan outcry? Regarding how many fans are silent. I feel many have been so shocked by the insanely badness of STP they simply have nothing nice to say, so they follow the old rule. Or perhaps the more cowardly among them feel they’ll be dinged on social media if they offer any negative critique.
Let Em Eat Tarvokian Chocolate Cake
But wait… all is not lost. The Calvary is coming to make us all forget how we’ve suffered! Or, as Deanna Troi might say, let em eat Tarvokian Chocolate Cake with me for a few hours to forget our troubles.
Fans hope for the shiny object being offered up. They wait patiently for the season 3 bone being tossed to them. Here’s the show you wanted, expected and deserved. We’re finally tossing it to you. Lap and lick it up, my desperate deprived Trekkers!
Um, yeah. I’ll pass. No thanks. You can gnaw all you want on that hollow bone.
Kelsey Grammar on Frasier will revisit his character when his reboot launches. Grammar’s both savvy actor and producer and I think it’s highly likely Frasier Crane will be mostly the same guy dealing with a new world of people and things. See spin-offs and reboots don’t have to be craptacular. Certainly Frasier itself was a spin-off of Cheers, running just as long (11 seasons) as its originator, while deftly honoring it.
Star Trek: Picard with Patrick Stewart boasted it would do the same. Instead, we were served up a nonsensical shitshow where you need Cosmic Cliff Notes to follow all the dim witted bullshit. Yet, amazingly, that’s not the whole nor worst part. Because a far more upsetting, disappointing and even, yes, feeling of betrayal, is the dark, hopeless and incredibly cynical nature of Picard’s treatment.
It’s an overwhelming feeling of being outright abandoned.
Those who don’t like Star Trek: Picard, or more accurately, are completely baffled by its maddening nonsense, no despairing, friends. Hold your naysayer heads up high. Don’t worry if they call you limited in your scope or vision when it comes to embracing something you’d rather not hold close. Because in the end, no matter how much Picard producers say one is weak minded or even dumb for not understanding the galling glory of this incomprehensible, truly humorlessness TNG spin-off, you can simply quote a towering pop culture icon. In fact, I see him justly helming a majestic Starfleet starship. One Rhett Butler:
Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
Ahem, I remember Joey - it was the first recurring role I saw Jennifer Collidge in. Can't comment on Picard, though - I don't do fan fiction, even big budget fan fiction. 😛