I found this bad apart from John de Lancie. The main issue is the characters, none of whom are interesting, layered or likeable. Like much of nu-Trek, the dialog sounds like it was written by someone who has never heard two people have a conversation before. Everything is so ham-fisted, and drowned in therapy culture... Picard is made out to be a kind of tortured incel who chose a career in Starfleet to get away from his eMoTiOnAl PrObLeMs, and his abortive romantic scenes with Laris are handled in an incredibly teenage manner not befitting either character, when in fact I'd have loved to see an intelligent, maturely written romance between these two (akin to Picard's relationship with Nella Daren). Alison Pill performs Dr Jurati as a grating Tilly-style comic relief sidekick, something the writers seem to think every nu-Trek show needs. (And to think people complained about Neelix 25 years ago.) Whoopi Goldberg is fine and a welcome presence, but the dialog the writers give her is terrible - it has none of the depth or grace that Guinan always had on TNG and instead is full of therapy-speak cliches. Raffi has almost nothing to her as a character, and Rios is poorly acted and impossible to believe as a captain. I'm embarrassed by the show's constant attempts to try and make Rios edgy and cool, like having him smoking a cigar while captaining the ship, as well as the show's patronising attitude to his ethnicity. Jeri Ryan is fine, but the character she is playing isn't Seven of Nine.
The bottom line, and this applies to much of Discovery too, is that it's simply impossible to believe these people are Starfleet professionals, members of a military organization. At the end of the day, Star Trek is a workplace show, it's about people doing their job, and nu-Trek forgets that most of the time. Some of the most important writers and creators in Trek history (like Ron Moore, and Roddenberry himself) came from a military background, and integrated that expertise into their scripts. Characters on Picard and Discovery simply don't behave like professionals doing a job, there's no understanding of structure or hierarchy - these aren't people you could rely on for a second, let alone trust with your life. This is something even Voyager and Enterprise at their weakest got right most of the time.
The bottom line, and this applies to much of Discovery too, is that it's simply impossible to believe these people are Starfleet professionals, members of a military organization. At the end of the day, Star Trek is a workplace show, it's about people doing their job, and nu-Trek forgets that most of the time. Some of the most important writers and creators in Trek history (like Ron Moore, and Roddenberry himself) came from a military background, and integrated that expertise into their scripts. Characters on Picard and Discovery simply don't behave like professionals doing a job, there's no understanding of structure or hierarchy - these aren't people you could rely on for a second, let alone trust with your life. This is something even Voyager and Enterprise at their weakest got right most of the time.