Just lousy. Hostage standoffs, Miracle Worf, wine jokes, and couples therapy. This is a writer's room who spent more time arguing over who got the vegan tuna salad than what the overall goals of this series might be. Is it Ninja Drug Addicts? Lonely Changelings? Beloved Characters ironically making jokes about tedious monologuing? Sounds in a vacuum?
Oh, these are all trivial criticisms! What's really important is that the Changelings have infiltrated Career Day! And only a ragtag bunch of Nostalgia can stop them! Even if it means suffering through bad dialogue, painfully stale tropes, and cheap Spot cameos.
"It can't be that bad," you say. Oh, it's actually worse. After spending the entire first season of Picard wandering the galaxy on the off-chance that Data might be resurrected, Picard's first question for the newly-minted Data "was it ethical to bring you back?" Perhaps THIS is what was really going on in the writers room: an argument over the ethics of bringing back these beloved characters and not really having any reason or purpose to doing so.
The mystery of Jack Crusher is about as interesting as aforementioned vegan tuna salad sandwich. It isn't real fish - it's an approximation of something created by an artificial hand to suggest real meat that someone ate long ago. It also suggests an even deeper cynicism that Wesley Crusher was only interesting enough for a brief Season 2 cameo, yet a brand new trope needed to be invented to fill in as actual familial angst. If the genesis of Jack has actually been explained, I simply wasn't paying attention. Instead, I was trying to fill in the rationale of bringing back all of these characters so that they could do nothing. There really is no story here. No overarching thread that suggests a thesis. Because what we've been shown again and again is that death is for tertiary characters. Everyone else can be resurrected at the drop of a hat.
If the show seemed cheap before, it's now teetering on self-parody. See the gang race to save San Francisco from the identity-fluid invaders! How will they stop this? Nostalgia for a by-gone era!
In a way, it's a good thing that Rene Aberjonois passed away before Odo could be dragged back into this. Oh wait! You forgot Odo? The character who forever changed the nature of the Changelings by introducing a complex morality that extended beyond retribution, threat, and domination? Yeah. Not that important.
None of this matters. None of it is very interesting. But you better believe the chances of Wesley and Tasha Yar showing up in the finale to do a dance number with Q, Guinan, and the Outrageous Okona are increasing by the minute.
Oh, these are all trivial criticisms! What's really important is that the Changelings have infiltrated Career Day! And only a ragtag bunch of Nostalgia can stop them! Even if it means suffering through bad dialogue, painfully stale tropes, and cheap Spot cameos.
"It can't be that bad," you say. Oh, it's actually worse. After spending the entire first season of Picard wandering the galaxy on the off-chance that Data might be resurrected, Picard's first question for the newly-minted Data "was it ethical to bring you back?" Perhaps THIS is what was really going on in the writers room: an argument over the ethics of bringing back these beloved characters and not really having any reason or purpose to doing so.
The mystery of Jack Crusher is about as interesting as aforementioned vegan tuna salad sandwich. It isn't real fish - it's an approximation of something created by an artificial hand to suggest real meat that someone ate long ago. It also suggests an even deeper cynicism that Wesley Crusher was only interesting enough for a brief Season 2 cameo, yet a brand new trope needed to be invented to fill in as actual familial angst. If the genesis of Jack has actually been explained, I simply wasn't paying attention. Instead, I was trying to fill in the rationale of bringing back all of these characters so that they could do nothing. There really is no story here. No overarching thread that suggests a thesis. Because what we've been shown again and again is that death is for tertiary characters. Everyone else can be resurrected at the drop of a hat.
If the show seemed cheap before, it's now teetering on self-parody. See the gang race to save San Francisco from the identity-fluid invaders! How will they stop this? Nostalgia for a by-gone era!
In a way, it's a good thing that Rene Aberjonois passed away before Odo could be dragged back into this. Oh wait! You forgot Odo? The character who forever changed the nature of the Changelings by introducing a complex morality that extended beyond retribution, threat, and domination? Yeah. Not that important.
None of this matters. None of it is very interesting. But you better believe the chances of Wesley and Tasha Yar showing up in the finale to do a dance number with Q, Guinan, and the Outrageous Okona are increasing by the minute.