JG Judgementally Comments...

Star Trek: Picard – Season 1, Episode Seven

Episode Seven – “Nepenthe“

I really wanted to start this episode with a two-word review – “nothing happens”. But that’s not true. Plenty of things happen, though they’re mostly low-key, character stuff. That’s fine though at episode seven, whether “low-key” is really what Picard should be aiming for is certainly up for debate. But let’s be clear from the outset – this is an episode specifically designed to do one thing, and one thing alone – tickle all those TNG feels. In that it is an undeniable success. The whole raison d’etre of this episode is Picard meeting up with Riker and Troi, hanging out for a while, then getting back to the main plot. And of course it’s delightful to see those three characters on screen together again, because of course it fucking is. It’s Riker! He’s visibly drinking! I mean, what’s not to love?

Star Trek: Picard – Season 1, Episode Six

Episode Six – “The Impossible Box”

What, exactly, do people want from Star Trek? There has been a legitimate line of questioning around this ever since Discovery brought Star Trek back from the televisual hinterland of syndication. One of Star Trek‘s strengths has always been its ability to appeal to people beyond a hardcore of fandom – that’s why it’s the biggest science fiction franchise in the world (putting Marvel to one side, of course – that’s a whole different conversation and I don’t want to get bogged down in genre definitions at this point). The movies appeal to people who like sci-fi but aren’t necessarily huge Trekkies. The original show has become part of the cultural landscape, one of science fiction’s defining texts, watchable by just about anyone. Is there some difficult-to-define over-arching appeal that can embrace TNG and Enterprise? Into Darkness and Picard? And if so, what is it? Over on The AV Club, Zack Handelin wrote, “A friend on Twitter recently pointed out that saying something “isn’t Star Trek” isn’t really an effective criticism”. I strongly disagree with Zack’s friend – I think it cuts to the absolute heart of the issue that people have with both Discovery and Picard, and it is to this we turn our attention.

Star Trek: Picard – Season 1, Episode Five

Episode Five – “Stardust City Rag”

A lot of the successes of Picard so far have tended to feel a little abstract – a bit more in-theory good and a bit less in-practice good. Stewart is obviously great and we have a series of intriguing mysteries, but one of the frustrations of the show is being able to see a lot of the potential whilst also seeing that the show really isn’t capitalising on it. Complaints that the story has been slow up to this point are certainly valid, yet “slowness” is not in and of itself a problem – take a show like Better Call Saul which moves at a pace which makes continental drift seem snappy and impatient yet also manages to feel achingly tense and riveting. Picard as a show hasn’t managed to get this balance right yet, mistaking slowness for thoughtfulness and number of so-so plot and character beats that just aren’t finding any traction beyond “I intellectually understand why this these choices are being made but this has yet to become compelling television”. It would be too harsh to call Picard boring at this point, but it’s also something that’s been hovering on the horizon ever since the credits rolled on episode one.

Star Trek: Picard – Season 1, Episode Four

I mean, what else was I going to go with. Seven! It’s Seven!

Episode Four – Absolute Candour

This is a show which is absolutely split down the middle at the moment. Which is to say, to be blunt, the stuff with Picard – even if it doesn’t always make the most logical sense – broadly works at least in part because, well, Patrick Stewart is on screen, and nothing on the Borg cube really does. That’s disappointing in any number of ways, but the Borg cube material basically just exists for people to stand around either telling us things which we the audience already know – which is repetitive and boring, or they’re playing with characters that they don’t quite seem to know what to do with, which is frustrating. Take our Romulan brother and sister pairing, Narek and Narissa. They’re baaaad. And they were baaaad last week as well (and the week before). And now they’re baaaad but with weirdly incestuous undertones.

Star Trek – Picard: Season 1, Episode Three

Episode 3 – “The End Is The Beginning”

More of the same.

Any Other Business:

• OK fine, I’m being a bit facetious. But really, I don’t know what more to say about this episode, it’s just Episode 2 but more. Picard speech, Stuff On A Cube, you know.

• Um. I mean, it’s not that this is bad, but the episode could have been entitled “Furniture Movers!” Subtitle – “Does your furniture need moving around? Call us for low, low prices! Wait, not prices, no money in the future. Eh, you know what we mean”.

Star Trek – Picard: Season 1, Episode Two

Episode 2 – “Maps And Legends”

It shares it’s name with a great R.E.M. song at least… Well, that was a whole lot of nothing. After a measured but compelling first episode Picard‘s second outing is a whole lot of place-setting and really not a lot more. All that exposition that was skilfully deployed in the first episode, teasing out interesting bits and pieces? All gone now as we get infodump after infodump after infodump in a slightly-desperate-seeming attempt to get us ready for the remaining eight episodes. I know we’re going to need more information than this, but surely there must have a more elegant way of deploying it (There was. And don’t call me Shirley etc).

Star Trek – Picard: Season 1, Episode One

Jean-Luc is back! But will the series live up the reputation of the titular Captain?

Jean-Luc Picard, in case you were unaware

Episode One – “Remembrance“
The question is, really, what do we want from Picard? Or Picard? After a drought of Star Trek shows following Enterprise’s inelegant shuffling off the airwaves in 2005 we suddenly have a deluge – two shows starting up within a couple of years of each other (Discovery having launched in 2017) and more on the horizon, both live action and animated. Discovery’s two seasons have been comparatively well received but it’s a show that often looks more like Star Trek than it ever feels like Star Trek. All the symbols, chevrons, phasers and transporters are perfectly, erm, replicated but often not much else is. It’s competent, slick, and well-acted but there’s a certain something missing, an animating spark that the show only occasionally and tangentially brushes up against. Is this, then, what we want from Picard? That old flavour of Star Trek?

The 1980’s

How did the 80’s manage to move on from the 70’s? And did it have to involve so much day-glo?

Disco was always clearly, unambiguously the most important musical genre of the 1970’s and its vast mainstream success both undeniable and significant. The 1980’s, by contrast, don’t really have that kind of easy-to-point-to genre dominance – the story of music in the 1980’s is one of fragmentation, and that fragmentation into smaller and smaller sub-genres continues to this day. Monolithic blocks of “genre” like rock, disco, soul, funk, or punk give way to smaller sub-genres which in turn develop into their own thing.

We’re Number Two: 1989 – “Song For Whoever”, The Beautiful South

For a band who were, at least for a while, incredibly popular, The Beautiful South have left a surprisingly small cultural footprint. There was a time when their Greatest Hits album, the magnificently-named Carry On Up The Charts, was said to be in one of every seven households in the UK. Whether anyone went round and actually counted them all remains somewhat up in the air but regardless – that such a thing could even be rumoured to be true gives some impression of just how successful they were. That album, released in 1994, was certified platinum five times in the UK alone (1.5 million sales – compare and contrast with Terence Trent D’Arby last week who “only” got to that number globally). It’s an impressive feat.

We’re Number Two: 1988 – “Sign Your Name”, Terence Trent D’Arby

Throughout the 80’s we have been tracking the development of the video as an essential tool in any artist’s repertoire to help shift units. From simple stand-and-play live shows through to complex stories or flashy special effects the video stands as a crucial development in how music is consumed. But there is also something of a split happening. For every glorious four-minute epic there are hundreds which are completely disposable – the concentration on image leans towards accusations of superficiality if the song accompanying the video wasn’t good enough.