Josh, 30, He/Him, mixed latinx
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Major spoilers for Star Trek: Picard, minor spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery, and every outbound link is to a character's fandom wiki page.

i, uh, like trash tv. it's a problem. i was recently doing a rewatch of the hit FOX tv show 24 because that show is way more unhinged than i remember, even from the beginning. CW's The Flash is must-watch tv for me, i drink my coffee out of a mug with The Flash on it every thrusday when i watch the new episodes.

in my quest to watch more trash tv, i remembered there was a new CSI show out, CSI: Vegas. CSI is prime Josh Trash TV, it's a show i used to watch with my mom when i was growing up that we both agreed was trash (me a bit more than her) and we watched anyways because it was a thing to watch when it was on. not so much "must-see" tv, but more "must-observe". "must-study"? whatever lol

CSI: Vegas is a continuation of CSI, taking place in the same setting (Vegas) and includes fan-favorite characters like Grissom and Sara from the original series. it also introduces a whole new cast, who get a ton of time to bounce off of old favorites while also defining themselves.

the interesting thing is that the "gimmick" of the new series also builds on the formula of the old series, and plays with the tropes of copaganda procedurals. in the old series, there would be about two cases per episode. characters would get split down the middle to take on the two cases, doing their investigating and finding evidence and so forth, while also occasionally coming together to give each other inspiration. usually the seasons are monster of the week style, every episode's cases are unrelated, but longer character development happens over each week to tie the series together.

in CSI: Vegas, the setup is similar. one case is monster of the week, a place for the new characters to stretch their legs and get their development. the second case is about the season-long mystery: did David Hodges fake all the evidence that he came up with during the events of CSI?

it's a neat premise! a less-trash tv show would probably read the room of Current Political Happenings of 2021 usa and just go for it: yeah, of course the cop faked all this shit, that's what happens. you'd still fall into copaganda stuff, because then the premise of the show would be "the Good Cops have to put the Bad Cops away", but at least it would be a little different, a little more interesting. regardless, it's a neat premise that allows for a lot of old characters to come up and for nostalgia to be farmed, while also progressing the new characters.

also, aesthetically, the show looks like old CSI. like, it's touched up, things look more "crisp" in the Streaming TV Era (this is a CBS streaming TV show, after all) but it's still like. pun or one-liner that leads into The Who song *Who Are You. when they Do Science there's some goofy, over-the-top CGI animation of chemicals and wounds and all that stuff. even "weird" shots are still there? something about original flavor CSI is that they'd make it look nice. if someone was rebuilding a crime scene in their lab, or doing a lot of large-scale monotonous work, there would be some interesting way to show it off. in the first or second episode they do the same type of stuff, they're marking a burned-down pawn shop into quadrants and cataloging everything, and it's one of those sweeping time-lapse shots that you'd see on Tested when adam savage is building something.

that's a lot about CSI and CSI: Vegas, but what does this have to do with Star Trek: Picard?

see, S3 of Picard is kinda attempting to do something similar, except they're failing spectacularly. the general thrust of S3 is that starfleet is under attack and must be stopped by the Next Generation cast and friends. that, i think, could be a neat premise. sure, they announced S3 was going to be a Next Generation reunion season in the middle of S2 while the characters were doing time travel shenanigans to save the universe (it doesn't matter) so we knew that this adventure didn't matter in several ways, but okay. neat premise, brings everyone back for one more paycheck to play these characters again and hopefully provide a good season of something like Star Trek: The Next Generation.

right? like, you wouldn't say "here's the cast of Next Generation going on one last, big adventure" and not play to the strengths of the tv show Star Trek: The Next Generation, right? you'd want this show to feel like Next Generation but with a modern budget and effects, right? right?

reader. i have some bad news.

see, Star Trek: Picard is setup like Star Trek: Discovery. i don't have a problem with the structure of Discovery, but it leads to some storytelling choices. the strength of Discovery is that each weekly adventure can be mildly self-contained, but also can be moving a larger plot forward. this week we're learning about a new species in this part of the galaxy, and this adventure with them will help us get closer to figuring out who that red figure is. where Discovery falls apart is when it spreads itself too thin, and each episode of the season feels like Part 5 of an arc that could have been two episodes at most. "what's beyond the milky way galaxy" is a two-episode arc in other Star Trek shows, not a season-long question that we're slowly coming closer to an answer for in Discovery. ya know?

anyways, the first four episodes of S3 Picard are answering "what's goin' on with Beverly Crusher and her new son", which is a weird question to ask in Picard because they haven't acted like the character existed up until now. some episodes of S1 & S2 dealt a lot with "can Picard love anyone?" and seemingly left out a very relevant character from that discussion. you do see her freak son once in S2 and he looks like he's hosting the aftershow talk show (it doesn't matter).

but that driving force for those episodes is a two-parter at best. 4 episodes? that seems a bit poorly paced. that's cause it is! there's another thing going on, where Raffi is on an undercover mission to find out who stole some portal tech and used it on a starfleet recruitment building. Worf is also there. Oh, also Ro Laren is there for an episode. oh, and now the changelings from DS9 are a threat again, and are behind a huge, slow coup of starfleet. i dunno, it's all... blurring together.

also, nothing means anything in this show. at the end of S1 of Picard Picard dies and he gets put into a Data-style android and he's still old and will die of natural causes anyways, just when the actor himself passes. it doesn't matter, it's come up as a joke a handful of times since. at the end of S2 Picard Picard befriends the new borg queen, one of the main characters they left in 202X during the season's events, which allows for a new benevolent borg who wish to join the empire. it doesn't matter, hasn't come up since and seemingly is not significant this far into the season... despite the fact the reason new main character Liam Shaw hates Picard and people from his Enterprise-D is because Picard got captured and turned into Locutus of Borg.

it's the combination of nothing mattering and not using the strengths of the show you're obviously trying to reference and call back to that makes Picard a worse "nostalgia" show then something like CSI: Vegas, which is a wild thought to put online. now the thrust of the season is "what are the changelings up to" and i don't care, really. i want to know how it ends out of fascination, but i know it won't matter. nothing else has, events in one season of Picard don't seem to matter to the next season, so who can say if this will even matter to other Star Trek shows made after this. Discovery is now set, what, 1000 years in the future of what's happening in Picard that it will likely never come up. Strange New Worlds takes place after Enterprise but before Star Trek: The Original Series that it will also never come up there. this is the last season of Picard, so it's likely any relevance these 3 seasons of television have to the greater Star Trek universe dies at the end of this 10 episode season. by April 20, 2023 it's likely this show will not be relevant to the Star Trek stories being told, a meaningless addition that the shows itself will no longer reference. Star Trek: The Animated Series will be more important to the fictional setting and stories.

it's frustrating! i love this weird universe and their weird shows with my whole heart, and it's weird that CSI: Vegas, a copaganda nonsense show made for streaming platforms to get the coveted "olds who love Gil Grissom so much" audience, is doing this nostalgia bait in a way more competent way and (crucially!) a way more entertaining way. all they had to do was "more Next Generation but with more modern tv show sensibilities" and they fucked it up so bad!


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