Star Trek: Picard: Season 2 - Angry Review 

Between this and RLM, Picard has provided me with a lot of entertainment without even watching it.

The unimpressed Alex face is a staple of these reviews at this point.

Favorite quote ever, "That's brilliant, for a stupid person." - Alex.

Star Trek has been low key culturally important, without being in your face. The fact that Paramount has taken down all Star Trek episodes on other platforms, and put them behind a paywall, while at the same time ruining it, is a shame for generations to come. Shame on them. The Orville is the new Trek.

Ensign Ro was a better Star Fleet officer than Raffi is.

When every character is miserable, drinks like a fish, swears like a sailor, and shreds Picard for his “white male privilege,” you know it’s not Star Trek anymore.

This show is the experience of going *SENILE* ..... You see a bunch of familiar things, but they're all off... people speak to you with very simplistic dialogue.... random stuff happens and nothing leads anywhere... and there's a dark, cynical and sinister undercurrent to everything 😕😕

What's wrong? You didn't like two-bit writers taking legendary characters who could travel anywhere in the galaxy, and instead using them as a vehicle to whinge about what they hate in America and their political opponents?

Ironically I JUST watched the DS9 episode where Dr.Bashir refuses to replace more parts of the preist guys brain with positronic parts because it would remove his "life spark" and yet we got Frankenstein Picard trying to fix the border crisis.

Federation officers were total professionals. Officers didn’t lose their shit emotionally over everything. When dealing with their situations Star Fleet officers will make observation but not judgement .

Red Letter Media also has a dumpster fire in the background as they review this show. It's fitting.

"... as subtle as two fists in your anus." - Alex. I laughed my ass off at this. I agree with his opinions though.

when Joe hates something even more than Alex, you know to stay away from it

5:18 Astronaut training programs are incredibly hard and rigourous. Space is ridiculously dangerous, highly stresfull, and requires intelligence, professionalism, team work, cooperation, stress resistance, and so on. They select astronauts on these criteria, and on certain personality traits. If you suffer from depression and anxiety you simply don't get in and don't even get started on astronaut training. At best, you'd get a job at ground control or engineering on the space program or something. But you are NEVER going to space. The fact that the writers of nu-trek don't even know this and have an active astronaut going on a major mission while having SERIOUS personal psychological issues shows just how ignorant these people are about anything space-related, let alone star trek related...

Part of new Trek's problem is trying to be adult when it was always an adult show. As a kid I loved watching Trek tackle darker subject matter and learn things about myself and about relatable themes in the real world. As an adult I have a greater appreciation for new perspectives that the old shows have opened up to me on various subjects. Can't get any of that from these new shows.

Star Trek, real Star Trek, was always progressive but the stories and lessons have always been told in a allegorical way. That separation from the real world while still tackling real world issues was genius and I'd love to see some intelligence brought back to Star Trek. Almost always there were two sides to every argument and it fell upon the main characters to suss out the "right way", the most moral way, to resolve the conflict. I honestly miss it.

Y'all remember the episode of TOS where Bones gets transported to the past by The Guardian of Forever and then Kirk and Spock have to follow him to unscrew up the timeline? And the cause was he had saved a woman's life and thus thrown off the timeline so Bones, a doctor, had to make the choice to let her die. It is such a poignant episode and concerns the moral difficulties of time travel.

I don't even watch half the shows they do but when there's an angry review I'm here

16:00 Give Picard a satisfying ending? I feel like he (and TNG) already got one. All Good Things is an incredible finale to one of my favorite shows. What Kurtzman is doing now is doing his damnedest to make it not so.

Akiva Goldsman. One of the most well-known hacks in Hollywood. He's the guy studios call when they are having issues in in pre-production, perhaps because some studios are trying to be ambitious and trying to imbue creativity within their medium, and Goldsman is notoriously that guy who shows up with the writer's equivalent of a template and pencil, "Save The Cat!" tucked under his arm, ready to phone it in for a bit of money. He's a classic script-doctor, the Hollywood writer equivalent of a handyman who gets the job done cheap, but not done well.

I literally believe that if you could bring Gene Roddenberry forward in time and show him these new shows he would never even create Star Trek in the first place.

Kurtzman has removed from Star Trek what made it great. The ability to make one think without realizing it by presenting different viewpoints and be full of hope. You wanted to live in the Star Trek universe and hope we one day got there. Now you want to forget it even exists because of how much they are butchering all it stood for and anything coming after will have to acknowledge that it exists. Just polluting the pool all over. You are too forgiving Joe and Alex is for once fully on point here with how it should be treated. The death of a franchise for generic so called woke sci-fi.

the dumpster burning in the background is so fitting. The entire original crew minus Wesley is coming back for the third and final season.

I remember in good Star Trek, when they would have episodes that drew comparisons to current events on other worlds and with other alien species, they would throw out two or three comparisons, where at least one example would show the correlation, and then they would posit some sort of solution. Now it sounds like that's too hard to be creative and pose a What If scenario, so just keep reminding viewers what a shitty world we currently live in, instead of a world where we could at last be better. That latter fact is what keeps me away from the new Star Trek, because it doesn't want to show us overcoming, it wants to keep us down.

46:00 Joe trying to make sense of the plot holes with Guinan's past has an easy answer: The Picard Writers didn't watch TNG. They read a one page series synopsis.

I love how all these legends from the 80s and 90s are being slowly destroyed for no real reason

This show is so frustrating, its like every time they take a step in the right direction they trip and fall and fuck it all up. This plot is legit madness, like wtf are they thinking?

I totally agree with Alex and Joe on this,but I couldn't subject my self to season 2 after the horrible season 1 and once I seen the direction of this one I opted out to avoid the pain

I'm always astounded by OJ's and Alex's restraint as Joe mispronounces almost every single name in all shows/movies/games they review :D

"Picard seems to have gotten one of the worst (creative teams)" You think? Is it worse than Discovery? I think it's on par. As in, it's some of the worst television I've ever watched. I give Discovery a 1 out of 10, and same for Picard. I'd give it a 3 out of 10 if it didn't shart all over the legacy of real Trek. But since it purposely destroys real Trek in order to make it's asinine points, it gets a 1.

Here’s the issue, Star Trek has never been shy about addressing social and political issues. But, the hamfisted way that the writers are addressing these issues is offensive, lazy and lacking in nuance.

From what I'm getting, this show's level of social commentary is: "Racism is bad, MKay?!... you shouldn't do Racism, cause Racism is bad"

16:25 so now you know how it fucking feels. Dr. Who has been this way for 4 or 5 years now and we fans have been getting pissed to the point the actually pulled the show of the air and are now questioning if it should come back. Dr. Who and Star Trek are great shows that follow the same concept.

The sheer irony that not too long ago sci-fi fans of not just star trek but nearly every other sci-fi world have been clamoring for any of these worlds to be displayed on the big screen only to find out that it shits on everything that originally made them great. The age old saying is very true : Be careful of what you wish for.

In the TNG episode “Drumhead” there is a Vulcan starfleet officer revealed as part Romulan, which would potentially count as the first Romulan starfleet recruit.

I can't understate how awesome it is to see how OJ has grown so much as an online personality.

The third and fourth episodes were so funny because it literally felt like they paused their pointless story, got out a checklist of things that are bad about today's world, and just looked directly into the camera and read down the list and called it a day. I remember star trek that had a nuanced social/political or ethical message baked into compelling stories. Now it's all trash with lazy cameos and lazy virtue signals glittered on top to hide the turd under the lazy polish.

The thumbnail is *PURE GOLD* Says everything about modern Star Trek.

"They just gloss over the fact Picard's dead and this is just a synthetic body" Perfect summary of this show. A puppet being paraded on stage for nostalgia. Given the "current thing" mentality of the political commentary in this show how funny is it that Stacey Abrams is the tyrant dictator of earth? Just goes to show how tone deaf they are. They wanted her in a prominent role because she is a political activist the writers align with or look up to. So they made her president, not understanding that if she is president in 2024.... that means she is in charge of and enacting all these horrendous policies they hate so much.

De-canonise all shows after Star Trek: Enterprise. And fiercely deny anything after ever existed. I mean it.

I'm amazed this show got a season 2 to begin with. The first season you could teach an entire writing class on what not to do. The pure definition of narrative incompetence.

Star Trek Voyager was one of my favorite series going from that to trying out Picard makes me feel like I'm throwing thumbtacks down my throat.

You heard the "Well there is more ST than ever, so that means it's GOOOOD" defense of Kurtzman Trek? They're literally saying that quantity is superior to quality. Weak sauce.

The thing about how the social commentary in older Trek. Is it was put in such a way as it made the viewer think. It also in many cases let the viewer choose how to feel. Where as new Trek TELLS you this is how you are to think and feel.

Damn when Joe rails against the social justice aspect you know it is bad.... Yeah this season is cringe as fuck. It started off so strong.

Focusing on time travel for Star Trek story arcs has never gone well.

That's it! This show doesn't teach morals or lessons on the social issues it peaches about, because it just points at them and says "bad." It doesn't ever present us an alternative to enjoy and learn from. It doesn't ever show us the pure utopian STAR TREK future where humanity has solved those issues.

They are not listening to feedback, at least not to anything that can't be changed in post, like that fleet in episode 1. That is why they started shooting season 2 and 3 right after season 1 started airing, before any reviews or audience reception could come in.

Last Hope: "The Orville" ;) The closest TNG we can get

Y'know, the first episode was so close to being good, I felt genuinely excited. It was far and away better than anything the first season produced and was the best Star Trek related.. well, anything in decades. I was surprised. Hell episode 2 wasn't as good, but it was still fun. And then it fell off a cliff and somehow was worse than season 1, complete with pandering, vulgarity, plot holes, retcons, idiotic characters with no personality... what a train wreck.

Star Trek was about a future where we moved past all the inequalities, that was its draw. This negates that

I simply refuse to watch how they massacre poor old picard.

Come Christmas time, I’m going to turn this review on my living room because at this point this roast is more intense than any virtual fireplace on RU-vid.

Social justice elements are ruining a show? Wow what a surprise I've never ever heard of that happening

Between this and Halo I’d say the moral of the story is don’t trust Paramount+ with Sci-Fi properties

they have the most ST shows running at once, while simultaneously having the worst ST shows running at once.

I feel there’s simply no way for the audience to feel invested in Picard as a character anymore when he’s way past his prime and really just being dragged along into conflict at this point.

I watched TNG because of the RLM crew listing their favorite episodes. Its pure science fiction at its finest. You guys should watch TNG with or without other Joe, and do something similar. Thats an awesome discussion I'm happy for. Because that's what good Science fiction writing does. Picard is the compete opposite of good science fiction and its just sad at this point.

The problem is that they claim to be "challenging" their audience, but there's no challenge about it. They're saying obvious things are bad. That's not a challenge. It's grade school arithmetic.

The Star Trek franchise has always been one of the leaders on social messages. The writers of this show are causing damage to the message they want to spread. That takes some effort and skill?... lack of skill? Not really sure, but it is impressive.

This show had ONE great effect on me. It made me watch the old series again.

Imagine talking a person into watching star trek and tell um how good it is and then only show them modern trek. That's Other Joe, he must hate this by now.

"This show is as subtle as two fists in your anus" Best Alex quote ever.

There's a distinct difference in my opinion between having an episode or season with a ideological theme and sending a direct, specific political message. The way this season has been written, having the main plot centered in 2024, focusing heavily on the massive societal problems in the world in general and the US specifically, is such a terrible mistake. They might as well have had Picard turn to the camera and shout "Don't vote for Donald Trump" for all the nuance this writers room can afford

TNG came up with an analogy for climate change in season 7 (Force of Nature) where they discovered their warp drives were damaging the fabric of the universe and they needed to acknowledge it and make some sacrifices (like limiting warp speeds) while they work towards a solution for the future. Voyagers warp drive was actually different because of changes made to make it safer to travel at high speeds. Picard is just like "FUCKING CLIMATE CHANGE. IT'S BAD"

As a conservative who loves TNG and DS9. They're not reaching me. I watched season 1 of Pickard and will not watch anymore. If I turn on a show and 3 minutes in, I'm getting propaganda shoved down my throat, I turn it off and don't have any desire to watch it. Doesn't matter how popular it is. It's not an echo chamber problem. Leftists won't watch right wing material for the same reason. Tons of shows from the 90's had amazing social commentary that talked about both sides of issues. Just can't have good TV anymore because of zealots.

Holy shit!! AJS acknowledging social justice in a show??!! It must be laid on THICK for them to acknowledge such a thing.

I was not even aware of the fact that they were making a second season - and now here we are.

I'm just sick and tired of these after school special messages that most shows now a days try to impart on us. Yes, people are awful to each other and yes the earth is in a bad place right now but that's why I watch Star Trek: it's a hopeful future and a vision of what humanity could be. It's great escapism. The people these shows try to lecture to aren't watching this show so this seems kinda redundant.

Thank you for saving me from watching this. So sad they ruined Star Trek.

When letting the deportees out, the only concern isn't one of them might be a killer or dangerous. One of the most classic episodes was centered around doing the right thing at the wrong time. So maybe they go, reform the system but the reformed system now butterflies into a completely different future.

I knew this series was in trouble before season 1 even came out after listening to Patrick Stewart rant on constantly about how "progressive" it was going to be. Red flags!

55:00 theres a process for if youre an astronaut whos got depression and anxiety and cant do you job? yeah, its called not getting to be an astronaut. They dont take chances on people will problems like that. you have to be the best of the best. you have to be 100% professional. One sign of anxiety and you seriously jeopardize your chance of flying as mission. Youre flying billions of dollars worth of rocket, with peoples lives as stake, they dont take chances. If someone is crashing the simulator due to incomitance a few days before a mission they are done. ZERO chance they will be flying that mission.

This drove me crazy Joe kept saying "Captain Ramos". It's not the character's name.

“Set phasers to stupid” - That sums it up well.

I agree that time travel episodes are difficult to write. I think my favorite time travel Star Trek episode was "Year of Hell" from Voyager. The idea of messing with the timeline and all of those butterfly effects that any time traveler would cause being the main driving factor of the plot was so much fun. Especially since the effects are so complicated that any person, even with infinite time, could just not solve.

The Stargazer in PIcard isn't the og Stargazer. The og Stargazer was a constellation class but this new Stargazer is a part of the new Stargazer class introduced in Star Trek Online. It is also called the Stargazer as well which can be confusing. fun fact: about 1/3rd of the fleet seen in episode one are comprised of ships from Star Trek online made canon in this episode

Modern star trek is written by children, for children.

The thing that's stupid about all these issues (deportation, climate change, depression) is that in the future presented all these problems were already solved! If someone who came from a future where these problems were already solved, they would logically go to the world leaders and say "Okay. Here's how you solve x. Here's how you solve y. Here's how you make a replicator." What's worse, is that the smart writers of Star Trek 4 already did what I'm suggesting! Scotty gave the Navy the formula for transparent aluminum! He solved one of Earth's problems right there!

I can tell they got inspired by RedLetterMedia with the hellfire in the background 😂

Never watched this show, but will gladly watch Joe's take on it

One might say that Star Trek IV was maybe not the strongest of the old movies, but the time travel made sense on a basic way and damn the humor was incredible. Like McCoy saying to Spock: "What, I have to die in order to be able to discuss death with you?" Or Spock jumping into the whale tank without telling Kirk and Kirk was like..."What the....?" Or the hospital scene where McCoy gets a meltdown after seeing all the medical treatments that he considers Medieval dark ages. There are so many subtle jokes in those films that hit the mark. Good times man.

Yeah I've watched every episode of TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise growing up in the late 80's-90's as well as both Lower Decks and Picard and I've watched all the movies, I also read the books almost religiously and so that's a lot of Star Trek but for some crazy reason as many times as I've tried I just can't sit through a single episode of the Original series or Discovery!

What hurts the most is that this is all canon and there's no turning that back. The Federation, established characters and the lore has been irreversibly ruined.

Petition to start "Angry Retro Review" series beginning with Season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation

The difference between old Trek writers and new Trek "writers": The former were *science-fiction* writers who loved the genre, and they included social commentary to add additional depth and meaning to their stories. The latter are *social activists,* concerned primarily with preaching the MESSAGE, and they include science fiction because it's required. Unfortunately, it's just a natural consequence of the environment that Hollywood has cultivated over the past few years. It's got a one-track mind. I'm not sure it's currently capable of doing any better, because it's allowed itself to be overrun with so many people who think the same way -- who obsess over the same topics -- and they naturally reinforce one another's beliefs. Many of them are probably honestly shocked when general audiences reject their programmes, because they live in such a self-congratulatory bubble ... Anyone who *didn't* live in this bubble would instinctively know that preaching the same banal messages at people again and again and again in their ENTERTAINMENT, in their escapism, is extremely pretentious and off-putting -- to people of all political persuasions.

I love that you guys are all waking up.

15:40 "And you know what's interesting? I AGREE with everything!" God do I feel this. Modern Trek aligns with my politics really well, but holy crap am I sick and tired of how they're presenting it. Allegories don't work if you just present everyone as being a raging a-hole; Gul Dukat wouldn't have been nearly as effective of a villain if he'd been unlikable right from the start. Old Trek made a good faith effort to present both sides of an argument as fairly as they could, even if they didn't condone both sides of the argument, this resulted in compelling television, it inspired even viewers who agreed with the points the show was making to look at their opposition in a more fair, objective light. nuTrek doesn't make any effort to present both sides fairly, and so even though I agree with what they're trying to say, I find the shows themselves boring and tedious. If I wanted to hear my own opinions parroted back at me I'd read my diary, not turn on Star Trek.

Once I saw and heard the term "The Confederation" in the episode I just laughed out loud with cringe. I'm not sure they could have been more on the nose with the SJW nonsense. After that I just viewed season 2 as a full blown comedy/parody. It definitely makes the series more tolerable when you view it like that.

It's *ENOUGH* with the "grim dark" Trek 🙄😠

Guinan can tell when a timeline has changed (Yesterday's Enterprise) so its not that her timeline is different. Its that the writers never saw that episode, don't care or think they're smarter than the original writers which is utterly ridiculous. Either way, fuck it! It sucks.

How can they explain Data and his daughter in this “timeline” being a doctor and a repeat cloning failure?

I'm never watching this show but I just wanna see the review

Gonna be honest, I don't watch much star trek. I came here to watch serious critics rip on SJW leaches masquerading as writers. Your willingness to do that despite sharing many of the political opinions of those writers gives you a lot of credibility. Also the rants are fun to watch. Keep ripping on BS when you see it. Critics like you with a large following who actually give a damn about good story telling are one of the few sources of hope I have for the future of American entertainment.

Remember Star Trek 4 the voyage home? Which had a heartfelt message about animal cruelty and hunting to extinction... but the story and characters were so F**king good it didn't need to shove the message down your throat. You got both: Entertainment AND a thought provoking message.

Episode one was horrible. They said the ship was new and then a refit. But, most egregious? A star fleet captain said, “stop firing” and no one listened. That would never happen.

I gave up on the Star Trek franchise when Abraham’s started making them. I watched season 1 of picard and knew it wouldn’t be able to recover, I watched through season 2 of discovery, and knew it wouldn’t recover. This franchise is dead as far as the fans are concerned.

I wish Patrick Stewart would retire from acting because Hollywood are a bunch of A-holes

I would just like to know why all of the footage is so dark and overly blue saturated. Visually, it doesn't look anything like any actual Star Trek movie or show. The bridge was always very well lit. The engineering spaces were always well lit. Why is everything so dark and dreary all of a sudden? Visually, it doesn't even feel like Star Trek. And while the series has always tackled social justice issues, it's always been done in a clever way. Nothing in the new series feels authentic. So far, the three non-animated shows that have come out all seem forced. Honestly, I have no desire to watch any of this. And with this poorly as paramount has handled Halo, I really have no interest in seeing anything from that entire conglomerate ever again.

I mean, this is simple. They didn't make this for Star Trek watchers. They made it for others and hoped to be religious on them. Trek fans knew all of this. We've been there. They obviously had no idea the source material.