Just saw first episode Picard season 3. Let me run down some random thoughts an autistic rant. Spoilers ahead matey.
Started with an extra-special title card letting everybody know you are watching something from the Star Trek brand. Maybe it's older I donno. Reminded me of Marvel/Dc in a bad way.
The first scene, after a long pan over a strange new ship and its contents, was like the first scene of Star Wars--but that one was over relatively quickly and had important dialogue from the droids. This was just a blaster battle between a couple invaders and one old lady which was very drawn out. No phasers, both sides had blasters that made actual gun-firing noises. Victims explode into cinders unlike phaser deaths in TNG where they just get vaporized. Later Riker even lampshades this "I've never seen ashes like this from phaser fire." Strange. The bad guys have weird bird masks. Dr Crusher went full murder mode but it was a kill or be killed moment. When she is shot she has a bleeding wound. Maybe those are bullets. Future bullets, or something.
Picard at home was fine, I guess. Surprised to see he had some sort of Bajoran trophy on his desk. He refers to his communicator as a "20 year old Enterprise D communicator" instead of a "35 year old Starfleet communicator." Later we see Rafi using a TOS style handheld. Crusher sends Picard coded coordinates which Riker helps decode with a bit of knowledge he gleaned back while Picard was Locutus. An event that didn't actually happen on TNG.
There's a ton of the Minority Report style holo-screens. I hate that shit. Like what if Picard wanted to watch a movie. Would he see through the screen to the furniture in his living room while watching Casablanca? Later there's a part where some nebula is interfering with scanning. The static even interrupts the GUI. At least most of the physical screens look right, although there are moments when it seems the screens have like fifty browser tabs open at once. In 2400 those problems really ought to be solved. TNG had more realistic touch screens. The computer voices are wildly inappropriate and sound a bit like a Good Guy doll from the Chucky movies.
So there are stolen weapons that Rafi is investigating on a planet that looks like Blade Runner LA except with aliens. Later she discovers the target of these terrorists and literally arrives at the last moment to warn the target, and witnesses some mass destruction. This after trying futilely to get in touch with Starfleet. Why won't they contact her? She couldn't even get customer service on the line, though she does have an anonymous handler for whatever nonsense reason. Evidently the weapon is just a big transporter portal because it opens under Starfleet Hq (should have answered the phone guys) which falls in a mile-wide hole, and simultaneously is dumped from above onto the adjoining neighborhoods.
People make fun of the Enterprise D and call it "the fat one." Wtf. Someone is spying on Picard and drops Enterprise D micro machine into his beer. Spooky ominous portent whoaaaa dude
The captain of the Titan is a rude jerk, insinuating that most of Starfleet considers our old heroes as unreliable rogues, and even insults Picard's wine which got a little laugh out of me. The captain's private dining room didn't have a door. The bridge looks like we're in the Tech Noir club from Terminator. Titan Captain refers to Starfleet higher ups as "above our pay grade." Yet according to Riker in Unification "I don't use money." Hell I don't think he even has pockets. But Rafi needs money to pay her info sources and is trying to get it from Starfleet. I guess there's money now. Yes there's tons of precedent in Deep Space 9 for credits, latinum whatever but that was like a stipend so Dax could go play dabo, or really a meta-excuse for writers to make conflict amongst the alien milieu.
At the end now we find a guy that refers to himself as Crusher's son. Neither Riker nor Picard say "Wesley is that you?????" The guy has an English accent. Probably Picard's kid. Are accents inherited in the future?
The colors are bad; the old orange/cyan joke is not only stale but using it here almost feels like a troll. Space has way too much light and clouds and shit everywhere. The Titan exterior had some lousy CGI but most of the visual fx were fine. Music was pretty good until the bad guy ship shows up at the end and you got some generic modern blaring klaxon non-music. The Starfleet uniforms are pretty cool but I wonder why there's so many different badges.
Not the future I'd expect from TNG but they had to inherit the problems of Picard seasons one and two. The episode does seem decompressed, it could have been at least ten minutes shorter. I guess Paramount really wanted ten episodes instead of eight. We shall see if forthcoming episodes drag as much. 5.5 out of 10
