Farewell Picard: Don't let the doors pinch you on the way out

I have been reading online people's reactions to the final episode of Star Trek: Picard (STP), Season 2.

And I just don't understand them.

One person stated that he was so caught up in the emotions of the episode that wept from start to finish. Another praised STP as the finest of Star Trek.

Am I missing something?

"Farewell" aired this week. It offered about 35 minutes of story spread across 54 minutes of television. It is proof positive, to me at least, that the STP creative team created a season-long story arc that was barely sufficient for about 7.5 episodes and had no clue what to do with the other 2.5 episodes' worth of screen time.

I have been open with my disdain for this show, especially this second season, from the outset and that disdain has only grown stronger. STP is not just bad Star Trek -- it is bad television.

If you read my blog posts on the first several episodes of STP from Season 1, I trust you will see that I approached it openly and with a hope that it would be amazing. I took great pains to appreciate the first five or six episodes of that first season, to focus on the good rather than the bad.

I was, perhaps, not so generous with Season 2. In my opinion it began poorly and went downhill from there. It took strong characters (like Seven and Raffi) and made them weak. It was self-contradictory and filled with plot holes and clumsy attempts to plug other plot holes. It undermined Star Trek lore and trampled on the basic tenets of good science fiction.

It meandered and faltered and descended all too often into maudlin introspection and emotional molasses.

And, to find out in the final episode of the season that the universe was thrown into disarray, that the lives of millions, if not billions, were put at risk just so that one white dude could help another white dude come to terms with his emotions and learn to love is just too much to accept.

Awful awful awful awful.

And the worst example of deus ex machina I have seen in a very long time.

The entire second season of STP started with Picard backing away from love and ended with Picard accepting love. The entire plot of the second season of STP was the creation of an all-powerful being who, at any time, could have extricated the characters from the plot but chose not to... until the very end.

Why did Q step in at the end to rescue Picard and his posse? Because the writers painted themselves into a corner and had no idea how to resolve the story at the end? Because they planned this unbearably bad plot turn from the beginning? Because they thought it made sense?

My mind boggles. Not only that the creative team of STP actually put this season on air but that some Star Trek fans have embraced it. Some want to celebrate the diversity of the show but carefully ignore that Picard's diverse posse plays no larger role than to be a backdrop to the great cis-het white guy whose personal baggage is apparently worth sacrificing a galaxy for.

Rios retires into the 21st Century.

Seven becomes incompetent, so wrapped up in her emotional life that she can no longer play an active, effective role. Did you notice the part she played in "Farewell"? No? Because she had no part, other than to urge Rios and Raffi to hurry up. One of the most interesting, capable, intelligent and effective female characters in all of Star Trek reduced to this?

Raffi sinks into her own emotional and psychic despair, more focused on Rios' love life, her rocky relationship with Seven and the loss of her beloved (?) Elnor than on the task at hand.

Jurati... well, Jurati disappears into Borgati, a once all-powerful enemy who, for the love of Picard, suddenly turns good.

Q uses the last of his powers to return Picard and most of his posse to the exact moment they left the 25th Century. Because Rios is staying behind, Q has sufficient power remaining to give Picard a surprise gift -- Elnor alive! Because, you know, Q has always operated on batteries that have only so much energy.

Q is ill. We are expected simply to accept that. And that Q won't spend his remaining time and energy trying to save himself. And that no other member of the Q Continuum would come forward to help because, well, maybe the illness that is affecting Q could possible kill them as well?

And the second season begins with the Borg reaching out to Picard in the 25th Century -- which means that the timeline Picard's foray into the past creates already exists before he makes that foray: Jurati has already taken over the Borg and turned them to the cause of good before Picard goes back to the 21st Century to save the timeline.

And what does that do to all of the Borg storylines from Enterprise, TNG, and the later shows? If Borgati has begun to change the Borg beginning in the 21st Century, does that mean that none of the later Borg plots actually play out the way they were originally portrayed? Does that mean Seven of Nine was never assimilated? So does that mean that the entire series STP never happened?

If only....

I guess that's too much to ask. Even worse, I guess we have to accept that the STP creative team is planning another season. Certainly, "Farewell" very subtly (ha ha) sets the foundation for a third season in which the greatest threat the galaxy has ever faced requires the reborn Borg and the Federation to join forces to stop it. I shiver with anticipation.