#but then why doesnt seven have it. why didnt hugh have if. or any of the other ex borg from s1

[positronicpain]

why would you, as the borg collective, choose the guy who very obviously does not want children to pass on your weird new cutting edge biotech

[philippageorgiou]

thoughts on the picard season 1 finale!!!!!!!!!!!!! only 26 hours after starting this damn rewatch

everything that happens on the synth homeworld just feels very silly, the first part of the finale is so inconsequential i couldnt even tell you anything that happened

it’s just. very messy and lazy. 

"sad queen annika, six years old and all she got for her birthday was assimilated" i’m sorry but this is such a funny line!!!!!! anyway seven killing narissa ‘for hugh’ just like she killed bjayzl for icheb 🥺 

will turning up to save the day and threatening to kill oh’s treacherous tal shiar ass... i love one man

very bold (read: stupid) of them to have the main character literally die 20 minutes from the end of the season. yes i absolutely sobbed through the scenes of everyone mourning yes i hated it.

i just think that his near-death thing achieved nothing!!!!! why!!!! 

the whole ordeal was just lazy writing and cutting corners idk they could just have easily.... let him live a few more years without bringing it up. or just given him a near death thing, let him see data, and thats that. we didnt need this whole thing it was so dumb and emotionally whiplashy. you dont let your characters AND audience mourn only to be like SIKEEEEE 2 minutes later

anyway ngl idk what else happened in this

isa briones’ cover of blue skies just makes me weeeeeep 

the raffi and seven hand holding moment is almost embarrassing in how random it was but as always with star trek it’s all about taking whatever crumbs youre given and i very much appreciate this crumb

ok so rewatching the whole picard show after 9 months (i couldve had a picard-hating baby by now! what a concept!) my opinion hasnt changed drastically but! here are my overall takes

it’s messy as fuck

none of the characters are developed as much as they should be at any given moment. you cant just wait to give characters personalities until its convenient to. yes this is about soji but also a lot of the supporting chars

also? on the subject of supporting characters? dont introduce a new one every episode. it’s clumsy.

i say we ban writing teams that are just one writer, one trek nerd and 35 executive producers. enough. let writers write and producers produce and nerds... nerd. stay in your lanessss! also please try to understand the format youre writing for!!!!! please!!!!! and for the love of god learn pacing. ive never seen anything as inconsistent as this

calm down with the plotlines. complicated doesnt always mean good. let the characters be the complicated driving force through a plot thats layered and interesting, sure, but digestible and actually makes sense

also? fucking acknowledge beverly crusher. i’ll go one step further and say let her fuck admiral clancy because that’s what they deserve and what we deserve

i still dont like this show and it’s still my least favourite trek but there are things i appreciate about it now that i didnt before! but not a lot! one thing that has changed though is that i dont have so much hatred for it, it’s mostly just been replaced with disappointment at the wasted opportunities 

i believe that next season could be a lot better now that theyve got the nostalgia / fanservice stuff out of the way, so fingers crossed!!!!!

[dismembered-narrator]

criticizing a pretty much universally loved series because i enjoy poking the hornet's nest

my main problems with the haunting of hill house come down to narrative structure and poorly integrated subplots. and this is entirely personal opinion so fight me.

the first five episodes? wonderful. i think they're wonderfully crafted nonlinear narratives, and work really well as the first main mystery of the series, which is how nell died. my only problem is that i really dont like luke's subplot about helping his friend? and i think the conclusion to that subplot, with his friend running away with his money, makes it feel like the entire subplot was pointless and i dont get it? like, what's it trying to say? how does this connect to the main narrative or the themes at all? it also never comes up again except in luke's hallucinations or whatever so i really dont get it. i find that a lot of the subplots about the main characters' romantic interests just dont seem to have any point, which is much more of a problem in the second half of the series.

i also really like episode six, because i love one takes, and its just a fun spooky episode. the same cant be said about the other episodes that are like episode six. the first five episodes are each centered around a single character, which is great for giving each episode a narrative arc and focus of its own, but as we go into the second half of the series, that structure is dropped. episodes seven and nine (i think) are focused on hugh and olivia, but six, eight, and ten dont have a particular structure to them. as i said, i like episode six, but eight in particular feels much more aimless than the other episodes, because it doesnt have a strong focus. this is a problem that i have with a lot of story-driven television series, that each episode feels more like an aimless collection of scenes with something big at the end to keep you watching, rather than a narrative arc that fuels the larger story. i was happy with the structure of the first half of hill house, but the second half really let me down by dropping that strong, focused structure, and i feel like it could have been cut down. if there were eight episodes, one for each of the main characters and a finale for the house, i feel like the structure would have been tighter and had better pacing. i also dont like episode ten, because going through each of the characters and resolving their subplots through dream sequences or whatever? i dont really like it, and it feels like padding.

speaking of padding! let's talk about subplots that should have either been cut or edited to be better. i already talked about luke's kind of pointless subplot with his friend whose name i cant even remember, but lets talk about the most pointless subplot of them all, the guy at the bar who haunts shirley despite the fact that he's not even dead? bar guy really feels like they forgot to give shirley a character arc and had to add him in at the last minute. he should have been cut in the first draft, i hate his guts, why is he here, he literally has no impact on the main plot! he's pointless! he shows up so late in the series and for what? so they could give shirley something to do? i hate bar guy with all of my heart and he really should have been replaced with a better subplot. speaking of stupid subplots that revolve around shirley, that whole thing where she thinks her husband is cheating on her with theo? that was pointless and cheap. i wish they did more with theo's "i feel empty" thing than a cliche cheating subplot that goes nowhere. it ties into the bar guy i guess but i do not like him so. they should have come up with a much better character arc for shirley, and also put more focus on theo's emptiness after she touches nell's body because i thought that was interesting.

there were also a few scares in the second half of the series that were just really stupid and pointless. the main one that comes to mind is when theo and hugh see some dead person crawling around in the funeral home (i think it's olivia?). it didnt seem to serve any purpose other than "oh no we need more spooky stuff uhhhhh heres a dead body that isnt very scary." i also dont really get the internal logic of the ghosts, especially when they show up outside of hill house. i thought it was implied through abigail's death that anyone who dies in hill house is stuff there? but then hat guy follows luke around, and nell and olivia show up in other places too. i guess it has to do with the metaphor. like luke's childhood experiences are haunting him, so that why he sees the ghost, and the same goes for the deaths of nell and olivia haunting the rest of the family. idk i just like horror to have internal logic. also why do most of the ghosts look like theyre real people, but hat guy is floating off the ground and stuff? i did like that some of the ghosts, like nell at the end of episode one, turned all gray like they were mimicking the statues at hill house, that was cool.

anyways, most of my complaints come from personal opinion. i know most story-driven tv shows like this dont have a strong structure to each of their episodes, but i really like when they do, and the first half of the series got my hopes up. thats also how i personally structure chapters when im writing, by giving them each their own little narrative arc that adds to the overall story, and i find it more engaging that way. i also find it hard to really care about any of the characters, and i dont know why. maybe its the way theyre written? i see people online talking about how they were crying over the finale or whatever, and i just cant understand how they care so much. i liked the series a lot more on my second watch than my first, but overall it just doesnt hit a chord in me like other stories do.