Star Trek

I think that's a bit harsh, it's no TNG S8 but it's noticeably a step-up from the prior two seasons. Particularly S2 which is some of the worst TV I've ever seen. S3 was at least watchable and reasonably coherent.
I see it more of a continuation of the mostly shit TNG films than of the series and through that lens it's not too bad.

We all have our kinks…

Shaw was one of the best things in Picard so obviously he had to die, similar to Rios being probably the best character in the first two seasons so he got left behind in the 21st century.

If season 3 Picard was the only one that got made people would have been sorry to see it go rather than glad it had a good ending after two seasons of occasional quality but mostly dross.

Having watched some BTS footage and interviews with the cast, the biggest problem the show had was probably Patrick Stewart. He seems to have heavily influenced the 'no uniforms, no star fleet' direction and had producer power well above his abilities. You can't fault him for wanting to do something a bit different but a lot of the creative choices were very, very poor. The best idea anyone had by far was to bring Seven back.

You can tell by the third series someone finally delivered the 'this shit isn't working' message and not only gave people what they wanted but actually thought about what Star Trek is good at.

I think the best thing they could have done was leave it well the fuck alone.

Now that's a casting choice I'd certainly approve of.

Just finished off first season of Strange New Worlds. It was pretty good. I liked the stand alone episodes and they had some good stories throughout. I wouldn't say there was much that really stood out as excellent, but it was all very watchable. The best episodes did play off classic Trek quite a bit, with the Gorn space battle episode feeling very Wrath of Khan and the final episode literally re-doing Balance of Terror (to the point of having one of the ensemble randomly being a stand-in for the racist navigator), so they did risk being not quite as good copies of a better Trek, but it mostly worked.

Even when not copying the old shows though, it did a really good job of being modern Trek, much more so then any of the other new series. Even the design of the ship feels like a more open and modern interpretation of the TOS ship, in a much better way then other attempts. The plots are a little more action orientated then the more cerebral Trek, about that works well with it going for the TOS style (albeit they go even less ideas based than that show).

I like most of the crew, although I wouldn't say any hugely stand out. There are some good stories for them, but it is hard to give much description as to who any of them are by the end of the season, beyond generic terms.

Despite some negatives though, it was a pretty good start. Certainly one of the better first seasons of Trek and I didn't think there were any real clunkers (the ship becomes a fantasy kingdom one was borderline, but it was doing something that is pretty established as a Trek stable story and was still enjoyable, as well as leading to a big moment for the doctor).

Oh fuck, I forgot season 5 of Discovery was starting today. That's my evening sorted.

Is it Paramount+ exclusive now? I might wait for it to finish and binge it on a short one month subscription.

The only way the plot of Star Trek Online could go further off the fucking rails at this point is if Kruge came back from the dead, ripped his Klingon makeup off to reveal Christopher Lloyd and said "Rails? Where we're going, we don't need rails."