I was up a bit early again today, and one of the first things I came across when I logged into Facebook was this review of the third season of Star Trek Picard by Steve Shives. I’ve been watching Shives’ videos for a while now, and really enjoy the detail he goes into, particularly how he explains why he liked or disliked the various pieces of media he responds to. In this video he excels himself: it’s essentially a degree-level essay in video form, albeit with the occasional swear word thrown in. Detailed, thorough, yet amusing, this is a very impressive analysis. As much as part of me loved seeing the old Next Generation crew reunited, I must agree with his central point that what we watched in Picard Season Three boils down to essentially meaningless fan service. That is, we constantly got nods and references to past incarnations of Star Trek thrown at us, without anything new really being developed. It was as if the writers didn’t want to make the effort, so simply rehashed things we had seen previously in Trek, as well as overplaying the nostalgia card and bringing back things and characters which had previously been written out (how many times has Data ‘died’ now?).

At 52 minutes, it’s quite a long watch, but I think it’s worth it. Shives makes some very good, fairly sophisticated points, most of which I had to agree with. He says he doesn’t want to seem too negative, but I don’t think he is; rather, Shives makes some good, well informed points about where the final season of Picard falls down creatively. To be honest I think Shives’ review is broadly on the same intellectual level as the film analysis I was reading back at uni: videos like this really demonstrate just how advanced the online fan discourse around programs like Star Trek is becoming.