Star Trek: Picard 3-10: The Last Generation (Quick Review)

Episode:

30

|

Writer:

Terry Matalas

|

Director:

Terry Matalas

|

Air Date:

20-Apr-2023

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing The Last Generation, the dramatic conclusion of Star Trek: Picard's dramatic concluding season. This means I've completed another series! This, Star Trek: Discovery and Babylon 5 are the only three shows I've finished writing about in their entirety, so this is a rare event for me.

The episode was produced, written and directed by showrunner Terry Matalas, so it's more one person's vision than any other Trek episode since, I dunno, the first episode of Strange New Worlds (and that has a couple of other names besides Akiva Goldsman's on the 'story by' credit). The next closest episode after that I can think of is from way back in the 60s, as the Original Series' Elaan of Troyius was written and directed by John Meredyth Lucas. So that's pretty rare too.

There are going to be all kinds of SPOILERS below so I wouldn't go any further unless you've seen the episode yourself. Also Star Trek: Voyager. And Return of the Jedi.

Star Trek: Picard 3-09: Võx (Quick Review)

Episode:

29

|

Writer:

Sean Tretta & Kiley Rossetter

|

Director:

Terry Matalas

|

Air Date:

13-Apr-2023

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Picard's penultimate episode, Võx, which has a weird title. At least, that's what the experts say. Personally I have no idea if it's right or not, I didn't even know that it was Latin, but the internet seems pretty sure that tilde shouldn't be over the o. It may have been meant to be Vōx, but plain simple Vox would've worked just fine. It means 'voice' by the way.

One thing you don't often see on Star Trek is the showrunner directing an episode themselves, but Terry Matalas was at the helm for this one. He'd directed a few episodes of Twelve Monkeys previously, including the finale, so I'm sure he knew what he was doing. It would've been hilarious if he didn't though, and Picard ended as a complete train wreck on a basic production level. I guess I'll find out!

I'm going to start discussing SPOILERS now, so avert your eyes if you'd rather not know anything about this episode or what led up to it.

Star Trek: Picard 3-08: Surrender (Quick Review)

Episode:

28

|

Writer:

Matt Okumura

|

Director:

Deborah Kampmeier

|

Air Date:

06-Apr-2023

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing the season 3 Picard episode titled Surrender.

It was written by Matt Okumura, who wrote Hide and Seek for Picard's second and absolutely nothing else. Well, nothing in Star Trek anyway; he's had experience writing for Leverage: Redemption and Blood & Treasure, which are two series I'm not sure I've ever heard of.

If you don't want to see SPOILERS for series like Discovery, Strange New Worlds and Picard, you should stop reading here.

Star Trek: Picard 3-07: Dominion (Quick Review)

Episode:

27

|

Writer:

Jane Maggs

|

Director:

Deborah Kampmeier

|

Air Date:

06-Apr-2023

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Dominion, which is an interesting word in Star Trek. There are ominous implications there.

It's the season season in a row to feature a Jane Maggs story as episode 7, though that's not much of a coincidence as she wrote almost a third of season 2. Arguably the worst third, but I'm blaming the season arc for that more than anything. I haven't seen director Deborah Kampmeier's name on any Picard episodes, but she did direct The Galactic Barrier for Discovery, which is an episode I didn't like all that much either. Damn, not a lot of reasons for optimism so far, but I'll see how it goes.

This is where the SPOILERS start, so quit reading here if you don't want the episode ruined.

Star Trek: Picard 3-06: The Bounty (Quick Review)

Episode:

26

|

Writer:

Christopher Monfette

|

Director:

Dan Liu

|

Air Date:

30-Mar-2023

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the 26th episode of Star Trek: Picard, which also happens to be the number of episodes Star Trek shows used to have each season. If Picard was like a 90s show this would've been the season 1 finale! But it's not, it's halfway through the final season. In fact there are only four episodes left, so if my maths are correct Picard is going to end up falling a little short of Next Gen's 176 episode run.

The episode is titled The Bounty and now I suddenly I want a chocolate bar with a coconut filling. It's not an unattainable goal, but I'll get this done first.

There are going to be SPOILERS, so if you don't want everything ruined you should stop reading.

Doctor Who (2023): Season 1 Review

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the latest first season of Doctor Who! It's also known as series 14 or season 40, depending on how stubborn you are.

Filming began on 5th Dec 2022, so it took a long while for this to finally reach TVs. In fact, the last full actual season of the show was in 2021. But it's finally out and now I have opinions about the dawn of the third age of Doctor Who.

Though maybe I should hang on until the next season's out. I mean 8 episodes and a Christmas special isn't much to review. This run of episodes flew by so fast that I'm not sure I was able to get a good enough look at them to describe what I saw. Then again, if I wait any longer I'll have forgotten what happened, so I should probably just get on with it.

There will be SPOILERS for this season, the recent specials, and maybe other episodes too.

Star Trek: Picard 3-05: Imposters (Quick Review)

Episode:

25

|

Writer:

Cindy Appel & Chris Derrick

|

Director:

Dan Liu

|

Air Date:

16-Mar-2023

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally back to writing about Star Trek: Picard's third and final season! It's only 10 episodes so you'd think I'd be done with it by now, but I had to put it to one side for a couple of months to get some other things written. Discovery's last season was coming out, I had a The Last Jedi review in the works for May the 4th, then the first season of Ncuti Gatwa's run of Doctor Who started as well, so there were a lot of things demanding my time.

But that's all done with now, almost, and I'm ready to give Picard my partially undivided attention for its remaining six episodes.

Imposters was the final story to be credited to Cindy Appel and Chris Derrick, who'd been on the show since season 2. Derrick did one story, Appel did a few, and none of them have been highlights so far. Director Dan Liu was new to Picard, but he'd also done some Strange New Worlds so I'm sure he knew the difference between a phaser and a phase inducer.

Warning, SPOILERS beyond this point.