On Friendica because long, and I don't have an active blog to put this on.

This weekend, there was a panel at #eastercon on "My Favourite Trek". It should probably have been titled "Why Deep Space 9 is my favourite trek", as that seems to come top or near the top for most people. And it wasn't just because of Garrick, as A K Falkner wasn't on that panel.

The reasons revolved around DS9 putting people in difficult moral situations concerning the Dominion War. It is not the TNG-era "the Federation and Star Fleet officers are perfect" backdrop to any moral story.

Picard season 3 deals with some of the aftermaths of the Dominion War, specifically how the main protagonist, Vadic, was captured and tortured by the Federation to try to create some sort of weapon, and this is on top of the morphogenic virus. Understandably, Vadic is pissed and wants revenge.

Well, that's a really nice setup for how actions taken in war or insurgencies can lead to resentment and future wars. Plenty of nice historical allegories there.

But they took all that lovely backstory that could give us some good solid DS9-esque issues to deal with and... literally blew it out of the airlock. Bloody solids. They have two episodes remaining, but it looks like that will be a Buffy Season 4 "Restless" style journey through someone's mind. (You know, the one with the cheese slices instead of red doors) They did that in Picard season 2 already. Adding in a dose of "Picard is part Borg" or wherever they go with this doesn't feel like it will be enough to make it new.

Plus, we will undoubtedly get more "Data has emotion now, yay!". That film is best forgotten. Please try not to replicate it.

On the plus side, the conversation between Troi, Riker and Worf, when the former two get broken out of jail, was excellent.