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See that's the thing - the Federation didn't turn on an instant, but it did suffer heavily during the Dominion War. It was honestly (ignoring time wobbling wars and stuff) the first big combat event the Federation had.

Most other conflicts were very quick, even the Borg, whilst a long standing threat, was mostly isolated Cubes and single strikes with long gaps between.

The Dominion War changed a lot of things for the Federation and what we see in Picard is basically a slightly new Federation that's a bit more scared. The problem is we don't see that transformation happen, we see the very end of the War and we see the final result of the Federation in Picard - but we don't see the steps in between.

It would be like watching DS9 and looking at Sisco as a character and going from him in season 1 to him in the final season. If you miss all the bits in the middle, all the big and small changes, the major events that twist, the personal conflicts and all; then its very hard to build the miss parts in convincingly.


Heck lets consider that Sisco isn't even very Starfleet by the end - he's willing to backstab, betray, commit war crimes (up to a point). He's even given up with his scientific federation upbringing and is embracing being a divine prophet.

He's basically entirely not a Starfleet Captain as we understand it from Original Series and TNG.


This is what Picard missed as a series; it missed that middle bit that explained and showed the transitional changes. At the same time it also peeked at the underbelly of things; crime lords, drugs and so on - things that we also rarely if never properly touched on before; or would be the domain of other species, not the Federation.

There was also the absorption of Romulans into The Federation.

Dominion War shock, and then having officers from a known pretty paranoid race? That’s going to change outlook. Especially with a foe like the Changelings.

Oh, sure they appear to be playing nice. But can you ever be fully sure?

If Picard season 1 and 2 had been focused on the Romulan events then what we now have as season 1 would have made way more sense/connected better for many people.

Season 1 of Picard should have been him in his Admiral position settled and stable at the start; then the rise of the Romulan problem and everything spiralling bad with the final part of the season/start of the next being the destruction of their homeworld and all the fallout from that. Second season should have been all the insane fallout from that ending with Picard renouncing and stepping away from the Federation etc..


If we'd "seen" and been on the journey there then a lot of the parts of the new Picard we did get would have felt more settled. We'd have seen the Federation making fundamental changes; the reasons for them; the challenges post-war; the changes in the Romulans. Even how Picard wound up living with two of them etc...

We could also have seen the natural breakup of the TNG crew as they all went their own ways etc...



Instead we get a lot of that as recaps sprinkled through season 1 and its on us as fans to fill in the blanks and connect the dots

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Picard (the series) lacks convincing explanations for why the federation turned into a shithole (you don't have to sleep in a trailer in the federation, unless you're really stupid or badly written, Miss Ruffy!) Because some androids rebelled on Mars the whole federation went down? Come on, they've been through worse things and still the federation thrived and kept their utopia. It's just the new writers lacking imagination, hence they copy mass effect (Pic. S1), Suicide Squad (Section 31), Game of Thrones (Disco S1) and can only reference the old series but not really continue them or create something even close to TNG/DS9. Really if you look back it's these two forming that framework of Trek, TNG (and to a lesser extent TOS) building the World, and DS9 diving deeply into it. Voyager, Enterprise and Lower Decks then tried to work with it and partly succeeded, but didn't really continue, because all of them had their restraints.

Half the season plots also just make the Federation look profoundly stupid by resolving around someone nefariously undermining the entire group without being noticed as a saboteur.

I don't like them ripping off 'Dilithium has betrayed us' as a plot point from Star Trek Renegades for Discovery and I loathe trying to turn Star Trek into a post-apocalyptic setting to the bottom of my soul, but havng a robot uprising turning the Federation into a gak hole is a close second to complete genre shift setting changes that I hate.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Random thought...

What if someone did a Star Wars story in the Star Trek universe and vice versa?

The USS Midway is a Nimitz class carrier with two dozen Peregrine Class Federation Fighters. The show follows the pilots of Renegade Squadron as they battle the forces of the Klingon Empire. Central characters include Duke Starrider, a fighter pilot whose mysterious half-Betazoid heritage gives him strange psychic powers and noted smuggler and scoundrel Thadiun Okona.

Upon reflection...

The USS Midway was a Nimitz class Starfleet carrier with two dozen Peregrine Class Federation Fighters stolen by the Marquis. The show follows the pilots of Renegade Squadron as they battle the forces of the Cardassian Empire. Central characters include Duke Starrider, a fighter pilot whose mysterious half-Betazoid heritage gives him strange psychic powers and noted smuggler and scoundrel Thadiun Okona. Others include a Kzin warrior whose vocal chords do not allow him to pronounce human speech (but is understood through the universal translator), an early model Soong android without the synthetic flesh, a Starfleet DOT-7 Repair Robot, and Princess Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po from Xahea.

There we go.

Other than like Pike and the future Enterprise crew, it’s really interesting the apparent lack of plot armor on the rest of the SNW cast.