Star Trek: Picard Finale Review - 3 Ups And 5 Downs From Et In Arcadia Ego (Part 2)

1. Less Is More, Number 1

218 Romulan Warbirds and about as many Federation Starships to match... and literally only two different ships across the entire set-piece. If the show only had the time, or budget, or imagination for a lowly two designs, why not just have two ships there? Well, because this episode had absolutely zero idea how to stretch out the dramatic tension.

Oh has - and I counted - about 4 chances to obliterate the settlement, but just repeatedly chooses to say "target the abomination's nest!" and "lock weapons" and "resume sterilisation targetting patter" and "on my command". Then, after she orders the fleet to "prepare... to fight!" the incoming Federation ships there is a whopping 45 seconds of screentime that exclusively consists of both fleets just sort of floating there. It actually gets awkward at one point.

Never in my life have I seen a setpiece of such scale carry such little significance. Not unlike the ending of the most recent Star Wars film, simply going for sheer numbers to try and create dread means absolutely nothing if you're trying to present an intimate character drama. This was Oh vs Riker with Picard in the middle and over 400 superfluous ships the audience neither knew nor cared about.