Since I can't force myself to do work right now, I will instead review Season 3 of Picard. Note: there will be some spoilers below. If you read on, resistance to them will be futile!

First, the positives:

1. This is vastly better than the awful Season 2 of Picard, and probably better than Season 1, too. Bringing back almost the entire original TNG cast helped with that.
2. You can almost feel the joy of the actors at returning to the roles that first made them famous. I'm no film maven, so may be missing something. But I don't think any of them have achieved anything like comparable success in other roles.
3. The season has a good pace. The action rarely flags, and I was always excited to get on to the next episode, thus watching all 10 within a span of 3 days (probably to the detriment of work, among other things!).
4. The season raises and/or reassesses interesting ethical issues about artificial intelligence and the rightness of Federation policy during the Dominion War.
5. Both here and in Season 1, Seven of Nine gets some great character development (almost the only character in Picard that does so!). I look forward to what seems to be a planned sequel series with her as captain of the Enterprise.
6. Jack Crusher (long-hidden son of Picard and Dr. Crusher) is a far less annoying character than Wesley Crusher was. I'm glad they didn't bring back the latter. Wesley is almost the only TNG bridge crew member they did NOT bring back, probably because fans hate him so much.

Despite these good points, there are also various downsides and revelation of flaws in the ST universe:

1. The way they brought back almost every original TNG character seems incredibly contrived and manipulative. Are these really the only competent and reliable people in the entire Federation (with the exception of a few other legacy characters, like Seven)?

2. Like in Season 1, but even more so, Starfleet comes off as stupid and incompetent. In Season 1, they got infiltrated by Romulans. Here, they not only get infiltrated, but completely taken over by an alliance of the Borg and Dominion rebels. And only the old TNG crew can save them!

3. The Borg-Dominion plot is to take over the Fleet when all of it assembles by Earth to celebrate Frontier Day (a big Federation holiday). Assembling the entire fleet in one place like this is incredibly stupid, even if there is no reason to suspect a plot. It would leave all the borders of the Federation defenseless! It's as if the entire US military gathered in Washington, DC to celebrate July 4.

4. Both in Season 1 and here, we see planets on the periphery of the Federation where the people (including humans and even some Vulcans!) live in poverty, squalor, and high crime. Why don't these people migrate to the Federation (in a universe with cheap FTL travel, moving costs are low!)? The possible answers all reflect badly on the Federation:
   a. Life for average people (as opposed to the Star Fleet elite) in the Federation is actually pretty bad. Perhaps socialism has finally done them in! There are some hints in this direction in Picard and perhaps also in DS 9. But it goes against a lot of canon. Thus, we are left with:
   b. The Federation has severe immigration restrictions and enforces them rigorously (advanced tech has enabled them to Build the Space Wall and it actually works!). This, too, would go against principles the Federation is supposed to espouse.

5. Star Fleet seems to be a highly nepotistic organization. Relatives of the TNG Enterprise crew seem to be present on almost every ship! At the end of the show, Jack Crusher gets assigned to a high position on the new Enterprise, despite having no previous command experience, and nearly destroying the entire Federation through his reckless actions. Seems like he gets the job because he's the son of Admiral Picard and Dr. Crusher (newly promoted to be Star Fleet's chief medical officer).

6. The whole plot line with Jack Crusher is overly reminiscent of the plot line with Kirk's previously unknown son in Wrath of Khan.

7. The destruction of the Borg cube in the last episode is suspiciously similar to the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars and in Return of the Jedi. Is Star Trek deliberately trolling Star Wars(their great rival) here?

8. I don't buy Worf becoming an intelligence officer or - even worse - an enthusiast for New Age pseudo-philosophy. Admittedly, the show seems to lampshade this! At one point, when Worf rescues Riker and Troi, and starts to spout his New Age-ism, Riker interrupts to ask whether this is a rescue or a continuation of the torture.

9. The splinter Dominion faction is plotting against the Federation to take revenge for Section 31 (Star Fleet's rogue intelligence agency) using a biological weapon to try to exterminate the Founders in the Dominion War. Both here and in DS 9, this Section 31 action is condemned. Perhaps rightly so. But the issue is not so obvious. Normally, genocide is wrong even if the victims' nation has committed great injustices, because people are not responsible for the actions of others, merely because they are of the same racial or ethnic group. Germans don't bear collective guilt for Hitler, Russians for Stalin, etc. But the Dominion Founders are a kind of collective hive mind (The Great Link). With the notable exception of Odo, all of them seem to have concurred in the establishment of a horrifically oppressive regime, and its efforts to conquer the Alpha Quadrant. Unlike the Germans and Russians, they ARE collectively guilty. And their atrocities (the slaughter and oppression of billions!) are on a scale large enough to justify killing them for purposes of retribution and/or preventing a recurrence.

10. Smaller plot point: It doesn't make sense that Picard was unaware that Ro Laren was back in Star Fleet until she came to investigate him. As a high-ranking admiral, he would surely have been made aware of the reinstatement of his former protege-gone-bad.

11. Troi's counseling in this series is only slightly less lame than in TNG. What she says is a combination of the obvious and the extremely dubious. As I have pointed out before, psychology seems to be a field that actually regressed in the Star Trek universe between our time and the 25th century. Whenever we see a Star Fleet counselor, they're either spouting nonsense or making very obvious points. With "treatment" like this, mental illness in the Federation must be running rampant! This may be another subtle indication that life in the Federation isn't as good as their propaganda claims (see point 4).

Despite all these negatives, I have to agree that the combination of Picard Season 3 and Strange New Worlds has put the Star Trek franchise on a better path than before. And I DO look forward to the possible series with Seven of Nine commanding the Enterprise. Hopefully, she will get rid of Jack Crusher before he has a chance to becoming as annoying as half-brother Wesley!