Well, that’s a hell of a title, isn’t it.
Last episode had Picard searching for a ship to help him begin his quest to unravel the mystery of Bruce Maddox, Dahj, and Dahj’s mysterious sister. (Who we already know as Dr. Soji Asher, hanging out on the reclaimed Borg cube.) “The End of the Beginning” has Picard getting his spaceship but not actually leaving Earth for the good until the final moment. The writers clearly understand the pop culture significance of Patrick Stewart on the bridge of a ship: from the first moment he beams aboard, the music references classic Trek tunes; there’s a cute beat where Picard almost (but not quite) sits in the captain’s chair; and the end of the episode has him kicking off the voyage with a familiar one-word sentence from TNG: “Engage.” It’s neat. I’m just not sure it’s enough.
“End” has some good bits. There’s a thrilling action scene at Picard’s vineyard, and it’s a relief to finally get things literally off the ground. Again we have characters questions Picard’s legacy, and if that criticism feels forced, it’s at least better than a simple hagiography. The idea of “reclaiming” former members of the Borg still feels fresh and exciting (although I keep waiting for Seven of Nine to show up; the lack of familiar faces at this point feels at once tasteful and kind of annoying), and, at the absolute worst, there’s comfort in knowing that that episode title isn’t a lie. We’re well and truly ended that beginning now. Finally.
But as I said last week, it’s hard to shake the sense that all of this took too long, in a way that gives me some concerns about the episodes to come. We learn a more about why the Romulans are determined to kill Data’s apparent descendants; Picard and his friends manage to capture a member of the assassin squad that tries to prevent him from leaving the planet, and (intercut with Soji’s conversation with an ex-Borg member on the cube), he reveals that Dahj and her sister are “the Destroyer,” which certainly sounds impressive. We also find out who Raffi is and why she’s so pissed at Picard; they were working together 14 years ago to organize the Romulan evacuation, and when Picard resigned, Raffi lost her position and ended up living in a trailer in the desert. She is, understandably, not happy about this.
Episodes of television don’t have to have to be measured for useful data and then judged accordingly; an hour can offer nothing new on a larger storyline and still be thrilling or hilarious or sad (or all three). The problem with “End” is that it moves the story forward by inches without really providing much in the way of justification for the time. Worse, we seem to be repeating some beats, to mixed effect.
I’m not sure why any of Soji’s scenes were in this entry. It was kind of cool to see her work with the Nameless continue, and her conversation with Ramdha (who I kept hearing as “Ronda”) is moody enough. But there’s nothing immediately vital or gripping to this beyond some stylistic moves and foreshadowing, and the character is really only compelling at this point as a mystery; no matter how much time we spend with her, that mystery is going to have to be sustained until later in the season, which leaves her largely opaque. Her relationship with Narrick might have some ambiguity in it, although I can’t imagine why (nothing against Soji, but the idea that she could sway a Romulan operative to have real feelings for her after a handful of lukewarm dates seems like a stretch), and we’re also treated to another weird, vaguely incest-y conversation between Narrick and his sister about the issue—a conversation that’s more or less an exact repeat of the one we got last week.
None of this (apart from that last conversation) is outright terrible, but by cutting repeatedly to Soji between scenes of Picard beginning his search for her, the writers are sacrificing a considerable amount of tension and focus on what should be our main concern. Instead of an exciting quest for a character we know nothing about, we have some people over here doing a thing, and some people over here doing a thing, and eventually, they’re going to have to meet up, and it’ll be totally cool when that happens I’m sure, but for now, we just gotta be patient. It’s silly, and in exchange for this silliness, we have a not particularly interesting character (Soji is fine, she’s just not allowed to really be more than that yet) going through the motions of a thing whose pieces won’t really fit together for another month or so.
It’s frustrating to watch. I’m also not completely sold on Picard’s relationship with Raffi. It’s possible there’s more backstory we’re not getting, but as of right now, it looks like Picard inadvertently fired himself from his job, and then just… didn’t talk to her for 14 years. That doesn’t sound like Picard. Last week’s confrontation with Clancy had some truth to it; Jean-Luc is an older man who isn’t in complete control of his faculties, and he bungled a huge publicity event, and he lacked the tact and patience (and humility) to make up for it. But here, it’s more like the show is trying to sell us on a version of the character that doesn’t quite line up with what we know. Picard was never a social butterfly, but he always had a strong sense of duty, and the idea that he’d abandon a coworker is hard to accept even if he was in shock from leaving his job.
Still, Raffi’s fun, as is Rios, the captain Raffi eventually hooks Picard up with. We get some weird but funny sparring between Rios and his Emergency Medical Hologram, which looks exactly like him for some reason; right now, the captain seems to have stepped straight out of Sci-Fi Archetypes R Us—the grumpy rogue with the heart of gold—but he’s entertaining. The episode also has Dr. Jurati making her triumphant return, getting a visit from Commodore Oh and showing up at the vineyard just in time to shoot a Romulan in the head and join Picard for his journey. (Although I’ll admit to being a little suspicious of her at this point. We didn’t see all of her meeting with the Commodore.)
“End” remains watchable, but as the show settles into its rhythms, I can’t help expressing a certain sense of resignation. If Discovery suffered from sacrificing narrative logic for Big Moments, Picard seems entirely content to be just another streaming show, with all the good and bad that entails. The story is still inherently compelling, and there’s a decent chance things will get more focused going forward. But it would be nice if a series so indebted to the past made more of an effort to recapture what made the past so thrilling in the first place.
Stray observations
- “What happened to you?” “I didn’t die.”
- Oh, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another bit of info we got from Soji’s scenes; she mentions that Ramdha was in the last ship assimilated by this particular Borg cube. Even more interesting, Soji had no idea she knew this, and had made no plans to mention it before their conversation.
- “I may be falling in love with you.” Ah, I’m so sure, Narrick.
- Okay, so Commodore Oh is supposed to be a Vulcan, but I’m assuming that’s a disguise because she’s working with the Romuans.
202 Comments
There is so much to criticize about Kurtzman era Trek but Jesus, the production design is especially dismal. It looks like a five year old designed the sets and costumes. Coloring almost everything black and mud gray makes it that much more awful. Even the location shooting is atrocious, like they shot everything at your mom’s favorite outdoor mall. It looks worse than a fan effort.
You’re right – it doesn’t hold up to the amazing production design of previous eras of Trek.
No, but it looks worse than other sci-fi shows airing currently.
Needs more styrofoam rocks.
At least TNG was on a free, network station and averaged around 25-27 episodes per season.
What’s CBS All Access’s excuse?
At least TNG was on a free, network stationIt was syndicated. If it was OTA for you, you’re fortunate.
They don’t feel like spending about 8mil an episode on four or five bullshit episodes a season, plus another couple of fillers? The 12 episode season is fantastic: no filler episodes, higher budgets per episode, and no mid-season hiatus.
Yeah but I think the point the OP was making that they’re spending that much and the production still looks not-good.I mean, it’s neither here nor there for me. I saw the premiere episode and was almost immediately turned off.So the Federation in 2399 is a racist, xenophobic organization that it almost became during its infancy on Enterprise?I’m not going to bother going into all the other points exhibiting how little the writers are familiar with character and TNG as a whole. There are plenty of YouTube videos for that.Just like the new Star Wars movies, all I want out of Star Trek are original stories that don’t rely so heavily or at all on nostalgia for stories and characters that came before.
I’d say that’s entirely not true. The production values are much better than TNG, but that’s to be expected given the time between the shows.
I don’t know if the entire Federation is a racist xenophobic org, but it’s got those elements in it. Like it always has through the movies and the series.
I’ve watched some of those YouTube videos. They range from “I’ve never seen the show but I need some views so I’m ginning up false outrage” to “This isn’t what I would have done, so I’m going to slam it”. Tough shit. The show to me is Star Trek, and I’ve been a Trekkie since Khan.
You see, you say things like that, but then you react negatively when you’re given it. I’m starting to think that what you want is just a carbon copy of TNG.
No, I just said said I want original stories with original characters.We already have a carbon copy of TNG yet, ironically, with original stories and original characters. It’s called The Orville.Here we got writers and producers trying to write a story around a bunch of fan service drops but all they really understand about Trek in the TNG universe is that Picard drank earle grey tea and Data was in it so naturally, they must have been best friends and hence why he has reocurring dreams of Data. The Borg was in it, too.Tell me you didn’t shake your head and do a facepalm when a group of supposed highly trained assassins beam into Dahj’s home who attempt to kidnap her, not by stunning her unconscious with a phaser but by smashing her head into the coffee table? Then they put a sack over her head like they’re gonna take a ride out to the country or some secret location. What century is this again? When they got back to the ship, were they going to stuff her in the trunk during the trip to the Borg reclamation cube as well?
Romulan disruptors don’t have a stun mode. So no, no facepalm.
Original stories with original characters? Discovery. The upcoming Section 31 series. Below Decks. There’s plenty of that’s what you’re looking for.
Sounds like you didn’t watch the show or any of the TNG films. Picard absolutely had a soft spot for Data. Hence the recurring dreams which is probably due to Survivor’s Guilt.
Discovery?! Really? So original, the main character is Spock’s adopted sister, who’s never mentioned until now. She’s the worst kind of fan fic contrivance there is. Christopher Pike was the captain for season 2 and the story focused primarily around Spock.
For some people, the mindless action, dark blue lighting and special effects may be enough to call it good Trek, or even Trek at all but it’s the most poorly written garbage with not a single character worth getting invested in. Saru only gets a pass because of Doug Jones and great make-up. Section 31 was a novel idea when it became a reoccurring foil for Doctor Bashir on DS9 but my interest in the organization never really went beyond that and even less when they showed up again in Enterprise and the Kelvin verse’s Into Darkness.
Picard respected Data but they were never friends. There were many instances where he barely tolerated Data’s goofy efforts to become more human. Oh, I also seem to recall Picard being the most vocal in his clear objection to Data building Lal, his daughter.Picard was first and foremost the captain and as such, kept his affection for his crew at arms length and performed his duties of running the ship. He was also a very private person. Didn’t care for children. Rarely participated with crew in off-duty activities and when he did, it was more out sense of obligation. He’d rather spend his free time in his quarters, sipping tea and listing to opera or playing the flute.
Sure, we were all sad when he gave his life to save Picard but the idea that he’d spend the next 25 years or so having dreams about playing poker with Data or watching him paint in the vineyard is ridiculous. He never even joined his crew for one of their regular poker sessions until the last 20 seconds of the final episode of TNG.
Stemmets is probably the closest to being a realized character that isn’t surface level cartoonish but they spend so much time in constant crisis mode because Star Trek all about the action and adrenaline now, that we never really get to know any of these characters beyond what the script needs them at the moment to push this mess of a story along.
Stemmets is probably the closest to being a realized character that isn’t surface level cartoonish but they spend so much time in constant crisis mode because Star Trek all about the action and adrenaline now, that we never really get to know any of these characters beyond what the script needs them to be to push the mess of a story along.
Spock had a half-brother and somehow that never came up until the fifth movie. So it’s not as much of a stretch as you’re claiming. And Pike was in two episodes of TOS, and barely.
Picard respected Data. And while they weren’t close in the beginning of the series, you’re neglecting how Picard defended him in ‘Measure of a Man’, went back to save him in ‘First Contact’, and picked him to be the new XO when Riker was going to the Titan. And even if they weren’t all that close, it wouldn’t be a weird thing for him to feel Survivor’s Guilt over Data’s death.
If you don’t like the show, fine. But at least criticize it on its merits rather than what you think it should be. I’m guessing there’s a reason that neither you nor I are writing Trek.
The Final Frontier was awful, which reinforces my point about Discovery but at ST:V was also a movie of the TOS era. Discovery is ret-conning everything because it can’t stand on its own two feet. They’re trying to bring in a new audience while simultaneously hoping to keep the old-school Trek fans onboard and they’re failing at both.CBS is banking on these two Trek shows to bring in subscribers to CBS All Access and people maybe tuning in for now, it won’t hold them for the long term.
It was an awful movie, but my mentioning it was to show that there is precedent there. Plus, Spock wasn’t exactly super forthcoming about his personal life, you know being a Vulcan and all. And if they’re failing at both, you’re apparently the only one that seems to think so. They announced Season 3 for Discovery and Season 2 of Picard before the first season even aired. And their subscriber numbers have gone up. But hey, I’m sure it’s pretty cool to have that crystal ball, huh?
The Final Frontier was awful, which reinforces my point about Discovery but at ST:V was also a movie of the TOS era. Discovery is ret-conning everything because it can’t stand on its own two feet. They’re trying to bring in a new audience while simultaneously hoping to keep the old-school Trek fans onboard and they’re failing at both.CBS is banking on these two Trek shows to bring in subscribers to CBS All Access and people maybe tuning in for now, it won’t hold them for the long term.
Yes, let’s compare super low budget public station Star Trek to modern Star Trek which CBS is banking its entire pay-for-All-Access lineup upon succeeding.(the production values on Discovery were great. if only the show weren’t complete nonsense)
Look you’re trying to dunk on the production design of a show that was attempting to be futuristic over *3* decades ago. Of course we look back on those choices and say “Wow that looks silly now” because of course the future has gone it’s own way and new trends and fashions have come and gone.But at least. But at least *they tried*. And that’s the thing, you’ve picked out one screenshot from the absolutely MONUMENTAL design effort that went into TNG, design work that still looks good and is still influential. And yeah you’re going to look silly sometimes when you try and design for a time 300 years in the future. You posit a lot of crazy things like spandex pyjama uniforms, and blindfolded American Gladiators martial arts.
But the alternative is the much more dismal path taken by nu-TV-Trek, which is that apparently nothing much will change in 300 years. People will be wearing contemporary style sunglasses, something from the frigging mid 20th century, they’ll be vaping using a juul from last year, and starfleet headquarters will basically look like any convention centre in southern california, push handle doors and all. This, contemporaneously with the ability to travel through the stars faster than the speed of light, replicate almost anything from base atoms upwards, and the existence of thousands of alien civilizations in a giant galactic federation.It’s like watching sci-fi written by someone in the 1700s where everyone is walking around with snuff-boxes and talking about visiting the castle for the queen’s next ball. Just absolutely low effort work.
Yeah, Star Trek, particularly TV Star Trek, production design has usually been a case of, “Well, they’re doing a fantastic job considering what they’re given to work with.” Put slightly differently, longtime Trek designer Michael Okuda once said that Star Trek is always “high expectations on a low budget.” That’s one of the reasons I’m fond of it, frankly.As for Kurtzman era Trek designs, I think it’s kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I find the design of the Enterprise bridge on “Discovery” far superior to the “Apple Store in Space!” aesthetic of the Abrams films. On the other hand, they lean a little to heavily into the Alien come Matrix “Darker=Better” aesthetic that has dominated Sci Fi production design for so long.
Okuda is one of those people who was crucial to Star Trek’s success without most people even noticing. The design team on TNG and DS9 were fantastic within the confines of what they had. And what they had was mostly a warehouse filled with props, costumes and sets left over from the movies.
It’s to their credit that they were able to spin a mostly convincing world from that.
(A benefit from having to repaint sets and props all the time was that they were able to create cohesive styles for Starfleet, the Klingons, etc)My main complaint about Kurtzman’s Trek shows is that things don’t seem particularly practical or thought out. They’re just designed to look cool.
(and John Eaves needs to be reined in)
Didn’t Paramount auction off pretty much all of their stockpile of props and costumes accumulated since about the time of The Motion Picture around the time Enterprise got cancelled? I understand the move to HD necessitated a substantial rethinking of how stuff was designed and finished, so maybe most of it just wouldn’t show up well on modern screens. But it still seemed rather shortsighted to me.
It wasn’t everything, but a massive amount of the Trek prop, model and costume stock was indeed auctioned off. If you look at basically any article on Memory Alpha, it’ll note when and for how much a specific costume from an episode went for, the same for the shooting models and so on.
I mean that stuff would be at least 40 years old by now, and the costs of storing it probably outweighed other concerns. What’s a shame though is that nobody on the current design teams seems to have really considered the aesthetics of Star Trek. Discovery and Picard do a lot to pay homage to their legacy, but it’s mostly in the forms of easter eggs: recreated background props, etc. They lack a kind of understanding of the visual language of Star Trek that would have made the new shows seem like it was part of the same world, but depicted with more detail and scope.
They lack a kind of understanding of the visual language of Star Trek
that would have made the new shows seem like it was part of the same
world, but depicted with more detail and scope.
Yeah, this is my main quibble. I mean you don’t have to go to the point of slavish devotion like The Orville. But the stuff on Discovery (particularly season one) would often times look and feel like it had no real continuity with anything that had come before. I think there’s a happy medium between those two extremes they could strive for.
For example, whatever qualms I have about Disney’s take on Star Wars, I must concede that they’ve managed to create a visual language that looks and feels very much of a piece of the ‘70s – ‘80s trilogy, but is also compatible with modern cinema technology.
I mean The Orville looks pretty terrible most of the time (sets are too brightly and flatly lit, awful uniforms, etc), but they have at least created a cohesive bunch of starships.
The Disney Star Wars movies are a good example of how to expand and update an older property (although Star Wars benefited from being made on a larger budget and screen), especially Rogue One.
I don’t really have that much problems with the look of Abrams’ Trek movies, because they were so clearly an attempt at running away from everything that Star Trek used to be, so I can take them for what they are.
Discovery and Picard are supposed to be within the same continuity as before, but they’re making no attempt to really do something with the design legacy of Star Trek. The updated Enterprise on Discovery is a good example of that, it’s all flash and shiny surfaces. I don’t get the sense that the designers have thought about the Enterprise, or Discovery for that matter, in a practical sense; as a working vessel where space is at a premium. (The best depiction of the Enterprise as a real place was in The Undiscovered Country)
I couldn’t agree more. I was really hoping that Okuda would be involved with this show, but it doesn’t look like that happened.I understand that they have to make things more complicated thanks to our current hi-def resolutions. On the plus side, I think the show’s computer displays are a reasonable concept of what the TNG-style Starfleet screen graphics might look like after 20 years of evolution (I‘m mostly going by the close-ups we got when F-8 was hacking into the system in that Ep. 2 Mars flashback). You can clearly see shapes and layouts that harken back to TNG design.But my biggest gripe is that this show has bought into a concept that seems to have spread to a lot of TV and movie sci-fi these days – semi-transparent holographic displays. You’ll see a character standing in some room watching a projected holographic screen that hovers in the air in front of them, the idea being that you don’t have to be sitting in front of a computer to interact with it – you could be in your living room, kitchen, or even outside. Fair enough; that’s a good concept. But inevitably, the display they’re looking at never looks solid. It always has to be translucent, presumably so the viewer knows it’s a projected image.. Now, if that was a real thing, would you be able to stand watching it? Why on earth would anyone want a display where you can also clearly see whatever distracting, brightly lit and/or moving objects are directly behind it? If you’ve got the technology to make solid holograms, you can damn well make a simple flat projected display look opaque.Since this isn’t just something limited to current Star Trek, I can’t place all the blame on this show alone. But it definitely plays into your point about creating designs based on looks alone, without thinking about whether such a thing would be realistically practical or even desirable in any way.
From an interface-design point of view Minority Report really has a lot to answer for. It’s also silly that they decided they needed to alter the perfectly usable concept of the Okudagram this much. With current technology they could have made those come alive in a way that would seem fresh and futuristic in a way that would have made them stood apart from the TNG product. I’d even have accepted some floating holographic stuff that was solid to the touch.
The floating neon displays have always seemed hacky to me.
This was high cost in the laste 80s. Star Trek most Scifi is stupid expensive.
TNG, a show that was supposedly far superior to the original series in terms of production, used fern jungles at least once a season. Your irrational hate blinds you.
It looks like any show these days, no worse no better. Things look overdesigned because you can do anything in cgi these days. Concept artists all use the same computer programs to model everything in 3d, so everything is overly complicated. Limitations like budget and technology can be very helpful, without them you can end up with a mess.
The problem isn’t Kurtzman so much as the lack of someone with a strong visual sense.I suspect another issue here is the difference between the high def TV we have now, vs the small, blurry screens of the eighties and nineties. Look at the Enterprise bridge on TNG vs the Generations bridge. They knew that they had to add stuff, or the tv-set would look like what it was on the big screen: a tv set.
So Picard and Discovery look so different from the old shows because there’s no simplicity or clarity to its design.
The title of the episode is “The End is the Beginning”The head of the Borg Reclamation Project Soji was interacting with all episode is Hugh, who I think we’ll all agree is indeed a familiar face.
Well, the parts of his face we’ve seen before are…
Yeah I was surprised there was no mention of Hugh in this review. He’s never referred to by name, and he did only appear in two TNG episodes (and in full Borg when doing so), so I can understand Handlen maybe not even recognizing him. All the same, I was delighted when he showed up, I honestly never thought we’d hear anything more about Hugh.
Soji briefly called him Hugh during her conversation with Ramhda. That’s the only way I noticed him.
They did mention his name once. I wouldn’t have recognized him otherwise.
Soji calls him Hugh once. I only caught it because I knew in advance that Hugh was in this series and I was puzzling over whether or not the project lead was Hugh.
well the original idea for Hugh WAS sort of goofy. The concept of “should we kill the borg with a virus?” was an interesting question, but the compromise that maybe the borg would learn indiviudality from hugh made no sense, as they assimilated races with a sense of individuality all the time and were unphased by it.
Soji says ‘I’m working with Hugh on the reclamation project’ when she sits down with Dharma, but that completely escaped me the first time, I never linked the Director to Hugh, I thought he was referring to himself as the first one liberated from this particular cube, and found it a bit strange that he’d be appointed director soon after that. But, that’s just me not paying attention i guess…
oh my god, i completely whiffed on recognizing that he was Hugh!!!!
Same here.
I only knew it was Hugh from his name in the end credits. Otherwise I never would have known while watching the episode.
yeah, i think Zach missed that that was Hugh. It was subtle, I could see people missing it if they weren’t paying close attention.
that’s a disguise because she’s working with the Romuans.
Nu Trek Vulcans don’t need excuses or disguises. They’re just douchebags.
With sunglasses. What happened, her spy fedora and trench-coat are in the laundry?Oh great, a vaper.
We need to sell our show to millennials! What do those whippersnappers like??? OK, Boomer.
The Romu Cube is superior to the Rubik’s cube in SO many ways.Oh great. We got ourselves a Tilly. I can’t wait for her to be quirky…
To be fair, Vulcan’s were kinda dicks in Star Trek: Enterprise as well but I think it worked in the context of the time period in which that show took place. There really isn’t much to be said in favor of Vulcans in the current timeline.
DS9 fucked with the Vulcans well before Enterprise where there wasn’t any excuse for there still being first contact tensions be they villainous baseball players or deranged psychotic spree killers.
Star Trek Enterprise started that whole Vulcans are dicks theme. (Though with captain Archer having such a speciesist boner against them it was hard to tell who was the bigger asshole on that show)
I agree, Archer wore his disdain for Vulcans on his sleeve but not entirely without reason since it was the Vulcan council that stalled his father’s warp research in the testing phase and never got to go into deep space as well as the many objections and influence on Starfleet the Vulcans had regarding the Enterprise’s missions throughout the show and then finding out the Vulcans had a secret listening post in violation of an already fragile treaty with the Andorians. On top of that, Archer discovers they were using T’Pol as an insider to keep the Vulcan council appraised of their progress.
I’d say “Journey to Babel” started the “Vulcans are dicks” thing and DS9’s “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” confirmed it.I think the mistake fans make is treating Spock or Tuvok as windows into what Vulcans are like, Worf as a window into what Klingons are like, Kira as a window into what Bajorans are like, Dax as a typical Trill, etc. Odo isn’t a window into what the Founders are like. The main characters (humans included) are ALL suggested to be highly atypical or even deviant within their culture. And this dates back to Dr. Boyce in the first pilot making illegal martini shots for himself and Pike.
I agree, Archer wore his disdain for Vulcans on his sleeve but not entirely without reason since it was the Vulcan academy that stalled his father’s warp research in the testing phase and never got to go into deep space as well as the many objections and influence on Starfleet the Vulcans had regarding the Enterprise’s missions throughout the show and then finding out the Vulcans had a secret listening post in violation of an already fragile treaty with the Andorians.
Nu Trek Vulcans don’t need excuses or disguises. They’re just douchebags.
Other way around. Classic Trek Vulcans and Romulans were indistinguishable from one another. Nu Trek gave the Romulans a little “V” shaped forehead ridge.And Vulcans have always been kind of douchebags.
I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw the shades. Like that had to be a concious choice in making her look as bad as possible.
Nobody wears shades in the future….And Vulcans literally have an inner eyelid to protect them against the bright Vulcan sun…. If anyone DOESN’T need shades….(Unless they’re trying to give a “sublte” hint that Romulans somehow lost that eyelid in a few hundred years and she’s a covert Romumlan…)
The fucking vape thing. I vape. I used to smoke a pipe. But I decided it was too pretentious, so I went with something dumber, and something I could tweak and change. Also, have you ever fucked up cleaning a pipe and then tried to smoke in it? Jesus, you’ll want to vomit.
What the hell is she even vaping? Medicine?I’m growing more and more frustrated with the portrayal of the prime universe. The vaping thing is.. idiosyncratic but when combined with what appears to be a captain who drinks, and the friend who guzzles down a bottle of wine, then shown later in the evening, drinking a bunch, I don’t… fucking get it.What happened AFTER Voyager and BEFORE this, that reset shit? In the post-TOS era, we saw Romulan Ale, Klingon Bloodwine, Quark still sold alcohol (on a non-Federation station..), and with only rare exception, we didn’t see people drinking A LOT. We saw Miles O’Brien getting Worf drunk after Jadzia’s death. We saw Montgomery Scott drinking something (“it is… it is… it is green.”) in TNG after being held in transporter stasis for decades, and realizing all his friends were likely dead.In DS9, we saw Earth was basically a utopia. So what the fuck happened in such a short period of time to turn utopia into.. a future-like now? No fucking clue, and I doubt anyone’s going to explain it.
We never really saw a lot of life on earth though, and nothing so far really conflicts with that vision of society.
Really though what’s happened is that Star Trek’s future was shaped by the blithely optimistic consumer society of America in the nineties, and the current landscape is too bleak to not be reflected in our idea of the future.Frankly though I find it a very heartening idea that in the future we can drink like that and not have to worry about our health.
That’s exactly the problem with the thinking of Patrick Stewart and the writers, though. Real life is bleak enough. I don’t want bleak Star Trek. I want to be reminded that maybe at the end of all this, we still have a future.
I don’t want or need TNG2; I’m fine with updating the formula. Just not in ways that compromise what the franchise is all about.
And it’s not exactly like society was all sunshine and rainbows at the end of the 80s and the 90s. Depicting a world that was better than our present day one at the time was a conscious creative choice.
We saw things from the perspective of members of an elite spacefaring military/science organization during some pretty specific eras. And honestly I’ve always been a little suspicious of the impression given of the Federation and Earth in the series, because literally every time we see some Federation bigwig they are secretly a villain, and we still have things like detention colonies and camps (Tom Paris’ backstory suggests that living as a pool playing barfly/drunk is still a possibility for a court martialed former Starfleet pilot, and ends with him in a Federation Penal colony in Auckland New Zealand. We don’t have penal colonies unless we have enough crime to necessitate them, and utopias don’t have crime.) so I don’t think things were all roses for everyone all the time back on earth. Though I agree that was largely how it was presented. Also the reality of what the makers of Star Trek are allowed to portray on TV is different now. Star Trek has always been a horny, violent show (that has flirted with being boozy, I mean 10-forward was a hangout bar on the ship) if in a slightly nerdy fashion. But they were heavily limited by what standards and practices would allow them to portray on prime time, which I think is partly what dictated the “good clean fun” atmosphere. Roddenberry wanted way more progressive (for the time) sexual exploration stuff, but couldn’t get away with it, and the reason we didn’t see too much of Earth, was both because the show was about exploration, and there was no way to easily create a set that replicated how they wanted to portray it given their budget.The other thing is, times change. I mean all the things you’re saying could be said by a guy who lived on a military base in 1965 and then walked around a city today. The Federation had gone through the Dominion War (probably like 5 other minor conflicts given the whole nature of a sci-fi setting) that changes people/cultures. Maybe we’re seeing the generation after that tumultuous time. Things change even in fictional futures, and were probably slightly more grubby than we were lead to believe, but are over all still pretty great compared to the present.
Snake leaf! She is vaping snake leaf. I don’t know what that is, but I better be able to buy a strain of weed named after it the next time I’m in a dispensary.
What the hell is she even vaping? Medicine?
She grows her own stuff, so I’m pretty sure it’s meat to be an illegal drug to get through her depression over getting fired.
Everyone literally drank non-alcoholic “snythehol” on Enterprise D.Gunaian still has the real stuff under the counter, the Picard wine exists and people have imported/smuggled bottles of exotic alien booze but yes, we got the impression that alcohol a rare thing for special tastes in the Federation and not the recreational drug it is now and in Picard.
Really? I think you need to re-watch DS9
What the hell is she even vaping? Medicine?She was vaping something called snakeleaf which I assume is what cannabis evolved into. She mentioned that playing off some of her concerns as “snakeleaf-induced paranoia.”
In DS9, we saw Earth was basically a utopia. So what the fuck happened
in such a short period of time to turn utopia into.. a future-like now?
No fucking clue, and I doubt anyone’s going to explain it.
So did you miss the part where the android uprising rendered Mars uninhabitable and destroyed Starfleet’s primary shipyard, and a supernova destroyed Romulus and a whole bunch of other nearby planets, resulting in the collapse of one of the super powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants and presumably a massive resettlement crisis? Because I feel like these two things happening in rapid succession is a pretty handy explanation for utopia turning into not utopia.
I’d think the Dominion War, multiple Borg invasions, Shinzon trying to blow up the Earth, and Mars burning turned a lot of Starfleet / Federation higher ups into isolationist jerkoffs. and now Our Good Captain is to save the day. Like the man said, it wasn’t Starfleet anymore. I still think the sunglasses wearing Commadore is a Romulan who infiltrated starfleet though.
And (forgive me, since I only just watched it) she said out loud “pro-tip”. I nearly vomited in disgust.
Oh God – PLEEEEEEEEEAAAAAASE don’t use “Nu” in place of “New” for “Star Trek”! We’ve had enough of that for “Doctor Who” since 2005!
I think Whovians use it a bit more kindly… 🙂
Nah, she’s not being Tilly, that’s just Alison Pill being Alison Pill-y. (If you watched The Newsroom you would know what I mean)
I consider that more an effect of The Newsroom than the actors therein; that show made absolutely everyone their most annoying self. Pill was great in Scott Pilgrim and Snowpiercer.
The problem is that Soji (and her sister) are just bad. The actress is very camera-ready, but she can’t talk.Don’t they realize that parts like this are exactly why there’s Mackenzie Davis? (I guess they can’t afford her, now that Ridley Scott and the rest of Hollywood is starting to catch on to how crucial she is for precisely this kind of thing.)
Damn, you’re right. They should put Mackenzie Davis in this.
They should put Mackenzie Davis in everything.
Jeeeezus, but you are hard on this show. One wonders if TNG would have even survived its early, pre-Riker’s beard seasons in the modern era.
to be fair, even a lot of TNG cast and crew say the first two seasons are “nearly unwatchable” – but i admit to loving them as they are. and yeah, io9/the av club have a weirdly strong disdain for trek. like this:It’s neat. I’m just not sure it’s enough.?!?! it is a tv show. if a part is neat, then it’s enough to be neat. if it is neat and you don’t like it anyway, maybe there is a bias at work? i love star trek enough to criticize it a lot, but just kind of diffusely sliming it as unidentifiably inadequate all the time is getting very old. would really like to see rigorous rather than lazy criticisms of both picard and discovery.
This show is full of insightful, rigorous criticisms. What are you reading?
well i am watching the show, not reading it, and if you meant to refer to the review, i would challenge you to come up with an example and explain why it is “insightful, rigorous” – much as i provided an example for my assessment.
The author provides many specific reasons why the show isn’t working and I’m not going to just repeat them here. You’re free to agree to disagree with them, of course, but slagging the review as “diffusely sliming” or “lazy criticism” isn’t a legitimate argument. Engage with the specifics or don’t complain.
so you’re ignoring the specific example i gave, refusing to give specific examples, and demanding i give specific examples. i think i am going to tap out here, good luck to you!
I’m glad someone else noticed this, because these reviews have been bugging me for the exact same reason. They come across like the same pedantic “never quite good enough/I can see a version of this show that might work, but…” attitude that Vanderwerff’s reviews always had when he was reviewing for the AV Club a few years ago. Ironically, at the time I always thought that Handlen’s reviews were more relaxed, as if he was actually enjoying whatever show he was watching in spite of whatever minor flaws it might have. Now Handlen seems to have gone down the exact same road. No TV show is perfect, and Picard is no exception. I have a few gripes about it, but to me, the positives about this series outweigh the negatives so much that whatever nitpicks I have seem minor by comparison. Hell, if nothing else, this show gets a pass based on nothing more that the fact that it actually looks and feels like Star Trek (as opposed to the utter abortion that is Discovery). If this show is taking more time to get the plot rolling, that’s understandable in this age of heavily serialized television storylines. TNG could never do that because they almost always had to start and finish the entire plot in 45 minutes. A format like that demands a much faster pace. If you’re going to spread a single story out across a full season (or multiple ones, as this show will probably do), then you can (and should) take more time to let it breathe. For now, I’m perfectly happy to have a show that’s letting us catch up with and old friend and see how he’s changed over the years, and maybe see a few others along the way. I’m just glad to have actual Star Trek back.
Love this comment.AV Club writers acting like they could do better is a bugbear of mine. The show we have is the show we have. Enjoy it or don’t, but don’t try to rewrite it on a weekly basis.
I’ve never understood this point of view. Criticizing a work of art doesn’t mean you think you can do better. It means that you can analyze a work of art and write about it. This has nothing to do with whether you, the reader, enjoy the art or not. If you enjoy it, fine, that’s something no one else can have an opinion on (likewise if you don’t). But don’t diss a reviewer for doing his job and critiquing the show unless you’re going to actually engage with the arguments.
The arguments presented are things such as ‘I’m not sure why any of Soji’s scenes were in this entry.’’.. it’ll be totally cool when that happens I’m sure, but for now, we just got a be patient’‘Picard (the show) seems entirely content to be…’‘It would be nice if..’This isn’t good critiquing or analysing; this reads like someone who thinks they can do better combined with someone trying to extrapolate 3 episodes into a full season and drawing conclusions that they don’t have enough information for.That’s why the van der Werff comparison rang so true. His Bates Morel season 1 reviews are a masterclass in drawing conclusions far too early.
I thought it was interesting how, in the last recap, he said that it was going too slow and they should have put all of the first two episodes in the premiere and then in the next paragraph he lists off some things the show threw at us and said, “it’s a lot to take in all at once.”Either it’s too slow or there’s too much at once. That shows me he’s just looking for nits to pick.
Zack’s been writing about Star Trek for a long time. Be weird if he had disdain for it all this time and it only just became obvious now.
I don’t recall TNG being much of a critical darling during its first two seasons. I believe it survived because it was profitable. The somewhat unique for its day first run syndication model is probably responsible for that more than anything else. In fact, TNG was sort of at the forefront of a wave of first run syndicated shows that would emerge in the late ‘80s to mid ‘90s.
Earth: Final Conflict FTW. 🙂
Oh, there was definitely a lot of sci fi in syndication, such as Babylon 5, DS9’s bitter rival. But lots of other genres were covered as well. Who could forget the Lorenzo Lamas actioner vehicle Renegade, the twin fantasy/action juggernauts Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, and of course the all-time reigning champ, Baywatch and its progeny.
Baywatch Nights!
I’ve wondered this as well. I’m old enough to remember the vitriol on rec.arts.tv.star-trek and the constant whining about how ‘this isn’t star trek’ and ‘Kirk is better than Picard’ etc I’ll say this isn’t new.
One wonders if TNG would have even survived its early, pre-Riker’s beard seasons in the modern era.It would not have, and it should not have. Early TNG was awful. It survived only because Trekkies were starved for content. Now, we have the luxury of demanding higher standards.
I’ve found that modern audiences tend to be really hard on just about everything. Everyone LOVED Endgame the first weekend. And then everyone started criticizing it and now you see people all the time saying it wasn’t all that great. People can’t just let themselves be entertained. They have to pick everything apart. They aren’t happy unless what they watch blows them away. Nothing can just be good and entertaining, it has to be fantastic and amazing. It’s kind of annoying. (And, I totally disagree with this guy about the opening. It’s boring and way too long and I’m mad that CBS All Access won’t let me skip it.)
no i think the commodore is a vulcan who got turned by those secret romulan folks, which would have been easy after the head of starfleet security read what happened with Control back in the day, and that’s probably why she let the attack on mars happen and probably helped get starfleet to ban synths.i am curious where the Doctor is, from Voyager. is the synthetic life ban androids only? seems like a weird place to draw the line.
That was very unengaging and self important – as evident by the fact that the show really wanted us to see Rios reading Miguel de Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life. In case you missed the show’s sense of importance or existential angst the first time, here’s a close up and then a blow up.And yet the fearsome Romulan death squad are (somehow) more laughable than scary.
Didn’t Rios explicitly title-drop The Tragic Sense of Life in his talk with Picard?
Did I see one get punched in the helmet and collapse? What’s the helmet for?
Picard was never a social butterfly, but he always had a strong sense of duty, and the idea that he’d abandon a coworker is hard to accept even if he was in shock from leaving his job.insert supercut of dozens of moments in TNG when someone said the captain is a “very private man” – not just “not a social butterfly”also he was traumatized, and so was raffi, and people do weird things – for years sometimes – in response to trauma. adding a significant element of personal and professional failure is a rich way to evolve the character, and probably part of why Stewart even came back to the role.
I think Zack is right and this isn’t really the same character, but Stewart is so skilled (and is riding such a wave of affection and nostalgic familiarity) that it doesn’t make any difference.There’s nothing wrong with this. I’ve always felt that “Ripley” in Aliens is not in any way the same person as “Ripley” in Alien — she transforms completely from the subtle O’Bannon/Giler/Hill/Scott 1970s corporate-defiant characterization to the jingo-ized, fetishized comic-book heroine that James Cameron envisioned — but Sigourney Weaver is just so incredibly awesome an actress and movie star that it totally works; she’s an amalgamated “Ripley” that’s greater than the sum of all the parts, that’s her creation, more than the work of any single filmmaking team (and she utterly deserved that Oscar nomination for the second one).It’s like John McClane or Captain Jack Sparrow or Tony Stark or any of the big actor/role/franchise icons. At a certain point they can’t not be the character: everything else bends around their presence.
Hmmm, lots to dialogue about here. For example, Captain Jack Sparrow really deteriorated as a character when he went from being savvy (yeah i did that on purpose) to being just goofy af. I don’t even know how many Die Hard movies there are now, but in the three I saw McClane did not change. Nor was he really complicated enough of a character to do so. Tony Stark evolved, ish, but seemingly just enough to stay ahead of any demands that the character have some #MeToo consequences (watching Iron Man 2 now is a triiiiiip), but really his arc from the first Avengers movie just repeated – with the caveat that Civil War really did something interesting stuff with him, though we never really got to spend more time with him after that other than in big crossovers. Too bad.Anyway, I have been watching this character for 30 years, I’ve seen a lot of other stuff Stewart has done, and my favorite thing about this show is that he is still very Picard, but also changed by events outside of his control, and that’s very arresting for me personally and I think a good thing about the show generally. I say “richly evolved character”, some say “not the same character” – okay.
All this talk about Picard “not being the same character” doesn’t make sense. People change, and Picard is now a very old man who’s no longer in Starfleet, and left for traumatic reasons. He’s not going to act exactly the same as he did in TNG, and they’re going to give you examples of why that is.Remember the TNG episode Tapestry, where Picard is shown a life he could have had, if he hadn’t been stabbed in the heart? This series is about the same amount of time away from TNG as TNG was from that incident. People change, and so far the Picard show has given us good reasons for those changes.
NO NO I WANT EVERYTHING TO BE LIKE IT WAS IN 1989.
Heck, Picard at the beginning of TNG wasn’t the same person as at the end of TNG. Time and experience changes people.
Thanks for responding. Obviously it’s not a hard and fast rule, and there’s lots of room for interpretation. I guess what I’m saying is that, for characters this iconic and indelible (meaning, by extension, any time a big star gets identified with a repeating franchise-star role) there’s just so much room for variation and evolution, without the actor ever really running the risk of losing the characterization; of not “being” that person for the audience no matter what. (When actors are victims of typecasting, so they can’t ever play a different part, as happened to Leonard Nimoy, that’s an extension of what I’m describing.) (I wonder if that would have happened to Nimoy today, now that sci-fi is less ghettoized.)It happens on the small scale over the run of a series, when different writers get their hands on the characters. I remember as a kid reading a David Gerrold critique of Season 3 of original Star Trek, with Gerrold describing Bones’ behavior in a certain episode by writing, “At this point he’s not even Dr. McCoy any more—he’s somebody else with the same name.” On paper it’s true, but, as absurd as that man was in the script, Deforest Kelley made him into McCoy in front of the camera and you didn’t really notice how bizarrely he was behaving until later.I still think my Ripley example is the best illustration of this because both movies are so good and Weaver is so good that it’s nearly impossible to realize how totally different the character is, unless you watch the two performances back to back.(One of the few counterexamples I can think of is Al Pacino in The Godfather Part III — followed by everyone else in that movie. It’s a measure of how unbelievably awful a film it is, and just how far out to lunch Coppola was when he made it. By no stretch of the imagination was that hoarse-voiced, crew-cutted, bellowing, antique-sunglass-wearing, strutting peacock Michael Corleone.)
yeah thank you also for responding and sorry for not getting to the ripley example, because you are so right there. when my son and i watched alien and aliens for the first time, back to back, it was really jarring how different she is. i think we are doing the internet thing where we agree but with different phrasing and only think we are disagreeing 😅basically, that this kind of evolution is normal (and especially understandable, i think, in the case of Picard) is why i don’t like the “not the same character” idea. it is the same character, that character has just changed as we all do, for better and for worse. the other reason i disagree with that specific phrasing in this specific case is that the TNG episode Family, which was a sort of epilogue to The Best of Both Worlds, showed us some of this side of Picard at the time. as did Chain of Command. so i see the changes to the character being explained by the events of his life since we saw him last, and congruent with how we have seen him handle trauma before.i also think that how people perceive the changes to Picard as a character is based on whether or not we have personally experienced severe institutional betrayal in our lives. i have, and it really biases me/makes me appreciate that a character who helped me understand myself in my youth is now also giving me some inspiration for how to get back on my feet after some ruinous adult experiences. (sorry if that got too real, just owning my bias here)
Thank you for responding. This is an interesting theory, but I’m not sure I agree with your example of Ripley. I always figured that Ripley had been changed by her experiences in Alien, so the version we see of her in Aliens is a woman who’s in a completely different state of mind.In Alien, she’s part of a mining crew that doesn’t expect to see much other than rocks and minerals (or whatever they were looking for). In Aliens, she’s seen every one of her coworkers die, and has narrowly escaped death herself. On top of that, she realizes she’s been asleep for 60 years, and most everyone she knows is dead. Most people would act a little differently in those two situations.
In a way, both of those descriptions apply. I can completely buy off on this new version of Picard because it seems realistic to me. Twenty years is a long time in anyone’s life. No one is the same person they were 20 years ago, especially if some traumatic event or events happened during that period. Call it “richly evolved” or “not the same” – either one can truthfully apply to anyone’s life.
Apparently I’m more susceptible to nostalgia than I thought because seeing Picard say “Engage” as the TNG theme swelled in the background gave me goosebumps.
Energize. Make it so. It’s about damn time. That was a three episode long pilot. I have to admit i teared up a bit. Nostalgia is a helluva drug. I feel so old.
“(Although I’ll admit to being a little suspicious of her at this point. We didn’t see all of her meeting with the Commodore.)“I was thinking the exact same thing, which is sad because I really like Jurati. But I think it’s even more proven that she’s working with Starfleet since how could they not be looking for ships that Picard would be commissioning and preventing them from leaving Earth? Jurati is most likely a mole.
Not to mention her fortuitously timed arrival.
Nobody else noticed Rios has a EMH (with an English accent) and a ENH (emergency navigator, dodgy Irish accent)?
I am *totally* sure this isn’t setting up any Orphan Black shenanigans later.
The ENH’s accent seemed to lurch between cod Irish and midlands UK, but yeah.
I really hope that they were trying to show that Rios has a ship crewed entirely by holographic duplicates of himself with different accents, which is funny.But I fear that they’ve just got somebody who is shit at accents.
I’m on a little bit different track than the review as I can completely see how the TNG Picard became this. Out of all the captains, while he had been the most idealistic, he had also been the most true as a leader and a diplomat. In many ways, he represented Starfleet’s ideals, which was at the root of all his decisions, but which alos made him deeply arrogant, just like every other of the Trek captains. So when at that crucial moment, he is no longer able to be that leader or find that solution, after having succeeding so many times before, I can see that shattering him. Don’t get me wrong, there are other just as believable reactions for him, but I can also understand this.I also kind of love Picard’s admission that he never felt like he belonged on the vinyard as that had in a certain way been his vision for his retirement.
“and ended up living in a trailer in the desert.”So, in other words, a van down by the river.
For more info on Raffi’s backstory, please read the three Star Trek Picard Countdown comics put out by IDW.
Nah.
This show is spending SOO much of its time on mystery boxes and a very protracted set up that it (almost) never finds the chance to just be…fun. Entertaining. Funny. Interesting. It’s all just absurdly detailed exposition.The season has now arrived at what you’d consider the end of the first “act” of ordinary television. And, I know, I know “10 hour movie, blah blah blah.”but there’s a reason real movies aren’t ten hours long. It would be punishing to endure a single narrative stretched to that length.We’re in the Peak TV era and that means a lot of serialized storytelling, which, in general, is a great thing. But this show represents the worst possible downside of that kind of storytelling. Episodes that have no identity of their own and (for the most part) no internal structure. Just puzzle pieces of a whole. This is especially frustrating when you have opted for the “one a week” strategy (which, while I still vastly prefer, is all wrong for this kind of storytelling.)The season may yet prove to be worthwhile in the end. But there are some episodes of Star Trek (across several different series) that I’ve re-watched literally dozens of times. No one is ever going to want to re-watch these episodes, there’s just no point.3 episodes in and “picard” already feels like homework.
The advantage of this being the Peak tv-era is that we have a lot of points of comparison for serialised storytelling. There are shows that succeed at telling a story across a season, Orphan Black did a pretty good job of it for the most part, and the key is, unsurprisingly, telling decent stories in each episode.
Picard suffers from trying to set up too much all at once, there’s almost no room for anything else. It’s all introductions, teases, and flashbacks.
On TNG they would have dispensed with the plot of these three episodes in the first act of one episode.
I can sort of see why they did it this way, even if they haven’t really pulled it off. Hopefully now that Picard is actually back on a ship, things will actually start to happen (having Jonathan Frakes direct the next two episodes might also help).
There are plenty of great examples of recent shows that have straddled the line FAR better than Picard. Shows that have long running story and character arcs but which are told across individual episodes that have smaller, self-contained plots. The “ten hour movie” excuse is feeble and really just means you’re fucking lazy and haven’t done the work to try to make your show work.As to your final comment, the choice of directors in a TV show like this really won’t make one whit of difference in terms of the storytelling approach that the writers have adopted. Frakes isn’t gonna save this show from itself.
I really like Michael Chabon as a writer, but I have my doubts about how his skills translate to the screen. Especially combined with notorious hacks like Kurtzman and Goldman.
I don’t have an issue with a ‘ten hour movie’, the problem is that the show needs to pick what it wants to be, a slow portrait of Picard in decline, or an adventure and thriller story. Right now it’s trying to do both and not succeeding. Discovery isn’t a great show, but it does at least know how to dispense with plot. Picard suffers from being too slow, it shows all the seams.Frakes isn’t going to save the show, but he might at least keep things moving briskly along.
When they sat down in the writers’ room to break the season, someone should have scrawled “End of Episode 2: Engage!” in big letters on the whiteboard. And they should have written towards that.There’s no way that we needed a whole episode longer than Farpoint, Emissary, Caretaker, etc. to get to this point.Except that pointless wheel-spinning is Discovery’s favorite thing (although even its pilot knew enough to tell a story in 2 episodes), and it looks like that’s where Picard will be going too.
On TNG they would have dispensed with the plot of these three episodes in the first act of one episode.On TNG, they would have dispensed with the whole series in a 2-part episode that would have ended with Geordi and Data refrangulating the obituron particles.
This has been a 3 episode pilot basically. This probably could have been in 2 episodes with a longer run-time. At this point, I’m holding judgement overall because all we have is mostly exposition and character introduction. Plus the return of our well-known characters. This season is obviously a journey of Picard back to his greatness from his fall after the synthetic attacke/Romulan debacle to earn it back. Picard was like a paternal beacon of hope that made us feel safe(Dahj even saying that made me think he was like a “safe space” and the reason to look forward to bringing Picard back to us). When Picard was saying about the hearing that half of the Starfleet muckity mucks wanted him to not be able to have his mission while the other half were too scared made me think of the Republican Party. Raffi is symbolic of Picard’s downfall and his chance to return to glory. I think he lost himself when they accepted is resignation and he gave up, not admitting it and hanging her out to dry. This looks like a redemption story.Anyway, I think, if you are a fan of Patrick Stewart’s acting to check out his film Coda. I think he should be considered for an Oscar for that film. The film itself is decent but won’t win best picture but if you want to see Stewart act the shit out of his role, watch this.
I’m very with you. I may be interested, but damn, I’m also bored. This plot is being doled out way too slowly.
I think this was the weakest of the 3 episodes so far. Despite that, three things I loved: 1. Picard’s “Engage!” 2. The Vasquez Rocks make an appearance, as themselves rather than an alien planet.3. Laris and Zhaban don’t just look great in sweaters, they are trained killers!
I do wish Laris and Zhaban went with them on the ship. Especially since more assassins are likely to show up to finish the job. And they could’ve taken the cute pup too.
My prediction is that at the end of the series, Picard will return home to find Laris, Zhaban and Number One surrounded by a mountain of dead Romulans because they just kept on coming
“This season’s harvest is going to be a good one. Romulans make great fertiliser”
I really hated the stuff with Raffi. You mention it, Zack it is like they are trying to create a Picard that just doesn’t exist. And, while Picard isn’t perfect, if you as a person find you have a burning resentment toward Picard, you should assume you’re the one with the problem. And the “JL” thing when she was a commander and he was an admiral? That was clearly setting up for later when she starts calling him that, but it was totally inappropriate to how we know Picard interacts with his crew. Clearly they are going for her having some sort of magical insight into complex issues that is balanced out by some problems, but the way is Hurd playing it is way too righteously resentful and not primarily wounded, which would have been more appropriate to what we know about Picard. It was just off.The new guy is okay, him talking to hologram people that he has look like himself is weird. It seems like just an actorly show-off combined with trying to keep the number of main characters limited, but maybe it will pay off.It picked up in the second half, but the discordant nature of the first-half Raffi stuff really made this whole episode worrisome.
I’m okay with the idea of Raffi as a Ro/Kira character (it took me a whole season to like Kira).I just think that the whole roadwarrior(/ceti alpha V) schtick is kindof stupid.There’s a great story in the idea that humans have spent generations dedicated to bettering themselves and the rest of humanity…and that when you suddenly get kicked out of that club, you’re going to be completely lost.But right now that’s not the story that we’re getting from her.
And the “JL” thing when she was a commander and he was an admiral? That was clearly setting up for later when she starts calling him that, but it was totally inappropriate to how we know Picard interacts with his crew.Yep, I was really disturbed at that too. I saw it as classic Kurzman, who neither gets nor cares about getting military culture at all as evidenced by what he did in the Kelvin movies and Discovery’s opening with the mutiny.Roddenberry would have thrown the script back at anyone who had a mid grade officer (she’s not even a commander, but a lieutenant commander, a significant difference) addressing an admiral that way, and Ronald D. Moore would have had a fit in the writers room in TNG and DS9, but what’s even more concerning is what you bring up. You’ve got 7 years of shows and several movies that clearly establish that pattern of behavior for that character even for someone who doesn’t understand why that pattern exists…and it’s blissfully ignored.Not a good sign on multiple fronts.
That casual “JL” from Raffi to Picard in the flashback was the first thing I truly loathed about this new series. It sounds so… wrong.Cheers
Man, so much rage in these comments. I think Zack’s being a little overly harsh, but some of you guys, jeez. Is set design really that serious? Ten seconds of a vape-like thingy, that’s a big deal? Not to mention I don’t have much use for the whole “the Federation would never act like this” crap. Didn’t the root beer speech from DS9 mean anything to you?One thing I like is that the show is subtly showing how a man like Picard can get used to people jumping when he tells them what he wants, and how long it takes to relearn how to deal with people once that power falls away. He genuinely expects Raffi, Clancy, etc., to just go along with him and is stunned when they turn out to be people with feelings and opinions of their own. It’s a commentary on how even the best of people can have power go to their head to some extent. And the nicest thing is that it’s not underlined, nobody gives him a big speech about how “You’re not Captain of a starship anymore” or whatever, it’s just shown and then we move on.I did like this episode better than the last one. We got more information, for one thing; Soji has some heretofore unknown connection to the Borg, Picard fucked Raffi over (and I feel like probably the reason he didn’t contact her before now is because he feels guilty over it and doesn’t want to acknowledge it), Narek may be falling in love with his quarry. And I don’t know; maybe some of these episodes have had a little too much filler but this show feels like it has a clear destination in mind. Not wild about grumpy pilot dude, but I’ll come around if it turns out he’s in a poly relationship with his holograms. Raffi’s great though. Hopefully she won’t let Picard off the hook anytime soon. And I never thought I’d be this excited to see Bruce Maddox again!
For rage you want to go to Star Wars comments sections. This is closer to irritation.
So it’s pretty obvious—based on the fact that they’re setting up Raffi to fill the “conspiracy theorist who’s always right” trope—that the Zhat Vash hacked the synths because the deaths of millions of their fellow Romulans was preferable to them from being saved by synthetic life forms. Which is a… disappointing villainous motivation.I had been hoping that Maddox hacked his own androids because he couldn’t stand them seeing them used as slave labor (in a shocking 180 from his attitude in “Measure of Man”) and that the story would revolve around our heroes getting caught up in a shadow war between Maddox and the forces that wish to exterminate all synthetic life. But yeah… I just don’t think they’re willing to go there. Which is a shame, because Disco S01 showed that Kurtzmann & co are more than capable of doing intrigue well.Similarly disappointed that Maggie Agnes is so obviously a plant. I’m hoping it’s like a sleeper / brainwashing thing that they can uncover and undo in like two episodes, and then we can keep the character on the show on the side of the angels.
My counter-theory is that the Romulans themselves are a true biosynthetic race, created by the ancient Vulcans with that fact lost to the sands of time.They’re studying the first ever Romulans ever assimilated by the Borg and shortly after that assimilation the Cube breaks down. Twinning in biosynthetics (Romulus, Remus, etc.)I have a 100-1 chance of being right, but if I am Im having that second drink.
That would be such an insane retconn. But it also reminds me that in the end I really wasn’t a fan of “skinjobs” and don’t care to relitigate that straw man’s debate in a new SF series. The debate over Data’s “humanity” in TNG was interesting simply because you could make a reasonable argument about whether he was human, as he looked, acted and thought in ways that were distinct from his organic crewmates. “Ex Machina,” for its faults, presented some interesting ambiguity about whether the androids were fully sentient or instead just deviously optimized to pass the Turing test. But no reasonable viewer can truly argue that a being that bleeds, loves and—if you’re right—procreates, is not “alive.”
My counter-theory is that the Romulans themselves are a true biosynthetic race, created by the ancient Vulcans with that fact lost to the sands of time.That’s brilliant! I really hope you’re right.
I loved that they had a scene actually set at Vasquez Rocks.
Is it just me or is it weird that “Hugh” didn’t revert to using his original name after the de-borging procedure? That was just a nickname given to him (I want to say by LaForge) on TNG. Other de-borged characters seem to know their original names, even if they stick with their Borg designation like Seven of Nine.
Well, we know from the first appearance of the Borg in “Q Who” that they assimilate babies. I think one of the Borg kids on Voyager was a baby too. That implies there are too kinds of drones: the ones who have been Borg from birth (their aging accelerated, I think), and those who are assimilated later in life. So Hugh could have been one of those Borg who never had an individual identity.
I’m pretty sure that unlike Seven of Nine, Hugh was assimilated from birth so it’s not like he had a “real name” to go back to.
Is Hugh in this episode ever called by a name? I rewatched his scenes and didn’t hear anyone calling him “Hugh” or any name.
I was going to criticize you for not even mentioning the considerable role Hugh played in this episode (especially when you complain about the lack of familiar faces), but then again, the episode itself glossed over his debut as well.
I only knew it was him by seeing the actor’s name in the end credits.
Raffi seems to be complaining that Picard retreated to his wealth and left her to rot in poverty. On Earth in the Star Trek future where they have no money and enough resources to provide for all, supposedly. Then Rios and Picard were talking about his fee. Interesting, given the whole no money thing. ;-)I thought it weird that Starfleet would just cut Raffi loose. If she’s just a commander was reassigning her not an option? Maybe there’s more to that story (in Picard Countdown maybe?)
I thought there was no money too, so I was surprised to see such stark class differences, and yeah, charging a fee is weird.I’m liking the show more than most here but some of the Earth scenes feel way too contemporary (the clothing even.) Odd choice.
There’s always been the question of why anyone would be a barber on the Enterprise, or would anyone work in Joe Sisko’s restaurant? Why are all those miners, colonists, and farmers toiling away out in space?The best solution is probably just not to think about it too much. But if trek is going to talk about it with characters like Raffi & Rios they’re opening a can of worms.
People work free in Sisko’s kitchen because he’s a famous New Orleans chef, and they can learn skills from him in exchange for their labour. It’s not that much of a stretch, given that we have unpaid internships even now in a distinctly money-dependent society.
As for farming, I’d imagine in Federation society there’s a lot of pressure to be ‘useful’ – and unless you want to bum around on Earth your whole life not doing anything, you’ll need to get out there into space. Your options in that regard are to join Starfleet, join some other space-faring agency or move to a planet or colony somewhere.But the people who are already there won’t take kindly to your bumming around on their world either, especially on the fringes without Earth’s resources, so to be accepted into their society you’ll need to make yourself useful. It’s the price you have to pay to see the universe, like joining the peace corps.It’s a bit of a wrench to imagine a post-scarcity society, but I think we have enough examples of communal societies in our own time to imagine how people might behave if they genuinely didn’t need to work.
“We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity” works as an ethos whether it’s coming from Picard or from Jake Sisko. (or Mot, or whoever peels Joe Sisko’s potatoes).But why has former-commander Raffi been all pissed off in the desert for a decade? I guess that having a utopia would mean that people have the choice to just be pissed off, and to not seek any sort of counselling?I would have just preferred if she were pissed off in some deadend science job, like alternate-Picard from Tapestry. What we got was trying to hard to be kewl, without making much sense. (even in a post-scarcity utopia there needs to be rules about just throwing a trailer down at the vasquez rocks)
Yeah, I don’t think they’ve handled it all that well, certainly. They could have explained WHY she appears to be hiding in the desert when she could probably have a normal house in a normal town.I assume it’s linked to the conspiracy theory she has. She’s probably trying to keep as far away from the Federation and ‘the man’ as possible.
Learning later on that she’s a utopia planitia truther does help explain it. Although that’s another can of worms that I’m not sure the writers will have thought through.If Allison Pill’s character were to claim that the synthetics had been hacked, then I might believe her, since she’s an expert on synthetics.But Raffi is just a rando in a trailer. If she “knows” there is a “conspiracy” maybe she was just radicalized by space-youtube, or her uncle posted a bunch of memes on space-facebook. Hopefully they give her some actual evidence, because otherwise that’s not a great look for trek.
“why anyone would be a barber on the Enterprise”. This ones not that hard. Either you badly wanted to travel but couldn’t hack Starfleet or you have a passion for cosmetology and also are really interested in space exploration.
charging a fee is weird.You expect Rios to let Picard take his spaceship on a possibly dangerous and illegal mission for shits and giggles?
Rios runs an illegal ship outside of the Federation. It’s reasonable to me that smugglers would operate in some black market economy. Perhaps gold pressed latinum is his currency of choice?To me, Raffi’s living situation seems self imposed. She’s in the middle of a desert in what appears to be a refurbished shuttle of some sort. If she’s angry at Picard for getting her fired, how angry do you suppose she is at the Federation? Would she be willing to accept room and board from the same people who just ruined her dreams?
Her digs about the farm seemed to both be related to class but also accomplishment. Picard was at a place where he felt like he’d already done everything he needed to do in his life. Resignation is a bit more toothless when a person is in their late 70s. Raffi was near the start of her career. A promising lieutenant commander who may have her sights set on captaincy. Picard’s resignation is retirement. He can live in comfort, at the farm, and enjoy that life because his ambition has been filled. Raffi, on being fired, needs to figure out what her life is going to be now. It looks to me like she didn’t want to figure that out. So she exiled herself.
I always figured that Trek’s “no money” thing was some bullshit. In any civilization you’re going to have to figure out how to allocate resources. Even in a post-scarcity society like Trek’s there will be a lot of things that will be rare and valuable. Who gets what is problem you need to solve.You can imagine, as I expect Roddenberry did, that the combination of a more advanced breed of humanity combined with a hand wavey new type of economics solves the problem. It’s certainly no less likely than warp drive.But it’s clear that the Federation’s “no money” thing is a polite fiction. Money is bad, so we don’t call it money. We have some system or systems of exchange and resource allocation that everyone knows about, but don’t discuss in polite company. You can live your life as a regular, Federation citizen and have your basic needs met without ever having to deal with it. However, if you want something else…especially if you don’t want to put your name on a list and wait for it…then you do.
I always figured that Trek’s “no money” thing was some bullshit.Good thing you don’t write for a Star Trek TV show.No but seriously though, that’s not how you make stuff in a franchise. You can’t go ‘I always figured “the Force” was some bullshit’ and then write a Star Wars movie where it turns out the Force isn’t a thing and it was all just a bunch of cheap tricks and the Jedi are frauds. The Force is real in that universe and SW stories need to behave as such, or alternatively ignore the Force period.Star Trek depicts a future post-scarcity society that doesn’t use money. If you think post-scarcity societies without money are bullshit, go write for something that’s not Star Trek. Of course I’m not having a go at you here, I’m referring to the current Star Trek writers and showrunner(s) who want to write a Star Trek TV show but don’t seem to like anything about Star Trek. Except the Borg and Earl Grey, or whatever.
Yeah, he depiction of Federation economics has been wildly inconsistent over the years. The idea of “no money” has been treated as a joke quite a few times, most notably Star Trek IV and DS9’s “In the Cards.”
Nog:”What does that even mean”?
Chabon has covered this some now on Instagram.Rios operates outside the Federation where they DO use money. Picard has access to money like lots of people on Star Trek did even though it isn’t used on Federation member worlds.Raffi is partly digging at Picard but the underlying truth is that her material needs are met without working but having more effectively operates on the “currency” of being able to persuade people. Either you have the charisma to talk people into free work or you live in an apartment or trailer with a holovid and a replicator. So you have effectively an economic system based on charisma and persuasiveness. If you want to do anything more than subsist, you have to sweet talk people or be good company or ready to take orders.
yeah, more or less. there is no longer an economy of scarcity. Everyone has access to food and medicine and such. And for some people thats fine. ut if you want to personally own things like ships or restaurants, you work with some type of money like thing.
Also, Picard took a taxi to reach Raffi’s trailer. a) why didn’t he just transport there? b) what did he pay the taxi with, a compliment?
a) All the transporter use we’ve seen on earth is transporter-to-transporter, not transporter-to-remote site. The one exception is Picard and Laris beaming to Dahj’s apartment, which was probably illegal. Maybe transporting to remote sites is something you only do when you’re out in space and there’s no receiving transporter pad.
b) Credits. He paid the taxi with credits. Which he has a lot of, because retired admiral. Or maybe the wine business is somehow booming in an era where people drink replicated tequila?
I can see that – similar to normal and “gourmet” or “organic” food differences today. But the whole currency thing…I think back to his comments in First Contact about there was no currency/credits and how the pursuit of material wealth was no longer the driving force behind mankind. Guess that all got dialed back.
It’s not much of a stretch to think that non-replicated food and drink would become a highly sought after luxury. Imagine being able to present your date with a bottle of wine made the traditional way on a family farm that’s been in operation for over 100 years!
It’s the vinyl record of the future!
Ever take an Uber on Q’onoS? The drivers don’t get five stars unless they beat you in ritual combat.
Bold of you to assume the taxi had a driver.
About Raffi’s trailer. I don’t think it’s necessarily that she HAS to live in a trailer because she’s poor- I think its more that on Earth, if you’re paranoid and want to grow and smoke your own drugs, ok. But you have to live out by yourself in a desert where you wont bother anyone.
It’s all about transporter rations! Raffi didn’t get any so she’s stuck in her trailer.Transporter rations are mentioned in DS9, suggesting the whole post-money system of the Federation is based on old school rationing. Which means there is going to be a black trade market as the rations redistribute themselves. I bet Rios can trade in transporter rations for Risa hotel vouchers.
I seem to recall transporter rations being mentioned in relation to Starfleet Academy, as if they were privileges for cadets, or something akin to a meal plan.
There was clearly money in TOS.
I assume that, given Rios seems to be some kind of blockade runner/smuggler, he operates a lot outside of Federation space where he’d need money to live. Not to mention carry out his illicit operations.
“I assume that, given Rios seems to be some kind of blockade
runner/smuggler, he operates a lot outside of Federation space where
he’d need money to live. Not to mention carry out his illicit
operations.”Yeah, he would. Not unlike Vash or Harry Mudd or all the other for-profit humans depicted in the history of Starfleet. But Picard is the one offering to pay him. Where is he getting money if he isn’t getting paid? (The statement is tongue-in-cheek. ‘Star Trek’ has never bothered to explore the no money thing when it’s not convenient for the plot, unless it’s the subject of a joke).
Totally, and they’ve probably avoided talking about money in Star Trek so they don’t have to go to the trouble of fleshing out an economic system that would be full of plot holes and continuity errors.Having said that, Picard makes a famous brand of wine. Maybe he ships it to non-Federation space and he recieves money in return that he has nothing to do with but put it in the bank (of Bolius?), or maybe he got a high interest payday loan from the Orion Syndicate.
It’s somewhat implied that the attack on Mars marked a sudden shift in power between political factions within Starfleet. To me, it seemed clear that accepting Picard’s resignation and firing his underlings involved in the evacuation effort was done to further solidify this new power.
Possibly. That would be just another parallel between the Romulan storyline and the Klingon storyline from Star Trek VI.
Nothing about it in Countdown – it ends prior to the attack on Mars [Mars Attacks?]. I read the comic, and still feel like their falling-out needs to be fleshed out a bit more.
I’m not sold on Raffi – she’s mad at Jean-Luc for walking out, obviously a huge betrayal, but we don’t see that. Just a scene that plays:
‘Come on! You always have one last great idea’
‘I threatened to resign’
‘HA! And what did they do?’
‘They accepted it.’
‘Oh yeah, well you’re a no-good quitter!’
They obviously had an important working relationship, but for the glacial speed these shows are moving at there’s apparently no time to establish that except in a half of a 10 minute pre-credits scene.
Also she calls him ‘JL’ – I’ve not heard anyone else call him that. It sounds irritatingly hip (Roy calling Homer ‘Mr. S’ hip). And while I can accept that an older Picard may have mellowed and would be okay with the nickname; they’ve not spoken for 14 years. This Nemesis era Picard at the start of the show – even when movie Picard did drop his flute for off-roading and action schlock I don’t see him being cool with abbreviations to his name from junior officers.
I’m a little worried that Everything Is Part Of The Big Secret Romulan Conspiracy might become short hand for lazy writing.
The attack on Mars was due to an error in the synthetics ‘base code’ ok – how do they know that? How do they fix that? Isn’t there a huge industry around synthetics? Wouldn’t people want to know and fix that? No – all synthetics are banned as is research into them.
And when that sounds shady AF, just point to the Big Secret Romulan Conspiracy (est over 14 years ago!).
This is like the UN banned combine harvesters because of a huge accident and everyone just went along with it.
I’ve heard the idea that Star Trek society communist, but that’s usually because of it being a space utopia where everyone’s needs are catered to, not because of a sinister monolithic and secretive government.
Same with Raffi – she’s doing high-level important stuff in Star Fleet and loses her job and clearance. And so she’s unemployed for the bulk of 14 years? Is Star Fleet the only outfit that gets to go to space? Surely she has transferable skills to the private sector.
I imagine that the Federation News Network must have a section for Holodeck Deaths, where they list the hundreds of people who die each day in various holodeck malfunctions throughout the UFP.But robots blow up *one* shipyard, and suddenly everyone is treating them like they’re the next Khan Noonien Singh.
My guess: the Romulans were actually created by ancient Vulcans as a biosynthetic race and we’ve all forgotten that to the lost sands of time. This week we got “the Ramdha was the first ever Romulan ship assimilated by the Borg and everything collapsed immediately thereafter.” Also, the science of biosynthetics requires twins (like Romulus and Remus).So, yes, this looks extremely preposterous and lazy.
Is Star Fleet the only outfit that gets to go to space? Surely she has transferable skills to the private sector.Well, she does have an unregistered starship. And Rios is apparently a private starship operator as well. But clearly Raffi has some… coping issues. She’s prone to treating her problems with snakeweed and alcohol, which probably curtailed her post-Starfleet career,
I laughed at the “Vasquez Rocks” insert. They’ve used those rocks and the surrounding area to film Star Trek episodes and hundreds of other things for decades in Hollywood, and finally the rocks get their moment in the spotlight, without having to pretend to be the surface of some alien world. Go, rocks!I like Picard, but the week by week thing is freaking killing me. It was obviously not designed to be watched like this, and everything feels like it’s taking forever. And you can’t wait, because the show is too popular and you know anything worthwhile that happens between now and the end of the season will be spoiled if you try to hold off and save them for a binge.The Vulcan in the wayfarers was a really strange piece of product placement. Notice they’re not even classic ray-bans, but the newer slimmer frames. I didn’t know Vulcans could be instagram influencers. Add that to the list of things we learned this episode.That thing with Picard ghosting Raffi for 14 years was off, yes. I mean, we’ve been beating the “Picard values his friends!” drum since the show started. Gotta save Data’s daughter, he was such a dear friend! Oops, gotta save Data’s other daughter now! Can’t bring Riker and the gang because they’re Picard’s cherished friends and they might be in danger! Even within their own tiny microverse, ignoring all previous knowledge of Picard, the Raffi situation makes no sense.
I think him ghosting Raffi does make sense, if you consider where the character is now. Data, Riker, etc. remind Picard of his best times – when he was captain of a starship, saving the galaxy and making things better.
Raffi reminds him of his worst time – when he learned that the Federation he fought for was going to turn its back on both synthetic life and the Romulans.
Also, worth noting that we haven’t seen any indication (yet) that Picard was in touch with his old Enterprise crew either during the 14-year gap. He might have ghosted everyone, not just Raffi. I’d wager that the upcoming visit with Riker and Troi will clear that up.
Sorry, but I found Rios to be an eye-rolling cliche, and the dodgy accents of his holograms were irritating.
However, I thought Raffi’s trailer house was pretty sweet. Wonder how she finagled living at Vasquez Rocks with apparently no neighbors like that.
I think that the stuff with Raffi not landing for people may be evidence that the show has not done a good job of selling the enormity of the Mars catastrophe. Because I can see this kind of event changing the Picard we know so that he would stay away from a friend for 14 years. He would convince himself it is because she doesn’t want to see him so he is doing the right thing, but it would really be so that he could avoid the pain of it.That is the thread of the show-this event has changed the Picard we know. Hundreds of thousands dead on a project under his watch, his Starfleet career in ruins, a whole civilization left without any organized place to call home and the organization he poured his heart and soul in leaving them to die. That would damage a person.Like it or not, that is the story the show is telling. Picard is still noble and good, but he is damaged by the events since Nemesis. Now the explorer isolates himself in a couple of vineyard rooms all day and isolates friends he should be there for. I don’t think it is the nostalgia filled story that some of us want, but I think it is consistent with the story they are telling. Hopefully the rest of the story will be about Picard reclaiming some of what life has taken away.I am liking the show, but they ARE spinning their wheels too much. It is time to move this thing forward and at least get on the road to the fireworks factory.
It’s always so interesting how several people can watch the exact same show and react completely differently to it. What some (some = Zack Handlen) consider to be meandering and slow feels, to others, like gripping revelation and taut suspense to (where“others” = me and all my Trekkie I’m friends). Are some people predisposed to like “Picard?” Are some predisposed to find fault — and if so, why? Because they’re getting paid to write a review and want to sound edgy in their analysis?
There are some who have said the Federation was already xenophobic back before the Dominion War.Sure, they were open to all races on the surface, but only on their terms. In particular the Federation treated the Ferengi harshly. They also took a dim view on any society that didn’t value democratic principles. The War only sharpened edges that were already there.
So what is the difference between synths, like Data, and AI like the Doctor from Voygaer (Which we’ve seen can learn and develop if left turned on for long enough) beyond having a physical body?It makes the Federation ban seem that much more arbitrary. (Especially if you are going to add emergency holograms as background characters in your show)
Forget plot pacing, narratives, comparisons to TNG, and characterization, etc…the most important question is: Where is Picard supposed to sit?? He can’t stand next to Rios for the rest of the series. And, by the way, if Rios is the pilot, what exactly is Raffi doing at her station?
You didn’t recognize Hugh? From TNG? He was the OG Borg that they made an individual.
So what’s the odds somebody on the show even brings up the parallel between the Federation’s treatment of the Romulans in the recent past and its initial reaction to the Praxis explosion of 2293?
Is it just me, or is Picard’s new ship basically the Normandy 2 from Mass Effect 2-3?! Same colour scheme and layout inside, the works. Externally it’s a little different, but not massively so.
“…but for now, we just gotta be patient.”This line says it all. I love this show, it’s a serious departure from other Star Trek series, but in a really good way – it feels to me like the entire Star Trek universe suddenly became inhabited by people who are more likely what humans will be like in the future rather than the visionary version that Gene Roddenberry created (with total respect for that vision! it was right for the time, I think this is right for now).But to enjoy a well written show that is developing a story rather than just dumping it on us requires patience.
What a feast of I Am More A Trek Fan Than You Are here!Loved this episode. Picard looks like he is wrong most of the times which is so welcome. I could live without the TNG/DS9 etc thingy of dramatic music + dramatic shot+ cut, though.
I wouldn’t say Soji’s dates with the Romulan fella have been “lukewarm”, she’s totally putting out already and they don’t exactly look disinterested with the whole thing. anyway as for lack of familiar faces, Hugh was totally in this epsiode, although it took until halfway through the conversation with Crazy Romulan lady for Soji show to offhandedly mention it was him. It may be corny, but I am totally okay with the narrative practice of characters being introduced by name in their first scene just to find out who the hell they are.
Well, I disagree with Zack. This episode got me excited for the series, as there is clearly a much deeper storyline then just “let’s show Picard again for the sake of Picard.”
My crazy idea (havent seen episode 4 yet)
Soji is ultimately the one who creates the virus that future janeway uses to destroy the borg collective. As the collective is dying, the borg do something to send a message to themselves back in time (we know they have tried to fuck with the timeline before) to alter this outcome that results in whatever created the anti-synth conspiracy.
Can we talk about how fucking hilarious is that Raffi lives at Vasquez Rocks.
Why is he leaving the muscle at home? It’s pretty clear from the fight scene at Le Chateau Picard that the good old captain is mostly adept at hiding behind a desk and panting (CC even has him ‘panting’), even though he gets off a lucky blaster shot. Those caretakers of his would be handy to bring along, but ‘the grapes are in more need of protection than me’? Maybe they’ll pop off to rescue him when needed, but it seems very silly to leave such capable fighters back home when he’ll most likely be facing some more Romulan stormtroopers (they’re very bad at their job for sure)