‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 1, Episode 1
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Join the full complement of the Shuttle Pod crew as they discuss the premiere episode of Star Trek: Picard. First, Brian, Jared, Kayla, and Matt catch up on some exciting news about season two of Picard, and then they dive into the episode “Remembrance.”
There was mention of Data wanting a daughter… it’s not a direct reference but it’s in there.
Yep, correct. I thought that was a reference to Lal.
Love the podcast, but they really drove home the point that Lal wasn’t even hinted at. The part of “Data always wanting a daughter” really stuck out to me.
Data wanted an offspring. Lal got to choose her species and gender.
I just went back and watched the show for a second time. I hadn’t noticed the “advertisements” in Boston the first time through. This second time through, I don’t think they are advertisements as much as simply corporate branding. Those buildings house the local or planetary HQ for those companies, so they have exterior signage. They are just a little more neon than some others. I don’t have a problem with it regarding the Federation and the lack of money/marketing.
One other point, Dahj says she is a fellow at Daystrom now, and a fellow could be a post-PhD position. So seems in line with her twin sister getting a PhD/doctorate/medical degree.
The idea of no money seems so wildly far-fetched they might as well ret-con it to some extent. If there is no money, then what would be the motivation to do anything in a world with holodecks etc? Maybe money no longer constitutes a barrier to good education and food on the table… but there has to be some incentive for the masses to latch onto.
Agreed.
True that. Even TOS acknowledged some form of currency. I cannot imagine that we’ve reverted back to a barter system in the 24th century.
DS9 did that too
ML31,
Re:Currency
Well, I suppose that all depends on what you mean by “currency”. We are already experiencing pressures to eliminate the physical stuff. And once a civilization converts to cashless it’s all just numbers in pervasive computers that are more than capable of keeping track of just another set of numbers to maintain a barter based system. Didn’t TOS call their payments “credits”?
As I type, NPR is reporting non-physical currency payments far outstrip cash payments.
Personally, I prefer physical coinage where the stamped metal has some value close to the number stamped on it and I grudgingly accepted the gold-based system. But once Nixon took us off the gold-based standard, “currency” just lost all its meaning for me. It’s all just inflated/deflated manipulated numbers to me now.
Fair enough. But even a cashless system still uses currency. It’s just virtual. Which is what I figured Kirk meant in the dreadful, Voyage Home. When he said “They are still using money” I figured he meant cash. Credits obviously have some sort of stated value.
“The idea of no money seems so wildly far-fetched they might as well ret-con it to some extent.”
Which part of “post-scarcity” and “free energy” did you not understand?
Thanks for the enjoyable chat, guys! A few comments about Lal: when Data was first trying to a create another android, the original result was genderless. It had to choose what species and gender it wished to be. After Lal’s cascade failure, perhaps some part of Data’s unconscious (which we know he had because of his dreaming) fixated on his failure and tried to figure out how to surmount it by some day making a daughter. This yearning got expressed in his two paintings, one of which had a face. But why two paintings, one with a veiled face and the other with it visible? Perhaps because he was working out that he needed to make twin androids simultaneously in order for the “positronic neuron” to grow successfully into functional and emotional androids. Maybe that’s the real reason Lore existed too. The first faceless painting was the earlier. He was moved to do the second painting with the face as he was becoming aware of the twinning process. Data communicated this discovery to Maddox, perhaps in a more driven way since by then Data had the emotion chip. Devastated by Data’s death, Maddox vowed to bring Data’s research to fruition and designed the entwined circles as the project’s logo. What this had to do, if anything, with the rogue synths’ attack on Mars remains to be seen. We’ll see.
I felt that was where they were going too… that androids need to be made in pairs. Data/Lore for example. All others seem to fall apart. Lal and B4 for example.
The pairs thing felt like a contrivance that drove the plot. It wasn’t based on anything from TNG. Lore came before Data. Just as B4 probably came before Lore.
ML31,
In BROTHERS, Soong said Data was physically identical to Lore so it’s possible the two were formed at the same time but were programmed years apart.
But this would necessitate the show eventually coming up with a twin for Data’s “mom”.
You are saying that B-4 has a twin somewhere then.
Perhaps but I’m not going to buy that until it becomes canon.
ML31,
Re: B-4’s twin
Hmm…possibly, but his being an earlier model may have been the the failure to meet goals creation that led to the twinning developement?
But let’s be clear, the existence of twinned chassis in no way means that BOTH were programmed and activated, for example in the case of Soong’s wife, it may have been stored for spare/repair parts.
I’ve been thinking along the same lines Disinvited.
I always wondered where Soong’s final secret lab was where Data’s mother was produced. I don’t think what we saw was that.
Perhaps Maddox found it and was able to work not just from Lal and whatever positronic neurons he had from Data, but from other remaining bits of Soong’s research.
I honestly do not understand how the same podcast that had such issues with discovery or with that one short trek about tribbles for maybe kinda sorta having the wrong tone (or something) is not the least bit upset about turning the federation into a full-blown racist dystopia.
It literally boggles the mind.
It is still a lot less racist then current day US or Europe. So at least a utopia compared to us.
And may I add, many beloved characters which appeared in Star Trek were racist: McCoy, Kirk, Riker, Odo, Lincoln…
“And may I add, many beloved characters which appeared in Star Trek were racist: McCoy, Kirk, Riker, Odo, Lincoln”
Seriously? Some people call it “racism”, others call it the normal human condition!
P.S. When you are far enough on the left, even the center appears far-right.
VS, I would argue the reverse holds true : when one is on the right even slightly left of centre appears radical left.
For those of us who sit firmly in the centre, this is pretty obvious. And I find that it’s those on the right, more often than not, who try to make it out as though they represent a majority when they often are around a third of the population just like the left.
The big political change with the rise of populism in this century is that instead of the centre holding and bringing the less extreme voters from both the right and left with them, the more extreme ends on the right and left are pulling the moderates to choose among extremes.
Last point, are you sincerely arguing that combating racism and other discrimination is a leftist agenda? Not long ago, libertarians and neo-liberals were strong defenders of human rights.
What excatly about the Federation (judging from ONE episode already out) is “dystopic” in Picard? Not being the happy-go-lucky UFP from TNG is hardly the same as being a dystopia…
I found the racist interviewer more confusing than anything else. We already saw Starfleet teaming up with the Romulans in DS9 and Nemesis, so why the grudge? It would make sense if they were talking about the Dominion but so much the Romulans at this point.
Loved Picard’s insistence that ALL LIVES MATTER. What a nice refutation of BLM extremism :)
I made that analogy as well. Was wondering if anyone else did…
“BLM extremism :)” That has to take the cake as the most clueless post I’ve seen on this website. That ‘extremism’ as you’d like to call was born from the fact that overwhelmingly in news and other forms of media and more importantly in daily life black and brown lives have been made to seem less than. It’s that same backwards thought process that some men use when they want to say feminists hate men.
Given that Picard and Discovery pathologically put a “black person” into every frame, far beyond their demographic share anywhere north of Africa, that “overwhelming fact” seems more like a complete work of fiction, my friend :) As for the actual majority ethnicities of Earth, Asians, they get shafted once again by Picard. That’s what agenda-driven television looks like – it just introduces new favoritism, and new injustice!
VS, I’m not sure where you live in the UK, but for those of us who live in major urban centres in North America or the UK, not having representation of a diversity of humans looks weird. To me, the most fundamental agenda I see is to actually reflect the diverse societies in which most viewers live and work.
I know the UK has evolved. When I first visited family in the UK in the early Thatcher years, one of my first thoughts was ‘this doesn’t look like the real world’ because the ethnic and racial distribution of people I saw on the tube and in the shops was so limited. Given how shocked I was by how behind the UK was technologically and in socio-economic status at that point, it’s notable that this stood out. I will say though that it was one of the factors that put me off exercising my UK citizenship as a young adult despite good job prospects.
By the time, I was visiting the UK in the 90s, I was feeling that it had come along enough socially and technologically that I could imagine living there. With Brexit, it would be a hard no.
I agree with the podcasters about this show. I absolutely loved it, but had a few pet peeves. But they are trivial.
I agree with Kayla that this show is a very big deal. And I think it is the best Star Trek since the last few episodes of DS9.
Let’s hope this level of quality continues and they stick the landing!
Well, I was never a Guinan fan. And while I do see a love of love for the character here there was very little of it among my little crew that watched the show back in the 80’s together. But just because Stewart asked Whoopie if she wanted to be in the show, does that mean she is for sure going to be in it? I haven’t seen any reports that have confirmed it yet. Just that Stewart asked her on her show. To me, this means nothing. I recall Chris Hemsworth was asked to be on Agents of Shield by Clark Gregg on some talk show, too. I think it needs to be said that very likely a large reason behind his return was his pay. Made even greater by giving him producer credit. Not only does that mean he gets a say in the character but it is also a way to get more money in his pocket. Maybe it’s true that he just wasn’t interested in playing the part any more and this particular pitch piqued his interest. But more often than not when actors say they have been approached to revisit an old part only to say “no” and suddenly later do it, it is usually because the previous proposals did not offer sufficient compensation. And to be honest, I am bothered by Stewart having so very much say in the story. I don’t think his idea of what is good for Picard is good for the story. As evidenced by his desired changes in the TNG features. I also wish to say that there is nothing majorly wrong with Nemesis. I didn’t sense that the cast didn’t want to be there at all. They came across just like they did in all the features. Save for Data who was presented in a way, for the very first time, that I actually cared a little about it. Which I consider quite the feat. I really find it difficult to rate this ONE episode. It is just setting things up and I guess it accomplished that. But as an episode I found it “meh”. It reminded me a great deal of “The Vulcan Hello.” Which also felt like “meh”. In both cases I felt there was potential to go somewhere good. So I am not wanting to judge the show yet. BTW… I liked movie Picard a TON more than TV Picard. Mainly because First Contact gave Picard a personal issue to overcome. Something that NEVER happened on TV. The downside to the serialized nature is that if the story isn’t compelling it will ruin the ENTIRE season. I must say that by the time he was talking to the robot lady towards the end I was starting to not really care anymore. I also disagree about the fan service. This was chalk FULL of fan service. That archive room was nothing but fan service as there was not reason for that room to even exist. And they did have the “I used to command the E-D” moment that was described. He stopped and admired the little hologram of it. However, as opposed to the archive room, that seemed appropriate as he may not have seen an image of that ship he was fond of for some time. It was short and he moved on. Also, holding onto that stuff seemed amazingly out of character for him. He never seemed like a guy that wanted mementos from that past. Especially the Captain Picard Day banner. I recall him tossing things aside in the wreckage of the E when he was looking for his photo album. He didn’t seem concerned about that stuff then. That room felt more like a Smithsonian kind of Picard exhibit than something he would want. Kayla said “Nobody wanted that.” But I don’t follow. Is Kayla saying that no one wanted Data to come back? I have a hard time buying that. A lot of people loved the Data character. I mainly remembered episodes that were either pretty good or pretty bad. So there weren’t a lot of episodes that I actively can recall. I did recall Lal as being a bad episode. So when they mentioned daughter I immediately thought of Lal. But what they presented it didn’t seem to work. Also it was odd because I thought Lal ultimately failed anyway. I guess I will need to look at ’09 again but I never thought it was galaxy of universe threatening. I thought back then it was just the nova. And I guessed that something happened to CAUSE their sun to advance to that stage. I, too, think there had to be more than we have been told. Just just stop the effort because of rogue synths just made no sense… Read more »
Re: Romulan ships
There were a number of these guys around the Borg cube
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Romulan_transport
I’ll take your word for it. I do not feel like going back and checking out the end of the episode again. Just too lazy for that. If I were to do that it would be to spot the TOS music cue that I surprisingly missed! I must be getting old as I normally pick up on that sort of thing.
I had no problem believing that Starfleet would abandon the Romulans to their fate. Just look at how certain Starfleet officers, including Kirk, reacted to the Praxis explosion. Everyone in the Federation was used to thinking of the Romulans as the enemy, and a lot of people probably assumed that the Romulans would betray them eventually anyway. I’m sure that plenty of people were asking themselves “If Earth’s sun was going to go nova, would the Romulan Empire help us,” and coming to the conclusion that they would not. Once the synths attacked Mars, they were happy to take the excuse to abandon the Romulans.
If they want us to believe there was a schism between the Federation and the Romulans after we already saw a thawing of their cold war, then it would help if they gave us some idea how this happened. This was a flaw in Undiscovered Country, too. They went from having drinks with Klingons in TFF to suddenly hating them with a passion in the next movie. Fine, but a little background would help. An incident that renewed the sudden hatred and distrust, for example. It only takes a few lines of dialogue.
Their cold war was barely thawed. Nemesis showed us that, as Section 31 predicted, things went right back to the status quo between the Federation and the Romulans after the Dominion War. Donatra helped Picard out during the Shinzon incident, but there was no indication that that led to any strengthening of relations between the two powers. Even if things did improve, it would take more than a single joint venture to undo over 200 years of mistrust.
I can understand continued distrust between the two powers, but the outright hatred and racism on display in Picard is baffling. Now we see supposedly ordinary citizenry behaving like the hateful, paranoid idiots from Section 31. So again, further context is needed.
Given that, with the brief exception of the Dominion War, the Romulans have been enemies of the Federation for their entire history, I would imagine that there is a lot of hatred and distrust even among normal citizens. Its the same thing that we saw with the Klingons in Undiscovered Country. It wasn’t just Admiral Cartwright and his friends who mistrusted the Klingons. Almost everybody was mistrustful of them.
Regarding the Romulans in the Dominion war… Its been a while since my DS9 rewatch… Did Romulans fight on the line with the
“allies” or did they have their own “front” that they dealt with? Like the Soviets in WWII. We were on the same side in that conflict, too.
Am I the only one not understanding what the part of Dahj’s mother? I felt that part was both weird and not very well written, but nobody seems to share that opinion anywhere.
The shared opinion is she is not her mother but a hologram.
I suspect that there’s little comment as most of us thought that the whole interaction was ‘off’ and we were supposed to pick up on that.
What comes across is that she’s talking to someone who has an agenda, can be directive and who knows how to trigger latent capacities. We’re supposed to be bothered by it.
Whether or not a human who played a role of mother ever existed is not clear – is it a hologram or just artificial memory, and a simulation on the phone- is not clear.
I strongly disagree with the Shuttle Pod Crew that Jake Sisko wouldn’t be a better choice for the interviewer. He had every emotional right to disrespect Picard since the good captain killed his mother. The scene would be far more interesting if you had sympathies for both sides. Giving both viewpoints good arguments is of course much more difficult to write then making her just a disgusting Fox and Friends host.
Jake would look pathetic because his dad already got over Picard’s involvement with the Borg crisis (literally days after the two of them actually met). Plus it would be beneath the journalistic integrity already shown from Jake. It would very likely get him fired from his employers (who are almost certainly not Fox and Friends).
Someone had to ask Picard if it is not duplicious to promote the creation of a artificial, superpowerful and emotional unstable race on the one hand and on the other hand support the discrimination of genetical enhanced humans as Julian Bashir.
I just read GQ’s interview of Michael Chabon.
He made the point that it’s important that not everyone Picard runs into is someone that we previously saw in some episode in the Trek universe.
While it’s great to have callbacks, if every character we see is a callback, it makes Trek a very small universe when it the Federation has scores of billions of sentient lives.
The writers really thought hard about when a previously seen character would add something critical to the story.
Frankly, adding Jake would have been a distraction precisely because it could have been viewed as personal.
A good editor at FNN would not have risked a once in a decade opportunity of an interview on that. Picard was a famous public figure in seclusion, so the editors would want this to be reflective of major audience questions and not an interviewer’s personal experience.
I don’t see the aggressive interviewer as necessarily being a critique of Fox and Friends.
While clearly she breached the agreement about the boundaries on the interview, it also sounded like she was testing his reaction to a major ongoing point in public debate about the Mars tragedy.
“He made the point that it’s important that not everyone Picard runs into is someone that we previously saw in some episode in the Trek universe.”
That is a very good point and I fully agree with that. But for me Jake would work more organic with that world of STP because he is one of the few civilian characters we have in Star Trek. I would prefere an apperance of him over one of the Rikers, Guinan or Janeway anytime.
I think the reporter asking critical questions rather than “rah rah Picard” was fair. Picard let the Starfleet down… again.
Most of the DS9 stuff (including enhanced humans), as well as most of VOY, most of ENT, and most of what’s in the TNG movies, isn’t even on Kurtzman Trek’s drawing board. S31 appears to be a frequent exception, and they can’t even get that one right. They dealt with all the NEM stuff upfront so they could be done with it.
No, they don’t need to account for everything that was seen on yesterday’s Trek.
Right?!?!? Also I think after yet another incident where Picard doesn’t defend Sector 001 from AI, at least one reporter should ask why he is so ineffective – and why would it not be someone who lost their Mother to Picard (as Locutus)? And before you think Locutus is gone think First Contact – how did Picard know exactly where to target the cube? Did he know before but kept that from Starfleet so he could get the glory (at the cost of crews of starships) or because he still has a link to the unimind and is compromised?
jake got over the death of his mum years ago and would not use it to attack picard.
anyway he is now a novelist not a reporter.