‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 1 Episode 2 Spoiler Discussion

We’ll have a review up later on, but for now this is a spot to discuss the episode with your fellow Trekkies.

New promotional photos

For people have haven’t seen the episode yet… stay away from the comments of this article.

 

Episode title: Maps and Legends

Synopsis: Picard begins investigating the mystery of Dahj as well as what her very existence means to the Federation. Without Starfleet’s support, Picard is left leaning on others for help, including Dr. Agnes Jurati and an estranged former colleague, Raffi Musiker. Meanwhile, hidden enemies are also interested in where Picard’s search for the truth about Dahj will lead.


The new episode of Star Trek: Picard premieres today on CBS All Access in the USA at 12:01 AM PT/3:01 AM ET. In Canada it will air later today on CTV Sci-Fi Channel at 6PM PT /9PM ET and will be available to stream on Crave. It will be made available on Amazon Prime Video for the rest of the world on Friday morning. Episodes will be released weekly.

Keep up with all the Star Trek: Picard news at TrekMovie.

428 Comments
oldest
newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

If CBS kills off Picard or makes him succumb to Irumodic syndrome in any way, I will unsubscribe and stop watching immediately. The whole parietal lobe abnormality thing caused me to be distracted and lose interest in the rest of this episode. I don’t want a series where it’s a demented Picard trying to prove himself, or one without him at all.

Otherwise I loved the first ep and the direction, but they are overdoing it on the Earl Grey references.

Parietal lobectomies/resections aren’t fatal. Motor aphasia is about the worst outcome. Other outcomes are loss of balance and fine motor function. It could take him out of the action, but they’ll need a macguffin to make it fatal.

Agreed. I’m actually a neurologist and just don’t like the idea of a show about a slowly dementing Picard. Doubt the writers would choose a lesion resection over just killing him off. Really hoping this is not some shoehorn maneuver to pivot toward solely the new cast, as seems to be the Hollywood trend nowadays.

Having a show called “Star Trek Picard” without Picard doesn’t make sense. I think the producers have said before that they have ideas for at least 3 seasons. There is a chance that they could spin off the new cast into a show of their own if Patrick Stewart doesn’t want to (or cannot for some reason) continue doing it anymore. But I think they are well aware that Patrick is the main draw this show has.

If the new rag-tag bunch of misfits name their ship Picard…

My guess is this is a safety net in case something horrible were to happen and Sir Patrick Stewart couldn’t continue filming. This way, if the unspeakable does happen, they can write it into the show more naturally because it’s calling back to “All Good Things…”

I suspect that Picard will die at the end of season 3.

He better f-ing not! Picard is immortal and lives forever. He is NOT ALLOWED to die!

With a Tony Stark Funeral-like scene in the finale.

Of course he will. It’s part of Kurtzman’s long term Roddenberry erasing narrative.

awesome episode!

Eh, not as good as last week’s… but still better than most of STD.

Agreed, I need to watch it again.

I don’t know… It’s starting to sink into STD level plotting already… It’s really early so I’m hoping this is a misdirect. PLEASE be a misdirect….

I enjoyed it, too.

I liked this one quite a bit. However, two small beefs:

1) so far both episodes are only 45 minutes. A bit of a bummer in this day and age of full-hour long streaming episodes.

2) while very pleased at the slower pacing in contrast to DSC, this episode seemed to be taking its sweet ass time. I kinda wish they had run episodes 1 and 2 together as a special and *then* done shorter episodes. Right now it’s a bit infuriating that we’re not further along. But, then again, patience has never been one of my virtues….

Otherwise, it really does feel significantly more literary in style and tone than anything we’ve had in a while. So far, so good!

I felt this way when watching The Mandalorian. The episodes got shorter and shorter in length and I had to wait a whole week for a half hour episode and some of them really took their time moving things along. I appreciated it for what it did but man did I just want to binge the first season.

It’s not even 45 minutes with the “last time on Picard” and “next time on picard” montages. It’s as if it’s not designed for streaming at all. Could you imagine DS9 if they hardcoded that into every episode once it went serialised? The only time they should be used is at the start of a new season, not every 40 minutes for god’s sake.

Even if they only take 2 mins each montage that’s 40 bloody minutes of them per 10 episodes in a season. It’s essentially 9 episodes thanks to montages! Then there’s the overly-long title sequence, the end credits…So that’s probably closer to 8 actual 45 minute episodes once all that bloatware is taken out.

Streaming doesn’t mean a show has to be longer or shorter, simply whatever time they feel the story needs. The Mandalorian was around 35 minutes every episode. Many people complained about it but eventually just accepted it. The first two episodes of DIS were both SHORTER than Picard first two episodes were. But then the second season had episodes over an hour long.

This is not new obviously. Some will probably be longer than this, others will be shorter.

I’ve no interest in the Mandalorian for similar reasons, not a good example to hold up as peak streaming.

The ONLY reason they have done it like this is due to the epic fail it has caused them in being able to sell STD to network TV after Netflix pulled large parts of funding from season 2, like here in the UK where it’s been an editing disaster. Don’t worry, Netflix’s STD contract ends at season 3.

Expect your beloved STD to go down the same path should season 3 ever see the light of day, but then again most streaming shows don’t expect network TV to be a revenue stream, they stand on their own without needing to recoup losses elsewhere.

Sigh!

So now you are questioning if season 3 will even air???? Even though its now finished? Why exactly would AA not want to air the show its already paid millions to make and is probably the biggest draw there? Seriously?

Fine, then show me a link that confirms A-N-Y of this? PaulB got on my case for ‘attacking’ you and its for THIS type of BS that I’m attacking you on, pushing false stories because you clearly hate the shows.

This is the same stuff we have been hearing for 2 seasons now. DIS days are marked EVERY season if you believe the morons at Midnight Edge. But show me a link please that makes you look even half way credible.

I’ve no interest in further communications with you. Others have expressed the same. Reply to any of my comments and I’ll report you. We’re done.

So in other words you have NO sources other than your other bitter buddies on Youtube. Right? Riiiiight?

Sigh. If you wanted to shut me up, here is your chance. ;)

Thanks for confirming the obvious and EXACTLY why you are a waste of space here. Just more BS sadly. You’re most likely a sock puppet of another troll who pulled this crap before. I have no interest in wasting my time with you now anyway. You’re probably be gone soon like the others.

LoL “Speak to me in a way I don’t like and I’m telling mom!”

Wow.

Regardless of your opinion, your presentation is off putting and it’s obvious you can’t handle adult situations…on the internet.

I can’t wait to see if I’m ‘reported’ or not. ;)

S’what?

Mike Burnthem, I find it fairly bizarre that you’ve just started posting here on TrekMovie recently (at least under this alias), and you are picking arguments with one of the generally most upbeat posters on this board… and then saying others have found them difficult and threatening to report.

How about just chilling?

More how about not seeking to jump in first with an agenda to spread absurd rumours from the YouTube grumpies. Discovery is wrapping up production in Toronto. The guild sheets are available on the internet and Frakes is just finishing up directing his last episode of the season.

Frankly, trying to peddle patently false rumours is more likely to get you a warning here than anything I recall Tiger2 has said.

“…should season 3 see the light of day…” What the hell are you even talking about?

You think it was taking it’s time? It was over so quick! I am not unhappy with the 45 minutes. I am hoping my wife will watch with me, and if the episodes go 1 hour or longer that decreases. I wonder if they are trying to keep this on pace with a broadcast time in the thought that it might go to syndication or CBS at some point.

The first fifteen minutes after the “14 years ago” opening were strangely paced, jumping back and forth from Chateau Picard to Dahj’s Apartment was a little weird… and very talky.

Yeah. The conversation in Picards mansion and then at the apartment was a bit jarring at first. But I quickly was able to follow what was going on after I got over the initial shock of just anyone beaming into a crime scene. (eyeroll)

Nobody but Picard knew it was a crime scene.

Which means he just beamed into a private residence uninvited. Is that still called trespassing in the 24th century?

Evidence of her death was erased, and she had asked Picard for his help, so going to her place would be in a gray area where trespassing is concerned. If Earth Security (which frankly seems nonexistent) caught him, he could just say he was concerned for her safety after she told him she thought she was in danger.

OK. You have a point. It was her apartment. But even if evidence of her death was erased, she’s still gone. It felt more like a break in than anything else.

Last summer, CBS aired The Good Fight in primetime, so I’m wondering if all of the episodes of Picard will be ~45 mins. It gives the network the option to air these on network television further down the line.

As to your second point, yes this episode was a bit slow. But they had a lot of exposition and setting up to do for the rest of the series. It’ll get better. Also, this episode and next week’s episode were produced simultaneously, so I think most of the action scenes will be on next week.

The running time would fit nicely into either a prime time run on CBS or on the Paramount Network.

Keep in mind that the 45 minute run time/episode will run as 1 hour with commercials. CBSAA has a $5.99/month with commercials tier.
We are so used to the Netflix & HBO 1 hour/episode time.

That doesn’t matter. They been doing the exact same thing with DIS. Some episodes were under 45 minutes while others have been over 50-60 minutes and its all made by the same people. That show’s shortest episode was its second episode at just 37 minutes. But it’s longest episode was the season finale at 65 minutes. In other words, they are simply making the episodes as long as the stories need to be, like every streaming site does.

As I mentioned above, streaming shows don’t follow 45 minute rules due to their ability to stand up by themselves without the need or expectation to ever resell it to network TV to recoup financial losses. That’s the joy of streaming shows, the story dictates their length, not network TV advertisers. STD has been a disaster for network TV reselling since Netflix pulled a large portion of funding. Expect season 3 of STD to fall into the 45 minute category as CBS looks to generate revenue beyond the 3 years Netflix signed up to fund it for.

That’s just speculation. Again, THIS is why I am calling you out! PLEASE cite me where you heard Netflix has ‘pulled a large portion of funding’? Show me a link please. I don’t care either way but I get so sick of hearing this BS based on nothing but random youtubers spreading it.

NO ONE even knows the deal Netflix has with CBS over Discovery other than they had agreed to pay for its international distribution deal. And THAT money covered most of the FIRST season of the show, which Les Moonves himself said. But there has literally been nothing else said or confirmed about the agreement. Its all been conjecture ever since.

But you are posting it like its a fact. So if it is, fine, who is your source and post it please.

But THIS is the issue I have with you, not how you feel about the shows, its the narrative you are pushing and why you won’t last here long if you keep pushing it.

But here is your chance to prove me wrong, show me the link to verify this and maybe I won’t see you as a random troll who is just here to spew this BS.

I’ve no interest in further communications with you. Others have expressed the same. Reply to any of my comments and I’ll report you. We’re done.

Exqueeze me, but who are you to forbid folks from replying to your comment? This is a blog, not your personal soapbox; people reply to comments. Moreover, nothing that’s been said to you in this thread is unreasonable. “Where are you hearing that Netflix has pulled fund for STD?” is an entirely legitimate question, because that’s news to me, at least.

Thank you River Temac!

This is exactly what I been calling out this guy on. I don’t care if he hates the shows, it’s the underlying FALSE MESSAGE that he’s pushing. And now when I simply asked him to produce something, now he doesn’t want to talk to me lol.

No worries, I already know his game here, so I’m not going to waste my time with him now regardless. I suggest others don’t as well.

I too would like to see you cite sources. It’s fine if it’s true, but it’s not true till you show your work.

I’d like to point out that season 1 of Discovery the bulk of their episodes were under 45 minutes. And it was a complaint back then. Season 2 had more that were over that time limit including the 65 minute one you mentioned. It seemed to be one of the things they listed to the fan base about maybe.

I don’t think they’re taking advantage of the streaming format, though. There’s a good reason why we’re used to the 1 hour episode time on Netflix and HBO; we’re paying for an hour of quality entertainment. The short episode times are a legit gripe.

Agree on that this should have been tied with episode one last week. Good news is Geordi and Worf are still living! Of course we have an evil and/or stupid admiral again, how TNG of them!
This show is such high quality, liked the inclusion of the Stargazer Doctor.

Crusher is obviously dead.

It’s interesting they didn’t think of bringing back *Pulaski*, though.

The two of them don’t even like one another, so I doubt an earthbound Picard would look for her to be a personal physician. But also, would she even retire back to Earth? Not sure that’s her personality. Doctor Crusher had the teaching style to go run a medical school, but Pulaski’s like, all about curing those space plagues.

I’m rewatching season 2 now and I recall not really caring for Pulaski when I first watched but seeing her now I like her a ton better than Crusher. And although they started a little on the wrong foot there was obvious mutual respect that developed. Not enough to keep in tough later I would think. But it’s there.

Stargazer Doctor. I liked that Picard’s doctor on Earth would be an old friend like that – but even more than that character work, I like that they cast the dude that they cast, because he’s exactly the actor that they would have cast if “Picard’s buddy from Stargazer” had showed up on TNG in the 90s … or even who they might have cast if “there had been a Stargazer show in the Early 80s”. He’s totally like, “that actor”. It’s a cunning little bit of casting.

Was he mentioned in the novel “Reunion”, which was ex-Stargazer crew visiting the Enterprise-D?

To be honest it’s slow, Picard is getting shouted at by woman after woman after woman, the plot is becoming very convoluted already, and Picard is right, it’s not Starfleet anymore. It’s dystopian, dangerous, violent, filled with liars, and certainly not in any reality Star Trek. This was CBS’s golden opportunity, but they’ve screwed the pooch.

Oh, and we had all of about 30 seconds discussing the fact that Picard has just been given a death sentence, everyone’s calling everyone else “dude”, Picard says “please don’t hang up” into his comm badge, for some reason an Irish Romulan is calling people “cheeky feckers”, the only men who work at Starfleet are a receptionist, the original Enterprise 1701 no longer exists in this timeline, this new secret Romulan cult has had some kind of secret for 1000’s of years in spite of the fact that they were still Vulcans at that time, and the Federation is now the EU who cares more about their own political cohesion than saving hundreds of millions of lives.

This is 100% STD:The Next Generation.

While I don’t agree with everything you’ve said, I do agree with much of it. My on-the-fence feelings of the first episode have decidedly shifted to what I had hoped this show would not be. One gets the feeling that it’s a Sir Patrick vanity project, and whether he realises or not, he’s sticking his middle finger up at the fanbase in the process. It’s certainly changed my opinion of him. I really tried hard to like this and I shall give it another shot next week, but I feel more like this is chronicling the final death rattle of the franchise.

The vanity project aspect of it is there, and I thought was at least textually apparent as well. Not that everything has to be ultra-meta all the time, but between the reference to the undertaking of the Great Pyramids, and the actual reactions that people are having to Picard (referring to his vanity and ego, and probably missing the mark about him), the show seems to not only be aware of that critique but also to be including it as a story element. I appreciate the earnest self-awareness, even if it doesn’t change the fact that for all intents and purposes, as a piece of entertainment, it is indeed that.

Well put.

It’s fascinating that you picked up on the number of female Starfleet officers, I didn’t notice at all. I bet Gene Roddenberry would have loved that part of this show, he always wanted to portray women in more authoritative roles.

We had a woman from Fox space news yelling at him, then the romulan at his house yelling at him, then the Admiral yelling at him. It’s really quote obnoxious when you see the pattern. Have you seen a single speaking male Starfleet officer yet? Children of Mars about two girls. Data’s twins are two girls, STD is all about Burnham. Who is going to be the next woman to lecture Picard? Won’t be Crusher, she’s obviously dead.

I think a dystopian starfleet and federation depicting woman in charge of it all dropping fbombs and allowing hundreds of millions of people to die for political interests would have been the last thing on Gene’s mind.

Very well said.

If you think a journalist asking pointed questions at Picard in a non-raised tone of voice is “yelling,” I think you have issues with how you interpret men and women saying the same thing at the same volume level.

It’s actually a thing – there’s scholarly research on this – that noted that in mixed meetings and classroom situations, men perceive women as “talking more” when in actual fact they speak far less than men do. One woman might say one brief thing and seven guys say far longer things, but the men perceive it as a 50/50 split, because of social conditioning.

If you’re not used to women having authority, or if you’ve come to associate authoritative or commanding tones as a purely masculine trait, well guess what – there’s nothing particularly gendered about those styles of speaking, it’s just that we’ve been socialized to expect women to be quiet, shy and retiring while men are encouraged to be bold, big and loud.

https://time.com/4837536/do-women-really-talk-more/

In reality, the admiral raising her voice isn’t anything we haven’t seen Pike, Kirk, Picard, — or Janeway, for that matter — do over the years. She’s in charge. She’s an ADMIRAL.

She’s got a particular set of motivations and objectives – political, military – which you may not agree with, but it’s the job she’s given – and Picard’s mercy mission is going to (once again) throw things into disarray. From her perspective, he *is* a crazy old man, and she needs to convey in no uncertain terms that she disapproves of what he’s asking, won’t go along with it, and he should drop it.

We had literally 55 years of mostly-male visible senior officers (even accounting for Voyager’s 7 years), and Roddenberry wanted to have more equal representation but the networks didn’t want to upset traditionalist viewers about the idea of “a woman’s place.”

But in 2020, In a world where the population is 51% women, if we posit Starfleet to be a true meritocracy, naturally a statistically even number of men and women will rise through the ranks. And if they rise to command, they would expect to command authoritatively.

When lives, worlds, war are on the line? Do you expect them to speak in baby-talk because their poor widdle lady-brains can’t deal?

Well said

Wow that’s a lot of triggered.

Seems like you’re the one that’s “triggered,” whining so much about women daring to speak or show authority. That’s some intense misogyny you got there.

I couldn’t care less if it’s all women or all men, it’s politically motivated asymmetric demographics which ruin it, and of course anyone who points that out is a misogynist, ad hominem attacks are the only way you feel you can justify such tripe.

Who you choose to cosplay is up to you, but at this point Dave your options are a receptionist, or an emo Romulan who looks suspiciously like Emo Spock…

You seem like you care WAY too much lol. You pointed out Children of Mars, how is having two little girls who simply don’t like each other in a story ‘politically motivated’? So if it was two little boys that would make it OK? It sounds to me just having any inclusion of women is politically motivated for you, which is just bizarre.

Take a breath, the show isn’t trying to eliminate all men, especially since the main lead of the show is in fact a man. ;)

How terrible for you. Stop attacking commentators and find something more substantial to back up your debating position, or GTFO.

How terrible for you there are more than 3 women on the show. Your ‘points’ have been debated by everyone here and most don’t agrees with you chief.

How did he attack you? He engaged with your arguments. You’re the one who isn’t answering the questions:

1) Why do you care about these roles being played by women, when, if they were gender-flipped or neutrally cast, they wouldn’t change the story at all? What, to you, personally, is offensive about this, when nobody else seems to care? i.e…. What was your gut reaction? What emotions did you feel when you saw this? Do you understand why you felt that way?

2) Why do you call these casting choices ‘politically motivated’? What evidence do you have of any political motivation, and to what political ends – what would this casting accomplish, politically? What grand political theory pivots on the casting of a one-time guest role in a show with spaceships, robots and laser guns?

Do you have any evidence of bias from the production team? Did you read an interview with the casting director where they stated anything about this? All sarcasm aside, I think we’re all open to having our minds changed if you can present us with anything and make a cogent case.

Working in show business, yes, I can say that casting *is* going more gender and race-blind, because aside from cases where gender and race matter to the character’s storyline (or adaptation from other media, etc) there is no reason not to give talented actors the opportunity to play these roles, if the casting director thinks they are the best for that part. That is meritocracy in action.

It’s designed to be fairer, and while it won’t right all historical wrongs, it is a step forward towards increased equality of opportunity.

Doing blind auditions for orchestras – based purely on hearing them play from behind a screen – has changed the composition of them from mostly-male to, as you would expect, a split that generally matches the population gender divide. Doing ethnic / gender-blind casting based on talent does the same.

As I’ve said, I couldn’t care less if it’s all women or all men, what I care about is forced bias to one side or the other, and so far it’s just been a bunch of angry women yelling and swearing at Picard, which isn’t a particularly flattering reflection to any of the very few females who are part of our community.

Could you TLDR the rest of your posts please, as far as I can see by skim reading it’s all a rant on the same topic but can respond to any other points if they are lost for the forest.

Dude, I’m not writing at complicated graduate student paper level, I’m writing adult English for other adults. But point taken, I don’t want to drag things out either.

Not trying to get you in a ‘gotcha,’ I genuinely want to understand where you are coming from. It would be helpful if you could unpack your thinking a bit.

To your first point:

– What exactly is this “forced bias” that you see, and why do you see it?
– Where did you get the idea there is ‘forced bias’ or ‘political motivations’?
– Who, in your view, is doing the “forcing,” and why – what’s the endgame?

To your second point:
– Why do you think women can’t (or shouldn’t) yell or swear? If you know real women, they do indeed yell and swear and do all the things men do.

(sorry, this post was stuck in drafts)

How bout you cite substantial sources for your comments?

But you clearly *do* care if it’s women. For you, their mere presence is evidence of “political motivation,” as opposed to just being normal, and you interpret the journalist character’s admitted jerky behaviour as “yelling.”

I’ve rewatched the episode, and if that’s “yelling,” you must not have ever really gotten yelled at, because you would KNOW what that was.

Yelling is Lee R. Ermey chewing out the Marine recruits in Full Metal Jacket, or Kirk going “KHAAAAAANNNNNN!” – the journalist was speaking at a completely regular volume level, just like any interviewer I’ve ever seen in real life.

I just don’t get it: What is your objection to these roles being played by women? If the role was played by a man, and they performed it identically – same level and tone of voice, same direction from the director – do you think you would even notice?

I somehow doubt you would be talking about “Picard being yelled at by men,” as if their gender had something to do with their character / role / actions. (Yes, there are casting cases where gender matters, but for these specific roles? Not so much.)

I mean, by analogy, if you were in 1965, would you object to Nichelle Nichols and George Takei being cast, because including non-white bridge officers was “politically motivated?”

“What are all these goldurn colored folk doing running a starship? The Navy was segregated in my day, this is clearly pandering to that troublemaker Dr. King and those dangerous commie one-worlders!!”

I am of course exaggerating for satirical purposes here, but you aren’t really engaging with the arguments or providing satisfactory explanations, so riddle me this: Are you just here to troll?

If so, admin, please wield the banhammer.

@Mike Burnthem – “it’s politically motivated asymmetric demographics which ruin it,”

With that dishonest bigot talking point, you’ve lost any chance of getting along in this forum. You’re clearly coming from a far-right position (using “triggered” as you did, your “politically motivated” comment…), so your politics are biasing your comments.

Good luck with that. I won’t be engaging with you anymore, and I predict many others will feel the same. LL&P!

dishonest bigot? My wife feels more strongly about it than I do! She says that she’s “not going to cosplay as any of these demented maniacs”, and I’m certainly not going to even try as that pixy Romulan from episode 3..

That Tiger fool is the reason myself and many, MANY of the people in my online social group don’t come to this site anymore. We now stick to Reddit. The admins of this site ought remove him/her. They are either an intentionally baiting troll, or someone with genuine borderline personality disorder. The fact that they have been here for so long begs the question of if it may be a member of site staff throwing their weight around under an unbannable sock puppet account

@Nicky – Tiger2 used to be far less hostile, defensive, and trollish. Used to be fun to chat with.

I hope he gets back to that.

Nicky, you are sock puppet. You’re not fooling anyone. If you’re not, tell me who you are and how I singlehandily destroyed your life here? If you can’t do that, yeah…

The irony is if people want me to leave them alone, I will. Yes things gets heated but I am the FIRST to apologize if I crossed the line. Majority of the time, if I know me and another person just can’t get along I’m the first to say let’s just ignore each other and go about our business. No big deal. For some reason they STILL don’t want to do that lol. But they all been banned. But seriously I’m not perfect I KNOW that, but I’m not a mind reader. If I really hurt someone’s feelings or they think I was being too belligerent or unfair I will certainly apologize or try to make amends.

Unless you’re just trolling. PaulB isn’t, but YOU most likely are.

Are we talking about the same Tiger here? We’ve had our disagreements but he has been nothing but open from what I can meagerly tell from just reading internet thread posts.

Now YOU get it PaulB. ;)

Says the person who’s feels got hurt and is threatening people not to respond to him or he’ll “report” them.

Regardless of gender… She was an asshat to Picard when he made his request. If the admiral were male and reacted the same way, he’d be an asshat. You don’t treat someone who is well respected that way even in private and even though you didn’t like he rant on the newsfeeds. I even followed her logic for why the evacuation project was halted and she still treated him badly. A simple “I’m sorry but I cannot authorize that because…” would have sufficed.

So far the Picard show seems to be presenting a definitive pattern of Elder Abuse.

LOL!

For someone that seems to dislike Fox News, you sure do like to gaslight…

Gee Mike Burnthem, it’s a good thing that all those girls in the 1970s who watched Star Trek in syndicated reruns didn’t say “Oh, how awful, all but the communications officer on the bridge are men.”

Or for that matter, my mother-in-law who watched as an adult in the 1960s.

Certainly, the Trek demographic has never been exclusively 14 year-old boys.

If all those women could stand to see women coping with men, perhaps you can suck it up for one show.

Wow, some truth there.

Authoritative but the ones shown ,so far at least, have been rather abrasive, although most of the characters overall have been abrasive, the characters and dialogue are very 2019, 2020.

Roddenberry also liked optimistic future, which this series hasn’t shown yet.

It’s telling how the ending of Star Trek VI saw the future and how this sees the future.

Hate to sound rude but I dont have clue what you’re saying most of the time. Why have you got to say “very 2019, 2020” all the time?

It’s pretty obvious what DataLore means. The 24th century (almost 25th) characters using 2019/2020-era slang and idioms. They sound like they’re just sitting around somewhere in 2019/2020, talking like we do. No attempt to sound like it’s a different time with different idioms and slang.

Weak, lazy writing because these writers are incapable of imagining anything new or futuristic. (as they’ve shown with 2 seasons of Discovery and 2 episodes of Picard)

Alex Kurtzman doesn’t seem to understand that Trek has always sounded a little alien, like humans now but with something not quite right. It’s akin to how someone from the 19th century might feel speaking to someone of the 21st century, but instead all of the characters they create sound like 2018, already slightly outdated and completely devoid of any of Trek’s signature futurism.

If Kurtzman had actually watched Trek when it was produced he would understand that, but because he’s obviously done most of his “research” since 2009 he looks back on it and it sounds old, rather than futuristic. Alas this reboot version will date very quickly, and obviously missing a major part of the soul and feel of Trek. It’s so blatantly obvious that he was never a fan until a carrot was dangled in front of his face.

You’re absolutely correct. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear that people who grew up with Trek are the target audience for this, which is the same story as has been since these reboots began 4 years after Enterprise came off the air.

I fear there is a possibility they may be taking the hard core fans for granted. They are the ones who will tend to watch and pay for nearly anything that says Star Trek on it. Sadly, I am one of those. Discovery felt like they were trying to make it so non fans could maybe follow easier. And Picard is starting to feel the same. So far the 31 episodes of Secret Hideout produced Trek that is the impression I am getting. If true it’s not necessarily a bad way to make the shows. But it does mean they have a tighter line to walk, perhaps.

This is all speculation and perception on my part, of course. Feel free to disagree as even I am open to this not being the case.

When you contrast it with Pike’s ‘I just can’t get used to a woman on the bridge’ it’s really nice to see how far we’ve come. Calm down lol the men still outnumber the women in the cast and the show is led by an elderly man for crying out loud. You’re pointing out things that women have had to deal with for…well since forever. It’s not the end of the world and it’s not the end of Star Trek.

I hear you, but to be fair “hanging up” has been used before. By Riker: “I take it the Shelliac hung up on us.”

Don’t ask me how I remember that. I just do.

We still talk about “hanging up” phones now even though most of us use smartphones or other devices that never were hanging anywhere. I can believe the phrase lingering into the future since it already has done so.

In the UK we say “put the phone down” as our phones were never hung on a wall.

I’m 55. The only place I ever saw a phone hanging on a wall was in a phone booth.

Might be a “Man Trap” salt shaker situation. They use contemporary props/nomenclature/phrases so the audience will get it.

I do not buy into everything you wrote but I am forced to say my feelings about the show are similar in that this 2nd episode took a massive turn for the worse. Too many things were way too easy to work out and find. The concept of the super secret tal shiar. Infiltration of Star Fleet at its highest level. I would have liked it better if this was picking up on the Conspiracy story from the first season. Maybe. But this episode had too many facepalm moments. And the thing that made me throw up a little was the hologram of the old Enterprise. It’s the STD one. Not the TOS one nor was it even the movie version. That made me remember that STD aesthetic fits perfectly into the Picard aesthetic. Even though they are more than 100 years apart.

Q in ‘Q Who’ (2365/1989); “perhaps you ought to go back home and crawl back under your bed. It’s not safe out here!”. “Terrors to freeze your soul!”. That sounds dystopian, and scary, and dangerous, to me. Q should know best shouldn’t he?

Laughable response!

LOL….crawl back from QWHo is perfect response;
They are establishing plenty of female adversaries for Picard instead of only old corrupt white men and male aliens (e.g. 1998 Insurrection). I like how Zhuhan is a cool and calm Romulan…found out that he was the ‘in control’ of the codes to the USS Verity in Picard Countdown #3 comic. His wife/partner has a different personality and skill sets along with different forehead and accent, it shows diversity within Romulan society and much as there are likely diverse Klingons.

So when Q is making a reference to the Federation’s biggest threat they haven’t yet met, AKA the Borg, and I am referring to the optimistic and outward nature of the federation and starfleet itself, how can that ridiculous response be anything other than laughable?
I don’t recall Starfleet stop building ships, cut themselves off from space and stop helping others after the Borg attack which took out most of the fleet and threatened the entire federation with oblivion. Why would a few androids taking out utopia planitia turn them into xenophobic closed off clowns? 95% of the federation have nothing to do with Mars! Earth wanting to leave the federation would have made more sense, and line up more with Patrick Stewart’s Brexit-hating mindset.

Excellent point, Mike.

And by the way, DataMat, even if the Federation retreated back to its borders and everyone hid under their beds, the Borg would still eventually come after them and everyone else in the galaxy. It’s what they do. And exploring is what humans do.

I thought … Kirsten? Admiral, CNC, can’t remember last name off top of head … had an almost Nora Sadie reaction to Picard. And I thought the irony there was a bit palpable, as Sadie was overreacting to Picard’s coolness (and righteousness, but he was right), because of fear of Romulan infiltrators in the Federation. And you know … Kirsten so-and-so … freaking out at Picard coming in there, saying that just such a thing as Sadie feared is finally happening … and this lady doesn’t want to hear it and has a full-on Sadie-tantrum.

In that way this episode plays as a bit of a spiritual successor to not just Conspiracy, but particularly The Drumhead. And also, particularly, although the first episode already did for it’s own reasons, this one doubles down on being a spiritual sequel to Data’s Day, which not just featured Data writing back to Maddox, but also where you know, a Romulan infiltrated the Federation by posing as a Vulcan.

Tangent: I know Rizzo is a Romulan undercover but I actually figured Commodore … Vulcan lady (man, I gotta get up on these names), is probably, possibly actually a Vulcan? Some Vulcans must be pretty pro-Romulan at this point. With the calamity and shake-up, Reunification must look different at this point. A different logic. A Pro-Spock Vulcan could even probably justify pro-Romulan conspiratorial stuff.

The secret is that the Romulans somehow created the Borg.

Geordi isn’t dead. Crusher is otherwise he would have called her to certify him.

Did we get an unnecessary F bomb?

The brother and sister Romulans are Sela’s kids and somehow will be connected to Nero as well. Nero’s ship used Borg tech.

on the nail

Two, though one was a little harder to hear.

Three. Once on Mars by that woman worker, once by a romulan woman with an Irish accent, and once by that angry admiral woman.

That doesn’t prove anything about Beverly. You don’t call your Ex-wife or Ex-lover to get certified — and she may very well be captain of that hospital ship or on a starbase. But when they do meet up, I’ll place a bet she’ll be whining at him too. Or horny. But you can’t complain about that… it’s exactly where she was for 6 seasons.

Beverly was Picard’s trusted doctor for years, why would that suddenly stop in favour of a doctor he’s not seen for even longer?

did you not hear the part where he didn’t want them involved in this mess? If he called her, shed blab to the others.

Actually he didn’t mention her, further bolstering what’s already been widely leaked. It’s revealed in episode 8.

Why would you reveal that?! What the hell is wrong with you?

its in all the msm known to most outside of this echo chamber, twitter and reddit etc

I know this article says “Spoiler Discussion” but I thought only spoilers for this episode, not a spoiler six episodes from now. Thanks a bunch, Mike.

Some of us detest MSM (lowest form of life on the planet) and avoid it like the plague.

Can you delete that post, please?

Because perhaps she is somewhere else? Not on Earth? There are plenty of reasons she would not be his personal physician.

Also, to me even though a past was hinted at throughout the run of the series I never really saw anything beyond a friendly professional relationship between the two. It seems reasonable to me that she would not be his physician in retirement to begin with. He seems to be friendlier with his Stargazer Doc than anyone he worked with on Enterprise anyway.

I don’t think the Romulans created the Borg (although their first known attack was along the Romulan neutral zone!) I thought maybe the Borg assimilated the Romulans that were left behind after the Federation bailed on the evacuation, but I’m not so sure of that anymore.

Dr. Crusher is not dead. As Picard said, he doesn’t want to involve any of his old Enterprise crew for fear that their loyalty to him would get them killed.

Yes, we did hear 2 F-bombs, but I wouldn’t say they were unnecessary. Hearing a Starfleet Admiral say that to Picard was a pretty good dramatic moment. And Laris saying “cheeky feckers” I thought was hilarious!

I don’t think that they are to kill any TNG characters off screen.

the 1000 year old secret that will blow your mind up.. yeah that sounds like having created the borg to me, especially now there is this new found dislike for androids and artificial intelligence that didn’t exist until yesterday, their desire to pull apart a cube with little interest in the species their technology assimilated in the process..

Or some secret that ties into the Vulcans.

Organics are just too diverse and imperfect now for Utopia TNG, obviously! Nothing to learn from them.

LOL here we go again! I remember how last year on DIS we got endless discussions for weeks on how it was CONTROL who actually created the Borg. Now its the Romulans. And the Borg are VERY old, over 100 thousand years when they started developing and started in the Delta quadrant. I just don’t understand why people throw out these theories. They make no sense.

If I had any interest in Discovery I would surely agree with you. The reviews kept mentioning evil AI there too but it didn’t interest me.

It doesn’t matter if it interest you or not, this was the EXACT same theory on that show too lol. And that was less than a year ago. Now here we are yet AGAIN! And like before it doesn’t remotely line up with what we know about the Borg, since they are waaaaay older than Romulans in terms of when they split from the Vulcans. And it happened on the other side of the freaking galaxy. If the Romulans created the Borg then why were there none in the alpha quadrant when they have a huge foothold in the delta quadrant? As I use to say to everyone who kept saying this when DIS was on, just think it through for three entire minutes.

How terrible for you. Stop attacking commentators and find something more substantial to back up your debating position, or GTFO.

WTF? I didn’t attack you lol. I just debated your points. You seem scared to debate back. Again, this just comes off like trolling.

@Tiger2 – Wrong, and stop accusing people of trolling when they aren’t. Not even close. You refuse to leave people alone unless they LOVE this show with the same unthinking enthusiasm you have. You’re a pest unless we agree with you entirely. Bug off.

PaulB, I LITERALLY said I would ignore you and yet here you are talking to me again lol. And dude we both know I don’t care if people hate the show (its been on two episodes, I could hate the show in time lol) just like I didn’t care people hated Discovery. But this guy is not really discussing the show, he clearly hates the direction Kurtzman is taking Star Trek in general and basically looking for all these shows to end.

THATS what bothers me. And thats his right to but once you start with the SJW and 25% BS we had to hear so much with Discovery (and I HATED much of Discovery first season but still called these people out) then its just more of that Midnight Edge BS which people HAVE been banned for here. He’s upset because its too many women on the show? Do you really think no one is going to respond to that?

PaulB, we have actually agreed on MANY things in the past. I disagreed with you in one post a few weeks ago and now you hate me lol. Fine, but dude this works BOTH ways, I will ignore your posts as you requested because I’m not here to make people feel bad man. And in fact, I will apologize to you because clearly I did. But that was NEVER my intent here. OK? But I will ignore you regardless because I’m not here to make waves and I clearly offended you even if that was not my intent. But you can’t keep calling me the devil either and not expect me to respond. I get enough of that from my own family.

So yes, make up your mind ignore me or attack me, but you can’t do both. ;)

Paul has it spot on, as do I. Your only response to arguments is to take it personally and attack others, and when that fact is pointed out to you, you double down on it.

Enough is enough, either debate the topic, or take your leave of it, as your money is no good here sir.

Mike all you’re doing is what people have been doing here for a long time now since Discovery came on. And I HAVE tried to have a conversation with you here. I only called you a troll because you started posting the same response to me. That is literally trolling lol. I been on these boards for a long time now, I have definitely said things I shouldn’t have said but I didn’t attack you. You are clearly triggered when you go into a rant about too many women on a TV show. It’s yours to have but you are in the wrong place i you think no one here is going to disagree with you on it.

@Mike – Meanwhile, Mike, you’re posting sexist comments that don’t really fit with Trek. Do you stand by your sexist comments?

@PaulB almost as strongly as my wife, who said she’s “not going to cosplay as any of those maniacs”. And I sanitised her quote, like that Admiral didn’t.

Debate the topic!

Stop responding or ill report!

Wow.

Not attacking you. Calling you out for your behavior. You like to gush your uncritical love of Trek at length, but you attack people who dare to be heavily critical. You’re a hypocrite, which wipes out any good qualities you might have.

Responding to a person’s sexist point is possible without your attacks against the person. I did so. Called him out for it.

Stop attacking fans for criticizing what you love.
Stop denying basic established facts about Trek.
Allow others to gripe as much as you praise. It’s their right. Stop trying to squelch critical fans.
Stop pretending like you’re a paragon of politeness.

I’m not pretending anything, but dude MAKE UP YOUR MIND lol. You said you were IGNORING me! Then I said OK, I understand and will ignore you. I come back and there are now a half dozen posts from you to me lol.

But no I’m not perfect either. I have certainly said things I later regret, for sure. And when I have I have also apologized.

PaulB, I have been here for ten years now. I have known you for several of those years. UNTIL a few weeks ago we had no issues with each other, at least that I know of. We have both agreed and disagreed with each other in the past and we moved on. You have never called me a troll or that I ‘attack others’. Now, suddenly that’s what I’m infamous for lol.

I can’t stop you for feeling this way. But PaulB you have to make up your mind, do you want to ignore me, hash it out like I’m trying to do or just attack me? I have nothing against you man, but clearly I hit a nerve somewhere. All I can do is apologize but I’m not going to back down on what I said in the other thread. Honestly until now I didn’t even know you were still bothered by it.

But which is it?

@Tiger2 – Stop the “hit a nerve” crap. I have clearly stated my issues with you. You attack people (then lie about doing it). You attack people for posting “B.S.” then get mad when you get called out for B.S.

I’ve pointed out several places here where you attack and insult people for HOW they dare to talk about Trek.

You weren’t a troll in the past. Now you are. You gatekeep, you attack, you insult, you sneer (“think it through for three minutes”), you refuse to be criticized…

You keep trying to make this about ME have hurt feelings. Nope. Every time I reply, I talk about your treatment of OTHERS. Clearly, one of us isn’t paying attention here or listening at all.

You criticize others constantly. Time for you to take some criticism to heart…if you’re a nice guy at all.

I’ll stop posting for this evening. You really should read my other replies. I’ve been very clear and specific about what you’re doing and why it’s a problem. You are NOT the nice guy you’re trying to pretend to be. I hope you can get back to being that guy, because the current version of you is as bad as others who have been banned over the years.

Don’t reply unless you read my other comments. I’ve been specific and clear in my criticism, with examples throughout this page. Either you can accept fair, true criticism, or you’re a troll. Your choice.

PaulB, then what else could it be lol!

We have been here for YEARS having conversations. Until TODAY not once have you accused me of attacking others or being a troll. And now it all comes out like someone who has repressed all their memories as a child or something.

It’s just really odd because until now we always been civil to each other. So where is it coming from now? This is the most you ever responded to me period lol. And I have read all your comments, clearly you are very very angry with me. Dude I didn’t even know that until today. How would I?

I get it, but man if you felt this way about me, why am I just hearing about it LITERALLY just today and not for the YEARS we have made discussions here? Can you answer that for me?

@Tiger2 – You asked, so I’ll reply and then I’ll shut up for the evening. (Not even if you ask questions.)

After our exchange about the Trek facts, I decided to ignore you rather than engage and/or bicker.

Then I saw your behavior in this thread, and I decided to speak up about your ongoing bad behavior toward fellow fans. (And yeah, a bit angry because hypocrisy and hatefulness to fans anger me.)

If you hadn’t been attacking and hostile to others, I’d have kept avoiding you, leaving us both in peace.

G’night!

So yes this is ALL about that thread lol. Dude, FOR LOVE OF GOD, we had a disagreement. And I’m going to be 100% honest with you PaulB, I don’t even remember what it was about lol. I mean yes I REMEMBER we got into discussion but I honestly don’t even remember what it was specifically about, only that I had a sharp disagreement about it, you thought I was being unreasonable and stopped talking to me. I didn’t even know it was an issue until now and it ALLLL comes out lol.

PaulB, all I can say is sorry. I mean it. But if you want to lash out for awhile, fine we simply disagreed over something no matter HOW right you feel about it, happens every day. If I called you a name over it, then OF COURSE that’s crossing the line. But I didn’t do that, so this has gotten out of hand. If you can’t accept my apology because I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, then I will surely ignore you from this point on as long as you ignore me if thats what you want. And I said that in my fist post, no hard feelings! What more can I say????? I been trying to be as civil about this as possible, but you seem to want to keep fighting about it.

And my ‘behavior’ in this thread is towards a sexist troll and someone who is pushing lies. It has nothing to do with a TV show man, I’m calling out someone who has been called out MANY TIMES by various people. I don’t mean the poster specifically but the type of stuff these people spew and YOU KNOW IT since you also called the guy a dishonest bigot lol. Even *I* didn’t go that far. So now you’re basically getting on my case for calling out someone you now realized needed to be called out?

And I never called him a name. C’mon man, at least admit I wasn’t just ‘attacking’ someone because they said something bad about Star Trek.

@Tiger2 – Yet again, you insist it’s about the other thread while I keep pointing out your behavior in this thread. Yet again, you accuse me of being so upset while you’re the one getting emotional in your replies.

ONCE AGAIN: After the other thread I decided to ignore you to avoid bickering. Then I saw you being a jerk on this thread, so I decided to speak up against your jerk behavior. Only a moron would continue to insist this is ALL ABOUT the other thread. You’re *not* a moron, so revise your thinking on that.

You keep defending your attacks on others, denying what you do, and trying to pass yourself off as blameless. You’re not. You attacked SEVERAL people here, NOT just the guy expressing sexism.

You refuse to admit your behavior. Fine.
You continue to say this is ALL about the other thread when it’s not. Fine.
You continue to defend your attacks while denying making them. Fine.

Tiger, it’s hard to consider you as anything but a troll considering all of that. I hoped you’d come back around to being decent to chat with. I guess not.

Live long and prosper, Tiger. We won’t be interacting anymore.

PaulB I have not attacked anyone EXCEPT one guy who you ALSO attacked lol. And even then I never called him a name AS you did, I simply called him out for WHAT HE IS, as you did. You’re coming off like a hypocrite since we attacked the same person and for the same reasons. Sooooo yeah! ;D

And BTW, I found that thread that got you in such a tiffy over here and honestly I have NO idea why you wee so put off by it? Yes, we disagreed (and I STILL disagree btw ;)) but I didn’t attack you man, I didn’t call you any names or berated you in any way. I simply held my ground since I felt one way and you did the same….which is done here all the time. End of story. No big deal. It was a few exchanges and that was the end of it. So I don’t get why you are so in a huffy about it and its ONLY you on this thread claiming I’m even attacking people here.

But you made 20 posts going completely off topic ironically attacking me saying all I do is bully others here if I disagree with their statement over Star Trek; which is odd because I NEVER ever told anyone to feel any differently about how they should feel about a show, love it or hate it. Most of the time I only talk about how I feel about it as I come here to mostly give my thoughts on something and not here to worry about how others feel about it as I imagine most do the same.

So great, you don’t want to interact with me anymore, which I told you 20 freaking posts ago I was fine with lol, but you had to vent so I get it. You vented now. We good? Great! Don’t worry as long as you ignore me from this point on, I will certainly ignore you, especially after this melt down lol. Take it easy.

Now this board can hopefully get back to being about the show and NOT me!

Someone’s disagreeing with you isn’t an attack. Such a banal, immature, simple minded argument.

Too many people consider a difference of opinion an “attack”. Sigh. What is happening to us these days?

Picard called. He’d like you to stop watching the show you don’t enjoy. Thanks.

Of course they did. What do you think the “big secret” is? Why do you think they hate any technology designed to imitate or augment artificial intelligence? These are all of course plots spun entirely in Picard. In TNG’s “the defector” the Romulan was intrigued by Data and said how many Romulan cyberneticist can only dream of being in the same room as Data.

Now we’re told Romulans actually despise artificial intelligence and computers that do anything other than numerical calculations. Come on, use your head now. Why would this suddenly be made a plot point for the sake of this reboot? Because the romulans are now retconned into a borg origin story, just so Secret Hideout can get their greasy finger prints over as much canon as possible. That big 25% different borg cube with huge angular slices taken out of it should earn a few bob in merchandise licensing. And of course it can’t be called a borg cube, oh no, it’s now called “The Artifact”, ie part of their history.

I actually agree with your points about ‘The Defector’. I recently watched that for this show and yes he was fascinated by Data. It is true we have never seen any type of AI in Romulan society but we haven’t seen a lot of AI in ANY society frankly. So yes this is probably a retcon, which is a Star Trek staple in story telling lol. Discovery wasn’t the first show to retcon things and Picard won’t be the last.

But can you stop with the 25% silliness. Guys, CBS owns it ALL, what are you going on about? Who do they have to change it for???? Who is forcing the company that owns the IP to change 25% of their own designs and for what purpose? Who is this shadowy group that has such control? Can you answer that?? Do you know see how silly this idea is? And its been debunked. People have literally been banned here for bringing up this nonsense over and over again. Just let it go.

Discovery doesn’t retcon, it’s bad fan fiction. So is Picard, and the fan is Patrick Stewart’s desire to give himself a greater acting range, at the expense of the audience.

Then why are you here? To point this out to the rest of us? Why don’t you simply stop watching it then.

I have my issues with DIS but I do like it and don’t believe its ‘bad fan fiction’. And certainly not Picard. This is the stuff I always wanted in Star Trek. DS9 is my favorite show for a reason.

How terrible for you. Stop attacking commentators and find something more substantial to back up your debating position, or GTFO.

Mike if this is all your responses going to be because you clearly can’t even have a debate now then it’s basically trolling. Seriously.

I’ve no interest in your opinion of me, and neither has anyone else. If you’re completely unable to debate a topic without resorting to attacking others, you’re done here.

Dude you been here a day. And clearly just here to pass off the same BS others have which is the real issue, and yes people have been banned for. You probably are just a sock puppet of someone who was already banned. But if you want me to ignore you, no worries, just ignore me too and you’re never get a post from me again. I doubt you will be here long either way.

Tiger2, I don’t get why your upbeat but critical view of recent Trek is such an affront to some. (But then we agree so very often.) It really seems like whoever Mike Burnthem is wasn’t around to read your criticism and frustrations over the last couple of years.

Tek thanks for weighing in. As I didn’t get to see this until CTV Sci-fi channel broadcast in Canada Thursday evening, I dropped in this thread late.

I hadn’t expected to find tha Mike Burnthem was trying to provably false rumours about the status of Discovery, and attempting to intimidate anyone who called him on it.

Not the fun discussion of the actual episode I was hoping for certainly.

I appreciate that TG47,

It is funny I have been one of the most critical people on Discovery, especially its first season. I have been a lot less hard on it in second season but I still criticized the show quite a bit. It simply got better in my mind and I enjoyed it more, which is a good thing obviously. Picard is still VERY early but so far I’m REALLY enjoying it. Doesn’t mean it will stay that way of course. But message boards being what they are some people can only remember your last opinion on something and assume that’s what its always been when clearly that’s not the case. But I love the fact I’m pegged both as a hater and apologist for these shows. ;)

As for Mike Burnthem, as you noted I got on his case because he is peddling the same BS others have peddled here since DIS started airing, which Trekmovie has literally removed from this board for doing so. It’s not because of their ‘opinion’, its because they are throwing out completely false misinformation. THAT’s what I was calling that guy on. And then you can see once I finally challenged him and just asked him to name his sources he immediately backed away lol. So clearly my suspensions were correct.

It has zip to do with how he feels about Discovery or Picard, he is simply trolling the same junk you find on Youtube. And yet the other guy was hounding me in every post claiming I was attacking him because I was trying to censor his thoughts over the show. Sigh

And yes Tek, thank you for weighing in as well! Most of us just want to discuss the show, for good or bad. We don’t need insane conspiracy theories people seem to love to peddle here.

I love that you think you’re able to determine who is done here. The hubris indeed.

Then please stop watching. Do you drink a glass of urine every day too?

For the record, “The Defector” was an episode I recall liking.

But I’m surprised people still bring up that bogus 25% thing. It was hogwash when Viacom was separate from CBS and it’s still hogwash today.

“When we saw the level of destruction, we knew it could not have been you.”
– Romulan Commander, “Neutral Zone”

Because they already knew about the Borg?

Some of that might be true ,way too early to say.

Mars workers are form 21st century? I thought humans would move beyond 21st century talk.

Not just 21st century talk but 21st (20th) century behaviour. That whole scene seemed to be lifted from Aliens.

Back in the 20th century we had no idea there was a university on Mars, or a ship factory.

How dare humans have to work for resources in the 24th century! Very anti-TNG utopia!

Where did it ever suggests humans stopped working for resources lol. Every colony we saw they were always working. As usual its like you never watched the show.

In the far superior TOS I agree with you. But I can see how Falassion would be confused with respect to TNG – what colony in TNG did anyone have to work outside Picard on his private property (which is awesome by the way!)?

This is such an odd question, what colony did we not see people working lol. Every colony was filled with people doing things. They didn’t have androids doing all the work. This episode was the first one I can recall even seeing androids doing grunt work and they were still working along side humans. I don’t get your weird nerdy obsession to hate on the 24th century because it doesn’t fall into your ideals of a fake future but at least stop cherry picking everything.

@Tiger2 – “I don’t get your weird nerdy obsession to hate on the 24th century because it doesn’t fall into your ideals of a fake future but at least stop cherry picking everything.”

Yep. You never attack people here. Nope. Not at all.

I been having the same conversation with this guy for years now lol. PaulB, seriously, you are coming off incredbily angry to me? First you said you wanted to ignore me, and now you won’t stop talking to me lol. Dude I said I was sorry, I did not know I made you so upset as I did. I don’t think I was attacking you, I simply disagreed with you. BUT if you feel I was attacking you, I’m sorry, that was never my intent. Unless I call someone a name then to me we’re just having a conversation. And you can admit tone can be hard on the internet. I just didn’t know you felt this way at all until now.

But either way, again, you have to make up your mind, IGNORE ME, or we can just hash it out. I’m not pretending I’m perfect, clearly I offended you but can you at least accept I’m trying to make amends here?

(People are probably reading this and think we were a couple or something lol.)

The question you should really be asking is what the hell the people on Mars are supposed to be doing. The shipyards are in orbit, and they don’t need to mine anything as they have industrial replicators to build ships. Surely all these people do is press buttons on replicators and then beam it up to the shipyards.

Need a warp core for a intrepid? Sure, let me just press these buttons to send it to the the industrial replicator and I’ll beem it to you Sir. What’s that? You need 1000 wall paintings of random celestial phenomena for guest quarters? Sure, what colour frames? I’ll beam them right up. You need replicators for the crew quarters? Sure, let me just replicate them for you and I’ll beam them up. What’s that Captain? You need an entire warp nacelle? OK, I’ll replicate sections 1-10, beam them up to you, then beam the bolts into place nice and tight with my transporter designed to place every atom perfectly.

What exactly else are they doing at Utopia Planitia? Oh that’s right, we saw on the Enterprise’s holodeck the Galaxy class drafting room building the prototype. Yes I remember now, Leah Brahms had mud on her face, dirt under her finger nails, was all greased up in a dress in that dirty, noisy industrial complex, wasn’t she? I remember the orange Martian sky outside, the winds howling, the cast of Alien sat around a table stuffing food from school lunch trays down their faces being rude toward the silly robots..

What we saw in Picard wasn’t Utopia Planitia, it was some kind of federation penal colony inhabited entirely by reprobates. Apparently the entire federation is crewed by the same reprobates, they are all the same cliche variants of the same theme ripped right out of generic sci-fi 101.

Wolf’s adoptive family settled in a farming colony. His adopted brother reportedly enjoyed the life, but Worf did not and went into Starfleet Academy.

There definitely were farmers on Bajor, although it wasn’t a Federation world.

And I’m sure they are doing that work for free because there is no money and no want in the 24th century.

Definitely did not like that we are back to some syndrome that is killing Picard.

He’s trying to undo the optimistic ending of All Good Things.

I don’t think it undoes that ending. Any fan now knowing where the show is going, assuming he does not get magically cured, can ignore Star Trek: Picard if they like, letting Trek end at Nemesis, which I was ok with that ending.

Story of a Trekkie’s/Trekker’s life: When canon ends and your imagination begins! For me, things started to get wonky with the throw away line in ST:III describing the Romulan Ale as 2283 vintage. That date was about 70 years ahead of most accepted timelines at that time.

Fast forward to “Encounter at Farpoint” where the nuclear war that Earth avoided (according to Spock in “Space Seed”) evidently occurred.

My preferred Star Trek ends with either ST:IV or ST:V, believe it or not. I guess I’m in the minority, but ST:VI is just ridiculous with no original script – just historical and literary allusions used for dialogue.

I’m certainly not buying that Romulus was destroyed by some ueber-supernova which, to my understanding (and you have to read some novel to get this fact??), occurred OUTSIDE the Romulan star system and, therefore, travelled faster than the speed of light through to destroy Romulus?

GIVE.ME.A.BREAK.

To be fair, I think they corrected that “uber-supernova” thing in canon (by last week’s episode) by saying it was the Romulan sun. The “Hobus star” was never canon, that was just in ST Countdown and STO.

I totally try to forget the “threatened the whole galaxy” bit from ST09, which was beyond stupid (just the science, I actually enyoed the movie…)

Thanks for the update!

I always took McCoy’s 2283/takes a while to ferment lines as sarcasm or irony. Kirk is amused that the Ale is from the current year, and McCoy jokes about it. Never even thought it could be a date error as you suggest.

I mostly agree with Trek ending at the end of ST:IV. I loathe ST:VI top to bottom (except the music). It’s anti-Trek through and through.

ST:Picard refers to the Romulan star as the one that exploded, so they seem to be retconning the Hobus super-super-supernova nonsense into something less stupid.

Thanks for the update!

I’m with you when Farpoint showed a nuclear holocost. Which supposedly never happened in TOS. That was one of the things I liked about Trek. It was a sci-fi show that did NOT claim we were going to nuke each other. It helped get TNG off to a very bad start in my book.

And regarding the Romulan super nova… I never thought it was universe ending. It was merely Romulus ending. That is what I got watching Trek ’09.

It does, because the difference in the All Good Things alternate future was that Picard had gone crazy, then at the end of the series Beverly said he had the defect but wouldn’t necessarily lead to any problems. Now we find that not only have the last 20 years of his life been miserable and unfulfilled, but now that he does have a problem, that it means starfleet will never commission him again, that all we have left is this miserable dystopia, and all thrown away in a 30 second conversation.

“All Good Things…” was the story that *introduced* the idea that Picard would face mental illness, and it gave no indication (that I spotted) that he would find a way to avoid it.

In this future, he faces the same (or a similar) condition later, if at all. That hardly seems less optimistic to me.

Agreed.

Exactly, we were left at the end of that episode that Beverly did detect the markers that could lead to Irumadic syndrome, or a number of other related syndromes. And that is what the Stargazer CMO told Picard that it could lead to a few. Also, between Picard’s dreams, and what he thinks is going on, is very similar to what was going on to the old Picard in All Good Things.

In AGT Beverly said that she found a small defect, and that many people lead normal happy lives. Now we know that’s not the case at all, that he’s definitely got something that will kill him. That doesn’t sound like a normal happy life to me. In fact, it means he can never be commissioned in Starfleet again. No doubt Patrick Stewart twisting the knife so we all know that he’ll never play the character we know and love (and he has no interest whatsoever in) again.

“He’s definitely got something that will kill him” – Nope. The Dr. didn’t say it was fatal. He implied a bad outcome, but not death. And we’ve seen Picard face worse before and come through just fine. Maybe we can just let the story unfold and see what happens …

“He has no interest whatsoever in” – Huh? I’m not sure there in any person on the planet who has a greater interest in the character of Picard than Patrick Stewart. You do know that he’s signed on for a second season, right?

I’d reply to you several dozen other posts on this thread, but who has time for that, and you seem pretty determined to be miserable, so I’ll just let you be…

Go back and rewatch it if you dare. The doctor said it’s terminal.
Suggest you read the Variety interview for Stewart’s thoughts on reprising his role as the Captain we know and love. He has no interest whatsoever in Captain Picard, period. Your confusion is that this reboot Picard isn’t the Captain we know and love…

If he had no interest in playing Picard, why is he…playing Picard?

If you want to blame anything for introducing the Irumodic Syndrome plot point, blame “All Good Things.” Frankly, though, I suspect where they’re going with this is that some kind of Borg technology, or perhaps cyvbernetic technology from Maddox, will end up curing Picard’s condition.

How many times have I specifically stated “Captain Picard” now?

“If he had no interest in playing Picard, why is he…playing Picard?”

Because what that meant was he had no interest in playing Picard at the rates he was offered. Obviously this offer was considerably higher. And they gave him producer credit. Which means a say in things as well as extra money.

There was an optimistic ending to All Good Things? That show ended in a very neutral fashion. Not optimistic nor pessimistic. It felt like they were merely heading to the next episode. Probably because they wrapped and nearly the very next workday they started work on their feature film. Nemesis felt like an optimistic ending to the franchise.

But in 2370, Dr. Crusher diagnosed Picard with “a small structural defect in the parietal lobe that could lead to a number of neurological disorders, including Irumodic Syndrome”. So this might not be Irumodic Syndrome, but perhaps some other neurological disorder. Seems like a nice bit of continuity actually.

I Spent a lot of Episode 1 thinking or fearing rather,
that they would introduce the idea Picard was suffering from Iromoduc Syndrome and that this was some form of delusion.

I am glad that does not appear to be the case

I just don’t like that this is basically the set up to the end of a character. I miss the days of Indiana Jones and All Good Things where the characters in essence ride off into the sunset. That to me is great. Not everything has to be driven by sadness and depression. And not every story has to be the “one last ride” that Fast and Furious started and now the industry keeps slamming down our throats. The story would have been just fine without the added “oh by the way…I’m dying,” trope.

Hollywood has loved the “one last mission” trope for ages. Take the Bond franchise; we’re about to be treated to it again in NO TIME TO DIE, and we got a dose of it in SKYFALL as well. And that’s just during Daniel Craig’s tenure. We saw it in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, the TOS movies, NEMESIS, MI-5 “The Greater Good,” to some extent in the Ryanverse…need I go on?

I think we can both agree that its a tired concept and needs to be left behind.

No one in AGT “rode off into the sunset” as it were. It wasn’t a finale at all. Didn’t even have a ‘finale’ feel to it like nearly every other shows final episode. It obviously led into their movie adventures.

I completely forgot about that disorder, to be honest.

Not as good as the first episode.

The first episode of Picard was, IMHO, the best Star Trek since DS9 ended. So that already set a very high bar that this second episode did not meet. This episode was, well, kind of boring. It’s still far better than the entire two seasons of Discovery, the JJ movies, or most episodes of Enterprise, but not as amazing as it should have been.

I still love the slow pace, but it did not do any favor as the plot was unfolding drip by drip.

What I liked:
–the Goldsmith theme when Picard beamed to Starfleet HQ. That brought the tears!
–The Romulan secrecy
–The two Romulan friends of Picard (I still don’t know their names, but they rock!).
–Picard’s “What it should sill represent!”
–All the different Federation species viewed working on the cube: Trill, Andorian, etc.
–The Romulans acting so very Romulan! (It really stands out that the writers could not wait to do a Romulan story, and they went ULTRA ROMULAN with this, which is great!)
–Chabon once mentioned he wanted to really dive deep into Romulan culture like how TNG did with Klingons, and he was true to his word!
–Picard on the start to put a rag-tag crew together
–The reason why Picard would not want to get Worf, RIker, LaForge

What I did not like
–Another bad admiral
–The F-bomb (I get that McCoy said “d***” all the time and people will still use profanity in the future, but it just took me out of the story)
–The stupid, stupid lens flares! C’mon! That was so distracting and it was not needed at all! Also, that same scene between the Vulcan commodore and her spy had waaaay too many moving shots. Just keep the camera still and let me take in all the super-important exposition! It was hard to pay attention to what they were saying!
–The hologram communication between the Romulan siblings. I thought that DS9 tried the hologram-comm thing and then dropped it. IT doesn’t work. Please don’t do it again.

What I don’t care about
–The opening sequence of the synth attack. I am just not sure it was worth it. I think it was enough from what we know already, but maybe there will be call backs to that. But I don’t think the bang was worth the buck.
–The Borg stuff, again so far

Overall I am very invested in this show and am looking forward to the next one!

F-bombs don’t really impact anyone in my age group… just comes out in normal conversations or jokes around friends. Didn’t really bring me out of the story. Just made me chuckle.

The synth attack was important to the show and it shows that the Synths were taken control of at some point by someone. We as the audience are now the only ones who know this as Star Fleet doesn’t know what caused it or cares.

The galaxy got more complicated after the Dominion war, trying to placate all the different members, balancing the political fallout after Nemesis.

The borg stuff again is fun and it allows for a connection to bring 7of9 and Hugh back.

Yes, I think that’s where its going, someone planned to have the Synths attack to try and divide the Federation. I don’t think its Maddox though (not saying you believe this either just speaking in general) because why would he do something that would put all his work into question and basically get shut down for it. It seem like he would be the last person to do that, but many believe its him.

But as you said, the galaxy has been very complicated for a long ling tine now and why I’m really loving this story line. I thought after the Dominon war ended, Romulus blowing up, Cardassia in ruin and (possibly) the Borg were taken out, the galaxy could be at peace. But of course for drama reasons it looks like its gone the other way lol. So its interesting to see where this is all going.

Destroying things is easy, being a peace keeper, nation building, and keeping large populaces happy is very very hard. There will be several elements trying to take control of each of those nations and some who oppose helping others and trying to say “we want our boys home” may become popular as the surviving powers become tired and weary.

Take it you don’t have kids you can’t watch the show with now..

My kid, who is approaching 18 now, has been exposed to F-Bombs his entire life. He is perfectly adjusted and has a fine vocabulary. At least in front of me. ;)

The F’bomb seemed gratuitous.

Chabon says that’s how people really talk so he feels it adds realism.

Perhaps in his workplace, but not in mine. It would certainly be considered unprofessional conduct and documented.

It’s not a good example for kids as I’ve mentioned previously, and if our kids were any younger, it would put the episode off-limits.

Our kids are old enough that we can manage around it, and the scene of Soji and Narek in bed didn’t go beyond what we saw in TNG.

The official site showed a video of a 7-year old superfan watching the premiere. I wouldn’t have considered it appropriate for our kids at 7 due to the violence.

It doesn’t exist in my workplace, that’s for sure. That said I have heard it on rare occasions. It doesn’t even exist when I socialize with colleagues. But it DOES exist when I speak with old friends and family. The way I see it, there is a time and a place. And a Star Fleet Admiral undressing a retired “hero” with it was certainly NOT the time or the place. That admiral was an ass. Plain and simple.

It’s prevalent in my work place, but not so much so everyone overhears, or it’s behind closed doors in a canteen. In my line of work it’s not unexpected. We just don’t discuss about our work outside of work, so everything that needs to be said has to be said in work – which includes that type of vernacular.

F-Bombs don’t bother me in the slightest. Me and my friends use them among ourselves no problems. They don’t bother me when I hear them in movies or read them in books. But… I just don’t expect them in Star Trek for some reason. And to be honest, I don’t want to get used to hearing them in Star Trek. But I guess I should.

The holographic communications should not be an issue in this time frame. It IS an issue in Discovery. To me it makes sense they might evolve to that. We saw it in TUC. We saw it in Nemesis. It’s use in this time frame is just fine. They just never should have had any of it in Discovery.

I also want to say again how irritated I was that the old Enterprise hologram in Star Fleet was the Discovery version. My head dropped when I saw that. They had a chance to correct a secret hideout mistake and didn’t.

I’m also stunned that this far down the message list and not one person mentioned the ultra silliness of the double secret tal shiar. It’s on par with the foolish stuff we saw from Section 31 in STD S2. And I see as evidence this shows story line may ultimately cause multiple facepalms.

I like the Asimov shout out. Data’s “positronic” brain is a direct homage to Asimov’s work from Roddenberry himself.

Picard’s “I don’t care for science-fiction” is a little cheeky, but ah well.

I’m almost certain there’s a copy of Asimov’s collection “The Complete Robot” on Picard’s desk when he wakes up from dreaming about Data’s daughter painting. (Stacked on the corner of his desk.)

“Picard’s “I don’t care for science-fiction” is a little cheeky, but ah well.”

Feels like Kurtzman breaking the 4th wall

I think that it was a reminder that Picard loves the classics, but is someone who wants to do more than imagine doing.

I actually got a bit of a charge from that line. :)

In the original Kurtzman cut it was a different book and the line was “I don’t care for Star Trek.” haha

Sorry, I loved it. And I love Discovery. Not sorry. My biggest issue with this show is why the hell can’t I get it in 4K?! Lost in Space (Netflix) looks STUNNING on my TV. Also, what was up with Lt. Rizzo’s pips at the end of episode 2?

I agree. I love all takes on Star Trek and this and Discovery are great shows. I was reading the posts and my gods, while I love the old shows, they can be a little slow. I like these updated versions very much now. And I have zero issues with women being in charge. Someone in the above thread doesn’t like it one bit. It’s a bit old fashioned and dull have Starfleet run by old white men.

Have you seen or heard a single male in a Starfleet uniform yet aside from a receptionist? Come on, two episodes in now, anyone? I thought everyone was supposed to be equal in the future.

Wahhh I got 50 years of men running the show but now GIRLS are playing in my sandbox, wahhhhhhh
-you, all over this comment thread.

@Mike – You must have skipped every scene involving people in Starfleet uniforms since there are plenty of male Starfleet personnel on screen. Perhaps you could tone down your obvious sexism since this is Star Trek, not a Trump rally.

Sure, there are plenty of extras, but no actual characters. I would have exactly the same position if it were entirely males with the only female being the federation receptionist. You don’t make an equal playing field by simply flipping everyone’s gender.

By my count, we’ve had speaking roles for exactly four Starfleet officers, three of whom were women. That’s not a huge sample size. And I bet TOS had that very same ratio skewed to men. Give the misogyny a rest.

plus the news interviewer attacking him, plus his romulan housekeep yelling.

Okay, we get it, you’re threatened by women.

All though I don’t agree with the focus you’re putting on this, I don’t think people constantly reminding you that other people “already had their turn” is helpful either. Like because things may not have been handled well before, it’s ok for a different group to handle it just as bad now and over correct. We’re living in a very “you win, I lose” society right now. This pendulum never seems to slow, it just gets pushed harder.

I love how people can’t talk about 4K without the word STUNNING in all caps, haha

Didn’t like it and I really enjoyed last weeks.

Why is the Romulan speaking Irish slang? “De cheeky feckers”

Really?

Maybe they learned English from an Irish person? But yeah, I do find the use of 21st century slang a little distracting and out of place. A minor quibble, though, as far as I’m concerned.

Yeah but why does she sound SO Irish and yet her husband Zhaband doesn’t lol. I don’t think its a huge deal, aliens with very human accents is about common as how well they speak English but it IS odd. Maybe it will be explained later.

I just wish they could make up an accent just to sound more alien. It has happened on rare occasions. Maybe its irritating to the audience?

Maybe she’s actually speaking Romulan, and what we’re hearing is from the perspective of Picard’s universal translator. And maybe by the 24th century, users of universal translators can choose the voice and accent they hear for each speaker — kind of like I can change the voice on my traffic app (I currently have the Cookie Monster telling me where to turn). ;-)

And I have my deceased father recorded on my GPS app, still telling me where to go even in death. ;)

irumodic syndrome. In the last episode Picard will wake up in hospital like Mr Robot and it will all have been a massive delusion, as his life support fails with all the TNG crew around him and it fades to black…

It never occurred to you she may have been raised in Ireland?

She wasn’t though. They lived on the Romulan colony that Picard visited and ended up taking them away and giving them the job on the Vineyard in FRANCE, not Ireland.

The actress is Irish but the character isn’t. I don’t think cheeky feckers would have been in the script if the actress wasn’t Irish.

It’s such an odd and stupid thing to put in.

Star Trek: CSI … I can actually see that working.

Now, that’s what I like POSITIVITY!

“Optimism, captain!!!” (Creepy smile.)
—Phlox

Good one!

LOL

Yeah after seeing what they did here, that’s a spinoff I’d watch and it would expand the universe. I’m excited about everything that’s coming to be honest.

I’ve been saying for years since it was CBS…

Star Fleet JAG

NCCSI

xD

Never thought I’d hear a Romulan say “cheeky fuckers” before. Where are all the hidden emoticons people keep using, we need the beer-toast one.

Apparently she said ‘cheeky feckers’. Its Irish slang but I think all us non-Irish (including CBS closed captioning) heard something very different lol. And it means the same thing anyway.

So we have Irish Romulans now. Sure, why not?

(Odd that CBS didn’t use their shooting script for the captioning. I mean if I had to type all that up…)

LOL it is weird, I agree. Especially since she wasn’t raised on Earth or had any human connections before she met Picard.

watch it be she spoke it in Romulan and the universal translator thought that’s what she meant.

Well, we had British-accent Romulans in TNG (Commander Tauris/Toreth), not to mention right in this episode. Why do they all have to sound like Americans?

I don’t think it’s just the accent, its just how much slang she has picked up like she’s always lived on Earth when she hasn’t….and don’t live in Ireland at least. It’s just a bit odd lol, but not a big deal either.

Thank you River Temarc.

I’m really tired of actors playing aliens in in Trek being expected to wash their accents into American newscaster accents.

Perhaps Laris was undercover on an human colony of Irish descent when she was in the Tal Shiar.

I thought maybe she was raised in Ireland, but apparently that isn’t the case.

“Feck” is the less-naughty and child-friendly version of it’s bigger, better-known brother.

I’ve been watching Star Trek(s) since I first sat cross-legged on the living room with my dad. It was first airing of TOS and I was 11. I’ve seen all the shows (and movies) when they aired, collected them on VHS, and now binge with steaming services. I can say, without-a-doubt, PICARD is the best!

Really? I find that hard to believe. I think you’re probably just gushing in the excitement of new stuff to watch.

Or just maybe he has a different opinion than you do? I know, shocking.

@Tiger2 – I ignore you, so please do me the same favor. You are the one who attacks anyone who dares to criticize the show–you can’t accept us having different opinions–so stuff your hypocrisy.

You’ve been a jerk before, and you refuse to let people criticize the show with your incessant attacks, so you’re of no interest to me. Bye!

PaulB, you got super upset with me in another thread because I simply didn’t agree with ALL your points lol (even though I agreed with some of them). I never attacked you man, especially since we have agreed on many things in the past. You got all hot and bothered because I wasn’t 100% onboard with a post you made and you got into a huge tiffy about it. But no worries, you won’t see any responses from me anymore so I will honor your request.

And I NEVER have an issue with people criticizing any show here since I do it all the time myself lol, for years now. People can feel however they want, it doesn’t mean we have to AGREE with it all either or there would be no debate on a message board. Anyway last response from me.

@Tiger2 – You wouldn’t accept ESTABLISHED FACTS. Nothing to do with agreeing with me. They weren’t my facts. They were established facts about Star Trek, and YOU were the one who couldn’t handle it. Your refusal to accept basic facts about Star Trek showed you to be ignorant and unwilling to learn, and unworthy of discourse. If you can’t acknowledge the facts involved, you have nothing to say on the topic.

If you accepted established facts and left critical fans alone, I’d have nothing negative to say about you. Sadly, you seem incapable of the latter. I don’t know why you couldn’t accept established facts. Oddly defensive about your ignorance of Star Trek, I guess.

That’s your problem. Now, go away since you still have nothing to say to me…unless you’re finally going to accept those established facts and admit you were wrong and hostile over that. No? Didn’t think so. You’re too trollish to behave with decency.

LOL, how was I hostile?? I simply disagreed with how you interpreted those ‘facts’. I don’t understand why you were so upset about it? I AGREED with MOST of your point, just not all of it man, OK? How am I ‘hostile’ if I agreed with most of what you said?? But you act like I called you bad names over it and I disagreed with all of it. I didn’t. OK, you think I SHOULDN’T disagree with you about it at all…well I disagree. ;D

I don’t have a problem with you PaulB, this is a message board, stuff like this happens ALL THE TIME man. I’m not the one who was offended over it. I have no issues whatsoever over it or with you. We just didn’t see eye to eye over a silly issue, yeah, OK, that happens. Now you are calling me a troll and a pest when for YEARS we have gotten along just fine lol. C’mon, seriously?

Dude, look I don’t know what I said that bothered you so much. Go back to that post, I even SAID you convinced me to change my mind in the first place, I simply didn’t agree with ALL of it. How does that make me evil exactly?

But again, since this bothered you so much, I will ignore you, no problem. But yeah, you now have to ignore me and not just attack me over something 99% of people have no idea what we’re even discussing lol.

OR we can be mature about it, realize we just didn’t see it the same way, even if you TRULY believed you are right and just move on. It is up to you!

I didn’t interpret the facts. I presented basic, established facts with NO interpretation. You didn’t like that you were ignorant about Star Trek, so you argued.

Meanwhile, I just replied to three places above where you attack fans for being critical. As I said you do, but you deny ever doing.

YOU are the one who needs to grow up, stop attacking others for disagreeing, and stop arguing against established facts that are NOT my personal interpretation.

When you can’t accept the established facts, you have nothing of value to say about them. Thus, you dealt yourself out of being worthwhile.

When people deny BASIC REALITY, I have a problem. It makes it impossible to deal with them on any level. You did that with the established facts about Star Trek. You didn’t like them so you deny them–deny reality. Sorry, but I live in reality, so I find that offensive.

You’re pissy about facts you don’t like. You’re pissy to fans who dare to criticize (unless you said it first).

We’ve gotten along at times, but not these days. Your hostility to critical fans and to facts…seriously, I can’t fathom how we got along before.

But keep on attacking fans for being more critical than you are, if that makes you happy. Keep refusing to accept other opinions while INSISTING that we accept YOURS. Keep ignoring facts that show your ignorance of Trek’s established canon.

Whatever makes you happy. OR you can admit that you attack, that you ignore facts, and that you are NOT the squeaky-clean nice guy you’re pretending to be.

OH MY GOD! PaulB, I was WRONG, you were right! Is that what you want to hear? OK?? Can we just move on now? This is getting out of hand lol.

I tend to agree, so far. I’ve been watching since ~’72. But I almost always find the most recent series to be my favorite (with the exception that DS9 continued to be my favorite through the end of the Voyager run). Regardless, I love DSC, love PIC so far, and am really looking forward to S31, Lower Decks, and dare I hope.. Pike.

Wild hypothesis – The Asha’s were not created by Maddox, but by Data. Maddox will have cloned Data, and we will meet up with an organic Data Soong. That will also explain better why Dahj was set to seek out Picard.

BTW, the Vulcan Commodore…. is this the first Commodore since TOS? I assume she is Vulcan, or posing as a Vulcan since her desk was adorned with an IDIC.

Don’t be stupid. Kurtzman Trek is all about erasing and breaking well known characters, not giving us what we want.

Kurtzman has been giving this 45+ year Star Trek fan exactly what I want. Do I have a few criticisms? Sure, nothing is perfect. But I am thrilled to be seeing what I view as a golden age of Trek, surpassing even the mid-90s. Don’t pretend you speak for all Trek fans or that your over-the-top negativity is shared by everyone.

I respect your opinion, but sadly it seems that the target audience isn’t that which it had spent 50 years cultivating very successfully. Good luck sitting comfortably on your sofa with a 4 year old and a 7 year-old since 2017, and forget taking them to comicon wondering why dad won’t let them watch the new Star Trek.

Mike Burnthem, your British and you’re jumping into critique that they’ve included a Commodore?

On my side, I’ve found it weird that since TNG, Trek has been trying to avoid including ranks that aren’t in the U.S. Navy and making everyone jump directly from Captain to Admiral.

Last, are you really telling someone ‘not to be stupid’ after your tone and upset that you were called out for promoting false rumours in the earlier posts in this thread?

Leads me to believe she’s a romulan impersonating a Vulcan. Similar to the situation in balance of terror, where they feared Spock was a romulan, but this time around the Vulcan really is a romulan.

Dialogue, acting, and costumes/ clothes are way too 2019, 2020, clothes especially look like something you’d see in Banana Republic.

Streaming / Cable storytelling in the sense that things that could easily be explained over, say, two episodes are drawn out over several.

It’s telling that Star Trek VI dealt with some big themes and ended on an optimistic, hopeful note while in this the future is essentially almost a Blade Runner dystopia.

You just compared a film that was more about saying goodbye to one crew with the mission of a multiple season tv show. That makes no sense. Of course you can end a film on optimism and then tell stories later that explain while yes humanity moved forward in a positive way, there’s still things to overcome. TNG and DS9 did that long before Picard did, so I’m not too sure how it’s telling unless I mistook your comment – my mistake if so.

Picard is 100% about saying goodbye to a crew, and Star Trek! What is the point in undoing the last goodbye to make another 20 years later, where instead of the Enterprise flying off into a beautiful starfield, we’re instead witnessing it’s destruction, literally.

And TNG clothes came right out of the 80s.

As for Trek 6, it ended with an optimistic ending. 15 minutes into the start of Trek 6, Kirk is like “Let them die.” Trek 6 is also chock full of Starfleet Badmirals.

Lets see where Picard ends it.

In that case, though, that was a scene between two beloved characters we knew full well and in the moment, a character we know very well — whose direct experience with the Klingons we’ve seen many times over — was expressing a sentiment that could be emotionally justified — and tracked what we knew of him — as repugnant as it was.

That scene follows a briefing scene where not only do Badmirals get to air out their racist and imperialist views, but the whole CONCEPT of diplomacy and a counter-idea to the racism and imperialism gets a moment. The premise of the film is a diplomatic mission that then reveals a conspiracy. A conspiracy that undermines the heart of what the Federation / Star Trek is all about.

In “Maps and Legends”, we get the most base version of this idea *without* the counterbalance. The Admiral overwhelms Picard, who doesn’t even counter with a direct personal appeal. He talks about Federation values, not the Admiral’s own. We get no sense of her character. The scene just has to build to that shouting match and that’s the end of it.

Also, the writers absolutely do not realize that Starfleet and the Federation are two separate entities. Additionally, “17 member worlds” wanting to pull out of the Federation for helping the Romulans sounds like a diplomatic mission Starfleet might’ve actually put Picard on and given the rescue envoy over to someone else!

So now Picard is going to go on a rescue mission that then reveals a conspiracy, only unlike Star Trek VI, this isn’t a group of bad actors conspiring together to thwart “galactic peace”, it’s a twofold measure of Secret Romulans *and* Racist Feds, where the Romulans’ hatred of synthetic life is going to somehow be compared to (and help minimize) the worse concept that the Federation has abdicated its principles out of fear and anger.

Or something worse, because these producers are more interested in twisting their twists than having anything track.

“Or something worse, because these producers are more interested in twisting their twists than having anything track.”

Or more aptly, the producers are more interested to twist this universe to fit their one-sided agenda in a ham-fisted allegory of apples and oranges, rather than respect the subject matter.

P.S. Happy Brexit Day from the future ;)

Kind of like how in TOS the costumes and acting is very swinging 1960s, while in TMP the costumes and style are very mod-1970s, and in the first few seasons of TNG the style was radical 1980s.

It is what it is.

What is clear is that Kurtzman did not watch those shows when they aired, otherwise he would realise that the characters and the costumes were not actually of those decades, but how those decades viewed science fiction.

Now we’re being led to believe that everyone in the future looks exactly like we do today. Worse still is using slightly modified Warship Voyager uniforms, which were specifically created to show an incorrect, dystopian view of Voyager, aka Voyager’s equiv of the mirror universe. This only adds to the distinct feeling that this isn’t in fact the universe this show is in is completely disconnected both visually and tonally from a show that managed to do quite well for itself for 50 years without leaping into dystopia.

I really want to like it. I’m not one of the YouTubers who decided a year ago the show was bad. I’m not closing the door on it, but I’m worried.

I actually like the Jean-Luc Picard we see in this show. It took a while to like him at all, though. Go back and watch the first season of TNG. He’s insufferable and I can’t imagine many people wanting to know or serve for him. He was not warm to anyone, and I understand some people questioning why he would be so broken up over Data’s death when he spent seven years face palming over the android. I think it’s fair to allow for the possibility that his character arc got him to a point where he did consider Data a close friend.

But.

I can’t help but feel like CBS missed the mark with their choices for the world he’s in. It’s one thing to challenge the Federation’s ideals or hold a mirror up to the utopia to ask if it’s real. This is grotesque. It’s evil. Saying it’s not the Starfleet and Federation we remember is an insult to our intelligence because it’s so obvious.

Let’s run this through for a second. It’s April 5 and a bunch of synthetic beings go haywire and obliterate facilities on the planet and in orbit. (Calling it now: The Super Tal Shiar did it because they’d rather there be no synthetic life than accept help from the Federation (except this creative team loves to twist their twists, so I’m probably wrong.)) The Federation looks around in the aftermath and instead of asking, “what can we still do to help?” says, “welp, we tried, we’re gonna go turtle now.” Does it make dramatic sense? I guess you could make the argument the attack was so devastating it paralyzed the union. Is it what I want from Star Trek? N-o-p-e.

As I reflect on all the interviews I’ve seen leading up to the series, I can’t help but notice a pattern. I believe the creatives underestimate the importance of humanity’s portrayal in Star Trek. We watch to see the best of ourselves. It’s one of the few places we can look to find humans making rational, compassionate decisions and working together. There are some bad actors (Admiral Cartwright, Admiral Pressman, you know what, most of the admirals do seem to suck). The difference is it used to be a small group working in the shadows. Now it’s the commander in chief cursing at Picard. The tone is just wrong. Evil, selfish and scared decision making is what Star Trek has used its many homogenous races for (Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans). They were the allegory for the worst of modern humans; future humans were always better.

I recognize three issues with this essay at this point. First: Star Trek does not belong to me. Second: it’s only been two episodes, and when you reflect on the trailers we’ve seen it’s almost all coming from the opening third of the series, so this can still go a lot of different ways. Finally: it is important to test your own beliefs and ask yourself why you hold them, and I find that true of fictional worlds as much as real ones. Maybe allowing the Federation to finally fall under the weight of those bad actors is a worthy dramatic experiment.

That final point is the one that persuades me to keep watching. I do have a nightmare, though. We finally get to see into the dawn of the 25th century and it is a grim dystopia. Our first looks at the 3100’s in the Discovery teaser appear even worse. Are we watching the beginning of the collapse of the future? I would hate to think the quadrant is full of humans who bully androids for hundreds of years.

I also don’t care that they used the Discovery-model Enterprise in the lobby shot, but it’s interesting that the Enterprise-D is left virtually unchanged. It seems to poke a hole in this conspiracy theory that these new shows need to be 25% different or whatever was on a note someone found that one time and YouTubers ran with.

Also get out of here with “there’s too many angry women.” That’s an absurd observation even if it’s real. Who cares?

Being a Star Trek fan is starting to hurt my head.

The Admiral’s explanation explains it better in that after the synth attack, Starfleet’s resources were short and they had to look at that and the fact that a lot of Federation members didn’t want to help the Romulans so Starfleet chose to pull back. It comes down to a committee doing what they felt was best vs a headstrong captain who wanted to do what was morally right. It’s almost as though the Federation is going through it’s natural cycle of being too big if that makes sense. Like it’s starting to crumble from within a bit without realizing it. Maybe the peril Jean Luc is talking about is what leads to state of the galaxy that Discovery has just found itself in. But like some of the best Trek, it parallels where some world governments are at this point. I think that was the goal of Patrick and the writers.

There seems a real confusion with these writers that the Federation and Starfleet are the same thing, and they are using that ignorance to force a dystopia on fans that simply wouldn’t exist.

The very least they could’ve done is try to create a plausible scenario that would explain how in a post-scarcity galaxy that resources *might* be finite. Even something as simple as “Dilithium isn’t abundant”.

Yikes.. you mean replicators and unlimited free energy were bad for story telling?? You know, I remember a show set in the 23rd century where they had to explore and deal with scarce resources which was pretty sweet.

Yeah, but ultimately, Kirk and Spock and Admiral Komack and Ambassador whoever didn’t quibble over whether or not the Doomsday Machine should be allowed to kill billions of aliens they didn’t like.

Doesn’t that make it (TOS) even more exciting given they are willing to sacrifice scarce resources and put their own reputations on the line outside a massive bureaucracy?

No, its not. Most of us don’t care about that stuff. You seem to be the only one CONSTANTLY obsessed about it lol. You been repeating the same thing for what, 30 years now? Get a clue, not everyone cares about it and in fact like it.

How terrible for you. Stop attacking commentators and find something more substantial to back up your debating position, or GTFO.

More attacking others…but you don’t do that, right, Tiger?

I agree PEB. And its funny I basically commented a week ago the Federation is a BIG organization with lots of different cultures and planets, they are not going to always agree on everything. And as we saw that’s exactly what happened here. The thing is we have to remember two important things about relations with the Romulans. A. There ironically would NOT be a Federation if not for the Earth- Romulan war and B. that we really don’t have a clue what the Romulans did to other species through history, we really only know what happened with them between humans and Vulcans basically and still very little details.

There are a lot of species out there that could still hold major grudges against them. In fact we can go one farther and suggest there are groups who joined the Federation solely as way to help keep the Romulans in check. Obviously its all conjecture on my part but (ironically) people are only looking at this from Starfleet’s or a human viewpoint but maybe just MAYBE there are species who truly loath the Romulans and willing to let them die if it meets with the Federation’s approval or not.

Lastly I just find it odd how people just throw the word ‘utopia’ around as if that means everyone gets along and agree on everything. Have people not watched this show? We have seen these divisions literally since TUC. This isn’t anything new. Not everyone will always agree with everything or come to a similar conclusion. That’s the difference between a democratic and an authoritative government. Democracy doesn’t always mean the most ‘enlightened’ decision will come out it, simply the one its citizens think works best for them, which we are seeing a lot in the world right now.

I think you’re having the simple minded debate Patrick Stewart wants you to have, and at the expense of Star Trek.

Well done you.

You’re the guy triggered because they have too many women on the show for you. That says it all lol. Your opinion becomes more moot here the more you type…seriously.

How terrible for you. Stop attacking commentators and find something more substantial to back up your debating position, or GTFO.

Einstein you attacked me first lol. I’m actually discussing the show. You’re the one attacking people because you don’t like the message of the show, not me. I literally JUST debated my position dude. What was your response again? What am I suppose to debate you on? You just called me simple minded and literally tried to negate the entire conversation lol. What was ‘substantial’ about that?

So take your own advice and GTFO if you can’t even talk about the story or to people who have no issue with it or actually want to discuss it.

How terrible for you. Stop attacking commentators and find something more substantial to back up your debating position, or GTFO.

You just repeated what you said. This comes off like trolling now.

Ahh the good old days when you could watch Trek with your kids and show them how grown ups handle differences, without the “fucking hubris” of intending that they learn something from it…

Thank you that thread was great!

You know, we have absolutely no idea what kind of of Government the UFP is. Is is more like a United Nations or a Commonwealth where the member worlds are still completely autonomous? Are they all a part of a union like the states of the United States? The fact they have a President seems to suggest the later. How is the President selected? Do they have a congress? A Parliament? Is it truly a democracy or a republic? None of these issues have ever been brought up in Trek. Speaking for myself, I kinda hope they never address such things but if they want to start addressing the world of galactic politics then it’s hard to avoid.

“As I reflect on all the interviews I’ve seen leading up to the series, I can’t help but notice a pattern. I believe the creatives underestimate the importance of humanity’s portrayal in Star Trek. We watch to see the best of ourselves. It’s one of the few places we can look to find humans making rational, compassionate decisions and working together. There are some bad actors (Admiral Cartwright, Admiral Pressman, you know what, most of the admirals do seem to suck). The difference is it used to be a small group working in the shadows. Now it’s the commander in chief cursing at Picard. The tone is just wrong. Evil, selfish and scared decision making is what Star Trek has used its many homogenous races for (Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans). They were the allegory for the worst of modern humans; future humans were always better.”

@Bobby O – What you wrote is exactly how I see it. Now instead of the small handful of deplorables causing trouble for the majority of good humans, It is now a small handful of good humans trying to fight the injustice of the majority of deplorables.

The humans in Star Trek were supposed to be more evolved than us and the alien cultures of the week were the vehicle to address our modern day injustices.

Agree. There’s a pretty simple thing happening here and it’s Kurtzman trying to erase Roddenberry. Let’s look at a few simple examples:

Creates storylines and characters that undermine established canon.
Gets two years of solid criticism about sticking to canon so instead of doing the hard work decides to create his own canon 900 years in the future that everyone after him will have to stick to as a big FU to the fans.
Takes TNG era characters and adapts them to his vision of Star Trek.

Someone on another site said it best when they stated he is not a creator, he is a repurposer.

That Admiral-Picard scene felt like a shotgun blast to the very concept of Star Trek (The Federation is driven by racist murderers!) and the rest of the oddly paced and sequenced and tell-y not show-y exposition dump of a story hands down makes this not just bad TV but one of the worst episodes of Star Trek ever made. There are 18 producers on this project and it shows.

“That Admiral-Picard scene felt like a shotgun blast to the very concept of Star Trek (The Federation is driven by racist murderers!”

Last week I commended them for NOT going the Discovery route of showing us the Trek of Old in loving recreation, only to blow it to bits in a really rude way and stick the middle finger to fandom, but it seems they just kept this for the second episode ;)

19 producers. Working in SOME capacity that warranted their inclusion in a title sequence.

The Admiral actually gave a plausible explanation for what happened. It would only take a handful of systems threatening to leave Federation to bog it down in its bureaucracy, especially if most of their resources devoted to the rescue mission at hand had just been lost. And Picard DID just make Starfleet look bad on network television.

This could still go either way. It’s at least as strong as STD was after only two episodes. It’s got people in its writers room who know Trek, but it’s also got Kurtzman. And even going into this second Kurtzman Trek series we still don’t really know what that means.

Plausible, but hardly a satisfying explanation as to why “this isn’t The Next Generation / Star Trek you remember”. Member worlds were grumpy all the time. They’d send the Enterprise on diplomatic missions to ease tensions, etc.

Also, Starfleet is not the Federation, and Picard could’ve made a better case (one that would do a slightly better job of justifying the pointless flashback that opened the episode) that recovering a valuable asset like Data (or even a bit of his programming) could help explain the synth uprising and prevent a future catastrophe – or – rather than vaguely referencing Bruce Maddox (thereby obviously, from a bad writer standpoint, keeping him in the audience’s mind while not tipping the hand that he’s actually super important to the season) make him the focal point and have Picard say “I believe former Starfleet officer Bruce Maddox might know what caused the uprising” and request the resources to locate him, and make the case why it should be him to lead the mission/manhunt and not somebody else.

The Admiral would’ve been more effective patronizing or talking down to him (since she already thinks he’s a useless and addled old man) than talking up how letting the Romulans die was a good thing and telling him to fuck off for being so arrogant. Just because the Star Trek movies made all the Admirals cartoonishly evil doesn’t mean the continuation stories need to follow suit.

Just the absolute dumbest possible dramatization of all their fairly obvious and unimaginative plot points.

Actually I don’t think for a second that a-hole admiral felt letting the Romulans die was a good thing. I think she felt Star Fleet was restrained by political ramifications within the Federation as a result of the Synth attack. That’s all.

Still don’t like using Synths. It still reminds me of that show, Humans.

I think you’ll find that if such a diplomatic problem occurred, the Federation is correctly placed to mediate it. In no reality would the federation stand by and let a billion people be killed because of petty squabbles. The writers don’t get Star Trek, and as for Patrick Stewart’s role in all this, he’s trashed his legacy by trashing Starfleet.

This is what happens when you let actors into the writer’s room, especially ones like Stewart who they couldn’t say no to as a basis for getting him in the show in the first place. He simply doesn’t understand the audience.

“It’s at least as strong as STD was after only two episodes.”

For me, that would be true of season 2 of STD. Season one after 2 was ahead of where Picard feels like its going now. This 2nd episode was NOT promising.

Sam, you really need to look at the naming conventions WGA requires now.

Every writer gets a ‘producer’ credit of some sort. With the shift to serial series writers working in writers rooms, this means that everyone in the room is in the titles every time. Plus the executives overseeing the show, and the show’s creators, not to mention the representatives of the Roddenberry estate.

I believe that TrekMovie has noted that even TNG had a lot of ‘producers’ but a number of these were listed on the screen during the second act after the titles. Viewers wouldn’t accept that on the screen during action now.

It’s funny because I look at it the complete opposite way. MOST of the Federation including Starfleet wanted to help (and as usual it was Starfleet doing all the heavy lifting of building the ships when they have 100 other planets there who could also help build ships) but it only took 14 planets to go against it. And remember she said they were STILL willing to help even when those planets balked at the idea but it was shattered when the synths did what they did. They just gave in after that.

As for the show not tell part, they LITERALLY showed us the synth uprising in this episode and its the second one. Maybe just maybe we will get more flashbacks? Remember all of this happened 15 years ago from their perspective.

But if you really hated the episode, that’s fine. I just have no problem with how they are handing the story so far.

That scene with the Admiral made me shake my head in disbelief.

The Federation is supposed to be made up of over 150 member planets. Who cares if a handful pull out over the decision to help the Romulans. That made no sense at all, like much of the stuff that happened in the first episode.

I cannot believe this is the Star Trek we are getting now, and it is a stretch to even call it that. Discovery isn’t going to be any better either when it returns. The federation will be in a bad place and starfleet nonexistant.

I’m not a fan of this dark Star Trek, and it seems like all the new stuff is going to be dark.

It’s awful dystopian sci-fi dressed up in Star Trek clothing.

Because the Romulans are the Federation’s enemies and those members have been with the Federation for probably centuries now and have been valued members. I don’t understand why this is so hard to believe? Again A. We don’t know WHY these planets were so against helping the Romulans but my guess is they had a really nasty history with them and B. the Romulans are STILL enemies of the Federation. So yes, its not a shock some people don’t want to help their sworn enemy. Kirk was the same guy who literally told Spock to let the Klingons die when they had their crises. This isn’t new lol.

People need to stop treating the Federation as if they are all free loving hippies. There is a Section 31 running around for a reason. Just because they care about people in the Federation doesn’t mean they will care about others outside of it, especially if others outside of it are antithetical to Federation values as the Romulans clearly are.

Same here. I had to stop the playback and go grab a glass of water wondering what I was watching, especially after what was in hindsight a blatant abuse of the Trek theme just a few seconds before, just to flip the bird at the fandom right after.
It’s like it’s being written for teenage gamers who understand the game but not the show.

“hindsight a blatant abuse of the Trek theme just a few seconds before”

Thats how i perceived it too. A loving homage that got p!ssed all over mere seconds later! Brought to you from the fine people of Discovery (never mind the Pulitzer God)…. enough with the post-modernist deconstructivist nonsense already!

To play the devil’s advocate here… I’ve seen all the Short Treks and the only two that were pretty good were written by Chabon. I really hope that counts for something in Picard but I’m not seeing it yet.

Maybe, and this is just fan guesswork… Maybe one or two of those member worlds are VERY important to the Federation. Maybe they hold some sort of major sway with others. We simply do not know the politics involved here yet.

And I say this as someone who was unhappy with the revelations in this episode as well as how it progressed. Just someone trying to see both sides here.

Picard did something against orders, after the Rescue-Mission was blown off and make him not trustworthy for Starfleet. His former XO from the Verity is obviously also pissed off.

You should start writing and get a job writing for CBS Television.

Picard is on a hero’s journey and, if this show’s history is any indication, he will uncover the dark truth’s lurking beneath the surface and expose those responsible. It will just take longer to get there than a 45 minute episode or two hour feature length film.

But will it have more meat than said 45 minute episode or two hour feature film of the old days, or be all meaningless fluff like Discovery?

I suspect that each episode will present another piece of the puzzle. Ep 1 established the premise, Ep 2 provided a glimpse of corrupt elements within Starfleet and a sense that the Federation was manipulated by the Romulan’s. The show is unfolding as a mystery / thriller.

So many great franchises have taken serialisation to the extreme where you can literally sum up all the key parts of an episode in 30 seconds in the style of a BBC murder mystery. In recent years I’ve seen very few shows do it successfully like Breaking Bad, Mr Robot and Galactica.

The trouble here though is that it’s not STD in which all this world building needs to take place across 3 or 4 episodes of a short 10 episode run, the world is already built over 50 years, but the writers want to make such drastic changes to it for *reasons* that they now have to spend all this time re-telling the world in their own image, which begs the question of why use established characters and settings in the first place?

Particularly when they have gone out of their way to tell us that it’s not a sequel to TNG.That’s crazy talk! like bad fan fiction, but unfortunately seems to be the only way to have bought Stewart in, but if he’s not the Captain Picard and Starfleet the fans want to see, why bother? There isn’t really any character development going on, it’s been completely devoid of humour of any kind so far, where’s the fun?

I would say that it would have been better for them to make a completely new post TNG series, but now that we have two Kurtzman Treks as an example of what is basically a variation on a theme of what is essentially generic sci-fi without the futurism and soul of Trek, for me it’s become very much a case of no Trek is better than bad Trek, which never in a million years would be a preference, as all it’s doing is splitting the fanbase right down the middle.

To me, so far he is the exact same Picard we have seen in the TV show. And nobody on that show went through any kind of character arc. I don’t see Picard going through one here either. I was hoping he would, however.

People are acting ridiculous about this. Do they expect everything to be resolved in one episode? Yay the world is saved every week! For God’s sake people, this may be Star Trek, but the reality is the world is not perfect. The works has had good times and dark times. I think it’s more realistic for Star Trek to expose both wonderful times for the Federation and dark times. This is not a political statement, but the world has elected good leaders and bad leaders. We’ve gone through times where we’ve questioned whether the United States is holding true to its constitution. Look what Venezuela is going through for the past 20 years. This is the way the world is in Star Trek is reflecting those times. But we know the final message will be one of positivity. This is not a one week happy TNG ending, this is going to be an arc.

“the reality is the world is not perfect.” – Which is why we tuned in to Trek. Patrick Stewart obviously doesn’t get that, and Alex Kurtzman has made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t either. Unfortunately neither of them know how to write anything different. Stewart wants to write so he can act in a different role (why would fans want to see that?), and Kurtzman wouldn’t know utopia if he won a holiday to one.

DS9 already did the “dark times” over several seasons of 24 episodes each. The people forced into those times hated it, they despised it, it broke them and they yearned to get back to the utopia with every line spoken. This dystopia is nothing like that. Everyone seems perfectly acclimated to living in “dark times” without even realising it, at each other’s throats, yelling, arguing, fighting. If it’s not school kids it’s androids and romulans, synths or admirals. It’s pathetic to even contemplate putting the Star Trek name on this trash. The cracks are already showing and only 90 minutes have passed.

We’re supposed to want to watch this to see it get fixed, but it’s so unrealistic with this writing team that they are losing any residue of goodwill fans had left for the franchise. That’s quite an achievement given the money that’s been pumped into it. A masterclass in how to lose fans and alienate people.

But I think that’s ultimately the point. At it’s core the Federations ideals have not changed but they’ve been manipulated. Picard’s journey will eventually expose how they were all deceived.

Exactly Denny C!

That’s why I’m loving this story line. The Federations just got out of a huge Dominion war, which only ended a few years before the attack on Mars. The Federation ideals were already tested with that war, its not hard for someone to divide them more after this.

Obviously androids just don’t decide to wipe out a planet on their own lol, clearly someone is trying to start trouble. We’re going to ultimately find out who and why!

Its weird in fact we just learned a HUGE revelation that the Romulans had another deep secret cabal with the Zhat Vash that are the people also working on the Borg cube and no one is talking about it.

“Obviously androids just don’t decide to wipe out a planet on their own”

If they are AI’s they can. Easily.

Sure in theory but we never seen that happen before. Well until Control lol. But that’s the thing though, we never seen AI in masses do anything with the exception of Voyager when holograms got together and started taking out the Hirogen and that’s only because how the Hirogen treated them in the first place.

But you never saw the kind of uprising with androids as we just did in this episode. Star Trek always made it clear if there was an AI going crazy it was due to its programming and always done it individually.

I think it obvious this was an Order 66 type of situation. They were programed to do this. But still, we’ve seen individual AI’s run amok in Trek. They ought to be wary of creating an entire city of them.

Well obviously I agree. Why would the androids wipe out a planet just to kill themselves after its done lol. They were obviously all programmed by someone to do that.

And yes clearly they are wary and why we never seen them make AIs in masses. I agree with you, from TOS through DIS, we seen why its probably a good idea NOT to make more AIS than should lol. So I completely get why the Federation is cautious about it given their experience with most of them, even I don’t personally believe all AIs will turn out evil like it is in sci fi so often. But in Star Trek the line is more grey I guess.

But I am really happy with this story line. I have said constantly one of the things I want in Trek are more AI stories so I am THRILLED they are going this direction. I may not be happy with the outcome lol but its nice we at least have an AI story again and its not (completely) about Data for once.

That’s fair. I’m not as big on AI but your take is reasonable.

I will say that Star Fleet’s record with AI’s is resoundingly negative. And given that history it is entirely reasonable they would not only discourage even the tech behind creating one but ought to actively fear one any they may happen upon. They have one positive experience that for some odd reason no one has been able to duplicate. (I guess Dr. Soong is some sort of God as he seems to be the only being in the entire universe that can grant a kind of “soul” to an AI)

Section31 could be involved too!

No it won’t, the federation is gone in STD season 3, so literally nothing any of these characters does short of being the reason the Federation crumbles makes any difference whatsoever as it’s going to be the job of Michael Burnham to try and restart it.

It’s quite possibly one of the worst directions to take two franchises in the same universe separated by 1000 years.
The stupidity in these writers room beggars belief.

We had the TOS movies going on at the same time as TNG’s 7 seasons without any of this federation-ending guff. TOS movies job was to see how they kept the Federation intact and how the Klingons were going to turn from enemies into friends by the time of TNG.

Picard’s job is to watch the federation crumble so Michael Burnham can start it up again. Who cares what happens to anyone in Picard? Nothing they can do now will make a difference to anyone or anything other than Picard’s survivor guilt, which quite frankly is like watching a beloved elderly relative slowly pass away.

And I find that to be a tired trope. I was really hoping to see something original. At this point I can only hope this is a misdirect and something more interesting is really what is going on.

Then don’t watch the show. Or Are you going to post 200 more posts trying to argue with people. Grow up or go sit in your basement and watch the next generation until you turn blue in the face

I think what we’re seeing is that good people were manipulated and were able to feed off of people’s fear. Picard and his crew will eventually expose the truth but it will take longer to get there.

Who cares? The federation is gone in STD season 3, so literally nothing that goes on in this series makes any difference in Kurtzman Trek’s timeline. When you see the STD trailers come in, just remember “all these people in Picard are long dead and gone, and nothing they ever did survived the future”..

It’s a show dude. It represents real shit that goes on in the world, politically and socially. You posted how you feel, we don’t need 236 posts from you to try to convince us anything. Now go back to your basement. You’re not gonna change anybody’s minds. I honestly feel bad if you have a family… You’ve wasted this much time Only to fall flat on your face. It IS Star Trek, that ain’t changing and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Starfleet represent not only the best of humanity, but the very reason it is watched. trash that and it’s no longer Trek, period.

I watched it this morning. Did it premiere at 12:01am again?

Yes, it did.

Thanks! I fell asleep a bit early last night.S till waking up to a new Picard epie was quite the early morning treat for this Trek fan.

I only made it through the cold open with the synth attack on Mars at midnight. Agree that it makes for a good morning treat after a good night’s sleep.

I actually checked at 11:15 pm and it was already available. Seems they start rolling it out before midnight

My only comment now is that Romulans speak in bass-tone Mid-Atlantic Accents and this is not Downtown Abbey.

Otherwise, intriguing for the fan. Will my civilians watch this and care about sub-sects within Romulan secret services? I don’t know!

They sound more like TOS Romulans

Sorry, I wrote that backwards. So… are TOS Romulans British Accented? I thought they had American Mid-Atlantic accents (a made up formal accent). And these Picard Romulans clearly have British accents.

Anyone in TNG who has a British accent and isn’t Picard is a baddie. It’s the unwritten rule.

I thought it was Star Wars whose bad guys all had the British accents.

Orla Brady playing Laris is an Irish actress speaking with an Irish accent. Just to clarify.

Mid-Atlantic accents are in my experience a result of people from the UK living and working in North America for an extended time. Not intentionally artificial.

(That’s also how one of my parents and their community of ex-pat Brits put it. I know that none of them made a conscious effort to change their accents even though they were in public facing jobs.)

So, I just took the evened out British accents as an indicator that the actors are British but have been living and working in the US for some time.

This episode was way more Discovery than episode 1, and more than I care for, in everything from its “edgy” 21st century language (totally anachronistic to 400 years in the future) , its skewed demographics to, not to forget, setting us up for a nostalgic reminiscence with Starfleet, Goldsmith theme from TMP and all, only to then (pardon my French) p!ss all over it with that awful Admiral scene and, apparently, a Romulan infiltration of the highest echelons. It was very similar to Discovery’s pilot in their pathological need to “deconstruct” Trek and all that’s holy and good for the sake of grimdark “Peak TV” (soon to be outdated). Not impressed!

I don’t know about the English language, but in German there are cursewords and foul language phrases which (apart from minor spelling alterations) have literally been in use for centuries.

As Kirk discussed in “The Voyage Home”, no one paid attention to anyone in the 20th century unless every other word was a profanity. Now Kurtzman is using them in the 24th century so people will pay attention to his writing.

Yes, he said that. And that was bad writing too. I suggest it is best to forget anything that happened in TVH.

“in German there are cursewords and foul language phrases which (apart from minor spelling alterations) have literally been in use for centuries.”

Strange then we saw non of it previously in the 24th (and 23rd) century! Maybe WW3, First Contact and “the end of hunger, poverty and need” had a tiny impact on language too, lift people from their crudeness towards a more sophisticated state of being?

This show is a lot more fun when you watch it thinking Picard is losing it – going all pro Eugenics but with AI in his pursuit of perfect people like Data. Also love how he is so committed to Romulans wanting to be just like semi-perfect humans (though not perfect enough for Picard). You don’t see him obsessing over having lost Tasha Yar, just the oh-so perfect Data. I hope Picard wins at the end against starfleet and the Federation only to let Maddox create AI that takes over the Federation with them being way more qualified as perfect than any organics, a mind blowing pyrrhic victory for TNG utopians.

That particular ending is a bit of a long shot

Yes.. no way any AI will ever develop that thinks the future should be a homogeneous algorithm where any biological and technological distinctiveness is just added in for the service of all. Also no way Picard would ever do anything to help or serve them, right? Or that the Romulans might end up being bad guys in this story?

Wow. This show has gotten me interested in Trek again. Sad to see the haters just pouncing at everything that doesn’t fit with your view of Trek.

I do have to say now that the 24th century bureaucracy has been shown to be dysfunctional while Picard is pro eugenics so long as it is AI…. I’m actually into the show which is saying a lot since I found TNG with its free energy, aliens all wanting to be humans, etc to be pretty dull and nonsensical. Looking forward to Discovery jumping into the future and finding the Federation in ruins needing a re-injection of pro-exploration pro-development values.

You do realize in the future will only have MORE AIs in the 32nd century? People already think Booker who helps Burnham is advanced android like Soji and Dahj is now. And don’t forget we already met Zora who is the AI that evolves from the computer on the Discovery and will control the ship a thousand years from now.

So they aren’t going anywhere.;)

And the producers already said what happens in the 32nd century has NOTHING to do with Picard. As I said many times, we have no idea what happens, it could even have something to do with time travel as all these end of the Federation story lines usually deal with (but I hope not).

By the time STD season 3 airs I’ll be surprised if many outside of the hardcore newtrek fans will be watching it. CBS went all in with Picard, $480m, it needs a drastic change of direction in the rest of the series to come anything close to winning back the fanbase STD has lost, to say nothing of what it stands to lose if it continues to get it so badly wrong. At this point it’s still working on it’s month’s free CBS AA subscription. Netflix already passed it up, Amazon isn’t exactly winning over piracy with a full 24 hour delay between the US getting it and the rest of the world. There don’t seem to be many seeders on p2p sites.

See, this is why your posts are just useless. Your not here to actually discuss the shows, you’re just here to pull a Midnight Edge and talk about their downfalls because you don’t like their directions. Just stay on Youtube to subscribe to this nonsense. Like it or not DIS isn’t going anywhere for awhile. And neither is PIcard. You’re only getting MORE Star Trek in the next few years, not less of it.

Sure, Tiger, you don’t attack fans for being critical. Yeah. Right.

He’s not being ‘critical’ he’s doing the same thing people who hated Discovery from day one has done and basically predicting its downfall. Notice he didn’t actually debate anything I said, all he did was say why he believes Discovery is a worthless show and will be cancelled.

You obviously don’t read enough of my posts if you think I’m all things Discovery apologist lol. No, far, far from it, OK?

But I have ALWAYS defended every show when people bring up this BS because its just not true! I have no issues if he thinks the show sucks. Where I have issue is when starts throwing the narrative around the show is failing and will be cancelled any day now BECAUSE he thinks it sucis.

PaulB, seriously, I have NO idea what I did to upset you SO much but I will say it again, if you want me to ignore you, I will. But that doesn’t mean you can just attack me in every post either lol. It doesn’t work that way man.

When you stop attacking fans and then lying about doing it, I’ll stop calling you out for it. You can criticize a person’s statements without the gatekeeping you keep attempting.

Stop trying to regulate other people’s fandom.
Try this: If someone says something negative about something you like, DON’T REPLY. Easy, huh? Or reply to their comments without the personal attacks.

Behave like the person you CLAIM to be, and we’re cool. But you’re attacking people constantly, while you expect to express YOUR opinions without criticism. (Such as when you refused to accept established facts because they contradicted YOUR opinions about Trek.)

You behave like a true fanatic, incapable of moderating your reactions and incapable of allowing others to dislike your love.

Get over it. Grow up. Stop gatekeeping and trying regulate HOW fans react to the show–or at least stop being a hypocrite when YOU get called out for B.S., as I did in that other thread of established facts.

Hypocrisy, gatekeeping, personal attacks–seriously, Tiger2, you aren’t the paragon you pretend to be.

I’m not pretending to be anything but this is getting out of hand. Dude you have let your feelings about it ALL over this thread lol.

And the guy I’m responding has nothing to do with his issues of the show, its just the same narrative people come here to push and ultimately Kurtzman Trek is poison and it’s all going to die any day now. That’s what he is pushing here.

Ask him to SHOW YOU where he got all this information? Where is he getting Discovery is not being watched by anyone? Why do they keep renewing the show then? I bet you his ‘source’ is nothing more than what somewhere said on Youtube but he’s pushing it off as a foregone conclusion.

I’m not attacking him for being negative, I’m attacking him for spreading disinformation but passing it off like its a fact. STOP PEDDLING THIS BS!!! Which I have to express again that Trekmovie has BANNED people for doing this. They are not gatekeeping man. It has nothing to do with that.

He can hate a show as much as he want. My god, I thought Discovery sucked too, but I didn’t say that it was headed for cancellation tomorrow just because I sucked or try to pass it off as fact. We are discussing two very different things here.

But it is ironic, the first season of Discovery people called me a hater who thought I wanted to see the show cancelled. Now I’m being called a lover who can’t endure any criticism of it. Make up your minds people lol.

PaulB, this is a bit harsh.

There many fans who come on here spouting the ‘25%’ debunked theory who Tiger2 treats gently because it’s clear that they’re genuinely muddled by what they’ve heard elsewhere. And this considering that there have been people who have got warnings from the mods here for peddling that rumour that TrekMovie has debunked.

But Mike Burnthem is talking down to those of us who don’t buy the provably false ‘Discovery is dead’ rumours.

I agree with Tiger2. When someone leads off with the position that they have all the hidden info and therefore are right, compounded by flat out sexism, it’s hard to engage that person in any kind of meaningful dialogue.

Thank You!

That’s all I’m doing. And I get sick of nobodies who come here claiming they are ‘in the know’ and treating what is clearly just their opinion (or their wish) over the fate of the show as a fact.

Why is it that people always like to declare Discovery dead before the new season starts?

Netflix only agreed to 3 seasons and also rejected Picard.

Burnthem, Netflix may not be the partner CBS wants to work with.

They reportedly demand that a series can’t go on another carrier once they cancel it. (Read about Anne with an E’s cancellation.)

Amazon Prime is a much better fit.

Bring on more Borg and more perfect AI… look forward to seeing how the average human copes with such challenges. I mean the Eugenics Wars weren’t pretty, but the Wrath of Kahn made for a great movie! The M5 Ultimate Computer is now flying the starships, anyone ready to compete??

Cmd. Bremmon, if you want to live in the past, fine, just watch your TOS blu rays for the 1000th time. But that show is not coming back regardless if you sadly can’t let go.

And DIS retcon TOS over M5 because we now know Section 31 ALREADY created a super computer that could control (ah, now I get the name lol) hundreds of ships at once as we saw last season. But hey this is why I hate prequels. ;)

Ha ha Watching the Ultimate Computer through the Picard lens now is fun!!
“Compassion. That’s the one thing no machine ever had. Maybe it’s the one thing that keeps men ahead of them.” – McCoy to Kirk
“Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them.” – Spock to Kirk
Racists?!?
Picard must be good because I finally want to see what the post TNG era has in store – the fall of the fake utopia and the replacement of “perfect people” by perfect AI!

I never believed the 24th century was utopia the way people talk about it here. I know because DS9 told us that over 20 years ago lol. Again, it may be a different show but it all happened in the SAME universe and literally at the same time. That’s why this is so eye rolling. If the 24th century was a complete utopia we wouldn’t have things like or need things Section 31. And why I LOVE this story line. Unlike you who cherry pick every thing to death, I never looked at the Federation as perfect society in the 23rd or 24th century. The 24th is definitely more progressive as it should be, but yes it still has MANY problems too.

No one was ever perfect dude. You only had to see where Tasha Yar came from that proves it. People just waaaaay over think the ‘perfect humans’ line..and still do sadly.

DS9 is my favorite show for a reason. I have no qualms to see more of that here too.

But if all you want is more TOS, its not coming man. You have to move on. Throwing out TOS quotes over and over again isn’t going to change that reality.

Hey, I’m enjoying Picard (as it has TNG fans all like “this is NO utopia!!) that seems to upset you for some reason?!?
Also if there is no more TOS (i.e. Pike / Number One / Spock on the 1701) they have missed a huge opportunity! At least a mini series. And why not do Final Frontier with Robert April while you got that awesome bridge??

I guess because I also remembered you saying you were hoping that both Picard and Discovery got cancelled because it wasn’t YOUR view of Star Trek. But OK, if you no longer feel that way and at least want to give the show a chance then I apologize.

And my guess is we will see some form of Pike as we got in the Short Treks. It may not be a full time show but I imagine we haven’t seen the last of him by a long shot.

” I know because DS9 told us that over 20 years ago”

DS9 said EARTH was the utopia. Although the word they used was “paradise” I believe. From my perspective, it was Earth and by extension humans who were the best thing ever in the TNG world. With the exception of the odd placed admiral designed to give our hero captains an ignorant authority figure to show what was right. But for the most part, Earth was utopia according to TNG. NOT the rest of the universe.

This is not an attack. It’s a disagreement. ;)

It’s also the same Earth that was nearly taken over by an admiral by creating a false flag to militarize it against the Dominion. ;)

I just don’t know how many times this can be said, but ‘utopia’ or not, it doesn’t mean it can’t be corrupted just the same. THAT’s what I’m talking about. It’s just funny to me people are going on and on acting like this is the first time we seen Starleet or the Federation gone astray from their values when it has ALWAYS happened to some degree in every TV show minus Voyager for obvious reasons. And those shows weren’t serialized like this show is and obviously the focus of the entire season.

And it only takes a few individuals to destroy something that has been built up for centuries. This is what Star Trek has ALWAYS done. People keep saying it’s the ‘aliens’ only that do all the bad stuff in Star Trek, but it’s like they never watched the entire show. I have, it’s not always just the aliens lol.

And thank you for your disagreement! I did not feel I was being attacked, just debated! ;)

Well, the occasional badmiral was my caveat. Take care. :)

Yes, but we seen a few bad captains as well. But obviously you are going to need someone in charge or higher up IF you are telling a story of Federation corruption from within. Anything below admirals you will just get stories of starships going rogue which we have seen as I alluded to.

See, Tiger? Another attack from you against a critical fan. It’s a pattern with you.

I didn’t attack him. I disagreed with him and gave my points directly. Now you are attacking me lol.

It’s compulsive. I don’t believe he either recognises it or has any method of regulating it.

Mike Burnthem, if you’d been on this board more than a week or so, you’d know that Tiger2 and Cmd. Bremmon like to go at another with tongue firmly in cheek.

PaulB.. I think the good TOS-dedicated Cmd can look out for himself.

I’m not at that point with the Cmd but I’ve only been around a bit more than a year, but I’ve getting a good sense of who he is.

I’m actually really tickled that he’s giving Picard such a try with such enthusiasm, and finding TOS callbacks that went right by me.

I don’t get it – are we not in agreement (me and Tiger2) that TNG is NOT a utopia??
The only disagreement now is wither it’s a nonsensical statist hell where humans are so boring they are replaced by AI or it’s just a bureaucracy gone unethical?

You are in agreement on this it seems Command LOL

Not to mention that you both think that Pike and his crew were an unexpected success in Discovery S2.

I guess if you guys keep talking to one another long enough you’ll find more points of accord than most of us ever imagined. ;)

Valid criticism is not hate. Now go home and get your shine box.

Certainly a slower paced episode, after a mere 45 minute episode I felt we had made 5 minutes progress :( And only 8 more episodes now for the action of this storyline to start and finish.

There’s something that really bothered me in this episode though… the sudden claim that Romulans have never like androids or artificial intelligence, have really dumb computers, etc.

In TNG’s season 3 episode “The Defector” the Romulan Jarok spoke with Data on the holodeck – he knew who he was, knew what he was capable of, and told Data he knew a heap of cyberneticists who would loooove to study him. Star Trek: Picard on the other hand is claiming there couldn’t possibly be a Romulan cyberneticist?

And what about their computer technology? In TNG’s season 5 “Unification” we saw they had one hell of a security grid, a global computer network, holographic technology, etc. In Star Trek: Enterprise’s season 4 “The Aenar” (I think it is spelt?) we saw some pretty impressive Romulan’s technology…

I am pretty worried they are building up to a claim the Romulan’s created some kind of computer/android technology that got out of control and became the Borg and thus have now been scared of any kind of intelligent or connected technology since – HELLO BATTLESTAR GALACTICA! Anyways the heart/nest of the Borg is over 70,000 light years away and they spread out from there… they did not originate from Romulus, and for me it would rather ruin the almighty threat of the Borg (right back to TNG’s season 2 “Q Who” when the Enterprise is flung 7,000 light years away and encounter a threat that shows we barely grasp what is out there) if it was never a far reaching threat but actually just a Romulan experiment that went wrong.

Besides, thousand of years ago (eg the implied surprise that will blow our minds) weren’t Romulans actually Vulcans?

Blown away by first episode of Picard (except Data wearing Enterprise-E uniform onboard Enterprise-D dream, but wearing Enterprise-D uniform while painting picture he did in Enterprise-E era) – but this episode has me a bit worried.

They created the Borg. That’s why they are now retconned to reject anything which resembles merging technology and people in anything which might get out of control. That’s the big 1000 year-old secret that will break your brain. I bet they claim it’s because they sent probes out into the galaxy to assimilate information, and instead began trying to return people by assimilating them.

The poor poor discriminated Borg. How DARE anyone ban research into collective uniminds for the common good?!?!?! (Picard is the Into Darkness of TNG!) How DARE Romulans want to separate organics from the unimind?

The argument of the TNG episode “The Defector” is a valid one.

But the argument that they have technology does not support denial of their aversion to AI. You can have highly advanced tech without any kind of AI.

Ignore my review at your cost, fans. You are all in peril….. :-)
That being said, I enjoyed it for the most part. Picards first two eps been better than pretty much S1 and S2 of TNG, combined.
The scene between the Admiral and Picard is my favorite of the ep.
The actress, however? She did a poor job when compared to Sir Patrick.
I’m glad Star Trek is back on TV. At least for the next 8 weeks.

So, I have a thought…

It appears to me that Star Trek is proving that it takes place in the Ron Moore Battlestar Galactica (BSG) universe. For those that know BSG follow along, for those that don’t let me explain a bit… The theme of BSG right from the beginning is that “All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again,” and the series demonstrates this happening over and over again, up to the point that Galactica settles on Earth 50,000 years ago (and then hinted at during the last scene). Now lets fast forward to Star Trek Picard (STP).

STP, in the first episode, has shown a great number of parallels to BSG:

1. Synths that are made of flesh and blood. So are the final Cylons and what they evolved too.
2. Duplication of a synth is possible with a single neuron, and you can make many copies. This sounds very close too or is the first step in Cylon regeneration.
3. Closing the first episode of STP disclosing there is a twin. On BSG, it was the disclosure of Sharon (Boomer) and on Picard the disclosure of the Dahj’s twin.
4. Rouge synths attacking an entire planet devastating it. Sounds a lot like the Cylons attacking and devastating Caprica.
5. Banning synths from society. Remember in BSG, network computers were banned after the first Cylon attack.

So, if you buy those similarities it seems that the universe of Star Trek is showing that all of this has happened before, and all of this is happening again!”

Now, of course, I am kidding around but look at the parallels.

“I never cared for science fiction” – oh look, Kurtzman is breaking the 4th wall thru the Picard character :>

Also: two random civilians can now just beam into a random apartment as they please? Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

Yeah, this beaming everywhere willy-nilly and attacking/killing people is very bothersome. It makes 24th century earth bound security look weak. Also can make for some easy/lazy writing.

(why do Romulans use knifes to kill after beaming into an apartment? can’t be to subvert an energy dampening field since they have blasters. I mean just disintegrate the sucker and don’t leave evidence. 24th century baddies are just as stupid as current day baddies I guess.)

Takes stalking to a whole new level, you can beam your love interest from their bed into yours while they sleep, or just go poke about in someone’s house. I would be replicating a transport inhibitor asap.

Illegal beaming should set off lots of alarms in that time frame. Without following protocols you could steal stuff, abduct people or cause untold damage with transporters. There would be serious monitoring of this — maybe big “no transport” zones.

I had two thoughts on the apartment scene.

As I said about episode one, transport inhibitors are an established thing on Earth. The Siskos had to walk from the neighborhood transporter pad to Ben Sisko’s father’s restaurant in New Orleans.

First, in this case, it seems probable that Picard had authorized entry. His Romulan staff had the surveillance footage from the police (and Starfleet Archives). So, given that the police had already done their investigation, and Picard is both a victim of the attack that killed Dajh and a retired admiral, Laris and Picard may have been granted time to look around.

Alternatively, Laris used some of her contraband Tal Shiar tech to get through the inhibitors.

As much as some people find this moving slowly, we’re still following Picard from place to place on Earth without explanatory dialogue.

“it seems probable that Picard had authorized entry.”

Sorry. That doesn’t seem probable at all. Why would a retired Star Fleet officer be allowed to beam into a crime scene at any time? Further, if the double secret tal shiar wiped it and erased everything there would be no record of a crime to begin with. So asking to beam in to a private apartment because he thought there was a secret conspiracy going on doesn’t fly.

Thank you!!!!!!

I thought that immediately and have been stunned it hasn’t garnered more discussion in this thread! I found that to be patently absurd. If the double secret tal shiar covered up the abduction and MURDER then the apartment would be available to rent by now. I’d think the double secret tal shiar would get someone else living there asap just for nothing else than to help cover their tracks. Tracks that seemed to be amazingly easy to follow, however. But that happens a great deal in fictional stories.

Good thought ML31.

Although if Dajh had rights to the apartment, getting someone else in quickly might trigger something in the system. Or, if she was planning to move to Okinawa, there may be someone already lined up to take over the suite who couldn’t be bumped without raising flags.

One wonders how two young adults could go completely missing though without it becoming a police question. Her Xehian boyfriend had a history that wasn’t fabricated and people who would miss him.

If Picard said he’d witnessed a death and that she’d claimed to have witnessed a murder, the police in Boston may have investigated.

When Picard was denied a ship and then was at his house looking at the communicator, I kind of thought he might yell for help from “Q”.

F-8, or rather Fate, makes me once more wish this stunning show was called Destiny.

While this episode was more exposition there were several very neat character moments
1) Picard and Starfleet CnC That scene was wonderful in that it showed how far the Federation had fallen away from Picard’s ideals. The tone,dialog and the actor mien in general made for an explosive scene. Now for those who say ‘This is against Gene’s utopian vision’ I will remind you of Star Trek VI (where Starfleet admirals plotted the murder of the Federation President) and DS9’s Dominion War where the Federation actually tried to commit genocide against the Founders. So this idea that realpolitic is not something that the Federation does is just not true,IMHO
2) Picard the The Stargazer Medical Officer Another small scene that built up to the great line about wanting to go back out into the dark. It showed both the literal danger of space along with the fact that Picard will be doing this without his friends,alone
3) Narek and Soji Watching these two made me realize their relationship may be the central one in this story.

Overall I liked this episode and series in that it explores Picard the man not the Starfleet captain.

I stayed up late last night to catch this so I’m not as fresh on the sequence of the plot, but yeah, this really continues to prove to basically be Picard living out a Dixon Hill-type storyline in real life, in a post-war timeframe. I’ll get into it as specific people bring up specific topics. I thought this episode called back nicely to a few things, though. The first episode (and series as a whole) calls back to more past stuff than this one did specifically, but I thought there were some pretty specific callbacks that were nice, thus making this series a direct sequel not just to the 10 episodes and 3 films the first was, but another, oh, 2 or 3 episodes additionally.

Oh and I rewatched the first episode prior, and while there’s no reason it would have required it storywise, part of me was like “actually … my mind would be blown if this hard-nose news reporter with a bone-to-pick with Picard was actually Jake Sisko.” I don’t think Jake would be quite so callous and story-minded, as he grew up within Starfleet people, as well as in a war, and with cultures that weren’t necessarily considered “the Federation’s friends”. But I do think if he was a news reporter and really wanted a story, his interesting history with Picard might lead to an even more tense interaction with a lot more nuance.

Nice episode.

Was that Alice Krige in the preview for next week? (The ex-Borg looking woman with curly hair.)

Also, I took the Worf, Riker, and LaForge references to imply that they were retired slash available to help. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason Crusher wasn’t mentioned was because she’s busy captaining the Enterprise-E. (She commanded the Pasteur in Q’s anti-time future, for one thing, and she handled the big chair well in “Descent.” It’d be interesting if she wound up in charge rather than someone more ”expected”, e.g. Riker)

Never mind, definitely not Krige.

I like that the writers have kept some of Picard’s reality parallel with what was shown in ‘All Good Things’.

Trek seems to rely on the ‘Many Worlds’ theory of alternate timelines. In that, we’d expect to see some patterns of event being hard to change even though Picard had already seen a version of his future due to Q’s intervention.

I suspect that Crusher is still in Starfleet commanding a ship. I hadn’t thought of the Enterprise, and have been assuming that Worf had that command. It could work though.

I love the fact that our stuck-up British accented bobbed-eared undercover Romulan Starfleet Officer is called “Ensign Rizzo.” Rizzo was one of the generic red-shirted security officers in “Obsession.” It’s such a weirdly Star Trekkie human crew-member name to me. Like naming a Klingon crew member “O’Reilly” for no reason at all. I wonder how long she can keep her cover? I wonder what her first name is?

Swearing in Trek is wrong. A hill I will gladly die on.

Sorry but it was boring. Too much talk per scene losing momentum. I don’t need action, I need more cadence, pick it up. So far none of it matters. It just isn’t engaging (ta dum) enough. I think a key issue is poor actor choice around Patrick, weak acting.

Wow… It’s not just the Tal Shiar… It’s DOUBLE SECRET Tal Shiar!

(Facepalm)

Oh come on ML31, as Laris argues, how can a secrecy-obsessed society like the Romulans stop with just having a secret police that everyone knows about? ;)

At minimum, it wouldn’t meet the test of the Romulans’ love of the dramatic. All that extreme Vulcan emotion, unrepressed, has to go somewhere. Or, as our kids put it in youth slang “They’re soooo extra!”

I get the feeling that facepalming will be a necessary survival skill when Picard spends a lot of time around Romulans. (They may not be as out there as Q, but there’s many more of them.)

She was explaining the existence of this organization. I just found the concept juvenile at best. It works for you. Wonderful. I thought it worked as well as Control did with Section 31. Which was, not at all well.

Yeah I don’t have a problem with it even if it is a bit contrived. I’m not sure why they just couldn’t have some Tal Shair members go rogue from the Empire (is it STILL and empire????) as they have done that before but my guess is they are building a bigger mythology and wants to present new things. I’m fine with that, as long as what they are doing isn’t lame. And yes if we expect anyone to have even more secret police it would definitely be the Romulans lol.

It’s just Kurtzman putting down a root behind existing canon. He’s done that before with other things so that he can drive his Star Trek beneath everything you already know. So in the end, everything you see on Star Trek has a layer of Kurtzman behind it. Dumb.

Boston, MA — Dahj’s apartment 2020 & 2399??

Corner of this building caught my eye today here in ‘Greater Boston’…and matches up to the ~Downtown area location shown in episode 1. I think there’s a 25% change.

https://imgur.com/gallery/OkDFIOK

And the Boston Federal Reserve Bank Building still exists in 2399….maybe owned by the Ferengi?? Or Section 31?

Laris and Zhaban are Romulan operatives using Picard to find Dahj. When Picard let it slip that Dahj was Data’s daughter, they shot a brief glance at each other. She also acted angry when Picard mentioned that he was leaving so he would give her information. She’s too calm and collected for a genuine emotional outburst as noted in the forensic scene in Dahj’s apartment. She also firmly suggested that Picard take Zhaban with him.

They been living with the guy for fourteen years now. They didn’t just show up a month ago. And we now know Dahj and Soji were probably made a lot more recently.

So no cares that the F word was used twice. I love star trek. I grew up on it. It made me mad and sick. That far in the future, there should be no need to use that kind of language. It shows a lack of verbal inventiveness.

If the program becomes one F word after another, You and I will be on the same team. For now I can’t join your protest. In the world I live those words are frequently used, and I think their equivalent will exist in Picard’s time especially in the military. So cuss words sparingly – yes. Frequent use – no.