We’ll have a review up later on, but for now this is a spot to discuss the episode with your fellow Trekkies.
“The End Is The Beginning” — Episode #103 — Pictured: (l-r): Jonathan Del Arco as Hugh; Isa Briones as Soji of the the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: PICARD. Photo Cr: Trae Patton/CBS ©2019 CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
For people have haven’t seen the episode yet… stay away from the comments of this article.
Episode title: The End is the Beginning
Synopsis: Completely unaware of her special nature, Soji continues her work and captures the attention of the Borg cube research project’s executive director. After rehashing past events with a reluctant Raffi, Picard seeks others willing to join his search for Bruce Maddox, including pilot and former Starfleet officer Cristóbal Rios.
The new episode of Star Trek: Picard premieres today at 12:01 AM PT/3:01 AM ET on CBS All Access in the USA and on Crave in Canada, and then it will air later today on CTV Sci-Fi Channel at 6PM PT /9PM ET. It will be made available on Amazon Prime Video for the rest of the world on Friday morning.
Keep up with all the Star Trek: Picard news at TrekMovie.
Great show. This episode was a scattered mess. Rambling. Incoherent.
Agreed, the narrative jumps were jarring.
So Rios has PTSD, Raffi has drug problems, Jurati lacks real world experience, and Picard is terminal, they are batting a thousand.
It’s gone down hill real fast. I find myself now not watching as a fan, but like I enjoy Air Crash Investigation. I’m watching a franchise crash and burn in weekly instalments, and in elongated forensic detail. I don’t want to see this Picard any more than I want to think about all the people who died in plane crashes, yet here we are with the franchise being dismantled and dissected.
I don’t ever recall a time I’ve paused Trek to go and do something more pressing and come back to it later.
The editing isn’t up to the golden standard we know of Trek, which makes a 38 minute episode seem even more rushed. There’s no time to take in anything anyone says, there’s voice dubbing going on left and right. One minute it’s millions of romulans, the next it’s billions of romulans, and they don’t even bother to make the dubs at the same audio level or tone.
I heard this cost something like $470 million. Where is all the money going? Sir Pat and VFX?
I’m sorry but this has trashed the Picard character, the best that could be done now is a Picard death scene and place the whole series in that context, I really don’t want another season, I don’t really want the rest of this one, but here it is in all it’s morbid curiosity.
I’m not seeing Picard as any different that he was when he was in command of the E-D. Same confidence. Same assurance. Same attitude. He’s an older version of the same guy. THAT is what I am unhappy with. I wanted to see him changed by events in his life. Not just a little disillusioned with Star Fleet because he was offended by a decision he did not understand. I thought Picard understood that things often are not as black and white as that.
Also, any idea why these elite groups of Romulan bikers keep getting defeated by beaming down to Picard as he hides behind things, instead of just beaming him and his female data / middle aged defenders up into the vacuum of space? Picard and the Romulans was always a game of chess, but these reboot romulans seem to be playing tic tac toe where the writers give Picard three turns first.
That’s a good thought but it could be that for some technobabble reason they could beam down nearby but couldn’t beam up. Seems an appropriate precaution for a retired Star Fleet admiral with two Tal Shiar operatives protecting him. It doesn’t explain the two attacks in the first episode, however. But yes, this is the third time they have been rather easily thwarted. Maybe they need to call in the TRIPLE secret Tal Shiar?
Not that there’s any narrative explaining it, but I’m under the impression that there’s some kind of technology that prevents anyone from being illicitly beamed off of Earth. Which you’ve then got to reconcile with the fact that certain actors in Starfleet are complicit in allowing these Romulans to beam down, or the fact that it’s a pretty free world with a pretty free economy and people just seem to be beaming all over the place.
I’m also quite sure that logical inconsistencies in the use of technology in Trek have always been all over the place.
I thought it was better than last week, but still nowhere as good as the premiere. I loved that Raffi was smoking snakeleaf, and I kind of want some myself.
The scene that really broke the reality for me was the brief scene between Dr. Juranti and Commodore Oh. Airpods and sunglasses? Really? Either this scene took place on a “Throwback Thursday”, or headphones and protective eyewear has already achieved its technological peak right here in the early 21st Century! Pretty laughable.
But, it’s good to see Hugh again after all these years, and I really like Rios’ EMH & ENH. Can’t wait to see more of them!
As another poster has pointed out elsewhere — OH’s sunglasses could be a clue that she is from The Mirror Universe.
I initially thought the same, and if true, that’s lazy storytelling. Vulcans have inner eyelids to protect from the harsh Vulcan sun. Enough that 1,000,000 candles per square inch will maybe blind them for an afternoon before they’re perfectly fine.
That a Vulcan would need sunglasses is physiologically impractical. Even IF she’s from the mirror universe, her race would be adapted to at LEAST Earth-standard sunlight.
Her last name is Oh, which presents the possibility that she’s half Asian-human and half Vulcan (allegedly), but Spock was half-human and had the eyelid. And even if she IS Romulan, they evolved on Vulcan up to maybe a couple millennia ago, so they’d have the adaptation as well.
But I thought she’s actually Romulan, not Vulcan
Or Romulan disguised as Vulcan. Which was where I went the moment I saw her.
It’s cheap theater. It’s “the bad guy wears sunglasses”.
In her defense, it was sunny.
The sunglasses are actually a clever little clue. The show hadn’t been explicit about Commodore Oh, if she’s a Romulan deep cover spy herself or “merely” a Vulcan co-conspirator (it was actually revealed in the official CBS Picard podcast for episode 2 by Kurtzman).
On Enterprise season 4 when T’pol and Archer are in the Vulcan desert, Archer offers her his sunglasses and she turns him down, explaining she doesn’t need them because of Vulcans’ inner eyelid providing the needed protection.
So it wasn’t just for giggles.
Maybe the actress was in discomfort for some reason.
Not all hybrids have the same gene combinations or genetic expressions.
Just because Spock wasn’t light sensitive tells us little about another half Vulcan – half human individual.
That said, it’s an oddity. As were the airpods. I would have expected to have seen something more like the tech Stamets used on Discovery or the juryrigged sim on the Excelsior.
Spock WAS light sensative.
Asian-look Vulcans were just in ST3, so I dont think she is anypart-human…
Oh my god… If they go THERE again then there will be no more doubt. The Kurtzman contract must be shredded and anyone from Secret Hideout should not be allowed anywhere near Star Trek ever again.
Sunglasses are fine and fresh for me, what irritates me here is the problem with the rank insignia attachment (again after the same issue in last episode)…
Yeah that was distracting in episode 2 when Rizzo’s rank pips would flop about from take to take.
We will see, Gersha Phillips usually has a reason for every little thing in her designs, maybe this slightly ramshackle look on the 2399 uniforms is meant to show that Starfleet really HAS gone downhill after Picard left (the 2384 uniforms are LOVELY).
May be there is the reason, may be UFP want to save some money and started to buy uniforms from Ferengia (read China) instead of using replicators (read US homeland products) :D
Gersha isn’t the costume designer on Picard.
If something as small as that is the biggest problem the show has it should be considered a wild success.
I hate to say it but through 3 episodes the most interesting character so far isn’t even alive. It’s the ENH.
This is a funny way of saying YOU were confused and YOU had trouble following along.
It wasn’t rambling and incoherent at all. It always amuses me when people claim intelligent shows aren’t intelligently written. It’s usually more a statement about the person who was confused.
Amen
Luke Montgomery is one of the biggest Trek supporters I’ve ever seen here. He rarely says a bad thing about any of them, ever. The guy just had an issue with some of the plotting, he’s not saying it was bad just could’ve been handled better, which I agree.
It’s just a consequence of the format of the show and the type of story they are telling.
Compared to classic, or Berman era Trek, where episodes had to stand alone as much as possible, Picard reminds me much more of a Star Trek novel.
I agree and this is just story telling for nearly every show now, not just Star Trek. They are obviously just following the trend like the rest. And I also agree with you. you’re not going to know completely until the end when all the pieces will fit how you truly feel about it, but they can still just have bad episodes and character arcs just the same and you can judge all of that in the moment.
And if the story itself is not grabbing you, then its just not grabbing you. I certainly felt that way for Discovery by episode five in its first season and sadly that never changed for me outside of the diversion into the mirror universe episodes. I was hoping by the season finale it would make me realize I been watching something truly amazing all along but instead it made me feel the complete opposite lol.
I’m hoping the first season of Picard ends MUCH better. ;)
So basically your only response is to attack the poster. That’s generally a sign that you’ve agreed with yourself that you have no valid response.
First episode was great. Second episode was okay. This episode was bad.
Sunglasses oh boy. But those EARS. ridiculous!
I’m forced to admit that Tomita’s ears sticking out like that is a bit distracting. Vulcan ears come in many styles, I guess?
Wow, mine was a totally different reaction luke montgomery.
I found this the most evenly paced of the first three. It totally held my attention.
I really liked the intersplicing of the two interrogations. The editing was deftly done.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this episode was very poorly written
The only “sheer effing hubris” here is from the writers who drip the plot along like a leaking faucet knowing the show is going to be released weekly. A lot of the problems might be forgivable if I could binge it.
I’m also gonna need at least one main character that doesn’t cry. I know they’re being set up as broken so they can all come together through the mission, but that will be two actual months from now. This is torture.
Midnight’s Edge pointed out that the showrunner changed after the first 3 episodes, so something, anything might happen next week, but then again it’s all still under the Secret Hideout asthetic which I don’t really see anything good ever spoken of it, so I don’t realisticly see anything changing. It’s still the same editors, the same 18 odd producers, the same VFX house, the same sound design, the same actors, the same atrocious lost in space set deisgn..
I’ve reached the point where I understand the ethos that no Trek is better than bad Trek, because this is actively destroying the franchise and trying to replace it with something entirely different, something fundamentally no longer Star Trek. I want it to be taken away from Secret Hideout and mothballed for a decade, and frankly if there’s never any more new Trek again it is preferable to this wanton oblitoration.
Midnight’s Edge lies about everything.
Agreed, but he has ” SOURCES”
I think we all know where those “SOURCES” are pull out of.
It’s a fact, CBS announced it themselves. Stop getting triggered like an idiot with a behavioral disorder.
Again….SOURCE? Where is the link? Just one link mate
Ohhhh you’re one of thoseeeee
“Midnight’s edge so valid sources are always Gospel and know all the Inside info”
“Secret hideout bad” no one knows what I’m talking about but they bad, wahhhh
Can’t believe you eat up those troll YouTube account clickbait videos…might as well just send him money on patreon…it’s like Trump supporters, you just lap up whatever he says hahaha
Grow the f up and stop behaving like a petulant teenager.
It’s alright, this guy Mike Burnthem we all know is a complete joke, and I love how the SECOND any of his so called “sources” get called out by someone he goes straight to name calling and personal attacks…
So just because I questioned your sources I am a “petulant teenager” and A34 is an “idiot with a behavioral disorders”
Right mate, keep on spewing hate and bulls*it somewhere else, doesn’t belong here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Picard
Grow up Tiger
Sigh, I’m not him. I don’t care enough about you or have the energy to create a sock puppet to have another useless conversation with. Believe it or not other people just disagree with you. And judging by this thread it seems to be many, so am I all those other people too? Leave my name out of it please and I will HAPPILY keep ignoring you as you requested. I have zero interest to talk to you.
Yes, the second Midnight’s Edge was mentioned we all knew where this was going lol. And I think maybe people here wouldn’t see that site as basically sensational geek tabloid fodder if just ONE of the many claims they made came true. Just ONE! They make every silly outrageous claim possible their ‘fans’ eats up but no one seems to once question any of it even though none of it has ever turned out true.
These are the same people who claimed Discovery was going to be canceled and season one and give Nic Meyers his own replacement Trek show, the Picard show was going to set up a completely new timeline away from both the Prime and Kelvin universe and oh yeah Alex Kurtzman was fired from Star Trek. But these idiots keep eating this crap up anyway. Stop with the silly bullshit!
Try to calm your trigger with a source of information that is in dispute with your own. You’re the epitome of the divisive commentary you so blatantly seek to rubbish, which is of course blatantly hypocritical.
It works both ways chief, if you want me to ignore you, FINE, then you have to ignore me too. I was talking about Midnight’s Edge, not you. And look around Einstein, I’m not the only one here that think that site is utter shit. The fact is most people here think that site is a total joke and for good reason. On Reddit the administrators there actually outright bans any threads who even links that site in their posts now.
And have you NOTICED that Trekmovie and basically every legitimate Star Trek website NEVER uses that site or its information for any of its news articles? You won’t find a single one on this site. Why is that? Because they all know ME is the Enquirer of genre news and just sensational crap for clicks, not because it has legitimate sources. And you will definitely never find actual journalist entertainment sites ever citing its bullshit. The only other places you see ME articles ever discussed is through other Youtubers, that’s mostly it and thankfully where it mostly stays.
So get the hint already, I don’t run this site man. I’m only telling you what most people here feel about it regardless how they feel about the current shows. You can feel however you want about it, just don’t expect many people to take you seriously here when you cite it as a ‘source’.
So basically your only response is to attack the poster. That’s generally a sign that you’ve agreed with yourself that you have no valid response.
great setup episode. really liked it.
Not a particularly good episode. I do not like Raffi even a little bit; stop with that “J.L.” crap, please. The Romulan-death-goddess subplot or whatever is going on there is awful. Commodore Oh turning up in sunglasses like she’s in a cheap spy movie was just laughable.
Please please please improve next week.
I’ve not read the Star Trek Picard Countdown comics but In the comic book Raffi addresses Picard as JL
Perhaps, but it sucks and is stupid, and I hate it.
Obviously that Commodore has recruited that blonde chick to do her bidding and beg her way on to Picard’s death scout ship. BUT PEW PEW PEW HERE’S ANOTHER ATROCIOUS ACTION SCENE TO DISTRACT YOU and then she comes in with a gun.
Do you remember that school yard game where everyone sits in a circle and adds a sentence on to the last one to make an endless story that goes no where?
It is definitely possible for Jerati to have her own agenda (“People in the A.I. community tend to get a bit secret-planny.”), but for now I’ll believe her official line that she’s a leading cybernetics expert who wants to come along because she’s always wanted to meet Data and helping Picard find Soji is the next best thing.
I tend to agree. Her reasoning for coming along is flimsy at best. I mean, she’s coming just to MEET that cyborg? How about ‘meeting’ her in your lab after all the danger has passed? Yeah, I don’t trust her and I would hope perfect Picard doesn’t either. Unless he’s lost yet another step in his old age.
felt the same way. not sure if i just do not like the name ‘raffi’ or the figure…
Raffi swigging the wine bottle and vape puffing was LOL horrible and awkward!! Picard’s pretty desperate bringing her on instead of Laris and Zhaban.
The vaping…! Awful. Every second she was onscreen was agony. And I hate to have to feel that way; I’m sure Michelle Hurd is a lovely person, it makes me feel a little guilty to slag her work off like that. But nothing that was done with Raffi as a character worked, especially the “why didn’t you call?!?” aspect. Lady, that’s a two-way street…
Last week when I pointed out that all of the women in this show just shout and womansplane at Picard I was called a biggot..
Well, that’s because you’re patently incorrect in your assertions, which clearly come from a place of misogyny and, I’d wager, other biases.
So…
Wrong.
Yeah it was a little TOO much lol. But I like the direction the character is going in actually, I just think they can tone it down a bit.
The vaping didn’t bug me but I can understand why it would others. I see that her career was destroyed just because she knew Picard and looking at how she is living I can see how she might want to just escape and the vaping could be a part of that.. So I can see why she wouldn’t call. But it doesn’t really explain why she came on board. Looks like we have yet another person with a hidden agenda. They might be going a little overboard with the “secret reasons” thing.
Bryant, J-L is exactly the short form that I’d expect from a close colleague.
Working with francophones, I know
and have known many J-Ps (Jean-Pierre), J-Fs (Jean-François), J-Ms (Jean-Marc) etc. Francophones don’t shorten their double-barreled personal names, so the letters are about the only option for anglophones to use as a familiar name.
Then you don’t understand Picard or anything about his command style. The “because 20 years” is almost as bad as STD’s “because classified” excuse for continuity errors and character inaccuracies.
The “because midnight’s edge” and the “secret hideout trek bad and it’s not what I like” is also a bad excuse for crappy comments
Try again in English.
Try again with a brain mate
Try again with a working class London accent.
There are precisely as many syllables in “Jean-Luc” as in “J.L.,” so it’s not even a proper phonetic shortening. Plus, I just don’t buy that she would call him anything but “Admiral.”
She would if they were close beyond a professional relationship. And I’m not talking intimate. I’m just talking as good friends. I would probably refer to someone with a hyphenated name like that myself if we were close enough. In fact, I often wondered why no one in TNG did. I figured it was either because Picard stuffily insisted on Jean-Luc or because no one was close enough to him to do so.
I have no problem with it. And I have been known to refer the the character as JLP from time to time. It makes sense that someone close to him might call him that.
Not sure why they used the Enterprise music when he beamed up to the generic sci-fi ship, but I hope that never happens again. Parts of the episode felt like a bad fan production. Especially Admiral RayBan sunglasses, and Romulan Rizzo who oddly reminds me a lot of Diana from the original V series. Every show has its terrible episodes.
The music represents Picard’s spirit, which is firmly in place no matter what type of ship he is on. I took exception to a lot in the episode, but not that.
That music is usually reserved for the Enterprise.
I’d argue that the music began as a love theme for Kirk’s Enterprise, but that what that really means is Kirk’s love for being in space and exploring the unknown. So for it to be used to represent Picard’s own love for the same seems perfectly sound to me.
What if that music is simply the Starfleet anthem? That’s what I always figured it was.
In nuBSG in an “in world” news report, they played the “old tv anthem” as the fanfare for some decorated soldiers.
If I remember correctly, they played the old tv anthem during a ceremony aboard the Galactica. The tv theme was also played at the very end of the show when bathtub Anders piloted Galactica into Earth’s sun.
Agreed. It was. Now it’s Picard’s character theme? Guess they’ve got to find something else to play if they do show any Enterprises.
I suspect if someone goes back and counts the times the Goldsmith and Courage cues were used independent of the ship, it would be far outweighed by the times it was not.
But hey, people gonna twist themselves in all sorts of pretzels to tell me why I am wrong here.
I mean … it WAS the theme music for seven seasons of a show on which Picard was the lead character. Not too big a stretch for it to be used to denote him musically.
Picard was never the lead character. Trek is an ensemble cast until superwoman Burnham turned up to wreck the day, but I guess that’s to be expected from Kurtzman who only knows how to write the tired and dated “hero’s journey” over and over and over again.
“Picard was never the lead character.”
Riiiiiiiiiight…
Again, you clearly have the attitude of a petulant teenager.
So basically your only response is to attack the poster. That’s generally a sign that you’ve agreed with yourself that you have no valid response.
The above are Your words mate ..can’t even be consistent.
“Trek is an ensemble cast until superwoman Burnham turned up”
Don’t let Shatner hear you say that!
Sorry, gotta chime in here. Even ensemble shows have leads. And Picard was the lead. Period. If it were more of an ensemble his name would not be the first listed in the cast. The theme was used for TNG because GR loved what Goldsmith wrote and wanted to reuse it.
If he were the lead then he would be in every episode, which he was not.
He was in every episode.
Factually incorrect.
A: Which episode was he not in?
B: The statement is not true either. Kelsey Grammer was the lead in Frasier and he missed an episode. There are other examples of this all over as well.
Romulan Rizzo is perfect as a romulan,
All the mannerism of a classic romulan
If you say so. Her acting seems more suited to playing a daytime soap opera villain.
…which is just what she was, once upon a time…
NAh, PEYTON LIST is really great. And her English Accent is FLAWLESS.
Not sold on the character, but she is really good. I’d never have guessed from “Mad Men” that she could an accent so well.
Oh and I was completely lost with that whole scene with the Romulan tarot card playing ex-drone that was saying Soji was some angel of death that was going to bring about an apocalypse or something.
This show is really hard to follow at times.
You were completely lost? That’s odd, because you literally just explained the scene. Would you have preferred that she turn to the camera and simply spell out the entire mystery in episode three?
Lost in the sense that all the dialogue leading up to “You are Zuul- The destroyer of worlds!” made me scratch my head.
So are they saying Soji is really Zuul, Gatekeeper of Gozer The Destroyer from Ghostbusters?
Something like that? Fortuneteller woman wasn’t very clear with her reading of the cards.
It feels like they are setting it up that she was created to be something bad, but will end up a messiah.
Hopefully Chakotay will show up with Harry, rip that Borg temporal node out of oracle Romulan’s head and use it to send a message to 7 of 9 in the past so this entire diabolical timeline never happens.
nice one. lol
There was a lot going on in that scene and the dialogue was oblique with double meanings all over the place. Soji first obliquely referred to a symbol of a false door and then asked how the door worked in everyday Romulan society and at the same time used it as a metaphor to ask permission to sit and talk to the former drone, a scholar of Romulan mythology. Permission was granted but she pointedly refused to discuss the symbol with an outsider. There was a debate about the word ‘myth’ versus ‘the news’ signaling that unlike on Earth myth is not dead literature but still used to convey magical consciousness and active, real-time moment-to-moment divination, something we might instead dismiss as a psychotic break or New Ager augury. Soji then for the first time gets her attention by introducing the idea as using shared mythos for therapy. But it isn’t that idea that gets her attention, she recognizes Soji as someone she met tomorrow. Soji pushes back on that nonsense at first then humors her and asks what they did together tomorrow, which leads to a brief flashback scene. Then Soji calls her out as having been among the last people the Borg cube ever assimilated before it self-destructed and asks what the hell happened? The fortune-teller than recognizes Soji as one of a pair of deadly sisters shown in the last card in the deck which she fits into the center, the more destructive sister, then she pulls a blaster from a careless guard and points it at Soji, then herself. Using super-speed synthetic reflexes Soji disarms her. It begins to resume conventional narrative there. All I can say this was a brief bit of postmodern narrative experiment using the ambiguous nature of language and the nature of mythology which is to refer all at the same time to sets of standard representations and none of them in particular, so the object of the conversation switches quickly between different topics and appears to resolve none of them, rather it is a sort of semantic duel a bit like when a hero meets a villain and they banter back and forth with meaningless puns, jibes and reposts, a game of wits while they fight or menace. The meaning is more contextual and a work-in-progress and is continued in future encounters. The absolute classic version of this is in the Matrix sequel where Morpheus and Niobe have this exchange: “I remember you used to dance”; “Some things never change” and “Some things do” is the reply. We have no idea what they are talking about for real, dancing, their habitual demeanor in living, their former marriage and whether they could ever get back together, but Niobe’s current lover puts the kybosh on their conversation right away.
You’re one smart cookie!
I didn’t find it hard to follow. Just wondering why we were seeing it. The hope is this scene will get paid off later in the series.
It could be excused to some extent for a 26 episode season, but a 10 episode season? At that number I’d expect every episode to be at a minimum, decent.
Especially with 37 minute episodes once the credits, intro, and montages are remvoed. The entire season could be binge wached in an evening.
37 min/ep – enough to claim California financial support which (as far as I know) depends on the number of episodes…
This slow set up could be acceptable in a 22 or 24 episode season. But not a 10 episode season. In other streaming season long shows I’ve seen they end with you jonesing for what comes next. Not so in this show. Discovery wasn’t this bad with their episode endings but I still was never in a “Can’t wait to see what happens next” mode there either. Not like I am with the handful of other streaming shows I watch. Hell the Arrowverse was better at this than Secret Hideout has been. And they have 20+ episode seasons.
ahem… That’s *Commodore* RayBan!
That look was Absolutely ridiculous. Like, not even funny ridiculous.
I watched it again, and what really made the sunglasses look ridiculous was how her ears were pushed forward at an extreme angle. She was all ears and sunglasses. They could have found more cool looking shades for her I suppose and not something pulled from a producer’s bag at the last minute.
The music is about a sense of familiarity. The man who we know is most at home in space is back in space on a ship about to begin a mission being useful. He’s doing what Kirk told him to always do. Makes sense to play the music cue. I’m not really sure how people don’t understand that.
He’s not being useful at all. He was just stood there with his little cliché bag of a French baguette and probably a week’s supply of medication in little boxes telling him the day he should take them.
Does he make bread at his house now too? As I recall he’s perfectly fine with sandwiches cut in little triangles. What the hell is he going to do with a crusty baguette? Replicate the rest of the ingredients and some cutlery? What’s the point in the bread then?
Nothing in this show makes any logical sense, it’s written by high school leavers who don’t seem to understand that not everyone is as stupid as they are. Well at least he can look out the window and see a shooting star in the middle of space in complete defiance of science.
And now you’re complaining about baguettes….did midnight’s edge tell you baguettes are bad? Or was that secret hideout? Hahahaha
Could you at least try communicating like an adult?
Could you respond at least once like an adult without name calling? Who looks stupider when you can’t even response to a basis question and instead to insults…clearly because you have nothing to back up your “sources” which if you could name one real valid source we might all shutup
See my previous comment.
So you still can’t answer one basic question? Right?
Does the above question I asked constitute communicating like an adult yet?
Are you on drugs Mike?
I personally did not have an issue with that cue at that moment. For all the shows faults, that did feel right for that moment.
I totally agree that the Goldsmith music belong only for ships named Enterprise. On the contrary sunglasses were fresh to me, but yes I have also feelings of cheap/fun production instead of A class sci-fi of 2020…
This episode was good not great, def felt rushed
But let’s see what comes our way
I’m loving picard
I do agree, that it was to rushed, quick edits, with chunks of data, alternating with chunks of off-camera events told. Economics, format, business – all seem to take precedence to story-telling.
But, it seems to me that sir Patrick Stewart has too long been outside the character, as rather too much of Patrick Stewart we see, and perhaps too little of Jean-Luc Picard, am I under the impression.
Did we really learn anything? Too many expository scenes without a story.
Starting, the first and second scenes with Raffi were an embarrassment of bad writing, acting and editing. Pick the flower, smoke the flower, hide nothing. Their new uniforms weren’t the only thing that were a little bright.
The best scene was the new captain arguing with his EMH..
When Picard is ready to leave his chateaux, it would have been nicer if we saw the Romulans appear to stalk Picard. Then he could have gone full Straw Dogs and shoot up the whole place!
I always think more of an episode later, but ar first watch, this feels like it’s being punched in.
I agree; the storyline is boring, familiar and highly signaled: Captain returns to space, motley crew are assembled with backstory baggage and conflicts they’ll have to live down, most of the plot takes place in far-flung dens of intrigue and menacing foreshadowing. Star Trek is guilty of this since it glorifies captain and crews from the fandoms of Christmas past. There were a couple of epic fan-made Trek series with this exact same formula of seedy, fallen starfleet rogues stepping up for a moral suicide mission when no one in Starfleet could overcome starch and corruption and rank fear to do what needed done. A ton of former Trek cast members were in these awesome videos so I wonder if CBS needed to own the trope of still shipshape crew of motley broken toys. If it follows the trope a lot of them are going to fall in battle. Definitely Picard himself is not going to see too many seasons more, he is not going to die of Eri-modi Syndrome. I hope nor fall on some rocks either. I’m thinking explosion.
I am expecting things to really pick up and I am happy to watch every minute of it and it really is some of the better quality Trek I’ve seen since last year’s higher-quality Discovery. CBS can take my money I am going to watch Picard.
This is why I am really hoping JLP is wrong on this one. It’s a tired trope what it looks like he is doing at the moment. If it turns out he was wrong maybe he might learn something and grow as a character. And it would make for a much better story.
Not even a goodbye and please look after the Chateau and Number One for Laris and Zhaban?
Laris, my favorite character, and probably not around for a while now.
“Good luck with all these dead Romulans” – Picard from a deleted scene. I bet this doesn’t get addressed. Did they get rid of the bodies? Did they alert Star Fleet that at retired Admiral just got attacked at HIS HOME ON EARTH by Romulan assassins? Doubtful. Nothing to see here according to the writing team.
Shhhh, shhhh. Sleeep. You are feeling sleepy. Verrry sleepy. You’re not supposed to think. Just let the scene finish and then the next one will come along so you’ll not remember any of the plot holes. That’s right, sleeeeep. Do not ask questions, do not connect one scene to the next, just sleeep and watch without question until the preview for next week.
Why do you keep watching?
Grow up
Oh yeah because your paragraph on hypnosis is so grown up right?
Clown
See my previous comment again “Tiger”.
LoL I’m not him chief. I don’t do sock poppets, believe it or not someone other than me just disagree with you here, shocking. I am doing what you requested and completely ignoring you, so don’t worry about that. I have zero interest to talk to you. I ONLY responded because I don’t want any time someone else just disagrees with you that you think its secretly me harassing you. It’s not, I’m not 15 years old, don’t play silly games and I don’t troll. If I wanted to tell you what I thought, I would just tell you as my handle, so get a grip. Val Jean is their own person here.
OK. ignoring you again. Bye.
If they are former Tal Shiar then they may have experience or knowledge on disposing of bodies and cleaning up crime scenes.
But… Yeah. If Picard wanted to go back and make a case to that bitch of a C in C it would seem this would be it.
I’ve hated the term “C in C” ever since ST: VI, lol! There, picked that nit…
I thought the Federation President would be the C in C for the Star Fleet… But whatever….
Good point!
Another good episode with some issues. It bothers me that the first episode was great, and then the quality continues to drop with each successive episode after that.
I like the EMH a lot. That sunglasses were horrible. I think Agnes is working for that bad guys. Hugh was awesome. I don’t like the ship design. Was Raffi vaping?
Next episode looks good! I hope! Legolas is joining the fellowship!
Whats wrong with sunglasses? Is the sun not gonna get in peoples eyes in the future?
Did the EMH and ENH have different accents? I think they may have.
That’s a good point. I will watch it a few more times to be sure. BTW: Is it vanity to program your support holograms to look just like you?
Immoral slavery, no? Programming a life form just to service you while forced to be on your ship in captivity?
The whole ship seems to be built with holo-emitters.
Even 20 years on that seems to be an advanced covert model rather than ragtagged relic.
Perhaps a former covert-ops vessel that vanished in plain sight.
Yep, the ENH had a fairly poor, probably offensively parodic Irish accent. If you’re going to showcase an actor’s array of dialect skills, it’s best to stick to those in which he’s proficient.
The EMH, on the other hand, was great. I really like the idea of multiple personality emergency holograms for a one-man ship. It can really showcase Santiago’s range. But man… it’s got to be done WELL to be impressive.
I took it as the captain did his own poor Irish accent when he programmed the ENH, and it was supposed to reflect that.
A terrible choice, either way.
EIH, Emergency Irish Hologram
Dang, I missed the ENH… Emergency Navigator Hologram?? Is this for real?
Finished watching episode 3 of Picard. A Romulan reading tarot cards, Commodore Oh wearing sunglasses, Romulan Rizzo, and Raffi vaping. Definitely not my favorite episode.
Also, why does the Commodore have to have an Asian name? Hopefully not because she’s being played by an Asian actor. If so, that’s pretty racist. Either way, for her not to have a more Vulcan-sounding name is a bad idea.
Unless she has taken her human parent’s name like Tryssa Chen, a half-Vulcan officer in the Relaunch novels.
The references to how expensive it was to hire Rios and his ship seemed to totally contradict the idea that the Federation had moved beyond wealth. That’s particularly egregious given it was Picard that made such a big point about this in First Contact.
Just because the society as a whole has abandoned wealth as a primary motivator, it doesn’t mean that _everything_ is suddenly free. Even in post-scarcity society, there are things that are limited, because they can’t be replicated. Antiques, for example. Or exclusive realties, like Kirk’s apartment in the walking distance of Starfleet Headquarters. Or… starships.
Thanks to unlimited power, replicators and automation, it is possible to live a perfectly sheltered life in plenty without spending a single cent, even if you can’t or won’t work – as long as you are happy eating only replicated food, wearing only replicated clothes, living in an assigned housing you don’t get to choose, or waiting your turn when it comes to travel. On the other hand, if you want to collect 16th century firearms, drink non-replicated wine, have a summer house up in the Canadian Rockies or travel independently between the stars, it’s still gonna cost you, because there’s simply not enough for everybody.
That’s a good point!
“The accumulation of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves.”
I think that Picard was talking about Starfleet and especially himself there. But if a person wants more than the government-issued living quarters, replicated food and clothes, and freedom to do nothing, then that would take some type of currency. Probably gold-pressed latinum.
That quote originates from 90s era Trek when Berman was very much trying to stay true to late-Roddenberrys vision of the future.
Realistically the more you think about it, the idea of no money makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Now, the idea of zero poverty and a 100% decent quality of life on Earth, I think can still be a perfectly realistic and noble vision. But commerce will always have to exist or else civilisation wouldn’t work properly at all.
If there is no money, then for a start how would employers be able to hold onto workers, how would they motivate them to reach targets? Why work hard if I don’t need the money lol? And if the boss doesn’t like it, I can leave because I will still be able to eat without this job. And what do I need to even work for anyway?!? This ain’t going well is it?
What targets? Who’s life can’t function without you turning up to “work” a shift? There’s no such thing as employers, no one needs staff. No one has to “work”. It makes perfect sense. Money is simply a motivator, nothing more. You need money to feed yourself and pay for a roof over your head, and as a consequence of working you provide things that other people need.
When society is essentially fully automated, when everything you need can be replicated, when energy supply is basically limitless, one is faced with the prospect of being perfectly happy to do absolutely nothing with their life and live in relative luxury. But that doesn’t mean that someone who does absolutely nothing is going to be able to obtain a starship.
Your value to society becomes a commodity itself.
Menial roles like maintaining power networks or garbage collection are automated. Just put your garbage in the replicator and it will reconstitute the energy that everyone else can use. Now you’re the garbage collector and take enjoyment knowing that everything you recycle in the replicator goes back into the power grid, guilt free for everyone else to use again, the ultimate eco warrior.
We’re seeing the beginning of automation right now, robot vacuum cleaners for example. How cool would it be if you’re into robotics and you design the next big robot that everyone in the world wants in their home? You don’t have to, no one is forcing you to, but you enjoy making everyone’s lives that little bit easier and putting your own stamp on society.
The primary motivator then becomes following your passions. If you’re a painter than your passion can either be painting for your own simple enjoyment, or for the enjoyment of others. You might take pride in creating works of art that others enjoy and take pride of place in their homes. Your motivation might be to become an explorer, or take pride and enjoyment in running a successful restaurant. Maybe you are besotted by spacecraft and pursue a career in being pivotal at the forefront of advancing starship design.
As Picard said, money is no longer the driving force, because there’s no shame or consequence in doing absolutely nothing with your life if that’s what you want, we’re beyond that kind of shaming.
People work for the betterment of humanity, to give themselves a value, to have a positive impact on the world. And if you don’t want to be a person who does any of that, then that’s just fine too. Wipe out that prejudice and you wipe out poverty. Powerful, but blatantly obvious in a post-scarcity society.
The only time in Trek we’ve seen rationing and credits needed is when either when there is a limit on available energy, or when interacting with aliens who still work on the basis of commerce, and usually both play a part. The rare exceptions are things that can’t be replicated, like dilithium.
Kirk also said they don’t use money in the 23rd century in The Voyage Home.
I think it’s generally accepted that money is not used on Earth. Similarly, when TNG-era characters talk about war and poverty having been eliminate, they’re talking about Earth there as well.
True story. They use Federation credits. :-)
They use Federation Credits. Credits have been brought up through out multiple Star Trek Series. Also I think Money may not exist in the core worlds but the further out in the rim you go the more it comes back.
Credits are a way of dealing with worlds that still work on the basis of money. To instantly flood another world still based on money with unlimited resources and energy would be dangerous and collapse their economies with horrendous consequences. This is why the Fed don’t give away tech like replicators and transporter tech. It’s simply not possible to transform a society overnight.
On Voyager and I think in Enterprise everyone had replicator rations and they were pretty valuable. I think someone made Janeway a gold watch and she took it right back to the recycler right away, didn’t even pretend to keep it. Obviously making a point that even though manufacturing is free raw element stock isn’t. Anytime some pirate had spare parts or access to aliens to interrogate about a terror plot they had to hand over some rare earth metal while shrugging about why it was particularly valued in the sector. Which is convincing for a warp-capable species. Remember Neelix would have done anything for a few gallons of water and he wasn’t the only one, because although he had a ship he was stuck trying to rescue his underage girlfriend from a desert planet. Sounds really sketchy now that I think about it. That just would not pass today, although she became all-powerful and came back and blew up half the ship in revenge for letting her decide willfully and against their pleas to leave the crew and find her own way among the stars.
That’s because energy wasn’t unlimited in Voyager or Enterprise. They were on their own, no starbases, no map of resources on their route.
Starships run on deuterium and anti-hydrogen. Once that runs out, they’re stuck at impulse speed with fusion reactors. No more ability to use replicators to turn matter into energy and back again.
Sure, Janeway could start throwing bulkheads of the ship into the replicator for recycling into boots, or whatever else they needed, but it was destroying her ship piece by piece in the process, and that’s why she was mad at Chakotay, that watch represented a piece of the limited resources of her ship that he decided to turn into a watch while she was obsessed with trying to hold what was left of the ship together. In the end she realised that the watch was more important than the ship as it represented what she had lost, rather than what she had left, so she decided to use what was left of voyager to ram the bad guy’s weapon on the slim chance that it would bring the people back. It’s a beautifully written two-part story.
In Nelix’s part of the delta quadrant no one had developed replicators. That’s why the Kazon were always trying to attack Voyager for their technology. They didn’t have the ability to change matter into energy, or energy into matter. If you burn hydrogen then water is a by-product. The only way they could get water was by collecting and burning hydrogen.
Star Trek has always been grounded in scientific fact, until 2009, then it’s just been blade runner.
I think it pretty obvious he meant money in terms of a physical coin or note. Or Cash. They have a currency. Just not physical. Hence, “They are still using money”. But that line is just one of the many idiotic things found in that train wreck of a movie.
Yes, Earth having no money has been there since The Voyage Home. Now I know some interpreted it to mean that Kirk was saying they don’t have any physical money, but A. I just don’t buy it and B. you can still interpret to mean that Earth simply doesn’t use money anymore regardless, especially now that it fits in with 30 years of canon.
My gut feeling is there probably WAS suppose to be a form of currency in the Federation itself but Earth no longer relied on money. Even in TOS they always had Federation credits. And we do know even Starfleet personal gets SOME form of money, most likely through that form of currency and not actual Earth currency. After all, everyone has actually mentioned buying things from TOS through Enterprise (even by that show’s timeline money was already suppose to be gone IIRC). Every single show has referenced money in some form, but that they don’t probably earn a pay check the way we do today.
So when Picard says getting rich is no longer the driving force of society, he probably means it, it doesn’t mean money doesn’t have a function in society, it just means no one uses it to buy mansions, fancy cars and things like that because humans as a species has moved beyond that type of mentality.
” it just means no one uses it to buy mansions,”
Except the one that Picard lives in. Or, if it were willed to him by his deceased brother, the one that he bought.
That house could’ve been in his family for generations. We just don’t know. The point is until someone just says ‘I bought so and so’ we really have no idea how they got it anything.
Didn’t Scotty say he bought a boat at the beginning of Star Trek Generations.
It could have, I suppose. But that still begs a lot of questions about how a society that supposedly has no currency can exist. Not to mention how he pays for two former Tal Shiar to serve as bodybuards/in home care therapists. And if he doesn’t then we are talking about something pretty close to slavery. Yes, it’s a bit of hyperbole but if Picard gets to compare Data, a machine, being Starfleet property to slavery then I sure as hell get to compare unpaid live in household help to it as well. I mean, yes they may feel an obligation to him but I cannot imagine this is what they would prefer to be doing.
“Probably gold-pressed latinum.”
Or Credits.
Boze, you make some excellent points. Some things are and will always be zero-sum because time and space are linear, even in a post-scarcity society. Only so many people can have that appartment vis à vis Starfleet Headquarters, real antiques are limited in quantity, and not everyone can be the “leading expert on synthetics”. It is the enduring presence of linearity that provides incentive for people to strive, to do anything, even in the future.
In that case, there still needs to be some sort of currency.
Society never needing resources was always a bad 24th century joke. Glad that this show has put that to rest. Probably the best part of ST: Picard so far is the exploration of civilian life in the future complete with expenses, a private sector and private property. Reminds me of the exciting 23rd century. Also TOS made references to credits and buying Tribbles.. it is only implied that paper money is gone replaced by electronic transfer. “You just earned your pay for the week”.
Paper money will be gone by the middle of 21st century I think. Maybe in less than 20 years from now in places like Europe and US at least. More and more people now use contact less cards and the tech is only going to improve.
Thing is how do people on Earth in 24th Century buy their food? Supermarkets still exist lol?
Fast food still exist?
Picard runs a wine business. We’ve seen that he has people working for him on the vineyard, I’m guessing for free?
He just sends off his wines for free?
And what if the federation are la king resources and need to purchase this from another power in the quadrant who have that resources, let’s say the Klingons for example?
Blockchain.
Paper money might be gone by the next decade. As soon as China announced that their digital currency was coming out, countries have been tripping over themselves about wanting to have digital currency also. China is so much ahead of them.
When your energy and resources are unlimited, utopia is achieved. Everyone has a luxury lifestyle by default, no one has to do any work and there are no consequences of doing so. People like to keep busy and will find a vocation they enjoy doing as little or as much of as they like.
The satisfaction and joy in life comes from bettering it for everyone else, and if you would prefer to sit around and do nothing all day it’s not like all of the technology around you is going to degrade and fizzle away. When your replicator can replicate replicators, 99% of the world’s problems vanish overnight. Material wealth no longer exists when total control over atomic matter and energy is achieved.
Throwing 20th century scarcity problems into 24th century post scarcity utopia is everything that is wrong with the fundamentals of these ignorant reboots. It flies in the face of the concept of Star Trek that has attracted such a broad and long standing attraction across generations of people from all walks of life. Take that away and it’s no longer Star Trek, period.
Star Trek says “Here’s most of the things that make your life hell, that’s all taken away in the 24th century, let’s examine what’s left”.
The reboots say “here’s all the things that make your life hell, still hell in the 24th century. So let’s see how 21st century people still fight and argue in 300 years over the same things, but in space”.
It takes intelligence and a cerebral and philosophical mindset to create stories for that stage, which the reboot writers and producers are either oblivious to, or simply don’t care about and want to use the branding for their own ends instead.
Yes, thank you! It was the implication in this episode of class and poverty, Raffi saying she lived in a ‘hovel’ that really confused me. Ok you have ptsd/mental health/addiction and your life is terrible. I’m sure modern medicine can help you with all that. But no, you are choosing to live in a greenhouse in the desert and smoke drugs because you got fired 14 years ago?? Am I missing something? The pilot wanting money to spend off world is more understandable. And yes, Picard probably gives his wine away. I imagine it’s a pretty niche market as who would actually want to drink alcohol rather than synthahol on a regular basis anyway?
It’s like saying who wants to drink diet coke when you can have coke instead. Synthohol is like artificial sweetener. It imitates sugar without the health implications. Scotty practically spat out his 24th century synthohol scotch, but it was still strong enough to get 7 of 9 rat arsed on one glass of champagne.
Have we all forgotten Deep Space 9. Rio is a ship captain, he’s not just chilling around Earth. Humans or the Federation don’t have a specific currency, but we know other races do, the Ferengi for example love Latinum. If he’s out zipping around the Galaxy it stands to reason he would have to be able to trade with other races not just the Federation.
I would imagine there are Federation Credits that are a Federation currency. However, when dealing with other worlds it would be necessary to barter or find a way to rate your currency against theirs. For example, how much Ferengi latinum = one Federation Credit? I would think there is a Federation department of Universal Economics to keep tabs on this sort of thing.
Something you can’t replicate is expertise.
Ben Kenobi: Let’s just say we’d like to avoid any Imperial entanglements.
Han Solo: Well that’s the real trick, isn’t it? And it’s gonna cost you extra. Ten thousand, all in advance.
Luke Skywalker: [shocked] Ten thousand!? We could almost buy our own ship for that!
Han Solo: But who’s gonna fly it, kid? You?
Expertise costs. Training costs. (“How much has Starfleet invested in you, Mr. Spock?”)
I thought about that as well. I did like the idea that some sort of currency in reality DID exist once again. That was a ridiculous concept dreamed up in TNG. Obviously Picard himself isn’t hurting for wealth. He seemed to get paid rather well as a Star Ship Captain and then an Admiral to afford such a lavish retirement manor. And there is NOTHING wrong with that.
He didn’t get paid anything, and the house was inherited from his brother and nephew who were burned to death there.
So those two house Romulans are Picards slaves then?
I tend to think not. He was indeed paid for his services. He pays for his estate even if it were willed to him. There certainly is a cost to doing all this. Those robot grape tending machines don’t fix themselves…
I fail to understand you believe money exists in the 24th century. Have you only viewed non-canon Kurtzman Trek?
Regardless of what has been implied, logic dictates there MUST be some sort of currency in the Federation. Because of this I have chosen to believe that when Picard says “Money doesn’t exist in the 24th century” he was saying it, to borrow from Star Wars, from a certain point of view. Meaning, money, as you know it, doesn’t exist.
A lot of complaints about the sunglasses. My only complaint was that it was a clumsy giveaway that Commodore Oh is not Vulcan. Vulcan’s have the inner eyelid which shields them from the sun, which as Spock says they don’t think about, but it also means they don’t need sunglasses. She wasn’t wearing them because she’s a spy – she’s wearing them because she needed them in the sun.
I do not think that Agnes is working for Oh.
Raffi wasn’t vaping, she was smoking. She stuffed a bud in there, did that not come across?
How long again has this Borg ship been there? How does this person know about Soji & Dahj? Either she was from the future, or the ship came back and she picked up Borg knowledge of the future – are we coming to some meeting with the Borg where Soji will be instrumental in the destruction of the collective?
And do we get to see Riker and Troi on Freecloud next week?
It really seemed that Riker was in Alaska from the trailer.
Maybe it’s Betazed, in a region which looks mysteriously like Alaska . . .
Correct.
Interesting bit about the sunglasses… the common complaint is that the writers don’t know Trek but that’s hard to accept. They sure do drop in these fascinating little nuggets.
Nuggets is latin for mistakes.
Mistake is English for Kurtzman.
This gave me a chuckle this morning. Thanks!
;-)
Agnes is definitely working for Wo. She is the sweet, innocent spy. The scene with Raffi questioning who Agnes is, and the fact that no security clearance was performed on her will be part of a future episode recap – after she is exposed
Freecloud sounds less like a planet and more like a website. As in: “I’ll just download next week’s episode on Freecloud!”
Right? I thought it was a pop up. Which would’ve bugged me
Like a Federation Hotmail.
I think that is pretty darn good detective work right there.
I wouldn’t bet on it being a clue. Maybe Vulcans don’t need sunglasses, but they are still bothered by sunlight. See Spock blocking sunlight with his hand in TMP…
You’d have to be a Star Trek fan to know about the inner eyelid thing.
But there will be a bunch of reasons why that’s not important to the “real” fans.
Kurtzman probably has an episode coming up that says Spock lied about the inner eyelid thing since the writing team would rather undo history than respect it.
The first 15 minutes of this episode was a struggle for me. The character of Raffi in 2385 seemed very forced. I know she is trying to get Picard to spill the beans on what happened. But when he reveals it, it just doesn’t work for me. Also, I was hoping they would show them on Romulus, where they get a notification that the Federation is pulling out, which in my opinion would have had much more weight to it, rather than another recap of a recap. I understand this is to introduce the character of Raffi, but the forced acting just kind of killed the scene for me.
I very much understood how losing her position in Starfleet, and, in her mind, the betrayal of Picard could have killed her passion and caused her to go down a dark path. Maybe I am being a little naive, but I just don’t think that on Earth (which as referred to in DS9 is paradise) losing your position in Starfleet would push Raffi down SUCH A DARK PATH that she is an alcoholic and at one time a drug addict. Also, if she wanted a bigger house then why didn’t she just build a bigger house. It’s the 24th century. There is no money. Unless that’s something they’ve neglected to tell us.
Outside of the beginning, I really enjoyed this episode.
Federation Credits, and you have to get approval for construction.
“and you have to get approval for construction.”
So Earth is not a paradise afterall.
I’m kinda flummoxed as to why Raffi would get fired if her CO quit. If Picard had quit Starfleet during TNG, even if he’d done something wrong, Riker would have been promoted to Captain, not fired.
I agree, this scene was forced and just didn’t work for me. And I can’t imagine Raffi would be on a first-name (or first initials) basis with Picard while still on-duty with him. I don’t think Picard would allow that level of familiarity. It took him 7 years to play a friggin’ poker game, for cryin’ out loud.
I hope it will be more fleshed out but I pushed up against that myself. My thought was less that Starfleet kicked her out and more that she knew she was going to have resign herself in solidarity with Picard and her bitterness comes from after that act, Picard just kinda bailed to Labarre to wait to die. Never calling til he needed her
I did, however, think it a really dickish move on Picard’s part to ignore her until he needed her for something. Afterall, he certainly seemed to be the cause of her ouster from Star Fleet. The least he could do was help her out. So perhaps our perfect admiral isn’t so perfect afterall?
Picard should have gave her a job picking grapes.
The only thing I can think of is that she had the data to back up her reasons for going to Romulus and that there was no connection between that and the Synth attack. Therefore, it might become an annoyance to Starfleet as a constant reminder if she starts to make noise about it. So in their mind, they are silencing a threat.
Because Federation bad. Get rid of all descent. Orange man bad. Brexit bad.
Weren’t you complaining somewhere earlier about people being high-school dropouts? Surely, then, you must know that you mean “dissent,” not “descent.”
It sounds very much from the post meeting debrief scene as though Raffi was the Admiral’s staff officer. It’s a completely different relationship than Picard would have had with his senior officers on ship.
In that case, Musiker’s career would have very much ridden on his. If he had pulled her out of Starfleet Intelligence and seconded her to his staff, there may have been no option but a forced retirement. All the more, if she had enemies in the organization who suspected that she had evidence of wrongdoing and no flag level patron to protect her, she may have been at risk had she fought to stay.
In a society where competition for self-actualizing work is fierce (as Wesley’s entrance exams showed), losing meaningful work and status could be psychologically devastating.
Any idea why these elite groups of Romulan bikers keep getting defeated by beaming down to Picard as he hides behind things, instead of just beaming him and his female data / middle aged defenders up into the vacuum of space?
I don’t need to see back story to just assume they WERE close enough for that. It also explains why she was so angry with him. Because they WERE that close. It’s rare to get THAT angry with someone you weren’t pretty close to. Even more so to hold on to it for years.
The reason it took him 7 years to join the game is because he never was that close to his Enterprise crew. They were loyal to him yes. But that felt more like obligation than it did friendship. In fact, when I saw that scene I felt that reading between the lines they were all secretly annoyed the “Boss” horned in on their game.
My question is why was Raffi reprimanded? Just because she worked with Picard? That seems pretty damn idiotic to me. Guilty by association. Seems like they should fire every person Picard ever worked with, too. Just in case. Maybe when we see Riker we find out that is what happened to him!
Chabon stated he wanted to expand our knowledge of Romulan culture, and we continue to learn more. I like that Romulans have a false front door to their houses. Also, “Northerners” have the forehead ridges. Romulans do not have a mythology? I think? And why do Romulans go crazy after being taken out of the Borg collective once assimilated? Hugh, 7 of 9, and Picard were all removed from the collective, and it took time to recover but they did not lose their minds. Is it that humans can recover better than Romulans from being assimilated? That’s fascinating. It’s finally something that humans can do better than another species in Star Trek. Laris continues to fascinate me. I really want to learn more about her story more than anyone else.
I do like how in Star Trek you can explain an alien species with one word. Klingons: warriors. Vulcans: Logic. Ferengi: profit. Bajorans: spirituality. Tellarites: arguments. Romulans: secrets
Andorians need two: Savage burns.
Kinda burns the concept of IDIC to the ground, buries it, and shovels it over with dirt. But yes, this has been a cornerstone of Star Trek history, despite its protestations to the contrary.
Whatever, in TNG they all want to be human anyway. Ironically not perfect enough, we must electronically engineer perfect lifeforms like Data.
My take from TNG is there are all these other aliens with some human characteristics and many with better characteristics of humans. But no one had the perfect mixture needed to make the perfect species. Humans. Sure, some were stronger, lived longer, etc. But none had that fantastic element that made humans the greatest thing in the universe.
Agree VZX!
This is EXACTLY why I wanted the destruction of Romulus canon for this show because as we are seeing it opens them up in ways we never could’ve gotten before. And I really love the Romulan/Borg angle. It’s not something I don’t think any of us expected, so I’m loving this part of the mystery; even more so because Picard has no idea the Borg are involved somehow so it’s going to open up a lot of things about both the Romulans and the Borg.
I think its something specific about the Romulans on that particular ship. It was implied that assimilating those Romulans is what caused the cube to be disconnected from the Collective. And, we did see a reclaimed Romulan who was doing fine in Unity.
Do we know who created the Romulan language?
They definitely have a canonical one now.
Linguist Trent Pehrson was asked to create a proper Romulan language.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Trent_Pehrson
Nice. But I hope it had a basis in what little Vulcan we have heard over the years.
The Memory Alpha entry says that Pehrson used what little Vulcan was available in constructing Romulan.
While the TNG music clip is nice, and is fine to hear around the Starfleet buildings, it felt out of place on the spaceship that warped at the end of the show.
And regarding that unregistered ship, how was it allowed to be in orbit of Earth, and why did it go to warp so close to Earth? I thought a rule was made that ships can’t go to warp within the solar system. Not unless there is an emergency.
Regarding what happened on the Borg cube, I have very little idea. Who that Romulan former done was, the mythology/muse stuff.
Admiral Rayban (as others have put it) was ridiculous.
Late 24th century home security sucks!
ahem… That’s *Commodore* RayBan!
Thats what I also thought, Warp in the solsystem but maybe they changed something at the warp drive – it´s the future….
Faster than light, no left or right. Maintain a linear trajectory. Warp near a source of gravity causes your direction to become curved toward the gravity. Like turning a corner at high speed in a car it places inertial stresses on the ship that can pull it apart.
Warping into a or out of a system from above the orbital plane of a planet is fine. Warping through the orbital planes, or within the system is bad. The gravity from the planets and star bend the trajectory of your straight line all over the place.
Basically, you can warp away from a gravity well without issue, but warping past one is dangerous. Like in TVH warping a bird of prey toward a sun within the solar system begins to pull it apart. In Generations blowing up a star meant the Bozeman had to make a course correction to account for the changes in gravimetric forces throughout the sector so the ship could still maintain a linear trajectory.
It was Picard’s first trip to space in a decade and a half, and the beginning of a brand new crew. It made sense to play the theme there.
Terrible, just terrible.
1. Another BSG reference in the “destroyer of worlds!” How many things from BSG are they going to copy?
2. It was made very clear in TNG that drug addiction was a thing of the past.
3. Rogue pilot smoking a cigar. Really? Is this the biggest cliche you’ve ever seen? Is this Firefly?
4. Ugliest ship that has ever been in Star Trek.
5. What happened to all the bodies of dead Romulans? Is it really just okay to kill them?
6. Agnes shows up just in time, grabs a weapon and shoots. Come on!!!!
7. Intelligent holograms built from AI are okay, but not anything else. Is there any logic to this show?
8. Romulan fortune tellers?
9. The fan service with “engage” was infuriating. How insulting to play the Star Trek theme underneath this crappy ship and show at the end.
By the way, did they hire professional actors? I’ve seen better acting in fan films.
I had really high hopes. I really wanted to like this show and see a return of Star Trek. Star Trek as we have known it for 50 years is just DEAD!
Perhaps Rios’ hologram is illegal?
“I really wanted to like this show and see a return of Star Trek. Star Trek as we have known it for 50 years is just DEAD!”
NAH – you probably only wanted it to return to the TNG form of storytelling and pacing, in which case, YES, it would rub you up the wrong way.
Not true. I am very open to different forms of storytelling and how Trek can evolve. I would be the first to say that TNG wouldn’t work today – the way it was done in the ’80s.
That does not mean you throw away the moral character of Trek, allow yourself sloppy writing, plot holes so big they take you out of the story, etc.
Agreed. The pillar of Star Trek was that humanity was going to be OKAY. Life would be absolutely perfect, and people would be good, moral people who improved themselves and learned things. We’d go through rough times, but we’d unite, our diversity would be our greatest strength, and we’d stop being children and do GOOD in the universe.
At at the risk of being called out for “othering”, we would explore present-day controversy by showing alien races that display racism, sexism, capital punishment, and every other present-day controversy, and expressing how wrong they were in contrast to the Federation’s standards.
Now that the Federation and Starfleet are “the enemy”, it’s just saying things will get better for a while, but humanity are ultimately greedy, savage, selfish insular bastards, and there’s no hope for the future in 500 years.
“Now that the Federation and Starfleet are “the enemy”, it’s just saying things will get better for a while, but humanity are ultimately greedy, savage, selfish insular bastards, and there’s no hope for the future in 500 years.”
—–
And Q is off somewhere doing the “I told ya so” dance at Picard.
Don’t worry, your perfect engineered AI life forms are here to save the day. They will have nothing to learn and be perfect at all times. All you need to do now is lose the imperfect organics and network all the prefect AI into a homogeneous collective that incorporates all diversity and knowledge. The TNG utopia is back!
Humanity will never be OK. No one is going to buy that.
“The pillar of Star Trek was that humanity was going to be OKAY.”
That part, yes. I agree that is what I gleaned from Trek. The rest? Some but not quite as much.
Until we get to STD Season 3, where we learn that the Federation doesn’t even exist.
Like I said a few comments up:
Star Trek says “Here’s most of the things that make your life hell, that’s all taken away in the 24th century, let’s examine what’s left”.
The reboots say “here’s all the things that make your life hell, still hell in the 24th century. So let’s see how 21st century people still fight and argue in 300 years over the same things, but in space”.
This is what continually eludes Kurtzman and his band of merry morons.
Picard seems to come across as morally arrogant as he always has been. So that hasn’t changed…
All of this. I felt ALL OF THIS. Thank you for making me “not the only one”.
You are so not alone. I really wish there was a full boycott of the current series and allow Seth and NBC to buy it at a fire sale.
LOL, where did you read that lie?
All good points, David. And not for nothing, if the writing (and in some cases, acting) here doesn’t start to meld, it may be time for me to write Kurtzman Trek off. There’s plenty of literally Great TV out there – I don’t need to pay for an entire CBS subscription to be frustrated every week.
While you bring up some constructive criticisms, I don’t agree with the “Terrible, just terrible” opening line.
Was this their best outing to date? Hell, no.
In my opinion, this episode suffered from poor editing. I suspect (hope) there are more scenes on the cutting room floor than we got.
Also, shooting that ambush scene at Chateau Picard was a mess. I don’t know if it was a fault of the director, the DP or there were just way too many Romulans in that ambush. I lost track as to who was who doing what. Combat filming may not be Hanelle Culpeppers forte? As far as Dr. Jurati coming in with the disruptor? You’re onto something there.
I suspect most casual viewers of this show will binge it once complete. Maybe episode 3 will stand up better when followed immediately by episode 4.
Better acting in fan films? I’ve made a couple of ’em. You’ve got a point, there. I still think it was editing choices that put a bit of a stink on this episode.
I appreciate the comments Denny. For the first time I actually yelled at my TV this morning. My biggest issue is the degradation of the moral compass of Star Trek and weak writing and plot points. That is not systemic to this episode, but starts with Discovery and unfortunately is continuing with Picard.
Well, it was 3:21 am when I turned it on. I had to watch it a second time to make sense of some of the nuances in this episode. The tarot card scene went right by me first go round. When I saw that Chabon wrote this one? I’m thinking something happened during filming or post production that gave us this luke warm (sort of) result.
My guess would be that Chabon writes and Kurtzman edits. Enough said.
I’d go further dennycranium.
It is not only ‘not terrible’, to me it’s very good.
I’ll grant you that the action scene with the Zhat Vash squad was difficult to follow.
All that said, I’m happy to have a less linear narrative. It doesn’t all have to be spoon-fed with the the clues in the mystery hammered home.
So far, even time there has been something that I’d have liked a bit more exposition of, the next episode covers it off.
For those grumbling and hand-wringing in this thread, perhaps this isn’t the style of Trek that’s to your taste. If so, that’s ok. Or, perhaps it’s just a matter of giving the show the chance to unfold it’s story before jumping in and saying it makes ‘no sense’ or violates deep Trek constructs.
They are taking stuff from every other sci-fi show and trying to force it to work in the Star Trek universe. I don’t understand the point of that.
Am I mistaken or was the big reveal of why everyone is pissed at Picard, the admiral and raffi, is because he resigned from StarFleet? Really? I was expecting it to be another “Insurrection” on his part. Something bigger than an ultimatum that made him resign.
Actually mostly from Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica. So many exact duplications.
He didn’t just resign.
He hid from the world and nursed his wounded dignity for 14 years. Laris and Zhaban are fond of him, but he clearly hasn’t done his duty by Raffi and perhaps other subordinates whose careers were damaged in his retreat.
It was his duty to reach out to them, to do what he could to ensure that were okay. Clearly, he didn’t.
That scene early in the second episode wasn’t just self-flagellation, it was a long overdue recognition that he’d failed himself. Raffi is quite right not to let him off the hook.
I was assuming Commodore Oh asked her for dirt on the Bidens, I mean Picard, then put her on a transporter pad with an expendable hit squad of Northerner Romulans to pass her off as somehow their informant/prisoner? Because they were to appear as if they had planned to use her to get whatever they were after, hold a gun to her head or confirm some torture info, but in reality they were housekeeper cannon fodder to give Daystrom Institute lady a cover story so Picard would feel indebted and take her along as a plant? Kind of like what I heard happened at the State of the Union, though I turned it off three words into it and walked down to the river to make a hole in it. Maybe she is not even the real robot doctor? The whole approach actually does remind me of some of awful Asimov adaptations, not the original books mind you but the terrible, unfaithful simple-minded ones where it was easy to turn a robot into a double agent, or assassin. Trek hewed deeply and greedily into Asimov tropes but stayed loyal to his overall theme of basically noble robot for years. Now CBS might be about to Will Smith it into illogical double-standards and play good-robot/bad robot or DataLore. I think what they did with Lore was ok but B4 was a little callous. No, I’m going to predict CBS is going to redeem this shaky start with some respectable writing. They aren’t messing around and all this is just set-up to hook some fresh viewers before the series reaches orbital velocity. Trek isn’t dead and its gonna take more than 20 years of fail to kill it. Give them till episode 5 to hit their stride. Every trek series had clinkers in the forge until growing the beard.
Yeah again we have this plot hole of not just beaming Picard out of his house into oblivion. You would have thought that they might have learned from their last attack party with the female Data that they are running out of black leather romulan bikers who can’t win a fight even to middle aged Irish house keepers. I guess they didn’t factor into their attack plans that Picard is able to hide behind things?
“4. Ugliest ship that has ever been in Star Trek.”
Have you seen the Enterprise D??
The D is a flying sculpture, and it’s beautiful, especially when it does J turns
https://youtu.be/TdgmfGB8Xzw?t=52
Or does Indiana Jones rolls to get out of the temple of doom
https://youtu.be/0wH19I5JLTQ?t=107
Clearly Romulans aren’t the only ones who are fond of drama.
Linea was the “Destroyer of Worlds” in Stargate SG1
Ugh.. another Starfleet Officer who like Picard is just like “Hey we can engineer electronic life? I guess our EHM holograms are life in captivity. We just sadistically built a bunch of feeling life forms just to make them slaves that had no Prime Directive development period for us building Starships but whatever (that same Prime Directive development period in which we allow organic life forms to self destruct and die over because the lessons are considered so important) . Those who have any concerns on this are backwards, that evil Starfleet, let’s go find the master at building these lifeforms with some Romulans not upset that we personally are responsible for screwing up the evacuation of their homeworld and ignore any dissonance with the fact Picard used to work for the Borg because Data soft spot and everyone else is at home in the holodeck since what’s to explore – we can just electronically engineer all the life we want?!? Let’s smoke.” Maybe they need to be smoking some faster than light mushrooms from ST:DIS?
Ok, don’t want to be always critical. On the PLUS side – turns out the 24th century has an economy, has expenses, private sector, private property. These are all exciting elements that set the stage for future 24th century shows to not be horrid.
I really appreciate that you’re working to find silver linings Cmd Bremmon ;
Ok. I know that I am in the minority but I never really liked Picard on TNG. To be honest I have not seen either Discovery or Picard. When it came down to choosing a streaming service I chose another one. I resented the fact that I would have to pay to see Star Trek on TV especially when the plot formats did not appeal to me. Where does it end with streaming services?
Unfortunately, I believe the streaming wars are going to get much worse before they get better, lynn. I cancelled Disney Plus to pick up CBSAA to watch Picard, and am starting to wonder at that decision. Ah well, at least Mandalorian comes back in October (and Disney is cheaper).
The mouse will jack up the price.
If you paid for your cable when TNG and all of the other Trek shows were on then you have been paying for Trek on TV for DECADES!
All Trek shows up to and including Enterprise were broadcast on local TV channels (or in Enterprise’s case on the UPN network, a loose affiliation of local TV channels). So chances were good that you didn’t need cable to see any of them.
In Amwerica TonyD, but most people outside of it (like I use to when I lived in Japan) saw it through cable.
I liked Picard more in the movies.
You are not alone. I never thought much of Picard. I found him to be a boring character bereft of any interesting characteristics that made him human. Writers thought that giving him a hobby (archeology) would help. It didn’t because he seemed to be the best archeologist in the Federation. Only adding to his impossible character. Honestly the TNG character I would like to see what happened to was Worf. No one else.
I’m also not a fan of all the streaming but unfortunately that seems to be the way things are going. I honestly do see a day when a bunch of streamers are bundled together in a package to make it a little more palatable. Like cable for streaming. I cannot imagine all the upcoming streaming services will be able to make it otherwise. And there are a LOT in the pipeline.
Yeah, that wasn’t very good. Clunky writing, drawn-out exposition and some pretty weak acting. Let’s not even talk about the EMH’s accent which slipped from English to Darby O’Gill Oirish. (Sorry. As an Irish guy, it’s a slog explaining to Americans that England and Ireland are most decidedly not the same place, culture, history or accent.) Dreadful. Stewart and Pill are the only ones carrying the load, acting-wise.
Anyway, we’re still miles better than Discovery, thank Grud, and it’s great seeing Hugh again but I’m getting a sinking feeling with each new episode. The quality is dropping since the pilot.
It might not be so obvious to someone from the US, but as someone from the UK who’s used to distinguishing accents from the UK and Ireland it was extremely grating (but I couldn’t be relied to distinguish Americans and Canadians). I even thought for a second it was meant to be a different character.
pssst…we Canadians are polite, tend to say sorry too much and end each sentence with “eh” at the end of it…..
Even if the Canadian ‘sorry’ can too often be a ‘sorry, not sorry’ in reality ;)
The ‘eh’ is dying out.
“Sorry” is a word that makes many Canadians easier to spot.
I’m going oot and aboot in my boot. :)
There were two different holograms, I believe: English medical and Irish maintenance/engineering. They had different attire.
I was really wondering though why the actor didn’t have a voice coach working with him in the voice overs.
Yeah, that wasn’t clear to me at first but as all the accents were terrible, the point still stands.
I was getting Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins vibes off of the ENH’s Irish accent…except that in Van Dyke’s case he had an Irishman coaching him to speak Cockney, while this ENH’s Irish was coached by someone who was likely from the American side of the pond.
The EMH’s British wasn’t as bad, but definitely could be clearer.
Unless the actor is putting up an accent, I think I can tell with about 75% accuracy who the Canadian and American actors are. The thing there is in north central part of the US the accent is VERY close to what one might hear from a Canuck.
Was thinking along similar lines, that Stewart and Pill aside, the acting was closer to a daytime soap. Similarly, the directing seemed inconsistent. I’m hoping the episodes directed by Frakes drag the show up by the scruff of its neck.
Seems I’m the only one who liked this episode. Who would have thought THAT? ;)
Nah, you’re not the only one. I liked it a lot too. My only complaint with the Picard show is that it is not set in the 24th century, but in the 21st… they are all wearing clothes and boots and carrying bags that look like they come from a holodeck recreation of 300 year old stories… Imagine us wearing clothes from the 17th/18th century. The designers should really try to imagine the future not just recreate the present.
Yeah, I don’t like that part. I didn’t like it in the Abramsverse and I didn’t like it in Discovery seasons 1 and 2 so…. don’t want to sound like a broken record already. It is the meat that matters, and slow as it may be, this ain’t Burnham burgers, thank Surak! As for the anachronisms, at least the classical music Agnes was listening to was nice … could’ve been the choice of “JL” himself, n’est pas?
Agnes was listening to Kasseelian opera. The same aria that Dr. Culber, from Discovery, was a fan of.
Wow, a cool tie in! :)
I just wish she’d had an advanced version of the player Stamets had rather than airpods.
LOL Discovery, a show that takes place 150 years before Picard, had a much more advance media device that really does feel like something post Voyager while Picard showed off something that we literally have right now. They need to sort out some of these things a little better. ;)
Please refrain from using teenage expressions such as “lol” in every other comment on a forum which tries it’s best to not judge people by their age and inexperience, but rather the content of their communication. You’re making it difficult for everyone else to take your commentary seriously.
Mike Burnthem, earlier that day:
“Enterprise got cancelled after that lol.”
I lol Bryant! Thank you! ;D
LOL.
Ok come on, LOL is mainstream at this point.
And Michael Burnthem, are you seriously critiquing communications styles after having chosen a weak and trashing pun on a Discovery character’s name?
Just in case you are from across the pond, I should perhaps note that our American friends don’t generally find puns as witty as other cultures do. (In fact, they’d call your alias a ‘groaner’.)
No, I definitely liked it too VS, but it was flawed for me. But I generally thought it was a decent episode, it just could’ve been better IMO.
I think much of the flawedness stems from the over-reliance on serialization, similiar to Discovery, with the added bummer it’s only 10 episodes (30% done and we just getting started). It’s 100% setup and 0% pay-off. I hope one day they will find a sound middle path between self-contained episodes with their own merit and mission, and a grander arc they feed into.
That said, this 3rd hour of a ten hour movie is more compelling to watch than Discovery’s 13 hour movies which are all wasted because the premises are badly executed.
Look… Enterprise proved that a season long arc CAN work in Trek. But Secret Hidout Trek has so far failed trying. Enterprise’ season was long enough where they could do individual story episodes that still were able to move the overall plot along. Then later in the season they went right into the serialization. But when you only have 10 episodes you really need to get it going. Move that story. Netflix’ Marvel shows worked better than this does and they had 13 episodes! I’m really starting to think this is more Secret Hidout’s fault more than anything else. But, the optimistic side is there are still 7 episodes left so this show could start taking a turn for the better after the difficult start. Let’s hope for that.
Enterprise got cancelled after that lol. The only reason there was a 4th season was because so many of us joined in on the “save enterprise” campaign. We finally got the Enterprise we wanted with arguably the best season and it was shoved in a bad time slot and then cancelled half way through the production of the season.
It was not canceled. There was a 4th season as you pointed out. When time came for renewals during the 4th sesaon, they were informed they would be canceled. It did not end part way through the season. They finished it out. But that is beside the point. That 3rd season is generally considered to be Enterprise’ improvement. The show was noticeably better. And it was a 20+ episode story arc. Secret Hideout has problems with just 13 or 10 episode arcs…
Incorrect. It was cancelled after the 3rd season. The “Save Enterprise” campaign got it a 4th season on a reduced budget, including a $1m donation from Richard Branson.
It was given a 4th season. Part way through production of the 4th season the producers were advised that there would be no 5th.
The fan efforts to prevent the cancellation of Enterprise at the end of season 3 were included in the season 4 bonus DVD’s. You can still find much of that content today online.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXomtuJ5qz8
Educate yourself.
That supplement was in the season 4 set. It was an attempt to save the show during the 4th season. Not the 3rd.
Anything else you’d like me to correct you on?
Incorrect. It was cancelled after the 3rd season. The “Save Enterprise” campaign got it a 4th season on a reduced budget, including a $1m donation from Richard Branson.
It was given a 4th season. Part way through production of the 4th season the producers were advised that there would be no 5th due to the poor ratings thus far in season 4.
The fan efforts to prevent the cancellation of Enterprise at the end of season 3 were included in the season 4 bonus DVD’s. You can still find much of that content today online.
Back in the day a season would be aired as it was being filmed, unlike today where the entire season is filmed before it’s aired.
Educate yourself. Search YouTube for “Save Enterprise Campaign”. The top hit will explain the situation to you.
I liked it too VS.
However, it feels as though there is a contingent (many of whom are new here) who feel the need to rush in to express a lot of unhappiness.
For those of us in Canada who only get to see it Thursday evening, that’s a whole lot of negativity to wade through just to join in the conversation and share our views.
I’m in the US and I don’t see it until Thursday evening myself. I don’t stay up to 12:45am to watch this. And some of us still have to work during the day.
On the one hand it was great to hear the Goldsmith and Courage music cues. On the other hand, they are overused and misplaced already. They’ve hijacked themes meant specifically to showcase the Enterprise and given them to Picard as a character. If they do show an Enterprise at some point, they’ve got nothing impactful to play for music. What a missed opportunity sacrificed by the production team’s need to keep pounding home the idea that this is connected to TNG.
The Kurtzman 1701 hologram makes it an-alt universe show for me since the only other explanation is that he’s rewriting established designs to make Roddentrek irrelevant.
Regardless, enjoying the show now that I understand it doesn’t impact anything I care about.
Considering TNG never really had its own musical identity (as evidenced by the only TNG film to not feature Goldsmith), I don’t have a problem with it. McCarthy had a main title theme which they never used, and he ended up utilizing cues from it to refer to Picard in early seasons. I don’t think you want to be using McCarthy here, but I don’t see an issue with doing the same to Goldsmith’s TMP theme as Ron Jones sometimes did.
Where has Courage been featured? I missed him. I assume you’re not referring to Fred Steiner.
I enjoyed it.
Me too. Following up on our conversation last week about when episodes are posted, it was posted by 11:00 PM on Weds night.
If it was available at 10pm I MIGHT stay up to watch. But I do start work pretty early…
A nice character setup episode that once again reminds us that these first 3 episodes really should be seen all at once, they don’t necessarily hold up as standalone episodes. This episode has some of the same problems I complained about with Discovery season 2, dense expository dialogue and occasionally sloppy editing. A good example of that is when the Chateau is invaded and Zhaban drops his Apple avoiding the disruptor blast and instantly he says “They hit the security system!” with no beat at all. It was super awkward and it deflated the shock of the moment. There is allot of clunky editing in this episode that can make it hard to focus.
I love the character of Raffi, although her origin story doesn’t make much sense in the world of Star Trek, nor does her current struggles and addictions. Her reasons for being so mad at Picard she threatened him with a rifle just doesn’t add up for me. I also love that she calls him J.L., it denotes a longtime friendship unique and separate from his TNG crew. And now I already find myself calling him J.L. Regardless, I love the character because of the actor, not because of the story, which is fine by me really.
The excitable EMH in the image of Rios with an accent is also a strange choice, definitely would have been a great opportunity to use Robert Picardo here if they don’t mind theatrical performances on this show. Rios is also a good character, a bit of a cliche perhaps but he’s played with more subtly than the norm, he’s approachable and matter of fact, but not obnoxious.
I have to admit to being very confused by the Romulan Borg story, I have a general idea of what they are trying to do, but I also get the feeling that the creators simply couldn’t realize the story idea as clearly as they should.
And then there is the “modern” dialogue that seems to be intentionally out of character with TNG, cursing and religious christian analogies and so forth. I realize that TNG guarded language under the thumb of Rick Berman so there was no way Star Trek would talk that way again, but it’s something that a diehard fan is going to notice and take issue with.
This is definitely an episode that needs a rewatch or two with the subtitles on to absorb some of the dense and overly rushed dialogue.
I deconstructed the Tarot Card scene above, I strongly assert they were trying to slip in a significant departure from clear narrative into the equivalent, for them, of ‘magical space alien interlude’. It was meant to be incomprehensible and disjunct. While it references postmodern ideas about mythological storytelling, think of it as being the same sort of scene anytime they’ve done a long version of a ‘mind-meld’. They signal the magical quality in TOS with a signature moody, introspective strum melody and ‘my mind to your mind’ or some such hoodoo, ‘audience please suspend normal language meanings’, this is a ceremonial beat meant to convey, not dialogue but exotic meta-cryptic, veiled language and forbidden alien cultural rites. Think of the classic Generations episode “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra”. The David Lynch version of Dune had similar meta-dialogue experiments (as did Herbert), as did 2001. Star Trek still aches to feed at the 1970s LSD-laced experimental forgotten editing riff dialogue trough and they did it with skill and panache. Nothing about that scene was muddled or the least bit unintentional. If you were confused they succeeded on a certain level, you are expected to experience the scene as if you met a truly alien performance and you are to revisit the scene in future episodes, in fact it is sure to be referenced several times this season. It is a key scene for future revelations. Yes, Romulans are basically a comment about ancient Sparta/Rome/Communists but CBS is now trying to hint at a more esoteric side of them, i.e. what if Earth never did experience the Enlightenment period and instead, packed into old-time colony ships and founded a militaristic, antirationalist, secret-obsessed anti-Vulcan society with very emotionally laden mystery cults instead of science as we understand science? Just replay the scene about 10x and pause after each sentence and think about the many potential layers of innuendo possible with each exchange. All of them are FALSE DOORS except maybe the last couple ones, meaning characters are not what they seem to be. They are hiding their true identities and motives, which are violent motives.
That’s a very compelling take on what’s going on! I think people forget that Romulans were MEANT to be the “Anti-Vulcans” who reject logic. Mystery cults and secret societies fit right into there.
Wow you thought about this a lot harder than I ever would have lol. And I really love this idea. I think you’re right, we’ve only seen a very strict and thin side of Romulan culture and that is the military/political side of it over and over again beginning with TOS all the way through DS9 and rarely anything outside of that. So we never seen much of their spiritual/estoric side (where as the Vulcans we gotten plenty of it through the years). And I like how it feels very different from Vulcans too, it does feel like it’s two different cultures even if they are the same species just like how we humans have hundreds of different belief systems even though we’re the same species too, ie, real life.
Again THIS what I been wanting out of Star Trek for so long, a real deep dive and opening species up in ways we never seen before and not just boring and tiresome connections like what year did Romulans get their cloaking power; now lets watch three episodes to see how that was done. Obviously I don’t mind some of that but I get tired of ‘filling in’ type of story lines (a HUGE reason why I generally hate prequels), but actual new inventive directions of mythologies and/or cultural development. To be fair they tried to do the same with the Klingons in the first season of Discovery but it still basically came down to the same stuff we heard over and over again for decades now, just in a different package (literally ;)).
This feels like something completely different because it is. That’s why I’m loving all the stuff with the synths, Borg and definitely the Romulans. It feels like we are getting a lot of new stuff with all of them (although we never got a lot with androids in the first place since it was basically just Data up until now) and why I’m really loving it, even if I don’t understand it lol.
It would’ve been interesting to see Robert Picardo tossed in there. It would’ve helped to ground the show a little better into the existing lore.
It sounds as though Picardo’s doctor will show up at some point Captain Koloth.
For my part, I really prefer that the writers are dribbling out the call-backs only as they become essential. I really don’t like the kind of cameo reunion shows. They break the fourth wall for me because they make the universe smaller rather than infinite. I hate American spin-off or reboot pilots that get weighed down with ‘oh look it’s character X saying their famous line’.
By the way, it turns out that it was Patrick Stewart who really resisted bringing back any TNG character unless it was meaningful and essential to advance the story. Kirsten Beyer, as a Trek novel author, seems to be the one advocating for including characters from across 90s Trek : she’s said in interviews that if all the characters live in the same time and universe, their interactions shouldn’t be limited to characters from the same show.
Watch this video… this is what Star Trek used to be about
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe7axuTmoUg
I don’t need a video to tell me what Star Trek used to be about. I’ve got Star Trek for that.
I’m starting to feel “Picard” is NOT it.
It’s 2020.
After reading comments here and knowing how people feel about Discovery, it is very clear that a lot of people don’t like the show because it’s a serial drama and not a season of mostly stand alon episodes.
It’s not that the shows suck or are poorest written, it’s that you want Trek the old way and not as it’s now being presented.
Not true. I think many of us are very open to different forms of storytelling and how Trek can evolve. I would be the first to say that TNG wouldn’t work today – the way it was done in the ’80s.
That does not mean you throw away the moral character of Trek, allow yourself sloppy writing, plot holes so big they take you out of the story, etc.
Nonsense. Serial drama’s great when it’s done well and there’s no reason it can’t work for Star Trek. Picard’s making a better go of it than Discovery but it’s still hampered by some weak writing.
There are also people who seem to be willing to just accept ANY old thing as Star Trek, just because it says “Star Trek” in the title. But sure, it’s serialization the rest of us object to…
I think there is probably SOME of that. I do think there are many fans missing the standalone stories (and probably why the most popular DIS episodes were also the ones that felt the most standalone) but I also think others are just not happy where the stories themselves are going either. I was fine with DIS being serialized, but I was NOT happy with the direction DIS went in season one at all. I wasn’t enthralled with it and while it did have some fun moments and twists oddly the whole thing just felt empty to me after it was all done. The second season however improved a LOT. I was on the edge of seat every episode and really enjoyed the mystery. And even though the story still wasn’t a complete home run it made me a bigger fan of the show when I was afraid I wouldn’t be. But that is the issue with serialization, end of the day you judge the entire season over how you felt about the story. And if you hate the story from the beginning, well…
With Picard, its a few episodes in and I’m really really liking it. But I also agree with others it may start feeling a little too convoluted with all the subplots, twits and turns its already taking. This is right out of Discovery’s playbook, so I can see why others may feel concerned about it.
Again, its not the fact that’s its serialized for some, simply its execution. But its way too early to say its bad or good. All I can say is I’m personally loving it, loving most of the characters and the mystery and it’s certainly better than Discovery, but its still not perfect either.
I think the first season of Discovery was ok. S2 was good. We’re 3 episodes in and people complain about things that are tied to it being serial.
The whole “but Star Trek is not supposed to be negative! It’s not like Trek in the 60s! Or the 80s! Or…”
We haven’t seen how the story plays out. So we don’t know if the entire thing is dark and negative. It’s a serialized story.
How can you have plot holes when it’s a serial?
If some of these things are true at the end of the season, ok. But the complaints I’m seeing all seem tied to serialization and people that want a 1960s show in 2020.
Ok. Sure. Let’s never evolve.
Yes I agree with you on a lot of that. The whole ‘but everyone is suppose to be super happy, always get along and never do bad things in Star Trek’ is just very strange argument to me. Since TOS we have seen people do bad things over and over again. We seen the Federation do questionable things MANY times. And yes we seen people struggling with things. I think if you believe Star Trek is suppose to be a utopia then yeah I guess you have a harder time with this because you expect it to be perfect, but that’s EXACTLY why I never saw it as utopia because it ISN’T perfect. Yes compared to today’s world it is, but it still have its own issues, just a lot more idealized. But yeah.
But like you said, even if the Federation is in a darker place but A. it’s NOT the first time and B. it probably won’t last forever since it rarely does.
The funny thing is I was thinking about Insurrection the other day which clearly shows the Federation up to no good in it and that was mostly due to the effects of the Domion war and their desperation to win. But I bring it up because I remember something Patrick Stewart said at the time that the movie was originally meant to be part one of a two part story and the NEXT movie was going to focus on the Federation going in a darker path and Starfleet being manipulated from within. Basically Insurrection was meant to set the seed for something more sinister happening. That was the original plan but then Insurrection wasn’t well received so they obviously axed it. And of course DS9 ended up doing a lot of those themes anyway, especially with stuff like Homefront/Paradise Lost.
And this was over 20 years ago now. Star Trek has been doing this stuff for a long time now. This is just the first real serialized version of it and not everything is wrapped up in a movie or a two part episode, that’s all.
Your comment about people struggling reminded me of Matt Decker, that decorated Starfleet captain, completely broken by a disaster. What’s new is that a main character could follow that path, and an entire series focus on this. That’s what is new with serialization. I do think though this series will follow the road of Discovery and season 2 will be less broody/more light hearted. Kurtzman said he’s gonna wait for the fan feedback of season 1 before nailing down season 2, and that is encouraging!
Serialization has the potential to let you get deeper into the characterization — but unless you really take advantage of that opportunity, it turns one hour or ninety minute stories into hugely padded seasons. I think this is true of a lot of stuff in recent years (some BOSCH seasons really come off that way to me, though I really enjoyed the last couple.)
The other problem is that when that character study takes somebody into a broody thing, that it just turns people off completely. My fave example of this is TOP GUN — the movie just stops dead for what seems like a half hour after Anthony Edwards’ character dies, and Cruise just mopes and mopes. Now I didn’t like much of the movie before that death, but it became pure agony after his death. I’m still surprised about how many sucker — sorry, filmgoers — stayed with the film despite this and everything else that I found cringe-worthy (except for TAPS and the first M:I and EYES WIDE SHUT and COLOR OF MONEY, I’ve never enjoyed any Tom Cruise movie, so that might color my thinking on this issue.)
Once again, the problem with serialization is that if the overall story is poor, then the entire season is poor. In episodic television, one bad episode does not ruin the entire season or even entire show. But you put two bad serialized seasons back to back and you get a bad show. So bad that maybe in an attempt to turn things around you change the entire setting of the show for the next season if you get one. ;)
But my point is that it really doesn’t seem to be all that hard to map out a decent short season serialized show. Others seem to do it on a regular basis yet Secret Hideout (and admittedly is is still only a little less than 1/3 of the way through Picard) has had a very tough time doing so with Trek.
I actually thing INS works better if you think of it as a section 31 plot.
Star Trek says “Here’s most of the things that make your life hell, that’s all taken away in the 24th century, let’s examine what’s left”.
The reboots say “here’s all the things that make your life hell, still hell in the 24th century. So let’s see how 21st century people still fight and argue in 300 years over the same things, but in space”.
Clearly you don’t understand that, which makes it abundantly clear that what you think is Star Trek isn’t in fact Star Trek at all.
The thing is Mike Burnthem that Trek said and showed that some things that make life hell are gone, but even in TOS and early TNG it was clear that Federation society was fairly harsh in some ways.
The reality of a society that requires hyper-competitive achievement systems in which individuals prove themselves worthy of making a contribution through meaningful work could be quite devastating for those who don’t get accepted to the Academy, or the command track program, or a prestigious posting to the Enterprise.
It’s never been clear how those who work hard but don’t meet their self-actualization goals are supported to cope, counseling psychologists notwithstanding.
Up to now, we’ve had the perspective of those privileged to be at the apex of Starfleet and Federation status. While addiction and risky behaviours may not be the only possible adverse outcome of dashed hopes, it seems past time to think about the other 99.99%.
I disagree completely.
Take a look at the rates of depression, suicide and other mental health issues at the highly competitive elite science and engineering schools in the U.S. and elsewhere Mike Burnthem.
Really bright people want to succeed by making a contribution, and when they falter in their belief that they can, the results are often devastating.
“But I also agree with others it may start feeling a little too convoluted with all the subplots, twits and turns its already taking. This is right out of Discovery’s playbook, so I can see why others may feel concerned about it.”
They did improve matters a bit though. We know from the get-go that Rizzo is a Romulan agent and Dahj/Soji are androids, opposed to the Tyler/Vogh disaster, and hopefully Picard will not turn out to be his mirror-version in episode 7 ;) Also, hopefully the search for Maddox will not take up most of the season à la The Search for Spock aka Discovery season 2.
“and hopefully Picard will not turn out to be his mirror-version in episode 7 ;) ”
I get the dig but that would seem unlikely as save for him being a total dick to Rafi he seems to be the same man we saw Captain the Enterprise for years.
Oh I definitely agree with that VS. That is a big difference and that we didn’t have to wait around until episode 7 to find out Dahj was an android or until episode 6 to find out Rizzo is secretly a Romulan spy and so on. Personally this is the better way to go instead of constant build up and reveals, which made things like Voq/Tyler just did not work at all. I’m not saying you can’t do some of that, but certainly not for every major reveal.
And yeah Discovery in season 2 had the similar issue, waiting 10 episodes to reveal the Red Angel just to feel let down by it.
But yes but then the problem becomes it feels like its too much too fast. I don’t think its because they revealed things so early its just too many reveals for some, period.
But I’m not saying I’m one of them. I’m basically fine with the twists now and as long as they don’t get too ridiculous like we find out Picard is an android himself who replaced the real one a decade ago (you know, I kind of would be curious to see that happen to witness the sheer vitriol lol) then its fine. Discovery just went TOO far with a lot of it IMO. Stuff like Dahj/Soji being Data’s daughter feels a lot more poignant than just having a twist for twist sake.
They just don’t like anything new.
Thanks for saying it Tek.
That is a poor assumption to make. It MIGHT be true of some but not from the majority of those criticizing as far as I can tell.
Rios mentions his old Starfleet vessel but Picard wouldn’t know about it bc it’s been erased from history. Did I hear that right? So, Discovery isn’t the only starship Starfleet has removed from the record. I didn’t like the idea in DSC and want to know more about it in Picard.
Maybe he’s from the Discovery.
I’m convinced all the more that it was a covert-ops ship, as is La Sirena.
This one was a letdown. It’s honestly the first time I’ve seen really bad acting in a scene with Patrick Stewart in it since Wil Wheaton was a teenager. The first scene was contrived and forced and, speaking as an actor, reminded me of a scene out of community theater. It’s like they got only one take after ten minutes of rehearsal and the director said, “it’ll do.”
The whole episode, the pacing was weird and the writing was sloppy (and I liked episode 1 a lot and episode 2 was okay). Raffi is a TERRIBLE character so far. Even as recently as Nemesis, NO ONE but Beverly and Guinan could call him “Jean Luc”, but now as an admiral, it’s “Screw you, JL. My ass gets fired.” (???)
The plot is growing more and more convoluted, to the point where I don’t understand exactly what is going on and who is in charge on the Borg Cube, why they are only reclaiming Romulans, who the Romulan mytho-historian even was or what her purpose was in the story. Hugh was a waste of time. Our new Captain Rios having a shard of metal in his shoulder but refusing to heal the wound was the worst case of “See- isn’t he an edgy badass?” I’ve ever seen.
The writing is clunky and lazy and the acting is marginal. I sincerely hope this improves but it’s a major drop in quality from Episode 1.
This one was a letdown. It’s honestly the first time I’ve seen really bad acting in a scene with Patrick Stewart in it since Wil Wheaton was a teenager. The first scene was contrived and forced and, speaking as an actor, reminded me of a scene out of community theater. It’s like they got only one take after ten minutes of rehearsal and the director said, “it’ll do.”
The whole episode, the pacing was weird and the writing was sloppy (and I liked episode 1 a lot and episode 2 was okay). Raffi is a TERRIBLE character so far. Even as recently as Nemesis, NO ONE but Beverly and Guinan could call him “Jean Luc”, but now as an admiral, it’s “Screw you, JL. My ass gets fired.” (???)
The plot is growing more and more convoluted, to the point where I don’t understand exactly what is going on and who is in charge on the Borg Cube, why they are only reclaiming Romulans, who the Romulan mytho-historian even was or what her purpose was in the story. Hugh was a waste of time. Our new Captain Rios having a shard of metal in his shoulder but refusing to heal the wound, shirtless and smoking a cigar and knocking back Cosmic Scotch, was the worst case of “See- isn’t he an edgy badass?” I’ve ever seen.
The writing is clunky and lazy and the acting is marginal. I sincerely hope this improves but it’s a major drop in quality from Episode 1.
I’m very mixed on this episode. Liked it overall with some good stuff, but definitely a lot of weak points. My quick pro and con list.
Pros:
1. Hugh is back!! He was great in this and it was so good to see how far he’s grown from the scared and confused boy we saw him in I Borg and Descent to being confident and in charge in this. And while he seems to be working with the Romulans he also doesn’t seem to trust them (probably always a good default with the Romulans ;)). Can’t wait to see where he’s going.
2. Loved the Rios introduction. He looks like he’s going to be a lot of fun in this! And also loved the EMH and ENH (although many are suggesting its suppose to be the same one, just in different modes but guess they will make it clear one way or the other). And I love the fact you can now ‘customize’ them to look, sound and act like anything you want. It really does shows technology advanced in this universe since Voyager but they haven’t gone crazy with it (like ironically with Discovery to me). It’s all feels like a natural progression in the last twenty years.
3. That scene in Picard’s house was fun!!! Laris and Zhaban have already become my favorites on this show. To see them kick Romulan butt was pure joy. I was actually worried one of them might die! DON’T DO THIS TO ME!!! Luckily it wasn’t the case. And how many phasers do Picard have hidden in that house lol.
4. The Romulan mythology. Obviously can’t say much yet but its great to FINALLY see them delve in to Romulan history and culture more. It looks like they are setting up something big about the Romulan’s past and how this might connect to what they are doing on the Borg cube. And also interesting that Romulans can’t seem to cope after being disconnected from the Borg. Another great angle.
Cons:
1. I agree with many the opening scene felt forced, especially with Raffi. I like the actress a lot, but here there was just something ‘off’ about her. The character is very interesting herself and it’s great to see (from a story point of view I mean) that even Starfleet officers can feel lost and fall into hard times just like a lot of soldiers today after they leave service. And its gets away from this ‘perfect human’ idea that people keep spouting about TNG which was NEVER true or not always true. We saw plenty of humans do stupid and corrupt things but yes most of our heroes were virtuous (but so were everyone on TOS as well) and its nice to see a main character with a drug problem. I think that’s a first for Star Trek. LOL, this is starting to feel like a ‘pro’. As said, the character is fine, but the acting was terrible. Hopefully it will change fast.
2. Commodore Oh and those sun glasses. Yeah, enough said lol. And now there theories she came from the MU. I really, really hope that’s not the case. But the character is just coming off like ‘I’m suppose to be evil’ in every scene and it too is feeling a little forced.
3. It just felt rushed as others said. This is the same issue with Discovery a lot of times too. They just throw a lot of things at you and don’t give you any time to think about it before its on to the next set up. I do like that the show has a lot more quiet moments but the plot still feels go-go-go with so many set ups.
4. Not in love with Rios ship at all! It just looks and feels SOOOO ugly to me. I mean I been looking at it for literally months now with all the previews and trailers and I have not warmed up to it at it. I have no issues they are not on a star ship but that ship just feels so generic and boring. We’ve had plenty of those on Star Trek too but never as the main ship. Although I still don’t love the Discovery, it at least feels unique. This thing is just, ugh. But it is what it is.
I liked the episode overall but it was lacking. I’ll have to watch it again but yeah it wasn’t great.
After seeing that scene where Laris and Zhaban are fighting, it made want a Section 31 show starring them.
LOL so true! I really hope we see them throughout the show. I know they won’t be on the main mission but its just great to see a different side of Romulans for a change and that not all Romulans are untrustworthy and ultimately out for themselves. We have seen some decent Romulans of course but you see them for an episode on TNG and they are never heard of again. These two have such an interesting background, I really hope we see more of them next season at least (assuming they aren’t killed off and they BETTER NOT BE!!!).
I loved it.
The better theory about the sun glasses to me is that she is not really Vulcan but one of those Romulans “cross breeds” who lost the inner eyelid and need sun glasses (the diversity in Romulan “ethnicities” was greater than anything we’ve ever seen in the Borg cube scenes alone – much more than “ridges/no ridges”). Clearly they were trying to communicate/setup something with that odd clothing choice, no?
I also think they do make a point in having this private, non-Starfleet one pilot vessel be generic and NOT the Star of the Show (It’s called Star Trek: Picard, not Enterprise or Voyager or DS9) – generic and ugly like many civilian ships in TNG were (at least it isn’t brown and has a nice paint job ;)
Tiger2, I found the opening scene realistically painful.
Musiker as a staff officer waiting outside to debrief her principal after a key meeting was really authentically done.
It was clear that it was a pivotal meeting, that she’d led his preparation, but that it was also a high level meeting where staff officers were not even permitted to sit in the back.
Her relationship as an advisor on his Flag staff would not have been like his relationship with his line subordinates on-ship. The mixture of familiarity and respect was spot-on, as was her becoming untethered as Picard, her principal, confesses that he’s resigned.
Neither Picard nor Musiker are taking ideal care of one another in this scene as they both move from denial to realization of a desperate situation.
OK. It wasn’t just my innate negativism about some of the writers and producers and designers of this go-round of Star Trek; this episode really was bad. There are a lot of things wrong with this episode. The vaping and the sunglasses are jarring. This is the 24th century, not the 21st. I am still hoping this will get better, but next week looks like ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness’ mixed with ‘Lord of the Rings’ and not in any good kind of way.
Again, as usual, the best part of the episode was Zhaban and Laris. I still think they need their own series. Need more Number One.
Looks like now, we’ll not see any of them now that Kirk, McCoy and the crew are going the Genesis planet.. err, I mean, Picard and his ragtag crew are going the second Death Star, err, I mean, the decommissioned Borg cube, er, artifact. Sci-Fi is hard.
>;>{
we had kirk and co in denim in ‘final frontier’.
some in the 24th century like retro style.
Well, I think that was because Levi’s offered a deal on STV. Nilo Rodis’ designs for the costumes looked a lot more interesting than what they actually wore.
His proposed TFF shuttlecraft was a real departure as well, with wings … Rodis really did a lot — way too much in my opinion — to make TREK look like STAR WARS and other ILM shows (EXPLORERS had a ship that looked like BirdofPrey with wings torn off, spacedock interior looks almost exactly like death star 2 reactor, spacedock exterior doesn’t look like a spaceframe a la original drydock but instead an orbiting blimp hangar, totally terrestrial and boring in conception and execution (part of that big is better nonsense that ILM seemed to get everybody else to happily swallow.)
Thoughts I had about where the show is going:
So it seems the Zhat Vash are based on a prophecy that A.I. will destroy all organic life in the Galaxy, something that almost happened (Star Trek Discovery Season 2) so their concerns aren’t without merit, so they aren’t villains as much as antagonists. Star Trek being the universe it is with time travel abundant, the Zhat Vash could even have been founded by survivors of this calamity who managed to flee to the past and wanted to prevent it.
The submatrix collapse of the Cube was probably caused when the Romulans they tried to assimilate came into the collective conciousness of the Borg and some of them knew bits and pieces about this grand conspiracy (the secret they keep which is said to be mind-breaking, so no one knew the entirety of it), and all of a sudden these Romulan ex-Borg knew the entire scope, which is why they’re all out of it now.
A.I. is what we make it. It will literally be our legacy, our children so to speak. And as with children, how they’re raised has a huge impact on how they turn out.
Feed an A.I. nothing but threat assessments and information about how everyone’s trying ot outflank one another, it will turn out paranoid and destructive like Control did.
Show them kindness and respect and let them experience what joy life can be, and you get someone like Data.
HA! Putting up the card for the Vasquez Rocks was pretty funny. I guess in the future it is no longer a park and no one goes there to wonder around. I wondered why they put in the fake background, however if it is supposed to be a real place. Maybe to hide the parking lot?
But hey… This time there were only a few buffering glitches. As opposed to TEN last week.
This show is taking its sweet time getting going. In other streaming short season shows they grab you pretty quickly. Not Picard. They want the viewer to savor everything. I get they are trying to get away from the whiplash inducing pace of Discovery. But this is just too far to the other end. I’m feeling like I did with Discovery’s Spock-tease. I’m waiting for this show to really get going. For a 10 episode season it shouldn’t take more than one episode to set things up and get the ball rolling.
I’m wondering what the point is of continually showing us the Borg cube. We still don’t know anything more about it than we did at the end of episode 1. My thinking is if you are not going to advance the plot then don’t waste our time there.
The other thing that came to mind was that flashback was nice. Normally I am not a fan of the short season shows wasting time with them because they often do them at really inappropriate moments. Not so here. They bring in a character and nearly immediately we get their back story. Bravo for that. Sadly, for some goofy reason Rafi seemed to be deemed guilty by association. I guess I’m going to have to just assume there is more that we have not been told that will come to light later. Kind of like it still feels like the decision to stop the rescue attempt is far more complicated than we are being shown. At this point, I am going with that because I do not want this show to be simplistic and shallow. Based on what was said I am hoping for something deeper and more though provoking. Which we really haven’t had yet here in the first 1/3. So far what we have is Romulans doing something with Borg Cube, Romulans infiltrating Star Fleet brass. Picard is still always right.
What we know about the Borg Cube so far:
When it assimilated a Romulan Scout ship, it suffered a “Submatrix Collapse” and got severed from the Collective. Most likely because some of the Romulans aboard knew bits and pieces of a mind-shattering secret and when they were assimilated, the true scope broke their minds.
The Artifact has been there for about 16 years (5943 days), so it pre-dates the Romulan Supernova and is also likely the source of the Borg technology used to enhance the Narada from Star Trek ’09.
The Romulan Free State is stripping it for technology and Hugh is working together with Doctors like Soji to help the former Borg back into society. Ex-Borg are shunned by many people in the Galaxy for the heinous acts they were forced to participate in by the Collective.
Romulans are the Borg origin story. Assimilation literally breaks your mind. As soon as it assimilated romulans (the species that created it) the cube shut down as it completed it’s mission. The romulans originally sent out AI probes to each quadrant to assimilate info and return it to themselves a couple of hundred years later. One quadrant went rogue and the Borg were born, it started assimilating more than simple information. Now the romulans are taught to hate AI and cybernetics (since 2 weeks ago) so the same thing doesn’t happen to their society. They also didn’t want the humans developing AI, so they created a big scene with the AI going rogue and attacking mars to dissuade the federation from following androids and AI, before having all the droids kill themselves too.
Kurtzman likes to retcon everything in really obvious ways.
This feels like you personally filled in a lot of gaps.
His “sources” know the whole story already don’t you know! The secret hideout buddies knows the whole plot and also told his friends over at ME that the show is cancelled after season 2 because searches for Picard on Google trends have changed!!! But shhhh
Some stuff to think about based on some comments in here, particularly regarding Starfleet’s backslide into isolationism: Roddenberry’s idea of a perfect humanity is fine and dandy and all that but I’ve NEVER gotten the impression in all the time I’ve watched Star Trek that just because the starship crew we’re following are paragons of human virtue means everyone else in this universe has to be too. Star trek has shown us plenty of human blue collar workers and top of the food chain Starfleet staff who were knee deep in their vices. From Mudd’s Women to Insurrection. I’ve never had a problem with that. Picard, Kirk and Janeway are captains aboard deep space exploration starships. As such, it makes sense to me they would be fashioned as idealists and more enlightened people if they’re representing humanity in first contact situations. Their crews would also have been formed with that in mind. It’s not a huge leap to expect that there are still unhappy and unfulfilled people living on Earth, even in a society that has supposedly dumped money for enlightenment. “There are other things men can do,” says Daystrom in The Ultimate Computer but has anyone ever considered there are people in the 23rd century who have no interest in becoming a poet or an artist or a scientist? Some people don’t want to, or are simply not designed to do “other things”.
Greed and the lust for power is such a base human failing that eradicating it will always be something to reach for rather than a reality, even in a fictional 23rd/24th century. It’s a pipe dream, and I suspect Roddenberry knew that even while creating Star Trek. He embodied it in the characters he created but knew he wouldn’t have much of an opportunity for drama if these perfect humans didn’t come up against their less enlightened counterparts, and not all of those counterparts are alien races.
What Picard may well be trying to warn us also, in regards to angry admirals and buckling Starfleet ideals, is that even when presented with a so-called “utopia”, human nature is what it is. Complacency and greed are never far away if not properly maintained. That will ALWAYS be a factor, no matter how enlightened we become as a race. If you need proof, ask yourself why in 2020, a golden age of information, we’re still having to patiently explain to people why vaccinating your child from measles is a good thing, the Earth is round, Nazis are not good and Coldplay are the devil.
If you don’t believe in Roddenberry’s ideals for Star Trek, then why are you watching? There are plenty of dystopian sci-fi shows with humans acting like galactic scumbags for you to enjoy without Star Trek having to become like them as well.
The very idea that the entire Federation StarFleet is filled with terrible people and Picard and a tiny ship of cliched rogues are the last beacon of hope is absolutely absurd. We already have Star Wars for that nonsense.
Who says I don’t believe in his ideals? I just view them as challenging, sometimes even unattainable. But that’s kinda the point. The challenge is trying to measure up. It’s just a lazy idea to think someday we’ll plateau out as some perfect enlightened race. That would involve the end of our growth and evolution, something Trek has always been at pains to remind us is the most important journey of all. We’re not, as individual people nor as a race, the finished article and there’s enough evidence in Star Trek up to this point to show us that even in the 24th century that’s still going to be the case. Still trying to grow, to improve, to better ourselves. That’s my favorite feature of Trek and when it’s at its best.
Also, stop trying to be the Trek police. It’s just a discussion. You don’t have to be mortally offended just because I’ve voiced a thought you don’t agree with.
Thanks for the thoughts blackmocco.
It does seem that some basic values from acceptance of scientific evidence and expertise to rebuttal of moral relativism are more than overdue for reaffirmation.
For those Trek fans who have been enthusiastically watching 21st century grimdark, but are now crying foul because Trek is making the effort to bring modern audiences from a flawed Federation through a journey back to hope and optimism, the question really has to be posed whether just leaping into a utopian Trek future would have any real hope of attracting adults 20-40 that have pretty much nothing but grimdark on offer for 20 years.
Yes, the 60s and late 80s cold war eras were also grim in the real world, but television audiences hadn’t been brought up on a steady diet of nihilism.
By the way, I thought the new New Yorker article on Picard has a good analysis of the present challenge of the the franchise.
Star trek never had to make an effort to bring in “modern audiences”. It was still on air 2 years before the needless reboot was announced. I think you’re confusing “modern audience” with “mass audience”, which obviously means changing the entire nature of the show to appeal to non-science Star Wars fans.
A fair point, Mike, although the argument can be made the audience was dwindling. Whether we like it or not, TV shows are a business that need to find an audience that justifies the costs involved in producing it and the people responsible for THOSE decisions are rarely the creatives. TG47’s not wrong when he says most modern sci-fi is pretty dark. It’s hardly surprising decisions were made to retool Trek in such a fashion.
“particularly regarding Starfleet’s backslide into isolationism:”
That was hinted at before the show started but I have yet to see any evidence that has happened or is in the process of happening…
Just going off the pilot, which hints very heavily in that direction.
I didn’t see it in the first episode, either. (This show had no pilot)
I guess everyone calling the pilot a pilot is wrong and you’re right. You can sleep better tonight. You win.
Who is referring to it as a pilot? Fans? Writers? Did the producers have to make that episode to sell the show? The answer is no. Therefore, it is not a pilot. Personally I have heard no one actually involved in the creation of the show refer to it as the show’s pilot.
So please, lose the attitude.
Disappointed. I was intrigued by the premise of the first episode. The second episode wasn’t as good and last nights was just bad. I want to like it but there’s just too much wrong. I’ll keep watching and maybe it will improve. With all the money and talent, it seems like a wasted opportunity to explore one of my favorite characters from the franchise. I think it’s lacking a coherent creative vision because there are way too many show-runners, producers, writers…
I really miss the science in all that fiction. Where are the scientific consultants for the show? I miss a mankind that could be a role model for our time. I miss a smart story that makes sense (at least a bit more). And I guess from next episode on, I will miss a Romulan warrior with some kind of Disruptor (or whatever they may call it), instead of a sword. And I guess in the end of the first season I will miss a message. I know, I can’t look into the future and I really try, looking for the Trek-Spirit in New-Trek, but it gets harder and harder to find. I have the feeling Kurtz an and Co. don’t even understand the difference of a random comic book genre or Star Wars and Star Trek. Sad :(
He doesn’t understand the difference. He said so himself in an interview that Star Trek never inspired him as a child like Star Wars did.
And now this is the result of handing him the keys. Turning Star Trek into another franchise that inspired him personally.
If the whole goal is to recreate Star Trek in another sci-fi franchises image, I would have preferred Stargate. That could work? Couldn’t it?
What do you expect. Star Wars is better.
I could not agree more than you. I miss all that too. This is not Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, this is some generic soulless show that just use names that is known. In the past I dreamed about future that i saw before, now I don’t want this future, this does not inspire someone to enter in the scientific career as once before.
Until a while ago I thought that I didn’t like these science fiction series anymore, but it turns out that after watching The Mandalorian series, I discovered that the problem was not me, but how these shows are produced. I prefer the episodic structure and not soap opera as it is now. I have called this way of doing series as He-Man format.
And Akiva Goldsman is right there with him. In The Ready Room, he kept referring to writing Picard as ‘sci-fi drama’ and as if it was different than just drama. Go back and read ‘The Making of Star Trek’. This was the mentality that Roddenberry was fighting when he created Star Trek, the idea that sci-fi drama was different than drama. It should not be.
And I think they can do a continuing story effectively, it does not have to be episodic. They just have to write it well, and follow the normal rules of drama.
Don’t vape >:( I was dissapointed
My first impression of ‘The End Of The Beginning’ was that it was the best episode of the three. Now that everyone’s opined on the mistakes, I have to ask myself ‘why I missed these things?’ or ‘Why didn’t they bother me at the time?’
It would seem that any form of creativity can be scorned if the scorner’s vision doesn’t match up with the creator. I think some of the commentators are robbing themselves of- what is aiming to be, a great Star Trek miniseries, by focusing on what you “Don’t” like about it, versus what you “do” like about it. The characters are raw, and very new to their roles. Not to mention dealing with the fact that they are going to be held to a very high standard due to historical popularity of the franchise.
Think: ST:TNG seasons 1 thru 3, about how terrible it seemed. Bottom line: If you gave TNG a chance, and believed in it enough to stick with it, you were not disappointed in the end. I believe ST: Picard will not disappoint.
Thanks Dribbles, well said.
Well, I have commented on what I like and don’t like about Picard. I am sticking with it, I am going to watch all of it. And I understand about my vision as the viewer matching up, or not, with the creator’s vision. There are times, many more recently, where I have watched a movie or series and have been disappointed and then, I adjust my expectations (down), I could then watch it again and accept it a little better. It does not always work, I could not dial my expectations down enough to watch Star Trek 2009 or Star Trek Into Darkness without being disappointed. I found that I could watch Star Trek Beyond with no issues because, I realized, at that point I had turned my expectations OFF.
I have, over the course of the first two episodes, adjusted my expectations down. Even so, episode three was even below that. I will continue to watch, but I don’t want to have to turn my expectations off.
But I am very close to doing that.
This series continues to plod along at a snail’s pace. I don’t care about any of these characters yet, including Jean Luc. The acting is solid, the blame falls squarely in the weak writing and plot. And we’re officially in soap-opera land now…where time stands still from from scene to the next. Scene1: ring the door bell, it opens, revealing an unexpected face. Cut to a 5 minute lover’s quarrel. Cut back to first 2 people still facing off on the front doorstep. “I was t expecting you to be here!” No time has passed. Trademark soap opera film making. Sad to see this style in Trek….but with Discovery and now, Picard, it seems to be what the franchise had tragically morphed into…so I’m not surprised.
I just watched the first 3 episodes and I love that show.
It is fresh and new and still the good old Star Trek I love!
Good writing, tension, and the story builds up more and more.
Keep it up, this is a show for me!