We’ll have a review up later on, but for now this is a spot to discuss the episode with your fellow Trekkies.
La Sirena makes its approach to Soji’s homeworld.
For people have haven’t seen the episode yet… stay away from the comments of this article.
Episode title: “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1”
Synopsis: Following an unconventional and dangerous transit, Picard and the crew finally arrive at Soji’s home world, Coppelius. However, with Romulan warbirds on their tail, their arrival brings only greater danger as the crew discovers more than expected about the planet’s inhabitants.
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.
Nice twist with Soong’s son and Spiner!
What I am confused about is when did Soong have a son, if this is actually his biological son. I think “Inheritance” established Juliana (the real one) and Noonien didn’t have biological children. Was it someone before Juliana? Or was he really always secluded on that planet all those years after the Juliana Android left him.
I strongly suspect that our new Soong exists more to avoid having to (expensively) digitally de-age a certain ”new” regular (or frequently recurring) cast member for season two than to serve some important narrative purpose…
I just hope the coronavirus doesn’t delay season two too much. Season one hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve enjoyed it more than I’d expected. (I suspect that this season will end on something like a cliffhanger, given that the show’s premise screams “limited series” — the story’s continuation will need some strong motivation, I think…)
Personally this has been the best Secret Hideout Trek so far although that’s an awfully low bar to set. It still has some pretty big problems but so far they haven’t been Discovery sized ones. Although we still have the finale next week so I’m not holding my breath.
The industry media outlets have some good analyses raising the challenges ahead in rescheduling production and the availability of actors.
However, I’m not convinced that Trek production will be severely impacted.
Picard may be in good shape though as Patrick Stewart doesn’t have other major commitments. As well, it has California production grants that will need to be expended once production resumes. Of all the Trek series, I expect it is the least likely to be impacted by the virus.
Mike McMahan is posting that the Lower Decks writers room has gone virtual – which is apparently a fairly experimental approach according to the media reports.
If Secret Hideout can make the virtual writers rooms work, they may get the writing further ahead of production for all the series.
This might be a good thing for more coherent seasonal arcs, although it depends on whether the casting and vfx can meet the writers expectations. Chabon has commented that flexibility was key for Picard as a new series, as they adapted some of the storyline and roles once they had the early table reads.
Discovery season 4 production might be pushed back, but they have dedicated space at Pinewood Studios Toronto, so it seems the rate limiting factor may be Sonequa Martin-Green’s recently announced pregnancy.
The S31 series might be most vulnerable as there have been reports that it was already be pushed back to accommodate Michelle Yeoh’s availability.
Other new live action series may benefit from development and writing time, but casting could be an issue. It depends how much the executive producers developing the series are willing to rely on video reads.
SPOILERS
This was truly an amazing episode. Mortality ,death, dying and rebirth ‘The calculus of lfe and death’. What I loved about this episode ,and the show in general, was that it was not a very big action piece like say ‘The Best Of Both Worlds Part I’. Rather it begins with not just the realization of Picard’s mortality but his ability to keep living on in its face. At the beginning of the show we saw Picard hiding from life , at the beginning of this episode we see him facing life head on and in the process be an inspiration to the rest of the crew. In the beginning I got the sense he had to convince the crew, and himself, that he could really do this.
1) When I saw Brent Spinner’s name I worried that Data would be on the planet. Instead we saw a slight homage to Enterprise Season 4 where we met Soong’s ancestors. Now we meet one of his descendants. Plus I love the little joke of how he was and older and fatter version of Data.
2) The androids being gold like Data’s original makeup was marvelous.
3) The idea that the Admonition was meant for synthetic life rather than human life was nice. It seemed to be a true example of a kind of post biological type of intelligence. Plus it was neat that post biological intelligence can learn things like the mind meld that other types of organics cannot do. In many ways this is a reflection of the fear we have of AI’s (singularity theories)
4) I wonder if the reason why Starfleet command was not reachable was because any alternative should work for them. If the synths were destroyed one potential threat was gone and if the Romulans were wiped out another threat is gone. Maybe in the post-Dominion War and Borg invasions this is all Starfleet can do, play one enemy off each other
5) This confederation of artificial life sounds really neat. I want to learn more
6) Is Jurati really with the synths?
Cant wait for next week.
I agree on all these, except #4…which I think is just a plot device to have Captain Geordi and Chancellor Worf show up with their fleets. “Hey sorry we didn’t call you back, we wanted it to be a surprise!”…I’m all for it by the way!
I was thinking the exact same!
@blculbre
I think you mean Captain Worf lol
I think you mean Captain Worf of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
FTFY
more likely ambassador worf, considering the title he adopted at the end of ds9 despite his appearances with the defiant in the later tng-era movies. he’s older & fatter too, having been targ hunting with martok all this time.
Ricker did it before
Spoiler intuition
The new android that need a mind transfert will be Picard’s mind before he died. The new Picard will end the war and Starfleet will come defend the synthetics at the end new Picard will be the captain of Enterprise F
I think Soong is building a replica of himself so as to become a synth via mind transfer and live forever. But Jurati will atone for killing Maddox by ultimately putting the reconstituted mind (from that single positronic neutron mentioned before) of another Brent Spiner character in there instead…
*neuron (autocorrect gone wrong)
I am pretty sure Soong, is actually Lore.
i had a similar thought watching this episode, considering they seemed to intentionally not mention lore or data’s other siblings, lal, & other androids known to have existed within that universe (think stella mudd androids from tos). lore, however, was supposedly disassembled following the events of tng’s double episode “decent”, so i kinda expected there to at least have been mention of his disposal or storage like we saw with b4.
Well, consider in Discovery season 2 they intentionally ignored Sybok.
On #4, I suspect the problem was intentional, some kind of interference from eith Sudra or Soong.
that was another good episode, although they didn’t really investigate the escape of Narek (Odo would not have dropped that). Looking forward to next week.
Spot 2?
Pretty good episode overall, although plenty to nitpick. It got kinda convoluted there towards the end, but I can’t wait to see how it all ends next week!
Prediction: Picard will sacrifice himself to save everyone, synthetic and organic alike. But Soong’s newest invention will allow Picard’s mind to live on in synthetic form, Picard 2.
And Elnor will finally get to see a cat. A synthetic one, at least.
When does the Enterprise arrive to save the day? You know, captained by Wesley Crusher.
I’m hearing Lore’s voice in Spiner. Maddox made Soji indistinguishable from a human and “humanified” Lore, perhaps? But that’s a lot to wrap up in one episode…
That’s what i am thinking the way Brent delivered that line ” My father had me, but he created Data, A fact he never let me forget.” really sounds like Lore. I think Maddox made Alton based on Noonien, using Lore’s nuerons and wound up transfering Lore’s program into the body.
When he got all uppity with Picard he reminded me more of Arik Soong from Enterprise, another Soong willing to have blood on his hands to protect his “children”.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Sudra ends up being patterned from Lore’s neurons.
So you think it inconceivable that Lore could have been built with elements of Soong’s actual son personality in him?
I really think he is Lore. Same evil actions and thinking.
I got a Lore vibe too.
Frankly, my suspicion is that Sudra/Sutra’s positronic brain was cloned from Lore, not Data.
She doesn’t have Data’s posture or movements the way Soji does.
In fact, I suspect that body posture is the way to distinguish the origin of an android.
Season 2: USS Enterprise, the Borg Cube
Season 3: Picard joins the Q Continuum as a new member.
End of series.
wow, don’t know what to make of this. need to watch it a couple more times. definitely not what I was expecting. i’m torn as to whether i love or hate the fact that this show/season is culminating in an avengers: endgame type of ultimate battle
not sure I understood why Sudra (sp?) Gianna’s sister seemed to release Narek on purpose. Was it on purpose so that he would kill someone so they could use it as a justification to kill all organics?
It was for the justification and to bring Soong on to her side too.
Yes, it was for persuasive purposes. Although I don’t know why she just doesn’t reprogram the others to buy what she says. Or “mind meld” with them to make them think like she does. Further, it makes no sense Maddox would program these things to have multiple opinions. What is the point of that?
I don’t think she needed to bring Alton to her side, i am pretty sure both Alton and Sutra are working together to. Brent is just playing this really sinister, and not that dissimilar to how he played Lore.
It’s really more like how he played Soong on Enterprise. Let’s not talk about Lore. The less said about that the better. Data’s evil twin was a low point in Trek history.
Agreed, ML31.
Although if Lore has been planted in a more human-seeming body, it might possibly be interesting, based on Levi’s comment, above.
Yeah… My eyes rolled when they introduced Lore. It really made me question if TNG was going to survive that they felt they had to stoop to a tired soap opera cliche. It feels like Georgeau was cut from the same cloth that brought us Lore.
Not liking where this is going-it’s the old “androids will take over everything and keep the organics in check” story, like Harry Mudds TOS androids and later the Roger Korby androids. Looks like Sutra is taking on Lores role – like when Lore had the Borg working for him. Lets see what happens, but things seem to be replaying themselves in a Star Treky kinda way.
It could tie into V’ger or the AI from Discovery’s last season, i’m Looking forward to seeing where this all goes.
It could tie into control but that is far too much to tell in one episode, V’Ger aswell be Interesting to see that return but sadly again all too much for one episode, my theory is for next weeks episode, Soji will talk the Romulans down, shows them that they aint going to destroy all organic life, that they can co exsist to which seems to be star trek picards theme, not using red alert all hands battle stations if you catch my meaning but by helping each other discover other ways without using violence & war all the frigging time, other theory is, the romulans, due to there paranoia won’t back down and starfleet will intervene showing synthetics that they aint here to destroy them that they let there fear get the best of them and starfleet, the federation will be redeemed, don’t be suprised if producers lied to us and we will see Michael Dorn, Levar Burton back, hell they kept Brent Spiner quiet as Soongs apprent son, so wouldnt suprise me that we may see the eneterprise and the verity come to picards aid
you’re forgetting the premise of discovery season 3, which picard is supposed to tie in with. remember, hundreds of years in the future the federation has all but collapsed & the discovery crew are trying to figure out what happened & when the turning point in history was. synth war could feasibly be that catalyst event, considering the work the romulans have already put into eroding the foundations of the federation through subterfuge & the attack on mars.
Doubt it. V’ger had to merge with organic life to gain the ability gain human qualities (i.e. “imagination”); similar to the Borg needing to assimilate organic life to expand (different motives though). Picard seems to argue that you can just electronically engineer all that, completely ignoring TMP / Ultimate Computer / Best of Both Worlds.
Honestly I hope they do something outside of V’ger and definitely CONTROL. But sure they might. I always liked that we didn’t know much about the machine robots who made V’ger, some things can just stay a mystery. That said I wouldn’t be completely surprised there is a connection since this show is ALL about connections lol. But yeah looking forward to seeing where its heading.
I tend to agree. I like that machine planet remaining a mystery. The narrative works better I think.
Yeah like the Borg origin, its just better we don’t know EVERYTHING. Just keep that a mystery.
And I’m thankful it looks like once AGAIN, people assuming the season was going to be about how the Borg was created was torpedoed out of the water. ;)
I’m calling it now. Picard will have a synthetic brain by the end of the next episode or the beginning of season 2.
I think so, or the whole body. This really will be “where no one has gone before.”
Wow, and for sure, Picard won’t end up in Starfleet!
Dr. Juliana Tainer would really have been the the first
there was also data’s “grandpa”, who took over data’s body for a time before finally transferring his consciousness into the enterprise main computer & so losing his essence to mere information storage.
…which would give Stewart the opportunity to provide voice-over work from home for the rest of the series, good point. If they even use his voice in the new synth body.
Q told Picard his destiny was “charting the unknown possibilities of existence”. This would certainly fall within that realm.
And would be the perfect reason to bring Q back.
I can see him being cured (we have at least 2 more seasons so no one is dying that soon ;)) but a whole new body would suggest someone else would be playing the role and I don’t see that happening at all.
Not necessarily, they can have the body look to be like 80 year old Patrick Stewart, or even younger if they had the budget for deaging him for 10 episodes.
But what’s the point??? Why put him in a new body at all? And Soong isn’t in a new body, he is just aging normally and you would think if anyone would do it would be him since he literally designed all of it.
I can seeing curing his illness because you’re not going to kill off the character whose name is in the title card lol. So we already know that’s not happening, its only a question of how. But everything that is wrong with him is in his brain, so I don’t understand why he would need a new body.
I see him getting cured as well. Possibly as a result of saving the AI’s. Maybe even next season.
Wouldn’t be surprised if that does indeed happen, I mean after all, they keep hinting at a major character death and Picard’s terminal illness keeps getting mentioned and thanks to this episode it looks like picard aint got much time so quite possible, they save the day but picard dies in the proccess but the synthetics along with Agnes and Soong, decide hes done all this to protect them, they save him by giving him a artifical brain, kind of like how hes got an artifical heart that, would probably be the ending, im curious as to what happens, do they convince the romulans that synthetics are no danger or will starfleet come to one of their greatest hero’s aid when he needs it the most
For some time, I’ve thought future seasons of this show would be called Picard: Legacy
Picard gets what he always wanted in my opinion; the order, perfection and immortality of an electronic life. No more worrying about kids he never liked, friends he really only really tolerated and given the chance would rather not hang out with at the winery. My question on this is will be want the synthetic brain because at the end of the day he has Stockholm syndrome and actually misses being Locutus?
I don’t think that Picard misses Locutus.
He certainly wasn’t pleased to be recognized as Locutus by one of the XBs.
But you do raise the question of where the XBs fit in all of this. Sentient biological lifeforms that had been enslaved into a cybernetic hivemind would be a conundrum for transcendent synthetic beings.
I really like the space flowers! Very Roddenberry esque! That was a neat mini battle at the beginning that ended with the flowers.
I don’t get why Elnor didn’t leave the cube for Picard, but then I realized it was to help the plot: he could have taken out a bunch of androids to save Picard. That’s weak writing, but whatevs.
It’s interesting to have another villain with the Lore-like Soji. Next week looks very good!
Oh, I also don’t get why Raffi said to Picard that he saved her. How? He didn’t talk to her for 14 years and just continued to use her this entire journey! Rios is the one that’s really helping Raffi, and she him. Picard should help her reconcile with her son and get her off the drugs.
I hope that that Soong’s son is also an Android.
VZX, I’m not sure what’s up with Elnor as a character.
A major part of the fourth episode was devoted to establishing the character, and the actor did well in that episode. Since then his role has been pretty thin. I get the idea that the writers changed their thinking midway.
My speculation is that they decided to have Elnor follow the XBs and Seven for a reason deeper than just plot mechanics based on who he should be able to defeat. Frankly, even the best humanoid fighter should be unable to take on an activated synth.
Which makes Narek apparent murder of his guard all the more questionable, and therefore Soong’s agenda all the more suspect.
VZX Oh, I also don’t get why Raffi said to Picard that he saved her. How? He didn’t talk to her for 14 years and just continued to use her this entire journey!
I think maybe it was because he gave her something to DO other than feel sad and smoke snakeweed at the old Vasquez Rocks. But I feel ya. That was my initial reaction too.
My thought it was for the kick in the ass to get up and stop sulking/self medicating.
If Rio’s captain killed Big Flower, Big Flower has a twin. So which Data-child is he? Wouldn’t Rios want to meet Big Flower and perhaps apologize for his captain’s actions?
Moreover, wouldn’t it be tonally wild if Big Flower was really a hippie-Data, and not just Krishna-like android in monk-wear? Would Big Flower remind us of the TOS Space Hippies? We might learn more about why Soong’s Son has hoped that Big Flower and Sutra were good ways to present themselves to the world. And perhaps we would better understand why Big Flower seemed like a threat to Oh.
Based on a rumor I regret reading elsewhere, but which now perhaps could be true, I predict a twist. Right now, we are lead to believe that Picard might get a new brain or body – but what if that body goes to Rios? And that this decision is Picard’s sacrifice, and his struggle continues in Season 2?
Rios could become a human mind in an Android body, flying away in a spaceship with his holo-selves. He faces existentialism outright! And his capability to engineer versions of himself. Remember, he programmed all the Holos to forget what happened. But arguably Rios has the most guilt feelings of anyone there, except Jurati.
Then Picard still has his own fate to deal with, and that of completely compelling Star Fleet to Engage!
I loved this episode. A great way to begin a quarantine day.
The Artifact coming through the conduit is one of the coolest effects I have seen in Star Trek in a while.
Agreed. The special effects are excellant. In about 5 years we can all probably do it on our smart phones…thats scary!
After three great episodes, this was a let down. I didn’t like the direction by Goldsman (I think he’s a lousy director overall) and the writing was all over the place.
Agreed. The editing and direction was terrible. It felt like scenes were missing, one example being when the dragged Narek in and then hes in a holding cell. And tell me…what was the point of them going to the Cube?
I find it odd that a Borg cube has crash landed on their planet and no one seems remotely concerned about it lol. I mean its a BORG CUBE, even if its damaged technically it could still send out its location to other cubes. At the very least you would think they would send people to assess the situation. Maybe I missed a line somewhere but its odd no one cares about that at all.
I was thinking that out of 6 possibilities it landed on the one side that kept everything right side up. Yes, I know it’s cheaper that way but I was thinking about it,
LOL true but yeah that happens all the time in stories. And I can believe Seven piloted it well enough to crash it that way. But yes it would be fun to see one of these ships turned upside down in a crash once in awhile.
You didn’t miss anything. Your mistake was, you watched Star Trek the Next Generation and applied logic to the show, that ignores both.
LOL, harsh!
But yeah its weird, they are freaking over the Romulans, which I get of course, but you have just as much of a potential threat sitting on your planet RIGHT now that can possibly send out a beacon to other ships.
I thought if they at least covered it with a line of Picard assuring them its OK, that would at least explain it but my guess is anyone would be freaking out about it. Last time Borg crash landed on a populated planet was on Earth in the 20th century and they were still able to live for another 200 years and went on to assimilate others. You don’t just don’t shrug them off, damaged or not.
They have explained ad nauseum,its not connected to the collective at all, even after 7 restarted the regeneration process on the cube and activated it reopened the transwarp conduit.
I thought the close up shots of the characters one at a time when they see the Android settlement was very cheesey. And it took too much time. And it there was some other weird shots that seemed out of place. Yes, this one was poorly directed.
I have to agree, the direction felt really bad at times. Not enough to not like the episode but its not nearly as good as others seem to like it because something felt really ‘off’ about it. And man a lot of the dialogue just sounded bad, especially the synth speech discussing the admonition in the mind meld scene.
Has Goldsman directed any other Star Trek episodes? I know he’s written a few but I can’t remember what else he directed of them.
I believe he directed the final episode of Discovery S2.
Yeah, didn’t love that one either. ;)
No, Osunsumi directed the 2 part finale for Discovery season 2.
But Goldsman directed 2 episodes in S1 of Discovery.
It’s a bit odd that Doug Aarniokoski only got one episode (Nepenthe) to direct given that he is the supervising director for Picard, and responsible to set and maintain the overall tone etc.
My personal ranking of the directors for this season of Picard is:
1) Maja Vrvilo
2) Doug Aarniokoski
3-4 tie). Hanalee Culpepper & Jonathan Frakes
5) Avila Goldsman
This isn’t actually how I’d expected it to turn out. I wasn’t as impressed by Vrvilo’s work on Discovery and Short Treks. However, her two episodes were the most consistently great for this season of Picard.
My mistake. I knew he did one of them. Thought it was S2 but S1’s finale was just as pathetic.
i have to admit, ive loved every episode more than the last and just could not wait to see the next one. after this episode i was kind of let down. i thought “THIS is what they were building up to?“ it kind of made the previous episodes not make a lot of sense, like the previous episodes were just a lot of odes to tng and did not contribute much to this finale. dont get me wrong, i love star trek and ill take what i can get and just happy this is back on the air, but still the show had a lot of momentum going and now i feel it has slowed down
Based on how the “syns” are reacting now (genocidal toward “organics”) to the potential Romulan assault,I side with the Romulan’s. Turns out that they were correct all along.
If they would just put the 3 Laws into the synthetics none of this would happen.
Not liking where this is going.
Rather a shame Hugh was not saved.
Well… Not exactly sure what to make of this. It jumped around a bit… Could be a good thing? But one thing I do know is the mind meld thing was monumentally dumb. It made it so the Vukcan mind meld isn’t something that Vulcans have in their DNA but something just ANYONE can learn. I get perhaps trying to teach the nerve pinch. But the sharing of minds? Sorry, I cannot buy that. It’s like saying that the Vulcan superior hearing and strength can be taught, too.
I wondered why they would create a lesser life form like a cat or a butterfly. Seems like a waste for those trying to study AI. It almost makes me think Soong likes to feel like he’s a God. And speaking of Soong… He sure did behave a lot like his ancestor who appeared on Enterprise.
Anyway, the androids may not need to be exterminated if something could be worked out where they leave and never return or something. But even then I’m not sure they could be trusted. God only knows what Maddux and Soong programmed into them regarding survival instincts that may kick in at any time. Also… What exactly was Soji’s mission? It was never explained one bit and she said she succeeded. that’s scary as well.
Maybe the Androids can be sent 8,000 years into the future? Guided by a Red Angel of somesort…I know it sounds like something out of Japanese Manga and a little convoluted, but its just crazy enough for it to work provided the Androids weren’t all destroyed moments before they travelled into the future and therefore negating any need to do so…but they did it anyway to escape canon and….oh my god, what came over me? sorry.
LOL, naw, send them 825 years ahead, so they can catch up with the Discovery crew and there’ll be another AI vs Human plot to follow, cripes ….
I loved S1 of Discovery, S2, not so much.
The mind meld thing bugged me a lot. And I thought, well, maybe the positronic brains can do it. And then I remembered Deanna couldn’t read Soji. Though in fairness, she’s read emotions from Data in the past. Because 90’s sci-fi writing.
Thoughts and emotions are just chemical and electrical impulses, and maybe she could have sensors that could interpret that. Maybe the sensors are in the fingers, and the “mind meld” chant of “my mind to your mind” is only an affectation to put the subject in the right state of mind.
Have to do a lot of explaining here; the scene would have been better if they’d found some other way, like Soong’s full-brain-download system or some protoype of it, or a friggin’ Klingon Mind Probe circa 2350 to get that info.
Isn’t that great, we can electronically engineer life to have the mind mind, making even Vulcan’s redundant. What can go wrong there?
ML31, It made it so the Vukcan mind meld isn’t something that Vulcans have in their DNA but something just ANYONE can learn.
AGREED. I could not believe that. How can you make a synth telepathic? It makes no sense. Accepting that premise, however, I had a thought: what if Sutra were putting those “movies” into Jurati’s mind? I saw new scenes I had not seen previously.
According to one professional reviewer, Data performed a mind meld once.
So, it’s a callback of a sort.
What. A. Mess.
Where to begin?
1. Why go to the Borg cube? – poke around a bit, remind us that Picard is dying for the third time in 3 mins and then leave everyone there
2. Once again, the most effective fighter (Elnor) is left behind to… “help bring the defenses back online” – he’s a Borg engineer now?
3. Describing Hughs final moments “how could a gentle soul turn to violence” …Hugh ran through a corridor, hid and then got stabbed by…something…who writes this stuff?
4. General comment about incredibly poor editing and directing throughout. It felt like scenes were mashed together with bits missing. I know the show went through re-shoots but it really feels like it here.
5. Jurati is a cold blooded murderer and we spend all episode characters feel sorry for her and justify what she did. “The mind meld made me do it” would not hold up in a court of law…
6. And after all of this, we have the same plot from Discovery. Evil artificial life from the future…sorry, i mean from a distant galaxy…will come to wipe out the organics…I mean was Kurtzman traumatised by his experiences of trying to install DirectX 12 to Windows ME back in the 2000s like the rest of us?
I have to say though that I loved the Space Flowers…that had a genuinely immaginative and original feel to it. That must have been the scene they actually let Chabon write. Also, I actually liked the 1st scene with the Soong character but everything he did and said after was just…off….again, like there were scenes missing.
“I mean was Kurtzman traumatised by his experiences of trying to install DirectX 12 to Windows ME back in the 2000s like the rest of us?” LMAO!!!! This is the best explanation I’ve heard yet!! (and I can’t stop chuckling)
Too soon, man. Too soon. The emotional wounds still get triggered every time I hear a 56k modem trilling.
I just remember parents. Them: “GET OFF THE PHONE LINE!!” Me and friends: “NOOO!!! OUR C&C GAME WE’VE PLAYED FOR HOURS WILL NEVER BE RESOLVED!!”
Well perhaps the charges against Agnes could be brought down to manslaughter?
You can’t have a “man”prefix in any word in Nu-Trek… so it’ll need to be Peopleslaughter
Excellent call! Forgive me for my crime. I meant to say ONEslaughter.
Starfleet crew have done plenty of weird-ass things when they were under the influence of other intelligences. If Jurati was “programmed” as I suspect she was, she was brainwashed into disabling the healing equipment to kill Maddox. It horrified her because she *had no volition.* She’d been “mind raped.”
E.g., Picard was not tried for war crimes because he was assimilated/under the influence of the Borg.
I also suspect that anything good is by Chabon and anything bad is by Goldsman or Kurtzman.
I would second that hypothesis.
Third! And speaking of dark portents on the horizon, Chabon’s leaving after season 1. Maybe he was pissed at what Kurtzman and Goldsman did to his baby for the finale.
No offense guys but we really don’t know who was responsible for what. And of course everyone here seems to like Chabon so he had the ‘good’ ideas while many don’t seem to like Kutzman and Goldsman (and I understand why) but we assume they came up with all the ‘bad’ ones. Sorry but I don’t think its that simple at all. It was the same argument people made with Discovery first season when we thought Nic Meyer had real influence on the show at the time (and apparently had very little if any) and people assumed all the stuff was ‘good’ was due to him too.
I been reading up on his posts and what he says in the podcast and clearly they all thought this through but it sounded like he was the on that Hugh should die for instance which I felt was just unnecessary. I’m sure he is coming up with the better ideas but its unfair to just assume the stuff you hate is done by the people you hate. I don’t think its that black and white.
No offence taken. I can seperate this show from the people that like it. Maybe you’re right and its not as simple as Chabon (good) and Kurtzman (bad). But lets say it was Chabon’s idea that Hugh should die….With my GCSE-C grade in England I can come up with better ways it could have happened…instead of a flick of the wrist and a blade hitting his chest…
…he does everything Seven of Nine did but died in the attempt
…he does everything Dahj did and died
…he does everything Icheb did but survives in the attempt only to die 10mins later by a blade to the chest….wait.
…he could of even did a ‘last stand’ thing with a phasor in both hands while his pregnant wife is giving birth on a shuttle craft fleeing the starrr…wait…no
…he could have been the red angel!!!
Oh I don’t know. I honestly would have liked to see him end his run happy, with a family, maybe on a nice planet surrounded by rehabilitated Borg…but no. We need “emotion”.
I’m still peeved about Hugh’s unnecessary death. What did they accomplish by it? Lessee, Elnor stayed to help Hugh, then Hugh died, and Seven “adopted” Elnor, now suddenly he’s an engineer.
Maybe Hugh could have gone to urgently save his XB friends [that was the gentle soul in him], and quietly continued the Reclamation project.
I know this is probably a dim question on my part, but WHY were the Romulans heading up the Artifact research and allowing the Reclamation Project? To lower the threat of synthetic lifeforms? To discover the secrets of the Borg?
I was somewhat underwhelmed by this one as well. But I can offer in fairness:
1. They went to the cube to look for survivors; namely Elnor and Hugh, and any of the other XB’s, because they’re people and victims and Picard has seen this.
2. Just a plot device to keep Elnor and Seven together for reasons only the writers know. Elnor is potentially a great character but hasn’t had an opportunity to bond or have a friggin’ conversation with anyone in this cast other than Picard, whom he resented for 75% of his first episode.
3. Hugh was fixing to turn on the cube and Borg the hell out of the Romulans for revenge. Hugh had reached his “fuck it” threshold. Picard was probably shocked that Hugh grew some balls after being fairly passive for his whole life. And Picard would not approve.
4. At the end of this one, rather than saying “that’s it??” and wanting more, I said to myself “welp, I guess they’re going to end it here”, and the “next time on Picard’ logo showed up practically on cue. Really felt like everything had been spinning out of control for a half hour at least.
5. I actually think the “mind meld made me do it” would work in a court of law. Commodore Oh was an authority figure in Starfleet. She did the mind meld, ordered Jurati to kill Maddox and Soji. “I was only following orders given to me as a civilian contractor by a superior officer in Starfleet Security”. You’re damn right that would work in a court of law.
6. I think a lot of the theories I’ve seen on here sounded like better stories that the one we were apparently given. Granted, the last hole card has to be flipped, but they have a lot of wrapping up to do in maybe an hour if we’re lucky, and this thing felt like they’re setting up a resolution that I don’t care about seeing. I hope I’m wrong.
“3. Describing Hughs final moments “how could a gentle soul turn to violence” …Hugh ran through a corridor, hid and then got stabbed by…something…who writes this stuff?”
To be fair, I think the idea behind this was the willingness of Hugh to try to get back at the Romulans for killing the XBs. His comment to that point made Narissa feel the treaty no longer applied to him, thus allowing her to kill him.
That fact that this “gentle soul” was considering revenge means he must have witnessed something terrible. Not saying the line was great, just providing context.
I appreciate the effort made here to this up. But the fact that they need well meaning fans to explain things to the rest of us its further evidence of poor writing. – I mean, why have the Borg Cube in the show at all? What exactly has the Bog done other than get sucked out the airlock and their ship crashes on a planet…. but wait…its the BOOOORRRG!!! They are from Star Trek!!! Like Data!!!!! *groan*
Yeah that line was just AWFUL. I can see Picard saying it but how it was worded just felt forced.
:-DDD
What ST Fans said to ST writers:
-> Please do not fall victim to hollow bad buy tropes.
We have seen sexy, strutting bad guy Cylons that want to kill humanity.
We have seen manipulative bad guys who use emotional abuse to ensnare victims.
Don’t write Sutra to be Lore… or 6.
Innovate the bad guy in a new and unpredictable way.
-> Please do not copy BSG. Be original.
What ST Writers said to ST Fans:
-> Resistance is futile. All of that which the BSG writers wrote before… ST writers will write it again.
-> We want predictable bad guy tropes.
-> We want homicidal, illogical Cylons in our Star Trek.
-> We want a Trek version of Cylon resurrection chamber, where minds can be downloaded into blank bodies.
-> We want to have an ST Synth home world where you see multiple copies of each synth model just like on a Cylon base cruiser.
My opinion is that Ep 7 & 8 were both really good.
My opinion is that Ep 9 was a let down. A big let down.
Maybe Ep 10 will provide a flourishing and unexpected finish to redeem things. Or do you think Ep 10 will end up with a Human – Synth détente… like BSG?
Good points BG35.
I’m reserving my finale view on this episode until I see part II.
However, I feel I can fairly say that the way villains are written has been a recurrent flaw in this series, and Discovery as well.
And it doesn’t have to be that way. Una McCormack’s tie-in novel for Picard does a great job of presenting the different perspectives of all the characters. In the novel, even Clancy is comprehensible, worn down by the effort to keep the members of the Federation Council on side with the rescue efforts.
In a recent interview, McCormack described her approach as writing as if every character was the hero of their own story (except perhaps the venal Romulan leaders who abandoned responsibility for others).
Picard would have been so much better if Narissa and Narek were shown as sincerely committed to a desperate agenda from the start. Sutra is pretty one-dimensional, but she could be more. Imagine how much better this would be if we saw instead the sincere differences in perspectives that we saw in Saints of Imperfection in Discovery S2.
And even when a truly amoral character is needed, it would be more powerful if it wasn’t the norm.
Bjayzl’s complete psychopatic greed would be more credible, and a better rationale for Seven’s actions, were she an outlier among the villains. Instead, both these series have repeatedly put villains beyond the moral pale (e.g. through cannibalism) for what seems to be shock value.
The weirdest thing about this is that it seems un-Treklike as an approach. Trek is often about coming to understand and accept diverse perspectives. It’s hard to do that when the go-to approach for creating antagonists is to make them irredeemable.
Sorry folks, but that was pretty dreadful. I guess everyone’s okay with Jurati murdering Maddox and the show is actually asking us to feel sorry for her. Just to clarify: Maddox was her significant other who she murdered, like what, four or five days ago? But now her and Rios are already a thing. Rios is clearly damaged goods in that he’s attracted to her, knowing what she did. Ludicrous characterisations. Poor Alison Pill – a stellar actress – must have wondered what she let herself in for once the scripts started arriving. (I was watching her pull double-duty on FX’s DEVS last night to remind myself what she can do with well-written scripts instead.) Glad some of you are getting something out of this show but I’m finding myself finishing it purely out of duty. It’s hard to believe there are writers on the show who have even watched Trek before, let alone claim to be fans of it. Ten year-old me playing with action figures had better stories to tell.
Star Trek: Pike NOW!
Nothing is happening “now” and most likely not for the rest of the year.
Virtual writers rooms can be developing series and pilot scripts.
Here, here!!
Ick. No more prequels. I loved the character of Pike. But we know how his story ends, and so does HE. Anson Mount could have played the exact same character with a different name, and he would have had room to grow and evolve. All Star Trek: Pike would be is a lead-up to TOS, and him wondering in every episode if THIS is the one where he gets his face melted. I don’t want to sit through three seasons of that.
I don’t want anymore prequels either but a Pike show would be crazy NOT to do at this point. If the Section 31 show actually happens (well if we don’t all die off in a year either ;)) I hope that stays in the 32nd century or a new era altogether although I’m prepared for it to be in the 23rd century.
I still want a post TUC set show. Perhaps 30-50 years later or something. But part of me is thinking that is never going to happen.
No thanks, I have no desire to have Goldsman, Kurtzmann and their band of hacks hash out yet another mediocre show.
I could not have said it better. I remember spending Christmas money on five Klingon action figures to go with the one I had. That’s because my Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, Scotty, and Chekov had tagged teemed my one Klingon to the point it was unrecognizable.
There was a very “Descent,” parts I & II feel to this, from the look of the planet to Sudra(Lore) convincing Soji(Data) that the evil-destructo plan was necessary and good. I was never very fond of “Descent” part II however. It was a little too by-the-numbers predictable by that point in the series and the plot was telegraphed a mile off.
I am interested to see if they have more to reveal with the Song character… seems too convenient to just “oh yeah, didn’t we tell you? Dr. Soong had a REAL boy,” at this point. It may be a deep dive for “new to Trek” audiences, but I still feel Lore at work here (and I never really cared for Lore either, too “mustache twirly,” but it was TV in the 90’s and there was still a good amount of cardboard to the characters, even recurring ones.)
I’m also feeling Sudra is a bit too Mustache-twirly now and there’s, hopefully, a bit more backstory to her. She’s too radically different from the other android folks there for there not to be something more going on. I am also pretty certain that she killed the other android girl with her brooch, not what’s his face Romulan dude. Interesting that he shows up to the cube all “I wanna help!” in the preview for next week. Maybe the Romulans, Federation, & XB’s on the Artifact all have to team up to defeat the evil synth army from beyond space next week ala all of Discovery season 2’s folks fro the Klingons to the Kelpians showing up to defeat Control.
Interesting also that space battles in Star Trek have always been sub-warfare analogues until recently when they have turned space opera/Star Wars-y with hundreds of ships swarming around each other. The only indication of anything like that in the past was the peek at Wolf 359 that we got in the opening of DS9 and the battle at the start of ST: First Contact. I wonder if it’s playing to “modern sensibilities,” bringing in new audiences that expect that in sci-fi, or is it that when you build a season around “the universe is ending” it seems too underwhelming to have only 2 ships bobbing and weaving. I feel like we need to bring the stakes down on these short seasons. Eventually we will get tired of the universe always in danger. In the 80’s – 90’s it seemed it was always the destruction of the earth at stake, and that got tired.
Instead of stepping back to character development (Amok Time, Family), interesting space anomalies that serve as social metaphor (Immunity Syndrome, The Most Toys), or high stakes, but small scale conflict (Corbomite Maneuver, Kahn, The Battle), we get only a long 7 episode ramp up to a three episode explosion of a super high stakes, galaxy ending potential, high tension ending where things feel wrapped up far too quickly and neatly. It’s amazing that the story can seem too rushed when carried out over 10 episodes when these were supposed to be a solution to the old episodic format of having only one episode to introduce, complicate, and solve a problem that began to feel too formulaic and too low stakes since it seemed guaranteed that all your main characters would be mostly unchanged at the end of the episode. We need to find an in-between somehow, but maybe that’s just me.
It’s not just you.
Said it before but this was a 5 episode arc stretched into 10…which is really the problem with just about all pay-TV at this point.
It’s true. The Marvel shows on Netflix wrestled with this too; thirteen episodes when ten would have been more effective. Nonetheless, as more shows are made, you’d think writers would avoid those traps. Picard’s overall story is pretty lightweight.
I never really get this. Dune for instance would be a PERFECT miniseries but instead we are going to get a movie. This would probably be a better made for TV movie but instead we get a miniseries. So strange!
I was having a similar conversation with a friend last night.
There’s a lot of issues with modern TV that seem to be overlooked. I think it’s largely because people “binge” a product, and then move along to the next product without giving the stuff they binge a lot of thought.
Sure there are some dedicated groups of people that discuss shows, but there’s no longer that “water cooler” aspect. It’s all “hey, did you watch show X?”, “Yes, but I’m not finished”, “Oh, I watched all the episodes 2 weeks ago.” And it’s never mentioned by either of them again.
They’ve stretched what should be a 2-hour movies into 8-10 episodes. They’ve stretched what should be 8-10 episodes into 12-13.
Loud, vocal people online complain about how much “filler” is in old 22/26 episode seasons of shows. Personally I’d take 20-24 episode seasons with 5-6 *self-contained* bad episodes over 5-6 meandering stories and 3-4 “great” stories that are only great because they’re better than the meandering, mediocre *filler* stories in the rest of the season.
The best X-Files stories were non-arc, stand alone stories. The revival’s arc stories were absolute trash, and they made up almost half of their short series. It was so sad to watch when they were also able to produce great episodes like “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” and “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat”, but then they have to spend half the show’s run on a convoluted, terrible mythology stories.
I’d like to mention that I don’t think that modern Doctor Who’s best stories are the arc stories. Individually, almost none of them stand up to some of the best stand-alone (or two-part) stories, and they’re often only good because of a 5-10 minute emotional impact at the end of their stories, even if the preceding 80 minutes were just “okay.”
I have serious worries about DUNE. I was really hoping that with the success of Game of Thrones (before the final season), that someone with the rights to that would wise up and try to emulate what they did with The Song of Ice and Fire. Instead, they’re going to do something like half the book, without possibly ever completing the second half if the first half isn’t a success.
See I liked Game of Thrones when basing off the novels forced the writers/directors/producers to pre-plan everything in advance with an epic multi-year always changing arc. Same with the Marvel movies how they all tied in together.
Even the X-Files arcs I thought were awesome until the end when you realized that the writers actually had no plan whatsoever to tie the black oil, bee release, alien civil war/take over and Mulders kid together and got the feeling in the end they really were just throwing darts at the wall hoping in the end it would all make sense.
Each series convinces me more and more they should just reboot Star Trek and start from the beginning with the old canon being the “pre-planning” but done right (i.e. Enterprise starting with Zehrame Cochrane lost post WW3, Earth needing rebuild with help from colonies, Vulcan ship in distress captured by Tyranny falling apart that once ruled our part of the galaxy, no subspace comms, armed only with nuclear weapons, no transporters, no phasers on stun, etc). And yes, I know, why not just make a whole new series which is what someone should do. Look at Netflix Lost in Space, it’s more TOS than Picard by far!!!
I’m kinda out of enthusiasm with reboots. I just wish they’d cut the cord completely, hurl us another hundred years into the future with a new ship and a new crew and head on out there. Space is supposed to be so vast so it’s frustrating that the more shows/movies we get (with all these franchises, not just Star Trek), the smaller these universes seems to get.
So wish they would have cut the cord fully with the Kelvin movies.
The problem with going further out into the future comes from Roddenbery’s own “Star Trek” writers guide. You go too far and the characters and situations are non relatable. For instance with Picard the future Starfleet now should be engineered androids/holograms who you can’t kill, live forever, can mind meld (don’t need Vulcans anymore), have no faults, fly/breath in space, everything. Now you say “cool!” but then for every situation they win in like 10 seconds. It’s like if there was “Q” the TV show, he doesn’t have to work hard at anything, has no threats, everything is a holodeck. The problem is that the stories, regardless of what galaxy you are in, become boring. That’s why you see these flawed characters in Picard, as they made it where the situation has no hardships (energy free, Federation has nothing to learn from anyone) they need to turn to internal conflict. Ironically TOS given lots of external conflict (out of dilithium crystals, hit by Klingon missiles) you didn’t need all these flawed characters to keep the story moving.
When I was a kid I used to think it was fun to design the Enterprise-J which had 10000 quantum torpedoes, 50000 photon torpedo launchers and 100000 phaser banks and could reach Andromeda at warp 9.9999999. Become an adult, try to write a story or show that on a movie and you realize how ultimately lame and unwatchable that would be.
Yes, but the problems you mention here are all down to bad writing and a lack of vision. Of course it’s difficult to write these characters when they’re supposedly stripped of all the human frailties that make any compelling drama but TOS and TNG (after the first two seasons anyway) solved that problem weekly by pitting them against everything they’re not. The Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, the Borg, the Jem Hadar. Perfect contrasts to the moral high ground these characters stand on. Hell, it took til Best of Both Worlds before we saw Riker really get his feathers ruffled and it wasn’t the Borg who did it first, it was Shelby, vying for his job. (DS9 took a different tack by setting the show in a non-Starfleet environment and Voyager had the best opportunity to delve into conflict between the main crew but wimped out by the end of the pilot) Only lazy storytelling and a lack of imagination insists because it’s the same show set in the future that you must make everything bigger and better than the last one. That the characters have to be even more evolved than the last one. No they don’t. Just because Enterprise-D was larger than the TOS one doesn’t mean that’s how this evolution has to proceed. Once you can create danger and drama, you can do it with anything. Every writer worth his salt who worked on Trek over the years has said how hard a show it is to write because of Roddenberry’s decrees but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It just means you have to work harder, is all. And before someone says “it’s not that simple!”, yes it is: Work. Harder. If you can’t cut it, get someone who can.
I hear you blackmocco, I want a show to go farther in the future as well and why I’m excited about Discovery third season. But I understand what you mean, you want a more back to basics feel with a new crew and all of that. It will probably come in time.
I like what they did with Picard but I don’t want that to be all of Star Trek either.
Tiger2, Have you watched Netflix Lost in Space (with tech even more primitive than TOS)? I’m curious if you feel that sucks because it isn’t enough in the future and it needs more quantum torpedoes, holodecks, etc.
I saw the first season of Lost in Space Cmd. Bremmon and liked it, but I admit it hasn’t been enough to get me to watch second season yet. I still plan to do it, but obviously in no rush lol.
And dude, that’s not the reason why I want to go farther in the future. You read most of my posts since this show started, how many times did I mention I want to see more holodecks and quantum torpedoes lol.
I don’t care about that stuff (but I don’t mind it either though). I simply want to see the universe EXPAND and not just play on nostalgia all the time or fill in to stuff we already know. That’s why while part of me really like the idea of a Pike show I’m not AS excited about it as others because I feel end of the day it will feel more like a nostalgia romp or just fill in to stuff to TOS. And I’m not saying thats a BAD thing in itself, I like nostalgia like everyone else here (and I loved seeing Pike and Spock in Discovery) and why I’m enjoying Picard obviously.
But for me, if we ONLY had one show and it came down to doing something like a Pike or a Picard show versus something TOTALLY new, different with a new setting and characters, etc I would take that show over those in a heartbeat. And when you do a prequel, let’s be honest, you can’t get away with doing something TOTALLY new because most of the prequels are designed to set up events, aliens and characters we already know. Enterprise for the most part DIDN’T do that because it was so early in the timeline compared to the others but then fourth season it was clearly going the direction of TOS more and setting up the Romulan war, etc. And it was GOOD, but it still wouldn’t be my first preference as a whole.
Fortunately we don’t have to decide between one or the other with the 30 shows they have planned lol and why I’m happy with a Pike show if it comes. But for me, I would always prefer Trek to go forward and push for new ideas and concepts, which is why I loved TNG so much. You don’t, I understand why, we ALLLL know lol. But as fans people just want different things but as a fan I will support anything they make AS LONG AS ITS GOOD first and foremost, prequel or not! ;)
If Discovery had been set a hundred years after TNG, think people would have given it an easier ride? Hell yes. Imagine this forum without any complaints about canon violation for starters. It’s too little, too late for Discovery now, methinks. It has all the baggage of the previous two seasons. The comparisons to TNG’s first two seasons are moot, in my opinion, because TNG kept trying to tell the same kind of stories within the same framework until they got it right. Discovery has hit the reset button each season trying to forget what came before. To me, it hasn’t earned the chance (although obviously, I’ll end up watching it because it’s Trek but that’s hardly the glowing recommendation CBS executives would like to hear, I’m sure…)
I’d argue had Discovery had a war with Klingons deploying D-7 battle crusiers, fighting Pike and the 1701 from the start and had a similar Discovery powered by something other than magic mushrooms it would have had a lot more fans (something could have easily been done).
That being said its clear what they have to do for future Trek and that is destroy the TNG Federation that they can do some “new” Wagon Train to the Stars. Had they continued the motion picture era as the next generation we would all be on the same page.
Sigh, they don’t have to ‘destroy’ future Trek, that’s just ridiculous lol. Yes I know you hate the 24th century, but again you don’t speak for the majority, just yourself dude.
“If Discovery had been set a hundred years after TNG, think people would have given it an easier ride?”
Oh I agree completely! I think that was the biggest misstep and NOT putting the show in a post-Voyager setting on day one by fifty years or so. They obviously know most fans weren’t happy with it but I get it made sense for marketing purposes (hence Spock now has a sister); and I truly believe it was really only set there because Fuller wanted to reset Star Trek in his own image the way Abrams tried it with the Kelvin universe, so you start at the beginning.
But I also think they realize what a mistake it was, not the timeline itself, but how much they tried to change everything in this era and it blew up in their faces. That was the biggest head scratcher, why put it in such a known era but then CHANGE practically everything??? Oddly the show would’ve gotten way less resentment if it was actually in a post-Voyager setting. That’s the crazy thing, it looks like it would fit in a 25th century timeline than it would the 23rd. And its even more funny since we seen WAY more advance stuff on Discovery than we seen in Picard lol. There are no spore drives, hologram communication or time travel suits to be found in Picard but 150 years ago this stuff was on the cutting edge ;).
But its clear they learned their lesson because of how well Picard feels. Nothing on the show feels misplaced for its era. The technology feels just right and in some ways its under-played, but that’s partly because the show doesn’t take place on any advance starships. But how they treated the TNG era SHOULD’VE been given the same treatment with the TOS era with Discovery…and it wasn’t at all sadly IMO.
So off to a thousand years later instead. ;)
Actually I realize I was wrong about hologram communication in Picard. We have seen it twice now, the first time Narrisa talked to her brother on the Borg cube and when Picard talked to the Admiral f-bomb lady on the La Sirena. So it’s there, but not used at the level of Discovery for some reason.
TNG season 1 & 2 relied heavily on reworked stories that were supposed to be for TOS and ultimately rewritten/reworked for TNG. It showed once season 3 kicked in with new stuff.
Oh, you tease!! I love it!
Is this Re: Ent done right?
“The best X-Files stories were non-arc, stand alone stories. The revival’s arc stories were absolute trash, and they made up almost half of their short series. It was so sad to watch when they were also able to produce great episodes like “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” and “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat”, but then they have to spend half the show’s run on a convoluted, terrible mythology stories.”
100% agreed. The X-Files revival was really let down by the insanely dumb mythology stories that bookended Season 10 and 11. They had so much to cram in, they shot it like an action movie on crack with dumb dialogue aplenty, it was ridiculous. Thank god Gillian Anderson said she was done with it.
I’ve been rewatching the X-Files on Amazon. Just starting on Season 3. The HD widescreen version is better than expected. The effects (upscaled) are okay. A shame it didn’t get the TNG treatment, but alright.
Yeah sadly I agree with the X Files revival. I was just as excited for that as the Picard show and naturally most people wanted the alien mythology stuff but it was the weakest part of the sow. The last episode was so bad it felt like it was a fan fic story written by a college student.
Yes, the monster of the week episodes in the X-Files revival were mostly good, but the main conspiracy storyline was truly awful. It was like watching two different shows.
It really was too bad they introduced the Conspiracy/Mythology episodes into X-Files in the first place. After the first few seasons, I was just, “WHY. WHY? This is not going ANYWHERE except up its own a$$”
Really a waste, considering the great acting and chemistry of the cast.
I watched the first 2 episodes of the X-Files Sequel series and gave it up. More Mythology junk? Phooey!
There all ready is a Dune Mini Series… two actually, that sci-fi channel did… I felt they far exceeded the original movie… though they still don’t do the text full justice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert%27s_Dune
Agreed. All about the $ub$.
“Said it before but this was a 5 episode arc stretched into 10…which is really the problem with just about all pay-TV at this point.”
This is exactly what I thought about Mandalorian: a perfectly fine movie stretched out across several episodes. A very simple plot dragged across a lot of filler episodes.
Descent as a whole isn’t good, but especially not the second half.
It’s a lot more watchable if you treat Picard as having been compromised by the Borg / secretly on the Borg’s side / PTSD from being Locutus and striving for the non human order of the Borg.
@Hutch$, I’m a little irritated by your mention of the glimpse of Wolf 359 we got in DS9 + the “First Contact” battle being the only big space battles from the past. DS9 had it’s fair share of big, epic space battles, and for what it’s worth it felt great to see all these familiar ships finally in a big fleet battle.
But I also have to say that nowadays the space battles they do (like on Discovery) leave me kind of cold. Perhaps because it’s nothing previously unseen anymore, maybe because it’s not a battle featuring “classic” ship designs, and maybe (and probably) because the plots surrounding the space battles hardly make any sense.
And I’m also a bit tired of these “Vs the end of the universe”-plots. It was ok in the movies, because we had the TV shows which contained more interesting plots. But nowadays it’s all the same. Both Movie-; & TV-Star Trek is about the end of everything. Booooring.
I think what I meant was exactly what you are talking about, space battles that leave you cold. By the time DS9 got into those massive battles, they were an essential part of the story and character growth, not just spectacle without context, like jumping into a battle right off in First Contact. Wolf 359 at the start of Discovery is perhaps not the best example, because we were aware it had happened having seen the aftermath in TNG, and they leave the battle pretty quickly to give us some real character with Sisko and family.
@Hutch$, thanks for the clarification. Now I understand what you mean. I’d also agree with the “First Contact”-battle. While I remember it was super fun to watch back in the days, it didin’t put you in the edge of your seat or something. It was fun, but there was no thrill and yes, the space battles in DS9 were very different in that regard.
For me space battles that left me cold started with SW The Return of the Jedi. Lots of stuff going on, but not enough angles or something even for a gamer to make sense of.
Lots of fog of war, with a multi-ring circus that doesn’t provide viewers a sense of continuity in any ring.
In the end, there’s not much sense of what counts to turn events (even when ships are crashing into one another).
And that’s the problem with most space battles: lots of busyness, but little information to follow the flow tactically.
I’d feel less unhappiness the loss of the tension of submarine style warfare if I could actually enter into the events with the various characters.
The thing is that it is possible to do. The Orville managed to provide one of the best choreographed and most complex battles with the Kaylons that I’ve seen. We’ve found The Orville pretty mixed, that battle was great.
I’ve said it before: starships should be elegant sailing vessels in Star Trek, not F-16s dogfighting.
As much as I’m down on Star Wars nowadays, at least it was just their fighter-scale ships buzzing around and not their capital ships.
Agreed. Compare Star Trek II finale, Master and Commander and/or Midway movies to any mass 1000 starships on 1000 starships battle and see which one is more fun to watch and allows the characters to influence the battle with relevant strategy.
Also the scene where Reliant and Enterprise are slowly drifting towards each other… unbelievably tense scene.
I wasn’t terribly impressed with this one. First half of the episode was better than the back end. As others have said, the writing seemed a jumble. This episode REALLY jumped the shark for me when Sudra taught herself how to mind-meld?? Just…no. It’s a Vulcan trait, it can’t be ‘self-taught.’ Rolled my eyes at that one. Other than that, Alison Pill’s character has really just wept a lot over the past few episodes, a disservice to the talented actress. Picard’s brief comment about Hugh’s death was off-base and did the character no justice. There was absolutely no reason to leave Elnor back on the cube other than set him up to rescue Picard again later. It was good seeing Stewart and Spiner share the screen again for those few moments. The sfx of Rio’s ship and the Borg cube cruising through the conduit was decent, but overall I remain totally unimpressed with the space shots in both this show and DSC. It does not feel in-universe and takes me out of the (rather bland) story. And how would a synth be ‘killed’ with a glass hummingbird to the eye?? Sadly, I’m not looking forward to the 2nd part of this finale as much as I would have liked. Mediocre. 6/10.
Sadly I have to agree with a lot of your points Danpaine, I felt a lot more let down by this episode too. There were things I liked but overall it just felt jumbled as you said and so many bizarre things like the mind meld and the entire Borg cube plot. I mean WHY is Elnor not there with the other guys??? OK, I bought he stayed behind to help Hugh the first time but not its obvious he’s not there because its simply in the script for him to not be there. I can understand Seven staying back but not him.
I like the idea of the planet a lot but I expected it to be much more story involved. It just felt like a lot of the set up for all of it hasn’t gone as far as it could’ve gone. We still have one more episode but based on this one my expectations are MUCH lower now.
I know I keep saying this but again: there is NO REASON for Elnor to be on this show. Not one! You could literally edit him out of every scene and still have the exact same show. Every week I think “Ok, they’ll bring him into play this time” and nada. Watch them kill him next week and think I should care.
It seems pretty clear that the writers had another idea for Elnor originally.
But how could they lean into Elnor as an adolescent child for Picard if they assigned that role to Soji from Nepenthe on?
It’s unfortunate, because the actor’s performance in Absolute Candour was solid, and credible. They could have found more for him to do than just be the vehicle for emotional expression.
This reminds me of how Tilly was pushed to deepen and show command character in the first half of Discovery’s S2, and then reverted to an annoying humour role after the showrunners changed.
Fortunately, the actor seems to have some chemistry with Jeri Ryan’s Seven. I could see him as a supporting character in a Seven series. His contrast of naivety and extreme competence ethos the XB children of Voyager.
Kinda sad we have to make up that show in our heads rather than having it done for us in the actual show.
As noted above, Data reportedly did a mind meld previously.
I also recall his doing a Vulcan neck pinch.
We may not like it, but it’s previously established.
Addendum – this may be a clue that Sudra/Sutra wasn’t closed from Data (but perhaps from Lore).
Given Data had the ability to mind meld, his clones should have the ability without study.
Citation needed. When did Data perform a mind meld?
I know that Spock melded with Nomad so organics have performed mind melds on machines. He also melded with V’ger but V’ger could be considered as more of an almost-person, Nomad was more machine like so that’s why I’m using Nomad as an example machine.
Nice touch using a little of the Voyager theme when Seven shows up.
Star Trek always feels the most Star Trekky when it’s cheesy, and. Akiva Goldman is such a bad director that he makes this expensive show look cheap (did he con the production into renting out his house as the set for an entire civilization?) It reminded me of his Discovery episode where an entire city was, I believe, an indoor set of a small strip of outdoor bazaar shops.
And he’s directing the next one too. Rod help us.
If you’re referring to the Orions on Qronos in the Discovery S1 finale “Will You Take My Hand?”, Avika Goldsman was the director for that as well.
I believe that body in the lab where consciousness of a human can be transferred to will be for Picard before he dies.
“All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.”
So say we all-
Have to say as we near the end of the season, it’s clear that the story isn’t paying off for me in some key areas. The big issue for me is that the Borg really played no part in this story beyond window-dressing which is hugely disappointing to me. The fact that the Borg are an AI appears to be coincidental to this story? I do like the over arching theme of AI evolution however, and although not played with enough dramatic heft, the concept is fascinating and makes you feel the inevitability of AI’s evolution in our own society. This particular episode had many great ideas and moments, but it had some mechanical issues that didn’t seem to bring it all together in a taught coherent way. Editing in the last two episodes has been noticeably problematic, here it’s less about the time gaps and more about the poor pacing and missing information. I guess we have to wait for the last episode before I can really comment on the fact Elnor seems to have been lost in this story and is being separated from Picard for contrived reasons. Isa Briones is fantastic, embodying so many different characters so effortlessly, she has been consistently excellent throughout the series. And I agree with many that Agne’s betrayal and murder of Maddox is being played off way too conveniently with little consequence beyond her own internal torment. The Soong character also didn’t work for me, too contrived to the point of being dramatically deflating. Ultimately it really feels like the finale is telling a new story very loosely related to what the series was building.
Sadly the Borg is one of the biggest disappointments to me too. Why are they there if there is no direct involvement in the story? They aren’t some small subplot, every episode took place on that Borg cube minus one. I thought we were being prepped for something bigger.
And I was fine we didn’t see the traditional Borg. I understand they didn’t want to go down that path with them this season so I was on board to see a different angle. But they should still have a REASON to be there other than to just say the Borg is there to get more people to watch. It’s going to be really disappointing we learn the Borg was there to give the Romulans something to do I guess but little else.
And agreed about Agnes too. Its like they wanted her to kill Maddox to give us a shocking moment but then want to somehow play it off because my guess is they want to keep the character around next season and not in a jail cell somewhere. But maybe she will pay for her crime.
When Seven appeared and the Voyager theme began playing I lost it. I don’t care if it was a play on nostalgia or not, I loved hearing it one more time.
Came here to say the same thing, it was such a subtle touch and easy to miss but I was so glad to hear that theme, if only briefly.
LOL I completely missed that! Will definitely be listening for it when I rewatch it.
That was… wow. I was expecting a stronger episode leading to the finale.
Nice to see Bill Theiss TOS-style costumes on all the androids.
If they’ve known for years that Romulans have a thing against androids, and they knew that Starfleet killed Jana & her ‘brother’ Beautiful Flower… why do they only have 15 of the Super Star Destroyer Space Flowers around? Wouldn’t you have thousands available in case of a large attack?
This would normally be considered a decent episode, but it has the weight of expectations of the whole series riding on it as the penultimate chapter – and it seems to come up short.
Hopefully our socks will be knocked off next week.
Yeah, this one wasn’t too great for me either. There were things I really liked, the twist of seeing Spiner again but as another Soong was great (now played his third version of one) and it was great to see him and Stewart really on screen together. And I love the general idea that an entire machine species is out there that goes beyond Soji’s planet. THATS Star Trek for me and the kind of stuff I been wanting to see discussed for literally years now. Yes we have the machine people who built V’ger but it does no good when it’s completely dropped after the movie and never discussed again. ;) But hopefully we will learn something about those people since the entire story line essentially evolves around them when you think about it. They were basically the entire catalyst for it.
But this episode was just, weird. I don’t know, the writing just felt really bad to me. The monologue during the admonition felt so cheesy to me. It was suppose to be serious and deep but it sounded like something out of a bad 80’s sci fi movie. And the delivery felt like Burnham monologue bad.
The less said about Narek the better. I don’t hate the character but its sad how predictable he ended up being. But we still have one more episode I guess.
Someone else brought it up but what was the point of going to the Borg cube other than to just see Seven and Elnor again? And why is it being COMPLETELY ignored by the synths??? A Borg Cube just landed on your very secret planet. You are literally a race of perfect beings, something the Borg seems to have an interest in, why is there no panic at ALL about this?? Why is no one assessing the ship at least?? Yes, WE know this particular cube is not dangerous but there are still actual Borg on the ship that can be activated. And now knowing what we know about this planet, there really should be a bigger connection somewhere between the Artifact and this planet. I was hoping for some actual story connection somewhere. I mean we still don’t even know what the Romulans were doing with the cube. That part of the story line feels more and more irrelevant.
And yeah I didn’t like the mind meld thing either. Wait so now ANYONE can just learn to do it? It’s not some biological trait, it just takes lots of practice? I mean people were questioning it when Commodore Oh did it when we thought she was just a Romulan but I could’ve still bought it. But now apparently Androids can do it too.
I didn’t hate the episode, I haven’t hated any of them, but I did expect more considering this sets up the last one. While I do generally like the show the biggest issue is just not enough happened in it. And its so odd because they have set up MANY elements in it like the Borg, the attack on Mars, the destruction of Romulus and so on but none of it feels very strong to the story as a whole. We learned the attack on Mars was due to the Romulans (shocking lol). And they only did it because they were afraid of Synths being produced more by the Federation and wanted them banned? That’s it? That’s the big conspiracy? And apparently they weren’t bothered that it cost billions of Romulan lives in the process.
I’m hoping the last episode really goes out with a bang but sadly I’m starting to feel like we really been told the story and its now just waiting for the final battle. But hopefully something more will come of it but I’m not as excited for the finale now like I was a week ago.
It’s making me crazy, where have we seen the decaying fox clip that we see on the expanded vision? I’m assuming it was control related, but I can’t place it.
The decaying fox, I believe, is from the title sequence of “True Blood.”
the decomposing fox is one of the most widely used bits of stock footage in existence.
1. I’m worried that there won’t be enough time in the next episode to sufficiently wrap up the episode with all its loose threads. There will be a cliffhanger and we’d need to wait more than a year for resolution.
2. The Borg Cube is supposed to be a HUGE vessel. Approximately 27km wide.
An object that size crash-landing onto a planet should have wiped out a continent. Yet, it seemed to have crashed approximately 12km away from the settlement and there was no consequences.
3. Where were the intense lightning storms (it was supposed to be a feature of this planet).
4. I believe it’s predictable that Soji will turn to the good side next week. If not, then this entire season to rescue Soji and the synths was a waste, the Romulans were right all along, and Picard was wrong.
We need to wrap up:
1. Purpose of this story – who was right, the Romulans or the synth?
2. What do the Borg have to do with this series> What happens to the artefact, ex-B, and the collective?
3. What happens to Commodore Oh, and what are the consequences for the attack on Mars?
4. Will the synth saviors pitch up, who are they, and what will they do?
5. What happens to Picard’s illness? Magic cure or does he transcend into another body?
6. Consequences for Agnes? It really looks like they don’t want her to end up in jail
7. Starfleet – out of the story?
Yeah I just don’t see them wrapping all that up in the span of an hour. Maybe they will but I feel it will be a ROTS situation where its just overstuffed and you are going 70 MPH to hit all the big plot resolutions.
I wouldn’t be too shocked if the season was left on a cliffhanger of some kind. We know the show is going at least 3 seasons, they can all be a continuation of the same story in theory.
I was thinking about the lightning storms, too, and thought, perhaps it’s a seasonal thing.
That was Kurtzman’s explanation for the blue Vulcan sky in Trek ’09! Seasonal.
If it’s seasonal, how can it be a constant characteristic, such that the location can be identified?
Well that was pretty bad. Goldsman has never been a particularly good storyteller, especially when it comes to sci-fi, so it’s hardly surprising that this episode feels like a hodge-podge of scenes lifted from prior Star Trek shows, half baked notions and scenes that look cool but go nowhere.
– The episode feels much like a retread of Descent I & II.
– Sudra and Soji are our new Lore and Data. And why do all these female villains have to have the vampy, sultry look and walk? Narissa was bad enough, now we have two of them.
– So synths can now do mind melds? How exactly does that work?
– Soong, Jr. is a chip of his old ancestor’s block from Enterprise, Arik Soong, right down to getting all uppity and willing to have genocide on his hands to protect his “children”. My memory of TNG is a bit hazy but didn’t Dr. Soong once tell Data that the reason he made Lore and Data was because he could not have children? If nothing else, you’d think he would have told Data about his organic cousin before he died, unless he was also a disappointment to him.
– How convenient that the orchids crash a gigantic Borg cube on their planet and then completely forget about it. It was also interesting that they crashed the La Sirena but didn’t feel compelled to check in on it. So much for their curiosity.
– Several people speculated that the synth overlords waiting to be called were reminiscent of the Reapers from Mass Effect and lo and behold, they pretty much are exactly that.
– I’m still not clear on why Maddox sent Dahj and Soji to the Daystrom institute and the artifact as it placed the synths in unnecessary peril. Nobody knew where their homeworld was and finding it would have been like finding a needle in a billion haystacks. Instead he gave the Romulans two giant signposts. And why were they given false memories? If Soji actually knew her purpose she might not have been fooled by Narek into trying to find what she really was. Kind of stupid and not well thought out if you think of it.
– Once again, the climax of another KurtzTrek show ends up involving AIs that want to destroy all organic life. How original.
As to my guess where this will end: Sudra will rally everybody to her cause, Soji will blindly go along with it. The synth overlords will come, wipe out the Romulan fleet and when all looks lost the restored Borg cube will come to the rescue and buy our heroes the precious minutes they need to turn defeat into victory. Picard, with a little help from Agnes will cleverly get Sudra to admit that she killed the android, not Narek. Soji and the rest of her people will turn on Sudra (synths shall not kill synths), Soji will tell the synth overlords that murder is noth the answer, the day will be saved and Picard gets a new brain or his consciousness transferred into the conveniently revealed synth body Soong was working on, just like that post-credits scene in X-Men 3 where Professor X transfers his consciousness into his husk twin.
Does no one see Soong as having a God complex? He calls the androids his “children”. He creates butterflies just because he misses them. He creates a cat. Is Spot II a sentient being? No? Then… Why? He probably should die for deciding he’s a God.
Well yeah obviously there is a screw loose somewhere lol. And I been seeing others point out he has nearly the same character development as Arik Soong on Enterprise, only his obsession was with augments. I lol when I read a post on another site that pointed out that Soong was also doing banned work on advance beings on a secret planet for over a decade. Didn’t Arik Soong also consider the augments his children as well?
He did but I would not classify that as much of self delusion as in this case. The augments were, augmented humans. The androids are his actual creation. If one classifies them as actual legitimate life forms, Soong is a God. He is doing more than AI research. He is creating life. Even animal life. And it appears he is doing so on a whim. As if he is creating his own ecosystem. I almost feel like all the Soongs have it in their DNA to be manically intelligent. Evil super geniuses. This sort of thing ought to at the very least be reigned in if not outright stopped.
Fan service galore in this episode and, as usual, not for the best interests of the story. That the actors are all excellent is sadly just lipstick on the pig. I think the mumblings about sacrifice in today’s episode should have been expanded to discuss the fact that the Zhat Vash Romulans knowingly sacrificed huge numbers of their own people, i.e., sabotaging their rescue-from-supernova by the Federation, by staging the Mars carnage. Unless it’s being saved for next episode’s all-but-assured chat between Picard and Commodore Oh.
Part 2 be like “The reign of biological life forms is coming to an end. You, Picard, and those like you are obsolete”; “I need to know I can count on you. As proof, I want you to kill Picard.”
Despite Lore being the mustache-twirly type, I actually like “Descent”. I really hope they don’t directly lift lines from those episodes though lol
“I can’t do it without you”, lol!
My heart breaks. Sloppy, rushed. It was as disappointing as grading papers. Part II will need to really step it up to live down this dud of an episode.
Well I was on Reddit and someone posted Chabon’s Instagram account and he answered questions about the episode:
https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/flhe9i/chabon_instagram_qa_transcript_for_picard_s1e09/
I haven’t had time to read them but just thought I post it here for others. Hopefully it makes the episode come off better…hopefully.
It doesn’t.
SPOILER THINKING
Picard will live forever and stop the war not as old Picard but as new Picard Android
I spoke to 4 other fans after last night’s episode and that came up as a big possibility. My cousin was saying the same thing about a month ago. Others think that it will be Data that gets a new body. We shall find out in 6 days. Oh btw has anyone heard when they plan to premiere S3 of Disco?
I’m intrigued by this episode. I can’t say I loved it though at this point.
More than for the others this season, I feel my rating of this episode will depend on the next one. It truly feels like the first part of a two parter.
A few offhand thoughts:
1). It’s truly a classic Trek story.
While the plot has many TNG call-backs, there is definitely something that gives a TOS vibe. One can really sense that Chabon and Goldsman were TOS fans at a young age.
2). My ‘what’s up with the synthetic orchids in Dajh’s’ apartment question isn’t quite resolved. It’s pretty clear they were synthetic, but what was their purpose.
3). Maddox had another lab destroyed by the Tal Shiar, and had taken Dahj and Soji away years before. What was the dispute? How and under what circumstances did he leave such that he left his personal effects behind? (Sudra says they only had the one small ship that was destroyed by the in Magic.)
3) If Juliana’s mind was transferred into a positronic brain, why does Soon the younger not have that ability?
This feels like part nine of a 10 part show, to me. ;)
I find it odd that you got a TOS vibe here. I’m a huge TOS guy and I’m not seeing it. To me it has a huge Secret Hideout vibe. And that’s not really a complaint per se… In the sense that I don’t think ANY Trek will carry the TOS vibe anymore. There just doesn’t seem to be any way to recapture that. While disappointing I think that may be a good thing as it keeps TOS special forever.
I know this is a few episodes too late but in tng episode the defector the romulan admiral that defects says to data that he knows a whole load of romulan cybernetisists that would love to be that close to data. Surely the zhat vash wouldn’t have allowed that industry to develop?
Also is it possible that OH didn’t share the entire admonition with jutarti, only enough to make her play ball? Which could explain why jurarti couldn’t understand it and that the synth took it to mean they do need to kill all organics?
I do hope they don’t do some picard becomes synth to save his brain, would ruin star treks entire premise of the importance of being good in the moment and that time isn’t an enemy but a reminder that now is what is important.
Sutra said to Soji, Did you complete your mission, or something like that. What was her mission?
That was one of my questions as well. You are the only other person to mention it so far here.
I’ve been wondering that since this whole thing began.
Once all the episodes were filmed, it’s as if they went back and reshot earlier episodes…changing the story but they left the 2-part finale unchanged.
Am I the only one who preferred the old After Treks to Wheaton’s? Blech!
Wheaton is too over-the-top enamoured by the cast, etc. I guess he has to be a shill for the show, but geesh!
I’ve seen a couple of these new Ready Rooms and yes, Wheaton’s never ending, over the top “this episode was FIRE!!!” comments quickly become tiresome. I understand the need to promote the show. accentuate the positives and maintain interest but when it’s that excessive it becomes distracting and borderline off-putting. I think the show would benefit a lot by dialing that kind of stuff back a bit.
Sadly, I felt like this episode continued a bit of a downward trend in the show that started in episode 8.
Picard started out aping Mass Effect’s biggest plot point, and then pulled a character out of nowhere in a way that made no sense and that contradicts already established canon way back in TNG: Dr. Noonian Soong EXPLICITLY had no biological children! This made no sense. A better twist which would have fit with canon AND the sort of narrative Picard had would have been Lore or B4 being the leader of the synths!
Lore was dismantled in Descent, Part II, yes, but Bruce Maddox was pretty well established as going rogue through most this show so far. It would not have been a stretch for Maddox to have rebuilt Lore and worked with him, as opposed to the Picard writers creating a character who literally cannot exist if they respected continuity.
What’s worse is, their one potential fix for this (Soong being a synth.) is just plain stupid.
Picard was going great until episode 8, and this episode just brought it down further. The season finale better be amazing, but given how this is now Star Trek: Mass Effect and the writers have again decided continuity won’t work for them (A la Discovery.) I’m kinda let down by this.