Podcast: All Access Star Trek Jumps Centuries To Review ‘Picard’ And ‘Discovery’ In The Same Week

Just finished listening to this weeks episode reviewing the new Picard episode. I just wanted to echo Tony’s “tin hat” theory about the Borg Queen. When she said “look up” I couldn’t help but but make the connection to Picard’s mother as those words had been said multiple times in the episode. The reason I believe this could be true is because as you say, she is shrouded, and we already know that Annie Wersching is the Borg queen, so there’s no surprise in revealing it to be her under that mask. So, it must be someone different. In Picard’s chateau after Q moves him into this alternate timeline there is the image they have shown us over and over of the (for lack of a better description) “mirror Enterprise D) destroying Borg cubes. I believe that Seven was correct about the Borg (in their universe), and that they wouldn’t take this tactic. So, I’m theorizing these Borg and this queen must emanate from whatever time or place that Q sends them to where the Borg have been dominated by the Federation. Now how that adds up to it being his mother I don’t know, but Borg asking for peace and that image on his chateau wall seem to go hand in hand. I have already had friends saying that the queen would be able to echo his mothers words because they know everything about him from his time in the collective. Well, true! But not if they come from an alternate timeline or universe in which Picard is his mirror self and was never assimilated by them. Maybe in that timeline, they assimilated his mother and the destruction he reigns down upon them is a result of that? How big is my tin hat here guys?? lol But just sayin, I agree with Tony on this. On another note, just something that is in my head and seems so obvious, but I hear very little about, is the lack of Voyager mentions! The scene where Seven and the Rios hologram are talking have multiple opportunities or obvious Voyager allusions. First he asks her about a flesh and blood crew (Voyager literally had an episode titled “Flesh and Blood”). She quickly responds no, that she does not want that. She clearly prefers to work with a hologram. Essentially her only true friend on Voyager was the Doctor. I don’t know why the writers didn’t put that in her dialogue to explain that. She could have very easily said something like “No, I found during my time in the Delta quadrant on Voyager that working with our holographic doctor was often easier than working with the crew.” The Rios hologram continues by saying that her lifetime dealing with adverse reactions to her half Borg nature must have “inhibited developmentally appropriate relationship skills.” Ummm, hello?? Wasn’t almost half a season of Voyager dedicated to her and the doctor working on social lessons? How did these two lines go without so much as even a mention of the Doctor? Seven then makes the comment that she should have never merged the holos and there must be a way to disable his therapeutic plugins. Did she not work for years with B’Ellana who helped keep the Doctor’s program running smoothly for seven years on Voyager?? Not only did she help him expand his program, but she fixed his subroutines MANY times when he did a little tinkering of his own. She’s clearly an expert in this, and while I know her and Seven weren’t exactly the best of friends, I think by the end of Voyager they were close enough that she could very easily call up her old shipmate and Roxann Dawson could make a cameo and help fix the Rios program. Could you imagine that sassy back and forth while she fixes his subroutines? Sassy but also sentimental. Then there’s Janeway…like ok, I get it, the series is called Picard and it’s all about him. But why the heck isn’t Janeway even in someway mentioned when it comes to the Borg. The woman literally “wrote the book on the Borg.” And for those who will say “well not necessarily, that future no longer exists because the admiral that wrote that book no longer exists since she helped Voyager get back early.” Ok, I’ll give you that. But she still brokered the only alliance with the Borg, ever. She kicked their butts so often she was basically enemy number 1 in the Queen’s book. She dealt the biggest blow to the Borg we have ever seen in “Endgame”, brought back armor technology and transphasic torpedoes, and she is officially cannonized as an admiral in ST: Nemesis. So, again I’ll ask…no mentions?? It just feels like the dialogue lends so many very obvious connections… Read more »

One more comment about ‘Picard’. Although I enjoyed ‘Picard’ very much (I don’t watch ‘Discovery’ anymore), I am bothered by it’s seeming participation in the small and crowded universe concept – as promoted in the Star Wars and JJ films. Picard arrives at the Stargazer (if it’s real) by shuttlecraft in much less than 48 hours and it is joined by 22 other starships (if real) almost by the time he has a chance to greet Rios and Seven, etc. Whatever happened to the expansive universe (as shown in TMP) where the Enterprise was “the only starship within interception range”? And whatever happened to a Starfleet which was not Earth-centric, as this one seems to be?

A couple of things. When discussing Laris’s role at the vineyard, you were wondering about what she does. Is she a housekeeper? Is she just an employee? There is a point where she it appears that she is helping another worker design a label and then we see that label appear on one of the bottles that Picard picks up. It would seem that if she is involved in the designing of labels, she may be more of a partner. When discussing Picard’s involvement in the destruction of Rios’s ship, he does not have command codes per se, but he used the same final code that Kirk uses to destroy the Enterprise in Star Trek 3. It must be an admiral thing. With the hobbling of the Borg, I assumed that they were referencing Voyager’s final encounter with them upon their return to the Alpha Quadrant. Your thoughts?

Thank you for the podcast guys. I know it must be daunting to cover 2 shows at once- you are doing a terrific job though. What I’ve noticed is that both Anthony and Laurie are natural speakers. Both of you are very articulate and easy on the ear.(shuttlepod crew don’t get jealous because you are great too)Keep up the good work guys!