The end of the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard is approaching, with the penultimate episode arriving this week. We have details along with new images, plus a trailer and a clip, so SPOILERS.
“Vox”
Episode 9 of Picard’s third season is called “Vox.” The episode was written by Sean Tretta & Kiley Rossetter, and directed by showrunner Terry Matalas. It debuts on Paramount+ on Thursday, April 13.
Synopsis:
A devastating revelation about Jack alters the course of Picard’s life forever – and uncovers a truth that threatens every soul in the Federation. The final battle begins as Picard and his crew race to save the galaxy from annihilation – but not without a gut-wrenching cost.
NEW images from episode 9:
Ed Speleers as Jack Crusher and Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi
Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher and Patrick Stewart as Picard
Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher and Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi
Patrick Stewart as Picard
Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi
LeVar Burton as Geordi La Forge and Brent Spiner as Data
UPDATE – Trailer:
A trailer has been released on startrek.com and on social media.
Everything has led to this moment—next, on the penultimate episode of #StarTrekPicard. pic.twitter.com/x6p0TAXd39
— Star Trek on Paramount+ (@StarTrekOnPPlus) April 11, 2023
Clip:
A clip was shown at the end of The Ready Room featuring Deanna and Jack. Watch the clip below (starts at 29:32).
Frontier Day is coming… and it’s “massive”
Showrunner Terry Matalas has teased that this episode will include Frontier Day.
#FrontierDay pic.twitter.com/VTpEWHSDDJ
— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) April 10, 2023
Frontier Day has been a focal event, first mentioned in the season premiere. Over the weekend Matalas used a GIF from the classic movie Ghostbusters to sum it up.
Best gif to describe Frontier Day: pic.twitter.com/v5UNuFkHN9
— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) April 9, 2023
Picard writer Christopher Monfette teased how the episode is “filled with massive, emotional, story-defining moments” and for fans to be wary of spoilers.
This next episode of #StarTrekPicard is filled with massive, emotional, story defining moments. Whatever you can do to safeguard against spoilers, you owe it to yourself to experience events as blind as possible. We’re into the endgame and are so proud of these final two hours.
— Christopher Monfette (@cwmonfette) April 8, 2023
The third and final season of Picard premiered on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., and Latin America, and on February 17 Paramount+ in Europe and elsewhere, with new episodes of the 10-episode-long season available to stream weekly. It also debuted on Friday, Feb. 17 internationally on Amazon Prime Video in more than 200 countries and territories. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave.
Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
Wonder if we’re FINALLY going to see the Enterprise-F and Voyager-B?
The Enterprise-F (or at least an Odyssey class ship) is seen near the end, yeah. Hope so!
I’m so excited. They really have done an amazing job this season. I’ve forgotten (almost) how everything after episode 2 last season was horrific). More from Matalas!
Totally agree. This season and the last (two) are like night and day in quality. It’s a shame it took all that time to get here.
What I just realized after checking IMDB is that season 3 is written mostly by the same writers who also did season 2. It’s quite fascinating that the same team delivered such vastly different seasons.
Just goes to show that it’s not always the writers. Hollywood is a complicated machine with a lot of cooks in the kitchen.
What I suspect is that Matalas was given freer reign over this season because the first two were such a success (if not with fans than with Paramount’s expectations for P+).
Matalas said in interviews he was given a free reign because everyone else who had worked on the first two seasons had either left the show or was too busy working on other projects. He cited Kurtzman was in London making The Man Who Fell to Earth and Goldsman went straight into SNW after season 2 and they were both heavily involved in seasons 1 and 2. Michael Chabon left the franchise entirely after the start of season 2 and the other producers around never had any real creative input, just helped produced the show. So he was given free reign because no one was even around to make the show by then. It was all left up to him.
And if the first two seasons were that much of a success I don’t think they would’ve hastily dumped 80% of the new cast after just two seasons. In fact I think it was due to how much fans drooled over Nepenthe and bringing Data back in the finale that really told them what fans responded to the most, ie, more TNG and why he didn’t get any push back when he presented it. They all knew it’s what fans ultimately wanted from the start and finally just gave it to them.
Oh you’re one of those who thinks PIC S1-2 was a failure for the franchise. You’re not worth listening to anymore, then.
I mean, you even admit it was Matalas who wrote S3 and was given free reign, so “dumping” the cast wasn’t about success or failure. It’s just not what he wanted to do. Bringing in the TNG cast necessitated not including everyone.
But please, do go on… eye roll.
LOL this is a bizarre response. You seem to have some issues man. Then maybe you will finally just ignore me like I asked you like 3 times now?
Season 1 and 2 is some of worst Star Trek ever produced IMO, so yes I think it was a failure for the franchise. ;)
And you’re missing my point. If season one was a huge hit and fans loved the cast, then I don’t think Paramount would’ve easily dumped them like they did. But they knew the show needed a shake up and that fans still wanted a TNG revival more than anything so they got it. I mean no one is crying that Elnor has been replaced with Worf lol.
Because they had a different show runner with a more ambitious and clear story from the start. The reasons why seasons 1 and 2 seemed so bad is because the show runners just didn’t have a complete or strong idea from the beginning. You can have all the best writers in the world, but in a serialized story universe, if there is not a clear or strong vision where it’s going from beginning to en, it’s easy to turn things into a mess.
I have pointed this out before, but Akiva Goldsman was practically bragging over the fact that unlike season one, they now had time to know where the story would end before it started…and it still turned out even worse. That tells you another thing, having more time doesn’t always mean you’re going to get a better story out of it either.
The story is probably developed by the writers room as a team effort, but there has to be someone (i.e. the show runner) guiding it, of course. During season 1, it seemed that Chabon and Goldsman had kind of different visions for the show, which might explain the multitude of story threads some of which went nowhere.
I remember that Goldsman talked about having more time to fully write season 2 before shooting it, but I also remember reading an interview with Stewart where he suggested that he had only seen a few scripts when shooting started. So it seems they did not take advantage of that additional time. Of course, it is also possible that season 2 had to be rewritten to make it work within Covid protocols.
As AlphaPredator said, there are many cooks in the kitchen who all want to see their ideas reflected in the show. Apparently, Patrick Stewart was one of those people with ideas of what he wanted and did not want to see in the show.
Whether all of these people agreed on season 3 or some of them just didn’t object, let’s be happy that they found a story that seems to resonate much better with fans.
I think I told you in another thread a few months ago I talked to someone on another site who knows some of the people who worked on season 2 and they didn’t give out a name but said that season 2 originally had a very different direction. It was time travel based but more complex, kind of how a lot of us assumed it would be. But he said a producer changed it and went a more simple (ie cheaper) way and we got what we got. My guess is it was Goldsman who changed it since he was in charge. But maybe it was someone above him who thought they ideas they had was going to cost too much or something and had to simplify and rush a new story.
It’s all total speculation obviously but if that’s true, I can see why season 2 was such a mess. My guess is if there was a behind the scenes shake up, it will come out in time.
So cool to see Geordi and Data in a Shuttlecraft again.
“That’s a big Twinkie”
Ironically, a lot of this episode felt like that cringy part in Ghostbusters Afterlife where they open the glove compartment and there’s a twinkie >_<
“A devastating revelation about Jack alters the course of Picard’s life forever”
Hmmm, lets see, Picard was assimilated by the Borg, which changed the course of his life forever, He died and was given a new synthetic body, which would seem to change the course of his life forever. This will be just another Thursday for Picard…
Perhaps the Borg planed for him to be their first Borg King like the Queens
Agreed – the idea being that if the queen had mated with Locutus, the Jack-like offspring would be the best of both worlds.
They essentially did this in the Hive comic.
Let me guess
The Queens was for support, assimilate… to grown stronger
and the king is their Sword of “Totally” War General. Perhaps jack lacks the DNA Key, that the Corpse of Picard still had to “unchain” the King of Doom
and behind the Red Door we see the Borg Queen from Season 2. But then she somehow got her Drones on some Changelings, too. Perhaps She got in contact with them in Picard 2. You know what i mean
p.s. i just suggesting it out of my “to much Coffee” guts right now
It’s still all guess work at this point but all roads seem to lead to the Borg right? Am I missing something?
They Recorded their Episodes on the Set of Picard 2nd Season. So how was there, too? No, i am not talking about Q. he would not turn his Eyes into red when doing his magic
So, Borg’s involving is here Super High Possibility
The only other red eyes I can remember in Star Trek was the Pah-Wraiths.
If they return to the Borg I will be very disappointed.
My guess is that behind the Red Door is either Locutus, or the Borg Queen. At this point, I think they’ve telegraphed quite strongly that this whole Frontier Day attack is the result of the Borg trying to create a new Collective that is free of the neurolytic pathogen that Future Janeway infected the Borg with. Picard wouldn’t have been exposed to it, so his brain sample they took might be the key, and Jack seems to be able to connect with others like in a Collective.
This story line would connect the end of Voyager, Picard season 1, and First Contact, all big influences for Terry.
“I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
Well, Picard is an old guy, and his synth life is about over. So, whatever is bugging Jack can’t be that bad, can it?
Don’t forget spending an entire life as Kamin on Kataan and waking up after an entire lifetime back on the bridge of the Enterprise, which will change the course of his life forever.
i get an 404 Error on the linked Trailer
Update: It’s now working
Not working.
Click the Picture under the Startrek com link, it redicrets you to their intl. site
On this end, it’s just been spooling all day instead of opening.
Wow it’s the living construct again! Also calling it now! Jack Crusher is not who everyone thinks he is.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if we learn that these renegade Changelings somehow learned of the Living Construct and adapted it to use here? I don’t think we’ll see that, but it does seem like there will be some similarities.
Also seems like the Federation would have learned something from the attack by the Living Construct and did something to prevent it, like NOT having their starships automatically communicate with each other…
Considering they have been infiltrated by Changelings, this definitely feels like part of their plan: orchestrating it so that their entire fleet can be easily controlled.
Exactly that. Plus iirc Geordi said he fought against that change and lost so it was a definite deliberate act.
Geordi: Hey Jack I inputted your symptoms into the computer and it says you may have “Network Connectivity Problems.”
The only thing about this that kind of takes the wind out of the sails for whatever trauma happens to Starfleet and the Federation during Frontier Day is that we already know that the Federation and Starfleet will be fine, at least until they are truly devastated by The Burn. The Federation will continue to grow, eventually encompassing 350 member worlds. The Changelings won’t succeed, the Borg won’t succeed, the Dominion won’t succeed, etc.
No matter how bad this attack will be, the Federation will be fine. This is one of the downsides of having shows in the same shared universe, but in different timelines. For massive events like this, we already know that it won’t have much of an impact due to Discovery.
Maybe not….. but there’s nearly 1000 years worth of history, the event here could still be devastating in the here in now. Realistically in and show of Star Trek, the federation would never been totally destroyed
We also know this because… well, that’s how this all works. The good guys always win in the end. The Federation and Starfleet will always persevere. If we didn’t see the future in Discovery, I’d still know that the season will end with Starfleet being okay.
Yeah, I mean, does he really expect the Federation to crumble in the season finale? That’s not the fault of having shows set in different timelines, that’s the nature of Trek on TV. They’re not going to shake up the status quo THAT much, no more than Trek in the ’60s, ’80s, or 90s would have.
Exactly. Another poster said the same thing a few days ago and I pointed out isn’t this always how it works lol. For example, you can blame TNG to know that the Klingons and the Federation would ultimately work out their problems in TUC and why no one should be surprised how it ended. But did anyone really believe it wouldn’t have ended just the same way because the entire point of Star Trek, like most fiction, is that the good guys will always win out. They are on the ‘right’ side of history and because of that alone will always have the advantage. That’s just how it goes.
There have been 24 James Bond movies in the last 60 years. It’s older than Star Trek is. But has anyone thought, ever, he would actually fail at his mission and the villains would win instead? I don’t think I went in watching any of those films ever thinking that would ever be the case.
The villain does sort of win in SKYFALL, and Bond (if you can even call Craig Bond) definitely fails in preventing the death of M. He also fails in CASINO, as the baddies get all the money.
Not only is Craig Bond, he is the best Bond.
What is it you like to say in posts? “you do you” isn’t it?
In this case, he(?) is correct, though.
Correct, he/him.
Daniel Craig was awesome as Bond to me personally anyway.
Yeah those are fair examples, but they are pretty small fry stuff. None of those guys tried to topple MI6 or kill off a quarter of the population or anything. And I think why they worked too. If he failed saving Canada or something, that would’ve been stunning lol.
And I wasn’t a big fan of Craig’s at the start but he grew pretty quickly on me. But I’m hoping the next one is a bit more suave like others before him (and yes I’m aware Craig fit the Bond more in the books, I just don’t care since I never read them).
I love the books and reread them often, but only see Connery or Dalton when I read them (not a surprise, since they are the ones who work for me on screen.) Craig seems to try to retread the Dalton territory, but is just so dour and one note that it doesn’t work, plus (and this is important for a guy playing Bond) he is just ugly and unpleasant to look at. I think Craig was a solid character actor pre-Bond, but I’ve seen nothing from the guy since PERDITION that impressed, and as Bond he mainly infuriated.
“ he is just ugly and unpleasant to look at.”
To quote a captain of a much shorter-lived space franchise, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
LOL you really didn’t like Craig as Bond. He was very divisive at first but Casino Royale did win many over. And I never loved that movie either but I liked Bond being a little more silly and over the top. I like it a lot more today though. And as said I do like Craig more too. For me it wasn’t until Skyfall though I really started to like him and that’s still easily my favorite of his.
But I agree, he did fall more into the Dalton realm, but he seemed a bit divisive with Bond fans too. Fans certainly liked him but I think other people thought he was a little too serious at the time and again not ‘suave’ enough. But that’s just my read of it when he played him.
He’s not just the best Bond, he might be the best overall actor of anyone who’s ever played the role. And yes, I include Connery, who might be the most overrated English actor ever.
I think that’s part of any story like this. It’s less about the outcome – yes, we know the Federation survives – and more about HOW it happens. You know that ET isn’t going to stay dead – it’s just not that kind of movie – it’s about HOW ET comes back to life. Etc. Sometimes the journey is more interesting than the destination. And, of course, there is still creative room for long lasting impact “life altering” etc., for our characters within the known outcome of the Federation surviving. Depends on how brave the writers are.
I hope the whole episode doesn’t deal with resolving the cliff hanger from last episode.
The trailer suggests it will not.
For that matter, the synopsis suggests it won’t.
Haven’t read it myself yet to see how much got cut, but promised to let you guys know when my PICARD cinematography article went up on the ICG website. It’s at https://www.icgmagazine.com/web/april-2023-digital-edition/ and starts on page 26 (sorry for uninspired title, my choices were probably too estoeric.)
Very cool!
Congratulations kmart!
That’s a lot of feature content, and a cover photo too.
I hadn’t realized there was crossover in cinematographers between Toronto and LA. Interesting.
It also means that if Matalas does get a new series greenlit, he’d be able to main continuity in cinematographic style even if production moves up to Mississauga.
Depends on their availability. The Jon guy is apparently in serious demand right now, having just done the second season of SCHMIGADOON!, which I guess is a lot darker and more Fosse-like than s1.
BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER passed on me covering SCHMIG, and I haven’t gotten any interest from lesser-known outlets either, which I’d find surprising if not for the fact that very few people seem to be answering query letters these days/months/years. My freelance income has dropped 70% in the last several years — it used to be I’d gross more from that than my day job, but now it is less than half of my day job income. Two of my regular outlets died, and another just didn’t pay enough to cover my time (which seems to be the case with the few places that do respond to my pitches … paying less for an article in the 2020s than I got for my first article back in 1990! And that’s w/o adjusting for inflation!)
Schmigadoon! is a very niche production. Season one might not have registered that much in the UK. I could see that season two might be more of interest there, but it’s a bit late to do the piece now. Wish you the best with it.
With most of Trek presumably moving up to Mississauga, will you still be able to do pieces?
There seems to be a gap. I see good guild-related coverage there of some of production design and costume design and construction. I don’t think I’ve seen anything on the cinematography. There was something from Pixmodo & WH White on the AR wall but, that was more of a corporate communications piece.
I agree the specialty magazines just aren’t what they once were. I mentioned I’d been hunting down my parent’s old pieces in various archives. Every staff career move is trackable in the backs of the old archived trades. I wonder if our kids will even be able to reconstruct a career footprint for us amid the transient noise.
Some very salient observations. There have been folks like Craig Barron who seemed to spend as much time preserving VFX history as creating it, but so much of what passes for documentation now is just puff. As much as it pains me to admit it, this happened on TENET with me, where basically despite asking all the right questions repeatedly, I never got any real answers. Even asking them to break down a single instance of the time weirdness got an evasive answer, and I still don’t know why it went down that way, cuz I’d talked with these same people about FIRST MAN and they were totally forthcoming. (has me worried a lil bit now, cuz I’m covering OPPENHEIMER and really want to get into the practical fx end of bomb blasts.)
Sorry for detour. Regarding the guild thing … ICG can only cover domestic stuff, with just a few exceptions, usually films that shoot in the US as well as internationally. ICG did have their in-house writer do a tiny sliver of a story on DSC a couple years back, but that was part of an overall TREK history piece, so it wasn’t too far outside the boundaries since the rest of that history was domestic and SoCal. I’ve queried CANADIAN CINEMATOGRAPHER several times in the last seven or eight years — they did cover season 1 of Picard cinematography, both Canadian DPs, in June 2020 issue, and there was another story last year, probably about DSC — and never gotten any response.
So any further Trek stories, unless they were for SF or Trek related sites, would probably have to be for some outlet like Filmsupply or Musicbed, websites that have filmmaking blogs. I have written — sans byline — for them for several years, but assignment parameters changed and they don’t do cinematography-only stories anymore. I’ve actually got so much left over from this article with the production designer that I could easily generate a Q&A with him out of it for Musicbed, just not sure they are interested in Trek. In fact I just queried them about this, adding that I might be able to get the showrunner too … he’s the only big game I missed this time, outside of the vfx supe.
I wrote several stories for AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER at the turn of the century, but apparently (according to a couple of people anyway) they have taken a ‘you write for ICG or us but not both’ approach, and since they have supposedly cut their rates significantly, it wouldn’t pay to defect, plus it would be out of character for me to do so. Plus I found out that the editors there — who are still there so far as I know — were, let’s put this delicately — racially insensitive — with the guy who later wound up first hiring me for ICG back in 2000. They had an associate editor position open a few years back that I had a few people saying they’d endorse me for, but I kept thinking, ‘ethical quandry’ … at least until I found out what they were paying, which was less than I made in the late 90s as the Cinefex staff writer, and barely more than I make now doing grunt work at a non-profit. Those numbers are insanely low for a job in SoCal, so I’m guessing they must have been trying to recruit college grads or something, cuz it wasn’t a working wage. So it was an easy pass rather than a hard one.
Nice!
Great writing! Kudos!
I love that they delay the “What’s behind the door??!” reveal by one more scene and that it’s the preview scene.
Why is no one asking Beverly what happened during her pregnancy?! Just straight out questions, “was there anything weird,” “was there any abnormalities?” “Did she have an encounter with a shadowy individual before she gave birth?” Something to explain how Jack’s birth could have led to these powers. It just seems like such an obvious thing I don’t know why the show hasn’t addressed it.
I think it wasn’t something that happened before he was born but after. He was either replaced or altered without Beverly knowing.
sounds plausible
I agree with this idea, but they would still be asking those questions. The problem is no one has even considered this possibility because no one has even suggested that either.
I do agree there, those questions absolutely need to be asked.
Beverly’s the doctor. It would be her job to ask herself those questions.
This is a great point and really bothers me too. Maybe we will get questions like that in the next episode, especially now that Troi is around. But yeah as much as I am loving this season, it still isn’t perfect. Not a single person has simply did the human thing and asked WHY is he suddenly having all these crazy visions and powers? And what’s odd is we did see Beverly try to give an explanation citing he could have Irumodic syndrome like his father; but that always seemed like such a weak excuse. I don’t remember Picard suddenly having strange visions every hour and then have the reflexes of Spider Man to take out people.
But sadly the answer is obvious, as to why no one does and that is to prolong the mystery as much as possible. They obviously want viewers to have every crazy theory out there and if they started knocking down the bigger ones too early then it will probably be easier to guess what’s happening to him. This is part of the problem with mystery box story telling….and you’re trying to keep the mystery in the box as long as possible. In a two hour movie, that can work. But in a season long story, it can just feel very frustrating and it’s the same flaws the first two seasons of Picard and nearly every season of Discovery had as well.
Well, I think it’s to do with Picard’s irumodic syndrome. We first see that he had this neurodegenerative disease in the alternate future of “All Good Things,” and in the present day, Beverly diagnoses it as being in the early stages and controllable.
It ultimately leads to his death in S1, but when he’s resurrected in his synth body, the brain abnormality was removed.
Picard S3 has noted in dialogue that the original diagnosis may have been flawed, and in fact it was not irumodic syndrome, but something else.
When they discover Picard’s original body on the Shrike, they note that the affected part of the brain had been removed. What would the Changelings want with that, unless it was something they could use as part of their plan?
Perhaps at some point, Picard’s brain was altered at a deep, DNA level. The show will explain how. Maybe it’s a freak interaction between Borg nanoprobes and his brain abnormality, and it’s somehow genetically inheritable?
We know that in his original body, Picard could still “hear” the Borg as seen in First Contact.
Wouldn’t be a huge stretch to think that, given Jack’s ability to mind-walk and telepathically control people, that this power, if amplified, would allow the Changelings to control people even over huge distances, and invoke some sort of disaster like Starfleet destroying itself, or attacking inhabited planets, etc.
BUT. That would be a bit too obvious, wouldn’t it?
The rogue Changeling faction have been shown to be working for someone else, who has a bigger agenda, and it was their job to deliver Jack to the Face, they weren’t necessarily after him for their own reasons; inflicting harm on Starfleet’s finest was just an incidental bonus.
To read into the titles:
“Vox” means voice in Latin, and Locutus was a name derived from locutio, the act of speaking. Locutus was the “voice” of the Borg. But who else could need a (humanoid) voice to speak?
Also, just to call it now: It’s Ronin from “Sub Rosa!”
I think the Face is actually Salome Jens’ changeling.
Her motivations? Pretty much straight forward, I don’t really need to say them.
I think she replaced Kathryn Janeway and has been manipulating Starfleet from the inside. (Which could lead into how they captured and replaced Tuvok. And why it’s so appropriate that Seven is there.) I also think that Picard’s corpse is a red herring again and that the real superweapon is Jack Crusher. They took out the part of Picard’s brain with the whatever the heck it is to cover up the fact that it’s not actually what’s going on with Jack.
It would also explain the political schism in the Great Link. She’s very likely to still have loyal followers within it. And as for the way the Face spoke to Vadic? It’s simple. She looked down on Vadic because she wasn’t a changeling in the same way.
I’d love to see Salome Jens again as a changeling for sure! But it might betray the “spirit” of Odo and the peace he brought to the Link.
This season has already done that. The moment Worf said that the first changeling they found on M’Talas Prime was from a violent anti Federation terrorist group was when that happened.
It will be interesting to see how they end this season with 2 episodes left and not much time to tie up all the loose ends left.
Terry Matalas (and Alex Kurtzman since he is the leader of franchise and has the final say regarding all shows) have done good with this season.
Though S3 i feel does suffer from all the same problems as S2 did with a season long story-line that feels unnecessarily stretched out because it feels like the writers realized part way they didn’t have enough story to make 10 episodes so they padded it.
It will be sad to see this show come to an end as i have enjoyed it.
S1 to me is still the best season as i feel it was written more consistently while S2 suffered badly from being filmed during the covid restrictions and they had to change quite a lot of the original story due to those restrictions.
S3 so far with 2 episodes left is an improvement over S2 but again still suffers from the same problems that affected S2.
I have enjoyed having the TNG cast back but i think that it took to long to get all the cast back together and that kinds of ruins the season for me since there is only 2 episodes left.
I hope that if they do make a Star Trek Legacy show and if Terry is show runner that he learns from the mistakes he made with this season(He did a fantastic job with the TV show 12 Monkeys) and put those lessons learned into use for the next show.
There’s only a few loose ends and a movie’s worth of time left to tie them up. Shouldn’t be a problem. As for the show’s “mistakes” I can’t really hold him responsible. Making a show is complicated, and it’s not always as simple as writing and releasing it.
He can be very well aware of what isn’t perfect, what is flawed, but may not be able to do anything about it.
Soooo…..just how do space fireworks work?
Whatever this all consuming evil may be, why is it only a threat to ‘every soul’ in the Federation? Doesn’t the rest of the explored galaxy count? How fast does the rest of the galaxy descend into chaos if the prevailing power, the Federation, completely disappears?
I was thinking about it and it’s like taking out the Federation does pretty much leave most of the alpha and beta quadrants unstable and defenseless. The Cardassians are probably still licking their wounds and unable to fight. The Romulans are in no condition to be much of a threat. So if the Federation falls, that just leaves the Klingon Empire. And who even knows what state the Klingons are in.
The Burn did damage the Federation to the point of being ineffective for over a century, so groups like the Emerald Chain ascended to power, along with other criminal organizations. If the Frontier Day attack that we anticipate is at that level, then I don’t know what a potential Star Trek Legacy show would be. The Borg took out less than 100 ships that we know of; the Dominion War probably took out at least 1,000 Federation ships, plus the Klingon and the Romulan losses (not to mention the experienced crews.)
If Terry decides to wipe out 90%+ of Starfleet in episode 9, then it would take decades to recover. Not quite as bad as The Burn, but at least in the same ballpark. Then Legacy would be what? Some Legacy characters and their kids trying to keep the Federation together using museum ships?
The Titan-A was refitted/built the way it was because the attack on Mars 15 years before was still causing problems in ship building for the Federation, so any attack that takes out most of the fleet would take longer to recover from.
You also gotta factor in the living construct. But yes, if the changelings win here, like I said, Starfleet will be basically dead and that will pretty much leave most of the alpha and beta quadrants defenseless. The Klingons would be the only major power remaining. And they’d just be next.
Then it’d be the Dominion still standing to protect the rest of the galaxy from themselves.
We’ve seen space fireworks before, most notably in the Voyager finale, in the year 2404, oddly enough. Probably some kind of colored, low-yield explosive, not unlike actual fireworks.
Weren’t those VOYAGER fireworks seen over San Francisco rather than in outer space?
Would be more fun to see somebody just direct weapons fire against a deflector shield and let the interactions create luminous fireworks.
I’ve always thought the MOTE IN GOD’S EYE description of space battles with colorful shield overloads was spectacularly cinematic and even tried doing some of that kind of stuff in my super-8 days, burning through cigarette container cellophane while shooting mylar reflections, anything to evoke a Trumbullesque non-fireball way of representing explosions in vacuum.
The DS9 episode Explorers had fireworks in space courtesy of Dukat.
As Dukat and Sisko are falling into the Fire Caves, Dukat’s last thought is “I should have pointed the fireworks AT him…”
Now THAT was one hell of a book. Niven+Pournelle… Doesn’t get any better than that.
first name of the main character is something I have appropriated for ‘my’ main character down through years (last name is taken from a character in Clarke’s EARTHLIGHT.) I love N/P’s INFERNO as well, have thought a ‘hell’ of a movie could be made from it for 40 years now.
Read all of Niven’s Known space series, but sadly The Mote is the only N+P novel I read besides The Legacy of Heorot (with Barnes). Tried Footfall at least 5 times but kept giving up. Too many characters! Reading 1984 now but damn depressing… Maybe I should give Inferno a try then.
INFERNO is a fun and fast read, and has more of the Niven feel (I love the Svetz stories as well as most of his Known Space) … I remember giving up on N/P LUCIFER’S HAMMER because it just felt so mainstream, like Arthur Hailey or James Michener was doing doing it.
Also sadly some Episode with Weshley Crusher still being an Starfleet Cadet. His Squad wanted to do an banned Figure to impress them with some “Fireworks”. But some accident happen and well.. You surly remember when Picard was disappointed with Weshley at that point
Thanks to Picard writer Monfette and to Trekmovie.com for the following alert…. “Whatever you can do to safeguard against spoilers, you owe it to yourself to experience events as blind as possible. We’re into the endgame and are so proud of these final two hours.!”
Even though I am going to be so tempted to visit trekmovie.com and other sites – I am going to make sure that this will be the last Picard story I read until Thursday.
Fans should also remember that some careless YT channels post spoilers right on the video titles, so best not to visit YT on Thursday either until after viewing E09!
Have a great week everyone. Oh btw I am sure the cast of SNW will be happy to know 70F and 80F temps have returned to Toronto this week. Winter is OVER!
Love hearing that Blaster Beam in the clip- is V’ger behind the red door???
An ancient evil … Stephen Collins?
Ha! I mean, ohhh… too soon.
LOL :D
The new Episode is called Vox. Vox Sola was the name of an Enterprise episode in which symbiotic beings with tendrils took control of several crew members. Could this be Jack’s secret?
Vox is also not all that different in meaning than Locutus.
I suspect the final reveal will be a multifaceted kit-bash of TNG references.
I will add Vox Sola to my bingo card.
Wow just watched the trailer on YT and man I’m excited now. I see a lot of speculation over it and that people think a certain Enterprise may be showing up. Fingers crossed!
RMB described the last two episodes as a movie and my guess where most of the budget went lol. So can’t wait for Wednesday….or late Tuesday night if you live on the west coast. ;)
I was not impressed by Part 1.
Do you mean ep 9? How is it you have seen it? And if so, why say anything?
I’m somewhat concerned this whole mystery has been drawn out too far.
Other places, I’m seeing this becoming a running joke with people trying to one-up each other with lists of all the classic episodes and weird phenomena, aliens etc that might explain ‘What’s up with Jack?’
Meanwhile, new ‘Hear me out, it’s got to be..,’ posts, tweets comments and replies keep coming just about everywhere.
Hopefully, we’ll end up with a rewatchable season overall whatever.
If it’s cool or trippy sci-fi, I’ll be happy. Really. (Just don’t let anything happen to Shaw or the LaForge sisters. I’m so done with killing off secondary characters.)
On the other hand, I’m the contrarian her who actually thought the cause of The Burn was a cool and classic Trek payoff. What I like may be a deflating reveal for others.
Be that as it may, I’m also happy as long as my mystery-fan spouse is watching avidly. So there’s that.
I am also in the minority of those who thought the resolution of the Burn was cool. I wasn’t really watching the show anymore at that point, not seriously anyway, but that plot point totally felt like classic Trek at its best.
It’s not contrarian to like something just because nobody else understands why it’s great.
Ok then, we’re two here, thinking The Burn was a completely valid payoff for all the near misses with powerfully telekinetic kids in TOS and TNG.
If this season again calls the franchise on some other recurring near-miss trope, I’ll be cheering.
For me, it was the classic trope of the “sad, lonely alien inadvertently doing harm when he was just looking for a friend” — combined with the age-old “alien who doesn’t fully comprehend the powers they wield and the damage they can cause.”
It was perfect, and something we’d seen many times before, even if the harm was never on that scale. Mind boggling that everyone thought it was stupid. It was classic Star Trek.
I’ve finally got to watching ‘Severance.’
I keep thinking it’s recapturing some of the creepy cerebral TOS mixed with Night Gallery / Outer Limits stuff that seemed to have gone out of style.
While the characters are important, so is the trippy Trek stuff.
But it seems a lot of fans are disappointed when it’s a conclusion to a serialized season. I’m seeing a pattern in serialized Trek – whether 10C, the Burn, or Picard becoming a synth, for some reason the cool classic endings aren’t hitting with viewers as they might.
I’d love to see Star Trek experiment with shorter pieces (limited series or direct to streaming movies) that could do that. SNW can include a single episode, but I’d like more than 60 minutes but less than a whole season. There has to be something in between.
A miniseries is a good compromise. Anywhere from three to six episodes for a self-contained story. Short Treks could also be revised, but retool the format to an hour … and that would allow for anthology stories.
When the cast of TNG were first announced as coming back, my thinking was they could do a 10 episode season with three distinct 3-episode stories, and then a big finale episode that capped off an ongoing subplot.
When the first trailers came out and we saw Dr. Crusher’s attack, Moriarty, and a big bad villain, I was hoping those were three separate stories. Alas.
Agree totally. I was glad it was not some baddie out for revenge.
Well those examples are just fans being fans. For the record, I don’t have a single theory about any of it. I been out of the theory game for a long time now since I’m usually wrong lol. Well I did guess Vadic was probably a Changeling but not until after they were revealed.
But I do agree the Jack mystery has run its course and it’s gotten frustrating. Someone on another site made a great point, it’s not just they are dragging it out, it’s the constant drumbeat and reminder about it every 10 minutes on the show itself. I don’t think we went a single episode about Jack’s visions after it was revealed with his powers becoming as crazy as a Jedi.
And what really frustrated so many is that Vadic showed up on the ship saying she knew who Jack was and was going to reveal it, so everyone assumed it would’ve been the last episode that we learned something. Instead we are still very much in the dark. And thinking about it now, I think it was a mistake for Vadic to even know what the secret was considering now of it mattered in the end. It would’ve worked better if she was just in the dark as everyone else but was determined to give him up to the face guy. Speaking of him, for some reason I’m not frustrated about his reveal but I think most subconsciously knew we wouldn’t get that reveal until they met him in person. But it looks like all of this will be revealed next episode seeing all the chatter over all the surprises it will bring.
But yeah I think relying on these season long mysteries have hurt shows like DIS and PIC when fans have these big (and many times better) theories in their head like the Red Angel plot as another example. But hopefully Jack’s will amount to something interesting and let’s hope it has nothing to do with Control or Burnham’s mom lol.
My brain glossed over Control and the Red Angel. 🤦🏽♂️🤦🏼🤦🏽♀️
What Discovery season two had going for it was that it didn’t try to do all the reveals in the finale. Also, they had room for side trips to Talos V and Borath. Some really decent stand alone episodes not including the visit to Terralysium.
I think you’re right to point out that the Jack mystery is sucking up a lot of attention. And it’s a problem.
Format-wise, I really liked Season 2. The idea that there was a larger mystery that required them to go to different planets that were then set-ups for standalone stories was great.
Not well-executed though, and the overarching mystery was disappointing.
True and it’s a reason why season 2 is still my favorite of the show. It’s not saying a lot, but it’s something lol.
But all the reveals were still mostly an eye roll for me, it just felt too cliche. But I always say its what got us in the 32nd century so I can over look it.
As far as Jack, it’s kind of crazy this entire season is basically set up around him and whatever he is. So I understand they want to play that off, but it is feeling a little tiresome now.
Hey Tiger2! Are they releasing 1 day early this week? You mentioned Tues night and Wed instead of the usual Thur 1 am ET posting on P+.
In California at least, the shows usually gets released around 11ish. This has been the case for years now. I wasn’t being too serious but it beats 3 a.m. East Coast time. I assume they get it around 2 a.m. though.
BTW, watching the trailer and the line Troi gives at the end was hilarious. But you can really tell that Deanna is written much closer to Marina Sirtis real personality and humor. The little we seen of her so far shows a much more direct and biting character. Troi always had a sense of humor and joked around but more diplomatically. But this Troi is a bit more out front and says what is on her mind.
And I love it BTW. Sirtis has always been a much bigger personality than Troi and she always said she wanted the character to ruffle feathers a bit more and I like it.
Well, 25 years older, and a couple of decades living with Riker, I would expect Deanna Troi to be less self-censoring.
I think many people can relate: I know my own mother got much looser with her words – and her opinions – as she got older.
Yeah I imagine living with Riker can do that lol.
I’m reminded of the late TNG episode where Troi does an impression of an alien professor who came on to her. Marina was damn funny there. I wish they’d given her more fun stuff like that.
Yes, excellent example. I forgot all about that scene. It would’ve been so fun to see her do more stuff like that.
I think people in general tend to let loose a bit more as they older. This certainly happened to me as I realized that after I passed 30 I started to less self-censor myself. I think it just makes life that much more fun and deals with unsavory people in a much more effective way.
And you stop giving a frak what other people think.
I think this episode is tied to Shatner’s novel The Return which featured an assimilated Romulan named Vox who was kind of like Locutus but for the Romulans. This sort of goes hand in hand with Kirk’s corpse being in Daystrom. Maybe the writers are giving us a hint that they are using a similar storyline. In the novel, the Borg resurrected Kirk in an attempt to use him as a weapon. Could the Borg want Picard’s actual body to resurrect Locutus? But how this ties with the changelings is beyond me unless the Borg assimilated the changelings.
Any idea if we will get an increased run time for episode 9 & 10 ?
I’m wondering if Data is only looking old but still has the same physical super strength he used to have or if he’s “really” old with the strength like a human now..
Interesting thought that I hadn’t considered. I’d think not, as it’s a golem body that simulates being human, not an android body. eg. Picard does not have superior strength. But who knows.
I wouldn’t like that really! I always loved that Data was appearing weaker than for example Worf or a Borg but were much stronger in fact.
Just my own guess: This will be Beverly Crusher’s last episode…………………………………………………. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
We’re at the part of the episode where we finally figure out what the Monster Of The Week is. Next week, they have to do something insane with technobabble that hurts them.
First Contact has been a huge influence for season 3 of Picard, so I know what conclusion I am going to draw as to the Big Bad for this Season.
I just wanna know what’s in hangar bay 12. I have a feeling it’s going to be awesome.
Well, now we know! And it is exactly what most of us guessed all along. Finally some carpet, and lights!!! ☝️😁👍
Should have been Bay 87 and the fan service would have been fully on the nose but oh well.
Picard has been one long slog from S1, and I won’t say it’s been worth it to get to those last 10 min of S9 but it was nice to see.
It also makes me wish for a deep-faked anthology visit back to that era