Star Trek: Picard

[Kalidor]

Spoiler

I am very late to this due to work but even though I pointed the lack of Robert out on Twitter people were quick to push up their nerd glasses and remind everyone that in half a sentence it was mentioned in the first episode. Picard's mother said something to the effect of "While your father toils away in the fields and your brother is away at school" and that was it.

I know the writers didn't think this deeply into it the same way they didn't think deeply into the incongruities with Guinan not knowing Picard with the feeble "It's a different timeline" excuse (Which is contradicted once again since the fixed timeline Guinan knew every single thing still)... but anyway, as I was saying, I think the thing that makes it Okay Robert isn't in there is the same reason Maurice is barely in there - this isn't a historical record of what happened. These are the childhood memories of an 80 year old robotman that stuck out the most to him as part of the trauma. Nearly anything shown in his flashbacks could have been inaccurate because that's how memories are. Fragmented and rife with errors.

A lot of the stuff this season was just superfluous shoehorning to adhere to contractual obligations to certain cast members. Kore could have been played by anyone. Anyone at all. There was no rhyme or reason to making her a juxtaposition of Soji other than the feeble connection to being a template for the inspiration. But in reality, while it may be a nice trope that all Soongs are Brent Spiner, there's no real reason to assume that a bunch of failed experiences from 500 years ago is a valid inspiration to an android template.

The same goes for Talin. Suffice to say I think Orla Brady is amazing in every possible way. But to make the Supervisor be a hamfisted Romulan hundreds of years in the past who also looks just like Laris was the same as Kore. Pointless and superfluous. In reality the Supervisor (or whatever her role was) could have been played by a totally new person with no connections to anything to do with Romulans or Laris.

And then there's Elnor. Dude died and barely showed up as anything more than a trauma mechanism for Raffi and then later a hologram that was scared of bullets. Then shows up at the end in some last minute "Hey I'm back!"

Even Rios was just sort of a pointless side story with far too many ST:Whales references crammed in there and then he got Poochie killed in a bar fight at some point. I mean, he was a full fledged Captain (not just 'guy who owns a ship') in Starfleet and he didn't do anything but get hurt, do some "this is how society is" posturing and then almost break the timeline. Total waste of character. The only good thing to come out of anything he did was the fact that Dr Theresa was absolutely amazing in her role. And then she got poochie killed off screen too.

I try not to think too much about the "same person playing ancestors" stuff, but this was really clunky in almost every way. At least Rene wasn't played by Patrick Steward ;P

So overall, as others have said - this season was leaps and bounds above season 1, but I feel like it started off strong, dipped terribly with Ep04 and did a bit of took a few steps forward to get its footing but ultimately I feel like the finale was a bit of a stumble. They never really did anything to explain how or why Q was even dying, which seems to me it would have at least caught the attention of other Q to deal with it, they didn't really explain how Q going back in time to hug with the Europa mission to create some darkest timeline that only 5 people knew was not right had anything at all to do with his teaching Picard his lesson about grief and forgiveness (it was just a budget stunt to keep the costs down on hardly any special effects) or why Wesley Crusher showed up randomly to recruit a pointless characters as a cameo having done nothing to interact with Q at all or the crew. Because while the Travellers don't "interfere", based on his explanation dealing with the people who shouldn't be there to protect time from a messed up future should be in his wheelhouse.

Also wasn't a huge fan of the Ducane red herring.

Well that's about all I have to say about it.

 

[Rust]

Spoiler

I feel like Rios' decision, and supposed happy ending, are a deliberate Trek re-write of its own history with World War III and the Post-Atomic Horror that Humanity was not supposed to pull itself out of until post-2063. 39 years is a long time. Maybe if Guinian had said Ramirez's son? That Rios' knowledge of the future let them survive the worst of it and set them up to be prepared to profit off First Contact?

 

[Copper Bezel]

There was no rhyme or reason to making her a juxtaposition of Soji other than the feeble connection to being a template for the inspiration. But in reality, while it may be a nice trope that all Soongs are Brent Spiner, there's no real reason to assume that a bunch of failed experiences from 500 years ago is a valid inspiration to an android template.

And Soji's appearance seems to have come from Data's painting. Which means not only are all Soongs obsessed with making Kores, but Data was programmed to be, just like daddy.

 

[Rust]

The fixation on the Soong family post-TNG has always been a really bad idea.
They're all super intelligent and smart people with questionable ethics pushing the boundries of science. There's not like "Al Soong's Pizza Parlour and BBQ".

 

[Kalidor]

And Soji's appearance seems to have come from Data's painting. Which means not only are all Soongs obsessed with making Kores, but Data was programmed to be, just like daddy.

Of course, if that were true (retcon notwithstanding) Lal should have looked like Kore. But of course Data gave her a choice, which was a more genuine take. The thing about using Kore is a base is that it's not like Soong made a conscious choice to make her look like that - it's just what the genetic blueprint happened to produce. The strangest thing about Soong ancestors is they are all single with no (apparent) offspring.

 

[Andrusi]

Spoiler

- Thanks to a conversation on Twitter, I've realized that Discovery now has the ability to do something that, in my head, is extremely funny. Reintroduce Jurati's Borg in the 32nd century with them having eventually completely supplanted the original-recipe Borg, but recently enough that the Borg being the baddest of bad guys is still in living memory and everyone's still kind of nervous around the Borg... except the Discovery crew, who think the cyborg hivemind guys are really cool and have no idea what everyone else is so nervous about.

Too many production crew members from TNG are returning for this not to essentially be TNG Season 8.

That's Lower Decks.

But yeah. And on that note, I somewhat expect Soji to come back to fill the Data-shaped hole in the TNG cast, though I guess they already have a perfectly good Seven of Nine who could be sticking around.

2024 Soong strikes me as the sort of guy who has traditional biological kids but is extremely estranged from them.

That, or the later Soongs are descendants of his brother or cousin.

---Dave

I don't remember offhand whether this was explicitly said to have happened or not, but Adam presumably had a response ready for when Kore asked what happened to her mother. Maybe that response was based on a real person who got custody of their son in the split.

Regardless, I feel like as of this season "all the Soongs are Brent Spiner" has reached "running gag" status. I'm not sure whether adding "and all of them eventually create Isa Briones" was what did it, or the number of Brent Spiners just reached critical mass, or it was a combination of the two. Either way, now we have a noticeable gap in the 23rd century. Get on it, Strange New Worlds!

 

[Copper Bezel]

Of course, if that were true (retcon notwithstanding) Lal should have looked like Kore. But of course Data gave her a choice, which was a more genuine take.

Perhaps Data is the first Soong to be able to evolve beyond his programming

Spoiler

- Thanks to a conversation on Twitter, I've realized that Discovery now has the ability to do something that, in my head, is extremely funny. Reintroduce Jurati's Borg in the 32nd century with them having eventually completely supplanted the original-recipe Borg, but recently enough that the Borg being the baddest of bad guys is still in living memory and everyone's still kind of nervous around the Borg... except the Discovery crew, who think the cyborg hivemind guys are really cool and have no idea what everyone else is so nervous about.

I don't hate this. We know that they weren't around to be a threat to the Federation in the 32nd Century, and we know from Lower Decks that they eventually join the Federation. XD Discovery has been happy to pull from Picard, as with the Qowat Milat. Of course, we'll have to see next season what becomes of the Jurati Borg, because they could always die, leave for another galaxy, turn into daisies, etc. during or following whatever conflict is coming through the space hole.

 

[Rust]

Either way, now we have a noticeable gap in the 23rd century. Get on it, Strange New Worlds!

Please God in Heaven no. We already have a Noonian-Singh in that show.

 

[MrBlud]

I don’t know. It would kinda be cool to have one that plays against the “cold, pragmatic, loner wholly obsessed with their chosen scientific discipline ” type that every single Soong we’ve ever seen has been.

If he’s a farmer with a loving spouse and triplets the Enterprise has to evacuate or something I wouldn’t complain.

Three episode arc where he combines augmented human and android tech into violent monstrosities? I very much would.

 

[Rust]

I'll only accept it if 23rd Century Soong gets snookered by a bad business deal with Harry Mudd.

 

[The Predaking]

So what about that finale.....


Okay. Q dying isn't really addressed and I am very miffed about that. While I do like that his entire motivation was to help pout Picard one last time. If he wanted Picard to forgive himself for Jean luc's mom dying as well as forgive his father, then why all of this? He could have just locked him in a room with Troi and worked through his issues. I did really like that in the end Picard gives Q a hug goodbye.

Soong just going all out to kill Picard and blow up the rocket is nuts. Like how did he think that he could get away with either of these? I am interested if they ever go into what he does in the genetics wars given that folder at the end.

Rios staying behind was kind of weird, but I get why. I am not really thrilled with his death, but at least they didn't get involved with the Eugenics war or WW3.

Sevan and Raffi finally showing any chemistry at all, but I am not really thrilled with either of their developments this season.

Juratti being a new borg queen in the future was a nice overall plot for the season that I think we all saw coming three weeks ago. I am wondering if the cosmic event however was related to Q dying. In Voyager, during a Q civil war where lots of them were dying, it was causing super novas to occur. I wonder if this is the result of Q dying, a giant explosion. I know that they said it was a new transwarp corridor, but I am just wondering.

Cori, ehh. She deleted years worth of his research. You mean to tell me that in the past 20+ years, he didn't make a back up? Dude should have had at least two back ups including an off site one. Weasley showing up was awesome though. I like that he was one of the people that are placing agents, and it is a fitting development given his last canon appearance in TNG.

Picard and Laris finally maybe getting together at the end is great. I was kind of wishing that he would get a bit of a happier ending though. Maybe not put the key where he would find it as a boy, resulting in a different present with maybe his brother and family still there. Oh well.


Overall, I would give the season a 7 out of 10, and say it was an improvement over the first one. I am greatly looking forward to the rest of the TNG cast returning next season, but I honestly think that I might get disappointed by it. I will still watch it, but I will try to keep my hopes tempered.

 

[Andrusi]

Juratti being a new borg queen in the future was a nice overall plot for the season that I think we all saw coming three weeks ago. I am wondering if the cosmic event however was related to Q dying. In Voyager, during a Q civil war where lots of them were dying, it was causing super novas to occur. I wonder if this is the result of Q dying, a giant explosion. I know that they said it was a new transwarp corridor, but I am just wondering.

IIRC the supernovas weren't because of the dying Qs per se, it was because of the weapons they were using to kill each other.

 

[Dekafox]

Pretty sure Seven is in for S3 as she was the one who commented on filming having finished and how it felt. If she hadn't been involved somehow, I don't think she would have commented about it the same.

 

[Rust]

I will say, the Borg allying with the Federation is a nice shake up to the status quo.

 

[MrBlud]

I very much doubt it’s the same Borg.

otherwise, mentally and physically violating your friend so they’ll kill 11,000 people is a bit of a faux pax.

 

[Glitch]

The elephant in the room: IS PICARD AN ANDROID?

 

[MrBlud]

Yes.

They made that abundantly clear when they first did it and reaffirmed it several times afterwards.

 

[Rust]

Yup. He's a Synth and I will never not be angry at this development.

 

[Copper Bezel]

I like how at the end of the first season we could say "we'll see if that has any meaningful impact on the story in the future", and we still can.

I mean, I guess he did blow up one defibrillator. Maybe it was a really significant defibrillator to someone.

 

[Andrusi]

The rumor come out: does Jean-Luc Picard is android?