Star Trek: Picard

The Children of Mars Short Trek was intriguing

If you sign up for CBS AA: https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/essy1b/cbs_all_access_50_off_for_2_months/

Hmm, he said, having seen the first episode. I like it, don't mind the tonal shift in general, but this was definitely a laying-the-grounds episode first and foremost.

Agreed, though I was more let down with the second half of the episode. It felt like it was trying to cram in as many callbacks to TNG as it could to establish its Trek bona fides, so it was mired in the past (even if it's meant to be the leitmotif).

I wonder about Data's poker hand, though.

how well do you have to remember TNG? I haven't seen the later seasons since they aired

I think that the callbacks are explained to make it easy on new/casual viewers, which may be why I thought it was slow.

yeah i didnt find it too heavy going, and i couldnt even tell you the last episode of TNG i watched

I was only a casual TNG viewer but could comfortably follow what was going on xps

If you really want a refresher, judging from what we saw in the premiere, you could watch these (avert yer eyes if you don't want the SPOILERS):

The Measure of a Man
The Offspring
Inheritance

Thanks y’all. Might be fun to watch a few old eps

how's he gonna do it this time drinking DECAF

earl grey with no milk is the beverage of a sociopath

it’s highly disturbing

always bothered me

that's how i always drink it

you = also a monster

it was our DUTY

earl grey with no milk is the beverage of a sociopath

Eek, I’m married to a sociopath. She takes lemon.

I always thought it was strange that Picard with his French history and English accent would require to specify that the tea was "hot", like if he didn't say so, the computer would respond "do you mean hot tea... or iced tea" in a thick American drawl

Should I watch this? All I heard was that the first episode greatly resembled a certain early S4 episode

how well do you have to remember TNG?

My understanding is that Picard takes place in the Kelvin timeline of the J.J. Abrams/Alex Kurtzman films and ST:Discovery. Real life licencing legal battles have severed the Kelvin timeline from the E/OG/TNG/DS9/V timeline. So none of the events of 1965-2003 Star Trek occurred in Picard, at least not in the same way.

Picard is perhaps an examination of how different histories change character. Or a vanity project about Patrick Stewart's real life political concerns produced to maintain Viacom's IP.

My understanding is that Picard takes place in the Kelvin timeline of the J.J. Abrams/Alex Kurtzman films and ST:Discovery.

Wait, aren't these two different timelines entirely?

Kelvin timeline starts with a movie where OG Spock comes in from the 'real' timeline, following the destruction of Romulus. I was under the impression said 'real' timeline is both the timeline of Discovery and Picard, while the Kelvin timeline is just the three nu-Trek movies and any directly associated spinoff media.

I always thought it was strange that Picard with his French history and English accent would require to specify that the tea was "hot"

it is a character note, so you remember his commanding aura

Picard is in the Prime timeline: https://www.gamesradar.com/star-trek-picard-timeline-explained-alex-kurtzman/

I always figured since the replicator fabricates a cup of tea that never needed steeping, it’d give you the most instantly drinkable temperature by default. By specifying “hot,” Picard wants the experience of fresh-steeped tea that must be carefully sipped.

Yeah I guess that makes sense. I just got in my head an idea for a Hitchhiker/TNG spin-off. “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” “Share and enjoy!” Data reads Vogon poetry to Spot. Fenchurch teaches Worf to fly and they have an aerial affair. Zaphod becomes assimilated. Deep Thought revises its answer to “Kill Wesley”, with tragic results

I reserve the right to judge the timeline by counting lens flares.

mh, yr no-prize is in the mail

I reserve the right to judge the timeline by counting lens flares.

fair

This was pretty ok!

I like the vibe so far - kind of Raymond Chandler in space, with Picard as the dishevelled ‘tec, stumbling from encounter to encounter, endangering his friends and getting lightly beaten up in the process.

I like Pill. The twin and the weirdly accented handsome on the cube ship were... less good.

This was okay, I liked that it had the more relaxed tempo of the '80s/'90s series instead of the more modern/actiony vibe of Discovery. I still think it was silly that they had to bring back Brent Spiner for fanservice though, as even the digital manipulation and choice of angles couldn't hide the fact he'd become chubbier and his face had changed with age. I guess his two scenes being dreams made it a bit easier to digest, but still... IIRC it was Spiner himself who wanted Data to die in the TNG movies, as it was obvious he couldn't be playing an ageless android for decades. Well, this episode proves he was right, and his presence here was really superfluous, they could've done the same plot with using only footage from TNG or something.

Also, the references to "The Offpsring" here made me at first excited and then disappointed. Because after seeing that episode, I always wondered why Data wouldn't try to create another daughter after Lal... Obviously losing her was traumatic to him, but in real life people still have kids after losing one, and you'd think traumatic loss wouldn't affect Data to the same extent as with humans? So when they first implied Dahj was his daughter, I was like, cool, he did build another child after all! But then it was revealed Dahj/Soji were only made after Data's death, so the question of why he never wanted another offspring remains. I get it that they didn't want to tie this series too much into old episodes of TNG, but on the other hand, the Picard wouldn't even exist if people weren't nostalgic for that series. So I do hope the following episodes will have some deeper connections to the lore than just fanservicey appearances of TNG actors.

deeper connections to the lore

i see what u did

Haha, that was actually unintentional!

They did seem to refer to Data/Lore with Allison Pill's weird comment about how androids are always made in pairs... Which I don't recall ever being a thing in TNG, IIRC the Soongs built Data to improve on Lore, not because there was some weird rule that you have to build two?

pill seemed to be implying that there was a biological reason for having to grow/build two at once, the ones in question being indistinguishable from human beings down to some level or something

Maybe yeah, but it was still a weird comment, because she didn't explain what the reason for building them in pairs was, she just stated it like it was an obvious thing.

if i cared enough, maybe i'd go back and see if it made sense how pill started with 'short answer, impossible; long answer, still impossible' and ended up with 'hey, maybe there's two of them'. also seems bad that a dozen romulan assassins can beam onto the roof of starfleet hq undetected, and the mom's ~slip-up~ mentioning picard was really ham-handed. it's fine, still liked it

Also, the references to "The Offpsring" here made me at first excited and then disappointed. Because after seeing that episode, I always wondered why Data wouldn't try to create another daughter after Lal... Obviously losing her was traumatic to him, but in real life people still have kids after losing one, and you'd think traumatic loss wouldn't affect Data to the same extent as with humans?

Data got into serious trouble with SF for creating Lal and only avoided punishment because of what ultimately happened to her. And he probably felt that unless he was able to create another android with better odds of survival, he wasn't going to try again.

Also, there's a quick line where Dr. Jurati surmises that the twins were created by Maddox. Don't know if that's meant to throw us off the trail, though.

Data got into serious trouble with SF for creating Lal

I like how this can mean Starfleet, San Francisco or science fiction, and they all more or less work.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/generationfleet/images/9/9b/BruceMaddox.jpg

I love the costumes in this so much

earl grey with no milk is the beverage of a sociopath

it’s highly disturbing

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, January 25, 2020 10:30 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

earl grey with no milk is delightful

in fact i don't like it with milk tbh

I really enjoyed this even though 'you can't make new androids without Data/but just a single neuron would do/oh they come in pairs' was all rather convenient - I know TNG was all about the handwavey pseudoscience but unlike Discovery it never fully jettisoned logic just to tell a cool story bro. I hope this doesn't end up going that route.

I was a bit thrown when the librarian said "the painting is called... Dodger!" - I had thought the girl was called Dahj but maybe it was Dahja, I mused. It later became clear. Rewatched, still sounds like that.

I spent about ten minutes assuming that this meant that Dahja was Picard's daughter

all the tea is upsetting me, tea is horrible and shd not be depicted on-screen

lol yeah! tea is just some foul aberration for when you've run out of coffee!

Kathryn Janeway otm

Now THAT was more like it.

I think just having a sassy, overqualified Romulan housekeeper question Picard about having all his marbles is all I need to be happy. Though more seriously, it's nice to see that things aren't going to be easy for JL and that other characters are allowed to have their own agendas and personalities.

I'm sure that Starfleet is thrilled about that living arrangement -- and I kind of wonder if some SF intelligence officer thinks that Picard's Romulan friends have turned him.

Also I really liked the Vulcan(?) Commodore.

I was a bit confused, was she supposed to be Vulcan or Romulan? Because her mannerisms and the fact that she's running the Federation's secret police (presumably built on the foundation of Section 31?) implied she's Romulan, but OTOH there's no indication the Romulan Free State (or whatever it's called) has joined the Federation.

Also, yeah, this season has been weirdly paced. They’re doing some reveals that seem like you’d want an additional episode or more to chew on

A lot of the fanservice winks are a little too ham-handed (and I echo Philip's sentiment), but seeing the bridge and hearing Majel Barrett's voice gave an actual thrill.

That said, I was hoping that the red door thing WASN'T Borg-related, because post-BOBW Borg stories, especially those involving the Queen, have generally resulted in middling Trek, and Picard's writers are bad at Trek, and as it turns out two wrongs do not make a right. Also, is Jack the Borg Prince?

I have the same questions as Trayce. If it turns out that the motivation was just petty vengeance, MEH. Also, is Vadik's boss a reconstituted Borg Queen?

Great story about how they put this together (I'm assuming everyone at least knows this much by now):

https://variety.com/2023/artisans/news/star-trek-picard-enterprise-d-bridge-set-1235580496/

Another thing that bothers me about this season's spate of cameos is that they just bring characters back to kill them off, which is really kind of selfish and I dunno, lazy? Selfish because now they're effectively off-limits to other series )(unless there are more secret Soongs with synth bodies that they could get downloaded into), while we have Data killed off three times and Picard once. Lazy because they're barely integrated into the plot beyond, "Hey, here's someone who was on the show 30 years ago, love it, nerds." Shelby could've been anyone, aside from the one line that does a LOT of heavy lifting to remark on how out-of-character the whole dumb plan was. Also not a great look that the ones who've been killed have been women, assuming that Shelby is indeed dead.

No one's ever truly dead in this show while the Q exist tbh.

From pop culture journalist and overall good egg (he was the guy behind the excellent Random Roles column for AV Club) Will Harris with this just now:

Just watched a screener of the series finale of PICARD in preparation for a chat with showrunner Terry Matalas tomorrow and...wow.
That's all you get. Just...wow.

Could mean anything!

I should add I was able to get IMAX tickets for the Wednesday night screening here in SF so bring it on.

Just started watching, from S1, nice to have on whilst working and eating easter eggs.

But S2 started off with a doom scene and then jumped to a "48 hours earlier" made me want to vomit all my chocolate up.

S2 was a mess all the way thru imo

Well that was lovely. And a nice live chat after too.

I didn't care for the main conflict -- fate of the galaxy stories tend to go the way you suspect, not to mention that picard's decisions were questionable, or that selected protagonists can now opt out of the borg hivemind -- but i liked the afterward.

idk -- i didn't hate it, but also it was pretty lame. the shaw arc could not possibly have been more predictable. jack magically absconding with a shuttle, and jack *wanting* to find the borg, and jack magically *finding* the borg was all absurd. if only all those millions of people assimilated by the borg had had a kickass dad!

appreciate the confirmation that it literally takes just seven people -- or merely one, if it's bev -- to run a starship

as for the mid-credits scene -- i would totally watch seven running a ship. i can vaguely envision being interested in Q despite them having done nothing good with him in 30 years. could not give less of a shit about jack

anything stemming from this absolutely requires worf tho

zen worf is a gift

i demand Captain Seven spinoff immediately (plz kill off Jack by ep 2)

i mean really, jack unassimilating because he loves his mom, or because he's hot for geordi's pilot daughter, or because the showrunners thought him charismatic doesn't make much sense

so Agnes and her posse were too busy guarding the mystery transwarp conduit wherever (which is not the conduit seen in this season) to show up and help or...

there's not a lot of between season continuity going on here

There's not even scene-to-scene continuity going on -- didn't Worf just take two full on space laser body blasts? and there's not even an insert of Riker quipping, "shake it off, Worf, it's just a flesh wound" to bridge the fact that he seems perfectly fine 10 seconds later.

Does the Picard golem have a usborg port in his neck? Or was it there from his prior assimilation? I guess all that cyberpunk armor is just for show.

Yeah, Borg stories hopefully are put to bed now because this, like every story following "I, Borg," has made them such stock villains that have almost none of their original alienness -- how banal it was that Queenie (and Vadic) were simply motivated by revenge.

Health and Wellness Worf is still a treasure. Philip, I kind of wonder if Klingon redundant physiology explains why he was able to shake off the phaser blasts.

I did completely hate Will's decision to keep Picard company, dressed up as loyalty but really just a cheap way of amplifying the stakes, in a way that doesn't make sense. He and Troi still have a daughter, or did she get conveniently forgotten?!

But I did like:

The shot of the nebula that's a straight homage to TNG's opening credits
Riker's "I miss that voice."
Poker game at the end -- stud, rotating aerial shot, etc.

I enjoyed the last ep overall as a nicely final-feeling bit of action TV with lots of fanservice. But.

As others already said, wither Jurati? What was the point of her borgifying if they just dropped that story?

If Q is able to recombobulate or whatever explanation befits, he could have done the decent thing and stepped in and stopped the borg thing. Just rude.

Cannot get past Jack and Picard being able to just rip out their borg cabling. ESPECIALLY since the queen specifically said, several minutes earlier, that doing so would destroy their minds. What is the POINT of assimilation if you can fight it that casually. And yeah did Picard just jam the port into his skin? Huh?

On a related note Worf seemed to cope with being shot twice right in the arm/shoulder by a powerful weapon thats been shown to kill people instantly on many occasions. He didnt even seem hurt. OK whatever. I did like the sword/phaser joke though.

i saw someone suggest that worf could survive such things because of his redundant klingon organs . . . which is trying *really* hard

the redlettermedia video pointed out that the last time elron was seen, he was serving on the excelsior. the ending that character deserved.

I suppose this is where I show my old age because the Treaty of Algernon is complete bullshit and should never have been signed with that provision intact. Section 31 sucks for not bothering to reverse-engineer cloaking tech anyway and Star Fleet sucks for not demanding that Section 31 does - even if it means installing an "in case of emergency, invoke Section 31" button on every NCC-* bridge (surprise, by doing so - you're now a Section 31 ship!) That alone would be a more interesting plot than - oh no, another page or two of script burned on the fucking cloaking device instead of something interesting.

I'm annoyed with how this all wrapped up because the first half was just good enough to encourage my own runaway imagination to expect something better than another Borg story (story made even lazier because now there's a kid). The fact that we're all talking about better spin-off fantasy shows whether it's Star Trek: Enterprise-G with Captain Seven or Star Trek: Kung Fu with Worf just magnifies how inert Picard is - even with all the end of the world stuff going on outside the viewscreen, the show (and him) seem strangely reactive. This isn't the first time this has happened with Star Trek or any other heritage IP bogged down by the weight of its own nostalgia. See also: the Obi-Wan series, most dalek episodes of nuWho.

There’s a single line in the RLM vid where Mike inadvertently summaries a lot of the modern ST content as missing the point with the writers/showrunners wanting more grimdark as presumably more real/relevant/realistic: “here! Here’s a sweet to wade thru!” rather any sort of utopian idea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g63G1l41Wp8

Dammit. “Here’s a SEWER to wade thru”

I gave up on this show but wife has been rewatching it and I'll say this much: great theme song.

Captain Shaw memes are still the best:

https://i.ibb.co/LYpT7nd/FB-IMG-1678630684510.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Z0QpfNj.jpeg

https://gizmodo.com/star-trek-picard-movie-patrick-stewart-paramount-2024-1851144813

"the actor, Patrick", said Patrick Stewart

I remember that Stewart went through a "refers to self in third person" phase in the late 90s or early 00s, maybe this was a deeply buried tic that resurfaced.