S01.E03: The End Is the Beginning

[paigow]

9 hours ago, starri said:

And why Zhaban has the bumpy forehead and Laris doesn't.  I'm not sure that required an explanation, as Enterprise attempting to explain the Klingons took some fun out of it, but it was also adapted from Gene Roddenberry's explanation on the Klingons as well.

The Discovery Klingons are a third sub-group that managed to start a war, but 10 years later, every Klingon that Kirk!TOS encountered was a genetic abomination???? Although old Kang, Koloth & Kor suddenly looked like Worf when they showed up on DS9....

[Anduin]

13 minutes ago, paigow said:

The Discovery Klingons are a third sub-group that managed to start a war, but 10 years later, every Klingon that Kirk!TOS encountered was a genetic abomination???? Although old Kang, Koloth & Kor suddenly looked like Worf when they showed up on DS9....

Late bloomers? Or, wasn't there something about how long a cure would take to be developed?

God, ENT. Take a perfectly good throwaway joke and contsruct a storyarc around it to beat the joke into the ground. I notice that Berman has no further work after that show ended.

[Netfoot]

Does it get exciting soon?

[MissLucas]

13 hours ago, starri said:

And why Zhaban has the bumpy forehead and Laris doesn't.  

Laris tapped the dude on the forehead when she called him a 'stubborn Northener' - so I guess the bumpy forehead comes with the accent.

[paigow]

Is Freecloud a planet? Or a lot of linked servers that store video files?

[starri]

Whatever it is, Raffi wants to be dropped off there, so it has to be a physical place.  The name makes me think more "space station" than "planet" though.

[Anduin]

54 minutes ago, paigow said:

Is Freecloud a planet? Or a lot of linked servers that store video files?

I imagine it as a station. One of those places you often see in fiction where there's no real law, it's game on for anyone to hide out and make money. A higher-tech Mos Eisley cantina kind of place, complete with a random murder now and then.

[paigow]

14 minutes ago, Anduin said:

I imagine it as a station. One of those places you often see in fiction where there's no real law, it's game on for anyone to hide out and make money. A higher-tech Mos Eisley cantina kind of place, complete with a random murder now and then.

Maddox would not last 5 minutes without a synth army in a wild west society....

[Anduin]

30 minutes ago, paigow said:

Maddox would not last 5 minutes without a synth army in a wild west society....

Wild west, yes, that's what I was getting at. I see Freecloud as a high-tech wild west station. And I see it as bigger than, say, DS9. Maybe around the size of Absalom Station from Starfinder.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's some backwater farming colony. But ep 5 is called Stardust City Rag, so I stand by my first assertion.

[Netfoot]

Silly me.  I thought FreeCloud was the name of the Borg Cube they are reclaiming.

[Wulfsige]

Worse luck that this isn't Game of Thrones. If it was GoT I'd have hope of the high likelihood that one of the bearded guys - preferably Smarmy Bearded Emo Guy - would be offed very shortly. They seem to be promoting him as Hot Stuff so he's almost certainly in for the long haul. Maybe his smarmy Sister/Lover will get offed? 

[paigow]

If this was GoT, Picard would already be dead.....

[ottoDbusdriver]

2 hours ago, paigow said:

Maddox would not last 5 minutes without a synth army in a wild west society....

Well, Narek did mention in one conversation with his sister that they were looking for "the others".  Which makes me think Maddux has built more than just the 2 organic androids we know about so far, so maybe he does have a small army of synths.

[Cthulhudrew]

The dialogue in  many parts of this episode was pretty weak sauce; definitely not up to the standard of the previous two (ex., Raffi asks Picard "What happened in there?" twice in the span of a minute.) Yes, I'm nitpicking.

Beyond that, I feel like these three episodes could easily have been reduced to two; a lot of filler just to get the plot up into space. The weakest of the episodes so far.

[Cthulhudrew]

5 hours ago, paigow said:

Is Freecloud a planet? Or a lot of linked servers that store video files?

I'm imagining something like the Freeside orbital station from Neuromancer.

[paigow]

5 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

Well, Narek did mention in one conversation with his sister that they were looking for "the others".  Which makes me think Maddux has built more than just the 2 organic androids we know about so far, so maybe he does have a small army of synths.

I thought Narek was hunting the Martian factory synths that escaped....not really sophisticated positronic units..

[paigow]

Maddox vanished a few years ago, and nobody checked communication logs to find a senior Starfleet officer until now? 

[Anduin]

1 hour ago, paigow said:

Maddox vanished a few years ago, and nobody checked communication logs to find a senior Starfleet officer until now? 

Maybe no one actually cared. It happens.

[Aliferously]

Santiago Cabrera just magically improves everything he features in.

Why is his emergency hologram thing British? I loved that he used the accent in the first scene and then it appeared to fall away whenever he had to emote with it.

[paigow]

2 hours ago, Anduin said:

Maybe no one actually cared. It happens.

He was head of synthetic research at Starfleet...figured somebody would want him to stand trial....

[Anduin]

1 hour ago, paigow said:

He was head of synthetic research at Starfleet...figured somebody would want him to stand trial....

Maybe he did, and was exonerated. But his career was gutted. Nothing was happening, or ever going to happen again. He probably hung around for a while, then stopped coming into work. Called in sick for a couple of weeks, then didn't bother. He could have been gone for a while before anyone went to check on him. The trail could have gone cold. If you don't have the correct contacts/tools/desire to look that Raffi did, you probably wouldn't find anything.

[greekmom]

The thing about "JL" that bothers me is that as Captain of the Enterprise, no one, not even Riker called him anything but Captain or Sir.  Even Crusher called him Captain, until later seasons in private she threw the odd Jean Luc. Remember in Hide and Q when Riker threw out the Jean Luc after gaining the power of Q and Picard gave him a look like what the fuck?

One other thing that bothered me was the smoking.  We have Raffi vaping some type of drug and Rios chomping on a cigar. You would think by then addictions to any type of narcotics even tobacco would have been banned or out right frowned upon. Again, going back to the episode Symbiosis where they were trying to work around the prime directive to get those people off the drug that was provided by the other planet. 

As for the situation on the Borg cube, alot of unanswered questions. First where is Hugh's posse of liberated Borg from Descent?  Why do the Romulans who were liberated from the collective go "crazy" meanwhile the Romulan ex borg in Voyager's episode of liberated Borg was ok.  And how did Hugh come across this particular cube which assimilated a Romulan ship as the last ship before it was cut off from the collective?  

Lastly, I think that I am use to the fact that previous Trek they were stand alone episodes or at the most two parters.  I know the trend now is to tell one continuous storyline throughout a season but not sure it works for Trek.

Seeing Picard and having him say Engage at the end with the TNG theme was wonderful.  It's these little tidbits that have me still watching - especially the fact that Patrick Stewart is Patrick Stewart.  Plus, I am loving the Zhaban and Laris.  

 

[Llywela]

8 hours ago, paigow said:

I thought Narek was hunting the Martian factory synths that escaped....not really sophisticated positronic units..

Narek is very specifically targeting Soji and has talked about trying to get information out of her - he and his sister believe she is part of an entire 'nest' of 'abominations'. There has been nothing to suggest that any of the factory synths from Mars escaped - in fact, it has been heavily implied that they were all destroyed in the disaster (and we saw one blow its own brains out, presumably to prevent anyone salvaging any evidence from it).

6 hours ago, Aliferously said:

Santiago Cabrera just magically improves everything he features in.

Why is his emergency hologram thing British? I loved that he used the accent in the first scene and then it appeared to fall away whenever he had to emote with it.

The Emergency Medical Hologram was English-accented and the Emergency Navigational Hologram was Irish-accented. The English accent is Cabrera's own natural accent when speaking English (he went to school in London) - the voice he's using for Rios is the fake one. As for why the holos have different accents, I guess Rios programmed them that way just for variation. Also, so that we viewers can more easily tell which is which.

35 minutes ago, greekmom said:

The thing about "JL" that bothers me is that as Captain of the Enterprise, no one, not even Riker called him anything but Captain or Sir.  Even Crusher called him Captain, until later seasons in private she threw the odd Jean Luc. Remember in Hide and Q when Riker threw out the Jean Luc after gaining the power of Q and Picard gave him a look like what the fuck?

One other thing that bothered me was the smoking.  We have Raffi vaping some type of drug and Rios chomping on a cigar. You would think by then addictions to any type of narcotics even tobacco would have been banned or out right frowned upon. Again, going back to the episode Symbiosis where they were trying to work around the prime directive to get those people off the drug that was provided by the other planet. 

As for the situation on the Borg cube, alot of unanswered questions. First where is Hugh's posse of liberated Borg from Descent?  Why do the Romulans who were liberated from the collective go "crazy" meanwhile the Romulan ex borg in Voyager's episode of liberated Borg was ok.  And how did Hugh come across this particular cube which assimilated a Romulan ship as the last ship before it was cut off from the collective?  

Lastly, I think that I am use to the fact that previous Trek they were stand alone episodes or at the most two parters.  I know the trend now is to tell one continuous storyline throughout a season but not sure it works for Trek

The J.L. thing doesn't bother me. It works as a shorthand to tell us that Picard and Raffi became very close while they were working together, but had a very different relationship than he had with his previous crew. It also tells us that the Picard who worked with Raffi had relaxed a fair bit from his days on the Enterprise - which tracks since he'd mellowed a lot just over the course of the show, and they were working closely on the kind of project that would allow for a more informal relationship.

The smoking doesn't bother me too much either. We don't actually know that Rios's cigars are tobacco rather than a futuristic synethetic, but beyond that...how do you 'ban' addiction? Human nature finds a way. The Enterprise mostly offered synthohol in place of alcohol, but even there it was possible to get hold of real alcohol if someone really wanted it - even Picard himself kept a stash. In previous Treks, we've mostly followed the stories of officers on starships, people who were doing well for themselves, out in the far reaches of space. We've never really had the chance to explore Earth society up close before. Paradise always looks perfect from a distance, but is usually a different story once you get closer and start paying attention to the detail. You start to realise that there is a cost in creating and maintaining it. Even in the richest, most perfect society, there will always be people who struggle and suffer, who experience crisis and react badly, who reject the help available and find other crutches because that's what works for them.

And honestly, for all Raffi's grumbling about Picard's fancy house compared with her trailer...she had a pretty sweet set-up, in which she was actively choosing to live. If that's the late 24th century version of poverty, sign me up!

Hugh's posse of liberated Borg from Descent were exploring individuality together almost 30 years ago - that's plenty of time for them to have grown and developed and gone their separate ways. Just because circumstances threw them together back then, doesn't mean they are compelled to remain together for the rest of their lives. Part of becoming individuals means being able to choose their own individual life paths thereafter, which means having the ability to move on and make new lives for themselves elsewhere.

As for why this particular group of liberated Romulan Borg have become 'disordered', that is clearly part of the central mystery that will be unfolded through the season. And how Hugh came across this particular cube? As far as we know so far, the Romulans seized the cube because it was crippled, ripe for the pickings, and the fact that it had just assimilated a Romulan ship may well turn out to be part of the reason why it was crippled, connected to that central mystery. Time will tell. How Hugh came to be working there, who can say? As an ex-Borg himself, he clearly as a vested interest in that kind of project. We'll probably learn more about that as the season unfolds as well. That's how serialised storytelling works, and there's no reason it shouldn't work as well for Trek as any other show - time and the rest of the season will tell!

Edited February 9, 2020 by Llywela

[paigow]

2 minutes ago, Llywela said:

There has been nothing to suggest that any of the factory synths from Mars escaped - in fact, it has been heavily implied that they were all destroyed in the disaster (and we saw one blow its own brains out, presumably to prevent anyone salvaging any evidence from it).

The synths that were flying around Mars probably escaped...unless they decided to kill themselves also...but they had a chance for a human-asshole-free existence...

[Llywela]

18 minutes ago, paigow said:

The synths that were flying around Mars probably escaped...unless they decided to kill themselves also...but they had a chance for a human-asshole-free existence...

It has been strongly implied that the synths on Mars were not acting of their own volition (they didn't actually seem capable of that) but were hacked. I strongly suspect they all, having done their deadly bit, took steps to destroy themselves, so that no evidence could be salvaged to prove or trace the hack.

No, I really don't think Narek is looking for the kind of basic synths connected to the disaster on Mars. He is after Soji because she is such an unusually sophisticated creation, and because he and his cabal believe she is just one of many.

Edited February 9, 2020 by Llywela

[starri]

1 hour ago, Llywela said:

And honestly, for all Raffi's grumbling about Picard's fancy house compared with her trailer...she had a pretty sweet set-up, in which she was actively choosing to live. If that's the late 24th century version of poverty, sign me up!

I also didn't think Raffi's home was some kind of hovel.  I just thought she liked living as close to off the grid as on can on an Earth of the almost-25th century.

My interpretation of "no poverty" is that no one goes hungry, lacks a roof over their heads, or dies a preventable death.  Beyond that, life is what you make of it.

[paigow]

4 hours ago, starri said:

I also didn't think Raffi's home was some kind of hovel.  I just thought she liked living as close to off the grid as on can on an Earth of the almost-25th century.

Nothing was stopping her from playing Firefly with Rios all these years....

Edited February 9, 2020 by paigow

[greekmom]

24 minutes ago, starri said:

I also didn't think Raffi's home was some kind of hovel.  I just thought she liked living as close to off the grid as on can on an Earth of the almost-25th century.

She reminded me of a futuristic Sarah Connor especially with her conspiracy theories.  I'm sure if she wanted, she would have been able to get some type of condo apartment like Dajh had in first episode. She did put in her time at Starfleet regardless of the circumstances of her parting with them.

[Netfoot]

2 hours ago, greekmom said:

You would think by then addictions to any type of narcotics even tobacco would have been banned or out right frowned upon.

Like that would work.  Ever.

People will always find a way to get high.

[starri]

Not to mention there's been a huge shift in attitude regarding marijuana even in the 21st century.  And given what Picard does with his time now, they don't have a problem with people drinking real alcohol.

If anything, I think the real thing they'd do is offer free, effective treatment for addiction to anyone who wants it.

[Llywela]

Showrunner Michael Chabon has done a litle Q&A vid on instagram answering a few fan questions that have arisen from the first three episodes - there's a write-up of it here. It is clear that a lot of thought has gone into even the more divisive choices made for this show.

[starri]

1 hour ago, Netfoot said:

People will always find a way to get high.

We saw repeatedly that Romulan ale, the Federation's answer to Cuban cigars, continuously found its way into the hands of Starfleet officers.

[marinw]

2 hours ago, Llywela said:

Showrunner Michael Chabon has done a litle Q&A vid

Fun interview. Good for him for taking the time to respond to some questions. He seems like a genuine fan of TNG.

[Chaos Theory]

I am slow and it took me until now to realize that Picards two friends were Romulans.  I like it.

I also really like the adventure nature the show is taking.  That Picard isn't just being handed everything he wants because he is the great and powerful Jean-Luc Picard.  It has been a long time and people have in fact forgotten.  He has become a relic of the past.  So he actually has to work to even get a ship.  Any ship.

It makes the show much for fun that he is relegated to a band of misfits and has beens to take this grand adventure to do the right thing with him because Star Fleet has become the shell its once was. 

Raffi sounds like someone who is living as close to off the grid as you could in a extremely modern world.  I am guessing after being screwed over by Star Fleet she has reason to be paranoid so she cut herself off from modern technology.   You did see people do that on off world planets.   Plus there is still the Picard Winery so I can see at least some things on earth being not quiet ultra futuristically modern.

[inchhighguy]

This show is starting off so slow.  And as it's a pathetic number of episodes, that is a bad sign.  We are going to get like 10 more slow ''mystery" episodes, then finally  the end...where, sigh, Picard will have to save the universe at the last second.

I guess the Commador is NOT a Vulcan.  Guess she could be Roumulan..wow, that would be so clever, right?  Lets HOPE she is not a Mirror Person, sigh.  Maybe is is a shapeshfting alien?  Like a Camaloid?

Yea...Dr.Agnes will be the not supprise mole plant Judas that will betray Picard....again, more amazing writing. 

This show has a lot of drug use for a Trek show....but they are trying to make it edgy and different.  And really Trek is FULL of drugs....just normally the Main Characters are good, clean people that ''don't do drugs".

 

Wonder why Raffi is so ''poor"?  Guess it's her own fault or something.  If she really wanted a mansion, there is a whole Federation full of colony worlds. 

 

[buttersister]

Hopping on the JL Hate Train to add that nicknames are short, trip off the tongue easier--Jean Luc vs. JL? No. A character thing? Lazy writing.

Also, the shorter version of Captain? Is Sir.

[Chaos Theory]

If alcohol was illegal there would be no need for Picard’s winery.    Synthetic alcohol would work on starships because they are fancy starships and the last thing  the Federation wants is a pilot with a DUI. But then you have Picard who might give the head of a Klingon family he meets one of his bottles of family wine as a gesture  of goodwill or share it with one of his crew members after a mission.

And yeah I can buy the JL nickname.   He mellowed over the years.  I could see him mellowing further as time went on and the Enterprise crew moving on to other things.  Maybe his relationship with his next first officer was  just.,...different then it was with Riker. 

Edited February 10, 2020 by Chaos Theory

[paigow]

8 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

 Maybe his relationship with his next first officer was  just.,...different then it was with Riker. 

[Interior: Enterprise-D Ready Room]

Picard: Number One, I will join your poker games, but I will never forgive and forget your Horgon prank.... 

[benteen]

On 2/7/2020 at 4:57 PM, Llywela said:

Raffi specifically mentioned that the snake-leaf she smokes makes her paranoid, which probably explains some of her attitude over Picard's vineyard versus her trailer. I imagine over the coming episodes we may learn a few more details about what happened in the past and why Picard's resignation from Starfleet hit her so hard.

That said, the supposedly cashless economy of post-scarcity Earth has never, ever made any real sense and even the TNG writers who introduced the concept struggled to reconcile it with what actually happened in some of the stories they wrote. I suspect that while everyone in this economy has free and easy access to the necessities of life - food and shelter, etc - there will always be some with more than others, because that's just human nature, because even in the greatest of economies there are only so many luxury waterfront properties to go around, and because Roddenberry's vision specifically says that since food shortage is a thing of the past, what people compete over now is status.

BTW it was never said that there was no money anywhere in the entire Federation, only that the people of Earth no longer needed to use currency among themselves since the invention of replicators meant there was no reason for anyone to go without. Plenty of TNG storylines revolved around trade agreements and the currencies of other worlds.

The cashless economy was always ridiculous but it is what it is.

DS9 writers had the opinion that Earth was a paradise but that you had to work your ass off to keep it that way.  They also pointed to a character like Dr. Bashir's father.  Despite how wonderful things were on Earth, you'd always have people who just weren't going to succeed even on this amazing world.

[benteen]

On 2/8/2020 at 10:18 PM, Cthulhudrew said:

The dialogue in  many parts of this episode was pretty weak sauce; definitely not up to the standard of the previous two (ex., Raffi asks Picard "What happened in there?" twice in the span of a minute.) Yes, I'm nitpicking.

Beyond that, I feel like these three episodes could easily have been reduced to two; a lot of filler just to get the plot up into space. The weakest of the episodes so far.

I felt that Episode 2 was the weakest of the three but agree with your point that this could have been wrapped up in 2 episodes.

As close as Data, Riker and Troi were with Picard, you can maybe count on one hand the number of times they called him "Jean-Luc" on the show.  That's a major reason why the whole "JL" thing doesn't work.  Picard wouldn't tolerate that.

I tend to agree with what another poster wrote elsewhere.  Calling him JL (50 million times!) seems to be the show's way of trying to convince the viewers that Picard and Raffi are close as opposed to actually showing it.

Raffi and Rios (whom I like for the most part) were pretty much taken out of the nuBSG playbook when it comes to characters.  Raffi really doesn't work well but at least Riso is called out for his silly brooding angst-ridden personality.

[Athena]

40 minutes ago, benteen said:

Raffi and Rios (whom I like for the most part) were pretty much taken out of the nuBSG playbook when it comes to characters.  Raffi really doesn't work well but at least Riso is called out for his silly brooding angst-ridden personality.

I think that's another thing to consider. I like that TNG had some humor even if it was dry from Picard. I've found many primetime sci fi shows are too serious. Raffi's character is taken way too seriously. Rios does get called out on it and the writers and the actor are having fun with the holograms. Agnes's green character is suppose to be naive and amusing (kinda). It's probably why the Narek, Rizzo and Soji are grim and less compelling right now. At least Hugh got a couple dry lines in pointing out Soji as a know-it-all. 

[Llywela]

1 hour ago, benteen said:

The cashless economy was always ridiculous but it is what it is.

DS9 writers had the opinion that Earth was a paradise but that you had to work your ass off to keep it that way.  They also pointed to a character like Dr. Bashir's father.  Despite how wonderful things were on Earth, you'd always have people who just weren't going to succeed even on this amazing world.

Paradise is a highly subjective concept, imo - it depends a lot on whose eyes you are looking through, and what you are comparing it with.

Trek has never been consistent over the cashless thing. Heck, the very first episode of TNG had Beverley purchasing a bolt of fabric and asking for it to be charged to her account, which definitely implies some form of credit.

The J.L. thing doesn't bother me, it works as a shorthand to tell us that Raffi and Picard were once very close. Picard had mellowed a lot over the course of TNG and came across very differently again in the films. He and Raffi worked very closely together on the kind of project that would facilitate a more informal relationship, so I can buy him allowing the J.L. - or at least, letting it go once, and it then becoming a thing. I can see him tolerating it at first for the sake of encouraging Raffi - who strikes me as a bend the rules, rebellious type - and then embracing it once he realised it came from a place of genuine affection.

On re-watch, I've decided that my favourite thing in this episode is how smugly satisfied Picard becomes when he decides he's got the measure of Rios. His whole attitude is like, "I came here expecting, basically, the Outrageous Okona, but instead I've found a guy who pretends to be the Outrageous Okona but is actually still a true blue Starfleet officer at heart, that's so perfect for me, I've always enjoyed mentoring talented but troubled officers exactly like this, this is great!"

Edited February 10, 2020 by Llywela

[paigow]

When you retire from Starfleet, are you still part of the "Verizon Friends & Family Com Badge Wireless Plan"???? Is Starfleet Security [NSA] recording all com badge activity?  So Picard & Raffi cannot call each other in secret???

[Kostgard]

3 hours ago, Athena said:

I think that's another thing to consider. I like that TNG had some humor even if it was dry from Picard. I've found many primetime sci fi shows are too serious. Raffi's character is taken way too seriously. Rios does get called out on it and the writers and the actor are having fun with the holograms. Agnes's green character is suppose to be naive and amusing (kinda). It's probably why the Narek, Rizzo and Soji are grim and less compelling right now. At least Hugh got a couple dry lines in pointing out Soji as a know-it-all. 

Maybe that's why I didn't mind Raffi in her last scene on the ship while the others didn't quite work for me - on the ship we had Agnes walking up to her all, "Who the hell are you?" while Raffi responds with a look that said, "Excuse you?" There was a bit of levity that wasn't there in the other scenes. 

I think they could make similar improvements with Narek and possibly Soji (though I'm more irritated at how naive/infantilized she is), but Rizzo is way too cheesy and she may be beyond repair for me.

[tennisgurl]

I finally managed to catch up! And just in time for an Engage! 

I love getting to see more of this era of Trek, and this episode was my favorite so far. It had a lot of good character stuff (especially for Picard) we are finally assembling our supporting cast, and it balanced the exposition and the plot momentum. I especially love Laris and Zhaban (and of course Number One!) so I am sad that they wont be joining the ship. But I guess someone has to harvest the grapes. Their fight scene was great, and I do like that, while Picard knows what he is doing in a fight, he is clearly a much older man now, he probably wont be crawling through any vents anytime soon. It also had some good Romulan world building, and gave an explanation of the different Romulans we have seen! Turns out, they have Northern Romulans and Southern Romulans! 

I also like Dr. Agnes, Raffi (as long as she never calls Picard JL ever again again) and Rios so far, plus his hologram counterparts, even if they are rather typical archetypes. I am especially interested in why Rios has his own self programmed into his holograms (just with different accents), is it out of a desire for self reflection, to explore different aspects of himself? Is it a form of self loathing, where he gets to literally tell himself how much he sucks? 

I am certainly interested to see where this show goes, but I got bored with Discovery after the first season (I heard from some people that season two was better, and from some that it was worse, I just haven't found the time to catch up yet) because it both seemed to be trying to be "darker" and "more realistic" than traditional Trek, but also seemed to pull back before taking any real risks, or had so many convoluted plots twists, that the twists started actually getting in the way of the storytelling, so that the shock of the twist was actually less interesting in the long term than just letting the story play out as it was. This show also seems to be falling into a similar pattern that Discover did, where it seemed to be trying to stay relevant by becoming more like other science fiction franchises than just being itself. We have the PTSD plots, we have the corrupt and xenophobic government which is a thinly veiled allegories for current issues (yeah, not sure how I feel about the Federation being shown to be just another corrupt crappy big government for the cool people to rebel against), the long story arcs, the dark halls and outfits,the plot twists every five minutes, none of these are bad in and of themselves, but it seems to be trying to make Trek into something that it doesent have to be. It just reads as so contemporary, like its basically just modern day, but with pointy eared aliens and flying cars and stuff. 

Not that any of that is new to Trek of course (even Gene said that OG Trek were a bunch of morality plays in space) and not that I dont like my Trek a little darker and more morally ambiguous. My favorite Trek series ever was DS9, probably the darkest, least episodic, most critical of Star Fleet and the Prime Directive of all of the series, and I loved it because of those very reasons. But, it was still very much Star Trek and it felt like it. It felt like the Trek verse trying to deal with a new threat and figuring out how they could be the idealistic hippie Federation while also fighting against this new enemy. Hopefully thats the direction this show will go in as we move forward. 

Of course I do prefer people more or less just acting like modern people than the weird smug robot way that people in early TNG were written, where people find the idea of grief weird or whatever. I sound like I am complaining, but I have liked this show and I really am happy to have Picard back, I just hope that, in the grand tradition of Trek ideals, it betters itself. 

On the other hand, Hugh! Who better to lead a team studying a Borg Cube?!

All of that being said, I am always a sucker for the "ragtag bunch of weirdos have to make untangle some mystery even when the powers that be say they cant to save everyone" trope, so I am pretty excited to see what happens now that we are finally in space. I also like exploring a bit more of Earth, and that we have places that are super high tech like the research facility in Japan, but also very old world style places like the Picard winery. It adds depth to the world. 

Edited February 10, 2020 by tennisgurl

[Eliza422]

OK, I feel dumb - I knew coming into the show that Hugh was going to be on it, but apparently he was in this episode? Where was he? 

I'm on the train that says JL has to go. When she and Picard were working together he was a fucking Admiral - no underling, no matter how close, is going to call him JL. Starfleet is military - it just ain't going to happen.

I'm also having an issue with Michelle Hurd's acting choices. Especially in the flashback scene she was acting really weird, I just didn't get it. It made no sense. 

 

[Chaos Theory]

Didn’t Raffi say something about losing her security clearance?   So she couldn’t even get a job Star Fleet adjacent.   She is not Jean Luc Picard and back  (15 or so years ago) then he probably could have just asked for some non Starfleet job and he would Have gotten it.   Some civilian science job or something.   It was his own bitterness and sadness that sent him back to his family’s vineyard.

Raffi didn’t have Picard’s options.   I can see her spending years trying to recover her career and not having her “friend JC” there to back her up turned her bitter and resentful and 15 years later she is a borderline alcoholic who dabbles in drugs.  So this adventure whether she wants to admit it or not is Picard offering her a olive branch and her own chance at redemption.  

Edited February 17, 2020 by Chaos Theory

[Llywela]

22 minutes ago, Eliza422 said:

OK, I feel dumb - I knew coming into the show that Hugh was going to be on it, but apparently he was in this episode? Where was he?

Hugh was in most of the scenes with Soji - he took her to meet the 'disordered' ex-Borg Romulan woman and was amazed (and a bit worried) by how much classified stuff Soji seems to know. He's some kind of director on the Borg reclamation project.

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

I also like Dr. Agnes, Raffi (as long as she never calls Picard JL ever again again) and Rios so far, plus his hologram counterparts, even if they are rather typical archetypes. I am especially interested in why Rios has his own self programmed into his holograms (just with different accents), is it out of a desire for self reflection, to explore different aspects of himself? Is it a form of self loathing, where he gets to literally tell himself how much he sucks?

I lean toward self-loathing, plus just sheer practicality, to avoid having to interact with anyone that might qualify as crew. After all, if the emergency holos are used enough, human nature is to treat them as people, and he does seem to use the holos as his crew, which speaks volumes for his desire to limit human interaction. I can see Rios skimming through a whole menu of hologram options when he first got the ship, deciding he couldn't stand the idea of having to interact with any of them as crewmates, and deciding the only option was to use his own likeness. But he's got a whole crew aboard now, so we'll see how well he does or doesn't deal with them!

[benteen]

4 hours ago, Athena said:

I think that's another thing to consider. I like that TNG had some humor even if it was dry from Picard. I've found many primetime sci fi shows are too serious. Raffi's character is taken way too seriously. Rios does get called out on it and the writers and the actor are having fun with the holograms. Agnes's green character is suppose to be naive and amusing (kinda). It's probably why the Narek, Rizzo and Soji are grim and less compelling right now. At least Hugh got a couple dry lines in pointing out Soji as a know-it-all. 

The holograms are a great addition to the show because without them, Rios would just be another cliche ripped out of nuBSG.  I even liked the hologram in the Starfleet Archives that Picard had to deal with.

[marinw]

I'm sure the Holograms will never get uppity and start a revolution...