S02.E05: Fly Me to the Moon

[Hiyo]

And why I did the same. Spiner can be hit or miss for me. Enjoying him so far on this show, regardless of who he is playing.

[SnarkShark]

2 hours ago, millennium said:

Precisely why I qualified it with "like me."  Though I don't pretend to understand Spiner's appeal outside of Data.

I don't mind that Spiner has played other characters besides Data.  I just mind that he's played like ten of them. 

[marihunc]

10 hours ago, millennium said:

I'm glad someone asked "Couldn't Q just snap his fingers and ..." because the psychiatrist charade seemed so far beneath Q that it was not credible.

He tried, right at the end of episode 4 when we first saw Renee, and it didn't work.

9 hours ago, ML89 said:

The whole explanation of how to get into the party…I stg I am expecting Parker or Sophie to show up. Then I remembered Jonathan was directing. (Leverage)

I really hope Jeri channels Tara Cole a bit, a la Girls' Night Out Job, when they get into the party :D

[MissLucas]

3 hours ago, SnarkShark said:

I don't mind that Spiner has played other characters besides Data.  I just mind that he's played like ten of them. 

Yes, and I also mind that every character he plays has problems with his offspring. 

Add Wesley Crusher, Alexander Rozhenko and Thaddeus Troi-Riker to the mix and it's really no wonder Picard never started a family. Yeah, I know that statement needs a ton of qualifiers but I'm too lazy 😁

Edited April 3, 2022 by MissLucas

[Llywela]

Spiner playing loads of Soong ancestors doesn't bother me. It is a longstanding Trek tradition, after all - both for there to be identical Soongs in every generation and for the same actor to play multiple characters in the same family. Spiner isn't the only one who's done that, although he is the most ubiquitous.

[Chaos Theory]

Of course Picard and his blood line are what saves....or dooms the universe.   Actually I don't hate it.  I kind of like the idea that this deals with the depression that goes through Picard's family line.  That the Picard family line is in fact brilliant but there are some things that do stop them in their tracks.  For Renee it is the thought of failure.   For Juan Luc it is risking his heart.    Plus adding Soong to the equation takes an interesting turn.

Also taking an interesting turn is the Agnes/Borg Queen storyline.   I was actually mildly surprised Agnes shot Queeny in stead of the cop.  but now having Queeny inside her own head is going to be an interesting development and put Agnes in a strange spot.  

And Soong made Data look like him.  There is a narcissism there that might have gone though his genetic line.  I actually find the idea of Brent Spiner playing all the versions of Soong and Data to be one of the more clever things Star Trek has done.

This season is about genetic lines.   It would be interesting if Seven ran into one of her ancestors.  

Edited April 3, 2022 by Chaos Theory

[Llywela]

8 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

Also taking an interesting turn is the Agnes/Borg Queen storyline.   I was actually mildly surprised Agnes shot Queeny in stead of the cop. 

Why would she shoot the cop? The whole point of that scene was Agnes trying to save the cop's life, even if it meant dooming the crew to never returning to their own time, because they were reliant on the queen to navigate them home. She was only ever going to use that gun on the queen.

[MissLucas]

I also expected Agnes to shoot the cop to save him from being assimilated and prevent the Borg Queen from having a mobile goon. IIRC there was a similar incident in ST First Contact? That said I like the plot of Agnes having the Borg Queen as mental lodger. 

[Llywela]

But the cop wasn't being assimilated in that scene. He was being held hostage. Agnes was quite clear in her desire to save his life. She might have shot him if she thought he was being assimilated but he wasn't. The queen was also quite clear in her intention, which is why Agnes never should have gone near her at that point - but I guess she was in shock and thought she was safe, since the queen was visibly dying.

[marinw]

It's worth noting that "Picard" is a very common French name, so not all Picards are necessarily related to Jean-Luc.

[paigow]

On 4/4/2022 at 7:39 PM, marinw said:

It's worth noting that "Picard" is a very common French name, so not all Picards are necessarily related to Jean-Luc.

Unless Picard is translated as Lannister...

ETA: Picard had some rare childhood fever / illness that gave him Daredevil class hearing... maybe due to inbreeding....

Edited April 6, 2022 by paigow

[Lebanna]

17 hours ago, marinw said:

It's worth noting that "Picard" is a very common French name, so not all Picards are necessarily related to Jean-Luc.

And of course if you add all the Pickards and Picardos out there, it’s not unusual at all in about half of the world…

Plus, since Picard was born around three hundred years after 2022, with the amount of global travel there is now, he’d actually be related to just about everyone alive at the moment.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Lebanna

[RedHawk]

On 4/2/2022 at 6:47 AM, Haleth said:

Speaking of stomping on butterflies, I keep wondering about Rios's communicator, if he'll ever retrieve it.

I look forward to next week when (hopefully) everyone will be at the fawncy party.  Shenanigans galore.

Rios could have asked Theresa to try to bring the communicator to him although who knows where it wound up while she was in custody. I guess ICE doesn't allow visitors though, even a doctor asking to treat a wound. Maybe the kid picks it up and as an adult reverse engineers it and...

[Llywela]

36 minutes ago, RedHawk said:

Rios could have asked Theresa to try to bring the communicator to him although who knows where it wound up while she was in custody. I guess ICE doesn't allow visitors though, even a doctor asking to treat a wound. Maybe the kid picks it up and as an adult reverse engineers it and...

It's probably still sitting right there on the front desk at Theresa's clinic, just waiting for someone to start messing around with it and discover all that future tech!

[Sandman]

On 4/1/2022 at 9:44 PM, ChitChat said:

FWIW, the Borg Queen gives me the heebie jeebies.  Seriously, she creeps me out to the point that I really am having a hard time watching the show.  

She creeps me out, too: to that extent, Annie Wersching seems just as effective to me as Susannah Thompson or Alice Krige. I find it a bit disappointing that this plot thread is the second time in as many seasons that Agnes becomes something of a Trojan horse.

I was enjoying the Seven Adam Raffi Buddy Cop show, though, and seeing Rios deal with the 21st century.

On 4/2/2022 at 11:02 AM, Llywela said:

Judging from their bickering comm conversation in 2.02, it was a combination of Agnes being unable/unwilling to truly open up (to a flesh-and-blood human, Rios said she preferred the company of synthetic pets and people)

Am I the only one who thought that was just the tiniest bit rich coming from the guy who peopled La Sirena with versions of himself?

Edited April 6, 2022 by Sandman

[Llywela]

46 minutes ago, Sandman said:

Am I the only one who thought that was just the tiniest bit rich coming from the guy who peopled La Sirena with versions of himself?

I dunno. Season one was pretty clear that he created the Rios holograms by accident (probably while drunk) and then was too apathetic with depression to do anything about it, which supports the case for him not knowing very much about cybernetics and sciences. It was pretty clear that he didn't enjoy the company of the holos - he actively disliked some of them and kept them switched off as much as possible - it was just that he found them preferable to having a real crew on board. Plus, he had something of a self-loathing thing going on (blaming himself for his captain's suicide, blaming himself for following through on the ordered cover-up of a double murder even if it did save many more lives) so the holos having his own face provided him with a means of effectively beating himself up, so to speak. None of which has anything to do with having an interest in (or any knowledge about) cybernetics.

It does add to the messiness of the relationship with Agnes, though, and aids our understanding of what went wrong between them. Quite frankly, neither one was in anything approaching the right headspace to get into a relationship in the first place, coming out of season one. But for Rios, from what we've seen this season, learning the truth about what happened all those years ago seems to have helped him resolve some of his past trauma, helped him move into a better, healthier mindset, enough to return to Starfleet and pick up the pieces of his career. So if he was actively working on improving his mental health, and hoping for an emotionally open, honest relationship as part of that, while Agnes remained bogged down in her own trauma and wasn't able to make that journey with him, I can see where that would have become an issue between them. And then with Rios accepting command of the Stargazer while Agnes got involved with Soji's diplomatic tour, the physical distance between them would have escalated those existing issues...which takes us to where we found them at the start of the season.

And hey, an element of hypocrisy in the accusation is also a character note, projecting some of his own issues onto her, perhaps. Agnes gave as good as she got, accusing him of taking the job as a way of running away because he doesn't feel like he fits in anywhere, which we could argue is Agnes projecting some of her own issues onto him in turn, since it is clear she herself doesn't feel like she fits in anywhere, which the Borg queen latched onto at once.

[paigow]

5 hours ago, Sandman said:

Am I the only one who thought that was just the tiniest bit rich coming from the guy who peopled La Sirena with versions of himself?

Is it creepier than TNG!Geordi programming his special version of Dr. Leah Brahms? Luckily he never experimented with cosplay variants...

[wmdekooning]

On 4/3/2022 at 2:36 PM, Chaos Theory said:

Also taking an interesting turn is the Agnes/Borg Queen storyline.   I was actually mildly surprised Agnes shot Queeny in stead of the cop.  but now having Queeny inside her own head is going to be an interesting development and put Agnes in a strange spot.  

I was actually hoping Agnes had totally killed the Borg Queen, because I get tired of her talky attempts to suborn Agnes' will with that "You'll always be alone" jazz. Whenever she pulls out that bag I wind up thinking of Jim Kelly in "Enter the Dragon...

https://tinyurl.com/yptjbzcw

[Sandman]

On 4/6/2022 at 8:04 PM, paigow said:

Is it creepier than TNG!Geordi programming his special version of Dr. Leah Brahms?

No; no, it is not. Indeed, I’d venture to say that few things in the entire fifty-odd year canon of Trek can match that level of deranged and creepifyin’.

On 4/6/2022 at 3:27 PM, Llywela said:

It was pretty clear that he didn't enjoy the company of the holos - he actively disliked some of them and kept them switched off as much as possible - it was just that he found them preferable to having a real crew on board.

It’s this aspect I was thinking of, in particular — though I think your analysis is pretty spot-on in general. 

[Chit Chat]

On 4/6/2022 at 1:20 PM, Sandman said:

I find it a bit disappointing that this plot thread is the second time in as many seasons that Agnes becomes something of a Trojan horse.

I'm holding out hope that Agnes will find her inner badass and take back control of her damn self!

On 4/3/2022 at 3:24 AM, Hiyo said:

Enjoying him so far on this show, regardless of who he is playing.

I remember when he had a cameo on The Big Bang Theory (50 seconds in) and he was a jerk to Sheldon.  It was fun to see him as himself representing the role of Data, but he was actually an asshole.  

[Sandman]

19 hours ago, ChitChat said:

I'm holding out hope that Agnes will find her inner badass and take back control of her damn self!

I will readily join you in the hope -- dare I say expectation? -- of seeing Agnes unleash her crouching badass, inner digital dragon.