S02.E09: Hide and Seek

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

Picard and his crew fight for their lives as they come under attack from a new incarnation of an old enemy. But to survive, Picard must first face the ghosts of his past. Seven and Raffi have a final showdown with Jurati.

Dropping Thursday, April 28, 2022.

[paigow]

The double Renee clue is unclear.

1. Soong manages to instantly clone Renee and make her evil
2. Renee is split by a purple haze transporter malfunction
3. Q recovers his powers and brings another Renee to the timeline

[greekmom]

I ff through the scenes with JL and Mommy. Was JL what? 10 years old in that scene? Usually at 10, kids are not playing hide and seek.

I am assuming next week is the season finale which then bears to question how they will clean up this mess and get back to the timeline. 

The whole 2 Renees doesn't make sense.  I am wondering if in the future, the Borg decided to wage war to assimilate the continuum like they did with species 8472 (figuring out a way to not be snapped out of existence) yet the war is going badly for the Borg which in turn went them knocking on Federation's door and Q's involvement plus his loss of powers.   Or Picard can just wake up on La Serena in the next episode and it was all a dream ala Pam and Bobby Ewing (and if you don't know that reference, please look it up).

I don't buy that the Federation wouldn't want Seven in the fold. Both Janeway and Seven combined with the information about the Borg would have given the Federation oodles of knowledge to keep the Borg at bay.  But thank you to that call back of Voyager and Janeway!

Question remains, how is our plucky scooby team going to get back to their timeline?

Still hate Jurati "queenie" of the borg.

 

Edited April 28, 2022 by greekmom

[paigow]

43 minutes ago, greekmom said:

I don't buy that the Federation wouldn't want Seven in the fold. 

If Dembe can join the FBI, 7 can join Starfleet

[MissLucas]

Arggh, they gave Burgati wedges!!!! (And they really didn't have to since she's not sharing any scenes with Chris Hemsworth.) The combat boots were just fine, dammit!

Other points of importance:

• Bipolar Mum who is enchanting her kids while demonizing their Dad was done way better in 'In Her Shoes'.
• Speaking of kids: where is Picard's brother? Not even a throw away line that he was sent to boarding school to keep him away from his mother's illness? And that she refused to let Jean-Luc go too? Why resist more emotional drama in this instance?
• The 24th century is still stigmatizing mental illness and there are still no better options than locking patients away? And why does Picard's childhood look like a horror version of Narnia with a tad of Bronte?
• Those scenes sure dragged on.
• Federation psych evaluation protocols must really suck. Nobody ever bothered to check cadet Picard's biography? Even without all the Gothic drama attached to his mother's death - a suicide of a parent is certainly something that needs a bit of attention for someone on a career path that will give him authority over people and heavy weaponry. 
• Still no answer why Picard's trauma is of any importance to Q.
• I'm currently reading the Backyard Spaceship series so I'm fine with a hologram/AI owning not just character traits of a person but also all their memories including their dying moments - well kinda fine.
• I wonder what Kore is up to.
• As usual Seven and Raffi saved the episode from becoming a complete disaster.

*still ignoring all the timey-wimey stuff*

 

Edited April 28, 2022 by MissLucas

[paigow]

37 minutes ago, MissLucas said:

• As usual Seven and Raffi saved the episode from becoming a complete disaster.

Covered 50 yards of open field against superior numbers and firepower with no bullet wounds...ok...Good thing those Imperial Storm Troopers were assimilated...

[greekmom]

1 hour ago, MissLucas said:

Arggh, they gave Burgati wedges!!!! (And they really didn't have to since she's not sharing any scenes with Chris Hemsworth.) The combat boots were just fine, dammit!

Other points of importance:

• Bipolar Mum who is enchanting her kids while demonizing their Dad was done way better in 'In Her Shoes'.
• Speaking of kids: where is Picard's brother? Not even a throw away line that he was sent to boarding school to keep him away from his mother's illness? And that she refused to let Jean-Luc go too? Why resist more emotional drama in this instance?
• The 24th century is still stigmatizing mental illness and there are still no better option than locking patients away? And why does Picard's childhood look like a horror version of Narnia with a tad of Bronte?
• Those scenes sure dragged on.
• Federation psych evaluation protocols must really suck. Nobody ever bothered to check cadet Picard's biography? Even without all the Gothic drama attached to his mother's death - a suicide of a parent is certainly something that needs a bit of attention for someone on a career path that will give him authority over people and heavy weaponry. 
• Still no answer why Picard's trauma is of any importance to Q.
• I'm currently reading the Backyard Spaceship series so I'm fine with a hologram/AI owning not just character traits of person but also all their memories including their dying moments - well kinda fine.
• I wonder what Kore is up to.
• As usual Seven and Raffi saved the episode from becoming a complete disaster.

*still ignoring all the timey-wimey stuff*

 

I'm telling you I seriously think they Chuck Cunningham'd him.

[thuganomics85]

Yeah, I know the Federation doesn't exactly have a perfect track record here, but if they really did look at everything Seven was a part of during the Voyager journey and were just like "Yeah, impressive, but you use to be a Borg, so pass!" with her joining Starfleet, then I really question their decision making here.  At least it sounded like Janeway tried to fight for her.

Certainly not against the idea of backstories and exploring tragic pasts, but every time they cut back to Picard and his mom, all I could think was "Hey, guys?  You do realize that not only is a mad scientist right on your heels, but the freaking Borg Queen (controlling your friend's body) is currently on your ship trying to capture it so she can get an early jump start on the whole "assimilate every species in the galaxy" plan.  Maybe hold off on the stories for now?"  Because it was established that Picard was actually Tallinn all of this, so I just imagine them standing around recapping all of this while their enemies got closer and closer.

Nice seeing Holo Elnor here, although I'm still thinking/hoping the real one will end up coming back when this is all said and done.

Agnes and the Borg Queen have basically merged into one being now?  And have decided not to assimilate people against their will, but instead recruit those who would be willing?  Like I guess those who are down on their luck or have no where else to go?  That whole bit confused me.  Also looks like she might not be sticking around for now, but I wonder if she'll be back somewhere down the line.  Hadn't heard anything about Alison Pill wanting to leave.

So, to finish the mission, one Renee Picard must live but once must also die?  How is that going to work?  Oh, time-travel!

[paigow]

2 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

And have decided not to assimilate people against their will, but instead recruit those who would be willing?  Like I guess those who are down on their luck or have no where else to go? 

Besides the Pat Benatar discography, Jurati downloaded Hard Target as a model for 21st Century exploitation...

[marinw]

4 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Yeah, I know the Federation doesn't exactly have a perfect track record here, but if they really did look at everything Seven was a part of during the Voyager journey and were just like "Yeah, impressive, but you use to be a Borg, so pass!" with her joining Starfleet, then I really question their decision making here.  At least it sounded like Janeway tried to fight for her.

Yet Seven's adopted son (forget the name) was able to join Starfleet. 

I do have to give the show some credit: I did not see the Yvette twist coming. They even retconed "Where no one has gone before"

Schrodinger's Renee? I don't get it.

[chaifan]

6 hours ago, MissLucas said:

Federation psych evaluation protocols must really suck. Nobody ever bothered to check cadet Picard's biography? Even without all the Gothic drama attached to his mother's death - a suicide of a parent is certainly something that needs a bit of attention for someone on a career path that will give him authority over people and heavy weaponry. 

Yes.  This.  I was thinking the exact same thing, that psych evals for Starfleet must absolutely suck. 

Despite the slogging through Picard's childhood, which I still see absolutely no purpose for, I liked this episode.  I'm a bit sad that Rios had to leave his doctor friend behind.  I was hoping that they would figure out a way to bring her back to his timeline, and he'd actually have a nice little family for Season 3.  I suppose it could still happen, but they've already got a lot to stuff in to the final episode, so I'm doubting it.  Great moments with Raffi & Seven, I liked the short background about why Seven isn't in Starfleet.  I also think that's weird, but there was probably one too many times she was almost re-Borged that I could see her being a perpetual security risk.  Why they just didn't offer her a cushy consulting gig and maybe an adjunct position at the Academy is beyond me, though. 

Borgati, BQA, Queen Agnes...  whatever you want to call her, I love her.  Love. Her.  Allison Pill is killing it with this dual role.  Her facial expressions and vocal tone/cadence mimic Annie W's perfectly.  The timey wimey stuff is making my head spin, though...  if the Borg Queen sets off in the 21st century to completely re-make the whole Borg purpose for being, then Annika never becomes Seven, so what happens to current Seven?  Now that she's Borged back up, does she un-Borg as they return to the 24th century?  And how is this voluntary assimilation going to work, exactly?  I can see people dying saying, ok make me Borg.  Sort of a sci-fi equivalent of being made a vampire on your death bed.  Do people just join the collective without getting Borg nanoprobes/implants, etc.?  So they're just a rag tag group of individuals?  Do they get a little Borged so the Queen can still communicate with everyone?  hmmmm....  so many thoughts.

Loved holo-Elnor as the ultimate security hologram.  Great way to bring him back.  And the sword, as impractical of a weapon in that situation as it was.  I think it would have been really funny if Raffi fainted upon seeing him, but there really was no time for that.

No idea what the 2 Rene thing is going to entail.  But they have to bring Q back in the loop and tie that up, so I'm assuming Q will be involved.

Looking forward to the finale.

 

 

 

 

[marinw]

7 hours ago, MissLucas said:

Federation psych evaluation protocols must really suck. Nobody ever bothered to check cadet Picard's biography? Even without all the Gothic drama attached to his mother's death - a suicide of a parent is certainly something that needs a bit of attention for someone on a career path that will give him authority over people and heavy weaponry. 

Childhood trauma shouldn't disqualify a person from Starfleet. The abilty to function with the trauma would also be considered. Serving in Starfleet is not exactly trauma-free.

If Jean-Luc and Maurice (still no word about Robert) were the only ones to witness Yvette's suicide I could see Maurice somehoew coming up with another explanation for his wife's death, so the suicide would not be a matter of official record.

A Borg Collective based on "Salvation" could go wrong in so many ways. I could see this new BQ going all Daenerys Targaryen.

Edited April 29, 2022 by marinw

[MissLucas]

7 minutes ago, marinw said:

Childhood trauma shouldn't disqualify a person from Starfleet. The abilty to function with the trauma would also be considered. Serving in Starfleet is not exactly trauma-free.

If Jean-Luc and Maurice (still no word about Robert) were the only ones to witness Yvette's suicide I could see Maurice somehoew coming up with another explanation for his wife's death, so the suicide would not be a matter of official record.

It shouldn't disqualify but there should have been some evaluation if therapy was needed. Original flavor Picard went through many traumas during his Starfleet service and there was normally some sort of  a psychological debriefing. It was a big deal when TNG came out that the mental health of the crew was given as much consideration as their physical health. Yet the same amount of diligence would not be given to cadets entering the academy? This is just a bunch of retconning. Last season's Picard was a broken man because he felt betrayed by the Federation and that was interesting to watch. This season he is even 'brokener' due to some childhood trauma that has never come up before.

And if watching too many crime shows has taught me anything it's that staging a strangling 'accident' is not exactly easy to pull off in this century and I guess it won't be easier in the 24th.

 

[salaydouk]

4 minutes ago, marinw said:

I do have to give the show some credit: I did not see the Yvette twist coming. They even retconed "Where no one has gone before"

Yes and no, I think... When they were showing what happened with his mother in reverse Picard stated, " I used to imagine seeing her older, offering me a cup of tea."  Which seems to imply that they acknowledge the scene in "Where No One Has Gone Before" but tweaking from what we assumed was an actual memory of an event to a memory from his life where he was imagining his mother.  So is it or isn't it a retcon? I think they split the finest hair possible, because IMO it is a tossup.  

3 minutes ago, marinw said:

Childhood trauma shouldn't disqualify a person from Starfleet. The abilty to function with the trauma would also be considered. Serving in Starfleet is not exactly trauma-free.

 It would have been a matter of public record how his mother died - Starfleet would have known before they admitted him to the Academy. It _would_ have be a topic that was discussed during his psych evaluation when he applied to the Academy - therefore _no_ way he could have been suppressing this for 70 years and _no_ way he would have been accepted to the Academy if the psych evaluation found him to have not resolved this issue. They would not have accepted a candidate functioning with trauma as there would be too much potential for issues in the field.  You are right though Startfleet is not trauma-free, but Startfleet would not want "damaged goods" going into the Academy.  (This has basis in real life, you can be disqualified from the US Military Academies for seemingly mundane things, ie in the Navy you cannot be allergic to bees?!?!?)

 

[Stardancer Supreme]

Okay... Now we are getting close to putting this misadventure to bed.

I was not expecting that end when young JPL opened the door. How devastating to think that you were the cause of your mother's death. He suppressed that memory so deep that even the eventual traumas he suffered later never made that come back up.

Again, the only thing this episode is missing is Q. Unless he knows that JLP will succeed in putting things back into place...  I still want to know how the death of Q and possibly the Continuum plays into this tête-à-tête with Picard.  Why this and why now?

Love to see that Holo Elnor was just as lethal as the real deal. 

Since we now know that the Future Borg Queen is Agnes, maybe this experience will compel JLP to make a different decision on the Star Gazer should we ever get back to that point in time.

[dwmarch]

I wish Elnor had been around this whole time. I think a character with absolute candor as his defining trait would have comedy gold potential telling it like it is to the people of 2024. I think the Raffi and Seven plot would have been better for it and/or we could have had him go off on other adventures. Suppose Kore escaped earlier in the season and bumped into him? He recognizes her and they get into trouble together. That would have been much better than what we got out of either of them thus far.

Those new Borg sucked. And if Jurati is going to be the Borg Queen and knows she is going to run into Picard again later, why not take the face mask off next time? And instead of saying "WE... NEED... POWER!" and going all hentai on the bridge crew, why not tell them you want to talk but need to charge your batteries first?

[rtms77]

I fail to see how Picard could keep this memory from any trained phyc therapist at the Academy especially a full telepathic such as the Betazoids etc. Heck one touch from a Vulcan would have revealed his mother suicide. I think they went a little too far with the retconning for Picard. Still glad to see this story line more or less over.

Poor Seven, I guess we see why Starfleet decided she couldn't join, but what a bummer. Still if she's that easy to Borgify , she was better off in the Rangers. I think Starfleet would have stifled her independence nature. Given she was just learning to assert herself when she left Voyager, it would have been a step back for her to join. Almost like a new collective. And was it just me or were her Borg implants,  clunky looking? I swear they were cos play level looking .

So does the ship tie into everyone's thoughts somehow? How else does the Elnor holo know what the real one was thinking. Nice to see him again, and so miss him.

If Raffi is a security expert, her combat skills are nil. Seven took the lead and held her own but Raffi went down with barley a punch half the time.

Rios and the Doc. I don't think we've seen the last of her. I just hope we don't get a Futurama situation  of them creating the Rios line.

So how the heck are the crew suppose to get back?

[Llywela]

17 hours ago, MissLucas said:

 

• Speaking of kids: where is Picard's brother? Not even a throw away line that he was sent to boarding school to keep him away from his mother's illness? And that she refused to let Jean-Luc go too? Why resist more emotional drama in this instance?
• The 24th century is still stigmatizing mental illness and there are still no better options than locking patients away? And why does Picard's childhood look like a horror version of Narnia with a tad of Bronte?
• Those scenes sure dragged on.
• Federation psych evaluation protocols must really suck. Nobody ever bothered to check cadet Picard's biography? Even without all the Gothic drama attached to his mother's death - a suicide of a parent is certainly something that needs a bit of attention for someone on a career path that will give him authority over people and heavy weaponry. 

Picard's brother was away at school at the time of this particular memory, we were told that earlier in the season. He was a few years older, would have been in his late teens at the time. Although the flashbacks have been spread through the season they all represent a single day in young Jean Luc's life. His brother wasn't there that day.

The episode does not suggest that the suicide of Picard's mother was a secret. He knew it had happened. His Starfleet file will no doubt also contain the record. What he suppressed because he couldn't bear to think of it was the memory of being the one to find her body, and his guilt at unlocking the door, which gave her the freedom to go through with it.

Nothing in the show suggests that Yvette was regularly locked up as the only means of handling her condition. On the contrary, we have been repeatedly shown that she was living her life quite freely with her family. She was locked up on that one night only, because she'd had a manic episode in which she took her young son down into the tunnels she knew to be dangerous, lost him there, and then spent hours wandering, lost in her delusion. She was locked in her room for that one night only because she was a danger to herself and others. We were told in an earlier episode that she had stopped taking her medication. Perhaps Maurice hoped to get her to a doctor in the morning, hoped she would start taking her medication in the morning, if he could just get her safely through that one night. Instead, she persuaded her son to unlock the door and then used the opportunity to take her own life.

10 hours ago, marinw said:

Yet Seven's adopted son (forget the name) was able to join Starfleet. 

I do have to give the show some credit: I did not see the Yvette twist coming. They even retconed "Where no one has gone before"

Seven said that Janeway went in to bat for her but she herself decided not to fight and walked away instead, found a more worthy cause to pursue. Maybe Janeway instead continued to fight for Icheb and was successful. We don't know enough to judge.

"Where No One Has Gone Before" was not retconned. The vision Picard saw of his mother in that episode was just that, a vision, and he referenced it in this episode.

6 hours ago, dwmarch said:

I wish Elnor had been around this whole time. I think a character with absolute candor as his defining trait would have comedy gold potential telling it like it is to the people of 2024. I think the Raffi and Seven plot would have been better for it and/or we could have had him go off on other adventures. Suppose Kore escaped earlier in the season and bumped into him? He recognizes her and they get into trouble together. That would have been much better than what we got out of either of them thus far.

Those new Borg sucked. 

I wish Elnor had been around all season, too. Since everyone was split into covid bubbles, he could have been paired with Rios, who has been isolated from the rest of the main cast for the entire season and has suffered for it.

The new Borg sucked because they were not properly assimilated - as Seven said, with imperfect materials comes imperfect assimilation. The Queen had been depleted of all her nanoprobes after her capture by the Confederation, she was just making do with what she could find locally, she's far from being at full strength again.

ETA I think the two Renees thing is talking about two timelines. All through the season they've been approaching this as an altered rather than an alternate timeline, and the aim has been to prevent that alteration so that the timeline will revert to what it should be. My reading of what Borgati said is that both timelines need to exist, so the altered timeline somehow needs to be split out to become an alternate timeline in its own right. The crew can then return (somehow - they are definitely going to need Q) to their own timeline, presumably a few minutes before hitting self-destruct so they can make different choices, while Borgati can go off into what would have been the Confederation timeline and spend the next 400 years building a different Collective, one that won't be wiped out by the Borg Slayer. Then, at the appointed hour, to close the loop on the temporal paradox, she will bring her Collective through the anomaly in 2.01 to rejoin the prime timeline - as friends instead of enemies.

I'm hoping that 2.10 will explain why she was so wiped out by the journey/pressed for time that she couldn't explain herself before taking control of the ship(s).

...then again, maybe they make the leap into the prime timeline to escape the Borg Slayer!

Edited April 29, 2022 by Llywela

[jcin617]

2 hours ago, Llywela said:

ETA I think the two Renees thing is talking about two timelines. All through the season they've been approaching this as an altered rather than an alternate timeline, and the aim has been to prevent that alteration so that the timeline will revert to what it should be. My reading of what Borgati said is that both timelines need to exist, so the altered timeline somehow needs to be split out to become an alternate timeline in its own right. The crew can then return (somehow - they are definitely going to need Q) to their own timeline, presumably a few minutes before hitting self-destruct so they can make different choices, while Borgati can go off into what would have been the Confederation timeline and spend the next 400 years building a different Collective, one that won't be wiped out by the Borg Slayer. Then, at the appointed hour, to close the loop on the temporal paradox, she will bring her Collective through the anomaly in 2.01 to rejoin the prime timeline - as friends instead of enemies.

I think that's right; both timelines need to occur in order to prevent a paradox.   I think the Collective 2.0 comes through in order to set things in motion (basically: they need to create themselves) -- I don't know how they avoid the self-destruct of the Stargazer though.

[TVbitch]

Oof. 

And no Q! I wish they would have saved Q for next season. I loved watching him poke fun at Riker. (You weren't this stolid before the beard!)  

[TV Anonymous]

In regards to Picard's psychological evaluation prior to joining Starfleet Academy, if we watch the Star Trek franchise and we compare Starfleet and Starfleet Academy with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Naval Academy (or any other military service and its service school), we can see that Starfleet is such an unorganized organization led by incompetent leaders with confusing processes and procedures. Off the top of my head:

• A Cadet got promoted directly from Cadet into the rank of Captain and appointed command to a capital ship.
• A Junior Officer conducted an unauthorized training activity in a dangerous area resulted in casualty. Such Officer was then appointed a leadership position at the Academy.

The other thing that I thought I never saw before, did the La Sirena go to warp within the atmosphere?

[paigow]

17 minutes ago, TV Anonymous said:

if we watch the Star Trek franchise and we compare Starfleet and Starfleet Academy with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Naval Academy (or any other military service and its service school), we can see that Starfleet is such an unorganized organization led by incompetent leaders with confusing processes and procedures.

This guy beat the Navy Screening Process...

 

[salaydouk]

3 hours ago, TV Anonymous said:

• A Cadet got promoted directly from Cadet into the rank of Captain and appointed command to a capital ship

The other thing that I thought I never saw before, did the La Sirena go to warp within the atmosphere?

Technically Kirk got promoted from Cadet to Captain in the Kelvin Timeline, not in the Prime Timeline that this show is in.  So it's possible that Starfleet in both Timelines are drastically different?!?!?  But your point is correct Cadet to Captain would _never_ happen and was my biggest annoyance of Star Trek(2009).

And yeah you are not wrong, it did appear that way to me as well. But, I don't think there is much screen time of what full impulse speed looks like, so... 

[paigow]

1 hour ago, salaydouk said:

But your point is correct Cadet to Captain would _never_ happen and was my biggest annoyance of Star Trek(2009).

Considering that Pike sent a lowly cadet on a suicide mission... maybe Pine!Kirk deserved it...

[salaydouk]

59 minutes ago, paigow said:

Considering that Pike sent a lowly cadet on a suicide mission... maybe Pine!Kirk deserved it...

And since in the Kelvin Timeline Adm Marcus sent Kirk on a coverup/stooge mission, maybe there is all sorts of Bleep going on their Starfleet. 

Edited April 29, 2022 by salaydouk

[benteen]

At first I thought this episode was a further improvement from two weeks ago. But when thinking it over, no, it was a train wreck much like most of those season. Where to begin...

Picard has been repressing his mother's suicide for 85 years, completely undetected by any Starfleet pysch exam and so debilitating that it causes hi to freeze in the middle of a crucial situation. Come on! Why can't Picard have a non-tragic backstory? Just another "great" creative decision from Patrick Stewart, who has been making bad creative decisions for Trek since Insurrection. 

I defended Picard being put in a synthetic body last season but this season have not just synthetic Picard but Juarti as a Borg, Elinor as a hologram and Seven partially assimilated again. What happened to the human adventure? I don't think the future here was supposed to be everyone becoming cyborgs and holograms?

Jurati's story arc is interesting and terrible at the same tim l. Victim again, now she pitches the idea of voluntary assimilation? Is this really the future she wants? Probably just making the best out of a bad situation. 

Soong is just twirling his mustache.. 

It's understandable that Starfleet would be nervous about Seven but rejecting her just seems like this show's continuing desperate attempt to be like the overrated BSG 

And again, no Q! I was very much looking forward to seeing his return to Star Trek and his butting heads with Picard once again. But after a great return, he has either been wasted or not seen at all. Only one real scene between him and Picard? Come on! Q has been criminally wasted on this show and I now wish he hadn't have been used at all.

Highlights...James Callis has been great as usual. I only wish he was part of Picard's crew. Stewart did some very good work and when Picard finally takes charge, he FINALLY seems like Picard. I love that Not Laris uses the same "time door" that Gary Seven uses. Dipping back into the Assignment Earth stuff has been a great old toy from the Star Trek toybox to play with.

So next week, Picard and company have to save and not save the underutilized Renee to save the timeline, go back to the future, try to prevent the disastrous confrontation with the Borg while trying to save Elinor and unravel Q's plan. Have can the creative team behind Picard not bungle this up?

I have a feeling we are heading for another cliffhanger. I know TNG used to do that back in the day but Picard is not in the league odlf TNG and hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt to do so.

Edited April 30, 2022 by benteen

[paigow]

2 minutes ago, benteen said:

I have a feeling we are heading for another cliffhanger. I know TNG used to do that back in the day but Picard is not in the league odlf TNG and hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt to do so.

If we jump back to the future and Riker is ready to fire a super-weapon at the Stargazer, after seeing Picard onboard... then we have a worthy cliffhanger....

[salaydouk]

1 hour ago, benteen said:

It's understandable that Starfleet would be nervous about Seven but rejecting her just seems like this show's continuing desperate attempt to be like the overrated BSG 

So regarding Seven's rejection by Starfleet it actually _does_ make sense.   What does not make sense is rejecting her and accepting Icheb and by extension allowing Picard to remain in-service after "Best of Both Worlds".   All three of them are effectively POWs and therefore 

• been traumatized as a result, to the point where Starfleet could never be sure if they could over come it.  This season alone we are seeing Seven not really being able to handle it.  Picard had issues during "I, Borg" when he literally approved sending Hugh back as a genocide weapon. That trauma could have other effects and result in bad command decisions. 
• there is  _no_ way for Starfleet to ever be 100% sure of the loyalty of POW/assimilated person. Is there still some remnant programming that could cause him/her to turn traitor to Starfleet?!?!?      
• As a result all three of them should be disqualified from serving. Picard should have been discharged from Starfleet and barring that he at the very least would no longer be allowed to be a ship's captain and he definitely would not have been promoted to Admiral.  

While all that might sound silly from a Civilian perspective, it makes total sense from a Military one.  

 

On a complete side note, this episode confirmed for me why Rios was wearing a long sleeve shirts for most of this season.  I couldn't be sure when we saw him with short sleeves scrubs right after his "beam in fall"... But here during his bullet wound treatment, did anyone else notice that Rios has lost his mermaid tattoo on his left arm?  Most likely the Covid bubble striking again... its just they were successful to avoid the continuity issue all season but to implode on themselves so spectacularly is just so funny. 

Edited April 30, 2022 by salaydouk

[Emily Thrace]

I actually think Seven being rejected by Starfleet does make sense but might have more to do with her own failings than her implants. Seven has grown up a lot but Voyager era Seven had plenty of flaws like arrogance and a lack of understanding of social cues that might not have made her an ideal candidate for Starfleet. I can also see Starfleet being more hesitant about her than Picard or Icheb because she was assimilated so young and was still so affected by it. Icheb was never even fully assimilated and had a very different experience than she did. Federation pysch evals may be a little lax but they would still pick up on the giant red flags a post Voyager Seven would have been giving off.

Also with regards to Picard I find it puzzling that people assume Starfleet would reject him over his mothers medical history. For one rejecting a candidate because of a disease their parent had is backwards in itself. Besides that surely by the 24th century we would have developed not only better detection for genetic tendencies like bi polar disorder but also a better understanding of how its triggered. Its also a complete falsehood that Picard's trauma makes him weak or in any way unfit for service. Just because someone has been through trauma or has a mentally ill parent doesn't mean they are one step from the edge themselves. Sometimes trauma can teach resilience especially in children, it might be why Picard has survived everything he has been through so far. Its entirely possible Starfleet is fully aware of Picard's history but also realized he is an extraordinary person and passing him over for something that might happen would be a mistake.

[salaydouk]

2 hours ago, Emily Thrace said:

Also with regards to Picard I find it puzzling that people assume Starfleet would reject him over his mothers medical history. For one rejecting a candidate because of a disease their parent had is backwards in itself. Besides that surely by the 24th century we would have developed not only better detection for genetic tendencies like bi polar disorder but also a better understanding of how its triggered. Its also a complete falsehood that Picard's trauma makes him weak or in any way unfit for service. Just because someone has been through trauma or has a mentally ill parent doesn't mean they are one step from the edge themselves. Sometimes trauma can teach resilience especially in children, it might be why Picard has survived everything he has been through so far. Its entirely possible Starfleet is fully aware of Picard's history but also realized he is an extraordinary person and passing him over for something that might happen would be a mistake.

Starfleet would not reject Picard due to his mother's medical history.  They would reject him because he has unresolved trauma due to his mother's suicide and his role when he was a child of "facilitating" it by opening the door. The amount of guilt that he could inflict on himself if not addressed could/would be an issue.

And I am sorry, but that level of trauma if left unresolved would make him unfit for service.  Severe enough trauma would make anyone unfit for military service.  It is the very reason why the majority of US military members officially diagnosed with PTSD are quickly medically discharged from service. (And let's not get into the ethics/morality of the military taking care/not taking care of its veterans as it is not within the scope of this board.) 

IMO we should all be thinking about it this way... Starfleet Academy, like the US Military Academies, is a school/university with an applications process and therefore a limited number of places for each academic class.  Given the number of Federation worlds, competition for each place would be high - thinking a ratio say of 500 applicant for each place.  At that l level of competition, your prior school evaluations, your medical evaluations, and your psych evaluations would need to be pristine in order to be accepted.  So it simply makes _no_ sense that Starfleet Academy would give a place to someone who has any inkling of a psych issue. 

So for Picard to be accepted he would have had to show that he had worked through all of the issues surrounding his mother's suicide.  His mother's suicide and the circumstances of how she was found and who found her would have been a matter of public record.  I suppose that Picard's father could have lied to the authorities regarding how she got out of the room and who found her thereby allowing Picard to repress the memory of his actions.  But when it comes to his applying to Starfleet, he would have been evaluated and the subject of his mother's suicide would have come up. The psychologist would have been _brutal_ because his/her loyalty would have been to Starfleet and not the applicant. Picard's father would have known that and if he had lied, he have attempted to dissuade Picard from applying to Starfleet for years.  (This will probably become a/the retconned explanation for why his father was against technology/Starfleet.)  The psych evaluation would have caused any unresolved trauma to come to the surface, perhaps not right away but it would have surfaced.  And it would have resurfaced sooner then the 80 years this show is asking us to believe that it did. 

 

Edited April 30, 2022 by salaydouk

[Frozendiva]

Not a great episode from an increasingly lackluster season. Renee Picard, who I thought was the key member of restoring time as it should be/the weird time focal point, has just seemed to be a plot point and afterthought. Where is the second one supposed to come from? Another timeline? A timey wimey event? Just a lot of filler in terms of stuff that could have been done in one or one point five eps. If they do get outta this place, will the timeline just reset and all this is just a weird dream, or will the butterfly effect and the grandfather principle and Q’s manipulation of time reset the future and change most of Trek.

[paigow]

Q will try to fix things but brings Discovery back from the 1000 year future by mistake.

[WalrusGirl]

Ya know, if Picard and Not!Laris hadn’t stood around chatting in the solarium (would have also been an easy time for Soong to lean back out and shoot them both), maybe they could have gotten to the ship in time to help before it was too late.

Which is partly why unresolved trauma gets you disqualified from combat/active service.

On 4/28/2022 at 9:27 PM, marinw said:

Childhood trauma shouldn't disqualify a person from Starfleet. The abilty to function with the trauma would also be considered. Serving in Starfleet is not exactly trauma-free.

I’m reading it as his clearly unresolved, clearly trauma over the circumstances being what should have disqualified him. Not his mother’s medical condition or the existence of trauma - it’s the not having worked through it. The man would have had psych evals by Betazoids and I know they tried to cover themselves with the line from Therapist/Dad about some people lock it away so deep not even a Betazoid can detect it, but I’m not buying that from a human versus, say, a Vulcan, or that a Betazoid wouldn’t detect *something* in the mother’s-suicide area (which would have come up in an initial eval), even if they couldn’t tell what because JL had repressed the what. But he clearly HAS remembered enough of the day for the seeds to have been there for a Betazoid. And he spent an awful lot of time with one, including after multiple service-related traumatic events.

On 4/29/2022 at 1:02 AM, rtms77 said:

And was it just me or were her Borg implants,  clunky looking? I swear they were cos play level looking .

So does the ship tie into everyone's thoughts somehow? How else does the Elnor holo know what the real one was thinking. Nice to see him again, and so miss him.

It wasn’t just you - her implants looked horrible, like soft flexible plastic. (Like the makeup actually was.) They’ve gone with a less-industrial metal look for the Borg, but that seemed way too far.

On 4/29/2022 at 6:45 AM, Llywela said:

Seven said that Janeway went in to bat for her but she herself decided not to fight and walked away instead, found a more worthy cause to pursue. Maybe Janeway instead continued to fight for Icheb and was successful. We don't know enough to judge.

Icheb was taking Academy courses on Voyager while they were still in the Delta Quadrant, but after they were in regular contact with Starfleet (Tuvok had been an instructor at the Academy already). Since Janeway also addressed him as “cadet” after an oral exam/presentation, again after monthly contact with Starfleet was occurring, I think they’d already approved/accepted Icheb.

(Losing the braintrust - Borg-related and otherwise - of Seven seems a major tactical loss - I can’t *imagine* why they didn’t do everything in their power to keep her in a tech division, as a consultant or full-time contractor, etc - but her history did give them *plenty* of reason to doubt her ability to function in a chain of command and follow orders. While most, not all, of the most egregious incidents were in her first year, some were not.)

14 hours ago, benteen said:

At first I thought this episode was a further improvement from two weeks ago. 

LOL, it was far more watchable to me, given the interminable flashbacks were at least far briefer at a time. I’d figured he opened the door and she took her life (though she could have done so just as easily still locked in the room we saw Young Picard enter and join her in), so was glad they finally got to the point. (Not to be heartless about her condition or suicide, but I’ve been so over these repetitive flashbacks since episode one.)

14 hours ago, salaydouk said:

So regarding Seven's rejection by Starfleet it actually _does_ make sense.   What does not make sense is rejecting her and accepting Icheb and by extension allowing Picard to remain in-service after "Best of Both Worlds".   All three of them are effectively POWs and therefore 

Icheb was never part of the collective - he was assimilated while sedated as a child and the Borg on the ship self-destructed in relatively short order. (His species bred him with a genetic virus to fight the Borg, and when he was young his parents sedated him and sent him out on a ship as bait for the Borg. That genetic pathogen destroyed the Borg on the ship that found him, and he was only ever - and briefly - in a collective with a handful of other juveniles, as the maturation chambers protected them from the pathogen. Though after being reunited with his parents, they promptly sedated him and sent him out on a ship with a false Borg-bait warp signature to be assimilated again, so certainly trauma and trust issues, but he never experienced time in the collective.

Picard presumably had to pass psych evals re working through his assimilation/Wolf 359 trauma.

Though honestly, Seven post-Voyager, as we last saw her, would have passed those Borg trauma related evals better than I think we saw evidence Picard would have, and he apparently did. I’d guess it was the combo of post-Dominion war issues within Starfleet and her rampant history of disobeying direct orders. (If we’re looking for legit reasons, she had them, though prejudice seems more the conclusion we should draw from the episode. And that doesn’t seem at all unlikely given being immediately after the Dominion War, either.)

10 hours ago, Emily Thrace said:

I actually think Seven being rejected by Starfleet does make sense but might have more to do with her own failings than her implants. Seven has grown up a lot but Voyager era Seven had plenty of flaws like arrogance and a lack of understanding of social cues that might not have made her an ideal candidate for Starfleet. I can also see Starfleet being more hesitant about her than Picard or Icheb because she was assimilated so young and was still so affected by it. Icheb was never even fully assimilated and had a very different experience than she did. Federation pysch evals may be a little lax but they would still pick up on the giant red flags a post Voyager Seven would have been giving off.

Yeah, I agree that Seven was absolutely in a different situation than either Picard or Icheb. Though arrogance hardly seems to be disqualifying, her rampant disobeying of orders on Voyager seems pretty legit. Just almost criminally egregious that they didn’t do everything they could to keep her in the braintrust and fold, if not as an officer who’d need to follow consequential orders she may disagree with on the regular. (Like as a science/tech NCO, contractor, consultant, researcher, whatever she wanted. But within a good working relationship with them.)

Edited April 30, 2022 by WalrusGirl
iOS changed “it’s” to “it’d”; fixed it

[Llywela]

12 hours ago, salaydouk said:

 

On a complete side note, this episode confirmed for me why Rios was wearing a long sleeve shirts for most of this season.  I couldn't be sure when we saw him with short sleeves scrubs right after his "beam in fall"... But here during his bullet wound treatment, did anyone else notice that Rios has lost his mermaid tattoo on his left arm?  Most likely the Covid bubble striking again... its just they were successful to avoid the continuity issue all season but to implode on themselves so spectacularly is just so funny. 

Rios doesn't have the mermaid tattoo for the same reason Seven hasn't had her implants all season. Because this is the consciousness of 'our' Rios in the body of Confederation Rios. Not an error. A different body. 

There's more in the thread I want to respond to, but I'm on my phone, so will have to come back to it later. 

[chaifan]

Regarding the look of Seven's "new" implants...  I think they are, for lack of a better word, Borgier on purpose.  If you noticed her hand, she was back to more of a Borg hand than she previously had.  I specifically noticed the nails.  Now, I'm not sure why, but I would guess it has to do with the amount of nanoprobes or whatever Borgy things Queen Agnes had to inject to save her from a sure to be fatal wound.  To get her to the Borg state where she could heal herself, she had to go back to being a little more Borg than before.  I think this also explains Seven's reaction, which I remember being a little more "nooooo!" than if she just saw her old regular hand. 

[salaydouk]

5 hours ago, WalrusGirl said:

Icheb was never part of the collective - he was assimilated while sedated as a child and the Borg on the ship self-destructed in relatively short order. (His species bred him with a genetic virus to fight the Borg, and when he was young his parents sedated him and sent him out on a ship as bait for the Borg. That genetic pathogen destroyed the Borg on the ship that found him, and he was only ever - and briefly - in a collective with a handful of other juveniles, as the maturation chambers protected them from the pathogen. Though after being reunited with his parents, they promptly sedated him and sent him out on a ship with a false Borg-bait warp signature to be assimilated again, so certainly trauma and trust issues, but he never experienced time in the collective.

Picard presumably had to pass psych evals re working through his assimilation/Wolf 359 trauma.

Though honestly, Seven post-Voyager, as we last saw her, would have passed those Borg trauma related evals better than I think we saw evidence Picard would have, and he apparently did. I’d guess it was the combo of post-Dominion war issues within Starfleet and her rampant history of disobeying direct orders. (If we’re looking for legit reasons, she had them, though prejudice seems more the conclusion we should draw from the episode. And that doesn’t seem at all unlikely given being immediately after the Dominion War, either.)

Yeah, I agree that Seven was absolutely in a different situation than either Picard or Icheb. Though arrogance hardly seems to be disqualifying, her rampant disobeying of orders on Voyager seems pretty legit. Just almost criminally egregious that they didn’t do everything they could to keep her in the braintrust and fold, if not as an officer who’d need to follow consequential orders she may disagree with on the regular. (Like as a science/tech NCO, contractor, consultant, researcher, whatever she wanted. But within a good working relationship with them.)

I can see your point on Icheb being a different and Starfleet would manage him differently, but Seven being rejected makes sense. I can see Picard being allowed to remain in service, but it would not be possible for Starfleet to accept him in a high security/intelligence post even after passing his evaluations - he would not be allowed to be or continue to be a ships captain for sure.  

2 hours ago, Llywela said:

Rios doesn't have the mermaid tattoo for the same reason Seven hasn't had her implants all season. Because this is the consciousness of 'our' Rios in the body of Confederation Rios. Not an error. A different body. 

Are you sure about that?  Because if that is the case then we are looking at a situation where, as you mentioned up thread, they would need to spit the timeline, go back to the 25th century in the Confederation timeline, and then return to their timeline via powerless Q for a body switch out?   So first how are they going to get back to the 25th century Confederation Timeline without a ship - by the powerless Q? Assuming the do get back to the 25th century Confederation timeline, how would Confederation Annika explain waking up with Borg implants to her xenophobic constituents?  Would Q simply snap them away?  

Don't get me wrong, I see your point and am ruminating on it... 

Edited April 30, 2022 by salaydouk

[marinw]

2 hours ago, salaydouk said:

I can see Picard being allowed to remain in service,

Did we ever find out how much time had passed between the second-to-last and very last scene in The Best of Both Worlds? We see him at his desk, clearly in comand, with some band-aids on his face.

James Callis's Maurice isn't portrayed as a bad guy here, but I could see how his relationship with his son would go downhill after Yvette's death. He would blame Jean-Luc for opening the door, even if Jean-Luc was just a child, albiet a very smart child. He would try not to blame Jean-Luc, perhaps very hard, but would still carry around some resentment.

Edited April 30, 2022 by marinw

[rtms77]

The problem with introducing Picards mother suicide and the trauma that should have followed it, is that we have not seen any evidence of it ever affecting him until now. At no time on TNG did he hesitate because of this supposed problem. Yes he did imagine her old and offering tea but it wasn't even an event. We've seen him as an arrogant cadet, which got him stabbed in the heart, we know that as a lieutenant he took command of the Stargazer and saved the ship and was given the command of said ship. He did so well that decades later he gets the flagship of  Starfleet. Again success after success with no hint of this suicide and family problems affecting him or his ability to command. Once again a TV series decides to throw in a problem they never established and insist the audience just accept it all.

[salaydouk]

4 minutes ago, marinw said:

Did we ever find out how much time had passed between the second-t0-last and very last scene in The Best of Both Worlds? We see him at his desk, clearly in comand, with somr band-aids on his face.

James Callis's Maurice isn't portrayed as a bad guy here, but I could see how his relationship with his son would go downhill after Yvette's death. He would blame Jean-Luc for opening the door, even if Jean-Luc was just a child, albiet a very smart child. He would try not to blame Jean-Luc, perhaps very hard, but would still carry around some resentment.

I don't believe so.  You are right he was in command and it didn't then and doesn't now make sense.  He would have been relieved of duty pending medical/psych evaluations.  Based on what we know with "Family" he was in treatment, and clearly Troi knew there were still issues unresolved when he went back to France that she would have to work through with him when he came back. 

And totally agree with you, that father-son relationship would have been completely rough - even with therapy! And without it would have been complete toast!  

 

5 minutes ago, rtms77 said:

The problem with introducing Picards mother suicide and the trauma that should have followed it, is that we have not seen any evidence of it ever affecting him until now. At no time on TNG did he hesitate because of this supposed problem. Yes he did imagine her old and offering tea but it wasn't even an event. We've seen him as an arrogant cadet, which got him stabbed in the heart, we know that as a lieutenant he took command of the Stargazer and saved the ship and was given the command of said ship. He did so well that decades later he gets the flagship of  Starfleet. Again success after success with no hint of this suicide and family problems affecting him or his ability to command. Once again a TV series decides to throw in a problem they never established and insist the audience just accept it all.

Totally agree with you - this retconning doesn't make sense one iota. 

[tessaray]

S2 has been pretty awful overall. Granted, there have been a handful of good scenes but I honestly don't know what can save it at this point. (I'm always open to being wrong - hopefully the last episode is so great it makes it all worthwhile.)

James Callis was the only bright spot in this one for me. 

[salaydouk]

Also just how did Yvette get the rope secured to what appears to be the apex of the solarium's roof so she could hang herself?   I didn't see a ladder... 

[aemom]

20 hours ago, salaydouk said:

Technically Kirk got promoted from Cadet to Captain in the Kelvin Timeline, not in the Prime Timeline that this show is in.  So it's possible that Starfleet in both Timelines are drastically different?!?!?  But your point is correct Cadet to Captain would _never_ happen and was my biggest annoyance of Star Trek(2009).

And yeah you are not wrong, it did appear that way to me as well. But, I don't think there is much screen time of what full impulse speed looks like, so... 

That has always made me so crazy that I envisioned that in a future movie, he encounters another captain who wants nothing to do with him, because they had worked so incredibly hard through Starfleet Academy and then working up the ranks to be given a commission of a Constitution class starship, and then Kirk saunters in and gets one just like that.

 

As for Picard, I don't think that any of this shows that he was unfit to command, but it clearly illustrates why all of his romantic relationships have been disasters. Even his platonic relationships have suffered because there is always a wall there cutting people off from getting too close.

If you feel responsible for your mother's death, there is a part of you that is always scared that you will again become responsible for the death of someone you deeply care for in the future, so you prevent such a scenario from ever happening. 

[marinw]

So when Robert gets home from boarding school (if that's where he was) what would Maurice choose to tell Robert about his Mom's death? In "Family" Robert says that it was his job to look after Jean-Luc. Because Mom wasn't around and Dad was running the vineyard? This looking-after would turn into bullying.

Edited April 30, 2022 by marinw

[salaydouk]

27 minutes ago, marinw said:

So when Robert gets home from boarding school (if that's where he was) what would Maurice choose to tell Robert about his Mom's death? In "Family" Robert says that it was his job to look after Jean-Luc. This looking-after would turn into bullying.

Good question... there is no in canon in-depth information on the brother relationship aside from Robert was like his father and Jean-Luc was not.  It could just be Maurice just told Robert to look out for his brother because they both knew that Jean-Luc was close to his mother and that her death would have deeply affected him. 

While it is possible he could have told Robert the truth, I think it would have been more likely Maurice would have still keep the truth to himself/Jean-Luc and told Robert either she got out on her own or he let her out.   He would have taken Robert's hate for enabling his mother's suicide and just added it to the hate that he already felt for himself - I mean the amount of worry, hate, and guilt he would have already for/towards himself and for/towards Yvette and their circumstances, would have been pretty extreme because they were basically in a co-dependent relationship.  Or perhaps Robert being older could simply have had a better understanding of his mother's condition and known what could happen and when it did was just able to reconcile it to her medical condition with out a post-mortem with his father.   Or perhaps like some, please note I am saying some _not_ all, men are prone to do, the three of them just took the path of "it happened and it can't be changed so what is the use in talking about it?"

As for bullying.. I don't think there needs to be anything added for two brothers to bully each other completely and totally.  Siblings, by and large, are responsible for creation of a persons "buttons" and they are the only ones that can press all of the "buttons" at the same time.  

2 hours ago, aemom said:

That has always made me so crazy that I envisioned that in a future movie, he encounters another captain who wants nothing to do with him, because they had worked so incredibly hard through Starfleet Academy and then working up the ranks to be given a commission of a Constitution class starship, and then Kirk saunters in and gets one just like that.

 

Oh I would have _loved_ to see that movie...  I mean Chekov was more deserving to be promoted to captain then Kirk since you know he was already a commission officer...  

Edited April 30, 2022 by salaydouk

[Llywela]

4 hours ago, salaydouk said:

Are you sure about that?  Because if that is the case then we are looking at a situation where, as you mentioned up thread, they would need to spit the timeline, go back to the 25th century in the Confederation timeline, and then return to their timeline via powerless Q for a body switch out?   So first how are they going to get back to the 25th century Confederation Timeline without a ship - by the powerless Q? Assuming the do get back to the 25th century Confederation timeline, how would Confederation Annika explain waking up with Borg implants to her xenophobic constituents?  Would Q simply snap them away?  

Don't get me wrong, I see your point and am ruminating on it... 

Yes, I'm sure. Q flat out told Picard that he still has a synth body because General Picard was also a synth. They are in the bodies of their Confederation doubles, that's why Seven has been running around without her implants all season.

And yes, it is all kinds of screwed up and none of them has stopped to really think any of it through, because they've all been in panic mode pretty much from the instant they were snatched from the moment of their deaths into another timeline entirely. They don't know how they are going to get back, they were relying on La Sirena and the Borg Queen for that, they were just hoping that if they could only set the timeline straight, they could do another slingshot around the sun to get back to the future, hoping against hope that when they got there it would be the 'correct' future and not the Confederation one. A desperate hope, but the only hope they've had right from the start. They are all just making it up as they go along, because what else can they do?

The way things were set up back in 201-2.02 it seemed likely that the story was heading toward Picard learning some kind of lesson and Q then snapping them all back to the proper timeline a few minutes before the Borg Queen beamed over, so they could make different choices (with Elnor alive again, because they'd go back to before he died). But the way the season has played out, that seems a lot less likely now. Agnes is clearly going to be the Borg Queen who drags her ship through the temporal anomaly to beam aboard, and I can't see now how they resolve that paradox if they go back to a time when earlier Agnes was still on Stargazer, because making different choices would mean she never went back in time to become the Borg Queen...and temporal mechanics make my head hurt.

Everyone has been predicting Rios staying in the past for half the season now. I still desperately hope he won't, but if he does...that also leaves a gaping hole in the regular timeline, if somehow everyone else goes back (which has to be via Q now, there is no other way, with La Sirena gone) and Stargazer suddenly no longer has a captain - or a visiting consultant, both of whom were standing right there on the bridge a second earlier. But surely they have to go back to before the self-destruct, because otherwise all those ships and their crews will be destroyed. And if they take the Borg ship out with them, that undermines the central lesson of the season, which seems to be to not make decisions rooted in fear.

But I don't want to try to predict how the final episode will play out, because honestly, this writing team has made so many strange choices this season, I can't begin to predict how they will wrap the story up.

From the point of view of the characters, however, at this point, they have no way back to the future. They just want to fix the timeline so that the future they remember actually happens.

Also, the thing that annoyed me most in this episode was characters - okay, mostly Picard - magically knowing things they shouldn't know. Picard knowing Theresa and Ricardo's names, for instance, when he never actually met them before, he was unconscious the whole time they were at the clinic with him. And his lack of reaction to La Sirena taking off, when he hadn't been there for the confrontation with Queen Jurati so had no way of knowing she'd taken herself out of the fight - he should have been horrified, believing they had lost, that she was setting off to destroy Renee's mission, as planned.

ETA the other thing I wanted to mention, in light of the discussion above, was that Starfleet Command was plenty leery about Picard's continued service after his very brief assimilation by the Borg. They tried to sideline him in one of the films rather than have him join another battle against the Borg, just in case. So having reservations about Seven is pretty much in-keeping with that. Icheb is the outlier there, but Seven did say that Janeway fought her corner but that Seven herself decided not to fight for it and chose another path. It isn't much of a reach to suggest that Janeway continued that battle on Icheb's behalf - and that Icheb was probably easier for Starfleet to swallow, given his youth and history (as far as I recall, he was never really a full member of the Collective?), than Seven, who was Borg for so very long - and still identifies by her Borg designation.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Llywela

[paigow]

8 hours ago, aemom said:

If you feel responsible for your mother's death, there is a part of you that is always scared that you will again become responsible for the death of someone you deeply care for in the future, so you prevent such a scenario from ever happening. 

Picard & Bob Jack Crusher were bros... Wesley always hated Picard until that alien tried to kidnap Jeremy.. eventually, Picard started hitting on Bev... not messed up at all...

Edited May 1, 2022 by paigow

[salaydouk]

3 hours ago, Llywela said:

Yes, I'm sure. Q flat out told Picard that he still has a synth body because General Picard was also a synth. They are in the bodies of their Confederation doubles, that's why Seven has been running around without her implants all season.

Everyone has been predicting Rios staying in the past for half the season now. I still desperately hope he won't, but if he does...that also leaves a gaping hole in the regular timeline, if somehow everyone else goes back (which has to be via Q now, there is no other way, with La Sirena gone) and Stargazer suddenly no longer has a captain - or a visiting consultant, both of whom were standing right there on the bridge a second earlier. But surely they have to go back to before the self-destruct, because otherwise all those ships and their crews will be destroyed. And if they take the Borg ship out with them, that undermines the central lesson of the season, which seems to be to not make decisions rooted in fear.

Also, the thing that annoyed me most in this episode was characters - okay, mostly Picard - magically knowing things they shouldn't know. Picard knowing Theresa and Ricardo's names, for instance, when he never actually met them before, he was unconscious the whole time they were at the clinic with him. And his lack of reaction to La Sirena taking off, when he hadn't been there for the confrontation with Queen Jurati so had no way of knowing she'd taken herself out of the fight - he should have been horrified, believing they had lost, that she was setting off to destroy Renee's mission, as planned.

Darn it.. I either missed that or forgot it... the latter being the most likely though so going to have re-watch that set of scenes again.  Darn it again! 

Agreed, I don't want Rios left in the past either.  But if the central lesson of the season is not to make decisions rooted in fear.  Well bleep that is the story of the human race.  Why would Q care about humanity, and in particular Picard/Rios/Seven, making decisions rooted in fear? Also Q stated that he wanted to extract a Penance from Picard not provide a Lesson and all that was predicated on him still having enough power to marionette everyone around - since he can't or for now can't, how can he achieve what he originally wanted? ( I am also still trying to figure out how he was able to make people think he was FBI without his powers so he could walk into an FBI building to answer Guinan's summons and how he even knew where she was without his power. But that thought belongs in that episodes comments.)   

I am left wondering if the Borg Ship coming through the space/time rift has collected something or collected a Q while in human form that has adversely affected the Continuum. That Q was sent to collect whatever it is and before he got there it was blown up by Picard's self destruct order.   But the temporal mechanics on how _that_ would work really makes my head spin...

Edited April 30, 2022 by salaydouk

[millennium]

Poor young Picard.   He must think his maman is Flo from Progressive.

[WalrusGirl]

On 4/30/2022 at 2:40 PM, marinw said:

So when Robert gets home from boarding school (if that's where he was) what would Maurice choose to tell Robert about his Mom's death? In "Family" Robert says that it was his job to look after Jean-Luc. Because Mom wasn't around and Dad was running the vineyard? This looking-after would turn into bullying.

Presumably Dad entirely leaves out that Jean-Luc let her out that night. I mean, it really wasn’t a child’s fault (though *obviously* that kind of guilt would be…wow); Mom could have easily hung herself while locked in that room anyway, without being out and about (and good grief, that would have been kinder and far more conscionable as a parent than giving into the urge *after* convincing your kid to unlock the door, so they’ll always feel like they allowed for your death), and if Dad was worried about her hurting herself, a) he or some other adult should have had actual eyes on her all night, or stripped the room of anything she could use for that purpose, which he had not, and b) Dad left the key to the bedroom literally right outside the bedroom and poorly hidden. Not saying it’s Dad’s fault either, but he was an adult not handling it perfectly, so it’s certainly not the child’s fault, who’s a) a child, and b) has no understanding of what’s really going on or of concern. But Robert wouldn’t have had to know the detail that she’d been locked in a room to wonder how she got elsewhere to take her life to start with. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[millennium]

I was surprised Picard said "hung herself" vs. "hanged herself."

I find it ridiculous that a woman of the 24th century should be so plagued by depression that she commits suicide.  Unless Baltar had some strong religious reasons to forbid medication or medical treatment in his family, that woman should have had a long and fulfilling life.   McCoy would have licked her depression with a hypospray.

On the other hand, they apparently haven't been able to cure male pattern baldness in the 24th century either.

How did Picard get through Star Fleet's presumably rigorous psych evaluations without ever addressing the fact that his mother killed herself and that he (though innocently) enabled it?