Posts Tagged ‘Star Trek’
They just never learn their lesson, do they? They killed Picard to bring back Picard, they killed Data to bring back Data, they killed Q to bring back Q. This nonsensical wheel just never stops spinning. This is almost as bad as babbling about “Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV” and thinking this means you are supersmart somehow.
But let’s begin. I was kind of scared and sort of had to force myself to watch this, because I didn’t want it to suck.
btw: Why did the Borg need to steal Picard’s body to steal a DNA sample they themselves added to Picard? Shouldn’t they, as the origin/creator of that DNA, have had the DNA all along? Is anyone understanding what I’m talking about? Do you now what I mean? Am I making myself clear here? The Borg can clone people and whatnot, they just could have made a thousand Jack Crusher’s with the desired gene sequences.
A day before watching this episode, I saw this gif on Twitter, that shows the Enterprise flying through the Death Star trench and blow it up. You don’t need to make a fake gif for that anymore.
Where was I? Ah yeah. So did it suck? Well, it wasn’t as bad as I feared, but it wasn’t as good as I hoped either. So maybe this still counts as the best possible outcome? I know I sound like a broken record by pointing out that this is still Shakespeare compared to the first 2 Seasons and I hate repeating this, but that’s just where we are at.
I guess my biggest problem with this is, that it’s pretty much a redo. It leaves them in the same spot they already were in at the end of All Good Things. It’s just less original this time. I heard them say this mantra, that they wanted this to be the Star Trek VI sendoff for the TNG crew, this crew never got due to Nemesis being bad. After seeing this, I can only say they failed at least at that goal. Star Trek VI wasn’t a redo of a previous plot that had already happened and left the crew in a largely identical scene, we already saw them in. Star Trek VI was a new original adventure, that cleverly included some political beats from reality. STP Season 3 is nothing like that. And it’s not like that would have been impossible, there is just no creative force behind this, that would have been capable of achieving this.
While I definitely didn’t want Agnes to show up again, it’s still funny how they couldn’t even mention her. They clearly know themselves that none of this stuff was very good and acting as if it never happened was the best they could do to handle things. Geez.
How dumb was it of the Borg Queen, to call something assimilation (or even a better version of assimilation), that only worked while a signal was being sent. That’s such a huge step back from the original version of assimilation. Even while she had the whole fleet under her control, she didn’t even order some of those ships to protect the vital signal source. She left herself completely undefended and vulnerable. A truly all around terrible plan with terrible execution.
At least they resisted the temptation to kill anyone, I wasn’t so sure they would get this done, because they are definitely capable of doing the dumbest thing possible here, namely killing a TNG character in a show, that’s all about spending some more time with these characters, possibly for the last time. It would have been the last thing anyone would have wanted to see.
Seeing them all together in the end really felt good, it’s really insane how likeable all these people are, they really come across as one of the best friend groups ever. REALLY! While the camera might have lingered a little bit too long over the table at the end, the good mood, these characters portrayed, felt genuine and this made me happy in response. Most fans just wanted to see these people in a good place after all. So this show at least succeeded at that, which makes it much easier to remember this in a positive light.
Hopefully for the last time (sorry), I wanna drag out my conviction, that this seriously didn’t need to be 10 hours just to get to that. I think largely the same could have been achieved in 2-3 hours. 8 episodes/hours about Vadic amounted to little more than her just being a minor villain/pawn after all. They couldn’t even be bothered to elaborate on the floating head thing.
What’s left? The end is supposed to set up the much talked about Star Trek Legacy show and… good luck with that. Although, while I dislike Raffi (who would be on that show apparently – you maniacs), Seven does insanely well with everything she was given in this episode. I’m sure she would do more than just be a harsh Mistress who sends Jack Crusher to sit in a corner on his naughty stool. I’m just not sure if it would be worth suffering through Raffi for this. Oh and Jack Crusher seems to be alright as well. I’m sure he could do much more, if given the chance.
Before I go I should probably still mention that the D was the only ship in the fleet that had its lights on – which I very much appreciated. I guess all the other ships needed their juice to power all that Borg-like tech they added. That’s also why the D won, because they were the only ones who could see what they were doing (complete silence, someone coughs). What did you expect? Name it Star Trek Into Darkness and then not address this? No Sir!
So I guess my life is complete now. Since old Star Trek shows were the only thing I was ever an expert in and this is the final episode tied to any of that, there is nothing left for me to do except wait for death, like Picard did on his vineyard in the beginning of this show. :P I can’t even have a podcast about this, since everyone else has already done that. :D
PS: The thing that felt the most spot on for me in this entire episode, was when Dr. Crusher fires all the weapons during the Death Star trench run (okay that part was more like Death Star II reactor run). I always thought, ever since I saw the episode Conspiracy 30+ years ago, that her arc in that episode should have been escalated throughout the show. I’m of course talking about this scene, in which Rear Admiral Quinn just throws Worf (who everyone expects to be the tough guy) through the room, making him collapse immediately and then Dr. Crusher steps in with her lab coat on and immediately pulls a phaser on Quinn and shoots him until he’s down. In my head canon she was only wearing this lab coat outside of sickbay, so she could better hide all the weapons she was carrying. In my version of Star Trek 9 it wouldn’t have been Worf who pulled that purple space-bazooka, but Dr. Crusher and Worf just would have been confused over where she even got all these huge guns, them not even being Starfleet standard issue. I’m sure the writers didn’t think about anything along those lines when they added this to the show, but this is definitely the closest I will ever get to my fun and awesome ideas in one of the official shows. “A lot has happened in 20 years” she said when firing all the weapons and “fuck yeah” I thought.
PPS: President Walter Koenig didn’t give a second speech, I missed that. Don’t get me wrong, I DEFINITELY didn’t want the Star Wars ceremonial walk through the huge hall with all the extras (the trench run was enough), where only Worf doesn’t get a medal for some opaque reason, but a simple “good job guys – mission’s done” from Starfleet command wouldn’t have hurt.
Guys, I gotta be honest here: if I would have commandeered that shuttle, it might have flown past the D, but it would have stopped at the Defiant, BECAUSE THAT SHIP WAS BUILT TO FIGHT THE BORG, BITCHES. :D And I’m not getting tired to mention, that the Defiant at least has quantum torpedoes. And a cloak. Also, how funny would that have been?!? But yeah, ever since the painting of the D was shown in the first episode and such an emphasis was put on it, it was only a matter of time until it showed up. It simply had to.
One thing that stabbed me in the heart brutally, was Geordi, AS AN ENGINEER, saying that the D is still analog. You really don’t have to have a degree in Informatik/computer science/electrical engineering, to know what digital is. If there’s one thing those computers in the 24. century weren’t, then it’s analog. An engineer saying this, is like a sailor, who has never heard of a thing called water. Those writers, good lord. People alive today should know this stuff by heart. This might really be tied to the toxic mandates from the Kurtzman bros, who constantly say that sci-fi is not about the future, I don’t know. These people never would have come up with stuff like the holodeck and all the characters and stories that resulted from being creative and there would have been no elements such as Moriarty to copy/paste in the first place. It’s lame that no cool new sci-fi tech was invented in a sci-fi show for so long. The holodeck was almost 40 years ago.
That’s also why the Borg are always the answer and behind everything in every Season somehow. Because doing anything else would require creativity that no one who works there is interested in. There were like 4 major Borg episodes out of 178 episodes on TNG and 1 out of the 4 movies had them and now they reduced Picard to being exclusively about the Borg and that’s just it.
Also, I’m with Worf. The E is awesome. I also didn’t understand their cryptic remarks, why they couldn’t use the E. The last time I saw that ship in Nemesis, it was completely being rebuilt, so presumably it should be completely fine then. Or was that the problem, because it is already compatible to the new Borg system? I really didn’t get it and because of the way it was handled, they might not know either. They do that every so often on Kurtzman shows, where they quickly do away with stuff, they have never thought about and are therefore unable to explain themselves. This attitude bums me out.
They could scan human DNA in its entirety in the TNG days, so they definitely would have caught such changes. There are even episodes about the transporter storing everything about a person, so you’d always know precisely whether there was ANY difference or not. Remember the Dr. Pulaski episode in Season 2, with everyone getting old? They returned everyone to their younger selves, by using the transporter data, that was stored about everyone BEFORE they got sick.
Shapeshifters helping Borg? I don’t know man. So that head in Vadic’s hand was the Borg Queen then? Will Agnes’ “better Borg” return? I mean I don’t really wanna see her again, but dedicating all 3 Seasons of STP to the Borg means it would also suck if they acted as if it never happened. It’s their own damn fault. :P It would be really funny if Agnes showed up, leading even worse Borg. :D
That moment when they step on the bridge of the D was really emotional. I mean I don’t have the faintest clue what butterfly tears are, but I was about to cry something like that. :P
It’s funny that overall this is still the least nonsensical STP Season by far. I mean I don’t think Picard still hearing the Borg in First Contact needed any further explanation/elaboration, but at least it’s based upon stuff that happened in Star Trek. It was also clearly shown that the shapeshifters replaced transporter chiefs, so this checks out too. Kind of. I mean it’s still hard to believe that shapeshifters killed and replaced all transporter chiefs on all ships without anyone noticing all the dead bodies, that were clumsily stashed somewhere, but… at least it’s something that was kind of built up over the season. It didn’t come out of nowhere and it did fit together.
Seven becoming Captain simply because the former Captain got killed didn’t sit right with me honestly, but apparently many fans wanted her to become Captain, so… I’m sure they could have given her her own command without having to kill someone to make room, like this is some Klingon ship, but that’s Kurtzman bros for you. Kirk, Sisko, Picard, Janeway and the like never had to kill anybody to get a command. LAME!!! BORING!!! :P
When leaving the Titan, they spoke of needing a plan, but in the end they just get onboard the D and fly away. So I guess they’ll still develop that plan? In the final episode?
Anyway, did I already talk how moving the final scene was? Despite everything? Damn.
And no, this doesn’t excuse the terrible quality of prior Seasons, so don’t give me that argument, that we should be thankful for all the bad episodes, because otherwise we couldn’t have enjoyed this so much now. I can see that point, but this reasoning is still wrong.
Okay, I’m ready for the final ep and I’m hoping incessantly they can keep their momentum. It would make me really happy.
PS: I didn’t think it was dumb/unnecessary to point out that it was weird that Shelby of all people implemented/was in favor of Borg-like tech. Would the audience have gotten that without that remark? Probably, but them saying something that made complete sense and showed them being on top of things was way more important to me. That’s something this show lacked too desperately too many times.
Out of all the Season 3 episodes so far, I liked this one the most, because finally things seem to be moving along. Everything up until right now, felt like a holding action. They never should have struggled with Vadic for this long. This should have happened in 3×04, not in 3×08. For the first time, all of the TNG crew met each other face to face. Again, this isn’t something that should have happened at the end of the season. All of them should have teamed up much much earlier. Their interactions are the best part of this show after all.
It really makes me double down on my opinion from last time, that they could have cut whole episodes. Introducing a secret about Jack Crusher at the beginning of the Season, then adding nothing substantial to it for the whole Season and then, presumably, just doing a reveal at the end of the Season, isn’t good writing.
I also dislike those lines, that Jack’s whatever syndrome is something he inherited from Picard. Picard possessing whatever kind of “super-genes” that can give people superpowers, would seriously damage this character for me. Even after they already damaged him with all this android nonsense. Picard was never more and was never supposed to be more than some guy who is good at his job, because Starfleet trained him well and he worked hard and he managed to make good use of some opportunities that presented themselves to him.
Why do so many writers think, that these “chosen one” storylines are smart or desirable. Especially in this context. More often than not it just cheapens everything. Sadly the writing team behind Season 3 really seems to broadly subscribe to this crap. One of my favorite episodes, not just from TNG, but seriously from all Star Trek, is “The Drumhead“. It’s about Picard defending some random crew member, Simon Tarses. Picard doesn’t defend Tarses because he’s someone special, or because he owes him a favor or anything like that. No. He didn’t need to be someone special. The only reason, Picard defends this guy, the only reason Picard NEEDS to defend this guy, is that it’s the right thing to do. That’s it. That makes it so much more powerful, than Picard only doing that, because he’s his son or something.
That’s sadly no longer the ideology this show follows. This already rubbed me the wrong way back in 3×02, when Picard only decides to defend Jack Crusher, after Dr. Crusher shows up on the bridge and let’s him know that Jack is his son. To TNG Picard this would have made no difference whatsoever. He just wouldn’t have turned over someone to criminals. Period. “Star Trek: Picard” Picard would have let Simon Tarses go to jail or commit suicide in his desperation or whatever, because he wasn’t a relative. Stuff like that really bothers me. When I watched Star Trek shows as a kid, this is why I would have loved to join Starfleet – this is what made it palpable to me, why people would be proud to wear this uniform. This doesn’t make me feel this way at all. It also weirds me out, how someone could grow up watching Star Trek and now sees things this way. Especially in this context of Star Trek. It’s like they didn’t get it at all. They might have seen it, but they didn’t understand it. I just don’t get what’s supposed to be cooler or more desirable about this “Dark Trek” version of this universe. They clearly must think this is better, or else they wouldn’t have changed it. They obviously have complete creative freedom here and could have gone in any direction they wanted.
But yeah, otherwise this is the best ep of this entire series to me, so far. Brent Spiner is really great in it. This whole cast just still fits well together. Again, they should have leaned into this relatively early in the Season and not delay this for so long. Especially since this Season was supposed to be about the cast getting back together, I would have expected this to be more front and center.
Now I’m worried about the resolution to all the Jack Crusher red door stuff. I just don’t see how this is going to be something good. Especially with this also being tied to inheriting superpowers from Picard… Delaying any sort of reveal about this until the very end of the Season, also doesn’t exactly fill me with much confidence. If it doesn’t suck after all, this will be the first Season of STP I’ll actually rewatch.
After last episode ending with a relatively beautiful Star Trek moment, this week we are back with “the whole Federation” being evil/compromised again. Like it has been too many times already. It brings back painful memories of Season 1, in which the Romulans had infiltrated Starfleet. It’s really funny somehow. So many people working over at Starfleet HQ seem to be in the employ of anyone except Starfleet. :D Who knows at this point, how many secret plots were foiled, because members of one secret group coincidentally killed members of another secret group, while thinking they were just replacing regular Starfleet folks. :D
An organization, that was actually “working” like that, probably wouldn’t last long. It’s almost as bad as it’s with the Klingons, where everyone can become Captain, if they just kill the Captain. More often than not, that clearly wouldn’t lead to the best person/strategist being in command.
That moment with them sitting around the table was great. Because that’s what they actually used to do on TNG all the time.
“Daystrom visitors identify or LETHAL protocols will engage.” WTF?!? Lethal??? Why are the inventors of the stun setting using lethal options only these days? I feel like they at least should have explained such a significant paradigm shift. Everyone just acts like this is completely normal. Do their phasers even still have stun settings? Every time they shoot it kills or even vaporizes.
The Starfleets torture Riker. As it turns out the villain does the punching, but since “real” Starfleets are watching it without batting an eye, this makes no difference – they clearly aren’t bothered by this. So when Vadic shoots them, I felt nothing. In a way this is even worse, that they weren’t some of Vadic’s henchmen.
Ships being “beacons” now makes little sense. Those ships have to be able to be undetectable during secret missions and whatnot. If one couldn’t shut this stuff down, all opponents would use it too, not just Starfleet. Also, why wouldn’t someone like Shaw, who’s the Captain and an engineer, know all about this? It makes him look really dumb. All of these writing problems are self-inflicted wounds, which could have been dodged easily.
Best part of this Season is, that Picard feels a lot more like Picard again. Maybe PS really needed the rest of the cast to remember who Picard was. I have this feeling a lot less, that I’m just watching PS, not Picard. Dr. Crusher is probably my favorite out of the bunch. She always is the one who does the smart things, like doing an autopsy on the shapeshifters to learn some helpful information. It’s like no one else even thought about this.
But let’s not forget that 90% of what’s good here, is the music. :P You can glue pretty much anything between the music from the Nicholas Meyer era of Trek and the First Contact theme and it will still feel 10 times better than it actually is. :P
Overall I’m really trying to like this, but some obstacles keep coming, many story beats only serve as excuses to show old stuff. Of course Geordi is the head of a starship museum (so you can see ships from previous Trek), of course the next clue is in a storage facility (that will have items from previous Trek) and once they find the clue it’s literally something from previous Trek. It’s like this show has a studio mandate that they have to show references every 5-10 seconds or something.
How weird is it though, that all these ships that seem to be perfectly alright, are “archived” in such a museum, when some others just get a refit. It’s especially weird in the case of a ship like the Defiant. It’s more modern than the Titan in at least some ways. While the Titan is still equipped with photon torpedoes, the Defiant already had quantum torpedoes (much, much more firepower) and yet it’s the Defiant which landed in a museum?!? The Defiant even had a cloak, although I can see how one might spin this, by saying they had to give that one back or something.
Outside of this it’s kind of alright. There were some scenes which weren’t boring to watch and almost exciting. With the previous STP seasons some ~60 min episodes could feel like they were 6 hours long.
In 3×07 they have a shapeshifter trying to impersonate Tuvok and all I could think the entire time was: why bother? When just talking about a viewscreen, they could just display a hologram of anyone anyway. Everyone could do that all the time, shapeshifter or not.
Odo looked the way he looked, because he copied the face of the scientist, who was experimenting on him, as best he could. So why does Vadic look the way she looks? *ding* *ding* *ding* Correct. Because Vadic copied the face of the scientist, who was experimenting on her. All shapeshifters have to have the exact identical backstory. There can’t be a difference in their origin stories or anything. They must have that copy/paste thing every 10 seconds or so. How hard would it have been, to do something original here?!? Seriously. Does it ruin the whole show? Maybe not. Does this mean it’s as bad as the previous seasons? No. Is this lazy as fuck and could have been avoided easily? YEEEEESSSSS.
Another thing I can’t stop thinking about, is how we are 7/10 eps through the entire season and not much happened. They are just on the Titan with Jack Crusher and are struggling with Vadic. That has been the whole show so far. Of course there are more details and they keep meeting members of the old TNG crew, but as far as broad strokes are concerned, that’s seriously it. What’s up with Jack Crusher, has been the mystery from the beginning and nothing substantial has been learned. They really didn’t manage to have many layers to this, where more and more is slowly uncovered throughout the season. They are ultimately doing that thing again, where they introduce a mystery at the beginning and then just dump the resolution at the end. That’s not very satisfying and makes me think that they could have cut whole episodes – hopefully leaving the entertaining bits and thus giving those much more focus.
I’m also disliking how they are killing and bringing back Data. That’s not cool. Good stories should have the same characters die only once max. There are only very few exceptions, where a deviation from that worked really well. Especially when they want it to be this epic dramatic/emotional scene each time. That’s bad writing.
Somewhere in all of this, is a really alright, entertaining 2 hour movie.
PS: If I was in Starfleet and someone would give me the order to attack/shoot/whatever the likes of Picard/Kirk & Co., the only people I might shoot would be the ones who gave that order. It would be obvious to me that clearly they would be the villains. This should be an unwritten law in Starfleet, if someone orders you to attack Picard, take THEM down!
Why are all STP flashbacks taking place in bars with them imbibing (too much) booze? Maybe all these violin sessions and poetry readings on TNG could be awkward as hell at times, but at least they had some variety. But then again, it fits perfectly in their bleak narrative of this future – all people have left is doing drugs & booze.
In this episode they have to save as much energy as possible, as they are about to crash into a “gravity well” and almost everything besides life support is disabled. So what does Picard do? He loads up a holodeck program. Because this definitely doesn’t eat up any energy. And it’s a holodeck program of a bar no less (of course it’s not the TNG version of 10 forward), when they could be sitting and drinking anywhere on the ship without using up energy for this. Sometimes such writing gives me a slight ChatGPT vibe.
Normally everyone on this show is shooting around as if it’s a shooting gallery, but when Seven of Nine is attacked by the shapeshifting saboteur, she is (for the first time) holding her fire, so the saboteur can escape safely after murdering a crew member. The one time it would have been understandable to fire all over the place…
Furthermore, during this crisis, no one really works on resolving/addressing it in any way for the longest time. Picard is just in the holo-bar drinking and talking about unimportant fluff. Did they ever do that on TNG? During a crisis they would just sit around and drink and wait for death without taking any action?
We also learn that Shaw hates Picard so much because of Wolf 359, something that happened like 30+ years ago. That’s a long time to hold a grudge against someone who was just a victim himself. Even 40 years ago it was standard for Starfleet to have therapists on board like Deanna Troi on the Enterprise D or Ezri Dax on DS9. So why are there all these untreated people like Shaw, who never received any of the help they clearly needed? They are literally sitting in a holodeck while he goes off. He could just consult a holographic therapist and tell no one. People like that have so many options in that time period, they wouldn’t even have to wait until an appointment with a flesh & blood therapist becomes available. They really have no sense of how such a post-scarcity society would actually be like. Or they do not have that sense anymore, weirdly enough they understood this better in the past. This is regression, not progress.
Later on, Dr. Crusher, the medical doctor, figures out how to utilize the space anomaly to supply the ship with energy. Not a science officer or anyone like that. No one else was looking into this. Everyone else was cool with just waiting for death. What a crew the Titan has. Dr. Crusher didn’t just have to come up with the idea, she also has to convince Riker. Riker, who was always the man of action is now the obstacle. He doesn’t even present an alternative plan or anything – at least not at first. It takes a while for him to finally come around and start doing his job – he really seemed to care more about leaving a goodbye message to Deanna than actually returning to her alive. That’s so bizarre.
Once they finally start doing something about their situation, the episode starts getting much better. If the whole show would have been like this, this actually would have been alright. A tighter cut could have worked wonders here. Maybe this didn’t need to be 10 eps a season and 6-8 would have been even better.
Another big plus for this ep was, that the audience didn’t have to suffer through more Raffi scenes. Oh and this one flashback scene with Picard being unintentionally cruel to his son in that bar earned its emotions. That much felt put together well. This might be a first for this show.
At some point the Shrike decides to go after the Titan into the nebula, but they drop their portal gun before they do. Why? The only reason seems to be that the Shrike won’t be able to keep using it against the Titan in the future.
In any case, the episode ends well and I actually wanna see what’s going to happen now. Yay!
PS: True to its title, the show remains super dark, in one scene nothing is visible except Picard’s face and the rest is pitch black. The effects do look good in general though.
This episode might have been the least bad so far, although there are, of course, still some problems with it, besides the stuff that is wrong with STP in general.
I don’t dig that family drama BS this show leans into, because that’s not something TNG (nor Star Trek overall) was ever about, but at least they gave Dr. Crusher some dialog this time. Her lines also make more sense than what STP usually delivers. She’s not talking about the stars and how they touch her soul and the spirits of the universe while lighting a candle or something equally idiotic, what she says is more along the lines of something an actual person might actually say. I mean there is still that weird element to it, that this is supposed to have happened 20 years ago, when this dude is more like 35, but whatever.
When Dr. Crusher starts helping people, the ship’s medical doctor doesn’t want her to, because “she doesn’t have time to explain what changed in the last 20 years”, although Dr. Crusher spent her time on a ship that seemed to have the same tech level the Titan has. Why would this doctor even assume, that Crusher isn’t up to date? She doesn’t even know her. Maybe this much is just a nitpick, but this stuff keeps adding up, you know.
What bothered me the most in this episode, was clearly the “fight” between Riker and Picard on the bridge. I’m not even talking about them doing this out in the open in front of the entire bridge crew – which by itself was a big no-no in the TNG era – no, it was that Picard kind of convinces Riker to follow his idea and when it doesn’t work out, Riker blames Picard and says it’s his fault etc… On TNG however, the Captain was always the one responsible. Even if someone else tried to convince the Captain of something, the buck always stopped there. He didn’t have to do what Picard wanted him to do. But he did, what made it his own choice, no matter where the initial idea might have come from. That’s the burden of command. It’s really tough to watch these legends go against everything they stood for for their entire lives.
It’s also dumb how they keep sending people of the bridge all the time. First Seven, then Riker and Picard, then… They probably think this comes off as dramatic, but they overused it so much already it’s just stupid and annoying. And this is only episode 3.
So what else happened? They brought the shapeshifters from DS9 back. They are really running out of things to reuse from earlier Trek. I wonder if this means someone from DS9 is going to show up as well. They wanted to have Sisko back in Season 2, but that didn’t work out because behind the scenes chaos, so maybe they’ll try to stuff him in here? I sincerely hope not, I don’t want that touched. They should do nothing with DS9 except maybe remaster all the episodes.
I also didn’t like how the enemy uses their portal gun several times and the Titan falls for it each time. Why are none of these people still smart? I get it that they have to show this once, but after that? The Titan just keeps flying straight at the portals, they don’t even try to do anything.
Whatever became of quantum torpedoes? The Titan only has photon torpedoes. That’s not a problem or anything, I’m just wondering about it. I wouldn’t expect a newer ship to have older weapons. I guess the reason is probably, that this is mostly a rip off of Wrath of Khan, an era in which they only had photon torpedoes and quantum torpedoes were an invention of the TNG era… something this show definitely isn’t about. :P
Poor Worf, being teamed up with Raffi. At this point my mind just zones out when she’s on screen. Laris actually was an intelligence officer and way more interesting and competent, therefore they picked Raffi to do all the spy stuff. Somewhere Spock is lifting an eyebrow to this and says “illogical”. :P
In any case, if the show keeps going like this, it’ll be way more watchable than any of the previous seasons/episodes. So I’m rooting hard for that to be the case. Hoping against hope or however that goes.
“Medicine isn’t free.” – Star Trek: Picard
Ah yes, who doesn’t remember all the times Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway or Archer delivered something e.g. to a planet and then charged everyone an arm and a leg. :D
Anyways, Dr. Crusher hasn’t spoken to Picard for so long, she doesn’t even know he died a few seasons back. Weird, I don’t remember that their relationship was so bad, that they weren’t even talking to each other. Maybe the show will still explain that? btw: When people die and robots replace them, it raises some interesting questions. It’s good that they have ships that can take people to other planets, because the housing market must be tight when you can just have a potentially immortal robot inherit everything forever. What an interesting conundrum. Maybe that’s why Raffi had to live in a trailer back in Season 1! :P
Also, how is it possible that every other jerk has more powerful ships than the Federation? Where do they get those? They must be so rich in order to afford them. When the Federation with hundreds of planets in it can’t. I suddenly remember Star Trek: Picard Season 1, during which Riker shows up with an entire fleet of “the most powerful ship Starfleet has ever built” and this time they ship out with a “neo constitution class” vessel that’s apparently a weak exploratory vessel. Why would you go from this to that and what became of these super-powerful ships?
When the Titan is being threatened by a criminal and they claim Starfleet has no jurisdiction there, no one thinks about pointing out that neither does a criminal. Why don’t they just let Picard do Picard things.
In the end Picard almost does something Picard would do, but then it’s reduced to being about that guy being maybe his son – so in order for Starfleet to do the right thing and uphold their values (kind of), you better be related to someone important. TNG Picard would have died for whomever, for whatever rando, it wouldn’t have mattered. He only cared about doing the right thing, not who was the recipient. Oh and I don’t remember Dr. Cusher having another kid ~35 years ago, which would have been during the show, right? Wonder if they’ll retcon this happening during the one season she wasn’t on the ship.
I also gotta say, they just have a hard-on on this show for beheadings. When Worf showed up, I thought for a moment it might be Elnor (honest, I don’t even remember what became of him), because he was beheading people left and right and that was Elnor’s signature move (and it even kind of would have made sense since between seasons/offscreen Raffi and Elnor apparently became close), but then that’s how they chose to (re-)introduce Worf. There would have been a thousand better, more Trek-like ways to do it. Just like the rest he looks really good and doesn’t need such silly stunts.
Oh yeah, I wish people would stop writing all villains as bizarre weirdos and that’s why the audience should be afraid of them. I guess it’s alright if Ferengi act this way, but everyone else?
When Dr. Crusher shows up on the bridge in the end, she doesn’t say a single word…
The fenris rangers, Seven belonged to at some point, are shown to be corrupt as well in this ep. How wonderful. The only thing you can trust in this world, is that every place will have grimdark lighting.
In one scene, I swear, Picard installs tech to prevent them from being beamed out of the ship against their will. Later they want to be beamed out and it doesn’t work – obviously because of the tech Picard just installed to prevent this and it takes them some time to realize this. How did this take them any time to figure this out? The audience is way ahead of the characters. This shouldn’t be happening. Why would you write a scene in such a way, that it makes your main characters look stupid? I just don’t get it.
But overall nothing much happens the entire ep. The first one ends with the big bad ship showing up and this whole second ep takes place right in this situation from start to finish.
PS: Saw the weirdest thing, the set with the lights on! They do have them! Incredible!
We’ve all been afraid for a while, but the moment has finally come: Star Trek: Picard Season 3 is here. But it’s not all bad – there is light at the end of this tunnel, they said numerous times it would be the final season, so… Yay! I was always a believer in “Better a horrible end than endless horror.”. So why talk about it? Especially since there already are really good reviews of it available?
The answer obviously is, that clearly no one else is nearly as qualified, since I made 100% Picard PERFECT SCORE on a random quiz I stumbled upon a couple of days back. :P
Impressive, right? :P
But enough of this and let’s finally get into it. The best new character STP added, was clearly Laris. She’s really likeable and the actress is really good too. The worst new character BY FAR, that STP added, is Raffi. So which character does this show get rid of right away and which character does the show keep for more involvement? CORRECT: They immediately do away with Laris (doesn’t look like she will play a major role in this) and shove in Raffi. FUCK YOU VIEWER.
The show is hardly using any new/own/original music this season, instead they decided to completely rely on music from the Nicholas Meyer era or First Contact. This didn’t work for me, since this is only supposed to bring unearned emotions into this. It’s fake. These older/more original Trek outings created these positive emotions and connected them with this music. So if people feel something now, hearing this, they only do because of these other Trek outings and not because of STP itself. This show doesn’t dare to create something on its own, that people will love without needing the good will of all that other stuff. I mean a lot of stuff is trying to manipulate the audience, of course, but it’s so transparent here what they are trying to do and it’s not working and I don’t appreciate the attempt either. Wouldn’t it be supercool, if people who had never even heard of TNG, could watch this and love these characters and this story? Just like it happened for so many people back when TNG was on?
So was this episode really that bad? No, not really, except for some minor problems maybe. But why be negative about it then? Because I’ve seen the first 2 STP seasons. They always start with an okay episode that could go in any direction and then the most horrible/disappointing/frustrating things ever happen. Sure, the Batman & Robin bro is supposedly no longer running the show completely, but the other dude who does it now, co-wrote season 2, so… I would really like to stay positive about it, but it makes me feel stupid, because that’s only possible by completely ignoring the first 2 seasons of this. My brain just doesn’t work this way, I can’t act as if this never existed. My memory just isn’t as bad as this show needs it to be. The best thing I can say about this, is that I hope incessantly to be completely wrong and that they actually managed to give this crew the proper sendoff this time they were denied back when Nemesis came out. Fingers crossed!
For what it’s worth, I liked Riker in this, he actually appeared to be like the character from the show TNG again. Jonathan Frakes definitely is trying and doesn’t just want to phone it in, this much alone makes it better. Dr. Crusher looked really good too, which is why it’s extra weird that they tried to hide her in the dark. She looked awesome, what’s wrong with you people? But she was in it so briefly (she’s in a Star Wars fight against Star Wars aliens in the beginning), that it’s impossible to say how that’s going to go (character-wise).
It’s really off-putting what some parts of some fandoms have become, with them being nothing but “Have you seen this? Do you remember this? Member this??? I member this!!! I recognize this from the TV!!!”. What’s even the point of all this. There is hardly a screen in this show that doesn’t just show objects from previous things, completely out of context and with no purpose to any of it whatsoever. It’s like some weird form of porn that makes me feel uncomfortable. It’s such a weird form of fandom, wanting absolutely nothing else out of a show than just this. None of this works for me or does anything for me. Maybe there was some mild interest in me, wanting to know what became of the Enterprise E, but of course that’s not a question this show has answered (so far).
I don’t even understand how we ended up here. There is so much good TV right now. I just finished watching “Fleishman Is in Trouble” and that show was awesome. I was really engaged all throughout. I never considered a future in which I would get my Star Trek fix from shows like The Boys or For All Mankind, but not from Star Trek.
Whatever the case may be, I’ll just have to do this 9 more times! Yay! :D I’ll be back for 3×02. Probably. I think.
PS: I can’t believe I almost forgot to mention the Fallout music they are playing in the beginning. WTF. Hard flashbacks from the wasteland. And yes I do know Fallout also only used this existing music. But that’s how those songs are known to people like me.
PPS: The phonograph, Picard is using to listen to his records, looks like something he stole from Tron, with its neon lights and all… Modifications like that make stuff never look more futuristic but always more silly.
The Orville started again and it’s pretty good – actually it felt better than previous Seasons, maybe they just managed to refine their formula after 2 Seasons and are really coming into their own. I’ve read that this is supposedly the final Season, so that part’s sad, but all the more reason to enjoy it then. They got a worthy problem to deal with in their Season opener and it’s so great to experience this. I read Season 3 has fewer episodes, but the individual episodes are longer, which would result in the same runtime. If that’s true they clearly made the most out of it, this episode seemed to benefit from its length.
Story beats didn’t have to be rushed and some more important scenes could be allowed to breathe a little bit. Maybe that’s really why The Orville feels more like original Trek, because there isn’t this mandate that stuff has to explode every 5 seconds. The funny part about this is, that without all these forced emotional moments, the emotions in this felt much more earned and sincere. I understood what everyone was going through and it made sense. On top of all this, they had to introduce a new character (who is clearly motivated to put in some good work), which worked out really well. She was involved in the main story of the episode, in a way that felt completely natural.
It’s interesting how they almost completely dropped their comedic bits and the show didn’t suffer at all from it, the opposite. There is this fluid CGI character and even he is just a normal member of the crew now, not just the comic relief. Really glad this show is back and still running!
And oh yeah, it released the same day as Strange New Worlds 1×05 so I watched these 2 shows back to back (almost like I was once watching TNG and DS9 back to back). Giving each episode to 2 fresh new writers keeps being a winning formula, let’s hope nothing will break their streak. It’s another solid episode. I don’t think I have anything to bitch and moan about here. :P
This episode is more on the side of being an outright comedy episode (weird that The Orville, which started as more of a comedy, was serious today – equilibrium?) and as we all know, Star Trek didn’t historically have the best track record of jokes landing right. Here it mostly works, on account of the cast being this charming. They manage to sell the silly parts. But despite that, they still got some solid Star Trek themes in there. I really liked everything Pike had to say at the conference table, to the potentially new Federation members. See? Star Trek fans are not that complicated. That’s all that needs to be in there to please them. Pike is seriously great in this.
But so is Nurse Chapel. Seriously great casting. She can make every scene she’s in better. This cast doesn’t seem to have a weak link. I just hope they won’t start relying on that fact too much. Their stories should stand up without having to be saved by the charm of these actors. If they were to go down that road, I don’t think that would end well. In any case, I like that show now. After 4 good episodes, I really want to watch this now. Just remembered the Aenar character wasn’t in this episode. Makes sense though, the episode was “full” the way it was, better to leave a character out, than to stuff them in needlessly. With them focusing on different characters each episode, they can do everyone justice anyway (hopefully).
The aliens they encounter this time fly away in the end with what really looks like a Bajoran lightship. Don’t know if that was intentional. There have been so many ship types over the years, that this might be a coincidence. The aliens are definitely not Bajoran in any case.
So yeah, running into appropriately weird/interesting aliens, Vulcan mysticism, adventures on the ship, cool crew… All of this could have been on another ST show, it just has better effects. It’s also not stupid or insulting, which is so refreshing. :D
This one came across like the best episode of STSNW by far, out of the small number of 4 eps released to date. It’s also a super good example, how things can be similar in tone to other stuff, without being an outright, mere copy of it. This episode is obviously similar to the TOS episode Balance of Terror and yet it doesn’t just copy it in an ignorant, much worse way, like other current Trek shows are usually doing it.
I enjoyed it so much, I can actually imagine watching this episode again. Great job all around. Feels like a short movie.
Crisis strikes the Enterprise and all the crew members we have met so far, are spread throughout the ship and they all have to deal with their respective problems. I like how this makes everything feel more palpable, it’s like they also showed the people on the planet in the comet episode. It’s again the opposite of what Picard was doing, where so many plot threads were isolated from each other. Doing it like this is so much better storytelling.
PS: One of the screens on the bridge reminds me just a little bit of Star Trek: Judgement Rites, this game too had such a screen, that would always show you if the shields were up and so on. It’s nice to see these screens, that actually display something and they are not all mindless blinking lights and the like.
PPS: I really liked this little speech the chief engineer gave, how pacifism is not passivity and I couldn’t agree more. But then again, his entire exchange with Uhura was pretty strong. For once it was appropriate to play the Star Trek theme.
From a certain angle, it’s really hard to watch this, without being (also) super cynical about this. Episodes 2 and 3 of this show have been perfectly okay Star Trek adventures, hiring writers who don’t suck were clearly all it took to make this happen – just as I’ve always thought. On the other hand, this inevitably has to mean, that they deliberately decided to make other shows like Picard this bad (and that the company behind them is cool with this).
It’s like they have their own version of “Revenge of the Jocks” going, where they go out of their way to stick it to the nerds they always hated so much and they missed bullying them ever since leaving high school. It’s all just so bizarre. For example, so far each SNW ep had different writers and yet they managed to keep it consistent. Characters will remember what was said the episode before. On Picard however, a show that was supposedly planned out by the same people, Soong will go to a committee to beg for money, because he’s broke, in one episode and in the next he’ll become a big time donor to an expensive space program. WITH WHAT MONEY? It’s like everyone working on that show had dementia or something.
But not on Strange New Worlds, apparently they have rediscovered the strange, futuristic technique of talking to each other and exchanging information.
The actual episode is, again, fine. So far they have cultivated this style of narration, in which an episode’s story is also somehow tied to specific characters and the audience learns more about those specific characters at the same time. It might be simple or whatnot, but so far it’s effective and it just works. I think I like all the characters, I only have problems with seeing this new guy as Spock. But it is what it is. I mean this is really as far as they are able to go. Clearly.
Still looking forward to the next episode.
Lately I saw those popular jocks strutting around again, trying to spread silly ideas like people who don’t applaud current Trek are against change and loving this unconditionally is being pro change. So if this is indeed this big change, then why are they usually so reliant on major classic character names such as Kirk, Spock, Picard, Pike […] and why is next to every episode essentially them saying look here, communicators, phasers, Enterprise, tribbles, Pike, Dixon Hill, Spock, Kirk, Uhura, ten forward, Nurse Chapel, warp, transporter, Borg, Gary Seven, Soong, Data, Khan, […] – you get the idea. It’s literally just throwing every buzz word someone might have heard of in there. Usually at random, of course. It’s like an algorithm randomly throws out those words and this is the next episode then.
On ~178 episodes of TNG they mentioned the name Kirk maybe in 2 episodes. It was just a nod to the audience, that this indeed happened, that this is canon and then they just went on with their own, NEW adventures. Clearly it’s not about change at all, otherwise they wouldn’t rely constantly on throwing in references to older shows. Change was, when TNG (which featured new characters, not just new actors in the same roles) added the holodeck, a technology that made complete sense in the context of Star Trek and didn’t exist before on TOS. What new ideas did, for example Star Trek: Picard, add to the Trek canon/lore, that didn’t exist before? Exactly. It mostly just revealed that they themselves had no idea of Trek, because they only threw in those words, without knowing their proper context. Oh, they invented that weird sex-toy thingie in Season 1. Remember that? What do people think was the better and smarter addition to Star Trek – TNG’s holodeck, or Picard’s sex-toy? Exactly… How pathetic is it, to applaud that “change”?
In any case, while I wasn’t all that impressed with the first episode last week (given their talks about ringing phones and seeing lights in the sky enabling people to skip hundreds of years of technology…), this week it took quite the turn for me. You could really tell instantly, that this episode wasn’t written by the Batman & Robin dudebro. This entire episode had like 1 big miss for me and that was their continued insistence on non-Trek nonsense like “fate”. Obviously actual Star Trek is always committed to reason and science and sees and judges everything through those lenses. So even if they don’t have their shittiest writers on the job, this seems to be some sort of mandate almost, to ignore those tenets of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek in any case.
I’m shocked to say that almost the entire rest of the episode was closer to Star Trek, than anything that had that brand name on it, since Enterprise went off the air 20 years ago.
A comet threatens to hit a planet and thus will kill all the people on it. They even show those people, which was really neat, so they are not just some abstract idea. Obviously Enterprise has to stop it and naturally there are some obstacles in the way. That’s the core of this episode. That’s a total Star Trek premise. Was that really so hard? And they are also not resorting to horrible violence and beheading people, nor are they ripping peoples eyes out. That’s a first for current Trek. No one could have foreseen, that you would have to say this one day about Star Trek of all things. Usually Team Kurtzman can’t control their bloodthirst and just give in to their deepest, darkest desires.
Pretty much everything else I haven’t mentioned yet was pretty okay. If they can actually hold this level (meaning all of the Kurtzman bros would have to permanently hand this off to other writers), I will definitely keep watching this.
The crew interactions were mostly upbeat and people who got some more screentime already, such as Uhura, are likeable and make sense. I had almost forgotten how it feels to see normal people on current Trek, who aren’t on drugs and suffer from all kinds of mental illnesses and are – of course – also incompetent. They seem to be selling the blind guy from the Andorian homeworld (the people who were first introduced on Enterprise) as some sort of Marvel’s Daredevil, which these people weren’t before (duh), but otherwise he seems well played. He made a good first impression in any case. Pike is a little bit too informal for my taste, but it is what it is. Those are really only very minor things.
I really wanna see the next episode now, to find out if they can hold this level or if it was just a fluke.
Without looking it up, I can immediately tell that the Batman & Robin bro has his fingerprints all over this. When something claims to be a Star Trek science fiction show, which was supposed to be all reason and science, but instead they are talking about “vision” and “fate”, it’s clear this can only go down one path. But what else could the same group of people ever deliver? There is no will/capability to improve/change anything.
Right at the start Pike’s communicator™ beeps and the other Captain says “the phone rings”. Being entirely unwilling to do science-fiction, on a show that’s in the future on a spaceship can only lead to disaster. Every. Single. Time.
Both Pike and Spock are introduced with a woman in bed, so the message is that even pussy can’t keep them off the Enterprise. Even in the Kirk era they handled this more delicately. :D This is literally a message in this episode. :P
So the thing in this episode is, that a society built a warp-weapon. The explanation is, that this planet saw the lights of the Discovery Season 2 Finale fight in the sky and “reverse-engineered” (!) this technology from… seeing lights… WTF. Okay. This is what happens if people who hate science-fiction and have no imagination write such a show. It would have been so easy to say instead, that debris from one of the ships crashed on that planet and they used that to build this weapon. Self-inflicted wounds.
During the entire episode Pike points out several times, how super classified the STD S2 Finale is, but then at some point he just openly blabs about it, unconcerned who hears it. There is this certain recklessness that seems to be in most characters. I don’t know if they think this is cool or something. But it’s normal now, that hardly any of these people behave like professionals.
Pike does get the 2 groups to use diplomacy in the end, but he does so by presenting the Enterprise and telling everyone he has much more firepower, so ultimately he uses force – which is probably the closest these people are able to get to the Star Trek idea. Use some diplomacy, fine, but there has to be at least some violence somewhere in the mix.
This went about as well as one could expect it to. The same ingredients make the same taste, no matter which direction one stirs.
To top things off, naturally Pike regularly has visions of his impending doom. btw: When they start the mission, Pike speaks about nobody dying and so on – why would you talk like that on some routine mission? This should freak the crew out more, than not mentioning crazy stuff like this.
Right at the start the watcher gives the group equipment which is supposed to work “like their tricorders” which would have been unnecessary, if those people were professional Starfleet Officers, who wouldn’t just leave their ship before taking the equipment they desperately need to complete their mission. It’s just the fate of all of humanity that’s at stake here after all…
Then Picard leaves with the watcher and they are like “What the hell is he doing?!?”. This must have been the first time I was feeling what the characters on this show were feeling. I’m asking myself this question most of the time watching this. Especially for a show called Picard, he isn’t usually doing all that much, most people come up with their own ideas and he’s not really leading them for the most part.
Rios, Raffi and Seven go to Brent Spiner’s lab and sabotage drones, which doesn’t tie into anything else and is a completely isolated plot thread. It’s not like anyone sees the drones and they never get close to the mission site. It feels like a throwaway idea, just to keep those characters busy, because they didn’t know what else to do with them. And they also needed the screentime. CBS is paying for ~45 min eps, so that’s what they have to deliver.
Brent Spiner just treats the figurehead of this whole endeavor like trash. Instead of standing up for herself, she let’s him do whatever he wants. He mentions his donations again, that he made with money he didn’t have (because all his funding was cut). She should have just thrown him out. Instead she let’s him walk around unsupervised during such a critical stage of their launch. Did they ever say which organization created this mission? I have no idea.
The watcher didn’t have to die (like Q and the story insists). The watcher wouldn’t have died, if they had just stopped Brent Spiner, who was unarmed, from leaving. I told them right away that this mistake would came back to haunt them. :P Why didn’t they listen? Spiner’s entire master plan is to accidentally run into Renée Picard and poison her with a handshake. His only backup plan were the drones, which they already destroyed. Nothing would have stopped the watcher from just punching him in the face instead, or use her weapon, whatever.
Picard and the watcher are completely alone on an empty set, a huge ground crew should be there. Especially during a launch. There is no security, no nothing. Apparently anyone can just show up there and go anywhere. What did Picard do with the alien body?
They never explained why the watcher just happens to look like Laris. Did they? Did I miss it? I’m not watching that twice. I really think they skipped this, which is pathetic. One random mystery without resolution follows the next.
We don’t even get to see what Renée Picard discovers, because the writers don’t know themselves, how that would have looked like. Just imagine First Contact would have ended without showing the Vulcans. That would have sucked so hard. But that’s how they handle it here, the whole thing the entire Season supposedly builds up to, happens off-camera. We get 2-3 sentences of dialog what she finds and that’s it.
Wil Wheaton (over-acting with the intensity of 10 combined William Shatners) shows up to recruit Soji to never appear on this show again (presumably) and claims that the travelers are behind the watchers, which really doesn’t seem to match the (admittedly vague) description of the group behind them. When John Byrne wrote and drew his comic Assignment: Earth, I’m almost certain that’s not what he had in mind. And not just because those watchers were an invention of TNG and didn’t exist yet during the creation of TOS. But how many times can you say, that they don’t care about the Trek lore. To hammer the ignorance home, they beam away at the end, when a traveler’s one defining quality was, to be able to travel without such technology (The Traveler had certain abilities, like the ability to act like “a lens which focuses thought”, which allowed him to alter space, time, and warp fields with the power of his mind.).
At the end, Q all of a sudden acts super nice and whatnot (and claims he just wanted to do Picard a favor), but he is literally the one who’s responsible for the death of the Laris lookalike (he claims she dies in every timeline, but what would even kill her, since without Q no one is even trying to stop the mission she protects). He is the one who hired Brent Spiner to mess with the Europa mission. Without Q’s interference, BS would have just been in his lab, working on a cure for Soji. But everyone on the show completely forgot about that. Whoever wrote this script, didn’t read the script for the other episode, or forgot all about it. It’s all so terrible.
Picard thankfully and finally asks Q WHY (he did all of this), but instead of answering this central and important question, he just lists some random nonsense, because the writers couldn’t think of a reason outside them having contracts for 3 Seasons of this. And they couldn’t have him say that. I would have enjoyed that bit of honesty though, if they would have dared to do it. Q goes on to add some more random nonsense like he’s going to die alone, but why would he necessarily, since he’s part of the Q continuum etc… Q says “you matter to me”, but again, no why in sight. Honestly, he raises more questions than he answers. That’s just not something I want from Season finales. But then again, who would have expected anything profound at this point.
Outside, Q addresses all of them for one last time and Raffi takes this opportunity to once more demonstrate behavior unbecoming of a Starfleet Officer. John de Lancie shows that he’s a good actor and deserved better before sending them back.
Rios leaves to be on The Flight Attendant. Good for him, he deserves some happiness, after everything he had to suffer through. :P I mean, Picard raises some questions about the timeline and all, the thing they came back to fix, but the doctor is just too hot to leave. So he stays.
Overall, this Season seems to “wrap” most characters (once more Seven and Raffi, characters with 0 chemistry, seem to be in a relationship by getting 1 scene to that effect, like their 1 scene in Season 1), so whatever we haven’t learned about them yet, we most likely never will. So they are like the space tentacles from S1, which just as well might have never happened. With the exception, that these were the so-called “family members” and main protagonists for all 2 Seasons of this show.
Agnes (as the new Borg Queen) requested Starfleet just to prevent a disaster, but when Seven takes command, she just orders the fleet to submit to the Borg, which never would have worked, because it sounded 100% as if they had just been assimilated. The entire rest of the fleet could have opened fire on them at that point. But of course that doesn’t happen, because they blindly accept the word of Seven of Nine (who got field promoted only seconds earlier), another “Borg” and they resolve the entire problem/galactic event in 30 seconds. It also might set up the threat of Season 3, but who knows, they actually might introduce this here and then just forget about it.
In the next scene Vin Diesel and the rest of The Fast and the Furious are back in a bar drinking with Guinan, because nothing is stronger than family™. If only there was any chemistry between them and all this emotional talk about family felt earned. It’s really weird. On an individual level these people (except maybe Raffi) aren’t even unlikable or anything, it’s just that especially those relationships between Raffi and Elnor (or Raffi and Seven) feel so extremely forced. The show just declared the existence of all these relationships without showing them develop in a more believable way. And even in 2 Seasons they could have done it, since lots of screentime went to them just standing around at parties or in bars.
I also have a strong dislike of them just playing the Star Trek music, when something supposedly in accordance with Star Trek values just happened, without them also delivering it through the writing. It just leaves a bad taste behind. They do it several times this episode. On TNG they didn’t have to play the Star Trek jingle each time Picard gave an order, out of fear the audience otherwise would have missed the crew saving the day or something. The stories and acting managed to do all of that on their own merits, the way it should be.
Parts of Season 2 could have made a nice two-parter, if 90% “trash” would have been cut out. So much was just random filler content. But nothing but a 90 minute movie about Picard, making peace with the Borg? Supported by Q? That could have been at least watchable. There are some scenes in this Season, if you would cut them out and show them to someone completely without context, they might actually like them. Ultimately there is just too much content in this that contradicts the lore or even shows open disdain for it. That doesn’t even cover all the elements which are stupid in their own right. All those plot threads that lead nowhere and are forgotten again. It’s so hard to like this. Even someone who knows nothing about Star Trek and therefore can’t be offended by all the lore violations, is still not given a solid sci-fi show.
PS: Did they ever “clean up” all those corpses, that got beamed into the walls inside the Château? :D
Last time this fed guy had this flashback about Vulcans trying to mind-meld with him. Problem is, during this time period, mind-melding was still outlawed on Vulcan and therefore no Vulcan expedition would have done/tried this. There is a whole arc about this on Enterprise. T’Pol’s mother T’Les is one of the “rebels”/Syrrannites, who start using mind-melds despite the Vulcan High Command prosecuting people who do this. People who watch Star Trek know this stuff. True story. Worse than fanfic.
The whole story with the mother having mental health issues and killing herself made no sense in the context of this setting. Sadly it makes sense in our day and age, but not in the Star Trek future, in which medical sciences are so advanced, that people could and would help someone like that successfully. So none of this could possibly be Picard’s actual backstory. But I already talked about it, how none of that stuff has anything to do with Picard anyway.
The soldiers that were introduced at the end of the last ep, show up with Brent Spiner this time. BS himself isn’t armed and yet he storms in with them. Why would he do that? During a shootout. And when he talks to PS, he just stands out in the open with all his men. THIS IS THE MOMENT TO SHOOT ALL OF THEM YOU GUYS!!! :P
After Stewart’s group is done killing all the soldiers, BS alone remains and they just let him get away, they don’t even try to stop him. I’m sure this won’t get them into any trouble later, he’s only trying to sabotage the timeline they are trying to fix after all.
The Borg Queen heals Seven and as a result Seven gets the exact Borg implants back, she had in the original timeline. They don’t just look similar, they are the same. From a wound the Borg Queen healed in Seven’s stomach, she got a Borg implant around her eye. Okay.
As thanks for Seven’s life, they agree to give their sole space ship to the new Borg Queen. They couldn’t wait with that until after the mission or anything. Stewart isn’t asked and after all of them meet up again, no one even talks much about what the hell just happened. It’s apparently no big deal to them, that they are stranded now and their whole equipment is gone too. Raffi and Seven don’t even grab anything, before they leave the ship. It’s like they aren’t even trying anymore and no one who truly cared about this mission, would handle it this way. And if they won’t take this serious on any level, why should the audience?
In a vacuum, completely ignoring the rest of the episodes, I dare say this one wasn’t even that bad. At least it had some themes in it that could be appropriate for an actual Star Trek show. The Borg Queen merging her different personas into a new personality and thus changing her opinion, the protagonists making peace with a former enemy, those are Star Trek ideas. If those would have been the only themes of this Season, this might have worked out. But they really aren’t. There is no coherence to be found. It’s all just random stuff they threw in there, without thinking too much about any of it.
They regularly forget about seemingly big pieces of their story like Q, who wasn’t in this episode at all and at some point he’s going to show up again anyway, as if the writers suddenly remembered they had this character on the show as well. A lot of it could be rearranged and it wouldn’t matter. It would still be as random and pointless. It’s a huge red flag if one could just cut out entire scenes out of something, without that making a difference. But that’s what this show is.
Maybe they bring Soji back next time to die or something, because the Borg Queen played cryptic oracle and said 1 Renée astronaut has to die/1 lives. They probably won’t kill off Renée Picard and have Soji be Picard’s ancestor. :D But then again, the father and mother shown had black hair like Soji, while Renée Picard is blonde (discovering this got Ned Stark killed). Nothing is too insane for this show. Having a story be unpredictable, solely because it’s all just random stuff mixed together, isn’t something writers should congratulate themselves for.
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