Star Trek: Picard -- speculation/discussion/spoilers

[Blake00]

Episode 4 seen (belated).. WE'RE OFF!:

Spoiler:

Well things have finally taken off! Enjoying the fact we're back in space.. loved the look of the Romulan refugee colony (particularly in the flashback sequences) with the giant 'world tree' background, although in the opening planet shot I wish we'd seen the Enterprise E approaching (considering they made some interesting modifications to the D I'd be interested to see what they do with the E). Backstory of the Romulan Samurai dude & his history with Picard was interesting, although Picard now walking around with a Elf looking dude that slices off heads feels a bit weird lol, but no doubt they'll be some big fun action bits with him down the track (which will aggravate oldschool trek purists to no end I'm sure haha).

Enjoyed the space battle, sure enough it was a classic 22nd century Romulan Bird of Prey (nice tip of hat to old Trek), retrofitted for lawless system warlord related activities lol. Interesting to see all these different hologram crew member variants captain Chris has. 7 of 9 has arrived! Will be very interesting to see how much they delve into her past and backstory post Voyager return. Also the holodeck stuff explains why she's in Patrick's 'home' in the trailers. I know people were complaining/making fun of the Picard sword scene in the original trailer, but it was fine, they even made him took kinda tough before he did the expected 'I'm not fighting you/playing your games' thing. Although his comment about having bad knees annoyed me, I don't care if you're 95yrs old, it's 24th century, people aren't gonna have 'bad knees' lol (we're already getting into 3D printing/replicating joints & cartilage now so it's only a matter of time), would rather they just continue to try and hide any difficulties RL Patrick might have, although I still maintain he seems to zip around just fine in real life on talk shows and stuff though lol.

Anyway we're already off to another planet in the teaser for the next ep so things are definitely moving along now lol! Although I'm a little worried about all that silly dress up stuff.. I swear to god if the next ep is like the Casino planet sequence in Ryan Johnson's cr*ptastic Star Wars film and black eye patch gangsta Picard is throwing dice with cheesy overly excited cgi aliens I'm gonna throw my Tv lol.

Oh and I'm probably off the mark with the Lore theory previously posted.. sounds like they're going for something bigger.. harbinger of doom stuff lol!

Guess I better hurry up and watch Ep 5 now instead of reading comments as that's just asking for spoilers haha.

.

[Blake00]

Yeah.. episode 5.. wow.. If people here disliked it you don't have to worry about me arguing with you on this one guys. As this episode broke me too, or more precisely it broke my enjoyment of the show. I didn't enjoy that at all. I thought maybe if I sleep on it I'd feel better but nope, today I'm even grumpier about it haha. Up until now I've only had little nitpicks and have really enjoyed show and have defended it when people have complained about it "not feeling like star trek" but there was next to nothing Star Trek feeling about Ep 5. Those people who complained about past eps not being star trek are gonna looooooove this one lol. I don't wanna walk away from a Star Trek episode feeling frustrated and miserable. When they played the exciting trailer for the next ep and all the cool Borg stuff at the end I didn't even give s***. I was like.. whatever. They're gonna have to work hard in the next few eps to undo the damage that one just did. I can only hope that they had to go that dark and callous to setup the audience to be brought back to the light and happy ending lol. But I can't help but think that if it turned me off that badly then all those people out there who's really not been that into the new show and were barely holding on will probably be like "stuff this!" and be done with it after seeing that ep lol.

Spoiler:

For starters the acting felt a bit weird and wooden in this ep. Picard & 7 scenes felt weird, felt more like the actors were catching up more than the characters haha. 7 felt a little too different and Patrick didn't feel very 'Picardy'. His french gangster over acting rouse was funny but just didn't feel like something Picard would do, felt like I was watching one of Patrick's stage plays lol. For a French born character his french accent was pretty bad haha!

Can't remember what forum I was talking in but there was a guy who was all annoyed about how upset Raffi was about loosing her security clearance lol, well he's gonna love this ep and it pretty much says she turned into a alco & drug addict and messed up her family after that incident lol. Messed up drug addicts and alcoholics on earth, I'm sure Gene would love that lol. But hey I'm sure she'll have her recovering addict redemption story a happy ending with her dr son at some point and people will wonder if they're watching an episode of Chicago Med & not Star Trek lol.

But lets get to the real jewel of the episode.. I liked Voyager a lot but its not my favourite old trek show, probably more 3rd fav behind TNG & DS9. So considering how much this ep annoyed me I feel bad for all the super Voyager fans out there. You're NOT in for a good time here guys, I REALLY do feel bad for you guys and say sorry. Pretty much straight off the bat poor old (now grown up) Borg kid Icheb is utterly and brutally tortured/dissected and then murdered. Obviously the former was by the 'bad guys' but the later was by his Borg mum 7 of 9! Yes that's right, die hard voyager fans who love 7 of 9 and have been waiting for her return will literally get to see her shoot her own adopted son in the first 20 seconds of seeing her lol. He does the whole "im too far gone, put me out of my misery" thing everyone's seen a million times and she obliges. Get f****** mate! I get it, he's probably missing a few vital cybernetic organs but if he bleeds out or dies on route so be it, but at least try to throw him over your shoulder and carry your sons ass out of there. I mean I'm sure she didn't exactly have a nice state of the art medical bay next door ready to go or a big starship to beam up to but still it.. just.. felt.. wrong. Oh and apparently she just left him there too giving the black market guys EXACTLY what they wanted anyway as the crime lord chick brags later in the ep about dissecting him. Wtf?????

But don't worry Voyager fans there's more character assassination coming for your enjoyment haha. 7 of 9 is definitely not the one you know anymore lol.. now she's PTSD Aragorn ranger'ing around the galaxy shooting lots of people vigilante style.. in fact I think they even call her a vigilante in one scene lol. You know all those boring episodes of Voyager where we got endless Janeway and 7 of 9 scenes (funny now considering how much the actors disliked each other) handcrafting her into a civilized 24th century human being? Well say goodbye to that folks cause now she's a messed up Bourbon drinking badass assassin for hire! She's helping those in need who can't help themselves and is more than happy to kill a few hundred people in the process if they get in her way *cue dramatic 80s action music* lol!

So what now then.. I mean in her final scene she lies to Picard, beams back down and offs the crime lord chick and then starts mowing down the place and it cuts away. The end! So that's answers the question of will she be a regular.. nope.. she's gooone. Maybe she'll come back later? Maybe she's return in a future season? Maybe they'll even be a nice happy ending redemption story for her down the track too (although that doesn't bring poor Icheb back does it lol)? Or maybe not lol and that'll be the end of her story and every time Voyager fans re-watch the old show they'll be like "oh look there's Icheb, when voyager gets home he joins starfleet and gets brutally tortured and murdered for spare parts.. and oh look there's 7 of 9, she's the one that kills him and leaves him there to be dissected for said parts lol, and spends the rest of her life miserable and shooting up half the galaxy in revenge." It's likethe new Star Wars films.. I don't enjoy seeing my favourite childhood characters being brutally murdered in front of me. Because now when I re-watch the original stuff I just see their cheap deaths. Data's death in Nemesis had a similar effect on me so that's why I was so happy about this show as it gave me hope that they'd "do a star trek 3" and find a way to resurrect him. But now I find myself wondering how many other beloved characters are gonna get killed or messed up on the road to that happy ending, assuming thats even what happens, we may not even get that lol.

Anyway sorry.. back to the slaughter.. Bruce maddox.. they found him.. and he was all a messed up stressed alcoholic too of course.. cause everyone's messed up these days.. aaaaaaand then he was dead. All he bloody did was tell them her name and that shes at the cube and next thing we know he's getting offed by his own girlfriend (20 or so years younger than him I might add, yeeeaaahhh way to go on office romance bro! pulling those youngers chicks aint easy bro.. high 5!) giving us our innocent clumsy girl is actually working for bad guys shock moment at the end of the episode.. fake gasp.. yeah.. like I said before I was already completely disconnected by that stage and just didn't even care.

Urgh.. end of rant. Breath Daniel.. Just breath... lol

Like I said.. they're gonna need to work hard to undo the damage this episode did. I think I'd rather rewatch most of the episodes in discovery season 1 than ever watch that episode again lol.

Everywhere I go so far I've seem pretty horrified responses to ep5. I've seen a couple of dudes say they loved ep5 though, I was like WAAAT lol.

Spoiler:

I will pay the episode one compliment though.. their attention to detail on past Trek events once again is impressive. Eg they acknowledged Picard's Borg past which I was worried they wouldn't. They mentioned Quark in the bar sequence. And the biggest one would be during the horrible Icheb torture surgery scene where the lady callously says "where's your cortical node buddy?" as shes ripping stuff out of him. In season 7 of Voyager Icheb risked his life and gave his to 7 of 9 when her failed and they realised she couldn't survive without one while he might, which of course he did.

Meanwhile some self appointed comedian just thew this hand grenade into a Voyager facebook group. I'm sure you can image how well that went down with them lol. Too soon? Yeah just a bit lol.

[VampyreWraith]

Blake00, hey, I'm not sure if you know, but we have individual episode discussion threads. It might be easier to have episode discussions in there since we don't have to use spoiler tags to discuss the episode the thread is about. I'm usually on my phone, so tagging spoilers on here is a bit of a pain for me personally. I'm not suggesting that you have to post in the episode threads, you can post wherever you like, I just wanted to make sure you know about the episode threads.

[EricG]

FYI: Seven of Nine is in 6 of 10 episodes, but Riker and Troi are just in episode 7.

[EricG]

I posted "Seven of Nine is in 6 of 10 episodes" 9 days ago, but Imdb now states only #4&5! Nepenthe is TNG reunion episode:

A Plethora Of Photos From “Nepenthe,” The 7th Episode Of ‘Star Trek: Picard’

[P-90_177]

I posted "Seven of Nine is in 6 of 10 episodes" 9 days ago, but Imdb now states only #4&5! Nepenthe is TNG reunion episode:

A Plethora Of Photos From “Nepenthe,” The 7th Episode Of ‘Star Trek: Picard’

Yeah I noticed that myself. Likely some miscommunication along the line. Assuming she doesn't have a surprise appearance in the finale then I'm guessing she'll be back in Season 2.

[EricG]

The PR photos all seem to be people shots while the teasers have the action.

Ten Photos From “Broken Pieces”

[Blake00]

Blake00, hey, I'm not sure if you know, but we have individual episode discussion threads.

No I didnt sorry haha.. this place is so huge lol..

oh well the show is nearly over and I kinda wanna cover all the new eps since my last post in one post so i may as well stay here and wrap this thing up lol..

Probably noticed I haven't posted here since I blew up a bit over Ep5 haha. I have kept watching the show though but was less invested in it to continue posting my episode round ups. I said after ep 5 that they'd really need some good eps to undo the damage that did, so...

Here's my thoughts on eps 6-9..

Spoiler:

They sort of did as Ep6 was really good. I love any story line that deals with Picard's trauma from the Borg, eg some my favourite powerful moments in classic Trek include Picard braking down in front of his brother at the chateau after Best of Both Worlds and Picard loosing it and smashing the ship glass case in First Contact. THE LINE MUST BE DRAWN HERE! So that moment when he saw his own face as locutus and his reaction was cool. Seeing him on the cube and the way the ex-Bs reacted to him was interesting too. I'm glad Soji got activated as I was getting a bit over the innocent girl on the cube with her cool badass lying boyfriend storyline. The queens chamber was cool and I liked the nod of the head to Voyagers Sikarians and the Borg using their teleporter tech after assimilation.

Ep7 was enjoyable due to us getting some nice fan service and seeing some beloved characters again, but some of those annoying things started to creep back in again. Troy & Riker lost a child due to a reason that just seems so silly.. a disease that is only cured by taking stuff from an android brain.. give me a break.. and once again WHY DOES EVERY SINGLE FRIGGIN PERSON IN THIS SHOW HAVE TO BE MESSED UP FROM TRAUMA??? why can't anyone at all be okay lol. I'm sick to death of it. People loved Star Trek because it painted a picture of this near perfect Utopian human future where greed, money, racism, poverty, addiction and all the other nasty stuff was either eliminated or barely there and therefore was usually projected onto the alien races, this giving people hope for the future and some nice escapism from all the news that tell us we're gonna destroy ourselves. However these writers seem to be intent on bringing the misery of their own lives into Star Trek making it not really escapism at all, now its just what we see on the news and todays flawed humans but with spaceships lol. Don't get me wrong, I love my dystopian dark future shows too but as for Star Trek unless its an alternate universe than I dont like them screwing up the prime timeline and characters we know and love. and don't even get me started on the smoking addiction BS.. I'll just leave this here:

Also clearly Kurtzman seems to have forgot Inner Light where Picard raised an entire family but oh now apparently now he knows nothing about teenagers so he gets schooled by Riker & Troi for it.. Urgh..

Oh and surprise surprise another old character has bought it.. but that's okay.. we've got these great new ones to replace them so who cares lol. The fact I just struggle to remember the names of the new characters really does show how great they are lol. RIP Hugh. Also wtf.. she's a evil lady pretty much killing everyone but she won't touch Hugh because he's a federation citizen. He helped Picard escape but she still has to hear him say that he's not on her side before she can kill him.. ugh come on..

Anyway on to episode 8 and its okay I guess.. but still some annoying stuff.. our Vulcan commodore is apparently half Romulan which I guess explain the sunglasses gaffe a few episodes back as vulcans don't need them, although clearly she has retained her Vulcan ability to mind meld as I've never seen a Romulan do that. The mind meld is what made Dr Death kill her lover and act all weird for ages.. but now she's fine and won't hurt anyone cause she and Soji talked about mucus lol. We see the source of the vision is from an alien artifact and we get further explanation on the main plot. Action Jackson 7 of 9 returns and kicks some more ass. She takes control of the cube which was kind of cool although apparently she doesn't have control of the airlocks and the Romulans do lol, plus apparently the Romulans can just stand there on a balcony and watch just fine (It'd like Pike watching the torpedo explode 2 meters away via a glass window all over again, or Spock watching Vulcan go into a black hole on a another planet with a thick cloudy sky lol). And somehow Borg are useless in a vacuum despite us seeing them operate in space just fine in First Contact although I guess it was more the venting that got them as Voyager vented a few Borg into space back in the day too. Anyway not much else to say about this ep as it was mostly plot moving and setup for final eps.

So I've just done Ep9.. yeah hmm.. I feel like I should have felt more and connected more with this episode but just didn't.. back in my first comments I predicted that there was someone else behind these androids and it wasn't just Bruce Maddox and I was right. I was just wrong about who it was lol. I predicted Lore, but it turns out there's another generation of Soong, another brother of sorts to Data. When Dr Soong Jr Jr Jr Jr Jr whatever (remember there was the one in the eugenics wars ep of Enterpise too haha) walked out the music didn't seem to change much, it was very fast, and he just took off into dialogue straight away.. the whole delivery felt wrong.. I should have been like WOOOOOWWW.. but instead I was like.. oh.. okay.. cool I guess.. as it was nice to see Brent back.

Then something really really stupid happened.. Soji's mum or whatever you wanna call her, an earlier android model and seemingly some sort of leader there has somehow taught herself to do Vulcan mind melds.. because you know she likes Vulcans n stuff. Yes I kid you not.. an android that just magically learned telepathy because she likes the aliens that can do them. Are you freakin kidding me???.. stupid f****** bloody writers.. omg!! I mean Data did a vulcan neck pinch in TNG but that was a nerve pinch that presumably just requires a lot of strength hence why no one else ever did it. But android learning an alien races telepathy as a hobby???.. arrggghhhhh

Anyway she melds and sees the vision.. now she's corrupted by it too.. possibly kills that chick and frees (all sexually lol) Nerek or whatever the hell his name is and is gonna 'ET call home' and bring an android alien invasion exterminate everyone thing to stop the massive Romulan warbird extermination fleet that is somehow just out there despite the fact that most of the romulan survivors seem to be refugees living in squalor camps and no one knew about the Zhat Vash. But hey maybe its the surviving romulan fleet being manipulated by the Zhat Vash. I don't know.. we see the commodore has apparently left her rather important Federation position and is now commanding an entire romulan fleet.. bit of a jump but yeah sure.. whatever..

Oh and how could I forget that they somehow grew giant flowers that can fly through space and drag down spaceships and borg cubes.. giant flowers bigger than cities and that fly into space.. grown by maddox in his lab.. while one of his android daughters was busy taking up Vulcan telepathy as a hobby..

It really is just like the new star wars films.. why do writers these days treat us with no respect and think that we're so stupid that we'll follow anything.. sometimes its so dark you think it's not suitable for children (eg Icheb eyeball rip) then other times like this where we're expected to take giant leaps of faith over plot holes like a child would..

Thanks to covid-19 the Melbourne Formula 1 race was cancelled and in the giant slots that were allocated to what would have been the tv race coverage they filled with old episodes of TNG, VOY and even some TOS.. so I thought why not and sat there watching them.. and my god.. the universe.. and the writing.. there's just so much more intelligence behind them..

We live in an age where people that grew up watching these scifi shows and films is now old enough to get into hollywood and create their own spin offs, remakes and sequels to these great old shows. All they had to do was bring back the same quality of writing and acting and we'd be living in a golden age. However instead of feeling like I'm watching actual sequels I just feel like I'm just watching fanboy films/eps that are filmed on hollywood sets with big budgets instead of Dad's shed with some toilet paper rolls, mops and bed sheets for props lol.

Anyway.. I seemed to be more relieved that there's one episode to go in Picard than I am excited to see what happens next with the story. Sort of just want it to be over so I can move on again. I didn't even feel that way about Disco (well maybe a bit in season 1 lol but not season 2). To feel that way about a Star Trek show really sucks.. especially as normally I'm the super tolerant scifi obsessed guy defending stuff like this to the haters.. yet here I am becoming one.. but a couple of threads keep my interest still to see this thing out and probably watch future seasons too lol.

Dr death is helping Dr Soong Jr Jr Jr Jr Jr whatever with that Golum so maybe it will be Data. I just hope I.. feel something.. when he appears cause that's meant to be the pay off for all this surely lol.. Apparently this neuron thread thing stuff talked about back in ep2 means some of data's memories can be restored but some memories would not really be him would it. So it makes me think how on earth can these writers really bring him (the full Data we know and love) back and can they do it in a way that isn't stupid lol. Which then makes me think maybe they won't bring him back and this is as good as it gets lol.. but hey todays writers love recycling old stories and rearranging them (ST Into Darkness lol) so if Soji's evil mum can mind meld then why not just do a Star Trek 3 and mind meld Data backed up memories out of B4 and into a new body.. I might even tolerate that nonsense if it leads to datas return lol.. but plugging in a usb cable like Data did in Nemesis seems like a better way haha.. hell maybe that's what they're gonna do haha.. i dunno lol..

Will also be interesting to see how Picards brain disorder is dealt with too.

Oh and one of my mates is convinced that Picard is an android because you see him being 'put together' in the show's intro, so he's counting down to the 'big reveal' lol. We all laughed at him but hell with this show any crazy cr*p is possible haha. So I dunno about that theory but the convo between Dr death and Dr Soong Jr Jr Jr Jr Jr whatever about transferring human consciousness across into androids (like the actual Dr Soong already did with Data's mother, although the writers probably don't remember that lol) being close plants an interesting seed on this subject that I wonder what it will lead to (otherwise why did that scene happen?). Eg Picard is prob not an (failing) android now but maybe they'll stick him into one before his poor human brain gives out haha.

Either way.. weeks ago I was telling you guys that I liked the show but that I was still needing to see more to really decide. Well now I've seen like 90% of the show and I can say I don't love it, I don't hate it, it has bits I like, it has bits that annoy me, so I'm just somewhere in between all that sticking with it to see what happens with Data and & Picard.

[P-90_177]

No I didnt sorry haha.. this place is so huge lol..

oh well the show is nearly over and I kinda wanna cover all the new eps since my last post in one post so i may as well stay here and wrap this thing up lol..

Probably noticed I haven't posted here since I blew up a bit over Ep5 haha. I have kept watching the show though but was less invested in it to continue posting my episode round ups. I said after ep 5 that they'd really need some good eps to undo the damage that did, so...

Here's my thoughts on eps 6-9..

You know, I actually have been watching through TNG, DS9 and Voyager lately as I'm showing it to my partner lately. They started watching Discovery cos I was and then they wanted to start over and watch everything and naturally we're watching Picard too. And honestly, Discovery and Picard are actually just as silly and in fact are more cohesively written than the old shows. Oh don't get me wrong, they make it easy on themselves. Ditching things like stardates and stating exactly what warp speed you're travelling at and how far you're going actually removes a lot of the need for forethought as so many continuity errors across the old shows were down to speed. But honestly for the rest. The silly plots? The obvious cartoonish villains? The science that doesn't make sense? It is all classic Berman (and Roddenberry) Trek. The only real difference is that Disco and Picard seem to just show stuff and allow you to fill in the blanks, hence no "Take a sensor scan of those orchids. What are they made out of?". We pretty much already know how they're made. Dahj pretty much gave us a hint in the pilot when she first starts to realise she's an android.

"I was born in Seattle. My dad was a xenobotanist, and our house was full of orchids. He spliced two genuses and he named the offspring after me: Orchidaceae Dahj oncidium. Yellow and pink."
"That's a beautiful memory, and it's yours. No one can touch it or take it away. But you must look inside deeply and honestly. Have you ever considered the possibility-"
"That I'm a soulless murder machine?"
"That you are something lovingly and deliberately created, like Dahj oncidium."

Basically, if that memory is a hint of a truth, much like in Soji's vision of her home that Narek made her see. The Orchids are made via the same technology that made Dahj and Soji. How exactly? Does it matter? Did the Genesis device not making any sense ever matter? How Changelings can shapeshift into anything regardless of mass? How the Universal translator can still work with races it's never encountered before? It's all silly. Awesome. But silly all the same.

As for the matter of the characters and escapism. I really truly appreciate seeing imperfect characters in Star Trek. As someone who suffers with mental health problems like depression, anxiety and low self-esteem, seeing an entire host of characters that are dealing with those same problems is really refreshing for me. Because it is still escapism for me. These people suffer but they still fight and try and keep going. And that is very Star Trek. By all appearances Earth is the same paradise we've always known it to be but even in paradise there are misfits and outliers that just don't fit. And that's who Rios, Raffi and now Agnes are. Trek is ultimately about cooperation and working for a greater whole, but what we almost always see are people who are working within a system, and some of us just don't do very well with the kind of restrictions that Starfleet would have in place no matter how much we'd like to. the Crew of the La Sirena however still shows that cooperation and that drive for betterment but without that rigid military-like structure with broken people and I for one really appreciate that. I'm by all means not saying you're not entitled to your view point. Star Trek is different things to different people. But What I'm saying is there is still value it what they're depicting here and it by far doesn't betray the core values of the franchise.

[EricG]

Finale promo and sneek peek.

[planet_tv]

‘Star Trek: Picard’ Star Patrick Stewart Announces Free Month of CBS All Access

[EricG]

Interview: ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Is Divisive — and Showrunner Michael Chabon Doesn’t Mind at All

[EricG]

Q&A: (Spoilers all) Transcription of some answers from Michael Chabon's Instagram (and lots of info on deleted scenes, ships, some season two, etc.)

[P-90_177]

Really interesting stuff in there. Chabon definitely has a strong appreciation for Trek.

[EricG]

Star Trek: Picard's Michael Chabon and Akiva Goldsman reveal some of the show's greatest secrets and easter eggs. Akiva and Michael break down the return of the Captain Picard Day sign, the numerous references to The Gorn, and the newest implementation of Vasquez Rocks.