Star Trek: Picard (CBS All-Access)

[sh9000]

Good episode.  I'll definitely buy season 3 on blu-ray.

 

 

Starfleet Museum

Spoiler

 

[borgified]

Now I’ve got more screensavers! 😉

Love to download all from the link one of these days. 

[Roy Focker]

Stupid question about the Star Fleet Ship Museum.

I know story wise they needed to meet up Geordi at his job and it need to be a safe location. Solution any remote star base or space station. They had to make it a museum with the most famous ships because of Easter Eggs. Why is this museum not in orbit around Earth or some busy planet with heavy traffic? You know a bunch passing active Star Fleet ships and tourists flying by?  This is a museum with no visitors?

 

[Dobber]

6 hours ago, Roy Focker said:

Stupid question about the Star Fleet Ship Museum.

I know story wise they needed to meet up Geordi at his job and it need to be a safe location. Solution any remote star base or space station. They had to make it a museum with the most famous ships because of Easter Eggs. Why is this museum not in orbit around Earth or some busy planet with heavy traffic? You know a bunch passing active Star Fleet ships and tourists flying by?  This is a museum with no visitors?

 

I agree and wondered why ‘in universe’ the museum was so out there. Though, didn’t Geordi say something about with the volume of visitors they get someone is going to notice the Titan. So I’m guessing the remoteness isn’t THAT remote. 🤷🏻‍♂️ But I ‘dunno and wondered the same thing. 
 

Chris

[Thom]

10 hours ago, Roy Focker said:

Stupid question about the Star Fleet Ship Museum.

I know story wise they needed to meet up Geordi at his job and it need to be a safe location. Solution any remote star base or space station. They had to make it a museum with the most famous ships because of Easter Eggs. Why is this museum not in orbit around Earth or some busy planet with heavy traffic? You know a bunch passing active Star Fleet ships and tourists flying by?  This is a museum with no visitors?

 

 

3 hours ago, Dobber said:

I agree and wondered why ‘in universe’ the museum was so out there. Though, didn’t Geordi say something about with the volume of visitors they get someone is going to notice the Titan. So I’m guessing the remoteness isn’t THAT remote. 🤷🏻‍♂️ But I ‘dunno and wondered the same thing. 
 

Chris

I don't think it's that far out there. It didn't take any time at all for Titan to reach it or return - to wherever Daystrom is. May be one of those instances where you don't want to try and map out where they are...

[sh9000]

It will be cool if the ships at the museum are used in the final battle.

[Seto Kaiba]

... like Odo in DS9's final season, this is deteriorating rapidly.

Come to that, I'm still not clear on why Picard's final season and its TNG cast reunion are set against a backdrop consisting almost exclusively of references to Deep Space Nine.  The USS Enterprise presumably participated in the Dominion War at some point, but they were far from the center of events and had little-to-nothing to do with the Founders.  If you're gonna have Jean-Luc Picard get the old crew back together, why waste it by having them fight some rando nobody's ever heard of or an enemy from another series that hasn't got any personal relevance for anyone except maybe Worf?

They come out hard and fast with the continuity nods to non-TNG shows in this episode too... with Tuvok (now a Captain) and the Titan-A hiding out in the Chin'toka system where some of the bloodiest fighting in the Dominion War occurred during Deep Space Nine.

Spoiler

Even this episode's (overdue) Big Reveal/Exposition Dump of the backstory behind Vadic, the rogue Founders, and their private little war against the Federation manages to both underwhelm and leave the show's antagonists feeling very out-of-place.  The Dominion War was Sisko's story arc, not Picard's.  After all the effort and bullsh*t that the showrunners put into making this season a full cast reunion they surely could have come up with a villain from TNG instead of one from one of the only antagonist species that the TNG crew never fought.

Vadic and her cohort are Founders who were captured by the Federation during the Dominion War and studied.

OK, fine.  That's not unreasonable on its own.  But it veers sharply into being an idiot plot immediately thereafter because, for some reason, instead of experimenting on the Founders to find better ways to detect infiltrators they experimented on them to make them better infiltrators.  WHY?!  What possible advantage could that POSSIBLY have had?!  Vadic's anger towards Starfleet is perfectly reasonable in that she was essentially tortured and several of her fellow captive were effectively tortured to death, but the idea that they were tortured to make them BETTER at the thing Starfleet wanted to stop them doing is bonkers.

Then we find out Starfleet also injected them with radioactive tracers so that they can be easily tracked, making literally everything up to this point complete insanity.  They had a way to track these changelings AT RANGE and distinguish them from real people easily all along.

They set a trap and conveniently flub it because plugging an android with a homocidal psychopath personality who hates your guts directly into the main computer is a great idea and always safe, right?

 

 

20 hours ago, Roy Focker said:

There's another cameo and name-dropped cameo. I have to wonder does anybody retire from Star Fleet? Should they have mandatory retirement age? In all the original TV shows we saw ships with crews between the ages of 20 to 50 and Admirals in their 50's and 60's. Why haven't we seen all the ships filled with mostly senior citizens?

In previous works, they had one... though it wasn't consistently enforced.  

When it was first mentioned in TAS, it was implied to be mandated differently based on the species of the officer in question.  In 2270, it was set to 75 for humans.  It seems to have possibly been raised a bit in the 2360s and beyond.  Mark Jameson from TNG "Too Short a Season" was 85 and still on limited duty.  Jean-Luc Picard was 82 when he retired for the first time, and was 96 when he retired the second time... admittedly from a glorified sinecure as chancellor of Starfleet Academy.  Admiral Janeway would be 73 at the present time in Star Trek: Picard based on her stated age in "Endgame".  

[Dobber]

Yeah there were some logic jumps in this episode. The ones mentioned above by @Seto Kaiba are big ones. The one that bugged me was when

Spoiler

Vadic said the Federation/solids ruin every world they encounter and is thus why the Founders/Dominion started the war. Picard then rightly asks her to name 1 and she replies hers because of the virus. But the virus was a result of the war the Dominion started!

I get so sick of the poor us argument that antagonists/villains give, so we are supposed to sympathize with them, but they always neglect to account for their own atrocities and culpability in events, and the protagonists always just accept it. The Cylons in the new BSG were the same way. It is endlessly frustrating. 

Chris

Edited March 31, 2023 by Dobber

[Thom]

2 hours ago, Dobber said:

Yeah there were some logic jumps in this episode. The ones mentioned above by @Seto Kaiba are big ones. The one that bugged me was when

  Hide contents

Vadic said the Federation/solids ruin every world they encounter and is thus why the Founders/Dominion started the war. Picard then rightly asks her to name 1 and she replies hers because of the virus. But the virus was a result of the war the Dominion started!

I get so sick of the poor us argument that antagonists/villains give, so we are supposed to sympathize with them, but they always neglect to account for their own atrocities and culpability in events, and the protagonists always just accept it. The Cylons in the new BSG were the same way. It is endlessly frustrating. 

Chris

It's just the shifting of blame.

Spoiler

Yes, the Dominion started the war, but that doesn't  mean a soldier that was wounded or tortured won't blame the enemy in front of him rather than the commander behind him. You fixate on the one who did the harm and they become the one to blame, and the mind does make logic jumps to enforce that. Vadic will never see her own specie's culpability for the events that led to her capture and torture, as it becomes yet another thing to blame the Solids for.

In fact, that could have been a nice twist on her character, to have her not just blaming the Solids, but also the Changelings for what happened to her and the others.

 

Edited March 31, 2023 by Thom

[Dobber]

You’re right Thom…and what you suggested would’ve been a good twist indeed. Maybe part of my problem is that I’m not sure if the writers are WANTING/EXPECTING us to agree with the antagonists . 🤷🏻‍♂️ While we can and dare I say should be critical of our own behavior, or doesn’t mean we absolve the other side of their responsibility/culpability. It always just SEEMS like that’s what happens in these shows. Like in our effort to critically view our “side” we start making excuses for the other and their actions….as long as “we” look like the “bad guys”. Maybe I’m looking into it too much.

Chris

[Thom]

One of the first casualties of war is morality. I could see her side, but it does not excuse her behavior, in the same way I could see the Federation turning to biological warfare when it was clear they were losing. They were responding to an invasion, and though culpability does reside with the Federation, even more sits with the Dominion as they were the aggressors.

[Dobber]

24 minutes ago, Thom said:

One of the first casualties of war is morality. I could see her side, but it does not excuse her behavior, in the same way I could see the Federation turning to biological warfare when it was clear they were losing. They were responding to an invasion, and though culpability does reside with the Federation, even more sits with the Dominion as they were the aggressors.

You stated it perfectly here. Thanks 🙂 I can’t always put my thoughts to words well, but you pretty much just said what I was thinking…in all aspects. 
I just hope the writers and the audience get that too…since what is being stated overtly is only her side.

Chris

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Dobber said:

Spoiler

Vadic said the Federation/solids ruin every world they encounter and is thus why the Founders/Dominion started the war. Picard then rightly asks her to name 1 and she replies hers because of the virus. But the virus was a result of the war the Dominion started!

To be fair, that kind of moral myopia is 100% on-brand for a Founder and shows up consistently throughout Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Throughout Deep Space Nine, the Founders use the claim that all "solids" hate and fear them as an excuse to use their shapeshifting abilities to do things that are all but guaranteed to make people hate and fear them like...

• Abducting and either murdering or imprisoning people and replacing them with Changeling imposters. (DS9 "By Inferno's Light")
• Using stolen identities to infiltrate, destabilize, and subvert sovereign governments. (DS9 "Apocalypse Rising", DS9 "Homefront", DS9 "The Adversary")
• Executing terrorist attacks. (DS9 "Homefront")
• Attempting mass genocide. (DS9 "By Inferno's Light", DS9 "What You Leave Behind")

Yet somehow, it never seems to occur to the Founders that their own overtly hostile actions might be the reason that "solids" supposedly hate and fear them.  For a species that, at least by Odo's reckoning, has such a great affinity for seeking order and finding patterns they really seem to suck at spotting the rather clear and unambiguous causal link between how the Founders behave and how the rest of the galaxy sees them.

Whether the majority of the Founders have had that long overdue Heel Realization after Odo rejoined the Great Link the way they did in the Relaunch Novelverse or not remains to be seen, but Vadic and her clique seem to be committed to villainy.

 

4 hours ago, Dobber said:

I get so sick of the poor us argument that antagonists/villains give, so we are supposed to sympathize with them, but they always neglect to account for their own atrocities and culpability in events, and the protagonists always just accept it. The Cylons in the new BSG were the same way. It is endlessly frustrating. 

Vadic and the other rogue Founders are definitely a-hole victims at best.  

Nobody deserves to be tortured, but the reason Vadic and her colleagues ended up imprisoned and in Section 31's hands in the first place was that they infiltrated the Federation on a mission to subvert its sovereign governments, enslave its people, and impose totalitarian autocratic rule over its territory.  It's asking a bit much of the audience to muster up sympathy for the captured Founders knowing what their mission was and having seen them attempt genocide twice in the previous series they're referencing and heard them talk about their plans for a third genocide.  Instead, Vadic feels like a rather hollow and pointless villain whose motivation seemingly goes no deeper than "How dare you capture and study me in order to prevent my people from exterminating your entire species the way we said we would".

It also loses a certain something in that the offense she's mad about was carried out by a rogue intelligence service not an actual Federation agency.  Section 31 doesn't answer to anybody, and they're rather vocal and showy about that for an agency that's not supposed to exist.  

 

22 minutes ago, Thom said:

One of the first casualties of war is morality. I could see her side, but it does not excuse her behavior, in the same way I could see the Federation turning to biological warfare when it was clear they were losing. They were responding to an invasion, and though culpability does reside with the Federation, even more sits with the Dominion as they were the aggressors.

It wasn't even the Federation that did it.  Section 31 did it, and the Federation authorities just rolled with it once they found out because at that point there was no hope for any kind of diplomatic resolution.  Any attempt by Federation medical authorities to research a cure would doubtless have been hampered by Section 31 sabotage in exactly the way that Dr. Bashir and Chief O'Brien predicted and exploited to capture Director Sloan. 

[Thom]

43 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

...

Yet somehow, it never seems to occur to the Founders that their own overtly hostile actions might be the reason that "solids" supposedly hate and fear them.  For a species that, at least by Odo's reckoning, has such a great affinity for seeking order and finding patterns they really seem to suck at spotting the rather clear and unambiguous causal link between how the Founders behave and how the rest of the galaxy sees them...

It is (was?) their blind spot. They've told themselves their own truth for so long that they cannot/will not see the fallacy in it. Anything but their own truth cannot exist. And that runs the same with Vadic.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 minutes ago, Thom said:

It is (was?) their blind spot. They've told themselves their own truth for so long that they cannot/will not see the fallacy in it. Anything but their own truth cannot exist. And that runs the same with Vadic.

Yup... and that's one of the major weaknesses in the writing of Star Trek: Picard's as a whole.

Normally, Star Trek tries to humanize its antagonists.  To give them a sympathetic or at least understandable motivation behind their actions so that they're not simply doing it "for teh evulz".  There's nothing redeeming about Picard's antagonists.  Season one's Zhat Vash are basically just the space Klan, season two has the Confederacy (which needs no explanation), a Dr. Soong motivated by nothing but his own self-aggrandizement, and the Borg, and season three has rogue Changelings who hate the Federation for *checks notes* not letting the Changelings destroy the Federation.

As a final villain for Star Trek's most celebrated crew, they could and should have done a hell of a lot better than Vadic.  Especially since she's basically doing a low-rent General Chang impression half the time and reminding the audience of a much better, much more developed Star Trek antagonist.

[Thom]

20 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yup... and that's one of the major weaknesses in the writing of Star Trek: Picard's as a whole.

Normally, Star Trek tries to humanize its antagonists.  To give them a sympathetic or at least understandable motivation behind their actions so that they're not simply doing it "for teh evulz".  There's nothing redeeming about Picard's antagonists.  Season one's Zhat Vash are basically just the space Klan, season two has the Confederacy (which needs no explanation), a Dr. Soong motivated by nothing but his own self-aggrandizement, and the Borg, and season three has rogue Changelings who hate the Federation for *checks notes* not letting the Changelings destroy the Federation.

As a final villain for Star Trek's most celebrated crew, they could and should have done a hell of a lot better than Vadic.  Especially since she's basically doing a low-rent General Chang impression half the time and reminding the audience of a much better, much more developed Star Trek antagonist.

It's become a self-fulfilling belief. Their history is full (real or not) of being persecuted by Solids, so everything is done in defense. And when another race manages to hold them off or hurt them bad enough, then that is just more proof of how dangerous/evil the Solids are.

[azrael]

5 hours ago, Thom said:

It's become a self-fulfilling belief. Their history is full (real or not) of being persecuted by Solids, so everything is done in defense. And when another race manages to hold them off or hurt them bad enough, then that is just more proof of how dangerous/evil the Solids are.

I agree with @Thom. The Founders have been and played the victim for so long, that thought pattern is practically their culture and, in turn, what drives them.

[pengbuzz]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yup... and that's one of the major weaknesses in the writing of Star Trek: Picard's as a whole.

Normally, Star Trek tries to humanize its antagonists.  To give them a sympathetic or at least understandable motivation behind their actions so that they're not simply doing it "for teh evulz".  There's nothing redeeming about Picard's antagonists.  Season one's Zhat Vash are basically just the space Klan, season two has the Confederacy (which needs no explanation), a Dr. Soong motivated by nothing but his own self-aggrandizement, and the Borg, and season three has rogue Changelings who hate the Federation for *checks notes* not letting the Changelings destroy the Federation.

As a final villain for Star Trek's most celebrated crew, they could and should have done a hell of a lot better than Vadic.  Especially since she's basically doing a low-rent General Chang impression half the time and reminding the audience of a much better, much more developed Star Trek antagonist.

Where's Discount Spock when ya need him?

[sh9000]

Costumes in Picard.

 

[borgified]

This better not be one of those craptastic series endings… 🙄

The next two following titles have been “leaked” out (after this upcoming episode), but not in terms of how the plot goes. 

[JB0]

4 hours ago, borgified said:

This better not be one of those craptastic series endings… 🙄

The next two following titles have been “leaked” out (after this upcoming episode), but not in terms of how the plot goes. 

Maybe they'll end it like Enterprise and accidentally retcon the entire series into a holodeck episode.

[pengbuzz]

4 hours ago, JB0 said:

Maybe they'll end it like Enterprise and accidentally retcon the entire series into a holodeck episode.

Why cause a perfectly good holodeck to detonate?

[sh9000]

Episode 8 promo.

[Seto Kaiba]

15 hours ago, borgified said:

This better not be one of those craptastic series endings… 🙄

Unfortunately, that is far and away the most likely outcome.

Given how previous grimdark NuTrek shows have performed, I expect Picard's season three and series finale to stick the landing about as well as Wile E. Coyote usually does...

 

10 hours ago, JB0 said:

Maybe they'll end it like Enterprise and accidentally retcon the entire series into a holodeck episode.

As lame as that premise was when Enterprise did it, I'll happily accept it from Picard as long as it ends with "Computer, delete program."

 

56 minutes ago, sh9000 said:

Episode 8 promo.

I swear, every one of these that drops I'm torn between wanting to say "Damage report!" and having the same feeling of irritated resignation everyone had hearing another one of Dukat's canned "Attention Bajoran workers" announcements from DS9 "Civil Defense".

[sh9000]

Looking forward to episode 8 and enjoying the rest of season 3.

[pengbuzz]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As lame as that premise was when Enterprise did it, I'll happily accept it from Picard as long as it ends with "Computer, delete program."

I'll settle for:

"Computer, stand-by auto-destruct sequence Omega. Recognize voice pattern Jean-Luc Picard, authorization Alpha-Alpha 3-0-5"

[Seto Kaiba]

10 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

I'll settle for:

"Computer, stand-by auto-destruct sequence Omega. Recognize voice pattern Jean-Luc Picard, authorization Alpha-Alpha 3-0-5"

Brings to mind an unanswered question from VOY "Author, Author".

Do personality rights apply to holosuite/holodeck programs?  As in, if someone makes a holoprogram and uses the likenesses of real people without their consent or potentially in an objectionable or defamatory manner, can the person depicted seek some kind of redress from the Federation or foreign court systems?  The first two times we see this happen are in private use on TNG and the people depicted are offended but the offender receives no real consequences.  On Voyager, it was done for commercial purposes with the Doctor's holo-novel that used the likenesses of the entire Voyager crew and it just kind of gets forgotten about in the brouhaha over the publisher denying the Doctor is legally the work's author.

Picard is nothing if not defamatory in its relentless character assassination of Jean-Luc Picard and other former Enterprise crew...

[borgified]

Going to give you guys the following titles for the remaining two if you haven’t looked at the leaked info sites. 
 

Episode 9: Vox (possibly Voice/Vocals related?)

Episode 10: Next Generation

I think we can guess by now how this season will possibly end. 

 

[Thom]

My Titan model showed up today! A little ding on the box, but otherwise A-OK. Nice detail and surface, and anice size too. It is set at 1/1400, but it looks good beside the Excelsior!

 

Thom

[Seto Kaiba]

On 4/4/2023 at 5:22 PM, borgified said:

I think we can guess by now how this season will possibly end. 

Poorly?  I think that much was inevitable.

This is less a narrative and more a string of poorly thought-out references and in-jokes driven by moon logic and garnished with a plethora of plot holes.  A few moments of almost quality writing were unlikely to ever change this show's course away from the ending being another disappointing arse pull.

[pengbuzz]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Poorly?  I think that much was inevitable.

This is less a narrative and more a string of poorly thought-out references and in-jokes driven by moon logic and garnished with a plethora of plot holes.  A few moments of almost quality writing were unlikely to ever change this show's course away from the ending being another disappointing arse pull.

that would have made a good name for a ship for them: the U.S.S. Arsepull...

[borgified]

Nah… Should be U.S.S Lemonade (or Rotten Apples) in which it really makes your entire life sour and full of regrets. 

Why did you think it bombed in the first place then? 

[sh9000]

Excellent episode 8.  I'm very happy for Data.

[Roy Focker]

Not a bad episode it wrapped a few things up but I'm worried about the last 2 episodes. I'm afraid were going headed towards the very stupid.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Roy Focker said:

Not a bad episode it wrapped a few things up but I'm worried about the last 2 episodes. I'm afraid were going headed towards the very stupid.

To Dumbly Go Where No One Has Dumbed Before...