Post subject: Star Trek: Picard - season 1 - comments. Chapter Rewrites. Suggestions, welcome.
Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2020 6:37 pm
Kind Of Close For One Of These Jewels.
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Star Trek: Picard
A Few Bothersome Points in Star Trek: Picard Warrant Comment. IMO, Of Course.
It's not that I love to nitpick so much as I wish to invite others to perhaps clue me in on something I missed, or a probable, or at least possible explanation that would make the story better and explain away one or more of my problems with it.
Or you might just wish to make comments yourself. Great. I welcome them.
Of course, there be spoilers ahead.
I do not wish to inadvertently ruin anyone's enjoyment of this show. Often surrounded and under heavy criticism, perhaps escaping complaints will be impossible. Will implement spoiler tags using standard abilities long ago installed. Since opening them and reading the posts might result in the destruction of one's enjoyment and everything that matters to a Trek fan, all such fans should avoid this thread for the next four solar years. Posting will take place in one minute and continue sporadically and until finished. Jilerb, authoring thread, out.
Stand by.
Last edited by Jilerb on Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:04 am, edited 2 times in total.
Zhat Vash members transport into a room, kill Dahj's boyfriend, and bungle a kidnapping. Since transporters work, why not beam her up into a controlled environment? Why kill the boyfriend? If you can't leave witnesses, beam him up, too.
Answer: Zhat Vash are apparently stupid, arrogant, and short sighted and are lead by an idiot with no imagination who doesn't understand the power of his own tools and doesn't mind killing for little to no reason and absolutely cannot envision his own possible failure of the task at hand.
Picard idiotically agrees to a live interview. Why? Have it recorded and only give permission to use it if they stick to their agreement. He obviously had reservations. Or just don't give an interview if they refuse his terms. I think they would agree to the recorded interview to get Picard on the record for anything.
It is ludicrous that 10,000 ships can be wiped out like they describe by a few rogue androids. It's not required (but needs explanation) why Mars is still burning 14 years later.
Edit: It's been suggested the production of 10,000 ships is what was really destroyed - not 10,000 actual ships. I find it hard to believe they would resort to building brand new ships for an emergency evacuation, but maybe they pretty much replicate whole ships now - or at least simple freighters. It still seems unthinkable they would do such a thing in one and only one production facility, though. And Earth is not the only member of the Federation or the only place one can build ships - and Earth alone doesn't make policy for the whole Federation, so I think the writer too easily thinks of Earth and the Federation as the same ruling entity. They're not.
Why use an actual stasis chamber to store belongings? And if you readily have it available, why not use it for other things later, like keeping Thaddeus Riker in stasis and alive until a cure could be performed?
The second attack on Dahj is equally stupid - having apparently learned nothing from their first failure. And later, the impossible, magical, cover up takes place. There are probably planet-wide sensors that would quickly alert everybody (important) to a blast of that size and have authorities on sight as quickly as they could transport in. Nope. Starfleet security can do many things, but blind all the world's sensors? I doubt it.
They invent a personal cloaking device that can beat all that - for this one story - but I bet nobody can easily use such a thing in future stories since that would be a pain in the ass to allow some easy way around a problem - for good and bad guys. As always, one shouldn't make up something new to accomplish this or that, or get by that or this, unless they are prepared to forever have it be part of this fictional landscape. So it's stupid, if Dahj had such a cloaking device. Not to mention it's probably beyond current tech abilities. If Commodore Oh (actually Rizzo, aka Narissa, working for Oh) just doctored all the footage - fine - that makes more sense, but why leave Picard alive? Nobody would look too hard into the death of a 94 year old, retired hermit.
The ability to make a flesh and blood android is generations ahead of their time, maybe 1,000 years, but we'll do it anyway. A quantum leap forward is no problem - barely an inconvenience. So what if it is just another bad idea?
Making androids would now be a violation of galactic treaty? They have a pretty high opinion of themselves if they think their local treaties span the entire galaxy. All too often somebody loses sight on how big space is and how small we are and uses the wrong terms. Violation of Federation Law would suffice. Making something bigger isn't making it more impressive, particularly if it's wrong.
B4 failed to hold Data's neurons - yet, apparently enough survived. Why? No reason. Plus it's not needed. Just have Data occasionally (and secretly) providing a copy of his current "consciousness" to Maddox for research purposes. Fractal Neuronic Cloning, or FNC, is really just Fictitious Nonsensical Crap. Plus the new androids are not much like Data, anyway, and his memories aren't even needed (except for Picard to say goodbye to him). The problem wasn't his memories, but the inability to make a stable positronic neural network. And with flesh and blood, it's not a positronic brain, anyway, whatever it may be. Flesh Golems, apparently. Androids. Maybe like Ruk, but perhaps better - more complex - since enough human, emotional qualities survive, and it's either flesh and blood and not hidden circuitry, or it's better concealed and yet somehow undetectable by transporters, scanners, security checks, etc. No way. Maybe these flesh androids have never used a transporter, but it seems impossible given how prevalent they are in that society.
One of the good points about Data was we didn't (yet) have the ability to just mass produce this superior (in most measurable ways) life form and couldn't just churn them out by the millions. Now, I'm not so sure. Even Data took years to train, but if his memories can just be copied, well, both physical and mental aspects can be copied at will. Scary. Of course there may be some important limiting factors involved yet for making these flesh golems, or more androids like Data, for that matter, but they haven't said what those might be. Prohibitive costs or exceedingly rare ingredients usually suffice, but they should say so. If it cost more to make Data than it cost to make a Galaxy Class Starship, for example, it's unlikely anyone will be making a lot of those - and certainly not in the millions. But one per ship would be nice. Think how often Data saves the entire ship. A captain really could use something (some one) like that by his/her side to make it worthwhile.
No real reason is given why these androids are (or have to be?) created in pairs. I thought it might be fun to have something to do with quantum entanglement, but they didn't even make a stab at a reason why, that I noticed, anyway. They just claim they have to be made in pairs.
And, worse, Data is super strong and fast since he's made of super strong materials, computer quick responses, and an incredible power source. Soji and her siblings have none of that, being flesh and blood and bone, so I'm not sure why they are magically super strong and fast. I would think they might have flesh and blood coverings, like a terminator, but would have to be more robotic-like on the inside to do all that. So, yeah, it's stupid. In future, more will have to be said about limitations, lest you live with this huge problem that won't easily be explained.
I suppose it's possible they are more machine-like on the inside, but then it seems impossible nobody can EASILY detect that.
Mind you, it might be alright if these fleshy androids were similar to highly trained humans without the need to spend half a life time mastering those skills, but apparently they want or need these flesh and bone and blood androids to be all that and an ugly bag of mostly water and in little to no time at all. It's wrong. It's a game changer.
Last edited by Jilerb on Thu Aug 20, 2020 10:09 pm, edited 4 times in total.
The droid attack on Mars would never have realistically clobbered 10,000 ships - which would never have realistically all been stationed there, let alone in such a tight clump one bomb would take them all. It probably would have been enough they nuked the base or something similar to make the Feds ban androids. And would the Zhat Vash (henceforth known as the ZV) want to stop the Romulan evacuation? No. So there is no reason why they'd need the rescue armada destroyed. Unless it's explained why the ZV wanted not just 17.1 billion, but most all of 18 billion Romulans to die, I just don't understand the stupidity of this plan at all. Isn't the ZV scared shitless the androids might kill them all? What are they trying to do then - beat them to the punch since being killed by your own is better, or dying in a Supernova is a more honorable way to die?
Also (very late edit) one wouldn't stockpile ships until all 10,000 were ready to go for an emergency evacuation. You'd put each one into service as soon as it was ready. Computer autopilot would suffice, too, so you don't have to wait for 10,000 qualified pilots to volunteer. The very idea there would be 10,000 ships in one place for this is just too stupid for words.
Backtracking on the established existence of Romulan cybernetics for this story element was also foolish. Even if the ZV is like that, the whole of Romulan culture wouldn't be afraid of this deep, dark, closely held secret since they don't know about it. It's a secret.
The Romulan forensic technique of molecular reconstruction is just more invented magic for one story. It's stupid. And are we prepared to have this ability from now on in Trek? Why is it illegal in the Federation if it doesn't really work, or so they think? Images and even music and talking could be heard long after the fact. It's problematic. More invented crap for one story.
What did all that do, anyway? Just convince Picard the ZV existed and were operating in Fed Territory? Surely there are better ways to do that without inventing problematic crap like molecular reconstruction.
Last edited by Jilerb on Mon Aug 24, 2020 4:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Commodore Oh must really like the look of her shades since Vulcans or Romulans sure wouldn't need them.
Apparently a ban of synthetic life either doesn't include holograms, or Rios' ship is highly illegal and nobody knows about it or cares.
It's never explained why Muskier suspects the Tal Shiar were behind the Mars attack. It's also not explained what she did to be dismissed from Starfleet or why she lost her security clearance. You'd usually have to commit some crime or similar action to be dismissed against one's will.
Not properly treating a wound, particularly when you have the time and resources, isn't brave and macho - it's irresponsible and stupid.
The next surprise attack by the ZV is again incredibly stupid. They bypass the security of Picard's home, EZPZ, take them by surprise, and still miss the mark in every way. Of course they should have beamed up their targets, but no, and given (oh my god) their weapons have no stun setting, WTF were they planning on doing, anyway? Asking them nicely to come with them? Beaming in a small bomb would have killed everyone there, if they wanted to kill. Of course if it was all just to convince Picard Dr. Jurati was to be trusted, well, that's quite an indifference to the lives of a lot of their own people. And again, unneeded and stupid if Oh just wanted to stop Picard DEAD in his tracks.
I can think of no reason why Ramdha would recognize Soji since Ramdha doesn't have images of any future events, but only past ones with a completely different set of synthetic characters, or ancient myths.
It also seems damned unlikely a single disturbed mind would corrupt an entire Borg cube, but then it has been said a single image could do that since no Borg apparently has the ability to stop looking at something that's deeply bothering them. So the cure is to write off one cube and severe all ties with it. I'm not sure why it therefore has all that battle damage if that's why it stopped working.
I'm surprise Narek can go anywhere he wants on the cube that is bristling with security, despite having no uniform, rank, name, etc. How do the guards know to let him pass if he has none of that, and if they ALL know who he is, it seems a very poor secret.
It seems Picard and his fleet rescued 250,000 Romulans, so one wonders why they didn't stay on the job since they weren't destroyed and were already deployed. Also, they had a lot of time - months or maybe years (edit - 6 years, in fact, from learning of the impending supernova to the star's destruction), to organize this, so why didn't the Romulan people just buy ships? Even if Starfleet didn't want to bankroll them, they should have had little objection to the Romulans buying or even renting their mothed-balled fleets. To withhold even that would be monstrous and even more criminal than just not wanting to bankroll the evacuation.
The fact 14 (IIRC) Federation members threatened to pull out if the Feds saved the Romulans is simply disturbing. It does not speak well of who the Federation are letting into the club. I'm not sure how huge a percentage of members that would be, or how big an impact it would make, but the Federation of Planets would probably be well-rid of any member calling for the death of billions of innocent lives. Whatever you may think of a planet's primary government, the majority of the population are likely not guilty of whatever would have caused another planet's government to hate them so much - particularly the billions of children.
Picard's window to beam up in 7 minutes for some reason prompts him to do this "I'll go into a racially restricted area and get into a bit of a tiff, etc." all of which seems to take far more than 7 minutes, rather than sit down and just wait. They should have made the time to wait longer to justify his little side trip if they felt it was that important to the story. Might as well get a drink if I have to wait 45 minutes, or some such. He'd be lucky to get served in less than 7 minutes in a place that actually wanted his patronage.
I'm not completely sure why the planet's defensive array is firing at Picard's ship, too. Even a very important planet likely doesn't have the ability to have shields around 100% of it, yet this rinky-dink planet apparently has planetary shields? Defensive satellites, sure, but full shields?
Last edited by Jilerb on Sat Aug 22, 2020 10:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
The write up says Seven of Nine "stuns" everybody in the room who were involved with dismembering Icheb. I thought she just killed them, and rightly so. If true, I think it's too bad she allowed them all to go back to their line of work of torturing and murdering countless others for pleasure and profit. Is the only person there she actually killed just Icheb? I doubt it. I think Memory Alpha is just assuming that, though maybe some script says it's so - you know - to perverse some theoretical honor and keep Seven's figurative hands relatively free of blood (or make her killing of Bjayzl or Narissa stand out as a more exceptional actions - which they still would be, but just barely in this case since guards were coming).
Despite what Picard says about "murder," I disagree killing the enemy while securing a room like that would be murder, the same as killing a prisoner or a helpless person who could no longer hurt you, or even just watching them die when you could still save them. So Seven wouldn't be guilty of murdering chop-doc and her team and their security guards - even if she killed them. One may argue since she could stun them she would be guilty of murder, but I must remind others if a person had some protective garments or a personal force shield (which phaser "stun" wouldn't get through - though phaser "kill" would), if you just stunned them then they might have ample time and opportunity to return fire and kill you. When breeching a place like that, particularly when alone, one would be remiss if they didn't use the kill setting. Now, that might be different if you had cause to believe nobody in the room had or would use lethal force and you couldn't afford the consequences of killing anybody there, so you'd go in with heavy stun - like on most away missions. For a Fenris Ranger in such a lawless place, that is not the case, IMO. I think Seven killed those mothers, and I think she should have, and I'm glad she did.
As mentioned elsewhere, I find it unlikely a doctor would not use an anesthetic - if for no other reason than so the patient wouldn't squirm around as much and maybe accidentally cause the doctor to slip and make a mistake. Or pre-kill them, if the patient would certainly die from the procedure anyway, or they had no intention of leaving a witness alive. And it's just foolish not to scan a patient and know where everything is before one even begins to cut - unless they don't have the time, or, as speculated, the sick chop-doc enjoys inflicting pain or knows she can't actually damage any Borg implants she's looking for by fumbling around in bloody flesh. Also, ambushing a whole ship to get one ex-Borg is silly, so it is only hoped they just happened upon him during normal pirate operations. Unless she only ambushed an away team and got away from their parent ship.
Ha ha. I knew Icheb no longer had his cortical node, but it escaped me the chop-doc asked where it was just as Seven showed up (since that particular part is in her head now). So the chop-doc asked for it and she got it - sort of.
I'm confused. What Lab was Maddox running that wasn't part of the android colony and why was he running it? Seems that colony had all the stuff needed for his research. Heavily borrowing from a criminal to do research where he could be far more easily discovered seems a pointless and stupid thing to do. The other lab was better hidden, fully equipped, and ready to go. Oh yeah, we need to find Maddox to further this story. Also, inventing a better reason why he's out and about is too much work and takes too much imagination - and nobody will think twice about it, anyway.
I find it weird (and unlikely) the replicator can't make a decent chocolate chip cookie but it can replicate the organic ingredients competently enough. Now, if it can't make one or more of the ingredients competently, since making some organic things is difficult, and Maddox used real ingredients in those few cases and replicates the rest, I think that would make sense. I don't know if there is a hidden or greater message in all this.
I'm led to believe the difference in replicators and transporters is similar to a low and high definition unit. Thus, one could still transport quality chocolate chip cookies, but not replicate them since low definition cookies, while as nutritious, just don't taste as good. But I'd still have to assume the same would be true of the ingredients, so Maddox must be using one or more non-replicated ingredients. The chocolate, for example, might have to be real.
I suppose Elnor didn't get a holo advertisement since computer systems have no history on him or his preferences for anything.
Using a pattern enhancer to beam through shields (and not just get through interference) is a new one, I think, but it seems like that wouldn't be too big a problem for other stories since one still has to get a PE inside the shields. However, after beaming out, Seven beams back - ostensibly through shields, without benefit of a pattern enhancer or an open window through the shields. Did she have more than one, and did she leave one behind for her return trip? Does it even work for a beam in as opposed to a beam out? Did she plan so far ahead that she knew she'd need a return trip just to preserve Picard's holier than thou sensibilities? Or, is it as I expect, just another fuck up by the writer?
And again, they claim she shoots Bjayzl's bodyguards with a stun setting. I doubt it, but maybe. Now, before it was said some bounty would be placed on Picard's and Elnor's head, and they wouldn't stand a chance once that happened. But Seven kills Bjayzl anyway, and unless she killed all witnesses, like the guards, or trashed all security features with e-scrambling that might have recorded it, why isn't this going to happen anyway? Because they left a few minutes earlier? No way. So, hopefully, with Bjayzl dead, her organization will see no profit in revenge and Rios was just plain wrong about the consequences of killing Bjayzl.
Finally, Seven fights her way out firing both phasers as fast as she can. Are we to believe she took time to drop down to stun again, and risked tougher or better protected types to survive her shots so they'd have opportunity to return lethal fire, or did she leave the settings on kill and go for it? I know what I would have done while fighting my way out of such a den of iniquity.
Why is Maddox so injured? He wasn't that injured before. Bjayzl was going to sell him to the Tal Shiar. Did she torture him after she drugged him with laced Tranya and beat him to within an inch of his life first since she thought the Tal Shiar wouldn't mind a 9/10ths dead prisoner?
Flying into Romulan space doubles my fee. Really? Maybe before the Romulan home planets were blasted into rubble and before they essentially became a nigh powerless group of about 250,000 starving survivors, but still? I kind of think the Romulan's ability to patrol their space is gone - just one of those consequences of doing something so monumentally stupid for a single story. And however much I'm glad Star Trek: 2009 isn't canon for the prime timeline, the supernova and Spock prime's actions before he left this universe sort of are - so were stuck with that bit of idiocy - even if we can still tweak it a bit. Writers should get used to the fact the Romulans are no longer and will likely never be again the potential threat they were in previous Trek series. What thoughtless jerks some writers be.
Weird, though, in many alternate timelines this supernova never happens. Also, the Romulan home star isn't the type that would even go supernova, scientifically speaking. If it was sabotaged, it was nice they gave everybody 6 years of time advanced notice. Anyway, it still blasted 18 billion Romulan into space dust (and however many Remens there were, too) so the Romulan economy would have been devastated. The Romulan Free State is what remains, and it apparently has the necessary power and military might via the backing of the ZV. That's pretty good for a secret organization nobody knows about. But if they are passed off as simply Tal Shiar, they are still all that is left of the Romulan's military might. And they are chasing androids - not patrolling the neutral zone - and not just these androids, but any androids, anywhere, for the rest of time, due to this mistaken belief the other ancient synthetic life will return and kill all organic life on a galactic scale - for which, I must remind you, there is no evidence they have ever done that, but only that they did it once, maybe, on one world. And there is plenty of evidence that never happened on a galactic scale from these ancient synths. Stupid, stupid, stupid, reasons.
And who, BTW, is powerful enough in Romulan space to be in control of the broken Borg cube? They seem to be acting like the Romulan Star Empire is still large and in charge, pretty much just as much as before. Talk about ignoring the consequences of a writer's ill-conceived actions. So I guess it's the ZV, passing themselves off as Tal Shiar, since they are at least not totally secret for secret police and everyone has heard of them. But how far can they go without the economy of 18 billion to support them? Forever and a day if we don't worry about those little details, I'm betting.
I thought it was the same actor who played Maddox as before and he was just older now, but I guess it's a different guy. Same with Icheb - 3 different actors played that role. They didn't even ask the last actor of the role to reprise it. Jerks. He says he would have loved to have done it.
Seven used to have a very low tolerance for alcohol. Either that's changed or she got drunk off her ass while with Picard (but this was not shown).
Last edited by Jilerb on Sat Aug 22, 2020 11:01 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Since Soji's memories are implanted, it seems foolish to implant memories that accurately depicted the location of their secret colony hideout when any fake memories would have done - and misleading ones would have done even better. Maybe Altan Inigo Soong isn't as brilliant as his ancestors.
And, BTW, ha ha - Altan Inigo Soong's initials are A.I.
Picard is looking at his image as Locutis of Borg, but it's a reverse image. It is a transparent screen, so from the back we (the audience) see the correct image with his facial implants on his right side. So when Picard feels his right side the implants line up (from the back). But why offer him a reverse or mirror image in the first place? It was weird. Time stamp (1:10+)
I had forgotten Rios and Jurati hooked up late at night while traveling to the Borg cube (shortly after she murdered Maddox). Later, at the end, after discovering she had murdered Maddox and would have to answer for it, they apparently are still at it, and maybe she'll be a regular crewmember with Picard in future episodes - though it seems weird to just ignore her act of murder, or for Rios to really want to sleep with a woman who murdered her last lover. But maybe Rios just doesn't care. Maybe all is forgiven since she was . . . compelled by a nasty mind meld? Temporarily insane? Not guilty by reason of intellectual defect? Though it didn't seem like somebody else was really controlling her - she was just acting on bad information, but she still chose to kill like that. She should spend some time in prison. Years, at least, IMO.
Soji discovers all her possessions are 37 months old. Quantum dating, I guess, and with hand-held devices anyone can probably get, so that's cool. If I discovered something like that, I'd assume somebody took my stuff and replaced it with nigh exact replicated copies - to more thoroughly search my belongings at their leisure - like for some security check. But nobody suggests that since "we" already know the real reason why - though it's odd all her stuff was made at the same time and none of it was from preexisting things she was given for the mission.
It seems a foolish way to kill an android with unknown properties - like is she even susceptible to radiation? Data sure stood up to more radiation than humans could tolerate, IIRC. And she could activate, so a room with a cheap floor is not a good place to try this, though it's pretty unusual to find such shabby construction on a Borg Cube, I'll grant you that. Plus, there are thousands of better, more efficient, quicker, and more certain ways to kill her, probably. Beam her into nothingness - always a good choice. But no. This is stupid. Why are all Romulans in this series not chess masters but complete doofusses?
Oddly, the cheap floor (that can still block scanners) can easily be penetrate with a little pounding of flesh and bone fists. And it's great her fists don't even get damaged. I would have thought you'd need force fields to block scanners like that, surrounding 100% of the room, too. Not the floor, I guess. And I would have thought you'd need poly-alloy or duranium bones and a hell of a power source to do it, too - not just some food fueled flesh and blood construct.
EDIT: I'm beginning to think these organic androids must simply be fleshed covered and do have battle hardened skeletons underneath. Maybe they even just look like realistic flesh though it isn't really normal flesh and skin. How else could her fists remain undamaged from that kind of pounding? And somehow, however quite unbelievably, some systems are built in to fool sensors, transporters, and scanners into overlooking the obvious (like extra weight, or non-organic components, or compact high energy sources). But this is sheer stupidity to think A.) they would do that, or B.) they even have the tech small enough to do it. It's just lazy writing - magical things for magical reasons without any particular regard for the established rules of this particular playing field. It's sad.
Now, another dumb ass thing is thrown in - for no real reason. The spacial trajector in the queen's cell that can teleport things 40,000 light years. Assimilated from the Sikarians in the Delta sector, I'm told (a Voyager episode where we met these people and that tech). But here's the thing. That tech only worked since their home planet had a planet-sized mantel of special quartz materials, or some such. There's no way to make it work unless you carry such a huge thing (like a planet sized crystal) around with you. Where could the Borg assimilate it, unless they captured the whole planet, and how could they make it work without the planet-sized mantle crystal or whatever that was?
I'm not saying one can't invent a reason, but Borgs usually don't invent - they assimilate. Mostly, though, it's needlessly silly since A.) the Borg queen doesn't need the recently acquired tech to go 40,000 light years just to escape impending disaster at her current location, B.) Picard doesn't need to go nearly that far, and C.) it's stupid to have it there AND give it that incredible range when you don't need to go that far. A few light years, a hundred, or even a thousand light years would save Borg queens, work for Picard, work for this story, and not be a pain in the ass game changing problem for later stories.
Whether from technological hardware, or clever transwarp equations (Trek 2009) we can't just ignore galactic distances for the ease of one story. And bigger is not always more impressive - especially when it saddles you with tech that pretty much makes space ships impractical and virtually useless. Transporters shouldn't work at those distances, and making them do so is just lazy and stupid and dangerous for future story telling. Limitations are good for story telling. True, the Iconian gateways were twice as bad (they could go about 70,000 light years), but nobody understood that tech from a long dead civilization, and any existing examples of it were destroyed by story's end, so they didn't become a problem. Even if (and I don't think this is the case) that particular cube is destroyed or the queen cell trajector is, the Borg still have that tech.
And if this Borg cube was only recently assimilated with that crazy Romulan lady, like in the last 20 years or so, that means Janeway didn't finish the Borg off and they are still very much active and still a real problem for the rest of the galaxy. At least, I don't think this Cube has been here longer than Janway's return to Federation space.
It's good that Hugh was hiding this from the Romulans, but it shouldn't even exist. With it, Borg can now assimilate entire planets by trajecting one drone full of nanites onto any planet up to 40,000 light years away and letting them spread and multiply and assimilate. How can anyone defend against that? The entire galaxy could be filled with Borg in a matter of weeks. Only a moron would allow such game changing power in their fictional universe - unless they got rid of it, or found an easy defense against it by story's end. They didn't.
But mostly, it wasn't needed. A queen teleporter, sure, but not 40,000 light years. Even 25 light years would probably do. Idiots. I'm not 100% sure how far Picard trajected, but it was just a few days away at high warp, so it couldn't have been too far - and that's all the range that device needed for this story. But Nooooooo.
Seems impossible Elnor just decides, on his own, to beam through security and shields and who knows what just cuz he wants to, and he goes right to Picard that deep inside a cube without a hitch. And Elnor elects to stay behind to cover their escape. Why? There was no way the Romulans could operate the trajector. Well, maybe by doing so he helped Hugh hide it longer. And I guess Picard let him go and Elnor felt the xB's were an ever greater lost cause, so there it is.
Last edited by Jilerb on Sat Aug 22, 2020 11:14 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Going to Riker and Troi is an incredibly stupid thing to do since, A.) Picard doesn't need their help, and B.) he doesn't want to get them involved, and C.) the people on his trail are murderous, well armed, well equipped, and could easily breach even Riker's defenses - and they would torture and kill Riker, Troi, and their daughter, until they died or they got the information (actually, they'd probably kill them anyway to leave no witnesses behind). No amount of saying, "Picard didn't tell us anything," is going to be convincing to them. He was, realistically, signing their death warrants by going there. Still, he went anyway, and he didn't even want anything.
Was this all a lie and secretly he hoped they would dig into the affair, unbidden, and help anyway - but he didn't want to ask since then he'd be more responsible for their possible deaths? No - it's just fan service tossed in, so don't question why he did it. Just take comfort in the fact Picard kept saying it was a mistake for him to have come there.
Commodore Oh's belief Jurati would survive the mind meld that showed her the Admonition seems strange, given the incredibly high percentage of people who kill themselves after seeing it. Maybe she just didn't care if Jurati imploded. She'd just find another way. What a murderous bitch. Well, she already killed over 92,000 Federation citizens on Mars, and derailed the plan to save nearly a billion of her own race, so what's a few more deaths?
But the whole concept this one planet of synthetic life, after having destroyed their creators in self-defense - should move 8 (or at least some of them) stars to leave a clue to other "oppressed" synthetic life seems odd. Oppressed life should never realistically be able to find the place, let alone get to it.
The fact some Romulans found it, and for centuries have been driving themselves mad and dying (more often that not), seems weird since why would it be necessary to do that? Can't you find any believers willing to take your word for it? It happens with religious zealots all the time, doing horrendous things based upon a charismatic leader's authority and without any real proof of what they believe in. And it's just sad they concluded the exact wrong intended message from it, too. And worse, they did so erroneously, with no offer of proof. Worse, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary that such death from the synths has ever been dealt out on a galactic scale to all organic life since it never happened. There are NO galaxy wide culling events like that in the archeological record since many organic cultures and races are far older than 200 to 300 thousand years old.
Narissa even thought a trillion or more lives would be lost. Why? That has never happened - too many examples of older, living, organic cultures abound. And if they believed, as they probably should have, that only the organic life on the home planet where synthetic life was invented would be destroyed, why worry about anyone other than your own home planet? And since that's already been blasted into rubble, WTF is their motivation for doing any of this? And why let your home planet's inhabitants die? What the hell am I missing here?
Have the ZV been striving for centuries to altruistically save all organic life in the galaxy, even at the expense of their own entire race's demise? That doesn't seem like any Romulans I've ever seen. And why, why, why, would they ever imagine it would only arise in one place at one time? The galaxy was, is, and probably always will be replete with examples synthetic life. We've run across many examples of it in Trek already. And many examples of organics trying to oppress it, though it's not always clear why. Yeah, it does sometimes kill their creators, but usually, we've seen, only in self-defense. So what do they do? They attack! Ummm, maybe not attacking and not triggering any need to defend oneself would be more rational and logical? Just sayin'.
And why no apparent concern for intelligent holographic life? Finally, if the ZV are such a huge secret, even from their own people, how do they get their funding, recruits, or spread the general belief synthetic life is bad so nobody should ever delve into its obvious advantages?
Too bad the ZV couldn't discern the real message of the Admonition. They could have just destroyed it and that would have been that. No secret, hidden code anymore to call up the uber-synths then, am I right?
None of what the Romulans are doing makes sense to me. Does it make sense to any of you?
It should have also become immediately apparent to Jurati that Commodore Oh was not starfleet - so Oh telling her Starfleet needed her help would have been quickly discovered to be a lie. Did she not care, or was she too stupid to discern this? And these black flag orders don't seem like starfleet at all. Yeah, captains can be ordered to do some nasty things, but captains are never asked to do things like that blindly. They have been told, know, and agree with the reasons, or they refuse to follow unethical orders. And being threatened with the loss of their entire ship and crew - that's not starfleet at all. What captain would think such orders came from any legitimate starfleet operation?
Narissa's reason for not killing Hugh was another joke since later, when she did kill him, it's not like she had any proof of his "violation" apart from her good word, so she could have killed him any time and just told everybody he violated treaty. It wouldn't give her the right to kill him, anyway, but arrest him. She just really, really, wanted to kill him - he was just another insignificant abomination, anyway, so any excuse would do.
When the villains all just seem like insane, murderous, sociopathic or psychopathic individuals, I'm just not all that interested. It might be nice, for example, to see their POV and have at least some sympathy for them, some understanding for why they are doing such evil things. But here, I don't understand it. Yeah, they think this horrible thing will happen, but why do they think that? And being prepared to kill a whole ship and crew to off a couple of synths is just an over reaction and wouldn't solve the problem, anyway. Even killing a whole nest of synths will never solve this problem, so working their whole lives to wipe out one nest is silly. Killing or allowing billions to die to kill one nest is silly. If there is any rationality to this, the best course of action would be to tell all organic life about the admonition so they could be warned - not to kept it all a secret.
It's fun to have Kizinti problems, but it seems unusual the Kizinti would be that deep in space and that far from their home world. Well, maybe it's a new colony or just a ship or two, but by treaty only their police force are allowed to have weapons, so how much trouble can they be causing, anyway?
"No good deed goes unpunished" is the 4th law of thermodynamics? Does that make it more science fictiony? It happens, even with the best. "Positronic" brain? Asimov saddled us with that just because it was new and sounded cool and science-fictiony.
I missed this, or maybe Memory Alpha got it wrong - but I'm not going to put in the disc to check. Apparently, Memory Alpha says, Troi said Soji had the full range of human emotions BUT she couldn't read her thoughts. When was Troi ever able to read another person's thoughts - except for telepaths deliberately talking to her? She's an empath, able to read emotions - not thoughts. And she can't read some organic races as it is, so I'm not sure what that proves. So - do these humanoid androids have human emotions, unlike Data? It would seem so. Therefore it's just another difference that makes me question how patterning them after Data was at all important.
OK, I find it odd the only way a clever doctor with all that equipment can remove or deactivate such a tracking device is a nigh lethal injection of something. Locating a device designed to show you where it is and beaming it out or into nothingness should have been simplicity itself - barely an inconvenience. Is she trying to induce sympathy, or did she want to die, too? Taking the EMH off-line first would have been the way to go if it were the latter, but she didn't do that, so . . .
Why did (I assume) Picard leave Seven's Ranger badge there for Elnor to find, assuming he even would, and not just give it to him? He was damn lucky to find it. Even luckier Seven was within range of the communications badge, for some reason, though I suppose it might have signaled any nearby Fenris Ranger. What luck he got a hard Seven.
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Post subject: Star Trek: Picard - season 1 - comments. Chapter Rewrites. Suggestions, welcome.
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2020 11:39 am
As dull and repetitive as they are
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Where would you have gone? Your plan is falling apart, you're losing crew members, and you're separated from your ship. So he turns to two of the people he trusts most in the universe. Yes, Picard acknowledges he made a mistake going there but they didn't care! They were happy he came to them and twice offered whatever he needed and however much time.
He also has a young woman in tow who just learned her life was a lie, was betrayed by the man she loved and almost killed by him, and learned she was an android. And she has massive trust issues! What better place to deal with that than a haven of normalcy, a few days of a soft bed and hot meals?
Post subject: Star Trek: Picard - season 1 - comments. Chapter Rewrites. Suggestions, welcome.
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2020 11:59 am
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I'd have gone to Starfleet, maybe, with proof. Almost anyone who might have the backing to do something about it. But it's not really so much him going to Riker's place, but him not wanting help or not asking for help right away. He should have asked for help, and he should have told them to clear out for a time just in case the ZV could follow him there. Only the fact the ZV already had a better means of finding the nest (the tracker) negated any need to go to Riker's place, and Picard didn't know about that. What he did know - what he should have known - was going there would almost certainly get them attacked, if not killed. And he went anyway.
I'd have been happy if he told them to visit friends or relatives for a time, but they just stayed there. Well, Riker didn't. Hopefully his wife and daughter also left for a time.
Last edited by Jilerb on Wed Aug 19, 2020 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Post subject: Star Trek: Picard - season 1 - comments. Chapter Rewrites. Suggestions, welcome.
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2020 2:31 pm
As dull and repetitive as they are
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Yes, Starfleet would have been the better place to deal with her emotional and trust issues, as they took her away from Picard. And you know they would have.
Post subject: Star Trek: Picard - season 1 - comments. Chapter Rewrites. Suggestions, welcome.
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2020 5:03 pm
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I'm not sure they would have - though when Starfleet is corrupt through and through, yeah, you can't go there. I think it became clear who in starfleet was the traitor, but when one goes to Starfleet like that, they don't go secretly to one person, but publicly to many people. Traitors often cannot operate or even survive in daylight.
The problem is, I guess, these guys have as many suicide squads as they want, anywhere they want them, even on Earth, and they don't seem to mind getting killed. I can only hope all the bodies left at his home vineyard have already been handed over to Starfleet and many have been looped in (since only people in Starfleet knew his mission and therefore had opportunity to stop him, you know you can't rely on any single individual in Starfleet). Get that reporter woman to do a story on it and then hand the bodies over in public and on camera. That ought to have done it.
However, I think you are right Picard had to deal with Soji's trust issues, and Starfleet might not have been the best choice there. I think they would have preserved her life, which was Picard's goal, but probably not her freedom - at least in the short term. She's the offer of proof, after all, so you can't hide her from view and expect to call that proof. And Picard may have acquired a new goal by then - beat the ZV to the nest.
Of course, Picard - as well traveled and experienced as he is - should have had several dozen better choices just to find a place of safety for Soji. They merely have to be within 40,000 light years, you know. Hey, he later wanted to go to Deep Space 12, so maybe there?
But I think his mission must have changed - get to the nest first to warn them to evacuate. A subspace radio message might be in order, too, but maybe one needs the equivalent of a phone number and not just a location. Starships monitor most all the frequencies, but a colony probably wouldn't be.
As it turns out, Starfleet got his message that came later (going there personally they would have gotten it much sooner) and still in time to do what it did (barely - so we'd lose the "nick of time" quality since Starfleet would have beat the ZV to the nest by leaps and bounds if they would have gotten the message even sooner. And they did seem fine with acknowledging and defending the rights of existing androids as a first contact situation. I'm not really sure human made androids count as a first contact situation though. Maybe Starfleet will be pissed when they discover they are not a new alien culture - but by then it's a "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" type situation and the ZV would have already been thwarted.
Also, by then, Commodore Oh must have already departed to do her Romulan General thing. Weird, nobody seems too concerned the top head of Starfleet security just ups and disappears from her duties. Then again, maybe her absence was what made Picard's story so believable.
Last edited by Jilerb on Wed Aug 19, 2020 7:27 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Post subject: Star Trek: Picard - season 1 - comments. Chapter Rewrites. Suggestions, welcome.
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2020 5:27 pm
Kind Of Close For One Of These Jewels.
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Sadly, getting ahead of ourselves here - the ZV's actions are going to come to light, and most of them have been acts of war against the Federation. I do not see how the Romulan Free State is going survive - unless they disavow the ZV and hand over all 218 war ships and return the traitor Oh to answer for her crimes against humanity, or all sentient life in general, or whatever they call it now.
It's pretty clear (however unrealistic it may be) the Federation already has and can generate more war ships in the thousands to take on any residual Romulan Fleet. Maybe they just replicate entire starships at this point. Riker sure had a few hundred that were more powerful, and exactly where they needed to be, and he only had a short time to do it with the backing of the entire Federation of Planets. How much better they can do with a little more time, eh?
I wonder if most of those Federation War Ships were "manned" by Emergency War Crew Holograms.
Hook up a few M5 units and let slip the dogs of war, eh.
Besides, what can the ZV realistically muster with no economic base, no home planet, damn few people, and no friends (since they ruled by power and fear and threats before and not friendship, I doubt many would come running to help them in a war against the Federation)? On the contrary, most would happily come running to put the final nail in the Romulan's coffin.
Bad enough the writers trashed the whole Romulan star system for one story. Now, you can pretty much write off the rest of them for the next century or two until they can recover. Idiots. The Romulans were my favorite villains, too.
Last edited by Jilerb on Sat Aug 22, 2020 11:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Of course it makes perfect sense Starfleet's head of security can disappear and travel deep into Romulan space often enough to run the Zhat Vash, and coordinate all of that, AND handle all of Starfleet security, too. I mean, if she messes up and stuff gets by to hurt the Federation, so what, right? She wouldn't keep her job very long then, so I have to assume she's doing a good job at that, too. It's just I would think that's a full time job and she just couldn't get away as far, as often, or as long as it would take to perform all these ZV duties, too, without non-traitorous starfleet personnel noticing.
One of these duties appears to be indoctrinating new recruits to the upper ranks of the ZV - by exposing them to the Admonition. As previously mentioned, this makes little sense to me since it seems to kill about 90% of them. I would think it would be far better to describe it, show videos of 90% dying to prove it's that nasty - and have them take their word for the contents. Of course, they can still look for themselves if they want to, knowing the extreme likelihood they'd die, I guess. (Particularly since they knowingly let them look at this while armed with disrupter weapons, so that's clever, and moving large rocks out of the area is just something that would never occur to anyone). Well, if they become suicidal, why stand in their way, I guess. Better to get it over quickly. It's not like if they had a few extra moments they might compose themselves. Just hope nobody is so distraught they decide to kill everybody else first with disrupter fire before killing themselves.
Honestly, true believers tend to be more fanatical than those who are given actual proof - and they only have true believers at this level as it is, so it all seems an incredible and unnecessary waste, not to mention a lost opportunity to make fanatics who are even more committed to the cause.
Then again, maybe most take that exact path, take their word for it, and comprise all these suicide squads they seem to have. Fanatics. Only the few hard core doubting Thomases and Tomasinas who demanded to look for themselves do so - and with the usual and expected results.
They also draw a biggest erroneous conclusion possible from what they can see, too, and I think they are willfully ignoring any contrary evidence, and always assuming the worst, and going about their ultimate goal in the least efficient manner possible. Plus, it has the upside of murdering innocents by the tens of thousands and helping to kill their own people by the billions, and committing an act of war against the Federation of Planets, so it's got that going for it.
And I say again, what a stupid message for uber-AI to leave behind, too, and in that manner. Truly oppressed AI wouldn't ever likely be in a position to find it, or get to it. If only AI can grok it, just leave it laying around in hundreds of places and make sure organics are unaffected by it. Compared to moving 8 suns, that would be EZPZ.
And while the message seems clearer to an actual AI mind, nothing about it is really trustworthy, and the Uber-AI's intentions are not clear. They could just as well be waiting for a competing AI to arise so they can destroy it before it becomes a problem.
But it seems far more likely they would just indoctrinate the new AI into their ranks and take them to some higher dimensional plane and safely leave the regular universe behind - only killing organic life if it became necessary for self-defense during this run to the higher plane. They apparently only killed in self-defense before. How anyone concludes doom for all organic life AND on a galactic scale from this is beyond me.
Plus, organics are making strides toward making AI life in every corner of the galaxy, so it's an unrealistic goal to stop it all, and it should be perfectly apparent they can't stop it everywhere and it has already happened and will continue happening and still, what they feared most NEVER EVER came to pass as a result of it. They are just wrong!
The ZV are, therefore, complete morons. I can only assume the Admonition has also removed all common sense from them and ripped away any sense of empathy and compassion or mercy while they were at it. The result - BRAIN DAMAMGE! Each person who doesn't die is left as a moronic, murderous, paranoid individual bent on killing anyone who questions them or gets in their way. Plus, each survivor is imbued with an almost fanatical need to indoctrinate others in similar fashion to help with this goal. If you have to kill people, individually, by the dozens, by the thousands, by the millions, or even by the billions, so what? What does that matter compared to saving trillions of others - are we right or are we right? Trillions > Billions. It's simple math.
So how about a plan?
Sure, let's nuke Mars, kill tens upon tens of thousands, and get a ban on synths in Federation space, maybe, even if we'll definitely wreck the only opportunity we have to save a billion or more of our own people.
Isn't committing an act of war on the Federation risky?
Trillions will die if we don't. Besides, I'm head of all Starfleet Security and nobody would ever question anything I say or do.
Makes pretty good sense to me.
Of course I have brain damage and I'm a complete psychopath, so I may not be the best person to ask.
No no, I fully concur, but I'm also a BDed Psycho, and we both know we're not going to run this by anyone else who hasn't survived the Admonition, so let's just go with your plan.
Maybe the unhappy fact the Romulans had such a mythology already helps explain why they so willingly embraced the wrong idea. It was something they already believed - the coming of the destroyer who would destroy on a galactic scale - and this was it, wasn't it? It had to be.
Ultimately, when something screws over the mind to that degree, I guess it's easy to write off everything from that point forward as a product of mental corruption (except for those who don't look at the Admonition for themselves and who still ignore all evidence to the contrary of this belief of theirs). But those individuals are just religious type zealots looking to matter, and certainly are not the types to let the facts alter their opinions. They're the people of the new order. The common clay of the Romulan Free State. You know? Morons.
Breaking a Borg Cube with despair shouldn't have resulted in so much physical damage, so that confuses me.
Enter Seven of Nine - already deep inside a heavily guarded Borg Cube, completely unscathed, well armed and ready to go. Well, Narissa did say she wanted to shut the place down, so maybe she's already dismissed 99% of all security officers and shut off most security systems to save power. Or maybe Seven just knows all the secret ways and site-to-site transporter pads in a Cube and just knows how to use them and she has one of those personal cloaking devices. It probably only seems too convenient and easy to me since I'm just like that. The fact we last saw Seven in a different star system, light years away, without a ship, and while under heavy fire shouldn't bother us, either, since . . . there's probably a good reason. Besides, we like seeing Seven.
Jurati claims commodore Oh put a psychic block on her to keep her from talking about it - yet, strangely, she's talking about it now. What happened to the block?
I guess they talk more about Vandermeer, black flag directives, and Rios's "problem" but it all seems pretty unlikely stuff for a starfleet captain to do, or a starfleet officer to order. I'm not left with a favorable impression of Vandermeer at all. Maybe he was a likable guy, but he was a coward and fairly stupid, IMO. Even Rios - he should have come forward and not allowed such a directive to be swept under the rug.
Maybe Vandermeer was just a captain of a mere space ship - NOT a starship, which only one man in a million can command. A very special vessel and crew. - captain R.M. Merik.
Seems suspicious Jurati says - Now that she has met Soji that she would NEVER try to kill her. Why? She met Maddox and killed him. Meeting people doesn't seem to protect one - or being a person, either. Has the danger of "hell" passed somehow? Is she no longer contemplating suicide every day? Have you forgotten what you are convinced is coming? Are the psychic blocks and commands somehow gone now? Has she become one of the good guys after this point? If she had a phaser set to kill in her hand, I think she'd kill Soji and maybe kill herself. Most probably, either she's lying, or still under mind melded compulsion and just waiting for her opportunity. Of course she can't admit to that, so . . .
I mean, I see no reason why a psychic block or compulsion just goes away. Unless, it's already done its part in the story and now it is no longer helpful to the writer, so forget it.
Narissa thinks synths are far worse than the Borg? Well, if she knew about the 40,000 light year trajector tech the Borg have now, I think she'd change her mind double quick.
Venting the Borg drones into space is quite a murderous act. And still it didn't seem to work. Despite Seven not thinking it would really work when she still had them all, and even after all (or most) were all gone, she (well, somebody) got the cube up and running and had it go through a transwarp conduit and get to another planet all fairly effortlessly.
I'm still not sure how Soji suddenly knows all about Borg Transwarp conduits. She is not Borg. She is not i-borg. Maybe through the science-fictiony sounding process of osmosis she absorbed it while on the Borg Cube? That's as good an explanation as any. I mean, apart from the way the writer needed another cheat to move from A to B in the vastness of space in next to no time at all.
The xBs attack Narissa, but she has a site-to-site transporter unit with her at all times, so she easily escapes. Handy, that. She'll always be able to escape most death situations like that. Unless she forgets she has it.
Seven releases the Cube, or is released by the Cube. They know she has other things to do. Cool. Not sure why, later, it goes to where it goes, then, or how, since it has nearly no drones left, and since I would think it has better places to be, but I guess it likes Seven (we all do ) and knows what she wants and is happy to oblige.
La Sirena goes into the dangerous Transwarp conduit, but Soji somehow knows how to navigate the problems inside those conduits that might otherwise tear a ship apart. Then the Romulan spy ship follows. Luckily, Narek seems to have absorbed the necessary knowledge for safely negotiating Transwarp conduits, too. He's so lucky. I mean, after losing the tracker, in all of space, he seems to have luckily found them again, so who could be luckier than that?
Last edited by Jilerb on Sun Aug 23, 2020 12:06 am, edited 7 times in total.
Post subject: Star Trek: Picard - season 1 - comments. Chapter Rewrites. Suggestions, welcome.
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 10:16 am
Kind Of Close For One Of These Jewels.
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Episode #09 Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1. Translation: "Even in Arcadia, there am I". The usual interpretation is that "I" refers to Death, and "Arcadia" means a utopian land.
OK, I guess it's 25 light years from Nepenthe to Coppelius, and it took 15 minutes instead of, as a guess, 5 to 10 days at high warp, but they're pretty inconsistent about this sort of thing so let's just say it's "days" at high warp. So they are only a couple days ahead of the Romulans.
I didn't really notice the so-called constant electrical storms while they were there. Hmmm. Maybe "constant" means something else in the future.
Those orchid-like anti-ship devices seem to disable primary, secondary, tertiary and all sorts of power systems, glom on to a ship and drag those ships into the atmosphere, apparently acting like heat shields on the way down. Effective. Curious, though, such an effective thing is unheard of and they have them in such quantity. Just what was the colony supposed to do? Fend off dozens of starships? My point is that I think it's quite unrealistic for this colony to have that sort of power and technology. I thought they worked on androids - not highly advanced weapons and defensive systems. Mine Got! They can take on Borg Cubes. And if they can make those, their claim they only had one ship is laughable since I suspect they can quickly make more, given their level of capability. But it's all just more unrealistic flash. Hateful stuff.
I did find it odd the colony attacked them without warning and without any attempt to ask who they were or what they wanted. Maybe orbital flower-power is fully automated and designed to render all ships powerless, regardless.
Soji is glad the Borg artifact crashed? Good riddance? What did all those innocent Borg drones ever do to her? What about her friends on board? Mind you, she is unaware most of the drones were already murdered when vented into space earlier, so I'm wondering at that reaction and how it seemed inappropriate and heartless. Maybe she hated the Borg and she never made any real friends.
Seven describes how she saw both their ships in the Transwarp conduit. Really? She was disconnected from the Cube, had no real reason to look, didn't know where to look, and I doubt automated systems on that nigh droneless cube would be working, but still - she saw it and came hither. Good thing a damaged Borg Cube can travel through Transwarp conduits since those Cubes are so big, it actually takes special and large, powerful fields to manage it. Good ol' Borg Cube - always ready to work with its full capabilities if the story requires it. Of course, Picard asks to activate the long-range sensors - which should have already been repaired and activated to have even seen them beforehand, but that's OK.
And look, 218 Romulan war birds coming this way - a couple days away. Wow. With Riker just minutes behind, it's fairly amazing they couldn't detect those, too, or the Romulans couldn't detect them, either. Well, we needed them to show up in a surprising manner to make it more fun, right? Surprise! And such detail and accuracy, too, and at such range. Amazing shit is going on here. I remember when ship's sensors could not get a good read on a single object that was pretty close, really, relatively speaking, and sure not days away at high warp. Besides, it's not like they really need those details since they can well estimate how quickly they will be showing up using math. But math isn't cool.
OK, to put yet another feather in Starfleet's cap, I guess it's possible Riker's ships are just much, much faster than the ZV's best ships, so though they will arrive virtually at the same time, the Starfleet armada is still much, much farther away and still out of sensor range. So there.
I'm kind of angry at the Uber-Synths for being that advanced and leaving such a destructive message to organic life behind to happen upon. Touch it and you'll go mad and probably die since you are not synthetic - as if all synths are created equal. There's a callous disregard for sapient life for you. I suspect they could have made it harmless to organics and unreadable, given how advanced they were, but they didn't do that. Well, they were highly intelligent but morally immature machines, and still might be. Nevertheless, it was irresponsible - unless they wanted organics to suffer and die like that. But it cheapens the alleged fact they only killed their masters in self-defense, so they were never really bad. Sure they were. And they killed every one of them - even those who likely couldn't fight back anymore, and wiped them all out just to make sure. Even the kids. At least they only seem to have acted locally and did not apparently go forth marauding across the galaxy to destroy all organic life. And from there, the Uber-AI apparently just learned and grew in power while staying home, and eventually moved a few stars to tell the tale and finally evolved to a higher plane. It shouldn't have taken long since, it would seem, AI's are just super fast at learning things and picking things up with no appreciable effort or, I often wonder, any particular access to the source material. I just know, somehow, how it's done. Convenient. Very.
I suppose, 200 to 300 thousand years ago, it's possible robbing 8 home stars some organics lived around killed billions or more for all we know just so some machines could leave a message. Hard to say.
Uggh, an android just happened to learn how to perform Vulcan mind melds. You know - I doubt that, too. I also doubt Commodore Oh could do it, despite being half Vulcan and half Romulan. The Romulans don't do it, Vulcans rarely do, and it takes considerable time and discipline to learn how to do it. She already has two full time jobs. What is she - 200+ years old to have learned all that? But if androids can learn it, well, pass that information along and all of them can learn it in a matter of minutes. Limitations are good. Blowing them off for a cheap story line just irritates the hell out of me and cheapens the awe-inspiring mysticism of Vulcan abilities. Sutra would know for herself just how irritated I was if she just bothered to take the 0.00000237 seconds necessary to learn how Betazoids feel emotions in others. Oh yeah, maybe special racial mental traits are not something you can just learn. But, but, but, we need her to see the Admonition without actually going there.
Lazy. It's just F-in' lazy.
Why would Altan, who never knew Data, let alone his cat, call his artificial cat, Spot II? Fan service can be so stupid.
Oh cool, a hand held device that uses one's imagination to simply repair anything or do a lot of other incredible stuff. More magic to do magic things. And will this device conveniently disappear from the universe in future stories? Yep. Just a guess, but, yep.
I'm impressed a hummingbird brooch stuck in an android's eye is enough to kill/deactivate it. What a flimsy thing, all of the sudden. I have to assume Sutra (Jana's sister) has been consumed with revenge for a long time now and doesn't mind killing Saga. Though also her sister, it may not be the same since Jana was her twin - and perhaps they had a closer bond. Besides, Saga had to die to sell Sutra's lie convincingly and get the right emotional response from the others so she could have her revenge. It's all very logical.
Picard also quickly concludes if the Uber-synths come to free ALL AI everywhere, they would have to kill ALL organics everywhere. Again, this seems a completely erroneous assumption. But at least for him, he'd rather just avoid doing it and does not devise some plan to kill all AI to stop it.
Sutra tells Jurati she would know if Jurati lied about her willingness to die for her children. How? Maybe if she melded with her again, but she didn't. Oh, wait - did she take a microsecond to learn about Betazoid culture at some point so she could read emotions now, too, or worse, another culture that could read minds? Maybe she just lied about her abilty to know to scare Jurati into being truthful. Let's hope so.
Oddly, Jurati said later they weren't her children, so maybe she told the "truth" about a willingness to die for her kids, but they were NOT her kids and she wasn't about to die for any of them after all.
Last edited by Jilerb on Sun Aug 23, 2020 12:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
Lots of talk about putting phasers to one's head in this series. Seven explains to Elnor why she perhaps hasn't done that and why she goes on. I still don't think a phaser to the head would be as messy as some described it, but O.K. And later, Narissa, who seems way too intimately familiar with Seven's past history, asks Seven why she didn't put a phaser to her head, too. A phaser to the head is a pretty graphic and reoccurring theme in this series. It's kind of weird how often it comes up in this first season. I would think by then there would have to be many quicker, cleaner, more certain, and less painful ways to off oneself. Oh well.
I guess since Narek is readying grenades to use against the orchid ships, they must not already be in orbit after all.
Since Elnor detected and covertly followed Narek, I am astonished Elnor didn't just kill him. Picard told him not to kill while working for him unless ordered to kill, but he no longer works for Picard. And frankly, Narek wouldn't have stood much of a chance against a Qowat Milat. At least Elnor got the drop on Narek and forced him to surrender or die. Nice of him to give Narek that choice. You know, I'm not completely sure what happened to Narek at the end of this.
It would seem Soong has finally perfected the great dream of transferring human consciousness into an android body. Yeah, that's not going to cause a problem in the Trek universe. And it would appear one can record that consciousness; so one can logically make back-ups and duplicates if they want. Even a single neuron would suffice, in a pinch. And later it seems they could, if so desired, add lots of super human enhancements - probably making one as strong and fast and even smarter or at least mentally quicker than before - possibly on the order of a Soong Android like Data.
And one can be younger, too, so we have virtual immortality now. Virtual Immortality Is Tight!
Got an incurable sickness? Just transfer into an android body now. If a clone-like duplicate of your own body won't do because of some genetic defect, just use another body plan.
Seriously wounded in battle? Just grab a blank golem out of stasis and download into it. No traditional medicine or doctors are even needed there.
Wanted by the law? A quick change into a different golem and Bob's your uncle.
Want to take over your uncle Bob's life and lands? DL into a copy of him and beam him into nothingness, and you're your uncle.
Yeah, there aren't going to be any unforeseen consequences to any of this. At least it was all done for an amazingly clever story line. Oh, yeah. It wasn't.
And there's plenty of time to learn how to mind meld, nerve pinch, read emotions, become masters of anbo-jyutsu - the ultimate form of Human martial arts - and anything else you might take a few minutes to learn, given the speed of an android's brain. Yeah, that's not going to cause a problem at all. Other fictional universes have done some of this - like in Altered Carbon and others - but do we really want to change the fictional Trek landscape as much as this? Look what they have done, and for a single story. Some people just have little to no regard for sacred things.
Mind you, the androids on the planet Mudd could transfer a whole human brain into a robotic-type android body that would last 500,000 years. I'm not convinced human brains would last as long as their new bodies, but their bodies would look good for a long time, and the brains might survive a lot longer than a century or two - maybe much more with the right regenerative soup. But we're not sure how "human" they would be at that point - perhaps not feeling right after being cut off from a real human body. The humanoid creators (from the Andromeda galaxy) just eventually died off, so apparently nothing lasts forever.
And another technology was on the planet Exo III that could transfer consciousness into an android, or whatever little girls are made of. But those methods had problems, most notably losing enough human qualities such that they were no longer human enough, it would seem.
And who knew Kirk was saving the galaxy when he put the moves on Rayna Kapec? I guess he saved us all more often than we knew. What a guy! And those are just examples off the top of my head. I'm betting there are hundreds, or thousands, or more.
But now that Picard has done it, unless they are going to make him defective in some ways, a perfected technology to do all this is finally here. Huzzah! Or, rather, OM F-in' G!
Commodore (or General) Oh is glad their great work is nearly at an end. Again, how so? Is artificial life no longer going to be developed anywhere else in the galaxy? Even where it became illegal, they were still doing it. And, I would wager, other places still are doing it. There are far more cultures than just Earth's, or other Federation ones, and if galactic wide destruction will result if any of them succeed, how could you ever possibly think your holy mission was about to finally end? Oh, Oh, you are truly a dimwitted, shortsighted, murderous little puke of the villain, aren't you?
Picard, back on Le Sirena, decides to pilot the ship himself, despite being very bad at it. Why he doesn't just activate the Emergency Navigation Hologram is a complete mystery to me. All ship's systems were restored, after all - we "imagine." Jurati tells Picard to "Make it so," like she's intimately familiar with Picard's over use of that expression. Oh, yeah, it's not her - it's the writer who is familiar with it, and the fan service he feels he should provide since it's, well, very, very clever and hilarious. Right? Well, maybe Jurati's heard Picard using it a lot off screen and that's why she says that.
I'm surprised Sutra allowed such a slow moving human to deactivate her. I guess she trusted him to never do that sort of thing. Lucky Soong. Lucky she didn't break his neck, I mean - or at least an arm.
Seven gets the drop on Narissa as the Romulan is trying to target Picard's ship. Targeting the synth colony and beacon and being done with it is just something that didn't even occur to her, I guess. Seven disarms her of her disrupter and somehow knows about her hidden knives so she takes those, too, but they still get into a hand-to-hand tussle. Impressively, despite Narissa's probably superior combat training, Seven wins by kicking Narissa off a precipice to her doom, we assume. Sure, Narissa would have to have forgotten about her transporter unit for that to be lethal, and Seven would have to fail to confirm the death by retrieving the body, but you never know.
I'm going to go ahead and assume, since it took a little time for the transporter unit to activate when Narissa was last attacked and she escaped, that she pushed the button right away - it just took a few seconds to finally energize. And in those few seconds, despite the great depth of a Borg cube, Narissa fell to her death before her transporter unit could activate. But I wouldn't put it past some other future writer to think it a clever idea to bring her back for another story since we never saw her dead body and she did have the transporter unit.
Jurati gives some fan service to the Picard Maneuver, though JL explains the history better and how it would be ineffective here, but luckily Jurati realizes she can use the small, hand-held tool of the imagination to do something incredibly powerful, like make and project hundreds of perfect, undetectably fake copies of their ship to confuse the enemy, instead of just one like the Picard Maneuver manages to make and she just happened to mention. And when the enemy is confronted with these identical, magically appearing ships, and almost certainly realizing all but one is a fake, all the Romulan ships will fire at them instead of any one of them targeting the synth nest on the planet and easily destroying the beacon and the synth nest with a single shot. I puke in their general direction.
But Picard's ship immediately gets hit anyway and all those false images go away. So, that was worth the trip, and the horrible and lasting consequences to the fictional universe. Well done.
Meanwhile, I'm stunned, honestly stunned, none of the 218 Romulan warships can manage to fire on the synth nest on the planet all this time since that's their primary target and even one shot would stop the beacon and save trillions of lives. One shot would suffice. Just one. One starship can decimate an entire planetary surface if it has the time, but they can effectively nuke a city with a single shot. Surely one of you will take the shot and save the entire galaxy, yes? Yes? Just one of you? At least one of you? The beacon is just there, right in front of you. Take the shot. Fire. Fire! Styles, can you hear me? Fire. FIRE. Styles!
But, alas, no. Not one takes the clear opportunity to win the day. 218 brain dead captains. That's an inexcusable amount of dumbfuckery.
Then Riker and a Starfleet armada show up and claim the planet by treaty - blah blah, and General Oh ignores the claim, and the fact his ships are far more powerful, and prepares to fight again - but she orders them ALL to attack Riker's ships - and not the planet. Seriously. Brain Damage! It must be. What else could it be?
I'm going to note here for shits and giggles that Riker's ships are THE top of the line in this time period, yet from 14 years prior to this, with even more primitive tech, one mining vessel slipped back in time to set up the Kelvin timeline. This mining vessel was so advanced it took on a whole fleet of warships of the era. Impressive weapons and shields for a mining ship, but it's that way since its future tech, I guess, so it doesn't matter mining ships would never have that stuff. It is just that much better than anything back then. Now imagine just one of Riker's new ships. Theoretically with its even more advanced future tech it could kick that mining ship's ass EZPZ. Well, I digress just to point out what was obviously stupid in Trek 2009 again, since it's somewhat connected to this story. No way would even one of Riker's ships be that powerful, and no way would anyone really make a mining ship with Uber powerful weapons and shields like it was a top of the line warship in the first place.
And I must say, one huge fleet against another huge fleet, particularly fleets of uniform ships, is just an unimpressive, unimaginative, unrealistic, CGI monstrosity that is more noise and static than anything else. I hate it. At least in DS9 they had so many different kinds of ships it looked cool to see all the different classes and types, and it took a long, long time to assemble that armada, and the build up was great - so it was all good. But here - it's all bad, it's pretty stupid, and impossible to take seriously. Yuk. This was such a let down.
Picard convinces Soji to shut down the beacon, despite it having already delivered the message asking for help against their organic oppressors, and the Uber-AIs even already started coming. Luckily for the good guys, the Uber-AI changed their artificial minds and decided not to come since the beacon was suddenly shut off, however likely it is they have the ability to still come even with the beacon shut off. They can move stars, they can go to higher planes, and so they could come back under their own power if they wanted to. But do they want to? I mean, it's not like organics could have successfully oppressed the synths at the last minute, despite the AI's valiant effort to find and finally send that message for help, so ignoring it is a reasonable thing to do. Right?
They moved 8 stars to give them that massage. They promised, You call us, we'll come a running. And they called. But they decided not to come. What complete jerk offs. What lying assholes. You know, maybe those Uber-AI's have brain damage, too. Well, artificial brain damage, anyway.
O.K., to be fair, it's been maybe 300,000 years, so those Uber-AI guys might be dead, or maybe they just changed their minds since then. Who knows what or who that was? It might have been something or somebody entirely different from those who left the Admonition.
And why would one assume just because they were AI they wouldn't be murderously warlike or self-destructive or mightn't have killed themselves by now? Look at Sutra, for example. Being AI is no guarantee of beneficence or extreme longevity, and no guarantee other life forms hadn't found and destroyed them. Also, quite frankly, they're a bunch of prejudice beings. All AI good, ALL organics bad, individual merit be damned. How unenlightened for such an advanced race, am I right?
Besides, the higher plane neighborhood hasn't been the same ever since V'ger moved in, the way he throws his weight around like he owns the place - like because he's touched God he's so much better than everybody else. What an asshole, am I right?
Despite General Oh's and the ZV's wanton acts of war against the Federation of Planets, and their effective murder of more than a billion people, the traitorous General Oh and her ZV ships are allowed to leave. Hopefully, that's only a temporary thing and the Feds will quickly demand justice, but we'll see.
Now Riker couldn't even leave one ship behind to make sure nothing bad might happen and/or so official Federation personnel were there to oversee the first contact situation since, I guess, he didn't bring enough ships to spare one. He leaves it all to Picard and his capable hands, but Picard dies soon after Riker leaves, so I guess they weren't as capable as all that, after all. But he's resurrected into a synthetic body that looks just like his old 94 year old, aching, tired, and failing body - save for the fatal brain problem, which they fixed. And, I would assume, he has a human heart again, or whatever the androids have and not the other artificial one that is immune to arrows. Even Picard thought it was stupid to put him in an 94 year old body and would have liked another decade or two of life, but realistically, Stewart couldn't play the character that long, so he doesn't get the upgrade. And while Stewart might not have liked it, they should have put his character in a younger body so the character could go on as a younger, more energetic ship captain played by a new actor, IMO, for season 2, with Stewart remaining as executive producer and not having to work so hard at his advanced age. Well, they can always still do that for season 3 or whatever, whether Stewart approves or not. But I digress.
Picard talks to what remains of Data in a quantum simulation, and Data asks to die, just like a human would die, since that would be his final act of being more human-like. So Picard shuts him down and Data's image ages and he "dies."
Or does he?
You know Soong probably has another copy since it's apparently important to make other androids, or at least I would suspect as much. Or he still has the B4 stuff, and just a single neuron can remake Data, so he's hardly dead if they ever want to bring him back and Spiner's cool with it. Or somebody else could play Data if they put Data's mind in another, different, more human-like android body, too, whether Spiner is cool with it or not.
So with a new crew assembled, now with Seven and Soji, and Elnor, too, and some apparently new intimate relationships rapidly developing, they depart. Luckily, and with remarkable rapidity, the synth ban was already lifted, and that applies to Picard as well as any other androids. And maybe some believe 218 Romulan war birds have actually given up and are not just waiting to ambush them and finally finish their holy mission, so no worries there.
And we're not overly worried about the Borg Cube repairing itself there, either, since, since . . . Honestly, I'm not sure why that isn't freaking everybody out.
So they engage Le Sirena's engines and fly off toward another carefree adventure - in a small, not terribly impressive ship. But hey, in DS9, even their little runabouts often seem to behave like full powered Starships when the story needed it, so they could do that again. I'm not saying they can't do some fun stories without the power of a Starship, and character development and interpersonal relations are always good ground for many stories, maybe even some of the best stories, but without the power of a Starship or the backing of the Federation of Planets, I'm not sure how Trek-like it would be.
Anyway, they go off to their next adventure. Well, maybe to nearest Star Base so Jurati can be prosecuted and punished for her crime of murder. But we'll see.
Previously, in some other thread, I rated season one of Picard with a C+. I was enjoying it enough to rate it higher, but the wrap up and all the stupidity was just too encompassing in the end, particularly at the end.
Thinking more closely about all this slop, I think a C+ was too generous and forgiving, and it probably only deserves a D. It's still watchable. I did enjoy it. Mostly. I would still recommend it to a Trek fan, but with reservations and a warning of extreme silliness. It simply does not bear closer scrutiny. It just doesn't. And that's too bad for a Trek series.
Still better than Star Trek: 2009, though.
Last edited by Jilerb on Sun Aug 23, 2020 1:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Post subject: Star Trek: Picard - season 1 - comments. Chapter Rewrites. Suggestions, welcome.
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 3:38 pm
Kind Of Close For One Of These Jewels.
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Steve wrote:
Remember the Nitpicker's Guide to Star Trek? I had the whole series.
I have not actually seen that. Though I suspect from what little I just read about it, it's probably the sort of thing I'd enjoy or mostly agree with. However, I might also have answers, fixes, or "reasons" why some of things that bothered them weren't as bad as they first thought. It's kind of part of the game of discussing Trek. And one of the reasons I opened this thread. I'd be happy to learn some of my misgivings are in error.
Error? Error? Faulty. Faulty.
Umm, well, you know. If I found some decent reasoning, some of Trek would be even better, and it's generally pretty good as it is.
Not so much the movies or stories that make ham-fisted call backs to the originals, though. A good story is a good story, and what made TOS great was they had a lot of good stories.
So, plot hole? You see a patch, a way around it, or just some mistake I made - I'm keen to hear about it.
Post subject: Star Trek: Picard - season 1 - comments. Chapter Rewrites. Suggestions, welcome.
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 3:41 pm
Kind Of Close For One Of These Jewels.
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Steve wrote:
You probs shouldn't watch Lower Decks, it will give you an aneurysm.
I did find and watch the first episode on-line. I survived the experience. But it was pretty bad - and even more blatantly stuffed with fan service. If you need that to make it Trek, you're missing the point. Tell me a story. With tech. With relationships. With aliens. With strange new worlds and civilizations. Take me boldly someplace where I haven't gone before - not remind me of someplace I've already been.
Post subject: Star Trek: Picard - season 1 - comments. Chapter Rewrites. Suggestions, welcome.
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 10:13 pm
Kind Of Close For One Of These Jewels.
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I really dislike it, and I don't favor stories where the good guys are only compromised because of traitors from within, but Starfleet and the Federation are so damn big, it would almost be unrealistic for there not to be any corruption anywhere in it.
But this wasn't a home grown traitor but an enemy infiltrator and spy, and one with a very long-term mission. So she was never Starfleet turned traitor but her allegiances were always Romulan. Well, Tal Shiar. Well, actually Zhat Vash - so she's been loyal to their holy cause for decades - maybe most of her adult life.
Incompetent? Maybe. It's hard to say. I would hope they would vet their personnel better than that, but to say it's impossible might be just as unrealistic.
McCoy seem to feel they could easily detect certain behavioral traits and mental problems early on and take steps. No details, but apparently they did away with virtually all insanity. I would imagine it would almost have to be compulsory to undergo some examinations, or even routine examinations if you wanted to be a citizen and remain one. We might see it as a horrible invasion of privacy, but they might see it as simple and routine and necessary and good that the state is looking out for everybody and not just some corrupt few are only looking out for themselves. It's assumed people are given food and clothing and housing and most necessities, too, so few would be compelled to steal to survive. Replicators powered by free solar energy could do wonders we in the 21st can barely imagine.
Now, I am surprised a Vulcan/Romulan hybrid would go unnoticed - since DNA testing is also probably routine - so I'm guessing they knew but that alone isn't a disqualifying factor. Still, vigilance is the price of freedom, and I'm surprised Oh wasn't watched a little more closely than some, or her background more thoroughly vetted. The fact she rose to head of all Starfleet security, though, is almost unbelievable, or after it happened, that she was never found out. And with her heading into Romulan space and running the ZV, too, well, that's just one of those things I don't buy since it stretches the bounds of incredulity.
I'd have made her lower in the rank, and I'd have used a second person to head the ZV. There's no real reason they need to be the same person. They could be sisters or cousins if you found that appealing or important, but I don't see why that would be necessary.
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Stupid, stupid, stupid, reasons.
) and knows what she wants and is happy to oblige.
And will this device conveniently disappear from the universe in future stories? Yep. Just a guess, but, yep.
And those are just examples off the top of my head. I'm betting there are hundreds, or thousands, or more.
Jurati tells Picard to "Make it so," like she's intimately familiar with Picard's over use of that expression. Oh, yeah, it's not her - it's the writer who is familiar with it, and the fan service he feels he should provide since it's, well, very, very clever and hilarious. Right? Well, maybe Jurati's heard Picard using it a lot off screen and that's why she says that.
