i have been reading , quite frequently lately, that control from discovery is an element to the doomsday story on picard. apparently the mindmeld vision that is shown to jurati is very similar to the one discovery spock saw. me personally, i hope control is not a part of st:p . i dislike the idea that control was some kind of precursor to the borg
Yeah, I've heard the same speculation. And I also don't care for the idea of an origin story for the Borg, but is Control any more contrived than V'Ger, as was put forth in the novels? (I mean, aside from Control being an entirely convoluted mess of an idea in the first place?)
I've been thinking about Thad Riker. We now know one consequence of the synth ban is that terminal diseases previously easily managed are back. It seems implicit that the Zhat Vash were behind the ban, which would seem to be a nice two-fer: They get to nullify synths and set up their longtime adversaries for some biological warfare. That makes sense. What I still don't get is why the Zhat Vash, Tal Shiar, or any other Romulan sect would sabotage the evacuation of Romulus.
My friend... don't you think this entire concept is a bit silly from the outset? First of all, this "ban" being something that's remotely enforceable over the entire Federation. Ha! We can't even ban things on Earth without there being black markets and who knows what else. You mean to tell me they can ban ALL synthetic intelligence across almost an entire quadrant of the galaxy?
And the idea that William T. Riker, OUR William T. Riker, the man that would do anything it takes to save the people he loves... Do you mean to tell me he wouldn't seek out a cure to his son regardless of some ban? How long had augmentation been illegal when Julian Bashir's parents got him augmented?
This entire concept has to be taken for what it is. Weak writing by people who don't really care.
S1E07 | 5 March 2020 | "Nepenthe"
Dr. Jurati's back story was simpler than I thought it might be, too. She must be exceptionally impressionable to turn into a killer after a single mind meld of things that she already knew happened. I guess it works, but it feels half-baked.
As I said in an earlier post Jurati killed Madox because of Mars.
Jurati is based upon Tilly from Discovery, and some of the fan theories about her. ST:Picard just tried making a character based upon those fan theories, so she is impressionable.
I've been thinking about Thad Riker. We now know one consequence of the synth ban is that terminal diseases previously easily managed are back. It seems implicit that the Zhat Vash were behind the ban, which would seem to be a nice two-fer: They get to nullify synths and set up their longtime adversaries for some biological warfare. That makes sense. What I still don't get is why the Zhat Vash, Tal Shiar, or any other Romulan sect would sabotage the evacuation of Romulus.
My friend... don't you think this entire concept is a bit silly from the outset? First of all, this "ban" being something that's remotely enforceable over the entire Federation. Ha! We can't even ban things on Earth without there being black markets and who knows what else. You mean to tell me they can ban ALL synthetic intelligence across almost an entire quadrant of the galaxy?
And the idea that William T. Riker, OUR William T. Riker, the man that would do anything it takes to save the people he loves... Do you mean to tell me he wouldn't seek out a cure to his son regardless of some ban? How long had augmentation been illegal when Julian Bashir's parents got him augmented?
This entire concept has to be taken for what it is. Weak writing by people who don't really care.
I will give you that that explanation wasn't well thought-out. Indeed, a man like Riker would have come across a lot of nefarious characters in his time who certainly would have been able to provide access to a synth.
And the whole "the cure needed a positronic matrix to grow in" (or however that was stated) struck me at the time as a sort of diabolus ex machina (the opposite of 'deus ex machina'), and a rather lazy way to engender sympathy and tie the Troi-Rikers' story into the larger plot, not to mention that it was based on a random idea that had never cropped up in any Trek series or movie prior to that point (so far as I know, anyway).
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
S1E07 | 5 March 2020 | "Nepenthe"
Dr. Jurati's back story was simpler than I thought it might be, too. She must be exceptionally impressionable to turn into a killer after a single mind meld of things that she already knew happened. I guess it works, but it feels half-baked.
As I said in an earlier post Jurati killed Madox because of Mars.
So, I went back and rewatched that scene, because y'all made me question what I thought I originally saw. And it's definitely not Mars that Oh is showing to Dr. Jurati in the mind meld. It's Earth that is being destroyed. (Or at least a planet that looks a lot like Earth — I was unable to make out any continent shapes.) And the whole planet explodes, not just the "burning" that happened to Mars.
So, I don't know what the explanation is for that... a vision of the future? And if so, why wouldn't Agnes have asked the same questions, namely, "Where do these images come from?"
On the other hand, maybe I missed something along the way which explains some of this. Any further elucidation would be appreciated.
One other thing I noticed when running that scene in slo-mo: at the beginning of the mind-meld, we see Commodore Oh wearing a cloak, then we see another woman who tears at her skin then eventually kills herself. At first I thought that was Oh, but it's not the same actress (Tamlyn Tomita) — it's either a Romulan or Vulcan woman (you can see the ears), but this woman has a little wart on her chin that Tomita does not have. Maybe they didn't have Tomita for that day of shooting and just hired a lookalike, figuring that for a bunch of images that flash by in a couple of seconds, nobody would notice. But either way, it just adds to the unanswered questions from that encounter.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I read a theory that the Romulans are synths but only very few of them know it and keep it a secret.
With the replay of the scene where Hugh says that those on the cube were the only Romulans ever assimilated (and that process having failed) this theory is getting more likely to me.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
I don't understand how the medical science of this show is supposed to work that such a thing would even make sense, and I don't buy that everyone in the entire Alpha Quadrant adhered to the Federation's ban, but the story function is to 1) establish one of the consequences of the ban, 2) make it personal for us by having it affect people we care about, and 3) affirm how comprehensive the ban is by showing us that William T. Riker, whom we know can move Heaven and Earth, was unable to procure a positronic matrix for his own son.
I read a theory that the Romulans are synths but only very few of them know it and keep it a secret.
With the replay of the scene where Hugh says that those on the cube were the only Romulans ever assimilated (and that process having failed) this theory is getting more likely to me.
I can see the elements upon which that theory is based, but that would actually be more absurd than making Control the origin of the Borg. At most I might accept that some element of Romulan leadership had some synths among them, depending on the scope and how it's explained. Maybe.
S1E07 | 5 March 2020 | "Nepenthe"
Dr. Jurati's back story was simpler than I thought it might be, too. She must be exceptionally impressionable to turn into a killer after a single mind meld of things that she already knew happened. I guess it works, but it feels half-baked.
As I said in an earlier post Jurati killed Madox because of Mars.
So, I went back and rewatched that scene, because y'all made me question what I thought I originally saw. And it's definitely not Mars that Oh is showing to Dr. Jurati in the mind meld. It's Earth that is being destroyed. (Or at least a planet that looks a lot like Earth — I was unable to make out any continent shapes.) And the whole planet explodes, not just the "burning" that happened to Mars.
So, I don't know what the explanation is for that... a vision of the future? And if so, why wouldn't Agnes have asked the same questions, namely, "Where do these images come from?"
On the other hand, maybe I missed something along the way which explains some of this. Any further elucidation would be appreciated.
One other thing I noticed when running that scene in slo-mo: at the beginning of the mind-meld, we see Commodore Oh wearing a cloak, then we see another woman who tears at her skin then eventually kills herself. At first I thought that was Oh, but it's not the same actress (Tamlyn Tomita) — it's either a Romulan or Vulcan woman (you can see the ears), but this woman has a little wart on her chin that Tomita does not have. Maybe they didn't have Tomita for that day of shooting and just hired a lookalike, figuring that for a bunch of images that flash by in a couple of seconds, nobody would notice. But either way, it just adds to the unanswered questions from that encounter.
I just figured Oh imparted imagined, manufactured imagery to Jurati. Easier to believe a Romulan to be manipulative than to be the Men in Black protecting the universe this whole time. Though speaking of Romulans and what they've been up to all along, so far as I can remember, this was the first canonical mind meld we've ever seen performed by a Romulan. That may or may not be related to some part of all this.
I just figured Oh imparted imagined, manufactured imagery to Jurati.
Possible, but from what we know about mind melds, they are true connections to one's true thoughts, so this would add another wrinkle, implying that she somehow developed the ability to create a mind illusion for this purpose. Even when Spock did mind melds to convince the other crew that the bullets at the OK Corral couldn't hurt them, he wasn't manufacturing anything, that was the truth, albeit not from the perspective of the other crew.
Though speaking of Romulans and what they've been up to all along, so far as I can remember, this was the first canonical mind meld we've ever seen performed by a Romulan. That may or may not be related to some part of all this.
That's true, and I thought of that, as well. But I had one thought that Oh might in fact be a Vulcan.
Edit: Another thought I had about your comment regarding it being easier to believe the Romulans were being manipulative than trying to save the galaxy: PIC has so far been about upending and subverting our long-held beliefs about Starfleet and about Picard, so maybe they would continue that by going against what has been a "truism" since TOS, and show us that Romulans do not always act purely out of self-interest. This, to me, would also make for a much more intriguing take on them, rather than just having them be the "evil empire" where everything is either black or white. After a while, that gets a little prosaic. I mean, of course they would never be shining heroes, either, but showing some shades of gray could make for some provocative and interesting dramatic twists and turns.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I don't understand how the medical science of this show is supposed to work that such a thing would even make sense, and I don't buy that everyone in the entire Alpha Quadrant adhered to the Federation's ban, but the story function is to 1) establish one of the consequences of the ban, 2) make it personal for us by having it affect people we care about, and 3) affirm how comprehensive the ban is by showing us that William T. Riker, whom we know can move Heaven and Earth, was unable to procure a positronic matrix for his own son.
That was indeed the function they were trying to serve by writing that particular bit of plot, but I just thought it was lazy and not well-thought-out by the writers. Perhaps if it hadn't come out of nowhere, but was set up a little bit, it might have been more palatable to my tastes — I mean, with the somewhat slow burn of this show (in the earlier episodes, anyway), it's not like they wouldn't have had time to lay the foundation for that, and cut some of the other fat away from those eps.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I just figured Oh imparted imagined, manufactured imagery to Jurati.
Possible, but from what we know about mind melds, they are true connections to one's true thoughts, so this would add another wrinkle, implying that she somehow developed the ability to create a mind illusion for this purpose. Even when Spock did mind melds to convince the other crew that the bullets at the OK Corral couldn't hurt them, he wasn't manufacturing anything, that was the truth, albeit not from the perspective of the other crew.
Mind melds are kinda nebulous. They've never canonically established exactly what the mechanics are, which is helpful for storytelling since they can be whatever they need. There was never any talk of katras until all of a sudden they needed a way to resurrect Spock, for instance. Nor was there any talk of mind melds having been taboo until ENT invented that. The extent to which information is shared has always been unclear, too. In most instances, it seems to be about a specific matter and not an entire "data dump", so there's really no reason a Romulan couldn't commit specific imagery to mind, then select that to be what's transferred. I mean, surely Oh didn't also let Jurati know she's working with or for the Zhat Vash.
Though speaking of Romulans and what they've been up to all along, so far as I can remember, this was the first canonical mind meld we've ever seen performed by a Romulan. That may or may not be related to some part of all this.
That's true, and I thought of that, as well. But I had one thought that Oh might in fact be a Vulcan.[/quote]
I've considered that, too. She wouldn't be the first wayward Vulcan, if so.
Edit: Another thought I had about your comment regarding it being easier to believe the Romulans were being manipulative than trying to save the galaxy: PIC has so far been about upending and subverting our long-held beliefs about Starfleet and about Picard, so maybe they would continue that by going against what has been a "truism" since TOS, and show us that Romulans do not always act purely out of self-interest. This, to me, would also make for a much more intriguing take on them, rather than just having them be the "evil empire" where everything is either black or white. After a while, that gets a little prosaic. I mean, of course they would never be shining heroes, either, but showing some shades of gray could make for some provocative and interesting dramatic twists and turns.
I was being a touch flippant, but those are good points. I would add that "upending and subverting" is one of the things I dig most about the show, and I concur with you about it. All we truly know about the Romulans is that they originated as Vulcans who rejected the teachings of Surak centuries ago, have been isolationist ever since, and until very recently, had an almost uniform hairstyle.
i have been reading , quite frequently lately, that control from discovery is an element to the doomsday story on picard. apparently the mindmeld vision that is shown to jurati is very similar to the one discovery spock saw. me personally, i hope control is not a part of st:p . i dislike the idea that control was some kind of precursor to the borg
I doubt it'll be the genesis of the Borg, but I suspect what Commodore Oh showed in the mindmeld is to do with Control. DISCO showed similar scenes.
It'd make more sense if it was S31 or Klingon intelligence though, as the Romulans had nothing to do with Control.
Although Momma Burnham was changing things in the past, so maybe one of her attempts created Zhat Vash?
My friend... don't you think this entire concept is a bit silly from the outset? First of all, this "ban" being something that's remotely enforceable over the entire Federation. Ha! We can't even ban things on Earth without there being black markets and who knows what else. You mean to tell me they can ban ALL synthetic intelligence across almost an entire quadrant of the galaxy?
And the idea that William T. Riker, OUR William T. Riker, the man that would do anything it takes to save the people he loves... Do you mean to tell me he wouldn't seek out a cure to his son regardless of some ban? How long had augmentation been illegal when Julian Bashir's parents got him augmented?
This entire concept has to be taken for what it is. Weak writing by people who don't really care.
You can apply that to pretty much the entirety of Trek though.
Why didn't Dr Crusher used Phlox's anti-assimilation shots on Picard/Locutus? In NEM, why didn't the E come with Voyagers Batmobile armour? Why not use the Terratin radiation to fight the Borg? Why not clone people Tom Riker style? Has no-one invented an anti-salamander potion yet for zipping about at warp 10? In Picard, they're apparently still using warp drive, where's the slipstream one from VOY?
Even taking the science into consideration, to use a transporter means the tech is there to know the current state of an individual - which opens up a can of worms as if you know the state of someone you can then pretty much have machine telepathy, transport pretty much any illness out of a body because you know the information of every single particle in the body, so you need to come with some pretty justifiable technobabble.
Start looking at Trek tech from day one, and you've a lot of logical conclusions that means all those terribly evil/misguided/stupid Admirals and Commodores our Brave Heroes have to deal with every other month should have had the Alpha Quadrant sewn up into an authoritarian hellhole before Kirk was out of nappies.
Wade through the tech encountered, invented and used from The Cage to Endgame, and the Federation should be able to solve anything. Hell, a kid created sentient nanites, the Enterprise D not only developed a sentiment hologram but evolved into a dayglo Tangela at one point.
Oh yes, and they can Honey, I Shrank the Starship. Couldn't Pilot Riker not have InnerSpaced into Thad and pew-pew-pewed away the virus?
The problem with any Trek series is there is a lot of cruft, and some of it needs to be conveniently forgotten for dramatic effect.
That was indeed the function they were trying to serve by writing that particular bit of plot, but I just thought it was lazy and not well-thought-out by the writers. Perhaps if it hadn't come out of nowhere, but was set up a little bit, it might have been more palatable to my tastes — I mean, with the somewhat slow burn of this show (in the earlier episodes, anyway), it's not like they wouldn't have had time to lay the foundation for that, and cut some of the other fat away from those eps.
And where are the counters to the Ban Synths laws? Imagine if the West had decided to ban Muslims after 9/11, I don't see everyone going "oh, okay, this is a thing now" and continuing their day-to-day life.
There'd be, quite reasonably, protests about that. Political movements, placards waved, voices of dissent in the media and political circles.
So I don't buy that everyone decided AI just had to go, because every JohnnyCab on Mars turned into David Berkowitz one morning.
Wade through the tech encountered, invented and used from The Cage to Endgame, and the Federation should be able to solve anything. Hell, a kid created sentient nanites, the Enterprise D not only developed a sentiment hologram but evolved into a dayglo Tangela at one point.
Agree with this — it's the bane of countless sci-fi and fantasy creations, that once you have a very powerful and/or highly advanced thing or person, you have to figure out ways to not employ that thing/person (or simply ignore it). Look at pretty much any superhero film, for instance, and you'll be able to spot numerous times where you can say, "Why didn't X just use his Y powers to defeat Z? Ridiculous!"
It's nice when writers actually figure out a plausible reason for why those things cannot be employed (and there is the time/budget/lack of studio meddling to put said explanation into the movie or show), but at this point it's pretty much expected that you'll run into a situation where they just say, "Ah, to hell with it, we've gotta ignore that thing or we simply have no plot." But that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop griping about it when I see that.
Btw, I lol'd at your JohnnyCab reference, as well.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
It's nice when writers actually figure out a plausible reason for why those things cannot be employed (and there is the time/budget/lack of studio meddling to put said explanation into the movie or show), but at this point it's pretty much expected that you'll run into a situation where they just say, "Ah, to hell with it, we've gotta ignore that thing or we simply have no plot." But that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop griping about it when I see that.
I'm fine with the griping - I do a fair bit, and it's fun!
I just get a little ticked off with the posters who demand that, just because it doesn't meet their expectations, it's not "Trek" and we should all accommodate that view.
I'm fine with people not liking a Trek series - no big fan of VOY or ENT - or even removing it from their own personal canon, but when you get the entitled attitude that a franchise past it's half century, and with millions of fans, and that gave us IDIC, should in some manner kowtow to the whims of an unhappy fan, I get a bit grumpy.
There's oodles I'd love to change - starting with rewriting NEM and ENT - I just don't feel like that gives me the right to belittle everyone who does like them, in a serious manner at least, a bit of tweaking here and there is harmless enough.
Maybe there needs to be a Trelane badge for everyone who says series X isn't Trek?
Alternately titled "The One Where They #@?!ing Put It All To-#@?!ing-gether and Santiago Cabrera Acts His #@?!ing Butt Off". Seriously, is Michael Chabon a plant to pave the way for that Quentin Tarantino Trek movie that everyone worried would feel too vulgar? Is he getting paid by the f-bomb? It's so intrusive that it took me out of the story all four (I think?) times someone dropped one. Taking me out of a 54 minute episode four times is sloppy storytelling.
Which is a shame, because aside from that, there is some really fine storytelling in this episode. Chabon wrote this one perfectly tailored to Cabrera and Michelle Hurd, and they both crushed it. My favorite arc was Raffi trying to suss out what's up with Rios. The scene of her with all five of the holograms was amusing, and this show can use some levity. But more than that, it just felt good to see her take that kind of active role and engage with her friend. I feel like this is who Raffi was before she was broken. We've seen flickers of it throughout the season. It's nice to see it solidifying. This was the episode where I think we finally saw why they wanted Michelle Hurd for this role.
On the other side of that conversation was Cabrera as Rios. He had a lot to do here as the five holograms, and not to downplay that, but sharing the story of his former captain with Raffi was compelling in a way that I don't think the written dialogue would be if just read on paper. He imbued that story with a lot of humanity; vulnerability, grief, sadness, pain, but also affection and that special kind of upbeat feeling that washes over someone talking about someone who influenced them in a key way.
As for the story points, looks like we were right about most of Commodore Oh's story. Half-Vulcan, Zhat Vash, responsible for Order 66. I wonder if we'll hear about her infiltration having to sidestep Norah Satie somewhere along the line. It could be ironic if Oh was able to carry on because of Picard discrediting Satie. And it looks a lot like everyone is right about Control fitting into this somehow; Airiam was unmistakable in the Admonition montage.
I'll also admit I got some kinda chills when Seven connected with the Queencell. Watching Narissa kill all those xB's and drones in stasis was upsetting in part because of seeing how it affected Seven. But also, now knowing some of Narissa's back story, I can see how she could do these things with the certainty it's for the greater good and not just cold blooded murder. Not sure I care much for the introduction of her and Narek being the niece of the one Romulan who overwhelmed an entire Cube into breaking down, or for that matter, that her aunt did that through sheer will. I don't much care for the octowhatever system being made by someone pulling eight suns from across light years. I did, however, appreciate the Engineering Hologram telling Raffi the reason you'd do such a thing would be to show off.
Lastly, as I hoped, we're seeing more of the Jean-Luc Picard we remember emerging. Even little things, like the way he says "Lay in a course" feels more recognizable. I loved the scene with him and Soji talking about Data. It felt like the conversation two people have about someone that one of them never knew and the other misses. Because I miss Data, too, it was especially bittersweet. And, of course, that mini-speech he gives Rios about how the Zhat Vash set the trap but the Federation walked into it felt especially like Picard. It's the kind of thing I need to hear today. I wish I could point to more real people as sources of such inspiration, but I'm grateful to find it in Jean-Luc Picard again.
are we sure that was airiam in the montage? there is a fb post that showed the android image that was used in todays ep is actually just a generic stock image
are we sure that was airiam in the montage? there is a fb post that showed the android image that was used in todays ep is actually just a generic stock image
The image from last week wasn't Airiam, but if it wasn't her and Data in this montage, then they did an excellent job of subliminally convincing me they were there.
I don't think it was supposed to be Airiam, but the design of the synth that was shown definitely had some similarities. However, I have no doubt that was Data that the first synth sort of morphed into (or at least they used Spiner's likeness for it). I took some screenshots of that scene and made a GIF for your edification.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
it's definitely not Mars that Oh is showing to Dr. Jurati in the mind meld. It's Earth that is being destroyed. (Or at least a planet that looks a lot like Earth — I was unable to make out any continent shapes.) And the whole planet explodes, not just the "burning" that happened to Mars.
So, I don't know what the explanation is for that... a vision of the future? And if so, why wouldn't Agnes have asked the same questions, namely, "Where do these images come from?"
Alright, well, at least this week's episode explained all that. Definitely not Earth, and definitely not from the future.
One other thing I noticed when running that scene in slo-mo: at the beginning of the mind-meld, we see Commodore Oh wearing a cloak, then we see another woman who tears at her skin then eventually kills herself. At first I thought that was Oh, but it's not the same actress (Tamlyn Tomita) — it's either a Romulan or Vulcan woman (you can see the ears), but this woman has a little wart on her chin that Tomita does not have. Maybe they didn't have Tomita for that day of shooting and just hired a lookalike, figuring that for a bunch of images that flash by in a couple of seconds, nobody would notice. But either way, it just adds to the unanswered questions from that encounter.
Also explained this. The woman tearing at her skin and the one who shot herself weren't supposed to be Cmdr Oh at all in the previous montage from the mind meld. But geez, those Romulan women did not take that Admonition well at all, eh? My theory is that the only ones that managed to not lose their minds were the ones who were crazy to begin with, including Oh.
In addition, I found this Council of Eight (or whatever it was called) an interesting thing, in that it was yet another instance of a powerful Romulan group (apparently) made up entirely of women. I find this interesting for a warrior race that is not typically depicted as matriarchal. Is there a precedent or background for that in ST canon?
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
it's definitely not Mars that Oh is showing to Dr. Jurati in the mind meld. It's Earth that is being destroyed. (Or at least a planet that looks a lot like Earth — I was unable to make out any continent shapes.) And the whole planet explodes, not just the "burning" that happened to Mars.
So, I don't know what the explanation is for that... a vision of the future? And if so, why wouldn't Agnes have asked the same questions, namely, "Where do these images come from?"
Alright, well, at least this week's episode explained all that. Definitely not Earth, and definitely not from the future.
Maybe there's something to the Borg Queen telling Data she was the beginning and the end?
One other thing I noticed when running that scene in slo-mo: at the beginning of the mind-meld, we see Commodore Oh wearing a cloak, then we see another woman who tears at her skin then eventually kills herself. At first I thought that was Oh, but it's not the same actress (Tamlyn Tomita) — it's either a Romulan or Vulcan woman (you can see the ears), but this woman has a little wart on her chin that Tomita does not have. Maybe they didn't have Tomita for that day of shooting and just hired a lookalike, figuring that for a bunch of images that flash by in a couple of seconds, nobody would notice. But either way, it just adds to the unanswered questions from that encounter.
Also explained this. The woman tearing at her skin and the one who shot herself weren't supposed to be Cmdr Oh at all in the previous montage from the mind meld. But geez, those Romulan women did not take that Admonition well at all, eh? My theory is that the only ones that managed to not lose their minds were the ones who were crazy to begin with, including Oh.
It was just Oh and Narissa. I think being stone cold ruthless was the ticket.
In addition, I found this Council of Eight (or whatever it was called) an interesting thing, in that it was yet another instance of a powerful Romulan group (apparently) made up entirely of women. I find this interesting for a warrior race that is not typically depicted as matriarchal. Is there a precedent or background for that in ST canon?
The brilliance of writing Romulans is that previous writers did surprisingly little with them in the previous half century. They appeared infrequently and we learned virtually nothing new about their society in most of those appearances. The Tal Shiar wasn't even made up until TNG's sixth season. Notable for the purpose of this conversation is that not only was Troi impersonating a woman of the Tal Shiar; she was doing it on a Warbird commanded by a woman.
I think I can remember off the top of my head at least as many Romulan women by name as I can men: Sela; Senator Cretak; Donatra; Caithlin Dar; T'Rul; Tallera; and Ba'el, the half-Klingon/half-Romulan Worf had an inappropriate dalliance with. I can't remember her actual name, but there was also that spy who posed as Vulcan Ambassador T'Pel. And the one with no canonical name who had a serious thing for Spock. Also, Taris and Varel. (I don't remember who the hell they were, but they were critical to building a Romulan deck in the Decipher CCG Premiere Edition days. They might not have even had onscreen names, for that matter.)
That group alone encompasses leadership in their government, their diplomatic corps, their military, their spy agency(ies), and their criminals. Also, whatever the hell Taris and Varel did. We also saw Romulan women scientists, like that one who worked on the Interphase Generator, and run a soup restaurant, like that one who was suspicious of Picard and Data. I buy these two newly invented sects existing among all that.
I don't think it was supposed to be Airiam, but the design of the synth that was shown definitely had some similarities. However, I have no doubt that was Data that the first synth sort of morphed into (or at least they used Spiner's likeness for it). I took some screenshots of that scene and made a GIF for your edification.
Alternately titled "The One Where They #@?!ing Put It All To-#@?!ing-gether and Santiago Cabrera Acts His #@?!ing Butt Off". Seriously, is Michael Chabon a plant to pave the way for that Quentin Tarantino Trek movie that everyone worried would feel too vulgar? Is he getting paid by the f-bomb? It's so intrusive that it took me out of the story all four (I think?) times someone dropped one. Taking me out of a 54 minute episode four times is sloppy storytelling.
This is one of the things that bothers me the most (there are other issues, but they've all been mentioned already) and I'm glad to see I'm not alone in it. It takes me out of the moment every single time.
Alternately titled "The One Where They #@?!ing Put It All To-#@?!ing-gether and Santiago Cabrera Acts His #@?!ing Butt Off". Seriously, is Michael Chabon a plant to pave the way for that Quentin Tarantino Trek movie that everyone worried would feel too vulgar? Is he getting paid by the f-bomb? It's so intrusive that it took me out of the story all four (I think?) times someone dropped one. Taking me out of a 54 minute episode four times is sloppy storytelling.
This is one of the things that bothers me the most (there are other issues, but they've all been mentioned already) and I'm glad to see I'm not alone in it. It takes me out of the moment every single time.
I had the same experience with Amazon's The Tick. At least so far, Picard himself has continued to sound like vintage Trek. It's not the word itself that bothers me; as anyone who has had a conversation with me outside a professional setting for more than ten minutes will attest, I use it all the time.
And in fairness, it's not unprecedented for Trek characters to use "colorful metaphors" in the movies, free from the constraints of syndicated TV. I totally expect if DS9 had been a prime time network show, there'd have been a lot of swearing on DS9; O'Brien and Kira would surely be the top two offenders. I think I'd be more amenable to it in Picard if it wasn't half the cast using it. At least so far, legacy characters have stuck to their original speaking structure. Seven is increasingly aggressive, though, so I have my money on her being the first. Unless O'Brien shows up, in which case I expect it'll be the first thing he says.
I really liked this last episode all around. Finally STP got me. And Seven is back! Yay!
And my feelings regarding the Zhat Vash were quite right, they are on a subjectively rightous cruisade. But sick nevertheless.
In German the swearing only gets through when Rios tells Raffi to "go away", but it fits the scene. I do not even know which two other occasions you are referring to, it seems they were smoothed out in the localization, at least it did not come to my attention.
Rios' HOs were hilarious, and Picard is more like I remembered him from TNG than he was in the first few episodes, this I like too. Good Trek after all for me.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
I really liked this last episode all around. Finally STP got me. And Seven is back! Yay!
Funny you say that. I have it ranked #2 on my list so far, but I saw in my Google news feed this piece from AV Club declaring it the "worst episode yet." I see the things that he sees in the episode, but we have diverging responses to most of them. I do agree that connecting Rios with Soji makes this show's world feel smaller, though. I'd have preferred
In German the swearing only gets through when Rios tells Raffi to "go away", but it fits the scene. I do not even know which two other occasions you are referring to, it seems they were smoothed it out in the localization, at least it did not come to my attention.
I counted four uses of "the f word" throughout the episode: Jurati, Rios, and Clancy. I forget the fourth. It might have been Jurati twice.
Comments
Yeah, I've heard the same speculation. And I also don't care for the idea of an origin story for the Borg, but is Control any more contrived than V'Ger, as was put forth in the novels? (I mean, aside from Control being an entirely convoluted mess of an idea in the first place?)
My friend... don't you think this entire concept is a bit silly from the outset? First of all, this "ban" being something that's remotely enforceable over the entire Federation. Ha! We can't even ban things on Earth without there being black markets and who knows what else. You mean to tell me they can ban ALL synthetic intelligence across almost an entire quadrant of the galaxy?
And the idea that William T. Riker, OUR William T. Riker, the man that would do anything it takes to save the people he loves... Do you mean to tell me he wouldn't seek out a cure to his son regardless of some ban? How long had augmentation been illegal when Julian Bashir's parents got him augmented?
This entire concept has to be taken for what it is. Weak writing by people who don't really care.
As I said in an earlier post Jurati killed Madox because of Mars.
Jurati is based upon Tilly from Discovery, and some of the fan theories about her. ST:Picard just tried making a character based upon those fan theories, so she is impressionable.
I will give you that that explanation wasn't well thought-out. Indeed, a man like Riker would have come across a lot of nefarious characters in his time who certainly would have been able to provide access to a synth.
And the whole "the cure needed a positronic matrix to grow in" (or however that was stated) struck me at the time as a sort of diabolus ex machina (the opposite of 'deus ex machina'), and a rather lazy way to engender sympathy and tie the Troi-Rikers' story into the larger plot, not to mention that it was based on a random idea that had never cropped up in any Trek series or movie prior to that point (so far as I know, anyway).
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
So, I went back and rewatched that scene, because y'all made me question what I thought I originally saw. And it's definitely not Mars that Oh is showing to Dr. Jurati in the mind meld. It's Earth that is being destroyed. (Or at least a planet that looks a lot like Earth — I was unable to make out any continent shapes.) And the whole planet explodes, not just the "burning" that happened to Mars.
So, I don't know what the explanation is for that... a vision of the future? And if so, why wouldn't Agnes have asked the same questions, namely, "Where do these images come from?"
On the other hand, maybe I missed something along the way which explains some of this. Any further elucidation would be appreciated.
One other thing I noticed when running that scene in slo-mo: at the beginning of the mind-meld, we see Commodore Oh wearing a cloak, then we see another woman who tears at her skin then eventually kills herself. At first I thought that was Oh, but it's not the same actress (Tamlyn Tomita) — it's either a Romulan or Vulcan woman (you can see the ears), but this woman has a little wart on her chin that Tomita does not have. Maybe they didn't have Tomita for that day of shooting and just hired a lookalike, figuring that for a bunch of images that flash by in a couple of seconds, nobody would notice. But either way, it just adds to the unanswered questions from that encounter.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
With the replay of the scene where Hugh says that those on the cube were the only Romulans ever assimilated (and that process having failed) this theory is getting more likely to me.
I can see the elements upon which that theory is based, but that would actually be more absurd than making Control the origin of the Borg. At most I might accept that some element of Romulan leadership had some synths among them, depending on the scope and how it's explained. Maybe.
I just figured Oh imparted imagined, manufactured imagery to Jurati. Easier to believe a Romulan to be manipulative than to be the Men in Black protecting the universe this whole time. Though speaking of Romulans and what they've been up to all along, so far as I can remember, this was the first canonical mind meld we've ever seen performed by a Romulan. That may or may not be related to some part of all this.
Possible, but from what we know about mind melds, they are true connections to one's true thoughts, so this would add another wrinkle, implying that she somehow developed the ability to create a mind illusion for this purpose. Even when Spock did mind melds to convince the other crew that the bullets at the OK Corral couldn't hurt them, he wasn't manufacturing anything, that was the truth, albeit not from the perspective of the other crew.
That's true, and I thought of that, as well. But I had one thought that Oh might in fact be a Vulcan.
Edit: Another thought I had about your comment regarding it being easier to believe the Romulans were being manipulative than trying to save the galaxy: PIC has so far been about upending and subverting our long-held beliefs about Starfleet and about Picard, so maybe they would continue that by going against what has been a "truism" since TOS, and show us that Romulans do not always act purely out of self-interest. This, to me, would also make for a much more intriguing take on them, rather than just having them be the "evil empire" where everything is either black or white. After a while, that gets a little prosaic. I mean, of course they would never be shining heroes, either, but showing some shades of gray could make for some provocative and interesting dramatic twists and turns.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
That was indeed the function they were trying to serve by writing that particular bit of plot, but I just thought it was lazy and not well-thought-out by the writers. Perhaps if it hadn't come out of nowhere, but was set up a little bit, it might have been more palatable to my tastes — I mean, with the somewhat slow burn of this show (in the earlier episodes, anyway), it's not like they wouldn't have had time to lay the foundation for that, and cut some of the other fat away from those eps.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Did you also marry a striking brunette with dark eyes who can tell whenever you're lying, and has a highly eccentric mother?
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Mind melds are kinda nebulous. They've never canonically established exactly what the mechanics are, which is helpful for storytelling since they can be whatever they need. There was never any talk of katras until all of a sudden they needed a way to resurrect Spock, for instance. Nor was there any talk of mind melds having been taboo until ENT invented that. The extent to which information is shared has always been unclear, too. In most instances, it seems to be about a specific matter and not an entire "data dump", so there's really no reason a Romulan couldn't commit specific imagery to mind, then select that to be what's transferred. I mean, surely Oh didn't also let Jurati know she's working with or for the Zhat Vash.
That's true, and I thought of that, as well. But I had one thought that Oh might in fact be a Vulcan.[/quote]
I've considered that, too. She wouldn't be the first wayward Vulcan, if so.
I was being a touch flippant, but those are good points. I would add that "upending and subverting" is one of the things I dig most about the show, and I concur with you about it. All we truly know about the Romulans is that they originated as Vulcans who rejected the teachings of Surak centuries ago, have been isolationist ever since, and until very recently, had an almost uniform hairstyle.
You must know me, sir.
(Her eyes are green, but what the hey)
I doubt it'll be the genesis of the Borg, but I suspect what Commodore Oh showed in the mindmeld is to do with Control. DISCO showed similar scenes.
It'd make more sense if it was S31 or Klingon intelligence though, as the Romulans had nothing to do with Control.
Although Momma Burnham was changing things in the past, so maybe one of her attempts created Zhat Vash?
You can apply that to pretty much the entirety of Trek though.
Why didn't Dr Crusher used Phlox's anti-assimilation shots on Picard/Locutus? In NEM, why didn't the E come with Voyagers Batmobile armour? Why not use the Terratin radiation to fight the Borg? Why not clone people Tom Riker style? Has no-one invented an anti-salamander potion yet for zipping about at warp 10? In Picard, they're apparently still using warp drive, where's the slipstream one from VOY?
Even taking the science into consideration, to use a transporter means the tech is there to know the current state of an individual - which opens up a can of worms as if you know the state of someone you can then pretty much have machine telepathy, transport pretty much any illness out of a body because you know the information of every single particle in the body, so you need to come with some pretty justifiable technobabble.
Start looking at Trek tech from day one, and you've a lot of logical conclusions that means all those terribly evil/misguided/stupid Admirals and Commodores our Brave Heroes have to deal with every other month should have had the Alpha Quadrant sewn up into an authoritarian hellhole before Kirk was out of nappies.
Wade through the tech encountered, invented and used from The Cage to Endgame, and the Federation should be able to solve anything. Hell, a kid created sentient nanites, the Enterprise D not only developed a sentiment hologram but evolved into a dayglo Tangela at one point.
Oh yes, and they can Honey, I Shrank the Starship. Couldn't Pilot Riker not have InnerSpaced into Thad and pew-pew-pewed away the virus?
The problem with any Trek series is there is a lot of cruft, and some of it needs to be conveniently forgotten for dramatic effect.
And where are the counters to the Ban Synths laws? Imagine if the West had decided to ban Muslims after 9/11, I don't see everyone going "oh, okay, this is a thing now" and continuing their day-to-day life.
There'd be, quite reasonably, protests about that. Political movements, placards waved, voices of dissent in the media and political circles.
So I don't buy that everyone decided AI just had to go, because every JohnnyCab on Mars turned into David Berkowitz one morning.
Agree with this — it's the bane of countless sci-fi and fantasy creations, that once you have a very powerful and/or highly advanced thing or person, you have to figure out ways to not employ that thing/person (or simply ignore it). Look at pretty much any superhero film, for instance, and you'll be able to spot numerous times where you can say, "Why didn't X just use his Y powers to defeat Z? Ridiculous!"
It's nice when writers actually figure out a plausible reason for why those things cannot be employed (and there is the time/budget/lack of studio meddling to put said explanation into the movie or show), but at this point it's pretty much expected that you'll run into a situation where they just say, "Ah, to hell with it, we've gotta ignore that thing or we simply have no plot." But that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop griping about it when I see that.
Btw, I lol'd at your JohnnyCab reference, as well.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I'm fine with the griping - I do a fair bit, and it's fun!
I just get a little ticked off with the posters who demand that, just because it doesn't meet their expectations, it's not "Trek" and we should all accommodate that view.
I'm fine with people not liking a Trek series - no big fan of VOY or ENT - or even removing it from their own personal canon, but when you get the entitled attitude that a franchise past it's half century, and with millions of fans, and that gave us IDIC, should in some manner kowtow to the whims of an unhappy fan, I get a bit grumpy.
There's oodles I'd love to change - starting with rewriting NEM and ENT - I just don't feel like that gives me the right to belittle everyone who does like them, in a serious manner at least, a bit of tweaking here and there is harmless enough.
Maybe there needs to be a Trelane badge for everyone who says series X isn't Trek?
Alternately titled "The One Where They #@?!ing Put It All To-#@?!ing-gether and Santiago Cabrera Acts His #@?!ing Butt Off". Seriously, is Michael Chabon a plant to pave the way for that Quentin Tarantino Trek movie that everyone worried would feel too vulgar? Is he getting paid by the f-bomb? It's so intrusive that it took me out of the story all four (I think?) times someone dropped one. Taking me out of a 54 minute episode four times is sloppy storytelling.
Which is a shame, because aside from that, there is some really fine storytelling in this episode. Chabon wrote this one perfectly tailored to Cabrera and Michelle Hurd, and they both crushed it. My favorite arc was Raffi trying to suss out what's up with Rios. The scene of her with all five of the holograms was amusing, and this show can use some levity. But more than that, it just felt good to see her take that kind of active role and engage with her friend. I feel like this is who Raffi was before she was broken. We've seen flickers of it throughout the season. It's nice to see it solidifying. This was the episode where I think we finally saw why they wanted Michelle Hurd for this role.
On the other side of that conversation was Cabrera as Rios. He had a lot to do here as the five holograms, and not to downplay that, but sharing the story of his former captain with Raffi was compelling in a way that I don't think the written dialogue would be if just read on paper. He imbued that story with a lot of humanity; vulnerability, grief, sadness, pain, but also affection and that special kind of upbeat feeling that washes over someone talking about someone who influenced them in a key way.
As for the story points, looks like we were right about most of Commodore Oh's story. Half-Vulcan, Zhat Vash, responsible for Order 66. I wonder if we'll hear about her infiltration having to sidestep Norah Satie somewhere along the line. It could be ironic if Oh was able to carry on because of Picard discrediting Satie. And it looks a lot like everyone is right about Control fitting into this somehow; Airiam was unmistakable in the Admonition montage.
I'll also admit I got some kinda chills when Seven connected with the Queencell. Watching Narissa kill all those xB's and drones in stasis was upsetting in part because of seeing how it affected Seven. But also, now knowing some of Narissa's back story, I can see how she could do these things with the certainty it's for the greater good and not just cold blooded murder. Not sure I care much for the introduction of her and Narek being the niece of the one Romulan who overwhelmed an entire Cube into breaking down, or for that matter, that her aunt did that through sheer will. I don't much care for the octowhatever system being made by someone pulling eight suns from across light years. I did, however, appreciate the Engineering Hologram telling Raffi the reason you'd do such a thing would be to show off.
Lastly, as I hoped, we're seeing more of the Jean-Luc Picard we remember emerging. Even little things, like the way he says "Lay in a course" feels more recognizable. I loved the scene with him and Soji talking about Data. It felt like the conversation two people have about someone that one of them never knew and the other misses. Because I miss Data, too, it was especially bittersweet. And, of course, that mini-speech he gives Rios about how the Zhat Vash set the trap but the Federation walked into it felt especially like Picard. It's the kind of thing I need to hear today. I wish I could point to more real people as sources of such inspiration, but I'm grateful to find it in Jean-Luc Picard again.
The image from last week wasn't Airiam, but if it wasn't her and Data in this montage, then they did an excellent job of subliminally convincing me they were there.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Alright, well, at least this week's episode explained all that. Definitely not Earth, and definitely not from the future.
Also explained this. The woman tearing at her skin and the one who shot herself weren't supposed to be Cmdr Oh at all in the previous montage from the mind meld. But geez, those Romulan women did not take that Admonition well at all, eh? My theory is that the only ones that managed to not lose their minds were the ones who were crazy to begin with, including Oh.
In addition, I found this Council of Eight (or whatever it was called) an interesting thing, in that it was yet another instance of a powerful Romulan group (apparently) made up entirely of women. I find this interesting for a warrior race that is not typically depicted as matriarchal. Is there a precedent or background for that in ST canon?
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Maybe there's something to the Borg Queen telling Data she was the beginning and the end?
It was just Oh and Narissa. I think being stone cold ruthless was the ticket.
The brilliance of writing Romulans is that previous writers did surprisingly little with them in the previous half century. They appeared infrequently and we learned virtually nothing new about their society in most of those appearances. The Tal Shiar wasn't even made up until TNG's sixth season. Notable for the purpose of this conversation is that not only was Troi impersonating a woman of the Tal Shiar; she was doing it on a Warbird commanded by a woman.
I think I can remember off the top of my head at least as many Romulan women by name as I can men: Sela; Senator Cretak; Donatra; Caithlin Dar; T'Rul; Tallera; and Ba'el, the half-Klingon/half-Romulan Worf had an inappropriate dalliance with. I can't remember her actual name, but there was also that spy who posed as Vulcan Ambassador T'Pel. And the one with no canonical name who had a serious thing for Spock. Also, Taris and Varel. (I don't remember who the hell they were, but they were critical to building a Romulan deck in the Decipher CCG Premiere Edition days. They might not have even had onscreen names, for that matter.)
That group alone encompasses leadership in their government, their diplomatic corps, their military, their spy agency(ies), and their criminals. Also, whatever the hell Taris and Varel did. We also saw Romulan women scientists, like that one who worked on the Interphase Generator, and run a soup restaurant, like that one who was suspicious of Picard and Data. I buy these two newly invented sects existing among all that.
its a stock picture.they cant even do that....
This is one of the things that bothers me the most (there are other issues, but they've all been mentioned already) and I'm glad to see I'm not alone in it. It takes me out of the moment every single time.
I had the same experience with Amazon's The Tick. At least so far, Picard himself has continued to sound like vintage Trek. It's not the word itself that bothers me; as anyone who has had a conversation with me outside a professional setting for more than ten minutes will attest, I use it all the time.
And in fairness, it's not unprecedented for Trek characters to use "colorful metaphors" in the movies, free from the constraints of syndicated TV. I totally expect if DS9 had been a prime time network show, there'd have been a lot of swearing on DS9; O'Brien and Kira would surely be the top two offenders. I think I'd be more amenable to it in Picard if it wasn't half the cast using it. At least so far, legacy characters have stuck to their original speaking structure. Seven is increasingly aggressive, though, so I have my money on her being the first. Unless O'Brien shows up, in which case I expect it'll be the first thing he says.
And my feelings regarding the Zhat Vash were quite right, they are on a subjectively rightous cruisade. But sick nevertheless.
In German the swearing only gets through when Rios tells Raffi to "go away", but it fits the scene. I do not even know which two other occasions you are referring to, it seems they were smoothed out in the localization, at least it did not come to my attention.
Rios' HOs were hilarious, and Picard is more like I remembered him from TNG than he was in the first few episodes, this I like too. Good Trek after all for me.
Funny you say that. I have it ranked #2 on my list so far, but I saw in my Google news feed this piece from AV Club declaring it the "worst episode yet." I see the things that he sees in the episode, but we have diverging responses to most of them. I do agree that connecting Rios with Soji makes this show's world feel smaller, though. I'd have preferred
I counted four uses of "the f word" throughout the episode: Jurati, Rios, and Clancy. I forget the fourth. It might have been Jurati twice.