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.
So much this.
Wish I could 'awesome' your post more than once. To me, IDIC is the core of what a Star Trek fan is. It's essentially the whole ideological underpinning of the franchise.
But then, I also understand the power of nostalgia. Nostalgia drives otherwise reasonable people to poorly considered deeds and words. It's a hell of a drug.
What I see in Picard is a world where the characters have been broken by the weight of circumstances beyond their control. I see the same thing throughout the community I live and work in, and it seems to permeate society far beyond that.
This is a story of people staring into the depths of demons both personal and impersonal, and that moment when they chose to try to believe in something more again. I can understand why this would make people uncomfortable.
That's a little weird, since it looks almost identical, but only almost. The PIC version is definitely softer, more human-like. You can see in the areas of the brow, especially, and also the nose. However, I suppose it could be that they just had one of their graphic artists alter the stock photo so that it would be more in line with a human-like synth, and less like a robot.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Speaking of "PIC" — I'm not terribly fond of that, but I certainly don't want to go the "STP" route, since that's never been a part of the naming convention for any Trek series' 3-letter abbreviations. Not to mention that that abbreviation just encourages the people who insist on calling Discovery "STD" ("Haha, it's named after a disease, hardy-har-har!").
Maybe "PCD" instead? But that doesn't really sit terribly well with me, either — I think it would just lead to confusion (whereas "PIC" makes it seem like I'm talking about a photograph). I'm sort of at a loss... perhaps "JLP"?
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
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.
She didn't break the cube by force of will, rather they bit off more than they could chew.
In a way, it flows from "I, Borg" where they planned to break the Borg with an impossible shape, and shows that the Collective has defences from that sort of thing so when they tried to assimilate Crazy Zhat Vash Redhead they encountered a similar thing with how broken she was. The Collective simply hit the eject button rather than have her craziness infect the collective.
Just as in 'Descent' they ejected those infected with Hugh's individuality, and it calls into question Necheyev chewing Picard out as it would appear that introducing the impossible shape would simply have resulted in the cube being abandoned, and the Borg keeping calm and carrying on assimilating all and sundry.
What I didn't like in the episode is the magic exposition and small world syndrome.
Oh is half Vulcan and half Romulan and we know this, how exactly? I get Raffi is Sherlock Holmes, but she's being used in a lazy way. A 5 minute scene in eps 1 or 2 with Picard contacting Garak stating a mutual friend suggested getting in touch, and you've then also got the reason for Seven showing up as she's bringing the information back, gets you a twofer - a bit of nostalgia without pushing the limits of credibility and making Raffi into a SuperDetective trope.
Queen Seven was good, and whilst little came of kicking the Romulans out - they were leaving anyway, and not letting the door hit them on the **tsk tsk** on the way out, as they were wedging the door open to fling out all the drones.
My suspicion is that doing so will come back to haunt them, either Queen Seven is going to rock up to the Synth Nest with a fully powered cube and a belly full of rage, or King Elnor is, and the Zhat Vash fleet will get to discover what smithereens are as they get blown into them.
Strikes me the reason they left him on the cube was to further his story, he works for lost causes, and what better lost cause than King of the Abandoned Drones? What's left of the mini Collective becomes a Co-operative, and joins with the Rangers whilst they work on healing the drones, and last week was Hugh passing on the torch to protect and help the de-assimilated.
With regards to the language, doesn't bother me - I'm used to salty language, and it's always struck me as unrealistic that it has been rarely used. I appreciate it's for reasons of the various series' being shown before the watershed, but having travelled a fair bit and dealt with many hierarchical groups, including some military, it's rarer for it not to be used to some extent.
Not sure I'd like to see it every other word though.
^My son is the same age I was when TNG was released and my only peeve about STP is that I cannot watch it with him. That and the developing small world syndrome.
Speaking of "PIC" — I'm not terribly fond of that, but I certainly don't want to go the "STP" route, since that's never been a part of the naming convention for any Trek series' 3-letter abbreviations. Not to mention that that abbreviation just encourages the people who insist on calling Discovery "STD" ("Haha, it's named after a disease, hardy-har-har!").
Maybe "PCD" instead? But that doesn't really sit terribly well with me, either — I think it would just lead to confusion (whereas "PIC" makes it seem like I'm talking about a photograph). I'm sort of at a loss... perhaps "JLP"?
Yeah this is the show that really breaks the abbreviation system, which may very well be my biggest gripe. I'm just going to call it "Picard". It's only 3 extra letters.
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.
She didn't break the cube by force of will, rather they bit off more than they could chew.
In a way, it flows from "I, Borg" where they planned to break the Borg with an impossible shape, and shows that the Collective has defences from that sort of thing so when they tried to assimilate Crazy Zhat Vash Redhead they encountered a similar thing with how broken she was. The Collective simply hit the eject button rather than have her craziness infect the collective.
Just as in 'Descent' they ejected those infected with Hugh's individuality, and it calls into question Necheyev chewing Picard out as it would appear that introducing the impossible shape would simply have resulted in the cube being abandoned, and the Borg keeping calm and carrying on assimilating all and sundry.
Hmm. I see the dots you've connected and it does track with the precedents you've cited. The problem I suppose I have is one that's been there since "I, Borg", which is just how and why the Borg have such difficulty suppressing individuality during assimilation from only some people. It seems to me if this is some kind of weakness, the Borg wouldn't have become much of a power in the first place. Granted, what we saw of the Delta Quadrant were a lot of impoverished, technologically immature peoples but surely they had people with strong wills? (Side note: I've always wondered if the Borg ever assimilated non-sentient creatures. Surely they at least tried at some point?)
I get Raffi is Sherlock Holmes, but she's being used in a lazy way.
I didn't feel that way at all. What I saw was that enthusiasm she had for pursuing her investigation gave me a sense of who she was before she was kicked out of Starfleet. She had focus and determination. But then, I spend some time most weeks in the company of people with mental health issues and addiction problems. That surely influences how I look at characters with such things and the ways in which their innate selves sometimes struggle to reassert themselves.
A 5 minute scene in eps 1 or 2 with Picard contacting Garak stating a mutual friend suggested getting in touch, and you've then also got the reason for Seven showing up as she's bringing the information back, gets you a twofer - a bit of nostalgia without pushing the limits of credibility and making Raffi into a SuperDetective trope.
I can't reconcile having Picard contact Garak (especially since there's no clear connection between those three characters) with disliking the small world syndrome.
Also, I didn't see anything "Super" about what Raffi did. She had an obvious question to ask (why did her friend freak out over seeing Soji?). She talked to people who knew him. We do that all the time without being branded specially gifted sleuths.
^My son is the same age I was when TNG was released and my only peeve about STP is that I cannot watch it with him. That and the developing small world syndrome.
Otherwise I am really enjoying the show.
I've thought a lot about that. I suspect a lot of were either exposed to Trek as children or came to it as adolescents. It's disappointing that Picard and more so Discovery have made themselves so incompatible with that for a lot of families. Trek was highly influential on me in my adolescence, and I hate to think that they've forsaken those viewers to impress those of us old enough now that it's no big deal for us to watch things like that.
^My son is the same age I was when TNG was released and my only peeve about STP is that I cannot watch it with him. That and the developing small world syndrome.
Otherwise I am really enjoying the show.
I've thought a lot about that. I suspect a lot of were either exposed to Trek as children or came to it as adolescents. It's disappointing that Picard and more so Discovery have made themselves so incompatible with that for a lot of families. Trek was highly influential on me in my adolescence, and I hate to think that they've forsaken those viewers to impress those of us old enough now that it's no big deal for us to watch things like that.
This is purely a thought exercise for me since I don't have children, but if I did, there's nothing that would be objectionable for me to watch with them provided they're ~8-10 years old. Although I didn't really get interested in Trek until my early teens, so I can't imagine kids younger than that really caring.
Younger than that, I can find all sorts of past Trek that has non-family friendly moments. TNG "Conspiracy" leaps to mind. Ditto ENT's cringe-worthy attempts at "sensuality".
Having grown up being both sheltered and curious absence of sheltering at times, all these years later I'm oftentimes resentful of the sheltered times. The absence of sheltering was often jarring, but children are a lot more savvy and resilient than adults give them credit for.
Far be it for me to tell others how to raise their children, but from personal experience I would have appreciated a thoughtful introduction and contextualization rather than outright denial or absence of input on a great many things. It's very vogue these days for older people to complain about younger people, but who raised who? There's probably a lot of good reasons why different generations have generally different values and opinions, and I'm extremely skeptical of blanket blame laid at the feet of mainstream culture.
^My son is the same age I was when TNG was released and my only peeve about STP is that I cannot watch it with him. That and the developing small world syndrome.
Otherwise I am really enjoying the show.
I've thought a lot about that. I suspect a lot of were either exposed to Trek as children or came to it as adolescents. It's disappointing that Picard and more so Discovery have made themselves so incompatible with that for a lot of families. Trek was highly influential on me in my adolescence, and I hate to think that they've forsaken those viewers to impress those of us old enough now that it's no big deal for us to watch things like that.
This is purely a thought exercise for me since I don't have children, but if I did, there's nothing that would be objectionable for me to watch with them provided they're ~8-10 years old. Although I didn't really get interested in Trek until my early teens, so I can't imagine kids younger than that really caring.
Younger than that, I can find all sorts of past Trek that has non-family friendly moments. TNG "Conspiracy" leaps to mind. Ditto ENT's cringe-worthy attempts at "sensuality".
Having grown up being both sheltered and curious absence of sheltering at times, all these years later I'm oftentimes resentful of the sheltered times. The absence of sheltering was often jarring, but children are a lot more savvy and resilient than adults give them credit for.
Far be it for me to tell others how to raise their children, but from personal experience I would have appreciated a thoughtful introduction and contextualization rather than outright denial or absence of input on a great many things. It's very vogue these days for older people to complain about younger people, but who raised who? There's probably a lot of good reasons why different generations have generally different values and opinions, and I'm extremely skeptical of blanket blame laid at the feet of mainstream culture.
Oh, I agree entirely that kids can handle far more than adults are typically willing to accept. And I love your point about an older generation complaining about a younger generation they were responsible for raising. I've made that argument for years. My concern isn't so much that Picard is too graphic for younger viewers to handle, though I would be reluctant to show it to anyone who wasn't at least a tween. It's that the parents won't expose their kids to Trek at those ages when I think a lot of us found it resonated.
Also, I highly recommend the memoirs of Glückel of Hameln. She was born circa 1646 and died in 1724, and her book is full of complaints about her kids and their generation being selfish, arrogant, disrespectful, and entitled. I laughed every time I came across a passage like that.
Speaking of "PIC" — I'm not terribly fond of that, but I certainly don't want to go the "STP" route, since that's never been a part of the naming convention for any Trek series' 3-letter abbreviations. Not to mention that that abbreviation just encourages the people who insist on calling Discovery "STD" ("Haha, it's named after a disease, hardy-har-har!").
Maybe "PCD" instead? But that doesn't really sit terribly well with me, either — I think it would just lead to confusion (whereas "PIC" makes it seem like I'm talking about a photograph). I'm sort of at a loss... perhaps "JLP"?
Speaking of "PIC" — I'm not terribly fond of that, but I certainly don't want to go the "STP" route, since that's never been a part of the naming convention for any Trek series' 3-letter abbreviations. Not to mention that that abbreviation just encourages the people who insist on calling Discovery "STD" ("Haha, it's named after a disease, hardy-har-har!").
Maybe "PCD" instead? But that doesn't really sit terribly well with me, either — I think it would just lead to confusion (whereas "PIC" makes it seem like I'm talking about a photograph). I'm sort of at a loss... perhaps "JLP"?
I really hope they don’t bring control into this...it’s not necessary and if they want to do more with the borg then get Seven to make her own collective again, don’t bring in an origin story, the borg are better being mysterious like that
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^My son is the same age I was when TNG was released and my only peeve about STP is that I cannot watch it with him. That and the developing small world syndrome.
Otherwise I am really enjoying the show.
I've thought a lot about that. I suspect a lot of were either exposed to Trek as children or came to it as adolescents. It's disappointing that Picard and more so Discovery have made themselves so incompatible with that for a lot of families. Trek was highly influential on me in my adolescence, and I hate to think that they've forsaken those viewers to impress those of us old enough now that it's no big deal for us to watch things like that.
This is purely a thought exercise for me since I don't have children, but if I did, there's nothing that would be objectionable for me to watch with them provided they're ~8-10 years old. Although I didn't really get interested in Trek until my early teens, so I can't imagine kids younger than that really caring.
Younger than that, I can find all sorts of past Trek that has non-family friendly moments. TNG "Conspiracy" leaps to mind. Ditto ENT's cringe-worthy attempts at "sensuality".
Having grown up being both sheltered and curious absence of sheltering at times, all these years later I'm oftentimes resentful of the sheltered times. The absence of sheltering was often jarring, but children are a lot more savvy and resilient than adults give them credit for.
Far be it for me to tell others how to raise their children, but from personal experience I would have appreciated a thoughtful introduction and contextualization rather than outright denial or absence of input on a great many things. It's very vogue these days for older people to complain about younger people, but who raised who? There's probably a lot of good reasons why different generations have generally different values and opinions, and I'm extremely skeptical of blanket blame laid at the feet of mainstream culture.
Oh, I agree entirely that kids can handle far more than adults are typically willing to accept. And I love your point about an older generation complaining about a younger generation they were responsible for raising. I've made that argument for years. My concern isn't so much that Picard is too graphic for younger viewers to handle, though I would be reluctant to show it to anyone who wasn't at least a tween. It's that the parents won't expose their kids to Trek at those ages when I think a lot of us found it resonated.
Also, I highly recommend the memoirs of Glückel of Hameln. She was born circa 1646 and died in 1724, and her book is full of complaints about her kids and their generation being selfish, arrogant, disrespectful, and entitled. I laughed every time I came across a passage like that.
I'm totally on the same page as you both. I look at the youth of today and feel confident that the world is in good hands. I look at the elderly and often see rude, bombastic, self-entititled types who are responsible for screwing up the world they were bequeathed. These are not the "greatest generation" - many of them are unfortunately no longer with us - they are the "boomers".
Anyway, my kids don't fall into the 8-10 age group yet, so they're too young. I was seven when I started watching TNG. I accept your point about Conspiracy, but that was heavily edited in the UK where I was watching, we didn't see the exploding head etc.
Hmm. I see the dots you've connected and it does track with the precedents you've cited. The problem I suppose I have is one that's been there since "I, Borg", which is just how and why the Borg have such difficulty suppressing individuality during assimilation from only some people. It seems to me if this is some kind of weakness, the Borg wouldn't have become much of a power in the first place. Granted, what we saw of the Delta Quadrant were a lot of impoverished, technologically immature peoples but surely they had people with strong wills? (Side note: I've always wondered if the Borg ever assimilated non-sentient creatures. Surely they at least tried at some point?)
I don't think it's particularly about willpower, more outliers - the Borg have got assimilation down to an efficient process, which means that there'll always be some individuals their system cannot handle, so they've got a circuit breaker for when then turns out to be catastrophic.
Some individuals are so damaged/different that the usual suppression triggers a response they have trouble adapting to as it's probably unique per occurrence.
I didn't feel that way at all. What I saw was that enthusiasm she had for pursuing her investigation gave me a sense of who she was before she was kicked out of Starfleet. She had focus and determination. But then, I spend some time most weeks in the company of people with mental health issues and addiction problems. That surely influences how I look at characters with such things and the ways in which their innate selves sometimes struggle to reassert themselves.
Look at how she connected the dots with minimal information.
Episode 1, we've never heard of Zhat Vash, yet here we have Raffi giving us their back history, Commodore's Oh's family tree...
It's the connections she's made, the dots that have been joined - as conjecture, I've no issue with it, but it's delivered as fact based on a logo, a treacherous commodore and what little Picard knows of the Zhat Vash.
That's straight out of the Sherlock Holmes trope playbook.
I can't reconcile having Picard contact Garak (especially since there's no clear connection between those three characters) with disliking the small world syndrome.
I find a degree of separation - Picard->Sisko->Garak - easier to swallow than a mix of Rios just happening to have been in the ship the synths were on, and Raffi's detective moves personally.
Picard knowing Garak would definitely be a stretch, but having him aware of him? I'm not sure, but, yes, it would tie into the small world syndrome.
Also, I didn't see anything "Super" about what Raffi did. She had an obvious question to ask (why did her friend freak out over seeing Soji?). She talked to people who knew him. We do that all the time without being branded specially gifted sleuths.
It wasn't the discovering what happened to Rios that was Super, it was the connections she made over the conspiracy, I just couldn't buy it.
Too much to quote and respond to by now, but Raffi wasn't just some lackey in Starfleet. She held high security clearance. You don't get that without being entrusted with being able to either collect sensitive information, analyze it, and/or figure out what to do with it. The Romulans were a particular bee in her bonnet; that's why Picard's bait for her is that he knows they have operatives on Earth. She went all "Fox Mulder" at hearing that. She's not new to this subject; she knows it as well as anyone in the Federation. She's just now getting her hands on the kinds of things she could only suspect before.
Also, if you're going to connect Picard to Garak somehow, surely O'Brien is a likelier link than Sisko. It would still have felt like too small a sandbox, though.
I don't have a problem with the "small world" issue. All one has to do is look at the incredible synchronicities and coincidences in one's own life, to know that sometimes we just run into people we know in the most unlikely of places. So for a fiction story to employ that, yes, surely many will go, "Oh, that's just wayyy too coincidental!" But others will realize that this sort of thing happens in real life more often than mere chance would seem to make it possible for it to happen.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I don't have a problem with the "small world" issue. All one has to do is look at the incredible synchronicities and coincidences in one's own life, to know that sometimes we just run into people we know in the most unlikely of places. So for a fiction story to employ that, yes, surely many will go, "Oh, that's just wayyy too coincidental!" But others will realize that this sort of thing happens in real life more often than mere chance would seem to make it possible for it to happen.
Oh, I could write a book about those kinds of experiences I've had. Some have been amusing, some have been eerie. A few have even been powerful. None of them have connected me with someone who was integral to a massive plot with implications for the existence of life itself. I can, however, think of a dozen people offhand that I would suspect would be involved in such shenanigans. I like to think I'm on a few others' lists.
Huh. We open with Narek showing up and opening fire on La Sirena, we've got the Artifact arriving on the scene, we've got Brent Spiner in the opening credits as a guest star... I was jacked. And then... I dunno. Everything just felt perfunctory, focused on hitting key story points and not even seeming to give any of them all that much thought. This entered my ranked-as-I-go list dead last, even below the "Children of Mars" Short Treks installment.
Things I liked:
Picard's announcement of his medical condition and his conduct about it thereafter felt like what I'd expect from him. Hearing him tell Raffi he loved her. I can already hear the complaints about how she hasn't "earned" it, and how it "should have been [TNG character]" to have "real meaning", blah, blah, blah. As my own inner circle will attest, I have always had difficulty saying such things to people, and have sometimes found it easier to say to someone I haven't known as long as someone with whom I have a longer, stronger history. Maybe it's not Emotion 101 correct, but it's how I'm wired and it clicks for me that this is how Picard is wired, too.
Picard passing the galaxy-saving baton to Seven. I really hope she gets a lot more to do, because this show in just a handful of episodes has proven that there was always more to the character than a skintight suit and curves. It makes me retroactively even angrier at how much VOY squandered.
Things I didn't like:
They crashed a Borg Cube on a planet. That seems incredible, but they just kinda shrug, like it was any other ship. No one even seems curious what it was doing there. Picard proposes checking for Elnor and Hugh as an afterthought. If he had gotten out of La Sirena on the other side, would he have even remembered the thing had come down at all? I was also disappointed that the extent of the damage to the Artifact seemed to be that they turned off the lights. Maybe the Borg once assimilated a cat and now their ships land on their feet?
Sojis's Twisted Sister knows how to perform a Vulcan mind meld? *sigh* Just lazy. Lazy, lazy, lazy. I'd have bought any number of mechanisms for drawing out that information. A highly advanced tech mind scanning gizmo would have been sufficient. I'd have even gone along with "She was made from some Vulcan-based neuron thing". But she's... read Surak? That's it? Really?
Good thing Poe and Finn already showed us that it's no big deal to excavate a spacefaring ship out of the ground it's crashed into and get it back to working order in no time, or I might be incredulous about what Rios and Raffi have to do with La Sirena by next week.
I wish they'd release the rest of these whilst we're in lockdown.
Take it from someone with chronic health issues that keep me at home and periodically completely bedridden. Ya gotta pace yourself, or this is going to be a far more anguishing experience than it needs to be.
(I might not be so chill if we weren't down to just one episode, of course.)
I'm not sure I understand what the gripe is. Is it that Spiner and Blalock played their characters' relatives? Or that they were the only ones? There are a lot more examples of that not being done, so "WAY too much" is throwing me off here.
And why have we never heard of Alton before now? Why didn’t Julianna mention him at all? Why did Noonian only refer to Data and Lore as his children?
Same reason Noonien never mentioned Julianna or B-4: They hadn't been invented yet. Ditto Sam, Aurelan, and Peter Kirk; Carol and David Marcus; Peter Preston; Sybok; Kestra Troi; Nikolai Rozhenko; Demora Sulu; Damar's wife and son; etc.
Did anyone else get a very Lore feeling from Sutra at the end. Supposedly the Androids were derived from Data, but Lore was around too, just disassembled. I wonder if they derived any of the programming/memories from him as well.
[Edit] Better wording.
"If it wasn't for autocorrect, we wouldn't have Tuvok on a Giraffe."
Did anyone else get a very Lore feeling from Sutra at the end. Supposedly the Androids were derived from Data, but Lore was around too, just disassembled. I wonder if they derived any of the programming/memories from him as well.
[Edit] Better wording.
Given that Lore fits right into the center of the Borg/Synthetic Venn diagram, he's felt implicitly present throughout this whole season.
So now we need to sympathize with the Romulans until the next twist occurs? Hmmm kay. Not impressed.
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.
Did anyone else get a very Lore feeling from Sutra at the end. Supposedly the Androids were derived from Data, but Lore was around too, just disassembled. I wonder if they derived any of the programming/memories from him as well.
[Edit] Better wording.
Given that Lore fits right into the center of the Borg/Synthetic Venn diagram, he's felt implicitly present throughout this whole season.
So, I just came across a crazy (but maybe not so crazy) fan theory: that Dr. Altan Inigo Soong is actually Lore. The reasoning behind this line of thinking: "His initials are literally A.I." 🤨 😏
So now we need to sympathize with the Romulans until the next twist occurs? Hmmm kay. Not impressed.
I didn't feel like I was asked to sympathize with the Romulans at all. If anything, I'm more irked at them now that I know they're to blame for escalating this antagonism. If not for the Romulan instinct to annihilate instead of engage, maybe all organic life wouldn't now be threatened.
Did anyone else get a very Lore feeling from Sutra at the end. Supposedly the Androids were derived from Data, but Lore was around too, just disassembled. I wonder if they derived any of the programming/memories from him as well.
[Edit] Better wording.
Given that Lore fits right into the center of the Borg/Synthetic Venn diagram, he's felt implicitly present throughout this whole season.
So, I just came across a crazy (but maybe not so crazy) fan theory: that Dr. Altan Inigo Soong is actually Lore. The reasoning behind this line of thinking: "His initials are literally A.I." 🤨 😏
According to showrunner Michael Chabon, Spiner came up with the "A.I." initials for the character, as a pun on "artificial intelligence". [1]
I would never have come up with "A.I. = Lore in disguise." Finding out that Soji was created from a neuron of Lore's would cement her as Star Trek Rey after all, which would be a bit disappointing.
I would never have come up with "A.I. = Lore in disguise." Finding out that Soji was created from a neuron of Lore's would cement her as Star Trek Rey after all, which would be a bit disappointing.
And maybe not all of them were. Might have been a select few "experimental ones". Before Data's death, Lore might have been the only positronic braIn that Bruce Maddox had access to.
Another possibility (don't think so, just thinking out loud), would be that the reason they were made in pairs was they were built differently. One based on Data, the other Lore. Now this could possibly support the idea that Soji was based on Lore, and Dahj was based on Data (only saying this based on the idea that Dahj seemed to know Picard and Soji never really seemed too).
[Edit]
Continuing the idea ... Sutra is based on Lore, her sister Jana was based on Data.
And given Noonian's other "son" names (e.g. B4) ... naming someone A.I. is definitely not outside the realm of possibilities.
"If it wasn't for autocorrect, we wouldn't have Tuvok on a Giraffe."
I would never have come up with "A.I. = Lore in disguise." Finding out that Soji was created from a neuron of Lore's would cement her as Star Trek Rey after all, which would be a bit disappointing.
And maybe not all of them were. Might have been a select few "experimental ones". Before Data's death, Lore might have been the only positronic braIn that Bruce Maddox had access to.
I wasn't thinking about any of the others. Just Soji.
Another possibility (don't think so, just thinking out loud), would be that the reason they were made in pairs was they were built differently. One based on Data, the other Lore. Now this could possibly support the idea that Soji was based on Lore, and Dahj was based on Data (only saying this based on the idea that Dahj seemed to know Picard and Soji never really seemed too).
[Edit]
Continuing the idea ... Sutra is based on Lore, her sister Jana was based on Data.
And given Noonian's other "son" names (e.g. B4) ... naming someone A.I. is definitely not outside the realm of possibilities.
Comments
So much this.
Wish I could 'awesome' your post more than once. To me, IDIC is the core of what a Star Trek fan is. It's essentially the whole ideological underpinning of the franchise.
But then, I also understand the power of nostalgia. Nostalgia drives otherwise reasonable people to poorly considered deeds and words. It's a hell of a drug.
What I see in Picard is a world where the characters have been broken by the weight of circumstances beyond their control. I see the same thing throughout the community I live and work in, and it seems to permeate society far beyond that.
This is a story of people staring into the depths of demons both personal and impersonal, and that moment when they chose to try to believe in something more again. I can understand why this would make people uncomfortable.
That's a little weird, since it looks almost identical, but only almost. The PIC version is definitely softer, more human-like. You can see in the areas of the brow, especially, and also the nose. However, I suppose it could be that they just had one of their graphic artists alter the stock photo so that it would be more in line with a human-like synth, and less like a robot.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Maybe "PCD" instead? But that doesn't really sit terribly well with me, either — I think it would just lead to confusion (whereas "PIC" makes it seem like I'm talking about a photograph). I'm sort of at a loss... perhaps "JLP"?
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
She didn't break the cube by force of will, rather they bit off more than they could chew.
In a way, it flows from "I, Borg" where they planned to break the Borg with an impossible shape, and shows that the Collective has defences from that sort of thing so when they tried to assimilate Crazy Zhat Vash Redhead they encountered a similar thing with how broken she was. The Collective simply hit the eject button rather than have her craziness infect the collective.
Just as in 'Descent' they ejected those infected with Hugh's individuality, and it calls into question Necheyev chewing Picard out as it would appear that introducing the impossible shape would simply have resulted in the cube being abandoned, and the Borg keeping calm and carrying on assimilating all and sundry.
What I didn't like in the episode is the magic exposition and small world syndrome.
Oh is half Vulcan and half Romulan and we know this, how exactly? I get Raffi is Sherlock Holmes, but she's being used in a lazy way. A 5 minute scene in eps 1 or 2 with Picard contacting Garak stating a mutual friend suggested getting in touch, and you've then also got the reason for Seven showing up as she's bringing the information back, gets you a twofer - a bit of nostalgia without pushing the limits of credibility and making Raffi into a SuperDetective trope.
Queen Seven was good, and whilst little came of kicking the Romulans out - they were leaving anyway, and not letting the door hit them on the **tsk tsk** on the way out, as they were wedging the door open to fling out all the drones.
My suspicion is that doing so will come back to haunt them, either Queen Seven is going to rock up to the Synth Nest with a fully powered cube and a belly full of rage, or King Elnor is, and the Zhat Vash fleet will get to discover what smithereens are as they get blown into them.
Strikes me the reason they left him on the cube was to further his story, he works for lost causes, and what better lost cause than King of the Abandoned Drones? What's left of the mini Collective becomes a Co-operative, and joins with the Rangers whilst they work on healing the drones, and last week was Hugh passing on the torch to protect and help the de-assimilated.
With regards to the language, doesn't bother me - I'm used to salty language, and it's always struck me as unrealistic that it has been rarely used. I appreciate it's for reasons of the various series' being shown before the watershed, but having travelled a fair bit and dealt with many hierarchical groups, including some military, it's rarer for it not to be used to some extent.
Not sure I'd like to see it every other word though.
Otherwise I am really enjoying the show.
Yeah this is the show that really breaks the abbreviation system, which may very well be my biggest gripe. I'm just going to call it "Picard". It's only 3 extra letters.
Hmm. I see the dots you've connected and it does track with the precedents you've cited. The problem I suppose I have is one that's been there since "I, Borg", which is just how and why the Borg have such difficulty suppressing individuality during assimilation from only some people. It seems to me if this is some kind of weakness, the Borg wouldn't have become much of a power in the first place. Granted, what we saw of the Delta Quadrant were a lot of impoverished, technologically immature peoples but surely they had people with strong wills? (Side note: I've always wondered if the Borg ever assimilated non-sentient creatures. Surely they at least tried at some point?)
I didn't feel that way at all. What I saw was that enthusiasm she had for pursuing her investigation gave me a sense of who she was before she was kicked out of Starfleet. She had focus and determination. But then, I spend some time most weeks in the company of people with mental health issues and addiction problems. That surely influences how I look at characters with such things and the ways in which their innate selves sometimes struggle to reassert themselves.
I can't reconcile having Picard contact Garak (especially since there's no clear connection between those three characters) with disliking the small world syndrome.
Also, I didn't see anything "Super" about what Raffi did. She had an obvious question to ask (why did her friend freak out over seeing Soji?). She talked to people who knew him. We do that all the time without being branded specially gifted sleuths.
I've thought a lot about that. I suspect a lot of were either exposed to Trek as children or came to it as adolescents. It's disappointing that Picard and more so Discovery have made themselves so incompatible with that for a lot of families. Trek was highly influential on me in my adolescence, and I hate to think that they've forsaken those viewers to impress those of us old enough now that it's no big deal for us to watch things like that.
This is purely a thought exercise for me since I don't have children, but if I did, there's nothing that would be objectionable for me to watch with them provided they're ~8-10 years old. Although I didn't really get interested in Trek until my early teens, so I can't imagine kids younger than that really caring.
Younger than that, I can find all sorts of past Trek that has non-family friendly moments. TNG "Conspiracy" leaps to mind. Ditto ENT's cringe-worthy attempts at "sensuality".
Having grown up being both sheltered and curious absence of sheltering at times, all these years later I'm oftentimes resentful of the sheltered times. The absence of sheltering was often jarring, but children are a lot more savvy and resilient than adults give them credit for.
Far be it for me to tell others how to raise their children, but from personal experience I would have appreciated a thoughtful introduction and contextualization rather than outright denial or absence of input on a great many things. It's very vogue these days for older people to complain about younger people, but who raised who? There's probably a lot of good reasons why different generations have generally different values and opinions, and I'm extremely skeptical of blanket blame laid at the feet of mainstream culture.
Oh, I agree entirely that kids can handle far more than adults are typically willing to accept. And I love your point about an older generation complaining about a younger generation they were responsible for raising. I've made that argument for years. My concern isn't so much that Picard is too graphic for younger viewers to handle, though I would be reluctant to show it to anyone who wasn't at least a tween. It's that the parents won't expose their kids to Trek at those ages when I think a lot of us found it resonated.
Also, I highly recommend the memoirs of Glückel of Hameln. She was born circa 1646 and died in 1724, and her book is full of complaints about her kids and their generation being selfish, arrogant, disrespectful, and entitled. I laughed every time I came across a passage like that.
can we at least all agree to NOT call it JL?
I second the motion.
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I'm totally on the same page as you both. I look at the youth of today and feel confident that the world is in good hands. I look at the elderly and often see rude, bombastic, self-entititled types who are responsible for screwing up the world they were bequeathed. These are not the "greatest generation" - many of them are unfortunately no longer with us - they are the "boomers".
Anyway, my kids don't fall into the 8-10 age group yet, so they're too young. I was seven when I started watching TNG. I accept your point about Conspiracy, but that was heavily edited in the UK where I was watching, we didn't see the exploding head etc.
I don't think it's particularly about willpower, more outliers - the Borg have got assimilation down to an efficient process, which means that there'll always be some individuals their system cannot handle, so they've got a circuit breaker for when then turns out to be catastrophic.
Some individuals are so damaged/different that the usual suppression triggers a response they have trouble adapting to as it's probably unique per occurrence.
Look at how she connected the dots with minimal information.
Episode 1, we've never heard of Zhat Vash, yet here we have Raffi giving us their back history, Commodore's Oh's family tree...
It's the connections she's made, the dots that have been joined - as conjecture, I've no issue with it, but it's delivered as fact based on a logo, a treacherous commodore and what little Picard knows of the Zhat Vash.
That's straight out of the Sherlock Holmes trope playbook.
I find a degree of separation - Picard->Sisko->Garak - easier to swallow than a mix of Rios just happening to have been in the ship the synths were on, and Raffi's detective moves personally.
Picard knowing Garak would definitely be a stretch, but having him aware of him? I'm not sure, but, yes, it would tie into the small world syndrome.
It wasn't the discovering what happened to Rios that was Super, it was the connections she made over the conspiracy, I just couldn't buy it.
Also, if you're going to connect Picard to Garak somehow, surely O'Brien is a likelier link than Sisko. It would still have felt like too small a sandbox, though.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Oh, I could write a book about those kinds of experiences I've had. Some have been amusing, some have been eerie. A few have even been powerful. None of them have connected me with someone who was integral to a massive plot with implications for the existence of life itself. I can, however, think of a dozen people offhand that I would suspect would be involved in such shenanigans. I like to think I'm on a few others' lists.
Huh. We open with Narek showing up and opening fire on La Sirena, we've got the Artifact arriving on the scene, we've got Brent Spiner in the opening credits as a guest star... I was jacked. And then... I dunno. Everything just felt perfunctory, focused on hitting key story points and not even seeming to give any of them all that much thought. This entered my ranked-as-I-go list dead last, even below the "Children of Mars" Short Treks installment.
Things I liked:
Picard's announcement of his medical condition and his conduct about it thereafter felt like what I'd expect from him. Hearing him tell Raffi he loved her. I can already hear the complaints about how she hasn't "earned" it, and how it "should have been [TNG character]" to have "real meaning", blah, blah, blah. As my own inner circle will attest, I have always had difficulty saying such things to people, and have sometimes found it easier to say to someone I haven't known as long as someone with whom I have a longer, stronger history. Maybe it's not Emotion 101 correct, but it's how I'm wired and it clicks for me that this is how Picard is wired, too.
Picard passing the galaxy-saving baton to Seven. I really hope she gets a lot more to do, because this show in just a handful of episodes has proven that there was always more to the character than a skintight suit and curves. It makes me retroactively even angrier at how much VOY squandered.
Things I didn't like:
They crashed a Borg Cube on a planet. That seems incredible, but they just kinda shrug, like it was any other ship. No one even seems curious what it was doing there. Picard proposes checking for Elnor and Hugh as an afterthought. If he had gotten out of La Sirena on the other side, would he have even remembered the thing had come down at all? I was also disappointed that the extent of the damage to the Artifact seemed to be that they turned off the lights. Maybe the Borg once assimilated a cat and now their ships land on their feet?
Sojis's Twisted Sister knows how to perform a Vulcan mind meld? *sigh* Just lazy. Lazy, lazy, lazy. I'd have bought any number of mechanisms for drawing out that information. A highly advanced tech mind scanning gizmo would have been sufficient. I'd have even gone along with "She was made from some Vulcan-based neuron thing". But she's... read Surak? That's it? Really?
Good thing Poe and Finn already showed us that it's no big deal to excavate a spacefaring ship out of the ground it's crashed into and get it back to working order in no time, or I might be incredulous about what Rios and Raffi have to do with La Sirena by next week.
Take it from someone with chronic health issues that keep me at home and periodically completely bedridden. Ya gotta pace yourself, or this is going to be a far more anguishing experience than it needs to be.
(I might not be so chill if we weren't down to just one episode, of course.)
Arik = Noonian = Alton
T’Pol = T’Mir
But...
Kirk =/= David
Spock =/= Sarek
Voq =/= Tenavik
Deanna =/= Lwaxxana
Etc
And why have we never heard of Alton before now? Why didn’t Julianna mention him at all? Why did Noonian only refer to Data and Lore as his children?
I'm not sure I understand what the gripe is. Is it that Spiner and Blalock played their characters' relatives? Or that they were the only ones? There are a lot more examples of that not being done, so "WAY too much" is throwing me off here.
Same reason Noonien never mentioned Julianna or B-4: They hadn't been invented yet. Ditto Sam, Aurelan, and Peter Kirk; Carol and David Marcus; Peter Preston; Sybok; Kestra Troi; Nikolai Rozhenko; Demora Sulu; Damar's wife and son; etc.
[Edit] Better wording.
Given that Lore fits right into the center of the Borg/Synthetic Venn diagram, he's felt implicitly present throughout this whole season.
So, I just came across a crazy (but maybe not so crazy) fan theory: that Dr. Altan Inigo Soong is actually Lore. The reasoning behind this line of thinking: "His initials are literally A.I." 🤨 😏
However, the Memory Alpha article on his character states:
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I didn't feel like I was asked to sympathize with the Romulans at all. If anything, I'm more irked at them now that I know they're to blame for escalating this antagonism. If not for the Romulan instinct to annihilate instead of engage, maybe all organic life wouldn't now be threatened.
I would never have come up with "A.I. = Lore in disguise." Finding out that Soji was created from a neuron of Lore's would cement her as Star Trek Rey after all, which would be a bit disappointing.
And maybe not all of them were. Might have been a select few "experimental ones". Before Data's death, Lore might have been the only positronic braIn that Bruce Maddox had access to.
Another possibility (don't think so, just thinking out loud), would be that the reason they were made in pairs was they were built differently. One based on Data, the other Lore. Now this could possibly support the idea that Soji was based on Lore, and Dahj was based on Data (only saying this based on the idea that Dahj seemed to know Picard and Soji never really seemed too).
[Edit]
Continuing the idea ... Sutra is based on Lore, her sister Jana was based on Data.
And given Noonian's other "son" names (e.g. B4) ... naming someone A.I. is definitely not outside the realm of possibilities.
I wasn't thinking about any of the others. Just Soji.
We ought to know in a few days!