Brontoforumus

Mothra wrote:

JD wrote:Picard episode 3: How does some guy have an unregistered uncloaked ship in orbit around Earth and Starfleet hasn't noticed? How come they talk about how expensive its captain's services will be, when TNG established that there's no money in the 24th century? How come they're still using plastic carrier bags in the 24th century? How come people still say "Oh God" in Star Trek's largely post-religion future, or know what Sunday school is? Why does Picard say "engage" if he's not the captain of the ship? Why does it take 2 hours and 15 minutes to introduce three crew? How come we never see anything happen (other than choregraphed fight scenes), but learn all our information from either Picard/Asha telling someone, or someone telling them?

This is the stuff I'm talking about where I've just reached that Discovery point where I stop asking questions, and am trying to focus on whether or not of the dramatic stuff is landing.

God... the fact that they started talking about how much money a captain cost... what the fuck, guys.

I didn't even register the Sunday school line.

One thing that super duper bugs me about this and Discovery (so I guess all "modern trek") is that they constantly tell the audience what they're supposed to be feeling at all times, like we're absolute cromags.

The final scene of this episode shows this perfectly, where Dr. Jarate surveys the crew, exclaims how excited she is to be part of this ride-or-die renegade crew, briefly interacts with Raffi, says out loud to the camera “what is the story with this mysterious woman?!”, then turns to Picard in time for Picard to Say The Thing, cut back to reaction shot of her being excited that he Said The Thing. Christ. Would anyone who wasn't part of the Enterprise crew even know that this was a thing he does?

Wait wait wait wait wait WAIT.

Are you telling me.

There's a character on this show named DR. JARATE?!

(Google neither confirms nor denies this...)

Yeah what you guys said about the pacing and how it took three episodes just to introduce the cast.

In comics this is called decompression. I hate it.

It's Jurati, according to the subtitles. Not an real-world name as far as I know, but appears to be a Latin word meaning "sworn" or "on oath", from the same root as the English "jury".

While we're on the topic of names:

I can't recall if they mention Raffi's surname on screen, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to name a character Raffi Musiker when the most famous Raffi is a musician.

Soji (双児) is Japanese for "twins". Asha is an Indian female given name originally from Sanskrit, meaning "hope". This is fitting, since the name of Data's daughter Lal is also of Indian origin (though Hindi rather than Sanskrit).

JD wrote:I can't recall if they mention Raffi's surname on screen, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to name a character Raffi Musiker when the most famous Raffi is a musician.

That seems transparently deliberate to me.

It gets even better. Her middle initial is P.

Doctor Agnes PEE JARATE

Okay that latest Picard ep was pretty good! I enjoyed it, particularly the little skirmish in space at the end.

Big fan of the EMH the captain summons to Tactical. I like the idea that the captain decided he wasn't going to chance losing another crew, so he just has EMHs doing everything.

Core cast is strong, which is a real relief.

The borg cube stuff in this show is so bizarre. For some reason they feel like they need to go back to that plotline every episode, even if nothing is happening there.

I truly don’t know what this show was going for with the “skating down the borg node hallway” thing, with the Doctor Who-ey swell of music? I thought it was leading to a larger romantic storyline progression, but then the evil guy just accused her of lying and she ran off, which, was an odd time to do that. I dunno. Since we know the guy is trying to kill or capture her, the only thing that could happen that would make this storyline not a slog is if he went against his orders for some reason? Even then, the romance is so underwhelming that I don’t give a shit.

I guess romance has never been something Star Trek’s been able to pull off, now that I think about it. Worf and Dax was probably the closest they’ve gotten giving a relationship the time it needed to properly breathe.

I made it to the fourth episode, but a cold open that lingers on a conscious dude getting an eyeball yanked out with a close up on snipping the optic nerve... Yeah, that's where I check out. I'm not squeamish but man does that seem jarringly vile and out of place for the first scene of a star trek show. I mean, there was that time BrundleParis yanked his tongue out, but that was a uniquely awful episode even by star trek standards and even then it was contextual and the makeup was pretty good.

... Christ, I just looked it up and apparently that episode won an Emmy for makeup. Threshold is for serious an Emmy award winning episode of star trek. Fuck my entire life.

The eyeball guy is Icheb, the rescued Borg boy from Voyager. The folks on the Star Trek wiki noticed that the reason the cartoonishly evil woman can't find the cortical implant she's needlessly torturing him for is that Icheb gave his to Seven to save her life in an episode Voyager.

This would have been a nice piece of continuity, but it's completely non-obvious. They don't tell you it's Icheb until later. If you look closely he's got a scar where Icheb's eye implant is, suggesting they pulled that out earlier, but it's easy to miss when they're pulling out his entire eye. Icheb wasn't in Starfleet when we last saw him, and he's played here by a different actor, so it's not clear.

If you don't catch one of the lines mentioning his name, you might watch the entire episode without knowing Icheb was that guy. I'm not the only one who managed to miss that the "xB" on the Borg cube working for the Romulans is Hugh, the borg Picard rescues in TNG.

This is starting to sound like it was written by a fanboy and directed by somebody who's never seen the thing before.

Woof... that was a rough one.

This one was a little more disappointing than usual because it both wasted Seven of Nine's guest appearance on a pointless, joyless revenge plotline, AND it really wanted to make a point that the universe is a bleak trash heap of crime and torture, in which Picard's idealism is infantile.

The Picard in this show seems comically naive and out of touch at best, and recklessly smug at worst. Compare this to the wildly travelled, deeply humble, endlessly wise captain from TNG. So weird.

This show is made by people who hate Star Trek

Crapsack federation in a crapsack universe isn't doing it for me. When I want grimdark cyberpunk genocide shit I have a door that goes outside.

I don't think the federation has to be the culture or anything, but there'd be more relative weight if there were anything even a little bit aspirational about this future. We already have the shitty future. Put something to give a fuck about in there.

The tone and moral is inconsistent with TNG, and it's hard not to expect TNG when the show is literally called Picard. Technically, though, a lot of the un-TNG stuff appearing in Picard has appeared in other Star Trek works, notably later seasons of DS9, which were more willing to explore less utopian ideas.

The DS9 season 6 episode Honor Among Thieves has O'Brien infiltrate a criminal syndicate on a planet outside of Federation-controlled space. It still uses currency and has problems like crime and poverty. A bank robbery occurs at one point.

Rios explicitly asking for payment for his services makes more sense when you consider that money still exists in the 24th century, just not in the Federation. Freecloud seems to be outside of Fenderation-controlled space, given that the Fenris Rangers have to patrol it.

It may seem like Freecloud is awfully close to Earth to have never joined the Federation (a mere 169 light years, according to the Star Trek wiki), but they are heading in the direction of Romulan space. It could be in the Neutral Zone or the territory of some other race who never joined the Federation, like the Bolians.

Humans reverting to a less civilized state when detached from their utopian society is discussed in the DS9 season 7 episode The Siege of AR-558, where a group of Starfleet officers become violent after an extended tour of duty in the warzone. Quark says that humans have not really evolved since World War 3, and that the enlightened nature of 24th century humans is predicated heavily on the Federation's peace and post-scarcity economy. It's not unthinkable that Seven would become this revenge-obsessed shooter, but her short appearance just doesn't give us much time to see that sort of character growth.

That's still on my main music playlist.

The Red Letter Media guys came up with a theory that Commodore Oh was wearing sunglasses because she's actually an android, and an android expert like Dr Jarate would identify her by her blink pattern (there's a TNG episode where Data recognizes a Soong-type android this way).

There was another theory that she's a secret Romulan agent in Starfleet, and the giveaway is that that Vulcans have a protective inner eyelid which precludes the need to wear sunglasses (as established in an Enterprise episode).

It turns out that Oh is a regular Vulcan, and just wears sunglasses to look cool.

JD wrote::cool:

The Red Letter Media guys came up with a theory that Commodore Oh was wearing sunglasses because she's actually an android, and an android expert like Dr Jarate would identify her by her blink pattern (there's a TNG episode where Data recognizes a Soong-type android this way).

There was another theory that she's a secret Romulan agent in Starfleet, and the giveaway is that that Vulcans have a protective inner eyelid which precludes the need to wear sunglasses (as established in an Enterprise episode).

It turns out that Oh is a regular Vulcan, and just wears sunglasses to look cool.

2:35

I'm just waiting to find out what made Patrick Stewart go for this. He must have seen some value in it beyond the paycheque?