I'd be kinda pissed if they killed Geordi off screen. Not only is it meaningless but it's sending the message again that black characters are expendable enough to be passed over with a piece of dialogue.
IF the attacking ships were sending out the proper Star Fleet Codes, it may have been such a surprise when they attacked that it caught everyone off guard. Also, the tie-in comics have said that the Romulans somehow acquired said codes. I see parallels to Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor in this as well.
Sorry, as the short isn't available outside of the US, the majority of the world have little to contribute on the plot
Don't diss the Mars defense perimeter! Ships are a Star Trek thing, and they were in the short. So what is the problem discussing the ships?
Their parents worked on Mars, hence the more literal aspect of the title. And they were definitely viewing the attack as a distant thing. It looked like the whole planet was being bombarded.
Okay, I just saw this. It was pretty effective little story. Not having dialogue but telling the story visually worked well. And Bowie songs are always a huge plus, but they should have used the original. And then to the hot topic, the ships. Using those ships was a problem and not only for continuity reasons. I was literally confused. When I started watching I was thinking 'this is the one related to Picard, right? But then I saw those ships and was unsure in which era this was supposed to be happening. There really were no visual ques that I noticed that would have tied it to 24th century. And imagine if someone has been watching Disco and Short Treks in order and are at least vaguely aware of other Trek things. They will simply assume this is in the Disco era. Magee was shown several times in that era, even in previous Short Treks. And then there suddenly is Picard in the need and they will be like "Huh? Isn't he supposed to live much later?" If creating new assets was not possible, then they should have reused some old meshes from the late TNG era, they certainly still exist. They might be a bit low quality, but we're talking about couple of seconds. Hell, as mentioned, reusing the clip from VOY: Relatively would have been better than the Disco ships. Now, from in universe perspective this particular instance is easy to explain. If you need to evacuate billions of people in a relatively limited span of time, pulling any old junk from the trash bin and repairing them might be perfectly logical. After all, they don't really need to be fully functioning starships, they just need to be able to do warp and stay in one piece for couple of round trips. But if you have shows that are set in the same universe in different eras, you should really endeavour to establish a distinct visual language for each era, or it gets really confusing for the viewers. I really hope we don't see any reused Disco ships in the actual Picard show, unless them being some completely outdated junk is the plot point. Either use TNG era ships and/or create new ones. And those new ones should somehow look stylistically distinct from the Disco era ships. Perhaps go with more flowing organic shapes in the style of Galaxy class as a contrast of the sharp and jagged eavesness of the Disco fleet. Also, don't kill any of TNG main characters off screen. Simply no, don not even think about it.
The girls living on Mars makes no sense: We saw bombing happening all over Mars. Yet they only saw live footage - 9/11-like - and didn't personally experience bombing. It would make no sense that Lil's dad was unable to come home for the past few years if he was just up in orbit. I don't care how busy he is - that's transporter distance. They are absolutely on a Class M planet. IMHO it makes more sense if it's not Earth, because that's still too close to excuse Lil's father not coming home.
When that happened in TNG era shows there was plenty of other era establishing elements and the previous episodes of the show were not set in the TOS movie era. If you wouldn't know from outside sources that this Short Trek episode was supposed to be happening in the 24th century, you would think that before Picard appears in the very end. Visual ques and the previous episodes all lead the viewer believing that it's happening in the Disco era.
I think the complaint is more about the ship talk dominating the discussion to such an extreme, when the story wasn't really about the tech and hardware.
Wouldn't the death toll be higher on Mars, considering how much of the planet's surface is impacted by orbital bombardment? In non canonical sources, Mars has a population of 133.8 million. So, shouldn't have the casualities been much higher, much more than the 3000 reported?
Would have helped immensely if one of the two shipyard workers had just mentioned that they were refurbishing old ships and that's why they couldn't come home. (and would have only cost couple of seconds of time on the recording stage)