Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x02 - "Maps and Legends"

Admiral: You're boldly asking what no one has asked before!

Audience groans

 

I think that--unlike the other officer ranks--admiral ranks are by direct appointment (either by the Federation Council or by the Starfleet admiralty itself) and one could go straight from captain to 4-pip admiral instantly to fill a particular billet.

 

I’ve seen lots of comments about how this episode had a lot of exposition which it did. I could’ve swore I’ve heard the idea that the first three episodes are the pilot, so to speak, so the middle section dragging makes sense as a setup before Picard gets his crew together and goes off on his adventures. I’m sure it could flow a lot better if they released all these at once, which is only capable of being done on a streaming service.

It seems like there is no advantages to streaming except they can slip a nipple or f-bomb in every now and then which equals mature storytelling to simpletons. Oh and commercials! Does All Access offer a no-commercial package? Cutting the cord isn’t much better if I still have to see goddamn geico commercials. Isn’t this supposed to be the future?

 

The Vulcan Commodore had model of the Kir’shara from enterprise on her desk
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https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/c...urce=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

And a neat reference thread I found on reddit[/COLOR]

https://old.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/ew5efx/canon_references_maps_and_legends/

 

I'm only half-way through the episode and won't be reading the rest of the thread either until I'm done or sometime later on the day but I wanted to get this thought out while it's still fresh:

I could see both points of view in the argument between Picard and the Admiral. Very well done.

I'll elaborate later when I have the time because when I'm done watching this, I have other things I need to do.

 

For a moment when Picard tapped his old TNG Movie Era commbadge I thought he said "Beverly." That Dr. Crusher would be behind trying to get him some help. That would have been a terrific moment even if we never saw Beverly until later in the series.

 

Could very well be. Say Captain Picard wanted to lead the Romulan evac fleet, and Starfleet says "Jean-Luc, that's 10,000 ships. You're just a captain. You need to be a fleet admiral for a command that large."
"Well then make me a Fleet Admiral. I've been a Captain for 50 years!"

 

I think I enjoyed this episode more then the first episode by a good deal. Episode 1 was very much an introduction or reintroduction while things were really taking a lot more shape here and just overall more interesting in terms of character interaction and overall information.

 

I liked that she was angry about the interview, rather than just reacting to his request. That’s the sort of indirect cause-and-effect that makes characters seem like real people.

 

Nice to see the dipshit Admiral tradition of Starfleet continues.

Geordi is alive and well enough to be considered for the mission. We can all go about our business now.

 

As a TOS Fan I love not only that the last episode had updated music from "Balance of Terror" but this episode also brought back the rank of Commodore. And in what a way did they bring it back! I'm going to guess that this Commodore used to be in the Romulan Fleet and that when she transferred to Starfleet, she was given an equivalent rank.

And we have Federation citizens working for Romulans, besides Romulans being in Starfleet (and high up), so it looks like there's peace between the Federation and the Romulans. But it looks like that peace came about through a very "It's Complicated" style situation.

I'd probably say at this point, nearing the 25th Century, the Federation has reached a point of Middle Age where its outlook has taken a beating but it's also marching along, doing what it thinks makes the most sense, and everything is a web that would take forever to untangle. Oddly, thinking about this while I type, that would make the Federation more like the Romulans than before.

 

I also liked this episode very much, in certain respects, maybe more than Episode 1. Some things were annoying, like the reference to Romulans never having developed cybernetics, which directly contradicts what Jarok said in "The Defector". But I am never too bothered by this kind of dialogue, because I think people speak hyperbolically all the time and state things as completely universal facts when they are simply mostly true, or maybe even just true in that one person's specific experience. ("What, you Americans open your banana like this? Everyone in Germany opens it like this." Cut to Germans opening bananas every wich way. Happens all the time.) Great pace, great story-telling, great dialogue.

 

And nobody ever said that A.) Jarok was wrong and that Romulan scientific circles didn't have cybernetics experts who researched the technology but didn't openly build androids or artificial life forms or that B.) Picard's caretakers couldn't have been at least partially incorrect or unintentionally exaggerating because that's how they were taught about their history.

 

Exactly. There are so many Trek canon errors and inconsistencies to pick apart, but throw-away dialogue should hardly be among them. People are inconsistent in the real world all the time, they exaggerate, they generalize, they are ignorant. This is the absolute easiest to explain away.

 

Besides, Kirk's Enterprise was the first starship named Enterprise...until it wasn't.

 

Whilst it might have been government policy for the Romulans not to pursue cybernetics etc and therefore androids etc weren't prevalent in their society, doesnt mean there still weren't Romulan scientists interested in them or studying them - it is only this new super secret organisation that is implied to really despise artificial life, she doesnt say it's ingrained in every Romulan to do so.

 

I was very disappointed int he length of the episode. Cant believe on a streaming sight we are going to get 43 minutes. My thoughts were that I now hate the plot. I am so sick and tired of the corrupt star fleet/secret organization plot. its been so overdone.

 

It's not official Federation policy nor beliefs to have a covert intelligence agency that infects an entire sentient species with a deadly virus or conspires with enemies using illegal and outlawed techniques but, hey, we have Section 31.

 

Thats fine, but do all the plot lines now have to be about Covert agents?

Is there no room for any other stories.

 

Ha, I was actually very glad to see the length of the first two episodes, about the same as a regular TNG episode. Hopefully that means we are back to having all episodes with consistent length, and none of the nonsense we saw with Discovery, with some episodes being as short as Short Treks.