Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x03 - "The End is the Beginning"

[AlanC9]

Maybe it wouldn't make Thribs happy but it would make me happy. One of the reviews I read after the premiere said that this was finally "prestige TV" for Star Trek and so far.....I'm not seeing that. I'm seeing a standard 44-minute show that looks great. A prestige show would run 60 minutes and GIVE us those meaty bits. Show Picard try, and gradually lose his faith.

Hmm... this may be the first time I've seen someone post that he wanted this show to go even slower than it does.

I'll bite. How would you have written those additional scenes? Does it still end with Picard's resignation, or are you adding on a downward spiral after that?

 

[DaveyNY]

I thought Rios having an emergency hologram that looks exactly like him and gives him backtalk that he doesn't like was a far more interesting and effective bit of characterization than the other stuff they came up with. "Grits his teeth, pours whiskey over a wound, refuses to have it sewn up" by comparison is pretty heavy-handed and cliche.

Heh ...
Isn't "cliche'" pretty much what all modern TV shows are based on.

 

[Alan Roi]

"Grits his teeth, pours whiskey over a wound, refuses to have it sewn up" by comparison is pretty heavy-handed and cliche.

So what. I've been known to do that.

 

[sttngfan1701d]

Hate watching is a thing. Even I've been guilty of it.

Yeah....I've noticed that, and I don't understand it. You could argue that the people on YouTube do it for views, but I don't get it myself. Once I start disliking something, I quit watching it. I did it with Discovery. I did it with Doctor Who. And if it happens with this show, I'm not going to watch it just so I can rant....I'll just shut it off and cancel CBS All Access. No use paying for something I don't enjoy.

 

[AlanC9]

Hate watching is a thing. Even I've been guilty of it.

I generally reserve that for stuff like Midnight's Edge.

 

[AlanC9]

Shiver me timbers! And here I thought the scruffy beard and indifference to metal in the shoulder was about Pirate, bad ass toughness. It was actually about how vulnerable, sensitive and damaged he is!

I didn't get toughness from it. More like indifference.

 

[Alan Roi]

I generally reserve that for stuff like Midnight's Edge.

I found it interesting how I reacted to Capaldi era Doctor Who. Mind you, I didn't go so far as to create a youtube channel.

 

[thribs]

The Romulan calling her the Destroyer gave me Agents of SHIELD vibes.

 

[Alan Roi]

Yeah....I've noticed that, and I don't understand it. You could argue that the people on YouTube do it for views, but I don't get it myself. Once I start disliking something, I quit watching it. I did it with Discovery. I did it with Doctor Who. And if it happens with this show, I'm not going to watch it just so I can rant....I'll just shut it off and cancel CBS All Access. No use paying for something I don't enjoy.

Bad Star Trek has never successfully gotten a rise out of me. Just ennui.

 

[Hythlodeus]

I found it interesting how I reacted to Capaldi era Doctor Who.

aka best era in Who history, once they killed f*cking Clara off?

 

[sevenstars]

Too much smelling.

 

[Tarek71]

EXACTLY.

Yeah, everytime I want to show how sensitive I am, I pour a bottle of whiskey on a wound like it's the War of 1812! Nevermind that BS 24th Century medicine! They should have put a parrot on his shoulder while he did it.

 

[Alan Roi]

aka best era in Who history, once they killed f*cking Clara off?

Nope. The bad taste in my mouth lingered all the way to the end. Well, the thing with the first Doctor was an OK sendoff. Sadly, no, they didn't kill Clara off, they made her immortal and gave her her own Tardis. Honestly, I'd rather sit through one of Picard's TNG lectures.

 

[Alan Roi]

Yeah, everytime I want to show how sensitive I am, I pour a bottle of whiskey on a wound like it's the War of 1812! Nevermind that BS 24th Century medicine! They should have put a parrot on his shoulder while he did it.

If that BS 24th Century medicine doesn't make you feel better, what use is it?

 

[NCC-73515]

Yeah, everytime I want to show how sensitive I am, I pour a bottle of whiskey on a wound like it's the War of 1812! Nevermind that BS 24th Century medicine! They should have put a parrot on his shoulder while he did it.

What alternative way of showing his problems would you have written instead?

 

[DaveyNY]

The Romulan calling her the Destroyer gave me Agents of SHIELD vibes.

I really believe that it refers to Data killing the Borg Queen.
The Entire Collective would remember that moment well and if Data's 'bits' were used to create the Twins then that is what is driving this.
The Romulans apparently believe that the Twins also have the ability to channel the Queen herself.

 

[Hythlodeus]

Nope. The bad taste in my mouth lingered all the way to the end. Well, the thing with the first Doctor was an OK sendoff. Sadly, no, they didn't kill Clara off, they made her immortal and gave her her own Tardis. Honestly, I'd rather sit through one of Picard's TNG lectures.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Another solid episode. Not great, but I'd put par with last week's. Again too much expo and set-up and not enough stuff happening. I agree that these three should have been truncated into one 90 minute episode with a bit of a bigger climax.

It's clear that Disco's structural problems continue here. *And I don't mean this as a slight against serialized storytelling.

However, I do love how - once again - we get humans acting like humans. Especially Picard. These three episodes have presented him as a more complete individual than seven seasons and four films ever did. Truth be told, I always found the base character under Stewart's performance to be pretty vapid and not particularly compelling. It's just that Patrick Stewart is fucking Patrick Stewart. So he made us love the character. None the less, deep down, there was never really any there there, as the kids say. Which is why I was always a "Kirk."

I also love how unabashedly derisive this show is about the Roddenberryistic pretentious bullshit. Raffi's 'circumstance' (for lack of a better word) is really a breath of fresh air. I've always said Star Trek isn't about humans "being" better, it's about "doing" better. Thre isn't any kind of lesson to take away if you just hand-wave it away with the "humans have evolved" rider. But at the same time, humans doing better feels disingenuous if the avatar/analog is something unrecognizable.

Why would a Vulcan need to wear sunglasses? Someone didn’t so their research on them.

You're assuming she's 100% full-blooded Vulcan. You're also assuming all Vulcans have the same evolutionary eye structure, which given that Vulcan's have different skin pigments and other evolutionary traits probably isn't true either. Heck, assuming she's a Romulan posing as a Vulcan; if it's true that Romulans - as the very episode stipulates - of different hemispheres were on Romulus long enough to develop brow ridges, then they've probably been there long enough to develop different eyes.

Of course, all that is immaterial because sunglasses aren't just about protection. Some people even wear their sunglasses at night, so they can watch you weave then breathe your storylines. Also, it's deceiving and cuts through security.

 

[sttngfan1701d]

I'll bite. How would you have written those additional scenes? Does it still end with Picard's resignation, or are you adding on a downward spiral after that?

Yes, it would still end with his resignation, but Picard is a guy that's had a 50 year Starfleet career. He's got contacts in the Neutral Zone you have to imagine. He's got contacts within the Romulan Empire. He would at least CHECK the Tal Shiar connection. He would try other ways....and if he had to clash with Starfleet again, he would....and then resign. And I would show him moving into the Chateau, and not being at peace there because it still felt like "Robert's chateau" and not his. Since he never felt like he belonged there in the first place.

But anyway, more time per episode and more characterization doesn't mean things move slowly. I regularly watch Korean and Pakistani dramas, and they have runtimes of 60-80 minutes per episode. They aren't slow. Rather, they're immersive.

 

[DaveyNY]

Another solid episode. Not great, but I'd put par with last week's. Again too much expo and set-up and not enough stuff happening. I agree that these three should have been truncated into one 90 minute episode with a bit of a bigger climax.

It's clear that Disco's structural problems continue here. *And I don't mean this as a slight against serialized storytelling.

However, I do love how - once again - we get humans acting like humans. Especially Picard. These three episodes have presented him as a more complete individual than seven seasons and four films ever did. Truth be told, I always found the base character under Stewart's performance to be pretty vapid and not particularly compelling. It's just that Patrick Stewart is fucking Patrick Stewart. So he made us love the character. None the less, deep down, there was never really any there there, as the kids say. Which is why I was always a "Kirk."

I also love how unabashedly derisive this show is about the Roddenberryistic pretentious bullshit. Raffi's 'circumstance' (for lack of a better word) is really a breath of fresh air. I've always said Star Trek isn't about humans "being" better, it's about "doing" better. Thre isn't any kind of lesson to take away if you just hand-wave it away with the "humans have evolved" rider. But at the same time, humans doing better feels disingenuous if the avatar/analog is something unrecognizable.


You're assuming she's 100% full-blooded Vulcan. You're also assuming all Vulcans have the same evolutionary eye structure, which given that Vulcan's have different skin pigments and other evolutionary traits probably isn't true either. Heck, assuming she's a Romulan posing as a Vulcan; if it's true that Romulans - as the very episode stipulates - of different hemispheres were on Romulus long enough to develop brow ridges, then they've probably been there long enough to develop different eyes.

Of course, all that is immaterial because sunglasses aren't just about protection. Some people even wear their sunglasses at night, so they can watch you weave then breathe your storylines. Also, it's deceiving and cuts through security.

I was thinking that perhaps the sunglasses were some kind of device for her to manipulate Dr. Juarti.
It let Commodore Oh get close enough to do some kind of weird mind-meld without Agnes realizing really whats happening.