Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x05 - "Stardust City Rag"

I've come across some people who honestly believe that no character of any note should ever die on Star Trek. I don't understand their mentality.

 

That's ridiculous. Harry Kim would never get promoted.

 

Geordi is the one that paid for Icheb's eyeballs. He thought they'd look good on him...

 

Maybe it needs to be replaced every so often like knees or hips.

 

Addendum:

• The whole "Rafi's son" stuff came out of nowhere and went there really fast again. I felt having that conversation in person was a cheap trick to have more crying faces/drama happening on screen. A more somber scene (her drinking with Picard reminiscing about how she grew apart from her son) would have been much more appropriate.

 

Guess alcohol doesn’t affect Seven’s cortical implant any longer.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if this happened. I'm still in shock that it seems like yesterday as a kid watching All Good Things and their "bad" future back in 1994, and now we're actually over 25 years later and watching TNG's actual bad future, which was worse than we could possibly have believed back then.

Coming from the comic book world, we know characters won't die so long running characters are made to suffer as much as possible to create drama (X-Men comics are a good example, old Star Wars expanded universe). And then, maybe they'll kill them off too (see Star Wars sequels)

 

Was Raffi's son's pregnant wife Pel a vulcan or a romulan? She had the forehead ridge, but Pel sounds like a vulcan name and she didn't show much emotion.

 

The Raffi son stuff was quite out of the blue and while it went according to a template; it was well acted. I dunno how they are going to quite do justice to this subplot though. Presumably at some stage Romulan agents will catch up with her son and their family and Raffi, Picard will have to save them..

 

She looked Romulan to me but I’ve read elsewhere she’s Vulcan. And you’re right about her name.

 

You would've preferred that they tell instead of show?

 

I can see it being used as a reason to give her motivation to actually be more involved in Picard's mission. She may not be a to save her relationship with her son, but she can save Data's daughter.

 

In this case, yes. Either really focus on that (then start back on Earth with that), or just put it in as background.
Don't half-ass it, and go straight into the dramatic-tension-scene (tm) without proper backstory or context..

I did like how her son's girlfriend/wife was Romulan though. A neat little bit of worldbuilding, as in, when a people (in this case Romulans) are displaced and have to find refugee among other people in large numbers - there's going to be intermixing.

 

I'm getting annoyed with not knowing why the Zhat Vash are afraid of/hate synthetics. How/why is Soji "the destroyer." I hope that gets fully revealed to us sooner rather than later.

If Soji turns into a giant marshmallow man it'll all make sense to me.

 

My youngest brother during some disaster movie involving a blizzard or avalanche or something:

"If it's so cold, why are they taking their clothes off?"

 

(EDIT: There are HUGE SPOILERS in this reply. Skip if you haven't seen the episode yet are reading this thread for some ungodly reason.)

I don't understand the reaction to the gore. What do you think happens to the people off-camera that we play so fast and loose with on-camera? Oh, a planet was assimilated? So cool. The Borg are so chilling; I love them.

I think it was there to establish the plight of the Ex-B's and context to Seven's descent to murder.

What did strike me as disturbing was that it was Icheb. I wasn't a huge VOY fan, but he was, for lack of a better term, part of the family. That said, why shouldn't it be him instead of a nameless or short-lived redshirt?

Some qualms with the episode:
1. Picard should have never beemed down looking as he did -- his face would have been recognized.
2. It kind of annoyed me that Raffi's son's wife Pel(?) was the exact same shade as he was. She's a Romulan at least, but even more of a mixed-race couple would have been statistically more likely. Sisko and Jake also had wives, girlfriends, and romantic interests who were also almost always black.
3. I get that it was comic relief, but Rios in 1970's pimp outfit and Picard unusually flamboyant didn't work for me. Picard isn't the actor Stewart. Maybe it's part of Picard's growth over his long life, or maybe it's just out of character for him.
4. Maybe Manu declined the part given how brief it would have been, but it might have been really great if they got both he and the actor who played Maddox to reprise their roles. Maybe if it were the both of them, it would have been less awkward?

Things I liked about the episode:
1. The actor who played Raffi's son did a great job.
2. It was kind of heartbreaking and great seeing the additional collateral damage of the Synth attack in it destroying Raffi's family despite her probably being right. Life's complex that way.
3. I knew Jurati was a plant, but I didn't think she was that deep on the other side.
4. I feel like we're now really getting into the series. I'm curious to see where they'll take in in the next episode or two.

 

Is it the first time they showed that Borg implants are considered so valuable? Or is it something that they already established in past series/movies?

 

Mot's Hair Emporium is one particular vault of hell reserved for the most evil people in the galaxy. Just thinking aloud.

 

They've established that the nanoprobes are valuable many times on Voyager. In one episode the Ferengi were interested in Seven's.