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

Why did Raffi stop Rios from lighting his cigar? Is he a hologram after all?

 

It was her "special" cigar.

 

Or the Romulans kept some popular children's names from the old country.

 

Death does not always have meaning.

 

Because she has gone 'cold-turkey' to get back with her son and can't stand the temptation.

Can we please lay the Rios = Hologram to rest.
(or at least kill it like Seven did to Bjayzl)

 

You could probably do a summary like that for every Shakespeare play, but you wouldn't capture the essence. I thought it was pretty obvious what the writers were trying to say. Seven was out for revenge because of Icheb's death, but the real issue was that she felt guilty because she told that woman about him. Big difference. The setup just shows that she has been out there alone for a long time, and her moral frame of reference, which was the Starfleet crew on Voyager, is gone. Her statement about not pulling Picard's gang into her revenge plot to preserve Picard's idealism was key. Picard still upholds that TNG-era Starfleet idealism that the rest of the universe seems to have lost, even after Mars and the Romulan evacuation failure he preserved it (even if he's a little grumpy now). The message is that both she and Picard are struggling to preserve their humanity under these conditions, and by killing Icheb they took some of that humanity from her. That was her breaking point. The narrative is mirroring the situation with Picard and Data's daughter.

Just for context, old Admiral Janeway stole a time crystal from the Klingons and went back in time and altered history, gave them future tech, killed the Borg queen and possibly millions of drones just to save Seven and a few other crewmembers (excluding Carey, who sadly dies a few weeks too early) and get the ship home a little earlier. Seven shot one underworld boss to take revenge for Icheb's death.

 

Bjayzl looked a lot like Troi from the early seasons of TNG. I thought she was Betazoid for a minute.

 

Now I’ve seen the full episode. I loved all the stuff with Seven though can do without the redshirting of Icheb. The final scene was “One twist too much” though. They need to give the show some solid core of trustworthy characters beyond just Picard. So twists and betrayals are actual surprises.

The business at the bar felt like a Mass Effect mission, you could almost see “Renegade +20” appear on screen at the end.

Nice touch that Quark owned the bar.

If their treatment of familiar characters is to instantly kill them to give this show’s characters a reason to be angry I’d prefer they leave them out.

 

This makes sense as a reading, but I'm somewhat skeptical. Picard, Raffi and Rios are definitely haunted by their pasts, but none have been driven to murder or any other desperate acts, so that doesn't seem like a core theme of the series to me. Seven's killing of the gangster is also not really that desperate - the situation is so uncomplicated and the antagonist so blandly evil with no redeeming traits that there's almost no debate to be had. Perhaps if the gang leader had been depicted in a more nuanced light and/or Seven's response acknowledged and discussed by the script as being morally complicated, I could see the theme of haunted people being pushed into morally dubious acts as being more apparent.

I appreciate that they discuss the morality of killing the gang leader prior to it actually happening, but it feels very lightweight (especially since one of the arguments is just that they'd get smacked around by security).

Fiction is generally better when it does, though, right?

 

depends on the fiction. Sometimes a meaningless death has more impact or brings the author's point better across.

 

Why?

 

you can do the googling yourself. in short: he defended sexual assault in a really disgusting way

 

I believe that one has to factor in the fact that Seven and Bjayzl may have possibly been romantically involved.
To have been deceived by ones "Lover" is one of the rawest emotional impacts a person can be forced into, even more so if it also leads to the death of another loved one.

There's just no getting around the fact that Seven had never experienced something on so high an emotional level.
Her response, built up over time, was most apropos.

Seven's 'trust' in other people has been severely compromised.
Thus why she deceived Picard and had no qualms about it.

 

It depends.

 

Maybe that's exactly why he wasn't asked back.

 

But she isn't.

 

I kept thinking her name was Vajazzle, or Bejazzle, or Witchhazel. And then Seven called her Jay, and I was like so her name is Jay?

 

?????
There was a scene where Chris was about to light up and she essentially told him "don't even".
(meaning in front of her)

 

She doesn't want to breathe his second-hand smoke.

 

They did it once.