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

[Danja]

Do you suppose the cookie recipe will be a clue to how Maddox made Dahj and all? Folks have been focused on replicating the end product in re-creating Data. He may have had some breakthrough where Song went about artificially recreating his own genetic code as a step to starting those Data's from a techno-womb of some sort or even incubated in a real one? He might have even been inspired through the work that created Kahn.

This went right past me, but I like the idea.

Maddox: "I don't like replicator cookies."

He doesn't like end products that are created by other people (Lore, Data, etc.). Far better to gather the individual components and reverse-engineer them into something new (Dahj/Soji).

 

[Yistaan]

I don't understand the big deal with the recasts in this episode. Were people this upset back when Alexander and Ziyal were recast? The latter was recast twice!

aliens are easier to hide than humans.

 

[Amaris]

I feel like it was thematic. This is not the Federation, or indeed the galaxy that we remember from TNG. It has changed, and not for the better. The very things that once made Picard a "great" man, his morals, his sense of righteousness, his almost boundless faith in humanity and the ideals of the Federation have become almost anachronistic. This is a a cruel, harsh universe. A place not of utopian ideals but of pragmatic, often morally compromised solutions. Seven is used as counterpoint to Picard. Somebody who has faced the same failures, the same kind of heartbreaking loss. But where it has challenged his faith, buried it, it has shattered hers.

Put another way, Seven has changed with the universe around her. Picard is still trying to change it instead. At the heart of this episode is the core idea that this faithless, dangerous galaxy devours everyone it touches. Seven, Raffi, even Jurati (who wishes she didn't know whatever it is she knows). But so far it hasn't devoured Picard. In spite of everything he's been through, some by his own doing, he still somehow clings to that faith. He's damaged but not broken.

At the end of the day, I feel like that's sort of the pillar they've built the show on. Will the universe finally break Picard, or can he find a way to bend it back towards optimism and hope in some small way. Can you be a righteous man in unrighteous times?

Very much this. I like this.

 

[fireproof78]

I don't understand the big deal with the recasts in this episode. Were people this upset back when Alexander and Ziyal were recast? The latter was recast twice!

People like to be outraged.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Maddox: "I don't like replicator cookies."

He doesn't like end products that are created by other people (Lore, Data, etc.). Far better to gather the components and reverse-engineer them into something new (Dahj/Soji).

Yeah, the research up to then had been focused on the end product, too. He may have realized he should have been focused on the ingredients, instead to make something original. I expect Jurati or someone seeing her letters might make that connection.

 

[Mojochi]

Maddox is a bit of a head-scratcher but there must be some reason for it.

Does the guy even work anymore? I'd have liked to see him back, but it was only one episode. I'll live lol

Someone else mentioned (I think in the General Thread) that his SAG might not be up to date which would impact his ability to work in Hollywood.

I was thinking something like that. It might not have even been an option, or if it was, it just wasn't on their radar to deal with

I don't understand the big deal with the recasts in this episode. Were people this upset back when Alexander and Ziyal were recast? The latter was recast twice!

Well, in all honesty, this show could benefit from as much familiarity as it can muster imho, even if it's just a cameo, imho. The Icheb stuff was really just a quick glance of some torture. So not a big deal, but Maddox factored pretty heavily in the story. It could've been a boon to have the original guy, but all in all, not the end of the world

I kind of felt the same way about the admiral that curses out Picard. Would've been much weightier if it had been Nechayev. We'd have felt the history. Just one man's opinion though

 

[Lord Garth]

I think the reaction by some to Maddox being recast was WAY over-the-top. Even for here.

At this point, it looks like they actually want to be outraged and find reasons to not like the show. This is show-business. Recasting happens. It's been going on for 100 years.

 

[Jadeb]

Here’s my complaint about the gore: It’s often symptomatic of simplistic and juvenile writing. Torture scenes like we got here, and similar scenes in Discovery, are a cheap way to inspire a wince and a boo-hiss from the audience. Here we have a character who not only steals body parts (evil but believable) but delights in causing the most pain and suffering possible while doing so, for no apparent reason other than to be eeeevul. That tips it into the cartoonish, and I’m not interested in cartoonishly eeeevul any more than I am in saintly characters who are never challenged in doing the right thing. Trek should be past black hats. Khan is a great bad guy not because he is “bad” but because he has understandable motivations and acts in accordance with them.

 

[thribs]

I think the reaction by some to Maddox being recast was WAY over-the-top. Even for here.

At this point, it looks like they actually want to be outraged and find reasons to not like the show. This is show-business. Recasting happens. It's been going on for 100 years.

Especially when he was just brought in to be killed.

 

[Yistaan]

Here’s my complaint about the gore: It’s often symptomatic of simplistic and juvenile writing. Torture scenes like we got here, and similar scenes in Discovery, are a cheap way to inspire a wince and a boo-hiss from the audience. Here we have a character who not only steals body parts (evil but believable) but delights in causing the most pain and suffering possible while doing so, for no apparent reason other than to be eeeevul. That tips it into the cartoonish, and I’m not interested in cartoonishly eeeevul any more than I am in saintly characters who are never challenged in doing the right thing. Trek should be past black hats. Khan is a great bad guy not because he is “bad” but because he has understandable motivations and acts in accordance with them.

Agreed. The gore doesn't even make sense in-universe in regards to the villains. Aside from cruelty, why wouldn't they knock out Icheb to operate on him? They just enjoy making operation harder on themselves by having fighting, thrashing victims? They don't even do a basic scan to see there's no cortical node? They use such primitive sawing tools to pry out highly valuable Borg parts, risking damage to them, instead of scanning them and beaming them out methodically?

 

[fireproof78]

for no apparent reason other than to be eeeevul.

What reason would satisfy you? Perhaps the person feels no pain and is fascinated by its experience. Perhaps they simply lack empathy and the causing of pain precisely zero to them.

Would you want such a character exploration?

 

[thribs]

I think it’s implied that she was told to inflict pain on him by some higher order. The Conclave of 8.

 

[Danja]

Oh, Mixer ...

Bottoms Up!

 

[Yistaan]

Oh, Mixer ...

Bottoms Up!

Star Trek Elite Force 3? Maybe we can petition for a Fenris Rangers game?

 

[eschaton]

I have no issue with the gore really. I have issue with the fact that later in the episode, Seven redundantly tells Picard what happened to Icheb.

The rule in filmed media is show, not tell. It's not show and tell. As viewers, we knew what happened. Picard could have been told off camera, or not told at all with just vague allusions made. But just letting it spill out of Seven's mouth is terrible writing.

 

[fireproof78]

If it impacted her that deeply then it would make perfect sense for her to spill it all out.

Is the complaint the same when Kirk tells Kruge that Kruge just killed his son? We just saw it!

 

[Nerys Myk]

I think murder is still a life imprisonment sentence in the Federation. Jurati better really be mind controlled (and it didn't sound like it, she sounded she was convinced to join the Zhat Vash going by her words), or she'll be spending the rest of her life in prison.

She's spends a year or two in New Zealand, max.

 

[Yistaan]

She's spends a year or two in New Zealand, max.

With Nick Locarno. Feel the outrage when they get Robbie Duncan McNeill back as Locarno only and to add to the Voyager massacre started here he says, "Oh I did hear about that Paris fellow who looks a lot like me. I heard he ended up in Stovokor after a misunderstanding with his inlaws".

 

[hayesc0]

I don't understand the big deal with the recasts in this episode. Were people this upset back when Alexander and Ziyal were recast? The latter was recast twice!

Tbh I don't think its comparable I didn't want recast for these characters especially the way they built up Maddox but the episode was good the only episode I liked so far.

 

[Amaris]

Agreed. The gore doesn't even make sense in-universe in regards to the villains. Aside from cruelty, why wouldn't they knock out Icheb to operate on him? They just enjoy making operation harder on themselves by having fighting, thrashing victims? They don't even do a basic scan to see there's no cortical node? They use such primitive sawing tools to pry out highly valuable Borg parts, risking damage to them, instead of scanning them and beaming them out methodically?

The Forgotten/Deborged Drones aren't seen as sentient creatures worthy of empathy and respect. That's the entire point of that scene. She's treating him like a pig being dissected for its parts, something to be harvested and exploited for financial gain. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are attitudes like that here and now, in the real world, and directed toward feeling, thinking human beings.