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

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).

 

aliens are easier to hide than humans.

 

Very much this. I like this.

 

People like to be outraged.

 

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.

 

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

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

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

Especially when he was just brought in to be killed.

 

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?

 

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?

 

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

 

Oh, Mixer ...

Bottoms Up!

 

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

 

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.

 

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!

 

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".

 

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.

 

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.