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

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"Parody: Modern Trekkies If The Wrath of Khan Was New"
- by Lord Garth

I don't get why Kirk isn't in command of the Enterprise anymore after he just got it back! That doesn't make any sense! Minus one point.

What's with the new uniforms? They don't even look like Star Trek uniforms! Minus another point. That's two points down so far!

Kirk collects antiques?! Antiques?! Star Trek is a show about the future!!!!! Three points down.

And what was this about the 23rd Century? Who cares what Century it takes place in?! I can't believe this! Just give me a good story! That's just fan-service putting up "In the 23rd Century". Only the fans will get that! Four points down!

Klingons! Again! In the simulation! Can't they come up with anything else? These hacks! Why did they reuse the footage from the last movie? They're not even trying! Five points down.

Don't even get me started on Khan! He looks like a rock star now. Why is Star Trek trying so hard to be trendy? And what happened to his followers? They don't look anything like from before! These filmmakers don't care about Star Trek at all! Have they even watched it?! Six points down!

Violence for violence's sake! The Ceti Eel, explosions everywhere! And all that gore! Again! Star Trek is trying too hard to be trendy! I'm telling you. Ever since Carrie it's just been getting bloodier and bloodier. How much more gory can these movies possibly get? Seven points down!

I don't know about this Saavik. Women on the command track? Star Trek's been taken over by feminists! What's next? Are they going to have a woman captain? Give me a break! Eight points down.

That ungrateful David! Doesn't he know his father is the legendary James T. Kirk?! In my day, I called my father Sir! Yes, that's right, I called him Sir! And what the Hell is this? This kid growing up without a father? It's like Kramer vs. Kramer all over again! You know what? Don't even get me started on that movie again! Nine points down.

HOW THE HELL CAN THEY KILL SPOCK?! That doesn't make any sense! Shouldn't Scotty be the one taking care of Engineering?! So stupid. These people don't even know how to write. That moment at the end between Kirk and Spock, I don't even think that moment was even earned! It's too emotional! Spock is supposed to be logical! These people don't know the TV series! Spock expressing emotion would completely embarrass him! Why should Kirk be so broken up? People die all the time. And the pipes at the end. Flies in the face of Gene Roddenberry! He doesn't believe in God! It shouldn't be a religious funeral! I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!! THIS IS A DISGRACE!!!!!! FUCK THE WRATH OF KHAN!!!!

10 points down!!!!!!!!!!


On a scale of 1 to 10, I give Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan a 0. A ZERO!!!! Harve Bennett and Nick Meyer are trying to destroy Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek!!!! But it'll never work. It'll never last. And I don't want to hear about how "It's 1982!" No. This isn't real Star Trek! You want to watch real Star Trek?! Turn on the TV. Don't go to the movies!!!! Boycott this film at every turn. It's the Trekkie thing to do.
Um...you forgot to call out the CANON VIOLATION in that Chekov wasn't a crewmember when the "Space Seed" incident happened so HOW would he remember Khan in the first place??!!
^^^
And you and I both know modern Trekkies would NEVER let that slide without comment because it's more proof Harve Bennett and Co. are:

A) Lazy writers who don't care

B) Never watched or really paid attention to TOS (dammit!) ;)
 
True but the whole plot line of the show is that Dahj/Soji are something far more than just another Dr Tainer or Lal with a flesh and blood meatbag body (blatant KOTOR reference).

What exactly has Maddox done that warrants him being killed for it with no opportunity to get a word in edge ways.

What is everyone so afraid of, or has it become a case of the fear being the catalyst rather than the event itself.
It was enough to get both the Federation and the Romulans, at least the string pullers in both societies, to agree to prevent it. It's clearly something to do with Borg, but did Maddux inadvertently create a new kind of Borg?
 
Honestly, that was mostly just a TNG thing, and mostly when Roddenberry was still well enough to be calling the shots.

Go back and watch TOS. Society has progressed, but it's far from "utopian," and Kirk and crew are fallible human beings who still read as very contemporary.
TOS was a show with improved but still flawed humans and an ostensibly superior alien who observed and commented upon humanity's flaws.

TNG was a show with ostensibly superior humans who observed and commented upon humanity's flaws as personified by aliens of the week.

I've skipped the last 50 or so pages
You guys always throw in a line like that to make me jealous.

And even character wise (IE as Picard) it doesn't fit as he's a Diplomat and has been on secret operations for Star Fleet before; so Picard doing such a bad/over teh top job in gthis situation is just plain bad - as IMO was his performance of it.
What, was the big gangster lizard supposed to notice that he wasn't acting authentically French?

- Elnor...Seemed pretty useless so far given how they've tried to build up his reputation as a great warrior and agent of that female Romulan Monk order that trained him. I mean if he grew up in this area, and was properly trained, he'd know a little bit more of the 'lay of the land' or something about the local gang situation - but no he's just standing around wondering why no one really notices him.
Au contraire...this is a young man who's led a very sheltered life, never having been off Vashti since he was relocated there as a child.

- Dr. Jurati just openly murdering Bruce Maddox IN FRONT OF the EMH A.I. What the hell? By the dialogue she spouts we know she's working with Admiral Oh; not because of a threat, but because of something Oh showed her WRT Danj and Soji. My point though is: She should be intelligent enough to at least make it look like she tried and his wounds were too severe or something because IDK HOW Picard and Rios wouldn't at least lock her in a cargo container or hell, just throw her off the ship after this. Also, given what the EMH A.I. saw, there's no routine for it projecting itself in front of Rios (the ship captain) and saying "Hey, the Patient in the Med Bay is DYING!" I swear, if the Writing staff has her 'get away' with making this look like some type of accident/being able to claim she 'did everything available, but the wounds were too severe...' (again especially given what the EMH 'saw' and should report the next time it is activated - I'll have lost A LOT of respect for Mr. Michael Chabon as a award winning storyteller.
As has typically been the case thus far, I'm sure that they plan to cover the aftermath in the next episode. Patience.

You skipped 50 pages? I don't blame you. But click on this one. You won't be sorry. ;)
Just put it in your sig, dude!
 
It was enough to get both the Federation and the Romulans, at least the string pullers in both societies, to agree to prevent it. It's clearly something to do with Borg, but did Maddux inadvertently create a new kind of Borg?
Who knows at this point, from what we have been told Soji and Dahj are something else entirely and in any case the Borg are not the threat they once were so I don't see the big problem.

More importantly what does Soji/Dahj have to do with the attack on Mars and the Supernova, I don't believe in coincidences.
 
It was enough to get both the Federation and the Romulans, at least the string pullers in both societies, to agree to prevent it. It's clearly something to do with Borg, but did Maddux inadvertently create a new kind of Borg?
Even if they aren't true Borg, if Maddox really relied on their technology to create them, it might just be enough for the Collective to subvert and assimilate them. And you'd have a Collective that has a template for infiltrators completely (visually or by sensors) indistinguishable from biological lifeforms. So, basically this:

I guess a flesh and blood android could be organic material covering a synthetic brain, musculature and skeleton but that is a Terminator in all but name.

So, when people talked about ripping off Skynet and the Borg with Control in Discovery? Turns out they haven't been completely wrong.
 
Did anyone finish reading the Last Best Hope novel? Someone on another board said they felt strongly after reading it that Agnes Jurati may have been Zhat Vash from even before the synth attack (insinuating herself into Maddox's circle just before the Mars incident, possibly even sabotaging the synths herself), and that Oh meeting up on the show was not conversion/brainwashing but just giving her further orders.
 
Even if they aren't true Borg, if Maddox really relied on their technology to create them, it might just be enough for the Collective to subvert and assimilate them. And you'd have a Collective that has a template for infiltrators completely (visually or by sensors) indistinguishable from biological lifeforms. So, basically this:



So, when people talked about ripping off Skynet and the Borg with Control in Discovery? Turns out they haven't been completely wrong.
Thing is though the Borg are not the threat they once were even if they do then develop infiltrators, plus the Federation have been through that with a species that were far superior at it (Founders) so I don't get where the insurmountable threat is coming from, the Borg had everything they needed decades earlier with Data's positronic brain but did nothing with it.

It feels like its all about the Borg but there is no need to fear them in 2399 like they did in 2369 and the Zhat Vash TRUTH clearly comes from much further back in the past hence why I keep coming back to Discovery S2 and that suit.

Between Skynet, the Borg and Control pretty much all the bases are covered in regards to synthetic life so its hard to be wrong when you have a bet that covers everything.
 
I think it's important to remember that Stewart himself was very much initially opposed to including the Borg in the series, and really only relented when it was promised that the Borg shown would be different from what we had seen in the past. That is to say, he was okay with Borg as long as they were shown as being a discriminated minority, rather than an existential threat.

This seems to suggest that whatever the grand conspiracy/threat is, it does not involve the Borg themselves, who will remain more tangential to the plot.
 
I don't know how much PIC and its writers want to tie in to Discovery lore, but there's always a chance the the Borg are not exactly a red herring, but just being used by a more malevolent bad guy:

Control DID get some of the sphere data. If part of it went dormant or just waited till the right moment to find a new host, Maddox would have known nothing about Control due to Starfleet eliminating all record of the event in the past.

Rios was XO on a ship in which his captain died and all record of IT was removed from Starfleet records as well.
 
Did anyone finish reading the Last Best Hope novel? Someone on another board said they felt strongly after reading it that Agnes Jurati may have been Zhat Vash from even before the synth attack (insinuating herself into Maddox's circle just before the Mars incident, possibly even sabotaging the synths herself), and that Oh meeting up on the show was not conversion/brainwashing but just giving her further orders.
Its possible but then why would she be blubbing about killing him if he was such a main enemy of everything she stands for.

She could have been the one who compromised the synths on Mars in that case, it still doesn't explain why she chose that particular day to trigger the attack though, does she hate the Romulans as well.
 
Even if they aren't true Borg, if Maddox really relied on their technology to create them, it might just be enough for the Collective to subvert and assimilate them. And you'd have a Collective that has a template for infiltrators completely (visually or by sensors) indistinguishable from biological lifeforms. So, basically this:



So, when people talked about ripping off Skynet and the Borg with Control in Discovery? Turns out they haven't been completely wrong.
IIANM Trek beat Terminator to the punch with defensive AI gone awry (see Ultimate Computer).
 
I don't know how much PIC and its writers want to tie in to Discovery lore, but there's always a chance the the Borg are not exactly a red herring, but just being used by a more malevolent bad guy:

Control DID get some of the sphere data. If part of it went dormant or just waited till the right moment to find a new host, Maddox would have known nothing about Control due to Starfleet eliminating all record of the event in the past.

Rios was XO on a ship in which his captain died and all record of IT was removed from Starfleet records as well.
I said at the time that I doubted Control was really dead, all they did was transport it to the future, as long as the suit is there is could make its way back.

I would much prefer it if the story in Picard had no connection to Discovery otherwise it just increases the chances we are going to end up with a gigantic reset at some point.
 
How old was she in 2385?
She did indicate to Picard that she was there when it was all shut down 14 years ago so she could have been the instigator of the attack.

She definitely had the means and opportunity, being a member of Zhat Vash would certainly qualify as motive.
 
I said at the time that I doubted Control was really dead, all they did was transport it to the future, as long as the suit is there is could make its way back.

I would much prefer it if the story in Picard had no connection to Discovery otherwise it just increases the chances we are going to end up with a gigantic reset at some point.
A reset that ends with an empty Discovery parked in a nebula waiting for a crew that never comes back and an AI that likes old Earth musicals.
 
She did indicate to Picard that she was there when it was all shut down 14 years ago.
But she didn't say in what capacity. If she's the same age as Alison Pill, then she was 20 when Mars was bombed. And while I'm terrible at guessing people's ages from their looks, she could conceivably be in her mid-to-late twenties in 2399, so she might even have been just a schoolkid back then.
 
Um...you forgot to call out the CANON VIOLATION in that Chekov wasn't a crewmember when the "Space Seed" incident happened so HOW would he remember Khan in the first place??!!
^^^
And you and I both know modern Trekkies would NEVER let that slide without comment because it's more proof Harve Bennett and Co. are:

A) Lazy writers who don't care

B) Never watched or really paid attention to TOS (dammit!) ;)

You're right. I'm kicking myself in the head for not including it. It's a pretty glaring omission. I just fixed it and worked it into the end of the sixth point. The rant just kept going and going and was heading in that direction anyway. So I figured, "Why not just take it all the way home?"
 
She did say Maddox recruited her out of Starfleet so my guess would be that she was at least a 22-year-old Ensign fresh out of the Academy when she started working at the Daystrom Institute. That would place her birth at roughly 2363 or just around the time TNG started.
 
But she didn't say in what capacity. If she's the same age as Alison Pill, then she was 20 when Mars was bombed. And while I'm terrible at guessing people's ages from their looks, she could conceivably be in her mid-to-late twenties in 2399, so she might even have been just a schoolkid back then.
When did Maddox disappear, we know they were both an item before he made himself scarce due to the cookie scene.

I think she was probably in her very early 20's and a student.

Edit: Sniped by the affro above. :biggrin:
 
She did say Maddox recruited her out of Starfleet so my guess would be that she was at least a 22-year-old Ensign fresh out of the Academy when she started working at the Daystrom Institute. That would place her birth at roughly 2363 or just around the time TNG started.
Like I said, terrible at guessing people's ages :lol:. That would make the most sense given her age range.
 
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