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Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x09 - "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1"

Rate Star Trek: Picard 1x09 - "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1"


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The original series always had Kirk looking inward and learning lessons while TNG always had Picard pointing fingers. Picard for all his "open mindedness" was extremely "judgmental" and "arrogant." Ironically that difference however also serves to justify it's existence.

Rios and Soong have each called Picard out on his bloviating ("Enough already!").
 
I've got a sneaking suspicion that the writers aren't even going to bother explaining how Data drew a painting of Dahj, how Ramdha recognised Soji, and how Data appears in a vision. If they don't then their storyline is half-baked...
p.s. note: Ramdha's brain was fried during the Admonition 14 years earlier..that's 5 years before First Contact with Jana, and 11 years before Soji was created.
Data didn't make a painting of Dahj. Maddox designed Sutra and Jana, and later Dahj and Soji, to resemble one of Data's paintings, which he had seen, in homage to Data.

Why does it matter that Ramdha went through the Admonition before Jana left Coppelius and before Soji was created? The existence of the Zhat Vash and initiation of its members isn't reliant on the known existence of synthetic lifeforms - they've been around for centuries, according to Laris. They knew that synthetic research was at an advanced stage, and that Maddox had gone into hiding most likely to continue that work, so they continued recruiting.
I'm actually MORE interested in - why did Maddox send Soji to the Borg cube in the first place? What was her mission there? How did Narek knew about her to be there right from the start? (also, what happened to all the human/Andorian/Federation scientists on the both cube? I know, probably "killed", but would have been important to know by whom - I thought the Romulans only went for the XB's).
Narek wasn't onto Soji from the start. She'd been on the Cube for 3 years before he arrived - Narissa said that many Zhat Vash agents had been operating over scores of systems trying to track the synths down, the show started at the end of that process, when both had just been located.

Soji's mission was to investigate the possibility of Romulan involvement in the Mars attack, Dahj's was to investigate the possibility of Federation involvement in the Mars attack. Both seem to have gone about it in a roundabout sort of way, but neither actually knew they were on a mission. Maddox seems to have been playing the long game - which actually figures, for a guy Agnes described as 'secret planny'.

I too would like to know what happened to all the Federation scientists and doctors working on the Cube!
 
You must be offended or you wouldn’t be trying to offend me.

If you interpret disagreement as provocation for offense well that's a "you" problem.

Again, a tv show is not fact or even dogma. It’s odd for you compare the two. Picking and choosing what to accept is a long standing aspect of fandom. There’s thirty thousand versions of Batman and the majority of fans chuck out whole Star Wars trilogies.

Not true. The individual installments setup and define the internal reality and physics of a fictional series (except when noted otherwise). Whether real or fiction folks pick chose a lot of things and it is based on those choices they are judged as credible or not. Folks can say they dislike SW I to III as I loathe episodes VII through IX, however, it would be fallacious of anyone to try and claim they didn't exist or had no bearing on the story or to ignore their impact on what follows.

This is only an odd concept to you for the sake of this particular argument.

Show your math on that statement or retract it.
 
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Narek wasn't onto Soji from the start. She'd been on the Cube for 3 years before he arrived - Narissa said that many Zhat Vash agents had been operating over scores of systems trying to track the synths down, the show started at the end of that process, when both had just been located.
What? 3 years? No. Where did you get that from? We see Narek is already there on Soji's introduction (remember the black woman talking about "hot Romulans"?). Soji arrived at the cube after(!) Dahj was killed. I doubt it took Picard 3 years to assemble his crew.
Soji's mission was to investigate the possibility of Romulan involvement in the Mars attack, Dahj's was to investigate the possibility of Federation involvement in the Mars attack. Both seem to have gone about it in a roundabout sort of way, but neither actually knew they were on a mission. Maddox seems to have been playing the long game - which actually figures, for a guy Agnes described as 'secret planny'.
Sounds reasonable. But where did you get that from? Have I missed that? When was that said?
 
They think Narek killed whats-her-name and it galvanized the rest to kill all humans (and Romulans, etc, etc). Sutra is Lore's daughter and she wants what she wants.

I don't get it, where in the episode(s) did they mention Sutra was Lore's daughter. I don't remember anyone mentioning Lore in any of the episodes. All we know is Sutra is Jana's sister much like Soji is Daj's sister because they are created in pairs.
 
Having watched the episode again, I feel better about it than on first watch. It's not my favorite of the season, but I do like it. There are wonderful character beats, a gorgeously strange first act action sequence, and a fantastic performance from Isa Briones. The plot as a whole holds up.

I think my single critique is that the pace is faster than prior episodes and thus doesn't let us sit with character choices. The series has taught us a narrative grammar for how place, character, and plot unfolds. This episodes disrupts that grammar somewhat, as we encounter new civilizations and characters, cover physical geography, find answers, and watch characters' choices evolve rapidly. I wanted more time for Soji to acclimate to being synthetic and make her choice, and I wanted to know Sutra and Soong better before making theirs. Partly, this is down to the editing and direction. Five more minutes and some different camera choices would have helped a lot.

That said, I like the story as it's unfolding. I like that it's now clear that the synthetics were the ancient species that towed a bunch of worlds into an octonary, not the victims of a disaster. I like that there's a solid thematic reason for why the synths would want to destroy half the galaxy, and I like that we're dealing with unreliable narrators. I particularly like how much Soji has emerged as a real person. It's a real testament to Briones that Soji and Sutra share a scene and I never questioned the trickery involved in their interaction.

Oh, and although I'm not much of a TOS fan, I love the brazen TOS/early TNG vibes of this synthetic commune. Fun stuff.
 
I don't get it, where in the episode(s) did they mention Sutra was Lore's daughter. I don't remember anyone mentioning Lore in any of the episodes. All we know is Sutra is Jana's sister much like Soji is Daj's sister because they are created in pairs.

A number of of felt she acted like Lore. Less flat-out evil, but menacing in a way.

If Maddox had B4 with Data's neurons/engrams.whatever, he may have ended up with Lore as well. Or Altan somehow ended up with Lore.
 
Since we didn't get to see the Tricorder opened in the actual episode, here's the concept art of it opened.
kUlaS1k.png
It's a nicely-designed prop and all, but if the medkit it's in also has a TNG-era hypospray - why bother going through the time and expense to design and build a blink-and-you'll-miss-it new Tricorder? Why not just use a TNG or DS9 prop? The design choices this show makes frustrates me sometimes.
 
If you interpret disagreement as provocation for offense well that's a "you" problem.
I think writing a long satire about me and then comparing me to a crying man is an attempt at offense. How would you take it?

it would be fallacious of anyone to try and claim they didn't exist or had no bearing on the story or to ignore their impact on what follows.
Fallacious means misleading or deceptive. I’m not trying to deceive anyone. You might mean that it is illogical, but again, this is not fact or science or history. It’s entertainment. The writers themselves basically support me as they, themselves reinterpret, throw out, and retcon things all the time. They also canonize things from TAS and fan work piecemeal while others don’t acknowledge it at all. Nearly every sub section of Trek is a soft reboot, including TMP and then again in TWOK, making slicing the franchise up into bits completely possible and internally square. And it’s perfectly possible to judge later installments based on previous ones. I don’t watch Picard as an attempt to add to the canon. I watch it to see how new writers interpret the material and I mostly judge it based on its merits as any story, not as Star Trek.

Show your math on that statement or retract it.
I stand by it fully. Everyone has head canon, that’s why there is a term for it. I know you do, too. Even the statement that the E always looked like the discoprise is a personal decision to pick one thing over another, even though it’s been presented to me as the only way to see it. I mean, they were both on screen.
 
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It's a nicely-designed prop and all, but if the medkit it's in also has a TNG-era hypospray - why bother going through the time and expense to design and build a blink-and-you'll-miss-it new Tricorder? Why not just use a TNG or DS9 prop? The design choices this show makes frustrates me sometimes.

They have to be 25% different...;)
 
What? 3 years? No. Where did you get that from? We see Narek is already there on Soji's introduction (remember the black woman talking about "hot Romulans"?). Soji arrived at the cube after(!) Dahj was killed. I doubt it took Picard 3 years to assemble his crew.
In Ep1 Narek arrives on the Cube via Warbird and when he introduces himself he tells Soji (who is already there) he is "new here". They hook up and by Ep2 are an item.
The black woman from Ep2 is a new arrival. Soji talks like she been there awhile, outlining the mission of the project. So while it's possible she hasn't been there three years, she has been there longer than Narek or the Trill.
 
Why do people keep talking about Lore? Wasn't he disassembled and likely in pieces across the entire quadrant? It'd be disappointing if they brought Lore back without any kind of foreshadowing. He was permanently deactivated for all intents and purposes, surely?
 
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