Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x10 - "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
Nice to see Data back. A fitting end that he wants the simulation to end.
Zheng He is an admiral during the Ming dynasty, had a huge armada that could sail around the world, but only went to Africa. Still neat to hear Riker said it, although with piss poor pronunciation.
What happend to that Romulan lover guy in the end.
Liked the Seven fight, vengeance for Hugh. Two hotties beat eachother up. Too bad she didn't activate the cube.
Zheng He is an admiral during the Ming dynasty, had a huge armada that could sail around the world, but only went to Africa. Still neat to hear Riker said it, although with piss poor pronunciation.
What happend to that Romulan lover guy in the end.
Liked the Seven fight, vengeance for Hugh. Two hotties beat eachother up. Too bad she didn't activate the cube.
Ugh that was bad. Worst ep of the whole thing. Whole ending was like a video-game cut scene that just ignores logic. Especially Riker looking right at the screen with video-game dialogue. Felt like i was watching a FMV game.
All the fleets being the same ship. Boo.
Of courrrrse 7 will walk close enough for her weapon to get knocked away.
My biggest complaint....EVERYONE IS JUST SITTING AROUND WHILE SOJI DESTROYS THE GALAXY. Just standing there. Soong doesnt try and tell her what her golden sister did. Nobody does anything They just stand there and let her destroy trillions of lives. Until a Picard speech saves the day. All was missing was a dialogue box from Picard for us to choose what he should say.
All the fleets being the same ship. Boo.
Of courrrrse 7 will walk close enough for her weapon to get knocked away.
My biggest complaint....EVERYONE IS JUST SITTING AROUND WHILE SOJI DESTROYS THE GALAXY. Just standing there. Soong doesnt try and tell her what her golden sister did. Nobody does anything They just stand there and let her destroy trillions of lives. Until a Picard speech saves the day. All was missing was a dialogue box from Picard for us to choose what he should say.
Zach Handlen, AV Club
excerpt
I wanted something memorably bad… What I got was just bad in the same way most of Star Trek: Picard has turned out to be bad; thoughtless, rushed plotting, meaningless twists, and bold decisions which are absolutely weightless.
They save the only real twist for the end. Last week, I was wondering how the show would continue with a second season, given how much of the emotional drama of the last few episodes has focused on Picard’s fatal brain problems. This week, I slapped my forehead halfway through the hour and realized they’d just dump him into the “golem” Soong was planning to move his own consciousness into. Which is of course what happens, albeit after the episode attempts to wring as much pathos as it possibly can out of a beloved fictional character’s “death.” It would be shameful if it wasn’t also hilarious; Picard gives his all to save the universe yet again, and in the end, dies in the arms of a character we met a few weeks back while a bunch of other characters we barely know stare on in distress. People get drunk about him dying, and then oh hey, turns out we’ve got a spare.
I think what really clinched it for me wasn’t just that the new body looks exactly like his old body, or that they’re careful to explain that he doesn’t have any super cool augmentations; it’s when Picard is horrified at the thought that he might be immortal, and Agnes handwaves the fear away by reassuring him that they’ve set it up so he should live about as long as he would’ve lived without the fatal brain problem. So after all that set-up, all that crying and sad looks and melodrama, in the end, it amounts to exactly nothing. The status quo is more or less restored. There’s no real triumph in this, no satisfaction of life snatched clear from the jaws of death. But then, if Picard had actually died in this episode, I would not have cared. That’s the worst possible thing I could say about this show: that it brought back one of my favorite television characters, threatened to kill him forever, and it somehow found a way to make that mean nothing.
And that’s the episode, really. People run around making decisions and forming alliances without any meaning or sense. The crew of La Sirena has a team up with Narek. Soong sees video evidence of Sutra’s duplicity and shuts her down, without any real complication or difficulty. Everybody forgets Agnes murdered a guy. It’s an old saying that limitations can make great art, but usually “limitations” means money or time or specific restrictions. There’s also the inherent limitation of obeying the internal logic of your own narrative; to make a promise to your audience that the choices you’ve made in telling your story matter, and then to follow through on that promise. The first season of Star Trek: Picard occasionally remembers to do this. But for the most part, it’s content to slide from one whiz-bang moment to the next with only the most tenuous of nods to what happened before, as though it wasn’t so much scripted as written via a particularly elaborate game of Telephone.
…… well, the badness had a certain efficiency I can appreciate. Just about every story beat is introduced and wrapped up in a handful of scenes, to the point where an entire Romulan armada just decides to up and leave after a single synthetic life form demonstrates it’s capable of backing down once. (I’m sure the Starfleet ships helped the decision along, but still.) After all that build up and death, all Soji had to do to change minds was to almost, but not quite, bring about the end of organic life. The fact that the real destroyers were just a bunch of robot tentacle arms was icing on the stupid, thoughtless cake.
https://tv.avclub.com/all-is-resolved-in-an-underwhelming-star-trek-picard-f-1842501152
excerpt
I wanted something memorably bad… What I got was just bad in the same way most of Star Trek: Picard has turned out to be bad; thoughtless, rushed plotting, meaningless twists, and bold decisions which are absolutely weightless.
They save the only real twist for the end. Last week, I was wondering how the show would continue with a second season, given how much of the emotional drama of the last few episodes has focused on Picard’s fatal brain problems. This week, I slapped my forehead halfway through the hour and realized they’d just dump him into the “golem” Soong was planning to move his own consciousness into. Which is of course what happens, albeit after the episode attempts to wring as much pathos as it possibly can out of a beloved fictional character’s “death.” It would be shameful if it wasn’t also hilarious; Picard gives his all to save the universe yet again, and in the end, dies in the arms of a character we met a few weeks back while a bunch of other characters we barely know stare on in distress. People get drunk about him dying, and then oh hey, turns out we’ve got a spare.
I think what really clinched it for me wasn’t just that the new body looks exactly like his old body, or that they’re careful to explain that he doesn’t have any super cool augmentations; it’s when Picard is horrified at the thought that he might be immortal, and Agnes handwaves the fear away by reassuring him that they’ve set it up so he should live about as long as he would’ve lived without the fatal brain problem. So after all that set-up, all that crying and sad looks and melodrama, in the end, it amounts to exactly nothing. The status quo is more or less restored. There’s no real triumph in this, no satisfaction of life snatched clear from the jaws of death. But then, if Picard had actually died in this episode, I would not have cared. That’s the worst possible thing I could say about this show: that it brought back one of my favorite television characters, threatened to kill him forever, and it somehow found a way to make that mean nothing.
And that’s the episode, really. People run around making decisions and forming alliances without any meaning or sense. The crew of La Sirena has a team up with Narek. Soong sees video evidence of Sutra’s duplicity and shuts her down, without any real complication or difficulty. Everybody forgets Agnes murdered a guy. It’s an old saying that limitations can make great art, but usually “limitations” means money or time or specific restrictions. There’s also the inherent limitation of obeying the internal logic of your own narrative; to make a promise to your audience that the choices you’ve made in telling your story matter, and then to follow through on that promise. The first season of Star Trek: Picard occasionally remembers to do this. But for the most part, it’s content to slide from one whiz-bang moment to the next with only the most tenuous of nods to what happened before, as though it wasn’t so much scripted as written via a particularly elaborate game of Telephone.
…… well, the badness had a certain efficiency I can appreciate. Just about every story beat is introduced and wrapped up in a handful of scenes, to the point where an entire Romulan armada just decides to up and leave after a single synthetic life form demonstrates it’s capable of backing down once. (I’m sure the Starfleet ships helped the decision along, but still.) After all that build up and death, all Soji had to do to change minds was to almost, but not quite, bring about the end of organic life. The fact that the real destroyers were just a bunch of robot tentacle arms was icing on the stupid, thoughtless cake.
https://tv.avclub.com/all-is-resolved-in-an-underwhelming-star-trek-picard-f-1842501152
Let's give it up for Captain WTR who gallops in to save the day! Two of the best lines (paraphrasing):
"General: I'm going to ask you -- one last time -- to stand down." Great homage to Admiral Marcus!
"You think I'm going to stay in the woods making pizzas and let you have all the fun?"
"General: I'm going to ask you -- one last time -- to stand down." Great homage to Admiral Marcus!
"You think I'm going to stay in the woods making pizzas and let you have all the fun?"
"THERE ARE B4 LIGHTS!"
Great season with a poor ending. They didn't stick the landing and much of what happened was pointless or at least disappointing.
Picard's story felt done. I don't think he needed to come back in a New body. His death and reunion with Data was the perfect end point. I don't care for the idea of him being an android. Given he's going to be exactly the same as before without any extra abilities it just seems (that word again) pointless.
What happened to Narek? Oh wait. I don't care.
Rios, Raffi, Agnes, Elnor and Seven should definitely continue on with or without Picard. I'm sort of on the fence with Soji. Her story feels complete much as Picard's does but I'm sure there's more that can be done with her.
I'll miss Rizzo. There. I said it.
Seven being into women was not surprising after the episode with Bitch Hazel but Rafi came out of nowhere. There was literally no build up to Rafi being gay/bi or anything between her and Seven.
I really don't get why Data couldn't get a new body. Picard got one. Soong is presumably going to get one. Why can't Data? It's disappointing at the end of all this Data is still dead. Oh well.
I don't get the significance of the Borg storyline. It was it seems.... pointless?
Nice Riker cameo.
I enjoyed the season but next time try to stick the landing. Much was promised but little was provided in the final two episodes. I'd still say it was a successful season but the last two eps slightly sucked.
Picard's story felt done. I don't think he needed to come back in a New body. His death and reunion with Data was the perfect end point. I don't care for the idea of him being an android. Given he's going to be exactly the same as before without any extra abilities it just seems (that word again) pointless.
What happened to Narek? Oh wait. I don't care.
Rios, Raffi, Agnes, Elnor and Seven should definitely continue on with or without Picard. I'm sort of on the fence with Soji. Her story feels complete much as Picard's does but I'm sure there's more that can be done with her.
I'll miss Rizzo. There. I said it.
Seven being into women was not surprising after the episode with Bitch Hazel but Rafi came out of nowhere. There was literally no build up to Rafi being gay/bi or anything between her and Seven.
I really don't get why Data couldn't get a new body. Picard got one. Soong is presumably going to get one. Why can't Data? It's disappointing at the end of all this Data is still dead. Oh well.
I don't get the significance of the Borg storyline. It was it seems.... pointless?
Nice Riker cameo.
I enjoyed the season but next time try to stick the landing. Much was promised but little was provided in the final two episodes. I'd still say it was a successful season but the last two eps slightly sucked.
Well.. Instead of doing that deux ex synth .. When Picard dies.. He vanishes! And he wakes up and sees..Q! Raff has heard the stories of Q so Raffi just smiles when JL vanishes.. And the crew goes on.. While we have a cliffhanger with Picard and Q taking a journey!
And have Data's passing earlier in the story..
And have Data's passing earlier in the story..
They already did that though
More: I did love the Data scenes. And thought i heard strains of Blue Skys through the first one
I notice they didnt use the word 'copy' (Though i cant help but think what else is it.)
Bringing Picard back partially defeats the theme Data was talking about!! Being finite. Even though Picard isn't immortal it still partially defeats it.
Ugh...I complimented PICARD for avoiding DISCOs constant weeping earlier in the series. Oh they were just saving it for the end.
Oh look, Seven has been hooked up again with someone out of nowhere with whom she has no chemistry.
edit: Just have Picards body fixed with a combo of borg and synth tech and avoid the Golem bit altogether.
I notice they didnt use the word 'copy' (Though i cant help but think what else is it.)
Bringing Picard back partially defeats the theme Data was talking about!! Being finite. Even though Picard isn't immortal it still partially defeats it.
Ugh...I complimented PICARD for avoiding DISCOs constant weeping earlier in the series. Oh they were just saving it for the end.
Oh look, Seven has been hooked up again with someone out of nowhere with whom she has no chemistry.
edit: Just have Picards body fixed with a combo of borg and synth tech and avoid the Golem bit altogether.
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They obviously have been bonding over "their" foster son, Elnor and their mutual addiction to Kalto.
Anyway, do we know that they have "hooked up", or are we just seeing the first flirtation of a new relationship?
We (you/me/Raffi) know that Seven and Bjazyl were an item 13 years ago and that may have given Raffi the idea/courage to make the first overture.
Honestly the disappointing fleet design (for both Romulans and Federation) brought down the whole sequence. Not to mention the reuse of the Discovery bridge. I don't think most people prefer this new style? DS9/VOY went a lot further with interesting ships with a lot less budget.
Lots of great moments in this episode getting past that though. Riker was a great surprise and I didn't see the ending coming at all.
Lots of great moments in this episode getting past that though. Riker was a great surprise and I didn't see the ending coming at all.
I mean, I'm sure I'm the minority but I do.
James Whitbrook, io9:
"Every time you ask a question of just how or why anything is happening, 'Et in Arcadia, Ego Part 2' simply offers up a bucketload of nostalgia instead of actually answering."
"Every time you ask a question of just how or why anything is happening, 'Et in Arcadia, Ego Part 2' simply offers up a bucketload of nostalgia instead of actually answering."
Oh well, I cried my eyes out when Picard died. Then again when it happened to Data. Sigh. I still can’t believe Patrick and Brent etc all came back. I’ll be forever grateful. Loved this series. Even more poignant when the world is in the shit it’s in.
thank you. God, I really do miss and love Star Trek so very much.
thank you. God, I really do miss and love Star Trek so very much.
