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Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x10 - "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2"

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Now that I've had time for it to settle in, the Data scenes make up for the crap that came before. (why did no one try and stop Soji????"
 
Stealing the Cube, has to be an act of war?

It's just a question of who the Romulans think is responsible for Seven.
 
It does seem jarring that no one tried to talk Data out of delaying his termination at all. There were so many people who wanted to see him, even those who never met him like Kestra.
I thought the very least they could do to make it interesting is to have the reconstructed data consciousness have doubts about his actual authenticity or something a bit more philosophical about the nature of consciousness both natural and artificial. Instead it sounded like emotionalizing gobbledy-gook about things only having meaning because they don't last...which is a much overused trope when dealing with immortality IMO
 
The scene with dead PIcard talking to virtual Data - it felt so perfectly Asimovian - like what Bicentennial man should have achieved but didn't manage. I could see R. Daneel Olivaw dying under the crush of the implications of the zeroth law, while reminiscing about Elijah Bailey. Well done.
 
This is all way too nitpicky, so take it with some salt, but some lingering questions...


This alien race they just contacted, the beacon opened a portal. Message sent. Why didn't this galaxy spanning synth race just reopen the portal and come through on their own? They're this advanced, you'd think them capable of it.

Why did Commodore Oh not fire on the planet? Why did she back down when her whole mission is to save biological life as we know it? Why didn't she out that reason to Starfleet in the stand off? Why didn't she fire on the ships and go down in a blaze of fire trying to destroy the beacon and the synths from contacting this race in the future? In her mind she's saving all biological life. How could she back down given what was shown?

Exactly. The entire time the Feds and Romulans are standing off, and Picard is speechafying.....all i can think is, "Does no one see the massive fucking energy thingie opening up a portal??? No acknowledgement from Riker or anything. No one on the planet is trying to stop Soji. Its the end of the galaxy and the tension is that of a wet diaper.

IN FACT the entire scene is set up as the tension is will the fleets start fighting!!
 
Picard thought he could reason with her. He trusted her to do the "right thing".

Plus, I don't think the others knew how to operate the beacon (they tried blowing it up).

It wasnt complete until she finished the QBert blocks. And any action is better than none.
 
The scene with dead PIcard talking to virtual Data - it felt so perfectly Asimovian - like what Bicentennial man should have achieved but didn't manage. I could see R. Daneel Olivaw dying under the crush of the implications of the zeroth law, while reminiscing about Elijah Bailey. Well done.

Whats hilarious is that its really a copy of Picard saying goodbye to a copy of Data,
 
Imagine if season 2 doesnt even mention Picard is an android body
I think all the exposition about how the Picard Golem is basically a non-super powered limited lifespan replicant pretty much guarantees it gets the short shrift in any future production IMO
 
My biggest issue with the finale though is probably that Narek just plain vanishes. Last we see him he's just pinned to the ground by some of the yoga synths. That's it...he's done. We don't even see him in the background of any of the remaining scenes with Soji on the planet.

There was almost certainly another scene that Narek had which was edited out, but it's really, really insulting to Harry Treadaway to just have his character's arc end so abruptly with no final moment - particularly given his character seemed to be turning to being...slightly less of a scumbag...at the beginning of the episode.
 
I liked this a lot.

Any complaints I have are nitpicky things. Like both armadas being made out of seemingly 1 generic type of ship. Or how easily Sutra was “defeated”, etc..

And I wonder what kind of snark he would've received from Q now that he lives in a new artificial body ;);)

hopefully we find out in S2. I mean, in theory Q could make him human again.
 
I just want to see Picard's robo brain with the flashing positronic brain christmas lights like Data had
Unfortunately I believe Picard was transferred to a fully organic body ala the replicants from Blade Runner or the humanoid Cylons from nuBSG so his brain is still squishy pink meat.

To be fair, transporters likely already create a duplicate (see Thomas Riker) and kills the originals, with all the Trek characters having been killed and a duplicate that has their memories and personality emerges at the beamdown site.
Star Trek transporters don't destroy the original and make a copy from stuff at the beam down site. They actually turn the original matter into energy, move that energy to the beam down site, and then turn that energy back into matter. So Star Trek transporters don't work the way real life teleportation theory works, they're special tv magic.
 
Just did a rewatch.

Went from feeling my 8 was too high to feeling it might be too low. Yes, there were some plotholes (sonic screwdriver & Borg dropped ball), but it was still quite lovely in the main.

I thought the first 20 minutes were good both times: Narissa & Narek, the fireside chat outside La Sirena, Rios getting Elnor to believe Narek, Narek giving himself up on the plan.

2nd time through I did not mind Soong's decision as much (not telling Soji Sutra is the murderer, though mayhap he kind of did it publicly), nor the Sonic, nor the orchid multiplication.

The other stuff rubbed it a bit smoother the second time through. The Raffi/Elmor scene was good, Rios/Seven even better. Data/Picard best of all.

Hopefully some of the loose ends get tied up (xBs, synthville) early next year.

On second watch, I felt that the last scene was sometime later. Lifting the ban had to take some time, right? That made me feel better about that scene.

Also, was I the only one who got a LOTR/ Gandalf vibe from the butterfly scene early on? Where Saruman has Gandalf trapped at the top of the tower?
 
So... will now this motley crue rejoin Starfleet? Or work for Starfleet in some capacities? The redemption journey is complete, now it’s time to kick some ass yes?
 
I doubt the governing officials of the Romulan Free State want to start a diplomatic incident with the Federation over the theft of a Borg cube.

Seven "currently" represents the Fenris Rangers, which sounds like a government that holds space, that is diplomatically recognized by at least the Federation.

Same rules as with the Cardasssians and the Maquis, any treaty made in friendship, would have the Federation hunt criminals of the Romulans, for the Romulans.

Freeing Borg, is probably vivisection from a certain point of view.
 
I'm assuming that the design for the "Soji-class" synths was A.I. Soong (or possibly Maddox, depending on how it went down) honoring Data, and using the old painting as the basis for the look. So it isn't that Data painted a daughter he didn't have yet, it's that someone designed Data's daughter to look like the one he had imagined years ago.

That is, the painting was just Data using his imagination. His hopes and dreams, if you will.
Makes sense. They do so much with things out of time, or someone's memory implanted in somebody else, I thought it was more complicated than it was. How would Maddox know of the painting? Was he close to Data? Not a big TNG fan. Also to the poster above, if this explanation was tossed off in one line in ep 01, no wonder I missed/forgot it. Been a lot of twists and turns and positronic engrams since then.
 
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