What happened to the other scientists on the Cube?
- Thread starter Jarvisimo
- Start date
The producers thought the other scientists were not important and why should the viewers think so? Retreading doesn't come with the territory with an Alex Kurtzman Star Trek series.
IIRC, Chabon said there was a deleted scene showing Narek being taken into Starfleet custody.
Narissa murdered Hugh, who is stated to be a Federation citizen, because he violated the political agreement, at which point Narissa also decides to kill all the drones and xB. The implication is that, as Federation citizens, the scientists would have been murdered as well, especially given the Romulan fleet about to commit genocide wouldn't want to bother carrying witnesses. The stupid "no stun setting" feature of Romulan disrupters in PIC does have the effective characterization of imply a no prisoners, no mercy attitude.
In short, the non-Romulan scientists were likely murdered, and if any got away they are still with the xB, or left with Starfleet at some point. But then there are the civilian Romulans.
I assume the civilian Romulans either had there own ships, as there is a ship class featured early on which does not appear with the genocide fleet, or the fleet took them. Alternatively, if the civilian Romulans had ships of their own, they could have taken the Federation personnel with them.
The civilian Romulans saving the civilian Federations citizens would have played nicely into how the show shows all sorts of Romulans.
In short, the non-Romulan scientists were likely murdered, and if any got away they are still with the xB, or left with Starfleet at some point. But then there are the civilian Romulans.
I assume the civilian Romulans either had there own ships, as there is a ship class featured early on which does not appear with the genocide fleet, or the fleet took them. Alternatively, if the civilian Romulans had ships of their own, they could have taken the Federation personnel with them.
The civilian Romulans saving the civilian Federations citizens would have played nicely into how the show shows all sorts of Romulans.
I don't think anything was implicated. The writers either forgot about them or didn't care or had too little time.
Last edited:
It's unfortunately likely given the weird holes and loose threads the show has, or it got cut for time as it seems many things were cut for time. The one time we get any decent background for Narak is pretty amazing. If we could have got more black sheep characterization for him and similarly good material for his sister from the very start the Artifact romance scenes might not have been a total waste.
Not completely forgotten. The script had a scene where the Borg baby was said to have been prepared for transport down to the twins' planet. But the scene had to be cut for time and was never filmed, especially easy to do since no script had managed to reference the baby since its introduction.
In terms of evolution, dark-skinned Trill would find less mates. And they do seem to be a rarity.
I assume that the scientists were evacuated off the Artifact before Narek tricked Soji into the meditation room and tried to kill her. A lot of the corridors seemed deserted in that episode.
Last edited:
I think it's highly unlikely the Tal Shiar took the Romulan civilians. The Una McCormack book was pretty clear the military and leaders of the Romulans did not care about being honest with the people about the Nova much less concern about evacuating them. Why would they loose sleep about blowing them out into space or killing them? Helping the XBs would probably be viewed as collaboration.
In that case the Romulan civilians were probably left behind with the only advantage of not being targeted by the Tal Shiar on the way out. The Federation scientists probably weren't targeted specifically like the drones and xB but likely killed if encountered.
Since the xB are probably going to integrate with the android society, if the civilians are remembered, we could see Federation and Romulans join too. Some might want to continue the work deborgifying people, others might want to continue researching the artifact.
Frakes should direct every episode and they need to get some real writers on the team. But Kurtzmen seems to have all the power now so i dont feel confident any of this will happen. Why Akiva Goldsman is allowed to direct any episodes is beyond me.
A best selling author who has a Pulitzer isn't a real writer?????
Agree about Goldsman, though.
Im actually totally okay with him leaving the series. Yeah, i get he won some awards. But man what a let down i felt his story telling capabilities are. But i think a lot of that has to do with CBS and Kurtzman etc. That ending was truly awful imo. I enjoyed every episode up to the last 2. but were they great Trek? no. not in my opinion.
What is it you think Kurtzman and CBS did?
The Pulitzer isn't just some award. Nor are many of the others he's been given.
What's Kirsten Beyer? Chopped liver?
Even allowing for the fact that writing a good, satisfactory ending is difficult (look at Avengers (plot hole time travel reset button, really?), GOT (rushed and out of nowhere), Star Wars IX (rushed and out of nowhere)) ... the writers were their own worst enemy with that finale. Just a total mess.
Frakes might have been better, he might have realized and pushed the importance of certain things. But if the script is fixed in stone by that point then he wouldn't have room to do much other than change the subtext of scenes.
We're talking about a show with 9 executive producers, 7 co-executive producers, and 2 supervising producers, plus an associate producer and consulting producer. That's 22 producers for one season of 10 episodes. 4 of the executive producers write, and there are four more writers.
TNG, which spans 7 years and roughly 24 episodes per season has 27 producer credits, with only 9 of them starting in 1987 when the show started production.
My point is I've read one of Michael Chabon's novels, it's great, and my impression is very little of his writing is present in Picard and it is likely due to the absurd number of producers diluting things. Looking at IMDB says he only has specific writing credit on half the episodes. He wrote the episode with Rios' introduction, and that's a strong scene.
On the other hand, I have the impression he doesn't care about certain things like we do here.
It should have been easy, everything was in place for a good finish. All they had to do was use everything there in a way consistent with what had been established or expected.
