Yeah but we don't know really know the state of the Romulans in Picard. We know they can assemble a force of 200 ships but that's not a large number by fleet standards. It could have been their entire fleet (by contrast Starfleet likely has tens of thousands of ships) meaning they may not be a significant threat.
So just finished the series and on the whole it's good. I can't help but think though that a TV movie or miniseries set around the Mars incident released before hand would've been a boost for the show, adding context to what's been going on since Nemesis and hinting at what is going on behind the scenes. One thing that does have me scratching my head is where the Seven/Raffi thing comes from, before the final scenes they had pretty much no substantial interaction and as Picard was on the mend there was no time given to them having any sort of meaningful meeting.
true but that was more an emergency fleet they had to assemble really fast. In DS9 Starfleet is shown having many more ships. I forget exactly how many, but I think it was 10+ fleets each with several hundred ships.
Though I will add that from a story telling standpoint it was odd to have the Romulan fleet so large. You could have told the same story if the fleet was 20 ships and it would have saved the VFX team a lot of time copying and pasting
The Seventh Fleet had 112 ships in it and the Tenth is the highest number of a fleet we've heard of so it they're all of similar scale then Starfleet has just over 1100 combat capable ships.
The Klingon fleet at the station in Way of the Warrior was well over 100 ships in the first wave of attacking Cardassia The Federation reinforcements that turned the tide when the Klingons attacked the station were just Six starships. Sisko's fleet to retake DS9 in Favour The Bold was about 600 - with 1254 Dominion/Cardassian ships. That was made from elements of the 2nd and 5th fleets, so by the time the dominon war was in full swing, assuming equal sized fleets, there were at least 9 Federation fleets with over 300 ships per fleet. (Dominion fleet in the wormhole was on the order of 2,000 ships, but it's safe to assume that was a large number of gamma quadrant ships) Fleet size changed in DS9, starships in TOS and TNG were rare things - to get just 40 near to Earth when the Borg broke through, and only having one near Earth when Nimbus three was attacked, or the Nexus hit the El-Aurians, or VGer turned up, backs that up. Clearly there are many other ships that aren't classed as starships By the time the dominon war came around, fleets were measured in the hundereds.
I guess my only point is that given the lack of worldbuilding in the show so far, it's hard to infer the relative strength of the Romulans to the Federation from that one scene. The scene is obviously meant to show a standoff of equal forces but we don't really know how powerful each Romulan ship is nor do we know what each of those fleets represents in terms of a percentage of their total forces. The Romulan's could still be a shell of their former selves if that Romulan fleet was 90% of the total Romulan force and the Starfleet fleet was only 5% of the total Starfleet force.
The Romulans are a shell of their former selves. That push on the android planet was to be either a last stand or the annihilation of the Zhat Vash's sworn enemies. If they felt the could go toe to toe with Starfleet then they would have. Except, the Romulan Free state didn't want an enemy in the Federation so the attack would have been pointless.
That was my impression as well. Also, if the android planet was near Romulan space, and Romulan space is smaller, they could have more easily marshalled their forces whereas Federation space might be really big with their forces spread thin.
So now that I do subscribe to Paramount+ I have started watching season 2 of Picard after completing the most recent season of Discovery. I have to admit I'm growing a little tired of the galaxy (or even universe) is in peril plots of Discovery and Picard. On the bright side I enjoyed seeing Q again, but have to admit I'm not sure I like this version of Q. But we'll see how that plays out. Frequently with Q not all is as it seems after all. I guess I should have added a spoiler tag when I started the thread, but at the time it was unnecessary because I was only seeing the show for the first time when it came out on Blu-Ray which was more than 6 months after it aired. But.... Spoiler: Key Plot Themes I'm a bit confused about the whole Borg battle sequence at the beginning. I'm still not sure how that played into Q's plans and as usual he was pretty evasive about that. Since the timeline has been changed I'm not sure of the point and it doesn't seem to play into the time change at all. I also am a bit shocked they killed Elnor off. Was it just to motivate Raffi. There's no guarantee he will be saved if they 'fix' the timeline and we know from the past Q is not usually inclined to reverse a characters death. And I was a bit shocked to see Q actually strike Picard. It just seemed a bit out of character for him, and there is an air of hostility about him that we haven't seen since his earliest appearances. Now as I said, typically with Q there's more than meets the eye so it's possible that may be the case here as well. I just hope Strange New Worlds is more 'traditional' in it's approach. There's enough 'universe' in peril themes in Discovery and Picard. I'll be grateful for at least one live action Star Trek show that is just plain old fun like the earlier shows. I don't mind continuity and some story carry over. But I'll be glad for some standalone stories.
I am currently up to date on where Picard is now. But I have to admit the show's really kind of lost me. I'm really having a hard time staying interested in it now. I'll see it through since I hate leaving it unfinished, but I almost don't care what happens at this point. I think I've just had enough of the 'galaxy/universe is in peril' plot device and the season long story arcs on Discovery and Picard already. It's just one after another and I'm honestly bored with it. Even Prodigy had that, though at least with that it wasn't some doomsday scenario so I was able to stay interested with that. I'm really hoping SNW is episodic. What I wouldn't give for a simple malfunctioning crazy machine takes control of the Enterprise and Pike has to talk the machine into destroying itself episode, LOL (ok, not literally that, but just a start to finish story in a single episode).
I enjoyed the first half of the second season of PIC a lot. The last two episodes have been just okay. I'm hoping that is really just a case of "sagging in the middle" and I'll like the last three episodes as much as the first five. One issue I'm having with PIC Season 2 is that it's hard to see where this is going, besides restore the timeline. Without spoiling anything (can't spoil anything on here for six months outside of a series' home forum), I like the way DSC Season 4 handled things. I'll take it as the Final Word on that particular subject. SNW is episodic from what I hear. It also seems to be very neo-TOS looking. Some people really like that. For me, it's something I'll have to see first. You can either pull it off or you can't.
Spoiler: Plot Spoilers At first I really liked the involvement of Q, but then it kind of lost me after that. And like you said it's kind of hard to see where it's all going. The whole Picard-father-mother thing kind of lost me a bit. It seems like a detour. But honestly I've just grown really tired of what I mentioned before, the season long galaxy is peril plot device. Maybe Q was doing us a favor in "Encounter at Farpoint" when he said humanity should just turn around. If the universe is this dangerous maybe they'd be better off, LOL. We'll see how SNW looks. I'm looking forward to it in some ways. I really enjoyed the Enterprise "In A Mirror Darkly" episodes for painstakingly recreating the original series look, with modern special effects. Now that was just a standalone trip down memory lane, it's arguable whether that could work for an entire series. But we've already seen in Discovery the current design team has no issues reimagining the set design so I think it will have more of a retro feel and not an actual retro look. But storywise I really hope it's more episodic like they say. Continuity and character building is fine. On balance I'd like to see something like TNG. Where there are individual stories but there is still some continuity within the show. Call backs to prior events, and even revisiting a prior story is fine, and can be fun sometimes (like how TNG handled Q). I just want at least one live action show not to have any galaxy ending consequences.
I finally got through season 2. It took me a while, partly because I had some stuff going on in my personal life that took my attention away, and partly because, honestly, I really didn't like it. I think they finally made a Star Trek production I have no desire to buy on hardcopy. I haven't had time to really read other's opinions about it, but I just thought it was a hot mess. Frankly, I'd rather watch the Enterprise finale TATV then season 2 of Picard ever again. I thought it was all over the place, I hated that 90% of it took place in the near future, and some of it just didn't make sense. The whole Wesley Crusher cameo seemed pointless to me (nothing against Wil Wheaton BTW). And why does almost every version of Soong have to be some dark character? The season finale seemed like a rushed affair to me. Like the showrunners thought, oh crap, we're down to the last episode and we have all this to clean up. And I don't know if anyone else picked up on it but there was a major continuity error I thought with what happened to his mother. In TNG: "Where No One Has Gone Before" Captain Picard had a vision of his mother, a very elderly wise woman. Yes, I'm sure someone will come on with some clever explanation. The only thing that was ok was the final scenes with Q. Perhaps it explains Q's fascination with Picard. Though for most of the season when he appeared he seemed dark and almost evil. So yeah, season 2 of Picard has become my least favorite Trek production, worse than TATV. And I'm sorely disappointed that the relaunch litverse continuity of the novels was wiped out in favor of this. I will take the litverse continuity written over the last 20 years over what I watched any day I'm sorry to say. A harsh criticism? Yes. But I've been a Star Trek fan since just before Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home came out. I haven't loved every episode of every show. But until now I've never actually hated one. I guess after close to 40 years of watching every new show and movie, one had to come along that I wouldn't like. As they say, nothing in life is perfect.
Why do people apologize for having an opinion? I have been a Star Trek fan since watching "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and playing with Mego figures. I make no apologies for the fact that I do not like TNG and prefer some books over multiple TNG stories any day of the week. Indeed. It's amazing it took this long.
That actually was addressed in the show. Picard said he would often imagine his mother as an elderly woman offering him tea. I'll admit, in the moment it felt a bit groanworthy, but going back to Where No One Has Gone Before after seeing Picard season 2, I find the scene with his mother is now chilling and haunting, which I feel adds a new dimension to it. Which in retrospect, makes this a retcon that actually does work.