This does open up the can of worms as to how a partially-Romulan Starfleet officer was so readily allowed into service if the Federation and the Star Empire had no official contacts of any kind between 2311 and 2364. A human Starfleet enlistee with a Romulan parent might raise some serious eyebrows given Tarses' apparent age in the episode, but perhaps a genetic scan was classified
I mean, it seems pretty clear-cut to me: Tarses claimed his grandfather was Vulcan instead of Romulan, and Vulcans and Romulans are still the same species from a genetic POV. DIS "Unification III" even overtly states that they're the same species.
Voyager was far from my favourite Trek, but I did watch it all, and thus saw him grow up from a teen.
I'm sorry, but no, you didn't watch him "grow up from a teen."
Icheb first appeared, played by Manu Intiraymi, in season 6 episode 16, "Collective," which aired on 16 February 2000. His last appearance on VOY was in season 7 episode 26, "Endgame, Part II," which aired on 23 May 2001.
Manu Intiraymi was born 22 April 1978. He was 21 (almost 22) when "Collective" aired and 23 when "Endgame, Part II" aired.
In all, Intiraymi appeared as Icheb in 11 episodes over the course of
one year, three months.
You did not "watch him grow up from a teen." You watched a 21 year old man playing a character already in his late teens become a 23 year old man playing that character still in his late teens.
Seeing him tortured to death wasn't really entertainment for me.
It wasn't entertaining for me either! Art is not always about "entertainment." Sometimes it's about deriving aesthetic pleasure from an artistic confrontation with difficult or upsetting themes that causes us to think about our values and our relationships.
From a creative standpoint, how is that any different from Kirk's brother dying at Deneva, or his father dying aboard the Kelvin in the Kelvin Timeline? Or Spock losing his mother in the Kelvin Timeline? Or Pike being haunted by the deaths of his crew members on Rigel in "The Cage?" Or Riker's mother have died when he was young? Or Picard losing Robert and Renee in GEN? Or Data losing Dr. Soong in "Brothers?" Or Geordi losing his mother in "Interface?" Or Worf losing K'Ehleyr in "Reunion" and losing Jadzia in "Tears of the Prophets?" Or Sisko losing Jennifer in his backstory in "Emissary?" Or Kira losing her father to the Cardassian occupation in "Ties of Blood and Water?" Or Kirk losing David in TSFS? Or Torres having lost her mother? Or Seven having lost her parents to the Borg in the backstory of "Dark Frontier, Parts I & II?" Or Neelix having lost his entire family to the Haakonians in "Jetrel?" Or Archer having lost his father in the backstory to "Broken Bow?" Or Trip losing his sister in "The Xindi?" Or Troi having lost her sister without knowing about it in "Dark Page?" Or Spock losing Spock Prime in Star Trek Beyond?
Most of those were part of a characters backstory when we meet them
And Thad was part of Will's, Deanna's, and Kestra's backstories when we meet them in PIC! It's no different from Will's mother or Deanne's father both being dead already when we first met them in "Encounter at Farpoint."
(the difference between killing Jor-El and Lara and killing Jimmy Olsen),
No, killing Thad is
not the same as Jimmy Olsen. Jimmy Olsen is a character who is intended as a vital and active part of Clark's life and the
Superman ensemble cast. Thad is like Jor-El and Lara: He is a character meant to be already dead, important because of how his death has impacted the actual main characters.
the rest were spread out over 55 years. In one season Picard was like:
Now you're moving the goalposts. Originally you were just complaining about PIC depicting Will and Deanna as having a deceased son. Your exact words: "(or learn their child died a preventable death because of said Federation stupidity)?" Now you're complaining about an entirely different set of characters you did not mention before.
Like Hugh? Murdered. <SNIP> Like Icheb? Tortured to death.
Yeah, those were sad scenes. It is a convention of modern television that characters we like do not have plot armor anymore. This gives television programs whose primary dramatic stakes are life and death more verisimilitude and in general makes for better writing, since actions have real consequences.
Like Maddix? murdered by his girlfriend.
I promise you, very, very,
very few audience members were emotionally attached to the asshole who tried to kill Data from "The Measure of a Man." Hell,
you weren't even attached to him enough to spell his name correctly!
Like these new twin sisters? One exploded after watching her boyfriend murdered.
Oh, c'mon dude. You might as well get upset at TOS for killing redshirts. (If anything, TOS was far more callous in its depiction of death as a casual event not worth being upset about.)
Like Riker and Troi? Let's see them mourning their preventably dead child.
They're not "mourning." Their mourning period has passed years ago. They still carry that grief with them, but it's not a recent event and it's not something that has stopped them from finding happiness.
That's a really important part of the series: Learning to continue living and finding happiness after death.
PIC is a show about coping with death. It rationally follows that death is going to be a recurring theme in the show.
Even the fun pleasure planet from Voyager has been assimilated.
I'm not sure what planet you're talking about. The one that had the transwarp projector thing? Nothing indicated the entire planet had been assimilated, only that that technology had been assimilated from them.
Sci said:
The same citizens of the Federation that went along with using slave labor from sentient holograms in "Author, Author?"
Don't get me started on that abomination...
Whether or not you think "Author, Author" (which first aired in 2001) was an abomination, the fact of the matter remains that it was canonically established that the Federation was using slave labor from sentient AIs in 2377. PIC's depiction of the UFP banning sentient AIs 8 years later is perfectly consistent with the canon as it had stood
for nineteen years. It is completely inaccurate to pretend that PIC depicting the UFP as banning sentient AIs was in any way inconsistent with prior canon.
Sci said:
it undermines the thematic integrity of PIC S1
*snicker*
Okay, this response makes me angry. It's actively disrespectful of you to respond that way, for two reasons:
1) A work of art's possession of thematic content
is entirely separate from whether you like it or whether it has high quality.
Art is a form of communication, and it is disrespectful to the artist(s) to pretend that their work lacks thematic content because of your subjective enjoyment. It is entirely fair to say, "I don't think it was well-written because X." It is entirely fair to say, "I did not enjoy it because Y." It is
disrespectful to claim that it lacks thematic content just because you don't enjoy it. I can't stand Zack Snyder's
Dawn of the Dead, but I respect him enough as an artist to acknowledge that he has thematic content in his film.
2) It is
especially disrespectful to react this way towards PIC S1, because showrunner
Michael Chabon literally wrote the show around the time his father died. I am not clear on if his father died before writing commenced or after, but Chabon's essay makes it clear his father's health had been declining for some time -- the death of his father, whether impending or recent, was
clearly on his mind when he wrote PIC. That's why the entire show, from start to finish, is about coping with death, grief, and mortality -- because Chabon was going through that at the time.
So, yes, S1 of
Star Trek: Picard had thematic content, and refusing to use an easy plot device to
de facto bring a long-dead character back with no meaningful consequences is a demonstration of thematic integrity.
We never even knew Trip had a sister until "The Expanse(ENT)." It's a perfectly fine and lovely character development that made Trip a more textured individual and her death not only made the Xindi probe attack much more personal but also upped the dramatic stakes even further from saving Earth, but up until the end of Season 2 we didn't even know who any of his siblings were much less their name.
Yep. And we never knew Will and Deanna had a son until the same episode we learned he had been long dead. And just as with Trip, it was a perfectly fine and lovely character development that made both of them (and Kestra) more textured individuals.
