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Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x01 - "The Star Gazer"

Rate the episode...


  • Total voters
    281
This show might have the most attractive collection of 50+ women I've ever seen. Only Pill is under 50 which is great considering how "handsome old man with young t&a" TV can be.
Michelle Hurd is 55 y/o
Jeri Ryan is 54 y/o
Orla Brady is 60 y/o
Alison Pill is 36 y/o
Isa Briones is 23 y/o

Over ½ of the Primary female cast is > 50 y/o
 
Solid season opener, whets the appetite nicely and drew me in from the start. Feels more like a direct sequel to the TNG/DS9/VOY era this time round too. Very interested to see where we go from here. Also – the Q and Guinan ageing thing was so well done.
 
I watched it. It was fine.
The whole thing looks and feels more like "Guardians of the Galaxy" than "Interstellar".

My main problem with Picard (& Seven & Starfleet) though is they don't feel like Picard or Seven. They feel like the Kelvin version of them. Everything is just so....exaggerated.

I'm not angry at anything. There were some good moments. Some cringy ones. But overall I'm just not very engaged. I guess modern Trek is just not my cup of tea. I played a lot on my phone during this episode. But I was interested enough to come back next week.
(I disengaged with DIS two seasons ago, so maybe I'm just not the target audience anymore)

Liked:
  • The central mystery (Borg wanting to join the Federation) was pretty nice
  • I liked how the "crew" from season 1 was re-introduced: Everyone doing their own stuff.
  • Jurati. I liked her pre-murder. I didn't like her after the murder. I like her again. A lot.
  • Special Effects look nice
Disliked:
  • It tries to be an epic action show. That just doesn't work with an 80 year old star. This is a streaming show. It IS allowed to be a slow, boring, "talky" one!
  • All the Picard-relationship stuff was very, very cringy. I liked Laris/Zhaban as a couple. Romantic interest for Picard felt veeeery forced. Together with all other on/off-relationships it felt almost "Grey's anatomy"
  • Please don't give Picard an "abuse" trauma from his past. Goddamn. Not every character needs a dark backstory. If every character has a dark dramatic traumatic past, noone has a dramatic past.
  • Little action. Lots of camera shakes. Star Wars shows are doing a lot better (good fights, steady cameras)
Also the story seems very predictable so far. "Picard" fucks up a first peaceful encounter with the Borg. Q gives him a friendly "second chance", but hides it behind an antagonistic appereance (like before) & puts him on some eeeeevil "test" first so that he can prove himself & earn to do the right thing the second time.
Not a bad plot. But I hate how the Federation (& especially 7o9) are hyper aggressive and shoot first. The whole "taking over the fleet" was forced writing 101.

Basically it's not bad. But I would enjoy this so much more if it were just a bit more thoughtfull, slow, and "talk-y", instead of trying to put a fast-paced action spin on everything. And yes, I realize how "old" that makes me sound. Stupid youths...:lol:
 
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Also, keep in mind that Orla Brady is 17 years older than Sir Pat's real-world wife.
I don't think it's the age thing that made me uncomfortable. Plus in-universe Laris is probably older than Picard due to Romulan lifespans.

I kept thinking what bothered me about the whole Laris/Picard thing and suddenly it occurred to me that Laris is still working for Picard. He's her boss. It's a power imbalance. Everyone's in an uncomfortable position. With all the misconduct we keep seeing in the news even though this is technically not the same thing and there's no coercion on Picard's part, it elicited a kind of "yeah not comfortable with this" feeling from me despite strictly speaking finding Laris a stunningly gorgeous character I'd normally enjoy seeing romance someone onscreen.

Maybe this would've worked much better if Laris were no longer working for Picard but recalled from her exile by the Romulan Free State in light of the revelations of Oh's sabotage, and visiting Picard on that note and initiating a relationship on more equal terms.
 
Solid season opener, whets the appetite nicely and drew me in from the start. Feels more like a direct sequel to the TNG/DS9/VOY era this time round too. Very interested to see where we go from here. Also – the Q and Guinan ageing thing was so well done.
Wait until next week……they turn it up to 11
 
Wow, she looks great for 60.
Pretty Romulan women have been a thing since the 'Enterprise Incident'. I headcanon that the wedding of Sarek's son mentioned in TNG was Spock marrying the Romulan commander from Enterprise Incident and thus his subsequent move to Romulus. :eek:

Oh wait, Laris is the Romulan commander isn't she? :guffaw:
 
I don't think it's the age thing that made me uncomfortable. Plus in-universe Laris is probably older than Picard due to Romulan lifespans.

I kept thinking what bothered me about the whole Laris/Picard thing and suddenly it occurred to me that Laris is still working for Picard. He's her boss. It's a power imbalance. Everyone's in an uncomfortable position. With all the misconduct we keep seeing in the news even though this is technically not the same thing and there's no coercion on Picard's part, it elicited a kind of "yeah not comfortable with this" feeling from me despite strictly speaking finding Laris a stunningly gorgeous character I'd normally enjoy seeing romance someone onscreen.

Maybe this would've worked much better if Laris were no longer working for Picard but recalled from her exile by the Romulan Free State in light of the revelations of Oh's sabotage, and visiting Picard on that note and initiating a relationship on more equal terms.
At least there is no infidelity that I can detect.

Laris doesn't seem to be in a relationship with Zhaban from what I can tell.
 
I tried labelling, I think these are the classes of the ships in the fleet:

KgTQeV4.png


Edit: see below for corrections, the Andromeda is a Ross class, and the lower Luna class is a Reliant class
Very cool, thank you.
True, but I also thought they have just played her as if she were decisively younger. There's all that banter in season one about him being old, she's often cast in the caregiver role in relation to him, helping him out with stuff he's a little too old to be on top of himself, that whole thing.
season one Picard was FEELING old, that makes a huge part of why he comes up as much older.

But I hate how the Federation (& especially 7o9) are hyper aggressive and shoot first. The whole "taking over the fleet" was forced writing 101
on normal circumstances and initially I would agree, however they are facing the borg, a terrible, duplicitous for they have likely been fearing since childhood. They aren’t acting normally here, they are scared.
 
As they shouldn't It's been a couple decades in universe, people change.
They didn't feel like changed characters though. They felt like different ones.
Like movie Kirk was a whole lot different than television Kirk, or future "All good things" Picard different than present day Picard. But they still felt like evolutions of the original ones. I just didn't get that feeling here

Though that was already a problem with the TNG movies. In fact - Picard here feels actually almost like the natural conclusion of "NEMESIS Picard"!
Though there's other people in this thread saying Seven feels more Seven-like when compared to Season 1.
I would actually agree to that!
 
I do believe that Q breaks the fourth wall the next episode.:lol:

On The Ready Room with Wil Wheaton they show a preview of episode 2.2, "Penance".

In it, after Picard asks Q where the crew of the Stargazer is, Q replies, "Ah, how quaint. How provincial. How yesterday's Enterprise of you."

:lol:
 
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They felt like different ones.
YMMV. they felt like the same characters to me, just changed and evolved over the last couple decades.

Last time we saw Seven in Voyager she had only just really started exploring her emotions, she was more emotionally akin to a child or early teen than an adult. This is another 20 years of that development done she now behaves like an adult, emotion wise.
 
on normal circumstances and initially I would agree, however they are facing the borg, a terrible, duplicitous for they have likely been fearing since childhood. They aren’t acting normally here, they are scared.
Yeah, that's totally fair.
There's nothing really "wrong" with it. It just feels wrong, because it feels so obvious a plot point that needs to be hit for the story to make sense. Instead of a natural thing the characters would do.
 
At least there is no infidelity that I can detect.

Laris doesn't seem to be in a relationship with Zhaban from what I can tell.

Laris and Zhaban were married, but he passed away after Season 1, as discussed by Laris and Picard in this episode:

Picard said:
You must miss him. I do.

Laris said:
Even now, after a year and a half.
Did you know that we were promised to each other at birth?

Picard said:
I had no idea.

Laris said:
Well, as is our custom.
But we did learn to love each other. Truly.
 
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YMMV. they felt like the same characters to me, just changed and evolved over the last couple decades.

Last time we saw Seven in Voyager she had only just really started exploring her emotions, she was more emotionally akin to teen than an adult. This is another 20 years of that development done she now behaves like an adult, emotion wise.

I'll be honest here:
It feels like Sevens last-second Chakotay-romance on VOY "Endgame", or like NEMESIS Picards dune buggy obsession.

I didn't like those back then. This here feels like a continuation of that direction. That's not what I wished to see. But this show is not the first time to do that.
 
Michelle Hurd is 55 y/o
Jeri Ryan is 54 y/o
Orla Brady is 60 y/o
Alison Pill is 36 y/o
Isa Briones is 23 y/o

Over ½ of the Primary female cast is > 50 y/o
Apologies to Isa I forgot her.

Also the more I think of it that "queen" is not a Borg. Ya she was using Borg tech and a Borg ship but we never say the body and we never saw the tentacles attached to the body. It's definitely a human using the tech
 
I don't think it's the age thing that made me uncomfortable. Plus in-universe Laris is probably older than Picard due to Romulan lifespans.

I kept thinking what bothered me about the whole Laris/Picard thing and suddenly it occurred to me that Laris is still working for Picard. He's her boss. It's a power imbalance. Everyone's in an uncomfortable position. With all the misconduct we keep seeing in the news even though this is technically not the same thing and there's no coercion on Picard's part, it elicited a kind of "yeah not comfortable with this" feeling from me despite strictly speaking finding Laris a stunningly gorgeous character I'd normally enjoy seeing romance someone onscreen.

Maybe this would've worked much better if Laris were no longer working for Picard but recalled from her exile by the Romulan Free State in light of the revelations of Oh's sabotage, and visiting Picard on that note and initiating a relationship on more equal terms.
I don't really get this. It's not at all that he's her boss and she's an employee. It's the 24th (25th?) century - Laris isn't there because she has to be, but because she wants to be with him.

It was made abundantly clear in the first season that she and Zhaban had a long association with Picard and had a lot of loyalty to him. They also clearly enjoyed being there.

There's no question that Picard is abusing a power dynamic here. On the contrary. Laris makes the move on him, he does not reciprocate and they leave it at that.
 
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