They just won't give up that awful Discovery Klingon design. I sure hope that's a prop they had lying around and recycled. I really really liked the episode, but this is just a little middle finger.
... I really don't even see how it's a "DIS Klingon skull" rather than a "TNG Klingon skull." It's a skull with bumps on the forehead. If the bumps don't exactly match Martok's cranial ridges, all that means is that maybe the ridges are partially the result of cartilage.
So now they also find a way to ruin Q, as well. Amazingly consistent, these hacks.
Never change, sir. Never change.
Also, it's nice that this series now remembers that violence and cruelty are bad, looking at you "Stardust City Rag."
"Stardust City Rag" remembered full well that violence and cruelty are bad.
By the end of the season, the Borg are absolutely joining the Federation, or at least allying with it in some way. The Confederation's viewpoint on all alien life is basically the Federation's view of the Borg (circa "I, Borg") extrapolated out to the entire galaxy, and if there's any subtext to this episode it's that the line between viewing the Borg as a threat worthy of extermination and taking that same view of, say, Gul Dukat is basically arbitrary.
I really like that idea -- that maybe PIC S2 will lay the groundwork for a lasting peace between the Borg and the Federation. We know from LD S1 that in the far distant future, children with Borg-looking implants attend a school alongside children from numerous Alpha and Beta Quadrant species. Perhaps we're seeing the groundwork for that, and for the end of Borg expansionism.
Before I make my first comment, I understand this is written for entertainment and played by the shows actors. But how are there always, in every mirror or alternate universe, the same people, physically, which would mean their parents and ancestors all happened to line up perfectly across time even with all of these changes. If one decision can butterfly effect the entire planet, how does this work?
Honestly, that's one of the great things about this season -- the presence of Q can explain away things like that.
Speaking of the magistrate, I didn't understand how his marriage to Seven worked. It seemed loveless, with no passion.
I dunno about that. All we really saw of their marriage occurred in the context of the Magistrate immediately sensing that something was wrong and his wife was behaving weirdly. I don't think that's an indication of what their marriage is normally like.
It agrees with some thoughts I've read that he is just a front of this world's President Hansen. But if this is an actual marriage in these worlds where everyone is killing each other to gain power work?
Where was
that established? I know they used that trope for the Terran Empire in "Mirror, Mirror," but I don't remember anything about people routinely assassinating each other in the Confederation of Earth. To me, the Confederation looks more like something between an apartheid regime and a fascist regime. We know they seem to pursue an exterminationist ideology against the Borg, and that they embrace the brutal mass murder and enslavement of alien races. But for all we know, the Confederation may have some level of free speech, civil rights, and democracy amongst Humans. It's entirely possible that President Hansen was democratically elected in a free and fair election -- a free and fair election in which Humans voted on exactly how ruthless and genocidal to be towards aliens.
I've seen some hate for Jon Jon Briones as the magistrate, including that he only got the job because his daughter was on the show. This is a man who has had his own career in his own right and yes, he probably got the role in some part because of his daughter, but it wasn't like putting some untrained or otherwise horrible actor in the role.
I thought his performance was excellent! Acting is never a pure meritocracy; somehow I am not surprised to learn that there are some so-called "fans" who decided to throw shade at an Asian dude by de-legitimizing his right to be hired in the first place.
I wonder how the Bajoran's took to being wiped out by the Confederation.
I would imagine they had plenty of experience before hand with the Cardassians' to put up quite a fight.
General Picard probably just phasered the planets surface from space.
In this timeline, I wonder if the Cardassians were ever able to establish much of an empire? It's possible they never got to conquer Bajor because the Confederation got there first.
It's basically just another Terran Empire but just transplanted to our own universe and given a different name. I mean, if you're going to do a dystopian Earth dictatorship it sure beats rehashing the Mirror Universe for the umpteenth time and at least the alternate timeline Confederation has a fresher, more visceral feel.
Just something to bear in mind: We don't actually know that the Confederation is a dictatorship.
Exactly. I also couldn't help but notice the use of the word "Confederates." It was classic Trek allegory and I was "here for it," as the kids say.
Loved it.
The crazy part of this show is that Patrick specifically ruled out a pandemic storyline because that would hit way too close to home and be uncomfortable for viewers:
Patrick Stewart Does Not Want Pandemic Storyline For ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 2 – TrekMovie.com
So they decide to go do a story about a warmongering authoritarian regime that literally premieres at the same time a warmongering authoritarian regime unleashes a war and threatens our planet. I know no one at all could possibly predicted or have intended that, but... wow... Sure there aren't any precognitive people on the writing staff?
Well, not to get too real-life political here, but various national permutations of fascism have been on the rise across the globe for the better part of a decade now -- Trumpism in the United States, the SD in Sweden, AfD in Germany, PL and Bolsonaro in Brazil, BJP and Modi in India, the FPÖ in Austria... and of course, the United Russia Party under Putin has been a
de facto dictatorship over Russia for decades now. So I don't think you needed to be a precog to write a story about an apartheid or fascist perversion of
Star Trek's idea of a futuristic society.
It also mirrors Picard's personal fear of intimacy. This, I think, is the way that Picard refuses to change that Q alluded to: he won't stop being afraid of other people. His internal reality is, in essence, fascist. I think this is the penance Picard must do: face down how his tight militant internal control affects the people around him. (See: Laris.)
I really like this interpretation! Picard essentially does to his own inner self what the Confederation does to society.
I can only echo what others have said - Stewart and De Lancie were just stunning in the opening scene. I don't think Q has ever been so menacing as he was here. It was a perfectly written scene too.
Q was genuinely scary in a way I don't think he's ever been before! It's a definite change from the "lovable trickster" figure he was in episodes like "Tapestry." But then, Q would probably want to be seen as a more complex character than just that.
I really liked the Confederation's Starfleet Uniforms. Brilliant to combine the 2400 uniform design with the militant First Contact Uniform colors.
Honestly I think I kind of prefer the Confederation Corps uniforms to the new standard-issue 2401 uniforms. But then the FC uniforms were always my favorite version.
I like the cast so much more this season. They're all acting so much better.
Firmly disagree -- I think they were just as good last season; it's just that last season was more melancholy and that alienated people. But this cast is wonderful -- particularly Alison Pill, who is one of the most gifted actors of her generation.
I guess the equivalent of the Section 31 virus would have wiped out the Founders, leaving only some very angry Jem'Hadar to fight.
Possibly. On the other hand, without the Federation's willingness to try for peaceful relations with the Great Link, it's just as likely that Odo was never allowed to travel to the Founder capital and enter the Link in the first place, thereby preventing the Confederation from having a vector for infection.
I'm starting to suspect Picard conspired to kill his abusive father and fled to Starfleet to forget. And he's been denying himself true happiness ever since.
He seems to be harboring some deep, dark secret he can't share with anyone else, or even admit to himself. And I can't imagine anything more meaningful.
I really, really don't like that idea. To me it fundamentally violates who Picard is on the deepest possible level, far more than the complaints people had about him in S1.
If people lost their shit last year when Agnes killed Maddox, I can't imagine how they will react to making Picard a murderer. I don't think that's going to happen.
It may be that his shame is that he did nothing.
This makes much more sense to me. The idea that Picard has been carrying around a level of irrational guilt over not having prevented his father from abusing his mother is much more consistent with his character. It also speaks to why he became such a moralizer in his later life.
I just "loved" when Picard took down a "Romulans Only" sign put up by fucking Romulans!
Tried to make a statement about discrimination being wrong, ended up making a statement about an old white guy being a colonialist prick and insisting on going where he wasn't wanted.
I think that was the
point of the episode, thought -- that Picard
thought he was a benevolent force for good fighting against bigotry, but in reality he was denying the Romulans their agency and acting like a paternalistic neo-colonizer without realizing it. There's
an essay on StarTrek.Com that talks about this.
I noticed that too and it bothered me. (At least in the prime timeline) The queen's organic components don't extend that far down her torso. She's just head and shoulders with her robo-spine poking out the bottom.
CANON VIOLATION alarms are going off.
1) Different Borg Queens could have different body structures.
2) I'm pretty sure the intent there was to suggest the possibility of sexual violence against the Queen from the Confederates.
If you're right it would also be in keeping with the themes of the show under either showrunner. Picard, the remnants of Data, Q and The Borg Queen all facing their own mortality, their legacies and their impact on the future yet to come.
Yep.
Star Trek: Picard is very much a show about finding meaning in the face of death.
9/10
I would have given it an 8 but that Q bitch slap to Picard elevates it an entire point for me. Picard had it coming.
He absolutely did not have it coming. He had been abducted by Q and placed into a dangerous situation. He is a victim of Q's violence and did not deserve that.
I'm reminded of a scene in Enterprise, in Season 4 I think. More or less, Soval is confronted with the fact that the Vulcans are some level are frightened of humanity because they remind them of themselves (and the Romulans), but faster. It took ~2000 years for Vulcans and Romulans to recover from the Vulcan nuclear wars. It took humanity 100. As Soval put it "what might you do in a century hence?" He and the Vulcans were right to be concerned. On the wrong path, in three centuries hence, Humanity would have conquered or annihilated all the great powers of the galaxy save one.
It kind of puts the Federation in a new light too. It's not just something built by many species for mutual cooperation. It is also a form of containment for, as Quark rightly put out in his immortal speech, a race "as vicious as the most blood thirsty Klingon".
I mean... I don't think the Federation is a form of containment for Humans. You don't "contain" a culture by making them one of the leading members of your union and putting the federal capital on their turf. But yeah, I think the idea that the Vulcans correctly sensed the Human potential for genocidal violence is definitely a valid way of looking at their motivations in ENT.
The attitudes to the Borg in Ep 1 show that humanity hasn't really gotten over its inherent biases and prejudice
I don't think that's fair. First off, the Borg Collective is essentially a single intelligence rather than many different individuals; the concept of being "prejudiced" doesn't apply when it's the same entity you've dealt with before, just in a new body.
Secondly, they
did open up the door to a peaceful relationship with the Borg. They did not open fire on the Borg Vagina Ship (sorry, but that's what it looks like!) until the Borg refused their explicit instructions
not to beam aboard the
Stargazer without their consent. Even then, Captain Rios tried to get his officers to hold their fire when he realized the Weird-Looking Borg Queen was stunning his crew rather than killing them.
These are not the actions of people who "have not gotten over their inherent biases and prejudices." These are the actions of people who have every right to be cautious about an entity that has consistently acted with malevolence and violence towards them, even as they did open the door to the idea of establishing a peaceful relationship.
I don’t get it. Why is STP such a good series while STD sucks more with every season the bring out?
It doesn't.
Star Trek: Picard and
Star Trek: Discovery are about on the same level writing-wise. Heck, Akiva Goldsmith is credited as a co-writer on both episodes of PIC S2 so far, and he was a key producer of the first two seasons of DIS.
Very enjoyable. Assuming they wrap up the cliffhanger in the opening minutes of next week’s episode rather than dragging it out for 50 minutes and ending the episode with the slingshot effect,
They will drag out the fate of Elnor and end episode three with the slingshot effect.
I’m curious as to how the Borg Queen will factor into the rest of the season after they’ve travelled to 2024. Will she be dead when there is no more use for the character, or just kept in a drawer when they’ve landed? Is she manipulating Jurati directly or just exploiting her existing insecurities? What did “there’s a splinter in her flesh” mean? It was said a couple of times but had the vibe of arc words from Doctor Who/Buffy.
I'm really interested to see where this is going, yeah. This is a chance to develop the Borg Queen as a character in a way we've never seen before.
Are we supposed to believe it's been the same Queen from FC, VOY episodes and now?
No, she clearly looks different, and the characters themselves seem to understand that there are multiple Borg Queens. Heck, the Queen in "Unimatrix Zero" explicitly referred to herself as having originated from Species 125 and as having been assimilated as a child along with her parents.
The Confederation is already a way better allegory, warning, whatever for the Trump/America First worldview than Discovery’s ham fisted Earth going “nope” and pulling the planet outta the Federation in Discovery when things got tough.
I don't think United Earth seceding from the Federation in DIS S3 was supposed to be a Trump allegory. I think it was meant to be a more generalized "xenophobia and isolationism are wrong" story. At most, it might be a Brexit allegory.
I wonder if she even exists in this altered timeline? They have the regular synths and Picard apparently has a synthetic body, so you'd think it's possible.
But Soji was a direct result of Data's death, and we don't even know if he was created here.
I personally am hoping that Q deposited Soji into this timeline and that she appears to save the gang from the Confederation.
On a completely unrelated matter: The "World Razer"? Really?
It's kind of silly, but cultures with colonialist histories do sometimes give their military ships silly names. The submarines of the British Royal Navy include names like HMS
Onslaught, HMS
Dreadnought (meaning, "fears nothing"), HMS
Warspite, HMS
Conqueror, HMS
Ambush... and HMS
Opossum, for some reason.
In this timeline, I doubt the Bajoran Wormhole was discovered; or that The Founders made themselves visible to the Confederation. Remember, the Cardassians, Klingons, even the Borg and all the other races were either killed off, or subjugated; and they were finalizing the conquest of Vulcan.
On the other hand, maybe the Confederation discovered the Wormhole after conquering Bajor, and that led to an eventual ongoing Confederation-Dominion conflict.
Does that mean we can just write the spore drive and the purple Klingons off as a "mass hallucination"
You can if you become showrunner of a
Star Trek TV series!
Yeah that was my one gripe for this episode, when Picard mentioned Q they literally didn't even cut to a shot of Seven to show her having any recognition at all. Presumably she's the only other person in their group to have actually encountered him, and given the other deep cut Voyager references this series has given us (reference to the metreon cascade in this episode, mentioning the Sikarian's spatial trajector in season 1, etc) it seems odd that they just glossed over that.
I mean, "Q2" was a lousy episode, so I'm not surprised they'd try to gloss over it.
As far as Raffi knowing or not knowing about Q, wouldn't she have to know who he is? I remember Janeway saying to him that "Every captain in Starfleet has been briefed about your appearances on the Enterprise" and she's a captain now.
ETA: I could have sworn Raffi was a captain now in command of the new Excelsior, but apparently I imagined that and she's still just a commander. My bad.
I mean, Raffi was originally a Starfleet Intelligence agent who specialized in Romulan affairs. It's entirely possible that she learned about Q but forgot about him because he was not part of her specialty and no one has seen him since he harassed
Voyager in 2377 -- twenty-four years prior to "The Star Gazer."
I was never a fan of the Borg Queen, but this was perhaps the first time I felt she was well used and genuinely menacing.
Which is ironic, because this is the most overtly powerless we've ever seen a Borg Queen!
I had the revelation that Jurati is basically being written as Tilly, only I prefer Tilly.
I mean, the only thing they have in common is a level of insecurity. Tilly is a young woman who is in the process of finding herself; Jurati is a woman who's defined more by her loneliness than her inexperience.
Curious that Soji barely seems to feature this season.
That's my one complaint so far -- not enough Isa Briones!
