Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x03 - "Assimilation"

[Rahul]

To be fair this isn't "our" present. There's Sanctuary Districts in this present at the very least and rumors seem to show there'll be other things to say that we're not longer traveling to "our" "now."

Which really would be a shame, since a big part of Star Trek's appeal is that it's OUR future, and it's a positive one.
So far, whenever they got an imediate prediction wrong (Eugenic Wars in 1996) - they opted to retcon stuff to line up with our reality again, over making the whole thing an alternate universe.

 

[Rahul]

As written so far, he's exactly the same Picard just with an artificial body. He wasn't given extra intelligence, speed, or mental processing power that we've seen.

THen let the fucking board computer do the stuff. Or one of Rios' holograms.
Just saying - this is super fucking handwave-y anyway, they could have had Soji with them, and still gave an explanation why they needed the Borg queen anyway.

As is, Soji completely missing just feels a little bit weird. She was such a major focus in S1. Except if they have some plan for her later on this season. We shall see.

 

[Quinton]

An easy 8, maybe a 9. Season's so good so far.

I'm hoping Elnor's going to be set right due to time travel hijinks, if for no other reason than it would be particularly cruel to have Raffi lose another kid, then have her heart broken again when her work toward saving him turns out to be all a vain hope. One of the complaints about galaxy/reality ending threats is that they're such huge stakes that they're actually no stakes - there's no doubt the heroes will save the day. I'm guessing that putting Elnor's life on the line is an attempt to give the mission some smaller, more personal urgency.

Still annoying, though, because it means my fave is going to spend at least the next four episodes in a drawer.

Do we know somehow that the 2024 Los Angeles stuff is the focus until 2x08? Or were you using the phrase "at least the next four episodes" as an estimate? Just curious.

And yeah, RIP.

 

[gvn2fly]

THen let the fucking board computer do the stuff. Or one of Rios' holograms.
Just saying - this is super fucking handwave-y anyway, they could have had Soji with them, and still gave an explanation why they needed the Borg queen anyway.

As is, Soji completely missing just feels a little bit weird. She was such a major focus in S1. Except if they have some plan for her later on this season. We shall see.

I think it makes sense as written that Soji is not with them because she doesn't necessarily exist in the alternate future. And the holograms may not exist in the alternate future either. It also makes sense to me that the computer couldn't do it because no one on the ship knew how to feed the necessary information/calculations into the computer and they didn't really have time to try to figure it out.

 

[Tuskin38]

Or

I don’t think they exist in the new timeline

 

[Vale]

Well... bit of a step down after two exceptional episodes, but necessary steps for the future direction of the season. Also – Rick and Morty confirmed to exist in the Star Trek universe. Awesome.

 

[StarMan]

Part of the issue is, much more than the first two, this doesn't feel like an episode - it's just a collection of stuff that needs to happen in order to move the arc forward. We have a quick first act which wraps up the Confederation plot before titles role, then a bunch of shipboard scenes that establish the "mission" and the stakes, as it were, and then finally - around halfway through the episode - we finally get to 2024, and presumably the main plot arc for the season. This has been the third episode straight which is placing items on the table for a new setting, so I hope we're strapped in here for awhile and can enjoy the story.

Yeah. I enjoyed it, but I agree and hope we're done with the set up and can settle in.

 

[Rahul]

Anyway. Soji was the only character with a real character arc last season besides Picard, and her final decision (even if very on the nose) had vast, galaxy-spanning consequences.

I'm really much more interested in that - how she lives with her newfound self-esteem as an android, weather she integrates herself more with humans or the "new" Federation androids, her relationship with Jurati (who kinda' built her) or Picard (who is from the same factory as her), what anyone thinks about the robot space tentacle monsters, and so on..... much more than about Jurati/Rios or Seven/Raffi's on/off romance thingies to be honest.

That was a pretty central part of the show before. Dropping her & that entirely just feels... wrong and empty. Like the stakes never really mattered.

 

[Anduinel]

Do we know somehow that the 2024 Los Angeles stuff is the focus until 2x08? Or were you using the phrase "at least the next four episodes" as an estimate? Just curious.

Just a guesstimate. I don't know how long they're going to be in 2024 or even if getting out of there is actually going to be the point where time starts righting itself (don't really trust that there won't be an additional spanner in the works).

 

[Quinton]

Just a guesstimate. I don't know how long they're going to be in 2024 or even if getting out of there is actually going to be the point where time starts righting itself (don't really trust that there won't be an additional spanner in the works).

Yeah, makes sense. And I think it's a fair estimate as well; the setting factored heavily into promotion, and I can't see a show helmed by Terry Matalas not tossing in at least a couple of time loops, hah.

 

[DaveyNY]

This one looks similar to the same street that was used in "2012" for the start of the Limo/Earthquake scene.

 

[Vale]

Elnor's death didn't surprise me after he was shot last week, plus I saw he didn't appear in the promo pics for this week, and we haven't seen any shots of him in the trailers from future episodes. This might be the end of his character on the show. I've thought Evan Evagora's acting has been far and away the worst of the leads, so in a way I won't miss him. On the other hand, he seems like such a wasted opportunity, since they spent an entire episode introducing him and did jack shit with his character ever since. But my biggest issue with the death is that despite the last two episodes trying to sell me on a close relationship between Raffi and Elnor, I just don't buy it. Yes, I know that there were two years of off-camera development of their relationship, but we as viewers didn't get to see it - we saw maybe ten minutes of interactions between them. So a character we barely know/understand died, and another character who we know better is upset because they had a close relationship which developed off camera. Only maybe he's not dead after all - maybe the timeline reset will fix everything. Time will tell.

I am very confident that wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff will have Elnor resurrected in some way by the end of the season.

 

[Yistaan]

Even considering Jurati was ruled not legally at fault, doesn't the fact that she murdered Maddox under the influence of a Vulcan mind meld show that she's the person least mentally equipped to withstand Borg assimilation? No one brings this up once not even Jurati herself? And even if she was legally cleared of that, she recovered from that way too quickly. Realistically she'd be having lifelong trauma, crying fits, flashbacks, etc. over having killed Maddox from a mindmeld, not unlike the way Picard is forever damaged by the casualties of Wolf 359 from his time as Locutus.

 

[Quinton]

I know I've seen it flung around here that there is cause to suspect a couple of the actors won't be in the third season, but I haven't seen anyone suggest similarly of Evan Evagora; for that reason, I'm just continuing to assume Elnor returns (obviously in a state prior to the events of the second and third episodes).

 

[DaveyNY]

I have a hankering suspicion that Agnes Jurati will end up as the Borg Queen we saw in the first episode (the one that was assimilating the Stargazer).

I think it's a little too on the nose for Juarti to be the one in the Borg Queen outfit now.
I don't believe the writers would be that obvious this early in the season.

 

[Vale]

Realistically she'd be having lifelong trauma, crying fits, flashbacks, etc.

To be fair this applies to half the Star Trek cast anyway, and they always seem to get over these massive life-altering traumas within a couple of episodes. Maybe 24th century psychiatric medicine really is just that good at dealing with PTSD

 

[Vale]

I think it's a little too on the nose for Juarti to be the one in the Borg Queen now.
I don't believe the writers would be that obvious this early in the season.

Ooh double bluff!

 

[Sakonna]

Homeless encampments are not necessarily sanctuary districts, unless I missed a scene.

(Though the point of Sanctuary Districts was too prevent the visual unappealingness of poverty/homelessness so it doesn't seem like there'd be these homeless encampments if Sanctuary Districts are a thing. ...

To be fair this isn't "our" present. There's Sanctuary Districts in this present at the very least and rumors seem to show there'll be other things to say that we're not longer traveling to "our" "now."

I thought this was a fix, reconciling Trek history into "our" history. Combined with a truly lacerating bit of social commentary.

They represented the homeless encampments as they actually exist today, just added Sanctuary District signs. The point of the Sanctuary Districts was to keep people away from the general population -- which is the same reason the real Skid Row in actual LA exists. Our current reality is so close to the dystopic 2024 dreamed up by Trek writers in the 90's that there really is no "continuity error." We did it all in real-life, we just did it even worse and we didn't name them Sanctuary Districts.

I've posted it here a million times, everytime I'm at Skid Row in downtown LA I'm amazed that we're underperforming the standards of "Past Tense."

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I went with a 9. Still in set-up mode, but good action and Jurati "impressing" the Borg Queen was epic.

 

[Yistaan]

Jurati's the hooded Borg Queen in the season premiere isn't she? That's why there was a hood on her.