Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x04 - "Watcher"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
where the heck did I read that then
It was a cameo to make people laugh. Mission accomplished, at least with me.
wow, this escalated quickly. There Are several valid objections that can be raised about the writing of this episode, but several pages discussing a harmless cameo that can be justified in a number of ways…really?!
It doesn’t matter that it’s fanwank. It’s subject to interpretation.
Well, that was...an episode. 
I had such high hopes after the premier, but once again lazy writing is just turning this to drivel.
Guinan is so totally out of character here that I thought the 'real' Guinan was hiding in the back and would eventually show herself. The reason the events of Time's Arrow aren't remembered have been adequately addressed- but not by the writers in show as they should have been. Again, all it would have taken was a line or two and the whole mess becomes clear and unconvoluted. I began to feel like the BTTF cast drawing out timelines and their various effects and splits on a chalkboard, trying to sort the temporal mechanics.
I'm tired of ham-handed social commentary. Trek has always been about social commentary, but in the past it was (for the most part) done so much better and subtly than it is here. There have always been exceptions, of course- I think I was 7 or 8 the first time I saw "Let that be your last battlefield" and I had it figured out waaaay before Kirk and Spock did. So yeah, writers, do your thing, but FFS let's get back to allegory and eloquent commentary, not cut-and-past FB posts popped into your scripts.
Punk on a bus- I had no idea it was the same actor/character, it has been so long since I've seen STIV. So while I did LOL, his reaction at the end was a total eye-roller for me: "Yup. Another emasculated 'male' meekly caves to his feminist overlords..." Now that I know this is supposedly the same guy, I have to ask- why is he still carrying a boom box in 2024?
Oh- because there is no 'joke' without it. All that aside, I did get a chuckle here.
For a bunch of trained starfleet officers attempting to minimize changes to the timeline, their actions are totally out of character. Raffi and Seven don't even make a cursory search for Rios' com-badge, Picard tells Guinan everything, and Rios (in an admitted harmless way) does the same thing with the ICE guard. Then Raffi and Seven steal a police vehicle and then transport out of it in front of the LAPD. (This after Jurati tells them to stop because the transporter can't hit a moving target, with no consideration given as to the consequences of 'rapturing-out' of an SUV rolling at high speed through a densely populated city block...
. Ethics? Fuck those, apparently- as well as who knows how many timeline changes when the SUV rolls through a window and kills your own ancestor...)
I'm willing to entertain the idea that Laris is actually Isis from "Gary Seven", especially given the transporter effect at the end. Mostly because I can't think of any other reason for the actual Laris (who we heard was killed in an uprising up-time) should be on Earth in 2024 as an obviously not-Romulan agent. Because in 2024 there had been no contact whatsoever between the Romulans and pre-warp drive Earth, and even with their lifespans, this is waaaay before Laris's time. Unless Laris has been ret-conned into something other than what she seems for the entire show.
So, the La Sirena is in France? How TF do you transport through the Earth's core to Los Angeles? Oh yeah- plot. Once again, just tired, lazy writing. With a cloaking device, they could have put down anywhere, especially knowing where they needed to go before the time jump. Same problem for comms- Jurati even mentions it (no relays), then somehow magically solves it. Nice hand-wave.
Anyway, I'm also tired of 2024. We've all lived through the shit-show of the past few years, and as others have said, if you want to address the issues of this day and age there are a ton of contemporary shows that do it better. Unfortunately, the story here is resolved when the timeline is saved, so I think we might be 'stuck in the past' for the balance of this season, which so far seems to be evolving into an un-inspired redo of STIV without any of the attendant charm.
I had such high hopes after the premier, but once again lazy writing is just turning this to drivel.
Guinan is so totally out of character here that I thought the 'real' Guinan was hiding in the back and would eventually show herself. The reason the events of Time's Arrow aren't remembered have been adequately addressed- but not by the writers in show as they should have been. Again, all it would have taken was a line or two and the whole mess becomes clear and unconvoluted. I began to feel like the BTTF cast drawing out timelines and their various effects and splits on a chalkboard, trying to sort the temporal mechanics.
I'm tired of ham-handed social commentary. Trek has always been about social commentary, but in the past it was (for the most part) done so much better and subtly than it is here. There have always been exceptions, of course- I think I was 7 or 8 the first time I saw "Let that be your last battlefield" and I had it figured out waaaay before Kirk and Spock did. So yeah, writers, do your thing, but FFS let's get back to allegory and eloquent commentary, not cut-and-past FB posts popped into your scripts.
Punk on a bus- I had no idea it was the same actor/character, it has been so long since I've seen STIV. So while I did LOL, his reaction at the end was a total eye-roller for me: "Yup. Another emasculated 'male' meekly caves to his feminist overlords..." Now that I know this is supposedly the same guy, I have to ask- why is he still carrying a boom box in 2024?
Oh- because there is no 'joke' without it. All that aside, I did get a chuckle here.For a bunch of trained starfleet officers attempting to minimize changes to the timeline, their actions are totally out of character. Raffi and Seven don't even make a cursory search for Rios' com-badge, Picard tells Guinan everything, and Rios (in an admitted harmless way) does the same thing with the ICE guard. Then Raffi and Seven steal a police vehicle and then transport out of it in front of the LAPD. (This after Jurati tells them to stop because the transporter can't hit a moving target, with no consideration given as to the consequences of 'rapturing-out' of an SUV rolling at high speed through a densely populated city block...
. Ethics? Fuck those, apparently- as well as who knows how many timeline changes when the SUV rolls through a window and kills your own ancestor...)I'm willing to entertain the idea that Laris is actually Isis from "Gary Seven", especially given the transporter effect at the end. Mostly because I can't think of any other reason for the actual Laris (who we heard was killed in an uprising up-time) should be on Earth in 2024 as an obviously not-Romulan agent. Because in 2024 there had been no contact whatsoever between the Romulans and pre-warp drive Earth, and even with their lifespans, this is waaaay before Laris's time. Unless Laris has been ret-conned into something other than what she seems for the entire show.
So, the La Sirena is in France? How TF do you transport through the Earth's core to Los Angeles? Oh yeah- plot. Once again, just tired, lazy writing. With a cloaking device, they could have put down anywhere, especially knowing where they needed to go before the time jump. Same problem for comms- Jurati even mentions it (no relays), then somehow magically solves it. Nice hand-wave.
Anyway, I'm also tired of 2024. We've all lived through the shit-show of the past few years, and as others have said, if you want to address the issues of this day and age there are a ton of contemporary shows that do it better. Unfortunately, the story here is resolved when the timeline is saved, so I think we might be 'stuck in the past' for the balance of this season, which so far seems to be evolving into an un-inspired redo of STIV without any of the attendant charm.
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Because that means none of the time travel events to the past never happened.
Why? It should be obvious.
Guinan's memory has been purposely changed so that Picard's task is even harder. The bus punk clearly remembers Spock and Kirk in San Francisco in 1986. There. Q involvement with Guinan and it still gives us a direct link to Star Trek IV.
Well for one thing, the Confederation future's going to need whales, so perhaps Kirk and Spock (before Vulcan was enslaved) went back to 1984 and the same events played out.
I can't believe that I'm saying this but...
I mostly agree with Steve Shives' review of Star Trek Picard season 2 episodes 1-4.
I mostly agree with Steve Shives' review of Star Trek Picard season 2 episodes 1-4.
- Pacing is for shit
- Everything drags
- We are spending way too long on way too little
- Unclear character motivation and goals/plans:
- They need to find something that is important for some reason.
- They need to stop something from happening sometime soon.
- There is someone out there who can help them, somehow.
- Nothing concrete, which makes it very hard to invest in any of this.
- We've seen all of this before:
- The timeline has been changed, again
- The characters are trapped in a warped totalitarian version of the world they know, again
- The heroes have to travel back in time to set things right, again
- They find themself fish out of water in a contemporary setting, again.
- The writers seem to have nothing new or original or creative to say about any of this
- Lazy witless fanservice
- We haven't gone anywhere yet, except a few places we've already been in other better shows
I think you need to read the context of my quote. I said I fail to see how Spock and Kirk meeting punk still happened if the Fed never existed, replying to another post.
That's a fair interpretation and I actually hope that's what the writers intended.
Really. I never would have guessed. Even without watching some YouTube asshole’s opinion about it.
Wouldn't the whale probe still be sent? After all, the whole point of the probe is because they lost contact with whales. Given the general state of Earth I would say their extinction probably still happened so whale probe sent, Confed Kirk and Spock go back.
Not necessarily. There could be a good amount of story back in the "present" with the Borg.
I mean, in the thread for "The Star Gazer", we had people convinced a Rios spin-off was a 100% done deal because of the extravagance of the Stargazer sets. We might have a whole other act there at the end of this season that we don't know anything about yet.
This is an A+ fanwank, I love it.
Q knows Guinan is there in 2024 Los Angeles. He alters her memory so she has no idea who Picard is and thus makes Picard work that much harder to correct history.
But the bus punk is still the bus punk and doesn't want someone else knocking him out for playing his loud music.
But the bus punk is still the bus punk and doesn't want someone else knocking him out for playing his loud music.
So, silly fanwank explanations for a complete disregard for all of Guinan's, what, three previous meaningful stories aside, this episode was absolutely terrible.
Rios's storyline is boring and clearly just there to pretend at social commentary. Raffi and Seven are even more boring and goes nowhere except to more fanwank nostalgia baiting.
Picard and Jurati was at least well acted and hinted some dark stuff heading straight for Jurati from her interactions with the Borg Queen but doesn't feel relevant thus far. And the Watcher stuff was weird and didn't actually tell us anything of import yet.
And this Guinan, Time's Arrow issues aside, just doesn't feel remotely like Guinan. GINO. Nothing about this interpretation of the character remotely implies she's the same character played by Whoopi even in the previous appearance in this very series.
Filler, in the truest sense, unless any of the Jurati teases pay off later.
We get the tease at the end with Q, which may be enough to get me back for one more episode. But, quite frankly, I think I'm done with Picard. It's funny, I thought the first two episodes were quite strong. But since the cast came back to 2024 this show has gone completely and totally off the rails in every way. Two hours of my life I wish I had back. I'm not eager to make it three next week, even if the part of me that adores Q hopes he can save this mess.
Rios's storyline is boring and clearly just there to pretend at social commentary. Raffi and Seven are even more boring and goes nowhere except to more fanwank nostalgia baiting.
Picard and Jurati was at least well acted and hinted some dark stuff heading straight for Jurati from her interactions with the Borg Queen but doesn't feel relevant thus far. And the Watcher stuff was weird and didn't actually tell us anything of import yet.
And this Guinan, Time's Arrow issues aside, just doesn't feel remotely like Guinan. GINO. Nothing about this interpretation of the character remotely implies she's the same character played by Whoopi even in the previous appearance in this very series.
Filler, in the truest sense, unless any of the Jurati teases pay off later.
We get the tease at the end with Q, which may be enough to get me back for one more episode. But, quite frankly, I think I'm done with Picard. It's funny, I thought the first two episodes were quite strong. But since the cast came back to 2024 this show has gone completely and totally off the rails in every way. Two hours of my life I wish I had back. I'm not eager to make it three next week, even if the part of me that adores Q hopes he can save this mess.
Implied. But I think he probably just remembered that something happened to him way back when.
Anyway, this timeline has become a jumbled-up jigsaw puzzle. I like things not quite fitting.
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