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.
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