The Queen took her sphere back in time in first contact, and then the Queen took the LA Sirena back in time in Picard.
Different time drives, but same pilot.
Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x04 - "Watcher"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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The Queen took her sphere back in time in first contact, and then the Queen took the LA Sirena back in time in Picard.
Different time drives, but same pilot.
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They do beat, starve (including children), and shoot people. To know this you have to often be involved on some level because the news tends to speak up or sweep it under the rug depending upon who butters their bread, and which political party is currently in power. The brutalization of immigrants has occurred under multiple administrations, this is true, including the Obama administration, and please note how popular he was, and how many people still do not know this fact. Fascism will always come with a smile before it comes with blood.
No you don't. Again, art does not have to be fair and balanced. It tells the story it wants to tell and uses the "characters" it needs to tell that story.
They have a quota.
If they don't meet their quota, then they are fired.
If they exceed their quota, then they get a promotion.
No different than parking enforcement handing out tickets to sloppy parkers and parking meter overstayers.
Plus, it's Star Trek. A minority of Klingons up until the Berman Era were depicted as good and noble. Romulans were pretty much assholes until DS9 - the occasional Alidar Jarok aside - and even then were scheming allies with ulterior motives. Only more recent projects have made them more kind and noble as a people.
ICE agents in this series are the bad guys because they're in a darker, alternate timeline and trying to prevent our heroes from linking up and completing their mission to fix history. They're an obstacle to be overcome.
ICE agents in this series are the bad guys because they're in a darker, alternate timeline and trying to prevent our heroes from linking up and completing their mission to fix history. They're an obstacle to be overcome.
The Dukat comparison is interesting. I recall, upon original air, not liking his turn back to hard villainy at the end of the series. I thought this was a stripping out of the character's complexity.
I no longer think this. Now I consider the middle section of the series, when there is the most focus on Dukat's "good" side, as serving the purpose of showing that Dukat was not inherently evil. He had the capability to make better choices. He just didn't, and the fact that he had that choice makes it even more damning that he went down the route that he did.
I now love that the show comes down so clearly on indicting Dukat, despite his mid-series adventures as a freedom fighter. Yes, there was some goodness in him. But the choices he made were so evil that his good qualities were swamped and are not relevant in judging him.
It takes a long time to tell a story like that with any sort of moral clarity. Arguably, even Dukat's 35 episodes were not enough.
So we definitely weren't going to get it with ICE Agent #1 in this one, and it would have been folly to try.
No, they just force people to live in filthy and inhuman conditions, steal their children, and forcibly sterilize people.
Regardless of who set them up it’s still wrong.
Right wing Trek fans are masters of cognitive dissonance, I’ll give you that.
The ICE flak jackets have a stutter.
Pol.. Ice... Ice... Ice... Ice.
Pol.. Ice... Ice... Ice... Ice.
The only reason they wrote the ICE agents like this is because they needed some convenient villains and couldn't come up with an excuse to use aliens in rubber masks. If you seriously think that's how ICE agents are in real life, you need to step away from the internet and get a life. The ICE agents I've worked with have been honorable individuals who respect the laws of this country and try to treat detainees with utmost respect.
But cartoon villains are boring. Also they don't cosplay as being good people. They no doubt see themselves as good people. Hell they likely even have good traits. Love their mom and dad and kids. You don't have to write ICE like heroes or noble but it helps if write them like a actual real human being because that makes a story better. In this case you got one guy who is kind of important because most of Rios story revolves around him interacting with Rios. All you do is have to do is give the guy some human touches but keep the apathy and anger towards Rios and you got a more interesting situation.
I have rarely seen the argument that lack of nuance makes for better art.
I'm the last person to support government approved violence against citizens or non-citizens. However, the situation itself ensures that some sort of force or possibly violence will invariably occur - ICE is charged with removing persons who do not have permission to be in the country. ICE agents would get nowhere by go around asking people nicely if they are legally in the country and if not then would they mind returning to their country of origin. Some kind of forcible removal is bound to be necessary. Does that mean that every encounter involves mass beatings or that it is an inherent (though perhaps unofficial) policy of ICE to beat everyone up? I don't know the answer to that - I'd like to see some evidence either way. If it's true then measures should be implemented to combat that tendency. That does not mean "ICE is bad" per se - especially if that opinion is based on your personal distaste for their mission.
Star Trek is a point of inspiration for us to strive to become better than we are - not a textbook on how to structure society. It is easy in a work of fiction to point out this or that failing from the point of view of a socially evolved human society looking at it's past. What isn't trivial is the real practical work of how we get there. Just saying something like "we should get rid of all borders" sounds nice but what about all the unintended consequences?
Who is saying that a person is "illegal for just existing"? This isn't the first time I've heard this sort of thing and it sounds like an emotionalized interpretation meant to stir outrage.
Who ever said anything about being upset about anything much less how this show makes ICE look? What I am saying is that ICE is an organization of people that is charged with a task that you personally may not like because you have your own particular ideas about immigration - does that make it "Bad"? To you, maybe, but that's not an objective truth.
Switching subjects a bit from the, frankly indefensible, "ICE aren't that bad" detour...
Stuff that really took me out of this episode:
Stuff that really took me out of this episode:
- Borg queen acting like a very sassy human rather than an alien entity serving as the head of a hive mind for who knows how long
- 24th-century humans knowing how to use 21st-century computers and vehicles. (I know it's been a frequent issue with Star Trek, but at least they've *tried* to address it in past instances, here they didn't even pretend that it would be an issue. 7 driving that car like a professional stunt driver was laughable.)
- Young Guinan acting like a completely different character from the always-cool, always-collected character we've come to know for decades.
what about the ones who put children in concentration camps
Maybe, but that's not the story being told.
The Sanctuary District guards in DS9 weren't all dicks even though Dick Miller's character acted like one for most of those two episodes. His partner was just an overworked, underpaid young man who couldn't wait to get home to see his wife and kids. Based on Part I of "Past Tense" you'd come away thinking that the Sanctuary Districts were guarded by smug assholes with guns.
Let's wait until next week and see if any ICE agents act more honorably. If not then it was just like I said. Obstacles to be overcome like Chekov escaping from the U.S.S. Enterprise aircraft carrier officers and security in 1986. Not evil, but not heroes either.
Let's wait until next week and see if any ICE agents act more honorably. If not then it was just like I said. Obstacles to be overcome like Chekov escaping from the U.S.S. Enterprise aircraft carrier officers and security in 1986. Not evil, but not heroes either.
It doesn't have to be fair and balanced but it usually does if it actually wants to be good and interesting. If they want to write mustache twirling bad guys they can but that stuff rarely resonates with people because people know it's fake and not realistic. Especially if you are trying to say something important. Maybe you can get away with Biff in the Back of the Future because those movies are pure escapism but try and get away with Biff in show like Better Call Saul or Succession. It doesn't translate.
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This is how ICE agents act in real life. That you've managed to find a few who don't seem overtly villainous doesn't change the actions committed by that agency.
Ok it’s hard for me to say this, but that didn’t click for me. At all. I think There’s just too many factors working against my personal Star Trek tastes here. Anyway, here’s my thoughts on one of the least-satisfying episodes of modern Trek I’ve seen yet:
1. I’m not a Guinan fan. Less a fan of this younger version
2. Watching Seven and Raffi drive around like maniacs for what felt like 45 minutes straight was tiresome and made me want to vomit.
3. Star Trek is smart and thought-provoking when it does allegorical social commentary. It’s painful, cringe-worthy and a little intellectually insulting when it does it so on the nose and unsubtly. This had no finesse. No cleverness. It was bad and lazy. There I said it.
4. I can’t shake it…I’m just not a fan of “frolic around in Star Trek’s past/contemporary times stories”
5. The TVH Easter egg with the song and the punk was cool.
6. Rios telling the cop the truth was relatively entertaining
7. The Borg Queen and Jurati were the best part of the episode….and that’s saying a lot, since I’m lukewarm on both of them.
8. I don’t buy Raffi’s character this season. And I don’t buy in to her reaction to Elenor’s death.
9. Laris rules.
4/10. Yikes. Nose-dive.
1. I’m not a Guinan fan. Less a fan of this younger version
2. Watching Seven and Raffi drive around like maniacs for what felt like 45 minutes straight was tiresome and made me want to vomit.
3. Star Trek is smart and thought-provoking when it does allegorical social commentary. It’s painful, cringe-worthy and a little intellectually insulting when it does it so on the nose and unsubtly. This had no finesse. No cleverness. It was bad and lazy. There I said it.
4. I can’t shake it…I’m just not a fan of “frolic around in Star Trek’s past/contemporary times stories”
5. The TVH Easter egg with the song and the punk was cool.
6. Rios telling the cop the truth was relatively entertaining
7. The Borg Queen and Jurati were the best part of the episode….and that’s saying a lot, since I’m lukewarm on both of them.
8. I don’t buy Raffi’s character this season. And I don’t buy in to her reaction to Elenor’s death.
9. Laris rules.
4/10. Yikes. Nose-dive.
Sometime reality is ugly and art has to expose it.
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