2024 is a thinly veiled version of our present, we don't need to learn mch more about it. The characters I wish to explore are those of our heroes, not of some rando fascist.
Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x04 - "Watcher"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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Starting to get a bit frustrated at the ret-conning so far in this series. We've now had the idea that Picard was actually from Paris, rather than LaBarre (unless I misinterpreted the scene with his mum in the conservatory in episode 1) and Guinan conveniently forgetting about the encounter she had with Picard and the Ent-D crew in 19th century San Francisco.
Your not exploring him. He is their to support the Rios character. Not the other way. Also explore some of the other people in the cage as well by Rios getting to know them. Maybe toss in a ICE agent that seems nice on the surface but in the end does something really horrible to one of the prisoners and the guard who is openly a asshole is kind of shocked. Play on expectations and subvert them.
The first paragraph notes how the cartels have nearly destroyed the safety of Guatamala, El Salvador, and Honduras. It's awful. The official murder rate in El Savador is 10 times higher than the U.S. 3,300 people are killed each year in a country with only 2.6 million people. It's basically the same size as the city of Chicago, and has nearly five times as many homicides.
The second paragraph notes that - yes - the cartels get most of their money via drug trafficking.
I don't see how you get from there to arguing we shouldn't let in refugees from these countries. Are you implying that everyone is a suspected drug trafficker, and as a result we have to keep them all out to bee safe? That's guilty until proven innocent. Plus it's relatively easy to determine if a refugee coming at a lawful point of entry on the southern border has any drugs on them.
I agree that addressing the root causes would be more ideal, but I'm not sure how you do this. Mexico's last president tried to go to war with the cartels, and failed miserably. Do you think we should station U.S. troops down there or something? Short of just legalizing everything, I don't see how to stop it entirely, just mitigate the damage.
Putting aside contemporary politics, I do think we should look at Rios's situation as providing the ideal "fish out of water" scenario which allows us to examine what is taken for granted.
Rios is a man out of time, who happened to be in the wrong place, have the wrong accent, and be taken to the wrong clinic. He's swept up into imprisonment without trial, and faces indefinite detention. The tazing was a little much, but I've had friends tazed by the cops for less. All of this is normal stuff that regular people have to deal with in America in 2022. But 90%+ of us don't see it every day, so we just take it for granted. Which is exactly the same sort of story Past Tense was telling back in the day.
Rios is a man out of time, who happened to be in the wrong place, have the wrong accent, and be taken to the wrong clinic. He's swept up into imprisonment without trial, and faces indefinite detention. The tazing was a little much, but I've had friends tazed by the cops for less. All of this is normal stuff that regular people have to deal with in America in 2022. But 90%+ of us don't see it every day, so we just take it for granted. Which is exactly the same sort of story Past Tense was telling back in the day.
While I was watching the "ICE" scenes, I said eh, they didn't go overboard against them. One guard, a little nasty, a stun gun shot. I knew it was for the story and bound to happen. It's HERE, where you have anarchists that want open borders and defunding Homeland Security that I have the problem.
Then come into the country the proper way.
No. Most detainees are caught trying to circumvent (sneak) in to the country. AND many have criminal records.
Yeah. It's still 1700s. Open borders is absurd in 2022 (2024). The country does not have the resources to support that. Nor the money.
Ok
Oh, I know they aren't synonymous. I used the word because it's the word I've seen bandied around on this very forum to describe what I would personally call slower storytelling/character work/breathing space. Sometimes folk want what they want until they get it! Even leaving aside the politics, which have been thrashed to death in this thread already, this sub-plot is giving us plenty of fleshing out both of Rios as an individual and the relationship between Raffi and Seven as they attempt to trace him, which is exactly what all three of them needed.
Watching Rios attempt to navigate this dangerous situation all alone with no recourse is fleshing out his character a lot, cementing things we already knew about him and filling in additional details along the way. It has demonstrated his impulsiveness, his recklessness, his kindness and his courage - the way that trying to help when he sees people in need is hard-wired in him, he can't not do it, even at cost to himself; we saw examples of that back in season one, even while he wanted so badly to convince the universe that he no longer cared about anything, and we've seen it again this season, multiple times now, he sees someone in trouble and tries to help even when he has no idea what he is getting himself into, even if it means putting himself in harm's way. Starfleet to the core, just as Picard recognised back when they first met. We've seen both his laid-back charm and his biting snark on full display. We've seen again that he over-acts when called on to play a role (see: his exaggerated reaction to the cookies while trying to entice the kid into giving back his comm badge, a call-back to how awkward he was when asked to play the part of a...what did they call it? A Facer, in Stardust City Rag, which was a perfect demonstration of what happens when you send an introvert to a bar and tell them to be outgoing!) Last week he told that little story about his mother teaching at the Academy and how he beat the top score in the simulator when he was only 8, and this week he confirmed that his mother is now dead, which builds on what we learned in season one, that he latched onto Captain Vandermeer as a father-figure, implying that he didn't have a father in his life when he was growing up. And so on, all valuable character information, which was sorely needed, since season one didn't do the best job of establishing the new characters.
And with Seven and Raffi on his trail together, the storyline is also fleshing out their relationship, giving us an up close and personal look into how they interact, how they relate to one another, how beautifully they balance each other out - whenever one starts to spiral, the other is there to ground her - and also how they rub each other up the wrong way. All sorely needed, since season one only hinted at a connection between the two of them in their final scene, and then season two jumped forward a couple of years to a point where they are already in an established relationship but struggling to make it work. Now we're getting to see that struggle in practice. I love that Seven could handle the mechanics of driving a car, just about - she did spent a few years on Voyager with Tom Paris, after all - but had absolutely no idea how to handle driving in traffic. That was perfect. Also, watching Raffi stressing out about Rios being kidnapped by ICE is also a timely reminder that despite barely interacting at all so far this season, those two were established last season as having a long and close friendship, while the early episodes of the season firmly established a rather newer friendship between Rios and Seven, all of which helps us to understand why they first gave up their search for the Watcher to try to find Rios when they saw his comm badge behaving oddly on the tricorder, and why they are so afraid for him now they know he is in the hands of ICE - I mean, over and above being allies on a joint mission.
Like others in this thread, I thought Ito Aghayere did a decent job of portraying a younger, more disillusioned Guinan, one who had no memory of meeting Picard in 1893 to give her hope for humanity's future, a Guinan who has lived through all the atrocities of the last 130 years without that hope and only sees things getting worse rather than better. She doesn't quite capture Whoopi's voice and delivery, but very few actors cast as younger versions of established characters do. I could picture Whoopi's delivery of all the same lines in my head, and that was enough for me.
I think both storylines - Rios and Guinan - are 100% Star Trek, shining a light onto the darkness and saying 'yes, things are bad, but they can get better.' Change can come - our characters, visiting 2024 from a much brighter future, stand as proof that a brighter future is possible. Sometimes that change comes later than we hope it will, it can be a long and painful road to get there, but Star Trek always insists that change is possible, that it will happen, we just have to keep fighting for it. Which is what this season is all about, so far - fighting to make a change, fighting for the hope of a brighter tomorrow.
A lot of this episode was setup for payoff down the track, but that's fine, it did its job and was entertaining along the way. Thumbs up from me.
If Rios had gone to a more upscale clinic, he would have been handcuffed to a radiator, waiting for ICE to come get him, or whatever stormtrooper the Department of Labour invented to patrol the sanctuary districts.
Didn't they have enough time to counterfeit identification?
Federation Starships have that shit on point, because the know that Time Travel is a thing.
Confederation Starships still think that time travel is impossible, so they don't have an entire wardrobe department dedicated to make a Nazi uniform for McCoy when ever he needs one.
Even if you don't support open borders, there are more humane ways of controlling immigration.
In lots of European countries, there is a much more strict work permitting system than in the U.S. Not only can you not work if undocumented, it's not even easy to work if you're like a student studying abroad for a year or something, and even refugees need to wait 6-12 months in many cases until they can be employed. This eliminates a lot of the impetus for undocumented economic migrants.
In lots of European countries, there is a much more strict work permitting system than in the U.S. Not only can you not work if undocumented, it's not even easy to work if you're like a student studying abroad for a year or something, and even refugees need to wait 6-12 months in many cases until they can be employed. This eliminates a lot of the impetus for undocumented economic migrants.
I disagree. For better or worse, they cast Santiago Cabera as Rios, who is a very "white" Latino. He speaks fluent English, and his accent is pretty clearly not Mexican or Central American (people in the LA area would know that). He's also attractive, which certainly helps when getting some people to believe a line of bullshit. Certainly they'd pick up on the fact he wasn't from the U.S., but he doesn't come across as someone from a poor background, and I think he'd be able to BS his way through. California hospitals are under no requirement to investigate immigration status, and in fact are guided by state law to cooperate as little with ICE as possible. He would have been fine in a regular hospital, as long as ICE itself didn't conduct a raid there.
I thought the episode was fine but it felt like too much filler and wheel spinning.
Like, did we need half the episode devoted to Rios in custody when you could have just cut to him on the bus. I mean, I get the usual Star Trek need for social commentary but when your running just 10 episodes and you’ve got a pretty big plot to resolve…maybe trim the fat. Same with the Raffi/Seven car chase.
I did like the Jurati/Borg Queen stuff and the Star Trek 4 callback.
I don’t think we needed to know why the French Jean Luc Picard acts/speaks like a Brit. But that’s ok. I’m also not sure about them possibly giving Picard a patented P+ Trek “tragic backstory”. I think having Picards Father be overbearing and his Brother be a dick was enough. No need to make his dad an abusive monster, etc...
Guinan should have known who Picard was without hearing his name. And I don’t know why he was so hesitant to tell her. It’s not like they hadn’t already met.
I’ll say 7/10
Like, did we need half the episode devoted to Rios in custody when you could have just cut to him on the bus. I mean, I get the usual Star Trek need for social commentary but when your running just 10 episodes and you’ve got a pretty big plot to resolve…maybe trim the fat. Same with the Raffi/Seven car chase.
I did like the Jurati/Borg Queen stuff and the Star Trek 4 callback.
I don’t think we needed to know why the French Jean Luc Picard acts/speaks like a Brit. But that’s ok. I’m also not sure about them possibly giving Picard a patented P+ Trek “tragic backstory”. I think having Picards Father be overbearing and his Brother be a dick was enough. No need to make his dad an abusive monster, etc...
Guinan should have known who Picard was without hearing his name. And I don’t know why he was so hesitant to tell her. It’s not like they hadn’t already met.
I’ll say 7/10
But should Rios be shocked? The guy was Han Solo for many years. We first meet him with a Klingon blade sticking out of him. He might have served in the Dominion War. Also one can assume most 24th century folks know past humans were primitive. Same with Seven and Raffi also have been through some shit and Seven has even become a cold blooded killer.
They are 24th century humans but they should actually understand some of this stuff from their own life experiences and maybe that should be the connection they should go for. That deep down they aren't that different from themselves from 2024 humans and maybe they have lost something that use to be important to them and that was the Roddenberry optimism and the reason why humanity got better is they figured out how solve problems with always resorting from violence.
Maybe Seven comes away from this and quits the Fennis Rangers and joins Starfleet. Raffi is reunited with Elnor and gives him a book about the Bell Riots. Picard kisses Laris, Rios looks up what happened to his Doctor friend and found out she became President of United States and created lots of reforms on immigration. Jurati as the new Borg Queen frees all the Borg Drones. That was what the Borg Queen meant about the Borg joining the Federation. As newly freed people who are now immigrants looking for a new home and wants it to be with the Federation.
Confederation Picard never made the trip to 19th century San Francisco, so never met Guinan in that time period. Just like ST09, the changes ripple back and forward from a change in a universe where time travel is relatively common.
Because the future that Picard came from doesn’t exist anymore, so she never met him
This makes sense but it should have been mentioned in the episode. People don't know what time travel logic they are going to be using. A little clarity would have helped. Assuming they are being honest and didn't just head-canon themselves a way out of a mistake they made by forgetting about TIme's Arrow.
Nothing in that scene indicated he encountered Kirk or Spock.
You can just say that you’re a conservative, it’s not illegal. I wouldn’t like this episode if they were running around beating up minorities, so I get it.
Certainly possible he never met Confederation Kirk/Spock - but he still exists and is more or less the same person. Maybe he learned his lesson about turning his boombox down from someone else over the years.
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