Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x04 - "Watcher"

‪‪I believe the same cross-temporal mechanics that make the past of 2024 different prior to Q’s change date (‪‪‪‪‪‪i.e. the erasure of the impact of the time travel events in Time’s Arrow) would apply after Q’s changes are undone, and the subsequent changes to the future would retroactively impact the past.

That is to say, once they right the change on April 15th the future following that point will be the Prime future, including the events of Time’s Arrow, and Guinan’s history between 1893 and 2024 would be restored as a result of Picard and his team’s changes/reversion of Q’s changes.

 

Sure. But wouldn't such a reset of pre April 15th 2024 events also erase the actions of Picard & Co in that era, including them them righting the chances?

 

I have a feeling that part of this season is putting out feelers on how folks would react to an "altered" Prime timeline. With certain recent announcements some of the new shows are going to be running into certain older shows.

 

I challenge anyone who hasn’t already seen Dr. No or read about it on Wikipedia, IMDB, etc. to watch it cold and try to figure out just what Dr. No’s evil plan was, or what he hoped to gain by it. The whole film is a convoluted mess, even by Bond movie standards.

 

I think I know the answer to that. The answer is yes as long as the original timeline still exists and isn't winked out of existence which would basically erase all the tv shows and movies. In fact this was like one of the biggest arguments in the early days of Discovery when the look of the show didn't look like it would fit into the TOS time period at all. Create a new timeline that exists outside of Prime but isn't the mirror universe. That way you can play with all the trek toys but you don't have to be held back by canon.

 

I can see that line of thinking, but it isn’t a forgone conclusion any more than say, the changes made in Back to the Future, which didn’t cause spacetime to implode on itself, even though Marty had altered his own future/present, because it was “close enough” to the original.

It’s an idea presented a lot in time travel fiction, that time will correct around changes that aren’t deemed significant, like Marty’s interference in his parents’ courtship, or Picard’s correction of Q’s time shenanigans.

 

Oh, great. Does this mean the timeline won't be restored by the end of the season?

 

Who knows?

 

Well, we'll find out soon enough, won't we? There's only six episodes left.

 

Then we'll know I guess. Or not. Cliff hanger is a possibility.

 

Hmmm.

The vineyard has gone to seed.

Maybe at the end of the show, Jean Luc stays in the 21st to get the farm back in shape before the Picards return?

 

How time travel works in these episodes...

Only one timeline.

No other timelines.

The one timeline just keeps rewriting it self.

That's why there's no Times Arrow or Past Tense crossovers.

 

Interesting thought.

 

Guinan was hiding out from her father on Earth in those early years, so transportation offworld might not have been as simple to arrange as you suggest, nor was she likely to desire to leave so soon while she had unfinished business.

Her later "angst" is perfectly in-character and understandable given spending a century and a half living as a black person and a woman in America (which, despite her alienness, is all that she is able to reveal since she is on Earth pre-First Contact), and all the ups and downs that entails. For every step forward in one area, there is often a backlash and a step back that follows afterwards. And while conditions for black Americans (and in other countries) have undoubtedly improved, one could understand becoming frustrated that there's is still so much work left to be done and at the fact that fighting for basic decency and human rights is still met with such resistance after 130 years where you would hope people would have learned from the wrongs of the past and stopped acting as a constant roadblock to positive change.

Does it seem like an accident that an alien with the appearance of a black human woman would choose to settle on a planet in a region where black people and women were treated as second class citizens unless it was her intention to encourage change in those areas? It's no accident that she established herself as a wealthy author and socialite, as that's one of the few places a person of her gender and appearance would be granted an audience with civil rights friendly (if still paternalistic) white elites like Samuel Clemens. Frederick Douglass was able to use his story and status as an author on slavery and the black person's condition in America to grant him access to the elites of American and foreign society, and Guinan came up in American society just before his death in 1895, so it's highly likely she took her cues from him.

Guinan was the one who reminded Picard of the slavery angle and "disposable people" treated as property when Bruce Maddox wanted to reproduce Data to serve as a disposable labor force that the Federation owned. You think that was because she wasn't touched by the experiences of ex-slaves in post-Civil War America and empathized with them?

At the same time, while she has the wisdom and temperance of centuries of experience, we have seen that Guinan is not beyond giving into fear and frustration like her human counterparts. When Hugh was first brought aboard the Enterprise, she had as much of a kneejerk "Kill it with fire!" reaction as Picard did before she too went to meet with Hugh and judge for herself. And those reactions should come as no surprise given that Picard and Guinan were the ones on the crew who had experienced the most troubling things at the hands of the Borg. But after being convinced of Hugh's new nature, she changed her mind and became an advocate for his protection. Just as she had reached her final straw in this 2024 Earth before Picard convinced her to stay and that it will get worse before eventually getting better. Though he's kind of burying the lede with them being on the cusp of WWIII.

I like to think Guinan stayed throughout humanity's dark times as a guide until she finally left for home aboard the NX-01 (because she was fond of the name Enterprise) and that's when she had her encounter with the Q (in disguise). Ironically she makes it home a century and a half before her homeworld is assimilated and has to come back to Earth again.

But I digress, the offense to her statement as being the product of a "jaded, arrogant jerk with a bad attitude" sounds like so many of the same complaints about black activists taking a knee during the anthem, protesting, saying or wearing shirts with "Black Lives Matter" on them, holding up a fist, refusing to sit at the back of the bus, refusing to get up from a chair in a white's only diner, etc. Why can't they just be accepting of all the good things they've got? They're always getting uppity and daring to ask for the same things white people take for granted. And why does it have to be in the middle of watching my game when I don't want to have to think about such things? I'd just prefer never to have to confront these unpleasant realities of life at all.

 

I have no idea what it means to say that someone is acting "out of character" if that person is hundreds upon hundreds of years old. I imagine someone who lives that long would probably be very different at different centuries in their lifespan.

 

Again: Movie Picard is a pretty different character from TNG Picard. Characters can change from situation to situation and from writer to writer. That's kind of a thing with fiction. You can't lock in a bulletproof guarantee that your character is not going to change their behavior nor should you have one.

 

It would take away the reason to actually watch something.

 

I would gently suggest that nobody who is a fan of a series that includes episodes like "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" can reasonably call the social commentary in PIC "heavy-handed."

I'm sorry, but the level of naivete here about what it's like to be the victim of racism is profound. This is an exceedingly thoughtless take. I highly urge you to sit down and really imagine what it's like to live in the U.S. as a visibly black person, day in and day out, for your entire life. And then imagine 130 years of that. It's absolutely not that simple.

 

Sometimes, you need to be heavy-handed to get the message across. I thought the actor did a nice job with the material and that the material she had was solid.

 

One of the best things about TWOK is how much Kirk has changed as he reaches his midlife crisis. Were he the same James Kirk who marooned Khan and his followers on Ceti Alpha V then it wouldn't be half as interesting a movie.