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Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x04 - "Watcher"

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We’ve all missed the real Guinan plothole anyway…

If she can adjust her ageing m and appearance to keep up with people then why didn’t she do so in Rascals?

She can only do it after El Aurian puberty/being fully grown and the incident in Rascals took her before that point.
 
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She can only donor after El Aurian puberty/being fully grown and the incident in Rascals took her before that point.

I was thinking that. Or that she can’t make mass out of nothing and Child Guinan was much smaller.

Or what might be my preferred choice. She could have aged up at any point but thought that would have made it even harder on Picard, Ro and Keiko so just didn’t.
 
I was thinking that. Or that she can’t make mass out of nothing and Child Guinan was much smaller.

Or what might be my preferred choice. She could have aged up at any point but thought that would have made it even harder on Picard, Ro and Keiko so just didn’t.

I'd say they latter, Trek's never been good with the mass/volume thing. (see: Odo)
 
Let's just say, in that 150 year gap, she did not skip arm day. Probably every Tuesday. "When are your biceps coming? Don't tell me, Tuesday?"
I definitely noticed that she's ripped and it looks good. I really hope we see this Guinan putting those muscles in good use and kicking some ass.

As for the whole the recasting/feeling different thing, I generally dislike recasting, and yes, this Guinan feels different. I get that people might not like it. If you swap the actor and change the demeanour of the character at the same time it might feel that it is just the same character in name only. I had that reaction to most of the reboot film crew. But then again, this is meant to be much younger Guinan, so at least to me it is easier to accept that she would feel different. Granted, her being more like her old self in Time's Arrow kinda makes it bit awkward, but like the writers, we just have to ignore that. I also really wish that this Guinan will be in more episodes and the actor gets a change to portray her in different light, to show the character taking steps towards becoming the Guinan we know.
 
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We’ve all missed the real Guinan plothole anyway…

If she can adjust her ageing and appearance to keep up with people then why didn’t she do so in Rascals?
I don't think it's like an instantaneous thing, like she's a changeling or something. It's just if she's living with 21st century humans, she dials up the aging process to 10x speed so she will have an "apparent lifespan" of 80+ years or so. But once she's back on her homeworld, she can reset to default and start over at normal aging speed of 800 years or however long they live. But it's not like she can just go from child to adult in minutes.

Plus, Guinan was enjoying being a kid. She was the only one chill with the whole thing.
 
We’ve all missed the real Guinan plothole anyway…

If she can adjust her ageing and appearance to keep up with people then why didn’t she do so in Rascals?

It's been mentioned at least once.

If Guinan can age up or down at will, why didn't she age up in Rascals?



Perhaps El-Aurian aging is related to certain viroxic sequences which were removed by the anomaly. She enjoyed the opportunity to be a child again anyway.
 
When you say she’s not African American I can kind of get with your literal meaning that she’s an alien.

But what I’ve quoted is a totally ridiculous thing to say.

Eh, I dunno. I think the best way to put it is Guinan "passes for black" - considering black (within the modern U.S. context) refers not to a skin color per se. Lots of people with partial African ancestry and medium to pale skin are slotted as being "black" while very dark people from different backgrounds (like say Indian) are not. And of course black people do not literally have black skin.

I recall hearing stories from a friend of mine who knew a grad student from Papua New Guinea. For those not in the know, even though the island is just to the north of Australia, people there look very similar to Africans because that was the original human phenotype, which happened to change elsewhere. So they have dark skin, kinky hair, etc. He had a big chip on his shoulder for being continually mislabeled as African everywhere he went in the U.S. - not just from white people, but from African-Americans as well. Like he'd show them where he came from and they'd be like "No matter where your ancestors were taken, we're all from the motherland."

Blackness is in the end a particular social/racial construct which doesn't really make sense to discuss outside of the West, and in its particular the U.S.
 
I mean having 10 on Forward Avenue... WTF? What are the chances that her bar is on that road... and then she gets a bar on deck 10 which is at the front of the ship. It's just completely pointless other than dumb fans going "Oh wow... 10 Forward. AMAZING!"
It's called Synchronicity

When I saw the young Guinan and Seven just driving a car 'just like that' I switched off. I can't be bothered as to what absurd excuses they have for not having Whoopi in the scene. I can't be bothered with car chases... this is meant to be Star Trek.
Maybe Tom Paris taught all his friends on Voyager to drive in his sports car on a holodeck.

When you say she’s not African American I can kind of get with your literal meaning that she’s an alien.
But what I’ve quoted is a totally ridiculous thing to say.
Of course she's not African-American. Assuming she's been on Earth (particularly in the US) she's had to have become a citizen. So she's El-Aurian-American.
 
I mean, does La Sirena seriously look like it will ever be spaceworthy again?

Borg nanoprobes to the rescue.

That's overstating it. She had a sense things weren't right, eg knowing that Tasha shouldn't be alive, but didn't have the details of what happened to her.

TASHA: Guinan, I have to know something. What happens to me in the other time line?
GUINAN: I don't have alternate biographies of the crew. As I said to the captain, it's just a feeling.
TASHA: But there's something more when you look at me, isn't there? I can see it in your eyes, Guinan. We've known each other too long.
GUINAN: We weren't meant to know each other at all. At least, that's what I sense when I look at you. Tasha, you're not supposed to be here.
TASHA: Where am I supposed to be?
GUINAN: Dead.
TASHA: Do you know how?
GUINAN: No. But I do know it was an empty death. A death without purpose.

The Next Generation Transcripts - Yesterday's Enterprise (chakoteya.net)

She also knew the Federation wasn’t supposed to be at war with the Klingons and that the Enterprise was supposed to carry children.

When I saw the young Guinan and Seven just driving a car 'just like that' I switched off.

Young Guinan likely has lived on Earth since 1893, how else are you expecting her to get around?
 
It does seem to be repairing itself. The Borg Queen was just needed to speed it up because of the urgency of the situation.

I think in their last point there is some missing punctuation. I think they are talking about 1. Young Guinan and 2. Seven being able to drive.
Neither issues in my mind.
 
Maybe Tom Paris taught all his friends on Voyager to drive in his sports car on a holodeck.

I was thinking about the "Seven knowing how to drive" thing. Even though she doesn't have her Borg implants in this altered timeline, does she still have all her previous knowledge that she retained from the collective? Theoretically, if during her time with the Borg they assimilated any Starfleet officer like Tom Paris who had an interest in "historical" automobiles, then shouldn't all Borg know how to drive? If there was any info about cars at all in Voyagers database then Seven would have downloaded it.

Then again, I seem to recall back on Voyager that despite all that Borg knowledge, Neelix still had to teach her how to chew and swallow food. So maybe not.
 
Oh, great. Does this mean the timeline won't be restored by the end of the season? :(

They're filming on the Stargazer bridge in Season 3 (Drexler posted a photo on Facebook), so the timeline does get restored.

And once Picard gives his name, she clearly reacts to it.
Because that's the name of the Woman Watcher Laris is watching over. That's why she takes him to her specifically.
 
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I was thinking about the "Seven knowing how to drive" thing. Even though she doesn't have her Borg implants in this altered timeline, does she still have all her previous knowledge that she retained from the collective? Theoretically, if during her time with the Borg they assimilated any Starfleet officer like Tom Paris who had an interest in "historical" automobiles, then shouldn't all Borg know how to drive? If there was any info about cars at all in Voyagers database then Seven would have downloaded it.

Then again, I seem to recall back on Voyager that despite all that Borg knowledge, Neelix still had to teach her how to chew and swallow food. So maybe not.

She didn't need a database. Paris had built a hot-rod on Voyager. At some point, I'm sure he let other people drive it (on a holo-track).
 
When you say she’s not African American I can kind of get with your literal meaning that she’s an alien.

But what I’ve quoted is a totally ridiculous thing to say.

By all means, please explain why it is a totally ridiculous thing to say.
 
The moment they beamed into LA i said "I bet they make some comment about homelessness" and boom there it was.
You're upset that we've almost reached the actual year featured in the DS9 episode Past Tense about homelessness, there's an actual massive homelessness problem going on in the very city the writers work in, with associated mistreatment of the homeless by law enforcement, and the writers decided to do some social commentary on it?
Now ICE.. and the writers clearly have an issue with that and it's just a soapbox for the writers.
And the problem with that is...?
And that is somehow different from what past Trek series have done because...?
I mean having 10 on Forward Avenue... WTF? What are the chances that her bar is on that road... and then she gets a bar on deck 10 which is at the front of the ship. It's just completely pointless other than dumb fans going "Oh wow... 10 Forward. AMAZING!"
Or Trek has always hedged the border of science fantasy and things like destiny and people winding up "where they are meant to be" play a part all the time.

You're talking about a franchise where evil versions of the characters exist yet somehow despite their vastly different circumstances all the same people wind up in roughly the same place either working together or confronting each other.
When I saw the young Guinan and Seven just driving a car 'just like that' I switched off. I can't be bothered as to what absurd excuses they have for not having Whoopi in the scene. I can't be bothered with car chases... this is meant to be Star Trek.
Guinan has lived on Earth since before the invention of the automobile and lived in the city that is built around using a car like no other and you don't think in over 131 years on Earth she couldn't have gotten a driver's license? WTF? She has to move around a lot and blend in, so a car would kind of be a requirement in LA.

Seven has the collected knowledge of thousands of species, some of which I'm sure drove cars. She was friends with a guy (Tom Paris) who was a vintage car nut and had holodeck programs on fixing cars and movies about cars. She is friends with Picard who is a dune buggy enthusiast. She has photographic memory and rapid learning capability thanks to her Borg implants and could have looked up how to drive a 21st century vehicle and assimilated the information in seconds.
 
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