• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x07 - "Monsters"

Rate the episode...


  • Total voters
    218
Honestly given her clothing styles both young and old, makes you wonder if it was actually she who was the luddite and not Picard's father. He simply allowed her to live her lifestyle and hoped it would help with her issues.
That was just the fashion in the early 2300’s
 
Yvette seemed like a woman who embraced Victorian or 20th century dress both as a young mother and an elderly woman. Luddite? Possibly. But very attached to old fashioned ways as evidenced by how she painted the glass walls of the vineyard greenhouse.
 
How can El-Auria hold their own against the Q to actually have a war and not a massacre? The Borg assimilated and incorporated them and seemingly didn't find anything special, sheer power wise, from it.
Yvette seemed like a woman who embraced Victorian or 20th century dress both as a young mother and an elderly woman. Luddite? Possibly. But very attached to old fashioned ways as evidenced by how she painted the glass walls of the vineyard greenhouse.
TNG said Yvette wanted a replicator and Maurice said no. Maybe he was afraid she'd bypass the safety protocols, replicate a phaser rifle, and kill them all.
 
My only guess is that El-Aurians can access powers on the psychic plane that can damage the Continuum. Because if they were simply a humanoid species with deep insight or a form of ESP where they could empathically read the emotions or minds of other beings I doubt they'd be a threat to a race as powerful as the Q. They must be able to do things outside our plane of existence that the Q fear.
 
My only guess is that El-Aurians can access powers on the psychic plane that can damage the Continuum. Because if they were simply a humanoid species with deep insight or a form of ESP where they could empathically read the emotions or minds of other beings I doubt they'd be a threat to a race as powerful as the Q. They must be able of doing things outside our plane of existence that the Q fear.
Why don't the Borg have this power then to make a threat to the Q?
 
I'm going to break with the developing consensus and say that was the best episode since the first two. I say this for two reasons primarily: That the format of the episode shifted considerably from the last several, and we actually begin to get some payoffs for plot threads which were dangled around in the beginning of the season.

The stuff in Picard's head was a bit of a confusing revelation once we reached the end of the story, it's true. I am glad they decided not to go for maximum trauma and make Picard's father into an abusive husband/father. But it was hard to see how this was that deep/dark of a secret in the end (although having a mother with mental illness could explain his fear of commitment). At first I was really perplexed how his "father" (who was just in his head) was providing revelations regarding what really happened, but Jean-Luc undoubtedly learned the truth regarding his mother as he got older, and just crafted narratives in his head to explain away how the mother he adored could have ended up this way. The explanation was really there for Tallinn (and us) not for Jean Luc himself, who was always aware of what had happened. I thought the "inside Picard's head" thing was enacted in a much more entertaining way than say Sloan's Brain on DS9 (though I was really missing Frakes' direction here).

Going round the rest of the plot, the stuff with Rios, Teresa, and her son continues to be well acted, a bit hokey, but ultimately heartwarming. The stuff with Seven and Raffi continues to be awful - I can't tell if they are given the worst lines (the scripting here continues to be pretty poor overall) or if it's just Michelle Hurd isn't as good of an actor as the rest. And then there's the curious decision the episode writers made to not conclude the episode at its obvious end, but append on a whole final act with Picard and Guinan in her bar. I don't know what to make of this because it's clearly Act 1 of next week, but was appended on here because...I guess episodes can't have closure or we'll stop watching?

Still, at least this episode was trying to do something other than just keep a bunch of stale B plots moving until the end of the season.
I think this was all to show that it was how Jean Luc Picard saw things as a child (WRT his mother's situation) - and even though intellectually as an adult; he understood the medical aspects and could dispassionately understand what occurred; he NEVER dealt with it on an emotional level and had repressed it so deeply that its affected his personality and his entire life including the choices he made way more than he realized <--- And Picard himself is just realizing all that now at this stage in his life. I do like the fact they didn't just 'fix' it by having Picard deal with it all in this one episode. The mind trip was to get him to a point where he could deal with it enough to return to consciousness; and that's were they got to - and stopped although both Picard and Talin know there's way more to unpack deal with.

I'm conflicted as I do like the fact this episode went in what I felt were some unexpected directions, but:

- Talin being Loriss' ancestor; and the aliens planting a Romulan on Earth to assist Earth survive/evolve is a bit much (Even though Gary 7 himself a Human, made a comment in TOS S1 - "Assignment Earth" that alluded to him also doing things to help other alien worlds.)

- I DO like that the Borg Queen is BEING a Borg Queen in that all along (for her); she's been manipulating everything just to regain her freedom/abilities, and is clearly working to restore herself and start creating a Borg Collective on Earth as soon as she is able.

- I also like that they DID cover the El Alurian/Q relationship, and did a sort of callback directly to TNG S2 - "Q Who", and Guinan's and Q's exchange in that episode - and who knows perhaps in the original timeline "those dealings" happened in her Bar of Earth and she used that Bottle successfully back in the 20th/21st century.

- And (while I never saw the Voyager episode I guess the actor who played the arresting FBI agent was in (as some sort of Federation Timecop); yeah, it's interesting and unexpected enough that maybe he is that character and also back in 20th century Earth to 'fix time' <--- But I'm sure we'll see one way or the other in the next 3 weeks at some point.

- A for Rios; at this point I think eiither the Doctor and her kid will make a jump to the 25th century with him (a call back to 'Gillian' in STIV:TVH going with Kirk - although she had a good reason ("Who knows Whales in the 23rd century") - WHICH was abandoned because somehow at the end of STIV:TVH she had somehow hast-tracked though the Academy and taken an assignment aboard a Star Fleet Science vessel :wtf::rofl: - OR - Rios will decide to stay behind. But no, I don't think the writers are going to have her stay in the 21st century and Rios return to the 25th. We'll see.

And yes, I agree that it's tough to fully judge episodes like this in a story we all know beforehand is serialized over 10 episodes. I do like the fact it allows for really unexpected stuff as I didn't expect Guinan and Picard to be picked up and arrested at that point. My thought was maybe this was another Q showing up in response to Guinan's summoning attempt. My one disappointment is that they didn't (for whatever reason - and that reason could be Whoopie Goldberg herself didn't want/wasn't up for that big a role in the story and the time it would take her to be a part of it to this degree) have Whoopie Goldberg playing 'Guinan' for this whole adventure. I have NOTHING against the actress they chose at all - and I think she's giving a marvelous performance of her own with the character; but yeah, I'd have been really enjoying it if it was Whoopie Goldberg doing the whole thing. YMMV.

Overall another 7 from me (but it might rate a point higher by the end of this season's run.)
 
The stuff with Seven and Raffi continues to be awful - I can't tell if they are given the worst lines (the scripting here continues to be pretty poor overall) or if it's just Michelle Hurd isn't as good of an actor as the rest.

I think the scripting is the issue. Raffi had that weird line after Seven told her she was trying to access La Sirena's security footage about how Seven hadn't touched her coffee. It just seemed weird and stuck out. Like the writers wanted to insert an easter egg about Seven liking coffee and just inserted it there and it didn't fit the moment. Raffi was also shown to be a hacker in season 1, so why isn't she helping out as well instead of just replicating and commenting about coffee? I said this in another post, but something has started to feel "off" about the show to me.
 
I think the scripting is the issue. Raffi had that weird line after Seven told her she was trying to access La Sirena's security footage about how Seven hadn't touched her coffee. It just seemed weird and stuck out. Like the writers wanted to insert an easter egg about Seven liking coffee and just inserted it there and it didn't fit the moment. Raffi was also shown to be a hacker in season 1, so why isn't she helping out as well instead of just replicating and commenting about coffee? I said this in another post, but something has started to feel "off" about the show to me.
To be fair, this is a confed ship that's still relatively new to them so maybe Raffi can't hack with it as easily as Fed tech she's comfortable with.
 
- And (while I never saw the Voyager episode I guess the actor who played the arresting FBI agent was in (as some sort of Federation Timecop); yeah, it's interesting and unexpected enough that maybe he is that character and also back in 20th century Earth to 'fix time' <--- But I'm sure we'll see one way or the other in the next 3 weeks at some point
You never saw the episode? It’s one of Voyager’s best.
 
My one disappointment is that they didn't (for whatever reason - and that reason could be Whoopie Goldberg herself didn't want/wasn't up for that big a role in the story and the time it would take her to be a part of it to this degree)
TPTB: Whoopi! We'd love to have you on this season of Picard!

Whoopi: Okay, sounds good, here are my rates.

TPTB (doing a comedy spit take): Whoopi! We'd love to have you on this scene of Picard!
 
TPTB: Whoopi! We'd love to have you on this season of Picard!

Whoopi: Okay, sounds good, here are my rates.

TPTB (doing a comedy spit take): Whoopi! We'd love to have you on this scene of Picard!
I'm actually fine with the recast because I'd like to see the new actress as Guinan in Strange New Worlds.

I'm still not fine with this season's take on Time's Arrow being erased and how time travel works. We're missing a big opportunity next episode for the FBI to know all about Chekov from TVH, all the TOS time travel, Quark's visit in the 40s, etc.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top