Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x08 - "Mercy"

[gweeps]

I wonder if this Q is the first to be dying or its affecting others in the continuum as well?

Q no longer has his powers as we saw at the end of 2.4, but he had them in 2.1/2.2 when moving Picard and crew to the altered timeline and appearing, disappearing. So did he have powers/change the timeline, used his powers to save Picard in 2.1 and he had them in 2.2, then he went back to the past to stop Picard from fixing the timeline..and then lost his powers? Just curious about the timeline of Q here.

Good questions. I have a theory that when Q was human, maybe he picked up some sort of weakness and it has eventually spread to the Continuum.

At the end of 2.4, Q was genuinely surprised his powers didn't work. So somewhere between saving Picard & co. and them going back in time, something really got borked. Perhaps Q had a sense of it when he told Picard, "I am but a suture in the wound"?

Remember that Quinn in Voyager's 'Death Wish' told Tuvok the Q aren't omnipotent no matter what they say. Q de Lancie has also made the occasional statement in episodes which suggests he doesn't know everything. Or that he can't always fix everything. I feel that the Q are best able to do what they do when they're controlling the game as it were. Like someone else said above, they live in their own timeline of sorts.

 

[Yistaan]

Vulcans were using transporters for themselves but probably did not share the tech with humans. So transporters were new to humans. So it would make sense that humans would be afraid since it was a new tech for them. And Erikson's transporter may work a bit differently than Vulcan transporters. And Erikson's tech was new. So there could be concerns whether Erikson's prototype would work correctly.

Think of it this way: say the Russians build a hypersonic jet. And then an American inventor builds his own hypersonic jet and builds a prototype and asks you if you want to be the first to fly on his new hypersonic jet that is not fully tested yet, would you be afraId?

Russians and Americans weren't allies historically and very much aren't now going by the news. Vulcans and Humans are allies. Even if Vulcans don't want to share the tech, they'd stop Erickson from doing needless experiments on his own son I think.

We have no indication transporters need to be configured differently for each species, and many indications against (all the new lifeforms beamed up in Trek).

 

[eschaton]

The problem with that is, the Borg are monsters. Or, at least, as they were originally presented, a force of nature that will kill and assimilate simply because that’s their nature. They’re certainly not misunderstood good guys. They are death, carnage and rape personified. I can’t see how there can ever be peace with the Borg, unless there’s simply an agreement to avoid certain territories because a war would cost them too much are therefore not be in their best interests.

The Borg were originally dropped in Q Who? as a lesson of sort to Picard about the dangers of the unknown. We were seeing them in the exact light that Q wanted to teach Picard - and humanity a lesson. Arguably everything that followed was Q's fault, although Regeneration did kinda retcon the invasion in BOBW as being due to a closed time loop from First Contact.

But let's hold to that idea for a second. Q introduced humanity to the Borg. Now he's dying, and he feels the need to make penance for this. This was the penance he was talking about in the beginning of the second episode - it's not about Picard's penance, but his own for his "sins" in making humans think that no coexistence was possible. Trying to undo what he sees as his worst decision.

 

[XCV330]

Good example is writing. Writing was invented several times around the world, specifically in places where the civilization that invented a writing system had no meaningful contact with anyone else that had one. So Sumerians, for instance, invented writing, but then so did China (and Egypt, and MesoAmerica, Incas, etc). In each case, it doesn't look anything like that of its contemporaries, even if it accomplishes the same task. So it is an invention, even if it had been invented before.

 

[Yistaan]

I was going to joke that the Vulcans were combatants in the Temporal Wars but going by how Picard has approached time travel (even Time's Arrow was erased) that doesn't even work.

 

[eschaton]

Good example is writing. Writing was invented several times around the world, specifically in places where the civilization that invented a writing system had no meaningful contact with anyone else that had one. So Sumerians, for instance, invented writing, but then so did China (and Egypt, and MesoAmerica, Incas, etc). In each case, it doesn't look anything like that of its contemporaries, even if it accomplishes the same task. So it is an invention, even if it had been invented before.

The Inca never had writing (though the had an accounting system with quipu). But yeah, writing was invented at least three times independently - may have been four times, since no one is completely clear if the Egyptians copied the idea of cuneiform with their own system or came up with it independently.

 

[Yistaan]

The Borg were originally dropped in Q Who? as a lesson of sort to Picard about the dangers of the unknown. We were seeing them in the exact light that Q wanted to teach Picard - and humanity a lesson. Arguably everything that followed was Q's fault, although Regeneration did kinda retcon the invasion in BOBW as being due to a closed time loop from First Contact.

But let's hold to that idea for a second. Q introduced humanity to the Borg. Now he's dying, and he feels the need to make penance for this. This was the penance he was talking about in the beginning of the second episode - it's not about Picard's penance, but his own for his "sins" in making humans think that no coexistence was possible. Trying to undo what he sees as his worst decision.

If Q cared so much about trying to make things right with the Borg, he'd tell Guinan all about the Borg considering, you know, El-Auria will be assimilated in about 250 years.

 

[Gov Kodos]

The problem with that is, the Borg are monsters. Or, at least, as they were originally presented, a force of nature that will kill and assimilate simply because that’s their nature. They’re certainly not misunderstood good guys. They are death, carnage and rape personified. I can’t see how there can ever be peace with the Borg, unless there’s simply an agreement to avoid certain territories because a war would cost them too much are therefore not be in their best interests.

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[eschaton]

If Q cared so much about trying to make things right with the Borg, he'd tell Guinan all about the Borg considering, you know, El-Auria will be assimilated in about 250 years.

Q doesn't give a shit about El-Auria. He likes humanity - and Picard.

 

[cooleddie74]

He clearly has little regard for her species since he basically snarled the words he used to describe them.

 

[Tuskin38]

Remember the Vulcans were holding back their knowledge on Warp Drive.

 

[cooleddie74]

For 88 years. They were the ultimate frenemy.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Just like how Zefram Cochrane invented warp drive, but the Vulcans and other races already had it before.

Bingo. The Vulcanians were not into sharing their tech with the aggressive Humans.

It would seem the Vulcans invented their transporter in those 67 years, or they would not have chanced detection by sending a shuttle down for T'Mir and Stron.

 

[XCV330]

The Inca never had writing (though the had an accounting system with quipu). But yeah, writing was invented at least three times independently - may have been four times, since no one is completely clear if the Egyptians copied the idea of cuneiform with their own system or came up with it independently.

Whether Quipu was writing or not has been debated quite a bit, but its becoming more clear that it is a form of writing, or at least that the nature of writing might have to be re-understood. You're not going to write epics or love poems on it, but decipherment attempts seem to show that it was capable of transmiting complex data in a uniform way that multiple trained people could interpret. It was not specific to each record keeper, as had been debated. If you had a quipu reading interface for your computer, you could code with it. Ergo, to me, it's writing. If it isn't then the Indus are the only bronze age civilization, let alone organized empire, to somehow manage without writing, and that in itself is pretty odd.

There are some other systems that are even more obscure and uncertain like Vinca, Indus script (which, regardless, would have been exposed to Sumerian/Akkadian, and possibly even Egyptian), Ekpe leopard, and Miqmac. I find this interesting. Anyway I am off topic. Anyway the point is, parallel invention happens.

 

[Yistaan]

The problem with that is, the Borg are monsters. Or, at least, as they were originally presented, a force of nature that will kill and assimilate simply because that’s their nature. They’re certainly not misunderstood good guys. They are death, carnage and rape personified. I can’t see how there can ever be peace with the Borg, unless there’s simply an agreement to avoid certain territories because a war would cost them too much are therefore not be in their best interests.

But it's the tech inside them that makes them monsters, not the organic part. Like a computer virus. Maybe if they just upload some antivirus into Jurati or something she'll stop assimilating people against their will.

Bingo. The Vulcanians were not into sharing their tech with the aggressive Humans.

Emory Erickson: You **** had transporter tech this whole time and never told me?

Soval: The last time we gave transporters to a new species, they immediately started beaming people into space, into the sun, and just for fun they scrambled their enemies' signals so they'd be beamed back as misshapen blobs in unimaginable pain that didn't even have mouths to scream or ask for a mercy kill. And we just met you humans after you literally had finished your THIRD world war.

If you match Kore's age to Isa Briones' actual age, she would have been made in 2002. Her predecessor lived till 4, having her made in 1998. The previous clones lasted days. This lines up with Soong starting his work almost immediately after the Eugenics Wars.

Why is the Borg Queen helping Soong and Q now? Doesn't that lead to the timeline where she and the Borg are, you know, eradicated?

 

[FederationHistorian]

2.5 mentioned that Soong has been working with a privatized military operation and conducting experiments on their ex soldiers.

The same Soong that then does not call the same private military to take out Renee Picard?

So Emory Erickson wasn't some pioneering inventor but just copied transporter tech from the Vulcans. And the Vulcans didn't even intervene when Erickson started experimenting on his own son to "invent" a transporter, even though it was meaningless as again the Vulcans already had the tech.

NX-01's fear of transporters now also seems even more absurd if the Vulcans had been using them safely for centuries.

Maybe it's better to retcon these guys as Romulans who secretly had transporter tech rather than actual Vulcans. Or the Vulcans were time travelers.

Erickson is to the transporter what Cochrane is to warp drive. Nothing is being taken away from him. At least, I hope nothing is being taken away from him.

Who says the Vulcans were using them safely for centuries?

Why is transporter psychosis always overlooked as being a reason transporter tech gets removed from starships? And transporter tech pre-TOS generally being imperfect and prone to malfunctions? Just because it was depicted as near perfect on Archer’s ship doesn’t mean the tech was perfected in the NX class/Daedalus class era. Archer might have gotten lucky to have had as few malfunctions occur during the first few years it was in use. And his entire crew seemed to prefer using shuttlepods and docking with other starships to the transporters in general, even with Vulcan visitors.

 

[DaveyNY]

Is it possible the Vulcans went through a 'religious' crisis with the advent of their own transporter tech?
The idea of their 'Katra" being something that a transporter might interfere with or destroy?

Possibly that is something that took them a very long time to philosophically/logically work out, thus explaining why they might not be willing to make the technology available to Humankind.

Which BTW, is a Race they obviously consider inferior to themselves and most likely not able to comprehend or get beyond the philosophical aspects of the Transporter.


They didn't want us getting a much less meaningful space engine upgrade, imagine their hesitation in giving us something that breaks a Person down to basic energy and then reforms it.

This might also explain why every Vulcan starship doesn't have a transporter.
Some Vulcan's are still resistant to using one.

The same Soong that then does not call the same private military to take out Renee Picard?

Q seemed to specifically asked Soong to handle the situation himself, not call in an Army.

 

[cooleddie74]

I'd like to think Emory Erickson came up with human transporter technology largely on his own. He might have taken some lessons in quantum theory from our contacts with Vulcans but I think he largely did it all himself with human know-how and ingenuity.

 

[Enterpriserules]

I was very impressed with the way this episode began to bring all the parts of the season together. I hope they land this ship well.

 

[Yistaan]

Cut scene from the episode.

Wells: Ducane to Temporal Investigations, one to beam up. The timeline is on track to being restored, separating Guinan from Picard so that Q couldn't confront Picard after the summoning. Can't believe the great Admiral Picard bought that nonsense story about the Vulcans and the mindmeld.