Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x08 - "Mercy"

[mdtauk]

It probably would not have worked, in terms of ages - but it would have been nice if the Vulcan he interacted with was the one who stayed behind in Carbon Creek - or if the FBI agent had come from there.

It would have meant less need to explain or accommodate the fact Vulcans were on Earth, despite thinking of it as un-interesting pre Cochrane's flight.

Carbon Creek was a crash, not an intended on the ground surveying.

 

[XCV330]

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.

Likewise. It might have been the last thing Earth came up with on its own.
With the ECS traders going further and further out, eventually a lot of that knowledge was going to make it back to Earth by diffusion. Probably why Vulcans had mostly given up holding back the Warp 5 complex.

 

[cooleddie74]

If we weren't going to get tech from the Vulcans we'd eventually get them from the Denobulans, Trill or Draylaxians.

 

[gvn2fly]

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

Yes, and it makes sense to me. I see a difference between Q saying - take care of this for me, run this woman over and I will fix your life's work (which he doesn't need an army for), and someone telling him to give them an army and his legacy (which he saw he cared about the most) will live on far into the future. But then I guess that leads into the question of why he would believe Agnes in the first place.

Also, we saw he was conflicted about what he had done to Picard. It's not like he was a straight up murderer that found it easy to call up his people to kill someone. He previously used those military for experiments, which he thought would ultimately help humanity, not to kill.

 

[Yistaan]

Yes, and it makes sense to me. I see a difference between Q saying - take care of this for me, run this woman over and I will fix your life's work (which he doesn't need an army for), and someone telling him to give them an army and his legacy (which he saw he cared about the most) will live on far into the future. But then I guess that leads into the question of why he would believe Agnes in the first place.

Also, we saw he was conflicted about what he had done to Picard. It's not like he was a straight up murderer that found it easy to call up his people to kill someone. He previously used those military for experiments, which he thought would ultimately help humanity, not to kill.

Why is the Borg Queen helping Soong create the very timeline where the Borg were eradicated and she herself was slated for execution?

 

[DaveyNY]

There's no way Soong could have known that Picard & Renee were going to be in that exact spot to be able to plan on running them over.
Obviously, Soong was just supposed to prevent Renee from going on the mission, not kill her.

He was in a rage because of not being able to succeed during the ball and simply took advantage of the situation before him while in the car.

I very much doubt Q would have been happy if Soong had actually killed her or Picard.

 

[Roald]

Why is the Borg Queen helping Soong create the very timeline where the Borg were eradicated and she herself was slated for execution?

Wasn’t it obvious she’s trying to create a THIRD timeline, where the Borg have a 400 year head start….?

 

[gvn2fly]

Why is the Borg Queen helping Soong create the very timeline where the Borg were eradicated and she herself was slated for execution?

She's manipulating him to get the materials she wants for assimilation. Why she doesn't just threaten to kill him and get them anyway would be a good question (maybe because some of Jurati is in there?). I guess she also wants an Army to stop Picard. I don't think she's helping create the confederation future - she's there now and once she's strong enough will be able to make enough drones to assimilate Earth anyway.

 

[Yistaan]

Wasn’t it obvious she’s trying to create a THIRD timeline, where the Borg have a 400 year head start….?

Other ways of doing this without Soong's help, like transmitting a signal to the Delta quadrant or something. A geneticist is not the first person you'd turn to for this.

 

[DaveyNY]

She's manipulating him to get the materials she wants for assimilation. Why she doesn't just threaten to kill him and get them anyway would be a good question (maybe because some of Jurati is in there?). I guess she also wants an Army to stop Picard. I don't think she's helping create the confederation future - she's there now and once she's strong enough will be able to make enough drones to assimilate Earth anyway.

As stated in the post above yours, She is attempting to create a much earlier assimilated Earth, just like the Borg Queen from "First Contact" tried.

Other ways of doing this without Soong's help, like transmitting a signal to the Delta quadrant or something. A geneticist is not the first person you'd turn to for this.

That was already tried and failed, Twice, counting the Borg in "Regeneration" .

 

[DaveyNY]

ERROR

 

[cooleddie74]

Technically the signal sent in "Regeneration(ENT)" worked. It's the reason why the Borg are heading our way when Q throws the Enterprise-D in that one Cube's path in "Q Who?(TNG)" The producers basically called that episode a predestination paradox.

 

[DaveyNY]

Technically the signal sent in "Regeneration(ENT)" worked. It's the reason why the Borg are heading our way when Q throws the Enterprise-D in that one Cube's path in "Q Who?(TNG)" The producers basically called that episode a predestination paradox.

The signal made it through, but the objective to assimilate Earth from that occurrence ultimately failed.
So technically both signal attempts failed to achieve the desired results.

 

[cooleddie74]

True, but the ENT signal at least made first contact with the Borg possible.

 

[DaveyNY]

Heh ...
At this point, One could suppose that the conflict between Humans and the Borg ending with Earths Assimilation, has a "Predestination Paradox" of never coming to pass.

 

[Saul]

Kinda uninteresting episode. A lot of time not doing much, sitting around and talking. The momentum really dropped off early on. Didn't care for Raffi's issues. Mercy is a Jurati quality? Tell that to her ex-boyfriend.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Technically the signal sent in "Regeneration(ENT)" worked. It's the reason why the Borg are heading our way when Q throws the Enterprise-D in that one Cube's path in "Q Who?(TNG)" The producers basically called that episode a predestination paradox.

Or....

TNG Borg and First Contact/Voyager/Enterprise Borg look very different, and the associated special effects are also very different.

So different that one might think that someone went back in time and envigourated the historic Borg with hundreds of years of fore knowledge.

 

[Yistaan]

Kinda uninteresting episode. A lot of time not doing much, sitting around and talking. The momentum really dropped off early on. Didn't care for Raffi's issues. Mercy is a Jurati quality? Tell that to her ex-boyfriend.

Interesting that Agnes can shrug off Borg assimilation to stop herself from killing (something many, many others in Trek including Picard were unable to do) while the same Agnes couldn't shrug off a mindmeld to prevent killing Maddox. That must be one very very weak assimilation the Borg Queen did. Except she's back to rampaging a minute later. The strength of the queen's control comes and goes with the plot.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Building nano probes requires raw recourses that do not exist on 21st century Earth.

Billions of microscopic subspace radio antennae.

Building nano probes requires raw resources that do not exist inside the Borg Queen because the Confederation literally and figuratively bled her out until she didn't have enough dilithium and exotic metal inside her to make a clothes horse.

PS

I know by direct connection, that Seven meant that she was hard wiring into a human brain rather than using wireless subspace connections... But the language seemed sexual, and it sorta seemed like they were saying that Jurati frakked that guy to death.

 

[Airmandan]

Time travel in this show gives me a headache.
Are we actually sure that Q is dying? He describes it as something new to him, but that doesn't necessarily mean death. The whole season has been about people's fears and how they influence decisions, what if he's supposed to get a lesson out of this as well?