Barging in here after a delay of a week just to say this episode made me able to relate to Picard in a way I haven't before. Back then as a kid, I looked up to him as a role model, the confident and rational captain who always knew how to convince people through his god-like speechifying skills, but as I grew up, I began gravitating away from him as I've gradually started seeing him as stubborn, emotionally repressed, unwilling to open up to people, arrogant and prone to claiming the moral high ground to shame his opponents into compliance. Naturally, I was very pleased when the last season called him out on these exact flaws (see how his first meeting with Clancy or his theatrics of tearing down the "Romulans only" sign ended) and I was happy to see him not only emerge but figuratively and literally resurrected as a healthier, wiser version of his old self in the end.
But in this episode, seeing how he deals (or doesn't deal) with his traumatic memories, I have seen many things intimately familiar to me. I absolutely loved the dual framing device of him in the therapy session, talking about the traumatic memory on the surface, and the imagination-colored representation of that memory below, a representation of his conscious and subconscious. It painted a very visceral picture in me: Picard needed a lot of prodding from the therapist to even realize this particular memory was what he was here to talk about. Tallinn arrived in his subconscious to bring him out, but he wasn't there. His thoughts are up there, in his conscious mind, talking about the traumatic memory, but he's completely unable to tap into that memory and its trauma and actually relive it himself until Tallinn literally brings his childhood self to the door and brings him out to the fore. I kept thinking how nice it would be to have my own Romulan lady do it for me, because just like Picard, I have forgotten how to do that and how to listen to that scared and lonely little girl down there a long time ago. Ahem. I have a feeling it's turned a bit too personal. Anyway, the revelation about Picard's aloofness made a whole lot of sense: he's keeping his emotional distance from others, but how could he start allowing them in when hasn't even stopped keeping his own self at an arm's length first?
EDIT: I also greatly appreciated the apparent (and very accurate, I think) disconnect between his conscious thoughts about his memory and how his childhood self experienced it in his subconscious. His father telling him basically outside infomation about his mother sounded like a representation of what he knows about his mother's illness as an adult, that he knows that his mother was sick and had an episode where she endangered her kid and was in such a bad state that she needed to be locked up, probably temporarily until the doctor arrived. But the emotions connected to the memory, how his childhood self experienced it, and the emotional wounds caused by it, speak of his mother as this fantasy heroine who protected him from the dangers lurking in their home, and his father as the monster who locked up the mother who wanted to defend him. And this disconnect just makes it all the more difficult to tap into your subconscious and relive the trauma, because the way it imprinted upon your soul is just so drastically different from how your conscious rationalizations interpret it in the present.
But in this episode, seeing how he deals (or doesn't deal) with his traumatic memories, I have seen many things intimately familiar to me. I absolutely loved the dual framing device of him in the therapy session, talking about the traumatic memory on the surface, and the imagination-colored representation of that memory below, a representation of his conscious and subconscious. It painted a very visceral picture in me: Picard needed a lot of prodding from the therapist to even realize this particular memory was what he was here to talk about. Tallinn arrived in his subconscious to bring him out, but he wasn't there. His thoughts are up there, in his conscious mind, talking about the traumatic memory, but he's completely unable to tap into that memory and its trauma and actually relive it himself until Tallinn literally brings his childhood self to the door and brings him out to the fore. I kept thinking how nice it would be to have my own Romulan lady do it for me, because just like Picard, I have forgotten how to do that and how to listen to that scared and lonely little girl down there a long time ago. Ahem. I have a feeling it's turned a bit too personal. Anyway, the revelation about Picard's aloofness made a whole lot of sense: he's keeping his emotional distance from others, but how could he start allowing them in when hasn't even stopped keeping his own self at an arm's length first?
EDIT: I also greatly appreciated the apparent (and very accurate, I think) disconnect between his conscious thoughts about his memory and how his childhood self experienced it in his subconscious. His father telling him basically outside infomation about his mother sounded like a representation of what he knows about his mother's illness as an adult, that he knows that his mother was sick and had an episode where she endangered her kid and was in such a bad state that she needed to be locked up, probably temporarily until the doctor arrived. But the emotions connected to the memory, how his childhood self experienced it, and the emotional wounds caused by it, speak of his mother as this fantasy heroine who protected him from the dangers lurking in their home, and his father as the monster who locked up the mother who wanted to defend him. And this disconnect just makes it all the more difficult to tap into your subconscious and relive the trauma, because the way it imprinted upon your soul is just so drastically different from how your conscious rationalizations interpret it in the present.
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