Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x02 - "Disengage"

[Yistaan]

Insurrection established that isolytic weapons were banned by the Second Khitomer Accords. Vadic presumably has them because she's not in Klingon or Federation space. If the Crushers stay in Fed space, they'll be nabbed by Fed conspirators. If they leave it, they run the risk of being blown to bits by stockpiled isolytic weapons.

If Starfleet can't do anything about supervillains hoarding banned weapons outside Fed space, you think they'd at least have SOME kind of defense against them, especially if they're an exploratory vessel that would presumably venture outside Fed space.

 

[137th Gebirg]

That is a DEEP cut in my opinion. With Wesley in the background. DANG.

With a completely clueless look on his face, no less...

 

[Yistaan]

This. Being a criminal doesn't make you a bad person, it just means you committed a crime according to someone's legal system. That leaves it open to great interpretation.

I don't buy it considering that Picard, the one most likely to be sympathetic to Jack and Beverly, and who knows full well that they're on freelance medical care missions and would've taken that into account, literally says,

“I have a great affinity for virtuosos, but it seems that your instrument is deception and thievery.”

 

[Amaris]

I don't buy it considering that Picard, the one most likely to be sympathetic to Jack and Beverly, and who knows full well that they're on freelance medical care missions and would've taken that into account, literally says,

“I have a great affinity for virtuosos, but it seems that your instrument is deception and thievery.”

Deception and thievery isn't a bad thing. Sometimes it's necessary to survive, and to protect others.

 

[fireproof78]

especially if they're an exploratory vessel that would presumably venture outside Fed space.

Except, Shaw was not expecting to go outside Federation space.

 

[Yistaan]

Deception and thievery isn't a bad thing. Sometimes it's necessary to survive, and to protect others.

I'll just have to say that I've had WAY too many people deceive me or mislead me in real life to horrific results with the justification that it was supposedly for good intentions, so yeah, we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

 

[Amaris]

I'll just have to say that I've had WAY too many people deceive me or mislead me in real life to horrific results with the justification that it was supposedly for good intentions, so yeah, we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

Seems like.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I'll just have to say that I've had WAY too many people deceive me or mislead me in real life to horrific results with the justification that it was supposedly for good intentions...

Myself as well. Co-workers, family, so-called "friends", to disastrous effect... People suck.

 

[Romulan_spy]

Shaw and Picard already took that into account and they still seemed horrified by Jack's criminal record regardless, especially Picard chewing him out on the brig.

The crimes don't change the fact that Jack is Picard's son. Mothers and fathers will often still love their kids even when they commit great crimes.

Would Jack qualify as a "doctor", though? I suspect he's probably just a black marketeer who excels at acquiring medical supplies, using them as a pretense to smuggle less savory items on the back-end. <cough-cough>Romulan Ale</cough-cough>

No, Jack is not a doctor, Bev is. I think their system is Bev does the doctor stuff while Jack does the black marketeer stuff to get her the supplies she needs.

Plus it's only Jack and Beverly on that ship. How could she not know what he's been doing? I'm surprised Vadic didn't demand her too as an accessory to his crimes.

Of course, she knows. Bev is in on it. But I don't buy Vadic's claim that she is just a bounty hunter trying to bring Jack to justice. I think that was her excuse to justify her actions to the Titan. I think she has different motives that probably don't involve Bev, just Jack.

 

[Yistaan]

The crimes don't change the fact that Jack is Picard's son. Mothers and fathers will often still love their kids even when they commit great crimes.

I have mixed feelings on this. I think for all that Disney Star Wars did wrong, there was a good message there that Rey doesn't owe her grandfather allegiance just because they share DNA. This was also touched on in Voyager where Seska tried to pull this sort of thing on Chakotay by tricking him into thinking she had his kid.

 

[Borgminister]

Another satisfying episode, complete with Riker-isms, smart-ass quips from Beverly's son, a bailout by Worf to Raffi's failed gambit, and some father-son talk... Too bad Sneed lost his head--the actor threaded the needle between goofy Ferengi and evil incarnate very effectively. Very unique and menacing. Vadik as portrayed by Plummer's daughter does chew the scenery very well, although the shrike reference brought to mind gazelles for some reason... Also thought the son or Sneed moment was well done, showing that choices have consequences. Looks like the Raffi aside will turn out okay with pacifist, decapitating Worf now revealed as the handler. Solid 10!

 

[Sci]

General thoughts without looking over the thread:

• I loved the way the tension kept increasing throughout the episode
• That scene at the end with Beverly and Jean-Luc just wordlessly giving each other this look. Absolute chills. Loved it. This is the sort of thing you can only get by bringing together these actors who have been playing these characters for almost forty years and taking their characters in a completely new direction and giving them so much more depth. Loved it loved it loved it.
• "Why are you tip-toeing around this?" Riker/Frakes speaking for the audience there.
• The whole thing where Picard is somehow not able to issue orders to Shaw in "The Next Generation" but is in this episode is a little sloppy. But I do buy that Shaw has come around on this.
• I still want to know why Jack has an English accent.
  • Maybe that's the real way Jean-Luc knows he's his son: because the Picard family genes always give you an English accent no matter what country you were actually raised in.
• I enjoyed the idea that there's tension between people who are more establishment-oriented, people who really believe in Federation institutions and in Starfleet, and people like the Fenris Rangers who are a bit more radical, more anti-establishment, more willing to defy conventional structures of power if they deem it necessary in the service of the greater good. Star Trek as a narrative has often been uncritically institutionalist in its ideology, so it's nice to see that out there on the frontier, things might actually be a little more complicated.
• The idea that Beverly would go out and become a bit of a radical strikes me as a very logical direction for her character to go in. My memory of her from Next Generation is that she was always a bit less of an institutionalist in her thinking, that she would frequently push back against some aspects of Starfleet protocols in the name of doing the right thing.
• Jean-Luc, though he is an institutionalist at heart, has also always been someone willing to recognize the limits of the law and institutions. As far back as Season One's "Justice," we've seen him wrestle with what to do when the law and the obligations of his institution are in conflict with morality. He recognizes in Jack someone who is "a criminal, yes, but not without principles." Jack is his inverse in that regard -- they both have principles, but Jack is more of a radical.
• I'm pretty sure Jean-Luc already knew he would have to take command of the Titan one way or the other when he sat down with Jack in the brig.
• WORF! So good to see Michael Dorn back for the first time in twenty years. (Really, the first time since 1999, since he barely had anything to do in Nemesis.)
• So I'm getting the impression that the old Next Generation characters are gonna come back one by one each episode?
• And hot damn, that's more graphic than we've seen Worf do before. Justified in that Sneed was still holding a gun and thus a threat to his and Raffi's life.
• I really like the makeup design for Sneed. I liked the Discovery makeup for Ferengi too, but this has a much more natural skin tone. It's genuinely hard to see where the mask begins and the actor's skin ends -- much as I loved the original Westmore design, the old techniques don't hold up well on modern HD TVs. I do kind of miss the orange skin tone that the old Westmore design had and which the Discovery design preserved, but I'm intrigued by the more naturalistic skin tone here. Also, I liked that he was a much more skeevy Ferengi than we've typically seen.
• The bit where Raffi's ex-husband also happens to live on M'Talas is a little bit hard to swallow as contrivances go, but I'll allow it because it was a really amazing scene. Raffi is the sort of person who can't just put aside her feelings of duty to all of the people whose lives are in danger, even at the cost of her relationships with her family. That's a really powerful and important scene, and I'm glad Picard as a narrative still has Raffi.
• Only 117 people died in the attack on that Starfleet office? Hot damn. I figured that would kill at least a couple thousand. Disaster-relief search-and-rescue technology must have come a long way by the 25th Century.
• I still want to know why Starfleet had such a huge recruitment center on a non-Federation planet.
• Amanda Plummer was absolutely delightful as Vadic.
• Shaw is revealing more depths. He's not the two-dimensional asshole we thought he was at first. And I think his concern for the lives of his crew is very real.
• So now the Titan is stuck in the same situation as the Eleos: hiding in the nebula, alone, needing to find a way to out-smart Vadic. I expect the next episode will have a submareine-movie/act-three-of-Wrath-of-Khan vibe.
• After saving it up for three seasons, Sir Patrick finally brings back his patented Jean-Luc Picard Starship Captain Command Voice™, and it was absolutely worth the wait.

 

[fireproof78]

But jack-of-all-trades seemed to work really well for them in the pass, the Constitution class as mentioned by WarpFactorZ for example. And as Amaris explained, if ships are supposed to be operating on their own for long periods of time, you'd want them to be designed in a such a way they could deal with all sorts of situations. Does that mean every ship has to be the Defiant class or Sovereign class? Well, no. But you'd think they be able to have a strong hull to take a photon torpedo or two. Shaw made it seem like the Titan is made out of paper mache. I mean survived a collision with another vessel, so it's bit sturdier than that.

I'm not dismissing any of this. Nor am I arguing against the jack-of-all-trades approach. I am looking at it from an in world perspective and why Starfleet might go towards dedicated ships of specific jobs, rather than the other approach.

I think Shaw is protective and not willing to risk his crew unnecessarily, so he probably was a bit hyperbolic in his statements. Certainly the impact from the other ship seemed manageable so there is that. But, again, I see Starfleet approaching things differently in universe, even if I would do things differently.

 

[Yistaan]

• Shaw is revealing more depths. He's not the two-dimensional asshole we thought he was at first. And I think his concern for the lives of his crew is very real.

If they go the predictable route and Vadic's surprise at Shaw being functional after severe trauma is connected with the Borg somehow, why in the galaxy did Starfleet assign a physically obvious ex-Borg to be his first officer? Why not just leave her on Stargazer where she was before?

 

[Kraig]

those salamanders need a dad

We'll Always Have Tom Paris

 

[JoseNoodles]

I'm not dismissing any of this. Nor am I arguing against the jack-of-all-trades approach. I am looking at it from an in world perspective and why Starfleet might go towards dedicated ships of specific jobs, rather than the other approach.

I think Shaw is protective and not willing to risk his crew unnecessarily, so he probably was a bit hyperbolic in his statements. Certainly the impact from the other ship seemed manageable so there is that. But, again, I see Starfleet approaching things differently in universe, even if I would do things differently.

I mean sure. We have classes like the Oberth which seem dedicated to planetary and stellar surveys. So it's not like there isn't precedent.

 

[Tuskin38]

I still want to know why Jack has an English accent

This will apparently be addressed.

 

[Yistaan]

I mean sure. We have classes like the Oberth which seem dedicated to planetary and stellar surveys. So it's not like there isn't precedent.

I think the only reason Kruge's gunner even destroyed the Grissom was due to the cloaking device and the element of surprise. It might've gone differently in an, ahem, honorable fight.

 

[fireproof78]

I mean sure. We have classes like the Oberth which seem dedicated to planetary and stellar surveys. So it's not like there isn't precedent.

Exactly. And Starfleet seems to have huge swings between dedicated craft and jack of all trades so I just wait and see.

 

[JoseNoodles]

Exactly. And Starfleet seems to have huge swings between dedicated craft and jack of all trades so I just wait and see.

I mean the Oberth class operated the same time with the Connie Refit and the Excelsior, even into the 24th Century, so maybe it's a bit of both. Specialized ships and multi-role vessels.