Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x03 - "Seventeen Seconds"

[Yistaan]

It's only fine if the woman in question is playing a character older than her. Case in point: the person I'm using as my profile pic right now. People have been already complaining that Wiseman was visibly too old for them to play a cadet in her twenties back in season 1 of Discovery, and some didn't stop at saying she looked her age of 32 but actually went as far as declaring she looked at least five older than that.

Star Wars fans are notoriously vicious but I don't remember a single complaint about Felicity Jones being 10 years older than Jyn Erso in Rogue One. There are TONS of complaints about Diego Luna being too old for Andor especially now in the tv show though. Also 60+ Temuera Morrison playing 41 year old Boba Fett.

 

[Ovation]

I find it highly amusing about the whinging of Speelers age as if it matters, or hasn't been done many many times in other shows.

Including Star Trek: Voyager where Kate Mulgrew actually played an older woman. Mulgrew was 39 when she started playing as Janeway. When Janeway's casting notes put her in her mid 40s. I beleive Janeway is 5 years older than Mulgrew is in real life.

Or Aaron Eisenberg. He was 26 when he was cast to play someone ten/eleven years younger than him in Nog for Deep Space 9. Where were your screams then? Your chagrins and wailing "HES TOO OLD"?

So, what? it's fine when it's a woman? Is that what we're going with here? It's fine when it's someone with only one functional kidney limiting their height?

Just so I know the criteria.

My high school, in the early 80s, had a very strict “no facial hair” policy. By Grade 11, a majority of us (all boy Catholic school) needed to shave at least once or twice a week to avoid trouble, but one guy had to bring a shaving kit to school just in case—he’d arrive clean shaven at 8am and have a 5 o’clock shadow by noon. Last time I saw him he was in his early 20s and if I didn’t already know him, I’d have had no trouble believing he was a decade older (and he was clean shaven that day—shaving that kind of beard growth does no favours for your skin). It’s rare, but it happens.

 

[Yistaan]

All this age talk reminds me of the Boba Fett tv show, where even hardcore fans forget that Ming-Na's character of Fennec Shand is supposed to be older than Boba due to Temuera's real life age.

 

[ToddCam]

That was because of

Spoiler

Rikka suffering from 'Great Link withdrawal', wasn't it?

Yeah, I was just thinking that "John Connor" still looked attractive even though he was clearly going through some heroin withdrawal-like scenario.

I'm actually guessing that these rogue changelings have done something to their bodies to make their bodies more unstable. Maybe I misread it, but Worf seemed confused by how easily John Connor disintegrated. Maybe they're on some sort of stimulant that allows them to take humanoid forms long-term but makes them "brittle" or something like that? I don't know what the advantage would be, though.

Or! Maybe they are like clones. Little more than automata, budded off from a main changeling to complete a task, and expiring quickly under high stress?

 

[bookworm8571]

The most common theory is it's the intelligence they are trapped in - see also the conversation with the science officer earlier in the episode.

Possible but I think the Great Link also is a real possibility.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Female Changeling is the one who called off the war with the Federation, so I can only assume she would not be in league with the rogues. So therefore I don't think she is Vadic.

 

[ToddCam]

We don't know the process of how Changelings reproduce (given they had infants, they must have at least at one point been capable of it). Maybe changelings naturally asexually reproduce, and the War Founder "gave birth" to Vadic.

 

[thribs]

Vadic is supposed to be connected to a story in TNG I hear, so she wouldn’t be a Founder.

 

[Yistaan]

Vadic is supposed to be connected to a story in TNG I hear, so she wouldn’t be a Founder.

What TNG or TNG related character could possibly be on a status, as a solid, to be giving orders to the notoriously arrogant Founders though?

 

[ToddCam]

Vadic is supposed to be connected to a story in TNG I hear, so she wouldn’t be a Founder.

I think she's probably not a Founder, but being connected to a TNG story, whatever that means, does not preclude being a Founder. I don't know what you're referencing, but it probably didn't say, "Vadic only has aspects that can be gleaned by watching episodes of TNG and the wider Star Trek universe is completely absent from her character or background."

 

[Yistaan]

I think she's probably not a Founder, but being connected to a TNG story, whatever that means, does not preclude being a Founder. I don't know what you're referencing, but it probably didn't say, "Vadic only has aspects that can be gleaned by watching episodes of TNG and the wider Star Trek universe is completely absent from her character or background."

Blast it, Vadic's Picard and Vash's daughter isn't she? Vash was in the Gamma Quadrant with Q for a while, enough time to set up shop with changelings. Vadic's after Jack because he's her brother.

 

[bookworm8571]

I was thinking that if someone made a drama film set in the present day, where a healthy and intelligent mature woman who is a renowned professional in the field of medicine and has already had a child, is totally AMAZED and FLABBERGASTED that she got pregnant after consensual and unprotected sex, I think critics would say, "But whoever made the movie thinks women are stupid?".

And really, I can't even remember a recent movie with a similar plot which isn't a comedy (like Knocked Up)

I had a college professor who neglected to use birth control with her 60 something boyfriend because they both assumed she was menopausal. She got pregnant with her first child and gave birth at 48 or 49. I also found a couple of women on my family tree in the 1800s or early 1900s who were in their fifties when they had children without fertility drugs or egg donors. It is biologically possible and also possible that both Beverly and Jean-Luc simply assumed it wasn’t.

 

[ToddCam]

Blast it, Vadic's Picard and Vash's daughter isn't she? Vash was in the Gamma Quadrant with Q for a while, enough time to set up shop with changelings. Vadic's after Jack because he's her brother.

Wow. She's aged terribly if so. If she was conceived when Picard first met Vash (2366) she'd only be 35! Maybe Q left her behind in the wrong time period. But maybe it's just Picard's kids age prematurely in general.

 

[thribs]

What TNG or TNG related character could possibly be on a status, as a solid, to be giving orders to the notoriously arrogant Founders though?

Maybe she isn’t the boss but just another follower

 

[WarpFactorZ]

So... why is it that Picard could take command from Shaw as admiral's prerogative (or whatever it was) to do what he wanted, yet he can't fight Riker's command decisions? Riker is arguably "less" of a Captain than Shaw, since he's reserve.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

The Female Changeling is the one who called off the war with the Federation, so I can only assume she would not be in league with the rogues. So therefore I don't think she is Vadic.

And she repeatedly let it known that Odo returning meant more to them than the entire AQ.
He did return on the condition that the war ends.
Which it did.
As long as Odo stays with them, this promise should hold.

 

[Skipper]

I had a college professor who neglected to use birth control with her 60 something boyfriend because they both assumed she was menopausal. She got pregnant with her first child and gave birth at 48 or 49. I also found a couple of women on my family tree in the 1800s or early 1900s who were in their fifties when they had children without fertility drugs or egg donors. It is biologically possible and also possible that both Beverly and Jean-Luc simply assumed it wasn’t.

It... makes sense...

 

[Paul Weaver]

They never did explain completely just why Wesley was supposedly so special but his mother and great grandmother and generations of Howards were all highly attractive to the shape changing entity who took up residence in that candle.

if they explicitly refer to Sub Rosa I don’t think I’d be able to contain myself

 

[Lt Mo]

I was thinking that if someone made a drama film set in the present day, where a healthy and intelligent mature woman who is a renowned professional in the field of medicine and has already had a child, is totally AMAZED and FLABBERGASTED that she got pregnant after consensual and unprotected sex, I think critics would say, "But whoever made the movie thinks women are stupid?".

And really, I can't even remember a recent movie with a similar plot which isn't a comedy (like Knocked Up)

Dana Scully in the last episode of season 11.

IMO can’t beat that for worst surprise pregnancy storyline. Maybe that’s why I don’t completely hate the Jack storyline, because my other favorite 90s show reboot did it much worse . At least I can pretend it was undetected metaphasic planetary radiation causing superfertility or something.

 

[jaime]

I think the truest reason it is that the writers wanted the drama and didn't care about whether it stretched suspension of disbelief too far.

But if we're scrambling for a diegetic reason, I'm choosing to believe the metaphasic energy in the Briar Patch had unexpected long-term effects that weren't picked up by scans.

So, what we’re saying is, Picard spent ages learning to hold back time in his Ning Nongs? Fair enough. Sting goes on about Tantra enough.