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Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x04 - "No Win Scenario"

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Why? Shaw wasn't there. All he has is after action reports, and a lot of crises, since, you know, they are the main characters of a show. Except Shaw doesn't know that.

Laughable maybe from our perspective but is Shaw us?

Hmmm, perhaps Shaw learned of Picard's adventures from a biased source (maybe from someone who didn't like Picard so they tried their best to make him look bad)?
 
Did they forget that you can detect Founders with blood tests? Also they can take the form of anything. Not just other beings. Even a surface of an object.
Annika should have had one of those phasers that scans everything.
Founder blood will try to flee, say, from a hot needle.
 
Hmmm, perhaps Shaw learned of Picard's adventures from a biased source (maybe from someone who didn't like Picard so they tried their best to make him look bad)?
Or Shaw disapproves of Picard's style and tendency to get in to scrapes. Kind of like the officer on the Time Ship Relativity who told Janeway to try and avoid time travel.

Again, the poorest assumption is that in universe these characters are regarded as heroic as the out of universe audience regards them. Why would an in universe character regard Picard as a hero?
 
I can't be effusive about this episode. Last week blew me away. This week had lots of cool scenes, but also brought back memories of why I kind of stopped watching TNG towards the end of its run.

I loved the scene with Seven and Shaw doing the engineering stuff. Their mutual acknowledgment that they were likely to be visited by the saboteur, Shaw's cautious reaction to Sydney LaForge showing up - it was a great scene.

I like Shaw. I kind of liked him from the start - calling our heroes out on some bullshit. I didn't like how he treated Seven but his reasons make sense from an emotional standpoint - she was not his choice for 1st officer and she's BORG. In light of his past, his response to Picard seems almost restrained considering his reasons to distrust and resent the guy. Shaw's a beautiful character, with depth and layers and a meaty backstory. I hope he doesn't die too soon.

People are reacting to the "pot" conversation, whereas I found the hair loss conversation pulled me out. I laughed along with the characters but then started thinking why male-patterned baldness would even be a thing in the future. (Roddenberry asserted the same when Stewart was hired.) As a choice, a bald (or shaved head) can certainly be sexy, but as the inevitable?
 
Or Shaw disapproves of Picard's style and tendency to get in to scrapes. Kind of like the officer on the Time Ship Relativity who told Janeway to try and avoid time travel.

Again, the poorest assumption is that in universe these characters are regarded as heroic as the out of universe audience regards them. Why would an in universe character regard Picard as a hero?

I thought in universe, the Federation and Starfleet regard Picard and Kirk as two of the greatest Starfleet captains of all time?
 
I thought in universe, the Federation and Starfleet regard Picard and Kirk as two of the greatest Starfleet captains of all time?
Maybe? But those are organizations not people. What do people know? Not what we, the audience knows, certainly. They have logs and dramatizations. That doesn't equal treating them as heroic figures for some nor should it.
 
I thought in universe, the Federation and Starfleet regard Picard and Kirk as two of the greatest Starfleet captains of all time?
Temporal Investigations don't think much of Kirk.

Interestingly enough, Q showed a timeline in Tapestry where Picard was less reckless, didn't get his heart stabbed, and was more by the book. It showed him as a 60 year old lieutenant junior grade, which was a bit over the top and rather absurd and heavy handed in trying to get the episode's "message" across.

Realistically, if Picard did indeed become less reckless at a young age, didn't get his heart stabbed, etc. I could see him still becoming captain, but basically turning into Liam Shaw more or less.
 
So Seven and 2024 did get a room? :D
Well, the Star Trek Earth of the 20th/21st century has always been our Earth, except when it isn't. I'd imagine walking around Seven would have run into the smell of people smoking, billboards advertising dispensaries, asked what that was to Raffi... I'd need to clarify on the rewatch, but I think the sequence went: Seven is the one that thinks "pot" has an additional meaning, says cannabis, which Shaw then recognizes.

It was kinda funny that Shaw needed to show Seven what a bucket looked like. And it made no sense the Changeling used the same bucket as Odo but whatever.
I could just see it as being something easy to save time. The infiltrator knew Odo used some kind of receptacle for years, looks it up, replicates it. Why reinvent the wheel?

I actually thought we were actually going to see flashbacks of Shaw's POV of the battle but instead they just did sound effects which gave the scene more gravitas.
Sometimes less is more, and more effective.

Nice mention of the Hirogen but it had me scratching my head about when that could've happened. I couldn't remember if Worf was a Lt. Commander or Commander by the time of Nemesis. I did like the tidbit though because it does open the door for a novel or comic to flesh out that story (as well as grist for fan fiction).
In PRODIGY, Delta Quadrant species are shown using the former Borg transwarp conduits to travel to the edge of Federation space. So by NEM this could already be happening.

I'm not the biggest fan of the Changeling effects here. They look too frothy, like root beer. Also, it doesn't seem that they ash or dissolve all the way either now. I also thought it was too convenient that the Changeling would have a pot just like Odo's, or that the Changeling would happen to be walking by while Seven is loudly shouting orders to the computer while walking down the hall, or why the Changeling was even on the Titan presumably before Riker and Picard got there. Maybe if it winds up being the guy that was eavesdropping on them in Ten Forward it makes more sense than him just being on the Titan for the story's sake.
I hope there's an in universe explanation for the revisionism. Yes it was standard definition, but the Changeling morphing sequence was seen in dozens and dozens of DS9 episodes.

The only real nitpicks with this ep is the cursing.
At least the F-bomb was an improvisation from Patrick Stewart and not in in the script, so here it does feel somewhat organic. A big annoyance, but not something that lingers into the next scene. My main complaint is they still can't seem to get the lighting right.
 
This was such a good episode. All the classic Star Trek feels, and even a log entry played across a flyby of the ship!

Great work from all the TNG vets, especially Frakes again. The Riker/Troi relationship makes sense to me. They always had a complicated on/off relationship and there’s no reason why that would fundamentally change. I can see the Nepenthe episode as them putting on a brave front for Picard, papering over the cracks that were still pretty visible. He must have left pretty much straight away to get back to Starfleet in time to rescue Picard, and apparently she told him not to bother coming back. But the scene at the end was touching.

I think we all guessed Shaw’s backstory, and that scene was beautifully performed, as was the scene with Seven in the engine room. I cheered when she pointedly told him it was about respect - hopefully he takes it in next week.

Jack is coming together as a character, the reveal at the end was heartbreaking.

Still no idea what’s going on with Vadic. She’s got a shapeshifting arm gremlin that gives her orders? I look forward to seeing what that’s all about.
 
I may be a bit messed up on the timelines, but was five years before the beginning of the series? If so, shouldn't Picard be all fed up and sulky in France?

I'm not saying he couldn't have popped over to L.A. for dinner one night, it just seems a bit at odds with the character as he appeared in Season 1.
 
Temporal Investigations don't think much of Kirk.

Interestingly enough, Q showed a timeline in Tapestry where Picard was less reckless, didn't get his heart stabbed, and was more by the book. It showed him as a 60 year old lieutenant junior grade, which was a bit over the top and rather absurd and heavy handed in trying to get the episode's "message" across.

Realistically, if Picard did indeed become less reckless at a young age, didn't get his heart stabbed, etc. I could see him still becoming captain, but basically turning into Liam Shaw more or less.

100% agree. He has shown he is good at other things, and not incompetent, so I would have accepted seeing him as, say, a commander, but in a non-Red Command role, like Xenoarcheology or something. But, 45 minutes of air time in a one hour show, means you have to beat people over the head with the message.
 
I really loved the ending when they see those space jellyfish (little ones this time......not the gigantic ones from the TNG pilot two-parter "Encounter at Farpoint). Showing the wonder of space is something that Trek forgets at times (especially when there are stories about fighting a bad guy) so I appreciate it when the writers remember to give us those moments.
 
I may be a bit messed up on the timelines, but was five years before the beginning of the series? If so, shouldn't Picard be all fed up and sulky in France?

I'm not saying he couldn't have popped over to L.A. for dinner one night, it just seems a bit at odds with the character as he appeared in Season 1.
He beamed over to have a chat with Guinan in LA circa 2396 and it might be a regular thing for him--maybe that's how Jack knew to find him there.

There wasn't anything out of character in what he related to the Starfleet crowd except the last line--"Starfleet is the only family I ever need!" is pretty odd when he resigned from said family on bad terms.
 
I'm not saying he couldn't have popped over to L.A. for dinner one night, it just seems a bit at odds with the character as he appeared in Season 1.
Having been fed up and sulky over the past three years I can confirm that occasionally I will go out with friends.
100% agree. He has shown he is good at other things, and not incompetent, so I would have accepted seeing him as, say, a commander, but in a non-Red Command role, like Xenoarcheology or something. But, 45 minutes of air time in a one hour show, means you have to beat people over the head with the message.
Star Trek is not known for subtlety.

I go to other shows for that; like Red vs. Blue.
 
There wasn't anything out of character in what he related to the Starfleet crowd except the last line--"Starfleet is the only family I ever need!" is pretty odd when he resigned from said family on bad terms.
He’s playing to the gallery of admiring cadets against a heckler, seemed quite natural in the context. He left Starfleet because of policy disagreements, not because of those people in the bar.
 
There wasn't anything out of character in what he related to the Starfleet crowd except the last line--"Starfleet is the only family I ever need!" is pretty odd when he resigned from said family on bad terms.

I can see this as him putting on a show for the cadets, not wanting to burst their bubble. I do this in my own career...I work in a field that people can be very passionate about but on many levels is quite dumb and flawed but I do not project this to eager young people!
 
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