Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x08 - "Surrender"

[Cyrus]

Previous episode was a disappointment but this one, which is basically the 2nd part of a 2 parter, was great.

It feels great to have Data back, and better than ever. His death in Nemesis should be easier to rewatch now.

 

[Orac Zen]

Oh sure, they’re obviously just setting him up to show his redemption by calling her Seven.

Agreed. In the interim, it just makes him look stupid, petty and childish. IMO, anyway.

But like the Jack reveal, it’s gone on just a bit too long.

Much too long. And the Jack thing is just ridiculous at this point. One hopes the revelation will be worth all the buildup.

 

[jaime]

They are exactly what the scriptwriter's require them to be at any given moment, logic be damned. It's a highly important mission, absolutely crucial to the attack on Starfleet. Not crucial, actually critical to its success. They may as well have sent the Marx Brothers.

Vadics crew blobs have only ever been Vadics crew blobs, roughly on a par with Kruge’s Klingon Crew. They and she also almost succeeded — the only stumbling block has been trying to get Jack Crusher alive. Whilst her crew are stupid goons, they are at least consistently stupid goons. They seem little more than blobby puppets.

 

[jaime]

She's clearly not totally in charge, but I don't buy that she's just the attack dog and was sent to get Jack. She has the Picard body, for example. She's clearly pretty central to the whole thing.

Yup — apparently the first of these new changelings. But she’s also clearly working for someone else, and succeeded in getting Picards bits that were needed.
Her stumbling block is getting Jack alive, because she seems to have some kind of… sympathy, for whatever he is/is inside him.
Aside from that though, she is basically the attack dog, even more so than Chang in VI, because the only methods she uses are violence and terror.
She’s not Vader to Blobby the emperor, she’s too unstable for that.

 

[Photoman15]

So now we know the holo thing has her in different poses...

There's a password protected folder in there that has some extra poses just for Data's eyes.

 

[Cortez]

Vadics crew blobs have only ever been Vadics crew blobs, roughly on a par with Kruge’s Klingon Crew. They and she also almost succeeded — the only stumbling block has been trying to get Jack Crusher alive. Whilst her crew are stupid goons, they are at least consistently stupid goons. They seem little more than blobby puppets.

The only stumbling block has been her sheer incompetence along with ridiculous plot contrivances and anyway, I've been down this road with you already. Your argument is basically that she's ego driven, a sadist and her crew are puppets. I've countered that argument (repeatedly) with numerous reasons as to why this doesn't add up or make any sense whatsover (and let's remember too that I've only brought up one plot hole here). If that's all she is then she's a terribly under developed villain, a villain that we've spent far far too long with.

 

[BBC 2 6pm]

There's a password protected folder in there that has some extra poses just for Data's eyes.

Tax documents, as my favourite podcasters would say.

 

[KennyB]

They are exactly what the scriptwriter's require them to be at any given moment, logic be damned. It's a highly important mission, absolutely crucial to the attack on Starfleet. Not crucial, actually critical to its success. They may as well have sent the Marx Brothers.

Are you new to Trek and/or SciFi in general........it's been like this for 50 years......

 

[jaime]

The only stumbling block has been her sheer incompetence along with ridiculous plot contrivances and anyway, I've been down this road with you already. Your argument is basically that she's ego driven, a sadist and her crew are puppets. I've countered that argument (repeatedly) with numerous reasons as to why this doesn't add up or make any sense whatsover (and let's remember too that I've only brought up one plot hole here). If that's all she is then she's a terribly under developed villain, a villain that we've spent far far too long with.

You keep using those words, I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

 

[Cortez]

Are you new to Trek and/or SciFi in general........it's been like this for 50 years......

I'm talking about the writing of this season in general, not just with relation to Vadic. Nobody cares about a few tropes here and there. That's par for the course.

 

[Cortez]

You keep using those words, I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

Ah, this is tiresome. Good luck.

 

[BBC 2 6pm]

Personally I think you're both right. The plot this season hasn't made much sense, and is filled with a lot of gaps and contrivances. But Star Trek has always been like that. Why didn't Kirk raise the shields in TWOK? Why was there no security in orbit at Camp Khitomer? Why was Picard allowed to return to duty after assimilation? How did Scotty and Geordi get a crashed ship into orbit by themselves?

It's just that with serialised TV the stakes are much higher -- we've been waiting all season for this! -- and it does seem like Star Trek hasn't adapted to the new landscape in that respect.

 

[Photoman15]

I found a photo of the Face guy after he learns of Vadic's demise:

 

[jaime]

Personally I think you're both right. The plot this season hasn't made much sense, and is filled with a lot of gaps and contrivances. But Star Trek has always been like that. Why didn't Kirk raise the shields in TWOK? Why was there no security in orbit at Camp Khitomer? Why was Picard allowed to return to duty after assimilation? How did Scotty and Geordi get a crashed ship into orbit by themselves?

It's just that with serialised TV the stakes are much higher -- we've been waiting all season for this! -- and it does seem like Star Trek hasn't adapted to the new landscape in that respect.

I just think that ‘I don’t like x character/x character is poor’ is not necessarily, and usually isn’t the same as either a ‘plot hole’ or even in most cases bad writing. The only real problem is her goons are just that, goons, and in the few interactions between her crew — for which I don’t even get subtitles on Amazon without turning them on for everything — there is very little sense of them. I can’t even necessarily call that bad writing though (and none of this so far is an actual plot hole, and very rarely are there full on contrivances that don’t also make perfect sense in universe/the narrative) because the goon show is not a primary factor in the story, and as shown, is not even the primary antagonist.
Even Vadic is basically a henchman. That’s been clear since the beginning, they outright state it repeatedly in dialogue from episode one onwards.
Peoples biggest frustration is ‘we don’t know what the plan is! Who is the baddie!’
But that’s ok — nor do the characters. This is almost a TMP plot structure as much as anything else, it’s about putting the crew back together, with a ticking clock for why they are back together — with elements of III and V thrown in to facilitate that.

 

[BBC 2 6pm]

Peoples biggest frustration is ‘we don’t know what the plan is! Who is the baddie!’
But that’s ok — nor do the characters. This is almost a TMP plot structure as much as anything else, it’s about putting the crew back together, with a ticking clock for why they are back together — with elements of III and V thrown in to facilitate that.

I think the difference is TMP was the first of the movies, whereas this is (almost certainly) the last time the TNG crew will be together. Were this season 1 of Picard and it seemed like this was building up to an old-school cliffhanger, I think people would be a lot more forgiving.

At heart though, Star Trek has always been full of bad writing. I go to it for nostalgia and cosiness and interesting space opera and issues. Aside from some classic episodes (hello, Yesterday's Enterprise), it's not what you watch if you care about tight plotting and writing.

 

[Cortez]

Personally I think you're both right. The plot this season hasn't made much sense, and is filled with a lot of gaps and contrivances. But Star Trek has always been like that. Why didn't Kirk raise the shields in TWOK? Why was there no security in orbit at Camp Khitomer? Why was Picard allowed to return to duty after assimilation? How did Scotty and Geordi get a crashed ship into orbit by themselves?

It's just that with serialised TV the stakes are much higher -- we've been waiting all season for this! -- and it does seem like Star Trek hasn't adapted to the new landscape in that respect.

I have no problem with a certain amount of plot holes. I stated this yesterday. What I do have a problem with is bucket loads of them, along with character inconsistencies, pacing issues etc. The person I was conversing with stated that they can't see any plot contrivances. I mentioned the hostage scenario as an example of one situation with a crazy amount of plot conveniences and facepalm moments. I listed at length why it doesn't make a blind bit of sense for so many reasons. Now, that's one situation in one episode, an episode where there's quite a few more.

 

[jaime]

I think the difference is TMP was the first of the movies, whereas this is (almost certainly) the last time the TNG crew will be together. Were this season 1 of Picard and it seemed like this was building up to an old-school cliffhanger, I think people would be a lot more forgiving.

At heart though, Star Trek has always been full of bad writing. I go to it for nostalgia and cosiness and interesting space opera and issues. Aside from some classic episodes (hello, Yesterday's Enterprise), it's not what you watch if you care about tight plotting and writing.

Any time there’s truly great plot and writing, we celebrate it (The Offspring, Inner Light etc…) but we don’t expect it at all times. Mostly, Trek fans just want something that is clearly identifiably Trek.

I think this whole season is basically ‘what if all the TOS movies happened all at once for the TNG crew’ in a *lot* of ways, and it’s not even subtle — look at the design, the music, the typography. But what’s great is that rather than just doing that, it’s clearly tooled in a way that suits *these* characters. They are all recognisable. Arguably, even more so than the TOS guys were when we got TMP, and certainly TWOK which rewrote the world. It is, for the most part, working much better than ‘what if we use known characters to tell stories we want to tell that aren’t really that much suited to them’ which happened fairly often in s1 and s2, though they really tried.
(For an example, if you want a story where Data’s daughter is Jason Bourne and needs help from her fathers friend — Data was closer to almost everyone in TNG than Picard. By the same token, if you spend however many episodes teasing his return and explicitly setting it up, killing him again isn’t the great masterpiece of subversion, it’s just a dick move. I am not even really sure what s2 was truly about, but it had the odd nice moment, and they didn’t know what to do with any characters there.)

 

[BBC 2 6pm]

I have no problem with a certain amount of plot holes. I stated this yesterday. What I do have a problem with is bucket loads of them, along with character inconsistencies, pacing issues etc. The person I was conversing with stated that they can't see any plot contrivances. I mentioned the hostage scenario as an example of one situation with a crazy amount of plot conveniences and facepalm moments. I listed at length why it doesn't make a blind bit of sense for so many reasons. Now, that's one situation in one episode, an episode where there's quite a few more.

I guess my response is that other than a few standouts, Star Trek has always had bucketloads of that stuff.

 

[BBC 2 6pm]

Any time there’s truly great plot and writing, we celebrate it (The Offspring, Inner Light etc…) but we don’t expect it at all times. Mostly, Trek fans just want something that is clearly identifiably Trek.

I think this whole season is basically ‘what if all the TOS movies happened all at once for the TNG crew’ in a *lot* of ways, and it’s not even subtle — look at the design, the music, the typography. But what’s great is that rather than just doing that, it’s clearly tooled in a way that suits *these* characters. They are all recognisable. Arguably, even more so than the TOS guys were when we got TMP, and certainly TWOK which rewrote the world. It is, for the most part, working much better than ‘what if we use known characters to tell stories we want to tell that aren’t really that much suited to them’ which happened fairly often in s1 and s2, though they really tried.
(For an example, if you want a story where Data’s daughter is Jason Bourne and needs help from her fathers friend — Data was closer to almost everyone in TNG than Picard. By the same token, if you spend however many episodes teasing his return and explicitly setting it up, killing him again isn’t the great masterpiece of subversion, it’s just a dick move. I am not even really sure what s2 was truly about, but it had the odd nice moment, and they didn’t know what to do with any characters there.)

Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying it, in many ways! But we should also recognise, I think, that the writing has been weak in places, and especially after shows like The Expanse, many audiences are a bit more demanding on that score.

Despite (what I consider to be) the massive plot issues this season, it's the only show I've been consistently looking forward to week after week for some time.

 

[Cortez]

I guess my response is that other than a few standouts, Star Trek has always had bucketloads of that stuff.

We'd have to disagree there, although I've watched very little of the new stuff. What I'd add though is you'd forgive alot of failings if you felt that you were in good hands.