Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x07 - "Monsters"

and it's not a real room, it is a dream while he's troubled. I don't know about anyone else but I have a lot of my dreams, even where I am just walking around the city happen in the dark or twilight, maybe because the bedroom is dark, I don't know

 

But it’s a subpopulation that includes the likes of Agnes Jurati.

 

James Callis is so damn good in this. Especially on a rewatch when you know who he is and what to look for. Biggest disappointment of this episode is that he probably can’t be used again in future episodes or shows.

On the flip side of the coin, Young Picard is horrific. Pretty much tanks that whole part of the episode. I know finding good child actors can be a struggle, but good grief.

Ever so slightly better on a rewatch, but still far and away the weakest of the season for me.

 

IMDb seems to think Matalas wrote the script for 2x10, just fwiw.

 

Glad you liked it a bit more. :P

I suspect Callis might return for 2x09 "Hide and Seek." One of the characters used that phrase to a tee, I think? During the climax of the flashbacks, I mean.

 

on a side note, the one time I broke a window punching it my fist was a bloody mess afterwards, I wonder how Jurati’s hands are now…

 

They are Borg.

*Seven of Nine thousand-yard-stares at you*

 

I once broke a window punching it with my fist. Got a couple of tiny cuts, hardly noticeable. Didn’t even require bandaging. I guess I got lucky.

 

i didn’t require bandaging, but there were a lot of cuts and a lot of blood.

 

Episode would have been an automatic 10/10 for me if that scene had gone the same way as The Nice Guys, with Gosling putting his fist through a window and immediately ending up in an ambulance.

 

Fine. It's Hollywood glass.

 

When was the last phaser fight?

 

is Jurati a last action hero?

 

Agnes has Queenie nanoprobes. Surely they can heal her hands from simple cut wounds.

 

I mean, maybe. But glass has never behaved like in real life for a long time.

 

Since you are the finder of all things, have you seen a closer image of Baltar's desk? I think I see K-7 and Regula-1 models, plus at least one ship.

 

"Freedum!"

 

In fairness, the franchise is very much alive and thriving. I was being a bit facetious. It's just that I didn't think this was a great episode. Off kilter, maybe.

I was reminded of two TNG episodes that delved into Data's subconscious, one where he started dreaming and the other where he consulted Sigmund Freud. The psychological plot was much more interesting in its metaphorical execution.

This episode was like Picard having a bizarre dream after eating bad lasagna.

 

This confusion is the result of bad writing.
It is not the result of antagonism towards NuTrek or trolling from the fans. Stop blaming fans. The writers were not able to make their point clear. It just shows how bad the storytelling in Picard S1 was.


Some people don't like it that NuTrek critics use the phrase "bad writing", so let me elaborate. Let me explain in detail why the confusion about robot Picard is "bad writing":

As far as I remember (I have watched Picard only once, over two years ago), there are only two scenes in the entirety of season one where the biological nature of the synthetics is addressed (and the first scene is not unambiguous if you are a TNG fan).

1) In a very short dialogue between Picard and Agnes at the end of S01E01
2) Another short scene in S01E10 where you could see a ripped-out eye of a synth and it was biological.





In the scene in S01E01 between Picard and Agnes, Picard talks about a "synthetic that looks fully human".
"Looks" fully human, not "is" fully human.
Not only is the language the writers are using confusing (Picard also uses the phrase "'android' out of flesh and blood". more language confusion), but more importantly, anybody who knows TNG will automatically think of Data's mother.
Data's mother is a synthetic that looks fully human.
There was an entire TNG episode about a Soong-type android that looks fully human. No wonder fans think that Picard is a style of Soong-type android like Data's mother.
In a single TNG episode ("Inheritance"), we spent more time seeing the insides of Data's mother than we see the biological nature of the synthetics in an entire season.
Think about that in terms of "mindshare". How much "mindshare" does Data's mother have among fans, compared to the new biological synthetics? A good writer should consider that. The writers simply did not consider how much mindshare Data's mother has among fans.

The nature of the synthetics:
The biological synthetics are not fully biological. The biological synthetics also have positronic brains and superhuman strength.
It doesn't help your case to establish that the biological synthetics are mostly biological when characters constantly talk about "positronic brains" and "fractal neuronic cloning", and show that the bio synthetics are super fighters and tear through metal bulkheads with their bare hands.

More visual and language confusion:
The Coppelius androids are all bio synthetics, but they are called "androids".
Almost all Coppelius androids (except Soji and Dahj) have golden skin. The Mars androids have golden skin.
But all Coppelius androids are bio synthetics and the Mars androids are mechanical.

Let me go back to the scene in S01E01 between Picard and Agnes and dissect it even more and give you a good example of "bad writing":
In this scene, Picard and Agnes constantly switch about what kind of synthetics they talk about. You have to pay very close attention to not get confused.

First Picard asks about biological synthetics ("out of flesh and blood").
Then Agnes switches the topic and starts talking about classic mechanical Soong-type androids. She talks about the androids that attacked Mars and that they build here.
Then Picard switches topic again and asks about biological synthetics, BUT in a way that if you are a TNG fan you think that he asks about Data's mother style mechanical Soong-type androids ("looks fully human").
Then Agnes switches again about what kind of androids they talk about. She talks about B4 and positronic brains.

Do you see how this adds to the confusion? In the minds of the writers, they let the characters talk about biological synthetics, in the minds of TNG fans the characters talk about Data's mother-style mechanical Soong-type androids.
No wonder people are confused. The writers did a poor job getting their point across. There was not a single unambiguous scene (for TNG fans who have Data's mother on their mind) where characters talk about the biological nature of these Androids and made it unambiguously clear that these are not Data's mother type androids.

 

I posted one of Jorg's tweets about it earlier
https://twitter.com/gaghyogi49/status/1515028685035823105

There's also a Discovery D7 on the desk he didn't notice.

Clearly they didn't since so many people understood fine and disagree with you.