Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x09 - "Hide and Seek"

Episode 10 needs Lord of the Rings: Return of the King-level multiple resolutions:

Q's ultimate fate as supernova
Jurati's restoration
Raffi and Elnor reunion
Seven at peace
Laris recognizing Tallin
Picard and Laris fully embracing
Rios meeting Teresa's descendants
Kore walking on the beach at sunset
Renee making first contact

 

Do they? Really?

 

She's an Admiral because she knows all the "right" moves. That's probably why she lasts as an Admiral, while Kirk and Picard didn't. Read into that what you will.

I think Sisko would've made a great Admiral. Also read into that what you will.

 

Eh, I dunno. I do think it's likely to be a lower-octane denounment - this was clearly the big action piece. Likely it will involve the following.

• Picard & company stop Soong from interrupting Renee's launch. This almost certainly will involve Kore. Probably involves downtime Guinan, and may involve Wells. The other Renee has to die somehow, whoever she is.
• Q has a scene with Picard where he explains the lesson that needed to be learned (I think we already have the lesson, TBH - face down your fears, and don't believe in monsters)
• They bump back into the "present" and make peace with the Jurati-fied Borg.
• Picard has some sort of resolution of things with Laris

 

And Q merged their consciousnesses into the altered timeline, so their alternate versions probably need to be swapped back.

 

Thank you for the mansplain.

Anyway, it wasn't a great episode but it didn't quite suck THAT bad. So it wasn't a 1 or a 2, for me, but it wasn't a 4 or a 5 either.

 

I did. So much exposition this season.

 

I think it's more literal than that. I think it means that both timelines have to happen, Renee literally has to simultaneously live *and* die.

My guess is that the Jurati Borg stay in the Confederation timeline for the next few hundred years as to not alter the Prime history that we know. They spend those years helping the races that have been decimated by the rise of the Confederation. Eventually the Confederation gets strong enough to defeat them, and now has them on the ropes and on the run, so they open up the rip in Space-time to escape, knowing that this whole chain of events will lead to a Picard that will help them.

Now, I hadn't thought of the Renee as BQ before, but if Renee has to "die" for the Confederation timeline to happen, it's certainly not a large stretch for that version to end up with the Jurati Borg who stay in that timeline.

 

This makes logical sense, but there's no way for the characters - who only inhabit a single timeline - to split into two. Plus if alternate universes split off with each decision made, logically speaking every possible success and failure must take place. So there's no possible agency that the individual characters can have, since both outcomes are certain.

 

I hate temporal mechanics.

 

To be fair, we don't know how they get back to the 25th century. They may have to get back the long way round. The versions we've been following continue in the 21st century and live out their lives, and then we pick up with the new versions in 2401. She may have had a long career in Starfleet when we meet back up with them.

 

Give her the Gom Jabbar test. The Qowat Milat have got to have something like that somewhere.

 

Well, the real reason is that Trek, like a lot of scifi, is about exploring contemporary fears or hopes. When TOS was written in the 60's, there was very much a fear about computers and AI. There was very much this idea that computers or robots would take over. There is still that fear today. TOS used scifi to tackle those ideas of it's day. The OG Twilight Zone also tackled similar ideas. It had several episodes about mad computers or mad robots taking over.

 

I think you laid out some points why you didn't like the episode and I don't think you'll get knocked down for that. I've criticized some episodes as well and have not been attacked. I think what's looked down upon here is just saying something like "this show sucks" or "this show is trash" People shouldn't attack you for saying you thought the writing was lazy or that the season wasn't planned out.

 

Of course! Everything must be addressed

 

This was my original post:

Not sure why that should spark any complaints.

 

To quote the Borg Queen: “Bullshit.”

 

But making a cloaking device is a very different thing vs a mobile emitter.
For one thing, cloaking devices already existed for centuries in the UFP timeline. The UFP also developed its own phased cloak in secret during TNG, and I suspect that would have been fine right up until the point they started USING it.
Its one thing to develop technology in order to find countermeasures to it, but its something else if you are using it in your fleet.

The main reason why UFP never used cloaking technology is becasue of the Treaty of Algeron with the Romulans. Otherwise, nothing would have prevented UFP from making its own cloaking technology.

The mobile emitter was portrayed as 500 years more advanced than anything UFP had... though to be fair, how hard would it be to scale down a holo emitter to such a size?
We've seen UFP shrinking down complex technology in a span of a decade in the late 24th century. By the time of Nemesis, they already had a portable transporter which was smaller than a commbadge and could beam a person once.

It stands to reason that scaling down a single holo emitter in 20 odd years wouldn't be too troublesome.. so long as that's the only thing they scale down... with the rest of the casing used for battery storage.

So, even if the holo emitter was from 500 years in the future, I don't think making just a standalone portable emitter would have been a problem in the late 24th century... after all, you don't need to replicate it exactly... just get the basics down, and anything extra, you don't bother with.

 

I guess the NX-01 refit is now canon?

The Doug Drexler model was on young Jean-Luc's table so I'm guessing this more or less makes the Drexler Refit a thing in-universe. Not gonna lie, it's kinda cool.

 

Not using cloaks isn't the same as not knowing how to build them. The UFP didn't use them due to the Treaty Of Algeron, but they still know how to make cloaks, even superior phasing cloaks.

Someone from the 29th century could still have come back to the Confederation era past and lost the mobile emitter, or the Confederation simply directed more resources towards that type of thing than the UFP ever did.