Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x01 - "The Next Generation"

Well I would hope that Seven is *not* being coerced in any way by Captain Shaw. Like I said, Seven may be wearing her name like a ‘tattoo’ to remember what she once was and who she became, a reminder of what she has both lost and gained. Seven quite simply may believe that she can never be Anikka again, but due to her stubborn nature and the fact that her birth name is now being forced on to her by Captain Shaw against her wishes may make her reject this name all the more. This is a parallel of how the designation Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One was once forced upon her by the Borg, Captain Shaw is now doing the same thing if you think about it but now on the flip side of the coin.

Of course, Seven of Nine may not have this name on her paper work and other Starfleet records. Seven may need to *officially* go with whatever name is on her documentation whilst serving in Starfleet if she has not already had the documentation changed on her service record. Seven’s birth certificate will say Anikka Hansen, for example, and I would imagine that her Starfleet service record name would have to match the name on her birth certificate? I’m not sure how name changes/modifications go in the 25th century, but it should all be pretty straight forward if it is done legally and above board. Janeway should have helped her out with that when they got back to the Alpha Quadrant.

Shaw has an obvious bias against ex Borg, including Picard. To be fair, Picard was behaving very unusual and almost as if he was under alien influence himself from Captain Shaws Perspective.

I hope that they have a very good reason why Starfleet could not be told anything about Beverley’s rescue mission, the whole hijinks of Riker and Picard did seem a bit suspect with them coming across as a pair of bandits. I will leave this for my review though.

 

Agreed. They didn't need to explicitly tell Shaw it was Beverley Crusher on the Elios on some secret assignment so keep it to yourself! Picard or Riker just needed to say that someone very dear to them was in mortal danger and he might have been swayed. Some people are saying Shaw is a by-the-book Captain, but where is the evidence of that? From what I can gather he is like you said bitter about the Borg and is just not stupid enough to be hoodwinked by Picards short notice bullsh*t inspection. Riker could have come up with a better idea than hijacking a Starfleet Ship, and it is just dumb luck that Seven does not like her situation and goes against her Captains orders. I understand that Shaw acted like an ass and he must be seen as such, but thats just because he could tell they were lying and thats why he gave them the crew bunks! They might aswell have hitched a ride on a BoP!

 

The concept of someone having a single legal name at any one time is a myth, even in western cultures. (#4 on the "falsehoods" list)

It sounds like Shaw is one of those starfleet captains who have a human-centric view of the world, the ones that Ro seems to have encountered lots: "Most Bajora these days accept the distortion of their names in order to assimilate"

Given the large number of Badmirals seen in TNG and in the 24th century trek in general, it must go that they were once Bad Captains.

Which is it?

 

Baptains.

 

Has Captain Shaw implicitly used force or threats against Seven? I hope not. I assumed that Shaw had ‘commanded’ Seven to use her birth name in an almost bullying way.

Whether Captain Shaw is a good Captain or not is yet to be seen. I know nothing of his past service records, only that he does not seem to have been on many adventures before.

 

I think I can go with that. My rule of thumb is very simple: Does my mind go, "This is CGI!" or not? If I'm not thinking, "This is CGI!" while watching, then I'm impressed.

The vast majority of the time, I don't comment on CGI, because what's the point? The only exception -- the only exception -- is the Enterprise-E in Insurrection. I thought it looked like a cartoon compared to how it looked in First Contact. They abandoned the E-E model too soon. I don't have that issue with Nemesis. Okay, I lied. Two exceptions. A lot of the time, when I'm watching TOS-R, I think "This looks like '00s CGI!" I prefer the original effects, even though the film quality on the space shots is in terrible condition in a lot of cases. Maybe it's different in the BR version of the un-remastered versions. I haven't seen those.

But the first eight Star Trek movies will always be my gold-standard for how Star Trek should look. Except for the lighting in the Enterprise-D in GEN. Then I'm going full Trekker4747 mode. No offense intended toward him. We'd be on the same side for once, on that issue.

 

https://twitter.com/shawnvfx/status/1626753286241132544?s=20

Interesting cityscaping there.

 

According to Matlas on Twitter it's a bit of a Fallout reference as a second Ink Spots song plays later on. But I totally see that other bit of history too.

Needs a snappier title. If we're still on the Titan By the end Star Trek: Titan or something might be good.

To be honest, as you mentioned our dearly Departed Empire I think an exploration of an era of "Splendid Isolation" would be an awesome thing in Trek.

For those who don't know, between 1815-1914 Britain had no peers in the global stage. To the point it began to turn a little more inward to various developments both technological, cultural and military, which led to the embarking of the single largest humanitarian action and campaign of human history with the abolishment of the Slave Trade globally. This it carried out almost unilaterally as while it had tolerated the trade to shore up important economic outposts such as the Carribbean it had never held the same "status symbol" as other cultures and was defacto abolished in Britain itself thanks to Somerset vs Sutton 1772.

I'd certainly like to see a Federation tackling internal house cleaning and other more aggressive powers like the Breen who themselves are known to practise slave trading for their many mines. After all, what can a Goliath do when it's the only one left?

 

Ro did say she wasn't surprised that they hadn't heard of the custom and that most Bajorans they'd be likely to meet dropped the custom in order to assimilate. I wouldn't be surprised if we see something similar crop up when we find out more about the new Bajoran bridge officer with the human naming convention.

 

While I understand and appreciate the allegory, it's not actually been she doesn't let anyone use it. B'Jayzl called her it. That's why I think it's more an intimate name (but now possibly dead) than something she outright rejects.

 

Episode 2 will expand on the 'different faces' line that Jack said

Spoiler

He mentions in the preview clip that at one point they pretended to be Fenris Rangers, and then Klingons, then Starfleet. This also explains why Beverly said not to trust anyone

 

While this is interesting, the British Empire expanded dramatically during that period - consolidating its control over India and taking big swaths of Africa - so I wouldn't really call it isolationism and it definitely counters the idea of them as humanitarians as they subjugate millions.

 

So what did everyone think of the scene at the space dock? I compared to the similar scene in TSFS. I do like the scene but I prefer the one in TSFS. The one I'm the movie has more depth and the ship seems to just move more naturally. Also the cgi was not rendered as well when the ship hit open space. But for the most part I really enjoyed the scene. I do wish it was a little longer.

 

I thought it was tedious and went on too long.

 

It would be nice if we could have the next episodes preview actually be at the end of the episode. I can’t even Google it to find it. I just get 80,000 different YouTube accounts that come up with theories and reviews of the episodes and not the actual preview. And for giggles someone should remix it with the original vo. NEXT TIME ON SSTTAAAARRRRRRRRR TRRRRREEKKKK

 

I was hoping to see a live action Cali Class in the background. Maybe next time.

 

This is starting to remind me of the early idea in TNG that Data would've been listed on the ship's ledger as "Data, NFN NFI," ("No first name," "No middle initial"). As you point out, Starfleet's record-keeping is probably sophisticated enough they wouldn't have to resort to listing her as "Nine, Seven O."

 

Yes. Like dock workers voices on the bridge speaker announcing ship names that are moving or other work going on in the dock. Yes that would give the scene more depth and realism.

 

You would? From an emotional standpoint, this does not makes any sense to me. Seven clinging to her Borg designation during the few years after she had been disconnected from the Collective is one thing. It was a familiar name. And she continued to cling to her use of Borg diction and beliefs. But clinging to a name that was forced upon her while being assimilated by the Borg after so many years just didin't make any sense to me. Why would anyone want to continue clinging to a name that had been forced upon him or her, after literally being kidnapped and raped from a technological/biological point of view? Which is what the Borg had done to her. Especially after she had learned to finally ditch that Borg mentality and diction. This story arc about Seven's name does not make any sense to me. I think the showrunner had used the wrong topic to push whatever political statement he was trying to make.

 

You know reading these posts I've been thinking about a lot of our gripes. the average TV viewer who has the attention span of a flea doesn't care about plot holes or canon, this is specific only to star trek fans, as a show Picard has the things that people look for: action bam bam, easy to digest surface plot (whilst simultaneously satisfying star trek fans with occasional technobable or fan throwback) and some eye candy (with respect to Jeri Ryan who is a fine actress she looks great on the promotional posters as well...always suspect there is a reason seven came back and others didnt).