Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x05 - "Imposters"

My imagine is limited especially regarding things that have a low likelihood of happening.

 

Man watching Star Trek must be a literal hell for you, huh?

lol

 

Yes.

 

Well, I think the biggest thing that happened is that by the time S2 finished filming, COVID-19 vaccines had been distributed and it was no longer necessary to break the cast and crew up into "pods" for safety reasons. That alone does a lot to bring more cohesion to the plot. COVID really messed up the logistics for S2 I think.

S1 had proper adult storytelling; people threw a fit. And Ro's return was no less gratuitous than Hugh's or Icheb's. I mean, she's there and immediately starts accusing Jean-Luc of treason for no reason? And Jean-Luc, famed diplomat, just immediately digs in and refuses to consider the legitimate complaints the Maquis had against the Federation? And Jean-Luc, who spent four years as an admiral between 2381 and 2385, and then has spent another two years as an admiral from 2399 to 2401, somehow doesn't know that Ro was reinstated into Starfleet decades ago? Things are definitely turned up to 11 incongruously. And then she dies in the same episode she's reintroduced? It's not that much different from Hugh or Icheb.

I mean, I don't really buy the level of intensity of his disdain for her at the start, but I did buy the idea that they would re-establish trust by revealing to one-another how badly each had hurt the other.

 

Don't bother. Any incongruence in Season 3 is written off as in service to a proper story.

 

Complaints about the secret son nonsense would be endless if it had come from S1 or S2. Turns out they just needed more fanservice to deflect criticism.

The best bit is that any lack of success for this season will be blamed on the previous seasons or Disco, rather than it being targeted at a niche audience and not strikingly better than the others.

 

Icheb was Steven's secret son.
Data had dozens of secret sons and daughters.
The Riker children were not secret, but they were news to us.
Geordi had a season 3 secret daughter.
Rafi was pissed about about her secret granddaughter.
Right in plain veiw we saw Christobell mack on a historic lady and adopt her kid.
Jurati became the mother of all borg.
Elnore was Picard's season one secret surrogate son.

 

That’s because so far, every one of the ‘huh’ things has been addressed in story, usually pretty swiftly. Even the Jack element is starting to look like there’s a bit more to it.

I still don’t know why Seven broke up with Chakotay, left Starfleet, and joined the Fenris rangers, let alone who Vajayjay was to her and why Seven shooting her was such a big deal for her individually, and they had two seasons for that. I don’t even dislike s1 and s2 but they are not as well written as s3 regardless of fan-service.
The few things in DSC s1 that I was curious ‘how are they going to resolve that’ never were, and I drifted off in s2 because so many spoilers showed what was coming, and I really hate the concept of Control, having sat through it once already in the books. Besides which, I barely knew more than a handful of characters, most of whom were written out.
I really wanted to see how the Tyler/Burnham thing would be resolved, and found the Klingon woman intriguing — but a couple of years on, having seen that be fumbled, I can’t even remember her name.
I can still remember TNG guest star character names thirty years later, despite sometimes only seeing an episode once. (Sure, trading cards helped…)

So far, S3 is the best written of the modern serialised Trek shows, with enough demonstrated skill that anything a bit janky that hasn’t been resolved has earned a ‘wait and see’ in completely the opposite way to DSC, in which I kept waiting, and when I saw, it was *still janky*.

I sort of like SNW but don’t find myself engaging with it — not enough to splash out on Paramount plus. Though I will be for Prodigy soon enough, because finally there was was some family audience Trek on screen. And Lower Decks is just *good*.

 

She was never admitted to Starfleet; it was explicitly stated that her application was rejected (not hard to guess why, given lingering prejudice regarding Borg). Unsurprising that she would wind up with a bunch of vigilante freelancers, as it's a lot like Voyager! She obviously had a close relationship with Bjayzl, and that too needs no more in depth explanation than most of the old friends who pop up in Trek.

An explanation is not required for breaking up with Chakotay given it was a relationship with little backstory or development many years ago. May as well ask why Picard never went back to be with Anij.

There's no explanation as to how Worf quit his role as ambassador or why he wound up with Starfleet Intelligence (indeed, whether he's even a part of Starfleet), which is at least as much of a gap as those.

 

Worf lost his ambassadorship in Nemesis, he was a sad drunk at the wedding because his life had turned to shit.

 

She was a field commission in Voyager, no different to all the Maquis crew and Neelix, or even Kes. Yes, we hear her application was rejected — except, she was already *in* by what we see about how those commissions work.
Yes, we can tell there’s a history there, with Bjayzl, but we aren’t told that much about it — compared to say Boothby, or Phillips Louvois in the olden days of Trek. Her shooting her is this big thing, but we aren’t shown *why* particularly. It wears the clothes of ‘big thing’ but doesn’t really have any substance in the writing.
Chakotay was a main character on Voyager, and though many do not like how that show ended with that relationship, it was there on screen. I would also say it absolutely did have backstory and development, just not as much as say Dax and Bashir. It’s completely different to Anij, who is one and done — even Vash had more than that, in Picards case.

Worf quitting his role as an Ambassador is indeed a question, but, hadn’t that already happened in Nemesis? Regardless, a former Starfleet Command and Tactical/Security Officer, then an Ambassador… there’s not a more obvious candidate for Intelligence Officer. Even if he wasn’t one, most people would assume he was. Which would probably be really annoying for Worf in the Klingon Empire, as he’s far too honourable to spy on the Klingons. Embassies are where the spooks live, everyone knows that. XD
Also, most importantly, is it a functional part of the story that he is no longer an ambassador?

The changes in Sevens character set-up would have benefit from proper exposition, precisely because they did not seem organic. There’s a whole chunk of s1 spent explaining why Picard is not really where we might expect him to be either. Rios and Elnor, *new* characters, we might reasonably accept small exposition for, are given flashbacks etc explaining how their path brought them here. Sevens is… unsatisfactory in comparison.

I kind of sort of like s1 and s2 of Picard, more in some places than others, and I can at least see what they are aiming for when they miss. S3 so far has been a lot more carefully done, and is just more polished and better. Part of that is, yes, the TNG characters being present and used well, but that goes a little beyond just cameo for the sake of cameo. Look at the difference between Ro this week and Icheb in s1 — both single episode cameos tied to a lead character, but one achieves much more and is much better handled.

I literally have more problem with ‘how is this Titan a refit of that Titan?’ than any character moments *just yet* and that’s really small small small potatoes.

 

Maybe you missed that Bjayzl was the one directly responsible for Icheb's death.

 

There's a Kevin Sorbo Hercules movie where the big bad is played by the lady from Touched by an Angel, and she killed his buddy, the blond guy who walked everywhere with Hercules...

"Pathetic. I killed your friend, his blood is still under my fingernails, but you still want me in your bed, you hunger for me."

Kevin Sorbo is the worst.

 

Nope. I caught that. But outside of inferring from performance and minimal dialogue, I do not know why this was such a betrayal for seven. It’s a good job of putting heavier suggestion in just through performance, but for every other character we are shown how they came to be through flashback and similar, whereas for seven — the one main character other than Picard that we have met before — there is no decent ‘this is how they came to be where they are’ *except* in the most basic of forms. The Fenris Rangers too are little more than a “cool” name, evocative more of Babylon 5 than Trek, and we still don’t know who or why they are. (Easy fix ‘they grew out of what was left of the Maquis, once the Dominion war was over” slap that in dialogue. Better yet, give me a flashback with Bells and Tom introducing Seven to their shadier but honourable mates, after Starfleet turns down rubber-stamping her field commission with everyone else’s. That’s a quick fix I just thought of. There are better.)
This wouldn’t be important, if it didn’t represent decades of backstory for a returning main character. Even the Raffi/Seven thing at least got that audible drama.

It’s nebulous how she even knows Picard, other than both being XB. Albeit in radically different ways, as long time viewers will know, but new viewers may not notice the difference. Mostly I am put in mind of the comic series Hive. Which reminds me — a little exposition on how we went from Guinans speech in Measure of a Man to a Federation embracing slavery with Synths would have been nice. Something other than just the poor mining re-purposed EMHs in Voyager to help join the dots with what is a pretty big story point.

S3 and Matalas still have the rule of cool, but it’s one rooted more in the characters themselves instead of the ephemera around them, or bits of the world they like. (You could remove almost all of the Artifact and XB stuff from S1, and would lose a lot of cool stuff, but not much in terms of real story or plot, because it ultimately didn’t add as much to those or the themes as was possible) That might be why it’s working better. There’s a better handle on character this time out, even new characters. It’s a real shame there wasn’t space for the new Picard characters this season, because with the exception of Rios, they were pretty poorly served.

 

No she wasn’t. Only the Maquis crew were.

Seven was never given a commission. She was more of a civilian specialist.

 

Ro's death was way more gratuitous than Hugh's. High was in the whole season and had a very good reason to be there.

Ro could have been Commander Red McShirt and it would have made no difference to the plot. Complete and utter memberberries but of course Matalas is a god because it helps with the bashing.

The ships are copy and paste from STO and the sets and FX are the same "too dark and pew pew" that everyone bitched about before.
Crusher literally had a pump action phaser set to disintegrate that shouted "out of power" at her enemies. As for tricorders how about Matalas remembers they exist.

Panto villian Vadic communicates by cutting off her hand. And don't forget we have a big mystery box OMG reveal still to come.

 

I think there were quite a good deal of complaints on social media and here about that.

 

They would have to sell a reason for Picard to trust her, and for McShirt to trust him. Sure could have been a Walker Keel type character that we'd never heard of before, and that worked back in TNG S1 when we'd only seen a tiny amount of Picard's career, but bringing in some random person we've not seen before? Perhaps whoever was security chief on the Enterprise E?? Harder to sell that

 

I’ll be honest, given she doesn’t have a rank pip except when she’s in uniform for time travel shenanigans, I suppose it could go either way — she’s referred to as part of Janeway crew, functions as a de facto officer, and at times appears to have rank as well as an obvious position. (Astrometric and science officer) She is even tutoring other waifs and strays (including icheb, who apparently was in Starfleet) in order to get them through something akin to an academy program.
I don’t think civilian specialist is a thing that matches up in Trek much of the time, but that’s something that devolves into ‘is Starfleet a military’ and that things on its ninth Soong golem body.

I mean no wonder she’s pissed off — wears the uniform, follows the chain of command, takes classes on behalf of Starfleet, saves the universe or somesuch here and there, all with that Delta smacked on the Starfleet Designed Warp Bosoms, and doesn’t even get a metaphorical Paycheck? Employee law is clearly different in the 24th Century. Explains why Worf is a Freelancer.

I still stand by that it was clumsily done, and could/should have been handled better, and that so far this season most things that have looked similarly clumsy initially have had further exposition that makes them either less so or not. (Jack Crusher so far — we had a conversation discussing how wrong that seemed, where neither B nor JL came over as idiots, and then we had the scene this week with Jack in Ten-Forward. It’s being handled. Riker and Troi? Developed in dialogue and various scenes. Even Raffi is getting more development, and seems almost like another Tasha Yar style Picard foundling, from a certain point of view. He has quite the habit.) Because this season seems to continually address these things, it gives me reason to keep giving it more benefit of the doubt than I ended up giving DSC. S2 of Picard was it’s worst, unless something truly bad happens in this one to take it off the rails.

 

STO ships have been great for a number of years. And neither the Titan A nor Intrepid, nor Beverly’s second hand ship, are STO ships. What other ships have there been?

Other than ‘oh Noe’s, they killed Hugh, those bastards’ what did it bring to furthering the plot or story? Even Picard hadn’t seen Hugh since Descent, and as with Data’s second or third death, there were other characters with a stronger connection that would have served the story by being present.

Ro’s at least furthered the plot, made organic sense in many ways, and by making this *her* investigation gave her old bridge-mates added reason to pursue the story. I mean hey, I’d rather she was now in Picards Scooby Gang for the rest of the series, but it does do more than just being an Easter egg, whilst also being just that chocolate goodness for old school fans.

The characters, particularly legacy characters, are being better served this series. Hopefully that will continue. Shame there isn’t time to fix up the newer ones. Shame if we get a Data, or Lore, they won’t meet their daughter/niece. That was somewhat confused by the time we get to Soongs Planet in s1 anyway.
One big thing to handle will be Laris. That could still be cocked up.