Let's talk Vadic..... Who is she? What's her motives? I'm thinking she / her family / her people has been wronged by Picard / the Federation. The only caveat to that would be that I don't understand the line from Troi that the ship is consumed by "darkness". There may be more going on than a simple vengeance plot. Thoughts?
My thoughts are "I'll find out in February......" Troi's inputs never were very helpful or specific......
It could be anything... Something that happened off screen, say with the Enterprise-E during the Dominion War. But, a reasonably safe assumption is that it's following up on something seen in a TNG episode. One where Picard made a morally ambiguous decision following the Prime Directive, orders, lesser of two evils etc. Could she have even been seen in an episode as a background extra or someone's child? Robert Meyer Burnett has said she is an antagonist, not a villain, and has a reasonable, sympathetic reason for her actions. Would be helpful to know if she's human, a humanoid alien, or has been surgically altered to narrow it down more.
Actually, I've been wondering if Vadic's backstory will be explained in a flashback set during the TV series days of TNG. We know the Enterprise D is in season 3, but unless I'm mistaken it hasn't been explained how. We've all assumed it's as a museum ship, as the wall plaque at Starfleet Command said happened to the saucer after Generations, but what if it's actually as a flashback scene? IIRC, they only spent a day on the set, which could be long enough to do a flaschback scene. The only drawback is they're going to totally waste the budget digitally de-aging everyone for such a scene.
Terry Matalas has said that there will be “flashbacks from Picard’s perspective” in season 3. Whatever that means.
A flashback scene on the Enterprise-D would be totally awesome. It would also be totally contrived, just like TATV was. "Hey, let's retcon this one scene from this one episode and take it totally out of context to suit the story we're trying to tell. We did it last season with Picard's mom, amirite??? Hell, they made an entire sequel to Coming to America by taking a scene out of context. I mean, that film sucked, but we can do better, right, guys?"
Vadic and her crew are former Federation colonists who lost everything the day the Enterprise-D failed to protect their world from the Crystalline Entity on Melona IV. Vadic believed that the whole disaster could have been averted had Picard and his crew destroyed it rather than let it get away a few years earlier during their first encounter with Lore. She never forgave them for that and spent decades pooling resources to eventually exact revenge by initially hunting them down, starting with the closest person to Picard at the time--Beverly Crusher. Either that or Vadic just doesn't like old bald men from France with British accents...
I have a feeling it's no connection we can guess from previous canon, but something new we've never heard of.
Given the episodic nature of TNG, it's not the most contrived thing in the world to insert some previously unknown adventure and say it happened between episodes. We already had hints of important things happening that weren't chronicled in episodes during the series itself, like in Violations where Riker relives a memory of an incident where engineering had to be evacuated. In fact, it might even work for Vadic's backstory, some incident which led to the end of her life as she knew it, but to Picard and the gang, it was just one of nearly two hundred missions they had on the D, and didn't stick with them all this time the way it did with Vadic. Hell, there's six months between AGT and Generations where such a mission could easily be inserted if exact placement is that much of an issue. There are ways this could be done without being a TATV level contrivance.
There's also plenty of missions that were already complete before the cold open and leads into the actual episode. Likewise we end on many episodes with the Enterprise on its way to complete the mission they were supposed to be on before the episode itself got in the way. Lots of book stories get stuck in between episodes in this fashion.
Most likely something new inserted into Picard's backstory via flashbacks. It might even be the guy we all assume is playing Picard's son is actually playing Young Picard on the OG Stargazer.
I've been wondering who Vadic was and her backstory of why she hates Picard and the Federation so much and wants to hunt them down.Also how Moriarty and Lore show up too as the other villians too.
That’s exactly what I’m thinking. His age is right for that, too - I believe the actor is in his early 30s. Jean-Luc WAS captain of the Stargazer already by then. It would make a whole lot of sense for them to tie this one back to the Stargazer, even. I mean Vadic’s beef seems to be with Jean-Luc himself and the Federation, not the Enterprise-D. And since we know very little about his time on the Stargazer in canon it would make sense for them to put the root of the issue there. Food for more thoughts: The actress who is playing Vadic is in her mid 60s. Which, if we assume her character is around the same age, would put her birth somewhere in the late 2330s, if we assume that the year now is around 2403 (Matalas said about a year and half have passed since season 2). Which… was exactly the time when Jean-Luc was in his early 30s. (She could also easily be his daughter, too, as suggested in another thread. Wouldn’t surprise me.)
With only ten episodes per season (and with the potential for completely wasting at least one, re: Agent Wells...), I really don't see much character development going on here for whoever this person is. I think the reveal is going to be a contrived letdown. But that's mainly because I've been disappointed with Star Trek: Picard as a whole, and don't feel that this season, even with the TNG cast back, is all of a sudden going to become magically better. But we'll see.