• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers Picard 1x1, "Remembrance"

Rate the episode


  • Total voters
    473
I just finished watching the first episode. Even on a VHS tape, that Enterprise-D model looked like something from a videogame or even the CGI model that was used at the end of the “Star Trek Generations” trailer (as it flies through the CGI insignia).

The only other major complaint that I have is that I wish they had shot and edited it in 1.66 or 1.78:1 rather than the 2.39:1 that it was presented in. To quote Jennot Swarcz, director of the 1985 “Santa Claus The Movie” (from the Anchor Bay audio commentary”), 2.39 is nothing more than “a slit” vs 1.66 or 1.78 which fill the majority of your screen.

otherwise, a lot more interesting pilot episode than Discovery’s, and Dahj really grabbed my interest, whereas Discovery the characters are kind of “it’s the crew-have no idea why I should be interested in them”. It’s to bad that Dahj was killed in this episode.

In some ways, this episode reminded me of the short story from the Myriad Universe Anthology, ‘Echoes and Refractions’ called “Brave New World” in which Data disappeared, but then reappeared years later, but in the intervening time a number of androids had been created.
 
>30 new PAGES within less than half a day, wow XD

All the immediate rewatching seems odd to me. I gotta let it marinate for a few days before dipping back in for another taste.
I watch it first without interruptions, then again to pause and rewind scenes.

I liked the accents on the Romulans. Though I was getting strong ‘oh, Picards married/shacked up with this one’ vibes. I mean...she knew he was talking in his sleep, and fixed his shirt collar.
The Romulans are (or at least were) in love with each other (Countdown).

Section 31 is one of those things you think is cool and so utterly profound when you're 14 years old. And then you grow up and realize just how silly it is.
What's so silly about a truly secret service when the other major powers have one? Odo explained that well. Disco 31 was silly, they should have called it the SI instead.

I didn't see them as fan surrogates. I saw them as characters there to help Picard navigate his daily life. It seems he's written a lot of books on history, and if that was his "career", then he would need people to tend to the vineyard.
I'm not saying they don't have a good reason, its made clear that they are alive because of him. I'm saying that their use in the story for people who are watching also has that obvious level of Picard fan stand ins, expecially the fact that they appear to are now devoting their lives to being in his service.
He didn't wanna live alone in this big house, always haunted by his brother's and nephew's deaths, and didn't care about making wine. The Romulans knew a similar plant, worked in a similar job before, and were saved by Picard. Was Vina a "fan surrogate" cause she cared about Pike and helped him? XD

I listened to some Trek Fm podcasts where they interviewed Sir Pat, and we’ve all seen the convention videos, so I would say your point is easy to see, and may even have been the intent. Or at least the inspiration, particularly for Stewart. But I do t see them as fan expies, simply because they do tie in to that wider story to do with Hobus. I would not be surprised if we see them put Picard in contact with some people, and tbh, it would be cheesy as heck, but I would not even be that surprised if ninja romulan turns out to be Picards son.
It's odd that none of the officers or guests at the Starfleet Museum recognized him. We know that the desk guy also asks for his name. You'd think at least some of them knew him from history lessons, his books, or his recent TV interview.

The only little nitpick I have is when Picard says that millions of lives were at stake when the supernova was going to blow. The writers need to think bigger. A star going supernova close to Romulus would threaten billions if not trillions of lives.
They've been evacuating for 4 years already when the first wave of the new fleet was almost finished.

So, Mars has been on fire since 2384 or when ever the attack took place, and Picard is in 2399.
It's like Silent Hill, which is based on Centralia!

The makeup/CGI didn't really bother me either. Of course, that's probably because I was so emotional that I just didn't care.
It was actually a good strategy to first show him unfinished/overdone, cause the final look could only be better. They seem to have improved the 10 Fwd scene more than the painting scene, though.

I noticed this too upon multiple rewatches. Did the Dominion sign this treaty? Does it still exist? And what about all those Delta quadrant races?

Also, if a "galactic treaty" was signed does that imply we now have galaxy spanning communications? Or can we actually travel quickly to other quadrants to negotiate such treaties?
A world trip doesn't visit all places in the whole world, unless you do it at Warp 10. Miss Universe still comes from only 1 planet. It's a simpler name than the official one, which is probably far longer but accurate.

I got impression that only the ship yards were directly attacked, and atmosphere starting to burn was the side affect of that attack. Presumably everyone else evacuated in time
Mars has shipyard facilities on the ground as well.

As we see with B-4, it isn’t that simple.
It only failed with B4 cause he was a less complex prototype. Data transferred the entirety of Lal into himself. Graves transferred apparently all of his personality and memories into Data. I'm sure Data is still around somewhere, maybe on a disk somewhere in Maddox' secret lab XD

If they do have him appear this season I hope they get the same actor. Not that a recast would make or break the appearance but keeping the same actor in the role would be a wonderful tie to the past and be even more connective tissue for the hardcore fans this series is clearly aimed at.
I also hope he returns! Continuing a S2 episode with the original actor so much later would be insanely cool.

If the only way to praise it is to bash something else I'll take the loss.
Its not logical. It is pure emotional frustration at Picard being used to tear Discovery down.
My choice. I loathe comparisons. Either it stands on it's own or it doesn't.
Alien has more horror than Terminator. Terminator has more action than Alien. Neither comparison bashes any of the two, but now you can't watch either anymore. :p

Also I love how in five minutes they made a character hated for 30 years into a rogue hero.
Who?

I would be shocked if B4 is brought up again, except possibly in passing reference to how the Dahj twins were created.
Why and since when are synths actually created in pairs? She sounded like they always are.

Confession time: I haven't watched much of Original Trek beyond the 6 movies, apart from a few of the more iconic episodes. I was able to follow those movies and get the gist for that cast just fine, and Picard had those same vibes as that. I could show this to my nephew without forcing him to sit through TNG every day after school and discussing it to death like my own aunt did, like geez I'm 12, lemme watch the Disney Afternoon FFS.
I was planning to show my non-trekkie friends this show, but I'm afraid that not knowing anything about Data or B4 or the Romulan nova would make them feel like they're missing important background and it's "just for fans".

Also, if Seven shows up and they don’t tell us what happened to the Doctor after synthetics were outlawed, the script is incomplete.
He might appear in S2, let's hope the photons will finally be free!

Considering we see a holographic AI working in the archive, we shouldn't presume holo-life has been banned just because synths have.
Her smile was very cute. I hope she returns.

I give it an 8/10. Points off for wallowing a bit in sentimentality and nobody noticing a massive explosion in a major center or talking to the main witness about it.
That was obviously covered up. It's on purpose.

I'll refer to Data's neurons as pieces of fairy cake.
They're positronic fairy cakes with mint frosting.
 
>

He didn't wanna live alone in this big house, always haunted by his brother's and nephew's deaths, and didn't care about making wine. The Romulans knew a similar plant, worked in a similar job before, and were saved by Picard. Was Vina a "fan surrogate" cause she cared about Pike and helped him? XD
.

Vina wasn't in service to Pike. She was in service to the Talosians.
 
Alien has more horror than Terminator. Terminator has more action than Alien. Neither comparison bashes any of the two, but now you can't watch either anymore.
I do not enjoy either of those films.

Also, it tells me nothing about the actual product. Just tell me about the show, not what it compares or doesn't compare to. That's not interesting to me.
 
Folks guessed this a while back, and it isn’t the same actor IIRC. The actor who played Maddox is alive and seemingly active, and I really hope they got him to come back and reprise the role.

I wouldn't call him active. According to IMDb, he's only done three roles in the last sixteen years, two of those being bit parts in a cop show, and the other a short film. His LinkedIn page comes up on Google, and that shows him teaching acting at a university, but it doesn't look like he's updated it for a while. He could definitely reprise the role, but at the same time, I wouldn't be shocked if the part got recast.
 
Dahj was great. I hope her essence is also preserved somewhere like Data's and she can be brought back. It was only one episode but I was really rooting for her. Maybe Soji will be even better.
 
I'm just hoping Geordi survived since he is commanding the shipyards in the comics........

The beauty of having him working at a shipyard is plenty of ships around to escape. My prediction they go all Michael Bay for one episode were we see Geordi seeing the explosions yell out "Oh Shit" and runs through the base as people all around him are screaming and yelling and afraid as walls are falling down and everything and he soon find himself outrunning a fire ball. He gets to the transporter room pushes a button and transports aboard a ship. He tries to start it up as he looks outside the window and see the base he was on explode. He gets it started just in time and pulls a lever and says something like 'I knew I should have stayed on the Enterprise" before the ship speeds off outrunning yet another fireball.


Jason
 
The beauty of having him working at a shipyard is plenty of ships around to escape. My prediction they go all Michael Bay for one episode were we see Geordi seeing the explosions yell out "Oh Shit" and runs through the base as people all around him are screaming and yelling and afraid as walls are falling down and everything and he soon find himself outrunning a fire ball. He gets to the transporter room pushes a button and transports aboard a ship. He tries to start it up as he looks outside the window and see the base he was on explode. He gets it started just in time and pulls a lever and says something like 'I knew I should have stayed on the Enterprise" before the ship speeds off outrunning yet another fireball.


Jason
Maybe he'll go Lethal Weapon and give us a "I'm getting too old for this shit".
 
Allison Pill is 34. The synth attack was ten years prior, so it works, particularly if she started as an undergraduate.

I thought PIC plays in 2399 and the Romulan supernova was in 2387. So the Attack on Mars must have been before it.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/star-...story-twist-with-a-new-short-treks-easter-egg
According to "The First Duty" exhibition at San Diego Comic-Con, Jean-Luc Picard leaves Starfleet in the year 2386, about 13 years before the new show begins.

So maybe even before 2386.

Either way she was hardly over 20 when it happened, but talked like she had worked on androids quite a while before and like her life work just got destroyed with the ban on androids. It felt a bit off to me.
 
Speaking as a Discovery fan, Picard's acting as a whole blows Discovery out of the water. Not only is Stewart the permanent Lorca/Pike character with gravitas, Briones is a significantly better actor than SMG imo. She's better able to elicit sympathy and she has this underlying vulnerability to her portrayal that is easily relatable. Pill's scene was great. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to find an acting performance in this episode that was even slightly off-kilter.

My biggest complaints were some uneven pacing and stilted dialogue between Picard and Dahj, but other than that, it was a very strong opening episode.
 
Alison Pill's character could be a synthetic. That might explain why her age doesn't really match with the time frame. We don't know everything yet. Maddox seemed capable of anything back in the 1980s.
 
Alison Pill's character could be a synthetic. That might explain why her age doesn't really match with the time frame. We don't know everything yet. Maddox seemed capable of anything back in the 1980s.

Maybe he clandestinely created a wife for Data (Pill's character) and promised them both he would create children for them too. That would explain Jurati's reaction (which, btw, was acted incredibly well) when Picard revealed the existence of Dahj/Soji.
 
I thought PIC plays in 2399 and the Romulan supernova was in 2387. So the Attack on Mars must have been before it.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/star-...story-twist-with-a-new-short-treks-easter-egg


So maybe even before 2386.

Either way she was hardly over 20 when it happened, but talked like she had worked on androids quite a while before and like her life work just got destroyed with the ban on androids. It felt a bit off to me.

My mistake, I thought the interview scene established that they were commemorating the 10th anniversary of the supernova, but that's not actually in there. They just say "anniversary."

It's a slight stretch due to Pill's age. but if it was 14 years prior, which I think is the correct number, you can still buy that Jurati was maybe a student at Daystrom at the time. And she could certainly be at least a few years older than the actress playing her (though she actually looks a few years younger than her age.)

It's a bit of a stretch, but they probably just cast the actress they liked and realized that quibbling too much about dates doesn't matter all that much.
 
So I wonder if someone will bring up Data's mom? She could still be alive and she is a functioning android even if she doesn't know it. The actress is also good and seeing her meet in essence her granddaughter could be a very good moment.

Jason
 
And Lore could show up. We last left him in Descent, albeit deactivated. What became of him then is unknown. I would love to see Spiner take on that character again.

They're bringing back Hugh from "Descent". It would be *really* weird if Lore wasn't brought up at that point. Plus, they've already made a big deal out of requiring a "pair" of minds to work whatever positronic magic required for artificial intelligence. Maybe that's the secret: Lore and Data were constructed simultaneous using twin-tech. Not sure what relevance that would have on the story though.

I'm also not sure if scenery-chewing Spiner-as-Lore gels with the grounded tone they've set. That's the one strike against that idea.
 
I think Pill having a pretty young looking face makes it odd looking for some watchers to think her character is in that position with that level of experience.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top