Picard...checking privilege?

[Makarov]

If the writers wanted Picard to be wrong it would have been better to make him do something clearly wrong, like support the synth ban or suggest letting the romulans go. Then the whole guilty Picard thing would make more sense.

 

[fireproof78]

Guilty Picard still makes sense, in my opinion. Him being depressed (as @Jayson1 noted, and I 100% agree with) and the psychological impact of failing to help (as @Sci mentioned) would leave Picard with that sense of despair. Again, 100% what I would expect psychologically from a man in the later stages of life (Erik Erikson's final stage, for example).

Guilt is not always rational but it this case I think it makes perfect sense.

 

[Jeyl]

You're applying logic to a character who likely had a psychotic break due to the emotional intensity of watching his world destroyed.

Now I wonder why the article doesn't bring that point up?

 

[Sci]

When did he not treat them as equals? Not in the show or the prequel book, he gave them the utmost respect and crossed the lines to help them.

In the flashback sequence of "Absolute Candor," he's respectful, but there's also more than a hint of paternalism present. He's very much in what we would today call "White Savior" mode. And the fact that he just abandoned them is not the act of someone who has fully internalized that the people he was trying to help are his equals.

Yes. If anyone deserves a break from making a promise you thought you could make but then couldn't it is someone like Picard.

So, if you're a refugee on a barely-developed planet and your homeworld has been destroyed and you're struggling day in and day out to survive and you've lost two children to treatable diseases common to under-developed refugee settlements and warlords are a constant danger that needs a government's fleet to keep away and you have been promised -- promised -- that help would be coming, and then it never comes and the representative of the government that made that promise just stops returning your calls...

... exactly how much sympathy are you going to have when he claims it was mental illness and he needed to be let loose from his promises?

If Jean-Luc needs a mental health break (which is legit), then he ought to be taking steps to make sure someone else with equal clout can step in and take over. For instance, Ambassador Spock.

Then years later he feels the need to make amends and people are still shitting on him for not "getting over it" on their timetable

They've got major social problems to deal with and lives are on the line. Sorry, but it is unreasonable of Jean-Luc to make it all about his feelings.

when they themselves apparently haven't been doing squat themselves to try and fix things in all those years.

This is pure bullshit of the sort that people with privilege use to justify ignoring the pain of marginalized people in real life all the time.

Starfleet had years to try and do something even after Picard quit. Raffi like I said could have searched out another captain. Riker and Troi were looking after their kids but in theory RIker could have carried out the Rescue mission instead. Seven was sort of doing something but that involves killing people so that's not exactly the best thing to do. Then you of course got a whole slew of people we aren't even familiar with. Is Picard the only person capable of carrying out this rescue?

No one said he was. But that doesn't excuse not trying.

Picard - "Sorry I took it to my manager and tried everything including quitting and they wouldn't budge. Looks like you guys might have to figure something out."

Romulan - "Damn you Picard! Where are the ships you promised?! Another federation deception! Raahh!"

Picard - "I don't know what to tell you man. Try calling the help desk 1-800-starfleet"

You sound like one of those people blaming Puerto Rico for all their deaths in Hurricane Maria.

The article mentioned something about Picard wearing a colonist style outfit when he visited a Romulan refugee settlement. It's not the first time I've seen a comment about that. Was that intentional or just a misinterpretation by some people?

I would find it very hard to imagine that they would have drawn upon the visual language of colonialism unintentionally. It seems about as probable to me that that might be unintentional, as the idea that they could have had a character dressed in a tie-dyed T-shirt wearing flowers in her hair and have it not be an intentional allusion to the 1960s counterculture.

Its hard to tell if the scene was subtly depicting Picard as being earnest but patronizing towards the Romulans, as in basking in the heroics of saving the Romulan people.

That's part of why I think it was intentional: The episode was essentially saying that Jean-Luc had fallen into some anti-egalitarian patterns that would be dysfunctional.

So in Picard, Stewart himself describes the setting and the Federation as "different". It doesn't exist as we knew it anymore.

It's isolationist, cynical and wounded, and most of the characters in it have a lot of issues and conflict, to the point that you might be able to tell them apart from a 21st century human. The same stuff doesn't seem to apply anymore.

I think the thing about the Federation is that it is so vast in size and scale that it's difficult to say the Federation is any one thing. Clearly, the Federation government has embraced a level of isolationism in its betrayal of the Romulan people -- but there again, the Federation is also actively sending scientists and doctors to help the Romulan Free State study the Artifact and liberate former drones. The majority of Federates seem to live in abundance and safety and comfort -- but, yes, there's also developed a level of anti-Synthetic bigotry. The Federation is I think is a complex structure that defies categorization as merely good or bad.

So now I'm wondering if that colonizer style outfit was a deliberate choice by Stewart. Was he hinting that the Federation had changed or was colonist in it's thinking without realizing it?

I think it was a particular commentary on Jean-Luc's mindset. I also think the Federation has always had a bit more of a colonialist mindset than people want to acknowledge. I mean, they literally tried to forcibly relocate a Native American settlement against their will in "Journey's End."

If so, then he was hinting that the setting in Picard is dystopian. And that he wanted it to be that way.

I think "dystopia" is a term that gets thrown around way too loosely. The Federation is flawed and did a terrible thing when they betrayed the Romulans, but it is also a society in which the overwhelming majority of people live in freedom, comfort, and safety. There's no evidence that Federation democracy has been compromised, or that Federates lack for free speech and other "sentient rights."

Why didn't the Romulan Star Empire save the Romulan people?

Okay, so, let's really think about the logistics of evacuating a planet. Let's do the math. This is going to involve starting off with some optimistic assumptions, and the move into some more pessimistic assumptions.

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier has a crew of about 6,000 people. A Galaxy-class starship is twice the length and several times the volume of a Nimitz, so it stands to reason it would have a larger crew and passenger capacity than that. This video points out that it seemingly could fit 6,000 people into about 14% of the usable volume of the ship; let's be really, really generous and assume that that means a Galaxy could contain about 42,000 people at max.

D'dreidex-class warbirds appear to be about twice the apparent size of a Galaxy, but they lack a huge amount of internal volume because of the catamaran-style hull. So let's assume they, too, could fit about 42,000 evacuees.

Let's say Romulus has a population of approximately 5 billion. That's two billion less than we have in real life today, but let's go with it.

Let's say it takes approximately two hours to travel by warp to the nearest M-class planet outside of the Supernova impact zone.

This page cites the TNG Technical Manual in suggesting a Galaxy can transport (via both beaming and shuttles) about 1,250 people per hour off of a planetary surface. Let's assume D'deridexes are comparable.

So. 42,000/1,250 means it would take a ship 33.6 hours to reach maximum capacity. From there, they'd immediately warp to Next Door Planet, whereupon it would take another 33.6 hours to de-people the ship. Then they'd need to warp back to Romulus.

So a single cycle of evacuation for a single ship would take 71.2 hours for 42,000 people.

5 billion (planetary population) divided by 42,000 people (max per ship per cycle) means you'd need 119,047.62 trips. Each of those trips would take 71.2 hours, so it would take a single ship 8,476,190.54 hours (aka 353,174.6 days, aka 967.60 years) for a ship to evacuate the planet.

Let's say that the Romulans discover the Supernova in 2381 and have exactly 6 years to evacuate the planet.

They would need, in other words, a fleet of 119,048 Galaxy or D'deridex-size ships to do it in 71.2 hours.

If they're trying to do it in six years, well, there are 8,760 hours in a year, and a single ship can evac 42,000 people in 71.2 hours. So a single ship can do 123.03 evac cycles in a year, or 738.20 cycles in six years. That means, a single ship can evac 31,004,494.38 people in six years. So, 5 billion divided by 31,004,494.38 is 161.266942099.

So, in other words, to evacuate Romulus in six years, they would need a fleet of at minimum 162 Galaxy or D'deridex class starships, operating 24 hours per day, seven days per week, for six years, engaging in constant evacuation cycles, with no margin for error, no room for anything to go wrong. And all that is assuming complete efficiency of personnel movement at all times (which is, y'know, not how real life works).

So, because you'd want redundancy, because you need to make room for problems of personnel inefficiency, of medical crises, of ship maintenance, etc.... Honestly I wouldn't be comfortable trying to accomplish something like this with anything less than four times that for redundancy. So at least 648 Galaxy-comparable starships in terms of volume and personnel transportation capability.

Oh, and let's not forget that the overwhelming majority of ships in both the Federation and Romulan fleets are not that large, and that my estimate of 42k per ship is really optimistic. The TNG Tech Manual says the Galaxy-class has an evac limit of 15k. If we go with that figure instead, we're looking at needing a minimum of 452 Galaxy-comparable ships to evacuate Romulus within six years.

Oh, and if Romulus's population is 7 billion like Earth's is in real life? That means you need 633 starships comparable to a Galaxy.

Oh, and let's not forget that Remus exists, too. Suddenly you need 1,265 ships because you've doubled how many people you need to evacuate. At minimum. With nothing going wrong. And probably you want four times as many as that in real life for if something goes wrong, so you actually need 5,060 Galaxy-class starships or comparable.

And all this was assuming that they had exactly six full years and that they didn't lose any amount of time on the need to construct, mobilize, recruit, or maintain the fleet.

This is a task that exists on a scale too monumental for any one interstellar state to accomplish in the amount of time they had. No interstellar government could do it by themselves.

Why was it left to Picard?

No one said it was "left" to Jean-Luc. But he made a promise, and he broke it, and people died who would have lived if he'd done more. This is the unavoidable fact.

One of the problems with this show is depicting the Romulan Star Empire - which is every bit as powerful as the Federation if not more

A questionable assumption.

- suddenly collapsing because of the destruction of Romulus. Would the Federation collapse if its capital world Earth was destroyed

I think it would depend upon Federation political culture. But the Romulan Star Empire and Klingon Empire are both imperial states with a high centralization of power in the capital; it's perfectly plausible that the loss of Romulus would lead to the collapse of the Romulan government and the emergence of multiple Romulan states.

and expect the Romulans and Klingons to relocate its population and then be bitter and salty because they failed to help?

Why don't you try asking real refugees who've had to flee their countries how they feel about the nations that refused to help them?

The Federation isn't colonizers.

I mean, not in the sense of them going up to native worlds and conquering them. But it was Michael Eddington in DS9 who pointed out that there's a pseudo-colonialist mindset behind the Federation government's behavior:

I know you. I was like you once, but then I opened my eyes. Open your eyes, Captain. Why is the Federation so obsessed about the Maquis? We've never harmed you, and yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you can't accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation. Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You're only sending them replicators because one day they can take their rightful place on the Federation Council. You know, in some ways you're worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You're more insidious. You assimilate people and they don't even know it.

So, that general mindset of wanting to bring everyone in under one government, one flag, one value system... Yeah, it's there in the Federation. It's an active thing, and it's dishonest to pretend that isn't part of Federation political culture.

The Prime Directive exists just for this reason. Something to keep themselves from exploiting other worlds that aren't their technological equals.

I mean, yes, but also the whole "you're not my equal" thing is clearly present in how the Federation interacts with cultures that haven't adopted FTL drive, and it's a very colonialist mindset.

They haven't been perfect but it's a stretch to say they haven't been a force for good during their existence.

No one said the UFP is not on balance good! Saying that there are problems, saying that there's a neo-colonialist mindset that needs to be fought against -- these are not claims that the entire UFP's right to exist is nullified or that it's an evil thing. But it is an argument that it's not as perfect as it imagines itself to be and that it needs some more humility.

Considering the fleet we saw Oh have I got to wonder why the Romulans didn't just rescue themselves.

That puny thing? C'mon. Those ships looked like they had maybe the volume of three or four runabouts. You could fit maybe 200 people on each of those ships. That's only 40,000 people in that fleet, total. That's the kind of fleet you mobilize to evacuate a small city; utterly inadequate for evacuating a planet.

Like misguided international aid groups of late 20th-century Earth, Picard and the Federation were guilty of having “no understanding of [the] ingenuity, resolve, and self-sufficiency,” of the people they were trying to save, says former senator, Tenqem Adrev. And then they forgot about them completely.

It seems as though the writer of this piece and the writers of Picard don't understand what kind of a conflict they want the Federation to have with the Romulans.

1. Romulans hate Starfleet for not understanding their ability as a race to prosper on their own.
2. Romulans hate Starfleet for abandoning them on a planet after facing a disaster of their own.​

​

First off: Different Romulans have different opinions! All Romulans are not the same. Shocking, I know.

Secondly: Do you really not get that that's a conflict that happens in real life -- that a nation may desperately need help, but also desperately need to be respected and treated as equals, rather than condescended to or exploited?

​

These are two arguments that cannot co-exist if we're supposed to take the Romulans' plight seriously. If the Romulans as a species have such high self-sufficiency, ingenuity and resolve, why would being abandoned even be an issue?

That Romulan Senator is not claiming the Romulans were materially self-sufficient to achieve the goal of evacuating Romulus. But he is complaining about being condescended to, about being treated as lesser-than, about being disrespected and being treated with paternalism. These are perfectly reasonable complaints that people from marginalized communities have in real life.

This comes off less as a plight of a troubled society and more of a whiny bureaucrat who only cares about the bad side of everything. And it gets worse when it's revealed that it was the Romulans themselves who were responsible for Starfleet not aiding in the evacuation Romulus. Not only does your species suck at self-preservation, you were the reason why you were abandoned in the first place!

Why do you keep essentializing "the Romulans" as one thing instead of acknowledging the diversity of Romulan cultures and beliefs and factions and interests that existed within the Star Empire and that survive after the Empire's collapse?

But for some reason, the show runners want us to believe that Picard is the one who's in the wrong here.

Is it really that hard to understand that he could be both in the right and the wrong at the same time?

If the writers wanted Picard to be wrong it would have been better to make him do something clearly wrong,

Star Trek: Picard is not here to reaffirm a childish, two-dimensional sense of right and wrong. Real life is more complex than that; people are often right and wrong in the same measure. Benevolence and paternalism can go hand-in-hand.

 

[fireproof78]

Now I wonder why the article doesn't bring that point up?

Because often times when it comes to emotional illogical we want a rationale, some way to make sense of the world. Except, emotions are not always rational.

 

[Jayson1]

One of my biggest issue is that Picard should have never made the promise to begin with. Him making the promise seems to be he main issue with Picard's action but what do you do when someone makes a promise they should have never made to begin with? He took on his own authority to speak for the Federation over something that he should not have. As Starfleet Captains they do tend to have a lot of leeway when it comes to stuff like this but when dealing with Government that your basically in a ongoing never ending cold war with that seems like something you should really send up the food chain.

I think a point can be made that Picard doesn't have a right to act on his own once the Federation government has made it's choice. For one thing Romulan Space is off limits to federation citizens so your basically sending a fleet of ships into Romulan Space without government approval. Something that could even start a war. I mean the Romulan government wasn't doing enough to help it's people so what do you think they would do if Federation ships started invading their space taking their citizens away. Romulus was destroyed but the Romulan government still existed. Imagine if we here in America sent non military citizens into Mexico to rescue citizens because of deadly storms but we didn't even bother to address their government. Or our own. We just picked up and did it own their own. The entire situation of Romulus basically begs for government intervention. Even with refuges in real life today we expect our governments to help them. Plus once you rescue them you have to have homes for them. That means finding planets to live on and you know you will have issues finding that in federation space since you basically just went over head and acted alone. Then you got provide food and medical help and supplies. That's a lot of stuff that might not be able to provide so then what do you do.



Jason

 

[Makarov]

In the flashback sequence of "Absolute Candor," he's respectful, but there's also more than a hint of paternalism present. He's very much in what we would today call "White Savior" mode.

So just by showing up, you think he felt they were not equal? Or do you mean Elnor looking up to him as an actual father figure? How else should he have behaved when those people were looking for hope?

It seems the only way Picard would have avoided this criticism is he never tried to help in the first place.

 

[Sci]

One of my biggest issue is that Picard should have never made the promise to begin with.

He made the promise the Federation authorized him to make. They were building the fleet when the Mars Attack happened.

I think a point can be made that Picard doesn't have a right to act on his own once the Federation government has made it's choice.

I don't see why it should be the right of the Federation government to decide that civilians may not use their ships to rescue people in need of humanitarian assistance.

For one thing Romulan Space is off limits to federation citizens so your basically sending a fleet of ships into Romulan Space without government approval.

Romulan space is only off-limits to Federation citizens because the Romulan government says so. Why would the Federation want to control the free movement of its citizens into Romulan space if the Romulan government is welcoming them? That would be a violation of their rights. Hell, the United States today does not prohibit its citizens from visiting countries like North Korea or Iran, even if it discourages such travel.

I mean the Romulan government wasn't doing enough to help it's people so what do you think they would do if Federation ships started invading their space taking their citizens away.

You're making a lot of assumptions about RSE governmental resistance that's not in evidence from the canon. Also: Do you really think the Empire's ruling class would have had the political clout to maintain control of the military if they tried to prohibit a civilian fleet from rescuing millions of people? The Imperial Fleet is gonna be drawn from that civilian population after all.

Romulus was destroyed but the Romulan government still existed.

Did it? On PIC, we only ever see the Romulan Free State. There's no evidence the Star Empire still exists. At best, a remnant of the RSE may control a portion of its former territory, but we don't even have canonical evidence of that scenario.

Imagine if we here in America sent non military citizens into Mexico to rescue citizens because of deadly storms but we didn't even bother to address their government.

Why do you keep assuming Jean-Luc wouldn't have gotten RSE governmental permission?

The entire situation of Romulus basically begs for government intervention.

Of course! The scale of the disaster is too large for anything other than state-level intervention to be capable of saving a significant number of people. But that's not an excuse not to make the effort to save as many as you can.

Even with refuges in real life today we expect our governments to help them.

And in real life today, when governments refuse to help, there are still civilian humanitarian organizations who send aide. Americans have sent aide to Iran after their natural disasters, for instance, even without U.S. governmental assistance. So I don't think it's realistic to imagine the Federation government would stand in the way of a private humanitarian fleet.

Plus once you rescue them you have to have homes for them. That means finding planets to live on and you know you will have issues finding that in federation space

Vashti was not in Federation space. Seems to me the galaxy is full of unclaimed, uninhabited M-class planets.

Then you got provide food and medical help and supplies. That's a lot of stuff that might not be able to provide so then what do you do.

Very good point! And that's why doing something like this would require an organization, not just one guy flying off on his ship. But that doesn't mean it's not possible to achieve these goals without UFP governmental assistance. Hell, as I said above, one option Jean-Luc seemingly never considered was appealing to the numerous non-Federation governments out there for assistance! I mean, wouldn't the Breen Confederacy love to paint themselves as the heroes of the Alpha Quadrant by providing significant assistance to save the Romulan people and sending out propaganda about how the Federation failed to respond? Yes, it would mean giving a P.R. boost to a hostile government, but it would be one way Jean-Luc could persuade a government to commit major resources to help.

So just by showing up, you think he felt they were not equal? Or do you mean Elnor looking up to him as an actual father figure? How else should he have behaved when those people were looking for hope?

No, but when you show up and you just soak up this "Yes, I am a hero and I will help you" vibe and you don't collaborate with the leadership of the refugees as your equals but are instead acting like you're in charge? Yeah, that's a problem. There's some paternalism there.

It seems the only way Picard would have avoided this criticism is he never tried to help in the first place.

Or if he had, for instance, put Romulan leaders in positions of significant leadership within the rescue operation. That might have helped.

 

[Pauln6]

In the flashback sequence of "Absolute Candor," he's respectful, but there's also more than a hint of paternalism present. He's very much in what we would today call "White Savior" mode. And the fact that he just abandoned them is not the act of someone who has fully internalized that the people he was trying to help are his equals.



So, if you're a refugee on a barely-developed planet and your homeworld has been destroyed and you're struggling day in and day out to survive and you've lost two children to treatable diseases common to under-developed refugee settlements and warlords are a constant danger that needs a government's fleet to keep away and you have been promised -- promised -- that help would be coming, and then it never comes and the representative of the government that made that promise just stops returning your calls...

... exactly how much sympathy are you going to have when he claims it was mental illness and he needed to be let loose from his promises?

If Jean-Luc needs a mental health break (which is legit), then he ought to be taking steps to make sure someone else with equal clout can step in and take over. For instance, Ambassador Spock.



They've got major social problems to deal with and lives are on the line. Sorry, but it is unreasonable of Jean-Luc to make it all about his feelings.



This is pure bullshit of the sort that people with privilege use to justify ignoring the pain of marginalized people in real life all the time.



No one said he was. But that doesn't excuse not trying.



You sound like one of those people blaming Puerto Rico for all their deaths in Hurricane Maria.



I would find it very hard to imagine that they would have drawn upon the visual language of colonialism unintentionally. It seems about as probable to me that that might be unintentional, as the idea that they could have had a character dressed in a tie-dyed T-shirt wearing flowers in her hair and have it not be an intentional allusion to the 1960s counterculture.



That's part of why I think it was intentional: The episode was essentially saying that Jean-Luc had fallen into some anti-egalitarian patterns that would be dysfunctional.



I think the thing about the Federation is that it is so vast in size and scale that it's difficult to say the Federation is any one thing. Clearly, the Federation government has embraced a level of isolationism in its betrayal of the Romulan people -- but there again, the Federation is also actively sending scientists and doctors to help the Romulan Free State study the Artifact and liberate former drones. The majority of Federates seem to live in abundance and safety and comfort -- but, yes, there's also developed a level of anti-Synthetic bigotry. The Federation is I think is a complex structure that defies categorization as merely good or bad.



I think it was a particular commentary on Jean-Luc's mindset. I also think the Federation has always had a bit more of a colonialist mindset than people want to acknowledge. I mean, they literally tried to forcibly relocate a Native American settlement against their will in "Journey's End."



I think "dystopia" is a term that gets thrown around way too loosely. The Federation is flawed and did a terrible thing when they betrayed the Romulans, but it is also a society in which the overwhelming majority of people live in freedom, comfort, and safety. There's no evidence that Federation democracy has been compromised, or that Federates lack for free speech and other "sentient rights."



Okay, so, let's really think about the logistics of evacuating a planet. Let's do the math. This is going to involve starting off with some optimistic assumptions, and the move into some more pessimistic assumptions.



And all this was assuming that they had exactly six full years and that they didn't lose any amount of time on the need to construct, mobilize, recruit, or maintain the fleet.

This is a task that exists on a scale too monumental for any one interstellar state to accomplish in the amount of time they had. No interstellar government could do it by themselves.



No one said it was "left" to Jean-Luc. But he made a promise, and he broke it, and people died who would have lived if he'd done more. This is the unavoidable fact.



A questionable assumption.



I think it would depend upon Federation political culture. But the Romulan Star Empire and Klingon Empire are both imperial states with a high centralization of power in the capital; it's perfectly plausible that the loss of Romulus would lead to the collapse of the Romulan government and the emergence of multiple Romulan states.



Why don't you try asking real refugees who've had to flee their countries how they feel about the nations that refused to help them?



I mean, not in the sense of them going up to native worlds and conquering them. But it was Michael Eddington in DS9 who pointed out that there's a pseudo-colonialist mindset behind the Federation government's behavior:

I know you. I was like you once, but then I opened my eyes. Open your eyes, Captain. Why is the Federation so obsessed about the Maquis? We've never harmed you, and yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you can't accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation. Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You're only sending them replicators because one day they can take their rightful place on the Federation Council. You know, in some ways you're worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You're more insidious. You assimilate people and they don't even know it.

So, that general mindset of wanting to bring everyone in under one government, one flag, one value system... Yeah, it's there in the Federation. It's an active thing, and it's dishonest to pretend that isn't part of Federation political culture.



I mean, yes, but also the whole "you're not my equal" thing is clearly present in how the Federation interacts with cultures that haven't adopted FTL drive, and it's a very colonialist mindset.



No one said the UFP is not on balance good! Saying that there are problems, saying that there's a neo-colonialist mindset that needs to be fought against -- these are not claims that the entire UFP's right to exist is nullified or that it's an evil thing. But it is an argument that it's not as perfect as it imagines itself to be and that it needs some more humility.



That puny thing? C'mon. Those ships looked like they had maybe the volume of three or four runabouts. You could fit maybe 200 people on each of those ships. That's only 40,000 people in that fleet, total. That's the kind of fleet you mobilize to evacuate a small city; utterly inadequate for evacuating a planet.

​

First off: Different Romulans have different opinions! All Romulans are not the same. Shocking, I know.

Secondly: Do you really not get that that's a conflict that happens in real life -- that a nation may desperately need help, but also desperately need to be respected and treated as equals, rather than condescended to or exploited?

​

That Romulan Senator is not claiming the Romulans were materially self-sufficient to achieve the goal of evacuating Romulus. But he is complaining about being condescended to, about being treated as lesser-than, about being disrespected and being treated with paternalism. These are perfectly reasonable complaints that people from marginalized communities have in real life.



Why do you keep essentializing "the Romulans" as one thing instead of acknowledging the diversity of Romulan cultures and beliefs and factions and interests that existed within the Star Empire and that survive after the Empire's collapse?



Is it really that hard to understand that he could be both in the right and the wrong at the same time?



Star Trek: Picard is not here to reaffirm a childish, two-dimensional sense of right and wrong. Real life is more complex than that; people are often right and wrong in the same measure. Benevolence and paternalism can go hand-in-hand.

Wow an analysis like this is so spot on. I think people who have major issues with the politics are probably not paying enough attention to real world history and current politics.

Some of the story points in Picard are bit flimsy and there are some annoying plot holes such as Seven just popping out of the woodwork with no explanation but it can't be accused of being simplistic.

I admit, the things that annoy me the most are the swearing because I just don't find that it adds anything, and the smoking. Smoking should never be used to try and make a character look cool. Plus, smoking on a spaceship (let alone while piloting at warp) would be sheer stupidity.

 

[Makarov]

No, but when you show up and you just soak up this "Yes, I am a hero and I will help you" vibe and you don't collaborate with the leadership of the refugees as your equals but are instead acting like you're in charge? Yeah, that's a problem. There's some paternalism there.



Or if he had, for instance, put Romulan leaders in positions of significant leadership within the rescue operation. That might have helped.

They did. Romulans were part of Picard's team and of course they let them lead their communities and assist the rescue however they wanted. Granted that's only seen in the book but in either case there's no good reason to assume otherwise just because he walks through their community in one scene.

 

[Nightdiamond]

The needs of the many outweighs the need of the few, or the one. At least, according to Star Trek. Again, I would have preferred Picard at least supporting Spock!

But even that was turned on its head in Insurrection. The needs of the few (600) outweighed the needs of the many (billions). In fact, Picard's "How many people does it take, Admiral, before it becomes wrong?" That's a polar opposite view of Spock's. Looks like there might be new rules in place now.

The majority of Federates seem to live in abundance and safety and comfort -- but, yes, there's also developed a level of anti-Synthetic bigotry. The Federation is I think is a complex structure that defies categorization as merely good or bad.

I've seen discussions that said if the Federation ever got too big, it might end up the same way the Republic did in Star wars. So many members with differing outlooks, and if they're not core members, their concerns may get overlooked by the other members.

So, around 14 members threatened to leave if the Federation continued to help the Romulans. Which was described as it being "imploding" from the inside. This would never happen in the TNG era Treks.

I'm wondering if next season, Picard is going in the direction where Federation citizens elect politicians that are more xenophobic, and humans show open prejudice towards sentient Synth lifeforms because of what happened. I wouldn't be surprised if it possibly went in that direction based on Stewart's interviews.

He said he doesn't want a retread of a safe, protected, blissfully bubbly Federation with all these things happening around it. Doing something like that would deconstruct what we know of the Federation and future human behavior, but that may be the challenge Stewart is trying to present.

I think "dystopia" is a term that gets thrown around way too loosely. The Federation is flawed and did a terrible thing when they betrayed the Romulans, but it is also a society in which the overwhelming majority of people live in freedom, comfort, and safety. There's no evidence that Federation democracy has been compromised, or that Federates lack for free speech and other "sentient rights."

Definitely and humans are still definitely post scarcity, well fed and clothed, open minded and free of basic failings like class-ism, racism and sexism ect. With an intact democracy.

But vigilantism, xenophobia, internal political problems, (possibly populism) seems to be creeping in from the outside.

Del Arco (Hugh) reportedly called Picard dystopian, but I'm not sure. Mr Stewart himself stated it would be a different Federation--I'm wondering by how much in the next season.

 

[fireproof78]

But vigilantism, xenophobia, internal political problems, (possibly populism) seems to be creeping in from the outside.

Which it did with the Dominion War as well.

 

[cooleddie74]

And it clearly did during the Cardassian War, too, since Miles O'Brien adopted racist slurs for Cardassians and held prejudices about them for the rest of his career. Captain Benjamin Maxwell of the Phoenix also seemed to be affected by his prejudices against Cardassians dating from the war.

 

[The Old Mixer]

You know what Quark said...if you take away humans' root beer, they'll get pissed. Or something like that.

 

[Nyotarules]

Moreover, Starfleet in PIC seems like a more cynical organization that's a far-cry from the more magnanimous Starfleet of 90s Trek, which is also problematic. It would be nice if the next season dealt with Picard working on a way to return Starfleet to its utopian ideals.

Considering Starfleet wanted to dismantle Data, commit genocide against the Borg, kidnap the Baku and had a messed up, semi WWI style peace treaty with the Cardassians, what Utopian ideals did they ever have? Picard believed in the kool aid he was drinking (or taught from school as stated by Miles O'Brien in DS9 Hard Time), the righteousness of the UFP and Starfleet.
The UFP and Starfleet are lovely places to live and work, but they are about as utopia as real, modern day life in the UK and life in the British Army is now, compared to life in the UK and British Army was in 1720.

 

[Nightdiamond]

Which it did with the Dominion War as well.

And it clearly did during the Cardassian War, too, since Miles O'Brien adopted racist slurs for Cardassians and held prejudices about them for the rest of his career. Captain Benjamin Maxwell of the Phoenix also seemed to be affected by his prejudices against Cardassians dating from the war.

Yep, but this time around it may deeply infect human society (and the Federation) itself. In the past they always had the "but the majority of humans (or Starfleet) are decent" thing to fall back on, but maybe there's a shock coming along in the next seasons.

Apparently some Fed members hate Romulans. Picard himself is now a Synth, and if there's still some Synth prejudice out there, who knows.

I'm going on things Stewart himself has implied, but I doubt it can go that far, who knows.

You know what Quark said...if you take away humans' root beer, they'll get pissed. Or something like that.

There's like 10 references to root beer in DS9. By at least 3 different species. The 24th century must have some damn good root beer.

 

[Nyotarules]

In the past they always had the "but the majority of humans (or Starfleet) are decent" thing to fall back on, but maybe there's a shock coming along in the next seasons.

As stated by people working in Starfleet and people who were humans.

One could argue most people are decent...until they are not.

 

[fireproof78]

As stated by people working in Starfleet and people who were humans. One could argue most people are decent...until they are not.

"We are killers. But, we're not going to kill...today."

 

[Jedi_Master]

I think Picard succinctly addressed the issues with it's main character when Admiral Icantrecallthename said "Sheer F***ing Hubris"
That's Picard in a nutshell. His hubris led him to do mostly good things, but also caused him to do some terrible things. He never adequately paid for his hubris in the first season, as they pivoted to a "let's explore androids - they are way cool" plotline, and in the end the show turned into a "Picard's so great I miss him and need him and yay! he's back let's go on adventures" which was a letdown, for sure. However, for a few brief moments the writers ALMOST acknowledged that Picard had some serious characters flaws and needed to make significant changes.

 

[Jeyl]

I think Picard succinctly addressed the issues with it's main character when Admiral Icantrecallthename said "Sheer F***ing Hubris"
That's Picard in a nutshell. His hubris led him to do mostly good things, but also caused him to do some terrible things. He never adequately paid for his hubris in the first season, as they pivoted to a "let's explore androids - they are way cool" plotline, and in the end the show turned into a "Picard's so great I miss him and need him and yay! he's back let's go on adventures" which was a letdown, for sure. However, for a few brief moments the writers ALMOST acknowledged that Picard had some serious characters flaws and needed to make significant changes.

When I think of 'terrible things' that Starfleet Captains do, it's generally reserved for Captain Archer for his xenophobic behavior towards Vulcans and his willingness to allow whole species to die out even when they ask for help. The worst thing I can think of that Picard has done was force an alien species to literally breed with another alien species that they had no interest in breeding with at all and he was willing to forcibly remove some of their technology in order to do so.

But for what it's worth, the show did deal with Picard's arrogance, hubris and privilege as something he needed to grow beyond. In 'Q Who', Picard and his crew are utterly convinced that they are ready to encounter any kind of life form to the point they're willing to demean Q even though he tries to warn them that they might not be ready. And at the end of the episode, Picard realizes that Q was right and even knowing what they did at the end of that episode, they still were not ready.

Or how about Picard's hubris on how evolved Humanity is? How in 'The Neutral Zone' he kept lecturing the folks from the 20th Century Earth that mankind had grown out of it's need for greed and want of material things, or in 'Hide and Q' where Picard's enamored love of Humanity is so delusional that he deliberately misquotes Shakespeare to say that Humanity will one day be akin to angels and gods. Well, when Picard ties to convince Lily that his futile tactics against the Borg come from his 'evolved sensibility', she rightfully calls him out on it. And when she brings the comparison to Moby Dick, a book that she didn't even read, he soon realizes that she is right. It's quite a thing when you look at 'The Neutral Zone' and 'Star Trek: First Contact' back to back and see just how out of touch Picard really was with 'evolved humanity' beliefs. And this realization came not from an omnipotent being like Q or from some species who were more sensibly evolved than Humanity, but from a woman living in a war torn Montana in 21st Century Earth. And this is the same era where the Enterprise crew not only said that there wasn't much redeeming qualities in humanity, but it was a mystery how humanity as a species even survived the 21st century. Mhm.