Spoilers Star Trek Discovery Season 4 Spoilers for Picard

Considering that Dr Culber mentioned in "Anomaly" that the Soong method was abandoned because it apparently didn't work in most cases, i guess it gives rise to the doubt that the Picard golem isn't the real Jean Luc.

What do you think? Is the golem the real Picard and if he is, why didn't the method work in most other cases?

 

Yes, it is the real Picard. I think it wss abandoned because it couldn't be broadly applied, much like how a lot of other Soong tech it was difficult to replicate.

I also think failed attempts may either be extremely painful, or traumatizing possibly due to existing in two bodies at once.

 

The phrasing in the script implies quite strongly, IMO, that it worked just fine for Jean-Luc. Simply put, he's lucky.

 

I can’t imagine interpreting the dialogue as presented to indicate that Picard isn’t meant to be the real thing, or that the process was unsuccessful for Picard.

 

Disco did not say he wasn't the real Picard... so where does that leave you now?

 

Q wouldn't fuck around with a Jean-Dupe. So he's the real deal.

 

Well, the method worked for Juliana Tainer and it worked for Picard. Not to mention the previous transfers with Ira Graves in TNG and Drs. Korby & Brown in TOS which were a 100% success rate as well. Clearly an event occurred between the 25th and 32nd century that skewed the record in favour of not being a successful method.

 

Which is why I think failures probably involve pain to turn people off of this.

 

Maybe Culber needs to read Picard's late life memoirs where he details "not feeling himself".

 

Korby was a 100% success? I doubt the original was as... unstable. As for Ira Graves, his lasted a day with no opportunity for long term observation. It was a few days until Lal melted down.

 

I'm pretty sure the point at the end of What Are Little Girls Made of was that it was very much not a 100% success...

 

Distinctly different methods were used in all cases, so it makes good sense that there would be a range of advantages and disadvantages.

Tainer and Picard were the work of Soong, rather than of completely alien forces (pending more data on the Soong clan, of course). But Tainer appeared to merely be a very good imitation of the real deal, the best Soong could make, a bit like Daystrom made M-5 by abusing suitable pieces of a preexisting mind. I doubt it counts as anything more than a particularly well-designed holosimulation of a deceased loved one.

Graves was a bit of a surprise, even to himself: he clearly wasn't counting on a positronic template, this being the supposedly failed work of his rival. And the thing he was counting on, transfer to a more conventional type of computer, apparently failed him in the end: it's the reverse of Tainer, with the real deal becoming a dissatisfying reincarnation, rather than a fake being given the satisfying characteristics of the real deal. But the technique held promise, assuming there would be further Graves-Soong cooperation. This being complicated by at least one being dead and the other being a regular Scrooge when it came to sharing or publishing. A.I. Soong creating the working golem would be the logical conclusion of this nevertheless.

What the Camus II machine achieved probably wasn't reproducible with UFP science. And it was a bit of a failure in the end: it left both the victims confused and unable to logically further their respective causes, and soon got reversed anyway. Might be the user misset the alien controls; might be the machine never was intended to do anything more, and was just the Trek equivalent of the polyjuice potion. Certainly no transfer of mind to an atypical or artificial template was achieved.

Such as Soong dying/going into hiding and not leaving proper instructions? I mean, that's not just his M.O., it's basically his entire biography!

Timo Saloniemi

 

More potential spoilers in tonight's episode. Admiral Vance is doubtful the Q Continuum is responsible for the DMA (dark matter anomaly - this season of Disco's "big bad," for those who aren't watching) because there hasn't been any form of contact in 600 years.

Discovery season 4 is set on or around 3190, which puts Vance's precise wording at 2590. Of course, Vance lives far, far away from that era; he may have been off by decades in his shorthand. That still wouldn't push things all the way back to 2400, but perhaps this is seeding a hint that the Continuum is transcending ever-further in PIC, or something to that effect, and that soon they will be beyond the level of interacting with mortals.

Or something. Who knows. But it felt like it mattered.

 

Perhaps Q does something in S2 that will make the continuum ban all interaction XD

 

He admits Guinan is a superior life form.

 

Picard becomes a Q and then makes sure they leave everyone else alone

 

No more Q would be amazing!

 

I think we find out that Q changed the timeline back in Q Who making even the reality of Picard a synthetic, AI driven sleep program for something in a container that is lazily turning end over end, out there in, Federation Space.

Will Q show Picard the Federation as The Federation should have been leading up to the Federations natural encounter with the Borg?