Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x03 - "The End is the Beginning"

[gvn2fly]

This one felt a bit flat for me, and on first watch I don't like it as much as the first 2. My initial rating is a 6. (would give the premiere an 8 and last week's a 7). I'm also starting to worry a bit about where this is heading. I loved the scenes with Rios (and EMH/ENH), Picard's Romulans friends, and the end and that's about it. It felt like the episode was spinning it's gears just waiting for the ending. If they would have added 10-15 minutes to episodes 1 and 2 (which in the age of streaming they should be able to do) I feel like we could pretty much have ended up in the same place. I didn't initially think taking 3 weeks to get here would be a problem, but it's starting to feel like a chore.

Thinks I didn't like
-The Romulan cube plot didn't really work for me this week. I hope this doesn't involve some time travel / borg origin story.
-Oh looked ridiculous in the glasses
-Jurati just happening to arrive with a disruptor in her hand right as the Tal Shiar agents did (this may have been part of Oh's plan, but it still looked clunky)
-Hate the whole "she's dangerous. she's a destroyer, this is important. you don't know what she is...but I'll just kill myself before telling/warning you why" trope

 

[Discofan]

I wonder if the Prophets are involved... After all Sisko told Kasidy that he may be back... last year.

I was surprised that the borg drones were not all dead. I thought these were cadavers they were dealing with.

 

[The Rock]

I wonder if the Prophets are involved... After all Sisko told Kasidy that he may be back... last year.

I figured the Prophets only really concern themselves with things happening on or near Bajor.

 

[Gonzo]

That kinda makes sense - but I have a hard time believing that the Romulan hit squad would have volunteered to all die just to get Agnes in. Particularly the last one.

"Okay, kill me by shooting me in the back, and we're in the clear."

Of course, they could be mooks being duped by Oh, but still, it doesn't quite add up.

There is probably more layers to the situation than we are aware of.

Commodore Oh may not be as obvious as she appears to be to us, there is the Commodore as Clancy sees her, how we see her and then the truth could be something else entirely.

Any attack on the Chateau is either a calculated setup to achieve a certain outcome or a desperate act and I would have thought its a bit early for desperate acts.

Then again that is how the whole thing has felt to me since the first episode, a calculated setup but its too early to identify the intended outcome, quite frankly it smells distinctly Chanel 31.

 

[sttngfan1701d]

Re: Is the Enterprise D a battleship or dreadnought....the line gets murky since historically all battleships are dreadnoughts but not all dreadnoughts are "battleships" as we think of them today. Personally I think the Enterprise-D is pretty much the equivalent of a modern aircraft carrier, which is a floating city of a kind. The Enterprise-E I would call a battlecruiser.

 

[Gonzo]

I wonder if STO is canon. I love that game btw. Play it every day.

Nah its not, we shall see if Picard changes that at all, no doubt they gave themselves a 10 year gap between events on Picard and STO to give them some time without having to worry about it.

Never played the game myself.

 

[indianatrekker26]

Better than last week, though the writing still makes me cringe sometimes. I wish they could've gotten some of the TNG writers to do this, but of course they're doing The Orville. If last week was a 6, I'll give this a 7. But we're finally off and running.

Oh, and for a minute there I was like "No, do NOT kill the Romulan housekeepers! Aside from Picard they are literally the best thing about this show so you better not!!!"

I don't know. I'm not going to sit here and act enthusiastic. All I can say is that I still need to see where we're going with this before I judge it. I loathed Discovery. I don't loathe this. But I also don't love it. I'm simply.....curious. I just want to feel like I'm watching it for more than to see Picard again....and I'm waiting for the show to give me that reason.

I think im in the same boat. I'm somewhat interested in the story, but if this didnt have Sir Patrick Stewart in the starring role, basically my hero from when i was a kid, i probably wouldnt be watching.

 

[Discofan]

It's funny that they banned synthetics but not holograms. I mean we've seen holograms commandeer ships and foment attacks on "organics" and they depend on programs, just as the androids do. Not to mention that there are sectors in the Delta Quadrant where they are already banned...

 

[Timo]

In the past Star Trek reserved the term Heavy Cruiser for the biggest ships they could field

...Which is why they never ever used it on screen?

not only does it denote the superior tonnage of the vessel it also indicates its greater firepower, speed and marks it as a ship of the line ready for battle.

Well, technically the designation would specify a ship unfit for fighting in the line...

That is, a cruiser of any color is just an errand ship, the same thing that in the age of sail was called a frigate. Fit for young heroic captains in the far reaches of the known, but several steps down from the glorious main battlewagons. If Kirk is our Horatio Hornblower, then his Enterprise may be a heavy cruiser in the same sense that Horatio's American adversaries in the exotic art of frigate dueling were heavy frigates. And if Starfleet is the early navy of the United States, then it might be a poor man's navy that cannot afford anything bigger than the heavy frigates, and takes doctrinal pride in never fighting in the line. But we never learn that Starfleet would be a poor man's navy, nor that it would shirk away from pitched battles, or lack the heavy hardware for it. (And of course the Kelvinverse movies show plenty of such hardware...)

[/quote]Many of the earlier Enterprise ships are Heavy Cruisers whereas they called the Klingons heaviest ships Battle Cruisers but the terms are roughly equivalent.

The NCC-1701-nil is a Heavy Cruiser in some barely glimpsed graphics; the Klingons call her a Battle Cruiser before blowing her up. The other ships are nothing much, although the DS9 Tech Manual wants to call the Excelsior class (or at least the E-B variant) an Explorer.

So whatever one would wish to convey by saying that a character has piloted a Heavy Cruiser is unclear at best. Especially as piloting would not differ all that much, regardless of whether you sat on the appropriate chair of a Corvette or a Battleship.

I can understand why an organisation like Starfleet doesn't want to use terms like Destroyer and Battleship

...Yet they do nevertheless - that is, Starfleet operates Destroyers in DS9 "Sacrifice of Angels" at least. We never learn which of their ships those might be, though.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

It's funny that they banned synthetics but not holograms. I mean we've seen holograms commandeer ships and foment attacks on "organics" and they depend on programs, just as the androids do. Not to mention that there are sectors in the Delta Quadrant where they are already banned...

It's not as if they could really ban clever AI. Their society would shut down in an eyeblink!

Most holograms don't have brains of any sort. Perhaps those that do were banned or lobotomized? But the brains behind Moriarty and the VOY Doctor were the computers of a starship. Should the Federation ban starships? Or lobotomize them?

Banning the Synths was just a feel-good move, an attempt to show that the Leaders were Doing Something to keep People Safe. I doubt it has hindered the plans of those exploiting the Synths in the slightest. (For all we know, they benefit from the ban, and attacked Mars solely to prompt the ban.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Romulan_spy]

I really enjoyed this episode. I am really liking the new characters. They seem suitably eclectic. It was neat seeing a EMH again. I am definitely intrigued by the mystery. But I think my favorite part was probably the ending with Picard saying "engage!" and the seeing the ship warp out with TNG music playing. That was a very nice touch. And while I love the planet based scenes, they are very well executed and well acted, the show felt more "star trek" to me when we got a ship and when the ship warped out with the TNG music playing.

 

[indianatrekker26]

I really enjoyed this episode. I am really liking the new characters. They seem suitably eclectic. It was neat seeing a EMH again. I am definitely intrigued by the mystery. But I think my favorite part was probably the ending with Picard saying "engage!" and the seeing the ship warp out with TNG music playing. That was a very nice touch. And while I love the planet based scenes, they are very well executed and well acted, the show felt more "star trek" to me when we got a ship and when the ship warped out with the TNG music playing.

speaking of the EMH, was that the same actor who is playing Rios? They looked so similar.

 

[bookworm8571]

So the Romulans impeded the effort to save them... Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

A riddle, wrapped inside a mystery, inside an enigma.

It’s cultural. They assumed that the Federation rescue scheme was a plot to defeat the Empire and destroy their enemies. Picard was “the false door.” It will be interesting to see how much of what they believed about the Federation was right.

 

[Gonzo]

Re: Is the Enterprise D a battleship or dreadnought....the line gets murky since historically all battleships are dreadnoughts but not all dreadnoughts are "battleships" as we think of them today. Personally I think the Enterprise-D is pretty much the equivalent of a modern aircraft carrier, which is a floating city of a kind. The Enterprise-E I would call a battlecruiser.

The difference in the real world between a Battleship and a Battle Cruiser is purely down to size/tonnage, the idea being that a Battle Cruiser is essentially almost Battleship firepower mounted on a faster and lighter Cruiser platform with the downside being lighter armor to keep the weight down and the speed up.

Its the best example of the old adage "Outrun anything you cant outfight and outfight anything you cant outrun".

Same goes for the Pocket battleships of WW2 like the Graf Spee which was ideal as a faster escort for other larger ships and carriers but was vulnerable on its own, funnily enough the Defiant class is that idea taken to the extreme with the amount of firepower it has compared to the size and tonnage of the platform.

The term Dreadnought is a tricky term to use as its meaning isnt as fixed as the others are and could be used as an outsize variant of a Battleship that is more tanky than the rest or more heavily armed such as the Scimitar we saw in Nemesis.

Explorer is just a Battleship size/tonnage vessel that is kitted out for Diplomacy, Science and Families, the Enterprise D is a classic example of this.

The Enterprise E does still qualify as a Battleship due to its size and firepower even though its overall tonnage and volume isnt quite as large as the Enterprise D, it doesnt really qualify as an Explorer though.

 

[Romulan_spy]

speaking of the EMH, was that the same actor who is playing Rios? They looked so similar.

Yeah, it looked to be the same actor to me. If true, that would be interesting. Did Rios program his EMH to look like him?

 

[eschaton]

That was fine. Better than last week, but not as good as the premier:

We start off the episode with another flashback scene, this time the immediate aftermath of Picard's resignation when he's talking to Raffi. I thought this scene was completely unneeded and felt like padding. We already know what happened, and the present-day scenes let us see how his decisions hurt her. I suppose seeing her competent and collected contrasts with her present state, but it feels like a scene added to pad out two episodes into three - nothing less, and nothing more.

I hate most of the dialogue in the opening third between Raffi and Picard actually. A lot of Raffi's lines remind me of how Discovery tends to write Burnham's dialogue, in that they're this weird expository monologue which is not how real people talk - and in particular isn't necessarily how someone who is in recovery from being horribly hurt by someone in the past would talk. Maybe this is just part of Raffi's character, but it reminds me I'm watching a show, not two people talking. Which is a shame, because the emotional dynamic in the scenes is great, as we get to see two flawed people together onscreen - a rarity in Trek.

I don't mind any of the Borg cube scenes this time around. Hugh didn't really get to do much of anything this episode though but stand around and watch Soji work. It's interesting that they decided to have Hugh and Soji have an already existing relationship that was unknown to the viewer. I really don't know where they're going with the foreknowledge that Soji had about Ramda - probably the only big mystery that I'm genuinely intrigued by. It's probably a big deal that all the assimilated Romulans were failures, and the Borg cube itself failed after assimilating them. Seems to suggest that the Romulans have some sort of anti-Borg malware installed in their brains, and gives some credit to the "Romulans are synthetic to some degree" hypothesis people are bandying about.

Rios did not bother me, even though he's a cliche. He's one character who is acting like a normal person and not going into sudden expository monologues, which is more than I can say for Raffi or Jurati. I really hated that they just dropped the bit about his dead former captain in the dialogue with his Irish-accented navigational EH though. For some reason this show seems to like going really really fast when it comes to expository backstory, but really really slow when it comes to actual plot development.

I'm not sure yet that Jurati is the villain, but there's more going on here than is being let on.

Still love Picard's too ex-Tal Shiar housekeepers. I liked the little drop about the one they captured being a "stubborn northerner" like the husband, because they're introducing canonical racial differences due to geography.

Pretty sure the fake holo-mother of Soji is actually different than the fake holo-mother of Dajh.

So yeah, it felt more like a real episode than last week, which is why - despite the continued use of clunky exposition - I actually liked it somewhat more. I'm hoping now the table is (almost) set they'll be more development and less backstory.

 

[Jadeb]

Rios did not bother me, even though he's a cliche. He's one character who is acting like a normal person and not going into sudden expository monologues, which is more than I can say for Raffi or Jurati. I really hated that they just dropped the bit about his dead former captain in the dialogue with his Irish-accented navigational EH though. For some reason this show seems to like going really really fast when it comes to expository backstory, but really really slow when it comes to actual plot development.

His tough-guy introduction, with the metal sticking out of his shoulder, put me off him from the start. I wouldn't say that refusing to have your open wound closed and pulling your shirt over your bleeding shoulder is acting like a normal person. Then they end on the brain-splattering bit and I thought, "The writing is trying way too hard."

I had a similar reaction to Raffi's emotional infodump. Too much, too quick.

EDIT: And yeah, there was something Burnham-esque (or Discovery-esque) about how these characters were presented. Characters defined by their damage. Picard is damaged, but he gets to be more rounded, because he's a pre-existing character. I hope the others get there too.

 

[Gonzo]

...Which is why they never ever used it on screen?



Well, technically the designation would specify a ship unfit for fighting in the line...

That is, a cruiser of any color is just an errand ship, the same thing that in the age of sail was called a frigate. Fit for young heroic captains in the far reaches of the known, but several steps down from the glorious main battlewagons. If Kirk is our Horatio Hornblower, then his Enterprise may be a heavy cruiser in the same sense that Horatio's American adversaries in the exotic art of frigate dueling were heavy frigates. And if Starfleet is the early navy of the United States, then it might be a poor man's navy that cannot afford anything bigger than the heavy frigates, and takes doctrinal pride in never fighting in the line. But we never learn that Starfleet would be a poor man's navy, nor that it would shirk away from pitched battles, or lack the heavy hardware for it. (And of course the Kelvinverse movies show plenty of such hardware...)

Many of the earlier Enterprise ships are Heavy Cruisers whereas they called the Klingons heaviest ships Battle Cruisers but the terms are roughly equivalent.

The NCC-1701-nil is a Heavy Cruiser in some barely glimpsed graphics; the Klingons call her a Battle Cruiser before blowing her up. The other ships are nothing much, although the DS9 Tech Manual wants to call the Excelsior class (or at least the E-B variant) an Explorer.

So whatever one would wish to convey by saying that a character has piloted a Heavy Cruiser is unclear at best. Especially as piloting would not differ all that much, regardless of whether you sat on the appropriate chair of a Corvette or a Battleship.



...Yet they do nevertheless - that is, Starfleet operates Destroyers in DS9 "Sacrifice of Angels" at least. We never learn which of their ships those might be, though.

Timo Saloniemi[/QUOTE]
The Klingons used the term Battle Cruiser which for me was good enough to mark the 1701 as a Heavy Cruiser as the Klingons clearly considered it an equal to their own.

Going all the way back to the age of sail is tricky as the ship roles role and designations were so numerous compared to WW2 onward with Corvettes, Frigates and Clippers, the list just goes on and on hence why I kept it to WW2.

I dont really see the Enterprise B as an Explorer, instead I see it as the point where the designs started to go in that direction leading to the Ambassador class and then the Galaxy class, for me the Excelsior class is the pinnacle of Heavy Cruiser design which is one of the reasons it stayed in service for so long, it had just the right mix of speed, size, firepower and overall flexibility for its era.

Its mainly about bragging rights, the bigger the class of ship you have served on the more Kudos you get, with additional points scored if its name or Captain is famous.

I consider Destroyers in Star Trek to be stripped down bare bones mid size ships that can be used as a front line protecting the more expensive and time consuming ships to build behind them, not that much different from WW2 or today really and the idea of lines of Destroyers screening the rest of the fleet.

Essentially they are cannon fodder.

 

[gvn2fly]

I hate most of the dialogue in the opening third between Raffi and Picard actually.

Same here. The entire exchange just felt unnatural. I wasn't sure if it was the acting or the lines just weren't working.

 

[eschaton]

His tough-guy introduction, with the metal sticking out of his shoulder, put me off him from the start. I wouldn't say that refusing to have your open wound closed and pulling your shirt over your bleeding shoulder is acting like a normal person. Then they end on the brain-splattering bit and I thought, "The writing is trying way too hard."

At least it's showing, rather than telling. My problem with Raffi's dialogue this episode is she spent a lot of time telling us things when tone of voice, body language, and vague allusions would have been enough.

EDIT: And yeah, there was something Burnham-esque (or Discovery-esque) about how these characters were presented. Characters defined by their damage. Picard is damaged, but he gets to be more rounded, because he's a pre-existing character. I hope the others get there too.

I mean, I'm still enjoying it a lot more than Discovery, because I get the idea they have a plan and they're methodically working towards it - rather than just winging it. But it feels like something is still missing in the writer's room.