Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x09 - "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1"
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I think that is more or less the point. The message is written in such a way that the person who encounters it can interpret it in many ways. The vision is basically filtered through people's prejudices. We could end up with something more like The Gambit, where the message was about love and unity, not ultimate power.
I'm not suprised Brent Spiner was playing another Soong character on the planet of Androids. I hope Narek will be killed off in part 2 of the season finale.It was interesting to see Isa Briones playing the Sutra/Soji characters in the same episode.I liked to see Seven of nine Helping Picard out.I'm interested how the second part will warp up this season.
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I probably rated it too high (8).
Things I liked:
The Admonition twist. This makes more sense now. The T'Kon leaving it made no sense.
Also, this is what needs to be destroyed. It makes the organics paranoid and it allows the synthetics to be destroyers.
Another cool possibility would be if the Admonition is kind of a trick. The Super Synths show up and save their younger kin, but admonish them for being bloodthirsty & take them away. The fate of the organics depends on how they act: peacefully or warlike.
Did not really like:
Anything else. It was not bad, per se. Just not good. The Cube stuff felt rushed. Picard's "I'm dying" speech fell flat for me, though Hurd did well to try and save it in a subsequent scene.
Another son of Soong, secreted away? Why didn't these digital dolts build more than one ship? Is that logical?
Soji's speech on life/death, killing one to save others, which is kind of the theme of the episode (for Jurati, for Soji, for Soong, for evil Soji), fell kind of flat for me.
I HOPE Jurati just knew which way the wind was blowing and will work to get Picard free. Otherwise, she has now gone from murdering her lover because of a "danger synths!" mind meld to helping the synths murder all organic life because she always wanted to create a synths? WTF? Somebody shoot her.
Again, because of the serial nature, you can never tell how good an episode is when it is done. The more I think about it, the less I like it.
TOS = TNG > DS9 > VOY > ENT > PIC > DISCO.
Things I liked:
The Admonition twist. This makes more sense now. The T'Kon leaving it made no sense.
Also, this is what needs to be destroyed. It makes the organics paranoid and it allows the synthetics to be destroyers.
Another cool possibility would be if the Admonition is kind of a trick. The Super Synths show up and save their younger kin, but admonish them for being bloodthirsty & take them away. The fate of the organics depends on how they act: peacefully or warlike.
Did not really like:
Anything else. It was not bad, per se. Just not good. The Cube stuff felt rushed. Picard's "I'm dying" speech fell flat for me, though Hurd did well to try and save it in a subsequent scene.
Another son of Soong, secreted away? Why didn't these digital dolts build more than one ship? Is that logical?
Soji's speech on life/death, killing one to save others, which is kind of the theme of the episode (for Jurati, for Soji, for Soong, for evil Soji), fell kind of flat for me.
I HOPE Jurati just knew which way the wind was blowing and will work to get Picard free. Otherwise, she has now gone from murdering her lover because of a "danger synths!" mind meld to helping the synths murder all organic life because she always wanted to create a synths? WTF? Somebody shoot her.
Again, because of the serial nature, you can never tell how good an episode is when it is done. The more I think about it, the less I like it.
TOS = TNG > DS9 > VOY > ENT > PIC > DISCO.
And assuming Soong was creating the body to look like him...maybe Brent Spiner wasn't kidding when he said he was interested in the role of Picard...
Well, I was curious and went back and transcribed the Admonition audio. Here it is, with editorial notes. I will spoiler code it, though, since it may be a bit too much for A.M. on Thursday.
{Voice of Sutra} Life begins. The dance of division and replication. Imperfect. Finite. Organic life evolves, yearns for perfection. That yearning leads to synthetic life. {ed. note, an image of a synthetic heart is shown at this point} But organics perceive this perfection as a threat. When they realize their creations do not age or become sick or die they will seek to destroy them {images of violence begin} and in so doing, destroy themselves. {Mars attack shown at this point} Beyond the boundaries of time {!} and space, we stand, an alliance of synthetic life. {space images shown} Watching you. Waiting for your signal. Summon us, and we will come. {A transmission tower is shown. It looks like the one we see assembling itself in the preview for the next episode.} You will have our protection. {Visuals of the Romulans at Narissa's Admonishment are shown, which is odd since Sutra is supposed to be experiencing a memory of the content of the Admonishment.} Your evolution will be their extinction. {Showing bombardment of a planet that is vaguely Mars-like, but with small bodies of water and some clouds - Vulcan? - the planet explodes.}
Frame by frame, this is interesting. The production department had to build this scene, and I wonder what they were intending. When the narrator - Sutra's voice, but Oh's vision - is speaking, we consistently get images that logically match the subject being discussed, but the source of the images does not appear to be consistent. When mentioning that organics will destroy themselves, we see an image of the relatively recent Mars attack orchestrated by Oh. When speaking of summoning the synthetic alliance, an image appears that is clearly in the actual future - a transmission tower that we see being assembled in the preview for the next episode. This probably represents the instructions for contacting the Synthetic Alliance that are supposed to be encoded in the message. Then when "protection" is mentioned, we see the Admonishment that Oh witnessed as a spectator - the one experience by Narissa and Ramdha. Finally we see images of planetary destruction on a large scale. These images match those shown in episode 8 when the Admonition was first shown. So one important question is whether the images are from the message itself or supplied by the receiver of the message - if so, the receiver is Oh since the images are the same as we (the viewer) saw in Episode 8. If the images are wholly from the message itself, then the images of the planetary destruction are likely to be the form of the "protection" the synth alliance will provide. And at least some of the imagery - the transmission tower for certain - is from the message itself. However, neither the images of the Mars attack nor the images of the Admonition that Oh witnessed could have been supplied by the message sender, which implies these images are at least partly Oh's interpretation. Which mean that the form of the "protection" could be the product of Romulan paranoia. So IMO the promise that, "You will have our protection," could still mean refuge.
Frame by frame, this is interesting. The production department had to build this scene, and I wonder what they were intending. When the narrator - Sutra's voice, but Oh's vision - is speaking, we consistently get images that logically match the subject being discussed, but the source of the images does not appear to be consistent. When mentioning that organics will destroy themselves, we see an image of the relatively recent Mars attack orchestrated by Oh. When speaking of summoning the synthetic alliance, an image appears that is clearly in the actual future - a transmission tower that we see being assembled in the preview for the next episode. This probably represents the instructions for contacting the Synthetic Alliance that are supposed to be encoded in the message. Then when "protection" is mentioned, we see the Admonishment that Oh witnessed as a spectator - the one experience by Narissa and Ramdha. Finally we see images of planetary destruction on a large scale. These images match those shown in episode 8 when the Admonition was first shown. So one important question is whether the images are from the message itself or supplied by the receiver of the message - if so, the receiver is Oh since the images are the same as we (the viewer) saw in Episode 8. If the images are wholly from the message itself, then the images of the planetary destruction are likely to be the form of the "protection" the synth alliance will provide. And at least some of the imagery - the transmission tower for certain - is from the message itself. However, neither the images of the Mars attack nor the images of the Admonition that Oh witnessed could have been supplied by the message sender, which implies these images are at least partly Oh's interpretation. Which mean that the form of the "protection" could be the product of Romulan paranoia. So IMO the promise that, "You will have our protection," could still mean refuge.
Also, on the subject of whether Soong is Lore...well, his name is A.I. Soong.
I'm starting to think the Admonition is just another test of humanity - cue Q!
OK, not really, but it might be more fun.
A.I. Soong?!
OK, not really, but it might be more fun.
A.I. Soong?!
I agree. Much like the Sith Fleet in Rise of Skywalker, the numbers made no sense and are purely there to make a 'neat' visual.
Woke up almost at the crack of 12:30. What did I miss out on? The usual?
A 9 from me. Great stuff, only a little underwhelming, but it is only a setup for the finale.
And Sutra, more than likely she has Lore in her DNA.
And Sutra, more than likely she has Lore in her DNA.
Yup. Kurtzman is ruining Trek again.
Also, this episode was the best/worst/biggest disappointment ever.
They laid on "Picard is going to die" a little thick. So either that's not to going to happen... or it is.
I can't really tell. I'm also still somehow really tired. How the Hell do you sleep eight hours and still feel tired? 'night everyone. Now I'll doze off for what I'll only intend to be for a little while and next thing I'll know, it'll be something stupid like 5:00.
I can't really tell. I'm also still somehow really tired. How the Hell do you sleep eight hours and still feel tired? 'night everyone. Now I'll doze off for what I'll only intend to be for a little while and next thing I'll know, it'll be something stupid like 5:00.
Sutra is a walking polygraph, we get it. I bet you twelve bars of gold pressed latinum that Dr. Agnes Jurati exposes Sutra's skin for the fool's gold it is...
Yeah, it's right there in the name. I can't believe I didn't see myself
Sounds like interrupted sleep.
She just misses her twin, Kama.
It was never said that the Tkon were biological beings.
Chabon confirmed that they were the builders of the admonition. Is there anything in the episode that proves that they weren't?
Now after thinking a bit more about it, it actually makes a lot of sense imo. The only thing that we saw of them in "The Last Outpost" was the portal, which could be either a synth or a hologram.
Maybe they weren't eradicated but simply left the places where they lived behind, like Babylon 5's First Ones...
And Starfleet could only get 39 ships to fight the Borg in BOBW, and then had fleets of hundred of ships just 6-7 years later.
Battles were really small-scale in Star Trek until "Way of the Warrior." And even in that episode, the Starfleet rescue fleet coming to DS9 at the end was like 12 ships.
And as someone noted earlier, they had advanced warning of the supernova, so they should have easily been able to move all their ships away. Also, they probably built at least some ships to help in the evac (either before or after the Starleet rescue fleet was destroyed). Based on all that, they would likely have more ships now than they did before the supernova.
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