According to Chabon, there is no empire. The empire fragmented into successor states, with the Romulan Free State being the largest and strongest, because of the support of the Tal Shiar.
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18134558401031871/
The fact that I have to read Chabon's Instagram account to get some sense of the world that this series takes place is indicative of how badly the world building has been for the series.
I'm sorry, but the presence of other Romulan states is interesting texture, but it's not important info to the story being told. Not at all.
Like, I would love to know who the Presidents of the United Federation of Planets have been for the past 30 years. Last we saw was Jaresh-Inyo in 2372. DS9 Season Seven established his term had ended, but we never found out which Federation President led the UFP through the Dominion War, which Federation President got the synth ban passed, or whether that Federation President is still in office. These would be lovely details.
They are absolutey not important to the story in PIC. And neither is the detail about the Romulan Free State being just one of several post-supernova Romulan states.
The whole Maddox thing isn't making sense to me right now and just raises more questions that will never be answered. Why did he leave? When his lab was destroyed why didn't he just go back to the planet instead of going to Free Cloud? Did the Romulans find out about Dahj and Soji, and the fact that there were more synthetics, from that destroyed lab? Why did he send Soji to the cube? Why did he have her (and Dahj's) memories wiped?
The answers to several of these questions to me are already implied by what we've seen onscreen. I'm sure several answers will also come in the next question.
Seriously, this complaint is not about unanswered questions; this complaint is about you wanting answers spelled out for you in a giant infodump as though that's "good writing."
How did OH find out about the synthetics that Rios' ship encountered in the past?
The episode explicitly established that Rios's C.O. had reported contact with Beautiful Flower and Jana, and that Oh was the officer in Starfleet Security who received his report and then ordered Flower's and Jana's murders.
Seriously, pay attention to the text.
Why did Dahj have a vision of Picard's face? Was she programmed to go to him if she was in trouble?
This is a prime example of a question that was already answered in "Remembrance" but you wanting it explicitly spelled out in an infodump. Yes, Dahj was programmed to go to Picard if she was in trouble, because whoever created her (later revealed to be Maddox) trusted Picard to protect her.
The Romulans and their fate have been a huge part of this show, and the info Chabon gave helps my inner world-building,
It helps my inner world-building, too, but it's not actually relevant to the story being told. We already
have all the info we need: We know from what we have seen onscreen that the Romulans are scattered and disunited ("Absolute Candor"); we know that the Romulan Free State is the major successor government and that the Tal Shiar is embedded within the RFS ("Maps and Legends"); we know the RFS is more open than the Star Empire was by its willingness to allow Federation scientists and doctors aboard the Artifact instead of just claiming the cube for themselves, but we also know that engages in authoritarianism itself (the Trill doctor complaining about her visa being held up for no reason) and that the Tal Shiar still has carte blanche to do what it wants ("Maps and Legends," "The Impossible Box"); we know the Zhat Vash have been manipulating Romulan society for centuries due to their mis-understanding of the Admonition ("Maps and Legends," "Broken Pieces," "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part I"); we know that the Tal Shiar has infiltrated Starfleet itself ("Maps and Legends"); etc.
Like, seriously -- what part of the story didn't make sense just because you didn't hear about the existence of the Romulan People's Liberation Front and the Romulan Liberation People's Movements over in Sector 220-E?
That seems like crappy writing to me, or at least him using the format badly. The individual "fragments" of your television story shouldn't confuse your audience before they've seen the entire thing.
He was talking about
the mechanics of Instagram Story posts, not the story he wrote for television.
Jesus, people.
What he meant was that the mechanics of Instagram Stories are such that only he can see the message another Instagram user sent him and he is unable to share most of that message when posting his own response as an Instagram Story. That's why he then spent the next several sentences attempting to summarize the message that had been sent to him for the benefit of third party readers.
But what does the artifact have to do with the synth ban? I guess on the borg cube to try to get information from Romulans?
Seems pretty obvious to me that after Beautiful Flower and Jana were murdered by a Starfleet captain, Maddox suspected that there was a conspiracy within Starfleet linked to the attack on Mars and to the Romulan rescue fleet. To this end he sought to place Soji aboard the Artifact and Dahj in Daystrom, to try to figure out where the conspiracy was coming from and who was behind it.
I got this from the text of the episodes themselves.
Why did Maddox care about the truth of the synth ban
Are you seriously asking why a man who dedicated his entire life to studying and replicating synthetic lifeforms might want to know the truth about the ban?
or how did he come to suspect Romulans and Starfleet were part of the Mars attack (Seems to be just Oh - How did Maddox (and Raffi) come to suspect this?
You really need it spelled out for you that the guy who created the Martian synths and therefore knows how their brains work would suspect someone else's involvement when they go crazy and kill people?
I'm just not buying that almost 10 years after the mars attack he put an android on a borg cube and on earth to find the truth about the ban because there isn't any setup or explanation for it.
There's plenty of setup. You're just not paying attention.
What was he going to do if the twins found out Starfleet and Romulans were working together? Report it to the public?
Probably! That would be the most effective way of undermining Tal Shiar infiltration of Starfleet.
You also said in your post that "He didn't return to Coppelia for fear of leading enemies there, perhaps." Your perhaps at the end proves my point. The show didn't explain it and it doesn't make sense.
It makes perfect sense, and it was explicitly stated in the show that Maddox didn't want to lead anyone to Coppelia.
Was anyone surprised that Sutra turned out to be evil? She just gave out to me such an evil villain vibe from the moment she first appeared on screen that I was absolutely sure that she isn't nice like Data.
To me, she gave off more of a "sci-fi pacifist enlightened being" vibe at the start.
And I don't think she's evil. Look at things from her perspective: The first time they tried to make contact with organics, her twin sister was brutally murdered by a Starfleet captain. The next time she comes into contact with organics, they show up, tell her that her father (Maddox) is dead and one of her other sisters is murdered; there's a fleet of organics coming to exterminate them all; and the one guy who's promising to try to protect them, is the dude the Federation government pissed all over when they betrayed the Romulans.
From Sutra's perspective, it's not unreasonable to think of all organics as basically violent creatures or as potential threats, and it's understandable that she might be so messed up from the violence inflicted upon her family as to develop a "screw them all" attitude. That doesn't make her
good or
acceptable, but I don't think she's intrinsically evil. She's someone who is terrified -- and terrified people often make horrible decisions they later regret.
Sutra is basically the female Lore.
No. Lore was a rabid dog; Sutra is a cornered animal. They may both lash out at you, but they lash out for different reasons.
And about Hugh what was Picard meaning with “to turn such a gentle soul to violence”?
Hugh was going to commit an act of mass violence against the Tal Shiar forces aboard the Artifact and probably against the RFS fleet when he seized control of the cube. I think his actions would have been justified, but they were also clearly regrettable. Picard was not judging him; he was sad that the universe had so abused a gentle soul like Hugh as to oblige him to turn to violence. And you are making way too big a deal of this one line. It's absurd and it's based on deliberately obtuse refusals to interpret the line in context.
