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Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x04 - "Watcher"

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7.

The worst of the first four episodes of this season, but still solidly entertaining with a minimum of gripes to keep me from finding it enjoyable from start to finish. Anticlimactic in too many respects but at least the set ups were solid.
 
The real Gabriel Bell probably never led a riot,
If you rewatch Past Tense, the future doesn't change until Gabriel Bell dies. It doesn't make logical sense (but very little time travel stories do), but that's how the episode frames it.

The Defiant was still in contact with Starfleet (Odo was even in mid-conversation) up until the moment Bell dies in the past, then suddenly the timeline changes.

So no, I do think in the original Bell did lead the riots.
 
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It's also about finding new ways to say these things as oppose to just having a twitter rant style of conversation.

I am beginning to see a generational difference in writers of most media; older ones write the way I am more used to (I am 43) and the younger ones write as you describe above. Almost all non-plot related dialogue in S4 of DSC seemed like it came from Twitter.
 
Yeah, some of the "funny" dialogue in CBS streaming Trek just comes off as cheesy and gratuitous, and I say this as somebody who uses awkward jokes at some of the most inappropriate moments. Some of it works and some just sounds like something you'd tell someone on Facebook to groans and displeased emojis.
 
In my head canon the bus punk behaved that way because he remembered the dude in the white hippie robes and headband knocking him unconscious back in 1986. He wasn't gonna risk that happening again. :lol:

It's amazing though how in 30 something years only 2 people have asked him to turn down his music. My theory is most of the time he is playing great music and people don't mind. The Animals, The Beatles and so forth. Then he plays this one song that nobody likes except him called "I Hate You" just twice in those 30 something years and just had the bad luck of doing it in a bus with visitors from the future who get annoyed by it.
 
Like all the time, if you take Whoopies remarks about bring the ancestor of most of the cast seriously. That unnamed Starfleet officer in the background? Guinan's son. The Bajor an freedom fighter? Her daughter. That sexy Cardassian tailor? Guinan's kid for sure
 
Is Laris really Romulan?

Maybe Romulans live longer than Vulcans?

Maybe she goes into hibernation later on, so that she's there in the future where she is supposed to be?

If she's an android, that totally fucks with season one.
 
We know in the core TL, "Gabriel Bel"l is actually Sisko. The real Gabriel Bell probably never led a riot, he was just some rando who saved Sisko - and would not have changed history. Thus the Bell Riots would already be butterflied away, and Sanctuary Districts would remain in place.
I do think the real Gabriel Bell originally led the riot. We know he was a heroic guy, as he got himself killed attempting to rescue Sisko & Bashir.

Like all the time, if you take Whoopies remarks about bring the ancestor of most of the cast seriously. That unnamed Starfleet officer in the background? Guinan's son. The Bajor an freedom fighter? Her daughter. That sexy Cardassian tailor? Guinan's kid for sure
Ah, didn't realize you were joking. :beer:
 
I am beginning to see a generational difference in writers of most media; older ones write the way I am more used to (I am 43) and the younger ones write as you describe above. Almost all non-plot related dialogue in S4 of DSC seemed like it came from Twitter.

It's also kind of a reflection I think in how it's actually hard to do good social commentary today. I mean what is social media if not one ongoing never ending outlet of social commentary. Usually bad social commentary because most people don't have interesting things to say or do have something interesting to say but it's already been said a million times. It's a particular challenge I would say that writers of old didn't have to face.
 
I think I saw something to this effect upthread but something that looms large over all of this is the fact that as bad as things are in 2024, and as much as the characters are talking about how "it gets better we promise!" there's a long and terrible nuclear apocalypse that happens first...
 
Yeah, within 29 years there are mushroom clouds over major world cities. It does get better but humanity has to wait at least 39 years for the upswing to commence.
 
It's also kind of a reflection I think in how it's actually hard to do good social commentary today. I mean what is social media if not one ongoing never ending outlet of social commentary. Usually bad social commentary because most people don't have interesting things to say or do have something interesting to say but it's already been said a million times. It's a particular challenge I would say that writers of old didn't have to face.

Good point! Good and effective social commentary is a tough needle to thread and probably always has been, but now we are in a culture where EVERYONE can do social commentary in real time and in small and frequent bursts. Younger writers have learned how to communicate and express thoughts in very different ways than those of us who are middle aged and older.
 
Baby Boomers and Gen X writers often write social commentary in paragraphs and in prose form. Millenials often use 140 characters or less and it sometimes works, but not always.
 
O'Brien and Kira, having no idea how to time travel, went looking for Sisko in the 20th century as well as the 21st century, so from way back they jumped forward through the events of Picard, into the Bell Riots.
 
There's a theory that Kira and O'Brien witnessed the timeline that leads to the Confederation when they refer to 2048 being so bad that even Earth hadn't been through that big a rough patch, making one wonder how bad that 2048 must have been to be worse than a nuclear war that killed 600 million people.
 
Predictions:

  • Harry Kim's ancestor shows up, played by Garrett Wang. 45-year-old ensign in the United States Navy.
  • A communications beep heard multiple times in three episodes of The Original Series' second season turns out to be the key to finding the Watcher, but Picard must forge an uneasy alliance with the Sheliak in order to recreate the beep.
  • Nagilum appears, admitting to a crestfallen Kes that it was he who sent the DMA into the 32nd-century Milky Way, not Species 10-C.
  • On the run from the Borg Queen, Agnes takes too many left turns and ends up attending a Star Trek Convention hosted by True Fans who announce Star Trek: Picard's cancelation upon her arrival. Q saves her from their pitchforks but claims he'll exact another "toll" on Jean-Luc in exchange for her safety.
  • The toll requires rescuing a time-traveling Brenna O'Dell from "Up the Long Ladder," who reveals Trip Tucker is still alive and replaces Rios with a resurrected Gene Roddenberry.
  • Alex Kurtzman is fired.

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