I have to admit that when the caption came up identifying Raffi Musiker’s home in the third episode of Star Trek: Picard as Vasquez Rocks, I squeed, loudly. I mean, it obviously was shot at the iconic rocks that have been used in pretty much every single Trek production at some point or other, but it’s always been to represent an alien landscape of some sort. For the first time, it’s been used as itself, and to have the caption was just delightful.
Yes, it’s a dumb, nerdy pleasure, but when you’ve got a 54-year-old franchise, dumb, nerdy pleasures are part of the fun.
I find “The End is the Beginning” to be a particularly apropos title, because truly, the end of this episode feels like it should’ve been the end of the first episode. The leisurely storytelling model of modern television instead has it at the end of the third, but it’s not like it’s a surprise that Picard’s going to wind up in charge of a ship, so why wait so long to get there?
Part of the reason is that there’s yet still more exposition to provide, and this time a lot of it relates to the Romulans and the Borg.
The first evidence of the Borg actually goes back to the first appearance of the Romulans on The Next Generation in its first-season finale, “The Neutral Zone,” though the 1988 writer’s strike messed with the plans to introduce the cyborgs. Instead, the formal introduction of the Borg in the second-season’s “Q Who” had only a passing reference to the notion that the Borg were likely responsible for damaging the outposts along the Neutral Zone in that prior episode.
But the link between the Borg and the Romulans has been there from jump, if anyone wanted to mess with it, and apparently the show-runners of Picard do, because the dead Borg Cube that’s being used by a bunch of Romulans for research isn’t just that. There is a whole ward full of Romulans who used to be Borg but unlike, say, Hugh (from “I, Borg,” who seems to be helping run things here) or Seven of Nine or Icheb or the other ex-Borg from later seasons of Voyager (the former of whom is supposed to be appearing at some point this season), they are all somewhat binky-bonkers, cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my-old-man’s-a-mushroom, etc.
Buy the Book
Network Effect
It is good to see the wonderful Jonathan delArco again as Hugh, though he’s not really introduced as such, and is more of an Easter egg, as nothing is done to relate him back to the TNG episode he debuted in (one wishes that the “previously on” had taken a page from Discovery’s “If Memory Serves” and showed clips from “I, Borg” and “Descent Part 2” to establish who Hugh is, but oh well).
Just like her twin sister, Soji Asha finds herself discovering things about herself she knew nothing about. While questioning one of the Romulans—who was a philosopher before she was assimilated—she finds herself asking questions about things she thought she had no knowledge of, including the specifics of how this Cube came to be deactivated after attacking a Romulan ship. (We also get some interesting takes on Romulan mythology, including that this Romulan at least dislikes that particular word, thinking that “news” is more appropriate than “mythology,” an interesting anthropological take.) And then when Soji talks to her mother, it’s a very strange conversation, one which literally puts Soji to sleep, and when she wakes up, she seems to have no memory of the conversation. As with Dahj’s talk with the same mother, one wonders if said mother is even real, or an AI construct designed to keep the twin androids ignorant. (But also to help, since the mother sent Dahj to Picard in the first place.)
Once again, Picard makes use of parallel scenes, jumping back and forth from one to the other, by way of leavening the endless exposition, though in this case it doesn’t have the time confusion of the scenes last week, going back and forth between Picard, Zhaban, and Laris interrogating the Tal Shiar operative who attacked Château Picard and Soji questioning the Romulan. In both cases, we get a lot more questions, but also in both cases, Soji and Dahj are referred to jointly as “the destroyer.”
What that actually means, we don’t know yet, but it’s fun to see Zhaban and Laris in action. (We also find out that Romulans with ridged foreheads are “northerners,” which explains why we’ve seen Romulans of both types over the decades, an amusing retcon.) Picard himself is once again mostly hiding under a table, as his one attempt to get physical with the Tal Shiar attack team goes poorly for him (though he does get some shots off with a phaser).
It isn’t just physicality that Picard has lost with age. The episode opens with a flashback to shortly after the Mars attack that was dramatized in both “Children of Mars” and “Maps and Legends,” and we find out that Musiker—who is played with superlative complexity by Michelle Hurd—was Admiral Picard’s aide, a brilliant strategist. However, when Starfleet decided to abandon the Romulan relief efforts in the wake of the Mars attack, Picard threatened to resign if they went through with it—and Starfleet called his bluff.
Picard’s response to their actually accepting his resignation—which he did not expect—was to go back to the life that he rejected as a child. As established in “Family” (as well as “Tapestry“), Picard rejected the life of a vintner that was the family business, and instead went to the stars. When the stars were taken away from him, he went back to the vineyard, but his conversation with Laris on the subject makes it clear that it isn’t taking. He doesn’t have the same connection to the creation of wine that his father and his brother had, and leaving right when harvest is starting pretty much proves it.
But his resignation had other consequences. Musiker lost her security clearance when Picard resigned, and while it’s not clear what the road was from that to living alone in Vasquez Rocks tending a garden and vaping, it’s obvious that Picard’s leaving Starfleet destroyed Musiker’s career.
The vaping is problematic, as is the cigar-smoking of Cristóbal Rios, played with tired rakishness by Santiago Cabrera. (Cabrera is much more fun as the various Emergency Holograms that service his ship than he is as the fourth-rate Han Solo that is all Rios seems to be so far. I particularly love the Emergency Navigational Hologram fangoobering Picard.) Prior to this, the only smoking we ever saw on Star Trek was in time-travel episodes or outside the Federation. Gene Roddenberry, in fact, specifically rejected NBC’s request to have characters smoking to satisfy the sponsors. Seeing Musiker vape and Rios puffing a cigar looks completely incongruous.
Less problematic is the obvious class differences, something rarely seen in even contemporary fiction, much less science fiction. It’s easy for Picard to resign Starfleet because he has a big family château to go back to. Musiker had no such fallback position. The Federation is supposed to be a utopia, but while you can theoretically do whatever you want, what if what you’re best at is taken away from you? It doesn’t help that Picard himself obviously cut himself off from everyone, as he didn’t even stay in touch with Musiker until he needed her for this mission. (Ever the admiral’s aide, Musiker still provides him with Rios.)
The conspiracy within Starfleet is still going strong. Commodore Oh visits Dr. Jurati to find out why Picard talked to her and Jurati, thinking nothing was amiss, told her. Not coincidentally, the Tal Shiar strike team showed up right after that. Jurati shows up at the château also, arriving just in time to kill one of the attackers, an action that shakes her to her core. She came along because she wants to join Frodo—er, that is, Picard on his quest. She’s the leading expert on synths, and he can use her expertise, and while it’s not mentioned, she probably also wants to find Bruce Maddox, since he was her mentor.
There’s been a lot of exposition, a lot of establishment of things, and a lot of questions being asked in these three episodes, but rather little forward motion, and since the season is only going to have ten episodes, they really need to get a move on. What’s the connection between the Borg and the Romulans? How did Musiker fall so far? (It’s likely that it has something to do with the fact that she said she had proof that the Tal Shiar had infiltrated Starfleet, and since we know that the Tal Shiar has in fact infiltrated Starfleet, that Oh had something to do with her fall from grace.) What is Oh’s (and Rizzo’s and Narek’s) endgame? Will Brian Brophy actually show up as Maddox, reprising his role from “The Measure of a Man“?
Let’s hope that the action starts next week. We’ve had enough set up. Time for some answers.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is also rewatching Star Trek: Voyager for this site. He’ll be reviewing each episode of Picard on Fridays throughout the first season. Look also for his rewatches of Star Trek The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, as well as his reviews of each episode of Star Trek: Discovery and Short Treks.
Uh, yeah, Keith, I’m pretty sure Musiker wasn’t vaping. She cut a piece off a plant (Snake Leaf she called it), put it in a glass pipe and smoked it. She was gettin’ high.
There is a whole ward full of Romulans who used to be Borg…
The sense I get is that while the “ex-B’s” we’ve seen who came out damaged but recovered, like Hugh or Seven/Annika, were individual Borg who were themselves cut off from the Collective, leading to their individuality reasserting, these Romulans were part of an entire Cube that got lost (the “submatrix collapse” that gets referred to), leading to all of those Borg going ’round the bend together as they were isolated from the greater Collective but not each other.
This is, I think, consistent with Icheb and his band of mini-Borg, who were the only survivors of a similar…ahem…colony collapse disorder (probably making it through because they were young and a bit more mentally resilient).
one wonders if said mother is even real, or an AI construct designed to keep the twin androids ignorant
I mean, I assumed exactly that after Dahj’s conversation with her in episode 1, where “Mom” knew that Dahj had already been to see Picard despite Dahj not saying so (“you told me…you must have, how else would I have known?”), and literally glitched for a moment in the process.
We also find out that Romulans with ridged foreheads are “northerners,” which explains why we’ve seen Romulans of both types over the decades, an amusing retcon.
And also, I think, a reference to Gene Roddenberry’s joke that the difference between TOS Klingons and movies/TNG/beyond Klingons was Northern Klingons versus Southern, before Enterprise came up with a different explanation.
I agree with you that I want to see some forward momentum, and that really, this was a three-part series premiere…but I did like it.
I want to see Maddox so Melinda Snodgrass gets a character payment. :-)
— Michael A. Burstein
mabfan@3: I have been assuming that a reluctance to pay René Echevarria is why we haven’t heard the name “Lal.” Though we have heard Maddox’s name, so it’s not like they’re completely refusing to name old names. (And I don’t know the finer points of how residuals work for a syndicated, open-to-slush-scripts show like TNG was.)
scifantasy: residuals are exactly the same for everyone. The WGA makes sure of that.
—-Keith R.A. DeCandido
Krad@5: Good point, I didn’t consider that. So is Snodgrass already getting residuals from Maddox being name-checked? (Was she for “Data’s Day,” where Data writes Bruce a letter?)
Have we identified the Elf with a sword yet?
pricnessroxana@7: He will show up next week, judging by previews.
About time.
EMH: The Emergency Mom Hologram.
(Also, I too squee-ed with the Vasquez Rocks caption.) {Jonathan}
It’s worth noting that they are under absolutely ZERO obligation to tie all of this up in S1, given that S2 is committed. They may resolve some, if not all of it, leaving a cliffhanger in play…
@1 worth noting that in The Ready Room interview, Michelle Hurd specifically mentions drug addiction when taking about her character. So yeah, she’s totally getting high.
One thing I really appreciate about this series so far is how Picard’s years as the captain of the Enterprise is clearly only part of his career, not his entire career. It always seemed exagerated to me how in the TOS movies Kirk was only ever the captain of the Enterprise, like he had formed no other bonds during his time in Starfleet.
Having the Stargazer’s former medical officer be Picard’s physician was a nice touch, and in this last episode we saw that Musiker had also forged a real bond with him – her calling him “JL” was a nice touch.
First-world problems… I subscribed to CBSAA last week, so I was finally able to see an episode on the day of release, and since this thread didn’t exist yet and the TrekBBS review threads are too busy to keep up with, I posted my review on the smaller Ex Isle Forum that I’ve belonged to for ages, with the expectation that I’d copy and paste my thoughts here later on. But this morning I’m suddenly getting a message that Ex Isle’s domain has expired. So now I have to try to remember what I thought.
At least I can repost this much from Facebook: It seems to me like Raffi’s hardship is not due to financial matters as much as her discredited reputation and outcast status (and drug use), and that it’s as much by choice as anything else.
After all, Vasquez Rocks is a county park and a tourist attraction, yet she was able to build her house right in the middle of its most heavily trafficked public area, right under the famous cliff. Could a poor person today get away with that? (Having Vasquez Rocks play itself is cute and made me laugh out loud, but it’s deeply implausible in this context given what a landmark it is.)
It bugs me that Hugh said these Romulans, the crew of a single ship, were the only Romulans ever assimilated, which contradicts the “Neutral Zone” backstory that Keith alluded to, not to mention the appearance of a Romulan Borg drone in at least one Voyager episode. Sure, he said “as far as I know,” but presumably he’s been interacting with the Federation and Romulans for some time, probably years, and has had plenty of time to learn about those two powers’ history with the Borg.
Also, a common problem with serialized TV rears its head: This episode picks up immediately after the last one and seems to span not much more than a day, yet Narissa/Rizzo (Peyton List) has managed to travel all the way from Earth to the Artifact and get cosmetic surgery to restore her Romulan physiognomy in that brief time. Well, we’ve seen equally swift plastic surgery in Trek, but I’m hoping the show will mention at some point that there are faster stardrives in use in this era — perhaps even VGR’s quantum slipstream drive, which Starfleet has been using to a limited extent since c. 2380 in the novel continuity.
Also, I could’ve done without the brother-sister flirting between Narek and Narissa. This show is trying a little too hard to take advantage of its TV-MA rating — F-bombs, graphic violence, smoking, drug use, now even implied incest. It’s a little too self-conscious.
I’m surprised that none of the reviews I’ve read express any skepticism about Dr. Jurati’s story or her motives for wanting to come on the mission. I mean, we see her meet Commodore Oh, we don’t hear the ensuing conversation, and the next time we see her she’s all “Oopsie, harmless li’l ol’ me accidentally killed a seasoned assassin somehow, I feel terrible about that, now please integrate me fully into your covert mission because I’m all doe-eyed and sweet, ‘kay?” I’m hoping it’ll turn out that Picard caught on right away and brought her along to keep a close eye on her.
This is the problem with serial TV. Due to the need to keep weekly surprises coming while telling a single season-long story, such stories tend to be disproportionately driven by conspiracies and secret agendas, which means we’ve come to expect secret agendas and shocking twists so that we recognize all the tricks. So maybe it’s time for TV to go back to a time when only some shows and storylines were serialized so that we had more variety.
Watching this episode, and seeing commentary on this episode and squaring it with the far future that Discovery is alluding to, is Picard showing the Federation at the beginning of a slow decline?
@15/Kyle Anderson: The future period in question in Discovery is 789 years later than Picard. I don’t buy that a single decline would take that long — surely a civilization would go through many cycles of decline and recovery over nearly 8 centuries.
Besides, we know from Voyager: “Future’s End” and “Relativity” that Starfleet still exists in the 29th century in a fairly recognizable form, though with kind of a fascist approach to enforcing temporal integrity. Whereas a moderately more benign version of the Federation still appears to exist in the 31st century, Agent Daniels’s time, which is roughly a century or so before the DSC future setting. Although I suppose those are not necessarily all the same future.
And we now know that Daniels will survive to meet Discovery when she arrives.
A version of him, anyway. Though VGR: “Relativity” established that a person’s temporal variants could be reintegrated with 29th-century technology, and I established in my Department of Temporal Investigations prose series that temporal agents from Daniels’s time could integrate with their own variants in the same way. (Though really, it was Spock who invented the basic technique in “Tomorrow is Yesterday.”)
Just to nitpick, we saw Iman smoking a cigar in the sixth movie, although that was clearly meant to indicate that she was a shady character who was not to be trusted. :)
I loved seeing Hugh! DelArco’s performance combined with some great makeup to create an amazing stage presence. Every time he spoke, I thought “This guy has seen some stuff.”
The Romulan cultural tidbits were great, too. Trek is always telling us that Romulans are secretive, but this series is actually showing it, at all levels. The story about traditional Romulan homes having false front doors is such a well-thought-out detail.
I was very amused that Raffi was living in a trailer outside Los Angeles, just like William Shatner in the 70s.
And hey, maybe Picard doesn’t want a position running a vinyard at a château in France, but… is that position open now? I volunteer as tribute!
One major problem: are we just abandoning trekonomics? There was a lot of talk about how Raffi is poor, and hiring a ship is expensive. I thought we didn’t have money in the future, and we worked to better ourselves and humanity?
I’m enjoying this series quite a bit, more than I ever liked Discovery.
I think that Rios is definitely hot; and his various holograms are a lot of fun.
I did find it rather coincidental that Dr. Jurati is so gung-ho to join up with Picard and his Merrie Band of Misfits right after Commodore Oh questioned her. I think she’s a plant, though her enthusiasm about meeting Dahj’s twin might be valid. Or Commodore Oh could have put a tracking device on Jurati without her knowing…
I wish we could have seen more of Picard’s dog. And what’s going to happen to his Romulan pals; will they stay to maintain the vineyard or (more prudently) get out of there fast (and take “Number One” with them)?
I watched the first few episodes of Discovery and walked away from it. Didnt even check out the 2nd season.
This show, to quote an old friend though is Fascinating. I have nothing constructive to add to this discussion but to express my gratitude that I have, at least. 17 more slices of this story to go.
David Warner’s character in Final Frontier was shown smoking a cig, though I probably shouldn’t point to FF as a good example of anything.
All the examples of smoking we’ve seen in Trek have been among disreputable figures from outside the mainstream of Federation society, and both Raffi and Rios fit that description.
I feel like with this episode, Picard is starting to lose me. As a Star Trek series, Picard started strong, but as it’s continued over the past two episodes it’s felt more and more like it’s just an original science fiction franchise, rather than one that’s supposed to be rooted in the Star Trek franchise.
For example, despite being allegedly the 25th century, everyone seems to be wearing clothing that looks like they’ve walked off the set of a 2016 BBC production. People have given Star Trek a lot of shit over the years about civilian clothing looking like Pajamas, but at least Star Trek, in the past, made an honest attempt to imagine what the future might actually look like, in terms of what people wear. Here, not so much. Similarly, while later writers of the TNG era weren’t completely successful at it, there seemed to be a genuine attempt to imagine what a post scarcity world might look like. Here, it’s fairly clear that the writers don’t even want to try and consider with, whether it’s the talk of ‘paying’ for passage on the hero ship (which, itself, does not look like it belongs in Star Trek) or even attempting to imply some sort of poverty with post-starfleet Raffi’s life (an attempt that frankly fails when you realize how much of a big deal living in the shadow of Vasquez Rocks is, but I kind of suspect this is more of a fail on the part of the writers, trying to both wink at the oft used rocks in star trek and other science fiction franchises by calling it by name, while not understanding that having the real like Vasquez Rocks stand in for a random desert location doesn’t actually imply the sort of hardship they appear to want to. If anything, I’d say Raffi’s home and land is probably worth much, much more than Picard’s Chateau.)
I also feel like they’re replicating some of the mistakes that Discovery made– particularly the whole prologue issue. One of the greatest disappointments of the first season Discovery was that it has the audience invest heavily into characters and character interactions, only to throw it away for what’s already been planned. In particular, I’m talking about the crew of the Shenzhou, particularly Burnham and Georgiou. Captain Georgiou clearly had a certain amount of chemistry with Burnham, and Saru, and it’s thrown away when they kill her off. In Picard, too, we spend some three hours establishing the chemistry and character interactions between Picard, and his housekeepers, Laris and Zhaban, only for the show to seemingly throw it away by having Picard leave for the show’s pre-determined crew. Now we’re faced with the prospect of watching the writers try and build up chemistry between these characters again as the show decides that this is the actual start point of the show’s narrative. It certainly doesn’t help that most of these characters, in contrast to Laris and Zhaban, are kind of dull and boring. Jurati appears to be another Tilly (a character that kind of wore itself out by the start of Discovery Season 2), Rios is just a knock off Han Solo (a character archetype that I’ve always found rather boring). Raffi might prove to be more interesting, but that remains to be seen). At least, thank god, they didn’t kill off Laris and Zhaban, so they can at least come back.
As for smoking, it really does feel out of place here, which probably contributes to my dismay above. But, more critically, I can’t help but think that it feels out of place socially. The most canon reference that anyone can point to for smoking in Star Trek is the sign in WoK, but social attitudes towards smoking, and the understanding of the dangers of smoking have changed drastically since the early 80s. It kind of makes the cigar smoking anachronistic even by today’s standards.
I like this show.
However, as a young teen, I watched Trek because it was hopeful and bright. Of course it had it’s not-so-bright moments but overall, it was optimistic. That is what drew me (and many) to it.
I didn’t watch a show full of broken people. Aged terminally-ill captains, a corrupt/jaded Starfleet, and worst of all, a main character who is a drug addict. Was the latter necessary? Can’t someone be broken without being an addict?
As a parent, I wouldn’t want a thirteen-year-old watching this.
Why does everything have to be dark and broken these days? What about exploration and new societies?
Quark was pretty harsh on the chain-smoking humans in DS9’s “Little Green Men”, so assuming that the Federation and the Ferengi have similar attitudes on the subject, it doesn’t really make sense for anyone to be smoking. (Then again, maybe the cigar’s not tobacco…)
I also remembered an episode where a couple of officers got hooked on cigarettes and had to be weaned off of them, but then remember that that was an episode of The Orville…
Smoking is a decent symbol for a self-destructive character, but it’s a little odd to use it twice to introduce two characters in a row.
Of course, but now maybe they have invented a synthehol version of tobacco or holographic smoke.
@26 Holographic smoking would fit his use of ExH holograms for multiple crewmembers.
@24 I seem to recall illegal drug abuse in a few episodes in the past. TOS “Mudds Women” for example. It is not so much what is being done as it is how it moves the story forward. For the record, I would not have been bothered by my son seeing anything in the show from 10 and up though it’s easy to say now that he’s 18 ;)
The comparisons of Rios to Han Solo fall down when you consider what Picard observed about him being Starfleet to the core and taking meticulous care of his ship. The “roguish space pirate” thing is just an affectation to cover up his true idealism. I think that’s why his emergency holograms look like him — they’re basically his conscience made literal. He lets them say what he really thinks and feels so he can pretend he’s at odds with it. I suspect he broke with Starfleet for the same reason Picard did, because Starfleet lost its way.
Brian Brophy hasn’t acted in 6 years, so if Maddox shows up, probably a new actor.
Farley: Brophy doesn’t have any IMDB credits since 2014, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t acting, just that he isn’t listed on IMDB. For one thing, IMDB doesn’t list theatre credits, for another, IMDB is not 100% perfect.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@31/krad: Brophy is now the Director of Theater Arts at Caltech.
http://tacit.caltech.edu/about/brian
And yes, it looks like he still does some stage acting. The bio also says Maddox was one of his favorite roles, which suggests he’s be open to returning.
Meanwhile, clearly the ban on “synths” has not affected emergency holograms. Seems an odd double standard; they’re both AIs, and Trek holograms can be just as solid and thus just as physically dangerous as androids — even more so, since they can become intangible at will (cf. the Ghost in Ant-Man and the Wasp for why that’s an advantage).
If anything, the 24th-century shows demonstrated that it’s far easier for holograms to become sapient than Soong-type androids — see Moriarty, the Countess, the EMH, possibly Vic Fontaine (though he might just be a very sophisticated interactive emulation), etc.
Also, there’s no reason the body should matter where the mind is concerned. There’s no reason you couldn’t install the EMH’s consciousness inside a synth body, say. He got uploaded into Seven of Nine once, after all. Sapience is software, not hardware, so logically a ban on AI sapience should apply equally whether that sapience runs on a synth’s positronic brain, a holomatrix, a starship computer core, or anything else. But of course, the ban was enacted out of fear and prejudice and thus is not rational.
So is Rios more or less outrageous than Okona?
@24
Star Trek can’t be that bright bouncy future anymore. It has to make a commentary on our times. It’s always done this in precisely this way. It can’t depict the Federation as a moderately peaceful and optimistic place we want to reach for like they did in the late 1960’s with TOS, just as, you know, late 1960’s America was peaceful and not at all a dark, turbulent place with many problems. We’ve only become troubled as a society now, right now, and they have to make that clear to the viewers as loudly and directly as possible.
@14: My wife and I also had that thought re: Jurati. It was too convenient, and her face went from “shaky and frightened” to “intent” very quickly when nobody was looking at her and she was watching the interrogation.
Agree with the sentiment that getting Picard back in space should’ve been compressed. Maybe two episodes at most.
Was Rios’ ship named? Don’t think I like the design much. The EMH and ENH actually make Rios a more interesting character. The ENH has a slight Scottish accent, which may tie in to his Starfleet fanboy image if he programmed it deliberately. If he modified such EHs to reflect parts of his personality, basically talking to himself, it may serve as a form of therapy, or at least self-examination. Or he’s just lonely and having a bit of fun. Hope we’ll get more of his backstory, including who was the captain he saw killed in front of him.
Dr. Jurati showing up in time to “Oops, I shot the bad guy!” was too convenient. I’m skeptical of her intentions. She does almost giggle when Picard finally says “Engage,” so she’s also starstruck like Rios. Or Alison Pill is. Maybe it was a natural reaction and they left it in.
Btw, Zhaban has lost a step. He smashes a bottle of wine on the attacker’s helmet. It probably wouldn’t have done damage on a bare skull.
Agree that the incest vibe between Romulan brother and sister was reaching for prestige TV a la GoT a bit too much.
Didn’t like Raffi becoming collateral damage to JL’s resignation at all. Makes Starfleet look shitty. Surely, she’s valued independently of him. Even worse is Picard not intervening or attempting to prevent it (he’s not a complete pariah at that point), or even contacting her in the following years until he needs something. Makes him a bit of a selfish bastard. Her takedown of him was deserved. Want to find out why she wants to go to the Freecloud. The story may confirm her conspiracy theory of well… a conspiracy inside Starfleet. The Tal Shiar seem to be roaming freely on Earth these days. I have a bad feeling about how she’ll end up. Nothing concrete, just that she may become the sacrifice. I expect more from Chabon and Co. though.
The Borg cube for me is Chekhov’s Cube. It will power up. They’ve already alluded to the dangers in the apparently unexplored parts, plus the board that claims “no assimilations” in 5K+ days, roughly the amount of time Picard has been retired, give a year or two. And he’s about to stir things up again.
At this point, I’m just waiting for the old familiar characters to show up. Seven makes sense, of course. How they fit in Riker and Troy is less clear, especially after Picard said he didn’t want to involve them. The men anyway. He didn’t mentions the women. Maybe Dr. Crusher will swoop in on the science vessel she captains to save his ass at some point.
@18:
The Romulan cultural tidbits were great, too. Trek is always telling us that Romulans are secretive, but this series is actually showing it, at all levels. The story about traditional Romulan homes having false front doors is such a well-thought-out detail.
Yeah, I’m really enjoying this world-building with the Romulans, too.
It’s badly overdue. The Romulans predate the Klingons by…what, 12 episodes? And yet, they’ve never really been explored as much as the older Trek cultures (at least, again, on-screen rather than non-canoical stuff like Diane Duanne’s Rihannsu novels).
@36/Sunspear: “Was Rios’ ship named?”
La Sirena (i.e. “The Siren/Mermaid”).
@37/Mr. Magic: “The Romulans predate the Klingons by…what, 12 episodes?”
In broadcast order, yes. 19 episodes in production order.
“And yet, they’ve never really been explored as much as the older Trek cultures (at least, again, on-screen rather than non-canoical stuff like Diane Duanne’s Rihannsu novels).”
Yeah, it’s weird. They were pretty much the main villains in TNG once the Ferengi fizzled out, but they were never really developed all that much as a culture.
I thought Dr Jurati might be a plant also. It seems like an obvious idea. However if she was a plant why have her tell Picard that Oh had visited her. That would seem like the wrong move for a plant to make. Why tell him that since it would raise suspicion. She already had reasons to be curious about the twin. They sent a hit team for Picard so it wasn’t like they were planning to let him go unless you get into multiple layers of deviousness that the hit wasn’t planned to succeed which is an overly complex tricky plan. Of course it could just be clunky writing.
@38 /CLB:
Yeah, it’s weird. They were pretty much the main villains in TNG once the Ferengi fizzled out, but they were never really developed all that much as a culture.
Yeah, I’ve never understood it either.
As an offshoot of the Vulcans and the enemy whose actions precipitated the formation of the UFP, you’d think more of the past Trek TV Writers would’ve been game to delve into world building and exploration with the Star Empire.
And sure, we got episodes like “Unification”, “Face of the Enemy”, and even “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges”…but it just never was enough.
Couple other details: seems weird that if Narek is Zhat Vash he would profess his love to Soji. She’s clearly being played or being manipulated at this point, but where’s his existential horror of artificial life?
The mission and the name of the vessel where Rios’ previous captain died has been scrubbed from Starfleet records. Sound familiar? Nearly a century and a half earlier, Spock advised something similar in his treason and “We shall never speak of this again” speech. Orwell would have nodded and recognized this version of Starfleet.
@39/greginak: “However if she was a plant why have her tell Picard that Oh had visited her. That would seem like the wrong move for a plant to make. Why tell him that since it would raise suspicion.”
Metatextually, it was done to throw off the audience, since we saw her meet Oh. In-story, I think it’s the sort of thing that would do more to allay suspicion — admitting to something that seems compromising makes you seem more honest, because it’s assumed that you wouldn’t admit it if you were lying.
Amusingly, my mother is apparently Romulan, as both of the houses she’s lived in during my lifetime had “false” front doors.
The house I grew up in had a door on the front porch that we never used (the steps were dangerously shallow and a tripping hazard), so we always used the side door. In her current house, she and my stepfather only ever use the door under the carport; the front veranda doesn’t even get shoveled in the winter.
What I’m loving the most here is the character development, or at least rediscovery (no pun intended) in Picard himself. At the beginning of episode one, he was clearly a broken, depressed old man who had lost his whole purpose for being alive. He was basically in a deeper version of the same rut Kirk was in at the beginning of The Wrath of Khan.
As the first three episodes played out, we’ve seen him go even deeper into the rut when Starfleet smacked him down…again…and then slowly but surely start to get his swagger back as he made the same decision Kirk made in The Search For Spock: “The answer is ‘no;’ I am, therefore, going to go anyway.”
By the end of this episode, with him smiling to himself and dramatically saying “engage,” everybody, including Santiago Cabrera and Alison Pill, could clearly see in no uncertain terms that Our Hero is BACK.
I love how Star Trek: Picard is so ripe for discussion and dissection and everyone here has has great commentary on it over the last three episodes…
There have been several mentions in comments above of how this series isn’t the same bright and optimistic Star Trek that we’ve come to known and love, and this is just a show that’s “Star Trek” in name only. I think that hat’s just a natural evolution of the franchise and that you can only do the same thing so many times before it feels dated, and you get bored of it. I think this was also apart of the whole “franchise fatigue” thing that set in during Voyager’s run and got the franchise axed during Enterprise’s run. TV-Trek is back in this Kurtzman era and I think it still shows hope and optimism which is fundamentally “Star Trek” but with modern TV grittiness, F-bombs and all. To me it’s refreshing because it i different for Star Trek and if I wanted what I’m already used to and comfortable with I can just thrown on some of my favorite beloved classic episodes. Depicting Starfleet and the Federation as having lost its way has precedent in our own history of many an empire’s long decline but that doesn’t mean these fictional organizations can’t find their way again. And besides, if it weren’t for this grittier, grimmer take on Star Trek, Patrick Stewart would have been less inclined to come back to play Picard and we wouldn’t even be having these debates!
The Romulan brother/sister, Narek/Rizzo “incest vibe” I think is more just mere playful flirting than actual incest going on. I don’t think it’s intended to be pandering to be like prestige television like Game of Thrones but rather just TV short-hand for these are dark/villainous characters because they’re a brother and sister who are flirting with each other, as cliche as that is. Rather, what I find more “prestige television” about this show is how many various characters, aliens or not, speak with various European accents!
Speaking of various accents, I thought Santiago Cabrera did a masterful job of pulling them off to differentiate his multiple characters and the holographic versions of himself were delightful (and look forward to seeing those iterations and perhaps more again). Yes, there are shades of Han Solo to Captain Rios but I think ultimately there will be more to him than that, and I am intrigued to get to know his character and backstory better. Did I read somewhere that Rios is the ex-husband of Musiker?
Regarding Rios having EH’s on his ship and that they should be banned along with the synths, maybe they are in fact banned but because he is no longer Starfleet and a roguish character, he doesn’t care and employs them anyway.
The whole smoking/drug-using thing is another TV shorthand thing for pointing out a damaged/roguish character. Some will say it’s incongruous with Star Trek but I think there can be a few human characters who did and still get away with it in-universe just to show that not everyone is perfect and how fall they’ve fallen. And who knows, maybe they’ll find “their way back” and lose their addictions.
I too enjoy the overdue examination of the Romulans on this series. They’ve obviously been major baddies since TOS and I’d get excited whenever they were featured in TNG-era series and they had cool looking ships, and they had the “mystery” thing going for them. But whenever the veil would be lifted back some, the results were usually disappointing and boring. But now, the layers of secretiveness about them and their culture is very intriguing and I’m especially loving the Zhaban and Laris characters because they are great examples of showing that not every member of the same alien race behaves the same, and also because they’re so fun! Who else thought and was afraid they were about to be sacrificed during their fight scene in this episode. I was so happy that didn’t happen. Someone commented above that they’re disappointed we’ve just gotten to know these Laris and Zhaban and now they’re being abandoned as the series is now truly beginning with Picard’s crew. I don’t see it that way at all. These first 3 episodes are really just the first chapter of the overall story, not something that “doesn’t count.” And who’s to say we don’t see them (and the dog) again? I think we definitely will. I do wonder if they are going to stay at the chateau or go elsewhere because Captain Rios does say that location has become “hot” now, and there’s no real reason the Tal Shiar wouldn’t stop pursuing them as they know so much already.
I think the Zhat Vash purposefully allowed Picard to live despite their attack at his home because they need to follow him to track down Maddox and the “nest of synths”. Likewise, I heavily assume Dr. Jurati is a plant by Commodore Oh to keep tabs on Picard and report back to her (remember, everyone on this show is full of SECRETS!). However, I think Jurati could also be a double agent in the sense that she is only pretending to help Oh and will reveal to Picard that Oh wanted her to spy on him.
I did enjoy the in-universe explanation for the varying appearance of the Romulans (the “northerners” having the forehead ridges). But how curious that we had only hereto-seen ships/colonies of completely one type or the other. Lol
Likewise, I also had a “Wait a minute!” reaction when Vasquez Rocks was labeled as the location of Musiker’s home. Nice wink at fans!
The economics of Star Trek at least for the Federation as depicted has always been problematic, in a society that has gotten rid of money. How do people pay for things? I’m assuming they at least accrue some form of credit from work and jobs done and that is used to make purchases or barter. Specific to the clear “class distinction” that Musiker alludes to between Picard’s chateau and her humble abode – well, some people in future human utopia are still going to have bigger houses than others. Picard seemingly comes from a well-to-do family with previously mentioned chateau and vineyard being passed on from generation to generation and Musiker has no such inheritance to fall back on, or perhaps she’s been disinherited; either situation of which would contribute to her fall from grace when her career was taken from her. To the comment that Musiker’s home and land would be worth more than Picard’s, who’s to say what the status of Vasquez Rocks will be in the future? Maybe it’ll be stripped of its park designation, or become some kind of toxic waste dump? Besides, she very possibly doesn’t even own the land she’s on but is merely squatting on it. In regards to the other comment that it’s “shitty” for Starfleet to drum Musiker out of the service merely for her association with Picard and for not having actually done anything wrong herself, that just further points to her theory that Starfleet and the Tal Shiar are in cahoots regarding the Mars synth attack, but more generally how Starfleet has become a corrupt “shitty” organization. How prescient that just earlier today I’m reading in the news that the current U.S. administration fired Col. Vindman’s brother from his job when the brother had nothing to do with the actual incident that led to the President’s impeachment. The brother merely showed up to the impeachment hearings to provide moral support. So yeah, clear real life example of how a government institution/organization can be “shitty” and vindictive to one of its own loyal officers.
I think Narek is going to be a shades of grey character in that in spite of his personal Zhat Vash code that he abhors all A.I., he finds himself falling for Soji and thus ends up betraying Cersei, er, Rizzo.
Great to see Hugh/Jonathan Del Arco again. His physical appearance reminds me a lot of Marc Hamill. Interesting how as an “Ex-B” he’s acquired a clear position of authority amongst the Romulans on the Borg cube. Is Hugh supposed to be human? I always assumed he was some other alien species that was assimilated by the Borg but he appears to be quite Human in his de-assimilated state. And I think it’s great, and very realistic, to show freed drones who are “crazy” and haven’t readjusted to their former lives after the trauma of being Borgified. I too wonder what it was about this particular group of Romulans that made the Borg ship corrupted. And I’m not sure if the timing is right, but did the Borg cube cease functioning at around the same time as the Mars synth attack?
@krad – Dahj/Soji’s “mother” doesn’t send Dahj to Picard after her initial encounter with the Zhat Vash. Dahj in fact as her own self-generated “flash” of Picard that sends her to him. It is only later in the series premiere when the mother “directs” Dhaj to Picard and that does trigger her to do so. Clearly though this is no real “mother” to either Dhaj or Soji and is some kind of A.I. construct or a holographic projection over an actual person such as Maddox.
Speaking of Maddox, it would be cool to see Brian Brophy return to play the character but it wouldn’t be surprising to see the character recast as often happens in television, especially after so many years from originally playing the part. Or, it may just happen that Picard and company discover that Maddox is already dead and perhaps someone else is continuing his work or he’s left instructions or a manifesto for them.
I like how familiar TNG (era) characters are being doled out slowly and I know everyone wants to see all of them right away but this series is going to last at least a few seasons so there’s no reason why they can’t be spread out and build up the anticipation. We already got Data and Hugh, and Riker and Troi and Seven are coming up soon as well. We know Guinan will be back next season. So we can just be patient with Worf and Geordi who we know are still alive, and Beverly who we are not so sure about – but I personally am most excited about a reunion with. And who knows, maybe a Travelin’ Wesley will show up? Miles O’Brien and Keiko would be great too. And of course the Voyager EMH.
I do find it interesting how Discovery and Picard are both big budget productions but I find Picard to outclass the former in just about every way (and I do like and enjoy Discovery). From the acting to the writing it just seems like a clear step up and seems like the first Trek series since DS9 I can see myself potentially loving. While award recognition may not mean much to us as the audience, it does mean a lot more to people in the actual industry so I hope Picard does get some Emmy love. Genre series have done very well for themselves at awards shows in recent years, and after Star Trek: TNG and DS9 in particular were snubbed of main category nominations, it would be great if Picard got some – especially for Patrick Stewart who is overdue for such plaudits.
One other thing I thought of in regards to this latest episode, I was a little “annoyed” with the repeated use of TNG/TMP theme fanfare when Picard is on Rios’ ship. I get that what’s being conveyed is the nostalgia of Picard being in space on a starship again, but still, the fanfare seemed inappropriate in my humble opinion. 1) Picard wasn’t resuming a command position despite the cute “engage” command – this is Rios’ ship and he’s in charge of it, if I’m not mistaken, and 2) I associate TNG/TMP theme with the Enterprise (any version) and not any other starship!
@@@@@ 45: The synth attack and the destruction of Romulus was 14 years before the current series. The Borg cube has been disabled for 16 years (5,843 days).
I’m assuming the two events happening relatively close together (but still separated by 2 years) will be significant.
@23/xomic, @24/TBonz: Thank you. I wasn’t sure whether to watch this. Now I know.
@45/GarretH: “There have been several mentions in comments above of how this series isn’t the same bright and optimistic Star Trek that we’ve come to known and love, and this is just a show that’s “Star Trek” in name only.”
People said the same thing about Discovery, but it turned out to be just as optimistic as prior shows, because the moral compromises all turned out to be the schemes of evil people, and the day was saved by the characters clinging to their optimistic Starfleet values and proving they were better. I expect the same thing to happen here. The thing is, TV seasons are serialized now, so there’s only one long story per season — and any story, even an optimistic one, is going to start out with things being bad so that the heroes have to strive to make it better. Even in the optimistic TOS, there were episodes that began with whole planets being annihilated, with terrible tragedies and horrors that the crew had to face. But in the end, they usually saved the day and things looked better than they had in the beginning.
In short, we haven’t seen the season’s whole story yet, so we should wait and see how it ends before we assess whether it’s optimistic or not.
“Is Hugh supposed to be human? I always assumed he was some other alien species that was assimilated by the Borg but he appears to be quite Human in his de-assimilated state.”
Lots of Trek aliens look human. The majority of aliens in TOS did, as did a number in early TNG and the occasional one in other series.
As for the economics, even in a society where money is no longer needed, there will probably still be an economics of prestige and reputation. Everybody’s guaranteed the food, medicine, housing, etc. they need to live comfortably, but how willing people are to give you optional stuff beyond that, or to cooperate with you in an ongoing joint undertaking like running a vineyard or operating a spaceship, could be a function of your reputation and social standing. Picard’s reputation is great enough to survive the setbacks he suffered after the Mars attack, but Musiker’s was not, and she ended up trashing it still further through her behavior. So in the reputation economy, she’s much “poorer” than he is.
When Picard was explaining the post-greed Federation to the recently awakened 20th Century humans in “The Neutral Zone” he outlined what you were supposed to do instead of accumulating wealth: “The challenge, Mister Offenhouse, is to improve yourself. To enrich yourself. Enjoy it.”.
The impression I got from Musiker was not that after leaving StarFleet she was impoverished materially, and irritated by Picard’s relative wealth, but that she thought he’d had what would seem a fulfilling post-uniform life, whilst she had personally stagnated. If StarFleet was all she ever wanted to do, if she’s been unable to find anything to replace it and has been wasting her time away (to which drugs would be a contributor), you can see why she’d be resentful. Especially as you’d imagine Picard knew her well enough to know that’s how it would play out. What she isn’t to know is that Picard hasn’t been as happy as she imagines.
Pretty crappy of Picard not to check up on Musiker in the 14 years since he resigned from Starfleet/she was fired. But then that is also supposed to help convey to the audience that this is no longer the Picard that we knew and loved, and that fell into some kind of funk for that whole period. One wonders if during those same years he became just as isolated from his Enterprise-D/E family? I guess we’ll find out when Riker/Troi show up. However, despite the hermit Picard became in cutting off people like Musiker, he somehow managed to open his chateau to Zhaban and Laris so that shows his compassion was in still in him somewhere.
Regarding the Borg cube being deactivated for 16 years, I wonder at what point the Romulans took it over? I initially just assumed they had been there during all of those intervening 16 years but maybe it is a more recent venture? After all, I feel like they would have explored the vessel through and through by now if they had 16 years to do so.
@51/GarretH: Cutting yourself off from friends and family can be a symptom of depression (I speak from experience). It’s not being a jerk, it’s more like not wanting to burden them with your unworthy self or your problems, or just being so stuck in your rut that it doesn’t occur to you to reach out.
If you think about it, the very idea of Picard ever retiring to be a vintner, giving up the stars, is grossly out of character. He rejected that path very early in life, leading to a rift between him and his more traditionalist family. The only times we ever saw him even tempted to retreat to it before were times when he was broken and had lost himself — post-Locutus in “Family” and as an old man in the throes of Irumodic Syndrome in “All Good Things…”. It’s something he’d only do if he were retreating from himself as well as everyone else. So it’s not the cushy, idyllic life it seems to Raffi. It’s more of a self-imposed exile.
As for the Borg cube, “the Artifact” appears to be in or near Romulan space. I’m sure the Romulans would’ve wanted to take control of it as soon as it became evident it was inactive. Indeed, since it went dead shortly after it assimilated the Romulan ship Shaenor, it’s reasonable to suspect that the Romulans were behind its collapse in the first place.
As for exploring it fully, first off, it’s huge and apparently still has parts that are dangerous. Second, the supernova happened about 4 years after its collapse, and even before the supernova, the Romulans were apparently busy preparing for the evacuation. So they would’ve had limited attention and resources to devote to the Artifact.
@49/Christopher: Personally, I found Discovery depressing.
If the dialogue were stronger, I would be able to suppress my criticisms of how they’re handling the serialization of this story. Twists and roles are telegraphed hard, and reveals are casually thrown out directly after the introduction of a concept – I have not yet wondered about a character’s motivations, and my first read was proven right with each reveal – there’s no mystery or hook to that. It feels like a grab bag of sci-fi concepts and locales that don’t gel together, and don’t feel much like Trek, unless copious lens flares are what define the series for you. On top of that, the dialogue is increasingly cringe inducing. Raffis homestead dialogue and framing had all the polish of deleted scenes. Picard’s singular focus on helping the maybe-existent-sister of the daughter of the man he is mourning have led him to make a series of flippant tactical political mistakes, and those mistakes are what are currently moving the plot. Altogether, it’s feeling very unfortunately half-baked at the moment. Here’s hoping something in following episodes is worth the time commitment.
I love this series, and I also like the slow pace of the first three episodes. There are so many details to enjoy, so much character development, and also enough time to fill in the backstory. I also like the fact that federation society is no longer depicted as the conflict-free utopia of early TNG. I know that this was Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future, but I always found it completely unrealistic, and a society where everybody is just perfect is also kind of boring.
There were some critical comments here on the use of a character with a drug addiction. I completely disagree, I think that’s a brilliant idea. As Michelle Hurd pointed out in the latest Ready Room, the idea is to show that a person with drug problems can make a valuable contribution and is not just scum. The way I see it, it’s an extension of the old and honored Star Trek principle of inclusion. Persons with drug problems are a part of our society, so why not have one as part of the team? (Compare it with the awful way of dealing with drug addiction in TNG’s Symbiosis). And, by the way, not everyone who uses drugs on a recreational basis is an addict or a social outcast.
Can’t wait for the fourth episode…
@Keith: I very much enjoyed your Star Trek rewatches in the past, although my personal rewatches always came too late to actually contribute (I’m doing the third rewatch of TNG at the moment). So I am really glad that with Picard I am right on time.
@54/Transceiver: Funny, I’ve been finding the dialogue quite rich and well-written. The showrunner is a Pulitzer-winning novelist, after all. (Although I wish the pacing of the plot were a bit less novelistic.)
@18: >One major problem: are we just abandoning trekonomics? There was a lot of talk about how Raffi is poor, and hiring a ship is expensive. I thought we didn’t have money in the future, and we worked to better ourselves and humanity?
A Federation citizen has all of their basic needs met, and probably some of their wants. But once you get beyond the basics, you’re going to need a medium of exchange. (Did the Picard family do so much work to maintain a vineyard just because they liked being known for their real wines? No! They got something out of it, something more than personal satisfaction.)
I can’t help to notice about a small detail in this episode: the book Rios is reading is Miguel de Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life. Barely three hours before I have been watching Amenábar’s While at war, a film about the last days of Unamuno and his change of mind about the military men taking control of Spain during the Civil War first and later lasting forty long years of dictatorship. Is there a very subtle comparation between Picard’s situation against Star Fleet?
@56 ChristopherLBennett
I think the bones are good, and 80% of the dialogue is solid. When it loses me, it loses me, but I’m still looking forward to the greater reveals and some action.
I’m torn on his show. I like seeing Picard as this old Cincinnatus like figure, but I’m not wild about seeing yet another conspiracy and moral rot within the Federation.
I don’t have a problem with an occasional dark and gritty drama about conspiracies and corruption in the government, but it’s been used so often in the past twenty years or so, across pop culture in general and not just Star Trek, it has lost a lot of its flavor for me. And especially at a time when real institutions and checks and balances are being destroyed from within, it would be refreshing to see the machine actually working for a change. Not just working but celebrated.
Star Trek, in particular Next Gen, would point to the awful past and tell us we got through the bad times. It was very inspiring to watch as a teenager, and helped me through my own bad times. I just hope young people today can find a place as inspiring in their entertainment. That’s all.
@45. GarretH: “The Romulan brother/sister, Narek/Rizzo “incest vibe” I think is more just mere playful flirting than actual incest going on.”
I think you mean there’s no sex going on (which no one asserted), but “playful flirting” between brother and sister has already crossed the line into sexual attraction. You’d think it was weird if you witnessed it in real life. Using “just and “mere” to downplay that is a bit strange.
@61 Has it ever been established in canon where those lines lie in Romulans culture(s)? Perhaps its normal for Southern Romulans? True, I doubt it, but there is always a problem with presuming human behavior is the only possible alternative in SF.
Now, I think it is simply weak writing in this case but it does well to remind that we know far less about this culture than we do about various other sentient species in the ST universe.
@62/wlewisiii: It’s not a question of whether their behavior can be justified in-universe as a cultural quirk, since you can use that handwave to excuse anything. It’s a question of whether it’s a desirable thing to see in a TV show. There are a few too many things in Picard that feel like it’s just trying to exploit its TV-MA rating because it can, not because the story needs it to.
small detail that might not mean anything: the Romulan mentioned meeting Soji “tomorrow.” Could the hostility of AI life come from knowledge of future events?
@61/Sunspear: Actually, @14/CLB mentioned “implied incest” between the brother and sister and he’s not “no one.” And yes, I was downplaying flirtation between siblings rather than actual incest because we’re referring to a television show, not something I’ve witnessed in real life. It’s fiction vs. reality and therefore I’m not taking it as seriously.
@65/GarretH: Whether the incestuous attraction is consummated or not is beside the point. Even the implication that villainous characters have some kind of kinky or immoral sexual habits is kind of a cheap shot. I’m reminded of how DS9 coded Intendant Kira as an “evil bisexual” back in the day. Granted, I doubt that incest will ever be as socially acceptable as LGB relationships have become today, nor would I want it to be, but just the general idea of painting villains as sexually perverted is too much of a reminder of some unfortunate story choices in the past.
Plus, seeing a brother and sister flirting is just icky. It takes all the fun out of watching Peyton List be seductive.
If they keep this up, Star Trek can no longer be uppity towards that other franchise in the next town over where brothers and sisters smooch like crazy, Star Wars.
Don’t blow this, Picard.
Ahem.
Just found out there are two Peyton Lists: our Romulan here and a younger actress mostly known for Disney shows. I thought the actors’ guild didn’t allow performers with same names.
Finally, we’re going somewhere, anywhere. And I admit I teared up when Picard said “Engage.” I just hate that Laris and Zhavan are left behind for no compellingly good reason.
JLP came to see Dr. Jurati before he went to Starfleet, but it’s possible Commodore Oh threatened Jurati into spying on Picard and Co.
I’m glad Raffi Musiker is along for the ride. Musiker’s understandable bitterness at JLP, to me, was more than just the destruction of her career. To me, I think Musiker’s bitterness is also about the saying about how you should never meet your heroes. This is Jean-Luc Picard, a decorated Starfleet veteran whom I’m sure Raffi was keen to work with. When Picard walked away from Starfleet, it didn’t just shatter Raffi’s Starfleet career, it left her disillusioned. Raffi’s disillusionment was compounded when Picard never once reached out to Raffi for 14 years (and I totally understand why Picard might not have. Like you, CLB, I suffer from depression and have done the same thing). So I really feel for Raffi, and hope she finds some measure of meaning in the coming journey.
I’ve already forgotten the pilot’s name…Ramos was it? ( the character bored me, but the actor was great, giving every hologram its own distinct personality). Ramos(?), like Picard, is a disenchanted former Starfleet officer, so it should be interesting to get to know him. But, sigh, there’s a Georgiou problem in that we already have interesting characters to start with, aaand we’re just gonna ditch them…
I’m also glad the writers didn’t pull a Discovery here and kill off the very compelling characters Laris and Zhavan. That…would have made me awful mad. It was enough to see Dahj brutally murdered, so I’m glad the writers chose not to go there again.
There is some ick in the Narek/Rizzo flirting. I barely tolerated the brother-sister incest on Game of Thrones (a series I will pointedly not be rewatching), and I hope they don’t make that an ongoing thing. But I am warming up to Narek’s relationship with Soji; it’s becoming more complex than I thought it would be.
I agree it’s time for some action. Gosh, only 10 episodes for the season? I hope the tie up at least some of the loose ends before the season is over.
But, Picard said “Engage.” Squee!
@69/DanteHopkins – It’s Captain “Cristóbal Rios” since you were unsure of the spelling.
@66/CLB: I’ll just reiterate that I’m in no way advocating for incest or flirting between siblings. I just recognize that TV writers have lately seemed to use that “attraction” as shorthand for saying, “hey, these are villainous amoral characters!” and it’s a cliché that’s too easy and not particularly original. Similarly, I never liked the implication that if you were LGB on Star Trek, then you were villainous like your example of Intendant Kira.
Speaking of which, we haven’t really delved into the romantic lives of any of the Picard characters but maybe at least one of them will be LGB (and not a villain). It’s not like Discovery needs to have the monopoly on characters with same sex attraction.
I am an only child, so I don’t have any first-hand experience with brother-sister-relationships. But I can imagine that if a brother and a sister have a close relationship they might develop a kind of physical attraction to each other and even a habit of flirting without crossing the boundary of an actual sexual relationship. One should also be aware of the fact that there were even cultures on our planet where marriages between siblings was not only tolerated but even praised, especially among members of ruling houses. So I don’t see why we have to presume that there is an incest taboo in Romulan culture.
@69/Dante Hopkins: “To me, I think Musiker’s bitterness is also about the saying about how you should never meet your heroes. This is Jean-Luc Picard, a decorated Starfleet veteran whom I’m sure Raffi was keen to work with. When Picard walked away from Starfleet, it didn’t just shatter Raffi’s Starfleet career, it left her disillusioned.”
I think it runs deeper than hero worship. In the flashback, it was clear that Picard and Musiker had become close friends — she called him “J.L.” even though he was an admiral and her commanding officer. There was a familiarity between them that went well beyond professional admiration.
Background material developed in consultation with the show’s staff, including the “museum exhibit” at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con and the just-released tie-in novel The Last Best Hope, establishes that Picard left the Enterprise to lead the evacuation fleet in 2381. So he and Musiker worked together for four years prior to his resignation.
@71. Thomas: “But I can imagine that if a brother and a sister have a close relationship they might develop a kind of physical attraction to each other and even a habit of flirting without crossing the boundary of an actual sexual relationship.”
I have yet to see this in real life. I don’t think it’s as casually common as you seem to imagine. And I certainly hope it’s not part of the Romulan worldbuilding, say if it becomes one of the reasons for rampant secrecy in Romulan society. Maybe Treadaway is just a sexy close talker and he made an acting choice.
“One should also be aware of the fact that there were even cultures on our planet where marriages between siblings was not only tolerated but even praised, especially among members of ruling houses.”
This is true, but also proof of why the taboo is a good idea. Generations of inbreeding resulted in genetic defects in the royal lineages of Europe, including such things as hemophilia and the Habsburg jaw, which can be argued led to their extinction.
habsburg-jaw-Charles II
52. ChristopherLBennett – And yet he holds onto the vineyard, keeping it out of the hands of people who would love to live there and run it. He didn’t “earn” it by improving himself. It’s his because of who his parents were. He’s shown no interest in it for the better part of a century at this point.
@68: Yes, that’s a well-known mine for “Did you know?” articles. I think the guilds just missed the fact they already had a Peyton List.
https://www.indiewire.com/2016/10/peyton-list-frequency-swap-thinning-1201733445/
I must admit I got confused at first, even though they look nothing alike, when the other Peyton List started turning up in Saturday morning shows and I was looking at them in confusing going “Is that really Peyton List, as in Smallville and Tomorrow People US? Was she really young at the time?”
@75/cap-mjb: “I think the guilds just missed the fact they already had a Peyton List.”
Hard to miss such a distinctive name.
There are two active actresses named Vanessa Williams. For a few years, the more famous one, the ex-Miss America, chose to go by Vanessa L. Williams to differentiate herself from the less famous one, which I found a classy thing to do (especially since she’d been acting longer than the other one). For most of their careers, though, they’ve both just gone by Vanessa Williams. So I wonder if maybe the Guild rule no longer applies.
kkozoriz: There’s a factor you’re not considering in your statement — Robert’s wife Marie. She survived the fire that killed Robert and Rene, and she has more claim to Chateau Picard than Jean-Luc does at the time of the fire. Presumably she’s been running the vineyard in the years between Generations and Jean-Luc’s resignation, and she may have then let Jean-Luc come run it so she could retire or something later on. Or something.
There’s an untold story there, in any case, both in terms of the years between 2371 and 2385 and in terms of what happened to Marie. (FWIW, Samantha Eggar is still alive, but has retired from acting….)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Really enjoyed the episode. In particular, I loved seeing Hugh, since I love the character and Jonathan del Arco is my countryman. It is interesting to see him say that some people see Exbees as property to exploit and others see them as a risk; he says Romulans have a “more expansive vision”… my son and I thought it meant he embraced Romulan totalitarianism; but no, he’s chaffing at the fact that Romulans see Exbees as both things. He’s obviously working for the good of his people, and if he has to get in bed with the Romulans (oops, that’s Soji), so be it.
I loved seeing his authority and the interesting power dynamics between him and the Romulans, or possibly himself and his people (since he was already leading a group of Exbees back in TNG). The Romulans would definitely rip the tech out of the poor drones without reviving them and trying to rehabilitate them, particularly with how desperate the seem to be to take advantage of it to recover some of their former power. But it seems they might have not been able to do it without the tech being ruined, and they needed Exbees to help them out… so there might be some sort of deal going on there.
The Romulan scout ship being assimilated just before this cube went offline seems to point to some sort of Trojan Horse tactic. I’m not so sure about Trek falling back on mysticism again; although as a student of Communication Studies, I do appreciate Soji trying to use common symbology/mythology to build common grounds for recovering Exbees.
I like Picard’s crew (even though we’re still missing Ranger/Monk Elf), but I would have liked to see more non-humans: give me an Andorian, a Tellarite, Bollian, etc, please… a Cardassian! Cabrera as Ríos and his holograms is great, although his initial shot as Space Che Guevara had my son and I eyerolling.
I also miss Number One the dog, but in the first Ready Room of the season, Hanelle Culpepper said that the “actor” dog is too green, and while there were more scenes in the script that called for him, they had to leave him out. And I doubt that he’d show up now that they’re leaving for space. I’d be surprised if Picard even goes back to Earth this season.
I’m definitely glad that Laris and Zhaban survived. I love how they were packing Picard a sack lunch for his trip. :)
@14 – Chris: I could definitively have done without the implied incest.
@29 – Chris: Good analysis.
@32 – Chris: At least holograms are limited by their emitters, and I doubt all have mobile emitters like the Doctor’s.
@36 – Sunspear: Yeah, the cube is definitely a gun waiting to go off.
@43 – Cybersnark: Lol, my parents’ house (and my house from ages 5 to 21, now occupied by siblings) has a front door that was seldom used, and in fact, was unlocked and opened the other day after almost 20 years closed. My sister and brother in law even sent a video of it being opened to the family group chat.
@51 – GarrettH: They’re obviously implying that Picard has been suffering from some sort of depression, as Chris says.
@58 – Indy: I doubt it was a coincidence.
@64 – M: I hope there’s no time travel involved, but it might be something like that.
@68 – Sunspear: Apparently, the two Peyton List thing slipped through the SGA’s filters. One would think they kept, I don’t know, a list…
@77, Marie lost her husband and apparently only child. It’s believable that she’d want to get as far away from the Chateau and wine making as possible. I just hope she’s doing okay after such a life shattering trauma.
I wonder if we will see more of Brent Spiner this season. I was hoping that he would have at least a recurring role in Picard, but Jean-Luc is out in space now, and B-4 still lies disassembled at the Daystrom Institute.
@79. That’s true, it’s also possible that she hired someone to run the vinyards (out of loyalty to Robert and René) while she continued to oversee the business side of things from elsewhere (as you say, the house itself would be full of ghosts for her). If so, Jean-Luc, Zhaban, and Laris might have simply stepped into that job while Marie still lives in Paris or wherever.
At least we now know that Commodore Oh is Vulcan.
@78/MaGnUs: I’m puzzled by the bit about the dog being too inexperienced an “actor.” Don’t movies and TV shows usually use 2 or 3 different lookalike animals for these things? I know there were at least two dogs playing Porthos in Enterprise.
And yeah, when Laris and Zhaban were fighting the assassins, I had a moment where I thought, “Oh, they wouldn’t dare kill one of them off, would they?” I’m glad they didn’t, and hopefully that means we’ll see more of them.
@81, true. There are two possible reactions: I’m out of here, I can’t handle any reminders!, Or: I must carry on because that’s what Robert and Rene would want. Living elsewhere and managing from afar would be a good compromise between these extremes.
@83 – Chris: I guess that depends on the production. I’ve seen films or shows that only use one animal for a specific animal character.
@85/MaGnUs: Are you sure? Even when they credit only a single animal, there are usually others used as doubles for specialized tasks, just as human actors have stunt doubles, photo doubles, hand doubles, and so on who aren’t necessarily given screen credit.
How can Picard leave his dog?! Unless he thinks Number One will be happier at home with his Romulan caretakers.
@69: I’m also glad the writers didn’t pull a Discovery here and kill off the very compelling characters Laris and Zhavan.
As am I. In addition, I have a niggling hope that they somehow end up arriving in the nick, somewhere down the line.
@88- agreed. There seems to be significant hand-wringing over why they aren’t part of Picard’s new entourage, but I would like to think the show writers are smart enough to see how compelling and watchable those two are and have plans for them down the line.
I have no issues with the smoking. I have always thought it strange that the television and motion picture Industries are more than happy to continue to push the envelope toward portraying ever more explicit sex, violence, profanity. and general moral turpitude, but smoking is where they’re going to draw the line and play nanny to impressionable viewers? Whatever lol.
I’m usually a squee happy guy. I love gratuitous fanservice. But even I cringed at “Engage”. As has been noted, Picard is not the captain. He’s paid for passage.
@89/fullyfunctional: “But even I cringed at “Engage”. As has been noted, Picard is not the captain. He’s paid for passage.”
But Rios, beneath his roguish-space-captain facade, is really a lapsed Starfleet idealist, and his ENH’s hero worship of Picard probably reflects his own feelings that he tries to deny. So the fact that he let Picard do that is one more hint that his cynical rebel act is just that.
77. krad – Regardless of how he got the vineyard, he didn’t get it through hard work and improving himself. He got it because of who he was and who he was related to.
That’s an advantage that someone like Tasha Ya wouldn’t have, for example. She could work as hard as she liked and she still wouldn’t have someone hand her a vineyard in France.
Same deal with Raffi. She ends up in a 23rd century mobile home surrounded by rocks and sand.
If Picard had turned out like Raffi, he’d still be vaping in a chateau in France.
@90 CLB– That’s true, and I think I’m going to enjoy the Rios character, because there’s a lot of potential for a truly complex and well-rounded character there. But regardless of whether he approved of, or merely tolerated the symbolic command, I thought it was a little sad that Picard chose to go there. At times, as with his formal request for a ship for this expedition, it seems he has little self-awareness about his current station in life.
76/CLB: I think the second one was registered when the first one was still largely an unknown, hence the person doing the registering wouldn’t necessarily recognise the name as already existing, and depending on how easily checkable the database is, it could easily be possible to miss one duplicate name among hundreds. I believe The Other Peyton List is sometimes credited as Peyton R List to minimise confusion.
@71 As a woman with a brother, I can tell you this most decidedly does NOT happen. In fact, I actually broke up with a guy because I realized he reminded me too much of my brother, and it grossed me out. Also, you should look up the Westermarck Effect–in essence, siblings raised together are “too close” to each other to be attracted to each other.
@73 Indeed. I also remember hearing of anthropological evidence that King Tut’s infant son was stillborn because he and his wife were brother and sister.
Though it has been scientifically proven that first cousins are far enough removed, genetically speaking, to prevent any progeny they have together from having incest-related birth defects. Not that I’ll be testing that anytime soon, because it’s still gross.
@62: “Perhaps its normal for Southern Romulans?”
I saw what you did there.
A quirk of “Romulan” culture indeed.
Sunspear@36 I didn’t hear the second emergency hologram as Scottish at all, but really, really bad fake American-pretending-to-be-Irish. Which is really odd for an American series that has an actual Irish actress using her native accent – I really enjoyed Laris ‘cheeky feckers!’, but the Stage Oirish ENH was just painful. I’m trying to rationalise it by saying that it’s a badly programmed EH with a poor quality accent file…
@Sushi: so he was going more for O’Brien than Scotty? Possible, I guess. Rios is a Picard fanboy and his era of the Enterprise.
You’re probably wrong about this though: “bad fake American-pretending-to-be-Irish,” since the actor playing Rios isn’t American.
Sunspear@97 Yeah, but O’Brien was also played by an Irish actor, using his natural Dublin accent, which the EH so wasn’t.
I wasn’t saying that was Santiago Cabrera‘s natural accent, but the dreadful ‘Oirish’ accent that gets used by American dialect coaches to signify Irishness, but doesn’t actually exist on this island. Think Tom Cruise in ‘Far and Away’, etc.
I don’t speak Spanish to verify this completely, but my theory is that all the emergency holograms have exaggerated comedy accents, the same way they have exaggerated comedy mannerisms. It’s the only way I can rationalise the glaring horribleness from both an actor and show which both have much lighter touches on this front (cf Picard in the next episode)
@98/sushisushi: The EMH’s English accent seems fairly natural. But then, Cabrera’s spent a lot of his career doing UK shows like Merlin (as Lancelot) and The Musketeers (as Aramis). Apparently he’s fluent in Spanish, English, French, and Italian, but I guess they didn’t want to give him a French hologram since they were saving the cheesy French accent for Picard.
@98 – sushisushi: Emmett, the hologram that speaks Spanish, has an actual, natural, yet “lower class” and slang-ey Chilean Spanish accent and jargon.
99 and 100: Yes, I’ve seen him in The Musketeers before, which would make you think he would be familiar with a range of British Isles accents. The Spanish accent blows my theory out of the water, though! Pity the dialect coach didn’t just try and copy Laris’ accent – that would have given him a perfect middle class Dublin accent. Hell, even copying O’Brien would have given him lower-middle to working class Dublin. Oh well, just chalk it up to another example of Fake Oirish in Hollywood and move on, I guess..
@100/MaGnUs: Rios’s pilot hologram is the second Trek Emergency Hologram nicknamed Emmett, across all versions; the da Vinci‘s EMH in the S.C.E. novella series was called that too. It doesn’t sound like a very Chilean name to me (though I could be wrong), so maybe it’s a nod to the literature?
@101/sushisushi: If Rios programmed the holograms himself, it stands to reason that he’d do a more accurate job with the Chilean accent than the Irish one.
@102 – Chris: “Emmett” is indeed not a common Chilean name; although it is a chain of stores… I doubt it’s because of that, and since Beyer is part of the writing group and she’s familiar with the books, I guess it might be an homage to that hologram.
@103/MaGnUs: It’s a name that stands out to me, since my grandfather and eldest uncle were named Emmett.
That’s cool. Father side? Emmett Bennett?
@105/MaGnUs: Yep, Emmett L. Bennett Sr. and Jr. (both with the same “L.” as in my name, which is Leslie — making me wonder how close I came to being an Emmett myself). Uncle Emmett was kind of a big deal in some circles — he was a cryptographer during WWII, and afterward he helped Michael Ventris decipher the Greek Linear B script and went on to become the world’s leading expert on the decipherment of Mycenaean clay tablets (a field whose name, pinacology, Emmett coined). And my grandfather helped write the Cincinnati city charter and later helped liberated Italian towns in WWII set up new governments.
They both sound pretty cool! And Emmett L. Bennett, adventuring cryptographer sounds like a pulp character.
Going back to Emmett the hologram… I wonder if when they cast Cabrera as Ríos they decided Ríos is also of Chilean descent, or if when filming this episode, they just told Cabrera to speak in Spanish as Emmett and he went full-Chilean slang with it.
Isn’t that the first name of Dr. Brown from Back to the Future?
It is. If this were a time travel story, maybe it could be a homage.
Anyone interested in more about Irish accents and the variety beyond the Stage Oirish accent, have a listen to this podcast episode of The Irish Passpor: https://www.theirishpassport.com/podcast/the-irish-accent/
@101 sushisushi: Maybe they used the same dialect coach that Daniel Craig did.
https://youtu.be/4_yV-7s2lWM
@101 sushisushi: Maybe they used the same dialect coach that Daniel Craig did.
https://youtu.be/4_yV-7s2lWM