The opening of Picard’s premiere episode is pure fan service: we’ve got the Enterprise-D flying through space just like it was on The Next Generation, we’ve got Data back in his old uniform, we’ve got Ten-Forward, we’ve got a poker game (a running gag that got its start in the episode “The Measure of a Man,” far from the last callback to that episode we’ll see in this first hour), and we’ve got Bing Crosby singing “Blue Sky,” which Data sang at the Riker-Troi wedding in Star Trek: Nemesis.
It’s all a dream, of course. But the fan service doesn’t end there….
(Full disclosure: Picard’s supervising producer, co-creator, and pilot co-writer Kirsten Beyer is a friend of your humble reviewer.)
As Trek pilots go, this is one of the better ones (certainly better than Discovery’s, which mistook backstory for introduction), though it helps that the protagonist is one of the most popular characters in Trek history (and, indeed, in pop culture generally), and so needs very little introduction.
It’s been just over two decades since the last time we saw Picard. This is the first long-form look at the post-Nemesis 24th-century since 2002, the only previous glimpses coming from Spock’s flashback in the 2009 Star Trek and “Children of Mars” a fortnight ago.
Thanks to the latter, we know one big thing that happened, and now we have the details of the attack on Mars that killed Kima and Lil’s parents: rogue synthetics destroyed Mars in a conflagration that is still raging a decade later. Apparently, work at the Daystrom Institute by Bruce Maddox (the cyberneticist who wanted to dismantle Data in “The Measure of a Man,” and who was later established as corresponding with him in “Data’s Day,” and who is name-checked here) resulted in more synthetics. (One wonders if the presence of Voyager’s EMH and his mobile emitter had a role in any of this as well, since he’s kind of a synthetic also.) After the Mars attack, however, synthetics were banned. Maddox himself has gone missing.
That attack happened shortly after the Romulan sun went supernova (as established in the ’09 film), and Admiral Picard’s rescue armada was discontinued, leaving many Romulan refugees screwed. Picard resigned in disgust, returning to the Picard vineyard in Labarre, France. (No word on Marie, Picard’s sister-in-law, who presumably would have inherited the vineyard and kept it going after Robert and Rene’s death in Star Trek Generations.) Two employees of the vineyard are Romulan refugees, played with country-manor dignity and delight by Jamie McShane (whom I just saw playing a drunk corrupt cop in my binge-watch of Bosch) and Orla Brady (late of Into the Badlands), and one wonders how many such Romulan refugees are performing menial jobs around the Federation now.
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The big change here in the twenty years since Nemesis is that the Federation is not living up to its ideals. Picard supposedly had to convince the higher-ups in the Federation to rescue Romulans displaced by the supernova, and a reporter to whom Picard has granted a live interview questions giving aid and comfort to “the Federation’s oldest enemies.” Well, the Federation has another nation that could be considered their “oldest enemies,” and when they had a catastrophe, the Federation went to their rescue and helped them out and they became a staunch ally. Of course, there were people who didn’t want the Federation and Klingons to become friendly, either, but just the fact that Praxis already happened a hundred years earlier makes this a bit—repetitive?
The flip side of this is that those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it, implied by the interview in which Picard references Dunkirk and the reporter has very obviously never heard of it.
I keep going back and forth on how I feel about these twin developments: the ban on synthetics and the treating of Romulan refugees as second-class citizens. Both of these are depressingly timely, especially the latter, but it also feels like ground that’s been trod before. The latter seasons of DS9, the third season of Enterprise, the first season of Discovery—they were all about wandering from ideals and needing to get back to them, and I just wish they’d dip into a different well.
On the other hand, who better to bring the Federation back to its ideals than Jean-Luc Picard, who’s already had to do that any number of times (“The Measure of a Man,” “The Offspring,” Star Trek Insurrection, to name but a few)?
I have no doubts, though, about how joyous it is to see Sir Patrick Stewart back in the saddle. After being stuck with Action Figure Picard in all the TNG movies, I’m grateful to see a return to the cerebral Picard of TNG’s earliest days, but with the more complex personality and maturity of TNG’s later days. He’s also very obviously older and more tired. At one point, he’s called upon to run up to the roof of a building, and he’s winded pretty much after the first ten steps. One of the things I’m most looking forward to about this series is a look at heroes in their twilight years, something not seen nearly often enough (and when done right, e.g., Unforgiven, and another Stewart vehicle, Logan, can be fucking brilliant).
There’s a lot of setup here, and some of the exposition comes a little too fast and furious. Picard’s leap from “I have a painting that looks like you” to “you’re an android!” is a bit far, and the only reason why the Daystrom Institute infodumps work at all is because Alison Pill’s Dr. Jurati is charming and snarky and delightful (by far the best performance in the episode, and that’s no critique of the other performances, Pill is just that good). Picard’s interview is a bit too constructed, feeling way too much like an attempt to channel Network’s climax by way of Aaron Sorkin, but Sorkin did it way better in the pilots for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The Newsroom than the five writers of this episode (Beyer, Akiva Goldsman, James Duff, Michael Chabon, and Alex Kurtzman) manage. It doesn’t help that the interviewer is a tired stereotype of a muckracking journalist who promises not to ask Picard about why he left Starfleet and then proceeds to ask it anyhow, and also is a callow youth who doesn’t know her history.
I also have to confess to not being all that thrilled with the Data cameos. They’re dream sequences, and technology is good enough to almost convince me that this is the same Data from two decades ago, but it’s still so obviously digital and makeup fakery that it’s hard to take it seriously.
Isa Briones also creates very little impression as Dahj, who is yet another young woman who suddenly can kick ass, and the science fiction world definitely is not crying out for another one of those. Dahj, however, gets blow’d up real good—but she has a twin, Soji! So we’ll see more of Briones, at least, as Picard’s quest is now to find her, especially since the Romulans who were after Dahj (and who have already killed one innocent bystander, Dahj’s boyfriend) are likely also after Soji.
Picard also continues the Secret Hideout era of Trek’s skill with person-on-person combat, as the Romulans who ambush Dahj and Picard at Starfleet HQ use transporters as part of their attack strategy, beaming in and out to provide surprise (and also escape damage). It’s brilliant, something I’ve been waiting to see for five decades now, and it’s awesome. Bravo to all and sundry.
While the previews gave away that the Borg were going to be a part of this somehow, I have to admit to being surprised at the reveal at the end: the Romulans are using a hulk of a shut-down Borg cube as a refugee station. That’s where Soji is, as well as Narek, played with don’t-hate-me-because-I’m-beautiful soulfulness by Harry Treadaway. Given that both Jeri Ryan and Jonathan delArco are going to be reprising their roles as “cured” Borg Seven of Nine and Hugh, respectively, there’s more Borg-y action to come, which is—okay? I guess? I’m willing to wait and see before passing judgment, but my instinctive response to more Borg is a massive yawn.
The series has a lovely look, from the elegiac opening credits, to the pastoral beauty of the vineyard to the nicely designed future cities of Boston and San Francisco. Hanelle M. Culpepper—who is also a co-executive producer—creates an appropriately lived-in look for the series, one that has Trek’s trademark nostalgia for old things mixed in with cutting-edge technological wonders.
I also must give huge amounts of nerdy credit to the set designers of Picard’s “quantum archive” in Starfleet HQ, which is a futuristic safety deposit box that includes a bunch of nifty items from a model of the Stargazer (Picard’s first command, as seen in “The Battle“) to the banner for “Captain Picard Day” (from “The Pegasus“) to the d’k tahg from his time as Worf’s cha’DIch in “Sins of the Father” (as well as a bat’leth).
“Remembrance” is a good pilot, setting everything up nicely, and most of the problems I had with it are ones that might easily be addressed in future episodes. It’s always a joy to watch Stewart work, more so in one of his iconic roles, and enough was established here that I really want to know what happens next.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is also rewatching Star Trek: Voyager for this site, starting yesterday with “Caretaker,” and which will run every Monday and Thursday going forward. 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.
Not sure how I feel about the show. Patrick Stewart was great as always, but I need to see some more. Some time to think.
But I’ll be honest. I’m sure as soon as we get some other TNG cast on screen that’ll be the last straw of my resistance, and I’ll be hooked.
I left work early to watch this (in UK we get it the day after US) and I’m not disappointed. I found myself attached to the Romulans who live with Picard (I hope they get some development in future episodes) and I love that we got to see Boston and Paris as actual life life cities that people live in – one hopes that we get to see other locations in the ST universe (including other planets).
I will admit that when the title of the painting was mentioned I really thought Dahj was Lal – afterall (in my mind) wouldn’t her body be somewhere. Even though thats not the case there is SO much potential here! I agree with KRAD that the point about a synthetic ban made me think of the Doctor and that the negative views on synthetics would make people turn on Seven, Icheb etc…. could we see Voyager characters making an appearance (other than Seven).
All in all this has made me quite excited.
I found it amusing that Picard quit Starfleet due to their refusal to help the Romulans after the “supernova” when he had to be convinced by Data to intervene to save Sarjenka’s planet. He also was perfectly OK with letting Boraal II die when Nikolai Rozhenko tried to save one village. Suddenly, he’s the one on the other side of the argument. Sure, there was a loophole for Sarjenka that the radio message could be considered an SOS but the good folks of Boraal II couldn’t do that due to technological limitations. But deciding that your decision on who to save is based on their ability to call for help across interstellar distances doesn’t make you moral.
Apparently the President of the Federation in 2399 is Donald Trump XXII
Making the Romulans at Chateau Picard gardeners and housekeepers is a little to spot on. Drawing a parallel to the current refugee “Crisis”, (one that is almost entirely self-made by the current US administration) is a welcome return to social commentary that I’ve found current Trek to be lacking.
The interview is a mixed bag. One one hand, we’ve got a reporter who’s digging into a story, albeit one that’s 10 years in the past. On the other hand, her attitude and immediate reveal that her agreement not to talk about Picard’s departure from Starfleet screams “The media is not to be trusted!”
The scene at the archive is a fun call back. The character of Index seems to show that the prohibition of “synths” applies only to androids and not holograms. Could Robert Picardo be a future guest star? A neat scene with one annoying bit for me. Do we really need the automated unwrapping device? The whole room is in stasis most of the time. Can’t we just have a simple box?
I wasn’t sold on Picard’s immediate acceptance of Dahj, particularly since she admitted to killing a number of people. And the jump to “You’re an android” was just out of left field. She seems to be a member of the Legion of Superheroes, Exposition Lass. Show up, drop a ton of information so Picard has a motivation to get off his ass and then get eaten alive by blood that seems to be a cross between Romulan green and the blood from Alien. Oh well, she’s got a twin sister so I’m sure well find out more in weeks to come.
Mars is still burning a decade later. Wait, what??
Some minor nits. It’s called Ten Forward, not Ten Off to One Side. And it had more than three windows. But it’s a dream sequence so I’ll give it a pass.
All in all, it was more about setting things up than anything. Some nice callbacks to TNG. 6/10
I enjoyed the overall feel of the show and Picard’s characterization. The mystery and plot are interesting enough and it obviously has a strong respect for TNG’s history and canon even as it deconstructs the Federation a bit.
My main problem was that the soundmix made it really hard to hear the dialog. I guess I need to watch it on the “good” TV from now on.
It was a little odd that Picard was apparently knocked out on the roof of Starfleet by an explosion and the cops just brought him home to wake up on his couch. No investigation, no questions, no medical checks?
I was so excited watching this. Yes, there are issues, but it’s new Trek and I don’t care.
They did stumble a bit on explaining Chateau Picard’s security, though. At first it seems like there’s none, and anyone can waltz right in. Then they say no, there are video feeds. Okay, so you don’t do anything with them, and anyone can waltz right in? Then they say no, Dahj didn’t show up on the video feeds. Yeesh, you could’ve made that clearer earlier.
I do wish we’d seen the flute from “The Inner Light” in the archive. I hope it turns up elsewhere.
I’m very excited that Hanelle Culpepper directed this one. Having a woman of color direct the very first episode is a great way to start out. The BBC could take some lessons here…
Wow. I was looking forward to this show so much and I was not let down.
But… I am worried. There was a *lot* of continuity in that episode which certainly was out of character for TNG (of course, this is not TNG!), but it must have been pretty opaque for new viewers. There are just too many elements all bunched together.
They could make a damn fine show about synth rights and the (terrorist?) attack on Mars. Having Maddox be around in the background, the possibility for Data’s daughters, and Dahj’s mother knowing that she *would* go to Picard left me wanting more. Seeing her die and knowing about her twin was a great twist that I did not see coming. (But is she really dead? Who knows?)
But then they layer in the Romulan stuff and the refugee crisis and Picard’s final mission (a great call back to the the Kelvin-era movies) and I’m not sure how that fits. It’s two ingredients, but they work okay together.
And then the Romulans are using Borg tech? And… why? So we can get more Locutus angst? So that Seven and Hugh can be in it? I’m very concerned that this is now juggling too many continuity beats, trying to follow-up on too many threads at once instead of telling one story at a time.
I loved seeing the future again. I am going to love Picard bringing honor back to the Federation again. But my fingers are crossed that the production team can juggle everything they are setting out to juggle.
@@.-@. There was also quite a bit of transporter activity and energy-weapon fire associated with the murder of Dahj’s boyfriend and the subsequent attack (given the speed and precision demonstrated in the rooftop fight, I’m inclined to assume a shipboard transporter with a skilled operator –probably not a standard Federation civillian/commuter model). That’s the kind of thing I’d imagine would be routinely monitored for and tracked, which would mean either Starfleet/Earth security is investigating in the background, or these attacks have high-level support (the kind that can scrub sensor feeds and intercept security alerts).
(At the same time, this all feels too clumsy for the Tal Shiar or Section 31, with the assassins having to remind each other to speak English, and going in hot in the first place when a quieter trap would work better.)
Seeing Dahj die, and then seeing another of her model on the Borg cube just brought to mind another show. What happened to Dahj’s consciousness when she died? Did it download to another body? How many models are there?
That said, I really enjoyed it. Can’t wait to see more.
I have to disagree with our esteemed reviewer about the reporter scene (partly due to the fact that I am an ex-reporter myself). Picard agreed to the interview about something that was so tied up with his separation with Starfleet that he had to know that it was going to at least possibly be referred to by the interviewer. All he had to say was that he wasn’t going to talk about it and then walk off. Instead, he got angry and decided to airhis grievance. I actually got a little choked up at the part where the reporter says “Romulan lives” and Picard sadly corrects her with “Lives.” I found that scene to be the best in the episode, actually.
As someone who grew up with TNG and the other 24th Century spinoffs, I have to admit it’s a little…weird seeing Picard and Starfleet with these kinds of high production values and digital effects after the, by comparison, lower production values of late 1980s and early 1990s Trek.
The CGI Enterprise-D in the intro especially felt…wrong, even though I know that’s irrational and it’s my nostalgia for the old shooting model grumbling.
Then again, I imagine this is how everyone who grew up with TOS felt by the time they got to the TOS movies.
And I absolutely love the seamless updating of the LCARS interface. It’s still unquestionably the same tech we know and love, yet reflecting the passage of 20 years.
Nice start, but in my vew quite uneven acting – the young actors are no much for Patrick Stewart. Hopefully they will find their footing as the show goes on.
People were walking around in TNG era uniforms in San Francisco, right? I haven’t gotten uniforms mixed up? Do we know if that means something or it is just a minor detail to obsess over?
@11 said: Nice start, but in my vew quite uneven acting – the young actors are no much for Patrick Stewart. Hopefully they will find their footing as the show goes on.
To be fair, it’s not like TNG didn’t have the exact same problem. Besides (possibly) Brent Spiner, were there any actors there who were a match for Patrick Stewart? Stewart as Picard is kind of like Daniel Craig as James Bond in a way. He’s an actor that most would consider to be “above” this sort of material. Yet he’s actually managed somehow to not only be the best thing in the show, but also to elevate the actual material to a level beyond what it had achieved previously
@10/Mr. Magic: After having watched 2 seasons of Discovery I’m already accustomed to this new era of big-budget Trek. Perhaps it was equaling jarring for fans of the TOS to witness TNG when it premiered with its own step up in budget and quality of special effects? And did you see “These are the Voyages” on Enterprise? The CGI rendering of the Enterprise-D (which was one of the few good moments of that atrocious episode) was quite beautifully done. So I found it quite nice fan-service to see the ship again at the start of this episode.
@3/kkozoriz: The fact that Mars is still on fire a decade later just speaks to the giant scale of the disaster that originally occurred there. And it rings true because there is precedent for that in the present on our very own planet. Did you know there is a raging fire in some underground mines in Pennsylvania that has been going on for nearly 60 years now causing the town above them to be evacuated?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire
I enjoyed this episode – a lot of info dump as often happens in a premiere episode but wonderful to see Picard/Stewart again (and Data/Spiner) and so many intriguing mysteries that are slowly unfolding. I was surprised Lal was never mentioned. I think we’ll find Maddox with the Romulans, my guess either against his will or he’s on the run or hiding from them. What’s going on with the Klingon Empire? Did they sweep in to take advantage of the chaos that occurred after Romulus was destroyed? Could the Romulans be using Borg and/or synth technology to try to recapture their glory days? Where is Beverly? Did she ever get married to Picard? Is she the captain of a hospital ship providing aid to Romulan refugees in space? What happened with Picard’s Irumodic Syndrome? So many questions!
I don’t think it’s been emphasized so much in the media and among fans but this is the first Trek series since DS9 that’s not starship-based so that in itself is refreshing and I like how this is a more introspective and character-based show.
There was a recent announcement by Kurtzman to expect two additional Star Trek series. If I had to guess, I would say one will be about Pike and company, and the other will tie into characters/events from Star Trek: Picard. Because this series is envisioned as being only 3 seasons or so and the general focus is on Picard, I think the powers that be recognized that there are enough intriguing story elements being introduced here that could form the basis of its own series. I know we haven’t even seen the new (older) Seven of Nine yet but I can already envision her headlining he own show.
@12/noblehunter: I noticed the uniforms myself but more accurately they’re of the early DS9/Voyager era with almost all of it in black and then the division coloring on the shoulders, but with looser collars now. Interesting reversal from the TNG film era uniforms and I guess the “All Good Things”/“Endgame” future Starfleet uniforms were rejected.
@krad
Well, the Federation has another nation that could be considered their “oldest enemies,” and when they had a catastrophe, the Federation went to their rescue and helped them out and they became a staunch ally. Of course, there were people who didn’t want the Federation and Klingons to become friendly, either, but just the fact that Praxis already happened a hundred years earlier makes this a bit—repetitive?
Thank you. I couldn’t clarify what was bothering me about the Federation’s relief effort and it didn’t occur to me until you pointed it out that it’s basically Praxis 2.0.
Given the mention of the reluctance of sharing Federation resources, I wonder if that was a subtle nod that the Federation was still recovering from the Dominion War at the time of the Hobus supernova. I also wonder if there’s widespread resentment over the fact that the War might’ve ended sooner if Vreenak hadn’t brokered the non-aggression Pact and the Star Empire hadn’t sat out the War’s first year.
One other thing I am hoping Picard does is finally do needed world-building with Romulan culture (especially with the refugees trying to hold onto it in the wake of Romulus’ destruction). Their Trek’s oldest antagonists and it drives me crazy that they’ve never received the same cultural exploration the Klingons got from TNG onward (which is why I adore Diane Duanne’s Rihannsu novels).
@14, Oh yeah, I forgot about the CGI D in the ENT finale. I remember it was a little weird at the time, but Trek had been transitioning to CGI throughout the TNG-DS9-VOY-ENT era, so it really didn’t bother me then.
But I think it’s different because I grew up with Picard, Sisko, and Janeway, the look of the 24th Century in my head is fixed and seeing a pillar of my childhood grow and show itself in a way that wasn’t possible with the production and tech of the 1980s and 1990s (or even in the TNG films)…it’s going to take some getting used to.
@10/Mr. Magic: “As someone who grew up with TNG and the other 24th Century spinoffs, I have to admit it’s a little…weird seeing Picard and Starfleet with these kinds of high production values and digital effects after the, by comparison, lower production values of late 1980s and early 1990s Trek.”
Odd… I also grew up with those shows, and I always felt their production values were top-notch for commercial TV and their VFX were cutting-edge. It’s only in retrospect that they’ve come to be seen as cheap.
I mean, if you look at just about any other SFTV show from the late ’80s and early ’90s, with rare exceptions like The Flash, the video effects were horrible compared to TNG. Nobody at the time was doing better work with that technology than TNG was. And DS9, VGR, and especially ENT upped the game further and further.
KRAD: “There’s more Borg-y action to come, which is—okay? I guess?”
Optimistically, perhaps one of the things this series can accomplish is to make the Borg threatening again. We’ll have chances to discuss this more as you get further into the Voyager rewatch, but I think one of the problems with that series is that it made the Borg seem a bit weak. Which may partly have been an occupational hazard of developing them as antagonists. But perhaps, with the space of almost twenty years, “Picard” can find a way to bring back some of the mystery and menace that they had in the “Q Who” and “Best of Both Worlds” days.
@18: They’d have to retcon out all of the “development” the Borg have had since then. I don’t think it’s going to happen.
All they’d need to do is activate an old program to make the Borg like the old Borg again — “nostalgia.exe.” I mean, I’d be shocked if we didn’t hear them say the catchphrases.
@17 / CLB:
Yeah, yeah, good point.
I could’ve phrased that better.
I think the plot twists may be a bit telegraphed, but I’m loving the ride!
Predictions: The oneiric feel of Picard’s vineyard hints at a later reveal that references The Prisoner. From his lapses into dream, to the fact that he is suddenly returned to the vineyard after the fight between Dahj and the Romulan commandos, I get the feeling that Picard is at the center of a conspiracy to gain information pertaining to Soji, and that some of the sequences are being manipulated by time travel and/or holographic environments. His staff are in actuality his handlers, and are likely in league with the commandos. The Romulan commandos’ commentary on whether Dahj has awakened to her latent Data-like superhuman abilities or not, implies that their order is targeting a range of time, but is uncertain which precise moment they must travel to in order to stop Dahj from committing some future, or past act – likely the attack on Mars which indirectly caused greater Romulan casualties. In fact, they evidently targeted the wrong twin, and Soji is the person who is related to the disaster. A time loop may be involved. The other party involved in the conflict has appeared as Dahj’s digital parent, and wants Picard to interact with Soji, as they know this is key to creating the future as they know it. Given that the Borg possess the ability to time travel, and that Data had many interactions with the Borg, including contact with the Hive mind, it is reasonable to suspect that Soji and Dahj are descendants of this union, or at least posses attributes of both, likely under the guidance of Bruce Maddox, who may have extracted a corrupted imprint of Data’s mind from a Borg source. When Soji activates in a future episode, a link to the Borg (via the cube she is on) will likely be triggered, setting the past events into action, in which the rogue synthetics are infected with a Borg virus. Also likely, is a conflict between the Borg and Data halves of Soji’s psyche, in which the good, Data, will win out thanks to the influence of Picard, and the Mars attack will be ultimately be averted. The Romulan faction will never have existed, but the other party, likely having infiltrated Starfleet, will remain. Season 2 – Admiral Picard, having never left Starfleet, further unraveling the plot of the other party.
14. GarretH – The problem is, what exactly is burning? There’s no coal seams like in your link. There’s no forests to burn. The oxygen in the atmosphere would react to form other compounds very quickly. The idea that a planet is on fire for a decade is just turning the disaster up to 11. Much like the “supernova” couldn’t just be a supernova, it had to threaten the entire galaxy. If they wanted to make it a bigger deal than just destroying Utopia Planitia, they could say that it’s undone all the terraforming thus far.
You can’t even break through to the mantle. Mars isn’t tectonically active.
Perhaps the “Mars is still burning” line isn’t meant to be taken literally. It might not be flames, but radioactive fallout (or something similar) making the planet uninhabitable, maybe?
You don’t think it could simply be a continuous fusion fire, fed by the surplus of materials used in forming warp engines at the shipyard? It was an act of sabotage meant to divert rescue forces. If they just blew up Mars, or destroyed the entire surface instantaneously, there would be nothing to rescue, and no diversion. It’s conceivable the saboteurs would engineer a continuous, slow spreading disaster utilizing raw materials, and that there would be enough materials present to maintain the disaster for some time, depending on the nature of it.
In Trek, Mars was terraformed for human habitation starting in the 22nd century. So by the 24th century, there probably are forests to burn, or at least some kind of surface vegetation.
Or “burning” could mean that parts of the planet’s crust are still incandescently hot from the bombardment.
27. ChristopherLBennett – We’ve seen Mars, both in Picard’s dream and in Children of Mars. It looks much like it does now and not at all Earthlike with forests and seas.
Why would Picard imagine Mars as Earthlike anyway? If there were forests, that’s how he’d imagine it because that would be how it was in his time.
It’s just cranking up the hyperbole in order to make a disaster into a MAGA-disaster.
I enjoyed the episode- it did a good job of catching the viewers up to the last 2 decades without feeling like a heavy trip to planet exposition. It acknowledged we needed some fan service, of which there’s nothing wrong with in moderation, had some cool technology with the transporter combat and holographic archive, and set up a lot of interesting opportunities.
I also didn’t object as much to the darker federation approach (sorry KRAD) because Trek has always been a reflection of its time. It sets up an interesting overarching narrative as well: if peak federation was the Enterprise D era, can it be returned or are we doomed to a slow decline?
It’s a great start- I really do want to see where it goes and I’m guessing with Patrick Stewart involved it’s going to go somewhere goo
Devin Clancy: the Romulan staff at the vineyard mentioned talking to the police, so there was some investigation, but it is odd that Picard awakened from an attack in San Francisco in his living room in Labarre rather than, say, a hospital in San Francisco……
Meredith: the vineyard is presumably own to the public to some extent, which may explain the ease with which Dahj entered.
Mr. Magic: I’m with Christopher, and your memory of the late 1980s differs entirely from mine. TNG had top of the line effects for the era.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@30/krad: And not just effects, but production values all around — the sets, the costumes, the makeup, the cinematography, the music, the works. People often complain about the repetitiveness of the music, but it always had orchestral scores at a time when much TV music had become purely synthesized to save money. All the Trek shows were pretty much the best-looking shows on TV.
Although admittedly that’s partly because a lot of ’80s and early ’90s TV looked really cheesy. A lot of it has aged worse than shows from the ’60s and ’70s, I guess because they were switching to new video-based tech for editing and so forth, and it didn’t look as good once the novelty wore off.
I’m usually not in the effusive gusher camp, but I loved this start. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a first-watch of a Trek episode this much – maybe not since “Family”, which for my money still has the greatest interplay between two characters (Picard and brother Robert) I’ve seen from this franchise.
And that may be why I grade it up so high. ST Discovery is such a mishmash of angsty furrowed brows and save-the-universe (literally) melodrama that I’m exhausted and annoyed by the end of each hour. I became a Trek fan not because it was a science fiction series, but because I loved Kirk, Spock and the rest of the ensemble cast. Their friendships, tested though they were so often, was the glue that held everything together. In TOS and TNG, the personal relationships among the crew were as important as the plotlines and special effects (and I completely disagree with whomever it was that suggested TNG looked cheesy back in the day. I was, and honestly still am, impressed with TNG’s attention to detail in that regard).
“Picard” looks like it’s going to try to strike a better balance between whiz-bang action (I did enjoy the choreography of the fight scenes, especially the one on the stairs) and character-development.
I like the casting in general so far, but once you have Patrick Stewart the rest is gravy. I hope we see a lot more of Dr. Jurati – she reminds me a bit of a less manic Tilly from Discovery.
Love, love love the way the show looks, rich and creamy in the scenes at Picard’s vineyard in particular. Makes me want to book a trip to French wine country on the spot.
I liked the interview scene because although it was completely telegraphed that the reporter was going to sandbag Picard somehow, she didn’t completely bowl over him. He was allowed to complete his thoughts. We’ve all seen clips from news shows and talk shows where interviewees abruptly terminate an interview, and they always come off badly, looking self-righteous or abused somehow. Picard had his say and walks off with a “we’re done here” so definitive that I heard the mic drop.
Yes, Data didn’t look like our Data – he got older, and you can say that’s distracting, but what are the alternatives? Not have him appear at all (boo!); have him appear in flashbacks (boring); CGI him like Peter Cushing in Star Wars, for which they got raked over the coals? I got used to the older thick-cheeked Data in about 2.83 seconds, and was cool with it from then on.
Lastly, I think I’m the only one besides the scriptwriters who haven’t tired of the Borg. I still find them to be an interesting collective villain, especially when they’re in dispassionate “Resistance is Futile” mode. No slimy Borg queens please….
@30 / KRAD:
Yes, you’re right. It was groundbreaking and high value at the time. It’s just easy to forget that with the passage of time and the advances in digital technology and production values.
As I said to CLB earlier, I could’ve phrased that better.
TNG’s production values were a significant factor in the 1980s cancellation of Doctor Who. It was considered embarrassing just how bad DW looked compared to Star Trek which the BBC were showing as an import, and which was considered to look as good as feature films.
Personally I still think the Enterprise-D set is exactly what a starship should look like. It looks like you could comfortably live and work there for year after year. Compare i to the current trend of portraying ships that seem like you’d be living inside a never ending firework display…
Count me in the apparent minority that doesn’t mind seeing the Borg return. They’ve always served as commentary on our relationship with technology, albeit taken to extremes. But surely there is plenty of new material to be pulled from the real world since their last appearance. Think about it, a network of aggressive people forcing their agenda onto others…. The Borg as social media. #assimilatethis
I was so sure Dajh was going to turn out to be Lal — she even looks like her, to a first-order approximation.
I loved the characters, loved the worldbuilding, but was pretty meh on the plot. Another magic girl we have to protect from bad guy agents? I’ve seen that in Firefly, The Witcher, Outlaw Star… I’m sure there’s a name for this plot device on TV Tropes.
But still, Trek is moving forward again! If, like me, you think Trek is at its best when it’s showing what happens *next*, then this is the first new Trek in about two decades. Go boldly!
@krad: “they were all about wandering from ideals and needing to get back to them, and I just wish they’d dip into a different well.”
This may also be part of the setup for Discovery season 3, with the Federation possibly gone bad, needing to be reborn. There have been seeds for this from things Chabon has said in the past.
I was excited while watching this yesterday, but it’s cooled off a bit since then. It’ll be a matter of where the story goes. I like the similar vibe to Logan. If Marvel was doing this as a comic, they’d call it Old Man Picard.
Mars is still burning because they had to reuse the footage from the original synth attack. In fact, it looks like a VFX mistake initially when the reporter and Picard are discussing the rescue armada for Romulus and she pulls up footage we saw in Children of Mars. Unless she’s cuing it up before bringing up the subject, which had to have rattled him.
Overall, very good start. We knew synths would be part of the story. Now everything seems to follow from Data’s Daughter.
@Aerik 36….. Dahj actually checks off several tropes, Action Girl and Distressed Damsel being the top two. She’s very River Tam from Firefly.
But I was with you thinking this was a Lal 2.0 for a while. Then the reveal that she and her sister were likely Commander Maddox creations was brilliant if for no other reaso. That it revives a character who showed up in one episode and was referenced in two and made a key player.
I think that’s why I liked the episode- I kept trying to guess where the plot was going to go, would be off, and not care. I’m with you in excited that we’re moving foreard
@30/KRAD – I am watching again, and there is a proximity notification on a screen for the television crew’s arrival. It’s very much blink-and-you-miss-it, though, and I must have blinked the first time through. They do say that Dahj “didn’t show up” on the notifications toward the end, apparently because she’s synthetic, but if you’ve missed the notification for the TV crew, it makes no sense. I’m not sure about the vineyard being public – it may be, but it seems that the proximity notification is for the approach to the house itself.
Okay, so, reading this from the perspective of someone who’s going to have to try and tie his fan fiction universe in with all this without having seen it (it’s like the late 90s all over again), I guess I’ve never said Mars wasn’t burning. So this happened in 2389 (which would be around the time of the outbreak of my Talenthan War) and Picard resigned straight after (problematic, since I had him still in Starfleet in 2393, but workable if they don’t fill in too much back story of the last decade)? And there’s still Romulans around, so shucks to anyone that insisted they all went down with their planet, and they have at least some sort of organisation, although it sounds like the Romulan Empire possibly isn’t around anymore (also problematic since I had it recover pretty quickly)? At least it seems to tie in perfectly with my having Picard lead the relief efforts after Romulus…
Some loose thoughts:
Was I the only one who was surprised by how emotional Picard made me? Maybe it’s the beautiful title theme.
The “magic girl” trope doesn’t bother me at all- I’ve actually never seen the other shows that use it. Also, didn’t the writers subvert that trope by killing her in Ep 1?
I realized that this is the 1st Trek series since the original to not have a 2 hr pilot. The story feels more incomplete than the others because of it.
The plight of Starfleet is a logical extension of DS9 and the Dominion War arc to me. My guess is the section 31 might be behind the Mars attack- and this might be the opportunity to end S31 for good: with Picard ending it. Seems like the perfect person to do it
@42/M: Discovery started with a 2-parter rather than a single 2-hour episode, so I’m not sure that counts.
I really hope Section 31 isn’t involved. They’ve been hugely overused in recent years. They don’t have to be behind every bad thing. Besides, why would they be behind an attack on Mars? Their goal is to protect the Federation by any means necessary, no matter how unethical. Destroying Mars hurts the Federation, so it’s anathema to S31’s goals.
Mr.Bennett: The Vulcan Hello/Battle at the Binary Stars really is one seemless story, so that’s why I included it. It could have easily been shown (and should have been) as a “two hour” episode.
As for S31: I don’t want them involved. But if they were involved in this series for the sole purpose of virtuous Picard ending them for good, I’d be okay with it.
As for why: (just spitballing) At the end of the Dominion War, every threat in the Alpha Quadrant is gone except the Romulans. By not helping them, they could have reasoned that makes the Feeration unchallenged.
@44/M: But at the end of the Dominion War, the Romulans are on better terms with the Federation than ever before. That’s why Shinzon’s coup happened — because he piggybacked on a fringe of military hardliners who wanted to end the postwar detente with the Federation. And then Picard and Donatra worked together to defeat the faction that staged the coup, so that at the end of Nemesis, relations with the Romulans were even better and Riker’s Titan was going to Romulus to facilitate peace talks. By the time the supernova is imminent, the UFP and Romulans are friendlier than they’ve ever been, and Spock is able to come freely to Romulus and offer the Vulcans’ help. It would be stupid to screw that up with an unprovoked attack on Romulus, and even more insane to screw that up with an unprovoked attack on one of the Federation’s own most important planets just because it would undermine humanitarian aid to the Romulans.
All good points. Perhaps I’m just used to seeing S31 as the go to bad guy.
I will say that I don’t think it is a coincidence that the efforts to help the Romulans escape the supernova was derailed by an unseen and unexplained attack on Mars.
@Transceiver 22:
I got that Prisoner feeling the moment the interviewer asked Picard why he resigned. Of course, this time around we already know who Number One is.
@42/M – I for one hope that we can get through one modern Trek series without Section 31 being involved. From DS9 to Enterprise to Into Darkness to Discovery and now they’re getting their own show! The writers have got to be more original then to keep falling back on this crutch. Section 31 don’t have to have their hand in everything that’s of big significance. Maybe it’s no coincidence that the synths attacked Mars when the Romulan evacuation was occurring because they were smart enough to realize the Federation would be “distracted” by that humanitarian effort.
@46/M: “Perhaps I’m just used to seeing S31 as the go to bad guy.”
Which is exactly why I hate conspiracy stories. Once you start thinking in terms of there being some secret evil force causing bad things, it’s easy to fall into the paranoid reflex of assuming the same evil force is behind every bad thing ever.
The thing to keep in mind is that the larger a conspiracy is, the more impossible it becomes to keep it secret. The more people are involved in it, the more actions it takes, the more chances there are for things to go wrong and secrets to be exposed, or for people to have bouts of conscience and confess the truth. That’s the other reason I hate conspiracy stories, because the idea of a conspiracy that is both omnipresent and all-powerful and able to remain perfectly hidden for hundreds of years is self-contradictory and totally idiotic.
The only way Section 31 could stay secret for any length of time is by doing as little as possible. So it’s best if their use in stories is kept to a minimum, for the sake of credibility as well as the sake of not making them even more hackneyed and overused than they already are.
@48 Or by disrupting the convoy they could kill millions and millions of organics with one op.
First, a micro-question: KRAD refers to the Romulan couple living at the winery as Picard’s employees; do we know this for sure, or might they be house-guests or “found family” — any other status that might make them other than servants?
Moving on, though, to something that’s been bothering me ever since I caught the text caption for the news feed in “Children of Mars”: when did the Federation (or at least, Earth) find itself (a) in need of a sizeable “synth” labor force in the first place, and (b) able to create such a sizeable force both able to do the needed work and ornery enough to engage in violent rebellion?
Very little in previous Trek fiction, prose or screen, has laid a foundation for “synths” as a practical industrial resource, save perhaps for the androids of “I, Mudd”. Nomad and M-5 show that electronic intellects are difficult to construct and dangerous once activated; in the TNG era, Soong-derived androids are rare and all but Data are unstable in one way or another. Ruk and his like turned on their creators; so, one gathers, did the androids of Mudd’s planet. The holographic Professor Moriarty chafed under his limitations; Voyager‘s EMH needed 29th century help to overcome his.
Moreover, we have seen no “synth” labor in use onscreen at any starbase, shipyard, or other Federation facility over the life of the franchise before now. Synths didn’t build the Enterprise, or K-7, or even (so far as we know) Terok Nor or any of Vulcan’s extra-planetary installations (for example). And yet the Federation — prior to the Dominion War, at least — has continued to prosper, and build its infrastructure outward, and increase the size of Starfleet.
In short, I have trouble envisioning the Federation as it’s been portrayed prior to Picard believable as an entity that could or would create — or condone the use of — a large population of intelligent “synthetic workers” as, essentially, a slave labor force. What we know of Federation economics suggest that no such force has existed in “modern” Federation history. What we know of Federation technology suggests that any such force would be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to create (and if the resources existed to create such a force, it would be simpler and cheaper to use those resources to build whatever else it was you wanted directly). And what we know of officially espoused Federation values suggests that institutionally speaking, it would be politically difficult to get the approvals you’d need to design and develop a “synth” labor force that was both smart enough to do useful labor and *not* so smart as to develop the intellectual potential to revolt.
Something feels deeply wrong with this picture. In fact, I think I’m going to call this one now: by the end of the season, I think we’ll find out that not only was the Mars disaster not caused by “rogue synths”, but that there was no such thing as a “rogue synth” until the Mars disaster forced the few functional synthetic beings in the immediate galaxy to go underground to avoid being persecuted.
It’s a shame that apparently the only thing that survives in contemporary Trek from DS9 is Section 31 which appeared in all of 3(!) (count’em) episodes from the series’ 7 seasons.
@51: You bring up some excellent points here, and I really hope it’s something that the series explores in detail. Poor worldbuilding has been one of the many crippling flaws of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, so hopefully Star Trek can do better on this front, especially with all the varied storytelling possibilities present in a post-Dominion War setting.
@52/remremulo: Section 31 isn’t the only DS9 idea that was used in later series. It introduced the genetic-engineering ban that was picked up on in ENT and DSC. It coined the term “Orion Syndicate” and established the use of “Terran” to refer to Mirror humans (which DSC annoyingly treated as if it referred exclusively to Mirror humans, ignoring the fact that previous Trek series routinely used it as a synonym for “Earth person” all along). We’ve seen a Lurian (Morn’s species) in the trailer for DSC season 3. Okay, mostly fairly minor things, but there are a few. And we’ll probably see more as PIC and DSC continue.
The vineyard scenes reminded me of where Veidt was being held in the Watchmen series.
@51 John C Bunnell
The vineyard staff are introduced in an ongoing 4 issue series of comics, which evidently provides a lot of background info on the series. Long story short, they’re ex Romulan intelligence agents who owe their lives to Picard. My money says they’re still intelligence and are more important than they appear.
@51,
Moving on, though, to something that’s been bothering me ever since I caught the text caption for the news feed in “Children of Mars”: when did the Federation (or at least, Earth) find itself (a) in need of a sizeable “synth” labor force in the first place, and (b) able to create such a sizeable force both able to do the needed work and ornery enough to engage in violent rebellion?
I’m wondering if the Synth Labor Force came about as a means for the UFP to compensate for the manpower losses Starfleet sustained during the Dominion War. The Federation would be anxious about post-war stability and security and would be working to rebuild as quickly as possible.
52 & 54– there was a blink and you miss it Deep Space Nine Easter egg in Remembrance. A reference to Kasidy Yates.
https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/et6wtj/star_trek_picard_ds9_easter_egg_kasidy_yates_ad/
@51. John C: the couple shows affection toward Picard and he may think of them as family, but he still make requests of them and has expectations, like “get a room ready for Dahj, please.” I saw them as more as caretakers of both the man and the property. Not sure what employment looks like on 2399 Earth or how such employees would be recompensed.
They may turn out to be more than they seem, as will Dahj’s mom. I’ll also chime in to say no more S31, but that seems almost inevitable with a show all their own coming. It’s a good bet that if you involve the Romulan secret service, it’s counterpart will rear it’s head.
Re: Synths in the Federation. People seem to be talking about synths as though they were slave labour. Perhaps that’s because we in our day and age are used to robots being used for the same purpose. But I suspect that may not have been the case.
Recall that Dr. Jurati mentions that nearly every synth was built at the Daystrom Institute. Now maybe she was speaking metaphorically, but if it means that the Institute was the literal birthplace for every Federation synth, then I suspect there were not a lot of them. The Institute is not a factory. Plus, I doubt Bruce Maddox, after his humbling experience with Data, would have readily consented to letting synths being used in such a manner.
Rather, I suspect that the synths were introduced to Federation society in the same manner as any immigrant would; granted citizenship, and allowed to integrate and find their own place in the communities to which they’re introduced. I doubt this process didn’t start until after Nemesis, so there might be only a few hundred synths by the time of the attack on Mars. Too small a number to present a serious threat to rational thinkers, but fear of strangers has never been rational. It’s also too small a number for people to complain if they disappear. Their status as manufactured instead of born probably made the othering process a lot easier.
How could a small number of synths cause so much damage, especially if only a tiny portion of the total synth population “went rogue”? We’ve seen plenty of examples where Data, or Lore, demonstrated themselves to be dangerous in the right circumstances. Chances are, only a few synths were needed to perpetrate the attack. This might also explain the ease and rapidity that a galactic treaty banning synth production was hammered out. If only 5 synths, say, devastated Mars, you can imagine the wheels turning in the heads of lawmakers on Q’onoS, Cardassia, and Ferenginar (and elsewhere).
Re: Picard’s logic leap. While I wasn’t disturbed by it at the time, I can see how it’s a problem. But, perhaps if they had placed the Daystrom scene before Picard met with Dahj that second time, it might have worked better.
The two Romulans at the vineyard appear to be either household staff or vineyard staff — that doesn’t preclude them also being found family, as it were. And they may use the above-mentioned backstory from the comics……….
As for synthetic life being used as slave labor, that was already established as a thing with holograms in Voyager‘s “Author, Author.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@61/krad: “And they may use the above-mentioned backstory from the comics……….”
Or rather, the backstory depicted in the comics is probably based on what they worked out for the show.
“As for synthetic life being used as slave labor, that was already established as a thing with holograms in Voyager‘s “Author, Author.””
Which made no sense at all and was the dumbest thing about that episode, but we’ll get to that in your VGR Rewatch in due time. Anyway, I don’t think it counts as “slave” labor unless the laborers are sentient; the Doctor’s sentience was meant to be an exception for holograms, not the rule, because he was kept permanently active for much longer than any other EMH.
Really, the whole idea of AI slave labor makes little sense. If you want to build machines to do mindless toil for you, why give them minds? That’s gratuitously inhumane and practically guarantees rebellion, so it’s both too stupid and too cruel for the Federation.
Granted, if what you specifically need is intelligence and mental labor, I could see it. In fact, I’ve depicted just such a scenario in my original fiction with the treatment of “cybers” by certain asteroid-dwellers (who live too many light-minutes apart to have the kind of global crowdsourcing capability we have for problem-solving on Earth and thus create sentient AIs so they can have that kind of problem-solving skill available at close range). But for that, you wouldn’t need humanoid bodies, whether mechanical or holographic. Whereas if you need machines to perform mining or assemble things in factories, there are actual machine machines that can do that; building them in the shape of humans is just silly, and giving them minds even more so.
I think the show is screwing with us as far as the “rogue synths” are concerned. It feels like they’re counting on the audience to fill in the blanks using rogue AI tropes. If they wanted us invested in this plotline, I think they’d put more effort into it.
On a related note, I hate weekly episodes.
@63/noblehunter: “If they wanted us invested in this plotline, I think they’d put more effort into it.”
This is a modern-style serialized show telling one long story spread out over a season. Just because a story thread is barely touched on in the first episode doesn’t mean it won’t be developed more fully later.
I get why people are seeing unfortunate implications with the two Romulans working for Picard but I want to propose an alternate view. If my home, life and world were destroyed in fire, I had nowhere to go and not much to do and the good man who had led the rescue effort offered to put me up at a beautiful estate in the country, with (presumably) the option of helping run it? Chateau Picard would sound like a haven to me. I might even want the work, even manual labor, for the sake of something to do and something to feel good about while processing the trauma.
Remains to be seen how or if this thread will be developed but from the end-of-episode preview it looks like the story will be heading into space soon.
I’m definitely looking forward to more in this season. This is a huge improvement for a post Roddenberry/Berman run Trek over Discovery (and I actually liked season 2 of Disco)
When they talked about rogue synths attacking Mars my mind immediately went to the first Mass Effect game where you fight rogue synths being led by a rogue special agent who has a sentient starship named Sovereign.
Literally the first thing I thought of.
On second viewing when Picard is talking to Dr. Jurati about Daj, it reminded me of the Cylons in Moore’s Battlestar Galactica.
@65/themindstream: I can imagine that Romulan refugees would recoil at the idea of a Federation-style life of pure leisure, and would feel they had to do something to contribute to society, or just to keep up their own discipline.
Regardless of if the Romulan housekeepers are actually “more” than what they seem, I absolutely love their portrayal. There is such a sweet compassionate and gentle nature about them that I’d like to see them more and learn of their backstory (and no, I haven’t previously read the comics that featured them). And I also don’t feel that because they are Romulan and have a relatively simple occupation now, that they should have had to at some point been intelligence officers or Tal Shiar operatives. Maybe they were just “regular” Romulan citizens that weren’t running around doing anything nefarious.
Amusing interview with Patrick Stewart and Jeri Ryan promoting Picard:
of spandex and catsuits
It never occurred to me the Romulans at Chateau Picard were anything but willing… employees? (still no clarity on the economy of the Federation)? They seem to have a great deal of affection for Picard, and he for them. What I really noticed about them was they mercifully do not have the comically pronounced brows of TNG Romulans (nor the oversized, very 1980s shoulderpads). (I always wondered if TNG felt they needed to visually distinguish between Romulans and Vulcans because, y’know, they both have pointed ears, what if the viewers get confused?)
I really enjoyed the first episode of Picard. I like how it leans in hard to Nemeis and ST09 instead of pretending they didn’t happen or revising or erasing elements from them (unlike some other “Star” franchises of late). I appreciate the show’s calling the Federation/Starfleet back to its core principle and high ideals. I really liked Dahj, trope though she may be – “The Mandalorian” is showing how tropes don’t have to be off the table just because they are tropes, if they’re done well. I liked the reveal at the end. Can’t wait for this week’s episode!
@70/mpoteet: “(I always wondered if TNG felt they needed to visually distinguish between Romulans and Vulcans because, y’know, they both have pointed ears, what if the viewers get confused?)”
Maybe to an extent. They rarely used Vulcans in TNG, but we’d seen Henry Darrow as a Vulcan admiral just one episode before the TNG Romulans debuted, so maybe they thought some clarification was in order.
But I’ve always figured it was largely done for the same reason the Klingon makeup was changed — because prosthetics technology had improved since the 1960s and the producers wanted their production to look more sophisticated, plus Michael Westmore wanted to put his own stamp on the design. The Vulcan makeup was probably off-limits for redesigning because it was Spock’s iconic look, but the Romulans were fair game.
@54: Wasn’t the ban on genetic engineering a callback to TOS?
@72/melendwyr: “Wasn’t the ban on genetic engineering a callback to TOS?”
Not as such. Yes, the Eugenics Wars were established in TOS: “Space Seed,” but the extremely, extremely bad idea that the Federation would be so Luddite and irrational as to ban genetic engineering because of something that happened 400 years earlier and that nobody alive would personally remember was not introduced until DS9: “Doctor Bashir, I Presume.” In TNG’s second season, “Unnatural Selection” showed a Federation science institute engaged in advanced genetic engineering, attempting to create genetically perfect humans, and though it was treated as ethically questionable, it was never suggested that it was against the law.
@10/Mr. Magic –
“As someone who grew up with TNG and the other 24th Century spinoffs, I have to admit it’s a little…weird seeing Picard and Starfleet with these kinds of high production values and digital effects after the, by comparison, lower production values of late 1980s and early 1990s Trek”
Hi! For those who saw the above comment & were either too young or not yet into Trek in the beginning, I just wanted to add the point of view of someone who grew up watching STTOS on a B&W TV, and also worked in the VFX industry in both the photochemical & digital era.
When TOS was first on the air, altho it was shot on 35mm film, they were very much aware of the limits of the medium on which most people would view the end product: an over-the-air NTSC signal of 525 lines of resolution captured by an antenna on a B&W or color TV with an under 30″ screen (or worse, during the 70s when the show was syndicated, from a 16mm film print in a film chain broadcast over the airwaves). You’ve got to push to get things to read properly on that old TV tech, which results in things like the heavy eye make-up you see on TOS Trek’s actors. But those kinds of limitations also allow you to “get away with” things you might see with your eye in person, but not on TV–very important when you’re on a tight schedule & budget. (Along the same lines of filming for the end-user viewing tech: if you were to see a color photo taken on the set of a film shot in black & white, you’d be shocked to see some of the garish colors, because you shoot for the way costumes, props, etc will contrast each other in shades of gray–there’s even a special viewing filter you can use on set to see how your colors will translate to B&W).
Because of their budget & time constraints, TOS couldn’t always achieve feature film level VFX, but they were using all the tried & true independent VFX/optical houses in town. Lin Dunn at Film Effects of Hollywood is considered the father of the optical printer & worked on King Kong in 1933! TOS’s contemporary, “Lost In Space” went a different route and made use of the likes of 20th Century Fox’s effects department and industry pros L.B. Abbott & the Lydecker brothers and their expertise in miniatures flown on wires. Both approaches were state-of-the-art for the time and it is only now in the age of HD, Blu-ray, 4K & widescreen TV that all the technical flaws–which would not be so evident on a 1960s TV–truly come to light.
Jump forward to the 80s and the premiere of STTNG, I remember sitting in an editing bay with a friend of mine (they had better tv’s at the studio!) and thinking, “NOW we’re going to see Trek the way it’s supposed to look!” And I was very much disappointed to see that altho they shot on film, they had opted to composite the effects on video. The end result (to me) looked a bit cheesy–but I understood the reason: keep the costs down. But again, for the time period, this was far & away so much better than most things on TV. (Yes, there are exceptions: shows like Space: 1999 had the superb miniature work of folks like Derek Meddings & Brian Johnson and Battlestar Galactica had VFX created by Star Wars’ John Dykstra, but the high cost led to heavy recycling of stock BSG spaceship footage). And now, the HD remaster of TNG shows how beautiful the show really was!
As DS9 & Voyager came along, VFX continued to evolve while still keeping the Trek aesthetic, and with Enterprise, we got the first Trek in HD. Of course, the Trek motion pictures had cutting-edge VFX technology, but they had the luxury of top notch VFX houses like ILM & much bigger budgets (altho they sure got their mileage out of that expensive CGI Genesis Project footage!).
Now, in the 21st Century, audiences have been exposed to more sci-fi/CG/special effects than ever and their expectations are high. One of the challenges for Trek today is to keep the VFX on a level acceptable to the modern eye AND keep that Trek aesthetic–which I thought they did BEAUTIFULLY with Capt. Pike’s Enterprise in ST:Discovery. They brought the tech up to what a modern audience (especially one not that familiar with TOS) would expect, while keeping that 60’s retro feel that Trekkers would love. (For me, while ST:Discovery looks great, it doesn’t really fit the time period it’s set in–I think they would have done better to set the series farther in the future. And Pike’s Enterprise shows they could’ve applied the same aesthetic to the Discovery to make it more familiar to longtime fans of the franchise.)
With “Picard”, the trailers show we’re going to see a lot more VFX and I look forward to finally seeing the classic Romulan Bird of Prey in HD. As far as Mr. Magic’s comment about CG ships vs model ships, ILM proved to Gareth Edwards they could recreate that “model” aesthetic with Rogue One–and with unlimited time & money you can do anything with a pixel. But VFX technicians don’t want to just recreate or imitate what’s been done in the past–much of which was dictated by the limitations of things like motion control & bluescreen tech of the time.
In the days before CG, there were many “how did they do that?!” moments in films, which sold a lot of Starlog & Famous Monsters of Filmland magazines. Today, we all say, “they did it with a computer” so it all comes down to: is the story good enough to keep our minds immersed & our disbelief suspended? One of my old VFX bosses used to say he was always most satisfied with his work when people didn’t realize they were looking at an effects shot. :)
@74/owlly72: Very well-said. My viewpoint is much the same — except that when I first saw TNG, I thought it looked great and wasn’t really bothered by the video compositing at first, despite the often-obvious scan lines. It was only in retrospect that I started to see the limitations of the FX in those early seasons. Like how static most of the starship shots were. A few seasons in, they started showing off with stately, swooping motion-control moves around their ship miniatures, and that became the standard from then on, and by the standards of the time it looked amazing (though swooping camera moves have become a cliche in the CGI era).
@75/ChristopherLBennett – yes, it’s very true that the swooping camera moves have become cliche in the CG era (much like the early overuse of “flying logos” over static titles) but in the beginning, wow, it certainly was amazing. I remember watching Doug Trumbull’s over-under fly-by of the Klingon Battle Cruiser in the opening of ST:TMP and being STUNNED at the beauty of the shot & completely mind-boggled by the complexity of the motion control involved to achieve it.
BTW, I always enjoy your perspectives in the comments of KRAD’s ST:Rewatches on this site. :)
@76/owlly72: My problem with CGI swoopy shots is that they tend to be physically impossible, way too fast to be done with a real camera, and often just way too elaborate to the point that they distract from the scene. It’s like they’re screaming “Look how fake and CGI we are!” rather than creating a believable simulation of reality. I don’t mind swooping shots done with real cameras, like the motion-control miniature shots in TNG/DS9/etc., or the way drone cameras are increasingly being used in cinematography these days.
One of the things I love about the underrated movie John Carter is how disciplined Andrew Stanton is with the camera work. The movie has all these huge, sweeping CGI vistas, yet the camera moves are restrained to what a real, physical camera in those settings would be capable of, and it sells the illusion far better than the usual impossibly fast swoopiness.
@77/ChristopherLBennett – I agree. There are multiple schools of thought I’ve run into over my years in VFX addressing the points you make:
1. Some directors/FX supervisors feel the advantage of CG is to finally do things you could never do with a camera & give us perspectives we could never see. Which, as you point out, let’s the audience know what they are watching couldn’t possibly be real.
2. Other directors want to stay more grounded & make you believe what you’re seeing COULD happen in our world. Some to the point of not wanting to use drone or helicopter shots in a period piece from say, the 1800’s, because there is no way you would gain that perspective in that time period. They feel it pulls you out of that time and reminds the audience they are watching a film (this goes along with perhaps wanting to use musical instruments or arrangements common to that same time period, to immerse the audience into the onscreen world).
In shows like Trek, yes, the audience knows the outer space shots are effects, but they shouldn’t distract and pull you out of the experience. Recent offerings like NBC’s Timeless & Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian are loaded with WAY more effects shots than most people realize–and, for my money, that’s the way it should be. :)
@78/owlly72: “Some directors/FX supervisors feel the advantage of CG is to finally do things you could never do with a camera & give us perspectives we could never see. Which, as you point out, let’s the audience know what they are watching couldn’t possibly be real.”
As with most things, I think it’s a matter of how you do it rather than whether. Giving us impossible perspectives can be great, if it’s done right, but not if it becomes too self-indulgent and overdone. One brilliant example is the way the miniaturized scenes in Ant-Man were done. They processed the images of Ant-Man in action to look like they were actually microphotography, which would’ve been impossible to do without CGI but made the scenes look far more believable as what they were meant to be, rather than less.
In a different way, one case where I felt swooping CGI camera moves were done well was in a certain episode (I forget which) of Stargate Atlantis. The show was set in what was supposed to be an alien city, but most of its scenes were indoors in a bunch of lookalike corridors and rooms and such. There was one episode where the various characters were scattered all over the city searching for something, I think, and the scene transitions were done by cutting to the exterior of the building where one scene was set, then swooping across the digital cityscape to the building where the next scene was set, and so on. It really opened it up and gave a better sense of the space the series was supposed to be set in. So such things can be useful when the style serves the story and makes it clearer, as opposed to just being gratuitous and intrusive.
@79 If I remember that episode right, I’m pretty sure at least one of those scene transitions was more than a little sarcastic.
@79 / CLB:
Sounds like you’re describing Season 5’s “First Contact” during the sequence when Rodney and Daniel are trying to locate Janus’ secret lab.
@81/Mr. Magic: No, I seem to recall it being the first-season finale or maybe the one just before it. It’s not just one sequence, it’s the transitions throughout the episode. I remember finding it refreshing that they’d finally found a way to depict Atlantis as a whole city rather than just a handful of rooms and corridors.
@79/ChristopherLBennett – Agreed. Wonderful examples! :)
I’ve been dutifully watching Discovery like a good little Trekkie, but I’ve only been lukewarm about it. But Picard has grabbed me from the start! It seems to have HEART in a way that Discovery does not, and it seems confidently bold, rather than self-consciously “edgy.”
Patrick Stewart is a great asset, of course, but I think the main difference is probably attributable to Michael Chabon, he of the Hugo and Pulitzer awards and long-time Trek fan. Great writing makes ALL the difference.
The first episode is being shown for free on CBSAA, YouTube, and elsewhere, so I watched it just now. I’m thinking I’ll probably cancel Netflix for a couple months and re-up my CBSAA subscription to watch the rest of the season, though I’ll maybe wait a couple of weeks so I don’t have to pay for more than two months.
Anyway, it was good. It was well-made and had some really nice writing here and there. I liked the “lightning finding the ground” analogy, and there was some beautiful writing in the scene at the archive where Picard tells Dahj who she is. It’s interesting to see how things have developed since Nemesis (although of course it goes in a completely different direction from the novel continuity I’ve worked in for the past decade and a half), both the changes in the culture and the advances in technology.
Kind of a sad future, though. Not only because of how the Federation and Starfleet have regressed from their principles, but in other ways too. It’s sad to see B-4 disassembled like that. Data’s intent in downloading his memories was never to copy himself, but to give B-4 a chance to grow and mature into his own being. B-4 got that chance in the novels and I believe in Star Trek Online, but this is a more pessimistic outcome for him.
I do have a couple of issues. Mainly: If Dahj’s combat skills came from Data’s memories, then her tactics should have been nonlethal. Data was pretty big on not killing if he could avoid it. Also, the idea that it shouldn’t be possible to make a human-looking android was implausible. Data could easily have looked human if Soong had given him a different skin and eye color. I’ve always assumed that Soong deliberately made his androids look inhuman so that people would know what they were — and so people could tell them apart from him, since he always gave them his face. But I guess what Picard meant was to make an android “look” human enough to fool sensors and medical scans. You’d think, though, that the big issue would be whether they could have emotions.
Also, though it was cool to hear the music quote Fred Steiner’s “Balance of Terror” Romulan theme (aka Steiner’s Mirror Universe theme and George Duning’s Henoch theme) in the closing scenes there, it’s a shame they didn’t give Steiner a credit in the end titles.
I enjoyed it, enough so that I have already rewatched it twice. I’ve never been a massive Trek fan, so perhaps that helps.
I don’t need to pull it apart much, it was enough to know that utopia is something to strive for, not something that is achieved, and that Star Trek: Picard is showing that. Kudos. The story was good, the characters were good, and it didn’t need to be perfect, just good enough for me to relax and enjoy the show, along with the morality and societal exploration thrown in as Star Trek has always included.
What’s different for me is that Star Trek: Picard seems to have moved on from the episodic, “we start and finish with everyone back in the same place” format to more of a long story ark. I personally prefer that, so the difference is welcome. The addition of older or aging characters is certainly appreciated, but less of a focus for me, as I’ve always considered that to be more to do with Hollywood than Star Trek.
Welcome back Picard. I utterly enjoyed what seems to be to be the harbinger of further excellence to come.
Seeing as Picard was basically mind controlled when he was Locutus and he was responsible for the deaths of thousands at Wolf 359, the Federation is really letting their hypocrisy show in this one. They even left Picard in command of a starship, capable of wiping out entire planets by itself. Maybe that’s why Starfleet is treating him so badly. They see him and the synths as similar.
Of course, if Starfleet dismissed every officer that has ever been mind controlled, there wouldn’t be much of a fleet anyway.
KRAD would it be possible to post @74 owlly 72 as a separate article with illustrations? I thought that was a great post and could have missed it since I actually haven’t seen PICARD yet. Thanks.
Orla Brady – fantastic actress, wonderful in Badlands ( a series they actually need to “finish” and Jeri Ryan. Catch her in Leverage, she is fantastic.
Good so far, though did they need to kill off the synth that fast…?
This was a promising beginning, this really felt like Star Trek!
I think it’s interesting how some elements of the plot are framed as Picard having dementia, like his leaps of logic regarding Dahj or his recollection not matching the footage edited by the killers. I wonder whether the writers are going somewhere with this?
Sorry, friends. I was too busy watching this episode a few (dozen) times to comment at the start.
Back in the 24th century at last (though these days I’d gotten comfortable in Discovery ‘s 23rd century, grumble). So much to digest here, but a compelling start! I can’t believe I get to see first-run 24th century Trek with you folks.
I didn’t mind at all Data looking different; of course he does, as actors age. I was just glad to see Stewart and Spiner together again, even in dream sequences.
I’m definitely keen to see what happens next. Engage!
Enjoyed the first episode, and of course Stewart is delivering top notch acting. Seeing him with Spiner was a joy, and I did think Dahj was Lal reincarnated… I do hope she gets mentioned, eventually.
*:I see a Joss Whedon influence here: a small, young, super-deadly woman and an unexpected death of someone about whom we’ve influenced to care.
* I saw the two Romulans not as menials but grateful in-home medical staff. That makes bringing him home make more sense: evaluated on-scene or in hospital, basic patch-ups done, and then wash your hands of the controversial man with his chosen aides—still, it looks a bit hinky.
*The look and sound of the thing is <em>gorgeous</em>.
*NOT A SPOILER, BUT A GUESS BASED ON PREVIEWS: I think the death squad is going after Picard next, and they’re going to get Ol’ Will Riker killed or severely hurt after Picard comes looking for him because he needs a great pilot, leaving his son or protegé (the one who was told that Picard was a speech-maker), also a damn good pilot, to help Picard and look for revenge.
Did anyone else notice that the Enterprise D in the opening dream scene, look different than the one we saw on TNG? The Front of the secondary/engineering hull and the goose neck are different. Then again this show was made before the merger and hence, it had to be 25% different.
@94/kaw211: Please tell me you’re joking about the “25%” thing. That was a total myth that’s been soundly debunked, and I pray that nobody still believes it was actually the case. (Seriously, why would a split between the movie and TV properties have any effect on one TV series’ ability to use another TV series’ designs? The myth doesn’t even make sense by its own internal premise.)
There were two main Enterprise miniatures in TNG, the 6-footer built by ILM for the pilot and the 4-footer built by Greg Jein late in season 3, and they looked significantly different from each other. The Jein model had a thicker edge to the saucer, slightly blockier proportions, a subtly more squarish deflector dish, and raised surface texture where the 6-footer’s texture was painted on. I would imagine that the creators of a digital model might attempt to create some sort of compromise between the two.
Anyway, what struck me as odd about the digital E-D was that there was only light visible through the centermost set of three Ten Forward windows, even though the two adjacent window triads on either side of it look in on the same continuous room, so all nine windows should’ve been just as brightly lit from within. Granted, it was just a dream, but it was an odd FX oversight.
“Romulan sun went supernova (as established in the ’09 film)” Uh no, Spock says that a “supernova threatened the entire galaxy“.well if they want to retcon it like that but makes hash of what Spock(Prime) was trying to do and invalidates Nero’s reason for revenge.if Romulas’s Sun went nove there was nothing anyone could have done and Supernova’s don’t happen overnight and makes the Romulans look like idiots for sitting around waiting to happen, it the main reason I dislike the Reboot movie, heck I don’t expect total scientific accuracy, like Warp drive, transporters, half human//alien hybrids, but please don’t insult my intelligence with getting basic astronomy wrong.
You’d think that the Romulans would have noticed something was amiss when their sun shed it’s outer layers, a process that takes a lot longer than a few days.
@96/kaw211:
Regrettably, that’s a lost battle with Star Trek — not just with astronomy and astrophysics, but with any branch of science or common sense. Like, say — Neon-bright nebulas everywhere? Accelerated aging that turns the victim’s hair white, and then it magically re-pigments in a few seconds? Seat belts? If it’s a choice between scientific accuracy and drama/speed/spectacle-for-TV, accuracy loses every time.
FWIW, the 2387 Hobus Supernova wasn’t your run-of-the-mill one-per-century-per galaxy stellar collapse, but rather, it “ruptured subspace” in an unprecedented way, hence its FTL propagation and wide-scale threat …
… Yeah, it’s all apologetics for Orci and Kurtzman’s script for Star Trek (2009). Or maybe the star was an unexploded ordnance from somebody’s ancient war. Given several billennia of macro-engineering by super-species and super-entities, it’s a wonder any part of the galaxy still operates according to “natural law” for scientists to derive consistent laws. (See also: “the wizard did it”.)
* https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Hobus
* https://sto.gamepedia.com/Hobus_System
@98/Phillip: Picard has provided a different, more plausible explanation than the “Hobus” stuff posited in the non-canonical comics. The movie and the comic stated that the supernova was an unexpected occurrence in a star outside the Romulan system; that it propagated faster than light, yet somehow the Red Matter was supposed to magically suck back in the supernova radiation that had already spread far and wide; and that said radiation front somehow accelerated and destroyed Romulus sooner than expected.
Picard‘s version is rather simpler: It was Romulus’s own star (evidently) that was about to go supernova; the Romulans had at least two years’ warning (since the rescue armada was being prepared in 2385); the abandonment of the rescue armada required Spock to develop a backup plan, delaying its execution; the plan was presumably to use the Red Matter to stop the supernova before it happened; but then the blast happened before Spock was able to reach the Romulan system. That’s not an exact match to what was shown in the movie, but that information was conveyed in a mind meld and the details might have been distorted by the subjectivity of the process. It certainly makes far more scientific sense than the “Hobus” version. It does raise the question of why the Romulans would settle around a star of the type likely to go supernova, but then, supernovae in inhabited star systems are just a fact of Trek life (Minara, Beta Niobe).
So I’m really rather impressed at how well Picard has made sense of the supernova story that was so nonsensically presented in the film. I’d had my own ideas for how I might’ve explained the supernova somewhat plausibly if I got the chance to do it in a novel, but the show’s version is simpler and better than the thoughts I’d had.
@98
I’m hoping they introduce the idea it was an extremist group that caused the instability in the star. It would clean up the scientific wackiness and add another layer of intrigue.
@100/JFWheeler: God, I hope not. There are more than enough sinister conspiracies in the Trek universe as it is.
@101
We can thank Discovery for going down the Section 31 rabbit hole again (and doing it quite badly.) But it would make more sense with the Romulans, as their society is already extreme and secretive.
But then I am still in an older TV Trek state of mind, when these developments were still allowed to occasionally feel organic and make some sense.
@101/Christopher: I can still remember a time when there weren’t any.
@31 / CLB:
And not just effects, but production values all around — the sets, the costumes, the makeup, the cinematography, the music, the works. People often complain about the repetitiveness of the music, but it always had orchestral scores at a time when much TV music had become purely synthesized to save money. All the Trek shows were pretty much the best-looking shows on TV.
Speaking of TNG Music…
While Jeff Russo’s done an admirable job of carrying on the Trek musical mantle here and in Discovery, the old school TNG nerd in me would’ve loved to have seen Ron Jones return to Trek.
It especially would be great for the Romulan-centric scenes to have Jones’ Romulan letimotif from episodes like “The Defector” and “Data’s Day.”
Heh, I love that theme. :)
@104/Mr. Magic: Whereas I think it’s cool that Russo’s score has quoted or paraphrased Fred Steiner’s Romulan theme from “Balance of Terror” — the first time we’ve heard it used as a Romulan theme since that episode (though it was used later in TOS for the Mirror Universe by Steiner and for Henoch in “Return to Tomorrow” by George Duning).
@106:
Yeah, that’s true.
Even if my personal preference is for Jones’ leitmotif, it definitely is a nice old school touch to use Steiner’s theme in this instance.
(On a side note regarding Jones, it’s driving me nuts that his DuckTales scores still haven’t been released — especially given Intrada Records finally released David Newman’s score for Treasure of the Lost Lamp a few years ago).
@103, Jana. Me too. Babylon 5 was a show with conspiracies but they all went somewhere and seemed to have some purpose beyond shocking twists of the plot. These days television writing seems to be a non-stop roller coaster ride with shocking developments around every turn. It gets tiresome.
@104. Mr Magic: normally typos are not a thing to bother about, but you need to fix one of the titles you cited.
@106/Mr. Magic: Ooh, yes, I’d love a Ron Jones DuckTales box set.
@109:
Yeah, it’s actually weird.
When Intrada put out the score for Treasure of the Lost Lamp 3 years ago, I remember thinking a box-set of the TV scores would doubtlessly be coming on its heels. 2017 was the show’s 30th anniversary and the reboot was coming up. Putting out the scores would fulfill both goals.
But it never happened, so I don’t know if plans changed or if there wasn’t any plan at all.
And I know Jones has samples of his music cues on his website as a consolation, but I’m still hoping for an actual CD release someday.
@110: “I know Jones has samples of his music cues on his website as a consolation…”
I went there, but I could only find one DuckTales cue.
@111:
Damm. I didn’t realize Jones had revamped his portfolio and removed stuff.
Ah, well, heh. Thank the Prophets, Sha Ka Ree, Masaka, the Founders, et. al. for YouTube. ;)
@112/Mr. Magic: Thanks for that. I couldn’t find most of my favorite action cues, but there were some good ones.
@104 – Mr. Magic: Dude, you might have not liked “The Defector”, but to call it the way you did… :p
@108 and @104:
…Oh. Oh.
Whoops.
To quoth Grover in The Monster at the End of This Book, “Oh, I am so embarrassed…”
(Seriously, I actually can’t edit the comments, so a Modertator would have to go in).
@115: Done and done! :)
@116: Much obliged, thank you!
@113: Yeah, those cues are just pure nostalgia. I can just sit back, close my eyes, and remember the late Eighties, heh.
Also, it still amuses me to no end that they reused the Theme Song (albeit while doing a new, 21st Century cover). It’s just not DuckTales without the theme and I find it absolutely hysterical that now another generation has that damned song stuck in their heads. :D
Also, the new Ducktales show is awesome.
@117-118: The new DuckTales is kind of fun, but its humor isn’t always to my tastes, and it spends more time deconstructing adventures or doing sitcom plots in between adventures than actually showing the adventures. And the music doesn’t hold a candle to Jones’s work. Never liked the theme song that much, but Jones’s score was one of my all-time favorite animation scores from the era — indeed, it’s the main reason I watched the show regularly, since I wasn’t much of a Disney buff. Although it had really good animation too.
How did we get onto this subject in a Picard thread? Oh yeah, talking about Jones’s Romulan theme. While we’re at it, Jones also scored the 1988 Superman animated series, the soundtrack to which is on a bonus disc of a box set of Superman scores from Film Score Monthly, samples of which can be heard here. He also did a few episodes of the 1988 Mission: Impossible revival, alternating with Lalo Schifrin in early episodes, though not for long. After he left Trek, he kind of fell out of sight until he came back to do Family Guy, a show I loathe, unfortunately.
@119, It was worth having Ron Jones as one of Family Guy‘s composers if, for nothing else, the episode “Stewie Kills Lois”.
I remember watching that episode’s ending and upon realizing that Jones was riffing on his own iconic “Captain Borg” music cue from “The Best of Both Worlds”, I couldn’t stop laughing.
@3 Iirc, intervening on Sarjenka’s behalf was seen as a Prime Directive issue. That wouldn’t apply to the Romulans.
@121/Michael Booth: The Prime Directive does apply to spacegoing cultures; for instance, Starfleet couldn’t intervene in the Klingon civil war in “Redemption” or the Circle’s coup on Bajor DS9’s season 2 opening trilogy, as they were seen as internal matters and the PD forbids meddling in other nations’ internal affairs. It wasn’t until the wars were discovered to be outside plots (by the Romulans in the former case and the Cardassians in the latter) that Starfleet was able to intervene to end the interference. In the case of Voyager, in “Prototype,” Janeway said that helping the androids develop a way to reproduce would violate the PD — whereas in “Counterpoint,” she broke the PD by helping the persecuted telepaths escape the Devore. And in “Homestead,” Tuvok said that it would violate the PD for him, a Starfleet officer, to lead the Talaxian colonists, but that it would be fine for Neelix, one of their own people, to do it.
So yes, of course the Prime Directive allows the Federation to offer aid to the Romulans — but it would forbid them from imposing it if the Romulans said no. It still applies to post-contact cultures, because it’s not just about contact, it’s about respecting other cultures’ autonomy and right to make their own choices.
Imposing a treaty port on Eminiar VII was also a PD violation but the Federation had no problem overriding that for their own self interest.
Adding my two cents to the production values discussion. As elaborate as Picard’s production is in 2020 (just saw the pilot episode last night), I’m the first one to say out loud that TNG was never cheesy back in the day. In 1987, its production values and visual effects were state of the art, especially given it was a television show (the production value gap between TV and film was far bigger back then).
The William Shatner narrated documentary Chaos on the Bridge addresses that issue to some extent. The higher-up executives at Paramount were well aware of the behind the scenes drama taking place in TNG’s production, but when they saw the first completed footage of the Farpoint pilot episode, they were astonished by the visual effects and level of production value. That alone convinced them to greenlight the first season despite the high costs and behind the scenes chaos.
@124/Eduardo: That’s true, although it should be noted that “Encounter at Farpoint” had its effects done by ILM, and it was the only episode of the series that did. ILM got a credit in every TNG episode, but only because the Enterprise footage they had shot for the pilot was reused as library footage in every episode (they actually extended the shots longer than was specifically needed for the pilot so that the show could have extra footage to use as stock later on). In particular, every shot throughout TNG of the Enterprise stretching out to go into warp was a reuse of one of the three shots ILM did for the pilot, because the slit-scan technique they used was very difficult and time-consuming. The only exception was the shot in “Where No One Has Gone Before” where the E-D stretched out while shot directly from the side, since that was a far easier, strictly 2D distortion effect.
So most of the early episodes didn’t have FX on quite the same level as the pilot, at least where things like compositing and animation were concerned, but they benefitted from being able to reuse ILM footage from “Farpoint,” as well as stock FX elements and reused miniatures from the movies.