Where “Remembrance” was full of both action and exposition, the second episode of Star Trek: Picard takes a step back and goes full exposition. It’s rather impressive how little actually happens in this episode—seriously, there’s, like, twelve minutes’ worth of plot movement here—but we do learn a great deal, and it’s all fascinating—
—though I’m not entirely sure all of it is convincing.
It’s interesting, I haven’t seen anybody mention “All Good Things…,” The Next Generation‘s final episode, on any of the lists of TNG episodes to watch before starting Picard. (I may have just missed it.) Yet “Maps and Legends” makes two overt references to “AGT.”
The first comes when Picard talks to Dr. Benayoun, his former medical officer on the U.S.S. Stargazer (Picard’s first command). Picard wants to be medically certified to travel through space again, but Benayoun says there’s one catch: damage to his parietal lobe that is very likely to develop into one of several nasty brain-injury syndromes. Picard mentions that “a long time ago” he was warned of this possibility, and that’s a direct reference to “AGT,” where we saw a possible future in which Picard is retired from Starfleet, living on the family vineyard, and has Irumodic Syndrome (which is, basically, Space Alzheimer’s). It’s good to see this is being remembered, and also lends a sense of urgency to Picard’s actions, as he doesn’t know when his brain is going to start to betray him.
Indeed, it may have already. While he’s joking, Benayoun does mention irrational anger during live interviews as a symptom of this condition. It also casts a doubt on everything he’s doing, truthfully.
The second reference is more subtle. After Picard has been rejected by Starfleet Command to be reinstated (more on that in a bit), Zhaban suggests contacting Riker, Worf, or La Forge to help him out. (Why the three men are mentioned and not Troi or Crusher is—irksome.) Picard refuses, because he knows they’ll follow out of loyalty, but he won’t let them take that risk. And he’s been down this road before, in that alternate future (which he’s the only one who remembers), going on a rogue mission after he’s retired from Starfleet—and that ended with the ship getting blown up in a temporal anomaly. Better to not let history repeat itself. (Somewhere, Q is laughing his ass off at this.)
Picard is forced to try alternative transportation for his mission—which is, oddly, not to find Dahj’s twin, but rather to find Bruce Maddox, who apparently created these twin androids—after he is (justifiably) refused by Starfleet.
I’ve already seen several instances online of people talking about what a creep Admiral Kirsten Clancy is for being a big meanie to Picard, and oh look, it’s another bureaucratic admiral getting in the way of Our Hero Jean-Luc—but let’s step back a second and look at it from Clancy’s perspective. Here’s a retired admiral who quit in a huff ten years ago, and just recently insulted Starfleet on intergalactic television. He shows up and asks to be reinstated, even “generously” offering to be demoted to captain, in order to find Maddox. He doesn’t apologize, and his attempts to be humble are suspect to say the least.
If it had been me, my response would not have been anywhere near as measured as Clancy’s “sheer fucking hubris.”
And it’s not like Clancy ignores Picard completely. She’s not willing to reinstate him and give him a ship, and I don’t blame her in the least, but she does have the head of Starfleet Intelligence, Commodore Oh, look into it.
We also get more background on the situation with the Romulans, and here’s where I’m not convinced, as I said above.
While the Romulans have traditionally been enemies of the Federation, going back to when we first met them in “Balance of Terror,” and going back further in the timeline to the Earth-Romulan War mentioned in that episode (and which would’ve been the subject of Star Trek: Enterprise‘s fifth season had it not been cancelled instead), their most recent relationship with the Federation as of the late 24th century is not as an enemy. The Romulans allied with the Federation and the Klingons against the Dominion, and then a few years after the end of the war, the Romulan Senate was turned to pixie dust by a usurper who was then blown up, leaving the empire in chaos. The last time we saw William T. Riker prior to his upcoming appearance on this show, he was about to take command of the U.S.S. Titan and was going to spearhead relief efforts in Romulan space. (Those last bits happened in the same movie where Data died, so it’s not like this is some obscure story the writers may have forgotten about…) And that was before their sun went nova.
For that reason, I’m having trouble buying Clancy’s comment to Picard that fourteen member species were threatening to pull out of the Federation if they continued to aid the Romulans. They were hardly a threat at that point—they went from ally to victim of an expansive coup to victims of a stellar catastrophe. Clancy also mentions that after the attack on Utopia Planitia, they were short of ships—but Utopia Planitia is where the ships are built, its destruction wouldn’t affect their current ship strength, and certainly shouldn’t impact an existing rescue armada.
I’m glad that Picard is making good use of the Romulans, at least. Laris tells Picard of a legend, the Zhat Vash, a shadow organization within the Tal Shiar, the Romulan secret police. (As hinted here, and as revealed in the Star Trek: Picard: Countdown comic book, Laris and Zhaban are former Tal Shiar.) Their mission statement is driven by fear and loathing of any artificial life.
Obviously, the Zhat Vash is real, because there’d be no point in spending so much time explaining them if they weren’t, and we find out quickly that they’ve infiltrated Starfleet Intelligence. Commodore Oh is either a Vulcan who sympathizes with the Romulans or a Romulan passing as Vulcan—and regardless, one of her subordinates is a Romulan agent surgically altered to look human, and another is Narek, who’s on the Borg Cube seducing Dahj’s twin, Soji.
The Cube itself is an interesting notion: it’s been completely cut off from the Collective, and is now a research outpost, where the Romulans are experimenting on former Borg drones in stasis, and in which scientists from around the galaxy are invited to do research. Soji is one of the latter, and she and Narek also fall into bed together.
Oh was in charge of the attack on Dahj, and the commodore isn’t thrilled that Dahj was killed, so the plan is to take Soji alive. But what the long-term goal here isn’t clear, as it’s only episode two.
The acting in “Maps and Legends” is beyond stellar (pun intended). Isa Briones plays Soji as much more relaxed and friendly than Dahj’s tormented waif-fu wielder, which is encouraging. Michelle Hurd creates a very cranky impression in a too-brief introduction (in her house which is at the foot of Vasquez Rocks, which may be the best Easter egg ever) that has me champing at the bit for next week to find out what, exactly, her history with Picard is. Allison Pill and Jamie McShane retain their strong performances from last week, and Ann Manguson gives Clancy a passion and outrage that matches that of Sir Patrick Stewart when they devolve into an argument. (Manguson fronted a band in the 1990s called Vulcan Death Grip, which is just delightful.)
Two great character actors show up here: David Paymer gives Benayoun his usual relaxed snideness, and Tamlyn Tomita does a superlative job with Oh. When talking to Clancy, Oh is the perfect Vulcan, speaking with equanimity and calm, but when she’s talking to Rizzo, the equanimity is still there, but the calm isn’t, as her frustration at how things have gone wrong is palpable.
But this episode is owned by Orla Brady as Laris. From her clear recitation of the legend of the Zhat Vash to her CSI-on-steroids in Dahj’s apartment to try to reconstruct what happened (and realizing how well things have been scrubbed) to her almost maternal concern for Picard’s safety and anger that he would put himself in such danger, Laris dominates this episode in a lovely way. Her banter with McShane remains strong as well.
Points to screenwriters Michael Chabon & Akiva Goldsman and director Hanelle M. Culpepper for structuring the forensic scenes and Laris’s lecture on the Zhat Vash so cleverly. Individually, each scene would be stultifying, especially back to back, but by intercutting back and forth between them, it keeps the viewer interested and keeps either the lengthy scientific study or the lengthy conversation from getting too dull.
I was worried that they were going to rely on the stunt casting to hook viewers throughout the early episodes, but they’re holding Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Jeri Ryan, and Jonathan delArco back, which is good. This second episode relies solely on moving the story forward, albeit only a few inches, and doing more to establish the background both of the last twenty years of Trek time.
To the latter end, the episode opens with another dramatization of the attack on Mars (firmly established as happening fourteen years prior to the episode, in 2385, which is also six years after Nemesis and ten years after the end of the Dominion War), but unlike the long-distance look we got in “Children of Mars,” we instead are at Ground Zero, where it’s clear that somebody took over one of the the worker synths on Utopia Planitia, which then lowered the shields, took charge of the orbital defenses and turned them on the planet. Oh, and then shot itself in the head…
There’s an interesting story here to be told, and so far they’re telling it interestingly. Still iffy on the recent Romulan history, but I’m willing to wait and see, especially if Romulan infiltration is as high up as the head of Starfleet Intelligence……
Keith R.A. DeCandido wrote a first-person Picard story for the TNG anthology The Sky’s the Limit in 2007 called “Four Lights.” It was a serious challenge to write the entire story in Picard’s voice…
Completely agree about Laris. If they keep giving her more depth, she may outshine Picard. One gets the sense that you *really* don’t want to be on her bad side.
Have we found out who the Elf with a sword is yet?
Huge props to the mighty Chris Lough of Tor.com, who embedded the Vulcan Death Grip video into the review. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad:
For that reason, I’m having trouble buying Clancy’s comment to Picard that fourteen member species were threatening to pull out of the Federation if they continued to aid the Romulans.
Yeah, it would help if we we got more context there — such as which member worlds were threatening to secede.
I could definitely buy UFP worlds close to the Neutral Zone who’ve lived in the shadow of the Star Empire years and the existential sword of Damocles hanging over their systems should Warbirds cross the Zone. Now, after 200 years, the shoe’s on the other foot and they’re unwilling to let old grudges go and throw their weight around.
It could also be worlds that were occupied during the Dominion War and whose falls were allowed by the RSE turning a blind eye before the events of “In the Pale Moonlight.”
Q. I wonder if John DeLancie is available? That could be a lot of fun, and probably more interesting than the Borg.
I also wonder if the Picard showrunners and Discovery showrunners are communicating? Are the events of Picard going to be important in a thousand years? Was anything that happened in 1400 likely to be important in 2400? Lots of pieces moving then, but no singular events.
Great write up as always, Keith! But yes, above text was either ‘Get a good motivation for a character/organisation without delving into the specifics because Trekkies know it doesn’t make sense’ or ‘We’ll get to the good explanation later.’ I hope it’s the latter.
Also: 14 species is quite a lot, but if it means opening a proper dialogue with the Romulans (who, everyone seems to forget, do not all live on the same planet, but are actually a great power in the quadrant), don’t the ends justify the means? (Maybe it depended on who those species are, but still: we’re talking about a rescue mission here. Who says ‘cut them loose’ (loose from what, exactly?), and do they even deserve to be in the Federation?)
I loved the episode, though, but find myself strangely uncomfortable with the Mars scenes: in a utopia, who works in crappy conditions (food, no free holiday)?
Nice to see The Complete Robot on the shelves of Château Picard :-)
wiredog: The notion that the showrunners wouldn’t be communicating is absurd. Both shows share many producers (including Picard co-creator Kirsten Beyer), and it’s all produced by Secret Hideout (Alex Kurtzman & Heather Kadin’s production company).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I thought the idea of the Zhat Vash was a good one at first (of course Romulans would have secret organizations inside secret organiations), but rolled my eyes the further they got in the explanation. A double secret cabal dedicated to hating AI and synthetic lifeforms for a millenia? Why? I’m hoping the explanation will be coming, because right now it seems like they just needed to whip up some bad guys for the plot they wanted.
Also, was anyone else thrown off by the camera work? It seems like every scene they had multiple cuts, lens flare, and the camera on rails even though it was just two people talking. I found it very distracting.
I loved the presentation of the safety guidelines on the Borg cube. It made the Borg seem quite intimidating, even in a “dead” cube. And I know that having all of that added security and a good sense of paranoia is the only way I’d ever set foot on a cube.
Happy to see my descendant has a nice desk job for herself.
In my personal canon, she’s the mother of Ensign Clancy from TNG Season 2. They probably had some awkward chats about Picard around the holiday dinner table.
@5: “I also wonder if the Picard showrunners and Discovery showrunners are communicating? Are the events of Picard going to be important in a thousand years?”
Based on interviews Alex Kurtzman has given, the answer seems to be yes (“the Federation has changed much more radically in Discovery than it has on Picard, and you’ll see that. I’m trying not to spoil anything for you.”-AK). One possible connection: the trailer for Season 3 of Discovery suggests that in the future the Federation will be down to just a handful of members. This episode of Picard gave the first intimation of worlds wanting to pull out.
Is it really that implausible that a large percentage of the Federation would still distrust the Romulans?
Wartime allies can quickly turn on each other once their common enemy is defeated (just consider how quickly the U.S. and Soviets fell out following the defeat of Nazi Germany), so the mere fact that the Federation and Romulans fought the Dominion together would hardly guarantee future friendship between them.
Nor would Shinzon’s coup have necessarily defanged the Romulans as there are historical examples of countries emerging out of revolutionary chaos to become even stronger. (Just consider the French Revolution, where even after the destruction of the Ancien Regime, Revolutionary and Napoleonic France arose from the ashes to conquer much of Europe.)
As for the Romulan sun going nova, it would depend on how much of the Romulan Star Empire was actually destroyed by the nova, but even if we assume that a single nova was sufficient to devastate the entire Romulan Empire, the Romulan fleet would still be intact and could still be very much a threat.
Thus it’s not at all implausible that many Federation members would still see the Romulans as a threat and would refuse to help them.
I found the episode generally entertaining but disappointing in three respects. First, that there was so much resistance to helping the Romulans. Perhaps the Admiral was exaggerating but it’s bad enough Starfleet gave up after the attack, to have had planets threatening to secede even before the lost of the relief convoy (I’m pretty sure it was also lost during the attack on the yards) is a major failure of the utopian vision of Star Trek.
Second, that Starfleet is so heavily compromised by the Romulan equivalent of Section 31. I get if Picard is going to go rogue, the establishment needs to be have problems but that seems like a bit much.
Third, that this episode doesn’t stand on its own at all. It ends rather abruptly without much of significance actually happening. It doesn’t need to be as self-contained as an entry in a truly episodic series but I think it should still have a beginning and a middle and an end.
I usually have a pretty high tolerance for exposition (I read a lot of sf, after all), but about fifteen minutes into this episode, I was getting antsy. Woo boy howdy, that was a lot of exposition. And a lot of telling, not showing. But hey, this is a kinda-sequel to TNG, the show of board meetings and La Forge slideshows. TV has just moved on to barely-plausible crime scene reconstructions instead.
In you review, I read “waif-fu” as “waifu”, which… I do not think is what you mean. :P
@@@@@ 12: the end of WWII is a great analogy. Did the Romulans try to grab territory, like the Soviets did?
Also, despite the circumstances, I’m sure Starfleet and the Federation didn’t take to kindly to the fact that the leader of the Romulans almost destroyed Earth.
@15:
The end of WWII is a great analogy. Did the Romulans try to grab territory, like the Soviets did?
DS9 implied they would at the end of Season Six (“The Reckoning”), or at least set up the question of whether or not the RSE would indefinitely occupy any UFP worlds liberated from the Dominion following the War’s end.
Yes, it’s true the Soviets grabbed territory at the end of the war. But did the rest of the world refuse to offer them help after Chernobyl? It did not. Help was offered.
Regarding the members threatening to pull out, this is a Federation post Dominion War. A war that the Romulans stood on the sidelines for until they were one of the last to join the side of the angels. So, it’s a decade into reconstruction, with half of that time spent also trying to provide humanitarian intervention to a foreign power after they go through an internal coup & environmental crisis.
I can very easily see a number of species, still spacking damage from Jem’Hadar attacks, getting very salty about the amount of aid given to what was until very recently an enemy.
“Thou shalt not suffer a machine that thinks” I don’t think is out of character for Romulans. ISTR references to a Vulcan officer that took it as a point of pride that they only used a computer to verify that they were correct. I can easily see the Romulans having a deep-seated suspicion towards artificial intelligence.
One tiny piece of Discovery continuity: Some of the Mars workers were complaining in the mess that the replicators didn’t use the “Unamatrix,” which was referenced in the Short Trek Q&A.
Picard should’ve given Admiral Clancy a reply laced with more, shall I say, “colorful metaphors” such as “double dum-ass on you!” Nobody pays any attention to you unless you swear every other word. ;)
Of course, left unstated is that one of the big narrative problems with Star Trek is that we-the-audience mainly see everything through the eyes of dedicated, well-equipped, fully-briefed Starfleet officers, who are directly involved with and well-versed in events of large-scale political significance and not in any way representative of the vast majority of the Federation.
Most of the civilians in Federation haven’t had a ringside seat to Romulan politics, might not even know the full details of the Shinzon Incident (I can see “the bloody coup was led by a Romulan-made clone of one of Starfleet’s most decorated and trusted officers” being something both governments would want to keep a lid on), and has probably never even met a Romulan face-to-face (let alone come to respect them as reliable fellow soldiers).
Consider that, several times in TNG, we saw glimpses of how people not from the Enterprise reacted to Data, and it was totally in line with how the Utopia Planitia crew talked about F8 (which, if Dr. Soong were around, would absolutely be pronounced “Fate”).
@17, even more, in 1948 the Soviet Union was actually offered Marshall Plan funding to help rebuild their country. They ended up turning them down (on their own behalf and those of the eastern European countries they occupied).
My favorite part of the episode:
“This facility has gone 5843 days without an assimilation”
@23, looks like it’s time to bring in some Borg consultants.
@23 Almost exactly 16 years. Suspiciously precise.
@22: Wasn’t the Marshall Plan aid offered with the expectation that the Soviets would turn it down (and with non-negotiable conditions on the aid that pretty much insured it would be rejected?) The US likely wouldn’t have offered Marshall Plan money to the Soviets if they thought there was any chance Stalin would actually accept it.
Besides which the Federation got a lot more battered in the Dominion War (given that it was directly invaded and had several of its members home world’s occupied) than the United States was in World War 2, so it would make sense that the Federation would be a lot more guarded and isolationist after the Dominion War then the United States was after World War 2.
With respect to Commodore Oh, I think it’s very plain that she’s Vulcan, not Romulan, and it really doesn’t look like she’s working on behalf of Romulan interests.
The impression that I got, and what makes much more logical sense, is that after the synth attack on Mars, she was approached by Zhat Vash with an offer of an alliance of convenience aimed towards eliminating the threat (in their minds) of androids.
Additionally, given the presence of the Borg, I think it’s much more likely that sometime in the buried past of Vulcan/Romulan history (depending on the exact timing, but canon says Vulcans had warp drive a couple of thousand years before humans did.), they had a run in with the Borg, and the hatred towards AI and development of Zhat Vash is a spinoff of that encounter.
I could be wrong on both counts but this is my two cents.
For all that I want to be on-board with this show, I have the distinct feeling someone just told Kurtzman the name “Bruce Maddox” was important without explaining why – because I don’t know how else to explain a callback that fundamentally inverts the thing it’s referring to. Maddox lost the argument that Data was property, and yet here we are in the Mars flashback, staring at what Guinan very pointedly called “whole generations of disposable people”. I can accept that Abrams’ pew-pew planets-exploding version of the Federation would summarily reverse such a critical decision, but not the same universe where “Measure of a Man” happened.
And the thing is… there’s an elephant in the room that could go some way towards explaining what’s going on. I could at least try to accept a more severe, curtailed, borderline-xenophobic Federation specifically as a consequence of the Dominion War – that they mass-produced B4s because of a manpower shortage, and maybe providing aid to Cardassia meant they simply didn’t have the resources to help Romulus too, something like that. But the lack of simple compassion, Clancy’s “yes the Federation does decide what species live or die”, the presence of yet another damn conspiracy… I don’t buy any of it. And that’s a problem if the state of the Federation is still a part of this show going forward.
@27 said: Additionally, given the presence of the Borg, I think it’s much more likely that sometime in the buried past of Vulcan/Romulan history (depending on the exact timing, but canon says Vulcans had warp drive a couple of thousand years before humans did.), they had a run in with the Borg, and the hatred towards AI and development of Zhat Vash is a spinoff of that encounter.
I agree with this – and kind of wonder if they’re angling To explain in this show why the Borg struck first at territories near romulan space
The interviewer in the first episode mentioned that the attack had not only destroyed Utopia Planitia, but also the rescue armada that was preparing for their mission to Romulan space. So there was, actually, a significant impact on the number of ships they had available following the attack – though they mention “warp-capable ferries”, as opposed to regular starships.
Exposition or no exposition, I was riveted for the entire episode. And krad you are spot on about the acting. After a first episode where their roles appeared to be limited to mollycoddling Picard in his chateau, Orla Brady and Jamie McShane as the Romulan refugees are absolutely fantastic with Stewart – the crispness of that dialogue is wonderful. Mini acting tours de force everywhere – Picard pathetically making his case for a ship (and even I as a fan cringed for him helplessly); Brady as Laris just ripping it up as indignant protector; Zhaban’s earnest concern for his old friend…. the only places where the story dragged for me was in the scenes between Narek and Soji; especially the morning-after pillowtalk scene, which we’ve seen a bajillion times. Besides, Treadaway looks way too much like an unkempt Rory McIlroy. I kept waiting for his caddy to appear and hand him his underwear and a razor.
And if I could just respectfully dissent from @13’s comment about the episode not standing on its own. Perhaps that’s true. If you watched it without context, it would mean nothing to the viewer. But I’m not that viewer. I’m fully invested in the star and rapidly becoming interested in the rest. I’m OK with hyper-serialized scripts – it is so very much more preferable to the usual nonstop sturm und drang action sequences that pass for plot in Discovery and so many other sci-fi and fantasy series these days…. JMHO and YMMV
@29
Well put.
Clancy’s line reminded me of Kirk angrily telling Spock to let the Klingons die in Undiscovered Country, but at least that movie gave him a personal reason for feeling that way. The widespread distrust, racism and xenophobia for the Romulans displayed here doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It probably would for the Dominion; they killed millions in the war. Not so much the Romulans now. Even in “Balance of Terror,” the outright hatred for them was an aberration expressed by a young officer, who had to reach back into history for that hatred. By the time of TNG and DS9, Starfleet tended to treat the Romulans as irritating, but they didn’t hate them.
@33
I rewatched the pilot to see if I missed anything, but no: the Mars attack is the stated reason for prejudice against androids and Romulans. Granted, there seems to be a connection, but only the viewer is privy to that. It’s transparent author’s fiat.
I don’t even understand why the Romulan supernova was needed at all – if you needed a race the Federation could plausibly be prejudiced towards and justify withdrawing aid from, wouldn’t the Cardassians be at the top of the list? That would at least be a jump the viewer could easily make.
@34: I don’t even understand why the Romulan supernova was needed at all – if you needed a race the Federation could plausibly be prejudiced towards and justify withdrawing aid from, wouldn’t the Cardassians be at the top of the list? That would at least be a jump the viewer could easily make.
True.
But the thing is, the show had to acknowledge the destruction of Romulus in some capacity because of the passage of time since Nemesis and the canonical demands of the larger franchise.
In the place of the producers, I don’t know if I’d have worked Picard’s post-Nemesis backstory so directly into those events, but then again, the Romulans are arguably most associated with TNG, so it is what it is.
And as KRAD’s pointed out, I do like how elements of the possible future of “All Good Things” are still coming to pass — the collapse of the Romulan state, Picard retired on his vineyard with the onset of Irumodic Syndrome and leading a non-Starfleet team, etc.
@32 fullyfunctional: If you watched it without context, it would mean nothing to the viewer.
If I knew how to embed a weeping emoji, you would see one here. *I* am that viewer, and—interested as I am in seeing this series—I do not have the background context needed.
@36: LOL, in that case, I apologize for being so flippant. On the other hand, if you mean that you haven’t watched the other Trek series’, I envy you. Would that I could re-experience watching them again for the first time….. well, except for Enterprise and much of the first year of TNG, and the Sisko-gets-angry-and-makes-weird-faces episodes of DS9…. :)
@34 A response to that was that the Cardassians were a defeated and occupied foe with a homeworld in ruins last time we saw them… twenty years ago. The Romulans came out of the Dominion War mostly intact apart from Shinzon’s coup. It’s easier to convince long-time Trek fans that the Romulans are still a credible threat by the time of the supernova, which also helps to sell the reluctance of Federation members to offering aid.
There might also be some, let us say, doubt, in the minds of some Federation citizens that the supernova was actually going to happen. If I read the timeline for this right, we had the rescue armada withdrawn sometime in 2385, and the supernova itself has been listed in some circles as happening in 2387. This suggests to me that Romulan and Federation scientists saw it coming and sounded the alarm. But, since it’s coming from the one superpower to emerge mostly unscathed from the Dominion war, and one not known to be trustworthy for many, many years before, who is to say the plea for help was true? Plus, if you had senior politicians who thought as Admiral Cartwright did, the temptation might be to wait for the supernova, then offer help. “Bring them to their knees,” indeed. Such a desire might also have them questioning the science behind the plea (gee, what does that sound like? I’m sure I’ll recall if I think about it…)
For new viewers, such in-depth reasoning can wait until later, but the basic premise is sound enough that they won’t be thrown by it.
This show necessarily ties into premises (technological, social, geopolitical and personal) raised during 21-plus seasons of content (TNG, DS9, VGR, movies), so it could really use an effective way to bring viewers up to speed.
A Star Wars-style textual intro-infodump would be the least elegant way to do so. (“From 23xx to 23xx, xx Federation planets — including Earth — were severely damaged during the war with the Dominion; even so, in 23xx, the Federation provided reconstruction assistance to former Dominion ally Cardassia Prime …”)
Shows sometimes do “previously on” clip-segments to remind viewers “these are the plot threads for today”, and DSC has already established “we’re willing to utilize clips from a different show within the saga” (vis-a-vis the Talosians in TOS), so clips of Maddox from TNG, Dominion-allied Breen blasting Earth from DS9, etc. (all with a date chyron) would be helpful.
CBS and Paramount haven’t yet re-merged, so using footage from Nemesis might be disallowed.
@38
Starfleet would be able to confirm the supernova was going to happen from afar. We can make fairly good observations now in the 21st century, so it shouldn’t be a problem in the 24th.
But this all goes back to the bad science of the 2009 Star Trek movie. Unless the supernova was suddenly induced by artificial means, everyone in the quadrant would be aware it was going to happen eons before this.
@krad: “just recently insulted Starfleet on intergalactic television”
I guess the signals would reach Andromeda eventually.
There seems to be a lot a care taken in the writing to build on details of established lore, while at the same time introducing concepts that double down on the current direction of Trek started by Discovery: a doubling down on AI as existential threats to organic life. I really hope this doesn’t circle back to Control.
Also, more focus on secret operations, with a Double O Super Duper Romulan Secret Service scarier than the Tal SHiar. Rian Britt’s article today goes into the subject more, but I was puzzled by the “for thousands upon thousands of years” line. If Romulans have been technologically advanced for so long, why are they stuck at Fed-equivalent level tech? Shouldn’t they be running the galaxy by now? Humans are Star Babies by comparison.
One detail: Oh’s badge was mostly black with some gold trim. Does that mean she’s also S31? We know the S31 series is coming and there seem to be some obvious tentpoles being set up for the current state of TV Trek: the threat of AI and the prevalence of secret services.
Another detail: Laris: “They’ve overwritten the particle residuum.” She has a forensic device that can see back in time. Would come in handy on CSI: Starfleet. That’s some serious new technobabble, though.
@38 The same movie that features Shinzon’s coup also ends with the Enterprise and the Valdore working together, with a clear suggestion that the previous Federation/Romulan pact was still holding. Now, sure, you could handwave that by saying relations eventually soured again for whatever reason… but the show hasn’t said that. Every mention of the pre-supernova Romulans (by people other than Picard) just says they were enemies of the Federation, as if nothing had changed since “Balance of Terror”.
Bringing up Admiral Cartwright actually crystallizes this for me: the show is asking me to accept that this is a world in which Cartwright’s arguments would have been seen as perfectly legitimate, but does none of the legwork to get me to where I can believe that.
JFWheeler: actually, The Undiscovered Country did absolutely nothing to justify the crew’s hatred of Klingons, as I said in my rewatch.
https://www.tor.com/2017/06/20/star-trek-the-original-series-rewatch-star-trek-vi-the-undiscovered-country/
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I just want to note that Brian Brophy is still out there, and Picard has been renewed for a second season. I am looking forward to that storyline.
It’s interesting that the Novelverse has portrayed relations between the Federation and the Romulans as rather strained both pre- and post-Nemesis (not so much under Praetor Kammenor perhaps, but not exactly allies either). I must admit I went the other way and portrayed them as being on friendly terms, and time will tell how easy this portrayal is to reconcile with Spock trying to save Romulus in 2387. So the Mars attack is definitely 2385 now? Checking my notes (which badly need updating), I don’t think I mentioned Picard or Earth much that year, although it was the year I had Section 31 taken down (another reason to hope they’re not in this show…) and a revolution in the Klingon Empire that brought the House of Duras to power. Talk about annus horribilis…
It has occurred to me that Guinan’s talk of “disposable people” has actually come to pass. I think “All Good Things” has been mentioned if only because it also saw Picard retired to the vineyard in the 2390s.
I feel obliged to point out that Picard stated in First Contact (the film, not the episode) that the Federation has over 150 members. Fourteen is a relatively small percentage.
@45. cap: it’s ten percent. Imagine if five states wanted to secede from the United States. Would be a big deal. Even a single secession would if the state is big enough. Say California was done with the red states. They’re already the world’s 7th largest economy just by themselves.
@43
I didn’t say the crew’s hatred was given a reason, I said Kirk’s was (because of David). But yes, broadly speaking, this was also a flaw with that movie. We needed an explanation for why people other than Kirk suddenly hated Klingons with such a passion.
It’s like if this series brings back LaForge and he still suffers PTSD from being tortured and brainwashed by the Romulans and resents them for it. That is at least a reason I can wrap my head around. None so far with the rest of Federation society.
I also felt like when the episode ended barely anything had happened any yet it was all still very interesting and well-acted. I liked the opening flashback to the synth’s “rebellion” as it filled in the crucial details of that event. Clearly something or someone turned on some switch in F8 to make it go rogue. Could it have been the Zhat Vash itself that was responsible? If they really do hate all synthetic lifeforms then what perfect way to turn the Federation on the synths and ban them as a result of the synths’ attack on Mars; and even if it’s at the ironic expense of the convoy coming to rescue their very own people after the Romulan supernova. Just a theory anyway.
I don’t think I’ve seen Tamlyn Tomita in anything since the Joy Luck Club back in ‘93 and I remember her as the cute teenager in The Karate Kid Part II all the way back in ‘86, so it was cool to see her all these years later playing a very emotionally restrained and plotting alien. I at first thought her character and that of Clancy were going to be revealed as Section 31 agents in which case I was ready to do a massive eye roll so I’m very glad that turned out to not be the case!
@46: I agree that 14 species is plenty to raise concerns. For argument’s sake, let’s say that among them are the Tellarites and Andorians – who have historical reasons to mistrust the Romulans.
As to the “not enough ships” bit, let’s not forget that over the course of less than 15 years, Starfleet lost some 40 ships to t he Borg, then who knows how many in a year or so’s worth of war with the Klingons, only to launch straightaway into a huge multi-year war with the Dominion and its allies. One imagines that the losses to Starfleet would have been significant – even ignoring the fact that the Federation was evidently at war with the Cardassians through at least the first year of TNG.
It’s easy to see how even a utopian society like the Federation could find itself wondering whether it risked the loss of hundreds of years worth of progress through over-extension.
When I saw how the admiral reacted to Picard, I honestly wondered if the part had originally been written as Admiral Nechayev.
Frankly, I thought the scene with Admiral Clancy was a great subversion of the usual Trek trope where Kirk or Picard would be on a first-name basis with the admiral whom they were asking a favor of. Then the admiral would say “If it were anyone else, I’d say no …” and then give him exactly what he wants.
i did think that Laris was awesome, but found her history-replayed gizmo to be a little too unbelievable when they were in Dahj’s apartment. Also, there was a ton of that exposition that could’ve been cut in favor of more substantive scenes like the one with David Paymer as Picard’s ex-Stargazer doctor. There was definitely a part of me that wondered why Picard didn’t prevail upon Crusher for this particular favor – right up until Zhaban asked about getting Riker, Worf and the gang back together.
Overall, I liked this episode quite a lot. It does feel like TNG infused with some of the energy of Discovery. Not a bad combination …
43. krad – The crew has always been shown to be willing to back up Kirk, regardless of the circumstances. To them, if Kirk has a reason for hating Klingons, that’s probably good enough for them. They don’t reach Kirk’s “Let them die” level though.
@29 Deena – “yes the Federation does decide what species live or die”.
It was nice to see someone throw that back in Picard’s face after he declared basically the same thing on at least two occasions, the first with Sarjenka’s people and later with the planet that Worf’s brother was living on. Perhaps this gives us a reason for that policy. The Federation needs to vote on each case, deciding who is worthy of saving and who deserves their fate.
As I’ve said before, the Federation is not nearly as altruistic as people seem to think that it is.
@50
I don’t remember that always being the case. If memory serves, there were a few episodes of TOS where Kirk went a little too far and Spock and McCoy had to bring him back to sanity.
Somehow I doubt the crew would go along with Kirk ignoring a Klingon ship in distress, angrily shouting “Let them die!” McCoy would have probably relieved him of command at Spock’s insistence. Or one hopes they would.
@40:
A supernova’s core collapse happens in fractions of a second. Surely they knew for years that the star was going to go supernova, but it’s entirely reasonable to think that, even with 24th century technology, they would only have a rough idea of the time available until the core collapse, perhaps on the order of months or years, not a precise timeline.
@38:
Randall Munroe, of XKCD fame, did a What If about supernovas. There was a trick question: case a) imagine that a 30 megaton atomic bomb is just touching you, and it detonates. You receive a specific amount X of energy per surface unit. Case b) Now, imagine that someone replaces the sun with a star that goes supernova, and, even if it’s 90 million miles away, the Earth and everything it contains, including you, gets a good dose of energy, let’s say Y per surface unit.
What amount is bigger, X or Y? As it is a trick question, the obvious answer is Y. You get more energy from the supernova 90 million miles away than you would get from a multi-megaton bomb directly touching your skin. Now the catch is this: Y is not only bigger than X, it is nine orders of magnitude bigger.
Supernovas are titanic events. They liberate in less than a second as much energy as the sun will emit in 10 billion years.
Which is to say, even with 24th century technology, if you wait for the supernova to explode, there will be no one left to offer help to, at least not in the Romulan system.
@52
A sudden evacuation is a tad confounding anyhow. What with the Romulans being an advanced spacefaring society, they would surely have ample amount of time to evacuate the system for another habitable system within the borders of their empire. In fact, they would have generations to work on the problem.
This is why I included the possibility of something or someone causing the star to go nova. It’s the only cause that makes sense with a sudden disaster. Other than the writers not caring how stars work.
@46: It’s less than ten percent. (How much less depends on how much over 150 it is.) I agree it’s something the Federation probably doesn’t want, especially if there’s a major long-serving member in the block rather than fourteen tiny colonies or new members that only discovered warp drive a few decades ago. But it’s more of a PR disaster than anything else and it’s not really evidence that the Federation is full of anti-Romulan sentiments, just that there’s a vocal minority. Would the UN abandon an aid operation because nineteen countries threatened to pull out? If you had someone with the clout of USA, Russia or China in the mix, maybe. If it’s a set of third world countries, maybe not.
@48: Main memory of Tamlyn Tomita is that she was the first officer in the pilot of Babylon 5! Checking her IMDb list, I think the last thing of hers I saw was an episode of Highlander from ’94. Could have sworn there was something more recent than that…
@2 princessroxana – I think they are doing a crossover with Lord of the Rings and bringing in Legolas
@5 – not sure how they’d explain Qs age, shouldnt he be ageless?
Okay, I’ve reupped my CBSAA subscription now, so I’ve watched “Maps and Legends” and I should be posting in the Short Treks review threads later on.
Pretty good episode, and yes, Orla Brady totally owned the whole thing. I hope Laris changes her mind about not coming on the mission.
Keith liked the intercut opening scenes, but I found them very confusing. It took a while to figure out which one came first (it must’ve been the scene in Picard’s home, since that was when the Zhat Vazh was first mentioned).
The Romulans’ deep-seated fear of AIs is a pretty major thing to add to their cuture retroactively, and I’m trying to remember if there’s anything that conflicts with it, either in canon or in the novels (not because novel contents have any impact on canon, but just because I’m wondering if this invalidates any books).
“Oh” is an unusual name for a Vulcan. I wonder if the commodore is married to a human of that surname, or is half-human (though that seems unlikely if she’s a Romulan infiltrator, unless she took over the real Oh’s identity.
“Picard refuses, because he knows they’ll follow out of loyalty, but he won’t let them take that risk. And he’s been down this road before, in that alternate future (which he’s the only one who remembers), going on a rogue mission after he’s retired from Starfleet—and that ended with the ship getting blown up in a temporal anomaly. Better to not let history repeat itself.”
I took that as a reference to Data’s death, not AGT.
@7/Alvaro: I think I even used to have that exact edition of The Complete Robot, though I swapped it out for a paperback to gain shelf space.
@15/M: “Also, despite the circumstances, I’m sure Starfleet and the Federation didn’t take to kindly to the fact that the leader of the Romulans almost destroyed Earth.”
No, the Reman insurrectionist who murdered the entire Romulan Senate and installed himself as Praetor for about a week almost destroyed Earth. If anything, the Federation and the Romulans had Shinzon as a common enemy.
@27/Alex K: Canon says that Vulcans left their homeworld to settle Romulus 2000 years ago, but it doesn’t say whether they had warp drive. The novel versions of the event have presumed it was done with sublight ships.
@29/Deena: There are numerous Trek experts on the show’s staff, including Kirsten Beyer (who came up with the initial premise for what became this show) and Akiva Goldsman (who co-wrote this episode). Of course they know who Bruce Maddox is. Dr. Jurati even said here that he and Data were friends of a sort, which fits perfectly with “Data’s Day.” But just because Maddox changed his mind doesn’t mean others couldn’t have ended up using his work the wrong way.
@38/Andrew: “the supernova itself has been listed in some circles as happening in 2387.”
That’s from the film itself — Spock Prime says it’s 129 years in the film’s future, and the film is in 2258.
@39/Phillip: “CBS and Paramount haven’t yet re-merged, so using footage from Nemesis might be disallowed”
First off, the merger took effect last December 4. Second, there was never any restriction on using movie elements on TV; Discovery featured movie-original elements like Ceti eels, Earth Spacedock, and the Klingon language. Good grief, the entire premise of Picard is based on the events of Nemesis and the 2009 film.
@41/Sunspear: “I guess the signals would reach Andromeda eventually.”
There are numerous dwarf galaxies much closer to us than Andromeda. People always assume the big spirals are the only ones.
@44/Meredith: Brian Brophy is still around, but he’s done hardly any screen acting in the past decade or so; he teaches theater arts now. So I don’t know if he’d be willing to come back as Maddox. They could always recast the role, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Maddox turned out to be a red herring or got killed offscreen.
@29. I’ve been thinking about this, and I could see the synths actually being worked in as an excuse for Maddox’s disappearance.
We know that, within a couple of years after “Measure of a Man,” Maddox and Data were friends, and both were, presumably, against the development of android slaves (for reasons that Guinan and Picard have already articulated).
Between the Borg incursions and the Dominion War, Starfleet (and probably other bodies within the UFP) suffers a need for replacement manpower. Then (circa Voyager) Starfleet started selling(*) stripped-down copies of the Mk-1 EMH(**) to private interests. The main handicap here is that the holo-workers are tied to holoemitters, and probably fairly advanced ones (they were made to run on Starfleet-issue tech, after all).
The development of (physically independent) synths is the next logical step (as Jurati notes, creating bodies is easy, it’s the stable positronic brain that eludes them –but avoiding cascade failure isn’t an issue if you’re mass-producing them. If one fails, just recycle it and get another), and with Data’s demise, the only one who would try to stop them is Maddox.
I can imagine a situation in which Maddox speaks out and gets ignored for trying to stand in the way of progress, and so starts working on a secret project, creating sapient Soong-type androids to carry on Data’s memory, and maybe one day guide their “cousins” to freedom. After the Utopia Planitia disaster, Maddox goes into hiding because if people remember his earlier warnings, they might accuse him of hacking the synths.
(* Or however that works in a moneyless economy)
(** Obviously, they didn’t take the actual EMHs from, say, the Intrepid, the Jefferson, and the T’Pol, and put them in a dilithium mine; they sold the software to whoever runs the mines, and that organization just ran multiple instances. The shipboard EMHs were probably just deleted or patch-upgraded to the next available version.)
@55:
Yeah, I have the same concerns about DeLancie making a surprise appearance.
I love him as Q, but it’s the same problem with Brent Spiner: You can’t disguise that the actor’s gotten older.
In Q’s case, yeah, I guess you could excuse it with Q ‘bringing himself down to Picard’s level’ or doing it to mock Jean-Luc’s mortality. But Q’s so vain and narcissistic that…I just don’t know.
By the way, Picard’s line about the harvest being in a month lets us put an approximate date on the episode. According to this site, the grape harvest in the eastern/central part of France where La Barre is located is typically in mid-September, though it can vary depending on conditions. Of course, by the 24th century, the climate may have shifted, but Trek has always assumed that Earth’s future climate was much like the present one. (In some of my tie-in fiction I’ve explained it by alluding to the Futurama joke about nuclear winter canceling out global warming.)
Anyway, if we assume a typical harvest season, that puts the story in mid-August, 2399. Which means the supernova also happened mid-August, since the interview was on the supernova’s anniversary.
51. JFWheeler – McCoy & Spock, not so much. But Sulu, Uhura, Chekov? They’d line up behind him.
Trek has always portrayed supernovas as something that happens suddenly with little advance notice and in a way that’s totally removed from actual science.
In The Empath and All Our Yesterdays, the planets are shown as habitable right up to the moment of detonation. In truth, they would have been destroyed long before the star exploded.
In 11001001, we got this line from Minuet “A star in the Bynar system went supernova and they miscalculated. The electromagnetic pulse from the explosion was going to knock out their main computer.”. So, in this case, the only danger to the planet was from the EMP even though the supernova happened in the same system.
There’s no need to make the Romulan supernova any different, although it appears to have been an even bigger event since Spock said it would threaten the entire galaxy.
Again, no basis in science but totally in line with has Trek has presented these events in the past.
@54. cap: “It’s less than ten percent.”
Oh, gawd. You wanted an exact percentage for an fictional imprecise number? I was using the numbers you cited. Answer: 9.33. Close enough.
@56. CLB: think you missed my joke, as apparently did krad, since the article remains unedited. He said “intergalactic television.”
It’s a pet peeve of mine, especially for writers of SF, that they shouldn’t interchange “interstellar” with “intergalactic.” “Intragalactic” may also serve, but that implies the other Quadrants are all receiving the broadcast. Who knows, maybe some Kazon are interested in what Picard has to say.
@56 – IIRC, they didn’t say that Romulan culture included a deep-seated fear of AI. That is Laris’ theory behind the Zhat Vash’ secret. What she does say is that Romulan culture lacks the presence of AI, and that computers are limited to mathematical functions.
I take that to mean the Zhat Vash has been subtly exerting influence to prevent the development of machine intelligence.
@56
I recall the Romulan admiral in “The Defector” telling Data there were Romulan cyberneticists who would love to be close to him, implying they would dissect him. Other than that, nothing comes to mind.
@61
Not always. In the episode “Half A Life” we see the Enterprise helping a planet with a dying sun. This is the culture where people kill themselves when they reach the age of 60, and they’re content with allowing the burden of solving their sun’s problem to pass from generation to generation. Because they have time.
@64, Given Kirsten Beyer’s presence on Picard, I wonder if she’s drawing influence from David Mack’s novel Section 31: Control.
I remember Mack offered his own take on why none of the major Alpha/Beta Quadrant powers had developed large-scale sophisticated ASI (an ASI with no programming restrictions getting loose in their information networks would be unstoppable and uncontrollable). So given the Romulans’ paranoia and obsession with internal security (rivaled only by the Obsidian Order), I could buy that motive.
I’ve also wondered if we’re going to find out the early Romulans encountered AIs during the pre-RSE years while seeking out what would become Romulus and that left a deep-seated distrust of cybernetics and AIs.
@63/Sunspear: I got your joke, and I share your hatred of “intergalactic” being used to mean “interstellar.” I guess I forgot to write down all of what I was thinking, because I got distracted. I meant to suggest that, since this is 20 years later than the last time we saw the Federation, maybe by this point their reach has somehow expanded to one of the nearby satellites like the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy. (In the novels, Starfleet has functional quantum slipstream drive ships by the 2380s. Those could make the journey.) At the very least, maybe they’ve made subspace radio contact with civilizations in adjacent galaxies by this point. So it’s at least conceivable that the broadcast could be literally intergalactic.
I didn’t edit it because it wasn’t a scientifically rigorous phrase. If it was, I wouldn’t have used “television,” either. It was no more meant to be taken completely seriously than “Space Alzheimer’s” was. So yes, I know the difference between interstellar and intergalactic….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Well, unfortunately, Trek has a long track record of misusing “intergalactic” — e.g. Kirk referring to Cyrano Jones as an “intergalactic trader and general nuisance,” Kruge calling the Federation “a gang of intergalactic criminals,” Geordi asking if Leah Brahms had attended “the Intergalactic Caucuses on Chaya VII,” etc. Pretty much the only times it’s been used literally were in “By Any Other Name” and DSC: “Context is for Kings” (to refer to the mycelial network).
I suppose by this point it’s futile pedantry to resist accepting “intergalactic” as a synonym for “interstellar/intragalactic,” since it’s been used that way for generations now. But it’s just so wrong that I can’t resign myself to it. It’s like crossing the street and calling it international travel.
@CLB: ” it’s been used that way for generations now. But it’s just so wrong that I can’t resign myself to it.”
Resistance in not futile! Don’t give up!
I can’t resign myself to it either. Even when it’s done for exaggerated effect as krad did. I always cringe and think, “This is how scientific illiteracy gets perpetuated.”
@krad: “television” as a term/word may still be OK 3 to 4 hundred years from now. We call Netflix and other streaming services television even though we don’t necessarily watch the content on the original TV sets designed to receive the signals. A screen’s a screen, even though apaprently they’re all transparent (as in Dahj’s apartment). I dunno, there’s actually very little we’ve seen about the culture and tech levels outside Starfleet.
@70/Sunspear: “Television” just means “viewing at a distance.” It refers to the transmission itself, the process of broadcasting visual information over distance, not to any single specific type of receiving device. A television set is called that because it’s an instrument that receives and displays television signals, just as a radio set receives radio signals. The device was named after the thing it received, not the other way around.
So absolutely, yes, any long-range transmission of moving pictures can be validly called television, no matter the technical specifics of the receiving apparatus.
“I’d be willing to accept a demotion to Captain”
Oh Jean Luc, you used to be so much more subtle than this :)
@69 – “But it’s just so wrong that I can’t resign myself to it. It’s like crossing the street and calling it international travel.”
May I present Rock Island, Quebec and Derby Line, Vermont.
@58: Well, that’s not what Q really looks like, it’s just the appearance he adopts when dealing with humans. Maybe we’re not meant to notice but John de Lancie’s obviously older in his Voyager appearances than he was in “Encounter at Farpoint”. And of course, he does make himself look like an old man in “All Good Things” (cut out in syndication for some reason) to wind Picard up.
@62: The figure I have was the one given on screen: Over 150. Which is imprecise, so subscribing a precise number to it would be silly, but it’s definitely less than 10%. If there’s 175, then it’s only 8%. But pedantry aside, my point is that that’s only a small proportion of the Federation, not the majority.
@74/cap-mjb: I think the point is that even 8% of the UFP’s membership is a surprisingly large segment. Imagine if four states declared their intention to secede from the United States — it would be catastrophic. Heck, look at Brexit. That’s just one country leaving out of 28, 3.6% of the whole, and it’s a massive event. The Federation losing twice that percentage of its membership would be no incidental thing.
Look at it another way — the human arm weighs “only” 5-6% of the total body weight. Would you therefore think it was trivial if you lost your arm?
@69, CLB, Now they said *intra* galactic that would be okay!
@75/CLB: Yes, it’s certainly something that no-one would want to see happen. But if “only” 8-10% of the Federation was willing to take that step, it does suggest it’s not the majority of the Federation being fervently anti-Romulan, just a significant minority.
@77/cap-mjb: Nobody ever said it was the majority. Keith’s point was that even 8-10% of the Federation seems a surprisingly high number to be so prejudiced against the Romulans at a point when they’ve been on good terms with the UFP for nearly a decade.
But then, maybe that’s part of the story’s point. Maybe in the wake of the Dominion War, a new strain of isolationism crept in, eroding the UFP’s ideals. So what would’ve been implausible before the war became a reality in the years following it.
ChristopherLBennett @67
one of the nearby satellites like the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy
To be really pedantic about it, it’s the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy; dwarf elliptical galaxies are more massive and denser (Messier 110/NGC 205, which is a satellite of Andromeda, is an actually dwarf elliptical in the Local Group).
lektu @@@@@ 52
A supernova’s core collapse happens in fractions of a second. Surely they knew for years that the star was going to go supernova, but it’s entirely reasonable to think that, even with 24th century technology, they would only have a rough idea of the time available until the core collapse, perhaps on the order of months or years, not a precise timeline.
We’re almost at the point of having precise timelines now. (See, for example, this astronomy.stackexchange answer to the question “Are there observable changes in a star about to go supernova?”). (He said modestly.) Scientists working on the KamLAND neutrino detector project figure they could detect the increasing neutrino flux from a star several hours or even days before the core collapse, out to distances of several hundred light years — that’s with early 21st Century technology.
Of course, as kkozoriz points out, supernovas in Star Trek have almost never been scientifically plausible….
We were allies with the Soviet Union during WW II and very shortly thereafter, the tide turned, I see the Romulans as being more of “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” for the duration of the Dominion War.
Add to that, the fact that Shinzon was human and it would be easy enough for the Romulans to deny their part in his creation and point at his race as being a Federation trick and I can see the relations between the Romulans and the Federation as being much less friendly that some are advocating.
Sure, the Federation could spill the beans about Shinzon but that would enrage some in the UFP and the Romulan masses would have no reason to believe it.
Tangentially related (probably of no interest to anyone but me): went back to play STO this weekend after 5 years or so. I should have been rich in game resources (kinda like the compound interest scenario) as I bought a lifetime subscription at launch, but they’re treating my account as free-to-play, putting a cap on how much “money” I can have.
Anyway, there was a curve in relearning how to loadout my ships and bridge officers. Made a Romulan refugee character (actually an unspecified alien allied with them), which started out in 2411 (about 20 years after the supernova) on a settlement planet trying to set up a new Romulan state free of Empress Sela and the Tal Shiar. Their leaders want to continue Spock’s work toward reunification with Vulcans (and Remans incidentally). My character started out in the warbird from “Balance of Terror.”
There’s no way I’m getting the new Khitomer Alliance battlecruiser before it expires. Definitely seeing some strange ships in Earth Spacedock, though, ships I’ve not seen in any filmed incarnation. But then the story is a decade more advanced than the new Picard show, and even that show had some delta-wing attack ships on Mars I haven’t seen elsewhere.
For the newest story content I used my Starfleet captain in a Defiant class escort (although there’s no space combat at all, so far). It involves Seven teaming up with Burnham (both actresses voice the characters) to pass some morality tests with the assistance of Abraham Lincoln. Yes, it’s an update of “The Savage Curtain,” with Yarnek not having learned much the first time (Kirk’s trials were inconclusive.) So our heroes get put thru some simulations (maybe?), including a future where there’s a temporal war against “the Alliance.” There’s also a replay of the sequence where the Red Angel is captured. That part was well done, with a few twists thrown in (Landry is a mean bitch. She killed me a couple times.). I’ll try to finish the other half of the story today.
@80. PeterErwin: “supernovas in Star Trek have almost never been scientifically plausible…”
To quote Paul Di Filippo again: “we must master the higher levels of Stefnal Thinking, not just the primitive ones we’ve all been exposed to since we could watch our first episode of Star Trek.”
Re relations between Federation and Romulans in the late 2370s, it’s worth noting that at the start of Nemesis the Enterprise is sent to Romulus to open a dialogue, which doesn’t tie in with them already being Federation allies. The implication seems to be that they beat the Dominion together, then went their separate ways. Fair enough, at the end of the film (when their senate has just been decimated and they’ve just lost a bunch of ships after realising the guy they supported didn’t have their best interests at heart) the Romulans are keen to open a dialogue for real (as opposed to as a ruse to strike back at the Federation) but that doesn’t necessarily mean things went well. If the Dominion War is World War II, then the Romulans have always felt like the Soviet Union of the parallel. (The Cardassians are more like the Italians.)
@84/cap-mjb: It seems to have been cut from the finished film, but I believe a deleted scene in NEM established that the Romulans who backed Shinzon’s coup were revanchists who objected to the Senate’s detente with the Federation and wanted to resume their traditional hostility toward it. At least, I could’ve sworn that was in the movie, but I can’t find any mentions of it in the transcript.
@84
If the Romulans are the Soviet Union, does that make the supernova Chernobyl? Because I don’t believe the UN ignored that problem.
IMO, Picard has every right to badmouth the Federation and Starfleet in the media. They should get advice from Worf about spine replacements.
We had bad relations with the Soviets for decades after the war. Then, a thaw when the wall came down. Now, the pendulum is swing back the other way.
It’s interesting that of the two attempts by the Federation to help the Romulans, both of them failed. Not the UFP’s finest hour.
With all the political intrigue showing up so far, I really, REALLY hope that we can get through this series without Section 31 showing up or even being mentioned. The last thing we need is the resident boogeyman of the Federation popping up.
Seriously, if the Federation was really serious about rooting them out, it should have been done during Enterprise. But, they’re either incompetent or they really don’t want to get rid of them. They make a convenient out for the Federation to say “Hey, we don’t sanction those guys”, while the dirty work is being done. Two centuries was more than enough time to get rid of them if they were serious about it.
However, seeing as Into Darkness implied that Section 31 had something to do with the explosion on Praxis, it wouldn’t surprise me if we get something similar with the Romulan supernova. After all, Founder-Bashir tried something similar on DS9.
I would hate to see Section 31 pop up yet again. They already appear to be treading that ground again with a Romulan version of them. It’s Super Secret Organization overload.
Unfortunatly, we seem to be in a place and time where Section 31 is thought of by TPTB to be goo handy a toy to put back on the shelf. They’re even getting their own series FFS. Sure, it’s 100 years before Picard but it’s the same producers and writers.
They’ve said that they really like Michelle Yeoh (who doesn’t?) and want to give her her own series. Well, maybe you shouldn’t have killed her off in the first place then. A Star Trek series starring a character who’s a genocidal dictator is too far removed from what Trek is supposed to be. Either they’re going to have Sec 31 succeed in their missions, thus bloodying the hands of the Federation or they’ll have them thwarted, in which case you start to wonder how they could possibly have lasted as long as they did. Either way, not a good fit.
Indeed.
I quite liked the regular Captain Georgiou. Honestly, I’d be okay with them resurrecting her via protomatter or some other bit of silliness than have this weird tyrannical version of her strutting around and hissing. Ugh.
@85: The film does open with one of Shinzon’s Romulan supporters trying to convince the praetor to endorse his plan to move against the Federation. They get turned down, although seems to be at least partly because of prejudice towards Remans. The situation is probably analogous to the east-west détente of the 1980s: Technically at peace, not making overly hostile moves, but not trusting each other or being on friendly terms either.
@86: Not quite a perfect analogy, since the USSR was a member of the UN. NATO might be a closer match.
@87: There wasn’t a Federation in Enterprise. If we believe Discovery, then Section 31 does seem to have been mostly under control at that point. It was only later that they started going to extremes.
Sloan in “Inter Arna Einem Silent Leges” does predict a time, when the Dominion War’s over, when the Federation and the Romulans will no longer be allies, although as he’s lying to Bashir about what his real plan is, it’s hard to be sure whether he means it.
cap-mjb @@@@@ 91:
the east-west détente of the 1980s
Nitpick: Detente was a 1970s phenomenon (example: Apollo-Soyuz in 1975), which ended with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
Very nice episode, I liked how the exposition scenes were intercut, and Laris and Zhaban are characters who really add to the show. The Artifact is fascinating, as is the whole operation with scientists from different places and species. I like how Soji is there to provide therapy to re-awakened drones, as they’re victims (it seems that’s what my fellow Uruguayan Jonathan Del Arco’s Hugh is there for too, of sorts).
I recommend watching the Ready Room interview with Akiva Goldsman, as he touches upon the Borg’s status as victims. There’s also a nice segment on creating the different Romulan make-up prosthetics, quite enlightening.
As for mentions of TNG’s crew, I wish they’d mentioned Crusher and Troi too. I join in on the chorus hoping that S31 is not involved here. As for the Zhat Vash, that part about Romulans hating AIs was a bit out of left field, and the bit about their computers only being limited to “numerical functions” is a tad too much…
The Mars flashback was heavy, it was quite disturbing to see the androids used as tools, and then, as killing tools by whomever is behind the attack.
As for Picard going after Maddox instead of looking for Dahj’s sibling; well, he has no clue who that could be or where, while there might be some chances of finding Maddox, who could then fill him in about the android’s he created from Data’s neurons.
@93/MaGnUs: Right. Picard knows nothing about Dahj’s sister beyond the fact that Maddox created her, so naturally he’s looking for Maddox.
Well, he also knows she’s identical to Dahj, so one would think they could attempt an image search. Plus she has the same surname, apparently.
I wasn’t clear that he knew for sure that they look identical. And Dahj’s identity proved to be a construct, didn’t it?
If one wanted to headcanon it, maybe “Intergalactic Television” is a brand name, like Universal Studios, or SpaceX’s Starship, rather than a literal description. (Even if it’s a state entity, the Federation is known to use evocative names: e.g., “Project Genesis” for accelerated terraforming.)
@95/MaGnUs: “I wasn’t clear that he knew for sure that they look identical.”
That seemed an improbable logic leap to me too — even if their brains were identical, it wouldn’t follow that their bodies were. But the episode treated it as a valid and correct deduction nonetheless. For the purposes of the story, Picard does know they’re identical, whether that holds up to analysis or not.
EDIT: Oh, yes, and Laris’s search of Dahj’s computer confirmed that Dahj had a twin sister, so Picard knew it that way.
“And Dahj’s identity proved to be a construct, didn’t it?”
Yes, but according to Memory Alpha, both Dahj and Soji use the same last name, Asha. Therefore, it shouldn’t be that hard to search for someone named Asha who matches Dahj’s description.
I’ve already forgotten . . . did we see Number One in this episode?
srEDIT: no, this episode was poochless.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@91
Split it however you want it, the point is the other nations of the world didn’t bug out when Chernobyl happened and leave the USSR hanging. So yeah, it’s bad when people in the dirty old 20th century look more compassionate than those in the supposedly enlightened future.
Give ’em hell, Picard!
I’m really into this show, even more than I am into Discovery (minus the ones with Sarek/Amanda/Spock/Pike and Number 1 of course).
This is surprising as I’m not a big TNG fan.
Wonder if the Rommies accidentally created the Borg?
What I wouldn’t give to see a T’Bonz name in this show. Ah, Trekkie dreams.
I can’t wait ’til Thursday. I also can’t wait until this hits DVD because the streaming is a PITA, quality-wise.
@101/TBonz: Romulan civilization is no more than 2000 years old in Picard’s time. The Borg’s age has been reported inconsistently, but it’s supposed to be considerably more than that, and their home territory is on the opposite side of the galaxy.
@100: As late as 1993 (i.e. 7 years after the disaster), Ukrainian officials were complaining about how meager and disorganized western aid to Chernobyl was, so in a real sense the rest of the world did leave the USSR hanging. (The Chernobyl Shelter Fund wasn’t even set up until 1997, over a decade after the accident and notably long after the USSR itself had collapsed.)
Furthermore, the Federation at the time of the Hobus supernova is just coming off of a devastating war that had seen much of the Federation itself occupied. That’s a very different situation than the western nations were in at the time of Chernobyl (where they had not been invaded in over 40 years.)
And it’s not as though the Federation didn’t try to help the Romulans. They were building the largest rescue armada in history and when that got destroyed (along with a major Federation world) they still didn’t give up but then tried to find a technical solution to stop the supernova.
@103/bguy: “Furthermore, the Federation at the time of the Hobus supernova is just coming off of a devastating war that had seen much of the Federation itself occupied.”
Well, it’s about a decade past the Dominion War at that point. So I guess it’s about like, maybe, the UK or Western Europe in the mid-1950s? How recovered were they?
“And it’s not as though the Federation didn’t try to help the Romulans. They were building the largest rescue armada in history and when that got destroyed (along with a major Federation world) they still didn’t give up but then tried to find a technical solution to stop the supernova.”
I get the impression that the Federation government backed down on helping Romulus after the attack on Mars, which is why Ambassador Spock and the Vulcan Science Academy seemed to be operating alone in trying to contain the supernova, without Starfleet help. (Which actually fills in a plot hole I hadn’t considered before.)
@97 – Chris: Yes, they have the info, but since the identities are constructs, they might be hidden behind better protection than normal people who leave real trails.
@98 – srEdit: From what Janelle Cullpepper (pilot director) said, the dog actor who plays Number One is very green, so they had to limit his appearances, despite what was written in the script.
@104 – Which doesn’t explain, if the technology to stop the supernova exists, why wouldn’t the Federation try that first? Why leave the solution that would avoid the entire problem as a backup plan? Or is the VSA secretly creating black hole creation technology without telling the Federation? Does Vulcan have a secret weapons of mass destruction program?
@103
There’s a big difference between government disorganization and completely abandoning the idea of helping. There’s an attitude expressed about “Romulan lives” that should be well in the Federation’s past.
The writers appear to be pulling a ‘Search for Spock’ here but dialed up to eleven: our over-the-hill hero goes on a quest to find someone against the wishes of an apathetic, bureaucratic Starfleet that should know better, and so gathers a crew of renegades. Only now the idiots like Mr. Adventure are no longer in the closet. They’re on TV and in command.
@107/JFWheeler: “There’s an attitude expressed about “Romulan lives” that should be well in the Federation’s past.”
Which is the point of the story, that the Federation has lost its way. Trek has always been a commentary on our own world, and this is reflecting how American policy (and British and others) is increasingly being dictated by attitudes we thought we’d left well in our past.
Picard said in “The Drumhead” that eternal vigilance was the price of maintaining the Federation’s values. There was always the risk of complacency setting in, leading to a backslide in those values. It’s not surprising that a nation scarred by the Dominion War would have a lot of voices within it advocating for a more self-centered, insular foreign policy, and that the synth attack on Mars less than a decade later would’ve strengthened their position.
@108
There is commentary and then there is COMMENTARY! This feels like the latter to me, like a shouty, ripped-from-the-headlines, unsubtle episode of Law & Order. If the writers of Picard had written TOS, then the Federation would’ve had race riots on multiple worlds within their own borders and lost tens of thousands of troops in a quagmire on a distant world. Did you see what we did there? We watch the news, too. Story by Walter Cronkite.
@109/JFWheeler: It’s more unsubtle than past Trek, yes, but these are unsubtle times.
And before you cast aspersions on the ability of the writers, try to remember that showrunner Michael Chabon is a Pulitzer-winning novelist, that Patrick Stewart himself is one of the shapers of the narrative, and that co-creator Kirsten Beyer is one of the most acclaimed Trek novelists of the past decade — as well as a personal friend of mine, so please keep a civil tongue.
@106: Given that the “solution” was used at the last minute and promptly didn’t work, it seems likely that it wasn’t an option earlier and was actually a desperate last throw (possibly a new, untested technique) after the evacuation plan fell through.
@111/cap-mjb: I’ve always had the impression that “Red Matter” was meant to be an experimental technology, or at least that using it in that particular way was untested, but it seems the movie doesn’t actually specify. Maybe I got that from the novelization or the Countdown comic.
And the Red Matter did work. It created the black hole exactly as it was intended to. But that was done too late to save Romulus, because the blast wave hit Romulus sooner than expected, before Spock could arrive.
Of course, this creates a problem. The movie’s premise was that, somehow, creating a black hole at the source of a supernova that had already happened would magically erase or suck back in all the radiation that had already spread out far beyond it, so that the rest of the galaxy would be saved even though Romulus was lost. Picard has offered us a far more plausible scenario for the supernova as a whole, but it still leaves the unsettled question of what the point would be of setting off the Red Matter after the star was already gone, the radiation already emitted and the star’s atmosphere already blasted out into space. That part of the movie’s story still doesn’t make sense.
@CLB: Red Matter is one of the purest MacGuffins ever invented by Abrams. It does just what he and the writers need it to do, whether that’s Trek, Alias, or Mission Impossible. Abrams isn’t interested in any explanations, just the setup. Wind up the mystery and watch it spin.
“Obviously, any thinking about red matter will find faults with it. Any thinking. At all. If the wormhole spat out two ships, why didn’t it spit out the energy of the galaxy destroying supernova it was created to absorb? Why does a little amount destroy a planet, but the great big ball destroys only one ship?”
in-praise-of-red-matter
@113/Sunspear: You’re just restating the obvious. We can move beyond that now. The point is, Picard has finally, impressively managed to provide a credible alternative interpretation of most of the movie’s nonsense about the supernova, except this one piece of the puzzle still remains unexplained.
ChristopherLBennett @@@@@ 112:
creating a black hole at the source of a supernova that had already happened would magically erase or suck back in all the radiation that had already spread out far beyond it
Not to mention the fact that many (core-collapse) supernovas are thought to create black holes as a natural byproduct (this is probably the main way black holes are created, in fact).
I have recently learned that the first lethal damage inflicted by a supernova on a nearby planet would be caused not by radiation nor by devris, but rather by neutrinos. At a distance of the Earth to the sun, the neutrinos would be sufficiently numerous and energetic to flash-boil all life on Earth. What damage would it do to a planet?
Beyond this, well, neither the Romulan supernova nor red matter make much sense. I would have thought it very unlikely that the proto-Romulans would set up the new homeworld on a planet of a star that was a supernova candidate, and the inexorably expanding black holes produced by red matter do not seem to behave in the manner of normal black holes. I will, charitably, conclude that the supernova and red matter are products of a science different from what we understand.
@116/Randy: Again, Trek has given us precedent for supernovae in inhabited systems going back to “The Empath” and “All Our Yesterdays.” It doesn’t make sense, but it’s an established reality in the franchise.
And as I’ve been saying, Picard‘s version of the supernova makes immensely more sense than the movie’s version. That’s something to be glad of. It just doesn’t solve all the problems.
@CLB: no need to be dismissive. The quote I included shows there are even more issues than the particular one you’re focused on. I guess it’s commendable that you’re giving it way more thought than Abrams ever did.
In fact, I guess I’m being dismissive of trying to make sense of a MacGuffin. The bit about including Red Matter in his other shows and movie series was deliberate. Like this Red Matter:
Mueller Device
@118/Sunspear: Yes, I’m fully aware of all the massive, massive issues with the 2009 movie. I think my comments have already made it quite clear that I’m not ignorant of them. My point is that they have already been discussed ad nauseam over the past 11 years and I think we can all take them as stipulated instead of rehashing a discussion I am long since sick to death of having.
“I guess I’m being dismissive of trying to make sense of a MacGuffin.”
Except they didn’t just try, they succeeded! That’s what’s so impressive! I’ve spent years trying to figure out a way to rationalize what was presented in the movie, a way I could explain it semi-plausibly if I got to write a novel about it, and I was never satisfied with the options I considered. But these guys came up with a revised explanation that’s coherent and logical and relatively scientifically plausible, and I never thought that was possible. I was as negative as you about the likelihood of ever making sense of it, but they proved me wrong. According to my reputation, I’m basically Pocket Books’ resident expert on concocting scientifically plausible rationalizations for Trek’s implausibilities — and these guys beat me at my own game. And I love that. It bodes well for the show going forward. And it’s better to look forward to the possibilities of the future than dwell on the disappointments of the past.
Granted, they had a freedom I likely wouldn’t have. As a tie-in author, I’d be obligated to stay consistent with the letter of established canon, although I could find creative ways to rationalize and reinterpret it. But the creators of actual new canon are perfectly free to ignore past canon altogether if they want, because canon is whatever the current creators say it is. So they were able to reinterpret the supernova in a way that didn’t necessarily mesh exactly with the dialogue and images in the movie. Which is okay, because it’s easy enough to assume that the subjectivity of the mind meld distorted some of what we saw and heard.
I agree with you that what we’ve seen so far (I’m not religious, but almost praying they don’t mess it up down the line) of Picard‘s writing staff bodes very well. I’m a fan of Chabon and have faith (damn, religious language again) that they will develop the story threads satisfactorily.
This part though: “I think we can all take them as stipulated instead of rehashing a discussion I am long since sick to death of having.”
You’re excitement is palpable in untangling a mess that was not scientifically, or even intellectually, rigorous as originally presented. However, not everyone is on the same page. I personally have no stake in it, so I continue to poke fun at Abrams’ lazy style mostly because he’s still around and still inflicts himself on properties like ST and SW.
De facto excluding discussion precludes any need for rewatching any of these shows or movies. Why rewatch Voyager if it’s all been debated before? Answer: for the fun of it. It’s the Blue’s Clues model of media consumption. As described by Malcolm Gladwell, kids love to rewatch an episode several times (sometimes endlessly with certain shows or movies) because there are gaps in what they pick up on first viewing. Each subsequent viewing fills in more of those gaps, while building a reassuring feeling that they are becoming familiar with the subject or story. So each rewatch builds expectation.
the-tipping-point/chapter-three-the-stickiness-factor
If you are in the subset that has watched and rewatched these shows and movies, then yes, you will become saturated (sick and tired). Others, like me, who tend not to rewatch hardly anything, still have room to pick up new information. (The only extensive rewatches I’ve done were of DS9’s final two seasons and, last year, almost all of Babylon 5.
@120/Sunspear: “I personally have no stake in it, so I continue to poke fun at Abrams’ lazy style mostly because he’s still around and still inflicts himself on properties like ST and SW.”
And that attitude is exactly what I find toxic and unpleasant about too much of modern fandom — this idea that it’s more desirable to find excuses to be negative and insulting to creators and their works than it is to find things to praise and be happy about. Even if those negative things happened a decade or two ago and there are good things happening right now. If you “have no stake in it,” can’t you just let it go and find something more enjoyable to devote your mental energy to?
@CLB: you’re taking it far too seriously. Assume that anything here at Tor.com is very mild compared to true toxicity elsewhere. As I said, the creator in question is still perpetrating mediocre product. It’s his stock in trade. He deserves his rep. If you’ve moved on, that’s fine. Nothing should compel you to respond. Take your own advice.
If some creators are lazy and do a sloppy job, while also taking my money, then I don’t feel it’s toxic at all to complain. There’s a balance. I also praised Chabon and Picard. You can’t just have heavenly choirs singing your praises, while also not wanting to hear anything negative. You (general you) are in the wrong business if you don’t want critics coming after you. And these days, because of the internets, everyone’s a critic. You (also general you) are in the wrong place if you want to avoid exposure to that.
Plus, this is minor level involvement for me. Doesn’t require much mental energy devoted to it at all. It’s just for fun, as I said. I don’t devote large blocks of time responding to every poster’s minutiae. Productivity is elsewhere…
I agree that the Picard account makes much more sense. Star Trek does have apparently inhabited planets around such stars as Antares and Regulus, while we also know that apparently normal stars can be made to go supernova. The new novel, The Last Best Hope, does share the thoughts of Federation and Romulan scientists that what happened was not natural, so here is that, too.
One thing that does strike me: how everyone on this Borg Cube (sorry, Dr. Asha, it is very much a Borg cube) is just poking around on this Borg Cube. I’ve been away from the Borg long enough for them to be scary again, and Borg Cubes are ginormous. And you’ve got various humanoids, with the Romulans apparently in charge, just poking around. And Dr. Asha has living quarters (!) on the Cube. Wow, no thanks. It’s like, yeah we’re just gonna dick around on this enormous death machine. What could possibly go wrong? Except, you know, everything?
@124 They do seem sensible to the risks. If the sign isn’t a joke, it’s been 16 years since someone was assimilated. Even active cubes are apparently quite tolerant of visitors so long as they don’t break anything.
Much like the Prime Directive, as soon as they bring up how long it’s been since someone was assimilated, someone will get assimilated.
It’s Pavel Chekov’s gun.
What odd writing in this episode! Cringed at “secrety,” cringed at the stilted pillow talk, pacing on the jargon in the CSI scene was bordering on incoherent, and it’s odd that the Dr’s prognosis was that most people suffering from Picard’s condition “all end the same way,” even though he admits he doesn’t know what his condition is. It’s implied the possible conditions belong to a cluster, but if they “all end the same way,” why not name the cluster? Also, I feel the Zhat Vash twist wasn’t teased out as long as it could have been, making me believe even more than I did after episode 1, that the Romulans are red herring main antagonists. Disappointed, especially after that promising first episode. #3, here I come.
Even though it’s only been a few weeks, I have to concede I can’t take Picard’s scene with Clancy in this episode seriously because of this parody video.
Also, I just realized something about Picard using the Anaheim Convention Center as the Stafleet HQ exterior in this episode (and next episode’s prologue).
We’ve seen so many re-modelings of HQ across the decades and the lack of consistency with the facility’s layout and design has driven me crazy more than once.
But in this case, it just occurred to me now that this latest remodel actually can be justified in-story because the Breen attack during DS9’s “The Changing Face of Evil” leveled HQ. The new design thus makes sense as a rebuilt, remodeled post-war facility.
Clancy also mentions that after the attack on Utopia Planitia, they were short of ships—but Utopia Planitia is where the ships are built, its destruction wouldn’t affect their current ship strength, and certainly shouldn’t impact an existing rescue armada.
The way I see it, Starfleet’s current ship strength is open for debate. Both the Romulan supernova and the Synthetic attack on Mars took place only a few years after the end of Dominion War. From what we know on DS9, the war easily claimed hundreds, if not thousands of warp capable ships. The 7th Fleet was entirely wiped out, according to A Time to Stand. And that episode’s novelization establishes that particular fleet as being made of over a thousand vessels.
When the Borg first hit Wolf 359, Starfleet lost 79 ships. Events on The Wounded make it clear the fleet was shorthanded, which is why the Enterprise had to intercept Maxwell’s ship.
And the Borg attack on First Contact had its own share of loss for Starfleet.
The fact that synthetics were employed on Utopia Planitia makes me think that Starfleet needed the extra hands to shore up their ship building program in order to replace their losses from the Dominion.
As for the episode itself, I enjoyed it, especially Clancy’s rejection of Picard’s demands. My only quibble is with Narek’s scene with Asha at the end. It felt a little too artificial and dragged out in an episode already full of exposition.