When I saw the title of this week’s Picard, I was apprehensive. The show has spent its first three episodes doing callbacks to the Star Trek movies in general and The Wrath of Khan in particular, so I was dreading sitting through an hour of Kobayashi Maru references. We’ve already gotten that in Discovery and Prodigy within the last sixteen months…
So I was relieved to get to the end of “No Win Scenario” with nary a Kobayashi Maru reference. That particular deadly test—seen, not just in TWOK, but also in the 2009 movie and numerous works of tie-in fiction—has been beaten to death.
Instead, the no win scenario from the past that’s referenced is one that is new to the viewers: the time Jean-Luc Picard and his best friend Jack Crusher were serving on the Stargazer, and they “borrowed” a shuttle in order to keep an assignation with a couple of hot chicks on Argelius (from the original series’ “Wolf in the Fold”). Unfortunately, the shuttle was struck by micrometeors and was left dead in space, barely able to navigate. It took ten hours to limp back to the Stargazer.
Actually, what Picard says is, “Ten fucking hours.” This will likely result in some tiresome fulminating from people about how much the Paramount+ shows don’t understand Star Trek, because in my day, the Trek characters didn’t curse like sailors, dadgummit! Of course, the reason why isn’t because Trek is this pure thing, it’s because they weren’t allowed to on commercial television (or in G-rated movies, as The Motion Picture was). I’ll repeat what I said in the comments of my review of Discovery’s “Choose Your Pain” in 2017: the use of “hell” in the original series’ “The City on the Edge of Forever” was significantly more edgy and envelope-pushing and risky and controversial in 1967 than the use of “fuck” is on a streaming service five decades later. Trek has always pushed the limits of what’s allowed and also embraced what really is allowed, and on a streaming service in the 2020s, there are very few restrictions on language.
Another complaint that has been particularly made about this season of Picard is that some of the TNG folks who are reunion-ing this season are acting wildly out of character. The accusation has especially been leveled against Captain William T. Riker, and I want to address that, especially since a big part of “No Win Scenario” involves him.
First of all, it’s been more than two decades of story time since we’ve seen most of these folks (in the movie Nemesis). In Riker’s case, we’ve gotten glimpses, at least—on Lower Decks shortly after Nemesis, and on Picard in season one shortly before the “present” of season three—but they’ve only been brief appearances.
And here’s the thing: in the twenty-odd years since Nemesis, Riker has been a ship captain, a husband, a father twice over, the grieving parent of one of those children who died, and a captain on bereavement leave. He was precisely none of those things in the fifteen years we followed him on TNG and its four followup films.
Of course he’s gonna be different. In particular, he’s greatly affected by the death of his son, who was taken from him way too young.
So when Picard and the Crushers (the name of my next band) come to him with a batshit crazy plan to get out of the nebula, Riker rejects it initially. It takes a certain amount of bullying to get him to agree to it. Mostly by both Picard and Crusher reminding him that the three of them (along with the rest of the Enterprise crew) spent years making batshit crazy plans work, and if they’re going to die, they should go out doing that instead of waiting for the ship to lose power and them all to suffocate. Riker’s counterargument is that at least the latter notion will leave something left to be found later (as he says that, he glances at the message to his wife that he’s barely begun to record).
My own argument would’ve been that the batshit plan had at least a chance of success. Sitting around waiting to die has no chance of success. And Riker finally goes along with it, even figuring out how to technobabble their way through the plan.
We get some other glimpses of Riker’s command style here, including his assigning Seven to seek out the changeling on board, but not officially reinstating her as first officer. The changeling is in as much danger as the rest of them, and the rest of the crew is too busy holding the ship together with both hands. Best for Seven to work more or less in secret. In addition, when they confront the Shrike toward the end of the episode (the batshit crazy plan having worked, because of course it did), he uses a tractor beam to fling an asteroid at Vadic’s ship, which cripples it. It’s a nifty bit of improvising, and one that tracks with some of Riker’s other clever plans over the course of TNG (I’m thinking “Peak Performance,” “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II,” “The Hunted,” and “A Matter of Honor” in particular).
The batshit crazy plan, by the by, is nifty on two different levels. For one thing, it’s Crusher who’s responsible for its genesis, because the writers finally remembered that she’s a doctor, not just a mother. She figures out that the nebula is, in fact, a creche for a lifeform that lives in space. Picard specifically cites the creatures from “Encounter at Farpoint” as an example of a similar type of lifeform, and the aliens that are born when the nebula “gives birth” look very similar to those aliens. (Regular commenter Christopher L. Bennett coined the term “cosmozoan” to refer to such lifeforms, which also applies to things like the giant amoeba from “The Immunity Syndrome,” the crystal entity from “Datalore” and “Silicon Avatar,” and Gomtuu from “Tin Man.”)
That moment of birth is the other nifty aspect of the plan, because we—as Crusher comes out and says—get the seeking out of new life. Which is, after all, supposed to be the point.
As the power is draining from Titan, Picard takes Jack to the holodeck, re-creating the Ten-Forward bar (they really want to amortize the cost of that set—we also have a flashback to five years earlier, with some young officers fangoobering Picard on Frontier Day while he’s at Ten-Forward trying to have lunch, about which more in a bit). They tell each other stories to learn about each other. Jack finds the exercise to be pointless, but Picard isn’t doing it for him, he’s doing it for himself. (Jack also isn’t “a wine guy,” turning down his father’s offer of some Château Picard, instead going for whiskey, preferably cheap and on the rocks. Because we have to make sure all the rakish rogue cliché boxes are checked, dammit…)
Jack is also understandably confused as to how the holodeck can still be powered, and Picard proceeds to provide an explanation for one of the stupidest things the franchise ever did. Way back in 1995, Voyager’s second episode established that holodeck power isn’t compatible with regular ship’s power, which was a cheap writer’s trick to justify doing holodeck stories on a show about a ship stranded very far from home that has power consumption concerns. Twenty-eight years later, this episode’s script by show-runner Terry Matalas and co-executive producer Sean Tretta finally provides a justification for this stupidity: to allow the crew to be able to have an escape even if the ship is in dire straits. Indeed, several members of the crew join Picard and Jack in the bar—including Shaw.
Several folks have speculated that Shaw’s background includes being a survivor of Wolf 359, or some other Borg attack, by way of explaining his animus toward both Picard and Seven. Those folks were completely right, as Shaw—in a bravura performance by Todd Stashwick, who sells every micron of the pain, fear, and anger that Shaw felt at the time and still feels more than three decades later—tells his experience of Wolf 359. Shaw was just a junior engineer at the time, and he was one of the few from his ship who survived, picked seemingly at random by a lieutenant who had limited seats to assign on an escape pod. He was just a grease monkey, a dipshit from Chicago, why did he get to live? That survivor’s guilt has continued to haunt him, and is a big reason why he’s such a dick.
His story is both very similar to and completely different from that of Benjamin Sisko, as seen in the opening of “Emissary,” but what’s especially interesting is the differences in Picard’s reactions. When Sisko confronted him about Wolf 359 in the DS9 pilot, Picard recoiled as if he’d been slapped, and the tension between him and Sisko was ratcheted up to eleven. They were both also, at that point, only a couple of years removed from the experience. Now, though, Picard has had more than three decades to come to terms with it—particularly after his experiences with Seven and Hugh and the dead Borg Cube in season one. He lets Shaw rant and rave and refuses Jack’s attempt to defend him. It’s a very mature response.
And it puts Shaw’s entire character into focus. After Picard leaves the holodeck, Shaw, by way of apologizing to the members of his crew present, says that over the years, “asshole” became a substitute for charm. It also raises several questions, the big one being, why does a survivor of Wolf 359 have an ex-Borg for a first officer?
That question isn’t answered, though Seven’s questions about changelings are answered by Shaw, since Seven was on Voyager in the Delta Quadrant during the Dominion War. Shaw explains about changelings to Seven (and the viewer), and he suggests using the infiltrator’s bucket to scan for residue that the ship can scan. He hands Seven a padd at one point, which has an image of a bucket that looks a lot like the one Odo used on Deep Space 9—and, in a lovely touch, there’s a picture of Odo on the padd’s display as well.
Unfortunately, the changeling is able to kill one crewmember and vaporize the bucket before Seven can perform that scan.
And then the batshit crazy plan kicks in. Picard goes to Shaw, saying that they need an old grease monkey, even if he is a dipshit from Chicago. Shaw is the only one qualified to hot-wire the nacelles to absorb the energy of the cosmozoans’ birth to re-power the ship and get the hell out of the nebula. Seven helps him out, and she also asks Riker to not send any additional assistance.
So when help shows up, in the form of Ensign Sidney La Forge, Seven is suspicious. Those suspicions are confirmed when Sidney refers to her as “Commander Hansen.” As established last week, she calls the first officer “Commander Seven” out of respect, which Seven points out rather tartly to Shaw.
The changeling dispatched by Seven’s phaser fire, Shaw finishes the job, Titan escapes the nebula, and lots of baby aliens are born.
And the Shrike is waiting for them in the nebula, Vadic having been given instructions by her superior to go after Titan despite the risk to her ship. (And she has to dump the portal weapon, because taking it deep into the nebula will cause it to explode.) What’s interesting here is the discovery that Vadic’s entire twirling-mustache act is just that: an act. When she communicates with her boss—which she accomplishes by slicing her wrist, which causes a big giant head that speaks in a spooky voice to appear seemingly from her blood—she’s timid and frightened and deferential. Amanda Plummer modulates beautifully into that mode, before putting her face back on, as it were.
While this is a strong episode, and a fun episode, and a revealing episode, it’s not quite perfect. I love all the references, to “The Best of Both Worlds” two-parter and “Emissary” and to Argelius and to Odo and his bucket and to “Encounter at Farpoint.” But while the episode shows a good sense of Trek’s older history, it doesn’t so good with recent history.
In both this episode and the last, Riker goes on about how his grief over Thad’s death has hollowed him out and caused him to take time away from Troi and Kestra. Except we saw him in “Nepenthe,” which was long after Thad’s death, and there was no sign of any of that. So when did this develop, and why is it happening now? I’m not saying it’s impossible, mind—the grieving mind works in weird ways—but some explanation of the timing would’ve been useful and less head-scratching.
And then we have the “five years ago” flashbacks that are peppered throughout. We get more references there, to adventures both known (“Darmok”) and unknown (a meeting Picard and Worf, presumably on the Enterprise, had with an alpha Hirogen). Picard is in Ten-Forward having lunch, and some young officers start peppering him with questions. As he’s finishing up, a young man in a ballcap—whom the viewers recognize as Jack, but whom Picard doesn’t know from a hole in the wall at this stage—asks if he ever had a “real” family. Picard tartly says that “Starfleet has been the only family I’ve ever needed.”
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Except that answer makes absolutely no sense coming from Picard five years prior to this, since that would’ve been before his encounter with Dahj in “Remembrance.” Which means when he said the only family he’s ever needed was Starfleet, he (checks notes) had been out of Starfleet for fourteen years, having quit in a huff after they pulled back his Romulan rescue plan, and he’d been living in the winery that has been in his “real” family for centuries.
In addition, we get no continuation of the Worf-and-Musiker plot, which I find hugely disappointing. At least I knew that going in. The “previously on” segment included no scenes from that plot, so I didn’t expect to see Michael Dorn or Michelle Hurd at all. (This is why I always watch the “previously on” segments and never skip them, even though streaming services in particular make that easy. The scenes they choose to show you often can give you a hint of what’s coming—and, sometimes, what’s not coming. And also remind you of important stuff, like Sidney referring to Jeri Ryan’s character as “Commander Seven,” which is a major plot point.) We do, at least, see Marina Sirtis again, and while Troi is once again only seen over a viewscreen, at least she has a significant conversation with Riker after they escape the nebula.
The last scene is of Jack seeing weird visions and hearing weird voices. This also happened last week, and I neglected to mention it, mostly because it made no impression on me. It happened between when the changeling conked Jack on the head and when Seven woke him. But it’s happening again, and it’s obvious from the look on Ed Speleers’ face that this has occurred many times before.
And I remain unmoved by it. There are a lot of ways this can go, and some of them might be interesting. We shall see.
Worf and Musiker better be back next week, though…
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written several works of Star Trek fiction that featured the character of William Riker, including the novels Diplomatic Implausibility, The Brave and the Bold Book 2, Q & A, and A Time for War, a Time for Peace (that last one also showed the planning and prelude of the Riker-Troi wedding), and the comic book miniseries Perchance to Dream. Q & A is the only one of those that featured Captain Riker of the Titan, as Keith never did get to write for the Titan novel series.
I appreciate the nod, Keith, but while I did introduce the term “cosmozoan” to the Trek universe, I can’t take credit for coining it. “Cosmozoa” was originally a term related to the theory of life on Earth originating from space, what’s more commonly known these days as panspermia. Incidentally, Discovery did canonize the term “cosmozoan” for spacegoing life forms in a late season 3 episode.
Okay, this one felt more like a proper Trek episode, with the crew coming together to do clever problem-solving and the climactic beat of wonder at discovery of the universe. But it had some plot holes. Is it really so impossible to draw on the holodeck’s independent power cell to run the ship’s systems? For that matter, why not tap into the shuttles’ warp engines?
Also, why the hell did the Changeling’s bucket look like Odo’s? That’s not a Changeling-specific design. Odo didn’t even know who his people were until the start of season 3 of DS9. His pail was probably of Cardassian origin.
And Jack Crusher was not at the Academy with Picard. He was Beverly’s age. In the hologram Jack recorded after Wesley’s birth, he looked like a man in his 20s. Jack would’ve been an infant when Picard was in the Academy.
Keith, I’m surprised you missed the photo of Therin of Andor behind the Ten Forward bar. For those who don’t know, Therin was a character played by uber-fan Ian McLean in a fan film decades ago, and used by Ian as his username on the TrekBBS and elsewhere. A number of us authors have homaged him in the literature; I made him an Enterprise crewmember, Shantherin th’Clane, in my post-TMP novels, and others have established a Therin Park on Andoria. So it’s cool to see him get a nod in canon.
Picard was in full-on Starfleet Hero mode after the cadets stroked his ego all during his lunch hour, so him saying “Starfleet is the only family I ever needed” was for their benefit, to put a punctuation mark on Storytime With The Legend and get a round of applause from the cadets. He probably wouldn’t have said that an hour prior, or to a different interviewer.
@00 / KRAD:
It also raises several questions, the big one bein g, why does a survivor of Wolf 359 have an ex-Borg for a first officer?
Todd Stashwick gives his take on that in this week’s Ready Room.
I won’t post a transcript just in case later episodes spoil things, but Stashwick’s take makes sense given what we’ve learned of the character over the last month.
Also, Riker using the tractor beam to throw the asteroid at the Shrike was a great “return to sender” for Vadic doing the same with the Eleos in Ep 2. I cheered.
Christopher: I totally missed the Therin picture!
JasonD: That is one way to rationalize it, but paired with the amnesia regarding Riker’s characterization in “Nepenthe,” not to mention Crusher keeping Jack away because of how “dangerous” life is near Jean-Luc Picard when he was sitting on his ass in France for most of Jack’s lifetime, it really feels like the current crop of writers have totally forgotten everything this show established in its first season….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Shaw’s experience at Wolf 359 **might** explain why he refuses to call Seven by her Borg designation. And we don’t know for sure that Shaw had anything to do with Seven being assigned to the Titan. Maybe he got stuck with her against his wishes, which would explain the disrespect. At this point, I’m predicting that by the end of the season, Shaw will address her as Seven as part of his ongoing character redemption.
Eric: Oh, it completely explains it. Thirty-odd years later, and it’s still obviously massively traumatic for him. Bizarrely both Terry Matalas on Twitter and Todd Stashwick on The Ready Room have said that Shaw picked her for his first officer, which on the face of it makes nothing like sense, though I can think of a few explanations off the top of my head, because this is what I do for a living. However, I’m waiting for an actual onscreen explanation of how she wound up assigned there….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I really liked this one; in fact, I think that it might just be the best single episode that Picard has ever done. We get revealing character moments, excellent dialogue, a classic Star Trek smart-characters-getting-out-of-a-jam-by-being-clever story, and a beautiful moment at the end when they find themselves floating amidst the cosmozoans, floored by the majesty of space.
That said, it has a few flaws. There’s absolutely no reason besides fan service that the Changeling’s bucket should look like the one used by Odo. Odo was basically sleeping in a Bajoran garbage pail; it’s not a Changeling thing, it’s a him thing. Secondly, it had a bad case of main-characters-do-everything syndrome: the Titan presumably has fully staffed science and engineering sections; why do the Crushers need to figure it out?
Finally, while I like the clarification that the mainline Borg Collective is still somewhere off in the Delta Quadrant and that Jurati’s Borg are just one of those weird offshoots that creep up every so often (which is pretty much what I’d assumed), waving off the latter as “That weird shit on the Stargazer” felt like a way of telling the audience to ignore it. It seemed like a very dismissive way to foreclose upon what could be a fairly interesting plot development (a group of Borg joining the Federation).
Finally, we’re four episodes in, and Geordi still hasn’t shown up yet. Shame.
I’m fine with Worf and Raffi not appearing this week as it gets us away from the trend in modern Trek where a starship can reach any point in the Federation in five minutes. The last we saw of them, they were on their way to Earth, and the Titan was only caught in the nebula for a few hours. The only way Worf and Musiker could’ve had a story is if the writers gave them some random hindrance to overcome, and those are so tedious.
Quoth jaimebabb: “waving the latter off as ‘That weird shit on the Stargazer’ was just a way of telling the audience to ignore it.”
I don’t think Shaw was referring to the events of season two there, I think he was referring to the story that Picard had just told to Jack about the adventure he and Jack’s namesake had while serving on the original Stargazer back in the day.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Shaw’s backstory–wow. This really shed some light on him and I can’t help but be amazed at his emotional bravery. Despite living with survivor’s guilt, he not only decides to stay in Starfleet, but he switches to the command track. I loved his line “Sorry. At some point asshole became a substitute for charm.” He knows he’s an ass–but, I think after Wolf 359, any wide-eyed idealism he had for Starfleet just went away.
Seven recognizing LaForge was a changeling was a great moment.
I didn’t find Riker’s grief to be inconsistent with what we saw in Nepenthe. We saw him for such a brief time. He may’ve been staying away from Deanna then too. (only he may’ve been puttering in the kitchen or whatever instead of being off planet)
Some things did annoy me:
1) Picard guesses that Jack is about 23/24. But we’re in 2401 now, correct? And Nemesis was in 2379. The math doesn’t add up. It’s like the writers want to have it both ways–for Jack to be born after Nemesis and for this to be the 250th anniversary of Starfleet’s mission. But if both of those years are correct, then Jack is maybe 21.
2) Jack Crusher, the older, went to the Academy with Picard? That means he must’ve been at least 40 when Wes was born. I always thought he was a lot younger. The actor who played him, Doug Wert, certainly was. However, this is less of a continuity problem and more “the show messed up my headcanon” problem. It’s annoying but it’s not the writers’ fault.
3) The changeling’s bucket has to look exactly like Odo’s? Okay, that’s not a nitpick. It was just strange. Any kind of pot would do.
4) The whole “holodecks are on an independent system so they can be utilized during a crisis” would make a lot more sense if they were used for simulations or training. Not for the crew to relax in the middle of a crisis!
For the most part, I did enjoy this episode. My one complaint about this season is too little Deanna!
My wife thought that the Picard in the bar got caught up in the moment with all the cadets, and that he was essentially repeating the “party line” about Starfleet crews being like family. It provided a nice moment for both of them, though, when they each realized each other’s point of view in that conversation. It’s too easy to guess that Jack will wind up joining Starfleet at the end of the season, but it’s clear the journey is the point and not the destination.
Todd Stashwick was incredible in this episode. I was one of those who had guessed that Shaw was an engineer on the Constance at Wolf 359, but his story still got to me. What was great was that you could tell that he does understand on some level that Picard was also a victim there, but that doesn’t absolve him of his survivor’s guilt. It brings his whole character into focus and I’m excited to see where he goes next.
The thing I appreciated the most about this week’s episode was that everybody was acting like a grown-up. Riker and Picard quickly put their differences aside (disproving the ridiculous “Riker is a Changeling” theories) like grown men ought to do. Shaw and Seven aren’t quite there yet, but they showed they can be an effective team in spite of their differences.
I was also glad that “guess the Changeling” was over quickly, though I am curious to know why that one didn’t turn to dust like all the previous dead Changelings have done. Is it only stunned?
Finally, I was impressed that a 58-minute episode without Raffi and Worf appearing at all was as well-paced as this felt. The preview clip from this week’s Ready Room was the two of them, so I think it’s fair to say we’ll see a lot of movement on their part. Somehow this season keeps getting better with each episode, which I didn’t think was possible for a serialized streaming show.
@10/krad – Shaw immediately followed it up with a reference to “the real Borg still being out there,” so I took it as reference to Season 2.
Great episode, even if some of the plot seams do show. (Holodeck is now on its own battery for morale… or in case the engineer needs a muse in a crisis. Granted, Shaw is high on painkillers, but his arrival in the holodeck — while making for great drama — is completely without predicate. Riker wants Seven to keep the Changeling saboteur quiet to preserve morale… ok, maybe, but why not assign a small number of trusted security personnel who could make all the difference to her mission?)
Not loving all the anti-Changeling racialism in this episode… thus far, they have been portrayed and spoken of almost entirely as repugnant and two-dimensional villains. DS9 portrayed them as menacing, even monstrous, but that was always counterbalanced by our affection for Odo and his journey of discovery of his origins and people. This culminated in the very dramatic rapprochement in the finale where Kira allows Odo to link with the Female Shapeshifter and share the cure to the disease afflicting the Founders — a powerful moment where Bajoran, Cardassian, and Founder learn to trust and reject genocide, paving the way to the end of the Dominion Ware. The racist treatment of the Changelings — at this point in the story, at least — feels like it rolls back DS9’s most ambitious narrative achievement.
@6 @7 I can imagine that Seven’s Borg name in particular was really triggering to Shaw. Every time she’d introduce herself as “Seven of Nine,” he probably can’t help but think “And I was 10 of 10.” Just a devastating story.
@11 I still can’t decide if the retcon is that Jack Crusher was much older than we thought, or that Beverly is. I guess him being 40 but looking like he was in his mid- to late-20s is pretty consistent with almost every character this season being younger than their actor.
Oh, and did anybody else notice the not-at-all-subtle focus on the Enterprise-C model in Ten Forward? Between that and Vadic’s use of a Reman knife exactly like Shinzon’s, there’s no way Changelings are the only threat here.
I want this to be good, I so do, and I think Dorn is nailing Worf and I like Frake’s Riker, but it’s all the same mystery box plotting I’m so sick of. Episode 4 done and I still don’t know what going on, why Jack matters, what all the nonsense is about his visions, what their plot is, what the stakes are, nothing! This just doesn’t work in a 10 episode series. If they had 22 or 24 episodes to work with, dropping in mythology eps every once in a while makes sense, but it’s unexplained transwarp conduits and interdimensional robot gods all over again. They throw in these things in the last episode or two, barely explain them, then expect them to have weight. Bringing in changlings, Worf, Riker, good ship designs finally, I think it’s just hitting the nostalgia button to cover up the same old flaws. It’s just bad plotting.
Aside, has Seven ever explained why she chooses that name over Anika Hansen? She was abducted, assaulted, and physically altered by a cruel personality-supressing collective. They stole her life and identity, murdered her parents. She has said many times she hates them. Why keep their name? I didn’t get it during Voyager’s run (I thought the episode with her backstory was going to have her switch to Anika, but no) and I don’t get it now. Renaming oneself has been a powerful tool for reasserting identity over an oppressor, for example Malcom X or the African naming revival of the 70’s and 80’s.
@16 Obviously, the real reason she kept her Borg name is because the Voyager producers/writers wanted it that way because it showed what kind of character she was for the show. In-universe, the best answer is that’s the only name she ever really knew and she still considered herself to be Borg on some level. We learned last season that assimilation is a euphoric experience involving massive endorphin releases, so it’s really not that hard to believe that she would have trouble completely abandoning that identity.
Also, I disagree that this is bad plotting. Every episode so far has given us a piece of the puzzle, while focusing mostly on the character dynamics that will make later plot revelations work. This is not the “mystery box” approach employed by JJ Abrams at all. I’ve been very impressed.
So what do we think is going on with Vadic? She cut her hand off, it turned into Changeling goo, then it turned into a scary floating head giving her orders, then turned back into her hand. So is she a Changeling with a split personality? Is she an amputee with a Changeling impersonating her hand? Why would she have to cut it off, then? I’m thinking maybe there might be Changelings living inside people for some reason, and maybe there’s one inside Jack giving him these visions. But a lot of it still doesn’t make sense.
It struck me as a bad idea for the Changeling to impersonate a bridge officer whose real location could be easily checked. I mean, they killed the transporter operator so nobody would see him in two places at once, so impersonating an active officer was risky.
Hey, what if the reason the Changeling impersonated the transporter chief was to prevent the detection of the Changeling inside Jack? Presumably postwar transporter biofilters are designed to detect Changelings. Or they would be if any kind of sensible safety design were being used, which is rarely a safe bet in Trek (seatbelts, anyone?).
Seven was never trying to return to the identity she’d had before the Borg stole it from her; her arc was always about forging a new identity. She was born Annika Hansen, she became Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01, and then she became just Seven.
@15: “7 of 9” vs “10 of 10” Absolutely brilliant stuff!
@8 – Not only does it appear that Titan doesn’t have any useful science or engineering personnel, they don’t have anyone that it would make more sense to replay asteroid data to Picard. But it’s a daddy/son bonding moment I suppose. Still doesn’t make any sense.
What we basically get at the end of the episode, despite Riker telling Picard he was right, was EXACTLY what Riker was advocating to do in the first place. How many crew members died before the command staff came to the realization that getting out of the nebula and getting help was actually a pretty good idea?
Once again people forget that Picard is retired. He has no authority to give orders.
We saw Riker twice in season 1, first on Nepenthe and later when she showed up with the fleet of identical ships. No sign that he was still mourning to the degree that we’re supposed to imagine here. Also, Deanna is a counsellor, not just an empath. You’d think that if anyone could help him, it would be here.
During the scene where Vadic gives her boss a hand, she uses a Reman knife. Foreshadowing or just reusing a prop?
Is there a system onboard the ship, one directly connected to the warp engines, that someone in that department doesn’t know how to operate? They’re vents, open and closed is pretty much what they do. But I guess they needed Shaw to do something useful.
May also say how glad I am that they came up with a somewhat better strategy for hunting Changelings than the absolutely useless blood screenings that they employed on Deep Space Nine? Really, though, every ship in the fleet should be outfitted those radiation emitters that they tried to use on Gowron in “Apocalypse Rising”
I liked this episode a little more. Not great but it still felt like Star Trek.
You brought up the profanity. I don’t think that’s quite the problem here. The problem is writing these characters to sound like 21st century screenwriter dudes in LA. This goes especially for Shaw, who in most scenes comes across not as a captain but as a bitter divorced dad who wandered in from the bar, two nacelles to the solar wind. However, when he’s down to business wiring and rerouting the thingamajig to the plot device, he’s great. I wish they would write him that way all the time. The scene where he learned to respect Seven was wonderful, by the way.
I understand wanting to allow the crew to mentally escape during a dire situation. Uh, but at this point wouldn’t something like the personal relaxation device Captain Ransom used be less of a strain on the ship’s power?
Despite trying really hard to stay focused, I can’t find much interest in the Picard/Crusher storyline so far. Sorry. Yeah, he’s your son and his follicles are living on borrowed time. Got it. The Riker scenes, on the other hand, were much better. I never would’ve thought of Frakes’s character as the heart and soul of Star Trek, but he’s sure coming across that way to me.
@21 — ” Not only does it appear that Titan doesn’t have any useful science or engineering personnel…”
I’m glad you brought that up because the reminds me of a comment I had last week that I forgot to mention. Seven and Jack go to Engineering and there’s no sign of anyone!
@21 / Kkoritz:
During the scene where Vadic gives her boss a hand, she uses a Reman knife. Foreshadowing or just reusing a prop?
Probably the latter.
But ‘Rikka” did mention last week the renegades were working with ‘like-minded souls’. Without access to the full resources of the Great Link, the rogue Changelings would need allies wherever they could find them — and the UFP has no shortage of enemies.
The ultimate fate of the Reamns following the Supernova is also a big loose end; I can’t remember if Una McCormack dealt with it during The Last Best Hope. I’d imagine even 20+ years later, Shinzon still has followers who want to avenge his death (which was likely the impetus behind those Reman assassins Beverley mentioned last week).
Quoth Dingo: “The problem is writing these characters to sound like 21st century screenwriter dudes in LA.”
And in the original series, the characters all sounded like 1960s humans. That’s the way of things…
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
#26. Sure, I get that bad dialogue isn’t anything new in Star Trek. Must it be a tradition though? ;-)
@17 Not sure I agree. If we were to look at this like long movie (the stated intention,) I would be fine if Vadic was the main villain. Introducing the “real big bad” at the end of episode 4 of 10 is like bringing in Hans Gruber halfway through Die Hard or Shinzon in the last third after using his henchguy as the front for most of the movie. Most stories introduce the villain up front even if they don’t explain all the details so the view can see what the stakes are, see what the villain can do. If episode 5 explains it, sure, fine, might work, but I suspect we won’t see this true mastermind until too late in the game for it to matter. You can’t just add Palpatine at the last second and hope it lands!
@19 Well said! Makes sense.
@21 Totally agree that Riker had it right but I guess his name isn’t on the show. I also thought the separation came out of nowhere, another of my complaints about the writing. Each new crop just makes up whatever they want to deal and basically disregard past events.
@krad – “This will likely result in some tiresome fulminating from people about how much the Paramount+ shows don’t understand Star Trek, because in my day, the Trek characters didn’t curse like sailors, dadgummit! Of course, the reason why isn’t because Trek is this pure thing, it’s because they weren’t allowed to on commercial television”
That’s one thing that annoys the hell out of me on Lower Decks. It’s not aimed at children and it’s not on commercial television. It’s on the same streaming service as Picard. Turn Doctor T’Ana free, dammit!
@17 I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong with how they’ve been handling it, because it all depends on how it works going forward. I’m on record saying that bringing back Palpatine in Rise of Skywalker was a perfectly serviceable idea; it was just horribly executed. If Vadic’s mysterious boss is somebody we already know (which I think is pretty likely), then less set up is required. That being said, I am in agreement that there had better be some more information in the next episode. Picard’s log at the end made it clear to me that now that the Titan is relatively safe, they can focus on who Vadic is and why she and the Changelings want Jack. Raffi and Worf are investigating the same thing, so I think we’ll get some answers.
@29 Bleeps are still funnier.
@29/kkozoriz – I actually think that bleeping T’Ana’s dialogue is a lot funnier than just hearing it out loud
@23/Dingo: “Yeah, he’s your son and his follicles are living on borrowed time.”
No, this episode made the same mistake as TNG: “Bloodlines” in that regard. Paradoxical though it seems, male-pattern baldness genes are inherited from the mother’s side, not the father’s. I inherited my father’s physical traits in almost every respect, with the sole exception that I still have a full head of hair as I near 55 while he was balding by his mid-30s.
@28/Rick: “You can’t just add Palpatine at the last second and hope it lands!”
Bad example, given that the Emperor appeared only as a hologram in the second movie and didn’t emerge as a significant character until the concluding installment of the trilogy. (And wasn’t named onscreen as Palpatine until the prequel trilogy, although the name was established in the novelization of the original film, IIRC.)
I’ve enjoyed the last two episodes far more than any in the previous 2 seasons. I think everyone is taking beverly and Jack’s appearance far too easy. We got changelings and robot Picard..are we sure these arnt mirror universe Bev and Jack? or robots or holograms? Also..Picard had a whole lifetime where he raised kids even leaving out a decade of capt Picard days. Family is sorta been there done that for him. Why do the changeling liquid forms look so organic? Did terminator copyright the metallic look they had before? How is Shaw still a captain with so much psych trauma? In a fleet with telepathy dont they like screen him? I’ve never understood why people would blame Picard for being assimilated. Anyone else feel like they had two scripts with two stories and just squished them into one to fill time? This episode could have been a conclusion.
#32. Interesting. Well, I was just repeating what the episode said, since that was the only bit of memorable dialogue I found between them. Like with “Bloodlines,” it was still a good punchline in an otherwise dull scene.
@29 – It would be if it was just an occasional expletive. But she does it so much I want to hear some Caitian cursing. Bleeping gets old really fast.
@33/Evrett: ” Why do the changeling liquid forms look so organic? Did terminator copyright the metallic look they had before?”
Terminator 2 came out a year and a half before DS9 did, so no. And they didn’t look metallic — they looked more like honey or pinkish-orange gelatin. As for why they changed it, presumably they’re just taking advantage of more sophisticated CGI to create something more textured, since the original effect looks somewhat dated.
@36 But why wouldn’t they just use the same effect that was used in Discovery? I feel like there is something weird about these Changelings, as you have already alluded to. When the one impersonating LaForge died, it left a solid body, which makes no sense for a regular Changeling. But before it did so, there was a rippling effect that I thought looked a little more like what we’re used to. There’s something else going on here.
Speaking of dialogue, I thought some of the writing was a bit banal. I was waiting for Picard’s message to the cadets or whoever they were to become eloquent, but it was basically just a cliche-ridden ode to crew togetherness. Rather reminded me of Patches pregame speech to LaFleur in Dodgeball, which amounted to “get out there and do your best”. Meh.
And I’m very sorry, I know grief and guilt will sometimes make people point fingers in directions where they don’t belong, but I can’t really jump on the bandwagon of love for Shaw’s survivor’s guilt, for the same reason I thought it was crappy of Sisko to blame Picard for his wife’s death. Do these two men hate every individual of any species who have ever been assimilated by the Borg for being too weak to resist? And if they do wtf is wrong with them? I mean Shaw even pointed out Picard was no longer Picard- he was Locutus. Any actions taken by the Borg while Locutus was Borg were taken by the Borg collective, not by Picard individually or otherwise, and although I understand it’s a very powerful plot device it annoys me to no end to see Picard have to continue to endure such treatment by those who should know better.
On the plus side, I really enjoyed the entire sequence once Riker got his head out of his ass and decided to work toward a solution rather than just curling up into a ball and dying. (That phase went on way too long by the way… “Starfleet protocol says we sit here and wait for rescue”. I highly doubt there’s anything in the Starfleet manual that says if you’re faced with a no-win scenario, abandon all efforts to save yourselves and wait for rescue, especially if you’re inside of a nebula where no one can find you.”
So it was fun to watch him shake that off, let Picard take the conn, and have multiple people on and off the bridge have their moment in the daring escape.
Yes, as soon as I heard the f-bomb come out of Picard’s mouth I knew there would be some backlash from old school fans, but I like the way they crossed that threshold. It wasn’t a cheap expletive, it was an apt adjective.
And I guess lastly, it must have taken Picard an hour to tell all those stories. Haddiock getting cold? At that point it was probably starting to smell a bit ripe, lol.
It may be simply taking advantage of better CGI compared to 25 years ago on DS9, but something about the way these Changelings act and look and move makes me thing they might be part “solid’? They look less like amber goo and more like unfocused bio matter. Maybe part of the schism in the Great Link was some wanting to somehow crossbreed or gene splice with monoforms?
#39. Right, I thought that about the Changeling who was captured by Worf and Raffi. Couldn’t he have slipped out of those cuffs well before that? He didn’t seem to be in full control of his shifting.
As for Vadic, I don’t know what the hell is going on there. During the talk to the hand scene, I was wondering what was in that cigar she’s been smoking?
Are we sure that the La Forge Changeling is actually dead? When Worf killed one last week, it vaporised. When Bev killed Vadic’s mooks on the Eleos (and I still think she knows more than she’s letting on), they turned to dust in typical Changeling fashion. Is it possible that Starfleet has developed a “Changeling stun” setting on its phasers?
@39 The Changeling from last week didn’t want to give himself away. He needed regeneration so badly he wouldn’t’ve been able to kill Worf and Raffi, so he tried to con them into believing his symptoms were from withdrawal.
#42. Then why not kill Worf and Raffi as soon as he encountered them? Or why not shift into someone else while on the crowded street and lose them?
No Kobayashi Maru reference? The entire scenario they’re in is identical to the Kobayashi Maru: A federation ship receives a distress call from just outside of Federation space. When they answer the call, they are immediately met with overwhelming force and the ship is incapacitated. This puts the captain in a strategic and moral no-win scenario, and regardless of what decision they make, they lose. That’s the scenario presented in the Kobayashi Maru, and also the exact plot of the first 4 episodes of this season.
Picard’s advice to the cadets is his version of saying he doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario, mirroring Kirk’s conversation with Savik. Picard eventually gets them out of it the same way Kirk does: he changes the parameters of the test, rewiring the ship to use the very waves of energy that are ripping them apart to escape.
The whole season to this point has been a callback and reference to the Kobayashi Maru.
@18: My take is that she’s full changeling, and this is a method of communications the changelings have developed (either just the splinter ones, or the regular ones use something like it too but we just never saw). They chop off a bit of themselves and put it in a machine that connects via some technological signal to another Changeling, using the inherent physiology that enables the Great Link (or whatever lesser link the splinter group’s using that they might well also call the Great Link). Essentially turning the hand, temporarily, into a merger of a distant changeling and the local one, so you can be 100% assured that it is another Changeling rather than a spoofed message, without being a full Great Link and thus potentially exposing ‘need to know’ information.
When you think about it, it’s quite a handy communications method.
@37/Chase: “But why wouldn’t they just use the same effect that was used in Discovery?”
For the same reason they don’t use the same Klingon or Ferengi makeup as Discovery. For the same reason Lower Decks and Prodigy have different animation styles. These are artistic creations, and the different shows have different artists designing things. Fiction is about creativity, not just continuity.
“When the one impersonating LaForge died, it left a solid body, which makes no sense for a regular Changeling.”
How do we know they were killed? Maybe they were just stunned. Remember “Vortex?” Odo was knocked out by a rock and retained his humanoid form.
@45/ghostly1: “When you think about it, it’s quite a handy communications method.”
Grrrrr…. What an underhanded remark.
But if she’s just an ordinary Changeling, why would she need to cut off a piece of herself? She could just sever it with a thought.
Admittedly, Odo getting KO’d by falling rocks was one of the silliest things to happen on Deep Space Nine, and I’d be just as happy to pretend it didn’t happen
@45 and @46 Applauding your punmanship.
One other thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post, I wholeheartedly approve of Picard’s choice of holohooch in stocking Jameson, although I would say that unless things have changed in a few centuries, Jameson may be modestly priced, but it’s not a “cheap” whiskey. I mean, it’s not like it’s Canadian Mist.
@47/jaime: I’m okay with Odo being knocked out. After all, when a person is knocked out by a shock, it’s often due to the hydraulic shock propagating through the bloodstream disrupting the flow of blood to the brain. So it stands to reason that a being made entirely of a fluid mass might also be susceptible to hydraulic shock from impact, causing a temporary loss of consciousness, but perhaps with enough autonomic function remaining to maintain his current form.
I have a harder time with Odo being described as “heavier than you look” in the same episode where he impersonated a drinking glass carried on a tray with no difficulty.
Random thoughts in no particular order. 1) since it’s just a simulation of Ten Forward wouldn’t the bottle of Chateau Picard just be a replicated version and thus not as good? 2) I still hold that there’s no way Shaw ever becomes a captain with the attitude he has but the scene with him retelling Wolf 359 was brilliant. 3) this may be the most TNG show they’ve done: we faced an overpowering enemy and deadly space and using our wits defeated the enemy and made an amazing discovery (remember when they were explorers?). We even had a technobabble solution that makes no sense whatsoever. 4) for the second time a new version of Picard comments on the hair thing. 5) they’ve really nailed fan service here- they drop in references both to things we’ve seen (Darmok, Farpoint) and things we haven’t (The shuttle, the hirogen) and it works whether you get the references or not.
My only complaints are this: the writers seem to think we HAVE to end on a cliffhanger and that gets old. I understand the point of cliffhangers in general- the fans will watch next week but this is the third (or tenth depending on your point of view), it’s on a streaming platform so you’ve already got my money and for most people Trek is the reason they’ve got Paramount in the first place. I don’t mind some cliffhanger so much as it’s mixed in with other endinfs
Jack is the son of an ex-Borg. Could that explain the red visions?
@32: Sorry, Christopher, they are right, because male pattern baldness is polygenic, and I have a family example for that too: no baldness on mother’s side, lots of it on father’s, my brother got it but I did not.
https://need-hair.com/which-side-of-the-family-does-baldness-gene-come-from/
I also missed Worf and Raffi, but I understood the decision to focus on what was going on with the Titan. The Worf and Raffi plot is the one that was working. This is the one that needed help. I mostly enjoyed what was done this week, though what this show chooses to reference vs. what it chooses to forget is a bit baffling sometimes.
And speaking as one of the commenters who was complaining about Riker sounding a bit out of character last week, you make a valid point about him not being the same person 20 years later. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed him this week.
@50/MikeKelm: ” 1) since it’s just a simulation of Ten Forward wouldn’t the bottle of Chateau Picard just be a replicated version and thus not as good?”
I don’t accept the premise that replicated food and drink are not as good as the real thing. Some characters gripe about that, but people’s gripes are often exaggerated or based more on perception than reality. I could buy it with 23rd-century food synthesizers, which would create approximations of the real thing from raw components (the meaning of “synthesis”), but a replicator is transporter-based, creating exact replicas (to molecular resolution) of an original item scanned in the same way a transporter scans a traveler. So there’s no reason it should taste worse or less authentic; it essentially is the original item in exact detail (just not exact enough to replicate a living, conscious being). The way I figure it is, every instance of a replicated food item is an exact copy of the same original, so every one would taste identical to every other one, without the variety you get with individually made items. So it might taste just as good as the original, but it would always taste the same, and people might get bored with that, hence the perception that replicated food is inferior.
@52/jmeltzer: Okay, but at least we can say that it isn’t guaranteed that a son will be as bald as his father. It’s a possibility, but both “Bloodlines” and this treated it as an inevitability, and my own luxuriant (if graying) locks disprove that.
I have to say that my absolute FAVORITE quote is “Bob’s your uncle; Fanny’s your aunt!”
First, Ed Speleers delivers that line beautifully–so much excitement! Also, it’s totally new to me. I’ve heard “Bob’s your uncle” but don’t remember ever hearing the rest of it.
@46: Dramatic effect? I mean, Vadic really seems theatrical.
Though it occurs to me…CAN Changelings sever parts of themselves with a thought? I’ve actually got no memory of any of them ever doing this (though with all the DS9 episodes it’d be easy to forget). So it’s certainly possible either way but it could also be that deliberately severing just a piece of yourself is difficult for some or all changelings… not necessarily that it harms them to do it (blood tests, after all prove that while it might expose their cover, it doesn’t especially seem to hurt them), but just that it’s difficult to overcome the ‘stay together’ instinct. Maybe it’s something like trying to keep your eyes open while sneezing, and, physically severing a piece is easier.
@CLB I actually thought I heard that replicators were ok at specific ingredients- say Admiral Vance’s apple made of shit- but weren’t as good at combined dishes, so a fine wine which is so nuanced couldn’t be fully mimicked. Likewise certain medications and materials such as Latin in which couldn’t be replicated. It also explains why planets still have farms, restaurants still exist and why Chateau Picard winery is still a thing.
From an out of universe explanation though, doesn’t a perfect replicator able to replicate anything pose a barrier as a writer? BS transporter saves the day plots aside, if anything can be replicated then the stakes are automatically lower. Something gets destroyed or you need something, press a button and good as new. How do you get around that?
@51/M The goopy red tendrils that Jack sees in his vision look similar to Vadic’s hand as it reconstituted itself. I think it’s related to that.
Quoth Christopher: “I don’t accept the premise that replicated food and drink are not as good as the real thing.”
Then you don’t understand how cooking works, or how alcoholic drinks are made. One of the reasons why cooking/being a chef and why making wine or beer or some such are artforms is that they are never the same way twice. Even a “good year” of a wine can have differences between one bottle and the next. The same chef will make a veal scaloppine that is mouth-watering one day and only just very good the next and maybe terrible the next — and it may be because the quality of the veal is different or they used less butter this time or some other random factor.
So what is the replicator replicating exactly? Which bottle of wine is the template for what’s created in the replicator when every bottle is slightly different from every other bottle?
Quoth ghostly1: “Though it occurs to me…CAN Changelings sever parts of themselves with a thought? I’ve actually got no memory of any of them ever doing this”
Odo did in “When it Rains…” when Bashir asked for “a cup of goo.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
That was some good Star Trek.
Re: Vadic’s handheld communicator. I don’t think it’s a Changeling or that she’s a Changeling, but perhaps some form of changeling biotech; a comm device that could disguise itself as needed. Safe bet that whatever communication medium it uses is not something that can be picked up by Starfleet. Not sure why Vadic needed a knife to activate it, but we are talking about rogue “we’re superior to solids” Changelings; perhaps the knife action is seen as a bonus feature for the Changelings (“we’ll get the solid to cut herself every time she needs to talk to us!”).
I like the idea that the molecular patterns programmed into the replicator are selected to be inoffensive to as broad of a cross section of the public as possibe; so it’s not so much that they’re bad, per se, so much as that they’re the kind of food that you would get from an event caterer: perfectly serviceable and maybe exactly what you’re looking for…but if you want something special or unique, you’re better off just replicating the ingredients and making it yourself.
The timeframes keep bothering me too. Jack should be closer to 30, given when Beverly left the Enterprise for the second time. Was there a third time? Fr that matter, if Jack is 23 or 24, then he was 18 or 19 “5 years ago” and was nonetheless drinking actual whiskey at an L.A. bar? Speaking of that bar, wasn’t it a pleasant surprise to Picard to find it (and Guinan) at the beginning of Picard S2? (I just checked back, and that scene still plays as if Picard hasn’t seen Guinan in awhile, so how is he a regular at the bar in prior years as shown this season?)
I’d be less troubled by all of this if the showrunners weren’t so dedicated to putting dates on everything else. Much harder to handwave Jack’s age when we’re being bombarded with specific timeframes.
Still, this was a fun episode. Thanks for the review, KRAD! {Jonathan}
No more Locutus, please. There is no more water to draw from that well.
I can see how Shaw’s experience could have profoundly influenced his character (and the part is very well acted), but I disagree with the writers adding a major character whose defining moment was Wolf 359.
Personalizing the fight with the Borg as a fight with Locutus makes a bit more sense with Sisko for a couple reasons. He was a bridge officer during the battle, not down in engineering. Also, Sisko’s interaction with Picard was an organic way to let the viewer know that DS9 was not going to be TNG part 2.
I don’t think it’s fair to judge one character’s trauma versus another’s—I can’t say if Sisko suffered more than Shaw by some measure. But I think Sisko’s attitude makes more sense in the context of the story as it was a recent event, and Sisko’s behavior with Picard, while skirting insubordination, was not on the same scale as what Shaw’s been shown doing to Seven.
It would seem more elegant tie Shaw’s trauma to experiences in the Dominion war. That aligns better story-wise with having Changelings as the villain. The casualties of the Dominion war were far higher than Wolf 359 giving it good odds of being applicable to any random officer. So Shaw can become more of a general purpose misanthrope and less a person targeted at two individuals who’ve done him no direct harm.
Having baggage related to the Borg and Wolf 359 only becomes relevant if you presuppose Starfleet’s two ex-Borg being on his ship at the same time as you need to tell a story. It seems suspiciously convenient.
@57/MikeKelm: “From an out of universe explanation though, doesn’t a perfect replicator able to replicate anything pose a barrier as a writer? BS transporter saves the day plots aside, if anything can be replicated then the stakes are automatically lower. Something gets destroyed or you need something, press a button and good as new. How do you get around that?”
You’re conflating two different standards of “perfect.” I never said “replicate anything.” It has to be scanned first. Anything that has been scanned into a replicator, anything that has a stored pattern in the replicator’s memory, can be reproduced with perfect accuracy on a molecular level, as long as there’s enough matter stock to assemble it from and enough energy to power the system. Just because it’s accurate doesn’t mean it’s magic. It just means it works like your phone camera — once you take a picture, you can copy it over and over and it will look exactly the same every time, because it’s digital. But first you have to take the picture, and save it, and have a charged and functional phone with an active web connection.
So yes, in theory, anything can be replicated. That’s always been the point of the technology in TNG-era Trek, aside from rare story-driven exceptions like latinum. (Think about how VGR: “Extreme Risk” established the use of the ship’s industrial replicator to explain how they build replacement shuttles.) More generally, it’s the whole point of a post-scarcity technological society, and plenty of science fiction has successfully been written about such settings. Far from being a problem that needs to be gotten around, I see it as a way to get away from the cliche of building stories around running out of things or needing to obtain scarce resources. The Orville has done some nice work with the idea, talking about how replication technology (under a different name) allowed building their post-scarcity utopia and exploring the question of what it would mean for less advanced societies to gain it. There’s also Wil McCarthy’s Queendom of Sol series, set in a society where programmable matter gives people almost magical ability to replicate anything, teleport themselves, repair or modify their bodies at will, etc.
@59/krad: “So what is the replicator replicating exactly? Which bottle of wine is the template for what’s created in the replicator when every bottle is slightly different from every other bottle?”
Yes, that’s exactly what I said. Did you read my entire comment beyond the first sentence? I said that, because a replicator copy is essentially a transporter duplicate, it’s exactly identical to one single instance of a food item — and the fact that it’s always the same item, tasting exactly the same without individual variety, is probably the reason that people consider replicated food inferior to real food. It’s not that it tastes worse or less authentic, just that it tastes repetitive.
As far as ‘Starfleet is the only family I needed’ – think of the rest of the audience, the cadets he just spent plenty of time regaling. That message was I think more intended for them (and for all Picard knew ‘Jack’ was a cadet out of uniform).
One nit – does every ship have that bar in holoform? (Is it not Guinan’s former bar?) or did Picard bring it with?
As far as Shaw being the one to do the hack – they did say basically the rest of engineering was trying to keep the ship together. But to me this is more of a Scotty moment. You can make an Engineer a Captain, but he’s still and Engineer at heart, and when you want someone to jury-rig a 20 year old system, you want a Scotty (30 odd years of anger may make him an ass – but we’ve seen no evidence that he’s not still a creative thinker.)
@32 CLB:
Since I still own the copy of the “Star Wars” novelization I conned my parents out of at the age of 10, I can confirm your IIRC and add some detail: Palpatine is indeed given that name in the Prologue to the novelization (credited to the “Journal of the Whills”), but as a very different sort of autocrat:
Actually the most fun thing about that paperback is the color inset of photos from the movie annotated with “American Graffiti” callbacks and attempts to get the reader to go see this innovative new SF flick …
S
#66. I suppose Guinan is famous enough for them to make her bar the official template for Starfleet hangouts.
Honestly, that scene and going out of their way to explain its power needs took me out of the episode. It was as if the studio suits were standing just off-camera, still shaking their heads that they didn’t have the budget to build a proper ten-forward set for the Titan. Let’s get a little more mileage out of Guinan’s bar, shall we?
@38: On Shaw, something to keep in mind is they’re only in this situation because of Picard and Seven disobeying him. The two constant visceral reminders of Wolf 359 and his survivor’s guilt, so while drugged up and at the time he and his crew are screwed, he breaks down. Superb acting by the way.
But it looks like we had a little growth later in the epsiode with Seven. Might even get a “Commander Seven” out of him by season’s end. And now that he knows a changeling was on the ship for weeks, who knows? He admitted he’s an “asshole.” Maybe he’s taken the first step in stopping being one.
No one’s mentioned this before but the Changeling that took on the appearance of the Titan transporter officer had that same appearance where he’s “spying” on Picard and Riker in Ten Forward on Earth. This was in the first episode of this season and obviously before Picard and Riker boarded the Titan. So how did this Changeling and/or his compatriots predict that Picard and Riker would seek passage on the Titan?
I don’t know what’s going on with Vadic but when she cut her hand off and the head of that baddie formed and started speaking it looked to me like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. And just the whole scene felt more mystical and silly to me like a Marvel movie so it took me out of what should be Star Trek.
The creepy red visions Jack has of something ominous going on behind a closed door, and tendrils undulating behind him along with whispering voices felt very Stranger Things. Again, this is taking me out of what is supposed to be Stat Trek.
I’m missing the other main TNG actors, and Deanna only gets essentially a small cameo again although it at least isn’t a flashback. I get that the showrunners want to slowly roll out the gang to increase the anticipation and I’m guessing we don’t get the whole original cast together in the same room until episode 9 if not 10.
I noted that Jack was about to reveal to Picard that he had already heard the Stargazer story before (and thus revealing to Picard that Jack had sought out his dad 5 years prior) but that is right when Shaw comes into the holodeck and interrupts.
Speaking of being interrupted, I found those cadets from the flashback to be annoying and obnoxious. How dare they continually interrupt a man who just wants to enjoy his dinner in peace just because he’s famous and a legend! It’s like if I saw a celebrity dining out I know personally that I would just let that person be and enjoy their solitude or their time with their friends and family. No wonder people like Britney Spears have public meltdowns!
Anyway, I thought this episode was great and probably the best one yet this season. The actors are knocking it out of the park. Frakes has obviously put his time and dedication over the decades into directing but he has just glided naturally back into the role of Riker and has never been more soulful. And he’s putting in this great work while he’s directing at the same time! In a just world he would be picking up supporting actor nominations for the performance he’s putting in. I’m enjoying some nuance at last to Vadic as she’s now seen reporting to someone above her. Loved that Beverly was the one that got the ball rolling on a solution to their crisis. Having the asteroid flung at Vadic’s ship and it being a big hit was cathartic and symmetric payback to when she flung the Elios at the Titan. And of course the alien space babies reminiscent of the “Encounter at Farpoint” space jellyfish was very sweet. These first four episodes this season could have been a satisfying TNG feature film in itself with a little editing here and there (like taking out the Raffi/Worf side plot) but having Worf and the rest of the TNG cast already fully involved in the storyline.
This episode was brilliant – and Todd Stashwick, in particular, deserves an Emmy nomination for the Holodeck scene alone – but there’s one thing that bothers me. And it’s a trope across the entire science fiction genre. Why, when Riker orders power transferred from life support, does everyone react like they’re going to suffocate in the next 15 minutes? There’s a lot of breathable air in the ship still, and since it’s hermetically sealed, it would take a long time for the temperature to drop enough for them to freeze. Death is not exactly imminent. (I haven’t done the math, admittedly.)
Was it my imagination, or were there a couple of quick shots of Vulcan officers cuddling with fellow officers when things were looking grim? (I particularly thought I spotted one in the Ten Forward holodeck scene.) Vulcans do not cuddle.
And finally, I don’t know if it’s due to his directorial experience, or because every line of dialogue doesn’t involve shouting orders, but Jonathan Frakes’ acting has been significantly better than it was in the TNG years. He’s a lot more relaxed, I think, even in the most dramatic scenes.
I half-expected even more references to main plot points of old episodes after Beverly mentioned the Farpoint aliens, perhaps with a round robin among the three OG TNGers. Picard: “Like Tin Man!” (which KRAD already mentioned) Riker: “Or the space baby!” Beverly: “The one I had to deliver…and when Geordi had to confront the real Leah Brahms instead of the holodeck version.” Picard: “And when I had to pilot us out of the booby trap manually, flying around asteroids.” Riker: “But unlike then, we need to go faster, like if we were riding a soliton wave.” Still, I really enjoyed all the characters having unique contributions to the resolution of the episode’s conundrum.
I agree that this characterization of Riker seems at odds with the family man we saw in Season 1. He didn’t seem to be feeling “nothing” back then, and it would be extraordinarily unusual – I would even say impossible – from prolonged grief disorder to have an onset so long after the death of Thaddeus. Because the boy died from an illness, not a violent act or natural disaster, Riker couldn’t be suffering from PTSD as we understand it, even with a delayed onset. Now, if something else happened, perhaps like a major depressive disorder with marked anhedonia setting in after his taste of command after Season 1, I could buy the emptiness he described feeling. However, tying it to his son’s death rang false given what we’d seen before, as KRAD and other commenters noted.
I also agree that the age given for Jack makes me wish again that there had been a nice, long time jump of half a decade or more between Seasons 2 and 3. I also think the reference to Locutus shows how Season 2 utterly fell down in not dealing with Picard’s forced assimilation into a golem body without his prior consent (as far as I could tell). For me, that’s the arc and trauma that Season 2 should have followed: How does a man made machine integrate that new identity with his past assimilation?
Vadic seems like a changeling with a nifty communication system. Is it a way to get in touch with a reactivated B-4 or whatever’s controlling him? Jack seems changeling-touched, albeit in a way that gave him visions of a future like Sarah Connor in T-2 at the playground. I’m not taken out of Star Trek in the same way; then again, maybe this episode just put me in the right Frame of Mind.
@66. I imagine that the ship knows who’s on board and makes their cloud available to them. From a work perspective it would allow each crewman to carry around their preferred panel settings and logs and in their off hours they can access their music, holdeck, etc. Once they depart the ship then it sends any updates to wherever personnel records are kept and clears cache
@52: Thank you, finally someone says it! I’m bald, my dad’s bald, his dad was bald. My mum’s dad had a full head of hair. (As do my brother and my dad’s brother.) Yet, for decades, I’ve heard people insisting that you get baldness from your mother’s side, meaning at least three generations of men having it would somehow be a big coincidence.
@69 “On Shaw, something to keep in mind is they’re only in this situation because of Picard and Seven disobeying him. The two constant visceral reminders of Wolf 359 and his survivor’s guilt….”
Point taken, but I got the feeling Shaw had been harboring that resentment for Picard for a lot longer than when he showed up with Riker. The disrespect he showed for him from the outset was beyond just being an assh*ole- it was calculated. I can’t imagine one rises to the level of captain in Starfleet when you’re in the habit of insulting and demeaning admirals and other captains. Starting dinner without them was snippy, but the bunk beds? That was genius, lol
@66/Jeff L: “One nit – does every ship have that bar in holoform? (Is it not Guinan’s former bar?) or did Picard bring it with?”
Picard said “I keep a bottle” of his family’s vintage behind the bar, or words to that effect, so I take that to mean it was his personal program. Similarly, in season 1, we saw him recreate his study from home in La Sirena‘s holodeck.
I was going to suggest he carried around the equivalent of a thumb drive holding his personal programs (maybe his personal communicator?), but it’s probably more like MikeKelm’s cloud suggestion in #73
@68/Dingo: “It was as if the studio suits were standing just off-camera, still shaking their heads that they didn’t have the budget to build a proper ten-forward set for the Titan. Let’s get a little more mileage out of Guinan’s bar, shall we?”
So far this season does feel like one big bottle show, written around a finite number of standing sets, including the previously standing sets of Chateau Picard, Ten Forward LA, and La Sirena. The Titan sets are presumably redressed from the season 2 Stargazer sets, since the seasons were filmed back-to-back. That basically just leaves the Eleos (also probably a redress), M’Talas Prime, and the Shrike.
@74: Genetics has proved to be more complex than originally imagined. It’s no longer thought that one and only one gene is always responsible for a condition.
By Picard’s time, though, DNA causes of genetic conditions should be known well enough so that if Jack wanted to find out if he would lose his hair, he’d just give a finger-stick blood sample (if even that) to the medical computer and know in seconds. That is, unless there’s a Eugenics War-related phobia about that kind of genetic testing.
And, on Jack – do he and Wesley know about each other and have they met? Presumably yes …
@76/CLB – I recall reading somewhere that the Shrike interior is just a redress of La Sirena‘s lower level. I think that the budget for this series must be more limited in general than it is for Discovery or SNW. Either that, or it was eaten up by the TNG cast’s salaries.
I too was utterly confounded by Riker making it sound like his son had just died and that’s the reason for his current rift with Troi.
I realize that Shaw was speaking through his trauma, but describing Locutus as “the only Borg so deadly they gave him a goddamn name” was a bit of a head-scratcher.
Jack refers to being named after his mom’s “first husband” as opposed to, say, “late husband”. Were she and Picard briefly married post-Nemesis, pre-Jack? That wouldn’t seem to be supported by previous dialogue this season.
I found it odd that when Picard suggests Jack is “What, 23-24?” Jack simply nods with a smile rather than specifying his age, which is just something that a person would do.
I appreciate the hand puns; “talk to the…” is easily the winner because it’s right there.
I kept waiting for Shaw, avowed explorer who’s not entirely dead inside, to mutter as they take in the sight of the newly born cosmozoans something like “So this is the upside to all that crazy shit you got into on the Enterprise.”
I was confused by Picard’s lunch in Ten Forward too. Maybe it’s a franchise and Guinan’s not there, because the gaggle of young officers suggested to me they were in San Francisco, although that still doesn’t gibe with the previous season.
I admit that the rationale for the holodeck’s power is dicey, but my burning question in that moment was the same as Jack’s, so at least we got a hand-wave.
I finally placed who Amanda Plummer as Varic, with her resting scowl to sudden creepy leer and her pasted-down forelock, reminds me of: Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley.
@71:
In situations where one’s more emotionally-unbalanced crewmates are facing certain death and are unlikely to embrace a more enlightened viewpoint in the next three hours before their demise, it is logical to provide them with comfort in order to ensure that crew morale does not decrease even further.
@79/Arben: In a world with transporters, everywhere is local. While Tom Paris was at the Academy, he hung out at Chez Sandrine’s in Marseilles, France.
A really great episode – the best of the series so far for me. As one of the people hoping Riker was a Changeling last week, I think the writers did a great job of proving to me why that would have been cheap storytelling. As our respected recapper noted, Riker dealing with the death of his son is a much better – and more interesting – explanation for his character change than being a Changeling. That said, one of the things I’ve always loved about TNG is how competent the Enterprise crew is,* so having Riker make such bad decisions in the first two episodes was a strange way to communicate his grief. Making different, more cautious decisions than his younger self would have made sense, but I’m not sure writing him to make bad decisions was the right choice (assuming it was a choice and not just sloppy writing). And to be clear, by bad decisions I’m mainly referring to his ridiculous plan to scam Shaw into using the Titan to rescue Beverly and Jack, and to a lesser extent, his unprofessional argument with Picard on the bridge at the end of last week’s episode (and declaration in front of the bridge crew that they were all doomed). But I’ll stop beating this horse, as this week offered at least a minimally satisfactory reason for this behavior.
The scene at the end where Picard realized Jack was the kid at the bar five years ago was heartbreaking. Patrick Stewart’s acting here was incredible – his eyes perfectly showed his pain at realizing it was his own fault that Jack never reached out.
As for this season seemingly forgetting about the first two – I’m ok with it as I passionately disliked seasons 1 & 2 of Picard. I’m going to head-cannon them away as one of the Lower Decks crew’s cheesy holodeck adventures.
*The Enterprise-D crew wasn’t always perfectly competent, but the overall sense from all 7 seasons was that this crew could believably think/science/engineer their way out of almost any jam.
@78/jaimebabb: This season may feel like a bottle show with the reuse of a limited amount of existing sets, but the production hasn’t felt cheap to me at all. I think a lot of the budget is being poured into the visual effects of which there have been plenty and they’ve been stunning and beautiful. So even without any location shooting this season so far has felt very cinematic with the combination of FX, music, and direction. But I would still love it if we got a few scenes of the characters out in daylight as a respite from the perpetual darkness.
@79/arben: I’m not really bothered by the gaggle of Starfleet cadets in L.A. There could be a training exercise or field trip to that city. Otherwise, with transporter technology, you can be anywhere on Earth in practically an instant. Ten Forward will undoubtedly be known as a frequent hangout for Picard and once one cadet spots him, word will spread and the rest will beam over to check him out.
@84/garreth: With regard to the darkness, Terry Matalas has posted on Twitter that the episodes weren’t meant to be this dark and there are some issues with the brightness and contrast settings on Paramount+ that he’s trying to get resolved.
I was confused by the hirogen story because the cadet asked if “Admiral Janeway” gave hints. By the time Janeway returned from the gamma quadrant, surely Ambassador Worf had long departed the Enterprise?
Enjoying this season so far and really enjoying the reviews and comments. Thanks krad and others!
@86: I think in fan/literary circles the hope was that Worf had become First Officer to Picard on the Enterprise-E. This reference essentially makes that notion canon.
@81. ChristopherLBennett: “In a world with transporters, everywhere is local.”
If you’re going to make sense about it all, sure… :^)
As a matter of cosmic history, Star Trek produced on a tight budget is almost always better than when it has a blank check. That being said, I think we’re going to find out that the show actually did have a lot of money, but was very frugal at the beginning of the season so it could all be blown on creating new digital models of beloved ships that are in the fleet museum, plus whatever other insanity they’ve got planned for the climax.
@89/Chase: My issue is less about money and more about how enclosed the season feels, and how contrived it is to bring in Ten Forward LA as a holodeck setting in the same episode where the real one is featured in a flashback. There are ways to limit the expenditure in a show without having it feel cheap.
@90 That hasn’t really bothered me, probably because I’ve accepted the obvious budgetary limit, but I can understand your point. I do think (or hope, at least) that we’ll forget all about it by the end of the season.
@87:
I figured that was it, but it also jarred me that Picard referred to Worf as “Lieutenant Commander.” Surely after his heroics in the Dominion War and serving time as ambassador to the Klingons (a high diplomatic rank given that the Klingons are essentially another Great Power in the Federation’s part of space), to say nothing of becoming the first officer of Starfleet’s flagship, he’d earned that third gold pip?
Quoth Nailah R: “I was confused by the hirogen story because the cadet asked if ‘Admiral Janeway’ gave hints. By the time Janeway returned from the gamma quadrant, surely Ambassador Worf had long departed the Enterprise?”
By the time Nemesis rolled around, Worf was back serving on the Enterprise, presumably as first officer after Data died. I assumed that the Hirogen confrontation they were speaking of happened after Nemesis and before Picard’s promotion to admiral.
[pedantic fanboy] Also Janeway was in the Delta Quadrant, not the Gamma Quadrant……. [/pedantic fanboy]
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
elcinco: Worf was still a lieutenant commander in Nemesis, which is another argument for the Hirogen mission to have happened shortly after it. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@63 In Canada, you can legally drink at 18 or 19, depending on province. In most of Europe and in Mexico, it’s 18. Among western countries, USA is an outlier.
Laws change, it’s not far-fetched to think that drinking age laws would become standardized across the world, especially with casual transporter se making regional laws pointless.
@95 Plus, we’ve seen multiple examples of anti-intoxicants and the existence of synthehol, so it’s really not that weird that 16 year-old Jack would have been allowed in a bar.
I would say the reuse of the bar is the first time where the budget has shown. Other than that, they’ve done an admirable job making this season look expensive.
As for the dark, dark lighting, my only issue is that Titan left spacedock that dark. So when they go to battle stations or are badly damaged, there’s little room to lower the lights and make it seem all the more dramatic. I’ve seen laser tag mazes that were brighter than that bridge.
@71 lance_sibley: “Why, when Riker orders power transferred from life support, does everyone react like they’re going to suffocate in the next 15 minutes?” Yes, this has become a grin-and-bear it trope in scifi. More than just the heating and atmosphere, it also assumes that life support on a starship has a noticible power requirement relative to other starship systems. Like the power requirements to push a starship to near relativistic velocities via impulse drive.
There was a brief shot in the episode of a console showing some power level graphs for life support subsystems as they were disabled. This is from memory but I think it included things like inertial dampers. Those, along with gravity, might consume a good bit of power. But I didn’t notice the effects of turning those off in the scenes following. But it was a nice detail for someone to include.
“Were there a couple of quick shots of Vulcan officers cuddling with fellow officers…?” I think so. And I believe the ship’s science officer who’s had a recurring speaking role is Vulcan as well and has been a bit emotive. But it’s arguably logical to provide emotional support to crewmates if it will maintain a high level of crew performance. It’s probably not very logical to do so on the holodeck while the ship is in crisis.
Heck, if the holodeck is working and has its own power supply they should start replicating oxygen, or warp plasma, or whatever you need for repairs. If the holodeck can create food and drink it can function as a large scale replicator.
@98 I also noticed that the remaining lights went out when life support was disabled. I’d never thought of them being the same system before, but I had wondered why ships would still stay lit when there was a power loss, so it actually makes a lot of sense. One thing I would like to know is why, if losing life support depletes oxygen so quickly. ships aren’t equipped with an EV suit for every crew member (or at least some kind of portable rebreather).
I kinda feel like they knew it would be too on the nose to mention the Kobayashi Maru so excised any direct reference with intent.
I’m glad Beverly was paying attention, I was thinking the flash pulses were a heart beat, contractions was a nice side step. And I am aggravated they didn’t mention the gekli (the space baby) or the soliton wave, though I was thinking the shockwaves from the Black Cluster in “Hero Worship”.
The Enterprise-D crew gets their groove back moment was delicious. I understand and appreciate why Jack got the role he did, he was showing that he was his parent’s child. A child of the Enterprise, even if he isn’t Starfleet, even if he doesn’t believe, even if he is a rogue and a rake, the stuff he’s made of, came from that ship and that crew.
On the subject of the Changeling and his bucket, I have a bigger bone to pick, though I understand as a plot point it was fairly necessary. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there a character development point that Odo was the only changeling that used a bucket and he had made it a point to not use a bucket but just liquefy and rest spreading out like a puddle? The Great Link is just an ocean of Changelings, there’s no need for containment. Odo got into the habit of going into his bucket probably because that was where Dr. Mora kept him and it became habitual once he realized he needed to rest.
I was confused about the Changeling being defeated as well. Vaporize is more or less the only way to kill a changeling. I would think a Changeling stun with knock them back to inert goo and not lock them in place losing color. While stunning with a tazer causes muscles to lock up, a phaser’s stun causes unconsciousness where everything relaxes. I imagine there’s going to be an autopsy coming up.
I can understand Will starting to fall apart even after Nepenthe. If coming back to Nepenthe was a way to reconnect but it didn’t work all the way then that episode makes sense, because he’s actively trying. A word on a recent event, such as the anniversary of Thaddeus’ death would also make sense.
I can get why a drugged up Shaw who just had a near death experience and had two Liberated Borg on his ship, both of whom had gotten him into this current mess that almost killed him would have his past trauma vividly brought to the fore. Wolf 359 was the formative event of his youth. He even explained himself that he knows that his survivor’s guilt made him a worse person. And Todd Stashwick, Bravo. Insert: PicardClapping.Gif. You could see him reliving it. And that 10 of 10 comment, outstanding. I think Shaw has been waking up every day since trying to validate that Lieutenant’s choice to save his life. Nobody special. A dipshit from Chicago who was probably a middling young officer taking it easy. Which is why his ship never breaks the rules, why his ship you won’t find a speck of dust, or a person out of place. He’s a hard ass because he wants to be perfect for the 41 people who weren’t chosen. But he’s not actually happy with himself, or the life he’s led since then because he doesn’t think he deserves it. He probably dreams about it every night. So having Admiral Jean-Locutus of Borg Picard, on his ship. He knows intellectually Picard isn’t responsible, he’s likely studied everything about the Borg. But the part of him that dreams about the Constance blowing up with him on the outside, the part that thinks about that lieutenant and his forty friends that burned immediately. The part that was pissed off that Picard got to go back to being the Captain of the Federation Flagship, and be a hero the Federation several more times, got riled up. He’s likely been dealing with it slowly just having Seven around. I haven’t watched the aftershow yet. But having Picard, the one whose voice spearheaded it on his ship. I understand why he was pissed.
Also Shaw being the only one who remembered how the old systems work, and jumping back in because he was needed and getting the job done. I can see how he made Captain. Even if he’s still a dick.
@100:
I’m headcanon-ing the bucket in this instance because the Changeling needed to stay undercover in the crewman’s quarters. He had the bucket so he could put it in the restroom and regenerate there. That way, if someone did enter his quarters unexpectedly (maybe with suspicions about him acting funny), (a) there wouldn’t be a puddle of Changeling in the middle of the floor giving away his identity, and (b) he could re-solidify out of view in a closed restroom and tell his visitor he’d been using the head.
But that doesn’t explain Shaw telling Seven that Changelings always have a bucket handy. Maybe it was just Federation reports on Changelings who are operating undercover, or who aren’t in an environment they can control?
I bet that Haddock was stone cold by the time Picard go to it.
I feel that they could’ve covered the A and B plots in a 2 part episode and left the Raffi & Worf stuff out for now. In my opinion, the fanfic vibe of the past 2 seasons continues here, largely because it seems they still can’t figure out what to cut, what to flesh out, or what just doesn’t fit, and the pacing suffers greatly with all of those unaddressed issues left to stand in the final product. But, I must go – my haddock is getting cold now.
Hmm… So, basically, what Picard was trying to say to the cadets was, “Not tonight, dears, I have a haddock.”
Parents don’t have a timeline on their grief when it comes to the death of a child. And whether that child’s death was seen coming a mile away (like a cancer that took years to progress), or happened like whiplash (such as a fatal car accident or suicide), also doesn’t necessarily make a difference in how long the parent grieves after the death. While they say time can eventually heal all wounds, that’s not always true either. People can relapse and be triggered by a memory or an event into their grief and/or depression. Unfortunately some parents never recover themselves and die prematurely because they stop taking care of themselves or succumb to suicide. So I think it’s perfectly plausible that Riker could have appeared fine on Nepenthe but he did a good job of masking that deep pain. Or maybe he was in fact fine at the time, but then more recently relapsed or was triggered into his emotional turmoil at home.
“Not tonight, dears, I have a haddock.”
————
Ha! Brilliant!
In fairness, Early TNG Picard could be a bit of a cold fish.
@105 I wonder if things started getting bad again for Riker because he heard what was happening with the Titan‘s refit into a brand-new ship. On top of all the usual connections and emotions that a Starfleet captain might go through in that situation, the previous Titan was also his deceased son’s birthplace and first home. To see it gutted and rebuilt into something completely different under the command of a man he doesn’t much care for (it was clear in the first episode that Riker had met Shaw before or at least knew of him) had to tear at him.
@104. ChristopherLBennett — Ouch.
@105. garreth — Everything you say is true. My own confusion, at least, is not that Riker couldn’t possibly still be hurting or have fallen into a relapse of recrimination (or… whatever) that’s distancing him from his wife and daughter or be continuing to deal with something here we didn’t fully see back on Nepenthe in Season 1; it’s that the dialogue suggested a recency of his son’s death, beyond an emotional immediacy, that didn’t fit with the established timeline. Which is kind-of emblematic of a larger issue with this season.
The emotional aspects of the episode were undermined for me by the hand-wavy nature of the crisis they were in — by being an inescapable situation that enables, maybe forces, the heart-to-heart conversations among Picard and Jack, Picard and Riker, and Picard and Shaw — and simultaneously an escapable situation that only requires the main characters to focus. (In a standard submarine-trapped-at-the-bottom story, this setup would be resolved by a last-minute rescue, someone knocking on the hatch.)
The characters must simultaneously surrender to their fate and not surrender to their fate. Shaw must be incapacitated so Riker can be captain, but not so incapacitated that he can’t plot with Seven of Nine, hobble to the holodeck while hopped up on painkillers, and then solve an engineering problem. The gravity well is sucking in Titan, but not the nebula’s asteroids (let alone the gas), so that there’s a peril to Picard to overcome while flying out. And Shrike, without the portal gun that it previously carried into the nebula, is somehow directly in the path of Titan as it charges out of the nebula.
With respect to Riker’s sudden onset of grief over losing Thaddeus, it could easily be the presence of Jack that’s triggering it. Thaddeus would be a teenager now, wouldn’t he? Close enough in age to the 20-ish Jack that Riker could have had intrusive thoughts about what Thaddeus would be like at that age, had he lived. And I can’t imagine that Riker would have had much contact with teenage boys on Nepenthe, so he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work through that reaction.
Quoth lance_sibley: “With respect to Riker’s sudden onset of grief over losing Thaddeus, it could easily be the presence of Jack that’s triggering it.”
Except Riker was having issues before he knew of Jack’s existence. He told Picard in Ten Forward in “The Next Generation” that he needed to be away from Troi and Kestra for a while, for reasons he spells out in this episode.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I can only speak for myself, again, but Riker’s schism with his family was broached when he first hitched up with Picard for this mission, before they ever met Jack, let alone knew he was Crusher’s son and never mind Picard’s. [Edit: Like Keith said between my page refreshes…] Since then, Thaddeus’ loss seems to have been connected to said rift. It’s all kind-of foggy and I’ve not gone back to rewatch the season to date.
One notable thing I didn’t mention earlier was the scene of Picard, Riker, Crusher, and Jack putting their plan together in the conference room off the bridge and that open arch between the spaces. I’m not sure how much of their debate the bridge crew was privy to but when Riker approaches the threshold there are officers standing to attention, then relaxing ever so slightly when he turns back to the others. To me it was interesting both as a matter of protocol and in how it illustrated the bridge crew’s lack of involvement in the deliberations, which of course is due at least partly to the nature of the show but in-story may also be related to their relative greenness and reverence for the legends among them. I have no grasp of how many if any of the current Titan staff would have served with Riker before Shaw.
Did anyone else hear Captain Shaw proclaim himself a Chicago boy and think “Owen Shaw on shore leave, Sigma Iotia II, MAKE IT SO” perchance?
…
Now I think on it, that world is probably going to be less “All Chicago Outfit, all the time” a century and more after James T. Kirk acquired a piece of the action, but hopefully there would be enough relics of that era for a son of the actual Chicago to give us a few laughs (Ha! What if “Old Chicago” is the local tourist trap precisely because of the association with James T, Kirk’s visit, while the rest of the planet is more 2260s retro?).
@102. Joe Clark: Well if it was then those pipsqueak ensigns really ought to buy a replacement, by way of apology for keeping Jean-Luc from his dinner!
Okay a couple of things, it’s obviously Species 8472 behind things,
Also something American fans will have missed the meal Picard is eating in the Ten Forward flashback is Fish and Chips a quintessentially English meal, moreover it’s ‘Haddock’ and chips a Quintessentially Yorkshire favourite version of fish and chips,Patrick Stewart of course being from Huddersfield in Yorkshire England.
@114/ED: “Now I think on it, that world is probably going to be less “All Chicago Outfit, all the time” a century and more after James T. Kirk acquired a piece of the action, but hopefully there would be enough relics of that era for a son of the actual Chicago to give us a few laughs”
For a glimpse of Picard-era Iotian culture, check out the novel Picard: Rogue Elements by John Jackson Miller, which fills in Cristobal Rios’s backstory in the years before the series.
Faults aside, I loved this episode. It was the first episode of this season where the plot holes didn’t pull me out of the story with a “c’mon man!” reaction. There were individual moments that were FANTASTIC–7 spotting that La Forge was a changeling and smacking Shaw with the fact that the real La Forge addressed her as “Commander 7,” a loopy Shaw in Ten Forward reliving his unexpected (and, he feels, undeserved) salvation on the Constance during the battle at Wolf 359, Picard realizing his son was in Ten Forward back when he was addressing the cadets, and Riker’s exchange at the end with Deanna, these were far and away the best moments of the entire series, and some of the best moments of modern Trek as a whole. I didn’t even miss Raffi and Worf, and up until now I felt like their plotline was the better written of the two.
FWIW, Terry Matalas said on Twitter that Vadic is in fact a Changeling, though he also more or less confirmed that they are not “normal” Changelings. He’s remarkably willing to share information. https://twitter.com/TerryMatalas/status/1634306984827850752?s=20
Great episode. Maybe the best episode of all of the big budget, serialized Treks so far? What made it so good for me is that everything was character driven. It wasn’t just them escaping from a predicament with technobabble or blasting the baddie. It was about the character relationships and their experiences. Like how Wrath of Khan wasn’t just about a baddie seeking revenge, it was Kirk dealing with aging, his son, the death of his friend, etc. That’s the lesson people should take from Wrath of Khan: make a strong, character driven story along with great action, drama, and tension.
The only nitpik I had was someone said pot and then they made a marijuana reference. Like 400 years later, they’re still going to be using that slang? One of the Rick Berman philosophies during his run of Trek was that Trek should be a period piece from the future. Using contemporary slang like that takes me out of the moment. But that was just a nitpik from a very strong episode.
All the comments about the cuddling Vulcans seem to be forgetting that whole Season 1 plot point about the Federation taking on a lot of Romulan refugees after the supernova event. Presumably, some of those refugees, or their children, would have joined Starfleet by now.
So Jack Crusher does a Marty McFly impression?
@119/kgrierson: I’ve watched this episode and that scene in particular twice now and there’s no indication Picard had the realization that it was Jack that addressed him 5 years ago in Ten Forward. Picard was and is an old man, Jack was at a distance and with a hat on, and the interaction was very brief. If Picard of the present had an “ah ha” moment where he verbalized the recognition that would be one thing but he didn’t. I think we’ll have to leave it to Jack to tell Picard that they met years ago which was what he tried to do right before he was interrupted by Shaw.
@121/Tim Kaiser: “The only nitpik I had was someone said pot and then they made a marijuana reference. Like 400 years later, they’re still going to be using that slang?”
The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the slang use of “pot” back to 1938, so it’s at least 85 years old. I wouldn’t call that contemporary. If it’s been around for three generations, it’s quite possible that it will still be known 400 years from now. At the very least, Trek characters are usually very familiar with 20th-century pop culture, jazz, etc., so they’d probably be aware of the term as a historical usage.
@124/garreth: Matalas said in an interview that Picard did indeed realize it had been Jack, or at least that it might have been, but the scene was played ambiguously enough to leave it open for interpretation.
This is an excellent review, and this episode–paired with the previous one–is some of the best Trek TV ever. I can’t stand precious fans who really understand nothing about the intent of Star Trek since day one: shake shit up. Freed from Rodenberry’s prissiness and tight-ass “cultural norms”, this show, Discovery, Strange New Worlds–and even DS9 in the ways it was allowed–are the best interpretation of the Star Trek ethos. This isn’t fucking Star Wars
@122 /Durandal_1707 They made a point in the previous season to sat that Elnor was the first full-blooded Romulan in Starfleet, so there shouldn’t be any Romulan officers on the Titan unless several years have gone by (which they apparently haven’t)
@126/David in MD: It’s odd how you praise the intent of ST in one sentence and disdain the goals of ST’s creator in the next. If “the intent of Star Trek since day one” was not Gene Roddenberry’s, whose was it?
Yes, ST was meant to shake things up and break new ground, which is exactly why Picard‘s overdependence on nostalgia, movie homage, and reuse of past story elements feels like falling short to me. TNG broke new ground by not constantly reusing TOS elements but instead striving to be distinct from what had come before, to expand the universe in new directions.
And one could argue that TNG’s optimism and avoidance of petty character conflict was shaking things up, because it was a refusal to fall back on lazy writing shortcuts and generate arbitrary, avoidable conflict by having characters be immature or mean-spirited or foolish, instead demanding that writers work harder to generate more meaningful bases for conflict.
I can’t remember Kestra’s appearance in Season 1 well enough: was it established that she had inherited her mother’s empathic abilities?
It just comes to mind because Riker said it was hard to live with Deanna because of what he was going through, given her abilities.
@129 It was never said that she had inherited empathic abilities, but Riker saying they’d both be glad to be away from him implies that she probably did. I really hope we get to see Kestra again, I thought she was a wonderful character.
@130 I agree! I’d love to see Kestra in a spinoff (Star Trek: The Subsequent Generation, maybe?)
@113. That bit bugged me too. It would’ve been the perfect opportunity to flesh out the Titan’s bridge crew by having them seated around the conference table and actually playing a part in solving the problem.
Both to underline Jean-Luc’s comments about the importance of trusting one’s crewmates, and because they seem to be around Jack’s age (thus giving him a chance to interact and bond with actual peers rather than just family and friends-of-family).
#121. I agree, the use of the slang “pot” threw me out of the story for a second. It would probably have been easier to take if Seven had done a Data-like listing of all the different meanings of the word including cannabis, then with Shaw interrupting her with what he meant. As it was played, though, it just sounded to me like more of that 21st century screenwriter dude talk that I mentioned in an earlier post.
This has been a weakness with new Trek, I think. Too often they go for the quipping Tony Stark cool kids banter rather than lean into the gloriously nerdy, perplexed by the past, ‘double-dumbass’ side of Trek. Which can also be funny.
Again, “pot” as slang for cannabis has persisted for at least 85 years already, so I see no reason to think it couldn’t persist indefinitely (though “grass” and “weed” date back even longer). It’s short, it’s easy to say and write, and it’s vastly preferable to “marijuana,” a slang name rooted in anti-Latin racism.
#134. Again, the issue isn’t just the words used but in how they’re used in context. In this context, Seven immediately went to pot equals cannabis. Really? She’s a former cyborg from hundreds of years in the future. Her mind went straight to that? Who wrote this? Bill Maher?
Of course, I understand there has always been this Poochy populism element to Star Trek going back to 1966. They want to bring in as many viewers as possible. They don’t always want to seem nerdy, they want to seem hip, too. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And I think this is one instance of the latter.
@135 I don’t understand why you think it’s so odd that Seven would have familiarity with the word “pot,” even ahead of the word “cannabis” in her mind.
She’s not just “a former cyborg,” she’s a former cyborg who’s lived another quarter century as a civilian and member of the Fenris Rangers. We’ve already seen two seasons of Picard that showed she is fully acclimated and developed as a human personality. Why do you think she wouldn’t use a common word like “pot”?
Not to mention that Seven spent years serving alongside Tom Paris, who wouldn’t shut up about his interest in 20th-century pop culture, slang, etc. And she was romantically involved with Raffi Musiker, who’s well-acquainted with mood-altering substances.
Plus, Seven just visited the early 21st century a couple of years back.
@138 Not even that long ago!
Yet another thing I’d wanted to say is that I thought I was fine never seeing Riker again until “Nepenthe” in Picard Season 1 and I have to agree with other commenters that this episode is easily the best acting I’ve ever seen from Jonathan Frakes.
I think it’s interesting to note that the boys at Red Letter Media actually seem to be enjoying this show, which is frankly startling, since they absolutely hate everything about recent Star Trek shows.
From William Riker to David Xanatos, Jonathan Frakes is at his best when he’s concerned about family.
@112/krad: “Except Riker was having issues before he knew of Jack’s existence.”
Yes, of course. I hadn’t stopped to consider that. Though Jack being there, and Jack being Picard’s son, could be exacerbating Riker’s thoughts of “what if?”, even beyond what he was already feeling.
As for the use of “pot,” it threw me out of the story a bit too, but not because it’s 20th/21st century slang being used in the 25th century. It’s because I can’t remember the last time I heard someone younger than me (55) call it “pot” rather than “weed.” Seven’s line was more like something I would expect my 82-year-old mother to say (though my mother would include assorted editorial comments about how inappropriate it was to mention such a thing).
@144/Lionel: Not specifically, just TV writer cliches in general. I remember seeing at least one TNG or DS9 writer admit that Roddenberry’s limits on petty conflict were good for them because it challenged them to be more creative instead of falling back on easy shortcuts to generate conflict.
Although I do feel the current season of Picard is falling prey to such shortcuts somewhat. As I mentioned last week, I felt that the Picard/Crusher and Picard/Riker clashes felt artificial, contrived to generate tension rather than growing organically out of their characters.
Am I reading too much into it that a character named Shaw is giving what is for all intents and purposes a USS Indianapolis monologue in Ten Forward?
@146/critter: Not at all. In the interview I linked to earlier, Terry Matalas confirms that the speech was referred to internally as “the Jaws speech,” and that’s literally how Shaw got his name:
Few directors are as adept at creating a tense atmosphere and putting the viewer into the maelstrom the way Jonathan Frakes does (hell, we have First Contact on the feature side as a 26 year old proof of that). No one is able to make a standard ‘technobabble your way out of a spatial anomaly’ plot as intense and engrossing as he does. Whether it was Seven chasing the Changeling or Beverly figuring out that the void was a pregnant uterus, every scene had purpose and I couldn’t help but feel every ounce of tension and relief. Easily one of Picard’s best episodes to this point. Not once in season 2 was I ever this ecstatic. It captured the old feel of the TNG crew banding together to solve the problem of the week while still maintaining the grittiness and dark tone of the current show. Matalas certainly knows how to write classic Trek (not surprisingly, given the time he spent under Brannon Braga and company back in the Berman era).
I loved the holodeck explanation, and the way it serve to deal with the old wounds and patch things up between Picard and Riker. I didn’t even miss Worf and Raffi’s side of the story as much as the others. We needed some extra time with Picard this time around. And I’m sure we’ll be getting back to them next week.
I even warmed up to Shaw, and was tense throughout his rant against Picard/Locutus – some pointed out that he shouldn’t be angry at Picard (same goes for Sisko) because of what happened since he was doing it against his will. I’d say that’s not how pain works. For over 30 years, he had to carry that pain with no outlet for it. When it comes to emotions, it’s naturally harder to separate the actual facts from the face of the man who was on everyone’s viewscreen on that tragic day.
And yet, once I went to this page, I did the math and one of the main pieces fell apart. And I had no problem with Picard’s encouraging the cadets on the bar itself – it was heartfelt and all, and it made sense in terms of driving Jack away. But the end of the episode gave us an actual stardate: 78103.10. Which means, if we go by the not always consistent math of 1000 stardate numbers = 1 Earth year, that means the current year is 2401 (and Memory Alpha is already using that date). Thus, we got two big questions:
One was brought up already: Picard’s “Starfleet is my family” speech pushing Jack Crusher away makes little sense if this in fact took place 5 years before. As pointed out, that would put it in the middle of Picard’s retirement/resentful phase when it comes to Starfleet. It’s a scene that could have been fixed with one slight rewrite: instead of making Picard declare unconditonal love for Starfleet in a family way, he could have instead declared the Enterprise crew instead as his family. That way, it doesn’t get in the way of his resentment at Starfleet the organization and top brass.
But there’s another problem: if Jack is 22/23 in 2401, this means he was born before Nemesis. Whichever writer decided to put the bar scene 5 years before the episode should have done the math. Nemesis took place in 2379. If the bar scene had happened after the events of PIC season 1, it could have worked.
@148/Eduardo: I hated the holodeck explanation. So, Starfleet is so fatalistic that they’ll save power for a place the crew can gather together and wait for death, instead of using that power for life support so maybe they don’t actually have to die??? That’s insane!!!!!! And come on, if these Starfleet geniuses can figure out how to tap space-womb contractions as a power source, how the hell can’t they figure out how to tap their own holodeck battery as a power source?
And yeah, the timeline this season is all over the place. I can’t help thinking they planned one thing initially and then changed it in post-production, given that we got conflicting tweets from producers about just when the season was set. The first tweet said the season was in 2407, which makes so much more sense with regard to Jack’s age, Seven’s career between seasons, etc. I mean, season 2 had to take place in October 2401, since it was the end of vineyard harvest season in France, but now they’re saying season 3 is the 250th anniversary of the March 2151 launch of NX-01, so it’s actually supposed to be set before season 2, somehow. So there’s definitely something screwy going on here.
@149/Christopher: Holodeck power source used to be integrated with the ship’s power back in the early TNG era. I still recall the scene where LaForge threw a tantrum when the Leah Brahms scenario dematerialized during that episode because of the power drain and rerouting. It was Voyager that decided to separate the two for holodeck story purposes on a show that was all about ‘conserving’ power. I’m not about to blame the newer show for a choice made in an almost 30 year old show.
Of course, there’s nothing stopping the Trek writers from coming up with a new story some day. One that addresses as to who decided to separate the holodeck subsystem from the ship’s power system. As it is, I’m satisfied with the current show’s explanation of a therapeutic haven in a no-win situation. Even if they could have culled power from the holodeck for life support purposes, it would have been all for naught if it weren’t for Beverly’s eureka Holmes-esque deduction of the phenomenon they were trapped in. It was pretty clear that any other attempt at escape would have doomed them even faster. If they had tapped into holodeck power for life support, they’d get what, another week of air? By then, Vadic would have found them and destroyed them.
Also, it occurs to me that frontier day should have been the celebration of the founding of the federation instead. Given the Enterprise series finale, that would place the 250th anniversary at 2411 or so – eliminating any inconsistencies regarding Picard and Jack Crusher 2.0.
@150/Eduardo: “I’m not about to blame the newer show for a choice made in an almost 30 year old show.”
Why not? Because one of Trek’s weaker series had a bad idea, that obligates every later one to perpetuate it? It was a dumb conceit then and it’s a dumb conceit now. And in the context of this episode, it’s much, much worse. At least on VGR, the issue was more to do with the general rationing of power on an ongoing basis, more a long-term concern than an immediately urgent one. This episode is specifically and emphatically about a survival situation so desperate that the crew has to scrounge for every milliwatt of power it can. To contrast that with the already-silly trope of the holodeck having abundant power that’s somehow completely impossible to tap into for other uses just shines a spotlight on how nonsensical it is.
That’s not a 30-year-old choice, that’s a choice made in the present for this episode. They chose to set scenes in a holodeck replica of Ten Forward, rather than having the holodeck sensibly shut down and using a shipboard set instead. There was no real reason for that beyond wanting to get more use out of a standing set. But how hard would it have been to redress the ready room or crew quarters set as a crew lounge?
Okay I know this is in the wrong place but I for some reason all of the articles and reviews dealing with Star Trek Discovery appear to have the comments closed, for no reason I can determine. Maybe the admins were tired of people like me complaining about Burnham’s chronically furrowed brow and Booker’s unnecessary, and in my opinion, unwelcome resurrection?
Anyway, sorry to go off topi, but what I really wanted to say was that I am thrilled to see that Michelle Yeoh was awarded an Oscar for best actress tonight. I just hope the prestige of that award doesn’t cause complications in securing her as the lead for for the section 31spinoff series.
@152/fullyfunctional: As I understand it, rewatch threads on this site are open to comments indefinitely, but review threads for new episodes close to comments after a certain time.
CLB, thank you, I did not know that…
I would just add on the Riker seemed okay in Season 1 point, I initially had the same reaction, but people with depression often put on a happy face in public, especially around old friends, particularly if they’re avoiding dealing with it. It may be possible that Jean Luc’s death at the end of season 1 acted as a trigger to worsen the condition. Of course, the idea that Riker was feeling this way was unlikely to have been discussed in Season 1, but just to say.
I thought Jack’s vision wasn’t a million miles away from the vision the Romulans had about the AI apocalypse?
The Holodeck issue should’ve been a non-issue, for crying out loud you have Picard himself right there. Booby Trap was an episode where the solution was found problem solving in the Holodeck, but the Holodeck was competing for power with the rest of the ship. The next new class out of the yard was the Intrepid. Say, because of an incident where the Enterprise was trapped in a situation where ship’s power was being drained and used against us, Starfleet decided all Holodecks would have an independent isolated power source, so that the Holodeck could be used for problem solving and simulations even in the worst case scenarios, and in the most dire situations a sanctuary for the crews’ last moments. I don’t mind the empathetic psychologically nurturing side of the solution at all, but there being an imminently practical reason is so much better.
@156/mr_d: “for crying out loud you have Picard himself right there.”
When I read that line, I thought you were going to say “He’s an android, they can tap into him for power.” Come to think of it, why couldn’t they?
“Starfleet decided all Holodecks would have an independent isolated power source, so that the Holodeck could be used for problem solving and simulations even in the worst case scenarios”
Even if that’s true in general situations, I can’t believe that they would’ve deliberately made it impossible to tap into as an emergency power source for the rest of the ship, even in the most desperate and urgent of circumstances. I mean, all they have to do is open a couple of dang vents and they can miraculously draw power from a space phenomenon they never encountered before. How hard can it be to yank open a panel on that “independent isolated power source,” unplug the cable going to the holodeck, and plug in a cable going to the engines or life support? I mean, it’s not like it’s in another dimension or something. It’s physically right there on the ship, and presumably can be accessed for maintenance or replacement.
Of course, there are countless potential power sources they ignored for the sake of the story. Shuttlecraft warp engines are the big one. Also phasers — we’ve known since “The Galileo Seven” that their energy can be drained into engine systems. You could probably wire together a bunch of tricorders, padds, or communicators and use their power cells to run some computer systems, or power down the main consoles and use padds as a less draining substitute.
For that matter, by the 25th century, they should really have the technology to extract power from the crew’s body heat and their kinetic energy as they move, or even from the acoustical energy of their voices. The alien ship in TAS: “Beyond the Farthest Star” had this capability, and Spock’s scans of its accumulator technology could’ve been used as a basis for reverse-engineering it.
@157/CLB: Even today, and for at least several decades previously, the US Navy has “sound-powered phones” used in emergencies and some other situations, which are literally powered by the voices speaking into them. I don’t know how they work, but I’ve used them, and they’re kind of amazing.
Also, worst case scenario for pulling power from the holodeck: get a holographic electric generator going, then say “Arch” and bring in a power cable.
I thought this was the best episode in all of the Picard series so far. Still, I had a couple of problems that others have brought up already, especially Jack Crusher being Picard’s “best friend” at the academy. I thought it was established in “Tapestry” that Corey and Marta were Picard’s best friends at that time, and there was no sign of Jack Crusher anywhere in that episode. It also didn’t make sense having Crusher be the same age as Picard all of a sudden.
My theory has been that this season is connected to both Nemesis and “Yesterday’s Enterprise” somehow. And, as much as I think it would be impossible to keep this a secret for this long, I’ve suspected that Sela could show up as some point as part of the TNG reunion, or at least be part of it even if she’s not shown.
@158/terracinque: “Also, worst case scenario for pulling power from the holodeck: get a holographic electric generator going, then say “Arch” and bring in a power cable.”
Which, by conservation laws, could not possibly generate as much energy as simply plugging that cable directly into the holodeck power source.
@159/cvalin: I got the impression that the writers confused Jack Crusher with Corey Zweller.
@160/CLB: Which, by conservation laws, could not possibly generate as much energy as simply plugging that cable directly into the holodeck power source.
Well, yeah, of course. I’m just saying—they can’t claim there’s no way to export power from the holodeck, when simply by definition there must be.
@160/Christopher
I got the impression that the writers confused Jack Crusher with Corey Zweller.
If that’s the reason, then it really annoys me. It’s one thing if they actively decided to upend expectations (or they felt it worked better for the story) but just because they got mixed up?
@160 @162 I should probably go rewatch “Tapestry” (for many reasons, not just this), but I don’t recall if they actually say that Zweller and Batanides were Picard’s best friends at the Academy or at least that they were his only best friends. Maybe Jack was the fourth member of their group at the Academy, but didn’t go to Starbase Earhart with them for some reason. I’m still trying to decide if they’re retconning the age gap between Jack and Beverly or just Beverly’s age.
@163/Chase: I don’t think it’s a “retcon,” just a mistake. They forgot how long Picard’s pre-TNG history is and lumped it all together, Academy and Stargazer alike.
@164/CLB: That would be disappointing if true, since it’s so easy to look all that up on Memory Alpha and other places. Nowadays there’s really no excuse not to figure that stuff out when you’re working on a script.
@163/Chase: I would have to rewatch “Tapestry” to know for sure, but my memory is that Picard said something about them being his two closest friends, and Memory Alpha says the same. I guess Jack could have been a fourth, but then his claim in this episode that he was his best friend at the Academy doesn’t really seem accurate. I agree with CLB that it’s probably a mistake.
@165/cvalin: As a viewer, I’m tempted to agree. But as a writer, I know that no matter how many eyes review a manuscript how many times, there will always be some mistakes that slip past everyone and make it into the finished product. You just have to pay attention to so many details, both onscreen and behind the scenes, that some things just get lost in the clutter.
Christopher is so right. In one of my books I managed to misspell liaison four times in three successive paragraphs. When I caught it it had been through 2 reviews by me and 3 reviews by beta readers. It was sheer luck I caught it the last time as it was about to go to bed.
@168/costumer: My favorite typo that almost made it into print in one of my works, which went undetected for literally years until I caught it in the nick of time, was in Only Superhuman, where at one point the narration said, “Bimala crossed your arms.” That’s right, she reached out of the book and crossed the reader’s arms.
I suppose it would be gauche to note here that I make my living as a professional proofreader.
Well, we professional proofreaders have our own horror stories of things that slipped past.
167/CLB: Yes, I’ve actually been guilty of continuity issues in my own books, and I have far less to worry about than almost 60 years of shows, movies, and tie-in materials. So, I suppose my writer self disagrees with my viewer self as well.
I re-watched the episode last night, and noticed at 37:29 during Riker’s speech to the crew Shaw had a glass of wine next to his bed. Is that the Malbec, or did he break open the Chateau Picard?
Chase: I would bet money on it being a Malbec.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who prefers Malbecs to pretty much any French wine, but also prefers Italian wines to either of the above…
Man, it really felt good to, just for a few moments, do that whole “Seek out new life” thing. I know it’s the era of prestige television, so we need conspiracies! Explosions! Season-long arcs (also known as 10-hour movies)! And I know seeking out new life is so boring! But to just get back to Star Trek on this show for a few moments was a welcome change of pace…
And everyone (in the credits, anyway) working together to solve a problem, was also nice to see again.
I do feel kind of bad that I don’t give a damn about Jack; Sorry my dude, you are a plot device and not a person. And he’s (yawning) a rogue who lives by seat of the pants and doesn’t connect with anyone (except his Mommy) and he’s having terrifying visions and– (snoring…).
Riker though. Frakes is batting 1,000 here.
And Shaw was at Wolf 359 and has survivors’ guilt; okay, but he’s still an asshole. Commentors think he’s reached a rapproachment with Seven, but I don’t see it.
I have not watched season 2 of this show (and don’t plan to, so cue Beverly Crusher analogy) but I can say with confidence this is the best episode of this series.
Let’s get to Worf and Raffi next week, and when the heck is Geordi going to show up?!
@176 At least now we know that Jack does have genuine daddy issues that are somewhat understandable. Even on my second watch, the look on his face at the bar was just heartbreaking. I think Ed Speleers is doing a great job.
Also, the Ready Room clip for tomorrow’s episode showed Worf and Raffi getting their Daystrom request denied. I wouldn’t be surprised if they go to Geordi so he can get them in. I also expect to see Lore there.
I assume that Geordi will be tied in with whatever subplot involves Lore and Moriarty, since it seems like the most natural place to include him
@177/Chase: See that’s the truly frustrating part about Jack: Ed Speelers is giving it everything he’s got, it’s just his character is a walking cliché. I like Ed Speelers, I just really want to like Jack Crusher.
@178/jamiebabb: I’d forgotten that Lore and Moriarty somehow tie into all this. Oof. Well the season has held together reasonably well thus far. I’m going to give the writers the benefit of the doubt.
My take on Riker’s melancholia is that it’s the result of Season 1 and the ban on synths being overturned. We know all his son needed to survive was a positronic matrix, but that was apparently forbidden by the Federation, apparently even for life saving purposes. This is now the first time we are seeing Riker living in a world where his son would have lived and so all those old wounds are now reopened.