When it was announced that Picard season three would be a reunion of the TNG “big seven,” one of the many speculations about it was who, exactly, Brent Spiner would play. His main character of Data sacrificed his life in Nemesis and then went from mostly dead to all dead in Picard’s “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.” But Spiner has played five other characters in Trek: the androids Lore (TNG’s “Datalore,” “Brothers,” the “Descent” two-parter) and B-4 (Nemesis), Noonian Soong (TNG’s “Brothers,” “Birthright I,” “Inheritance”), Soong’s son Altan (Picard’s “Et in Arcadia Ego” two-parter), and Soong’s ancestors Arik (Enterprise’s “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” “The Augments”) and Adam (Picard’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” “Two of One,” “Mercy,” “Hide and Seek,” “Farewell”).
We get the answer this week, and it’s not what I expected at all…
Spiner’s appearance in this episode also means that, coupled with the arrival of LeVar Burton’s Commodore Geordi La Forge, this episode is the first time all of the big seven are in the same episode (though we have yet to get them all together in the same room).
More on Burton in a bit. In Spiner’s case, the answer to the question of who he would play turns out to be more complicated than expected. Spiner is actually playing several of the characters I listed above, plus at least one more…
As it turns out, and as one could guess from the reference to the sophisticated AI Krinn mentioned last week, the complex AI that guards Daystrom is Data—sort of. Riker, Worf, and Musiker beam over to Daystrom, using a workaround of the transport inhibitors that Ro left for them. But they only have an hour between physical checks by Starfleet Security. They find a crow (which Data dreamt of the first time his dream program was activated in “Birthright I”), Moriarty (from TNG’s “Elementary, Dear Data” and “Ship in a Bottle”), and “Pop Goes the Weasel” (which Riker remembers Data failing to whistle in TNG’s “Encounter at Farpoint,” to which we see flashbacks—I also love that Riker, the musician, recognizes every note as it’s played). It turns out that Altan Soong created another golem, one that, like Picard’s new body, will age, and which contains everything Data downloaded into B-4 in Nemesis. This includes, not just Data’s own brain, but also Lore’s, Lal’s (Data’s daughter, created and then broke down in TNG’s “The Offspring”), and B-4 himself, of course. (What nobody mentions is that Data has the journals of the colonists on Omicron Theta where he was created in his head, also, which he made use of in, among other places, TNG’s “Silicon Avatar.”) All of it is in a body that has the wisdom of age, presumably coming from Altan himself, as he states in his final log.
Unfortunately, Altan was unable to integrate the personalities before he died. When this new being—whom we’ll call “Data” for simplicity’s sake, though he’s more than that—is activated, he bops back and forth among Data, Lore, Altan, and B-4 (not Lal, disappointingly—and hey, guys, Hallie Todd is still working…). It’s a way to get the septuagenarian Spiner to continue to play the role, certainly…
Spiner’s presence answers three questions that have been lingering for a while: What’s Moriarty doing in this season (Daniel Davis’ return is a delight, if too brief)? What’s the AI that runs Daystrom? And, finally, what did the changelings steal besides the portal weapon?
They find out the latter because Worf, Riker, and Musiker quickly realize that the manifest of items in the station they need is actually Data himself. On the way there, they come across other items that Worf refers to as “Section 31’s table scraps.” (Yes, it’s another Section 31 reference, and not to the fact that 31 should’ve been abolished and eliminated by now. DS9 is my favorite Trek, and I will love it to my dying day, but its introduction of 31 to the Trek universe is the worst thing it did, an absolute fucking blight on the franchise.)
These scenes are fantastic. Worf and Musiker’s chemistry has been one of the highlights of this season, and Michael Dorn and Jonathan Frakes have made a superlative double-act for decades (e.g., TNG’s “Where Silence Has Lease,” “Unification II,” “Ethics”). It is to Michele Hurd’s great credit that she slides seamlessly into the thirty-five-year-old ensemble, mostly playing moderator of the hilarious banter. Riker is having serious trouble dealing with the new Zen Worf. (“Are you serious?” “I just said it.” “We’re all gonna die.” “We will be friendly energy.” “I don’t understand the world anymore.”)
Three of the items in Daystrom are the Genesis device (from The Wrath of Khan, because we can’t let an episode go by without at least one reference to that movie, apparently), a genetically modified attack tribble, which is there to give Worf a jump-scare, and the remains of James T. Kirk, presumably retrieved from where Picard buried him on Veridian III in Generations. That last is a nice bit of foreshadowing, because it turns out, there’s another captain of a ship named Enterprise whose corpse they’re keeping on ice: Jean-Luc Picard, whose biological body died in the aforementioned “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.” It’s the other thing that the changelings stole from Daystrom.
We also find out this week why Jack has been having crazyshit hallucinations, and it’s not what everyone was expecting: it’s the early stages of Irumodic Syndrome. Established back in TNG’s “All Good Things…” as something that would debilitate Picard as he got older, it also is inheritable—and Jack inherited it.
While this doesn’t explain Jack’s ability to go all John Wick on four changelings, it does explain his hallucinations and crazy stuff. (Picard saw weird hallucinations in the alternate future of “All Good Things…” too.)
It’s also a link between the two of them that might explain why the changelings are after Jack specifically. They had already stolen Picard’s corpse, but it may not have had what they needed, and they may need a living example of Irumodic Syndrome to work with.
Some might view this an anticlimactic, and I do see the point. When you’re expecting them to have stolen a nastier weapon, to find out that they stole the portal weapon to cover up some grave-digging can be viewed as a letdown. Especially since this station should have all sorts of fun things like AGIMUS or Peanut Hamper or some Omega molecules or the Ark of the Covenant.
But it’s also in keeping with the changelings’ MO that we saw on DS9: distract with the big thing so you don’t notice the small thing. (Or, as Crusher put it, “steal the diamonds so nobody checks on the pearls.”)
Finding that information out involves a lot of cat-and-mouse, as the entire fleet is after Titan, and the fleet has been integrated to a degree that any Starfleet ship can pretty much instantly find any other Starfleet ship. With the net tightening, Titan is forced to abandon the away team on Daystrom to run for help.
And this is where Burton comes in. Picard has Shaw take Titan to the Fleet Museum in the hopes of conscripting La Forge to clone Titan’s transponder. Here’s the problem: La Forge can’t clone the transponder and he wouldn’t if he could. In fact, his first response to Titan’s arrival is to tell them to stand down and power down.
La Forge has two grown daughters now, who are both ensigns in Starfleet. We’ve seen one this whole time in Sidney, the Titan conn officer. We meet the other, Alandra, played by Burton’s daughter Mica. La Forge is also very protective of his museum, and while he’s generally glad to see everyone, he doesn’t want to get involved in whatever craziness is happening. Both Picard and Sidney try to cajole him by reminding him what’s at stake, but La Forge has both been there and done that, and his priority right now is to protect his family. To that end, he not only gets Picard to agree to go on his merry way, but also to leave Sidney behind to say she was coerced.
To her credit, Sidney does not go along with that. She wants to save the galaxy, and she wants to stand by her crew. La Forge’s retort that they’re not her family is met with a most tart reply is that the crew is her family, and the reason why she knows that is that her father is the one who taught it to her due to his time with these same people.
One of the things I really like about this season of Picard is that, while our heroes are definitely older, they’re not old. Part of that is just that humans age better now than they used to thanks to modern medicine and a reduction in pollution and smoking, so (for example) Michael Dorn is in much better shape at age 71 in this season than James Doohan was at the same age in The Undiscovered Country. But in general, the characters are aging gracefully and it’s a good thing.
But in La Forge, we see the first of our heroes who has allowed age to limit him. He’s become the cranky old fart who wants to stay home and play it safe and leave the adventuring to the kids—but not to his kids, he needs to keep them safe.
Geordi La Forge hasn’t been my favorite character in the TNG ensemble, at least in part due to his awful behavior in “Galaxy’s Child” (and, to a much lesser extent, in “Booby Trap” and “Aquiel”), but I have to give props to Burton and to executive producer Christopher Monfette, who wrote this episode. This is some of the best work Burton has done as La Forge, as we see a father who has become comfortable as a retired bureaucrat who writes cranky memos to the fleet and who cares for older ships (and I mean that verb deliberately—La Forge cares about his job, as well he should, and it’s good that someone is preserving Starfleet’s history). But he’s reluctant to get back into the saddle, not wanting anything to do with nasty disturbing uncomfortable adventures that will make him late for dinner.
(Speaking of being late for dinner, the only reference to Sidney and Alandra’s mother is a line La Forge has to Alandra to tell Mom that they won’t make dinner tonight. We don’t find out who she is, which is good and bad. Good in that they don’t establish that he wound up marrying and procreating with Leah Brahms, which would be gross on multiple levels; bad in that they don’t establish that he didn’t, either.)
The museum itself is fun, and provides several nifty nostalgia hits. It turns out that Jack is a starship nerd, which he says predates his knowledge of his paternal parentage. Seven starts scrolling through the ships docked outside the museum (which is the old Spacedock, from The Search for Spock): Defiant, New Jersey, Voyager, Enterprise-A, and the Bounty, the Klingon bird-of-prey from The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home, retrieved from the bottom of San Francisco Bay.
I love pretty much everything about this scene, beyond the nostalgia hit, which is great fun and not overplayed. For one thing, one of the ships is the New Jersey, which we’ve never seen on screen before, but Jack recognizes it as one of the greats of the fleet. This is a nice example of big-universe syndrome, as we see something that isn’t from one of the TV shows or movies, and reminds us that other starships do important stuff, too.
And then Seven scrolls onto Voyager. We get some music cues from Voyager’s opening theme (one of many great music cues throughout the episode), as Seven tells Jack about how Voyager did its work farther out than any of the other ships in the fleet, and how Seven was reborn on that ship. It’s a beautiful character moment, and one that continues the episode’s theme of sticking by your found family as much as your biological family.
Jack then says something profound, and Seven declares him to definitely be his father’s son, elaborating on that with probably the best description of Jean-Luc Picard anyone has given since 1987: “He … has a knack for the poetic drive-by observation. It can be very annoying—but it can also make a person feel seen.”
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Jack also conscripts Sidney and Alandra for a batshit plan. Since the fleet is all tied together and they can always find Titan, they need a cloaking device. For reasons passing understanding, rather than take the one off Defiant, which is only a couple of decades old, they take the cloaking device that’s more than a century old off the Bounty and install it on Titan. Sure. That makes sense.
Mind you, it’s worth it for the moment when La Forge yells at Picard for stealing his cloaking device, and Picard assures his erstwhile chief engineer that he would never do that, and they both realize that it’s their dumbass kids doing this.
There are many more great moments in this episode. Shaw’s role is somewhat reduced, but I love when he fangoobers La Forge. After all, Shaw joined Starfleet when La Forge was at the heyday of his time as chief grease monkey on the Enterprise-D. Picard and Riker may be pains in his ass, but La Forge is his people, dangit! And Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut and Mica Burton have excellent sibling chemistry, with Alandra doing the whole, “I know, Dad’s being an asshole, I’ll try to talk to him, but you know how he is” thing. It’s just perfect.
And one moment that was hilarious, but in service of something overwhelmingly stupid. Apparently, Musiker and Seven have broken up. The ineptitude of how this relationship has been handled is, frankly, staggering. First they’re just seen holding hands out of nowhere at the end of season one, then they resist making the relationship overt in season two (while simultaneously making the hetero pairing of Rios and Ramirez incredibly overt), and then they break up off camera between seasons two and three, and don’t even make that clear until six episodes in. (As usual, it’s left to the tie-in fiction to fill in the gaps the show fails to provide, in this case the audio drama No Man’s Land by Kirsten Beyer & Mike Johnson.) The hilarious bit, by the way, was Worf—believing that Seven would be going on the mission to Daystrom—saying that he has gone into battle with lovers before (which we’ve seen in, among many other places, DS9’s “Change of Heart”). But when Seven says she’s not going, Worf immediately admits that he was lying and that he’s really really glad that Musiker and Seven aren’t going on the mission together…
Oh, another question is answered this week: Vadic cutting off her own hand hinted at this, but it’s now completely clear that she’s a shapeshifter. At the end, Riker fights off Starfleet Security to allow Worf, Musiker, and Data to escape to Titan. A security guard is beating Riker up, and then shoots the other two guards before changing shape to Vadic and bringing him onto the Shrike. (Why Vadic killed the other two is unclear. If they’re fellow changelings, that’s just insane. If they’re real Starfleet Security, why were they just standing there while a decorated Starfleet captain is assaulted?) Earlier in the episode, Vadic, frustrated by her inability to find Titan, orders her people to find someone Picard cares about or loves or might go to in his hour of need. Several of those people are also now on Titan, of course. I thought this might be how La Forge got brought into the story, but instead, the episode ends with Troi in Vadic’s clutches, handy leverage to use against Riker.
This is assuming, of course, that that really is Troi we saw in the closing moments. There are some interesting hints as to what’s happening with the changelings, from Worf’s comment that some changelings are pissed about the disease that Section 31 infected them with to Vadic’s statement that, when this is all over, “There will be silence again, unity again, peace again.”
Keith R.A. DeCandido is one of the guests of honor at Zenkaikon 2023 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania this coming weekend. He’ll have a table in the exhibit hall and will also be doing lots of programming. Check out his schedule here.
Clearly the weakest episode to date, though it was still fine. I just felt for the first time since the premier the memberberry ratio was way, way too high, and that the episode focused way too much on plot machinations and expository dialogue.
Don’t get me wrong, plenty of lovely scenes here. The Seven/Jack scene in particular had me on the verge of tears; an impressive feat considering I don’t have a very strong connection to Voyager. I loved the character arc that Geordi had over the episode, the Jack/Picard scenes, the flirting between Jack and Sydney (I hope they at least make out by the end of the season). But there were 2-3 episodes worth of plot crammed in here, which made it not feel like it had as much room to breathe as the last several.
I don’t think the second Defiant (which I was disappointed to see wasn’t given the -A designation that Ron Moore always wanted) ever had a cloaking device. But that’s great, because it allowed them to establish that even in universe, the Probe Incident of 2286 is called “the one with the whales.”
In general, I loved all the nostalgia hits because I thought they fit well enough within the story and they didn’t feel cynical at all. And I think that’s going to crescendo and go over the top when we finally see whatever project the LaForges have stashed in Hangar Bay 12 (after all, it’s not over until the “fat lady” sings).
I still think something else is up with Jack, because I can’t figure out why Changelings are interested in Irumodic Syndrome. The common theory that Picard had some leftover nanoprobes hidden in his body is gaining some weight for me. Will the big clash at the end be Jean-Luc Picard vs. Locutus of Borg?
Also, did mine ears deceive me or was the stasis chamber containing Captain James T. Kirk making TOS sickbay noises, hinting that Data isn’t the only stupid TNG movie death being undone this season?
Wait, the original Defiant was destroyed and replaced near the end of DS9. I can’t recall: Did the nu-Defiant have a cloaking device? Why would it, given the original was on loan from the Romulans?
Lots of fan service in this one. Was it too much? Not sure yet.
OK, they’ve got a Genesis Device, showing that the tech didn’t die with the end of the Genesis project. The question is, why does it seem to be activated?
Starfleet likes to keep the corpses of various officers? Wouldn’t Picard’s body have been turned over to whoever took care of his estate? I can’t imagine his will stating that he wanted his body turned over to Starfleet. And going out and digging up Kirk makes sense so that a human body isn’t found by later explorers from Veridian III. Again, why keep it, except as part as something called Project Phoenix, a name glimpsed in the graphics. Is Starfleet planning on cloning these various people? We saw how Riker and Pulaski reacted when they were cloned without permission.
Nice to see Moriarity again but, as you said, much too short.
One thing that bugged me was the fact that Riker, Worf and Raffi have a maximum of one hour before being discovered and not only does the Titan have to travel to fleet museum and back in that time, they spend a lot of time talking about families. Tick tock, guys.
The cloaking device on the BoP was captured by Starfleet. The on on the Defiant belonged to the Romans and they presumably wanted it back after the war and Starfleet got their first one blown up with the original defiant. If you can’t take care of the things that you borrowed….
I’m both pleased and somehow disappointed that the ultimate weapon wasn’t Peanut Hamper.
Keep in mind that the only reason the Defiant had a cloaking device in the first place is that it was on loan from the Romulan Empire to deal with the Dominion threat, and was likely returned when the war ended.
I liked the scene of Seven recounting the voyage of Voyager. Riker’s flashback to “Farpoint” was nice, too. Sentimental but nice enough.
But are they using AI to write TV scripts now? I began to wonder about this halfway through the episode — some program skimming the depths of the Memory-Alpha wiki, then combining it with the latest fatherly advice from Parents Magazine. Although, humans are still perfectly capable of making a mess of things. So there’s that.
Anyway, this one pretty well summed up everything I despise about pop culture today. I mean, them showing us the corpses of James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard sitting in storage for later use says it all, doesn’t it? Picard… okay, I guess. His name is on the show. But they needed to throw Kirk in there too, huh? We can’t move beyond anything apparently. It’s all repackaging, and not at all subtle. It’s downright condescending.
How can we call these Easter eggs anymore? It’s not much of an Easter if your dad dumps a pile of eggs on the front lawn and says, “Here’s your eggs, kids. Get them.” Could you at least place one behind a tree? Some weeds? Anything?
That was an exciting episode! I didn’t like it as much as the others but it was still very good.
Star of the of the day was LeVar Burton. I loved it when Geordi said he wasn’t sure if he was going to go for a professional handshake or a hug and then hugs Beverly. I love how him wanting his daughter to be safe conflicts with his duty to protect the Federation and Sidney’s push back on that.
I hope Jack’s visions aren’t just due to Irumodic Syndrome. That just seems anti-climactic.
It was neat seeing the Fleet Museum. Seven’s comments when she saw Voyager were touching
Glad we got Moriarty out of the way since I never cared for him anyway.
The use of “Pop goes the Weasel” and the flashback was great!
I’m lukewarm on the Data/Lore/etc. android.
Riker being captured by Vadic was shocking enough, but OMG Deanna!
Okay, the next ep. Is called “Dominion”. It’s probably a long-shot but I really, really hope we get a cameo from someone from Deep Space Nine.
I would assume Starfleet had to give the Defiant’s cloaking device back to the Romulans when the Dominion War ended, while the Bounty’s cloak is exempt from the Treaty of Algernon because it wasn’t developed by Starfleet. Though I would’ve preferred if they stole an old school Romulan BoP and found “Shaxs was here” scrawled on the bridge.
I think one of the great missed opportunities in Star Trek was using Saavik and David Marcus as the nucleus for a true next generation, and it’d be cool if they did that now with Jack, the LaForges and Kestra (who is sadly missing so far).
It’s a small touch, but I like how the Fleet archivists patched up the 1701-A after Khitomer. Can’t have Kirk’s Enterprise sporting all that damage from Chang’s Bird of Prey.
Still wish we’d gotten the NX-01 IN a cameo. Seems odd it wouldn’t appear — esp. given the plot poiint about Frontier Day celebrating the anniversary of Archer and Earth’s Starfleet.
@8 Wil Wheaton said that his guest on The Ready Room next week is a surprise, and to even reveal their name would be a major spoiler. I think there’s a good chance it’s a DS9 (or possibly Voyager alum).
@9 One of my first thoughts when I saw “Deanna” (I’m not convinced it’s really her) in Vadic’s cell is “Where is Kestra right now?” I really need to know that she’s safe soon.
It’s an open question whether in the grand finale we’re going to see Jack Crusher or Kirk captaining the 1701-A. My guess is Jack, based upon the foreshadowing, but I’m not putting it past Matalas to finish off with an orgy of fanwank now.
As I was saying over on TV Tropes’ Recap page this morning, it also makes complete sense Voyager would’ve been retired from active service following “Endgame” — something which otherwise always bothered me about the Golden/Beyer Relaunch novels.
Think about it. Voyager went being from one of the inaugural ships of the Intrepid-class to one of the most important vessels in Federation history. Preserving it for future generations would thus be a top priority for Starfleet historians.
As Voyager returned in the aftermath of the Dominion War, there would also be PR value in making the ship — a symbol of Starfleet’s mission, bravery, and heroism — available to Federation citizens while trying to rebuild post-War morale.
An honorable retirement was also certainly mandated from an engineering perspective — and not just to evaluate the alien technologies they’d brought home. While the Intrepid-class was built for long-term exploration, its designers also obviously never anticipated something like the Delta Quadrant.
After spending nearly a decade without access to proper dry dock facilities and being under constant stress, battle, and exposure to God knows what else to get its crew home, Voyager was probably too compromised to remain in active service regardless.
So Levar Burton manages in a very short time to make everyone understand he was insanely underutilized as Geordi with some tremendous acting here. That’s no knock on the rest of the cast, but Levar’s acting with his eyes and facial as they reactivate Data and before when he’s talking about parenting is tremendous. Also Mica Burton and Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut do a good job making you believe that they are actually siblings.
Our crew goes to the space museum where they do a tremendous job of highlighting famous ships (my only knock is that there weren’t more of them). I’m guessing that New Jersey is an homage to the USS New Jersey BB-62 which is the most decorated US battleship of all time with 19 battle stars over 5 decades of service. Of course the fact that somehow our crew steals a 300 year old cloaking device which we’re expected to believe can fool advanced sensors in the 25th century? On a ship much much bigger than it was designed for? That technologically doesn’t make sense, and as was pointed out taking one off Defiant would make more sense- although I was just expecting them to take the Defiant. The scene with them seeing the legendary ships was phenomenal between Seven and Jack and the musical cues a great touch, but this particular plan makes no sense.
Meanwhile the most advanced research facility in the galaxy is abandoned… or not abandoned… or something. It’s guarded by some really cool looking ships (Sagan class with a couple fewer nacelles I think) that somehow shoot tracking devices? What exactly is the point of that and for that matter, how are they doing it in a phaser shot which is nothing more than a stream of energy (it’s in the acronym that is phaser). The facility itself looks very kitbashed and apparently is the least organized collection of easter eggs ever. How exactly do they have a Genesis device? And why is it in the same hallway as Jim Kirks body and a psycho tribble. While I don’t wander through ultra secure facilities it seems that weapons, corpses and biology experiments should be on different wings. Also while we’re on the facility, could we have made it something other than a non-descript corridor for our crew to walk through? It just looks cheap. There was no off-site location we could have shot in rather than redress a corridor? So after we have a bunch of ships chase off the Titan they are befuddled by the 300 year old cloaking device and then apparently disappear entirely when the Shrike shows up.
To no one’s surprise the killer AI is Brent Spiner playing literally everyone he’s ever played before. The showrunners bait and switch us with Moriarty who shows up as a projection that fires lethal bullets in what amounts to a cameo (after making it seem in trailers like Moriarty was going to be a bigger part) and a bad shooting cameo at that. But it’s really a cry for help from data inside another Golem body, which at least allows Brett Spiner to NOT have to play 30 under 800 pounds of makeup. And the thing that was stolen was another bait and switch in that it was the corpse of Jean Luc Picard.
Random interjection- did everyone forget that space is really really really big? Vadic tells her crew to research the crap out of Picard, has time to make it back to wherever Deanna is (apparently there’s a galactic locater somewhere you can just figure this out) they kidnap her (but not Kestra) and make it back to Daystrom annex all within a matter of hours? Picard zips from Daystrom to the fleet museum, has a big long conversation with Geordi where everyone’s child steals a cloaking device, install it and get back to the annex just in time for the security guards (who we’re told are on an hourly patrol) to show up. That’s a lot of flying and things happening in a very short amount of time. Unless we’ve discovered alternate Kahn’s intergalactic transporter from Star Trek Into Darkness and everyone has access to that we are going way way too fast. And we’re still a couple of days away from Fleet Day.
I have zero idea where all of this is going… you have a bunch of changelings who have taken over all of Starfleet but somehow need the corpse of a 90 year old and his son who have a degenerative neurological disease that has only ever been a problem when the plot demands that it is (Picards disease seems like a pair of socks with a hole in it that keeps getting washed and shoved in a drawer and you remind yourself that “oh yes, these socks have a hole in them” and then wash and store them over and over again. There’s been tremendous acting between a group of characters who have fantastic chemistry and genuine love for each other and it’s wasted in a plot that seems scattered at best. It’s tremendous seeing these actors together again but they’re being just as wasted doing this as they were in Insurrection.
By the way, they said the Titan couldn’t beam up anyone while they were cloaked, right?
What? They did plenty of beaming while cloaked in The Voyage Home, using that very device, and while under a power strain no less.
@10,
Looks like I was wrong. It looks like the NX-01 is part of the Fleet Museum (see 1:21). If that is Archer’s Enterprise, it’s sporting the refit design Doug Drexler always intended to implement, but never got a chance to do because of the cancellation.
@15 Maybe no transporters while cloaked is a side effect of using a 125 year-old cloaking device on a larger ship. Or maybe they were able to do it in 1986 because the ship was parked (in the park, heh heh) and so Scotty was able to distribute enough of their remaining power to make it work? I imagine it’s always a fairly delicate seesaw operation trying to keep a BoP running. Klingon engineers deserve more credit than they’re giving.
The cloaking device isn’t 300 years old — it was presumably only manufactured in the late 23rd Century (Kruge’s Bird-of-Prey was captured in late 2285), which would place it at just over a century or so old. You’re probably factoring in that the Bounty did indeed travel 300 years into the past at one point, but from the ship and crew’s POV, only a few days actually elapsed before they returned home to the late 23rd Century.
Also, remember too that both Defiants’ cloaking-devices on DS9 were simply loaners from the Romulan Empire, and that the Fleet Museum Defiant‘s was presumably returned to the Romulans upon the ending of the Dominion War.
I’m not to proud to admit when I’m wrong. I thought S3 was going to be a meandering mess that only starts explaining things in the last 5 minutes of episode 9 before ignoring lots of burning questions in episode 10, but boy did ep 7 clear everything up! I never would have guessed the bird guys were Talaxians. Does this mean Neelix is going to show up? I now have a clear idea of who the main bad guy is, what they want, and what our heroes need to do to stop them. Raffi and Worf’s sidequest sure did pay off! At the time I thought it was rushed, but setting up that they needed a key really deserved 5 episodes of them on their own on Cyberpunk World. That setting had unlimited possibilities and I feel we barely got a chance to explore them. I really enjoyed watching Shaw bond with Picard, Worf, Riker, Raffi and the rest during this episode, it’s good to know where he stands now. The season trailer set up Moriarty in a big way and boy was it worth it! What an exciting cameo. Glad to see the writers tying up S1 and S2’s loose plot threads, namely the Romulans, Synths, evil interdimensional AI’s, Agnes’ Borg, and that weird anomoly that need those Borg to guard. I hope the Federation doesn’t get into trouble when news of Picard using the cloaking device gets back to Romulus. Great episode, egg on my face!
Loving the music on this show. I hated the Raffi character in the 1st two seasons, and now she is fine. That was my last big hang up. Well done season 3 team.
I don’t like the TNG films and have always considered TNG as its own thing separate from all other Trek and all Trek separate from the rest of Trek. Lower Decks was the first Trek show that made all the Trek series actually feel connected to me. Prodigy continued that feel and now for the first time in live-action I feel like this show connects with what came before it. Well done season 3 team.
This show feels like TNG characters but with the tone of DS9. Which might have slightly bothered me a few years ago as I much prefer TNG to DS9 and the tone is part of the reason but since Lower Decks, SNWs and Prodigy are episodic, utopian and hopeful this does not bother me at all. Well done season 3 team.
Final thoughts: Its Lore, Lal, Data and more! Well done season 3 team!
Way, way too much nostalgia porn in this one. Nice that they threw in the New Jersey, but practically everything else in that museum connects to TOS or other shows we’ve seen in one way or another, so it’s not enough. And too many of the references were gratuitous, even counterproductive to the story. (If there’s a Genesis device in the vault, why didn’t the bad guys in search of a doomsday weapon steal that?)
Even the use of Irumodic Syndrome was clumsy nostalgia. People forget that “All Good Things…” established that Irumodic Syndrome was just one of the potential conditions that Picard’s genetic defect could lead to. That’s why his condition in season 1 wasn’t called Irumodic, because that season’s writers actually paid attention and thought things through rather than just going for the lazy, obvious callback.
I suppose it was inevitable that they would find a way to bring Data back, and while that’s certainly loaded with nostalgic references, I actually don’t mind it much. I like it that it integrates the minds of all the Soong androids, that this is a way to bring them all back to life. That’s so much better than the usual “sacrifice B-4’s mind to resurrect Data” idea, because nobody is being sacrificed or judged less worthy to survive. Even Lore has been preserved.
And they’re making the same good choice here that David Mack made in the novels. They’re not just hitting a reset button and undoing Data’s death; they’re creating a successor to Data that preserves what he was but is still a distinct being, so it doesn’t negate his death. This has potential, even if it is largely just an excuse to let Spiner show off all his characters.
I hate it that it takes less than an hour to go from Daystrom Station to the Starfleet Museum and back. The whole reason it’s called Star Trek and not Star Commute is that Roddenberry envisioned interstellar travel as a big deal, a major undertaking that should not be treated casually. He was homaging the British Age of Sail, not routine jet travel.
I also find Vadic more and more annoying every time she appears. She has no personality beyond smoking a cigar, and she’s a ludicrously overplayed cartoon villain. I realized this morning that she reminds me very, very much of Burgess Meredith as the Penguin. But the Penguin actually worked within the context of his show. Vadic is just preposterous. Also, why does she have nobody to play off except those masked guys who speak in subtitled clicks? Are they other Changelings? If so, why do they take that form?
As for the hologram of Alton Soong, there’s no way he could’ve aged that much in less than two years. The chronology of this season makes no sense. Its stardate puts it in early 2401, consistent with what Terry Matalas said on Twitter about Frontier Day being the 250th anniversary of NX-01’s launch in April 2151. But season 2 took place at the end of the 2401 harvest season in LaBarre, which would be October 2401, months after the reputed date of season 3. It also makes no sense that Seven has become a Starfleet commander in a matter of months at most. There’s also the claim that Jack is 24-ish, which would have required him to be born before Nemesis, yet Beverly said she left the E-E when she found she was pregnant.
So I’m convinced that the season was intended during writing and filming to take place years later, perhaps even in 2411, which would be the 250th anniversary of the Federation’s founding. Yet for some reason, they decided during post-production to retcon it to 2401 and dubbed over the stardates to fit, despite that creating enormous continuity holes.
Not just the Genesis Device but listed at the Genesis II Device. A double Easter Egg perhaps? Refering the the Gene Roddenberry pilor from the 70s?
@21 / CLB:
I suppose it was inevitable that they would find a way to bring Data back, and while that’s certainly loaded with nostalgic references, I actually don’t mind it much. I like it that it integrates the minds of all the Soong androids, that this is a way to bring them all back to life. That’s so much better than the usual “sacrifice B-4’s mind to resurrect Data” idea, because nobody is being sacrificed or judged less worthy to survive. Even Lore has been preserved.
And they’re making the same good choice here that David Mack made in the novels. They’re not just hitting a reset button and undoing Data’s death; they’re creating a successor to Data that preserves what he was but is still a distinct being, so it doesn’t negate his death. This has potential, even if it is largely just an excuse to let Spiner show off all his characters.
Yeah, I really like this route too — and just because it’s canonizing elements of Cold Equations.
Legacy is the central theme of this Season. It honors not just Data, but the entire Soong legacy. It gives us a Data who’s integrated all elements of his family and past — much like Worf. It’s a way the most human Data’s ever been and I can’t wait to see Spiner cut loose in the final 4 episodes.
Is it just me, or is the Shrike becoming more and more an homage to Mass Effect? Not only does the weird “ship growl” sound like a Reaper, but the music that was played when it was onscreen in this episode sounded very similar to the Collector’s Ship theme from Mass Effect 2. Between this and some of the plot similarities from Season 1, I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody on the staff of Picard was a fan of that franchise.
We’ve seen planets with planet wide weather control. Who knows when the harvest season in France falls on the calendar. For all we know, there may not even be winter, just an extended rainy spell when needed.
Just checked something with closed captioning on. When Worf mentions Section 31, he refers to them as a “Critical division of Starfleet Intelligence “ . He also said the Changeling Virus was created by Starfleet. It appears that the idea Section 31 is unauthorized has been dropped and is now recognized as SI’s black ops division. Which explains why it hasn’t been shut down. In the words of Mission Impossible “As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”. Apparently so many people have found out about them that the fiction of them being unauthorized just wasn’t plausible any longer
Edit – Strangely, when I posted this it came as #25 but also as a second #1
I’m not entirely sure why they would keep Picard (and Kirk’s?) corpses in a Section 31 blacksite (ugh), but I was genuinely surprised that Picard’s transfer to a Synth body is going to be relevant after all. Everything up to this point left me with the impression that Terry Matalas wasn’t interested in touching that plot point with a ten foot pole beyond a few throwaway acknowledgements.
It’s great to see Geordi again, and this episode makes me think that it’s a shame that Levar Burton’s acting abilities were wasted on technobabble exposition for most of TNG. And I agree with him on one point: Jack should stay the hell away from his daughter (Did they feel that they needed a new chemistry-devoid het couple on the series to fill the void left when they broke up Jurati and Rios?)
Unfortunately, this one also had some negatives. The Seven/Raffi reunion was incredibly tepid (I honestly wonder whether they made a conscious decision to dial down the gay to appeal to alt-lite YouTubers), and Moriarty was sadly wasted (it wasn’t even the “real” Moriarty, as far as I understand, just Data’s dream of him). It beggars belief that Starfleet wouldn’t have countermeasures against a cloak that they’ve had in their possession for 120 years, and it also seems silly that they would take an advanced android whom they know to be sentient and leave him unconscious to guard a warehouse.
@21 CLB
Speaking as one of the haters of Picard season 1 and 2 that is not part of the anti-woke crowd (think Red Letter Media or Angry Joe as they had similar views to me of the 1st two seasons). I think Terry Matalas might have similar views and wanted to do a major course correction to the point where they dropped most of the previous cast, retconed some stuff and also just flat out ignored things because he does not care and wants to do something very different.
I don’t care about the inconsistencies, as I never planned on watching season 1 or 2 again. They will cease to exist in my TNG universe along with the films. Yet, assuming this shows sticks the landing I will watch this again, it will be like the TNG films we never got. Like with TOS, I still will prefer the show and the episodic hopeful format and “All Good Things” way of ending the journey. Yet still Picard S3 will be worth watching again for years to come and the fading memories of the 1st two seasons will keep on fading to the point I won’t even recognize the inconsistencies you mention anymore (hopefully).
@2: Are you implying nanoprobes are attached to Picard’s sperm? Fascinating.
Vadic killing other Changelings? Whoa! These definitely aren’t your DS9-era Changelings.
I’m also of the thought that this was one of the weaker episodes so far this season if not the weakest. Lots of lovely moments and nostalgia hits and the plot is moved along. But my measure of great episodes is how complete they feel as stand-alone entries, like the one a couple episodes back with space babies felt whole, and this one feels only like a middle chapter with a lot of exposition. Lots of fun stuff though.
It would also have been nice to have Seven roam the halls of Voyager or one of the rooms she was always in whether the bridge or astrometrics just to get a touching emotional connection for her. But her scene reminiscing while gazing at Voyager on the view screen was wonderful all on its own.
And yes, yet another scene this week in Ten Forward. I think we’ll see it in every episode this season lol.
@28 / Garreth
It would also have been nice to have Seven roam the halls of Voyager or one of the rooms she was always in whether the bridge or astrometrics just to get a touching emotional connection for her. But her scene reminiscing while gazing at Voyager on the view screen was wonderful all on its own.
Yeah, the drawback of budgetary limitations and the expense of having to rebuild any of the VOY sets.
@26 the sentience of Data being harnessed as a watch dog is a good point. I figure it either that Section 31 is EVILLLLLL!!!! or that there seems to be a trend of government in general is uncaring and incompetent in a lot of shows lately and they turn a blind eye to inhumanity. Either way, this is deeply problematic that it’s happening. I suppose we could make the argument that changelings are influencing everything including the way Starfleet is being used as it’s attitudes (but if they’re really so in control why do they need to break into the station rather than just have the body routinely transferred). Most likely though it’s just more sloppy writing by the staff who needed a way to get Brent Spiner involved without any deeper significance or conscious choice
@27Kefka, “Speaking as one of the haters of Picard season 1 and 2 that is not part of the anti-woke crowd (think Red Letter Media or Angry Joe as they had similar views to me of the 1st two seasons).”
Same here, and I think the reality is most people disappointed with S1/2 are like us. The anti-woke/Midnite’s Edge crowd is just really, really loud. The whole thing with the Snyder Cut shows how the whole thing was manipulated and artificial, run in large part by Snyder himself. I also think the studios themselves love to amp it up for all the free publicity and artificial claims of “relevance.”
I don’t care if Raffi and Seven are in a relationship, I care that’s its so poorly done. I didn’t even care in the 90’s with Riker’s genderless fling or any of the Trill stuff, and 2023 is not 1991. Their tepid greeting shocked me. Three seasons of them off and on and they can’t bother with anything at all? Ugh.
@28 As far as I can tell, the only new set that they’ve built for this season is the dreary little platform where they were keeping Data. Even Vadic’s bridge is just the mess hall on La Sirena.
Either they’ve invested their entire set budget in the last four episodes, or visits to any other ships are extremely unlikely.
Interesting that LeVar’s actual daughter played Geordi’s daughter, what with all the “nepo baby” arguments going on right now in popular culture (my hope is that someone reading this comment years from now is asking themselves, “Nepo baby? What was that about?” I think it’s a dumb topic, personally.)
@29/Mr. Magic: Yes, I had meant to but forgot to mention my understanding that budgetary constraints wouldn’t allow for a one-off recreation of the Voyager sets. Also, unfortunately, Picard isn’t shot in Toronto where other Trek live-action productions have access to the large virtual wall which projects simulated locations behind the actors.
@33/Austin: The whole “nepo baby” thing is just a trendy new name for something that’s been going on practically since the dawn of time. And there’s prior precedent in Star Trek itself from William Shatner‘s daughter portraying a bridge extra in Star Trek V to Patrick Stewart’s son playing his alien probe simulated son in a cute cameo in “The Inner Light.”
@31: Yeah, either commit fully to the Raffi/Seven relationship or don’t even bother. As it is, what we got over the last three seasons just feels like empty pandering.
@34 – Shatner’ wife also played Chief DeFalco in TMP
The flashback and integration of scenes from “Encounter at Farpoint” was great. Good thing the image quality from TNG was restored all those years again. Maybe if Seven gets her own series (and/or Janeway) that would be a pretty good excuse for rescanning the film negatives from Voyager for any possible use in flashback scenes as well.
The Moriarty cameo seems like a huge missed opportunity to give us closure to that character’s story..maybe tie it into the Voyager Doctors efforts towards holographic rights..nostalgia has its place but these cameos seem to be more about fan service Easter eggs than actual story. Honestly the whole daystom station made no sense. All that stuff would have 100s of civilian and star fleet scientists studying it. Even if there are 100s of changlings in starfleet there are still a few humans left living their lives right? Picard and the Synths gave Data’s body back to Starfleet? Are the Synths and their hyperfuturetech world gone?
I almost mentioned the use of the Ten Forward set AGAIN, but I decided not to assault the deceased equine.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@31 Rick in China
Ya the anti woke crowd is just loud. But even they took a blow to their echo chamber with “The Last of Us”. Geeks and Gamers, Shad and HeelvsBabyface (all big figures in the community) actually stopped reviewing the show before it ended, and I think it was because some of their ignorant audience started to realize these folks are actual homophobes and bigots and that other big names in the community like Drinker and Mauler actually liked the show so they just noped right out before making themselves look even worse.
Matter of fact they got so loud Red Letter Media and Angry Joe had to make a point that when we don’t like this or that, it has nothing to do with racist/bigotry nonsense these anti-woke crowd people are on. And now I realize the anti-woke crowd is so loud, I did not want people to misunderstand my intense dislike of S1 and 2 of Picard as having anything to do with anti-woke.
As for Raffi and Seven, barely remember how they handled it in prior seasons so the luke warm response did not ring hollow to me. And as I wrote in a previous comment I hated Raffi in earlier seasons, so the less I remember the better.
@38 That’s obviously not Data’s original body, which was obliterated on the Scimitar. I had assumed before today that B-4’s brain was uploaded to Lore’s body, but what Raffi said is that he’s a synth with an “android interface.” This sounds like what I wish the synths in season 1 had been from the start. The idea of an android that is completely indistinguishable from a human apart from special abilities was kind of lame, IMO.
@26/jaimebabb: “It beggars belief that Starfleet wouldn’t have countermeasures against a cloak that they’ve had in their possession for 120 years”
My belief is that cloaking tech must be a constant battle between stealth and detection, with each old cloaking system being rendered obsolete as soon as it’s penetrated and then replaced by a different tech — which is why Trek has so many inconsistent portrayals of how cloaking works and whether it’s penetrable. Given that, it stands to reason that nobody would use a cloaking system that was rendered obsolete multiple generations ago, and so the countermeasures for that old system might have fallen out of use and been forgotten. It’s like how some stories show people using antiquated computer systems as a foolproof security measure, because nobody’s trained to use their software anymore and so they’re hack-proof.
“it also seems silly that they would take an advanced android whom they know to be sentient and leave him unconscious to guard a warehouse.”
He was unconscious because they couldn’t get him to work right. Presumably only Geordi will be able to put his pieces together and stabilize his neural net.
However, I do think there are serious ethical questions raised here. How does Daystrom have the legal right to do these experiments with these remains? It all feels more sinister than Starfleet should be.
Speaking of sinisterness (sinistrosity?), here’s another thing I wondered about: If we’re in the middle of an “anyone could be a Changeling” scenario, why was there no effort to confirm that Geordi really is Geordi?
@27/kefka: “I think Terry Matalas might have similar views and wanted to do a major course correction to the point where they dropped most of the previous cast, retconed some stuff and also just flat out ignored things because he does not care and wants to do something very different.”
No, that doesn’t explain the chronology inconsistencies. As I said, it seems quite clear that the season was written and filmed with the assumption that much more time had passed, as many things in the story are consistent with a much later date than 2401. The change must have happened in post-production. The mystery is why.
@38 / Everett,
Yeah, Daniel Davis feels the same way.
While he was happy to come back to Trek, he was hopping to see a final reckoning between Picard and Moriarty (to say nothing of interacting with LeVar Burton and Patrick Stewart again on-screen).
@37 / Garreth:
The flashback and integration of scenes from “Encounter at Farpoint” was great. Good thing the image quality from TNG was restored all those years again. Maybe if Seven gets her own series (and/or Janeway) that would be a pretty good excuse for rescanning the film negatives from Voyager for any possible use in flashback scenes as well.
Yeah, that was excellent editing.
The match cut from Present Day Riker looking upon neo-Data to young Riker looking upon O.G. Data for the first time was the chef’s kiss.
Mmmm, nostalgia. I did like the Voyager moment with Seven.
I knew when they said 72 hours until Frontier Day they would forget that Space is big. With such a short time frame, and if Jack is really necessary for the evil plot, they could thwart the whole thing just by setting a random course and spending the next two days (I think the show said they were down to 48 hours) at high warp. Which is not good storytelling.
@39 I was like “they reused the set, drink!”
Honestly, I think I like the idea of the Seven/Raffi relationship (and the general concept of Seven being bisexual) a great deal more than I’ve actually liked it in practice. Not just because it’s been sloppily written, but because, honestly, until her arc with Worf, I didn’t really like Raffi very much.
@45 But they don’t know that Jack is essential to the Frontier Day plan (neither do we, for that matter). I think in their minds, “What do the Changelings have planned for Frontier Day?” and “Why are the Changelings hunting Jack Crusher?” are two completely different problems, which could still kind of be the case. For all they know, the Changelings on the various starships will just trigger every ship’s autodestruct.
So, is Starfleet putting their entire fleet in one place supposed to mean the Changelings are behind this? Geordi is right to point out what a bad idea it is. Therefore, it stands to reason other captains and admirals might think so as well. Does that mean the entire command structure is compromised? That’s a LOT of Changelings on a lot of ships then.
Or is this just Starfleet being tactically stupid again?
The whole gathering all of the starships in one place for Fleet Day is very reminiscent of the Diviner’s plan on Prodigy to systematically destroy Starfleet by having all of the starships destroy each other upon coming into close contact and opening communication.
Regarding the budgets and sets and such, I have to believe that a whole lot of the season’s budget was taken up just by paying the whole TNG cast for them to make an appearance and they’re not gonna be cheap.
@49 / Garreth:
Regarding the budgets and sets and such, I have to believe that a whole lot of the season’s budget was taken up just by paying the whole TNG cast for them to make an appearance and they’re not gonna be cheap.
Yeah, it’s also lmost certainly why Jurati, Rios, and Elnor were all written out of the show: Redirect the moolah from their actors’ salaries to booking the TNG cast.
I didn’t mind all of the nostalgia beats in this, and I like how they brought Data (plus all the others) back. It will be fun watching Spiner flit between personalities throughout the rest of the season. I did think that Irumodic Syndrome was a poor explanation for what’s going on with Jack. At the very least it’s an incomplete one, since that doesn’t make you a super-soldier. I still feel like the overall success of this plot hinges on what is really going on with Jack and why the Changelings want him, and until that is revealed, I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop on the show.
I don’t have a problem with the way the Raffi / Seven breakup was handled. Someone suggested that not giving the pair a grand send off somehow meant that putting them together in the first place was just pandering. I would look at that the other way around. It would be pandering to make more of it than it needs to be. They broke up, big whoop. Couples do that all the time no matter what gender they are. Maybe they decided, like I did, that the actors didn’t have enough chemistry together to warrant what they started with them, so they ripped it off like a Band-Aid. No biggie.
Jeri Ryan is so perfect for the role of Seven. She projects hard and brittle with an undercurrent of deep sentimentality and lingering pain, and she can convey all that with just a sidelong glance. It’s amazing.
And as has been mentioned, Levar Burton is the other standout here. Someone earlier said this episode actually serves as judgment against the writers of the TNG series, for never really showing us Levar Burton’s range as Geordi besides being occasionally being creepy and stalkerish with women. Or holograms of women. Or with the private belongings of dead women. Sigh.
And I say this every week when I see all the people hating on the fan service: I freaking love it. I do love it so. This is Star Trek: Picard. The show is named after the main character in TNG. Yeah I know they said all the right things about moving the show beyond the next generation, but we all knew it was going to come to this, so sit back and enjoy the ride and quit your bitching lol.
Can’t lie, I’m glad Moriarty was relegated to a short cameo. I know he’s beloved by many but I never really warmed up to him. Maybe it’s partially because I don’t dig Sherlock Holmes.
Completely agree that VaDick (misspelling emphasis supplied) is turning into possibly the most overplayed villain in the history of Trek. Mustache twirling doesn’t even begin to cover it.
@49/garreth: Yeah, that occurred to me too — that’s twice in one year we’ve seen a season arc climax revolve around a bad guy gathering the whole fleet in one place to destroy it.
And really, you’d think after the disaster that happened in Prodigy, and the synth attack on Utopia Planitia a few years later, Starfleet would know better than to gather all the fleet in one place. Although Geordi did say it was over his protest, so presumably it’s the Changeling infiltrators behind the plan. But then, as someone asked before, if they’re that much in control of Starfleet, why’d they need to burgle Daystrom instead of just requisitioning what they needed?
Vadic stealing Riker suggests there might be two factions of changelings. Which could explain in some convoluted way why they needed to break in?
@2/Chase: Up until this moment, it never occurred to me that when the original Defiant was destroyed in “The Changing Face of Evil,” the cloaking device was destroyed along with it. Would the Romulans have supplied a replacement cloaking device afterward? They were allied with the Federation at that point.
@55/bgsu98:
I sincerely doubt it. The Romulans originally provided the cloaking device for reconnaissance in the Gamma Quadrant. That phase in the conflict had passed, and the Romulans aren’t ones to volunteer technology. And if they did, surely they would give it to every ship in Starfleet, not just one specific ship that no longer has any particular strategic value for them.
With the whole thing about all of the Starfleet ships being linked and that’s why the Titan can so be easily tracked, maybe abandon the Titan and use a more obsolete Starfleet or just plain non-Starfleet vessel that’s not in this network? I mean the answer to this was practically staring everyone in the face in this episode with the fleet museum right there! This scenario is reminiscent of how the Battlestar Galactica on that eponymous show (or at least the Ron Moore version cause that’s the one I saw) was able to avoid destruction by the Cylons because it was older and offline to the network the other battlestars were synced up to. Why even take the cloaking device out of the Bounty and instead just use the whole ship to evade detection?
Somehow, I find it easier to fan-wank a plot point or technology point like the cloaking device (Romulans took it back. Different cloaking devices take different technology to pierce, and it takes time to run through the iterations. etc.) than it does to explain the character points. I still don’t buy Doc Crusher’s explanations (other than being an asshole). And some of the peril seems a bit on the cheesy side.
@57/garreth: They don’t use the Bounty because they don’t have the budget to rebuild its sets. Unless it turns out that Geordi conveniently refitted its bridge to look exactly like the Los Angeles Ten Forward bar. I wouldn’t put it past the show at this point.
I have to assume that the reason they didn’t abscond with an older “out of network” ship from the Fleet Museum is that those ships aren’t operational. I mean I’m sure they don’t keep active warp cores in them for one thing.
It is a couple of days before the big fleet show. You’d think that they’d haul at least one of the ships out of the museum to take part.
Also given the problems that Starfleet had 20 years earlier with the Living Construct, and even just a few months (years?) earlier with the Borg taking over an entire armada with one Queen, who the hell thought that permanently networking every ship in the fleet together was a good idea?
@59/CLB: Ha!
But I think the Shrike’s bridge set seems relatively Klingon bridge-like so maybe it could be redressed in a pinch once all of the Shrike scenes were done filming. But yes, budget stuff. The Titan is the hero ship of this season so that’s what we are going to get and perhaps whatever mystery ship Geordi has parked in Hangar Bay 12 (but we’ll just get exterior shots of that vessel and no sets for the interior).
@57 @59 @60 I think the reason they didn’t take a museum ship to get off the grid is because they’re going to come back when the whole crew’s reunited and take whatever ship is in Hangar Bay 12 at that point. :-)
@60/David Pirtle: Logically, there wouldn’t be an active cloaking device in the Bounty either, since it would be restricted by treaty. I mean, it’s technically a combat device, and I doubt the ships in the Smithsonian have any active weapon systems left in place. Not to mention, wouldn’t Starfleet Intelligence have taken the Bounty apart for study as soon as it was salvaged from the bay? At least the cloaking device? Though that just raises the question of why the Vulcans didn’t do the same during the three months that the Bounty was on Vulcan between movies.
to Christopher’s point about the year dsicrepency after the first episode memory alpha had the year listed as 2411 and Titan-A launched in 2402 but after episode 2 it changed to 2401. Putting the season thirty years after Nemesis would allow for Geordi to get married and have two kids plus Bev and Picard to have more start & stop romance time before she got pregnant and left
@2 The nano probes thing actually makes a ton of sense, and could explain Jack’s visions. He’s hearing a female voice basically saying “join us”, so maybe there’s something of the Borg Queen there. The probes could have easily passed to him from Picard, so maybe his take-down of the Changelings is part of the abilities granted to him, and the Queen is the one calling to him. The Changelings want Jack because whatever Borg probes were left in Picard’s body are useless. The Borg are also all about a hive mind and “unity” like Vadic says, so maybe they want to somehow use the Borg tech to reunite the Changelings in the Great Link, even if it means stripping out individuality? The Federation is screwed if the Changelings and Borg unite, even if it’s just the Changelings using Borg tech.
I just wanted to write here that this community is so good (mods and community members) and sticks overwhelming to the facts to make points (and mods to stop those with ill intent), avoids personal attacks and is pleasing overall regardless of the fact that some disagree. I recently made one of my longer in-depth style post, a review regarding the TNG episode “Haven” and plan to keep at it with longer format essay style reviews of TNG.
Oh. The Bounty. Got it . ( almost halfway through the episode )
@28: Indeed. Odo’s violation of the “no changeling has ever killed another changeling” was an enormous deal to the entire Link, and now (unless Vadic is some wanky hybrid) they just blow each other away to make a point. A dissident faction opposed to the peace is easy to believe, but that is a tough one to swallow since it’s an alteration of what was presented as fundamental character. And yeah, Vadic keeps getting worse — ST has dipped into the “nutjob villain motivated solely by vengeance and/or eeeeeeevil” well way too often. I’m not seeing a resolution of the type that KRAD and I both like, where the heroes succeed by finding the humanity in their opponents’ point of view ala “Devil in the Dark”, coming. Bah.
@57/various: I was totally expecting them to steal the “Bounty” (it’s in the title!) rather than try to jam the tech onto the “Titan”. I guess that would have been another set though, which seems to be becoming a theme. (EDIT: Ah, I see CLB beat me to that).
Burton does amazing work here, but it’s hard to believe a Starfleet lifer like him would have that much trouble making the connection that his kids are Starfleet now, and have duty and obligations. I’d have bought that better if one or both of them was a civilian and hadn’t made the choice to shoulder the risks of service. They MADE that choice, you old fart.
My biggest issue with this season generally is that, for all the “Easter Egg”-level fan service, there are just too many instances where individuals or peoples are acting in ways that are at odds with their long-established characters. As a fan of plot-and-character storytelling, that strikes me as the wrong choice of what to preserve.
S
They are on a roll. And that twist. They got me. The distracted me with the shinies. But are we about to do the Picard version of Shatner’s Star Trek the Return? Shaw and Picard facing their trauma in person. If this is actually personal against Picard, that would be… wow.
@krad I agree with you about Section 31, but I think there were some interesting possibilities if they had developed it differently. I often think about the comparison between the Federation and Ian Banks’s Culture, with Section 31 analogous (very weakly) to Special Circumstances. Banks used the latter effectively to help highlight the rough edges and moral traps in a utopian, post-scarcity society. Something like that, done well, could be useful, I think, to highlight the strengths, weaknesses, and challenges that might arise in the context of Federation society.
One other thing I found interesting. Geordi must have watched BSG. Smart being against the ships talking to each other. You wouldn’t want the fleet to form a collective, if you will. Distracting us with the shinies and laying it all out there.
As the son of an often absent Shakespearean actor father, who I reconnected with when entering university, partially via his local Irish pub in New York, I’m finding 10 Forward, and the entire Jack-Jean Luc saga, painfully familiar. Substitute “Shakespeare” for “Starfleet” in that bar scene last week, and that could have been me. My father then spent 3 years in a theatre company with Colm Meaney, who I regularly trounced at darts, so that’s my personal DS9 connection. Unlike Dr. Bashir, I was young and cocky, and did not hide my natural ability.
@21: In regards to the timeline, I worked out a way which I think makes Sseason 3 fit in 2401.
https://reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/119txhk/working_out_when_pic_season_3_takes_place_using/
@49 and @53, I had the same thoughts about Prodigy, and then the same annoyance that they didn’t learn about the perils of having communicative links that could be manipulated.
My thoughts about B-4 are officially put to B-ed now, though at least his head was seen having been transferred from the Daystrom Institute in S1 to Daystrom Station in S3, albeit for reasons more sinister than offsite storage. I had a hard time buying the narrative logic of Altan’s final creation; it seems more like an excuse to give Spiner a character revue, as krad noted. In particular, I couldn’t follow the logic of how all the previous personas were implanted in the final golem.
During the “previously on” scenes, I had the random thought that we might be seeing Redjac somehow having gotten reconstituted after a century of floating into space and possessing Jack to make a kind of murderous Red-Jack hybrid who saw visions in red in a TOS throwback. Jack’s early Irumodic syndrome feels…really early for that syndrome’s onset in-universe. It sent another Vigo chill up my spine.
The episode is not the best although certainly very nostalgic and a point that I do not like is that this series is the only one that has made me very angry (the cruel death of icheb … And the irrelevance of hugh, in addition to the stupidest justification that I have ever seen for the motivation of the borg collective) and I see the series by inertia because its story I did not like at all in the previous 2 seasons but see the voyager with an interesting metallic color instead of white and its opening In addition to how emotional seven is to tell a little of his story on the voyager I manage to put a big smile on my face because among other things it was the first Star Trek series I saw.
I think there are different Changeling factions at play here. There’s one that is gathering the fleet together for Frontier Day. And then there’s the group that’s trying to secure Jack Crusher alive and did the heist at Daystrom Institute. This theory makes more sense now because I had wondered why the Changeling that infiltrated the Titan and attacked Jack just left him to die. That Changeling clearly had no interest in Jack and just wanted to sabotage the ship. But the Changelings aboard the Intrepid, including the ones that accompanied Ro are part of the retrieve Jack faction.
I wonder if any of these Changelings have sprung the Salome Jens Founder out of prison?
I really liked this episode.
KRAD — You wrote “Spiner has played five other characters in Trek” and then you named six. :^)
“The ineptitude of how [the Raffi & Seven] relationship has been handled is, frankly, staggering.”
Word.
Kirk’s remains being stored at Daystrom sure threw me. So did the stolen item being Picard’s remains, albeit in a different way. I don’t think I’d considered before what happened to his body after his mind’s transfer to the positronic golem, but neglected would not have been among the options.
I wonder if Starfleet was planning on employing that Genesis device in conjunction with the remains of all these celebrated officers.
Maybe Vadic et al.’s plan is to somehow use Jack and Picard’s old body to weaponize Irumodic syndrome and infect Federation solids in retaliation for the Changeling disease of three decades gone, although it’s hard not to lean towards something something Borg.
Once LaForge mentioned how battered Titan was to Shaw, I felt nearly certain that in addition to Jack stealing the cloaking device the crew would decamp to one of the museum ships not part of the Starfleet network, despite the budgetary limitations mentioned above.
I demand the deepest of cuts! Brent Spiner as Data as Bob Wheeler from Night Court or I’m DONE with this show! #MakeItSo
The Defiant was destroyed in a battle with the Dominion, Cardassians and Breen. The cloak, if still installed, would have been with it. The Sao Paulo was delivered to replace the Defiant, and Captain Sisko was given special dispensation to rename it. I doubt the Romulans would have made a special favor to allow the “borrowing” of a second cloaking device.
@70 – “it’s hard to believe a Starfleet lifer like him would have that much trouble making the connection that his kids are Starfleet now, and have duty and obligations.”
It makes even less sense since we know since both of his parents were in Starfleet. How would he feel if his mother showed up before the Enterprise went up against the Borg and said “No, you can’t stay here, it’s too dangerous”
Quoth Silvertip: “Burton does amazing work here, but it’s hard to believe a Starfleet lifer like him would have that much trouble making the connection that his kids are Starfleet now, and have duty and obligations. I’d have bought that better if one or both of them was a civilian and hadn’t made the choice to shoulder the risks of service. They MADE that choice, you old fart.”
You’ve never met any parents, have you? *laughs* I’ve seen far too many parents whose rationality goes completely out the window when it comes to their kids, even after they’ve grown.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
For an episode so stuffed full of history, the characters themselves are terrible at remembering it.
A Section 31 facility (at least partially).
Guarded by… an AI?
What the actual f-
I realise a lot was classified and never spoken of again, but you’d have thought someone somewhere in Starfleet would have standing orders to never turn control (heh) of anything completely over to an AI. It didn’t work for Section 31 in the 23rd century (and it nearly destroyed the galaxy) and it didn’t work for Admiral Buenamigo in the 24th. I get you could argue that this one is different, but… is it? Really? It’s not like it’s an android sitting at a desk watching monitors. Did they have any countermeasures in place should this new creation go rogue? Especially if one of the potential personalities in there was frickin’ LORE.
I mean come on guys. It’s like you WANT the Federation to go down. And no. I don’t credit the changelings with that much power. If they had it, there’s nothing Picard and crew can do anyway.
@71/davidjcochrane: Why would the Changelings have anything personal against Picard though? The Dominion/Changelings weren’t even an antagonist on TNG or in the feature films (although ostensibly Enterprise-E fought in the Dominion War). If the Changelings had a vendetta against anyone specifically it should be someone directly involved with Section 31/the creator or the Changeling virus. I think Picard (his remains) are just a means to an end for the Changelings. The speculation is about nanoprobes but what’s so special about Picard’s nanoprobes (weren’t they all purged anyway?) that any other Borg or ex-Borg drone doesn’t have? I’m hoping the answer doesn’t have to do with the Borg though just because, really, more Borg after Seasons One and Two?
I’m actually missing seeing other Klingons (aside from Worf). Like, what’s the Klingon Empire up to lately? Still friendly with the Feds? And also partly I want to see if the Klingons look like Worf or the DSC retcon-version. And if it’s the latter, and everyone’s in a room together looking back and forth from Worf to these strange looking Klingon, Worf can say, “We don’t discuss it with outsiders.
@74/Agent6: Cool story! The part about Colm Meaney, that is. That sucks about your father and any lingering resentment though.
@75/Terence Chua: Interesting analysis, but one detail you missed about season 1 is that episode 2 is explicitly stated to be a month before the harvest, which would put season 1 in August to September 2399. There’s a contradiction between seasons 1 & 2, since they say they’re 18 months apart but season 2 begins at the end of the harvest season, which would be October of whatever year it’s in.
@76/Marzipan: “I had a hard time buying the narrative logic of Altan’s final creation; it seems more like an excuse to give Spiner a character revue, as krad noted. In particular, I couldn’t follow the logic of how all the previous personas were implanted in the final golem.”
We already know that Data downloaded Lal’s memories into his own neural net at the end of “The Offspring,” and then uploaded all his memories into B-4 in Nemesis. So we’ve already got a turducken of android memories, Lal’s inside Data’s inside B-4’s. It would presumably have been just as easy for Altan to transfer Lore’s memories, since Lore was disassembled rather than destroyed, and thus his parts were probably stored at Daystrom along with B-4’s.
As for how “Soong” (presumably Noonian) is in there, we saw in “Birthright, Part 1” that a version of Soong was present as a program in Data’s mind. That was presented as merely an interactive recording, but it could’ve been more. Or Altan could’ve had a recording of Noonian’s engrams from some previous time.
I know! I was sort of rooting the entire scene for a throwaway glimpse of Peanut Hamper in the background. :laugh: I still stand by my desire to have someone mention a mangled version of the name in passing, a la, “What is up with some of those AI names? What was that one, Data? “Nut Humper”, or some such? Crazy!”
@88- your point about Data and how often Spiner is brought back to play some iteration of Data or his creator or his evil brother or whatever, it’s all gotten way too convoluted and somewhat irritating. And now as you said, we have an amalgam of all of them just so Spiner can do his thing. He’s good at it, but enough already. I mean Picard himself pointed out how silly this is becoming when he said something like “I’ve seen him die twice already”. Yet here he is again. I said earlier that I do like the fan service bringing all these beloved characters back, etc, but there have to be some rules, or The poignant moments don’t mean anything anymore. Ro Laren is deader than a doornail, but does anyone really foreclose the possibility that she’ll be back in some form or another in Star Trek: Jack Crusher?
KRAD said: Riker, the musician, recognizes every note as it’s played
True, and that was impressive, but it’s not just because he’s a musician, per se. Not every musician has perfect pitch. I ought to know—I am one who does not.
The plot chickens… I actually liked this episode. Geordi is my guy, so this was fantastic. But man, I don’t think we’ve ever seen the character this angry. He was definitely on his overprotective Dad ish and it worked. But that moment when he’s yelling and Picard and Picard’s trying to reassure him and then they both just snap to, “Jack” “Sydney” the amount of old man in that was perfect. As was Sydney’s rapprochement with her father about how she ended up being called Crash. Geordi is also rather inverted from how his character at this age was played in All Good Things. He’s still a father but he’s still in the service. When Picard needed help, he jumped right in because it was him putting himself on the line, and not having a career to risk. Now he’s reticent because he’s trying to protect his kids who are involved and their careers. I don’t know why people are surprised Kunta Kinte can act. He was Emmy nominated a decade before The Next Generation aired. It was rather obvious he was underutilized.
Riker going “F Sharp?” and breaking down Pop Goes the Weasel was an excellent hand shake protocol from DataLore. Even in an identity crisis induced cybernetic coma, Data still calls out to his friends. Even better as it is a Nemesis call back, with Riker being unable to remember what Data was whistling in Farpoint, but in this episode it comes back to him.
I concur with Geordi, having the whole fleet being linked is a recipe for disaster and I can’t help but think it was an initiative put forth by Commodore Oh, for later sabotage. That may also be how she threatened to blow up Rios’ old ship to force the captain to kill the Synth ambassadors. We’ve seen that used against the fleet when Queen Agnes of Borg started taking over all the ships in Pic S2. Having all the ships in one place seems…incredibly overindulgent at BEST. This isn’t a strategic fleet massing, it’s a parade. A parade that you would think leaves the Federation incredibly vulnerable. How and Why would you gather what must be at least 50,000 starships in one place? Then there’s the Protostar Incident.
The travel time thing is working my nerves. They didn’t even establish that Athan Prime was close to Daystrom Station, that would’ve helped. If it was like Sol and Alpha Centauri close I could’ve bought it. Having a Daystrom facility right next to the Fleet Museum isn’t really irrational. It just raises a question of why they weren’t tracked to the Museum. But nobody except Discovery has respected space is big since ST09. And Discovery treats it with respect because the core plot device of the series is a drive system that let’s the ship skip across the galaxy on a highway of magic mushrooms, ignoring the vast space and travel times. The series is built on the idea that the ship is designed to break that rule.
Shaw having a fanboy moment with La Forge and La Forge having to talk him down, was unexpected hilariousness and sweetness that I didn’t know I needed.
If the Irumodic syndrome is the thing…I mean are they trying to make a bioweapon? Is the Irumodic Syndrome not a disease but a side effect of being touched by the Vorlons…so to speak? The Synth vision from season 1 or the Conduit message in Mass Effect rendered as a disease.
And the Changelings. I get the feeling that these changelings are part of the 100 Changelings sent out for exploration like Lass and Odo. Founder society is very stable, and one thing is they keep their word. Because their word is the word of a god and they associate violating their word as being something solids do. So it is very culturally locked in, along with the no Changeling has harmed another rule. If it’s the 100 infants however, then these are Changelings who grew up apart from that culture and who have their own ideas. They’ve had more time among solids, so if they come back to the Link, find out about the attempted Genocide and have been around Solids longer and are more vindictive and aggressive like Laas was, then they’d be willing to say screw the peace treaty, kill anyone who fails or deviates from the mission even another Changeling, and would aggressively infiltrate Starfleet to destroy it, even though the war is long over. The Next Generation of Changelings filled with piss and vinegar and not caring about consequences, thinking they are justice. But peace and unity again? Maybe they can’t join the great link because something about the S31 virus changed the Link? I don’t know.
I like the Soong Android gestalt. And I also like that new Data will become whoever he is, because he’s surrounded by his loving family.
@93/mr_d: “But nobody except Discovery has respected space is big since ST09. And Discovery treats it with respect because the core plot device of the series is a drive system that let’s the ship skip across the galaxy on a highway of magic mushrooms, ignoring the vast space and travel times.”
Although Discovery has freely ignored it too. In “Into the Forest I Go,” after the crew rescues Admiral Cornwell from the Klingons, they send her to Starbase 88 in an emergency rescue shuttle, and she somehow arrives there before Captain Lorca gives his post-mission briefing to Admiral Terrell over subspace.
”I really, really hope we get a cameo from someone from Deep Space Nine.”
I mean, it has to be O’Brien, right?
Levar Burton acted his ass off in this episode.
I also think they should’ve just retcon out Nemesis completely. Instead we have to keep coming up with ever more convoluted reasons that Data is back. But I’m enjoying this season a lot and I’m actually excited on a week to week basis for the next episode. The last show that did that to me was…Strange New Worlds.
@85 I don’t think the Changelings have anything against Picard. Who’s ready for a long theory?
These Changelings were absent from the Great Link when Odo delivered the cure to the morphogenic virus, so they are still infected. They managed to come up with ways to survive, but it has drastically affected their shapeshifting abilities (remember, Odo’s constant shapeshifting while working with Kira and Damar accelerated his condition). Vadic mentioned that they had “brothers and sisters” who were trapped in Federation forms. This also has the side effect that they can no longer link with each other. Not linking has eliminated the affinity Changelings have for each other, which is why Vadic is perfectly willing to have people vaporized.
At some point, these Changelings met up with a piece of functioning Borg technology that contains an exact copy of Locutus. Remember, the Queen has been killed at least 3 or 4 times and always comes back more or less the same. Locutus was intended to be her counterpart, and thus was preserved the same way. Locutus offers the Changelings a chance to be able to “link” together again–as a collective. But to do that, he needs a physical body with compatible Borg nanoprobes. The Changelings stole Picard’s body, but maybe there’s something insufficient about it, so Locutus orders the Changelings to bring Jack instead.
I think something like this would fit the themes of this season, and give us the absolutely insane climax of Picard v. Picard. Plus, imagine if the Changelings in Starfleet “clear” Picard’s name and he steps up to give his speech on Frontier Day, only to reveal himself as Locutus of Borg. Sounds like fun to me. It would also provide a nice closure to Shaw’s arc this season. He lashed out at Picard, but was obviously unsatisfied because Picard is not Locutus. But if Locutus returns, then Shaw has an opportunity to face his tormenter.
@97/Chase: Seeing an aged and gravelly-voiced Patrick Stewart all dressed up to play a menacing Locutus would be rather ridiculous in my honest opinion.
Another thing is that with so much fan service and references, when they throw in something original like the New Jersey it confuses me thinking I’m not getting it. I had to look it up on Memory Alpha to confirm that it was made up for this episode. But more original stuff is definitely what I would like to see, even if it’s just throwaway lines and random references.
I thought I posted earlier, but I don’t see it. Apologies if this appears twice.
I had a middle of the night theory that I don’t remember seeing posted before.
Many of us thought Beverly’s rationale for keeping Picard uniformed about Jack were dubious at best. What if 20-some years ago she were replaced by a new version, organs included, Changeling? If Beverly were replaced and the Changeling-Beverly had relations with Picard, resulting in a hybrid Changeling-human. If Changeling-Beverly had a change of heart (due to the power of family/motherhood) and decided not to turn over Jack to the other changelings, but instead went on the run with him. Hiding from both her own people as well as Human Beverly’s old friends and associates.
This would help explain why Jack is so needed but Picard is not. Picard now inhabits a synth body and now longer has the genetic distinctiveness that he once did. Presumably Jack does and, since they couldn’t get a hold of him, the changelings then shifted to stealing Picard’s old human body. I don’t know if it’s related to Irumodic Syndrome, but remember we only have Changeling-Beverly’s word that Jack has that as well. It could be something else they share.
This would help explain, in story, why Beverly was so bloodthirsty in the first episode that she vaporized her attackers.
Also, for the writers, why they delayed bringing Deanna around until near the end. Presumably an empath could sense Beverly isn’t who she says she is. She might be able to fool everyone else for a week or so, but not Troi.
So that’s my current theory. Anyone want to tell me what I missed? Or what facts might back it up?
I agree, though the voice can be done digitally because it’s okay if sounds artificial (think how good Vader sounded in Kenobi). A body double could be used with a slightly de-aged Patrick Stewart face, since Borg parts would make that easier.
But maybe he just takes over Jack’s body.
#80. Rage Against The Pusheen.
I demand the deepest of cuts! Brent Spiner as Data as Bob Wheeler from Night Court or I’m DONE with this show! #MakeItSo
I second this! This needs to happen!
@100: It sounds like you put a lot of thought into your theory but there’s a scene in a trailer for this season before it even premiered where Beverly and Troi are sitting together calmly around a conference table while Picard tells everyone how much he needs them. So I don’t think Beverly would be around anyone at that point if Troi didn’t trust her.
@87 / CLB:
As for how “Soong” (presumably Noonian) is in there, we saw in “Birthright, Part 1” that a version of Soong was present as a program in Data’s mind. That was presented as merely an interactive recording, but it could’ve been more. Or Altan could’ve had a recording of Noonian’s engrams from some previous time.
Right. We know from “Inheritance” that Noonien had perfected his synaptic scanning technique well before “Brothers”.
It’s therefore not unreasonable that Soong had done his own pass through the scanner and that Atlan might have a copy of those digitized memory engrams.
When Riker and company are doing their little heist on Daystrom Station he says the crow that swoops by them is vaguely familiar or language to that effect. But if that crow was imagery in Data’s dream program, why would it be familiar to Riker?? Moriarty is a different story because at least that hologram had originally interacted with a bunch of the characters.
Wow!!! What a great episode! My brother’s been a “Constitution-class man” since we were children, and that scene felt like it was written just for him. So wonderful to see Levar Burton back in action, he’s as fantastic as ever!
I truly didn’t see Old Man Data coming, I was sure that the crow and Moriarty were red herrings and that it was all going to be a gruesome Lore fake-out. I was so nervous, until that beautiful Farpoint flashback. The Cold Equations solution that allows Brent Spiner to create a more human spin on Data while preserving ALL of Soong’s legacy brings me no end of joy. Data’s my absolute favorite character in fiction, and I’m just thrilled to have my old friend back again, even if it’s just long enough to see him fly off into the sunset for imagined future adventures. If this is to be the true ending for our TNG family, we don’t want any empty chairs at the table. Can’t wait til next week! Deanna had better get something more to do than just be a hostage!
I liked the New Jersey being there because, not only does it give us an original Constitution-Class there but it’s also a callback to when Picard told Scotty in the holodeck recreation of the original Enterprise bridge in “Relics” that he’d seen a Constitution-Class like it in the fleet museum. Now we know which one it probably was.
— David Young
@105/garreth: “But if that crow was imagery in Data’s dream program, why would it be familiar to Riker??”
We were shown in “Birthright, Part 1” that Data did paintings of his dream imagery, including the crows.
He also spoke to his friends about his visions when trying to understand them, including Picard, Geordi, and Worf. He may have talked to Riker about them off-camera.
@28 and 70
Have we seen any of Vadic’s crew exhibit changeling nature? Changeling’s might not harm each other, but they’ve also always used servitor races, so vaporizing a crew member did not strike me as that wrong.
The D7/K’Tinga in the fleet museum intrigues me.
So no one remembers if Defiant 2 (Sao Paolo) had a cloaking device, including the Memory Alpha web site. Memory Alpha says that they “brought back” Defiant because some story lines, battle scenes especially, needed a ship for Sisko, I suppose. Evidently it wasn’t shown cloaking, but in other media it is given a new cloak. I suppose they expected that some less attentive viewers wouldn’t realise that this is not the original Defiant, besides which, they were going to go on using old stock “film” of Defiant flying around and it has “Defiant” written on it.
On revisiting Voyager etc., I mean literally, the ship, it is unlikely that a necessary plot coupon is concealed in the old ship – though I don’t think it would be out of service as soon as it got home, these ships are built to work and expensive. I suppose it had alien technologies patched in, extra holodecks from that time, had been through space warps and time warps and enthusiastic engineering, so probably it would be quite an adventure to serve on it after that, but a lot of it is true of ships called Enterprise. So there could be something cached.
But they didn’t need an actual holodeck to show us Montgomery Scott on the Enterprise-D holodeck visiting the NCC-1701 bridge. Possibly, they needed a lot of money.
@109 I’m almost positive that it’s Kronos One.
@67 and @100 – I watch with the subtitles on, and interestingly, when Jack is having the nightmare visions, it says the voice is Beverly calling to him. It’s difficult for me to tell whether it’s Gates’ voice, and subtitles are sometimes wrong, but it relates to both of your comments if it really is her.
@110/Robert Carnegie: “But they didn’t need an actual holodeck to show us Montgomery Scott on the Enterprise-D holodeck visiting the NCC-1701 bridge. Possibly, they needed a lot of money.”
Actually, they kind of did need a “holodeck.” The wide shot of the holo-bridge was achieved by matting Scotty into stock footage from “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” just about the only episode where the bridge was seen empty from a suitable angle. If you look closely, most of the shots of Scott and Picard are close-ups with little of the background visible. They could only afford to build the turbolift alcove and the console next to it, and they rented fan replicas of the command chair and helm console. They used the same single console to represent the opposite sides of the bridge by rearranging the set for Picard’s reverse-angle shots.
In “Trials and Tribble-ations,” they were able to afford to build more of the bridge by adding onto what they had from “Relics,” but it wasn’t until “In a Mirror, Darkly” that they were able to completely rebuild the whole bridge and other TOS sets, again expanding on what they’d built before.
I give them points for giving us a never-before-seen “legendary” starship in the New Jersey, but I take half of them away fir the sneaking suspicion that they just wanted to include a TOS-era Constitution class despite the original Enterprise having been destroyed.
I definitely second one of the above comments about how ridiculous the contrivance are getting to bring Data back. Actually, I feel like this series has been weighted down in general by the twin albatrosses of Data’s stupid death in Nemesis and Romulus’s stupid destruction in the 2009 film.
@85/Garreth Thank you. We did reconcile later, and I nursed him through his final cancer. And I can smoke O’Brien any time, any board!
Any episode that has Mr Worf employed as an Emotional Support Klingon, Geordi La Forge putting Jack in his place, Young Crusher making some new friends while making some useful mischief AND a gallery of grand old starships can’t be all bad (I choose to believe that NX-01, at least one Excelsior-class*, USS Galaxy and a number of other old favourites are in there somewhere but weren’t highlighted).
*Perhaps USS Gorkon or USS Cairo? I believe either Admiral Nechayev or Captain Jellico would have reputation enough to see their ship preserved for posterity, though doubtless there are ships we’ve never previously heard of in the mix too (At least one for every Starfleet class).
Oh, and @ChristopherLBennett, it’s possible that Doctor Soong died of an illness, rather than old age, hence his prematurely-aged condition in that holo: even in the 25th century they can’t cure everything.
Also, did anyone else feel a little relieved that the body those Changelings beamed out wasn’t the late Gary Mitchell? (I’m not going to lie, the thought of the mischief somebody could work with the remains of a being who acquired Godlike powers and misused them … brrr).
@114/jaimebabb: “I definitely second one of the above comments about how ridiculous the contrivance are getting to bring Data back.”
I wouldn’t say that. I’m not a fan of character resurrections, but this one does rather make sense. We know that Data downloaded his memories into B-4, whose brain wasn’t sophisticated enough to process them, but still contained them. And we know from season 1 that Altan Soong created a lot of viable sentient synths/androids. So it kind of makes sense that if Soong applied himself to the problem, he could create a new version of Data, or rather, a new android that contains Data’s memories along with B-4’s, Lal’s, etc. It’s not too different from how Data 2.0 (so to speak) was created in the novels, except there it was done by an android version of Noonien Soong.
The one part I find contrived is the bit about building him with “the wisdom of age” to account for Spiner’s aging. But that could’ve just been vanity on Altan’s part, the same vanity that led his brother to design Data in his image the first time around.
As I mentioned, my favorite part is that it’s not just Data that was brought back, but all the Soong androids. It’s a lovely, Trekkian message that every life has value, that the one we know and like the most is not more worth saving than the others.
@116/ED: Not only was NX-01 (or a ship of its class) indeed present in the museum, but it was Doug Drexler’s conjectural refit version that added a secondary hull, making that design canonical at last. https://www.facebook.com/doug.drexler.7/posts/10159580308536104
Which is nice, because I featured NX refit ships in my Enterprise: Rise of the Federation novels.
I have paused actually thinking about this season until it was more or less half way and now that we are six episodes in, I am completely torn on an experience that has been thrilling, emotional and incredibly frustrating in equal measure.
I like:
– Forget Todd Stashwick (more on that below), the award winning performance this season has, for me, been Jonathan Frakes. He has evolved the Riker character to reflect, as KRAD and CLB have said, a man who has experienced much, while keeping enough of the old swagger and charm (his banter with Michael Dorn was wonderful) to deliver a very deep performance. It has been a surprise delight.
– I echo KRAD’s dislike of the TNG La Forge but here Levar Burton delivers a wonderful return for the character. La Forge’s reaction to the new Data/Lore/Soong AI’s activation was charged with emotion; it is so right that it was La Forge, Data’s friend in most of his journey of self-discovery, who was at his side.
– I am very much enjoying the Worf/Rafi interplay, in fact, everything about Worf has been superb.
– I have enjoyed the (limited) attempts to flesh out the Titan crew beyond some extras pressing buttons. The Vulcan (Vulcan/Deltan?) and Bajoran bridge officers, as well the Trill Medical Officer have been well used and have actually assisted the resolution of the Titan’s predicament(s), rather than merely button pushing.
I dislike:
– Here goes. I cannot work out if my dislike of Shaw comes from the writing of the character, the acting by Todd Stashwick, or both, but I am far from convinced by any of it. In my thoughts on Episode 1 of this season I called out what I believed to by the repugnant bigotry shown to Seven; the fact that he is a Wolf 359 survivor changes absolutely nothing, if anything it must make it less likely that he would, in his condition, be given a chance to command an exploration vessel with an ex-Borg First Officer. On Stashwick, I feel as though we are getting a Brad Garrett tribute act. I found the Wolf 359 speech a couple of episodes ago to be hammy and trying too hard. Conversely, there was hope in the more matter-of-fact scene where he tutored Seven on how to identify a changeling. But that was one standout moment in a hugely irritating season’s performance.
– The Picard founding gospel of “thou shalt bring back well-loved supporting cast and kill ‘em off” is infuriating. I was amazed and delighted to see Ro return, only, a la Hugh and Icheb, to be killed off far too quickly. Keeping Ro on the Titan and seeing her interact with Rafi, Seven and Worf in particular would have been wonderful, if the highly-charged reunion with Picard is anything to go by.
– I can see that Ed Speleers could be Patrick Stewart’s son, and he does sort of give off a cut-price Tom Hardy vibe, but I am not remotely interested in a cliched Star Trek version of Han Solo.
– Yet more Soong. I don’t know what kompromat Brent Spiner has on the producers, but it must be good, illegality good, to ensure that Soong is almost as prevalent as Starfleet Intelligence/Section 31 in recent Trek. Data died in Season 1, that should have been the end of it.
– The tone. FFS, was nothing learned from Season 1? Star Trek has always shown that humanity’s trajectory is upward; we’re going to move on from the awfulness of the 20th and 21st centuries and be better versions of ourselves. Mankind isn’t perfect in the future, that’s the point, but Earth and humanity have made great strides. Time and time again Picard destroys this aspirational view and replaces it with a grittier, darker (literally and figuratively) dystopian view. We have drug addictions, bounty hunters, criminal gangs, dirty streets, squalor. I get that Earth as paradise was always tainted (as we saw in TUC, late TNG and DS9 in particular), but I no longer want to live in this wonderful Trek future. I’ll take my chances with corrupt, chaotic 2023 England thanks. I have a very big problem with that.
So I’m torn: in places this has been a well written, emotional ride with some wonderful acting. But my concerns and irritations are many. I suspect that my misgivings about Picard stem from a concern that I have with much of modern TV Trek; it has drifted, for me, a little too far from the Roddenberry/Berman vision that I grew up with. Weirdly, at the same time it feels like a load of fans like me sat down to binge their favourite episodes from that era (TWOK, bits of TNG) with a “things we need to have fun with in this season” shopping list. Very odd.
About Jim Kirk’s body, maybe Starfleet got a copy of “The Return” and they decided they had to keep him in storage to stop that happening. ;-)
@97 Chase,
I like the theory, though I think they’d be dumb to pursue it as it would be like opening a door to Borg Assimilation. Another issue is, theoretically all they’d need to do to be cured is actually go to the Link. Furthermore, Starfleet Officers are the ones who created the cure in the first place. If anything if a cure was all they wanted, then they’d be kidnapping Julian Bashir if they were too scared to actually just go to Starfleet directly.
@100 sg26053;
The thing I don’t like about that theory is that it requires Beverly to die and or at best be kidnapped. And this Changeling to have basically perfected being her beyond anything else. She even argued with Jean-Luc like Beverly. If this is a TNG Family Reunion having Beverly already dead kind of robs us of that. I don’t need that kind of fake out. It means it’s yet another character that the Picard series has killed off needlessly.
@120/Robert: When I mentioned before that I didn’t find Data’s rebirth particularly contrived, I was implicitly comparing it to The Return, which was the most contrived deus ex machina way possible to resurrect Kirk. The Borg just inexplicably happen to have a device that can reach back in time and snatch someone from the moment of their death, and once it serves its purpose in bringing back Kirk, this disturbingly powerful technology is never mentioned again.
I mean, as ridiculous a concept as Genesis was, at least the phenomenon that resurrected Spock was central to the story it happened in. So it didn’t feel like it was just a gratuitous way to bring him back. Here, it’s admittedly not quite so integral, and having “a sophisticated AI” run Daystrom Station was kind of a contrived setup to lead the characters to Data. But at least it is fairly integrated into the storyline rather than just being a random detail unconnected to anything else in the narrative, like the resurrection device in The Return. And the actual idea behind Data’s revival at Altan Soong’s hands is a logical outgrowth of season 1’s events as well as Data’s previous memory transfers involving Lal and B-4.
@11 @95
Bringing back Miles Edward O’Brien would be delightful, and makes much sense considering the TNG character lovefest they have going on this season. Plus he’s likely the engineer in Starfleet with the most experience with a cloaking device, so you have an actual purpose to having him show up.
Another idea would be Reg Barclay. Again a longstanding TMG character, but he has the Voyager connection and is smart enough to figure out a cloak if needs be.
The reason I don’t want either to turn up is the Picard show’s fetishisation of bringing back beloved character just to kill them off.
I’m not sure how contrived Data’s return is, but I do see it as emblematic of the current state of Trek — old parts cobbled together to keep it lurching forward.
By the way, when did Data get R2D2 projector eyes? That’s quite an upgrade.
@121 My thought is that whatever these Changelings did to themselves to slow/stem the progress of the virus altered their physiology so that they cannot link, as I said. Not being able to link means that they could not receive Bashir’s cure (I think there’s a very good chance that Bashir himself will explain this to us next week), and would further increase their desperation and their hatred of the Federation. At that point, they might be willing to be assimilated by Locutus.
@so many other commenters — Irumodic syndrome being used here feels like a red herring — either a straight up lie by Potentially Changeling Bev or a clever way to disguise whatever the Changelings put in Jack’s brain to make him a sleeper agent
Regarding the cloaking device, is the Treaty of Algeron still in effect? Onscreen is there still a functioning Romulan government with which to even have a treaty?
@119: Don’t mince words, le_jones, tell us what you really think.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
I do agree with you about Jonathan Frakes’ acting being leaps and bounds beyond what he ever did in TNG. Back then, he shouted every other line of dialog. Here, he’s actually showing emotion. His “you’ve killed us all” line was full of heartbreak. I disagree, however, with your estimation of Todd Stashwick’s acting. What little acting training I had in my youth means that yes, I can see the acting occurring (being assigned a scene from Pinter for your final grade leads one to see the acting choices being made in everyone else’s performance), but I still think he deserves every accolade he’s received. As for Spiner… well, kompromat indeed. I’ve never been thrilled with his acting – he has a few tricks that he overuses. For instance, that audible intake of breath just before speaking – it would be one thing if it were a Data tic, but he did it as Lore too, and while I don’t recall it in his B-4 performance, it turned up in Independence Day too.
And as for Levar Burton’s performance, while I’m in agreement that he reaction to seeing the Data/Lore/B-4/Soong android was wonderful (we really need a single name for that character), it would have been better if his reaction had been wordless. But when he said Data’s name, I immediately wondered if everyone has forgotten that Data blew up on the Scimitar at the climax of Nemesis. Geordi was, in fact, the last person to see him alive. (His appearance in S1 of Picard was a dream sequence, wasn’t it? Or am I misremembering?) Everyone present, except for Raffi, met Lore and B-4 and knows that there are multiple lookalike Soong androids, so calling him Data took me out of the moment.
…So, I have questions
Why are Kirk’s and Picard’s remains being kept on this station? That’s…grisly, and ghoulish. Is it somehow normal to keep the corpses of Starfleet officers on research stations? CLB, krad, anybody, help me out here, please.
Also, why didn’t Seven go on the mission to Daystrom station? Raffi, though entertaining, was largely useless there, so teaming her up with Seven would give Seven something to do, maybe even some awkward moments between Seven and Raffi, perhaps even them off-handedly explaining why they split up; nothing major, maybe it just didn’t work out.
Seven’s Mad Borg Skillz would seem to be more useful in hacking into Daystrom. Then maybe Seven could have gotten kidnapped by Vadic (thoughts on her in a moment), and Seven actually gets to do some cool shit off the Titan-A.
In this episode, Seven is just kind of there, chilling on the Bridge, reminiscing about the old days on Voyager (not a complaint. I loved that scene, and Voyager is home for me, too).
Then we could see if Shaw actually has learned to appreciate and respect his First Officer (he doesn’t at this point, and the fact that Seven still calls herself “Commander Hansen” is proof of that).
Geordi LaForge.
I know you’re not the biggest fan of the character, krad, but that’s because LaForge was written as kind of a creeper. I always felt, like Nichelle Nichols before him, LeVar Burton had all this talent brimming just below the surface, kept there while his character spewed technobabble and exposition; this episode proves that.
But Geordi has always been my dude, and it felt right to see him as a cranky old fart who wants these damn kids to get off his lawn. Burton gives Geordi a depth and range in one episode than Geordi really had in seven TV seasons and four movies.
We see a Geordi LaForge who has raised children (I wonder if he has a son named Brett out there somewhere), and logic and rationality go right out the window when it comes to your kids. I’m glad Sidney stood up for herself, reminding Geordi that your Starfleet crewmates becoming your second family is a value that Geordi taught her.
You know, when he’s paired with the sisters LaForge, Jack is far less grating. Alas, I still don’t really care about Jack.
I also don’t care about Vadic, and would like her to please go away now…
Finally, the best they could come up with for Troi is to be a damsel in distress? Disappointing (if that really is Troi. I mean, how would Vadic know she was going to take Riker prisoner? Vadic just happened to have kidnapped Troi also? Hmm…).
Also, CLB, that empty shot of the TOS Bridge came from “This Side of Paradise”, after the crew has deserted and before Kirk walks onto the empty bridge.
Kind of a mess, this is, but a well-acted mess.
@128: Geordi wasn’t the last person to see Data alive if you’re referring to Nemesis. Remember, Picard was with Data on the Scimitar and beamed Picard out of there right before the Scimitar was destroyed.
This episode was packed! In terms of the whole timeline and plotting, I could rant at a dozen issues popping up across the season. But emotionally, I've never been more fulfilled or satisfied with a show. Part of it is certainly a long emotional desire to see these characters gather back again – even though I was thrilled that the story dared to split them apart and go to new places in their lives.
I agree the nostalgia is certainly overdone. I don't need visual nods to Kirk's remains or Genesis device (Wrath of Khan reference no. 47). But this episode gives us the best kind of nostalgia. I bought 'Farpoint' on VHS during the '90s. I must have rewatched that pilot a hundred times or so. The holodeck Riker/Data whistling bit is deeply rooted in my mind. Seeing that of all things being brought back during the Daystrom set piece is exactly how you do nostalgia! Character-based rather than a wink at some ancient relic. The very kind of scene that can bring forth tears.
Much like the Picard/Data goodbye during the first season, this goes a long way towards giving us a Search for Spock-esque conclusion to the events that began over two decades ago in Nemesis. Bringing Data back this way might just be the most satisfying feeling of them all. And Spiner is more than game to playing these varying personalities buried within that body. Just the way his facial expression instantly changed when Lore took over – Spiner hasn't missed a beat.
And then there's LaForge. It's a nice twist that the youngest, most driven main character (besides Wesley) turned out to be the biggest old stick in the mud.
But him becoming commodore over a starship museum falls almost exactly in line with an old TNG comic book I still own ('The Lesson', written by Michael Jan Friedman – the one where Crusher and Troi celebrate Crusher's birthday on a holodeck field trip). There's a small scene between Data, O'Brien and LaForge where they discuss their hopes and dreams, and Geordi specifically mentions he wanted to buy a moon in the Gamma Meridien system from a guy he knew – essentially a junkyard covered with ships, wrecks and spare parts he scrounged across the galaxy. He'd have no deadlines, no pressure, and that would be his version of heaven.
Also, I assume at some point he was captain of the USS Challenger. The fact that Voyager averted its icy burial on that show's 100th episode doesn't change the timeline to the point where Geordi wouldn't be in command of the Challenger (that episode took place around 2390 according to Memory Alpha). I assume that was his last assignment prior to his promotion to commodore and taking over the space dock museum.
I'm not at all disappointed over the fact that the Changelings merely stole Picard's remains instead of something bigger. As pointed out, it's in line with their MO. Depending on how they maintained that brain of his, there could be a LOT of useful intelligence they could retrieve, not to mention his Locutus self and all that came with his prior assimilation.
@129 I, too, am disappointed with the damsel hostage bit, but it’s clearly logical for any room temperature IQ villain. Grab the folks who has emotional holds on the crew, and it’s clear that Troi is #1 on that list.
@124/Dingo: “I’m not sure how contrived Data’s return is, but I do see it as emblematic of the current state of Trek — old parts cobbled together to keep it lurching forward.”
That’s certainly true of Picard, which started out being an attempt to take the title character in a new direction but ended up being just an extended exercise in nostalgia. But I think there’s more to the other shows than that. Strange New Worlds is using some familiar characters but mostly doing new things with them, and giving depth to characters who never had it before. Lower Decks is overly dependent on continuity for its jokes, but has added a lot of new characters and fresh ideas to the canon. Prodigy is largely new, though somewhat reliant on the past. And Discovery has become mostly forward-looking since its move to the 32nd century, with the exception of Georgiou’s arc in season 3.
I’m the first to say that current Trek and other fictional franchises have become way too reliant on rehashing the past, but it’s an exaggeration to say that’s all Trek is doing.
“By the way, when did Data get R2D2 projector eyes? That’s quite an upgrade.”
This isn’t Data, but a new android/synth containing his and others’ memories. So he can have whatever new abilities were built into him.
@129/Dante: “Why are Kirk’s and Picard’s remains being kept on this station? That’s…grisly, and ghoulish. Is it somehow normal to keep the corpses of Starfleet officers on research stations? CLB, krad, anybody, help me out here, please.”
I can’t make any excuses for it, since I’m just as uneasy with what it implies about Starfleet’s ethics in this era.
“that empty shot of the TOS Bridge came from “This Side of Paradise”, after the crew has deserted and before Kirk walks onto the empty bridge.”
Arrgh, that’s what I meant to say. Why did I say “Tomorrow is Yesterday?” I guess because they both start with T.
@131/Eduardo – The tie-in materials released before Season 1 indicated that Geordi was in charge of building the Romulan evacuation fleet at Utopia Planitia and that he survived the Synth attack only by having the pure luck to be on a transport to Earth at the time. I kind of hope that this season makes that canon, because I think it makes for some interesting drama (and maybe explains why he’s so obsessed with keeping his loved ones safe now). Of course, before the reveal about Picard’s corpse, I’d assumed that this season wouldn’t be related to the first at all, but now everything is on the table.
Also, thank you for reminding me of that exchange in the comics; I didn’t make the connection until now.
Perhaps it’s just the nostalgia, but I have found myself enjoying the season more and more as it progresses. The first two seasons weren’t dreadful, but they were dreary in a lot of ways. This season manages to recapture a lot of the fun of Star Trek, and I would now rank it up with SNW as the best of NuTrek. This episode was fantastic: LeVar Burton shows that Geordi was criminally underutilized in TNG, and his daughters, both real and in-universe, have a sibling relationship that was perfect for this episode. Worf’s comment to 7 where he admits he was lying about wanting her to come is hilarious. Shaw’s meeting with Geordi is great stuff. And hoo-boy, all those starships. I didn’t even mind the post-GRRM Game of Thrones-type conceit that travel anywhere takes no time at all if the plot requires it.
If I have a quibble with this episode, it’s with “fan service” that seems directed at one particular fan: I’m getting a bit tired of Matalas injecting himself (or being injected) into the the show. It’s starting to feel more than a bit self-indulgent. First, we have M’Talas Prime as the site of much of the early Raffi-Worf action (yes, I know it was originally introduced on Enterprise, where he was a writer, along with the planet Matalas. But still). Now, we get the heretofore undisclosed USS New Jersey, NCC-1975, and it just so happens that Matalas was born in New Jersey in 1975. At this point, I would not be at all surprised to find out that Vadic is the surname of Matalas’ ex-wife.
My head-canon is that the Saber Class in the museum is the USS da Vinci from SCE…
@131/Eduardo: “The fact that Voyager averted its icy burial on that show’s 100th episode doesn’t change the timeline to the point where Geordi wouldn’t be in command of the Challenger (that episode took place around 2390 according to Memory Alpha).”
I’d say the fact that Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant two years later with 100+ extra living crewmembers would be a pretty significant change to the timeline. Enough of a change to affect Geordi’s life? Hard to say, but at the very least it must have been someone else that sent the Enterprise to Romulus in Nemesis in the earlier timeline!
@135/kgrierson: “Now, we get the heretofore undisclosed USS New Jersey, NCC-1975, and it just so happens that Matalas was born in New Jersey in 1975.”
Brannon Braga did the same thing with his hometown of Bozeman, Montana, both as the name of a starship and as the site of Zefram Cochrane’s first warp flight. Gene Roddenberry named Commodore Robert Wesley and Wesley Crusher after his own middle name. Michael Piller injected his love of baseball into his TNG debut “Evolution” and into Sisko’s character in DS9, and Ira Steven Behr built a lot of DS9 around his own personal interests like the Rat Pack era.
One of the more interesting lines to me was the one about all ships being linked. Sure, it provides a reason why the Titan has been so easily found, but it’s also evocative of the series ending of Prodigy, with all the “evil” ships there. And with the additional threat of the hero ship not being immune this time.
But you know which ships are immune? All those “relics” parked around the museum… This may just me getting a little too fan-boy, but I really hope that, rather than pure fan service, this museum is a Chekhov’s gun, and the solution to the connected fleet issue is our heroes each commandeering an old ship. Seven on Voyager, Worf on the defiant, etc…
That does lead me to one question though. Where’s the E? Is Picard gonna helm the A??
@139/mattmatt: Given how much this season has been written like a “bottle show” taking place on a finite number of mostly pre-existing sets, I really doubt they’ll be moving the action to any ship interiors besides Titan, La Sirena, and redresses thereof (like the Shrike, a redress of La Sirena‘s lower deck).
@140 There is some reason to believe that the “bottle” nature of this season is because they spent so much money on the last three or four episodes. Rebuilding any sets from the legacy fleet would likely take a good chunk of that money.
The odds that Hangar Bay 12 contains a fully-functional Enterprise-D are so high that Vegas probably wouldn’t even take bets on it. Rebuilding that bridge (and probably engineering, so Shaw can have the time of his life) was probably expensive.
#133.
I’m the first to say that current Trek and other fictional franchises have become way too reliant on rehashing the past, but it’s an exaggeration to say that’s all Trek is doing.
I didn’t mean to say it’s “all” Trek is doing, but it’s sure doing it quite a lot. To the point of being distracting for me. I’m holding on to hope they ‘clear the cache’ someday and give this a fresh start. It needs it.
As for Data, yeah well, I think it’s mostly Data. They can make up whatever reason to bring him back, but for all intents and purposes it’s Data. His friends are calling him that. They’re happy to see him. What follows will most likely be the old multiple personality act, with Spiner hamming it up for a while, before the old Data settles in. Or maybe a balanced, more fully human version of Data — the final product of Soong’s dream.
You know, a dead friend returns and is not quite himself. I’m beginning to suspect this Matalas guy REALLY likes those TOS movies.
@141/Chase: “There is some reason to believe that the “bottle” nature of this season is because they spent so much money on the last three or four episodes.”
“Some reason” as in objective evidence suggesting it, something that’s been reliably reported in the news or indicated in a producer interview? Because speculation alone doesn’t count, especially if it’s a way to convince oneself of something one wants to be true.
@142/Dingo: “As for Data, yeah well, I think it’s mostly Data.”
In mind and personality, yes, of course. But the body is an entirely new construct, since Data’s original body was vaporized. So there’s no reason it can’t have projector eyes, which is the point I was addressing there.
#143. Sorry, I misunderstood and went off on a tangent there. Yeah, new body, new upgrades. It’s all good.
@137/cap-mjb: I don’t think so. Starships have disappeared before. And any other admiral could have ordered Picard to travel to Romulus. I doubt Voyager’s surprise return would have affected the people on the Enterprise, or at least the ones we know about. Plus, DS9 clearly had more of an influence on Nemesis happening at all, given that Reman soldiers were used as cannon fodder during the war (and was likely a factor into Shinzon’s rise to power).
@145/Eduardo: I think the idea was that using Remans as cannon fodder had always been a standard Romulan practice in all their wars and conquests, not something exclusive to the Dominion War. After all, Remus is the twin sister planet of Romulus, so presumably the Remans have always been the Romulans’ primary slave race, and thus would always have been their preferred cannon fodder.
Although it’s true that it was Shinzon’s career in the Dominion War that impressed the Romulan military enough for him to win their support for his coup.
Anyway, if we’re talking about how things change in alternate timelines, there are always unpredictable ripple effects that can change things that don’t seem connected. For instance, Nero destroying the Kelvin somehow led to Pavel Chekov being born four years later earlier and Starfleet moving ship construction to the surface of Earth, as well as to the Botany Bay being discovered more than a decade sooner and Carol Marcus being raised in England.
@146 – Chekov was born four years earlier, not later.
@@@@@140/ChristopherLBennett
Alas, I fear you’re right. Especially given the fact everyone keeps going to Ten Forward despite not having the same connection with the place Picard has. But life, as they say, is a dream.
@143 I didn’t want to give too much information, because it’s possible that some people never saw or heard this stuff before the season. But if anybody is interested, they can search for LeVar Burton’s comments at the Orlando MegaCon last summer.
@148
Alas, I fear you’re right. Especially given the fact everyone keeps going to Ten Forward despite not having the same connection with the place Picard has.
I have a theory about that–I think the program in that holodeck is just left running and the people who enter are just “What the heck, This is as good place as any to talk.” As for why it’s left running–I don’t have a good reason for that other than everyone’s in crisis mode and no one wants to bother shutting it off.
Didn’t they build a reconstruction of the actual Ten Forward for the opening scene of the series pilot? Surely they could have just redressed that and called it the ship’s lounge.
@151/jaime: They probably didn’t keep the Ten Forward (E-D version) set after season 1, since they didn’t expect to use it again. The reason season 3 is able to reuse so many season 2 sets is because they were shot back-to-back, IIRC. And I get the sense that the budget this season is lower.
Still, it shouldn’t have been hard to redress the observation lounge set or something like that to serve as a crew lounge.
I get they’re dealing with budget restrictions, but it seems like they could’ve had the majority of the conversations take place in the conference room, just as this episode did with Picard and LaForge. It looks nice, too. It has little ships. Or even the old West Wing style walk-and-talks could’ve worked.
The budget situation is such that once you see it (the reuse of ten forward, the really small hallway that is the Section 31 wing, etc) it’s hard to not see. Which is a shame because while I don’t think it’s the critical flaw of the show- that would be the meandering nostalgia tour of a plot- it isn’t doing it any favors. The starbase full of famous ships seems like a great way to get around the built in echelon system. If it had turned out that Voyager was “gassed up” (not literally) for a surprise appearance at frontier day and could be taken while Titan did a distraction run would be great, but no money for that.
By the way, the networked ships seems like a spectacularly bad idea. Capture a ship and now you know where every other Starfleet vessel is? Like that’s not a bad idea…. Unless that’s part of the (still unclear, convoluted) plot of the changelings.
And of course we’ll get Chekhovs starship in whatever is in Hanger 12. I’m guessing it’s the 1701E but that’s just a guess
#154. That’s a good guess about Hangar 12. Either that or the refurbished D saucer married to a “new” star drive. They must have some NOS parts for those things. ;-)
Anybody else find themselves secretly wishing that instead of having Spiner play Data/B4/Lore etc., they would have worked in all the terribly annoying personalities from TNG’s “Masks” instead?
That way we wouldn’t be rehashing very tired old ground, and we might even get a “Masaka is coming!” For old time’s sake!
Speaking of old times sake, it was nice to see LeVar Burton stick a computer cable into Brent Spiner’s head one more time. I suppose the Soong androids still don’t have Bluetooth
@145/Eduardo: It’s possible the lives of people removed from the situation wouldn’t have been changed, but obviously the events of this series would have been different since Seven of Nine would have been dead. The Borg transwarp hub wouldn’t have been destroyed. And an extra hundred or more people in Starfleet could have caused a big difference in terms of personnel allocation: Maybe Tuvok or someone was given the captaincy of the Challenger in the new timeline. Basically, while it’s possible Geordi’s career followed the same path until 2390 in the new timeline, there’s no reason to assume that it did.
On the reuse of sets, there are many stories about how productions have been held up by covid considerations and lack of resources/staff over the last few years (it seriously scuppered plans for recent Dr Who shows for example), so it’s entirely possible that there was little choice but to use the ten forward set, in the same way as I assume that the jaunt to the past in the last season was at least partially borne out of the fact that it wouldn’t need as many sets to be built when that was difficult to achieve.
@158/Stuboystu: “it’s entirely possible that there was little choice but to use the ten forward set”
I’d find that more credible if not for the fact I mentioned, that it wouldn’t have been that hard to redress an existing Titan set such as the observation lounge to pass for a crew lounge. They wouldn’t have needed to build a new set from scratch.
I think they just like the set and want an excuse to keep using it. I mean, they filled it up with so many photos and props and Easter eggs. I’ve learned that when they were filming the season (or maybe it was season 2), they put out a call to fans asking them to donate cosplay photos, which ended up decorating the walls of the set. These producers love their Trek nostalgia, and they poured a ton of it into Ten Forward LA, so I guess they want to keep highlighting it.
@159 I think the reason it keeps getting used is not because it’s cheaper than redressing an existing set, but because it doesn’t cost anything extra at all. That was a set built for season 2, on the season 2 budget; either they amortized the cost over seasons 2 and 3 to pay for it (so it’s a built-in cost for this season), or it was paid for last season and is free to use in this one. That leaves more money free for the expensive legacy actors, a bunch of new digital starship models (the entire Starfleet is supposed to be at Frontier Day, which will presumably include new ship designs besides the Enterprise-F), and (still rumored) “new” sets for the last few episodes.
@143: Logic suggests that they’re going to put a heap of money on the screen sometime. If they don’t… it only means that Humans aren’t very good at logic. :-)
The logic of a bottle show, of course, is to use less money this time, and spend more usually later.
“Doctor Who” in 2005 spent a lot of money on episode two, hoping that you’d subconsciously think that it was like that all of the time, even though you could see it wasn’t.
In 1964 the cast spent two weeks locked inside TARDIS because they’d run out of money. (In universe that wasn’t the reason.)
@161/Robert: “Logic suggests that they’re going to put a heap of money on the screen sometime.”
How does it suggest that? You’re assuming there’s a significant difference between their overall budget and what they’ve spent so far. Without factual data, there’s no way to be sure of that. If you’re going to evoke Spock by talking about logic, then remember how much Spock loathed speculation in the absence of hard data. Logic is a means of deriving conclusions from initial premises. If the initial premises are mere guesswork, the conclusion is no better.
The “heap of money” may well have already been spent on cast salaries and VFX. There’s no reason to assume it has to be in the set budget.
“The logic of a bottle show, of course, is to use less money this time, and spend more usually later.”
That applies to a single episode within a season, not to an entire season. Generally, a TV series does its most expensive set construction at the start of the season, amortizing the cost of the sets by using them in as many episodes as possible. It would be atypical for a production to devote the most money to building the sets it intends to use the least.
I mean, your argument might hold water if it were just one or two episodes, but we’re already 70% of the way through the season (as of the episode after the one covered in this thread). Any really expensive set would probably get used in more than 2-3 episodes.
(Also, bottle shows are often used to make up for overages earlier in the season. For instance, DS9’s season 1 bottle show, “Duet,” was the second-last episode of the season.)