RemembranceIn the super advanced future, "knock her out" involves putting a bag over somebody's head?
I was confused at the start of this as to whether the supernova was something I was supposed to remember from TNG. Then I wondered if it fitted with the JJ Abrams movie, a quick Google confirmed it did. So we are not in the Kelvin universe, but are hearing about the thing that caused Nero to go back and create a different timeline. Phew, I'm exhausted! At least it now makes sense why by S3 of Discovery the Romulans are living with the Vulcans, they had nowhere else to go.
Plus I had to remember the end of a Short Treks episode, luckily it wasn't very long ago I watched it.
Trek has a reputation of showing an idealistic future, where humans are no longer selfish and petty racists, but have become enlightened space explorers. I don't think that reputation is well earned. The Kirk era showed humans were still banana splits. TNG was swarming with banana splits. DS9 really showed the dark side of the Federation etc etc. And now in Picard we have an interviewer (I thought TNG established TV was a short lived fad?
) who seems to think Picard should have just let all the Romulans die. Wow, so enlightened and so different from 21st century humans...
I love the dog's name.
Should have just called it Riker though.
I'm assuming the woman
is a synth? Is this going to be a Blade Runner style thing? She doesn't realise she's a synth and "blade runners" are coming to get her? Ha, not long after I typed the above, it was confirmed, I thought they'd drag that out over a few episodes.
I thought that was a really good opening for the series. Just the right amount of nostalgia, showing Picard as a vulnerable old man and an intriguing mystery. Plus
a Borg cube!. Plenty of nonsensical technobabble as well, so we can tell that this is a Trek show....
Cheeky Devlin has been hinting this series is gooseberry fool though, so I guess it must go rapidly downhill.
Maps and LegendsI didn't even notice in the first episode that those two were Romulan.
Interesting that there are Irish Romulans.
I guess that's the second ever F bomb in Trek? Much much better placed than Tilly's "I said strawberry float because we need prove this is an adult show!".
Another enjoyable episode. So far it seems ti be setting up mysteries and then immediately revealing them (
the Romulan spies), while leaving the central mystery bubbling away in the background.
It's a shame Picard doesn't want to get the band back together. I'm pretty sure we'll meet them all at some point, and some of those old TNG actors could do with the work.
The End is The BeginningOoo
we finally get an "engage" Another good one, although the slow build up to actual space adventures was starting to wear thin.
I am not sure
what to make of the Starfleet/Romulan/Borg situation or where the synths fit in. As they said in the episode, why would the Romulans strawberry float with Earth just as Romulus is about to be wiped out? And why do the ex-Borg know the synth sister? I hope this isn't leading to some bollocks about the sisters being a hybrid of Data and the Borg. I'm not sure what to make of the new captain and his EMH. Both seem to have the possibility of either being very annoying or becoming some of the best things in the show.
Absolute CandorNice callback at the start to Picard hating kids.
These are the ninja nuns from Discovery, right? I hope Burnham's mum doesn't show up.
Nice to see Picard getting told off.
The leader of the nuns was much better at it than the kid though. I hope his acting improves as this goes on.
A lot of this felt like a fantasy story. An old man has a quest and recruits a young warrior to aid him by binding him to his service.
To be fair the dialogue pretty much said that, so it's a bit unfair to mock.
The ending was a surprise
I seen to remember hearing Seven was in this, but didn't think she'd appear like that. She seems to know Picard as well, I'm looking forward to (hopefully!) finding out more about what happened to the Voyager crew after they got home! A bit of a dip from the previous episodes. Still decent enough though and I really liked the ending.
Stardust City RagWhat the strawberry float is this opening scene? Have I put Dexter on by mistake? Wait. Is that Icheb?
Looks like Seven can drink now, back on Voyager she'd be pissed on a tiny amount.
Erghh, pop up adverts are still a problem in the future.
Nice to see Quark is doing well, although I guess he might have just sold his name and then lost all the money.
That final scene was a good twist, I didn't see her killing anybody! I wonder what she has seen to make her willing to kill somebody she clearly loved? This was a bizarre episode. It felt absolutely nothing at all like Star Trek. Discovery skirted the line between Trek/not Trek, but (even when it was at its shittest) usually stayed on the Trek side. This just felt so out of place. It's like it wanted to be a violent adult TV show. But didn't quite have the balls to actually make it adult, just a gross scene and then a piss poor "pose as criminals" load of crap.
The worst of Picard so far.
The Impossible BoxHugh I didn't recognise him before. A complete turnaround from the previous one. This was decent from beginning to end, other than the dreadful acting from Picard's ninja friend.
Picard said something like it's the first time he's been on a Borg cube since he was turned into a Borg? Did he not ever go on another one, in First Contact for instance?
The Romulan guy is more interesting than I though he was going to be. He seemed to actually care about the synth, even if he also thinks she is just an object. His sister is pretty dreadful though, she's way too one note.
NepentheRiker looks older than Picard. And of course he has a pizza oven in the garden. The main baddie is probably a decent actress, but the character is just too cartoonish to work. She might as well just stand there cackling and twirling a moustache. If she had a moustache. And the good guy ninja is terrible. I hope they kill him off soon.
The
killing of Hugh was really poorly done. He wasn't in TNG much, but still, he deserved a better story and end then he got. The show seems to jump around time periods too much. There's way too many "14 years ago" "3 weeks ago" scenes. And when they show beloved characters from the older shows, you instantly know it's just going to be a brief appearance for an episode or two. It's probably impossible to get all of them back together for an entire series, but they must know we all want more than just an extended cameo.
Those are minor moans though, this was wonderful. A great balance of nostalgia and the present. And they even managed to get a really good kid actor instead of the annoying/wooden (or annoyingly wooden) ones we usually get in Trek.
At this stage I can only assume Season 2 is terrible, because (other than that one episode) Picard has been pretty good so far. I'm not understanding why people don't seem to like it.
Broken PiecesDid the Romulans ever react particularly badly to Data in TNG? It seems a big plot hole that they, or at least this sect, didn't go after him.
Another very enjoyable episode. While there was action, it felt like a talky one. Lots of answers, while not giving everything away.
I didn't believe Seven would suddenly become a Borg queen, but you could see how tempted she was. That was some good acting.
I thought they forgave the weird science lady a bit too easily. While the murder was not really her fault, she certainly isn't somebody that I'd let loose amongst the ship until I was 100% sure. And a quick chat with the synth isn't enough! If they can keep this up for the final 2 parter, then this will be a successful season of TV!
Et in Arcadia Ego: Part 1Those male Soong genes are STRONG. They've looked exactly the same for generations, all the way back to Captain Archer. And they've all gone into the mad scientist career path.
As a part 1, this felt like mostly set up for the actual finale. It was lacklustre though. I was disappointed that
they went down the "synthetics need to destroy organics" route. I know we kind of had that with Lore, but it does the memory of Data a big disservice to just do the overused "AI rises up" tripe (my phone autocorrected trope, but tripe works well ) that is in so much sci-fi.
Having said that, I fully expect this to flip it around in the final episode. Soji will realise it's wrong and will persuade enough of the others. The Federation (probably not the Romulans :lol) will then see that synths are not all bad. Et in Arcadia Ego: Part 2My prediction was pretty spot on. It's not quite how I imagined it going down, but was close enough.
I've refrained from saying it all the way through, but the main Romulan guy just didn't seem anything like a Romulan. He just played the character as human. It's not that he's a bad actor, but he wasn't at all believable as a Romulan. His sister was much better in that regard,
although she died way too easy The
robotic tentacles coming out of the portal was strawberry floating stupid. What a terrible decision. Great
to see Riker in uniform again. Daft that he managed to rejoin Starfleet, take command of a ship and travel there in that amount it time though! I don't know if Season 2 was announced before the end of Season 1, but
it really would have destroyed any tension over whether Picard lived or died. I was just waiting to see how they saved him.
But I didn't expect it to be what it was. While the whole "one positronic neuron of Data has all his memories" thing is bollocks, the emotion of Picard saying goodbye to his friend was very very well done. It's just a shame it was preceded by a disappointing and cliche ridden "synths v organics battle to the death...no wait they like each other now!" story.
So Picard is a synth now, he just looks identical and has the exact same mind....ok It's a flaw with a lot of TV series, but there was way too much teleporting (without a transporter
) around without explaining how characters got there. I can let it go, but it is lazy storytelling.
Overall it was a decent season, Stardust was a crap episode and the majority of the finale was poorly done. But most of the series was an enjoyable watch. And it's amazing just how much it was based on Nemesis. I didn't hate that movie, but would never have guessed any Trek would even mention it again, let alone reference it so heavily.