Star Trek: Picard

[TheSupernova]

I know this is awful, but when the Confederation officers beamed about La Sirens and blasted Elnor, my initial reaction was "Oh no, they shot their dog!"

(Honestly, I feel his character has been reduced to pretty much "family dog", going between overly affectionate to attacking all the threats. I haven't been a big fan of Elnor since the start, but it feels disappointing all the same)

 

[Dvandom]

Speculation:

Spoiler

Q is unwell because in this universe, humanity actually found a way to hurt him as part of their ruthless extermination program.

---Dave

 

[Glitch]

Elnor's been totally pointless, just a token Romulan. I keep calling him Legolas though.

 

[The Predaking]

Speculation:

Spoiler

Q is unwell because in this universe, humanity actually found a way to hurt him as part of their ruthless extermination program.

---Dave

That is a good theory but probably not right since it would be interesting. Like maybe he mad because his son was killed.

 

[Darth_Prime]

I’m interested to see where the season goes. I’d like to see some better shots of the Excelsior and the Hikara Sulu. One thing that’s always bugged me about Star Trek, is unless it’s the Enterprise, Voyager, or whatever show the main ship is, we don’t get any good shots of the other ships. I’d like to see a big space battle too, I always feel slightly cheated on those as well.

 

[Copper Bezel]

Speculation:

Spoiler

Q is unwell because in this universe, humanity actually found a way to hurt him as part of their ruthless extermination program.

---Dave

That is a good theory but probably not right since it would be interesting. Like maybe he mad because his son was killed.

I'm going to acknowledge that you can ultimately explain any amount of temporal shenanigans and handwaving with three words in any story involving Q. But it's still extra steps.

Spoiler

The exposition was painfully explicit about the fact that this is Back to the Future 1 rather than 2, and this alternate timeline doesn't exist separately like the Mirror Universe does, but was created by a change to the prime timeline. That implies that the change to the timeline is part of Q's plan, because this new timeline didn't exist until Q put the cast there, because they didn't exist simultaneously in the meta-time of the viewer (regardless of the centuries of time that happened in the normal sequence of things after the change for the people experiencing it.) The threat to Q just can't have existed yet, even from across timeline boundaries, because the timeline didn't. They could later explain that the rules are different from that, but after they've spent one episode hinting that it's the MU and then revealing that it isn't, I don't think it'd be a very satisfying turn if the exposition turned out to be wrong after all again.

And while not completely ignored, Picard being a synth is super low key. Basically every plot point introduced in season one has been utterly ignored.

They're keeping it on hand for later though, and went out of their way to do so.

Spoiler

It actually makes no sense that this alternate timeline version of Picard would take a synthetic body based on his frail old self and designed to continue to age, but he explicitly did, just to avoid undoing the first season ending. The mechanics of what Q does when they fix the timeline could be anything, so Seven may or may not get her residual implants back, but they took that extra step to keep Picard's synthetic body even in the interim.

Unrelated things:

Spoiler

It bothers me so much that La Sirena exists and is a Confederacy warship in this timeline. I know it's just to have La Sirena around for the rest of the series in the 21st C., but there's just no explaining how it got there.

Patton Oswalt cat was my favorite thing in Picard so far and I can't believe they left him in the future.

 

[SHIELD Agent 47]

They're keeping it on hand for later though, and went out of their way to do so.

Spoiler

It actually makes no sense that this alternate timeline version of Picard would take a synthetic body based on his frail old self and designed to continue to age, but he explicitly did, just to avoid undoing the first season ending. The mechanics of what Q does when they fix the timeline could be anything, so Seven may or may not get her residual implants back, but they took that extra step to keep Picard's synthetic body even in the interim.

Unrelated things:

Spoiler

It bothers me so much that La Sirena exists and is a Confederacy warship in this timeline. I know it's just to have La Sirena around for the rest of the series in the 21st C., but there's just no explaining how it got there.

That's what I thought too.

Spoiler

It would actually make sense if Stewart were younger to safely perform stunts which show Picard's synth body having super strength, super speed, and everything which TNG's filming technology pulled punches on for Data.

As for your other point, it may be too Star Wars-y, but it seems light freighters are more manoeuvrable than Star Trek's typical heavy cruisers, so the Confederation would field something more aggressive in mass production than the Peregrine fighters used by the Federation in the Dominion War. It's too bad the showrunners evidently don't have the old Prometheus-class model as multi-vector assault mode on a cruiser would be even more fittingly aggressive.

 

[Copper Bezel]

Per things I've seen on Trekyards,

Spoiler

that Akira Class model that the STO guys built for the long shot in the fleet was probably significantly higher def than the one used in First Contact, which the Trekyards guys actually got to play with once and was very much a game quality model by current standards. I don't think the Prometheus from Voyager would be ready for closeups. That doesn't mean they couldn't upscale it in the same way with some modeling time and borrow a federation bridge from the Disco set, of course.

And I do get that ultimately, what they wanted was their small and unstarship-like La Sirena to have in the 21st C., and bonus for getting to keep the same set. La Sirena seems more like a runabout with wings added for quarters and engines than a scaling down of even relatively tiny starships like the Defiant, which would have made perfect sense in the combat scene but wouldn't feel scrappy and RV-like enough for the cast to take with them into the past. (Or I suppose La Sirena is right in between a runabout and the Defiant, by nominal number of decks and general tube-ness, I guess, coincidentally putting its interior space somewhere around that of a Klingon BoP, the preferred vessel for time travel to late capitalist Earth.)

 

[MrBlud]

But they DRM’d the body to be just as janky as his old human one.

They even spent time *explicitly* exposition dumping that.

 

[Lobjob]

So far I am very excited about season 2.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Any body think it weird that Captain Rios orders his crew to stop shooting the Borg thing and...they just keep shooting? Also, during their little meeting on the Stargazer, shouldn't other members of the bridge crew or department heads be in on the meeting? Minor, nitpicky things but they stood out to me.

Back to the good stuff, I am cautiously optimistic about this season. Its been really great so far and I am definitely concerned for Q. I hope they keep the ball rolling. I am actually enjoying myself.

 

[Copper Bezel]

It's weird, I don't really have any optimism for it but I'm enjoying it and I'm going to keep watching. There are enough small things I like, whether it's Patton Oswalt Cat or the fleet shot or Seven being badass, that I feel like I'm probably going to enjoy the experience even though I fully expect the overall story to be a letdown.

But they DRM’d the body to be just as janky as his old human one.

They even spent time *explicitly* exposition dumping that.

The one thing they technically didn't do this time was explicitly say that those limitations extend to the synthetic body Picard now has in the alternate timeline. Logically it shouldn't, because the circumstances Q exposits for how Picard got that body in this timeline were different. I feel like we know that it nevertheless does apply, because the show is just not going to throw CGI Picard having a Yoda fight at us and none of this alternate timeline stuff is going to matter after the next episode, but that one link hasn't technically been established explicitly.

But it's splitting hairs - I think 47 is assuming that Stewart's age and his body's age DRM are a package deal, and that it would have made sense to turn a character into a synth for action scene reasons but only if that character was then going to go on and do action scenes.

I'm still at a loss to explain what the first season intended to accomplish by making Picard a synth myself. I think the one thing the writers intended that worked for me on some level was the idea that Picard was part of Data's family and Soji's minority group now. Season 1 is full of minority groups Picard represents at a distance, because he's not treated as an XB because they got him out quick enough to remove the implants, he's obviously not a Romulan, and until the end, he's not a synth. (Synths aren't banned in the Federation anymore, but surely there's still some fear and discrimination we'll see when they get back to the Federation in the second season, right? Right? Oh, never mind.)

But bringing him back as a synth was also just a naked plot mechanic for a death fakeout, which I just despise, and I think there was potential for emotional payoff there in relation to Soji and in relation to his brain condition, but I also think that whatever the writers intended to accomplish with those aspects got utterly scrambled in the final result to the point that the original intentions are indecipherable.

For right now it really seems like something the writers are keeping in their back pocket for a future situation in which someone will be inclined to react, positively or negatively, to Picard on the basis that he is technically a synth.

 

[Axaday]

I feel like there have been a lot of starships named after famous people and they were all just last name until Hikaru Sulu. Am I wrong about that?

It makes me feel weird too. I like that unlike most of Kirk's crew, Sulu got his own wings. And I don't know how many starships there are. Maybe way more than I imagine. But a century after the end of Sulu's career, what was it that made someone want to name a starship after him? Starfleet has always been full of capable officers like him, but he didn't get a ship named after him IN UNIVERSE for anything we saw him do and it just emphasizes to me that it wasn't in universe that he got a ship named after him. The name was made in OUR universe because he was an important character in OUR universe and probably also because George Takei is such a likeable celebrity. So even though it would technically be taking the fan service to yet another level, I now want something to flesh out what made Hikaru Sulu so remarkable outside my view. Did he become President of the Federation or something? Did he sacrifice his life holding off 5 Romulan ships to save his crew?

 

[SHIELD Agent 47]

But it's splitting hairs - I think 47 is assuming that Stewart's age and his body's age DRM are a package deal, and that it would have made sense to turn a character into a synth for action scene reasons but only if that character was then going to go on and do action scenes.

I'm still at a loss to explain what the first season intended to accomplish by making Picard a synth myself. I think the one thing the writers intended that worked for me on some level was the idea that Picard was part of Data's family and Soji's minority group now. Season 1 is full of minority groups Picard represents at a distance, because he's not treated as an XB because they got him out quick enough to remove the implants, he's obviously not a Romulan, and until the end, he's not a synth. (Synths aren't banned in the Federation anymore, but surely there's still some fear and discrimination we'll see when they get back to the Federation in the second season, right? Right? Oh, never mind.)

But bringing him back as a synth was also just a naked plot mechanic for a death fakeout, which I just despise, and I think there was potential for emotional payoff there in relation to Soji and in relation to his brain condition, but I also think that whatever the writers intended to accomplish with those aspects got utterly scrambled in the final result to the point that the original intentions are indecipherable.

Sorry if I didn't make my writing clear, but yeah, my point is to agree with you that Picard becoming a synth is ridiculously pointless to the storyline because Stewart is too old to do any stunts which would take advantage of a synth body in a frikkin' sci-fi show. For Pete's sake, at least TNG did some camera tricks to exploit Data's superspeed, supervision, chassis hardness, resistance to radiation, and longevity. The insult to injury here is that Stewart is portraying the body of General Picard who almost certainly would have cool technological upgrades as a synth for war!

I feel like there have been a lot of starships named after famous people and they were all just last name until Hikaru Sulu. Am I wrong about that?

It makes me feel weird too. I like that unlike most of Kirk's crew, Sulu got his own wings. And I don't know how many starships there are. Maybe way more than I imagine. But a century after the end of Sulu's career, what was it that made someone want to name a starship after him? Starfleet has always been full of capable officers like him, but he didn't get a ship named after him IN UNIVERSE for anything we saw him do and it just emphasizes to me that it wasn't in universe that he got a ship named after him. The name was made in OUR universe because he was an important character in OUR universe and probably also because George Takei is such a likeable celebrity. So even though it would technically be taking the fan service to yet another level, I now want something to flesh out what made Hikaru Sulu so remarkable outside my view. Did he become President of the Federation or something? Did he sacrifice his life holding off 5 Romulan ships to save his crew?

You're mostly right. I checked, and it turns out that TNG 1.24 had the U.S.S. Albert Einstein and the U.S.S. Elmer Fudd in an Okudagram list, for what that's worth. And to be fair, PIC 1.10 introduced the U.S.S. Zheng He, which includes both a Chinese surname and given name.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

It makes me feel weird too. I like that unlike most of Kirk's crew, Sulu got his own wings. And I don't know how many starships there are. Maybe way more than I imagine. But a century after the end of Sulu's career, what was it that made someone want to name a starship after him? Starfleet has always been full of capable officers like him, but he didn't get a ship named after him IN UNIVERSE for anything we saw him do and it just emphasizes to me that it wasn't in universe that he got a ship named after him. The name was made in OUR universe because he was an important character in OUR universe and probably also because George Takei is such a likeable celebrity. So even though it would technically be taking the fan service to yet another level, I now want something to flesh out what made Hikaru Sulu so remarkable outside my view. Did he become President of the Federation or something? Did he sacrifice his life holding off 5 Romulan ships to save his crew?

While Paramount has never considered itself beholden to any expanded lore, I feel it worth noting that in the so-called "Shatnerverse" novel continuity (The Return and its sequels, bascially hewing very close to the audiovisual continuity but with a few key points of divergence -- sort of like Wings Universe to the Sunbow cartoon for Transformers fans), we learn that Hikaru Sulu did jump from 1-star admiral (as mentioned in Voyager dialogue) to politician and served three terms as UFP President in around the 2330s or so.

Now this is only me talking, but after running into a fair number of Tube of You commenters who insisted that "Old Man Picard" (as I call it, with affection) cannot be a sequel to the 1966-2005 audiovisual Trek continuity Because Reasons, I've been entertaining the thought experiment that this is the future of said novel continuity. It would explain both the points of commonality and a few problems that fans have had....

 

[MrBlud]

Sulu was navigator on probably the most famous Federation ship in History. He was the first to report Praxis exploded which kickstarted the Khitomer Accords and peace with the Klingon Empire. He also helped stop Chang and the other conspirators.

I feel like that’s plenty to warrant a ship.

 

[Kup]

I feel like there have been a lot of starships named after famous people and they were all just last name until Hikaru Sulu. Am I wrong about that?

This also opens the possibility that both he and Demora were so influential in the 23rd/early 24th centuries that they needed to distinguish which Sulu this is for.

 

[Axaday]

This also opens the possibility that both he and Demora were so influential in the 23rd/early 24th centuries that they needed to distinguish which Sulu this is for.

Yeah, I thought of that.

Sulu was navigator on probably the most famous Federation ship in History. He was the first to report Praxis exploded which kickstarted the Khitomer Accords and peace with the Klingon Empire. He also helped stop Chang and the other conspirators.

I feel like that’s plenty to warrant a ship.

I mean...these are the sort of things that a Starfleet captain is supposed to be prepared to do. The biggest deal there is his role in stopping that conspiracy. Maybe. I've never heard of a USS Kirk and he was arguably a pretty big deal... Probably a big question it comes down to is how many ships are there? If there are like 70,000 starships now, I get it. Coming up with names gets hard.

 

[Kalidor]

I feel like there have been a lot of starships named after famous people and they were all just last name until Hikaru Sulu. Am I wrong about that?

It makes me feel weird too. I like that unlike most of Kirk's crew, Sulu got his own wings. And I don't know how many starships there are. Maybe way more than I imagine. But a century after the end of Sulu's career, what was it that made someone want to name a starship after him? Starfleet has always been full of capable officers like him, but he didn't get a ship named after him IN UNIVERSE for anything we saw him do and it just emphasizes to me that it wasn't in universe that he got a ship named after him. The name was made in OUR universe because he was an important character in OUR universe and probably also because George Takei is such a likeable celebrity. So even though it would technically be taking the fan service to yet another level, I now want something to flesh out what made Hikaru Sulu so remarkable outside my view. Did he become President of the Federation or something? Did he sacrifice his life holding off 5 Romulan ships to save his crew?

There were some ships named after people with their full names that exist as real people in our timeline, but they are people like Albert Einstein and John F Kennedy.

Certainly more notable than a random Captain in Starfleet, I agree.

 

[Kup]

Yeah, I thought of that.



I mean...these are the sort of things that a Starfleet captain is supposed to be prepared to do. The biggest deal there is his role in stopping that conspiracy. Maybe. I've never heard of a USS Kirk and he was arguably a pretty big deal... Probably a big question it comes down to is how many ships are there? If there are like 70,000 starships now, I get it. Coming up with names gets hard.

I thought there was, but apparently it’s just a Memory Beta ship with non canon appearance. Captained by Elias Vaughn though so there’s that.

 

[Kalidor]

As far as the "47" that's something that's been running in Star Trek since TNG. Look up "The number 47 and Star Trek" on google.