Picard (contains spoilers)

Fretwired

Jalapeno said:

Belter this week.

Disagree. Weak.

The idea of Seven as a Borg Queen was intriguing ... it was wasted. The Borg on the ship were shunted into space and killed .. but hang on they can survive in space as per the film First Contact - why didn't Seven beam some back into the ship? Having Seven in control of a Borg cube that's not part of the Collective would have been an interesting plot twist, and could have been an ally for Picard in the final battle.

Rios and EMH clones grated. Was it supposed to be funny. The only interesting bit was the android in the vision - it was clearly Data or was it Lore? Is Lore the destroyer?

As for Picard he's now just Patrick Stewart. He was going through the motions .. nothing like the Picard of old. The ratings have fallen off a cliff. This show has some good ideas but suffers from poor writing and the usual political point scoring - this week immigration.

fretmeister

Fretwired said:

Jalapeno said:

Belter this week.

Disagree. Weak.

The idea of Seven as a Borg Queen was intriguing ... it was wasted. The Borg on the ship were shunted into space and killed .. but hang on they can survive in space as per the film First Contact - why didn't Seven beam some back into the ship? Having Seven in control of a Borg cube that's not part of the Collective would have been an interesting plot twist, and could have been an ally for Picard in the final battle.

Rios and EMH clones grated. Was it supposed to be funny. The only interesting bit was the android in the vision - it was clearly Data or was it Lore? Is Lore the destroyer?

As for Picard he's now just Patrick Stewart. He was going through the motions .. nothing like the Picard of old. The ratings have fallen off a cliff. This show has some good ideas but suffers from poor writing and the usual political point scoring - this week immigration.

“Usual political point scoring” has been a the season since the sixties.

Star Trek / Roddenberry is a social justice warrior. Always has been.

Stratavarious

We really really tried but my wife and I are bailing on the series.  

We got half way through the latest episode but the pointless multi accented EMH just jumped the shark.

We are out.  

Looks like the script was given to a committee of very inexperienced writers.  The plot haphazardly develops in mere paragraph long personal dramas.... 

digitalscream

Fretwired said:

Rios and EMH clones grated. Was it supposed to be funny. 

It's not funny, it's tragic. Spoiler below, but I think you'll find out next week.

Have you ever seen Rios off the ship?

darthed1981

I still love this show.

Fretwired

digitalscream said:

Fretwired said:

Rios and EMH clones grated. Was it supposed to be funny. 

It's not funny, it's tragic. Spoiler below, but I think you'll find out next week.

Have you ever seen Rios off the ship?

Apparently that's script MK 1 .. he will be replaced by his EMH though ... ;-)

Leaves Picard to command the ship for S2.

Fretwired

fretmeister said:

“Usual political point scoring” has been a the season since the sixties.

Star Trek / Roddenberry is a social justice warrior. Always has been.

Yes, but it was done very well as the main part of the story and not shoehorned in as a piece of virtue signalling. Star Trek was a way that Roddenberry could get around strict rules and talk about social issues - censors just thought it was a naff sci-fi show. Look at the casting -  a black woman in a senior role - the first on screen TV kiss between a white man and a black woman. It dealt with racism, the cold war, and one powerful episode on the Vietnam war (A Taste of Armageddon).

Jalapeno

Fretwired said:

digitalscream said:

Fretwired said:

Rios and EMH clones grated. Was it supposed to be funny. 

It's not funny, it's tragic. Spoiler below, but I think you'll find out next week.

Have you ever seen Rios off the ship?

Apparently that's script MK 1 .. he will be replaced by his EMH though ... ;-)

Leaves Picard to command the ship for S2.

Don't think he's a droid/holo - witness the drinking session - but still have nagging doubts

littlegreenman

Fretwired said:

Jalapeno said:

Belter this week.

Disagree. Weak.

The idea of Seven as a Borg Queen was intriguing ... it was wasted. The Borg on the ship were shunted into space and killed .. but hang on they can survive in space as per the film First Contact - why didn't Seven beam some back into the ship? Having Seven in control of a Borg cube that's not part of the Collective would have been an interesting plot twist, and could have been an ally for Picard in the final battle.

You assume that's an idea that can't be revisited. Those drones are still out there in space and 7 could theoretically re-harvest them and have a cube. Unlikely but not beyond the realms of possibility.

More likely the Octal planetary system is the birth place of the Borg and synthetic life and the two will come to an existential head in the next few episodes.

digitalscream

littlegreenman said:

More likely the Octal planetary system is the birth place of the Borg and synthetic life and the two will come to an existential head in the next few episodes.

Unlikely - the Borg aren't synthetic life. Their MO is to improve biological life, not create life entirely out of tech.

Fretwired

digitalscream said:

Fretwired said:

Rios and EMH clones grated. Was it supposed to be funny. 

It's not funny, it's tragic. Spoiler below, but I think you'll find out next week.

Have you ever seen Rios off the ship?

Rios left the ship in Stardust City Rag - he beamed down to Freecloud to negotiate the exchange of Seven for Maddox. Pretty sure he's human. Some of the leaks have been from early drafts of the scripts.

Latest rumour for S2 - Riker's back. Looks like the ratings collapse might have pushed the production company into relenting on the constant doom and gloom.

bbill335

it’s pretty fascinating that there’s a better show inside this one - the adventures of annika, former borg turned mercenary hero - but we’re stuck with allison pill trying her very best (i think she’s great) while the plot twists and contorts and ouroboroses itself underneath her

 so many hacky explanations for previous twists in this last ep

Fretwired

digitalscream said:

littlegreenman said:

More likely the Octal planetary system is the birth place of the Borg and synthetic life and the two will come to an existential head in the next few episodes.

Unlikely - the Borg aren't synthetic life. Their MO is to improve biological life, not create life entirely out of tech.

Agreed .. Borg to side with Picard in final battle? Like Seven he was assimilated (albeit only briefly). Not sure the Borg would like the universe full of synths. I wonder if writers will give the synths a name for their species .. Moog would be good .. ;-)

digitalscream

Fretwired said:

digitalscream said:

littlegreenman said:

More likely the Octal planetary system is the birth place of the Borg and synthetic life and the two will come to an existential head in the next few episodes.

Unlikely - the Borg aren't synthetic life. Their MO is to improve biological life, not create life entirely out of tech.

Agreed .. Borg to side with Picard in final battle? Like Seven he was assimilated (albeit only briefly). Not sure the Borg would like the universe full of synths. I wonder if writers will give the synths a name for their species .. Moog would be good .. ;-)

That's a bit of a logic hole left over from TNG and First Contact. The Borg Queen regarded Data as close to perfect, closer than biology-tech hybrids, but they've never created their own totally artificial life form.

Either they've never tried, or they've tried and failed - with the implication that, even with thousands of species assimilated, the knowledge to create a Data-alike didn't exist in any of them. That would imply incredible hubris on the part of the writers - that out of all of those thousands of species, only humans possessed the ability to create life.

bbill335

digitalscream said:

Have you ever seen Rios off the ship?

yeah, when they did the daft heist thing to get bruce maddox

digitalscream said:
 the implication that, even with thousands of species assimilated, the knowledge to create a Data-alike didn't exist in any of them. That would imply incredible hubris on the part of the writers - that out of all of those thousands of species, only humans possessed the ability to create life.

the implication from the last episode is that 

the romulans have thwarted all efforts to create synthetic life throughout history, not that no one other than Soong was clever enough to do it

Fretwired

digitalscream said:

That's a bit of a logic hole left over from TNG and First Contact. The Borg Queen regarded Data as close to perfect, closer than biology-tech hybrids, but they've never created their own totally artificial life form.

Either they've never tried, or they've tried and failed - with the implication that, even with thousands of species assimilated, the knowledge to create a Data-alike didn't exist in any of them. That would imply incredible hubris on the part of the writers - that out of all of those thousands of species, only humans possessed the ability to create life.

But the Borg couldn't assimilate Data. The Queen tried to 'bribe him' by making him more human via a skin graft.

Fretwired

digitalscream said:

That would imply incredible hubris on the part of the writers - that out of all of those thousands of species, only humans possessed the ability to create life.

We don't know that as Soong's early work was highly regarded, and he promised breakthroughs on the positronic brain. After failing to deliver on his promises, the disgraced and utterly humiliated Soong disappeared.

What happened to him is sketchy ... he claimed to have developed a series of 'robots' with his wife but did they do it all on their own? It was never fully explained how Soong got from B-4 (which was primitive) to Data. Maybe we'll get answers in Picard.

tekbow

Just watched ep.9

Loved it, but HEAVY borrowing from Mass Effect as I suspected. IMO YMMV

Fretwired

tekbow said:

Just watched ep.9

Loved it, but HEAVY borrowing from Mass Effect as I suspected. IMO YMMV

My only complaint was not enough Seven of Nine .. :-)

Who bets Soong is in fact Lore ... hence the evil synth?

tekbow

Fretwired said:

tekbow said:

Just watched ep.9

Loved it, but HEAVY borrowing from Mass Effect as I suspected. IMO YMMV

My only complaint was not enough Seven of Nine .. :-)

Who bets Soong is in fact Lore ... hence the evil synth?

Not convinced, he's done a great job of fake aging himself if so