Sfdebris.net

Picard: The End is the Beginning.
https://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/p103.php

Or, how the writers on this show have zero imagination when it comes on how to manage post scarcity economics. For god's sake, there are people with degrees in post scarcity economics out there now, reach out to them and research it before you write Trek. FFS.

Raffi is just an ass though. She is living in a luxury RV in the middle of a national park with unlimited vape juice, she is living the Coachella life large. She is not struggling to get by in any meaningful way at all. I think it is fairly clear her ejection from Starfleet is more that when she was called up for reassignment, she ran her mouth and became the author of her own firing.

I don't blame Picard for giving up when Starfleet gave up, he gave his entire life and gave it his all long after anyone else would have given up. If any man is owed being allowed to bow out on a "screw you" and retire, then it is Picard. Sure, he could have found a private ship, like multiple man here, and started evacuating people in groups just out of sheer cussedness, but he isn't morally obligated to do that. He was morally obligated to tell the people he personally promised that he personally would take care of them, but that is a complaint for another time.

Also, also, I'd say fuck the writers for that X event was an inside job stuff that usually comes with a slice of 9/11 truthiness, as regards the Utopia Planetia subplot, but we just saw that an attempted coup in America actually was. So, I'll let it pass this time.

This should have been the end of episode one though, or at least episode two of a two part pilot episode. The current fad for stretching shit out for serialised storytelling really does validate old Gene's decision to do an anthology show in the first place.

Edit: Removed a tortured metaphor that really didn't read right.

So if the first two episodes had the role of introducing the viewer to the plot of the series, the third episode is where things start to go downhill. I'm not talking about taking a dump all over the Federation principles and the general tone (this time), I'm talking about mystery boxing the plot and trowing in lots of plots that ultimately either go nowhere or have a lame conclusion:

-Raffi's paranoia made her family hate her and she ended up a junkie, yet somehow she's allowed to live in a freakin' national park, I guess she if the higher ups she pissed off wanted her to pay, forcing her to live in a national park is kind of a stupid punishment. It's a very famous place. Dozens of people go there every day, and don't you think that the casual tourist will start asking questions as to why the Federation gov allows some wacko to live in a high tech caravan there and not help her? The Federation isn't a Soviet Russia, despite what the writers seem to push. This will draw more attention than avoid and people will start asking more questions. I mean, it's not like the conspirators have managed to perfectly hide themselves for millennia without drawing any attention to anything they do, right? Oh and how does her mini-arc get resolved? Oh yeah, her son still hates her and that's the last we hear from him. But Raffi's conspiracy theory is right,so he's wrong. But who cares.

-Raffi keeps calling Picard JL because some obscure comic said so. Which doesn't contribute to the story in any way, other than making Raffi look like even more of an ass.

-Soji is the Destroyer. Eh, OK. How? If the Romulans are so afraid that any AI could bring the end, somehow, what makes her so special? Is it because she's "synthetic"? What does that even mean? biomechanical organs? plastic lungs? They never properly explain what she's make from. Just "synthetic". So how am I supposed to know how she's supposed to be different in the context of the show? At the end she's just some android that uses the Admonition's secret instructions to build a Hellboy beacon... which could have been done by any other android? So she's the Destroyer because she actually reads the instructions? I get that the Romulans wanted to extract from her the location of her origin planet. But...

-Rios. Boy oh Rios. Quit Starfleet because his captain blew his brains in front of his eyes (I guess phasers now work with bullets again). But we later find out that Oh had Rios' captain shoot the androids that were on that ship, and then apparently destroy the ship... so why didn't Oh instead of issuing some bullshit order to kill the two androids and blow up the ship, stalled the meeting to send a team of her own to capture the ship and extract the androids' homeworld coordinates from said ship? Surely, even if the ship's navigational computer would somehow delete the coordinates for some reason, are you telling me that for the last 9 years the Romulans haven't at least sent probes in the direction the ship came from to narrow down the search? Did they seriously blow away their only lead to find more androids by literally killing off their only witnesses? How the hell have these people maintained their secrecy for like 2000 years by being such idiots? There's simply no way for Rios' story to be the way it since since it requires everyone to be a complete moron. So his backstory could be replaced with him getting kicked out of Starfleet because he plagiarized The Expanse by naming his ship in Spanish and sporting a James Holden-esque look and it won't change the story too much, if anything.

-The Romulan Cersei is a bitch, and later it's implied that her exposure to the Admonition had a hand in her being this way? While her aunt just went crazy? That's it?

-The Romulan story from the cards gets turned into exposition in the season finale: Someone calls the monsters. Monsters come and kill everyone. The end. Literally.

-The Borg cube and the xBs (I hate that term) secondary plot are presented like they'll play some important role later in the story... nope, the writers shit on the Borg worse than Voyager did: All those drones? Shot by the Romulan annoying lady. And then somehow they're alive again in the season finale. The rest? Blown into space with a push of the button. Hugh? Killed by a knife he already had in his neck. The Cube? Get taken down by fucking flowers, sorry, orchids. At least the "LoCuTuS?" guy still lives. He's the key to all this. Cause he's a funnier character than we've ever had before.

-No one thought that is was weird that the bookworm Jurati just happened to conveniently kill a Romulan superspy trooper with a Romulan phaser? Not even the genre-savy ex-Tal Shiar Irish Romulan Lady? Or her comic relief counterpart? Or Picard himself? Or Rios? Or Picard's dog from the poster? Oh wait, she was revealed later to actually be a mole, but no one suspected that in any way. I guess they were more interested in Soji's chest mole than the possibility that the Deep State could have kept a closer eye on a retired admiral that employs ex-Tal Shiar agents as his personal diaper changers, and therefor tried to sneak a spy onboard... days after getting into a fight against said Deep State... meaning they were getting closer to silencing Picard.

Basically the entire plot of the season can be summed up as this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-DDSyXaJlM
Only there were no emergency writers.

I'm fairly convinced that this show started as something that was supposed to stand on its own, until they realized that no one was going to be interested in it, so they shoehorned Picard into it and said, "There he is! Look at him! Please love us!"
When the guy who is supposed to be headlining your gig, a character beloved by millions around the world, has so little influence on the plot of his own show that he could actually be removed from it with the barest of rewrites, and not only would this not hurt the pace but actually improve it, then what you've probably done is accidentally submitted the script that you were supposed to send to DeviantArt.
I would say that I feel bad for Sir Patrick, but he knew what he was getting into, and he still chose to go through with it.

I'm just so disappointed at all the missed opportunities in the show. I never liked the whole Romulan supernova thing because it didn't make any sense. But since they've decided to make it canon, there was so much they could have done with it but they were just too lazy.

They could have had Picard try to create a civilian fleet to help evacuate Romulus. We know that there are civilian and independent freighters and traders. Kasidy Yates had her own freighter. We see trading convoys and cargo vessels all the time. You don't think the most decorated Starfleet officer who's saved the Federation a dozen times would be able to get a bunch of freighter captains to help?

Heck, I would have expected many Starfleet officers to resign with Picard to help with the evacuation effort. The Romulans helped defeat the Dominion. Of the thousands of Starfleet soldiers and even Klingons who fought with the Romulans, some would have wanted to help. It'd make perfect sense for a Maquis like movement within Starfleet, with officers sympathetic to the Romulans taking Starfleet resources to help.

Then there are all the other powers in the Alpha/Beta Quadrant. I'm sure the Ferengi would have been willing to help. Even without Rom's intervention, there'd be plenty of Ferengi who would have sold their services. Heck, being shrewd businessmen, they could have made a deal with the Romulan government. Help them evacuate in exchange for Romulan technology and Romulan scientists and engineers to work for their corporations. There could also be more insidious powers exploiting the opportunity. The Orion Syndicate could have gone in to "help," but then secretly steal Romulan technology and kidnap Romulans to be used/sold as slaves. Klingon Houses could have taken advantage of the situation to settle old blood feuds and take Romulan territory.

So many different interesting plotlines they could have done, and they threw these opportunities away for some dumb story ripping off the worst parts of Mass Effect.

I think what they're going for is that the necessary evacuation is so massive, anything done without Starfleet's help is going to be a drop in the bucket: a few individuals saved, but the vast majority still left behind.

Fianna wrote: ↑Sat Jan 09, 2021 10:12 pm I think what they're going for is that the necessary evacuation is so massive, anything done without Starfleet's help is going to be a drop in the bucket: a few individuals saved, but the vast majority still left behind.

I'm admittedly only a moderate fan (by which I mean, I've only seen the shows and movies. No comics, books, games, etc.), so I admit that I might be sucking this out of my thumb here, but isn't the Romulan Star Empire roughly the same size as the Federation? If the sun blew up, it wouldn't destroy the UFP, so how come this quadrant-spanning superpower can be brought to the level of Syrian refugees just because they lost a couple of planets? Kurtzman and the rest of his goons seem to have the same problem that Berman and Braga had back in the day, i.e. forgetting how big a planet or a galaxy can really be.

We don't really know what state the Romulans are in during Picard. Because in the last episode, the Zhat Vash, a super secret organization that's been able to hide itself for centuries, was able to gather a fleet of 200 ships in like a day. That kind of suggests that the Romulans are still a major power.

DrWheelz wrote: ↑Sat Jan 09, 2021 10:21 pm

Fianna wrote: ↑Sat Jan 09, 2021 10:12 pm I think what they're going for is that the necessary evacuation is so massive, anything done without Starfleet's help is going to be a drop in the bucket: a few individuals saved, but the vast majority still left behind.

I'm admittedly only a moderate fan (by which I mean, I've only seen the shows and movies. No comics, books, games, etc.), so I admit that I might be sucking this out of my thumb here, but isn't the Romulan Star Empire roughly the same size as the Federation? If the sun blew up, it wouldn't destroy the UFP, so how come this quadrant-spanning superpower can be brought to the level of Syrian refugees just because they lost a couple of planets? Kurtzman and the rest of his goons seem to have the same problem that Berman and Braga had back in the day, i.e. forgetting how big a planet or a galaxy can really be.

AIUI the Romulan population was highly concentrated, they controlled a lot of territory but the ruling Romulan peoples mostly lived in the one system. It is as if a supervolcano suddenly erupted under Victorian Britain, the centre being knocked out would cause the whole rest to fall apart and suddenly be surrounded by a lot of newly liberated and highly unfriendly powers. BICBW.

Disappointing to see cigars and vaping are still a think in the semi-utopian Federation future.

A guy who has holograms that are duplicates of himself is either a narcissist or has a personality disorder.

JL_Stinger wrote: ↑Sun Jan 10, 2021 1:15 am Disappointing to see cigars and vaping are still a think in the semi-utopian Federation future.

As opposed to booze? And their medical tech can probably heal lungs or something.

The series has issues but I liked it overall. I can see most of the episode posts will be nothing but bitching though.

I do think episodes 1-3 should have been condensed into 2 episodes at most. It was too drawn out. And I regret he left his Romulan friends behind, I really liked her.