PIC: The End is the Beginning.

[Taurian Patriot]

I don't mind much of the show, at least toward the beginning. I'd chalk up its ultimate flaws as being the same as Voyager's and Enterprise's: tremendous potential that the writers/executives jettison in order to stick with the routine (routine Trek in the case of VOY and ENT, routine modern sci-fi television and gaming in the case of PIC). And there's nobody who actively angers me like Discovery season 1's Michael Burnham, with a "Please Love Me!" sign strapped to her back by the writers.

This episode does hit one of my peeves, though, by trying to offer an in-universe explanation for superficial differences: in this case, the various forms of Romulan makeup over the franchise. And it's not necessarily because trying to explain it just raises more questions (which it does), but because I know that, somewhere out there, there are fans who've actually demanded answers for this sort of thing.

It's one of the reasons I greatly hesitate to call myself a "fan" of anything, since I know that category includes those who treat fiction as though it represented an objective reality. Consistency with characterization and plot elements is one thing, since a compelling story hinges on those, but does it really matter that forehead lumps come and go, or a phaser beam comes out of the torpedo tube in one episode?

[Link8909]

There's a lot I love about this and the previous two episodes that make up a solid opener for me personally, the introduction to the awesome Captain Cristóbal Rios of the La Sirena and his Emergency Holograms, the glimpses into Romulan culture and mythos, and seeing the different parts of Earth like the Daystrom Institute, on top of the fantastic character moments and interactions, and the reintroduction to the Star Trek past the TNG era and expanding on things that only Beta Material has covered like the fallout of the Romulan Supernova.

I really enjoyed Chuck's talk about Raffi and speculation on lore, and something I love overall about Star Trek Picard is how it weaves bits of Star Trek lore into the story naturally, Laris's comment on how the assassin was a northerner and showing both versions of Romulans, seeing the different Emergency Holograms on the La Sirena, and the little bits of Romulan lore like during Soji's interview with Ramdha, with her sort of Tarot Cards, how she refers to it as the news, and how it began with the false door, and as I posted in the previous Star Trek Picard review thread about the political aspects to why there was conflict to helping the Romulans to begin with because of Admiral Clancy comments, these broad strokes as Chuck put it helps make the Star Trek even more fascinating to speculate on without being bogged down in too much detail.

Something I also love in this episode is something Picard said at the beginning:

"Mars is burning, tens of thousands are dead, and nobody is thinking, nobody is listening, they're just reacting!"

This line is so meaningful as it incapsulate what I feel has been the mentality of many people nowadays, not just to larger and important issues, but simple and small ones to, people are far more quicker to react to something that they don't think of their actions or consequence, and far to quick to be hate-filled and lash out, it's also why I always use Picard's line from "The Wounded" in my signatures, a caution to overs and even myself that if someone is hate-filled all the time, that in the end that hatred will define them.

[clearspira]

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 think the moment that Picard gets on that crappy little ship with its ''ragtag crew'' the show would work quite well as a Farscape crossover. Crichton accidentally gets home 400 years too late using broken wormhole tech - rescues Picard - its writes itself.

So yes - fanfiction at its finest.

[Mabus]

Before watching the review, I finally got around to watch the 2011 film Limitless. It's a good film, but it has some issues. If you haven't seen it, I'll spoil the plot for you: Some loser writer suffering from writer's block and procrastination gets offered a miraculous pill containing an active ingredient called NZT, that greatly increases you attention, intelligence, confidence. But if taken in excess they give you some form sensation of invincibility and eventually you suffer some form of neurological damage if you don't take them anymore (memory loss/blackouts, headaches, lack of focus and eventually death). The film explores the effects these new "superpowers" have on the main character. That is the first half of the film. Because the second half goes bonkers. Early in the film decides to go into stock exchange, and manages to go from 800$ to 7500 $ in three days, and at the rate he made his money he would have gotten to 120k in two days. But nope, that's not enough so he borrows from a Russian loan shark 100k $ because he was too lazy to wait two more days so that later he can waste more days spending money on crap. Apparently that was meant to show that he's overconfident and even geniuses make mistakes... except he doesn't pay the loan shark at all, even though he had enough money by the second and third day to pay him tenfold! And this was months before he started to get the memory blackouts! He only pays him very late, and the loan shark finds his pills and after he just takes one he wants more. Yup, the only reason this subplot keeps happening is because the film needed some dumb tension, and apparently having a cat and mouse game between Bradley Cooper's character with Robert deNiro's character, an eccentric drug-fuel young genius vs old-school experienced businessman with plenty of tricks that's can't be learned at a quick glance is far less exciting than some generic Russian mobster stalking the main character for more drugs and whose greatest moment of genius was that he discovered Google (that's a line said in the film), as well as some rando 60-year old drug dealer than could outrun a woman in her late 20s in the Central Park, stab to death two guys bigger than him, then chase said woman again without getting tired, running on ice without slipping, dropping the bloody murder weapon on an ice rink full of families with kids and not get arrested, not even at the end of the film, which takes place a few months later, and not even Cooper's character doesn't get questioned by the police after he killed the Russian mobsters in his apartment even though he was currently investigated for the death of a woman he slept with and he didn't remember that since it happened when he had blackouts from the NZT excess, and that was supposed to be an important subplot, which also goes nowhere. Oh and those nasty lethal side-effects due to excessive consumption of NZT and subsequent quitting? You just have to take more, and if you take the dose properly, eventually you can even quit them and your superintelect remains...? Apparently the film's ending was changed and I'm not sure what version I watched, it said "unrated", but could be another, I don't know. So remember kids, if you take a brain damaging drug, you have to keep taking it, eventually you won't need it. Wow, what a great aesop!

This is what I like to call "Hollywooditis". It's when an interesting story gets screwed over by the writer (the film was adapted from a story), producer, director or executives, because either is too "cerebral", doesn't have enough "action" or needs a new direction or to subvert expectations. Rather then let the story develop organically, maximize your main character's interaction with the other characters, have the character face the consequences of his actions, which developed organically from the story, nope, you have to cram in as many subplots that go nowhere as possible, every character has to act like an idiot and avoid the more interesting obvious over the less interesting obscure, that way your story goes all over the place, and everyone will be asking questions about the movie's flaws rather than the movie's themes, because in the producers' head those things are the same.

When I look at Picard, I find the same issues that plagues Limitless: uninteresting villains or antagonists that ultimately go nowhere or get underused, main character(s) acting like morons to drive the plot forwards or to avoid solving the plot in 5 minutes, idiot ball everywhere (yeah, let's destroy our only lead to find more androids; positronic brains can be detected from light years as per ST:Nemesis, well, we sure forgot how to do that a few years later when it could have come in handy, now we'll never find androids or related positronic brain-technologies; "begin the unnecessarily slow-dipping mechanism "; let's prepare to fire on the planet for like 4 times; let's not fire at the androids even after their shut down their beacon, even though 5 minutes earlier it's clear were were willing to go to war against the Federation for that, it's not like we're fanatics or something) subplots that go nowhere (everything related to the Borg cube, Raffi's shitty life; admiral potty mouth) and the conclusion to the story contradicts itself (we shouldn't fear androids because there's a chance they might bring the end of the world, except we should because they nearly did that in less than a day).

It's clear as day that what hurts Picard and NuTrek in general is the severe incompetence of the execs and producers, the lazy writing and the general uncaring attitude towards worldbuilding and continuity, sometimes even in their own series.

[clearspira]

There's a lot I love about this and the previous two episodes that make up a solid opener for me personally, the introduction to the awesome Captain Cristóbal Rios of the La Sirena and his Emergency Holograms, the glimpses into Romulan culture and mythos, and seeing the different parts of Earth like the Daystrom Institute, on top of the fantastic character moments and interactions, and the reintroduction to the Star Trek past the TNG era and expanding on things that only Beta Material has covered like the fallout of the Romulan Supernova.

I really enjoyed Chuck's talk about Raffi and speculation on lore, and something I love overall about Star Trek Picard is how it weaves bits of Star Trek lore into the story naturally, Laris's comment on how the assassin was a northerner and showing both versions of Romulans, seeing the different Emergency Holograms on the La Sirena, and the little bits of Romulan lore like during Soji's interview with Ramdha, with her sort of Tarot Cards, how she refers to it as the news, and how it began with the false door, and as I posted in the previous Star Trek Picard review thread about the political aspects to why there was conflict to helping the Romulans to begin with because of Admiral Clancy comments, these broad strokes as Chuck put it helps make the Star Trek even more fascinating to speculate on without being bogged down in too much detail.

Something I also love in this episode is something Picard said at the beginning:

"Mars is burning, tens of thousands are dead, and nobody is thinking, nobody is listening, they're just reacting!"

This line is so meaningful as it incapsulate what I feel has been the mentality of many people nowadays, not just to larger and important issues, but simple and small ones to, people are far more quicker to react to something that they don't think of their actions or consequence, and far to quick to be hate-filled and lash out, it's also why I always use Picard's line from "The Wounded" in my signatures, a caution to overs and even myself that if someone is hate-filled all the time, that in the end that hatred will define them.

Keyword: nowadays. As in 2021. As in ''what the fuck happened to my evolved humans of the 24th century?''

What amuses me as well is that even Star Trek Enterprise, the show that was meant to be the bridging gap between 2021 and Star Trek, actually had people in it who were morally superior than 99% of the characters in PIC. I would go as far as to say that if - today - you gave me the choice of serving under Captain Jonathan ''Duchess, Hobo, Lover of Gazelles, Destroyer of the Valekians'' Archer or anyone we have ever seen after ENT the show ended, I would choose Archer.

[Link8909]

Keyword: nowadays. As in 2021. As in ''what the f[RED ALERT]k happened to my evolved humans of the 24th century?''

Simply, it was never perfect to begin with and people are capable of making morally wrong decisions for what they believe is a greater good, Star Trek has always shown human fallibility, this isn't the first time the Federation has made a morally grey decision, and there are plenty of episodes in the franchise that explore this, one of Star Trek Deep Space Nines themes is to show that ugly side of humanity and show how governments can and will compromise their morals in times of crisis, and many proclaim this to be the best Star Trek series despite going against the utopian future of Star Trek, and the only time Star Trek has acted like humans are infallible to the point were the future looks more like a cult is season one of The Next Generation.

As Chuck said, it's not a utopia because everyone agrees on the same thing, it's one because we all have different opinions, views, and beliefs, and still respect each other as people, and what I personally like about showing this in Star Trek Picard is Picard himself, while he may have lost faith in Strafleet, he still holds to Starfleet morals no matter what, a true paragon of the ideals that Star Trek has always taught us to live up to, and not just Picard, Hugh helping the XB's regain their individuality, Riker coming to the aid of his Captain and defending the Androids of Coppelius form Oh and the Zhat Vash, and Picard's motley crew in the end are inspired by Picard to be better than they were.

The future may not be perfect, but as long as people like Picard are there, I still feel it's a bright one in my opinion.

[DrWheelz]

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.

That's entirely possible, and certainly believable (I don't care enough about Abrams\Kurtzman Trek to look if any sources actually said that), but if that's the case, I think that it probably should have been brought up somewhere along the line. As is, it just makes it look like another case of writers not giving any thought to what they're writing about apart from the most superficial aspects (the Romulan shanty town is my favorite. "We have technology that can create absolutely anything we want, so let's live like extras in a Clint Eastwood movie.")*

*yes, I know, physics-defying limitations and all that, but the people that brought you anti-ship blossoms are never going to let true science stand in the way of telling really awful stories.

[CharlesPhipps]

I liked Chuck's statement that you can't just tell people it's a utopia and people will accept it. It reminded me of THE PURGE and how people were like, "Wait, all unemployment and poverty is gone because you legalize crime for 12 hours a year? What the hell?"

Which ironically made the later movies all the more interesting because it is government propaganda and an excuse for killing minorities.

Anyway, Re: Abandoning Romulus:

Frankly, I think that the Federation can't be blamed because they did make the enormous effort to try to save billions of their worst enemies as well as show what good little boys and girls they are in Paradise. THEN THEY HAD MARS DESTROYED along with the fleet they had built to do all the efforts. That's not NOTHING. People act like they're suddenly all Nazis or the villains from Dishonored gloating over people dying.

That's not going out to rescue a bunch of people caught in a storm because the first rescue ship and the island that they were being sent from were all destroyed. It's not moral or the right thing, don't get me wrong, but it is fundamentally different moral calculus than Rorshach going, "No."

[Link8909]

I liked Chuck's statement that you can't just tell people it's a utopia and people will accept it. It reminded me of THE PURGE and how people were like, "Wait, all unemployment and poverty is gone because you legalize crime for 12 hours a year? What the hell?"

Which ironically made the later movies all the more interesting because it is government propaganda and an excuse for killing minorities.

Anyway, Re: Abandoning Romulus:

Frankly, I think that the Federation can't be blamed because they did make the enormous effort to try to save billions of their worst enemies as well as show what good little boys and girls they are in Paradise. THEN THEY HAD MARS DESTROYED along with the fleet they had built to do all the efforts. That's not NOTHING. People act like they're suddenly all Nazis or the villains from Dishonored gloating over people dying.

That's not going out to rescue a bunch of people caught in a storm because the first rescue ship and the island that they were being sent from were all destroyed. It's not moral or the right thing, don't get me wrong, but it is fundamentally different moral calculus than Rorshach going, "No."

Indeed, and even with the destruction of Mars, it was more the Federation was divided on whether or not to help, which given that the Romulans are the Federations oldest enemy that its military are notorious for duplicity it's easy to see why other worlds wouldn't want to help, likewise it's easy to see others like Picard and Spock who would help, as Picard said in the interview:

PICARD: The Federation understood there were millions of lives at stake.

RICHTER: Romulan lives.

PICARD: No. Lives.

The Romulan people shouldn't pay for the actions of its government, and helping them not only would have broken the centuries of mistrust between the two factions, but it's simply the morally right thing to do, and I like that Picard was able to convince the Federation worlds that were against aiding the Romulans, and a fleet was build to help, and it was an unforeseen tragedy that compelled the Federation to abandon them.

The whole situation was a lot more complicated than the Federation being evil for evils sake as many people think it was, there were no bug aliens or brain washing or shapeshifters to blame, it was simply people had their own views, reasons, doubts and fears for whether or not to aid the Romulans and with the Synthetics, and while the Zhat Vash had infiltrated Starfleet, all they did was play on their fears which they gave into, as Picard said in one my favourite scenes in the series:

RIOS: I hate that he died thinking it was really Starfleet that betrayed him. Betrayed itself.

PICARD: But Starfleet did betray him. We did betray ourselves. Long before Oh gave Vandermeer that order. The ban itself was a betrayal. Oh the Zhat Vash, they set the trap, but we could merely have sidestepped it. Instead, we gave way to fear.

RIOS: It took her all of five minutes to hack my ship, Picard, and now, maybe there's a whole planet of them. Raffi said the Romulans called her 'the Destroyer'. What if they're right?

PICARD :They may be right about what happened 200,000 years ago. The past is written, but the future is left for us to write, and we have powerful tools, Rios: openness, optimism, and the spirit of curiosity. All they have is secrecy, and fear, and fear is the great destroyer, Rios.

I also like that see people being open to Romulans now, like with Laris and Zhaban living on Earth, and Raffi's son marrying and having a child with a Romulan, which she was upset about missing, I hope we get more of this in the future.

[hammerofglass]

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 think the moment that Picard gets on that crappy little ship with its ''ragtag crew'' the show would work quite well as a Farscape crossover. Crichton accidentally gets home 400 years too late using broken wormhole tech - rescues Picard - its writes itself.

So yes - fanfiction at its finest.

Plus big sections toward the end stolen nearly word for word from Mass Effect.