For the first forty minutes of its forty-two-minute running time, “Stardust City Rag” is a fantastic episode, my favorite episode of Picard so far (okay, fine, the competition isn’t exactly fierce yet, given that we’re only five episodes in, but work with me, here). It is full of so much amazing stuff from beginning to end, and runs the gamut from hilarious to sad to dramatic to action-packed to horrific. This is the first solo script by Kirsten Beyer, who is not just supervising producer and co-creator (and also a friend of your humble reviewer), but is also the author of several brilliant Star Trek: Voyager novels which did powerful character work with Seven of Nine.
Then there’s the last two minutes.
This should go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyhow: THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE VERY ENDING OF THE EPISODE IN THIS REVIEW. Having said that, I’ll get to that later on, as I want to start with the stuff I liked, which was 95% of it.
One reason why I liked it so much is that stuff actually, y’know, happens this week. We’ve had four episodes of setup and backstory, and it’s nice to get significant forward movement, though there’s still way too much left unsaid. Still, Picard actually finds Bruce Maddox and we learn why Musiker wanted to go to Freecloud and we find out what Seven of Nine’s been up to in the 22 years since Voyager came home. Oh, and we also find out more about how horribly cured Borg are being treated, already hinted at by Hugh in “The End is the Beginning.”
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This is a great vehicle for Michelle Hurd. Musiker came to Freecloud because that’s where her estranged son Gabriel Hwang (and his pregnant Romulan wife Pel) are living. She’s come to make peace with Hwang, but he very obviously wants none of it. Mason Gooding and Hurd are both magnificent in this scene. Gooding’s body language is hostile from the nanosecond Hwang sees his mother, and while there are moments where you can see that he loves and misses his mother, there’s way too much anger there for that love to stay at the forefront for long. And then Hwang throws her conspiracy theory about the attack on Mars in her face, and Musiker immediately goes into a rant about how she was right, dammit, and as soon as that happens, it’s obvious that there will be no peace between mother and son. It’s a heartbreaking, brilliant scene, and Hurd, Gooding, Beyer, and director Jonathan Frakes all deserve tremendous credit for it.
Before that, we see why Picard relied on Musiker so much as his aide, as she very much knows how to get shit done. While she’s not present for the mission to retrieve Maddox, she’s the one who sets everything up, including creating a backstory for Rios that allows him to be an interfacer, acting as intermediary between Bjayzl and the character Picard is playing, setting up the exchange for Maddox.
For that alone, this would seem to be Musiker’s episode, yet she’s only a small part of it. While “Stardust City Rag” is a fine title, it could just as easily be called “Seven of Nine is Back and She’s Pissed!” In the two decades since Voyager came home, Seven has joined the Fenris Rangers, helping keep law and order in a lawless and chaotic area of space. She has tremendous bitterness toward the Federation, and a particular animus toward Bjayzl, which is the real reason why she helps Picard.
We get the first hint of that in the opening flashback from fourteen years earlier, where we see Icheb—the former Borg drone who served on Voyager during its final two seasons—being tortured and killed, his Borg implants being violently removed. When Seven shoots him in the end, it’s a mercy killing to end his suffering.
There are two nice touches in this scene: Icheb was an officer on the U.S.S. Coleman, having completed the Starfleet training he began on Voyager, and the person removing his implants can’t find his cortical node, which Icheb donated to Seven in the Voyager episode “Imperfection.”
Icheb is also one of two returning characters from past Trek series who are re-cast. It’s perhaps not surprising that Manu Intiraymi was replaced as Icheb given his comments on Twitter calling Discovery actor Anthony Rapp a “whiner” for accusing Kevin Spacey of inappropriate behavior with him as a teenager.
The other re-casting is Maddox, where the reasons for the re-casting are less obvious. Brian Brophy played Maddox in his only other appearance, way back in “The Measure of a Man.” Brophy is currently the Director of Caltech Theatre, so it’s possible the schedules didn’t work out. In any case, John Ales plays him instead, and doesn’t really look or sound anything like Brophy, who gave Maddox a distinctive arrogant, mannered style of speech.
A much stronger guest is Necar Zadegan—who can be seen on NCIS: New Orleans as Hannah Khoury—as Bjayzl. Zadegan plays her with a preternatural calm, never losing her cool, not even when Seven of Nine is choking her out. She’s got no morals, and obviously cares for nothing but herself. She’s an easy villain to hate.
The setup for rescuing Maddox is a fun little game of dress-up—and I love that Elnor, who was raised by fanatical truth-tellers, has serious issues dealing with an undercover mission where people pretend to be something they aren’t. It makes sense that the same Jean-Luc Picard who indulged in the Dixon Hill holodeck programs would pose as an eyepatch-bedecked mercenary. And after 33 years of listening to people bitch and moan about how Picard talks with a British instead of a French accent, to hear Sir Patrick Stewart put on a comedy French accent for his part is just hilarious. The only thing missing was him farting in someone’s general direction.
There are continuity touches galore in this one. There’s Icheb’s cortical node. The establishing shot of Freecloud shows signs for Mot’s Hair Emporium (nice to see that the Enterprise-D’s erstwhile barber is doing well for himself) as well as a branch of Quark’s Bar. Indeed, part of Rios’s fake interfacer backstory is a testimonial from Quark for helping him deal with the Breen. (I am now dying to see Armin Shimerman as Quark in an episode of Picard.) And there’s Rios fangoobering Seven of Nine, having already fangoobered Picard in “The End is the Beginning.”
However, the most powerful continuity hit is the reminder that Seven of Nine and Icheb and Hugh and Ramdha aren’t the only former Borg we’ve seen on Picard: there’s also the title character, who was assimilated and made into Locutus of Borg in “The Best of Both Worlds” two-parter. The moment when Picard and Seven bond over that shared history is one of the most dramatically effective scenes on Picard so far. Traumas don’t ever completely go away, we just try to manage them as best we can, and Picard admits that he’s still not completely recovered from his assimilation experience. Seven’s time as a Borg was much longer, of course, and went back to childhood, so recapturing her humanity is a lot harder. Still, it was fantastic to see that moment of understanding between the two of them. (Equally fantastic is that Seven has become a bourbon drinker…)
And, indeed, Seven doesn’t have nearly as much humanity in her as Picard hopes. At first it seems that Seven has been convinced not to kill Bjayzl by Picard’s words about revenge not solving anything, though it’s more Rios’s practical argument that the subsequent bounty on all their heads would cripple Picard’s ability to do anything that convinces her. But then, once Picard and the gang are safe with Maddox on board La Sirena, she goes back—with two phasers she got from Rios’s armory—and gleefully shoots Bjayzl. Seven has seen too much both as a Borg drone and as a Fenris Ranger to ever truly be a hero, but she knows that Picard has that in him, and she doesn’t want to ruin his optimism, because the galaxy needs more of him and less of her.
Speaking of non-heroic behavior, we have Dr. Jurati.
I’ve been worried that Commodore Oh’s approach of Jurati was to suborn her to her side, and that she joined Picard’s mission under false pretenses. Those worries came to a head at the end of the episode—an episode that also established that Jurati and Maddox’s relationship wasn’t just as friends and colleagues, but as lovers—when Jurati has Maddox alone in sickbay and, citing things she now knows that she wishes she didn’t, and that she wishes Maddox did know, kills him.
From this point forward, Jurati is utterly, completely, totally, thoroughly irredeemable. She murdered an injured helpless person. Worse, she murdered an injured helpless person she supposedly loves. Here’s the thing: whatever Oh showed her that so devastated her, it obviously was enough to convince Jurati to change her position on synths and AIs and such—so why doesn’t she first try to similarly convince Maddox? Or, failing that, why not put him in a coma or in stasis or contrive some other way to keep him out of action without killing him? Why take this appalling, despicable, extreme action?
Plus, she did it stupidly! The EMH already knows that something was going wrong with Maddox, and La Sirena likely has internal sensors and such that record what’s going on in sickbay. Are we supposed to believe that the same Dr. Jurati who could barely operate the transporter is now able to erase medical logs and internal sensor data to cover up her appalling crime? And even if she is able to erase that, the erasure will be a red flag. Hell, given Musiker’s skills at data interpretation and manipulation, she should be able to see through any cover-up Jurati could attempt in two seconds flat, which means that the next episode really needs to have Jurati thrown in the brig and being held until they return to Federation space, and if it doesn’t, I’m probably not going to be a happy reviewer.
Because Jurati is a murderer, period, full stop. I’m pissed, because I like the character, and because Alison Pill is a really good actor, but the character is forever tainted by this action.
No Narek or Soji this week—indeed, no scenes at all on “the Artifact”—which is fine, as that subplot has been spinning its wheels, and I didn’t miss the two of them and their sodden romance in the least. Next week, according to the previews, Picard will actually go to the dead Cube, and then Narek and Soji’s plot can finally move forward as well. And we’ve had more hints of a big-ass conspiracy, both from Musiker and from Maddox, and it would really be nice if we got some forward movement on that, too…
Keith R.A. DeCandido is at Farpoint 2020 this weekend as an author and musical guest, alongside Trek actors Mary Chieffo (L’Rell), Penny Johnson Jerald (Kasidy Yates), and Anthony Montgomery (Travis Mayweather) and fellow Trek authors Derek Tyler Attico, Peter David, Dave Galanter, Allyn Gibson, Robert Greenberger, Glenn Hauman, David Mack, Aaron Rosenberg, Howard Weinstein, and Steven H. Wilson. Keith’s full schedule can be found here.
I’m also puzzled by an EMH that can be turned off mid emergency. It seems a strikingly poor bit of design.
Thanks for the great review, Keith. I just finished watching this episode, and I loved every minute of it. Yes, including the final 5%. I agree that killing Maddox makes Dr. Jurati a murderer, but it also makes her much more interesting than the shy, nervous and seemingly innocent person she was before, who was really getting on my nerves. I am very curious now what she learned about the androids. If it was serious enough to make her kill her old love, Soji must be really, really dangerous (or so Commodore Oh made her believe). Together with last episode’s revelation that Soji is (or will be) “the Destroyer”, the roles in this play are much more ambiguous now – perhaps Picard is all wrong in trying to protect Soji.
I do agree, though, that it’s hard to see a way how Dr. Jurati will get away with killing Maddox, with the EMH as a witness, internal sensors and all. I hope they find some credible way out of it. I guess I would be willing to believe that her technical ineptitude was faked. Her being an authority in cybernetics, this seemed somewhat implausible anyway. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised if she is able to erase medical logs and internal sensor data.
@1 Rios has a habit of shutting his holograms down. That feature seems like a custom modification, much in the same vein as giving them all his own face.
As far as Jurati goes, whatever Commodore Oh showed her may have triggered some kind of conditioning rather than convincing her to change her mind. Or, since she wasn’t very smart about it, Oh may have some other kind of leverage. Whinging about the transporter may have been an attempt to avoid being in a position where she was able to carry out her mission.
Jurati killing Maddox kinda reminded me of Brian Bendis’ Age of Ultron event for Marvel Comics back in 2013.
It reminded me of the halfway point when Wolverine and Sue Storm go back in time to the day of Ultron’s activation and try to convince Hank Pym to abandon creating the robot as a last-ditch attempt at preventing their apocalyptic future from coming to pass. It looks like it’s worked and Pym’s been successfully convinced of the horror to come.
And then Logan goes off script. He pops the claws and kills Hank because he knows the Doctor, he knows his personality and flaws, and he feels they can’t risk Pym not being able to give into temptation.
So I’m guessing it may be the same motive here. Jurati knows Maddox intimately, she knows his personality, and may feel that convincing Maddox to believe whatever revelation Oh showed her was pointless.
Still, it would’ve worked better if she’d tried and then gone with the last resort.
I liked most everything about this ep except for the Icheb slasher-flix surgery/torture scene, which was UGH UGH UGH. Is somebody (director Frakes or network execs?) fixated on the show’s TV-MA rating? I was badly reminded of Farscape (which had a recurring thing for ocular trauma). I’m strongly motivated to complain, if I can figure out how.
Jurati killing Maddox was definitely an “idiot ball” moment. Either she doesn’t realize how easily she’ll be discovered, or La Sirena’s onboard records really are that flimsy. …Or maybe she secretly wants to be discovered? This puts a different spin on her anxiety while hovering over the transporter console, and the repeated appearance of the “please state the nature of the psychiatric emergency” Rios-EMH — she fears that if the others successfully retrieve Maddox, then her hand will be forced.
Also, Bjayzl looks like a young Deanna Troi. Probably a coincidence of nose shape and hair style.
I felt that Juarti was going to have a dark turn as soon as she showed up at Picards and said that she’d been visited by Commodore Oh. The fact that we didn’t see the actual meeting just turned on a little red alerta at the back of my neck, to borrow a phrase. I was surprised how much of a turn it was but not shocked.
The cover identities were so over the top, I’m both surprised and disappointed. A pimp hat and Picard doing a bad impersonation of a cross between Fearless Leader and Pepe le Pew? Really? And these people are supposed to be professionals?
Raffi really is broken and much more than she’s let on. Not that long ago, we saw her vaping some sort of drug and now she’s claiming that she’s clean? Her son was right for not falling for it. A drug addict in self denial is not someone you want around your child.
If Rios is a civilian, why doe she have a rather extensive armoury of phasers, especially since it’s a on man ship? And is gun control in the Federation so lax that Picard can just let Seven take two of them (which aren’t even his) when he knows that Seven is out for revenge. Giving her the weapons, makes him an accessory.
The holographic pop-up ads are another reason they could go back to standard touch controls. Sheesh, were they annoying.
At least the plot moved forward a bit but getting there was not enjoyable or entertaining.
5/10
p.s. – I still really hate the Star Wars-ifacation of the depiction of warp travel and the window instead of a view screen.
@7:
I still really hate the Star Wars-ifacation of the depiction of warp travel and the window instead of a view screen.
Yeah, it feels like Kurtzman’s influence on the show. I wish they’d stuck with the old TNG Warp Speed effect, too. I can understand the argumenet of keeping visual continuity with Discovery, but the TNG iteration of Warp Speed is just so iconic.
As for the window, I’m not happy about it either. There at least, however, I think it’s partly a reflection of a point Ronald Moore and Ira Behr have discussed before about how the Viewscreen, despite being an integral part of the franchise, doesn’t work as well visually the more time passes:
“I just think it’s so absurd that in the twenty-fourth century they have holodeck technology that allows them to recreate Ancient Rome, but everybody talks to each other on television monitors. It’s just so lame. The viewscreens have been around for over thirty years. Can’t we move to something a little more interesting? But it’s like pulling teeth.“
I get where they’re coming from a visual, cinematic perspective. I get it. It’s just the Window idea is, well…stupid.
As far as Dr. Juarti is concerned, I’m just curious when her Twin Sister is going to show up. Not knowing what happened in that meeting and also that precious cookie baking memory that seems as fake as various “memories” the other twins have had? No, I expect that she is “activated” but in a different manner than the other two. Perhaps an earlier model? It would explain how she contributed even though she didn’t remember how earlier.
The rest is fairly straight forward catnip and well done at that.
9/10
Man, Jeri Ryan still looks fantastic. I think she might be an actual immortal Amazon. And while this episode took Seven in an unexpectedly dark direction, I was reassured and pleased that it was written by Kirsten, who’s been the sole author of Voyager novels since 2009, so she’s written more post-“Endgame” Seven of Nine than anyone else working professionally (though the continuity of Picard is incompatible with the novel continuity she and I and Keith wrote in, at least from 2381 onward).
Also, is Seven canonically bi now? The dialogue between her and Bjayzl certainly sounded like they had been intimate once. (And it was weird that Bjayzl’s actress looked so much like Marina Sirtis.)
I’m a bit disappointed that they didn’t get Brian Brophy back for Maddox, though after reading just now what Manu Intiraymi said about Anthony Rapp, I’m fine with Icheb being recast. Although I’m rusty on VGR and I didn’t even realize that was Icheb until Seven called him “my child.” I found the alien makeup familiar but couldn’t place it, and I was wondering, “Why are they extracting Borg implants from a Starfleet officer?”
We’ve hardly ever seen so much advertising in the Trek universe as we saw at Freecloud. Did the planet require Rios to disable his ship’s ad blocker in order to assume orbit?
And I agree with the above commenters that Jurati, the Federation’s leading expert on cybernetics, is probably more than capable of reprogramming an EMH’s memory and a few sensor logs. I doubt her “Ooh, how do I operate one of these newfangled trans-porter gadgets that have only been part of everyday life for 250 years?” act was any more authentic than her “Oopsie, I accidentally killed a highly trained assassin with his own gun even though I’m timid and helpless” act a couple of episodes ago.
@8/wlewisiii: Yeah, I have been wondering if Jurati is human. In the tie-in novel, she’s introduced as already being an M.D. 18 years before this series, but Alison Pill is only 34 years old. Granted, people live longer and age more slowly in the 24th century (Patrick Stewart is 79 and playing a 94-year-old Picard), but it seems incongruous.
@7 :As for the window, I’m not happy about it either. There at least, however, I think it’s partly a reflection of a point Ronald Moore and Ira Behr have discussed before about how the Viewscreen, despite being an integral part of the franchise, doesn’t work as well visually the more time passes::
The problem with a window is that all you need is a visible light laser to penetrate it. With a viewscreen, it gets it’s image from various sensors around the ship.
It seems so much like “You know, Star Wars is really popular. Maybe we should emulate their look and feel.”
I liked the episode, it was cool to see Maddox again (even though it was another actor and he gets killed) and Icheb (even though it was another actor and he gets killed). And of course, Seven and her being a member of the Fenris Rangers. Now I want a show about the Rangers.
Was it just me, or are they hinting at a couple relationship between Seven and Bjayza? I understand that Jay pretended to be a Ranger and Seven trusted her, but there seemed to be something more there. (Oh, Chris also saw that.) Ryan did a great job in being an extension of the Seven she played all those years ago, but with more life under her belt.
Raffi’s interaction with her son was very hard to watch, it made me sad. And the theories about Jurati being a spy for Commodore Oh, well, it was obviously true, but I’d like to know what was she shown to kill her mentor and former lover. Was she brainwashed in some way?
I loved that Mr. Mot, the Breen, and Quark especially were mentioned.
Speaking of Icheb… why was he wearing a red uniform if he was a science officer? And why, if he was on leave from Starfleet, was he wearing his uniform while doing recon for the Rangers?
And of course, the elephant in the room…. seriously, nobody recognizes Picard just because he’s wearing a beret, an eyepatch, and a small scar? PLEASE!
@krad: Maddox sounds different because some 30 years have passed, and he’s a changed man. And Jurati was nervous about operating the transporter, but she’s an expert on AI, and can probably easy reprogram the EMH.
@10 / CLB:
I’m a bit disappointed that they didn’t get Brian Brophy back for Maddox, though after reading just now what Manu Intiraymi said about Anthony Rapp, I’m fine with Icheb being recast.
Yeah, Maddox has always reminded me of Benjamin Maxwell from “The Wounded”. He was a one-shot character, but like Bob Gunton, Brian Brophy gave him such a memorable performance that’s endured enough for Maddox to have been a recurring fact in the pre-Picard literary continuity.
So, yeah, it’s unfortunate that Brophy didn’t reprise the role, but as Keith said, it just may not have been feasible with his scheduling commitments to CalTech.
With Icheb, like you I wasn’t aware of the Manu Intiraymi controversy either until Keith brought it up. So I also can’t blame the Powers That Be for recasting there.
Pretty mixed bag for me, and my least favorite episode thus far. The holo ad pop-ups were cute (as was Elnor’s evident consternation at not getting one), and the interplay between Picard and Seven terrific. But the heist stuff was pretty pro-forma when it wasn’t being silly, and Freecloud itself just one more generic Casino Planet. Speaking of which, is anyone else curious why Raffi’s son would give up living on earth (once described by Ben Sisko as “paradise,” and whatever issues there currently are with Starfleet and the Federation, it still appears to be a prosperous, well-ordered place) for such a lawless hellhole?
Call me weird, but is anyone else deeply disturbed by the horrible torture of Icheb? Getting just a little too dark for my taste.
I was afraid this episode was going to be as absurd as the trailer looked, but I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging it was. Michelle Hurd’s performance was particularly stellar in the scene with her son. I’m finally alright with Raffi!
The full scene of Jurati receiving “the secret so profound it could break minds” from Commodore Oh will no doubt appear in a future episode via flashback or exposition – leaving it there instead of inserting a slice early in the series would have given this episode’s murderous act/twist a lot more weight! C’est la vie. Also, the various holograms and interfaces don’t feel Trek in the least, and they really take me out of the show. Ce n’est rien.
Continued indications that Soji will be assimilated (ideologically or in actuality) and spark an uprising that will threaten all organic life – knowledge of which would provide the weighty exploit of conscience that inspired Jurati’s act of murder. The central threat is feeling more future focused with each episode – Jurati’s act was a preventative measure which could only logically be tied to a known future event. In her defense, at least she’s trying to save billions of lives by ending Maddox’s. Who knows, maybe this act helps pave the way to the galaxy’s salvation. The ZV’s laid back approach of observing Soji suggests they don’t feel like they’re running out of opportunities to avoid disaster, but they really should be concerned by her present proximity to Borg drones and tech. Although, assuming they ultimately want the power balance in the alpha quadrant to skew totally towards Romulan interests in the future, maybe it’s best to let some things play out as they already have. I do hope we don’t see the events of these episodes rewritten via time travel – it would be a shame to lose all of this character development.
Side note, spotted a possible spoiler. Made an image of it. I’ll just link it: https://imgur.com/a/EcGXFrL
@13/Michael Hall
We don’t know that he’s permanently residing on Freecloud, but since Raffi met him at a fertility clinic, he and his Romulan wife may have moved there for the duration of her pregnancy. (If it was a brief visit, it would’ve been harder for Raffi to patch her side-mission onto Picard’s trip, vis-a-vis timing.) This might be the sort of place at which Julian Bashir’s genes were resequenced by his anxious parents, because interspecies procreation (and whatever medical assistance is necessary) doesn’t seem to be controversial in the UFP — see also, Tom and B’Elanna in VGR.
@13 – Michael Hall: When I saw Raffi’s son was in a medical facility related to births, and before I realized it was her son, I thought she was looking for some doctor working in a genetic manipulation facility, something ilegal in the Federation. Furthermore, there is a recorded voice at the facility saying “your child is our business” or something to that effect. It might be that in order to reproduce with a Romulan, they needed genetic assistance that is not exactly ilegal, but less easy to come by? Moreso with a Romulan in these times.
@16 – Phillip Thorne: Maybe perhaps because it’s a brief visit that Raffi was so pissed when Picard asked for a detour to Vashti.
@13/Michael Hall: Since Gabe has a Romulan wife, and they’re in the part of space where the Romulans were resettled, I’d assume he lives there because she does.
@17/MaGnUs: “It might be that in order to reproduce with a Romulan, they needed genetic assistance that is not exactly ilegal, but less easy to come by?”
Genetically, Romulans are the same species as Vulcans. It’s long been part of Trek apocrypha that Spock’s conception required medical/genetic intervention, and Enterprise made that indirectly canonical by establishing that humans and Vulcans in general would need genetic intervention to procreate.
The Federation does not ban all genetic engineering, just the kind that isn’t medically necessary or would augment people’s abilities beyond natural levels. Given how many interspecies hybrids there are in Trek, I’m sure that genetic manipulation for reproductive purposes is a routine and long-accepted practice in the UFP.
I agree, best episode so far – lots more forward movement this time out and more showing versus telling.
Icheb’s ultimate fate was sad but at least Seven was with him in the end. And Manu made that Twitter comment?!? Gross!!!
The Icheb torture/surgery itself was a bit much. This is definitely not your “family-friendly” Star Trek. I felt like I was watching “Hostel” or a “Saw” flick.
Speaking of Seven, she was also back in fine form even though she’s seemingly taken a darker path post-Voyager, or at least post-Federation abandoning the Romulan people.
Dr. Jurati’s turn in itself was predictable but to the extent that she’d murder Maddox was not. Hope to find out what exactly Oh told her. Maybe what Jurati was told is not true or entirely true. Interesting theory being bandied about that Jurati herself is a synth. All of a sudden, I feel like we’re getting into Westworld territory here where not everyone is who or what they seem. But if we go down that route, then maybe Picard is a synth too! After, he survived that roof-top explosion back in the 1st episode with nary a scratch. Lol
The actor playing Maddox reminded my of John Turturro. And the actress playing Bjayzl indeed looked like Marina Sirtis. Great acting and good character to hate. Apparently she and Seven did have some kind of intimate relationship.
Loved the caper high jinks on Freecloud for as long as it lasted. The depiction of that city reminded me of Rouge City from “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” and Las Vegas from “Blade Runner 2049”.
I didn’t notice or miss Soji or Narek back on the dead cube either.
Can’t believe with already halfway through the season! No!!!!
@00 / KRAD:
And after 33 years of listening to people bitch and moan about how Picard talks with a British instead of a French accent, to hear Sir Patrick Stewart put on a comedy French accent for his part is just hilarious. The only thing missing was him farting in someone’s general direction.
Speaking of Monty Python and Star Trek, heh, I remember comparing the franchise to the Dead Parrot Sketch during the hiatus between the cancellation of Enterprise and the premiere of the Abrams films (albeit in this instance with the Parrot being, you know, still alive).
My stance was that Trek would be back eventually and that it was merely tired and shagged out after a long squawk — all of which in a sense was true, heh.
I watched the ep last night, and I woke up this morning thinking, “It’s a beautiful day and oh yeah, Seven of Nine is canonically bi now” and I felt so happy that I thought it was Saturday for a solid 10min before my alarm went off. There was very little “hinting” about it; the two actors were 100% playing “people who used to bone” and Bjayzl referred to their “close, intimate personal relationship”. I mean… we always knew. But it’s nice to have it confirmed.
I also wasn’t a huge fan of the gratuitous torture porn with Icheb, but I saw Agnes’ sudden turn to the dark side as evidence of brainwashing/reprogramming, rather than her just being a surprise incompetent psychopath murderer. Which makes extra sense if she were a synth herself– a synth programmed to “atone” by hunting down other synths, kind of like Helena in Orphan Black when she’s first introduced.
Sigh. I knew I was going to forget to discuss something because there was so much to talk about in this episode, and I totally dropped the ball on the obvious past between Seven and Bjayzl. Derp.
Yeah, they were totally a couple. Someone on Facebook asked if it was queer-coding, and all I could think of was Giles’s line from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Buffy, I fear the subtext is rapidly becoming text.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@21 – gwern: “We always knew”?
@22 – krad: It’s not queer-coding since Seven seems to also be queer. And yes, she killed Jay, but she’s not a villain, or morally corrupt, imho.
I don’t see a problem with Dr. Jurati being able to reprogram the EMH and hack the internal sensors. She’s a cybernetist. She knows her way around a computer probably as well as Data.
The fact that she was nervous about using the transporter doesn’t undermine that. A transporter isn’t a computer. It’s a complex machine that takes people apart at the subatomic level and reassembles them thousands of miles away. And she’s being asked to operate it in non-standard conditions where a moment’s delay can get people killed. She’s not Chief O’Brien; she may not even have used a transporter more complex than the ones we saw at Starfleet Headquarters before. This is like asking someone who’s never driven further than the grocery store before to be the getaway driver in a bankheist.
@21/gwern: I don’t think Jurati was acting out of some brainwashed compulsion, or she wouldn’t have been crying so hard. She knew what she was doing and hated it but chose to do it anyway. Come to think of it, it’s an interesting bit of bookending — the episode both begins and ends with a woman weeping as she kills someone she loves. Are we meant to see a parallel between Seven killing Icheb and Jurati killing Maddox, or a contrast?
@23/MaGnUs: I believe gwern is referring to the belief of many fans that there was a lesbian subtext between Seven and Janeway. Not that I ever got any such impression myself; I saw it more as a surrogate mother-daughter thing, though more like a mom and her rebellious teenager than the warmer mother-daughter bond between Janeway and Kes.
If anything, Bjayzl’s features make me wonder if Seven’s interests went in a different direction back in the day. She did meet Deanna Troi once or twice, didn’t she? Maybe she has a type.
@24/Sean: Sure, it’s certainly possible that an expert at computers wouldn’t know how to work a transporter. Heck, I earned two bachelor’s degrees and became a published novelist before I learned how to drive a car. But I’m just skeptical of Jurati’s protestations of panicky uselessness. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
I never knew some people thought there was a lesbian subtext between Janeway and Seven. It was obviously a mother/daughter thing, or mentor/mentee.
About Jurati, perhaps it is both a brainwash thing and something that upsets her deeply. Brainwashing doesn’t mean she lost her memories and feelings for Maddox.
@25: Thanks for the quote from the Bard!
Jurati’s murder of Maddox brings me back to my theory from another thread. The threat from Soji is very real. The intel on that is convincing and authentic- and that is why Starfleet is working with the Romulans. It is less of “evil conspiracy” and more of a wonderful shade of gray.
Anyone else worried we only get Seven in this episode?
After the terrific scene between Seven and Picard, I cant help but lament the lost opportunities for other crossover characters.
@28 (And others asking the question)
According to IMDB, Jeri Ryan is credited for 6 episodes this season… That’s too specific a number not to mean something.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8806524/fullcredits
@28:
After the terrific scene between Seven and Picard, I cant help but lament the lost opportunities for other crossover characters.
Yeah, I’m specifically thinking of the Doctor in this instance.
If the Feds banned all synthetic lifeforms following the Mars attack, did that mean our beloved EMH got deleted or permanetly taken off-line? Before the Icheb revelations, I’d wondered if that was one reason Seven gave the finger to the UFP and joined the Fenris Rangers.
It raises that question from the previous threads again re: how Rios can have EMHs on his own ship in spite of the ban.
@11.Magnus: I really suspect that Seven will get a spin-off series of her own and I made this assumption right after Kurtzman revealed that there are two more previously unannounced Star Trek series in the works. We’re getting so many wonderful interesting characters in Star Trek: Picard that I think fans and viewers are clamoring to see more of their stories beyond the adventures of Jean-Luc Picard. Plus, Seven has always been a fan favorite.
@25/ChristopherLBennett
Re: Jurati: I suspect I’m working with different definition of “brainwashing” here than you are. I don’t mean “disassociative episode activate! beep boop, must kill”; I mean the instillation of a… let’s call it a value system, that must be upheld, regardless of the emotional toll on the individual. More like how a cult brainwashes people IRL, than how brainwashing is frequently portrayed in sci fi. I agree that she knew what she was doing and and hated it, but chose to do it anyway. But if she’d been instilled with deep belief that “synths will destroy everything unless we stop them by absolutely any means necessary” she could both love Maddox and see murdering him as the “right” thing to do.
Re: Seven of Bi-ne; yeah, sure, Seven and Janeway had some chemistry, but that was very ambigous. Mostly I was referring to the fact that she came of age in a culture where gender isn’t a thing, so it wouldn’t make any sense for her to be monosexual– she’d either be bi/pan, or asexual. In VOY she is shown to have interest in sex, so it stands to reason she wouldn’t limit herself to just men.
@29/Ryan: You can’t trust IMDb’s credits for unaired episodes to be accurate. Their editors have an unfortunate tendency to speculate and confuse rumor with fact. Before Star Trek Nemesis was released, its IMDb page listed virtually every actor who’d ever played a Romulan in a 24th-century show on the movie’s cast page. Not a single one was actually in the film. Also, for years, IMDb falsely claimed that the human form of Isis in “Assignment: Earth” was played by Victoria Vetri, merely because one website had speculated it might be Vetri while openly admitting it was a tenuous guess based on a very vague resemblance. They didn’t fix it until it was confirmed a year or so ago that April Tatro actually played the part.
@30/Mr. Magic: We saw a holographic assistant at the Starfleet Archive Museum Picard visited in episode 1. Clearly the ban on “synths” does not apply to holographic AIs.
@31:
I really suspect that Seven will get a spin-off series of her own and I made this assumption right after Kurtzman revealed that there are two more previously unannounced Star Trek series in the works. We’re getting so many wonderful interesting characters in Star Trek: Picard that I think fans and viewers are clamoring to see more of their stories beyond the adventures of Jean-Luc Picard. Plus, Seven has always been a fan favorite.
Yeah, and even if Seven doesn’t get a TV spinoff, it’s all but garunteed that we’ll see a Seven-centric Picard tie-in novel exploring how she ended up with the Fenris Rangers.
@28: I love a good inversion of expectations so I would very much welcome if in fact Soji isn’t some wonderful precious child of Data that needs to be saved at all costs but is in fact is “the destroyer”; and so in this case, the Zhat Vash or whatever it’s called actually have it right in this one instance, and therefore the Federation is also rightfully collaborating albeit secretly with them in trying to quash Dahj/Soji and her kind before they can wreck havoc in some new kind of synth uprising.
@29: If that’s factual then Seven/Jeri Ryan will appear in every episode in the remainder of this season. I find that doubtful but I guess we’ll see!
A missed opportunity, they could’ve made one of those holographic ads a cartoon Ferengi jumping around the bridge. Instead we got generic cartoons from a Saturday morning show from 20 years ago. Meh.
@33:
We saw a holographic assistant at the Starfleet Archive Museum Picard visited in episode 1. Clearly the ban on “synths” does not apply to holographic AIs.
Oh, yeah, good point.
Never mind.
@32/gwern: “Mostly I was referring to the fact that she came of age in a culture where gender isn’t a thing, so it wouldn’t make any sense for her to be monosexual– she’d either be bi/pan, or asexual.”
That’s an interesting point, although I would disagree that the Borg constitute a “culture.” They are, effectively, a single individual. Although it follows that that individual would not see itself as gendered — and it is quite promiscuous in its desire to join with every species it comes across, at least if its biological and technological distinctiveness is sexy enough.
Still, I think that being a cog in a collective consciousness is different enough from individual thought and choice that it wouldn’t define how a liberated drone defined oneself or one’s physicality as an individual. That’s something Seven would’ve discovered only after her liberation, and would probably be mainly a function of whatever Annika Hansen’s inherent inclinations would be.
On the other hand, even as a drone, Seven of Nine showed an unusual degree of autonomy compared to other drones, speaking as an individual rather than part of a chorus and having more awareness of the individuals she interacted with than drones normally have. It could be that she was merely programmed by the Queen to act that way as an interface unit, but given that she made her debut coming out of a special chamber at the very core of the cube rather than a normal recharging alcove, I’ve often wondered if she was a special class of drone in some way — perhaps even a potential replacement Queen. So she may have had something resembling individual awareness even then.
I’m also of the camp that Jurati should have no trouble editing the memory of the EMH. I also think that it’ll be something that paranoid Raffi should be able to detect, moving the plot forward. I also don’t think that Jurati’s brainwashed, and she almost told Picard the secret, back when the death squad attacked his house.
@29/35
Yeah, I can imagine someone on that Borg Cube will need help from a Fenris Ranger Corvette next week.
@13 / Icheb’s ultimate fate was sad but at least Seven was with him in the end. And Manu made that Twitter comment?!? Gross!!!
Like I said earlier, I had no idea about the Manu Intiraymi controversy until Keith brought it up and I’m just as disgusted as you are.
This is one of those instances of having to separate the Actor from the Character they play(ed). Intiraymi’s not the first time this has happened with Trek and he won’t be the last.
@37 – Or the Federation defined AIs as a form of WMD and banned their use by everyone but Starfleet and only in specific situations. It’s possible that the hologram in the archives is not just an assistant but also a deadly form of security
Ugh. Torture porn is the one thing Star Trek really was needing *rolleyes*. Also this is the usual serialized melodramatic soap opera trash with cliffhangers and some universe and character assassination. It would be awesome if Seth MacFarlane came in and would fire the whole staff – including your friend Kirsten Beyer.
We have an extensive melodramatic scene with Raffi, we have Picard as an old fool who is tricked right and left by everybody around him, more dystopia because this totally is what Star Trek stands for, Seven as Charles Bronson on a vengeance mission and even more over the top melodrama with Bruce Maddox.
It’s amusing that after all these years Patrick Stewart doesn’t understand what Star Trek is about and again like in the movies where he wanted to play Bruce Willis and The Fast and the Furious uses it for his vanity projects. Let the character die and have some people take over who are more competent.
I have to say the idea of a Maddox/Jurati romance felt iffy to me. OK I get the coworkers thrust together part, but in TNG he was roughly the same age Jurati is now, and that was 30 years ago (in real-world time at least). Bit skeevy.
I think this was actually my least-favourite episode. Oh the hammy French accent was great, and Vajazzle was certainly well-acted, but overall… I don’t know, this episode just didn’t do it for me.
Side-note: can we please have a scene which is just all the E*Hs arguing with each other?
@43
That’s a bit harsh. I’m not so sure it’s the fault of any single person. I would say the army of producers this series and Discovery has may be the problem. A case of too many cooks. Along with a case of looking at what other popular brands are currently doing and doing that. Because to me it feels less like Star Trek and more like a big stew of television trends from the past decade.
@@@@@13. Michael: “anyone else curious why Raffi’s son would give up living on earth”
Probably has to do with his wife being Romulan. The conversation between Picard and Seven about the region being lawless suggests they are in the former neutral zone between the ex-Star Empire and the Federation.
Much of what I was going to say has already been covered by others, so a couple details: Was the eyepatch an intended rhyme for Icheb losing his ocular implant? Picard was literally flippant about it.
I took Rios’ pimp hat as an in-joke to his prior role as Aramis on The Musketeers:
Was it Seven who said his hat “Needs a feather”? I enjoyed the first season of that show, but it was doomed after Peter Capaldi left his Cardinal Richelieu role to go do Doctor Who. You can’t have the Musketeers without their prime nemesis.
Did anyone have an issue with Seven killing her former maybe flame Ranger buddy? It’s flat out vengeance. Not as apparently malicious as Jurati’s killing, but still something Seven did with forethought.
It’s a bit tough to discuss where the show is going thematically until we get more information. I’ve seen it said elsewhere that this show would benefit from releasing the whole season at once, as other streaming services do. I suppose people would binge watch and then cancel the next month, so it makes sense to stretch out the story, but the stretch marks are showing.
@43 Bring in the Doctor from Voyager and an EH show.
@46 Not really. The Fenris Rangers are all the law the area has right now. Ms. Jay wasn’t going to stop dissecting Borg just ’cause someone asked her to. Not would she quit misusing distress signals.
@47
She could also be stopped by the Rangers imprisoning those responsible. They do have weapons with stun settings in this universe.
@45 Exactly my point. It is just another modern series and not the best among them. The utopian world view and the allegorical stories, the problem solving approach and the humanism defined Star Trek. This here is simply another overblown stew of melodrama which the current generation seems all too often to confuse with profound storytelling. Also please stop this whole conspiracy stuff, I know it is a cheap and useful tool to spin stories, but in times when lunatics believe every nonsense I would rethink the use of this tool which is also the embodiment of flashy but hollow storytelling.
@44 – If Jurati is in her 20’s now and so Maddox is in his 50’s, is that what you’re referring to as skeevy? I’ve been attracted myself to those significantly older than me when I was in my 20’s and younger actually. I think as long as both parties are of legal age and mature, so that one party isn’t taking advantage of the other, then what’s the problem?
@45/JFWheeler: Every TV show these days has a huge number of credited producers and executive producers. It’s misleading because the titles are used for multiple different types of people. Typically no more than half of a show’s producers are writing staffers. Of the others, some are responsible for the physical, logistical side of production, the process of turning the writers’ ideas into actual episodes. Some are responsible for the business side of the operation. Some are just financial backers or rights-holders to the property and have no real creative role in the production, just a share of the profits. Often these days, one executive producer will be a “producing director,” a director permanently attached to the show and in overall charge of its directorial tone, supervising the other episodic directors to keep things consistent (I believe Olatunde Osunsanmi has that role on Discovery). And of course, sometimes a big-name star gets an executive producer credit too, as Stewart does here.
@51
Well, I do find most television these days to be mediocre to downright bad, so maybe there’s something to it after all. ;)
I do think this series would benefit from trimming the fat, if not in producers than in characters and storylines.
@46:
Did anyone have an issue with Seven killing her former maybe flame Ranger buddy? It’s flat out vengeance. Not as apparently malicious as Jurati’s killing, but still something Seven did with forethought.
A little, but it’s not unlike my initial reaction to Picard’s characterization in the Pilot and the backstory.
We have a specific version of Picard, Seven, and the other 24th Century characters fixed in our heads, but in-story that was 20 years ago. People change and develop for better and worse. Picard isn’t the same person he was in Nemesis, nor is Seven the same person we last saw in “Endgame”.
On top of that, Seven’s bond with Icheb was very a key part of her character during the final two Seasons. He was very much her surrogate son even then.
And we also saw the lengths Seven was willing to go to on VOY to protect her ‘collective’ (ex. “Prey”). She did, after all, learn from the Master (i.e. Janeway) of how to respond to people who are screwing with your family.
So was it heartbreaking to see Seven, a character who struggled to regain her humanity for the final four Seasons of VOY, lose it even more? Yeah…but it’s also realistic.
Serialized television is de rigueur these days and it’s obviously extended into the modern era of Star Trek. I am enjoying it to a degree on Discovery and Picard, but perhaps on one of the forthcoming spin-offs we will get a more episodic series like classic Trek shows of previous eras? It could work as a nice counter-balance to those that just aren’t into the serialized format and/or the dark themes of a conspiracy-laden and/or war-torn Federation.
Am I mistaken or did the Voyager theme play when Seven was leaving the ship? I am not quite sure what I thought of Picard and company’s trip to Canto Bight Freecloud. i felt like it was a bizarre way to find Maddox and didn’t completely click. It was too wide a swing between goofy heist movie, family drama and Death Wish. Not a terrible episode, but one that felt a little confusing. Also, I have to say that I didn’t find too much of a real reason that Seven actually needed to appear in this episode, other than fan service. S
@46/Sunspear: “Did anyone have an issue with Seven killing her former maybe flame Ranger buddy? It’s flat out vengeance.”
It definitely wasn’t a good or heroic act, but Seven was never quite fully on board with Starfleet values and had a more ruthless side. Given her circumstances here, given that Starfleet seems to have abrogated the role of being the conscience of the known galaxy, I can see how Seven could’ve reverted to her darker impulses without her Starfleet connections to keep her in the light.
And Seven might see it not just as vengeance but as a necessary act to protect the ex-Borg from being preyed upon by Bjayzl. With Federation law and order not holding sway in this part of space, she may have logically, ruthlessly computed that there was no other way of stopping Bjayzl from harming more ex-drones.
@50/GarretH: As I said above, Alison Pill is 34, and Jurati is almost certainly older than that, given that we know from this episode that she and Maddox were in a relationship sometime before he disappeared 14 years earlier, and the tie-in novel establishes she was already an M.D. 18 years ago. So she’s probably in her early 40s at least. If we assume that Maddox was 30 in “The Measure of a Man” (as Brian Brophy was), then he’d be 64 as of this episode (though John Ales is only 51).
@54
You mean like an old school episodic series starring a certain square-jawed pre-Kirk captain of the Enterprise? I wouldn’t be surprised if CBS did it.
@56/CLB – Okay, but the point I was making in response to @44 was that I don’t find the age disparity between the two characters to be “skeevy” and your calculation puts them even closer in age than @44’s conjecture.
@57 – Ah, yes, I had forgotten all about Pike recently what with the excitement surrounding Picard and Discovery‘s pending return. But a Pike-centered series would be great but like I was saying, hopefully in an episodic format, as out-of-fashion as that may be in the current television landscape.
@48 Assuming that this area of space is organized enough to have jail. The Fenris Rangers seem to be spread very thin, and the Federation is supplying no support.
I’d have been horrified of Picard had done it, but it is in character for Seven–or at least, one can extrapolate this kind of ruthlessness growing out of her Voyager character. She never entirely lost her Borg pragmatism, the desire to do what was necessary efficiently, without getting bogged down in debate. This is probably part of how she ended up in the Rangers to start with.
@58/GarretH: Yeah, I was basically trying to back up your position as well as clarifying the ages involved. I agree it makes no sense to project insinuations of pedophilia onto a relationship where both parties are currently adults, regardless of how far apart they are in age. It’s bound to be even less of an issue in a future where people live considerably longer than they do today, whether due to futuristic medicine or alien biology. (Sarek was surely several decades older than Amanda, for one thing, and was more than a century older than Perrin.)
@59:
But a Pike-centered series would be great but like I was saying, hopefully in an episodic format, as out-of-fashion as that may be in the current television landscape.
I think their best approach is probably to try and split the difference between doing Planets of the Week while also advancing ongoing storylines.
Something akin to the format of Stargate Universe is kinda what I’m thinking of.
@53: Mr Magic: “So was it heartbreaking to see Seven, a character who struggled to regain her humanity for the final four Seasons of VOY, lose it even more? Yeah…but it’s also realistic.”
I think I agree that in the storyworld it’s a logical progression. But it’s an ethics 101 thought exercise to ask, “What would it take for you to resort to violence in real life?” The common answer is to protect your family and those close to you from imminent harm. That concept of “protection” can get problematic if it’s extended to a possible future threat, or scaled up to an organization or government saying they have to do something like go overseas (to other star systems in this case) to “keep us safe.”
It’s even more problematic if you resort to violence after the fact. Seven refers to herself as a vigilante during her talk with Picard and that’s exactly what she’s become. She’s become Judge Dredd: judge, jury, and executioner. “I am the Law!” I think I would’ve been happier with Batman levels of vengeance: break some bones, cause some pain, but don’t take a life. The life she took was also supposedly a person dear to her at some point.
@38. CLB: ” and it is quite promiscuous in its desire to join with every species it comes across, at least if its biological and technological distinctiveness is sexy enough.”
Was it ever established if the Borg procreated, aside from assimilation? I remember seeing baby Borg in some kind of cradle/drawer setup. I imagine Borg nannies and wetnurses changing lil’ borg diapers… More likely it’s something like the Machines did with humans in pods in The Matrix. In any case, it’d be a missed opportunity if the show doesn’t have Mama Seven rescuing a Baby Borg and protecting it from the baddies. Just think of the merchandising potential.
@59
I share your hope for an episodic. Short stories have their own appeal. Novels shouldn’t get ALL the glory. ;)
@63/Sunspear: “Was it ever established if the Borg procreated, aside from assimilation?”
As it happens, I’ve just been debating this today over on the TrekBBS. Basically, TNG portrayed the Borg as essentially a single species whose drones were gestated in incubators, as seen in “Q Who,” and who had no prior identity aside from being drones, as seen with Hugh in “I, Borg” and the drones in “Descent.” Starting in “Best of Both Worlds,” they talked about assimilating the entire civilizations they encountered, but we never saw an individual drone who was assimilated other than Picard, who was a special case. The modern version of zombie-like Borg who use nanoprobes to assimilate everyone they come across debuted in First Contact, where it could be seen as a special case because only a few drones beamed aboard the ship and needed to replenish their numbers. It wasn’t until Voyager that the Borg were retconned into consisting entirely of assimilated drones.
I believe it was said once in Voyager that Borg only assimilate and don’t procreate, but that makes no sense. As I said on the TrekBBS: The Borg assimilate species, not individuals. A species, by definition, is something that reproduces and survives for more than one generation. The Borg would not gain anything long-term from assimilating a species if it did not perpetuate the survival of that species after it was absorbed. So the first generation of drones from a given species would be entirely assimilated, but it seems obvious that those assimilated drones would then have their gametes harvested and used to breed or clone new generations of drones from that genetic stock. The only way assimilation makes sense is if assimilated species are, in fact, reproduced within the Collective so that their biological distinctiveness remains assimilated over the centuries or millennia. There’s no point in acquiring livestock if you don’t breed it.
What I posited in my novel Greater than the Sum was that the reason for the discrepancy between TNG’s and VGR’s portrayals is that the Borg in the Delta Quadrant had suffered massive attrition in their war with Species 8472 and thus needed to assimilate a lot of new drones to replenish their numbers. That’s why we only saw assimilated drones in the DQ whereas we saw mostly incubated drones in the AQ.
“In any case, it’d be a missed opportunity if the show doesn’t have Mama Seven rescuing a Baby Borg and protecting it from the baddies.”
Drone Wolf and Cub?
@CLB: Drone Wolf and Cub?
Yes! Pitch that to the PTB immediately!
Added: thanks for the rundown on Borg survival strategies. I’m not sure if it was delved into in the tie-in lit, but I always thought it was interesting that, considering the supposed ideals of the USA (and the Federation), the concept of a melting pot species represented a horror and threat to individuality.
That could be a good mirror to hold up to our current culture wars and identity political battles. Maybe the original creators of the Borg were on to something more than they knew. Hopefully, once we actually get to wakened Borg in this show we’ll have some thematic meat to chew on.
The opening scene reminded me of a Saw movie. Too much gore for Star Trek. I get they wanted to explain why Seven was so angry, but wow, that was just nasty. I guess I expect Trek to be “better” than resorting to scenes like that. Picard’s eyeball in First Contact was plenty!
What happened to Lore? Was he just deactivated?Could it be that the twins are Data’s “nieces” and not “daughters” ? I was not a fan of the evil Android twin episodes- just wondering if we know for sure where Lore ended up. We were blatantly reminded they are created in pairs after all.
@46/Sunspear
She wasn’t a ranger – she was a sociopath of the highest degree who feigned altruism and romantic love in order to dissect living and unanesthetized people (who were familiar to her) for profit and pleasure! She was living as a free woman, hiding behind layers of a presumably legitimate appearing business front, and continuing to commit the same crimes with impunity. She would never be put to justice otherwise. Good riddance. I enjoy a vigilante.
@68, The fate of Lore’s body after he was deactivated in “Descent” was never revealed on-screen.
That I know Jeffrey Lang resolved the thread in the novel Immortal Coil:
Data brought Lore to the Enterprise-D and disconnected his positronic brain. He kept it in a vault in his lab, isolated from his body, and designed the vault to self-destruct if it was ever tampered with. In 2371, when the Enterprise-D crashed on Veridian III, the vault containing his brain was damaged; the self-destruct system activated, and the brain was destroyed. The rest of Lore’s body was unharmed, and as of 2374 was being kept in Data’s lab on the USS Enterprise-E. (TNG novel: Immortal Coil)
@66/Sunspear: “I always thought it was interesting that, considering the supposed ideals of the USA (and the Federation), the concept of a melting pot species represented a horror and threat to individuality.”
As with most things, the critical issue is one of consent. Something that’s perfectly okay among willing participants becomes evil when it’s imposed by force.
Also, the Federation (and the school of American thought it reflects) values diversity — different individual viewpoints and traits working together and complementing each other, not being bulldozed into uniformity. Equality is about respecting difference, not eliminating it.
@67/CommodoreCee: The Picard tie-in novel says that Maddox got the source neurons from B-4, not Data, although presumably those neurons contained Data’s memories which he downloaded into B-4.
@65
I like this take on the Borg. Thank you.
@67
I’ve wondered that too. Just what became of Lore? Did his parts remain on the Enterprise-D until it was destroyed or were they sent back to Daystrom for study? Seems odd to me that we never got a followup where Lore was put on trial for his crimes. Of course he was a jerk, but he was still a sentient being with rights.
@CLB: ” the Federation (and the school of American thought it reflects) values diversity”
That’s the tension I was trying to get at: diversity to what degree. It would have to be a kind of middle ground. Waves of immigration can tend toward cultural assimilation (which used to be desired historically in the US), or they can retain a degree of their distinctiveness without fully assimilating.
Point taken about the issue of consent. If you have to use force to incorporate (or worse, eliminate), disparate elements of your society, yes, it’s evil. And that’s the pressure the Borg could represent.
@18 / CLB:
The Federation does not ban all genetic engineering, just the kind that isn’t medically necessary or would augment people’s abilities beyond natural levels.
Right. The Ban was an invention of DS9 and an attempt to explain in-story the absence of transhumanism in the 24th Century (and to tie it into the TOS backstory with the Eugenics Wars).
But I’ve always had some issues with the concept of the Ban. I just wish it had been developed more on screen. I’ve always thought there was great storytelling/commentary opportunities with UFP member worlds lobbying to get the Ban overturned by arguing it was causing more harm than good, that it was another example of Humans being a ‘First Among Equals’ membership of the UFP and wielding too much influence, etc.
Then again, considering the damage caused by the Augment Crisis and Klingon Augment Virus in the decade leading up to the UFP founding, I’ll at least credit ENT for indirectly answering why the Big Four would be in favor of the Ban.
Incientally, CLB, I loved how you used the ROTF novels (Live by the Code in particular) to provide an in-story explanation for why the Federation eschewed automation into Kirk and Picard’s eras.
Regarding the, in my opinion, excessive gore at the beginning of the episode, on rewatching the episode I literally have to look away or fast forward through it. And I wonder what ever happened to the episode content warnings before the start of a television program? Am I just somehow not seeing them right before the episode starts?
The gore at the beginning is there to let us know that “this isn’t your father’s Star Trek” and that it’s now edgy and “mature”. Just like the f-bombs and the sex/rape scene in Discovery (although in Picard, people are still wearing underwear while having sex.)
Definitely my favorite episode so far, especially Jeri Ryan’s performance. I was never a 7 fan during VGR, but I loved her in this episode. I would go so far as to call her my second favorite fictional Ranger, with Drizzt Do’Urden from Forgotten Realms being my favorite and Marcus Cole from Babylon 5 being my 3rd favorite.
I will definitely have to rewatch The Measure of a Man soon, even though the actor is different.
@@.-@: I agree: it looks like Jurati just knows Maddox too well, and how much he’s devoted to recreate Soong’s android technology: she knows he won’t back down, whatever the cost to the galaxy. That still doesn’t explain why she couldn’t incapacitate him in some other way, but maybe the medical technology is just too good to leave him long enough in a coma?
In any case, there’s no way Jurati can hide what she’s done. Musiker is paranoid and never trusted her in the first place: however Jurati fakes the data, Musiker will know. Even if she could believably edit the logs, how would she know how to fake believable data for Maddox’s death? She’s not a MD! If she isn’t found out, then that will be really bad writing. Or maybe she’ll just escape at the start of next episode, to share the intel with the Zhat Vash?
@19: the series’ credits do imply that Picard is a synth, although I don’t see yet how that would make sense, or since when he would have been.
This episode establishes Seven as having mercy killed Icheb in 2386. I established her as having died in 2383.
Excuse me while I swear a lot and try and come up with a new patch.
I have no patience for Idiot Ball plotting.
TheNewNo2 @@@@@ 42
“, and Vajazzle was certainly well-acted, but overall… ”
I see what you did there. Nice!
@73/Mr. Magic: “But I’ve always had some issues with the concept of the Ban.”
Agreed. I hate the idea that the Federation would be so Luddite as to outlaw a beneficial technology because of the way it was abused once 400 years before. Societies don’t work that way. People don’t let themselves be eternally bound by the fears their distant ancestors had toward new technologies. I mean, there was a lot of resistance to electricity when it was introduced. There was resistance to cars and aircraft. There was resistance to organ transplantation. Heck, there was even resistance to the printing press. But every technology whose abuses were feared in one generation came to be accepted by later generations. So it doesn’t make sense that a phobia like this would endure for 400 years.
“Incientally, CLB, I loved how you used the ROTF novels (Live by the Code in particular) to provide an in-story explanation for why the Federation eschewed automation into Kirk and Picard’s eras.”
Thanks, though it’s been somewhat undermined by Discovery establishing that there were repair drones on 23rd-century Starfleet ships all along, just only coming out when nobody was looking like the Shoemaker’s elves. But it does still work as an explanation for the backward state of AI research in the Trek future (which would presumably have been reinforced for later generations by debacles like Control, Nomad, and the M5).
@74/GarretH: “And I wonder what ever happened to the episode content warnings before the start of a television program? Am I just somehow not seeing them right before the episode starts?”
They display in the upper left corner of the screen at the start of each act.
@77/Athreeren: “the series’ credits do imply that Picard is a synth, although I don’t see yet how that would make sense, or since when he would have been.”
I don’t think that’s the intent. We see a shard break out of the sky, fall through a vineyard, then pass through imagery of the Artifact and Borg tech; then we give way to a sequence that appears to symbolize the creation of the genes and eye of a presumably synthetic life form; then the eye becomes a round piece of tech, and then there’s a fairly sharp cut to what appears to be a Mars-like planet breaking up, and the pieces of the planet then reassemble into Picard’s head, bringing back the shard element from the beginning. So I don’t see a direct throughline from the “synth” portion to the “Picard assembly” portion. I see the titles more as symbolizing various different elements of Picard’s journey — he’s fallen out of the sky into his vineyards, then he gets drawn into a story involving the Borg and synthetic life, which connects to the devastation of Mars that shattered Picard’s life and his certainties. Maybe the final image suggests that he now has a chance to piece himself back together and become Jean-Luc Picard once again. Or maybe just that the Picard we see now is the end result of all those previous elements, that he’s the synthesis of them in a figurative way rather than being literally synthetic.
I wonder if Jean-Luc enjoys undercover work because it allows him to take a vacation from being Picard? The same way the holodeck did.
@81/Christopher: Riker said in “Up the Long Ladder” that the ship cleans itself. So they always had some degree of automation.
@82/roxana: If he was taking a vacation from being himself, then it’s ironic that he used a French accent, given that he’s been a resident of France for the past 14 years. Although it was a comically exaggerated French accent, as Keith said. Almost like Stewart was winking at all those viewers over the decades who’ve said “How come Picard doesn’t have a French accent?” (Which, realistically, there’s no reason he would if he’d been bilingual in French and English since childhood, or was just good with accents. Though I think at this point we can rule out Picard being good with accents.)
@83/Jana: Thanks, I knew I’d heard that somewhere. But it was never established how the ship cleaned itself. It might’ve been something transporter-based.
I remember some book or show or movie where there was a futuristic facility with self-cleaning floors that absorbed and broke down any dirt or spilled food or whatever that was left on the floor — and at one point there was a murder and the characters found the corpse had already been half-eaten by the floor. I think I found the story too vague on how the floor was supposed to distinguish between something it should eat and something that it shouldn’t, like a bag left resting on the floor, say.
In the short-lived “Isaac Asimov’s Robot City” series, there was a story that centered around an entirely roboticized city considering human blood, once out of the body, to be a form of contamination that had to be contained. This resulted in an apparent violation of the Laws that caused the city to be abandoned.
@84/Christopher: Transporter-based cleaning? Now that’s a cool technology!
@81 / CLB:
I hate the idea that the Federation would be so Luddite as to outlaw a beneficial technology because of the way it was abused once 400 years before. Societies don’t work that way. People don’t let themselves be eternally bound by the fears their distant ancestors had toward new technologies…But every technology whose abuses were feared in one generation came to be accepted by later generations. So it doesn’t make sense that a phobia like this would endure for 400 years.
Right
And you’d think there’d be newer member worlds or advocacy groups trying to get it overturned or pointing to examples like the Jack-pack from DS9 as to the harm the Ban was causing.
It’s just felt like a missed storytelling opportunity and a chance for Trek to comment on contemporary issues like Stem Cell Research or medical research outside the United States.
Sounds like a fun episode. I just love wretched hives of scum and villainy.
87. Mr. Magic – It’s a bit misleading to refer to the Eugenics Wars as a one time thing. It involved many Augments, close to one hundred were unaccounted for after the war. It’s not like the ban is based on the creation of a single Augment that went wrong. Over 30 million people died.
And if you lift the ban, who decides whose children get augmented? Who decides which augmentations to allow? Can everyone augment their descendents? Starfleet officers only? Leaders in medical and scientific endeavors? Or would they be banned and only people who don’t reach those lofty positions get to improve themselves artificially?
melendwyr: Robot City was six books, plus another six in the sequel series, Robots and Aliens. A dozen books is not what I would call “short-lived.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Wikipedia says Robot City was published from 1987 to 1988, and Robots and Aliens from 1989 to 1990. That does indeed fit my definition of ‘short-lived’.
Perhaps you ought to consider your use of smilies more carefully in the future, DeCandido.
@89:
It’s a bit misleading to refer to the Eugenics Wars as a one time thing. It involved many Augments, close to one hundred were unaccounted for after the war. It’s not like the ban is based on the creation of a single Augment that went wrong. Over 30 million people died.
True and I’m not discounting the impact the Eugenics Wars had on the Trek Earth’s backstory prior to First Contact.
But I also agree with Chris Bennett’s point (@81) about taken as a whole, the Federation’s entire attitude seems Luddite and the problems start appearing with the concept. Part of the problem is how the Ban came out of Ron Moore’s attempts to address in-story (during “Dr. Bashir I Presume”) why we hadn’t really seen genetic engineering in the UFP by the time of DS9. That’s all well and good.
But it also logistically causes these problems that I’m not sure Moore realized when he came up with the idea 23 years ago. We don’t know if other member worlds dealt with their own equivalents of the Augments before joining the UFP. All of the Canonical evidence is that it’s Earth and Earth alone that pushed for the Ban, citing Khan’s reign of terror as the justification. It kinda feeds into the old White Mugato in the corner about how despite being an egalitarian culture, at times it really does feel like Earth is a first among equals.
Again, we can infer that stuff like the Augment Crisis and the Klingon Augment Virus reawakened those fears on the cusp of the UFP’s founding and again a century later after the Botany Bay was discovered and the Genesis Incident. But those are just inferences and with the available Canon, again, the Ban as a concept is just problematic.
And if you lift the ban, who decides whose children get augmented? Who decides which augmentations to allow? Can everyone augment their descendents? Starfleet officers only? Leaders in medical and scientific endeavors? Or would they be banned and only people who don’t reach those lofty positions get to improve themselves artificially?
All excellent logistical questions and this is what I mean about topics that could drive stories and multi-episode arcs. It’s an untapped vein of narrative gold Trek hasn’t really explored on-screen other than the post-Bashir revelation episodes and the Augment Trilogy on ENT.
Agnes Jurati has probably been my least favorite character, her exposition dumps at the Daystrom Institute in the pilot being particularly painful to watch — I was never convinced for a moment that Alison Pil understood anything about the pseudo-scientific speeches that had been written for her. It’s ironic, then, that she commits such an irredeemable act just as I was warming up to her a little. But while Maddox’s murder was plenty horrific, it was anything but cold-blooded, and to give credit where it’s due, I thought Pil completely sold Jurati’s anguish in that scene.
I enjoyed the bit about Rios being warned that the lizard guy could smell what you had for dinner and who you last had sex with, to which Rios says “if they’re not the same thing”… Wha-hey.
I’m also cool with Seven’s vengeance in this instance. I don’t mind the torture porn, because I know this is not your dad’s Star Trek, and would likely be bored to tears if it was, because been there done that.
I also like that, so far, despite the name, this is not a Picard-centric series. There is room to grow in many different directions. So far, my least favorite facet of the show is the goings-on on the artifact. I find those characters somewhat tiresome, and I think that’s maybe why this was my favorite episode so far, as they did not appear.
Seven’s revenge might have been more palatable to me if we were given a chance to know Icheb as he was now as an actual character before his gruesome demise, instead of being a red shirt with some distant connection to canon that has us scratching our heads trying to remember him. As it stands, it comes across as a third rate comic book revenge plot. Yea, very cold in space… and in the fridge, apparently.
Has anyone else noticed that Bjayzl looks like she belongs in either the G;lenn Larson Buck Rogers, the Dino DeLaurentis Flash Gordon, Space Mutiny, or some other extra-cheesy early 80’s sci-fi?
@95: Yeah, Rule 63 that scene, and the cries of fridging would be loud enough to wake the dead.
@96, personally I am reminded of Blake’s 7’s Servalan.
@95 I would hardly describe Icheb’s role in Voyager as “distant connection to canon.” True, it would be nice if the “previously” bits could include clips from other shows for people who haven’t watched Voyages or who haven’t watched it lately, but Icheb was firmly a part of an earlier, decidedly in-canon show.
@98 Yes! Thank you.
#99. Distant as in time. It’s been around twenty years since we last saw Icheb. A few scenes with him as a healthy non-bloody character would’ve gone a long way to give his death actual impact. Instead, what we got was body horror and a memberberry dressed up in a red shirt. Cheap.
@@@@@ 100 Well, I don’t agree. I haven’t seen the last two seasons of Voyager, yet had no problem buying Icheb’s torture/murder as a sufficient motive for Seven’s rage, because the episode makes it perfectly clear what he meant to her. That’s really all I needed.
#101. Oh, I buy the motive too. It makes sense. I just find it a standard, schlocky horror/revenge plot in execution. Seeing Icheb as a living breathing person instead of a slab of meat, perhaps even giving him more than one episode, would have helped alleviate that somewhat.
@@@@@ 102. Fair enough. I don’t entirely disagree, though I think the interplay between Seven and Picard elevates the material more than you do.
@81 / CLB:
But it does still work as an explanation for the backward state of AI research in the Trek future (which would presumably have been reinforced for later generations by debacles like Control, Nomad, and the M5).
Don’t forget Lore and V’Ger, either.
In Lore’s case, to play Robot Devil’s Advocate, heh, even if the Crystalline Entity was technically the murder weapon rather than the murderer, Lore was the one who lured the beastie to the Omicron Theata colony. And we also don’t know what damage he did off-screen that undoubredly soured more people/worlds on AI lifeforms.
(Also, because I can’t resist, heh, I loved how you tied together the Crystalline Entity and the Farpoint lifeforms for Orion’s Hounds. It’s still my favorite of the Titan novels even 15 years later).
And in V’Ger’s case, I remembered you’d covered some of that public perception ground back in Ex Machina.
Anyway, the A-500 s are the final nail in the Trek AI coffin for now and I’m curious to see what revelations Picard supplies regarding what triggered “Crush. Kill. Destroy.” Even if the A-500s are vindicated, what storytelling opportunities does it open for Picard? Is the AI ban immediately overturned? Does the Ban remain out of fear that they can’t take the risk of another Mars incident (and citing the chain of problems going back to Control, Nomad, the M5, etc.).
Lots of possibilities to explore based on whatever’s revealed.
@98/Roxana: It seems that Star Trek these days wants to be Blake’s 7, so that’s kinda fitting.
At Farpoint this past weekend, I did a panel on the CBS AA Trek shows with fellow Trek scribe Derek Tyler Attico and urban fantasy author JL Gribble, and one of the things we talked about was wishing they had included clips from “I, Borg” and “Descent Part 2” to establish Hugh in the “previously on” prior to “The End is the Beginning,” and clips from latter Voyager to establish Icheb (and Seven, for that matter) prior to “Stardust City Rag.”
Gribble thought it would turn off new viewers, because they’d be overwhelmed, but I argued that it’s a lot more off-turning to new viewers to not know what the hell’s going on. And besides, it’s just a “previously on” clip segment. It’s a useful reminder of things, and it’s also something you can easily skip on most streaming services.
Anyhow, I stand by what I said. If they can use clips from “The Cage” prior to “If Memory Serves,” they can use clips from TNG and VOY prior to Picard episodes……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@106/krad, re: the utility of “previously on”:
The fundamental problem is that different viewers have different styles of consuming a long-running saga, and a single choice can’t please everybody. Some viewers will want the context up front; others will prefer it be organically explained; others will want to jump right into the “new” and let it stand on its own merits. (Presumably CBS wants a bunch of the third set, to expand the audience.)
Short of constructing the episode as hypertext, you can’t serve all those separate demands. (The show does have “skip recap” and “skip intro” buttons — in the CBSAA-via-Prime version, at least.) And if you do go hypertext, it complicates discussion. (Which already exists to an extent. Consider TOS: is your memory based on the full originally-aired eps, or trimmed-for-syndication, or TOS-R, or the James Blish prose adaptations?)
@krad – I doubt you will see and respond to this on a 100+ comment post already, but would you mind commenting on what Picard broadly means to Trek writers? Obviously, there are changes to the established story that writers have been plotting for the last two decades but what, if anything, happens next? Do new Voyager novels suddenly take the new continuity? Does some writer pick up a short story that that suddenly changes Seven’s character arc to make it match with Picard?
I’m fascinated by the craft of writing tie-in novels and am very curious how new (potentially “unexpected”) content affects the work that you and others do and have done.
Thanks!
@109, Regarding Voyager, I believe Kristen Beyer’s To Lose the Earth is still in the pipeline for an October release (given it’s been pre-contracted ever since Architects of Infinity).
I assume it will close out the Voyager branch of the old literary continuity in the same way David Mack’s Collateral Damage closed out the Next Generation Relaunch (and, to a lesser extent, the Titan books).
@30 – Mr. Magic: Ríos doesn’t care about legalities.
@31 – GarretH: I don’t know about a Seven show, but a Rangers one…
@46 – Sunspear: My son and I really enjoyed The Musketeers.
@110:
I know, I know.
Again, I’m just curious whether or not Holograms like the Doctor are also classified as being under the Ban.
@108 – KRAD tends to see all posts on his threads even if they are on reviews he did years ago!
@110 – Well then a Rangers show having Seven as one of the main characters should work for a lot of people clamoring for one or the other or both!
@108/Joe: I would expect the same thing to happen now as when ST:TNG came along in the ’80s: The books simply discontinued the ongoing continuity they’d been (loosely) building up and did books consistent with what the new show established. Picard definitively contradicts pretty much the entire current novel continuity from 2380ish onward (not to mention Star Trek Online‘s continuity), so presumably the books will just stop adding to that continuity and do books consistent with the Picard continuity instead (whether they’ll remain consistent with the pre-2380 book continuity remains to be seen, but the one Picard novel so far doesn’t introduce any conflicts).
Basically, tie-ins are conjectures about what might have happened between the canonical stories in a fictional series. I like to say that if the canon is the history of that universe, tie-ins are historical fiction. If new facets of the universe’s history are revealed, then the tie-ins going forward are based on those new insights.
@111/Mr. Magic: As I mentioned above, there is a holographic assistant at the Starfleet Archive in episode 1. The ban is specifically on androids, it appears.
@113 / CLB:
“…whether [the Picard-era tie-in books] remain consistent with the pre-2380 book continuity remains to be seen, but the one Picard novel so far doesn’t introduce any conflicts.”
Yeah, among other things, I appreciated Una McCormack’s nod back to the TNG Relaunch with Worf having succeeded Riker as the Enterprise XO after Nemesis (as well as the continuing career repercussions of “Change of Heart” to Worf’s captaincy prospects).
@114/Mr. Magic: Also I think the novel mentioned Bajor joining the Federation, as it did in the novels.
The earliest thing I think it conflicts with is Death in Winter, where Picard and Crusher finally acknowledged their feelings and got together, something that evidently never happened in the Picard continuity.
If I had to guess, I’d say the holographic AIs are both better-understood and more controllable than Soong-style androids. They’re probably also far less ‘efficient’ in terms of how they use computational resources, which would make them even easier to direct and limit.
@116/melendwyr: But then, why can’t you just install a hologram’s AI in an android body? It’s weird to treat them as fundamentally different things. Indeed, the tie-in novel even explains the synths as a hybrid of positronic tech like Data’s and bio-neural circuitry like Voyager‘s, which I’ve always assumed played a role in the EMH’s sentience.
@115 / CLB:
Also I think the novel mentioned Bajor joining the Federation, as it did in the novels.
Yeah, I think McCormack did allude to the events of Unity or at least that particular plot development from the Relaunch.
It’ll also be interesting to go back and reread The Last Best Hope to see what other foreshadowing McCormack set up that won’t be obvious in hindsight until after the Season Finale.
@117: Primarily because they don’t truly know how to duplicate androids like Data – although they might establish that to have changed in this new series. Secondarily because – I assume – the ways the data are stored are fundamentally different. It’s like asking why very early 20th-century engineers didn’t simply upload the contents of wax cylinders to the cloud. Sure, data is data, but not all representations are equivalent.
Data was superhuman, not just in his more obvious ‘physical’ abilities, but in his mental ones too. The holographic Doctor was as smart and as knowledgeable as a human being, but not noticeably more smart or more knowledgeable. And I doubt the processors on which he ran would fit into a quasi-human skull like Data’s did. They likely took up a volume equal to multiple human beings in total. However Data’s brain worked, it was much more advanced than the relatively kludgy systems used to emulate the Doctor.
It’s still hard to tell whether the EMH type programs are legal. Does the holographic assistant at the Starfleet Archive meet the qualifications for a self-aware artificial intelligence, or is she a convenient way to interact with data? “She” could be no more than Siri or Alexa albeit with a more efficient search engine.
@119/melendwyr: “Primarily because they don’t truly know how to duplicate androids like Data”
They don’t know how to duplicate sentient positronic brains. That’s got nothing to do with the body. That’s my point, that it’s contrived to treat the brain and the body as the same problem. We know that “hologram” AIs can become sentient, but their consciousnesses don’t actually reside in the holograms; those are just avatars used by the AI stored in the holodeck or sickbay computer, or in the Doctor’s mobile emitter. The emitter proves that a holographic AI’s consciousness can be stored in a platform small enough to be contained inside an android’s head. And the Federation has seen all sorts of androids before Soong came along — Exo III androids, Mudd’s Planet androids, Sargon’s androids, Flint’s androids. They should know how to put together an android body, so there should be no reason they can’t stick a “hologram”‘s consciousness inside one, bypass the whole “recreate Soong’s work” thing altogether.
“However Data’s brain worked, it was much more advanced than the relatively kludgy systems used to emulate the Doctor.”
What’s your basis for assuming that? If anything, it’s far easier for holographic systems to produce viable AIs than it is for Soong-type positronic brains. Data’s the only positronic android who functioned at a high level and didn’t suffer collapse or psychosis, but we’ve seen multiple fully sapient holograms — the EMH, Moriarty, the Countess — and they weren’t that difficult to give sentience to.
Besides, Zimmerman’s work on the EMHs was more than 30 years later than Soong’s work on positronics, so why assume it was less advanced?
@120/IBookwyrme: According to the tie-in novel, the synths weren’t sentient either. Indeed, that’s the only logical reason why Maddox would’ve agreed to create them, because he learned in “The Measure of a Man” how wrong it would be to create a race of sentient androids as essentially slave labor. Although after the massacre on Mars, Picard wonders if it was an uprising of synths that had gained self-awareness and rebelled against their servitude.
@121 Then it really is hard to tell what, exactly, the Federation is banning. We’ve seen a society with all kinds of automation; there is just no way they abruptly turned off every functioning robot in their shipyards, hospitals, and daily lives. And they have the holograms.
Are they just against computers stuck in humanoid bodies? And where does the Romulan paranoia fit in this?
@121 / CLB:
According to the tie-in novel, the synths weren’t sentient either. Indeed, that’s the only logical reason why Maddox would’ve agreed to create them, because he learned in “The Measure of a Man” how wrong it would be to create a race of sentient androids as essentially slave labor. Although after the massacre on Mars, Picard wonders if it was an uprising of synths that had gained self-awareness and rebelled against their servitude.
Yeah, I’m glad McCormack clarified that the A-500’s were non-sentient because it was bothering me based on the opening episodes. It looked liked Guinan’s prophecy from “Measure of a Man” had come to fruition and I refused to believe Picard would’ve been onboard with that.
I’m assuming they’ll also confirm the non-sentience on-screen as well as we get into the second half and learn what caused their attack on Utopia Planita.
@121 – “According to the tie-in novel, the synths weren’t sentient either.”
But you shouldn’t have to read a tie in novel in order to learn such an important plot point. And just because the novel was written by one of the Picard writers doesn’t change the fact. We saw that happen with Pathways. Show writer wrote a novel, was followed fairly well until they left the show, the it was contradicted.
If Picard is to tell a story, all the relevant parts should be on the screen.
@105, Jana, It wants to be Babylon 5 and Firefly too.
I don’t think the sentience or lack thereof of the synths is a critical plot point. All that really matters to the plot is that the creation of beings like Dahj and Soji has been outlawed due to the Mars attack. The rest is peripheral — helping to provide context and reconcile Picard with TNG, but not required to follow the narrative of Picard as a self-contained entity.
After all, laws and restrictions passed in the wake of acts of terror or disasters tend to be rooted in emotion rather than reason. People would’ve been scared of androids, period, and wouldn’t have bothered to distinguish between sentient and nonsentient ones. That kind of irrational reaction strikes me as the only explanation for why the ban is only on androids and not holograms. The distinction of android sentience didn’t matter to those who passed the law, so it isn’t essential to the story.
@125/Roxana: Oh yes.
I’ve seen both Blake’s 7 and Firefly called “the anti-Star Trek”. I guess that’s what it wants to be.
@126/Christopher: Where are the Vulcans when you need them?
ChristopherLBennett @@@@@ 121:
We know that “hologram” AIs can become sentient, but their consciousnesses don’t actually reside in the holograms; those are just avatars used by the AI stored in the holodeck or sickbay computer, or in the Doctor’s mobile emitter. The emitter proves that a holographic AI’s consciousness can be stored in a platform small enough to be contained inside an android’s head.
Melendwyr wasn’t claiming the holographic AI consciousness was “in” the hologram; they were making the argument that the “holodeck or sickbay computer” necessary to run the AI was probably large, maybe power-hungry, and not very portable.
Admittedly, I don’t remember the details of the “mobile emitter” (or never saw the episodes it’s in), but the Memory Alpha entry claims this was a bit of “29th century technology”, so that doesn’t seem to work as an argument for the compactness or portability of the Federation’s (24th Century) holographic AI technology.
Of course it’s a critical plot point. Unless the Federation is just as badly run and reactionary as we are now. And if that’s true, then is the Federation and the future it supposedly represents really that different our current situation? Sure, the Federation is supposed to show us a more enlightened future but it really isn’t. People are just as blind to reason, just as rules by emotions and just as petty, nasty and cruel as we are.
So the future isn’t going to be better. It’s going to be just as reactionary and backwards as we can be.
Meh.
@128/Peter Erwin: “Admittedly, I don’t remember the details of the “mobile emitter” (or never saw the episodes it’s in), but the Memory Alpha entry claims this was a bit of “29th century technology”, so that doesn’t seem to work as an argument for the compactness or portability of the Federation’s (24th Century) holographic AI technology.”
To me, the fact that Captain Braxton’s 29th-century time police didn’t come back and confiscate the mobile emitter is evidence that its technology was likely to be developed fairly soon anyway, so that it wasn’t a major anachronism.
Also, the Doctor’s mind was downloaded into Seven of Nine’s Borg implants in “Body and Soul.” And in DS9: “The Passenger,” Rao Vantika’s entire consciousness was stored in a device smaller than a person’s fingernail. And why not? After all, it’s just data. I have a tiny thumb drive in my pocket that has more data on it than I could’ve fit onto a thousand floppy disks 20 years ago. It’s not that hard for an advanced technology to store vast amounts of data in a compact space. Presumably what was so advanced about the mobile emitter was its ability to compactly create and project the holographic body itself, without needing a room full of omnidirectional holodiodes and a bulky power source to create it. But none of that would be an issue if you were just uploading the consciousness/personality of the AI into an android body. That would logically be far, far easier.
Forget the holographic emitters. How much space does it take to emulate the Doctor himself?
In the TNG episode “Ship in a Bottle” two sapient programs, lots of data, and enough computational power to create a lifetime of experiences are contained in an object small enough for Picard to hold in one hand easily. Assuming there’s no link to the ship computers involved.
@131/melendwyr: Yes, exactly. The software alone doesn’t need bulky storage. It should be easy to install it in an android body. So it’s illogical that Trek treats sentient holograms and sentient androids as two fundamentally different, incompatible technologies. If you can achieve the former, it should be easy to achieve the latter.
But the obstacle to recreating Data isn’t making a sentient android, but making a sentient android with Data’s specs. Data’s brain is subtle and powerful in ways Federation know-how couldn’t reproduce.
I always thought they should have built a body – no stronger or faster than a human, certainly – for Moriarty. But then they didn’t understand how Moriarty worked, either.
@129/kkozoriz:
This would be a premise-problem, if Picard (the show) were about the Federation. Evidently it isn’t — it’s about Picard (the man) atoning for his mistakes and a 14-year sulk. The moral state of Starfleet, the UFP, and every person Picard meets — those are windmills for him to tilt against.
A secondary world in SF can either be aspirational (“we want to be like them”) or cautionary, possibly allegorical. We tend to think of Trek as the former (honestly, most of that derives from the interactions of laudable Starfleet crews, and their occasional comment about the UFP’s utopian aspects, which we’ve rarely seen first-hand) but the show that Patrick Stewart agreed to do, at this juncture of history, is more the latter. If we accept that, we can move on to asking “is the allegory ham-handed?”
A show focused on a single person isn’t unknown in TV, but it feels weird for Trek given the ensemble-nature of prior shows. This kind of experimentation is more in the litverse’s wheelhouse.
@134/Phillip Thorne: Star Trek has been the proverbial aspirational SF universe for decades. It still baffles me how easily its inheritors discard this legacy, and how many viewers don’t see this as a loss.
@134. Philip: “a show focused on a single person isn’t unknown in TV, but it feels weird for Trek given the ensemble-nature of prior shows”
This is what gives me pause about the rest of the season. I want more worldbuilding, especially for the Romulans, but I’m starting to think we’re not going to get much. Or, if we get it, it’s going to make things so much worse for the Federation (in a meta way, not just dramatized way) if they go the route of full on conspiracies within conspiracies. Maybe Control is still alive in the networks and that’s what Oh and Jurati are paranoid about.
@135 – Think of this season as one episode’s worth of story – an expanded version of TNG: “Coming of Age.” That story could’ve been expanded into a story arc very similar to this. Not too difficult to reconcile with the entirety of Trek when viewed through that lens.
@133/melendwyr: “But the obstacle to recreating Data isn’t making a sentient android, but making a sentient android with Data’s specs. Data’s brain is subtle and powerful in ways Federation know-how couldn’t reproduce.”
That’s not how the show treats it, though. It treats any android sentience as some unique, unreplicable feat, ignoring the fact that if you have sentient holograms, all you need to do is install one in an android body.
And on what are you basing your assumption that Data’s brain is so much more advanced than the EMH’s? The EMH has emotions and humanlike behavior, the Holy Grail that Noonien Soong was never able to crack. Soong’s positronic brain model was flawed, doomed to cascade failure in the face of emotional overload, as we saw with Lal, or to psychopathy as in the case of Lore. (I assume his psychopathy is what saved him from cascade failure; since he only cares about himself, he can’t have a fatal emotional conflict.) Soong basically avoided the problem with Data by deliberately leaving him incomplete, making him without emotion and intending to tackle that problem later once he’d achieved stable cognition.
Okay, if the Soong model were the only known way to achieve a functioning, sentient AI, I could understand the way it’s portrayed. But it isn’t. Sapient AI has been achieved repeatedly with holograms, and there’s no evidence that they’re somehow more limited than Data, when they have the emotions and human insight that he lacked.
“But then they didn’t understand how Moriarty worked, either.”
They didn’t need to understand it in order to download Moriarty’s program onto the virtual cube. So they should’ve been just as capable of downloading him into an android body.
@134/Phillip Thorne: According to Michael Chabon’s comments online, it’s more that the focus is on the people on the periphery of the Federation and those left behind by it. He makes an interesting point, which ties into a thought I had this past week — that this is the first time we’ve really been shown the Trek universe from the perspective of civilians (even if several of them are ex-Starfleet). What we’ve seen before has always been the best and the brightest of Starfleet and the Federation leadership, the most optimistic side of the Federation. But even a progressive and enlightened civilization will have its imperfections, its darker corners. The TOS Federation had Harry Mudd, Ben Finney, John Gill. It had crooks and bigots and fools, and it had people on the fringes who didn’t fit into the utopia. This show is just focusing more on that side of the Trek universe than any other show besides DS9.
There’s a saying that the future is already here, just unevenly distributed. We’re seeing something similar in Picard. The ideal society exists in the Federation, but it’s not uniformly distributed. There are places on the fringes where things regress, especially in the wake of traumas and tragedies like the Dominion War, the destruction of Mars, and the Romulan supernova. Even an enlightened society can suffer setbacks in its values in the face of such crises, as we saw in DS9 and in Discovery. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a better future; it just means that every civilization has its ups and downs, that even if its average quality of life and moral standards are much higher than ours, there will be dips below the average from time to time, just as there are in our own society. Trek has established often enough that utopia isn’t automatic, that you have to work to keep it. And that means that if you let it slip too far, you have to fight that much harder to bring it back.
136. Sunspear If Section 31 or Control show up in any way, shape or form, I may just throw my remote at the TV. Give it a freaking rest already. We get it, they’re supposed to be the bad guys. But Starfleet and the Federation are apparently too incompetent stop them, despite everyone knowing about this supposed secret organisation, or SF & UFP actually support them as it gives them a “the secretary will disavow any actions of your actions” way of being a bad actor while pretending to be the good guys.
138. ChristopherLBennett – Abandoning billions of people you promised to save isn’t an “up and down”. It’s a failure of a culture or a government to live up to it’s most basic, fundamental tenents. It’s a lot more than just a down.
@139, Yeah, I really hope Section 31 doesn’t show up either.
I love DS9 and even I’m just as sick of Thirty-One at this point. For all the inherent potential of the concept, they’ve become as overused in contemporary Trek the as the Borg were on VOY 20 years ago.
@139 kkozoriz
It’s safe to say that they’re going to explain why the Federation made that choice before season’s end, and as such, I think it’s wise to reserve judgment on that point until after the season is finished, or at the very least until after they flesh out that motivation.
@141:
It’s safe to say that they’re going to explain why the Federation made that choice before season’s end, and as such, I think it’s wise to reserve judgment on that point until after the season is finished.
Una McCormack’s novel The Last Best Hope explores the internal politics of the post-Nemesis UFP that eventuallled to the decision to abandon the Romulans. But I’m curious how much of that will actually be reflected on-screen (if at all).
@139
Indeed, abandoning the Romulans is a colossal failure for the Federation, since the concern for the lives of other beings is presumably one of the few things on which all those different worlds in the Federation could agree. Got to be a checkmark on the form for membership. And if fourteen worlds couldn’t see that, hey, maybe they would be better off without them.
@142 Mr Magic
Since the surface politics have been established in that format, I’d guess we won’t see much of it repeated on screen – probably just enough of a framework to support the as yet unrevealed true motivations behind the politics.
@144:
Since the surface politics have been established in that format, I’d guess we won’t see much of it repeated on screen – probably just enough of a framework to support the as yet unrevealed true motivations behind the politics.
Right, that’s what I’m expecting, too.
I’ve said this before, but it’ll be interesting to reread the novel after the end of next month. There’s foreshadowing aplenty for the first five episodes, but it’s unclear yet how much (if any) foreshadowing McCormack threw in for the second half of the Season.
According to Chabon, Stardust City is the “capital of the non-aligned Crypto-Libertarian Pseudorepublic of Freecloud.” Also, did anyone log possible Bowie references in the episode? Would have been cool if an alien resembling Ziggy had shown up, even briefly.
For Jana: Chabon also claims: “Trek doesn’t, hasn’t, and *shouldn’t* reflect the world and times. That it has always presented its crews, Starfleet, and the Federation as improvements, as realizations of our best potential, as aspirational.”
picard’s-showrunner-defends-its-moral-darkness
Guess he believes you have to show the darkness before the dawn.
For CLB: Chabon again: “Star Trek has always been just as fascinated with the people outside of the confines of the Federation’s reach as it is those deeply enmeshed within its structure.”
These outsider aspects were usually explored through alien societies. It does feel different now that we’re seeing non-Fed, non(or ex)- Starfleet operating on the fringes.
@140: Agreed. Section 31 is like pudding (of the evil yet delicious variety). It’s all right as a treat every once in a while, but have it for every meal and you’ll quickly get sick of it. It also doesn’t help matters that the DS9 writing team was far more talented than the current crop, and could deliver far better stories with the concept to begin with.
Section 31 made more sense as a name taken up by various groups when they decided to ensure the survival of the Federation despite its ethical codes. So there wouldn’t have been a super-secret entity that’s nevertheless known to everyone for decades and decades. The plotters of Star Trek VI would likely have called themselves that, but they wouldn’t be the first and the last.
@148:
Section 31 made more sense as a name taken up by various groups when they decided to ensure the survival of the Federation despite its ethical codes. So there wouldn’t have been a super-secret entity that’s nevertheless known to everyone for decades and decades.
If I remember right, David Mack (and CLB towards the end of Rise of the Federation) ran with that very idea in Section 31: Control — that 31 went dormant every few decades and there were new cells popping up in every era rather having a continuous, unbroken organization and chain of command. I believe Mack’s intent was to offer a more plausible explanation for how the agency had managed to avoid being exposed for 200 years.
Of course, this novel preceded the revelations of DSC Season Two (and is also now part of the defunct post-Nemsis continuity anyway), so take what you will from it. But I do think the basic idea still works with current canon.
The plotters of Star Trek VI would likely have called themselves that, but they wouldn’t be the first and the last.
It’s funny you say that, because Mack and S.D. Perry’s Section 31: Cloak did tie Admiral Cartwright (and thus the entire Khitomer cabal) to 31. Jeffrey Lang’s Section 31: Abyss also later did the same with Admiral Doughetry and the events of Insurrection.
While the nerd in me does love seeing decades of Trek continuity tied together like that, I also concede it’s lazy writing. It’s implausible and ludicrous to make 31 the nefarious boogeyman responsible for every crime in UFP history.
I actually remember watching Into Darkness in theaters back in 2013. When Admiral Marcus reveals Section 31’s role in the London bombing, I idstinctly remember loudly grousing, “Oh, for God’s sake!!!”
Seeing the overuse of Section 31 now makes me wish that Assignment: Earth could be revived, so maybe they could push all this espionage stuff over there, away from Trek proper. I don’t have a problem with spy stories in and of themselves, but that’s not the primary reason I watch Star Trek.
@150, Yeah, Gary’s one of those long-abandoned threads nobody’s every followed up on — or at least on-screen.
As to off-screen on the other hand, heh, thank you Greg Cox and Dayton Ward. :D
@147/Devin Smith: “It also doesn’t help matters that the DS9 writing team was far more talented than the current crop, and could deliver far better stories with the concept to begin with.”
I always felt that David Weddle & Bradley Thompson, the duo who created Section 31 and wrote two of the three Sloan episodes, were the weakest writers on DS9’s final staff. They’re responsible for both of my most hated concepts in DS9, Section 31 and the Pah-wraiths.
@149/Mr. Magic: I think the idea of Section 31 as a group believed to have gone defunct in the 23rd century but secretly surviving into the 24th is still reasonably compatible with the stories that treated it as secret all along — and actually a lot more plausible, because no really big conspiracy can stay secret for centuries. So I don’t think the books are badly affected by DSC season 2, except for the epilogue of Section 31: Cloak, which portrays 31 as a deep dark secret in the TOS era.
@151:
I always felt that David Weddle & Bradley Thompson, the duo who created Section 31 and wrote two of the three Sloan episodes, were the weakest writers on DS9’s final staff. They’re responsible for both of my most hated concepts in DS9, Section 31 and the Pah-wraiths.
Good point. I’ve always thought “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges” was the strongest installment of the Sloan Trilogy. RDM was on scripting duties for that one instead of Weddle and Thompson probably helped.
(Incidentally, heh, I can’t take that title seriously anymore because of SF Debris. Chuck Sonnenburg got frustrated trying to pronounce it during his review. He finally gave up by the end and sarcastically just called it Enter the Dragon.)
@148 “Section 31 made more sense as a name taken up by various groups when they decided to ensure the survival of the Federation despite its ethical codes. So there wouldn’t have been a super-secret entity that’s nevertheless known to everyone for decades and decades. “
But for them to pick the same name means that someone would have had to be aware of Section 31 during the time they went dormant. So they were still around, just at a lower level. And still, Starfleet can’t find them even though they pop up over and over again. It’s been over two centuries guys. They operated in the open in the mid-23rd century. Are we supposed to think that people just assumed that they’d disbanded when they go quiet for a few years?
It would have been so much better of Sloane had been shown to be a rogue agent and that there really was no Section 31. But the writers of DS9 and later Enterprise and Discovery just couldn’t resist playing with their new, bad boy toys. So they’ve been around and unstoppable for centuries. And they’re even deemed worthy of getting their own series. If they’re shown as successful, then the case will be made as to their value. And if they’re shown to fail, then Starfleet is shown as inept for not being able to stop the Keystone Cops. And we already know that they won’t be stopped in the 23rd century.
Either way, not a good look.
It’s hard to explain how much like a kid in a candy store I feel, watching *new* episodes of a Star Trek series starring Patrick Stewart as Picard in 2020 — decades after I as a young boy shared so many adventures with Stewart And the crew on the Next Generation.
Several years ago, my now-nearly-10-year-old daughter and I started rewatching TNG because I wanted to share with her what had been such a formative experience for me at about that age. I never for a moment thought that new Star Trek television episodes with any member of the TNG cast would be produced. The experience is unreal as I sit with my daughter and watch the continuing voyages of … well, Captain Picard, at least. I never thought I’d have the opportunity to discover new stories about Picard at the same time as my oldest child, discovering each plot twist and turn at the same time.That experience alone is worth the subscription fee of CBS All-Access, many times over.
@155, Yeah, with Picard, I keep joking that, “It’s the Eighties! The Eighties! I knew they’d come back!”
Seriously, my experience watching Picard has been similar to yours.
Since it was born in ’85, TNG and the other 24th Century show were my entryway into the phenomenon. Whenever I think of Trek, I think of Picard, Sikso, and Janeway.
But after Nemesis bombed in 2002, I’d never thought we’d see this time period again — which was why, heh, I then eagerly, if desperately turned to the old post-Nemesis books to get my 24th Century fix.
And even if the Kelvin Timeline had eventually revisited the 24th Century, it just would’ve been new actors taking on the roles and new spins on old technology, stories, etc.
So when Picard was announced in August 2018 and that Stewart was coming back, I think I finally understood for the first time how old school Trekkies felt when TMP hit theaters in ’79.
@155: Yeah, I hear you. For TNG-fans and TNG era-fans, Star Trek: Picard is a really nice treat, especially because I don’t think any of us would have ever contemplated it could or would happen. A few years ago I would have this nice reoccurring dream where in it I randomly discovered that a Stat Trek: The Next Generation season 8 was already airing in syndication without much fanfare and I was trying to find out what day and time it was on and on what channel. Then I’d wake from my dream and it would quickly dawn on me that it wasn’t real. So having Star Trek: Picard here now sort of feels like my dream has come true. And so nice for you that you get to experience this show with your child as you reminisce on growing up with TNG.
@157:
Yeah, though I stand by what I said back in the “Remembrance” Comment.
For those of us who grew up with TNG (the series more so than the movies), man is it weird as hell seeing the 24th Century in HD and with these kinds of production values.
@146/Sunspear: Thank you for the link! It’s interesting, but I don’t agree with Chabon. He asks: “What happens when two of its essential principles (security and liberty, say) come into conflict?” But security and liberty are always in conflict. A mature society is used to dealing with that. The Federation has never been portrayed as risk-averse. It doesn’t equal the idyllic Earth, it consists of many species and their colonies, and some of them are quite used to danger. The most plausible answer to his question would be that different member worlds would react differently, and there would be a lot of talk and weighing of alternatives. If you want to show us the Federation in a crisis, show us that.
Instead he claims: “The answer has to be – at first, it buckles. […] If not, there’s no point asking the question, though it’s a question that any society with aspirations like ours or the Federation’s needs to ask.”
Let’s look at this in some detail. From an in-story point of view, there is no reason why the answer has to be “it buckles”. The answer could be anything. “If not, there’s no point asking the question” is the storyteller speaking: If your fictional society reacts to a threat in a measured and mature manner, you have no story. But in the second part of the sentence he jumps to an in-story point of view: it’s a question the Federation needs to ask. This is very wobbly reasoning.
Me, I would love to see a story where the fallible people who make up the good society struggle and talk and actually do the right thing right away. I can see this happening in real life. I can see it happening in a book. I can’t see it happening on TV, because TV plots don’t work like that. Perhaps you can’t have a good society on TV unless you mostly stay away from it (the original Star Trek approach).
@Jana: what I increasingly suspect is being set up is a full corruption of the Federation. Chabon was one of the first to cryptically make the connection of the enemies indirectly referred to in the short “Calypso” to a fallen Federation. This may line up with what Discovery will have to deal with in its next season.
This could become frustrating for some viewers if it happens. Maybe season 1 Picard will resolve it’s plotline about AIs, while opening up the Fall of the Federation. After season 3 of DIS, the Section 31 show may cover some more fallout from that Fall, most likely requiring their brand of dirty work.
So yeah, you may be right about the wobbliness if this turns into a kind of Dark Ages, wiping out the aspirational aspects formerly represented by the Federation. Then Discovery will come back in time (maybe with future tech, so it will be even more overpowered) to help Picard fix things.
@158: Personally, I don’t feel it’s that weird seeing TNG in HD after having already witnessed and enjoyed TNG remastered on Blu Ray. Too me, that’s how TNG was meant to be originally portrayed and to finally see that was glorious. As far as the high production values go, TNG had high production values for its time but of course nothing compared to what Discovery and now Picard is getting. But I’m very jazzed that the TNG world is getting this fancy treatment through Picard because these are characters that I love and I feel like finally, no expense is being spared in making this as beautiful and epic a production as possible.
@161:
Absolutely. I think it’s gorgeous seeing the 24th Century rendered like this (just as it was for the TNG Blu Rays and the What We Left Behind documentary).
It’s just, again, a little…weird to do so after so many years of re-watching the Standard Definition versions of the episodes on DVD and old VHS tapes.
@138 – Chris: “the future is already here, just unevenly distributed”
I like that saying. I looked it up, and it’s from Neuromancer writer William Gibson.
@155 – Stephenc202: I know the feeling. My son is 15, and we’ve been watching all Star Trek, starting with TOS, since he was 4 or 5 (we finished ENT recently); and when we got new of Discovery, I couldn’t be happier that I was going to watch a new ST show with my kid. And now, one with TNG characters and going forward in time!
@158/Mr. Magic: “For those of us who grew up with TNG (the series more so than the movies), man is it weird as hell seeing the 24th Century in HD and with these kinds of production values.”
Whereas for those of us who grew up with TOS and ’70s and ’80s SFTV, the production values of TNG were top-notch. No other SF show from the late ’80s came anywhere close to the quality of its cinematography, sets, casting, music, and especially visual effects (which look cheesy today but were enormously better than anything else at the time), and only Alien Nation rivaled the quality of its prosthetic makeup.
Besides, when I was a 5-year-old, I discovered TOS reruns while TAS was still in first run, so I perceived ST from the start as a show that was sometimes live-action and sometimes a cartoon. So I have experience taking changes in its visual quality in stride.
Anyway, thanks to you and GarretH for saying how thrilled you are by this show’s existence. I’m seeing so much of the same kneejerk negativity online that I’ve seen hurled incessantly at every new Trek series since Voyager (and that’s just because I wasn’t online before then), the same petty, closed-minded hate from people who refuse even to give a fair chance to something new or different. So it’s reassuring to hear some genuine enthusiasm.
@159/Jana: “The Federation has never been portrayed as risk-averse.”
But that’s the point, isn’t it? The Federation has changed, as one would logically expect it to after the trauma of the Dominion War, compounded by the devastation of Mars and the domino effects from the supernova. It’s crossed a line it never crossed before, and that’s what generates the story. Just as Picard failing and giving up in a way he never did before is what generates the story. The core question of the narrative is, can Picard and the Federation find their way back? Can they redeem their mistakes?
No society remains monolithic and unchanging forever. I have always considered it a given that at some point in Star Trek‘s future — indeed, at several points over its lifetime — the Federation would lose its way, go through a decline in its values, and have to fight its way back up. Societies tend to go through periodic cycles of reform and regression — you see it all the time in world history, so of course it will continue to happen in the future. It’s unrealistic to expect that once the Federation became enlightened, it would never change again. Enlightenment is something a society has to fight to keep, and sometimes it loses a round or two of the fight. I always figured that someday we’d see a Star Trek series that explored such a period of decline. Heck, I’ve seen people speculating about doing fall-of-the-Federation series for decades, so it was inevitable that it would eventually happen. At least in Picard the Federation still exists; it’s just lost its way a bit.
@165:
Whereas for those of us who grew up with TOS and ’70s and ’80s SFTV, the production values of TNG were top-notch. No other SF show from the late ’80s came anywhere close to the quality of its cinematography, sets, casting, music, and especially visual effects (which look cheesy today but were enormously better than anything else at the time), and only Alien Nation rivaled the quality of its prosthetic makeup.
Yeah, like I said back in “Remembrance”, I know it’s completely irrational and illogical to think it’s weird seeing the 24th Century in PIC with these kinds of production values. I think part of it is just that the look and feel of the TNG-era is so ingrained in my head and childhood nostalgia and what I associate with the 24th Century that I can’t help grumbling (albeit in good humor)
And I know what makes that even more irrational is that the 24th Century production values (on TV rather than the films) did change from ’87 to ’01. Digital technology more and more became the industry norm during the Nineties, after all. Hell, VOY was doing stuff towards the end of its run that wasn’t possible back in “Caretaker”, let alone early TNG or DS9.
Actually, I’d imagine this is how everyone who grew up with TOS felt when TMP hit theaters in 1979 and it overhauled the 22nd Century production values while implementing a decade’s worth of real-world technical advances.
Anyway, thanks to you and GarretH for saying how thrilled you are by this show’s existence. I’m seeing so much of the same kneejerk negativity online that I’ve seen hurled incessantly at every new Trek series since Voyager (and that’s just because I wasn’t online before then), the same petty, closed-minded hate from people who refuse even to give a fair chance to something new or different. So it’s reassuring to hear some genuine enthusiasm.
Heh, I’ve following what I jokingly call the Tao of Basil Exposition (from Austin Powers): “I suggest you don’t worry about those things and just enjoy yourself. That goes for you all, too!”
Seriously, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found there comes a point where you have to stop hitting the pinata with a bat’leth and just sit back and have fun.
And even if this wasn’t a return to the 24th Century and finally moving the internal timeline forward for the first time since Nemesis (or I guess technically Spock-Prime’s flashbacks in the 2009 film), I’d still be excited about the dream team of creative talent involved and seeing what they’ll do with the mythology.
But incidentally, I think part of the problem with the hostile reception (aside from standard toxic fandom problems) goes back to what I was saying at the beginning about ingrained nostalgia. That vision of TNG-era Picard is so ingrained in anyone who grew up wih the 24th Century that it’s what they want to see rather than a Picard 20 years later and they can’t recouncile that it’s not the Picard they remember.
Yes, the Jean-Luc of Picard isn’t the Picard of Nemsis…and the he shouldn’t be. 20 years have elapsed off-screen since the last TNG film. And even in Nemesis, the Picard of that film wasn’t the same character we’d met in “Encounter at Fairpoint”. He’d changed and grown and developed across those 15 years.
We’ve also had 7 Seasons, 4 movies, and one crossover appearance on DS9 worth of Picard as the Captain. At this point, I’d be bored going back to that. I want to see something new done with the character and Patrick Stewart did too.
Has it been heartbreaking seeing Picard this broken and bitter? Absolutely.
Is it still compelling drama and acting? Hell yes.
When people are happy to receive additions to a franchise, no matter their quality, then the franchise is guaranteed to decrease in quality. It’s much, much easier to produce something lackluster than something artistically, intellectually, and dramatically worthwhile.
Whatever we think of Roddenberry’s politics, he had a vision and he was committed to it even when it cost him financial success. (Remember, TOS was cancelled in the third season, and it was very nearly cancelled at the end of both its first and second seasons.) A lot of major cultural franchises have been declining in quality, and it’s because people who are only concerned with making money from eager fans and who have no particular talent for or concern with artistic quality are in charge.
@166/melendwyr: “When people are happy to receive additions to a franchise, no matter their quality, then the franchise is guaranteed to decrease in quality.”
Straw man. I don’t recall ever coming across people who were automatically happy with anything new no matter its quality. But there are always, always people who are automatically UNhappy with any new addition, no matter its quality. They won’t even give it a chance and will denounce it from day one, because they want something exactly like they had before and are completely hostile to anything even slightly different. You find that reaction in every fandom, and it’s tediously predictable.
“A lot of major cultural franchises have been declining in quality, and it’s because people who are only concerned with making money from eager fans and who have no particular talent for or concern with artistic quality are in charge.”
Oh, stop it. Michael Chabon is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Roddenberry was just a middle-of-the-road TV producer who only created one successful thing in his entire life.
@166:
When people are happy to receive additions to a franchise, no matter their quality, then the franchise is guaranteed to decrease in quality. It’s much, much easier to produce something lackluster than something artistically, intellectually, and dramatically worthwhile.
Yeah, I’m reminded there of the contrast between the VOY and DS9 Writers Rooms late in their respective runs. With DS9, Behr, RDM, and the others have admitted how daunting it was to try and do the mutli-episode Dominion War arc in Season Six and for the Fina; Chapter. Nothing like that had ever been in Trek before then and it was ultimately creatively fulfilling exercise.
With VOY, on the other hand, it was all about the paycheck (as RDM’s admitted he found out the hard way when he briefly joined the show following DS9).
As unappealing as I found specific parts of DS9, the show as a whole was great. They took lots of chances and many of them paid off; some of the most interesting episodes of Star Trek are in that series, at a much higher rate than chance alone would suggest.
Voyager’s kind of the opposite.
@164/Christopher: I don’t believe in historical inevitability, and I don’t believe in cyclical history. If today’s Star Trek believes in these things, it’s no wonder that I feel alienated.
@170:
I get where you’re coming from.
But I also agree with CLB that it’s realistic that the UFP would be having its own identity crisis and the temptation towards a more conservative societal shift in the wake of something like the Dominion War (and also on top of the two TNG-era Borg attacks).
This is, again, actually something I wish the show would touch on more because there’s an opportunity for Trek to analyze the 9/11 generation through the lens of the Dominion War and Synth Attack generation.
There’s the matter, for me personally, of never finding the civilian and fringe elements of the Federation all that interesting. I mean, maybe they could create something interesting, but if their idea of ‘future poor’ is having someone living in a trailer in the desert and vaping their sorrows away, then that doesn’t strike me as particularly imaginative. Same with all the stuff at the Romulan colony and Freecloud. It’s gloomy stuff I’ve seen in dozens of other properties.
Never thought I’d be nostalgic for Voyager’s anomaly-of-the-week, but here I am.
The problem I’m having with later Trek (JJ Abrams and after) is the idea that the future is it going to be better. That we’re just going to be the same nasty, petty people we’re always been. Sure, in earlier versions, there were the occasional throwbacks (Think Stiles in BoT) and they were called out for it.
Not now. It appears that those folks are in the majority and our heroes spend as much time fighting the Federation as they used to fight the Klingons.
And something that really grates on me in Picard is the fact that everything he is doing is out of selfishness. He sat on his ass in his vineyard while billions died and the Federation turned inward and didn’t get motivated to do anything until its connection to Data came to light
@170/Jana: “I don’t believe in historical inevitability, and I don’t believe in cyclical history. If today’s Star Trek believes in these things, it’s no wonder that I feel alienated.”
As for the former, I don’t mean any specific event is inevitable, just that change over time is inevitable, because nothing lasts forever. And belief is beside the point. The universe doesn’t care what anyone believes; it just does what it does. So the only intelligent way to engage with the universe is to look at what it actually does rather than what you want to “believe” it does. So the only thing that matters is evidence, not belief. And history provides abundant evidence of how cultures evolve over time. There is no evidence for any culture remaining perpetually unchanged in its values and attitudes. The evidence clearly shows that patterns of decline and reform are commonplace. You just can’t expect a given generation to see the world exactly like the previous generation did. Even individuals often change over time.
That would be true if Star Trek was in the real world. But in the real world we don’t have time travel or FTL or alien/human hybrids or people coming back from the dead, especially with the startling regularity that happens in Trek. I don’t want to see a future where the UFP turns out like the UN, the small players try to improve things the best they can while the big boys treat it as a big chess board, hoping to push the agenda that profits them at the expense of others.
kkozoriz @@@@@ 175:
And something that really grates on me in Picard is the fact that everything he is doing is out of selfishness. He sat on his ass in his vineyard while billions died and the Federation turned inward and didn’t get motivated to do anything
That’s a bit unfair to Picard. He was motivated, he put all his efforts into saving billions — and certainly did save a fair number of Romulans — and then the Federation told him to stop. He made a career-ending gesture in an attempt to reverse this, failed, and was ejected from Starfleet. And then he gave up, which is kind of understandable.
(How was he supposed to “do anything” given that Starfleet had accepted his resignation and he no longer had any official powers, and it was now official Federation policy to not help the Romulans?)
ChristopherLBennett @@@@@ 174:
There is no evidence for any culture remaining perpetually unchanged in its values and attitudes. The evidence clearly shows that patterns of decline and reform are commonplace.
Two things:
1. There is also the possibility, in principle, that a culture could change by becoming better, rather than either remaining perfectly static or just cycling through “decline and reform” over and over.
2. You are, ironically, falling into something of the same trap yourself, in that you are assuming that cultures change, but always in exactly the same ways (“Societies tend to go through periodic cycles of reform and regression — you see it all the time in world history, so of course it will continue to happen in the future.” In other words: the future will always be essentially just like the past, even if some of the details change.)
For anyone looking for more information on Manu Intiraymi’s comments before deciding he’s canceled:
https://twitter.com/riverstone248/status/1167238937817079808?s=19
I’m not saying don’t hold him to account, and I’m not saying don’t cancel him. I just want to provide additional information besides the single tweet.
@171 – Mr. Magic: Trek already did 9/11 with the Xindi storyline in ENT, and even if it was before, with the Founder infiltration paranoia in DS9. And no one did 9/11 better than BSG, in any case.
@179:
True.
But even with the reactionary elements in Earth society that mobilized (i.e. Terra Prime), the Xindi storyline and its fallout really only gave us an initial aftermath.
What I was trying to say was…It’s struck me that the 20th anniversary of 9/11 is next year and that we have a generation whose formative years were against the backdrop of the attacks, the War on Terror, and the rise of reactionary American politics. This generation has now entered the armed forces, is running for office, etc. and their lifelong worldview has been impacted by that single event.
What I meant was that I’d hoped that Picard would do do the same at some point with the generation of Federation citizens and Starfleet officers whose formative years overlapped with the Borg attacks and the Dominion War. Do they feel the UFP is weak and its institutions aren’t worth preserving? To they have an almost zealous devotion to preserving the UFP at any cost to prevent another generation from going through that same crucible? How does this reflect our own contemporary society and young Americans or non-Americans?
It just seems like a rich storytelling opportunity to me, anyway.
@177/PeterErwin: “There is also the possibility, in principle, that a culture could change by becoming better, rather than either remaining perfectly static or just cycling through “decline and reform” over and over.”
It’s not “rather than,” though. It’s both. Societies have gotten better over time — we’ve invented democracy, outlawed slavery, expanded civil rights, etc. — but we also go through rises and falls, because it’s not a mathematically perfect curve. On the large scale, there is a trend toward improvement, but on the more incremental scale, there are fluctuations. There are setbacks and recoveries, but on the whole, the setbacks aren’t quite as far back as they were and the recoveries go a little further forward each time.
I mean, this is just common sense. Life is not simple. History and society are not simple. There are always going to be multiple cultural factions and points of view jockeying for influence, and naturally the balance of power will shift back and forth, and attitudes and policies along with them. Everyone in a society may legitimately be trying to make things better, but there’s no way that every single person will agree on what “better” means, and so there will be disagreements and tensions and mistakes and problems that have to be solved before any trend toward improvement can resume.
Besides, history operates on many scales. There’s the scale of a single cultural or political trend, the scale of a person’s entire lifetime, the scale of a nation’s existence over centuries, the scale of the entirety of civilization over millennia. Even if the trend on the larger scale is toward improvement, it’s naive to think there won’t be ups and downs on a more granular scale. I mean, good grief, look at the world today. We’re suffering our worst downturn in political freedom and economic fairness in generations. But I believe that will provoke a new era of progressive reform in the next generation that will take us even further toward a better world.
Heck, Gene Roddenberry always believed things had to get worse before they could get better — the Eugenics Wars, WWIII, the Post-Atomic Horror. He never saw the Trek future as some easy, inevitable, linear upward trend, but as the result of a long, hard fight to climb out of humanity’s lowest ebb. And Trek has often acknowledged — in “The Drumhead,” in DS9, and elsewhere — that we’d have to work at it in order to keep from backsliding, and that there would be mistakes made along the way.
“You are, ironically, falling into something of the same trap yourself, in that you are assuming that cultures change, but always in exactly the same ways (“Societies tend to go through periodic cycles of reform and regression — you see it all the time in world history, so of course it will continue to happen in the future.” In other words: the future will always be essentially just like the past, even if some of the details change.)”
You are, insultingly, twisting my words into a straw man that is a gross misrepresentation of my point. Of course the future won’t be exactly like the past. The nature of the changes will be different, of course, but there will still be changes. What I’m saying is that you can’t expect the Federation of 2399 or 2500 or 3200 to be exactly like the Federation of 2379. It makes no sense to say a Star Trek series set in a different era is doing something wrong by not portraying the Federation exactly like it was portrayed in TNG. No civilization is that unchanging. Something will be bound to change, though of course it won’t be “exactly” like past changes.
@174/Christopher: “The universe doesn’t care what anyone believes; it just does what it does.”
The universe doesn’t “do” anything. It certainly doesn’t create, or change, societies. People do.
“So the only thing that matters is evidence, not belief.”
Far be it from me to declare what matters, and evidence is certainly something wonderful. But there can be different interpretions for the available evidence. It doesn’t make sense to believe or disbelieve the evidence; it does make sense to believe or disbelieve an interpretation. Which is what I did.
“The evidence clearly shows that patterns of decline and reform are commonplace.”
True. But “commonplace” isn’t the same thing as “ubiquitous” or, for that matter, “eternal”.
The evidence also shows that some things continue to change in the same direction. Life spans. Education. Scientific knowledge. Political participation. New things come into existence and stay there. Democratic countries were a new thing in the 18th century, and now half the world’s population live in a democracy. This would have been unthinkable in, say, 1750. Likewise, the future may be very different from the past. Perhaps an interstellar political body like the Federation, made up of many different planets and species, will not show the “patterns of decline and reform” you mentioned, merely a shift between different member species taking the lead. This may even be true for our own global one-species civilisation. We’ll see.
“You just can’t expect a given generation to see the world exactly like the previous generation did.”
I don’t. Of course the Federation will change. It could change in many directions. Unfortunately, the direction the current writers went for is a conventional pattern of decline and reform.
I guess the core problem is that the writers tend to see the Federation as a stand-in for the US, when it is nothing like the US. It’s a union of many different peoples and species, all with their own unique history and worldview. It’s as if the UN were the European Union. It shouldn’t be shaken by an attack on Mars, for example.
@182/Jana: “Democratic countries were a new thing in the 18th century, and now half the world’s population live in a democracy. This would have been unthinkable in, say, 1750. Likewise, the future may be very different from the past. Perhaps an interstellar political body like the Federation, made up of many different planets and species, will not show the “patterns of decline and reform” you mentioned, merely a shift between different member species taking the lead.”
None of which is incompatible with what we see in Picard. The Federation has not fallen. Fascism has not returned. It’s still the same Federation it was. But it’s been bruised by the ordeals it’s gone through over the past few decades, and that’s made some factions within it scared and isolationist, and through bad luck or outside manipulation, those factions have currently won a major battle or two and led to the UFP failing to uphold its commitment to help the Romulans. But that’s just a slight setback relative to its usual enlightenment. I mean, it’s hardly slight for the Romulans, but on the grand scale of history it’s a small fluctuation in Federation policy. Picard is only planned to be a 3-year series with presumably 10 episodes per year, so I expect the series will end with the Federation redeeming itself and making up for its mistakes, resolving that minor backward fluctuation in what is still a great improvement from where we are now.
That is all I ever meant. I NEVER, EVER, EVER said that Picard represented human society degenerating to where we are now or where we were in the past. I only said that the exact degree to which it was better than today would ocasionally fluctuate and have some relative setbacks. I’m sure the Federation of 2399 is still a generally benevolent and enlightened society, except that it made a major mistake with the Romulans, a mistake it will eventually have to make up for, presumably within the next 25 episodes. So it’s not that huge a fluctuation on the grand historical scale of things. It’s just a reminder that even the best society makes mistakes and stumbles sometimes, that a better world is not automatic or effortless.
“I guess the core problem is that the writers tend to see the Federation as a stand-in for the US, when it is nothing like the US. It’s a union of many different peoples and species, all with their own unique history and worldview.”
Which is exactly why it would go through changes in its policies as different segments of the population gained and lost in political influence. This is a factor in the tie-in novel filling out Picard‘s backstory — many of the smaller, outer Federation worlds resent the dominance of the big four founding worlds and are jockeying for more influence, and they (particularly the ones near the Romulan border) resent the Federation diverting so many resources from their needs to help an old enemy. They feel they aren’t being given enough of a say in the Federation’s decisions, and so they band together as a bloc and threaten secession.
“It shouldn’t be shaken by an attack on Mars, for example.”
Again, that ties into the disproportionate centrality of Earth and the founding worlds. ST has always portrayed the Federation as dominated by humans and Earth in particular, despite all the pretentions of equality. That’s a flaw in the system that was bound to cause problems eventually, and now it has. But hopefully that will lead to a more egalitarian Federation in the future. Like I said, there are always going to be problems in need of repair, always going to be setbacks and reforms. That’s how societies improve — not in a simplistic straight line or parabola, but by fits and starts as problems arise and are eventually solved.
@180 – Mr. Magic: Yeah, we’re getting some of that, but it’s “Star Trek: Picard”, not “Star Trek: Daily Life” (I would watch the hell out of a hospital or police show set in the Trek universe).
@184/Christopher: “ST has always portrayed the Federation as dominated by humans and Earth in particular, despite all the pretentions of equality. That’s a flaw in the system that was bound to cause problems eventually, and now it has.”
I’ve always assumed that the Federation wasn’t really human-centric, it’s just that we incidentally always see the humans. Because if I started to assume that the percentages we see on screen are the actual in-story percentages, I’d also have to assume that it’s heavily biased towards characters with English names and light skin, and starships with English names, and that advanced aliens have had a weird preference for visiting Earth.
@185:
Yeah, I know, I know.
Heh, it’s the kind of nitty-gritty depiction of the UFP that only the tie-ins cant really explore in depth (and Una McCormack did with The Last Best Hope, though she went in different directions I didn’t expect).
Speaking of which…
@184 & @186:
That was actually one thing I did like about David Mack’s Section 31: Control.
Mack, intentionally or not, gave a subtle, interesting in-universe explanation for that via the Control AI. If the UFP’s been secretly guided by an human-created AI with directives to protect Earth at all costs, then of course it would ensure humans would be a first among equals in the interplanetary alliance forged from the ashes of the Earth-Romulan War.
In terms of real-life, of course, it’s kinda like the old Klingon forehead debate, i.e. accepting the omnipresence of humans is due to makeup budgetary issues.
@186/Jana: Sure, ideally, I’d like to assume that about the Federation too. But stories are not about ideal situations. They’re about problems that need to be solved.
Which is why acknowledging a problem is not incompatible with optimism — because facing the problem is the first step in solving it. No matter how good you get, there’s always room for more improvement. The moment you assume you’re perfect, that’s when you start backsliding because you’re no longer working to improve. Maybe the TNG Federation was too complacent in its enlightenment and didn’t face its remaining problems. If the events of Picard lead it to recognize its imperfections, that lets it become even better in the future.
@188: If I thought the writing teams behind a variety of recent SF shows were trying to make intelligent and thoughtful points about politics, I would cut them some slack for writing all the corruption, stupidity, and short-sighted politicking into their shows.
But it’s pretty clear to me that they’re just doing it because ‘dark’ is trendy right now, and it’s easier to create pseudo-drama by putting mindless violence, sex, and corruption into the program than to create a good story.
@176 – Oh, I don’t know. How about trying to find privately owned vessels to form a rescue fleet? You know, much as he’s doing with Rios right now. Looks like that ship has lots of space on board. I’d image that a ship like Kassidy Yates’ would be much the same.
Instead, when the Federation basically fired him by backing him into a corner, Picard basically shrugged his shoulders and said “OK”. He literally tried one thing and when that didn’t work, he decided there was nothing more he could do.
It was only when he found out that Data may have children and that they were in danger did he decide that they were worth saving but that the Romulans weren’t.
Went to see Raffi, not because he was interested in how she was doing, but because he needed a favour.
The fact that there doesn’t seem to have been any outrage on the part of the Federation citizens says more about the Federation. The UFP says “We’re not going to try and save these people and the reaction seems to be a universal OK.
@181 – WW III and The Post Atomic Horror were TNG rectons.
From The Omega Glory:
“SPOCK: Kohms? Communists? The parallel is almost too close, Captain. It would mean they fought the war your Earth avoided,“
And we’ve seen no evidence of reform on the part of the Federation in Picard.
“conventional pattern of decline and reform.”
World War III was established under that name in “Bread and Circuses,” after “Space Seed” had previously described the Eugenics Wars as the last world war. TNG’s only retcon was moving WWIII to the mid-21st century so that it was separate from the Eugenics Wars.
@184. CLB: “so I expect the series will end with the Federation redeeming itself and making up for its mistakes, resolving that minor backward fluctuation in what is still a great improvement from where we are now.”
I expect you’re correct within the confines of the Picard show. It would be very dark for it to end without some positive resolution. (I also expect the character will die by end of series, but that’s another issue.)
The key is that on a historical scale it will be a minor course correction. In between those 3 seasons we’ll get Discovery seasons that point to a much more major dissolution of the Federation. From the hints dropped so far, we may get a Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire storyline, with the Federation essentially becoming Italy by Discovery’s new era. It may still be able to engage in wars, as the “Calypso” short suggested, but no longer a galactic power. The biggest hint may turn out to be the comment about species/worlds leaving the Federation and the PTB’s fear of secession.
Picard won’t go that far, but it is sowing the seeds.
@191/kkozoriz: Kirk also told Sargon in “Return to Tomorrow” that humans “found the wisdom not to destroy ourselves” in “our early nuclear age”.
@193/Sunspear: “Picard won’t go that far, but it is sowing the seeds.”
I don’t think so. Picard is 2399. Discovery season 3 is 3187. That’s a 788-year difference, twice the length of time between today and Picard. So it doesn’t make sense to assume that what happens in Picard is the direct setup for what happens in DSC season 3, with nothing but a straight-line path in between. Especially since we know from Voyager and Enterprise that in at least some potential futures, the Federation is still going strong in the 29th and 31st centuries. So there’s no reason to assume it’s going to fall apart anytime soon relative to Picard.
@CLB: didn’t say soon, said seeds. Obviously I don’t know the meta-level plotting for this and all the other shows in the pipeline. But somewhere in that span of hundreds of years will be a relative collapse. I don’t think Control is gone, for one thing, and Discovery may find out their escape to the future didn’t forestall the AI v. organics war (possibly also being seeded by the synth subplot). But whatever the mechanism, the writers are going to test the utopian ideal. Options after that: Discovery will stay in the future, restarting the ideals of the Fed in their original time, or go back to the past to reset things.
What you see in the short term, in an idealistic fashion, can still fall apart over a larger span of time, hence my Gibbons reference. In any case, the gradualism of the near future, where the Fed regains some of its true values, will indeed be a minor forward fluctuation.
I can’t say I care about the ups and downs of societies and how that’s realistic. I just want a modern Star Trek series that isn’t a dour, obnoxious, or overly violent experience with messy writing that’s built around mystery boxes, nostalgic meandering, and “cool” moments. We already have that with Discovery.
Btw, how much do we know about Federation or Earth’s governments? It seems like we know more about Romulan gov: they have/had Senators. What are Earth or Vulcan reps called? We hear about laws being passed that multiple planets must follow, like the synth ban. Who sponsors and enacts these, and how are they enforced? Maybe the tie-ins delve into this more, as apparently the Picard one does, but the actual information onscreen is thin. How open to a reactionary movement are those entities? Maybe a Fed president will be elected who turns out to be disastrous.
@197/JFWheeler: Me too. Where can I sign up?
@198/Sunspear: We don’t know much, and I think that’s a good thing. Because the Federation government wouldn’t look like any of ours. It would be more robust, for one thing. Because democracy would be old by then, and many different approaches would have been tried on many planets. People would know what works and what doesn’t. It certainly wouldn’t look like the US system, which was the first democratic state ever and had to make up everything from scratch. I think Roddenberry was wise when he stayed away from describing Earth and Federation politics.
Personally, I’m not happy with the fact that the Federation has a president at all. I would prefer a prime minister.
@196/Sunspear: “didn’t say soon, said seeds.”
Same difference, as I see it. There’s such a vast gulf of history between the two that it’s illogical to assume a direct connection. The Federation could go through many changes and phases in the intervening centuries. Essentially, what you’re suggesting is the equivalent of saying that what happened in the 1280s laid the seeds for our world today. Okay, certainly some things around that time had lasting impacts — the conquest of Wales by England, the rise of the Mongols and the Yuan Dynasty, the founding of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, etc. — but there are plenty of other things going on in our time whose “seeds” weren’t planted until centuries later.
Okay, you could argue from the perspective that the producers intend there to be connections between the two series, in which case the size of the time gap wouldn’t matter. But I think it’s just as possible that the producers want the shows to stand apart from each other as much as possible, to let each one be its own distinct thing. So far, we’ve hardly seen any nods to Discovery in Picard — the only one I’m aware of is that Dahj’s murdered boyfriend was Xahean, the same species as Tilly’s royal friend from Short Treks and season 2. Plus a nod to Una’s synthesizer matrix from “Q&A,” but that’s more a Pike-Enterprise nod than a Discovery nod. I think if the producers wanted a story link between the two shows, we would’ve seen more cross-references between them by now.
As for the Federation government, we know the Federation Council is the legislature. In TOS, it also had commissioners, which I figure are something like cabinet officials. I think they have commissioners in the European Union, and IIRC I modeled Federation commissioners on them somewhat in my Rise of the Federation novels.
@199
There are several more Star Trek projects in the pipeline, so maybe one of them will be audacious enough to be bright and fun. Maybe the rumored Pike series.
@Jana: “Because the Federation government wouldn’t look like any of ours.”
Yes, exactly. But I still want to know more about it. Maybe some viewers would find that boring, but I enjoy a good political debate. One model for that is Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars novels that feature a full-blown constitutional convention. I’d have to reread them, or Green Mars anyway, to fully remember what they came up with, but it definitely wasn’t US style democracy and was a complete rejection of Earth’s disregard for the environment and exploitation of resources (Earth was flooded by then).
One thing I like about Picard is the way it’s fleshing out aspects of Federation society outside Starfleet, and even going beyond the fringes of that. I also like your earlier point about going beyond (apparent) human domination of Fed affairs. Apparently, next season of Discovery will more heavily feature Andorians (some cryptic references to a lot of antennae on set). So yeah, let’s see more of that. More aliens, more types of governments, less monolithic thinking.
@CLB: “you could argue from the perspective that the producers intend there to be connections between the two series, in which case the size of the time gap wouldn’t matter”
Ding ding. Yes, we’re dealing with pretend history here, upon which we impose our theories, such as your gradualist approach that only seems to allow for minor downward spikes in an upward trend. I’m am not asserting anything or overlaying anything about what I wish to see happen. I’m trying to suss out what the writers intend, absolutely. A correct theory of history (if there is such a thing) isn’t relevant to that. I don’t see a direct line between the shows either. In fact, I’m saying the graph can get really messy, with huge chaotic spikes in the pretend history between Picard and Discovery’s new era.
Idealism and optimism are nice to have, and Chabon seems aware of expectations viewers and fans have for a Trek show, but doesn’t mean we’ll get it past Picard. He has control over the arcs Picard will present, but not necessarily beyond that. Although, he was the first to mention/confirm the V’draysh.
@202:
One thing I like about Picard is the way it’s fleshing out aspects of Federation society outside Starfleet, and even going beyond the fringes of that. I also like your earlier point about going beyond (apparent) human domination of Fed affairs. Apparently, next season of Discovery will more heavily feature Andorians (some cryptic references to a lot of antennae on set). So yeah, let’s see more of that. More aliens, more types of governments, less monolithic thinking.
Yeah, I know the Starfleet-centric perspective is part and parcel of Trek and I know it’s an intrinsic part of its commercial value.
But after 53 years, 13 films, and over 700 episodes of TV, I can’t help wondering how much deuterium is left in the anti-matter reactor, if you get my meaning.
It’s why I loved stuff like Keith’s IKS Gorkon novels or Una McCormack’s Cardassian-centric novels. And it’s also why I think it was the right move to show a Picard who was no longer in Starfleet for this series.
@203/Sunspear: “such as your gradualist approach that only seems to allow for minor downward spikes in an upward trend.”
“Only?” Where in the bloody blue hell do you get “only?” I never said that was the only possibility. I was correcting the misapprehension that my comment about cultures rising and falling meant I believed nothing could ever change. I was saying that it is possible — not “only” possible, just possible — for there to be relative rises and falls within a larger-scale upward trend. My point is that history is complex and multilayered and cannot ever be reduced to any simpleminded “only” statement or blanket generalization. So hell yes, obviously, there are many other possibilities as well. And yes, one of those is complete societal collapse, because nothing lasts forever.
I mean, come on, dude, history is long. It operates on many scales, most of which are beyond our comprehension. So over the ages, over centuries and millennia and eventually tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of years, everything will happen. Every possible historical trend and cycle will happen sooner or later. All we can do is hope that the better times are more frequent and longer-lasting than the worse times. But change is inevitable. Every status quo is impermanent if you wait long enough.
For what it’s worth, my novel Articles of the Federation delved into the UFP government. I imagined it as a melding of the U.S. democratic republic and European parliamentary systems.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@CLB: ” for there to be relative rises and falls within a larger-scale upward trend.”
That’s what I said you said. Your previous comments reflected a gradualist view of history, generally trending upwards. They didn’t seem to allow for a collapse. The specific idealism of the Federation is a positive thing; nothing wrong with that. And it’s good that you allow for shocks to the system, because I think more are coming. You were speaking before about the adjustments the Fed will need to make to get back to status quo ante. As I said, you’re likely right about that intent for Picard, although we have 5 episodes left and don’t know the Borg role in this story.
But there are bigger shocks coming across the franchise. The first two Discovery season showed that set of writers can tend to “all or nothing” extreme scenarios. Picard is far more subtle by comparison.
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Actually Democratic and Republican forms of government are quite old, on the order of two thousand plus years. Not exactly in tune with our ideals but the forms were there.
Actually Democratic and Republican forms of government are quite old, on the order of two thousand plus years. Not exactly in tune with our ideals but the forms were there.
@210/Sunspear: “That’s what I said you said.”
No, you claimed I said that was the only possibility, when I only meant that it was a possibility. That’s a massive and critical difference.
@192 – which could have just as easily been referring to the Eugenics Wars. Much like WW I was called The Great War and the Russians referred to WW II as The Great Patriotic War.
The retcon of yet another war, this one with widespread nuclear weapons, came in TNG.
@206 – “The Federation is nothing more than a homo sapiens only club.”.
One problem I had with AotF was the lack of alien fingerprints on the governmental form. Not only were the aliens left out, so was the parts of Earth that were non-white.
Great book but I kept hearing the quote from Azetbur.
kkozoriz: What are you talking about? There were plenty of different species among Bacco’s staff and cabinet, and plenty of different races among the humans we saw in the book.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Just to back up what I was saying….
Characters in Articles of the Federation who work for the government include:
President Nan Bacco (female human of Italian descent).
Chief of Staff Esperanza Piniero (female human of Latin descent), and her four deputies: Ashante Phiri (female human of African descent), Z4 Blue (male Nasat), Myk Bunkrep (female Zakdorn), and Xeldara Trask (female Tiburonian); Trask resigns partway through the book and is replaced Dogayn 418 (Hermat); Trask and Dogayn’s assistant is Mikhail Okha (male human of mixed Russian and Japanese descent), Blue’s assistant is Q2 Brown (male Nasat).
Press secretary Kant Jorel (male Bajoran) and his assistant Zhres th’Vroth (male Andorian).
Head speechwriter Fred MacDougan (male human of Irish descent), along with a deputy speechwriter Bey Toh (male Bajoran) and a research assistant Rel Yarvik Rel (male Dorset).
Security advisor Jas Abrik (male Trill), and his assistant Roshenz Huaig (female Delbian).
Travel office head Mantor (male Benzite) and his assistant Ne’al G’ullho (member of Damiani’s third gender).
Cabinet includes Secretary of the Exterior Safranski (Rigellian male), Secretary of Defense Raisa Shostakova (human female of Russian descent from the high-gravity colony of Pangea), Secretary of Technology Forzrat (female Androsian), Deputy Secretary of Technology Theodore Czierniewski (male human of Polish descent), Secretary of Agriculture Salna Kolrami (female Zakdorn), Secretary of Transportation Iliop (male Berellian), and Secretary of Commerce Ralph Offenhouse (male human of German descent, from the TNG episode “The Neutral Zone”).
And that’s not counting the various councillors, which each represent a different world. The only humans in that bunch are the Earth councillor, Matthew Mazibuko (male human of African descent) and the Alpha Centauri councillor, Huang Chaoyang (female human of Chinese descent).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@202/Sunspear: I enjoy speculative politics too, but I don’t trust the writers to make up a likeable, plausible political system for the Federation. Perhaps if they hired Malka Older or Kim Stanley Robinson (I still have to read the Mars novels) to do so.
If you feel like it, you can read my complaints in the comment section of the DS9 “Homefront” rewatch, about how badly they handled the issue there.
Quoth Jana: “I don’t trust the writers to make up a likeable, plausible political system for the Federation.”
So you don’t trust me. Good to know.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@Jana: I’ve yet to read Malka Older. Her books are on my To Read list (which is getting very lengthy; and there’s more coming this year, like the new Murderbot and Harrow the Ninth novels (plus more literary stuff like Hilary Mantel’s third Cromwell book), that will be bumped to first in line immediately I can get my hands on them.) My brother has read Older’s books and recommends them.
@krad: holy hell, that’s a lot of characters to keep track of…
@217/krad: Oops, sorry! I meant the TV writers, based on what I’ve seen in all five Trek series. Did you invent a political system in your books?
@218/Sunspear: I recommend them too.
Okay, I’ll read the Mars books, you read Older, and then we can chat about them!
Quoth Jana: “Did you invent a political system in your books?”
Yes, as I mentioned in comment #206.
Sunspear: that’s not even all the characters in the book (by a long shot), just the ones who work directly for the Federation government.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@221/krad: Sorry again, I completely overlooked that comment. I’ve never paid any attention to Star Trek in-universe nonfiction, but now I’m curious.
Jana: It isn’t nonfiction, what gave you that idea? Articles of the Federation is a novel that chronicles a year in the life of the Federation President, specifically the year following Nemesis. The main character is President Nan Bacco, who first appeared in the TNG novel A Time for War, a Time for Peace (where she was elected) and has appeared in multiple Trek novels since.
—-Keith R.A. DeCandido
@223/krad: This isn’t my day. :P
I heard the title a couple of years ago, assumed that it was nonfiction, and never gave it a second thought.
@206 – krad: I would watch the hell out of a West Wing style show based on your book. I love it that you used Ralph Offenhouse.
MaGnUs: Actually, I didn’t use Offenhouse in Articles. He was established as commerce secretary in David Mack’s A Time to Kill and then later in the Destiny trilogy, so I had him on my list of government officials, but the opportunity to use him didn’t present himself in Articles.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@Jana: I can’t promise I’ll get to the Older books anytime soon, but I’ll try. May also have to reread the Robinson ones to refresh my memory.
What was your overall opinion of the political structure presented in the Older books? From reviews I read, it seems vulnerable to outside interference and cheating, just like our real world. I was also initially interested in Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series, but was disappointed. Didn’t finish that series, so my impression may be unfair, but it seemed like a medieval clan and guild system imposed on a future setting. Didn’t seem all that enlightened to me, more of a “let’s try this system again” thing.
@227/Sunspear: “I can’t promise I’ll get to the Older books anytime soon, but I’ll try. May also have to reread the Robinson ones to refresh my memory.”
That’s fine. I’m not in a hurry.
“What was your overall opinion of the political structure presented in the Older books? From reviews I read, it seems vulnerable to outside interference and cheating, just like our real world.”
Yes, I guess it is. I didn’t like the books because they presented a better system but because they presented a different system – one out of countless different ways how democracy could work, too. I found that refreshing. It’s the kind of thing I would like to see more often in SF. I also liked them for their cosmopolitanism and for their cast of characters, all serious, likeable, (mostly) young people from all kinds of places, and all working for big organisations and enthusiastic about politics. I’m so tired of stories about evil establishments and plucky rebels. Although you could argue that there was a plucky rebel in the third book (anything more might constitute a spoiler).
In case you’re interested, here is an article by Older with some thoughts on the future of democracy.
“I was also initially interested in Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series, but was disappointed. Didn’t finish that series, so my impression may be unfair, but it seemed like a medieval clan and guild system imposed on a future setting. Didn’t seem all that enlightened to me, more of a “let’s try this system again” thing.”
I read some reviews and decided that it didn’t sound all that interesting, politically. But I wasn’t really sure about my verdict, so thanks for the information!
@226 – krad: I stand corrected. I knew I had seen him in a book, and I read Articles and the Destiny series around the same time.
@Jana: interesting piece at your link. Reminder that the Founders of the Constitution didn’t trust full direct democracy, so they built fail-safes, which gives us two US presidents in twenty years who didn’t win the popular vote. Add in the squiggle districts of gerrymandering and it explains how a party that should be a permanent minority stays in power.
Had never heard of the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, fixing the number of Representatives at 435. Wonder what the House would look like today if it more accurately represented the census. Maybe Older’s system of 100,000-person voting blocks really is the more democratic way to go.
214. krad – I meant as far as the form of government. Aliens are welcome to join the Federation as long as they don’t bring any of their own governmental forms with them. US/European only need apply as it were.
What Azetbur was saying was the major components of the Federation are based on Earth and Earth customs.
President – Earth
Council – Earth
Starfleet – Earth
Form of government – Earth
It’s like having a government composed of nothing but white men, Where’s the representation (not just in personnel but in culture) for women (and other genders) and minorities? Why doesn’t the government look like them too?
The Federation talks a good game but even in the novels, where budget is not an issue, it comes up short.
225. MaGnUs – Using Offenhouse as Commerce Secretary made no sense to me. It would be like using Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury 1789, as the current Secretary of the Treasury. Sure, he could have gone back to school and unleared everything about commerce that he know but there’d still be people that knew how the Federation economy (whatever form that is) worked better than he did.
230. Sunspear – My wife came up with a system based on how many Wyomings each state had. Wyoming, the least populus state, has 577,000. California, the most populous state would therefore have 39,560,000 /577,000 = 68 times as many seats. If another state at some times ends up with a lower population than Wyoming, then you use that one instead.
Is this the most comments ever for a Star Trek franchise episode review/re-watch? Seems like we’re really up there.
@233. kkozoriz: that’s an interesting formulation. I like it. That would be an impressive delegation in the House. Your wife may be one of the target audience for the Malka Older books.
Then there’s the problem of states like Wyoming and Rhode Island having as much power in the Senate as one that could be a nation all by itself. It’s not true representative democracy. It’s a hedge against the mob (as the Founders saw it).
kkozoriz: All that stuff was established onscreen, though. The tie-in fiction is beholden to what’s been established in the primary source material. And besides, all the other alien governments we saw (Bajoran, Cardassian, Klingon, Romulan) were based on Earth models, too. I wouldn’t have been allowed to alter the existence of a Federation Council led by a President because that was all established very firmly onscreen.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Sunspear. It’s a hedge against large states dominating what’s supposed to be a union of equals. James Madison was upset by the Senate representing states not population, but I can see the sense of it.
@236/krad: We don’t know how the Vulcans, Andorians, or Tellarites are governed, though. Of course, they may all have Earth-style governments because of Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planet Development.
@237. roxana: state border lines are as arbitrary (usually; sometimes it’s a river, but there’s lots of straight lines) as any other imaginary lines on a map. But it’s clearly not a union of equals. It is actually anti-democratic to grant states like Wyoming or Rhode Island (who apparently don’t even know they’re not an island…) the same two votes in the Senate as big states like Cali.
@Jana: how are Vulcan or Andor governed? I’d like to know. (Tellarites get mentioned a lot as Founders of the Federation, but rarely seem to factor into anything.)
Sunspear, but why should people in California have the sole voice in deciding questions that affect Wyoming and Rhode Island too? And I don’t know why they call themselves an island either. There’s probably a reason.
@240/roxana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhode_Island#Origin_of_the_name
Apparently it’s actually the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, named after several different settlements that merged into the state, one of which was on an island.
@roxana: maybe that was less a question when California didn’t exist as a state yet. Now you could flip that question and ask why should a state like Kentucky have such an overwhelming influence on the affairs of California. (I am of course referring to the dominance of the Senate leader of the party in charge and his stranglehold on passing legislation.) It’s the tyranny of the small, or smaller, on the larger entity.
I don’t have the answers, but what we have right now is a long shot from participatory democracy. It’s not even true representative democracy. It’s just a mess.
This appears to be a great time to remind everyone of Tor.com’s moderation policy, specifically this part:
Let’s get the discussion away from current politics and back on topic. Thanks!
236. krad – Yes, we had the President and Council established but the only thing we saw that was even approaching a council was a small representation in TVH. And all they were there for was to applaud at the end when Kirk was demoted and given a ship. We also get a human President who is basically there for the same reason. Lay out the case against Kirk and then shurug his shoulders and say “Ah, what the heck, it’s not really important anyway.”
In TUC we see another president, this time an alien, at least in appearance. But there’s nothing really alien about him.
It’s disappointing that the Federation is so human centric. McCoy may say “That’s not true” but Azetbur was a lot closer to the truth than he was. Much like how the founding fathers were convinced that they’d done a great job in setting up America, as long as you were wealthy, white and male.
@244/kkozoriz: I never liked that Azetbur quote. I would have vastly preferred if they had made the Federation less human-centric instead of complaining about it in-story. It’s doubly annoying if you take into account that Star Trek had already added more aliens in TAS and TMP before TWOK rolled it all back. So basically Meyer created the situation he then criticised a few films later.
“Spock, you want to know something? Everybody’s human.”
Our pointy-eared friend found that insulting, but it holds true with fiction and definitely with Star Trek. In most cases, just about every “alien” is some shade of humanity, to show us our own foibles and challenge our own society in interesting and creative ways. Hard to get around that when 100% of your audience is the same species.
Quoth JFWheeler: “Hard to get around that when 100% of your audience is the same species.”
Not to mention 100% of your actors……..
(Well, 99% — there’s also Spot, Porthos, Number One, and various other animals……)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@247
Ha, indeed.
@@@@@ 246. JFWheeler – Imagine if, back in the 50s, he’d said “Everybody’s white”. Or, at the turn of the century “Everyboy’s male”.
Very, very, VERY rarely do the characters on Star Trek have to learn to deal with “the other” in a way different that how they’d deal with a human. In Canada, native children were taken from their families and given over to church run schools in order to “civilize” them. May of them never saw their families again. Many of them died, But they were taught their history from a European & “Christian” perspective. They were forced to become “Christians”. They were punished for speaking their own language. All in an attempt to make them more like the dominant culture.
“Everybody’s European/Christian”
When your way is the default way, that makes anything that’s different wrong, And that’s something that Star Trek has done time and time again. Bring up the Prime Directive and then ignore it and wade into a culture you don’t understand and change it to be more like your own.
All sensible points having been raised by previous comments, I would just like to note my suspicion that Admiral Janeway would die of shame to see her girl Seven of Nine drinking bourbon when she could be smacking down a fine Irish whiskey!
(-;
When I noticed it was Icheb dying on that biobed, I instantly went to Memory Alpha. I could not believe they recast such a perfectly cast role. Needless to say I was appalled when I read Intiraymi’s comments regarding the Anthony Rapp situation. I certainly understand the recasting now.
It’s too bad, really, because Intiraymi was one of the best things about Voyager’s last two seasons. Icheb was the most interesting and the most developed secondary character they’d done (as interesting as Nog on DS9). Having wrapped Voyager for the first time last year, my memories of Icheb are still fresh. He had more meaningful development during those last two seasons than Tuvok, Kim and Chakotay combined. A brilliant mother/son relationship between him and Seven.
And Ryan hasn’t aged a day (neither has Blalock or Linda Park, for that matter). I like this updated version of Seven, and it’s only natural they put the best actor in the Voyager cast up against the best actor in the 55 year old franchise. Seven and Picard have great chemistry.
I’m a little miffed that the writers resorted to killing Icheb in order to further Seven down a dark path, even though it’s very effective. It feels like it’s coming down with a case of Star Wars sequel trilogy syndrome when it kills the older characters for dramatic reasons.
As for Jurati, I’m holding my judgement since I’ve yet to wrap the season. That can be the frustrating aspect of serialized storytelling that relies too much on twists and misdirection. Still, not cool to lose Bruce Maddox. I expected to spend more time with him, and see more of this older version and how far he’s come since the cocky scientist from Measure of a Man – I was even hoping for a callback to Data’s letters from Data’s Day (but the new actor did a decent job with an older, wiser version of the character, despite the recasting).