TF Views

Posted: **Sun Mar 29, 2020 12:29 pm**

Mott the barber seems to be doing well for himself though.

Posted: **Sun Mar 29, 2020 1:01 pm**

Shockwave wrote:Mott the barber seems to be doing well for himself though.

He does, and I saw Quark's Bar in the same episode. "Quark of Feringinar" gets namechecked as well. I guess he's franchised the bar out at this point.

Posted: **Sun Mar 29, 2020 5:26 pm**

Spoiler

So in the finale... They show that they were indeed able to reconstitute all of Data's code and memories, and apparently kept him in a simulation within a device I assume they used to make the new androids. But this being the case, how come they never created a new body for Data? They're capable of giving him everything he ever wanted now: To become fully human. Data did ask Picard to terminate his consciousness because he wanted to know his life was finite... But they explained Picard's "golem" body isn't immortal, he will still age and eventually die. So... why not make a new mortal body for Data, like they did for Picard?

Further... They never explained how they got a "positronic neuron" from Data in the first place.

Posted: **Mon Mar 30, 2020 6:11 am**

I've finished the series. I don't normally binge-watch shows since I'd rather make them last, but I'll admit I was interested in seeing where the story went next at the end of every episode. I'll put my thoughts in the spoiler box for those who haven't seen it yet but intend to.

So....

Spoiler

- Picard is now a synthetic life form himself, albeit one who was fully human for 94 years. Transferring a human consciousness into an artificial body is not without precedent in Star Trek, going all the way back to "Return to Tomorrow' in the original series and Dr. Ira Graves inhabiting Data in TNG. But it's never been done to a main Trek character before.
- That ending with Picard is very strange. I'm not sure what the point was of giving him the brain abnormality at all if it's only going to play a part in the last two episodes and then we get essentially a miracle cure by turning Picard synthetic. And they couldn't be bothered to given him a younger body or anything while they were at it? Of course the whole point of the show is having Patrick Stewart play the character again, and they're not going to recast or turn him into a young man in every episode, so the whole thing seems a little pointless to me. I'm not sure where we go with Picard the synthetic person who isn't really all that different than he was before, but I suppose they have a direction they want to go.
- The profanity in this show gets really tiresome. I'd much rather have a more family-friendly approach so I can share the show with my kids like I do previous Star Treks. And frankly I don't enjoy the language either. One of the themes of TNG was that humanity had moved past some of its vices, but it seems they've regressed by the end of the 24th century. Do we really want to hear Admiral Clancy or anyone else tell Picard to "shut the F*** up"?
- When I saw the trailers, I was glad to see Seven of Nine would appear in the show, but having seen it I really don't care for how the character was written (though apparently Jeri Ryan enjoyed it.) In Voyager she was on an uphill trajectory, learning how to become human and a better person, but now she's an angry, vengeful, hard-drinking killer and vigilante. Maybe they wanted the audience to cheer when Seven killed Bjayzl or Narissa, but I just found it sad to see the depths to which Seven of Nine has fallen.
- After seeing so many episodes where people were angry with Picard, it was a genuine delight to see first Hugh and then Riker and Troi express unqualified friendship and acceptance to him. I've complained a lot about this show so far, but let me say that there are some things the writers got very right, and the depiction of these characters and their friendship was one of them. Riker's appearance in the final episode with the Federation fleet was a highlight for me. Riker and Troi's daughter was a delight as well.
- Interesting that this series was just as much Data's story as it was Picard's, even though Data himself on appears in the first and last episodes. I guess they wanted to give Data what they decided was a better death scene than "Nemesis" gave him, and I guess it mostly works. I had no problem with how he was written out in "Nemesis", honestly. Still, it was nice to see him and Picard get one last conversation. I have to admit that when I first saw the trailers, I expected them to be the "Data's consciousness in a simulation" scenario that we actually got in that final episode. At least Data's desire to have a life that is finite is consistent with how he was written in "Time's Arrow" where he expressed similar sentiments.
- I'll give the writers credit again for knowing their 90s Trek continuity. I can't think of a reference I noticed that wasn't consistent with what we saw before. Some could have slipped by me, but for the most part they did a nice job making this fit with 90s Trek. I did enjoy that Picard is a sequel to TNG, DS9 and Voyager with references to all three.

I guess I mostly enjoyed the show, but found it uneven in tone. It did some things I've wanted to see for a long time (Picard and Seven sharing thoughts on being ex-Borg, for example), but the show is the very essence of "be careful what you wish for" when you want to see old favorites return for new stories. Sometimes it seems like it's better to just enjoy what we already have. I have mixed feelings about "Picard", and I can't quite decide if my reaction is more positive or more negative. There are some things I very much enjoyed, but too many things I really disliked as well. That's a shame for a show I really wanted to be enthused about to end up only slightly on the positive side.

Posted: **Mon Mar 30, 2020 10:11 am**

I've seen most of it, up to part of the last episode. And I have mixed feelings about it as well. For me, it's like the first Transformers movie, there are times where they knock it out of the park only to be followed by a scene of dogs fucking, sex or toilet jokes or in the case of Picard, swearing and unnecessary violence.

Posted: **Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:59 am**

andersonh1 wrote:
Spoiler
- I'll give the writers credit again for knowing their 90s Trek continuity. I can't think of a reference I noticed that wasn't consistent with what we saw before. Some could have slipped by me, but for the most part they did a nice job making this fit with 90s Trek.

I can think of a few...

Spoiler

-Jurati calls B-4 a copy of Data, when he was actually a prototype built before Data, and Lore.
-And speaking of Lore, he is never mentioned. Which I'd have expected, like B-4, he would have been disassembled and shipped to the Daystrom Institute for study. So... what happened to him?
-Picard says Data always wanted a daughter. He seems to have forgotten Data did build a daughter, Lal.
-Laris tells Picard the Romulans don't study cybernetics or develop AI technology, as a result of the Zhat Vash despising of any form of artificial life and super secretly influencing their culture to avoid it. Yet, Admiral Alidar Jarok had told Data he knew a host of Romulan cyberneticists that would love to be so close to him. And we know Romulan ships have computers with some degree of AI.
--Along with this... How come it's only androids covered by the Federations ban on synthetic life? They never explain why holograms are exempt, despite some holograms being every bit as advanced, or even more so, than an android. Granted, they'd be limited to the range of holo-emitters (unless they've managed to figure out the Doctor's mobile emitter) but still...
-Hugh says the Romulan "Xb's" on the Cube are the only Romulans ever assimilated by the Borg he's aware of. The Borg were established to have assimilated colonies on both sides of the Romulan Neutral Zone at the end of the first season of TNG, and we saw assimilated Romulans in Voyager.
-The Sikarian trajector in the Borg Queen Cell looks nothing like the technology did in Voyager. Seemed more like an Iconian Gateway. The technology was also only established to have such a huge range because the Sikarian homeworld had a unique mantel of tetrahedral quartz twenty kilometers thick, acting as an amplifier. And as an aside, if the Borg have this technology now, why do they only use it as an emergency escape for the Queen? Especially when we've seen the Borg must have some means to resurrect the Queen. Or whatever she meant by "You think in such three-dimensional terms" after Picard pointed out she should have been killed when the first Cube to assault Earth self destructed...At any rate, you'd think the Borg would use it for so much more.
-This is more of a nitpick but... The tracker Oh gives Jurati is viridium, the same thing that Spock slapped on Kirk's back to keep track of him in "The Undiscovered Country"... So why does Jurati have to eat it?
-The android version of Juliana Tainer said that she (the real Juliana) and Noonian Soong never had children... so where did Altan Inigo Soong come from?
-When Narek explains the ancient Romulan myth of the Ganmadan, he says it goes back to before their ancestors arrived on Vulcan. So far as we know, Vulcans originated on Vulcan. Although they may have been descendants of Sargon's species, which colonized several worlds. Spock said it would explain a few things in Vulcan pre-history. Still, there is no confirmation of this within the series. At any rate, I assume Narek meant to say before their ancestors arrived on Romulus, or perhaps before they left Vulcan.
Edit: Something I forgot, Seven of Nine inexplicably being a lesbian now, despite being straight in Voyager. Her apparent relationship with Raffi (who was also straight, given they'd established she had a relationship with a man that she had a son with) in the finale comes out of no where, especially when I don't think these two characters really even had any interaction with each other. That's something they should have developed.

Posted: **Wed Apr 01, 2020 2:30 pm**

I finished watching it. For the most part I enjoyed it and if it gets a season 2, I'll watch that too.

Posted: **Wed Apr 01, 2020 3:30 pm**

Yeah, I'll watch season 2. I agree, I enjoyed most of it. Interesting story, nice to see returning characters again and catch up with their lives. I have honest dislikes and complaints, but they're not enough to make me avoid a second season.

Meanwhile I'm still not interested in Discovery...

Posted: **Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:56 am**

Some of these are fairly minor, while I'd agree some are problematic.

SPOILERS!!!

Sparky Prime wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:59 amJurati calls B-4 a copy of Data, when he was actually a prototype built before Data, and Lore.
-And speaking of Lore, he is never mentioned. Which I'd have expected, like B-4, he would have been disassembled and shipped to the Daystrom Institute for study. So... what happened to him?

Yeah, I'm surprised he never even got a line of dialogue devoted to him. "Lore was destroyed when the Enterprise crashed on Veridian 3" or something like that.

-Picard says Data always wanted a daughter. He seems to have forgotten Data did build a daughter, Lal.

I figured it was Data's experience with Lal that made him want another "daughter".

-Laris tells Picard the Romulans don't study cybernetics or develop AI technology, as a result of the Zhat Vash despising of any form of artificial life and super secretly influencing their culture to avoid it. Yet, Admiral Alidar Jarok had told Data he knew a host of Romulan cyberneticists that would love to be so close to him. And we know Romulan ships have computers with some degree of AI.

Yeah, this is definitely a retcon, albeit one that I can live with, given that it produced an interesting story.

-The Sikarian trajector in the Borg Queen Cell looks nothing like the technology did in Voyager. Seemed more like an Iconian Gateway. The technology was also only established to have such a huge range because the Sikarian homeworld had a unique mantel of tetrahedral quartz twenty kilometers thick, acting as an amplifier. And as an aside, if the Borg have this technology now, why do they only use it as an emergency escape for the Queen? Especially when we've seen the Borg must have some means to resurrect the Queen. Or whatever she meant by "You think in such three-dimensional terms" after Picard pointed out she should have been killed when the first Cube to assault Earth self destructed...At any rate, you'd think the Borg would use it for so much more.

That seemed to me like the writers needing a way to get Picard and Soji off the cube, and the trajector presented itself as a bit of continuity that made that possible without resorting to that stupid long range intergalactic transporter we saw in the Kelvin timeline in Star Trek Into Darkness. Yeah, it's still problematic because it was the makeup of the Sikkarian planet that allowed the trajector to work in the first place, but I have no problem assuming the Borg could find a way around that. I just found it interesting that the show seems to have had nearly as many callbacks to Voyager as it did to TNG.

-The android version of Juliana Tainer said that she (the real Juliana) and Noonian Soong never had children... so where did Altan Inigo Soong come from?

A desire to give Brent Spiner a role that he could play at his age.

Edit: Something I forgot, Seven of Nine inexplicably being a lesbian now, despite being straight in Voyager. Her apparent relationship with Raffi (who was also straight, given they'd established she had a relationship with a man that she had a son with) in the finale comes out of no where, especially when I don't think these two characters really even had any interaction with each other. That's something they should have developed.

"Representation" trumps continuity these days. This isn't the only fictional property in which we've seen a character's established history ignored to add "diversity" to a show. I'm always of the mind that they should respect established continuity and create new characters if they want to do that, but clearly the writers disagree. But even with the new characters created for this show, the idea that Raffi would be interested in women comes out of nowhere in the last episode just like it does for Seven, given that Raffi was married and had a son. There's no indication until the last two minutes of the final episode that she's anything but straight.

Posted: **Sun Apr 05, 2020 11:14 pm**

andersonh1 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:56 amI figured it was Data's experience with Lal that made him want another "daughter".

If Picard had mentioned Lal as being a reason Data wanted another daughter, I might see that. But without commenting he had a daughter in the first place, it comes off as ignoring she existed.

Yeah, this is definitely a retcon, albeit one that I can live with, given that it produced an interesting story.

To each their own. Personally, I felt the story was disappointing. But even if I thought it was interesting, I still wouldn't give it a pass for retcons. To me, unless they retcon the story in a way that still works with the already established story, it's just lazy writing.

That seemed to me like the writers needing a way to get Picard and Soji off the cube, and the trajector presented itself as a bit of continuity that made that possible without resorting to that stupid long range intergalactic transporter we saw in the Kelvin timeline in Star Trek Into Darkness. Yeah, it's still problematic because it was the makeup of the Sikkarian planet that allowed the trajector to work in the first place, but I have no problem assuming the Borg could find a way around that. I just found it interesting that the show seems to have had nearly as many callbacks to Voyager as it did to TNG.

See, but because these writers didn't consider the ramifications of using the trajector technology like this, it might as well be the stupid transwarp transporter we saw in the Kelvin timeline. It's nice to see a callback to Voyager, but it gives the Borg a powerful piece of technology, that they're under-utilizing for no apparent reason... I mean, what's stopping the Borg from parking a couple Cubes outside Federation space and transporting armies of drones directly to any Federation planet?

A desire to give Brent Spiner a role that he could play at his age.

Given they're making androids that are flesh and blood in this series... They could have accomplished that without introducing a child of Noonian Soong which was already established not to exist.

"Representation" trumps continuity these days. This isn't the only fictional property in which we've seen a character's established history ignored to add "diversity" to a show. I'm always of the mind that they should respect established continuity and create new characters if they want to do that, but clearly the writers disagree. But even with the new characters created for this show, the idea that Raffi would be interested in women comes out of nowhere in the last episode just like it does for Seven, given that Raffi was married and had a son. There's no indication until the last two minutes of the final episode that she's anything but straight.

I'm all for representation, but it shouldn't trump continuity. Taking an established straight character and making them gay, to me, is like the writers are saying being gay is a choice, when nothing could be further from the truth. And the fact that it comes out of no where is just terrible writing.

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