I found myself pleasantly surprised how much I liked this episode. I have a few complaints, but they're fairly minor.
Data looks better than he did in the trailers. Guess they fixed the CGI.
We might have something of a retcon as far as the destruction of Romulus goes. I don't have the 2009 film handy to check Spock Prime's exact wording, but the implication was that the star that went supernova was not the Romulan sun (non-canon sources name the system that went supernova as Hobus). However, the reporter here definitely states it was the Romulan sun that blew up.
I find it absolutely hilarious (and awesome) that Dahj's "mom" was played by Sumalee Montano, who was the voice of Arcee in Transformers Prime.
I think that the writers mixed up Romulans and Xenomorphs, since Romulans now seem to have acid blood?
We find out that Data's download to B4 didn't take, and B4 is now sitting disassembled at the Daystrom Institute.
Maddox kept working on cybernetics for years, and went underground after the ban on artificial life went in place. He apparently came up with a method to duplicate a positronic net if you had some fragment of the original, which is where Dahj and Soji came from?
New Romulan ship design.
Nice final zoom-out from the Borg cube.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Man, I quit. I'm so tired of this dystopian AU shit. And the theme sucks. Jeff Russo can't compose for shit.
Posted by Capt. Kaiser (Member # 10511) on :
Dang was hoping for a return of Data =/
Still excited for new Trek Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
Of course they had to tie the new series to Discovery within the first 5 minutes.
Posted by Zipacna (Member # 1881) on :
I enjoyed the episode, but one thing that did bother me is that in the dream sequence Picard is drinking tea (presumably Earl Grey) and adds milk. No self-respecting tea drinker would ever add milk to Earl Grey!
Also to be nit-picky, but if synthetic lifeforms are now banned then why is the archivist at the Starfleet Archive a hologram? And what's happened to NCC-74656's holo doc?
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
Probably applies only to the creation of sentient androids. I doubt the Federation would destroy/expell all synthetic lifeforms just based on the crimes of some rogue elements.
The part with the necklace was a bit cringeworthy and in your face. It's two simple boring rings; don't know why everyone felt compelled to comment on it.
[ January 24, 2020, 01:43 PM: Message edited by: Spike ]
Posted by Alshrim Dax (Member # 258) on :
I really loved the episode -- maybe i'm just so excited for new Trek that i wasn't really looking for faults in the episode.
Funny enough, Krenim, i watched Star Trek: Nemesis AND Star Trek Into Darkness last weekend (there was a marathon happening on the SciFi channel). In "Into Darkness", Spock's recount to Kirk about the events that led to the destruction of Romulus was the Supernova of their sun happening faster than Spock had anticipated. He had released the Red Matter too late.
I, too, wished the B4 "download" had worked, and Data had re-emerged .. but given that Synth-life is a no-no .. i guess that progress was never realized.
I just really enjoyed the episode and i'm so looking forward to more ... like... Seven of Nine more!
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Having watched the episode, I can say that I'm willing to give the series a chance and see where they're going, but there were definitely problems. I'm really getting a similar "this doesn't feel like Trek" vibe to what I get from Discovery, which is one of my major issues with that show.
But on top of that, it just felt like there was a lot of weak writing in this episode. Like, the whole "they're created in pairs" thing. No explanation. I mean, maybe they're planning on explaining it in a later episode, but, in the moment, it feels like "yeah, we just threw that in so we could blow up a character, but still bring 'her' back".
Also, when Picard wakes up after the explosion, and the Romulans tell him that the police said he was the only one on the security cameras. Are we not even going to discuss the fact that someone's clearly covering something up? They say "maybe she had a cloak", except... she didn't? It was pretty clear that Picard could see the whole fight happening. If that—or at least the huge explosion—didn't show up on the security feeds, then someone obviously changed the recordings. Even if, somehow, Dahj, the Romulans, the Romulans' gunshots, and the explosion were all invisible only to cameras, shouldn't the police have wondered why the recordings showed Picard suddenly go flying through the air? There's just no way the security footage could have been totally unremarkable, and Picard not be very suspicious of that fact.
"I think that the writers mixed up Romulans and Xenomorphs, since Romulans now seem to have acid blood?"
I'm hoping that it's something specific to these assassins or whatever they are, and that's not supposed to a general Romulan thing now.
"Of course they had to tie the new series to Discovery within the first 5 minutes."
Did they? Apparently, I missed that. I just went back and looked, and I still don't see the reference.
Assorted thoughts :
- Evidently, at some point in the past 35 years or so, television has made a comeback, considering that, as of "The Neutral Zone", it was a thing of the distant past, but now you can watch the "Federation News Network" playing on the bigscreen in your local shop window.
- Picard has a safe deposit walk-in closet.
- So, when the police in San Francisco find an old man lying on a rooftop unconscious, they don't take him to a hospital or anything? They just beam him back to his house in France and leave him with his housekeepers?
- How did Picard decide that Dahj was some sort of newfangled all-biological android? As far as we know, he never so much as pointed a tricorder at her, but he goes to the AI scientist completely certain that Dahj is flesh and blood all the way through, despite being an android. I mean, 60 years ago, Noonien Soong had already made an android-who-doesn't-know-she's-an-android who could pass for human, even to medical scans, as long as she didn't do something silly like hit the ground too hard and have her arm fall off. This probably belongs above in my complaint about weak writing. Characters who have information they couldn't possibly have or come to perfectly correct conclusions that don't at all follow from what they know are not a good way to advance your story.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
The Discovery reference was Dahj's boyfriend who was Xahean.
Maybe the assassin took an acidic suicide pill? A reference to Alidar Jarok maybe?
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Given how clueless the reporter was, how obviously pursuing an agenda, I’m not going to worry too much about her saying it was Romulus’s star that novaed.
But... it’s all gonna be Lore, isn’t it? Maddox had ten-fifteen years to stew over the end to his research and life’s goals after Data died, and there was his equally advanced brother sitting in a box RIGHT THERE. Dr. Kim Pine is in on it, she was all too obviously only giving Picard information in response to what she was finding out he knew as they went along. The whole Dahj thing could just be an elaborate ploy to draw him in.
They say the first two eps ending up becoming three. And there’s some serious padding in here. Consider Dahj’s actions:
1. Gets attacked, has vision of Picard. Apparently doesn’t recognise him despite his fame. 2. Runs away, doesn’t call police, roams streets of Boston. Sees Picard on news and learns who he is. 3. Visits Picard in France, then runs away. 4. Roams streets of Paris, then calls her mum. Who obviously doesn’t exist and is a software construct/implanted memory. 5. Goes and finds Picard again...
Did all that NEED to happen? Nope. The only advantage to it all was that it got Picard really interested, and endured the final act (her death) happened somewhere else - away, in particular, from Picard’s ex-Tal Shiar carers.
Same with the painting. Both could have just been in his farmhouse - why have one but not the other? - and given his age he could easily had not spotted the resemblance.
So, yeah. Will watch. Not exactly Earth-shattering though.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
How is it that in the entire Romulan/Reman star system there were only 900 million people? 🤔
Posted by Krenim (Member # 22) on :
Maybe the Romulans were able to evacuate all but the 900 million themselves?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
A couple of things I accidentally left out of my previous comment :
Can we stop with the Westworld-style title sequences? It feels less like Star Trek and more like "well, this is what everyone else has been doing for the past few years, so we can't not do it".
Also, can we stop making the characters sound "real" by having them talk like they just walked into the scene from the modern day? I don't need to hear a character living at the end of the 24th century start a sentence with "Dude!". Imagine if, during TNG, Wesley Crusher had sat on the bridge watching something happen on the viewscreen and said "Whoa, totally radical!"
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
I'd say it's believable that the Romulan population was under a billion, since they started as a (relatively) small colony of Vulcan outcasts around 2000 years ago.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Omega: I'd say it's believable that the Romulan population was under a billion, since they started as a (relatively) small colony of Vulcan outcasts around 2000 years ago.
The Vulcanoid lifespan is far longer than ours, and while it isn't clear if Romulans have the same 'seven year itch' it is evident from T'Pol et al. that they can breed for much longer than humans generally can.
Coupled with the fact they were already technologically advanced when they arrived on Romulus, I can't imagine many constraints on their breeding, but for an excess of warfare.
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