So it looks like Trek is not, in fact, ripping off Battlestar Galactica by having the Romulans be Vulcan Cylons. Instead, Trek is ripping off Mass Effect!
Some species hundreds of thousands of years ago created artificial life, and it ended really badly. They then blatantly engineered an entire star system and placed a device there to warn those that came after not to do the same, otherwise something bad will return. (The Reapers, no doubt.)
The Romulans discovered the warning device and formed the Zhat Vash to prevent the rise of artificial life.
When Soong comes along and starts creating androids, the Zhat Vash decides to infiltrate Starfleet using Oh, who is flat out now revealed to be half-Vulcan half-Romulan. Oh engineers the attack on Mars to convince the Federation to outlaw artificial life.
Maddox goes underground and figures out how to create his own androids. The first two show up a few years later, and on Oh's orders, Rios' captain kills them both and then kills himself because of it. The fallout is why Rios left Starfleet.
And the reason why the Artifact cube broke down is because Ramdha is Zhat Vash. Apparantly the Collective and the effects of the alien artifact don't mesh well.
Speaking of the Artifact cube, Elnor gets saved by Seven. I'm still confused how Elnor got his hands on that Fenris Ranger SOS device. The "previously on Picard" segment implies it was the same device Seven gave Picard, but Seven's dialogue in-episode implies that it was Hugh's device.
Seven takes command of the cube, which looks like it's gonna be awesome... and then the Romulans flush all the drones out into space.
Admiral Pottymouth agrees to send a fleet to help Picard defend the synth homeworld, but I'm not hopeful that they're actually going there to help. My bet is that the two-part finale has Starfleet and the Romulans both trying to destroy the synths, with the cube showing up to fight them off.
The biggest question I have out of this episode is this... If Maddox was so successful on this secret synth homeworld, why did he leave, have his new lab destroyed by the Tal Shiar, and wind up broke on Freecloud?
[ March 12, 2020, 10:03 PM: Message edited by: Krenim ]
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Okay, so now we kniw why the Queen always had a hard-on for Seven. Backup queen capability, I'm guessing.
I think it was Picard's. She says "you", meaning Elnor, not "Hugh".
I don't know why spacing the drones was a problem. We know drones can operate in space perfectly well.
I was hoping Jurati would be killed for safety. She grates on me so much. Also, who doesn't know what a fucking mindmeld is? This chick is the epitome of "smart stupid".
USS Ibn Majid, NCC-75710, with a new boring Eaves stereotype design: https://ibb.co/vJVhqLr
The callback to Marta Batanides was a neat touch, & they finally got Picard's service on Reliant into (kinda) canon.
Overall, this has been DSC S1 with a new skin, but worse.
Finally, again let me reiterate how much I would love a "Rios & the E*Hs" show, even if it's short webisodes. The accenting is fun, the personality conflicts are fun. The lights in the eyes are stupid.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Lots of exposition, yeah.
But this week we finally see in full view the Picard we all love. All the things that started to peek out last week after Deanna gave him a verbal dope-slap. And we even get to hear most of a well-delivered Patrick Stewart Speech(tm).
“Drones can survive in a vacuum!” was the same thing I yelled at the TV before the effect was done and we saw Seven’s reaction. (And that doesn’t even consider that Borg can revive recently-dead beings like that not-so-great episode with Neelix.)
If there’s an octonary star system out there, I find it very unlikely that Starfleet’s super sensors and subspace telescopes, not to mention inter-quadrant space probes, haven’t found it. It also seems weird that the Romulans would keep this memorial or whatever so secret, and also seems weird that no one else would find it.
I think the Fenris SOS device was Hugh’s, which is why Seven immediately asked about him. I guess they’d met each other before. (There’s a meeting I was really hoping to see this season that will never happen now...)
And it was weird that Jurati didn’t even seem to be aware of a mind-meld.
My big question is, from the perspective of the “Admonition,” what’s the difference between sentient synthetic life and sentient holograms or other software?
Also, I realized from the title of this episode that the trippy visuals from the opening credits represent the broken pieces of Picard’s life at the start of the show.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: My big question is, from the perspective of the “Admonition,” what’s the difference between sentient synthetic life and sentient holograms or other software?
I have been asking this since day fucking one. A program is a program, regardless of whether is hard-shelled or soft-shelled. Stick an EMH in a bot bodt, does it suddenly become illegal?
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Apparently the ibn Majid is a Curiosity-class ship according to Chabon, and definitely not an attempt to shoehorn Eaves’ USS Emmet Till into canon. Presumably somebody’s noticed Eaves’s “only name ships after US Air Force officers” policy and they’ve decided to rein him in before the Trump-class USS MAGA turns up to save the day in the final episode...
I thought something happened to the ejected drones once in space. They all lit up or something? I reckon the Romulan ships are carrying a few unnoticed extra passengers...
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
(also, excepting the questionably-uncanon Luna-class ships - really the only thing we can say for certain is there was a USS Titan - I think NCC-75710 is the highest-ever canon registry, excepting the Relativity? And the last one before that was the USS Sao Paulo, more than TWENTY YEARS AGO!)
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lee: they’ve decided to rein him in before the Trump-class USS MAGA turns up to save the day in the final episode...
Thanks. I haven't vomited that strongly since that commie guy repainted a Klingon Academy Miranda model in red with a yellow hammer and sickle and called it the USS Stalin.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :
I didn't realize Starfleet made orange colored starships.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lee: (also, excepting the questionably-uncanon Luna-class ships - really the only thing we can say for certain is there was a USS Titan - I think NCC-75710 is the highest-ever canon registry, excepting the Relativity? And the last one before that was the USS Sao Paulo, more than TWENTY YEARS AGO!)
Correct. The ibn Majid's registry indicates that she was possibly built not long after the Sao Paulo, so she'd be almost 25 years old in 2399 (assuming the ship still exists.)
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
Well, finally things start to make some sense. Altough I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to warn people about the threshold instead of keeping it super secret.
Loved every scene with Seven especially the one where Elnor hugged her.
My only rather big grief is that now Rios is also involved in the whole conspiracy. What are the odds?
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Well if Picard is still in the Nexus after all this time, it would make perfect sense.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
The ep went some way towards explaining why the Zhat Vash do what they do - so it's not just "Hey all of a sudden Romulans hate androids now LOLRandom"but some secret society instead.
Just notice though that a) their plan involves making synths do what they say they were going to do anyway, but the example of Data etc. suggests they were unlikely to; b) said plan ends up killing plenty of other Romulans by destroying the means to save them from a supernova...
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Also (c) apparently hiding knowledge of this warning from the rest of the galaxy...
Concerning the coincidence that Rios is also affected by the conspiracy, I think it’s reasonable enough to be a believable one. After all, Raffi is disgruntled ex-Starfleet and probably sought out Rios specifically because he was also disgruntled ex-Starfleet. It makes some sense that they were both touched by different aspects of the conspiracy, especially when it’s being run by the head of Starfleet Security.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lee: Just notice though that a) their plan involves making synths do what they say they were going to do anyway, but the example of Data etc. suggests they were unlikely to; b) said plan ends up killing plenty of other Romulans by destroying the means to save them from a supernova...
Yeah. So Oh's plan to convince the Federation that synths are bad ends up condemning her own people to death because the ships the synths destroyed were meant to save the Romulan people. Can someone please explain to me how that plan makes any kind of sense? If she just wanted to make a point that synths were bad, why not just have them attack a different shipyard, not one dedicated to saving her own people? I'm sure if synths were at Utopia Planitia, they were other places too. Or at the very least, attack UP after the rescue fleet finished their job!
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I suppose the idea is that she's a fanatic. Stopping (one form of) artificial life is the only thing she cares about, even if billions of people die.
What I want to know is where they're going with this whole "knowledge that literally drives most people insane just by being aware of it" thing. I mean, other than the little super-fast montage of robots and exploding planets that they've already shown, they can't actually show what it is that these people are seeing, because then the audience will say "well, that doesn't seem all that mind-breaking". But, on the other hand, just continually telling us "Oh, yeah, trust us, this information is bad. Just so bad." is kind of dumb.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
It's the same thing as in DSC, with the visions of Control wiping ourt all organic life. Like, yeah, shocking, but anyone who's ever seen Terninator is gonna be all "oh, sure, of course".
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
quote:Originally posted by TSN: I suppose the idea is that she's a fanatic. Stopping (one form of) artificial life is the only thing she cares about, even if billions of people die.
Oh doesn’t come across to me like a stereotypical ‘hurka-durka-jihad’ fanatic. On the basis that she’s a rational, logical Vulcan (half-breed), her plan simply makes no sense.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I suppose you could argue that the risk to all known biological life outweighed the risk to the Romulan planets. But that still puts more credence to a possible future threat and less to a clear and immediate threat.
Something else I haven’t seen discussed is just when and how the synths became so prevalent. From just the few glimpses we saw, the synths sure seemed to be used as slaves, exactly as feared in “Measure of a Man”. I’m jumping to a conclusion here, but it seems as though they were able to make B4-level intelligence, and used that to boost their manpower to build the ships for the rescue armada. Which would mean Picard was complicit or directly responsible for their creation and treatment.
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)