A vast improvement over last week, since stuff actually happens.
Picard speaks with Tallinn/not-Laris, and it is indeed confirmed she works for the same folks as Gary Seven. Neat to revisit that after all these years. Her job is to watch over Renee Picard, who should be going on the Europa mission but may not due to Q's interference.
Raffi and Seven free Rios. Raffi hallucinates Elnor momentarily, which cannot be good.
The Borg Queen manages to lure a police officer to La Sirena and takes him hostage. Jurati kills the Queen to save him... but not before she injects Jurati with nanoprobes from her fingertips (so much for her being out of them). By the end of the episode, we see that the Borg Queen has gone full Harvey/Scorpius in Jurati's head.
We also get to see how dangerous Q can be even without his powers. I guess he wasn't bluffing all the way back in "Q Who" how useful he could be even as a human.
Tying in with that, we finally get to meet the Soongs of the early 21st Century. Yup, plural. Brent Spiner of course plays Adam, and Isa Briones plays his daughter Kore. Kore has some auto-immune disorder that will eventually kill her, which Adam is trying to cure. Not surprised genetic disorders run in the Soong family; they're completely inbred!
Adam's funding gets cut by Lea Thompson, who is in front of the camera this week instead of behind.
Q gets Adam onboard with helping him by providing Adam with a temporary cure, and holding the permanent cure over his head.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Improvement in action, no doubt becuse of ol' Two-Takes running the show, but not in plot. This is so badly written because everything is telegraphed so far in advance. If it's not, then the surprises (e.g., Renee Picard) are ruined by tech team blabbing. Honestly, I can't plot for shit & it feels like I could structure this better.
ANYWAY.
Interesting choices in names. I know of Shango mainly through his Santeria aspect, Changó. There's also the multi-aspect of Kore, who, given Adam's evasiveness about her mother, leads me to believe she's a rescued and/or failed Augment.
The cop call was cute. The Borg bonding was not, because again, telegraphed. Also, John de Lancie's voice is too recognizable so that it was no surprise that he was the therapist. Also, on the subject of voices & accents, Orla Brady's American accent is the laughably worst I've heard since Julian Rhind-Tutt on "Keen Eddie".
Called it on the Supervisor tip.
Jean-Luc's mention of the Io organism is oddly specific.
Anyway, we're half over & still with minimal forward movement. That they filmed S2 & 3 back to back has me feeling like we'll not be seeing a resolution or denouement anytime soon.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :
I'm not feeling the direction they're taking Q. In the past he's messed with Picard, but to ultimately help him open up his mind like in 'All Good Things' or teach a lesson about bigger threats out there in 'Q Who' which lead to Starfleet building up their defenses. And finally 'Tapestry' to remind Picard to not always play it safe and where he would be if he did.
Right now Q seems hellbent to make that alternate future happen. First he tried to snap Renée Picard (kill her? maybe). To making her step down from her mission posing as a therapist.
Meanwhile he's giving Data's great-great-great grandpa a treatment for his daughter. Also I noticed how she required the same type of shielding provided by drones that covered the entire atmosphere of alternate future Earth. Making me think Q tricks him into giving the planet the same disease his daughter has in order to create that atmospheric shield.
The Q I know would show Picard what could happen, and allow him to fix it to learn a lesson. Not actively try to make it happen.
And finally to address the Farscape Harvey in the room. This makes no sense with what I remember of the Borg for the most part. Yes Picard could hear the collective in First Contact since the Queen was nearby. But aside from a dream at the beginning... no visions. I'm really not sure what to make of it.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
So, uh, you can call the number on the card.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
quote:Adam's funding gets cut by Lea Thompson
And another board member was Vasiliy Rozhenko. You can't walk an inch without stepping on a continuity reference these days.
I felt the Kore/Soji thing was a bit too much after Laris/Tallinn (and I'm curious why they look the same).
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
quote:And finally 'Tapestry' to remind Picard to not always play it safe and where he would be if he did.
Just a reminder: we don't actually know that Q appeared as anything other than an imagined figment of Picard's subconscious during a fever dream.
If this did happen -- and if it did, there's no actual evidence that it was time travel and not just Q messing around in Picard's head to help him be satisfied with the life choices he'd made -- then I would read this to be evidence that, to Q, Picard was someone he considered a friend.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
quote:And finally 'Tapestry' to remind Picard to not always play it safe and where he would be if he did.
Just a reminder: we don't actually know that Q appeared as anything other than an imagined figment of Picard's subconscious during a fever dream.
If this did happen -- and if it did, there's no actual evidence that it was time travel and not just Q messing around in Picard's head to help him be satisfied with the life choices he'd made -- then I would read this to be evidence that, to Q, Picard was someone he considered a friend.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Why are you double-posting Jeff? That's two weeks in a row.
Y'know what? I'm finding it hard to care about any of this. Even after a whole season previous of this lot we don't know much about them, and especially not after the year and a half of storyline reboots they've all gone through. Seven and Raffi were together then broke up. Ditto Cris and Agnes. Now Raffi is massively maternal about Elnor for some reason. Isa Briones? Oh, sorry, we literally can't think of anything else to do with your character so how's about this? You can play someone else who looks like your character for convoluted reasons we'll probably just let everyone assume. And some of the other past characters like Q? Oh, we'll have him be totally different to how he was before and acting seemingly according to motivations he NEVER evinced before but don't worry, there's all a good reason for it, which we'll get round to explaining... hey, where'd everyone go? They need to hear the EXPLANATION...!!!
Look, there was a POINT to Q. But now... he's just another baddie. And not even a good one. He's a Blofeld. A Christoph Waltz Blofeld, at that.
I was partly thinking that maybe the twist will be that in the proper timeline Renee P. didn't go on the Europa mission. Picard himself never mentioned it. Plus, hello? EUROPA MISSION. What the hell is she doing pissing around on Io?
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Trying to boost my post count, I guess?
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Trying to boost my post count, I guess?
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I’ve had a pet theory about the Soongs ever since the Enterprise Augments trilogy. Simply put, the Soongs are clones. Before Picard, I assumed that Arik Soong from ENT cloned himself to continue his work but kept things low profile with different names so they could appear to be children.
Now Picard is just pushing the timeline back a century or so, but it could be the same thing. Because we now have four Soongs of different generations that are all played by the same actor. And I think it’s fairly well telegraphed by the fact that this new Soong is named Adam.
I wish I’d made the Queen-Harvey connection, it’s been too long since I watched Farscape.
I’m enjoying the season but right now Q is more annoyance than interesting. Stretching out the mystery of his agenda is frustrating when he’s acting so different, when it’s obvious the writers are holding out on the reason why as a lynchpin for the plot. It’s also perplexing why Q needs/wants to change these two specific but apparently unrelated things in tandem, unless he’s specifically trying to create the evil timeline for some reason.
Even in All Good Things, Q was both getting Picard into and helping him out of the paradox. This time he’s not helping at all, and there’s no hint or discussion as to why.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: I wish I’d made the Queen-Harvey connection, it’s been too long since I watched Farscape. needs/wants to change these two specific but apparently unrelated things in tandem, unless he’s specifically trying to create the evil timeline for some reason.
Even in All Good Things, Q was both getting Picard into and helping him out of the paradox. This time he’s not helping at all, and there’s no hint or discussion as to why.
Comet, an over the air TV channel in Denver Colorado airs old sci-fi shows like Outer Limits, Quantum Leap, X-Files, Sliders, SG-1, Farscape, ect...
Don't worry MinutiaeMan, you still have mad sci-fi cred in everyone's book.
Posted by Zipacna (Member # 1881) on :
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: I’ve had a pet theory about the Soongs ever since the Enterprise Augments trilogy. Simply put, the Soongs are clones. Before Picard, I assumed that Arik Soong from ENT cloned himself to continue his work but kept things low profile with different names so they could appear to be children.
Now Picard is just pushing the timeline back a century or so, but it could be the same thing. Because we now have four Soongs of different generations that are all played by the same actor. And I think it’s fairly well telegraphed by the fact that this new Soong is named Adam.
That idea did occur to me while watching, although the idea is a little muddied by the line Arik Soong said, when called a "son of a bitch", that "mother was a chemist, actually". That could be Adam Soong's mother (presumably also played by Isa Briones, for reasons), though, I suppose. It would give an interesting motivation behind why the Soongs are obsessed with genetics for at least the next 130 years - and would explain the absence of a Cain & Abel Soong in the series, as presumably Kore isn't Arik's direct ancestor.
It's that or they're on a centuries-long mission to produce a chin that would rival that of the Habsburgs.
It is, for me at least, a shame that the season isn't set in the 60s or 70s, as Adam Soong would have made an interesting progenitor behind the whole Eugenics Wars thing...assuming they're not just ignoring dialogue and bumping that up a few decades.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
What does it say if you ring the phone number? (I’m not making an international call for that). Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
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