Yeah, so Ro's back, and back in Starfleet as a commander no less. The meat and potatoes of the episode is Picard and Ro hashing out the events of TNG's "Preemptive Strike", while at the same time both are trying to determine whether or not the other is a changeling. Good stuff.
Worf and Raffi are back this week, tracking down one of Sneed's associates to figure out how he got onboard Daystrom Station.
Jack is having a lot more of the red vein delusions, typically involving him killing folks.
Beverly's been examining the changeling killed last episode, and it seems that they've somehow upgraded their shapeshifting ability to render the blood test moot. But... this is my biggest problem with the episode: The point of the blood test was NOT that changelings couldn't mimic blood. The point of the blood test was that if a portion of a changeling was disconnected from the rest it would revert to goo form. Both instances of the blood test here (the dead changeling and Ro) have the blood still touching the rest of the body, so it would still stay blood anyway.
Picard and Ro reconcile (kinda), and Ro makes sure a skeleton crew stays behind on the Titan so they can make their escape from the changeling-infested Intrepid. While en route back to the Intrepid, changelings plant a bomb on Ro's shuttle to take her out. She dies, but she makes sure the explosion disables the Intrepid in the process. The Titan makes its escape, and its revealed that Ro left her Bajoran earring behind, which has all of her investigation into the changeling conspiracy stored on it. We also learn that Ro was Worf and Raffi's handler, and Worf hails Ro and is stunned to find Riker and Picard on the other end of the line instead.
As a continuation of the changeling storyline and as a sequel to "Preemptive Strike", this was a good episode. Heck, I ain't even mad they killed Ro because (IMHO) it worked in context. Everything else, though? Not bad, but not great either.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
I'm beyond pissed that after Icheb, Hugh, and Q they killed of Ro Laren, a character I always liked. Also, the initial interactions between Picard and Ro felt totally off to me. Kind of when Riker blamed Picard in Episode 3. It just didn't feel right to me.
At this point it seems inevitable to me that one of the TNG main characters will be killed off too and I just dread it.
Woda and his padawan Raffi going against a Vulcan crime lord, who for some reason grew up with a Ferengi on the streets of a non-Federation planet, was silly as fuck.
So is Moriarty the AI guarding Daystrom Station or the key to circumvent the AI?
Oh goody, another uniform variant.
I think the Netflix way of releasing whole seasons at once is the superior way. I still have no fucking clue what is going on with Jack (well maybe an inkling) and waiting week after week annoys the hell out of me.
Posted by Krenim (Member # 22) on :
quote:Originally posted by Spike: Also, the initial interactions between Picard and Ro felt totally off to me. Kind of when Riker blamed Picard in Episode 3. It just didn't feel right to me.
I think it was supposed to not feel right. If Ro and Picard had met again under different circumstances, I think the interaction would have been quite different. But both of them were at the same time trying to trip the other up to see whether or not they were a changeling.
quote:Originally posted by Spike: So is Moriarty the AI guarding Daystrom Station or the key to circumvent the AI?
As soon as I read that question, I knew he had to be the AI guarding Daystrom Station. Some idiot at Daystrom couldn't leave well enough alone and let him live his life. "Hey, y'know what'd be a great addition to this security system? Enslaving a self-aware holographic criminal mastermind to it!"
quote:Originally posted by Spike: Oh goody, another uniform variant.
I noticed that. I get that Michelle Forbes' long hair would hide her rank, but did we really need another uniform variant just to make it more visible?
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
Also kind of bothers me that Picard didn‘t care to check up on her for thirty years.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Kinda bothered me no one that knew Ro was back in Starfleet felt the need to tell Picard.
Like, uh, Worf.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Holy Christ, what a hot fucking mess.
Fifty percent done & still no movement forward. Fridged cameos. A lotta deus ex.
Do writers even know how to write anymore or do they just use AI plot programs?
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
quote:I get that Michelle Forbes' long hair would hide her rank, but did we really need another uniform variant just to make it more visible?
I doubt that's the reason. You could see her collar just fine and Seven's hair is even longer. Also this generation of costume makers obviously doesn't really care about visibility or ranks. Otherwise we wouldn't have gotten the god awful DIS rankbadges, the crazy PIC rank charts or the hot mess that is SNW.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
You know what pisses me off the most? Bringing Ro back just for bullshit daddy/mentor issue trauma & exploding. Like, I get she's a fan favorite but she deserved way more than this.
Again, a better choice for a better writer would've been to use Sito Jaxa. Have her show up all angry at Picard for never looking for her, just giving up. Have her having spent 6 years in a Cardassian labor camp after countless violating interrogations, found only after a review of prisons by postwar occupation administrators. That resentment sits & it festers & breeds. Give her the same backstory of aggressive rehabiliation & SF Intelligence snacking her up. Have that resentment sit & have her be angry af at Picard still, & even angrier that she knows she has to trust him to take over again. Do that, & see if Shannon Fill would be willing to take one more acting gig to do the role (she's a social worker now) before recasting (& a recast could be explained as a reconstructive surgery due to imprisonment disfiguration).
Also, why did they have to keep saying "Bajoran earring"? We know it's a Bajoran earring. Just say earring.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Also:
Me, watching Liam Shaw in Picard S3E01: This guy's an asshole! 😡
Me, watching Liam Shaw by Picard S3E05: This guy's an asshole! 😂❤
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Ro and Riker shagged that one time, and you can be darn sure neither of them ever told anyone about it. There’s your Changeling test right there.
And, I can’t help but wonder whether Matalas and Co. don’t know how Bajoran names work, because both Picard and Riker were previously on first-name terms with her, and neither called her Laren once…
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :
Am I the only one thinking the VFX watched Stranger Things when doing the Upside-Down looking vines effects?
Posted by shikaru808 (Member # 2080) on :
Read an interesting theory on Twitter about how Jack might be possessed by a Pah-wraith.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I don’t know whether that’d be a good thing or not. It might be refreshing to have the whole thing come down to something he himself did, or someplace he went, and therefore nothing to do with who either of his parents are. Rather than it all have to do with his father.
But at least we know now that this season’s (apparent) main villain’s motivation isn’t some hithertofore unknown grudge against the show’s main star, which was a concern before the season started. So that IS a positive, I think.
Posted by Brown_supahero (Member # 83) on :
It’s great to see large organizational trauma. Continuation of dominion war thread is awesome. I’m happy for next gen crew to have developed stories. Ro scene picard at holodeck is top tier Patrick steward acting. Shaw did nothing wrong, that attitude feels like a US submarine captain or a young US admiral… 2400’s fleet should be more like that.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
quote:Ro and Riker shagged that one time, and you can be darn sure neither of them ever told anyone about it.
Well, they told Deanna about it; or, rather, Ro told Deanna. That was the final scene of the episode!
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
A thought occurred to me this morning.
The next episode is called "The Bounty".
We know we're meeting La Forge in this one. We know he's stationed at the Fleet Museum.
What do you bet we're gonna see the gang borrow a certain 100+-year-old Bird-of-Prey to reach Daystrom Station undetected?
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
Almost correct. Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)