Star Trek: Picard S01E02: Much more world building and setting the stage—not a bad thing at all, in my view. Parts of the “magic technological forensics” bit were a little far-fetched, even for Trek, but hey, it’s just a future version of what Law and Order does, right? 🖖
Spoilers follow…
- On the one hand, it’s sad to see people treating the synthetics the way they do. At the same time, it doesn’t seem at all improbable. We’re so good at othering and demeaning those who are different.
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That said, F8 (fate?) definitely didn’t have the personality that Data had, even in Encounter at Farpoint, and assuming he was representative of all the synthetics, it’s not difficult to see how people would find him (and the other synths) off-putting. Just another machine, not a real being, etc.
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Plus, of course, those scenes fulfill Bruce Maddox’s stated intentions from “Measure of a Man”, in using synthetics for dangerous and difficult manual labor, so it’s good continuity.
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Reading between the lines, it’s more clear that Picard’s Romulan housemates are ex-Tal Shiar (something that I was aware of thanks to the Star Trek: Picard Countdown comic series), but perhaps not clear enough, judging by some comments I’ve already seen on Twitter.
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But even with Tal Shiar tech, the “magic forensics” scene was a little too much of Law and Order-style “magic technology” for me to totally get on board with. Not enough to be really bad, but at least enough to get a smirk.
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Though this episode (and that scene) did answer a question I’d had for the past week. In episode 1, Dahj never mentioned having a sister, but her sister did, so I was curious as to whether Dahj even knew she had a twin, or if she was unaware of the necklace’s symbology beyond it being a memento from her father. But apparently she did.
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The transporter portal frames at Starfleet bothered me only because how the heck to people keep from walking into someone exiting one as they walk up to it? It was flashy, but just looked completely impractical.
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I do have to admit, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to Admiral Clancy’s umbrage at Picard apparently assuming he could just stroll right back in and fly out with command of a ship and crew. Plus, definite shades of The Search for Spock. This isn’t a Picard quote, but practically could be:
“The word, admiral?”
“The word is ‘no’. I am therefore going anyway.”
- I did love Dr. Jurati picking up one of Asimov’s Robot anthologies; and that followed by Picard admitting that he just “didn’t get” science fiction was worth a laugh.
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As was his Romulan housemate’s outrage at his deciding to go off galavanting around the galaxy again.
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And the callback to Picard’s illness, introduced in TNG, is bittersweet. It’s a good thing we know that they have a second season already approved and a three-year plan for the show, so we don’t have to worry about Picard falling apart too soon!
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So is the Commodore Vulcan, as implied by the IDIC emblem on a box on her desk, or Romulan acting as Vulcan, as implied by her snippishness with her agent? (Though Enterprise Vulcans did get pretty snippy as well…I’ll always hold Nimoy’s and Marc Leonard’s portrayals as prime Vulcan stoicism, and will always find the more outwardly emotional Vulcans as a little odd.)
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I’m fascinated by the Romulan reclamation site Borg cube and whatever project is going on there. Lots of different races are involved with the project. How are they recruiting? Where from? Is the Federation/Starfleet aware of this project? Just what are they doing?
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“This facility has gone 5843 days without an assimilation.” Hah! That’s just over 16 (Earth) years, so the project got started post-Nemesis, but two years before the Mars attack and the destruction of Romulus.
Now to wait for next week!