star trek picard the end is the beginning

The End is the Beginning (episode)

• View history
• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 2 Memorable quotes
• 3.1 Production
• 3.2 Cast and characters
• 3.3 Continuity
• 3.4 Reception
• 3.5 Video and DVD releases
• 4.1 Starring
• 4.2 Guest starring
• 4.3 Co-starring
• 4.4 Uncredited co-stars
• 4.5 Stunt doubles
• 4.6 Stand-ins
• 4.7.1 Meta references
• 4.8 External links

Summary [ ]

Outside Starfleet Headquarters in 2385 , Admiral Jean-Luc Picard meets with Lieutenant Commander Raffi Musiker after the devastating synth attack on Mars , where they discuss the ramifications of the attack. Musiker is optimistic that the evacuation plan for the Romulans can still be achieved if Starfleet were to create a new fleet of mothballed starships from the inventories of Eridani A and Beta Antares , staffed by reserve duty officers, alongside synthetic labor; however, Picard informs her that effective immediately, synthetic lifeforms have been banned throughout the Federation , that any existing synthetics are being dismantled, and that any further research into synths has been halted. Musiker does not buy the official explanation that the attack was the result of a fatal code error in the A500 operating system , and suspects the Tal Shiar of sabotaging the synths, though Picard is skeptical that Romulans would attack a fleet designed specifically to assist them in their time of desperate need.

Musiker remains eager to help the Romulans evacuate from the impending supernova , but Picard seems distraught. Asking about his distress, Picard informs her that the Federation has halted any further plans to lend assistance to the Romulans, and that many of them never wanted to assist the Romulans at all. Picard tells Musiker that he gave Starfleet a choice: to accept the revised Romulan evacuation plan, or to accept his resignation. Starfleet accepted his resignation, much to Picard's shock.

Musiker remains adamant about acting, unwilling to accept that this is the end of their efforts, but Picard admits that he has run out of ideas for any further action, and that he believes that mounting a multi-world evacuation of tens of millions of Romulans without Starfleet's support would not be possible. Musiker insists that she cannot move forward without Picard's help, when the CNC summons her through the PADD she has been carrying. Realizing that she is about to lose her commission with Starfleet, she scolds Picard for giving up, and angrily leaves him, ignoring his calls to her. He places his forehead in his hands.

Act One [ ]

At Vasquez Rocks in 2399 , Picard and Musiker talk about the two synthetics and discuss the plan to find Bruce Maddox . Musiker seems noticeably uninterested and scolds him again, saying he has some nerve to come there, and that she had already heard of his plan through his visit to Fleet Admiral Clancy . Next time, she sarcastically advises, to not tell the CNC of Starfleet about his top secret, unauthorized mission to find Maddox. She mentions the FNN interview which Picard dubs an "unmitigated disaster", and rants about him being able to fall back to living in a family château with heirloom furniture while she's living in a hovel in comparison. She mentions that since his resignation and her dismissal from Starfleet, the past fourteen years have been one long period of humiliation and rage, plus some snakeleaf -induced paranoia . She continues her grievance by suggesting it would have been nice to hear from Picard for a reason other than finding a pilot for his mission, such as just checking in on her, because she was not doing well at all. Picard remains silent through this, a look of regret on his face. She begins to break down in tears when she reminds him that she lost her security clearance back then, but she is unable to finish. She springs off her chair with the bottle of Chateau Picard in hand and leaves, warning Picard not to touch her. All Picard can do is watch, but he immediately gets up and calls out her name.

On the Artifact , a now fully liberated Hugh is watching video playback of Soji Asha speaking to the nameless unconscious Romulan Borg in its native tongue . Intrigued, he pays Asha a visit, and commends her for her work, and for speaking to the unconscious " xB " in his language. Asha replies that it was Hugh that taught her that even in an unconscious state, that such words can be soothing to an individual. Hugh informs Asha that he’s granted her an interview with an xB by the name of Ramdha , and admits that after seeing her behavior earlier, it helped influence his decision, though he is curious as to why Asha is interested in interviewing Ramdha. Asha asks what Hugh knows about Ramdha prior to her assimilation into the Borg Collective , and asks if he has read her Romulan dossier. Hugh tells her he has not, before realizing that Asha has. He asks her how she managed that, and she replies that she merely asked to see it, noting that usually when she asks, people are happy to help her. Hugh replies it is usually the opposite for him, especially with Romulans. Asha says that Ramdha was an expert in ancient Romulan mythology, and notes that she wrote about evidence for a therapeutic utility of a shared mythical framework. Intrigued, Hugh grants permission for a thirty-minute interview with Ramdha.

Back on Earth, Picard catches up with Musiker, and tells her that he understands her anger towards him. He admits that he disappointed her, neglected her, and wasn’t there for her when he should have been and apologizes for it. She only replies that she doesn’t care and takes another swig from the wine bottle. However, when Picard once more brings up that there are indeed Tal Shiar operatives on Earth, and that they could not be there without some complicity from the Federation, she finally listens to what he has to say. Picard remembers that Musiker had always suspected the connections between the Romulans and Federation, but she says that those suspicions were only of the Mars attack. She elaborates that she doesn’t just assume such connections, but that she has concrete evidence that a high-ranking Starfleet official willfully allowed the attack to happen on Mars, and end the rescue mission. Picard remains skeptical that the Romulans would sabotage their own rescue, to which Musiker simply replies that is exactly what happens with a cover-up: they conceal their reasons. Picard responds that he wants her help because she is good at seeing the things that other people are unable to see in this manner. However, Musiker refuses, and says she will not get herself involved in this sort of thing with Picard again. Before Picard can try to convince her otherwise, she demands him to leave. As Picard begins to walk away, she looks back to him and says that she knows a pilot that she will have get in contact with him, named Rios. Picard thanks her, before leaving.

Outside the Daystrom Institute on Okinawa , Dr. Agnes Jurati is enjoying a picnic, and listening to Kasseelian opera through some earbuds, before she turns around to see Commodore Oh , wearing shades , waiting for her to see her. She introduces herself as the director of Starfleet Security , and tells her she’d like to speak to her in regards to her two recent visits with Picard.

Act Two [ ]

On the Artifact, Hugh and Asha are walking to the unit where Ramdha is being held. Hugh approaches a Romulan guard outside the unit, and informs him that Asha will be meeting with Ramdha. The guard says that she needs authorization, but Hugh replies that as his unit is operated by the Reclamation Project, he has granted the authority, as the project’s executive director. The guard grants them access without further protest, and as another guard takes over his station, follows Hugh and Asha into the unit which is full of Romulan xBs, all of which are busying themselves with certain simple tasks. Asking about it, Asha is told by Hugh that as far as he is aware, these are the only known Romulans to have ever been assimilated into the Borg Collective. They spot Ramdha sitting at a nearby table, laying out a peculiar set of triangle cards in a certain fashion. They approach her, and Asha greets Ramdha, who merely looks at them, before returning to her cards without a word.

Back on Earth, at her home, Musiker is sitting outside, looking at a particular file on a tablet, when she gets an incoming call from Picard. Although she hesitates, she answers and asks what he wants. He correctly guesses that she is researching what they spoke about earlier, though she denies it. He then sends her everything that the Daystrom Institute has on Bruce Maddox , before leaving her to continue with her work and tells her to carry on.

In orbit of Earth, La Sirena beams Picard onboard into an empty transporter room. A few moments later, the ship's Emergency Medical Hologram greets Picard, and leads him to the ship's captain, Cristóbal Rios . Rios' hologram is literally him, only with a more neat, presentable appearance and a British accent . Rios is smoking a cigar, and has a large piece of tritanium shrapnel embedded in his shoulder, which Emil begins to treat as he and Picard introduce themselves to one another. Rios offers Picard a drink, which Picard politely declines, before telling Picard to sit anywhere. Picard almost automatically sits in the command chair but instead decides to sit elsewhere. Rios asks Picard about where they will be going, since Musiker informed him that Picard wasn't totally sure of their destination. Picard only responds that he's working on it, and that he will want to leave as soon as possible. Asking if there will be any undertaking of illegal activity, Picard only responds that he doesn't know, but that he isn't in the habit of consulting lawyers before doing what needs to be done. Emil successfully removes the shrapnel from Rios' shoulder, but is deactivated by Rios before he allows Emil to patch his wound. Picard delves a bit more into Rios and his Starfleet history, in which Rios was a former executive officer aboard a cruiser called the Ibn Majid – a ship that has since been stricken from all Starfleet records. Picard notices a distinct bitterness from Rios in his attitude towards Starfleet, and tells Rios of his own falling out with Starfleet. Picard also notes the impeccable shape that La Sirena is in, and that Rios has maintained and stowed everything in accordance with Starfleet protocol. Despite not knowing what happened with Rios in his past with Starfleet, or his old ship, Picard believes that Rios is still Starfleet to his core, to which Rios responds that is only his tragic sense of life. He also asks Picard to hire him or someone else, but to stay out of his head.

Meanwhile, Musiker has indeed continued to research Bruce Maddox's location, and after a considerable amount of research, traces some quantum fingerprinting connected to Maddox originating on Freecloud .

Back on La Sirena , the ship’s Emergency Navigational Hologram , another copy of Rios identical to Emil only with an Irish accent, informs him that the ship's navigation sensors are back at their maximum range, before inquiring about Rios and his encounter with Picard. The ENH begins to list off the achievements and commemorations that Picard had earned in his Starfleet career, such as his being the chief contact with the Q Continuum , his role as Arbiter of Succession for the Klingon Empire , saving Earth from a Borg invasion, his command of both the USS Enterprise -D and -E , and working alongside the great Spock . The hologram tells Rios that Picard is a good man, and that it's been a long time since Rios has served with someone like him. Rios only laments that he does not need another grand heroic captain to work alongside with, especially since the last time he had such a captain, he was killed, and that the death of this captain still haunts him. He deactivates the ENH before the hologram can protest further.

Back at Château Picard, Laris joins Picard standing outside in the night air, where Picard is reminiscing the familiar scents of the harvest season. Laris asks if he will miss it, to which Picard says that he will miss her, Zhaban , and Number One , but that despite trying his best over the years to belong at the château, that he never truly felt at home. Laris only responds that she supposes that Picard always kept one eye on the stars.

Act Three [ ]

Hugh and Asha continue to watch Ramdha arrange her cards on the table, and discern the meanings of certain symbols shown on each card. Asha sees a symbol for a door, which Hugh clarifies as meaning " shaipouin ," or as Asha continues, "false door," fitting with traditional Romulan houses, which feature a false front door which is never used. One must go around to the back door to be admitted into the home. Asha then sits behind Ramdha and asks for entry to Ramdha in Romulan. Ramdha doesn't take her eyes from the cards, and continues to lay them out, but finally invites Asha to join her at the table.

Back at Château Picard, Zhaban is giving Picard the last of his supplies: bread , Roquefort cheese , terrine d'oie handmade by Madame Arnaud , and the last plum in the house. Bending down to pick up the plum he accidentally dropped, Zhaban narrowly misses being shot with disruptor fire taking out the lights when the household is suddenly attacked by the Zhat Vash ; the housekeepers immediately realize the intruders must have taken out the security alarm. Taking cover, the Romulan assassins make their way into the house and are fought off by Laris, Zhaban, and Picard. Easily falling back on their Tal Shiar training, Laris and Zhaban are successful in defending Picard as they fight the intruders off, knocking out or killing many agents with their own weapons, or the emergency disruptors hidden beneath the furniture. After seemingly dispatching with every assassin, and making sure everyone is alright, another assassin charges into the study, only to be killed by Dr. Jurati with a dropped disruptor rifle; she faintly hopes the man is only stunned but becomes mortified when Laris explains that Romulan disruptors possess no stun setting . Thanking Jurati for her quick actions, Picard settles her down with a glass of wine and comforts her as Laris restrains one of the unconscious assassins for interrogation in a wooden chair. Zhaban is prepared to immediately kill the man with an unarmed strike as he's certain others will be sent soon, but Laris reminds him in Romulan that it isn't who they are anymore. Jurati tells Picard of her conversation with Commodore Oh, and how Oh had inquired about why Picard had come to visit her at the institute. She reveals that she told Oh why he had come to her, and that she felt it was important to tell Oh the truth (besides, she's a terrible liar). Jurati tells Picard that she did not tell Oh one thing. Before she can say what this is, however, the restrained assassin awakens when Laris spritzes him with water, and Picard goes over to question him. Picard asks the assassin why the Tal Shiar are on Earth, and if he himself is of the Zhat Vash, and promises that if he answers the questions, Picard will have him released. The assassin is silent, and Zhaban remains skeptical that an interrogation will be successful. Laris comments that, flicking the assassin with the back of her fingers on the prominent brow ridges he and Zhaban share, the prisoner is a "stubborn northerner , like you." Picard asks why the Zhat Vash killed Dahj Asha , to which the assassin only responds by saying that Dahj was not a girl. Picard asks for help in understanding everything that's happening, but the assassin says that she is not what Picard thinks she is, and that he will not find her before the Zhat Vash do. Apparently calling the Human an epithet in Romulan, Laris responds with a punch to the face while Zhaban tilts the chair backwards hard to the floor and grabs the man, fist prepared to hit him. The assassin calls the other sister the end of all; the Destroyer, before he bites down on a capsule and spits acid on Zhaban, like how Dahj was sprayed. While Zhaban is successful in quickly taking off his coat with Picard's assistance before the acid can hurt him, the assassin completely and painfully disintegrates in seconds before he can say another word, taking parts of the chair that he was bound to with him.

On the Artifact, Asha begins her interview with Ramdha and introduces herself as an anthropologist by training, though she seemingly gains little progress in speaking to her. Hugh tells her that Ramdha is known for having both good days and bad days. Asha asks about Ramdha's cards, which she calls pixmit , asking if Ramdha tells fortunes with them like a mandala. She asks if each symbol has a certain connection to Romulan mythology, however at the word, Ramdha expresses disliking of the term, and refers to the cards as the news. The concept intrigues Asha, who shows huge interest in the idea that she is able to express her trauma in such a manner that is rooted in deep archetypes, but still relevant. Asha expresses that she hopes to succeed in a similar fashion with her own work. At this, Ramdha gazes at Asha, visibly disturbed, and says that she knows her, and that she remembers Asha from tomorrow. Asha is confused by what she means, but runs with it and asks her what she was doing. Asha tells Ramdha that she was on board the Imperial scout ship Shaenor with 25 other passengers, the last vessel the Artifact assimilated (when it was a part of the Borg Collective, shortly before the cube's submatrix collapse). Hugh seems confused as to how Asha would know this information. Asha asks Ramdha if she knows what happened, but Ramdha, becoming increasingly disturbed, completely ignores the question, focusing on another of her cards instead which depicts two girls, her hands beginning to shake. Ramdha asks Asha which sister she is, the one who dies, or lives. Ramdha then stands and grabs the holstered disruptor of the guard that had accompanied them inside and aims it at Asha, fearfully saying she knows who she is, identifying Asha as " Seb-Cheneb ", the Destroyer. Ramdha then aims the disruptor at her own head, but before she can fire, Asha rushes to her side and disarms her. Hugh immediately calms Ramdha, and settles the situation, while the other Romulan xB's in the room eye Asha in a fearful manner, much to her confusion.

Act Four [ ]

Distressed at the scene that had just occurred, Asha calls her mother from her quarters and asks if Dahj is alright, to which her mother responds that Dahj is fine. While her mother talks about what Dahj is up to, Soji seemingly becomes exhausted and falls unconscious while her mother continues to speak about Dahj's interest in adopting a puppy .

Later, she is awakened by her door chime being rung by Narek , who has come to her quarters after hearing what had happened. Asking about it, Asha expresses confusion as before the interview; she didn't recall ever hearing about the Shaenor , or knowing that Ramdha had been on board the ship. She merely attributes this to the fact that she must have learned of the fact through one of the many unclassified documents about the Artifact. When she asks Narek if he believes her, he whispers in her ear that he believes he's falling in love with her, before they embrace each other.

Leaving Asha's quarters, Narek meets with Narissa in a darkened hall, taking him by surprise. She is back to her natural Romulan appearance, and can smell that Asha has been very close with Narek, calling the scent carnal. She asks Narek what Asha has told him, to which Narek tells her that he’s been told nothing, and that while he's unsure, he believes Asha has no idea of what she truly is, and after the incident on Earth, he believes it’s best that she remain unsure of what she is. Narissa realizes that the incident on Earth was a miscalculation, which is why she lets Narek continue with his own approach, but warns him to watch his feelings with Asha, before leaving him. Narek tells his sister it is good to see her restored to her Romulan appearance.

Back at Château Picard, Dr. Jurati informs Picard that the one thing she didn’t tell Commodore Oh was that she would be joining Picard in his search for Dahj's sister. Picard then gets a call through his old Starfleet combadge from Rios earlier than he expected. Rios tells him that his sources have told him that this mission is about to get hot, to which Picard says that it's already hot. Jurati makes her case to join, that she sees Dahj and her sister as a miracle that she needs to see for herself, and as Earth's leading expert on synthetic life promises to more than earn her keep. Convinced, Picard and Jurati beam to La Sirena , in orbit above western Europe.

La Sirena leaving Earth at warp speed

Aboard the ship, Picard is shocked to see Musiker on board as well, and realizes that she was the source that Rios had spoken of. Musiker tells Picard that she's found Maddox, and tells Picard on the promise that he takes her with him to Freecloud. Picard at first is happy to have her join them, but Musiker clarifies that she's not joining him, and that she's only catching a ride to Freecloud, where she will separate from them. Then, Musiker tells him, Picard will be on his own. Jurati asks Musiker why she wants to go to Freecloud, and Musiker treats Jurati with suspicion, and scolds Picard for letting her join when she wasn't able to run any security background checks on her. Picard asks why Musiker wants to go to Freecloud, and she refuses to give him an answer. Rios impatiently asks if they can get underway, and they all take their positions. Picard smiles and gives his familiar " Engage " command, and La Sirena heads to Freecloud at warp speed.

Memorable quotes [ ]

" Mars is burning, tens of thousands are dead, and nobody is thinking, nobody is listening, they're just reacting! " " Wait a minute. What happened in there, JL? " " They said that our plan was 'unfeasible'. Half of them never wanted to rescue the Romulans in the first place, and the rest are… are just frightened. I never dreamed that Starfleet would give in to intolerance and fear. "

" The CNC wants to see me. That's great. That's great. You tender your resignation, and my ass gets fired. "

" My entire life for the past 14 years has just been one long slide into humiliation, and rage… also a fair amount of snakeleaf-induced paranoia, so some things never change. "

" There is no more despised people in the galaxy than the xBs. People either see us as property to be exploited, or as a hazard to be warehoused. Our hosts, the Romulans, have a far more expansive vision. They see us as both. "

" What? " " You're doing the research, aren't you? " " No. " " I'm sending you everything that Daystrom had on Bruce Maddox. " " I don't want it. " " Carry on. "

" I'm not in the habit of consulting lawyers before I do what needs to be done. "

" You were the XO of a heavy cruiser? " " The Ibn Majid . You never heard of it because it doesn't exist. Starfleet erased it from the records. " " Do I detect a certain bitterness towards Starfleet? You must know that Starfleet and I long since have parted ways. " " If you say so. I really don't give a damn. " " Oh really? I see this ship is impeccably maintained, every bolt, and clasp, and fitting in place. Everything stowed in regulation Starfleet order. I don't know what happened to you, Rios, or the Ibn Majid , but five minutes on this ship, and I know precisely what I'm looking at. You are Starfleet to the core. I can smell it on you. " " That's just my tragic sense of life. Raffi warned me you were a speechmaker. "

" So, are we excited? Intimidated? Maybe a teensy bit starstruck? Jean-Luc Picard: Chief contact with the Q Continuum. Arbiter of Succession for the Klingon Empire. Savior of Earth from Borg invasion. Captain of the Enterprises -D and -E. The man even worked alongside the great Spock. "

" I tried my best to belong to this place, but I don't think I ever truly felt at home here. "

" Maybe... maybe it was on stun. " " Romulan disruptors don't have a stun setting. " " Oh, God! "

" Do the images have connection to Romulan mythology? " " 'Mythology'? I hate that word. In Romulan, we have no such word. " " What's a better word? Scriptures? Sacred stories? Legendarium? " " The news. "

" I know who you are! You are Seb-Cheneb ! You are the Destroyer! "

" Engage! "

Background information [ ]

Production [ ].

• Vasquez Rocks is first established as such on screen, following on from its brief appearance in the previous episode, " Maps and Legends ". The shooting location has appeared in many previous Star Trek installments, depicting alien landscapes.
• The sunglasses worn by Commodore Oh were established in the script of this episode as an homage to actress Anna Karina . [1]

Cast and characters [ ]

• Santiago Cabrera makes his first appearances as Emil , Cristóbal Rios , and the ENH , and is first featured in the opening credits. This is the first time that a series regular makes his debut appearance as a hologram since Robert Picardo first appeared in VOY : " Caretaker ".
• Jonathan Del Arco reprises his role as Hugh . He last portrayed Hugh in " Descent, Part II ".
• Evan Evagora is not credited as a main cast member and does not appear in this episode.

Continuity [ ]

• This episode establishes that Jean-Luc Picard resigned his Starfleet commission in 2385 , shortly after the attack on Mars . While it was implied in " Remembrance " that his resignation was largely in protest over Starfleet's decision to abandon evacuation efforts in the Romulan Star Empire , this episode reveals that Picard actually used his resignation to bargain with Starfleet Command over the continuation of his mission. He apparently miscalculated Starfleet's willingness to let him go.
• Raffi Musiker states that the impending supernova of the Romulan sun threatened " billions of people out there in the Beta Quadrant ." This appears to confirm that Romulan territory is located in the Beta Quadrant , not the Alpha Quadrant as often previously implied. The location of Romulus as a Beta Quadrant world originates from reference works, such as Star Trek: Star Charts .
• The attack on Mars is officially attributed to programming errors in the androids used at Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards . Picard and Musiker voice their continued doubts over this explanation, assuming a manipulation of the androids through a third party.
• Laris calls one of the Romulan attackers a "stubborn northerner ", comparing him to Zhaban . It is implied that the clear distinction is possible due to their ridged foreheads , offering an explanation for the different looking Romulans seen throughout various Star Trek productions.
• Hugh is the director of the Borg Reclamation Project and it is established that the Romulan Reclamation Site is hosted by Romulans, but not under their sole direction. This offers an explanation for various non-Romulan species seen among the workers and researchers, such as Humans and Andorians .
• As an xB himself, Hugh has comprehensive experience with Borg vessels which are disconnected from the Borg Collective hive mind . He himself had been severed from the hive mind when his scout ship crashed in 2368 , as seen in " I Borg ". By 2369 he became the leader of other disconnected Borg after the vessel he was then on was severed from the Collective as well, some of them later following Lore in a scheme to establish a rule of synthetic beings in the galaxy, as shown in " Descent, Part II ".
• The state of the disconnected Borg on the Artifact is substantially different from previously observed Borg which were freed from the Collective, such as seen in "I Borg", " Descent ", " Unity ", " Scorpion, Part II ", " Survival Instinct ", and " Collective ". While most of these Borg were portrayed as confused and disoriented, none were in a state as dysfunctional and broken as the Borg which appear in this episode. Soji Asha implies in her questioning that this might be a consequence of the assimilation of the Shaenor – or more specifically by the assimilation of its passenger Ramdha, as later implied by her niece Narissa in " Broken Pieces " – the last vessel which the cube encountered before its submatrix collapse .
• Hugh thinks that the Romulan drones in the Reclamation Center are the only members of their species to be assimilated. However, at least one other Romulan drone, Orum , was encountered in the Delta Quadrant in 2373 in the episode " Unity ". In 2375 , Seven of Nine also assumed the personality of a Romulan drone , when a malfunctioning vinculum caused her to experience the personalities of other assimilated individuals in the episode " Infinite Regress ". Despite having once been part of the hive mind, Hugh has apparently forgotten about prior Romulan assimilations after he was disconnected from it, and his remarks could therefore imply that Romulans have been assimilated less often than Federation citizens. This may also indicate that the Borg did not assimilate a significant number of Romulans when they destroyed outposts near the Romulan Neutral Zone in 2364 , as referenced in " The Neutral Zone " and " Q Who ".
• The appearances of the EMH and ENH aboard La Sirena mark the first depictions of emergency holograms since " Endgame ". Their appearances raise the question whether sentient holograms are excluded from the Federation-wide ban on synthetics.
• " Chief contact with the Q Continuum " as a reference to Picard's continued experiences with the Q , beginning in " Encounter at Farpoint " all the way to the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation , " All Good Things... ".
• " Arbiter of Succession for the Klingon Empire " is a title bestowed upon Picard in " Reunion ".
• " Savior of Earth from Borg invasion " likely refers to the events of Star Trek: First Contact .
• " Captain of the Enterprise s -D and -E " refers to his command of USS Enterprise -D and USS Enterprise -E , the respective flagships of the Federation.
• " The man even worked alongside the great Spock " hearkens back to his collaboration with Spock in " Unification II ".
• Picard's plan relied on the inventories of Eridani A and Beta Antar. These presumably refer to the 40 Eridani A Starfleet Construction Yards and Beta Antares Ship Yards . Previously, their existence had only been established on the dedication plaques of starships launched from there, such as the USS Brattain and USS Prometheus .
• Agnes Jurati listens to Kasseelian opera , music also enjoyed by Hugh Culber and Paul Stamets in the 23rd century .
• Commodore Oh is established to be the head of security of Starfleet.
• Oh is shown wearing sunglasses , the practical purposes for which were later revealed in " Nepenthe ". It was previously established by T'Pol in " The Forge " that Vulcans don't need eye protection due to the existence of an inner eyelid .

Reception [ ]

• TRR : " The End is the Beginning " discusses the making of, and events in, this episode.

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• Released on PIC Season 1 Blu-ray and PIC Season 1 DVD .

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard
• Alison Pill as Agnes Jurati
• Isa Briones as Soji Asha
• Michelle Hurd as Raffaela Musiker
• Santiago Cabrera as Cristóbal Rios / Emil / Enoch
• Harry Treadaway as Narek

Guest starring [ ]

• Jonathan Del Arco as Hugh
• Peyton List as Narissa
• Jamie McShane as Zhaban
• Tamlyn Tomita as Oh
• Rebecca Wisocky as Ramdha
• Orla Brady as Laris
• Sumalee Montano as Soji's mother
• Graham Shiels as Tal Shiar operative

Co-starring [ ]

• Son of Lee as a Guard

Uncredited co-stars [ ]

• Zachary James Rukavina as an xB/Nameless (archive footage)
• An unknown performer as a Freecloud banner individual (image only)
• Unknown performers as Starfleet Headquarters personnel (flashback)

Stunt doubles [ ]

• Jessi Fisher as stunt double for Orla Brady
• Tim Storms as stunt double for Patrick Stewart

Stand-ins [ ]

• John Funk as stand-in for Patrick Stewart

References [ ]

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Meta references [ ]

flashback ; intertitle ; subtitle

External links [ ]

• " The End is the Beginning " at the Internet Movie Database
• " The End is the Beginning " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• Observations in PIC: "The End is the Beginning"  at Ex Astris Scientia
• " "Star Trek: Picard, "The End is the Beginning"" " at MissionLogPodcast.com , a Roddenberry Star Trek podcast
• 2 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

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Star Trek: Picard : Assembling a crew

Picard may be a legend, but he can’t unravel the mystery at the heart of his latest mission alone. Thus, the third episode of Star Trek: Picard (“The End Is the Beginning”) finds the former Starfleet admiral putting together a team that will hopefully lead him to Dahj’s twin Soji — and also, in the process, to answers about the apparent conspiracy involving the Romulan evacuation crisis.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2385 Mars catastrophe, Picard and Raffi meet outside Starfleet’s San Francisco headquarters. Picard tells Raffi that, in the conference he just left, he made the case for continuing to evacuate Romulans from the supernova blast radius by using reserve duty officers and mothball ships. They rejected his plan, and instead of letting synthetics handle the evacuation (as Raffi suggested), they instituted a ban on synthetics, which they claim went haywire on Mars due to “a fatal code error in the operating system.”

Raffi doesn’t buy that for a second, and says, “I smell the Tal Shiar.” She has no idea why the Romulans would want to sabotage their own rescue, and neither does Picard. Nonetheless, he’s immensely disappointed in the organization to which he’s given his life. “I never dreamed that Starfleet would give in to intolerance and fear,” he laments, and in that moment, Star Trek: Picard offers a not-so-subtle critique of contemporary democracies that refuse to help refugees out of either prejudice or cowardice.

In the face of this objectionable stance, Picard demanded that Starfleet either accept his evacuation plan or his resignation — and they accepted the latter. Raffi is stunned, and hopes Picard has “some last, desperate, wild solution — that’s what you do.” Alas, Picard’s resignation was that Hail Mary, and it failed. “I never believed they would accept it,” he confesses. Realizing this turn of events means she’s about to be fired (while Picard gets to retreat to his swanky chateau), Raffi angrily storms off to face her Starfleet fate.

In the present, Picard asks Raffi for help procuring a ship and a pilot so he can locate Dr. Bruce Maddox, who’s the key to understanding this Dahj mystery. She chastises him for tipping off Starfleet about his activity, as well as for the “unmitigated disaster” that was his TV interview. She also tells Picard he has “some goddamn nerve” for making requests after abandoning her for the past decade-plus, which she describes as “one long slide into humiliation. And rage. Also a fair amount of snake leaf-induced paranoia,” at which point she takes another drag off her high-tech vape pen.

Following another elaborate visual journey around and through the Artifact — a CGI sequence that director Hanelle M. Culpepper once again handles with aplomb — we’re introduced to Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco), the executive director of the Borg reclamation project. He visits Soji and commends her on her excellent work. Hugh is a reclaimed Borg drone and states that there are no more despised people in the galaxy than those like him, who are seen as either property to be exploited or a hazard to be warehoused. Romulans, he states, view his kind as both.

Soji is different because she has compassion for those assimilated by the Borg. Consequently, Hugh grants her an interview with Ramdha (Rebecca Wisocky), the foremost expert on Romulan myths. Ramdha is part of a group of assimilated Romulans referred to as “the disordered,” who mutter and shuffle about aimlessly. When Soji arrives, the once-revered author is assembling a puzzle comprised of triangular pieces featuring tarot card-like symbols.

Back at Vasquez Rocks, Picard apologizes to Raffi for abandoning her. Though she claims not to care, she listens to Picard’s talk about a unit of Tal Shiar operating on Earth, which couldn’t happen without Federation complicity. She replies that she always knew the Federation was in bed with the Romulans, and that she has concrete evidence that a high-ranking Starfleet official conspired to allow the attack on Mars to go forward. Picard tells her it’s this very ability to see things that others don’t that makes her invaluable. Such praise doesn’t convince her to join his new squad, but she does give him the name of a pilot: Rios (Santiago Cabrera).

Later that night, Picard sends Raffi everything he has on this case and beams up to Rios’ ship, where the pilot is having shrapnel removed from his arm by a hologram of himself that, we soon learn, likes to speak in different accents. At first glance, it’s clear Rios is a cigar-smoking, liquor-swilling, devil-may-care badass — he even reads a book called “The Tragic Sense of Life” — and when Rios asks if they’re going to be breaking any laws together, Picard asserts, “I’m not in the habit of consulting lawyers before I do what needs to be done.” This pleases Rios, who counters with, “I’m not in the habit of consulting anybody about anything.”

Picard’s impression of Rios as a kindred spirit is confirmed by the fact that the pilot keeps his ship in immaculate shape, thus proving he’s “Starfleet to the core. I can smell it on you.” After Picard leaves, Rios’ hologram excitedly talks about the prospect of teaming up with the iconic hero (“he’s on the side of angels”). Still tormented by the death of his last noble captain, Rios isn’t quite as enthusiastic.

“The End Is the Beginning” subsequently sets about cross-cutting between two momentous encounters, both of which culminate with a tense interview. At his chateau, Picard confides to Laris that he never truly felt at home in France; his place was in the stars. Before he can depart, Picard and his friends are attacked by Romulan assassins. They triumph in this fierce skirmish, thanks in part to the aid of Dr. Jurati, who unexpectedly shows up. They attempt to interrogate one of their attackers, who merely growls — about Dahj and her twin — “She’s not a girl…she’s not what you think she is…She’s the end of all. She’s the destroyer!” He then takes his own life.

At the same time, Soji chats with Ramdha. When questioned about mythology, Ramdha states that she prefers the term “The News” — a concept that pleases Soji. More revealing still, Ramdha muses that she remembers Soji “from tomorrow.” Soji presses her on this point, saying she’s aware Ramdha was on board the last ship assimilated by this Borg Cube — a fact that Hugh didn’t know, and can’t understand how Soji knows. Ramdha suddenly asks Soji, “Which sister are you? The one who dies or the one who lives?” and then leaps up and grabs a guard’s blaster, yelling, “I know who you are … You are the destroyer!” Ramdha tries to kill herself with the weapon, but Soji stops her.

In her bedroom, Soji calls her mom, who reports that Dahj is fine and thinking about adopting a puppy — a lie indicating that Soji’s mom (who may not even be real) is interested in deceiving her. Strangely, Soji then immediately passes out. Awakened by Narek’s arrival, she tells him she doesn’t understand how she knew anything about Ramdha’s ship. Rather than provide her with clarity, Narek instead whispers in her ear, “I may be falling in love with you,” thus solidifying his connection to her. Upon leaving, Narek runs into his sister Rizzo — who’s now on board the Artifact — and she wishes him luck in his scheming.

Jurati informs Picard that, though she spilled the beans about his plans to Commodore Oh, she didn’t tell the Director of Starfleet Security about her intention to join Picard on his quest. Convinced that he can use Earth’s leading expert on synthetic life, Picard agrees to this arrangement. The two subsequently beam up to Rios’ ship. Raffi is already there and has found Maddox’s whereabouts — he’s on Freecloud. Raffi has her own reasons for wanting to travel there, but for now, she keeps those to herself.

With the ragtag crew complete, Picard gives a trademark forward thrust of his hand and commands, “Engage.”

Captain’s Log:

• Ramdha clearly has some sort of extrasensory sensitivity, since the last puzzle card she flipped featured two identical female twins.
• It’s nice to know that Zhaban and Laris aren’t just friendly vineyard employees — they’re formidable bodyguards as well.
• Rios’ book – Miguel de Unamuno’s 1912 Tragic Sense of Life – indicates that beneath his gruff, roguish exterior, he has a philosophical soul.

Related content:

• Watch Whoopi Goldberg lose it as Patrick Stewart asks her to join Star Trek: Picard season 2
• Patrick Stewart on how Star Trek: Picard strives to avoid fan service
• Star Trek: Picard second trailer shows Will Riker’s return
• You can now watch the Star Trek: Picard premiere for free

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Star Trek: Picard Episode 3 Review: The End is the Beginning

Star Trek: Picard pumps the narrative breaks the breaks when it should be accelerating, but a strong episode ending gets us back on track.

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This Star Trek: Picard review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Picard Episode 3

Jean-Luc Picard is putting together a team, and there’s not as many people jumping at the opportunity as you might expect. We get some context for Jean-Luc’s fall from grace in “The End is the Beginning,” which gives us another flashback to the events of 14 years prior. This time, instead of diving back into the specifics of the Utopia Shipyards attack, we see how it immediately impacted Picard’s life and career.

Rather than see another showdown between Picard and Starfleet Command first hand, we learn about it as he tells Raffi (Michelle Hurd), a fellow officer desperate to get the Romulan evacuation back on track. Picard slow burns the truth he can’t quite yet believe: he gave Starfleet the choice between accepting his new evacuation plan or accepting his resignation. They accepted his resignation, and Picard admits that he didn’t think that is how it would play out, making his departure from Starfleet that much sadder.

Back in our main timeline, Raffi is not happy to see her old friend “JL”. She blames him for losing her own position in Starfleet, and is angry that in the subsequent decades, he didn’t check in to see how she was doing. (Which, if you were wondering, was not well.) I wish they had backed up Raffi’s feelings here with some POV flashbacks of what her own life looked like post-Starfleet. Without it, Raffi’s anger is confusing.

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Sure, Picard could have kept her name out of it when he was outlining his evacuation plan, but it’s not his fault that Starfleet had turned corrupt and didn’t she believe in the mission, too? We’ve all had a friend (or have been the friend) who has dropped the ball on a friendship, but that doesn’t mean we can hold their responsible for the disappointing aspects of our life. It wouldn’t take much to truly show how Jean-Luc has failed Raffi, but Picard doesn’t do the work to make this particular JL flaw stick and the episode is weaker for it.

While Raffi may not articularly want to help JL, she seems to have a moral compassion that behooves her to find the man a ship when he tells her what is at stake. The ship in question is piloted by a prickly man named Rios (Santiago Cabrera) who looks great without his shirt on and spends his time reading Spanish philosophy. While he may act like he’s not bothered by Jean-Luc’s presence on the ship, Picard has his number: he is Starfleet through-and-through. And, when we see Rios chatting with his Emergency Medical Hologram, we get his number, too: Rios is a total Picard fanboy. (Who isn’t, honestly?)

While Rios may be playing it cool, Dr. Agnes Jurarti is not. When Commodore Oh comes to grill her for information about what Picard may be up to, she goes to find Jean-Luc herself. If he’s going after the other sentient synthetic, then she wants in. And while she may have Little Orphan Annie vibes, she’s no wayward waif; she’s got skillz to contribute, most essentially her knowledge as Earth’s foremost expert on synthetics. Picard has always had a soft spot for nerds.

Rounding out the crew is Raffi herself, who is coming along on mission because she wants to travel to a place called Freecloud, which totally sounds like some kind of techno-anarchist utopia. Raffi has mysterious reasons for doing so, but neither the viewer nor Picard is privvy to them—and with Raffi’s feelings towards JL right now, Picard is smart not to press her.

Meanwhile, on the Artifact, Soji’s research project is going swimmingly—but what exactly is her research project? Not even Soji seems to know. In theory, she is working on ways to help the former Borg process their trauma, but, when she gets a chance to interview one of the former Borg Romulans, a woman named Ramda, she begins to ask about the ship Ramda was stationed on before being assimilated by the Borg rather than her theories on mythology as a framework for collective trauma therapy. Soji later admits to Narek that she didn’t even know she had that question before she asked it, suggesting that she has been groomed for a specific purpose that not even she understands.

Meanwhile, Soji still  doesn’t know about her twin sister’s explosive demise. In fact, her “mother” is straight-up lying to her, in classic handler quality. When Soji begins to ask questions about the event, she falls unconscious, perhaps a kind of failsafe triggered when she is getting too close to the truth? Well, at least she can trust her hot Romulan boyfriend… just kidding! While the show hints that Narek may actually be developing real feelings for Soji, it’s hard to believe him when he tells Soji he may be falling in love with her. This is classic manipulative fuckboi behavior and the show hasn’t put in the work to convince me otherwise. 

In general, “The End is the Beginning” is easily the weakest Picard episode yet. It has its qualities—namely, the introduction of Rios and the articulation of Picard’s resignation—but the thinness of Raffi’s characterization (perhaps in an attempt to make her motivations mysterious) and the continued trope-iness of Soji’s character created an uneven installment, especially in an episode that feels like more set-up when we should have already started on our journey. 

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Picard continues to be at its best when it centers its title character, as it does in the episode’s final, emotionally-impactful moments. Picard, seemingly aware of the gravity of the moment, orders the ship forward with his classic command. It zips off to the Next Generation  theme, and Picard is (finally) back where he belongs: amongst the stars.

Additional thoughts.

Hugh! We got a reintroduction to Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco), the former Borg drone Picard and the Enterprise crew met during The Next Generation . He’s got some power on the Artifact and has taken a liking to Soji. I’m already counting down the days until his and Picard’s reintroduction.

Raffi thinks the Romulans were behind the Utopia Shipyards attack, but is unclear why. I have to admit, I prefer the idea that it is a synthetics revolution thing, but I am open to going down different narrative paths.

“Mars is burning. Tens of thousands are dead. And nobody is thinking. Nobody is listening. They’re just reacting.”

I didn’t think I liked that Raffi calls Jean-Luc “JL,” but I have to admit it is a lot of fun.

“My resignation was the last, desperate wild solution. I never believed that they would accept it.” 🙁

Raffi compares her living situation disfavorable to Picard’s chateau, which… fair enough. But she seems to have a pretty cool set-up?

They love those Borg Cube entrance and exit shots, don’t they? (But, seriously. Director Hanelle Culpepper is killing it.)

“People either see us as property to be exploited or a hazard to be warehoused. Our host, the Romulans, have a more expansive vision: They see us as both.” Yikes.

“Usually, I find that if I ask people for help, they’re happy to give it.” “That has not been my experience, in particular with Romulans.” I feel like this is a conversation between a person of relative privilege and a person who has experienced prejudice.

Raffi better have a crazy wall before the end of this show.

I have never seen someone so actively not  sit in a chair as when Picard doesn’t sit in the Captain’s chair on the new ship.

“I’m not in the habit of consulting a lawyer before doing what needs to be done.” Love this from JL.

“Raffi warned me you were a speech maker.” He really is.

“I remember you from tomorrow.” A great line, tbh.

“She is the end of all. She’s the destroyer.” Just once, I would love to see a powerful young woman have a line like this delivered about her, and for her to just lean into it?

“I’m back.” “So are your ears.”

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Was anyone else getting Jamie and Cersei vibes from Narek and his sister? Was that intentional?

Agnes has a real Felicity/Cisco thing going on, which basically means she is an audience surrogate for the nerds watching at home. I don’t think this is how the show characterized her in the premiere, so that is frustrating, but she was a lot of fun to watch in this episode, so I am willing to forgive this discontinuity.

“Engage!” All of the heartstrings.

Keep up with all our Star Trek: Picard news and reviews here .

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek . Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt .

Kayti Burt | @kaytiburt

Kayti is a pop culture writer, editor, and full-time nerd who comes from a working class background. A member of the Television Critics Association, she specializes…

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Star Trek: Picard Gives Jean-Luc a New Crew and Mission — Are You Onboard?

Dave nemetz, west coast bureau chief.

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If we should really consider Star Trek: Picard ‘s first three episodes the series premiere, as producers told us, where do we stand after Thursday’s Episode 3? (And where is Jean-Luc heading? And with whom?)

The episode first flashes back to 14 years ago, with Raffi catching Jean-Luc on his way out of a big meeting. He pitched Starfleet higher-ups a plan to keep the Romulan evacuation going, but they called it “unfeasible.” He told them to either accept his plan or accept his resignation… and they accepted the latter, a stunned Jean-Luc tells Raffi. But then she gets a call to meet the higher-ups, and guesses she’s getting fired because he resigned. She storms off — and back in the present, she’s still bitter. When he asks her for a ship and pilot to find Bruce Maddox, she puffs on a snake-leaf vape and notes that he has his fancy chateau to go home to, while she’s stuck in this ramshackle trailer. She kind of wishes he’d have reached out to her when he didn’t need something, she adds.

As Jean-Luc packs up to leave his chateau, he and his Romulan friends are attacked by a pack of masked assassins — and this time, even creaky old Jean-Luc gets his hands dirty. (His cane comes in handy, it turns out.) They subdue the invaders and unmask one, and when Jean-Luc asks him about Dahj, he ominously calls her “the destroyer” before spitting acid at them and disintegrating. Agnes shows up, too, and gives Jean-Luc a long list of very reasonable arguments as to why he should let her tag along. So they beam aboard Rios’ ship and find Raffi there, who says she’s only hitching a ride to Freecloud, where she’s located Bruce Maddox. She eyes the perky Agnes warily — I love their dynamic already — and before this newly formed quartet sets sail, Rios glances at Jean-Luc, who points ahead and says, “Engage.” As their ship zips off at warp speed, a variation on the Next Generation theme song plays… and reader, I got chills.

Alright, Trek fans, we’re three episodes into Picard — how are you liking it so far? (And did you get chills at the end, too?) Beam down to the comments to share your thoughts.

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35 comments.

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Hell yeah, I’m on board! Love this crew too.

I am loving this series. The new crew is fun and I’m looking forward to the trip to space. The mystery is intriguing and seems to deepen with every episode. And the show itself, manages to throw some real emotional punches (JL got fired!) while conveying a sense of hope that things will be put right or at least put in a better place.

OF COURSE Jean-Luc gets a good looking, bearded, alpha male, sorta second in command! LOL

I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to watch this show, and I’m torn. Nothing that I’ve seen of the show looks or feels like Star Trek. It just looks like random “future” show with the Star Trek name slapped onto it. And nothing that I’ve heard about the plot sounds like Star Trek, or even like the writers have seen Star Trek. The X-Files used up a large chunk of my “benefit of the doubt” points, so I just don’t know. I’m a lifelong Trekkie. Why isn’t this more appealing to me? Hopefully once it is over, I can try to watch it as a general scifi series and not try to fit into a Star Trek box in my head.

It absolutely doesn’t feel like a Star Trek TV show. But it does feel more like a Star Trek movie, just a 10 hour long one.

Exactly. Star Trek upgrade!

I can see how the Picard vineyard kinda feels like the Kirk Nexus home, but in terms of the character designs, etc, I just haven’t seen much Trek in what I’ve seen. Even the movies had a certain Star Trek feel that I’m not getting from the promo material here. I think I’m mostly hesitant based on the promotional interviews for this show, as well as Discovery as a series. I’m very wary of this one, which is weird because it has Picard and a bunch of others that I enjoyed before. I have to try to get past silly interviews and try to forget about Discovery entirely, and just watch this.

Haven’t watched the 3rd episode but I definitely like what I see. TNG was always a very light vibe, which this definitely isn’t, but then one of the best movies was First Contact which was pretty dark. I like it not being a procedural. I was initially very worried about what they would do with Picards character. I hoped he would still be the Picard we know and love, and not some twisted and dark version. So far my concerns have been alleviated.

*Bruce Maddox, not Richard. . And I don’t know what it is about her, but I never like Michelle Hurd in anything. I never feel like it’s her fault as an actor, but I never like her characters.

it’s probably because she generally tends to play characters who aren’t nice in anyway what so ever and also seem like her characters were almost meant to be written for a man where a male actor could be switched in and absolutely no dialogue changes are necessary

I know it was in the trailer for the series, but I got chills when Picard said “engage” at the end of the episode. I’m freaking loving the show so far. I love that they’ve complicated Starfleet/The Federation in some really interesting ways. I love new characters. I really love there this is going. I only have two complaints so far: 1) some of the editing is weird. The narrative feels kind of choppy sometimes. I’d like a little more cohesion, or at let a scene finish before you cut away to something else only to return 10 minutes later. 2) I really wish they had released these first three episodes all at once then went weekly after that. As much as I’ve loved it, it did feel like it took a while to get going

Same here. I also got some chills going on. Also love it when he told Raffie to carry on and the look on her face.

In my opinion, this show has three huge problems: 1) It’s set in the Kelvin universe, 2) the characters are largely off-putting, and 3) it doesn’t honor Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future. Yet another beloved franchise has been subverted to create yet another a thin-veiled, poorly-executed allegory regarding the current political climate.

Nice try. It’s not the Kelvin timeline, but I’m sure you know that.

It seems that calling it part of the Kelvin timeline is just an attempt by some to either dismiss the show without actually giving it a chance or, in their mind, deride it by saying it’s in the Kelvin timeline.

Correct; from TCA press tour: ALEX KURTZMAN: We are in the Prime timeline. Events from the Kelvin timeline impacted “Picard,” but if you look at that movie, the destruction of Romulus was in the Prime timeline. It is what enabled the Kelvin timeline jump to happen. So that is very consistent with canon.

Yeah, but they claimed the same thing with Discovery, which is clearly a different timeline/universe. Apparently there is a licensing reason why these products have to be a certain percent different than the classic Trek universe, so the Prime universe isn’t really the classic Trek universe at all. They just say that to appease the casual fans. Picard isn’t the Kelvin timeline, but it also isn’t the same Trek world that TNG comes from… they really made a mess of this whole thing, partly due to licensing, and partly due to creative decisions/bad showrunning. They wanted to reboot the franchise and do whatever they wanted, but they also wanted to sell it to us as the same old Star Trek.

That “licensing” rumor started because one of the designers misspoke on Facebook. He corrected his comment, and everyone involved on the production/creative side have said that it’s not true. This is Prime trek. They’ve just updated the visuals because, guess what, a starship with ’80s aesthetics isn’t going to cut it in 2020. You can not like the new series if you choose, but to disregard everything because they’ve updated the look designs of the technology is a little silly imo Also for what it’s worth, designs have always changed as eras change in trek. Species look different. Ship design looks different. Technology looks different. Trek has always been somewhat loose with canon even in narrative terms — I just saw a listicle today about some of the major plot threads that were never mentioned again: warp speed limit, lizard Janeway and Paris, Wesley quitting the Academy and going off with the traveler then suddenly wearing a Starfleet uniform in Nemesis, etc. As I said, you’re free to dislike the new series. No one’s telling you not to. But to pretend like TOS or TNG-era trek was any better in terms of consistency ignores a few decades worth of retconning.

So it’s the same old Trek canon, except everything looks different and the writers have changed a lot of things? That doesn’t even make sense. They should just call it what it is: a reboot, with a few callbacks. I have no problem with updating things when there is a good reason, but what I’ve seen with Discovery was horrible in every way. Deep Space Nine looks better. I don’t mean to imply that people aren’t entitled to their opinions, but when I watch Discovery, I don’t see Star Trek. I don’t see it in the writing, the audience they’re writing for, the designs of aliens, ships or sets… it is poorly written, generic space show with the Trek label slapped onto it.

Literally no one is taking issue with the aesthetic redesigns. This is a total strawman created by Discovery shills on reddit. In fact, as someone who is not a fan of this show and is in fact the reverse, I will say that the visual enhancements are one of the only things worth complimenting (other than the new reptile Klingons, which are ridiculous).

Primarily, people take issue with the complete abandonment of the core concepts of Roddenberry’s vision, along with the writing, which people find boring and dumb and full of plot holes.

Redesigning the technology is the least of the redesigns and one of the most offensive is redesigning the language to have people using profanity and speaking in millennial slang. In episode 3, Raffi uses the term “protip.”

What timeline is this that over a 15 year period, the entire Federation devolved into 21st century slang?

Also, why are people smoking and reading paper books? Why are there Romulan biker ninjas?

I am a massive Star Trek fan. I have everything on BluRay or DVD, including the 1st 2 seasons of Discovery, and I for one am happy this shade of grey is happening in Star Trek. A Utopian vision requires vigilance, which Star Trek, until DS9 came along just sort of dismissed. This is where this Picard show is going I think, and from the looks of it so is Discovery Season 3. Sign me up! I do not need more of TNG’s clean vision. I have 170 episodes of that sitting on my shelf and on Netflix when I want to watch that. I want Star Trek to tell new and different tales. The golden age of Star Trek from 1987 to 2005 eventually died because, apart from DS9, it was the same structured show over and over again. The first two seasons of Enterprise could have been Voyager just with the names changed.

Yeah, I remember this argument happening when DS9 was on, and TNG fans insisted that it betrayed the Star Trek vision. I’ve always been on the side of telling more complex stories, as DS9 did. However, DS9 also respected the legacy of Star Trek, which I haven’t seen with Discovery or modern Trek. Now they keep trying to alter or update the legacy in their own vision, rather than moving forward or exploring the world that Star Trek built over many decades. Star Trek never ignored the design differences when they happened, and the fans just accepted that things changed because capabilities of production changed. But what I’ve seen with Discovery isn’t progress or improvement. I’ve been watching DS9 lately, and the show looks better than Discovery in many ways. I don’t feel like the design decisions (or writing decisions) have improved anything at all. It just feels like a “look what we can do!” style with no direction or restraint. And in terms of writing… I agree with Entertainment Weekly when they said that the arc style that allowed DS9’s writers to explore deep and complex stories has now been used to merely draw out single, weak stories for longer than they deserve to be. I don’t believe that something is better just because it’s newer. And I don’t see how the new Trek producers are helping Trek by rewriting its history and redesigning the franchise to look and feel like other space shows/movies. I don’t dislike these things just because I’m stuck in my ways. I dislike them because they’re genuinely bad decisions. I also disliked Enterprise for many of the same reasons, though it now looks far better when compared to Discovery.

Finally! Somebody that likes this show, isn’t whining about how it “isn’t Trek” and realizes that sometimes changes are necessary to keep things fresh. I lo e this show and Discovery. I hoped after DS9 that Trek would continue along a more adult path with more complex characters but it reverted back with Voyager and Enterprise. I love how these two new shows reflect people acting like real people do and not overly idealized “Starfleet Officers.” It is possible to have high ideal and principles and be flawed too. It is also possible to be angry or bitter at having been betrayed by an organization you devoted your life to upholding those same principles. Trek finally grew up.

There’s a really interesting video on youtube if you are trying to make heads and tails of the timelines, licensing etc.. Its a long listen, but actually found it very interesting youtube : “Star Trek Discovery: The Prime Deception”

Basically, the entirety of Trek after Nemesis is going to have to be trashed as a part of an alternate timeline of stupidness and Levantine meddling.

None of this has been in line with the franchise and none of it is salvageable.

Less a Jaime-and-Cersei vibe as a Philip and Elizabeth Jennings vibe (minus being married, but still). So much of this feels very Cold War! I like it, though; it’s a good well to draw from, and I love the new characters (the emergency holograms are great–Irish Santiago!)

I loved all the Star Trek series but was not sure about this one. I am so in love with it!!

So far so good. I was worried from things I read that this show would be too “woke,” but am pleasantly surprised 3 episodes in. Discovery lost me early on. Mostly because the Vulcan character is the most emotional on the entire show. I’ll keep watching this until it jumps the socially didactic shark.

The music is jarring. Hearing the TNG theme woven throughout the episodes isn’t necessary for a show that is trying to tell us it isn’t TNG. I dunno, maybe not hearing that music as part of a Trek episode in over 25 years is skeweing my opinion. At least it isnt like Rogue One’s soundtrack that sounded like the Muzak version of Star Wars themes.

when is discovery coming back? I enjoy it more than this !

Have to say the last minute of this episode got me on board. I was in two minds as a old school tng fan, the first two eps were empire building but nothing really got me going. The ” engage” the music… yes! im in! I think Rios and his EMH counterparts who I presume make the rest of the crew is the most interesting new character, look forward to seeing more of him.

So far it’s much better than Discovery, but it’s been a very slow build over three episodes and the set up could have been done much faster.

Laris, Picard’s Irish-Romulan housekeeper, is truly preposterous (she’s more like a Father Ted character with pointy ears), but I have to confess her partner Zhaban is smoking hot and possibly the first Romulan I’ve ever had a crush on (not counting the half-Romulan cutie Simon Tarses from “The Drumhead”).

My only real gripe is that the inclusion of the bald, tattood, thuggish Romulans seem to be giving legitimacy to JJ Abrams’ Star Trek Abomination Trilogy, which I will refuse to accept as Star Trek until the day I die. I know Kurtzman co-wrote that rubbish but he would do well to steer away from it. I dont want to lose respect for Patrick Stewart the way I did for Leonard Nimoy.

Loved the first two episodes, this one, not so much. Still, there’s no doubt I will be on board to see where it goes. If I’ve slugged through Discovery I can definitely do this.

I’m ready for the TV series called “Rios.” The most interesting character so far. Santiago Cabrera rocks!

Shows seem too short. Like the cliffhangers though; keeps me coming back for more.

In. All the way in.

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Engage! ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Finally Heads To The Stars In “The End is the Beginning” – REVIEW

| February 6, 2020 | By: Laurie Ulster 313 comments so far

“The End is the Beginning”

Star Trek: Picard Season 1, Episode 3 – Debuted Thursday, February 6, 2020 Written by Michael Chabon & James Duff Directed by Hanelle Culpepper

Spoiler-Free Review

“The End is the Beginning” is an apt title, since this is the last of the three episodes that set up the story. I’ve been trying to resist comparisons to Star Trek: Discovery because it can be so divisive, and also because I’m a fan of the show despite its weaknesses. But it’s hard not compare the two set-ups. Discovery took two episodes to set up three basic facts: Michael Burnham mutinied thinking she was doing the right thing, Georgiou was her mentor, and she knows Saru.

What these three Star Trek: Picard episodes did was tell us everything we need to know about why Picard is going on this mission, why it matters to his conscience as well as his soul. It also sets up his companions elegantly, with just enough information to make us care about what happens to them next and be glad they’re along for the ride.

[WARNING: Spoilers from here on]

Episode Discussion

Another strong episode, and better, I think, than episode two. The big standout for me was Michelle Hurd as Raffi, and the complex, rich-in-backstory relationship she has with Picard. The fact that she calls him “J.L.”–which we’ve never heard before from anyone–speaks volumes about their connection, and everything she does feels 100% authentic… and very intense.

In a flashback, we learn that Picard’s break with Starfleet cost Raffi her career, and changed the course of her life. Her enthusiasm for their cause and her realization that she was being abandoned is beautifully drawn by both the writers and the actor, so when we find her 14 years later in (ahem) Vasquez Rocks, alone and vaping snakeleaf, her surroundings and her attitude change seem like a natural evolution. And now we know that Jean-Luc never really thought his resignation would be accepted, adding even more layers to his falling out with Starfleet.

Raffi and J.L. discuss the situation after the Mars incident.

I can’t say enough about Hurd’s performance—I’ve been a fan of hers for years. She brings so much to every line and every gesture, making us want to know more but not as if there’s some secret piece of information we don’t have. Her attitude towards his life of luxury while she lived in solitary “humiliation” makes perfect sense, given their history and the place where their paths diverged, and makes her an utterly compelling character.

I also loved the scenes at Picard’s “chateau,” as she called it, when they were attacked. Discovery has taught us that no character is safe, and it served Picard well in this episode, upping the stakes considerably. I felt that any moment, Zhaban or Laris could’ve been killed—remember, there is no “stun” setting on a Romulan disruptor—and was immensely relieved when they weren’t. Dr. Jurati’s well-timed arrival helped forge her connection to Picard, and his compassion for her after she realized she’d killed someone was, well… lovely. This new Picard has a deeper empathy than he used to; in his younger days he had compassion and sympathy, but now he seems to really understand what people are feeling, a type of wisdom that often comes with age. Deanna Troi would be proud.

The introduction of Rios, as well as his groovy-looking ship, was enjoyable. I’m hoping his over-the-top macho attitude–the cigar, the disinterest in the dermal regenerator–will provide some fuel for gentle mockery later by his traveling companions, but we did see his more thoughtful side as he read The Tragic Sense of Life by Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno . And his EMH and ENH were fun, with their different accents and saucy attitudes. They speak volumes about the ego of a guy who’d want holograms around that look just like him, but give him a hard time and offer commentary on his personality.

This ship is operated by the firm of Rios, Rios, and Rios.

Just being on Rios’ ship seemed to change Picard’s demeanor (despite his old man sweater—bring back the brown jacket!). He has a bit of a lilt in his voice, his body language is more relaxed, and he has more confidence. We didn’t need familiar music to remind us, although it was a nice touch: this man belongs on a starship, even if he hesitates, then walks past the captain’s chair.

Less effective this week were the scenes on the Borg cube, although it was great to see Hugh again after all these years. I am now filled with questions about everything that happened to him after the events of TNG’s “Descent.” What I’m not filled with questions about is the Romulan mythology plot, because they’re not giving me enough to grasp onto. There’s no hook. I will wait for it to play out and maybe then those scenes will start to come together, but I’m not invested in speculating yet. And the quick cutting from the cube to the vineyard and back, with just a few lines spoken in each scene, zapped the intensity away on both sides. I didn’t really see a reason for it.

The whole scene with the Romulan “disordered” was confusing, but did remind me a little bit of “ Frame of Mind .” I kept waiting for Susanna Thompson to show up and talk into a spoon.

Soji reads Romulan Tarot cards with Ramdha.

The worst part of the episode: Lt. Rizzo Narissa’s turn as a faux-Georgiou, which I found rather annoying. She’s now in skintight leather and she and her brother Narek have a weirdly sexual vibe going on between them. Big yawn.

Do Romulan siblings always stand this close?

When Picard takes a quiet moment to look up at the stars, much as young René did at the end of TNG’s “Family,” we can almost see young Jean-Luc doing the same. His affectionate farewell to his vineyard life is touching, and true to his character. I’m glad he mentioned Number One, even if the dog hasn’t been seen in two episodes. (Michael Chabon and Hanelle Culpepper told Wil Wheaton that the dog wasn’t a very good actor in the first episode of The Ready Room , so I’m assuming that’s why, but he was missed.) And that moment is a great example of how deftly the writers are handling callbacks to TNG and other Trek series; they seem to be there for organic reasons, and work for both the Trek vet and the newbie.

The episode ends on a high note. Our crew is assembled, all fascinating, rich characters in their own way. And I’m not ashamed to admit it: When Rios said they were ready to go and Jean-Luc looked ahead at the viewscreen, I was on my couch saying, out loud, “Say it, say it, say it, say it, say it” and then he said it. “Engage.”

Picard says the magic word.

P.S. What is up with Soji’s mom? Is she just a phony? Is she in on it? Is she a simulation? Can she put Soji to sleep remotely?  Why would Soji have a video screen that’s transparent so she can see her own foot through her mom’s face? Will have to wait for answers on that, minus the transparent screen question.

Random Observations

• Why is Rios smoking? That seems an incredibly odd habit to have when we know humans haven’t smoked in at least 200 years. It also just feels rather wrong in the world of Trek.
• Sunglasses, while less commonly seen, aren’t totally out of place in Trek. On Enterprise they were part of the standard field issue when in desert climates. In the the 24th century we’ve seen sunglasses on Geordi in First Contact and on Reg Barclay on the beach in Voyager .
• Raffi’s house is officially said to be in Vasquez Rocks, making this real-world location, used for so many other planets in Trek productions, now a canonical place on Earth.
• The synths working on Mars were model A-500 androids.
• Based on what Laris implies when talking to Zahban about the captured Zhat Vash operative, Northern Romulans have ridges, while those in other regions don’t.
• In a fun easter egg that’s a nod to the fact that Raffi lives in Vasquez Rocks (perhaps was most famously used as the location for the Kirk vs. Gorn fight in TOS: “Arena”) there’s a mention of a literal “egg” in form of a cryptographic algorithm called “Gorn Egg.”

Raffi finds a Gorn easter egg.

The Ready Room

This week brought a nice interview with Michelle Hurd, who delved into how her character is an addict. (Made me wonder about Picard’s choice to bring her a bottle of wine.) She talked about the importance of representation without all the producer pomp; it means something very personal to her as a biracial woman. You can tell she has thought deeply about her character, AND that she’s thrilled to be a new part of the Star Trek legacy. She and Wheaton had a nice talk about how much it means to them to be friends with Patrick Stewart, and she mentioned how careful he is with the scripts when he feels he’s being asked to do something fans would have issues with.

They had a segment with fan questions, which didn’t give us any new information, but I was fascinated by the fact that they described Patrick Stewart as the funny one on set, given the stories of how he was the serious one among the TNG actors until they taught him how to loosen up, all those years ago.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/B8OsysMHf4R/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

New episodes of  Star Trek: Picard are released on CBS All Access in the USA on Thursdays. In Canada it airs Thursdays on CTV Sci-Fi Channel at 6PM PT /9PM ET and streams on Crave. For the rest of the world it streams Fridays on Amazon Prime Video. Episodes are released weekly.

Keep up with all the  Star Trek: Picard   news at TrekMovie.

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I like the cigar. While the idea that smoking should have diminished by the 24th century has real merit, seeing a character go against convention is kinda’ nice. It gives the universe some depth, that there are more than just pious characters in the story. People are people, and Star Fleet piousness isn’t the only law in the universe. Heck, even Kirk smoked a cigar on Rura Penthe.

Any idea why these elite groups of Romulan bikers keep getting defeated by beaming down to Picard as he hides behind things, instead of just beaming him and his female data / middle aged defenders up into the vacuum of space?

Maybe he has sensors throughout his home that would be able to register transport signatures?

I would guess that a person of such stature will have a personal transport blocking device to prevent unwarranted beaming. These type of technologies can be so small (as we’ve seen in the past) something like an implant under the skin. Heck, if I lived in a world like that, I would implant that kind of devices on every one around me.

The big secret that will literally break your mind to know it? Assimilation into a collective mind. This is why the Romulans hate AI, cybernetics and androids.

Romulans created the borg 1000 years in the past accidentally when they split from Vulcan, they sent out Von Neumann probes with artificial intelligence and the ability to self replicate, sent out into each quadrant to assimilate information and then return it to the Empire a couple of hundred years later. The delta quadrant probe was a disaster, it decided to assimilate not only information, but biological creatures and technology as part of it’s information gathering in it’s mission to perfect Romulan knowledge because they gave the AI the ability to make it’s own decisions. Thus, the borg were born. The Romulans received a transmission of this and were powerless to stop it.

Now (since two weeks ago?) the Romulans hate AI and (as described) cybernetics. That’s the important word mentioned. Did you miss it? The uber secret group of Romulans have been tasked with one thing, to ensure that AI with the ability to self replicate is obliterated at all costs and self replicating cyborgs can never exist again, otherwise it will destroy everything. What more perfect opportunity to stop the federation furthering AI than to destroy the Romulan rescue armada with hacked federation androids. Not only can they destroy the androids, but also dissuade the federation from pursuing AI and cyborgs in one fell swoop. As far as they are concerned 900 million Romulans dead is preferable to the Federation inadvertently creating cyborg again which will surely spread and wipe out the whole quadrant anyway.

And so we have the motive behind the android attacks, the need to kill off the android twins, and the reason the cube exists as a “reclamation” artifact. It disconnected from the collective the moment Romulans were assimilated, it had fulfilled it’s task of returning everything the collective assimilated back to the Romulans. Artifacts are of the past. Reclamation is reclaiming the result of their own initial probes. The assimilated Romulans knew of the original probes and what evolving AI ultimately results in, a destroyer of everything it encounters. The cubes to this day even use the trademark Romulan green colour palette, and all because the Romulans wanted to perfect their knowledge of the galaxy.

The bad guy Romulans are actually doing something right, they are trying to prevent another catastrophic accidental Borg 2.0 being created. Kurtzman likes retcons and twists, Picard will realise that the bad guy Romulans are actually the good guys, as is Commodore f-bomb, and in true Terminator 2 style, the 2nd twin will have to self sacrifice, just like Data. Picard will finally accept that Data dying was the best possible outcome, and be at peace with his past, along with 7 and Hugh who will also get closure. STD season 2 narrowly avoided another version of the Borg being created again. This is the plot that binds STD to Picard as one continuous story.

There, I just saved you an All Access subscription and 10 weeks of waiting for something to pay off.

Is that from your sources? Can you please clear up if this is your personal opinion or something you were told. Pretty easy Question, just asking.

By the way I can afford $10 a month I just want to know if your sources are as good as you say, if you believe in them then you should be confident in backing them up.

So I guess if you know the whole story then you won’t be watching or commenting anymore since you know it all right?

We’ve seen “transport inhibitors” previously. There’s surely technology like this installed in the personal residence of a flag officer, and probably among the population at large, for that matter.

Absolutely agree, transporter inhibitors for has to be widespread device due to security reasons.

Re: Smoking

Not to mention even with synthahol, we know they are still partaking of illegal drugs, i.e. Romulan ale. So why would nicotine be avoided by scofflaws?

Even the Iotians were sporting stogies, so the doomed ship must have been been toting tobacco plants in addition to the mob book?

And Federation citizens could safely learn how to partake of these substances on holdecks/suites.

And Mudd’s women certainly didn’t seem hesitant to ingest Harry’s drugs?

The Federation representative on the backwater planet Nimbus III in “Final Frontier” was smoking too. So it seems smoking in the 23rd and 24th century is mainly for people who ended up in “loser” positions within Federation society…

Was just about to point that out about Star Trek VI!

It really is an ugly and uninspiring ship. Somehow it’s worse than the Pizza Cutter, I mean, Discovery.

I disagree. Nothing is uglier and more uninspiring than Discovery.

It looks like what the Delta Flyer should have looked like if they had genuinely had 48 hours to design and build it to retrieve that probe from the gas giant. ie a crock.

Absolutely agree

Disagree there; this is nowhere near as good as Discovery 1031.

To me, it feel like someone saw the Normandy in Mass Effect and based the design off of it.

It’s just some generic ship you would see in most sci-fi movies and video games.

Agreed. It just feels too generic and as you said something you find in any sci fi story or video game. Even more so since everyone seems to keep comparing it to Mass Effect lol.

It just sucks THIS is the ship that will supposedly be the star of the show. And I thought Discovery was bad.

Agreed, Tiger. Very disappointing. Kurtzman-Trek does not do ships well, thus far.

Agreed, Hope the ‘La Sirena’ serves our heroes well and goes down and destroyed in a ‘blaze of glory’ by the end of the season, which would be a wonderful ST3 and Generations homage.

I hope they destroy it much more sooner and board that old romulan ship we see in trailers…

Yeah I’m not as hard on the ship designs as other people are here, but sadly the most beautiful design we gotten on this show appeared in the first few minutes of the first episode, the E-D, and nothing has been nearly close to that. We still have 2/3rds of the season to surprise us but not holding my breath for anything amazing.

This is not a show about the best and and most advanced ships in Starfleet, and at least they are being consistent to that idea (so far).

I totally agree VS. The name of the show is Picard, not La Sirena.

More, as I argued further down the thread, I suspect this is a state-of-the-art ship hiding under a mundane disguise.

How and why Rios has it when it’s so obviously a former Starfleet Intelligence ship is likely an interesting story. I’d like to see that in a Short Trek.

No but they could have made something that’s memorable and at least echoes something that looks like it’s from Star Trek. This ship is right out of any generic science fiction movie or video game.

Exactly Denny C! No one is saying the shop has to be the Enterprise, but it’s just generic and boring looking to some of us for a Star Trek show, that’s all.

The Defiant wasn’t a typical Star Trek ship but people loved it because it still had its own style while feeling very much in the world of Star Trek and not just any sci fi show or movie.

Exactly.. First sketches of Defiant are horrible, but final version is beautiful. Sirena looks like someone used first sketch and did not care it is ugly :(

And I’m not saying that it is. It can just be a better looking ship! ;)

Elon Musk designed it to stand out from all the other space pickup trucks.

After three episodes, I’m skeptical any one ship will be the star of the show, Tiger2. Maybe the disappointment is rooted in how long it took for the show to get to this point?

Just like Discovery, we didn’t see the star vehicle until the 3rd episode. This series’ 3rd episode is really the end of the pilot which took 3 weeks to view.

I wished we had more than 10 episodes, this season is already 1/3 done!

I’m with you!

I’m wondering if the season is actually 11 episodes.

From what we heard from the producers, the opening sequence was originally intended to be two rather than three episodes. The flashback scene to Mars in the cold open of episode 2 was shot later once they realized they could / had to extend the run time.

It’s possibly an error on Imdb, but the cast listing shows Patrick Stewart in 11 episodes. On the other hand, the directors listings only sum to 10 episodes.

Guess we’ll see…

@TG47 That would be nice if it is 11 episodes and certainly it’s not unprecedented as Discovery seasons have been extended. However, the 11 episodes as stated is not an error – it’s 10 episodes of season 1 and 1 from season 2. Whenever a show is renewed IMDB always lists the first episode of the newly announced season alongside the episodes already produced.

I don’t know… After seeing them we may decide that 10 is too many. I already think they could have done what they did in these three in two.

Aside from having the look of a generic sci fi ship, one would think that ‘a guy with a ship’ would have been flying around in something a bit older and likely repurposed based on his limited means (a runabout, old science vessel or scout ship).

Everyone seems to be enjoying the show but no one really seems to care for this ship.

The entire series so far seems like a Mass Effect 2 re-do in the Star Trek universe.

“It’s just some generic ship you would see in most sci-fi movies and video games.”

And that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be – a generic NON-STARFLEET private ship, a mercenary, freighter, whatever ship, steered by one man, NOT a Starfleet vessel that breaks the design lineage of the time period it is set in like Discovery (the 1970s design it is based on was shelved for a reason). I don’t get the hate for this ship. Have you seen the civilian ships and freighters in TNG? Compared to that, this is a beauty ;)

My thoughts exactly, VS. La Sirena is not a Starfleet battle cruiser with twin nacelles and a separate engineering section. It should be compared with an upgraded Xhosa than a Starfleet vessel with a crew of hundreds.

The 1970s design was not shelved. The movie it was supposed to go into (Planet of the Titans) was shelved, and the design was abandoned along with the director who had selected it. Several study models were built based on that design and eventually appeared as background ships in Star Trek, showing they are nothing but part of the canon… Discovery just followed this trail. Nothing wrong with that.

Exactly VS!

More to the point, the ship has a lot of less-than-obvious tech that an experienced Starfleet eye like Picard’s recognized immediately.

This is a retired Q-ship I bet. Looks like a merchant vessel, but is really quick, dangerous and has high end sensors and intelligence capacity – not to mention a crew of holograms.

Correct. Unlike the Xhosa mentioned above, it does not have outdated TOS-style computers but fancy holographic controls that are decidedly post-Nemesis even by Starfleet flagship standards. Like Rio wanted his ship be underestimated from the outside and flying under radar (literally) – that may be very handy for the kinds of jobs he does.

Interface is new. tech is old. Rios bought a new keyboard, so what?

If I recall correctly, didn’t VOY’s Timecop say his cozy little timeship was internally holographic? Not to mention wasn’t said Timecop the source of the EMH’s mobile emitter? This would lead one to conclude his ship likely had a holocrew too?

Most TNG miscellaneous ships were represented by the ILM Merchantman model from TSFS or were redresses of the ship Andy Probert first designed for HAVEN. There was even that weird little thing in the teaser for s3’s THE HUNTED, which was a five inch battery powered toy that I actually already owned when the ep debuted … except for taking the activation switch off the top, I don’t think they changed anything on that, even the paint job.

My point exactly, kmart. Imagine the cries if they had put THAT into this show, and they could even claim they are adhering to TNG canon ;)

Exactly VS! But then again I’ve been a casual Trekker since TOS,and not very nit-picky or complain about everything. I just enjoy everything Trek for what it actually is,a tv show. And I buy whatever Trek merchandise that I actually like and want in my collection. Like I do with other tv shows or movies that I like.

For everyone to look through, here is a list of Freighters known in Star Trek.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Freighter#Freighters_by_race

Reminded me of the fighters in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. (Only months away!)

BIDDI BIDDI! RIGHT BUCK!

I’m sure it crashes or something before the season is out, I doubt it’s meant to be the home of this cast forever.

I had hoped they’d commandeer a TOS Romulan Bird of Prey after seeing the trailers. Guess not … or maybe yet still?

La Sirena is the Trek version of previous rogue ships on many many dystopian space shows: Firefly’s Serenity, Killjoys’s Lucy, Expanse’s Rocinante, Andromeda’s Eureka Maru…you name it!

But we haven’t seen enough of her to judge whether there’s some deeper beauty in her or whether she’s supposed to be deliberately unimpressive…

I don’t think it’s ugly. Although I will admit it looks like it belongs in the Star Wars universe.

Sorry, but NCC-1701-E still wins that contest. But it’s followed closely by Discovery.

St. John Talbot prominently smoked in Trek V. Lidell Ren in Voyager’s Ex Post Facto smoked. When Guinan dressed up as Gloria to play in the Dixon Hill hologram she smoked.

I liked the episode overall, but not as much as the first two. This felt like a lot of wheel spinning and set up.

-I found the sunglasses weird for another more canon reason. Vulcans (and I would guess Romulans too, since they have the same origin) come from a homeworld with intense sunlight, to the point that in TOS we were told they have an inner eyelid as protection. Why would a Vulcan need to wear sunglasses on Earth?

-Dr. Jurati seems off to me and a character who has a twist coming. Initially, I thought it might come to a reveal she is an android/synthetic living in secret. But I could also see her somehow being a plant for the Romulans or working with Commodore Oh. I know they state in a previous episode that she is former Starfleet, but it made no sense she went from shooting a Romulan with a disruptor she somehow acquired to quivering and shaking the next second.

-I like Rios’s ship the more I saw of it. Although, it really doesn’t feel like anything from Star Trek, at least right now. Reminded me more of something out of Mass Effect.

-As far as Rios smoking, oddly enough, Star Trek II had “No Smoking” signs on the bridge of the Enterprise, implying it’s still a thing in the 23rd century. From listening to the commentary track for Wrath of Khan, Nicholas Meyer says something like he just didn’t believe people won’t be smoking 200 years from now. However, Quark isn’t aware of what cigarettes are in DS9’s “Little Green Men,” which one would think a guy that owns a bar and might like selling an addictive substance would see as a business opportunity if it was still a widely used substance in the 24th century.

-If Raffi is an addict, that opens all sorts of questions about human culture, Earth, and the Federation. I know the first season TNG episode “Symbiosis” is not exactly the show’s finest hour, especially with its Nancy Reagan “Just Say No” message, but the conversation between Wesley and Tasha Yar implies that drug addiction in human culture is so rare as to be something which Wesley isn’t aware of or understands.

-If Hugh is in charge of the Borg Reclamation Project, and working with the Romulans, could it be possible Dahj and Soji are based on Lore, instead of Data, since Lore has more of a connection to the disconnected Borg (TNG’s “Descent”).

-I still don’t get what the Romulans’ endgame is with Soji? If the Zhat Vash think all synthetic life is an abomination, the logical thing to do would be to kill her. So what exactly are they trying to extract from her? The location of Maddox? The location of other synthetics?

” Dr. Jurati seems off to me and a character who has a twist coming… ” I had the same taught – she is hiding something, maybe working secretly for Starfleet Security without the knowledge of the Romulan involvement?

I don’t think Jurati has a big twist coming up, I think she is there to represent us in the episodes to come. She’s the one Picard, Raffi, or Rios will explain things to and in the process explain it to the audience, since there won’t be a “Captain’s Log” this time around.

If there’s one valid criticism of this show so far, it is “too many info dumps”. Granted they have alot of explaining to do what changed in 20 years (let’s see how Discovery does this for 1000 years!) They should apply flashbacks (even) more often – it’s more fun to watch.

As expected… even worse than I would have believed, she kills Madox! (PIC 1X05)What’s her game plan? Is she knowingly involved with the Tal-Shiar or just Starfleet Security… maybe Section 31!?

“-I found the sunglasses weird for another more canon reason. Vulcans (and I would guess Romulans too, since they have the same origin) come from a homeworld with intense sunlight, to the point that in TOS we were told they have an inner eyelid as protection. Why would a Vulcan need to wear sunglasses on Earth?” Yes that looked strange. At least she should have used that stylish futuristic Spock sunglasses! I think this is no coincidence. Just one word: M I R R O R -U N I V E R S E !!! Or… wait! She is a clone and was raised on the sark Reman homeworld and became sensitive to light.

Mirror universe characters such as Commodore Oh (likely replaced the original since Picard heard she’s good at her job??) could be an explanation. I hope not yet they are going to tie it into STD

“-I still don’t get what the Romulans’ endgame is with Soji?”

I still don’t get what the Romulan endgame is with the Borg cube in general. They haven’t even teased us and at this point I find myself caring less and less what they do with that cube and the Borg they revive.

The Tal Shiar probably already extracted a lot of tech. This thing has been around since before the supernova (ca 2383, nova was in 86), and is also likely the source of the Narada upgrades (Countdown ’09 comic mentions it was upgraded with Borg tech without explaing where it came from, guess now we know). After the nova and the collapse of the Empire, the “Romulan Free State” took over the adminstration, and they brought in Hugh to assist with the X-Bs. The Romulans don’t seem to really care what happens to the X-Bs, they might just have euthanized them after extracting the tech.

OK. Again, this is a lot of speculation. None of this came from STD. My point that the audience still has yet to even be teased about what is going on with that cube stands.

That’s STP, not D. Sorry. Force of habit.

Few issues with this episode, it feels like these episodes are made to watch at least twice, as it’s really difficult to follow what’s going on with a lot of information being thrown at you. The constant cutting back and forth between earth and the cube was infuriating.

Laris and Shaban remain the best supporting characters so far. Raffi, Romulan evil woman are the weakest characters right now. I actually don’t blame Michelle Hurd but the lines written for her are awful. That flashback scene at the start had no dramatic impact at all.

The fight in the chateau was good had it not had the JJ Abrams-esque camera work, couldnt keep up with what’s going on.

As most have been saying, the episodes have been getting weaker since Ep1, but hopefully now that some characters have been bedded in we may get a bit of a resurgence, especially with Seven ,Riker Troi still to make their appearances.

(PS Jurati is the villain!!!)

Ep ratings Ep1: 9.5/10 Ep2: 7/10 Ep3: 6/10

Just curious, what makes you think Jurati is the villain?

I think it’s because we saw Oh had approached her and questioned her off camera. She then shows up just when the men in black show up. I felt she came clean with Oh’s visit and very open about it. BUT maybe that’s the writers way of making us think she isn’t working with Oh when she really is.

It’s like it was almost PLANNED that she show up and save the day in order to win Picard’s trust. Or it’s a red herring.

There was something decidedly awkward about her arrival.

Or they are playing the old “agent turns to the other side by a change of heart” angle. Something similiar going on with Narek/Soji. Clearly they want to let us keep guessing for most of the season if they will/won’t betray our people!

Jurati seems to mean ‘bold, brave or courageous’ in Maranathi.

This is likely not an accident.

Can anyone here with a good knowledge of South Asian languages and mythos weigh in please?

I still have no clue what they want with Cyborg girl. And the more they drag this out the more I’m not going to care anymore.

Killing off Dahj successfully engaged Picard, but in some ways it seems less successful in terms of attaching the audience to the survival of her twin Soji.

See? I don’t even remember their names. Not a good sign for a character who may be integral to the plot.

When they panned to the door like that I thought it would be Seven of Nine making a surprise entrance but it was Jurati… where on earth did she get that distruptor? Was is just lying on the ground? the whole thing was just off.

I’m calling it now I think she’s Maddox’s true daughter.

I think it was just lying on the ground. It probably belonged to one of the Romulans who had already been knocked out or killed.

I’ll have to re-watch. Wasn’t one of the assassins thrown out the door by Laris or Zhaban? The weapon was probably that guy’s.

I don’t think daughters often call their fathers by his first name. Jurati called him Bruce at least once. She doesn’t really have any reason to keep that secret, she’s already in career hell and Maddox has gone missing anyway.

I re-watched. It is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment but Laris does knock one guy back out the door with her phaser.

Also, the “xenomorph blood” is apparently some kind of cyanide capsule weapon the assassins have in their mouths. You hear the captured assassin break a tooth before he spits at Laris.

Moderately entertaining episode but Oh’s sunglasses looked, absolutely, laughably ridiculous and her delivery was the definition of bad acting. Once again, as is par for the course with KurtzTrek, more and more cracks in the writing and the show’s own internal logic appear:

– How did Picard’s resignation ruin Raffi’s career?

– After the attack at Chateau Picard, why didn’t he just call up the admiral, thumb his nose at her, and point to his delusions lying dead all over the floor?

– Seeing as the Romulans attacked right after Oh spoke to Agnes, you’d think somebody would put two and two together and mention just how fishy it sounded.

– We start veering into mumbo jumbo, pseudo-spiritual territory with the tarot reading.

The editing in this episode was also really bad; the fight at the chateau was really hard to follow (maybe necessary to hide the stunt doubles) and the constant cuts from the Borg cube to the chateau and back again were positively distracting. Rizzo/Narissa was nothing more than a caricature and the odd sexual tension between brother and sister was the sort of tired, cheap, unnecessarily sleazy thing I’ve come to expect from this producing team from time to time in their misguided efforts to give the shows a sense of “edginess”. Raffi’s poring over the computer data also felt like a rip-off of Tony Stark always using his holographic displays to figure out the latest problem vexing the Avengers.

Again, the main cast continues to be the show’s biggest strength; I really liked Rios and his holograms, the cigar and tats notwithstanding (because every mercenary pilot chews a cigar and has lots of tats). His backstory sounds downright interesting and I am curious to see where it goes. Hopefully now that they are in space things will pick up and start to make a little more sense and we can leave all this exposition behind.

“After the attack at Chateau Picard, why didn’t he just call up the admiral, thumb his nose at her, and point to his delusions lying dead all over the floor?”

My thoughts were that Picard left Starfleet out of the loop on this because Picard (I REFUSE to accept him being called “JL”) might have felt that either Starfleet or the Romulans would send a clean-up squad that might or might not clean up Picard and his friends in the process.

Just my 2 credits.

So just beam them up to Rios’ ship and contact the admiral from there. I think even Picard felt she was not compromised; clueless perhaps but not compromised.

IF (and I do say if) Clancy is compromised, calling her from Rios’ ship is just going to endanger another person in this little fellowship Picard has going on.

Clancy had her chance to play nicely with Picard, but she told him to eff off back to his vineyard — he owes her nothing.

From Picard’s perspective, his home gets shot up after speaking to Admiral Clancy. He has no reason to trust her, and every reason to believe that she may be involved with the Romulans.

Yah, Oh’s sunglasses were so funny, it did kill off the tension more then it was supposed to. At least the attack of the Chateau did reinstated her status, but that was a very misplaced piece of comedy.

Hahaha thanks for sharing. That started my day off with a good laugh. It has absolutely no connection with Star Trek whatsoever except they put the name Spock on it haha. I especially like the antenna. I wonder how many of these things they sold?

Check out Ethan Peck’s unboxing video of the Spock helmet on the official site for more laughs.

The helmet has clearly become a trope for bad/irrelevant Trek merchandising.

I would have taken Commodore Oh more serious if she wore one of these instead of Agent Smith/MIB/RayBan sunglasses

– How did Picard’s resignation ruin Raffi’s career? It did not, but she perceives it that way as she was terminated when Picard resorted to his “desperate attempt” of resignation to save Romulans.

– After the attack at Chateau Picard, why didn’t he just call up the admiral, thumb his nose at her, and point to his delusions lying dead all over the floor? Picard has no idea who he can trust.

Your last two points are not worth discussion, but I think Picard’s first and foremost issue is that it not Starfleet that withdrew, it is Picard.

I don’t get why people see a lapse in logic in her getting fired after Picard resigns. She was the brain behind the Romulan rescue effort, so to speak, and “Picard’s woman”. This is NOT the same as “Picard getting fired and Riker taking over the ship”, especially not with this Starfleet and Federation that made a huge political turn. Firing Raffi clearly is a political decision in this context, to keep the pot from boiling over, not one based on her service record. I also have the strong suspicion there is more to her back story; more like the expulsion from Starfleet led to a string of events that saw her slide down a dark path.

“Picard’s Woman”? She was an officer. Even if she came up with the plan, at worst she would have been given the same ultimatum as Picard: fall in line or leave. If she had stuck to her principles and then regretted the consequences of her decision that would have one thing but to try to rationalize that she was kicked out because she came up with the idea (and we even don’t know if she did) or worked on the logistics of the plan (which seems more plausible) makes no sense to me.

Likewise, this whole notion that Picard won’t tell anyone about the Romulan attack on his villa because there is no one left in Starfleet who be trusted is another lazy writing gimmick that just stacks the deck and makes Picard look like the sole voice of reason against the entire Federation. It smacks more of vanity that trying to come up with a tight story.

But whatever, it is what it is. It’s obvious that this writing team has a very different definition of “Star Trek” and does not buy into the notion that mankind will have improved and we will live to outgrow our prejudices and vanity. It’s pretty obvious that to them Star Trek is just our current world with our current problems, but with lots of spaceships.

Musiker was clearly on Picard’s flag staff.

She prepared his briefing, including options and backpocket supporting information.

As his staff officer, especially one who had provided uncomfortable options and evidence that some wanted buried, Musiker would have been very vulnerable once her patron resigned suddenly.

Bad-admirals and machinations at the flag level have been a staple of Trek. It’s never been idealized.

“It’s pretty obvious that to them Star Trek is just our current world with our current problems, but with lots of spaceships.”

And Stewart pretty much announced as much a couple of weeks ago! I seemed to be the only one who didn’t take this lightly. I have moved on from it though as long as they don’t insult me with silly sledgehammer speeches like on Discovery.

It’s appreciated VS.

I hadn’t expected the two of us to have such common ground on this series.

I’m actually fairly flexible and open to changes / new ideas for Trek as long as they are not backwards (dumbing down), compelling and…

1. They keep it consistent and don’t break their own rules 2. They don’t overpromise and underdeliver 3. They don’t become insulting to their own audience (inclusiveness!)

I’m on the same exact page with that comment, VS. I, too, am open and flexible to changes and new ideas for Trek and am certainly not beholden to something as limiting as “Gene’s Vision” like that is something that came from the heavens themselves.

Those three points are dead on. Good call.

Yeah… You’d think there would be SOMEONE in Star Fleet he knows and trusts… Someone fairly high up the food chain, too.

“You’d think there would be SOMEONE in Star Fleet he knows and trusts… Someone fairly high up the food chain, too.”

I do hope we see Admiral Janeway (again) at some point, especially as she and Picard already had interactions in the much-referenced Nemesis.

The thing is that he blew the opportunity to seek out allies and work for a compromise solution when he gave the ultimatum of resigning.

He made a major tactical error in believing that his resignation would never be accepted.

The fact that his resignation did not work like he thought it would suggests strongly that there was a lot going on there that Picard was unaware of. If that is not the case then the show is overly simplistic. Something I feared after watching the first episode but wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

There is no logic in her getting fired after Picard resigns. So you have a seasoned experienced Starfleet officer. Trained and educated for years and years. Up to the point where she is working directly with *the* Admiral Picard. So Starfleet… the esteemed Starfleet we’ve seen for decades established on-screen…. takes a high ranking officer… working to try to save billions …. and “kicks her out”? This is beyond the pale ridiculous writing. It’s not the Trump Administration… it’s Starfleet Command.

ST:EXP staff officers, whatever their talent and expertise, become extensions of the persona that they support.

The experience and enlarged perspective can lead to rapid advancement, but it can also crash a career if their principal leaves under a cloud.

Picard, at minimum, ticked off the C-in-C.

Even if there weren’t those who were engaged in a cover-up, Musiker’s career would have taken damage.

“So you have a seasoned experienced Starfleet officer. Trained and educated for years and years. Up to the point where she is working directly with *the* Admiral Picard. So Starfleet… the esteemed Starfleet we’ve seen for decades established on-screen…. takes a high ranking officer… working to try to save billions …. and “kicks her out”? ”

It’s politics. Even institutions far in the future would not be impervious (as DS9 showed so vividly). That she was so deeply invested in the Romulan cause is precisely why she was axed. After the political decision was made not to engage with the Romulans, Starfleet felt she couldn’t credibly represent the organization anymore. It’s a breach of trust, as is common in other employment situations. It has nothing to do with whether she is skilled and capable, or not.

Yes, I guess this is what we’ll have to accept. Maybe it’s just that us as the audience is left to do sooooo much extrapolation on our own for these first 3 episodes. We have to build so much backstory and reasoning in our own heads based on a few sentences of dialogue which is supposed to represent a whole load of unseen events.

“It did not, but she perceives it that way as she was terminated when Picard resorted to his “desperate attempt” of resignation to save Romulans.”

That isn’t what what STRONGLY implied…

” How did Picard’s resignation ruin Raffi’s career?”

A very good question. I figured Star Fleet would be above guilt by association. They may have dishonorably discharged everyone on Picard’s staff? Which, agian, feels like replacing the entire house because you want a new sink.

This is typically how politics work. New administrations or changes in political will can have a rolling affect on current officers. If they do not like someone or feel they will not follow new directives to their liking it will be the door for them.

That only happens at the highest levels. Which Rafi most certainly did not seem to qualify. She wasn’t even a Vice Admiral. She was on Picard’s staff. Staff gets reassigned and such a thing would not be considered a black mark. Her career ought not have been ruined by Picard’s resignation. Again, unless this situation is way larger than Picard ever realized. Which I am still hoping it is but I fear this is all we are going to get told and this will be a simplistic 6th grade level plot.

Picard and Rafi were behind the whole development of the fleets. creating plans and trying to win the backs of Star Fleet and the Federation Council. If they kept Rafi on she would be a thorn in their sides and trying to rally others around her to support the now disposed Picard’s plans.

Removing her from her rank and power removed an obstacle.

I think Rafi wasn’t the only one removed. We just only see her.

First, I question the need to construct a bunch of ships for this purpose. It’s not like enough ships did not exist to make the exodus possible. If there wasn’t, then Picard’s Dunkirk comparison would not be correct.

Next, it was strongly implied that Rafi was just on Picard’s staff and it was Picard who was spearheading the effort. And even if she was severely a believer in JL’s plan, to arbitrarily dump her out of the Star Fleet feels like overkill. As I said, it would make no sense unless everyone Picard ever worked with was dumped as well. And so far, there is no indication of that.

Look, I WANT to believe there are more reasons behind this the audience has yet to be made aware of. That is the only thing that might justify the extreme decisions made by Starfleet top brass. I’m only saying that as of episode 3, there are none. The audience is forced to come up with fan theories for it. That is not a BAD thing. This is just the first 3rd. It’s just that my own fan theory is that this story will not dive particularly deep into it. Time will tell.

I enjoyed this episode as you can feel the energy starting to rise. I honestly felt chills when Rios looked at Picard waiting for him to say engage. It felt epic in so many ways.

For some reason, I felt nothing.

I guess I need more than just Picard to feel sentimental. IMO, Too much about the show is foreign and unrecognizable to the point of being a major distraction and preventing me from being pulled into this strange new world they are calling Star Trek.

Maybe my days as a fan have come to an end?

Maybe things will change and something will finally create a connection for me.

You’re not alone there, Trellium. I’ve been pondering the very same things myself.

You’re definitely not alone. I’ve been watching Star Trek since I was a kindergartner in the early 70s, and since the 2009 movie, I don’t recognize this universe anymore. I give every new show an eager chance, only to sit here and wonder why.

For all of its flaws, that universe as originally conceived made me want to live there. It made me want to aspire to be like those people whom I held up as heroes. It gave me a sense of wonder and a feeling that everyone, from any background, can be part of something grand. It made me reach for the stars.

These new shows? Not once.

I loved it too, I just wish we hadn’t already seen it repeatedly in the trailers.

I wish they wouldn’t score the entire thing on keys. It sounds cheap and fan fictionesque, like STD.

You say there hasn’t been smoking in the Star Trek universe in 200 years? So that’d be what…2199?

Where did you get that number from? The character that David Warner played in Star Trek V was a smoker. That was in 2287, only a little more then a hundred years prior. Also didn’t you notice that Raffi is a smoker in this too…Although she vapes…maybe that’s different but I think it’s more or less the same and just as bad if not worse of a habit.

I remember Tom Paris once said that Humans quit smoking “centuries ago,” when he saw an alien woman smoking. My guess is that he either didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, or that it was made illegal then.

Romulan ale was also illegal, but still widely consumed. Also, the Enterprise had a “No Smoking” sign in the transporter room in The Wrath of Khan. So, whether it was legal or not, people were still doing it.

I think this is an understandable thing. It shows that just because people may have unclean habits and make mistakes, they can still be included, they are still a valuable part of the crew. And it’d be silly to assume that just because this is a near-utopian society, that characters this heavily flawed wouldn’t still be around.

Isn’t that the problem? “Heavily flawed ” characters are a tired staple in modern TV. Because our world isn’t crappy enough right now, let’s pay CBS a monthly fee to watch some of TV’s best characters get put through the ringer.

Don’t normalize it.

The alternative to normalizing it is to imply that people are weird or less worthy if they have flaws or addictions. Flaws are normal, and perfect characters are both unrealistic and boring.

True that. That is why I could never latch on to Picard as a character. He’s too perfect. Perfect people are boring to watch. I mean, I do not recall the guy doubting himself or opening up to anyone about it. And while he is older and frailer here, he is still convinced he’s right and everyone else is wrong. And, of course, he is.

I’d rather watch flawed people than perfect, shiny, happy people.

Smoking dates back to 5000 BC. It’s perfectly believable that smoking is still a thing in 300 years from now. It might be a more niche thing. Medical science is a lot more advanced by then so perhaps the dangers of smoking are no longer even really an issue!

That’s the problem – since the 2009 film, there IS no near-utopian society. It’s just our current world with space ships.

Good episode, uninspired ship design. It reminded me of the Blackbird from BSG.

I thought this was the best episode so far.

I don’t understand how anyone can think the pilot was better or episode 2. But 2 was better than 1.

Really this is a 3 part pilot but this felt to me most like a TNG episode.

I don’t care about sunglasses or cigars. Get over it. Maybe they all came back into fashion since TNG.

Loved the holograms, flashback, the fight at the chateau, Raffi is fun and so are Rios and Agnes. I had goosebumps and a tear in my eye with the TNG/TMP theme when Picard said engage.

We haven’t heard that much of the theme since Nemesis in 2002 – I loved it.

You speak for me, too, Oliver, esp your 4th paragraph.

“I don’t care about sunglasses or cigars. Get over it. Maybe they all came back into fashion since TNG.”

I agree people are blowing minutiae (which I also don’t neccessarily agree with – though at least the sunglasses feel like a plot device) out of proportion. It’s like our first and foremost criticism of Discovery was the crew wearing T-Shirts. “Wow, so 21st century!” ;)

I had less of an issue with his smoking a cigar and more of an issue with his character coming off as a bit of a cliche. An unshaven, smoking, rogue-ish kind of guy with a past who has a ship for hire has been done before. I’m actually a bit more curious about the backstory of his EMH.

Yeah, people getting hung up on a pair on sunglasses absolutely baffles me. It feels like bashing for the sake of it.

They’re sunglasses and maybe they’re not JUST sunglasses. Dd not have an issue with that at all, either.

When you can remember each and every episode that has come before, and writers have gone out of their way to add something new to the universe that is Trek, such as Vulcans and Romulans having an inner eyelid (made a point of in multiple episodes and stories), to then do something in complete contradiction to that with no explanation becomes a WTF moment.

You may or may not have invested time in the franchise over the last 55 odd years, but to those who have it comes across as lazy when the audience know more about the universe than the current “writers”, which then breaks the 4th wall and pulls us out of the story.

Let’s be honest, STD and Picard do that every 30 seconds in some form or another, which begins to make it amateurish and unwatchable as they continue to pile up over time and it becomes apparent that it’s not a plot point that’s been done intentionally, but just canonical mistakes.

It’s become such a problem for Kurtzman that he’s basically had to reset the show and send the entire series 1000 years into the future, and he feels (somewhat naively) that will resolve the problems, when in fact it’s the writers and advisors (or lack thereof) that is the real problem.

The technology definitely works and feels like a natural evolution of what was presented during the TNG era. No complaints, really.

What I’m enjoying about this series is that it’s a mystery slowly unfolding week by week, allowing us to speculate on what actually occurred and what is occurring now.

The tech doesn’t look any more than a decade tops past what we saw on Discovery….

Which is mostly the entire problem with Discovery lol. On Picard, it flows nicely from the TNG era.

Agreed. This show does look like it flows from TNG some 30 years earlier. (Although the fashion looks like it ignored the feature film completely) And the tech was one of the MANY problems with Discovery. And again, one that this viewer could have overlooked had the show been better to begin with.

Is it just MY eyes, or is that a rather Van Halen-esque(circa 1980s) paint scheme on the La Sirena?

Dahj = Data Soji = Lore Thoughts?

I wondered if when all is said and done Data turns out to be Trek’s version of R. Daneel Olivaw.

I can’t really see Data trying to guide humanity’s destiny like that. Data isn’t bound by the 0th law. It is interesting that Jurati was reading Asimov though.

There definitely is the idea (from the Romulan tarot) that one twin must be good and the other ‘the destroyer’.

However, is that fair, or is it just another fatalistic prejudice that need to be taken on and turned on its head.

Really, it sounds too much like a ‘biology is destiny’ statement, even though it’s about an android.

To be fair, for most robots “biology is destiny” indeed because they cannot exceed, much less contradict, their initial programming.

Good God I hope not. Trek already had a massive fail when they came up with the soap opera cliche of Data’s evil twin. Please let’s not revisit that tired trope here.

Overall I enjoyed this one. I’m wracking my brains trying to figure out how Soji is “the destroyer” and whether or not the Tal Shiar / Zhat Vash sent those Romulans to the Borg for the express purpose of damaging the collective and/or capturing that cube.

A couple of things that irked me, though (have Trek will complain) included the fact that Raffi calls Picard JL. That bugged me – but I guess Picard could be taking after his old friend admiral JP Hansen and adopting a similar nickname.

The other thing was that I kept expecting Picard to pull the whole “I expect you to do your duty, commander” to pull Raffi out of her downward spiral. He’s had to deal with emotionally inward-looking crew members before and has always relied on that kind of motivational technique so it was unusual that he didn’t employ it here (it kinda surfaced later when he said “you’re doing the research – here’s the Maddox stuff, carry on!” – I loved that it!).

I also reckon that Rios has his Starfleet uniform stowed somewhere on that ship.

And I would like the EMH to say “the line” at some point…

Hi Dr C, as I noted on a previous thread, J-L (not J.L.) is exactly the familiar short form that a francophone superior would permit his anglophone staff to use in private. (In fact, it reflects my own experience with a boss who I called J-J in private, but by his title outside the circle of his staff.). It appears the writers consulted a francophone about permitted familiar names.

In terms of ‘duty’, Musiker is in forced retirement and Picard has not eased her transition to civilian life. She’s already called him on having the gall to call on her for assistance. Teasing her curiosity with a puzzle showed much more leadership insight about her motivations than an appeal to duty could have at this point.

“Teasing her curiosity with a puzzle showed much more leadership insight about her motivations than an appeal to duty could have at this point.”

A more sinister take is that he was also waving a bottle in front of an addict. Clearly this Picard has “evolved” from his 2364 version where he flat-out told Wesley: “Drugs are bad!!”

As far as we know, she’s not an alcoholic. It isn’t as if he tried to bribe her with those drugs that she’s addicted to.

VS, I have the idea that the bottle of ’86 from the Chateau was long-promised but never delivered.

The synth attack on Mars was in 2385, and Musiker was Picard’s staff officer then.

I can imagine him saying that they’d open a bottle of ’86 together once the ships were built and the rescue fleet on its way. If so, he didn’t dare show up without it.

“And I would like the EMH to say “the line” at some point…”

You mean, “Please state the nature of the navigational emergency”? Oh wait, that’d be the ENH 😜

Loving Picard, keep it coming, Stewart & team! 👍

I have no issues with her calling him JL. It shows how close they are. Or were. That relationship could have easily been forged in the last 14 years off screen. He seemed pretty close to his old Stargazer Doctor, too. Funny how he comes across as closer to both of those people than he ever did with his staff on the Enterprise.

“The worst part of the episode: Lt. Rizzo Narissa’s turn as a faux-Georgiou, which I found rather annoying. She’s now in skintight leather and she and her brother Narek have a weirdly sexual vibe going on between them. Big yawn.”

Maybe they are offsprings of House Lannister :-) I don’t think Narissa is faux-Georgiou, Georgiou is Commodore Oh… George Oh, so to speak. I wouldn’t be surprised if Oh actually was the daughter or granddaughter of Georgiou and a Romulan/Vulcan affair.

“Why is Rios smoking? That seems an incredibly odd habit to have when we know humans haven’t smoked in at least 200 years. It also just feels rather wrong in the world of Trek.”

It’s weird but to some degree, they are reverse-engineering the Trek universe’s morality. Back in the 80s and 90s, when smoking and drinking was still widely socially accepted, they tried to be progressive and enlightened about it. But now that the Zeitgeist has turned against those ancient freedoms and overemphazises health issues, it seems to be quite adequat that Trek takes a stand against moralism and prohibitionism and promotes freedom of choice regarding those habits.

It’s not just Rios… Raffi seems to be on some sort of weed as well. Both seem to be heavy drinkers too.

Very weird: they recycled a cue or two from a DSC score when La Sirena was first shown on screen. I only noticed because I’ve listened to DSC scores time and again…

We saw in DS9 that Starfleet officers who had experienced trauma in large conflicts weren’t always ideally supported.

That is, Starfleet may have done well in peacetime in making sure trauma was dealt with, but at the scale of Wolf 359 or the Dominion War, not so much.

We also saw that officers who were on the cold face with other less ideal alien societies were at risk of picking up destructive habits.

Rios and Musiker both fit these exceptions, and are also both people that Starfleet clearly hoped would vanish into anonymity like Picard.

“That is, Starfleet may have done well in peacetime in making sure trauma was dealt with, but at the scale of Wolf 359 or the Dominion War, not so much.”

That fits well with the “It’s easy to be a saint in paradise” theme. Same as we had this short period of time in the 1990s when even accomplished academics would claim that we have reached the end of history and peace, prosperity and liberalism would now rule the globe, maybe this particular Utopia proved to be an illusion after all, and the children of Utopia were ill-prepared for the real world and its messy, complicated choices.

Just wondering how holographic AI’s are still legal when “synths” aren’t.

I assume that they can be controlled better and that they are limited to their area. It should be explained if starfleet was able to reverse engineer the mobile emitter. When 7of9 appears in tzhe next episodes, we hopefully will learn what happened to the crew of VOY in the last 20 years.

We don’t know that the holograms are legal.

Perhaps Rios is protecting them from being decommissioned by giving them his image and retaining them on his ship.

Starfleet is obviously sadistic still when it comes to holographic AIs, perhaps even more so by keeping them captive on their starships only to serve their needs in emergencies. Like Into Darkness the writers in trying to push an agenda have inadvertently made their characters genocidal criminals (poor poor Kahn, he just wanted his family back).

I reckon the Mother could be like a Metal Gear Solid 2 type of Roy Campbell: as Colonel Campbell was an AI created by GW, I reckon it is the same with this Mother of Dahj and Soji.

Oh my… Would Oh be from the Mirror Universe?? Her glasses and room… Vulcans have great resistance to intende light, that I recall.

Why would other species have issues with light? STD explained it as a Human genetic difference.

If the sunglasses are because she’s from the mirror universe, I think I’m done with Trek so long as Kurtzman is at the helm. That man is poison.

“They had a segment with fan questions, which didn’t give us any new information, but I was fascinated by the fact that they described Patrick Stewart as the funny one on set, given the stories of how he was the serious one among the TNG actors; looks like they really taught him how to loosen up, all those years ago.”

Patrick Stewart loosened up back in TNG days. Check out this cool story from Brent Spiner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5zQIKeh9B4

IMO this was my least favorite episode on the block of three. It is almost as if they ran out of the time to get the cast into space, so after the nice pacing of the first two and a half episodes, everything in the last 20 mins of E3 seemed rather rushed. Also unlike Disco where they extended some broadcast episodes to 70 or even 75 plus mins, Picard has been exactly 60 mins/episode. This one could have easily used an extra ten minutes.

Completely opposite reaction DeanH.

This was the first episode that didn’t have a flagging moment for me.

exactly 60 mins? It’s 37 mins once you take out the previews, recaps and title sequence.

I’m assuming DeanH watches the show with commercials.

Who in Star Trek benefits from destroying the Romulan rescue armada in Star Trek: Picard? Who’d want the Romulans to die that badly? Who hates the Romulans with enough passion to — okay, it’s Klingons. Klingons hate Romulans badly enough to want to see them vanquished.

They’d be my first suspects. Problem is, are Klingons smart enough to reprogram androids to use them as tools in a revenge ploy? Additionally, it’s not honorable.

They have the motivation, but do they have the means?

It would have to be a Klingon house devious enough to ally itself with someone smart enough to reprogram androids like F8 into destroying the armada.

Until proven wrong, Klingons remain my number one suspects, which would easily bring Worf into the narrative.

That’s not really the Klingons style. It’s not an honorable ploy.

Like I said, it would have to be a Klingon house devious enough. Think the House of Duras, not the House of Mog, for instance.

I would think that the House of Duras would benefit from keeping the Romulans around.

I wasn’t being literal, though. I was giving you an example of one devious Klingon house. Where there is one, there are others.

I suppose that if my namesake were still alive, then he might try something like that. It still seems too subtle a plan for a Klingon though.

Did Gowron have heirs? I don’t recall.

If not Klingons, who else might benefit or be motivated enough to do it?

“Who in Star Trek benefits from destroying the Romulan rescue armada in Star Trek: Picard? Who’d want the Romulans to die that badly? ”

I don’t find this notion that maybe some faction of Romulans boycotted their own rescue mission as far-fetched as both the characters of Picard and some viewers. It’s basically TUC’s “No peace in our time”. I’m sure many Romulans would loathe to be indebted to the Federation and possibly “slide” into an alliance with them, when some could profit from the power vaccuum after the fall of the Romulan Star Empire.

Interesting.

It’s the romulans. They don’t want the federation to continue developing AI, so they use this to create such a massive impact on the federation that they will ban AI, and also the synths destroyed themselves when they were done.

The romulans accidentally created the borg in the past when they sent out sentient von neumann probes into the galaxy to assimilate information, replicate themselves and return it to the Romulans hundreds of years later. Assimilation is the secret that will break your mind to know it. Reducing the romulan population in the attack is preferable to the federation accidentally creating their own borg and ultimately destroying the alpha quadrant.

As soon as that Borg ship assimilated Romulans it cut itself off from the collective ready for the Romulans to reclaim the tech and information the collective had gathered over the thousands of years since the probes were first sent out.

“As soon as that Borg ship assimilated Romulans it cut itself off from the collective ready for the Romulans to reclaim the tech and information the collective had gathered over the thousands of years since the probes were first sent out.”

How very V’ger of it, lol.

SUGGESTION for Trekmovie.com to pass onto the producers of Star Trek Picard. Instead of limiting the show to fit a 60 min timeslot in those regions who broadcast the show – offer CBSAA and streaming customers bonus extended episodes (an extra 5 mins or so). This would address what seemed to me to be a rather compressed or rushed episode 3 – the pacing of the first 2.5 episodes was great and that all went down the drain in the last 20-30 mins of yesterday’s show. It would also provide CBSAA customers with more value. To be fair, give the international broadcasters the choice. If its the 60 min timeslot, here is the edited version. Space Channel in Canada seemed to have no issue showing 70 or 75 minute Discovery S1 and S2 episodes.

Agreed DeanH.

I don’t think UK or Aus broadcast television would have issues with longer shows either.

The U.S. permits the greatest amount of advertising time per hour as far as I know. Canadian channels have filler to compensate.

That said, we’ll need to see what the run time of the remaining episodes will be. We’ve heard that the opening sequence was originally written to be two episodes, but then edited to be three with some additional scenes added (Mars flashback for example). So it could be that they added just enough to fit minimum broadcast times for those three.

Multiple versions of a single episode is an added expense so it’s ultimately a budgetary issue.

As for those 60 minute + episode, that’s what’s known as running off the clock. Schedules can be adjusted but typically there is a target runtime.

“Why is Rios smoking? That seems an incredibly odd habit to have when we know humans haven’t smoked in at least 200 years.”

He’s smoking cigars; it’s not necessarily habitual.

It may be an affectation, or a test to see if Picard can accept that La Sirena is not his Starfleet ship running under standing orders and regulations, but rather a private ship operating under Rios’s rules.

I love Discovery but after watching Picard I think I now understand why some people dislike the show…Discovery that is. I really like Picard, maybe more than TNG.

Picard is the better of the two. Discovery looks like it’s produced on a soundstage whereas Picard has the look of a feature film and feels like it’s part of a much larger world.

So true! It’s clear they went big for this show. And it feels like a much larger world because it is. The 23rd century era just feels much smaller compared to the 24th century because it didn’t have 3 shows , 20 seasons (and four films) of story telling. And even more so since DIS was a prequel to TOS so it didn’t even have that mythology to follow.

It’s exactly why its so much more exciting for many of us who wanted a return to this era.

I like this episode, but not as much as Episode 2 just because the flaws in the writing were so significant, and the discontinuity with TNG’s universe (smoking, drug abuse, poverty, cursing, depression, etc.) was particularly egregious for me. The entire front of the episode was a dense and clumsy exposition dump that really failed to establish a convincing reason for Raffi’s extreme anger at Picard. The Romulan Borg scene was very confusing and nonsensical and couldn’t decide what it wanted to focus on. This show badly needs some better script writers, the story ideas are there but they can’t seem to write it lean enough to let the ideas breath and evolve naturally, instead it’s crammed down our throats in an effort to get the story’s idea across. I like watching these characters, and I like the fan service, but there is also a point where the world they are in is too unrecognizable for me to enjoy the trappings enough to forgive the bad writing.

Did anyone else notice Dr what’s her name listening to the Kaseelian opera from Discovery Season 1? Just before she was approached by Commodore Oh? Coincidence as both scores written by Jeff Russo or could it mean something more?

You heard it here first folks! Dr. Jurati is Bruce Jenner, I mean Maddox. They’ll find out he/she, or whatever pronoun they prefer, re-wrote their DNA so they can fool a tricorder scan. This DNA re-writing is amply precedented in, TNG era particularly, Trek history. Maddox, in addition to his positronic skills, must have some competency in biology as well given that Dahj and Soji have flesh and blood bodies. It also fits with the Kurtzman crew’s M.O. of nobody is who they say they are. Ash Tyler is Voq, Georgiou is actually Evil Georgiou, Lorca etcetera.

Star Trek: Picard has been great so far. The characters we’ve been introduced to, from Zhaban, Laris, Agnes Jurati, Dahj/Soji, Commodore O, Narek and his sister and Raffi, are all interesting, likable and memorable. They all feel like they have purpose and I want to learn more about them – something that Discovery lacks outside of a few characters like Saru and Phillipa Georgeau. (I don’t count Pike because he was an established character already).

I also love the sprinkling of the Star Trek fanfare throughout the last two episodes, talk of his days on the Stargazer, mentions of Worf, Riker and LaForge.. all might be fan service but I still love that there’s a respect for TNG there and I’ll take it.

Hughe’s appearance felt a little underwhelming to me. I felt like he deserved a bit more of an entrance or hint of what his journey has been like the last 25 years. I’m sure more will be revealed in the coming episodes but overall I am happy with Picard – I just really wish they’d change the Show’s theme song – its so far the only thing I’m not too fond of.

I’m probably going to be in the minority, but i’m kinda disappointed 3 episodes in. I’m just tired of the cliche’d trope of the sinister government (or starfleet) conspiracy. It reeks of tired storytelling. In this day and age particularly, it would be nice to have some inspirational Trek. My other gripe is a bit of an oxymoron because i like slow methodical storytelling, but i feel like we could have gotten to this point in one episode. I’m finding myself bored. So… those are my 2 cents.

(*after reading through these posts, maybe not so much in the minority as i thought*)

I’m not really enjoying the show very much either. It’s gorgeous to look at, but the writing…while trying to be better than Discovery…isn’t really very good at all. I’m not looking at it from a ‘This isn’t exactly like TNG’ point of view, I expected that and was looking forward to it. The pure level of the writing is aiming pretty low….yet I get the feeling that the writers really feel they’re knocking this out of the park, like it’s mature, subtle and deep. It’s very surface level stuff.

What you see is the result of a mandate not the primarily make Star Trek but to be oh so smart with a message that just happens to have a Star Trek label. This is in contrast to Star Trek that was Star Trek first and had a powerful message within. This happened before with Into Darkness where the writers in trying to hit us over the head with “That’s George Bush firing drones you see!!!” they made it where you can beam across the Federation (in which case why have Starships at all?), fire photon torpedoes from the neutral zone at the Klingon home world (they are really that close? Where are the Klingon defenses?) and made Kahn just a poor guy just trying to get his family back from the evil Starfleet. Only they could have wrecked the return of Kahn… a no brainier for action and adventure. In Picard they’ve made it now where TNG Starfleet basically engages in slavery and captivity with AI holograms, androids, etc and where you can electronically engineer life thus discriminating against organic life forms whom can’t be engineered (Eugenics ban) and have to develop at the cost of potential nuclear annihilation per the Prime Directive. Unfortunately the more they want perfect characters (and let’s face it hypothetical AI life can be whatever you want it to be, thus the ethical issues around it) the less relatable and boring the story will be and nonsensical when they try to throw in flaws that they themselves made difficult to put into the story.

You’re not wrong.

Another episode where many elements don’t seem to make any sense in the pre-established lore of the franchise. Instead of people here blindly defending the series… I’m inviting logical conversation….

1. In what form could Raffi possibly have lost her CAREER IN STARFLEET over Picard resigning???

A seasoned experienced Starfleet officer… trained and educated for years and years… Up to the point where she is working directly with *the* Admiral Picard… working to try to save billions …. is “kicked out”? This is ridiculous writing. It’s rare a 21st century real world organisation would get away with this without facing retribution from an employment lawyer. Nevermind thinking Starfleet Command would excise top talent this way.

2. Exactly why… in Gene Roddenberry’s 24th / 25th century… is she living unemployed in a shack in a California desert? (and why can’t Picard beam to that spot?) This has to be by choice out of self-pitty?

3. Picard is a 30 year on-screen established diplomat, leader, artist, caretaker, confident, etc…. and we are to believe he actually ignored her with zero contact for 14 years? It’s like there is no thought put into the history and precident of this character. This is how he would treat someone? I’m reading alot into 5 minutes of dialogue and screentime.. but c’mon folks.

4. To hammer home how this crop of writers want to distance themselves from the elevated calibre of character dialogue of established TNG…. they do everything in this show and in Discovery to make everyone talk like a 90’s Valley Girl. Imagine how Allison Pill’s character … with her scientific credentials at the Daystrom Institute …would talk in the TNG series. In this show she is reduced to lines like “Who are you, girl?!?”

There is this bizarre need to try to make 400 years in the future seem synonymous to lifestyle and diction of the 20th century. Now Picard is walking around with a cardigan and belt buckled khaki pants. The whole attraction of Star Trek was a vision of the future and watching the “best of the best” tackle a situation.

Now everyone is a mean spirited contradictory a-hole with a confusing agenda.

And why are they trying to make the brother/sister Romulan spy team the “creepy incest-twins”

An answer to #3 is that when you look at it Picard isn’t an established anything. His claim to fame is that he was the one that allowed himself to get assimilated to destroy half the fleet at Wolf 359 and almost take out Earth. In First Contact yes he stopped a cube but by knowing exactly where to target it, does that mean that he is still communicated with the Borg or that he deliberately did not inform the fleet of a weak spot leading to the destruction of additional starships. He lost the Federation flagship fighting a 50 year old bird of prey – yes he wasn’t in command but is not the Captain responsible for the conduct of his crew (or is that tradition dead in the 24th century)? Then he goes to build a rescue armada using androids sadistically programmed to have emotions which take out Mars. His “diplomacy” consisted of why humans are so perfect and everyone else is not and should be human. He also seems to have a soft spot regarding Data (we need more perfect engineered life but ignore eugenics bans, the Prime Directive, etc) and he certainly isn’t losing any sleep over having lost Tasha Yar. It is no wonder he ends up on his private vineyard alone. That being said, I hate perfect characters and so this series has me liking Picard (unlike TNG) so props to the writers on that.

He saved Earth in the past from assimilation, and he saved the entire federation and god knows who else from Shinzon, to say nothing for uncovering a plot to overthrow starfleet, keeping peace with the Romulans, preventing the Klingon empire from imploding, preventing a planet of hundreds of millions of people from being destroyed by Soran.. and ensured that all life in the galaxy wasn’t erased from the temporal anomaly in All Good Things. Need I go on?!!! He should be running Starfleet!

He should it’s crazy he has no allies

Picard was never my favorite, but he basically saved his whole universe in “All Good Things” and “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” not to mention personally saving the Enterprise in “Booby Trap” plus many others. And I wouldn’t include his STP actions as valid to his TNG history. Picards feelings and strategy to demostrate Data’s value as a person in “Measure of a Man” were masterful and heartfelt, and that episode, one of Trek’s finest, should not be dismissed because STP writers decided they needed a plot point. Rather than deconstructing Picard and Starfleet, and the Federation, and thereby the whole Star Trek concept, why not create something new? Your recitation of TNG events proves that he had human flaws and was hardly “perfect”.

he didn’t allow himself to be assimilated. and his achievements predate ‘farpoint’.

WORF allowed him to be assimilated and should have fallen on his own sword for failing Starfleet/Fed so completely. 24th century enlightenment notwithstanding, a security chief in that situation should have had ‘kill’ defauts set up for the command staff in case of Borg incursion aboard, just based on Q WHO. I really thought BOBW pt 2 was going to focus on a Riker/Worf difficulty more than Shelby (who always seemed very 20th Century ALL ABOUT EVE with her scheming, and a far cry from the mandated 24th century perfectpeople) — then again, I also hoped they’d kill Picard, because I found the character unappealing even before season 2, which is when I first gave up on the show.

She probably didn’t lose her career in Starfleet, but she was apparently dismissed from the Romulan rescue planning when her patron and leader Picard left. To her, that probably did feel like the end of her career, and it looks like she also resigned from Starfleet and holed up in the desert, as Picard holed up at his vineyard.

They were both depressed and demoralized; not having contact with each other is believable to me.

She said that they revoked her security clearance.

Without a clearance, one can’t do anything in Starfleet or in the civilian bureaucracy of the Federation. More, given that her expertise was as an analyst, pulling he clearance would eliminate most non-government civilian jobs.

So, forced retirement compounded by destroying her reputation seems the established history.

For a bright mind that thrives on analytics, this would be tremendously damaging.

It looks like it was a ton more than just that. That would be something you could recover from. She doesn’t come across as someone who would quit at the first sign of adversity. So, no. I think she was a casualty of Picard’s resignation. There were undoubtedly others, too.

Maybe there will be more to it. Maybe it could simply be once she got addicted and never got herself out of it and that was the real downfall, even though losing her job was the catalyst. And thats VERY realistic. I grew up in Compton, I seen it time and time again (although its far from a utopia lol). I hope its something more than was shown but I don’t have an issue with HOW she is portrayed either. In fact its refreshing to me.

ML31, it seems you are right that there was something more.

A great deal of the backstory is coming out in The Ready Room and the Deadline podcast interviews with Kurtzman, Beyer and Culpepper.

Essentially, Musiker had deep-rooted fragility (rooted in growing up as child of mostly absent Starfleet officers), and Picard’s strength in being able to move on to after a mission or a command was finished meant that it never occurred to him to take care of her after he left Starfleet.

If what you say is true about more will get revealed about how deep this runs then it bodes well. At the moment if feels absurdly simplistic. Although I would think that someone as wise as Picard should have said something to someone along the lines of “There must be more to this than we know…”

If he just moved on and left her to take care of herself then his idea of their relationship was not the same as what she saw it as. Although I would think that since she referred to him in the amazingly informal “JL” that would be a giant clue to him. Picard has been portrayed as someone who would not be so oblivious to such things. That’s not a big complaint because I welcome anything that can humanize him. It’s just that it doesn’t seem like something our perfect captain would do. Just as succumbing to revenge in First Contact, as great as that was to see it did not fit the established character at all.

Even though I really like the show so far ST EXP, but I can’t disagree with many of your points either. The main one just having to do with the ‘falling out’ between Raffi and Picard. I mean out of ALL the things they could’ve done, this does seem like a really lazy direction to go in. They fired her because Picard resigned? I don’t understand the thinking of that at all. Were they afraid she was gong to be belligerent about it as Picard or something? And then she blames Picard, how was he suppose to know him quitting was going to cost her her job?

There were SO MANY ways they could’ve given them a real conflict. Maybe she was one of the people who just sided with the Federation after the Mars attack and Picard replaced her as his Number One. I mean she clearly doesn’t trust Romulans NOW so it wouldn’t be a stretch that she simply didn’t want to help them as much as Picad did. Or maybe something more deeper and tragic like she had a husband and a family who was killed on Mars, blamed Starfleet for employing synths and simply resigned out of grief and easier to buy how she ended up where she is. Or even take what the comic set up when she was imprisoned by the Romulans and maybe she turned against Picard after that incident because he was still willing to help them and she felt they would never completely change their nature.

There could’ve just been other ways to do it other than, “they fired my ass because you quit even though I did nothing wrong, so now I’m going to hate you for it.”

I’m not AS bothered by her downfall with drug issues or living a more bare bones life because I think she DID choose to live that way. I mean she basically just checked out of the system and fell out of society in general. You can’t just live how you want if you forego the rules and decide you don’t want to work. Everyone in the 24th century still has to contribute on SOME level if she wants most of the benefits of it. If you decide to just wallow in misery and be a pot head then of course you’re not going to have any of the benefits in a progressive society, in any society regardless.

And before I say this, I’m not talking about YOU but I don’t understand why people just assume ‘utopia’ means everyone is just super happy and well adjusted all the time? People can still be just PEOPLE and do bad things or, here is a shocker, just REJECT the system altogether because they simply refuse to follow the rules in it. Again, I actually watch the show. We seen it with Harry Mudd, we seen it with Tom Paris, we seen it with the Maquis and etc. In fact in an alternate timeline we saw what happened to Tom Paris if he never joined Voyager and someone who was aimless, unemployed and basically shunned from society. And he was living on Earth and his father was a Starfleet admiral. I don’t thunk he had a drug problem or anything but these things have been shown on Star Trek before.

In fact, we first met Paris in prison (but a very nice one lol), which suggests there are people still committing crimes even though there is no poverty, lack of opportunities/education or prejudice to speak of, but people still find ways to be people. Kirk even admitted humans will always be savages on some level and that has never changed.

Even in a ‘utopia’ people can fall through the system if they still can’t play in it and I’m very happy we have someone like Raffi to show that. But HOW they did it rings a bit hollow, agreed.

I appreciate the insight here. Gives me perspective.

Thanks! And I clearly love discussing it lol. I think I’ve always seen it a different ways from others I’m learning. But to me, no matter how great a society seems on the outside its not flawless either. Watching The Expanse for example, you would think that Earth is basically a utopia on that show as well (also set in the 23rd century) but then they made it very clear there is still a seedier and downtrodden side to it, no one just really talks about it. But I think it shows a reality that sadly no matter how great a society pretends to be it doesn’t mean everyone will be fully acclimated in it.

As much as I love Star Trek and its hopeful and progressive vision, it doesn’t mean it would be that way for everyone and we have seen those people…it’s just rare when we do.

I’m surprised that there’s so much dislike for this episode. I thought Ep 2 was a little messy, with too much exposition and not enough time spent on the individual moments and their aftermaths, but I really liked this one! We’re finally getting out of the exposition and into the plot, and I think by the end of the season, the deliberate plotting will have paid off. I’m glad they’re not rushing us into space and into combat. I don’t think Michelle Hurd is comfortable in her roll yet. Some of her dialogue was very cumbersome and I thought a lot of it was painfully delivered, but she has an excellent attitude and embodies the spirit of Trek so I think this criticism is just early growing pains, and even if this doesn’t improve, I find her so likable in person that I think I will forgive the clunky delivery. To the stars!

It’s not the episode itself that I am disliking, it’s the series as a whole. I have no issue with the type of story they’re trying to tell, but the way they’re executing this show, representing starfleet and writing the characters is contradictory to what came before. It’s the same stuff the JJ movies suffered from…I’m not intentionally trying to find fault in the episodes, but when I’m sitting there watching and being pulled out by numerous non-sensical things…gah. I remember in the 2009 Star Trek, when they spoke of the Hobus Star going super nova and threatening the galaxy…I was like..”WHAT?”. They’ve toned that down in Picard and changed it to the Romulan planets star…but man…they really needed to bring in some stronger writers to tighten this show up.

How about that episode 4 clip preview from “Ready Room?” I was hoping that planet Picard was visiting was Mintaka III … until I heard him say “Jolan Tru”

At least this greeting is 100% correct unlike Nero’s “Hi Chris” in ST2009.

Mintaka is definitely still pre-warp. Picard will never go back there.

He thinks engineering and programming AI life is awesome, why would he have a problem with teaching organic life?

The middling Jeff Russo music slathered over every scene is getting to be quite irritating. Mr. Kurtzman, you said you are making Star Trek’s first “adult drama.” Mr. Kurtzman, why don’t you go ahead and watch some acclaimed dramas? You could observe how such fare lets scenes breathe and lets actors act. You might notice how even a fantasy show like Game of Thrones doesn’t Mickey-Mouse every beat of every scene with musical slop, commanding the clueless viewers how to feel at every moment. If you insist on going the Merrie Melodies route, might I plea for you to hire a composer who sounds like he has actually studied classical composition?

The question about smoking is an interesting one. It could be that with medical technology being so advanced, the negative consequences of current-day vices are no longer an issue, so people can take them up simply for pleasure. Synthehol removes the worst aspects of alcohol, smoking (or vaping) is harmless because any problems can be solved with a quick shot or a few minutes on a bio bed. The fact that we don’t see a lot of overweight people might mean that everyone just eats healthier, or it could be that there are easy steps to take that allow you to eat whatever you want without gaining weight. Shoot, Captain Kirk had casual sex all over the Alpha Quadrant — did he always carry a space condom?

Presumably medics have advanced enough to completely obliterate addiction too, so who would want to subject the people around them to medical treatment for cancer and addiction with 2nd hand smoke? That would be pretty repugnant behavior. Here, have a hypospray and a few counseling sessions to get past your problems instead of wasting everyone’s time with unnecessary medical treatment. We’re supposed to be enlightened by the 24th century, not still 21’st century selfish assclowns.

It’s almost like the billions of people all over the federation aren’t one archetype, and are different people with different feelings and desires … Almost…almost like real life?

I have to ask if this reviewer has watched the previous 2 episodes. It is quite clear that Soji is investigating Romulan Mythology because Maddox wants to know why they hate Androids so that Mars never happens again.

The mother is very clearly a similation that only exists on screen, this isn’t even a question.

Robert Burnett has some VERY good discussion on the show so far. Begins from 17:30 on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va5QXH3fgP4

I find it’s best to just have it on, don’t bother sitting in front of it. Topic continues intermittently through the superchats at the end.

I’m still lost on what happened to the full “Romulan Empire”. Did the Romulan fleet/military just abandon the rest of the population on Romulus? It makes no sense why they needed outside help, and why they would be living poor refugee lives, when there were plenty of planets in the Empire to spread around to (it would seem anyways). Makes this “Empire” seem small and no big deal. Why did they need the Federation to help at all

A core world like Romulus would have a population in the billions TKW.

The Romulans realized they couldn’t get everyone out of the radius of the supernova on time.

Asking the Federation to transport 900 million out of billions seems proportional, and even if their are other worlds, they may not all be M-class or have infrastructure to support that large an influx within a couple of years.

I think the Fall of the Rom(ul)an Empire illustrates the achilles heel of strictly centralized, hierarchical societies kept together by the military and lethal force. When you cut off the head, the body cannot survive. Most likely Romulan military was based in the Romulus system. Worlds at the periphery of the empire that were kept in line by force seceded after the destruction of Romulus (similar to the dissolution of the Soviet Union). Interestingly, the Federation seemed to fear something similiar, seeing the threat of secession of (only) 17 member worlds as existential.

No, core world like Romulus has 900 m people until it’s established otherwise. Accept everything at face value and don’t give this production more credit than it’s earned.

Sam, that is just silly. The word help does not equal ‘do the complete task for us.’

Why would the Romulans ask the Federation to take responsibility for 100% of the evacuation of their core system?

Given how secretive Romulans are, they would ask non-Romulans to help with transport of the least security-sensitive people and essential materiel.

It sounds as though you are so determined to find fault with TPTB that you’re extrapolating to absurdity.

Not at all. I would love nothing better than for modern Trek (in this case Kurtzman Trek) to finally prove all them smug naysayers wrong. If that was ever going to happen though there’s no time like the present. They got Patrick Stewart out of semi-retirement; they’ll never have better motivation than that.

900m is the number they threw out, economy of storytelling would make it absurd extrapolation to assume that was anything other than the total number of people in need of relocation, regardless of who would have relocated them, unless specifically established otherwise. Who else was involved in the rescue is most likely unimportant — again for purposes of streamlined storytelling.

What likely IS important is the current state of Romulas: refugees, government, secret police, “secret” secret police, how many overall were saved and where do most of them reside — especially since we have a lot of these people running around. It’s even *possible* the show has yet to establish a better picture of this in the remaining 7 eps (I’d even approve holding back on a lot of this info rather than implausibly dumping it upfront).

But it also appears like a lot of what we’ve seen (in general) just wasn’t very thoroughly thought out.

Economy of storytelling means that we’re given the magnitude of the commitment that the Federation made, with no assumption that the Federation would do it all.

Don’t like it, point to the showrunners. Hold the series to a higher standard. That’s the number they spat out. Without further elaboration it refers to everyone who was in the path of the supernova.

Actually Sam, on rewatch of episode 3 I noticed that the writers offer Raffi saying that “billions are in the blast zone”.

Perhaps I had that in the back of my mind, but whatever we have been given that: 1) the Federation committed to relocate 900 million out of the blast zone 2) the total population at risk in the blast zone was in the billions.

Sam, I’ve found several of your posts quite reasonable, but as I’ve noted, in this thread you seem to be determined to quibble over minutia which in fact had been clarified by the writers in the episode we’re ostensibly discussing.

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♀️. Sigh facepalm.

I agree that’s the best interpretation available until they give us more. If they ever do. If they didn’t that would be fine.

But there’s also not enough here to dismiss it as a Kurtzman Trek inconsistency. And as I said above, the current state of Romulus (as a people) is more important, if they can give us more of that before season’s end. It’s already too late for them to patch up most of questions and holes left back on Earth — at least without very obviously playing catch-up as they did in the finale of STD S2.

I love the series in concept, and it’s got some good and even potentially great ideas, and I don’t even think the Brexit/Trump stuff is uncharacteristic of ST at all as others are complaining. But so far it just keeps piling on even more ideas rather than fleshing out the ones already in play. Not unlike STD (before STD fell apart in S1’s final act).

Ha! Seems we fans have had the same discussion since TUC and Praxis…. =P

BTW I agree with you, although the urgency of a supernova would outweigh the destruction of a moon. Evidently there are speed of light factors involved in RL novae, and the radiation can be deadly light years away (when it finally reaches a system).

should have used the stargazer, link to picards past and something never seen by the audience

The Stargazer appeared in the first season episode, “The Battle”. I only know this because I am in the process of rewatching TNG for the first time and I saw season one a few months ago.

all u nay-sayers….I’ve been a fan since TNG day 1, and while the franchise has had big problems (ie ST: DSC), I’m willing to wait and give it the benefit of the doubt. After all, we are only 3 episodes into a 10 ep 1st season of a show that has already been confirmed for a 2nd season. Remember how we all compared TNG S1 to the rest of the seasons?

I’m willing to overlook the bumps atm, because this show just FEELS like STAR TREK has come home (so far :) )

I too have been a fan since the start of TNG (cheers!), my first “Star Track” was TWOK, my first REAL exposure was TVH, very dim awareness that there even had been a TV series, but saw scattered eps of it when our local Fox5 picked it up in preparation for TNG.

And all throughout, my relationship with Trek has seemed to be exactly opposite of whatever was the talk on the street. TNG sucks? I was the perfect age for it, Wesley’s dorky striped uniform and all. DS9 sucks? It started getting really good right when TNG felt tired and soapish. DS9 still sucks thank god for VOY? I begged to differ. ST09 sucks? I was so done with Berman Trek that I still rank the movie at 3rd place. (The Meyer/Bennett movies remain my favorite re-creation of Trek.)

So naturally I loved STD while everyone said it sucked. Revisualize the universe? HELL yeah. Of course then the story fell apart in its 3rd act. “Oh well, we knew this would happen.” Then it re-stabilized (kind of?) for S2 before it fell apart again. I still have no idea what S2 was even about. It was about nothing. Plus after two years the show itself still has no premise.

STP has been an awkward mixture of everything I want from a new ST series (non-formula, driven by concept and character rather than setting), and everything I kind of fear about Kurtzman based on his history with Trek (even loving the 2009 movie as I do). And I just think WHATEVER the real long-term creative potential for Kurtzman Trek, it will have been determined by what’s already on film, face-down and waiting to be discovered in those unseen 7 episodes.

It just proves as a fanbase we’re not a monolith and there will never be a TRUE consensus of what people want in Star Trek, which sounds like its almost impossible for any of the shows or movies to ever completely win over everyone. And it is lol. FORTUNATELY though most Star Trek has been more successful than not because even when people moan and whine about not liking something, most still watch it just the same. That’s the power of the brand.

Even for me, I have watched every single iteration of Star Trek just like you starting with the TOS movies (that’s when I was getting ‘new’ Trek and not just old TOS reruns which I started with) all the way through today. Enterprise was the ONLY show I gave up on very early but I stuck it out with everything else even when I wasn’t that in love with it from the beginning. So that’s why although I am hard on shows when they just suck (as I felt Discovery and Enterprise first season did), I know from experience they usually all get better for me. Even with Enterprise once I went and watched the show (and this was when STID first arrived, I really never bothered to watch it until well after it was cancelled) I realized it too was a great show for me after all although its still on the lesser side of my favorites.

For me though, I really do love Star Trek in every iteration. 90s Star Trek will probably always be the best Star Trek for me. I been a fan since the late 70s but it was the 90s era that really turned me into a fanatic. And I think that was when there was just so much going on with it. It felt very mainstream at the time. So I really love Berman’s era of Star Trek even though it probably should’ve been a change by the end of Voyager. But I also loved the Bennet era as well but it was just a few movies basically. It wasn’t the ’empire’ Star Trek had become later, but they were fun and gave us more adventures with the TOS crew.

But I’m also fine with Abrams version of Star Trek and I like Kurtzman version too, even if I’m not in love with them yet. Because UNLIKE some people here, I don’t expect Star Trek to be the version in my head and I accept different people will have different ideas with it (but I generally love the direction Picard is in even if I still can admit I miss seeing him as captain on a star ship). That’s a GOOD thing because it needs to change to stay relevant for every generation. Star Trek was just 20 years old when TNG started but it was the perfect time to do something new and different with it. If we just got multiple versions of TOS, it would’ve died out looong ago IMO. The only issue is the execution of those changes. But TNG wasn’t TOS, DS9 wasn’t TNG, the Kelvin movies aren’t DS9 and Picard isn’t those movies either. They still have to represent the universes they are in (which is the other issue ;)) but they can certainly have their own unique identities and I will happily watch it all.

But it still has to be good! Or even just a little good lol. That is the one saving grace for me, ALL of Star Trek has all been a little good at least. ;D

Too right mate….so many people here keep banging on how this trek is supposed to be like 90s trek (which was the best) but can’t accept it changing and want it stuck in time, and use crappy YouTube channels and misinformation to trick people into thinking that it’s the mainstream opinion

Yeah as I said I love that era of Trek and I’m pretty convinced it will always be my favorite as well. I can probably watch those type of shows for the rest of my life and never complain. But I also believe in order to bring in new audiences and breath new life into the franchise you have to make a change at SOME point. It can’t just be nostalgia or the same formula all the time or it will never attract new people, just keep the old ones happy. Picard is sort of a best of both worlds, the TNG/DS9/VOY nostalgia is there and that aspect will probably only grow in later seasons as more characters show up from those shows; but its NOT any of those shows either and something on its own. That was a clever way to handle it IMO.

That’s why I’m really happy to see what Kurtzman is doing even if I’m not overly excited about every little thing coughSECTION31cough! But he’s trying to make it feel a lot more diverse with different types of characters, time periods and settings. And I just LOVE the fact he is taking real chances like setting Discovery a thousand years into the future. We needed something like that back in its first season IMO but it tells people like me who is real hungry for change that they are too!

It doesn’t mean all these new and current shows will be BETTER (and that’s the real issue I think for some who misses the TNG to ENT period of Star Trek) but hopefully it can still be good. Jury is still out but all I can say is I am enjoying it more and more and hopeful for the future shows.

But I do think with many Picard will probably be the make or break show in how they see the franchise going forward, especially if you were already disappointed in Discovery.

To many the best Trek was TOS. But I can understand that perhaps one of the best times to be a Trek fan was the 90’s.

Well for people who grew up with TOS like you and I (at least when it was the only Trek around if you didn’t catch its original run), sure. But for most people who didn’t, it isn’t. I know, all my friends who grew up with TNG era saw that as their favorite Star Trek. It’s really clear coming to this board where most people seem to be above 40 and then go to a place like Reddit where people are generally much younger and you see the stark difference easily between preferences for the two eras. And why I like both boards, because you do get a more well rounded view of it.

And yes maybe in time this new era will find another, excuse me, generation of new fans who will see Discovery and the others as their favorite part of the franchise as I felt the Kelvin movies were starting to before those movies deflated. Obviously the jury is still way out but this era is just getting started.

“FORTUNATELY though most Star Trek has been more successful than not because even when people moan and whine about not liking something, most still watch it just the same. ”

Fans are like that. I think Discovery season 1 and 2 have been absolute garbage. But God help me I’m a fan and will watch season 3 expecting it to be garbage and hoping it gets better. Just like fans of teams that suck sill watch each season hoping they get that player that can make the difference between sucking and competing. Even when all signs point to them still being crap. It’s just the nature of fandom.

I want to give them the benefit of the doubt as I am a Trek fan from back in the 70’s and really want the brand to give us good stuff. But Secret Hideout Trek is 0 for 2 from the first and 2nd seasons of Discovery. So while I am holding out hope for Picard, I am forced to think the likelihood of it being good, or even mediocre is low. It’s still early and the jury is still out. But rest assured this show can still go either way. At this point I will be stunned but pleased if it ends up being good and not at all surprised if it ends up being bad.

The fact they have a 2nd season is hardly evidence the show will end up being good. More likely the show had a 2nd season option going in and already had financing in place. The announcement was merely a formality like season 2 of Discovery.

OK, here’s a point NO ONE else has mentioned. Vasquez Rocks is a Los Angeles County Park, a short drive away from a heavily populated area. How the heck is someone in a run-down trailer living in it like it’s the middle of nowhere?

Basically considering this is fictional depiction of a world centuries into the future and post 21st century war, who knows what SoCal would be like in the late 24th century. We do know that NorCal SFO is still around along with Paris, etc., but as far as we know that part of LA Country may have been a wasteland after what TOS termed the the third world war or some other form of natural disaster.

Thanks DeanH.

Why is it that so many American Trek fans seem to think that WW III, a long established Trek canonical anchor somehow managed to leave the lower 48 states intact?

Probably because FIRST CONTACT made ww3 look more like a spoiled picnic rather than a nuclear winter.

When I first saw FC, my main distraction (besides how dark the movie looked, which was a problem with all the theaters at that point, just like GENERATIONS, which it turned out years later I found was shot wonderfully, just suffering from bad projection) was, ‘why aren’t they showing the devastation?’ All it would have taken is a shuttlecraft flight over a city to get a little taste of the horror.

Easy. Spock himself said Earth avoided nuclear war (but not WWIII). TNG decided to ignore that. Ergo, in my “vision of the future” (barf), there was a limited nuclear exchange – most likely attributable to Colonel Green’s War, except… ENT.

Because this was hundreds of years after said WWIII. And until TNG mentioned otherwise (a huge mistake IMHO) it was presumed that the 3rd WW was in regards to Khan. Who had taken over a quarter of the globe. None of which was in North America. Therefore it would be reasonable to conclude that part of the globe went through fairly unscathed. Further if the area was affected by such devastation it stands to reason the Vasquez Rocks would not look like the Vasquez Rocks we see today given it’s proximity to the nearby urban areas and military installations.

I mentioned it. I visited out there and there were a handful of people wandering about. It is not that far out of an urban area at all. So her living like she is “off the grid” (which she wasn’t as Picard was easily able to “call” her) seems like a stretch.

Yes, I know they did it as a “wink” to fans but that is the sort of fan service I do not like because it makes little sense. Had they put her in the middle of the Sahara or something where one would not expect anyone to be, even in the 24th century it might make more sense.

After all, the only way to get a real true Star Trek is to remaster DS9 and VOY at least to 1080p…

I never cease to be surprised how each succeeding generation of fans can be so insistent that they know what ‘real Star Trek’ is.

It’s funny, because I’m old enough to remember that when both series were originally airing, there were contingents of fans who didn’t believe either series was “real” Trek, too.

Absolutely, Edward Samuela!

It seems that the fans who can’t accept any Trek but the one they first attached to as kids or adolescents often have the loudest and shrillest voices on any board.

I, on the other hand, watched TOS in first-round as a young child, and have been enthusiastic to see every new Trek iteration.

I’ve found a lot to love in every series, even if some of them have disappointed me. (Enterprise was the only one that I largely gave up on, but even it has some episodes and arcs that are absolute gems.)

More, for the most part, the evolution of Trek has largely reflected my own changing perspectives and expectations.

I know I’m not the only one, in fact I suspect fans like me are more common if less vocal. I had friends who were dedicated TOS fan-club leaders who by the middle of TNGs sincerely admitted that TNG had become ‘their Trek’. I see the same pattern in our kids whose loyalty to different Trek shows has been evolving as they mature and new shows are available.

The odd thing is that given that so many of the negative fans speak about their love of Trek as exploration, they really aren’t wanting to explore or be challenged by new Trek.

That bird has flown.

I think that I should stop reading the comments. Some of you guys seem to consider ranting about *anything* one can think of, to be the actual entertainment drown from a TV show… it’s a damn fictional story but yet every box of your long list of expectations needs to be ticked. Hopefully, in a decade or so, we’ll have a fully interactive story-based TV type entertainment, so all of you aspiring directors, writers and producers would get your chance to adapt the story to your liking. Meanwhile, live long and prosper.

Alex..Bullseye! On the obsessive ranting. “…fully interactive story-based TV entertainment…adapt the story to your liking” Like what Rios did with the EMH & ENH by making them a spitting image of himself to interact with on his ship. I can see Star Trek series becoming like STO video games where one subjectively chooses the ship, galaxy quadrant, time era, species, race, characters, style, skin, adversaries, storyline and have some randomness to keep things from repeating or fight for survival. All to keep trekkie die-hards satisfied for better or worse.

I’m really looking forward to something like that. Mosty likely will be something like what you’re describing, a hybrid Video game/live(or next gen life-like CGI) action content.

I am looking forward to time when some Artificial Inteligence will be able to (not only upscale DS9 and VOY into HD/4K if remaster will not still come but) transform TOS into Discovery look :D

Jonathan, You could probably transform TOS into DSC look yourself right now. Just get a 35mm or 16mm print, project it through three layers of screen door material and transparent blue holiday wrap onto a wrinkled bedsheet, then add whatever idiotic amount of unmotivated lens flare you think is appropriate and ta-dah! You have the unwatchable DSC look, dumbed down immeasurably from TOS glorious 35mm shot on low-grain stocks.

Perfectly said, Alex. Sadly, Star Trek fans are the worst and would never survive living in the 23rd/24th century.

Sadly it’s not an exclusive privilege of ST fans.. happens everywhere, it’s the new norm. For example; The same was happening just a couple of months ago with Mandalorian which was a very entertaining show and I’ve enjoyed it (Was never a Star Wars fan but a good story is a good story nevertheless..) however, “fans” were ranting there for almost the same things. A few years ago we were starving for just ONE good Science fiction show…

I don’t know about that. The Mandalorian seemed to be rather well received by the hard core SW fans. Including those turned off by the sequel films.

I grok this show, but Raffi is the worst. I don’t buy her at all because she’s such a cliche. I hope she gets drunk and falls into the engines.

If Hank Azaria has to walk away from voicing Apu because of cultural sensibility, then for the love of Q STOP with the awful Irish accent by the E?H, it’s a disgrace and a slur on my people’s identity and heritage

Yeah, it’s absolutely shite. Laughable and offensive all in one.

I watched E3 again this afternoon and I really enjoyed the first 30 mins, sunglasses excluded haha. Btw the one acceptable reason why she was wearing sunglasses might be a confirmation to the fans that she is indeed Romulan and not Vulcan. No self-respecting Vulcan with inner eyelids would ever consider wearing eye protection from the sun. Ha, okay as for the 2nd half of the episode, MEH, but not as bad as I thought first time around and that said – I am really looking forward to E4.

Star Trek: Picard soundtrack is now available on iTunes. Stay away from the track listings, unless you’re ok with minor spoilers.

Its pretty awesome. Jeff Russo’s score is great. I’ve really warmed to the main theme.

I absolutely loved the first episode. The second episode laid out lots of exposition for what to expect, and while lacking the quality of the first episode, was serviceable. The third episode has me very worried about the series, as the writing and some of the acting was horrific! I have seen better writing on fan films. Stewart remains majestic, but the scenes with Raffi were awful. The relationship between these characters seemed so forced. Instead of Raffi, who we know nothing about and couldn’t care anyhow, they should have used a character that is familiar to us, like Dr. Crusher.

Fingers crossed that the show gets back on track, but that last episode was awful.

Yes, agree, dreadful episode. Episode 1 opening was the best with the big D and Data/Picard playing poker. The new characters suck so far, I liked Dahj but they killed her right away lol. No mention of current captain of USS Enterprise or letter e or f, I am hoping this gets better. Episode 1 A, episode 2 B, episode 3 D so far

It’s possible those who loved that first episode were more in love with seeing the E-D flying again and the presence of Data more so than it was seeing Picard in retirement. What the other episodes lacked was more familiar elements. Just putting that out there…

in order of my liked eps 1>3>2

I’d say 1=3>2.

1 had a particular magic, but 3 never flagged for me. 2 really suffered from the long conversations among the utterly-less-than-compelling villains.

I can’t even rate them. They are all part of the same arc and so far none of them have really been any better or worse than the others. At this point they are just sort of ‘there’ and I’m getting tired of set up. We are 3 full episodes in and what they did in three episodes could have easily been done in two. Based on 3 eps (not a good sample size but its all we got to go on at the moment) the show has a “get on with it!” feel. Part of me is thinking the final 3rd of the season will be overloaded with attempts to pay off the set up. Sort of like Discovery once they got back from the MU. There were far too many loose ends to tie up that they HAD to do. And even though the MU completely ruined the season the way the finished up did them no favors.

Funny… I felt like Picard had a stronger relationship with Rafi than anyone under his command on the Enterprise. Which made his choice to blow her off after his resignation all the much more the head scratcher. If they didn’t present their relationship to be as strong as it looked it might have been easier to take. Instead they presented them as having developed at worse a VERY close working relationship, if not outright friendship, over those years.

This series continues to plod along at a snail’s pace. I don’t care about any of these characters yet, including Jean Luc. The acting is solid, the blame falls squarely in the weak writing and plot. And we’re officially in soap-opera land now…where time stands still from from scene to the next. Scene1: ring the door bell, it opens, revealing an unexpected face. Cut to a 5 minute lover’s quarrel. Cut back to first 2 people still facing off on the front doorstep. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here!” No time has passed. Trademark soap opera film making. Sad to see this style in Trek….but with Discovery and now, Picard… it seems to be what the franchise has, tragically, morphed into, so I’m not surprised. Just disappointed. Patrick Stewart deserves better. Trek deserves better. Or, at least it used to, when it was synonymous with quality science-fiction. This franchise has seriously lost its way.

I actually agree, I was thinking e3 was the worst. The plot and writing is weak. Hoping it gets better. The best scenes was when Data was in them, would have been much better if Data never died and Data was with Picard in this new series.

They need to bring back the sci fi and twilight zone style TNG style stories with bizzare mysteries and a bigger hook. Q would have made things interesting and fun.

Nostalgia is driving your opinion. We don’t need to have all the old cast back, though nice to have it isn’t necessary. We need time to develop new cast and stories. Nothing needs to be answered all at once, I find it fun to try and figure out things as information is slowly revealed. Nothing needs to be fast paced.

Knowing human condition and inferring things from real life counterparts fills in how people react in this show.

With today’s serialized storytelling, the writers are conscious that they can’t switch across a large range of styles from episode to episode within a single series.

Basically, TNG offered a diversity of Sci-fi flavoured drama, action-adventure, mystery, twilight-zone, and comedy.

This isn’t possible in the dominant series format expected by peak-age viewers today. As much as many of us over 40 would like episodic Trek, we just aren’t going to provide the audience base to sustain Trek for the future.

So, TPTB are trying to mix things up across series instead of within a series. As well, Short Treks offer some opportunities to experiment with a broader range of styles and tones.

Can we say that we’d like TPTB to keep trying to stretch the envelope of what current peak age audiences will accept? Absolutely.

Should we dig our heels in and claim it can never be Trek because it isn’t precisely as it was? Not a chance in my view.

By the way, Chabon himself acknowledges that it took quite a while before he (as a childhood TOS fan) could accept TNG as really being Trek. All he’s asking is that fans give Picard the same time and patience to convince them that it is worthy Trek that he once gave to TNG.

I agree with everything here TG47 :D

Today’s audience is for binge watching, multiple ep arcs. Enclosed stories don’t work as they once did.

I love Trek no matter the formula. I grew up with TNG but fell in love with DS9.

You said everything I was thinking TG47…as usual.

And this is why so many people begging for a Pike show might be disappointed because so many seem to want the show also done in the TOS/TNG format which would be episodic and they find a new adventure every week. I just don’t see that happening. Whatever the show will be it will most likely be done like DIS and PIC and basically one main story driving the season. Hopefully it would be about exploration though (which is one o the biggest complaint against DIS and now PIC) but that trend of a single story every week has basically died out, especially in our binge watching world today. Unless its an anthology show like Short Treks essentially is then it will be heavily serialized.

The only way that I would accept a Pike show is if they just go on one big serialized adventure. If its episodic, then I’m just not sure what it adds that we haven’t already gotten from TOS, TAS, TNG, and Enterprise.

I sort of have to agree. I’m really looking forward to the idea of a Pike show but I don’t think it needs to be a TOS/TNG redux either. But it can still be a story dealing with exploration and not just more war stories, Section 31 or evil villain schemes. I would love a story line that deals with first contact of a new species and go from there.

IF they do a Pike show and that show is a serialized story then it has to be a good story to work. Anything less would be a failure. I think the risk/reward of that is awfully high. Which is why, and I’m not saying no more story arcs because I love me a good season long story arc, I think a Pike show might be better served to go with the episodic format or at least pull a season 4 Enterprise type of deal with three and two parters along with a handful of standalones.

So, you want to just do the same thing they did on TNG?

It hasn’t lost it’s way it has found the formula that is successful in todays television. I enjoy slow plots with lots of world building. I don’t need pew pew action or fast scenes all the time.

I was hoping with Discovery and now Picard, we would get WestWorld level of plotting and writing. Discovery pretty much failed with not being able to follow through with its twists and Picard is feeling like a soap and is lacking any hooks to make people want to binge it. And I love to binge shows.

I don’t get the- “Oh my gosh it is 2am but I have to see what happens next!”- feeling from the show at all.

“I don’t get the- “Oh my gosh it is 2am but I have to see what happens next!”- feeling from the show at all.”

I don’t get that feeling either and I certainly didn’t get it from Discovery either. Yet I have gotten it from other short season shows with season long arcs. I’ve sat through as many as THREE episodes in a row from time to time. For me, that is nearly an eternity of sitting on my couch!

this is not your usual ‘trek’ tv, everything wrapped up in 42 mins. this is a big 10 chapter story being told at its own pace.

Yes, the show is plodding along. Slowly. I know they said this show would be more methodical but I expected it to slow down from Discovery. Not come to a near complete halt! I, too, find myself not caring about anyone. So far the most interesting character isn’t even alive! That is not a good thing.

.. anyone but wheeeeeaton!

I was excited after watching the first episode of Picard. Now, having watched the next two episodes……..meh. It’s mediocre at best. Other than Stewart and the female Romulan looking after him, the rest of the cast need acting lessons. Big time!

Picard should have stole the stargazer from the smithsonian and went on his mission with help from people he helped in tng. Dahj should have been on this mission to find her evil twin sister, with Q popping in now and then. I dont feel any connection with the new crew.

Well, some thoughts, that is an interesting pitch.

So, basically TNG, but on a needlessly stolen 60 year old ship?

I hope beyond hope that is said with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Harry, you seem to have very high, or at least very specific ideas about what constitutes good acting.

My sense is that these new Trek series are trying to thread the needle between Trek’s Shakespearean style and some more naturalistic performances. I’m not sure the casting decisions have been fully conscious of matching actors to the target style.

Both Discovery and Picard have some very strong theatrical actors, and I’d say that Discovery’s regulars are second in craft only to DS9. I’m less critical of the Picard cast than you, but agree that the villains needed stronger actors.

TG47, I really appreciate your thoughts on the matter. I admit I am a picky bastard. I just find when you come across a really good actor, they jump off the screen and grab you by the throat. Call it charisma, talent or both. I just know it when I see it.

I tried really hard to get into this. Disappointed with what Picard has been written into here… to me he seems more like the counselor to all these broken unknown characters. This is not the Picard from Next Generation and the movies and this universe is not the universe I grew up with… sorry.. fail. So far its like Picard runs into the Firefly crew. The ship is so generic its painful.

I will hang in there like I always do, because I was also not a fan of the first season and a half of TNG. THe problem here is people really want to see the characters we know and love in a more (IMHO) More Good things kind of vibe. Also the political issues in trek used to make you think but rarely did the show take the side… for example they might have dealt with divisions but the overall theme was unity of purpose and chain of command was rarely challenged… Now everyone is like “Dude”!! and dropping F bombs and other weird language. This does not feel like Star Trek to me…

After watching every episode of every Star Trek, I have come to expect metaphors to life on our world. Are there metaphors to this life now in Picard? Sorry to be so dense. I’m not picking up on the metaphors. Maybe something about AI? I mean when a Ferengi says “once you have their money never give it back,” I think I can make a comparison to our world. It’s obvious that Ferengis are capitalist. Who are these people on Picard?

I thought perhaps the Federation separation anxiety was a shadow for Brexit as in isolationism. The problem is half of everyone takes sides in these things in life so Trek would always explore the concept but not pick the side… Now Trek picks the sides. When was the last time we hear the Prime Directive mentioned? This is so far simply not Star Trek.

Im sure a lot of hard work and resource went into making this but that does not make it something I chose to watch going forward perhaps, even tho I probably will struggle through and hope it gets right.

I will continue to watch because life without Star Trek for me is not complete. It’s just I need some practical application of what I am watching. Your example of Brexit is a good one. Give me the Irish side and the British side with Star Trek characters. I will be satisfied. Part of the fun is trying to figure who these characters represent.

I’m OK with action/adventure. The life I have led includes plenty of real life blood and guts. Most of the people who watch Star Trek have not seen folks getting blown-up in real time, or witnessed the tragedy of collateral damage.

But life is more than death and obscenities. There is an intellectual side which I find wanting in all the recent Star Trek offerings. I am willing to admit that I am slow to see the deeper meaning in everything I watch. I need a muse to help me with that aspect of TV viewing.

I’m kind of with you ALT. I’m just not seeing any kind of Brexit allegory here. The closest thing mentioned is the potential loss of 17 worlds, something NO ONE seemed to want. And certainly nothing relating to anything going on politically here in the States. Which I’m a bit relieved about, to be honest. I feared they would do some heavy handed badly done allegory that would tell viewers they should feel what the producers feel about it. Unfortunately so far (and yes, this is only after 3 episodes so obviously there is still time to remedy this) the plot has been amazingly shallow.

It could be that I am cursed and comfortable with looking at both sides of an issue. But I agree a badly done allegory might blow-up the series. So I guess action/adventure and Easter Eggs will have to suffice……..for now.

If Picard resigned, why he has still combadge?

This was a terrible episode, filled with cliché. Dreadful. Baddie wearing shades (though Vulcans/Romulans have inner eyelids), subordinate lieutenants calling their commanding ADMIRAL “JL” and cursing in their face, every single character is wounded psychologically, our new ship captain is the biggest “tough guy” trope I’ve seen in literature in ages.

It’s bad drama, bad writing, shaky acting, I had such high hopes.

I should add that another commentor took a lot of heat a week ago for noting that Picard is being literally yelled at by every female character on the show. This episode proved it once again.

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Episode Preview | Star Trek: Picard - The End is the Beginning

Get a peek at things to come in the next Star Trek: Picard episode

Episode three of Star Trek: Picard is titled "The End Is The Beginning," and StarTrek.com has your global preview.

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The End Is the Beginning

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Recap / Star Trek: Picard S1E03 "The End Is the Beginning"

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In a Flashback to the aftermath of the Utopia Planitia attack, Admiral Picard emerges from Starfleet HQ. His faithful adjutant, Lt. Cmdr Raffi Musiker, awaits the results. From their discussion, it's clear they've planned how to argue their case... but Picard reveals that all their arguments were shot down, one by one, and that he has resigned from Starfleet . He discloses the just-passed Ban on A.I. , and Raffi mentions her suspicion that the attack was orchestrated by the Tal Shiar— though neither she nor Picard can square the Violation of Common Sense of the Romulan Secret Police sabotaging their own Homeworld Evacuation . When Raffi protests that Picard needs to regroup and Take a Third Option , he admits that the resignation was his Third Option, a Backup Bluff that he never dreamed would be called. Raffi is then summoned to the C-in-C's office to be fired.

In the present day, at Raffi's cabin, Picard states his desire to find Bruce Maddox. Raffi is more interested in scolding him for abandoning her: apparently, in the years since, he has not once reached out to find out how she was doing. After she has vented her anger (and Picard actually apologizes), she listens to Picard's tale of the Romulan death squad. She admits that she found concrete evidence linking the Tal Shiar to the Utopia Planitia attacks and a Government Conspiracy within Starfleet to cover it up, but refuses to get any further involved. Although, ever the Number Two , she does have a pilot for "JL".

Aboard the Borg Cube, Soji meets with the project's executive director— no less than a de-Borgified Hugh. He was impressed by the dignity and respect that Soji showed to another xB, and grants her request to speak to Ramdha, a liberated Romulan who used to be an expert on the species' mythology.

Dr. Jurati is approached by Commodore Oh, who is wearing sunglasses in an unsuccessful attempt at subtlety. Oh asks about Dr. Jurati's recent interactions with one Jean-Luc Picard.

Ramdha is in the Disordered Ward with other xBs who have had trouble adjusting to their post-Borg lives. She is laying out cards from a pixmit deck, the Romulan version of Tarot Cards . Hugh recognizes one of the cards as a shaipouin, a false front door — a feature on any Properly Paranoid Romulan's house — and Soji approaches Ramdha by sitting behind her and asking for entry.

Picard beams aboard La Sirena , a private ship owned by captain Cristóbal Rios. Extra crew requirements are served by Emergency Holograms, and the EMH (who looks and sounds like a proper British version of Rios) conducts Picard to the proprietor. The two don't get along: Rios (correctly) identifies Picard as a speechmaker and an idealist, and he's bitter that the heavy cruiser that he served on (the USS ibn Majid ) was erased from Starfleet records for reasons that he won't elaborate on. Picard, meanwhile, (correctly) identifies Rios as "Starfleet to the core"— despite his disdain for the organization, La Sirena is still kept to Starfleet standard. Meanwhile, Raffi has started digging into what Picard said — against her own better judgment — and, after JL dropboxes everything that he has on Bruce Maddox to her, she is able to trace him to a location named "Freecloud."

Shortly after Picard leaves, Rios' reading is interrupted by another of his holo-doppelgangers, the Emergency Navigational Hologram who speaks with an Irish accent. He tries to drum up some excitement at the idea of working with the great Picard, but Rios won't have it— he's still traumatized after seeing his last captain meet an extremely gruesome end.

Picard is at home finalizing his preparations when the lights go out: it's another squad of Zhat Vash assassins. Of course, Battle Butler Zhaban and Ninja Maid Laris are both retired Tal Shiar, and Picard has had more than one stint at playing the action hero — not to mention that they have at least three phasers stashed in hidden locations. The final hit, amazingly enough, comes from Dr. Jurati, who saw the commotion, seized a Romulan disruptor rifle, and did her best. (She is disconcerted to learn that Romulan weapons don't come with stun settings .) The three clean up, get Agnes a very large glass of wine , and truss one of the Hit Mooks for interrogation (the phasers do come with stun settings).

Soji has a breakthrough with Ramdha, but not a good one: Ramdha recognizes her "from tomorrow." Soji asks what that means, mentioning that Ramdha was aboard the Shaenor , the last Romulan vessel assimilated by this Cube before it was abandoned by the Collective. Ramdha is focused on one of her cards, showing twins — one alive, one dead — and asks which one Soji is. Concurrently, the Zhat Vash assassin awakens and is convinced to explain himself. He and Ramdha describe Soji as "Seb-Cheneb"— the Destroyer. Ramdha then steals a disruptor from a Romulan guard and tries to off herself, only to have Soji save her; the Zhat Vash Hit Mook isn't so lucky, biting down on the same acid-spewing Suicide Pill that his compatriot used in the first episode.

Soji, a little bit freaked out, calls her mother and asks if Dahj is alright, to which her mother responds that Dahj is fine. While her mother talks about what Dahj is up to, Soji seemingly becomes exhausted and falls unconscious while her mother continues to speak. Later, she is awakened by Narek, who has come to her quarters after hearing what had happened. Asking about it, Soji expresses confusion; she didn't recall ever hearing about the Shaenor , or knowing that Ramdha had been on board the ship. When she asks Narek if he believes her, he whispers in her ear that he believes that he's falling in love with her.

Outside her quarters, Narek meets with his sister Narissa (a.k.a. Lieutenant Rizzo)— now back in Romulan garb and Romulan ears. She inquires as to Narek's methods of controlling the target , but Narek believes that Soji doesn't know what she truly is— and insists that it's safer if she remain that way, given the Waif-Fu that Dahj displayed.

Picard and Jurati beam aboard La Sirena . Jurati insists on coming, as she wants to see Soji Asha for herself. (She also feels somewhat guilty for inadvertently triggering the Zhat Vash hit squad.) Picard is also delighted to see that Raffi has joined as well, though she insists that she's merely heading to Freecloud for her own reasons. As the tiny crew look to him, Picard smiles and gives the familiar hand gesture and Catchphrase : "Engage!"

• Alien Arts Are Appreciated : Jurati listens to Kasseelian opera during her lunch break before Commodore Oh approaches her.
• Always Know a Pilot : Picard contacts Raffi because he figures that she'll know "an off-the-books pilot with an unregistered starship." Although she's pissed at him, she does direct him to Captain Rios and La Sirena .
• Ambiguous Situation : Narek whispers to Soji, "I think I'm falling in love with you." It's uncertain whether his feelings are genuine, or if it's part of his plan as a Honey Trap .
• Apocalypse Maiden : The Zhat Vash refer to Soji as "the Destroyer," although they don't elaborate on that.
• Assassination Attempt : Considering that Picard is famous across the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, the death squad that Commodore Oh sends to his chateau qualifies as an assassination attempt of a public figure. The Zhat Vash commandos fail to take out Picard because he's protected by Laris and Zhaban, who are ex-Tal Shiar.
• Bested by the Inexperienced : Jurati is a non-combatant, but she kills a Zhat Vash assassin by shooting him In the Back with a disruptor rifle.
• Bilingual Dialogue : Soji first addresses Ramdha in Romulan, who responds in English. Soji: (sits behind Ramdha) Yiwav sooha wassyakassa kahfavret eedayhoon fal teh voh? (If certain people requested entry...would it be granted?) Ramdha: ( Beat ) You may sit. Soji: (sits across from Ramdha) My name is Soji. I'm working with Hugh on the reclamation project, but I'm an anthropologist by training. Lehsbey invehcreese nehveltev staam. (My presence is an intrusion, forgive it.)
• Blatant Lies : Soji's mother reassures her that Dahj is perfectly fine when she calls, being very concerned following what she has heard from Ramdha's prophecy, who claims that one sister dies. However, it appears that Soji realizes that her mother may be lying due to micro expressions as she speaks, which provides her first clue that something is very wrong.
• Broken Tears : Ramdha begins crying after Soji inquires about her assimilation by the Borg, and it's the first sign that her mental state (which is already very fragile because she's a psychiatric patient) will soon unravel to suicidal extremes.
• Calling Out for Not Calling : Raffi is more angry that Picard made no attempts to see her, check on her, or even call her in the fourteen years since they last spoke than she is about him giving up on the Romulan rescue plan and costing her her job. A chastened Picard admits that he should have done better to make sure that she was all right.
• When discussing Picard, La Sirena 's ENH mentions events from several The Next Generation episodes and movies. These include Picard's interactions with the Q (which started in "Encounter at Farpoint" and continued at least through "All Good Things..."), being the Arbiter of Succession for the Klingons ("Reunion", "Redemption"), saving Earth from Borg attack ( Star Trek: First Contact ; possibly also "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II"), and working with Spock ("Unification II").
• Laris is the second Romulan in the franchise to tell someone that Romulan disruptors don't have a stun setting.
• Cane Fu : Picard uses his cane to strike down one of the Romulans who invade his chateau.
• Catchphrase : In-Universe ; Rios looks to Picard to give the order "Engage!" Raffi just rolls her eyes.
• Hugh is the Executive Director of the Borg Reclamation Project, yet he's not permitted to view Ramdha's Romulan dossier even though she's his patient in the Disordered Ward.
• Hugh is astonished that Soji somehow knows that the imperial scout ship Shaenor with its 26 Romulan passengers was the last vessel assimilated by the Artifact, because no one outside the Tal Shiar has access to that information.
• During the flashback, Raffi mentions the shipyards at 40 Eridani A and Beta Antares, which had only been seen on dedication plaques for other Starfleet ships.
• Agnes listens to Kasseelian opera , a musical genre that Dr. Culber adored.
• Cool Chair : Rios tells Picard to take a seat, and Picard deliberately avoids the first chair which belongs to The Captain .
• Dark and Troubled Past : Rios first hints at something terrible in his backstory aboard the ibn Majid . Rios: I already had one grand, heroic captain in my life. The last thing I need is another one. Ten years on, I still can't close my eyes at night without seeing the last one's blood and brains splattered all over a bulkhead!
• Didn't See That Coming : When it looked like the Romulan rescue mission was teetering on the edge of failure, Picard stated that Starfleet could either authorize his revised plan or accept his resignation, expecting that no one would be willing to cashier the legendary Jean-Luc Picard out of Starfleet service. Picard admits that he was completely surprised that they chose to accept his resignation.
• Did You Just Have Sex? : Narissa sniffs her brother and says that she can smell Soji on him , and that it smells "carnal."
• Distressed Dude : The sole surviving Romulan commando at Picard's chateau is tied to a chair and can't free himself from his bonds.
• Dope Slap : Laris whacks the captured assassin upside the head while calling him a "stubborn Northerner, like [Zhaban]".
• Driven to Suicide : Ramdha nearly blows her own brains out after declaring that Soji is "Seb-Cheneb," the Destroyer. Soji barely manages to save her.
• Drugs Are Bad : Raffi's drug habit has increased her paranoia; not the best thing when you may be facing an actual Government Conspiracy .
• Dude, Where's My Respect? : Emil doesn't appreciate being referred to as "just an EMH."
• Establishing Character Moment : Rios is introduced smoking a cigar and drinking aguardiente while paying little heed to the piece of tritanium in his shoulder. He also eschews the dermal regenerator once the shrapnel is removed and doesn't seem to care that he's still bleeding. Why, yes, he is a rugged badass, thanks for noticing.
• Evil Costume Switch : Narissa is back to her Romulan uniform and appearance.
• Fatal Flaw : Pride for Picard in the opening flashback when he does his Resign in Protest gambit. He was so convinced his own reputation and standing within Starfleet would make them calm down and see reason rather than cashier out the most legendary officer in the contemporary service. Picard's pride blinded him to the realities of the post-Synth Attack politics and situation — and that Starfleet would actually call his bluff.
• Fantastic Flora : Raffi grows a flowering plant called snakeleaf. When smoked, it induces paranoia.
• Fantastic Racism : Hugh explains to Soji that the group who suffers from the most discrimination in the Milky Way galaxy are ex-Borg drones. Hugh : There's no more despised people in the galaxy than the xBs. People either see us as property to be exploited, or as a hazard to be warehoused. Our hosts, the Romulans, have a more expansive vision. They see us as both.
• Flashback : The episode opens with the immediate aftermath of the synth attack on Mars. Picard tries to present a revised evacuation plan, but resigns when Starfleet won't accept it. Raffi, a subordinate of his who was also trying to help the Romulans, ends up being fired at the same time.
• Forced Sleep : When Soji calls her "mother," something in the communication (either a tone or Trigger Phrase ) causes her to fall asleep within moments.
• Zhaban lists the contents of a bag of food, which includes Madame Arnaud's terrine d'oie (goose terrine).
• Rios warns Picard, "It's about to get real hot chez vous (at your home)." An odd choice for the Hispanic Rios, unless he was playing on Picard's Frenchiness.
• Grievous Bottley Harm : Zhaban smashes a bottle of wine on the head of one of the Zhat Vash hit men.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy : The Romulan guard who is present with Soji and Hugh is not attentive to the people that he's supposed to be watching, so Ramhda easily steals his disruptor pistol from its holster. Hugh rightfully demands that the guard in question be removed and disciplined, and reminds the other guards to make sure that their sidearms are secure.
• Hidden Supplies : When Romulan assassins attack Picard, Laris, and Zhaban in the chateau, the trio proceed to fight back with the several phasers that they have stashed about the place. And that's just in the dining room! Given their respective pasts and present activities, it's understandable that they might anticipate needing to shoot someone at a moment's notice.
• Holographic Terminal : Rios pilots his ship with a holographic helm.
• Interrogation Montage : Between Soji interviewing Ramhda on the Borg cube, and Picard on Earth interrogating a captured Zhat Vash assassin.
• I Need a Freaking Drink : The first thing that Picard does after they secure and clean up from the Zhat Vash attack is get Agnes a very large glass of wine.
• I Was Just Passing Through : Picard is delighted when Raffi turns up on Rios's spaceship, but she insists that she's just hitching a lift because they're going to the same destination.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique : Zhaban prepares to do something painful to the captured Zhat Vash operative before Laris stops him. Laris: Nehn vrelev zohzuus. (We are not like them anymore.)
• Just a Machine : Emil doesn't like being described as merely an Emergency Medical Hologram. Rios : He's just an EMH. Emil : (annoyed) Just.
• Kirk's Rock : This episode has another scene at Raffi's house at the Vasquez Rocks.
• Knight in Sour Armor : Implied with Rios; Picard notes that he's "Starfleet to the core" despite his brusque manner, and his ENH tries to whip up his enthusiasm for working with the legendary Jean-Luc Picard .
• Leitmotif : The TNG theme plays as Picard gives his familiar "Engage" and La Sirena departs Earth.
• Left the Background Music On : It's natural for the audience to assume that the opera piece in the Okinawa scene is part of the show's soundtrack, but it abruptly ends when Jurati removes her earphones.
• "London, England" Syndrome : In The Teaser , there's an odd city-with- planet variation with "San Francisco, Earth" as the caption. Someone in the production firmly believes that Viewers Are Morons .
• Love Confession : Narek whispers in Soji's ear that he thinks that he's falling in love with her. Of course, he's actually a Honey Trap , but his sister warns him of the dangers of falling In Love with the Mark , so it's left ambiguous whether his intentions are solely to manipulate her.
• National Stereotypes : In-Universe , we have a Romulan version when Laris claims that those who are from the Northern part of Romulus are stubborn when the Zhat Vash commando refuses to answer Picard's questions. Zhaban : This is pointless. Laris : Yes, because he's a ( Dope Slap ) stubborn Northerner, like you.
• Neuro-Vault : Soji can't understand why she has knowledge of Classified Information that she should not know, like the details of the last Romulan vessel to be assimilated by the Borg cube.
• Ninja Maid : Laris and Zhaban, being former Tal Shiar, both more than hold their own against the Zhat Vash hit squad.
• Noodle Incident : We never find out the circumstances which led to Rios' shrapnel shoulder injury. When Picard inquires about it, the gruff pilot merely replies, "I didn't die."
• Pardon My Klingon : The assassin whom Picard interrogates calls him a qezhtihn , a Romulan insult.
• Patrick Stewart Speech : Lampshaded. When Rios and Picard meet on Rios's ship, he tells Picard that he's been warned that Picard would be a "speechmaker" after the old captain goes on a tangent about Starfleet. Picard: I see this ship is impeccably maintained, every bolt, and clasp, and fitting in place. Everything stowed in regulation Starfleet order. I don't know what happened to you, Rios, or the ibn Majid , but five minutes on this ship, and I know precisely what I'm looking at. You. Are. Starfleet. To the core. I can smell it on you. Rios: That's just my tragic sense of life. Raffi warned me you were a speechmaker.
• Perverted Sniffing : Because of the Incest Subtext between Narissa and her brother Narek, when she sniffs his neck to determine if he had sex with Soji (a Romulan's olfactory sense is superior to a human's), it's a little creepy.
• Raffi suspected that the Tal Shiar were behind the synth attack on Mars and had help inside Starfleet to do it. She's right on one count, and half-right on another, and the Zhat Vash may just be fanatic enough to doom their own species if it meant stopping the synths.
• Laris and Zhaban have evidently stashed weapons all over Picard's vineyard just in case someone tries to kill him. Given Picard's reputation and current investigation, this is an entirely reasonable precaution that pays off.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens : It's established here that the more rubber-foreheaded Romulans (like Zhaban) are Northerners.
• Scenery Porn : Jurati has a magnificent view of the Okinawan sea shore while eating lunch just outside of the Daystrom Institute.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! : Rios: You breaking any laws? Planning to? Picard: I don't know. I'm not in the habit of consulting lawyers before I do what needs to be done.
• Series Continuity Error : Hugh says that the "disordered" on the cube are the only Romulans assimilated by the Borg. What about Orek ? Admittedly, Hugh hedges it with "as far as I know."
• Shiny-Looking Spaceships : One of the things that Picard picks up about Rios is that, despite his cavalier and roguish facade, he is meticulous about the maintenance and appearance of his ship: there is no clutter, every fitting is in place, and its interior is spit-and-polished to Starfleet spec.
• Shirtless Scene : Cristóbal Rios is shirtless because the EMH has to remove a large piece of shrapnel which is embedded in his shoulder.
• Sinister Shades : Oh wears sunglasses when she goes to interrogate Agnes, despite not needing them on account of being a Vulcan. invoked Word of God says that she was deliberately trying to look intimidating.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land : Picard admits that, as hard as he has tried to make a life for himself at his family's chateau, it is not his home anymore.
• Suicide Pill : The captured Zhat Vash assassin uses an acid capsule, just like the one that killed Dahj, both to kill himself and to try to take Zhaban with him . He fails at the latter, but succeeds at the former.
• Super-Reflexes : Without even thinking, Soji is able to cross the room, disarm Ramhda before she can shoot herself in the head, and hold her until additional guards enter the room. All in a matter of seconds.
• These Hands Have Killed : Agnes is visibly distressed when she is informed that the Romulan disruptor that she shot a Zhat Vash agent with does not have a stun setting.
• Threat Backfire : In the flashback, Picard figured that he could push Starfleet into aiding the Romulans by threatening to resign and leave them with the public relations nightmare of one of their most revered admirals quitting on them. Picard admits he never expected Starfleet to accept his resignation without hesitation.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth : For whatever reason, the Cube suffered a critical failure after assimilating the Romulans. Soji attempts to pry the reason why out of Ramhda, which causes her to rant about Soji being a threat before trying to kill herself.
• Vagueness Is Coming : The Zhat Vash are adamant that Soji is "the Destroyer" who will bring ruin, but they don't get any more specific on any details.
• We Have Reserves : A non-ruthless variant (and, unlike other examples, applied to a loss of life that nobody saw coming )— after the rescue armada is destroyed, Raffi suggests continuing the evacuation (albeit at a reduced scale) by refitting mothballed ships and reactivating reserve personnel. Picard then reveals that Starfleet Command shot down her idea.
• You Are Number 6 : Ramdha is known as Patient 4822 stroke 2, and Hugh identifies her as such to the Romulan security guard when he brings Soji to the Disordered Ward to visit her.
• You Are the Translated Foreign Word : During Ramhda's Freak Out when she recognizes Soji: Ramhda: I know who you are! You are Seb-Cheneb ! You are the Destroyer!
• Star Trek: Picard S1E02 "Maps and Legends"
• Recap/Star Trek: Picard
• Star Trek: Picard S1E04 "Absolute Candor"

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Star Trek: Picard “The End is the Beginning” – Review

Can we move on please, I’m getting bored of the setup! This episode is directed once again by Hanelle M Culpepper and written by Michael Chabon. This time Chabon is joined by James Duff, with Nick Zayas story editing. Duff is probably best known for creating the 2005 police procedural (shocker) The Closer , starring Kyra Sedgwick and J.K. Simmons, as well as its spin-off show,  Major Crimes , starring Mary McDonnell and G. W. Bailey (Rizzo from  M*A*S*H* ). Zayas is mostly known for being an assistant, and later a story editor/writer for  Major Crimes .

With yet another pre-credits scene set before the TV interview,  Picard is getting on my nerves as it shovels more into the foundations of the series than building the metaphorical house/plot. This time focusing on Michelle Hurd’s Raffi, we get a look at the former officer both during her time at Starfleet and the “troubled” aftermath of following “JL” into one of his many crusades. Great character work, we see she’s had struggles with drugs and gambling, we see she’s got trust issues with the man that cost her Starfleet. However, we’ve already had two episodes of plotting.

There is a touch more done with the Borg Cube, as Soji has knowledge she didn’t know she had. Tick another tired trope off the bucket list, because making something feel fresh or interesting isn’t key here. I want to keep summarizing before I get into moaning about the episode and ultimately conclude that it was enjoyable, just with heavy asterisks. These first three episodes have done all the work of a pilot, quite literally finding us a pilot to go on an adventure with, and has taken two hours to get us there. Implied incest with Evil Spock and all.

I feel I’ve said it a hundred times already, and I’m sure I’ll say it a hundred more, but “The End is the Beginning” isn’t a bad episode and the writing isn’t terrible. That said, I also think after two episodes already, I want to go places. I want to see the dark expanse of space, and I want to… go somewhere that isn’t on Earth or this dull Borg Cube. I know I’ve just said something goes on, but Soji being able to see why humanoids seek mythology/religion as a way to connect and understand others isn’t visually or emotionally interesting.

This brings me to Culpepper’s final directorial duty for  Picard , an ok work but once again we’ve got action to contend with. I believe I’ve mentioned some of her other work before, particularly with 2017’s reboot of  S.W.A.T. ; in fact, she’s just directed last Friday’s episode “Escape,” a show dependent on its action. Admittedly, it isn’t just her fault, I’d credit a good portion to Chabon and Duff as the Zhat Vash attack is messy, to say the least. Something once again made worse by needing to hide stunt doubles in quick cuts, making the ability to understand what’s going on difficult.

However, this wasn’t the only late-in-the-episode problem I had, as Narek and his sister (also called Rizzo) were nearly getting it on from a Dutch angle. Hold on, I’m seeing red and that awful 2017 redesign of the Klingons again. Right, I’ve had a good deep breath, but can we limit our Dutch angles please? I don’t want to feel like I’m in that bit just before the spin-cycle on a front-loading washing machine. I had enough of it from David Semel and Adam Kane, I don’t need that and family-smelling sex on each other.

The majority of what I’ve said thus far is technical, the mechanical portions of the show that you aren’t supposed to notice if done well. Let’s talk about our new cast member, someone who becomes the heart of the show later on in season 2, Santiago Cabrera’s Cristóbal Rois. Someone who is basically set up as one thing and is completely different than what they are portrayed as. So let’s get this straight, Jean-Luc gets on the La Sirena and meets a guy with an accent that guides him to the captain who looks exactly like the guy Jean-Luc just met.

The captain (Rois) is sitting with shrapnel in his shoulder, totally not bothered because he’s a big gruff man, especially as the EMH that looks like him pulls this metal out of him. Then he reads the Spanish philosophy book The Tragic Sense of Life, by Miguel de Unamuno. That wasn’t his only emergency hologram either, as minutes later he’s putting on an over-the-top fake Irish accent, an obvious nod to the  greatest human who ever lived . Now let’s work logically: He’s reading a book on what it is to be alive and he’s surrounded by copies of himself in hologram form, clearly he’s human.

The setup here points all the fingers at Rois being synthetic or some form of artificial life, which (spoiler) never pays off because he’s just human. Why do we have this in particular for him, when he’s in a story about artificial life and the importance of that life being maintained? Connect the dots or don’t put the picture in the connect the dots book, how hard is it for writers to understand this? It should have been in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat , maybe then we wouldn’t have mini-Chris Chibnalls running around thinking “Et in Arcadia Ego” was smart.

Though speaking of books, I’ve got a bone to pick with  Star Trek  and a lot of modern sci-fi. What is the purpose of all these touch-screen, holo-computer things that you can see right through and make the whole UI of the things god-awful to look at? Remember LCARS, I remember LCARS, at least you could see and read what is written there on the screen instead of a blurry bit of text that is mirrored. Maybe I’m just looking at it as a nightmare for dyslexics to read, which it is, but it’s also not great in terms of a viewing experience.

I’ll admit, I think the reason I’m nit-picking and poking holes in “The End is the Beginning” is because we’ve only just begun. With all three episodes smooshed together, I’ve watched about 2 hours of setup to a show that’s a sequel and a continuation of a show that’s 20+ years old. It feels like someone saw the word pacing in the dictionary and said, “Well, it must be opposites day.” January 25th for the record. My point is that I’ve sat through this third episode a couple of times now trying to pry something worth saying out of myself, and it has been a fruitless endeavor.

What I keep coming back to time and time again with “The End is the Beginning” is the fact that I found myself saying: This should have been in episode one, that should have been in two, if we got this nostalgia bit you could shove that in episode one and we’d be on the adventure already. We know why, as I’ve stated before, the series was already fully in production before the finale was written . At this point we’re effectively throwing darts in the dark, hoping to hit the light switch and get us moving.

I’ll go into more angry detail when we’re in the finale on the 2nd of May. However, my point now is that we’ve had so much groundwork laid because we’ve been in this holding pattern. To further back up my point, the production codes (oh yes, real nerddom here) were 101, 102A, and 102B; which translates into season 1, episode 1, and season 1 episode 2 part 1, and part 2. An odd decision considering the actual two-parter is 108 and 109, but the point stands, even production viewed these three as one little thing even beyond logistics.

To me, it feels like mismanagement of production. Filming began in April 2019, writing wasn’t complete until late July, and by September, filming had wrapped. There may have been a vague idea of the finale in sight, but common sense says to have your work done before getting it down on film, in this case. You wouldn’t tell a teacher that you’ll write the conclusion/summation to your 30,000-word thesis while they read the body, which you handed in on the deadline. It is a slightly messy metaphor, but one that works.

“Stop ranting!” Ok, I’ll try: As a showrunner, Chabon just tried to fill the production quota and called it a day, or Nick Zayas really shouldn’t be editing TV. Once again, “The End is the Beginning” written by Chabon and James Duff isn’t poorly written nor a bad episode itself, but after watching the same setup in three episodes, I’m bored and want to go on adventures. There is something to be said for Borg Cube, the Romulan conspiracy, the nostalgia of Jean-Luc in space again, and the potential the series has on its side. Though again, I’m a sitting of Nemesis  deep and I’m not excited about what I’ve seen.

Ultimately, “The End is the Beginning” is a beginning of how we mean to go on: A slow laborious march to the grave before nonsense ensues. Aside from the action scenes and that Dutch angle, Culpepper does fine in getting out of the way and giving us serviceable shots. Sadly, it is difficult to say anything when she’s done very little to get you excited. I do like the sequence of Jean-Luc looking at the captain’s chair before sitting elsewhere, but that’s probably it. The highlight of the whole episode is probably the emotional punches of Michelle Hurd’s Raffi in the second act.

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Star Trek: Picard "The End is the Beginning"

• Michelle Hurd brings a lot in that second act.
• There was so much potential with Rois.
• Glaciers move faster than this plot.
• The dutch (angle).

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Star Trek: Picard (TV Series)

The end is the beginning (2020), full cast & crew.

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In the epic, thrilling conclusion of STAR TREK: PICARD, a desperate message from a long-lost friend draws Starfleet Admiral Jean-Luc Picard into the most daring mission of his life, forcing him to recruit allies spanning generations old and new.

Star Trek: Picard, The Complete Series

• Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Season 1, Episode 1: Remembrance

At the end of the 24th Century, Jean-Luc Picard is living a quiet life on his vineyard, Chateau Picard. When he is sought out by a mysterious young woman, Dahj, in need of his help, he soon realizes she may have personal connections to his own past.

• Jan 23, 2020

Season 1, Episode 2: Maps and Legends

Picard investigates the mystery of Dahj as well as what her very existence means to the Federation. Meanwhile, hidden enemies are also interested in Picard's investigation. Without Starfleet's support, Picard is left leaning on others for help.

• Jan 30, 2020

Season 1, Episode 3: The End Is the Beginning

Completely unaware of her special nature, Soji captures the attention of the Borg cube research project's executive director. After rehashing past events with a reluctant Raffi, Picard seeks others willing to join his search for Bruce Maddox.

• Feb 6, 2020

Season 1, Episode 4: Absolute Candor

The crew's journey to Freecloud takes a detour when Picard orders a stop at the planet Vashti where Picard reunites with Elnor, a young Romulan he befriended. Narek continues his attempts to learn more about Soji while Narissa's impatience grows.

• Feb 13, 2020

Season 1, Episode 5: Stardust City Rag

The La Sirena crew begin an unpredictable and lively expedition on Freecloud to search for Bruce Maddox. When they learn Maddox has found himself in a precarious situation, a familiar face offers her assistance.

• Feb 20, 2020

Season 1, Episode 6: The Impossible Box

Picard and the crew track Soji to the Borg cube in Romulan space, resurfacing haunting memories for Picard. Meanwhile, Narek believes he finally found a way to safely exploit Soji for information.

• Feb 27, 2020

Season 1, Episode 7: Nepenthe

Picard and Soji transport to the planet Nepenthe. As the rest of the La Sirena crew attempt to join them, Picard helps Soji make sense of her recently unlocked memories. Hugh and Elnor are left on the Borg cube and must face an angered Narissa.

• Mar 5, 2020

Season 1, Episode 8: Broken Pieces

When devastating truths behind the Mars attack are revealed, Picard realizes how far many will go to preserve secrets stretching back generations. Narissa directs her guards to capture Elnor, setting off an unexpected chain of events.

• Mar 12, 2020

Season 1, Episode 9: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1

Following an unconventional and dangerous transit, Picard and the crew finally arrive at Soji's home world, Coppelius. However, with Romulan warbirds on their tail, their arrival brings only greater danger.

• Mar 19, 2020

Season 1, Episode 10: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2

A final confrontation on the synthetics' homeworld, Coppelius, pits Picard and his team against the Romulans, as well as the synths who seek to safeguard their existence at all costs.

• Mar 26, 2020

Season 2, Episode 1: The Star Gazer

Season premiere. Starfleet must once again call on legendary Jean-Luc Picard after members of his former crew – Cristóbal Rios, Seven of Nine, Raffi Musiker, and Dr. Agnes Jurati – discover an anomaly in space that threatens the galaxy.

• Feb 28, 2022

Season 2, Episode 2: Penance

Picard finds himself transported to an alternate timeline in the year 2400 where his longtime nemesis, Q, has orchestrated one final "trial." Picard searches for his trusted crew as he attempts to find the cause of this dystopian future.

• Mar 7, 2022

Season 2, Episode 3: Assimilation

Picard and the crew travel back to 2024 Los Angeles in search of the "Watcher," who can help them identify the point at which time diverged. Seven, Raffi and Rios venture out into an unfamiliar world 400 years in their past.

• Mar 14, 2022

Season 2, Episode 4: Watcher

With time running out to save the future, Picard takes matters into his own hands and seeks out an old friend for help. Meanwhile, Rios ends up on the wrong side of the law and Jurati makes a deal with the Borg Queen.

• Mar 21, 2022

Season 2, Episode 5: Fly Me to the Moon

Picard discovers an important person from his past may be integral to the divergence in the timeline. Q continues his manipulation of the timeline, taking an interest in Dr. Adam Soong. Jurati faces the consequences of her deal with the Borg Queen.

• Mar 28, 2022

Season 2, Episode 6: Two of One

Picard and the crew infiltrate a gala on the eve of a joint space mission, to protect one of the astronauts they believe to be integral to the restoration of the timeline – Renee Picard. Kore makes a startling discovery about her father's work.

• Apr 4, 2022

Season 2, Episode 7: Monsters

Tallinn ventures inside Picard's subconscious mind to help wake him from a coma and face both his darkest secrets and deepest fears. Seven and Raffi go in search of Jurati. Rios struggles to hide the truth from Teresa.

• Apr 11, 2022

Season 2, Episode 8: Mercy

With time running out before the launch of the Europa Mission, Picard and Guinan must free themselves from FBI custody. Seven and Raffi come face-to-face with Jurati and the horror of what she's become.

• Apr 18, 2022

Season 2, Episode 9: Hide and Seek

Picard and his crew fight for their lives as they come under attack from a new incarnation of an old enemy. But to survive, Picard must first face the ghosts of his past. Seven and Raffi have a final showdown with Jurati.

• Apr 25, 2022

Season 2, Episode 10: Farewell

In the season two finale, with just hours until the Europa Launch, Picard and the crew find themselves in a race against time to save the future.

• May 2, 2022

Season 3, Episode 1: The Next Generation

After receiving a cryptic, urgent distress call from Dr. Beverly Crusher, Admiral Jean-Luc Picard enlists help from generations old and new to embark on one final adventure: a daring mission that will change Starfleet, and his old crew forever.

• Feb 17, 2023

Season 3, Episode 2: Disengage

Aided by Seven of Nine and the crew of the U.S.S. Titan, Picard makes a shocking discovery that will alter his life forever – and puts him on a collision course with the most cunning enemy he's ever encountered.

• Feb 24, 2023

Season 3, Episode 3: Seventeen Seconds

Picard grapples with an explosive, life-altering revelation, while the Titan and her crew try to outmaneuver a relentless Vadic in a lethal game of nautical cat and mouse.

• Mar 3, 2023

Season 3, Episode 4: No Win Scenario

With time running out, Picard, Riker and crew must confront the sins of their past and heal fresh wounds, while the Titan, dead in the water, drifts helplessly toward certain destruction within a mysterious space anomaly.

• Mar 10, 2023

Season 3, Episode 5: Imposters

Caught by Starfleet and facing court martial, paranoia grows as Picard struggles to uncover whether a prodigal crewman from his past has returned as an ally – or an enemy hellbent on destroying them all.

• Mar 17, 2023

Season 3, Episode 6: The Bounty

Now on the run, Picard and the skeleton crew of the U.S.S. Titan must break into Starfleet's most top-secret facility to expose a plot that could destroy the Federation. Picard must turn to the only soul in the galaxy who can help – an old friend.

• Mar 23, 2023

Season 3, Episode 7: Dominion

Crippled, cornered, and out of options, Picard stages a gambit to trap Vadic and reveal her true motive.

• Mar 31, 2023

Season 3, Episode 8: Surrender

Vadic forces Picard to make an impossible choice: deliver what he can never give… or watch his crew perish.

• Apr 7, 2023

Season 3, Episode 9: Vox

A devastating revelation about Jack alters the course of Picard's life forever – and uncovers a truth that threatens every soul in the Federation.

• Apr 14, 2023

Season 3, Episode 10: The Last Generation

In a desperate last stand, Jean-Luc Picard and generations of crews both old and new fight together to save the galaxy from the greatest threat they've ever faced as the saga of Star Trek: The Next Generation comes to a thrilling, epic conclusion.

• Apr 21, 2023
• 1 Hour 2 Minutes

The Gangs All Here

The producers and cast talk about reuniting The Next Generation cast for Season 3 of Picard and the journey of each of the characters.

• Sep 3, 2023

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Things To Do | Star Trek’s Denise Crosby looks forward to…

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Things To Do

Things to do | star trek’s denise crosby looks forward to connecting with fans, fellow actors at motor city comic con.

“I never thought that would’ve ever happened. Out of the blue, (Executive Producer) Rick Berman called me and asked, ‘Would you come back?’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, yes!’” recalled Crosby, of Los Angeles, who will appear at the Motor City Comic Con in Novi the weekend of May 17-19.

Crosby played security chief Lt. Tasha Yar on “TNG,” who was killed off at the end of the first season.

“The first year of ‘TNG’ was rough,” she recalled. “It was all over the place and didn’t have its footing yet. It was 26 episodes/season, which is a lot of shows and commitment. I thought my role was promising to be fantastic and had all the promise of what you hadn’t seen on TV yet: A woman security chief in a traditional male role, who is strong, fierce, at the top of her class. Those are empowering traits. She was on the bridge of the Enterprise and would have something to say and would be acknowledged. It slowly devolved, where I felt like a prop. I felt like the token female in the male role but without really fulfilling the part. It was very frustrating.”

Crosby expressed her concerns to the late “TNG” creator Gene Roddenberry.

“Gene himself said to me: ‘It will not change. This is what it’ll be. I don’t want you to leave, but I understand your frustration. I have a template for the main three: (Patrick Stewart’s Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, Jonathan Frakes’ Commander William Riker, and Brent Spiner’s Lt. Cmdr. Data).’ God bless him, but he was stuck in the 1960s formula that worked on the original series. My decision to leave wasn’t an overnight decision. It was months of thinking and talking, trying to get some idea of developing her,” she said.

Berman asked Crosby to reprise her role as Tasha in the third season episode called “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” considered one of the best episodes of “TNG.” The plot involved an alternate timeline where Tasha was alive and well. Only Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) sensed something was wrong and that Tasha should be dead. Eventually, Tasha, alongside Richard Castillo (Christopher McDonald), manage to restore the proper timeline with Tasha dead once again.

“It was the script I’d been waiting for. I had an incredible time coming back. It was a surprise on so many levels,” Crosby said. “Working with (MacDonald) was one of the all-time pleasures I had. … It was just such a solid, solid, wonderful episode. For me, it sort of was redemption in a way. I had to die to get the best episode, I’ve always said.”

Crosby wasn’t done with “TNG.” She played Tasha again on the series finale, “All Good Things …” She also played Sela, Tasha’s half-Romulan daughter, who was a villain for three episodes. Another character she played was Dr. Jenna Yar, Tasha’s grandmother, in a 2009 episode of “Star Trek: Phase II,” a fan-created web series.

Crosby said she really enjoyed playing Sela. She explained why Sela didn’t appear in “Star Trek: Picard,” which concluded last year after three seasons.

“(‘Picard’ showrunner Terry Matalas) thought it would be such an add-on to use Sela. She really needs her own storyline because she’s such a great villain with so much room to explore,” Crosby said. “I think there’s more of Sela to come. I’m hoping another (Matalas) can get it off the ground. She’s just a dynamic, complex character with so much potential. Tasha had so much potential. Now we’re in a different time, a different place, with different writing, and with different people running the ship — no pun intended — maybe something could come about. You never know.”

Crosby said she’s looking forward to coming to the Motor City Comic Con for the first time in more than a decade. Her fellow “Trek” actors who will be present include William Shatner and Gates McFadden (her “TNG” co-star), Bruce Greenwood, Ron Perlman, among others.

“You get to see these people. Bruce and I go way back; we did a movie (1995’s ‘Dream Man’) together. While I’ve never had the privilege of working with Ron as an actor, I got to meet him through these con experiences. You make a lot of actor connections through these cons. It’s unique,” Crosby said. “I see Gates more because we do shows and charity events together. We belong to the same theater company, Ensemble Studio Theatre Los Angeles, where she was the artistic director for a long time. She asked me to become a member and directed me in this amazing play. She’s an incredible theater director.”

Capt. Kirk, Hellboy, Biff Tannen, Agent Maria Hill, Moff Gideon, Starbuck, Emma Swan and more to converge on 2024 Motor City Comic Con

After a fashion, cons break the fourth wall for Crosby because she gets to hear feedback from the fans, who make it all worthwhile.

“Cons are always a chance to connect with the fans who have been so lovingly supportive over the years; they have been loyal to your career and whatever you do. It goes without saying you always leave with some really, deeply touching story about being on (‘Trek’) — that a fan caught the show at a specific time in their life when they needed it, how it registered with them, and they walked away with some hope. I’ve been brought to tears numerous times over the years as you can imagine because of the stories that have been shared.”

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2-Hour Star Trek Is On The Table, Says Jonathan Frakes & What This Means For Picards Legacy Spinoff

• Star Trek is considering a 2-hour movie format for future projects, potentially exploring canceled series like Star Trek: Legacy.
• Jonathan Frakes suggests positive energy around the Section 31 movie opens up possibilities for more 2-hour Star Trek projects.
• Fans hope for a Star Trek: Legacy spinoff, but a potential streaming movie may have limitations in fully exploring its potential.

Jonathan Frakes suggests that the 2-hour format for Star Trek on Paramount+ is now "on the table", but could this mean Star Trek: Picard ' s proposed spinoff, Star Trek: Legacy, might become a 2-hour streaming movie? Star Trek: Picard season 3 was a huge success both critically and with audiences for reuniting and wrapping up the stories of the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast while setting up an exciting future for the USS Enterprise-G led by Captain Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), However, despite passionate fan demand, there is no greenlight for Star Trek: Legacy from Paramount+.

Star Trek is in another transition period following its 2022 apex of five Star Trek shows streaming on Paramount+ . Star Trek: Picard ended with season 3 in 2023, and 2024 will mark the final seasons of Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Lower Decks. Star Trek: Prodigy moved to Netflix after a groundswell of fan support saved the beloved CGI animated series. The good news is Star Trek: Strange New Worlds received an early season 4 renewal, and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is scheduled to start filming in late 2024. In the midst of all of this is an X-factor: Star Trek: Section 31 , the first Star Trek movie made for streaming on Paramount+ that recently finished filming.

Every Upcoming Star Trek Movie & TV Show

Jonathan frakes says section 31 put 2-hour star trek on the table, there's a lot of positive buzz around star trek: section 31.

Jonathan Frakes appeared on TrekMovie 's All Access Star Trek podcast to promote Trek Against Pancreatic Cancer's fundraiser and walk at PanCAN PurpleStride on April 27th, along with Armin Shimerman, Kitty Swink, and Juan Carlos Coto. When talk turned to Star Trek: Lower Decks ending with season 5 and whether it could be revived the way Star Trek: Prodigy got a new lease on life on Netflix, Frakes suggested that the potential success of Star Trek: Section 31 could lead to more Star Trek projects with a 2-hour format. Read Frakes quote below:

I do know that theres a lot of positive energy around the Michelle Yeoh Section 31 movie. So that 2-hour format is now on the table for Star Trek going forward.

Star Trek is no stranger to a 2-hour format after 13 theatrical Star Trek movies since 1979, and many 2-hour episodes of the various Star Trek series. Star Trek: Section 31 , which is headlined by Academy Award-winner Michelle Yeoh, already has talk of a sequel. Hopefully, Section 31 will be the first of a series of Star Trek movies or event mini-series made for streaming on Paramount+. Potentially, this means canceled Star Trek on Paramount+ series and characters can be explored further in 2-hour streaming movies, which can be relatively less expensive to produce than a full-blown 10-episode-per-season Star Trek series.

You can listen to and download the excellent episode of TrekMovie 's All Access Star Trek Podcast here .

Will Picards Legacy Spinoff Become A Star Trek Streaming Movie?

Better a star trek: legacy movie than no spinoff at all.

Variety 's recent cover story about the future of the Star Trek franchise indicated that Star Trek: Legacy is being considered as a 2-hour streaming movie rather than a 10-episode series, and Jonathan Frakes agreed this was a possibility during TrekMovie 's All Access Star Trek podcast. Frakes confirmed that "of course" Star Trek: Picard showrunner Terry Matalas has spoken with him about Star Trek: Legacy , although Jonathan doesn't think he would be asked to direct it if it happens. Frakes predicted Matalas would simply "hire himself," as Terry wrote and directed Star Trek: Picard season 3's acclaimed finale episodes "Vox" and "The Last Generation."

Jonathan Frakes would like to play Admiral Will Riker in Star Trek: Legacy and be the "Charlie" of Charlie's Angels who gives Captain Seven of Nine and the USS Enterprise-G their marching orders.

Fans hope Star Trek: Legacy will still happen, although a 2-hour movie instead of a multi-season TV series would be a disappointment for many . A Star Trek: Legacy s treaming movie would mean there wouldn't be time to fully explore the vast potential of 25th-century Star Trek . However, with multiple factors such as the possible sale of Paramount+ and the reduction of Star Trek content creating uncertainty towards the future, a Star Trek: Legacy streaming movie is better than Star Trek: Picard' s spinoff not happening at all,

Source: TrekMovie.com All Access Star Trek podcast

Star Trek TV shows and movies are streaming on Paramount+

Star Trek: Prodigy is streaming on Netflix.

The first 10 Star Trek movies are streaming on Max.

Star Trek: Section 31

Director Olatunde Osunsanmi

Studio(s) CBS

Writers Craig Sweeney

Cast Humberly Gonzlez, Joe Pingue, Sam Richardson, Omari Hardwick, Robert Kazinsky, Michelle Yeoh, Kacey Rohl

Franchise(s) Star Trek

Writers Akiva Goldsman, Terry Matalas, Michael Chabon

Cast Orla Brady, Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton, Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, Jeri Ryan, Patrick Stewart, Alison Pill, Isa Briones, Evan Evagora, Marina Sirtis, Amanda Plummer, Whoopi Goldberg, Gates McFadden, Todd Stashwick, Santiago Cabrera, Michelle Hurd, John de Lancie, Ed Speleers

Streaming Service(s) Paramount+

Directors Terry Matalas, Jonathan Frakes

Showrunner Akiva Goldsman, Terry Matalas, Michael Chabon

Where To Watch Paramount+

Screen Rant

Jonathan frakes reveals how roddenberry described riker & how “nervous” he was in tng season 1.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation Cast & Character Guide

Q’s son has an awesome new role in the star trek universe, “i feel sorry for him”: liam hemsworth’s the witcher geralt recasting backlash addressed by ciri actor.

• Gene Roddenberry described Commander Riker as loyal, honest, and patient, which made Jonathan Frakes proud for 37 years.
• Frakes felt nervous during Star Trek: TNG season 1 but says the cast felt looser in episodes with strong villains.
• Star Trek: Resurgence incorporates many TNG elements, and Frakes voices Captain Riker in the game.

Jonathan Frakes reveals how Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry described the character of Commander William T. Riker and how "nervous" he was during production of Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1. For 37 years, Frakes has portrayed Riker, who appeared in Star Trek: TNG , four TNG movies, and Star Trek: Picard , as well as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , Star Trek: Voyager , and Star Trek: Enterprise . Frakes played Captain Riker in Star Trek: Picard, and Jonathan also voices Captain Riker in the video game Star Trek: Resurgence .

In an interview with Star Trek: Resurgence 's lead writer Dan Martin about Captain Riker's role in the game, Jonathan Frakes discusses how Gene Roddenberry saw Riker as a "loyal, honest, reliable, patient, and with 'derring-do'" . Frakes also spoke about how proud he is to be associated with Riker for nearly four decades. Read Frakes' quote and watch the video of the interview below:

The character of Riker, as Gene Roddenberry created him, was a man who had what… Gene used this phrase, he said, ‘He has derring-do, he’s incredibly loyal, he’s honest, and he’s reliable, and he’s patient.’ What great qualities to aspire to, not only as Riker, but as a dad, and a husband, and a friend. And it’s been a privilege to be associated with this guy for the last 37 years.

Jonathan Frakes also marveled at how Star Trek: Resurgence pulled story and alien villains from the Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1 episode, "The Last Outpost." When Dan Martin asked if Frakes thought of that episode as a turning point for Riker, Jonathan spoke about what it was like for the TNG cast filming season 1:

I wish I could say I did. I think I was so nervous during season one. When we go back and watch clips of these original shows, you can just see we’re not really quite sure how we’re supposed to behave because we hadn’t found the characters yet. And whenever we went to Planet Hell, which is what we called Stage 16, and we had a strong villain, we were a little bit looser.

Star Trek: The Next Generation has one of the most beloved cast of characters in all of science fiction. Here are the major characters of the classic.

What Is Jonathan Frakes' Future As Captain Riker In Star Trek?

Fans can interact with captain riker while playing star trek: resurgence.

Jonathan Frakes' acting comeback in Star Trek: Picard season 3 earned him a Saturn Award for Best Actor in a Television Series , but will Frakes get to play Riker again? Like millions of fans, Frakes is hoping Paramount+ greenlights Star Trek: Legacy, the proposed continuation of Picard season 3, whether as an ongoing TV series or a possible 2-hour Star Trek streaming movie . Further, it's hoped that Star Trek: Legacy would have a role for Riker, and would include Will's long-deserved promotion to Admiral.

Jonathan Frakes said he would like to play the Charlie of Charlie's Angels role in Star Trek: Legacy and give Captain Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) and the USS Enterprise-G their orders.

Frakes is one of the most beloved and prolific Star Trek directors, and his presence will continue to be felt behind the camera. Frakes is directing the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Discovery season 5, and he is helming a "Hollywood noir" episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3. But video game fans can interact with Captain Riker by playing Star Trek: Resurgence , and encountering the Starfleet hero in the post- Star Trek: The Next Generation timeline.

Star Trek: Resurgence is available on PC, Xbox One, Xbox X/S, PS4, PS5, and coming to Steam on May 23, 2024

Source: YouTube

Star Trek: The Next Generation is available to stream on Paramount+

• Jonathan Frakes