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The cast seemed to work together with the script with a ease (real or practised) that put me in mind of SG1
I even managed to not hate the bit with
Spoiler:
Guinen
who I disliked throughout Next Gen Some interesting stuff, lots of nice throw backs and all good.
Always great to see Orla Brady and Jeri Ryan
Some thoughts
Spoiler:
* Picard has actually lived an entire live and had a family in that episode he was in a simulation
* I hope the Borg Queen is not Picards mother.....
* Q is back - hopefully having fun and not just testing....
Roll on episode 2
I AM A MARINE PLAYER
"Unimaginably ancient xenos artefact somewhere on the planet, hive fleet poised above our heads, hidden 'stealer broods making an early start....and now a bloody Chaos cult crawling out of the woodwork just in case we were bored. Welcome to my world, Ciaphas."
Inquisitor Amberley Vail, Ordo Xenos
"I will admit that some Primachs like Russ or Horus could have a chance against an unarmed 12 year old novice but, a full Battle Sister??!! One to one? In close combat? Perhaps three Primarchs fighting together... but just one Primarch?" da001
The Queen being his mother is a touch too obvious by the quote; however the same is true if she turns out to be Seven of Nine or indeed anyone who is directly very close to him. Of course that latter part is me thinking that she's an alternate dimension/timeline queen creation.
I think Guinen was a great character who never got developed in TNG. If anything she was a touch more like a DS9 character designed to be developed bit by bit over multiple episodes. However I think they just couldn't make it work. It might be because she was always a guest character so perhaps they just never had enough episodes in the budget/time to make it work. They certainly had a few interesting encounters and parts to her story that hinted that she had more to her than just a very long life.
Definitely an improvement over the early episodes of season 1. I think a lot will depend on how quickly they get past the exposition in the next episode and into the actual meat of the story but I enjoyed this opener a lot.
On the “less faffage”, I think I need to acknowledge that Season 1 had some heavy lifting to do.
First, it had to tell us or at least hint at what had happened in the 25 or so years since we last saw Picard. We find out he was central to sorting the aftermath of the Kelvin divergence, etc etc.
Season 2 has that established, so is able to get to the meat and bones of its own plot quite quickly.
Some pretty neat callbacks though. And I do wonder if that was Grand Nagus Rom’s noggin on display….
Fed up of Scalpers? But still want your Exclusives? Why not join us?
Also season 1 had to give us a different Picard. Someone who was much much older and has to deal with the fact that his body has aged physically. Even without all the political shifts and his status position changing as well, the actual man has changed.
I also think that its got the added difficulty that we aren't actually used to such mature characters being in a leading role. We are used to them in the "Gandalf" or "Obi Wan" role of being a guide setting things up and advising and helping the younger generations come into their own. Ergo a supporting not a leading role.
So in a way I feel like season 1 did really well with its slow start because it set out some really good and very important solid groundwork. So yes season 2 gets into the swing of things so much faster, because we already know the political shifts, the social shifts, the post war shifts. We've an appreciation for how Picard is different; his relationship with other characters and more.
The one bit I found weird was Dukat's skull. All of the ridges are bone, including the eyebrow ones. Like the head bits and the spoon forehead would be fine, why did the eyebrows need to be bones?
Also;
Spoiler:
RIP Worf lol
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/03/11 19:09:30
AduroT wrote: I don’t think Borg are all about becoming pure machines, or they wouldn’t need to bother assimilating other races biologicals. Plus remember when the queen had Data, a pure machine, her response was to slap organic skin on him. It’s hard to say if the queen is more cybernetic, I think it’s just clothing/mask to hide her identity for later dramatic reveal. As for why Borg would join up, one thing to consider is they’re all about adapting to stuff. If you can’t beat them?
Spoiler:
The Borg have always worshipped the machine*, they are like the Ad Mech of the Startrek Universe. However when the Queen had Data she knew that she couldn't just "hack" him or corrupt/infest him to her cause. So she gave him what he wanted, flesh. Preying on his emotion chip (which she reactivated) and feelings to try and convince Data to join her and abandon Starfleet. Considering that Data wasn't just a wealth of knowledge on the perfect machine body, but also able to take control over the Enterprise as he knew most of the security codes and such. If she got him she got the ship, if she got the ship she won the war against humanity in the past.
As for adaptation the Borg typically assimilate other things into their own. Indeed as the queen proved within her first few moments of appearing, she was already securing those ships for her own use. It's their first line of thought - to infest others not be infested. What's strange is that they'd request Picard to appear and their whole approach is very non-typical for the Borg. They also rarely show concern for preserving other life; other life is either hostile and to be destroyed or non-hostile and to be infested.
Your idea that the queen is a mask is a good one. Time Travel/reality hopping is something we know will happen and the Queen was very well hidden. It could be she's a character from the future come to the past; or one from an alternate reality again fleeing an enemy. Alternate reality presents an interesting situation as she could be the alter-ego of an existing character.
*That said I've often wondered if the Borg are "broken" in some fundamental way as they are rarely shown as having very advanced bodies. Heck their early ones were very slow and the cybernetics very primitive compared to, say, Data and other mechs they encounter. Plus adapting others into their whole isn't "necessary" for them to gain new technology all the time and such. So I've often wondered if they've this lofty goal to become the perfect machine, but somewhere along the line something got correupted/confused within the collective and they end up like an ant-hive. Even though they've a "Queen" they've no way to move out of what they are locked into. A fixed way of flawed design and thinking.
Spoiler:
The Borg don't worship technology, either figuratively or literally. They seek to incorporate both the biological and technological distinctiveness of other races into their own in a pursuit of perfection, either some hypothetical static future state or an evolving definition that they continually strive for. When Data insists he is unlike any lifeform they have encountered before, the Queen responds with a blazé 'You are an imperfect being, created by an imperfect being', for all we know they've already assimilated completely technological life forms or societies, if the amount humanity churned out over the course of the TOS-TNG era is anywhere close to the galactic average.
That second episode was great. Proper great. And I have a wild out there theory to share:
Spoiler:
That anomaly from episode 1, and the borg behind it are actually Picard and the crew, emerging triumphant from their 2024 adventure. Maybe the 'queen' from that episode is Picard himself.
I gave up during voyager. Was too repetitive and formulaic in content.
Tuned in to Abram's "Star Trek Babies" (cue muppet babies theme) and found I didn't find the characters very believable. Dislike the whole "throw out the old and make something new even if it isn't rational, as long as its a spectacle" trend. Modern works often feel less mature to me both in writing and characters than earlier works.
Wasn't at all interested in the looks of Discovery. I frankly liked the puerto rican klingons best, not because of their looks, but because of their acting. Movie and TNG klingons became more of a caricature (as were most aliens in TNG on) and discover was looking to double down. May watch some day to see if I'm mistaken.
Integration of Current Year politics seems less artfully done than in the past.
Dislike the way the tech level of stories in older parts of the timeline creep higher than the original series (Enterprise)
Suppose I'm just too old and too oriented around/steeped what was good about the older material to have interest in the new approach and content. Maybe. Some how I love Rogue One and ghostbusters afterlife where I disliked the disney trilogy and GB reboot.
I'll bet if someone did a TOS level of maturity and skill with elements of Abrams visual interpretation of the TOS universe it would grab me better.
I'd be interested to see a series which explores and is sympathetic to the perspective humans on the outside of the federation. Explore potential cohesiveness or unfairness toward humans who don't want to be part of the Federation truth. A Maquis series painting a different side of the federation could be cool
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/03/12 05:06:01
The one thing that has been constant for me the last 20ish years is my confidence that the people in charge of Star Trek don't actually respect Star Trek.
How many trek shows are they concurrently showing now? Three? That seems a bit of an odd choice if they're going to have a big gap following them before the new seasons queue up again.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/03/15 01:17:36
Prodigy's 1st season finale was just over a month ago. How time flies.
ATM we have Picard and Discovery, which I think will have its season finale this week. That leaves Picard as the sole show until Strange New Worlds in May?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/03/15 14:16:28
Ok, thanks for the clarification. I figured Prodigy was still going on but it's on hiatus (is it on streaming or is that the Nickelodeon show that it "needs" a mid season break?) so just two ongoing for a couple weeks.
Prodigy seems to be a relatively limited series in general, they had a break after episode 4 or 5 and episode 9 is listed as their finale in Crave, at the very least.
As for the breaks, I imagine it's for technical reasons. The show seems pretty sophisticated compared to the Star Wars CGI cartoons.
