The show starts this week, on CBS All Access in the US, and Amazon in most of the rest of the world.
No sign of the Children of Mars short that serves as a prologue showing up outside the US yet.
The Picard Thread (with SPOILERS)
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Picard: The Last, Best Hope
Unfortunately, this was a book which, from about the halfway mark, I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy. Does that make it a bad book? Far from it. And it’s not purely the book’s fault I was unable to like it.
If you are not enjoying or have yet to be won by the TV series, this book is unlikely to help you. If you are enjoying the TV series, there is much here you probably will enjoy.
I’ve read a good deal of McCormack’s previous Trek work and found them to be excellent. So why can this one not work for me? Quite simply put it isn’t due to any lack of effort or skill, she takes the best attempt at it she can. And the book is certainly ambitious covering 2381-2386 all in one go. The problem is, we know how it ends and there’s certain stuff it can’t go into. At the same time, certain developments of the TV series undercut parts of the book. This is particularly so in the case of the Vashti colony.
However, five, six years ago I likely might have enjoyed it more and been more open to what the TV series is trying. The problem is it isn’t then and the world feels considerably nastier now. Does the book reflect that? Yes, quite accurately, which is the problem – this is one reflection I can do without. A large part of the appeal of Trek for me is it doesn’t take the lower path, it is quite encouraging reading stories where not being a bastard pays off. When I have read a Trek book it has generally been a positive experience. This can’t do that, its story simply isn’t that. Solutions? There aren’t any because no one’s solved it and a Trek book certainly isn’t going to crack it either.
Nonetheless, what is here is the best possible attempt to render the situation around the collapse of the Romulans, although there are some odd omissions given the author’s skills and ability. McCormack sketches a picture of Romulan society that I don’t think has been seen before, one devoted to secrecy and paranoia to an unfathomable degree, but the book is far more vague on the post-nova Romulan government. Maybe that was off-limits to it, but it likely would have benefited from McCormack’s attention. Clancy doesn’t come out of this well, being a micromanaging exec, but I did like her predecessor as C-in-C, Bordson.
One of the biggest successes is in portraying and conveying the sheer scale of what was attempted. To rescue nearly a billion beings, with their government sabotaging it as much as possible, including covering up the actual extent of the looming supernova. There is also a major tease in the book of what is happening to the Romulan star being artificial. It never goes anywhere, maybe the answer was off-limits to it, but that really ought to not be forgotten about. As to Mars and what happened there, it recaps the TV series – expecting that to be answered here is far too big an ask. That was never on the cards.
Combined with the last Discovery novel I read, The Enterprise War, again by an author whose work I usually enjoy, John Jackson Miller, it’s quite clear the relationship between the mediums is one where TV says ‘jump’ and the books say ‘how high?’, but TV doesn’t really give a crap. Were I used to that it would be less of a problem, but I’m not because there’s been a 20 year void in Trek on screen and 2009 Trek doesn’t count because of the unholy Pocket Books and Bad Robot decade-long punch-up. Because of that the books got to go much further than before, even despite a rare mess-up in how they decided to depict the Section 31 fallout. In a way, it’s similar to the path taken by the new Wars material, where technically all mediums are equal, but some are more equal than others. So, time to call it a day and move on? Probably.
Although, while I might reduce and cut back, I’ll still likely keep an eye on it in case of the odd product that looks good despite all the slings and arrows that high ‘n’ mighty TV and film casually dumps on it.
Back to the book: It won’t change or convert anyone but it’s a technically accomplished piece that has some things in common with the author’s previous works, but that wasn’t enough to make it work for me. For anyone who is enjoying the series, this should be on your list of material to look at.
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In retrospect, knowing that Soji ad Dahj’s mum looked like this, it would have been a big hint to their artificial nature:
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I really enjoyed this week’s episode. I mean sure, the plot slowed down to a near halt but I’m OK when it’s done in favour of some fantastic character work with Riker and Troi. I know it’s a low bar to cross, but this is easily in the top 5 Troi episodes. Like Raffi, Kestra seems like a fully realised character from her first words, aided by a great performance from a young actor.
The stuff on La Sirena and the Artifact did move forward, even if only a little bit. Alison Pill is giving an amazing performance as Jurati – between this week and last week I think she’s up there with Patrick Stewart in terms of top-tier acting on the show.
And like yeah, Fs in chat for Hugh.
In terms of deep dives into continuity, after two weeks of Voyager references we go real far back this time – Riker mentions the Kzinti, an antagonist race in Larry Niven’s Known Space universe which he added to Trek when he wrote the TAS episode The Slaver weapon. They were mentioned in one or two more TAS episodes, and a couple of feline characters on the TOS-era movies were listed as Kzinti in script or production notes, but never explicitly mentioned as such on screen. Fearing legal issues, DS9 replaced them with the Tzenkethi and while Star Fleet Battles used them, the Starfleet command computer games based on SFB called them the Mirak instead.
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Wait, they didn’t really go that whole episode without a shot of Riker taking a seat did they?
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Yeah, didn’t like this one. It was pretty boring and corny, really.
Alison Pill was good.
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SPOILERS; but interesting if you’re up to dat;
EDIT:
I understand the dramatic use of killing characters. I get the intended impact and I appreciate the pressure of on a showrunner and the writer room to deliver drama and surprise every episode but… you can waste opportunities and the word “squander” does spring to mind.
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How dare Star Trek modernise by using slightly harsher swear words than it did 30 years ago!
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It adds nothing, it feels unnatural for the style of the franchise, is clearly only being done for some sort of shock value and is being forced into a show that is intrinsically linked to nostalgia for a show from 30 years ago. (Although the show seems more in keeping with Nemesis rather than TNG.)
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The same franchise that had characters saying bastard, son of a bitch, and piss in the 80s? That Star Trek? The one that snuck the word shit onto US TV in 88 by having Picard say “merde”? The same Star Trek that still sees the one episode where O’Brien said “bollocks” regularly censored on TV in the UK?
Say it ain’t so.
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I don’t find any of that comparable to the head honcho of Starfleet telling Picard to shut the fuck up.
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I don’t find any of that comparable to the head honcho of Starfleet telling Picard to shut the fuck up.
Maybe the head honcho thought he was talking to Wesley?
Even worse than that. Thanks to modern Trek’s SJW cuck agenda, the Admiral chewing out Picard is a womz
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Well I mean, she voiced what I was thinking, so I don’t see the issue…
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I don’t find any of that comparable to the head honcho of Starfleet telling Picard to shut the fuck up.
Maybe the head honcho thought he was talking to Wesley?
Even worse than that. Thanks to modern Trek’s SJW cuck agenda, the Admiral chewing out Picard is a womz
And Picard didn’t ask to speak to the man in charge?!?!
Star Trek really has gone to shit.
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I understand the dramatic use of killing characters. I get the intended impact and I appreciate the pressure of on a showrunner and the writer room to deliver drama and surprise every episode but… you can waste opportunities and the word “squander” does spring to mind.
Yeah, I didn’t like them killing off Hugh. It seemed needlessly cruel, wasting a great character just to show once more how evil whatshername is.
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Yeah, I’m not a fan of arbitrarily killing off characters; I generally find that killing off characters is the least interesting thing writers can do with them.
(An exception would be Game of Thrones, which has a reputation for killing off characters and being quite bloodthirsty, but those deaths are planned within the context of the storyline and propel the story forward.)
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It usually works for me when Whedon does it as well, because the impact of the death on the story’s world is so great. Everyone fell apart after Tara’s death.
(That’s what always bothered me about Wash’s death though. Zoe never had the opportunity to mourn him; she had to get over it too quickly.)
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I just caught up with the last couple of episodes. It really is two hours of plot squeezed into ten, isn’t it? So slow and long-winded.
And yet I’m still watching for some reason – partly sunk cost at this point, but I am still genuinely interested to see how the story plays out.
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Yeah, we should’ve seen the fucking Borg fucking do something.
Other than assimiliate evil female Romulan. Because that was what was happening, right? She’s not dead, she’s going to be Borg?
Other stuff: Loved Captain Rios and his holograms. That part was really good fun. Suspense of disbelief is way stretched with him meeting an android before all this. Also, reason Romulan robo-hunting turns out to be a bit of a crap story, too. Maybe it’ll improve when we finally find out what actually happened, but I’m kind of doubting it. One very simple question, for example: Why the fuck is this even a big secret for them? Why does their civilisation not openly pronounce and follow dictions along the lines of Butler’s jihad?
Still, the last one was a pretty good episode. Stuff happened. Rios holograms. Soji taking shit over. Alison Pill doing great work.
It was alright.
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I think the show is leaning towards the ancient race either being wrong about their prediction, or that the 24th Century Alpha and Beta Quadrant civilisations will succeed where their predecessors failed. Picard’s speech about them having amazing tools to use seemed to be leaning in that direction at least.
As for the Borg, maybe they don’t count as being a terrible synthetic lifeforms because they’re part organic, and therefore only as bad as say, the Klingons or Cardassians at their most hegemonistic?
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Oh, and by the way, speaking of the Borg – I wonder what it is those artificial intelligence are supposedly going to do that is so much worse than what the Borg are doing. I mean, annihilating and assimiliation whole civilisations and spreading that machine virus everywhere seems as bad as it can get. What can possibly be in that vision that’s so much worse? If it’s just androids killing a lot of people I’ll be disppointed.
the impression I got was that the threat isn’t the android but something else that shows up and annihilates all life in the universe when androids reach a certain level. It’s basically the reapers from mass effect.
The Romulans keep it secret because that’s what Romulans do. This series has stressed over and over that keeping secrets is an essential part of Romulan culture/identity.
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One very simple question, for example: Why the fuck is this even a big secret for them? Why does their civilisation not openly pronounce and follow dictions along the lines of Butler’s jihad?
I do find myself sort of put off by the whole Zhat Vash thing.
First, it seems really tacked on. This doesn’t seem to have been a concern for the Romulans before now, and they never gave a shit about Data being an officer on the Federation’s Flag Ship. That alone is something that should freak the fuck out of the Zhat Vash, and I don’t see how they wouldn’t have made some kind of move on Data during his time on the Enterprise. Never mind that they let Lore run around all over the galaxy.
And second, you mention reference Dune. The “machines taking over” has been such a staple in so many high-profile science fiction franchises like The Matrix, The Terminator, and Battlestar Galactica. I’d rather not Star Trek go there as well, even if they’re probably going to take it in a different direction (as we heard in Picard’s gib speech).
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Again I feel like the show adequately rationalized this. They’re not interested in individual androids. Their concern is an Android race reaching a certain level. The Romulans infiltrated star fleet when Soon started building androids but it wasn’t until the federation started mass producing them that they acted.
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The Romulans keep it secret because that’s what Romulans do. This series has stressed over and over that keeping secrets is an essential part of Romulan culture/identity.
When it is that counter-productive to your goals? They are also a very pragmatic and calculating species. They should’ve realised that the best thing they could’ve done was to not only share that information, but to aggressively missionise with hit.
The Romulans are all about making things needlessly complicated, and really every time they’ve done something that was practical on a grand scale it was the result of an intricate plot – like teaming up with the Obsidian Order to try and wipe out the Founders.
And yet, a Cardassian tailor manipulated the Romulan Empire into joining the Federation against the Dominion.
You know, I suspect that he wasn’t just a tailor after all…
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He was much more of a tinker.
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See, for Kirk that would probably just make him think of the end of Mudd’s Women and wince.
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Man, I bet Kirk wishes he wound up stranded on a planet of sexy robot ladies.
To be fair, that’s every teenage boys wish.
Yes, but boys are stupid.
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The Romulans are all about making things needlessly complicated, and really every time they’ve done something that was practical on a grand scale it was the result of an intricate plot – like teaming up with the Obsidian Order to try and wipe out the Founders.
Man, it’s a miracle those guys ever get anything done at all.
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Jesus fuck, I don’t even… I mean, come the fuck on!
There’s not much to say about this episode except that Evil Soji was so very badly done that it all feels like a lost cause now. I mean, shit, man. With two sentences out of her mouth, it was just, hey, Why is this one evil? What a horrifyingly bad decision. If they’d been more sutble with her, maybe the story would have worked in some way. But let’s be honest, it wouldn’t, because there’s just no reason why in an entire species of naive and lovable androids, there is just one who for no reason at all is an ultra-clever conniver and manipulator who will kill one of her own in a convoluted plan to make Soji pick her side. If they’d given her some kind of backstory, some reason why she is different than the others – maybe call back to Lore – then that could have worked to some extent, I guess. But the way it was done here, it just didn’t work in the least.
I see that Akiva Goldman directed the episode himself, which explains the terrible sledgehammer direction, but man. This is just one of those pieces of TV where you’re left wondering how at multiple points of the road to the finished episode, nobody turned around and said, “Guys, do you think this is really a good idea?”.
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There’s a spare AI body hanging around waiting for a mind, Picard’s body is failing him, the opening credits culminate in Picard being pieced together and there have been several reminders of his time as a not-quite-a-real-boy Borg days… Hmm…
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At this rate I’m half expecting the final episode to see the cast turning to camera and explicitly telling the viewer “I’m sorry you wasted ten hours of you life on this, I promise the next season will be better.”
So far, I’m up to 5 wasted hours and you lot aren’t encouraging me to go for the full 10.
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Better than that time when Optimus Prime lived on a floppy disk.
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This is just one of those pieces of TV where you’re left wondering how at multiple points of the road to the finished episode, nobody turned around and said, “Guys, do you think this is really a good idea?”.
At the random of the finale, Picard talks about how he needs some time to relax so he decides to go to a new theme park that was created by Delos, Inc.
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This is just one of those pieces of TV where you’re left wondering how at multiple points of the road to the finished episode, nobody turned around and said, “Guys, do you think this is really a good idea?”.
There’s a lot of this going around lately, from the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, to the current season of Doctor Who, to the current run of Star Trek series.
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That’ll make Todd really happy.
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Especially when Picard suddenly develops a penchant for big hats and coats.
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Spock also did a mindmeld with V’ger.
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Poor IG-88 was never the same afterwards.
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Not that I care the least bit, but wouldn’t the problematic thing be that an android autodidactically self-taught herself how to do the mind-meld and that she was the one to perform it (as opposed to a Vulcan performing it on a machine intelligence)?
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Not that I care the least bit, but wouldn’t the problematic thing be that an android autodidactically self-taught herself how to do the mind-meld and that she was the one to perform it (as opposed to a Vulcan performing it on a machine intelligence)?
That boat sailed during TNG, the vulcan nerve pinch has frequently been said to have a psychic element to it and Data was able to perform it in Unification.
Also, androids are not robots. Data had biological components, he always needed to eat to maintain them – his skin was warm and natural, his hair grew. There’s no reason that a Soong-type android couldn’t have all the biological components needed to perform a mind-meld and team themselves how to do so.
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Anyway, the series finale? I really liked it, I think the people who have given up on the show won’t be lured back by it or anything, but I’ve enjoyed the entire show and this didn’t disappoint.
The biggest misfire of the series has to be the Artefact. I’m not sire if the writers just weren’t able to land their ideas around it, or that it became more important to the viewers than they thought it might, but it’s just there, being this huge thing, and nothing that happens in or around it amounts to much. Like this week, after Seven killed Narissa, I was expecting her to use the weapons Narissa brought back online to help defend the planet. But nothing. Alton Soong seemed to be all over the place as well. He was all on board from bringing MechaCthulu into the Milky Way when he thought Narek had killed Saga, but changed his mind when he realised Sutra had did it? eeeeeeeh.
The other thing I’m meh on is them transferring Picard to a Synth body. It feels like they brought back his Irumodic Syndrome just to add a tiny bit of drama, and that time could have been spent on… say the Artefact.
The things I did like? Pretty much everything else. All the interactions between the cast shone, I love this ensemble, and I really like that they all got a moment or two here. Wouldn’t mind a Short Trek or something expanding on Raffi and Seven’s apparent romance. Also, I really liked the conclusion to the main plot. For all the hue and cry about Trek being dark and edgy and not like Trek, the conclusion to every single story arc in the modern shows has been really Star Trekky – Burnham talks Georgiou out of detonating the bomb; Burnham figures out that she was the Red Angel at parts, Picard talks Soji out of summoning MechaCthulu through self-sacrifice. The asthethic is darker and modernistic, but the themes and ideas are still the same at their core.
And the emotional core of this episode – Picard and Data’s conversation in the simulation? That was beautiful. It definitely tugged on the old heart strings.
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I didn’t enjoy that at all.
But I’ll think on it before posting more. Suffice to say, I’m the anti-Lorcan right now.
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RISE OF THE ANTI-LORCAN!!!
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Re: Trek and Telepathy
There were telepathic humans in Old Trek. There’s a telepathic subspecies of Andorian; then there are the Medusans; and the Deltans, and Betazoids. Oh, and those children from the TNG episode whose immune systems were so over engineered they were killing their parents; they were telepathic and telekinetic.
Really, I’m more surprised there isn’t more tech-based telepathy in Trek.
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Yeah… well, at least the main theme music was good!
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Regarding the Borg Cube: Maybe it will come into play in the second or third season. It and the surviving XBs are still on the planet of the synths. I could see them getting up to something.
Regarding Picard’s fate: I thought that the whole thing about giving him a synth body was a quite — and I generally don’t like to use this term — fanficcy. Were I charge of the series, I probably would have done something less drastic like cure his space Alzheimers by injecting positrons into his brain or something. Or even some kind of positron treatment that would have left him with a partially positronic brain.
Regarding Data: Sad to see Data go, though his death was well done and it makes a certain amount of sense that Data, who always wanted to be human, would want to experience a finite lifespan and death. But a part of me also thinks that Data is a unique creature, and deserved to endure for centuries, like Star Trek’s version of the Wandering Jew (or Hob Gadling), who could even appear in the third season of Discovery, which apparently takes place some one thousand years from the current Trek era.
I wonder if we’ve seen the last of the “MechaCthulhu” (as Lorcan puts it). I thought that the Synthetic Alliance was an interesting idea, but it didn’t feel fully developed, and all we saw were a bunch of mechanical tentacles that looked like they came from The Matrix. The existence of the Synthetic Alliance, living outside of the galaxy, might be a reason Star Trek has never really encountered robots in its many decades of incarnations. The Synthetic Alliance might have even been responsible for V’Ger.
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