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Duckula posted:Q is going to show up at the end and tell Picard the trial never ended. I would be shocked if that's not the case.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 12:06 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 13:15 |
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Duckula posted:Q is going to show up at the end and tell Picard the trial never ended. I really hope not, because it would be entirely redundant. The line is "the trial never ends", not "ended". The point has been made. Why come back to say it again to the one person who heard the message most directly the first time?
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 12:24 |
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Not really anything to do with the current episode or anything and maybe this is just a "me" thing, but I really hope that TV gets to a point soon where we can stop making artificial life the central plot of sci-fi shows. It's best used in small measure for effect, like Data in TNG, but when you revolve entire plots and series around it (Picard, BSG) the premise just .. ehh.. fizzles and loses my interest. Maybe that's because I haven't seen any series do anything truly interesting with it yet. Fully prepared to be called an idiot for thoughtcrimes tho
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 12:34 |
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Tiggum posted:I really hope not, because it would be entirely redundant. The line is "the trial never ends", not "ended". The point has been made. Why come back to say it again to the one person who heard the message most directly the first time? creatively? there is no reason. however, the show is a money making concern and the people love callbacks
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 12:37 |
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already pre-ordered my baby q funko-pop and have money set aside for the knowing reissue of the "spock helmet"
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 12:41 |
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Giggs posted:
-Narek -Because he was told if he didn't than Starfleet was going to destroy his ship and everyone aboard. For all he knew they had an instant long-range self-destruct button. It was so traumatic he immediately killed himself. What did you expect him to do?
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 12:44 |
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They really backloaded this season huh
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 12:52 |
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Brawnfire posted:They really backloaded this season huh they know we are filthy addicts who would keep watching and now they are giving us a taste to hook us for next year. i wish i knew how to quit q
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 12:58 |
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nine-gear crow posted:I am Locutus of KORG Quoting for appreciation. Prediction: In the end, synths will be allowed to share the cosmos with organic life, but at all times they must be identifiable as synths by — as a hat-tip to Spot — having cats placed on them.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 13:03 |
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A lot of people have been quick to take note of the BSG and Mass Effect parallels at play in this episode, but did no-one else notice the completely loving awesome Event Horizon imagery? Gouging your face and being driven insane by seeing 'Hell?' Oh should've been rocking those sunglasses all the time, so she could take them off one day to reveal that she's gone full Sam Neil.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 13:09 |
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I feel as though someone was like "we gotta decide if Rios is brooding, slovenly, professionally aloof, or what. We've got him written as comic relief in some scenes, even, only to be a drunken shambles over a tragic past the next." To which the answer was steepled fingers and a raised brow.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 13:16 |
Just watched, episode was really good. My theory is that Soji is The Destroyer... but the Romulans have gotten the whole "who is she actually destroying?" angle all wrong. The as-yet-unnamed precursor civilization wasn't destroyed because of some boring-rear end Mass Effect ripoff story about machines always killing their creators, or because their development of androids caused them to get on the radar of the Trek Reapers; they were destroyed because the machines they created were unable to fight off some Greater Galactic Evil that was attacking them for other reasons. So they put together this time capsule star system with the message for future civilizations: this is what destroyed us, they're going to be coming back, working together with synths (and with half-synth life like the Borg) is your best hope of being able to do it, make yours better than ours. Use them together, use them in peace. Like literally the opposite of the whole lovely Control plotline from Discovery Season 2. And whether or not the Romulans corrupted that message intentionally or simply misinterpreted it for centuries will be revealed at the end. Also man I really want the inevitable battle between the Starfleet squadron at DS12 and the Romulans and the Big Space Bad to be interrupted by Queen Seven of Nine rolling in with her fully refurbished cube as the cavalry. Drone fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Mar 13, 2020 |
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 13:23 |
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Drone posted:Also man I really want the inevitable battle between the Starfleet squadron at DS12 and the Romulans and the Big Space Bad to be interrupted by Queen Seven of Nine rolling in with her fully refurbished cube as the cavalry. I'm about 99% sure it's going to be that plus Riker in command of the Ent-E/F, preferably with a third nacelle and a super phaser to complete the 'All Good Things ...' callback.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 13:33 |
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Snow Cone Capone posted:-Narek And the guys from episode 1. It's pretty heavily implied every Zhat Vash has experienced the vision.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 13:35 |
Drunk in Space posted:I'm about 99% sure it's going to be that plus Riker in command of the Ent-E/F, preferably with a third nacelle and a super phaser to complete the 'All Good Things ...' callback. Yeah, Riker's "I'm on active reserve" line was too prominent to have not been some kind of foreshadowing. At least that was my first thought when I heard it... then I realized I can't imagine big ol' chonky Riker fitting into a Starfleet uniform anymore. Like, it'd be worse than in Enterprise.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 13:37 |
Give riker some kind of officers coat and he'll be fine
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 13:45 |
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Just watched the episode, it was a mixed bag. It all depends on how much you enjoy the main plot (not very, poo poo's stale as hell), the Soji and Picard scenes (quite good) and the Rios holograms (moderately good, although Cabrera should probably face political censure for his accents). This episode made last week's Nepenthe plot completely redundant and I suspect it may have been shot first, or at least not changed significantly from the original script before Troi and Riker were added late in the game. - There's little connecting the two episodes together, we just start on the ship, presumably 10 days later although no time seems to have passed. - The Rios not trusting Raffi subplot is completely dropped or resolved off screen (no complaints here, but why did they bother?) - Soji and Picard share the exact scene about not being able to trust her own reality that I was expecting after she's rescued. Picard also acts more in line with how he was introduced this season in a similar scene with Daj and isn't bizarrely impatient with her for the sake of spinning the conflict out across an episode with a lot of filler cloaked in nostalgia. This would also be the scene where Soji reveals the location of the homeworld to Picard before it got moved to the Nepenthe ep, the one shot of the compass also felt suspiciously like a pickup shot edited into an already shot scene. This is just a theory, I have no proof of this of course, just a feeling... Now for the episode itself: - Seems like touching the Prothean beacon is a terribly inefficient recruitment method, when it drives 80% of your initiates to kill them selves on the spot - hell, Auntie Crackers only survives thanks to Narissa (who deserves a name this episode since it's the least sexy, stupid or sister-ish shes been all season) and even fragile Jurati lasts longer when getting the same info second hand. Presumably Narek too got the info from his sister and didn't off himself. But whatever, the scene was goofy as hell and fun to watch. - It's a little strange that the conspiracy reveal is that the shadowy conspirators are... the main antagonists of the show so far. Why was this such a veiled mystery? - Raffi's addiction issues have been all over the place this season, from serious drama to comic relief to ignored when they'd be inconvenient. Did I miss anything about where Raffi got her initial lead about the "cabal of 8"? She extrapolates a lot from this starting point and essentially puts together all the pieces together from very little. Which is funny since in the sick bay is Jurati who could have saved her a lot of time. She basically info dumps everything on the crew instead of putting the pieces together slowly across the season. At least now finally our characters know as much as the audience and we'll be finding out new information as they do. - Jurati wasn't bad, except for the whole "psychic block" thing they added which just gave her less agency to make her more redeemable I guess? I assumed she bought into the terrible secret of space enough to murder he lover but meeting Soji was enough now to break the spell? - When he's playing Rios, Cabrera does a nice job of it. It's a shame it's such an incredible coincidence that not only has he met another Soji clone before but that Picard never bothered to show his crew a picture of the person they're out to rescue. I'm not clear why the holograms have his memories (maybe that's still to come) but horrendous accents aside, he seemed to have a lot of fun playing them. A neat idea could be that Rios has transferred parts of his psyche to these holograms to avoid having to deal with them and that's why he won't leave his ship since they're acting as mental blocks of a sort, interested to see if they do anything more with that. - On the subject of Rios' past, massive lol at the idea that a Starfleet captain upon first contact with 2 friendly strangers gets a call from Starfleet Intelligence ordering him to murder the two for being synths (synths to him would be the presumably non-sentient plastic men that clean toilets, not the flesh and blood sentient life forms on his ship) or his ship will be destroyed and he just goes along with it. He doesn't know the terrible secret of space, you'd think he'd want to get conformation on that order or do a bit of investigating himself. Why didn't Oh just waste Rios and make it look like an accident? Why leave a loose thread like that? - Seven's mini collective: awful, just awful. No tension, no consequence, over and done in a few seconds and achieves nothing except to get the borg drones out of the picture (more on that later) and her back into the show (again conveniently teleporting into the middle of the action). Apart from the nonsense like Seven being unable to do anything to prevent the spacing of all the drones, or recover them, or prevent Narissa beaming out, this whole plot should have been Hugh's if anyone's. The following is the stuff I'd usually chalk up to Kurtzman's style of writing, the kind of "never look backwards" mentality that sets up threads for mystery hooks but that don't pay off. However, since this is apparently the Chabon show, I expect to see some resolution to the following: - The Borg. What is their connection to the story? As it stands they seem like a plot convenience factory as a way to get info to characters, get them in and out of trouble via single use technology or just giving characters something to do. - Bruce Maddox. Poor Bruce, no one gives a poo poo about him it seems. What was his plan? What did he have Soji and Daj doing? Where was he when the Tal Shiar found him and his non-homeworld lab? Why did he keep creating clones of Soji when that appearance had already been compromised and what is the significance of the "twins, they're created as twins" line apart from being a hook for the pilot ep? - How was the synth attack cover-up pulled off so that no-one asked any further questions about the ban, its related restrictions or investigated what supposedly went wrong. And why was the terrible secret of space a secret? I know it's the Romulans but wouldn't this be easier to enforce if people knew about it? Were they not letting the XBs leave since they'd presumably have the assimilated knowledge of the terrible secret of space? Why were they pulling them out of stasis at all? Was it just to monitor Soji? If so, how did they know the project would attract her to the cube in the first place? Now all of these may have good answers, in fact many of my issues with the episode may well end up being addressed and I'm holding out hope that they're all going somewhere. Just flagging them now as exactly the kind of thing that would be ignored in a straight Kurtzman joint. Guess we'll see...
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 13:48 |
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:Give riker some kind of officers coat and he'll be fine Give him the B'elanna "totally not pregnant" engineering smock.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 13:48 |
Lizard Combatant posted:Give him the B'elanna "totally not pregnant" engineering smock. On the smock note, if we get more shots of Starfleet in action before the season is out, I hope they re-introduce the uniform skant in the background somewhere.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 13:54 |
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This was the first episode where I really bought that Stewart was playing an old man Picard and not just himself.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 14:05 |
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Lizard Combatant posted:- On the subject of Rios' past, massive lol at the idea that a Starfleet captain upon first contact with 2 friendly strangers gets a call from Starfleet Intelligence ordering him to murder the two for being synths (synths to him would be the presumably non-sentient plastic men that clean toilets, not the flesh and blood sentient life forms on his ship) or his ship will be destroyed and he just goes along with it. He doesn't know the terrible secret of space, you'd think he'd want to get conformation on that order or do a bit of investigating himself. Why didn't Oh just waste Rios and make it look like an accident? Why leave a loose thread like that? I assume getting a 'Black Directive' from Starfleet Security is the equivalent of "FBI OPEN UP" - you probably don't have time to investigate it. Thom12255 fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Mar 13, 2020 |
# ? Mar 13, 2020 14:08 |
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Drone posted:On the smock note, if we get more shots of Starfleet in action before the season is out, I hope they re-introduce the uniform skant in the background somewhere. Sadly I suspect we wont see any more Starfleet space action, they presumably don't know where to go since they're meeting Picard at DS12 and he isn't stupid enough to broadcast the homeworld location. Even if we do I wonder if the squadron will include honest to god capital ships with saucer sections. Thom12255 posted:I assume getting a 'Black Directive' from Starfleet Security is the equivalent of "FBI OPEN UP" - you probably don't have time to investigate it. Or what? It's an insane order that a "good man" would at least fight. Having him just immediately kill himself (through the mouth like it's a modern day projectile weapon, lol) is just to wrap that up without having to think about it any more. e: to prevent this potentially going around in circles for pages, I thought it was dumb - that's just opinion and neither of us are wrong or right. Lizard Combatant fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Mar 13, 2020 |
# ? Mar 13, 2020 14:11 |
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Lizard Combatant posted:- The Rios not trusting Raffi subplot is completely dropped or resolved off screen (no complaints here, but why did they bother?) To make Agnes feel even more like a piece of poo poo for betraying everyone? And yes it was dropped when they realized who the actual traitor was. There would definitely be some species(and probably a bunch of Starfleet admirals) that would put all their resources into trying to make synths thinking they could control and weaponize them even knowing they were such a threat.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 14:18 |
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Lizard Combatant posted:Sadly I suspect we wont see any more Starfleet space action, they presumably don't know where to go since they're meeting Picard at DS12 and he isn't stupid enough to broadcast the homeworld location. I mean, I want to agree with you, because I kind of feel similar, but hypothetically, how do you fight that? Like I mentioned earlier, if Starfleet Security tells you "do this or your ship and everyone on it will be destroyed," you kind of have to assume they've got a crosshairs on you right that second. Vandermeer wasn't infallible, he was put in an incredibly hosed up situation with zero time to think or form a plan or do anything but say "yes sir" and pull the trigger or "no sir" and be potentially instantly vaporized. The fact that he immediately killed himself means that either the actual act, or the lack of pushback on his part, were decisions he couldn't live with. Not to mention that if him and Rios were that close, in the state of mind he must have been in, Rios laying in to him might have been the last straw (which is probably what Rios thinks too.) Also while I understand that phasers are different from projectile guns, where on your head you point the thing to end your life seems fairly unimportant in the grand scheme. Not to mention that with humans being as nostalgic as they're shown to be across Trek in general (emphasized specifically in this episode by stuff like Rios's record player and printed books), the trope of "eating a bullet" or whatever would still possibly be around. Maybe Vandermeer liked 20th-century drama movies or something. Snow Cone Capone fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Mar 13, 2020 |
# ? Mar 13, 2020 14:28 |
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Snow Cone Capone posted:I mean, I want to agree with you, because I kind of feel similar, but hypothetically, how do you fight that? Like I mentioned earlier, if Starfleet Security tells you "do this or your ship and everyone on it will be destroyed," you kind of have to assume they've got a crosshairs on you right that second. Vandermeer wasn't infallible, he was put in an incredibly hosed up situation with zero time to think or form a plan or do anything but say "yes sir" and pull the trigger or "no sir" and be potentially instantly vaporized. The fact that he immediately killed himself means that either the actual act, or the lack of pushback on his part, were decisions he couldn't live with. Not to mention that if him and Rios were that close, in the state of mind he must have been in, Rios laying in to him might have been the last straw (which is probably what Rios thinks too.) Does the Captain investigate if they're the same synths with the same origin since they look and act completely differently? The Mars synths apparently malfunctioned and were automatons, does he call back and say "hey, these two are flesh and blood and seem to be actually sentient and this doesn't feel very Starfleet". Does he consider any other course of action that doesn't involve murder? Unless it's a literal finger on the button, "we're watching you and will blow you up" type situation, in which case if they have that level of control (which isn't established) it seems like they went with a needlessly risky plan that left loose ends. How did they know they were synths? Were they not interested in capturing them or finding out where they came from? I don't know, it may have worked for you but I didn't care for it. Lizard Combatant fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Mar 13, 2020 |
# ? Mar 13, 2020 14:42 |
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How many times have characters turned phasers on themselves in Star Trek? The only ones that come to mind are Captain Terrell vaporizing himself in TWOK, and Data momentarily pointing one at his head when he was under Armus' control in Skin of Evil.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 14:42 |
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Lizard Combatant posted:Does the Captain investigate if they're the same synths with the same origin since they look and act completely differently? The Mars synths apparently malfunctioned and were automatons, does he call back and say "hey, these two are flesh and blood and seem to be actually sentient and this doesn't feel very Starfleet". Does he consider any other course of action that doesn't involve murder? Unless it's a literal finger on the button, "we're watching you and will blow you up" type situation, in which case if they have that level of control (which isn't established) it seems like they went with a needlessly risky plan that left loose ends. I don't know, it may have worked for you but I didn't care for it. The captain didn't know they were synths. All he got was an order from the head of Starfleet Security to kill the 2 aliens. For all he knew they were carriers of a horrifying, super-contagious plague or something. There's no indication that Vandermeer or Rios knew they were synths until Rios saw Soji. And I dunno, it seems like "a literal finger on the button" would be a scenario that would have to be considered. If I was a government contractor and a confirmed CIA agent called me while I was driving with my family and said "do this horrible thing or your car will be destroyed with everyone in it" I would pretty much have to assume that there was a helicopter with a rocket launcher trained on me somewhere above. Like I said, I didn't like it either but given what we're told about what happened, there's a lot of maybes. I don't think it would have added anything to the plot or Rios's character to add in a couple of lines about how the captain frantically searched for a way out of the situation for an hour before the computer announced a mysterious imminent warp core breach and his decision was made for him. e: I saw you edited your post, I think how did Oh know they were synths is a more plot-relevant question, and the answer is I have no idea. But for that matter, how did anyone know Dahj and Soji were synths? Snow Cone Capone fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Mar 13, 2020 |
# ? Mar 13, 2020 14:52 |
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e: /\/\/\ sorry, hoped i'd beat you with the edit. Yeah this is the stuff I'm worried they'll just gloss over. Cause going from "first contact" to "murder" is a hell of a leap.CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:To make Agnes feel even more like a piece of poo poo for betraying everyone? And yes it was dropped when they realized who the actual traitor was. CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:There would definitely be some species(and probably a bunch of Starfleet admirals) that would put all their resources into trying to make synths thinking they could control and weaponize them even knowing they were such a threat. Possibly, but they've managed to manipulate the Romulans into never developing AI somehow without knowing the secret. How old is this organisation? Did they not seek to infiltrate the Federation eariler to prevent their own research? Or other species? Or even species in other parts of the galaxy? Seems like for something with such stakes you'd want the word spread as far as possible. If they were just protecting Romulans I could buy it maybe. I'm hoping this will be addressed. Lizard Combatant fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Mar 13, 2020 |
# ? Mar 13, 2020 14:52 |
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Snow Cone Capone posted:
Hundreds of years from now, The Shawshank Redemption is the highest rated holomovie on HMDB
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 14:57 |
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Lizard Combatant posted:e: /\/\/\ sorry, hoped i'd beat you with the edit. Yeah this is the stuff I'm worried they'll just gloss over. Cause going from "first contact" to "murder" is a hell of a leap. It might have been suspicious but Agnes went into a coma while Rios was talking to Raffi. Also they mentioned this episode they found the device she used to inject herself. "Hey guys don't make AIs and synthetic lifeforms because it will doom us all." - Romulans. "lol check it out I'm gonna" - some random assholes with a lot of hubris
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 14:59 |
What if the Trek Reapers are actually the machine race that reprogrammed V'Ger. I just spitballing here.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 15:02 |
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mllaneza posted:It looked to me that the scene with Aunty and
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 15:04 |
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:It might have been suspicious but Agnes went into a coma while Rios was talking to Raffi. Also they mentioned this episode they found the device she used to inject herself. Much better to just try and solve it everytime it pops up with a handful of agents since everyone is in the dark to the danger, instead of having y'know entire governments on board. The mars ban is only successful because they've written the Federation as credulous idiots. At least when we all thought the Romulans created the Borg there was a believable motive of self preservation and face saving.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 15:05 |
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FlamingLiberal posted:I thought Narissa said that ‘the Borg assimilated the wrong ship’ and it implied that it was not intentional on the part of the Zhat Vash. Looking back actually, this scene annoys me because it very casually implies an extremely heavy concept: that 1 person's individual personality can literally overwhelm the Collective to the point where they sever their connection with that Cube. I mean yes, that's basically exactly what happened with Hugh, but he had already been assimilated, and then was reintroduced to individuality. Snow Cone Capone fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Mar 13, 2020 |
# ? Mar 13, 2020 15:20 |
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Also, for all we know the transmission came directly from Oh and not from Starfleet. I'm sure the head of the NSA makes a dozen secret calls a day that nobody below him has any idea about. There's no real reason to think this was a Starfleet-sanctioned fuckup and not just Oh acting alone off of Zhat Vash intel.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 15:22 |
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Snow Cone Capone posted:Looking back actually, this scene annoys me because it very casually implies an extremely heavy concept: that 1 person's individual personality can literally overwhelm the Collective to the point where they sever their connection with that Cube. Again, if this was a straight up Kurtzman production this is exactly the kind of handwave for a start of season hook I'd expect and the Borg are just here for plot convenience reasons. I'm still holding out hope there's more to it.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 15:24 |
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Martytoof posted:Not really anything to do with the current episode or anything and maybe this is just a "me" thing, but I really hope that TV gets to a point soon where we can stop making artificial life the central plot of sci-fi shows. It's best used in small measure for effect, like Data in TNG, but when you revolve entire plots and series around it (Picard, BSG) the premise just .. ehh.. fizzles and loses my interest. Maybe that's because I haven't seen any series do anything truly interesting with it yet. It's kinda funny the way TV AI plots are all about the dangers of AI rising up and deciding to genocide humanity, when real Artificial General Intelligence (AGI, making an AI that can actually learn generally like a human, i.e. a Data) is not even close to being on the horizon in real life, and the much more real danger is that we'll just use our lovely primitive AI (like machine learning, which is in a way just applied statistics) to destroy ourselves through racism or surveillance.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 15:24 |
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Wait, can someone explain why a suicidal person putting a phaser in their mouth is silly?
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 15:29 |
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piratepilates posted:It's kinda funny the way TV AI plots are all about the dangers of AI rising up and deciding to genocide humanity, when real Artificial General Intelligence (AGI, making an AI that can actually learn generally like a human, i.e. a Data) is not even close to being on the horizon in real life, and the much more real danger is that we'll just use our lovely primitive AI (like machine learning, which is in a way just applied statistics) to destroy ourselves through racism or surveillance. And when it's something like Data or a box on wheels that's showing signs of sentience, it's kind of more interesting as it's then about the line between what constitutes consciousness, recognising intelligence and sentience that's very different to our own, and our obligations to our own creations. It's less interesting when it's just a human with human feelings, wants and desires who finds out they're a secret AI, to me anyway. marktheando posted:Wait, can someone explain why a suicidal person putting a phaser in their mouth is silly? It's not a big deal at all, but you put a gun in your mouth to attempt instant brain death. A phaser with a kill setting made by a humane-conscious starfleet probably doesn't need to blow your brains out.
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 15:31 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 13:15 |
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Snow Cone Capone posted:Also, for all we know the transmission came directly from Oh and not from Starfleet. I'm sure the head of the NSA makes a dozen secret calls a day that nobody below him has any idea about. There's no real reason to think this was a Starfleet-sanctioned fuckup and not just Oh acting alone off of Zhat Vash intel. I’m glad this episode clarified that she is half-Vulcan/half-Romulan, because we had never previously seen a Romulan do a mind-meld
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# ? Mar 13, 2020 15:33 |