Picard 1x10 - "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2" [** SPOILERS WITHIN **]

I enjoyed it overall but sometimes I had no idea what was going on to be honest.

Far too much folklore.

Too much exposition with groups having conversations around table or a fire with loads of info being given.

Also, didn't like the smoking and vaping, why would still have that hey have that?

Swearing: I've nothing against swearing but it's not part of Star Trek no more than you'd expect it in Star Wars, Marvel or even Fair City for that mater.

It's also part of Star Trek canon that people don't swear anymore as shown in Star Trek IV.


Show just didn't feel like Star Trek for me.

The transference tech wasn't new but now with the ability to produce android bodies it's a hard genie to put back in the bottle for any writers going forward.

Evade wrote: »

Tom Hardy could always play a younger Picard again.

He could but I've always had an inexplicable dislike of Tom Hardy as an actor. Well, maybe not that inexplicable, I just think he's so overrated as an actor, he's just a face imo. He's a bit too bulky to play Picard now I'd say, someone slimmer and someone younger would be better. And with unusually advanced natural male pattern hair loss and a pointy head.

This series felt like a sci-fi channel knockoff of star trek.

FutureGuy wrote: »

Zhat Vash soldiers: Use personal transporters to fight Dajh
Narissa: Use personal transporter to escape XB's
Also Narissa: Aiiieeeeee I am falling down the Borg cube shaft. Goodbye world.

I think they've left this open intentionally for Season 2 - either she did escape or Narek will now come after Picard and co for revenge after he learns of his sister's demise. So that's the sub plot already sorted.

Despite what I'm going to say I overall enjoyed this show - granted I didn't like the Golum bit, nor did I like the Copy and Page Starships. Have they lost the original digital files for the ships used in late DS9/VOY/Movies? I ask as there's already canon for TOS ships being used in the TNG era. The scene would have been so much better had they put in one or two Galaxy/Defiant/Sovereign class amongst the fleet. Even an Excelsior! The Romulans could have used a D'deridex or two as well. Would have been a sweet touch as despite their age they were large, powerful ships.

Hell - it's been shown that one starship can do a hell of a lot of damage to a planet - why not have had 5 v 5 ships instead of the copy and paste job? That would have made it all the better imo.

And as already has been said - the CGI models of the ships from previous series also looked better.

They could have also put Riker on the bridge of a re-dressed Discovery too..would have been better than what we did see.

Again I'm still glad we have this show as, poor writing aside - we're finally advancing ST and no longer in the world of prequels. I didn't like Enterprise for that reason and I'm still dodgy about Discovery with it.

Often wonder what could have been had Scott Bakula's crew been in a post Dominion War ST. Same with Disco.

Roll on Season 2 and that hopefully some lessons may be learned.

Now that I think about it - what happened the Borg cube and the xB's that Seven claimed she cared about? Did she just leave them there? I thought the borg ship would have a far more important role in all of this. And also - if the beacon had summoned this incredibly advanced race - why does it matter that they closed the wormhole - now that they've been alerted to what's going on are they not simply going to create the wormhole themselves and begin the destruction of civilisation?

And..

Evade wrote: »

It's nice to see there's seemingly no consequences for anything. Jurati gets off for murdering Maddox, Oh was exposed as a spy and led an invasion fleet into Federation space and was just asked to leave. The synth ban was overturned somehow, I'm sure that was a popular move in the Federation this series showed.

Agreed! Jurati still openly chose to kill Maddox and, judging from what had been said, would still be guilty of a crime perhaps by loss of reason/insanity of the like. That can't be tolerated especially by Picard; a man who believes you should face consequences for your actions.

As for Oh making her sudden evil appearance as commander of the romulant fleet I agree with other posters - why on Earth would she have sacrificed her high ranking position in star fleet for this when so many more instances of AI could arise. Also - Oh can't be the leader of the Tal Shiar while double jobbing. Where is the real leader?

[Deleted User] wrote: »

And if it were called Star Trek: Orville it wouldn't have made it through half a season

Well that's just because you cant please a certain percentage of Trek fans. Let's be honest Orville had some brilliant episodes dealing with controversial issues.

It had the ingredients for a good finale but was hamstrung by how much time they wasted in the preceding episodes. As Mrs Greyjoy pointed out - that was a 5 episode mini-series stretched out into a 10 episode season. Consequently plot threads were either rushed through without dwelling on them (lifting the synth ban, the jadh vast just...leave) or just dropped entirely (everyone's now ok with the fact that Agnes murdered Maddox?). The scene between Picard & Data was genuinely emotional but a highlight in otherwise disappointing episode. I'd echo previous comments about the laziness of both the Starfleet armada and Picard's cop-out resurrection (if Picard is essentially unchanged by coming back to life what's the point?). The Borg cube also felt utterly redundant to the climax and the character of Alton Soong felt a bit pointless other than giving Brent Spiner something to do without having to get into makeup (his character also annoys me on a story level as it feels like he undermines Data & Lore as being Soong's "children"). The 'beacon' and evil super-synths felt even more like a rip of from Mass Effect videogame.

On the plus side perhaps with all this setup out of the way in S1 they can tell a more interesting storyline in S2.

Blazer wrote: »

christ it went downhill badly. Worse than Discovery and by christ I hated discovery with a passion..
Think I'll just rewatch TNG and DS9. I always pretend Voyager never existed.

What About Enterprise? Yes some of the acting and character development was not great but there ws some good stories in it and I think it has aged well too. Just it never got a 5th and 6th season that would have been great and a proper ending.

opus wrote: »

As for transferring dead Picard's mind into a robot body, I believe the term is 'jumping the shark'?

I felt that kind of stole from this show the very thing that would have given it some gravity.

From implications at the beginning, and simply from Steward's age, it appeared that this show would be Picard's swan-song. He'd die, possibly heroically before the illness got him.

Sure enough he died, and you could argue that the real Picard actually did die, and Robo-Picard is just a copy of his brain, but they didn't kill off the character, instead they let him continue. This stole an ending that might have rounded off the story of Jean Luc Picard. Instead they chickened out and dared not take responsibility for killing off the main attraction for their new series.

Also. his sacrifice lacked any real buildup or impact. They could have shown him progressively getting more ill, and filled with pain over the episodes so that his final death would have seemed more natural. Also, convincing the androids by paying them "with his life", did not come across well. It all seemed so disjointed and thrown together. It was not enjoyable and the stakes at play seemed pointless.

Also, were those robot claws the same ones we saw briefly in Discovery? Are the big bad super-robots some how connected with Control? Not sure I like that idea

ReginaldSmythV wrote: »

There were some excellent episodes in Voyager.

Some were really good, but some were also Fairhaven

Deleted User wrote: »

Lots of references to Picard being transferred into an Android body. Synths aren't androids like data. In the episode with Riker, his daughter asked various questions which established this. Synths are organic. In TNG, Data would pop open a control panel on his head and there'd be LED lights and circuitry.

If anything he's a clone of himself with his own memories.

While I don't really disagree the whole synth/android/organic thing is very muddy. They are describe as basically being enhanced humanoids, which itself opens a whole new Khan can of worms, but they also thought they'd be spared by tech elder gods scouring all organic life in the Galaxy.

Evade wrote: »

Tom Hardy could always play a younger Picard again.

Theres no way they could afford him now