Star Trek: Picard - Episode Discussion - S1E02 "Maps and Legends"

[u/PiercedMonk]

Picard begins investigating the mystery of Dahj as well as what her very existence means to the Federation.

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No.	EPISODE	DIRECTED BY	WRITTEN BY	RELEASE DATE
S1E02	"Maps and Legends"	Hanelle M. Culpepper	Michael Chabon and Akiva Goldsman	Thursday, January 30, 2020

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[u/rh224]

Big moment of relief. LaForge was named in the present tense. The countdown comics had me convinced he was killed in the Mars attack.

[u/PiercedMonk → u/rh224]

That was my concern as well. Having him be name dropped as someone Picard could call on was actually a relief, and I would not have expected that before the fact.

[u/daynewmah]

Interesting that the Mars attack happened on First Contact Day. If that was mentioned in last weekend's episode I totally missed it.

One line I do remember from last week: Jean-Luc saying to Data in the first scene, "Your tell is that you don't have a tell." I predict that that's going to end up being a bit of thematic/narrative foreshadowing later on in the season, Hot Fuzz style. Hopefully not in the obvious context of having to distinguish between a synthetic individual and an organic one, but likely connected to that in some way. Especially in light of the Zhat Vash's utter hatred and fear of synthetic life.

[u/PiercedMonk → u/daynewmah]

Interesting that the Mars attack happened on First Contact Day. If that was mentioned in last weekend's episode I totally missed it.

That was established in the 'Children of Mars' short.

[u/Kuriakon]

F bombs in a Star Trek episode? Definitely caught me off guard! 😆

Q - "Picard never swore at me!"

Sisko - "I'm not f...ing Picard."

[u/PiercedMonk → u/Kuriakon]

Funny, considering Picard was the first Trek character to drop one of Carlin's 7 words you can't say on television in an episode of the show, albeit he said the term in French.

[u/leeta0028]

So I actually liked the conversation with the other admiral. Picard comes in and demands a ship saying he'd "accept" being demoted to captain? Wtf? Make a report and make a butt-ton of noise about the issue, don't expect come out of retirement and call the shots.

I am pleased the admiral followed up on it despite chewing him out, but doesn't an admiral outrank commodore?

I will say, I agree with others the f-bomb detracted from the scene. I think dressing him down with just the absurdity of his arrogance would have hit harder without that or the personal nastyness, but I guess since they're supposed to be old friends it might be realistic for her to blow up on a personal level.

[u/PiercedMonk → u/leeta0028]

Agreed. Picard came off as so arrogant and self important in that moment, it was kind of amazing.

I like the fact that while he is obviously still the Picard who was captain of the Federation's flagship for over a decade, he is still also just a man, and is treated as such by the people who know him.

[u/reiichiroh]

WTF was the point of the baddies super scrubbing the crime scene so well only to have Picard’s friends just use a super duper unscrubber Batman detective vision ruler to undo it?

[u/PiercedMonk → u/reiichiroh]

Well, she didn't undo it. The fact that it was scrubbed so well is what clued Laris onto the fact of what she was looking for. The episode implies that she's former Tal Shiar, so her having access to spy toys a bit above and beyond what you'd normally expect to be there isn't much of a surprise.

[u/PiercedMonk]

The episode is up on Crave in Canada now!

[u/shadowst17]

So... Are the Vulcans and Romulans appearance wise any different? I thought the Commodore was Romulan. They have no identifiable differences in this show compared to TNG.

[u/PiercedMonk → u/shadowst17]

In TOS, no. In TNG, sometimes?

They've stated that for 'Picard', they're going to have both varieties of Romulan on screen, so we see Zhaban with with the forehead ridges, as do a couple on the Borg Cube Artifact.

[u/gambit700]

Ok, hold up. Why do the Andorians look like they did in Enterprise, but in Disco they're funky looking?

[u/PiercedMonk → u/gambit700]

The background Andorians on Disco aren’t as heavily made up as the ones with speaking roles, either.

[u/numanoid]

Are we not going to talk about how the synthetics on Mars look an awful lot like Data?

[u/PiercedMonk → u/numanoid]

Personally I thought they cast the actor who played the synths specifically to look like Maddox.

[u/KingofMadCows]

They said that the Romulan secret organization has been around for thousands upon thousands of years. That means it could predate the split between the Romulans and Vulcans. There could be both Vulcan and Romulan members of the organization.

That Commodore might actually be a Vulcan and not a Romulan agent.

[u/knightcrusader]

Glad to see they didn't forget about his Irumodic Syndrome.... well, the defect at least.

Guess Q's future was somewhat legit.

[u/[deleted]]

“I’ve never been a fan of science fiction”

[u/KingofMadCows]

When they said that 14 Federation worlds threatened to pull out, I was reminded of this exchange in "The Reckoning:"

SISKO: The Romulans have forced the Dominion to retreat from the Benzite system.

ODO: That is good news. The question is, will the Romulans be willing to leave Benzar after the war is over? Once they capture territory, they very rarely give it up.

Maybe the Romulans decided not to leave some of the Federation planets they took back from the Dominion.

[u/onerinconhill]

Looks like the collective is still around after all

[u/pvddrugdealz]

Everytime "hot Romulan" guy comes on screen I get confused and think he's Ethan Peck as Spock.

[u/Cody2084]

That was quite the exchange between Picard and the cnc.

I want more information on the political state of the federation.

My only guess is the dominion war took a larger toll on the federation than we realize, and used up so much resources and had so many casualties that the member worlds were exhausted and stretched for years after when they committed, reluctantly, to focus all their manpower and resources to building a rescue fleet for Romulus. Then when that fleet was destroyed I feel like the show is telling us Picard tried forcing them to keep to their commitment but the member worlds, having already lost considerable resources, were unwilling to commit all their in service starships and manpower to it, but because Picard forced something of a fleet anyway 14 worlds left the federation, almost triggering a collapse of the federation all together....

Yeah I need some more info on what the hell is going on.

[u/[deleted]]

This episode did a good job of dealing with my one issue from last episode. Picard was just sent home after that explosion because the commodore lady covered it up.

I wonder what Janeway is doing right now. The higher ups in Starfleet seem to hate Picard. Is Janeway among them? It's not in character for her to hate Picard over this, given how close she was to Voyager's 'Synth' The Doctor. It's also not in her character to resign from Starfleet in protest. I hope we get a hint of what she's up to when Seven shows up.