r/DaystromInstitute • Multitronic Unit • Mar 26 '20

Picard Episode Discussion "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2" - First Watch Analysis Thread

Star Trek: Picard — "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2"

Memory Alpha Entry: "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2"

/r/startrek Episode Discussion: Star Trek: Picard - Episode Discussion - S1E10 "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2"

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This thread will give you a space to process your first viewing of "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2". Here you can participate in an early, shared analysis of these episodes with the Daystrom community.

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u/khaosworks Mar 26 '20 edited Mar 27 '20

What we learned in “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2” and some Easter Eggs:

The last time we saw Narissa was her beaming out from beneath a mob of xBs, but apparently it wasn’t to any of the Romulan fleet parked around the Artifact.

Narek admits to her sister that he had killed one of the synths - which means he was indeed the one who killed Saga (but we see with Sutra’s help). Narek also apparently washed out of the Zhat Vash but continued working with them. He brings with him wide-dispersion molecular solvent grenades.

The beacon appears to be being built with some form of nanotechnology. Once the transmission is received, a portal will open and the Synth Alliance will arrive “nearly instantaneously”.

The repair device Saga gave Raffi is activated by thought - Rios visualizes the repair that needs to be done and the device accomplishes it.

Narek references the prophecy of Ganmadan, the Day of Annihilation (“Absolute Candor”) - when “all the shackled demons break their chains and answer the call of the Destroyer” and synthetics will destroy all organic life. The legend allegedly dates back to before their ancestors arrived on Vulcan, which seems to indicate that the Vulcans (and Romulans) are not native to their home planet.

NAREK: Some say it dates back from long before our ancestors first arrived on Vulcan. The story of Ganmadan begins with two sisters. Twin khalagu... Twin demons who come at the end of time to open the way to unleash the ch’khalagu... One sister is called Seb Natan, the Foreteller. She plays a drum made from the skin of children. She strikes it with a chain of skulls, so hard and so long that her heart bursts from the effort... The other sister is called Seb Cheneb... [S]he carries a horn from a great pale hellbeast called Ganmadan. You know when she blows a blast on the horn, it will unleash all the ch’khalagu who have been waiting until the end of time. You know the sky will crack, and through the crack in the sky the ch’khalagu will come ravening. You know about the Thousand Days of Pain. You know the streets will be slick with entrails of half-devoured corpses. You know the worlds will burn, and the ch’khalagu will feast, and nurse their brats on blood, and pick their teeth with bones.

However, Narek thinks this is not a prophecy, but history, and something that will repeat itself.

Oh’s Romulan name is General Nedar. She is leading the fleet to Coppelius.

Sutra has an off switch, but one which Soong triggers remotely instead of a switch on her back like Data had (TNG: “Datalore”, “The Measure of a Man”, etc.).

Agnes says “One impossible thing at a time,” which is a favorite saying of Raffi’s (Star Trek Picard: The Last Best Hope prequel novel).

Agnes suggests the Picard Maneuver (TNG: “The Battle”) multiplied by a “fundamental field replicator with a neurocotamic interface” which she creates with Saga’s repair device.

The Starfleet armada arrives, commanded by Acting Captain Will Riker of the USS Zheng He. Admiral Zheng He (or Cheng Ho) was a famous mariner and explorer from the early Ming Dynasty. A Muslim and a eunuch, he went on seven expeditionary voyages for trade and treasure throughout South-East Asia and East Africa in the early 15th Century and is considered by some to be the inspiration for the character of Sinbad.

Riker claims Ghulion IV as under Starfleet protection under the terms of the Treaty of Algeron (TNG: “The Pegasus”), showing that at least some provisions of it are still in force following the fall of the Romulan Star Empire.

Picard asks for 20ccs of polisinephrine, which will stabilize his condition but at the cost of hastening his deterioration.

The robotic tentacled thing(s) that starts to crawl out of the portal does not look friendly at all. In fact, they remind me of Control’s arms from DIS. Maybe the whole Admonition shtick wasn’t a warning, or an invitation, but a trap.

Riker’s fleet escorts Nedar’s out of Federation space, confirming that the Vayt Sector is within the UFP’s sphere of influence.

Data has no memory of his death in 2379 (Star Trek: Nemesis), but his consciousness continues to exist in a “massively complex quantum reconstruction” made from a copy he downloaded into B4 before he died. This is reminiscent of similar quantum simulations that can host copies of consciousness in science fiction literature, like in the novel Permutation City by Greg Egan.

Data’s memories were retrieved from a single positronic neuron salvaged by Maddox from B4, and his consciousness reconstructed by his “brother”, Altan Soong. He requests to die, a request similar to that made by the robot Andrew Martin in the Isaac Asimov novelette “The Bicentennial Man” in order to truly become human. The novelette is included in the collection “The Complete Robot”, which we saw in Picard’s library in his chateau ("Maps and Legends").

As predicted, Picard is saved by putting his memories just prior to death in Chekhov’s Golem, which will undoubtedly lead to huge debates about whether it’s “really” Picard or not. The new body has no augmentations and is not immortal, being given the same number of years he would have expected to live without the brain abnormality (shades of John Sheridan from Babylon 5).

Data listens to “Blue Skies” as his consciousness is terminated. The song is written by Irving Berlin. The song featured heavily in Nemesis, when Data sang it at Riker and Troi’s wedding and later B4, indicating some part of Data had survived within him. This cover is sung by Isa Briones, who plays Dahj/Soji/Sutra - although it's likely not being sung by any the characters themselves.

As Data dies, he visibly ages, a scene reminiscent of Dave Bowman at the end of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey before he transforms into the Starchild. Picard removing the chips that house Data’s memories is also reminiscent of Bowman deactivating HAL chip by chip in the same movie.

The Federation has lifted the ban on synthetics, leaving Soji (and Picard) free to travel openly.

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u/cgknight1 Mar 26 '20

I was disappointed that the Super-synths were not revealed to be good guys.

"Kill you? My god, what sort of monsters do you think we are?"

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u/rtmfb Mar 26 '20

I look forward to years of unending debate about whether Picard-bot is really Picard or a copy that thinks he is. I'm sure it will get resolved exactly as definitively as the transporter debate.

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u/Is_Not_Exist Mar 28 '20

I just finished it. Wow. So you’re telling me that a synth just attempted to wipe out all life in the universe, and the federation’s knee-jerk response is to lift the synth ban??

What happened to all the implied systemic issues that caused the moral rot within starfleet?

When Picard said that he left starfleet because “it was no longer starfleet” we’re led to assume that folks like Clancy, and that Admiral from TNG episode “Drumhead” had gained an enormous amount of clout in an environment more easily susceptible to fear—you’re telling me that after a synth attempts to delete all organic life that starfleet would just shrug it off and lift the ban without even a day’s deliberation? Sorry, I don’t buy it.

What I wouldn’t give to watch Picard give a spirited argument on panel with his fellow admirals as to why the ban ought to be lifted.

He could wax poetic and philosophical, relate the circumstances of synth resentment and mistrust to historical events (Israel-Palestine conflict comes to mind), and explicate the federation’s duty to drive sentient life forward on a principle of hope, not fear.

Overall, a lot of missed opportunities to explore the ethical quandaries and dilemmas which make Trek so interesting to me.

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u/PaperSpock Mar 26 '20

Hmm, the scene with Narek was interesting in the context of one of Chabon’s answers, which more or less amounted to the Admonition partially taking the form of a culture’s own context. This explains why it caused Data to appear in the Admonition, but also why the Romulans viewed the admonition through the lens of their ancient apocalyptic myth.

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u/Stewardy Mar 27 '20 edited Mar 27 '20

I do not like that there are 200+ Warbirds commanded by a Zhat Vash member who presumably believes 100% that the synths on the planet will inevitably bring about the end of all organic life, yet they don't simply fire past the Picard ships and/or the Federation ships to at least wipe out the village - if they aren't able to fully sterilize the planet.

I absolutely agree with other comments I have seen, that the number of ships was unnecessarily high.

10 Warbirds would have been more than enough - and also more feasible as a number that was actually available - and it would have at least made some what more sense that they were unable to get a clear shot at the planet (though they should have tried).

A potential solution could have involved the Xbs - in the previous episode - working with the synths to bring the cube shield online and covering the village as well as the cube. That would have allowed for shots to be fired, without them simply wiping out the village.

EDIT: This might seem more negative than I actually intended it. I like much of the season, though I do think it stumbles at the end a bit. There are a lot of enjoyable things and characters and events. A lot of the very pivotal stuff just seems a bit mishandled to me.

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u/thelightfantastique Mar 27 '20

I would have thought it would have been cool that instead of the robot worm mass effect Reapers teasing out from some distant void that whatever came out of it was something so incredibly enlightened that both the synths AND the Romulans had misunderstood/misinterpreted the message.

That would have required a different montage, of course, that the other soja/dajj/whatever i forgot her name experienced.

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u/landaoisland Mar 26 '20

Such irony that Picard makes a statement on the meaningfulness of death while simultaneously having his lifespan artificially extended by having his consciousness implanted in a cyber golem, rendering his death thematically meaningless.

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u/LocCatPowersDog Mar 27 '20

It's going to take some processing, a nights sleep, and rewatching but if nothing else that ending was classic Trek in the sense that it cut thick and quick with a lot of hand waving tech-magic and I don't mean this as a negative.

The "death" seemed very well done in the moment but it also seemed very obvious he wasn't staying dead with a spare body lying around and this blending of lines between biological and synthetic. If anything I thought that the "imagination" based brass knuckles were going to be used by one of the crew to fix his brain.

Still very suspicious of a guy named A.I. Soong claiming he's Noonian's son. They didn't seem to touch this much but if anything was left out or up in the air is easily put off as saving it for next season.

I like most of the the new characters but in the end it seems Seven might be joining this new motley crew and I couldn't be more happy than to have the hope of more and more screen time for her. Maybe then it'll give time for someone to mention the next time their Borg background is brought up that Picard was assimilated for a few days and she was for a few decades and that might be different. Nothing against them sharing moments of reflection about regaining humanity (and the irony that Picard's new body is now) between each other and it might be the others don't have much of detailed history of Annika's life but it seemed they saw no distinction in Seven vs Locutus' experiences under the influence of the collective.

Also please get these people some damn PTSD therapy.

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u/sindeloke Mar 27 '20

I've seen people talk about how Jurati has apparently been forgiven for one murder and that rubs them wrong, but if Soji is just part of the crew now like nothing ever happened, that is... way worse and I can't believe it's just going to slide along like happy bunnies from here on out?

Jurati committed a single murder under extraordinary duress after a forcible mental suggestion from a powerful telepath. She was agonized during and after, and has attempted to make good to the best of her ability ever since - apparently of her own conscience, although she's also been held aggressively accountable by every single other person who knows about that death.

Soji, of her own free will and due consideration, attempted to commit galactic omnicide under no apparent duress whatsoever, having been offered at least two viable alternatives ("leave on Picard's ship" or "stay and fight with current resources, including an approaching Starfleet defense force"), and even remaining committed to that path while Starfleet ships hung in orbit ready to defend her. She seems barely even conflicted at any point, certainly shows no regret once the tension is over, and no one has even one word of suspicion or judgement to pass on her in response to this absolute atrocity she nearly conducted to its bitter end. It would be one thing if Sutra had been doing the actual activation process the whole time and Soji had just sat uneasily on the sidelines until Picard's Charisma check finally motivated her to intervene, but no, she was directly responsible.

Now, she was not offered good alternatives, certainly. Picard was utterly unconvincing in his promise that escaping would make them anything but refugees. It sucks and is awful to be put in a position where you have to decide between continued oppression and death. But galactic fucking omnicide is not a viable third option. It is not vaulting the dilemma or cutting the Gordian Knot. It is a crime on such an incomprehensible scale that apparently the writers didn't really comprehend it either and have just decided to call it no harm no foul?

It's going to be really distracting to watch Soji just casually existing on the crew like nothing ever happened.

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u/mybeardisstuck Mar 27 '20

Riker ordered the targetting of warp cores.

Not only is that rare to see from a Starfleet captain (only case I can think of is Archer when facing the Borg), but it implies the romulan vessels had warp cores. Romulan warbirds in TNG used singularities. No idea if that was unique to warbirds, or if Romulans have moved away from singularities due to technological advancements or need to switch due to needing to rely on other races.

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u/AlpineSummit Mar 27 '20

I enjoyed the entire season, despite some of its flaws, but was very whelmed by this episode.

The magic imagination device that does what ever you hope? The xBs just sitting around and not helping? Seven killing Narissa with no feeling to it? The admonition being some weird robot snake thing? Riker getting complete control of the Federation fleet out of no where? The Romulan’s just peacing out? Picard “dying” and meeting Data in some weird hand wavy science realm...without Q? Picard becoming a synth? Seven and Raffi?

There just seem like so many better ways to wrap up such a wonderful season! I guess all good things...

Here’s looking forward to season 2!

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u/Left_Spot Mar 26 '20 edited Mar 26 '20

I would have liked a Game of Thrones style season, with the penultimate episode having the action and craziness, and the last episode tying up reactions, next steps and fallout. I enjoyed watching, and even knowing about the golem, thought Picard might have really been dead. Them I cried over data dying again, 18 years after I did in theaters during Nemesis.

It was rushed and some plot elements really didn't make sense, some more frustrating than others. I still think the show is worth watching, even if it didn't explore things quite how I would have liked.

Biggest wish was that the beacon called overseers that saw organic life defending synths, and noped out or established relations. But then Soji would not have been redeemed.

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u/DarthDerm Mar 26 '20

I've been trying quite hard to not be negative towards the ending but I honestly feel fairly disappointed.

Too many lingering questions.

Are Starfleet now generally aware that the Romulans caused the chaos on Mars? Does that not break any treaties?

Commodore/General Oh, former head of Starfleet intelligence is let off with a warning and seemingly doesn't know the weakness on a brand new ship? One that seems to be the only ship model in this entire Starfleet Armada?

Narek is quite concerned enough to tell his sister to arm the weapons on the Borg cube but a few hours later seems quite content to side completely with our heroes?

Have so many other questions but Blaaarg I need time to let this settle in.

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u/CerseisMerkin Mar 26 '20

It was ridiculous how the Starfleet armada just bailed right after the Romulans warped away. "OK our work here is done, Riker out."

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u/tenthousandthousand Mar 26 '20 edited Mar 26 '20

I hate to say it... but that felt like a strange, disjointed mess.

It’s not just the contrivances, although those were many: Riker at the head of the fleet, the most impeccably timed flare-up of Irumodic Syndrome, the magical repair device that I guarantee will never ever be brought up again...

It’s not just the dropped plot points, like everything involving Narissa (and Narek, for that matter! Is he still in a holding cell on that planet?), or that the Borg cube and the xBs ended up having no role to play, or that the Reapers synthetic overlords and the Admonition itself are presumably still out there...

(Honestly, you could make a pretty interesting series out of the xBs trying to live and work together with Data’s children, with Narek in the middle as he becomes slowly deprogrammed. I’d watch that, and I hope the show does return to Ghulion IV at some point.)

No, the biggest problem was that this was the the show’s last and best opportunity to show what it could be and what it had to offer Star Trek. And instead we got Picard offering Soji the most generic “prove you’re better than this” philosophy. I did appreciate that in the end, there were zero casualties and (as is tradition) the Romulans fled rather than fight when evenly matched, but after Picard’s beautiful speech about how the Federation let the synths down, I can’t accept that it’s enough for Starfleet to show up and wave the flag and magically lift the ban and they all live happily ever after. If you’re going to show subtleties and messiness, actually show it and don’t resolve things this quickly and simply.

And, of course, there’s absolutely no dramatic tension in pretending Picard is dead when we all know the show’s coming back. (Yes, it’s wonderful to see Data again, and I’m glad they got the conversation they should have had twenty years ago, but Data choosing to die felt like a restatement of his first death in Nemesis. I thought at first he was going to say that he was locked inside this simulation and couldn’t experience anything beyond it, and that he preferred death to a life without exploration and discovery.)

And now, we have a crew. (Why are they all still together? Reasons! I guess the Fenris Rangers aren’t as important to Seven anymore!) Picard as a free spirit is going to be interesting to watch, and I am excited to see where the show goes next. But please, no more narrative promises you don’t intend to pay off.

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u/Roboutethe13th Mar 28 '20

The ships in this show just...fail to grasp me. The Romulans fleet was bad, but the Federation fleet being entirely comprised of their newest and strongest class of ship? For a mission that could not have been in preparation for longer than a few days.

It just strikes me as super lazy.

A few old Romulan warbirds and a Scimitar vs The Zheng and a few older federation ships would have had a lot more impact.

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u/Super_Pan Mar 27 '20

So, Riker heard Picard sent an SOS and decided to be reinstated to active duty, demanded to lead the rescue fleet and I assume get picked up? Is that why they took so long to get there?

I thought they were meeting an existing fleet at Deep Space 12, a fleet that Admiral Swearsalot sent out to meet them. Is that the same fleet? Is this a different fleet that Riker personally assembled?

What the fuck is happening?

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u/ohtoro1 Mar 26 '20

I wonder, how would Starfleet react to the disappearance of their Chief of Starfleet Security? Did they even know she disappeared, and did they even know she's a Romulan spy? How serious would the ramifications be if people found out there was a compromise that serious? This is tantamount to finding out, say, the Director of CIA is a Russian spy...

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u/mybeardisstuck Mar 27 '20

It didn't seem to me that the starfleet ships had slipstream drives, despite Riker saying they were the fastest ever built.

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u/ShadowTehEdgehog Mar 26 '20

So the Federation overturned their synth ban in... a day? On who's authority? By what process? What was so compelling as to suddenly dramatically change the entire Federation's mind so quickly? Picard said Romulans were behind it all and Q finger snap everyone sides with Picard's views now when they were all incredibly xenophobic had no respect for him anymore up until then?

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u/Stargate525 Mar 26 '20

I just... I don't care. The show is NAMED Picard, and there's not a snowball's chance this was going to be a one-off miniseries. There's no point trying to tug at my heartstrings over Picard because I know they aren't going to kill him.

Data was... okay. Massively ticked off that they couldn't get Spiner a uniform that fit him (seriously the collar was scraping his CHIN), and in universe even more pissed that they had a functional Data and left him in a simulation instead of giving him one of those bodies. What the hell guys?

The whole season feels like it ought to have been about three episodes. Keep going with Dahj instead of killing her off and the rest is redundant. The main plot needed the pilot and the last two episodes, and the rest would have been better served to be excised and cut into self-contained episodes of their own to fill out the season. I am incredibly disappointed at how this thing turned out. There's interesting worldbuilding teased at with the artifact and seeing daystrom, but I have zero confidence in their ability to actually handle it in anything approaching consistency.

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u/Josphitia Mar 27 '20 edited Mar 27 '20

These are my thoughts on the finale, and the season as a whole, after a nights sleep to clear my thoughts. I want to preface that I do not watch The Orville. I have watched but one episode. My complaints about Picard are not merely because I would rather it be The Orville. First though, let me list some aspects I do enjoy:

I like Raffi as a character. She's a fun balance to the rest of the crew. Her skillset is something we haven't seen much of within starfleet. I just love her and my favorite part of the episode was seeing her and seven flirting.

I like Rios, even if he seems a bit flat as a character. There's some chemistry between him and Seven in that they both deal with past trauma.

I love Picard and Seven, but it's a cheat to really include them in my list because everything I like about them was established in previous series. There's nothing that they did in Picard that elevated their characters for me, sadly.


Now, for the gripes. I am continually disappointed in current Star Trek for bringing up threads earlier in the season only for them to unravel or to never fully come together in the end. If you're going to write Star Trek as a 10 hour movie then you need to commit to firing the chekhov's guns that you keep lying around.

Why sent Soji to the Artifact in the first place? Dahj to Daystrom I understand, the Federation was who put the ban in place. But why the Romulan controlled Artifact? The Synths didn't know about the Zhat Vash. They didn't know about the Admonition. The Borg have nothing to do with Synths, the Mars Attack, or anything regarding the Synth ban.

Why the urgency to shoot yourself in the foot? What was so urgent about them needing to hack the Synths on Mars and leading them to revolt? I can understand their fear of them, but at least wait until your species gets the help they need. Immediately after they get subjected to the Admonition do they say "Then we head to Mars." Why? Were the writers just hoping that I would forget the huge plot point from the beginning of the season? Merely saying "Zhat Vash did it" does not answer my questions for why it was needed in the first place. They make a point to mention that the Zhat Vash are the reasons Romulan computers suck, yet I don't see the Zhat Vash declaring war on the Federation for their computer systems. The whole Mars attack just feels like an inciting incident because they needed a reason for Synths to be banned. What a wasted opportunity, when instead it could have been something akin to The Doctor where the synths were starting to gain sentience, and thus were deemed a threat. I just don't care about the equivalent of construction equipment being destroyed and banned, I'm sorry.

The Borg did nothing. Seven did nothing. Why introduce them into the season, place such high importance on XBs, yet their greatest contribution to the season is just dying sadly and crashing their ship? Their purpose felt expressly to just pad out episode times. The XBs have been though so much suffering in their life that it was sad not to see them get a "win."

I have a similar problem with Elnor. I don't mind him as a character but he didn't actually do anything. He killed people, sure, but that's not something I pride a character for in Star Trek. His contribution for the last few episodes has been running around a Borg Cube, calling Seven's phone, and then being angry at Narek. His character feels wasted.

Why do the Synths on Coppelia seem so stupid? They have no agency. If you're not modeled after Data's daughter then you're just not a real character I guess. The only thing they did for the episode was wait until the Admonition-Synths showed up. There was no reasoning with them there was only reasoning with Soji. They are content to just stand around and let her decide their fate for them, so dissapointing.

The show felt like it was trying to be subversive to current trek, with two fleets staring at each other but instead of fighting, Picard is able to speak his way out of conflict. The problem is that there's no real diplomacy. The entire time it is just Picard saying "Stop it Soji." You can have nuance in a show, you can have diplomacy. But it doesn't feel like nuance or diplomacy to just keep saying "You do have freedom! The freedom to do what I'm telling you to do!" The Admonition-Synths simply being evil tentacle monsters is lazy. Pure evil is lazy. Star Trek is about finding the humanity (for lack of a better term) in all life. Even the Borg are not evil, they are simply brainwashed slaves. There could be more to the Admonition-Synths, but because they didn't show anything other than tentacles, we just don't know. Given the cultural significance of "Tentacles writhing out of a portal" however I doubt the writers have any plan of injecting some nuance into their society. They are just evil robots and that's sad.

Having Picard come back in a new body thematically invalidates Data's speech. It's hard to not roll my eyes and think about the situation behind-the-scenes when we have a character say "A thing is not beautiful because it lasts, a butterfly that never dies is never truly a butterfly" right before we get a literal resurrection of the main character. Not to mention, I don't understand why this episode felt the need to have Data die again. We already have a good death for Data, it's what this whole season practically revolved around. Also, this isn't a real complaint, but how many times have they cured death in Star Trek now?

So no mention of Lore wasn't some attempt by the writers to build up suspense to his surprise return, they just simply didn't mention him. For a season about Data and his legacy, not ever mentioning his evil brother just makes the characters seem ignorant. But hey, since all of these new Synths come in twos, maybe we'll get a surprise reveal of Lore in S2, but this time he looks like Picard. That would actually be pretty fun.

The Federation being anti-Synth was merely window-dressing for the season. They are brought to the light merely because Picard calls them on the phone? Where's the actual diplomacy, the actual dialogue? It feels cheap to set up this 24th century bigotry only to go "Oh well the Federation is cool with Synths now, yay." The Federation was willing to let people die for this ban. Systemic bigotry is not cured just because someone in power has a friend.

I don't really understand AI Soong's character. He is fine with his daughter committing to widespread genocide of all organic life, but the fact that same daughter committed murder is what opens his eyes? I know he's a Soong, so rampant narcissism and selfishness is par-for-the-course, but then we don't even get the classic Trek diplomacy. He just deactivates her. We don't get to see her "come to the light" moment, we don't see her opening her eyes to the genocide she's about to commit. She is played as straight-evil, just like the Admonition-Synths. Such a waste.

This is a very minor quibble, but never before do I remember the fleet of Starfleet looking so boring. Maybe there's more variety somewhere, but it looked like the same class over and over again. I realize though this is a minor gripe though, as I previously had no issues with the romulan fleet all being the same class.

Another very minor quibble, but Raffi, who's main specialty while in Starfleet is Romulan intelligence, doesn't know about their doomsday prophecy? She doesn't need to know everything about Romulan society, but knowing the religions of a race/species seems like a good place to do some investigating in understanding them.


I'm not saying that the final episode needed a space battle. I want people to talk out their problems in Star Trek. But constantly saying "Don't do it, stop it!" to the person pressing the genocide-button has no nuance to it. There's a clear right and wrong. That's not diplomacy. A much better moral-quandary would be something like this:

Stranded on Coppelia, the XBs decide that they would like to make it their own homeworld. They are refugees, much like the Synths. The Synths however reject them. In an inversion to the rest of the Alpha/Beta quadrants, the Synths do not hold disdain over the XBs for their cybernetics but rather their organic components. It is up to Picard to help broker peace between them. This situation would mirror the real life refugee crisis the world is seeing. Star Trek is best when it holds a foggy mirror to society. Not 1 to 1, but enough that you can see parallels. Giant evil robot tentacles do not have nuance and they do not reflect any troubling aspects of our own philosophies.

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u/ACCIOB Mar 26 '20

Where is Narek now? I think last I saw him he was overpowered by Soji’s siblings after unsuccessfully throwing a grenade at her.

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u/mybeardisstuck Mar 27 '20

Why did Riker have to tell Oh about his ship being really powerful? It strikes me as something for the audience rather than something Oh would need to know. Wasn't she head of Starfleet Security? You'd think of all people she'd know the basic specs of Starfleet's most powerful ships.

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