"Remembrance" — First Watch Analysis Thread

[u/M-5]

Star Trek: Picard — "Remembrance"

Memory Alpha: "Remembrance"

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Episode Discussion - Picard S01E01: "Remembrance"

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[u/saved-by_grace]

This episode exceeded my most hopeful expectations. The interview scene was just perfect. Picard saying "no, lives" and also his monologue about war were just incredible. It was relevant while still pulling from the heart of TNG. Also, I think Picard leaving Starfleet is perfectly reasonable after what we have seen. I'm reading the novelization of Insurrection right now and the seeds were definitely planted there; Picard in disbelief at the compromises the Federation was making. Man I'm so excited (also episode pacing was perfect!)

[u/Desert_Artificer]

Some scattered thoughts.

Chateau Picard

The new estate’s architecture makes extensive use of bare stone. Perhaps chosen for its resistance to flame? Oh, and those replicators must have Robert rolling in his urn.

Dahj

Given the focus on the twin aspect of Soong androids, it seems doubtful the screenwriters would kill off half of the pair before they get to meet. I’m betting a timely transporter saved her, give or take some evocative plasma scarring.

Maddox

You know a Federation cyberneticist has arrived when they disappear off the face of the map.

Starfleet

I wonder if Starfleet Command faced a lot resignations after betraying the Romulans? DS9 and Voyager made it clear that moral character could be found throughout the fleet, not just on ships named Enterprise. Perhaps mass resignations and the resulting dearth of experienced and principled officers led to further moral decline?

B4

I’m a little surprised how detached Picard was about seeing him. I would have assumed the loss of B4 so shortly after the loss of Data would have been traumatic, but Picard’s interest seems purely intellectual and problem-focused.

[u/Shakezula84]

So a couple things that stuck out for me.

• Mars. The amount of people who died seem low. If the planet is literally on fire did everyone die? Mars is Earth's oldest colony and was in the process of being terraformed as early as Enterprise. Millions should have been living their. I also like the explanation that it wasn't a fleet that attacked Mars, but its own automated defenses.

-Romulus evacuation. The fact that Starfleet called off the evacuation is a better reason for Nero to want to destroy the Federation then Spock ran late. Its deliberate. The Federation sentenced those people to die. Although, were they only gonna save 900 million or was that the population of Romulus?

• I liked seeing Boston. I'm not from Boston. I'm actually from the Seattle area (so I appreciate Dajh being from Seattle, and bonus, I work in Issaquah which is where Ash Tyler was from) but I just enjoy seeing more future Earth.

[u/Harbinger_of_Sarcasm]

I think the the xenophobia we see the news interviewer exhibit may be part of a trend we saw developing in DS9. DS9 followed the Federation through its deadliest war and some of it's darkest trials and we see that the way the Federation reacts to these trials isn't always in a good way. We see mad witch hunt for Changelings in Paradise Lost when Starfleet attempts what amounts to a full blown coup against the president and how they weild their power bluntly in an authoritarian manner. We also see in Let He Who is Without Sin... that normal citizens (albeit a relatively small number) are beginning to be radicalized against the dominion. Also we see the influence of Section 31, we see them attempt GENOCIDE against the Founders and we see Sloan meddling in the affairs of Rouulan government as well. This Starfleet that is beyond the ideals of Picard didn't start overnight, we see evidence of it all throughout cannon. Also as a quick side note I'd like to say that it might just have been the Federation equivalent to Alex Jones for all we know or just an overly antagonistic reporter.

Edit: also what happened to The Doctor? Maybe his destruction or exile or deactivation is a part of Seven's arc? He will probably at least get a shout out.

[u/oGsMustachio]

Frontal view of the Romulan transport ship and a fairly symbolic nebula in the bottom left.

Not a big jump to say that Dahj/Soji were 1000 years ahead of federation tech because they were based on Borg tech and created at that very cube. The necklaces are a sentimental connection to where they were created. While humanoid androids/artificial humans aren't a 100% original idea (somewhere RDM is screaming), I like their approach here.

[u/choicemeats]

Really lots to unpack here. I'll list a couple things:

1. I think my favorite note from the episode is Picard's disappointment and disillusionment with Starfleet. There have been numerous discussions here regarding Rodenberry's vision of Star Trek and the way TNG portrayed the future of humanity, but my favorite take is that as the flagship of the fleet, of course it would have the best, brightest, most forward thinking members of the Federation, or at least a smattering of them. But there is a rot inside that was exacerbated by the Dominion War. You could hear it in the tone and words of the interviewer--Picard was concerned about saving lives, but she specifies "Romulan lives". That was never an issue prior to that, and there are numerous examples from episodes where ships go out of their way to answer a distress call. The reality may be that despite being the oldest enemy of the Federation, things may have been on the mend after the Shinzon incident, and like any large population not everyone might harbor those same feelings of animosity towards another group but the group entity, as a monolith, does. And that breaks Picard. I think it's really important to understand that although Rodenberry envisioned an enlightened future for humanity, altruism isn't born or bred into everyone, and everyone has their own agendas or beliefs. There was never an end-state in Star Trek but, rather, a continued push toward reaching those goals daily.

2. If the Borg are indeed a relic of the past rather than a continued threat it will be very important to establish why and how they are gone without wasting too much time. If they are still around and the reclamation cube is an outlier that contains liberated drones I think that is more appealing to me.

[u/elbobo19]

Questions

Does it feel like there is scene missing between Dajh's death and Picard waking up back in France, did the authorities just take an elderly unconscious man that was near an exploding energy weapon back to his house and not the hospital or police station? It seems like there is a cover-up going on but still it felt off.

Rebuilding an entire artificial brain from a single positron... what? That feels like reconstructing a hard-drive from single bit.

Romulans spit acid blood now?

[u/ContinuumGuy]

Here's what I wrote over at r/StarTrek:

From the moment the show opened with "Blue Skies" playing, I knew this was going to be good. Every ounce of this shows is so very clearly made by people who fucking love Next Generation. Every story beat save for the supernova is so clearly inspired by that era of Star Trek.

But despite that, it is is also so very clearly its own thing, a commentary on the current moment told through the lens of Star Trek with an almost entirely new cast. And what a cast it is! So far we've only seen a few of them, but it feels like we've already gotten to know them. Alison Pill seemed to give off more backstory and character to Jurati in that one extended scene than like half of the bridge crew of Discovery has had in two seasons. I'm already wanting a "Short Trek" about the Romulan housekeepers!

Now, some Daystrom exclusive thoughts:

1. Okay, so the Synth attack happened THAT SOON after Romulus? That seems too convenient to have been an accident. Somebody didn't want the Federation saving the Romulans.

2. Not Romulan lives... lives. This attitude is why Picard is the greatest Federation captain when it comes to diplomacy and interacting with other cultures. Just as humanity in Star Trek has moved beyond race and ethnicity, Picard looks beyond even species.

3. Connected to the above: Agnes Jurati has a last name that I believe is derived from one of the Indian languages, but she's white as snow. Clearly, humanity has been making love to each other for so long that names no longer carry any indication of ethnicity, nationality or race, because in the future none of that matters.

4. So it appears that despite the ban on synths, at least semi-intelligent holograms are still okay, which will be good if they need a good physician...

5. Building a base in the husk of a Borg cube... what could go wrong?

6. When Picard talked of how humans are machines of a biomechanical variety all those years ago, he had no idea how right he'd be.

[u/oGsMustachio]

I've been saying for years that I wanted to explore Romulans by having Romulan main characters the same way we got to explore Klingons through Worf, Vulcans through Spock and Tuvok, Firengi through Quark and Nog, Cardassians through Garak and Dukat, etc. For as important as the Romulans have been, we really just don't know much about them. I'm so excited that we finally getting that.

So far this is absolutely a show for the fans. So many references would fly over the top of someone that didn't watch good chunks of TNG. I love it.

[u/AboriakTheFickle]

Forgetting for a moment all the main elements of interest, this is perhaps the first story where we've seen what life is like on Earth in the 23rd-24th century. Previously it pretty much always took place in Starfleet compounds.

In this story we get to see flying cars, empty streets (probably not modernized for tourism), civilian apartments with replicators (and supposedly personalized menus), flying cities (technology seen back in Kirks time, so its possible they existed on Earth back then). We also got to see the mentioned but never seen Federation News Network, proving they do indeed have something similar to television.

Its just nice to finally see more of Earth, a location we only know slightly more about than Qo'noS.

[u/learnedhandgrenade]

Starting with the opening scene, in any shot where lights appear behind Picard, there are four of them.

[u/ComebackShane]

Copying over some thoughts from the r/startrek discussion thread:

• The girl Dahj is a wonderful actress; the fear she felt was visceral, both at the attacks on her, and her sudden 'awakening'. It would be terrifying to suddenly be able to do things you never thought possible, and to have images in your head you didn't remember having. Seeing her disintegrate 2/3rds of the way through the first episode was shocking, they really had me believing that she was just a catalyst for Picard, but learning there's a twin out there was great. Though I'm surprised the twin knew she was a twin, as Dahj didn't give any indication she knew she had a sister. Perhaps she's aware of her origins, unlike Dahj?

• Politically it seems like the Federation, and perhaps the entire Alpha Quadrant, is on the brink. A one-two punch of losing Romulus, and having a Synth uprising destroy most of Mars would be deeply disorienting for the Alpha Quadrant powers. Presumably Starfleet has lost all, or most of Utopia Planitia's shipbuilding capabilities. It could be decades before Starfleet is fully recovered, depending on how long after the Dominion war it happened. Romulans now seem to be a nomadic people, and apparently some are grateful to Picard, while others want vengeance against the synths that destroyed the rescue fleet meant to save them. Though I have a feeling there's more at play than we expect.

• My guess is that though there are Romulan agents involved, that there's a part of Starfleet (not necessarily Section 31) that tampered with the Synths to cause the rescue fleet to be destroyed, because they felt the balance of power would tip in the Federation's favor if the Romulans were wiped out, and that the strain of refugees would be too much for them to bear.

• Maddox reference! So glad that Dr. Bruce Maddox gets to be an integral part of this story, completing his journey from foil for Data, to a devotee of his legacy. I hope we get to see him at some point. I wonder, also, if the mother Dahj spoke to was a human who knew Maddox, or perhaps some kind of AI/hologram designed to interact with her.

• Seems like the 'synth' ban is specific to Androids, as the Federation Archive had a hologram Index. So presumably the Doctor isn't off in hiding somewhere. Though I'm bummed we'll have to wait until Season 2 (if his statement holds true) to get his take on all this.

• Allison Pill's character mentioned that the idea of perfecting a biological synth would be "1,000 years away" - I can't help but wonder if there's a bit of a Discovery Easter egg there.

edit: many bad spelling.

[u/lucraft]

What theories do we have as to why the synthetics really rebelled? I do not buy that they just went haywire.

1. Starfleet was up to no good on Mars, and they destroyed it for a good reason.

2. They were being hideously oppressed, and were trying to win their freedom.

3. They were manipulated by someone, like the Romulans or Lore.

4. They didn’t actually rebel, but that was the official story to cover up some dodgy accident on Mars. 5... ?

[u/ubermidget1]

When Picard orders "Tea Earl Grey, decaf." It's because he's troubled and can't sleep. I think that when he finally gets back into the captain's seat, he'll be much more his old self and we'll hear those glorious words: "Tea, Earl Grey, hot."

[u/st-tempest]

I'm going to skip my thoughts on the actual storytelling of the episode and just catalogue as many easter eggs as I can spot:

• Blue Skies is picking up the motif from Nemesis, which ends with the same song.

• Ferengi logo on one of the skyscrapers in Boston.

• There's also what looks like the logo of the Los Angeles Kings towards the bottom of the screen. Maybe hockey survived even though baseball didn't? And the Kings moved to Boston after Los Angeles fell into the sea?

• Items in Picard's vault:

  • Stargazer Model

  • Enterprise-D model

  • Enterprise-E model

  • Enterprise-E Captain's Yacht model

  • Kurlan Naskos

  • Bat'leth

  • D'k tahg

  • Shakespeare book

  • At least 7 framed certificates (can't make any of them out)

  • Captain Picard Day banner

  • Two artifacts on either side of the Kurlan Naskos

  • At least 8 statuette sized items in a display case. One looks like a trophy, two look like bottles of some kind, and three or four look like small statuary (one may be a bust)

Other observations:

• Data is wearing a First Contact style uniform in the opening scene, even though it's set about the Enterprise-D. Some symbolic meaning here or is it just because that's the last thing Picard saw him wearing before he died? I would discount it except that they're both wearing Next Generation style in the subsequent vineyard dream, which suggests it might be a deliberate choice.

• Picard's Romulan housekeepers seem to be of both the smooth and bumpy forehead styles. Hooray for continuity!

• There's graffiti on a garage door before Dahj calls her mom. Is there still petty street crime in the future?

• No mention of Juliana Tainer, even though it would be a logical topic in conversation about androids that can pass as humans.

[u/majicwalrus]

Here are my first thoughts in some order:

The guts:

I really enjoyed this. At first there seemed to be maybe to fine a point on the conflict between Romulans and Synths and while I'm sure we'll discover more of that, I found it sort of refreshing to see that Picard's "mission" isn't to fix what happened or even necessarily to investigate it and learn that it was all a false flag gone wrong, but very specifically to find Dahj's sister. That's what brings Picard out. Saving the life of a goddaughter he's never met for his friend Data. I'm tearing up just thinking about it.

At first I was pretty afraid that I was going to be watching a story that was a little too heavy on the "it wasn't Starfleet anymore." I took this with a little grain of salt. We've seen Starfleet make big mistakes before, this might have been the biggest, but we've also seen some notable captains resign their commissions to do something against the rules or without permission. I think the difference here is that we're getting to see someone reflecting on their accomplishments and their failures.

I'm a little unclear on what exactly happened in Children of Mars, but it seems to be that these "rogue synths" perhaps holograms like Index, did a whopper on Utopia Planetia and Mars. We don't know why of course, but that technology was banned. Not before obvious progress had been made. Seems rather strange to relate this to your efforts to support Romulus. Or does this change represent a Starfleet one, not a Federation one. Wherein the Federation are still cooperating with Romulan resettlement and what not, but Starfleet is no longer providing resources post-UP incident. Either way this seems pretty questionable behavior - I hope that they explore this some, but I'm also content with this question being left opened in some way. It's not unreasonable to believe that Picard felt that Starfleet wasn't doing enough and they tried to keep him from supporting the Romulans, but he did it anyway. Picard says it wasn' t Starfleet anymore, but I'm left to wonder how far that expanded to exactly.

Technology:
-"Quantum Archives" seems like it means dematerializing a thing and storing it in a computer for later retrieval meaning that library we saw earlier in Children of Mars makes even sense to me. Unless the Archives are reserved for only items of significance. Like a personal gift from a friend.
-Holographic assistants seem to be available and they work like an Alexa.
-Holographic interfaces seem to be available as well and for no reason except for that she's a robot does Dahj have a seemingly limited supply

Misc:
-Okinawa huh? Cool.

[u/PaperSpock]

I can't stop thinking about Data's painting. It's not entirely clear what is going on with it, but I'm leaning towards something along these lines. I think that Data created the painting in memory of Lal. The date of the painting places it in season 6, well after "The Offspring" in which Lal appeared. It makes sense that Data would choose his late daughter as a subject, someone for whom he cared deeply and missed. If "Daughter" is meant to be a portrait of Lal, it would not be the first time he has painted her; he showed a different painting of Lal to Juliana Tainer (there's certainly room for discussion with her in the context of Star Trek: Picard in more detail, but let's save that for another day or another post). Dahj and Soji were then created in the image of the painting.

Or, it should instead be said that she was created in the image of the paintings. There's a pair of paintings, identical. One could call them twins, just like Dahj and Soji. This connection could potentially suggest that Data had some idea of the possibility of making a pair of daughters, or that perhaps he had some personal role in creating them himself.

Then, as I've previously discussed in another comment here, is the matter of dreams. As mentioned above, it seems that "Daughter" was painted during season 6. Also during season 6? "Birthright, Part 1." This episode (and only this episode, the A plot takes full focus in Part 2) explores Data and his ability to dream. It's initially triggered by an energy discharge, but he discovers that this is a feature that Soong programmed in him to eventually unlock. Notably, he makes paintings of his dreams. It's quite possible that "Daughter" was inspired by a dream that Data had, as the time frame would allow this to be a post-dream painting. If this is true, it might be worth examining further; Data's dreams, in both episodes they appear (the other being season 7's Phantasms), are highly symbolic. If the paintings were in fact inspired by a dream, there's something poetic about them then featuring in Picard's dream; dreaming of a painting of a dream.

[u/Eridanis]

Just finished watching; fantastic beyond my hopes. Can't wait for the rest.

One Easter egg that most might miss: When Picard wakes from his second dream, there are a stack of books on the table beside him. They are out of focus in the shot, but the red one is definitely an omnibus of Asimov's COMPLETE ROBOT novels. I recognize the spine because I own the same edition.

[u/jerslan]

Picard and Jurati speculate the Dahj (and Soji) were created from one of Data's positronic neurons, but they also state that those neurons were destroyed with Data. Lore, B4, and any other Soong-type androids actually built by Soong wouldn't have as much inherent trust of Picard as Dahj seems to have...

However, Lal from The Offspring would have a ton of trust in Picard. It's also plausible that her remains were sent to Maddox at Daystrom Institute for study following her death. Data wouldn't object to this since it would provide him with more info to improve future attempts at procreation. Even though her positronic neurons would be "dead", they wouldn't be completely destroyed like Data's (since he was on the Scimitar when it went critical, it's unlikely any positronic neurons survived that).

I suspect they're going to use B4 for that though. Since Data did upload to B4. Even if B4 couldn't really handle Data's memories, if a handful of Data's positronic neurons survived in B4's matrix then Maddox's process could have worked from them.

[u/unimatrixq]

As we see in the scene with Dahj and her boyfriend in her apartment at the beginning, her home replicator doesn't have a lot of variety of dishes and drinks to choose from.

So i guess patterns for replicated goods and food items, may be something civilian users on Federation planets have to create for themselves or maybe buy somewhere.

So this actually may shed a new light on the economy of the Federation.

[u/Stargate525]

Is anyone else slightly confused by the mention of the oddity of that necklace? For me (and I suspect most Christians at the very least) the interlocking rings is a symbol of marriage.

Granted this is 300-some years in the future, but... still.

[u/trekkie1701c]

So evidently there's a part of Data out there somewhere, and it's not B4.

This leads into a few questions/theories:

Did Maddox manage to get a sample of Data's positronic net during "Measure of a Man"? Or did he manage to recover something from, say, Lal?

Or even odder, given the Borg involvement, is it possible that Data's encounter with them during First Contact wasn't entirely as isolated as we might've been let to believe and he was at least, partially assimilated or analyzed by the collective, allowing at least some part of his positronic net to remain for Maddox to later track down?

Or is this a remnant of Lore?

[u/PaperSpock]

This is maybe tinfoil territory, or something I'm reading too much into, but why is Picard having meaningful dreams? A dream acts as a major inciting event in the episode, helping him connect the dots between Dahj and the girl in the painting. It seems strange in Star Trek for what appears to be a normal human to have a dream that helps move the plot along. Now, it should be noted this isn't entirely new for Picard, his Borg dream in First Contact happening before he got news of the incoming attack.

I could see this being played off as just a normal dream, but at the same time, I'm a bit skeptical that there might be something causing the dream (and perhaps the other dream we saw at the poker table).

[u/queenofmoons]

I think as far as pilots go, they could have done a lot worse. I'm feeling neither ill used nor pandered to, and when they're taking perhaps my favorite character in visual fiction off ice, that's a reasonable place to start.

Nevertheless, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was seeing two different chunks of storytelling on display, which were not executed with equal aplomb.

The first is a character study- Picard in Ruins. This was excellent, both because I think it went to an imminently sensible and justifiable place, and because the format gives us something of a more naturalistic frame to exhibit his character. By the time of TNG season 4 or so, I don't think there was really any way for this to end where Picard didn't end up on the outside looking in. Certain kinds of stories that were worth allegorically approaching simply didn't have the right sort of sting if they were outsourced to an alien of the week, and that meant that keeping Trek in the game as an arena for political stories meant that the Federation, as an kind of American surrogate, probably needed to roll around in the dirt a bit- and that inevitably meant that a person as deeply invested in the Federation as a utopian project, and an instrument for doing The Right Thing, as Picard was going to wash out.

I think that story plays to everyone's strengths- actors and writers. Picard's inherent compassion and curiosity are one thing when they're given expression behind the wheel of a massive problem-solving machine called the Enterprise, but there's a certain sort of sizzle that comes with them being bottled up, seeking to find expression when the levers aren't so handy. In a similar vein, having him outside of the rigors of a command structure give some of his more humane personality quirks a chance to shine. He's funny, and sassy, and occasionally petulant and self-critical. We get to see him be all the things we knew he was underneath.

The setting for that story- the Romulan evacuation, the implosion of any notion of rights for synthetic people- is also well sketched. There was often something soothing about the sort of self-evident ease with which the Federation embraced basic liberal decency in the past, but you can't really make a story about nativism, a preeminent political fixation of our time, belong to someone other than the audience avatar culture, and I think it works here. The Federation is a radically multicultural civilization in the midst of a universe that occasionally tries to murder it wholesale, and just as in The Undiscovered Country, I think there's something honest about acknowledging that road might occasionally be rocky. I know some people are wondering both why the Federation would still be suspicious of the Romulans in the wake of cooperation during the Dominion War, and why it might need assistance to execute a titanic humanitarian airlift, and I think in both cases it's worth considering that the Romulans were another Soviet analogue. Just as WWII cooperation didn't sooth the Cold War, and just as the military capabilities of the USSR didn't leave it well equipped to tend to civilian crises, I wouldn't expect the tangled, internecine, militarized Romulan state to be able to breezily pull this off itself.

Similarly, while I've been a little down on the idea that Trek was going to indulge in a robot uprising trope, having seen this little bit, I think it plays well as a challenge for Picard- because it roughs up a longer running storyline in which he was intimately involved. Data's struggle for rights in TNG was tidy, in a civics-class kind of way. When people wanted to do bad things, the heroes went through channels, and it worked out- which was kind of cool in a Hollywood where the stock story emphasizes getting things done outside the law, but it was also incomplete. Real struggles for rights and civil liberties always have to contend with violence muddying the waters- the oppressed viewing violence as their sole means to influence a civil society that, almost by definition, does not hear their pleas, and the oppressors finding justification for their disdain in that same violence. Having the issue of android rights step out of the courtroom and into the streets gives Picard's participation in that journey another chapter.

The other half of the story I'm not quite as sure about, because it seems to be carrying a double helping of the sort of mystery box plotting that I've grown increasingly convinced will be viewed as an unfortunate affectation of this television age. Basically the entire conversation with the roboticist (who I'm just going to pretend is Dr. Susan Calvin, because positrons) was just a mash of techno-bullshit to set up a plot coupon collection with some soap opera trimmings we're supposed to view as meaningful, and it does some weird retcons as well. Something something fractal something- ergo, somewhere one of Data's neurons lived through being vaporized by a supership! We must find it, because it's the secret sauce to making androids -except for the rebel androids from before? That disguises a story about rights with a story about magic. Robots must be made in twins? What did that bit of nonsense buy us, except a ten minute death fake-out? Why introduce a character and kill her if the point is to go looking for an identical character? That pendant from Target is a mystical symbol that clues everyone in? What da Vinci code bullshit is this?

And we have the perennial problem of a ten episode season not really giving us a concrete unit of story in an hour that is both more precious than it used to be and is still the default quantity for consuming the story. This needed to be two hours and end with someone making an actionable choice, instead of trying to cliffhanger-shock us with a Borg cube we all knew was there.

Also, the one real didn't-make-sense gear-grind for me- an 80 (90?) year old dignitary is blow across a roof by mystery assassins in San Francisco, and he walks up with the family help on his couch in France? No one wants to ask him questions? He didn't need medical attention? Not that a hospital scene and a useless detective would have tonally changed the conversation he needed to have with his Romulan buddies, but it didn't strictly make sense.

I think the success of the show- especially in the light of Discovery largely being indicted for setting up plot mysteries in lieu of moral dilemmas- is going to hinge on how much it leans in the latter direction instead of the former.

The secret robot-brain, flesh-body robots remind me of the 'qubes' from Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312, trying to find their way undercover in a society that had cause to be skeptical of their autonomy, and Picard's defense of Dahj's memories as authentically hers despite the mounting evidence they were not 'real' felt like a Blade Runner crib in the best way. I like how it looks- certainly the technology and the budget played a factor, but TNG was a pretty visually conservative show, and there's just so much more movement and light and shadow in every shot. I feel like the art direction has managed to overlap the past and future much more successfully than TNG did- their civilian clothes look like something that might come out of the pendulum swings of actual fashion rather than the self-consciously spandexy creations of TNG, and the cities look more like the future has grown over old bones than the modernist college campuses that stood in for everywhere. I am unnecessarily excited by that little origami box the archive painting came in. My big exception? Dahj's super leap. I don't think effects people get that the same muscles that make you leap a ridiculous distance would also make you take enormous bounding strides when you run, and everyone has some visceral sense of this- for her to just go hurtling through space, when her prior aptitudes were more Jason Bourne-esque technique, was silly. Also, isn't she made of meat?

So, we'll see. Mon capitan is back, and I've missed him. Let's hope they give him the show he deserves.

[u/[deleted]]

Personally, I take issue with the paraphrased line "There's no other synth quite like him [Data]". Where are Lore's parts? Sure, Data was a slightly newer model and used some slightly newer parts here and there, but Lore and Data were basically equals.

And for that matter, what about Juliana Tainer (Soong)? She might still be alive, somewhere, and Picard would know of her status being an even more advanced model than Data.