I call these posts low effort because I can kinda just go from memory, I don’t need to think too hard about what I am doing, but inevitably they end up super long, so saying its low effort seems a little silly, but if I was actually doing something thesis driven or writing a story, that would be a lot more effort even if it ended up shorter. But anyway, so more random reactions to Picard, this time for S3E7.
At the start of the episode they are talking to Data and then Lore takes over so they shut him off, and then they discuss, hey, what should we do about Data? His brain is partitioned and Geordi can remove the partition to let them integrate but Lore might end up destroying Data, or he can keep it and Lore still might end up taking over, blah blah blah, what should we do. My question is, why not ask Data? If they really think he is a person deserving human rights - something we had a whole episode of TNG about and that Picard the show so far mostly seems to indicate is still the intended interpretation and how Picard the person is supposed to see him - than surely he should decide the best course of action, not Picard and Geordi while he is turned off. Also kinda feels rude that Picard just tells Geordi to switch him off once Lore takes over - you cannot do that to a person. Lore says later in the episode he wants the same things as the changelings, to survive, and like, thats pretty reasonable? It really feels like Geordi and Picard are failing to live up to their ideals here. This is not necessarily a problem - like I think the show is at least somewhat aware and thats the point and hopefully this problem will somehow resolve in a way to make peace with Lore, not destroy him - but I do wonder exactly how much of this is intentional to further that theme and how much is the writers not thinking about how violating it would be for someone to turn your consciousness off mid sentence or whether Data (and perhaps Lore, although an argument could be made he gave up those rights when he became a murderbot) should have the right to self determination with regards to whether to integrate with Lore or delete him or suppress him or whatever.
This is honestly almost completely an aside and maybe should be its own thesis driven blog post but I feel like modern Trek is written in such a way to make the universe feel tiny. I remember in Strange New Worlds constantly being mind boggled they were so close to all these Star bases and planets and they just kept meeting up with Captain Love Interests ship and its like, are they even going anywhere? I felt the same at times in Discovery, although somewhat less so, and during these last few episodes of Picard, and I think I know what the difference is. Older Trek episodes were almost entirely episodic, and as such would mostly only occur in one place. Usually episodes would start with them journeying to that place, there would be some slice of life stuff on the ship that would often but not always set up the plot somehow, they’d arrive, stuff would happen, then they’d be back on the ship and discuss what happened. Sometimes instead the episode would open with noting that they were en route somewhere, but the first half or more of the episode would occur while they were en route and only the climax would actually occur once they arrived. Other times they’d be en route but the entire plot would take place on the ship during that journey - sometimes it would be about the place, other times it would be interpersonal conflict or random holodeck shenanigans or maybe a space anomaly is discovered whole they are en route. The point being, there was always a sense of journeying and distance being conveyed in how the plot was structured. It was very rare for a scene to occur, we find out we need to be in Y place, and then the next scene we are there - even if an episode was written such that we would need to be in two places and journey between them (rare) there would usually be at least one scene during the journey establishing the passing of time.
Modern Trek is different, though. Events usually happen at the places, and we skip the journey. We go to Warp 9.9 and then next scene we are there. Part of this is I think also influenced by how modern Trek is more serialized (or completely so in the case of early seasons of Discovery and all of Picard) which means there is always a lot of pressure to solve whatever the season long crisis happens to be, which is always some big fucking deal, so it feels unnatural to watch them calmly discuss Dom Jot over tea or whatever. I also think a bigger focus on action influences this - they want to keep the episode exciting so they are rushing to get from set piece to set piece. In general I think this is a deliberate artistic choice that is accomplishing creative goals the writers and directors and what not have, but I think the cost is it makes the Universe feel tiny because we never see the time it takes to get anywhere. Personally I greatly prefer the style of older Trek, and also value that sense of distance, so I think this is a bad trade off, trading a good sense of distance for a negative payoff, but for people who like the more serialized plots and high action set pieces, they may see it as a necessary evil, or even a good thing.
I am legitimately unsure if I just missed something, but Picard is having a conversation with Jack and then suddenly is like, “Maybe we do have the advantage.” and then the next scene Vadic is boarding the ship and they end up trapping her in some force fields (I think this is actually what made me think the previous thought about the universe feeling small). And like… what? I really expected them to have some amazing plan and it would eventually be clear how they had the advantage, but like, their plan ends up failing and if his whole idea was, “If we let them board us we control the ship so can trap them.” That was a dumb plan. Thats just Picard forgetting that letting the enemy board you is stupid, especially enemies who can become liquid and squeeze through tiny gaps and then look like normal crew members. I actually kept expecting Picard to be like, “Ah ha!” and reveal his secret plan and advantage they had all along which would make that line make sense and it never happened. So this feels like dumb and bad writing, Picard being stupid on purpose to move the plot forward, but I kind of suspect I missed something.
I’ve mentioned before that I hate Starfleet officers using disintegration weapons, and my opinion on that has not changed but I find it interesting that I mentioned before that it was discordant for Beverly in particular, a doctor who has vowed to do no harm, is using one, and then she herself brought it up in this episode, but in the context of, “Well, maybe I will do some harm anyways,” She then also later has a conversation with Picard that she thinks she may be losing her moral compass. On the one hand I am glad the show is addressing this, albeit belatedly, but I’m not convinced they are doing a good job, especially because Picard is like, “Well, maybe we should develop a genocidal tool just in case and decide once we have it whether to use it,” all the while Vadic is making it clear just how far Starfleet has fallen. Things will probably turn around at some point, but its hard to be invested in these guys as heroes even with decades of history when they are saying to the camera “Are we the baddies?” then shrugging and continuing to do bad stuff while your villains are like, “Please stop torturing our people.” Like honestly after this episode I’m Team Vadic. Down with Starfleet. I think Vadic is suppose to be sympathetic, but not the person you side with, and its got a lot of work to do to convince I should be on Picard’s side for anything other than “I am personally invested in his character,” reasons, because morally he is a shit storm this season. This does definitely feel like an issue I am going to later have to be like, “Okay, fine once the plot landed I get it,” but I still think they are leaning too hard on the grimdark side for the changelings to be like, “You used a bioweapon to genocide us and and then experimented on us while we were alive to turn us into weapons,” and for Picard to be like, “Yeah, well, it was war, and maybe we’ll do it again, how do you like that?” There is also a lot of casual racism against changelings being tossed out too which feels jarring coming from Starfleet mouths with no pushback. Keiko needs to be here to say, “Raffaella, that was very ugly,” and then plopping down some potato stew.
Speaking of turning the changelings into weapons, it was just yesterday I was complaining about how Picard was tweaking changeling lore in ways that made DS9 era Starfleet look like idiots, but it payed off this episode… kinda. I get what they were going for and why they thought they needed to do this. But like… did they? Given that no accurate way to detecting changelings was ever demonstrated in DS9, they could have just had these changelings be prisoners of war who were tortured so Starfleet could brainwash them, or try to clone them or hybridize them with humans to make their own spies, or to interrogate them - any number if reasons, without actually tweaking the lore in this way which results in DS9 retroactively making less sense. At the end of the day, they wanted to tell this story and they probably were not thinking super hard about how these lore tweaks would affect interpretation of DS9, and its not a huge deal, but I would definitely have preferred a more careful approach, and it is entirely possible to have written this same plot with slightly different details that would be wholly consistent with how DS9 portrayed them instead of off just enough that you wonder why changelings were ever hard to detect before.
Finally, Jack using telepathy to instruct Sidney how to fight was stupid as fuck and I hated it. She is Starfleet. She knows how to fight. I honestly hate how fights in modern Trek feel like anime fights where everyone is either a god tier fighter who uses a flashy martial art or a complete pushover, and in the context of that it makes sense Jack is conveying his anime protagonist powers telepathically to her, but like, fuck that. She is a Starfleet Officer, she was trained as a soldier. Jack was not, and like, I’m sure we will find out why he is having borg themed seizures which make him an anime protagonist and why he can transfer those skills to her, but I don’t like it and it feels like it hugely undermines her character that she needed him to do that. Bad vibes all around, I disapprove.
One last thing, I hope we find out why these clicky aliens are so clicky before our heroes disintegrate them all with their auto kill weapons. Are they changelings? Are they a new kind of Jem Hadar? Why do they communicate in clicks? I actually am pretty sure they are also supposed to be changelings based on what has been said but I do not understand why they look and speak the way they do and I hope the show addresses it. Oh, that actually reminds me of a thought I had - its weird to me that old Trek just hand waived all alien languages with a universal translator, except in particular instances where it was malfunctioning, while modern Trek tends to leave them untranslated and subtitle. Is this supposed to represent diversity - as it might if these were real languages, showing other cultures more accurately - or is it actually a way to make them seem more alien and thus its okay for our heroes to disintegrate them with impunity? I feel like it was probably intended to be the first, but it definitely seems to have the second effect in my opinion, especially because the aliens the shows choose to do it for - Klingons and these clicky guys off the top of my head - are enemies while like Vulcans are shown just speaking English usually. I dunno, food for thought. I don’t have a huge preference either way but I do think the shows should be careful not to use it to dehumanize aliens.
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