Star Trek: Picard 1.01 - "Remembrance"

[lizbee]

I have watched the thing!

My initial reaction was, THAT WAS GREAT, I LOVE IT, I JUST HAVE SOME MINOR QUIBBLES!

Then my quibbles grew, eg:

• we have two characters played by black people; one is unceremoniously killed, the other is patronised by Picard in a scene which reminded me of Babylon 5 (and not in a good way)
• this is literally the second Trek premiere which presents an Asian woman as a lead, then kills her and subs in an identical replacement?
• like, really??????
• I can't believe we're doing Cylons
• there were a lot of women in this episode, but they didn't speak to each other
• this is not a show about relationships, but so far I'm seeing a lot of heterosexuality

I think that at least some of these problems will shake themselves out as the series goes on and the rest of the cast is introduced, but I feel like ... okay, I had this thought about The Mandalorian as well: if you know your show is going to be released week to week, then you should probably write and cast accordingly, so that you don't end up with (for example) three consecutive episodes and only one scene with a female character?

These problems aside, THAT WAS GREAT, I LOVE IT. On a purely contrarian note, I really enjoy that Modern Trek is all about brilliant female relatives of iconic male characters. And Brent Spiner's scenes were incredibly effective and affecting.

(I feel like Lal needed a more overt shoutout? I realise that this show needs to be accessible to new viewers, and also "The Offspring" is just an inferior version of "The Measure of a Man", but still!)

(Lore ... probably also needed a shoutout. I guess.)

I'm not into the whole synths storyline so far -- not least because it feels like Discovery has also touched on this, but the two series aren't quite in conversation with each other. And where do sentient holograms fit in? Was Maddox and his team really just building an army of synthetic beings in a factory? That seems ... ethically problematic.

(As does using Data's positrons to create posthumous offspring. Maybe Data arranged for that in his will? I've seen Star Trek, so I assume that Maddox is hanging out on an isolated planet with an inappropriately young wife, doing Mad Science, but maybe this whole thing with Dahj and Soji is actually just his self/Data babyfic gone too far.)

BUT I can easily buy that a lot of Federation citizens are prejudiced against synthetic life forms, even without the whole "destroyed Mars" business.

(Guys, they destroyed Mars.)

Like, consider the way Pulaski treated Data; the way a lot of people -- Voyager's crew, at first, but also Beverly -- treat the EMH. So that makes sense to me! But I have questions about ... look, Cylons? Again?

(I stand by my position that Michael Chabon is not necessarily a good or original writer of science fiction. Or women. Or women in science fiction.)

Comments

[nostalgia]

is it BORGS post-War ?

[lizbee]

Yup! Dunno what's happening with regard to the Gamma Quadrant at this stage, but I bet that war didn't help when the Federation was going, "You know, a bit of isolationism might be nice..."

[nostalgia]

Was 7o9 in it? I LOVE HER IS SHE DEAD SAY NO PLS.

[lizbee]

She's not in it yet! But Jeri Ryan said something which implies she's in season 2.

[nostalgia]

yay!

[kore]

She's in the "this is what will be happening on this show" preview!

[fahrbotdrusilla]

I really hope the EMH from voyager wasn’t decommissioned when the cylons attacked mars.

Daj’s mom was in her mind, yes? I’m wondering why she didn’t mention her sister... if she even knows, maybe Soji knew about daj, but Daj didn’t know about her (like Lore/Data) but The way they talked about it they would have been created at the same time.

I think in measure of a man data consented to leave his body for science, but I haven’t watched it in a year or two so may be misremembering.

[lizbee]

Daj’s mom was in her mind, yes?

I think so, yeah.

(And Dahj not mentioning that she's a twin felt very contrived on a rewatch. Like, if someone's suggesting you're an artificial construct, wouldn't you go, "No way, I have parents and a twin sister!"

I think in measure of a man data consented to leave his body for science, but I haven’t watched it in a year or two so may be misremembering.

I need to double check!

[kore]

I thought that might have had more to do with their 'upbringings'? Like how on earth did Soji wind up with the Romulations on a Borg cube while Dahj was going to work with the Federation? AI lab? And not only that, Dahj BEING an artifical life form (synth whatever) suddenly casts a sort of weird light on that....but, maybe they don't have the same life programming/memories, for whatever reason. Maybe.

(Would you be interesting in doing -- or someone doing -- a Picard post for spacefungusparty to see if people want to discuss it there? I miss that place and the discussions were SO GOOD)

[starlady]

My guess is that Dahj was brought up in total ignorance (her mother, possibly less so?) while Soji at least knows some of her origins…I'd bet quite a lot of Federation credits that Maddox is the person she's referring to as "her father." But the preview clip of Narek saying she has no idea who she is indicates that she doesn't know much.

[aristofranes]

Yeah, I also had similar concerns about the treatment of POC which ... I'm really hoping they learned from the missteps of Discovery, in a what not to do sort of way rather than a follow this template kind of way

But on the whole - I'm in, albeit slightly more cautiously than I'd anticipated. It was an exposition-heavy ep, so hopefully now that the scene is set we can just get on with the plot.

[lizbee]

I'm really hoping they learned from the missteps of Discovery, in a what not to do sort of way rather than a follow this template kind of way

Yeah, Hanelle Culpeper spoke on Women at Warp about the drive to bring more diversity behind the scenes, but that's a long process. And then you have to keep them -- when it seems like CBS's "zero tolerance for discrimination" policy applies more to PoC than white dudes.

At least, on a narrative level, Picard has made it through a whole season without a showrunner change. So the story will be consistent, but maybe ... consistently not great with race?

[kore]

LOL I had a lot of the very same reactions: https://kore.dreamwidth.org/1487800.html

PICARD: AMAZING, WONDERFUL, GREAT

Treatment of women and PoC: :-//////

Background plot and setup, and stuff about synths: wha? And did they really want to make this so dependent on Nemesis? I couldn't even remember whether or not I had seen Nemesis. That was annoying.

[kore]

OMG I just realized I linked you to a LOCKED entry, SLIGHTLY tacky (I keep forgetting I had to lock my entire blog down). But now you have access!

[lizbee]

THANK YOU!

I think they had to make it dependent on Nemesis -- awful as it was, it was literally the last time we saw these characters, and ended with Data's death. I'm just glad they walked back the horrible novel pseudocanon where Data more or less possessed B4.

[kore]

I asked T "Did we see Nemesis?" and he was just like "....did we?"

[lizbee]

My flatmate was like, "Do I need to watch Nemesis?"

I said, "Here's all you need to know: Riker and Troi get married; Picard has an evil clone played by Tom Hardy, who is doing his best; the evil clone mindrapes Troi and everyone is a dick to her about it; Data finds his own beta; then he dies. And there's a dune buggy race."

She chose to skip Nemesis.

[kore]

Wait wha, EVIL CLONE? Tom Hardy?? Did I see this movie and then get zapped by the Men in Black right afterwards?

[archangelbeth]

Look, all I want is a cut of Nemesis that has all the Donatra bits (even the ones from the cutting room floor) and everything else can go hang.

...yes, I obsessed over a tertiary character from a movie that otherwise had all my internal STO characters throwing popcorn. *covers face with hands*

[starlady]

I was very glad that I (re)watched The Measure of a Man this week, that's for sure. I stand by my idle speculation that Maddox could still show up in this show. I also think that they could go either way with his (presumably) having created the Soji and Dahj twins: either he did it on his own recognizance, or it's something that he and Data talked about in their ongoing correspondence after their meeting.

I think they did the best possible job they could getting Nemesis and Star Trek 2009 to make sense in the main timeline, and the Federation's treatment of Data, of holograms, and of genetically engineered people makes their attitude towards "synthetics" very plausible. That said, I'm extremely intrigued by the fact that the AI researcher is like "the synths that destroyed Mars came out of this lab" and yet she still has a job? Obviously a lot to unpack with her.

The Mars attack thing has reminded me powerfully of B5 since I saw "Children of Mars" (come on, the synth ships in there look quite a lot like Shadow vessels) and I am still powerfully reminded of B5 in general, especially since there's now a kind of narrative equivalence between Mars and Romulus. Having just rewatched Generations, though, where the media also get very short shrift, I don't think we need to go to B5 for Picard lecturing the anchor, we can stay in Trek just fine.

The artificial intelligence thing in general does feel awkward, given that Discovery just spent a whole season on it and jumped to the 29thC to avoid a very evil artificial intelligence. As with some of the other wince-worthy bits you point out, you can tell this show came out of the same brain trust, Michael Chabon (who I'm not really a fan of) notwithstanding.

[lizbee]

That said, I'm extremely intrigued by the fact that the AI researcher is like "the synths that destroyed Mars came out of this lab" and yet she still has a job?

If the character is the same age as the actress, she'd have been just 20 when Mars was destroyed -- definitely not involved firsthand. I'm more puzzled by the fact that she has a career at all, and that the Daystrom Institute is apparently still accepting research fellows into this dead-end field.

As with some of the other wince-worthy bits you point out, you can tell this show came out of the same brain trust, Michael Chabon (who I'm not really a fan of) notwithstanding.

Yeah, but it also feels a bit like DS9 covering the same ground as Voyager with holographic rights, and apparently not realising they weren't doing anything new? Like, I can see how the Discovery stuff can be integrated (clearly the whole "Control can never happen again" is why it takes a century to get from Mudd's androids to Data), but it's not clear yet.

[starlady]

My impression from the dialogue about Maddox recruiting her out of Starfleet, them coming so close, and her knowing so much about his theories (the necklace symbol, for instance) is that they had to have been working together before the Mars attack. (It's also not clear how long a lag there was between assault and ban.) PatStew is 79, but Picard is 93; there could be a similar presumed gap in Jurati's case. I'm sure we'll find out more soon.

[pauraque]

I have now also watched the thing! I had pretty much all the same reactions as you, except I still haven't seen Discovery so I didn't know they did the exact same thing with their Asian lead in the first episode (really?? why is this a thing they are doing and continuing to do???), and I haven't seen BSG so maybe the elements that are reminiscent of it feel less played-out to me.

I wondered about sentient holograms too. Maybe that'll get a mention eventually. (Seven would be well-positioned to point it out!) Also, like, the fact that it seems like Starfleet at one point signed off on the plan to create a race of android slaves to do dirty work... you know, the very thing that the events of Measure of a Man was supposed to prevent? But apparently they weren't as advanced as Data. But then why did they rebel (if that's what happened)?

I also was a bit taken aback that I was expected to remember whatever the hell happened in Nemesis, which I have not seen since the day it was released. I guess they couldn't really help it, though, if they wanted to make Picard's friendship with Data a big part of the show (which I do think was a great choice). And really I'm not at all opposed to taking one of the less successful parts of canon and making some tasty lemonade out of those lemons.

[rivendellrose]

I'm glad I'm not the only person whose overwhelming reaction to this premier was, basically, "Really?" to all those things listed above. I mean, honestly.

Alas, I did not have the 'it was great I loved it' bit. I'm starting to think I'm just broken about fandom, lately. I want to love it. I just... can't seem to.

And yeah, it's pretty much never a good idea when a writer of literary fiction does sci-fi. They always wind up thinking they've invented something Very Clever that the genre's actually been doing since, like, forever.