I thought it was great, and appreciated that it didn't feel like TNG.
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I thought it was great, and appreciated that it didn't feel like TNG.
Live thoughts while watching
The Enterprise D never looked so good.
Spiner doesn't look as bad as I thought he would, but he does look decidedly odd in HD.
I like how one of the first things they did was destroy the Enterprise. It was like "Okay, let's get this out of the way."
And suddenly we're in The Matrix.
For a second, I thought the girl might be Miles O'Brien's daughter all grown up.
Are Picard's houskeepers Romulans?
So, this is what led into the Kelvin-verse.
Wow, I really hate this reporter. Can the Agent Smiths kill her next?
Is the girl Lal?
How many synthetic lifeforms were there? I thought Data was relatively unique (outside of Lore and B-4).
It was nice seeing Picard in the old Starfleet uniform
I like how the Goldengate Bridge is now a big solar collector
Loved the archive. From the Captain Picard Day banner, to all of the ship models.
It IS Lal!
....And she's dead.
Since when do Romulans have acidic blood?
Always two there are. No more, no less. And on a Borg cube, no less.
Good start. Really looking forward to the rest of the season.
[QUOTE=Cyke;4798715]Well, yeah. The Vietnam War is one example -- yes, the country is intact, but destroying just one city was enough to spur diaspora that still has repercussions today, as reflected in the number of Vietnamese people living in the US, Canada, and France. There are obviously still Vietnamese people living in Vietnam, but the influx of refugees after the war really affected the US.
There are good odds of meeting a 2nd or 3rd gen Vietnamese American and finding out that their family immigrated as part of the refugee crisis of the war. A minority fraction of the population is still enough to be considered a refugee crisis.
Katrina as well is a well documented example of the government's mismanagement of relocation and rescue efforts, leading to other states struggling to take in survivors. Even mighty Texas had issues coordinating survivor intake -- it's not called a refugee crisis only because movement was intra-country, but the logistics would be even more nightmarish if they had to move to a foreign country with a completely different bureaucracy and style of government.
Also, note that in Trek, whenever Earth is threatened rarely does the villain say humanity is at stake, just the planet or Federation leadership. If Earth is destroyed, it's a huge blow to humanity, even though they're spread out over half the galaxy. It's not extinction, but it's a catastrophic and supremely eventful loss of life nonetheless. You can bet that humans would have its own refugee crisis if Earth was destroyed. They can always resettle after losing humanity's home, but again resettling is a major undertaking in response to catastrophe. Humans moving en masse could be seen as threatening to a Federation member world, and we've seen the kind of territory mess when the Maquis renounced Federation membership and encroached on Cardassian space -- and Maquis numbers are way smaller than Earth or Romulus blowing up.
And then there's the logistics and admin challenges that come with relocating the capital -- blowing Earth to stifle Federation leadership won't kill the Federation, but it would severely hamper their capacity and ability to mobilize, and that's why Earth needs protection. The Klingons couldn't handle that burden and that's why they needed the Khitomer Accords when Praxis blew up and damaged Qonos in Star Trek VI. DS9 also states that the Cardassians need this support from the three powers at the end of the show, despite being a nation whose planet survives a genocidal assault.
As we see with the ample Romulan population here, there's still plenty of them but they're not the force they used to be. It would take decades, maybe even centuries, to rebuild to those previous levels, and even then that would leave other powers unchallenged and free to advance.
A planet blowing up is one thing, and is already a refugee crisis at smaller populations. A capital and/or a homeworld blowing up isn't just a refugee crisis (which it is, obviously), but it would upset the balance and relationship of power with other nations, and severely hampers the ability to coordinate rescue, relocation, and resettlement efforts. That's a huge crisis, too. If we lost Washington D.C., other states would step in to help, sure, but you better believe that we would readily accept help from Canada, Mexico, the UK, the EU, etc, and the surrounding states would have to try to absorb the survivors and evacuees, when they already have a tough time absorbing much slower trends of new residents. And while US states and allies try to help, less friendly countries would look to take advantage of this low point.
Plus, logically, no member world or conquered world is likely to have a bigger population (at least of Romulans) than the homeworld. If this happened to Earth, by most implications, Earth still likely has the highest concentration of humans despite all the colonies. Moving 7 billion humans (nevermind any other races) into hundreds of colonies where the max population is in the tens of thousands isn't feasible, and it's not like you can just dump them on a Federation member world like Vulcan, Betazed, and Andoria on a whim overnight without violating their position in the Federation. That takes a crap ton of coordination that would likely take years to sort out.[/QUOTE]
Something else to consider- depending on how long after Nemesis the supernova took place, the Romulans were probably still rebuilding their government after Shinzon killed them all.
[QUOTE=ZeroBG82;4798820]Talk about a deep cut. We went straight to name checking Maddox, a character not seen since early TNG. Mad respect just for the reach, and actually using one that is apropos. I wonder if we'll get to see the man himself? And will they bring back the same actor to do it? I haven't been this excited for a piece of Trek continuity nerdity since Barclay got to appear in First Contact.[/QUOTE]
Is Maddox the scientist that wanted to disassemble Data to study him, which led to the trial on the Enterprise?
[QUOTE=AnakinFlair;4800523]Is Maddox the scientist that wanted to disassemble Data to study him, which led to the trial on the Enterprise?[/QUOTE]
"The Measure of a Man", yep. During the Pulaski season (season 2)!
[QUOTE=Nate Grey;4800524]"The Measure of a Man", yep. During the Pulaski season (season 2)![/QUOTE]
That was a really good episode.
Time to break out my TNG blu-rays!
[QUOTE=Reservoir Dog;4799167]At first, I thought Dahj was Lal when it was revealed that she’s an android. But I thought Lal’s name was gonna be name dropped too.
When Picard said that Data always wanted a daughter, that wasn’t true. I just watched the episode when Data created Lal. He allowed Lal to pick its gender and species; he never said that he wanted a daughter but that he wanted to procreate.[/QUOTE]
That was before Lal's death, I think we can surmise after her death caused him to change his mind... since even before his emotion chips .. his creator once said implied he could missed (actually it was grieve) someone in his own way .. with the emotion chip who know how much he missed her... he always planed to try again maybe after her death he now has a preference
Just finished the first episode and it was pretty great, very different than any previous iteration of Trek but I love that it looks to be doing it's own thing.
As someone who has never cared for TNG, I enjoyed the first episode. The concept is a fairly simple one, and it takes the time to establish everything a new viewer needs to know to keep things clear. I'm sure there's a lot a long-time fan can dig into, and speculate about but I'm just happily entertained.
I've had a sort of up and down relationship with TNG over the years. Often really great stories but it was always fairly stiff and uptight, I guess you could say, and Picard totally overshadowed the other characters. It's why I'll always prefer the original crew.
That said, I really loved this first episode of this. Stewart is brilliant as always and it has more of a First Contact vibe to it, where it feels looser and more natural. The plot definitely has me intrigued and I'm enough of a fan of the old show to get and enjoy the fan-servicey stuff but the real draw here is Picard himself, who is a bit more world-weary but no less idealistic and principled.
[QUOTE=Anthony W;4798260]It's better than Discovery, it could have been so much worse.
I want to see where this goes.
Things I liked.
Patrick Stewart as Picard. The casting for the other characters works.
Things I didn't like.
I know we needed to get the info dump out of the way but they used the old tired "ratings hungry reporter sensationalizes news in a trap interview" bit. As soon as they were talking about the subject matter of the interview I sighed. Maybe they should have [B]showed[/B] us those events. It feels like we have [B]missed[/B] two episodes worth of story. A lame music video about two brats in school fighting doesn't do that. If you are wondering what I'm talking about watch the Short Trek titled "Children Of Mars" it's terrible.
Dahj shows up at Picard's house with a head wound and talking about being attacked and [B]her boyfriend being killed in front of her and then killing her attackers and Picard...gives her tea and puts her to bed instead of alerting the authorities immediately?[/B] I get that if Picard went to the authorities it would slow the whole episode down and we wouldn't see Dahj karate kick people...but man show you are asking a lot of me.
There is no need to try to make Data look younger. The fans will understand. I find it funny that they are obsessed with trying to make Data look young (something the fans won't get bent out of shape about) but turned around and made the Klingons look like orcs without a second thought.
It's the Romulan Star Empire...not the Romulan Star Planet. They have an empire with numerous worlds and all it takes is the destruction of one and all of a sudden we have a refugee crisis? The loss of one world did all of this? Just one?[/QUOTE]
Picard doesn’t TRUST the authorities.
Kind of curious about the synths. It's pretty much established that there are other humanoid robots in Star Trek in TOS, almost right away, although they didn't seem to have the ability to really advance beyond their basic programming like Data did, or were simply duplicates. Korby's were more or less just copies, Sargon's were meant mainly as vessels, the Mudd androids couldn't handle illogical stuff etc....
One thing I'm kind of curious about is the Enterprise-E's whereabouts and who is the Captain. Perhaps at one point Starfleet will send it after Picard if his mission isn't authorized....
Also the preview for the next episode seems to show Picard looking over what seems to be Riker in what looks like a sickbay. Hopefully they didn't bring back Riker in order to just kill him off or something.
Just watched the episode again. Picard needs to take some lessons from Captain Shepard when it comes to dealing with reporters. ;)
[QUOTE=ChrisIII;4802025]Kind of curious about the synths. It's pretty much established that there are other humanoid robots in Star Trek in TOS, almost right away, although they didn't seem to have the ability to really advance beyond their basic programming like Data did, or were simply duplicates. Korby's were more or less just copies, Sargon's were meant mainly as vessels, the Mudd androids couldn't handle illogical stuff etc....
One thing I'm kind of curious about is the Enterprise-E's whereabouts and who is the Captain. Perhaps at one point Starfleet will send it after Picard if his mission isn't authorized....
Also the preview for the next episode seems to show Picard looking over what seems to be Riker in what looks like a sickbay. Hopefully they didn't bring back Riker in order to just kill him off or something.[/QUOTE]
I think the distinction they made between those earlier TOS androids and Data and perhaps these mysterious synths is the idea of sentience, with the latter having that quality while the former did not.
[QUOTE=Reservoir Dog;4799167]At first, I thought Dahj was Lal when it was revealed that she’s an android. But I thought Lal’s name was gonna be name dropped too.
When Picard said that Data always wanted a daughter, that wasn’t true. I just watched the episode when Data created Lal. He allowed Lal to pick its gender and species; he never said that he wanted a daughter but that he wanted to procreate.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, Picard should've just used something gender neutral, like child or offspring, since that's more accurate. It's only because of Lal's choice of gender that Data refers to his "daughter" in subsequent references. But Picard's comment does make me wonder if Data ever re-accessed his memories of Lal *after* the installation of his emotion chip. I can't imagine how devastating that would be.
I can't believe so many people like this. It feels like Star Trek / Star Wars remake, where "Fans" of the original try to write a show as good, but just end up mining the best stuff and aren't as creative or talented as the originals. I'm sorry, but this show is dumb. It's just star trek for dumb people written by dumb people.
There was a moment in force awakens where they build a new death star, but they were like no, it's a death star but 10x the size, and instead of destroying one planet, it destroys 3. And with this it's like what if borg and romulans worked together, zomg! Federation are now bad, and data is now special. Did they actually invent anything new? They're cashing in on memberries like so many others have been doing.
How many franchises does Abrams and his buddies get to ruin.