The XO skipper’s holographic pal made me wonder: are all AIs beyond a certain level now banned in the Federation, making even sentient holograms illegal, or are only Data-type androids using “positronic brains” verboten? Seems like a hacked/rogue AI could still do a lot of damage even without an android body. What about Korby-type and other known android technologies? (I guess all those are obviously banned now too, though it doesn’t seem like the Federation was ever able to recover that tech, especially with that Romulan cabal that “operate without regard for treaty or jurisdiction” in their mission to purge the galaxy of all synthetic life.) What about non- or only semi-intelligent robots on assembly lines and such? All automated factories suddenly getting shut down sounds like a catastrophic disaster,
Watching in Belfast, I felt a little attacked by that line 
I don’t think you’re actually missing anything here from lack of familiarity with the previous material-
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There was a discussion about some of the circumstances of the acquisition of the cube in the most recent episode, though it was also mentioned that parts of what happened are a mystery the characters intend to now investigate
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Interactions in what respect? I think a decent amount of time characterizing them has been spent. The only weak spot might be the Vulcan connection.
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I kind of suspect that’s sort of the point. A major theme of the series seems to be “who is our enemy really? And what do we owe them in their time of need? Etc” so of course we are going to see a variety of Romulans. Also, the Vulcan Starfleet agent seems to be set up specifically for us to wonder if they are a secret Romulan. I didn’t catch whether the series reminded us about the Vulcan Romulan historical connection though - it might have been helpful to have a better reminder.
After looking that up: ooh, nice.
The series is really gripping me, more so than Enterprise and Discovery. A few niggles here and there, the “no assimilation since…”, “I don’t get SF”, those are silly. Also how old are Dasj/Soji supposed to be? My guess is early twenties? They have worked up enough of a credit to get into the Daystrom Institute
and a super exclusive former Borg cube investigated by the Romulans?
I’m looking forward to going over the easter egg video when I get home.
IIRC Spock explained that Romulans and Vulcans are the same “species”, which used to be aggressive imperialists with a martial culture, savage and ruled by their emotions. The Vulcan moiety dealt with this by taking up meditation and logic and suppressing all emotions (at least that’s what they pretend), while the Romulans… didn’t, but rigidly ordered their society in other ways. Or, if you prefer, Klingons are space Russians, Romulans are space Chinese, and Vulcans are space Japanese.
Sorry I didn’t watch carefully enough, but who exactly did they say is controlling operations at the old cube? Is it a Starfleet operation? Or an independent Romulan thing? If the latter, what are the interactions between Romulans and SF? I saw many species at the cube - the blue guys, humans, some guy w/ a helmet that showed up in every alien crowd scene…
-Are the Romulans still IN Starfleet? (I know SF abandoned them, but does that equate with separation from the alliance?)
-Who is the SF Vulcan agent? I thought all the pointys were Romulans. I wasn’t aware that we has seen ANY Vulcans yet in this series.
Questions like these contribute to my attitude of just watching somewhat casually - which, in turn, contributes to my lack of specificity as to details, and so on… :rolleyes:
The impression I got from the episode (obviously more twists are to be revealed) is: the borg cube was happily cruising along when it attempted to assimilate a Romulan vessel. Somehow, it then succumbed to a mysterious virus (or something) and shut down. I’m assuming the Romulans then salvaged it, because the director of the Reclamation Project (the ex-Borg guy) refers to the Romulans as “our hosts”. I guess they now own the ruined cube and any salvageable equipment and technology they can exploit. Of course, if one thing has been made clear in this series, it is that there is now a bewildering mix of different Romulan factions, so who knows who is really running what?
ETA was the Romulan Empire ever in Starfleet? I thought Starfleet was specifically the Federation’s military arm (plus some research and exploration and other stuff).
Good point. I was forgetting the history, in which the Romulans (and Klingons) were pretty much the main enemies of Starfleet. I gues I got confuses in THIS series, with all the talk about rescuing thye Romulans, and the apparent acceptance of Romulans into various aspects of the Starfleet society (Picard’s servants, the security officer, the “cubists”…)
OK, I think you’re still confused on a number of points. The Romulans were never in the Federation. None of the Romulans we’ve seen so far in Picard are in Starfleet. With Romulus destroyed, there are a large population of refugees all over the place, two of whom happen to be former Romulan intelligence officers (Tal Shiar) who now take care of Picard’s estate and protect him from mysterious goon squad assassins.
(It seems likely that Commodore Oh is a secret Romulan, but she’s pretending to be a Vulcan to infiltrate Starfleet security.)
The mysterious Borg cube is not under the control of Starfleet; some group of Romulans is in control of it. None of the people aboard the cube are Starfleet personnel, but some appear to be human.
Thanks. I admit, I have been sloppy about my use of the term “Starfleet”.
What does ST call humans people living on earth? Citizens of the federation? Earthlings? Is there a “legal” distinction between - say - Picard’s citizenship, and that of his Romulan house-staff?
Since the housestaff Romulans were living openly on earth, I simply assumed Commodore Oh was also a Romulan. That is why I asked how you can tell Romulans from Vulcans. Was anything said to expressly state that Oh was supposedly Vulcan? Or was I to “know” that Romulans would not be Starfleet officers? Even tho Romulans historically were not in Starfleet OR the Federation, I did not realize that things couldn’t have changed after the end of Romulus, such that they now COULD be.
I didn’t get a sense that the Borg cube was operating secretly. Was that explained? Because the fact that the AI twin was there, the female Romulan spy was able to get there, many species were there including the African American human who showed up - all made me assume Starfleet/the Federation would be aware of it. Yeah, I know - space is REALLY big…
And what is the jurisdiction of Starfleet/the federation?
Seriously - thanks everyone for putting up w/ my ignorant questions.
In Ep. 3, Picard recognized Commodore Oh’s name and seemed to think she was a Vulcan, but, when asked, he admitted he did not actually know her, only that he heard she was “very good at her job”.
I assume that Earth has a united central government, as do a bunch of other planets, and that the Federation is, well, a federation of multiple planets, and operates a federal government. One complication seems to be that Starfleet is run by the Federation, but also employs a few non-Federation-citizens; maybe that is not unheard of historically. But, prior to Romulus’s destruction anyway, I don’t suppose you could have expected many Romulans to openly sign up. (ETA in Captain Kirk’s time the cold war was so cold apparently no one from Earth could even claim to have seen a Romulan in over a century.) I figure they will clarify the legal status of various Romulan refugees a bit more in the next episode.
I suspect this new “Romulan hatred of AI”…which may just be a trait of the Zhad Vash…and the fact that the Cube disconnected from The Borg after assimilating Romulans…is related.
I’d like to think Starfleet isn’t going to fall for the same trick twice.
[Ambassador T’Pel] Want a lick? Psyche! [/Ambassador T’Pel]
But I’m not holding my breath.
I see that the ST universe hasn’t yet switched to gender-neutral pronouns.
I’m watching ep 4 now…and i realized something
I want to applaud the producers for stopping to try and figure out what ‘futuristic garb’ will look like and just have people wear civilian clothes that look a great deal like ours.
Picard and Riker in ‘comfortable garb’ always looked like they were on spa holiday.
I really like the SF uniforms we’ve seen so far and of course the overall production value.
Edit: I also have a hard time seeing how we’re going to get a meaningful resolution by the end of ep 10. Nor a realistic direction once enough goals have been achieved. They arn’t a super-team!! ‘Rag-tag bunch of do-gooders in a Star Trek setting…?’ I dunno.
Soji’s little Data-esque head tilt of curiosity when Narek told her about the Borg ritual was a nice touch.
A few of the reviews I’ve read are making the obvious Cersei/Jaime connection with Narissa/Narek, but is anyone else getting a Battlestar Galactica Head Six feel from Narissa when she’s ostensibly(?) onboard the cube with Narek? Her demeanor is way more creepyhorny than when she is communicating via hologram, for one thing.
I just wish that somebody would say “You son of a bitch–I’m in.”
Don’t forget Ryker’s sparkly man cleavage shirt. Now with more chesthair exposure.
It’s not only the uniform designs but the overall costumes that are great, because there’s so much diversity. The hair department is doing a great job too. I loved that in the last episode, the people on Vashti had pretty much every Romulan hairstyle there ever was, from the classic shortish bowlcut with the V-shaped bangs to complete baldness to whathaveyou.
I actually dislike that. The TNG era civies were better. Our clothes are similar to but distinct from the clothes of the 19th century. The TNG (and DS9) clothes were clearly different from ours even if they followed the same scheme.
You do realise that Picards RP accent is not Patrick Stewarts original accent either?