“He’s my son”…
Christ, I saw TOS episodes in first run and Jean-Luc is older then MY dad. Gates isn’t older then my mom but only cause she had me at age 20.
-Little Princess Leia: “Grandfather maybe.”
Raffi, in this episode, typifies the issues I have with parts of current trek. They get some stuff amazingly right, and other stuff is written by people who have clearly never seen people talk. Hey! A Ferengi! He needs a mustache to twirl…oh…he’s dead. Raffi’s high, and here’s a %spoiler%…what a clunky way to introduce %spoiler%,because in the future, when there’s hundreds of billions of lifeforms, Star Trek is still the same dozen or so people hanging out.
(And when they reboot Trek again, I fully expect the Bridges will be 400 feet on a side.)
People live longer in the future. Leonard McCoy was 137 when he was on STtNG.
I don’t know, this just sort of felt like going through the motions. Of course they’re not giving over Jack. Of course he’s Picard’s son. Of course Raffi is going it alone. And Captain Vadic seems just cartoonish.
I think I’m just going to be Team Shaw from now on, pulled against his better judgment into the shenanigans of relics from the past. (But even there, the writing’s just thin: “I’m not going to jeopardize the lives of 500 people who were dragged into this without having any say in the matter!” – “But you’d be, like, a hero and stuff” – “OK fine, I’m in.”)
I did like the reverse-Worfing though: having him go through the bad guys effortlessly to establish how much of a tough guy he is. Still, he seems to be an odd choice as a handler for a covert operative, and the whole communicating only by text shtick appears to have been solely for the purpose of dramatic reveal.
Also, of all shows, Star Trek is the one bringing back smoking on screen? I mean, I know we don’t get a clean future anymore, but that just seemed incongruous.
They mentioned the fact that Picard has an artificial body. I had assumed they were Chuck Cunninghaming that whole thing.
Wow. Who’d have thought that Wesley would be the less annoying brother?
My theory of The Conspiracy Bugs being back explains Amanda Plummers over the top (WAYYY) dialogue. The Bugs have a love of theatre. And Picards being mentioned having a synthetic body. Would also explain why Moriarty and Lore appear.
Or one with light bulbs.
…yelped when Deacon said James Cole in a Terry Matalas production, then gasped when I found out this morning that Sneed was played by Aaron Stanford who died in the same way as Deacon (temporarily) did in the show.
A little bit on the nose there, Terry.
(Twelve Monkeys TV show spoilers: If this doesn’t make any sense, the Picard showrunner has thrown in a lot of references to the show Twelve Monkeys, that he also was showrunner for. Aaron Stamford played “James Cole”, and James Cole was one of Jack Crusher’s aliases which were read out by Captain Shaw, played by Todd Stashwick, who was Deacon in 12 Monkeys, who got his head taken off in that show)
It just hit me; Worf is an adopted Ukrainian. They may have explained Jack’s accent, but he’s sure aged terribly for a 29 year old.
Some people have been hard on this series for various reasons, and while I didn’t disagree with them, I still watched because I mostly liked the characters and the actors. The latest episode, Seventeen Seconds, annoyed me enough for me to post this. I didn’t mind it so much when they made bad trek with Discovery, but they’re fucking with established, loved characters now.
The thing that stood out to me in this episode was the immature bickering between Riker and Picard. Picard should know not to argue with the captain in front of the crew (in his role as Riker’s #1), and Riker was just childish when he told Picard, “You’ve just killed us all.” It was Picard’s ADVICE, but he was captain, and he agreed to it. The buck stops with him.
Also, wasn’t it pretty clear that the enemy ship, the Shrike, vastly outgunned the Titan, and IIRC, had better defensive abilities? They didn’t do much to out-think the enemy the whole episode, and generally that’s what gets them out of these situations. I guess the writers needed the ship to be in that position for another episode. Also, anyone who ever played the game Portal should have known the Shrike would open a portal in front of them and redirect the Titan’s attack back on itself. I saw it coming, and I don’t often do that.
The Founder acted like a scene-chewing holodeck character more than the calm, calculating character we knew from DS9.
I like Worf so far, but I wonder how long that will last. The idea of him, “working on himself”, but then some asshole always coming along who needs a bat’leth to the neck, kind of tickles me.
The actor who plays Jack Crusher is turning 35 this year. It’s a hard 35 in a future where people often live well past 100. Also, how the hell old is Beverly? Is she getting pregnant in her 60s? Maybe that’s why Jack looks so old.
…one of my favourite moments in Wrath of Khan was when Spock pointed out that Kahn was thinking in two dimensions, so they adjusted their tactics accordingly, adopting simple tactics that simply used all three dimensions.
I used these tactics to great effect in the video game Homeworld. I would send a diversion force straight down the middle to tie up the enemy, while sending the bulk of my forces on a longer journey straight down the map, then underneath my opponent’s base, then punched up and through my opponent’s base, wiping them all out in minutes. He would fall for this tactic, every single time. He was playing in two dimensions, but I was using all three. I don’t think he ever figured out what it was that I was doing.
I see it the same way here. But instead of thinking in three dimensions, the crew of the Shrike were thinking in four. The crew of the Titan were on the back foot because, tactically, they were thinking in three dimensions. And while Riker and Picard (and even Shaw) are very good at what they do, it was like being thrown into a game of Portal without getting the chance to play the tutorial.
I thought that scene was really well done. It was a twist on the Battle of the Mutara Nebula where it was Riker and Picard who struggled to conceptualize that extra dimension which ultimately lead to them shooting themselves in the arse.
Yeah, Im out. That end ruined it for me. Its artificial and unearned. Maybe there’s some twist to it. Like part of a plan. Too bad, cause I was excited for this ep based on clips.
Also:
Episode four: “STILL in this fucking nebula.”
The Riker-Picard bickering was EXTREMELY out of character, just to create a bit of tension. I’m going to keep watching and pretend that Riker had a case of space-flu that was warping his mind just a bit.
Yeah, maybe I’m being hasty. I read that there’s a lot of guilt and misplaced anger going on here.
I just dislike how ineffective/along for the ride that Riker has been written so far.
It’s already been mentioned how freakin’ dark many of the scenes are, and I really noticed it in ep.2-- my eyes were hurting from squinting, trying to make out anything in the murkiness. Especially on the command deck of a spacecraft. There’s no way it would be that dark.
Yeah I really didn’t like Picard and Riker being at odds. It was like listening to your parents fighting which feels uncomfortable. I am still onboard but I want to like this show more than I am.
Well, the thing is just—why bother? They had the Titan vastly outgunned, they could’ve had them crippled and dropping down into the nebula at any point. The portal gun could’ve been a neat touch, if they’d established a need for the Shrike to use it, similar to how Kirk needed to press his tactical advantage against Khan; but like this, it just seemed like one more neat doohickey tacked onto whatever Rube Goldberg plan just keeps and keeps and keeps unfolding here.
I mean, are we supposed to think that the plan was always to get Picard somehow into whatever lurks at the bottom of this nebula? If they’d just wanted him out of the game, then they could’ve just blown up the Titan. But then, was all of the stuff before just to somehow engineer this situation?
I expect there will be some attempt at explaining, but right now, there just is too little in the way of an indication of where this is supposed to go, to my taste.
Worf was cool, though. I hope he doesn’t end up noble-sacrificing.
…it was a defensive move. The Titan took them by surprise. To protect themselves, they threw up a portal. Maybe they just didn’t have time to redirect things somewhere else. Maybe it just wasn’t part of the plan.
I fear this is going to devolve into some grand master plan that depended on a very tiny unlikely thing happening. Like:
There are Nebula aliens (Like Wormhole aliens) living deep in the nebula so The Changelings needed a ship to go down there so they could portal them out. But that all depended on Beverly hiding in the nebula, which depended on Jack Crusher being chased…but the real target from Daystrom was Lore and Moriarty…
I GUESS if Moriarty devised this whole plan* its a teeny bit more plausible because he is Holmes rival and a Goldbergian plan like this smells like something out of a Holmes story.
*So,on a whim,the Holodeck created a God. Basically.