Star Trek: Picard Catch-All [Spoilers]

... I have questions.

$50 on Captain Wesley Crusher.

Also, I have really enjoyed the show a lot, up to this last episode. It's starting to have the Got season 8 problem of things happening simply because the plot requires them to happen. Everything is moving incredibly quickly, implausibly quickly. Which the show logistics probably require, but it stretches my suspension of disbelief.

SO what do we think the over/under is on:

Spoiler:

JLP getting the shiny new robot body that is intended for Soong Jr but for some reason is built as a blank instead of looking like him

Alton Inigo Soong.

A.I. Soong.

Subtle, Star Trek Picard. Subtle.

To be fair, Noonian Soong was his father and he named his android sons B4, Lore, and Data. The man was a genius, but obsession with punny names was his weakness.

Djinn wrote:

To be fair, Noonian Soong was his father and he named his android sons B4, Lore, and Data. The man was a genius, but obsession with punny names was his weakness.

BY his normal naming standard that makes his (allegedly) bio son's name downright clever.

Prediction: A.I. Soong is Lore in disguise. Giving himself an incredibly obvious punny name that he assumes the meat creatures around him are too stupid to see through would be entirely in character.

The Reapers mysterious all-powerful trans-dimensional synths are the crystalline entity's species.

OOOh the crystalline entity, that is a good tie in.

Djinn wrote:

To be fair, Noonian Soong was his father and he named his android sons B4, Lore, and Data. The man was a genius, but obsession with punny names was his weakness.

Did you hear some of the names of the other androids on the planet? Saga, Codex, Rune, and Arcana.

hbi2k wrote:

Prediction: A.I. Soong is Lore in disguise.

"My father had me, but he created Data - a fact he never let me forget."

For some reason, I expected the Picard speech to not be so... powerless.

I think that's been the whole theme of the show. His newfound irrelevance and lack of agency and power.

Spoiler:

They even do a gag on that when they decide to take Soji home. When he sits on the captains chair and is about to say "Engage!" and then he realizes it and moves chairs.

maverickz wrote:

$50 on Captain Wesley Crusher.

Wil Wheaton backed out of JoCo Cruise last-minute because he had the chance of a lifetime and didn't want to mess it up with potential post-boat-quarantine:

Wil Wheaton wrote:

In about three weeks, I will start a job that has the potential to change my career, and my life. I'm not paranoid, I'm not panicking, but I'm considering my future, my family's future, and doing my best to make choices that are in their best interests.

...

I have a chance to live my dream. *MY* dream, not someone else's dream that I felt obligated to live for most of my life. I know that there is not a person among you who would even consider for a moment putting anything in between me and realizing that dream.

...just sayin'.

Couldn't be for Picard if it happened around the time of the outbreak of the pandemic, could it?

Season 2 maybe.

Ranger Rick wrote:
maverickz wrote:

$50 on Captain Wesley Crusher.

Wil Wheaton backed out of JoCo Cruise last-minute because he had the chance of a lifetime and didn't want to mess it up with potential post-boat-quarantine:

Wil Wheaton wrote:

In about three weeks, I will start a job that has the potential to change my career, and my life. I'm not paranoid, I'm not panicking, but I'm considering my future, my family's future, and doing my best to make choices that are in their best interests.

...

I have a chance to live my dream. *MY* dream, not someone else's dream that I felt obligated to live for most of my life. I know that there is not a person among you who would even consider for a moment putting anything in between me and realizing that dream.

...just sayin'.

Based on a lot of the things hes said, I don't think Will Wheaton's personal dream would involve playing Wesley Crusher again. He seems to genuinely hate the character and reacts pretty hostilely (albeit kindly to those doing it in ignorance) to references to it.

He's also doing the post-episode talks with other actors, which would be a really weird gig for someone who's going to be playing a major role. Not saying it's impossible, but I wouldn't put any large bets on it.

Based on a lot of the things hes said, I don't think Will Wheaton's personal dream would involve playing Wesley Crusher again. He seems to genuinely hate the character and reacts pretty hostilely (albeit kindly to those doing it in ignorance) to references to it.

I don't think he hates the character - more like hates the "Shut up, Wesley" culture that developed around it and takes it personally when people treat him like that, or blame him for the character's problems. It's actually pretty similar to people going after Kelly Marie Tran for playing Rose Tico.

If he actually hates even being associated with the character, getting involved in anything Star Trek - including the Ready Room show - would be radioactive to him. I don't think that's the case at all.

None of this means that he's coming back to play Wesley in some role or another based on what he wrote. I'd put money on it not being that at all, in fact. Just clarifying what I feel like I've seen him say about Wesley.

I wouldn't say he hates the association, he clearly has a love for Star Trek and the people he worked with at the time. He's definitely explicitly said he would never want to play the character again though. It's possible he might change his mind on that given the right offer, i hesitate to actually guess his internal feelings i'm just going with that hes stated. I do agree that's probably not the case here.

Spoiler:

What the hell happened?! What an awful last episode. What an awful end to the series. What a cringe inducing mess of Mary Sueing and over indulgent fan service. And this is in a show that's basically all fan service. Oof. What happened?

Wait, wait, wait, wait....

Spoiler:
Spoiler:

THAT WAS HER THE WHOLE TIME?!

So that finale felt so...rushed. I realized my feelings on the entire season can be summed up by John Mullaney as he describes making a happy birthday sign.

Well,

Spoiler:

On January 31:

kazar wrote:

Just wait until the finale. You know they are going to reveal that Picard was replaced with an android ;).

Spoiler:

I think the only part I actually truly liked was the Ogdru Jahad trying to make their way out of the Hellboy universe into the ST universe.

Well that was fun! For me, this series has been more like reading a nice Star Trek book. A bit slow going into it, but the pace picks up as it goes along until I'm eating it up. Even the length of time spent in the medium seems about right. Some parts happen as predicted but I'm happy to watch how they turn out, while others are nice surprises. There's spectacle. There are heroics. There's neat tech. There are coincidences. Surrounding all of that there is heart. It's all there, and I've been very entertained by it.

I was pretty entertained by it all, but the writing never came together like I'd hoped. I liked that they didn't lean too hard on fan service, but honestly the fan service seemed like the best part of it, so I feel conflicted about it. Also not sure how I feel about giving Data yet another death scene. Maybe they can move past him next season. It would be cool if Seven of Nine was a more permanent member of the cast, based on that end scene.

I'll look forward to whatever's next, but I hope it's a little more coherent.

My big question I guess is...now what? The entire reason Picard got all those people together has been accomplished. Now what are they gonna do? Cruise around for no good reason?

Anyone else get final-season-of-Game-of-Thrones vibes from the two-part Picard finale?

Like they had the skeleton of a decent story, but for some reason they ended the season at 10 episodes when they could've fleshed out the finale into an additional 2-3 episodes. For instance:

Spoiler:

We had some good quality scenes of the crew mourning over Picard's death. We could've had a whole episode of characters dealing with that, as well as a very Star Trek debate over whether or not they should "resurrect" Picard into an Android body.

Instead, the crew is seemingly okay with Android Picard. There's no apparent adjustment period for them (and how much time passed between his death and rebirth? A day? A week?)

I would've loved more of an epilogue and character exploration after Organic Picard's death.

That said, for me Season 1 of Picard takes the new title of "Best first season of Star Trek" away from Discovery.

T-Prime wrote:

That said, for me Season 1 of Picard takes the new title of "Best first season of Star Trek" away from Discovery.

Really? Really?

TOS gets special treatment in the "every first season of any Star Trek franchise is bad" argument