What most disappointed you about Star Trek: Picard?
Where to start?
Re-watching the DS9 episode, “Past Tense” recently, a line from Bashir really stood out, which personified everything wrong with Star Trek Picard - “But it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Are humans really any different than Cardassians or Romulans? If push comes to shove, if something disastrous happens to the Federation, if we are frightened enough, or desperate enough, how would we react? Would we stay true to our ideals or would we just stay up here, right back where we started?"
According to STP, the answer is apparently, no, we don’t stay true to our ideals; and we do go right back to where we started, or pretty damn near close.
There are just so many logical inconsistencies. I mean, Christ - just, everything about Raffi, from her ambiguous chemical dependency, her resentment about her living conditions versus Picard’s, when such things are no longer supposed to exist in Star Trek; or at least not in the Federation and most definitely not on Earth.
The unwillingness of the Federation to help Romulus when their sun was going to go nova. I mean, this is the Federation, for crying out loud; yes, the Romulans had been cold war style adversaries of theirs for centuries, but humanity and the Federation are supposed to have been above such pettiness when it came to actual, desperate need for help. Plus, they had managed to find themselves allies against the Dominion; which would surely count for something.
Of course, one of the chief excuses for the Federation not to help Romulus, was the so-called synth attack on Mars - which turned out to be orchestrated by the Romulans; because when your homeworld is in danger of being destroyed, risking a massive death count of your own people, why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to screw with the people who are in the best position to save your sorry asses?
And why did the Romulans do it? Because of some stupid ass cult/shadow organization within their shadow organization that are afraid of artificial lifeforms, because of some psychic acid trip bullshit they all share.
So they need to ensure the Federation bans synthetic life and concocts the most asinine plot to engineer this; and to add insult to injury, it works! The Federation falls for it!
I mean, honestly, the synths were decidedly not sentient; yet there’s not the slightest doubt that they appear to act on their own, which again, they’re not supposed to be able to do, but they do and not only that, they inexplicably and out of the blue frag an entire planet, killing themselves in the process and all for no apparent reason; and the Federation assigns blame to all forms of artificial life and bans them from the Federation? Bullshit.
Seriously, how many Vulcans must have died from brain aneurysms trying to wrap their heads around that kind of logic?
Never mind some of the inconsistencies that crop up later; like Rios’ holograms (are those permitted with the Synth ban?), or the bullshit that Riker and Troi’s son couldn’t be cured, because the only cure had to be cultivated in a positronic brain; you know, the thing that successfully existed in only three androids, and they couldn’t possibly go anywhere else or develop the same cure some other way. Nope, this is the darkest fucking timeline, which means all of the characters we love now live shitty, depressing lives.
Speaking of which, 7 of 9 appears; having left behind all of her friends and the promising life suggested by the end of Voyager, because the writers felt the need to torture-murder Icheb, so that 7 could run off and join the fucking Power Rangers, or whatever they’re called.
Then there’s the main plot of the first season, meandering as it is. So Bruce Maddox managed to replicate Data’s programming by using a single positron from Data, which somehow contains everything that made Data, Data? What?? How is that supposed to make any sense?
Seeing as he apparently got that positron from B4, why not just say he reversed engineered the programming Data tried uploading to him?
And they always come in pairs. WHY?? So the plot can happen, and so one of them can die; and Jean Luc Quixote can put a crew together and go chasing windmills, or rather, borg cubes. But it can’t be the crew he used to have, because why enlist your friends who have the proper resources to help you; when you can contact the burnout who hates you for somehow ruining her career by sticking to your convictions and retiring; and then spend five or six episodes out of a ten episode season just putting the rest of your crew together….
So then we find out the Romulans have in their possession a decommissioned borg cube, because again, the Federation are complete fucking morons now and in addition to their xenophobic policies and stupid laws regarding AI, they’re fine with Romulans having a borg cube… because, reasons….
Why the Romulans, who are supposedly so afraid of artificial intelligence, even want the cube or what they’re getting out it completely escapes me.
We also find out the Borg now have space folding technology that makes their ships redundant and should pose the greatest threat the galaxy has ever known, but whatevs…
And now we’re on the planet of the androids, with a large number of Data’s offspring, essentially; and another flippin’ Soong who looks exactly like Arik; making at least two generations of his descendants, and probably more, who apparently got nothing from their mothers - but that’s okay, because my personal theory is that Arik, brilliant geneticist that he was, just cloned himself to perpetuate his work, rather than have kids the conventional way….
But more importantly, it turns out that some aspect of Data is still alive, on a floppy disk or something, chilling in his own personal limbo. Did Maddox’s work bring Data back to life, or would Data have been stuck in this virtual realm within B4 indefinitely? And why, out of all the other new androids that were built, let alone the planned “golem” Maddox was creating to put his own mind inside, did they never give Data a new body? Sure, Brent Spiner is older and looks relatively different from when he originally played Data, but they’ve now established that this new batch of androids can age and are somehow “organic artificial life” - which, in its own right, is the dumbest fraking thing they could have come up with. So why not put Data in an older body, and have him greet his old Captain, instead of introducing yet another carbon copy Soong? It would have been everything Data every wanted, making him as close to being human as possible, but instead, he just wants to be turned off and die… again…
But I get ahead of myself, because they have to have the big climax, where the Romulans that have been chasing Picard and Data’s daughter halfway across the galaxy to find the android homeworld, finally find them!
But wait, are the Romulans a decimated, nomadic people; or are they still a strong empire, with a huge fleet of ships? Doesn’t matter. The Romulans must destroy the androids, because of that acid nightmare they all had, about how artificial life will destroy everything.
Agnes knows, she’s seen it and it scared the shit out of her too; so much so that she killed her dad, Bruce.
Wait. What? She wasn’t his daughter? They were boning? Well, bully for him, I guess, but still, it drove sweet… bland… cardboard cutout Agnes to be a cold blooded murderer; which means she’ll eventually go to jail soon, so it has to be pretty serious. It’s not like they’re just going to ignore that she killed a dude, and move on like it never happened, right?
Data’s children want to know about this vision, and one of them has…. (sigh)… “practiced the Vulcan mind meld”…… (Sigh) Just… seriously, fuck these writers……
So the android leader sees the visions and sees the dimension inhabited by… I don’t know, Doc Ock? And they understand, it wasn’t a vision warning organics about synths, it was a warning to synths about organics. So to prove to organics they aren’t the threat they fear them to be, they are going to become the threat the organics fear them to be; and Picard and his “crew” are under arrest. But of course, they get free, because Agnes sucks and has loyalties to no one and lies with ease, despite her otherwise innocent demeanor.
And blah, blah, blah, the synths and organics decide a stalemate is preferable to the machine tentacles that are coming out of the rift in space. Riker has somehow taken command of a ship and gets to the android planet just a few hours behind Picard, and then promptly leaves after going through all that trouble, rather than staying long enough to make sure the Romulans don’t come back; or at the very least, check out this new civilization populated with the “descendants” of a close, late friend….
And now Coulson is alive again as an advanced LMD… I mean, Picard… is an android… but you know, with none of the advantages of being an android….. Because if you’re going to be an android, you might as well be an android who looks, feels, sounds and has all of the same physical limitations of a 90 year old human male… Is Synth-Picard going to have to get up five times in the middle of the night to pee?
And the synth ban is conveniently lifted, offscreen, with barely any effort, like it was really no big deal….
But none of it really matters, because let’s face it, the whole thing was a hallucination caused by Picard’s Irumodic Syndrome.
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