Star Trek: Picard: Fly Me to the Moon
March 31, 2022 5:59 AM - Season 2, Episode 5 - Subscribe

All these worlds are yours / Except the second Jovian moon / Don't attempt a landing there / And don't trust Adam Soong

My god, Memory Alpha is full of stars:

• Penelope Mitchell (Renee Picard) is best known for her roles on Hemlock Grove and The Vampire Diaries.

• Q referring to himself as "Death, destroyer of worlds" is a reference to J. Robert Oppenheimer's reaction to witnessing the Trinity test, a line spoken by Vishnu from the Bhagavad Gita.

"Is that your crew? The people carrying a dead cop out the door?"
- Tallinn

Poster's Log:
"I wish the ep titles were more exciting. I know we're a long way from "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" but Assimilation followed by Watcher is just... yawn."
Looks like Stream Trek was listening, crossoverman!

Very glad to see some love for the venerable Kirk-chop. Less glad to see another plausibility-straining Soong contact, but OTOH, I guess I see the logic: Q figures Adam Soong (or his daughter) will have better luck getting Jean-Luc to let his guard down than anybody else in this time period. I'd like to think Q's wrong about that, but we'll see. I also wonder how many of Q's powers are suppressed, because like, how'd he know about Adam and Kore?, how'd he make Uncle Q's Wonder Elixir?, why'd he think it's a good strategy to introduce himself as "Death, destroyer of worlds"? A suitable answer to a lot of that is "Q is insane," but if he HAS in fact been going around destroying worlds, where's the rest of the Continuum to come and discipline him?

By my count, Brent Spiner has now played seven different characters in Trek. Jeffrey Combs still has him beat at eight, according to MA.

The panelist sitting next to Lea Thompson was named Vasiliy Rozhenko. Rozhenko is the name of Worf's adoptive family.

Wikipedia indicates "Shango" is a Yoruba deity, and that "Kore" is an alternate name for Persephone.

Poster's Log, Supplemental:
We heard some time ago that the writers of PIC and DISCO had been collaborating, so it seems likely that Europa is destined for big things in Stream Trek-era continuity. Here's what I hope DOESN'T happen: this season ends with both Picards going to Europa and getting trapped there for over a thousand years, only to be thawed out by Book and/or Grudge, and season 3 of PIC is some kind of nutty Fett/Mando-style stealth crossover with DISCO.

"Showrunner Explains How ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Is Handling Time Travel And The Eugenics Wars" (TrekMovie.com)

A negative review of the season so far from Slashfilm; I wouldn't be as critical as they are here, but some good points are raised. Chiefly, it seems like this season is less thematic (or at least, less focused w/r/t themes) than season one was.

Screenrant article on the theory that the masked Borg Queen from the season premiere will turn out to be Jurati. I had this thought a week or so ago and it's making a lot more sense after this ep. I hereby dub her "Agnes of Borg."
posted by CheesesOfBrazil (41 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
I really want Jurati to start calling the !HeadQueen “Harvey.”
posted by Mr. Excellent at 6:43 AM on March 31, 2022 [7 favorites]


I've loved this season up to this point. This episode wasn't bad, just perfunctory. It's clearly putting pieces onto the board for a larger payoff in the remaining episodes, which is fine. Pacing is always a problem with these serialized Trek stories, but they're doing a better job this season than last.
posted by SansPoint at 12:43 PM on March 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


Looks like Stream Trek was listening, crossoverman!

I did enjoy the fact it was more than one word.

Chiefly, it seems like this season is less thematic (or at least, less focused w/r/t themes) than season one was.

Yes, I'm having trouble figuring out what this season is about. If it's about Picard never being in love (ugh), the season isn't really playing with that idea at all.

The Jurati plot is becoming interesting, but after this episode, what exactly have Seven/Raffi/Rios achieved this season? They've just run in a big circle. We're halfway through the season and apart from messing around with 2024, what have they done? (I'm sure they've "butterflied" some shit, but I wish that thread had more weight to it.)

Adding in another generation of Soong and child seems... I dunno, an excuse to shoehorn Brent Spiner in? The original Data/Soong story seems like one cog in a whole recurring lineage of mad scientists which could be interesting but as a subplot, feels a bit forced.

Anyway, this season feels like it just wants to drop the weirdest deep cut references so here's Picard talking about Gary Seven like he's a fan of TOS.
posted by crossoverman at 3:54 PM on March 31, 2022 [5 favorites]


The number on Q’s calling card is a real phone number. Goes straight to voicemail though…
posted by nathan_teske at 5:29 PM on March 31, 2022 [4 favorites]


Lots of series have these setting-up-the-big-events episodes; it's OK if they take some time out in the fifth episode in to get the pieces on the right squares of the board. It does seem like Seven, Raffi and Rios were mostly on a wild goose chase as some way of keeping them busy while the real intrigue was going on; maybe Rios' short time in detention might come back around if they're in a situation where he's flagged on some Homeland Security database? I dunno. '

As for what the season is about, I think that they're still working with the theme of "the choices that we make now will affect the future of humanity", with Soong's work on genetics being continued by his descendant, as shown in ENT's fourth season, and his work also having a lot of prominence in whatever we're calling the human-supremacist timeline (alt-Mirror?). Renee Picard's role in history seems to have been defined as being the one who makes actual first contact with another sentient species (notwithstanding the adventures of certain Vulcans, or Ferengi + changeling), as opposed to the official "Welcome to the Warp Drive Club" First Contact. How that ties in with the theme of people making connections with others--Picard with Taris, Seven with Raffi, Agnes with anyone who's not a supervillain--I don't know. Yet. I'm guessing that lots of the pieces will be shuffled around (and maybe some taken off the board) next week.

One thing that bothered me a bit: doesn't that drone-supported sunscreen seem a bit advanced for two years from now? Is Soong supposed to be a MCU-type superscientist?
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:48 PM on March 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


Also, WRT a PIC-DIS crossover, there was some mention of Titan (the moon of Saturn) in this last season as apparently being inhabited. There was also mention that it had been 600 years (IIRC) since there had been any contact with the Q Continuum, which squares with the idea that there might be something going on with all the Q.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:55 PM on March 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


dude you're a geneticist !!

you of all people should KNOW it takes more than like 45 seconds for an injection to affect skin cells !!!
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:20 PM on March 31, 2022 [4 favorites]


Jurarti's assimilation seemed so inevitable that I almost wonder if Picard deliberately set it up. That'd be more of a Charles Xavier thing to do than a Jean-Luc Picard thing to do, though.

"Don't tease me with Data!" Indeed, sir!

Are all of the dopplegangers (except for Soong, who has always been King Doppelopolis since TNG days) just an artistic license thing or are we supposed to read more into that?
posted by jordemort at 8:51 PM on March 31, 2022


Re: "death, destroyer of worlds," maybe Q has gotten himself confused with The Doctor and blew up Quallifrey or wherever that depressing crossroads they hang out at is.
posted by jordemort at 8:56 PM on March 31, 2022 [5 favorites]


One thing that bothered me a bit: doesn't that drone-supported sunscreen seem a bit advanced for two years from now? Is Soong supposed to be a MCU-type superscientist?

To say nothing of the crewed mission to Jupiter.
posted by bowline at 9:44 PM on March 31, 2022 [6 favorites]


what exactly have Seven/Raffi/Rios achieved this season? They've just run in a big circle. We're halfway through the season and apart from messing around with 2024, what have they done? (I'm sure they've "butterflied" some shit, but I wish that thread had more weight to it.)

I agree. I expect Pedro to return in some fashion based on his screen time, but yeah, the Rios story lacks the weight this far into the season that I expected based on how the season opened.

it's OK if they take some time out in the fifth episode in to get the pieces on the right squares of the board.

To be sure. I expect some more dramatic timey-plot-stuff in the next couple eps, followed by a dark and desperate episode 8, and a complicated and busy episodes 9 and 10, if contemporary short-season serialized TV trends are anything to go by.

I think that they're still working with the theme of "the choices that we make now will affect the future of humanity"

That's likely, based on some clues I've seen on MA which I won't explain here b/c spoilers. OTOH, that doesn't square with the fact that the showrunners emphasized relationships as being what the season is about.

Are all of the dopplegangers (except for Soong, who has always been King Doppelopolis since TNG days) just an artistic license thing or are we supposed to read more into that?

No clue. I'm a little worried about the Laris/Tallinn thing, TBH. If Q were being his normal self, I'd be certain that Q gave Tallinn that appearance as a dig at Jean-Luc.

One thing that bothered me a bit: doesn't that drone-supported sunscreen seem a bit advanced for two years from now? Is Soong supposed to be a MCU-type superscientist?
...
To say nothing of the crewed mission to Jupiter.

I'd guess that as their basis/justification, the writers used DS9: "Past Tense" and VOY: "Future's End", both of which show that tech in the late 20th and early 21st centuries didn't evolve exactly along the same lines as reality—the former because it takes place a few decades in the future w/r/t that ep, and the latter because of Ed Begley Jr. acquiring future tech and reverse-engineering it.

It's a very tough writing challenge because Trek canon also has sleeper ships being launched into space in 1996, and Eugenics Wars happening sssssomewhere sssssort of around that time. Were this my franchise, I might use Insane Q as a device to make sense of that inherited legacy timeline, a la Nero in JJ Trek but hopefully without diverting into a new universe (and definitely without the motivation of recasting sexier younger versions of generations-ago characters).

Now, the good news is this: making Adam Soong a geneticist in this time period may very well mean this season intends to actually address the Eugenics Wars somehow.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 5:20 AM on April 1, 2022 [3 favorites]




One of the Easter egg videos I watched pointed out that the text on Talinn's device is in Romulan.
posted by briank at 7:32 AM on April 1, 2022 [2 favorites]


The orange forcefield drone mesh was a miniature of the shell that the evil future had around the earth to keep the pollution out. Which I'm taking as an implication that this Soong came out on top in the Eugenics Wars.
My biggest eyeroll was when he talked to the ethics panel in Nazi dogwhistles and a few minutes later lamented to Q that half the people sending him fanmail were Nazis.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 7:48 AM on April 1, 2022 [13 favorites]


making Adam Soong a geneticist in this time period may very well mean this season intends to actually address the Eugenics Wars somehow.

That might actually tie in to Strange New Worlds having an Enterprise crew member who is a relative of Khan.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:11 AM on April 1, 2022 [1 favorite]


One thing that bothered me a bit: doesn't that drone-supported sunscreen seem a bit advanced for two years from now? Is Soong supposed to be a MCU-type superscientist?

It’s best to think of the Trek timeline diverging from our own in 1966.
posted by rhymedirective at 9:54 AM on April 1, 2022 [12 favorites]


It seemed in this episode like they might be working towards something where shit only changes because they get involved in trying to keep it the same.

It doesn't feel like they have enough material for ten episodes and a bunch of this is filler until they get to something down the line. Two episodes of cocking about for Rafi, Seven and Rios and suddenly everyone beams up, and nothing much has changed for them, only for Jurati & Queenie.
posted by biffa at 2:22 PM on April 1, 2022 [1 favorite]


I'm still shipping Jurati and the Borg Queen. I think those crazy kids can make it work.

But anyway, this episode really annoyed me for the number of plans that hinged on dumb luck.

What if that cop had called for reinforcements and a few hundred police surrounded the ship for days without going in before the military was called in?

What if Jurati had been thrown out of the party? Or locked up, like, anywhere other than exactly where she wanted to be?

What if the Borg Queen had already assimilated that cop they tossed out the door?
posted by kyrademon at 2:36 PM on April 1, 2022


What if that cop had called for reinforcements and a few hundred police surrounded the ship for days without going in before the military was called in?

I don't think they take domestic violence calls seriously enough for that.
posted by biffa at 2:38 PM on April 1, 2022 [1 favorite]


Regarding the change to the tech timeline, I've always wondered about the - I guess - weakness? of mobile tech in Star Trek. They have their communicators and tricorders, but nothing like a far-in-the-future mobile smartphone. They need to call up to the ship's computers for information. The communicators are powerful, yes, but just for communication. And the tricorders are great at scanning.

But with Moore's Law and all that, you would think that in the 24th century you could have Wikipedia (maybe plural for all the known worlds) downloaded on your device.

So I've been keeping my eye out for mobile devices in these back-in-time to our-time episodes... so far I haven't noticed any. Except for the cops and ICE walkie-talkies I guess? Anyone catch passing people staring down at their iPhone XIVs?
posted by mephisjo at 4:47 PM on April 1, 2022


I don't think they take domestic violence calls seriously enough for that.

No, but an invisible spaceship parked by the vineyard could have plausibly given the cop a little more pause before he proceeded into it.
posted by Pryde at 5:03 PM on April 1, 2022 [1 favorite]


I feel like Raffi's tricorder is shown as pretty slick and capable.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:54 PM on April 1, 2022


I figured that the secret military project, "Spearhead", that Adam Soong was involved in is going to turn out to have some kind of Eugenics Wars angle. But we'll see.

I'll say again that it really seems like the writers are trying to cram in references to almost every time travel plot Star Trek has ever done. I'm enjoying it on a fanservice level. But I'm also feeling like this season seems to be weighted much more toward action and a super-twisty plot than character and thematic development. I'm enjoying it well enough, but it feels a little shallower than last season.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:57 PM on April 1, 2022 [1 favorite]


What if that cop had called for reinforcements and a few hundred police surrounded the ship for days without going in before the military was called in?

I don't think they take domestic violence calls seriously enough for that.

No, but an invisible spaceship parked by the vineyard could have plausibly given the cop a little more pause before he proceeded into it.


All easily explained away by this classic TV trope.
posted by fairmettle at 11:51 PM on April 1, 2022 [1 favorite]


What if that cop had called for reinforcements

The Trek trope for this would be that he went in knowing he was the only cop available within 200 km of the arrondissement.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:37 AM on April 2, 2022 [2 favorites]


Regarding the change to the tech timeline, I've always wondered about the - I guess - weakness? of mobile tech in Star Trek. They have their communicators and tricorders, but nothing like a far-in-the-future mobile smartphone. They need to call up to the ship's computers for information. The communicators are powerful, yes, but just for communication. And the tricorders are great at scanning.

The real answer for this is that the writers of 60s-90s Trek did not have any experience with computer networks. It's why people use multiple PADDs like they're magazines.
posted by rhymedirective at 4:34 AM on April 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


"Ensign, take these reports to the bridge."
posted by TheophileEscargot at 4:48 AM on April 2, 2022 [2 favorites]


One of the Easter egg videos I watched pointed out that the text on Talinn's device is in Romulan.

Very first scene, Renee Picard got the correct 1202 error when the vector accumulator was filled up.
posted by mikelieman at 10:06 AM on April 2, 2022 [3 favorites]




Halloween Jack That might actually tie in to Strange New Worlds having an Enterprise crew member who is a relative of Khan.

Uh.. did you mean relative of Soong? Or is there a Kahn hidden in that spot about a Soong?
posted by coriolisdave at 7:49 PM on April 2, 2022


That's La'an Noonien Singh. The relationship was confirmed by Akiva Goldsman.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:33 PM on April 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


LAAAAAA''''''''''AN!
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 7:22 AM on April 3, 2022 [2 favorites]


About the theme of the season: I took it to be, at least partially, not specifically about Picard-in-love but about not letting people in, about leaning out at the moments where sustaining intimacy is built because he can't quite trust enough to connect. They seem to be setting this up as related to some developmental trauma, abuse (likely drawn from Patrick Stewart's own life), and loss.

They're paralleling this with many of the characters this season to some extent (Agnes, Seven, Raffi, in their own ways), but for Picard-the-character, it's a theme that has some continuity, not just in the first season of this show but going all the way back to TNG, where his joining the senior officers' poker game for the first time in All Good Things is treated as a moment of growth after holding himself at a remove for so many years.

Whether it's being executed well or not, I think I'll withhold judgment until the season is over, but that's how I've seen it, and I've been enjoying the ride so far. I don't rush to watch each episode as soon as it drops, but I always enjoy them when I do watch them.
posted by Kosh at 7:53 AM on April 3, 2022 [10 favorites]


La'an! La'an! La'an! La'an!
WHAT?!
Danger Zone.
posted by Marticus at 4:19 PM on April 3, 2022 [6 favorites]


If other things happened in the plot instead of what did happen then it would be a different show with different writers.
posted by bleep at 9:52 AM on April 4, 2022 [2 favorites]




We have our first teaser and cast announcement for Picard Season 3.

I'm not crying you're crying shut up.
posted by SansPoint at 12:03 PM on April 5, 2022 [7 favorites]


We have our first teaser and cast announcement for Picard Season 3.

Me: I'm really glad that PICARD is focusing on him as a character and not trying to play only on nostalgia and recreate the Next Generation.

Also me after seeing that trailer: GIVE IT TO ME RIGHT NOW!
posted by crossoverman at 4:56 PM on April 5, 2022 [4 favorites]


WORRRRRRRRRRRRRF
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 12:44 PM on April 6, 2022 [2 favorites]


By my count, Brent Spiner has now played seven different characters in Trek.

It's more than seven if you count his roles in "A Fistful of Datas".
posted by obol at 9:56 PM on April 6, 2022 [4 favorites]


> Which I'm taking as an implication that this Soong came out on top in the Eugenics Wars.

There was a huge hologram statue of Adam Soong in San Francisco in the Bad Future. It was shown at night, in a city flyover; I think right before the Eradication Day scene.
posted by riotnrrd at 2:05 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]


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