Star Trek, Picard, season 2

This is sort of a review of Star Trek Picard, season 2. Sort of. It’s actually notes I took while watching Star Trek Picard Season 2: What the Hell Happened?. Spoilers.

Beats:

  • Episode 1 👍🏻
    • Answers some questions and critiques after season 1.
    • More positive Federation.
    • A lot of cool spaceships.
    • A mission: What’s up with the Borg?
    • Q! Looking older!
  • Episode 2 👍🏻
    • Skull Dukat.
    • What’s up with Q and Picard?
    • Goal: Go back and fix the timeline.
    • Picard being evil.
    • Theme introduced: trauma.
    • A society choosing darkness or not.
  • Once we get to 2024, we start meandering. 👎🏻 Running in place, going nowhere. 👎🏻
    • Climbing a tower to scan.
    • Rios being injured.
    • Rios in hospital.
    • Rios in jail.
    • Picard and Guinan in jail.
  • Actions without consequences. 👎🏻
    • Once Rios is away from ICE, nothing.
    • Rios falls in love, then nothing.
  • Guinan and the fight against fascism. 👍🏻
  • The gala is a heist, done wrong. 👎🏻
    • For a long time, we don’t know why Renée is important.
    • The right way: Clear expectations and goals, but then the original plan fails.
    • Rios smoking, Seven chatting, why?
    • The plan was for Picard to talk to Renée?
    • Jurati singing a song is a great distraction?
  • Are changes to 2024 important or not? 👎🏻
    • Butterflies.
    • Rios’ badge.
    • Borgified humans being killed.
    • An agent being fired.
    • A bar having to replace its window.
    • ICE detainees running away.
    • The bullet holes.
  • Soong runs over Picard and nothing more? 👎🏻
  • Supervisors. 👍🏻 But does Tallinn really do a lot? And does it make sense that she looks like Laris? 👎🏻
  • Easter eggs.
    • Guinan’s new bar’s name. 👍🏻
    • Mention of Janeway. 👍🏻
    • Prejudice against Seven. 👍🏻
    • Guinan’s 2024 bar’s name. 👎🏻
    • Project Khan. 👎🏻
    • Did “Time’s Arrow” happen? Did Voyage Home happen? 👎🏻
    • Renee living/dying hint. 👎🏻
  • A lot of smaller plot points are quickly resolved in the end, just because. 👎🏻
  • Looking at trauma. 👍🏻
    • The PTSD Seven suffered.
    • Jurati being suicidal.
    • The Borg queen experiencing genocide.

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Oh, those gods

These are some thoughts on The Gods Themselves (free), Isaac Asimov. Spoilers.

First of all, I read this a while back and had some thoughts then.

This time I really caught the whole “academia can be a very toxic environment”. Oh boy. It’s a wonder anybody survives.

The aliens are wonderfully different. Interestingly their psychology is like ours some of the time. Like, they will get embarrassed, but for weird reasons. I think the genders would’ve been handled differently today.

Oh, and there’s the, ahem, procreation. With the aliens it’s kind of sweet. Can those descriptions upset anybody? It’s a little more complicated on the Moon. She’s 24, he’s 48? Really?

Other big themes are: truth, the me-first attitude, politics, the answer to scientific disaster is more and better science (not restraint) and chemistry/physics.

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