1) Again with the recap...at what point did CBS decide that the audience have the memory capacity of goldfish?
2) Into the Beta Quadrant we go.
3) And it's another flashback. A planet that served as a hub (or was going to) for the relocation of the Romulan people.
4) Ethnically diverse Romulans then. That's somewhat new, but we've seen black Vulcans before so it's not really an issue. Just figured I'd mention it before someone else did.
5) I guess 'bite me' is a pretty universal insult in this galaxy.
6) Picard beaming in, looking like a tourist on a safari trip in the 1950s.
7) Seems like they've fleshed the Romulan language out some for this production then.
8) Backstory is getting filled in more and more. And another "hooray for continuity!" moment - Picard's (oft-noted in TNG) discomfort around children is mentioned, a discomfort that he seems to have gotten over in his older age.
9) Guess this kid grows up to be the man we see in the trailers, the swordsman Elnor.
10) Man, that's cute on a couple of levels. One, the Romulan boy Elnor listening to Jean-Luc Picard in full flow and being enraptured. Two, the kid playing Elnor listening to Patrick Stewart in full flow and being enraptured.
11) I'm not far behind either.
12) And then he gets the news about Mars.
13) And there's a promise that the Federation and Starfleet end up not letting him keep.
14) Beaming up while walking. I know the transporter has never been consistent about that sort of thing (Saavik was even able to continue a conversation with Kirk in "Wrath of Khan" before beam-up had been completed). Still, shows that the technoology has moved on a bit since TNG - in "Darmok" Picard was unable to move to help the Tamarian captain Dathon when the Enterprise was making their attempt to beam him back up.
15) Jeri Ryan getting her 'guest appearance' credit now. Unless that's been there all along, and the dull nature of the intro theme made me miss it.
16) Just me who misses the full-on rainbow light show of the jump-to-warp effects in the early movies?
17) Another cavernous ship interior that makes precious little sense. Oh for the days of Matt Jefferies designing stuff with at least one eye on how to explain it rather than just making it look 'cool'.
18) Jurati is bored. I guess when you've grown up with FTL space travel being a fact of life that could happen. Speaking as a guy born in 1983 though, you'd never chisel the grin off my face
19) Another new 'in-warp' effect seen out of the front window. Sort-of JJTrekish.
20) Recite a whole bunch of numbers so the audience know that you're a scientist!
21) Rios can't be all bad though, he has a catalogue of Klingon opera.
22) Hey, look STD showrunners - well-written dialogue delivered by two actors who don't murder the material. Bet you wish you had that, huh?
23) Enter Raffi, peeved that the ship isn't headed for Freecloud.
24) Because Picard needs to make a stop at the planet seen in the teaser.
25) Man who was desperate to get back into space, using a holomatrix to bring rural France with him.
26) Another hologram (and also played by Santiago Cabrera), a hospitality one. We've come a long way from the days of the EMH Mark 1.
27) Annoyed Raffi is annoyed.
28) Rios pointing out that things have turned to worms in this part of space.
29) Aha, the antique Bird of Prey from the trailers gets a mention.
30) Backstory.
31) Jurati as audience surrogate here, marveling that "Romulan warrior nuns" are an actual thing.
32) Picard calls them the "most skilled single combat fighters" he's ever seen. And he's hung out with Klingons, so he ought to know.
33) Episode title getting name-dropped a bunch.
34) Kind of like the anti-Vulcan way then. No filter on emotion at all.
35) Shift scenes to the Borg ship. And now Soji is playing the space jigsaw.
36) Video of Ramdha when she was rather closer to lucid. And Soji looking up at the mention of "The Destroyer".
37) Soundtrack going ominous.
38) Back to the La Sirena, out of warp and orbiting Vashti.
39) Amusing reaction from Picard at being told by Raffi that the people down below weren't exactly welcoming him with open arms.
40) "A cash gift is always appropriate." Another thing that Trek has never been overly consistent with, currency!
41) Though he clearly had something, because he's beamed down.
42) Bit less welcoming than 14 years ago.
43) At least the nuns haven't immediately turned their backs on him.
44) "You got old, Admiral Picard." There's that absolute candor in action.
45) And there's Elnor, all grown up.
46) That was the moment that this episode shouted from the rooftops that it was directed by 'Two Takes' Frakes. That push-in on Picard to end the scene. *chef's kiss*
47) Back to Soji and Narek, as Ramdha gets looked at.
48) Medical drone!
49) Soji trying to figure Narek out. Wondering if he's Tal Shiar. As Zhaban and Laris noted in an earlier episode, outsiders to Romulan culture leap at thinking of the Tal Shiar as the Romulan secret police. Hooray for continuity!
50) In other respects she is pretty genre-savvy though. Got to hand it to her.
51) "Come on, I want to show you something." Best not be your trouser department Narek, this plotline needs to keep up the momentum
52) A Borg ritual? Hmm...
53) Ah. Not so much a Borg ritual as a way to flirt with Soji then.
54) Humming 'Careless Whisper' to myself, an in-joke with a friend who I often watch films and TV shows with.
55) Welp, you might have screwed that one up Narek.
56) Nice save.
57) Star Trek: Picard, a series where people go boldly and drink various things in different locations.
58) And our retired Admiral is trending on space Twitter.
59) Bird of Prey incoming. And a "hooray for continuity!" moment as the showrunners resist the temptation to change it up much from the TOS appearance. Who would'a thunk that it was possible?
60) Picard seems awfully sure that Rios and his ship can take a(n almost certainly) heavily refitted BoP. Raffi...not so much.
61) Zani filling in Picard on the last 14 years out here.
62) Trek As Social Commentary part 686.
63) Picard has a keen grasp of where he failed, allowing 'I want a flawless victory' to become the enemy of 'well, at least I did
something'. Though Zani is being somewhat unfair in heaping it all on him IMO - being constructively dismissed from Starfleet is going to make anyone throw their hands up, say "to hell with it all" and go retire to a vineyard.
64) So Elnor has completed his Jedi - sorry, Qowat Milat - training. But he can't be a Qowat Milat because he's a man. Trek As Social Commentary part 687
65) To get Elnor to join his cause Picard has to tell a story. So at least he'll be in his element there.
66) "I had a friend, called Data." "It's usually a sad story." "He died." Yes Elnor, it is indeed a sad story. On a personal note, one of the few things I hated about the premise of this series was it in any way validating bits of the plot of "Nemesis". Hey ho.
67) Hooray for continuity! Spot getting herself a mention.
68) Elnor is a perceptive young man, with his note that Picard does need someone but why him specifically?
69) Nice.
70) Will I ever tire of that joke? All signs point to 'no'
71) Picard well aware of the limitations that him being in his 90s places on him. Presumably if the showrunners had set out to make TNG part II with this then he would have looked Worf up for this role.
72) Past mistakes biting you on the backside.
73) Seven minutes might be about six minutes too late there Rios...
74) Especially if Picard is going to do some provocation. Entirely in-character of course, ripping down a 'Romulans Only' sign. But might not be the smartest thing he did all day.
75) Yeah, this isn't going to go brilliantly.
76) More backstory being filled in.
77) Sounds about right. Blame him for not trying harder, also blame him for trying at all. Very...Romulan.
78) Well, that went south for the former senator
real quick! Guess he should have...*puts shades on*...kept his head. *
YEEEAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!*
79) Picard has himself a qalankhkai then after all.
80) Picard speech
81) And another one, also a very Picard moment. Glad that he's alive, furious that someone else had to die for that to be so.
82) Elnor explaining his motivation for coming back to join Picard, and I'm getting flashbacks to a TNG episode "The Defector". Picard's line from that show: "If the cause is just and honourable, [his crew] are prepared to give their lives." Elnor finds Picard's story - his cause - just, and honourable, and worthy of him joining. Because it's absolutely a lost cause. And so was one Galaxy class starship against three Romulan warbirds. But we know how
that story turned out.
83) Jurati rather less impressed at the idea that this is all a lost cause, mind!
84) Back to the creepy brother-sister relationship.
85) Ah, Romulan paranoia. Gotta love it.
86) Rizzo still hitting the villain tropes hard. Bit like !Georgiou in STD.
87) And we rejoin Picard with a space battle getting underway, as the Bird of Prey warps in firing.
Pausing here to work out the size of the La Sirena. That's a Bird of Prey quite like the one Kirk and the Enterprise faced down in "Balance of Terror". In the final draft of the script for that episode the ship was described as being similar to the primary (saucer) hull of the Enterprise, but modified. Fanon popularly assumed for a long time that this meant it was about the same size as the Enterprise saucer, maybe slightly larger since it was a single hull design, so around 150m long. The Star Trek Encyclopedia depicts it as even longer, around 190m. And other sizes are offered around too by various sources - the Michael McMaster blueprints from 1977 have it as just 68m long, a size that I always felt might make it just too small to be a credible threat to the Enterprise even with the cloak and the plasma torpedo weapon. But then a lot of the features on the ship (for example the windows, or the promontory on the hull where the cramped bridge is) support that smaller size. The studio model itself was 2.5ft wide, compared with the main studio model for the Enterprise at around 11ft long. Enterprise at 289m length and BoP at ~70m do kind-of work.
When the BoP comes warping in here both ships are flying across the screen at a fair old rate of knots. But it does look a good bit bigger than the La Sirena. Plus, if the 'cockpit'/forward section of Rios' ship is anything to go by I'd put the vessel at being a bit larger than a Starfleet Danube class (the runabout from DS9), which is 23m long according to the DS9 Technical Manual.
88) BoP has got a pair of disruptor cannon by the look of things. Probably a smart move fitting them in place of the powerful-but-slow plasma torpedo.
89) This planetary security grid that they're so concerned about is clearly manned by imperial stormtroopers, because it couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
90) Emergency Tactical Hologram!
91) The cavalry, perhaps? And if you haven't guessed who's piloting that ship, you really ought to have. Especially when Jeri Ryan was named in the opening credits...
92) Bird of Prey, say goodbye to your starboard nacelle as it drifts away from you.
93) Still firing, though. It's only a flesh wound
And scoring a bad hit on the other ship.
94) Picard reverting to captain mode there before remembering that it's not his ship
95) New ship blowed up good as it smooshes itself against the defence grid. But Raffi is quicker on the transporter. Hello Seven of Nine!
96) "You owe me a ship, Picard." And she faints. So not quite the Seven of Nine from the Voyager days, and not just because she changed her hair. Ah, Jeri Ryan. And her huge...tracts of land
97) Hell of a way to end the episode.
98) "Next time..." Sparks fly as the crew play dress-up, Jurati snarks about it and Seven goes guns akimbo.
https://imgflip.com/memegenerator#
Hopefully this isn't like that.
