LizstarTrek - Picard Season 1 episodes 5 - 7

Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you’re curious about a nerd’s views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I’ve watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!

I was not looking forward to DIS, but I think the thing I’ve been dreading the most was this. I have NOT been looking forward to this. Every thing about this sounds bad. Only 3 episodes tonight so we can pace this a little bit.

Stardust City Rag - PIC 2/10

Hey, remember Icheb? I liked Icheb! He was a cool ex borg from Voyager, basically Seven’s surrogate child. Anyways this episode starts with him being brutally tortured and killed to harvest borg tech from him. What in the shit fuck? Seven then kills him to put him out of his misery.

THIS SHOW. IS SO FUCKED UP. We REALLY did not need to see this, they didn’t have to kill off a beloved character for this. They could have just gone “Oh, Seven didn’t go into starfleet and is here to help cause she wants to”, make up a reason that doesn’t fucking depress me.

This guy straight up looks like the Goombas from the Maria movies. Anyways, Maddox is poisoned and killed somewhere in some fancy bar by some fancy lady, but not before admitting he’s been working with the Tal Shiar.

Seven is a “Fenris Ranger” now. They’re basically old school lawmen in the lawless corners of space, trying to keep peace where they can. It’s not glamarous, but she’s doing her best. But she’s kinda sad about it, her life’s not going hot. Gee, I SURE DO LOVE HOW EVERY CHARACTER’S LIFE IS MISERABLE NOW THAT THEIR SHOWS ENDED.

We’re randomly interrupted by cartoon character holograms advertisements being goofy and weird, like pop up ads. They give me Bonzi Boddy energy. This show has a tone problem.

They decide they need to get to some tal shiar lady. And to do that, they use Seven as bait, since she loves to buy Ex Borg slaves on the black market. They go down to Shitty Space Vegas, where apparently Mott the barber from TNG has opened a barber empire? We also mention Quark. These references feel… unearned. I like how this show feels allergic to like, bringing in TNG stuff and giving it justice and making it happy but they sure do love to REFERENCE it. Anyways, Rios goes to meet with this guy who can smell really well to cinch a deal. They give him drugs so he’s blazed out of his mind as he does it. This seems like… a very BAD plan.

Picard is going to pretend to be a pirate. This is totally why Picard signed on to this series, but I love the idea that all he has to do is put on a ratty outfit and an eyepatch, and he can pretend to be a slave trading pirate. Dude’s one of the most famous people in space. It’d be like Barrack Obama trying to pretend to be a pirate.

Raffi goes to see her son, who is NOT happy to see her, and wants her out. Apparently he has a Romulan wife and they’re expecting a kid. Good for them. Let’s make the characters even MORE miserable I guess. Anyways ha ha more Picard funny pirate voice! THIS SERIES HAS A TONE PROBLEM!

We find out that Seven was just using Picard to get to this woman. I mean yeah, obviously, but they ALSO find Maddox with her, so I guess she did at least help. As she explains how this woman betrayed her, we have to watch Icheb die and be tortured again. YEs, we saw that, we’re good, show. She seems to decide not to do revenge to protect the others, beaming up, then basically beams RIGHT back down and fucking pastes this girl.

What was the point of… any of this?

Meanwhile Maddox explains what he knows to Picard, and then when Picard goes off, Aggie, the doctor with them, basically smothers him to death. She turns off his machines and lets him die, in a REALLY uncomfortably gross scene, while she sobs and goes “I wish you knew what I knew”. Gee it sure is going to be a surprise how he died, ESPECIALLY SINCE THE EMH SAW HER DO IT.

This episode was all over the place. This SERIES is all over the place.

The Impossible Box - PIC 2.5/10

Soji, the android, has a nightmare about Maddox dying. Then she wakes up with Incestuous Fuckboi Romulan I can’t remember the name of.

Wow, gee, I can’t believe Maddox died all by himself with no foul play. Gee, what a surprise. I can’t believe it. Out of all these character btw, the one I most tolerate is Elnor. While he interjects in scenes and does nothing else, what he says is kinda amusing, and I like him. He’s almost got pseudo Data energy. Everyone else I could take or leave, tbh.

The doctor and the Han Solo clone randomly start making out. What the fuck is going on.

Oh, THIS is why we have the shitty holographic screens. So we could do this one shot.

We get more scenes of incestuous fuck boi and fuck girl. I want you to know, I’m not just reading too much into it, I don’t WANT to invent incest, she’s fondling his god damn face for some reason. Anyways they’re doing that thing again. That thing where they want to say a profound sentence so they invent a scene of shitty sentences around it. This time it’s about a Romulan puzzle box. Cool.

Raffi burns the bridge of her last friend to help Picard, AGAIN, and then wanders off crying and drinking. This gets a heroic fanfare for some reason. Forget a tone problem, this show is tone drinking. Also it’s just now hitting me, but Raffi’s character is… she’s a black absentee parent with drug problems. And her current problems are because of a white guy using her and then throwing her away. Whoof.

Soji has a breakdown where she thinks something’s wrong with her, and she carbon dates herself and her stuff and finds out she’s only 37 months old.

Picard has another panic attack as he enters the Borg Cube, freaking out about the Locutus thing. Hugh shows up and helps snap him out of it. We also FINALLY find out what the Artifact, as they call it (the borg cube) is even here for. They’re not like, harvesting it for tech and parts. They’re actually rehabilitating Borg and unassimilating them, the ones that were on ice down below. Picard is stunned that the Romulans are doing this out of generosity. Dude, there are a lot of heroic Romulans in this show.

The Romulan Fuckboi mind melds with Soji basically, using some weird Romulan meditation room. He uses this to find out where she’s from. They find out she was built on a planet with two moons that appear red in a thunder storm. Yeah, that’ll be easy to find in the entire fucking galaxy, dumbass. And then he puts some gas emmitting thing in the room with her so it’ll kill her. Radiation, apparently. You know, cause Data was famously affected by Radiation. She punches her way through the room, as Hugh and Picard rush to try and find her. They find her first, then use a magical teleporter to escape. For some reason, Elnor stays behind to keep them safe. Why? Dude, why?

This episode literally fridge logic’d me. It’s the morning after now, I was making breakfast, and as my water was boiling I was like “wait a second”. Why the hell does the Borg Queen have a specialized long-range teleporter? They really skip past that part. Apparently it’s in the queen’s room, and needs an XB to activate it. And then you input a planet and… off you go. Yeah, uh, why does the Borg Queen have an Iconian Gateway??? They had far reaching tech, but uh, it was based in GIANT structures and pre-built pathways. This is not that. I feel if they had this, they could have just… plopped a few drones on Earth and gone to town with a zombie apocalypse.

This show really REALLY does things without thinking about them. Just seriously, it’s one of two categories, every time: Oh, this seems cool, or oh, I didn’t think that far ahead. In this case it’s both. Woah, big teleporter cool, AND “how the fuck is Picard gonna get off this Borg cube”. JUST WRITE A BETTER SHOW, DUDE.

Nepenthe - PIC 3.5/10

We start with a scene explaining why the Doctor is there, and why she killed Maddox. The Vulcan secret intelligence leader, who we KNOW is a Romulan, mind melded with her and showed her something bad will happen if synthetics can exist. She also injests a tracker for some reason. Okay. Meanwhile, back in the present, Hugh and Elnor did not do a good job of holding them off, and are now captured. Hugh watches as the incest lady kills all of the borg on the cube, cause apparently ALL of this was set up to find this synth, even though they already had her on the cube the entire time and knew she was there, and they don’t actually care about helping the ex borg??? Elnor is not here, but then suddenly after they leave and leave Hugh crying alone, Elnor lopes out of the shadows with his fucking sword. I guess he was just hiding???

Meanwhile, Picard and Soji land on a planet and are immediately accosted by some girl with a bow and arrow. Apparently this is Kestral. That name MIGHT be familiar to you. Picard asks to see her mom and dad, and she takes them to see them.

IT’S RIKER AND TROI! They live in a nice little log cabin in the woods with their kids, apparently. Troi looks amazing. Riker looks aged as hell but he sounds amazing and as SOON as he saw Picard he was like “Aww MAN!” and hugged him bigly. Holy shit, you have NO idea how emotional I’m getting seeing Riker just be Riker. I’m sure he’s suffered through some horrible bullshit the past several years that made him sad and awful, but currently they just seem retired and have to deal with “Kzinti raids”. HOLY SHIT, KZINTI MENTIONED. Their daughter, Kestral, is awesome as hell btw. She’s named after Troi’s sister, Kestral, from that one episode. She brings in a “bunnicorn” she hunted, and Troi’s like “You DID remove its venom sacks, right?” “No mom, I was hoping we could all spew black bile and die”. She’s great.

Okay turns out they ARE sad, their first child died. He would have been 18. They’re doing okay, but yeah, they ALSO are suffering from Tragedy Background-itis. Apparently his name was Thaddius, and he was super creative. He invented a bunch of fake languages, which they still speak around the house. Man that sounds awesome, why’d they invent a cool character then immediately kill him off in the background??

Soji is VERY suddenly acting like an Android. She does a head tilt which Riker recognizes at Data’s head tilt. “I recognize that head tilt anywhere!” Oh, the head tilt she never did ever before???

Hugh is EXTREMELY suddenly killed off by the incestuous Romulan. He then has a moment with Elnor as he dies. Glad we had this moment with Hugh instead of any of the characters he has a connection to. WHERE IS GEORDI???

With the help of Riker and Troi’s mom and dad vibes, they get Soji to trust them more, and she tells them about her homeworld, and asks them to take her there. Picard promises to, and then they find where it is.

The doctor, feeling remorse for leading them all into a trap, injects herself with some kind of poison. This for SOME reason shuts down the tracking device in her body??? What?! And then we also see Elnor summoning Seven of Nine with a distress beacon. Lots of shit happening with these side characters. Can I see more Riker again?

Thank you. Riker and Picard walk through the woods and drink some tea. Nice. They see Picard and Soji off, and we get another misplaced TNG motif.

This was better just because Jonathan Frakes is a nearly perfect Human being.