2.09: Star Trek: Picard - Hide and Seek
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ctg
weaver of the unseen
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Honestly, I cannot quite believe that the alternate version of La Sirena has been sitting outside the Chateau Picard all this time and no Frenchman has seen nothing. Not one single person who has flown over it has seen anything, and no police has come to investigate the missing officer case.
It's almost like in some special operation country, where buildings are burning around them and people are sitting around in the playground, with no worries. Nothing special to see anywhere. Everything is just fine.
"Oh, that thing," a French farmer to another. "That's been there forever. Typical Picard stuff. They should come around and clean their rubbish. It's spoiling the countryside."
Queen Agnes and her husks. Luckily they're only husks, and not the real thing, because if they'd have been the real operators, the whole escape from the ship would've been abandoned as soon as they materialized in the ship.
The thing that freaked me more was the fact that Agnes downloaded the Queen suit. Nobody had even hinted that the Borg's do freakish things with their clothes. They don't have closets or laundry services, because they can just order their garments to rearrange-and-repair whatever is worn in their things. Just like they do with the Borg cube.
Why she didn't order them to secure the ship first?
Then again I saw Picard's order, "We have to defend it no matter the cost," as a Hail Mary, and not a proper plan. And two phase pistols and a rifle between them didn't strike me with a confidence.
It totally surprised me that Agnes was able to physically stop the Queen from taking over the ship. She said, "I've been poking around in the trash dump of a mind. Wow, by the way. 'Cause I had to know why. Millions of species, planets, and still you always needed more."
The Borg Queen grinned. "Perfection takes time, dear."
What a lady, so greedy. It is quite unbelievable that her greed has caused her so much harm and conflict. On their own, the Borg do nothing. They just are, but with the Queen in the helm, the whole concept of unity disappears as the light shines through the murky clouds full of lies.
Agnes called it loneliness. And the Queen said it was BS, "cruse colloquialism," because she could not know anything better. Agnes slapped her with a fact, and the Queen claimed that the time was on their side, making the whole attack in the Chateau Picard as a nexus point in the time. By winning, she could create that weird dimension where only the Borg lives, while by losing Picard restores the original timeline.
Fixing the Queen greedy takeover, that's going to need some doing.
Man, Agnes' combat hacks brought back Elnor as an Emergency Combat Hologram. I love that lady. She makes me smile. The Borg Husks were in the world of hurt after he was activated. But so were our main heroes, as for the life of me I couldn't understand why they didn't put up a fiercer fight.
Picard sent Rios away, before he faced Dr Soong and the husks. Soong having his husks all firing at the same time would most certainly brought attention to the locals, but nothing happened. But as they went to seek our heroes, we also got the most brutal scene in ST history, with Seven and Raffi driving a knife into one of the husks.
Personally, I'd have double tapped, with phaser set on full power, to be certain. They are not people, like Picard said.
We also got to see Picard's darkest memories. Man, he didn't have the easiest childhood. Privileged, yes, but easy, nope. I know from my own experience how hard it was to see mum going bonkers. And for a little boy like him, not a thing I'd wish for him.
"We have a dozen Borg between us and the ship, a 50-yard (300 more likely) sprint across open terrain (overgrown winery), and all we have is a knife and a corkscrew."
I had to put in the classic BB scene. What happened to two phase pistols, M4, sidearm, combat knife and the kit?
"And an ice pick," Raffi added innocently.
The thing they didn't know about was Elnor with his Katana. I loved and hated Raffi's dialogue in time when they didn't have time. So female like. But at least it didn't compromise the whole mission.
Elnor showed a great restrained from not hacking the Queen to pieces. He could have easily stabbed her a few times and even sliced off an arm wielding a mountaineer's axe. Why didn't he, when in next turn, Queen Agnes produced tentacles, stabbed fatally the wonder boy and their only real fighter, Seven.
If it not had been Agnes doing the ultimate hack as a ghost-in-the-shell, they all would have perished. Agnes made a great speech that you have to see with your own eyes. Thanks to her, Seven was restored back to her species and Queen Agnes seeing a new future for the Borg Collective.
A pacifist collective. But doesn't that change a lot of things, like what happened, when the Federation first time really encountered their species?
Time-travel is such a risky business, and it never happens perfectly. You can be an observer, but even then your presence can alter temporal flow, and the events.
For Picard's mission to succeed, there has to be two Renee's, one who lives, and one who dies.
It's almost like in some special operation country, where buildings are burning around them and people are sitting around in the playground, with no worries. Nothing special to see anywhere. Everything is just fine.
"Oh, that thing," a French farmer to another. "That's been there forever. Typical Picard stuff. They should come around and clean their rubbish. It's spoiling the countryside."
Queen Agnes and her husks. Luckily they're only husks, and not the real thing, because if they'd have been the real operators, the whole escape from the ship would've been abandoned as soon as they materialized in the ship.
The thing that freaked me more was the fact that Agnes downloaded the Queen suit. Nobody had even hinted that the Borg's do freakish things with their clothes. They don't have closets or laundry services, because they can just order their garments to rearrange-and-repair whatever is worn in their things. Just like they do with the Borg cube.
Why she didn't order them to secure the ship first?
Then again I saw Picard's order, "We have to defend it no matter the cost," as a Hail Mary, and not a proper plan. And two phase pistols and a rifle between them didn't strike me with a confidence.
It totally surprised me that Agnes was able to physically stop the Queen from taking over the ship. She said, "I've been poking around in the trash dump of a mind. Wow, by the way. 'Cause I had to know why. Millions of species, planets, and still you always needed more."
The Borg Queen grinned. "Perfection takes time, dear."
What a lady, so greedy. It is quite unbelievable that her greed has caused her so much harm and conflict. On their own, the Borg do nothing. They just are, but with the Queen in the helm, the whole concept of unity disappears as the light shines through the murky clouds full of lies.
Agnes called it loneliness. And the Queen said it was BS, "cruse colloquialism," because she could not know anything better. Agnes slapped her with a fact, and the Queen claimed that the time was on their side, making the whole attack in the Chateau Picard as a nexus point in the time. By winning, she could create that weird dimension where only the Borg lives, while by losing Picard restores the original timeline.
Fixing the Queen greedy takeover, that's going to need some doing.
Man, Agnes' combat hacks brought back Elnor as an Emergency Combat Hologram. I love that lady. She makes me smile. The Borg Husks were in the world of hurt after he was activated. But so were our main heroes, as for the life of me I couldn't understand why they didn't put up a fiercer fight.
Picard sent Rios away, before he faced Dr Soong and the husks. Soong having his husks all firing at the same time would most certainly brought attention to the locals, but nothing happened. But as they went to seek our heroes, we also got the most brutal scene in ST history, with Seven and Raffi driving a knife into one of the husks.
Personally, I'd have double tapped, with phaser set on full power, to be certain. They are not people, like Picard said.
We also got to see Picard's darkest memories. Man, he didn't have the easiest childhood. Privileged, yes, but easy, nope. I know from my own experience how hard it was to see mum going bonkers. And for a little boy like him, not a thing I'd wish for him.
"We have a dozen Borg between us and the ship, a 50-yard (300 more likely) sprint across open terrain (overgrown winery), and all we have is a knife and a corkscrew."
I had to put in the classic BB scene. What happened to two phase pistols, M4, sidearm, combat knife and the kit?
"And an ice pick," Raffi added innocently.
The thing they didn't know about was Elnor with his Katana. I loved and hated Raffi's dialogue in time when they didn't have time. So female like. But at least it didn't compromise the whole mission.
Elnor showed a great restrained from not hacking the Queen to pieces. He could have easily stabbed her a few times and even sliced off an arm wielding a mountaineer's axe. Why didn't he, when in next turn, Queen Agnes produced tentacles, stabbed fatally the wonder boy and their only real fighter, Seven.
If it not had been Agnes doing the ultimate hack as a ghost-in-the-shell, they all would have perished. Agnes made a great speech that you have to see with your own eyes. Thanks to her, Seven was restored back to her species and Queen Agnes seeing a new future for the Borg Collective.
A pacifist collective. But doesn't that change a lot of things, like what happened, when the Federation first time really encountered their species?
Time-travel is such a risky business, and it never happens perfectly. You can be an observer, but even then your presence can alter temporal flow, and the events.
For Picard's mission to succeed, there has to be two Renee's, one who lives, and one who dies.
Royalty has its privileges.
That was an uncomfortable moment for me, too. Making it a team effort seemed to somehow reduce the mitigate the impact.
I thought Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid ending, but Blues Brothers works better.
I was expecting that but then realized that he couldn't kill the queen without killing Jurati, who was still keeping Queenie in check if not under complete control.
That seemed like a stretch to me. One inspired speech reforms the entire Borg assimilation directive? I wouldn't expect a Borg Queen to be so receptive to suggestion.
I'm as puzzled by that statement as the characters appear to be.
I was surprised when Queen Jurati was allowed to take off in La Sirena, leaving the gang stranded in the wrong time and reality. I suppose Tallin can fix the former; Q, the latter.
I didn't think much of this episode, I'm afraid. Maybe it was because the most recent episodes were so good that I now expected too much. However, there was a lot to believe as you both have already pointed out, from the ship not being discovered, to Picard's missing older brother, to Agnes talking the Queen out of plans (even James Kirk would have found that one difficult.)
Also, Q is dying and has problems of his own to deal with, so maybe don't rely on him.
Which is exactly why I hate what they did with the Borg. The Borg never needed a Queen. They were perfect as they were, assimilating the best parts of every species they met, and becoming collectively the most superior beings imaginable. Without the Queen, they were invincible. With a Queen lynch-pin they became weakened and susceptible to any whim she may have.
That's very likely, but is that what they expect to happen? Are they expecting not to survive this mission, or do they expect to be magically returned? And if so, couldn't they talk Q and Tallin into fixing everything anyway?
Also, Q is dying and has problems of his own to deal with, so maybe don't rely on him.
No idea what that means. It sounds cryptic and suitably vague that it could mean almost anything.
No. Nor me.
There is, of course, another René, who we've already seen: J-L's nephew, the elusive Robert's son, who was quite possibly named for this particular ancestor. Although I suppose Robert was unlikely to have chosen to honour an astronaut ancestor that way.
It does at least point to a possible fairly common use of the name in the Picard family.
Elckerlyc
"Philosophy will clip an angel's wings."
Or Queen/Agnes is talking about Renee's from 2 different timelines. The original one and the one where they're currently messing about.
Elckerlyc
"Philosophy will clip an angel's wings."
Hmmm, yes. Give humans a good riddle and they're totally absorbed by it for the next 24 42 hours, thinking it must be the answer to everything.
I'll preface this by saying: I've enjoyed S2 of Picard, but it definitely has a lot of flaws - my enjoyment has a lot to do with my personal taste. I've actually 'got' the Borg Queen for the first time, in universe. I agree in general terms, wrt to how the Borg have been, er, adjusted over time and multiple series. In TNG's Q-Who and Best Of Both Worlds they were a terrifying force, an fairly original, frightening and truly post Human (or Romulan, Bajoran, Ferengi etc) foe. They bring the intellect of a galaxy wide civilisation to bear on anything in moments. How do you fight that?
So I totally get why, even from Best Of Both Worlds Pt2, writers have either avoided using them or dumbed them down. Because they should, by any and all logic and common sense, have won. Worse they show no kind of personality. Neither trait is sustainable for a recurring antagonist - and starting with Voyager it's clear the franchise wanted to use these fan favourite villains. But with the original Borg concept that would have, IMHO, created something more akin to a Lovecraftian horror story.
My point, after the waffle is: Introducing the Queen was a way of humanising them for dramatic purposes, and I always kinda accept that as a necessary evil. But for the first time I've gotten why it might make sense for the Borg to have something like the Queen in-universe: She's a walking 're-build-this-specific-collective' toolkit. True, any re-activated drone (as in Voyager or Enterprise), or even a single nano-bot might, in principle, restart the Borg as a 'race'. But the Queen's got cunning, charm, a grasp of a society. She can cut deals, pose as a friend, and seduce - and she carries the Borg identity and memory of the particular collective she's from, even when disconnected. A drone, or an infection of nanobots, would just give you blank-slate assimilators, starting from scratch.
So, yeah, I wish they hadn't done what they did with the Borg, but given that they did... I've decided I kinda like the Queen after all.
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Although I've generally been enjoying this series, not been keen on the Jean-Luc flashback scenes through the various episodes - all feel like pointless filler so far to me. Also, this series seems a little more bloodthirsty - one of my kids pointed this out in episode 3 when they killed Seven's husband and 2 confeds, rather than simply try to disable them (what happened to stun settings on phasers)? In this episode we also saw humans transported into walls so they ended up dead and petrified - again, was that really necessary?
Also somewhat jarring is the young Guinan - it was a cliffhangar 2-prter in NextGen that Picard and crew ended up in 19th century USA where Guinan Picard met her, apparently, the first time. But two centuries later and she's younger again? Just typical Trek inconsistency I guess.
But the biggest relief is that it's not so much of a turkey as Season 1, which started well enough, but ended up feeling like it was written by a teenager using a book of mindless cliches.
Also somewhat jarring is the young Guinan - it was a cliffhangar 2-prter in NextGen that Picard and crew ended up in 19th century USA where Guinan Picard met her, apparently, the first time. But two centuries later and she's younger again? Just typical Trek inconsistency I guess.
But the biggest relief is that it's not so much of a turkey as Season 1, which started well enough, but ended up feeling like it was written by a teenager using a book of mindless cliches.
But then they are given a full and proper explanation in the following episode which I found quite satisfying.
