Yet Another Star Trek Podcast - Ep 042: (PIC S03E07-E08) Dominion & Surrender (Dual Review)

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 takes on some dark tones, as Admiral Jean-Luc Picard and friends go face-to-face with the villainous Vadic. But how do the episodes "Domion" and "Surrender" pan out? Do they continue the hot-streak that showrunner Terry Matalas and crew have established? Listen in to find out!  Be sure to check out our website, social media, and join our Discord! Links for all are listed below: Website | Discord | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | TikTok | YouTube Drop us an email at [e-mail]! “Warp Speed” and "To the Stars" was written and performed by William Grobbelaar Music: https://soundcloud.com/williamgrobbelaarmusic Additional artwork by George Rateau: https://www.fiverr.com/georgerateau

Good day and welcome to yet another Star Trek podcast. I'm Brad, your host for the segment, followed by my lovely cohort Drew. How you doing buddy? It's Brad for the segment. For the segment. I know I gotta change it up a little bit, you know. I appreciate it man. I'ma... I mean, we're recording on Friday. So TGIF, but as you and I both know, maybe the listeners don't know this, but I do not have the best work schedule and I will frequently not have a quote, quote, Friday, like everybody else says Friday is. But this week I have Friday, like everybody else. But if you do today, it's exciting.

It's exciting. Is today your Friday? Today is my Friday. Yes, I am a traditional Monday through Friday type of chum. So I'm sorry to to roll that in. Well, it's okay. You know, it is the life I chose. Hooray shift work. But on the flip side, I don't like keep my job so much that I want to jump off of a cliff. And you know, for a baroculation that you and I shared once upon a time, well, that's certainly how I felt in a daily basis. So.

Well, I'm happy you're not feeling like you want to jump off a cliff. How are you? I'm tired. Yeah. Having a seven-month-old baby is very exhausting. You know, if Majid were here, he would say something along the lines of, Brad, how long are you going to use that as an excuse? Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure of it. But he's not here. So I'm going to say I'm really sorry, man. I appreciate. For a second, there was going to be like, oh, I think he's going to say I'm really sorry, man. I appreciate for a second.

There was going to be like, oh, I think he's going to channel magi and just use the magi powers. But like, you mean the powers of gaslighting? Yeah, pretty much. Now, no, I couldn't do that to my buddy. Oh, that means a lot. I appreciate it. Well, loyal listeners, we are here for yet another

episode of Picard, not TOS, but Picard. We have two episodes actually, in fact, Dominion and Surrender. Yeah, we're going to hit episode seven and eight of season three of Picard and We are getting down to the wire. There are only ten episodes in the season. I know And then the series is over. Yep. Yep. There's there's potential I guess there's potential replacement series. There's gonna be more Star Trek TV shows on its way I think you mentioned is the, was it Starfleet, like Academy type thing? Yeah, yeah, they've greenlit a Starfleet Academy show, which they haven't announced any official cast members or anything of that nature, but it seemed like they were hinting that Tilly

would be a part of that in the last season of discovery. So I'm curious to see if that still holds true. I know, I know the actress that plays Tilly had some other acting opportunities outside of Star Trek that she was pursuing for a while. I don't know if she's planning on coming back or not. Not that I dislike Tilly. I do dislike that dystopian future that discovery is left in. Yeah. And it looks like it's going to be taking place in said dystopia. I mean, of course, I'll probably watch it. I'll give it a chance.

But I'm going to do so on in the hate watching aspect of things. Just like seasons one through four of discovery. In discovery's defense, one and two did have certain highlighted moments. Yeah, no season two was great and I really like season one as well. Lorca and Pike were phenomenal. However, some of the other plot points, what was the guy's name, Ash? I think his name was Ash Tyler. Ash Tyler, I didn't care for the character. I liked him.

I didn't have a problem with him. I liked generally speaking, I liked all the characters. I just didn't care for how a lot of them were handled. Right. That's fair. Any case, we can... Well, I'll have to make a special episode of Discovery Bashing. I know, I know. But I also heard that there was going to be, was a section 31, which is potentially going

to be pushing forward. And I heard a rumor that apparently they're looking to do something with Star Trek Voyager doing a not like a reboot, but more of getting the band back together, just kind of like this one. Oh, that's first I've heard of the Voyager one. The section 31 show has been discussed for years. So that's really nothing new. But it's just been rumors. I have they made any sort of an official announcement from Kurtzman at this point. No, nothing, nothing official. The only one that was officially announced as far as I'm aware is the Starfleet Academy one. But as far as section 31 goes, there was a lot of speculation that Ash Tyler and Empress George Joe would be a part of that. And, you know, with...

Why can't I remember her name, Brad? Michelle Yo. Okay. Michelle Yo. It took a second. With Michelle Yo winning an Oscar and being, you know, the most popular female lead in Hollywood at the moment. It should be interesting to see if they're able to still land her. But as far as a Voyager show goes, this is the first I've heard of it.

So I'm kind of curious. Prodigy in a lot of ways was in extension of Voyager. I know you keep mentioning I should watch it. And I, it's, I'll give it a go someday. I think if you, I think you need to give it a few episodes. I think if you watched one episode, you'd be turned off. I would say you need to give it five to six episodes, which I watched the first episode and was turned off.

Right. So there you go. But it's a really charming show. And I think that as long as you consider the target audience of prodigy, and just kind of keep that in the back of your mind, and don't let that sway your opinion too much, I think it'd be really surprised at how good the quality of the writing is. Janeway is a major part of it and there's some other surprises in there as well, which I will not reveal. But it is, it is a well written show that is thought out and really I feel captures the heart of what Star Trek is, but for a younger audience. You know, I think I was reading an article the other day with Picard, the reason why season three is kind of

more favorite is that it's kind of like a passing of the torch or season where just like how bones showed up in the first episode of TNG at the end of it, he was passing that, it said torch to the TNG cast kind of thing. And I think looking at how TNG and Deep Space 9 kind of continue and then how DS9 and Voyager did, it seemed to be like a continuous thing of passing that torch along into the other shows. And I kind of feel like with

Picard season 3 that they have this mixed crew of subcharacters that are not like clearly important enough as the TNG crew to get too many lines. But they're in there in a point to kind of maybe pass that torch along. And so you could technically see maybe Shaw showing up again in another Star Trek series. And honestly, I mean, I don't want to get into the two episodes yet, but the way Shaw has been portraying since we first got introduction to him, I would be okay with watching that show. I have been a big fan of Captain Shaw since maybe episode three or so, like episode one, like what a complete asshole.

But he start to see little by little why he is the way he is. And the fact that he really does give a crap about his crew. He's not just an egotistical captain. He just has a different way of doing things. So big fan, big fan of Shaw. And there's been a lot of talk on Twitter about something that people are referring to as quote, star trek legacy, which Terry Metallis has been acknowledging is something that he too would like to participate and do. And the idea behind that is taking the characters like Jack Crusher and then the

two LaForge sisters, seven of nine, captain Shaw, and then maybe a few others, and get them in the mix and use their more famous TV parents to help launch the show as they have been this season and carry on the legacy. Yeah, I know. How are you okay with that? I think that could be a lot of fun in the right hands with the right writing.

And then you could use that as a way to occasionally bring in characters like Jordy LaForge, you know, Beverly Crusher, even Patrick Stewart, if he's interested in participating once in a while. Well, assuming he's alive at the end of the season, right? Well, yeah, that's fair. They do have this habit of killing off Jean-Luc Picard for some reason. Yeah, but you know what, speaking of the little forge sisters, I was actually pleasantly surprised to see them keep the real daughter. Yeah. And like, she's still there. And I was honestly like, I was kind of initially anticipating when they first brought her in and we realized it. I was like, oh, she's probably just

gonna be here for one one episode and they're just gonna be like, no, you're gonna stay on the station, but they didn't keep in her room. I mean, I was actually pretty happy with that. Yeah, I was surprised too. I had a feeling that she might be a cameo, but she is not, and I'm glad to see that, because I really enjoy her character, I think she's doing great. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Let's start out with Dominion. This is Picard, season three, episode seven. We start out with the Titan Hiding in the Chintaka Scrapyard.

Do you remember the Chintaka system, Brad? No, I don't. I absolutely have no room for that. All right. So, let me allow me to put my nerd cap on for a second. The Chintaka system is where two very large battles in the Dominion War were fought. Do you remember the episodes of Deep Space Nine where they had those space turrets that just destroyed the fleet? Yeah, I do remember that.

That was Chintaka. So the Titan is hanging out in the debris of that battle. And they're with like minimum power trying to stay stealthy. And seven of nine is on the phone with Captain Tuvac. She's trying to see, you know, if there's any information on where Riker is at. They're doing some IP masking and VPN trickery in that old situation. Seven of nine has increased her Nord VPN subscription to the maximum level. Clearly, doing them was a mesh network, they call it, I guess.

I don't know, this is out of my scope. So, go ahead. No, it's insane. It was good to see Tuvac. I really love the guy. Tim Russ, a tremendous actor. I was really happy to see him. Unfortunately, a short lived, you know, as Shaw and Tavine are analyzing Tuvac's voice, they

start to notice some abnormalities in his speech patterns. They think that it's him, but they're not 100% sure. And seven starts asking some qualifying questions. And she does ultimately decide that this is not two Vox. This is a changeling. And sure enough, that is the truth. Yeah, that was, you know, I'm worried, man. Like I hope they do like a reveal at the end

like two Vax alive, but I'm worried about him, man. The changeling implies that he's either been severely tortured or killed. We don't know for certain, but he ends up changing his face to match that of Riker. And then Mox Picardin says that Riker is as good as dead. Yeah, unfortunately that seems to be the case. So we start out the episode proper in the conference room. Picard is asking about Wurf and Jordy tells him that Wurf and Raffy have gone off to do some scouting of their own and try and find Riker.

But they're also running out of time because Frontier Day is right around the corner. So Bev is just trying to figure out the moral quandaries of whether or not she should develop a virus once again and commit genocide. She wants to target the species based on their biology. She's thinking about the virus that they use in the Dominion War to ultimately get the changelings in the Dominion Surrender. And she's flat out honest about it. She's like, I'm a doctor, I took an oath, but our backs are against the wall, and it's gonna be me or them.

I would at least consider it. Yeah, and I guess that's the big hole. Is this the right thing to do type of aspect of it? And it's, I mean, it's this kind of whole thing. It's, you know, do you need to do this to save yourself as that, then OK to justify that? Right. I mean, it's a very deep philosophical conversation

can be had with this. It's like, if a species is just trying to commit genocide on you, is it OK to genocide them first? Like, where do you draw the line? And to his credit, Picard tells her to do the research, but they'll deal with that if and when it becomes necessary. You know, so he's like, hold that thought, but let's keep it in the background, you know? Yeah. And they still don't know how Picard's involvement in Frontier Day is at this point. You know, they're, they mentioned that they need genetic verification of his identity.

So they're thinking that maybe the body of Picard that was stolen from Daystrom is a way to combine his DNA with Jack Crusher's DNA and make the perfect genetic double of Jean-Luc, but they don't really know because it seems a little weird and as Beverly points out, they both have unique DNA of their own. They don't need the relatives to complete an incomplete sequence. So you know, it's one of those situations where I'm kind of worried that they wrote a plot point, but they don't know how to write themselves out of it. Yeah, I'm kind of wondering that too.

And, you know, we don't really get too many more answers in the following episode, do we? No. No, we got more questions. We got a lot more questions. So data is hanging out in sick bay or the amalgamation of what data is and they they've been trying to work on him to get him up and run in. They bring data out of Stasis and start speaking with data's voice, recognizes Jean-Luc is capped in, he recognizes Jordy, then all of a sudden, Lord jumps in, is like, hey, it's me, I'm gonna kill you all.

Yep. I mean, that's not ominous at all. No, no. But they start diving into the different personalities of Data, Lore, B4, Soons, and they're talking about how it's all partitioned off, and this is gonna come into play in the next episode.

I'm a little confused, because I thought in the previous episode, they said he's got four personalities, but in this episode, they're like, oh, he's only got the two personality, but the memories of B4 and Alton soon. So I think they did clarify that previously and they're just kind of like expanding on the definition because from what I understood,

data in law were the dominant personalities while B4 and Alton soon were more supporting cast. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's like 60% of the personalities or even 80% of the personalities were split evenly between data and lore. And while the other remaining percentage was split between B4 and so. Yeah, I don't know, man. This whole thing is... It's weird. Yeah, it's love heat. Yeah.

Well, long story short, they don't want to lose data and they need to make sure that they don't accidentally trigger something that would cause Lord to take over the partitions because if Lord takes over data's partitions, data could be lost forever. Which would be bad. We bet. It would be. It would be. And we're bad, we're bad. It would be, it would be. And we're gonna put a pin in that because that might be a plot point later on. Back on the Shrike, Vatic is reaching out to her creepy face, superior guy girl thing.

I don't know what it is. But the face is threatening Vatic and telling her that she's got to step up and bring them Jack Crusher because she dies or she dies. Yeah, it's like basically Vatic is expendable. So I'm guessing that like those guys are probably more change links. It's unclear, but it's kind of the vibe that I had. But then later on, when we find about Vatic's, you know, backstory, it seems to imply that that's not the case. We'll see. I guess. Let's see here. Jack starts noticing that there's something wrong with him and he tries

to explain it, but he really can't and he's constantly offering to just let himself be turned in so that he could save Riker, save the crew, and Picard is just like, no, you're not doing that. That doesn't make any sense Jack but anyway I don't know where the strike appears and attacks the Titan. Well no, no it doesn't attack the Titan because it was the the crew of the Titan or is like, hey, we got to come with the plan to get things taken care of and then it cuts to

to get things taken care of. And then it cuts to something like a battle where the Titan and another ship fought. And, oh, it says there was a Vulcan worship. And then the Titans just floating. And so the strike can't really identify life signs and so they decided to board. I guess the question I have is where the freak, do they come up with a Vulcan worship,

like the last possible second? Was this like one of those hard times ships? I think it was implied that it was the remnants of a ship from the Chintaka battles. Okay, but it could be wrong. Eh, who knows? I don't know, it's irrelevant. Anyway, Vatican and company hop on some shuttles and they board the Titan. And she starts ordering her crew to go and find them and

hunt them down and trap them. And Jack starts trying to lead them through some corridors and he runs into Sidney LaForge. They actually managed to trap some of the boarding party behind force fields. You know what this reminds me of? Alien three when they're trying to lead the alien into the pit. Yes. And then they fit. Yep. And in just like that, they failed here too. As you do, right? Yeah. But they end up getting stuck in a force field together with, uh, with bad dudes on both sides of them. So it was a, yeah, Jack and, and which is, said crash.

Yeah. So let's see here, they, they, uh, they do, Vatic ends up finding Picard and Crusher in sick bay. Right. And she gets captured. Yeah. And, and Vatic is, is just chilling in, in a force field in the middle of sick bay. She's telling her backstory, being like, Hey, this is what's going on. Can we talk about this for a second? The monologue that no villain should technically be doing.

Correct. First of all, holy crap. Let's talk about how great Amanda Plummer is. Oh, so you see now? Yeah. I mean, I've been I've been thoroughly impressed with her all season. But up to this point, I've really not been aware of her as an actress. Oh, yeah, she's really good.

And she's tremendous. And in her, her, the backstory for her character is, and in essence, kind of very tragic. Oh, super tragic. And like, I think that's what makes her a great villain, you know, in all honesty. The characters that have these dark back stories and they have a moral justification for why they're doing the things that they do, that they believe to be right. It's shades of gray. It's not black and white, you know? Mm-hmm. And to her people, she might be a hero.

And so it's kind of funny in a sense, in a very sick sense, I should say, that the, sense, I should say, that the, from Vatic's perspective, is that the federation is the true villain, the ultimate torturer, whereas, you know, the federation is, it looks at them as the true villain, the ultimate killers of taking over and trying to dominate their whole galaxy. Exactly. So they both have the same opinion of each other from different perspectives, basically. And it turns out that the section 31,

it was section 31, I believe, right? Yeah, they're the ones that developed the virus and then they captured some changelings and Vatic has scars on her face because she was tortured in a lab and experimented on. And she took the shape of her tormentor. Yeah, she did. Really sick and twisted segment, in my opinion. Very so, very so. In heartbreaking in a lot of ways too. But really strong performance by Vatic or by Amanda Plummer.

And ultimately she ends up escaping when data starts taking over the enterprise. But it was more. It was just a war. It was a war. Yeah. The war is fighting back and he starts taking over all the ship systems and while he's doing that, the force field of vatic is in drops and she goes morphin up an air pipe. So ultimately, vatic manages to make her way to the bridge. Now, it's also worth mentioning here that at,

there comes a point where with Jack Crusher and Sydney, they get separated when the force fields go down and they're separated by their own force fields. And Jack, like mind, it's not really a mind-milk, it's like red eyes to red eyes. And he takes over her brain in a way that he can basically do things that, you know, for her and she mimics them. Right? Let's be honest. He Charles Xavier's her. Is that what that is?

Like I was thinking of the future Rama episode where Lila is being the the wrestler for you know against Bender and she's like I mean if you're thinking by in truth Professor X is dad so oh my god I can't believe you went there. Oh my jee would be proud. Yeah but but he's not here. So he'll never know clearly, clearly. But that was pretty cool. Any thoughts on on Jack's superpowers? Here was, you know, it's, it's funny.

It's like, it's getting to another point where I'm just, I am enjoying it, but I'm concerned that they've written themselves down this plot point and they're not going to get out of it. Yeah, it does seem a little convenient and weird. We still don't have any answers on the red door that you see in or anything like that, even after the next episode too, we don't. Well, that's where they used to have a cliffhanger, but yeah, but still it's like, hey, what's going on?

And I'm wondering if when we see it, we're going to be happy. Or is it just going to be like sad trombone? I remain optimistic. So far, this has been a very enjoyable season. And I would like to think that they will not ruin it on episode nine. So, um, so after that fight though, uh, Vatic jumps on the bridge and she takes over. She has Shobb, uh, beaten the crap out of in a turbo lift and uh, seven tries to shoot her with a phaser, but misses and uh, Vatic is in charge of the Titan.

And she speaks on the intercom and demands that Jack Crusher come to visit her on the bridge and says, it's time you learned who you truly are. And so Jack and Sydney are in sick bay with Crusher and Picard. Jordi and his other daughter are with data slash lore in some other area. And then Seven Shaw and the main bridge crew up there.

And I guess there's probably crew scattered around the ship. And yeah, things do not look good. And that's where the episode ends. I have to say, I actually was really happy with this episode the way the direction went and how everything transpired. Yeah, a very good episode I think. You know, it really hinged for me on the performance of Amanda Plummer and Sick Bay with that monologue. And to some degree, her performance on the bridge when she finally had control of the ship there was just this confidence in her character in both that was very striking I feel and

Big fan of her big fan of her performance, and I'm really into the character of that. I But even even the stuff with Jority and Data was enjoyable. You know, I'm sometimes Brent Spiner can be a little too Brent Spinery for my case. You know what I mean? I get that. And he's been kind of walking that fine line so far. I'm concerned that he may jump that shark, but he hasn't quite yet,

but he's gotten pretty close in the past two episodes. Yeah, I can definitely see where you're coming from that. Most notably though, there's no riker and no Troy in this episode, despite both of them beginning locked up in the previous one. Didn't they show up for like a second in this episode? Well, Riker's face was on screen briefly when, you know, two Vock turned into him, but, but that was it.

Fair, fair. So, but yeah, I mean, after after this episode how'd you feel like do you think were you excited to see where they went next or were you kind of rolling your eyes? I was really excited, but I mean I was kind of I Was rolling my eyes at the Come on guys you you expected them to board your ship and not take over Yeah, I think that their plan just backfired, they were going to try to ambush them. And I think they just weren't good at that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I get it just to me. It was like one of those things. It's just like, oh, come on. Man. Great. I would agree with you.

Let's start talking about surrender. So we're back again on the Titan and that is looking awfully comfortable on the bridge. She orders her followers to take the crew's eyes and she doesn't mean literally she means lock down all the controls of the ship. Yeah pretty much. And then she's like take their ears and she doesn't mean literally she just means shut off the communications. And then she's like take the very road of head of them and she doesn't mean literally she just means close the of head of them. And she doesn't mean literally, she just means close the doors and lock them. Okay.

Yeah, no literal things of here, but just more of feature-ly. And then she gets her goons, her hired goons to go in and start shooting some of the remaining crew that's sky around the ship. And she leaves the comms open so the bridge crew can hear them scream. So you know what I'm gonna say because this thing that this kind of bugged me in the beginning. She knew Picard and Beverly were in the sick bay.

a card and Beverly were in the sick bay. Why did she not send somebody to sick bay? That is a valid question. And I would only surmise that she believed that they had already moved on from sick bay. She was like, well, they're not gonna stay there. So why am I gonna waste resources looking for them? That's a guess. That's me like, that's me like really stretching the taffy. You really, you like, you dropped all the straws and you're just

trying to pick one up. Well, I mean, it's the biggest one. The, the, the other thing too is a critique is that she monologologue too much in this episode. Well, I mean, that's what villains do, man. They monologue because they think they have the upper hand and then they die. Think about it, Hans Gruber did it. The alien did it from alien. All the great villains.

Not that I wanna see her to kill all the bridge crew or anything, but I mean, come on. Negan did it. You know, like that was a whole scene felt very Negan walking dead to me. We'll get there. Yeah. Yeah. Continue, sir. So, even though, so Picard and Crusher are still in sick bay and they got Jack with them and Sidney and Jack starts like eye glowing and doing his professor X stuff and he is

actually able to like get in the head of a security officer who is trying to find his squad and He sends this guy running through the hallways gun in hand But he's quickly dispatched and killed by one of that excuse I mean, I mean hey expendable surf lead, right? This was the epitome of red shirt. Yep. In this moment, you would think that like if, if, if I had sudden control over somebody like that, I wouldn't go like barreling down the hallway. I would like sneak.

Super stuff. The least to try to mask yourself, but nope. Right. It's full full throttle, man, full throttle. Yep. And the other thing too is Jack didn't even feel bad. No, no, he's just like, let me do it again. And yeah, pretty much. In any case, Vatic jumps up on the, on the comms

and she's like Jack Crusher to the bridge on the double. And meanwhile, over on the Shrike, which is completely empty of all Shrike crew, for some reason, Breaker and Shrike are in the same few there. There's a few there. It was like one. It was like two. This is like, when you leave your teenagers

home, when you go out for a date, and you hope that they don't have a party and burn the house down. That's what they left. So, so Troy and Reiker have a heart to heart and they start basically hashing through all their, their depression and despair for the past, however long it's been since that died. And they finally understand each other. They come to an understanding and agreement and they get through their pain and now they're on the same page again and they're glad to be back together. And none of this felt like normal to me. I don't know how you felt because we've never gotten

this type of relationship from them before. And while I think that it's certainly possible that they got to this place, it just seems like, it seems like we've missed a lot of the in between. Yeah, I think that's the problem is that like, there's so much history is passed between the characters and they're trying to cover all these small plot points, but yeah, and like the other thing too, and I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing, but you know the character Deanna Troy in the entire run of next generation was pretty poorly written.

And we know that Marina Circus is a much more charismatic actress who is capable of way more. And the Troy that we get in season three of a card feels like an extension of her personality, not an extension of Troy's personality. Yeah. And like I'm kind of conflicted on that because it doesn't feel like the same character to me, but I think for Marina, I think it's probably a hell of a lot more fun to play.

So I'm kind of, I'm kind of torn. I know it is, it felt, it didn't feel like fully genuine, I guess. Yeah. It felt like an interpretation of a character. Yeah, I mean, it's been a while. I mean, I remember seeing, seeing her on Voyager, and I loved the character being on Voyager, and it just felt distant from whatever, remember. and it just felt distant from whatever remember. Yeah. I don't know. Um, maybe they're just trying to bring more of her into the character of Troy, you know, and try to reshape that character a little bit more. Mm-hmm. But in any case, they have their heart to heart and then we go back to the Titan and Vada continues with her verbal assault.

Jack's prepared to give himself up again. Again, this kid, at this point, just let him give himself up, right? Yeah, I think that's the thing is they're like, we got to protect Jack, got to protect Jack. And I'm like, dude, like you guys were already caught, like just give him over by this time for the crew, honestly. Right. It's kind of silly, but anyway, they refuse to give Jack up and, you know, Picard makes a very good point. It's like, well, what it happens when Vatta gets you.

She's gonna take you away, and then she's gonna blow up the tight and kill everybody on board. And you know, Jack seems to think that he's supposed to just jump in the great link or something, but Picard explains to him that it's not really about that. It seems to be more about seeking revenge, and he thinks there's something more sinister going on.

Yeah. So anyway. seeking revenge and he thinks there's something more sinister going on. So, anyway, Jack seems to think he can get to the bridge and take control of it using his mind powers. And you know, as Vatic starts to count down to the end of her ultimatum where she says after 10 minutes, I'm gonna start killing crew. One of the crew members gets absorbed by Jack's mind powers and starts typing in some access codes, trying to be all stealthy and stuff, except that is like literally right in front of the guy.

I know, and it was so obvious too, it's just like the hands up and everything, and he's typing away. Yeah. Like it was really poor. Like what were you expecting? What were you expecting? So that starts giving a pretty lengthy speech and she acts like she's going to kill Murra. But then she turns about face and she shoots the Vulcan instead, Tavine.

Mm-hmm. And just vaporizes Tavine on the spot. You know, at first I was like, oh, they're probably just shooting somebody and they're like, oh, I'm still good, it's just a flesh wound. And then that happened. And it was like, nope, that's not them, be the case. Nope, it's final. Tavine's dead.

No, I don't really, like I recognize her from the show, but like it to me, it's just like, I don't really have any attached feelings to her death or anything. No, I would agree with that. None of the bridge crew really have been fleshed out. You know, there, there's definitely side pieces. And that's okay. Like, it's fine, but there was no impact, too. Riker and Troy are back on the strike and they start trying to come up with a plan to escape. And when one of the vatic's crews opens the door and they start fighting with the guy, but then I don't know where Warf like just

Shubbs is blade right through his chest and vaporizes him. So I mean To me I was like why didn't she just vaporize them in the beginning? Well, cuz it's cooler to stab him For the special effects for effects. I get it. I got it. But it's cooler to stab him for the special effects, for effects. I get it. I get it. But it's also cooler. No, no disagreement there. Um, I know what you want from you, man. You're like, I didn't write the show. Stop. Get off my back. Yeah. Get off my lawn, Brett. Warf starts looking around the ship with Reichard Troy trying to see if they can figure out what exactly it is that they want with Picard's body. They come across Raffi, who's also on board looking around too. Turns out that they

had a cloak shuttle and they were able to board the strike unnoticed. They found the body of Jean-Luc. They started making some scans and they found that they were trying to do something with Picard's body in regards to the eromatic syndrome. Is that right? Yeah. Well, they took out parts of his body, like his parts of his brain and stuff and they don't know why. So the mystery continues. Well, I think from what they're indicating is that that wasn't actually the situation I was going on. He didn't really have the... What was it called?

Aromatic syndrome. They didn't really, like, he doesn't really seem to have it. Or it's something, it's, or it's something, it seems to indicate that it may be something else. Okay. That's kind of the vibe I'm getting from it. And they just have other plans for it. I mean, the only thing I can think of, the only thing I can think of is that what they're trying to do

is some sort of mind linking for all of humanity and kind of do the exact same thing what section 31 did to the changelings. Whereas like they did implemented some sort of disease and to wipe out the changeling and I think what they're gonna do is they're gonna use Jack to do some sort of mind thing to transmit a disease to all of humanity. Or at least everybody who's there during first contact day. Gotcha. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure, but that could be it.

Well, let's see here, what else is going on during this whole thing? Oh, yeah, Data and lore. Start fighting in the Matrix. You know, I have to say, Drew, oh my God, these two episodes have so much more going on in them than like, than like entire seasons of Star Trek, I feel. Yeah, they crammed a lot into these two episodes. I feel like the pacing

kind of got rushed here in these past two episodes. And even if they had maybe a 12 episode run, I think it would have been a huge improvement because there's a lot going on here. And they somebody realized, oh crap, we're running out of time. Yeah, pretty much. So data and lore are like fighting inside like the white space of the matrix. And lore is trying to take over data's partition and data just starts like willingly giving him all of his quote, quote, memories, but they're like as objects.

So like he has the memorial for Tasha Yarr, he has the pipe from Sherlock Holmes and the cap from Sherlock Holmes. He has spot the cat, which he just hands over to lore and lore starts taking all these possessions of data's. But ultimately, none of this, like, actually, let's lore succeed because they're not lore's memories, they're just objects. And data somehow uses this as a way to turn it around and take over lore himself and become the dominant and sole proprietor of the Android body. So I think the premise is that he's giving him his memories and he knows that

lore will not delete them and because he doesn't delete them in essence, he's betraying the trophies and he's becoming data in essence, allowing him to take over entirely. That's a good way to put it because if you think about it, like data on lore, you know, the memories of data, if you just transfer those memories into lore, then lore then becomes data with additional personality. Right. Right. It's a good way to put it. And I think that's in a way, kind of what we ended up with too because the ultimate result was a character that cares like data but talks kind of like lore. You know, he's able to joke. He's able to joke. He's able to use contractions things like that. We get Jack Crusher. So they hatched this plan

to try to take over the ship again and they send Jack Crusher up with a, basically a Star Wars grenade. Thermal detonator, yeah. Thermal detonator. I don't know why I couldn't think of that because, man, Frank's is going to be so pissed at me. Goes up on the bridge of the thermal detonator and threatens to blow up the ship. And meanwhile, all the stuff with data is going down. They're trying to get data to basically tap into the ship and gain control, right? That's the whole reason that data is having this fight

with lore in his head so that he can gain control to tighten. And meanwhile, Jack is on the bridge and he's trying to talk to Vatic and, you know, get her to explain like what's going on and just get any information out of her well, also like threatening her and being like, well, hey, this bomb might not blow you up,

but if it goes off, it'll blow me up and now you won't have what you want. Yeah, like a, which is valid. Yeah, it's a valid threat. Well, it turns out it's not a third of a detonator, Brad. Turns out it's like a personal shield from Halo. Yes. And big enough because seven,

so all the bridge crew gets pushed into the side room and seven's like, no, I'm gonna stay here. I'm gonna figure stuff out. She wants to accept the consequences for her actions because Shaw made her feel like, you know, part of the reason they were in that circumstance was because of her actions. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And well, of course, the shield's big enough to protect her and Jack. And all while after data takes over, And all while after data takes over, he then like vents the bridge. Yep. And all the vatic screws like flushed out. And so is Vatic.

Out space. They literally get sucked out into space like that. And post. Vatic is dead. she she floats and hits the Shryek and Shatters until like a billion pieces. Right. How do you feel about that? Sudden. I was disappointed. It was it was a little anticlimactic. I because it didn't feel like this whole big

epic death scene. It was more of just like, oh, too bad. Yeah, it's like, oh, we need to move on. And how can we, how can we eliminate Vatic? Oh, I know. We'll, we'll, uh, just open the bridge. We'll open the doors to the bridge into outer space. Just vent it. The only thing I can think of is that she's not really dead and she'll just be back. But no, but they didn't they destroyed the strike? They destroyed the strike. They destroyed the strike at the end of the episode two. Yeah. So I don't know how she's going to survive.

She's not. She's not. She's not. That's the end of attic. And I just like, for such a powerful character and such a powerful performance, it was just, I don't know, I felt like it kind of did her a little bit of it to service. Mm-hmm. You know, there wasn't that like grand finale. No, it was a bit of a let down. What I think would have made more sense is if her and Jack like got into it, you know, had some sort of like,

you know, Professor X versus Magneto fight. Yeah, some sort of fights he wins towards a but now unfortunately it wasn't right. And then he could have sucked her out into space. Yeah. But where else were Harry then? Well, um, after that the crew gets together and Everybody sits around the conference from table just like old times And they start talking and they have a moment where they're basically reminiscing about how good it is to be in each other's company and then Deanna Troy says well, I think it's time I met Jack because the moment I walked on board to Titan I sensed a deep darkness coming from him. And we need to get to the bottom of this. So she puts on her counselor

hat and she joins Jack in his quarters and tries to gain his trust and says that she'll be there to walk through the red door together. And the episode ends as they open the door. Well, they handle at least. They put their hand on the door knob. Okay. And then always whisper a stack of same. What'd you think of this episode? I think you summed it up pretty well earlier

when you said that there was so much going on. And it felt like because there were so many different things happening, like not a lot of it had a chance to breathe. It was kind of funny. I watched the last last weeks episode and then was like, oh, super excited for this week. And then I watched this week and I was like, I'm disappointed. And I was like, it felt, it felt like it was maybe even directed differently. So I looked it up and I was like, who directed this?

It was just two different people. No, it was actually the same person. Which season I think they've been doing pairs of episodes together. And it surprised me because to me they felt very different, very different between the two. It's been, it's been tricky, man. Um, I don't know, like I like the tone of the two episodes, but like I definitely felt like they were trying to make it so that the crew felt like it was at a disadvantage in this one, like like really hopeless in a lot of ways. Yeah.

And I do think that they succeeded, but they rushed the ending so quickly that it felt like the impact was a lot less than it could have been, right? And I think it really does just boil down to they just started running out of time. Because now we have to, like it's episode eight, and we still don't know what the hell's going on with Jack Crusher. We don't know what the plans for running out of time. Because now we have to, like it's episode eight, and we still don't know what the hell's going on with Jack Crusher. We don't know what the plans for first contact day are. We don't know what any of this stuff is

and what it means and where it's going and who the face is. There's so many questions that remain unanswered. And we have two episodes to answer at all, and I'm concerned. I'm hoping that it's not a situation where they really should have had 12 episodes or hell, even like 11 episodes. And then we get to the end of it and we're like, man, there was clearly points to the

eruption. And I think this is a, unfortunately, this was an episode actually a little bit of the last episode and this one too, it was really kind of like, it felt too much going on and they didn't have take enough time to really properly flesh it out. Right, a big part of it is you're trying to give each member of the next generation cast their proper due.

And I'm fine with that, right? Like, you know, you don't have seven seasons and 26 episodes per season to flesh these characters out, like they were originally, right? We have to get everybody caught up on to what's been happening with them for the past 30 years in 10 episodes or less, right? That's really complicated with, you know, you're going to have to make some sacrifices. And for some characters, it works better than others. For Jordi, I think they did a fine job of putting a stamp on where he is mentally and what he's been up to, right?

Yeah, I think that's reasonable. Yeah, I think they did just fine with him, but a character like data or Troy and Riker, and their marriage is specific, it's a little bit more complicated. So you need to have that time, I think, I think they need better time management for that. The only thing I can think of is that

because they appeared in season one, they felt that they did enough during that, and they didn't feel like they needed to go too far deep in this one. I mean, okay, I could agree with that assessment. I don't know if I would agree that that's the best way to handle it though. Oh, no, I don't disagree with that part. I just think that's kind of where their mind was. That makes sense. That seems logical to me, you know.

Yeah. But, I don't know. In any case, like, I'm still hopeful. I think I mean, maybe we'll get lucky in the next two episodes will be longer. Maybe there'll be 90 minutes each. I doubt that. I do too. I am interested to see where they go with it because there's two mysteries. What's going on with Jack and then who's this other entity?

Like, are they going to give us enough closure for everything that's going on? Right. I think they did, you know, the way they ended with data or this episode where he is merged. I'm actually okay with it. I think I'm happy to see where the character is because if you think about TNG, data has always been striving to be human in essence. Now he's human. Right. I mean, he basically is, you know, for data, anyways. So, I don't know, man, do you have any predictions for next week?

I, the only prediction I have is that they are going to do some sort of jack being able to transmit some sort of disease into all humanity that's the goal for it. I don't know why he could do it or how that can happen, but that's my prediction. Any thoughts on who the face might be? No, absolutely not. What if it's like the packlets? That would be the best. It would just be like, oh man, the back lids, lower decks got it right.

Yeah. I'm just trying to think of like what villains from next generation or the movies were big enough or bad enough that they could have some sort of a vendetta. You know, like like, or even from deep space nine, you know, is it like the, I mean, I heard some people have joking around that maybe it's the power rates. I certainly hope not. Uh, yeah, I guess you could do that, but I don't know. To me, like, I feel like that would be a loss because, well, I don't, I don't disagree don't disagree the parades are you know really bad but to me that's deep space nine and I get like the the dominion is intertwined into

and into TNG in some sense mean like the movies like they they even mentioned them there to TNG in some sense, and like the movies, like they even mentioned them there. But like, I feel like that would be just a game. No, it is. And I'm okay with them choosing like the Dominion as like the villain for this, but they just do some throwaway character

or some character. He, you know what would be cool? Gold to cut. Yeah, but dead. I know, I know, I know. So who knows? Right. I'm not sure.

But I mean, I'm looking forward to it though. It should be fun to find out. But my, my hopes are dwindling, Brad. Well, we'll see. We're going to have to see how this goes. Right. So let's give it a bit of the dough and we'll tune in next time. That's right. We will. So on that note, I guess we'll wrap things up, shall we? Most

certainly, sir. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see in two weeks for the finale of Picard season three. Take here folks, live long and prosper. Live long and prospect. Prospect? Sure, let's do prospect. That's what Mijid would say, but he's not here. Take care folks. Bye. Thanks for listening to yet another Star Trek podcast for part of the retro sessions

and work. This episode was recorded on April 7, 2023, and hosted by Drew and Brad, and Majeed, well we talked about him a lot, but he wasn't able to join us today because it's a jerk. That's okay though, because he handles our social media, well Brad writes to some nopsises for us, except when he doesn't. And I edit the show, except when I don't. Well, if I don't edit it, then how are you going to hear it? This is crap.

That's not going to work. Anyway, we have music that was written by us graciously for the great, wonderful William Robillard. If you'd like to check out his work, he's got a SoundCloud page and a YouTube page. We'll have links for that in the show notes. And you can hire him to do your podcastment music as well. Of course, if you'd like to hire an artist, George Tau, he's got a Fiverling. Check out the artwork he did for us.

Turn us into lower-decks characters. We do love it for him. Thanks, George. Thanks, Will. We really appreciate your hard work. Be sure to check us out on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at yet another ST pod. We're also on TikTok too for some reason. I'm not sure why, we're supposed to put out reels of our shows I guess, or TikToks.

I don't understand social media, this is why I'm a GD handles it all. But in any case, follow us there and listen to snippets of our stuff and random postings and things like that. Of course, if you'd like to send us an email, you do that as well too. Get another ST pod at gmail.com. And of course, check out our website, get another ST pod dot com. Thanks for listening folks. I'll see you next time. you