Picard: Episode 1: Remembrance

We’ll start with the non-spoilerly part of the episode first, THEN get into heavy spoiler territory but we’ll warn you before we spoil stuff.

Overall:

  • Alvin felt it was a very well balanced episode
  • Nice pacing
    • Much slower than Discovery
    • Looks / filmed beautifully
    • This is NOT a TNG show, it’s very serialized and focused on Picard
  • We see Picard at Chateau Picard as seen in the trailers
    • It’s not ACTION man Picard
  • There was only one scene Alvin felt suffered from JJ-itis which we’ll get into during the SPOILERISH part but when you see the scene which comes near the end and before we’re introduced to one of the new MAIN characters.
  •  Definitely dealing with real world comparisons, I totally called that there would be some kind of refugee crisis BUT was NOT expecting the storyline they gave us.
    • It’s no secret the DATA haunts Picard in his dreams, we DO see him and what I will say is that it’s clear that Andorid Rights/Syntheitc humans will play a huge part in the new series.

 

SPOILER:

  • Episode Breakdown
  • We start on The Enterprise D, Picard and Data are playing cards
    • It’s obviously a dream sequence
    • Picard is in his civilian clothing
    • Data in his Nemesis uniform
    • They arrive outside Mars which is being bombarded and Ten forward explodes.
  • Picard wakes up.
  • Later we are introduced to his two Romulan aids/companions
    • They seem very loyal to him, at least for now.
      • We’ll get into that later
  • We see Picard at Chatau Picard as he calms himself from his nightmare.
    • The anxiety he’s feeling now stems from an interview he gives later in the episode where it’s revealed
    • He left the Enterprise to lead a rescue armada to help with the evacuation of Romulas
      • The Romulans asked for the Federation’s help
        • It’s obvious the reporter is going to get hostile
          • She asks why should they devote so many resources into saving Romulan Lives and Picard corrects her
            • Not just Romulan Lives, Lives
        • During this rescue mission, a group of Synthetic humans attack MARS, causing like 90,000 deaths, they destroy the
          • Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards
            • This is one of Star Fleets primary ship building facilities
        • He asks if she was framiliar with DUNKIRK?
        • Picard’s interview with FNN delivers a bunch of backstory that sets up where we find Jean-Luc at the start of the show. After the Federation learned about the Romulan supernova, Picard pushed Starfleet to launch a massive armada to rescue the Romulan people. Picard likened the attempt to Dunkirk, in which British civilian ships rallied together to save stranded British soldiers during World War II.
      • She presses him on why he left Starfleet and he frustratingly declares it was because after what happend, Starfleet going back on helping the Romulans, the subsequent ban on synthetics that he left
      • He ends the interview
  • Following the destruction of the Confederated Martian Colonies by synthetics (artificial lifeforms similar to Data),
    • Admiral Jean-Luc Picard has resigned his commission from Starfleet in protest of Starfleet using the destruction of the Utopia Planitia Shipyards as an excuse to back out from the evacuation of Romulus,
    • Not the first time we’ve seen the Federation do something like this:
      • Augments have been banned for centuries
        • We’ve seen this in DS9 with Bashier and the auguments that he helps
        • We’ve seen WHY there is fear both with Kahn and the Eugenics wars that are mentioned in Star Trek
        • We’ve seen other characters reactions to Data in TNG
        • We’ve seen very bad decisions the Federation has made, some corrected or stopped
          • The sona relocation in Insurrection
          • The rise of the human colonies along the Cadasian boarder which leads to the Maquis being formed
    • and retired to his country estate in La Barre, France.
    • In Greater Boston, Dahj is enjoying an evening with her boyfriend, when Romulan assassins transport into her apartment.
    • They kill him, but before they can kill her, something activates in Dahj, and she kills the assassins.
    • She experiences visions of Picard, and seeks him out after seeing him being interviewed on the Federation News Network.
    • Dahj finds sanctuary in La Barre, but soon runs away out of fear of bringing harm to the Admiral.
    • Picard calls on the Starfleet Archives and discovers a painting Data made thirty years previous entitled “Daughter”, bearing a female figure resembling Dahj.
    •  Dahj talks to her “mother” who urges her to seek Picard.
      • Mother KNEW she met with Picard BEFORE Dhaj mentioned it.
    • Dahj tracks Picard down and reunites with him, but it proves to be a brief reunion, as she is killed by the same assassins from earlier.
      • The romulan chews an acid fake tooth thing and spits it at Dhaj
        • the acid hits a dropped phaserrifle and explodes killing her!
      • Picard is thrown back in the balst
    • When Picard wakes up he is tended to by his Romulan aids
      •  Suspiciously okay,
      • There are throwaway lines about a cloaking device maybe concealing Dhaj on security cameras, etc.
      • Something’s up with them
    • Picard travels to the Daystrom Institute in Okinawa and meets with Dr. Agnes Jurati, who reveals Dahj may be Data’s daughter through an experimental procedure known as fractal neuronic cloning – meaning she is an android with an organic body but a positronic brain.
    • Jurati reveals this process results in twins.
    • The episode ends in a Romulan reclamation site where a Romulan named Narek meets with Soji Asher, Dahj’s twin. A final view of the reclamation site reveals it to be a Borg Cube.

 

 

Episodes to watch

TNG’s, A measure of a man, Offspring, the