I really enjoyed the finale.
I’m sure Data was fine with 15-20 years. The fucker was buried under San Francisco for 500 years.
Can someone please explain to me how Picard's consciousness and personhood could exit the "quantum simulation" and be implanted into a new body, but they couldn't simply do the same for Data??
EDIT: Hell, I'll even give them a way to handle it: have it turn out that Young Soong had already been preparing a secondary body for himself just like he did for Picard, but that he decides at the end not to transfer his own consciousness into it--having lived enough--and instead gives that gift to his brother Data, so that Data's consciousness enters the body and lives out his days as a real mortal. Brent Spiner could transition to playing Data but as the older looking self. Continue to go on adventures with Picard, but both of them now mortal.
EDIT2: The more I think about it... this is probably exactly what they'll do in Season 2. Mirroring The Search for Spock, we'll find out that the "golem" concept (like Genesis) was used between seasons / films to restore Data to a new body, which will have been one made older like Son Soong, so that Spiner can reprise the role without all the makeup. They actually. might do that, as crazy as it is.
I actually don't think they'll pursue this with a Season 2 because it felt like this was being a proper sendoff for Data, the way they did it. That speech by him was about as close as it gets for his character, considering the writers.
Not Picard related but the Star Trek YT channel did a cool quick Q&A with John De Lancie. Dude looks great for his age. Wish it was a bit longer. Q is what got me into TNG.
Went to a Con in the 90s and ended up in an elevator with him. He was real cool.
I actually don't think they'll pursue this with a Season 2 because it felt like this was being a proper sendoff for Data, the way they did it. That speech by him was about as close as it gets for his character, considering the writers.
“In the course of this season, we show the death of Icheb, who was a recurring character on “Voyager,” and then the death of Hugh, who was a recurring character on “TNG.” When we talked about it, we definitely had a sense of like, there’s probably going to be some people who are upset that these characters have died.”
“The death of Icheb has now become part of the story of Seven of Nine. It felt completely called for and we couldn’t have told her story without it. I mean, the death of Icheb is upsetting partly because it’s fairly gruesome, which I understand, but also because, you know, he’s so powerless, he has no agency. He’s really a victim.”
“But that isn’t the case with the death of Hugh. He dies trying to do what he’s been trying to do for his entire adult life, which is help former Borg. His death felt meaningful.”
“I will say, I don’t think I quite understood that there were going to be people who would be upset about a character’s death regardless of how that character died. That simply the fact of a character dying — that was not okay with them. Even if I had known that I would have ultimately dismissed it because it seems — I just don’t understand television in that way.”
” I mean, one possible response that I could have had — and I think some of my partners on “Picard” do have — is to ignore it all completely. Or to just take a little glance, maybe look at Rotten Tomatoes, see what the kind of consensus of the reviews from the critics has been, which has been pretty darn favorable, and just sort of leave it at that.”
“I’ve gone maybe half a dozen times since this season started to look on Reddit. I will say, the quality of comment and of criticism on Reddit is so much vastly higher than it is on Twitter, even some quite strongly negative criticism. It tends to be much better reasoned, much better supported with evidence, in a way that I can respect and engage with and listen to.”
“As someone who spent a fair amount of time over the years on Memory Alpha, looking on Reddit, enjoying the way people enjoy “Star Trek” online — it’s been so fun to see [the show] getting absorbed into the kind of greater corpus of “Star Trek.” What makes me feel good is when I see it being treated, in a sense, the same by fans as previous versions of the show.”
“I actually went back and looked on Google Groups, which acquired Usenet, so you can look through the old Usenet groups and watch what people said about “Deep Space Nine” and then about “Voyager.” They f—ing hated it. They lacerated it. I mean, plenty of people liked it and loved it.”
However, maybe the biggest revelation is that Chabon admits he wanted to add darker, grimmer elements to Star Trek in the vein of Westworld and Breaking Bad.
Chabon explains, “You come to “Star Trek,” I think, as a fan, especially if you’ve watched all the episodes many, many times, with this expectation that you won’t have to tolerate that kind of level of “darkness” for that long.”
He continues, “And so that when a show in this era asks you to do what you are readily willing to do with a show like “Westworld” or “Breaking Bad” or whatever — somehow, the mere fact that it’s “Star Trek” makes it hard to accept.”
Chabon adds, “And I actually get that. It’s a little weird for me, too. Both in conceiving this show, and sometimes, if I can give myself enough distance as I’m watching the episodes as they’re dropping, I can feel this deep wiring in my brain that wants “Star Trek” to be episodic.”
Chabon has routinely placed the idea of the Picard show at the feet of Patrick Stewart. During a Q&A on Instagram last month, Chabon highlighted Stewart’s condition for being involved with the production:
“Sir Patrick was very clear and explicit with us, from the outset, that his returning to the role of Jean-Luc Picard, like his previous return to the role of Professor X in LOGAN, depended on our creating a series written and intended for an older, more mature audience, about an older, more battered hero, one that would accurately reflect and take into account the burden of years, disappointments, and regrets. So that is what we set about doing.”
― Joss Whedon“There's a time and place for everything, and I believe it’s called 'fan fiction'.”
Onto their next impossible thing!What I would like to know is where the fuck Picard and his band of merry murderers were going at the end of the last episode. They have no reason to still be together as a group.
Shouldn't Barclay be in the show then? They can finally show us that Murdock was an adventure that Barclay had on the holodeck, lolOnto their next impossible thing!
Rumor has it, Picard was actually a reboot of the A-Team. The P-Team is set to premier next spring.
Shouldn't Barclay be in the show then? They can finally show us that Murdock was an adventure that Barclay had on the holodeck, lol
I'd say "cheesy stupid writing" is not the problem for us old time trek fans.Cheesy stupid writing was always a huge part of Trek.
Patrick Stewart gets to give a masterclass on dramatic death scene acting, as Picard says goodbye to his new family of rag-tag misfits, and drifts away into death. However, Jean-Luc finds himself not in the afterlife, but rather a simulation where his mind is being housed - alongside an old friend (Data). After giving Data a much better send-off than Star Trek: Insurrection did, Picard wakes up in a new synthetic body.
It's arguably something of cop-out how the showrunners set it up: Picard now inhabits a cutting-edge new synthetic body, but is aged to his current age 'for comfort and familiarity,' and is artificially given a shut down date that's equal to his real human lifespan. Basically, it's Android Picard without any of the logical questions or hangups to keep Patrick Stewart for returning as the character. Works for us.
Holy hell what was all that
Soong-son-chan just low key invented immortality--can create flesh & blood replica bodies that are basically 100% human and implant your mind with ease in his lab--and everyone just went on about their business as if nothing big happened. Why didn't he implant Data's consciousness in a new Data body at any point?? I mean, that makes way more sense than creating an old-man clone with an intentionally imposed 10-year shelf life? What the hell
Glad I went in blind, I really enjoyed it for what it was. Nostalgia can be a darn big emotional amplifier. Didn't get annoyed by the tech, TNG always had silly willy moments with technology.
Okay, so I heard about this shitshow and looked up spoilers to laugh at them:
Star Trek Confirms a Major Change to Picard
SPOILERS: The Star Trek: Picard Season 1 finale has concluded with “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2”, as Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his crew of allies try to stop a major battle, and advert the annihilation of all organic life, all at once. However, the biggest twist in the Star Trek...comicbook.com
So Picard dies. Is he hooked up to a machine when he dies or do they think that his "soul" just got sucked into a storage medium? The only way you could possibility continue being conscious and transfer over to another body or medium (synthetic or otherwise) is that there is continuity between your old body and the new medium. Your experience has to be continuous, or else you are gone. Otherwise, if that new medium starts to have conscious experience it is its own being. If Soong recorded his brain structure and replicated it, that will just be new Picard based off of that structure, not the Picard that died. The Picard that died had his experience end there.
Such retarded science fiction.
If Picard was dying naturally of a brain disease, isn't that his real human lifespan?
How does he have the Data who died? I'm sure you could make up shit that Soong had a subspace network setup that constantly backed up Data's data and he used that to make a copy Data, but that is not THE Data. Just a copy. Which is fine and all, but I like my science fiction precise.
It's Data's consciousness ... His memories and everything that he downloaded into B4 coupled with his neurons that ... I forget the name of the character... The one from Measure of a Man... Took to the planet Soong was at. So it WAS Data's consciousness... It WAS Data ...
As for Picard... Soong said it himself... He downloaded Picard's consciousness before his brain ceased functioning. Your brain doesn't die as soon as your heart stops beating. It's still "alive" with electrical impulses ... But it's a finite time before it DOES cease function. Which is why Soong hurried to do the transfer. So that TOO is Picard. The original. Remember, there was an episode in TNG where Data's "grandfather" downloaded HIS consciousness into Data...
And why only Soji and Dahj weren't golden, by the way?
Only good thing in the episode:
Better than dying under the bridge instead of on it.Yep, we have an android that thinks he is the real Picard, while the real Picard died and is rotting in his grave.
Isn't the future going to be wonderful.
Alex Kurtzmann and the bit about Game of Thrones makes me groan. Does this idiot think that Sex and Violence somehow equal quality TV? Has he even read the books GOT is based off of? A Song of Ice and Fire was a very thoughtful and nuanced fantasy series, much like Star Trek in science fiction, except Trek didn't have the bloody and sexy bits.Amazing. This guy's videos are spot-on.
Why?Better than dying under the bridge instead of on it.
The descriptions of sex in ASoIaF are also teenage poetry level awfulAlex Kurtzmann and the bit about Game of Thrones makes me groan. Does this idiot think that Sex and Violence somehow equal quality TV? Has he even read the books GOT is based off of? A Song of Ice and Fire was a very thoughtful and nuanced fantasy series, much like Star Trek in science fiction, except Trek didn't have the bloody and sexy bits.
But the average Jane and Joe want more sex in their lives. Combine TNG with sexy incest subtext and you get a recipe for a bowl full of ownage. Too bad the ingredients lacked spice.Alex Kurtzmann and the bit about Game of Thrones makes me groan. Does this idiot think that Sex and Violence somehow equal quality TV? Has he even read the books GOT is based off of? A Song of Ice and Fire was a very thoughtful and nuanced fantasy series, much like Star Trek in science fiction, except Trek didn't have the bloody and sexy bits.
We have people here, and I'd wager a bulk of the audience, thinking it's a continuation of the real Picard. Does the writer think so too? lol.Yep, we have an android that thinks he is the real Picard, while the real Picard died and is rotting in his grave.
Isn't the future going to be wonderful.
Yep, we have an android that thinks he is the real Picard, while the real Picard died and is rotting in his grave.
Isn't the future going to be wonderful.
In some senses he is a continuation of Picard, but it requires a great leap to just pretend that he's the same man. At the very least, something this unprecedented would have been met with a full episode of ethical and philosophical debate on TNG, with characters dealing with the change on a serious level (Dr. Crusher perhaps deeply conflicted between mourning her friend and welcoming the facsimile staring at her, that still is him on some level yet still feels like a betrayal; Data speaking of the nature his own identity; Riker reflecting on the second Riker that was created in the transporter accident in a prior episode, and how both of them are "him" even if they are not each other; etc). Instead, it's just a quick "oh well we copied his brain into the robot" and no one bats an eye. Ridiculous.