Star Trek Picard: 2x04 (Watcher)
Apr. 5th, 2022 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenIn which we meet an old friend.
Well, I can't believe it. I was joking elsewhere that if Picard was visiting the 21st century, they should take the chance to revisit the Punk on the Bus – I didn't think they'd actually do it. A great little in joke, and I appreciated the updated 'I Still Hate You'.
Meanwhile, as I had guessed, Guinan is wrapped up in this – though she's not the titular 'watcher' herself. I didn't mind the recasting – I prefer it to the way Star Wars continues to use deepfakes to try and pass off actors as themselves from decades prior – though it was a little disconcerting to see her without a hat!
More troubling was that she lacked any memory of Picard. The show-runner has explained that this is meant to be a sign of the timeline being altered – since we haven't corrected the alteration that leads to the Confederation timeline, the changes ripple backwards as well as forwards, and since Confederation-Picard never met Guinan in the nineteenth century, she doesn't remember that. That makes sense, but I feel it should have been acknowledged in the show. Just a quick line of Picard noting that there's more damage to the timeline than he realised when she doesn't recognise him.
(It does raise the question of why, if the timeline alterations ripple back as well as forwards, why does the Punk seemingly remember his encounter with Spock? But, of course, we know from Spider-Man Homecoming that the Punk is a multiversal singularity existing even in completely unrelated universes, and so his knowledge of the timeline probably exceeds even that of Guinan or the Q... :P)
I also didn't think I'd come to love Picard even more than I already do, but learning that yes, he is the sort of person who'd be distracted by a cute doggy even in a tense situation is something I really appreciated and can relate to.
But the A plot of this story was very much Rico and the ICE, with American law enforcement very much the villains of the story. We get the obligatory nod to “Past Tense”, with the mention of a 'sanctuary district' on the border, but much of this story just plays the story completely straight, with no fictional elements. The moment when Raffi notes, shocked, that there are so many people in the database as they try and track down Rico feels like, if this were a regular Star Trek episode, the moment when the dark secret behind some alien civilization would be uncovered by our crew. But this is our society, our culture, our reality. This isn't the exaggerated cruelty of the Confederation or the Mirror Universe, a sign of a timeline dangerously out of joint. It's something that happens right now to thousands of people. I can only hope that seeing this system presented directly as a villainous adversary might make some people recognize the brutality of law enforcement and immigration enforcement across the modern world. It's a fairly dark story, but one that fits the mood of our time.
On a lighter note – add Seven of Nine to the long list of Star Trek characters who have proven they don't know how to drive.
Meanwhile, the Borg Queen and Jurati continue to flirt shamelessly, and we finally meet the Watcher – though we haven't learned anything about her/them. I'm curious as to why she appears as Laris – I'm hoping there won't be any twists regarding Laris' own identity, since I think that would undermine her own characterisation and what she establishes about Romulan culture. I'm wondering if the Watcher is also a time traveller, and is aware of Picard's connection to Laris and has chosen that form to keep him off-balance?
Well, I can't believe it. I was joking elsewhere that if Picard was visiting the 21st century, they should take the chance to revisit the Punk on the Bus – I didn't think they'd actually do it. A great little in joke, and I appreciated the updated 'I Still Hate You'.
Meanwhile, as I had guessed, Guinan is wrapped up in this – though she's not the titular 'watcher' herself. I didn't mind the recasting – I prefer it to the way Star Wars continues to use deepfakes to try and pass off actors as themselves from decades prior – though it was a little disconcerting to see her without a hat!
More troubling was that she lacked any memory of Picard. The show-runner has explained that this is meant to be a sign of the timeline being altered – since we haven't corrected the alteration that leads to the Confederation timeline, the changes ripple backwards as well as forwards, and since Confederation-Picard never met Guinan in the nineteenth century, she doesn't remember that. That makes sense, but I feel it should have been acknowledged in the show. Just a quick line of Picard noting that there's more damage to the timeline than he realised when she doesn't recognise him.
(It does raise the question of why, if the timeline alterations ripple back as well as forwards, why does the Punk seemingly remember his encounter with Spock? But, of course, we know from Spider-Man Homecoming that the Punk is a multiversal singularity existing even in completely unrelated universes, and so his knowledge of the timeline probably exceeds even that of Guinan or the Q... :P)
I also didn't think I'd come to love Picard even more than I already do, but learning that yes, he is the sort of person who'd be distracted by a cute doggy even in a tense situation is something I really appreciated and can relate to.
But the A plot of this story was very much Rico and the ICE, with American law enforcement very much the villains of the story. We get the obligatory nod to “Past Tense”, with the mention of a 'sanctuary district' on the border, but much of this story just plays the story completely straight, with no fictional elements. The moment when Raffi notes, shocked, that there are so many people in the database as they try and track down Rico feels like, if this were a regular Star Trek episode, the moment when the dark secret behind some alien civilization would be uncovered by our crew. But this is our society, our culture, our reality. This isn't the exaggerated cruelty of the Confederation or the Mirror Universe, a sign of a timeline dangerously out of joint. It's something that happens right now to thousands of people. I can only hope that seeing this system presented directly as a villainous adversary might make some people recognize the brutality of law enforcement and immigration enforcement across the modern world. It's a fairly dark story, but one that fits the mood of our time.
On a lighter note – add Seven of Nine to the long list of Star Trek characters who have proven they don't know how to drive.
Meanwhile, the Borg Queen and Jurati continue to flirt shamelessly, and we finally meet the Watcher – though we haven't learned anything about her/them. I'm curious as to why she appears as Laris – I'm hoping there won't be any twists regarding Laris' own identity, since I think that would undermine her own characterisation and what she establishes about Romulan culture. I'm wondering if the Watcher is also a time traveller, and is aware of Picard's connection to Laris and has chosen that form to keep him off-balance?