I'm still not won over by this. The alternate totalitarian Mirror Mirror aspect, been there done that. Same with the Borg Queen, time travel. I'm not against them using this stuff but man they need to try a little harder and come up with something more compelling. Was looking forward to Q and he's gone in less than 10 minutes.

The Jurarti hyper comic relief stuff is nails on the chalkboard annoying. Just end it already. Hoping she'll be assimilated by the end of the season.

I'm guessing that the turning point in 2024 is the next presidential election in the U.S. Picard and company will have to fight to protect the integrity of the election! Hope I'm wrong.

I enjoyed most of the first season of Picard, but really didn't like stuffing him in a robot body. In fact, most of the stuff with Other Data on the synth planet was a bit much.

This, however, is off to a great start.

Regarding alternate timelines vs. alternate universes, Q said this was Picard's world where a different decision was made, or something to that effect. The Borg Queen even said "time is broken". The Confederation is the result of an upheaval on "our" Earth, quite possibly caused by time travel shenanigans. Perhaps universes don't branch out based on every decision large or small, but are set in motion at the beginning and take similar but different paths, and someone interfered with this one. Q has shown Picard the consequences of his decisions in the past, and that was not supposed to be an entire alternate universe.

Also, I'm really glad this is not just the Mirror Universe again, despite some pretty obvious references by Q. That universe is fundamentally different from the main continuity in that all of human history has been more barbaric and warlike. Discovery pretty much ran the mirror universe into the ground anyhow. Of course, they may well pull a retcon at the end and when the First Husband gets back he takes over and declares the Confederation the Terran Empire or some such nonsense.

I was thinking the writers chose the year 2024 so they everyone wouldn't need to be wearing face masks.

I think this season feels a little more like classic Trek. Still not quite it, but the first two episodes have been alright.

Even though they’re not in the Mirror Universe episode two definitely had that vibe. It kind of feels like a mashup of different tropes used by Trek (Mirror Universe, time traveling, Q meddling).

The big question is if the show can maintain this quality over eight more episodes.

I think it will do well. There's got to be at least two or three, and maybe more, episodes set in 2024. So we will have that Star Trek IV vibe going for it. I figure towards the end we will get some kind of resolution to or continuation of the "romance" between Picard and Laris.

I want to hear Picard say "Well double dumbass on you!"

I though Discovery got better after a couple seasons and S1 of Picard was mediocre at best. So to me this is like criticising mediocrity while embracing mediocrity.

Season one of Picard started as mediocre and wound up a dumpster fire. Season two so far is slightly better, but it’s early. It seems like maybe they took some of the criticisms into account with season two.

I have a feeling Q is going to give Picard his human body back, or he will some other way by the end of the season.

Is there any point in Picard getting back his human body? I don't think he's expressed any longing for that. It seems his android body doesn't seem any different to him, or at least he hasn't seemed to mention it. Is his body supposed to be a traditional super advanced android like Data, or is it supposed to be a flesh and blood replicant type body?

I don’t know the exact details, but it seems to be a super advanced android body. Speaking for myself at least Picard “dying” and then getting an android body felt like a total jump the shark moment. I was already less on board with some of the things happening last season, but that solidified it for me.

It’s possible that Q could give him back his human body as some form of a punishment, but who knows if they’ll go that route. It seems like as of the first two episodes Picard being an android is being mostly ignored.

He better hang on to that robot body if he's gonna hook up with Laris so he's not the last of the Picards.

Aren't we really kind of beyond the point where we can pretend that Star Trek, in any way, shape, or form, represents our own real-world future?

I mean, I was in high school and college in the 90s, and I sure as hell don't remember any kind of "Eugenics Wars" being fought that wiped out thirty million people. I'd think that would have mentioned on CNN a couple of times.

We might be looking at World War III in 2026, though!

"Jump the shark" is a great way to put it.

I'd think that the writers would be mindful of things like this. You can defend the themes and whatnot all day, but can't someone step up and say "You know, that's a really fucking stupid thing to do. Aside from just being flat-out silly, it also introduces that kind of technology into the Star Trek canon, and it's the kind of thing that could be commonplace within a generation or two. Do we really want that?"

If you want to cure his Space Alzheimer's, just give him some kind of positronic treatment or positronic brain implant derived from Data's leftover parts and leave it at that.

They weren't expecting Star Trek to still be on television or the movies in the 1990's when TOS first aired. Now they know that Star Trek is going to last indefinetly and they'll keep away from mentioning any in universe events that occurred 40-50 years from now at least. I think they know that if they came back to present day 2022 that the audience would make note on social media if people weren't wearing masks. Skipping two years gives them the opportunity to film without people without wearing masks.

So far in this season they've barely mentioned Picard's new body. For the writers to go through so much trouble in the first season to have Picard "die" and become a synth, there has got to be some kind of payoff later in this season or next.

Wasn’t it pretty much stated that the writers didn’t exactly have a plan for where season one was going? It doesn’t sound like it was the most well thought out.

I thought the writers pretty much had the whole series mapped out when they proposed it to Patrick Stewart to get him on board. I would guess at least seasons two and three were mapped out together considering they were virtually filmed together all at once. I feel like there has to be some kind of payoff to the synth body at least by the third season or it would seem pointless to have the first season focus on Picard's illness as much as they did. I can't see them not having something planned out in future episodes regarding Picard being a synth.

It was interesting that Picard made reference in his speech to him being "the last Picard". Now that they are hinting at a romance between him and the Romulan, it could be possible for him to "settle down" even at his advanced age and have a child to continue the family legacy. The only roadblock is that he has a synth body and while possibly being "fully functional" would not likely be able to pass on his genes unless Q or something else remedies that during the series.

Picard started to bleed when Q hit him. Data didn't have blood, right? So it seems this Picard synth is more biologically like a human than an android like Data was. Or else the writers just don't know what they're doing.

There’s a quote out there from one of the writers. I think basically they didn’t know how to end season one.

I believe it was said the synths were much more biological than mechanical, considering that Soji and her sister didn't even know that they weren't human. I think that they were created in a way that they could trick most scanners into making them think that they were human or biological.
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My guess is he already has it back right now.

Q said to Picard that the one Cardassian is the reason why he has the synth body in the altered timeline.

General Picard has (had? will have? would have had?) a robot body too. Q told him.