Star Trek Picard: 1x08 (Broken Pieces)
In which everyone finally starts putting the puzzle together.
I suppose the big question here is what was the point of the Borg storyline? It really feels like the Artifact has turned out to be a giant red herring, and while we've gotten some good scenes out of it, it does feel like it took up an inordinate amount of time for what it's contributed to the story. It's looking more and more like Soji was assigned to the Artifact purely to get information on Zhat Vash from Narissa's assimilated aunt, not because of anything related to Borg technology. And this week's scenes on the Artifact felt fairly irrelevant to the rest of the story; it's fun to see Seven again, and I liked her interactions with Elnor, but we could have easily done without any of it.
Elsewhere, though, we finally get the characters working together and putting aside their various agendas, and some much needed development for Rios. The idea of using his various holograms as representations of his personality made for some great scenes, and the backstory regarding the ibn Majid gives the Zhat Vash and their schemes some personal weight that's been lacking so far.
Speaking of the Zhat Vash, I loved the scenes with Narissa and her aunt, giving her some more personality and sympathetic traits. She's been far too much of a cardboard villain, with her brother given all the meaningful screentime. With him absent for the episode, she finally gets a chance to stand out as a character in her own right.
Regarding the message left by the unknown ancients, and their prophesy of a coming Destroyer; it does seem like artificial intelligence is oddly absent from the Star Trek universe. The original series had plenty of rogue synthetics and evil computers, but few of them seemed to be truly self-aware, and were extremely unsophisticated, with an unfortunate tendency to self-destruct when confronted by irrational behaviour or data. Voyager encountered the Cravik and Pralor automated units, but they were unable to replicate themselves, and again seemed very limited in their programming. It does seem perfectly plausible, then, that there is some sort of 'great filter' that eliminates any civilisations on the cusp of developing true AI.
The question then, is what actually happened to the unknown ancients who left their warning? Were they overthrown by their own creations? Did some outside force intervene, and eliminate their society for the 'crime' of creating synthetic intelligence? Or, perhaps most intriguingly, did some outside force seek to 'liberate' their creations from organic servitude? In the later case, could averting catastrophe be as simple as accepting synthetic intelligence as equals, an option the paranoid Romulans would never have considered...
I am kind of hoping that the unknown ancients will be connected to the Tkon from “The Last Outpost” - they're an extinct culture who were capable of moving stars, and the sole representative of their society, “Portal 63”, could well be a synthetic of some kind, given he seems to have a designation rather than a name, and was assigned a single task of guarding a planet for millennia.
In minor trivia - I just discovered Commodore Oh is played by the same actor as Lt. Takashima from the Babylon 5 pilot. Takashima, as people may be aware, was originally going to be unmasked as a traitor to the station and part of a sinister conspiracy. So that's some weirdly specific type-casting...
I suppose the big question here is what was the point of the Borg storyline? It really feels like the Artifact has turned out to be a giant red herring, and while we've gotten some good scenes out of it, it does feel like it took up an inordinate amount of time for what it's contributed to the story. It's looking more and more like Soji was assigned to the Artifact purely to get information on Zhat Vash from Narissa's assimilated aunt, not because of anything related to Borg technology. And this week's scenes on the Artifact felt fairly irrelevant to the rest of the story; it's fun to see Seven again, and I liked her interactions with Elnor, but we could have easily done without any of it.
Elsewhere, though, we finally get the characters working together and putting aside their various agendas, and some much needed development for Rios. The idea of using his various holograms as representations of his personality made for some great scenes, and the backstory regarding the ibn Majid gives the Zhat Vash and their schemes some personal weight that's been lacking so far.
Speaking of the Zhat Vash, I loved the scenes with Narissa and her aunt, giving her some more personality and sympathetic traits. She's been far too much of a cardboard villain, with her brother given all the meaningful screentime. With him absent for the episode, she finally gets a chance to stand out as a character in her own right.
Regarding the message left by the unknown ancients, and their prophesy of a coming Destroyer; it does seem like artificial intelligence is oddly absent from the Star Trek universe. The original series had plenty of rogue synthetics and evil computers, but few of them seemed to be truly self-aware, and were extremely unsophisticated, with an unfortunate tendency to self-destruct when confronted by irrational behaviour or data. Voyager encountered the Cravik and Pralor automated units, but they were unable to replicate themselves, and again seemed very limited in their programming. It does seem perfectly plausible, then, that there is some sort of 'great filter' that eliminates any civilisations on the cusp of developing true AI.
The question then, is what actually happened to the unknown ancients who left their warning? Were they overthrown by their own creations? Did some outside force intervene, and eliminate their society for the 'crime' of creating synthetic intelligence? Or, perhaps most intriguingly, did some outside force seek to 'liberate' their creations from organic servitude? In the later case, could averting catastrophe be as simple as accepting synthetic intelligence as equals, an option the paranoid Romulans would never have considered...
I am kind of hoping that the unknown ancients will be connected to the Tkon from “The Last Outpost” - they're an extinct culture who were capable of moving stars, and the sole representative of their society, “Portal 63”, could well be a synthetic of some kind, given he seems to have a designation rather than a name, and was assigned a single task of guarding a planet for millennia.
In minor trivia - I just discovered Commodore Oh is played by the same actor as Lt. Takashima from the Babylon 5 pilot. Takashima, as people may be aware, was originally going to be unmasked as a traitor to the station and part of a sinister conspiracy. So that's some weirdly specific type-casting...