Star Trek: Picard.

I'm fine with this plot and where they are going, I'm a sucker for the ambition to draw in the events in DS9 as key to this plot, the moral compromises and the basically CIA nature of S31...

The one thing that nags at me is that, if S31 wants shapeshifting operatives - THERE ARE OTHER SHAPESHIFTERS IN THEIR OWN BACKYARD.

How hard could it be to recruit some Chameloid operatives?

Not to say that ammoral scientists wouldn't have fucked with Changelings anyway but still.

Really hard, considering they hide so well, they're considered a myth.

Dragging this one out.

During the first two seasons of Discovery, Section 31 seemed to be a fully recognized branch of Starfleet, operating more or less openly, with their own space station and a fleet of ships.

During DS9, Section 31 was down to one confirmed dude (Sloan) that occasionally roped in people like Bashir or Admiral Ross to assist him with specific missions. They turned out to have created the changeling virus and infected Odo with it before the Dominion war even started, but you never got the impression there was a huge operation there. It could have just been Sloan doing it all himself, considering he'd also memorized the cure.

Picard is depicting Section 31 operating during the Dominion war as it did during Discovery, with evil scientists openly torturing changelings in Starfleet installations and people like Picard and Crusher never stopping to say "Section 31 doesn't represent the Federation, they're a bunch of rogue unsanctioned assholes and the good moral folks at Starfleet have been trying to shut them down for over a century." And that's bad.

I don't think any reasonable interpretation of DS9's Section 31 would have been a one-person job. Sloan simply could not have as a solo person concocted the Changeling virus, gathered the intel he did.

Now, I don't know if I would buy the notion that the DS9 Section 31 would have had its own fleet of ships, its own starbase and what not. But I don't know if what we saw would rule it out either.

It's not clear to me if this experimentation was during the Dominion War, sometime in the 30 years since, or even just recently. It seems like it's improbable that it was during, as there were seemingly very few known Changelings in the Alpha Quadrant, and for Starfleet to have captured nine of them during the events of the Dominion War is hard to swallow. (Especially DS9-style changelings who can turn into basically anything, as opposed to these, who seem to only have the abilities to be ooze or humanoid.) Off the top of my head, the only known ones are the one who was terrorizing Earth, fake Martok, the female Founder, the changeling friend Odo made before the Dominion War started...is that it?

There could certainly have been more members active during DS9, but Sloan was the only one we saw onscreen. In one season 7 episode the Romulans were convinced that Section 31 didn't exist at all and that Sloan was just a lone nutjob, and that was entirely plausible based on what we'd seen at that time.

And that was a great way to depict Section 31, as one criminal vigilante or a small group of criminal vigilantes that think they're superhero spies, who occasionally convince regular people to assist them.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is why they should have stuck with the parasites.

I always thought of Section 31 as Starfleet’s version of the Tal Shiar or the Obsidian Order.

Wonder if we will get more TNG/DS9/VOY cameos. Where the heck is Barkley?

Enterprise had Reed also being in Section 31, but he left it. It was secretive then.

Kind of, but not really. The Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order were more or less publicly known agencies whose reputations served to keep the population in line. Originally Section 31 was the blackest of black ops organizations, such that we'd never heard anything about them until the episode where they tried to recruit Bashir.

Then Discovery turned them into the Starfleet version of the Tal Shiar or Obsidian Order.

Oh yeah, and what's this shit about all Starfleet vessels being linked and constantly communicating with each other? Did they learn absolutely nothing from the first season of Prodigy, or is PIC taking place in a "clean" version of the timeline that existed before the Protostar was sent into the past?






*I'm using "clean" extremely loosely here, the Trek timeline has been utterly fucked forwards and backwards by so many crews I'm surprised there are any butterflies left.

Remember, we saw William Boimler being brought into S31. I think it plausible LD will be examining S31 in various ways to both lend credence to and to detract from these theories on what it is.

Also, I thought the implicit narrative was that after Discovery "disappeared" and after the near disaster with the AI that S31 was driven into the shadows - "officially" disbanded and mandated to keep themselves out of public eye.

After all, if it were otherwise Bashir wouldn't have needed an explanation of what they were.

Terry Matalas says calm down about Kirk; he's not coming back.
Right now.
But, it is a seed that some future writer can play with far down the line.

https://trekmovie.com/2023/04/01/te...e-return-of-james-t-kirk-on-star-trek-picard/

Who's Barkley?

Do you mean Barclay?

Broccoli.

Maybe he did mean Barkley.

No, it's the right one, it's just ruff

Seems to me that Alandra LaForge's uniform takes inspiration from LD

Terry Matalas says Legacy is real and being pitched.

Also, the template for season 3 is Star Trek 6, but they're not going to do the cast signature thing, but they have something elsse that we're going to like.

https://trekmovie.com/2023/04/03/te...-3-ends-setting-up-star-trek-legacy-spin-off/

The uniforms worn by Starfleet regulars this season seem to basically be a cross between Lower Decks (the cut) and Voyager (the colours).

The excursion outfits seem more like the 32nd century Discovery jackets, though.

What a fucking waste of an episode.

There were some really good moments: mostly the Riker/Troi/Worf/Raffi scenes, Data/Lore in conflict, and then when everyone got together towards the very end.

Otherwise, I honestly think this series should have been called Star Trek Phaser. Everyone pointing phaser pistols, disruptors, all kinds of guns at everyone else. It's something that's just really noticeable in a season that's already jam packed with vaporizing changelings and other characters, a beheading, repeated stabbings, and all sorts of other action packed badassery where cool guys don't look at explosions.

"There's a darkness on this ship."

Yeah, Deanna, it's the lighting. God forbid people be able to see each other. It might take away from the awesome grittiness. Just ask Sidney LaForge's father, Geordi LaForge, the best engineer in all of Starfleet.

Anyway, so now we get to Jack's abilities, and we're opening the red door to the upside down, or whatever the hell it's supposed to be on the other side. I'm curious to see what all the fuss will be about.

I was trying to think of how many points it would have made a difference if the villains were Romulans with Mission: Impossible-style face-swapping tech, rather than honest-to-goodness Changelings. And the answer is basically two -- the couple of times when the Changelings managed to ooze away because suddenly, Seven, Picard and Bev are apparently terrible shots when the plot requires it and are not able to hit them with multiple attempts.

Jean-Luc, you're alive! And you're a horrible shot!

Again why they should have used the Conspiracy parasites, those things were tiny and moved fast. The main characters having so much trouble shooting them would have made much more sense.

It would have made Vadic cooler too. "Yeah, this lady tortured the shit out of me, so now I use her body to get around and also I smoke because I'm trying to give her cancer."

I don’t know, I liked it for what it was, a nice reunion of the cast. We’re still missing Miles, but there’s still two more episodes to go. I like the resolution we got between Data and Lore. I mean at this point what else could be said or done? I agree that this should have been the first season. Hell, this should have been the end of Nemesis, but I’ll take it. We still don’t know what the floating face i, but seeing Tasha again makes me think it could be Armus.

A repressed memory, Jack accidentally walked in on his mom and her ghost lover.