Star Trek: Picard.

Do you even live on the same planet as the rest of us?

Immigration issues is under the purview of the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service operating under the Department of Justice.

ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement is operating under the Department of Homeland Security.

So, the Bajorans being sympathetic to the Skrreans would be akin to INS being sympathetic to and working with refugees and displaced citizens from war torn countries.

ICE is exactly what you are describing. It is their job to remove people without documents from this country. How do they know someone is undocumented? By behaving exactly as is portrayed in this episode. Unless, of course, you can show me where they act differently as described. hell, just looking at Google, it tells us that it's purpose is exactly as is described in Picard.

No where in the episode you used as an analogy do you see Bajorans or Federation officials forcibly rounding up, detaining, and removing Skrreans.

Wait... what?

Uh, so you saw this clip

And didn't immediately stop and search for what it might be? It's been ~40 years since it was released, so I can understand you not necessarily knowing it off the top of your head (especially since the "classic rock/whatever they're calling shit that's 20+ years now" stations play, generally, the shittiest stuff by artists), but goddamn, the lyrics should have triggered enough of a memory that it was a song worth looking up.

Didja watch the video and notice who was in it? Judge Reinhold, Greg Kihn, and Adam Baldwin! I think a couple of the other Nazis (besides Baldwin) might have had halfway decent careers after that.

video isn't available in canuckistan

but nope. I don't really do twitter or insta.

I think Q should have been retired after All Good Things. I don't know we're there heading, but a Q / El Aurian cold war is breaking into new levels of dumb.

El Aurians: long lived with spooky temporal awareness; can be killed in a variety of ways, including i) on a refugee transport stuck in a spacetime anomaly ii) in a mine under 19th century San Francisco iii) standing next to an exploding trilithium weapon.

The Q: high-level reality warpers capable of effortlessly manipulating space, time and matter on a cosmic scale. Proclaim themselves to be omnipotent (though a member of the Continuum suggested otherwise).

I guess The Borg are clued up on Q vulnerabilities. Oh yeah - iv) can be killed/assimilated by Borg Drones.

Picard, S02E07

Ups:
* "I'm from Chile, I only work in outer space."

Downs:
* A little slow in the middle.

Ruminations:
I rather enjoyed the dive into Picard's past trauma, and the man clearly carries a great many of them but this one is the most fundamental, the most foundational. The one upon which all other traumas perch themselves. How we see ourselves, how we perceive the family with whom we are close, guides our beliefs, our choices, our actions. The catalyst for Picard was for him to escape all of this, to run for the stars rather than stay down in the dungeons.

Unfortunately, his trauma kept a piece of him there, and he stayed there hoping that some day that trauma would be healed. The whole segment of this episode was about waiting for healing to come while still being stuck where we are, not moving away from it, not addressing it, just hoping for change, and hiding away all of the memories that keep us from realizing the truth. Sometimes I think I would rather believe that the people who left me really loved me, and that they would return to make amends, and heal the rift between us, but that isn't always how it works, and sometimes the ending is a little boy or girl lost forever in the labyrinth of their own mind.

We are such fascinating creatures, sentient, sapient, capable of creating amazing works, changing our own world around us, and yet being enslaved by the neurons in our heads that try to whisper to us what is real and what isn't, and what's most frustrating is that the same neurons are the ones we rely upon to divine the truth from those whispers. That, too, is part of the human condition.

I still think Tallinn is Laris, and she just doesn't know it yet, or she does know it, and has been watching over Picard, who knows? We'll hopefully find out in the next couple of episodes. I'm also curious to see how this all works out with Jurati, the Borg Queen, Soong, Kore, and all of the other wildly loose threads that will need to be tied up before season's end. So I'm wanting more, which is a good sign, and I was thoroughly entertained by this episode because of everything it showed and didn't show but let you work it out in your own head. It got a little slow in the middle, they lingered on things they could have moved past a little more quickly, but that's a minor quibble in the scheme of things.

This one gets an 8/10.

Nice to see Baltar. Nice call back to Kirk's line in TVH, "I'm from Chili, I just work in outer space." This little backstory seems unnecessary, but we'll see.

this

and by showing them the ship, I'm more sure than ever that "records show Teresa and her kid disappeared during the Bell uprisings later that year".

*also: the kid: "I'm gonna touch EVERYTHING!!!"

There was just something in what Picard was saying-or maybe the way he was saying it- all the learning from your enemy and all... I think Q is dying. He wants Picard to know him by knowing/discovering himself (to paraphrase Sun Tzu).

Oh yeah, pretty convenient they all found clothes in the lost and found that not only fit them, but also look fabulous. The replicators work, why not replicate clothes?

S2, Episode 7:

. I nearly creamed my pants when I heard Gaius Baltar's unmistakable voice.

. Patrick Stewart's wife making a cameo as the singer: I recognized her immediately from the "staring at boobs" memes.

. So Picard's mom was a LARP-loving loony and this is why he has attachment issues? Am I following this right?

. Anyone else finding Seven of Nine to be boring AF in this series? She used to be one of Trek's most interesting characters, now she's just another human female. At least bring back the catsuits!

I think you're not reading between the lines. I'd wager Rios did have the clothes replicated and beamed over from La Sirena, but said were from lost and found to downplay the change of clothes to Teresa.

hmm.. maybe, but that flies in the face of a few seconds later beaming them onto the ship.

"history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme"

and then that bullshit Lucas pushes about star wars as poetry by repeating basic elements and calling them "choruses" that likewise "rhyme".

which brings us to ICE/TSA likewise being refrain of the SS/SA, just with buses instead of trains.

I did find the idea of Picard turning the tables on Q interesting.

You know, I think this might be the most disappointing NuTrek season yet. The fact we had such a cracker of an episode out the gate just rocketed expectations, especially when juxtaposed with Discovery's glacial narrative.

I don't know if it's disappointing so much as I'm gonna get the diabeetus from all the easter eggs

There's nothing wrong with TFA, although we all know it's basically a riff on ANH.

I thought that was quite a poor episode. I wasn't interested in any of the stuff inside Picard's head (which constituted the bulk of the episode) and I can't see how it advances the plot much.

I think it's less about this season's storyline and more set up for next season. But, I agree. I found the inside Picard's head very ... not inline with this season's story.

Well, Teresa having to stabilize Picard and witnessing and then using the Comfederate(?) tricorder(?) beam into Christobal's hand kinda forced the issue.

Disagree. The flashbacks were happening since ep2 if not in 1, and this is the payoff.
It goes back to my pacing comment a few posts back.

Oh, I agree that they've been dancing around it all season. But, the storyline for this season is trying to fix the past. It may be that Q feels a kinship with Picard due to each of their past traumas and we may get to see Q's trauma as well and how it relates to Picard as well as his reasons for send Picard, et al, to an alternate universe that led them to fix the past. But, so far ... it just kinda feels like episodes 5 and 6 of The Book of Boba Fett.

exactly...
just like ICE is pretty much a less stylish version of the SS.

Yeah, first real disappointment of Picard for me. l fell asleep during the flashback sequence. This episode seemed like unnecessary filler, created to make season two a total of ten episodes like season one.

The IMDb ratings for season two pretty much mirror my feelings towards this season. Strong start with a real danger of stalling out.

Episode 1 - 8.2/10
Episode 2 - 8.2/10
Episode 3 - 7.1/10
Episode 4 - 6.4/10
Episode 5 - 6.7/10
Episode 6 - 6.4/10
Episode 7 - 5.6/10

Pretty much a downward trend, with the latest episode being correctly rated (IMO) as the worst so far.

Heh. At the moment, it feels like a lot of people havent listened to or appreciate Mahler, as I'm finding this season comparable to one of his symphonies.
I can see the stalling out danger though.

You mean long, boring and overrated?

On the first listen through, maybe

But given they average 90 minutes each, they're great to set as background for long tasks (like delivering mail)... if YouTube didnt interrupt the music with ads every 4 minutes

To be honest, I’m surprised Picard made it this far before starting to go down hill.