Amph "Engage!" - Star Trek: Picard Discussion Thread [Paramount+/CraveTV]

4 episodes in it doesn't seem like this story lends itself to Q showing up considering it's serialized and the tone of it (Q could literally solve this entire mystery with a snap of his fingers). It's kind of like how if you look at Encounter at Farpoint Q's plot is sort of awkwardly slapped on top of the Mystery of Farpoint Station (cuz it was, quite literally, rewritten by Gene to add the Q character on top of DC Fontana's Mystery of Farpoint station script but Q actually doesn't do a hell of a lot aside from the opening scene). but maybe Guinan S2 means Q is coming up then cuz they have a history and a Q story could make sense.

 

I think the Q arc finished up fine in TNG. I don't think there's anything left for Q to do for Picard's story.

 

^ also a perfectly valid point but, y'know, I'd just kinda dig more Q stuff. The post All Good Things novels and comics have basically taken the Q Continuum God War shenanigans to get him involved. Although Voyager kinda did that too with the Q civil war stuff.

 

Yeah, and for the past decade or so, thanks to Battlestar and Game of Thrones, we’ve basically had the possibility of feature film level special effects in weekly TV shows, so there’s potentially a lot of stuff they could do now with Q that would have been completely impossible ten or twenty years ago outside of a feature film.

 

True, if he upset her she may get on the snake leaf again.

 

"JL" is not the equivliant of "Jimmy Boy" or "Disco Sisko" (it maybe the the equivilant of Kayjay though), becuse those sound mocking. Abrevating someones name into initals like that is a very common thing when your close freinds - if anything, its closer to shortening James into Jim or Benjamin into Ben, becuse both are terms of enderment meant to imply your close with someone.

It's certinaly not disrespectful, and Picard definatly did'nt think it was or have an issue with it.

Why would he?

When has Q ever just said whats going on or just done something himself? That's not his MO - even when the fate of Humanity itself was at stake in All Good Things he did'nt do that.

They could easily have Q show up in an episode unrelated to the main plot to do something fun, or have him be a reacurring charecter driving the overall plot of a later season.

(really though, as soon as Janeway shows up and starts hanging out with Picard, Q will appear - like, could he resist the temptation offered by both of them at once)

"The trial never ends."

"In any case, I'll be watching. And if your very lucky, I'll drop by to say hello, from time to time - see you...out there."

They can't anyway, that would lead to confusion with Sisco's late-20th Century ancestor, Jerome "Disco" Sisko, the famous funk singer - not to mention his father's maternal great-grandfather, Benjamin Cartwright, who served aboard the USS Discovery and was "lost" with said vessel, that guy really loved wearing his off-duty Disco t-shirt to family gatherings.

 

I could see Q solving the Picard S1 Data offspring/ artifact / synth rebellion / Romulan conspiracy mystery in the final episode 3 minutes just for kicks. Fine Jean-Luc, here's how it works, now lets get back to something important!

Wouldn't be the most dramatically satisfying ending but I'd dig it.

 

I know. I was using slight exaggeration for the purposes of humour.

You mean the writers of this show have no issue with it. They tell Picard what to think & feel. I don’t agree with them. I think it’s too informal for his tastes, but it’s also not the huge deal that this discussion is making it out to be.

 

Fair enough.

I've always found Picard's fomality overstated, personally. He's professional, but he's not nearly as stuffy as he's made up to be I think - especially with close freinds, which Raffi seemed to be. So I think that's why I'm more accepting of this.

As I said before, at this point we don't know their full backstory - it could be that he'd known Raffi for decades prior to her serving as his aide, or that they had some sort of bond that fostered that kind of imformality (war buddies from the Dominion War who shared some sort of harrowing experience, maybe, or hell even a past romance from before they served together - though that's just wild speculation)

I'm pretty sure Mark Lenard is the only actor to have played a Romulan, a Vulcan and Klingon (though it that actually an acolade that means anything is doubtful).

 

Yeah, can we have an episode of just Weyoun, Brunt and Shran in a room together?

 

Oh that's cheating - most of his charecters were just different versions of Weyoun!

Yeah, the episode were Rom becomes Grand Nagus.

Off the top of my head the only episodes I can think of off the top of my head with one actor playing two charecters who both interact with each other were said charecters are'nt alternate versions/copies of the same person is the episodes with Data and Doctor Soong and Data and Lore/B4. There are probobly others though that I just can't remember.

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with it being a retcon, it looks close enough to the TOS BoP (and even closer to the TOS-R version) to just ingore the differences. That being said, it could easily be a refit, or just a later version of bird of prey.

 

My take on Disco is that only thing being retoconned is the Menagerie, which is all presented as Talosian extracts from the memory of a heavily-wounded Pike, so we can chalk up inconsistences (the uniforms, the Enterprise's design, Colt being a Human) to being the results of either brain damage or the Talosians confusing fantasy for reality.

To me, the Cage turtlenecks never existed as Starfleet uniforms and Pike and co were wearing their varients of the Disco uniforms when they went to Talos*, and the Discoprise is the Connie's original configuration before getting refited prior to Kirk assuming command.

I'm ingoring their appearence in Where No Man Has Gone Before becuse that's just one episode (and is slightly out-of-step with the rest of the series anyway) and interpeting their apperence on the crew of the SS Antares as them being the uniforms of the Federation Merchant Service.

My take on "warbird" as always been that its a type of heavier vessel - the Romulan equivliant to an assualt cruiser (the Valdores) or battleship (the D'deridex). I always assumed their were birds of prey and smaller cruisers flying around during the TNG era that we just did'nt see for whatever reason (there are "Romulan battlecruisers" mentioned convering on an outpost in Angel One, and that was before the Neutral Zone when they first encounter a D'deridex)

At any rate we already know the Rommies were using the warbird classifiction before the Romulan War, so I'm sure the Federation know about the term well before the Romulans went into isolatation

 

Even without the head, the BoPs (at least when they have the green paint) and the warbirds are similier enough, I think, that one could figure out they were made by the same race.

True, but I think with the encounters its more for power-projection, and in the Dominon War it can be chalked up to the fact that they would'nt need smaller support ships with the Federation and Klingons filling that role (give that they share a border with the Cardassians, most of their forces were probobly concenrated their during the war, and those fleets probobly had plenty of other ships classes.

They could have been D'Deridexes (which I think are called battlecruisers in anouther episode), but given that their were I think seven of them menancing the outpost that seems like overkill - I'm inclinded to belive they were smaller vessels, perhaps a Romulan-built sucessor to their D7s (or even just refitted D7s).

It's non-canon, but I always imagined something like this - a late TMP (post TFF, pre TUC) warbird from the old Interplay era RTS New Worlds - in my head when I pictured what the E-C fought at Nerenda.

There's also some weird D7/D'Deridex hybrid in one of the old TMP era comics.

Non-canon stuff aside, they do say the drone ships in Enterprise are "modified warbirds," and the Vulcans call Klingon ships warbirds in the pilot of the show, so the term in and off itself was already being used by the Romulans and in general usage elsewhere well before TNG.

 

Maybe we already saw Q in the first episode, without realizing it

 

The BoP, aside from the one-two punch of its plasma weapon and cloaking device, is pretty clearly at an overall disavatage when compared to the Enterprise. It's probobly more equivliant to a B'Rel, if anything - or even weaker, since a squadron of ten (probobly not equipped with the same type of plasma torpedos as they had in Balance of Terror) was required to tackle the Enterprise in the The Deadly Years - and even then the Enterpise took a lot of hits without taking any visable damage.

As for the image, it was working when I posted so I don't know what went wrong. Here's a link to anouther shot, and here's the ship in profile from Bridge Commander. As I said the game its from is set between ST 5 and ST 6, so it would seemingly be an equivliant to an Excelsior.

I belive that the script for Balance of Terror originally indeed actually stated that the Romulans had stolen Fed tech, with renmants of this abandoned plotline being the design of of the BoP and Stiles's otherwise random and unfounded belief that their might be Romulan spies about the Enterprise.

But as for them having "starship technology" equivliant to the Federation, even if they were outpaced by the time of TOS (which I always took them to be becuse of their isolation) they definatly were'nt during the Earth-Romulan War, were there technology actually seemed on par with the Vulcans/Andorians and their ships were already using the general BoP design and shape.

I think I get your general idea. Something vaugly like this? Or maybe this or this?

The Romulans were already using green ships back when Earth made first contact with them. It would'nt be an unknown thing to the Federation.

Designs and color aside, the Federation would be able to read the power signatures and such, so even if they did'nt reconize the general design on sight they would still know it was Romulan by design, if not by affilation.

 

Probobly weaker then even a pod-less Miranda. As I said, ten of them were attacking the Enterprise in the Deadly Years and did'nt even take down her shields. Their seemingly attack ships, so if anything they'd be like a TOS version of a Klingon BoP or a Jem'Hadar attack ship (with the Consitution being akin to a Galaxy in comparsion)

They may have already caught up by the time of TUC - by then their considered equal enough by then with the Federation/Klingons to be at the Khitomer confrence and for the Federation President to have their ambassador in his office for dicussions regarding importent affairs and seek his advice on them. So even if they were'nt fully on par, they were definalty close enough that any deficiencies did'nt matter in the eyes of their rivals.

After all, D7s were newer then the Consitutions by over a decade by the time the Klingons gave some to the Romulans, so its not like they were being given outdated rusbuckets - it probobly would'nt have taken them that long to play catchup after being given acess to those ships, especially if the Klingons were helping them in other ways.

The second one is a Centurion-class, and is anouther design originating from an Interplay game - IMO the interplay era video games contian a lot of good TMP era designs for all three of the big races. It was just a cruiser though, not a D'Deridex equivilant, the equviliants to those from those games would be the warbird I posted before and these two ships, the latter of which might be a little closer to what your imagining.

It's ugly, but it could actually be worse - as I said earlier there's actually a warbird from an old comic that's just a K'tinga turned into a proto-D'Deridix by just mirroring its wing section into a hoop. It looks akward as hell, and is probobly one of the dumbest Trek-related ship designs I've every seen.