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Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather prepare for CBS All Access’s Picard by overthinking who Picard was, is, and will be in “All Good Things… Parts I & 2.” Fun fact: Picard never actually says, “Anti-time, Data! Anti-time!”
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The Mini-Dress seen in the first few episodes of Season One are known in the Canon as the “Scant” uniform. I have always felt cheated that we never saw Picard in such an outfit, Patrick Stewart could have pulled it off.
There is a nod to the Scant in a later season. When Worf complains that his dress uniform looks like a dress, Riker admonishes Worf for his outdated and sexist attitude, adding that Worf looks good in a dress. How Riker knows this is open to speculation.
Question: if Geordi was born blind, how could the anti-time regenerate functioning eyes that weren’t there the first time?
As for sex, I maintain that TNG was (and will be) way more evolved than our own era when it comes to sexual liberation. The seeming prudishness was an artifact of our own era (and the TV network), not the 23rd Century. In one episode Picard clearly states that there is no absolute rule about a captain getting romantically involved with a crew member. In another episode, a Han Soloish man comes aboard the Enterprise and starts flirting with female crew members. When Not Solo asks Picard if this is a problem, the captain says that the visitor was “free to fraternize with the crew.” This was a revelation in an otherwise mediocre episode, it demonstrated that Picard acknowledged that his crew are sexual beings who are free to consent or not to another’s advances, they don’t need rigid regulations to protect them.
I’m Canadian, so I can watch ST Picard without subscribing to CBS All Access, I get CTV Sci-Fi as part of my cable package. TV is so complicated. Despite my trepidation about going back to the Star Trek well yet again, I for one am cautiously thrilled. My two favorite TV characters of all time are Jean-Luc Picard and Jack Bauer. We don’t choose who we love.
Why could Geordi see if he was blind from birth?
It doesn’t “make sense,” but the idea would be that Geordi’s congenital blindness isn’t entirely genetic. Something happened in utero to prevent his eyes from developing properly, but once you’re developed, that it, you don’t go back and regrow organs. So as everybody’s cells are gradually undifferentiating – first breaking down to stem cells, then to proteins, then to amino acids, then presumably just to molecules – there is a brief period where his cells gain the ability to regenerate, as if they were growing in utero again.
This happens to Geordi’s eyes first because his visor makes him more sensitive to various kinds of radiation and energetic fields, which happens throughout the show. And the baby in utero dies first because it’s vulnerable.
Geordi is presented with various cures for his blindness throughout the show and turns them down because he sees them as ableist (another way the show is ahead of its time), and the Federation has strict regulations on genetic engineering because of Khaaaaaan and whatnot, but there’s no particular reason that Geordi’s blindness should be irreversible in Star Trek Land where crazy things happen and Picard almost genetically reverts into a marmoset.
Not the same as blindness, but it has been suggested that by the 23rd Century baldness is “Curable”. Another example of how just because you can do something, it dosn’t mean that you should do that thing.
I never quite warmed to The Next Generation, and this episode (well done though it is) nails every reason why: It took a franchise that’s supposed to be about society and turned it into a self-referential soap opera with science fiction “scrap” strewn around for flavor. The Troi/Riker story was some of the worst of it.
But the base plot also reminded me a lot of one of the very few Star Trek novels that I (a) bought, because it was selling for pennies at a used book store, back when those still existed, (b) took the time to read, and (c) actually enjoyed. I can’t figure out which novel it actually was, but there’s a similar time-rip-destroying-the-universe plot, except that Picard’s Enterprise and Kirk’s Enterprise sit staring across the rift at each other, trying to find a way to make a plan without any explicit communication that might further pollute the timeline. I kind of wish the story, here, was about Picard needing to do something similar with his other selves–relying on their shared history and impulses and then forgetting the event–instead of just a linear story claiming to be non-linear by weaving through different eras…
As for the Picard series, I’m going to give it a shot, because there’s a lot of potential (apparently, it’s going to be a topical story about an influx of Romulan refugees from Spock’s exit into the reboot JJ-verse, just as the Federation is showing its lack of cohesion, with a recent short implying that the hologram uprising may be happening, on top of everything else), but I’m very concerned about the constant announcements of Star Trek alumni guest stars that sound like they’re on their way to eclipsing anything like an actual story. Given how quickly Discovery lurched over from “let’s talk about serious issues” to “hey, let’s click Random on the Memory Alpha wiki a bunch of time, instead of writing scripts,” that really worries me about where this is all going to (boldly) go.
But more importantly, I back the “Star Trek Beyond” recommendation. With Captain Idris Elba unable to let his bigoted past die, that felt more like Star Trek than anything had in a long time.