Star Trek: Picard

[Werthead]

I suspect they meant to say three hundred billion but either the script or the actor dropped the line by accident. The number of stars in our galaxy is effectively uncountable, as we can't see huge tracts of the galaxy where star density may fluctuate significantly, but there is a ballpark figure of 100-200 billion star systems with between 300 and 400 billion stars, but it may be significantly more (probably not significantly less).

[karaddin]

I thought the comment about Sevens ship being "ugly" pretty transparently meant to be humorous jealousy, not to be taken as a serious comment. But when the rest of the show isn't working for you, these things don't tend to land either - they rely on audience good will.

[red snow]

On 2/13/2020 at 9:01 PM, Corvinus said:

I did a double-take on that, too, and now I'm worried that Kurtzman is going the way of JJ when writing about space. (He probably already has)

I'm feeling pessimistic about the show at this point. I don't even care to start a new thread. 

I guess she specialises in AI/robotics not space. JJ Abrams did more actual damage, this is just dialogue from someone who may not know what they are talking about. 

That said, i thought the episode was easily the weakest and the first one i didn't enjoy. Maybe my good will has been sapped now that they are still creating a crew. Maybe it's because the new character is like an emo legolas? It would have been far better if the nun/monk leading the order had joined as that character was more interesting.

The episode at least went meta with a warning from iffa/jeffa (caravan woman) at the start of the episode about picard wasting their time by going on a memory lane guilt trip.

Does the EMH have multiple personalities for different functions? Accents/behaviours seem to be all over the place. Guess it gives the actor more to do than just be boy scout

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, red snow said:

Does the EMH have multiple personalities for different functions? Accents/behaviours seem to be all over the place. Guess it gives the actor more to do than just be boy scout

It’s separate holograms, there’s an EMH, an ENH, an EHH, I think another one.

For some reason it was the languages that were bothering me in this episode, what language has the Romulan spy brother been speaking to pick up on the fact that Soji was watching in Romulan? And so what language is anyone on the cube speaking? Was that a Romulan translation of Three Musketeers? Does the kid speak and read English? Picard tried out his Romulan briefly, so does that mean everyone else there spoke English? 
 

I’m finding I’m not all that enthusiastic about a mystery these days, I’d rather everyone just got on with the mission. Not all that interested with this ancient prophecy about a Destroyer.

I did really like when Picard got angry with Legolas, it’s the first time we’ve seen him act like he’s in charge. Really felt like Picard then, he’s mellowed the rest of his performance I think.

[Corvinus85]

Ok, why are calling the Romulan warrior-priest Legolas? He doesn't have a bow. Shouldn't he be Romulan Jack?  Or if we're going with LOTR, he should be Glorfindel.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

6 hours ago, red snow said:

 

It’s separate holograms, there’s an EMH, an ENH, an EHH, I think another one

EMH is the “Emergency Medical Hologram”.  What are the ENH and the EHH?

[karaddin]

Emergency Navigation Hologram, Emergency Hospitality Hologram

There was also the combat/gunnery Hologram but I don't think we got his name. He was drunk acting one at the end

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, karaddin said:

Emergency Navigation Hologram, Emergency Hospitality Hologram

There was also the combat/gunnery Hologram but I don't think we got his name. He was drunk acting one at the end

Wow, sounds like the crew is unnecessary.

[Werthead]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Wow, sounds like the crew is unnecessary.

Pretty much. The number of times Voyager got into trouble where the crew was captured/exiled/incapacitated and the EMH saved the ship single-handed was insane, not to mention the episode where two EMHs join forces to take down a Romulan attacking force. Riker and Picard command the Enterprise-D with just the two of them in one episode, and Kirk and four other people pilot the Enterprise by themselves in Star Trek III (although it did require a lot of automation programming, which breaks down at one point and leads indirectly to the ship's destruction).

Crews aren't completely unnecessary in the 24th Century, especially for travels into hitherto unexplored regions, but they are superfluous when everything is running normally.

[Toth]

17 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Crews aren't completely unnecessary in the 24th Century, especially for travels into hitherto unexplored regions, but they are superfluous when everything is running normally.

... and while it pains me to admit it, this is actually a point also raised by STO, which has holographic crewmembers pretty much on any ship and they are actually a game mechanic (when you don't have decent crew members, just take holograms!).

[red snow]

5 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

EMH is the “Emergency Medical Hologram”.  What are the ENH and the EHH?

Phone typos 

[RumHam]

I don't really get the difference between the Doctor's brain and Data's brain, I never have. I assume mobile emitter technology isn't widely available so holograms couldn't follow you where there aren't holographic emitters. But others than that what is the difference? I can't see why one type of artificial life-form has been banned and the other apparently hasn't.

Edit: oh man I just got to the TNG episode where the plot is that they found Scotty and he won't shut up. Classic. 

 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

I don't really get the difference between the Doctor's brain and Data's brain, I never have. I assume mobile emitter technology isn't widely available so holograms couldn't follow you where there aren't holographic emitters. But others than that what is the difference? I can't see why one type of artificial life-form has been banned and the other apparently hasn't.

Edit: oh man I just got to the TNG episode where the plot is that they found Scotty and he won't shut up. Classic. 

 

The Doctor isn't a standard hologram. He has a learning capacity and a personality/genuine AI system far above that of "standard" holograms, which themselves were massively gimped after the "Moriarty Incident" on ST:TNG. I believe the analysis is that the Doctor is now sentient, and the other EMHs have that capacity, but they are also strictly under computer control at all times (the Doctor's mobile emitter is a one-off, freak occurrence that can't recur until they work out how the 29th Century tech works, which by the end of Voyager they certainly hadn't). 

[DaveSumm]

2 hours ago, RumHam said:

I don't really get the difference between the Doctor's brain and Data's brain, I never have. I assume mobile emitter technology isn't widely available so holograms couldn't follow you where there aren't holographic emitters. But others than that what is the difference? I can't see why one type of artificial life-form has been banned and the other apparently hasn't.

I wish they’d never done Moriarty / Vic Fontaine / EMH to be honest. It makes Data more unique if recreating consciousness is just super difficult, and no one’s really sure how Noonien Soong did it. You’re right, there isn’t a difference as it’s presented. It makes sense if the computer simply fakes a person being conscious for holograms, so I guess if you cracked open a hologram’s program it would be full of algorithms about appearing conscious but nothing suggesting it is. Whereas Data’s brain is genuine emergent consciousness, in that it was designed like a human brain and consciousness emerged naturally, and there are no algorithms for faking anything.

But, we’re clearly supposed to be believe the Doctor is conscious. Hence why it bugs the crap out of me that anyone would ever treat him inhumanely or, oh I don’t know, enslave a bunch of them to work in a mine (wasn’t there a great speech once upon an episode about not condemning new life forms to slavery?).

[Werthead]

3 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

I wish they’d never done Moriarty / Vic Fontaine / EMH to be honest. It makes Data more unique if recreating consciousness is just super difficult, and no one’s really sure how Noonien Soong did it. You’re right, there isn’t a difference as it’s presented. It makes sense if the computer simply fakes a person being conscious for holograms, so I guess if you cracked open a hologram’s program it would be full of algorithms about appearing conscious but nothing suggesting it is. Whereas Data’s brain is genuine emergent consciousness, in that it was designed like a human brain and consciousness emerged naturally, and there are no algorithms for faking anything.

But, we’re clearly supposed to be believe the Doctor is conscious. Hence why it bugs the crap out of me that anyone would ever treat him inhumanely or, oh I don’t know, enslave a bunch of them to work in a mine (wasn’t there a great speech once upon an episode about not condemning new life forms to slavery?).

Yes, I think the calculation is that the Doctor is conscious, but to achieve that requires a considerable amount of computing power. They can't do it with every hologram in every simulation.

I believe the official word is that Vic Fontaine is a very accomplished programme with an unusually high level of programming (from Dr. Bashir's crazy friend) but he's still only a simulation, not a real, sentient being in the same way the Doc is and Moriarty became.

The synthetics are clearly not conscious or sentient, and may have deliberately never been designed to be. They were an off-shoot from the research to recreate Data, but fell massively short.

[Aemon Stark]

16 hours ago, red snow said:

That said, i thought the episode was easily the weakest and the first one i didn't enjoy. Maybe my good will has been sapped now that they are still creating a crew. Maybe it's because the new character is like an emo legolas? It would have been far better if the nun/monk leading the order had joined as that character was more interesting.

He's not Emo Legolas... for he is the Kwisatz Haderach!

[RumHam]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

(the Doctor's mobile emitter is a one-off, freak occurrence that can't recur until they work out how the 29th Century tech works, which by the end of Voyager they certainly hadn't). 

It's been a while, but didn't Ed Begley jr reverse engineer the mobile emitter from a crashed future ship specifically for the Doctor?

Also like the whole concept of that episode was that technology could be reverse engineered and analysed to drastically speed up research and development.

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, RumHam said:

It's been a while, but didn't Ed Begley jr reverse engineer the mobile emitter from a crashed future ship specifically for the Doctor?

Also like the whole concept of that episode was that technology could be reverse engineered and analysed to drastically speed up research and development.

Yes, but not created from scratch. Begley couldn't do it in the 20th Century, nor the Voyager crew in the 24th.

[Mindwalker]

You know, it just occurred to me that maybe the "Picard trampling on the Romulans Only sign" scene was not just him being dumb. It is possible that...

a) Picard counted on Elnor following him and thus saving him, and providin opportunity to recruit him after all. That's quite clever. Also kind of mean. (And still Picard couldn't know Space Samurai would kill the attacker. Unless that's a well-known rule of the order that he failed to look up.)

b) It was a fit of anger because of his illness.

I tend to think it was a. He did look rather calculating before he did it.

But that's the thing: I don't need them hitting us over the head with it, but a little hint would have been nice.

[Toth]

1 hour ago, Mindwalker said:

a) Picard counted on Elnor following him and thus saving him, and providin opportunity to recruit him after all. That's quite clever. Also kind of mean. (And still Picard couldn't know Space Samurai would kill the attacker. Unless that's a well-known rule of the order that he failed to look up.)

He literally stated at the beginning that it's a cult of deadly assassins. If that was his intention, he pretty callously endangered their lives.

My best guess to the intention of the writers was that it was a very miserable attempt to say "Come on, bigotry is stupid, an only Romulan allowed sign is stupid". Of course this was undercut by having Picard not act the least bit diplomatically. But you see, even my best guess is still that it was mess, because it was just that irritating to watch unfold.