Star Trek Picard SPOILERS thread

[Hussar]

That will be challenging for any advance space faring race to do, but there's a indication (could be wrong), but they knew this was happening in advance.

And yes, the Federation is advance with great diversity of science from it members worlds, but as it was shown also, it looks like that the Romulans were very advanced in the tech themselves and kept a lot of it, hidden.

So...who was greater, the Federation under a two hundred years plus of birth, or a Empire, who was around for a few thousand years?

This has ALWAYS been the problem with Star Trek. You have all these different races that have been space faring for centuries, if not millennia before the humans get out there, and, yet, in a very short span of time, not only have the humans caught up with everyone, they've flat out surpassed most of them. It doesn't stand up to a moment of scrutiny and it's one of those things you just have to completely ignore in the show.

Think about it. The Klingons had centuries of empire building - hundreds of worlds, lots of resources, yet, within a century of hitting interstellar flight, the humans cobble together a federation totally capable of kicking the Klingon's butt.

Without delving too deeply into the colonialism inherent in the show, it's far, far easier just to let it slide.

 

[MarkB]

This has ALWAYS been the problem with Star Trek. You have all these different races that have been space faring for centuries, if not millennia before the humans get out there, and, yet, in a very short span of time, not only have the humans caught up with everyone, they've flat out surpassed most of them. It doesn't stand up to a moment of scrutiny and it's one of those things you just have to completely ignore in the show.

Think about it. The Klingons had centuries of empire building - hundreds of worlds, lots of resources, yet, within a century of hitting interstellar flight, the humans cobble together a federation totally capable of kicking the Klingon's butt.

Without delving too deeply into the colonialism inherent in the show, it's far, far easier just to let it slide.

Well, that's the difference. The Klingons are just the Klingons. The Romulans are just the Romulans. The Federation are the Humans and the Vulcans and the Tellarites and the Andorians and dozens of other races. They're the ones who didn't just go out and colonise a bunch of other cultures - they banded together for the betterment of their respective cultures and economies.

 

[Hussar]

Well, that's the difference. The Klingons are just the Klingons. The Romulans are just the Romulans. The Federation are the Humans and the Vulcans and the Tellarites and the Andorians and dozens of other races. They're the ones who didn't just go out and colonise a bunch of other cultures - they banded together for the betterment of their respective cultures and economies.

Well... sort of.

I mean, if you have several hundred worlds in your empire, for several centuries, you can't really help but accumulate massive amounts of capital. Yet, the humans, in a tiny fraction of the time, have gone from being bound on one planet to running an interstellar federation that is the largest, most powerful political body in the quadrant.

It's not really all that plausible. It works because we tend to ignore it. And, well, it fits nicely within colonialist attitudes. Anybody that's not us is just a bunch of barbarians and ignorant savages incapable of doing things right. Vulcans are far more advanced, totally based on logic yet, every seven years their males fight each other to the death in order to procreate. You'd think a technologically superior race based on logic might, oh, I dunno, figure out some sort of medication for this?

Klingons are so busy being drunk barbarians that they never actually get around to developing anything? Really? Centuries old empire of hundreds of worlds, and their technological development is so stunted that we catch up in a generation?

So on and so forth. Humans rule because, well, we're humans watching the show and if it was even remotely realistic (humans being relagated to third world status, totally dependent on the hand outs from more technologically developed races), the show would be too depressing to watch.

 

[Janx]

Cannot confirm directly, but some folks are saying that some scenes are off, and there is a question of cramming stuff in example--Picard's brain condition is terminal Like that should be put later in the season, instead we got it in Eps #2.

No. Diseases, Deaths and Divorces on Page 1. Popping the "and he's got cancer" late in the game is considered crap writing. I've been studying this stuff.

 

[Janx]

Finished Ep2 last night. Everybody enjoyed it.

What do we know?
Secret Secret Romulans Hate AI
They probably subverted the Synths to blow up Mars
Starfleet doesn't like Picard
He still doesn't have a starship or a destination
Romulans have invited scientists to help dismantle their nuclear program, I mean Borg Cube
Secret Secret Romulan Boyfriend is dating Z
Romulans and Secret Romulans have infiltrated Starfleet

What do I think?
Maddox didn't blow up Mars
Maddox' process is not the same as Soong's

Questions
Is the Commodore pretending to be a Vulcan really a Secret Romulan (as opposed to a Secret Romulan)?
Will Picard ever get a ship?
Who is the nice woman by the rocks where Kirk died?

 

[Mallus]

I want it to turn out that the Romulans were "fracking" their own star and caused the supernova... because you'd think an advanced space-faring race would have hundreds of years (at least) to plan for their star going supernova...

I like the idea of star-fracking. Works well with what we know about Romulan technology in the TNG-era, ie their warships are powered by artificial singularities, which implies the requisite technologies to really eff-up a sun.

 

[Ryujin]

Well... sort of.

I mean, if you have several hundred worlds in your empire, for several centuries, you can't really help but accumulate massive amounts of capital. Yet, the humans, in a tiny fraction of the time, have gone from being bound on one planet to running an interstellar federation that is the largest, most powerful political body in the quadrant.

It's not really all that plausible. It works because we tend to ignore it. And, well, it fits nicely within colonialist attitudes. Anybody that's not us is just a bunch of barbarians and ignorant savages incapable of doing things right. Vulcans are far more advanced, totally based on logic yet, every seven years their males fight each other to the death in order to procreate. You'd think a technologically superior race based on logic might, oh, I dunno, figure out some sort of medication for this?

Klingons are so busy being drunk barbarians that they never actually get around to developing anything? Really? Centuries old empire of hundreds of worlds, and their technological development is so stunted that we catch up in a generation?

So on and so forth. Humans rule because, well, we're humans watching the show and if it was even remotely realistic (humans being relagated to third world status, totally dependent on the hand outs from more technologically developed races), the show would be too depressing to watch.

I know it's not Star Trek, but I like Londo Mollari's comment from Babylon 5; Humans make communities. The Federation is a large group of very different species, working largely toward common goals. The other interstellar empires are exactly that; empires of subjugated species. The Vulcans didn't have the drive to explore. The Tellarites and Andorians spent most of their time killing each other, even after joining the Federation. I don't think that humanity really sticks out much, in the fabric of the Star Trek universe except for that tendency to build communities, that the other species seem to lack.

Oh, and if FASA is to be believed, much more luck than the rest of the universe seems to have

 

[Mallus]

That will be challenging for any advance space faring race to do, but there's a indication (could be wrong), but they knew this was happening in advance.

Even with 2 (Earth) years warning, that's still the need to move an average of 1.2 million people per day out of the Romulus system. What's the largest fleet size ever mentioned in an episode or movie prior to Picard?

And yes, the Federation is advance with great diversity of science from it members worlds, but as it was shown also, it looks like that the Romulans were very advanced in the tech themselves and kept a lot of it, hidden.

I was thinking specifically of industrial replicator technology, which the Federation has more of/better than their rivals (or at least the Cardassians). It's implied that's one of the Federation's strengths - though we see in Picard there's still a lot of manual/artificial manual labor involved in starship construction. You can't just beam one into existence from a pile of raw materials.

So...who was greater, the Federation under a two hundred years plus of birth, or a Empire, who was around for a few thousand years?

This is hard to answer. Romulan civilization split off from Vulcan around 2,000 years before the shows. As originally described, they didn't have warp drive until some point after the start of TOS (their ship in "Balance of Terror" is a sub-light vehicle). Going by that for most of its existence, the "Romulan Star Empire" is really, really small.

This gets retconned (wisely) in ENT, giving them around warp 5 (which may or not = 125c) capability a few decades prior to TOS (or maybe longer, it's undefined). But they're still biologically Vulcans, meaning their birth rate is kinda... low. So even though the Romulans are described as expansionist, we don't see much description of what that entails territory or population-wise. All we really have is their hostile relationship with the Fed and the contested border.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

One of the things with Romulans, is they're so secretive that no one (in the federation, or us audiences) ever knows exactly what they have or are capable of.

That sub-light ship in TOS could easily have been some kind of ruse/lie/misdirection.

 

[Beleriphon]

Who is the nice woman by the rocks where Kirk died?

And fought the Gorn.