[CaptainCrunch]

I enjoyed it for a first episode, in one foul swoop they showed that humanity was maybe not the bastion of goodness and enlightenment that was pushed as part of the original Trek universe.


I honestly thought that the most brilliant part of the episode was the interview with the reporter which was a really clever way to catch up on a lot of backstory

Spoiler!

The reporter practically sneering when she talked about giving aid to the Federations oldest enemy and her almost smug satisfaction at lecturing Picard about the destruction of Mars was brilliant. Picard's resignation from Star Fleet because they weren't the Star Fleet that he envisioned instantly peeled back a layer of arrogance that Picard always had.

To be honest, when Dahj showed up on Picard's property I leaned forward in anticipation of the typical response of an elderly slightly bitter old man "Get off of my lawn you shiftless teenager" Instead we were driven head first into a compassionate Picard eager to dive into another mystery.



We have Picard chasing down threads, and it leads to another nifty encounter. My worry stated earlier would be that Picard would once again be doing forward shoulder rolls and firing phasers, but they brilliantly made him what he is, a slightly confused old man who can barely walk up a stair case and sat huddled behind a barrier while the young girl carried the fight.

Spoiler!

Here we see that the enemies chasing her are romulan's and in the end Dahj meets her fate as the lord takes a liking to her and blows her up real good.



From there, we have Picard now grieving go to the Daystrom institute where we fall into the trap of Trek gobbly #### as the fate of B4 is explained, and how synthetic androids can be made or not made. Apparently Doctor Bruce Maddox found a way to create synthetic androids but they can only be in twins so there's another Dahj out there. Now for real Trek fans, Maddox is a nice call back to STNG as he was the cybernetics that wanted to rip data apart in measure of a man and we had the court battle that defined Data as a sentient being with rights.


There is a ludicris concept here that Maddox vanished after he realized that the only way to make a sentient flesh bot would require being made from Data (That to me was a major why moment)


After that we flash to a romulan walking through a romulan reclamation zone where he runs into Dahj twin sister and befriends her, then we zoom out and see a Borg cube being I guess reclaimed.

Overall I liked this because so far it hasn't fallen into the trap of normal star trek with ships in drydocks and a familiar clue with a snobby federation with a superiority complex.


Patrick Steward did a great job of playing a man who for the most part was crushed by his own beliefs and the failings of those around him and he was clearly a man that wanted deaths chilly embrace for the most part.


If I had a complaint again it was that the whole premise around

Spoiler!

needing Data to create synthetic beings seemed overly complex and silly and we need to remember that Lore Data's EVIL brother was disassembled but not destroyed. So here's my theory

Spoiler!

Maddox when Data was destroyed and B4 was a failure vanished, he found Lore and used him to create the not only synthetics that destroyed Mars but Dahj and her sister . So this brings up a question, could we see, not the return of Data, but the return of Lore? Are the Romulans and Lore trying to create their own version of the Borg Collective using synthetics instead of Drones