Star Trek: Picard, Episode 2: "Maps and Legends"

* I'm 10 minutes into episode 2 and I've said "What?" out loud about three times.

* Episode opens with a flashback to the destruction of Mars, "14 years ago."

* Which unless they changed the date is two years before the Romulan supernova so the Romulans had years to evacuate their population onto any of the other worlds of their huge empire but they didn't for some reason.

* The androids who destroy the Utopia Planitia shipyards are creepy bald albino dudes with serial numbers tattooed on the backs of their heads.

* Another character says the word "dude." 

* Also heard in this episode: "shit," "fuckers," "fucking."

* Finally I can take Star Trek seriously! 

* Picard and his Romulan slave beam into Douche's apartment, which is something I didn't know anyone could just do from anywhere.

* They use the banned Romulan technology of "forensic molecular reconstruction" which is where your holographic iPhone shines a laser around the room and somehow that shows you a hologram of what happened in the room the day before????????

* But they're only able to see Douche and her boyfriend sitting on the couch; the hologram cuts out right before the Romulan attack because the room has been "scrubbed" with "anti-leptons."

* Picard's Romulans tell him there's only one group who could be responsible for this. He's heard of the Tal Shiar, the Romulan secret police? Well the Tal Shiar have their own even secreter police: the JACQUES VASH. 

* The Jacques Vash have existed for thousands of years and are dedicated to one goal: destroying synthetic life!

* This is why the Romulans have never developed androids or AI. 

* Meanwhile Douche's twin sister whose name I still don't know is fucking sexy British Romulan bedhead-and-stubble guy.

* The Borg cube they're on has suffered a "matrix failure" and whenever that happens the Borg cut all the Borg on that cube off from the collective.

* As we know from several episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, whenever a Borg is cut off from the collective they slowly regain their individuality but all the drones on the cube seem to just be comatose.

* Twin Sister is working with surgeons removing the drones' implants for some reason.

* "You're free!" she tells them.

* Meanwhile Picard and the Romulans trace Douche's phone records to find her sister. "Wherever this call originated from, it wasn't on Earth," the Romulan says dramatically as the music rises to signify the end of the scene and Picard looks fucking shocked.

* DID THEY FORGET WHAT SHOW THEY'RE ON OR

* Picard contacts a physician he served with on the Stargazer and asks for a physical so his Starfleet commission can be reactivated. The doctor says that Picard is in perfect health except for a minor abnormality in his parietal lobe, which makes it sound like nbd, but then the doctor is like "IF YOU'RE LUCKY THIS MISSION WILL KILL YOU FIRST" so idk what to think.

* Picard goes to Starfleet headquarters and asks to be reinstated so he can have a ship and try to find Data's other daughter who seemingly has no actual connection to Data besides possibly being imbued with his "essence."

* Picard says that he's been mourning Data for two decades. TNG Picard would have been over it by the end of the episode.

* Bitchy Starfleet Admiral yells at Picard for shitting on Starfleet during his Fox News interview in the last episode.

* She exposits that 14 species threatened to leave the Federation unless they let the Romulans die. Picard says the Federation doesn't have the right to decide if an entire species is killed. "We absolutely do!" says Bitchy Starfleet Admiral.

* She throws out Picard then calls Vulcan commodore and is like "Picard was just in here raving about androids and Romulan assassins, isn't that crazy?" and Vulcan commodore is like "haha yeah so craaazy" but actually she is secretly aligned with the Jacques Vash!!!

* Her assistant is a Jacques Vash agent surgically altered to appear human, and also the older sister of the Romulan fucking Douche's sister.

* Her actual name is like Dodge or Dash or something but it's so unmemorable and she's dead so it doesn't matter.

* Episode ends with Jacques Vash agent hologramming to sexy Romulan and asking if he's gotten the information from the android yet.

* "I'm on top of it" he says. She looks over at his unmade bed where he screwed whatshername and responds "I can see that!"

* Good joke, everybody laugh.

* Roll on snare drum.

* Curtain.

* Also I forgot but there was a scene where lady scientist from the last episode was reading Isaac Asimov and Picard said "I never really cared for science fiction. I guess I just didn't get it."

* That should be the tagline for Paramount+.

Star Trek: Picard, Episode 1: "Remembrance"

* Star Trek: Picardo is here!!!! 

* I haven't watched it yet so I'm trying to avoid reviews but I accidentally saw one headline call it "bafflingly bad" so we're off to the races.

* Ok it opens with Picard and Data playing poker on the Enterprise D and they both look depressingly old but it's a passably heartwarming opening.

* But it's all a dream and Picard wakes up at his vineyard with his unneutered dog and his Romulan servants who he took in after Romulus was destroyed in the JJ Abrams movies.

* Picard gives a TV interview for the anniversary of the Romulan supernova where it's established through exposition that the Federation wanted to let all the Romulans die in the supernova, but Picard convinced them to form a rescue armada to save them, but that mission was aborted when rogue androids attacked the planetary shipyards on Mars and set the whole planet on fire. 

* Starfleet left the Romulans out to dry and Picard resigned in protest.

* Elsewhere we're introduced to the girl from the trailer, she's in her college apartment with her alien boyfriend when dudes in biker helmets transport into the room and attack!

* The bikers kill the boyfriend and give the order to knock out the girl but instead of stunning her with a phaser they just stand around and let her murder them with kung fu moves.

* She goes to see Picard even though she doesn't know who he is and introduces herself as Douche, explaining that she suddenly has these superpowers she doesn't understand like instant kung fu and being able to overhear conversations from a block away.

* Picard finds an old painting of Douche that Data made 30 years ago, the painting is called "Daughter."

* Picard is overjoyed to meet Data's daughter and promises that he will never leave her but then more bikers show up and Douche jumps 300 feet in the air and kicks them all.

* One biker gets his helmet knocked off revealing that he is a Romulan, but he spits acid on Douche and it melts a phaser rifle, causing it to explode and kill Douche in a massive fireball.

* Actually maybe it's a disruptor, I don't remember what Romulans use.

* Anyway Picard is thrown 20 feet by the explosion which in real life would have turned his bones to powder because he looks like he has the fortitude of papier mache.

* Picard regains consciousness back at the vineyard, where his Romulan servants tell him that the space police dropped him off instead of taking him to the hospital or questioning him about the destruction.

* Also the Golden Gate Bridge is just a giant field of solar panels now, which seems... weird.

* Picard goes to the AI research center where he asks a lady scientist if it's possible to create a fully organic sentient android, because apparently Douche was fully organic instead of artificial like Data? And Picard knew that somehow? How did he know th

* The scientist explains that that won't be possible for 1,000 years, but after the Mars attack the Federation outlawed synthetic life and put a stop to their research.

* Scientist opens a drawer that contains the dismembered body of B4, who if you remember was the [mentally exceptional] Soongh android Data found in Star Trek Nemesis.

* She explains that Data tried to upload his brain into B4 (which happened in the movie) but he was so [mentally exceptional] that it didn't work and he died I guess.

* Without Data's neural net no one is able to construct another sentient android, but Data's neurons died with him so the android Picard claims he met can't exist.

* The androids who attacked Mars were built in this very laboratory but they weren't sentient, I guess? Idk it's not explained.

* It's also not explained why they couldn't just use Lore's neural net since they should still have him in a drawer somewhere too but he's never even mentioned so maybe they just forgot. 

* But Picard shows scientist lady Douche's necklace, which looks like two slightly overlapping circles.

* Scientist says this is the symbol for fractal cloning, the idea that if they had just one neuron from a neural net it could regenerate the whole net including memories. 

* Picard says so Data's "essence" could still live on and scientist lady says yes and fractal clones are always created in twin pairs, even though I thought it was just hypothetical and had never been done so "always" seems like a strange

* "So there's another one out there" realizes Picard. 

* We then cut to Douche's twin named Loji or something and she is like a psychiatrist on the Romulan Reclamation Station.

* A sexy Romulan approaches her and says he just arrived on the station, he used to have a brother he was very close with but he's dead now, and other ominously veiled things.

* Logjam is like why don't you tell me about your psychological trauma and then we'll fuck?

* Then the camera pulls back to reveal DUN DUN DUN they're in a Borg cube!!! ROLL CREDITS

* tldr it stinks

* The things that annoyed me the most were the dumb action/crazy camera cuts.

* The music, which would not go away.

* Like on TNG they'd have nice quiet conversations, here the sappy music was constantly playing "you saved us picard, you're a great man, be the captain they remember."

* So emotionally overwrought.

* And the set and tech designs, which followed Discovery's lead and were super slick and shiny with lots of holographic displays and interfaces.

* Really wanted to see an extension of the 90s Trek design aesthetic.

* But of course they couldn't do that, it would be way too cheesy.

* People might get confused.

* Also the use of contemporary language when the girl and her boyfriend are in the apartment. She says "dude" and he describes her replicator selection as "tragic," it was really jarring and silly.