The Gamers Arms

Well the last 10mins was the biggest pile of utter pish. It wouldnt have been the best send off for Picard but I would so much rather they left him dead that have that written by a tumshie garbage. It was a genuinely emotional moment, it really got me. Its Picard, hes been a monolith for 30 years but now hes what? A copy of dead man in a stupidly frail android body? It doesnt change the fact that hes dead its just that Raffi and Rios have a Picard real doll to stop them feeling bad. Way to ruin all the emotional heft you built up in the previous scene.

The one thing I can say for it is that it was nice to have a send off for Data that he deserved after how dirty they did his character in Nemesis buuuuuuut when they have Data inside a box all those years why the shit didnt they bother building him a body? I also loved seeing Riker at the helm but not a chance that shit would have happened!

Also stupidly underused Cube. It served no purpose at all.

I completely agree on the last ten minutes - I don't understand what the point of any of the "Picard is dying" subplot was if they were just going to kill him for five minutes before resurrecting him in an identical but artificial body. And it's not like it was a surprise either; the unused golem was a Chekhov's Gun in the previous episode. I just hope that they don't ignore this pretty significant development for the character. They need to allow Picard to go through some of the same development Data did, and show it from his unique perspective. If they just carry on and do nothing with it, it'll be hugely disappointing and a kick in the teeth to anyone that hates deus ex machinae.

I have mixed feelings about Data existing in a simulation. On the one hand, allowing Picard to say goodbye was quite poignant, but Brent Spiner is just too old now to portray a character that shouldn't age, and de-aging him with anything less than a Disney budget was a constant distraction. Besides, there's a popular fan theory based around a deleted scene from Nemesis that perfectly ended Data's character arc. It's not strictly canon, but it's too good to ignore. The scene has Geordi and Worf going through and packing up Data's belongings after the climactic battle with Shinzon's Scimitar. At one point Geordi picks up Data's emotion chip from the desk and considers it for a second. Data did not have his emotion chip installed when he died. Think back to the final scene where Data saves Picard by transporting him back to the Enterprise. After Picard dematerialises, Data says "Goodbye." Nobody was around to hear it except for Data himself. That was an emotional response. Data had grown to the point that he was capable of expressing feeling without the hardware hack. It added a huge amount of significance to an otherwise pointless death and they sodding cut it from the film.

And what was going on with the relationships aboard La Sirena? It's as if the showrunners forgot which characters they were trying to match up, and right at the end they decide Seven of Nine needed to get in on this? Wha?