Jean-Luc returns as an aging admiral who turned his back on a Starfleet that he believes betrayed its principals. A mysterious woman, somehow linked to both Commander Data and the Romulans, draws him away from the vineyard and into her conflict.
Title: Remembrance
Cast and Crew
Directed by Hanelle M. Culpepper
Written by Akiva Goldsman, James Duff, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer, and Alex Kurtzman
Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard
Isa Briones as Dahj / Soji
Alison Pill as Dr. Agnes Jurati
Harry Treadaway as Narek
Brent Spiner as Data
Orla Brady as Laris
Merrin Dungey as Interviewer
David Carzell as Dahj’s Boyfriend
Sumalee Montano as Dahj’s Mother
Jamie McShane as Zhaban
Maya Eshet as Index
Dinero as Number One
Premise
After an aborted rescue mission to Romulus and an attack by synthetic intelligences on Mars, Jean-Luc Picard left Starfleet and retired to his vineyard. When a woman survives a bizarre attack, Picard finds himself drawn into a mystery.
High Point
This story draws on a number of elements from past movies and episodes. While the exposition may prove awkward in places, I didn’t feel that a viewer would have to know all of the relevant past details in order to follow the story. Fans will recognize and appreciate the weight of franchise history, but casual viewers can watch as well. That balance can be a challenge to achieve.
Low Point
You have to accept the fictional world as presented, but it’s difficult to believe the entire galaxy, in which we’ve seen numerous artificial life-forms, would ban all “synthetics,” successfully, and would, in any case, not be able to reverse-engineer Data decades after he was first created. And the Romulan Star Empire surely consisted of multiple planets, even if their warp-drive ships could not get them off their homeworld in time to dodge a supernova.
The Scores:
Originality: 3/6 The plot draws heavily from past stories, and thus far, does not really do anything especially new.
Effects: 6/6 The effects work quite well, blending impressive CGI and sets with traditional Star Trek shooting in futuristic-seeming locations.
Acting: 5/6 Patrick Steward has aged, but he remains in fine form as an actor. The rest of the cast varies as much as in any better-quality Trek enterprise.
Story: 5/6 The story has an interesting first chapter, despite an excess of infodump. The plot cannot be fairly assessed until we see more of it.
Production: 6/6
Emotional Response: 5/6 I enjoyed seeing Stewart and Spiner again…
Overall: 5/6 ….”Remembrance” intrigues me. I have some reservations, but I suspect I’ll stay with the series to the end.
Resistance may well be futile.
In total, Picard “Remembrance” receives 35/42
I enjoyed it. It has the feel of one of those mid-afternoon mystery show reruns your grandparents watch, but seeing Jean-Luc again was heartwarming.
Do ‘synthetics’ include holograms? Voyager’s Doctor seemed more sophisticated than Data ever did, and he, too, was essentially synthetic. The future we saw in the finale even had him getting married, if I remember right.
I haven’t seen it, so I’m genuinely curious as to whether they addressed that question.
I would assume not, since we see a hologram (Index) when Picard visits the Quantum Archives. The whole idea does seem a little dumb though – is it *just* lifeform replicants, or any form of AI that is mobile and can interact with their environment? What about putting a positronic brain into something that doesn’t look like a lifeform, or any other form of AI that could theoretically harm humans for that matter?
Not to mention that Trek has a well-established canon of Federation government / Starfleet units that believe they operate above the law – there’s just no way this law is ever going to be effective where it counts. Not that this stops our own law makers passing similar laws, of course, so maybe that’s the point?
“Index” appears to have an extremely sophisticated brain, is networking with the entire Starfleet archive, and appears, like the Doctor, to have a specific personality capable of change. For that matter, wouldn’t the standard ship’s computer count as artificial intelligence? Or does it have to look like a Terran to be in the club?
It doesn’t really make sense, and it strikes me that a version of the plot (based on the whole one episode I’ve seen) could exist without the ban.
All the above comments seem accurate. I think that the plot is intended to mirror the current reality (in the US, at least) where the government you once loved has turned into something that you can’t even respect, and that the general populace has irrational and idiotic reactions to some subset of life forms because some smaller subset has done something horrible. (The one that comes to mind for me is irrational hatred for anyone Muslim due to 9/11.)
So, yes, the A.I. ban is stupid and doesn’t exactly make sense, but that does mean it isn’t realistic.