Picard 2x04 - 'Watcher' ~~ { ** Spoilers Within ** }

Goldberg always was a hard age to tell. Same as Stewart actually.

But in both cases there was a divergent point after which history unfolds differently in a separate timeline. Yes Q jumped them into an alternate timeline (like Hill Valley 1985 where Biff runs the town), but because they went back before the 2024 change (whatever it is), they should have still been in the original timeline that we saw in TNG/DS9/Voyager etc in the same way as them going back to 1955 in BTTF was prior to Biff polluting the timeline.

Thus, Guinan should have remembered Picard from Time's Arrow

Still, that aside it was another decent episode.

A Chevy Camaro circa 1969 in particular.

Although he wouldn’t be much use to them here, since he was an aficionado of the *20th Century* :P

Yeah, she doesn't act, look or sound like the Guinan we have met in the 19th, 23rd and 24th century.

It's not been too bad though overall. A big improvement on last season, which wouldn't be difficult.

I echo what others have said regarding Rios this season. He is much better, but has the most interesting plot line.

I can't stand Raffi. For an apparent commander in starfleet, she's seriously unprofessional. I also don't understand where her love for Elnor came from? Did I miss that in season 1?

Probably easy enough to guess who the incognito Borg from the first episode is at this stage.

I kind of assumed the Queen was acting like that because she thought she was playing Jurati but then got played.

no communications available, i dunno, maybe replicate or beam in a couple of mobiles?

stupid episode full of stupid nonsense, its rapidly repeating season 1s descending quality as you go.

That shouldn't be necessary. Combadges use sub space don't they? A chunk of planet shouldn't be enough to block them.

EDIT: Or not. They only had a 500km range in TNG without a relay.

I know it's Star Trek and anything can be solved by recalibrating the quantum dodaddle.

But there is nothing to suggest a 24th century combadge can piggyback on the satellite network. I could be like trying to run your modem by hooking it up to a Morse telegram wire.

Because it's set earlier then this episode and depicts Guinan's first meeting with Picard.

Start at the edge of known Dominion space and off you go. Could even add in some former Dominion world on the rebuild or fighting each other in land grabs.

I'de love to know what happened the various cloned/manufactured species in the Dominion.

You don't have to have one big scary bad guy. Plenty of ways to endanger a ship. Especially one out on its own far from backup.

All what tech ? They beat the Dominion with the usual old phasers.

Got to agree here. Her character is so inconsistent. Almost feels like she's tacked on. Maybe they've just failed to develop her properly. She served as Picard's XO for a decade? And yet she interacts with him like they only met recently. When she blamed Picard for "playing games" with Q, I was like "WTF". If she knew Picard as well as she's supposed to, she'd have never said that, even in anger.

In this episode, she had the role of the "streetwise sidekick" to Seven's fish-out-of-water. And it just felt all wrong. She was written into the episode like she grew up in 2024 and knew her way around, even down to her use of vernacular language.

I'm otherwise definitely warming up to this season. I think they're actually being pretty meticulous about tying up some continuity stuff. The decision to choose 2024 as the year can't be a coincidence, there has to be some connection to the Bell Riots.

Maybe they wanted though to avoid explicitly getting back into that. Apparently there was some bad taste left in Brooks' mouth from Star trek. Others might know better.

Or maybe they will get into it. The original "break" in the timeline now doesn't happen, but Q tries again in late 2024. And they do a look-back/cross-over episode like DS9 did with TOS.

Q's remark to Picard about things he had to repent for had me thinking that maybe Q was referring to Sisko & Wolf 359. Time will tell.

Personally I don't need any stakes at all. Picard, Discovery, Snowpiercer, Expanse were always at their least interesting during the high stakes bit.

I think Voyager and Enterprise mostly sucked but I don't think it was the format was the problem.

Re X-Files, I'd have been the opposite. I saw all those monster of the week episodes as filler and distractions from the ongoing plot and conspiracy narrative. Of course, then that became far too convoluted in itself, so....

Year of Hell on Voyager was supposed to be a season I gather. That could have been interesting although a full 26 episode run could have been too long but even 6-10 might have worked.

Yesterday's Enterprise is another that could have done with more time (heh!), a two-parter at least.

It wouldn't have to be something Picard told her, the Holodeck incident with Dixon Hill could have made Federation newswire or became known as a holodeck can kill you thing.

@_Kaiser_ wrote:

It was believed to be too hardcore for audiences. That nobody would want to watch a show where the heroes are really struggling from episode to episode. The format was very specific, you open with a problem, the meat of the episode is our heroes struggling to resolve it or things getting worse, and you finish with a positive conclusion. If you did end the episode on a bad note, it has to be a cliffhanger with an immediate resolution at the start of the next episode. No way you can just drag on this huge story over multiple episodes without people getting bored.

Virtually every TV show in the 80s and 90s followed this format, from the A-Team to Knight Rider, Star Trek, X-Files, ER, Xena, Stargate.

Imagine what TV execs from those times would think watching something like Breaking Bad or The Walking Dead :D

Funnily enough, if you read any weekly comic books like 2000AD during those times, they usually had episodic one-off stories, but they also frequently ran long storylines that sometimes went on for months, with no resolution/conclusion week-to-week. Nobody got bored with those, in fact they were riveting.

Not to mention the fact that soaps were also very popular. But I guess no TV execs at the time thought it was transferable to prime-time viewing.

There was also the issue with syndication of shows, which was big money spinner for the production companies pre-DVD era and not being able to rely on those stations showing episodes in the correct order.

Lol. Me either lol.