Star Trek: Picard

Maps and Legends - S1-E2

Stupidity: The super powerful Romulan commandos (no doubt with the help from the higher-ups infiltrated in the Federation) managed to touch up the footage of the fight in the roof so to remove every trace of the Romulan agents present. But Picard has been running, dodging blasts, ducking, and is knocked back by a huge explosion caught on camera and not deleted; we see it in this episode and it is unequivocally not caused by him. What is the point of going through subtly deleting every trace of the aggressors when it is transparent that something real happened and it's not all Picard's imagination? And the police simply take Picard back home from San Francisco to France without questioning him, not caring about investigating the explosion in the heart of the city involving a famous Admiral battling invisible enemies. If the conspiracy can erase anyone from the tape, why not erase Picard too, or the explosion and explain how he ended up K.O.'d differently?

Sammo

Remembrance - S1-E1

Stupidity: In this episode wily old battle genius Jean-Luc Picard and amazingly smart human-android Dahj act exactly by the definition of stupidity of this website ("something daft, like running upstairs with a killer behind them, instead of out of the front door"), and even surpass it, because the killers are not even chasing them yet. And why not? Because they are in a public area with a ton of people in the middle of what is basically the capital of the world; no band of kidnappers would attack at that point, or at least, it's way more unlikely. But from there, our nearly centenarian hero (steps away from official government buildings and in a world with communicators, teleports etc.) goes up a ramp of stairs leading to a desert rooftop with no exit and no witnesses, exactly where a group of evildoers would attack - and are even able to cover their tracks up exactly because of this choice. (00:31:50)

Sammo

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Suggested correction: Picard is being led by the extremely combat-effective android. She has previously fought off these attackers with ease, and had succeeded again. It was only the exploding rifle that stopped her escaping. Picard and Dahj would rather lure attackers away from a populated area in order to protect bystanders, since the attackers were coming either way.

The slowly-exploding rifle somehow unavoidable for the super-fast android that dies from the barf that a middle-aged caretaker shrugs off would deserve a stupidity entry of its own, but back to the point: if the attackers came their way, they would have never been able to erase their traces by deleting footage, and therefore they would have been the 'stupid' ones. This is pure movie logic and plot convenience, just like the designated victim in a slasher running upstairs rather than screaming bloody murder in the street where they can be helped or dissuade the killer from getting into unfavourable situations.

Sammo

Hide and Seek - S2-E9

Stupidity: Towards the end of the season, the Borg Queen uses Soong to get control of the ship. When asked by the heroes who gained back control, she says that her plan is to get back to the Delta Quadrant and prepare for the Confederation that she already fought in her 'future'. If that's her plan, it's quite silly; she prepares for a conflict she might lose, when she has in her grasp the man who, as she knows, will originate the Confederation itself; Soong, not to mention that she can assimilate (or destroy) the whole Earth already. No reason is given why she'd let 'us' live and thrive.

Sammo

Two of One - S2-E6

Stupidity: Adam Soong's daughter is a grown woman who is well aware of her unique critical condition and the outside world, and is homebound because of her health condition that prevents her from being exposed to direct sunlight and pathogens. Apparently, with all the free time she has and awareness and investment in her father's researches who are all about her, she never ever looked at her father's computer (which has all the info about her story right there on the desktop) nor googled him before.

Sammo

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Suggested correction: I'm sorry, but what reason would she have to look at her father's computer or google him prior to becoming suspicious of him? Yes, the information about the experiments is laughably easy to find but that doesn't mean it's stupid that she hasn't stumbled upon it yet. She never looked because she trusted her father. She doesn't have a reason not to, she isn't privy to his shady actions like the audience. It doesn't seem unreasonable that someone who is so isolated from society might be naïve.

BaconIsMyBFF

If she were a pure innocent soul isolated from society in an absolute sense, yes, but if you look at episode 4, she is aware that he is being audited, and she even jokes about the line he actually used "Humanity is at a crossroad" implying it's a bad line that he used before and that, besides being a huge red flag about the unethical experiments she is totally unaware of a couple episodes later, there is contention about what he is doing. If your dad were implied in some public auditing the outcome of which your very life depends on, I think you'd peek at the media coverage. Even worse for the computer, with the data easily accessible from the desktop, in video format - she's home all day and yet she never ever in a lifetime peeked what her dad was up to, which is, and she is aware of that much, finalized to save her life.

Sammo

The End Is the Beginning - S1-E3

Stupidity: The Chateau is stormed by the Zhat Vash commandos. The two trusty housekeepers prepare to fight the aggressors armed to the teeth by grabbing... a bread knife and a wine bottle. All is good, since the bottle is super-effective, knocking down a Romulan wearing a helmet. This absurdity aside, moments later during the fight it turns out that the valets had weapons stashed everywhere in the room, even strapped underneath tables! Why would they start off with such ineffectual weapons instead of reaching for the guns, other than of course for dramatic purpose?

Sammo

Farewell - S2-E10

Stupidity: From a remote location, Kore deletes her father's research data from his computer, defeating him. So Adam Soong in a few decades of work as a geneticist, apparently never once backed his work up or kept a hard copy of it. (00:20:05)

Sammo

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Suggested correction: The question is left unanswered. We simply do not know if he did. Or when was the last time he did a backup. If she did a system-wide purge. Or if she got to that too.

There's no question waiting for answers about it, is there? Quite the opposite, the scene is very straightforward and would be entirely pointless if he had a backup to salvage (which would be a terrible backup if it could be wiped out remotely), and his reaction does not imply anything of the sort - she knows that she is completely destroying his work with a handwave (work she didn't even know about until hours earlier) and she is right, because he's a defeated man that turns to a very different project entirely because of her action. It's simply an oversimplification/trivialization of how research (and computers in general) work in movies.

Sammo

Season 2 generally

Plot hole: Dr. Adam Soong is initially presented as a discredited scientist, banned from the scientific community; he gets debarred and his funding revoked. And it's not an internal matter; he is publicly exposed for it. His daughter in episode 6 even finds out this information on Google. Several news articles call him "mad scientist" and such. However, this same person at the same time throughout the rest of the season has every bit of pull and influence, not just through undercover channels, but is treated with the utmost honor and deference by the NASA PR people at public events.

Sammo

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Trivia: President Anton Chekhov is the son of Pavel Chekhov. While he has the same name of a real life Russian writer, his name is also a tribute to the late Anton Yelchin who played Chekhov in the rebooted Star Trek movies. He is voiced by Walter Koenig, who played Chekhov in the original Star Trek series.

Bishop73

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Show generally

Question: How do the "door transporters" outside Starfleet work? People just seem to walk straight into them and vanish, a) faster than normal transporters, and b) without any indication they're controlling where they're going. There's no sign saying where each door connects to, are people just hoping for the best?

Jon Sandys

Chosen answer: My guess is that they go to 1 place and they can't chose where to go. Like a highway without exits, you just end up where the highway stops.

lionhead

Answer: I assume they get sent directly from those 'Doors' to a Central Transporter hub, from there they can request to be beamed to their desired destination.

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