Star Trek: Picard - Countdown #1

[history79]

Written by Kirsten Beyer and Mike Johnson, Art by Angel Hernandez

9 pages of 28

Comments

[scorntx]

Watch out, Picard, she's gonna lock you up in a supply cupboard with everything you need to escape!

(Nice to see Geordi's doing fine. Legit concerned there, given everything...
... although, since this is a prequel, there is still a chance for something pointlessly horrible to happen to him.)

[mazway_75]

I'm guessing Picard calls up Starfleet to ask for more ships...and stunned they reply "just the Romulans, Picard and even that's pushing it."

MINOR SPOILERS for the series.

I do love the scene on the show where Picard is put in his place by an admiral pointing out that 14 races were ready to leave the Federation over aiding the Romulans and keeping all the planets that rely on it together was more important than Picard's moral outrage.

Picard: "I'ts not up to us if a species lives or dies."
Admiral: "It absolutely is. For all the hundreds of races that depend on the Federation, it is."

Also love Picard talking of how he told Starfleet "do this or I quit," meaning it as a bluff as surely they'd never actually cashier Admiral Jean-Luc Picard....and they accept his resignation on the spot.

There's a line on DS9 fans of "If Picard was in charge, the Dominion would have won" because while a great Captain, Picard can be too high-minded and not ready for the darker moves the Federation sometimes needs.

[shakalooloo]

"The darker motives the Federation sometimes needs."

Hmm.

If fourteen species are prepared to leave the Federation over the matter of preventing millions of deaths, maybe the Federation is better off without them.

And the Romulans helped win the Dominion War. Were those fourteen species protesting against them then?

[mazway_75]

Well, Federation were seeing resources stretched due to synthetic uprising and not enough ships. And a backstory is that the Romulans did find out Sisko tricked them into the war which didn't go over very well.

The series does explore how the Federation may have looked a utopia but as prone to politics as anywhere else and sometimes hard choices had to be made. The admiral point blank says "letting the Federation implode was not worth helping the race that's tried to wipe us out."

[matrix_dragon]

Ah yes, the Federations slave race rising up against their masters... *Sigh*

[icon_uk]

The EMH's probably rose up in sympathy too, the Federation turned most of them into miners

[matrix_dragon]

Oh yeah, that. *Gives Voyager a disgusted look*

[scorntx]

Thought they were still using EMHs, just that Starfleet "reassigned" the Mk. 1s.

[deepspaceartist]

Honestly at this point I'm 100% sure that the synth attack wasn't anything along the lines of a slave uprising. Not to spoil anything specific, but the show has made it pretty clear that it was a case of someone hacking all the robots to go murderous and then self destruct. From what we've seen of them the synths hadn't even reached the same level of intelligence/sentience as the TOS Enterprise's computer, much less reaching actual sentience and wanting to revolt.

[starwolf_oakley]

Peter David wrote a short story "Stone Cold Truths" that said the Romulans learned about "the Sisko lie."

The Earth-Romulan War is part of the reason the United Federation of Planets was formed in the first place."

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

The Romulans only helped when the war against the Dominion after 1) getting creamed in a surprise attack they launched and 2) afterwards, allowing the Dominion to use their territory to attack the Klingons and Federation.

Had they not been tricked, the Romulans would have gladly done nothing.

So really, they were like Russia in WW2. Happy to do their own thing until their allies turned on them.

[matrix_dragon]

"I'm guessing Picard calls up Starfleet to ask for more ships...and stunned they reply "just the Romulans, Picard and even that's pushing it.""

Yeah, being incompetent assholes getting in the way of saving lives is something of a tradition for Starfleet Admirals.

[dcbanacek]

I wonder if Nero will make an appearance.

[starwolf_oakley]

Not in this miniseries. I've wondered if we will appear in the "Last, Best Hope" novel.

[arilou_skiff]

Fun fact: That ship is an Odyssey-class, that originated in Star Trek Online. I believe there is another STO design (at least) in the comic as well, the Faeht-class romulan warbird.

[lordultimus]

Cool uniforms.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Just wondering, what are the general physics at work here?

I always presumed that like the Federation, the Romulans had colonized several different systems, at least. Losing their home system would be a blow, but it'd be one you'd think that they could manage.

[arilou_skiff]

This is actually something that was established earlier, but basically: Space wimey-timey, the Supernova due to Reasons (TM) propagates through subspace and its effects are not just limited to the capital system but takes out a good chunk of the romulan empire (hence why Picard is on some backwater planet trying to evacuate the natives)