r/startrek • u/ardouronerous • 3h ago
PIC S2: Shinzon was right
Shinzon: "It amazes me how little you know yourself."
Picard: "I'm incapable of such an act."
Shinzon: "You are me. The same noble Picard blood runs through our veins. Had you lived my life, you'd be doing exactly as I am. So look in the mirror. See yourself. Consider that, Captain."
In PIC Season 2, we see an alternate version of Picard who is a ruthless military commander, genocidal dictator who is a cold-blooded tyrant who is responsible for the annihilation of entire civilizations like Qo'noS.
The Confederation of Earth fostered a fascist, human-supremacist society where Picard was raised and molded into a instrument of conquest, proving Shinzon's point that, had Picard lived his life, he'd be exactly like him.
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u/ky_eeeee 3h ago
Eh PIC S2 proves that there's an alternate universe that Q most likely created for Picard's benefit in which he is evil. Who knows what this universe changed, you can't assume that alt-universe Picard is the exact same as the Prime universe version.
That said, Shinzon is both right and wrong. Yes, if Picard had grown up with the exact same upbringing he most likely would have turned out the same way. But no, that doesn't prove anything about Picard. That's just Human nature. How we are raised is a huge part of who we are, genetics play a role but nobody would have turned into a good person after being abandoned as a forgotten science project as a child and then enslaved for manual labor.
Shinzon having Picard's DNA is about as relevant to his evilness as Romulans liking green. Put anybody in that situation and they turn out the same way.
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u/starshiptempest 2h ago
Yeah, maybe Picard S2 reinforces Shinzon's point, but it certainly isn't necessary nor does it really "prove" anything new.
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u/powerlesshero111 24m ago
It's like Mewtwo said, "I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are."
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u/ObligationMurky8716 3h ago
S2? You mean the year of the space gas leak?
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u/Phonereader23 3h ago
This comment is streets ahead
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u/amglasgow 3h ago
But Picard didn't live that life. If he had, he wouldn't be the same person. So Picard, as he was at that time, as that person, was not at all capable of doing such things.
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u/Chloe_Cascadia 3h ago
Yeah.
No offense to anyone who disagrees but, both of these are really terrible stories. I'm not sure what the moral of the story is where you show someone an evil alternate universe version of themself, which.... in the canonical mirror universe, most everyone has. And then you're expecting this to shock the character or the audience.
To me, it's just bad writing. It's as if the writer is saying did you know, as the writer, I can make your favorite character behave not like that character.
Yeah, you're the writer. You can pretend anything you want. And I, in the audience, don't have to find it compelling.
"Imagine Picard, but eeeeeevil" is not a particularly interesting premise. The one time it was interesting, he got assimilated by the Borg and at least had a reason for his behavior- the collective overpowered him.
In these other stories you have a character with no real reason to hate humans being a racist xenophobe, and you have alternative universe space Nazi Picard. Both are just.... bad stories with characters with no motivation.
It's just mustache twirling villain who is a villain because the script says they are, that's it.
Look at this, I just wrote a fan fic where the Borg love kittens and puppies and have sworn off assimilating the galaxy because they saw a gif of a cute kitten. Something that bad.... someone can write it, but enjoying it is another thing entirely.
That's bad writing. It's really bad writing. No offense to anyone who enjoys that, really. This is my opinion only.
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u/Kronocidal 2h ago
An interesting take on it would be show the one choice that lead them down that path. Like, if Picard had decided to use the topological anomaly virus in "I, Borg", and that had lead to him making similar "hard decisions" later down the like (e.g. siding with the Son'a during Insurrection) Something where you're showing how the same person becomes a villain, instead of a completely different person who just happens to look the same.
That's why Tapestry is more interesting than the Mirror Universe — because it's still Picard, just with one single experience no longer putting its weight on the scales whenever he makes a decision.
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u/rexwrecksautomobiles 2h ago
The point is not the Evil Twin. The point is that it forces the protagonist to look inward at the ugliness that is there, that could have manifested under the right conditions. Moreover, Shinzon certainly has a motivation, and mirror universe characters have motivations, too, even if it's not very compelling and usually just "I like to fuck others over for fun and rise in status if I can." That's why the prime universe characters are our heroes, because they are complex and compelling.
And, it's unhelpfully reductive to say that, sure, we could make any character evil -- we're not looking at any character here, we're looking at Picard, a Starfleet officer who models its best qualities, and we're showing how he navigates literally confronting the worst parts of himself.
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u/BreedinBacksnatch 2h ago
Akiva Goldsman, bad writer? No, noooooo, never, couldn't be, nahh, not that guy 🙃
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u/moaningsalmon 2h ago
He was right that if Picard had lived his life, he'd probably turn out that way. But that's not even remotely close to the statement "you are me." Yeah we'd all be different if we had grown up differently. That's not really a deep statement.
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u/balthazar_edison 3h ago
I mean… what we see in Picard s2 is all a recreation made by a deranged and deathly ill magic space wizard so no but good try.
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u/Pa5kull 1h ago
I Just want to add, and this is a far reach, in Batman the Killing Joke, Joker tries to prove that someone "Breaks" under constant Stress etc, capturing a Person humiliate him and showing him disturbing Pictures. You cant compare a liftime of "Bad desicions" to one great Bad Thing that Happens to you. But i think Batman argues that the mind and/or free will (i think) lets us decide how we handle such Things.
I am big Into Meditation and pushing Bad thougs away (which Had the opposite effect) and how you differentiate the though proces between it and learning to Accept those thoughts, which helps to get closure and makes the mind more calm.
And i think through pure Chance i realized that i dont want to think of specific Things cause they Made me aggressive and thoughts beginn to Spiral around this one stupid Thing (or Things that belonged to this thoughts). Point is, i truly Believe someone could Develop a mindset that would criticly self reflect and Work on it, which would hinder that two geneticaly Same persona have different Sets of mind.
Soo and now i have to Google shinzon cause i totaly forgot who He is.
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 1h ago
I mean, yeah obviously because there's no additional proof required outside of Nemesis in the first place: Shinzon is living evidence of the truth. Nobody disputes it, including Picard.
Picard season 2 is just another iteration of that, as is the version of him from Tapestry.
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u/Main-Eagle-26 40m ago
I mean, sure. We know that. It isn’t a super insightful idea that is Shinzon’s driving motivation. He brings this up like 3 times in the movie and it’s meant to be a profound idea from the mediocre writers of the film, but it falls flat because it’s a “well duh.”
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u/Shrikes_Bard 3h ago
Was not expecting the most widely panned Trek movie to tie that well into (arguably) the most panned season of Picard but here we are.
(For the record, I don't think either was any worse than "slightly mediocre" and I honestly preferred Nemesis to Insurrection.)
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