honestly the earnest, sorrowful but absolute tender way that Picard speaks about Data in Star Trek: Picard never fails to choke me up

in Star Trek: TNG, Picard wasn’t the warmest of the captains - never cold really, but it also took him seven years to participate in the poker game of his crew. in Measure of a Man, he initially tries to persuade Data to give his autonomy to Starfleet, until he realizes exactly what he is doing

and then comes Nemesis and Data sacrifices himself to save him. I always hated Nemesis and the decision to kill the android character, but the way that STP is handling this… I like it quite a lot, because it’s so clearly haunted by this loss, by the sacrifice a friend did for him to live, and it affects him so deeply that such an unique being like Data died for him

Picard left Starfleet faced with the fiasco of Federation’s lack of compassion for the Romulans and for the mess that was the prohibition of synts, retired and hide from the world, but as soon as Dajh appears and he discovers she’s his “daughter”, she gains his immediatly devotion - If you are who I think you are you are dear to me in ways that you can’t understand.I will never leave you - he tells her, means every word of it. She is a piece of Data, and she has his heart from this fact alone. and when Dajh dies and he can’t save her he is SO heartbroken - She deserved better from me - he says, means every word again - couldn’t save Data, couldn’t save his daughter.

and then the information that she has a twin. As soon as he learns about Soji Asha, the desperation he feels to try and save her, the hopeless operation, the mismatched crew, going along despite knowing hardly anything, he’s just trying about everything to try and save her the way he couldn’t save her sister

and the desperation, again, when he meets Soji already activated - I’m a friend of a friend of your father’s  - and the way he begs that she lets him help her - Please, Soji, let me help you. Please, trust me. Please

and there’s more to it to the story, of course - Federation’ corruption, the Tal Shiar involvement, and the fact that he wants to get to the bottom of it but at the end, it all started, it all began with Picard’s love of Data and his sense of his loss of his dear friend that haunts him.

one of the things i always deeply disliked about the AOS films was the decision of destroying Romulus in the prime verse and Vulcan in the Kelvin timeline because like… this is such a huge thing, not so easily brushed off, and the films because of their structure and because of the time itself could never hope to truly portrait the impact it would have

and tbh this is one of the things I’m liking the most about Star Trek: Picard, the fact that it did have a huge impact in the universe, that it’s still having repercussions, that what happened with the Romulanss resulted in other messes happening, like the whole Mars thing with the androids, and the role of the Federation on it all

all the Star Trek flirted with the idea of the Federation having a dark side, even TOS, and ofc no one did it more than DS9, but now we’re really seeing the Federation being really upfront about this dark side, no subterfuge necessary and i’m finding it so interesting to see familiar characters in this new world

when we had Picard in TNG being hopeful and optimistic in a perfect world it didn’t mean a whole lot - easy to be a saint on Paradise, and all that - but seeing him still believing in those principles in a much darker world…. really makes me enjoy him much more in this new lightning tbh

happily surprise to hear Quark’s name being dropped like that in the Picard show

i came home pretty late from work today so i’m knackered but i just had to watch the premiere of the Picard show and yoooo this is SO good and my hype is only getting higher, excellent start

i’m gonna reblog stuff with spoilers and i’ll be using the tags #star trek spoilers and #star trek picard spoilers if anyone wants to block it