whatwegrowbeyond:I, I will be kingAnd you, you will be queenThough nothing will drive them awayWe ca

whatwegrowbeyond:I, I will be kingAnd you, you will be queenThough nothing will drive them awayWe can be heroes, just for one dayWe can be us, just for one dayDavid Bowie, ‘Heroes’The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself— Yea, all which it inherit—shall dissolve, And like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.The Tempest, Act IV, scene iIt started with a Bowie song: Peter Gabriel’s cover of ‘Heroes’ scored the bulk of the Short Trek prelude, ‘Children of Mars’. It ended with a Shakespeare quote: Picard’s eulogy for Data is capped off by a line from a Prospero soliloquy from the final act of The Tempest.In between were questions of legacy and failure, hope and redemption, second chances and new lives, love in the face of despair and the importance of companionship. It pitted personal morality against political ideology, trumpeted the importance of a rules-based ethics in the face of an overriding utilitarianism and it posited that the most important thing, in the face of personal failure, is the willingness to stand back up and try again.I guess what I’m saying is that nothing could have been more me.I couldn’t have asked for more from this show. For all of its flaws, and there certainly are flaws, it was beautiful. It was new. I got what I wanted. I got to see a chance at redemption, and maybe find a way forward for myself.I have never wanted this particular game to end, and what Picard has told me that it will, but that it doesn’t have to. Not yet.There are unanswered questions, but there are answers if you’re willing to look for them.Why did all of those Starfleet ships look the same? Well, after their losses to the Borg and the Dominion, Starfleet built a specialised Fast Response Task Force, composed of the Zheng He and her sister ships, designed to go anywhere within in local space as quickly as possible.Where did the Romulans go? The Romulan Free State is still a shaky, weak government with barely any control over its own space. It can’t afford to violate treaty and begin a full-scale conflict with the Federation, especially since one of its most important assets now lies in ruins on a Federation protectorate.What became of Narek? Well, given that he was a member of a secret society dedicated to hunting down and destroying their kind, it makes sense that the synths want to keep an eye on him. The androids are holding him and Sutra prisoner for their role in the murder of Saga.What will become of the xBs? Well, Coppelius is a Federation protectorate now, which means the xBs will be able to become Federation citizens—they will be free to chart their own course with the protection and guidance of the United Federation of Planets, if they want it.Why didn’t Elnor ever get to snuggle a cat? This one does feel like a genuinely missed opportunity, but we can’t see inside Elnor’s cabin. Maybe Spot II is curled up in there, waiting for his Romulan foster dad to come back for scritches.I mean, hey, all of my suggested answers might be wrong. We might get different answers in the future. But I’m happy enough with the thematic strength of this series, with what it had to say, that I’m not going to let the niggling continuity stuff get in the way.There’s too much beauty and wonder here for that boring nonsense.You know, I really love the song ‘Life on Mars?’ by David Bowie. It is a fucking good song, but what I love most of all about it is the central question. You know, “Is there life on Mars?”Way back when this series started, I used this question to underscore the existential uncertainty that had gripped Picard and seemed like it would define the series moving forward. Because it is that kind of question, right? “Is there life on Mars?” is asking “Is there something more? Is there something other than just this? Is there more out there?”The show didn’t turn out to be as unmoored from certainty as I thought it would be. It revolved around a group of characters who both knew exactly who they were and what they valued but found themselves unable to assert that individuality and those values in the context of lives that had, often through no fault of their own, really, really screwed them over.Jean-Luc Picard retreated into himself. Seven of Nine became a vigilante. Elnor’s loneliness turned him into a brittle, dogmatic young man. Cris Rios and Raffi Musiker hid from themselves and the rest of the galaxy, burying their trauma as deeply as possible in as many narcotic substances as they could get their hands on. Agnes Jurati shattered. Soji Asha was confronted with the hollowness of herself.They have all found community, connection, hope and healing, in one another and in the path they have travelled together. It has been a pleasure to watch them, even when their attempts at healing have faltered, even when their trauma has been compounded, because they are all strong people; strong enough to forge ahead.So I come back to the question I asked at the beginning of the series, the question David Bowie asked in 1971. It is a question that doesn’t need to be asked with despair, with pleading; it’s one that I ask now with wonder, joy and hope because, even in the wreckage of everything we have made, there are the pieces we need to rebuild. We’re in the best-selling show…Is there life on Mars?That’s it for my Picard musings. Thank you to everyone who has read them, liked them and shared them. It has been such fun sharing this adventure with you. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone back aboard the Discovery. -- source link

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