Very intriguing beginning. I was totally on board no matter what because of Patrick Stewart.
I kinda wish they'd quit making these new Treks so damned dark. Even DS9 knew how to have fun. So on top of the destruction of Romulus (mentioned in the 2009 Star Trek reboot film) we now know some rogue androids completely destroyed Mars and killed nearly 100,000 people and for some reason even though we're in the late 24th century, the planet is STILL on fire (how is that even possible?).
Interesting that we see Picard in the same place he was at in "All Good Things...", largely alone in his vineyard, except in this timeline, he has a Pit Bull and two Romulan refugees for company (funny side note, the Pittie's real name is DeNiro and he's a rescue, but both the director and showrunner Michael Chabon said on the latest Ready Room segment that he is a sweet dog but a lousy actor, and that they basically cut him from a few scenes he was supposed to be in
). This will get no sympathy from Brent Spiner, who really hated having to do scenes with Data's cat Spot.
As I said to Erik via IG message, I'm glad that now Star Trek: Nemesis is no longer the last story, because that was such an insanely shitty way to end things. Now the whole thing with Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" has even more poignancy than it did in the film.
My favorite scene was Picard going into his own archive room, and seeing all the stuff there. The dagger from "Darmok," the Captain Picard Day banner from "The Pegasus", just gave me chills.
And yes I'm very much curious about whatever the hell this Romulan Borg Cube is.
It's funny...but one thing Trek never, EVER did right was use the Romulans properly. We kept hearing about the war they fought that triggered the founding of the Federation but apart from a couple good episodes here and there, there was lots of talk and hype about the Romulans, nothing ever actually happened with them. They even hyped Nemesis as the film that would prominently featured the Romulans. NOPE...it was these fucking "Remans" we didn't care anything about and a super-young Tom Hardy playing Captain Picard's clone for some weird reason. NOW maybe we'll get to see Romulans doing something of consequence.