The first episode of Star Trek Picard is here. Let’s talk about it!
Transcript
Welcome to Nerd Heaven.
I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars.
And I am a nerd
Can you believe it? We’re finally here.
The first episode of Star Trek Picard has released! It’s out in the wild and we’ve seen it.
I’ll admit I found it kinda hard to concentrate on work yesterday, knowing it was available and just waiting for me to watch it, but I muddled through.
So today, we’re talking about Remembrance, the first episode of Star Trek Picard.
The description on IMDB is
At the end of the 24th Century, and 14 years after his retirement from Starfleet, Jean-Luc Picard is living a quiet life on his vineyard, Chateau Picard. When he is sought out by a mysterious young woman, Dahj, in need of his help, he soon realizes she may have personal connections to his own past.
This teleplay was written by Akiva Goldsmith and James Duff
Story by Akiva Goldsmith, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer, Alex Kurtzman and James Duff
Directed by Hanelle M Culpepper
And first aired on the 23rd of January 2020.
Make it so
Before I go deep into this episode, I thought I’d share a few spoiler-free thoughts.
I loved this episodes. It was a delight to watch.
It was lovingly crafted with exquisite attention to detail.
The episode maintained a near perfect balance between the old and the new.
There was a lot of nostalgia in this episode, but the story wasn’t chained to it. It wasn’t indulgent. The episode told a fresh and new story with a much-loved character.
That’s not to say that the nostalgic elements weren’t integral to the plot. Everything was there for a reason. But I think a non-star trek fan could sit down and watch this, apart from perhaps a little disorientation from a dream sequence, and not just follow the story, but feel like they’ve had a satisfying experience.
The story builds slowly, giving itself time to really focus on character.
So if you’re on the fence about checking this show out, let me wholeheartedly recommend it to you.This is one of the good ones. I signed up for a new streaming service so I could watch this. I don’t regret that decision.
From here on we’re going full spoilers, so if you haven’t seen this episode, stop listening, and go watch Star Trek Picard.
The episode opens with a dream sequence.
But the very beginning is a couple of beautiful shots of nebulae with the song Blue Skies playing in the background. This provides a beautiful link to the very last time we saw Picard on screen at the end of Star Trek Nemesis, when he was in his ready room, and B4 started to sing the song. It’s also very emotionally evocative of Data, because he sang that song at Riker and Troi’s wedding. But to Picard, that song represents the hope that maybe a part of Data survived in B4. A hope that he desperately wants to be true.
And then we see the Enterprise D. In all her glory. And she looks beautiful.
This dream sequence is all a bit messed up, which is exactly how dreams are.
Picard and Data are on the Enterprise D, but Data is in his Enterprise E uniform. Picard is old and wearing civilian clothing. And then suddenly, they’re not in a nebula, they’re in orbit of Mars. Picard was an admiral, in command of the Verity when Mars was attacked. I’m sure you’ve had dreams like this. I know I have. This is probably the most realistic dream sequence I’ve ever seen in a movie or TV show.
I kinda wish these scenes had not been spoiled in the trailer. I would have wet myself if I hadn’t known they were coming.
I imagine the conversation Picard has with Data about his tell was probably a real conversation they had at some point. Or perhaps, Picard did notice Data’s tell but never spoke about it. We can’t really know. But dreams do pull on real stuff from our lives.
And then we’re in the present, meting Number One, who we’ve all fallen in love with in the trailers. Right? Looking at Picard during the TNG era, I never really saw him as a pet person. But now, living his retirement on Earth, I can see it. His whole life Picard has been surrounded by people that depend on him. Now, he’s alone, with only his two Romulan friends for company. It makes sense to me that he would want a pet. I know the choice of a pit-bull was due to Patrick Stewart’s passion for the breed, but it works for me. And people mellow as they get older.
It’s a thrill to be back here at the Picard vineyard. It brings back memories of the episodes Family and All Good Things.
Then we switch to Boston, which looks pretty cool. Did you notice the big glowing Ferengi symbol on one of the high-rises? I just did as I paused. That’s cool. Of course the Ferengi would have a business presence on Earth.
By the way 99 percent of this episode is set on Earth. It’s rare that we get a really good look at 24th-century earth, and I’m loving it. Yes, I want to get out into space, but I do enjoy seeing beauty of earthin Star Trek’s future. I always have, and we get to see it so rarely.
So we’re introduced to Dahj for the first time. She’s at the highpoint of her life. She’s just been accepted into the daystrom institute, and she’s very much in love with her boyfriend. You know that happiness isn’t gonna hang around for long, right?
By the way, we get a few instances in this episode of 21st century colloquialisms. Dahj actually calls her boyfriend “Dude”. And then he says “that’s pretty cool”. This feels really out of place in the 24th century. But at the same time, it lends a sense of realism. So I think I can accept it, but, maybe “dude” is a step too far for me.
Then the masked figures bean in and kill the boyfriend. This scene feels genuinely dangerous. I’m feeling the same fear that Dahj is feeling. The music, the editing, the acting, it all just feels thrilling. Compare this to action scenes on The Next Generation, and they become laughable.
This show is much more sci-fi drama than sci-fi action, but when the need arises, they do action, and they do it well.
This scene is a little dis-orienting. Dahk is very much the viewpoint character here. She doesn’t know what’s going on, and we experience that through her eyes. And we’re just as shocked as she is when she suddenly goes all terminator and kills the intruders.
The emotional realism when she runs to her boyfriend’s dead body is perfect, and again, much better than what we saw in most of TNG.
Now we have a brand new opening credit sequence to talk about. I’d heard this described as rather “James Bond-ish” which isn’t a bad descriptor, but I’d just say it feels very much like the opening credits of a modern TV show. Very artistic. Lots of images, representing different things.
The sky cracks into pieces at the start, and then those pieces fill in a whole in Picard’s face at the end like a jigsaw puzzle. I’m not sure what that is meant to be symbolic of yet, but it does feel very symbolic.
I think a lot of what we’re seeing will make more sense as the season goes on. But it all looks great. They’ve followed the same kind of mould as Star Trek Discovery, in that all the guest star, written by etc credits that you’d traditionally see after the credits, overlaid on the story, are in the title sequence, so there are no words on the story itself.
The music is very sedate. Fitting for the show I think. Not very memorable, melodically, which again, is kinda modern. It takes a while to develop an affinity for these modern themes, I feel. It certainly doesn’t move me like, the theme from The Crown, for instance, but it’s nice music. I’ll report back on this as the show goes on.
And just as Discovery gave a nod to the TOS theme at the end, this music gives a nod to the TNG theme at the end.
And also, notice rather than the traditional “Based upon Star Trek Created by Gene Roddenberry” it says “Based upon Star Trek The Next Generation created by Gene Roddenberry.
Nice touch, showing us that they really are all-in for the particular Star Trek that made me a hard-core fan.
I like the location they used for chateau Picard. It’s not the same as what we’ve seen before, but it’s beautiful, and it works.
And then Picard speaks french to number one in a rather cute scene that show he’s just like our cat. He loves to hunt birds and them them into the house.
It’s nice to finally hear Picard speak french. I enjoyed that touch.
So meet Laris and Zhaban. Two Romulans that live and work at Chateau Picard.
If you haven’t read the Star Trek Picard Comics, then this might be really confusing to you. We first meet these characters on a Romulan colony world which Admiral Picard has come to help evacuate. They’re former Tal Shiar operatives that worked with Picard and have obviously becomes his friends. I’m still waiting for book 3 to come out so I don’t understand all the backstory of how they came to be here, but I at least know them. This must be a little disorienting for those who haven’t read the comic. The way they’re doing Romulan eyebrows is a little different on this show. I don’t really mind it. Helps distinguish Romulans from Vulcans. Alex Kurtzman has promised that we’ll see some TNG style Romulans in the show, with the v-shpaed forehead ridge. Canonising the fact that some Romulans have them and some don’t. Makes sense to me. Afte their ancestors left Vulcan, they undoubtedly intermarried with some other species. Plus, there are variations among humans, so across a vast star empire, it makes sense there would be variations among Romulans too.
The replicator looks cool. Very similar to the TNG replicators.
The effect suggests the object is being built up molecule by molecule like an advanced 3d printer. It doesn’t quite fit with the established understanding of how they work, which is more akin to transporter technology, but it looks cool. Maybe they’ve found this is a more efficient way of doing it.
And notice that the computer interfaces on this show are very reminiscent of the LCARS okudagrams used inthe Berman era. The sound effects too. The aesthetic of this show all feels like a logical extrapolation of the berman era 20 years on. Replicators, transporters, shuttles.
And we learn that Picard is now having his earl gray decaffinated. Interesting. As I understand, people often sleep less as they get older. (either that or they sleep all the time). But I can imagine that as a 94 year old (yes, that’s Picard’s age) he may have found reason to adust his favourite beverage slightly.
I love how Laris mothers Picard. Very amusing.
The TV interview is an effective way to get out quite a lot of exposition in a dramatic way. This show is introducing us to a brand new era in the Star Trek universe, and we’ve got quite a lot of catch up on. The interview scene pulls double duty, getting this information across, but also showing a lot of Picard’s character. Very nicely done.
I loved the little images of Picard from the past. Two from the TV series, and two from the movies.
And we learn that since retirement, Picard has been writing history books. He left his day job to become an author. A man after my own heart.
This brings us to the supernova that destroyed Romulus, which, of course, connects us to the narrative of JJ Abram’s Star Trek 2009 movie, co-written by Alex Kurtzman. We’ve always known that this even took place in the original prime timeline, in which TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager all took place. When nero and spock were pulled into the singularity and thrust back to the 23rd century, they created the new timeline in which those Kelvin movies are set.
But now, we get to see the ongoing consequences that event had on the prime timeline, which I think is really cool.
That was a massive event. Liken it to 911 but even that falls short.
We learn that when it happened, some in the Federation opposed helping the Romulans. Feeling the resources of the Federation could be put to better use than helping a former enemy.
Now this is really interesting.
I’ll be honest. I have a hard time buying that.
First of all, this is Star Trek. Resources are basically limitless. But let’s put that aside because that never really made a lot of sense anyway.
We’re talking about the potential extinction of an entire sentient species. This is the Federation. Do-gooders of the galaxy. And I don’t mean that with derision. The federation is a very moral organisation which values compassion and peace.
If it were the Jem Hadar, at the height of the Dominion War, I could maybe buy it more. But the Romulans? Let’s not forget they were our allies during the war. And relations only improved after the whole Shinzon incident in Nemesis. I don’t think the Romulans posed any significant threat to the Federation at this point. Could anyone in the Federation really not look with compassion on a former enemy and help save them.
Of course, in the real world, people have many different opinions on issues, so again, this adds a greater sense of realism to the Star Trek universe, so I’m with that.
But even in the real world, let’s say Russia, who were once considered the enemies of the western world. If some natural disaster was going to destroy eastern europe, and a western country had some means of saving them, would anybody argue against helping those people? Civilians? Children?
But then I realise I think the writers are trying to connect this with the real-world issue of refugees, which has been a hot-button topic for a number of years, in many countries. Don’t worry, I’m not going to divert into real world politics.
So I guess there could be debate and disagreement in the Federation council regarding this.
I also very much buy that Jean Luc Picard would want to help those in need, regardless of who they were. And while physical resources such as food as ships are near limitless due to replicator technology, the availability of habitable planets to house that many Romulan citizens would be a very real concern.
I do like when the interviewer says “Romulan lives”
And Picard replies “No. Lives.”
And this is where we learn about the attack on Mars. A group of rogue synths (androids) attacked Mars and destroyed the rescue armada (there’s that word again) being constructed at Utopia Planitia. This has me worried for Gerdi. He was at Utopia Planitia in charge of that construction project. Is he still alive. Man, I hope so.
There were two major consequences of this attack.
Firstly, it destroyed Starfleet’s ability to evacuate those Romulans. The fleet they were building was gone.
Second, the Federation placed a ban on the development of synthetic or artificial life forms.
I’m not sure why we have to introduce this new term, synthetic, into Star Trek Lore. What’s wrong with Android? Although we’ll get into more of this later.
But the real reason Picard resigned from Starfleet is that they went back on their decision to help the Romulans. They didn’t rescue them.
This is a complex issue and we don’t know all the facts. But with that rescue fleet destroyed, did they even have the ability to help? On one hand, no. I mean, if their existing fleet was sufficient for the job, they wouldn’t have been building new ships in the first place. They probably couldn’t have rescued everyone as they had planned to do, but I am sure they could have rescued someone. But it seems they just gave up. They became inwardly focussed, mourning the loss of the many many who died on Mars.
I can understand Picard resigning over this. “It was no longer Starfleet”, Picard passionately says.
He likens the rescue of the Romulans to Dunkirk, where allied forces retreated from France into England during world war 2.
All of this just feels like it’s adding some gritty realism to the Star Trek universe, which I’m with.
Then Dahj comes to Picard at his estate. She saw his interview, but something in her mind flashed like lightning and told her to seek him out. That she’d be safe with him.
This is the big msyery of episode one.
I love how Picard responds to her. This werid stranger turns up in his front yard and starts crying.
He immediately responds to her with compassion. He takes her into his home. Most importantly, he listens. That’s Jean-Luc Picard.
Picard was always a compassionate man, but as he’s mellowed with age, I think he’s become much more empathetic. He becomes even more, someone we’d all like to know.
At this point, I’m already wondering if she is synthetic. But she’s bleeding, so she can’t be, right?
Then we get our second dream sequence, and we’re treating to Data and Picard int their original TNG uniforms. Yay.
Data is painting, which is something he’s always been known for.
Picard’s mind is trying to tell him something. Something he isn’t yet willing to consciously admit.
The visual similarity between Dahj, and Data’s daughter, from the TNG episode The Offspring, is hard to ignore.
I really liked the way they used Data in this episode. My theory was always that Data wsa a hallucination, a sign of Picard’s developing Irumodic Syndrome. I’m still not completely discounting that as a possibility for the future, but his appearances here have all been in dreams. It has been done in a way that feels natural to me.
So Picard goes off to the Starfleet archives to investigate. And as we get our first real hint of Star-Trekiness, or at least, of Starfleet-iness, we hear hints of the TNG theme (which, of course, is actually the theme from Star Trek The Motion Picture, credited that way in the end credits, by the way).
I like the holographic index in the archives. Given the prevalence of holographic technology in the 24th century, it makes perfect sense to me that an archive would have a holographic librarian.
This is the scene the fans have been waiting for. From the moment we first hear that Door whoosh sound, the show allows us to really dwell, for a moment, in unadulterated nostalgia. But in a way that again feels completely natural. And if you were new to Star Trek, you’d just think, ok , this is some old things of Picards. But to us, every item in this room holds meaning, brings back memories.
We see his model of the Stargazer from his ready room on the Enterprise. A klingon batleth and daktag. And notice, these are the original designs, not the re-designs from Discovery, which, I suppose, were simply 23rd century equivalents.
We also see the book that was displayed in his ready room. Shakespear? Probably.
There’s a model of the Enterprise E, The Captain Picard day banner, models of the captain’s yacht, and Enterprise D. What else did you spot?
So the reason Picard came here was to see a painting Data gave him. It looks like Dahj. Data called it Daughter.
So….this was a painting of Lal?
Dahj calls her mum, further confirming that she is human.
But when her mum tells her to go back to Picard, even though Dahj never mentioned that, we have doubts again. Who and what is this girl?
The floating holographic interface doesn’t look very TNG, but i’m cool with that. Remember back in the DS9 episode, The visitor, was set somewhere around this time, and Bashir remarks to Dax about how he doesn’t know how they ever manage dusing 2d interfaces. This is a natural progression of 24th century technology.
We see a few Starfleet uniforms in the background. We don’t get a really good look at them. I’m sure we’ll see more in subsequent episodes. We know from the trailers that Picard will go to Starfleet headquarters. So I’ll talk about them when we get a closer look.
At this point, Picard has figured it out.
She knows what Dahj is.
He tells her all about Data.
He believes Dahj is a synthetic. It all makes sense when he lays out the evidence.
All her memories of her childhood and family, are implanted. But Picard doesn’t belittle those memories. He calls them beautiful.
He refers to Dahj as something that is lovingly and deliberately created. And I really like that.
And although he doesn’t fully understand the nature of the connection, after all, Lal died, Picard is at a point where he is willing to consider Dahj as family. You are dear to me, he says.I will never leave you.
I’m loving this stuff. This is emotional. It’s great character drama, and as a parent, I’m connecting with it strongly.
At the same time, at this point I’m dying to understand the mystery. Did data secretly build a second Dahj back in the day? One that survived? Or is it something else?
Then we switch into thriller mode again. First of all, I love how Picard is struggling up the stairs. OF course he is. Even with 24th century medicine, he’s in his 90s. I like that the show allows Picard to be old. How many shows do we get with elderly heroes like this?
This action scene is fantastic. I feel like I’m watching a big screen action movie. Brilliantly done.
When Dahj does a superman jump, we’re left with little doubt that Picard is right about her. But what’s with that bleeding?
Let’s talk about the new transporter effect.
I don’t mind it. It’s still somewhat reminiscent of the TNG transporter effect. But it’s very quick. Again, I can buy that. It seems a logical advance that would occur in the technology.The sound effect still has hints of the old sound, but perhaps sounds a little too hologrammy to me. But I’m with it. This is a new era with a new aesthetic. But that aesthetic doesn’t feel like it came out of nowhere.
And then the big shock that I did NOT see coming.
The romulan puts his disruptor on overload. It explodes.
And Dahj dies.
I thought she was gonna be a major character in this show, and she didn’t make it to th end of the first episode.
That was shocking. And she Isa Briones played her death wonderfully. The fear on her face. The horror as she realised she was about to die. That hit me.
Not to mention Picard’s reaction.
Now we need to talk about something. Dahj has been experiencing and expressing a lot of emotion. She didn’t even know she was an android.
Data, as we know, was incapable of feeling emotions, at least until he installed the emotion chip that Soong developed later in life. So this android is more advanced than data.
Remember, also, though, that Lal was able to experience emotions, or at least a reasonable simulation of them just before she died. That was explained as a glitch in her positronic brain.
Anyway, this is something to keep in mind. Somebody has the ability to create android with emotion.
When he wakes up, Picard has a character growth moment, as he realises he hasn’t been living, he’s been waiting to die. I wonder if he remembers at this moment, a conversation he once had with James T. Kirk, about making a difference.
So he heads off to the Daystrom institute to talk to an expert about whether one can make an android out of flesh and blood.
And can I just point out how awesome all of the sets on this show look. Brilliant.
And here we meet another main cast member of this show. Doctor Agnus Jurati. She’s the expert.
She says a flash and blood android was in their sights, but a sentient one, not for a thousand years.
This kind of makes sense. A body is just a body. The impressive thing about an android like data was not the mechanical arms and legs. It was the brain. The mind.
When it comes to creating life, that’s the hard bit. That’s the bit that matters. The mind. And potentially, the soul.
I can buy that in the 24th century, that can manipulate biological matter to an extent that they can create a body out of bio matter. One that would bleed, like a true biological organism.
But creating a positronic brain like Data’s is something only one person ever achieved. Doctor Noonian Soong. And nobody has ever been able to duplicate his work.
This is why I think maybe the word synthetic could work. Because it’s more than just android. It’s talking about synthetically created biological organisms with robotic brains.
And now we learn the fate of B5. He’s been disassembled and put in a drawer at the Daystrom Institute. I wonder why they dismantled him.
Jurati tells us what we already knew, that B5 is an inferior copy of Data. And we learn that sadly, Data’s neural network didn’t take in B4’s primitive brain. Almost all of it was lost.
And then we get an exciting name drop. Bruce Maddox, from the TNG episode Measure of a Man.
Maddox was trying to follow up on Soong’s work. He wanted to dismantle Data to learn more so he could create more soong-type androids. Data refused, believing the procedure too dangerous, as Maddox needed more research. That, of course, lead to the court case where Data’s rights as a sentient life form were established.
Data and Maddox continued to keep in contact over the years. He’s occasionally mentioned in TNG. It seems he kept working and eventually recruited Doctor Jurati.
They came close to succeeding, and then mars happened, and the ban on the creation of synths. That understandably crushed him. He was no longer allowed to finish his life’s work. The guy was a jerk in TNG when we first met him, but I’m feeling sympathy for him now. Will we see him in a future episode. Man, I hope so.
Let’s talk about this ban on creating synths. As I understand, we’re not talking about taking away anything from synths that already exist. We’re talking about making it illegal to create more.
Was this an over-reaction? Possibly. Picard certainly thinks so.
But I can understand the feat that drove that decision. To this day, nobody knows why those synths attacked mars.
You can’t blame an entire race for something done by a finite number. Obviously.
But at the same time, we’re not talking about people. We’re talking about machines. And probably not even sentient machines, as they’re still trying to crack that nut. Created by technology. Created by flawed imperfect humans. Was there some kind of failure of glitch in the technology that lead to this tragedy? We don’t know.
I’m not sure where I stand on this issue right now, but I can see both sides.
Maddox disappeared after the ban. Even Jurati doesn’t know where he went.
Because nobody is clever enough to duplicate Soong’s work, any new sentient android would have to be created from data
Jurati then tells us about the theory of fractal neuronic cloning. Maddox believed all that data was could be re-created from a single positronic neuron. Kind lof like re-created a human from a strand of DNA in one of its cells.
So the theory is that Maddox created Dahj using this method, and modelled her appearance after the painting of Lal. They’re created in pairs. Twins.
Why this is the case, I don’t know. The episode doesn’t do a good job of explaining that. I can’t see a logical reason why the technology would require you to make two. Hopefully this will be explained more in future episodes.
And as Picard comes to the conclusion that there is another one out there somewhere, we leave him, as the episode cuts away from Earth for the last scene.
But now, it seems, Picard has a goal. A mission. This will guide us logically into the plot of episode 2, and perhaps, the entire season.
The new Romulan ship looks pretty cool. Very birdlike. The voice we hear as it flies by sounds very Klingon to me, but I assume it’s supposed to be Romulan.
This new location is referred to as the “Romulan Reclamation Site.” What that means, we have no idea.
We briefly meet another major character, a Romulan named Narek.
And then we meets Doctor Soji Asher. Who looks exactly like Dahj. The twin! I think she’s a psychologist.
We get a little backstory about Narek. He had a brother that he lost recently. There’s not a lot to say about this. We don’t know what part this character will play in the show. It’s essentially a cameo.
And that brings me to something about this show.
This very much feels like a story about Jean-Luc Picard. There are other characters around him, of course, and they’re important, but this is much less an ensemble show than any other Star Trek. Most of the cast, we haven’t actually met yet.
They tried to do that with Discovery, but Discovery can’t quite decide whether it’s the story of Michael Burnham, or a kind of lower decks ensemble show. I get the impression this show is much more certain of its identity.
And as the camera zooms out, in a shot reminiscent of Star Trek First Contact, we learn tat this Romlan Reclamation Site is actually a damaged Borg cube.
Interesting!
The credits mention somebody played a tellarite. I missed that.
I haven’t talked much about the music, so let me just say that I really liked it, and I think it fits the show well. It’s a lot less generic than the berman-era music, which I know a lot of people complain about, but there are a few hints of TNG-era music. I thought I heard a hint of something from Generations.
So that was the first episode of Star Trek Picard. Let’s go into some summary thoughts about the episode.
In short, I loved almost everything about it. I loved the tone. I loved the aesthetic. I loved the character focus.
In a way, this show is giving us the equivalent of what the movies gave us for TOS. There was quite a big gap between the original series and the original movies. Not so with TNG. They were filming the final episode, and then practically the next day there were filming the first movie. In a way that was good because we saw continuity. We travelled with these characters from Encounter at Farpoint through the Nemesis.
But we didn’t get to grow old with the characters like we did with Kirk, Spock and Bones. We saw them grow and change. Become old. We saw the world around them change. The look and feel of the original movies and very different than that of the original series.
But Star Trek Picard is giving us that opportunity with the Next Generation characters, and potentially, with Voyager and DS9 as well. We know Seven of Nine is returning. I live in hope that we’ll see someone from Deep Space Nine at some point during the planned 3 seasons of this show. And honestly, after Picard ends, I hope we get more of this era.
I’ve been wanting to return to the 24th century for about 20 years. And I can’t believe it’s finally happened. We’re getting to see a future for my favourite era of Star Trek, the Berman era.
If you’re coming to this, looking for TNG, you’re not going to find it. They’ve told us that all along. This isn’t planet of the week. They haven’t even left Earth yet. The creators described this as a ten hour movie. If that’s not the kind of thing you like, you might be disappointed, but I love this kind of thing.
So I’m really pumped and I can’t wait for next week so I can have another helping of Star Trek Picard.
What about you? What did you think of the show? Feel free to leave me a comment wherever you’re listening to this. (or watching)
So what other nerdy stuff is happening in my life?
Well, I recently started walking to Mordor.
You see, I’m quite overweight. My job involves sitting at a computer all day, and most of my other interests also involve sitting at a computer. So, that’s really very unhealthy.
I need to move a lot more during the day.
I thought a fun, nerdy way to motivate me to exercise more, (you’kow, other than not dying) would be to retract Frodo and Sam’s journey from the shire to Mordor to destroy the one ring.
I’ve got the Walk to Mordor app on my phone, which has all the distances calculated, with various milestones along the way, from the story. Whenever I go for a walk, I log the distance and it fells me how far I have to go.
I started at Bag end, and I’ve just passed through Tookland. In about 35 kilometers, I’ll have an encounter with the black rider. You remember that scene in the movie where they hid under the log with the black rider looming over them. It was terrifying. That’s in my future.
Anyway, it seems to be working. I’m finding myself wanting to go for walks. And as I do, I imagine myself on an epic quest through fantastical countryside.
The imagination is a powerful thing, and it’s interesting the tricks you can play on your own brain.
I’ll keep you up to date on my progress through middle earth in future podcasts.
But for now, I’m gonna say goodbye, until next time, when we meet with our friend Jean-Luc once again.
Have a great week.
Live long and prosper.
Make it so.
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