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Old September 23 2008, 04:01 PM   #36
Re: Picard's 'middle' years

OTOH, there's another bunch of people who have a compulsive need to speak about the past: heroes.

Typically, this means "small heroes", people who fear that their feats will be forgotten, or people who doubt the significance of their feats and try to boast on them. To my experience, it's particularly prevalent in certain elements of the military...

In that sense, it wouldn't have been out of place for Picard to keep on dragging up irrelevant connections between the week's adventure and one of his old Stargazer or Pathfinder or Prince Charles ones. That we never quite got this does tell us something specific about Picard's character... The closest he comes to "irrelevant connection" is in "The Wounded" where, while operating close to Cardassian territory, Picard takes the time to bad-mouth the species. Usually, he gives even his worst enemies the benefit of the doubt, but here he jumps at the chance to hatemonger.

Are we perhaps to think that Picard and the Cardassians have more history than that? That Picard's "last time" was preceded by several even nastier encounters? Perhaps Picard in fact played a major role in at least one segment of the UFP-Cardassian war? He'd then be downplaying, understating, being downright civil about the hated enemy - in essence, being more Picard.

(Excluding his attitude towards the Borg, of course. But probably everybody in the 2th century can excuse that.)

Timo Saloniemi
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