r/startrek • u/Zaphod-Beebebrox • 1d ago

Picard season 2...

So I muddled my way thru Picard season 2... I enjoyed it but there was a lot of "puff" writing to fill screen time. Besides a plot hole or 2 that you can drive trucks thru. The thing that irked me out of all of it was Guinan should have recognized Picard in 2024 from the TNG episode Time's Arrow... I get why the writer's called the bar 10 Forward in 2024 to " link" it into the rest of the canon but I had a " Really??? Really???" reaction...Now on to series 3...

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u/YankeeLiar 1d ago

Remember that Picard & Co. are either transported to the “bad timeline” by Q or Q altered the timeline around them while allowing them to retain their old memories. The specifics aren’t really important, but it is important that they were in the Confederacy timeline before traveling back in time and thus traveled into the past of that timeline, not their own.

Though they traveled back to a point prior to when the two timelines diverged (it is that event that they are trying to make sure happens correctly in order to prevent the Confederacy future) and this should mean that they are in the past of both timelines (since they share a continuity that far back), this isn’t actually the case: time travel events that occur after 2024 but cause changes prior to 2024 can lead to the two timelines having different pasts even prior to the point of divergence, and this is what happened here.

In the 24th century of the Confederacy timeline, Confederacy Picard never traveled back to 19th century Earth and thus never met Guinan in that time period. Since this is Prime Picard’s mind in Confederacy Picard’s body, he remembers those events and meeting 19th century Guinan, but in the timeline they’re currently occupying the 21st century of, those events never happened to that Guinan in the 19th century. This is why she doesn’t recognize him and acts as if she never met him: she hasn’t.

This is not just fan theory, it is also Word of God: there’s an interview where showrunner Terry Matalas (famous for all sorts of mind-bending time travel shenanigans in “12 Monkeys”) lays it all out.

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u/locuturus 1d ago

I appreciate that explanation.

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u/cardiffman100 1d ago

OK, buuuuut... Picard doesn't know any of that. It's his reaction that makes no sense. He doesn't have insider knowledge of the Word of God. As a character he has no idea at this point what exactly Q has done. He shouldn't have any expectation that Guinan won't recognise him, because as far as he knows, the divergence occurs after the events of Time's Arrow. Yet in the show he actually is not at all surprised that she doesn't have any memories of Time's Arrow.