Maman

Picard's Mother 

TNG Older Explained 

Star Trek Picard

Picard and his mother.

Yeeeers -- That'll be 

The Trauma : He's clearly not 

remembering Her 

very well.....

 our son.

[Chez Picard]

(Picard is making inroads into a bottle of the family produce when Robert comes in with flowers for the house) 

BOB : 

Careful. You're not used to drinking the real thing. This synthehol never leaves you out of control, is that so? 

Johnny : That's so. 

BOB : This will. (pours himself the last dregs) Now there is something I'd like to see. 

Johnny : What's that? 

BOB : 

The gallant Captain out of Control. Mind if I ask you 

A Question? What the devil happened to you up there? 

Johnny : 

Is this brotherly concern? 

BOB : 

No. Curiosity. What did 

They Do to you? 

Johnny : 

You know what happened. 

BOB : 

Not precisely. I gather you were hurt. Humiliated. I always thought you needed 

a little humiliation. 

Or was it humility? 

Either would do. 

(Jean-Luc storms out of the house) 

[Garden]

BOB : Why do you walk away? That isn't your style. 

Johnny : I'm tired of fighting with you, Robert. 

BOB : Tired? 

Johnny : That's right. 

BOB : Yes. Tired of the Enterprise too? The great Captain Picard of Starfleet falls to Earth, ready to plunge into the water with Louis. That isn't the brother that I remember. Still, I suppose it must have seemed like the ideal situation, hmm? Local boy makes good. Returns home after twenty years to a hero's welcome. 

Johnny : I'm not a hero. 

BOB : Of course you are. Admit it. You'd never settle for less than that and you never will. 

Johnny : That's not true. 

BOB : Cancel the parade? In your favour? 

Johnny : No! I never sought that rubbish. 

BOB : Never sought? Never sought president of the school, valedictorian, athletic hero with your arms raised in victory? 

Johnny : Valedictorian? Arms raised in victory? Were you so jealous? 

BOB : Yes, damn it. I was always so jealous, I had a right to be. 

Johnny : Right? 

BOB : I was always your brother, watching you receive the cheers, watching you break every rule our father made and get away with it. 

Johnny : Why didn't you break a few rules? 

BOB : Because I was the elder brother, the responsible one. It was my job to look after you. 

Johnny : Look after me? You? You were a bully. 

BOB : Sometimes. Maybe. Sometimes I even enjoyed bullying you. 

Johnny : All right. Try it now. 

BOB : Did you come back, Jean-Luc? Did you come back because you wanted me to look after you again? 

Johnny : Damn you! 

(And he punches his brother, sending him flying over some barrels into the vineyard proper. There they fight in the muddy irrigation ditches, through the vines until they finally fall back laughing) 

Johnny : 

You were asking 

for it, you know. 

BOB : 

Yes, but you needed it. 

You have been terribly 

hard on yourself. 

Johnny : You don't know, Robert. You don't know. They took everything I was. They used me to kill and to destroy, and I couldn't stop them. I should have been able to stop them! I tried. I tried so hard, but I wasn't strong enough. I wasn't good enough. I should have been able to stop them. I should! I should! 

BOB : 

So, my brother is a human being after all. This is going to be with you a long time, Jean-Luc. A long time. You have to learn to live with it. You have a simple choice now. Live with it below the sea with Louis, or above the clouds with the Enterprise. 

Johnny : You know, I think you were right after all. I think I did come back so that you could help me. 

BOB : You know what? I still don't like you, Jean-Luc.

[Chez Picard]

(There's mud, and muddy boots, on the carpet, and drunken voices singing 'Aupres de ma blonde, qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon' dum, dum, dum. Marie enters from outside) 

Mrs. BOB : What in the world? What happened here? 

BOB : Ah 

Johnny : It's entirely my fault, Marie. 

BOB : Yes, I fell down, then he fell and then 

Johnny : We both fell down. 

BOB : We both fell down. 

Johnny : Together. 

BOB : We both fell down together. 

Mrs. BOB : Have you two been fighting? 

BOB : Fighting? No, certainly not. 

Mrs. BOB : Shame on you both. What would your father say if he saw you like this? 

Johnny : He'd probably send us both to bed without our supper. 

Mrs. BOB : Well, perhaps it's just as well you got it out of your systems. 

Johnny : Perhaps it was, Marie. Perhaps it was. I'll contact Louis and cancel the meeting with the Board of Governors. It's time that I was going. 

Mrs. BOB : 

Already, Jean-Luc? 

Johnny : 

The ship will be ready to leave orbit soon, and I belong on board. If I should ever doubt that again, I know where to come. 

Picard - Sheer Fucking Hubris

[Patio]

(Arranging flowers in a vase in the evening.)

MORITZ: 

He said I'd find you out here.

Johnny : Moritz.

MORITZ: Hello, Jean-Luc.

Johnny : It's been a very long time.

MORITZ: Too long.

Johnny : I know there was a bit of trouble with the remote medscan, but I hardly expected a house call. Let me just er... (picks up tea tray) Your office told me they would be forwarding the certificate for interstellar service as soon as you had seen the results. (silence) Oh, I see.

MORITZ: You might want something stronger.

(A little later.)

MORITZ: Your medscan came in at or above Starfleet minimums in every category. Cardiovascular, metabolic, cognitive. For a relic, you're in excellent shape. Just that little abnormality in the parietal lobe.

Johnny : I was told a long time ago that it might cause a problem eventually.

(Irumodic Syndrome? See All Good Things.)

MORITZ: Loss of appetite, mood swings, unsettling dreams? Inappropriate displays of anger on interplanetary news holos?

Johnny : What do you think it is?

MORITZ: I'd need to run more tests. It could be one of a number of related syndromes.

Johnny : Prognosis? Come on. Let's have it, Doctor Benayoun.

MORITZ: A few are treatable, but they all end the same way. Some sooner than others.

Johnny : I see. I need you to certify me to Starfleet as fit for interstellar service. Now, will you do it?

MORITZ: I don't suppose you'd condescend to tell me why. Secret mission? We certainly had our share of those on the Stargazer, didn't we? Remember that time in the fireforest on Calyx, we

Johnny : Doctor Benayoun. Forgive me.

MORITZ: You really want to go back out into the cold, knowing

Johnny : More than ever, knowing.

MORITZ: I don't know what kind of trouble you're planning to get into. Maybe if you're lucky, it will kill you first.

[Starfleet HQ]

(Picard beams in through one of a line of arches in the plaza. Humans and aliens with a mixture of DS9 and Voyager style uniforms throng the area.)

COMPUTER: All visitors must report to the main security desk. All visitors must report to the main security desk.

(A large hologram of NCC1701 hangs over the foyer, then it changes to NCC1701D.)

MAN [OC]: Admiral Gurdy, please report to Conference Room B. Admiral Gurdy, please report to Conference Room B.

Johnny : Hello. I er, have a meeting with the CNC. I have an appointment.

ENSIGN: Of course, sir. May I have your name, please, sir?

Johnny : Oh. Er, Picard. P-I-C-A-R-D. Jean-Luc.

(The Ensign puts a visitor badge on the reception desk.)

ENSIGN: Ah. It's nice to see you up and around, Admiral. Welcome back.

[Admiral Clancy's office]

(Doorbell.)

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy , 

C-in-C, Starfleet : 

Come. (door opens) 

Ah. Jean-Luc.

Johnny : 

Kirsten. Hello. 

May I? (he sits)

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy , 

C-in-C, Starfleet : 

Apparently, you have 'urgent 

Federation Business'. 

I understood you to have left 

affairs of state behind.

Johnny :

 I am staying as far 

from it all as I can.

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy , 

C-in-C, Starfleet : 

So then what can I do for you?

Johnny : 

Bruce Maddox.

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy , 

C-in-C, Starfleet : 

What about him?

Johnny : 

I believe that he is using neurons 

from the late Commander Data 

to create a new race of

organic synthetics.

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy , 

C-in-C, Starfleet : 

Well, that's not far from all 

of it, it is all of it.

Johnny : 

The Romulans are involved.

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy, 

C-in-C, Starfleet : 

This gets better and better.

Johnny : 

Commander Data was 

not only my colleague, he was 

my dear friend, and he gave 

his life, body and soul, 

to The Federation.

 And if there is a chance that some part of him 

still exists, then I think we have 

an obligation to investigate.

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy,

C-in-C, Starfleet : 

There is no 'We', 

Jean-Luc --

Johnny : 

Kirsten, I know we have not always seen eye to eye. Nevertheless, I have a request to make. Based on my years of service, I want you to reinstate me, temporarily, for one mission. I will need a small warp-capable reconnaissance ship with a minimal crew, and if you feel that my rank makes me too conspicuous, well then, I am content to be demoted to Captain.

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy ,

 C-in-C, Starfleet : 

....sheer fucking hubris --

You think you could just waltz back in here 

and be entrusted with taking men 

and women into space? 

Do you think I wasn't 

watching the holo 

the other day along 

with everyone else 

in The Galaxy?

Johnny : I should not have spoken in public.

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy , C-inC, Starfleet : The Romulans were our enemies, and we tried to help them for as long as we could, but even before the synthetics attacked Mars, 14 species within the Federation said, cut the Romulans loose, or we'll pull out. It was a choice between allowing the Federation to implode or letting the Romulans go.

Johnny : 

The Federation does not get to decide 

if a species lives or dies...!

.

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy , 

C-in-C, Starfleet : 

Yes, We Do. 

We absolutely Do. 

Thousands of other species depend 

upon Us for unity, for cohesion. 

We didn't have enough ships left. 

We had to make choices. 

But The Great 

Captain Picard didn't 

like His Orders.

Johnny : 

I was standing-up 

for The Federation, for 

what it represents, for what 

it should still represent!!

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy , 

C-in-C, Starfleet : 

How dare you 

lecture me?

Johnny : 

Ignore me again 

at your cost.

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy , 

C-in-C, Starfleet : 

My cost?

Johnny : 

You are in 

peril, Admiral.

Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy , 

C-in-C, Starfleet : 

There's no peril here...!!
Only the pitiable delusions 

of a once-great man 

desperate to matter. 

This is no-longer Your 

House, Jean-Luc. 

So do What You're

Good at : Go Home. 

Request Denied.

Man on The Moon

 

All men dream : but not equally, Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: 

But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. 

The story which follows was first written out in Paris during the Peace Conference, from notes jotted daily on the march, strengthened by some reports sent to my chiefs in Cairo. Afterwards, in the autumn of 1919, this first draft and some of the notes were lost. It seemed to me historically needful to reproduce the tale, as perhaps no one but myself in Feisal's army had thought of writing down at the time what we felt, what we hoped, what we tried. So it was built again with heavy repugnance in London in the winter of 1919-20 from memory and my surviving notes. The record of events was not dulled in me and perhaps few actual mistakes crept in—except in details of dates or numbers—but the outlines and significance of things had lost edge in the haze of new interests.

Dates and places are correct, so far as my notes preserved them: but the personal names are not. Since the adventure some of those who worked with me have buried themselves in the shallow grave of public duty. Free use has been made of their names. Others still possess themselves, and here keep their secrecy. Sometimes one man carried various names. This may hide individuality and make the book a scatter of featureless puppets, rather than a group of living people: but once good is told of a man, and again evil, and some would not thank me for either blame or praise.

This isolated picture throwing the main light upon myself is unfair to my British colleagues. Especially I am most sorry that I have not told what the non-commissioned of us did. They were but wonderful, especially when it is taken into account that they had not the motive, the imaginative vision of the end, which sustained officers. Unfortunately my concern was limited to this end, and the book is just a designed procession of Arab freedom from Mecca to Damascus. It is intended to rationalize the campaign, that everyone may see how natural the success was and how inevitable, how little dependent on direction or brain, how much less on the outside assistance of the few British. It was an Arab war waged and led by Arabs for an Arab aim in Arabia.

My proper share was a minor one, but because of a fluent pen, a free speech, and a certain adroitess of brain, I took upon myself, as I describe it, a mock primacy. In reality I never had any office among the Arabs: was never in charge of the British mission with them. Wilson, Joyce, Newcombe, Dawnay and Davenport were all over my head. I flattered myself that I was too young, not that they had more heart or mind in the work, I did my best. Wilson, Newcombe, Dawnay, Davenport, Buxton, Marshall, Stirling, Young, Maynard, Ross, Scott, Winterton, Lloyd, Wordie, Siddons, Goslett, Stent Henderson, Spence, Gilman, Garland, Brodie, Makins, Nunan, Leeson, Hornby, Peake, Scott-Higgins, Ramsay, Wood, Hinde, Bright, MacIndoe, Greenhill, Grisenthwaite, Dowsett, Bennett, Wade, Gray, Pascoe and the others also did their best.

It would be impertinent in me to praise them. When I wish to say ill of one outside our number, I do it: though there is less of this than was in my diary, since the passage of time seems to have bleached out men's stains. When I wish to praise outsiders, I do it: bur our family affairs are our own. We did what we set out to do, and have the satisfaction of that knowledge. The others have liberty some day to put on record their story, one parallel to mine but not mentioning more of me than I of them, for each of us did his job by himself and as he pleased, hardly seeing his friends.

In these pages the history is not of the Arab movement, but of me in it. It is a narrative of daily life, mean happenings, little people. Here are no lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock peoples. It is filled with trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones from which some day a man may make history, and partly for the pleasure it gave me to recall the fellowship of the revolt. We were fond together, because of the sweep of the open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The moral freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up in ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.

All men dream: but not equally, Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses oftheir minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did. I meant to make a new nation, to restore! a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts. So high an aim called out the inherent nobility of their minds, and made them play a generous part in events: but when we won, it was charged against me that the British petrol royalties in Mesopotamia were become dubious, and French Colonial policy ruined in the Levant.

I am afraid that I hope so. We pay for these things too much in honour and in innocent lives. I went up the Tigris with one hundred Devon Territorials, young, clean, delightful fellows, full of the power of happiness and of making women and children glad. By them one saw vividly how great it was to be their kin, and English. And we were casting them by thousands into the fire to the worst of deaths, not to win the war but that the corn and rice and oil of Mesopotamia might be ours. The only need was to defeat our enemies (Turkey among them), and this was at last done in the wisdom of Allenby with less than four hundred killed, by turning to our uses the hands of the oppressed in Turkey. I am proudest of my thirty fights in that I did not have any of our own blood shed. All our subject provinces to me were not worth one dead Englishman.

We were three years over this effort and I have had to hold back many things which may not yet be said. Even so, parts of this book will be new to nearly all who see it, and many will look for familiar things and not find them. Once I reported fully to my chiefs, but learnt that they were rewarding me on my own evidence. This was not as it should be. Honours may be necessary in a professional army, as so many emphatic mentions in despatches, and by enlisting we had put ourselves, willingly or not, in the position of regular soldiers.

For my work on the Arab front I had determined to accept nothing. The Cabinet raised the Arabs to fight for us by definite promises of self-government afterwards. Arabs believe in persons, not in institutions. They saw in me a free agent of the British Government, and demanded from me an endorsement of its written promises. So I had to join the conspiracy, and, for what my word was worth, assured the men of their reward. In our two years' partnership under fire they grew accustomed to believing me and to think my Government, like myself, sincere. In this hope they performed some fine things, but, of course, instead of being proud of what we did together, I was bitterly ashamed.

It was evident from the beginning that if we won the war these promises would be dead paper, and had I been an honest adviser of the Arabs I would have advised them to go home and not risk their lives fighting for such stuff: but I salved myself with the hope that, by leading these Arabs madly in the final victory I would establish them, with arms in their hands, in a position so assured (if not dominant) that expediency would counsel to the Great Powers a fair settlement of their claims. In other words, I presumed (seeing no other leader with the will and power) that I would survive the campaigns, and be able to defeat not merely the Turks on the battlefield, but my own country and its allies in the council-chamber. It was an immodest presumption: it is not yet: clear if I succeeded: but it is clear that I had no shadow of leave to engage the Arabs, unknowing, in such hazard. I risked the fraud, on my conviction that Arab help was necessary to our cheap and speedy victory in the East, and that better we win and break our word than lose.

The dismissal of Sir Henry McMahon confirmed my belief in our essential insincerity: but I could not so explain myself to General Wingate while the war lasted, since I was nominally under his orders, and he did not seem sensible of how false his own standing was. The only thing remaining was to refuse rewards for being a successful trickster and, to prevent this unpleasantness arising, I began in my reports to conceal the true stories of things, and to persuade the few Arabs who knew to an equal reticence. In this book also, for the last time, I mean to be my own judge of what to say.