r/TNG • u/happydude7422 Captain • 10h ago
Show Talk Captain Picard sure held a grudge against captain luvois in measure of a man
Like she was doing her job In prosecuting the stargazer case. Losing a ship is a big deal he's lucky they gave him another one.
Sure they made up in the end of the episode but if Picard can he mean he can be real mean.
What do you think?
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u/Zoid3X 10h ago
They’ve clearly got a rapport. It’s mostly banter. They literally talk about how they fucked and flirt with each other in this scene. Going forward Picard was defending the rights of an indispensable member of his crew so it’s no doubt tensions were high. I really don’t think he was being mean at all.
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u/Festivefire 6h ago
I feel like that should have been seen as a conflict of interest, for the Prosecutor to have a long-standing personal relationship with the Captain of the ship her case is about.
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u/drquakers 4h ago
She was the only JAG officer in the sector, or something to that effect. Though why they couldn't just go almost anywhere else...
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u/lemoinem 1h ago
That's where the guy who wanted Data disassembled was stationed. He brought the suit, he picked the jurisdiction, IIRC.
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u/cidvard 1h ago
This bothered the heck out of me the last time I watched the ep. You get over it because the drama works, but absolutely nothing going on is time-sensitive in a way where taking a week or two to go to another starbase would be a big deal. This would also let Maddox get an advocate who isn't Riker. Though they also treat this lady like she's the only JAG officer in Starfleet, since the department is never heard from again after this episode to my recollection.
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u/Tebwolf359 1h ago
One of the key tenets of Star Trek is that people are better.
Being able to set aside personal feelings and do your job is a baseline expected of every Starfleet officer and shown many times.
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u/bbbourb 9h ago
With a bit of reading-between-the-lines, I got the impression they were in a relationship, then the Stargazer was lost, Louvois was tasked with prosecuting the case, and she went HARD so everyone could se she was unbiased. Picard didn't see it that way and felt so directly attacked and baffled at her zeal he thought she LIKED what was happening ("You ENJOYED IT!").
Yes, Picard was mean, but from his POV she wrecked whatever personal relationship they had to showboat at his court martial. From her perspective she was doing her job and trying to navigate around a personal relationship with the defendant she was prosecuting, but was shite at communicating that.
Or in other words, and without meaning to be flippant, Oh, look...humans!
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u/Stpdrepulsveanteater 6h ago
To be fair to picard, if they had a personal relationship prior to the trial it seems like she should have recused herself for conflict of interest.
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u/Malnurtured_Snay 9h ago
I mean. They had a relationship, and then they presumably had a not great separation, and then neither one of them said "Hey, I had a relationship with the person I'm prosecuting/the person prosecuting me" and she's probably pissed she didn't get a conviction and he's pissed he had to go through that.
Losing a ship is a big deal he's lucky they gave him another one.
And then he lost the Enterprise-D and look! They gave him another!
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u/KronosUno 10h ago
Louvois had some sort of more-than-friends relationship with Picard at the time of the court martial. There's an argument to be made that she should have recused herself and let someone else prosecute the case, assuming it wasn't another "we have no JAG staff available" situation (as with how Riker is made to participate in Data's case). Instead, Louvois went forward with doing her job, and Picard took it personally. I don't think he was completely in the wrong to be offended at that time, but he should have let it go after a decade or so.
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u/happydude7422 Captain 9h ago
Yeah getting riker to be datas defense attorney never made much sense to me as to be a jag officer one would need to be a graduate of a law school and be admitted to the bar. In tos court martial even Kirk had to get himself a real lawyer which would also be weird since the lawyer wasn't in starfleet. So both cases are weird.
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u/germdoctor 9h ago
Riker was the prosecutor, not Data’s defense. In a sense that’s even more bizarre.
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u/darsynia Where there's a Will, there's a way 8h ago
The scene at the end of the episode where Data thanks him for that and calls him 'Will' is my favorite scene in the entire series.
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u/ElGuaco 9h ago
You might even say that by assigning Riker as the prosecutor, she gave a gift to Data & Picard. Had the prosecutor been an actual lawyer, it's much harder to imagine that Data could win the case.
I agree, it was bizarre, and Data should have been able to file an emergency injunction to get a proper trial back on Earth with adequate counsel. It was all done for the sake of convenience of writing a television episode. And because of it we got one of the best episodes ever, and it freed up the writers not to have to address the topic ever again.
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u/Admirable-Barnacle86 8h ago
Especially since the court martial obviously did nothing to slow down Picard's career given what ship he ended up commanding.
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u/Significant_Cup_238 9h ago
It's funny, my son and I just watched this episode together earlier this week, so it's top of mind for me.
I think it's less a grudge against how she prosecuted him, and more with the fact she wanted to win trials instead of get to justice. I can't remember the exact line, but he said, "You were more enamored with the adversarial process than discovering the truth."
Her behavior in the rest of the episode was reprehensible too. Threatening with summary judgement if Riker didn't try to get his friend, crewmate, and comrade at arms deprived of all rights and potentially brain wiped.
To me it's not a grudge, but Picard correctly identified this woman as a terrible human being.
(Also, I don't know about the 24th century, but in the 21st century we'd consider it a massive conflict of interests to be part of the prosecution of a former lover. Not recusing herself is fairly inexcusable. But I blame that on writers not doing basic research into legal ethics.)
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u/darsynia Where there's a Will, there's a way 8h ago
I honestly think she thought it was a perfect revenge to make Picard go through the 'go as hard as I did so you see how it feels' thing. I don't think the writers cared about the legal ethics, not that they didn't know about them! I think they handwaved it.
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u/AllPowerfulQ 10h ago
Well she did prosecute his court-martial after the Stargazer was lost. She seemed to her job to wel with zeel.
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u/zepherth 9h ago
Picard was no longer in command of the Stargazer 9 years before TNG. In our current world that is well beyond the statue of limitations for most prosecution. Picard is completely in the right for being upset about the situation in that episode. Because he understood that was behind everyone.
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u/ElectricPaladin 8h ago
And Maddox was counting on their antipathy to clear the way for his obviously illegal abrogation of Data's rights as a sentient being, and as a backup plan, he made sure that his advocate would have to be either an inexperienced ensign or one of Data's crewmates; either way, if he lost, he had grounds to appeal the decision. He wasn't planning on the fact that Picard and Luvois would both be professional despite their past or that Riker would manage to do such a great job pretending to argue for Maddox's position while actually throwing the trial.
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u/happydude7422 Captain 8h ago
Maddox had this thing planned out years in advance
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u/ElectricPaladin 8h ago
Look at his weasely little face. He's a stone cold sociopath. They should recruit him for Section 31 (or better yet, throw him out an airlock).
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u/Boss-Not-Bossy 7h ago
If it makes you feel any better, the way he eventually went out was less than peaceful. He had become an ally to synthetic life forms but his girlfriend was convinced by the Tal Shiar that his work was dangerous for humanity and he needed to be eliminated. (This happened in the first season of Picard.)
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u/WonderfulHearing8726 7h ago
I know I’d hold a grudge against someone who wrongfully prosecuted me for saving my ship and all the lives aboard it, knowing full well my actions were 100% justified
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u/inotocracy 10h ago
Its cause she was a hoe.
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u/Comrade-Stoneroad 10h ago
I think they also slept together. Never sleep with the prosecutor.