On Shinzon's age, the plan was to accelerate his aging to the appropriate level. Partway through the process, they decided it was a stupid plan, stopped aging him, and threw him in the slave camp. (That explains how he can even be an adult at all in the film's timeframe as well, which would otherwise make no sense.)
Giving Picard an actual son was extra frustrating because it had become clear long ago that Picard's efficacy as a leader and teacher was because his relationship with most of the men in his life was fundamentally paternal- Riker, Worf, and Data are all his sons, and Picard season 1 came perilously close to giving him an actual adopted child in the form of Elnor, which would have been all the more resonant because it represented a true generational change in the form of the collapse of the old political patterns of TNG, and a willful choice on Picard's part to embrace those nurturing elements of himself and formally retire his discomfort around kids. But somewhere in there Michael Chabon wandered off and they beat a hasty retreat all through season 2 at wiping out anything interesting that had been pregnant in PIC's premise.
There's some particular fanservice-scented fault that I feel needs its own name, where a story being brought to its ostensible fruition does nothing of the sort. Someone in the writing room thought they were cashing in a big chit with 'Picard finally has a kid with Beverly, his lifelong crush', but not a bit of it actually is informed by character. We have the option of Beverly, the genius space doctor, having a surprise baby at 60, or choosing to have a medical magic baby at 60, in both cases abandoning all her friends to 'keep him safe', which seems to have somehow ended up with Jack being wanted as a criminal and terrorist on multiple planets? What a good job keeping him safe from space antics. Was Jack actually a nice person, like either of his parents? Did we ever really find out?
It feels like the scriptwriters ran out of ideas for what to do with the character: or else that the old soap cliché of the long-lost, secret son (or, to dignify it, the Romance conceit of the royal heir raised in the countryside far from the corruptions of the court) just worried away at them until they succumbed, against perhaps their better judgments. I agree it's odd that Jack Crusher growing up a space-rascal was a strange twist. Then again, the script sessions for Picard s3 were evidently constructed around "what will this week's surprise twist reveal be?" -- the Changelings, the Changelings are working for the Borg, Enterprise D has been restored, all under-25s on Earth are suddenly Borg now! -- that "twist: Picard has a secret son!" is just one more example of the fretful plotty churn.
Thanks: typo fixed.
On Shinzon's age, the plan was to accelerate his aging to the appropriate level. Partway through the process, they decided it was a stupid plan, stopped aging him, and threw him in the slave camp. (That explains how he can even be an adult at all in the film's timeframe as well, which would otherwise make no sense.)
I'd obviously forgotten that detail from the movie (at least there was a wave of the hand in the direction of explaining the age disparity).
Giving Picard an actual son was extra frustrating because it had become clear long ago that Picard's efficacy as a leader and teacher was because his relationship with most of the men in his life was fundamentally paternal- Riker, Worf, and Data are all his sons, and Picard season 1 came perilously close to giving him an actual adopted child in the form of Elnor, which would have been all the more resonant because it represented a true generational change in the form of the collapse of the old political patterns of TNG, and a willful choice on Picard's part to embrace those nurturing elements of himself and formally retire his discomfort around kids. But somewhere in there Michael Chabon wandered off and they beat a hasty retreat all through season 2 at wiping out anything interesting that had been pregnant in PIC's premise.
There's some particular fanservice-scented fault that I feel needs its own name, where a story being brought to its ostensible fruition does nothing of the sort. Someone in the writing room thought they were cashing in a big chit with 'Picard finally has a kid with Beverly, his lifelong crush', but not a bit of it actually is informed by character. We have the option of Beverly, the genius space doctor, having a surprise baby at 60, or choosing to have a medical magic baby at 60, in both cases abandoning all her friends to 'keep him safe', which seems to have somehow ended up with Jack being wanted as a criminal and terrorist on multiple planets? What a good job keeping him safe from space antics. Was Jack actually a nice person, like either of his parents? Did we ever really find out?
It feels like the scriptwriters ran out of ideas for what to do with the character: or else that the old soap cliché of the long-lost, secret son (or, to dignify it, the Romance conceit of the royal heir raised in the countryside far from the corruptions of the court) just worried away at them until they succumbed, against perhaps their better judgments. I agree it's odd that Jack Crusher growing up a space-rascal was a strange twist. Then again, the script sessions for Picard s3 were evidently constructed around "what will this week's surprise twist reveal be?" -- the Changelings, the Changelings are working for the Borg, Enterprise D has been restored, all under-25s on Earth are suddenly Borg now! -- that "twist: Picard has a secret son!" is just one more example of the fretful plotty churn.
In a series that could not stop shooting itself in the foot, the character assassination of Beverly Crusher may be PICARD's most inscrutable sin...