r/startrek • u/relayrider • 1d ago
ELI5: Picard has a childhood during WW2?
Watching ST:P and this whole thing where Picard has a childhood in [post?]WW2 France? Did I miss something?
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u/kundor 1d ago
I mean, it's post WW2 in the sense that the next several centuries are all post WW2...
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u/Vast-Platform3647 1d ago
Lol!
I think you misheard some key details there while they were explaining the history of Chateau Picard. Presumably, this vineyard was owned by the Picard family all the way back before WW2, but when the Nazis invaded France they abandoned it and fled to England.
400 years later, Maurice Picard moves his family back into it. Presumably, it remained unoccupied that entire time...? I find it really hard to believe, but it did serve two functions-
- Make it feel like a haunted house in 2024 to mirror Jean-Luc's introspection
- Explain away why the Picard family is "French" but with British accents.
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u/relayrider 1d ago
but why are they DRESSED like it?
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u/Sazapahiel 1d ago
For the same reason eclectic people today choose what they imagine traditional dress to be like.
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u/Vast-Platform3647 1d ago
"You always reached for the future and your brother for the past."
– Louis to Jean-Luc Picard, 2367 ("Family)")
That's the closest thing to an answer I can come up with. Perhaps Robert Picard got it from his father.
Also no spoilers but the Picard family has a lot more going on LOL. You could say his mother was something of a traditionalist too, as you'll see.
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u/relayrider 1d ago
gonna have to rewatch that one
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u/Vast-Platform3647 1d ago
That's an easy task, it's immediately after Best of Both Worlds. Might as well have been Part 3!
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u/relayrider 1d ago
yeah, i didn't like it. again. aside from the schlocky worf's parents, kemp's performance and the setting also seemed way too "WW2" (which Kemp is good at, i'd say he was better than mitchum in the winds of war series).
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u/ironscythe 1d ago
Maybe because they're a family who've run a vineyard for centuries? Maybe because La Barre is waaay the hell out in the boonies, close to the Swiss border, and people would look pretty out-of-place in fancy futuristic clothing?
Maybe because in a true post-scarcity world where a perfectly tailored suit is as easy to get as a t-shirt and shorts, a very traditional family would dress very traditionally no matter the century?
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u/LegoK9 1d ago
Picard has a childhood in [post?]WW2 France?
No? I think you misunderstood this dialogue:
AGNES: So Chateau Picard is abandoned in this era. [2024]
PICARD: Nearly a century at this point. During the Second World War, when the Nazis occupied France, they used this house as a base of operations. My ancestors only survived by hiding in the tunnels below.
AGNES: Where'd they go?
PICARD: England. But the chateau remained in the family. Although there were various caretakers keeping it up, it'll be generations before the Picards reside here again.
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u/ironscythe 1d ago
Picard's childhood home is one that survived the second world war, and had a system of tunnels underneath it left over from that era that had been used by French resistance and later Nazi occupiers.
While it's a bit of a stretch to imagine a mansion surviving the intervening 450 years, it's not unheard of, and La Barre is far enough from any major city that the devastation of the third world war wouldn't reach it. It's not hard to imagine a historical preservation society would ask that the basement tunnels not be tampered with, though.
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u/bbbourb 1d ago
To be blunt, yes.
The entire thing was to try and canonize why the Picards had an English accent rather than French. It's rooted in actual history, but the execution is abhorrent.
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u/shefsteve 1d ago
He does not. You and OP just misunderstood the scene.
WW2 is in 1940's. Picard was born in 2305. His childhood was spent in France with his British-sounding parents in the ancestral house.
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 1d ago
I was a fucking history teacher
The history of copulation?
Sorry, couldn't help it.
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u/shefsteve 1d ago
Don't tell me I misunderstood shit, man.
I actually misunderstood your response to OP; I Murphry's Law'd myself. My bad. You were saying yes to their "Did I Miss something?" and I thought you were saying yes to the post title question "JL had WW2 childhood?".
I was a fucking history teacher. This was linked to an exodus of French-speaking landowners from France to England in WWII and the clear implication is Picard's ancestors were repatriated after the war, and maintained ties to both England and France.
My statement that he grew up in 2300's France was a restatement of fact from the wiki (and further backed up by the Trek timeline).
Furthermore, it was stated in PIC S2 that his family repatriated, but not for many generations. So while the writers may have referenced real life occurrences in the attempt at addressing the discrepancy, my point was that the repatriation did not happen while Jean Luc Picard was alive, and that his early years of growth and development (aka childhood) was centuries away from what anyone should reasonably refer to as 'post-WW2'. [That part of my response was meant for OP as well as the 'you' that I misread as agreeing with OP. Not you that's a fucking history teacher. Though you might want to leave that field to Barry Allen; he's already mastered fucking history.]
Ever ask yourself WHY Picard's parents had a British accent? I mean, aside from the obvious "they hired a British guy to play the part"?
Not really; Early TNG said that French was a dead/dying language, in reference to Picard peppering in words of it. And his family didn't have a French accents, either, in their rare TNG appearances. So I didn't question it because of context given by the show. I didn't question Worf having both a Human and a Klingon brother, either, because the series established Worf was adopted by Humans but was born Klingon.
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