The original conception of Star Trek: Picard was that it would not be a retread of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but instead be an examination of Jean-Luc Picard in his twilight years, to examine a hero past his prime rather than in the midst of it. It’s a concept that is rarely seen, though some of the few examples are great: Unforgiven and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and another Sir Patrick Stewart vehicle, Logan.
Unfortunately, the first two attempts to execute this notion didn’t entirely work, as season one of Picard was a bit of a mess, and season two was a much bigger mess. And so season three instead became the very thing Stewart said he didn’t want to do back in 2019 when they announced the show: a retread of TNG. And now it’s over, and while many aspects of it were disappointing—some of it relating to who wasn’t in the episode—it’s a generally satisfying ending that also nicely sets up what is likely to be the series taking its place in Paramount+’s schedule.
Let’s start with the first thing they got right: the explanation for why the Borg and the rogue changelings were working together, because the entire notion was absurd. Even changelings that aren’t part of the Dominion or the Great Link are usually smarter and cleverer than what we got from these guys. They also don’t trust any solids, and would be unlikely to work with anyone. And that’s as nothing compared to how uncooperative the Borg are by definition—they don’t collaborate, they assimilate. The one and only time we’ve seen them collaborate was when Species 8472 was stepping on their necks in Voyager’s “Scorpion” two-parter (ironically, the story that gave us the character of Seven of Nine).
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But then the newly refurbished Enterprise-D flies to Jupiter, from which the Borg are transmitting instructions to their under-25 drones. Picard, Riker, and Worf board the ship and find that most of the drones are dead or dying. The Borg Queen herself looks like crap (Jane Edwina Seymour is the one in the makeup, with Alice Krige continuing to provide the Queen’s voice as she did last week), and is obsessed with revenge on Starfleet for committing these indignities on the Borg. There’s almost nothing left of the Borg (retroactively explaining things like the empty Cube in season one).
I can’t really blame writer/director/show-runner Terry Matalas and his gaggle of writers for this particular characterization of the Queen because it’s just continuing the terrible work done by Voyager to make the Borg less interesting and to turn the Queen into a mustache-twirling villain who would’ve succeeded if it hadn’t been for those meddling Starfleet officers.
The Queen is using Jack—who is wearing the exact same half-assimilated outfit that Picard wore in Part 1 of TNG‘s “The Best of Both Worlds”—to broadcast instructions to the Starfleet drones. Picard is trying the usual thing fictional characters do when someone they care about is taken over by bad guys, to wit, yell at them to fight it and try to break though and all that other nonsense, but in the end what works is Picard plugging himself into (what’s left of) the Collective and talking to Jack directly.
That scene is generally well played, mainly because Jack’s being subsumed by the Borg hive mind makes sense. One of the things prior seasons of Picard established was the euphoria that comes with assimilation. That, combined with Jack’s very chaotic life up until now, makes the very orderly Collective extremely appealing to him. He isn’t just being mind-controlled, he feels like this is where he belongs.
Except part of his argument is about how he’s been alone, and he hasn’t been alone, he’s been with his mother this whole time. One of the major issues I’ve had with the storyline this season is that it’s predicated on Crusher taking Jack away for years and years and living away from the comfort of the Federation. I have a hard enough time buying that she kept Jack safe from Picard’s crazy life by gadding about as a renegade doctor while Picard was sitting on his ass in a vineyard, but to constantly hear Jack talk about being alone and not having a family when he was traveling with his mother the whole time is irritating to say the least.
But it does set up Picard’s Big Speech, because in a show called Star Trek: Picard, there has to be at least one Picard’s Big Speech (it’s how he stopped Soji from letting the Cthulhu AI into our universe in “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2” and how he got his ancestor to go on the Europa mission in “Two of One”). The speech actually flows nicely from the themes of seasons one and two: it was in season two that we saw just how toxic Picard’s family was and why he needed to get away from Labarre to find a new family in Starfleet. He found it on the Enterprise, but then the family fell apart after Nemesis (Riker and Troi went off to Titan, Data died, Picard got promoted and tried to help the Romulans, Crusher pulled her disappearing act). He sat alone in his vineyard for years because he had lost everything, but now he’s got them all back, and now he has a son, too!
That gets Jack to throw off the Queen’s control, at least. But stopping the Queen herself is up to everyone else. Riker and Worf find the hub of the Cube and transmit it to the Enterprise, all the while fighting off what few drones are left. Back on the Enterprise, La Forge is in charge of the ship (hilariously, he’s actually the second-highest ranking person in the group as a commodore—at one point, Riker says, “Belay that order” to La Forge, but La Forge actually outranks him now, which nobody mentions), and he, Data, Crusher, and Troi have to do the hard work of stopping the Borg. Data is the one who flies them into the center of the Cube intact, Crusher is the one who lays down the weapons fire (“A lot’s happened in the last twenty years,” she says when La Forge, Data, and Troi all turn to stare at the doctor at the tactical console kicking all the ass), and Troi both reminding La Forge of what he has to do, even if it means the Enterprise’s destruction, because the galaxy’s at stake, and then later using her telepathic link with Riker (established when the characters were introduced in TNG‘s “Encounter at Farpoint“) to locate him, Worf, and Picard so they can beam them out before the Cube goes boom.
By the way, as has often been the case this season, the best bits have involved Worf. At one point, Worf—wounded by weapons fire—tells Riker to grab his kur’leth. Riker nearly dislocates his shoulder when he tries to pick it up (“Shit! I had no idea it was that heavy!”), and then is told that there’s a phaser in the hilt. Riker incredulously looks at Worf, and Worf just says, “Swords are fun.” I nearly died laughing. Michael Dorn has honed Worf’s deadpan to a razor’s edge this season, and the bluntness has been turned up to eleven. And Dorn and Jonathan Frakes continue to be a superb double act. (“And I will make it a threesome.” “Do you even hear yourself?”)
Meantime, there’s an armada of Starfleet ships in orbit of Earth under the Borg’s control, and Earth’s defenses won’t hold up for long. In a season that has been chock full of callbacks to Star Trek movies, we open the episode with a tribute to The Voyage Home with a message from the Federation President telling everyone to stay away from Earth. In a beautiful touch, the president is named Anton Chekov (presumably the president’s office in Paris has a phaser on the mantelpiece, cough cough), and he’s voiced by Walter Koenig, pretty explicitly intended to be the son of Pavel Chekov.
That’s the one and only hit this season hadn’t given us. We’ve had TNG references out the wazoo, obviously, as well as callbacks to DS9 (the changelings, Section 31, the Defiant cameo, the mention of Odo), Voyager (Seven of Nine, Tuvok, the Voyager cameo, the mentions of Janeway), and Enterprise (the entire Frontier Day celebration is for the anniversary of Archer’s inaugural voyage on the NX-01). But there hadn’t been any references to the original series, until we heard President Anton Chekov remind us that there are always possibilities. Bravo.
The attack on Earth is also at least forestalled a bit by Titan, as Seven, Musiker, and a group of older Titan crew (including Dr. Ohk and the cook, the latter reluctantly pressed into service as the conn officer) manage to retake the bridge. Musiker was able to rig up a remote transporter to a phaser rifle, which beamed the people shot to the transporter room, which they’d managed to lock down.
On the one hand, I’m glad that we got to see Seven and Musiker do well on Titan. On the other hand, I find it impossible to credit that they’re the only ones who were able to manage this. (Last week, the Excelsior crew were also able to take back control of their ship, but then they were destroyed—in an amusing touch, the ship that destroyed it was the Hikaru Sulu.) But none of the other ships have opening-credits regulars on their crews, I guess…
I will also give Matalas credit. Everything was set up for Picard not surviving to the end of the episode. For one thing, half of Picard’s dialogue throughout the episode was a sort of benedictory goodbye to everyone, and I found myself reminded of “All Those Who Wander” on Strange New Worlds, where every line of Hemmer’s was similarly benedictory, all to set up his death at the episode’s climax. Plus, Stewart is in his eighties, and he’s very obviously slowed down considerably in the last few years. It would be fitting for him to go out in a blaze of glory, taking down the Borg once and for all.
But no, he lived. And so did everyone else. They take out the Borg Cube, the assimilated young folks are all unassimilated, and everyone lives happily ever after except for the people who already died.
Crusher—who is not only reinstated to Starfleet, but gets promoted to admiral—is able to dope out a way to remove the Borg DNA from people via the transporter so they can’t be reassimilated. She also improves the changeling-detection on the transporters so they can find and get rid of them. (This is a very facile and unconvincing solution to the changeling issue, by the way.)
And then we get another special guest star, one we’ve seen before, in Tim Russ as Captain Tuvok—the real one this time. I never object to seeing Russ’ Tuvok, as I’ve always loved the character. But the scene in question is one where Seven wishes to resign, but Tuvok not only refuses the resignation, but—after playing a unexpectedly glowing evaluation from Shaw, made before this season began—promotes her to captain.
That scene should have been between Seven and Admiral Janeway. It’s already been established that Janeway is still around and still an admiral (Picard takes place a decade and a half after Prodigy), so why not get Kate Mulgrew back? Tuvok is certainly the second-best choice to have this scene with Seven, but the first-best would’ve been her mentor.
Janeway’s absence and a proper closure of the changeling storyline are two of several missing elements from this episode. Where are the Klingons? The Cardassians? The Bajorans? The Romulans? The non-Starfleet Federation ships? For that matter, where’s the rest of the fleet? There’s no way the entire fleet was at Frontier Day—there’s too few of them at Earth, for one thing—and there had to be some ships protecting the border or on deep-space missions or unavailable for whatever reason. (Heck, I didn’t see any California-class ships at Frontier Day, and that would’ve been a nice Lower Decks shout-out…)
Where’s Wil Wheaton? Wes is a Traveler now, and wouldn’t it have made sense to have him, y’know, meet his half-brother? I mean, we know the actor’s around, he’s hosting the after-show every damn week…
Where’s Kestra? At no point were we ever told what happened to Riker and Troi’s daughter when her mother was kidnapped by Vadic, and at no point are we told if she’s okay or where she is or anything.
Where’s Laris? After spending all of last season building the relationship between Picard and Laris, and after setting up their reunion after this mission is over in “The Next Generation,” Laris isn’t mentioned and Orla Brady is nowhere to be found, which is wretched and dreadful. Brady and the character of Laris both deserve much better.
Where’s Jurati? Not even a mention of the Borg offshoot that they spent all of last season creating?
Where are Diana Muldaur and Denise Crosby? Yeah, their time on the show was limited, but so was Michelle Forbes, and we got her back.
Where’s Whoopi Goldberg? Our penultimate scene is in the inevitable Ten-Forward set that they’ve made ridiculous use of since debuting it in season two, and La Forge even mentions Guinan giving them the side-eye for keeping the place open past closing. Which makes her absence all the more frustrating.
Ah yes, the penultimate scene. In a season full of self-indulgence, we have the ultimate self-indulgence: the gang playing poker again. It’s a very fitting way to end the season and the series, truly.
Indeed, most of what happens in the episode’s denouement is superb. We get one final Worf-Musiker scene, and it’s golden, especially since Worf used his mad skillz to have it get out that Musiker played a huge role in saving everyone’s ass, which goes a long way toward enabling her to reconcile with her family. We get a delightful therapy session between Troi and Data. Brent Spiner continues the superlative work he’s done the past few episodes of giving us a character who’s part Data, part Lore, and part Altan Soong, and it’s absolutely glorious.
Most importantly, we get the next show set up. The Titan has been rechristened the U.S.S. Enterprise, registry NCC-1701-G (I guess the F that Admiral Shelby was in charge of was destroyed?), with Captain Seven of Nine in command, and Commander Raffaela Musiker as her first officer. Sidney La Forge, Kova Esmar, and Matthew Mura are all back on the bridge. And Ensign Jack Crusher—who was fast-tracked to a commission, as, probably, were a lot of people, as Starfleet lost a shit-ton of personnel—is also assigned to the Big E, currently serving as a special counselor to the commanding officer, whatever the hell that is. Then again, it’s a tradition for a child of Beverly Crusher to get a bullshit title and be assigned to the bridge of a ship called Enterprise…
I expect the announcement any minute now of Star Trek: Legacy starring Jeri Ryan, Michelle Hurd, Ed Speleers, Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut, Jin Maley, Joseph Lee, Tiffany Shepis—and, as a special guest star, John deLancie.
Yes, there’s a mid-credits scene! And it’s Q showing up to tell Jack that he’s about to undergo a trial! And it’s total nonsense and I don’t care! Jack says that Daddy told him Q was dead, and Q scoffs and says that Jean-Luc is so dang linear, which is all the explanation we need. I never really bought that Q was dying anyhow.
This whole season has been a meringue: tasty but not with very much substance. The setup for Legacy (presuming that that really is what’s being set up, as nothing has been officially announced as of this writing), complete with deLancie’s uncredited cameo is the yummy whipped cream on top of that meringue.
Next week, we’ll have an overview of the season—and the series—and we’ll see how that meringue ultimately tasted…
Keith R.A. DeCandido will have stories in each of the next three issues of Star Trek Explorer, starting with issue #7—available now to subscribers and going on sale to newsstands at the beginning of May—which has a DS9 story called “You Can’t Buy Fate,” featuring Nog and Ezri Dax.
A friend pointed out that President Chekov’s first name was also a tribute to the late Anton Yelchin, who played Pavel Chekov in the three Bad Robot movies….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who’s embarrassed to have missed that
As a tribute to the TNG crew–this was beautiful. Matalas was right–this ending was much more satisfying than Nemesis.
As a conclusion of the season though–I thought it was anticlimactic.
So, Jean-Luc hooks himself up to Jack so he can “speak” with him. Assimilation of the young fleet is reversed because of Jean-Luc’s little pep talk to Jack. I know I’m supposed to be touched at how beautiful this moment is and reflect on the power of a father’s love. But, I’m sorry, it just seems too easy.
I also feel bad for all those young officers who have to live with what happened when assimilated. There had to have been a lot of counseling going on that year.
I did LOVE the Enterprise flying into the Borg cube to destroy the transmitter. It brought back memories of the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars. It was fantastic. In fact, every scene on the Ent-D and the Titan was fantastic. I don’t know why Geordi doubted Data could do it. Data’s an android who can calculate and amazing speeds.
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVED Shaw’s glowing recommendation, before all this even started, of Seven being promoted to captain. I also absolutely LOVED the Titan being rechristened as at the Enterprise-G. Captain Seven in command with her first officer, Raffi– it warmed my heart. Ditto to Raffi’s hugging Worf. Oh, and the voice cameo for UFP President Anton Chekov was awesome!
Well, Matalas was right–no Janeway. Not a surprise to me because I believed him when he said so. I am bummed we didn’t at least get Harry Kim. All the cameos this season were great. I just wished we’d ha a few more from Voyager and it would’ve been great to have at least one from Deep Space Nine! (and, no, Worf doesn’t count)
Wow. Jack was fast-tracked to ensign. I guess I could see that–he does have the life experience from working with his mother. Plus, if Seven can be fast-tracked to first officer, Jack can be fast-tracked to ensign. I did love the part when he beams onto the Ent-G and starts giving orders. Jack is fun. I wish Seven had given him a specific duty instead of just creating one. However, I’m sure since he’s on the command track and he’ll be trained in other things. (I’m thinking of Worf’s line in TNG Season 1 “the captain wants his junior officers to learn”)
I liked Picard’s statement that “names mean nothing” when Jack mentioned nepotism because I ALWAYS think that when someone brings it up. Yes, having a name could very well get somebody in the door, but they need to have the talent as well.
No mention of Laris. We know she has important work but what of her and Picard? You’d think she’d be mentioned in passing at least at the end. [Full disclosure: This comment only occurred to me because I’ve seen other people complain about lack of Laris this season. I don’t know if I would’ve thought of her if left to my own devices]
People keep bringing up Kestra but I never saw the big deal. Riker says “I knew you and Kestra were safe” Deanna doesn’t contradict so she’s safe. I just used my imagination and figured she was either at the Academy or visiting her grandmother on Betazed.
I think it’s for the best that we didn’t learn Geordi’s wife’s name. That way, people who ship him with Leah can imagine it’s her and others can imagine it’s someone else.
That ending shot of the old crew playing poker–OMG, that was a pitch perfect ending!
I’ve seen some reviewers saying that this finale “stuck with the landing.” In terms of the season’s arc, I disagree. The whole Borg/Changeling plot just didn’t work for me and neither did the resolution with Jack. However, in terms of wanting a satisfying last hurrah for the TNG cast–it definitely succeeded!
I could’ve done without the Q cameo though. I get that he’s a beloved character and it was a nice call back to Encounter at Farpoint. But, still, it’s overkill.
In closing, I really, really hope we get Star Trek: Legacy. We need another 25th century show.
Yeah, it’s pretty much The Rise of Skywalker . I definitely prefer how David Mack resolved the Borg in Destiny.
But the difference between this and Episode IX is that at least left me feeling more emotionally satisfied and ready to say goodbye to this era and these characters.
I actually do like Q’s post-credirts cameo. I argued on TV Tropes that it decontextualizes Season Two to an extent.
Since this Q comes from a temporal point prior to his death (and seems to be aware its coming), the implication is that by helping Mon Capitaine come to terms with his family history — and especially the specters of Maurice and Yvette and how Picard didn’t want to become a parent — Q knew what awaited Picard in Season Three.
Q was trying to help prepare his favorite mortal for encountering his son, accepting him, and realizing neither of them have to be alone — all lessons and self-acceptance that proves invaluable in the series climax and breaking both Picards free from the Borg for good.
Forget ST Legacy, give me Star Trek: The Golden Years. The scenes at the end with the TNG cast just being their charming selves were great.
Overall I think they stuck the landing with this finale.
. . .while I thought it was the most unoriginal, pandering, paint-by-the numbers admixture of cliches in the history of the franchise, if not American television. I can’t even call it awful, as it’s not interesting enough, in its focus-tested blandness, even for that. Pray for SNW Season 2, where we’ll see if the old girl has any spark left in her at all (yesterday’s trailer actually looked pretty good). In the meantime, I’ll sit quietly in my corner and work on not putting “Anton Chekov’s” gun in my mouth.
I don’t mind ending with a repeat of the Poker Game either; if nothing else, I loved that the TNG running gag of Worf never being able to win a round of poker hasn’t changed.
But what I like — as, again, I was arguing on TV Tropes — is that if bookends “Remembrance” in addition to “All Good Things”.
When Picard played poker with Data in this show’s Pilot, it was a dream showing Jean-Luc alone, a shadow of his former self, and trapped in the past (between the lingering loss of the Enterprise-D and the guilt from Data’s death during Nemesis). Now, he’s at it again — only this time, Data’s resurrected, Picard’s been reunited with his entire command crew and best friends for the first time in decades, and he’s been made whole in a way he never was even during TNG.
And it also evokes “All Good Things” while still showing JLP’s character development since TNG.
While Picard had slowly bonded with his senior officers over TNG’s run, he still ultimately maintained a professional working relationship with them as the Captain (with Beverly being the sole exception). When he sat down to play poker with the command crew in “All Good Things”, it was really his first steps forward to interacting with them on the same level and truly seeing them as his friends rather than his subordinate officers.
Now, 30 years later, they end as they did before with another round of poker — but this time, Jean-Luc’s much more at ease. He’s relaxed, grinning, and delighted to be surrounded by the people he has come to love and cherish more than anyone else in the galaxy.
Thanks for this recap/review, Keith. As I’ve said before, Nomi and I have no idea how we’re supposed to feel about the episodes until we read your review. :-)
(But seriously, I do find myself agreeing with you a lot.)
— Michael A. Burstein
Mr. Magic: there was no such running gag. In fact, when Worf first joined the poker game, he cleaned up regularly.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I thought most of the season was a slog, but I really liked the finale. I especially appreciated the fact that they resolved the Borg threat midway through the episode and gave the characters plenty of breathing room at the end. I hate it when they take down the big bad and then the show ends abruptly without tying up loose ends.
@8,
My bad. I must’ve been misremembering Keith.
I think I was thinking of Worf losing “All Good Things”, that was it.
@1: another detail to offer…
(Great to hear Walter Koenig, of course.)
Trek people will look to ‘Anton’ as a tribute to Yelchin — a nice touch. But that’s not the detail that jumped out at me right away.
But if this Federation president sticks with using the patronymic in his name (as is established his father did) he would be Anton Pavlovich Chekov.
It ends up being a nice little reference, as the Russian author — whose gun is so often referenced in discussions of storytelling — is Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.
It’s a character off (in the Cyrillic alphabet too), and probably just a happy circumstance. But Trek has always been culturally literate.
Aside from a few nice moments here and there, I found it mostly underwhelming. I mean, all this tremendous buildup to a final conflict with the Federation’s biggest baddest enemies and no one in the main credits dies? No noble sacrifices? Nothing? Not even the nervous cook at the helm got a scratch.
It all felt very much by-the-numbers and safe, like everyone was destined to be kept on standby for the spinoff, Star Trek: All Out of Ideas, when they’re inevitably needed for a viewership boost. But at this point, for me, that spinoff sounds about as exciting as a new Taco Bell opening in my town.
I will give credit to the actors. Patrick Stewart and Jeri Ryan have done some fine work throughout this series, and now I want Jonathan Frakes to be my big brother. What a lovable knucklehead. Ditto for Michael Dorn.
Yup, it was nice seeing all of them together. Again. Playing poker. In a finale. Again. [shrug]
Oh, one more thing, why not rename the ship USS Picard? I thought that was where they were headed. Nope. Another Enterprise, huh? Well, I hope this one lasts longer than five minutes.
I feel like the entire 2nd season of Picard might as well have never have been. How can you make the Borg the primary threat and not even mention Jurati? Dramatically having her to show the day would not have worked, but they either could have worked her in or had a one liner from the Borg queen mentioning having decoyed her away, neutralized her, or whatever.
<Lightbulb> Is this what people mean when they reference Rise of Skywalker? That Season 3 is a deliberate refutation of season 2?</Lightbulb>
I feel that Matalas doesn’t like “Lower Decks.” The Titan redesign, the lack of California-class ships, the way both shows have opposing views of Star Fleet…
That was superb. Everyone played a part in it. Bravo!
Congratulations, Captain 7. Welcome to the 1701 Club.
I think I missed a step somewhere. In the message to Raffi about her son and granddaughter, who is talking?
@11 Mikko, I didn’t know that was the writer’s patronymic! Wow!
S
It was a perfectly cromulent episode of Star Trek. Better than most of the second halves of TNG two parters (not that that takes much, given Chain of Command is the only one which improved between the first and second act). Way better as a coda to TNG than Nemesis. Not as good as All Good Things. But viewing it just as an episode of a TV series – as an episode of a Trek series – I was entertained. It wasn’t the ending I wanted for the promise of the series, but for the first time in modern serialized Trek they managed to have a logical payoff to the breadcrumbs laid at the beginning, and paced the story reasonably well.
That said, even though I thought this season was better than seasons 1 or 2, it was still frustrating the degree to which Matalas basically threw out everything he didn’t think worked, which effectively invalidates those seasons even more than their shoddy endings already did. The thematic core of season 1 was Picard coming to terms with Data’s death, but that death was meaningless. The thematic core of season 2 was Picard learning to let someone (Laris) in emotionally, and the relationship was immediately sidelined. Q’s death? Undone. Jurati’s Borg faction? Meaningless. Essentially nothing introduced in the earlier seasons means crap ultimately, other than Raffi getting to have a complete character arc. This was a coda to TNG, not the third episode of Picard.
I just feel like even if earlier seasons are bad (and written by different people) a serialized show can’t just shake the etch-a-sketch and say none of that shit matters now. Part of what immerses people in a story is the idea that characters grow and change over the viewing – not just within the episode arcs, but carried through them. Discovery has also had this issue (witness Stamets getting mad at Burnham at the end of Season 3, then forgiving her off camera in season 4), but Picard has almost been like an anthology of single-season shows rather than a concrete series.
While Diana Muldaur wasnt around, we did see a USS Pulaski ( last week I think?)
@1 My apologies; what i get for trading this in between a few innings at a baseball game, is that i clumsily scrolled right past your Chekov/Chekhov reference. Upon re-reading, turns out the only useful detail i provided (@10) was about the patronymic! Shucks.
@14: I don’t think Matalas has to dislike Lower Decks for him to ignore it. I don’t think supplementary cartoon shows count, either. This goes for Star Wars, as well. (Actually, especially for Star Wars, as I don’t think there have ever been uglier character designs in the history of animation, which makes them simply unwatchable.)
“Self-indulgent” pretty much sums up the whole season. Boldly going backward 35 years. Oh, well.
What irked me most this week was Troi’s complete and utter dismissal of Data in therapy as she is (it appears) planning her vacation while Data talks about finally being human. Why is Troi a counselor, again? Has she ever been a good therapist?
Flibbedy floo.
Puff the Magic Commenter: The animated series totally count — even more so in Star Wars, actually. I mean, The Mandalorian‘s entire story arc this season has been the culmination of stories that appeared in The Clone Wars and Rebels, and the second-billed actor is playing a character who originated in the animated series. That’s not even mentioning the upcoming Ahsoka….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
There was so much about this episode that just continued the usual lazy pandering to nostalgia, from the opening ripoff of The Voyage Home to the climactic ripoff of Return of the Jedi to the final ripoff of “All Good Things…”. And so much of it fails to hold up to any logical analysis. Still, I found it unexpectedly satisfying. A lot of it did work reasonably well for me, with qualifications. The character resolutions were generally satisfying, and everyone got their featured moments and contributed to the outcome.
A lot about the Borg didn’t make sense, like how easy it was for Jack to free himself with Picard’s help. I can buy that given how much the Borg have changed, reduced to nothing but the Queen, in an echo of the alternate Queen’s fate in the evil timeline seen in season 2. Still, there are holes in it. The Queen seemed to attribute the fall of the Borg to Picard, but that makes no sense. The biggest hit we’ve seen the Borg take was at Voyager‘s hands in “Endgame,” in 2378, but we know from Prodigy that the Borg are still active in 2384. And at that point, Picard is busy evacuating Romulans, and a year after that, he resigns and goes to his vineyard to sulk. So what could he possibly have done to virtually eradicate the Borg?
Also, the way this show interprets the relationship between the Borg and the Queen is the opposite of what First Contact originally presented. Picard‘s writers, both in season 2 and season 3, see the Queen as an independent being who has all the drones under her thrall. But the original intent of the Borg was that the Collective was a hive consciousness made up of all the minds within it. The Queen was the face and voice of that hive mind, not an independent being in herself (as proven by all the times Queens were destroyed and new ones took their place). Take all the drones away and there should be no hive mind to animate the Queen. That’s implicitly why the Queen assimilated the E-E crew in FC — because she only had a handful of drones and needed a larger hive to be at full strength. Again, I guess I can handwave that the Borg have changed as a result of their devastation, but it’s still a mystery what caused that devastation.
I’m also disappointed that the story ended with the Queen (and implicitly the Borg) being exterminated. I was hoping, given how weak and desperate she was, that Picard might reach out with compassion and achieve a Starfleet-worthy redemptive resolution. Sure, it would’ve been a rehash of how season 2 ended, but going for brute force makes this resolution far inferior to that one.
One of my biggest disappointments is that the Seven-Raffi relationship, barely touched on in previous seasons, is essentially absent here. I was hoping their scenes together here would address their breakup and get them back together, but their relationship here is solely professional.
Using phasers to fire transporter tags was a nice idea, but Seven (and Matalas) were apparently unaware that the technology has been seen before, and was used on Picard in TNG: “Gambit.”
Anyway, despite the attribution in the closing log entry, I’m inclined to believe that the transporter cure was actually devised by Miles O’Brien, which is why he’s later revered as the most important person in Starfleet history, per Lower Decks.
The “fleet formation” thing requiring line of sight to work is silly. What if the fleet is in planetary orbit and some ships are on the opposite side of the planet? What if it’s in one of those implausibly dense nebulae that are so common in Trek?
Why wasn’t the Titan‘s cook evacuated with the bulk of the crew several episodes ago, or slaughtered by the Changelings? This ship keeps spontaneously generating new crewmembers as the plot demands.
Picard saying he’s been running from the Borg half his life is wrong; it’s only a bit over a third, given that he’s 96 at this point.
Q’s cameo was totally gratuitous. I kept hoping Traveler Wesley would pop in, confront Q, and say “Hey — stay away from my half-brother.”
How old must President Chekov be if he’s Pavel’s son? Pavel was 22 in 2267, so he was born in 2245, so this is 156 years later. So the average age of father and son would have to be 78. So either President Chekov is really, really old, or Pavel was really old when he became a father.
Anyway, I think we now know why that website about the Titan-A erroneously gave its launch date as 2402. Maybe it was confusing it with its relaunch as the Enterprise-G.
Alas, poor F… we hardly knew ye. I guess from now on, Starfleet officers will have a new meaning for “getting F-ed.”
I stayed up to watch this one when it dropped at 3 AM in my timezone, and left off feeling curiously…empty.
I grew up with TNG; it’s always been my Trek; I spent much of my childhood obsessed with it. And there I was, watching what promised to be the Last! Appearance! by the TNG Crew! Ever!, and I felt nothing at all.
Nothing had any weight. The Borg Collective got blowed up real good, but they’d already been blowed up real good 20 years ago, and last season set up another, vastly more interesting version of the Borg anyways if only anyone had bothered to mention them or anything else from the first two seasons, so it means nothing. Nothing had any weight. No one even died. No one even got meaningfully assimilated. Apparently you can just peel Borg implants right off your face without, you know, bleeding to death or ripping out a chunk of your brain. Someone should probably tell Seven of Nine about that.
And now I’ve had a few hours to reflect upon it and what occurs to me is: I think I hate it. Yes, that sounds right. I hate it.
I mean, Nemesis gets a lot of sh*t, much of it deserved, but like…I actually cried during Nemesis. Nemesis also had a fascinating nature-versus-nurture theme, which admittedly, was a come-down from “All Good Things…” promise of human transcendence, but at least it was something! This just felt like empty nostalgia calories, wrapped it a blanket with bathetic MCU quips. No thought-provoking science fiction. No exploration of the human condition. Just…bloodless violence for an hour.
And then I thought back to how this series started, my beautiful, flawed, Star Trek: Picard; and here I must admit that I’m one of those sad, lonely freaks who actually really liked the first two seasons. I liked the weighty themes of living in the cognizance of death, and the serious engagement with transhumanism. Above all, I liked the characters. Elnor, Soji, Rios, and especially Agnes. And then I thought: what an absolute Insult this season is! You dump all of the characters and you can’t even be arsed to namedrop them. I mean, shit, there’s a reference to Chekov in the first five minutes, but you can’t be arsed to reference any of the characters whose series you hijacked? You have Raffi sparring with Worf and she can’t even mention that her adopted son is a Romulan swordsmaster? You have the Borg invading, and “no one’s seen them in over ten years!” and you can’t be arsed to clarify why that Borg Queen that we all saw Jurati turn into last season doesn’t count? Literally the only allusion, anywhere, to any of the characters from the first two seasons other than Raffi is Shaw telling everyone to “Forget that weird shit on the Stargazer.” That weird shit. Yeah. One of the only characters in all fiction that I’ve ever meaningfully identified with. Thanks, Terry!
But, at the same time…what a gross insult to TNG. TNG with its humanist utopia and moral conundra and scientific grounding. TNG, which, at its best, showed us would humanity could be; which challenged us to see the world in new ways. Reduced to this. This empty, plastic pile of rubbish.
But, hey; the reviews are positive! The series is in the top ten for streaming! And a billion YouTube comments have already informed me that, finally, REAL Star Trek is back! Forget “that weird bullshit,” this is what we, the fandom, wanted all along!
Anyways, can’t wait to see the next exciting installment of Star Trek: Funko Pop
Quoth Christopher: “I’m inclined to believe that the transporter cure was actually devised by Miles O’Brien, which is why he’s later revered as the most important person in Starfleet history, per Lower Decks.”
Neat trick, given that Lower Decks takes place twenty years prior to Picard……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@23/christopher
I’ve (randomly) headcanoned that Anton Chekov is nearly 100 — (if Elias Vaungh can be active at that age in the novels, then so can Chekov) That would put him born about 2401. And yes, Pavel would’ve been close to 60 but we see that sometimes nowadays so why not in the 24th century?
jaimebabb: As I said when you brought it up in the review of “No Win Scenario,” Shaw was not referring to Picard season 2 when he was talking about the “weird shit on the Stargazer,” he was referring to the story Picard had just told to Jack about the time he and Jack’s namesake were serving on the Stargazer that Picard was captain of before Enterprise.
So season 2 didn’t even get that much, sadly.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@25/krad: You forget: the reference in Lower Decks to O’Brien being the most important person in Starfleet history was in a flashforward to an unspecified time in the distant future.
Poor Laris.
So who was evil floating head? The Borg Queen is disguise?
I just assumed the Enterprise-F survived the battle so I too was wondering if it’s possible to have two active Enterprise’s in service at the same time? But then I guess maybe the E-F was in fact destroyed.
The CGI for the Enterprise-D looked great and it’s great to finally see that shipped depicted as so maneuverable which wasn’t really possible on TNG but the model still looked more realistic and had more weight to it.
The absence of Janeway was very disappointing as her name had been dropped a couple of times throughout the season and it would make perfect sense for her to promote Seven.
So many people have died in the last 10 episodes and especially the last episode with the Borg takeover and the fleet battle but it’s all just glossed over.
The Changelings all being rounded up is so simplistic a conclusion and is basically wrapped up in a speedy manner as if there were never any deep implications to the takeover and conspiracy.
The Q mid-credits scene was alright I guess but just seemed like the series emulating the MCU films with their mid-credits scenes.
I didn’t buy the whole one year jump. It all seemed like it happened within the following few days of the battle with the Borg.
But, otherwise lots of nostalgia and fan-service so all is forgiven! And looking forward to the next series with Captain Seven and those crazy kids!
@27/Krad – According to Terry Matalas on Twitter, the reason why Jurati doesn’t count as the Borg was “explained by Shaw in episode 4”. The only line that fits the bill is “that weird shit”
@krad – I feel like the the first reference was container of Kirk’s remains. Chekov seems like the second reference.
@25–twas in the flash-forward that the gag was made
im a little surprised that no one has yet mentioned what hit me right away like a ton of latinum bricks. So I’ll just go ahead and quote my own self from Mastodon…
“Was not really prepared for how hard it would hit me that a bisexual woman—who started out yanked across the galaxy and controlled by hostile aliens ever since she was a child—is now THE captain of THE Enterprise. And her first officer is her on-and-off girlfriend. THE AUDACITY
And let’s not forget that Jeri Ryan was marginalized too. Added to the show late. Sexualized by producers, publicity, and the audience. Harassed by her castmate. Treated like a gimmick. And she not only endured but was one of the top three cast members of the show as a whole…easily.
NOW SHE’S THE ******* CAPTAIN OF THE ******* ENTERPRISE.
Back in the day, my dad’s coworker gave him a customized Barbie as a gag gift. “Twelve-of-Ten, the Barbie Borg-ette!” That was the vibe back then from TV Guide on down. NOW SHE’S THE CAPTAIN OF THE ENTERPRISE AND NO ONE CAN EVER TAKE THAT AWAY. *EVER*“
So yeah.
@26
Oops, that’d make Anton Chekov born in 2301.
Mary–who can’t do math or remember what year the 25th century should be in
@25/krad:
I think Christopher was referring to that one flashforward-scene set in the far future (in Lower Decks: “Temporal Edict”), where we see him revered as “[the] most important person in Starfleet-history,” or words to that effect, and a gigantic statue:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Temporal_Edict_(episode)
Oh yeah and regarding the E-F, on Raffi’s early “wall full of crazy” scenes on La Sirena, it was “slated for early decommissioning.” Nothing need have happened to it that wasn’t going to happen to it anyway.
There’s also a Voyager-B listed in there which I wonder may have been part of a cut plotline with Janeway, since it’s not in the Fleet Formation.
@23/Christopher Bennett — Having a crewman onboard a starship who’s unqualified to do anything but cook — when most of his crewmates eat replicated food anyway! — is just stupid, a throwback to the Earl Holliman character in FORBIDDEN PLANET. (Which nevertheless is a movie that plays much better now than I predict this show will in 2090.)
@24/jamiebabb — FWIW, you aren’t alone.
Well, that was okay, but just okay. I don’t understand all the hype. Everything was so predictable. It felt like a lot of reheated leftovers. And not just leftovers from Star Trek, but from Star Wars, too, with the Enterprise-D zipping around the innards of the Borg Death Star like the Millennium Falcon did 40 years ago.
Nothing seemed to matter. All consequences were just handwaved away. Was Jack Crusher traumatized by his experience as the new Locutus? Apparently not. In the space of a couple of sentences, Admiral Crusher figured out a way to unassimilate the Borg and detect all the changelings. Case closed. How many people died on Frontier Day? Starfleet’s ranks must have been decimated, but everything seems hunky-dory one year later.
I suppose it’s pointless to criticize the plot. The plot was just a flimsy cardboard carton to hold the colorful Easter eggs.
I enjoyed the interactions between the characters throughout the season. The showrunners have a sure grasp of the characters and obvious love for them. That makes it even more of a shame that they didn’t find much that was new or interesting for them to do.
No Laris? Is she still waiting at that bar for Picard to show up? Did he break up with her offscreen? After a whole season devoted to Picard dealing with his family trauma so that he was ready to have a lasting relationship with someone, she’s unceremoniously dumped in Episode 1, never to be seen again. They couldn’t even show us her face on a viewscreen or give us one line of dialogue in which Picard tells her he’ll be home soon?
And Q is back, ready to pester a new generation of Picards. Ho-hum. Why bring him back? He had a good send-off. Everything that was new and different in Season 2 is undone or ignored.
Nostalgia is a fine garnish to a tasty meal, but when your whole meal consists of heaping helpings of nostalgia, it’s not very satisfying. Not for me, anyway.
I find myself echoing Harry Kim’s criticism of “A Briefing with Neelix”: “I’m not sure I care for all the frosting… It’s sort of like a steady diet of dessert, which is fine, but pretty soon you want some meat and potatoes.”
jaimebabb: Matalas may have said that on Twitter, but in the actual episode that aired, Shaw was talking right after Picard told a story about his time on the Stargazer. Speaking as a professional writer and editor of more than three decades’ standing (though I usually do both while sitting down), that’s how antecedents work in the English language.
And I don’t accept tweets as gospel — call it my is-Dumbledore-gay? rule.
:shrug: Whatever, I can’t argue with a single other thing you said. But I’ll be talking more about the season and the series as a whole next week….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@29 / Garreth:
The Changelings all being rounded up is so simplistic a conclusion and is basically wrapped up in a speedy manner as if there were never any deep implications to the takeover and conspiracy.
I guess it kinda makes some sense. The UFP was supposed to go down in flames and be assimilated; they didn’t expect/have a Plan B in case things went “Whoops!”.
With Vadic dead, no backup from their estranged brothers and sister in the Dominion, and Beverley having devised a Project Proteus detection method, they were kinda f’ed.
Also, I never expected a callback to “”The Naked Now of all episodes in the final scene. Data’s attempt to complete the unusual limerick about the “Young Lady From Venus” (and his petulant pouting when everyone started yelling at him) had me in stitches.
Patrick Stinson: Very true, and yeah, that did kinda get lost in the shuffle, didn’t it?
:makes note to talk about that in the overview next week:
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Re: “But there hadn’t been any references to the original series, until we heard President Anton Chekov remind us that there are always possibilities.”
Kirk’s corpse on ice at Daystrom Station doesn’t count?
@@@@@ CLB re: Seven/Raffi: For God’s sake, WHY? ‘Shipping them was a terrible idea in season 2 and dropping that subplot for season 3 was one of the smartest things that Matalas did.
I wasn’t expecting to cry as much as a I did. But it was rather intense. They primed me by recreating the TNG intro sequence passing through the Nebula. I loved that the warp speed view of the Enterprise wasn’t changed to the new all streaks all the time version. Then President Chekov’s speech. Bravo. That look between Deanna and Will as he left the bridge started the water works though. The acting from this team is next level this season. All those goodbyes they kept throwing out just in case did me no good.
Crusher laying the smack down was *Chef’s Kiss*, good thing Worf wasn’t there. Everybody looking at her like Princess Vespa with a gun was classic. Geordi’s definitely gotten the “oldest” of the crew, him thinking Data couldn’t do something is new, though I appreciate that his standard for piloting excellence is Sydney, who I just realized may be named after the Jenolan, which was a Sydney-class starship.
The Borg Queen. Hmm. I never was in the camp that Janeway had actually finished off The Borg in Endgame. I figured in the vastness of the Collective even if you infected the Queen, that the rest of the collective would sever her, lobotomize that part of the hive mind and persist. The Federation coming a long and putting down the biggest threat in the Galaxy didn’t make sense. I think a lot about the character of the Queen. I mean hive mind aside, once that character came into being she had to be the original Borg. The Conqueror, The Thief, The Virus. Season 2 implied that she was someone who was intensely lonely and forced others into that twisted union so she could have someone be with her. It’s fascinating that season 2 and 3 both have the Borg Queen as the last of her kind. And in terrible condition. So following along with that, she’s reached the height of her pettiness. Revenge. Though it does go back to an old adage, what the Borg cannot assimilate, they destroy. Well watch out, now they can do both. Because The Queen is trying to claw her way back from defeat. And she sacrificed all the drones for her own survival, which honestly makes no sense, why would the Borg of all civilizations need to consume the organic material of her own drones to survive. They used to build transwarp conduit hubs on STARS. That Neurolytic Pathogen was way more of a finishing move than I thought though.
That denouement was…it was worth the price of admission. I cried again when Raffi’s family finally saw her as we see her.A hero. Someone who just can’t let it lie if she can make a difference. As the trope goes, “Mama had a good reason for abandoning you”. I was disappointed that Kestra didn’t get a mention at least.
As for nobody in our cast dying, I’m good with that. I expected someone to remind Worf of what he told O’Brien on DS9, “We were like Legends from the old tales, there was nothing could not do.” Legends never die. Though I did think Jean-Luc was going to sacrifice himself to save his son, I’m much more satisfied with the way it happened. Sometimes everyone dies, sometimes only a few die, sometimes a key person dies. But sometimes the heroes just win. It’s the art of the impossible. That’s why they’re legends.
Continuing on from last week, regardless of how powerful the Enterprise-D is… this week….she was enough.
As a Star Trek Online player, I felt the Titan being rechristened as the Enterprise-G landed with a very wet thud. Mr. Matalas tweeted a don’t worry message regarding the Enterprise-F being decommissioned a decade before when she was commissioned in the STO timeline…as it turns out we were right to be worried. I too was thinking it was going to be the USS Jean-Luc Picard. I mean naming the ship Picard in the series Picard seems like low hanging fruit. Heck it’s the third Federation threatening crisis that Picard resolved in the last three years alone. Making the Titan the Enterprise-G…just because there’s plenty of letters left in the alphabet doesn’t mean you have to race down the alphabet.
Overall though, like many Star Trek series, Picard found greatness in Season 3. It was a great family reunion and the Au Revoir that we wanted. Goodbye Old Friends, until we meet again.
Eric: No, it doesn’t count because that was just a display item in the background that you can only even see if you hit pause. President Chekov was the first reference that wasn’t incredibly easy to miss.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad
This was never stated in the show, but on the startreklogs Instagram account, there’s an entry on the Enterprise where they go through all of the ships to bear the name. For the F, it stated that the ship was recently damaged and would be decommissioned following the Frontier Day celebrations.
My guess is they liked the Star Trek Online designs enough to tip the cap and include them in the show, but not enough to keep them around longterm.
Also, Saavik commanded the original Titan, apparently. This season (and this extra material they released) is full of hooks for tie-in-fiction (hint hint, nudge nudge) . . .
@29/garreth: “So who was evil floating head? The Borg Queen is disguise?”
Rather, the Borg Queen communicating through a method that obscured her real appearance because it was made of severed Changeling hand goo.
“The CGI for the Enterprise-D looked great and it’s great to finally see that shipped depicted as so maneuverable which wasn’t really possible on TNG but the model still looked more realistic and had more weight to it.”
It wasn’t supposed to be that maneuverable with the saucer attached. The whole point of separation was supposed to be to free the lighter battle hull for combat maneuvers.
@32/Patrick: Thanks — it hadn’t really registered with me that Seven of Nine is captain of an Enterprise now. (The definite article doesn’t seem appropriate given how darn many of them there are now.) I think the name change is a bit silly, but it’s a nice grace note for her. Though it would carry more weight for me if this season had actually done anything with Picard and Seven’s relationship after the first episode, so there’d be more a sense of a torch being passed. Or even acknowledged that Raffi used to be Picard’s first officer.
@41/ERIC L WATTS: “re: Seven/Raffi: For God’s sake, WHY? ‘Shipping them was a terrible idea in season 2”
Actually their relationship was implicitly set up in season 1 and developed more overtly in the audio drama No Man’s Land, co-written by series co-creator Kirsten Beyer and set shortly after season 1.
As for why, how about the fact that it’s the one and only same-sex relationship that Star Trek: Picard has acknowledged to exist, as far as I can recall? Erasing it is a bad look. Also, I don’t understand your objection — I think pairing them off was a great idea. They have so much in common.
This episode was ridiculous. The plot was just silly. The whole thing about the Borg being on their last ropes seemed to come out of nowhere. The space action was so over the top as to become laughable. If these last two episodes had been a movie, it would rank up there with the cheeziest of cheezy Star Trek films.
And yet, I did enjoy myself. Partly I think it was because of the residual good will the first 8 (or 7 of 8, since I didn’t really care for episode 7) episodes built up, and obviously part of it was just the nostalgia party that’s been going on all season. I’m not made of stone. TNG and these characters were a formative part of my teens, and I have enjoyed the heck out of seeing them all together again. It helps that several of these actors have never been better than they have been on this show. The story of Picard season 3 may not go down as one of the most thought-provoking in Trek history, but the actors have certainly gone out on a high note.
That’s assuming this is actually their last hurrah. At least a few of them (Frakes, Dorn, Spiner) have voiced interest in continuing to pop up in future Trek series. I think Paramount+ could do worse than to give Worf his own show at the very least while he’s still capable of swinging a sword. As for the buzz around Star Trek: Legacy or whatever they might end up calling a show with the new Enterprise-G and her crew, I wouldn’t mind seeing something like that.
#24.
You’re right to feel that way. The more I think about the episode, and the season, the more I dislike it. Seems like a whole lot of nothing in retrospect. Or at best it seems to fit the description a friend and I once had for movies like this: a shrug in the parking lot.
Promoting Seven based on the recommendation of Shaw seemed a little shallow.
If anything, she’s now an especially important person now to help the large number of Ex-Borg in Starfleet.
Someone up there mentioned the Destiny books’ Borg origin story, and yes! I loved that origin story – some other parts were a bit much, but the division and isolation, all that leading up to their initial evolution, awesome. The state of this queen sorta reminded me of it, actually: severely crippled, the comforting voice of her collective fading, leaving her lonely, growing desperate and hungry, resentful, looking for a way to adapt… so she did. Normally, no, she wouldn’t cannibalize her drones, because she was a part of them and they a part of her. Janeway injected her peaceful sanctuary to chaos with that virus though. How could anyone think that wouldn’t mess them up? Infected the hive, then blasted their fast & easy space travel across the quadrants. There might still be a Borg threat out there, but not in the Alpha Quadrant anymore, or else, it was the ones in the DQ she lost, and was only feebly able to make it to where she was in the Alpha Quadrant … they did obliterate the sphere that went through the transwarp conduit with them in Endgame, so this might’ve just been the one cube that managed to find a cinduit to get her here in pieces. Either way, the queen was stranded, weak, and vulnerable, reluctantly using her dying hive as a reserve to keep her going long enough to *save* them all – by adapting, and evolving the Borg. I’d like to think that origin story from Destiny is still possible, in some form, and what we saw in the finale was a reflection of the desperation of those cold beginnings. They totally needed to give credit to Janeway there though, Picard only barely survived each time he ran across a *single* cube.
As for the Changelings team-up … I wouldn’t have thought of it, but having it done, it makes sense. Both are powerful races that rule their respective quadrants of space, in different versions of a collective that act as a single unit. Both were injected with lethal viruses by Starfleet representatives, with their high and mighty altruistic promises and chaotic lives. Then they were both tortured by “Starfleet” – explicitly, with the Changelings, but it’s also inferred when you think about it from the mind of the Borg, as the Artifact was stripped and studied, the xBs liberated (“killed” from the Borg-perspective, weakening the remnants of the hive). So, yeah, it makes sense. The queen is stranded, can’t get anywhere, but is capable of adapting if given the chance, while the Changelings are onto an idea, and able to get pretty much anywhere, but they need the queen’s adaptations to pull it off.
The Agnes-Queen is way over whenever that space anomaly that’s like a transwarp conduit, but with even more energy and with some seriously bad news on the other side. She’s probably busy with there. I don’t mind saving that story for later.
Oh, and the Artifact from season 1 was a different thing. I missed the whole point on first watch, and figured it was just weak because of the virus or because it was cut off from the main hive after the conduit was destroyed, but no … that was a fine, healthy cube out on its own, assimilating at a happy rate, until it got to the wrong Romulan (14 years earlier) and suffered cataclysmic failure with the “worst news in the universe” or whatever because of that synth prophecy I keep not caring about. I preferred my head-canon events, but meh.
I did half expect the ship to be called the Picard, but then I thought … do they name ships after you while you’re still alive? Maybe, I honestly don’t know. And I did indeed hear The Pulaski called out as a ship, so … is she gone, or is it named for a different Pulaski, the Pulaski that Pulaski was named after? It’ll be exciting to eventually see a USS Picard, but they’ll probably do it post-mortem. Then again, I was sure he’d die by the end. In the one hand, I’d never want that, but on the other, I love a good hero’s ending. I’d built myself up to be so ready for lead deaths, that having them live *was* a suspenseful surprise! I didn’t mind at all. Sometimes, everyone lives, and it’s grand. There were enough deaths going on throughout the fleet anyway.
All around, I loved it. Beverly magicked a DNA-altering cure, as she tends to do, and everyone had a lot of techno-babble savers, and a lot of it doesn’t technically make sense, but it’s fun to watch these characters work together … and that’s what they do! The theme was family, blood and claimed,
@49 – “In 1969, a Navy panel decreed that warships would no longer be named after living persons.[1] That lasted until 1974, when President Richard Nixon announced the naming of an aircraft carrier after United States Representative Carl Vinson.[1] Over the next half-century, the Navy named more ships for living people than it had in the previous two centuries. From October 2020 to March 2023, the Navy named a ship for a living person every eight months, a pace unseen since 1776.”
List of U.S. military vessels named after living Americans
So the whole season was essentially a backdoor pilot?
I love Christopher bringing up Miles O’Brien. KRAD asks why Diana Muldaur and Denise Crosby weren’t here, but Colm Meaney was in more episodes of TNG than both of them combined, and was also a key player on the one show from that era which wasn’t really represented here. (Worf doesn’t really count, because he’s foremost part of the TNG crew.) Would have loved to have him show up, but even a throwaway line about Dr. Crusher working with Miles on the de-Borgifier would have been nice.
@51 Don’t count on it too much. Season 1 ended on what very much looked like a setup for future seasons of Picard: The Adventures of the La Sirena Crew, and that got wadded up and thrown away. THAT show might have been fun!
S
(Not seen this yet – UK here so waiting for it to drop tomorrow; have seen a few clips on YouTube; but couple of questions/thoughts based on your comments)
President Chekhov – definitely stated he’s Pavel’s son and not his grandson? That’d fit the age gap better?
Beverley Cure – they already stated that the bit of DNA that enabled the Borg to hijack in was a sequence common to all and used whenever transported – easy enough to replace that with a non-Picard string of DNA from someone healthy and then just beam everyone up and down. Not a million miles away from the work Pulaski & O’brien did in the episode with the GM children who were attacking the researchers and making them old.
Q in the Mid-Credits – as he himself says, it doesn’t undo his death at all if you’re not looking at it linearly – nothing says this is a Q from after his death; just an appearance of Q from after our last subjective visit with him – and he is omnipotent (or claims to be) after all – so he’d know what happened before & after his death. And I agree with @3 Mr Magic – it gives new potency as to why Q went through everything he did in Season 2, if he knew that shortly afterwards Picard would meet up with Jack.
…plus, second Big Bad this week to perish in a ball of flame during a finale. Two doesn’t constitute a trend, but I’d like to see this broken up sooner than later. Maybe drop a grand piano on the next?
Quoth Tom: “President Chekhov – definitely stated he’s Pavel’s son and not his grandson? That’d fit the age gap better?”
Yes. He refers to his father.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@49/Fred: “Both are powerful races that rule their respective quadrants of space”
Neither Borg nor Dominion territory encompasses anywhere remotely near an entire quadrant. Per the maps in Star Trek Star Charts, Borg territory is widespread across the Delta Quadrant but makes up a small fraction of its volume, maybe 6-7 percent at an eyeball estimate; and even the book’s implausibly large depiction of Dominion space takes up less than 2 percent of the Gamma Quadrant. Keep in mind that travelers through the Bajoran Wormhole were exploring the GQ for a year or so before they even started encountering cultures familiar with the Dominion, and it was close to two years before they made direct contact. The Dominion and Borg are in their respective quadrants; that does not make them the only things there, because a quadrant of the galaxy is preposterously huge.
“but it’s also inferred when you think about it from the mind of the Borg, as the Artifact was stripped and studied, the xBs liberated (“killed” from the Borg-perspective, weakening the remnants of the hive).”
Starfleet was not responsible for that, though. As you said, the cube was severed from the Collective by the disruptive program of the Admonition when it assimilated an infected Romulan. And it was the Romulan Free State that oversaw the exploitation of the Artifact with cooperation from civilian Federation scientists.
@53/Tom: Prez Chekov didn’t explicitly say Pavel was his father, but he said his father quoted the line “There are always possibilities,” which implies it was someone who knew Spock. It’s possible that Pavel’s son got the phrase from his father and then passed it in turn to his son Anton, but it seems clear that we were intended to assume it was Pavel being referenced.
@55 – Thanks Keith! I’ll listen out for that in the morning!
—
One final thought – on the lack of lifespan for the Ent-F and the Titan being renamed Ent-G – could it be something real-life related, like not paying revenue to Star Trek Online/the designer every time it’s used on screen? If they are hoping to have a green light for a new series moving forwards, if it was set on an STO design that might have implications – and might explain why they changed the Titan from the Lower Decks/Tie-in-Literature design?
One other callback to the TOS crew: the whole business with “The Bounty,” aka the Klingon ship used to save the whales back in the day.
While I loved the episode. I absolutely HATED two things about it. The first is the renaming of the Titan to be the Enterprise G. Completely unnecessary and diminishes the accomplishments of that ship on its own. And second the Special Counselor to the Captain for Jack?
I can accept the magic handwave for transporter cure from Beverly. We have seen similar before and they know exactly what to fix. Also with the Changeling, she said she could track them now that she knew what was special and that was a couple of episodes ago.
I do find it interesting how much more regret there is for the attempted genocide against the Changelings compared with the attempted genocide against the Borg.
I mean, you can make the argument that the Borg were an existential threat who showed no real interest in negotiating and probably could never have been defeated by conventional means; but doesn’t that also apply to the Dominion? In fact, shouldn’t killing the Borg be worse because you are, by definition, also killing everyone that they’ve assimilated?
I mean, I can’t really fault this episode for it though. Like I said, Voyager already blowed the collective up real good 20 years ago. And yet, they managed to spare a thought for it in “I, Borg”
I didn’t watch the credits to the end. Was there an after-credits scene with Laris tapping her foot while waiting for Picard? That poor character.
Huh.
Well.
I liked that quite a bit more than I expected to, to be honest. I am really, in general, not at all down with the kind of nostalgia-entertainment that’s in vogue these days. And there were about 20 or so moments in the finale where I wanted to groan.
But I mean, credit where credit is due: Picard S3 actually told a story; and almost more important, told it to a fairly logical conclusion.
I was very fond of Picard S1 and the original concept of the show, pretty much until the finale, when it became clear that the basic bones of the story were missing or utterly deranged and frankly offensive: that it wasn’t a story about Picard finding his purpose again by saving Data’s daughter, but a story about a random colony of magical special self-reproducing androids with the magical power to bring people back from the dead being menaced by evil magical Romulans and being tempted to summon magical evil apocalyptic space robots. And then Picard died and was manipulatively magically cheaply resurrected in the worst modern-entertainment way, had a perfunctory conversation with a random Data clone, and then euthanized him. And the whole thing fell to pieces from my perspective.
The less said about Picard S2 the better; but if there was ever a piece of entertainment that fundamentally did not have a story to tell, that was it. Picard, I don’t know, helps his distant ancestor feel better (after randomly spending some time in an alternate universe where he’s evil) while hanging out with a magical spy person who happens to look exactly like his lover and defeating a mustache-twirling bad guy who happens to look like Data while another character finds connection and meaning by being assimilated and then telling the Borg that maybe they should be nicer and more manipulative and oh yeah I guess while all this is going on Picard is confronting his parent issues and saying goodbye to a dying Q who made all this happen for unclear reasons…?
Anyway, Picard S3 shows a profound lack of restraint in many aspects of its storytelling, but dammit, it does have a story to tell, and it’s a pretty good one. Picard coming out of retirement to meet Crusher and his son and helping him overcome his disconnection and escape the temptation of the Borg while reconnecting with his own Starfleet “family” and purpose and helping Jack on the path to finding his own…yeah, I buy that.
Last week I was pretty annoyed really by the Borg getting introduced at the last second. But you know, the Borg have always been a big stonking metaphor for social connection and conformity and the desire for transcendence and the evil of fake transcendence and the hunger for real community and the threat of fake technological community. And having the Borg be weakened and decimated by Janeway and on their last legs makes them kind of more interesting than they have for a while–and hopefully now we can finally, finally, be done with the Borg and move on.
Really, though, what made this work and the season work were the character beats and moments, and the willingness to have characters go through real changes and arcs. Picard and Jack is the central one, but Crusher is involved in that. Geordi and his daughters have been great; Riker and Troi have been a major, major highlight. The new Data feels different enough to be worth it and not just undoing Data’s Nemesis sacrifice. I even liked Raffi getting to come full circle by reconnecting with her family–that was a nice beat that picked up on her early S1 arc and characterization before S2 reduced her to solely pining after Seven. Hopefully that relationship is over now. Still, Seven has become a character I actually like now.
So yeah, in all, I feel good about this and am willing to accept it as a last journey for the TNG crew. Even having them back on the Enterprise-D feels less egregious.
I could nitpick from here to eternity. The biggest nit is that Jack was just assimilated and was indirectly responsible for the deaths of likely thousands, so he kind of should not really be all cheery-happy at the end?Like Picard had “Family” after his assimilation to help him recover. It’s an actual story problem imo, caused by the need to set up the new hoped-for show as literally as possible. Hopefully if Star Trek Legacy does happen, they’ll introduce that and give Jack (and the other assimilated young people) some character room to process all that horror. At least having Seven there could provide some nice plot and character beats with her helping younger people based on her own experience (as she does briefly in a few excellent beats earlier in the show).
There are so many other nits. The way the Changeling threat is dropped and undone retroactively is awful. Why not leave them around as a real danger in the future? And many many other moment where the fan stuff seemed to intrude on the story and make it works.
But again, I’m in a good mood now. This is a Star Trek project I can basically accept and get behind, which has been very very very few and far between over the last ten years or so. So I will accept it.
Quoth Tom: “One final thought – on the lack of lifespan for the Ent-F and the Titan being renamed Ent-G – could it be something real-life related, like not paying revenue to Star Trek Online/the designer every time it’s used on screen? If they are hoping to have a green light for a new series moving forwards, if it was set on an STO design that might have implications – and might explain why they changed the Titan from the Lower Decks/Tie-in-Literature design?”
Extremely unlikely. CBS owns it all in any case, and licensees don’t get those kinds of perks as a general rule. Besides, someone still had to design the new Titan and that costs money, too. I think it’s more likely that the Picard producers wanted a new design for the ship, at least in part due to the likely spinoff, so they’d have something unique for this and the next series.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This season was a lot of fun. Nostalgia was definitely the biggest guest star this season, and this cast inhabits these characters so well that they are a joy to watch, which really helped because the story was so-so, at best. I had fun and, at the end of the day, that was enough. I enjoyed it. Also, damn, I really want one of those cool new Starfleet jackets.
Bobby
Picard as a series seem to suffer from a complete lack of story planning. Is this due to leaving huge plot holes available for young book authors to create a job around? Babylon 5 was such a better show for having its story already written. If there is going to be a new show with Seven as the star I guess it makes sense she was sidelined but it bothered me that with the borg being the big baddies she wasnt front and center. Seven had a much longer, stronger bond with the collective and did the borg queen even mention her? Was Sisko the only show captain not mentioned at all? Seems racist. The series seemed very light on DS9 stuff other than the changelings who were played out of racial character. Supposedly the changelings had completely infiltrated starfleet with operatives..wouldnt they still be in charge of starfleet like they were at the beginning even if the borg plan failed? I also got the feeling we were meant to forget about 7 and Raphi and focus on Worf and Raphi.
Does the transporter keep a trace every time you go through it or just of the last one? What about people that were transported after being assimilated? Would it make a difference if it’s two different transporters? How does that work? Would the Titan bridge crew be out of luck since they were transported while borg?
Not only did they throw everything at the all, apparently everything stuck. Even Return of the Jedi. We did get a Galaxy Quest moment earlier with Riker’s towing mines maneuver.
Based on what President Chekov said, the transporters on Earth were also compromised. “An agent of unknown origin has turned our young against us. They have been assimilated by the Borg.
Most people have hit my nitpicks but I do want to say this – I kind of appreciate Jack’s position as “special counselor to the Captain” because, like Seven herself, he’s bringing a lot of life experience into his commission that a cadet who maybe went a more traditional post-high school route to the academy wouldn’t. Especially since he’s been tooling around places outside Federation territory.
It’s definitely been hinted at that Starfleet values life experience and it’s always been generally a lot less rigidly military. That honestly might have been the most “Star Trek” aspect of the finale….
Krad, great review but in this season we got cameos of the enterprise-a, the bounty (the cloaking device was uded in the story) and james t.kirk himself in his bones! So, they covered tos
I liked the way they briefly teased us with possibility that Jack had been promoted straight up to captain (like Kirk in the 2009 movie) only to have Seven tell him to get out of her chair. :)
@62 / Captain Peabody:
And having the Borg be weakened and decimated by Janeway and on their last legs makes them kindof more interesting than they have for a while–and hopefully now we can finally, finally, be done with the Borg and move on.
Which is another reason why Mulgrew should’ve have appeared in this episode: Just as in Mack’s Trilogy, this is all partly her fault for firebombing the Collective with her future self on VOY’s way out of the DQ. What did she think was gonna happen if the Collective survived? That they were just gonna let bygones be bygones?
(Though having Seven representing VOY in her place ameliorated it somewhat).
But anyway, I don’t think the Borg will ever truly be gone from Trek. They’re too iconic and popular.
I’ve compared it to the Doctor Who revival, wherein initially the Daleks had been all but wiped out in the Last Great Time War. And then, gradually, they kept coming back.
Same thing here. That said, I do think the Borg for now have run their course.
If the Borg have a future, it’s Jurati’s offshoot — and like everyone else, I’m likewise irked she didn’t even get mentioned.
I’ll write a longer post. But wanted to get some thoughts out there. I just finished watching the finale. I thought it was a hot mess and absurd…but I still loved it. They get most of the themes and all the characters right. But it just so over the top and ludicrous, the Titan is causing serious disruptions to the Borg’s attack against dozens and dozens of ships of similar power levels? What? The D is able to fight though a massive Borg cube where they are totally surrounded at all times by various Borg weapons shooting at them, ha! What about the changelings? Naw it’s fine forget about that, Star Fleet got transporter tec….anyways look here they’re playing poker again!
But none of that mattered in the end for me what matter to me was getting a proper ending for the TNG crew and now I can completely let my memories of the film’s esp Nemesis fade away. This certainly won’t replace “All Good Things” for me and I still have my own head canon for what happened afterwords (basically what happened in “All Good Things” but without the bad stuff, Troi dying, Picard losing his mind, etc).
Also I like that now I have Picard as a show to point too about turning things around. Lot of haters (including me) really did not see how you could turn around the mess that was Picard, but Terry Matalas did it. Amazon look at Picard when it comes to season 2 of Rings of Power please!. And yes I get that TNG itself went through this, but having something more recent to point to I think is useful.
-Kefka
@70 Along that line, I don’t mind the classic Borg to have been sidelined or at least weakened; it allows for variations in a them that might be interesting, and Jurati Borg is one of them.
I think that a friendly, if somewhat amoral, Borg who try to personally persuade you to give up your individuality have the potential to be much more dramatically interesting than an army of faceless zombies who take it by force. And I think that, if nothing else, this season has really demonstrated how tapped-out the narrative potential of Borg-as-apocalyptic-threat stories is.
According to the latest Terry Matalas interview, the answer to a lot of KRAD’s “Where’s so and so?” questions came down to time and budget. He wanted to include more legacy characters and more returning cast from earlier seasons but didn’t have the time and/or money to pull it off. Apparently they had to save every penny just to get the Enterprise D set built.
Another interesting thing from the interview was that they didn’t intend to kill off Ro. She was supposed to have been taken off the shuttle at the last second by the Intrepid, then rescued along with a bunch of other people who had been abducted and duplicated, but they didn’t have time to shoot all that.
@74 – I mean, I could buy that as an excuse for not bringing back the actors, but really? They don’t have room in the script to say their name?
#73.
Agreed. I would welcome a more nuanced take on the Borg. There’s quite a lot of material they could’ve pulled from real-world concerns over AI right at this time. This though, well, I don’t think the raging evil Queen wanting to annihilate the human race through the young’uns on their TikTok machines connects to any of those concerns in a meaningful way. It’s pretty shallow.
Alternatively, picking up the Jurati story, they could’ve explored the Borg joining the Federation and how that might change their society. For example, what if the Borg were so efficient they threatened to replace or radically alter Starfleet? That would surely rock Picard’s world.
@65/Evrett: “Is this due to leaving huge plot holes available for young book authors to create a job around?”
Heh. I wish the Trek producers would give us novelists that kind of attention. That’d be a nice change.
“Babylon 5 was such a better show for having its story already written.”
Not already written — plotted out in broad strokes, which were frequently and extensively changed in response to real-life circumstances like actors not working out and characters being replaced. J. Michael Straczynski knew what overall story he wanted to tell and what elements he wanted to include in it, but how he put the building blocks together was open to change as circumstances demanded, and as better ideas occurred to him along the way. Straczynski’s own book on screenwriting emphasizes the saying “No plan ever survives its encounter with the enemy.” A plan needs to be loose and adaptable in order to work.
The problem with Picard is that each season has had a different plan from a different planner. It’s basically three separate miniseries, aside from the cursory lip service paid to what came before.
@73/jaimebabb: “And I think that, if nothing else, this season has really demonstrated how tapped-out the narrative potential of Borg-as-apocalyptic-threat stories is.”
Amen to that. As much as I disliked season 2 as an exercise in rehashing the past, it did at least have enough originality to try something new and fresh with the Borg. The only fresh idea with the Borg here is the transporter trick; otherwise it’s a huge anticlimax.
@17. Karl Zimmerman Kudos for ‘shake the etch-a-sketch’. I also found the utter disregard for the previous seasons annoying. And the mid-credits scene? Q Again? Gimme a break! Ending on the poker table was perfect.
And, re: Miles fixing the transporter, I did tweet this 5 days ago
https://twitter.com/EMSBoys/status/1647352617645887489?s=20
KRAD, here’s a link to an article with an interview where Terry Matalas does admit he wanted Soji, Janeway, Ro, and even Harry Kim as a captain in the episode, but budgetary concerns as well as actor availability during the filming window killed it.
https://l.smartnews.com/p-rLZxa/08G1HH
That being said, while there were some weak points in this episode, I still loved it! This is the farewell that the TNG crew deserved but alas, never really got.
For a moment, I thought they were going to name the ship the USS Picard, so I admit to being very happy to see it being named Enterprise. Also, when Jack tells Picard, “Welcome to the Enterprise, Admiral,” the way the music was winding through, plus just his inflection, I thought was very well done.
As far as the Enterprise-F goes, I recall seeing a short on YouTube sometime this week that said according to Star Trek Online, something happened to the Enterprise-F, some kind of cataclysmic systems failure, I think, and Starfleet just decided to decommission the ship afterward.
Ah! Here it is! https://youtube.com/shorts/_MSS-QblFy0?feature=share
Incidentally, one thing that annoyed me was Picard picking up the weird conceit from Discovery and Strange New Worlds that every captain has to have a distinct catchphrase they use to order warp. Where the hell did that come from? That hasn’t been a thing for most of Trek history. Usually it’s just “Ahead warp factor X,” and Picard’s “Engage” was the same as Pike’s in “The Cage.” It wasn’t a cute catchphrase, it was just a commanding officer giving an order. As it should be.
@73 and @77,
Yeah, ironically, the Borg as a concept have to adapt and evolve.
It’s like the post-TOS Klingons when TNG got going. Moving them beyond their Soviet Standby roles was the right move. They were still the Klingons, but it also opened new avenues to explore.
If not for that reinvention, we’d never have gotten the TNG/DS9 Klingon Politics arc or all the rich world-building that Ronald Moore and others contributed to and played around it.
(And yes, Keith, I’m including the I.K.S. Gorkon novels as part of that. I loved those novels, heh.)
Same thing with the Borg, which is why I was so on board with Jurati’s independent hive.
I am not sure that I agree with “to constantly hear Jack talk about being alone and not having a family when he was traveling with his mother the whole time is irritating to say the least.” It’s a valid perspective of course but to me it seemed like Jack was an incredible egotist, as can be common for quick witted good looking young men—his perception that he was alone seemed based on that young male angst, and Beverly and he constantly being on the move so he avoided having continuing friends or roots—except for the English accent of course. I thought Picard’s comments that he remembered feeling like that was a call out to a family similarity of being arrogant hot heads in their youth. And young men who overlook the role of their mothers while seeing themselves as self-invented is common also, and not hard to recognize.
Your mileage may vary of course. Overall, I enjoyed the show very much—more than it deserved probably but I was watching it though nostalgia and fond memories.
I’ve decided after this season that a) I liked the episodes themselves and while yes the season told an interesting arc that b) that arc was basically unconnected to the previous two seasons and anything else that had happened. The borg queen is ranting and raving about how she was left at the edge of space and it’s all Picard fault? Huh and what? It was Janeway who firebombed a lot of your infrastructure to take a shortcut and a mentally deranged Romulan who put you in a feedback loop or whatever it was that happened. What exactly did Picard do? And you had enough energy to collaborate with who knows how many changelings and transwarp yourself into the middle of Jupiter (btw I’m pretty sure the pressure inside Jupiter would do a number on your ship by itself once you emerged from the transwarp highway but whatever). Did it not occur to you somewhere to find some random planet that can’t defend itself and assimilating them first then going on your vengeance ride? The writers really don’t get the borg and the queen.
Then we decide to take the literal museum piece and do the Death Star run. An X wing is roughly 13 meters long, the Millenium Falcon is 27 meters and the Enterprise-D is 641 meters long by 450 meters wide and weighs just under 5 million metric tons. Since when were there kilometer wide canyons in a borg cube (why would there be???) that a ship almost two/thirds of a kilometer long can get through it?
And let’s not forget that the Titan is a 25 year old ship that’s now gone through a couple of refits…. Why would Starfleet rename it versus just either keep the F or build a new G and not one that’s done a considerable part of its service life.
Also don’t get me started on the under 25s took over the ship (there can’t be that many of them and it feels like a millennial jibe), the Titans ability to regenerate crewman at will, the fact that no one seems to care that a bunch of people probably died doing this, Jack gets bridge duty a hot second after commissioning as some sort of whatever we need character, or that the evil change kings turns out didn’t kill anyone? Maybe it’s just better if we don’t think to deeply.
Fun watching but as another captain might say: illogica
The whole catchphrase thing did give me my favorite moment in the whole SNW trailer, though: “I want the ship to go. Now.”
@77 CLB Excellent summation of JMS’ ‘5 Year Plan’ for Babylon 5, and its contingencies. I’m very happy with what we got, regardless of the Season 5 shenanigans. The Michael O’Hare details are heartbreaking. I was at the ‘Promise Panel’ where JMS revealed why he was replaced. And it was definitely better than the original 10-year monstrosity revealed in the super-secret 15th Script Book. Google it, the details are out there.
Completely agree that Picard feels like three separate stories/mini series. I found things to like in each, and things that fell apart under scrutiny. Ah, well. Onwards to the next star to the right, to trot out another catch phrase, from another finale.
@84/SaintTherese: “The whole catchphrase thing did give me my favorite moment in the whole SNW trailer, though: “I want the ship to go. Now.””
I hated that. It’s totally out of character for Spock to be so childishly monosyllabic. It’s a dumb joke for a character who should never be dumb.
Ugh. I wish I was among those who liked this episode. I found it pretty awful. I’ve rewritten this paragraph several times but I’m just going to leave it at that.
I’ve never been on board with the idea that Jean Luc’s defining characteristic was that he was once Locutus. Since First Contact that’s been emphasized to the detriment of the character. If this show can do one thing to the betterment of the franchise it’s to decide that the Borg are ‘a Picard thing’ and just let them die.
I always liked Laris—I’ll remember her fondly even if Picard (man, show, take your pick) seems to have forgotten she existed.
There was a lot of Marvel-style quipping this season that I found off-putting. Picard is not the only show following the zeitgeist on this, but every time they dropped a zinger it felt like the show was asking me not to take it seriously.
Something that’s seemed odd to me all season is that the potential victims of the villains’ plot are completely off camera (except for Shelby I suppose). When the Starfleet facility on planet Matalas was portaled they didn’t pick up the hail from Raffi. We just saw a CGI building silently get wrecked. We get no POV from Earth, or Spacedock. We just see a lot of CGI. I never got a sense there were any actual people on the receiving end of anything.
I felt like there were two piles of scripts this season. There was a pile of character work with the TNG cast—most of that was very strong. Then there was the pile with the season-long plot, which was about what’s behind Jack’s secret door and what’s going to happen on Frontier Day. It was like the showrunners felt the need for some high stakes action plot but didn’t want to use the TNG cast for it. It never felt very integrated to me.
Honestly the series probably did as well as it could with the core concept. TNG worked partly because it was an ensemble cast. Any individual character would struggle to anchor their own show.
I’m hopeful that we get a detailed behind the scenes book about the making of the show. It got so messy so often that I think seeing how the sausage got made would be a good read.
@80/Christopher
Incidentally, one thing that annoyed me was Picard picking up the weird conceit from Discovery and Strange New Worlds that every captain has to have a distinct catchphrase they use to order warp. Where the hell did that come from? That hasn’t been a thing for most of Trek history. Usually it’s just “Ahead warp factor X,” and Picard’s “Engage” was the same as Pike’s in “The Cage.” It wasn’t a cute catchphrase; it was just a commanding officer giving an order. As it should be.
I agree. It is getting annoying. It was cute in Disco and Lower Deck’s “warp me” is kind of cute. But it’s getting old now.
One funny bit I did like was Worf sitting down after coming back from the cube and falling asleep for a moment. He’d had a busy day
Alright, a second viewing was a little more enjoyable, especially when my friend deadpanned that Seven’s catchphrase should be, “Let ‘er rip, tater chip.”
Some more notes/nits on this episode:
I can get the complaints with this season of the series feeling cheap what with the constant reuse of the Ten Forward set, and no on-location shooting, etc. But this final episode did not feel cheap at all. Between the Ent-D bridge set, the sets with all of the Borg, and tons of VFX shots involving the fleet battle and the battle between Ent-D and the Borg vessel, it felt very high budget indeed. I think that actually furthers the argument that this season could have been paired down to a standard feature length film to feel consistent throughout in quality and not wheel-spinning.
As others have mentioned, beyond what I’ve said about all of the many thousands of lives lost in the finale, you also have thousands of young Starfleet officers that are now ex-Borg. If Seven and Picard have lasting trauma from their assimilation, you can sure as hell bet that these young people will as well. Not only did try have their minds and bodies violated, but they were used as instruments to kill thousands of people, including their fellow shipmates. Any Star Trek: Legacy show or whatever it’ll be called should surely address this type of lingering trauma and the ship’s counselor should have a busy schedule around the clock.
@62: You mentioned Jack is indirectly responsible for the deaths of so many but I say he was actually directly responsible. He purposely delivered himself to the Borg Queen knowing she needed him for her evil plan and allowed himself to be assimilated. And yet we don’t get any mention of him feeling guilt nor being charged for mass genocide. This is the complete opposite of what to his dad, Picard, who was abducted by the Borg and against his will, forced to kill thousands of others.
I also thought the Titan was going to be rechristened the U.S.S. Picard.
I’m kind of disappointed that the Titan became the Enterprise–G just because I think it’s kind of a boring design. The Enterprise–F looked a lot more interesting.
I’m not really bothered by the idea of Q coming back. He’s an entertaining character and John deLancie looks great. It’s just a bit eye-rolling that he takes an interest in Jack. It’s all a bit too coincidental and what is it with Q and his pet humans?
A series with Seven and Raffi as captain and first officer would mark the first time we’d have a series with two regulars in the lead who are female which is cool. And no, I don’t count Captain Georgiou and Burnham because Michelle Yeoh wasn’t a regular and was killed off in the second episode of the first season.
I’m sure all of the adult Starfleet officers killed in the finale were faceless, nameless nobodies so fan favorites like O’Brien and Bashir and Barclay, etc. still live on for possible future appearances lol.
It’s too bad about the Guinan name-dropping in the last pre-credits scene because I was really hoping she’d appear.
Speaking of that last scene, of course it was an “All Good Things” callback and it was poignant and fun. But the style in which it was shot, with the constant spinning around the table reminded me of the end credits scene of that crummy movie Dreamcatcher and that memory and the similarity to the scene here annoyed me.
Despite never really believing that any of the TNG characters would kick the bucket, I still got plenty emotional at times during the conclusion just because the character beats were so well written and acted and I just love the characters.
Aside from a Legacy series, I’d enjoy seeing Worf get his own show, but I’m also hoping for a Star Trek: Janeway.
I thought this was as good as “What You Leave Behind”, and had echoes of some of the best elements of that finale.
Picard’s choice after all these years to voluntary rejoin the Collective, but from a place of confidence and self-possession, was a very powerful moment. It reminded of Odo’s choice to link with the Female Changeling, and Kira’s trust in him to do so without compromising himself — the act of connection that finally brought Odo’s understanding of solids to the Great Link and ended the Dominion War without further loss.
The coda in Guinan’s bar was a great finale from the perspective of character development and mood. The DS9 finale took a risk by incorporating a similar scene, which I always felt ran a bit too long but let these characters have a proper goodbye. This scene was similar, and I almost expected Worf to insist on Minsk as a vacation destination for the Rikers.
Among other things, Matalas has confirmed what a lot of people suspect from the final Poker Game’s footage.
The whole thing was improvised. They left the cameras running for about an hour and let the TNG cast cut loose as their characters. So all the smiles, jokes, etc., are all completely genuine.
So little of this made any sense and it was possibly a worse end for these characters than Nemesis. Nothing but nostalgia hits and fanservice. Fell apart toward the end worse than the other seasons of this show, as much as I love seeing all these characters I grew up with together again.
Can I simply say there was one – ONE – good moment in the show? Worf settling down into the front chair and snoring.
That was the only moment worth watching in the whole freaking show.
Laris? Who’s Laris? Having a captain and first officer who are in a tumultuous on/off relationship is just good HR policy. Glad we finally got an explanation for the giant space anus at the end of season 2. I applaud the writers for not introducing Data to his “daughter” Soji, either now or in season 1. The way everything fit together, poetry.
A couple of other things:
I also felt it rang hollow with Jack saying he felt alone all his life. As had been mentioned, he had his mother all of that time. So he’s simply going to abandon her and let her die (along with all of her friends) just because he’s suddenly forgotten about her and everything she’s done for him over his life? What a twit.
And can someone remind me of how Jack got his superpowers? Is it Borg-related because it was passed down from his dad’s Borg genes? And so this has made Jack somehow telepathic and able to manipulate the minds of others? And if that’s the case, what about all of the other children of ex-B’s? Will they also manifest the same powers? Will B’Elanna’s daughter also have superpowers? Or is it just the kids of Captain Picard who are bestowed with these gifts?
Bravo! One of the best episodes of Star Trek ever made. I was completely enraptured the entire time. This was a fine way to send off the TNG crew. Terry Matalas said he wanted to do his own version of Undiscovered Country and he succeeded. I’m glad no one died and we got a happy ending for all (except all the people who died during the borg mass assimilation. Oof!)
I’m also glad they basically retconned out the first two seasons of the show. Q is back. Jurati’s borg collective is ignored. Picard’s robot body is basically ignored. Data is alive again. There has been no mention of the “synths” that had a big part in the first season.
I’m mixed about the prospects of a Star Trek: Legacy show with the new cast. Fan service, member berries and small universe syndrome are things that I don’t like and all long-running media franchises these days are riddled with them. But if they can do episodic, smaller stakes, character driven Strange New Worlds style adventures, then it could be great.
Speaking of Strange New Worlds, I can’t wait for season 2! The future of Star Trek looks pretty bright right now.
And in my father’s love, I watched the Borg Cube explode – the last half of the line was practically written by the start of Jack’s assimilation last episode
Oof. The start of the episode showed how many ships taking on Spacedock, again? It’s as if someone had given an order to concentrate all fire on that Super Star Destroyer, except the Executor was a place where ships go to dock and repair instead of a mobile battle station.
One thing I still can’t quite parse is how the Borg and rogue Changelings made first contact, let alone developed a plan for the rogues to be thrall to the Borg. I rewatched this episode, and I still can’t piece together precisely how that they made their acquaintance except for the Queen stating they did so for thematically convenient reasons.
As superficially funny as Worf’s “Swords are fun” line was, it was belied by the sword being so heavy as to be a bludgeoning weapon as much as a slashing weapon…that didn’t work as either against the remaining drones. That humor unfortunately felt false to the character, unlike his gentle snoring on the bridge after coming back after having been cauterized while shot. Likewise, going over session time by an hour…again…I can see how Counselor Troi’s browsing of vacation spots was again meant to be funny, it’s suggestive of poor boundary management in a couple of ways that is just unprofessional instead of a deeply felt character beat.
The run through the Borg Cube felt like a mashup of the Death Star I and II runs for me: All the fun of the tower runs in the first movie before diving into the trench combined with the twists and turns through the superstructure that didn’t even require a single Bothan spy to map out perfectly! Yes, it was a worthy moment for the crew to trust Data, but @83 pointed out the dimensional ludicrousness entailed in such a run.
In contrast, Jack’s assimilation had shades of The Matrix; @97, I think his special transmission powers were specially transmitted from Picard’s Borg-rewritten gametes. The description of how he felt lifted up made me think of the end of Revolutions, in which Neo was borne up and assimilated willingly. His visitation with jacked-in Picard (whose golem body was somehow still able to be assimilated with no problem) was more like the initial White Room scene in The Matrix. I still find it weird how Jack just went off to jack in at the end of the last episode; how did the Borg call intensify so? How was it that Jack was looking so ardently for the Borg Queen (implying that Troi shouldn’t have helped him open the door?) and could contact her after the Shrike’s destruction (so the Portal gun was really just a freaky toy to start the season and then screw with the Titan)? And WTF trial, Q? Again, a character moment thrown in for nostalgia that didn’t feel grounded to the overarching narrative; I agree with @23 that at least having Wesley show up and defend against Q would have been a more fitting “familial” confrontation of superpowered beings.
The best thematic sense I could make is that pace @82, it’s not that Jack has never been connected to anyone; it’s that for so long, he was connected to only his mother, which stymied his social development. And then, he was going to trade one isolated mother for another. It took his father reaching into the Collective to rejoin him and welcome him into back into the wider world rather than being constricted to life within a cube. I agree with a number of commenters who have questioned how a transwarp conduit opening into a gas giant wouldn’t wreak havoc on Jupiter and the cube; what was unique about Earth’s planetary defenses that would have prevented the Cube from transwarping beneath them with such technology and beginning the assimilation with no muss, no fuss?
And yet, there were satisfying callbacks. Worf’s “Tears are the body’s weapon against pain; having never wept” was a great reference to Star Trek VI’s “Klingons have no tear ducts” assertion all the way back to his granddad. Data’s limerick from The Naked Now – the first non-pilot TNG episode – and the longing poker game showing how much the crew’s camaraderie had grown since Picard’s first joining them at the tail of All Good Things… were beautiful bookends to the whole series in the bar. I lamented Guinan’s absence there, along with Laris’s, though Kestra’s could be hand-waved away as it was the whole season due to the kid-unfriendly locale. In any case, I agree with other commenters about appreciating the room this denouement gave the characters to resolve their stories, and @32 highlighted how important Seven taking the captain’s chair with Raffi at her side as a first officer bridge is.
Overall, though I do think that plot holes and characterization missteps remained this series’ nemesis (my wife muttered that Q’s appearance wasn’t the worst way this show broke its own and TNG’s established rules), but it provided a far more satisfying resolution to the characters’ story arcs than Nemesis. Like season 1, I think it lost the plot in the final two episodes, but it provided an emotionally satisfying wrap-up for all the TNG characters, not just Data.
If only season 2 would have addressed Picard’s involuntary “assimilation” into the golem body as a thematic bridge between seasons 1 and 3…
Have no fear. There will be more Borg.
Next year the Borg will assimilate the Muppet Show, and we will get an entire season of Borg drones attacking, singing Hmm Borg Borg.
@80/CLB: I believe the catchphrase thing began with Discovery. Jason Isaac gave an interview where he said he wanted to come up with his own unique catchphrase as captain. And then Burnham made a big deal out of her own catchphrase, “Let’s fly.” Next, Pike did one. Seven gets a crack at it. And now Spock will. So it’s definitely a Secret Hideout thing.
I’ll be honest, I absolutely loved it. But I’m a man who is very easily pleased and I think I’ve just been in the mood for some unadulterated nostalgia.
My only nitpick is that I wish the the Titan had been renamed the USS Picard. I think that would have made much more sense to the show and the universe as a whole.
@91/garreth: “Between the Ent-D bridge set, the sets with all of the Borg, and tons of VFX shots involving the fleet battle and the battle between Ent-D and the Borg vessel, it felt very high budget indeed.”
Not to me. I mean, it was pretty evident that we didn’t see any other parts of the E-D like the transporter room or the corridors, except for Deanna’s office, which was probably a redress of a Titan set. And the Borg interior was probably another La Sirena redress, or maybe on the M’Talas Prime soundstage. Otherwise, we didn’t see any sets we haven’t already seen, didn’t see anything of what was happening on Spacedock or on Earth. So to me, it didn’t feel any less enclosed than previous episodes. I don’t think there was a single scene filmed outdoors in this entire season.
One way in which there was a very clear budget crunch, confirmed by Matalas’s interviews, is the lack of cameos by people like Janeway. Apparently we were supposed to discover that Ro had been captured alive along with Tuvok.
@93/Mr. Magic: “The whole thing was improvised.”
I figured that when Worf said “I fold, okay?” That sounded more like Dorn than Worf.
@97/garreth: “And if that’s the case, what about all of the other children of ex-B’s? Will they also manifest the same powers?”
They may have the potential, but I think Jack’s powers were only manifesting because the Queen was trying to activate him. Without a Queen anymore, the potential will be dormant.
@98/Tim Kaiser: “There has been no mention of the “synths” that had a big part in the first season.”
Yes, there was. Altan Soong was the one who recreated Data using the same technology he used to make Picard’s synth body. “Synth” was treated here as a term for a more advanced, pseudobiological form of android, although it was used in season 1 merely as a pithier synonym for “android.”
@101/garreth: “I believe the catchphrase thing began with Discovery.”
I know where it began. I just wish it hadn’t caught on afterward. It’s a silly retcon.
Quoth Tim Kaiser: “Bravo! One of the best episodes of Star Trek ever made.”
Quoth Tim Kaiser two paragraphs later: “I’m mixed about the prospects of a Star Trek: Legacy show with the new cast. Fan service, member berries and small universe syndrome are things that I don’t like”
You just called an episode filled with fan service, member berries, and small-universe syndrome one of the best episodes of Star Trek ever made, so I’m having a real hard time reconciling your post…. *chuckle*
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The fleet formation is line of sight in a galaxy 100,000 light years across. Tell me you don’t understand how space works without saying you don’t understand how space works. Then again we seem to be warping around the quadrant in no time flat so we knew that already. Guess we couldn’t afford the science advisor this seaso
@105/MikeKelm: “The fleet formation is line of sight in a galaxy 100,000 light years across. Tell me you don’t understand how space works without saying you don’t understand how space works.”
On the contrary — line of sight in space is potentially limitless. We can see the Andromeda Galaxy 3 million light years away with the naked eye. The problem is not distance (as long as you have instantaneous or near-instantaneous subspace communication); the problem is that sometimes things can get in the way of line of sight, as I mentioned before.
It would’ve made more sense to say that the cloaking device blocked signals between ships. After all, that’s basically how cloaks work, by obscuring any emissions from a ship, so presumably they could be set to block incoming signals too (although apparently they usually don’t). Or maybe, because it’s a two-way connection, breaking the link in one direction would be enough, since you’d get no feedback.
I know the ‘cheapness’ of the show came up a lot in the discussions but I don’t think a limited budget is always a bad thing. Any creative endeavor has limits it needs to stay within, and the tighter those limits the more thoughtful you need to be about what is absolutely necessary and what to cull, i.e. “Kill your darlings.” All the Treks were relatively cheap and they made do.
The big CGI spectacle we got at the end made me reflect on how the show actually distributed their budget. The returning cast had to have been a major part of the spend, and I found the scenes focused on those actors just talking the best parts of the show. When the show cut away from this to run the season’s A plot I almost always felt that I’d enjoy more low stakes scenes with the TNG crew just acting than high stakes scenes involving the new cast.
The finale was impressive on the visual effects side, but it’s money that I think would have been better spent earlier in the season on more time with the TNG crew. How many Geordi/Data or Picard/Beverly scenes were cut to afford the Enterprise D bridge? And it’s another reason having the Borg be an 11th hour villain was a dumb call. After spending a season with the Changelings as the show’s antagonists they had to create all the assets to bring the Borg in rather than investing that budget earlier in the season.
Also, I noticed they didn’t manage to get the scaling right in the CGI. When the docked the D at the museum station it was right next to the door they flew out of last episode. And it was half the size it needed to be for the D to exit the station. That got a chuckle. And relative to the other ships the D looked too small. Before JJ/Secret Hideout rescaled everything the D was a really really big ship.
Let me compare this to Doctor Who. One Dalek was massively scary, tens of thousands are just CGI overkill, and emotionally flat. Same here. There is no way the one old ship would have survived the attacks from the entire fleet. And the Q scene was not only unnecessary, but it also made his previous ‘death’ meaningless, and Jack can be a bit unlikable to be the next, next generation of Trek.
Otherwise, the emotional bits were great and appropriate, the old crew’s chemistry was at its best, and their ending was fitting and well-deserved.
@26/Mary: Walter Koenig is four years older than Patrick Stewart. Since Picard is several years older than Stewart to account for slower human aging in the 24th/25th centuries, I would assume that President Chekov is at least several years older than Picard, and thus possibly a centenarian.
@107/kurtzwald: “I don’t think a limited budget is always a bad thing.”
Of course not, but there are better and worse ways to handle a limited budget. TOS’s Bob Justman was a master of finding ways to achieve as much as possible with a limited budget, so that the show looked like it cost more than it did. PIC season 3 was much less successful, making creative decisions that just called attention to the budget crunch, like the dreadful “The holodeck has power to keep Ten Forward running even when the entire crew is literally on the verge of death from loss of life-support power” idea.
“When the docked the D at the museum station it was right next to the door they flew out of last episode.”
I don’t think it was, no. The door we saw at the end was Bay 15, not Bay 12. I think I read that the CGI artists added a larger Bay 12 door to the Spacedock digital model to accommodate the size of the E-D.
Overall, I agree with KRad’s analysis of the good and the bad in the episode. There were a number of absences that could have been solved with what a friend and I call the “one line of dialogue” rule (that is, if you can easily account for someone’s or something’s absence with one line of dialogue, you should write that one line of dialogue): Jurati Borg, Janeway, Laris, even the TNG supporting cast we were hoping to see (Pulaski, O’Brien).
I really thought the mid-credits scene would be Wesley meeting his brother. Then when Q showed up, I thought for a moment we’d get a Wesley-Q snipe-fest. Ah well.
The one absence from earlier seasons that I haven’t seen mentioned in the comments (although)I haven’t read through all them) is Elnor. I know a lot of people didn’t care for the character but given Raffi’s connection to him (which drove so much of her arc in Season 2), you would think he’d have been among the bridge crew of the new Enterprise. Seven clearly got to have a say in her first officer, her “special counselor” and her returning bridge crew — I have a hard time believing she and Raffi wouldn’t have pushed for Elnor to be reassigned.
I like the catchphrase thing. It’s fun. And I don’t think it’s “dumb” for Spock to say “I want the ship to go, now.”. Spock can be a wordsmith, but he’s also utilitarian. What’s more utilitarian than that?
I generally disliked everything up until the Borg cube blew up. Another villainous Borg Queen episode. Yawn. Explosions, pew pew shooting at each other, And yes, the imminent “fall of the federation and destruction of earth”. The Earth centrism bugs me too, can’t remember what character says something like if Earth falls everything everywhere is lost, ok.
As much as I have disliked them bringing back characters from previous shows only to kill them off quickly, I kind of wish one or more of our heroes had met their end here, if only to justify all of the heartfelt goodbyes…. It’s been an honor serving with you, farewell Imzadi, yada yada yada.
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Jack. I just don’t.
The best things about this episode were the little moments. Riker struggling with the sword, Worf’s one liner that followed, The beautiful bit of acting by Jeri Ryan as Seven watched Shaw’s holographic performance review, etc.
I will echo the comments of those who think Laris’s character was very poorly treated here. I was hoping one of the denouement scenes would include a reunion of her and Picard. Such an empathetic yet complex woman. I thought she was perfect for him and I wanted to see them together one more time.
But my favorite part about this last episode is that illuminated card table. I’ve got to get me one of those.
I suppose I still want a Seven of Nine spinoff, but I would honestly prefer if Jack wasn’t there and no one at all commented on his absence. Bring back Elnor.
jaimebabb: I abso-fucking-lutely want a Seven of Nine spinoff, and have wanted one since the nanosecond the character showed up in Picard season one.
But I’d also be very happy if Elnor showed up as part of the Enterprise crew, too, as Evan Evagora deserves better than what he got on this show, and it would be nice to show more of his being mentored by Musiker.
I doubt they’ll just wish Jack into the cornfield, but I wouldn’t complain if they did, either………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Jack Crusher has been through enough and deserves a trip to his home planet.
@112/fullyfunctional: “And I don’t think it’s “dumb” for Spock to say “I want the ship to go, now.”. Spock can be a wordsmith, but he’s also utilitarian. What’s more utilitarian than that?”
What’s more utilitarian is issuing the actual appropriate command to order a subordinate to execute a specific task. “Ensign Ortega, ahead warp factor two, engage.” That’s what Spock would say. It’s a military command center, not an improv stage.
I love a good catchphrase when it comes from a tokusatsu or anime superhero, but that’s a fantasy genre. Star Trek is supposed to be more grounded. There’s room for banter on the bridge, yes — that was established as far back as “The Corbomite Maneuver,” a superb example of the everyday character naturalism that TOS originally aspired to — but actual orders need to be clear and precise.
@110, “PIC season 3 was much less successful, making creative decisions that just called attention to the budget crunch”
That’s close to the point I was attempting to make. What money they had I felt they spent unwisely. Specifically they paid for an effects heavy finale with money that could have been used earlier in the season to improve the quality of the show.
What bothered me about the reuse of 10 forward was less about set reuse that in was about how silly the idea was for the reasons you mentioned. Outside the bridge and engineering I think 90% of shipboard Trek is on redressed sets.
Someone’s been pointing out this season the dim lighting on the show (I’m sorry I forgot who it was) but that was another effort to try and mask that they only had one hall and a couple rooms built. Like lighting the same hall to hide the windows and make it look like an internal hall. It just looked to me like they were in a tunnel. There’s plenty of great scifi that was done on the cheap (B5, SG-1, Farscape, Doctor Who, etc.) I’d have been fine if they didn’t bother trying to look like a more expensive show. It was effort I think that could have been spent elsewhere. As a Trek fan I’m used to one hall and a couple rooms.
#116.
I agree. I heard someone once say that when you push aside Trek’s sci-fi elements it’s basically a workplace drama.
With that in mind, I would say only the most annoying people in the office have their own personal catchphrase — the kind of boss who makes finger guns and calls you “sport.”
@118/Dingo: Yes, exactly. Roddenberry strove for character naturalism. He didn’t want larger-than-life, quippy action heroes, he wanted believable professionals doing a job that happened to be in outer space in the future.
@119/Christopher
Roddenberry strove for character naturalism. He didn’t want larger-than-life,
I find this ironic since many people in fandom tend to treat Capt. Kirk like he was larger than life
We even have Janeway in “Flashback” waxing nostalgic about the TOS era
#120.
That’s fine for fandom to treat characters that way; it’s only natural for us to hold our heroes in high regard. But when writers start treating characters within the fictional universe that way, it pulls me out of the story nearly every single time. Same with catchphrases. They shouldn’t be aware of how great the pop culture phenomenon Star Trek is while they’re in Star Trek.
@118, @120, Not terribly long ago I read Marc Cushman’s ‘These are the Voyages’ (which I’d recommend to any fan). One of the tings it made me think about was how the character of Kirk is remembered or misremembered. I think the caricature of Kirk as a two fisted womanizer with a weird cadence to his dialogue has replaced the actual character as he was written. The majority of the time he was a serious professional career ‘military’ officer.
When I look at something like Chris Pine’s character in ST (2009) it’s clearly drawing from the caricature more than the character I think Rodenberry intended and for the most part Shatner delivered. That was ‘Kirk’ crafted for a general moviegoing audience.
I suspect a lot of the unprofessionalism we see in the recent Treks points back to JJ and he pointed back to a false precedent.
To bring this back around to Picard, my impression is we saw three seasons of Movie Picard and not really TNG Picard. Things in the movies seemed to get a lot of weight relative to the show.
@120/Mary: “I find this ironic since many people in fandom tend to treat Capt. Kirk like he was larger than life”
Which is an ongoing source of frustration to me. The popular perception of James T. Kirk is almost the diametric opposite of who he actually was.
@122/kurtzwald: “When I look at something like Chris Pine’s character in ST (2009) it’s clearly drawing from the caricature more than the character I think Rodenberry intended and for the most part Shatner delivered. That was ‘Kirk’ crafted for a general moviegoing audience.”
That’s true to an extent, but everyone seems to forget that those movies were specifically about depicting a younger, less seasoned Kirk, Spock, etc. in their formative years. The idea was that we’d see Kirk grow into the captain we knew over the course of the trilogy. And indeed, in Beyond, which is set only two years before when the second pilot took place in the Prime timeline, Kirk is portrayed as a more seasoned officer rather than the hothead of the first two movies (allowing for the idiom of modern action movies, at least).
If anything, the Kelvin films did something rather deft, by starting with the caricature of Kirk that people expect and evolving it toward a more authentic portrayal as the character matured.
@123 / CLB:
If anything, the Kelvin films did something rather deft, by starting with the caricature of Kirk that people expect and evolving it toward a more authentic portrayal as the character matured.
Agreed; that was one aspect of the Kelvin Trilogy I did like, too.
I fell behind watching Picard because I was in the midst of a move, and stopped at Ep. 7, catching up with 8 and 9 Wednesday and then 10 last night. 8 was glorious (except for killing of Shaw, dammit)–daring rescues! Villains vanquished! All of the old gang sitting around a table plotting their next move! Honestly, if they had ended the season right there I wouldn’t have quibbled too much, major unresolved plot points be damned. Vadic was the best villain Trek has seen in a long time. Then I watched 9 and 10, and although there were superb moments (Data must’ve studied SNW’s Lt. Ortegas’ flying techniques–the “fat” big E was moving like a fighter jet in Top Gun), it really felt like somebody had given a big budget to a piece of fan fiction. Borg? Again? That horse isn’t just dead, it’s pretty much fully decomposed. And then they trot out even more fan service. I’m only mildly surprised we didn’t get references to the mirror universe and maybe even the TOS Doomsday Machine (one of my favorite TOS episodes growing up). But even with all the callbacks, it seemed like Picard wanted to ditch its first two seasons entirely. Laris sends Picard off and we never see her again. Jurati isn’t mentioned, though certainly reaching out to her for help with the Borg would have made sense. No mention at all of Space Legolas (er, Elnor).
Despite my grumbling, this was far and away the best season of Picard, and Episode 8 ranks right up there with SNW as the very best of new Trek. I would definitely love to see Captain Seven and XO Raffi’s adventures on the new big E, too (though I am sorry T’Vreen and Shaw won’t be around for it).
@123 – The same more mature and seasoned character who was bored after two years of boldly going and wanted to “apply” to be an admiral? Just a couple of years out of academy? That Kirk? He’s the same cocky kid who bragged that he didn’t need a full four year academy education, just a tiny bit more restrained.
TOS Kirk is the one that bulled his way back into command in TMP because he convinced Nogura that he was the only one who could deal with V’Ger. His elevated status also comes up when Morrow say Kirk is his best officer. And again in TFF when Admiral Bob sends him to Nimbus III. And again in TUC when Kirk is seen as the only Captain who can deal with the Klingons
kkozoriz: What you describe in your second paragraph is not TOS Kirk, it’s movie Kirk. And movie Kirk — both the one played by William Shatner and the one played by Chris Pine — is based, as Christopher said, on the perception of Kirk more than the reality of Kirk.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
President Chekov’s age is reasonable if we assume that Chekov had no children in Generations. He and Scotty have a conversation with Kirk about Sulu’s daughter and there’s a line about “if something’s important you make the time” so he could have taken that to heart after the loss of Kirk and started a family soon after that. It would make his son less than 110, which is a reasonable age for a 25th-century human.
@125/kgrierson: Terry Matalas has said that he’d find a way to bring Shaw back and on Star Trek anything is possible whether it’s a clone of Shaw or Q simply snapping his fingers. But I think sometimes a character should just remain dead because then there is no emotional weight to a character dying if it has no permanence.
Personally, my favorite episode of this final season was the one with Ro: surprise return of a great character, fireworks between her and Picard, wondering if she’s a Changeling, dramatic and emotional heartbreak and resolution between the mentor and protege, and we’re still in the midst of the paranoia of a Changeling conspiracy and takeover which is legitimately scary and disturbing (and before the Borg show up to muck things up as the main adversary).
A word in defence of the Cook – not necessarily that they were the cook; but for their existence – in the first episode, when Seven is arguing with Picard & Riker and demanding to know why they are on the Titan; and is shown to be considering leaving Starfleet – she says that she thought, from the example of Picard and Janeway, that she might one day be able to inspire someone to do something they couldn’t otherwise do, but instead, she’s not.
Until of course, she did – told the Cook he was their pilot now and just had to ‘comply’ and get on with it (I know she didn’t say Comply, but it would’ve fitted if she had!). It gave a symmetry/destination to that thought expressed in the first episode.
The Cook didn’t have to be a cook; but to fulfil that wish from the first episode, they’d need to be someone who wouldn’t normally be on the bridge – maybe a sickbay tech or a sanitation worker would’ve worked; but then you wouldn’t have had the Easter Egg of Neelix & the Chef from Enterprise – two other cooks we’ve seen! (And after all, Voyager did have a private dining room for the Captain originally, and the Ent-A hosted state dinners; so presumably there is a role to preparing food that isn’t just replicated!)
@127/krad: “And movie Kirk… is based… on the perception of Kirk…”
Isn’t it more the other way around? I’ve seen you argue (and I agree) that the popular image of Kirk as a rule-breaking maverick is based mainly on the TOS movies, what with the Kobayashi Maru cheat and the hijacking of the Enterprise.
If anything, though, the Kirk of the TOS movies was different from his popular image in one respect, in that the movies didn’t portray him as a womanizer. He had a past relationship with Carol Marcus, but the closest thing he had to a romance in the movies was his flirtation with Gillian Taylor, which pretty much failed to impress her.
Oh, and after everything is said and done, does Jack still have his superpowers where he can warg (Game of Thrones reference) into other people’s minds and also hear others’ thoughts?
@125/ kgrierson – I agree that Episode 8 was a very solid episode. So solid, in fact, that I think that we might have been better off just getting a feature-length movie about Data, Lore, and the rogue Changelings.
@129/ garreth – There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Terry Matalas will bring Shaw back if he gets a chance, because there seems so little regard for the permanence of death. That’s probably the main reason why this season felt so utterly lightweight to me.
@127 – TOS Kirk = Movie Kirk. It”s the same guy, or so we’re told. Or are the movies in an alternate realty? Sure, the presentation has changed since TOS but Kirk also changed from season 1 to season 3. Unless it’s Mirror Kirk or JJ Kirk, we’re told that it’s the same guy. Same as when he shows up on SNW in season 2. First season wasn’t the same reality so that one doesn’t count. Other than those, It’s the same guy.
@132 – My understanding was that he was only able to “warg” them because the Borg had already installed the requisite organic hardware in their brains. That presumably is why he couldn’t have just remotely taken control of Vadic.
I just wanted to thank KRAD and CLB for defending Kirk’s honour. I was just old enough to see some episodes when broadcast, and then, of course, devoured the reruns throughout the 70s. To the point of being able to identify episodes by opening shot, usually. And always after the opening lines. The caricature of Kirk as an arrogant, womanizing blowhard always annoyed me. Yes, the convention, back then, was for the lead actor to have romantic entanglements. But Kirk always remained devoted to the ship, and his crew. When it happened, it was usually tactical, a way to protect the ship and mission. Or he was under the influence, Elaan, Miramanee, etc. And it’s clear he did attempt deeper attachments, Carol Marcus, Areel Shaw, but, in the end, Enterprise remained his Muse.
I don’t feel that I can agree about the complaints regarding the size of the Borg cube because the Enterprise flew through it. Looking back at earlier episodes of TNG with the Enterprise facing off against a cube, it showed the cube being much smaller. The cube in this episode was gigantic! It had to be at least an order of magnitude larger than cubes seen previously to be visible at all against the Great Red Spot! Yes, the previous cubes were very large, but none so big that in zooming out, the Enterprise pretty much disappeared from view!
(On a side note, I was mesmerized, not just by the size of the Enterprise against the cube, but also how the cube almost disappeared against the enormity of Jupiter!)
Thinking back to First Contact, the cube was much larger than the Enterprise-E, but not that big! So, with a cube that is that big, I can imagine it being large enough for the Enterprise-D to get through.
Also, I can imagine Spacedock being able to double as an orbital battle station in defense of Earth, especially after the Dominion War.
Concerning TOS Kirk vs. Movie Kirk, I think they did a fairly decent job carrying over Kirk’s qualities from the series to the movies, despite the larger-than-life exaggeration that often comes with the big screen. Keep in mind, also, he is in a sort of prolonged midlife crisis through most of them, so it makes sense to me seeing him desperate to get back in command, suffering regret and ennui, stealing a starship, flirting with a younger woman, and climbing a rock. It’s cliched as hell, but I think it works for the most part.
I find it a more believable transition than TNG Picard to Movie Picard to Picard Picard, anyway.
It’s a cozy conclusion when everyone escapes consequence.
Even Jack — the central figure in the near-annihilation of the Federation, humanity, and just about every other sentient life form in the galaxy — gets a cushy job as a Starfleet crewmember. Who’d want to share a ship with him? I imagine chatting him up at in the lunchroom: “What did you do before you enlisted?” “Oh, I coordinated the deaths of all the senior crewmembers during Frontier Day and destroyed Spacedock before unleashing the fleet on all the major cities of Earth. But the admiral — I mean, my dad — or my mom, well, they both love me.”
Come to think of it, that’s probably a good reason to assign him to the renamed Titan rather than any other Starfleet vessel; it’s the one ship where he probably killed the smallest proportion of the senior crew.
I feel like part of why the perception of Kirk, both in pop culture and in-universe, is so all over the place is that he wasn’t consistently written in TOS. Gene Coon typically wrote Kirk as impulsive but good-hearted and empathetic, but other writers alternately portrayed him as a breezy jokester, a tense and grim professional, a hard-headed uncompromising soldier, or a horrible skeevy bastard. Shatner is a very good actor IMO and embodies all those roles well, but Kirk doesn’t really feel like the same person from episode to episode to me. Movie Kirk is a bit of a prat and his in-universe reputation is annoying, but it makes sense that the popular perception of Kirk relies so strongly on Movie Kirk, given that he’s at least consistent and you could probably make a short list of his main traits that won’t get contradicted ten seconds later.
It’s always baffled me how people claim Janeway was erratic and inconsistent, but give Kirk a free pass – Janeway actually feels very coherent to me with a clear evolution across the show’s run and broadly consistent morals and motivations, whereas Kirk’s characterisation is still scrambled even in Season 3.
@139/ Jeffronicus – It’s especially ridiculous given how much shit Seven of Nine, or even Picard, have faced over their histories with the Collective. Both of them were assimilated against their will; Jack, in the midst of an adolescent tantrum, went off to the Borg Queen voluntarily, knowing full well that he was the centrepiece in her evil plot. Jack should be in prison, not in Starfleet.
@141 – So should Spock (The Menagerie), Kirk (TSFS), Scotty (Sabotage of Excelsior, theft, etc) along with Sulu, McCoy and Chekov. You try stealing an aircraft carrier and see how people react.
@142 Spock and company also didn’t force half of Starfleet to slaughter the other half.
“Wait, so you’re the son of a bitch who made me murder my best friend?! …Oh, you were having daddy issues at the time, were you? Well, that’s alright then.”
This was a profoundly unnecessary and thoroughly loveable conclusion to a moderately-necessary and quite loveable series: I’d have liked it still better had the Big Bad been someone other than the Borg AGAIN.
On the other hand, any show which pays tribute to the late Anton Yelchin by simultaneously reminding us that Pavel Chekov is ABSOLUTELY the sort of All-Russian Nerd to name his son ‘Anton Chekov’ can’t be all bad! (Even if there is a truly tragic lack of Number One canine meeting his namesake and Picard’s OTHER friends & family).
Oh, and it would be absolutely hilarious if Jack Crusher’s position as Special Counsellor basically translates to “Jack, you’re getting Deanna’s old job” (Because, in all seriousness, a position as moral officer would be an excellent synthesis between his mother’s gifts as a healer and his father’s gift for the inspirational speech – and also, helpfully, keeps Jack a safe distance from any Big Red Buttons).
I wonder if President Anton Chekov has an Uncle Vanya. (It would have to be on his mother’s side, though.)
@143 – Kirk was also willing to let people die of a virulent plague while he chased after the cloud creature in Obsessio
Re: referencing TOS, it makes sense for a show named “Picard” to focus on TNG, DS9, and Voyager—the three shows set in the era that Picard’s crew kicked off. Discovery and SNW have more than enough TOS references to go around. Heck, Discovery even brought back the Galactic Barrier last season.
@149/durandal: “it makes sense for a show named “Picard” to focus on TNG, DS9, and Voyager—the three shows set in the era that Picard’s crew kicked off. Discovery and SNW have more than enough TOS references to go around.”
Which is exactly why it’s so incongruous that this season has blatantly copied so much from The Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home.
I fully accept the criticisms and plot contrivance issues that are being mentioned and the main criticism being that Matalas has just indulged in fan service throughout this season.. but you know what.. screw em… as a fan of various franchises that have left me disappointed in the last couple of years, (I’m looking at you Marvel and DC) I am delighted to be wiping a tear or two from my eye after watching this season, a bit of fan service is well overdue in my book, I’ve enjoyed it immensely.
@151/chadefallstar: What disturbs me is the idea that “fan service” means reminding us of things we were fans of decades ago. You know how I want to be served as a fan? Give me new stories good enough that I can become a fan of them. I’d consider that far greater service.
When TNG started, a lot of the hardcore TOS fans rejected it and denounced it as “not real Trek,” and even much of the TOS cast was pretty hostile to it. But it didn’t try to constantly reference and imitate TOS in hopes of winning over the nostalgia junkies. It made itself better at telling new stories about new characters and new parts of the universe, and it won over the fanbase by being good in its own right.
@152 / CLB:
When TNG started, a lot of the hardcore TOS fans rejected it and denounced it as “not real Trek,” and even much of the TOS cast was pretty hostile to it. But it didn’t try to constantly reference and imitate TOS in hopes of winning over the nostalgia junkies. It made itself better at telling new stories about new characters and new parts of the universe, and it won over the fanbase by being good in its own right.
I also think part of it was that at that point in time, Trek was TOS. 79 episodes and 4 movies (and TAS) was all they had for a foundation.
TNG had to prove you could tell stories without Kirk, the 1701, or the 23rd Century. Either option — of delving head-in into nostalgia, or trying to break free — would piss off half the audience. The latter was ultimately the right move. And even though I didn’t grow up with TOS, I’ll admit removing the temptation to play with the old action figures by virtue of the time skip from the 2280s to 2360s was the right move.
Now, 35 years and countless spinoffs later, the pressure isn’t there anymore because there are so many foundations. With the TNG era especially, that’s the era that has the most media and the most generation saturation. The temptation to play with the action figures you grew up with is overwhelmingly greater compared to revisiting ENT and playing with those toys.
@152 The unceremonious dropping of the first two seasons’ cast is pretty emblematic of the unrestrained fan service. It’s almost fetishistic in its slavish devotion to the old. Couldn’t they have at least TRIED to integrate the two segments of Picard’s life?
Interestingly, for all of the complaints about how “NuTrek” has been insufficiently deferential towards what has gone before, this is first season that feels outright contemptuous towards previous canon. Not stuff from the 90s of course–God no; that needs to be preserved like holy relics–but for everything that had been established in the first two seasons.
McCoy was aged 137 when he appeared in TNG, and wasn’t Archer intended to have died at age 133? President Chekov possibly being a centenarian should not be much of an issue.
@153/Mr. Magic: “The temptation to play with the action figures you grew up with is overwhelmingly greater”
Professional writing is not just about giving into temptation, though. The problem with fans of a franchise becoming its creators is that they forget the maxim “Kill your darlings.” Creators have to be willing to put aside their own sentiment and focus on what the story needs. They need to look beyond themselves and consider how to appeal to an audience that doesn’t necessarily share their pre-existing preferences.
The goal of new works in a series should not be merely to pander to the existing fanbase, which is bound to dwindle over time, so it’s an exercise in diminishing returns. The goal of new installments should be to create new fans.
Fan Service, Nostalgia-bait… if I ever hear these terms again, it will be too soon. At least to me, when I hear these terms thrown around negatively, it feels like an old adult lecturing a child. As if the critic is an above it all enlightened human and the people enjoying it are simple minded fools.
These season was fantastic and exceeded all expectations. Every one I know in real life is overjoyed by it. Any website I go to that has any kind of rating system shows these episodes as being enjoyed by the vast majority of fans. It’s only message boards that are bogged down with negativity.
@158/M: As I’ve said before, majorities mean nothing. It’s easy to make people happy by reminding them of something they already enjoy, so that’s not an impressive accomplishment. It’s more impressive to make them enjoy something new, which is what TNG did, and what Picard attempted to do in its first season and then abandoned.
> (hilariously, he’s actually the second-highest ranking person in the group as a commodore—at one point, Riker says, “Belay that order” to La Forge, but La Forge actually outranks him now, which nobody mentions)
I’m not entirely sure of the regs, but I believe that chain-of-command takes precedence over rank in combat situations, so you don’t get situations in battle of a flag officer overruling the CO just because he happens to be on the bridge.
I’ll have to confirm that, however.
I still suspect that Geordi’s commodore rank is mostly just a formality that allows him to “command” a fleet of museum pieces. That said, I actually enjoyed seeing him in the centre seat. I think that this is first time we’ve seen him in command since all the way back in “The Arsenal of Freedom,” and he’s actually done a fairly good job of handling it both times.
jaimebabb: Strictly speaking, we saw La Forge in command in Voyager‘s “Timeless,” though that was an alternate timeline…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@157 / CLB:
The problem with fans of a franchise becoming its creators is that they forget the maxim “Kill your darlings.” Creators have to be willing to put aside their own sentiment and focus on what the story needs. They need to look beyond themselves and consider how to appeal to an audience that doesn’t necessarily share their pre-existing preferences.
Yeah, Matlas even outright admitted that:
“There was a moment in the finale where it seemed like Riker and Worf and Picard or some combination might actually die. Was that really on the table?”
No, but I really wanted you to think that it might be for the drama. I don’t have it in me to kill my childhood heroes like that. I think some creators probably would. It felt like those characters would certainly feel like this is probably our last run. So I really wanted the surprise ending to be a happy ending.
A nice sentiment…but all too TNG and playing it safe.
Regarding the discussion about callbacks and fan service, and TNG’s decision to reinvent itself rather than regurgitate TOS:
The thought occurs that, if TNG had taken the same sort of route in 1987 that Legacy (if it happens) appears set to take… the captain of the Enterprise-D might have been an elderly Pavel Chekov, Geordi would have been Uhura’s son, Riker would have been Kirk’s son, and they would have spent the entire first season almost exclusively visiting places and encountering groups already visited by Kirk a century earlier. Any original characters would have been fully thematically tied into a pre-existing TOS episode in some way (think the way La’an from SNW is tied to “Arena”, or Burnham was at first tied to Spock).
I wonder how long the show would have lasted.
To me, the way Picard and Strange New Worlds have gone, plus the way Legacy sounds like it’s going to go, represents a really concerning degree of stagnation for the franchise. I don’t want remixes of pre-existing lore (especially when misused and stripped of its original meaning, like the treatment of the Gorn in SNW). I don’t want to be reminded of better shows I watched years ago, I want a new show that I’ll still be rewatching fondly in two decades’ time, as I do with the 90s shows today. I don’t want to see Kirk, Picard, Sisko or Janeway again; I want new characters to add to that list. The reimagining of Pike in SNW sort of comes close but, as with everything in newer Trek series, he’s just too tied up in existing lore.
@164/Descent: I agree with some of your sentiments, but I think there’s value in expanding on pre-existing lore, filling in the gaps that were underdeveloped before. I mean, TNG gave us new aliens like the Ferengi and Cardassians, but it also deepened Klingons far more than TOS had, and that was a massive part of its legacy. Similarly, I think a vital part of the legacy of Enterprise is the way it deepened the Vulcans and Andorians. And SNW has done more to develop Uhura and Chapel in ten episodes than TOS did in three seasons, not to mention picking up the dropped threads of Pike and Number One and developing them in new ways.
It’s not bad to draw on existing lore as long as you add to it, move it forward in a meaningful way, rather than just using nostalgia as an easy way to get a reaction. The best things this season did were allowing Worf to evolve in a way that was a plausible endpoint of his growth in DS9, and bringing back Data in a way that transformed him into something new rather than just pushing a reset button. Those were better than just putting the crew back on the rebuilt E-D bridge and making a point of recreating old camera angles and actor poses.
@165 / CLB:
I agree with some of your sentiments, but I think there’s value in expanding on pre-existing lore, filling in the gaps that were underdeveloped before… And SNW has done more to develop Uhura and Chapel in ten episodes than TOS did in three seasons, not to mention picking up the dropped threads of Pike and Number One and developing them in new ways.
Or how DSC’s “Lethe” completely re-contextualized the Spock-Sarek schism — something that had been part of Trek for 50 years and been one of the cornerstones of the TOS era — by finally revealing why the Ambassador had been such a p****k about his son joining Starfleet.
My personal rule for fan service and continuity porn is: If you take away all of the Easter eggs and member berries, is the story still worth watching? I personally feel that Lower Decks uses too many Easter eggs; but if you took them all away, then you’d still have a fairly amusing sci-fi sitcom with some fun and interesting characters and occasional moments of extreme poignancy, so Lower Decks passes this test. Strange New Worlds would, if anything, actually probably be even better if the crew were all people we’d never heard of on a ship that we’d never heard of. Same with Discovery if they hadn’t opted to make Michael Burnham Spock’s previously unestablished foster sister.
This season of Picard, in my opinion, does not pass the test. And in fact, once you strip away all of the appeals to nostalgia, there’s really not a lot here. And so I find it very difficult to get excited at the prospect of a series by the same showrunner with a name like Star Trek: Legacy.
@164 / Descent:
I don’t want to be reminded of better shows I watched years ago, I want a new show that I’ll still be rewatching fondly in two decades’ time, as I do with the 90s shows today. I don’t want to see Kirk, Picard, Sisko or Janeway again; I want new characters to add to that list. The reimagining of Pike in SNW sort of comes close but, as with everything in newer Trek series, he’s just too tied up in existing lore.
Yeah, I mean, PIC was a nice way to scratch the itch and come home to the era I grew up in — an era that had always ended unsatisfactorily with Nemesis. I’m grateful to the show for — and since this preceded DSC Season Three — finally returning to the bleeding edge and moving the timeline forward after almost 20 years of looking backwards chronologically.
But more and more, I feel that once Lower Decks and Prodigy wrap their runs, there needs to be a moratorium on any more projects in this era for a good long while (maybe for, heh, the next generation).
I grew up with the 24th Century shows. I love ’em. But at this point, PIC scratched that itch, we got closure and a sendoff, and I’m ready to move on.
That’s one of the reason I’ve enjoyed the last two Seasons of DSC so much — jumping them ahead to the 32nd Century has offered so many world-building and new possibilities (ex. Ni’Var).
@168 / Mr. Magic – Yes, I’m pleased that Starfleet Academy at least will be keeping the 32nd century era going after Disco‘s conclusion.
@165/CLB:
I’d agree with all that – in addition to the examples you mentioned, I especially liked SNW’s treatment of T’Pring, it really felt like the writers were genuinely interested in exploring that character and her situation far more deeply and sympathetically than “Amok Time” had ever afforded.
As you say, the key is definitely in having something meaningful to add to pre-existing ideas. There’s perhaps something grimly amusing in the way that one of Picard‘s (IMO) relatively few worthwhile examinations of past lore, Vadic’s legitimate grievance over the atrocities afflicted upon her by Section 31, was quite literally blasted out an airlock and never mentioned again in order to make way for more shots of the TNG crew standing on the Ent-D’s bridge together. Amazing illustration of the show’s priorities.
@169,
Yeah, I’m really excited for SFA.
There’s building on pre-existing lore right there. The Academy’s been part of the franchise since the very beginning. But while we’ve seen glimpses of the institution and its Cadets over the years, it’s never really been explored in depth on screen.
So it’s a chance to do world-building while offering a new perspective of the universe.
And setting it after DSC is absolutely the right move than just going back to an earlier. Rebuilding the Academy from the ground up offers dramatic possibilities and ups the stakes of being the first Class since the Burn.
I can’t believe this show is giving us the Enterprise-D when we’ve already seen it!
I can’t wait to get back to Strange New Worlds, which is going to show us the…. Enterprise.
#172.
If you’re suggesting SNW gets a free pass from this criticism about nostalgia, then it won’t be from me. I think it’s a problem across the entire franchise right now, as well as a large portion of popular culture.
I would love to see a series that takes it a step beyond SNW, going back to basics with a ship exploring space — no familiar people or ships or aliens. Really strange and new.
As someone who had never watched ALL of Star Trek, I started Picard 3 years ago partially because it seemed to promise new characters, new ideas, and new worldbuilding. Instead, I reached the end on Thursday and almost shut it off. What do I need with all the whipped cream on top of meringue (thank you, KRAD)? Besides the overload of nostalgic characters, the music cues were over-the-top—telling me this was a BIG MOMENT, telling me how emotional I *had to be*. I hate being told how to feel artificially, and this show was worse than I’ve experienced in recent memory. I knew it was pressing the button for “tears now” for many viewers, but for me it was a total turn-off.
@172 & 173: The difference between this and Strange New Worlds is what I mentioned earlier. SNW isn’t just reminding us of familiar, well-explored characters and story elements; it’s taking characters and elements that were barely explored in TOS and adding what was missing before. The characters and aliens and such are familiar, but what we’re learning about them is mostly new, just as with TNG’s Klingons or ENT’s Andorians. And it mostly works well, except for the horrible misstep of dumbing the Gorn down to “pure evil” horror-movie monsters.
Picard‘s preoccupation with nostalgia and continuity porn is closer to Lower Decks, but at least LD manages to balance it with worthwhile new characters and stories.
@173: I’ve been saying the same thing for awhile now: have a crew that goes far out, say, into another galaxy, and explores it willingly, not always griping about returning home. You can have familiar aliens on the starship itself, like Bolians and Benzites and whatever, but the aliens native to this galaxy aren’t just humans with bumpy foreheads, but truly alien and unlike anything we’ve seen before.
@176,
Right, doing VOY straight and right this time around.
And intergalactic exploration is definitely one aspect of the Final Frontier Trek hasn’t really delved into (yeah, I know, due to the Galactic Barrier).
@175 This feels hypocritical to me, sorry. It boils down to: “This type of nostalgia works for me personally, while I go complain about others enjoying this type of nostalgia.”
@178/M: You missed the part where I distinctly explained why they aren’t the same type of nostalgia. Or rather, why it’s not nostalgia at all to reveal new things about characters or aliens that previous canon barely touched on.
It would be interesting to see, say, a fleet of starships pushing out beyond the edge of the galaxy. Maybe have them resupply with Species 10-C before progressing on to one of the Magellanic Clouds. I feel like the entire first season would need to consist largely of shipboard politics and a certain backdrop of psychological horror as they make their way across the intergalactic void to properly capture the enormous distances involved, even at high warp. It would be very different from typical Star Trek fare and probably attract lots of complaints from the side of the fandom that’s depressingly averse to novelty, but I could imagine it being quite interesting.
@180,
Yeah, it just feels like the logical follow-up to VOY — and even the penultimate Season of DSC.
Yes, there’s still plenty of Milky Way Galaxy to explore. But sooner or later,Trek’s gonna have to move beyond it.
The Local Group hasn’t really been fleshed out beyond the Kelvans or Species 10-C. Having the Feds go intergalactic and entering a while new level of exploration just feels right.
178: No, it’s not hypocritical. People explained why the usages differ. I think it’s up to you to explain why those explanations don’t hold up or why the different usages are actually the same. Why do you think the terms “fan service” or “nostalgia ports” are not relevant?
179: Yeah, if a revisit to a character or situation makes you go back and re-evaluate all the past appearances of that character and come to new conclusions, I think that’s actually in opposition to “nostalgia porn” or “fan service.”
@182 / gwangung:
Yeah, if a revisit to a character or situation makes you go back and re-evaluate all the past appearances of that character and come to new conclusions, I think that’s actually in opposition to “nostalgia porn” or “fan service.”
Yeah.
Again, that’s why I brought up the Sarek revelations from DSC’s “Lethe” as an example.
Spock and Sarek’s schism and fiction across TOS — an essential pillar of that era that got carried over even into the Kelvin Timeline — now retroactively plays differently since we finally have context — beyond just, as Keith put it, Sarek being a jackass — for why Sarek was so pissed at Spock for rejecting the VSA in favor of Starfleet.
@179 @182
I like SNW. I have no problem with it. S1 is my favorite season of modern Trek after Picard S3.
I take exception to the nostalgia complaints about Picard S3. As I said before, it comes across as snobbish and it feels judgmental to the ones enjoying it. I also take exception to it bc Trek has never been shy about nostalgia before, and the current example is SNW.
The very reason for the show existing is nostalgia. It’s part of the very DNA of the series, right down to the opening narration. I see no meaningful difference between using an existing character and filling in backstory vs using an existing character and continuing their story. That’s where I see the hypocrisy.
@184 The existence of modern day Trek is because of nostalgia. But nostalgia is not enough to create; there have to have new insight and new things to say. A continuance of character is the perfect things to say new things, and not just recycle old moments.
You really haven’t defended your argument. All you’ve done is ignoreother people’s points.
I don’t think you really understand the “nostalgia porn” argument or are very clear on why people use that term. That you don’t understand is why you think it’s hypocrisy. But that’s not really grappling with what other people are saying.
@185/gwangung: “But nostalgia is not enough to create; there have to have new insight and new things to say.”
Yes. The difference lies in whether nostalgia is your starting point or your endpoint.
@185: “there have to have new insight and new things to say. A continuance of character is the perfect things to say new things, and not just recycle old moments.
You really haven’t defended your argument. All you’ve done is ignoreother people’s points.”
I’ve gotten plenty of new things this season of Picard. The characters have never been better written or acted. I’ve never seen Vadic. I’ve never met LaForge’s kids. Or Shaw. Or Jack. Or been on the Titan. The villains were the direct result of actions the Federation (S31 and Janeway) took. The bill came due.
I see no compelling reason why it’s “wrong” for the return of the Enterprise D. Or why it’s “wrong” to end the Borg threat. I want to spend more time getting to know this new Data than I do on Discovery. (And I like Discovery)
The arguments against it are its nostalgia porn. But once again, why are the above things “wrong?” It’s subjective.
Episode 10 is more unique than Ep 10 of SNW. Once again, I like SNW including Ep 10. But I don’t dismiss things as worthless simply because it reminds me of some thing I’ve seen before.
@187
I see no compelling reason why it’s “wrong” for the return of the Enterprise D. Or why it’s “wrong” to end the Borg threat.
I’m going to stop you right there. No one has said this. You keep straw manning what other people’s arguments are. And that’s why you are not grappling with people’s arguments.
We’ve explained why we consider “nostalgia porn” to be insufficient, and we’ve given contrasting examples of new explorations. You cannot dismiss that by ignoring the differences that were pointed out.
@188
Unless I missed it, I didn’t see what you specifically find to be objectionable and “nostalgia porn” about this episode. So please enlighten me.
I wonder if Picard 1-3 was just one season at one point. Picard had a psedo-son in season 1 – Legolas. And there were borg in season 1. I think it would have been a better show to leave jack totally out and say the borg assimilated Legolas and used some romulan version of mind powers that was from his cult upbringing to control non assimilated robots. But Lar, not Sogi, being the only positron brain around was the only thing that could resist. And it turns out shes been in hiding for accidentally killing Rikers son while trying to help him with her mecha-psychic powers.
@187/M
“I see no compelling reason why it’s “wrong” for the return of the Enterprise D. Or why it’s “wrong” to end the Borg threat. I want to spend more time getting to know this new Data than I do on Discovery. (And I like Discovery)
The arguments against it are its nostalgia porn. But once again, why are the above things “wrong?” It’s subjective.”
If you’re asking for opinions, I think it’s “wrong” because it exists purely for its own sake. Geordi building a full replica of the Enterprise-D, and the entire bridge crew assembling on it in a billion-to-one chance, strains credibility to no end. The writers very clearly started with the idea of “we want the TNG crew on the old ship” and the plot was forced to contort in unbelievably convoluted ways to accomodate that. To me, the TNG reunion doesn’t feel organic or like it comes naturally from the events of the plot, it feels like it happens because Terry Matalas wants it to happen.
Regarding SNW – I wish it wasn’t set on the Enterprise, and I wish it wasn’t about legacy characters. I’m prepared to give SNW a pass though because Pike, Uhura, Chapel and M’Benga are essentially total reimaginings – plus, Uhura and Chapel are receiving treatment that, IMO, they should have gotten in TOS but never did, and it feels like the writers simultaneously have some fresh ideas to bring to the table for these characters and are also beefing up unfairly neglected characters from Trek’s past (a process that began as early as TAS). I’d prefer to have new characters, but there is at least some value in what SNW does with old material.
There’s two exceptions – the Gorn, who SNW mis-use horribly, and episode ten, which was an absolute disaster in my view, for similar reasons to Picard – the writers clearly began with the idea of “we need Kirk and we want to recreate shots that people remember from Balance of Terror”, rather than setting out to write an original piece of science fiction. The result was something terribly convoluted and self-absorbed that just made me wish I was watching the original “Balance of Terror” rather than the cheap self-absorbed remix SNW was offering.
In Picard, what’s the value of bringing the Borg back to be blown up yet again? What was the value of Vadic and the Changelings, whose plot was never resolved? What was the value of renaming the Titan the Enterprise? What was the value of recreating the Enterprise-D? The writers don’t seem interested in doing anything with these ideas and concepts, they just want them there because they think they’re cool. Which is a shame because they’re typically stripped of what made them cool in the first place – the Borg were interesting in “Q Who?” as unknowable assailants, and I liked them in Voyager as a sort of cult that left a trail of human tragedy in its wake. But what are they in Picard? They’re purely there to be blown up, and to have Alice Kreig come in and give a voice performance.They’re there because the writers remember liking them in previous Star Trek series; that’s literally the entire reason for their inclusion.
Similarly, while I was never a fan of the Changelings in DS9 to begin with, they at least had some kind of ideology and a plot arc to follow in that show – but what are they doing in Picard? Okay, Vadic brings up the horrors of Section 31, which is an absolutely solid thing to build a new plot around and could have been a superb hook for the season’s plot, but the show was straightforwardly not interested in actually engaging with the points the character raised, and dismissed her from the show as soon as the TNG cast was assembled, because she was getting in the way of them standing on the bridge together.
In other words, to answer your question: I don’t like Picard‘s callbacks because they feel self-indulgent in a way where it seems that the show was written specifically to make callbacks for their own sake, rather than to tell a fresh sci-fi story that has something new to say about old ideas, which is mostly how SNW feels to me (though again, I’d have liked a new ship and new characters even more).
I feel like this sells season one short. It wasn’t perfect but it was good. I mean just reread that season one overview, it’s actually mostly positive with only a few fairly mild criticisms.
If you’re asking for opinions, I think it’s “wrong” because it exists purely for its own sake. Geordi building a full replica of the Enterprise-D, and the entire bridge crew assembling on it in a billion-to-one chance, strains credibility to no end. The writers very clearly started with the idea of “we want the TNG crew on the old ship” and the plot was forced to contort in unbelievably convoluted ways to accomodate that.
They could have stolen the New Jersey instead. I don’t see how that makes it better. It makes full sense in universe why Geordi would restore the Ent-D for a future exhibit in his museum. It makes full sense in universe why the Borg want the fleet to act as one unit- acting as one unit is what the Borg do.
To me, the TNG reunion doesn’t feel organic or like it comes naturally from the events of the plot, it feels like it happens because Terry Matalas wants it to happen.
The snow burn of the reunion feels completely organic to me- it wasn’t until EP 8 when they were all there. We can agree to disagree there.
In Picard, what’s the value of bringing the Borg back to be blown up yet again?
To end them once and for all.
What was the value of Vadic and the Changelings, whose plot was never resolved?
It was resolved for me.
What was the value of renaming the Titan the Enterprise?
Um, because it is Star Trek. Why was the ship in TMP a “refit” instead of a completely new ship, which it obviously was? Why did Kirk get a new Enterprise at the end of STIV? Why did TNG name its ship Enterprise? Why did FC give us another Enterprise? Why did the prequel series bring us the NX Enterprise? Why did Strange New Worlds get set on a ship called Enterprise?
What was the value of recreating the Enterprise-D? The writers don’t seem interested in doing anything with these ideas and concepts, they just want them there because they think they’re cool.
It is cool. But remember, we spent about 30-40 minutes on this ship out of a 10 hour show. Why are we hung up on that?
Which is a shame because they’re typically stripped of what made them cool in the first place – the Borg were interesting in “Q Who?” as unknowable assailants, and I liked them in Voyager as a sort of cult that left a trail of human tragedy in its wake. But what are they in Picard? They’re purely there to be blown up, and to have Alice Kreig come in and give a voice performance.They’re there because the writers remember liking them in previous Star Trek series; that’s literally the entire reason for their inclusion.
I liked seeing a dying Borg on their last grasp, made possible by Janeway’s actions. It’s a logical continuation of canon.
Similarly, while I was never a fan of the Changelings in DS9 to begin with, they at least had some kind of ideology and a plot arc to follow in that show – but what are they doing in Picard?
This is covered in the show. I’m thankful that the writers remembered anything from DS9. The Dominion War was the most impactful event that happened to the Federation in the 2400s, and I’m glad it was finally followed up on. I think there could have been more, but at least it was something.
Okay, Vadic brings up the horrors of Section 31, which is an absolutely solid thing to build a new plot around and could have been a superb hook for the season’s plot, but the show was straightforwardly not interested in actually engaging with the points the character raised, and dismissed her from the show as soon as the TNG cast was assembled, because she was getting in the way of them standing on the bridge together.
The horrors of S31 was covered enough in DS9. Vadic’s backstory as presented in EP 7 is enough for me.
In other words, to answer your question: I don’t like Picard‘s callbacks because they feel self-indulgent in a way where it seems that the show was written specifically to make callbacks for their own sake, rather than to tell a fresh sci-fi story that has something new to say about old ideas, which is mostly how SNW feels to me (though again, I’d have liked a new ship and new characters even more).
Season 3 of Picard’s strengths come from how it treated its characters. There were all written phenomenally. The acting was top notch. Each one was allowed to evolve on their own. This is even the first time the secondary TNG characters felt like real people. Compare that to the secondary TOS characters, who somehow stayed on the Enterprise for 40 years without leaving (besides Sulu) and had absolutely no growth.
Ok this may be all over the place but here are my more drawn out thoughts, minor spoiler warning I vaguely talk about some other non Trek shows structure in regards to a finale :
Expectations
I started off hating Nu-Trek. I think Discovery is horrible, I watched till S3 Ep1. Not for me. I still strongly dislike the 1st episode of Lower Decks and season 2 of Picard may be my most disliked season of anyshow I have watched. But then things changed. I randomly came across an article saying give Lower Decks another chance. They laid out why they hated episode 1, and it was basically everything I disliked BUT things have changed, I was assured.
According to this writer, they fix everything pretty quickly into the show’s run and things are dramatically better. The tone, characters and humor were much more consistent with Star Trek in general. Ok, I thought I will give it another chance. Lower Decks is now my 3rd fav Star Trek show (after TNG, then TOS). I think Strange New Worlds and Prodigy are the only ST shows that start off strong in season 1. So after watching the trailer for Picard season 3, my hope was low but not bottom of the barrel. In other words my animosity toward Nu-Trek had greatly tempered before watching Picard S3.
General Thoughts
Terry Matalas clearly loves Star Trek and has I would think a deep respect for the characters. He does great with themes and character moments. I would guess he is a more general Star Trek fan than me. As this while keeping true to the TNG characters puts them in a darker and more over the top adventure that reminds me of DS9 and the Trek films at times. But only now and then, really reminded me of TNG the show. I love “All Good Things” and it still is the end to TNG for me. But given that, given the understanding that when you go movie in Star Trek you for whatever reason just have to go in a different tone and direction compared to the shows (Lower Decks has some fun episodes that touch on this fact) this was a lot of fun for me and did a very good job giving closure to the TNG characters in a way that that respects them as the characters they were on the show. I do think Matalas having a partner to help with the logic and technical aspects of the plot would have been useful to helping suspension of disbelief.
When it comes to finales for me, there is a clear formula that works. The final episode of TNG, Deadwood the Movie, Avengers End Game, Better Call Saul and The Deuce all follow this method. That is, you show what has come before, the early part of the adventure. In “All Good Things” this in done by reliving the past and bringing back Yar, O’Brien, the old props/costumes, season one style Data writing, etc 2nd You show what we know. The present in “All Good Things” and 3rd you give a glimpse of what is to come, of course the future in “All Good Things”. In different ways, my examples include all of these types of storytelling.
Picard season 3 uses a mix of Deadwood and “All Good Things” style to end things. We start way in the future (in both cases because in the real world these productions happened years apart). Deadwood uses basic flashbacks (clips and references from the show) to show what happened before, that is to reflect the past. Both show the future by being in the future (far from the shows’ timelines). Deadwood sorta uses the past clips to be both the past and the show as we know it same with the “current” state of things which also strongly suggests the future. Picard though does an explicit future time jump (similar to The Deuce and Better Call Saul) at the end to show the future to come. This formula just works for me. For 20 plus years, I had almost come to feel “All Good Things” ruined my enjoyment of finales. Because I was so often let down by the endings to so many stories (shows and films series), including every Star Trek series up to this point, beside TNG. Picard does hit a lot of what I like in finales, but I will need time to process it.
One background aspect that more and more I felt as the season went on was the budget. It’s great how far we have come with VFX, CGI, ease of editing, rendering speeds all these various things. Yet, all those things are still expensive plus sets cost money, actors cost a lot of money, props cost money, stunt work cost money, location shooting, etc. It got to the point where I am seriously wondering if the reason everything was so dark was to cover up the fact that sets were half done, sets were use over and over to depict multiple things, time and covid caused additional issues with production.
Greatest Hits
Ro getting a conclusion to her storyline. I have head canon for doing a last hurrah with the TNG cast. I have various scenarios in my head on how numerous TNG characters adventures should go. But Ro Laren someone I place in my tier 1 category of TNG recurring characters was someone I never thought there was any chance of getting closure to her story. What we got here was great. Would have loved a brief scene with Guinan and even LaForge but budget issues likely played a role.
Lore getting a conclusion to his storyline. I have Lore at the top of my list for wasted TNG recurring characters. In Lore episodes, Data is always naive/caught off guard, and Lore’s plans/goals always felt off to me. Here things are simple. Lore wants to live, Lore is an agent of chaos and deeply narcissistic. Data finally beats Lore with, intelligence, compassion and understanding. The Brothers have a moment to say goodbye. I loved seeing the various TNG props again, seeing Yar and most of all Spot! Awesome!
Worf being a total peace warrior boss who skills are off the charts at this point. On TNG Worf was often used as comedy relief, it was almost always done in such a way to never undermined Worf’s actual person, convictions or abilities. The epitome of good-natured jabbing. Here we up the Joke count and also up Worf’s warrior awesomeness level. Still works for me!
Those times when TNG vibes shined through. Of course, in many of the interpersonal character moments, we get at least some of this feel (like with Ro/Picard or Data/Lore). But I am talking more thematically, for example the end of ep4 with the birth of the space squids (who may be the young of the creatures seen in “Encounters at Farpoint”) or Jack’s “little poetic drive by observation” to Seven in ep6.
Mixed Feelings
I also have a few mixed feelings on what I DID like about season 3:
1) I hated the Raffi character before this season. This made Raffi’s change even more impactful. In this season Raffi is introduced to Wolf, and he shows her up and makes her look wrong and dumb multiple times. Then Raffi acts like a generic (don’t mean that as a pejorative here) professional, competent TNG style crew member. Afterwords, she gets a scene where she truly is a badass** and acts fairly humble about it when Riker tells her she is scary. If this was officer Jane Dow undercover, a new character for Season 3. I would have felt less impacted by the character and her moments.
2) Data should have always been the pilot in dangerous situations. LaForge questions Data’s “death” in “The Most Toys” because pilot error makes no sense. Yet in “Chain of Command Part 2” Riker is called out as the ace pilot on board, also Picard for unclear reasoning decided it was best he pilot the shuttle in “In Theory”. Still annoys me for logic reasons, but more for thematic reasons that align with the logic. Use Data, he has the skills, and this is also a Data episode. Regardless, Data is a boss and pilot’s the D through a massive Borg complex that is far from full strength, fine, whatever. Data rocks! In other words, I enjoyed the D’s ride through the Dea…Borg Cube/complex.
3) Retcons: I loved the Picard season 1 and 2 retcons. I was confused with Kieth and Tor commentators when they were writing about Laris and Kestra. I literally forgot there was a Laris and that Picard had any current love interest. Likewise, I forgot the name Kestra, but I did wonder what happened to their daughter in the prison cell scene. But changes did not end there: Matalas undid Data’s death, undid Q’s death, and forgot that all the Borg stuff had happened in any form from the 1st two seasons.
4) There is likely much more I can point to. I enjoyed these changes, but it is a bit strange to revel/be so pleased about tearing up such recent canon or reverting to older canon so nonchalantly. For example, I love Troi in this, but her portrayal is somewhat inconsistent with her appearance on TNG overall. That said in the pilot “Encounters At Fairpoint” Troi’s relationship with Riker, their connection is portrayed in a way that Picard season 3’s Troi feels like a fairly reasonable extension of that.
**In a way that does not make much sense in terms of humans vs changelings, though I find the fight choreography to be well done as it has been throughout the 3rd season.
Closing Thoughts
“All Good Things” is my TNG ending. One of my fav series conclusions ever. The basis of my head canon for a reuinon show which I now reconize would be very expensive to make. Given real world logistics and the natures of these kinds of productions I am very happy about Picard season 3. I use to ignore whaever every happned after TNG as it relates to TNG. The TNG films, huh? Picard season 1 and 2, huh? Even DS9 is a show complelely disconnected to TNG when I think about my TNG experince. TNG is its own thing to me, not connected to anything. But Picard season 3 does give me a fun, enjoyable way to experince the TNG cast one more time in a heroic, staying true to thier characters kind of way. I may likely have much more to say. I will keep on writing my fandom essay’s of TNG episodes plus more to comment on Star Trek in general.
-Kefka
@191 one thing about Geordi reassembling the Ent-D with the Saucer section coupled to the secondary hill of another ship – and the reason why it was removed from Veridian III was it at least explained all the reused props throughout Picard S1-3 that reviewers and commentators complained about at the time – ie “why has Picard got his Knossos Figure (sorry if that’s the wrong name autocorrect keeps playing with it!) or his flute – he only retrieved his photo album in Generations we saw him throw the thingymabob away!” etc.
Presumably when they retrieved the saucer they returned personal effects to their owners!
To be honest the bit that skewed my credibility was the speed at which she turned on… Geordi has drones loading torpedos and then two minutes of elapsed real time later the ship is leaving through the doors! Guess he must’ve written a few macros he could trigger remotely to have her shipshape and up and running at the drop of a hat!
@193 / M:
In Picard, what’s the value of bringing the Borg back to be blown up yet again?
To end them once and for all.
Yeah, that’s fair.
As I think I said last week, the Borg are the existential threat of the 24th Century era. Sooner or later, the franchise was gonna have to deal with them once and for all; even David Mack recognized as much when pitched Destiny IIRC.
While I personally wish we hadn’t gone for one more Borg Apocalypse, at least it’s the last one — and symbolically and dramatically, it’s better it happens in this era rather than a later generation dealing with them.
The Borg are part of the Enterprise-D crew’s legacy — and not just because of Locutus. They made official first contact in “Q Who?”, they opened the door to let the cybernetic boogeyman into the franchise and it’s fitting that they get to be the ones who show them to the door and kick them the f**k out.
(And frankly, the Collective’s run its course and it was far past time for them to GTFO).
And it also works symbolically in the context of the overarching TNG era narrative. Starfleet opens the 24th Century era at peace with the Klingons and with the Romulans in isolation after Tomed. Aside from minor stuff here and there like the Cardassians, it’s a golden age of peace and exploration.
The Borg’s introduction is the death knell of all that and is shattered with Wolf 359. It’s their 9/11 and Starfleet slowly turns to militarism and loses more and more of its way between the Dominion War, Insurrection, etc.
That’s why I like the the shot of the D and Titan sailing into Earth orbit as the sun rises. It’s not just an homage to the A and Excelsior above Khitomer, but that the dark ghosts of the past have been exorcised. The long night is over and it’s morning in the Federation.
I’m thankful that the writers remembered anything from DS9. The Dominion War was the most impactful event that happened to the Federation in the 2400s, and I’m glad it was finally followed up on. I think there could have been more, but at least it was something.
Yeah, for me, thematically it worked in tandem with the Borg’s last gasp and as a final meditation on the 24th Century era and its legacy.
The Dominion was the other existential threat of this era They shaped it just as much as the Borg and deserved (no, needed) to be acknowledged.
There’s also been this interesting link between the Collective and Dominion I wish had been touched on. Ironically, if not for Wolf 359 and SF getting its ass kicked and the wake-up call, the UFP would’ve been really ill-prepared for the eventual Dominion conflict. In a way, the Borg prepared the Feds for the Dominion.
Vadic and the Queen were both vengeful ghosts of the past and reflecting choices made decades ago in the name of protecting the UFP — and from different ends of the heroic spectrum (Janeway and S31 respectively).
Now, as I think you put it earlier, the bill’s come due and their generation’s legacy has now endangered the next one. The execution could’ve been a little tighter, but thematically it works.
@196/Mr. Magic: I can see the logic of closing out the Borg’s story, but I don’t approve of the way it was done. Just destroying the Borg is a terrible way to end it, because the actual drones themselves are victims, slaves, not evil monsters. The way to resolve the Borg once and for all should be to free them, not annihilate them. That’s been the moral stand of the franchise from “I, Borg” on to Destiny, and even to Picard season 2 in a way, so it’s a terrible conclusion if that morality is thrown out in favor of shallow action-movie violence.
Also, as I’ve mentioned, the setup makes no sense. Why is the Queen on her last legs? Why does she blame Picard for it? Janeway crippled the Collective in “Endgame,” but we know of a couple of cubes that were active years later in the 2380s, the one in Prodigy and the one that became the Artifact. So there’s just no explanation for why the Borg are the way they are here. It’s incredibly sloppy writing.
@197,
That’s fair. I should’ve touched on that (I haven’t had my coffee, LOL).
Yeah, I’ve always liked how Mack resolved the Collective’s threat in his Trilogy; it was a very Trek resolution (much like how Odo ended the Dominion War).
That’s why I thought that’s where the setup with Jack’s abilities was going and I wish Matalas had done the same. I think Mack’s ending is superior.
As for the Queen, I guess you could argue that she was clearly a few docking rings short of a space station. In a way, she might irrationally blame Picard for all this and fixated on him (as first contact with the UFP and Picard/1701-D set off the chain of events that led to “Endgame”)
The emotional climax of the season, and the series, was Picard plugging himself into the collective to talk to Jack. It’s such a powerful and phenomenal scene. And, of course, it’s something we have never seen from Picard before.
To dismiss it and focus on charges of “nostalgia porn” seems petty to me.
@198/Mr. Magic: The issue isn’t the Queen’s attitude. The issue is the narrative failure to connect the dots. The last appearances of the Borg chronologically show them still active in the 2380s, yet now they’re portrayed as almost extinct, with no effort made to explain how they got that way. It’s an arbitrary narrative leap to set up the desired ending. It’s “Somehow, Palpatine returned” all over again.
Yeah, it’s not clear to me why the Borg would be on their last legs, given that Prodigy showed that there are fully intact and crewed Borg Cubes out there that just need to be reactivated to get back into the assimilating business; drones can canonically regenerate after spending more than a century frozen in ice, I don’t understand why the Queen would have such difficulty. But perhaps we’ve just soft-retconned that, along with the rest of post-2005 canon.
The presence of Jurati in the narrative would have given them an easy way to end the Borg as an existential threat without simply wiping them out. But to be fair to the series, this has been an issue with how Starfleet has dealt with the Borg since “Endgame.” “I, Borg” actually considered the moral dilemma of wiping them out and decided strongly against it; even “Unimatrix Zero,” terrible as it was, had Janeway lament the loss of entire ships of drones. But then “Endgame” just had them poison the collective without a second thought. There were canonically trillions of drones inside the Unicomplex and we just watch it blow up.
I guess it stands out particularly stark for me because, as I’ve noted above, it’s basically the same thing that Section 31 did to the Changelings, except arguably worse. Of course, this season can barely commit to the idea that poisoning the Changelings was bad, so what can one expect.
@200 / CLB:
I mean, it could be those Cubes were still functioning, splintered off-shoots and the Queen simply wasn’t aware of it.
But, I’m aware that raises even more plot holes, so…
In retrospect, Secret Hideout probably should’ve laid down guidelines and/or a master plan for revisiting the Borg before PIC began and made sure the post-24th Century shows were on the same page (and esp. after LucasFilm had made the same mistake with their franchise).
I guess it’ll be up to the tie-in literature to try and reconcile the discrepancies, but yeah…I’ll concede that Matalas took narrative shortcuts like Abrams.
I get thematically and symbolically what he was going for (and I got caught up in the moment when explaining earlier), but I still think Mack’s resolution of the Collective was more satisfying.
@200; @201; @202 – there is a line in VOY Endgame when the Borg Queen is suffering from the Future Janeway Virus ‘to bring a little chaos to order’ – that the Sphere which is following Voyager ‘Can still hear me’…. it could be that one effect of the virus was to disconnect sections of the collective from each other – to essentially disrupt the Vinculum network within the Collective.
We saw back in Season 3 of Voyager with the Borg Cooperative, that when that Cube was damaged by an Ion Storm and the drones could no longer connect to the Collective they shut down and the cube became dormant.
Those two together would explain the Cubes from Prodigy/Lower Decks etc. Cubes which have gone into dormancy/shut themselves down because they can no longer connect to the Collective. (And presumably before their individuality started to reassert itself) – mayhap the Janeway Virus was akin to pulling the plug on a turned on TV or computer – instant shut down with just a few capacitors to drain as the ship drops out of warp and the lights go off?
@201 I could see Future Janeway telling her younger self that the Virus would only disrupt the connections between the Borg – enabling them to reassert their individuality; and that only the ‘manifolds under the control of the Queen’ would be unable to function successfully without that connection and would therefore be destroyed/meltdown etc. ‘obliterating the Transwarp Network’ dealing a crippling blow to the Borg – but without the widespread destruction of the Unicomplex which we saw on screen. Then again it’s even possible that Future Janeway wasn’t aware of the full consequences of the Virus – after all its not exactly something you could model perfectly in a computer!
One thought – could the Mega Cube have been constructed by the Queen from the remains of the Unicomplex – that certainly seemed to be in ’empty’ space – as in not near any planets etc. and we saw the cannibalised drone which was decaying as the Collective reabsorbed the drone to keep the Cube/Queen functioning? It would also explain a little why there was so much empty space – if effectively the Cube had been constructed for the sole purpose of transmitting the Vox message – hence the fully integrated Beacon (which was larger than the Ent-D!) and all of the attenae etc. on the surface – it was certainly a far more spiky cube than any we’d seen before! Then again, previously iterations of Cubes etc. have included lots of large empty spaces inside!
@203/Tom: “Then again, previously iterations of Cubes etc. have included lots of large empty spaces inside!”
Which doesn’t really make a lot of sense, since the Borg are supposed to be hyper-efficient, so why waste the space?
But then, if Borg vessels were really efficient in their use of space, they’d be spheres rather than cubes, since the sphere is the most efficient shape for enclosing a volume.
@204 / CLB:
But then, if Borg vessels were really efficient in their use of space, they’d be spheres rather than cubes, since the sphere is the most efficient shape for enclosing a volume.
Heh. I see what you did there.
A little callback to Greater than the Sum, eh Mr. Bennett? :)
@204/CLB – Very true! I suppose they might use the empty space for some purpose – do they, like the planetkiller, need to allow some vessels inside in order to assimilate them? Or are the outer layers more like our dead skin cells – designed to take damage from Ion storms etc. and then be regenerated as necessary from the interior?
Or is it as prosaic as a cube is a easier shape to make a model and shoot film of – as it can stand up by itself whereas a sphere would need some sort of mount/holder?
I always sort of assumed that the Borg put the cubes together face-to-face to make other structures.
Hey, I just noticed I got the 200th comment! Keith was right — it didn’t take this thread long to reach that milestone.
@206/Tom: “Or is it as prosaic as a cube is a easier shape to make a model and shoot film of – as it can stand up by itself whereas a sphere would need some sort of mount/holder?”
Oh, they certainly mounted the cube on a stand as well, so they could shoot it from various angles.
No, they chose a cube shape because it symbolizes the mentality of the Borg. As Maurice Hurley put it in the “Q Who” script, “It’s box like, with none of the aerodynamic qualities associated with most spaceships including the Enterprise. This is a case of form following function.” The cube shape is basic, linear, functional, unadorned, assertively unnatural, so it represented the mechanized, regimented nature of the Borg, the triumph of the artificial over nature. A sphere would be more logical in terms of physics, but round shapes occur in nature, so they wouldn’t convey a mechanical, artificial impression to the viewer as much as a cube does.
Re: The Borg
As a wise man once said, “Believing oneself to be perfect is often the sign of a delusional mind.”
The Borg are fundamentally arrogant, and this is their fatal flaw. They COULD be more efficient with their use of space, but they don’t HAVE to, because they’re above all that. As a whole, they are emotionless and pragmatic to the extreme, but whoever started them on the cybernetic path way back in the distant past had to have been Thanos-level crazy/arrogant, and this has tainted the Borg’s base programming ever since. I see the Queen as a final echo of the Borg’s original creator. (Which, I guess, tracks pretty well with the Destiny trilogy. Love those books!)
******
Re: Everything Else
I LOVED how this season turned out. Everyone got their moment to shine. I know I should be more critical of the writing and all that, but for me the warm fuzzies outweighed everything else. I was SO afraid that one or more of the crew would die, so getting that lovely extended scene around the poker table was more than I could ever have wished. Maybe it’s not as self-contained a story as it could have been, and maybe it relied too much on nostalgia, but as one who has been thinking of a lot of the new Trek as being a kind of wacky Joel Schumacher era that we need to get through before we can get back to the good stuff, it’s been a real treat. I finally have a sense of closure for TNG that I’ve needed for many years, and now I’m excited to see what comes next!
@209/kahunapuffin: “whoever started them on the cybernetic path way back in the distant past had to have been Thanos-level crazy/arrogant, and this has tainted the Borg’s base programming ever since.”
Not necessarily. It seems more likely to me that it would’ve been an emergent process — it started out benevolently as a way to improve connection between individuals, but the technology got out of hand and its programmed need to consolidate and expand overrode individual wills. There are plenty of reasons why a society might see it as beneficial to link their minds to a computer network — heck, we’re halfway there already. They might have seen a collective consciousness as a way to create global understanding, to end conflict and prejudice, etc. And maybe it worked at first, but it worked too well and went beyond the limits they intended.
Destiny was a good story, but I don’t care for the idea of the Borg starting with one specific individual. It seems to me that a consciousness as unconcerned with individuals as the Collective would more logically have emerged from the collective interaction of thousands or millions of linked minds, not representing the intentions or will of any one of them but arising from the system’s overall programmed imperatives. I still believe the Collective created the Queen, not the other way around.
@210,
Destiny was a good story, but I don’t care for the idea of the Borg starting with one specific individual. It seems to me that a consciousness as unconcerned with individuals as the Collective would more logically have emerged from the collective interaction of thousands or millions of linked minds, not representing the intentions or will of any one of them but arising from the system’s overall programmed imperatives. I still believe the Collective created the Queen, not the other way around.
That’s fair. There’s dramatic merit to an idea of the Borg having started ironically with the best of intentions, only for things to spiral horrifically and tragically out of control.
That said, with Destiny, I did like Mack’s irony that the heart of darkness was singular rather than plural. For all their talk of Collectivism, the literary Borg were being driven by one voice and one individual’s gross desires alone — and they didn’t even realize it.
As arrogant and unlikable she was, you couldn’t help pitying Sedin — much, in a way, you could pity the Queen in these last two episodes (and how her arc mirrors Jack’s). You could pity Sedin for giving in to all too human impulses and desires: Not wanting to die and not wanting to be alone. It’s just too bad the Delta Qaudrant and then ours had to pay the price over the next
And much as the Borg served as a horrific mirror of the UFP and their own collective cross-cultural collaboration, the Borg worked as a horrific perversion of the Caeliar Gestalt and all its benefits and good (well, maybe not good, but not malicious) intentions).
We seem to be in the midst of a trend in entertainment, in which executives believe it’s better to churn out new material (regardless of its quality) than it is to allow a franchise to go through cycles of dormancy. Marvel has hit oversaturation, for example, and the quality of a good portion of their current output has dropped sharply. I’m thrilled to have Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds, but I’m astonished that Discovery (ok, season 1 was great) and Picard have been well received and regularly greenlit. If Legacy or whatever they’re going to call Jack & 7’s new show shares a creative team with Picard, well, this just felt like content for contents sake. It didn’t need to exist. There wasn’t a strong concept to justify the existence of this show, and it wore that fact on its sleeve throughout all 30 meandering episodes. Quality content comes from capable hands, Picard was handled poorly, and to me at least, this finale indicates further fumbles with its spin-off.
@210/ChristopherLBennett:
Destiny was a good story, but I don’t care for the idea of the Borg starting with one specific individual. It seems to me that a consciousness as unconcerned with individuals as the Collective would more logically have emerged from the collective interaction of thousands or millions of linked minds, not representing the intentions or will of any one of them but arising from the system’s overall programmed imperatives. I still believe the Collective created the Queen, not the other way around.
@211/Mr. Magic:
That’s fair. There’s dramatic merit to an idea of the Borg having started ironically with the best of intentions, only for things to spiral horrifically and tragically out of control.
Agreed. I definitely favor the Destiny style, but I admit my interpretation is deconstructed from the First Contact Queen, and the “real” story could be far different. The idea of being unwittingly consumed by the well-intentioned collective… *shudder*
Late to the party I am, again.
Oi, 214 comments (as I write this)!
Me and my wife decided to watch the final two episodes back-to-back (the season was kind of a slog for her, and I honesty considered not watching the final two episodes. Vadic gone, the Shrike got blowed up real good, and the Big Seven were all together. But I decided to see this through…).
You know, in a lot of ways, this felt like two different shows in a single season; you have the jumbled plot of the Changelings/Borg, and the TNG reunion. Despite attempts to make it feel like one story, it never felt like it. The main arc of the season was a jumbled, convoluted mess, and it happened to coincide with the crew of the Big E finding their way back to each other.
The plot left me confused and frustrated; the reunion brought me joy.
I freely admit seeing that old bridge brought tears to my eyes.
But overall, as others have commented, I feel nothing.
I’m glad the Big Seven all got to be together, presumably one final time. But the whole resolution left me cold. No aspirational solutions, no reaching out to your advesary, just blow it all up real good. Another galaxy-is-at-stake story, revealed and fixed in about five minutes. Thousands of young officers assimilated by the Borg, thousands of others killed, but we jump ahead one year and don’t worry about that, it’s fine now.
Writing out all that, and having time to fully digest this finale, I think I agree with you, jamiebabb: I hate this! *Takes another swig, swallows with difficulty* Oh yes, I hate this! It is revolting!
More? Absolutely not.
I don’t know, I want Trek to look forward. We have that now on Discovery, but now that series is ending (which breaks my heart, because I have come to genuinely love that show, it’s characters, and it’s far-future setting rife for storytelling).
As CLB so eloquently explains, this was looking back for the sake of looking back, not for telling any kind of meaningful story or new insights into established characters. Actually, that’s not entirely true; we do get new insights into the Big Seven (particularly Riker and Worf). But those insights are eclipsed by this half-ass season plot.
Oh, and Shaw calls Seven by her name as he dies. Yeah, that’s exactly how I thought that would happen, and it did nothing for me.
But Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One, is now Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise-G. I’m thrilled for Seven, but also admittedly a little sad.
Having played Star Trek Online for almost thirteen years, it’s nirvana to see ships from that game included in this series; it’s just too bad the Enterprise-F, so lovingly crafted and integral to STO, is brought into Picard and then tossed aside in short order. Oh well.
I too expected the Titan-A to have been rechristened U.S.S. Picard (giving Picard being the title of the show a whole new meaning and dimension), but that’s fine.
@208/CLB – thanks for the photo Chris, I’ve never seen that one before!
I find it somewhat ironic that this season of Picard has somehow become more polarizing (in my view) than the previous two, and maybe more than any other modern Trek production. I don’t think the two camps have equal numbers, mind you, but I think there’s a far greater distance between viewpoints than there has been in the past.
In my mind, it always comes back to expectations. A lot of the criticisms I’ve seen, in my view, come back to people’s (frequently unreasonable) expectations. I think I enjoyed it in part because my expectations were pretty simple: I wanted to see the crew of the USS Enterprise go on one final adventure together. Those were fulfilled, and then some. I am wholly satisfied with the happy ending we got. I would advise those who are dissatisfied to ask yourselves way, and to try to grapple with this season on its own merits, rather than your ideals.
@217/Chase: That’s a bit patronizing, as my “ideals” have very little to do with my “dissatisfaction.”
I and others are simply saying that there was an opportunity to tell a good story, a good Star Trek story, one worthy enough to give the Big Seven a proper send-off, and it was mostly squandered for nostalgia, and action and explosions. Both are fine in moderate doses, but too much of either and you lose your story.
217/Chase – I don’t think my expectations that the season would (1) do the absolute basic legwork to maintain continuity with previous seasons and the rest of the franchise since 2005, (2) not be outright contemptuous towards those of us who liked the new characters, (3) actually show the queer the relationship that they spent the entire second season establishing, and (4) actually have any deeper themes or meaning were unreasonable.
#217.
After looking into the abyss and rethinking my life, I still think I’m going to stick with being dissatisfied with a season of television. Sorry.
I will try to cut back on sweets, though. So there’s a positive.
Dingo: but — but — sweets are yummy!!!!!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
#221.
Alright, you talked me out of it. :-D
I don’t quite understand why so much of the fandom has ADORED this season. I loved Seven, the few times she got to do anything, the new Data was interesting, and Worf is always adorable. But most of the season was a combination of blowing things up and pandering nostalgia. I’ve read better FAN fiction!
@217 Actually, I think it’d be more interesting for YOU to do the deep thinking to grapple with why folks are not content with the season while you ARE content. Folks have spent many, many paragraphs detailing where they were dissatisfied, both on the small scale and on the larger scale. They seem to know their own minds. Why do you think they don’t?
Just a quick reminder to keep the tone of the discussion civil and pleasant. Our community guidelines can be found here.
@223 –
“I’ve read better FAN fiction!”
I watched the episode with my brother, and he paused it towards the end, leaving me to frown and contemplate what I saw. I saw fan fiction. Picard’s recently un-assimilated surprise son, emerging from the bridge turbolift of the decommissioned enterprise D and into a tearful reunion, wearing a facsimile of his father’s own Borg assimilation outfit. Not a scene that should exist in a professional format, in my opinion. To think that of all the possible conclusions, they chose that strikingly atonal plotline to serve as the supposed climax and resolution of an entire series, or worse, as the footnote to one of the most beloved series of all time… What was anyone at Paramount thinking? Picard Jr., offspring of a relationship that was tacitly dismissed by the source material, now consummated by the random wish fulfillment of a misguided writer. And Data, at last attaining humanity through the least poignant way possible – that just served to undermine his entire character arc. No commentary on what it means to be human. No commentary on much of anything at all. These beloved characters felt like mere set dressing in some random youth fiction style TV drama. Is it even science fiction if it doesn’t have anything to say?
Personally the resolution to the Data-becoming-human arc was by far my favourite part of the season (and certainly more poignant than him getting emotions in an unfunny comedy subplot in Generations), but I agree that they should have followed it up by interrogating what it actually means for him to be human; is he satisfied with it, or what? As I have said, I found the season to be mostly empty nostalgia calories, and philosophically shallower than almost any other season of Trek that I can think of.
(I also object to using “fan fiction” pejoratively. Like everything else, fan fiction varies widely in quality, and I’m not one to use intellectual property as a basis for deciding literary merit)
@226/Transceiver: I didn’t see it as Data “becoming human.” I saw it as Data integrating Lore into himself, each brother providing completion for the missing part of the other, like the two halves of Kirk in “The Enemy Within.” I thought that was easily the most poignant thing in the season, and the only thing that actually had a philosophical element to it.
@227/jaimebabb: I agree that “fan fiction” should not be used to imply a lack of quality, but it does define a style of fiction that’s intrinsically derivative, just as tie-in fiction is. I’m proud of the work I’ve done as a tie-in author, but what I do in that capacity is support, like being someone else’s employee rather than running my own company. I don’t believe the original franchise should approach its storytelling in the same way. It should be breaking new ground, taking the lead for tie-in and fanfiction authors to follow, rather than simply being a tie-in to its own past. If a franchise reaches the point where it only looks backward, then it’s stagnant, a dying entity feeding on itself to survive, like the Queen feeding on her drones.
Certainly there is still Star Trek that innovates and expands the universe meaningfully. But this isn’t it.
I’m surprised at the number of people who were surprised by the skipping-over of the Enterprise-F. I mean, it has nothing to do with the design of the ship itself, but the letter F has a lot of connotations, none of them good. Given that the writers were obviously wanting to set up a new Enterprise-based series here, did you really think they were going to give that potential sequel series a ship named the Enterprise-F?
@104 Krad: Yeah this was a great episode and yeah it was filled with member berries, fan service and small universe syndrome. For one episode, or even one season that’s fine. But I don’t want an entire show based on those. We already have Lower Decks and SNW which have enough as it is.
The caveat about this season and about most Trek in general nowadays is that “Fan service, nostalgia and member berries are popular so we need to keep doing that when creating new Star Trek.”
@229/durandal: “Given that the writers were obviously wanting to set up a new Enterprise-based series here, did you really think they were going to give that potential sequel series a ship named the Enterprise-F?”
Actually, the producers have said that they considered rechristening the Titan as the USS Picard before settling on Enterprise-G. So there was never any consideration of centering a show on the E-F.
@228 CLB –
I saw it as more than incorporating Lore, essentially his shadow self – he also gained an inner child in B4, and the father figure of Soong. Add that to Data’s observations of human nature, and you have a complete human psyche. I quite enjoyed that concept, and I enjoyed what we saw of Data, I just wish they had done more with it. You know, character driven stuff instead of an endless tease cat and mouse game in which they postponed revealing the plot for as long as possible and ended each episode with a tedious cliffhanger.
@231 I actually went into that scene expecting it to be USS Picard before it was revealed as the next Enterprise.
@229 It may not have featured onscreen but the Enterprise-F has been around for about ten years or so, I think. The Enterprise-F was introduced in Star Trek Online and at the time of this episode, the ship had been around for about 15 years, in universe and was about to be decommissioned anyway because of a major problem of some kind on a recent mission.
I had a lot of the same thoughts you did – especially about wanting to know more about what was going on with the Bajorans, the Cardassians, Jurati’s Borg, or heck, even somebody like Bashir or Dax or O’Brien! It’s such a shame the actor who played Nog passed away because I was thinking it would have been really cool to perhaps see an older version in Starfleet. I guess I just missed getting a DS9 cameo, although I appreciate that they at least rolled in some story elements there.
However, I do agree the changeling plot felt wrapped up kind of perfunctorily.
The plot/story itself didn’t do a ton for me (I’m kind of over mass apocalyptic scenarios and I also enjoyed to an extent the last two seasons so it was weird to just…ignore it for the most part) but one thing I liked that actually sticks with the Return of the Jedi parallel is that while the ‘Death Star’ battle is going on, the crux of the show is about a single battle for somebody’s soul. And while maybe Picard speechifying saving the day is a bit trite…that’s what we’re here for. I DID really enjoy all of the different character moments, and fan servicey as it was, I did really feel satisfied just seeing them together playing poker (but I also wanted to know what the heck was up with Orla!!!).
I hope Data gets a new kitty :) (Also, is it even appropriate for Troi to be counselling him??? I also feel like the Enterprise-F has a bit of nepotism going on, haha. And speaking of counselling, what about Jack and an entire generation of Starfleet that massacred their elders?)
And as for the end…I literally screamed, lol. (I actually REALLY wish we had gotten Q/Data to interact). The funny thing is in my previous comment about Spot being my favorite cameo I almost wrote that Q might be the only other one I would get that excited by, but since he was already in the last season, alas. His non-linear death makes perfect sense to me.
Spot is still the best cameo of the show though, I said what I said :)
@234/Lisamarie: “I’m kind of over mass apocalyptic scenarios”
Yes, absolutely. I wish the makers of this show hadn’t felt compelled to make every season about an existential threat to the Federation or to civilization as a whole. Season 1 didn’t need the apocalyptic angle; it could’ve just been about fighting for the rights of synths to exist and be accepted. And this season could’ve left out the Borg and the silly Frontier Day threat and just focused on the Changelings’ grievances, on Picard finding a way to reconcile with them and see that Starfleet holds their abusers accountable. A story can have high, meaningful stakes without having to go to the blunt-instrument extreme of a threat to all civilization.
I have to agree that the changeling part was wrapped up kinda quick like. Another thing I thought of, Riker’s log entry stated that Beverly was instrumental in developing the means to detect changelings in the transporter, but I can’t believe that Starfleet wouldn’t have been working on that since before the Dominion War. Maybe she just made a breakthrough that made it possible? I dunno.