Jeff took part in a triptich of "authentic" cosplay youtube videos based on the paranoid rantings of the DC character "The Question" who was the template used to create Rorschach in the Watchmen movie, because Coombs earlier played the Question in the naughties JLA animted series. The story mirrors significant ground shaking events in the comics from 2005 there abouts which are now utterly moot. You'll find the Question videos here... http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL94C6DCB772473657
Collective The most I'm willing to give this episode is the idea of finding a Borg ship with the drones dead, and the maturation chambers malfunctioned to release half-drone children to run the ship is not bad. But the rest of the execution of it is pretty bloody awful. Especially now that we have the Borg children on board. Eurgh. I'm not looking forward to where this is going. Hopefully they're off loaded quickly. Or at least pay the two twins enough to speak.
You were unprepared for this? The episode were Neelix dresses up as Santa and they sit on his knee asking him for presents is pretty funny. "If you posses the technology to fly to the Earth's northpole, collect our presents, and then return here in a matter of hours, why do you chose not to share this technology with lieutenant Torres or Captain Janeway?"
Was I ready? Sort of. This rewatch is no longer a rewatch. After Equinox part 1 it became just a Watch. The entire reason I started this was I never watched seasons 6 and 7 originally. I only know a little about those two seasons. Vaguely the plot of Unimatrix Zero (one of the reasons I've taken so long getting round to this), since coming to this board I've accidentally picked up the vague plot of the finale, and finally the Borg Children. A concept that, like Unimatrix Zero, had put me off, but time had removed them from my memory. Soon as I saw them it triggered some recollection, and I was sad to see I was right. Spirit Folk Urgh, a holodeck episode, and another where holodeck characters earn a sense of what they really are. Though an intriguing spin in that they work out what the crew are instead, but don't make the final leap and just decide on time travel. I honestly could have done without this episode. Except for more confirmation that Janeway is sating her urges in the holodeck. Ashes to Ashes This is a lot more like it. This felt like a proper Star Trek episode. And Harry's luck with women keeps on going. I get the impression this was meant to be the same crew member as Latent Image. Honestly, right up to her and Harry walking us through how she died I thought it was. I knew it was a different actor because I recognised Kim Rhodes from Supernatural, who was pretty cute fifteen years ago. And the alien make up was cool, but that halfway stage was rather horrific. The one thing that bugged me was how everyone was reacting to her being an alien. People stop and stare because she was speaking a different language. Ignoring that the Universal Translator didn't kick in for dramatic effect, it can't be that odd on a Federation starship. I get they're used to her being human, but I think too much was made of her not being, at least from the crew side. Be'lanna obviously didn't care and found it kinda cool, and Harry eventually came round, but only after some interesting choice in words about it, and being pretty derogatory about her new race in general. Dude, no wonder she ran off. I get that the decision to leave was more about how Lyndsay felt about the ship than how they felt about her, and I don't fault that, but a speech from someone less biased then Harry about how none of them care and she was welcome as a human or a Kobali would have been nice.
Kirk said the Universal translators have a telepathic component. True Blood says that the dead have no electrical impulses in their brains to react against telepathy.
Oh, I watched Child's Play a few days ago. Not a bad episode, but I can't help thinking it should have ended with him deciding to stay just as Voyager left. For them to discover horrific secret and parents' being arseholes just turned it into a generic story, while without it, it's a huge growing moment for Seven, and quite a touching tale of a long lost son finding common ground with parents he can't remember. Bonus points for Mark Sheppard Star Trek appearance though.
I love the tragedy of Icheb, never thought of it as generic. I guess it was a big shock the first time I saw it. It also added to the Borg story in that it showed how one planet dealt with the terror of them.
The Borg are not trying to be scary or terrifying. They're generously gentrifying the Galaxy gratis. If you want to talk terrorists? Talk to the child suicide bomber regenerating in Cargo Bay 2.
Okay, I meant generic towards the episode, the descent into "oh no they're actually evil and we must save him". Icheb's story is a nasty one, but it didn't resonate enough, I don't know, sci-fi has done the "bred specifically to kill" story over and over again, even with the reluctant killer, all Child's Play did was make him super unaware of it. And his mum a bitch. At least Crowley wanted to let him be a child now they had a second chance.
They did this in Star Gate Atlantis. Inoculated worlds making entire human populations poisonous to the Wraith. Once the Wraith figured this out, they started blowing up planets with soiled food supplies. I wonder what they Borg would have done if the virus Icheb had was contagious and easily transmittable between potential drones, and it was left as a streak behind Ichebs every step across the Delta Quadrant on his way to Earth?
They would have stepped down from their DQ assimilation but continued to boost their ranks by assimilating the AQ and the BQ. The Feds would not notice that they went quiet in the DQ, and they would be kept busy by extra AQ Borg fronts. Meanwhile back in the DQ all efforts would be expended on assimilating or integrating Species 8472 properties into the collective in order to be resistant to such a puny virus as Icheb's puny world came up with. In order to keep this project from hostile forces (ie, everyone else) all contact with the AQ and BQ would be severed, lest a freed individual should report this alarming information to their world and all eyes should turn to the DQ, hindering their progress. Eventually they would succeed. Within a span of a decade all the Borg of the DQ would be more Species 8472 than not. When they returned to the AQ and BQ and they would view the Borg there as inferior prototypes. Their assimilation of the non-8472 Borg would be seen as hostile and a Borg on Borg war would break out.. which would be quickly over when the DQ Borg assimilated or destroyed all inferior Borg. Then, earth.
In theory the Borg have assimilated the biological and technological "distinctiveness" of humanity and the Federation through proportional representative sampling. Cataloguing why we are awesome, and adding it to the collective is already in the bag. The 400 billion new Drones should have been just gravy and unnecessary. If they're coming back to Earthspace to update their understanding of the Federation, that's kosher, but if its just because they think they've been short changed in their Drone recruitment, well fuck them. Altruism, cheap sons of bitches, my submersible ass.
It seems a mystery why they are so "OH EARTH" all the time. But maybe it is because humans have some inferiority complex? Like they assimilate someone, a top science dude, and he's still thinking and being in his heart of hearts that he really doesn't know everything and might actually be a bit of fail. So then the Borg are like, okaaaaaay.. let's go get someone who does know it all. Rinse and repeat. But you take a Vulcan, or a Klingon and they all like "I AM SUPERIOR" and "I AM THE MAN". So the Borg, who have a zero in psychology, think oh right, got everything we need here, no reason to pursue this race as a whole.
You'd think the Borg would have discovered cloning by now. They could take representative samples when a society is interesting enough then let it continue to develop is it will. Be more like pruning, while clones are generated to bring up drone numbers as necessary? The current method seems rather wasteful and ultimately stultifying to their purpose.
You're describing the 29th century assimilation process of the Borg, that was used on Mulcahey to no lasting ill effect in Drone from Season 5... Um... If the Borg adopted this method as standard, if Janeway wouldn't have stopped the Collective from adopting this method as standard, wouldn't this mean that the Borg would have immediately evolved past the point of needing to destroy lives to assimilate cultures and so therefore would have stopped destroying lives to assimilate cultures immediately? In fact, with the Borg as they are striving for perfection, I do not think that they would have any interest in keeping their current stock of outmoded Drones once they had been outmoded. Trillions of outdated Drones no sexier or useful than Windows 95. It's just a question of if the retired Drones were going to be kicked out of the collective into space, or onto a planetbound landfill, or maybe even given a couple cubes to fly off in and make a life for themselves or if the Borg weren't complete fucking assholes put them back where they found them if their worlds of origin still existed. Sure it's wrong to anyone else but Janeway to give species technology they are not ready for, just look at what happened to the Hirogen after Kathy gifted them Holodecks. Hunted for sport by justifiably angry AI. Tell me I'm wrong. Oh. Logically, I thought that since One was a clone of Mulcahey that Mulcahey and One were played by the same actor... That does seem reasonable right? [LEFT] J. Paul Boehmer - One Todd Babcock - Ens. Mulcahey [/LEFT] Apparently not. Boehmer is just a delight every time I find him hiding under a quart of latex or a German accent.
Another aspect of it could be "These bastards keep beating us, so clearly there's more to them than what we've assimilated up to this point. Let's go back and make sure we get it all" Travelling back in time to wipe us out doesn't cover that. Unless the Borg Queen was a bit more petulant about it of "We are perfection, and I'm tired of you lot proving we're not. So I'm going to make sure you can't!"
She waited for Picard. I mean REALLY waited. The Queen could have gone back in time in Borgspace and then made her way to 21st century Earth. Just a girl in love with a boy to shy to tell him about it.
I was surprised they didn't use Boehmer for Mulcahey as well. It was the character's first on-screen appearance, though he'd been mentioned in an earlier episode. I think one of Boehmer's biggest roles on Trek was as Mestral in ENT: Carbon Creek.