I should be ashamed for liking something that was in such a large part nothing but pure nostalgia, but it sucked me right in and never let me go. And in addition to the nostalgia, the main theme seemed to be passing the torch to the new generation, with both Jack and Sidney reflecting on what they've gotten from their parents and how that relates to the people they've become. I found it difficult to digest Geordi becoming a cautious bureucrat with a desk job in his old age, but to be honest, I've never seen what he would be like as a father before, so it's not like it's a bad thing. All in all, Sidney confronting him about the path she has chosen for herself ended up as an emotional high point of the episode for me, neatly capped with their reconciliation as they were working on the Soong-type Android v2.0.
The review of all the ships in the museum also felt like a bit of a nostalgia-baiting first, but seeing all the hero ships with their respective motifs (complete with the HMS Bounty having The Voyage Home theme playing) affected me emotionally in a way I didn't expect. However, it became perfect when Seven switched to Voyager and started wistfully reminiscing about her own found family, and that did bring out the tearworks. Also, Jack's "drive-by wisdom" about lonely stars in a galaxy touched me on a personal level as it related so well to my own personal experience.
Throughout the whole sequence, I was looking at each of the major starships and my first thought was that I wanted them to take that and end the season flying it, no matter how impractical that would've been from a production point of view. Stealing the cloaking device from the Bounty was a nice move that helped the story remain a reference to Kirk and his crew going rogue as opposed to a complete rehash, albeit I'm a bit sad we didn't see a retelling of Quark stealing the cloaked cloking device from Deep Space Nine. I'm certain it would've worked perfectly with Jack and Sidney.
Daystrom turned out so much different from what I was expecting... after playing up the whole super-AI defense system thing, I was completely expecting Moriarty to be running the whole thing, so I was caught completely off guard about it being an incomplete AI composed of literally everything found on the hard drives of every Soong-type Android that has ever existed together with Altan. I guess that answers how Lore comes into the picture, and now we also know what the changelings have stolen. There's just so much they could do with Picard's body, and I'm actually a bit uneasy because any option has the potential to end up both awesome or extremely cheesy. Ultimately, I found the reveal that every weird thing they saw from the AI was an attempt by Data (and maybe the others) to assist his friends to be quite clever. He couldn't talk to them directly, but he could use all the machinery at this disposal to help them figure out who he is.
Riker felt a bit off in this one though. I don't know, he just seemed far too nonchalant and snarky in this one compared to the last few weeks.
Observations:
- "That is a relief. I was practicing deceit." - somewhere on Cardassia Prime, a certain tailor just blurted out "GOTCHA" out of the blue and he has no idea why.
- "Genesis II Device" stored in Daystrom
- A refit NX-class parked behind the K't'inga at the Museum
