Whatever it is required the time to germinate and evolve.
Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x09 - "Võx"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
He’s fine. And up until episode 5, he told a decent story. It slowed down a bit but still had promise. But this? This is not what I want in my Trek.
It makes zero sense. All it does is kick off an investigation that lets our heroes confirm a threat is imminent.
The Borg really shouldn't need Picard's body to obtain gene sequences they put there in the first place.
The Dominion dealt with outsiders via proxies, that they ran from behind the scenes — think Warsaw pact. They tended towards genetic engineering — think doping of athletes and soldiers. Regardless of whether these things were true in reality, they fit perfectly with Hollywood Communist Stereotype (Trek has a *lot* of Hollywood stereotype in it in those days) Handbook 101. It’s a hive mind running a space superpower. It’s possible that subconsciously Hollywood in the eighties and nineties couldn’t *not* write communist baddies, even if LA leans pretty left.
As to the Middle East — well, those weapons came from someone. Depending on which conspiracy theory you believe, or even if there is none at all, those roads always lead back to a superpower (sometimes both superpowers of old) that absolutely would consider nuking — or more accurately, assimilating, the Middle East. So it is here with these changelings and the Borg. They either don’t care, or think it won’t happen to them. Their way is the *right* way, and they don’t care about those others like them who went down a different, peaceful path.
And those young are not under foreign influence — they are under Jacks unwilling influence. Because of things that happened to his parents. It is a little different. It’s very ‘the seed of the next war is planted in the last’ with a dash of ‘young people are malleable and should be protected’ which can absolutely go either way ideologically or politically.
But that has always been Trek in a nutshell — the perceived socialist utopia, that is also so American and Indvidualist that it bleeds Red White and Blue, whose enemies always manage to be Communist allegories, even when they are introduced as ultra-capitalist. Apart from maybe the Ferengi, but there’s an argument even there. And it has never been subtle. Nor has it been subtle that Starfleet and the Federation are *also* extremely progressive — so where does the allegory go?
It’s fun, and Trek has always danced that odd dance.
In short, I wouldn’t worry about ‘boomers vs tiktokkers’ til the curtain falls.
Locutus is the one who speaks, the only Borg with a given name. He’s always been ‘special’. In some ways it’s like BladeRunner 2049.
But that was by design. One would think as it was the Borg’s design, they could do it again. Maybe even better than Locutus. Isn’t the point of the Borg to achieve perfection?
Matalas confirmed on Twitter who the face Vadic was taking orders from is. https://mobile.twitter.com/TerryMatalas/status/1646410456914100225
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Back after taking last week off from reviewing. To make a long story short, I was on vacation in the UK, and found I couldn't access Paramount Plus there - nor could I find Picard for free on Amazon Prime, despite being told it was a standard part of service there. I guess P+ thought I was a UK viewer, but Amazon still thought I was in the U.S. Regardless, didn't get to see the previous episode until Sunday, at which time my two cents would have been pointless.
This is a stronger episode than the last one, but I still have decidedly mixed feelings here - I have to disentangle how well done the episode is from my personal feelings about it. This is the first competently-done mystery box in modern serialized Trek...but I just was kind of unimpressed with what happened to be inside of it.
Don't get me wrong, thematically speaking, using the Borg makes great sense. TNG had lots to do with the Borg, and nothing to do with the Changelings. It's bound up in the personal trauma of Picard as well. My issue is just this is a well we've gone to in both Seasons 1 and 2. It's not Matalas's fault with the first season, but he was involved in Season 2 to some extent, so I don't understand why he told two Borg stories in a row, with this one even undoing a good deal of last season. I pretty much knew that the Borg were somehow involved, but I had hoped the Changelings and some third party (whoever was behind The Face) were working together to exploit a Borg remnant in Jack. Instead we have Crusher just declare "the Borg and the Changelings have been working together all along!" and then the half-dead queen confirm it. Thus all nuance is pretty much gone, and it's down to defeat the bad guy...again. Only I don't think it works emotionally as well as with Vadic, because the motivations of this Queen haven't been established onscreen...she's an 11th hour antagonist. I guess she was The Face, and we'll never get it explained?
I also understand thematically what they were going for with the only under-25s getting assimilated thing (even if all the actors portraying the characters were in their late 20s or 30s). I have to say that whole sequence was hard for me to suspend disbelief on however. Shaw's entire bridge crew other than Seven were a bunch of inexperienced n00bs? That's...that's nuts. Looking online at U.S. Navy demographics, while it is true that nearly half of enlisted are under 25, only 14% of officers are - and bridge crew should be officers. If anything Starfleet should skew older, given advances in medical technology and it not being as rigorous of a job. Ships like the Titan should also be plumb assignments which tend to skew a bit older as well.
That said, the emotional beats hit well here, and aside from some awkwardness in early-episode technobabble (and the weirdness that Deanna of all people gives a lecture about protocol) this was a well crafted, acted, paced, and even scripted episode. It did the job well. I'm just left hoping for more, and am really worried with one episode left we're going to have a pretty shallow conclusion to this arc.
The biggest open question for me - is Jack going to die? The finale is titled The Last Generation, which could be seen as meaning "the previous generation" - how the oldsters need to save Starfleet with the youngins taken out - but there's another meaning I can parse out here. Indeed, given all good climaxes come at an emotional cost, and Matalas had said he is intentionally making a TOS movie rendition for the TNG cast...well, we know how it ended for Kirk's son.
This is a stronger episode than the last one, but I still have decidedly mixed feelings here - I have to disentangle how well done the episode is from my personal feelings about it. This is the first competently-done mystery box in modern serialized Trek...but I just was kind of unimpressed with what happened to be inside of it.
Don't get me wrong, thematically speaking, using the Borg makes great sense. TNG had lots to do with the Borg, and nothing to do with the Changelings. It's bound up in the personal trauma of Picard as well. My issue is just this is a well we've gone to in both Seasons 1 and 2. It's not Matalas's fault with the first season, but he was involved in Season 2 to some extent, so I don't understand why he told two Borg stories in a row, with this one even undoing a good deal of last season. I pretty much knew that the Borg were somehow involved, but I had hoped the Changelings and some third party (whoever was behind The Face) were working together to exploit a Borg remnant in Jack. Instead we have Crusher just declare "the Borg and the Changelings have been working together all along!" and then the half-dead queen confirm it. Thus all nuance is pretty much gone, and it's down to defeat the bad guy...again. Only I don't think it works emotionally as well as with Vadic, because the motivations of this Queen haven't been established onscreen...she's an 11th hour antagonist. I guess she was The Face, and we'll never get it explained?
I also understand thematically what they were going for with the only under-25s getting assimilated thing (even if all the actors portraying the characters were in their late 20s or 30s). I have to say that whole sequence was hard for me to suspend disbelief on however. Shaw's entire bridge crew other than Seven were a bunch of inexperienced n00bs? That's...that's nuts. Looking online at U.S. Navy demographics, while it is true that nearly half of enlisted are under 25, only 14% of officers are - and bridge crew should be officers. If anything Starfleet should skew older, given advances in medical technology and it not being as rigorous of a job. Ships like the Titan should also be plumb assignments which tend to skew a bit older as well.
That said, the emotional beats hit well here, and aside from some awkwardness in early-episode technobabble (and the weirdness that Deanna of all people gives a lecture about protocol) this was a well crafted, acted, paced, and even scripted episode. It did the job well. I'm just left hoping for more, and am really worried with one episode left we're going to have a pretty shallow conclusion to this arc.
The biggest open question for me - is Jack going to die? The finale is titled The Last Generation, which could be seen as meaning "the previous generation" - how the oldsters need to save Starfleet with the youngins taken out - but there's another meaning I can parse out here. Indeed, given all good climaxes come at an emotional cost, and Matalas had said he is intentionally making a TOS movie rendition for the TNG cast...well, we know how it ended for Kirk's son.
I think this should have had a spoiler tag.
Damn, both Changelings from the Great Link and the Borg must have been really pissed off at the Federation if they actually joined forces to achieve a common goal. Neither side seemed like the kind of power who'd join with the other until now.
Wow, could see it coming at the end but two big gripes, killing of Shaw, actually liked him as a character. And also I knowwww this is a TNG love affair but they could of took Defiant and Voyager out of retirement too! (Maybe they still will, Seven and Raffi are still free I suppose)
The irony of that statement is absolutely delicious given the over-the-top weeping and gnashing of teeth any time someone dares say they don't watch STD because of the liberal propaganda that is most certainly intended.
Or maybe we're just over-thinking a simple, nostalgic, sci-fi themed drama and using our own ideological proclivities to give meaning where nothing special was really intended.
The reason I mention 2049 is because like with that film, we know the Borg suffered a big set-back before they could see whatever they had planned for Locutus fully put into play. (Janeway and the disruption of the Transwarp network) This is what’s left of the Borg using what’s left of their failed plan to stage a comeback. They may not have the means to make a new Locutus. They may have intended some version of this all along — certainly, Jack or any of Picards children may have been drawn to the Borg over time, though it is just as likely he is completely unexpected and they are taking advantage of his existence. Again, in which case, they wouldn’t have bothered making a new Locutus, because they didn’t know this would happen.
In terms of could they not use Jack with a new Locutus?
Maybe not. Maybe that DNA shared between Picard and him is essentially like a pairing code. Like a keyboard that only works with one specific proprietary dongle. Lose the dongle, the keyboard is useless.
Picard and his nano-spoodge is also an irreplaceable dongle.
Here's an existential question...if you gave Matalas a blank slate, new ship, new characters, new storyline would he be as successful? He has a lot of things to hide behind in this series, old characters, jokes, ships. Yes I enjoyed it, anyone who was a fan would but...maybe thats a question for another day and another series.
Worst musical act ever.
The WHOLE THREAD is marked
I think he is joking that the original tweet should be marked. For viewers who haven’t started yet.
(Including people in the Uk who haven’t seen this episode yet, and unlike me didn’t dive into spoilers straight away… I haven’t seen it yet. It’s not here for me to see yet.)
Doesn't matter any longer I guess, given this episode seems to infer that...everyone over 25 in Starfleet is now dead? Or at least anyone onboard a ship?
This is such a WTF moment for me I don't know what to say. Even when Picard & company defeat this, you're talking about a complete decapitation of the entire officer corps.