Is Best of both Worlds overrated?
- Thread starter DarthTom
- Start date
Yep, I'd have preferred a longer resolution. At the time ISTR that there was a rumour of a six episode follow-up, but it didn't happen, and in hindsight we now know that the DS9 staff had to push to make the follow-up to the season five cliffhanger more than one or two eps.
Point two: Yep, it's a massive ret-con by DS9's pilot. Again with hindsight, you could have had a moment which really fitted with the episode's theme of Riker having to step up to the big chair if there had been lifesigns. Eg:
Worf: "I'm reading survivors, captain. Difficult to be precise - perhaps 9, 10 thousands."
Data: "The Borg must have felt the escape pods were irrelevant and that destroying them would be a distraction."
Riker: "Get us back into warp, MrCrusher."
Shelby: "Captain?"
Riker: "We can barely catch them as it is. Which is more important, Commander, 10 thousand people or the billions on Earth."
And if you really really wanted to ram it home, add in a Ready Room scene where Riker points out that Enterprise is probably on a suicide mission: "They've got a better chance out here than with us."
And point three: Well, they did at least consider it. There's a design sketch for Picard's bio-synthetic arm ('slightly paler than normal flesh') in some behind the scenes book. But it got nixed.
But you can claim something is good-as-entertainment because you like it, and you can also note that, because it's popular, it has suceeded in its goal. You're confusing 'true' with 'good.'
In short, we exist outside the realm of 'true' in an argument about the quality of entertainment. We only discuss the good - we all agree, for the purposes of this argument, that BOBW exists, that we can experience it, and what those experiences contain. So BOBW is 'true'. But is this true thing good? As this is not a good based on any moral or ethical system, it is connected to subjective tastes. There are many theories about what constitues the good but none as absolutely reliable as science or even as plainly absolute as morality.
For example, I might say that I conider 'BOBW' good because it adheres to one of the Aristotelian laws of tragedy, it takes place (presumably or probably) within a 24 hour period. I could also say it is bad because it does not adhere to another law, remaining in the same place all the time. But using this and other theories so literally are wholly inadequate - as a non-moral, non-technical, individual 'good' there is very little quasi-objective criteria.
I don't think anyone actually claimed that. They claimed it couldn't be overrated because it's popular, that was their argumentative flaw. Nor, indeed, did you claim that it was overated (purely to you) until just a moment ago - but I'll let that pass.
And since we lack those, we judge it by the criteria I mentioned above - namely, using an argument based on our own conception of what constitutes good entertainment. That's less a counter-position than a repetition.
As our opinion is to an extent unique, the argument's main purpose is to explain why one feels the way one does, and isn't likely to convince anyone.
BobW is way overrated. It has a killer rep but really it's just coasting on it's cliffhanger ending which was a major shocker for it's time. The resolution was lame. A complete anticlimax. Trek has produced way better two parters in it's time.
Point of order: it doesn't, actually. There's a full night between Shelby's arrival and then her confirmation of the Borg presence on the abducted colony; setting up the deflectors to remodulate into the fire thingy beam takes the ``better part of a day''; it's another eight to twelve hours to recover from the Locutus pointing at Riker and Nelson Mutzing a ``HA-ha!''; after Admiral Sha-Ka-Ree declares Picard a casualty of war there's another day before the expected battle between the Armada and the Borg cube which the Enterprise will miss; plus the repair time between retrieving Locutus and reaching Earth. They, wisely, don't pin down hours too precisely which makes it almost impossible to pick out contradictions in the timeline, but it's still several days at least.
As for whether the episodes are overrated, I say: no. The main weakness based on watching them for the Showdown threads was that in the second part there's this dead zone between the failure of the deflector remodulation thingy and the retrieving of Locutus. There's stuff going on, in figuring out a plausible course of action and trying to move the sense of imminent dread from Picard to Riker, but it isn't moving things along again until they have Locutus back.
(In fact, that is a slight storytelling problem: the personal crises start with Picard facing the Imminent Doom of Humanity and Riker wondering where his career went wrong -- and yes, thats a touch imbalanced, but it establishes the complacency among our characters that Riker didn't have any doubts that there'd be a next month until Picard was abducted -- to Picard out of action and Riker stepping up as the protagonist.)
The magic wand at the end being to send a sleep command is just fine; clearly, blowing stuff up isn't working, tactically or dramatically (we would see just how boring ray beams blowing stuff up are in the Next Generation movies). If you want to impress the audience, and if you want to sensibly beat a villain which adapts quickly, then you have to out-think them and find things that weren't previously considered.
One thing I'm not sure about was the pause between when the Borg went to sleep and when the cube blew up; in fact, I'd completely forgotten it. If I were going back with full discretion to edit things as I liked I'm not sure whether I'd keep that or not. On the one hand, it does pause things between the ``sleep'' command and the climactic explosion; on the other hand, it gives a few more moments of suspense and dread and add a moment where you just don't know what's going to happen next.
I love both parts. Trek's finest hours.
I thought the two hours gripped me in a way that tv or film rarely has. It's dark, fatalistic. It's tension filled. You've got the wonderful build-up to the first encounter, Picard's assimilated, you've got some nice(rare for TNG- battle scenes, a perfectly executed near armageddon scenario, nice touches of irony, two really strong Guinan scenes.
And I totally disagree about the last acts of the second hour feeling like a letdown. For me they were tension-filled seeing the cube pass the familiar sight of Saturn and then ominously hovering above Earth. You have the uncertainty surrounding Picard's fate--would the cube's destruction take his life. You had some pretty dark moments such as Riker ordering Wesley to prepare to take the Enterprise on a collision with the cube.
And then there was the lovely haunting epilogue at the end.
I thought the two hours gripped me in a way that tv or film rarely has. It's dark, fatalistic. It's tension filled. You've got the wonderful build-up to the first encounter, Picard's assimilated, you've got some nice(rare for TNG- battle scenes, a perfectly executed near armageddon scenario, nice touches of irony, two really strong Guinan scenes.
And I totally disagree about the last acts of the second hour feeling like a letdown. For me they were tension-filled seeing the cube pass the familiar sight of Saturn and then ominously hovering above Earth. You have the uncertainty surrounding Picard's fate--would the cube's destruction take his life. You had some pretty dark moments such as Riker ordering Wesley to prepare to take the Enterprise on a collision with the cube.
And then there was the lovely haunting epilogue at the end.
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