Is Picard Concealing Assimilation Effects?

[fireproof78]

Who knows if Hugh was in the collective while Picard was assimilated. Hugh did call him Locutus and believed what Picard told him while pretending to be Locutus.

That much is true, but it goes back what supports Picard had with him at the time. He didn't have the same level of support in First Contact.

 

[Timo]

Well, the ship is still on her shakedown after a full year, this being exceptional enough to frustrate the Chief Engineer. Perhaps there's something seriously wrong with her, and LaForge's pride is speaking when he claims otherwise?

The second King George V class of battleships was fine for the WWII fighting environment. HMS Prince of Wales of that class was not: being new to the game, and originally designed slightly wrong, she was in shambles when sent to challenge the Bismarck. Possibly not thinking "it's better than nothing" would have resulted in the German ship going to the bottom there, rather than the Hood. Likewise, the fleet fighting the Borg could have been better off without a Sovereign and her teething troubles.

We'll never learn if it would also have been better off without Picard. For once, the Cube seemed to be taking a pounding, and the ships swarming it were in no particular distress, or short on reinforcements.

But the Borg were calling Picard. He was consciously aware of that during the battle, but his nightmare at the start of the movie might have been the corresponding subconscious expression. One way to read ST:FC is that the Borg wanted Picard to attend the fight, so that he could be lured to the past, where he and his team would make Cochrane fly, resuting in the birth of the Federation and the introduction of all those delicious assimilables for the 24th century Collective. And letting Picard kill the irrelevant Cube so that he could then chase the all-important Sphere was part of the plan, as was the unusual level of lowering the defenses and blocks on the connection he still had with the Collective.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Backfired? The Borg got the UFP started just fine. And since they were the ones with the time machine, they could do it all over again till they won.

Which I gather they indeed did, so what we saw was their final triumph only. Previously, they had lured people from the future to kickstart and then slowly mature Earth's warp drive program, in which Zephram Cochrane played a minimal role, and historical records of his increasingly more impressive achievements recycled back via the likes of LaForge and Barclay played all the lead parts...

That the UFP might be more than the Borg could chew is first suggested in "Endgame". But Lower Decks now hints that the Collective survived that event at least to some degree, and may be all the stronger for it (this being how the Borg usually evolve, after all).

ST:FC would involve quite a bit of concealing, then: Picard hiding his insecurities, the Queen pretending to be defeated, and Cochrane trying to bullshit it through his "Yeah, I invented warp drive, I really did, I'm just extra humble about it" act...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

And the Borg typically are not. So they would draw out any assimilation to maximum length, so that their hapless victims would struggle as much as they possibly can, and innovate for the Borg. Which is spelled out for us in VOY "Child's Play", but could be implicit in the Borg treatment of Earth and the Federation, too.

Picard clearly isn't in on any of that. Possibly Seven isn't, either: she may clamshell on a lot of things ragarding her past, but she doesn't appear to be informed in "Child's Play" to begin with. But it isn't exactly shocking news that the Collective wouldn't share everything, despite perhaps claiming to...

Doesn't mean Picard wouldn't be torn from keeping certain dark Borg secrets from his friends and superiors, though. For all we know, he actively guided the Borg to kill all those starships at Wolf 359, realizing that this otherwise unnecessary action would hinder rather than help the Borg, delaying them till Riker could save the day. He'd then have to lie about "them forcing me to do it" for basically the rest of his life. Except perhaps to Vulcan or Zakdorn strategists, who'd completely understand.

Timo Saloniemi