@mods, if it's not too late we really SHOULD have a Spoiler tag appended to this thread - it's pretty much implied, and I've been posting as though it were, but still... Spoilers for 309 are below:
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- Troi and Jack have their tete-en-tete in a room labelled "Counsellor" on the door. It makes sense a ship the size of the Titan will have a counsellor and their comfortably-appointed office.
- The multiple monitor setup is indeed in sickbay, meaning that for an expositional scene someone had to wheel in at least three more monitor-equipped stations, and removed the biobed originally there - all this instead of having everyone gather at the conference lounge like they should. Titan clearly still has some Lower Deckers among the crew to do this work.
[Aside: It's rather horrifying to consider that any surviving Starfleet characters from the TNG era shows, Lower Decks and Prodigy who were still serving in Starfleet and potentially aboard a ship in the review, are in mortal danger and probably dead. Conversely, people we know have, or would have joined Starfleet in assorted alternate futures may currently by part of the Veiny and Pasty killer's club, like Miral, Elnor, Kestra, etc. At least Elnor was PROBABLY past the end of his field study and was back at the academy, taking out his pent-up frustrations on the instructo--- oh my God, O'BRIEN!!]
- But what of anyone on a Starbase? Have they gotten round to infecting all the space-based or landside facilities? My gut feel is that the Jacks-mission was aimed squarely at Earth and thus only the ships and bases there were in immediate danger - otherwise, why bother assembling the fleet there for the takeover?
- The many Defiants we see in the Fleet seem to be in clusters of four.
- We see at least two more designs I'm not familiar with, including one I can only describe as a "beefy Akira" with additional impulse engines stacked high - more STO refugees?
- There was at least one Ross-class starship with missing nacelle cowlings in the model, though the bussard collectors were there and red.
- Regardless, as the OG crew escapes it's probably no coincidence that the ships closest to her were the higher-detailed models like the Sagan-class, and not the lower-poly ships like the other STO designs (with the likely and notable exception of the Enterprise-F).
- It's been pointed out that the earlier in-universe news of the Enterprise-F being decommissioned as part of this whole hubbub was part of a ploy tot get her home in time for the takeover, which I like as a theory. We'll see if she survives next week, or if the Enterprise-D is Doctor Who'ed into the franchise as the next Enterprise while also being a previous Enterprise (take THAT, David Tennant!).
- When the gang reunites on Deck 11, Troi has maintained her dolphin phaser while Worf has at last upgraded to the same sidearm that everyone else is using.
- As the Titan shuttle speeds away, it's great that LaForge, some assimilated crew, or the automated launch protoclas remembers to close the garage door on the way out. Still, though - do we meant o suggest that the extra shuttle they made off with, supposedly stored unwatched on a maintenance deck, escapes through the same main hangar door? Is this a Voyager shuttlebay two situation?
- So... Where's the staff and crew at the Fleet Museum? There was no dialogue to indicate that they had been redeployed (unless they meant to have it covered by Riker's line on the fleet being dispersed in 301). Or are we REALLY meant to believe that the whole museum was run by two LaForges? And worse still, that it's been unstaffed for three episodes now... So in the universe where the Borg aren't conspiring to take over Starfleet, do they beam home at night and leave the place unattended, starships and cloaking devices and all? Or do they count on the unseen drones to take care of everything?
- While non-canon, the Jackill's series of Starfleet technical readouts suggests the entire "lower bulb" of the old spacedock was
one giant arboretum. This makes it relatively easy for one bored hobbyist to transform it into a huge, enclosed hangar bay to work on a pet project for twenty years.
- The old E-D models didn't have such detail on the lifeboat hatches. We NOW know that they were probably meant to be openable or blowaway hatches concealing the lifeboats beneath (as on Voyager or Defiant), but here they are more detailed hatches or possibly ASRVs mounted flush to the external hull as on the Sovereign.
- LaForge offhandedly noted that they couldn't use the Enterprise-E, mostly as a joke setup for Worf's punchline. Does that mean that if the Enterprise-E were available, it'd have been a useful ship as it was not networked? There were plenty of Sovereign-class ships in the fleet review.
- There are plenty of examples of starships being piloted into battle by as few as a single person, going back to at least "The Doomsday Machine", "The Year of Hell", with honorable mentions to "11001001" , "Remember Me" and so on. I'm not worried that the OG crew can fly and fight with the Enterprise-D, it's mostly being able to sustain and recover from damage that's the problem.
- Crusher reports that all the ship's systems were online, apparently from her tricorder readout?
Mark
PS - it's worth pointing out that this is the FOURTH season ender in the last five years of Star Trek that has involved the severe misuse of networked Federation starships, the others being assorted incidents on Discovery, Lower Decks and Prodigy... And with this episode of Picard, three of them happened in the past year! Strange New Worlds gets a pass by using networked starships as a feint and for non-evil purposes last year, but even that didn't work out effectively for Starfleet.