What the hell happened to Descent?

[Praetorian]

In first part we get quite an important and well done story.
The Borg return, as a consequence of past actions ("I, Borg").
Data experiences his first emotion..and it's a negative one.
Picard starts having doubts about his decision in "I, Borg"
And the episodes ends with the revelation of Lore, and the threat of Lore and his army of emotional Borg causing havoc across the Federation...

What was I expecting?

Seeing Lore's campaign...Data realizing he doesn't need his "ethical subroutines" to do the "right thing", or perhaps, expanding on what Troi said about "negative emotions possibly having positive outcomes" and use all his hatred to defeat Lore...
Picard either changing his mind about the decision to spare Hugh, perhaps sacrificing someone (Hugh himself?) or maintaning that he did the right thing, but not without wrestling with it..

What do we get?

Lore goes nowhere and spends the episode doing nothing of consequence, Data acts like an evil guy adicted to negative emotions torturing Geordie for nothing really...and his problem being solved by some bullshit "nadyon wave something" emited from a device Geordie and Picard McGuyvered in a cell??
Picard's moral debate regarding Hugh is totally disregarded and Hugh simply appears to save the day...
Crusher in command wasn't bad, though it didn't make much sense..the Chief Medical Officer in charge..really?
Not sure about the "young and inexperienced black women becomes friend with arrogant and stuck up white man" plot...

Data deactivating Lore was a somewhat powerfull scene though...

 

[USS Triumphant]

Yep, I'm with you - the second part felt completely watered down, and you've stated the reasons pretty well.

 

[nx1701g]

I never really liked Part 2 either (except for the solar storm caused by the E-D - who would have thought Beverly would be such a good commander?). Part one was very well done.

 

[john titor]

I thought it was good. I can't understand Data though killing his own brother rather than just deactivating him, not very ethical or noble.

 

[WillsBabe]

I think the OP makes good points. The whole thing does seem a little pointless and a wasted opportunity. The thing that always throws me out of the episode is the way everyone seems to be wandering around aimlessly. OTOH, I always enjoy watching these couple of eps, I think because its brain-off stuff that's interesting to look at but there isn't much happening below the surface.

 

[Anwar]

Yep, Part two was a mega-letdown. Though this plot may have worked better as a theatrical film than a 2-parter.

Crusher's way of dealing with the Borg ship was very smart though.

 

[WillsBabe]

Just remembered: really like the phaser fight in part one, and Riker's crack about the Borg fighting like Klingons - then apologising to Worf for the comment.

 

[SomniumRabidum]

The 2nd part was definitely a letdown, especially because the plot had so much potential.

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

Yeah, this episode was a huge let-down.

And people blame VOY and FC for ruining the Borg. This and "I, Borg" is where the Borg began to seem less threatening, imo

 

[Trekker4747]

This whole 2-part sucked.

Interesting to note, though, that this is one episode in the series where the episode title and credits don't start right after the first commercial break. They don't come in until after the first fight with the Borg. (They did it this way so that the credits/title don't interfere with the action scene after the break.)

 

[Klingon Empire]

I'm with you. I watched that episode on Sci-Fi channel on their Christmas marathon. It seemed very dull.

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

Especially considering that this was the S6 finale, and that audiences had to wait 3 months to find out the crappy conclusion and kick off the final season, it was disappointing.

Did TPTB think they had a real winner on their hands with this one?

 

[Praetor]

I agree with everyone that part two was a total mess and letdown.

What was I expecting?

Seeing Lore's campaign...Data realizing he doesn't need his "ethical subroutines" to do the "right thing", or perhaps, expanding on what Troi said about "negative emotions possibly having positive outcomes" and use all his hatred to defeat Lore...
Picard either changing his mind about the decision to spare Hugh, perhaps sacrificing someone (Hugh himself?) or maintaning that he did the right thing, but not without wrestling with it..

This is a MUCH better part two than what we actually got.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

And people blame VOY and FC for ruining the Borg. This and "I, Borg" is where the Borg began to seem less threatening, imo

This wasn't the Borg, though, it was just a single ship that was altered.

Voyager ruined THE BORG. Every. Single. One of them.

 

[Romulan_spy]

I do think Lore was a cool villain in Descent.

 

[Anwar]

And people blame VOY and FC for ruining the Borg. This and "I, Borg" is where the Borg began to seem less threatening, imo

This wasn't the Borg, though, it was just a single ship that was altered.

Voyager ruined THE BORG. Every. Single. One of them.

It was inevitable, they couldn't use the Borg as a recurring foe without being able to escape so they had to make them weaker. And no, they couldn't do stories about the Borg attacking other worlds while Voy observes or anything because that would be too expensive. So basically they had to tell stories of VOY vs Borg, and as such Borg had to be weak or VOY goes boom in 5 seconds.

 

[CaptainStoner]

I think this is the 2-parter where in the commentaries, they say part 1 was written first, and it wasn't until getting ready for Season 7 that part 2 came about. Seems an odd approach.
It's not one of their strongest. I guess Lore had to come back at some point, but that's my whole beef with the evil twin thing. More predictable as an M-class planet with a civilization similar to 20th century Earth. I was downright pissed when they did it again with Sela. At least with Lore, there was some good drama between him and Data. Spiner sold it well, and that's no small feat with a giant cliche, and the writing wasn't bad. But it's still evil twins.

 

[WillsBabe]

I read a really great fanfic based on the events of this episode. I think it may have been written in the hiatus. It was based on the idea that humans had been all but written off by Lore.

 

[Hober Mallow]

The Descent teaser was great. It was all downhill from there.

Actually I did like the fact that there was so much fast-paced action in Act 1 they had to show the guest star and production credits during the teader.

According to Braga, the Enterprise destruction scene from Generations was supposed to happen in Descent Part 2, but the special FX people assured him they'd never be able to pull it off on the TV budget.

 

[Too Much Fun]

The Descent teaser was great. It was all downhill from there.

That's exactly what I was going to say. To this day, I think Data's reaction to killing that Borg is one of the intriguing 'WTF' teaser climaxes in the whole series. Right up there with the Enterprise exploding. It's too bad the rest of the episode couldn't maintain that level of intrigue. I liked "I, Borg". Even though it sort of ruined the concept of the Borg by introducing individuality to them, at least it was well-written and acted. This one just messed with the Borg too much and didn't have a dramatically effective story to justify doing that like "I, Borg" did. As a fan of the Borg, I like to pretend this episode doesn't exist. It's one I skip when watching the series again. I don't care that it was supposed to be an epic season ending cliffhanger. It just doesn't work.