Star Trek: Picard.

I told you.

 

I'm just glad it didn't shit the bed in episode 4 like it usually does.

It's improvement, I guess.

 

What a difference two days makes!

 

Star Trek Picard debuts the new U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-F!

 

I don't know if JLP and his immediate circle of friends are too bright either....

 

I just can't wait for them to fly back to Earth in the Battlestar Galactica and teach those networked ships a thing or two!

 

I would have had the Titan have its bridge module either blown clean off, or gutted open, so they had to use the holodeck as a backup bridge, and then they set it to ENT-D bridge as a skin preference.
Less contrivance hurdles than rebuilding the D.
But, that's me.

 

I too will give FF (or the YouTubers who he parrots) credit for saying that they would bring back the D.

But let's pause to talk about how ridiculous a prospect that should have been and how it is an indictment of the poor writing of this season.

For this to have happened, someone must have decided that it made sense to:
1. Tow the saucer section of the D from where it was blown up real good to the Fleet Museum
2. Dedicate what had to be thousands of person-hours to replicating portions of the ship to just get it to a semblance of its old self
3. Spend thousands more getting its systems working and get the materials necessary for it to have warp drive, etc.

From what I gathered Geordi just did this all on his own over the course of 30 years. That's where love crosses over to obsession.

 

He wouldn't have had to replicate the engineering/battle section from scratch, he could have stolen one from a Galaxy class that got smashed up in the Dominion War.
Indeed, the Dominion War could have offered up all kinds of lovely scrap for the purpose of rebuilding the D.
...it still would have taken obsession and person hours though.

 

The secondary hull is actually the USS Syracuse. Geordi says so when he said he spent the last 20 years restoring it.

In that sense, it's actually the NCC-1701-F.

(The "F" is for Frankenstein.)

 

S03E09, "Vox"


Lots of issues with this episode for me, from the singularly awful idea of having a single point of failure in a security system that can control an entire fleet, to Jack having special Borg DNA, which some of you called weeks ago. The reveal was underwhelming. The crew becoming Borgified was kind of funny, especially with the need to comment vocally about everything happening. That's one hell of a telegraphing move: "Eliminate non-assimilated, but give them about 10 seconds or so to react first,"

Anyhoo, I knew Captain Todd Stashwyck was going to die, and yeah, knew he was going to use Seven's name at last. Lots of gunfire, gunplay, Star Trek: Phaser plot development that I've come to expect from this season. Borg baby Jack can't make it any worse in that regard. Still, let's not focus on all of the negatives, let's focus on some positives:

* Seriously nice Frontier Day visuals. Good work SFX team.
* Interesting idea with using transporters to spread Borg DNA. I didn't expect that one.

There were also some solid quotes:

Seven: "The robot's right."

Geordi: "Data, could you try to be a little more positive?"
Data: "...I hope we die quickly?!"

And of course, the beautiful Enterprise D being brought out to cause our nostalgia bombs to explode all over the place. It was the highlight of the episode for me, and easily accounts for half the score I gave this episode.

Now we'll get to see how all of this incredible mess of a season wraps up.

 

Why did he devolve the bridge from its ST:GEN configuration?

 

Yeah, but he would have had those bits and pieces hauled from over by DS9 (or wherever). And apparently he was doing all of this on his own, or at least, without telling the command crew of the D, and with it coming to them as a complete surprise that he had been restoring the D in his spare time for decades.

Oh, and it has to be considered a better idea to take Geordi's rehab of a ship that was destroyed about three decades ago than any other ship that they might have access to -- a current Klingon or Romulan ship, for example -- but shut down or rip out the integrated computer system part.

Fans: Beverly not telling JLP that they have a kid and cutting off all contact from the Enterprise crew for 20 years is a terrible, out of character idea.
Writers and Geordi: Hold my beer!

 

It doesn't have as many memberberries as the configuration from TNG's most popular seasons.

 

I'm sorry what were you saying, I didn't quite hear that? With all of that crow in your mouth.

 

Who knows, maybe it could get restored fully by someone who's in charge of the fleet museum.

 

Not a bad prediction, I'd say.

 

Awful. Just fucking awful.

-The Borg? Lame. And no one has seen or heard from the Borg in ten years? Come on, man. We just did the Borg last season, they're our allies now. Picard and the Borg Queen are pals. Are you telling me over a decade went by between seasons two and three? And the Borg went from asking for Federation membership to just disappearing in that time? Come on. And a decade went by between seasons?

-There are protocols that require Jack to be detained, are there? There's a lady full of Borg components that's second in command of the ship. Her blood is full of Borg nanoprobes. And Jack's the one they're locking down?

-And they put armed guards in front of his door, when they know he's got powers that let him control other people? Fuck sakes.

-All those Starfleet officers died because Picard didn't just hand Jack over to Vadic, Ro died to stop the changelings from taking Jack, and once Jack knows where the changelings wanted to take him he immediately goes there anyway? Cool, I hope he fucking dies next episode. I hope he violently shits himself to death.

-Why are changelings wasting time impersonating people like Tuvok when the key to everything was reprogramming the transporters?

-The revelation that the transporter doesn't actually materialize a person, but rather materializes most of a person while replacing parts of their DNA with pre-programmed code is a fucking nightmare. McCoy was right, the fucking things really are killing people. But if that's what the transporters were doing all along, how come they didn't unintentionally filter the Borg DNA out of Picard and Jack long before the changelings reprogrammed them? Or turn all sorts of exceptional people into generic lumps? What about that Romulan spy that was pretending to be a Vulcan during TNG, did the transporter give her the wrong DNA or did it detect she was Romulan and keep quiet about it?

-Fuck Kestra, I guess? I read somewhere that Matalas had planned to say she didn't get abducted along with Troi because she was at Starfleet Academy but dropped it because the dialogue sounded forced, but now it's like she never existed. Maybe Jurati took her along when the friendly Borg disappeared over a decade ago.

-We've never seen Borg fuck, why would the collective alter the DNA of anyone they assimilated in a half-assed way that would only fully effect their kids? And how did no one check for that? DNA isn't some poorly understood thing in the Star Trek universe.

-What do the changelings gain from helping the Borg take over Starfleet? If changelings know how to reprogram transporters to mess with peoples DNA, why not just reprogram the transporters to give everyone terminal ass cancer and call it a day? That's a better revenge than helping the Borg assimilate a bunch of people. And since when do the Borg use henchmen or middlemen anyway?

-What possible benefit could there be to networking a bunch of ships together so they act as one? It's stupid as hell. And we already saw Picard and Jurati do the same thing in last seasons finale to generate that massive shield, so what's supposed to be impressive about this?

-Hey, it's Admiral Shelby! And now she's dead. That feels like some incel wish fulfillment.

-Starfleet was already a thing before the NX Enterprise launched. The fuck is this weird unnecessary retcon?

-Who exactly are the fireworks for? Can people on Earth see them from that distance?

-Why wouldn't Titan disable whatever let the rest of the fleet control it remotely? Why didn't the Shrike or the Intrepid use that same trick earlier?

-Why are the Borg loudly telegraphing their every move?

-Did the actor playing Jack get told his character was going to get stabbed in the back with a great big needle and that he shouldn't react to it at all? Seems like a weird choice.

-Oh good, everyone that's not a TNG character is getting left behind. How convenient.

-If they're on the D, Geordi should be behind Worf at one of the engineering stations, not piloting the ship like it's season one of TNG.

-I love how Picards "urgent" message to Shelby communicated basically nothing useful because of his long pointless preamble.

-How is Seven not flipped by the Borg signal? Again, blood full of nanoprobes, body full of Borg tech. Is she fighting it off with the power of coolness?

-Why does Titan have exactly one guy in a DS9 era cadet uniform? Weird.

-Okay Shaw, announce the escape plan to everyone on the ship.

-I'm just going to assume Shaws "death" was a fakeout since his head didn't explode and he was with Raffi and Seven when we last saw him. They got him right in the chest, so maybe he ends up with an artificial heart like Picard.

-The fleet is happy to blow up the Excelsior but ignores a fleeing shuttle? Okay, sure.

-Hey, are all these ships still full of changelings? Is changeling Tuvok there? How do the assimilated crewmen know who not to kill?

-That's way too small a fleet to be "the entire fleet."

-"Eliminate planetary defenses?" Just blow up the fucking sun already, a DS9 changeling would have done that nine episodes ago.

-Nostalgia be damned, stealing the Defiant to fight the Borg would have made much more sense. Or even Voyager, which fucked up more Borg cubes than the Enterprise D ever did.

-Sure Picard, take a minute to joke about the carpet while people are dying back in the Sol system. Okay.

-Weird that Geordi would have to fix up the D himself, you'd think he'd have Starfleet's blessing and all the resources he needed to put it alongside the other ships at the museum.

-"I'm reluctant to ask you to face this threat" Fuck off, man. It's way too late for that.

 

Shush and look at the Enterprise D. Shhhh... sshhhhhh... listen to the swelling music, and stop thinking. Shhhhhh...

 

OH SHIT ELNOR WAS ASSIGNED TO THE EXCELSIOR

 

ELNOR NEVER EXISTED. SHHHHHHH... look at the faithful recreation of the bridge, and down at the carpet. The lovely 1980s, early 1990s carpet.

 

The Tom Cruise War of the Worlds remake. That's what the red vines reminded me of.

 

I can't disagree with any of this. Where the hell is Jurati Queen? It's like they forgot everything that happened last season. Shelby's line about Starfleet immediately jumped out at me. Starfleet existed during Enterprise. She should have said that the NX-01 lead to the formation of the Federation. None of this episode made sense.

 

It reminded me of the red forest from the 12 Monkeys series.

 

TNG fans watching season 1 Picard- Where's all the old stuff?!??! Fuck all this new stuff!!

TNG fans watching season 3 Picard- They're blowing up all the new stuff and bringing back that old shit!!

 

This entire season feels like a mean spirited daydream Picard might have after a well meaning cadet asks him what it was like serving alongside Jonathan Archer.

 

Where have I seen this before?
Ah, yes, going from Last Jedi to Rise Of Skywalker.

 

Reductive and dishonest, as usual. Way to stay on brand.

 

A good balance would be fine. They were doing good up until now.