Võx

 DVD, Picard S3 (Võx)

Jack Crusher, Jr. had been a rather unappealing character, from his 'mystery' identity, to his casual disrespect and self-absorbed attitude, but this time he really takes the biscuit - after the whole season had been about protecting him from the marauding pursuers of Changeling Vadic and her beak-faced crew, upon learning the Borg are behind his strange nightmares and he needs to be kept a prisoner for his and everyone else's sake, he rushes off to seek the Borg Queen! How stupid can one man be, and how unsympathetic can one character be? The whole season! It was all about protecting him! And thanks to his incredibly selfish, emotional need to know what it's all about he puts everyone's lives at danger, very far from the Starfleet way. I suppose you could say he's as equally motivated to run from his friends and colleagues right into the waiting arms of the enemy to protect them as he is to unlock the mystery of himself, but it was such a hotheaded act and he's not a teenager any more, he should have more sense. And who was to say he would have put them in danger if he had stayed, which makes it increasingly, groan-worthily appear it's more to satisfy his curiosity, which doesn't look good at all... Again, in his defence you can argue Picard could have broken it to him in a more gentle, diplomatic fashion, or you could if he'd been as insensitive and out of touch with others as he's been shown to be across too much of the last three seasons, except that he was quite gentle, and all round Picard (and Stewart's acting), have been much closer to what he's supposed to be, exhibiting the qualities or at least a better line delivery, of the Picard we knew before he got old and badly written.

If Jack doesn't have even the leg of Picard's blurting exposition to stand on as excuse for his actions, it makes him look even worse. Perhaps Jean-Luc should have been a touch more sensitive from a perspective of Fatherhood, insisting he'll do whatever it takes to protect his damaged son to make up for the bad genes he saddled him with, or if Jack didn't just fly off the handle, then things might have been different, but it ends up looking like Jack isn't trusted and doesn't trust, so decides to go his own way (he can apparently control more than one person at a time, too, as he uses both Security officers to flank him, though I'm not sure it fits with what we saw before that he can move around normally himself, stalking down the corridor, while simultaneously controlling his guards). Unfortunately, that's exactly what the Borg Queen needed at that moment to enact her carefully timed plan of taking over the fleet. At least I think that's the case... The story gets overly convoluted and because so much of this episode is exposition you have to pay close attention to what's being said as it all comes out and the plot unravels, which would be my biggest (but not only criticism), of this penultimate episode of the series, and potentially 24th/25th Century live action Trek indefinitely. Can we say Jack's running away is down to him being so strongly 'activated,' or is it just pigheadedness that drives him to rush off from even his Mother? Is it Deanna's fault for pushing him to open the door in his mind from which all those slightly poor red CGI veins (or vines as she calls them), originate? She didn't get to drive the ship this time, but is she responsible for metaphorically crashing the season?

The question is, what would the Borg Queen have done if Jack hadn't torpedoed straight for her? The timing was critical, presumably, she needed Jack to be the transmitter to activate all the under-25s in Starfleet's, well, star fleet, or am I getting the wrong end of the tubule? Would they still have been activated if Jack had been elsewhere? It's not clear to me, but to go the whole season in one direction, then throw out all the various plotting and actions because Jack gets stroppy and undermines every effort to prevent him from being captured is a major failure of writing, to me. If he came to the decision alone as the only way to save everyone that would be one thing, but as I've mentioned, he looks very self-obsessed more than any other motivation that can be read into it. It might have been exciting to see Borg Cubes coming for the Titan, though that only reinforces the idea that the majority of this season has been treading water (as is sadly the case with serialised seasons, at least in Trek), waiting for the big finale, which is, I suppose the point: you're intentionally stringing your audience along for as long as possible until there's a big final confrontation. It's a model, it's a system, it's a formula, but not one that plays to Trek's strengths. Fortunately, for this particular season it works much better because the draw has been something other than plot: the reunion of the 'TNG' cast, so that gradual coming together has been the glue which held it together.

Once again, like the previous episode, the final scenes of this one almost make up for the lack in the majority of it (though there are some definite highs along the way), and leaves me wishing the goodness could have capped a great story. But to have all those characters not just in the same room, breathing the same air, but walking reverently onto the Bridge of the Enterprise-D, a spotless recreation from the production team, only serves to plunge the knife in further on the fact that the lost aesthetics of Trek needn't have been discarded. It still looks as immaculate, futuristic and simply beautiful as it ever did. I've always loved when Trek has revisited the past by bringing back part of an old ship, whether that be the original Enterprise, the Excelsior, another Constitution, or the 'D,' but all of these examples were achieved in old Trek, while the new has chosen to reimagine and alter, much to the detriment of the visual canon and continuity (just one of many reasons 'DSC' and 'SNW' can't succeed for me - they never seemed to care about Trek history, even while inserting themselves into it, which is a major flaw for a serious Trekker). You can point to the beauty of 'Lower Decks' returning to the aesthetic, and 'Prodigy' has nice moments, such as their Holodeck recreation of the 'D' Bridge, but live action is different, and this more than anything else shouts out that Trek is back!

Picard jokes of all the things he's missed being with his old comrades, he's realised what he missed most: the carpet. This was clearly an intentional dig at the modern Trek aesthetic where everything has to be shiny floors and lights blinding you out of the gloom at every opportunity, but I think it also points to a reality about that, too. I was with Picard, and where he may have been lighthearted about it, encapsulating the moment of reunion with their most powerful shared experience of their former careers, I took it seriously and loved every short second we spent on that Bridge - they even have Geordi explain how it came to be, that the Saucer was recovered from Veridian III (a uniquely 'Generations' reference, my favourite Trek film, how wonderful!), and the engines were formerly of the USS Syracuse, and which he's tinkered with for the past twenty years. Is that how long he's been managing the Fleet Museum or was he afforded a priority berth somewhere he could keep coming back to work on it? That modern Trek would not only make mention of key ship history, but also explain how it came to be, is a huge joy and something missing from much of this TV era where you sometimes get the impression they either didn't know about something, or worse, didn't care, or think the audience would! It shows the writing of this season in particular had its heart in the right place even if it found Trek as difficult to write as what had recently come before.

'LD' has to get some of the credit for making it acceptable to reference the past of characters and ships that we knew, even if they started out on overdrive, but it is the little things like explaining how the Enterprise-D can be in one piece, that matters to people like me. It's a shame they couldn't get everything right, though... And there is one absolute clanger in this episode, and just as Jack as the focus of the season messes up at the end, the other main focus has been Frontier Day, the 250th Anniversary since... mumble, mumble. It hadn't been entirely clear, but this time we get not only a new flagship (presumably, since it's leading the celebrations), the Enterprise-F, but another returning character in Admiral Elizabeth Shelby to tell us the exact meaning of the big day. And it is... drum roll... to mark two hundred and fifty years, or a quarter of a millennium (which puts Trek in its perspective!), since the launch of the first Enterprise, the NX-01, which led to the birth of... I thought she was going to say the Federation, but apparently it was the birth of Starfleet! Is that the Starfleet Captain Archer and his crew worked for and had been around some time even before the launch of the NX-01? That would be a yes. Whoops! You can't catch everything, I understand that, but such a key part of Trek history getting misrepresented or misinterpreted - Terry Matalas, the man behind the season, and who we can be thankful to for so many things, even worked on 'Enterprise,' so to get a detail like that mixed up is astounding! I can only put it down to the stress of this late in the season where everything has to come together, because that's a massive booboo.

In terms of the actual reveal of the 'F,' I loved it. The fireworks reminded me of Voyager's triumphant return at the end of its series, the ship itself was lovingly presented and allowed time to shine, so much so that I wished we could see more of her, and while you can tell they didn't have the money for a proper Bridge set as it's mostly Shelby alone on a Captain's Chair in a blank, empty space, it's another throwback to TV Trek of old when they similarly had to conserve budget when it came to guest ships, so I didn't mind. What I did mind was bringing back another 'legacy' character, as they call them these days, only to kill her off after five minutes. Having Shelby as the voice (or Vox?), of the fleet operations was a nice touch since she was so unlikeable back in 'TNG,' and also that she was so key to the big Borg engagement in those episodes, so I can see the mental lineage of getting her to this point, but she's not really a character, just a speech, she doesn't really even get to interact with Picard or any of our characters before she's shot by her crew. In one sense you can suggest that perhaps this was Matalas' idea as revenge for how she treated Riker, maybe, and I didn't like that impression. It's also not the only one in the episode: they treat the Enterprise-E with disdain as if to say we don't care about that ship, only the original 'TNG' for us, and I had always wanted to see the 'E' again as such a sleek, beautiful design that helped make the 'TNG' films be even more advanced and cinematic than the TV series they'd come from.

In both cases there's room for speculation, and if, as Matalas has said, even the death of Ro Laren isn't supposed to be certain, then not seeing Shelby definitively die also has to count as room for manoeuvre should they ever wish to bring her back. The evidence is that we see two of her crew shoot her with Phasers, you even see the fiery red marks as she's hit, but unlike just about every other Phaser hit in this season, she doesn't dissolve into sparks so there's still hope. It just seems the intent was to suggest she was dead as they never mentioned her fate one way or the other, in this episode or the next and I don't like something hanging like that. Not that it really matters, we're unlikely to see any of these characters again, so Shelby living or dying is a very minor matter, but my feeling is that if you're going to bring back someone it needs to be in a meaningful way, where they can have interaction with our characters, otherwise it's just a little Easter egg, and while they're fine, they're ultimately unsatisfying compared to most of what we've been given this season. The 'E's demise is similarly uncertain, but I didn't like the flippant way it was turned into a joke, and not only that, but it's a joke about Worf's command ability, with the implication being (and they might even have mentioned he was its Captain earlier in the season, I can't remember), he was responsible for its loss, since he defensively denies 'it' was not his fault, whatever 'it' was.

One of my problems with this episode is they don't get the tone right sometimes when it comes to the humour. For example, moments with Data were terrific, such as when Geordi asks for more positivity and he pleasantly obliges, saying, "I hope we die quickly," which is very much the kind of Data thing he would say. I think Data as a whole was much more self-aware by 'Nemesis,' but then if you think this is a kind of Data reborn, much like Spock in 'Star Trek IV,' but not quite as strongly, it's easier to see him as still not exactly himself, which can conveniently and adequately justify anything they do with him. I felt like that joke was one of the moments they got the humour right, but too many times they didn't, like with the dig at the 'E,' or Seven offhandedly referring to Data as 'the robot.' In that scene she very much regressed into the Seasons 1 and 2 version of the character where she was brash, casual, flippant, uncaring about precision and specifics or showing intelligence and knowledge, sensitivity she slowly gained on Voyager that made her character so appealing and compelling to watch. All that was sacrificed on the altar of what the writers thought was 'cool,' but which made me greatly dislike her. She doesn't have much to do in this episode as the focus has shifted to the 'TNG' cast having their moment, and it's not a big problem, but it reminds why, without Shaw around it looks like she'll revert back to that awful version of Seven, all for the sake of a 'laugh' at someone treating the venerated and loved android with such disregard.

I'm sure many people would have dreamed of Seven of Nine and Data meeting - they were the outsider character growing towards humanity in their respective series', so to have that potential scene of mutual understanding and similarity lost so they can instead have a cheap joke, is exactly the kind of crude approach to drama, and cruel approach to expectations that has been just one more thing about modern Trek to put me off, and why having Seven here has really made little difference, especially in these later episodes. The same, to some extent, can be said of Worf, who has fallen back into his 'TNG' position of just being one of the gang, mostly a solid presence in the background, literally, when he takes up his old station at the horseshoe, though it didn't even quite register at the time, probably because the cinematic widescreen aspect ratio doesn't really suit a Bridge built for 4:3 Fullscreen, although it wasn't a problem in 'Generations,' so perhaps it just wasn't well-framed by Matalas as Director? Worf on 'DS9' became such an important figure, elevated beyond his role on 'TNG' and far less the butt of jokes, that it's hard to return him to that lesser stature, although they got the humour right when everyone's pouring out love for their old ship and he bluntly complains that the weapons were better on the 'E'! It's a very Worf thing to do, he isn't one to be particularly sentimental about things, though he acquiesces when the sensitive Deanna chastises him, and pretends to be very happy.

It's moments like these that lift this season above all the other live action seasons we've had in the Kurtzman era, and why it was such a good move to bring in these old characters instead of insisting on continuing the drab, boring, unhappy version of 'Picard' they'd presented us with prior. And having them get to be together on the 'D,' so homely and attractive, was a masterstroke and shows where the money went. I would say the lighting is a bit pale and makes the place look different, somewhat dingy to the bright place it used to be, and as amazing as the recreation of the Bridge was, there is a sense that this is all they could build so it does feel somewhat limited rather than the original set where people were coming and going between Turbolifts or the Briefing Room, so I couldn't quite help but feel this was a set, but in the moment it was simply incredible and a real joy - not since the series finale of 'Enterprise' had any of the 'D' been recreated, and there it was other sets, like corridors, Quarters or the Holodeck rather than the Bridge, so taken together, the main parts (other than the impressive Engineering which would require a lot more money!), have nicely existed outside of their own series, and that always makes me happy to see. And they even managed to find Majel Barrett's voice for the Computer, a brilliant icing on the cake and something that's been very much missing from this era as she used to bind all the past series' together. Lovely!

You even get Alice Krige back as the voice of the Borg Queen, and no matter who they go to for new versions, they always come back to her as the original and by far the best, although I was very disappointed it was only a voice role. We only see the back of her head in this episode, so it didn't matter, but in the finale it would have been good to see Krige. Like John De Lancie's Q before her, she made her return debut in 'LD,' which was quite a fun episode, but I think they'd been mixing n her voice with Beverly's across this season of 'Picard,' I'm not sure when I first started noticing it as they were careful to keep it very subtle and for the most part chose misdirection with Crusher as the trick, but it was good to have that connection back to 'First Contact.' I'm not so sure her character's plan made sense, however: employ a disaffected sect of Changelings to infiltrate every Starfleet ship in order to integrate portions of Picard's DNA into every Transporter system so that whenever anyone beamed they were implanted with it, which was some kind of organic technology transmitter (like bees in a hive, or birds flocking together - the Trek explanation!), which then activates everyone under the age of twenty-five (puts a new spin on 'Challenge 25' for those working in retail!), turns them Borg and leads them to take over the fleet. So did this new technological development of having the fleet interconnected so they could act as one have any bearing or was that supposed to show misguided symmetry of Starfleet top brass becoming like the Borg?

The thing about modern Trek is they love to make Starfleet the villain! I know we had officials in 'TOS' that tended to cause problems, and Admirals were the same in 'TNG' onwards, but Starfleet itself as either a villain, or secretly controlled by villains (like Commander Oh in Season 1, or the other Romulan spy who was working for her), does get a little tired. It's like they take every opportunity to deconstruct the positive aspects of Trek to make it more and more Dystopian, and it's quite depressing. I'm not saying that about this particular story, because Starfleet just come across as misguided (unlike the Season 3 finale of 'LD' where they also had connected ships, although they were AI controlled). For one thing, Starfleet's mission is to seek out new life and civilisations, and they boldly go one ship at a time so there doesn't seem to be that much call for the fleet acting as one, since apart from this once-in-a-two-hundred-and-fifty-year event, they're all going to be off in different directions! I'd also insert a little complaint here that when you're showing all these Starfleet ships it would have been nice to be able to see them, rather than just being dots in space! How about some glorious flybys as the 'F' was given, swoop us through the ranks - at least have some views where you're up close to some. I assume this is another budgetary issue, and it does reflect the old days when they were still using models on 'DS9' and having to pull off hundreds of ships in battle they had to use off the shelf model kits or Christmas ornaments to represent ships further away, not having the time or money to build that many, and that worked very well, except that we were getting more detailed views and closer, up front, so there was a sense of scale.

It's the same way I felt about the internal of the shuttle Jack steals - I don't get a sense of scale as you used to when a Runabout or shuttle were filmed, and that has to be down to the way they shoot things so often in modern times, where you have to be zoomed in on a character rather than establishing shots of the environment he's inhabiting. At least when he gets to the vast Borg Cube (Tactical Cube?), it's back to the messy, untidy corridors of old, with their pipes and conduits strewn around and smoke hissing, while evil green lights give a sense of depth. Much better than the clean, tidy, huge blocky corridors seen in Season 1, but I suppose that could be justified by saying all the Borg rubbish had been cleaned out, although that's not the impression I had at the time. They make a major retcon in revealing that Picard never had Irumodic Syndrome in the first place, it was just the side effects of the implanted organic Borg tech that were designed to one day be spread to his offspring, I assume, so the Borg could one day use it... Yeah, it gets a bit hazy then, because why would the Borg put in motion such a longterm plan with such uncertain probability of success. Were they really hoping he'd have children and thus, his immoral act birthed a new threat when he could just as easily have remained childless until death, or was it meant as something where he, himself, could have been co-opted? And why would the Borg kill people when their goal has always been assimilation? And do we know if there are other Changelings at large within the fleet? And when they escape in a maintenance shuttle shouldn't there be lots of other shuttles and escape pods as others have done the same, or theirs would stick out like a sore thumb? Best not to think too much about it because I don't think it makes sense, and if the Borg did that to Picard then why wouldn't they have done it to some other human, and why wait so long, and... oh dear.

At least it gives a rationale for how Picard could hear the Borg in his mind even after the technology had been removed from him, although even that I fear was a product of 'First Contact,' I don't think it ever happened in 'TNG.' But it was a cool development and seemed to make sense, we didn't need a reason, you just assume that because they left some indeterminate thing of themselves in him, not a physical object, but a mental connection, it was a residual effect, but I like that we now know it was due to specific tech that Starfleet couldn't detect back then. It does throw up all kinds of questions about why the Borg would even keep using mechanical parts if they have organic tech now, and also smacks of the Cylons in modern 'Battlestar Galactica,' just like the modified Changelings who could apparently simulate real flesh now - not so keen on all that. Also, when Picard said he could still hear the Borg after he was assimilated I'm assuming he meant after the event, once he'd been de-assimilated, since of course he could hear the Borg after he was assimilated, that's the point of assimilation! The reveal that it was the pesky Borg all along and they would've gotten away with it if... actually, no, they wouldn't have gotten away with it if they needed Jack as the transmitter, or are they saying the Transporter stuff with the DNA in the library– I mean the under-25s would have been activated anyway, because it was unclear if Jack getting hooked up had anything to do with that or it was just the time the Borg chose and they have a more deadly thing planned with Jack as transmitter, but I don't remember exactly what happens in the finale.

But anyway, I meant to say the Borg reveal would have had more weight and power if we hadn't already dealt with them for the past two inferior seasons, so they don't quite have the impact they should have had. I know Beverly says no one's seen or heard from them in over a decade, but we've seen and heard from a version of them quite a lot lately! Even the animated series' have got in on the action, and while 'LD' featured them on the Holodeck, 'Prodigy' met them for real, if far away in the Delta Quadrant, which doesn't step on any toes and shows they weren't dormant or destroyed. It wasn't a bad twist to make youngsters be the threat, especially as the series is about seasoned, mature characters well out of that category. I don't think they fully exploited the concept, as while there is some concern from everyone having to escape these sudden attacks from enemies within, it's all rather perfunctory, tension not being something strongly accomplished in modern Trek, even on this season. For example, I know it was done for dramatic effect to have Ensign Esmar clump up the steps and sit on the Captain's Chair, but it wasn't a very Borg thing to do. They wouldn't care about such imagery (especially as there's no one around to see it, so it wasn't even done for intimidation effect), nor do they care about comfort - when was the last time you saw a drone sit down? That's right, they don't, and even the de-assimilated Seven found it hard to sit since it was such an alien concept to her. They don't even lie down to regenerate, but stand stiffly in their Regeneration Chambers.

It's not a problem, you can just say these aren't fully Borgified drones so they're a slightly different concept to normal Borg, but it's just the visual language that Trek was so good at adhering to which was a sort of shorthand that regular viewers would come to learn, that is missing these days. I was glad at least to hear Captain Shaw (remember him, he's the guy captaining the ship, remember?), order them to use stun only, although it used to be the Starfleet way that 'kill' setting was only used in extremes because they'd rather avoid killing if they can. At least these semi-Borg don't develop immunity to Phaser blasts, another sign they aren't quite fully Borg, but also a sign that things can all go back to normal quite easily if we can just stop these pesky Borg at their source, which undermined the tension quite a lot for me. Like Seven and (thankfully), Raffi, Shaw has been in the background more and more as we've focused on the 'TNG' characters, which is fine and good, but he's almost an afterthought now, like when they work out what needs to be done and rather than including the Captain of the ship in the conversation Picard just calls up to the Bridge to tell him where to go! It's a bit demeaning. It at least reminds you there is a Captain, but he doesn't have much authority now. Perhaps his lessening as the season went on also makes it harder to care about his death, dropped by a good shot in a corridor, although there's also the sense that he foolhardily looked behind him at the wrong moment, so even his last act was a rash mistake that got him needlessly killed. Except it wasn't needless, it was needed since he only really existed as a barrier for Seven to surpass to the captaincy.

It's a little strange that throughout the season people have been dying by Phaser, reduced to showers of sparks, except in this case he just falls to the deck so Seven can have that goodbye scene and he can 'validate' her 'chosen' 'identity.' It struck me as the height of inappropriateness to start calling her by a Borg designation now the Borg have suddenly become an active and present enemy again. But that whole thing is a failure to accept or understand Seven's journey towards her humanity that we were landed with right from Season 1. I just wish that like a few other things it had been retconned over, avoided, or maybe Seven wasn't even in it at all, a sentiment I never could have imagined myself wishing before they brought the character back for 'Picard.' It's moments like this that cloud what could have been a good episode, although even if it had been full of the best scenes (such as Data and Picard's exchange in the Briefing Room where there's nothing he can say so he just puts his hand comfortingly on Picard's shoulder, the kind of beautifully touching moment I never thought I'd see again in Trek), it still wouldn't have papered over the heavily expositional and confusing storytelling or the clunking mistakes. I haven't appreciated the horror tropes of Jack's mental imagery with its very specific type of music and the old-fashioned wooden door, etc, it was all very derivative and didn't fit the 'TNG' tone, not to mention they get in yet another old-timey song in the opening scenes, which they seem to love.

Still, it remained very heartwarming to see the old cast back, acting in scenes all together on occasion, even the recap of the previous episode made me smile internally and reflect that this is like a final film in the series, one they never got, even if it also has more of a 'TNG' flavour since there is so much talk. But when it's meaningful talk it works and, if anything, makes me hungrier for more of the cast together as it's like we didn't have enough of them since the drawing closer of all these people was meant to be the point of all that waiting to get to this two-part finale. Others haven't been forgotten, either, with a USS Pulaski a nice little Trekference to the second doctor of the series, and Beverly saying how she gave her first son Wesley space and then lost him to it, and now she's done the opposite with Jack. More information on Wesley Crusher would have been good, but it's not really relevant to what's going on here and you can't fit everything in. They did their best, though, with starship names representing various characters and behind the scenes people (USS Okuda, USS Drexler, USS Trumbull, USS Hikaru-Sulu, just to be clear in case we thought it was for another Sulu, USS Cochrane, USS Mandel, USS Ross for the Admiral of that name, I hope - may have gone a bit over the top with all that!), and even hear the current Captain of the Excelsior's voice (Nolan North, a regular contributor to modern Trek, from 'Into Darkness' to varied credits on 'LD').

We see Data still has emotions as he gets choked up upon seeing the 'D,' which is an interesting revelation in case anyone was wondering about the emotion chip, although the line between organic and tech is apparently so blurred now that maybe he doesn't even need one... I'm not sure about Geordi's description of the 'D' as being analogue, it all looks pretty digital to me, but I take it as meaning in comparison to the fleet synchronisation and it's as good a reason as any to justify bringing the old series' starship back to life, I'm certainly not going to complain. I might complain that Picard's shirt tug at the end was very feeble, but it's more difficult to do wearing a jacket over your top, so that really is a nitpick, and it in no way dampens the high of the ending as our beloved crew set out to right wrongs, all aboard their old ship once again, and at least the end is much better than the sum of the episode's parts, even if parts do drag it down. It is disappointing the Enterprise-F, whose original creation was actually a prize in a competition to design it for 'Star Trek Online' quite a few years ago, would turn out to be a very short-lived addition to official screen canon (for reasons that would become painfully obvious in the finale), but I do appreciate they bothered to include it at all (unlike the 'E,' grrr [gnashing of teeth]), and it undeniably looked the part - spin off? All that remains is to tackle the last ever episode, overlooking the flaws to try and enjoy what will probably be the final coming together of the 'TNG' cast.

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