- Geordi LaForge.
We didn’t have cable TV for the longest time when I was a kid. (Yes kids, television used to come through cables, like water through the faucet.) I hungrily flipped through the TV-magazine each week, looking at the pictures and descriptions of shows on networks we couldn’t watch. I remember vividly seeing a photograph of Geordi with his visor and being mesmerised. Geordi LaForge was my first exposure to the Star Trek universe, years before I actually watched any ST episodes, and he still holds a special place in my heart. - Seven of Nine.
The first few episodes after she was rescued/abducted were heartbreaking. Her whole world was shattered. Her slow acceptance of her underlying humanity while holding onto a few core values retained from her Borg years makes her a very interesting character. - Jean-Luc Picard.
Erudite scholar, diplomatic genius, determined battle commander,… Played by the great thespian Patrick Stewart. Patrick Stewart.
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Well, perhaps similar, perhaps not: In my family there were never Western movies watched. And Denver Clan. This formed my movie/TV taste so that up to now I don’t like Western movies except “Dances with the wolves”.
Whoot, someone else who likes Seven of Nine beyond the “fan service”.
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Now let me tell ya, whippersnapper, ‘bout when me and my folks used to watch black and white TV that magically flew through the air!
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@rileypb , thanks for using the word “whippersnapper”. A favourite of mind since I first heard it in an Avatar-episode.
Calvin and Hobbes, sunday strip by Bill Watterson
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Netflix over wifi? 
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Okay, finally watched it all and have some thoughts.
Why did she not show up for that scene? She appeared earlier in the show. They even name drop her as supposedly just off screen in the scene. The TNG crew are riding off into the sunset for frigging ever, in a bar, and Goldberg chose that particular day to not show?? Did someone piss her off or something??
I was impressed that they managed to make this guy:
Legitimately scary.
Okay, some thoughts that all tie into the show's final episode (duh, spoilers):
One, I hate that De Lancie didn’t actually die. It undermines the emotional weight of Q accepting his mortality and that, at the end of such a wide-spanning and enormously long life, he had grown genuinely affectionate of Picard. It humanized him in a way nothing else could.
Also, his end reveal was unnecessary. De Lancie’s actual son played Q Jr. in the Voyager episode Q2. It would have been trivial to rewrite that scene for his now adult son. Also, that episode is already named “The Next Generation.” Showing Q’s son continuing humanity’s trial with Picard’s son would have been a thematic bullseye.
I have some concerns about the villain reveal at the end. One, Picard and Crusher agreeing to extra-judicially execute a captive Vadic, especially immediately after the reveal of the crimes committed by Section 31 against the changelings, was an enormous bid deal. Picard, the paragon of virtue, decides to murder a prisoner in cold blood.
And then, after Vadic dies, the changelings get swept aside and we never revisit this moment. We never come to grips that we just watched our protagonists try to commit a warcrime.
On top of that, the Changling Borg alliance… How was that supposed to work again? Like, in what universe do the Borg win and the Changelings aren’t betrayed by the Borg Queen?? Also, how exactly do you sit down and hammer out a convoluted revenge plot with the last remaining Borg Queen? Is there a villain pub in the Delta Quadrant?
And finally, I find it thematically confused. Earlier in season 2, in alternate Confederation Earth, the last Borg Queen is about to be publicly executed. The destruction of her collective and her impending execution are played as genocide and truly a horror. An example of the brutality of the Confederation. Also, in the season before that, the execution of thousands of Borg Drones on the Artifact are, again, treated as a crime against… uh… Borganity.
Yet, we are meant to cheer when the Queen dies and the Borg Supercube is destroyed, killing however many hundreds or thousands of drones that had been clinging to life onboard as well as ironically completing the very genocide that the Confederation had been condemned for attempting earlier in the show.
Also, the “Jurarti” Borg, or the good Borg. Why do they never come up again in Season 3??? Picard was seeking allies in a compromised Federation. Where else could they have been assured of no compromise. A changeling can imitate a Borg Drone all it wants; the rest of the collective knows they aren’t “plugged in” so to speak. Also, again, having the Good Borg show up and help put a final end to the Bad Borg, thus truly replacing them as “The Next Generation” would have been [chef’s kiss] for the final episode, which I remind everyone, again, was named “The Next Generation.”
And some thoughts about Picard's second lease on life (again, spoilers):
Okay, so the issue I have here is the same issue I have with all sci-fi “mind uploads” or “consciousness transfers.”
This process cannot be cut and paste. You aren’t converting the subject’s brain into a digital mind, your scanning a glop of grey meat and are then extrapolating the information in digital form in a new format. It’s copy and paste. His body is still there, as is his very dead brain.
Picard is very extra dead. The imposter in Season 2 and 3 is a convincing copy that itself believes he’s actually Picard. Let’s go further with this. Let’s say the Doctor’s brain scan of the real Picard moments before he experienced brain death was part of his database of info vacuumed up by Section 31.
If someone a few hundred years later got their hands on Picard.exe and booted him up a few dozen times in a bunch of Golems that functionality look and feel like Picard, are we to accept these are all Picard too? What if we made a thousand? A million? Billions? At some point, we must cognitively accept that these are Picard copies, and that the original Picard died long ago.
Well, if that holds true, then that must be equally true for the original golem created in the same way. Yet, Picard 2.0 never contemplates that he isn’t actually Picard or that he’s only just been born, with a comically and artificially stunted lifespan as well. Picard 2.0 struggling with identity would pair well with similar themes found all throughout Star Trek. Also, -10 points for missing the opportunity for Picard’s son to tell RoboPicard, “yOu ArEn’T mY rEaL dAd!!!”. Also, the emotional catharsis of Picard’s son finally accepting Picard as his actual father could have been an mid-season bump. Only to have him go, but yeah, even if you really are him, fuck you for being married to Starfleet, etc, etc.
The trope of mind uploads being treated as a seamless continuation of the original template’s consciousness, especially when the original consciousness explicitly experiences death, has always ground my gears and stank of missing a wealth of angst to explore.
As a side point, sorta ewww on consent? Like, the show shows Picard being cool with it, but that wasn’t a forgone conclusion. We have issues with organ harvesting and transplant or replicating a deceased actor’s likeness and voice in later films and movies all without consent given. It’s viewed as unambiguously wrong. This is like next level, though. You copied the guy’s mind. Did you destroy the scan? Did anyone ask? What’s to stop someone replicating him ad nauseum for nefarious purposes?
And then, hilariously, they immediately make a huge deal about respecting life-support Data’s desire for euthanasia. Like, great, but no one thinks it strange that these decisions were just made for Picard?
The scene was touching and well done, I just feel there are some awkward holes.
And, finally, some loose ends:
What happens to the Borg Cube that was crashed on the Data Planet? It was supposedly repairing itself. And all the ex-borg on the Cube. Do they stop and just make it a bizarre town? Do they finish repairs and leave in their Cube for better pastures?
I feel like they nerfed the Borg at the very end. The two battles occurring are at Earth and Jupiter. Enterprise D, the geriatric ship in this scenario, can travel at a max speed of about Warp 9.6 which is supposedly around 2000 times the speed of light. So, the presumably oldest and slowest ship can travel from Earth to Jupiter, approximately 385 million miles apart, at 372 million miles per second (c × 2000), arriving in 1.03 seconds. Why didn’t the Borg take at least some of the entire Federation fleet and order them to come to the Borg Cube’s aid? For that matter, why weren’t at least a few immediately sent to guard the transmitter located on the weakened and vulnerable Borg Cube upon assimilation?
Moving on, did virtually everyone over 25 years old in Starfleet just die? The assimilated crew eliminated anyone not assimilated, and we see that all the ships were successfully taken or destroyed except the Titan. That has to be a big deal, no? Like, similar to Wolf 359? Every single ship was there, surely many thousands of more experienced officers were vaporized. Also, virtually all of those ships would be commanded by acting captains. In fact, they would have been so shorthanded, I’m surprised we don’t see Seven being offered an acting Admiral commission. Surely, she must be one of the most senior active officers left in all of Federation space? For that matter, surely this loss of experience and knowledge is a gutting blow to the Federation, making them more vulnerable to their enemies. I just find it odd that we get a “we found all the changelings and reversed the Borg Crispr” insinuating everything was “back to normal.” Just landed strange for me.
Next point, didn’t 1800’s Whoopi meet and befriend Picard? Did she suffer a head injury in between? Shouldn’t she recognize the literal time traveler she met earlier?? I found the 21st century hostile Whoopi completely bizarre and nonsensical.
The genesis device seen in Daystrom. Ummm… where did it come from? Wrath of Khan is pretty explicit that the original device was considered a one of a kind. More so a loose end than a plot hole, but I felt the included it as a memberberry without any regard to whether it’s existence made any sense.
And finally, did the show or Picard forget about Laris? Season 3 starts with them as a couple, getting ready to move, and yet, the end of the show never even makes an offhand mention of Laris ever again. Even though the entirety of Season 2 was about Picard’s ability to embrace that relationship. Nothing. Poof. Okay then.
I liked the show, I really did, I just feel like there were some significant missed opportunities.
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I haven’t actually seen Picard past the first couple episodes of the first season, but I have heard about some of the plot points, so re your second drop-down:
This is all correct re copies, but this is a universe where everyone uses the transporter all the time. The “original” Picard you’re contrasting with the robot version is, conservatively, the couple-thousandth copy of the one who was created by being born. It actually makes all the sense in the world that in Star Trek, everyone has a massive blind spot about this issue, because once anyone asks “wait, if the original matter that made up ‘my’ body isn’t the matter making up my current body, doesn’t that mean ‘I’m’ dead?”, 95% of the population of the galaxy would start screaming in existential horror and never stop.
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Yeah, the transporter issue is something else I take umbrage with, but that handwaive has been fairly cemented at this point. Amusingly, some of the various episodes, like the one where they accidentally split one transporter beam into two Rikers, and the show takes pains to acknowledge neither one is the “real” Riker, or another where they effectively resurrect Dr. Pulaski from a hair in her brush, all confirm the more horrifying aspects of transporters. The Tuvix episode of Voyager comes to mind as well. They are definitely execution machines. Each time you are transported, you are definitely killed and a new copy believing itself to be you is created at a different location. Amusing premise though. Since everyone embraces transporters, the impermanence of consciousness becomes a major cultural blindspot.
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Also, let’s pour one out for Lieutenant Barclay for being the only one in-universe to raise pertinent questions about transporters. Since his last appearance has him living on Earth, my headcanon is he survived the Borg fleet assimilation and is now being pressured to accept a captain’s commission in light of the Fleet’s experienced officer core being wiped out. The idea of a highly reluctant Captain Barclay tickles me. I would watch a Star Trek series helmed by a very uncomfortable Captain Barclay. It’d be like Monk in space.
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I always thought there could be a Monty Python-like sketch surrounding what they do to people who were teleported, but not killed properly afterward. Like…
*shimmering dissipates*
“Are you sure the teleporter is working?”
“Of course it is. Well mostly…”
“I’m still standing on the pad! Of course it’s not working!”
“Well that’s a matter of opinion.”
“What?!”
*points out the window* “Well, there you are on the Klingon ship for the diplomacy mission. For all intents and purposes, you’ve teleported just fine.”
“How am I standing HERE then?”
“It’s all a part of the process. However the part that kills you at the end malfunctioned.”
“KILLS ME?!”
“It’s the glowy, sparkly stuff that’s supposed to do you in.” *shakes his head* “I knew I should have fixed that part myself.”
“Wait? How do you know I’m on the Klingon ship?”
“You can talk to yourself if you want to?”
“Talk… to myself?”
“Yes.” *turns to a demeaning tone* “You see, there’s this little bit of technology called a communicator and you…”
“Yes! I know what a COMMUNICATOR IS!”
*acts indignant* “Well then… shall we just hurry this along then?” *reaches behind the console producing a hammer*
“WHAT’S THAT FOR?!”
“Well, we can’t have TWO of you running about now, can we?”
(I could go on, but I’ll stop now. )
EDIT: Rest assured that the transporter chief gets a communication that they are still waiting for the teleportation to take place. The hammer is put back and both men laugh at the misunderstanding.
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So my feel on all the disconnect in Season 3 is that Season 2 sucked, they knew it, and they just jettisoned all that. Friendly Borg Queen Agnes who probably should have changed the whole Borg/Federation trajectory? Gone! Laris? Gone! The fans wanted the team back together on the Enterprise, and that’s what they focussed on, and didn’t bother spending time cleaning up the mess they made. And it was SO messy that I was OK with just pretending Season 2 didn’t happen.
But they were also just lazy about stuff, like as you point out, Guinan not recognizing Picard. And being young. And generally just not dealing with the intricacies throughout time of that relationship. That could easily have been dealt with in the script. I can’t imagine why they didn’t.
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Obnoxiously long plot idea for a Voyager episode that will never be filmed:
I always thought that premise would make a good setup for a standalone episode. Probably alt-version of Voyager. You know how the show kills off the crew or blows up the ship or whatever. It’s either somehow a duplicate, or an alternative future that inevitably one or more characters, usually those with more woo woo, will just know is wrong. By the end of the episode, all is returned to normal. Classic Star Trek fare.
Anyway, I was thinking there could be a space anomaly, you pick what and how, that upon investigation a bunch of hostile ships boil out of and start attacking Voyager. The ship takes significant damage and, more importantly, the attackers prove able to transport through Voyagers shields and start to board the ship in large numbers to try to take the vessel.
“Captain! If we take on any more boarders we won’t be able to hold the ship!”
Losing control of various parts of the ship while the crew tried to resist the boarders, Janeway orders the ship to enter the anomaly. At the same time, a crew member (Let’s pick Ensign Kim just for clarity of discussion) orders a site to site transport to the sickbay with an injured Chakotay. Passing through the anomaly without the same type of shields that the hostile ships have proves fatal. An energy pulse runs through the ship vaporizing everything biological, crew and boarder alike. A fraction of a second later, the transporter finishes and Kim and an injured Chakotay arrive in a nearly empty and silent sickbay, one they heard over their communicator as crowded and chaotic mere seconds before. The EMH exclaims, “What did you do!?”
Obviously, no one answers any hails. Main power is out, shutting down transporters, so, leaving Chakotay to the doctor, Kim makes his way to bridge, navigating around abandoned barricades, disabled turblifts, and phaser burned jeffries tubes. When he arrives, he finds the bridge empty. As the realization that he’s essentially alone dawns on him and the audience, the POV switches back to the doctor battling to save their single remaining patient. You could substitute someone else from the main cast if you like. Either way, the
Doctor fails and their patient dies. The Doctor contacts Kim, and Kim, in his grief and hopelessness, deactivates the Doctor. “Your services are no longer needed, Doctor.”
The episode jumps ahead to the doctor being activated and finding the Kim helping someone into sickbay. The Doctor gets a view of the patient’s face when they get to the bed and sees it’s also Kim. Dun… dun… DUN!! [Commercial break]
Cutting back to a flabberghasted Doctor, the ship is tossed by explosions and the lights flicker.
“What’s going on, Ensign?”
“Lieutenant, Doctor. And I’ve got it under control.”
“Don’t you need to get to the bridge!?”
“I already am.”
Lieutenant Kim punches in a call to the bridge on a terminal and the viewscreen appears with a bridge entirely crewed with Kims, including an older and slightly distinguished Kim in the Captain’s chair.
“Ahhh, Doctor. It’s nice to see a different familiar face.”
The Doctor:
Turns out that it has been years since the Doctor has been shut off and Kim spent several years by himself drifting through space, slowly repairing the ship. Realizing the futility of the task, he focused his efforts on the transporter system. Breaking all sorts of Federation conventions. He used his pattern buffer recorded into the transporter to make copies of himself. At first one, then two, then an entire crew. The original Kim eventually placed himself in charge as Captain of the vessel.
In the meantime, Voyager has been trapped in a parallel universe that reflects the normal universe 1 to 1, but has slightly different physical laws, making matter not compatible with that brought along with the ship. Heading home in such a reality has no meaning. Also, the ships that originally attacked them are from a species that came from this universe. They were the ones to open the bridge between the two universes (the anomaly) and had crossed to attempt a bridgehead for invasion. However, eavesdropping on communications shows that, while Voyager had come back through the portal, none of the ships sent have, even though many years have passed since. Captain Kim hasn’t wanted to stray too far away from the anomaly since, seeing it as the only way back, but they have been hunted since and entry to the portal is guarded by enemy ships.
On top of that, while Kim has figured out shield modifications that block the enemy’s transporters, he hasn’t figured out how to replicate the enemy’s shields. They have been scavenging bits of debris from defeated enemy ships trying to reproduce their shields, as he knows going through the portal without them will be suicide.
Unable to refuel and limited to what they could make onboard, Voyager is running into a crisis and must find a solution to both of these problems to get back to their universe.
Long story short, the Doctor is the one to figure out what’s going on. He gets fixated on why the returning ships haven’t yet returned. The breakout clue happens when the discover that Voyager arrived in this universe decades after the enemy fleet had left. Turns out, the two universes experience time at vastly different paces. While many years have passed for the Kims and the Doctor, only scant minutes have passed in their universe.
Now knowing this, the Kims put their heads together and discover if they enter the portal at a high rate of speed, they would actually enter their universe in the past, maybe even slightly before the Voyager left in the first place.
The guarding ships and the lack of proper shields remain a problem. The Doctor makes a suggestion. Install a holo emitter into one of the shuttles. He can make the transit without shields while the Kim Voyager tangles with the ships guarding the portal. If successful, he can warn Janeway off from the transit and also pass on information on how to modulate shield frequencies to prevent more boarders.
The attempt works with the Kim Voyager sacrificing itself to allow the Doctor to make the transit. The doctor hails the Voyager on the other side just as Janeway orders their retreat into the anomaly.
“Doctor!?”
“I don’t have time to explain, modulate your shields to Technobabble.”
[Meaningful look as bridge shakes.]
“Do it.”
The doctor then feeds additional hard won information on weaknesses on the enemy’s vessels. Janeway immediately takes advantage and defeats the attacking ships. Janeway starts to demand an explanation, but the Doctor, in his typically brusque style, says he doesn’t have time and cuts the connection, instead directly contacting himself. He brushes past the other’s astonishment and tells him the mistakes he’s about to make with Chakotay and what to do instead, saving his life.
Cut to “sometime” later with Janeway visiting Sickbay to talk to the Doctor, who’s two instances have been reintegrated into one Doctor. Discussion that acknowledges the crew taking back the rest of the ship, Chakotay still recovering, and repairs to the Warp drive almost finished. Janeway wants to speak about the Doctor’s report. She’s concerned about alternate Kim breaking Federation law and wants to classify the report and forbid the Doctor from telling anyone to protect her Kim’s career if and when they make it back to Starfleet. The Doctor is offended, finding the obfuscation of Kims’ sacrifice to be an affront to their honor. Janeway insists. The Doctor says he agrees.
After she leaves, he pulls up a message Captain Kim had made for himself and sends it to Ensign Kim anyway, in defiance of Janeway. This will cause further strife in a later episode. Cut to credits.
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I would agree on motivations. I do feel like the bulk of these issues could have been addressed with a bit a dialogue, leaving it materially much the same, but, I guess they just… didn’t.
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I read your episode… and it’s really quite good. Solid plot to give gravitas to any character needing a little arc development. Damn, dude. Harry Kim is one of my least favourite characters and the guy was a freaking stud in your episode. Nice job!
I wish the writers of the new Star Treks were actually fans of the show.
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Thank you for the compliment, and moreso for actually reading it.
I feel like this can cut both ways, especially with a long-lived IP. When the writers are very big fans… it can get reverential, which often becomes self-referential. For example, OG Star Wars was inspired by a mix of influences, including Westerns, Flash Gordon, Samurai, and Greek Mythology. The Sequel trilogy appears to be inspired by the Original Trilogy. Sometimes hiring a nonfan allows outside inspiration to enter the writing process. See Tony Gilroy’s Andor, love it or hate it, it’s easily the most original Star Wars show in years. Gilroy is emphatically not a Star Wars fan and only used the setting to tell what he felt was a compelling story.
As a friendly reminder, Star Trek: TNG was originally roundly dismissed by critics and fans alike as just “not feeling like Star Trek.”
I think Star Trek can be whatever it needs to be and try to temper my own criticisms in that regard.
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The IP was long-lived for a reason. It presented a universe where humanity had moved beyond societal greed, hatred and neglect of each other, allowing us (the audience) to look at facets of our worst selves through the actions of alien cultures. It was a great way to tackle interesting (and even contentious) topics without being political or offensive. It was about ideas and less about drama. In fact, I’d argue Star Trek is basically all about an idea of the future of humanity.
In the new Star Treks, I find that they lean on “we are our own worst enemies” way too much (yawn) and all the drama that entails; I think that is about as opposite to Star Trek as one can get. I watched Discovery and Picard, but stopped watching Strange New Worlds mid-1st season as it felt goofy. It was like a comedy of sorts, but I just wasn’t laughing along, even though I liked Lower Decks (despite the Mariner character being unlikable half the time).
Yeah, I watched the entire series in order a few years back and those first couple of seasons were rough. The original series hit its stride early on; TNG took a couple of seasons (or more) to find its footing. I can see how fans were critical because the 1st season was, in fact, mostly terrible. We’re so lucky it wasn’t cancelled.
The Inner Light was probably the best episode of TV in history; period.
DS9 and Voyager followed suit well (more of the same… yes, please!), though I found Enterprise lacking a bit and I never liked Archer as a captain.
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There seems to be a bit of a consensus that TNG got good in the course of the third season. Incidentally, Number One grew a beard in that season.
Hence:
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It’s funny, I grew up as a fan of the the original series. I agree that TNG took a couple seasons to settle in, but after a while I found it very good. I thought DS9 was ‘meh’. The Cardassian and Dominion stuff was good, but I disliked everything to do with the Bajorans. Voyager had tons of promise which it mostly undercut at every opportunity. To say the writing was bad and the characters inconsistent would be to say that water is wet. Sorry, I obviously mean wetogenic. On the flip side, I found Enterprise very likable. The first couple seasons having the nascent Enterprise weaker than just about everything they encounter and seeing the crew adapt was refreshing. While the whole time travel arc and the third season were not good, the fourth season remains one of my favorites. I’ve not watched Discovery, Picard, or Lower Decks, but I have watched the first season of Strange New Worlds and really liked it. It isn’t fully consistent with the original (which I am currently rewatching in order, having finally bought the Bluray set), but overall I find it very enjoyable and I particularly like Pike as captain. I was pleasantly surprised to find Dr. M’Benga was a character on the original as I had forgotten he was a minor character in a couple episodes.
I will not speak of the Kelvin timeline movies. They didn’t happen. (sticks fingers in ears) lalalalala I can’t hear you.
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Here, allow me to tick off all the old school Trekk(ers)(ies). I unironically liked the 2009 Star Trek Reboot. Period. I thought it was a good film, lens flares and all.
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Arrrrrgh!
I will grant one thing: They nailed the casting. Everything else…sucked. The second one sucked twice as much as the first. I refused to watch the third.
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