Being someone who has a particular neuro-proclivity to recall and remember a lot of things from the past, I often get sucked into these member-black-holes of things long past. Unlike most people though, I have a fairly well-documented log of much of the past ~twenty years through writing website blogs in my early websites, Livejournal, WP blogs, and social media, namely Facebook and Twitter. It’s probably not enough for a Dyson Sphere to reconstruct my psyche long after I am gone, but it helps fill in a lot of the gaps in my memory that tend to be dampened by my AD4K. Despite that, there are some missing holes in that archive that were lost when my primary machine’s HDDs died in 2006 and I did not have good backups. The plus side is that I lost most of anything related to my ex and old friend group from that time, but the minus is I lost much of the photos I took from our IRC con gatherings at Otakon and ACen.
This latest round of the members comes from a Discord server I am part of along with a handful of other Aniverse IRC folks. As best as I can tell, I joined Aniverse IRC for #megatokyo and its off-shoot, #rafters, sometime around the fall of 2001. I would have been a senior in high school at the time, roughly a year after my parents divorced, and two years after we had moved from the midwest to the northeast. Much of my writing, journals, blog and news posts, and other media at the time was highly chaotic, and very deep in what would be the cringe to today’s kids. Teenage angst, a lot of delusions, and being lost deep in the anime and gaming sauce. I was most certainly crutching on online spaces at the time because my real life spaces were dismal and falling apart. I had a group of friends I started hanging out with at the time, all members of the same Japanese club in high school, but as record seems to suggest, the “IRC Crew” came first.
Like I said, m a x i m u m c r i n g e
Iterating over all these names, and the names of so many others, invokes various memories from that time. Most were uneventful, as most conversations and transactions were banal, probably about anime or gaming, or of some trivial life nature. But others got into the mud sometimes. To this day I often question how I got into arguments over the internet with basically strangers, but it did happen a few times. One of the more fascinating things about this era of communication was that apart from IRC and perhaps AOL or Yahoo chat rooms, communication was very decentralized. AOL/AIM was not the first one-to-one communication protocol, but it endured past ICQ and MSN Messenger at being the most popular. I would easily have 4-8 tabs open each night talking to people one-on-one, asking how their day went, shooting the shit, and trading what we’d call memes now. IRC expanded upon the chat room concept and allowed for many people to talk in the same room. Yet unlike a lot of the spam-fest Twitch or Youtube chats you see how, IRC channel chat was always fairly neat, readable, and scrollable. Most people had logging turned on so they could read the past history of what they missed, or just keep a record of their conversations. I had lurked among those Aniverse channels for probably a few weeks, understanding how it worked, and slowly working my way into chatting. #rafters (nee #megatokyo-rafters) was a bit of a clique channel for cool people that I somehow stumbled into, though I don’t recall how. But lurking and observing enough to just start engaging as if I were one of them from the start, I recall a couple people actually asking if I had always been there from the beginning. I had not, though I did slip in and become a regular right as they transitioned from MT-R to just R. Somehow I just became a series regular.
Ah yes, ASCii art spam. The glory days.
Twenty years on, I often look back on those days, and it’s a mix of emotions. On the whole, I fucking miss those old IRC days, as I kind of miss that whole IRC-BBS-Forum-Web1 era of the internet. It always felt more alive, more wild fucking west, more interesting to be a part of. We were constantly pushing boundaries, finding weird dumb ways to do tech things, share content. Everyone ran their own web server off a shitbox Pentium 2 or 3 running Red Hat or Debian Linux. I actually don’t like to oldfriend or edgelord all that often, but I regrettably will always be a Web 1.0 stan compared to today’s shlock. Obviously I partake in the social media and cloud-computing-galore as anyone else in IT and tech would, but it’s always felt cheap and plastic to me. Like it or not, social media and the act of oversharing our information has created an ecosystem of having too much information, too much detail, too much news, too much opinion, basically there is just so much information out there that our brains are either ignoring most of it, parsing it for whatever we deem relevant and discarding the rest, or rapidly processing and discarding it. That’s why news cycles are short. That’s why tragedies and awful world events are forgotten next week. There is just so much out there, accessible to a hundred times many more than twenty years ago, that it’s impossible to iterate upon all of it. So most people don’t.
And I guess that is kind of the crossroads I’ve been reaching with my own internet presence. I’m long past the point of no return on my terminally online status. Most of it is for work, but a lot of it is just comfort food. It’s where I go to decompress after my ASD child screams into the void, or the users I call my other children sack me with a bunch of last-minute IT issues at the end of the day. I think back on those old days, and I had just as much work and worry then, but at the end of that slog, it was watching new crazy cartoons from Japan, discussing them online with people, and having crazy conversations. I miss that shit, and I know it’s unrealistic of me to think that would endure forever. Those people all moved on eventually and made their own lives. I guess I am just sad that ethos cannot be replicated again for a new generation. Or perhaps I am just not acclimating to what the new ethos is, one centered around Discord, TikTok, and other platforms.
If you’re a fan of The Mandalorian, you probably watched its season finale yesterday and felt incredibly disappointed at the rather rushed, video game-esque ending. But if you’re a fan of Star Wars, you also know they are setting up the next phase of their streaming universe, and needed to tie up those previous storylines. Picard is no stranger to rushed storylines either, and this season was unevenly paced in places. But this finale far, far out performed Mando both on setting and scale. This was most certainly a movie ending, in what I referred to last week to as First Contact 2. This has felt very much as not only a homage to the TNG crew, but a direct sequel to that film. I imagine someone could easily recut the season into a feature-length film.
Hello there~
It was a fairly forgone conclusion from promo material and hints throughout the series, that not only were the Enterprise-D crew returning for one last adventure, but the ship herself was returning as well, thanks to Geordi’s weekend restore project. Having them go up against one the most classic foes of the franchise can feel either like a bold or predictable move. I know a lot of folks in fan circles groaned a bit knowing it was the Borg, and not the Pah-Wraiths or six other villains. After all, this is the TNG cast and not one of the other shows, but fans wanting to see the TNG cast interact with other shows’ crews and storylines was an incredible draw. For what it was worth, Matalas not only delivered the meat and potatoes, but he offered up many sides and many desserts for everyone in the fandom. So as much as it felt like direct pandering, I couldn’t outright hate the experience we got. We especially got command performances from many newer cast members that uniquely positions them for potential spinoffs, namely Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut and Mica Burton. Although Paramount has not officially announced any kind of series revolving around the Titan crew, they would be very foolish not to capitalize on this momentum soon if they want something to replace Discovery that has the potential to go beyond.
Because what Picard has demonstrated alongside the fans’ eagerness for one last ride with their old friends, is that they want more, and especially more from Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. I’ve seen a great many people who wrote off Seven of Nine as a “Borg Bimbo” during Voyager reexamine their laurels with Jeri Ryan’s fresh take on the character throughout this series. People wanted her back in Starfleet and “writing a new book” as Captain Shaw puts it. Personally, she has always been a character that has challenged both human and Starfleet convictions, and I am happy that Matalas did the most with that this season than the previous two.
SCIENCE 2
For fans of the Trek universe and canon though, this show really helped mend fences torn asunder by Nemesis, a movie so unpopular that between it and Enterprise it collapsed the franchise for many years. Data’s “death” was something most fans could not accept because he was such an important part of The Next Generation. If it had been left at that forever, it still would have stung, but people may have moved on from it. The first season of Picard suggesting he was still alive in the metaverse, and had seen his old colleague Bruce Maddox finally rip him off, almost put this revival series in the grave for good. It was not well-received at all. Allowing Data to come back, and in a form that he had wished for since before Generations, finally gave that character the proper closure fans wanted. Fans of the the ships and Starfleet ethos though probably haven’t been fully validated, given the seemingly glossy fate of the Enterprise-E, the whole mess with the Romulans, the Synth Ban, and many other catastrophes. I don’t imagine the television universe will ever cover these, but perhaps some book writers can fill in some of this space, or maybe just retcon it entirely.
It feels like the 1980s again.Spoiler Talk
Over the last week, there has been a lot of chatter, theorycrafting, and questions for showrunner Terry Matalas. Who are these Borg, why aren’t they Jurati’s Borg, and why was the Queen voiced by First Contact actress Alice Krige? Well, the short answer is that these are the original prime-timeline Borg, she is what remains of whom Janeway and Voyager dispatched before when they deployed a virus against the collective and destroyed much of their transwarp hub behind them on their way home. Somehow, the Queen’s cube got to Sector 001, but was cut off from the collective, and hid in Jupiter. How that went unnoticed for dozens of years is curious, but not answered. All our geriatric heroes know is that through Jack, she is able to control all of the young human officers the Changelings helped introduce Borg DNA into through the transporters.
The way with which the Queen was shown as disfigured, permanently attached to the ship, battered, and broken, was probably one of the most visually-stunning sights in modern Trek. But to hear her talk about how she disassembled, and consumed drones to sustain herself to the point of nearly being alone, that was such a powerful set piece to this story, but also marked a potentially deadly reinvention of The Borg. She described how they fully intended to biologically evolve instead of simply assimilating and adding biology or technology to themselves. I get the impression that there will be more Borg in future Trek from this, and they want to really explore the depravity the collective seeks in other beings to their fold.
Dommy Mommy
Seven and Raffi retaking the bridge of the Titan was a particularly clever use of an old Insurrection method of transport-tagging people to beam them away. They beamed all of the compromised crew to the transporter room and sealed it off. The cloaking device gets one last run as they use it to break “line of sight” with the “Fleet Mode”. This may be the part that kind of pulls me out of immersion with the show as a whole. I am able to buy Starfleet foolishly thinking that having an interconnected codebase where changes are deployed fleet-wide instantly is a good idea for many reasons. I don’t think having a system that lines up all your ships and takes complete control over them was ever a good idea. At least one engineer, like Reginald Barclay, should have veto’d this project from the get-go. Obviously it works for our plot here, but it was just so cheesy, especially when Raffi says it’s “line of sight”. What is this, Star Trek Online?
“Why am I sensing enjoyment?”
Probably my favorite part of this episode though is when they determine that in order to destroy the beacon, they have to get to the center of the cube. Predictably, no one other than Data can navigate the ship that quickly through a Death Star II core run. But here Data gleefully navigates the ship through every twist and turn to arrive at the center, where they have to blow up the beacon, rescue everyone, and clear the cube as it explodes. No small feat!
Riker and Worf’s role in getting the beacon data was a good bit of classic away team fun, especially with Worf’s hidden hilt phase in his blade. I did note how these two Borg drones had hand-canons though, which I cannot immediately remember where that came from in non-canon works. The Borg in prior series did not use any kind of energy weapons and only had personal shields. I want to say it was one of the video games, perhaps Star Trek Borg. It certainly marks the same shift as I mentioned before of the Borg pivoting to more aggressive means to get what they want.
Picard briefly jacking in to the database to reason with his son, it was a nice touching scene, but it felt a bit throwaway against all the action. After all, the whole reason Jack ran away to his Borg Mommy was because Starfleet Daddy never knew he existed. As I quipped in earlier episodes, most of this falls on Bev for not telling Picard anything about this sooner, which plays out in Picard telling Jack in this scene how much he felt empty inside until finding out about Jack. Even given Picard’s tumultuous Starfleet history and penchant for getting into danger, the least Bev could have done was told him a helluva lot sooner, and perhaps almost all of this could have been avoided even if they never found the Borg pieces in them. It was made clear the Queen had no ability to do any of this on her own, she needed both Jack and the Changelings to even realize this plan. Sorry Bev, but once again, ya fucked up.
PREPARE TO BE RESCUED
Picard succeeds in bringing Jack back, and with the help of Deanna Troi’s Betazed abilities, everyone gets a beam-out from the Enterprise-D overhead as they escape, the cube explodes, and everyone is saved. The fleet was just about to target Earth cities and carry out an orbital bombardment, something the Borg wouldn’t have considered before, but again, this is a Queen reeking of revenge and desperation, she just wanted most of humanity gone and to run off with whatever remained for her new collective. I don’t know if everyone who was under their control knew what was happening, Sidney certainly seemed like she knew what had happened even being under their control. We were unfortunately not told of the fate of Admiral Shelby, and no formal space-funeral of Shaw occurred, which would have been a good touch. Instead we kind of neatly wrap up, and move on to ONE YEAR LATER.
Plenty of letters in the alphabet
It’s not entirely unsurprising that in Tuvok’s second and last debut in the series, as the real Tuvok this time, he’d be debriefing Seven about her role in everything. It’s also not entirely unsurprising she would insist that she isn’t Starfleet material and attempt to resign. It is very surprising that Shaw recorded himself recommending Seven for a promotion to captain before they left spacedock at the start of the season. Tuvok flatly, in his trademark tone, denies her resignation. This sets us up for the next scene with Picard and Crusher delivering Jack to his first posting as a Starfleet ensign (clearly fast-tracked, like Elnor) which turns out to be the Titan… or not. It’s the same ship, reclassified as the Enterprise-G, under the command of Seven of Nine, and First Officer Raffi. Most of the same bridge crew is there, and Jack takes his place as some kind of surveyor or somesuch. Fans were clamoring for a Titan series, but now I can see why Matalas was coy about it on social media. I do want to know though what happened to the Enterprise-F before. Was it destroyed? Kinda feels weird to skip a letter like that, but then shit has been weird since D.
Aw shit, here we go again.
Our final “post-credits” scene has John de Lancie back as Q, appearing before Jack in his quarters. He seems to be very much alive, and very much insisting that the trial begins again!. Nothing is explained as to how he is alive again, or if he really died in the first place. We know from both The Next Generation and Voyager that there are other Q who look different, so it’s possible that this is another Q who just happens to look and talk the same? Who knows. But like many other cues this episode, this seems to suggest that Matalas and Co. are not done with this story just yet. I smell a Legacy-like series in the works.\
Random Observations and Easter Eggs:
We unfortunately did not get any additional guest cameos out of this episode, such as a long-sought after Janeway reveal or perhaps Chief O’Brien fixing the transporters. With such amazing SFX and camera work this season, I can see why they chose to spend more budget making it look good than give into deep-nostalgia.
Alice Krige, the actress who portrayed the Borg Queen in Star Trek First Contact provides the voice for her here, but a different actress wiggles around in the visuals. This was likely done to connect the previous film’s story and Borg collective to this one. Interestingly, Matalas has noted their suffering from the effects of Janeway’s intervention, which was a different queen played by Susanna Thompson in Voyager. The late Annie Wersching played the alternate-universe queen that Picard dealt with in the last season of Picard.
In the beginning of the episode, the Federation president, Anton Chekov, is giving a warning for people to escape Earth or not come to it during this seige. He would be the son of Pavel Chekov, celebrated crewmember of the original USS Enterprise 1701.
So, what happened to Laris? Did Picard have to call her up on subspace and say something like “Sorry babe, my baby momma is back and I have a son now, gotta go be a father, maybe we meet up on Risa in a week? Maybe I get another son out of this body? Wink wink nudge nudge?”
Brent Spiner being able to play himself finally after all these years has been a treat and highlight of this season.
The opening Star Trek logo crawl not only featured the Enterprise-D, but also Borg-ified the logo. This is unique to this episode as the previous nine featured the Titan-A
Well we’ve reached the end of this nostalgia trip, and I thank you all for reading if you have been. I certainly wished we got a little more out of this for some of the lower-point episodes, but this has been some of the best Trek I have seen in such a long time. Don’t get me wrong, some episodes of Discovery were good, Strange New Worlds much better, and Lower Decks and Prodigy keep hope within me. Being a huge fan of this universe, being a huge supporter of the ethos of the Federation, and the hope for a more unified and better future, I naturally am not shy to say how middling today’s Trek writing has been, and how this show hopefully has reinvigorated them into producing new and fresh content with mostly-fresh faces that keep the spirit of the universe alive. It’s not just a generic sci-fi action series, it’s about people and places, solving problems, and working together to overcome challenges. I hope to see Jeri Ryan and everyone return in a new show and carry on that legacy.
Strange New Worlds returns for its second season on June 15th, so I’ll be writing about it here again. Until then, I’ll make it a threesome.
Modern serialized streaming television, especially by and for nerds, tends to rely on a lot of epic twists that the showrunners hope fans will flock to social media to talk about after each episode. While not a bad thing per se, the quality of the twist has to be something substantial and meaningful for that to land. The big-bad drop in this week’s Picard kind of straddles the fence, which is why I’ll say it here above the spoiler line; The Borg are back, and in probably the most terrifying permeation they have probably ever been throughout the Trek franchise. I say this above the spoiler line because even if it hadn’t been for that foreign television closed-caption gaffe earlier in the season, we all saw this coming, and hints were dispersed throughout the entire show. Fortunately, that did not soften the landing one bit, they had a plan and came in swinging incredibly hard. So much so that this could very well be the direct sequel to First Contact.
Are those rounded edges? Did they round their edges?
In the preview for this episode, Troi sits down with Jack to probe the red door, and upon opening it, gets scared and runs off. So naturally this is part of the warm open as well as she runs to Crusher and Picard to tell them. Neither understand how or why he has Borg components when they thought they removed everything from Picard, but as many pointed out the connections back to The Best of Both Worlds, the frontal lobe of the brain, and his DNA being rewritten was the keys to this series. Turns out the Borg have adapted a very nasty little trick in Picard that passed on to Jack, and Jack does not take too kindly to it, opting to run off and find the collective for answers.
Meanwhile Frontier Day has begun, and in classic Starfleet fashion, they assembled all of their fleet together to show their unified fleet systems, but the Titan is coming in to crash the party and warn of the Changeling infiltration. There are a couple surprises here, one known from the initial promo material, and another I’ll divulge in a moment. I had fun pausing at the screen to read the ship names, a few familiar names, a lot of new names I’ll mention in the easter eggs. The production team did take a cue from the end of the first season and try and put in some different classes of ships this time, but you can tell there are still some repeating especially in the further distance of each shot. Doug Drexler, Michael and Denise Okuda, and so many other returning graphic and set designers from the older shows helped really make this season stand out so well and they honestly didn’t have to. I know I sometimes bust balls on newer Trek showrunners, writers, and staff, but they’re handling a franchise that means something to myself and fellow fans, and if I were them, I’d be spending most of my days prior to production learning everything from those who came before me and any tips and tricks to derive a style from theirs. Of course, they are pulling out all the stops because this is the final season, but I almost feel this was the season they originally wanted to make from the get-go, before whatever decisions prior led to the first two seasons.
Fireworks IN SPAAAAAAAAACE~
This episode almost almost almost got a ten from me, just like the last episode, and it really comes down to the plot pacing. Once again, the show spent far too much time in the middle bumbling about in their escaping or evading Vadic, setting up story pieces that they didn’t want to reveal too early. We did get an amazing performance from Amanda Plummer, but it just felt like the meat and potatoes of it all got dumped on the final two episodes of the final season. Imagine if this reveal came two or three episodes sooner, and they had to spend the back half trying to assemble a team and plan to fight back? They made the changelings out to be the big-bad, but they ended up just being a man-in-the-middle attack, sideloading code into the Starfleet Github repository. I could do this if the changelings were season two and the Borg were season three, but they crammed it all into one season. I am going to continue to insist that this was the real Picard project all along, and the first two seasons were worthless. They are worthless. If you could have used them to set up for this story, it would have been amazing.
Spoiler Talk
Not Admiral Janeway.
Frontier Day opens with Elizabeth Dennehy’s Admiral Elizabeth Shelby, the fierce Lt. Commander who became Riker’s first officer after Picard was assimilated in The Best of Both Worlds. We knew we’d see the Enterprise-F from the promo material, but Shelby was a welcome surprise, though it seems she may have got-got towards the end. The whole fleet assembly thing was cool for me, a starship nerd especially in love with the Starfleet starship aesthetic. I would have loved to see more close-ups of the ships as they got into formation, but instead we just got a lot of wide shots. Good for illustrating the fleet, but I guess there wasn’t enough in the budget to model more ships up-close.
But then of course, the shit hits the fan hard. It turns out the changeling infiltration wasn’t the real threat, it was how the Borg had been using them and their infiltration of Starfleet to secretly rewrite everyone’s DNA through the transporter system with Picard’s modified Borg DNA. That is how the Borg would then soft-assimilate everyone on every ship. It also now finally explains how Jack could control people. But the kicker was that it relied on frontal lobes of the brain not fully-developed, which occurs around age 25. So while it did not affect anyone older, it affected all the younger crew members. As much as I wanted to cringe a bit at yet another Big Borg Plan, I have to admit this was very clever, and had significantly more impact than Voyager or First Contact did. This was truly a modern, 2023, Black Mirror-inspired Borg plan that really needs more than two episodes to play out. The pacing for this series is not good, and suffers from Discovery-itus; When you want to have characters, but you only have ten episodes to tell a serialized story. As much as I enjoyed the use of the changelings, and what I assume is the double-cross (I assume the rogues are now assimilated as well) it felt like they teased us with a lot of DS9 trails to throw us off the Borg.
BRO I TOLD YOU TO NOT TO MERGE ALL THE FORKS IN THE GIT REPO!
So now we have most of the Pre-Borg trying to execute the remaining crew as the Queen has control over “Fleet Mode”. Shelby seemingly gets phasered twice, so presumably she is dead. Like Ro Laren, I am a bit disappointed that they’re offing so many secondary characters from TNG in this, but I suppose it’s been long enough. Poor Geordi has to come to terms with his daughters being assimilated, and the Geriatrics have to find their way off the ship. On their way down they hear the Excelsior try and break free of the fleet, only to be gunned down by the rest of the fleet. o7 But that gives them the idea of using a maintenance shuttle to get off the ship. But not before Shaw is shot.
Nearer My God to Thee
If you’ve also seen this week’s The Mandalorian, you’ve just been kicked in the balls again by the loss of another character that hasn’t had a ton of screen time and isn’t that integral to our heroes, but he gave it where it counted. Shaw may have just been a dipshit from Chicago, former grease monkey, survivor of Wolf 359, and maybe a bit of an asshole in more ways than seven, but he had a charm that grew on me with each episode. We all kinda wanted to see him return with Seven and the Titan for Legacy or whatever they’d call it. I haven’t really cared much for the new cast deaths throughout Picard’s run, mostly because they weren’t written worth a damn. Shaw was, and I felt sad at this. But he did what his senior officers did for him at Wolf 359, he sacrificed himself so others could live. Godspeed, Captain No.
You knew what was in Hanger 12.
With the fleet lost to the Borg and the Geriatrics left to save the day, where do they go? Back to the fleet museum. What do they get out of Hanger 12? You guessed it. The 1701-D. Geordi explains they had to recover the saucer section from Viridian III due to the Prime Directive, and he’s spent the last twenty years restoring it with a drive section from another Galaxy-class ship. But it’s not connected to the new fleet in anyway, so they think they can use it to somehow save the day? I love how Geordi also mentioned the Enterprise-E, and Worf just says “It wasn’t my fault”, implying the ship was either destroyed, or forced out of commission. He later complains about the E’s superior weapons systems compared to the D, just furthering Michael Dorn’s comedic hot-takes in this show. Every aspect of this scene is tailored to nostalgia, from the familiar bridge, Data’s seat, older-LCARS interface, and of course Majel Barrett-Roddenberry’s familiar voice as the computer. With Geordi at the helm like TNG first-season days, the ship leaves dock and even the does familiar left-hook turn-to-warp to end the episode.
ARE YOU NOSTALGIC YET?
I have no godly idea how the Enterprise-D is going to stop the fleet, or the Borg. Why didn’t they take the Defiant or Voyager? Aside from obvious nostalgia, those two would have been far better in a fight, and I’m curious how only seven or so people can crew a ship whose compliment was over 1000. I also shudder to know if they’re going to destroy it in the process. My immediate guess as to how this all ends is that either Jack somehow manages to reverse everything from within the collective, Janeway shows up and kills another Borg Queen, or Jurati’s collective shows up and takes control. I also assume that there has to be a way for them to remove the transporter code and then maybe strip the affected DNA out of everyone through a transporter or something. Honestly, Bev should really be playing a far larger role in this series doing these sorts of things. A lot of that sort of problem-solving side of Trek hasn’t been on display much this season, but we’ve forgiven it for the ACTION TREK plot. But now that you know how everything happened, do something, Bev. Hell, even Weasley could come in and do something.
Oh, this week is going to be maddening.
Random Observations and Easter Eggs:
In the starship fleet screens some familiar names, some new, and many named after series crew like the Okuda. Excelsior, Sutherland, Appalachia, Akira, Reliant, Zheng-he, John Kelly, and so on. Later on in the turbolift we also see the Hikaru Sulu, Luna, Cochrane, and Intrepid.
The revelations about the DNA base pairs and transporter code answers one of the earlier season questions why the transporter chief was replaced by a changeling. Considering how “all Starfleet ships are connected”, the code changes made on the Titan allowed for it to spread to all other Starfleet ships on the network. Some Starfleet network admin is getting fired, if they haven’t been offed already.
This episode marks Elizabeth Dennehy’s return to Trek since TNG’s The Best of Both Worlds, however this is Elizabeth Shelby’s third appearance, after the Lower Decks episode An Embarrassment of Dooplers where then-Captain Shelby is mentioned by Boimler, but she had no spoken lines.
We finally get to see the phasers set to stun this episode, which at least tells us they still have a stun setting and someone is willing to use them to maybe not intentionally kill everyone for the fun of it.
A lot of DS9 fans will probably be disappointed by the turn away from Pah-Wraith theories this week. I’d like to be among that camp, but this being a Picard story and him having no real connection to that storyline, it wouldn’t have made sense. The Borg was always going to be Picard’s nemesis (lul) at every turn. The only other Starfleet officers with equal measure in that are Janeway and Seven, and it remains to be foreseen if Kate Mulgrew steps in to deal another crippling blow to the Borg collective alongside Patrick Stewart. Don’t get your hopes up though.
Finally, some proper starship lighting at the end. Would it really kill modern Starfleet to have just a few overhead lights on the bridge?
