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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
