Beverly: Okay, I fucked up with my last kid and accidentally raised a Chosen One. I’ll just do the opposite with this new kid.
*Creates Evil Chosen One*
I’m giving the show shit but this season has been by far the most watchable. If they stick the landing, Picard might wind up getting the rare advice “watch the last season and nothing else.”
A pretty strong episode, but maybe my least favorite so far? It’s very fan-servicey. Two different fan service museums in a single episode, each packed to the gills with Star Trek callbacks? It defines narrative credibility. (And don’t get me started on the fact that The Titan whips over to get help from Geordi LaForge in another star system, steals and installs a Klingon cloaking device, and flies back to save the day… all in an in-universe hour).
But I think what I like least is the return of Data/Lore/B4. If there’s one thing that the last three Picard seasons have ruined for me, it’s Brent Spiner. And if Picard has proven anything, it’s that what he said twenty odd years ago when he first tried to leave the franchise is right. No one wants to watch a fat old man play an android forever.
Ain’t that the truth. I had fun with it, but still, wow. Slow it down y’all.
I fucking loved the fleet museum. I want episode 7 to just be Seven flying around the ships in a shuttlecraft for 55 minutes making comments about each ship class.
I am a fan. Service me. I don’t give a shit about non-Trek fans. This isn’t a show for them. Season 2 was a show for them.
Raises hand! I do, lol.
Enjoyed this ep and really enjoyed that they’ve dialed back Shaw’s assholeishness since I really like him when he’s just being an eye roll to Picard’s Picardishness. But Geordi…you seem to believe that Starfleet was the infiltrated and on the verge of being destroyed from within. So why do you think keeping your kids from helping stop said destruction is safer than letting them stop it? He changed his mind pretty quickly and while I get the idea of him being worried about his kids the alternative to keeping them safe is making them less safe.
I watched the episode this morning. Gosh, that was a great time. All the way from the “Previously On” that was expertly put together, and the fantastic music that kicked in, I knew I was in for a good time this week.
This truly feels like the extended TNG movie we never got after the show ended. It’s different from TNG the series, but it’s way better than any of the TNG movies, in my opinion.
Yeah, I don’t get this criticism. In an actual Star Trek universe, there would be “call backs” all the time to the past. It’s only less so in a tv show because they want to keep it episodic and not have people feel like they missed out because they missed a previous episode or movie. This episode felt more like Deep Space Nine in that way to me, not afraid to reference Star Trek history extensively, something the franchise has been very reluctant to do outside of Deep Space Nine.
What made it feel off to me was that the fleet museum bit was total fan service but they didn’t fully commit to it. Instead, they also made sure the characters explained each ship as if that would make the people who didn’t know their significance care about it and it left the whole scene feeling a bit off. Whereas I can picture Lower Decks doing the fleet museum as something like a shuttle flyby with Boimler’s face squished against the window unable to speak as he looks in awe at each of the classic ships they fly by.
It didn’t feel off to me. It made sense to me, the conversation between Seven and Jack, as someone in Starfleet talking to someone who is not as familiar with Starfleet. And it made sense that she would talk the longest and most fondly about Voyager.
And maybe that scene would have worked better for me if they’d have done something more interactive with the ships vs just kind of clicking through a powerpoint? I don’t know. I certainly liked seeing some of the old classics again but I didn’t like it as much as I think I should have.
Also, With the speculation that Jack actually is possessed by a Pah Wraith and that we’ll be going deeper into DS9 fan service in the remaining episodes, I thought it notable that the Defiant was the first ship we saw in the museum.
Speaking of which, how did the Changlings get through the wormhole and past the wormhole aliens/Prophets?
My guess, since the war is over theres really no restricted travel for members of the Dominion.
Aren’t there a bunch of Changelings already on this side of the Wormhole?
My favorite thing is that the NX-01 refit was included in the ships. I really hope they find an excuse to revisit this location before the end of the season…
Fan diagram of the refit, which was planned for Enterprise Season 5.
(There was a model of the refit NX-01 glanced in Picard S2, so it’d already been made canon, but this time we get a distant glance at the actual ship.)
I bet you money they’ll have to use these “relics” to save Fleet Day because of the Battlestar Galactica-style network connectedness problem mentioned in the episode. Especially whatever is in “Hangar Bay 12”.
Weird, I remembered the NX-01 being a bit ‘flatter’ than that, but then I notice this says it’s a refit, so a later version?
edit: oh, yeah, ok
What a fun bit of business, that. Thank you.
I think it’s partly the lighting there. Lots of top light is making the upper disk seem to “bulge” more.
Borrowing a similarly angled shot from Enterprise (via Memory Alpha):
Or did you mean the drive section? Because yeah, Enterprise didn’t even have one in its original incarnation:
Hadn’t made this connection but I bet you’re right.
