dovegrey

I was more or less okay with Kirk being in the SNW season finale, since it was a time jump forward to when Prime Kirk canonically should have already had command of Enterprise and it explained why Pike has to get Piked. I'm not so okay with Kirk apparently being in season two. If they want to reboot TOS (which I feel like they kinda sorta do), then reboot TOS but don't call it SNW.

I caught this episode because of the preview. Haven’t watched since sometime last year and felt like I haven’t missed anything. The parking garage scene was so silly. For starters, 81 was jingling their gear all over the place, and the bad guys didn’t hear them coming or “sneaking.” They all would have been dead. But it was almost nice to see Casey leading 81 again (except for poor Mouch). Kidd’s handwringing about Severide becoming his dad struck me as such a waste. These writers spent 6+ seasons getting them together, with Severide’s only solid development across this entire endless series being him settling down, and now they’re apparently trying to hang Kinney’s absence on Severide being “destined” to become Benny (which has already been addressed at least two other times with Stellaride)? Why. He's probably doing dumb shit firefighters would never do, like usual, only not in Chicago. I can’t tell if Spencer is coming back, if Kilmer is leaving, if Spencer agreed to come back as recurring (like a Donna or Chloe), or if they’re going to torpedo Brettsey once and for all. I mean, Casey could come back as a captain or batt chief on a different shift and we’d never need to see him - and, if he comes back, he really shouldn't be at 51 with Brett, and it would make tons more sense for them to run on different shifts so someone is always home and they get a day off together every couple of days. But if Spencer comes back and Kinney doesn't, I bet Casey takes over Squad and all logic goes out the window. Anyway, I hope Brett says yes and they’re happy together. Casey’s wanted a kid from literally the first episode of this show, and I’d love for him to end with a happy family, whether that’s in Chicago or Portland. Just…don’t repeat the Louie story.

To me, by that logic, then Ted also chose to disclose personal and private medical information to his subordinate coworkers at work. Which is a big no-no that most adults have learned, even when you’re not in a small, competitive industry. If Ted’s choice to move to the UK in good faith for a job mitigates Rebecca’s behavior (which was not a wait-to-fail and fire him approach… she immediately and actively schemed to destroy him with a fake sex scandal and then a hit piece in the newspapers), then, by that logic, Ted’s very informed choice to disclose his health condition at work with coworkers mitigates Nate’s behavior. But I don’t agree that Ted’s choices absolves the behaviors of others, regardless of who the character is. In general, I didn’t mean to start a tit-for-tat tally of Nate vs. Rebecca when I compared them. I just generally don’t understand the general vitriol toward Nate compared to Rebecca and Jamie, except he’s not nearly as charismatic, their stories/shitty-behavior catalysts were better developed on-screen (making them easier to root for), and both have had a lot of time to simmer and rehabilitate during the episodes and between seasons (which I didn’t have). Either way, I would never talk to Rebecca or Nate again - but I would personally far prefer what Nate did than having Rebecca schmooze me to my face while secretly trying to completely destroy me, my career, and my work for an entire year. I would never trust her or work for her, but I’m glad she’s nice now. (I’m still working to forgive Jamie’s hair this season, though. 😝)

Talking unfulfilling storylines - I’m not impressed with Roy’s storyline this season at all. IMO, he’s turning into a caricature of who he was in seasons one and two, and I really didn’t find the tie dye shirt plot to be funny or interesting; it was an antiquated punchline. In seasons past, he wouldn’t have even growled about the shirt; he would have worn it proudly, because who GAF, it’s a color and his niece gave it to him. This season, I would have really liked to have seen Roy come into his own as a coach (besides doing one press conference and teaming up with Jamie) or by adding some level of value or expertise to the team, besides tying dicks to strings and laughing about it. And then his story with Keeley might have seemed like something more than a plot contrivance, as Roy found worth and identity in "retirement." The game mechanics and Richmond’s performance is where I think the show is really floundering. I have no emotional to connection to this 10-game winning streak and underdog Richmond being #4. It feels so unearned to me, and I have no idea how they’re doing it (besides Total Football), when their head coach is disinterested and their other two coaches don’t appear to add anything. Likewise, I had no idea why they were failing so badly after Zava left; that felt hollow, too. They really could have tied some character stories together into the team’s performance and drawn a compelling season-long arc for many characters. I’m still enjoying the show but there’s been a clear shift in quality, and I find that nearly every character is suffering for it. Rebecca is probably faring best.

She didn't have the Ted/Keely photos published because they were traceable back to her, so she immediately hired Trent to write a hit article on Ted to disparage him (which also backfired, and so then she got rid of their star player). Hiring a person to move across the world knowing your only goal is to completely ruin them for your own gain, only to say "well, you chose to move here and how could I know" would...not be a good look. IMO. I'm glad she copped to what she did instead of making bad excuses. Having watched the whole series (up to this point) for the first time in the last month or so, I see both season one Rebecca and Nate as coming from extreme places of bitterness and being supremely shitty people in their bitterness; so, to me, it's very much the same. Rebecca has had the favor of time and development to redeem herself and have the people she tried to hurt forgive her and become her close friends. YMMV. 👍

This is where I see the show's name "Ted Lasso" perhaps not literally about Ted as a character but Ted as a philosophy and way of treating people. Ted doesn't see people as irredeemable or needing to be taken down, and so I'm with the writers on the Nate redemption arc. I don't really like him but I'm interested. And I'm trying to see it this way: a lot of the characters have arced from complete jackasses to redeemed people. I wouldn't classify anything Nate did or said as worse than Rebecca having a guy move to a different country so she could intentionally and covertly torpedo his personal and professional life to exact revenge on her ex. Nate has the unfortunate fate of not having two seasons to redeem and grow, like Rebecca and Jamie. I never thought Jamie would be a functional part of the team again (and wish that had been fleshed out more, actually), but here we are. If anything - the whole Zava arc should have been scrapped, IMO. What a waste of time that could have been dedicated to growing out the real storylines.

I've binged the whole show in the last month or so (just got Apple TV whoo hoo), and this is my read on it, as well. Ted ran away from Kansas, processed through some heavy stuff from his childhood, and now is geographically stuck in a place where he can no longer move forward. The episode where he sought out the US-themed restaurant only to have the drug-free Total Football hallucination hit that home for me, no pun intended; he’s homesick. Most importantly, his kid is in the US - so, why is Ted, a person who is so deeply affected by losing his own father, in the UK coaching a football team? How does he move forward in his life, when his life and deeply-rooted identity is across the Atlantic? It doesn't make sense, especially now that Richmond is cohesive and functional. I'm fully expecting the stagnation to lead to Ted leaving and going back to Kansas. That's his story arc, unless he gets back with Michelle and she and Henry move to the UK. (I'm curious who will lead Richmond if Ted leaves, because I don't think Roy is quite ready to carry the team as manager. I have a hard time seeing him and Mumblekid Shelley working together but Nate's definitely on a redemption trajectory. I just...ugh. Nate's so awkward to watch, and they've even made Roy a bit creepy this season.)

So, I'm conflicted. I'm looking forward to new content (based on old content) and with the book content having time to breathe. I think that could be really cool. But there are certain elements from the movies that I think would be hard to see done differently, such as Hogwarts itself, the Hogwarts Express, the music, and certain characters/actors. For me, the movies brought the book world to life, and it's the worldbuilding that I'm most attached to in terms of the films. Whenever I rewatch the movies - and especially the earlier movies - it's not really for the story or the characters but for the world and atmosphere. Probably an unpopular opinion, but I'm not attached to the main trio and really didn't care about kids saving the world until circa Order of the Phoenix and for sure the Deathly Hallows. The acting also got better then. Caveat...I wasn't allowed to read the books as a kid, ignored the hysteria as a teenager, only got into the franchise when Deathly Hallows Part 1 came out (as an adult), and couldn't stand any of it (books and movies alike) until the end of Goblet of Fire. I don't have a lot of nostalgia. A part of me wants to see fidelity to all the books, but the bigger part of me really doesn't care to watch seasons of 11-13-year-olds dumbly foiling Voldemort's stupid ploys. I liked Potter as a story when it got dark. So, yeah, I'm conflicted. But interested. It would be really cool to see a season 1 or limited series about the Marauders and Voldemort's first rise, so long as it could be compelling on its own without messing with existing canon (e.g., it can be hard to develop characters without overdeveloping them beyond where they canonically ended, such as James being a dick). I'd rather watch the tragedy of 20-somethings James, Lily, and Sirius, with Lupin having lost everyone he considered family in a single night, than 11-year-olds outsmarting everyone. #getoffmylawn 😅

I guess I don't see what difference it would make if it had explicitly been "the entire fleet except ten ships." Let's say that ten ships didn't go to Frontier Day and stayed out on their mission, had an emergency call, maintained a minimal defense position around Federation space, or, oops, "forgot." Even if Enterprise had sent a call to arms (...which they should have...), how many of those ships would have been able to get to Earth in the short time it took the Borg to breech planetary defense and start targeting cities? And those people on those ships still got assimilated or killed, since Jack was talking to the "worlds of the Federation," but the ships simply didn't get used to target Earth. Even if the ships didn't get assimilated, they're screwed the minute they come anywhere near the assimilated fleet (the young get assimilated, the old get killed, and the ships get hijacked), and suddenly we're watching a badly written version of Star Trek: Galactica (which might have been cool actually 😝). It might have been more palatable if the Changelings/Borg Queen somehow faked a situation that needed a heroic fleet-wide response, like Wolf 359, but I also think the Changelings were taking a very vindictive approach. Frontier Day was a mockery of the Federation - and it was meant to be. But the writers forgot the Changelings existed once Vadic died.

I don't think that trillions would protest a couple hours of starships being in Earth orbit during peacetime or that Starfleet officers would resign their careers/risk court martial over it; that would be an odd response to a stupid and pointless show of pomp, and I don't want to get into what society usually does when leaders violate norms, so I'll leave it at respectfully agree to disagree. 🙂 Connecting all the ships to the point where ship autonomy can be overridden is what I'd be more concerned about; where's Bill Adama when you need him 😆.

Right. I thought it was established that the Changelings infiltrated Starfleet's highest command levels and planned Frontier Day to be the stupidest thing the Federation could do, specifically so Earth couldn't mount a defense against the Borg. People who questioned or dissented or fought back got killed, like Ro.

There has long been speculation in Trek fan circles that there are multiple Borg Queens, possibly even clones because they look and sound alike, rather than one single Queen. The Confederation Queen who assimilated Agnes was different, and we have even seen Seven become a Queen. The Artifact had a specific Queen Cell when it was just a standard cube, which is suggestive that there is possibly a Queen for every cube. So, following that speculation, it could have been any Queen who survived the virus and was close to Earth. But the Queen from Endgame was infected by a virus, literally fell apart limb by limb, and was blown up on-screen with Janeway (we saw the explosion come up behind her then saw it from the exterior), then that entire transwarp hub to the Alpha Quadrant was completely destroyed. How would a dead infected blown up Queen with no body who is in the Delta Quadrant get to Jupiter? This show has done some dumb shit but, boy howdy, that would be a doozy. I agree about the DNA. They shouldn’t have even explained it. The Borg made their own pathogen using Picard DNA and weaponised the transporters, the end. I swear, the more the writers tried to explain stuff through exposition, the worse it all got.

Raffi said she had been investigating the Daystrom breakin and missing missiles for months. She and Worf then figured out the stolen missiles were a diversion from what was really stolen, which the crew later determined was the body. Ro said the transporters had been having problems for four months. The show started after the Daystrom breakin and, yes, literally days before Frontier Day would become Assimilation Day. Would the Borg in the Delta Quadrant, who were just as sick as the Borg in this episode for the last ~20 years, have been able to hear 3-year-old Jack from Earth? Was he transmitting as a toddler? Did it go that far? Or did this Queen hear him as he got older and only because she was close by in our quadrant or solar system? Even if he was plugged into the whole Collective, what were they really going to be able to do as they were literally dying and losing their own connections to each other. Those cubes would have been absolute chaos. (Note: I forget why I’m saying this but at some point I figured it tied in - I don’t think and will not be convinced that this Queen is the same Queen from Endgame. No way.) Also, I’m fairly convinced Agnes doesn’t exist in this season, like that one TV sibling who was mentioned once and then never again. But it would have made sense if she was the one who saved the Borg and then did all this. Edited to add: I thought Beverly said the dreams and odd behavior got better as he got older, which would square with the Borg being annihilated in Endgame when he was 3-4 years old. Then this Queen comes around and starts talking again.

To be fair, the Borg stuff in Picard was the misdiagnosed Irumodic Syndrome. Beverly and Starfleet did catch it but they didn't know what it was. I can buy that. Starfleet had essentially just encountered the Borg en masse for the first time when Picard was assimilated, and, IIRC, he was the only person in the Federation who had been unassimilated, until Voyager came back with troves of Borg intel+technology and a half dozen friendly ex-Borg. I can buy that everyone missed it for what it was at that time. I figured that Jack could only control people who had been infected with the Borg DNA. That ability seemed to manifest fairly recently, which tracks with the transporters being compromised about four months earlier. He also seemed to get weirder and more tuned in to the Borg stuff the longer he was around Picard (who somehow still has Borg stuff despite being a synth...) I don't think using "the Borg" in this scenario is accurate. The Queen flat-out said that the Collective is gone - "Until recently, there was no Collective left." She meant that Jack had just created a new Collective out of Starfleet. Janeway's virus worked, and the Borg from TNG and Voyager are gone. This was the work of a single cube with a dying, starving Queen with no Collective who one day heard Jack's voice. It wasn't a 30-year plan; it was an opportunity. My read on the situation was that the Borg didn't plan for Locutus to be a trojan horse, and the Queen didn't know Jack existed until he subconsciously connected to her; by that time, all of her drones were dead, the Collective was gone, and she didn't have a way or the time to make another Locutus, have someone birth a Vox, and then spend years waiting for Baby Vox to be old enough to "transmit." She'd be dead by then. (So she decided to grab the dumbest Changeling she could find, who, instead of pretending to be Jack's mom and just kidnapping the idiot, chased him around the Alpha Quadrant for a while.) That being said - yeah, it doesn't make any sense that the Queen and the Changelings somehow found each other, or how a dying Queen intimidated Vadic the way it was depicted on screen. I doubt the writers have an explanation for that. And, as I understand what happened and what the Queen said, Jack wasn't an expected development, so it doesn't make any sense to me that the Queen would know that Jack was a genetic transmitter to Picard's genetic receiver or whatever. And it was never explained why Picard was so special as Locutus that only his DNA could be used for the transporter plot. The only thing I can think is that the transmitter and receiver need to share DNA, and Jack is the only known off-spring of a fully-assimilated ex-drone (B'Elanna wasn't fully assimilated). (And, not to be gross, but, given that arms and eyeballs and even entire chunks of brains - sorry, Seven - are routinely disposed of, I so much doubt that the Borg let most long-term drones keep their reproductive organs intact. Picard may be the first and possibly only former drone to successfully have post-assimilation offspring. Edited to add: On Voyager, Seven clarified that Borg babies are assimilated like everyone else, not birthed by Borg; Riker was wrong in Q Who.) Anyway, I'm not defending the inane story. It falls apart pretty quickly, and the writers, once again, did a poor job of telling a comprehensible story. It wasn't fully thought through, it was convoluted, and the Borg story was completely rushed to the point where it's just a giant WTF.

It was specifically stated in the last episode that Picard’s body was stolen because the Changelings needed the DNA for the transporters. Dialogue from other episodes established it had been stolen just months earlier. The transporter DNA hadn’t been there for a long time. I agree that the breadth of assimilation doesn’t make sense, unless the Changeling replacements fabricated a reason for the presidential employees and most starship staff to use the transporters at some point, which is possible. But then I’m doing more work than the writers.

It sounds like Jack's connection couldn't penetrate all the way to Earth's surface, but then it doesn't make sense that he was saying, "To the worlds of the Federation, hear us. Assimilation blah blah blah it's great you'll love it really blah blah" (paraphrasing that last part). If he could only speak to assimilated Starfleet people on ships orbiting Earth, why would he say that? Overall, I think it's a case that the writers knew everything was going to be easily wrapped up and forgot to actually commit to the story; the season's pacing didn't help at all. They really had to scramble at the end, which didn't leave room for the characters or story to breathe...and they overly committed to this being Jack's story, rather than a story about Picard/Locutus/the Borg, about the Federation facing annihilation/an end-of-an-era catastrophe - or even about the OG TNG crew, who were essentially plot ornaments rather than characters who made a unique contribution to the story. Hell, Geordi couldn't even muster a word or two with Beverly about his daughters being Borg, while she wrung her hands about saving her son who made his daughters into Borg. I try not to be too negative, but, looking back on the season, I just see a lot of wasted opportunity...and apparently a team so dismissive of the series' prior seasons that they'd rather commit to an incomprehensible plot with a nonsensical Borg Queen from ??somewhere??, than go the very obvious route of having "Friendly" Borg Queen Agnes who used to work at Daystrom and know all about organic/inorganic synthesis be the one behind it all. (Also, some alliance that turned out to be.)

Dialogue from the previous episode indicated that the transporters didn’t have the Borg DNA until after Picard’s body was stolen from Daystrom, which happened “months” before the start of this season (and I believe Ro mentioned the transporters had had problems for four months, which related to her not wanting to use them). This wasn’t a long-term plot. I do find it hard to believe that everyone on all the ships had used the transporter in the last few months; they still use shuttles and many crew don’t leave the ship. All in all, I don’t think anyone involved in what happened would assume someone they love is fine and safe. They either got assimilated and killed people, got killed, or got hunted by assimilated friends/coworkers. What actually happened does not match the tone of the episode, which is the same problem they had in the last episode when they listened to people get murdered and then laughed about carpet.

I agree. I don’t like the optics of it. Their relationship has been a barely-there shitshow since it began and, although I’m here for a Captain Seven show, I can’t stand Raffi and I don’t care to watch a shitshow relationship consume stories and airtime. I also question the logic of having Raffi serve as First Officer instead of as a captain of her own ship, given that it appears that most command crews were just killed and there should be lots of ships needing experienced officers to serve as captain. All in all, Seven, Raffi, and Jack together on Titan!Enterprise just seems like a lazy manufactured plot contrivance, and it’s a bummer, IMO. (I’d much rather see some manufactured Voyager connections, like Seven and Miral working together.) As I write this, I also want to complain that the cute celebratory tone that closed out the episode was not well placed, in my opinion. It was a massacre, not a victory, and I’m curious to know the list of the dead. I’m curious to know how the survivors cope with the memories of killing their crews and/or being hunted by their crew. But the writers treated it like superficial plot fluff all so Jack could have a dad. (And although I’ve never understood how assimilated people get blamed for the Borg, Jack made a choice. He shouldn’t be on that bridge.)

That's more or less how I've been handwaving it. Seven was incredibly experienced on Voyager, created the astrometrics lab, knew the ship inside and out, advised Janeway, and literally ran the ship singlehandedly for a month when the entire crew had to go into stasis. By the end, she had essentially become part of the senior command crew, IIRC. My biggest issue with her on Picard is that they established Starfleet didn't want anything to do with her (which was just dumb writing - but I've also wondered if she actually completed the Academy after Voyager, but Starfleet didn't want her on a ship after that...I think Voyager!Seven would have struggled), so this is putting Seven where she should have been all along, IMO, especially considering how far she's come in terms of being human/personable/etc. And there's not a whole lot of experienced people left to command ships after what just happened. Ensign Jack is absolutely ridiculous, though. Dude with a long criminal record who willingly got assimilated and then assimilated/killed your entire fleet completes the Academy in a year and gets assigned to a special position on the flagship? Okay.

I’ve read that season one was in 2399 and both seasons 2 and 3 are in 2401 (which doesn’t track with Seven becoming a Commander but the years were established by a showrunner interview for this season, I believe).

IIRC, that was a cube that a purposely-assimilated Romulan disrupted by sharing the Admonition vision that made everyone go insane. The Collective cut it off. Voyager destroyed the cube that followed that followed them back home. (So I guess season 1 established that there were still OG Borg hanging around the Alpha Quadrant.)

Yep. And/or possibly the OG Borg stepped up their game after - from their perception -Starfleet used time travel to infect the Borg with a virus, destroy 1/6th of their Delta Quadrant infrastructure, and save Voyager. I still can’t tell if this is a plot they plotted since BoBW or if this is a specific counterattack for what Janeway did. As a general point, the Queen who assimilated Agnes was from an entirely different timeline, where none of that happened and the Federation didn’t even exist. We have no idea how that Queen and her Collective encountered the Confederation. When the time travel hijinks happened and she stayed in 2024, she still wasn’t part of the OG Collective and, if she’s to be believed, never reached out to them (although I still think this story would make more sense if Borgati was lying, and she’s the reason the Borg survived Janeway and is now using a different assimilation strategy - and it would be a cool way of last season actually having some impact).

From how I understood season two, it was only Agnes and the Confederation-Timeline Queen who together decided to be nice Borg and have an alliance with the Federation. Borgati is basically just one cube that isn't part of the Collective we've been dealing with since TNG. All in all, the TNG/Voyager Borg had nothing to do with season two or the alliance. And since it seems like the new showrunner really wants as little to do with seasons one and two as possible, it's doubtful Agnes/Borgati will even come up (although it'd make sense for Picard to lean on that ally for a number of reasons...).

See - and this is where I thought the plot was going, only Jack was a happy accident that made the Borg plot possible after Picard died in season 1. I figured they'd designed Locutus to be the "remote control" for their Federation assimilation plan, and he was essentially a sleeper agent all these years. When he died in season 1 and became a synth, they lost Locutus and needed a new "remote control" - enter Jack, who inherited Borg-methylated genes. They got lucky. But it really looks like Jack inherited some special mutated genes from Picard that go beyond Locutus, which seems completely unnecessary and silly given what the Borg can do...and what the writers could do as writers. How did the Borg even know about Jack - could they eventually sense him? Did the Borg program Picard to procreate? And why couldn't anyone be Locutus-assimilated and then directed to breed (I feel icky writing that yuck) - why are the Picards so special?

And this is where I have a problem with the casting of Ed Speelers. I just can't see him as 23-year-old, where I could be more forgiving of him doing something this stupid, impulsive, and short-sighted...after a counselor saw the deepest/scariest part of his mind then immediately ghosted him, right before his long-lost father told him he's dangerous and needs to be committed for the safety of everyone around him because *surprise* he's accidentally Borg. On paper, I could get on board with it. On screen, it didn't really work. (The poor pacing of the storyline didn't help, either. There was some good Locutus momentum when Shaw confronted Picard on the holodeck, but that feels like a long time ago; maybe it'll play better on binge.) Speelers is a good actor IMO but this is not the role for him. And I don't really see why they even needed a Picard offspring to fulfill this role; maybe that will become more clear next week, maybe not. Picard finally finding closure and redemption re: Locutus/Wolf 359 would have been a fine way to end the series; he didn't need a son to do that, or compound the guilt he feels for BOBW.