S03.E09: Part Nine - Vox

[Prevailing Wind]

And now the Writers Guild goes on strike. Ya think these writers even know what a strike is?  I hope they all find other (non-showbiz) jobs during the strike that they like so well, they never return to "Hollywood."

[PurpleTentacle]

1 hour ago, Ottis said:

I very much think it does, writ broadly. I think essays have been written on this, even on Star Trek and its various series and how they reflected the times they were created in.

I think TV used to reflect society, but it doesn't anymore. Now it just reflects a very tiny bubble. At least most of TV does and Star Trek in particular. The Secret Hideout / Bad Robot clan is so, for lack of a better term, inbred and insular, that nothing can penetrate the circlejerk.

[ML89]

1 hour ago, paigow said:

He would have run to the Holodeck, got drunk and told his Wolf-359 story to anyone there... even Vic Fontaine

I would pay to see that ending. Poor Shaw, he could have had free drinks forever after surviving this nightmare, just show up and tell his story. 

I didn’t realize until you said it, but he went like his namesake in Jaws, the Borg got him in the end. 

[formerlyfreedom]

Let's please stick to the episode here - there's been a lot of wandering off into other topics re: Star Trek, but not the episode. There is a Season Three Speculation topic where you should take the non-episode talk. Thank you.

[Francie]

I'll try to get us back on track:

The more I think about this episode, the more I realize it sucks donkey's balls. 

The only thing salvageable are the last four minutes spent on the Enterprise-D bridge. And the dialogue is so dreadful (whoever said it was characters waiting around to say their one line of exposition was spot on), that the only way to salvage that is to extract the video and set it to music. 

So I'm waiting for someone to get on that and post that to youtube. I would, but I have a case of the olds. 

[tennisgurl]

Well looks like we've finally made it home! Where they actually know where the light switch is! Amazing! I find what is happening with the Borg rather confusing, but its certainly exciting, there is so much happening I really have no idea how they will wrap things up. 

What happened with Borgati? I thought that the Borg were going to be playing nice now, when did this all change? I know that this franchise, including the recent shows, have played fast and loose with continuity, but that just happened last season, you would think they would remember that. I wish that they had stuck with the Changlings as the main bad guys, with some more DS9 cameos, but I get why they wanted to end on the Borg. They're TNG's most famous villains and Picard's most personal enemies, it does make thematic sense even if its confusing timeline wise. Or was that an alternate timeline? Or just some Borg? The end of the last season was rather confusing.

Sad that Shaw died, I really came to like him. The last "Seven of Nine" was a nice way to close things out with him at least. 

I really wish I cared more about Jack, as a character or as a plot device. 

Edited April 18, 2023 by tennisgurl

[dovegrey]

2 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

What happened with Borgati? I thought that the Borg were going to be playing nice now, when did this all change? I know that this franchise, including the recent shows, have played fast and loose with continuity, but that just happened last season, you would think they would remember that. I wish that they had stuck with the Changlings as the main bad guys, with some more DS9 cameos, but I get why they wanted to end on the Borg. They're TNG's most famous villains and Picard's most personal enemies, it does make thematic sense even if its confusing timeline wise. Or was that an alternate timeline? Or just some Borg? The end of the last season was rather confusing.

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...).

[Chit Chat]

2 hours ago, dovegrey said:

Borgati is basically just one cube that isn't part of the Collective we've been dealing with since TNG.

And aren't the Borg in different quadrants?  I thought they were done with them, but then I was reminded that this is a different quadrant with Borg.  Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.  It's easier for my brain to accept it this way though!  ;) 

[paigow]

13 minutes ago, Chit Chat said:

And aren't the Borg in different quadrants?  I thought they were done with them, but then I was reminded that this is a different quadrant with Borg.  Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.  It's easier for my brain to accept it this way though!  ;) 

O.G. Borg come from the Delta Quadrant...  After Q initiated first contact for Picard during TNG, those Borg decided to assimilate the Alpha Quadrant. The cube controlled by the Romulans and Hugh was part of the fleet.

O.G. Founders / Changelings / Dominion are from the Gamma Quadrant and used the wormhole near Bajor to reach the Alpha Quadrant. The most plausible connection is that a second wave of Borg reached the Alpha Quadrant and met the Section 31 Founder research subjects.

[dovegrey]

3 hours ago, paigow said:

O.G. Borg come from the Delta Quadrant...  After Q initiated first contact for Picard during TNG, those Borg decided to assimilate the Alpha Quadrant. The cube controlled by the Romulans and Hugh was part of the fleet.

O.G. Founders / Changelings / Dominion are from the Gamma Quadrant and used the wormhole near Bajor to reach the Alpha Quadrant. The most plausible connection is that a second wave of Borg reached the Alpha Quadrant and met the Section 31 Founder research subjects.

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).

Edited April 19, 2023 by dovegrey

[rtms77]

3 hours ago, paigow said:

O.G. Borg come from the Delta Quadrant...  After Q initiated first contact for Picard during TNG, those Borg decided to assimilate the Alpha Quadrant. The cube controlled by the Romulans and Hugh was part of the fleet.

I thought the cube in the first season was from the end of Voyager?

[ML89]

9 episodes and we don’t have really any idea how all this worked. Maybe they could have spent some time on that instead of Vadic yammering Jaaaaack over and over? Or Raffi “undercover” on Bladerunner planet? When Bev said the Borg had been gone for a decade, well, she’s been out of the loop but Picard didn’t object. 

Edited April 19, 2023 by ML89

[dovegrey]

4 hours ago, rtms77 said:

I thought the cube in the first season was from the end of Voyager?

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.)

Edited April 19, 2023 by dovegrey

[chaifan]

On 4/17/2023 at 5:18 PM, rtms77 said:

Troi never should have showed her hand. She should have cut it off , explain that what she saw was a security concern and then tell him she was informing the senior most Starfleet person of her report with Jack present. She would leave the room and put guards there and a force field on the door. Return with Picard and go from there. 

She should have tied him up with zip ties and duct tape.  Go old school analog on him.  Force fields he can mess with.  Guards he can mess with.  Let him try and control duct tape with his mind.  Good luck with that.

 

[paigow]

Troi should have given Jack some Peptide Cake to distract him before running away...

[rtms77]

16 hours ago, dovegrey said:

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.)

Thanks 😂 There are soooo many Borg Cubes in the Alpha quadrant ha ha and not one bothers to communicate with any others. 

[Prevailing Wind]

3 hours ago, paigow said:

Troi should have given Jack some Peptide Cake to distract him before running away...

With mint frosting.

 

[TAG42481]

Only 7 people onboard the Enterprise-D ... and they still have the lights turned on throughout the ship.  You can see all of the lit windows.  Tsk, tsk - save some of that power for the battle in the finale! ;-)

[millennium]

For all the complaints, I think the writers did create one new original plot line that respects and perpetuates canon from the original TNG without retconning, namely the Irumodic syndrome as a Trojan horse for the Borg seed.   It all fits, and ties this series directly to "The Best of Both Worlds," one of the most memorable stories of the original series.  Those episodes where Picard's Irumodic syndrome is mentioned will now be viewed differently.  I give them a lot of credit because it's creative and it works.   At the same time, it's a shame they wasted the previous eight episodes on masturbation.

Two complaints:

1) The killing of Shaw just when he had become interesting

2) The OG brain trust is having their "What awful thing have the Borg done now?" pow-wow and NOBODY considers asking Seven of Nine for her input.   Such a glaring and frankly insulting omission. 

Oh, and somebody please explain why Raffi is on this show?

 

[rmontro]

Just watched this now, and the main thing that jumped out at me was the similarity with the door Picard was dealing with in season two.  The writers must  like using that analogy.