I'd direct your attention to DQ's posting...
And I’d direct you toward the description in universe of that moment being a fracture in the collective with a minority breaking off to flee while the majority of the collective remained with the Queen
No worries, I'll only think you an a###~!$+ if you break out the personal attacks.
The Borg hivemind was made of many individuals, mind-wiped and subsumed to the collective. Individual minds didn't stand out. There were no identities other than function. Heck, I even think the idea of Locutus was a bad one that went against the idea of removing individuality and creating interchangeable drones. Drones severed from the collective still thought and acted like Borg, and learning how to function as individuals was a slow and painful process. They all still acted like, for want of a better word, emotionless robots. The along comes the queen and acts like a petty human from her introduction. Having a personality in charge is the antithesis of a hivemind. Having individuals with personality is the antithesis of the Borg Collective.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Ah I see. The issue is the introduction of the idea of a Queen at all, not necessarily (just) the one on Picard. Folks have been debating that for years.
My understanding is the general gist is it was supposed to be like bees, generally a hivemind agreeing and fully collaborating but with a single entity who was their "nexus" that they built themselves up around. I admit the metaphor is limited, as all bee queens do is have babies and borg queens actually do have more power. I'm not defending it, just recalling (badly) the thinking behind it.
Personally I always liked the Queen idea, but not for terribly logical reasons... I always kind of found her hot (I know, I'm weird) and it made it easier for me to think about how the Borg came to be (one person in search of perfection building up a "hive" around them to serve and protect her, again, going back to the sort of bee metaphor).
Moving into head canon territory:
The origins of the Borg could be anything. Science experiment gone wrong, over-eager do-gooders trying to stop wars,
Those were already done as origins of the Cybermen on Doctor Who. Though that doesn't negate the possibility.
or a desperate attempt to connect with people*.
Picard (the show, not the man) seems to suggest this is partly the case, and partly the obsession with attaining perfection.
The end result should be the same - the monstrous, inhuman scourge that has no emotion, no pity, cannot be pleaded with, only escaped from or fought. The Borg, from an emotional creature's perspective and the general humano-centric thrust of the ST-verse, are powerful but broken. They do what they do, they can adapt tactics and strategies to achieve their stated goal of assimilation but they...
To me I feel like that hasn't been lost, and maybe it's just cognitive dissonance I feel like I can reconcile both the idea of the unstoppable legion and its singular queen in my mind. But I can't explain it very well. But I understand just wanting them to be the unchanging terrifying legionous monster in the dark.
Interesting start to the new season. Seems a fair bit of time has passed since the last one and everyone has been doing things.
Dr. Crusher, she's gotten dark, not sure what she's up to but wow.
Captain Shaw......I both like and hate him. Well done
Raffi and Seven Split and Raffi in deep cover.
Terrorist attack....damn! that was a nasty strike
new surprise character...hmmm?
No idea who these bad guys are
Trust no one?
Interesting start to the new season. Seems a fair bit of time has passed since the last one and everyone has been doing things.
Dr. Crusher, she's gotten dark, not sure what she's up to but wow.
Captain Shaw......I both like and hate him. Well done
Raffi and Seven Split and Raffi in deep cover.
Terrorist attack....damn! that was a nasty strikenew surprise character...hmmm?
No idea who these bad guys are
Trust no one?
All of those things added together made me like the opening episode of Season 3 more than just about the other two whole seasons combined.
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Well as someone who thoroughly enjoyed seasons 1 and 2, it's not surprising that Season 3 is off to a great start. Pretty hard to not be with a "getting the band back together" plot, but thankfully it's more than just that and banking on nostalgia.
Captain Shaw is a hoot, and it's fun to see that there are some who don't so idolize Picard that they think he can do no wrong. It's always been slightly unrealistic that EVERYONE thinks he's amazing. There's always some haters. The fact that Shaw is a borg bigot is also a good counterpoint to the general ST trend of making everyone accepted eventually, as a realistic journey like that involves both steps forward and backward, and is highly uneven. Good to see some of that realism which DS9 had elsewhere in the ST universe. It's also taking some good notes from the Orville.
What had me laughing is the way Shaw describes Picard and Ricker is very similar to how I remember someone describing Kirk at one point in the Next Gen series.
Between this and Prodigy it is interesting getting a look at the galaxy outside the Federation
Season 2, at least to me, was utterly pointless. It really didn't seem to advance Star Trek history, save for just one thing, and the finale just had me sitting there wondering why the season wasn't a buildup to that. It's like they ran out of ideas for scripts and just stuck that part in out of desperation.
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My major problem is Qs are immortal. Thus having them die was pretty stupid.
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wasn't there that one Q who wanted to off himself, and the rest were worried about what kind of a ripple effect that would have on them.
Hindsight theorizing not really an excuse for season 2 but there are ways to logic a reason out.
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They did have a Q in Voyager. But I don't think the Continuum actually allowed it so much as they ignored Q's role in assisted suicide.
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They did have a Q in Voyager. But I don't think the Continuum actually allowed it so much as they ignored Q's role in assisted suicide.
Actually, they didn't ignore it. They ended up in a civil war over it, finally settling on a "as long as you reproduce, you can die" policy. The whole idea was a revolution for the Q.
Sadly, this wasn't spelled out very well in the relevant Q episodes of Voyager and 2nd season of Picard addressed that—in a round about way. I enjoyed 2nd season, but there were some serious plot issues. I respect the opinion of those who didn't like it.
As for the last episode, this series is shaping up well. two strong episodes in a row.
Oh, and Worf's introduction to the series may be the strongest character intro I've seen in a long time! :D
My friend and I "Whooped!!!!" at the same time when Worf picked up Raffi. She, because she loves Michael Dorn, and me, because of the Klingon theme from from "Star Trek: The Motion Picture".
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I was wondering how the two storylines were going to connect and then Tadaa... there he was
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I'm expecting with the first episode titles "Next Generation" it was not only a nod to TNG, but also indicating that we'll be meeting characters who will lead a new ST show after Picard wraps up. We've already met LaForge's daughter, and Crusher's son, and in season 1 we were introduced to Riker and Troi's daughter Kestra if they want to bring her back. If they promote Seven of Nine to captain, I'd watch that show with her leading a starship in the years after Picard and keep advancing the ST timeline.
Feros,
I must have missed that part of the explanation. I do remember Q and other Q having a kid. But nothing that suggested that meant other Q could die.
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Finally caught up with the first couple episodes; man, they were good! Now, I loved the first two seasons as well (yes, the second went off the rails for a few episodes but it was overall enjoyable; I also liked that there were more lighthearted moments than in the first season). And what I feared about this season has not come to pass--I think it was Joel who said upthread that they've brought folks back without it feeling gratuitously fanservicey.
I also like that the existing cast still have plenty of interesting stuff to do. I particularly enjoy watching Seven ever be the stubborn thorn in her Captain's side. When Seven mentioned that Janeway had helped her get reinstated, I can almost see Janeway working to get Seven assigned to that ship just because she knew Seven wouldn't make it easy for Shaw. Seven has changed so much but she still gets that same flatly stubborn look on her face that says, "You will say you'll punish me until you realize I'm right." :)
Raffi's story is really interesting too, love seeing the dark intelligence side of Starfleet as well as her wrestling with the various elements of her past in a new and interesting way. One thing I appreciate is how they handle her addiction; so many TV shows will have former addicts be "cured" whereas they dig into the fact that it is something someone always struggles with. Also,
I'm expecting with the first episode titles "Next Generation" it was not only a nod to TNG, but also indicating that we'll be meeting characters who will lead a new ST show after Picard wraps up. We've already met LaForge's daughter, and Crusher's son, and in season 1 we were introduced to Riker and Troi's daughter Kestra if they want to bring her back. If they promote Seven of Nine to captain, I'd watch that show with her leading a starship in the years after Picard and keep advancing the ST timeline.
And yeah, I never thought I wanted Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Next Generation, but this specific lineup I would be SO there for.
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Feros,
I must have missed that part of the explanation. I do remember Q and other Q having a kid. But nothing that suggested that meant other Q could die.
It wasn't explicitly. It was suggested by the reason for the conflict and the resolution, but the scripts in Voyager were often lax in detail. (i.e. Why else would them having a kid bring back peace and balance to the Q after one of them dying?)
Sadly, a lot of these sort of ambiguous situations could have been cleared up with a single sentence of dialog. [sarcasm]But why have dialog when you can have space ships shooting at each other or people shooting at each other? That's why people watch science fiction, isn't it?[/sarcasm]
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Lol. I enjoy that sarcasm block you inserted there Feros. Good job.
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So far, 3 for 3 excellent episodes.
One minor quibble in episode 3 though:
It was cool when the Shrike used the portal tech weapon to re-direct the Titan, but when it did on the photon torpedoes, I was cool with that as a defensive tactic, but didn't quite buy that it could re-direct them to perfectly hit the Titan itself while it was making combat maneuvers. I guess chalk it up to superior predictive 25th century computers, but especially for a brand new weapon, and on a ship which was a single purpose warship and presumably didn't have general science capabilities, it stretched believability a bit much. It was cool visually, but I'd have preferred that they just harmlessly re-directly the torpedos, then as soon as the portal turned off unloaded their own weapons on the Shrike to disable it and gotten to the same end result.
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LMAO I love Worf in this.
and the reveal of the true enemy, not 100% surprise but still great. (It was either them or the Maggots)
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I think Riker and Picard not being on the same page is more to do with Riker's loss of a son having changed him and his willingness to put others in harm's way, while Picard hasn't ever had that (though this season is clearly putting him on the path to change that).
Then again, I don't think Picard's plan was any better or worse than Riker's, and neither of them would have been successful with the
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First episode was good, much better than season 2, and I was excited to see more. Then it turns out only the first episode is on Prime you need a Paramount subscription for the rest. Bleh. Maybe if I wait a bit the entire thing will come to AP.
That's highly unlikely to ever happen. It's a Paramount show. Prime sometimes works with other channels to hook people with a free first episode to entice them to sign up for the channel. If you wait until the season ends, you could easily watch it all in a single month's subscription though.
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Guess Canada lucks out on that front, getting the show on our SciFI TV channel and Crave over here.
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First episode was good, much better than season 2, and I was excited to see more. Then it turns out only the first episode is on Prime you need a Paramount subscription for the rest. Bleh. Maybe if I wait a bit the entire thing will come to AP.
Wait until all 10 episodes have been released, sign up for Paramount+, watch 'em, unsubscribe. Scruples? I don't need no stinking scruples.
Yes, they are all on Paramount.
Prime allows you to sign up for other streaming services and watch it through the Prime viewer. (For example, my sister subscribes to Acorn and Discovery+, but watches these through Prime rather than the separate apps). So one possibility is you might have signed up for Paramount and/or a trial period and watched it through Prime. Or it's possible the earlier seasons dual released.
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Were the first two seasons also Paramount shows? Because I watched them on Prime.
Guessing you're watching from a country not the United States. What likely happened is that Prime had the rights to stream Picard in countries where Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access) didn't exist. Once Paramount+ launched in your country though, the new season wasn't available on Prime anymore, since it's on their in house streaming platform Paramount+ instead.
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Again...Do not like Cpt. Shaw as a person, but I gotta say I love him as a character. He is a good Captain, and I have to say I probably would enjoy a spin off with him and his crew.
but he is a giant messy ball of snark and hostility
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Shaw is a well-written a$#!!$#. He is someone who has no interest in social niceties, but at his core is trying to protect people and do his duty. And it makes sense for there to be starship captains like him--it's a hard job and some are going to find what works best for them is being a ballbuster. Plus of course he then makes an excellent foil for noble Picard and heroic Riker, highlighting not just their strengths but also their flaws, which is the point.
This episode was good, though I missed seeing what Raffi and Worf were up to (reading reactions online not all agree; apparently there's random hate for Raffi amongst the fandom I don't get. I think having a woman who's lived on the darker side of the Federation is a good addition to the show, especially one who is ultimately a survivor). I expect one of the next episodes will primarily focus on them and connect them up with Picard.
If I had any criticism the flashbacks went on too long. The payoff was good but it took too much screentime to get there.
If a bunch of randos wanted storytime with Auntie DQ (because obviously I am as famous and heroic as Admiral Picard) while I was eating a plate of freshly cooked haddock I would tell them to f%%@ off. Well, I would tell them I'm eating first before my food gets cold, at least.
Crusher (Beverly) was crushing it. Solving the problems on the ship in only the way she could.
The end scene with the birth of the nebula creatures was awesome, very trek, and yet also seemed a random reference to Stardew Valley, because they looked oddly like the moonlight jellies.
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Episode 4 was amazing. Super tense, even with the flashbacks to take a break from the tension. It was only at the very end of the episode that I noticed that Worf/Raffi weren't in this episode, which isn't a knock on them or their plotline, but more about how this episode was so laser (phaser?) focused on the Titan's problem, shifting to Worf/Raffi for a scene or two would have taken the tension down too much. I expect next episode will lean a bit more into their next steps to "catch up" the screen time they missed in Ep 4, and that by the end of Ep 5 they might connect with the Titan (likely at Starfleet museum with Geordi for good measure, and maybe Troi will meet them there after the Riker/Troi resolution at the end of Ep4).
With only 4 episodes left, they need to have the full reunion pretty soon to give them a few episodes together.
With only 4 episodes left, they need to have the full reunion pretty soon to give them a few episodes together.
There are six more episodes, which is still far too few for this season. I've loved every episode so far and I can't say that for any episodes in the first two seasons.
....Holy Crap what an episode
I don't know what is going on...but man it looks bad
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Poor Shaw. He's genre savvy enough to know that if Picard and Riker show up, s$#~ is going to go south, and has done everything he can to get rid of them and can't.
I adored Ro when TNG was originally on, and it was a delight and surprise to see her again... and horrible to see her likely (though not guaranteed yet without a body) demise. But everything between her and Picard was amazing. And her sacrifice was very well written and served both character and plot well, even if sentiment resents it.
Loved that she was also the link that brings together Worf and Picard. Love that she was Worf's handler.
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It's tragic that René Auberjonois died before the changeling return. I've heard other actors say he did an incredible job showing emotion under that makeup.
As for the actual story, the past two seasons of Picard have felt slow, even when they were good. I commented that the first season would have worked better as a movie. Season three, however, is moving very fast. I would have liked more time of no one knowing about the changeling. Maybe an episode where the audience knows there's a changeling, but the characters don't.
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Wow, I'm running out of superlatives to describe just how great season 3 is. Aside from this episode being jam packed with some super cool Easter eggs, I'm amazed as just how good they have the pacing of each episode, with enough time for good character moments, action scenes, and none of it is rushed. Considering the number of characters involved, it's really impressive. Sure, it helps some that many of the characters are well established and don't necessarily need as much backstory and development, since they can lean into what's been done before (as well as the actors knowing their roles backwards and forwards), but even with that advantage, it's very impressive.
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Oh My Lord...so many fan moments
and I love Shaw meeting Geordi and just being a big geek about it.
damn it I am really liking Shaw....please don't kill him
(Also Geordi mentioning how the fleet ships are now linked up to each other....Isn't that exactly what is used against them in Prodigy)
I agree, Greylurker, I loved the payoff of Shaw giving absolutely no f$*#s about Riker and Picard and then melting down like a fangirl over Geordi. (And I agree there's a huge risk of him doing a heroic sacrifice and I hope they keep him for future Trek projects).
The more scenes we had with Vadic were also fascinating (actress is clearly having a ball). Seems like these Changelings have been severed from the Unity. I don't know the Dominion War plot super well (I watched some DS9 but it was on at a time when I couldn't always catch every episode and have never caught up with it via streaming, etc. since) but I do recall enough of the story with Odo and the Unity and the virus to be interested in where they are going with this.
I wonder if there's something to the Irumodic Syndrome that Jean-Luc had and Jack has that is still tying into this plot, especially given the reveal toward the end. It doesn't fully explain to me what was going on with Jack in the previous episode. I wonder if it does something to the brain that makes one receptive to a telepathic connection to aliens or something (perhaps making it a route to reattaining Unity that Vadic is seeking).
PS: If y'all haven't heard of/been watching The Ready Room for the post episode actor interviews and behind the scenes stuff, they have some fascinating material. But you don't have to take my word for it...
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I think the Irumodic Syndrome is a red herring. Jack may have it, but it's not what's affecting him, or it may be mis-diagnosed as the syndrome due to medical history.
I think Jack is somehow part changeling, and that his unique genome is somehow important, which also ties to why the changelings stole
Another possibility is that Jack is connected to the Upside Down - his visions remind me way too much of Stranger Things! :)
Could Picard still have had Borg nanoprobes? Perhaps ones that have been deprogrammed to seek to create new Borg but have some other adaptation traits? Could they convey via intercourse? And/or could Picard's time as a Borg alter his DNA in some way that has conveyed to Jack, and this something is desired by the Changelings?
Only issue with this thought is this is why not go after other XBs? Unless there is also something tied into Picard DNA specifically...
....I am very lost.
A) The Boss is Not a Changeling....? but it is something that can exert a lot of influence over a very long distance.
B) It has something to do with the Iromotic Syndrome which is increasingly looking like it's not Iromotic Syndrome. Something to be Extracted?
C) FU Lore
D) and F Section 13. How many times this group going to make a mess that needs cleaning up.
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also the Tuvok thing......that hurts
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My guess at the boss is the worm symbiotes from TNG season 1 episode conspiracy. I don't see how any of them could have been dormant in Picard all this time, since in that episode he never actually got taken over, but the methodology fits. And it's the biggest dropped plot thread from TNG, so bringing them back would finally address that.
My guess at the boss is the worm symbiotes from TNG season 1 episode conspiracy. I don't see how any of them could have been dormant in Picard all this time, since in that episode he never actually got taken over, but the methodology fits. And it's the biggest dropped plot thread from TNG, so bringing them back would finally address that.
The showrunner has already ruled this out. He considered it, but he felt they were a bit too tricky to manage plot wise, since they need to take people over and it's very hard to stun or disable them without killing them outright.
Unless he's lying, of course.