Home is where the ship is. In this week’s episode of “Picard,” the crew goes home.
Season 3, Episode 9: ‘Vox’
If you’re going to lean into nostalgia, might as well go the whole way. If you’re going to bring back the old cast, bring back the old ship and the old villains, too.
Resistance to fan service is futile. Recall that in this season’s premiere, Jean-Luc wanted to give Geordi a gift of a painting of the Enterprise D.
“She wasn’t the first,” he said. “But she was certainly my favorite.”
Little did he know that Geordi was preparing a gift himself the whole time: the real Enterprise D, somehow excavated from Verdian III, where the ship unceremoniously crash landed in “Generations.” It’s the ship that many of us fell in love with, just as much as we did with the characters that served on the ship. The “Picard” showrunner, Terry Matalas, has used this season of “Picard” to right many of the previous wrongs of the “Next Generation” franchise. Giving the Enterprise D a proper send-off seems as appropriate as giving the crew one.
Seeing the crew take its familiar stations on the bridge felt like putting on your favorite sweater that you can never throw out. It just fits, no matter what. Seeing the renovated ship in high definition? Even better.
It’s not too much nostalgia at the expense of story either. It turns out only an old Starfleet ship can be dusted off to save the day, not one of these newfangled, high-tech ones Starfleet is at the mercy of now.
Once again, the Enterprise crew is all that stands between — surprise — the Borg and the Earth’s annihilation. The face that Vadic was referring to the whole time was Jean-Luc’s old nemesis: The Borg Queen. Just as the “Trek” universe keeps finding ways to bring Data back to life, it does the same with the Borg. I must confess some disappointment in seeing this become the Big Reveal that the season was building up to. Ever since “First Contact,” the Borg have been the well “Trek” writers keep going back to, including in “Voyager” and both seasons of “Picard.”
It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise: Vadic hinted at this on the bridge with Seven in last week’s episode.
The Borg Queen was already a major part of the story line last season with Picard’s friend Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill). You might remember, and it’s likely you don’t, since the season was so convoluted, that Jurati became the leader of a new, benevolent Borg. This goes totally unmentioned by Jean-Luc here. This felt odd, especially when Beverly said, “No one has seen or heard from the Borg in over a decade.” Well, it has assuredly not been a decade since Season 2. And what about the Borg cube in the first season that was being repurposed as a Romulan reclamation site? And the season ended with an unexplained transwarp conduit that Queen Jurati suggests is a threat! Worth a mention from Jean-Luc, methinks.
It’s possible there is some timeline shift or something I’m missing, and I am eager to see the comments correcting me. (Annie Wersching, who played the queen in Season 2, died earlier this year.)
Now, it’s a New and Improved Borg. When Jean-Luc was Locutus, they implanted an assimilation gene inside Jean-Luc that would be passed on to his offspring. The changelings helped the Borg place the altered DNA into the transporter systems to assimilate anybody who uses them, which explains why changelings wanted to use shuttles before. But it affects only the youngest members of the crew, not anyone over, say, the age of the main cast of “Picard.” Got it? Me either. The Borg essentially have taken over Starfleet without anyone noticing: a coup without a shot fired. Until the shots are fired. And now, Earth can be saved only by the Olds.
Poor Jean-Luc: First he finds out that he has unwittingly been an absentee father and now he may have accidentally turned his son into a homicidal robot. As Jean-Luc remarks to Beverly: “He inherited the best of you. And the worst of me.”
(Also: Poor Jack, who now doesn’t have a solid answer to his question, “How much of me is me?”)
Jack is, in many ways, not your ideal candidate to lead the Borg collective. He has long been an independent, rogue actor who doesn’t want to play by the rules, while the very notion of individuality is anathema to the Borg. Jean-Luc’s use of Starfleet protocols to try to keep him confined to quarters was always doomed to fail, especially after he told Jack that the solution was to institutionalize him on Vulcan. Not exactly a great parental approach from Jean- Luc! In his defense, he is not exactly experienced.
Jack snarls: “What about the protocols of a father? Or were you never issued those?”
A fair point, and one that stands out even more when one considers how many times Jean-Luc broke protocol in this season alone. Remember when he stole a ship and put members of the Titan in mortal danger?
Jean-Luc has not had his fastball this season, but luckily, his former teammates have. Geordi dusting off the Enterprise D was a shrewd maneuver. Beverly and Data are able to quickly figure out what happened to Jack and the plot to overrun Starfleet. Troi discovers the Borg connection to begin with. Riker and Worf are in prime quip form and absorbing punches when necessary.
Now, they’ll have to find a way to keep Jack from becoming chief executive officer of the New Borg, which they have experience with from Data’s experience on “First Contact.”
All in all, a fun penultimate episode.
Odds and ends
In the opening scene with Troi and Jack, Jack references a planet Beverly used to take him to as a boy: Raritan IV. The planet is named after Matalas’s hometown, Raritan, N.J., and is also featured in the second season of “Picard.” Soji and Jurati visited deltans there in last season’s premiere.
Beverly mentions her other son, Wesley, again. That guy just doesn’t seem to be checking his phone as the universe threatens to implode again!
Some fun ship names in the fleet: Reliant (the commandeered ship in “Wrath of Khan”); Okuda (a reference to Michael Okuda, the longtime “Trek” graphic designer; and Sutherland (a ship that Data briefly took over as captain in “Next Generation”).
Cool cameo from the now Admiral Shelby (Elizabeth Dennehy). We met her in the classic “Next Generation” episode “The Best of Both Worlds” as the ambitious commander angling to take Jean-Luc’s chair. She makes a rare reference to “Enterprise” and the NX-01. Jean-Luc points out the irony of Shelby’s schilling for a synchronous Starfleet system that is similar to the Borg, given her own history of fighting them. We don’t get to see her for very long before she is killed. At least she died doing what she loved: being in charge.
A bit unclear on why the Borg need Jack to begin with. They’re already assimilating the fleet! (This is similar to “First Contact,” in which the Borg Queen didn’t really need Data. Or going back further, did the Borg need Locutus?)
How did Starfleet set up fireworks to go off in space?
A (presumed) goodbye to Captain Shaw. He handed command of the Titan to Seven as he dies, which felt like an unearned moment given what their dynamic had been all season. Seven’s competence has been, shall we say, not exactly high, and in a similar moment earlier in the season, he gave command to Riker, not Seven. Seven hasn’t done much since then to justify earning Shaw’s trust. Even so, after all time spent being a huge jerk to the elder Starfleet officers, Shaw still dies saving them — a contribution which is barely mentioned by Jean-Luc and the rest of the crew. He also refers to Seven by her preferred name, instead of Hansen. Overall, his character seemed like a wasted opportunity.
I’m curious about the Enterprise E, which gets a glancing mention. It appears the ship was destroyed, somehow, and Worf had a lot to do with it.
Source: Television - nytimes.com
