Josh Reviews Star Trek: Picard: Season Three — Part Two!

I enjoyed the first half of Star Trek: Picard season three, and the second half did not disappoint.  I am so impressed at how completely they turned around this show. I strongly disliked the first two seasons of Picard, but new show-runner Terry Malalas and his team did an incredible job rebooting and rethinking this show.  This is by far the best modern live-action Star Trek series.  This is one of the greatest turnarounds of a TV show there has ever been.  (The statistics tell this story!!)

I’m delighted that Mr. Matalas has finally given the ensemble of The Next Generation the satisfying farewell they’d always deserved but never gotten.  I’m glad he embraced the idea that this show should be a TNG reunion.  (It never made sense to me, in the first two seasons, why Picard didn’t turn to his TNG comrades when he needed help and the universe was in peril.)  I loved the effort Mr. Matalas and his team made to give each member of the TNG cast a lot of great material to play, with a lot more drama than most of them ever got on the series.  These character moments were incredible, and it was a thrill to see how great the TNG actors still were.  Michael Dorn as Worf and Jonathan Frakes as Riker were the two stand-outs, but the whole gang was terrific.

As I have written on this site over and over again, most modern Star Trek frustratingly ignores Trek’s vast history and continuity.  That’s a huge turn-off to me, as a long-time fan.  But this show was filled bow to stern with a deep love of Trek.  I was thrilled by all the deep-cut references woven into this show, all the returns of characters I’d never expected to see again.  I loved seeing classic Trek starships and hearing classic Trek music again.  This was so well done.  This season can stand on its own, but if you’re a long-time Star Trek fan, each episode was drenched in delights and a joy of the love of Star Trek.  (And while this season was of course focused on TNG, it was awesome to see lots of love for DS9 and Voyager as well.)

I have some problems with this season.  It’s not perfect.  The overall plot of the main villains did not make much sense to me, and I felt they were too easily defeated in the finale.  Many episodes had various plot points that needed more clarification; there were too many times when it felt to me like things happened because that’s what the writers needed to have happen, rather than because they made sense.  While I was thrilled how this show was filled with love for Star Trek history, I think there were too many times where the show just replayed old Star Trek moments rather than more subtly referencing/homaging them or, even better, telling the story in new or different ways.  For instance, hearing the President of the Federation in the season finale almost word-for-word repeat the speech the President said in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was too silly for me.  (Watching Star Trek, I want to believe in this world; I want to allow myself to believe that the events of Star Trek IV happened in this universe; so it damages the realism of this world for another President to just repeat the same speech when another catastrophe is happening.  It would have been better to give us a one-line reference and then have a different speech.)  Another example: Vadic’s brutal execution of a Titan bridge officer is staged to be very reminiscent of the “David is dead” scene from Star Trek III.  It was TOO reminiscent for my tastes.  I wanted the show to do more telling its own, new stories, rather than being a greatest hits replay.  Looking back on this season, I think that smushing in Moriarty and Lore and the Changelings and the Borg all as villains in this short ten-episode series was too much.  It would have been better to have chosen one or two classic villains and given them more time to breathe, and more development of new villains like Vadic.

But, so OK, this season wasn’t perfect.  It was still far better than I’d ever dreamed it could be.  For the first time in decades, for the past ten weeks, I have been eagerly counting the days until the next new live-action Star Trek episode.  I’m going to miss that, now!  I hope they allow Mr. Matalas and this team to continue making Star Trek.  I’d love to see the “Legacy” spin-off show they’ve all been talking up in the press, or whatever else Mr. Matalas decides he wants to do.

Let’s dive into my episode-by-episode review of the second half of the season…!  Engage:

Episode 6: “The Bounty”

• We get some beautiful visual effects shots of Starfleet vessels finding the Titan’s decoy buoy, and then later of the Titan in front of a fiery sun.  I love these gorgeous starship shots!
• The opening scene with Vadic is frustrating.  She talks about “brothers and sisters” — but if she’s a Changeling, that feels wrong, because Changelings have no gender.  And then one of her alien goons shoots another.  But wait, aren’t they Changelings too?  DS9 told us that “No Changeling has ever harmed another” — so now that’s changed?  This scene would be better if I understood who what Vadic was or what she wants.  But because I don’t, and because this scene doesn’t shed any light on that, it feels like a pointless waste of time.
• So Jack has Irumodic syndrome like his father?  I am sure something more than that is happening here.
• Is Jack somehow drinking real bourbon on the holodeck Ten-Forward?  (They showed Picard drinking wine here in an earlier episodes.  Are the writers forgetting that this isn’t a real bar??)
• I like the briefing scene.  It’s nice to get a reminder of the virus that Starfleet unleashed on the Changelings in DS9.  I love that attention to continuity.  This is a story worthy of follow-up, so I’m thrilled they’ve picked up this thread.
• What happened between Seven and Raffi?  I’m sorry they’re not still together and bummed the show hasn’t really addressed their relationship so far this season.
• It’s a cool moment when all the starships arrive at Daystrom Station.  I am a sucker for these starship visual effects shots.  But they can’t figure out that people beamed down to Daystrom?  Come on.
• It’s fun to see a Genesis torpedo and hear a hint of James Horner’s Star Trek II themes.
• They have Kirk’s skeleton there??  Whaaaa?
• I loved seeing the crow from Data’s dream (in the TNG episode “Birthright”) — I got that right away.
• It was cool to see Moriarty, and I got chills at the “Pop Goes the Weasel” callback to “Encounter at Farpoint.”  But there’s no in-show reason for Moriarty to appear so old.  And he’s in the episode so briefly.  I wish we’d seen more of him!  And I wish we’d gotten a better reason for him to appear.  Why would Data/Lore have recreated the Moriarty hologram?
• We see the corridors shake as Riker & co. make their way through Daystrom… surely the starships around the station would detect that?  Or be aware that the security measures were triggered?
• It’s spectacular to see Geordi again, and LeVar Burton is terrific.  But I wish the show didn’t keep going back to this well of showing all our heroes as being unhappy and at odds with one another.  It leads to some juicy dramatic moments, but also to out-of-character behavior.  Geordi’s grumpiness seems way over the top (just like Picard and Riker’s arguing on the bridge in episode three).
• Well, we get a lot of crazy fan service in the Athan Prime Fleet Museum.  It’s a bit much that we see every single beloved Trek starship… but dang if I didn’t smile at each new shot.  I loved seeing the Enterprise-A, and the Defiant. I loved seeing the Constitution class USS New Jersey — and I was THRILLED to realize it had the classic Original Series design and NOT the ugly souped-up redesign of the Enterprise used on Strange New Worlds!!!  Great choice!!
• I loved Seven’s reaction to seeing the USS Voyager, and it was great to hear the Voyager theme.  I’m not a big Voyager fan, but that was nevertheless moving.
• I loved seeing the HMS Bounty — the Klingon Bird of Prey from Star Trek IV!  What a surprising choice!
• It’s fun to see Data, and I’m intrigued by the notion that this android body contains the consciousnesses of Data, Lore, B4, and Lal.  I’m assuming that by the end of the season we’ll get a new Data who’s a synthesis of all four personalities?  (Reminds me of the synthesis Hulk during Peter David’s long run on The Incredible Hulk comic book series.)  But I am thrown by seeing Data looking so old.  I just don’t buy the in-show reason why this Data looks like old Brent Spiner and not like classic Data.  (Just like I didn’t buy that Picard’s android body in season one would be old like Patrick Stewart is now.  There’s just no satisfying in-universe reason for either.)  I wish they’d been able to spend the money to de-age Data.
• Brent Spiner says Golem like Gollum, which is wrong!
• I really like the burgeoning relationship between Jack Crusher and Sidney!  That’s great!
• I love the moment when Picard and Geordi simultaneously realize that it was their kids who stole the cloaking device.
• I love Shaw’s cute nervousness in front of Geordi, his fellow engineer.
• It’s crazy that old Riker goes to fight off security instead of Worf or Raffi.  If feels like a transparent way to get Riker out of the show for a while, as does Worf’s leaving to track him.  I want these two to continue to be main characters on the show!!
• I love Geordi’s reaction to seeing Data on the transporter pad.  It’s nice to see an acknowledgement of their long friendship from TNG.
• Troi as hostage at the end doesn’t make me happy.  I hope Marina Spirits has a lot more to do in the season’s back half.

Episode 7: “Dominion:

• I was bummed not to see Worf or Riker in this episode (though we do get to see Changeling Tuvok morph into a corpse-like Riker head!)… or Troi!  After the cliffhanger ending of the previous episode, I thought we’d finally get to spend time with Troi this episode… but they’re making us wait still more…
• I love that the Titan is hiding in the Chintoka Scrapyard at the start of the episode — that’s a wonderful deep-cut DS9 reference.
• Tuvok!!!!  Love that!!  What a fun surprise!  Tim Russ is terrific.
• It’s fun to see a classic “trace the call scene” on Star Trek.  But I don’t quite buy what’s happening here.  First off, why would the real Tuvok still be alive?  (I’m curious if we’ll see him alive before the end of the season.)  It seems clear these evil brutal Changeling villains would have just killed them.  How many people have the Changelings replaced?  How many people have Picard and Seven tried to contact?  Have they ALL been replaced by Changelings??  How many are there??  On DS9, in “Homefront”, they told us that there were only four Changelings on Earth.  This seems to suggest there are hundreds or thousands, which feels wrong to me.  BUT, on the other hand, I’m glad the show showed our heroes TRYING to get help from others before concluding they’re on their own.
• We keep hearing that the whole fleet is going to assemble for Frontier Day.  That seems like a ludicrous idea.  They’re going to leave the entire Federation undefended???  I don’t buy that.
• This is an exciting, tense episode, with a lot of great action.  I just wish the story-telling was a little more clear.
• For instance, there are some interesting scenes in which Picard and Beverly weigh murdering Vadic.  But because the show never told us what their plan was, I didn’t know if this was an actual moral dilemma that Picard and Beverly were debating, or if this was a fake good cop-bad cop show they were putting on for Vadic.  As such, the scenes didn’t have the dramatic weight they should have, because I didn’t believe they were seriously considering just shooting Vadic.
• If we’d known what our heroes’ plan was, we’d have better understood when/how things started to go wrong, which would have increased the tension.
• It seemed overly silly and coincidental that Lore seizes control of the ship just as Vadic and her goons are invading.  In earlier episodes, I’d suspected that either Lore or Moriarty were in on Vadic’s evil plan, but here it just feels like a coincidence, which feels like a letdown.  (And makes our heroes look very dumb for keeping Data/Lore connected to the ship’s systems in any way.  Unplug that blue wire going into the back of his head!!!)
• And Shaw is a dummy for forgetting to disintegrate the Changeling he takes down, which allows the bad guys to take over the bridge.  Again, I wish our heroes were smarter and not so dumb!
• Still, I love the Geordi-Data stuff, and LeVar Burton is terrific.  It’s nice to see the show allow Geordi to react to his friend Data’s death, something denied us both by Data’s first death in Nemesis and his second death in Picard season one.
• I’m also continuing to like the growing Jack-Sidney flirtation.
• Jack using his mind to control Sidney’s movements was a surprise!  Where is this going??  I am ready to finally get a full answer.
• We did at least finally get the story of Vadic’s origin (“Project Proteus” — like the X-Men villain!).  There are cool aspects to this, but 1) I wish we’d gotten this sooner, and 2) I wish the storytelling here was more clear.  I got very excited by the idea that Vadic and her fellow Changelings were experimented on by Starfleet/Section 31 as part of the process of developing the disease used to infect the Great Link on DS9.  I’d never considered just how Starfleet was able to create this fatal disease — that they did it by experimenting on imprisoned Changelings is a very dark, but very interesting idea.  But this episode is vague enough that I wasn’t sure if what we were seeing was something happening during the Dominion War, or something happening in the years after.  We also get the suggestion that Starfleet was trying to create super spies, which is a whole different idea (and not as good) as the origins of the disease from DS9.  I also feel like this episode does the same thing that most modern Star Trek has done, in equating Section 31 with Starfleet Intelligence.  DS9 made clear that the two were not the same, and that Section 31 was a super-secret, hidden organization.  Was Vadic experimented on by Section 31, or by Starfleet’s official intelligence branch?  I wish this episode had made that clearer.  If it was Section 31, it’d have been nice to have gotten more protestations from Picard that Section 31 doesn’t represent Starfleet, to which Vadic could have rightfully replied that it’s all the same thing to her.
• I also don’t understand the suggestion that the Changelings want to create a perfect Picard doppelgänger using Picard’s corpse and Jack’s DNA.  This feels like a stretch — we haven’t seen the Changelings have any problems until now in infiltrating Starfleet!
• I’d guessed last week that there was more to what’s happening with Jack than Irumodic syndrome, and here Data suggests that maybe Picard never really had Irumodic syndrome at all, but there was something else going on… I am very curious as to where this is going!!

Episode 8: “Surrender”

• I was a little underwhelmed by the previous episode, but this is a stronger installment and a nice wrap-up to this mini-arc.
• Watching the murder of a bunch of Titan officers in the beginning is pretty brutal.  I love seeing Vadic listening to their screams on the coms.  What a creepy thing for our villain to do!  The brutality keeps on coming as we get a wrenching scene of an execution on the bridge.  That was very well-done and very intense and shocking.  The only down-side for me was that whole scene felt too reminiscent of the “David is dead” scene from Star Trek III.  I love all the call-backs to Trek continuity this season, but the show has sometimes gone too far in aping famous Trek moments that have gone before.  I want this show to tell new stories.
• I’m not sure I buy that Picard or Jack wouldn’t surrender earlier.  I feel Picard would have surrendered in order to save his crew.  I know it’s different when his son’s life is on the line, but this still feels out of character for the supremely moral and principled Picard.
• Geordi also feels out of character to me.  He’s way too passive here, having to be told by Picard what to do.  Come on!  Voyager established he was a starship captain, for goodness sake!  (OK, I’m not sure if the events in “Timeless” actually happened in the main timeline, but still, even just based on all we saw of Geordi’s career in TNG, he should be able to be more active in solving the problem then he is here.  I laughed when he finally unplugged Data from the ship’s computer, an episode too late.)
• The Riker-Troi stuff was good, and I was glad to see Marina Spirits finally get some good stuff to do on the show.  It’s an interesting piece of backstory that part of what drove a wedge between Riker and Troi was that she tried to use her abilities to dull Riker’s grief.  (Like Captain Kirk, Riker needed his pain!!)  But hang on, we’ve never seen Troi be able to use her abilities to affect the minds of others, have we?
• It’s funny when Riker and Troi mock their idyllic, pizza-making life, as seen in the Picard season one episode “Nepenthe”!
• I love Worf’s arrival.  His speech to Troi was a little over the top, but it was sweet and funny.  (And a nice attempt to address the ill-conceived Worf-Deanna pairing seen in the seventh season of TNG and then completely ignored thereafter.)  However, my joy at Worf’s return here only underscored what I felt a few episodes ago, that it was a dumb idea to write him out of the show for a few episodes in the first place.  (For that to have worked, we needed to better understand what he and Raffi were off and doing; better yet, we should have seen some of that.)
• The Data vs. Lore astral plane fight is great.  I love this idea.  But I can’t get over that it feels wrong that they both look so old.  In the astral plane, we really should have seen them de-aged to look younger.  I’m assuming the show couldn’t afford to do so, but it just stretched my credulity too far.
• Previous episodes mentioned that Lal and B4, and also Alton Soong, were also inside this new Data’s mind.  But this episode seems to forget about them.
• I laughed when Jack appears, holding a thermal detonator Return of the Jedi style.
• The resolution of the Data-Lore story was interesting, albeit not quite what I’d hoped for.  Rather than Data’s tricking Lore, I’d have liked them to have finally reached some sort of mutual understanding.  That would have felt like a more Star Trek ending, and a more satisfying to the decades of Data-Lore rivalry.  I was hoping we’d see these different versions of Data merge together into a new, unified personality, sort of like what Peter David did on his famous run on The Incredible Hulk, in which he depicted the Banner and Hulk identities merging together.  The end of the episode sort of suggests that’s what happened, as this new Data doesn’t just act like the old Data but like a new, more human version.  I’d loved for that merging to have been more explicitly depicted in the final Data-Lore scenes.
• Why is Raffi fighting Changeling goons with swords, instead of a phaser?  Why don’t the goons use their shapeshifting powers when fighting back?  For that matter, why don’t we ever see any Changeling on this show use their shapeshifting powers when fighting?  Are these goons even Changelings?  The show is still weirdly unclear on that.  Raffi stabs one and blood comes out of its face, so maybe they’re not Changelings??
• The view screen can be an evacuation hatch?  OK.
• “Fucking solids” is a great last line for Vadic.  I was surprised they killed her off here in episode eight!!  I guess we’ll meet the real top villain next week.
• BUT — jettisoning her into space feels like it wouldn’t work as a way to kill a Changeling!  We know that Changelings can survive in space!!!  We saw Laas on DS9 travel in space… and we know from Odo’s backstory that the 100 baby Changelings were sent out in space.  So while spacing Vadic like she was a Cylon on Battlestar Galactica was a cool moment, it feels wrong for this character.  (Though I’ll admit that seeing her shatter against her own ship was great.)
• I loved hearing the classic The Motion Picture music while seeing a beautiful, classic Trek movie-style shot of the Titan passing by the camera.
• I didn’t love how the bridge execution scene aped David’s death in Star Trek III, but I smiled when Geordi asked Data “how do you feel?”, a lovely call-back to Star Trek IV.  Data’s reply, “I feel”, was lovely.
• I’m glad they addressed Picard season one Data’s desire to die, even though I thought that was extremely dumb at the time.
• I was delighted by the wonderful scene of the gang all gathered around a briefing table again.  That was amazing.
• I liked hearing a few bars of ominous Star Trek VI music when Picard talks about the Changeling infiltration.
• I like the idea of Troi’s being important to figuring out what’s going on with Jack, but I don’t understand what happens the end.  She’s not a telepath, so how does she know about the door or what’s going on inside Jack’s head?  How is she able to enter Jack’s thoughts at the end??  She’s not Professor X!  This episode seems to misunderstand Troi’s abilities.

Episode 9: “Vox”:

• We finally get the truth about Jack Crusher and the villains of the series.  I have mixed feelings about these revelations.
• I very much like the twist that Picard never had Irumodic Syndrome (as was originally revealed in the TNG finale, “All Good Things…”), but that it was a misdiagnosis of the way he had been changed by the Borg.  I think it’s a very interesting idea that the Borg have evolved to develop organic transmitters/receivers of their signal, not just technological ones.  That’s actually a genius explanation for why Picard could still hear the Borg in First Contact.  So I love all of that.
• But I don’t love pushing aside the Changelings for the Borg to be revealed as the big bads.  I think the Borg have been way overused in Star Trek, unfortunately, making me tired of these once-great villains.  I don’t really get the idea that the Changelings and the Borg were working together.  It feels like a weird smushing together of two popular villains in a way that doesn’t actually make much sense.  (A crime this season has already been guilty of, by also throwing in both Moriarty and Lore.)
• Deanna’s running out on Jack at the beginning did not seem very professional.  I guess she felt she had to activate Starfleet’s anti-Borg protocols, but I’d have thought her first thought would be for the welfare of Jack, her patient.
• Beverly says the Borg haven’t been heard from in a decade — what about last season??
• As I’ve been saying all season long, the idea of gathering all of Starfleet in one place is insanely stupid.  The Federation is huge and surely these starships are needed on their borders and all over!!
• Admiral Shelby!!!  About damn time!!  That was a terrific surprise.  (Though then she’s murdered in her chair??  OY!  I hate bringing back this character only to kill her off a few moments later.)
• We get to see the Enterprise F and it’s… a little weird looking.  It’s a cross between the Enterprise E and the Voyager… and I don’t think it quite works.  And what we see of the bridge of the Enterprise F looks disappointingly spare — it’s obviously not a full set.
• We learn that Frontier Day is celebrating the 250 year anniversary of the launch of the NX-01.  I like the connection to the Enterprise show.  This is information we should have gotten much earlier in the season.
• I don’t see the point of this “ultimate synchronicity” of Starfleet operating as one — why would Starfleet have wanted that?  I said to myself (a minute before Picard actually says this on screen) that the Borg-fighting Shelby, of all people, should be wary of the dangers of this.  I don’t like seeing Shelby being such an idiot.
• Why doesn’t Picard try to contact Shelby on subspace, or any other ally in Starfleet, BEFORE showing up at Earth?
• I like the revelation that Borg DNA has secretly been added to everyone who’s used a transporter.  That’s clever!  I like the idea that everyone in Starfleet has already been assimilated.  Though I thought it was silly that it only affects the young people.  That doesn’t make sense to me.  Also, I wouldn’t have expected a physical transformation once the signal was activated, because there’s no nanotech involved here.
• Frankly, there’s too much about the Borg’s ultimate plan that doesn’t make sense to me.  Why do Borg need Jack and Picard’s body to get a code they’d put in his DNA 30 years ago?  It would have made sense that the Changelings would need to go to those lengths to get this info, but if the Borg designed this, they should have it already, right?  And why did the Borg need to capture Jack to activate this code inside him?
• Season 2 told us that Elnor had been assigned to the Excelsior; hope he wasn’t on board when it was destroyed.
• I was bummed that they killed off Shaw.  It seems a waste of a great new character.  And that shoot-out in the hallway seemed like a lame way for him to go out.  Still, I did like his last words. Terry Matalas has said in interviews that Shaw’s death was meant to show him coming full circle to his Wolf 359 experience.  That sounds great on paper, but the execution didn’t work for me — that scene did not at all play like a full circle moment to me.  I didn’t think of any parallel to Shaw’s Wolf 359 story until I read Terry Matalas’ interview.  It’s not the same thing at all!  Shaw doesn’t heroically sacrifice himself.  He goes out like a punk, shot in a hallway, a situation our TNG heroes have escaped a million times before.  His death doesn’t feel inevitable abd tragically heroic; it feels silly and that he died because that’s what they decided to do for plot reasons, not because it really felt like there was no other way out for the characters in that moment but for Shaw to give up his life.
• I loved seeing the Enterprise D again.  (However, while I appreciated  Geordi’s explanation — the Prime Directive problem of leaving the saucer where it’d crashed on Veridian III in Generations makes sense and is something I’ve often wondered about — I can’t believe Geordi could have possibly repaired the D.  The star drive section exploded into a billion pieces and the saucer was smashed beyond belief when it crashed.)  Frankly, I’d been hoping our gang would use the Enterprise A.  But it makes sense to use the D.  This is a Next Gen reunion show, after all.
• What happened with the E???  That was funny.  (No one criticizes Troi for crashing the D…)
• It made me very happy seeing the bridge of the D again!!
• I also loved hearing the late Mabel Barrett’s voice again as the Enterprise D computer.
• I’m not sure I buy how six people could operate a starship that used to be crewed by 1,000 people…!
• As we did earlier this season, we again see a starship going to warp within a planetary system.  That shouldn’t be happening.
• I liked hearing Alice Krige’s voice as the Borg Queen.  She originated the role in First Contact.  Sadly, the actress who played the Queen in Picard season two, Annie Wersching, passed away last year.  I love the move to go back to the actress who originally created the role.
• I love that we’re still getting payoffs to clues and imagery that have been in the opening credits since the first episode.

Episode 10:

• I smiled at hearing Walter Koenig’s voice, playing Federation President Anton Chekov (a nice nod to the late Anton Yeltsin, who played Chekov in the JJ Abrams movies).  The repetition of the President’s message from Star Trek IV felt a little too on the nose to me.  But I loved seeing the shots of space that looked just like the TNG opening credits, and I loved hearing Chekov quote Spock by saying “There are always possibilities”.
• We get some beautiful shots of the Enterprise D — approaching Jupiter and then a great shot of the tiny D and the huge Borg Cube, right before the opening titles.
• Earth has a planetary shield now?  That feels anti-Federation to be hiding behind a shield, but I can roll with that and head-canon that it’s only activated in a case of emergency.
• The staging of the Borgified-Starfleet’s attack on Earth was lame.  How could Spacedock fend off the entire Starfleet for more than two seconds?  Why are all the starships clustered so tightly together??  Split up and go around Spacedock!!  Surround the planet!  This sequence should be scary and intense but it seemed dumb to me; silly narrative wheel-spinning so our heroes have the time to save the day.
• Phasers that work as transporters?  OK, I can roll with that.
• But the other Borg should know instantly that Seven and co. retook the Titan.  The Borg are a collective consciousness!
• Seeing Jack in Borg facial gear identical to that of Locutus was interesting.
• Good farewell moments with Riker, Worf, and Beverly.  I wanted Picard and Riker to hug!  This cast is still great, and I love the great scenes Malalas & co. have been writing for them.
• The Borg Queen looks even more like am H.R. Geiger nightmare than ever!  Cool.
• The Queen is pissed at Picard, but it was Janeway who crippled the Borg, in the Voyager finale, right?  (I have never rewatched that, so I don’t remember it too well.  I didn’t love it the first time.)  It stands out that among all the other callbacks, they don’t reference Janeway here.  (I’d also have loved to have seen her, either with or instead of Tuvok, at the end when Seven gets promoted to captain.)
• The Queen says “watch your future’s end” — nice First Contact call-back.
• The Fleet control is line of sight?  Ludicrous.  Space is huge; that’s an insane way for this system to work.
• Why does anyone doubt that Data can calculate fast enough to pilot?  He’s surely a better than Geordi’s daughter, right?
• Cool visuals of D inside the Borg cube. But, come on, D shouldn’t move like the Millennium Falcon flying through the Death Star in Return of the Jedi.  The Enterprise is a huge starship.  I wish the visual effects better conveyed that.  (Instead of always seeing the D so small in the frame, let’s have the D fill the frame, with the backgrounds whizzing by, to better give a sense of the size of the D.  Then maybe just every now and then cut to a long shot to show the D dwarfed by the size of the Cube, like the original Enterprise moving through V’Ger.)
• I like that Troi doesn’t hesitate to tell Geordi to destroy the Borg beacon, even though that means the landing party will likely die.
• I like Picard’s strategy of allowing himself to be assimilated.  I like the astral plane scene with him and Jack.  I like the suggestion that Picard and Jack both, somewhat like the Borg, wanted a community but also always kept others distant.
• Loved the shot of the D swooping in from above to beam up Picard & co.
• I liked seeing Troi at the helm!  (She redeems herself from crashing the D in Generations!)
• Worf falling asleep in a bridge chair was very funny.
• I liked the ending shot of the Enterprise and Titan flying into the sunset, just like the end of Star Trek VI.
• Tuvok and everyone impersonated by the Changelings are still alive?  I’m glad they are, but I wanted a bit more of an explanation for why the Changelings wouldn’t have just murdered them.
• I loved the last scene between Seven and Tuvok.  (It’s moving, even though I never loved Voyager!)  I liked seeing Shaw praise Seven in his holographic performance review.  “The book that she writes is gonna be great” — that’s an excellent last line from Shaw.
• Raffi got pushed to the side in the second half of this season, but I’m glad they included this scene showing that she’s been able to reconcile with her family.  It feels a little too fast and easy, but I’m glad she got a happy ending.  I loved her last scene with Worf.  I love that he helped her, and I loved their hug.
• Great scene of Troi counseling Data.
• Ugh, showing the D sitting in the Starfleet Museum ring emphasizes the scale problems I’d mentioned a few episodes back!  The D is much bigger than most of those other starships!!  And how did the D even fit through the docking bag doors??
• Why is shutdown of the D only happening after the one year jump?  They spent a year repairing the damage, only to then turn it off?
• Spacedock has been rebuilt perfectly?  There’s no scaffolding or anything??  I don’t like this “everything is magically fixed” — let’s still see some fallout from the conflict!
• I like that the Titan has been renamed the Enterprise.  But was the F totally destroyed?  Was that the F’s maiden voyage?  Shame that the F basically doesn’t exist.  Also, we’re getting ridiculous now with these letters.  Just drop the G and call it the Enterprise, NCC 1701.  (“No bloody A, B, C…” you get the idea.)  There’s no need for the letters; they’re silly at this point.
• Also silly: Jack is in a command seat on the Titan/Enterprise?  Come on.  He should be several ranks lower than Sidney LaForge, not her superior.
• I love seeing Seven as captain of the Enterprise.  I wish they let us hear her order but, OK, they’re making us wait (like we had to wait for “Avengers Assemble” in the MCU movies), I can roll with that.  But why do they say this is her first act as captain?  What’s she been doing for the last year?
• I loved the last scene with the TNG gang (though I wish it hadn’t been in that awful Earth-bound 10-Forward location that I’ve been complaining about for this whole season).
• I loved it when Picard whipped out that card!  Poker!  Great!!  Wonderful echo of the last shot of TNG.  (Though lingering on the gang playing cards felt weird to me.  Why not shoot us out into space?  I wanted to end on the optimism of Trek exploration.)  Also, I think Beverly looks up at the camera at the end!  Oops!
• Being in 10-Forward, it would have been nice to have seen Guinan again too.
• And I’m bummed we didn’t see Wesley.  I wonder why?  We got so many call-backs and unexpected character returns.  Wesley was a main character on TNG for half of his run.  Why not include him?  I really wanted a scene between him and Jack.
• I love that we ended back on the Titan/Enterprise.  I loved seeing Q again!!  That was wonderful.  Good job erasing the dumb ending of Picard season two.
• I wish we’d gotten some acknowledgement this season of Seven and Raffi’s romantic relationship, even if it was over now.  That was one of the few good ideas in season two.  I wonder why the jettisoned that so completely?
• This was a solid finale.  I’m glad they gave enough time for all the great post-battle character epilogue stuff in the final 10-15 minutes.  That was terrific.
• I just wish that the action/plotting stuff worked as well as the character stuff.  Beating the Borg was, once again, too easy.  They needed more time to develop the Borg and this mangled Queen as villains.  Shoving them in at the very end of the season didn’t work.  The Borg needed to be harder to beat than just shutting off the beacon.  Why doesn’t the Borg cube shoot down the tiny D right when the D arrives at the start of this episode?  Then, when the Cube finally starts firing on the D, why doesn’t Cube use its tractor beam on the D, like it always did on TNG (in “Q Who?” and “The Best of Both Worlds”).  Beverly knocks out ALL the Borg phaser arrays?  In the previous shot, it looked like the Borg had a billion phasers!!  This sort of silliness weakens the episode somewhat for me.  It’s way too easy for the D to survive fighting this Cube, which it should never be able to do (especially being manned by 6 people instead of a thousand).  I love all the character stuff, but I wanted this final showdown to be more tense and more exciting.  I wanted to feel like the Enterprise was in more danger.  And I wanted the other characters to have more to do, beyond Picard.  It’s a cool moment, at the end, when Worf and Riker agree to stay behind on the Cube to help Picard… but then I wanted them to actually do something to help him, as opposed to standing around.  I wanted Seven and the Titan to have more to do defending Earth.  They needed more of a purpose.  Instead of just annoying the Borgified fleet to stall for time, what if they were defending the shield generator protecting Earth…?
• I wanted to better understand the Changeling-Borg connection.  How did this alliance form?  How did the Queen communicate with Vadic as a face coming out of her hand?  That was such a cool visual, but I never understood it.
• I wanted to see Shelby alive at the end.  I hate that she got taken out so easily.
• It’s interesting that we get no mention of Laris at the end.  I didn’t want to see her; she wouldn’t have fit — this finale was all about wrapping up TNG.  But they should have found a different, better way for her and Picard to split up in the premiere episode.  Are Picard and Beverly together at the end???  It’s weird to me that that’s left vague!
• I’m glad no one died in this finale. The TNG story should be a happy ending.  That feels correct.

So, here we are at the end!  Bravo to Terry Matalas and the team behind this great season of Star Trek.  I hope future Trek shows can build upon everything that worked so well in this season.

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