Star Trek: Attack of Shatner's Toupee Tribble

[Jaxom 1974]

4 hours ago, RumHam said:

I've seen a lot of people say "how is an old ship going to stand a chance against the new fleet" and I think it's just not? Their plan can't be combat. 

Also they do have allies, like we know those weird looking Vulcan ships exist, the Klingons (I wonder if Martok is still in charge.) Maybe even the cardassians, who knows what happened to them. 

I hesitate to bring this up, because it isn't the kind of nitpicking I generally go for (instead I look at it as opportunity for a story or novel down the line, except they basically wrecked the literary arm of Trek), but wouldn't there have been representatives pf the Klingons and other powers who might have gone through thise Federation transporters also, thus infecting them with the Borg tech...? Is there a Bird of Prey out there with a couple young warriors who have been activated now...?

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

All caught up. Not bad.

What did Worf do to the Enterprise "E". I know it wasn't his fault but still. 

[Denvek]

7 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

I hesitate to bring this up, because it isn't the kind of nitpicking I generally go for (instead I look at it as opportunity for a story or novel down the line, except they basically wrecked the literary arm of Trek), but wouldn't there have been representatives pf the Klingons and other powers who might have gone through thise Federation transporters also, thus infecting them with the Borg tech...? Is there a Bird of Prey out there with a couple young warriors who have been activated now...?

You can resolve that by assuming the activation signal was local to Sector 001 rather than quadrant/galaxy-wide. There are reasons why they waited until the fleet was all in one place on Frontier Day to do this, and this could easily be one of them.

Now, we know that Tuvok will be in the finale next week (Tim Russ' Twitter said he was in two episodes), so what's the betting that Admiral Janeway also shows up? She's already been mentioned as being involved in the Frontier Day preparations so should we be expecting her to be on the Spacedock while the fleet's attacking it?

[Werthead]

My suspicion is that they'll reverse the signal somehow and immobilise the fleet, then de-Borgify everyone, probably tapping into Seven's implants (or rescue Jack and reverse the signal through him or something). Basically not a million miles away from how Best of Both Worlds ended.

[Toth]

Okay, I may be my usual party pooper self, but given that I wanted to watch the Enterprise F in action and I learned that in the last episode they actually canonized the Star Trek Online ship I liked so much, I kind of watched clips of the episode on Youtube and... yeah, even that gave me a headache about how nonsensical the plot seems to me.

So do I get this straight:

People can now get spontaneously assimilated without the need for nanites and implants, purely biologically, simply because people have been using contaminated transporters, which... is the result of modifications done to Picard as Locutus which they couldn't have possibly thought of at the time because their plan was still to throw Cubes at the problem, but also something that needed changeling sabotage for some reason, needs all Federation ships bundled together at one location, wasn't used to the fleet in Star Trek 8 or to the Enterprise E and somehow conveniently can't affect old folks, so that our reunited original cast can get away unscathed, except for all the trauma of the situation, which is completely overwritten by them fanboying about the bridge set.

Again... the ENTIRE Starfleet has congregated at one location for a bloody festival. ALL ships, NO EXCEPTIONS. So all exploration, all diplomacy, all security, came to a screeching halt for weeks on end because every ship had to get recalled for a dumb parade. And all these ships... somehow had to be... networked together, somehow, because... it isn't like they had copious smaller scale catastrophes whenever they did that before, even in this same show. Why the need for superlatives? Wouldn't it have been sufficient to say all ships in the sector who had nothing better to do? Still would have been fairly catastrophic, but not ridiculously so...

Remember Commander Shelby? Look how awesome she is now! BAM, DEAD, MUAHAHAHA, we are so damned edgy, gruesomely killing just another old character off for the lolz while still banking on you eating up all the nostalgia which is the sole life support of every big franchise nowadays! I'm so tired of this... why does Picard feel the need to be so horrifically grim all the bloody time?

Of course the Enterprise, which had been stated as unsalvageable in Star Trek 7, had been salvaged, somehow. After it bounced through a mountain range and slid across the entire valley beyond, fucking its structural integrity up beyond the point where simply building a new ship from scratch would have been less of a hassle than to try to restore it. Yes, the saucer would need to get retrieved, the explanation was sound, but they probably would have to cut it apart and beam it up piecemeal. Something like that however happened, and a ship of the biggest Federation starship class until the Odyssey has been treated as the vintage hot rod pet project of Geordie and his daughter in some museum's garage, and somehow ended up in pristine condition with all systems and weapons intact AND rigged in a way that a single-digit number of old folks can commandeer it and probably will do so at max efficiency, somehow.

I know I'm directing all the anger of... pretty much everyone towards me, who liked this episode and this show... but I'm sorry, I can't stomach that cynical nostalgia bait anymore, that combined with the childish edginess and the horrific lighting, where my first thought upon the bridge of the D being shown with all lights on was that it highlighted how you couldn't see shit anywhere in almost every scene prior. Yeah, aside Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds, this new "Star Trek" still is absolutely not my cup of tea, even though this season is probably better than the garbage before...

[SeanF]

I love the title of this thread.

But not as much as I did one meme, which had Spock saying:

”They’re Trump’s toupees, Captain.  They’ve been breeding.”

Edited April 15, 2023 by SeanF

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, Toth said:

Okay, I may be my usual party pooper self

I know I'm directing all the anger of... pretty much everyone towards me, who liked this episode and this show... but I'm sorry, I can't stomach that cynical nostalgia bait anymore

Don’t worry, I’m totally with you. I’m still so confused out how the fandom seemed to fall in line that this season is the second coming, I just see the same flaws that Picard always had (and Discovery) papered over with slightly more effort. It was really jarring to go from ‘literally the worst thing ever has happened, the Borg have assiLOOK IT’S THE F AND SHELBY MEMBER SHELBY’ … Ok, back to the plot … so Shelby’s dead…

Zero interest in a Legacy series. It seems like Star Trek has no creativity anymore, just make a bad series and then make a spin off of whichever the most popular character is (Pike, Georgiou, Shaw).

[Toth]

16 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Zero interest in a Legacy series. It seems like Star Trek has no creativity anymore, just make a bad series and then make a spin off of whichever the most popular character is (Pike, Georgiou, Shaw).

Indeed. Even Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks are part of that nostalgia addiction with their premises, but at least Strange New Worlds isn't quite as stupidly grim and tries to be an episodic show about exploration and Lower Decks just doesn't want to be anything other than a PG-rated Rick and Morty in the Star Trek universe, taking absolutely nothing about itself seriously. Those are their redeeming qualities that make me somewhat enjoy them, Lower Decks a tad more, admittedly.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Toth said:

Okay, I may be my usual party pooper self, but given that I wanted to watch the Enterprise F in action and I learned that in the last episode they actually canonized the Star Trek Online ship I liked so much, I kind of watched clips of the episode on Youtube and... yeah, even that gave me a headache about how nonsensical the plot seems to me.

So do I get this straight:

People can now get spontaneously assimilated without the need for nanites and implants, purely biologically, simply because people have been using contaminated transporters, which... is the result of modifications done to Picard as Locutus which they couldn't have possibly thought of at the time because their plan was still to throw Cubes at the problem, but also something that needed changeling sabotage for some reason, needs all Federation ships bundled together at one location, wasn't used to the fleet in Star Trek 8 or to the Enterprise E and somehow conveniently can't affect old folks, so that our reunited original cast can get away unscathed, except for all the trauma of the situation, which is completely overwritten by them fanboying about the bridge set.

Again... the ENTIRE Starfleet has congregated at one location for a bloody festival. ALL ships, NO EXCEPTIONS. So all exploration, all diplomacy, all security, came to a screeching halt for weeks on end because every ship had to get recalled for a dumb parade. And all these ships... somehow had to be... networked together, somehow, because... it isn't like they had copious smaller scale catastrophes whenever they did that before, even in this same show. Why the need for superlatives? Wouldn't it have been sufficient to say all ships in the sector who had nothing better to do? Still would have been fairly catastrophic, but not ridiculously so...

Remember Commander Shelby? Look how awesome she is now! BAM, DEAD, MUAHAHAHA, we are so damned edgy, gruesomely killing just another old character off for the lolz while still banking on you eating up all the nostalgia which is the sole life support of every big franchise nowadays! I'm so tired of this... why does Picard feel the need to be so horrifically grim all the bloody time?

Of course the Enterprise, which had been stated as unsalvageable in Star Trek 7, had been salvaged, somehow. After it bounced through a mountain range and slid across the entire valley beyond, fucking its structural integrity up beyond the point where simply building a new ship from scratch would have been less of a hassle than to try to restore it. Yes, the saucer would need to get retrieved, the explanation was sound, but they probably would have to cut it apart and beam it up piecemeal. Something like that however happened, and a ship of the biggest Federation starship class until the Odyssey has been treated as the vintage hot rod pet project of Geordie and his daughter in some museum's garage, and somehow ended up in pristine condition with all systems and weapons intact AND rigged in a way that a single-digit number of old folks can commandeer it and probably will do so at max efficiency, somehow.

I know I'm directing all the anger of... pretty much everyone towards me, who liked this episode and this show... but I'm sorry, I can't stomach that cynical nostalgia bait anymore, that combined with the childish edginess and the horrific lighting, where my first thought upon the bridge of the D being shown with all lights on was that it highlighted how you couldn't see shit anywhere in almost every scene prior. Yeah, aside Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds, this new "Star Trek" still is absolutely not my cup of tea, even though this season is probably better than the garbage before...

Nope.  In cannot fault any of your nitpicks.  And… did StarFleet (again they said this was every ship in the fleet) seem ridiculously small to anyone else?  That was a couple of hundred ships… maybe.  
 

StarFleet had that many ships in single Fleet actions during the Dominion War on DS9…

[Cas Stark]

It seems that fans are desperate for anything, so if the product rises above 'total nonsensical crap' it gets embraced.  Same for Star Wars.  

[Mosi Mynn]

3 hours ago, Toth said:

Okay, I may be my usual party pooper self, but given that I wanted to watch the Enterprise F in action and I learned that in the last episode they actually canonized the Star Trek Online ship I liked so much, I kind of watched clips of the episode on Youtube and... yeah, even that gave me a headache about how nonsensical the plot seems to me.

It gets more non-sensical the more I think about it, to the point that I'm not sure it's even supposed to make sense.  It seems to be all nostalgia over plot.

Are we going to see the changelings again?  Have they really infiltrated Starfleet, or was that a misdirect, and it was really the Borg all along?  Is the Borg Queen the indistinct head Vadic was taking orders from?  Were Vadic's changelings part of the Borg collective somehow?  I wish they had gone with one or the other - either changelings or Borg would have been more than enough for a good story.

Did I miss why the Titan had to go to Earth?  Couldn't they send a message from where they were?

The Jack thing seemed really rushed.  And Starfleet protocols around the Borg seem ill-thought through.  As others have mentioned, surely the first thing you do if you think someone is under Borg influence is to knock/stun them unconscious. 

And speaking of Jack: was he a long-term plan for the Borg, or were they taking advantage of the fact Locutus had a son?  If it was a long term plan, why not just make another Locutus and ensure they have children?  It was opportunistic, how and when did they find out about Jack?  

Why was Vadic chasing Jack and Beverly?  She's a changeling!  Just change from, lure them in and deliver them to the Borg!

Why did Ro avoid the transporter?  I thought she feared assassination, or she suspected the Titan transporter was compromised (the changeling they found and killed had taken the place of the transporter chief).  But the transporters were compromised by the Borg - presumably Ro did not know this, as she never mentioned the Borg, and, as it turned out, she would have been unaffected anyway.  So ... why did she avoid the transporter?

And then there are the characters.  I love Geordi, and always have, but good grief he should be freaking out that both his daughters are suddenly Borg!  He should barely be able to function, let alone stand proudly aside as everyone meanders leisurely around the D-bridge, praising his achievement, and complimenting the carpet!!  But at least he is thinking of his daughters.  Riker and Troi seem to have forgotten about Kestra ...

I thought that everyone took the Borgification of Starfleet very well.  This should be the darkest, most hopeless time.  BOBW was really tense, but this takeover of all of Starfleet does not feel particularly tense, because the characters seem to be quite chilled about the horrors they have unwittingly unleashed on everyone.

I love the nostalgia.  I love seeing the crew back together.  I choked up when they were on the E-D.  And I really enjoyed Shaw as a character.  But the plot makes no sense at all!

Sorry, that was far too long!  I needed to vent!

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

It seems that fans are desperate for anything, so if the product rises above 'total nonsensical crap' it gets embraced.  Same for Star Wars.  

“Andor” is sincerely a cut above the rest.  It isn’t just great “Star Wars”.  It is great Television.

[Cas Stark]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

“Andor” is sincerely a cut above the rest.  It isn’t just great “Star Wars”.  It is great Television.

Yeah, maybe but that is what people said about Picard, but outside of the rush of feelings seeing the TNG cast again, the show itself is terrible, so I'm extremely jaded about all the new stuff.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Just now, Cas Stark said:

Yeah, maybe but that is what people said about Picard, but outside of the rush of feelings seeing the TNG cast again, the show itself is terrible, so I'm extremely jaded about all the new stuff.

And I agree on this point.  This show has been very uneven. It has pacing problems.  It loves tangents that lead nowhere and… I’ll say the sacrilegious… it makes me look back on TNG with fairly jaded eyes recognizing that TNG wasn’t as good as I remember it to be…

[Toth]

57 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Yeah, maybe but that is what people said about Picard, but outside of the rush of feelings seeing the TNG cast again, the show itself is terrible, so I'm extremely jaded about all the new stuff.

I must concur with Ser Scot on that one, give it a chance! Andor doesn't indulge in (almost) any memberberries (I can really only think of one stinger to the Death Star under construction), everything else is about entirely new characters on entirely new planets, focusing on a very... mundane and Average Joe level portrayal of life under the thumb of the Empire, of various instances of its injustices (which all here always follow very specific and clear purposes) and acts of resistance committed (which also only get triggered in response to certain breaking points being overstepped). It's really all I could have wished from a Star Wars product in this day and age. The part that I like is that the Empire in Andor isn't portrayed as adorably incompetent clowns with cool toys, but as... an oppressive system of faceless bureaucracy trampling on everybody's freedoms, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally as a side effect to certain policies it's pursuing. And it is scary and terrifying throughout. Even when it comes to the shootouts... okay, the TIEs get a bit of the short end of the stick as they get screwed both times they engage with protagonists, but only through surprise countermeasures or pre-planned exploits of the environment to escape them. Stormtroopers... hooo boy, they get to shine here at the end swooping in and mopping the floor with good guys as eerily silent, faceless and disciplined special forces brought in when shit hit the fan for the still very humanized Army troopers that were holding the line the rest of the show.

My personal theory is that all the Disney execs didn't care about a spin-off about a supporting protagonist from a one-shot spin-off and so the authors didn't have to deal with all the meddling and were able to work completely freely on a story about fascism that just happens to have the Star Wars galaxy as a setting.

[RumHam]

10 hours ago, Denvek said:

 

Now, we know that Tuvok will be in the finale next week (Tim Russ' Twitter said he was in two episodes), so what's the betting that Admiral Janeway also shows up? She's already been mentioned as being involved in the Frontier Day preparations so should we be expecting her to be on the Spacedock while the fleet's attacking it?

If we get Janeway Niomi Wildman should be her chief of staff.

I would also accept Neelix as federation president. Especially if Tuvok is there and has to accept that.

[Werthead]

I don't see how logically it can be the entire Starfleet. In DS9, only 25 years before this episode, the Federation mustered 10,000 starships for operations across 4,000 light-years (going by First Contact, the episode) to 8,000 (going by First Contact, the movie). Sisko assembled an armada of 600 starships from just elements of 3 fleets (from a supposed 10 in total) in about five minutes flat.

Various methods and screengrabs of this episode suggest 300 ships in the fleet, max. Even if we assume that Starfleet massively demobilised after the Dominion War, it probably didn't demobilise by a factor of 30.

My guess is that this is either the main active duty roster fleet, but Starfleet still has tons of inactive reserves secreted all around the Federation (probably the same explanation for how Starfleet went from 39 losses being massive at Wolf 359 to shrugging off ~100 losses at Chin'toka just eight years later) which can be mobilised in the advent of a major disaster, and these ships are mostly newer classes ready to be networked from scratch (the Odyssey, Excelsior II, Ross and Constitution III classes) or older ones that can be easily retrofitted (we see some Sovereigns in the fleet, I believe).

An alternate explanation is that most/all of Starfleet is indeed congregating at Earth for celebrations over the whole day (or maybe several days), but for various reasons they had not arrived by the time Jack Crusher showed up, so the Borg decided to enact the plan ASAP.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

26 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I don't see how logically it can be the entire Starfleet. In DS9, only 25 years before this episode, the Federation mustered 10,000 starships for operations across 4,000 light-years (going by First Contact, the episode) to 8,000 (going by First Contact, the movie). Sisko assembled an armada of 600 starships from just elements of 3 fleets (from a supposed 10 in total) in about five minutes flat.

Various methods and screengrabs of this episode suggest 300 ships in the fleet, max. Even if we assume that Starfleet massively demobilised after the Dominion War, it probably didn't demobilise by a factor of 30.

My guess is that this is either the main active duty roster fleet, but Starfleet still has tons of inactive reserves secreted all around the Federation (probably the same explanation for how Starfleet went from 39 losses being massive at Wolf 359 to shrugging off ~100 losses at Chin'toka just eight years later) which can be mobilised in the advent of a major disaster, and these ships are mostly newer classes ready to be networked from scratch (the Odyssey, Excelsior II, Ross and Constitution III classes) or older ones that can be easily retrofitted (we see some Sovereigns in the fleet, I believe).

An alternate explanation is that most/all of Starfleet is indeed congregating at Earth for celebrations over the whole day (or maybe several days), but for various reasons they had not arrived by the time Jack Crusher showed up, so the Borg decided to enact the plan ASAP.

Precisely.

[RumHam]

https://variety.com/2023/artisans/news/star-trek-picard-enterprise-d-bridge-set-1235580496/

 

They kept the set! Really hope they do the anthology series and use it there.

[Rippounet]

Yeah, that was really bad. It really shouldn't have been difficult to reach this -expected- point in a way that wasn't both terribly convoluted and yet utterly stupid. Jack going to the queen of his own volition was certainly the worst decision they could make: completely unnecessary, and making the entire plot they'd built meaningless.