I was just not feeling this one too much, mostly because the A-plot was so hackneyed.
The C-plot was the funniest. The Cerritos is having to implode this moon before it falls on this planet, but the inhabitants of all the other moons are protesting because of how it would affect them. Captain Freeman manages to satisfy most of them via diplomacy, but this one guy just isn't having any of it. Turns out he and his wife are the only inhabitants of their moon. Upon finding this out, Freeman's done with this and hilariously gives the order to implode the moon.
The B-plot had Rutherford and Tendi jealous of all the cool stuff the Vancouver had and trying to get their hands on some of it, only to find themselves facing an involuntary transfer to the Vancouver. Not bad, but not great either.
Like I said earlier, the A-plot was hackneyed. The "nerdy guy has cool girlfriend so there MUST be something wrong with her" plot. And poor Boimler gets left all alone once the parasite is removed and Mariner makes friends with the (ex-?)girlfriend.
We get a LOT of reference to past Trek series in this one, including a very cool flashback scene with Mariner in the uniform type seen in the later TNG movies and later DS9. In that same scene, Mariner references Lore and the events of "Descent". Picard spends a whole season dealing with Soong-type androids, and Lore doesn't get brought up ONCE. It takes Lower Decks to remember he exists. (What ever DID happen to Lore anyway?)
And, of course, we get Tendi paired with Rutherford AGAIN and Boimler paired with Mariner AGAIN. Mix it up, people!
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Lore was taken apart, remember?
I agree with your plot ratings. I, too, am tired of the pairings. The constant references are awful, too. It's like "gotta make sure they know it's Star Trek & we know our history!"
Quito is an Olympic, apparently.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Taken as a whole, the fate of Lore becomes a gaping hole in the PIC premise. Sure he was deactivated & dismantled (being summarily deprived of the same rights his brother had fought for, by the way). But he could thus be reassembled and reactivated, you’re telling me someone as obsessed as Maddox wouldn’t do that? It’s also never made clear whether B4 was similarly stored because his simpler design caused him to permanently malfunction; or if the greater complexity of Data’s memory engrams caused the failure; or if he was just shut down because androids were now verboten.
PIC is more and more of a shitshow the more I think of it, really. I can’t believe Picard or Riker or Troi - or LaForge or Crusher or Worf - would let Thad Riker die just for want of a fucking positronic brain.
Posted by Krenim (Member # 22) on :
Yeah, Lee pretty much stated my problem with not mentioning Lore at all. Lore was the most advanced Soong-type android once Data went kablooie. I highly doubt somebody just shoved him away in a warehouse Ark of the Covenant style to be forgotten.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
The Lore/Borg incident happened in 2369 but the Quito crew talked about it like it happened a few weeks ago while wearing uniforms introduced in 2373.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Also weird having the Vancouver be seen as this bright shiny new ship when it has a registry 5,000 lower than the Cerritos, so is not just older, but potentially up to five years older (based on past observations of how registries advance).
I’m wondering whether they meant it to have a 80xxx registry, Galaxy-style saucer aside it has some pretty advances design features, notably around the deflector.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
Maybe the Vancouver received some sort of tech upgrade?
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Registries seem all over the place, what with the Cerritos being 75XXX and her sister ship the Merced being 87XXX, and what’s implied to be a brand new ship (the Vancouver) has a registry of 70XXX.
At least we’re not seeing new ships with registries of 3XXXX or whatnot. That would really annoy me.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I was very surprised that I liked Captain Freeman this week. She was persistently diplomatic, and her reaction when she found out she was being stonewalled by a “civilization” of two was perfect.
I ended up being confused by the resolution to the A-plot. So that parasite was what got Boimler his girlfriend? How did the parasite not affect anyone else around him? Why did no one suggest he go to Sickbay to check for side effects, much less for actually removing the parasite to begin with? (I know, Rule of Funny...)
I find it interesting that the Cerritos is considered to be “falling apart” when it’s probably about 10-15 years old at the most. (Well, getting half-dissolved by alien proto-terraforming goop probably didn't help.) I guess it’s more evidence at how under-recognized B’Elanna Torres was for keeping Voyager running all those years? Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
Well, the showrunner said
quote:It’s a California-class ship, which has always existed in Starfleet – [this is] what we’re saying – that they’re the utility support ships. In the California-class [line], there are three types of hull painting: there’s blue, red, and yellow.
If we don't take this literally we could assume that the USS California was in the NCC-1xxxx or NCC-2xxxx range and ships of the class are still produced in the 2380s.
Kind of like the Mirandas with registries ranging from NCC-1864 (Reliant) to NCC-32591 (Sitak) or the Excelsiors NCC-2000 to NCC-44278 (Archer).
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I can see the logic in the California-class being this rather uninteresting second-tier utility vessel, especially being similarly configured to the Miranda which it was presumably conceived to replace. But it’s hard to overlook that we never once saw any of them previously. You can hand-wave that away by saying the known registries imply it’s still a relatively new replacement - but it almost implies that maybe (along with aging Excelsiors) the Mirandas were kept operating perhaps far longer than they should have been. Maybe the heavy losses of both in the Dominion War finally prompted a replacement project...
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: I find it interesting that the Cerritos is considered to be “falling apart” when it’s probably about 10-15 years old at the most. (Well, getting half-dissolved by alien proto-terraforming goop probably didn't help.) I guess it’s more evidence at how under-recognized B’Elanna Torres was for keeping Voyager running all those years?
I always wish Voyager got banged up looking over time like Galactica did throughout the series.
Yeah, I don't get how the Cerritos is described as being an old jalopy considering it's high registry number. It would have been built around the same time as the Sao Paulo. It can't be that old. Hell the real life USS Nimitz is 45 years old and still in service.
[ September 05, 2020, 08:57 PM: Message edited by: Hobbes ]
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Sadly, it seems the need to have yet another hero ship with a 747 registry trumped any logical sense.
74205: 7, 4, 2+5=7
74656: 7, 4, 6-5+6=7
75567: 7, 5+5-6=4, 7
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
That's some Pi shit right there, Aronofsky.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
TrekCore just pointed out that because Lt. Brimson served on the Vancouver one could reasonably say that Boimler had a girlfriend who lived in Canada.
*rimshot*
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
I wonder if Starfleet took possession of Lore, or if they left his components with Hugh & the free Borg.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I can’t imagine they’d be naive enough to leave Lore’s parts behind after all the stuff he’d done. What would stop someone from putting him back together (knowing or not knowing who he was and what he’d done)?
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
I always thought Data had him in storage. I seem to recall a line implying that if not outright stating it.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Perhaps he was in one of the boxes Data oh-so-casually tossed aside in his search for Spot (!), much like Picard did with his “priceless” Kurlan naiskos.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)