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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 8991202" data-attributes="member: 6988941">Well, episode 9 is a mixed bag. I'll spoiler my comments beyond that because I'm writing a few hours after it premiered and it's the most spoliery episode of the season.[SPOILER]They started me off in a bad mood because they had Troi's spotlight moment be her being an absolutely terrible mental health professional in like four different ways, and given that she's got very little screentime this season (partly for scheduling reasons, partly to keep their mystery box a mystery) and this is likely the last outing for the character, a character who got a lot of crap writing in her original series, it's a bummer. Hopefully episode 10 is kinder to her.Well the big reveal is finally revealed. As much as I felt like season 2 already resolved the Borg, thank god it's the Borg, because anything else that made any kind of sense would feel too inauthentic to the show to reveal this late in the game. I know DS9 diehards seemed to want pah wraiths, but as someone whose watch of that series in order petered out in early season 6 I barely remembered that those are a thing, and they have no connection to Picard. Anything else, even if it was a deep pull from Next Gen lore, would just feel out of left field once they teased it for 8 episodes. I mean the parasites from Conspiracy might have been fun, but they couldn't establish stakes with them this late and live up to the build up. Whether or not a new biological borgification does live up to the build up is a matter of taste, but anything else would have been lamer after teasing it this far. Note to showrunners: don't jerk us around with a mystery for 8 out of 10 episodes, it just sets things up for disappointment. I really disliked Jack going rogue for the Borg on a dime. If they played it as the Borgness won out after the door was opened that would be one thing, but they went more for "I don't want to go to a mental institution for my obvious mental problems that I acknowledge I need help with, so I will go way out of my way to join up with the Borg." Having an irrational character move to move the plot along I can accept, but given that it needlessly expedites a colossal Star Fleet bloodbath it makes it really hard to redeem the character, which means they probably have to kill him off, which is a shame. I liked Jack.Shelby was nice as a deep pull. Of course she made Admiral.As someone who firmly believes transporters are a nightmare fuel technology of disintegrating, cloning, murder machines I really appreciated the detail of them being used to rewrite everyone's DNA for evil. The everyone over 25 is unaffected thing smells of convenience, but I also kind of love it. It makes me disappointed though that we don't now have a couple more episodes to go around pulling classic trek characters out of retirement to save the galaxy in some sort of geezer fleet.I'm okay with killing off Shaw, but it felt like a needless and abrupt death (if that's what it was, since they've already had him incapacitated with injuries twice, having a third recovery seems unlikely). I don't think they had yet realized he might be a fan favorite character when they plotted it in there. It probably gets characters where they need to be, he got a good last exchange with Seven, and it was his idea that got everyone into that situation which mostly saved them which keeps it from being completely meaningless end, but still the character deserved a better end.But oh my goodness, what was shaping up to be one of the weaker episodes in the season ended by knocking it out of the fan service park. I thought "oh they're all going to grab classic Trek ships from the museum", but surprise reveal... Enterprise D? Enterprise D! Everyone in their old positions and Picard saying "make it so". The old carpet, the old computer voice. The Enterprise D, back from the dead, to take on all of Borgified Starfleet alone and save the galaxy one last time. Now that's fan service! I don't care that they're manipulating my nostalgia, slather that fan service on. Also nice job keeping that reveal under wraps.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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