What a disappointment.
So it was all just the Borg again? Yawn. Beverly's line about the Borg not being seen for many years despite them being the focus of the last two seasons made me honestly laugh.
Then they killed Shaw, easily the best new character in the entire SERIES. But yeah, give him a pointless death (poor guy gets gunned down by the last person, seconds before they are shot). Pointless gravitas, just like showing Shelby to kill her seconds later.
Looks like like this one is going to fall apart in the final two just like Season 1 - at least we had the excellent episodes up to that. Anyone want to wager if they plan to even bother explaining why the Changelings were working with/for the Borg?
A few other things that just seem dumb:
- Let's pretend that Starfleet consists of like ~50 ships. Not that there weren't more in the final episode of Picard season 1. Or in any DW battle.
- Let's go into battle with the Enterprise D (the last five minutes were cool, but I'm not sure if they were earned)… but leave the Defiant (you know, a warship more advanced than it) along with plenty of other ships out? I can't believe Worf didn't make a stink out of that, given that the Defiant was his baby (I mean, technically a different ship but yeah).
- The entire interlinked ship threat feels like a BSG retread, and not a good one.
- Having seen DS9, my money's on spacedock
I still can't get over how disappointing the big "Borg" reveal was here. The moment it happened any and all excitement I had for the episode flew out the window for me.
It's between that and Shaw's pointless death as the biggest lets downs of the season - can't tell which (which is a nice testament to the latter's character, well developed over the entire season unlike most of the S1/S2 Picard characters).
Alexander L