Star Trek

Admittedly the beginning of the episode is saved by effectively two things: The acting between Patrick Stewart and Ed Speleers. Both actors were amazing and Jack/ Ed did a great job of hitting the right note between despairing and tortured and kind of betrayed while also, while stupid, making sense on to the reasons why he wants to confront the Borg Queen. He is looking for answers, he is looking for connection. Meanwhile Picard/ Stewart does the great dance between being concerned for his son, but also concerned for all of humanity given his abilities. And I guess the other thing it does well is just the set up with Deanna and the conversation they have because they keep teasing it, she freaks, great scene in the mind and then we get what she saw...with the reveal of the Cube, the voices, perfection. Shame here from here a lot of plot holes pile up...as I said to my wife it was starting to form a black hole. In this case one of the things I talk about in fiction a lot because sometimes you need plot holes and dumb writing because you don't know how to get to the good stuff so you just do hand wavey BS to get to the good stuff. But there was a lot of dumb crap in here.
-So knowing Crusher's abilities why didn't they take a lot more precautions? Like we don't know the scope of his abilities, but like more security troops, more people, more back ups in mind. Like we don't know it yet but he can't control anyone older then 25 and while there are apparently a lot of 25 year olds on that ship...there are also a lot of none 25 year olds.
-Why didn't Picard or Beverly have communicators on them and instantly alert Shaw who could have easily stopped him?
-Bit of a Trek trope but why wasn't the shuttle bay locked down?
-I know this show is playing fast and loose with speeds and everything but why didn't they instantly start looking for the shuttle? I mean sure he was hidden but we get the feeling that some time has passed.
-Or why didn't they warn Starfleet? Like they make a huge deal about how they have to get to Sol to warn the fleet but this is a universe with SUBSPACE COMMUNICATIONS and they weren't jammed until they were in the system itself so send a message...hey scatter the fleet.
-And also kind of the idea of integrating the fleet like that given all of humanity's problems with AI and ships.
-OH I almost forgot actually why didn't they contact the Borg Cooperative? I know season 2 is much maligned and I know it was a weird idea but good writing is about HONORORING continuity and not ignoring it or retconning it, or if you do retcon it give a reason. I mean just imagine if Borgjati shows up with Janeway and Voyager in the finale to help the Titan against an entire fleet and...well...ahem. (Yes I know that doesen't actually happen but the Titan facing off against that fleet is...silly).

So now that the minor and major plotholes are out of the way I actually ended up enjoying most of the rest of the episode.

The younger generation assimilation ended up actually making a lot of sense and worked out really well, this is kind of my big fear of the episode and it actually worked because it dealt with several things. Trying to organize the thoughts. So you have changelings going around the fleet and reprogramming the transporters to put this genetic code into people, now this does stretch believability that they could have hit every ship and every 25 year old in the fleet to go through this process though minor complaint because maybe they have been doing this for decades. But the idea of the transporter saving data by looking for commonalities is brilliant because it actually matches actual computer science, this is a thing computers does, and given the complexities of transporter patterns this makes an AMAZING deal of sense. And 2 the reason why it only effected 25 year olds also sold me because it is actually a scientific that brains don't actually develop that well to that point so anyone over 25 would be safe. Which is nice because it ties into what could be one of the themes, drives of this whole thing, the older generation saving the younger. Its not just a mindless idea they put out there but they worked at it.

Though from here two other nit picks one minor and one bit major. So the young crew gets assimilated, Sidney speaks...why is her voice echoed? They make a big deal of this not being technological and I have always assumed the echo was technological. And why I am sure the 25 year olds or equivalent for other species would be a big part of the fleet like by evidence of the Next Gen and Seven crew running around and Shaw...there would also be a lot of 25 to like what 60 year olds? that is a lot of people. Like first off how many people died in this...second of all just why were they able to just secure this ship so quickly and so easily and hell if the ships weren't at Red alert why were so many of them armed? I mean you kind of get the scene of them arming themselves later but...hmm. No think there could be a reason.

Shaw's death was sad and perfect and he called her Seven. Todd Stashwick is the best new character from the show. Which is amazing because it is really rare to do by having a character be such an arse his establishing moment was him being an obstinant and petulant bigot to Picard, Riker, and Seven...they then make him sympathetic and I think its owing entirely to Stashwick's performance here that this works because it is so. hard. to. do. So RIP Liam Shaw, you will be missed. "no-no-no...this isn't my ship any more" *sniff*

Which brings us to the D...and well I still hate it so still chagrinned. But sound design, music, Majel Barret, cinematagraphy, and reaction of the characters all sold it for me. Little bit of tears.

And finally. Connection. Two big things modern Trek keeps on doing and this is one of them. This thing came up as the major point of Season 3 of Disco and the cause of the Burn. It came up as the entire point of an episode of SNWs. Connection. Empathy. If we can only understand each other, hear each other, see each other, the world would be a better place. And Jack mentions this pretty much verbatum and he is like 'well maybe the Borg have a point because they all move as one and can just be unified.' Which is delightfully funny because he started the scene bitching about Troi's empathic powers. But yeah they did this great in SNWs, horribly in Disco...yeah its a neat idea but don't think they did a good job setting it up in Disco. But here its kind of the same thing but they do manage to make it work because there is a lot of overt exposition and subtext here. Jack likes helping people, now we know why. Jack has always been lonely and feels frustrated and hell did reach out to his father and his father rejected him...though he did not know it. Jack is frustrated by being abandoned again and even though he knows the Borg Queen is not the answer well he still looks for answers. And Jack has the unique ability to reach out for people like he is a freaking Betazoid in power set, again hillarious he bitches about Troi, and he is so powerful at it that he can connect so hard he can hijack them. So yeah, this is quite good. Maybe could have made a bit more set up but still, great.

We know from space seed that the eugenic wars happened in the mid 1990s, and that in '96 Kahn and the other fled earth in the DY-100 class ship SS Botany Bay.
There are at least 3 occasions of Kirks crew time travelling to earth some times before the end of the '60s, so lets assume everything before then matches with the original history - including the crashed Ferengi at Roswell from DS9s 'Little Green Men'.
(Note: Into Darkness apparently places Kahn's birth in 1959, but i like to completly disregard everything from that movie for sanity's sake. Also, LOL: Sanity )

The next incursion is Braxton's time ship Aeon crashing late 60s and being found by Henry Sterling. Sterling uses the the Aeon to build his tech company and rapidly advance computer technology. When Voyager arrives in the mid 90s, there are no traces of the eugenic wars to be found. But for Voyager's crew this timeline seems to be correct. BUT: According to memory alpha a picture of a DY-100s launch exists in this timeline, which does seen not fit the technology available

In-between those two directly connected events, the crew of the Enterprise / Botany Bay (Bird of Prey) travels to the 80s, to get some fresh whales. Here everything seems normal, but maybe it isn't? There is a scene were Scotty tries to talk to a computer, which obviously does not work. But what if this is not just a joke, and Scotty actually knew the technological capabilities of that time?
By the mid 90s neither did the eugenic wars happen, but we also did not have the technology to build DY-100s. Whatever disrupted this event probably also lead to a stagnation in technological progress that could already be seen in the '80s.

Then there is the 2020s with SNWs 'Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow', PIC season2, and DS9s 'Past Tense'. I did not get when exactly the SNW episode takes place, but lets assume it is the same timeline that PIC season 2 was in. -> Memory alpha states the episode plays in 2022, but I can't remember that being confirmed in the episode, and IF it is the same timeline as PIC s2, then it must play after 2024, as Adam Soong only then restarted Project Kahn. BUT it must also be before 2026, the supposed start of WW3 - which is too short a time for that boy to be a newly created Kahn that leads Most of Asia during the eugenic wars and probably early WW3.
So maybe those are different timelines again? But the Bell Riots from DS9 seem to fit to both.
But the interesting thing is that again earth does not have the technology to build or launch DY-100 type ships - Even with the technology boost from the crashed Aeon! In PIC s2, the Europa mission's Shango X1 is an interplanetary ship, yes - but limited to a Mars expedition with 5 astronauts.
By the end of WW3 the capability to build bigger ships is surely completely lost, the Phoenix seemingly being one of very few spacecraft launched after that.

So, during which time again does earth have the capabilities to build a DY-100 class ship? This seems to me to be the limiting factor for when the Eugenic wars are definitely ended.
The fix points being that WW3 ended around 2053. Followed by Zefram Cochrane's first warp flight and subsequent first contact with the Vulcans on 2063-04-05.

I guess I'm asking: "Big ship, when?" and wonder if we are ever going to see the Botany Bay's launch or Kahn's rule.
Also, no wonder that Captain Braxton went insane

Khan is from Canada.

That's right, the most feared villain is, Khanadian. This is what you get when you live in constant fear of the cobra-chickens.

Meheh...

I'll show myself out.

The plan to find fusion reactor cant work. Its one of those cases where a technobabble solution would look more convincing than their kinda grounded in reality approach. And if you do want to look for radiation from reactor you don't need to invent a detector you can buy it in store.

I was wondering about that. While I'm not a nuclear physict or anything of that nature so I couldn't fully comment, but it did seem a little convoluted to the overall plot and a silly reason for them to go down to Vermont in the first place which just makes the money problem even worse if it wasn't neccessary in the first place.

And even worse as Trek Culture pointed out, since I finally watched their video on this subject, since Pellia seemed to recognize La'an and her getup at the end seems they were trying to go for the same thing they did in Stargate's first time travel episode with then Lieutenant Hammond. Except in that case where that was neccessary and vital to the plot this felt really awkward and forced in there. Now I could imagine that maybe they were also trying to make a nod/ joke to the show Taxi as I have seen people suggest they could do which is why they set it in the United States but given the science involved, if I am reading your comments correctly, it would've been far easier and make far more sense to either A. have them figure things out on their own in a store like you suggest or B. just have Pellia in Canada and not the US.

I think the point is that time and dates are fairly malleable in this instance in the first place. Her line about 'time fighting back' is also indicitive to this since its a line either said in Star Trek 2009 or about Star Trek 2009 in the fandom, I forget which. But the idea that 'canon' events in the timeline, things that are neccessary for that timeline to be a cohesive whole, tend to reassert themselves even in the face of interference from 'Temporal agents'. Case in point, in a way, even in the new timeline created from the actual destruction of Toronto and subsequent war with the Romulans a version of James T. Kirk still ended up in command of the Enterprise...goodness I just realized if that timeline still continued in any way they just lost their Captain.

But it does remind me to of the point brought up in Doctor Who about 'fixed points in time', things in the timeline that cannot be altered, which is starting to become my pet theory on reconciling between two types of timetravel that we always see. Without getting too much into it the idea that you can change certain things in the timeline and still have it be one cohesive timeline where events still play out pretty much the same but just in slightly different ways or in slightly different experessions. But yet if you change certain mage events in the timeline then the only way the universe can reconcile it is with an entirely new timeline. The destruction of the Kelvin for instance and Kirk being born in space in that universe.

But, for me anyways, that's why the line does work so well because it bridges the gap between these two concepts and is confirmation of the theory I expressed way back in Disco season 2 and an explanation for pretty much every single minor reshuffling of canon ever. SNWs does take place in the 'Prime' Timeline but not the same Prime Timeline that TOS did. Events have gotten moved around, the ships interiors and archetecture looks a little different, just a minor reshuffling of the deck.

+ The joke about the USS Iowa/I was born in space. Now this was great. I understand where Trek Culture was coming from may've been nice to get a shout out but it did make it where an awkward bit from the trailer actually worked...and makes that bit of the trailer pretty good. Because of course the conversation became 'what Kirk was never born in space in the original timeline he was born in Iowa!' So it invited speculation which got people talking about your show and paid off, this time successfully in the show.

But another reason I love it because they do a lot of background world building on just how bad Kirk's timeline was and we are presented with a couple of choices because the name Iowa presents a couple of different connotations. Was it named after the Battleship of the same name, the most famous ship I can think of which had the name, which can suggest on how desperate Starfleet is that they are having kids being born on warships...or has Earth been devestated are they have to construct giant ships like states and that is why the ship got its name? The mind boggles.

La'an's idea was to find tritium used in reactor by detecting products of its decay. When tritium decays it produces helium, antineutrinos and beta particles (electrons). Beta particles is what makes those watches glow so it kind of makes sense, right? Well beta particles produced in tritium decay have energy so low they can travel only a couple of millimeters in air, that is why it safe to use tritium in watches in the first place. And of course any Geiger counter would do a better job of detecting particle radiation that a broken watch would.

A much more plausible looking scenario imho would be: they figure out that reactor uses tritium, Kirk proposes finding it by looking for beta particles, La'an dismisses this plan for above listed reasons and realizes that Pellia is living not that far away so they go to her and she provides them with some space gizmo that can detect neutrinos. Voila! Scientifically accurate enough to satisfy nerds and educate kids while achieving all of the same plot points.
P.S. I don't know why this niche nuance irks me so much