1.08: Star Trek: Picard Broken Pieces

[REBerg]

Go Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One!
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Seven's reactivation of the disabled Borg Cube was the high point of this episode for me. I would not have thought that an ex-Borg was capable of impersonating a queen and taking command of the cube. She must have a few vestigial ports enabling connection to those nasty-looking cables and averting what otherwise would have been critical injury.
Still, Seven's brief time as a pseudo-collective did seem to exact a toll. I suspect a longer stretch would prove fatal.
I wondered why she didn't block Narissa from opening the cube and mass-jettisoning the reawakened Borg into space. I guess her latent abilities were not without limits.

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[ctg]

Seven's reactivation of the disabled Borg Cube was the high point of this episode for me. I would not have thought that an ex-Borg was capable of impersonating a queen and taking command of the cube.

Well, she is Borg and she was one of the unique ones. So, her impersonating and knowing all the kinks in the BorgCube and what to do with the Queen's Chamber tells me that there wasn't just one queen. There were many to replace her. And when she spoke, she spoke in the Voice of Borg as she took the collective in and felt all those hundreds of deaths.

In a way Romulans did everything they could to prevent full activation, and they had a backup plan just in case it happened. But they never had planned inflicting massive damage to the cube. Now it's repaired and helmed by Seven-of-Nine. We can speculate that she's able to engage the drives and assume flight to follow the Romulans.

Still, Seven's brief time as a pseudo-collective did seem to exact a toll. I suspect a longer stretch would prove fatal.

I assumed that she was taking toll because of the separation, not because of the collective. She wants to be part of it.

I wondered why she didn't block Narissa from opening the cube and mass-jettisoning the reawakened Borg into space.

She is a Borg, but she is also a human, and that human has been in control longer than she has been a Borg. At the moment she activated the Collective, Narissa turned the switch. In other words, the Hivemind became suddenly one or very few. We don't know how many of them survived, but it cannot be many. But what I mean is that the Borg has weakness in surveillance. They don't see everywhere. And they need drones to act as their eyes. Take those out and the Queen cannot see.

Elenor don't know anything. He has never really encountered Borg's in the full might. If he would, he would be careful around Seven-of-Nine. I like that he's young and innocent. He doesn't at all about the reality and what's going on in the Milkyway. Most of all he doesn't have those social experiences that Travellers have. I really wish that Elenor would meet Ferengis.

 

[REBerg]

Another thing that surprised me was Rios' retreat to his cabin, putting the entire ship in charge of holograms. Doesn't that make him a genuine Captain Dunsel?

 

[ctg]

I loved seeing all the holo's together. It was brilliant and reminded me about Council of Well's from The Flash. Like the counterparts, they couldn't really help Raffi, or even come up with a solution. And to be honest, it's his ship, his decision. The default holo's are default, but now they are more charm (and don't need other actors).

 

[Brian G Turner]

Enjoyed this episode - 7 of 9 taking control of the Borg cub was dramatic, just as the Romulans spacing Borg was sickening. Looks like a lot of the plot elements to date are finally coming together nicely, but it remains to be seen how things pan out at Soji's home world. I presume the Borg cube will be arriving shortly, and the Romulans should know better than to put up resistance.

Not sure why Picard is still talking to Starfleet HQ - but we got the obligatory F-bomb from that scene that every episode seems to require.

Looking forward to the next episode.

 

[Blake00]

episode 8 is okay I guess.. but still some annoying stuff for me.. our Vulcan commodore is apparently half Romulan which I guess explain the sunglasses gaffe a few episodes back as vulcans don't need them, although clearly she has retained her Vulcan ability to mind meld as I've never seen a Romulan do that. The mind meld is what made Dr Death kill her lover and act all weird for ages.. but now she's fine and won't hurt anyone cause she and Soji talked about mucus lol. We see the source of the vision is from an alien artifact and we get further explanation on the main plot. Action Jackson 7 of 9 returns and kicks some more ass. She takes control of the cube which was kind of cool although apparently she doesn't have control of the airlocks and the Romulans do lol, plus apparently the Romulans can just stand there on a balcony and watch just fine (It'd like Pike watching the torpedo explode 2 meters away via a glass window all over again, or Spock watching Vulcan go into a black hole on a another planet with a thick cloudy sky lol). And somehow Borg are useless in a vacuum despite us seeing them operate in space just fine in First Contact although I guess it was more the venting that got them as Voyager vented a few Borg into space back in the day too. Anyway not much else to say about this ep as it was mostly plot moving and setup for final eps.

 

[Dave]

I was a little dismayed that it began with even more back story. I can't think of another show that did this so much. Is it written by the ghost of JRR Tolkien? However, it was a well paced episode and as others have said, the plot is now moving along, and Seven activating the Borg Cube was a high point. The history of the Mars attack makes more sense now with the Romulans behind it and engineering it. The part about a mind-meld vision being sufficient to make someone murder is less convincing.