Star Trek Picard: 2x03 (Assimilation)
Mar. 25th, 2022 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenIn which the regular cast continues to shrink.
I'd expected we'd be spending at least a bit longer in the Confederation timeline after last week's cliffhanger, but it seems that was entirely to get Elnor shot before we head back to the past. I'm not convinced Elnor is permanently dead; Picard has unceremoniously killed off characters before (RIP Hugh), but given that we're dealing with time travel, I expect to see him back by the end of the season. The Elnor who died is, technically, the Elnor from the Confederation timeline, after all, and I assume everyone's going to end up back in their original bodies once this is all over.
(Although maybe not – it would be interesting if Seven remained in a fully human body permanently.)
The 2024 setting immediately invites comparisons to Ds9's “Past Tense”, and it certainly feels like the show is intentionally riffing on that – although part of it may just be that, sadly, DS9's take on the 21st century proved pretty damn accurate. Once again, there's the racial disparity between how our characters are treated, with the attractive white woman able to breeze through obstacles, while the minority man finds himself trapped by the system and automatically assumed to be a criminal. Not a lot has changed since the 1990s, and it still feels uncomfortably realistic.
(And, tragically, Ds9's take on the era feels in someways naively optimistic; I doubt we're going to see an internet billionare helping out the disadvantaged this time around, and the idea that simply giving the disenfranchised a voice would turn public opinion against the injustice of the system is... charming in its idealism.)
I did like seeing that Seven gets to enjoy being fully human – it may be a dystopian timeline, but it's also a world where the great trauma of her life never happened, and its nice to see that acknowledged.
(Can we also talk about how, despite having developed almost entirely off-screen, Seven and Raffi's relationship is still infinitely more believable than Seven and Chakotay was in Voyager?)
Meanwhile, the Borg Queen proves to be more terrifying on her own than previous incarnations ever did with the full power of the Collective behind them. There's some really interesting takes on Borg assimilation here – Picard's description of it as 'euphoric' is particularly interesting. Assimilation has always been treated as horrific, and it still is here – but its treated as far more insidious, as something you can fall into without consciously recognising it. While we've never heard it described as such, we have seen more than enough examples of former Borg wanting to recreate that experience, from Hugh in “I, Borg” to the ex Borg in Voyager's “Collective”. The description given here makes it almost feel like a drug addiction – one can feel revolted afterwards by the situation, yet struggle to reconcile that with the awareness that the experience was genuinely pleasurable. And one wonders if Juranti will be able to resist that alure.
(Or if the Queen can resist Juranti. New fanfic crack pairing, anyone?)
I am amused that Juranti was the one to emphatically warn everyone of the dangers of accidently contaminating the timeline – it feels to me perfectly in character that she's the sort of person who's spent a lot of time speculating about time travel and constructing scenarios in her head about it...
So, what is the shift in the timeline? It's possible this is a predestination paradox, that something the crew does will accidently shift Earth's history – but Q already played that trick in “All Good Things”, and it feels a bit petty of him to blame Picard for a situation that would never have happened without his interference. Still not sure where we're going, but still very intrigued.
I'd expected we'd be spending at least a bit longer in the Confederation timeline after last week's cliffhanger, but it seems that was entirely to get Elnor shot before we head back to the past. I'm not convinced Elnor is permanently dead; Picard has unceremoniously killed off characters before (RIP Hugh), but given that we're dealing with time travel, I expect to see him back by the end of the season. The Elnor who died is, technically, the Elnor from the Confederation timeline, after all, and I assume everyone's going to end up back in their original bodies once this is all over.
(Although maybe not – it would be interesting if Seven remained in a fully human body permanently.)
The 2024 setting immediately invites comparisons to Ds9's “Past Tense”, and it certainly feels like the show is intentionally riffing on that – although part of it may just be that, sadly, DS9's take on the 21st century proved pretty damn accurate. Once again, there's the racial disparity between how our characters are treated, with the attractive white woman able to breeze through obstacles, while the minority man finds himself trapped by the system and automatically assumed to be a criminal. Not a lot has changed since the 1990s, and it still feels uncomfortably realistic.
(And, tragically, Ds9's take on the era feels in someways naively optimistic; I doubt we're going to see an internet billionare helping out the disadvantaged this time around, and the idea that simply giving the disenfranchised a voice would turn public opinion against the injustice of the system is... charming in its idealism.)
I did like seeing that Seven gets to enjoy being fully human – it may be a dystopian timeline, but it's also a world where the great trauma of her life never happened, and its nice to see that acknowledged.
(Can we also talk about how, despite having developed almost entirely off-screen, Seven and Raffi's relationship is still infinitely more believable than Seven and Chakotay was in Voyager?)
Meanwhile, the Borg Queen proves to be more terrifying on her own than previous incarnations ever did with the full power of the Collective behind them. There's some really interesting takes on Borg assimilation here – Picard's description of it as 'euphoric' is particularly interesting. Assimilation has always been treated as horrific, and it still is here – but its treated as far more insidious, as something you can fall into without consciously recognising it. While we've never heard it described as such, we have seen more than enough examples of former Borg wanting to recreate that experience, from Hugh in “I, Borg” to the ex Borg in Voyager's “Collective”. The description given here makes it almost feel like a drug addiction – one can feel revolted afterwards by the situation, yet struggle to reconcile that with the awareness that the experience was genuinely pleasurable. And one wonders if Juranti will be able to resist that alure.
(Or if the Queen can resist Juranti. New fanfic crack pairing, anyone?)
I am amused that Juranti was the one to emphatically warn everyone of the dangers of accidently contaminating the timeline – it feels to me perfectly in character that she's the sort of person who's spent a lot of time speculating about time travel and constructing scenarios in her head about it...
So, what is the shift in the timeline? It's possible this is a predestination paradox, that something the crew does will accidently shift Earth's history – but Q already played that trick in “All Good Things”, and it feels a bit petty of him to blame Picard for a situation that would never have happened without his interference. Still not sure where we're going, but still very intrigued.