Vox

This Story: Season 3 Episode 9 (production code 309)
PIC Overall: Episode 29
Trek Overall: TBD
Airdate: 13 Apr 2023
Written by Sean Tretta & Kiley Rossetter
Directed by Terry Matalas

My Remarks

Due to the overly spoiler-y nature of Episodes 9 & 10 of the series, I’m handling these two a bit differently.  I’m going to do most of my writing about them on my blog here.  Normally I summarize the episodes in a couple of social media posts, but this time I’ll put the bulk of my writing here.  I don’t plan 3,000 words, but it will be a bit more than I normally do on socials.  Will probably be a lot of bullet points.

We find out that what’s behind Jack’s visions and skills are the Borg.  The voices in his head were the Borg, and Jack takes a shuttle and leaves the ship to go looking for them after much discussion with Troi, Dr. Crusher, & Picard.  There’s some good acting by Patrick Stewart (no shock) when he has to tell Jack that the Borg has been passed down genetically to Jack.  I did like Troi telling Beverly & Jean-Luc that “no, you can’t do that”.  Rarely did we see Troi exercise her ship authority like that.

We get a lot of techno-babble in the middle about what the Borg did to Picard 35 years prior which sets up the forthcoming assimilation the entire Starfleet (well, the younger ones anyway).  It’s top shelf technobabble, but does allow them to advance the plot in a very fast fashion, which I suppose is needed as there’s just this episode and one other left. It involves the fleet wide transporters inserting that genetic code into literally everyone.  But only younger folks are affected.

Our crew figure out what the Borg and the changelings are doing, and decide to try and warn the fleet, but the entire fleet is together with a new thing called “Fleet FormatioN’ which allows the fleet to act together as a single unit.  Couple that together with the transporter assimilation and it means that the Borg silently assimilated the majority of the fleet, and is using it to attack the Titan and our people.  The crew being assimilated and wearing starfleet uniforms was a great visual.  Had a “zombie” feel to it, despite them not being dead.   Once this shit hits the fan, our crew realize they need offline tech that isn’t tied to the fleet and they run.  Our crew getting off the ship though costs the life of Shaw, something that I wasn’t happy about.  Funny thing is Shaw started off as a fucking jerk, and ended up as a hero type that you were annoyed he was killed.  Testament to Stashwick that you felt what you felt for Shaw when he died.

This leads Geordi to take them back tp the fleet museum where he reveals a surprise. He apparently had been rebuilding the Enterprise-D.  He recovered the shuttle from Veridian III (Star Trek: Generations), and got nacelles and other ship parts from other Galaxy class ship, and put the TNG crew’s ship back together in secret for 20 years.  It was an epic moment, and the first time I saw it, I was like “Oh shit, they’re doing this”.  Some comedy in the leadup there making it seem something happened to the Enterprise-E at the expense of Worf (although we don’t actually find out what).  When I saw this episode in a movie theatre with other Trek fans, the reaction from everyone was off the charts nuts (more about the movie thing in the next episode’s writeup).

This being the penultimate episode of the series, it’s the place when a plot “hits the fan”, and this hits the fan big time.  It was one hell of a setup for the finale, which I’ll talk about in the next post.

Fucking awesome episode.   There were a few accents of Data humor thrown in there.   They were placed well for maximum effect (Data saying “I hope we die quickly” as they’re escaping the Titan).

Notes

• Elizabeth Dennehy returns as Shelby, last seen in “The Best of Both Worlds Part II” (1990).  It is heavily implied she is killed in this episode, but we don’t actually SEE that she was.
• Alice Krige (the OG) returns as the Borg Queen, but only in a voiceover.  The physical form of the Queen is played by someone else.
• The late Majel Barrett’s voice appears as the voice of the Enterprise D using recordings culled from episodes of the series.
• The title of the episode means “voice” and is the name the Borg Queen gives to Jack like Locutus was to Picard.
• Features the first (and only) appearance of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701F – also captained by Shelby.
• The first appearance of USS Enterprise NCC-1701D since it was (mostly) destroyed in Star Trek: Generations.  It is said on screen that the engines and nacelles are from the USS Syracuse (a ship I don’t recall ever seeing on screen before).

Links

[ Wikipedia | Memory Alpha | IMDB | Amazon US DVD | Amazon US Blu-Ray ]