The Last Generation

This Story: Season 3 Episode 10 (production code 310)
PIC Overall: Episode 30
Trek Overall: TBD
Airdate: 20 Apr 2023
Written by Terry Matalas
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.

I’m not going to write a ton about this I think as it’s too awesome to break down.  I will just say this wrapped up everything in the Picard storyline perfectly, and also wrapped up the cast and crew of Next Generation way better than Nemesis did, and to an extend how they did with “All Good Things….”  This was a perfect ending, IMO.  I’m going to list bullet points for this of things that I liked or didn’t like vs expending them out with a ton of words.  The only thing I really will do that for is how I viewed it.

The week before Episode 10 game out Paramount+ in conjunction with Gofobo held a screening of both this episode and the one before it in theatres.  It was in IMAX, and was set to screen the evening before it was set to drop on Paramount+.  If I remember the timing right this started about 7-8 hours before it was to be released on Paramount+ (at least where I was – Dallas).  It was super chaotic getting tickets, I had to have the page to request the passes open on three separate browsers, but I did eventually score a ticket to the viewing.  Not everyone could because of problems.  When I showed up, it was a HUGE line to get in, and it was so bad I thought I wasn’t going to get a seat (because seating wasn’t guaranteed even with a pass) ,but I did get in.  It wasn’t just the movie screening too – they gave everyone free popcorn in a special Star Trek: Picard “The Final Season” container, which I brought home and still have to this day.  They also gave out a movie poster at the end after everyone was leaving, which was nice.  Still have that, too.  They showed both Vox & The Last Generation back to back.  Even though everyone in there had seen Vox, the communal atmosphere contributed to some enhanced reactions to some of the key points of that episode (Worf & Enterprise-E, the reveal of Enterprise-D, etc). Actually enhanced my enjoyment of that episode.  Then they got to the finale, which was a perfect mix of storytelling, fan service, and just general action.  I’m convinced my love of this finale was helped by seeing it in the IMAX theatre.  I’m sure I would have really enjoyed it as much on first viewing on my own sofa, but in this atmosphere – it filed it in a much better part of my brain for sure.  I’ve included a few pictures of this event here.  I did on socials as well, but the poster was spoiler-y, so it’s just here below.

Now to the actual episode.  Here’s a list of things I liked and didn’t (and just some factoids) about the episode.

• Only the second episode of any variation of Star Trek to be written and directed by the same person. To date, the only other one was the original series episode “Elaan of Troyius” (John Meredyth Lucas).
• The Borg return as the main threat here. They actually appeared in the last episode, but they’re more in your face this one.  It’s not the Borg as we knew them from the past, because the OG Borg were mostly done away with in the Star Trek: Voyager finale.  However, this time they’re shown to have “evolved”.  In the plot of this story, they are seemingly killed off for good, with no apparent way they could return.  There is the “Jurati Borg” from Season 2 of Picard still around, but they were not the OG, Borg Queen lead Borg.
• The Borg Queen was using the existing remaining old collective as “food” more or less to survive – interesting that they’d result in that to survive, but it does explain why the “old Borg” are both here and not here at the same time.
• Walter Koenig makes a voice over cameo as Federation President Anton Chekov (son of his own character, Pavel Chekov).  The name Anton was a reference to the late actor Anton Yelchin, who played Chekov in the JJ Abrams movies.  The situation and speech mirrors the speech that the President of Earth gave out in Star Trek IV. The reality of that is funny, as Koenig is the real life next door neighbor of Todd Stashwick, and they just walked over there and talked Walter into doing that.
• Alice Krige (the OG) returns as the Borg Queen, but only in a voiceover.  The physical form of the Queen is played by Jane Edwina Seymour.
• Seven & Raffi as renegades on their own ship was a fun vibe, I liked that a lot.
• Worf is used for comedic effect again – but to the character’s benefit, he’s not TRYING to be funny.  It happens twice.  Once when he says “… I I will make a threesome”, and at the end when he falls asleep on the bridge.  Some interactions between him and Riker when doing hand to hand combat with the Borg were hilarious as well, but that was more Riker, although Worf saying “swords are fun” are hilarious.  :)
• A lot of this episode has a funereal feel to it – you feel like characters are marching to their death.  Well written and acted for sure.
• The late Majel Barrett’s voice appears as the voice of the Enterprise D using recordings culled from episodes of the series.
• I liked the shots of the fleet firing on Spacedock.  It was quite a cool visual, although I thought the fleet was a bit too “cut and paste” in terms of it looking like they just used the same ship model quite a few times.
• There was little use for a Doctor in this episode, so Beverly was the weapons officer in Enterprise-D as Worf was off the ship.  She handled it perfectly – in fact I loved the reaction from Geordi, Troi, & Data to her mastery of the manual weapons system.
• They did work Data’s mastery of emotions into this quite well.  His “hating” the Borg inflcting suffering on people as well as his glee at pulling off the ship maneuvers needed to destroy the Borg beacon.  He even said “My gut says I can do this”.  Well handled.
• Speaking of that, the way they got to the beacon really REALLY feels like Millennium Falcon in Return of the Jedi.
• The resolution of the Borg plot all came together in a couple of events well timed to happen nearly at the same time.  ALMOST too convenient, but I’ll let it slide, because it was a nice emotional ride that masked the “oh come on, they can’t really do all that” of the scene.  haha.
• Speaking of that, Troi’s emotional connection to Riker being the reason they found them to rescue was nicely done.
• Picard’s realization of true fatherly emotion is what resolves the conflict and gives Jack the internal fortitude to leave the Borg collective.  As a father myself, that got me – while I didn’t cry in the theater, I did have a little “lower lip quiver” to this scene.
• When the Borg ship is destroyed, the humans revert to full human instantly.  I know it was done due to time constraints, but it felt a bit unrealistic they’d revert to full normal in a matter of seconds.
• The Borg plot of the story finishes with about 20 minutes left in the episode, which IMO is enough time to wrap everything up.
• Some continuity established in the wrap-up sequence.  Starfleet figured out how to eliminate the transporter Borg code, and was sending everyone through a transporter to clear it.  They also said it was designed by Beverly Crusher, the new head of Starfleet Medical, who is now ranked as an Admiral.
• Tim Russ reprises the role of Tuvok – actual Tuvok unlike the changeling version we saw earlier in the season.
• In the wrap-up, Seven of Nine was promoted to the rank of Captain.  This happened in the scene with Tuvok, and it came via a recorded recommendation by the late Capt Shaw (cameo by Todd Stashwick).  Was great to see the two of them on screen together for the first time in ages.
• There is a wrap-up scene with Raffi and her granddaughter, but both this time and in the original viewing when that happened, I was like “Oh yeah, that was a thing”.  It was pretty much a forgotten plot line – I think they put this in there solely so fans didn’t go “What about…”  I actually didn’t care about that.
• The wrap-up jumps forward an entire year when they’ve rebuilt Spacedock and done work on rebuilding the fleet.  In this final segment we get the setup for what many fans (and a lot of the cast) want as the next Star Trek series.   In this segment we find that the USS Titan-A was renamed to the USS Enterprise NCC-1701G, and was captained by Seven, with her officers being Jack Crusher, Raffi, & Sidney LaForge.  I’d LOVE to watch that series, to be honest.
• The Star Trek episode with the most variants of the Enterprise in it.  Have NX-01, NCC-1701A, NCC-1701D, NCC-1701F, & NCC-1701G all in the episode, although not all on screen together (or focused on).
• They spent a time of time and coin in building the bridge set of NCC-1701D.  I really wonder what has happened to those sets in real life.
• The proper episode ends with the Next Gen crew in what we are told is Guinan’s bar.   It bummed me out they didn’t get Whoopi to make an appearance here.  She didn’t even have to do much just stand there say a line or two – heck they mention Guinan was there in dialogue, but we never saw her (even the younger version we saw in S2 of Picard). But it ends with a great time with them joking, having fun, a few drinks, and then playing poker – the best way that could have ended IMO.  Other than the Guinan thing, I thought this entire scene was perfection.  The poker scene was real – the cast played for about 45 mins and they just extracted bits to use in the episode.  A longer version of the scene is available on the Blu-Ray as an extra.
• John Delancie makes an appearance as Q in a post credit scene at the tail end of the episode.  He addresses Q’s “fate” at the end of Season 2 in Picard in the most Q way there could be.

Links

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