Good points, good points, retracted.
I actually haven't seen "These Are the Voyages" since it originally aired. It didn't offend me very much what they did, but I just haven't ever gone back. It would make a lot of sense not to have exteriors in the episode since it was from Riker's perspective in the holodeck and he wouldn't have seen any of that. But I feel like there was a space battle and they did show it.Good points, good points, retracted.
Isn’t the New Jersey wholly new?
The selection of the ships in the museum as we see it in Picard is suspect. They're the same ships that Boimler gushes about in Lower Decks, which happen to be the hero ships of the various series. I think we need a little bit of that "according to great minds like Plato, Zoroaster, and M'Keptak of the planet Frall" business in there to mix in some colorful nonsense with the familiar names so we don't assume we've seen everything there is to see.
The Stargazer is there too (right side of the image), which has significance to the entire Picard/Crusher family.
Isn’t the New Jersey wholly new?
Given the likely late construction (after 2270, probably), one would expect so see a "Phase II" type (as seen in production art for the scrapped 1970s series of the same name) rather than the Bonhomme Richard or Achernar subclass (the type seen after "The Cage", of which casual fandom would be the most familiar).Random observation but this is a weird name for a starship - it doesn't follow the regular naming conventions for ships of the line at the time which weren't named after states. The closest we have were cities: the Lexington and Yorktown. I know it's far-removed from canon at this point but the old Starfleet Technical Manual from the seventies puts the highest registration number as the USS Wenzen NCC-1842, so NCC-1975 is a loong way down the list to boot.
What's crazy is thatthe building blocks they are now playing with could make for one hell of a FRANCHISE finale.
- In the Star Trek subreddit, they are positing that somehow Jack (or his blood) will be the key to reviving Picard's body as Locutus, who will be controlled by the Changelings as a hive mind that commands the entire networked Federation fleet.
- Janeway could easily appear. We could feasibly see DS9 cast members appear (besides Worf). Hell, if you read the blurb about Kirk's body, it mentions that his body was retrieved for Project Phoenix..... meaning that since William Shatner is still alive.... KIRK COULD APPEAR!
- If the bad guys from the final battle are a fleet of Federation ships controlled by a hive mind, who are the good guys? The museum ships! Enterprise A, Defiant, Voyager for sure, and very likely NX-01, Excelsior, Enterprise E and the mystery in hangar bay 12.. a fully-restored Enterprise D (with a new stardrive section salvaged from a different decommissioned Galaxy class ship)!
Essentially you could in theory have an iconic big bad as the face of the enemy, fighting a team of pretty much every iconic hero ship in franchise history (aside from the Discovery which is in the future, and the TOS Enterprise and original Defiant which were completely destroyed), with core cast members appearing from most of the series.
If Star Trek were to end (which it won't), this is setting up a hell of a way to do it. Do I think any of this will happen? I'd say we could easily see most of it. I don't expect to see any more DS9 cast members or Kirk. I don't even think we will see the Enterprise E. I do think we are going to see Locutus and the Enterprise D though, and that our hero ships are going to fight the networked fleet. I think Shaw's line about hot dropping the D's saucer section on a planet was to remind us that it crashed so that when it returns, we are even more surprised.
Leaving aside the Beta canon retcon of that episode (whereby many of its events didn't play out in reality the way Riker's holodrama depicted them), that leaves plenty of room for the NX-01 to have added a secondary hull by the time of those events.The only exterior shot of the NX-01 Enterprise in this episode appears in the closing montage. This is consistent with the narrative method established in TNG, that the viewers can't see the "exterior" shots when a starship is recreated on the holodeck.
I feel like that sentiment takes away from Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and Prodigy (the latter of which I haven't watched most of, but it seems to be well received). All three of those have done well enough and really don't need someone new at the helm.
Matalas has done a fine job of running this season, which is indeed leagues better than the previous seasons, but I mean, it isn't perfect (feels a tad fan-servicey, yet another galactic threat to be stopped, the plot dragging a bit more than it should, etc).
I would agree that the franchise has been doing better than it was when Discovery started out, though.
I'm surprised that's even a take. The third season had a weak mystery box plot and resolution, and the fourth still wasn't what most people really want out of a Trek show, but the dire meanspirited imitation prestige drama of the first season and the incoherent reverse-engineered plot of the second are on a whole other level.Discovery is a show that has the Star Trek name as part of the title. It started out flawed and continually got worse with each season.