Star Trek: Picard 3-09: Võx (Quick Review)

Episode:

29

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Writer:

Sean Tretta & Kiley Rossetter

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Director:

Terry Matalas

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Air Date:

13-Apr-2023

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Picard's penultimate episode, Võx, which has a weird title. At least, that's what the experts say. Personally I have no idea if it's right or not, I didn't even know that it was Latin, but the internet seems pretty sure that tilde shouldn't be over the o. It may have been meant to be Vōx, but plain simple Vox would've worked just fine. It means 'voice' by the way.

One thing you don't often see on Star Trek is the showrunner directing an episode themselves, but Terry Matalas was at the helm for this one. He'd directed a few episodes of Twelve Monkeys previously, including the finale, so I'm sure he knew what he was doing. It would've been hilarious if he didn't though, and Picard ended as a complete train wreck on a basic production level. I guess I'll find out!

I'm going to start discussing SPOILERS now, so avert your eyes if you'd rather not know anything about this episode or what led up to it.

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RECAP

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Troi's empathic abilities finally reveal the source of Jack's visions... surprise, the Borg are back again for the third season in a row! It's always the Borg.

It turns out that Picard never had Irumodic Syndrome, his condition was actually caused by organic Borg technology implanted while he was Locutus, and this had been passed down to his son. The crew realise that the Changelings' plan was to take the technology from Picard's brain and put it into Starfleet's transporter systems, leaving every young officer vulnerable to become a mind-controlled Borg drone.

Unfortunately Jack reacts badly to the crew's response to this revelation and steals a shuttle to confront the Borg personally, which goes about as well as you'd expect. Somehow the Borg Queen returned and she assimilates him into what's left of the collective, giving him the name Võx.

Meanwhile every Starfleet ship has gathered above Earth for the Frontier Day celebrations, including the Titan, which came to warn them about the threat. Võx uses his power to control the Starfleet Borg drones and seize control of their ships. Fleet Admiral Shelby is immediately killed aboard the Enterprise-F, but the crew of the Excelsior are able to retake their vessel, possibly due to Elnor's ninja skills. Unfortunately the ships themselves are being controlled by the Fleet Formation protocol and the Borg move the Excelsior into position to be destroyed.

Captain Shaw dies helping Picard's crew escape in a shuttle, giving Seven command of the Titan. She stays to help her crew, along with Raffi, while the others fly to the Starfleet Museum. Inside they find Geordi's secret project: a restored Enterprise-D, recovered from the surface of Veridian III. They now have the only ship immune to the Fleet Formation protocol.


REVIEW

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Holy crap, they're back on the Enterprise-D and it looks the exact same as the last time we saw it! Well almost, it's been restored to its pre-Generations look, but close enough.

It took the Original Series movies just a few years to undo Spock's death and bring back their ship, but Next Gen fans have had to wait a little longer. The series got there in the end though, as this episode ends with a resurrected Data back in his seat on the Enterprise-D for the first time in 30 years.

Star Trek has revisited classic ships before in stories like Trials and Tribble-ations and Flashback, but this isn't a trip through time or a holodeck recreation or whatever, this time they've actually brought back a ship we thought we'd lost for good. The producers did a good job keeping that spoiler under wraps! They spoiled that the characters were coming back the first chance they had, but they kept the important bit a secret.

Surprises like this work better if they seem implausible due to production issues. If you're sure something isn't going to happen because of the cost, or an actor's disinterest, or whatever, then it's amazing when it does. The producers apparently spent a huge chunk of the season's budget recreating this bridge and that would've been wasted money if it had looked anything less than perfect. You might consider it wasted money anyway, but I think returning to the original ship is great way to bookend Picard's story. On the other hand, it's also what Star Trek: Enterprise did with its finale, so it maybe not a good omen.

It took me a bit to decide what I thought about Võx, and I've decided that it's a Doctor Who episode. It certainly ends with a big dumb Doctor Who cliffhanger complete with huge emotional moments, the shocking return of a classic villain, and a billion enemies in the sky. Everything's dialled up to 11 and things are at their most desperate.

This is the third season of Picard in a row to end with a giant fleet of Starfleet ships, except this time the fleet is big enough to contain both fleets from the earlier season finales! In fact it's probably big enough to contain all the other hostile Starfleet ships from when the other Trek shows pulled this same twist in their own season finales as well! How is Starfleet continually making the same mistake of connecting all their ships together?

It's also the third season of Picard to be about the Borg, they've been in the show more than most of the cast, so it wasn't really a shocking twist when they turned up again.

It was a nice surprise to see Shelby again, though it was less good when I realised they were making her a kind of scapegoat for the plan to bring the fleet to one place and have them all connected together. And then she got killed, because of course she did.

Shaw also got killed, which just feels so tired and expected at this point. The flipside of 'no one ever dies, so there's no drama' is 'everyone always dies, so I don't care'. When Shelby got gunned down on her own bridge my only reaction was to make a mental note to knock the episode's score down a bit because the death of a major Next Gen character shouldn't be part of a running joke. I mean it's not supposed to be a joke, but that's what it is at this point. Picard has brought back the classic redshirts trope and all that's changed is who's wearing red.

The scene of the assimilated crew fighting in the corridors was on the wrong side of hilarious to me as well, especially with the sound of people screaming. They only just did this with the Changelings taking over the ship last episode! How is there even anyone left alive on the Titan-A after everything that's happened?

So now every Starfleet officer under 25 has been turned into a Borg and has started gunning down their own crew. That's even more messed up than the TNG episode where everyone turned into animals and Worf tried to eat people. Sorry Elnor, you just used your murder skills to kill your senior staff... unless you were still on the Excelsior and blew up.

But the most horrifying part of the situation is the revelation that the transporter system takes shortcuts with people's DNA. What the hell? I'm going just going to pretend they said a bunch of sci-fi words my 21st century brain can't understand and put my fingers in my ears next time they mention it. The whole point of the transporter is that it moves you from place to place, it doesn't estimate what you are and then fill in the gaps with cached data.

There's a point in the episode where the stakes go from 'how are they going to get out of this one?' to 'you've got to be kidding me'. It's funny though, how the mood completely shifts at the end of the episode. Everything's as bleak as it can possibly be, all their children are evil now, Captain Shaw just died... and they they stop to make a joke about carpets.

Incidentally getting the carpets back was one of the things I said I wanted for this season at the end of my season 2 review, so I can actually cross that one off the list! I didn't get the other stuff, but I got my carpet and I accept it with gratitude.

The tone shifts way before the carpets to be fair, because as soon as the crew sees the Enterprise-D all the anxiety disappears. At that moment you know that the finale isn't going to be a desperate last struggle, it's going to be about the finest crew in Starfleet getting the job done. Picard even does the standard 'I can't ask any of you to come with me' scene, despite Earth and the entire Federation being on the verge of falling to a Changeling/Borg alliance. No one is sitting this one out Picard. You absolute idiot.

I've done the maths, and it turns out that Picard has had more Enterprises in this one season than any other Trek series has managed in their entire run. The NX-01, the A, and now the D and F. No E though, only a joke hinting at Worf's involvement in its final fate. Knowing him he probably rammed it into something.

My predictions for next episode: Jack, Sydney and Alandra will survive, Jack will be the key to stopping the Borg, the Enterprise-D will fire torpedoes.


RATING

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I've been putting Picard episodes up against their counterparts from TNG, which means this time it's the battle of the Vs, with Võx taking on The Vengeance Factor. That's the one where Riker falls for an assassin who's trying to kill everyone who belongs to a rival clan. The episode's not a fan favourite, but I liked it enough to have to really think about whether I enjoyed it or Võx more.

Võx loses points for killing off Shelby and I hate what it reveals about the transporter. Plus it loses more points for having screams echoing down the corridors of the Titan again, and even more points for Jack being an idiot. On the other hand, it gave me back my Enterprise-D and did it in a way that makes perfect sense, so I'm going to say that it's my favourite of the two episodes. But only just.

7/10

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COMING SOON

Next time, it's the epic finale of Star Trek: Picard - The Last Generation. And then I suppose I'll have to figure out what series I'll be writing about next.

Please leave a comment if you're in a commenting mood!