Star Trek Retro Review: "Descent" (TNG) | More Borg Episodes
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- ▶Join this channel to get access to perks:
www.youtube.co...
▶Patreon: / steveshives
▶PayPal: www.paypal.me/...
▶Venmo: venmo.com/that...
▶Twitter: / steve_shives
▶Facebook: / thatguysteveshives
▶Instagram: / steve.shives
Listen to the Late Seating podcast:
▶RSS: / sounds.rss
▶Soundcloud: / late-seating
Listen to The Ensign's Log podcast:
▶RSS: / sounds.rss
▶Soundcloud: / the-ensigns-log-podcast
#startrek #review #startrektng
6:45 for the authentic Star Trek experience, pause here and come back in three months for the conclusion.
And make sure to listen to Majel Barrett say "and now, the conclusion" before you press play again.
😂
For the current Star Trek experience pause here and find out about the Gorn cliffhanger from last year sometime in 2025!
Bev in command and a total badass is my spirit animal.
From the tail end of TNG, when they were running on fumes, and continued chugging on those fumes throughout all of _Voyager._
What I remember was the allegory of Data’s emotion being about drugs….
"You don't know how good you've got it" Man, you cracked me up here lol
I have almost all of the Borg episodes in the Borg fan collective
inexorable slide, dive, drop, fall, slump, dip, declination...
Not a very good 2 parter, but the “Stop, stop it, stop, stop” scene became an inside joke around our family
Dr. Beverly Crusher is not just the most underrated character in the history of Trek, she is also a hardcore badass. She may have a soft voice, but she's never soft spoken. She stands up for what is right even if it means going toe to toe with the captain. She's even hardcore with Lore. In "Datalore" she points a phaser at Lore and threatens him in order to back off from Wesley. In "Descent" she takes on Lore's minions and defeats them through sheer tactical brilliance. It's sad and kind of sickening that this overlooked and disrespected character will always be remember for that dipshit "ghost candle episode". Dr. Crusher and Gates McFadden deserve better.
Until this video I forgot that she had a history of wrecking Borg shit well before Picard season 3.....
At least "All Good Things" gave Crusher her due in the captain's chair. And in fairness, the blame for the ghostfucker episode really can't be pinned on either Crusher or McFadden.
True. Though I’m a sucker for a Scots accent, so that’s a guilty pleasure for me. 😂 But you are right that Dr. Bev Crusher deserves more respect.
And damn, she can cut a rug!
she acted her heart out in that episode too, anyway. her delirious screaming at the ghost of her grandmother is genuinely tense, to me anyway. but i really do love suspending my disbelief and i can take some pretty stupid stuff seriously.
The Beverly subplot was the highlight, and good callout that her solution to the conflict was a callback to something only she would've had experience with.
The scariest thing about the Borg was their hivemind, the implacable singular drive that directed millions of bodies in a common purpose. _Descent_ showed us how weak, and more importantly how _sad_ the Borg are without it. That they turned into a group of bitter, angry, easily radicalized jerks makes perfect sense to me, and might the best thematic element of the episode.
So, Trump voters.
Re: security desk guy, as a security officer, staying out of whatever the hell the command crew are doing is probably the best way to stay alive. You speak up, suddenly you get volunteered to join an away mission.
"Yes, Jean-Luc, here are the keys back. I had the Enterprise washed and waxed, filled the dilithium tanks, changed the air freshener, and wiped out the Borg. Thanks again."
Funny how the most memorable part of this episode for me was that poker game. I was a teenage fan of Stephen Hawking, and seeing him as himself, playing poker in such lofty company on Star Trek of all places made me a very happy little nerd. I hope he had half as much fun filming that as we did watching it.
Of all the TNG two-parters, this is definitely one of them.
(Happy 69th like)
EDIT: Oh my god you make the exact same joke in the video
Great minds think alike! 😂
*pushes nerd glasses up* "actually it was Redemption not Reunion" 😂
Yeah, that one. One of the Klingon ones.
@@SteveShives well they both start with R. I did like that Sela reveal though at the end of that finale.
The Sons of Soong should’ve teamed up as an evil villain team with the Duras sisters…
🤔
Hang on. Completely unrelated to anything, I need to go write an erotic fan fic real quick
Ive seen that episode, but you can’t get it in Texas now.
Don't forget that "Lore" rhymes with "vore", you cheeky person
Can you have Daimon Bok be watching? Like, please?
When you've got that written, can you drop us a hint as to its title, just to make it easier to fine on AO3?
I actually kind of liked the Barnaby and Tate thing, but the fact that there's no follow-up in a later episode, not even cameos, kind of makes it feel a little pointless. It just would've been nice to see Tate later on getting pinned as a Lieutenant JG or something basic with Barnaby cheering at the ceremony.
That would have been great. I feel like that's the sort of things that shows only started doing when the internet and fan forums took off, and the showrunners/writers realized that there were thousands and thousands of fans that were keeping track of things and hoping for callbacks.
As someone who used to work security, that security guy doing a crap job is pretty accurate considering he's clearly zoned in on whatever deskjob task he's doing 😂 He was probably monitoring security alarms to look busy or writing a last minute report he'd been putting off, and most definitely did not hear one bit of dialogue and got got before they left.
Sounds like Ensign Johnson😄
I always liked Lore’s costume in these episodes. Just looks neat and evil
I remember reading that they were partially inspired by David Koresh for Lore in this episode.
"a funny little in joke you get if you know and if you don't it doesn't matter" ah, so, like Sonya Gomez being a captain in Lower Decks? Because if you don't know who she is, she still just scans as being Carol Freeman's friend? Like that, Steve? So, it's like that, huh? It's just like that, isn't it?
Isn't it?
*Isn't it*?
I guess the biggest difference there is that this cameo happened a few months later and on the same show, whereas the in-jokes and cameos from Lower Decks tend to come decades after the original episodes first aired.
I mean, other than the fact that the casting of James Horan in this episode was nothing at all like having Sonya Gomez show up in Lower Decks, yes, just like that.
@@SteveShives True! Unlike Descent, First First Contact is actually a good episode.
While touring the sets, Hawking is purported to have looked up at the warp core and said something like,
"I'm working on that."
Iconic! 😂
And the one who did was Alcubierre
That sounds very Hawking. If spoken in a computerized voice.
He also asked to be put into the Captain's chair. :)
5:47 apparently Jean Luc knew the doc would be scary effecive at blitzing the Borg, sad she didn't get a chance this time....
Im glad im not the only one that compared the Borg compound to the command center from Power Rangers lol
Well, the close up shots of the building were actually filmed at the same location that Power Rangers used for the command Center. 🤷♂️
It's the same building, the Brandeis-Barden institute building in California. It was also a background building at Khitomer.
Who cares that we're dating ourselves; ‘90s kids LOVE POWER RANGERS! I personally was 14 when Mighty Morphin started (born in November 1978), so I'm about 1 1/2 years older than Steve.
Well…compared? It is the very same building, right? Or maybe I’m misremembering and misinterpreting the joke 😅
@@augiegirl1 Ok, now I feel like a snob, because I'm the same age as you, and I had already graduated to Stephen King and Anne Rice at 14, and had no interest in Power Rangers. I loved Sailor Moon, in a semi-ironic way though. Please don't judge, I was a messed up kid.
This episode butchered the Borg as badly as Doctor Who did in that episode where James Corden stops the Cybermen from taking over a shopping mall with the power of love. 🤦♂
Ok but the everything else about that episode was awesome. The fact that Cordon's baby hated him. Everyone assuming he and Doctor Who were husbands. A rare check-up on a previously almost entirely forgotten character. They just... had nothing for a bad fat comedian to do to fight the cybermen
Steve, I love your channel and everything but good God I hate this fucking episode...
The first cliffhanger I didn't really care about. Heh. The Borg were so disappointing..
It's annoying that the popular concept is that Voyager ruined the Borg. They certainly helped them overstay their welcome but they were well spoiled by the time Voy got it's shot. And honestly, Voyager did do a few good things with them.
Great vid Steve your recaps are hilarious. Hugh "infecting" the borg with individuality makes you wonder why doesn't that happen every time they assimilate someone?
Yeah descent is kinda weak, although I guess it makes sense that the last TNG season ending cliffhanger has the borg since they were in the first, groundbreaking two parter back in best of both worlds. And always great to see Beverly given something to do!
Now that Discovery has concluded I expect a revision to your star trek's number 1 most awesome and handsome badass video with Saru at the top of the list. Starfleet captain. Savior of his own people and ambassador for his home planet. Graceful and mature Vulcan wife. Paris can warp 10 the delta flyer to second place where he belongs
His name is ACTION Saru.
Data episodes are my favorite, but Crusher episodes have just as much heart. I appreciate your jokes Steve.
In the 1992/1993 TV season the Borg appear in two episodes: DS9's "Emissary" and TNG's "Descent". "Emissary" is the last true time we see the Borg in their full horror as villains in both the destruction of the ships at Wolf 359 and in the crumpled weeping figure of Ben Sisko. It's a sad switch over from that to "Descent" and the Borg have never recovered since after all these decades.
I don't know if it's considered a hot take these days to say that the Borg were neutered long before season 4 of Voyager.
I don't know. First Contact (the movie) is probably their final TRUE horror outing.
I still think that I, Borg should've been the last Borg episode. It's a great episode [at least, I think it is, I know a lot of people disagree], but it worked a little too well. Descent is one of my least favourite TNG episodes, to the point where I've only watched it once.
Not an especially amazing set of episodes, but I do remember that watching Data turn evil as a kid was really disturbing
The brilliance of this episode is the allegory of the Cardassian invasion and occupation of Bajor. The Bajoran Starfleet officer sitting in the brig watching Data and Chrosus illustrates that history perfectly.
I always liked Lore as a character for the simple reason that I like villains, and Lore is a brilliant one. He's always fun and sort of the snake in the grass tempting the good guy to do the bad thing. Plus he helps to create some fascinating moral and ethical quandaries with Data.
Thank you for recognising the home base of the Power Rangers. It was vitally important to me that someone else see it.
I remember cliffhanger anxiety. It sucked.
I don't know why, but I never liked the Lore character. It was an unnecessary callback to the Mirror universe.
Any TNG episode from the 2nd half of the run that isn't about Data-possessing masks or Crusher-seducing ghosts gets a thumbs up from me. Mostly.
My memory: At the time, seeing a resolution to I, Borg, was very exciting. And seeing emotional, angry, berserker borg was exciting. However, decades later, these episodes leave a similar chalky, bland taste in my mouth as Voyager's Basics, parts 1 and 2.
Something I would talk about if I were an actual youtube reviewer is how the media I consume tends to inhabit my perception with color schemes. The less exciting being more of pastels and browns while dipping towards vibrant shades and combinations for more exciting narratives. I'm sure there's some scientific/expression study for such a thing, but I don't know anything about it, so I won't digress, with the exception that it is seemingly relative to the next part of my comment.
This time in TNG's run seems to represent a sort of color palate shift in the feel of that era of Trek. TNG transitioning from a vibrant silver and deep blue, with occasional green to a tan, wall-panel gradient much like what Voyager was to become. Meanwhile, DS9 held a maroon and black kind of palette for me, with violet creeping in. More exciting and edgy. Does that make any sense to you?
Ok. Enough of that.
At the time this aired, I had a friend who considered only TOS Trek as "real Trek" and TNG-era as "Meh Trek." I remember him saying, "Why does TNG always wheel out the borg for season finales?" And I was like... "This is only the 2nd time. Even if you treat the Season 1 finale as kinda Borg-adjacent, that's still less than half." But, I guess he was expressing a sort of Borg fatigue. Sounds like a theme congruent with the upcoming downhill slide you're speaking of. Just an independent observation that apparently validates the idea, methinks.
This just reminded me how the idea of XBs was actually a really interesting, intriguing and totally wasted plot idea.
Season 1 of Picard was extremely frustrating.
I think as much as this two-parter ruined the Borg, it also ruined Lore. I've always found Lore quite a sympathetic villain, he's angry, he's resentful, he's basically psychopathic, but it does seem like there's something in him that's redeemable. The scene in the episode "Brothers" where he's clearly pretty upset to learn that Dr Soong is dying always sticks out for me to illustrate that. The way everyone, including Data, refuses to see Lore as a troubled person and instead as a malfunctioning piece of technology never sat right with me, because what does that imply about Data's own journey to have his personhood acknowledged? This two-parter was TNG at its most dumbed-down.
I need fanart of Data and Lore as Identical Twin Android Bounty Hunters.
Of all the puns and word play, you missed the most obvious in your closing. "This episode marked the beginning of the descent of the Borg into monsters of the week."
There was something comforting in the return of our favorite series in the fall. ST:TNG was the first TV series I recorded on my spiffy new 4-head, stereo video cassette recorder. Remember trying to decide "VHS or Beta"?
I remember shortly before Descent, Part II first aired, I read in a magazine somewhere a quote from Rick Berman on TNG's 7th season (I think it was in Entertainment Weekly). He said later in the season they would revisit Hugh and the leftover Borg on that planet. We obviously never got that episode - I wonder if it was one that never got off the brainstorming phase of episode ideas. While it would have been nice to finish Hugh's arc, I don't know what else they could have done with it. And the Borg would not have been the central antagonist either.
How did Data not get drummed out of Starfleet after this? This is the second time that somebody sent out a weird signal that messed with his android brain and made him go rogue. How does the robot have such terrible cyber-security? You think he would've installed a firewall after what happened in "Brothers".
An idea to make the borg scary again. You start the episode on a deepspace exploratory vessel. They have found a world home to a fallen advanced civilization. Through exploring the ruins They find some surviving holographic records of various news and propaganda broadcasts. It seem this world was at war with itself. Something about cyborgnetics vs automation vs natural evolution. You really only hear snippets but it reminds one of the officers of the genetics wars. There seems to be nation states and war lords fight some global conflict. In one of the propaganda holos in the background shows a warlord with some small cybernetic implants in her who we, the audience, recognize as the borg queen. As the ship is about to depart marking the planet as in need of further exploration they detect a borg sphere heading their way. Instead of running they decide the borg haven't been a real threat in years and nobody's heard anything since the events in Picard. They raise shields and prepare for an attack or attempted assimilation but the borg ship just rams them killing everyone. Fast forward a few years. A new ship following beacons left by the previous ship approaches the planet. They are a research following up on points on interest marked by the previous ship. They are increasingly concerned because they expected to pass the previous ship a week or two ago on its way back to federation space. They also haven't detected the next beacon after this. Odd but they always leave a departure heading in the beacons computer logs. Maybe it just took them awhile to find something else worth the research vessels time. They detect the ships debris as they approach the planet. No survivors detected or clues found but there is a faint signal from the surface. Maybe a life sign? They pickup the records from the beacon and see the same holos from earlier. They wonder if the other crew activated some defense grid or maybe the war isn't as ancient as originally believed. On the surface they find a survivor. An ensign who was fixing a glitch in an escape pod that was lucky thrown clear during the impact. All he remembers is a yellow alert before the explosion. Then he saw the borg sphere. It looked like it scanned the wreckage before leaving. After further investigation of the planet they find records to suggest the person we know as the borg queen was the last warlord standing in the war for this world. They find out that one of the factions, a pro cybernetics one, had decided to link themselves together. This solved their infighting and they started to spread. As the hive mind grew they became obsessed with peace through assimilation. The person who became the borg queen thought the many should empower the few, like herself, and adapted the borgs tech to her forces but she would retain control. This led to the destruction of this world and the war continued into space. They decide to head back with the information they had obtained. While trying to leave the sphere appears again this time from under a cloak. They have been waiting. They tractor beam the ship and board. While on the ship they ignore the crew and download their files like the did in thier first episode in tng. While the boarding is going on they are able to disable a drone, they all seemed to freeze for a moment right before but it vaporized itself as it fell. After the computer is downloaded the borg teleport away. The crew find a piece from the vaporized borg. Some kind of nural recorder. While the crew is trying to see if they can get anything valuable from the nural device the borg just hold them with their tractor beam. Not communicating or anything. They descover through the nural device that something they found in the ships database activated a piece of code in all the drones and sent it through the hive mind all at once. It translates simply to "She's dead."
(Ok, I kinda got myself in a corner and I'm getting sick of typing and using the nural device as catch all so speed round.)
They somehow get limited access to the collective and find out the true borg and the queens hive have both been fighting and assimilating civilizations for thousands of years trying to destroy they other. Now that she's dead, her disconnected hive can be brought into the fold and their perfection and peace can spread unhindered. Needing to get this information back to star fleet. The captain decides to try and destroy the tractor beam emitter and run while having a probe ready for launch with all the information they have and a live update some it can record everything up till the ship destruction if it comes to it. Right before they make thier attempt the engineer who's been monitoring the borg yells, "WAIT!" but its too late. They fire but the tractor beam is unaffected. Then the engineer says, "They were gonna let us go. They didn't see us worth assimilation at this point and not a threat. They have more important things to do apparently. " From weapons control. " Sir, I'm reading....impossible power readings......Sir....I think they're charging weapons. The Capt. orders all power to shields but the response back is a sullom , "Sir, at these power levels it won't matter." The Capt. replies softly, "Launch the probe.... Then we see the probe shoot off into space with a cloak activating right as the federation ship is destroyed in the background right before the borg disappear into warp.
Crusher’s role as acting captain in Descent also sets up a callback in a season 7 episode where she’s shown commanding the Enterprise’s night shift and serves as an inspiration for Troi to apply to rank up to Commander by taking the Bridge Officer Test
I guess I'm the only one who didn't like First Contact. I pretty much agree with your review on this episode, but First Contact was a terrible TNG movie. The elephant in the room is the Borg Queen. The whole point of the Borg is that they have no central leadership. That's why they created Locutis. If they always had a Queen, then what was the point of Locutis? Just say'n.
I actually don't totally hate this episode. Probably bc I saw it as a kid and it had Lore & the Borg. Admittedly not the best of reasons.
Lol, if that was Ensign Shives at the security desk, we're sure this would have all gone so much better....
22:19 why tf did you say slide and not descent??? It was RIGHT THERE
Crusher was a damn good captain. I think she could have helmed a show about a medical ship. I mean her commanding the Enterprise was the one time the writers utilized Gates McFadden to her fullest.
Having Cam and Tate bicker felt natural, that’s why it connected.
I thought that the strange shape of the Borg ship was supposed to be a hint that the Borg on this ship were different in some way. Not all the same and not all in one thought.
(of Lor) - "his association with the Borg feels random, and not all that well thought out"
Sir, your gift for understatement cannot be overstated.
I have a lot of problems with this episode, but the end of that one sentence pretty much sums it up.
Hugh's "sense of individuality" gained in I, Borg, existed for a day or two, before being reassimilated. Surely inconsequential since assimilation supposedly can wipe out a lifetime's worth of it.
Not well thought out, indeed.
I really don't like any of the TNG episodes that feature Lor. They just come across, to me, as way too contrived.
I was today years old when I learned that Brent Spiner actually does have a twin brother, Ron Spiner.
And that's the last we see of Hugh until 2020 when he starts to look a bit more like Dr. Morales on "Major Crimes".
geordi saying “still watching porn, huh?” in response to seeing data choke out a borg is genuinely funny i love the little comedy snipes
I will never understand the hate these episodes get. I think from the beginning that Data should have had more interaction with the Borg. It makes too much thematic sense. The Abdroid who is on a path of self discovery as an individual to understand humanity so as to join it and the faceless collective that lives to strip away choice from beings and replaces them bit by bit with machinery.
And I think they did well to follow up on the Hugh story, rather than leave that hanging. And the inclusion of Hugh to my mind, makes this a bit of a "side" story to the Borg in Trek. The affects of Hugh on his Cube doesn't have to reflect the wider Borg in the Galaxy. Also, Lore using the chip in some way against Data makes sense. I would agree with anyone that said the changes to Data feel rushed and his actions crossed some big lines, emotion chip or not.
I still think it's a really good two partner that brought together elements in the show that I for one naturally thought should freely mix. It felt, plotting wise, like when a comic book is running on all cylinders. This works for me, I dunno?
You have some excellent points. :) I don’t remember hating this episode. And I loved seeing Stephen Hawking in the poker game. That was EPIC at the time! Still an awesome legacy, in my nerdy opinion. :)
i think it’s the obviousness that people dislike. the borg is interesting because it contrasts human individuality. data is interesting because he contrasts human emotionality. the human element is, in my opinion, necessary for them to work as characters. both characters are meant to hold a mirror to humanity. when you pair them together, you just put two mirrors against each other with no subject to play against.
(lore is meant to contrast with data, as a kind of bizarro-mirror for humanity. he’s more of a foil to data rather than being a true contrast, but even then i do find stories strictly about the two to be lacking in a true subject)
moreover this plot is convoluted. lore introduces negative emotionality to data which effectively just changes his character traits, so you’re not truly watching for data’s sake. the borg has also been essentially changed, it’s a “side story” as you said. that doesn’t appeal to me at all. this is just some weird techno-cult.
what are we exploring here? i love data, truly, but he’s not a character i’m invested in in a biographical sense. the events of data’s life truly only matter to me as a viewer so long as they say something about humanity- this is true of every star trek story and character. if it isn’t doing that, i feel like it’s wasting my time. you watched this episode and felt it was firing on all cylinders (and i appreciate the comic-book logic of lore’s involvement, hugh coming back up), but i personally thought it was spinning its wheels.
You would think Picard would be as concerned if not more about the change to datas behavior as he is about the borg, just sayin
I remember watching this for the very first time on a late night re-run on BBC2 and was very excited to see the Borg again as a young Star Trek fan. On re-watch...it doesn't have the same appeal but I feel is a critical episode in Data's story to reach emotional awareness. I feel like deep down in his programming/soul he is so desperate to feel emotion that the negative side of him truly comes out and is preyed upon by Lore.
It even shows Lore manipulating his brother on that desperation in the scene where Lore tells him that the emotion chip even contains memories of their father. I do wish Dr. Soong did get to see Data achieve not only emotional awareness but his additions to the positronic world of Star Trek with helping Dr. Maddox and creating Lal and then even coming back to life in PIC. Data will always be my all-time favourite Star Trek character as TNG and beyond allowed me to grow up with Data, learning from his crew-mates and friends about the wider world of what it means to be human and understand humanity in the 24th century. Data rules and Lore droolz
I have to say, this is the first time I've thought about how Data gets his "morality" back and his two big thoughts are - murder my brother, and destroy the emotion chip I took off his corpse cause murdering him wasn't enough.
**Plinkett voice** Someday, Geordi...someday I'll plug this emotions chip into my brain and laugh at your jokes...
There is a very 1960s Batman-ish "What if LORE teamed up with the BORG?" component to this, and maybe that's also a nod to the "What if ROMULAN Tasha teamed up with the Duras sisters?" two part cliffhanger from previous seasons. It just reminded me of a Penguin and Joker team up complete with scenery chewing villains.
This is a weird episode of TNG for me because I remember the first half (especially the cliffhanger and the poker opening) so clearly, and yet I completely blank on the second half.
Oh, and such a missed opportunity for Data and Lore, they could've faced the Hollywood Blonds or the Nasty Boys for the WCW Tag Team belt...or the Steiner Brothers, Money Inc., or the Quebecers for the WWF Tag belt.
Nice video as always, Steve!
I disagree with you that this two-parter was the beginning of the end the Borg as a credible, fearsome threat, though. I would argue that that started the previous season in "I, Borg," where the Enterprise crew decides they can't hurt the poor widdle Borg because Hugh is just so damn ADORABLE.
(SPOILER ALERT: I've thought "I, Borg" was pretty dumb ever since I first watched it in 1992. In fact, I tend to agree with Admiral Nechayev in "Decent Part I": The Enterprise would've saved countless lives if they'd taken the Borg out when they had a chance. They're not a productive race. As portrayed on TNG up until this point, they create nothing and only exist to assimilate and destroy other sentient species, so I don't think the genocide argument really applies.)
The sheer hubris the producers had to use Zordon's command center in 1993 (when Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers was WHITE HOT) and think no one would notice always baffled me.
Thank you for calling this out. I feel vindicated.
Even when it came out, I thought this cliffhanger was a big nothingburger. In the good season-enders, there was some sort of believable peril- when the Borg made Locutus, the show wasn't so established that it would be obvious that they weren't going to get rid of Stewart. Here: will we lose Data to evil? We clearly won't. Will he kill Geordi? He clearly won't. The Borg Collective is scary- they represent loss of individuality, which is a conceptual threat. These are just a bunch of guys in rusting cyborg costumes standing around. The damning judgement was that I was an SF obsessed twentysomething when this came out, and I don't recall wondering "What's gonna happen?" for the whole summer. Even bad cliffhangers usually do that for me. And what was even descending, in "Descent", for that matter?
Okay, forget the Borg, I wanna see a spinoff series about Horan and Tait! Or even just a full episode. C'mon Lower Decks, don't let us down!
Identical twin, android bounty hunters? Are you kidding me? I'd watch 10 seasons of that shit!!
Brent Spiner always seemed to enjoy playing other characters & looked like he was really having fun with Lore but man those eps could be cringey. Btw, I will never forgive the writers of Picard for fridging Hugh & completely dropping the former Borg from the plot.
Subspace conduit, transwarp conduit....same dealie
I loved how Nechayev dressed Pickard down for him releasing Hugh back to collective without the virus. I thought it was bad decision when I watched "I,Borg" and I think it was bad decision to this day. Even from fan standpoint, all we would lose are ton of average Borg episodes which followed.
Descent made me feel some things😵💫. Particularly when Data was in his evil mode. It awakened some stuff in me😅.
As much as I love Spiner, Lor always gets on my nerves. Just so smarmy... Maybe that's the idea...
The big problem I had with Hugh was the idea that individuality would destroy the Borg. Literally everyone they assimilate has a sense of individuality and the Borg are experts at crushing that. Hugh’s anomalous behavior should have been noticed are “corrected” pretty quickly
Data was eviler than Lore.
Data and his co-operative Geordi, were Section 31 agents, who together with Sloan, made the greatest poker player ever, Worf, loose every game after, "The Emissary."
That's why Data had more evil than his innocent brother, Lore.
Descent Part II is a pretty good lower deck episode, maybe even the best of it's era of trek. It puts both the lower deck characters as well as Crusher into a fish-out-of-water situation and Crushers leadership enables both herself and the lower deckers to rise to the occasion. This episode is everything that TNG Disaster tried to be, but wasn't. While other lower deck episodes such as TNG Lower Decks and Voyagers Learning Curve and Good Shepherd focus heavily on the guest characters and have almost no development for the main cast.
In "I, Borg", I always thought that sending Hugh back to the Collective was unwise. We saw the result of that here. Better would have been to let him enjoy his identity within the Federation much as Voyager did with 7 of 9. Lesson learned I guess.
So, I think this 2 parter kinda sucks, it makes the Borg worse and totally spoils Lore, they shouldn't both be in the same episode.in the first place and they should have realized then when they brought back the Crystslline Entity, Lore takes attention away from other stuff and should have a more Lore focused final episode with character stuff as the focus. Lore coming back to Data after experiencing emotion and maybe being no longer Bad Guy but he regrets installing the chip and makes Data question his quest to be more human in amore serious way because he has a very literal example who.is now miserable for it, do some blah blah stuff with Geordie with how Data isn't Lore and they have different experiences and will handle emotions differently and then Lore does a B Plot sacrifice and his head is recovered along with the emotion chip. The Borg follow up with Hugh could have also been good, but I dot have a pitch for how. But combining those threads was weird. MAYBE Lore being assimilated by the Borg as a plot to combine the two maybe could have potential but would still be a bit much. Just a real flop of a 2 parter
I sort of liked Decent as a kid, but now I have the same issues as pointed out. Lore just feels like too much of a conman huckster that everyone shouldn't take seriously. There is too much sitting around killing time, and not enough payoff. The only bright shining part of these episodes is Crusher and crew on the Enterprise, that subplot worked great.... Of course the opening with Hawking remains a highlight too.
I remember part 2 was interrupted halfway through by a presidential speech about the US sending troops to Bosnia. My sister and I were so pissed!
I have to admit, the James Horan actor allusion to Suspicions completely passed me by. Really clever, TNG
Thankfully when this episode came out I was 12 so, I could enjoy it because I didn't tend to think about it too much....
I've been thinking a lot about Data/Lore episodes recently because I'm playing an android in a game of Mothership, which is a sci fi horror RPG. I was thinking about this one in particular because the fact that my character acts a lot like Data only with emotions came up during the last game.
I know that this series is called Retro Reviews, but I would LOVE to see the Prodigy Borg episode included.
Know what would have been a cool ending. They’re all in a staff debriefing.
Geordi: Data, why did you suddenly decide to stop the experiment on me.
Picard: oh because i rebooted his ethical program.
Data confused: . . . processing. . . No, my ethnical program is still not running.
They all look around the room at each other with astonished expressions. Cut.
TNG had its share of misses but this was the first time I remember feeling they dropped the ball entirely. If you're gonna do season-ending cliffhanger, you really gotta have more in your bag for the conclusion.
So, a maybe totally pointless question; who do you think is the series' best Admiral? Some of them are just there to look of a higher rank, and give the crew their weekly task. Some are just maliciously "evil Admirals, leaving us to wonder how they ever rose so high in rank, and others are, at the least, there to give Picard an order that he obviously won't want to do, but will then have to struggle to decide if he will, anyway, because it's his responsibility, or right if not best, or decide to follow his conscience/what's right, and hope that the rewards carry him past court marshal, or worse, while leaving us wondering how much utopia is a veneer, if the authority that speaks for the great Federation has to give these orders. Who do you think is the best one, as a character?
I imagine how things would have been different if the Voyager double episode 'The Scorpion' had been used instead of this one for the TGN cast.
9:05 missed an opportunity for a joke...that will no doubt age as badly as Morbius.
The first time I sat down and binged all of TNG on streaming I was really confused by these episodes because I thought I had seen every episode and didn’t remember these ones at all. The second time I binged all of TNG on streaming I was really confused by these episodes because I *knew* I had seen every episode and didn’t remember these at all.
God this episode is awful.
EDIT: I do agree that the Crusher subplot is pretty solid though.
By the time they showed this episode, I think that had overused the borg. They weren't scary any more. I think had it been written better, this episode could have made them more scary. After all, they were being controlled by Lore, who, while he appeared charming, did sacrifice the entire population of his planet to suit his own wants.
Lore also isn't written well in this episode. He comes across as annoying.
And here ive always blamed voyager for defanging the borg and stripping away the cosmic horror that made them compelling
Lore should have gotten his own sendoff without the Hugh and the borg stuff. A follow up to Hugh and a more independent Borg could also be an interesting story on its own but don't graft Lore to it. They should have learned that when they realized the crystalline entity deserved an episode.
Here's my better Lore finale: he returns to the enterprise for whatever reason and the emotion chip has made him depressed and miserable, he's not evil anymore but he can experience regret and embarrassment over things he's done and that can lead to Data having second thoughts about whether he should pursue humanity seeing the consequences on what I'd essentially his double. Geordie and him have a moment where Geordie explains thst Data lived a different life and has different memories than Lore which make them different and maybe do a human metaphor where some previously seen character we never see again is a triplet and all three are.totally different people or something along those lines. Lore does a sacrifice in service of the Danger B Plot and his emotion chip.is recovered. I've got nothing for a Hugh follow up
"But what if the moral thing to do wasn't the right thing to do... Jesus is *this* what they do over at Deep Space Nine?" 😂
I wanted to like Descent more than I did because they were trying to do a better Nazi episode than Patterns of Force. But it didn't work.😢
starfleet most have some really strict confidentiality rules concerning higher ranking officers
This was a surprisingly disappointing episode for me, on paper it sounded great but the execution and pacing really underwhelmed me
Not related to this video, but I would love to see your reaction/analysis of some other great scifi from the era, namely Farscape and Babylon 5.
I can't believe Steve got through the whole final scene without mentioning the actor stealing the show. He was in the middle of one of the shots used as an example for goodness sake! Spot deserves better, Steve. For shame.
This definitely comes off as a half baked idea that could have actually been good. The metaphor of the Borg representing cults or political movements and the willingness some people have to surrender to them because misinformation makes them think they just can't anymore is a good theme and was hinted at in the earlier Borg episodes.