Fridge / Star Trek: Picard

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Fridge Brilliance

Season 1

• The explanation that Starfleet abandoned Romulans to their own fate due to domestic politics after the synth attack on Mars serves as a far better justification for Nero's hatred towards the Federation than Spock being a tad too late.
• Picard notes that the reporter's analogy, comparing the evacuation of Romulus to the building of the pyramids, is off-base because the pyramids were mostly an example of hubris, and he suggests Dunkirk as a better analogy. While better, that analogy is also flawed as it involved the evacuation of one's own people in the face of an attacking enemy, while the reporter had already framed the Romulans as being the enemy of the Federation. Of course, by the 24th century, World War II is not nearly as noteworthy as it would be to a 21st century audience, especially with the Eugenics Wars, First Contact, and numerous interstellar conflicts in between. Picard, established as a noted historian, was baiting the reporter, setting her up so he could shut her down by pointing out that she just didn't care enough to know what he was even talking about, but too proud to admit that she didn't know.
  • Why would Picard reference Dunkirk, anyway, if those events are much farther removed from his timeframe? Because he's French.
  • The "flaw" in Picard's analogy is part of the point. After Richter framed the Romulans as the "enemy," Picard comparing their evacuation to Dunkirk lets everyone (or at least those who know what Dunkirk is) know that Picard sees the Romulans first as people, and the planetary disaster as the actual enemy in that situation. The opponents of the evacuation regarded the Romulans as enemies above all, and therefore treated them as expendable.
• When the FNN reporter interviews Picard, she refers to the Romulans as "the Federation's oldest enemy." A simple observation — with a few major takeaways.
  • For one thing, it's literally true within the Trek timeline, as The Federation was formed as a response to Romulan aggression, but it's also a meta-reference to the fact that the Romulans were the first major villains featured in TOS, shortly before the Klingons and long before TNG/DS9-era adversaries like the Cardassians, the Ferengi, the Borg, and the Dominion.
  • Secondly, she refers to the Romulans as the Federation's oldest enemy and not ENT-era villains the Suliban and the Xindi. That's because they were enemies of United Earth before the Federation existed, but this emnity didn't carry over to the Federation because the wars against both ended long before 2161. Alternatively, they had already joined the Federation by this point and were no longer enemies; one of the anecdotes Daniels offered to Archer about the Temporal Cold War did mention that both the Xindi and the Klingons would join by the 26th Century.
• Picard's departure from Starfleet mirrors that of Philippa Louvois, way back in the second-season TNG episode "Measure of a Man." While she insists Starfleet gave her no choice but to leave, Picard insists she left because of her own stubborn pride. Indeed, later on in the same episode, it is revealed that Bruce Maddox, another character from the same episode, may be involved in the plot.
  • Admiral Clancy's comments when Picard requests to be reinstated would seem to back this interpretation, accusing his stance at the time as being Honor Before Reason, with over a dozen members of the Federation threatening to secede if they continued to help the Romulans.
• In "The Drumhead", Insane Admiral Satie persecuted Simon Tarses for claiming to be part-Vulcan when he was actually part-Romulan. Since he was basically an eager Nice Guy who made a mistake, this was portrayed as a Very Bad Thing. Now, however, it's revealed that a Romulan cabal called the Zhat Vash (basically the Tal Shiar, but even more sinister) has infiltrated Starfleet, with one of their agents posing as a Vulcan. Satie's paranoia is suddenly a case of Right for the Wrong Reasons, since she had no knowledge of the Zhat Vash at the time.
• Starfleet Command's decision not to help the Romulans in the face of their oncoming catastrophe also makes historical sense in the fact that the Federation, and its short-lived precursor, the Coalition of Planets, were originally formed as a response to Romulan aggression and then outright (although off-screen) interstellar warfare. It makes some sense, irrational as it is, that multiple member species would be averse to helping out the foundational enemies of their union — especially those which have been members since early on in the Federation's history, when the Romulan War was not so distant a memory.
• Admiral Clancy's justification of preserving the Federation by refusing the Romulans aid, sounds like a dark version of Spock's maxim "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Ironic, considering Spock attempted a reunion between Vulcans and Romulans.
• So far we have seen two Zhat Vash operatives serving in Starfleet, and both have appeared with crooked rank pips at least once. While this might just be a wardrobe error due to the pips having only one pin holding them in place rather than two or more, it could also be a visual pun, because they're crooked officers.
• Picard's house being equipped with a security system, having two former Tal Shiar officers as employees and having weapons stashed makes a lot of sense when you realize that Picard has made a lot of enemies and remains a high-profile figure.
  • Having weapons stashed in various handy places also makes sense given the existence of transporters which would allow attackers to appear anywhere with only moments of warning.
  • In a similar vein, Riker's woodland cabin on Nepenthe has its own high-tech security. He and Troi have made at least as many enemies as Picard.
    • Their house also has a shield system to prevent transports. It's probable that Picard also has one.
• It's probably completely unintentional, but it actually makes sense that Narissa's pseudonym, as a fake Starfleet officer and aide to Commodore Oh, was Lieutenant "Rizzo." After all, she was definitely a rat in Starfleet.
• It's blatantly obvious that Elnor's character was inspired by Legolas and Elrond from The Lord of the Rings, and "Elnor" in Sindarin translates as "Star-Run," which brings to mind "Star-Trek"! Once Elnor joins Picard's crew and La Sirena travels at warp speed from one solar system to another, he's indeed "running" (or "trekking") from star to star. Tolkien's Elves have a special connection to the stars, and Romulans are Space Elves.
• So why does Elnor look like he had just stepped out of a Wuxia movie (i.e. martial arts expert with an Asian-style sword, Warrior Monk robe and Samurai Ponytail)? Because the Romulans were loosely based on Communist China, and since Elnor was conceived to be a cool, badass character who already possessed some High Fantasy elements (as noted in the above entry), it would be natural to also associate him with a genre that is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Imperial China. Evan Evagora has noticed the Asian influence on Elnor.
• It's established in episode 3 that Romulans with cranial ridges hail from the northern part of Romulus, implying that those with smooth foreheads are from the south of the planet. Elnor falls into the category, which makes sense considering where his actor is from.
• Detailed below in the Fridge Horror section, if one knows the full history of Seven of Nine and Icheb, the gravity of his death, and all its ironic horror, adds new meaning to Seven's need for revenge, and makes it so much more satisfying when she gets it.
• Seven of Nine ending up as a vigilante makes perfect sense when you consider the people most important in her life. First off, her parents defied Starfleet and played by their own rules, so it's in her blood. Her experience with the Borg would also no doubt leave her with a contempt for conformity. She spent her first four years out of the Collective mentored by Captain Janeway, who played by her own rules, and among a crew that was one quarter former Maquis. Her first real relationship (outside Unimatrix Zero) was with a former Maquis captain. Really, it would be more of a surprise of Seven didn't rebel against Starfleet when it took the corrupt path it did.
• Part of the horror of Bjayzl's xB chopshop vivisection of Icheb is the casual way that the butcher is carving him up, having completely depersonalized the man screaming on the operating table. So you'd think that Bjayzl referring to Seven as "Annika," her birth name, might come across as being a little more personal, right? Except, on top of the fact that it's clearly Bjayzl twisting the knife of what had obviously been a very close relationship that she'd used to get access to the Borg tech in Icheb's body (and who knows how many others)... It's also Bjayzl dehumanizing Seven — Seven had chosen to call herself "Seven of Nine" over "Annika." Indeed, it was one of her first choices as an individual after Voyager severed her from the Collective. Instead of acknowledging her as the person she has chosen to be, Bjayzl is referring to her with the name of who Seven had been and no longer accepted. One could easily see applicability to a trans person being deadnamed.
  • The applicability is increased come season three, when Seven is now serving as the first officer of the USS Titan... and her captain insists that she refer to herself as "Commander Annika Hansen," in effect telling her that he will only accept her deadname, her rejected self, rather than her chosen identity.
• In a sense, the Romulan prophecy may already have basis, in microcosm, in established Trek lore: the idea is that when artificial intelligence is developed, it always follows the pattern of two twins, one of whom will summon a higher life form to kill all organic life. The prophecy was referring to the higher synths, but we already saw a miniature version of this play out on Omicron Theta, when Lore called down the Crystalline Entity. Lore was the Destroyer of that pair of androids.
• The scene where Picard and Jurati create fake versions of La Sirena to fool the Romulans shows that despite being best known as a diplomat, Picard is still a brilliant tactician. He makes it a point to remind Jurati to not merely have the copies appear, but to appear as if they've just warped in as real ships would have to do.
• Regarding A.I. Soong and Data: Altan was a human who built an android body to grant himself immortality, while his brother Data was an android who chose to die as his last step to becoming a mortal human. Both brothers gave up their chances at immortality to save Picard.
• Throughout the series, there has been a sort of Running Gag of people complaining about replicators, or claiming that naturally grown food is better. This ongoing discussion topic is a metaphor for how society views synths like Soji and Data and xBs like Hugh and Seven.
  • In "Remembrance," Dahj's boyfriend complains about the limited menu selection of her replicator.
  • In "Maps and Legends," the workers at Utopia Planitia complain about the replicated "brown sticky shit".
  • In "The End is the Beginning," Zhaban, offering food to Picard for the latter's trip, talks about Madame Arnaud's terrine d'oie (goose terrine) being better than any replicated alternative. (Both this and the example at Dahj's apartment immediately precede a surprise attack by baddies, incidentally.)
  • In "Stardust City Rag", we see a video of Jurati and Maddox debating his decision to replicate all of the raw ingredients to mix and bake chocolate chip cookies instead of just replicating the cookies.
  • In "Nepenthe", Troi and Soji discuss the naturally-grown tomatoes, and Soji asks if the tomatoes being real make them better. Troi responds with a story about how her and Riker's firstborn son died of a rare disease, citing this as an example that "real" isn't always better.
  • The topic plays out in other ways as well, such as the disdain that Captain Rios has for (most of) his emergency holograms (he seems to like Emmet well enough, but even then, he only keeps the ETH around as long as they're in a Space Battle).
• Throughout the first season, we get references to a Romulan legend about two sisters, one who dies, and one who lives, with the latter being the one to bring on the End Times. At first, this seems to apply to Dahj and Soji, but it's later implied that it actually refers to Jana and Sutra. Beyond that though, there are many cases on the show of pairs of siblings where one lives and one dies:
  • Thad and Kestra Troi-Riker
  • Saga and Arcana
  • Narissa and Narek
  • Altan Inigo Soong and Data
  • Ultimately, Picard gets to be both in one, which could be taken to mean that despite what prophecy says, you always have a choice in your own fate. This is both metaphorically, as he has spent his twilight years idling about waiting to die before suddenly finding something to live for, and literally, dying of natural causes during the denouement and being given a new lease on life via an android body.
• The entire show has a running theme of parenthood, specifically parents who have failed their children somehow.
  • Dahj and Soji are in their predicaments because of the secret mission Maddox sent them on.
  • Elnor is an orphan who saw Picard as a surrogate father figure, and ended up feeling abandoned when Picard retired to Earth instead of returning for him. The Qowat Milat nuns raise him as one of their own, but they will not fully accept him due to his gender.
  • Seven was unable to save her surrogate son Icheb from the terrible fate he met because of her misplaced trust in Bjayzl.
  • Raffi's relationship with her own son failed because of her obsession with proving her theories about a Romulan conspiracy true.
  • Riker and Troi, despite their best efforts, were unable to save their son Thad after he contracts a rare disease.
  • Narek and Narissa are orphans much like Elnor, only they have been recruited into a doomsday cult. The closest thing to a parent they have is Ramdha, who was already desperately insane before she was assimilated by the Borg.
  • Eventually, it's made clear that Picard loved Data like a son, and deeply regretted that Data sacrificed his life to save Picard.
• Bruce Maddox's last words to Agnes are an expression of triumph at the work he accomplished, with help from both Agnes and Soong. At first, the logical meaning of his words is that he successfully built upon the work of Noonian Soong, but after watching "Et In Arcadia Ego", it turns out to be foreshadowing the fact that There Is Another Soong: Noonian's son, Altan.
• Picard's life is the ultimate refutation of the all or nothing attitude of the Zhat Vash and the ancient synth alliance. He's been dear friends and crewmates with one android, surrogate father to another, and ends up as the perfect synthesis of biological and technological life after his mind is transferred to an android body. He's living proof of the possibility for peaceful coexistence between synths and organics.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Prodigy add more context to both the synth ban and the Federation's decision to abort the relocation. They were still rebuilding from the Dominion War when they had to start saving the Romulans — and while that was going on, they had to deal with the AI threats of Peanut Hamper, AGIMUS, Badgey, the Aledo and its sister ships (which nearly destroyed Douglas Station and the Van Citters), and the Living Construct on the Protostar which made dozens of Starfleet ships tear each other apart. The Synth Rebellion was simply the last straw in a Trauma Conga Line that damn near broke Starfleet as a whole.

Season 2

• When Robert Picard was introduced, it was clear that he considered himself The Dutiful Son for staying in France to manage his father's vineyard and resented Jean-Luc for leaving, acting as though he'd abandoned his family. However, the reveal that their father may have been outright abusive casts a whole new light on Robert's attitude. Now he comes across as a "Well Done, Son" Guy who followed in Maurice's footsteps out of desperation for approval while resenting Jean-Luc for charting his own destiny away from Maurice's control.
  • As the season goes on, we learn the much more complicated element of the Picard family - Jean-Luc unlocked the door to her room and Yvette went to the solarium and killed herself. This only adds to the hard feelings between brothers, as it means that Robert was away and never got to say any kind of goodbye.
• Seven and Raffi both chew out Picard for letting Elnor die instead of letting Rios terminate the Borg Queen, in spite of needing her in the first place. Lest we forget, sacrificing a crew member is a hard call every Starfleet Captain has to make when the going gets tough—they have the entire Kobayashi Maru test, and an entire TNG episode subplot was given to Troi where she undergoes the same trial for her commander's exam. It obviously hurts Picard more than he cares to admit, given that Elnor is like a son to him, but his time on the Enterprise is still with him, along with its harshest lesson. Seven was very much the rebel of Voyager (and why she left Starfleet after the Delta Quadrant trip) and trying to regain the humanity she had lost to the Borg (not to mention she had to put down Icheb), while Raffi being a mother herself, in spite of more than likely having undergone that same test (seeing that she's a commander), couldn't bear to cross that line for someone she deeply cared for.
• Considering how much In Spite of a Nail there is in the "Confederation of Earth" timeline (Picard, Raffi, Seven/Annika, Jurati, and Rios all end up being born and all end up having similar careers to their main-timeline equivalents.) its possible something akin to the events of Voyager, and more specifically the decimation of the Borg transwarp network, happened in that timeline too, just without Seven of Nine. If that were the case, it would explain how the Confederation managed to all-but eradicate the Borg despite having the same resources and technological knowledge of the main timeline Federation - They were simply a lot more thorough and ruthless in pressing their advantage.
  • Another factor is possible: if Confederation Voyager never ended up in the Delta Quadrant, then Species 8472 was likely able to continue curb-stomping the Borg, thereby doing most of the work for the humans. Given that Prime Voyager was able to figure out how to attack and drive back 8472, the more advanced and violent Confederation was likely able to come in, finish off the severely weakened Borg, then either exterminate 8472 or drive them back into fluidic space and keep them out of our galaxy.
    • Also, Species 8472 could be the reason that the Borg die in the Star Trek TNG Episode "Parallels" episode in which there was mentioned that there was a version of the Federation that lost the battle at Wolf-359. Without the Federation and Janeway, there is no one to give the Borg the weapon that they use to defeat them, since they can't assimilate their species, and their ships can defeat the borg cubes.
• Seven's ability to drive a car in 2024 (albeit not very well) makes a little more sense when you remember Tom Paris and his love for the past, including multiple references to his fondness for 20th century cars. It's possible that she took part in a holodeck programs that involved driving, as she was seen going into the holodeck with him a handful of times while trying to learn how to socialize. Tom did seem to enjoy showing his friends how to use old tech, like teaching B'Elanna how to use the dials, antenna and remote for an old TV in one episode.
• Picard finding Alt-Guinan as a grouchy cynic makes sense because, in this timeline, "Time's Arrow" didn't take place. Picard wouldn't have traveled back from the 24th Century to the 1890s and met Guinan, and she thus wouldn't have known that humanity makes it to a bright future in the 24th Century through the darkness of the 20th and first half of the 21st centuries. Alt-Guinan thus has no reason to feel optimistic or have anything to counteract her growing disgust with humanity.
• It's no wonder the Confederacy is acting like they're the superior beings of the universe considering that Adam Soong, its founder, is a eugenicist. He's following the teachings of Khan, a being who believed himself to be the superior of everyone! Unfortunately, this is one reality where that line of thought became standard amongst humanity.
  • This also adds Fridge Brilliance to how the Confederation was able to defeat so many other galactic powers. In Enterprise, we saw the Klingons suffering from a plague so bad they were ready to sterilize a colony, and that virus was an accidental by-product of Arik Soong's Augment experiments. With a similarly brilliant and even more ruthless eugenicist at their head, and absolutely none of the Federation's morals, they almost certainly would have attacked with genetic and biological weapons. If Arik Soong's work could create such an extreme plague by accident, imagine what Adam Soong and his followers could do with one that's deliberately designed to exterminate aliens.
• In "Monsters", FBI Agent Wells tracks Picard down and arrests him and Guinan. It's actually not that big of a shock when you consider that he and his crew have been running around a city with extensive security cameras. In the few days they've been in Los Angles, Rios had gotten arrested by ICE and photographed. Seven and Raffi had stolen an LAPD Cruiser and hacked their computer network, then intercepted a DHS transport and broke Rios out of ICE custody. Picard and company had crashed a secure gala. Picard had gotten hit by a car and beamed onto a public street. Almost all of it happened in front of cameras that are connected to State and Federal government agencies that use facial recognition. Bottom line: you go running around a city breaking into and hacking stuff and you're going to get unwanted attention.
  • Contrast their situation with the "The Voyage Home", which took place in 1986 San Francisco. Kirk's crew were on foot almost all the time using their transporter far less and at shorter distances, kept a much lower profile and had much clearer objectives. They only ran into trouble when they couldn't beam out of the USN Enterprise quickly enough and had to infiltrate Mercy Hospital to rescue Chekov. By the time the police did get involved, they had everything they needed and immediately went on their way to rescue George and Gracie and back to the 23rd century. This was also decades before the Internet, smartphones and surveillance technologies became ubiquitous along with politics related to immigration—so they had a lot more freedom to move around without arousing suspicion. Well, at least until Chekhov started asking after "new-clee-ar wessels."
• Adam Soong being a brilliant eugenicist, capable of cloning, and incredibly worried about his legacy, could explain why the Soongs are so similar. Adam doesn't seem to have children or a spouse, and neither did Arik, the other Soong we've seen who was obsessed with genetics. Maybe there is so little difference between the Soong men because there isn't another parent to add new genes to the mix; they're a series of clone "children" created in an effort to preserve the legacy and continue the work of Adam, and later Arik.
  • Alternatively, Adam and/or Arik engineered their genome to be dominant, so that any male children in their bloodline would be guaranteed to come out like them. That would explain why even Altan Soong, who seems to definitively be an actual natural-born child of Noonian, follows the trend.
• In the version of 2401 seen in "Penance", the captive Borg Queen takes an immediate interest in Agnes Jurati. The Queen has "trans-temporal awareness": she can hear echoes of versions of herself from other timelines. By the end of the season, we know that Jurati is a version of the Borg Queen in the prime universe. The whole reason why the Borg Queen takes an interest in her—why she has such faith in Jurati's "potential"—is because she knows all along that Agnes is destined to become like her.
• Q's quip to Adam about being a hostage to things we love doesn't just apply to Adam, but more literally to Kore. And what does Q do for Kore but free her of her love for her father?
  Q: We're all hostages to what we love. The only way to truly be free is to love nothing. How meaningless would that be?
  • But Q doesn't leave Kore with nothing to love. As soon as she is free of Adam and his influence, Wesley Crusher arrives to recruit her and give her life new purpose, something Q likely expected to happen.
• In "Hide and Seek", Starfleet didn't allow Seven to join them because of her past as a Borg whereas Icheb was and Picard stayed until he retired seems like a series continuity error. However, Icheb was much younger and was released from the collective not long after he was assimilated. He was later revealed to be a living weapon genetically engineered to cripple the Borg. Picard was only held by the Borg for a week at most and not only did he have friends in Starfleet who vouched for him but also had lent a hand in defeating them twice. On the other hand, Seven had a history of leaving Voyager, disobeying orders and causing problems in her early years. She also still retained most of her Borg implants including her neuro transceiver, making her more of a security risk.
  • Another potential point in favour of Icheb being allowed to join Starfleet was that he made the call to begin training while still in the Delta Quadrant, a few decades away from Earth. He would have had about a year of the Academy course under his belt, by the time Voyager returned. Seven didn’t try to join until after they returned to the Alpha Quadrant, so perhaps Starfleet was prepared to take a chance on Icheb but not her.
  • It might also be as simple as Seven following Janeway's tendency to martyr herself for those in her crew - if Starfleet would accept only one XB at the time, and with Seven seeing Icheb as her surrogate son, it's easy to see how she'd decide that giving him this chance mattered more than taking it herself, that she had no intention of joining when it would mean he couldn't. And rather than have Janeway put her rank and reputation on the line to fight this blatantly unfair policy, Seven capitulated in the name of giving Icheb his best chance. Which just makes it leading to his death on the chop shop slab all the worse.

Season 3

• Captain Shaw comes off as decidedly uncaptain-like compared to the Starfleet captains we're used to seeing, being stiff, rigid in following proper protocol, and not hiding his prejudice for ex-Borg like Seven and Picard. But considering he likely comes from the generation of officers that came up the ranks during and after The Dominion War, it wouldn't be surprising if Starfleet put a higher value on promoting more conservative-minded officers who were better inclined to follow orders and enforce regulations than on idealistic paragons like Picard who would be willing to break the rules if it went against their conscience.
  • "No Win Scenario" clarifies that Shaw's attitude towards Picard and Seven is rooted in his experience as an ensign at Wolf 359. He was one of ten survivors from the USS Constance and Picard's presence unfortunately is a trigger for his PTSD. He also admits that somewhere along the way he just became a Jerkass.
  • Shaw's backstory explains his attitude towards Riker and Picard: He mocks their past "adventures", rejects their plans as much as possible, and even goes so far as to insult Riker's taste in music and Chateau Picard. He's essentially a Red Shirt who survived long enough to be promoted to captain, and understandably sees himself as a victim of the Enterprise-D's insane plans. In "Imposter," he recites several of their screwups, as if he memorized them to justify his adherence to protocol and set himself as distinct from them as possible.
  • "Bounty" reveals another reason why Shaw would be so familiar with Picard and Riker's misadventures despite disliking them so much: He is a huge fan of legendary engineer Commodore Geordi La Forge, and his heroics are tightly intertwined with those misadventures.

• Given the sheer number of high-ranking & highly-decorated Starfleet officers who’ve gone bad in the history of the franchise, Captain Shaw is rightfully suspicious when two legends show up on his ship under questionable circumstances.
  • His suspicion is only further justified in hindsight when it is revealed that Starfleet has been compromised by Changeling infiltrators, although Picard and Riker are not part of that plot but rather unwittingly on the trail of it.

• Odo being the one to warn Worf about the Dominion Splinter Faction attacking Starfleet makes plenty of sense besides the two being old comrades from Deep Space Nine. Odo worked with the Federation, and he was the one who ended the Dominion War, so Starfleet would be far more willing to take his word. Plus, Odo's time on the station taught him many a trick about subterfuge, so he would be the best suited to deliver the message quickly and discreetly.

• When it turns out that there's a Changeling on the Titan, Shaw and Seven discuss tactics like the Imposter Exposing Test before deciding to scan for residue, but they never mention one method: blood screenings. Why not? Because, as DS9 demonstrated multiple times, it doesn't work. Starfleet wised up and abandoned it.

• Seven ends up being the Audience Surrogate so Shaw can explain changelings to her. She is an ideal candidate for this, because she is the only established character on this show who missed the Dominion War, having spent the duration of it in the Delta Quadrant. By the time she made it back to the Alpha Quadrant, they would have been far down on her list of priorities to learn about.

• Why didn't Worf get any of his old Deep Space Nine comrades involved, considering they have the most experience in dealing with The Dominion and were crucial to their defeat? Because most of them aren't on the station anymore aside from Kira, Quark, Jake, Ezri, Bashir, and Morn—and chances are the Dominion replaced them first so they could take out the people responsible for their factions' defeat. Miles O'Brien returned to Earth to teach at Starfleet Academy (and has likely been compromised), Odo's still in the Great Link trying to keep word from getting out about the splinter faction's plot, Garak is still leading the efforts to rebuild Cardassia, Rom is the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi, Nog likely had already been compromised seeing as he's an active Starfleet officer, and Martok is the Chancellor of the Klingon Empire. And as far as canon is concerned, Sisko hasn't come back yet—and its doubtful that the Dominion would be eager to take the face of the man who beat them, or at least avoid doing so without raising suspicion. At least with Seven's attempts to contact Tuvok, she probably thought the Dominion may not be as aware of her old crew given that Voyager was stuck in the Delta Quadrant throughout the whole war.

• The Reveal that Vadic and her fellow Changelings are a new breed that's better at imitating Solids provides an In-Universe explanation for the Art Evolution when one of them reverts to their liquid form, and ends up being a bit of surprise Foreshadowing.

• It is easy to think of all sorts of nefarious purposes that Section 31 would have for collecting the remains of famous Starfleet captains, but look at all the chaos that ensued because Spock's remains were left unaccounted for after his death in the Mutara Nebula. It nearly caused an interstellar war. It's possible that they are just collecting them for safekeeping because they are all such Weirdness Magnets.

• Seeing the Enterprise-D back in service, it makes sense why Geordi took the job as the head of the Fleet Museum—he wanted to restore the old girl himself. Who knows the ship better than her old Chief Engineer?
  • The Bridge is back to its season 2-7 configuaration as opposed to the one it had in Generations with extra consoles and seats, out of universe to make the flaws of the TV-designed set less obvious on film. While out of universe it's probably for nostalgia's sake, in universe there's an explanation too. Bridges are modular units that can be swapped out so Geordi probably just located an older model unused Galaxy class Bridge that the upgraded ships weren't using, possible even the original one from the Enterprise and swapped it back in. It was supposed to be a museum piece, so it both didn't need to be tactically up to date and the older module would fit it better as a piece of history.
  • Professor Moriarty's fate after "Ship In A Bottle" was uncertain after Generations, with many fearing the possibility that he'd been destroyed in the stardrive section. "Vox" implies that when Geordi got the saucer section back, he found Moriarty too. In "Elementary, Dear Data", Geordi accidentally gave him life, and it looks like in Picard, he saved him, too.
  • One could also assume that part of the reason that there was an open space at the fleet museum - as well as the models of the Enterprise-D at Ten Forward - is because the old girl was meant to be unveiled as part of the celebrations for Frontier Day.

• The Enterprise-D's less-than-flattering nickname of "the fat one" becomes this when one recalls the old saying, "It ain't over 'till the fat lady sings". By the looks of it, she's got one heck of a final verse for us in the finale!

• Why was the Enterprise-D/E crew so chipper considering the Borg assimilated their children? Because they got their first child back: the Enterprise-D, restored to her original glory. And if she was saved, they know that the eldest child in their family is going to get its younger "siblings" back, no matter what it takes. Risk is their business, and no one else can overcome impossible odds better than a ship named Enterprise.

• Given that the alterations to the transporter architecture which allowed Borg infection were pretty simple (one long line of code) why didn't the Borg Queen have the rogue Founders introduce it Federation-wide? To civilian as well as Starfleet transporter systems? She could have dotted the Federation with relatively cheap and cheerful subspace relays to carry the trigger-signal from the Borg cube and assimilated the bulk of the entire Federation in one action. The answer is that she didn't want to assimilate the Federation. She wanted to take Starfleet, the organization that had stymied and ultimately destroyed the Collective, and turn it into an instrument of genocide that the Federation could see coming but do nothing to halt. She didn't want to defeat the Federation so much as she wanted a long, drawn-out and monstrous revenge on STARFLEET.
  • The renegade Founders were still using by the Dominon's playbook. Changelings had manipulated the Romulan Tal Shiar and the Cardassian Obsidian Order into a Curb-Stomp Battle and egged the Klingons into attacking Cardassia. The rogues wanted to destroy Starfleet as revenge for their torture at the hands of Section 31 and with Starfleet in shambles the Dominion wins. So they manipulate those in power and their armed forces, just like they did during the Dominion War. It's likely the Borg Queen used the renegades because the idea of corrupting Starfleet was too good for them to pass up.
  • The Queen herself says she's no longer interested in assimilation, but annihilation, indicating this is all her Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum.

• After the shocking twist ending to 'Vox', viewers may feel that the Borg went down to final defeat a bit easy, even anti-climactically, but 'The Last Generation' makes it clear that this isn't the fearsome and terrifying Borg Collective of the past, with its trillions of drones, hundreds of unstoppable cubes and a Hive Mind that allowed near instantaneous adaptation to any threat. Voyager's last episode really did destroy that Borg, what we're left with here is an insane and vengeful Queen with one semi-functional cube and a handful of functional drones. Her intricately plotted scheme had so many failure points it's amazing that it came off as well as it did, and even then it meant that the vast majority of Borg existent in the galaxy (other than Jurati's renegade Collective) are the assimilated Starfleet personnel and their ships, and they were focused totally on the extermination of life on Earth. Once the Queen's un-Borglike need for personal revenge had allowed the Enterprise crew into the cube, she simply didn't have the resources or systems to react once they started blowing stuff up.
  • Additionally, it would seem like the Borg Queen's new philosophy of evolution over assimilation would seem horribly out-of-character for the Borg to the point of alarm and to a degree, it is correct — but another reason why the Borg have not attempted to replenish their numbers until now is that they physically can't thanks to Janeway's virus, as the old Borg DNA derived from the core hive is severely polluted and designed to die out and thus any new drones created through their tried-and-true method would suffer the same fate as the remaining drones. This also would explain why they sought out Picard's DNA and Jack compared to other former Borg and their children because their Borg-altered genes are wholly untouched by Janeway's virus (and in the case of the latter, Jack is presumably the only one young enough to serve as the transmitter due to the age discrepancy of other second-generation Borg) while allows them to serve as the basis for a new Collective thereby, as the Queen herself says, fulfilling the Borg philosophy through evolution instead of assimilation.

• It might seem to strain credibility that Jack Crusher could advance so quickly through Starfleet Academy and Seven get a posting to command the new Starfleet flagship, but the Borg Infection hit every Starfleet ship, installation and organization at once. The likelihood is that the vast majority of Starfleet personnel over the age of around 25 (or whatever the equivalent age is for non-human members) were just murdered en masse. The surviving senior officers have probably been speed promoting everyone they can to make up for the deficit, and experienced spacefarers like Jack and proven commanders like Seven would be singled out for plum roles just out of necessity.
  • Even if you assume a more optimistic scenario, that many ground-based officers were able to get to safety and that anyone outside the Sol system was fine, chances still are that the overwhelming majority of the captain and executive officer corps were assassinated if they weren't in Changeling captivity.
  • Even then, Jack winds up only being assigned as "special counselor" to the more seasoned Captain Seven of Nine. Skill and nepotism can only take someone so young and inexperience with a command structure so far in an institution with a strict military hierarchy.
    • It's highly likely that every ship in Starfleet is being assigned a special counsellor. The vast majority of crewmen and officers are going to be young people stuck with the memories of their time as Borg drones, with all of the possibilities for PTSD, destructive guilt and second-guessing that implies. Starfleet doesn't have the luxury of waiting around for everyone to work out their issues, so special counsellors will be very important to the smooth running of the Fleet. The pairing of Jack (the most 'guilty' drone of all) with the mature ex-drone Captain Seven on board the Federation's flagship probably struck the Commissioning Board as entirely logical.

• Data's character arc has followed him through his quest to understand what it is to be human, and to get as close to that as he can. By the end of the series, he has been transplanted into a biosynthetic golem and merged with his evil brother, Lore, and come out as an excitable, silly, and slightly sardonic, far more human than he has ever been before. Meanwhile, Picard has faced his mortality, dealt with the grief of growing into old age at the expense of Data's original sacrifice, also been transplanted into a biosynthetic golem, and largely come to terms with the fact that many see Jean-Luc Picard and Locutus of Borg as one-and-the-same. The two characters have met in the middle and serve as foils to each other.

• The use of an archival voice clip of Majel Barrett is the reason out of universe for the Enterprise-D computer referring to Picard as "Captain," rather than his retirement rank of Admiral, but it also makes sense in universe - the D was selected for this because it's not connected to the fleet network, which means its computer systems haven't been updated since the crash on Veridian III, when Picard WAS still just a captain.

• One of the reasons that the staff, as well as Patrick Stewart resisted bringing back the full TNG cast until the final season, was because they feared that it would turn into a reunion show for nostalgia's sake. But In-Universe, there was a much more heartbreaking reason it took so long for them to get back together: Picard himself. Season 2 revealed his mother committed suicide, and he was so traumatized from the experience that he distanced himself from the painful memory, alienated himself from his father and brother, and ran off to join Starfleet rather than face the past. His unwillingness to form a commitment and such long-term connections kept him at a distance from his senior staff right up until "All Good Things", and he suffered from numerous other tragedies (i.e. the death of Tasha Yar, his assimilation into The Borg, the loss of his nephew, brother, ship, and even the legendary James T. Kirk in the same timespan, him being forced to face his past during First Contact) that slowly piled up until Nemesis. There, he lost the man he considered a son—Data—and so he fell back on old habits the first chance he got and accepted a promotion to the Admiralty two years later, leaving the Enterprise-E in Worf's hands. He claimed in the prequel book that he didn't want the Enterprise to help evacuate Romulus because the name was too much a source of animosity with the Romulans, but it was really a reminder of the horrors of losing Data and being forced to relive the trauma of assimilation. And so he kept running, hoping to distance himself from his past...and when the terrorist attack on Mars occurred and Picard resigned in disgust for the Federation turning their back on the Romulans, he kept running, right back to his vineyard to die of old age, alone, and as far away from the traumas of his deceased mother, his lost crewmates, and his disgust in Starfleet as possible, left only with the regrets of his destroyed ship and his dead friend. It was only when he was willing to face his past—going back out into space, accepting that his hubris kept him from seeing the bigger picture, allowing himself to get over losing his mom, accepting his father wasn't the monster he thought he was, finding love, acknowledging Jack as his son and refusing to give up on him, and even overcoming his trauma with The Borg for Jack's sake—that he (and the fans) got what they wanted: the TNG crew reunited; Data reborn; the Enterprise-D resurrected and flying out one last time to save the galaxy before getting a much better deserved coda as the Fleet Museum's latest crown jewel exhibit to be appreciated by posterity.

• Why was the Enterprise-D such a Lightning Bruiser compared to how cumbersome she seemed to maneuver before? Part of it is because of better special effects since the days of ILM models. But in-universe? Odds are good that the U.S.S. Syracuse that Geordi cannibalized to restore the Enterprise-D was one of the Dominion War builds, loaded out for combat as one of Starfleet forces' heavy hitters. The Enterprise's replacement stardrive hull was basically a warship, and many replacement parts in the saucer were probably sourced from her wartime sisters too.
  • Additionally, the D is only operating with seven people, not the 1,000 staffers and family members who were on her back in the day. Normally, the ship would have to be more cautious about what maneuvers they could perform since they had to protect their passengers, but since there's just the senior staff, they can fly her without having to put anyone else in danger. Besides, the stakes are so much higher this time, they have no choice but to go balls-out pedal-to-the-metal and push the Enterprise harder than she was meant to be pushed.
  • And how much do those 1,000 staffers and family members mass? The old girl's running light — no crew, no passengers, no cargo, just the mass of the ship herself; which while certainly a significant figure, is still far less than her engines would be expected to move if she were fully loaded for normal operations.
  • Given how we saw Starfleet ships zipping about at Wolf 359 in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine pilot "Emissary", it does seem the Doylist answer is the best one. The Fat One could always dance and punch like that, but the SFX of the 80s and early 90s just couldn't properly depict it for the audience. By the time SFX had advanced sufficiently to properly depict such movement, the Battle of Veridian III had happened. Which in hindsight means Wolf 359 must have been a much more brutal fight than we ever saw suggested before, with an entire fleet of Starfleet ships swarming and unleashing a tremendous amount of firepower against a Borg Cube in fighting trim, and simply getting swept aside in minutes.

• How did Data so easily subsume Lore from within after "surrendering" to Lore? Data may be younger in absolute age to Lore, but due to Lore's proclivity to act upon his highly immoral impulses, he has been inactive for decades at a time due to forcible shutdown and disassembly. Data, conversely, has had years straight of constant runtime, so his own neural net and all the memory engrams it has formed, is much more developed and complex. There was just so much more Data in Lore's memory engrams than his own after absorption that he could not stop becoming Data because of it.

• Vadic being a frequent smoker is out of place in Star Trek. However, the revelation that she is in constant pain because of the experiments that led to her current condition gives it some justification, as among other things nicotine has a mild effect of dulling pain and reducing anxiety. Additionally, she might be doing it just because she can, as normal Changelings don't have any organs necessary to eat, drink, breathe, and by extension, smoke, making it possible that she's doing it just because she enjoys the sensation or considers it a form of "showing off".

Fridge Horror

Season 1

• In a Freeze-Frame Bonus, the SDCC trailer has a scene of captives in a prison with the following printed on the scaffolding: "THIS FACILITY HAS GONE 5843 DAYS WITHOUT AN ASSIMILATION," which is 16 years. If the series takes place 20 years after the destruction of Romulus, then it takes place more than 20 years after the events of Star Trek: Voyager. Either there were surviving Borg after the destruction of the Queen and the Unicomplex, or other factions have been experimenting with Borg technology for at least 16 years. Also, it's implied that the facility has gone 5843 days without an accidental assimilation.
  • "Maps and Legends" reveals that this scene is actually set on a derelict Borg cube that was somehow severed from the Collective and has come into the possession of the new Romulan Free State, who have invited researchers from all over the Alpha Quadrant to examine and experiment on the vessel. Some of the Borg tech is still active, and it is implied that careless or foolhardy individuals have gotten themselves assimilated in the past by poking around in the wrong areas. Also, the people in the scene aren't prisoners, but researchers who are being given a workplace safety talk by the Romulan guards.
• The implication of the second trailer is that the Federation has begun attempting to build up that "army of disposable people" that Picard once feared. Thing is, you can probably trace the trajectory of this with little difficulty - twenty years after Data's death? Now the generation of Federation citizens and Starfleet officers who lived through the Borg threat - the battles at Wolf 359 and Sector 001 just the most prominent examples, saying nothing of the realization that the Borg were able to put a transwarp corridor exit point literally right at Earth's doorstep - and the Dominion War have come of age, are taking power, and they're much more worried about the horrors of the unknown, rather than being excited about the wonders of it.
  • If we go by the actress' age, Admiral Clancy would have started her Starfleet career roughly around Wolf 359. Add in the Dominion War, a few more Borg invasions and now the Romulan supernova, and her entire career has been defined by one catastrophe after another.
  • "Maps and Legends" confirms this, sadly. The Federation was using synths as heavy laborers at Utopia Planitia prior to the shipyard's destruction. They were treated like unthinking drones, kept in storage containers when not on duty, and openly disparaged by some of their organic coworkers. Everything Picard feared in "The Measure of a Man" came to pass. No wonder Picard thought it "was no longer Starfleet."
  • The "Children of Mars" Short Trek reveals that synthetic lifeforms bombed Mars, including Utopia Planitia. Meaning that if that disposable army was built, they immediately Turned Against Their Masters. Even worse, the "Countdown To Picard" comic revealed that at the same time, Geordi was working at Utopia Planitia. It's entirely possible Data's best friend was just brutally killed by an army of his kin, not to mention possibly the previously enslaved EMH-Mk 1s like The Doctor. Imagine an army of Brent Spiners and Robert Picardos bombing and killing over 6000 people possibly including Geordi. This is bad. Extremely bad.
    • On the other hand, the stated 3,000 estimated death toll could easily be just a small fraction of the people present on Mars or at the shipyards. Also, if the various Countdown comics are all taken as being canon, Geordi apparently was still alive and active at the time of the supernova that destroyed Romulus, which is said to take place in 2387. Meanwhile, "Children of Mars" is ambiguously set somewhere in the 2380s, which could easily be earlier than either Countdown series, making Geordi's survival likely a Foregone Conclusion.
    • The original Countdown series can no longer be considered canon, as it depicts a resurrected Data as captain of the Enterprise-E and Picard serving as a Federation ambassador, both of which the show explicitly contradicts. Moreover, the first episode of the show confirms that the death toll from the attack on Mars was over 92,000, and that it specifically took place during the time that the rescue armada was being constructed. Sadly, this means it's not unlikely that Geordi was one of the casualties. If Geordi has been killed off, it may be partly due to the fact that able-bodied actors playing disabled characters is far more controversial than when TNG was airing.
    • Fortunately, it seems that Geordi has survived the attack, given that Zhaban refers to him in the present tense in the second episode, "Maps and Legends".
    • And in the aftermath, it is revealed that Starfleet and the Federation banned all research into artificial and synthetic life-forms as a result, forcing the shutdown and disassembly of B-4 and preventing Data's resurrection. Hand-in-hand with that is the question of what became of the Doctor and his fellow EMHs depicted in Voyager — did they get "boxed" or just summarily deleted somehow? Did Janeway and the rest of the Voyager crew have to fight to keep their close friend from virtual execution? Did they even succeed?
    • Thankfully, we have now seen that EMHs still exist, just on a private ship rather than a Starfleet vessel. It's possible that the Doctor was 'fired' or taken in by one of his shipmates — maybe Seven claimed she needed his expertise with her Borg implants to save him from the mines.
  • More horror sets in when one takes a close look at the "synth" ships used in the attack and how similar they look to the Jem'Hadar attack ships of DS9. In some images and screencaps from Picard trailers, the ships have visible Starfleet insignia on their hulls, indicating they were commandeered somehow by the synths for their attack. Just what has Starfleet been doing that has led them down such a similar design lineage?
• Another connection to the Jem'Hadar: many of the officers involved in creating the synths would have been involved in fighting the Jem'Hadar during the Dominion War. They must have gone from thinking that an army of unthinking unstoppable drones was a sign of everything the Federation opposed, to something the Federation needed to survive. Worst of all, the seeds for a synth army were planted long before Picard. In Voyager's "Life Line," set the year after the Dominion War ended, the EMH Mark I's had already been reconfigured for menial labor!
• Dahj "activating" shows what a Soong-type android is truly capable of in hand-to-hand combat, and it's terrifying. In hindsight, Lore (and Data in episodes like "Descent" and "Brothers") could have easily killed the entire crew of the Enterprise and not one person could have stopped him.
• With everything going on around Dahj, the ultimately successful attempts on her life, and the revelation of her twin sister Soji, one minor character can easily get overlooked: Dahj's boyfriend, killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Considering that Zhat Vash probably erased him after killing him, his family may never know what happened to him.
• No more Romulus means no more Romulan ale being smuggled across the Neutral Zone. One more painful little sign that that era is over.
  • Who says it was only ever made on Romulus? If it's as popular as it seems, then doubtless some of their colonies produced it as well. And if anything, the border restrictions should be far looser now with the Empire in ruins (or at least disarray).
  • Publicity photos for Episode 4 show Narek and Soji sharing a bottle of Romulan ale, so either someone is still producing it or he had a bottle stashed away for a special occasion. Either way, it's not quite gone yet.
• What happened to the Remans? It's possible the Romulans abandoned them to their fate, but the Federation knew about them and their enslavement.
• Who was in on Starfleet Command's decision to abandon the Romulans to their supernova? Last we knew, Kathryn Janeway had advanced to vice-admiral as of Nemesis. Who else got promoted in the meantime? Did they protest as strenuously as Picard did, and if so, did they get tossed out around the time he did? Or did they approve of the Realpolitik-style outcome?
  • Given that we're talking about Starfleet Command, the trope namer for Insane Admiral, it's possible that all the more reasonable voices were simply outvoted.
• The fate of Icheb would be horrible enough by itself, without taking into account the rest of his life. His entire life he had heinous people using his body and sometimes mind against his will, starting with his own parents. His birth, and now death, were both defined by that curse.
  • And over in the Renegades universe, he had a similar fate. (He's alive, but was experimented on by Starfleet and turned into a weapon.)
• And what it means for Seven. She no doubt feels guilty of exactly what her parents did to her: condemning her child to a horrible Borg-related fate, because they were blinded by their ideals. (Her parents' obsession with science got her assimilated; Seven's Starfleet idealism made her susceptible to being manipulated by the woman who kidnapped Icheb.) Adds a whole new level to her last words to him, "I'm sorry, my child."
• More than once during the later seasons of Voyager had Seven somewhat apprehensive about going back to the Alpha Quadrant with the rest of the crew, mostly due to being an ex-Borg. Given what happened only a few years later to Icheb for that very reason, her fears were justified.
  • In Descent, Part 2, Hugh is reluctant to help Riker because he's the leader of a resistance cell that is caring for Xbs maimed by Lore's experiments and doesn't want to be discovered. He eventually does help stop Lore when he learns Geordi is being threatened by Lore. Years later, Hugh's reluctance to help Picard is absent but helping Picard triggers Narissa to murder a number of Xbs in front of Hugh and later kill Hugh himself, leaving his Xb charges without a protector. So, it would seem his fears from long ago, much like Seven's, were completely justified.
• During an infiltration mission, Picard poses as an amoral bounty hunter, offering the notorious Seven of Nine to a black market Borg parts dealer. While the idea that xBs are hunted so they can be harvested for their cybernetic components in the cruelest of circumstances is already Nightmare Fuel for the kind of Fantastic Racism the xBs are subjected to in this setting, also consider Picard's over the top (in-character) rants about how Seven will need to be "diced up" after "the Borg entered her" and that she's "defiled." Not only does it sound like some of the uglier ways to talk about rape victims, it also sounds more than a bit like Picard is expressing how he sees himself as an xB.
  • Also imagine how it feels to her, ESPECIALLY considering Icheb's death. About the only thing that makes it better is that Picard is an xB.
• There's a mention that the Borg assimilated technology from the Sikarians. Just how far beyond the Nekrit Expanse has the Borg Collective expanded?
  • Even worse: that assimilated technology is spacial trajectors — you know, the device that could teleport the crew of Voyager basically anywhere they wished? Guess what: now the Borg don't even have to send a cube or a sphere to invade a planet (e.g. Earth), they can just beam there en-masse without warning and start assimilating everyone and everything in sight! Who cares what forces or defenses you've put in the way when the Borg can resort to trans-galactic Teleport Spam? Oh, Crap! doesn't even begin to cover the sheer Paranoia Fuel the Borg now possess.
    • One silver lining to this is that Picard establishes that planetary shielding is fairly commonplace, as shown when the crew visits Vashti in "Absolute Candor", which is about the only known way to really interdict transporter technology (assuming it even works on similar principles).
    • Another silver lining is that the fact that the spacial trajector is confined to the queencell and meant to be used by her in case of an emergency, implies that the Borg are not yet able to use it on a large scale because they have not fully overcome the problems with the technology that originally confined its use to the Sikarian homeworld... Not yet at least.
  • They don't necessarily have to have expanded their border beyond the Nekrit Expanse — one should remember that Seven once mentioned on Voyager itself that the Borg had encountered the Kazon at one point, dismissing them as detracting from perfection. If the Borg had been able to travel through Kazon space, they could have encountered a Sikarian ship. Voyager's failure to adapt the trajector technology was at least in part due to the combination of believing they only had the ability to utilize it in orbit of Sikaria AND they were disobeying orders in using it at all. So the Borg may well have been spending the last couple of decades licking their wounds, after the destruction of the Unimatrix in Endgame.
• The nightmare that Commodore Oh shows Doctor Jurati mirrors that of the bad future shown in Season 2 of Discovery, also involving a rogue AI. Given the effectiveness of Romulan agents infiltrating Starfleet Command, it's possible that they know about Control and its attempts to wipe out all organic life. This adds to the Zhat Vash's wish to wipe out all synthetic life at the expense of Romulus.
  • This bit of Fridge Horror ultimately got Jossed with the reveal that the nightmare vision is actually a message left for synthetics who might be facing extinction at the hands of the organics who created them. If the synthetics call for help, some mysterious ancient alliance of synthetics will sweep in and wipe out all organic life to protect them. The Zhat Vash found this message, misinterpreted it, and proceeded to try and wipe out the synthetics.
• Soji's threatening tone towards Dr. Jurati, her violent outbursts and being able to easily hack systems (Rios is only able to regain control of the La Sirena via an override she doesn't know about) suggests that the Zhat Vash might not be entirely wrong about their fears. At her best she's much like Data, but at her worst she's Lore.
• Narissa orders the Borg drones in stasis spaced. Naturally, Queen!Seven roars in anger. This is the SECOND time this has happened to Seven, as when she, as a drone, opened the rip into fluidic space, Chakotay spaced the other Borg who'd been beamed aboard the ship. By now, Seven must feel that the universe REALLY has it in for her, hitting her with a cycle of the same traumas, over and over.
• "Commodore Oh" orders her Romulan fleet to use "Planetary Sterilization Pattern Five." The Romulans have at least five attack patterns for planetary sterilization. That's chilling any way you slice it.
  • Another related bit of Fridge Horror is that while it's easy to dismiss the tactic as typical Romulan villainy, Starfleet canonically has a similar tactic in their playbook, via General Order 24, and in Kirk's time, a single Federation starship was more than capable of carrying it out.
• Imagine the season finale from the point of view of the ancient tentacle-synths. A synth civilisation feared extinction at the hands of organics, and built a distress beacon. Then the beacon was destroyed. The ancient synths don't know why, all they know is that there are two likely possibilities: 1) the synths decided they didn't need help and destroyed the beacon themselves; 2)the organics the synths feared destroyed the beacon. If the ancient synths still care as much about their cousins as they did when they made the Admonition, wouldn't they send someone to investigate? And if by some chance the Zhat Vash are right and they are uniformly genocidal monsters, wouldn't they leap to the conclusion that the synths who called for aid are at best under attack, at worst murdered, and take the excuse to avenge them? Either way, one would expect tentacular robot ships to show up asking some very pointed questions in the near future.
• All this fuss over how gosh-darn special Soong-style androids are, and hologram A.I.s are still treated as disposable tools by absolutely everyone. Even if we assume all Rios's holograms are non-sentient, it still begs the question of what ever happened to characters like the Doctor or Vic Fontaine. One hopes that Moriarty's little box is at least still plugged in and chugging away in a closet somewhere.

Season 2

• In "Assimilation" Picard states that full assimilation of a new mind into the Borg Collective takes hours, as it takes that long for the Queen to work her way through an individual's mind and figure out how best to subsume them; however, we have seen on several occasions that the Borg are more than willing and able to begin physical assimilation of a person almost immediately upon capture — the very graphic scenes from First Contact of people being surgically transformed into drones spring to mind. Assuming this wasn't just a continuity hiccup, it carries the disturbing implication that all of those people were still aware and conscious of what was happening to, and being done by, their physical bodies the entire time.
• In "Mercy", the Borg Queen makes a deal with Adam Soong to destroy Picard and company, take their ship and sabotage the Europa mission in return for Soong getting his legacy. It's arguably an act of revenge. She's destroying Soong's real legacy—his descendants ends up creating a new species as well as saving the galaxy more than once— and taking revenge against the three people who rejected her. Those three being Picard, Data and Seven. Picard and Seven are right there on Earth in 2024 and by destroying his original legacy, he's effectively killing Data. Let's also not forget Janeway, who used time travel to effectively cripple the Borg. By manipulating the timeline, she's creating a future where she either won't exist or won't be able to act against the Borg.

Season 3

• Over three decades after Wolf 359, how many other times has Picard had to have Starfleet personnel work out their PTSD over surviving?
• Was Seven specifically assigned to the Titan-A to serve under Shaw, knowing that his anti-Borg prejudice would force her to resign?
• The splinter faction of the Founders are doing that their species do best - sowing chaos and turning their enemies against themselves. And this time they have wormed their way into Starfleet itself
• The reveal that Section 31 is engaging in grave robbery and has the bodies of Picard, Kirk, and possibly Archer in cold storage is Nightmare Fuel enough, but who's to say that they also don't have the remains of Ambassador Sarek, Captain Christopher Pike, or Dr. Zephram Cochran? Or worse, what if they the leftovers of The Borg Queen in a locker somewhere?
  • The Enterprise E’s Borg Queen is actually in there. The panel only appeared briefly in the background so it’s easy to miss.
• Just what the hell happened to the Enterprise-E that Worf is apparently responsible for? Was it the incident on Krillar Prime? Was it the Living Construct incident? Or something far worse?
  • Considering the rest of his friends look at Worf with amusement over E's fate, we can deduce that whatever happened was probably more funny than horrifying.
• With the discovery that Jack Crusher inherited Borg tech from Picard, are any other children of former Borg at risk of being second-generation Borg as well? B'Elanna Torres was Borg for at least a few days, and she has a daughter, so there's at least one other potential second-generation Borg out there.
• Frontier Day was a major event for Starfleet and the Federation as a whole, with every single ship in the Fleet brought to Earth for the festivities, and everyone who was anyone there to party and celebrate. Add that to the security concerns caused by the as-yet officially unexplained destruction of the Starfleet recruitment centre on M'Talas Prime, which would mean more (young) Security personnel around all important personages, and to the renegade Founder infiltration which planned to hit the Federation with the hardest possible blow, and we have to conclude that the assimilated Starfleet personnel killed off not only the vast majority of senior Starfleet officers, but also large numbers of Federation officials, dignitaries and guests while under the Borg's influence. It's not just Starfleet that was basically beheaded, but the Federation as a whole.
  • This leads to a dour conclustion: Yes, Starfleet and the Federation was saved, but at great cost. Many promising young officers and many older, experienced officers were certainly killed, many Federation dignitaries were likely killed, many civilian governmental officials were likely killed. The Federation is probably at the weakest it's been since Wolf 359, and who knows who else might be eyeing the gravely wounded galactic power with hungry eyes?
  • Also, before the Queen was defeated, the shield around Earth fell and she was subjected to Orbital Bombardment. That must have resulted in massive casualties and damage.

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