Fridge / Star Trek: Picard S3E09 "Vox"

• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The revelation of the Borg/Changeling compromised transporters completely re-contextualizes the Changeling who posed as the Titan-A's transporter chief back in the season's first four episodes. On the first watch, replacing Eli Foster made sense from a strategic perspective. A transporter chief is, after all, an important cog in the day-to-day operation of a Starfleet ship. It would have allowed the fake "Foster" to plausibly keep an eye on developments aboard without attracting attention and to covertly sabotage key systems (which he did). On the re-watch, though, now it's clear that the other purpose of the replacement was to ensure that the Titan-A's transporters were sabotaged with the altered architecture and subroutines and not discovered. And because of the threat to the Titan while they were facing off with Vadic the first time around, and then having to go on the run, nobody thought to take a closer in-depth look at the transporter systems that "Foster" had been overseeing until it was too late.
    • The Changelings' presence on Titan likewise takes on additional context with the Borg Queen reveal because of Seven of Nine's position as Shaw's XO. Given her experience/expertise and the role she played in helping Janeway and Voyager battle the Collective back in the Delta Quadrant, Seven is definitely one of the Borg's most dangerous enemies in Starfleet (second only to Picard and Janeway). The Queen *would* want to keep an eye on the ex-Tertiary adjunct of Unimatrix 01. A Changeling operative would also be there on site and in position to eliminate Seven if needed (though certainly not prematurely, as doing so would've have gotten Janeway involved and run the risk of the plan being uncovered before Frontier Day).
  • The Borg Genetic Malware revelation also completely re-contextualizes Ro's refusal to use transporters anymore back in "Imposters". On the first watch, it was Ro being Properly Paranoid and wanting to avoid dying in a Changeling-engineered transporter "accident". Now, on the re-watch, we realize she had good reason to avoid using Starfleet transporters. Ro likely pieced together enough of the puzzle to realize something was wrong with the fleet-wide transporters, but lacked the technological and biological expertise to understand how and why the rogue Changelings had compromised them. Ro probably thought the transporters had simply been sabotaged as a means of killing Starfleet personnel individually or en-masse — never realizing that their new intended purpose was far more sinister than she ever could have imagined.
    • Similarly, it also re-contextualizes Jack's vision during that episode, where he saw people who were in mid-transport now sporting an ominous set of red tendrils. Now we know why: it was a clue that the Transporters and their users had been compromised.
  • Vadic's murder of T'Veen in "Surrender" also plays differently now in the wake of the "Anyone under 25 is susceptible to the Borg genetic malware" reveal. Vadic didn't have to execute any of the younger crewmen like Mura unless it was necessary; if anything, killing them would spare them of the far more horrifying fate the Changelings and the Borg Queen had planned mere hours later when Frontier Day commenced. But as a Vulcan and an officer who has been in Starfleet long enough to attain a comparatively higher rank as a Lieutenant, T'Veen was old enough to be safe from the Borg's plot and thus expendable to serve as Vadic's first executed hostage.
  • The revelation of what the Borg really did to modify Picard's DNA back in "The Best of Both Worlds". Obviously, as the characters realize, it finally explains in-story why Picard could keep hearing the Borg without his implants (and why other ex-Drones like Seven or Hugh never experienced the same phenomenon). But it also re-contextualizes Picard and the Queen's discussion during First Contact about why she had taken an uncharacteristic interest in Picard's assimilation and why he was different and meant to be more than just another Borg Drone. It also finally explains why ex-Drones have continued to address Locutus with near-reverence.
  • In Voyager's "Dark Frontier", the Borg Queen tells 7 of 9 that their previous assimilation attempts of humanity had failed because they were direct assaults. As such, they will change tactics and will instead employ an insidious method of assimilating Humanity. Decades later, the plan has been implemented (albeit with changes, possibly because the Queen anticipated that 7 of 9 warned Janeway and Starfleet of her plan).
  • Choosing the Enterprise-D is actually the smartest move. Discounting the nostalgia factor and that it isn’t connected to the fleet system the Borg hijacked, Galaxy-class ships are sturdy birds that can take a wallop with many used in the Dominion War as command craft. Charging into a hijacked fleet of Starfleet’s best is going to need a lot of strength to stand firm.
    • Furthermore, the other ships in the Museum — even the Defiant — are technically exhibits, meaning they've not only been stripped of their weapons and other sensitive systems, but a majority of them are at least already a century old. The clock's ticking, Earth's at the mercy of the assimilated Starfleet, and Geordi doesn't have the time to make any of these vessels space or combat worthy. By contrast, the Enterprise-D has proven itself in plenty of fights and is already all but on standby; it just requires minimal preparations for launch. Additionally, Geordi and the rest of Picard's command staff worked on the Enterprise-D on a day-to-day basis for seven years and know her systems inside and out, something far less likely to be the case with the Defiant or Voyager, even though those two ships are newer.
    • Then there's the question of why the Enterprise is combat ready in the first place. The ship would need to be fully restored if Starfleet ever needed it to be recommissioned, just as the Klingon ship Kirk stole still had its cloaking device. With the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards gone, the museum where the ship's chief engineer works would be the next best place, so Geordi was supplied with live weapons and ammo for testing once the repairs were done.
    • Also, the Enterprise-D bridge is the pre-Generations bridge rather than the one with the extensive modifications seen in the film. Which does make sense since in-universe Starfleet bridges are modular in design to make refits easier. Since the 2371 bridge was completely trashed in the crash landing, Geordi probably pulled an earlier version out of storage and swapped it out.
  • Citing the Prime Directive as the reason the Enterprise-D's saucer was retrieved from Veridian III makes more sense when one realizes that, while Veridian IV was where that system's pre-warp capable society lived, III was also within the "Goldilocks zone" for that solar system, and would be the easiest planet to be the next target for a nascent space program. Leaving the saucer on III would have been similar to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin finding an ancient astronaut's starship in 1969 (or its alien pilot's dead body, which is why Kirk's remains would also have had to be retrieved and removed from the site of Picard's cairn).
  • As stated on the main page, Geordi was indirectly responsible for Enterprise-D's loss during Generations. It was his compromised VISOR that allowed the Duras Sisters to bypass its shields and inflict fatal damage. So, yes, it's ironic and fitting that having been the catalyst for the 1701-D's destruction, it's Geordi who's labored to refurbish and restore her. But it may also be why Geordi's pursued this passion project beyond just nostalgia or his duties as the Fleet Museum Curator. It's very likely also out of guilt and atonement for his unwitting role in what happened at Veridian III.
  • Picard accepting the "field demotion" makes sense for two reasons besides Rule of Funny:
    • The source of the official records on his actual rank is compromised. The only way to set the record straight would be to network with the rest of the fleet, which would result in the Enterprise-D being taken over by the Borg.
    • Kirk's advice not to let Starfleet promote him. Picard has never been able to affect Starfleet meaningfully as a desk jockey; he accepted his promotion to Admiral to coordinate the evacuation of Romulus, only for that to be completely derailed due to political issues after the Zhat Vash hijacked the synths and his protests to fall on deaf ears. When he's on a ship and in the fray, on the other hand, his ability to make a difference is amplified. His role in the lifting of the synth ban was the result of him going to Coppelius personally, reporting what he had discovered to Admiral Clancy personally, and talking Soji down personally. Every single one of his greatest achievements has happened when he was personally taking part in the action, which is much more expected of a captain than it is of an admiral. And now he's saving Starfleet as the commanding officer of a starship - a Captain - in a way he never could as an Admiral at Starfleet Headquarters. In short, this database error has unintentionally reminded him that he's in his element so long as he's in that chair, which is a confidence boost he likely needs right now.
  • While at first it seems like a cop-out that the rogue Changelings were a red herring and that the Borg were the real antagonist all along, it's actually quintessentially Dominion in-universe and on a Meta level. Throughout Deep Space Nine, the Founders excelled at the Kansas City Shuffle and at distracting with the big stunt so you missed the smaller, more crucial play (ex. the Dominion "attack" on DS9 when the ''real'' plan was actually blowing up the Bajoran Sun and wiping out the station, the system, and the combined Alpha Quadrant fleets). And that's exactly what Vadic and her faction did all Season long: They kept all the attention on them and made characters and audiences alike think they were dealing with renegade Founders out to avenge the Dominion's defeat decades earlier. By the time Vadic goes down and everyone finally realizes it was really the Borg running the show all along, it's too late. Worf and Raffi were right: The Founders were doing a Kansas City Shuffle, they just neglected to consider there might be more than one in play...
  • The reveal that the Borg were the handlers of the Changeling conspiracy makes a lot of sense as, if there was any faction that could have forced the Changelings—even a group of renegades from the Great Link—to fall in line with their massive superiority complex, it'd be the one group so dreaded that even the immensely powerful Q was extremely hesitant about upsetting in spite of being able to have the power to change the space-time continuum at a whim. And on a practical level alone, capable as the Changelings were in manufacturing and manipulating entire species to serve them in the Jem'Hadar and the Vorta within the Dominion, the Borg are vastly superior in being able to tamper with genetics as they are able to assimilate entire species en mass that all have extremely unique biological structures from one another to accommodate their conversion process into Borg to the point that it's an afterthought for them to do, something further affirmed by how they are able to effortlessly force a Shapeshifter Mode Lock on Vadic as a form of torture to show their displeasure over her faction's lack of progress and emphasizing that their abilities and nature they laud as their defining distinction from "the Solids" doesn't make them special, implying that the Borg see the Changelings as beneath them compared to the Federation.
    • The reveal also re-contextualizes Vadic's perceived Boisterous Weakling characterization. It wasn't an act; the Laughing Mad and Ax-Crazy characterization was her real persona when Vadic didn't have to worry about her "boss" looking over her shoulder. When faced with what we know now was actually the Borg Queen, however, even Vadic — a Founder full of arrogance and bigotry towards the Solids — had enough sense to recognize she was in the presence of something far older and far more malevolent than even the Dominion at its peak. Vadic's deference and sheer terror were completely genuine.
  • Data takes his old station at ops while Geordi takes the conn. However, Picard orders Data to set a course for Earth while Riker tells Geordi to handle the shield power. The LCARS console actually do have the ability to be reconfigured as needed. On DS9, Worf once had to take command of the Defiant from engineering and told a subordinate to reset a panel to the default configuration.
  • The culling of senior personnel would go a long way to justify why, in Star Trek Online, Starfleet is seemingly just giving a ship to anyone who demonstrates competence.
  • One of the ships in the fleet above Earth is the USS Pulaski, no doubt named after the acerbic and transporter-phobic Dr. Pulaski from TNG's Second Season. One episode of hers dealt with a disease that causes rapid aging and has to be cured by......using the Transporters. Fitting, if not (possibly) another feat of foreshadowing?
  • The future elements of VOY's finale, "Endgame", were set three years after this episode. Did the assimilation of Starfleet factor into Janeway's decision to travel back in time? It's possible that her stated goals^note to prevent the deaths of Seven and Chakotay and heal Tuvok were all a smokescreen: she managed to get Voyager's crew home and placed in position to stop the Borg threat, while crippling them with her pathogen in 2378 to give what remained of Starfleet a fighting chance. Admiral Janeway dismissed the Temporal Prime Directive as easier to ignore, but by not telling her past crew, she was in fact upholding it.
  • Of course Worf would advocate for the Enterprise-E: Word of God confirms that after Picard left the Enterprise, he took over as her captain, and as his first command, it'd mean just as much to him as the Stargazer (or even the D) does for Picard.

• Fridge Horror:
  • Just how long have the Changelings been introducing Borg-designed DNA into crews across Starfleet? And how many of them (a Redshirt Army) are going to be lost forever or be dealing with life-altering health conditions if or when this plot is finally stopped?
    • Not that long, but arguably that just makes it scarier. It is stated that Picard's body was stolen from Daystrom Institute to design the DNA to be injected in the first place, which happened a few months at most before the season began. Meaning: in a couple of months, the Borg developed the vector for their infiltration and had their agents disperse the transporter modifications fleet-wide fast enough that by the time Frontier Day rolled around, apparently every single Starfleet crewmember (of appropriate age) was infected. Just goes to show how deep and far-reaching the Changeling infiltration of Starfleet really is.
  • If the Borg DNA changes were introduced by transporter alteration, is it even medically possible to reverse them? Or will everyone have to go back through a transporter — the very things that caused the problem and of which people will now be especially (and justifiably) wary or Properly Paranoid — to reverse the meddling?
  • One more helping of horror on the compromised transporters going into the series finale, mixed in with some grade-A Nightmare Fuel: the compromised transporters are still on every single Starfleet ship now under Borg command, and since they have Jack, the Borg has a working activation signal. That means that assimilation into the collective has never been quicker and easier than before: forget surgically installing cybernetic components or the nanoprobe injection tubules. If the subject doesn't have a fully developed brain (remember, for humans, that means anyone under 25), all the Borg needs to do is beam them up with one of the compromised transporters and wait for the activation signal to kick in. And the entire fleet, with all of its transporters compromised wholesale, is now in orbit of Earth. Sweet dreams.
  • If the assimilated crew members are as successful as they seem to be at purging anyone around them who isn't compromised, how many senior officers is Starfleet even going to have left after all this to command and coordinate their ships and installations?
  • In a similar vein, what's happening to the other 24th-century-era officers from TNG, DS9 and Voyager? We know that Tuvok is in Changeling captivity (if he's still alive), but how many of the others are still in Starfleet and now under lethal threat from their compromised junior crewmates?
  • Sending individual Borg cubes to target Earth (as seen in "The Best of Both Worlds" and First Contact) can be explained as one-off events, but now we have the Borg trying to (and seemingly succeeding) in taking over all of Starfleet to conquer the Federation. Even if this particular plot gets averted somehow, how does this not spark an all-out war between the Federation and the Borg, especially as member governments will be clamouring for revenge and even genocide? The alternate-timeline Confederation headed by "General" Picard and "President" Hansen may have ironically been ahead of their time by conquering and destroying the Borg before they could pull something similar in their version of history.
  • And even once this is done, how extensive will the damage to Starfleet be? They've spent a quarter of a century recovering from the Dominion War and the Mars Attack. How much of that rebuilding of their navy and personnel was just wiped out in a matter of moments? Will any of their other old enemies see the UFP as vulnerable and worth attacking?
  • Just before the attack goes down, Dr. Crusher notes that the primary affected part of the brain is the frontal lobe. Which means that the assimilated young crew members are fully conscious of the acts that their bodies are being forced to perform.
• Knowing now the Queen was the Face, was that avatar just a disguise...or is that what she really looks like now after the alternate Admiral Janeway's attack back in "Endgame"?