As for the finale, there are two I'd really like to see for shits and giggles: One being Admiral Fred Jones Jnr entering the room, tearing off Jack's face to reveal Stewie Griffin, Beverly tearing her face off to reveal Lois and everything fading to black and we're back to the end of S1 of Picard where it turns out the last two seasons were his brain fritzing before dying. Finish with the voice of John DeLancie: "Really Jean-Luc, fantasising that I'd die? Moi?" The other, a bug-eyed Shaw gatecrashing Starfleet Command to announce the Changeling infiltration, only to find a resurrected Kirk saying they know - that he and Spock came up with a wheeze years back, where they got all the Federations enemies to infiltrate them. No one higher than a Captain isn't an infiltrator, and it's why the Federations been so successful - getting invaded by the Romulans? Who better than all the Romulans' other enemies to give tactics and send them packing? And if the infiltrators succeeded in taking down the Federation? No more comfy quarters for them. No more annual trips to Risa for whorin' and a drinkin.' No more of the good blood wine from Martok's private stock chucked over as a diplomatic hello. Back to the shit jobs, sonny. Better off almost succeeding and sending a "darn those pesky Starfleeters!" missive home, sticking your feet on your big desk and lighting a cigar with a big, satisfied sigh. Not seen Admiral Bert for a while? He's a Pakled. Been stuck in the toilet for six months, can't figure the door out, been living off toilet water and replicated toilet roll - turns out, even that's better than Pakled grub.
Season Three has been teetering for some time, but fortunately so far hasn't fallen over the cliff like the previous two seasons.
Except it was fairy tales, but okay. Maybe they got sold on some bill of goods they'd get from it. Not necessarily religious, but some kind of impossible (to us) goal for the Funders/Dominion.
It's absurd for any Founder to go from "We are Literal Gods" to "we are disposable cannon fodder taking orders from someone else" simply in the name of revenge. Not when the Founders infected planets with plagues and plotted to wipe out entire planetary systems by making their suns go supernova as ordinary day to day activities. And I'd personally like to think that everyone on DS9 was not legally retarded, and that the blood screenings involved more than just testing to see if the liquid that came out of the subject was the right colour. There had to be at least some sort of DNA cross reference or blood type matching going on, right? And changelings impersonating people, objects, and animals had to appear indistinguishable from whatever they were copying on internal sensors and tricorders scans, right?
I suppose being radicalized and outvoted in the Great Link might make a changeling change their tune. If we assume that there's a relative handful of Changeling 2.0s/sympathizers compared with the overall body of the Founders -- say, a couple hundred essentially disabled Changelings versus billions or trillions of OG Changelings, it would seem reasonable that the 2.0 know they can't get the Great Link to alter their position, and so to get revenge, they are going to need to ally with/work for someone else. As far as we saw on DS9, the screenings they did were pretty simply "does the blood turn into goo?" Maybe the tests became more sophisticated than that under the surface, and I think there was a point where either Papa Sisko or an actual Changeling talked about how that test was beatable, or someone actually beat the test in use at the time. One would imagine that there would be additional security measures and countermeasures that both sides would be using, though. In other words, while a Changeling impersonating a rock could fool a lot of basic surface scanning, there probably is a way to tell it is a Changeling if you probe deeply enough.
Props for the naked honesty and not trying to pretend this is the best Trek since DS9. I doubt it'll remain the best Trek of 2023 when SNW returns in June.
I mean...the Klingon screenings where people were just cutting their hands with a knife and sprinkling some blood on the nearest table was clearly basic. But it was well over a decade ago that I walked by a "find out your blood type" booth and learned I was A+ in less than thirty seconds. And DS9 notably crossed over with TOS, specifically the episode where McCoy was able to verify that Arne Darvin was actually a surgically altered Klingon by looking at his internal organs with just a quick 23rd century tricorder scan.
Chicago is in the mix. What about Toronto? It's the largest city in the United States/Canada after L.A. and New York.
Sadly, no Chicago screening. According to the article, just Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Orlando, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, or Dallas. I did get an e-mail from Paramount plus that said there would be a Chicago screening. I went to the link in the article and put in the zip for Chicago and no dice. Maybe it already sold out...or actually, maybe they have not yet released them. The e-mail says tickets arent available for about another halfhour.
I'm ready. Give it to me, Matalas. Open that mystery box already and give it to me like the greedy little 'memberberry whore I am.
Oh I'm all strapped in for a fanfic ending - what if the Changlings teamed up with the [xxx]!?!?!?!? Splooge! Space Battles!
IIRC, the whole point of the test was that when a part of the Changeling separated from the main body it reverted? So you'd expect they'd already be able to fool most scans, and you'd expect that'd include maintaining a set of matching expected organs. Of course if someone had lost an organ - hey Lt. Hi-pitched, you regrow those balls the Cardies shot off? - but Trek IV, and magic liver injections, so yeah, falsetto can go back to being baritone. Ferengi legs may not qualify... So, I'm not sure what superpower they got in exchange for vacuum now being deadly, and having the persona of Hedley Lamarr from Blazing Saddles. They could have binned the whole autopsy bit, and just stuck with they're now super difficult to track and don't revert back to goo or dust when they die, and save on a lot of confusion. Show, don't tell, doesn't work if the showing bit serves to confuse rather than clarify.
I'll echo 14th Doc: they should have just used the "Conspiracy" bugs having come home to roost after S1. There were basically only a couple things that would have needed to be re-written -- when Changelings shapeshifted into goo and got away despite multiple phaser shots comes to mind, and tracking down the goo bucket. But almost everything else works better with them since they were unwilling to have these Changelings do the sorts of things that OG Changelings could.
Anyway, looks like @Bill Carson was right. I apologize for the mockery over the Enterprise-D. It's just too bad they brought her back in one of the shittiest, most nonsensical episodes of Star Trek ever aired. I don't even know where to begin as to how badly they shit the bed on this one. Eight episodes of a really good build up this season and then... BAM! Episode nine shits the bed. And don't even get me started on the senseless killing of the most interesting Starfleet captain to come along in years.
Also... I think I've actually figured out why Picard is so frustrating. In Patrick Stewart's universe, everyone except for Jean-Luc Picard and his immediate circle of friends are fucking idiots. It's the only explanation for the last three seasons, and suddenly Picard makes a whole lot more sense when you look at it through that lens.