Chekhov’s Frontier Day begins in Picard Season 3 Episode 9

Things go from bad to worse when Jack runs off and turns himself over to the enemy. Can Starfleet’s Frontier Day celebration survive the wrath of “Võx?” in Picard Season 3 episode 9, written by Sean Tretta & Kiley Rossetter, directed by Terry Matalas.

Mark Turetsky: Hi Will! It looks like it’s all been coming down to this: all mysteries revealed. All the actors unmasked. All characters under 25 rendered untrustworthy.

Will Nevin: Never trust young people, Mark. Their blood is too rich and nougat-y; their brains too susceptible to Borg nanoprobes and DNA rewritten by transporter systems. We’ve seen it a thousand times.

Mark: It’s why I’m writing to my congressperson right now to ban Tik Tok. And gum. And backtalk.

Will: The Framers had it right: No one under 25 should serve in Congress. Or in Starfleet.

The Secret of the Boy

Mark: Speaking of young people under 25, Picard season 3 episode 9 starts with the big reveal that it’s been dangling in front of us since episode 1: what makes Jack the special boy that he is? It turns out all our speculation was right, Will (though I’m still holding out for the aliens from “The Inner Light” being behind it). He’s a Borg! And he always has been!

Will: A predictable twist in a story is not necessarily a bad one. We surmised that Jack might have some sort of inherited Borg trait just as we guessed that the Frontier Day terrorist attack was really an opportunity to assimilate the entire fleet. Yes, we could have gone with something a bit stranger (Pah-wraiths, perhaps), but I’m not mad at all about the direction this story has taken. Would it make a bit more sense *without* literally all of last season? Absolutely. But if Beverly Crusher doesn’t know what happened on the Stargazer, I don’t have to know what happened on it either.

Mark: There’s still a chance Agnes’ mini-collective might stop in next week to save the day, but considering the show has now almost completely forgotten about the Changeling plot now that it’s switched over to the Borg, I think the likelihood of bringing in more stuff outside of The Next Generation in the finale is pretty slim.

Let’s stop for a moment and reflect on the ultimate revelation of the entire plan: the renegade Changelings have been working with The Borg all along, implanting special coding into all Starfleet transporters to rewrite DNA in order to make everyone who uses it susceptible to Borg mind control. The writers know enough about physiology to know that encoding someone’s DNA won’t necessarily alter their development after they’re done growing, so the effect is limited to anyone under 25, as their brains are still developing.

What exactly do the Changelings get out of this, handing over all of Starfleet to The Borg? It’s…unclear, especially since, with the death of Vadic, we seem to have heard the last of them.

Will: Simple, good old-fashioned revenge. It’s certainly not spelled out, but it makes sense with what we know of Vadic’s character — Starfleet abused and tortured the Changelings, and now, most likely in death, Vadic has enabled the mortal enemy of the Federation to strike what seems to be a fatal blow.

Mark: Well, regardless of the Borg/Changeling plan, it takes Jack all of a minute or so after learning that he’s some kind of Borg transmitter to turn on his parents and run off to join confront the Borg. Picard tells him that he’s potentially dangerous and should be kept under wraps, and so obviously Jack mind controls some guards, steals a shuttle and flies off. This might be more convincing as motivation had they actually cast someone who isn’t a 35-year-old father. We kinda need that youth to sell this impulsive move.

Will: Ed Speelers has been great, but this was some awkward casting from the beginning that was only underlined in this episode. This subchapter in the story — Jack learning of his Borg bits and then absconding off to the hive — seemed rushed, but there was a lot to get to in this episode. The pacing of this season in general has been all over the place. Serialized television, man. Kinda makes me long for Strange New Worlds.

In any case, Jack, like many of the other characters this week, faces an “all is lost” moment when he appears to lose the will to fight the Borg Queen and gives in to assimilation. Maybe his one idea of turning himself over to [insert bad guy here] was doomed to fail.

Mark: And we should note that we got the OG Borg Queen, Alice Krige from First Contact, reprising the role in voice only (Krige is 68, and so probably should not be given the physically taxing job of wearing the Borg queen costume).

Will: And it’s worth noting here that last season’s Borg Queen, Annie Wersching, died after a two-year bout with cancer. That’s a tough problem for the series to write around.

Mark: She was only 45, it’s truly horrible. But I have to wonder if Krige would have returned even without Wersching’s passing. Bringing Krige back to the role serves to underline that the Borg we’re dealing with here aren’t Agnes Jurati’s peace and love collective (turn that into a Sgt. Pepper’s parody image, put it on a shirt and make a million dollars) but rather the unaltered Borg of old. 

Will: I’m sure the folks in Warp 11 are working on the parody song as we speak.

Mark: The Queen’s dialogue here gets a bit on the nose. She explains outright what Locutus means in Latin (he who speaks), and test-drives a few names for Jack (“Puer Dei” or “God Boy” being the silliest) before landing on Võx. I contacted Anise Strong, a professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University to clarify the tilde business. Evidently, the tilde over the o denotes that it’s a long o sound (so, “Vokes”), but that’s not something actual Romans would have used, but rather an invention of 19th century British scholars when writing Latin. Also, after consulting with some of her colleagues, she informs that it shouldn’t be a tilde, but a long accent (“Vōx”) The more you know, right?

Will: That’s what we get for messing with a deadass language, Mark. Still, I guess we have to consider Jack as one of our possible heroes for the finale, right? This series isn’t going to end with the Federation in ruins…is it?

Mark: Just last season we had someone fight off assimilation long enough to negotiate a kind of equal compromise, and that was a cybernetics expert fighting against a weakened psychic seed of a Borg queen. So can one Very Special Boy fight off the full strength of a fully-powered collective? Sure, why not.

All Your Ships Are Belong To Us

Will: So…seems like it was a bad idea to bring every single ship in the fleet into one spot and then network them together, huh?

Mark: Did nobody in Starfleet watch Battlestar Galactica (2004)? We also get another familiar face popping up: Commander Shelby from “The Best of Both Worlds.” 

Will: Excuse me, Mark, that’s *Admiral* Shelby commanding the new Odyssey-class Enterprise-F! Fun story behind the Odyssey class and the F — it was created during a fan contest to design the new Enterprise some years ago for Star Trek Online. Now that the F is canon, I was a little bummed out to think that the winner of the contest might not receive the proper credit/compensation for adding something so important to the Star Trek tapestry…but it turns out he’s kind of a dick. So fuck him. Long live the new, thicc, sexy Enterprise-F. 

Mark: Excuse me, Will, it’s Fleet Admiral Elizabeth Shelby.

This is the second time this season they’ve brought back a strong woman from TNG, only to have her killed by the end of the episode. I gave their killing of Ro a lot of leeway as it was a heroic self-sacrifice, but Shelby here just gets phasered point blank. I hope she’s still alive, I hope this just isn’t the last we see of her, because it’s pretty undignified if so.

Will: We know the Changelings are keeping the high level officers they replaced alive. Maybe Shelby is off somewhere and possibly one of our heroes to save the day? It would make perfect sense for the Borg to turn on their Changeling allies as soon as they were no longer necessary. And Riker underlined how strange it would be for Shelby to embrace an idea that was so Borg-like in nature. That plot wiggle room aside, I agree with your point.

Speaking of other strong women, where is Admiral Janeway? They’ve gotta be saving her for the next episode, right?

Mark: Oh, they’ve gotta be, though maybe they don’t want to spoil the character’s fate for those of us watching Prodigy (it would be wild if she showed up with one or more of the kids from that show, all grown up and in live action, mere months before Boimler and Mariner are set to visit Strange New Worlds).

Also, with our knowledge of the full plan, Vadic’s decision to kill off T’Veen is starting to make some sense from a tactical point of view: we knew she wouldn’t kill off Seven or Shaw (they’ve got a certain degree of plot armor) and so it would have to be one of the younger crewmembers. But T’Veen was a Vulcan, and so possibly already 70 years old. Had Vadic killed someone else, she’d be taking away one of their future Borg drones. So T’Veen was the only logical choice.

Will: Invoking logic to explain the death of a Vulcan. How appropriate. And speaking of deaths, Captain Shaw appears to slip into the surly night of the final frontier after he’s shot during the firefight to escape the Titan. If he is well and truly dead, I think 1) it’s an incredible miscalculation on the part of the Trek braintrust of how popular the character would be and 2) not a good sign for Star Trek Legacy.

Mark: There’s still some wiggle room here. He wasn’t vaporized and they can do some amazing things with medicine in the 25th century, but yeah, I think he’s toast. Especially since he called Seven by her chosen name in his final moments. I’m hoping we get a hastily put together “Duke is gonna be a’okay” (see G.I. Joe: The Movie [1987]) coda for the character, but this was clearly a death scene as written and filmed. I can definitely understand the appeal of leaving Seven in charge of the Titan going into whatever future Trek has in store for us, but yeah, a wild miscalculation of Shaw’s popularity here.

U.S.S. Fan Service-D

Mark: Which brings us to the final bit of nostalgia in an all-nostalgia season: the contents of Docking Bay 12 are revealed, and as had been predicted by just about everyone, it’s a newly-restored Enterprise-D. 

Will: I watched the whole episode Thursday morning. Then the whole thing again Thursday night. Then the last 10 minutes maybe four or five times in a row. I don’t think you could have scripted a better 10 minutes of fan service. Collectively, we cried; we laughed at Picard’s carpet joke. Cried again at Riker’s line about family. Everyone had a part to play in that scene…aside from Beverly, who kinda awkwardly stood there with a tricorder.

Mark: Isn’t that part of the nostalgia, too? Writers not knowing what to do with Beverly? 

I agree, the return to the Enterprise-D was wonderful. And while there have been complaints that this show is photographed too dark, I’m glad they didn’t return to the flat lighting of 1980s television and gave the bridge some contrast. It gives the whole thing space and depth. Also, a part of me wonders how much of this set was completely built from scratch, how much was salvaged from the original, how much might have been bought at an auction from a bankrupt tech billionaire who built this in his home? And is the bridge the only set we’re going to see on the D? Engineering would be fun, but that was a massive set. 

Will: And how much must it eat up Geordi inside knowing that this engineering isn’t *his” engineering? Poor guy.

Mark: Going into the series finale, we’ve finally come full circle. The series started with a dream of Picard and Data hanging out in Ten Forward (no bloody “Avenue”) and now here we are, back where it all began. One little ship versus the fleet.

Will: Setting a course for the Sol system was certainly a choice, wasn’t it? I don’t know how they’re going to save the galaxy this time, but as we know, fate protects fools, little children and ships named “Enterprise”. 

Mark: They will simply [tech] the [tech] until all the [tech] becomes [tech]. Like when ants start a revolution against their queen!

Make It So On and So Forth

• The Enterprise-E is my [Will’s] favorite ship, so it’s kinda sad to see it reduced to a punchline. But I get it — one good movie, another mediocre picture and a final one so bad, it has to be thankful that both Final Frontier and Into Darkness don’t stack up to a beloved television show.
• Levar Burton’s reading of the line, “They’ve been assimilating the entire fleet this whole time, without anyone ever knowing,” was incredibly powerful. 
• Do you think it’s a metaphor for algorithms leading children to extreme right-wing content, Will?
  • Will: [thinking face emoji]
• Data’s “I hope we die quickly” was hilarious.
• Data still calls Picard “Captain.” Data’s become an old softie.
• Speaking of, the moment of him simply putting his hand on Picard’s shoulder was great. It shows just how far Data has come in understanding humanity.
• Gates McFadden says the TNG cast has a group text. They really are friends. [heart eyes emoji]
• She also has a podcast where she speaks with each of them one on one. It’s delightful.
• The Borg have access to billions of life forms. Why didn’t they simply make another Locutus and breed their own Võx? Why not breed thousands of them?
• It seems pretty easy to turn off a shuttle transponder. 
• We also got a nod to another of our former TNG regulars with the USS Pulaski.
• Majel Barrett’s line as the computer voice comes mostly from “Chain of Command, Part II,” when captain Jellico turns the ship back over to Picard.

Will Nevin

Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.

Mark Turetsky

Mark Turetsky is an audiobook narrator and voice actor who sometimes writes about comic books. Originally from Montreal, Canada, he now lives in Northern Louisiana.