starlady | What I Rewatched to Watch Picard (Reply)

Picard is out! I liked it, with some qualifications, and I was very glad that I rewatched quite a lot of Star Trek over the past week or so to prepare. For my own records and for anyone else who feels the need to review, here's what I watched, with notes.

TNG

"The Measure of a Man" (2x09) - Starfleet orders Data to report to Cmdr. Bruce Maddox of the Daystrom Institute for disassembly. Data refuses, Picard belatedly realizes this is a bad thing, and a trial ensues. Rated E for extremely significant and extremely disturbing. Anyone who thinks that Trek thinks that Starfleet is always 110% on the side of the angels after this is fooling themselves.
"Q Who" (2x16) - Q throws the Enterprise into the path of the Borg, and the rest is history.
"The Enemy" and "The Defector" (3x07 and 3x10) - Two good Romulan episodes showcasing their Cold War vibe, with Andreas Katsulas as Cmdr. Tomalak.
"The Offspring" (3x16) - Data creates a child, Lal, and Starfleet Research tries to take custody of her. That doesn't seem like something they'd do! Oh wait.
"The Best of Both Worlds" (3x26 and 4x01) - The crux of the entire show, when the Borg assimilate Picard and the crew of the Enterprise risk everything to get him back. Quite possibly Riker's finest hour.
"Family" (4x02) - Gene Roddenberry hated this episode and tried to prevent it being made. Dealing with the fallout of Picard's assimilation and recovery, it was an instant classic.
"Unification" (5x07-08) - Picard, noted Klingon weeaboo and Sarek partisan, goes undercover on Romulus to try to find Spock, who is teaching Romulans dissidents about Vulcan logic.
"I, Borg" (5x23) - The crew of the Enterprise treat a stray Borg drone, who becomes an individual going by the name "Hugh." Picard and Guinan fence.
"Birthright" (6x16-17) - Data learns to dream with some inadvertent assistance from Bashir while Worf's melodramatic backstory takes yet another turn into more Romulan plots.
"Descent" (6x26 and 7x01) - Data's brother Lore is a real PITA, Hugh returns, and many plot threads are dangled which are picked up in…

The Movies

Star Trek: Generations - Gets a bad rep, provides a better ending to the series than the actual finale episode, Brent Spiner steals the show when Data turns on his emotion chip, and James T. Kirk and the Enterprise-D go out together, with guest appearances by Guinan and Sulu's daughter. Also Picard's family are all dead btw.
Star Trek: First Contact - The best TNG movie, hands-down: time travel, the Borg, the Enterprise-E and the good purple uniforms, with James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane and Alfre Woodard as Lily and some good VOY cameos.
Star Trek: Nemesis - I don't actually recommend watching this movie. If you must, turn it off after Admiral Janeway's cameo. Data dies a punk death and no one except Michael Dorn could be bothered to remember that Worf was in DS9 for *checks notes* four years.
Star Trek: 2009 - I don't recommend rewatching this movie either, as its marked similarity with JJ Abrams' Star Wars movies does nobody any favors. Rewatch the excellent vids instead. Romulus is going to explode/has exploded/will have exploded. There, you're caught up.

ENT

"Regeneration" (2x23) - A follow-up to First Contact that is ENT at its most charming and least offensive. Like PIC's glimpses of Treasure Island, provides strong evidence that in the future Earth goes carbon negative, as there is ice in the Arctic in the 2150s and the recovered Borg drones have been frozen since 2063.

VOY

"Scorpion" (4x01-02) - Seven of Nine joins the Voyager crew against her will and the show finally gets good, or at least as good as it gets. Chakotay literally says the same things about Seven in this episode that he says until the very end of the show.
"The Gift" (4x03) - Kes uses her burgeoning telekinetic powers and does Seven a solid before she departs for the astral plane, even though Seven doesn't actually want the Borg implants that are killing her removed.
"One" (4x25) - The Doctor and Seven are the only crew members left conscious when Voyager has to cross a deadly nebula. Just go with it, it's VOY.
"Dark Frontier" (5x15-16) - The Borg Queen tries to recapture Seven, while her parents' research on the Collective and hubris with respect to the Borg is tragically revealed but triumphantly repurposed.
"Endgame" (7x25-26) - 33 years after Voyager was thrown into the Delta Quadrant, ten years after it returned, Admiral Janeway jumps back in time 26 years to get Voyager home faster, with a little (semi-witting) help from the Doctor (whose new wife is a dead ringer for Seven), Commander Barkley, Miral Paris and Captain Harry Kim. Standing in her way? The Borg Queen herself. Featuring the worst and least-developed endgame pairing in all of Trek, unless you count the finale of ENT killing off the other guy to stan Archer/T'Pol.

Short Treks

"Children of Mars" - Mars gets blown up on First Contact Day, to the strains of a very odd cover of David Bowie's "Heroes." The synth ships look like the Shadow vessels from B5 and the song makes me think that the two schoolgirl protagonists are going to grow up to become lesbian lovers. We can only hope, I suppose.

Out of all of these, if you haven't seen the Maddox, Lal, Hugh and "Birthright" episodes, run, don't walk--they are obviously going to be very relevant to whatever is going to happen next in PIC. Engage.