#i'm telling you it is so funny EVERY time someone starts enterprise and they're like okay i was warned about the theme song

[mylittleredgirl]

i will always love the original version of the deep space nine theme song best, but i do understand why they put more zip to it in the later seasons. breathtaking musical composition, but yeah it's kinda slow for an action/adventure tv theme song, so if you're already remaking the opening sequence to add the defiant, go ahead and punch it up. good idea, good execution.

fully hilarious though that enterprise tried to do the same thing ten years later, because as memeable as faith of the heart is the Skip Intro era, it's really hard to overstate how much vitriol people had about the theme song in real time. i will say that fandom history overstates this a little because it wasn't universally treated as a sin against god, there were at least twelve diehard trekkies out there (including me) who looked at this gorgeous intro sequence paired with a mediocre cover of a rod stewart song and went "hmm. weird choice, but you make a good point, i would like to have strength of the soul and reach any star."

but the star trek fans who like being mad about star trek were frothing at the mouth. it wasn't just silly and bad this was the rallying point for how enterprise was an affront to star trek. they were NOT going to take it lying down, they had torches they had pitchforks, they were nailing a list of grievances to the church door and THE FUCKING THEME SONG HAS LYRICS was thesis #1.

(followed by "why are the vulcans jerks :(" and an itemized list of every single canon inconsistency)

so it is so, so fucking funny to imagine the network meeting that must have taken place sometime in late season two when they were bleeding audience numbers and UPN started making the worst previews of all time ("tune in for next week's SPECIAL ENTERPRISE EVENT: ✨Canamar✨!") (the previews also spoiled the ending of every episode for months, like they weren't just bad they were actively damaging) (it was soooo so hard to have a good time as an enterprise fan in 2003).

so this meeting happens and they go okay. we know what to do here. first up. put "star trek" back in the name (it was just "enterprise" for the first two seasons to "attract a new audience"). next. is there a way we can make this about 9/11. great great good job. can we put jolene in a different catsuit? and then some intern whose job it is to monitor the forums on television without pity timidly reminds them about the torches and pitchforks and they're like oh yeah we should remix the theme song! and the intern is like WHEW so should i book an orchestra for like an hour to do an instrumental version of the closing credits and then bermaga or some clown at UPN is like no no no you're not getting it. the lyrics aren't the problem. they just don't understand our vision because there weren't enough bongos.

[thegeminisage]

oh boy IT'S tng update time. last night* we watched "imaginary friend" and "i, borg."

*tonight. it's 1am. whatever. it's posting tomorrow when i'll be awake but busy. anyway im gonna have to start splitting these up so tumblr will stop FUCKING me re my character count

imaginary friend:

what i like about this episode and indeed tng as a whole is that the little girl was fucking adorable. tng fans, your show has at least one point of validity. whenever there was a child on tos i wanted to throw them out of the airlock because they acted possessed. all the children on tng inspire within me motherly concern.

HOWEVER. THERE SHOULD NOT BE. CHILDREN ON A STARSHIP.

we've gone over this at length. we don't need to do it again. i am sick to death of hearing myself talk about it. i want to stop. and yet. every. and i mean EVERY. SINGLE. PROBLEM. in this episode. happened because there were children on a starship.

problem #1: child is making up a fake imaginary friend instead of making real ones = it's because her dad hops from starship to starship

problem #2 her imaginary friend is real now and wants to drown her in the pool like in that one episode of s*pernatural = this is because an alien, from space, read her mind, which it could not have done if she wasn't in space on a starship

problem #3: the alien HATES the grownups and thinks they should die = because she is seeing the ship from a child's pov, because there are children on this starship

and on and on and on.

aside from this huge and ongoing point of contention it was solidly watchable. i liked the little girl. i like guinan. i like worf being a big old softie when he found them out of bounds. i like people not undermining deanna's counseling work. i liked the horrifically unsettling imaginary friend with laser eyes who definitely absolutely inspired 2.11 playthings.

can anyone tell me if the other star trek shows just let them have kids on the ships? ds9 i get because that's a space station but are there kids on the ship in enterprise? voyager? discovery? genuinely please write in i can't take living like this

i, borg:

ooooooh. ooh i am twirling my hair and kicking my feet and giggling about it. OHHH finally we get a good tng episode. and not just a good episode a GREAT episode. the liz community has forgiven tng. oh baby where do i even begin

okay, firstly, beverly. she so instantly sees someone injured and HAS to help, i mean HAS to, it's so good. it's very bonescore in a way that doesn't feel like they're trying to make her a cheap bones knockoff but rather a spiritual successor. he would have also helped his enemy rather than watching him die. hell, he DID do that and got quite literally mind-raped for his trouble, and he'd probably do it again. i was really really lukewarm on poor bev at first but she's come into her own so well and i'm proud of her

the borg himself - third of five, aw, just like seven of nine - but no, hugh - the name is dumb but whatever i'm glad he has one - was well-cast. it would have been easy to make him uncanny and an unpleasant presence onscreen (this was my biggest issue with data's daughter even though the ep DID make me cry, deeply sorry to data whomst i love the most). his "you will be assimilated resistance is futile" song and dance was actually really funny when played off of geordi's wry indifference. "ok, but before we get assimilated, can we please finish x test?" so true king

geordi's a natural choice to pair with this guy because when he's not being the creepiest person on earth to holodeck girls he's sociable, outgoing, and patient. PLUS he has experience befriending machines because of data. hugh actually reminded me of data in some ways because of his general lack of understanding re: humanity but - and this is critical to me - HE IS HUMAN

like, i feel like the episode didn't quite nail the point home hard enough possibly because they were afraid of the implications but the cold hard truth of the matter is that each and every person on the borg cube IS A PERSON. they have been assimilated, but we've twice now seen that it's possible to unassimilate them with only a few days of effort. picard (and guinan!) consider the entire collective their enemy but the collective is comprised of brainwashed prisoners. those fucked up little borg babies they found in the cube were assimilated as INFANTS - i assume they weren't born on the cube bc if the borg could reproduce on its own it wouldn't need to assimilate - but even if they were born on the cube, they had no choice but to be this. you know.

which is whyyyy it's so fucked picard was like yeah give hugh some digital poison let him carry it back to his cube and we'll kill them like ants <3 like, oh my god his lingering borg trauma or whatever. MWAH. when he told deanna he didn't wanna talk. when he and guinan had to trauma-bond while fencing. when he told geordi that he needed to unattach himself because it was nothing more than animal experimentation. STONE FUCKING COLD BY THE WAY. he is fighting in the war on animal experimentation on the side of animal experimentation. he was going to let his cre heal and feed that kid and then send him back laced with poison. diabolical <3

and, of course, when he didn't want to speak or associate that borg kid at all because that's who he used to be AND WHO HE STILL IS in some corner of his brain (!!!)

LIKE. WHEN HE WAS FINALLY CONVINCED TO INTERROGATE THIS KID. and IMMEDIATELY broke out the locutus voice. he still remembered all the protocol! the way of speaking! everything! i was so shocked and thrilled.

i love also how everyone who spoke to hugh came away extremely unsettled but also totally convinced of his humanity. even guinan, which was so fun, because she was even more anti-borg than picard at first and they were bonding over trauma and fantasy racism. that bit where hugh, who had only known about the concept of loneliness for like an hour, immediately pegged her as lonely after like three lines of dialogue. oh my GOD???

i was decently satisfied with the ending - obviously they couldn't send him back with poison nor could they protect him from the borg, but i wish they had informed him of the inevitable memory wipe before he made his choice. (a selfless choice! he loves geordi!!) still i think he mostly walked into it with eyes open. very sad but very proud of him.

my one tiny nitpick with this episode is that for all beverly's genuine and justified concern about hugh, i don't think theyre ever gonna address the fact that she shot and possibly killed some of the borg in the episode where picard got assimilated. i feel like after realizing they are all people, like hugh, she should also realize she's broken the hippocratic oath, and have a little crisis about it. i have no idea why we had the DOCTOR shooting and killing anybody but let alone if we aren't gonna get into that. i don't think anyone cares/cared except me though.

but tbh, for me this is one of the main draws of the borg. they're ALL brainwashed cyber-assassins and they're ALL prisoners and in theory ALL of them could be saved if only they would stop attacking first. sure, yeah, in fights you gotta do what you gotta do because your own life has gotta come first, but the unique scifi horror aspect of all of those guys being perfectly innocent people fucks and they should utilize it a little more!!!

NEXT TIME: "the next phase" and "the inner light."