9, 12, and 25 for any Star Trek of your choosing
9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?
Honestly, not into the Borg Queen. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE “First Contact” and Alice Krige killed it, but making the Borg ~sexy~ is... eh. The first time I saw the movie (11/22!!! Happy 24th birthday First Contact, now let me rag on you), I came away from it thinking the Borg Queen was metaphorical and only Data and Picard could see her because of the connection to the Borg -- like she was a kind of siren voice in the head of new drones luring them into giving themselves up. Which is cool! But that didn’t hold up to a second viewing, and certainly not to how she plays out in Voyager. Having her be an Actual Entity changed the nature of the Borg from this terrifying faceless, emotionless, reason-less entity without individuality into... well, a mindless army serving a single individual. Meh.
12. Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?
Hmmm... it’s hard to tell sometimes what’s an unpopular arc and what’s just “a lot of people hate this series,” but I like both the Xindi arc of Enterprise and the first season of Discovery. There’s actually some similarity to the reasons why people don’t like them, too -- Starfleet flagrantly sacrificing its principles for military reasons, the captain doing Morally Dubious Shit, and the biggest issue with mainstream Trek fans: iT’s NoT cAnOn!!1
However my single most unpopular take in my family is that I like the Klingon redesign in Discovery. I subscribe to the “Lord, give me canon or something better” prayer of hey, if we have more money to throw at this, let’s definitely make them look more alien and hire a dialogue coach.
25. How would you end XXX/Would you change the ending of XXX?
Oooooh okay. So. Obvs, the series finales to change are Voyager and Enterprise, right?
Enterprise is easy! Sure, skip ahead to the start of the Federation -- that’s basically the finale we would’ve gotten if we’d had a full series run, cool cool cool. But framing it as a holodeck program wrecked it, and somehow managed managed to travel back to the mid-90s and ruin a perfectly good TNG episode in the process. So like... just make the plot of it the plot, let Trip live, and center it on the actual Enterprise characters. Dishes are done.
The Voyager finale should just be like, a whole new thing, but I was thinking about the recent discussion of how the stakes are too small to justify Admiral Janeway’s actions. They’re especially too small for us, because we haven’t seen this tragic future for ourselves -- I mean, they could have shown us a Federation largely overrun by the Borg, but they gave us a cocktail party missing 3 people. And if Admiral Janeway shows up like “here check out this picture of THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE ASSIMILATED” we get to skip the 35 minutes of Janeway arguing with herself and we can rock and roll.
But!! If we’re going to do a “Janeway gets the chance to change the past” thing... and let’s assume they for fuck’s sake knew how the series would end at the beginning of the season so could set this up... why not create an episode that centers the actual point of the series. I want to see Janeway look in the face of the positive impact this ship has had on the Delta Quadrant and make the choice a second time, knowing everything, with her crew united behind her, to destroy the array and strand the ship. And then get them home, even if it time-skips forward a few years, and show! us! the damn! parade!! Let me see Harry Kim’s parents hug him PLEASE, show us Tom Paris proudly showing his kid off to his dad, fucking go FULL ON end of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey and give me Janeway reuniting with her old dog.
And? Don’t stone me, but I don’t actually want a romantic resolution for Janeway, because both J/C and J/7 fans should get to go on living. But I want some scenes man, give me the SCENES. Seven should thank her, and I demand one warmly reciprocated hug. And as Voyager flies toward Earth, give me J/C giving each other a Meaningful, She’s Kind Of Teary-Eyed, He’s Kind Of Star-Eyed Look on the Bridge, and they hold hands with a smile that speaks of The Future Is Now. The whole thing ends with a pop of champagne, the whole team raising their glasses together, and toasting “To the journey.”
It’s a work in progress, but like. Yeah. Change that Voyager finale please.