It was just 1 stupid thing after another, with nostalgia-bait at the end.
The 1st 8 episodes were decent and the 1st few episode arc in particular was pretty good, on the same level as TNG.
Then it's like they let a retard write this episode. Every plot point was annoying and stupid and totally contrived absolute dumpster fire garbage. This is the twitter profile pic of one of the 2 credited writers. Some young chick who gets coffee for the writers room.
okay so just off the top of my head:
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jack crusher suddenly being treated like the enemy for no good reason
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jack crusher suddenly running to the borg for no good reason so the plot can happen
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borg reveal and within minutes, jack crusher is at the queen
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the whole concept of a "borg queen" is fucking stupid, anyway, they're not fucking ants, they're the ultimate space communists.
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changelings totally disappear from the plot the moment they served their purpose
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rogue changelings were 100x more interesting than this generic borg shit
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the whole concept of "frontier day" is fucking stupid & contrived just to make an excuse to put all Federation ships in 1 place for a ... parade? absolutely idiotic.
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fireworks in space are retarded
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transporter technology cannot be use to alter human DNA en masse, or at all. this has literally never happened in ST history, nothing like as depicted here
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the idea that a human can become a borg because of a few hidden genes is retarded. borg are cyborgs. they spread by injecting nanites. this has all been established over and over.
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borg "brown noise" that makes crew
shit their pantssuddenly have borg nanites in their blood somehow -
LET'S NETWORK ALL OUR SHIPS TOGETHER, IT'S NOT LIKE EVERY SINGLE TIME THIS HAS EVER BEEN DONE IN SCI-FI, THE RESULT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THAT 1 HACK WIPES OUT THE WHOLE FLEET. absolutely retarded, contrived. comes out of nowhere. every view immediately knows it means they're all fucked. It's like "scary movie" levels of retardation.
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literally no reason to network ships unless you're doing a drone light show
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the old ship was destroyed but Geordi put it back together in his free time like your dad working on an old car
But muh nostalgia!
Brings back yet another random face from TNG just to kill them off in the same episode
D is back
Plot is now Battlestar Galactica and the cast is all boomers
As for your points,
Except that time it de-aged Polaski in TNG s02e07 'Unnatural Selection' from 1989.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Unnatural_Selection_(episode)
So the basic idea is there, it was just upscaled in reach.
I totally forgot about that episode. I barely remember Polaski at all.
I mean if you can manipulate DNA with a transporter so easily, it would be used 99% of the time to cure everything & be the ultimate in cosmetic surgery. The medical bay basically would have no reason to exist. Want a footlong dick or size DDDD tits or to be 6'6" tall? Just tell the transporter to give you the genes for it.
Let me also say that Captain Shaw is easily the best character of Season 3 & the writers just do him dirty and kill him randomly for absolutely no reason. Fuck them for that.
Also fuck Raffi. What a useless dumb bitch.
The transporter helping with aging dna shit is also used when Picard & co are reduced to children when the Ferengis take over the Enterprise.
That said - while I haven't watched any Picard after S1 - going Borg is utterly shit. There is a TNG episode though that deals with activating some hidden DNA shit (Barcley turns into a spider, Worf in an old Klingon being, ...).