“I would ask for an updated star chart for this region, but I believe the only thing I am at risk for getting lost in is your eyes.”
Voyager finds an apparently uninhabited planet with some valuable resources and Torres prepares to extract them. Before she leaves on an away mission, Ensign Vorik (Alexander Enberg), a Vulcan we’ve seen in engineering a time or two, requests to mate with her, and the two fight after she rebuffs him. Turns out he’s going through the Vulcan 7-year mating itch Spock went through in “Amok Time”. Torres, Paris and Neelix head to the planet and Torres begins acting weird and bites Paris on the cheek. Somehow, Vorik’s condition has been imprinted on Torres, and now she has Paris in her half-Klingon sights. Meanwhile, the away team eventually meets aliens who still live on the planet after mastering a way to hide themselves from unnamed invaders. With Torres’s condition deteriorating, she and Paris are about to get busy when Vorik leaves the ship and demands Torres mate with him. At Tuvok’s suggestion, Vorik and Torres fight in ritual combat, extinguishing the blood fever (which is how Spock got over his thing back in the day). Back on the ship, Paris and Torres talk about what happened, with some hints that a relationship between the two might be around the corner. But the episode ends with Chakotay showing Janeway the skeletal remains of a Borg (!) on the surface — apparently the planet’s invaders and an indication Voyager is nearing or entering Borg space.
Why it’s important
The main plot to this episode isn’t all that important from a bigger-picture perspective. It is a nice bit of continuity with Trek as a whole and it does further the Paris/Torres relationship — which would become one of the show’s best nods to Voyager’s premise of an isolated crew.
But, really, the show’s final minute is the important thing here. Discovering that the Borg are close is a huge domino and would go on to be part of Voyager’s lasting legacy — with the debut of Seven of Nine in the fourth season and the ship’s repeated encounters with the Borg up through the series finale.
It was a tough call whether to review “Blood Fever” or the subsequent episode “Unity” — in which Chakotay encounters a group of freed drones who want to return to a lesser version of the collective. But this episode is the first time we see the Borg on Voyager, so it got the nod. And when Voyager encounters actual, real, live Borg, we’ll be on it.
“Is that a ritual dagger in your pants or are you just here to challenge me to a duel?”
What doesn’t hold up
It’s a little hard to believe that Vorik — in his messed-up state — would have been able to disable Voyager’s transporters, communications and shuttles before heading to the planet. It’s too bad the creators didn’t just chalk up the lack of help from Voyager — which is key, as it means letting Torres and Vorik fight is the best available option — to interference on the planet. But whatever.
I do wonder about Tuvok’s thinking in suggesting that Torres and Vorik fight. While it’s true that combat was preferable to the two of them dying from the fever, why not just just stun them or give them both nerve pinches and wait until Voyager fixes things? It’s awfully convenient that both Torres and Vorik end up being done with the blood fever at EXACTLY the same moment.
Big picture, this is pretty cartoony, even for Voyager. The cast pulls it off as well as could be expected, I guess (Roxanne Dawson and Robert Duncan-McNeil bring their A games). And I actually really liked the use of Chakotay in talking down the aliens on the planet. But the idea that Vorik’s condition could be transmitted is, well, goofy.
I give Voyager a lot of crap for lack of continuity. But it’s nice that we don’t meet Vorik for the first time in this episode and that he doesn’t go away after it. Although he mostly shows up in the third and fourth seasons, we see Vorik again in the seventh season. So, I’ll give the creators a mild pat on the back on this one. Plus, Enberg can do the Vulcan thing pretty well.
It is interesting that Voyager — much like DS9 in the middle years — was seeking to reinvent itself. After a second season that wasn’t well received, Voyager brought back one of Trek’s best baddies in the Borg, who were recurring villains the rest of the series. In a way, that decision made Voyager even more “TNG in the Delta Quadrant.” But given the bad execution during the Kazon years, it might have been the best choice.
“Captain, have you been watching ‘Star Wars’? What is up with that vest?”
The Borg are back, but the new Enterprise-E is told to stay out of the fighting, as Starfleet is worried former-Borg Picard could be a liability. Of course, he defies orders, heads to Earth and successfully destroys a cube in Earth’s orbit. Before it explodes, a small sphere emerges and travels back in time — apparently changing history. The Enterprise follows, and determines that the Borg want to stop humanity’s first warp flight by killing its inventor, Zefram Cochrane (see “Metamorphosis”). The Enterprise destroys the sphere, but not before it attacks Cochrane’s facility and beams drones to the Enterprise. Riker and Geordi head to the surface and help Cochrane (James Cromwell) — who’s a drunk and isn’t the paragon of virtue history paints him to be — while Picard must try to save the ship from the Borg. Data is captured by the newly introduced Borg queen (Alice Krige) and Picard sets the ship on autodestruct — to prevent the Borg from taking it over and stopping Cochrane. Before he leaves, Picard tries to save Data, who has apparently switched sides on the Borg queen’s promise of having real skin grafted onto his body (or something) but ends up double-crossing the Borg and allowing Picard to kill the queen. Cochrane’s flight continues (mostly) as planned and a Vulcan ship sees the flight and makes first contact. The Enterprise returns home, with history restored.
The Enterprise-E, ladies and drones.
Why it’s important
This movie, aside from being mostly very good, explains a lot of Trek’s backstory and is a touchstone for “Star Trek: Enterprise.” Humanity joins a larger galactic community after these events, although it really makes its biggest steps about a century later.
This movie also shows more background on the Borg (some of which is dumb) and is consequential in that humanity was saved twice by the Enterprise crew (first in the initial battle and, then, in the 21st century).
Lastly — and maybe most importantly — we see the new Enterprise-E for the first time. I’ll always have a special place in my heart for its predecessor, but the new Enterprise was pretty badass.
“Says here, you two will be the Enterprise’s B team for the rest of the movie franchise.”
What doesn’t hold up
The movie’s biggest conceit is that it totally ignores everything that happened in “Descent”. There’s no mention of the individual Borg seen in that episode or why Picard was allowed to defend the Federation then but not in this movie. Or, why Riker — who saved Earth from assimilation in “The Best of Both Worlds” — is excluded, as well. Basically, the reason for keeping the Enterprise-E out of the fight is dumb. It would have made more sense if the ship had been late to the fight because it was too far away. Of course, the fact that the Enterprise can leave the Neutral Zone and get to Earth in the course of the battle has never made even a bit of sense. Essentially, the battle would have had to last for DAYS for the Enterprise to make it in time.
One also wonders why the entire Enterprise crew (save Worf) is serving on the new Enterprise with the same rank. Seems like any one of them could have gone onto greener pastures, particularly with the natural break after the destruction of the previous Enterprise.
Speaking of Worf, it was fun to get him back into the fold by having him command the Defiant in the Borg attack. By this point in the Trek timeline, he was stationed on DS9. But it’s kind of ridiculous that he’s the only DS9 character on the Defiant during the attack. Even if Sisko and some of the others (Kira and Odo, certainly) stayed on the station, why Dax, O’Brien and Bashir aren’t on the Defiant is never explained. Also, the Defiant survivors got absorbed pretty quickly into the Enterprise crew (or, were assimilated).
There’s also the matter of Cochrane in this movie compared with his first appearance in “Metamorphosis”. Besides the fact that James Cromwell looks NOTHING like Glenn Corbett, the two characters sure don’t act alike. Corbett’s Cochrane talked about decency and was weirded out when he learned the Companion had an intimate relationship with him. Cromwell’s Cochrane is a drunk who built the warp engine to get to an island full of naked women. Hmmm …
Also, it’s odd that the Borg chose to try to stop Cochrane in the days before first contact. Why not go to Earth and kill Cochrane as a child — or destroy Cochrane’s complex weeks or months before first contact? There’s no advantage to them arriving right before the event, other than to allow the Enterprise crew to see and be part of the first warp flight.
There are a few other stray items, like why Picard brought Data down to the planet initially. There’s just no way to justify that, considering it’s a primitive culture in which Data sticks out like a sore thumb. But, basically, this movie sets up the Picard-and-Data shoot-’em up approach we see for the rest of the Trek movies. That’s unfortunate, because it doesn’t play to the characters’ strengths from TNG and it marginalizes nearly all of the other characters. Riker and Geordi essentially become the leaders of the B team starting here. The funniest example comes in “Star Trek: Insurrection” — which we won’t review — when the entire senior staff joins Picard, going against orders. Picard is in civilian clothes (planning to leave the ship) and Data, Worf, Troi and Crusher all arrive in civilian clothes as well. Riker and Geordi, though, are in uniform. At that point, it was unclear whether Picard would allow anyone to join him. But he relents, and asks Riker and Geordi to stay on the ship. It’s almost as if those two — and only those two — knew they’d be left behind and dressed appropriately. Or that Picard picked who would join him based on who had changed into civilian attire.
Back to “First Contact”, it does seem that Picard values Data more than just about anyone else. That’s not necessarily a problem — they are, of course, close — but Picard’s decision to go save Data is over the top. It’s justified by him realizing he’s been callous about his disregard for crewmembers who were assimilated earlier. But it’s awful convenient that he had that realization only in time to save Data.
Final thoughts
This really is a good movie, even if it’s more violent than just about any other Trek film. The first contact stuff works quite well — the reveal that the aliens are Vulcans was nicely done — and the Borg action (particularly the space battles) is great.
But the Borg stuff on the Enterprise is kind of annoying. Why don’t more of the Starfleet officers start using bladed weapons — or even replicating bullets? To go to hand-to-hand combat after the Borg neutralize the phasers was really stupid. Hell, Picard uses a machine gun in the holodeck! Why didn’t he replicate a few dozen of those?
I’m not going to get too deep into the Borg Queen stuff, as I don’t absolutely hate the idea and realize it might have been necessary for exposition. But it does run counter to a lot of what we know AND the forced retcon from “The Best of Both Worlds” really was odd. Why the creators decided to make the queen an active part of Picard’s assimilation way back when never made a ton of sense.
Coming next week …
The Enterprise crew has one last mission before it breaks up — and the music of Irving Berlin plays a big role. Hmmm.
“Are you the one who changed Spot’s gender? Tell me!”
Part I: The Borg are back, but they exhibit individuality and emotions. Data, too, during an early encounter gets angry — and even feels pleasure when he kills a Borg. As the Federation prepares for a new Borg invasion, a captured Borg (Brian Cousins) convinces Data to steal a shuttle to meet “the one” who will give him more emotions. The Enterprise follows, and Picard sends pretty much everybody on the ship except for Spot and the fish in the ready room to look for Data on a remote planet, leaving Crusher (!) in command. After a brief search, Picard, Troi and La Forge are captured by the Borg, who are led by our favorite evil twin, Lore (see “Datalore”). Data then emerges, and tells Picard that he and Lore will together “destroy the Federation.”
Part II: Picard and Co. are prisoners, and it’s clear that Lore’s done something to Data to make him act all evil while feeding him emotions from the chip he stole from their creator, Dr. Noonien Soong (in “Brothers”). Lore has Data experiment on La Forge as part of a plan to make the Borg fully artificial. Crusher recovers most of the Enterprise crew from the surface, but Riker and Worf stay behind to try to find Picard’s team. They run into Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco) from “I, Borg”, who tells them his individuality caused chaos within the Borg, who were then manipulated by Lore. Crusher on the Enterprise defeats a Borg ship in battle, and Riker and Worf mount a rescue — in which Hugh and his buddies reluctantly help. Data, whose ethical subroutines have been reactivated, MacGyver-style, by Picard and Co., rejoins the good guys and deactivates (and later disassembles) Lore. La Forge, back on the Enterprise, is fine, and stops Data from destroying the recovered emotion chip.
“So, have you seen the Crystalline Entity? Dude owes me like $20.”
Why it’s important
You might think part one is one of Trek’s most consequential hours. It’s a good piece of TV and ties in a lot of threads from past storylines. But part two — in which we learn that only a subset of the Borg is part of Lore’s plan — kind of kills the consequences of part one. Other than those we see here, the Borg are largely unaffected by what happens in these episodes (and by Hugh, previously) and go about their merry way of trying to assimilate the galaxy. We see them back in their collective form in “Star Trek: First Contact” and starting in the third season of Voyager.
Really, the recovery of Data’s emotion chip is the bigger domino. In “Star Trek: Generations”, Data decides to use the chip — with disastrous (early) results. Cowered by fear, Data lets Dr. Tolian Soran escape. Later, Soran successfully draws the Nexus time event to him in the Veridian system by destroying that system’s sun. Picard, caught in the Nexus, goes back in time and stops Soran with the help of James T. Kirk, who had been caught in the Nexus for nearly 80 years. Picard and Kirk are successful, but Kirk is killed. And the Enterprise-D is destroyed.
Data, of course, has emotions for the remainder of the Trek movies, as he’s able to (mostly) master them. Sure makes you wonder why he and La Forge didn’t test the chip in a more controlled environment, as we’ll get to that when we review “Star Trek: Generations”. Get ready for an epic rant, people.
“Commander, how did you get so dumb in the last year or so?”
What doesn’t hold up
Part one deals a lot with Picard’s decision to send Hugh back to the Borg without the destructive program Data and La Forge designed. Admiral Nechayev (Natalija Nogulich) rakes him over the coals for the move. My only real gripe there is that Picard didn’t have this kind of dressing down earlier, if he was going to have it at all. We’ve seen Nechayev before (in “Chain of Command”) so it’s odd that she hasn’t addressed her concerns previously — and only does so when it provides necessary exposition here.
Otherwise, Picard’s decision to send nearly the entire crew to look for Data was just ridiculous. It all works out in part two, but the Federation flagship was facing a Borg vessel with an untested ensign at tactical and the chief medical officer in command! The idea, I guess, was to line things up to give Crusher a shot in the big chair — and Gates McFadden was up to the challenge — but Picard’s logic was just awful here.
Part two, actually is even worse — both as far as logic and entertainment value. To start, Picard and Co., simply are able to do way too much with limited resources while in a Borg holding cell (with no apparent surveillance). That they could reactivate Data’s ethical subroutines with a piece of gum, some tin foil and a lot of luck was hilariously bad writing.
Then, there’s the clear retrench by the creators between the two episodes. In part one, the obvious implication is that the ENTIRE Borg collective had been affected by Hugh. There’s no discussion or pondering over whether the new individualized Borg are anomalies. But in part two, near the end, Hugh makes a comment that they “can’t go back to the collective.” Initially, I took this to mean that all Borg, now individuals, couldn’t recreate the collective. But, apparently, it meant that the collective still existed and the Hugh-affected Borg were separate of it. Why they can’t rejoin the collective isn’t explained.
Why only some Borg were affected by Hugh, of course, is never explained. The whole POINT of the Borg is that they’re interconnected. But by limiting Hugh’s effect to the Borg we see here, the Borg as we knew them are still around as a threat. My guess? The creators realized after part one that they wanted to keep the old Borg around and they undid some of the consequences from part one — even though they had to do it with what only could be called “weak sauce.” Yuck.
I suppose I could bitch about how Lore found the Hugh-affected Borg in the first place. The last time we saw Lore, he had a small ship and was leaving a planet in or near Federation space. So, either the Borg ship with Hugh on it was in or near Federation space — which comes back to the whole question of where the Borg are and why they don’t attack the Federation more often if they’re close by — or Lore was able to travel a VERY long way from Federation space and just happened to stumble onto the Borg and THEN take them to the Delta Quadrant, home to the planet we see in this episode. Either way, it’s a mighty small galaxy, after all.
Lastly, why does Riker tell the Enterprise crew still on the planet to take cover and not assist him and Worf? Granted, a larger group would have been easier to spot, but Riker could have called for the other officers before he mounted the attack on Lore’s compound and not had to go in with awful odds. Or, maybe more significant, having even four or five more officers would have helped Riker and Worf without compromising their position. My guess is the budget for extras was already overly taxed.
Oh, and one more thing. Does anyone else find it odd that Data — whose rights as a sentient being have been a major thread of TNG — is cool with essentially executing Lore? In second-generation Trek, there’s no indication that the Federation is down with the death penalty, but Data makes the conscious decision to disassemble Lore at the end of this episode. The creators made this harder on themselves than was really necessary, as Lore could have been damaged beyond repair when Data shot him near the end of the episode. I understand why imprisoning Lore would have been damn-near impossible. But by having Data disassemble Lore, he treats his brother like a piece of equipment — the very thing that was the whole point of “The Measure of a Man”.
Final thoughts
Season six of TNG was arguably its best, but season seven is arguably its worst. While “Descent I”(the final episode in season six) isn’t perfect, it’s a fun watch, but “Descent II” (the first episode of season seven is really bad. There are a lot of weak showings in season seven, with a few good ones thrown in. In retrospect, it seems pretty clear that the series was running out of gas, as season seven has a lot of off-the-wall outings (“Masks”, “Thine Own Self”, “Emergence”, the crap with Troi and Worf and the abysmal “Sub Rosa”).
Basically, season seven gets points over the first two seasons because the characters are less erratic and because the finale (“All Good Things …”) was so strong (so were “The Pegasus”, “Parallels” and “Preemptive Strike”). But I’d rather watch most first- or second-season episodes than about two-thirds of season seven.
Last point: This is another example of our heroes having some really bad stuff happen right at the end of a calendar year. With the decision to make a full season a full year (e.g., the sixth season is 2369 and the seventh season is 2370) the entire incident with the Lore-led Borg happened right around New Year’s Eve. This approach really began with “The Best of Both Worlds” two-parter — that set in motion season-ending cliffhangers. With some exceptions, this was the approach for most of TNG, all of DS9 and all of Voyager.
Coming next week …
So, THAT’s why the Federation doesn’t use cloaking devices.
“When I return to the collective, I will rename Fourth of Five and Fifth of Five ‘Dew’ and ‘Lou’.”
The Enterprise finds a single Borg (Jonathan Del Arco) at a crash site, and Crusher insists on nursing it back to health. The crew is cautious, given their last encounters with the Borg, and comes up with a plan to use the injured Borg as a weapon to wipe out the entire collective. But the injured Borg, cut off from the hive mind, becomes an individual, and La Forge names him “Hugh”. After meeting Hugh, Picard eventually decides against using an individual as a weapon of mass destruction and decides against sending Hugh back with an invasive program. The crew sends Hugh back to the Borg — but with his new-found individuality.
“So, Mr. La Forge … the Borg can assimilate entire worlds, but they can be beaten by a weird shape? Maybe you need to call in Dr. Brahms on this one …”
Why it’s important
Hugh, upon returning to the Borg, destabilizes a subset of the collective with his individuality. The subset is later found by Lore — Data’s evil twin brother introduced in “Datalore” — who leads them on attacks against the Federation in the upcoming “Descent” two-parter, which begins in the sixth-season finale. That partly paves the way for Data to recover his emotion chip from Lore — which Lore stole from Data in “Brothers”. The emotion chip becomes a major focus point of “Star Trek: Generations” as we’ll discuss later.
But this episode might be more important for what it says about 24th-century humanity (at least, the TNG version of it).
In the first part of the episode, the only cast member speaking out against using Hugh as a weapon is Crusher. Even Troi and Data — characters who might object for various reasons — are pretty much behind the plan. But as the episode progresses, and as the characters get to know Hugh and see that he’s not a mindless killing machine, they realize that they can’t use him as such. It’s a core Trek message about morality, as it dismisses the caustic, security-first message we might have seen in later Trek (and in the beginning of this episode). It’s interesting to wonder what captains Kirk, Sisko, Janeway or Archer would have done in Picard’s situation. Given the actions by each of them — and given that Picard changes his mind despite the events of “The Best of Both Worlds” — I think Picard is the only captain (certainly, the only second-generation captain) who certainly would have not sent the invasive program along with Hugh. More on that in a moment.
I’m glad this captain doesn’t want to get ‘that fish out of the ready room’.
What doesn’t hold up
The invasive program — essentially, an unsolvable shape, or something — sure doesn’t seem like it should be a big threat to the Borg. I also find it odd that Data, the ship’s foremost expert on artificial intelligence who interfaced with the collective in “The Best of Both Worlds”, isn’t more involved with Hugh. I get that La Forge’s presence is needed for the emotional connection. But maybe Data could have subbed for Crusher and supplanted cold machine reasoning with Crusher’s humanism? Maybe not …
One real problem is the idea that the Borg couldn’t handle the infusion of individuality. The collective has assimilated billions, perhaps trillions of people. Didn’t they have individuality when they became drones? Or, is the idea that the Borg block the individuality of newly assimilated people but didn’t know to block Hugh’s?
Lastly, I still don’t understand exactly where the Borg are in relation to the Federation. In “Q Who?”, we’re told they’re thousands of light years away, but that they most likely destroyed several Federation and Romulan outposts in “The Neutral Zone”, about a year earlier. Here, Hugh’s ship and the one that comes to recover it are in an area of space the Federation is considering for colonization — which means it can’t be too far away from more settled areas. But we don’t see the Borg (in their collective state) again for like four years — when they have a battle in the Terran system in “Star Trek: First Contact”. That’s despite the fact that they’re a relative stone’s throw (especially with Borg technology we see in Voyager) from the Federation and that they’ve been around the Neutral Zone, which was established when the Federation was newer and presumably much smaller.
I suppose you could argue that the Borg are encountering other Federation ships and planets in events that didn’t involve the Enterprise (or, later, DS9). But that doesn’t seem to mesh with the foreboding surrounding the Borg return in “Descent” or in “Star Trek: First Contact”. Each time, the idea is that the Borg “HAVE RETURNED”. But what were they doing in the interim? Keep in mind that only a part of the collective is affected by Hugh after this episode.
The big thing, I guess, is that the series could have turned into All Borg, All the Time, and that the creators didn’t want that.
Final thoughts
As noted above, this episode is about as idealistic as they come in Trek. It matches some of the most Roddenberry moments from TOS (like “The Corbomite Maneuver”) in rendering aid to a fallen adversary, refusing to follow through with an approach that could only be rationalized by the ends justifying the means. Of course, in “The Corbomite Maneuver”, Kirk really holds all the cards and only risks his life and the lives of two others by helping his adversary. In this case, Picard must do what he thinks is right with a LOT more at stake. It’s also interesting that in “Descent”, Picard is excoriated by an admiral for not “ridding the Federation of a mortal foe.”
Sisko — who did some pretty dirty stuff in the latter years of DS9 and whose wife was killed by the Borg — would have likely sent Hugh back with the invasive program, with Bashir or possibly Dax questioning the decision. Janeway is tougher to pinpoint, as her character was more erratically written. But her near-obsession with getting her crew home would have likely prevailed — though it’s unlikely the Voyager creators would have forced her to make the hard choice, as that series was always about finding cheats for the hard questions. Same goes for Kirk really — though I think Kirk would have talked the talk more before finding a way to work around the problem.
Archer, of course, was the one captain who was partly written after the events of 9/11. Given his actions during the third season Xindi arc — torture, piracy, etc. — I think he would have ultimately gone with the ends over the means. But he likely would have been torn up about it.
Anyway, this is a great TNG episode because it’s one that only really would have worked on TNG. It was Trek’s most idealistic crew and series and was the best about “doing the right thing” — at least, until the movies (more on THAT later). The episode also is well served by Patrick Stewart, who displays Picard’s anguish perfectly. The whole episode is about his high-sounding ideals fighting the awfulness he went through and the fear that the Borg could do it somewhere else. As Picard and TNG are wont to do, they pick the moral option.
“I am, the cutest of Borg. Wait, that’s not right …”
Part I: The Enterprise discovers that the Borg (see “Q Who?”) have made it to Federation space. After a brief encounter with a cube in which the Borg say they want Picard, the Enterprise hides in a nebula while the crew begins to build a weapon that they believe will destroy the Borg ship (based on what they learned in the earlier encounter). The Borg force the Enterprise out of the nebula, kidnap Picard and set course for Earth. Riker sends an away team to the Borg ship, which finds Picard, assimilated — in one of the franchise’s signature moments. The away team manages to get the Borg ship out of warp — and Riker, facing an assimilated Picard, now Borg spokesman Locutus, on the view screen — tells Worf to fire the new weapon. Then, a million nerds threw their remotes at the TV and wondered how they’d get through the summer.
Part II: The Borg, armed with Picard’s knowledge, are unaffected by the attack. The failed attempt has left the Enterprise damaged and the Borg head on their merry way to Earth. Riker, promoted to captain via subspace, seems lost at first without Picard. But encountering 39 Starfleet vessels destroyed at Wolf 359 provides him with resolve. He kidnaps Picard and uses Data to tap into the information about the Borg within him. With the Borg vessel orbiting Earth, Picard manages to reach out to Data and suggests putting the Borg to sleep — which causes a malfunction that destroys the ship. Picard is saved, but clearly messed up, as the episode ends.
“This is for telling me I need to read more history.”
Why it’s important
Simply put, this is TNG’s most consequential showing — and it should have really been more consequential than it was. But, first the good.
It’s not overkill to say that the events here (and, really, the actions by Riker) saved the known galaxy. At one point Troi says that in a few weeks “nanites might be all that’s left of the Federation.” The stakes here are as high as they get in TNG and are actually higher than in two of the TNG movies. If the Enterprise hadn’t been successful, Star Trek pretty much ends. For more, check out the alternate-reality episode “Parallels” in TNG’s seventh season, when we get a glimpse at the Enterprise (“one of the last ships left!”) three years after the Borg have (presumably) assimilated Earth.
Picard’s assimilation is a major bit of back story for the character and the franchise. We see fallout in TNG’s next episode (“Family”), in other shows through the years (“The Drumhead”, “I, Borg”, the “Descent” two-parter and the previously mentioned “Parallels”). Of course, you could argue that Picard’s knowledge of the Borg (post-assimilation) helped him lead the final attack in “Star Trek: First Contact” that ultimately destroyed another Borg cube threatening Earth.
The battle at Wolf 359 is also a major bit of back story for Benjamin Sisko. The death of his wife at that battle (on board the Saratoga) essentially puts him on a trajectory to be the commander of DS9 two-plus years later as a damaged man unable to get over the past.
Spiner and Stewart bond over how much time they had to spend with the makeup people.
What doesn’t hold up
If you can get past the Borg wanting Picard as their spokesman — with the thinking being that archaic cultures are “authority driven” — the first part of this episode is just about perfect. It’s kind of annoying that Starfleet’s Borg expert, Lt. Commander Shelby (Elizabeth Dennehy) is worried about her career (that Riker is blocking it) as a major invasion looms, but I can get past that. Part II is more problematic …
The episode’s big conceit is that the Borg ship doesn’t simply destroy or assimilate the Enterprise after the deflector beam thing fails. I’m sure it could be argued that the Borg no longer saw the Enterprise as a threat, but that’s a stretch. Clearly, it would have been easy and smart to simply destroy the most powerful ship in the Federation fleet.
Most of the show’s final 15 minutes are somewhat questionable. For one thing — as we noted previously — why wasn’t someone from Earth, Starfleet or the Federation generally in contact with the Enterprise after the ship goes through the Wolf 359 wreckage? A lot of Starfleet was wiped out, but much of it remained (based on what we see later). If nothing else, shouldn’t the Federation president have been trying to get Riker on the horn? There’s no indication the Borg were blocking transmissions (which would have been an easy line of dialog to throw in, BTW). Beyond that, wouldn’t Starfleet have left a couple ships to defend Earth — beyond the rather paltry Mars defense perimeter vessels? Or, maybe, some ships that weren’t able to reach Wolf 359 would have been en route to Earth, possibly attempting to contact the Enterprise? I know that might have cluttered things up, but still …
Then, there’s the idea that planting a bad command within the Borg ship would cause it to self-destruct. The execution is good, but I’ve never bought the premise. Wouldn’t it have made much more sense for the command to be entered, for the Borg to lower their defenses and for the Enterprise to have just blown it to hell after that? I know that’s not exactly in keeping with Roddenberry’s usual vision, but it seems like an exception could be made when the fate of Earth and the Federation is at stake!
Also, it’s pretty clear that, at the time this episode was released, the loss of 39 starships was seen as a big hit to Starfleet. Shelby, at the end of the episode, actually says that a task force will have the fleet up and running within a year. This is somewhat buoyed by Picard’s struggles to get a fleet together a year later in the “Redemption” two-parter and other dialog in the fourth season alluding to Starfleet being sort of strapped. Essentially, in TNG and even early DS9, Starfleet is big — but not enormous.
But, in mid- to late-DS9, Starfleet is shown to have hundreds, maybe thousands of vessels. There never was talk of a build-up of ships — though one certainly would have been possible with all the threats facing the Federation in the late 2360s and early 2370s. Maybe, with a conflict with the Dominion looming and the threat of more Borg attacks, Starfleet called in its vessels that had been in deep space, exploring? Again, it’s possible, but never stated.
Lastly, it’s odd the level to which things return to normal after this episode. Other than one attaboy for Riker (in “The Wounded”) and the ship issues in“Redemption”, TNG doesn’t feel like the Federation was almost wiped out. This is something DS9 and Enterprise did much better (though Voyager did much, much worse). I’ll give the creators props for “Family” — the following episode, in which Picard struggles with the emotional toil of what’s happened. It’s also smart that several weeks (maybe even a couple months) pass between the end of Part II and the regular episode after “Family”. But, in that episode (“Suddenly Human”) things are really back to status quo. Shame.
Final thoughts
Complaints aside, this was TNG’s peak. Aside from a few classic episodes in the following years, notably “The Inner Light”, never again did TNG work as well — though it was still very good and didn’t fall far until some truly awful episodes in season 7.
Oh, this marks the first time where the creators’ decision to have second-generation Trek seasons coincide with calendar years (unlike TOS) produce unintended comedy. With the cliffhanger here — and the many that followed at the end of seasons on TNG, DS9 and Voyager — calendar years often ended with really bad things happening to our heroes! From a practical perspective, the success of “The Best of Both Worlds” likely inspired other cliffhangers. But it sure must have wrecked a lot of New Year’s Eve plans on the Enterprise, DS9 and Voyager. 🙂
Coming next week …
Worf’s a daddy! No, really.
What if a site focused on the really important Star Trek episodes, explained how they were important and how they tied together — while tossing in a healthy dose of snark?
