Picking up exactly where we left off last week, with Seven of Nine and the Fenris Rangers aboard their disabled starship, facing off against some furious Cardassians.
How will they get out of this one? Well, read on, and find out!
(once again, prepare for another archival episode-by-episode reaction of mine to the first season of the Captain Picard show, below!)
from February 10, 2020 (about episode 3):
I never really liked it when Star Trek went back to the Borg well. I get why they did – most of the Federation antagonists created for STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION weren’t very successful, before the Borg happened along. The Ferengi? Not exactly the kinds of characters one lies awake at night worrying about. The little parasite aliens from the ‘Conspiracy’ episode in the first season? Never to be seen again.* But, the Borg? An ancient race of cybernetic organisms that function as one enormous collective consciousness, hellbent on assimilating all intelligent life in the galaxy into that collective? That’s a great idea, a great threat.
The unknowability of the Borg is what I like best about them. A form of existence utterly foreign to us, although made from us, that was described best in ‘Q Who?’ the sixteenth episode of TNG’s second season, when Q himself said, “They’re not interested in political conquest, wealth, or power as you know it. They’re simply interested in your ship, its technology. They’ve identified it as something they can consume.” The Borg were almost Lovecraftian in their actions, driven by desires that would subsume everything in existence, if left unchecked.
Of course, the Borg developed in more complex ways with every reappearance, if only because Star Trek’s creative leaders wanted to tell more than one kind of story with them. The exploration of the culture of the Borg, their inner workings, and even their hierarchy (which you wouldn’t necessarily think a society with a singular collective consciousness would have, but FIRST CONTACT and seemingly 1 out of every 3 episodes of VOYAGER would prove you wrong) made me less interested in them as the years went on. What was once unknowable, ominous, and dangerous became banal, even rote. In a lot of ways, my disenchantment with the Borg presaged my similar disinterest in the interrogation of Cylon culture that the Sci-Fi Channel’s reboot of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA would do later.
TNG arrived on our televisions just as (mainstream, American) TV shows were starting to understand how to tell more serialized stories over the course of a season, and from season to season. WISEGUY premiered on CBS a year before TNG began; the Stephen J. Cannell-created undercover cop show broke its seasons into several discrete storyarcs, taking multiple episodes to tell a single story. HILL STREET BLUES concluded the same year WISEGUY began, and legions of TV critics and historians before me have thoroughly detailed its influence on serialized storytelling on television. While TNG never got more explicit in its experimentation with serialization than two-part episodes, the ripples of past stories could be felt years in the future. Lt. Worf’s trials and tribulations with the Klingon empire told a thorough and compelling story across all seven of TNG’s seasons (and into DEEP SPACE NINE), and Captain Picard’s conflict with the Borg did similarly, even leaping onto the big screen in 1996, only to return to television in 2020.
So, when the second trailer for THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW indicated pretty directly that the Borg were going to return to menace the Alpha Quadrant… Well, I wasn’t filled with excitement. Star Trek has whole galaxies of strange new worlds to explore, and new civilizations to meet that are utterly unlike anything we’ve ever imagined. Was going back to the Borg well the boldest way to chart this course? As it turns out, it might have been. A chunk of the action on the show takes place within a desolate Borg cube that might as well be an archaeological dig site. Within it, the Borg are no longer users; they are being used by the scientists, entrepreneurs, and intelligence agents willing to brave its confines. The threat from the Borg now might not be so much the cyborgs themselves, as it might be from what people in the Alpha Quadrant are willing to do, to get their hands on this technology that’s almost overtaken the galaxy a dozen times, or more.
This turning-on-its-head of the predator/prey relationship the Borg have had with most other sentient life in the universe is the most fascinating idea that THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW has had, I think, and the one of which I was most wary when it was hinted at in that second trailer. To see technicians and scientists walking the halls of a Borg cube, while they strip its technology out of the walls and cut implants out of the bodies of unconscious drones, is one I never imagined. The environment aboard the reclaimed Borg cube is unlike one we’ve ever seen before, with the intrusion of Romulan technology aboard the aggressively industrial Borg design, assembled in its seemingly ad hoc way over the centuries. Every step down the corridors taken by our characters seems fraught, as if they’re daring the (seemingly) dormant Borg technology to wake up and lash out at them. You never know, with the Borg.
I would be derelict in my duty writing about THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW to completely ignore the return of a character I never thought I’d see again, Jonathan Del Arco’s Hugh (introduced in TNG’s fifth season episode ‘I, Borg’). Hugh had a rough time, becoming the first Borg in recorded history to reclaim a sense of individual consciousness, with the significant assistance of Dr. Crusher and Lt. Commander La Forge. He’s working with the reclamation project, in an apparently high-powered role, and looks as free from his own cybernetic implants as Seven of Nine became, during VOYAGER’s run. Hugh understands the danger of the Borg better than anyone alive, except perhaps Picard himself. Still invested in the well-being of former Borg as ever, Hugh is an exciting addition to this story. He was playing a long, dangerous game the last time he appeared – TNG’s two-part sixth season finale, and seventh season premiere, ‘Descent’ – and I can’t imagine he’s not doing something similar, here. Hopefully, Hugh and the man who once was Locutus can stand together, one last time.
Broadly, THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW seems to be interested in turning Star Trek on its side, giving it a good shake, and putting the pieces that tumble out together in interesting ways. We’ve gotten hints at how the Romulan government coped with the destruction of their home planet; peeked at the Federation’s dirty underbelly, that seems to only get filthier as the light of its influence grows dimmer; and seen how the values of Starfleet persist in those it’s failed most completely, in ways we’ve probably not since the heyday of the Marquis in DS9. Jean-Luc Picard’s mere presence seems to be enough to reignite the flame of honor and duty within even the most disillusioned people with whom he comes in contact. He’s clearly not the only one who’s been disappointed by the institution to which he dedicated his life. There’s always a chance for redemption, though. Whether in a vineyard on Earth, or a derelict, city-sized alien spaceship floating in what used to be Romulan space.
It makes sense to put the Borg at the center of THE CAPTAIN PICARD SHOW, really. The story of Jean-Luc Picard is inseparable from the story of the Borg. The trauma he suffered at their hands as he was integrated into the collective is, by now, well-trodden path. Maybe, by the end of this season, their bound-together path will reach a satisfying, final conclusion. Maybe I won’t need so put out by another dive into the Mystery of the Borg.
*Although, a friend of mine and I have a decent little pitch for a follow-up to that episode that we co-wrote back in 2009…