4.1 — “The Best of Both Worlds: Part II”
Plot: Resuming the cliffhanger from last season, Riker leads Enterprise in its standoff against the Borg Cube. The Borg are led by an assimilated Picard, as Locutus. Time is running out, because the Cube’s next chosen target for assimilation is planet Earth.
Thoughts: And we’re back! It doesn’t seem like it, but relatively little has been established about the Borg at this point. The catchphrase “You will be assimilated” debuts in this episode (“Resistance is futile” premiered in Part I). You still feel like you know everything you need to know.
We get a little piece of the Borg’s motivation/philosophy in this snippet of conversation between Locutus and Worf: “We only wish to raise the quality of life for all species.” “You will be obsolete in the new order.” Collective consciousness leads to interdependence, an Achilles’ heel.
I don’t know if I buy the last bit. I thought the point of the Borg drones is that they are all expendable due to key knowledge and skills being collectivized. I can buy reversing the connection which the Borg is using to control Picard to upload disruptive commands. The lack of single agency could render the Borg vulnerable to this sort of decpetion, since no individual holds authority or veto. Not, at least, until the Borg Queen is retconned onto the scene (a development I expect to not support, but one that is still six years in Trek’s future).
The choice of Majel Barrett to do the voiceover at the beginning is interesting. Which character is she representing? I would have picked Troi.
That’s a very fine shot of Picard’s head with the single tear. I expect we will see that again fairly often.
While I enjoy this episode in general, I do not enjoy the back and forth between Riker and Shelby. It seems the whole crew disapproves of Riker’s decision to appoint her to first officer. Too bad she doesn’t get anything important to do for the rest of the episode. I don’t know if Riker has what it takes to be captain, but the awkwardness of the briefing scene convinces me that Jonathan Frakes doesn’t have what it takes to play the captain every week on television.
That’s a big tease about Picard’s relationship with Guinan! I guess we will just have to wait for it to be paid off. And what is she wearing?
Visits to Earth come infrequently in Star Trek. The only others I recall were in TOS: “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” “The City on the Edge of Forever,” and “Destination: Earth.” It would be nice to get more of a sense of what Earth means to this crew. I feel like they did more of this in Babylon 5. (Edit: this flaw will be remedied next episode.)
The ship’s repairs are happening at Station McKinley. Don’t they mean Denali?
I’m going to assume that the Cube chose to self destruct, or was destroyed remotely to prevent its capture, because otherwise the big kaboom doesn’t make much sense. A solid episode, however. What did you think?
4 of 5 ships lost at Wolf 359.
http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Best_of_Both_Worlds,_Part_II_(episode)
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