TNG Flashback: The Best of Both Worlds, Part II

There was no way that the fourth season premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation was going to live up to the spectacular cliffhanger that ended season three. Still, even if "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" is a bit of a disappointment, it's far from a flop.

With Captain Picard transformed by the Borg into their voice, Locutus, they are now equipped with all the knowledge and experience they need to obliterate the Federation's defenses. Riker must step out of the shadow of his former captain and devise new strategies to protect Earth from annihilation.

Part II has a lot of story to pay off, but in its first half at least it does a commendable job in continuing with more of the character moments that helped make Part I so wonderful. Admiral Hanson gives us the back story of how he met Picard, as a means of declaring that Picard is already dead; the thing now working for the Borg is not the captain. It's a sentiment shared by Guinan in a brilliant scene where she comes to the ready room to lift Riker out of his uncertainty and give him permission to let Picard go. When Guinan says it's alright -- necessary -- to move on, that's that. (She also playfully teases the story of how she met Picard, without telling it.)

The rapprochement between Riker and Shelby is handled well in this episode. Riker extends an olive branch by revealing to her the comments Picard made in Part I... but still does get in a few jabs here and there even as they begin to work together more harmoniously.

There are plenty of other great accents throughout the episode. It's a chilling "walk over your grave" moment when we learn that the ship Riker was offered to command in Part I -- the Melbourne -- was destroyed in the battle at Wolf 359. The brief glimpses of Saturn and Mars are fun, particularly the former in that it sort of calls to mind the series' original opening credits from the first two seasons. The mention of weaponizing nanites is a fun bit of continuity to an earlier episode. And the fact that Riker and Shelby both change the pips on their uniforms (to indicate their promotions) does work to push the notion that the loss of Picard might be permanent.

Speaking of Picard, the most powerful moments in the episode are ones involving him. Right in the teaser is the outstanding moment where Locutus first calls Riker "Number One." It's a wonderful twist of the knife on the fact that Picard truly is in there (despite whatever Hanson or Guinan might later say), and simultaneously belittles Riker as a subordinate, an unworthy adversary. It makes the moment that Riker rises to the challenge that much sweeter. Later, there's the scene in which we see Picard further transformed by the Borg, in which they attach a prosthetic arm and drain the color from his skin. The single tear that rolls from his eye again tells us: Picard is in there somewhere. And then of course there's the final shot of the episode, a melancholy gaze out the window that lets us know this ordeal has cost him something dear.

As I've mentioned before, when this episode aired for the first time, I got to watch it at a Star Trek convention with thousands of fans. The cheers that erupted when Worf and Data retrieved Picard were deafening. The laughter at Worf's hilarious "I like my species the way it is" line was memorable. But the crowd quieted down a bit as the episode came into the final acts. That's where the episode gets weak.

There's no denying the logic of making the Borg's interconnectedness -- their strength -- be their weakness. Writer Michael Piller reportedly only figured that out two days before shooting began on this episode, after weeks of struggling with how to resolve his unsolvable cliffhanger. But as logical as it is, it just doesn't make for much excitement. They literally put the Borg to sleep. Director Cliff Bole would, in later interviews, acknowledge this as "a little bit of a cop out." And composer Ron Jones essentially lets us hear how disjointed this wrap-up is: his score whiplashes back and forth between pulsing action for the battle outside, and atmospheric synthesizer for the work in Data's lab. It's low energy, the only drama in it being quite intellectual -- you have to really stop to think about it to respect how much strength of will Picard has to fight the Borg and give the solution to Data.

Other observations:

• With a new season replenishing the production coffers, the costumers were able to outfit all the background characters with the same collared uniforms the major characters had been using for a year. (Apparently in the moment between Riker's order to fire on the Borg cube and the actual execution of it, half the bridge staff rushed out to change their clothes.)

• This was the last episode of the series to show the Enterprise separating the saucer. This required the visual effects team to haul the older, larger model out of storage; the newer Enterprise model they'd been using lacked the ability to do this.

• This was also the last episode to feature a Borg cube, even though the Borg themselves would reappear in later episodes.

• This episode won two Emmy awards: Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series and Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Drama Series.

• During the battle sequence in which Picard is rescued from the Borg, Riker orders the use of a new communications scrambling code, "Riker One." But you can plainly see from the way his lips move that the "One" was a substitution in post-production. I wonder what the original line was, and why they decided to change it?

• Writer Michael Piller wanted to add dimension to the Borg, explaining the motivation behind their outright villainy, so he wrote the scene in which Locutus explains that they want to improve the quality of life for all species.

• Security was understandably tight on this episode, the production fighting to keep the conclusion of the cliffhanger a secret. To track any potential leaks of the first draft of the script, the number of the "Jupiter station" referenced in the episode was unique in every single copy.

• LeVar Burton was in the hospital for emergency surgery when filming began on this episode. This is why Geordi appears in tight close-ups throughout this episode; his material was filmed later and spliced in with the other actors. This is also why Chief O'Brien is the one to assist Data in the lab during the episode's climax; this was written to have been Geordi, but his lines were all given to O'Brien because of Burton's unavailability.

• The Blu-ray set for season four includes a scene deleted from this episode for time, in which Troi and Riker discuss the loss of Picard. It was meant to occur before the Riker/Guinan scene, and given the similarities between the two, that later scene probably plays better without this one. There's also some rough, trite dialogue for Troi in this scene that the episode is probably better without. That said, there are two great moments: Riker acknowledging the Picard was more like a father to him than his real one, and Troi flat-out contradicting the sentiments Hanson and Guinan argue at other times. Troi says there is still humanity she can sense in Picard.

• Though I mentioned the somewhat schizophrenic music from Ron Jones in the climactic scene, the bulk of his work in this episode is just as exceptional as what he composed for Part I. His screaming action cue for Picard's rescue is brilliant, but just as powerful are some quieter moments in the episode: the mournful solo horn that plays as Riker "lets go" of Picard, the Enterprise's flight through the graveyard at Wolf 359, and Picard's look out the window at the final fade to black.

Despite that "cop out" of an ending, I still think there's plenty of good things about this season opener. I give it a B+.