Wednesday, January 28, 2015

TNG Flashback: I Borg

After the epic third/fourth season two-parter, "The Best of Both Worlds," Star Trek: The Next Generation fans spent years clamoring for the return of the Borg. It finally happened, though in a form few expected, near the end of season five.

The Enterprise finds a crashed Borg scout vessel with a single survivor. When Dr. Crusher insists on saving the Borg's life, it is brought aboard the ship. But her samaritan gesture is soon undermined when Picard realizes an opportunity: this Borg could be infected with a virus to be transmitted into the entire Borg collective when a ship comes to retrieve him. It's a plan Guinan wholly supports... until she discovers what Geordi and others have found. Since being separated from the collective, this Borg has begun to develop a sense of individuality. Now Guinan and Picard are forced to confront their prejudice for the monolithic race that wronged them.

On the one hand, this episode feels like a bit of a cheat, a Borg episode that isn't exactly a Borg episode. It's certainly not the "next big showdown" that fans were surely hoping for. But then, an episode like that is exactly what the writers were never going to deliver. Although they were never opposed to more Borg in general, they didn't see a way to deliver another satisfying confrontation with them. If they're supposed to be so menacing that our heroes barely escaped with their lives the first time, what would you do for an encore? Indeed, Star Trek: Voyager would later prove that point, defanging the Borg bit by bit with every implausible escape by the intrepid ship (ha, Trek pun) over the course of the last four seasons.

So along came this different approach, from René Echevarria. He had already contributed the superb episode "The Offspring," and other episodes since, but was still an outside freelancer when he pitched this new script. His idea to bring the Borg back by going small and personal proved to be the key. With the series Deep Space Nine now in the planning stages, the Trek production offices knew they'd need to double their pool of writers, and so this was the script that finally got Echevarria a job offer. He'd become part of the Next Generation staff beginning next season.

What makes the episode so strong is the way it provides so many strong scenes for so many characters. It begins with Beverly Crusher, who is so fierce in her commitment to save a single life that she steamrolls everyone else opposed to her -- including Captain Picard -- and sets to work on this Borg, Third of Five. In short order, she's sharing the story spotlight with Geordi, who as Data's closest friend is probably the most logical character to befriend a Borg. The scene where Geordi and Beverly name him Hugh does feel a bit forced, like they're having way too much fun with their pet cobra, but beyond that, LeVar Burton does an excellent job showing us Geordi's growing discomfort with the idea of using an individual as a weapon of mass destruction.

Of course, stronger material still goes to Picard and Guinan. In probably Whoopi Goldberg's best performance on the entire series, we see the normally calm and unshakable Guinan rattled to her very core. First, it's by the notion that everyone around her is foolishly being taken in by the "poor, helpless little Borg." The fencing scene, in which she lies and cheats to make a point ("You felt sorry for me. Look what it got you.") is shocking in Guinan's genuine hatred. Later, Geordi is throwing in her face what a good "listener" she's supposed to be, challenging her to meet this Borg. And when Guinan does so, she's rattled again. Hugh is everything he's said to be, and her core convictions are proven wrong.

It cannot be overstated how big an emotional journey Guinan then has to go on to change her mind. But she does. And then tries to convince Picard to come with her, in another shockingly raw scene. In what other scenario could you ever imagine Picard shouting, "it's not a person, dammit!"? This then paves the way for the most chilling scene of all, in which Picard confronts his darkest memories and masquerades as Locutus to probe Hugh's true thinking. And it's no casual interrogation, either. Picard forcefully goes after the Borg, physically backing him into a corner, until Hugh's shocking assertion of individuality breaks through even all the walls Picard has put up.

Guest star Jonathan Del Arco has a tough role to play here, but he rises to the occasion. He manages carefully restrained emotion within an arc that traverses both the "collective" Third of Five and the individual Hugh. I'm not sure why the writers felt the need to make this Borg a teenager (beyond their normal attraction to "cute kids"), but they found the right actor for the job. Del Arco was a longtime fan of the original Star Trek who had auditioned for the part of Wesley Crusher. He was so disappointed to lose the role to Wil Wheaton that he refused to watch the series until he got this opportunity to guest star. A friend warned him that if he took the role, he'd be talking about it for the rest of his life. The friend was right, of course, but that was hardly a negative for a Star Trek fan. I mean, come on, he got an action figure and everything!

"I Borg" was the only episode of the entire season helmed by a first-time director. Robert Lederman was an editor for the series who, like actors Jonathan Frakes and Patrick Stewart before him, went through the internal "director school" to get this big shot. He did great work here with the actors, and got extra help from the production team. With the episode otherwise being easy on the budget, the producers allocated extra money to build the crash site set. The result was a snow-covered rocky waste that's a good deal more convincing than the series' average planet surface set.

If there's one problem with the episode, it has to do with the ending -- though in a way that really should be held against the follow-up, "Descent," and not this installment. In the end, the crew decides that individuality may be the greatest virus the Borg could encounter, and Hugh voluntarily returns to the collective with his identity intact. But if Jean-Luc Picard, fighting with all his strength against his Locutus identity, didn't have what it takes to break through and introduce individuality to the Borg, it's hard to imagine this random drone would.

Next time, it's made to seem that all Borg have indeed become aimless individuals, so in need of leadership that they turn to Lore. But then comes the film First Contact, and the ultimate Borg retconning. Not only does the film not acknowledge any of this, it suddenly makes the Borg about assimilating people instead of cultures (which is specifically disavowed in "I Borg"). The film puts the Borg back in a collective under a heretofore unknown Queen (whose presence must have been what kept Picard from infecting the Borg with individuality; sure, let's go with that).

Other observations:
  • Showrunner Michael Piller dubbed this his favorite episode of the season, "everything I want Star Trek to be."
  • The 30-second preview created for this episode ("Next time, on Star Trek: The Next Generation...") uses Ron Jones' iconic score for "The Best of Both Worlds," rather than the standard music used in all the series' other trailers. It just goes to show you how stupid Rick Berman was to get rid of Jones. Even the people cutting the trailer were all, "everyone knows this is what the Borg sound like."
  • The Blu-ray edition of this episode comes with a commentary track by Michael and Denise Okuda, and writer RenĂ© Echevarria. Echevarria tells a great story about something that bothers him to this day, a mistake introduced in someone else's polish rewrite on his script. Early on in the episode, Third of Five asks, "do I have a name?" Not WE, but I, in direct contradiction with the episode's pivotal scene in which Hugh finally refers to himself as "I." Like the Okudas in the commentary, I must confess I never noticed this slip up, though I can definitely see how it would bother Echevarria.
For cleverly finding a way to tell a personal story about the very impersonal Borg, I give rate this episode an A-.

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