Enterprise Flashback: Regeneration

Star Trek: The Next Generation invented the Borg, and knew enough to use their menacing creation sparingly to keep them dangerous and special. Star Trek: Voyager resisted showing the Borg for a few seasons... before beginning to feature them so often that they no longer felt like such a threat. But at least with the Star Trek franchise moving on from Voyager to a prequel, that would be the last we'd see of the Borg, right?

Wrong! Behold, "Regeneration."

Researchers on Earth have discovered wreckage from an alien ship frozen in the Arctic on Earth, including its frozen, cybernetically-enhanced occupants. When Starfleet loses contact with the researchers and an alien ship departs for deep space, Enterprise is called to intercept. Soon, they come into conflict with an enemy that not only threatens the ship, but -- through a strange co-opting of biology -- the crew itself.

The original introduction of the Borg was a tantalizing moment in a mixed bag season of The Next Generation because, as Q summed up nicely: "you're out of your league." That was a feeling largely preserved in that Enterprise's subsequent encounters with the zombie-analog nemesis. But the more often you stop a supposedly "unstoppable" foe, the less it feels like an actual accomplishment -- which is exactly what happened throughout the run of Star Trek: Voyager.

Still, Enterprise tries with this episode to get back to the heart of what makes the Borg scary. It's not a prequel to the rest of Star Trek so much as a sequel to the movie First Contact. And while there are a lot of winks and nods to an audience who knows a lot more than the characters do about what they face, the episode manages not to feel like pure fan service.

If anything, I'd say it feels like a horror movie -- more so perhaps than any other Borg episode. Some of that is the "The Thing"-like vibes immediately invoked by the Arctic-bound (and Enterprise-less) first act. But we also get it in the many horror tropes lovingly deployed through the episode: characters with "the smart idea" ignored by the rest of their group, the "ghost story" energy of Archer recounting Zefram Cochrane's tales of aliens like this, the frightening whispers that Phlox hears when he is partially assimilated(!), and his insistence that his friends should kill him before letting him turn into a monster.

The episode is also good about portraying this as a real first contact with the Borg. When Archer is forced to kill a few Borg, there's a moment where he's understandably distraught at having taken lives; he hasn't yet learned that he's living in a zombie movie. It's only later, when he encounters an assimilated Arctic researcher aboard the Borg vessel, that he truly realizes the nature of what he's up against.

This is another triumph for Enterprise's production departments. Voyager already paved the way for achieving the movie budget Borg of First Contact on a television budget and schedule. Enterprise does that and more, adding the extended opening sequences in the Arctic. The snow storm was obviously done on a sound stage, but it still looks remarkably credible. (Perhaps the least realistic part is that the actors don't seem nearly cold enough in their physicality.) Phlox gets a wonderful compound makeup of his usual Denobulan features, gradually being necrotized by Borg implants. There are good FX shots of Enterprise control panels being Borgified, a fairly well done moment of ejecting some Borg into space, and a satisfying ship explosion in the final showdown.

But even if this episode does make the Borg feel scarier than Voyager usually managed, let's be clear: they're still very much "de-fanged" in this episode. They have to be for the Enterprise to ever defeat them. The trademark Borg personal shielding seems to take longer to kick in than usual. It seems easier to get up close for hand-to-hand combat (and hose pulling) than it has before. And of course, Phlox manages too easily to find a cure for assimilation (albeit a painful one).

Other observations:

• The fan service isn't just about Borg. Phlox mentions Bynars as another alien race that engages in cybernetic implantation.

• In dozens of appearances, the Borg have always "introduced" themselves with "we are the Borg." Surprise, surprise -- here they skip straight to "you will be assimilated," to avoid giving their name to the future history books.

• The Borg seem to move a lot more deliberately than usual in this episode. If the Borg are zombies, these are almost "fast zombies."

I feel like Enterprise did a better job with the Borg than Star Trek: Voyager usually did. Still, there's not as much drama in watching a struggle against a defanged opponent. I give "Regeneration" a B.