Star Trek The Next Generation ”The Best of Both Worlds” (Nerd Heaven #001)

Welcome to the first episode of Nerd Heaven. We're counting down the 10 Star Trek episodes and movies that you should watch before Star Trek Picard releases.

Today, we're looking at Star Trek: The Next Generation "The Best of Both Worlds". I share my thoughts and review of this iconic episode which changes the life of Jean-Luc Picard forever.

If you enjoyed this episode, you can buy me a hot chocolate.

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Transcript

Welcome to Nerd Heaven.
I’m Adam David Collings, The author of Jewel of The Stars.
And I…am a nerd.

In this podcast, we’re gonna geek out together over works of science fiction and fantasy. TV shows, movies and books.
Star Trek Picard is coming out on the 24th of January next year.
Today is the first of our looks at the Star Trek episodes and movies that you should watch before Picard.

And today’s episode is Best of Both Worlds.
The IMDB description for this episode is
Responding to a distress call on one of the Federation’s outer-most colonies, the Enterprise arrives…only to find a big hole in the ground where the town used to be and discovers the Borg are behind the attack.
Part 1 of this episode first aired on the 18th of June 1990.
Part first aired on the 4th of September, 1990.

So let’s launch right into the episode.

The episode starts out like any other. An away team is beaming down to investigate a distress call. It could be caused by any alien of the week. But as they appear in what should be the centre of town, and see before them, a massive hole in the surface of the planet, we know, this isn’t just any episode. This is something significant.

That visual of what’s left is fantastic, and they a great job of integrating the live actors into the scene.

The tone and stakes are made clear right after the credits, when Admiral Hanson says, “Hell, we are not ready. We’ve known they were coming for over a year. We’ve thrown every resource we have into this, but still…”

The second season episode, Q Who, did a great job of establishing just how unbeatable the Borg are. In that story, we encountered them in the delta quadrant. The enterprise survived because Q was able to snap them back home. But now, they’ve come to us. This isn’t the depths of unexplored space. They’re heading for our backyard.

So we get the introduction of Commander Shelby. Now, I don’t know how much I’d like her as a person if I really knew her, but I can say I definitely like her as a character. She brings a whole lot of interesting conflict into the show and forces Riker to take a close look at himself.

It’s tempting to think of Best of Both Worlds as a Picard story because it has such a major life-changing effect on him, and that’s true. That’s why I chose this as an episode to watch in the lead-up to Picard’s new show. But in a truer sense, this is a Riker episode. Riker is the protagonist. Of Best of Both Worlds.

Shelby is a good officer. The traits that make her so frustrating, that make her clash with Riker so much, are also the traits that were needed to cut through all the drama and make some progress, trying to develop a defence against the Borg.

This is the third time Riker has turned down an offer to captain his own ship. I can understand that. After all, this is the Enterprise.
Plus, there’s something comforting about a stable job. Staying where you’re comfortable. In the 20 years since I left university, I’ve only had 3 jobs. Of course, nobody has been offering me the captain’s chair of a starship!

Shelby does make some genuine mistakes. Her first is beaming down ahead of schedule without permission. I wonder if part of that is the great latitude that Admiral Hanson has been giving her. She is clearly surprised that Riker is so upset by her actions. She thought he’d be cool with it.

I love this episode for the character stuff with Riker and Shelby just as much as I do for all the Borg stuff. I like exciting sci-fi action plots with big stakes, and I like powerfully emotional character-driven stories. But my favourite types of episodes are those that combine both. That’s one of the things I loved so much about Babylon 5.

I love how the dread slowly building through this episode.
First of all, there’s the mystery. We think it’s the Borg. Then the confirmation. Then our first encounter with them. Each step raises the tension and clarifies the stakes.

Picard doesn’t want to lose Riker. He’s a fine first officer. But as a friend, he wants what is best for Riker.
Interestingly, this kind of reflected Michael Piller’s own journey. He was considering leaving the show. He wrote episode 1 without knowing what would happen in episode 2, or if he would even be there to write it. It was Gene Roddenberry who convinced him to stay.

Sometimes when a writer draws from their own life experiences like this, they can create something that rings especially true. I know I’ve found that with my own writing.

Riker and Shelby argue about whether to keep working on their defences or get some rest. I’m never quite sure whose side I’m on. Because they’re both right.
As Shelby says, the borg are coming. They HAVE to get a workable defence. At times like this, maybe sleep isn’t the highest priority. The clock is ticking and every second counts.
But Riker is also right. They can’t function on no sleep. I know for me, if I’m stuck on a problem in my work as a programmer, pushing on into the night is completely pointless. But if I call it a night and try again in the morning, the answer often presents itself surprisingly quickly. It’s uncanny.

That actually happened to me last night. I’d been working on a problem all day, and I just couldn’t find a solution. This morning, I thought ‘hmm. I’ll just try this’. And that lead me to the solution. It happens.

The music in this episode is great. A lot of the music in the early seasons of TNG sound very dated to me, but this episode is the first one that I remember having a truly epic musical score

Also, the show looks absolutely beautiful in high definition.
I know all the episodes look good in their remastered form, but I was especially noticing it here. Not sure why.

Shelby’s second big mistake, of course, was going to Picard behind Riker’s back with her plan, bypassing the chain of command.
I get her perspective. She has a plan she really believes in. Riker might be playing it too safe. She doesn’t want to plan dismissed because he thinks it’s too risky. As she says, “I’d like the captain to make that determination.”
But Riker clearly said he takes all alternatives to the captain. She didn’t need to go behind his back.

And then we get the scene where they have it out in the turbo lift. It’s awesome stuff.

In an era where writers were virtually banned from having conflict between the characters, this story really broke free and let loose. Sure, it’s tame by today’s standards, but at the time, and under the rules the show was being run with, it was huge.

The episode slows down a little here, as the enterprise hides from the borg in the nebula. That isn’t a bad thing. It gives us space to really live in the tension and acknowledge just how much worse this situation is than anything our heroes have ever faced before.

Picard has a great conversation with Guinan. I love Guinan, and I’ve always enjoyed her relationship with Picard.
I wonder if we’ll see her return in Picard. They’d probably have to use some de-ageing technology, since the character doesn’t age, like the human actor who portrays her.

So the borg kidnap Picard and then set a course for Earth.
Could things possibly get any worse.

The interior of the Borg ship looks great. They took the design from Q Who, which was already good, but made the ship look bigger and creepier.

The struggle to adjust to being captain begin immediately for Riker, as he has to be corrected by Troi in front of the entire bridge when he insists on leading the away team himself.

And so Picard is assimilated.
This is the very first assimilation we’d ever seen. In fact, the first suggestion of the idea of assimilation.

How chilling that must have been for the characters.
Being killed by your enemy is one thing, but for them to make you one of them? That’s the fear that drives our current fascination with zombies.

And now we come to that epic incredible cliffhanger. Where Picard appears on the viewscreen as Locutus, speaking for the Borg.
And Riker orders Worf to fire.

And this is where my experience differs from most.
You see, I didn’t see this episode on TV. Around the time this episode was airing in Australia (which would have been a year after America) there was weird stuff going on with the TV stations in my state, Tasmania. Essentially, the TV station in the south of the state had the rights to show Star Trek, and the station in the north of the state, where I am, didn’t.
So we actually missed a few seasons of the show.
I actually saw Best of Both worlds on VHS. I was at our local video rental place. It was called Wills and was later bought by Blockbuster when they moved into Australia. I saw they had an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. I was missing the show so gladly hired it. It was both episodes together, edited together into a movie. And I was blown away by the epic nature of it. This wasn’t just any Star Trek episode. This was so much more intense. So much more exciting.

So I never had that horrible wait they everyone describes as they waited to see if Picard would die. To find out if Earth would be enslaved by the Borg.
I just watched it all back to back.

So, the plan doesn’t work. Picard knew about it, so now the borg know about it. Picard’s assimilation actually gave the writers the perfect way to resolve the cliffhanger, which they hadn’t planned ahead of time.

Hanson essentially declares Picard dead. It seems callous and premature, but I understand his reasoning. They have to take out that borg ship. They can’t keep thinking of Locutus as Picard. Riker already understands this. He gave the command to fire, after all.

The shot of the tear falling from Picard’s eye as they complete the assimilation process speaks volumes.

Even though he doesn’t appear in the episode, it’s nice to hear mention of Barclay’s name. I like little touches like that. I’ve never noticed it before.

Riker and Shelby managed to sort out a lot of the conflict between them.

And then the battle of Wolf 359 takes place off-screen. That makes sense, both for budgetary reasons, and also because this story follows our heroes on the enterprise.
It might have been nice to see some of the battle, but this way, we got to see it in deep space nine’s pilot – Emissary.
Part of me actually wants to see an extended cut of best of both worlds that incorporates some of the footage from Emissary. I wonder how seamlessly it could be edited in.

We get another Guinan conversation. This time she has some wisdom for Riker.

I notice that since Riker received his promotion to Captain by Admiral Hanson, he’s the fourth pip on his collar.
That symbolically shows that they really don’t expect to get Picard back.

They also don’t think there’s any way to get out of this situation alive.

His first job as captain is to save Earth from an unstoppable enemy.
Pretty tough gig for his first day as captain.

The shot we get of the Enterprise flying through the wreckage of all the ships destroyed at Wolf 359 is powerful and is probably more effective than showing the battle would have been, anyway.

Riker manages to distract the Borg long enough to rescue Picard.

Amusingly, the borg aren’t really bothered by this. Locutus can continue to speak for them from the Enterprise as easily as he could from the cube.

This is more than just wanting to save their friend. There are tactical reasons to try to access the knowledge that Locutus has of the Borg.

Earth sends three fighters to intercept the cube, which dispatches them immediately.
This is, to my knowledge, the only time we have ever seen Starfleet using fighters, until the Discovery season 2 finale.

It’s not clear to me how exactly Picard was able to reach out to Data, and it’s never really explained. My best guess is that it was something to do with Data’s attempts to hack into the collective. Maybe he weakened some firewalls or something.

The idea of implant a command into the collective through Picard is pretty cool.
And the choice of ‘sleep’ as a command to tell all the drones to regenerate was very clever.

I wonder if Riker’s plan to destroy the cube by colliding the enterprise with it would have worked. Given the destructive nature of a warp core breach, I suspect so.
As Scotty said in The Motion Picture, when that much matter and anti-matter comes together, oh yes, we will indeed.

What a relief we all felt, what triumph, as explosions began to break out along the hull of the borg cube.

In typical TNG fashion, things go back to normal at the end. Shelby is off to rebuild the fleet. Picard has his job back, and Riker is likely to remain on the enterprise.

But if it hadn’t happened this way. After watching this episode, I went outside and started to make-believe another option. I imagined an entire season with Riker in command as captain of the enterprise, only to finally bring back Picard at the end of that season. I guess even as a kid, I like the idea of actually making bold changes on a tv show, rather than always putting the reset button.

Except….not everything is back to normal for Picard.
As we linger on his face at the end of the episode, it is clear that he has been changed.
His life has been impacted in a very significant way.
He will never be the same again.
And credit to the writers, in an age where continuity was rare, they continued to run with that.

I expect that his assimilation by the borg will continue to haunt Picard as he embarks on his new adventure next year.

Best of Both Worlds showed us Star Trek The Next Generation on a scale we’d never seen before.
It was epic, exciting and deeply emotional.
There’s a reason many people consider this one of the best.

It’s been fun revisiting this with you.
Thanks for geeking out with me.

If you like Star Trek, you’ll probably like my Jewel of The Stars series of books.
It’s about a cruise ship in space full of eager tourists. When Earth is invaded and falls to an alien armada, they can’t return home, so they flee into unexplored space. They might be the last free remnant of humans in the galaxy.

If you’d like to sample the series, you can find episode one on Wattpad. I’m adding one new chapter each week. Or, you can read the whole book for just 99 cents. Find it at all the major ebook retailers by going to books2read.com/jewel.

Next week, we’ll look at the episode that directly follows best of both worlds. I’ll see you then for Family.