On June 18, 1990, Captain Jean-Luc Picard was assimilated into the Borg Collective and I was nine-years-old. The famous third season finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation was one of the first TV shows I was allowed to stay up late to watch, and for a variety of reasons I had a lot of feelings about it. And though I didn’t know it’s what I was doing at the time, that summer all I did was craft fan theories about the resolution of Picard’s Borg problem—more than a few those ideas involved time travel, and one idea definitely involved gambling…
My mother—a hardcore Trekkie, and solo parenting that particular week—was determined to get my sister and me to stay up until 9 pm and catch the local airing of TNG on our Arizona syndicated channel. Her strategy was to make the evening into a pizza night marathon that began with Back to the Future Part II, newly released on VHS.
Back to the Future II was great of course, but I had no idea how spoiled I was to get both that and The Next Generation Borg cliffhanger in the same night. As an adult, the only thing that compares is the day that I met The Lonely Island in the morning and had lunch with Chuck Klosterman that same day. I was, of course, a Star Trek and science fiction fan before that night (it’s not like my mom wanting to watch these things was a new development) but for a future sci-fi critic, the combo of these two things was like getting hit by lighting and being bitten by a spider at the exact same time.
Though both BTTF2 and “The Best of Both Worlds” end on cliffhangers, my child-brain was more interested in using elements of the first thing to solve the problems of the second. Because I’m a bigger Star Trek fan than I am fans of most things, this makes sense to me in retrospect; How could Back to the Future ideas help Star Trek? I’m sure the screenwriters of Avengers: Endgame know what I mean.
ANYWAY. Here are five very specific ideas I remember having after seeing Picard get turned into a Borg.
5. Multiple Datas would travel back in time to save Picard.
When there are two versions of Marty McFly running around in 1955, this didn’t really blow my mind, because my kid brain had seen this kind of time traveling duplication thing before; hazily I recalled two Picards in the episode “Time Squared,” and also three versions of Data in the climax of the episode “We’ll Always Have Paris.” The point is, the multiple Martys presented an obvious solution to getting Picard De-Borged; Data would travel back in time at multiple points, and simply prevent the abduction from ever happening. To me, it was canon that Data could not be turned into a Borg, because he was already a robot. You can’t make a robot into a cyborg, meaning three (or more) time-traveling Datas could have easily fixed all this.
4. Geordi would invent a hoverboard to fly over unsuspecting Borg.
One disadvantage I noticed that the Borg had in 1990 was the fact they couldn’t fly. This seemed like an oversight on their part (even Spock had rocked rocket boots the year prior in Star Trek V)—and the fact they couldn’t fly meant that the Enterprise crew could exploit that mistake. This is how it is when you’re a kid; the way different fictional characters can defeat each other often rests on which “power” they possess that someone else doesn’t have. Rock beats scissors, lightsaber beats phaser and so on. In this case, I figured a hoverboard would beat the Borg.
Also, if the technology for a hoverboard existed in Marty’s 2015, Geordi and Wesley could have certainly built one in 2366. Right?
3. Riker would become the Captain and have big jazz concerts all the time.
The musical number at the end of both Back to the Future and Back to the Future II made a huge impression on me, and I wondered why more sci-fi movies didn’t have scenes like this. (I still wonder this, in fact.) Because it had been well-established by this point that Riker played the trombone (“11001001”) and because I had taken up the trombone for band in 4th grade, it seemed pretty obvious that if Riker did remain the Captain of the Enterprise, he would probably have jazz shows all the time.
2. Picard would be like a Darth Vader figure for the rest of The Next Generation.
It’s hard to remember this now, but because “Best of Both Worlds” really, really focuses a lot on Riker being ready to be Captain, on some level, you really buy that Picard is not coming back to Starfleet. At this point in my life, I’d of course seen Star Wars and I knew how this would go: Picard would turn to the Borg Side of the Force, and only Riker would believe there was still some Jean-Luc left in him. I figured this could go on for like the rest of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and when the show finally ended, Riker and the crew would totally get Picard back, but then, just like Vader, Picard would die in Riker’s arms. Listen, little kids are often really macabre. Also, despite the excellent Picard episodes that were still yet to come at this point; I ask you, would it have been so bad if Picard had been Locutus for like a whole season? Come on! It would have been awesome!
1. Riker’s poker addiction would create alternate timelines.
Back to the Future II is a cautionary tale about gambling as much as it is a kooky time travel movie. When you fuse this idea and the opening poker game in “The Best of Both Worlds,” and mix that all in with some little kid logic you get a few fake Star Trek episodes where Riker betting on stuff at big stakes poker games just fucks up everything. I’m not really sure how this happened, because let’s face it, I had no idea how poker and gambling even worked at that point. I just knew that Riker had some elements of both Biff and Marty inside of him. He was either going to use his poker skills for good… or screw up the universe in the process.
Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Tor.com. His other science fiction essays and journalism has been published by SyFy Wire, Den of Geek!, Inverse, and StarTrek.com He is the author of the essay collection Luke Skywalker Can’t Read (Penguin Random House) and an editor at Fatherly.
No, I think Ricker screwing up the universes with poker is perfect, and needs to happen. This can be what the Picard show will actualy be about, they just don’t know it yet.
Kinda like all the Worfs, but with a smug Ricker buffing various hands.
I love all of these ideas so much. I 100% think sci-fi tv writers should canvass little kids for ideas, the resulting episodes would be beautiful.
I remember being 12 when I saw this episode. The day after, my friend Andrew and I had a spirited conversation in which he believed there was no hope for Picard. “His organs have been removed for cybernetic implants,” he argued. For some reason, that idea shook me to my core – that Picard’s body had been mutilated to install Borg components.
My theories, while not influenced by BTTF2 as yours were, also involved time travel. Beyond theorizing a solution, I argued with Andrew that there was no way in hell that Star Trek – up until that time a mostly optimistic sci-fi series – would ever murder off their captain in such a gruesome way.
In true Riker-fashion, we bet five bucks on who would be right. I was very relieved (and five dollars richer) that we had a definitive answer when the show returned for Season 4. That cliffhanger made for the longest damn summer of my life.
Theory number 6: Q could snap his fingers, Thanos-style, and set everything right.
I spent that summer (the summer after I graduated from high school) being so stunned by the fact that Picard had been Borg-ified and stressing out about going to college in the fall that I never developed any hypotheses about what could happen.
I also associate this episode with a movie, though in my case it was the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy movie, which I’d taken some kids I babysat to go and see.
In the fall, when Part 2 aired, I had out-of-town relatives visiting me at college who wanted to take me to dinner, so I relied on my college roommate — who was fortunately also a TNG fan — to sit in front of the 3-inch black-and-white we had in our room (it was a combo TV/clock/radio – ha, remember those?!?) to take notes so he could tell me how it all went down when I got back from dinner.
In Part 1, Geordi modified the main deflector into a weapon, and the cliffhanger was Riker grimly ordering, “Fire.” I imagined the visual would be something like the wave-motion gun from Star Blazers, a beam of starflame punching through the Borg cube (rather as in “All Good Things” five years later), and then the dish would rupture and explode.
Instead, Part 2 gave us an ineffectual blue spotlight and “oops, it’s not working, well we burned out some important bits but we’re not going to show you.”
THESE ARE ALL BRILLIANT, WHY DIDN’T WE GET ANY OF THESE, MICHAEL PILLER SUCKS!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@5: writermpoteet – I do remember those, and posts like yours just absolutely destroy any nostalgia I have for the pre-internet days. My first TV, in my bedroom in high school, was a stupid little 13″ black and white thing (and this was in the late 80’s so there was just no excuse). I swear, every time I start to get a little wistful about my youth, something comes along to remind me how much better everything – everything, by every possible measure – is right now.
“What happens next?’ The question that started many a writer’s career. The statement that starts other careers is “This is crap. I can do better than this!”
@3 In a later episode, Dr. Crusher said something about Picard’s cybernetic parts and his fake eye so he wasn’t back to his original self at the happy ending.
@9. Are you sure it wasn’t Seven of Nine? She had a cybernetic eye and other Borg parts.
@10 No, Picard, after he was borged. But I haven’t rewatched since it was originally on.
I remember getting very, very angry at what seemed to be suggested that they were going to move Riker into the Big Chair and then install the extremely irritating Cmdr. Shelby as the First Officer.
@9 Are you sure about the eye thing. I can’t find any images of Borgcard having an eyepiece. He had a nightmare about a needle to the eye in First Contact, but that seems to be about it.
I always wanted some small Borg implant![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
BOBW part 1 is such a GREAT cliffhanger that the actual resolution episode, good as it is, remains a bit of a letdown.
Your idea that Picard would remain Borged for at least a season is far better than what we actually got (though not as AWESOME as the Geordie-on-a-hoverboard idea). In fact if this show had been done today — where bold story strokes and extended arcs have become common –something like that would almost certainly be done.
But 1990 TNG, just getting up to the magic number of episodes needed for syndication, was not quite ready to let go of the reset button that completely.
@6 Phillip Thorne I love the idea of a Star Blazers blast that cripples the ship and destroys the Borg mother ship (but allowing Picard Borg to survive) – mutual destruction event that then leads Riker to realize his mistake. Riker then dispatches multiple Datas on a a time-travel mission. Then the rest of the season could have a split focus with 1st story focusing on the adventures of multiple Datas back in time and 2nd story focusing on the crew’s quest for survival on a crippled ship with Picard Borg hunting them. It could set up for a bittersweet ending where the crew turns Picard Borg back to the side of good and wins(!!!) only to have their victory stolen away when the multiple Data quest is successful in saving Picard in the first place (which ultimately saves the Borg as well).
I was going to keep this to myself, but after seeing a few more negative comments about Part 2, I dredged up the defense of Part 2 that I wrote for The Sci-Fi Christian a few years back.
Regardless of what you may think about my connections to matters of faith, I think Part 2 really holds up better than most fans give it credit for.
@12/LadyBelaine: I found Riker more irritating than Shelby in that episode. I generally found the emphasis on career choices irritating. Their whole world was in danger! What’s a career compared to that?
18–
Well, it’s not like Riker stops to talk about his career in the middle of the battle. The discussion is mainly in the first half of the first episode before the Borg arrive. I think overall it’s more about Riker’s crisis of confidence. Can he really make the big decisions?
A shame they never brought back Shelby, though. I liked her energy. Seems like the hologram heavy Voyager could’ve done something with her as a Borg tactical program or something along those lines.
@19/Pendraggin’: Granted, Picard tells him that “Starfleet needs good captains, particularly now”. But in the next scene Riker and Troi talk about the fact that he’s become “seasoned” and whether that’s a bad thing, that’s he’s comfortable where he is, that he’s happy, leading to the question: “What do you want, Will Riker?” The question “In the current crisis, where can I be the most useful?” never comes up.
I liked Shelby too, and would have liked to see her return.
I didn’t mind Shelby as an irritant one-off character; she’s brash, aggressive and ambitious, all fine. I just didn’t relish her as a lead character who would constantly be sniping at another lead character every week.
21/LB – Best avoid Discovery then. . .
Shelby is great in the New Frontier books.
Did you just spoil Endgame for me?
@24 Oh come on, there are only three people on the planet who haven’t seen Endgame by now. I’m one (and don’t care about spoilers), you must be the second, and the third is a monk in Tibet living on top of a mountain; and he’s watching it this evening.
Spoiler for “Endgame.”
Voyager makes it back to Earth.
random22: Actually, my Mom hasn’t seen it, either. But she doesn’t care about spoilers…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@27 Me and your mum should have dinner one day [g]. I must admit, I am glad I don’t care about spoilers. I really do want to see Endgame, but for disability related reasons there is no way I could sit through a movie its length at the theatre. It is quite vexing.
random22: Yeah, for my mother it’s for health reasons, also. She can really only see movies at home, so she has to wait for the home video release.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido