We pick up where we left off at the end of the previous season. Data has been corrupted by Lore, using emotions, and he has now joined his brother along with a group of "defected" Borg (part of the cube that included Hugh, who was given individuality where it was assumed it'd act as a corruptive programing to bring-down The Borg.) Lore has installed himself as a leader which helped to organize these Borg who were otherwise lost and directionless without operating as a single thought process. Lore intends to use them in order to, pretty much, eradicate intelligent biological life and replace it with artificial life using a combination of Borg technology and Song-Type Android technology.
Picard, Troi and Geordi are being held captive by Lore and a "brainwashed" Data; Riker and Worf are on the planet's surface along with a very large search party trying to find Data, the Borg and now Picard and co. Crusher is commanding the Enterprise with a skeleton crew with instructions to eventually recover the landing parties and take the ship back to Federation space, presumably to gather reinforcements from Starfleet.
As Data places Picard and co. in the holding cell he confiscates Geordi's VISOR and leaves, Geordi presumes it's because his VISOR saw a signal Lore was transmitting. He figures Lore has found a way to transmit the emotions into Data in order to manipulate him and has also somehow disabled Data's ethical programing, which is why Data is behaving so abnormally. He thinks there may be a way to "reboot" Data's ethical program.
Data eventually returns to collect Geordi, planning to experiment on him to find a way to make Lore's process of replacing biological brain matter with an artificial one. Geordi tries to connect with Data by talking about old memories, but Data is unmoved.
In orbit, Crusher works to recover all of the away team members but her attempts are cut short by the Borg ship sharing orbit with them, forcing her to flee. She refuses to abandon the remaining crew members and launches a buoy through the conduit, hoping Starfleet will get it and send in reinforcements. Her and some junior bridge officers work on a way to recover the remaining crew members while avoiding the Borg ship. They end up being successful and recovering the rest of the away teams (save the entire senior staff minus her) but the ship's warp-drive is damaged in an attack. Not being able to fight or out-run the Borg ship she uses the "metaphasic shielding" to shelter the ship in the corona of the system's star, where the Borg cannot go, but the ship remains close by.
Eventually the shielding begins to get taxed so they must escape, a junior officer comes up with a plan to create a solar-flare that'll destroy the Borg ship, allowing the Enterprise to escape and return to the planet.
On the surface, Riker and Worf are able to trace the path Picard and co. took and find the Borg compound but they're ambushed and taken hostage by another group of Borg; these being defectors from Lore's group hiding underground with Hugh. Hugh is bitter over what's happened and how he was "used" by the Enterprise but is willing to help Riker and co. to recover his friend Geordi and the others, though he will not go with them.
Picard, Geordi and Troi are able to recover a piece of one of the Borg and are able to use it to hopefully trigger Data's ethical programming. Lore continues to try and manipulate Data, but soon realizes he's at an impasse when Data refuses to kill Picard (his ethical programming having finally reasserted itself.) Lore, instead, opts to kill Data. Hugh -having changed his mind- shows up and begins an attack on Lore and the other Borg. Lore attempts to flee and has a final confrontation with Data where he, again, begins trying to manipulate Data into letting him go. He's able to trigger another emotional twitch in Data which he tries to exploit to attack Data; but Data is a little faster and shoots Lore. Lore is disabled, and Data begins to shut-down Lore, before being deactivated Lore says he loves Data.
Hugh is uncertain what will become of him and the others since they're without a leader again, but Riker isn't so sure, implying Hugh could take-on the leadership role.
Everyone is back on the ship safe-and-sound, Geordi is recovering from the experiments performed on him by Data and Lore has been dismantled. Before sending Lore's "remains" to Starfleet Data recovered the emotion chip (which was damaged in the attack) and plans to destroy it as it almost caused him to kill Geordi and Data is unsure if he could live with himself if his emotions ever caused him to harm those he cares for. Geordi, stops Data from doing this, saying he couldn't live with himself if he allowed Data to give up on his dreams, maybe someday Data will be ready for the chip. I dunno, maybe in a movie or something?
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As I said last time, this is probably my least-favorite of the TNG Season End/Start two-parters, but I do think the second part is a slight improvement. I liked much of the action on the ship with Crusher in command and dealing with the "junior" officers. Good action scenes and the remastered/redone effects with the stuff in the star as such look good here.
But the overall story still feels a bit lacking and it still seems like Data was very easily corrupted and manipulated by Lore.
I'm guessing there's a lot of "gray areas" when it comes to how Starfleet/The Federation deals with the stopping and handling of a "criminal" like Lore. I guess we could argue that his ambitions, motives, and plans could make him a "high enough" criminal that he's not due any kid of rights or respect since it seems Data thinks he can just shut Lore off and take him apart without a trial or anything like that. And since Data is considered an individual lifeform with rights, it'd make sense that Lore would be too. But do his crimes negate him his rights?
It probably would have been interesting if we had a "Most Toys" type situation when it seems what happened is more than what Data lets on. We see him shoot and deactivate Lore, and then when he returns to Picard and co. he says that lethally shooting Lore was unavoidable since Lore went in for an attack. Chalk it up to Data's "ethical program" having not fully asserted itself so Data was still in the gray-area that, arguably, everyone lives in. But instead he just shuts off Lore and says he's going to be taken apart. Which, again, is really the only thing that could be done with him but it still seems Lore is due some of his "rights" as a living being.
The good location shooting continues here and to Spiner's credit he plays off himself very well really giving Lore and Data different personalities, if one didn't know better you'd swear these are two different actors who're twins acting with one another and not the same person.
A meh episode but in hindsight probably one of the "better" ones of S7 which, granted, isn't saying a whole lot.
So here we are, just 25 more episodes to go and we've a rocky road ahead of us, folks.
