I loved the music that accompanied the shot of the Enterprise in orbit of Earth after the destruction of the cube--it was so uplifting which contrasted with the more foreboding music from all of Part I and most of Part II-- and the final notes that close out the hour with Picard looking out his ready room window followed by the shot of the Enterprise as credits roll gets to me everytime creating a very haunting epilogue.
Fix Best of Both Worlds II
- Thread starter Garm Bel Iblis
- Start date
You're right, they did use the reset switch. How unbelievable was it that Picard was assimilated, killed thousands of starfleet officers, and then they put him back in command of the flagship immediately afterward? Don't you think Starfleet might want to put him under observation for a while? Plus, think of the political repercussions. There's no way he would have been allowed to keep such a prestigious command.
The Best of Both Worlds was actually Riker's story, not Picard's. The only way they could complete the character arc they set up for Riker without neutering the character was for him to become captain of his own ship permanently. I understand that the producers weren't sure whether Stewart was going to come back for season 4, but that's no excuse for putting themselves in the position of essentially sacrificing one character or the other.
Not quite accurate. Brothers is about him coming to terms with what has happened. Admiral Satie tries to use it against him in Drumhead. He comes face to face with the experience in I Borg and has to deal with it again in Descent. His emotions finally come full circle in First Contact.
Like I said, that's not the same as actual appearances.
She had that booby-trap virus thing in her, with herself as the carrier for it. I'd say that had a hand in the limited resistance (and she DIED from all that).
No one from ENT had a chance to observe or study assimilation either, or study the implants from the Borg.
Like I said, the Feds weren't going to be helpless forever. They already did it once in TNG.
Sounds like you have a double standard to me.
The Borg mainly stayed away from the area where the Feds are located until "Q Who?", it's a big galaxy.
In other words, it's okay because you like the 8472 but you don't like Phlox?
Mentioning them in every other episode did make them less special. From a big threat the quickly became just another of those aliens that tried to obstruct the good guys whenever possible. Even their dreaded nanoprobes suffered from it; becoming Voyager's equivalent of TNG's Main Delector.
And it ended with uberweapons like the transphasic torpedo, super shields and batmobile ablative armour. Talking about making sure the Borg would never be considered a danger to Federation security again.
To stay on topic, BoBW II is good as it is now, one of TNG's best episodes. No need to change anything about it. Back then I respected the Borg as a good enemy; now the mere mentioning of the word is enough to make me turn my head as quickly as possible.
I would reply, but Nevyn basically said everything I was going to say..
but just to clarify a few points:
8472 did suck, but in terms of resistance to assimilation.. 8472 is unlike any lifeform seen before on Trek, whereas Phlox looks suspiciously like a human wearing makeup. Phlox's biology is obviously less alien than that of 8472, so one could reason that he would be must easier to assimilate.
Additionally, the Neurolytic Pathogen that old lady Janeway infected herself with didn't provide resistance to assimilation. The entire point of it was that it would be assimilated by the borg, and thus screw with their cybernetic junk.
but just to clarify a few points:
8472 did suck, but in terms of resistance to assimilation.. 8472 is unlike any lifeform seen before on Trek, whereas Phlox looks suspiciously like a human wearing makeup. Phlox's biology is obviously less alien than that of 8472, so one could reason that he would be must easier to assimilate.
Additionally, the Neurolytic Pathogen that old lady Janeway infected herself with didn't provide resistance to assimilation. The entire point of it was that it would be assimilated by the borg, and thus screw with their cybernetic junk.
Wasn't that 'Family'? 'Brothers' is where Data meets Soong and Lore steals the emotion chip.
Again, mentioning them a lot isn't the same as their actual appearances. And plus they were in Borg Space and had an ex-Borg crewmember, it would seem kind of weird to NOT keep mentioning the Borg since they were an ever-present threat. It would be like DS9 not mentioning the Dominion in most episodes.
Those were all weaponry developed 30 or so years in the future, seeing how the Feds created the Quantum torpedo (which could damage the Borg) in far less time, this isn't a huge stretch. And for all we know, the future Borg were far more resistant to those weapons.
Just because Phlox is humanoid doesn't mean his body is going to be that much like a humans', I mean just look at the Gallifreyans in Doctor Who. You going to tell me they had an anatomy like a humans just because we look alike? There's no evidence that a Denobulan should be less immune than an 8472 merely based on appearance.
As for 8472 sucking, nice to see my beliefs about VOY's unfair ill-treatment still stand up.
It took them exactly 2 episodes to cross Borg space. After that, they were outside of Borg space.
How many episodes did DS9 use Dominion technology to save the day? I can only think of one instance when Sisko used tachyon beams to find the Defiant, which had been stolen by Tom Riker.
A bigger question is why the Enterprise-E didn't have the Batman armor and godmode torpedoes installed for Nemesis. They could have blown up the scimitar with one shot.
Yes, because Doctor Who and Star Trek totally share the same universe.. so this comparison makes total sense.
Please watch TNG: The Chase over again if you still don't get why phlox and humans are similar.
So, it's unfair to call 8472 lame because they were on Voyager? 8472 sucked no matter what show they would have appeared in.. whereas the Borg were awesome in every other incarnation, and then started sucking when on Voyager.
I'll give you that part of that was because the Borg were pretty much used up by the time First Contact rolled around, but the other part of it was Voyager using them every week without having anything for the Borg to do, except lose to Janeway over and over.
Borg space was bigger than they assumed. Kes sent them past the HEART of Borg space, not all of it.
DS9 had the resources of the whole Federation to fall back on, VOY used the tech it had on hand. Thus the advanced Borg tech was used.
It'd been one year or less since "Endgame", I'd think they'd still be reverse-engineering the stuff at that point.
It never said in the Chase that ALL aliens were created by the Progenitors. Just the Klingons, Romulans, Humans and Cardassians. We can use it to justify others, but nothing is said that the Denobulans are exactly like them. It makes sense that out of all life in the Milky Way at least one species would have a harder time being assimilated. Why is it so hard to think og that.
Yes.
Uh-huh, and will you justify this "8472 will suck no matter what?".
The Borg decay was inevitable anyways.
VOY didn't fight them or encounter them every week. That's anti-VOY hyperbole. And these "losses" were far fewer than you'd think.
But frankly I think we've derailed this topic enough. BOBW part II doesn't need to be fixed.
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
The only thing I would've liked is if after the Borg went to 'sleep' then the Enterprise and maybe a couple of other ships torpedoed it to pieces instead of them self-destructing.
It would be a little more pro-active that way, but no biggie, still a classic.
It would be a little more pro-active that way, but no biggie, still a classic.
Actually, that's my big complaint, all this build-up, and then the Borg conveniently self-destruct. It would have been more cathartic to have the Enterprise finally have it's moment to kic the stuffing out of the cube.
Also, my complaint about the teaser of the episode is that the deflector dish payoff was a yawner. The stupid sparkly tinkerbell beam effect as used created no tension and made the Enterprise look wimpy. When they came back and Riker says, "Fire", Worf shoulda hit a switch and we should've seen the Enterprise from behind and this TITANIC blast slam into the Borg ship and BOOM, utterly obscure it. Then, when the blast dissipated, we'd see that the beam did and is doing nothing. If an "Earth shattering kaboom" was shown to be utterly ineffective, then the Borg threat would have been even scarier, and the audience woulda got some sense of payoff for three months of waiting for that "fire".
"After Jack Armstrong escaped from the pit of death..."
Seriously, BOBW I was written to, among other things, address several behind-the-scenes exigencies (such as the possibility that Stewart and/or Spiner would not continue into Season Four). They really didn't have a definite Part II in mind - certainly not the one we got - and it does show.
Seriously, BOBW I was written to, among other things, address several behind-the-scenes exigencies (such as the possibility that Stewart and/or Spiner would not continue into Season Four). They really didn't have a definite Part II in mind - certainly not the one we got - and it does show.
I disagree. The teaser in Part II was oozing with all sorts of tension. I certainly didn't see the deflector discharge failing.
Part of what makes Part II so impressive to me is the fact that Michael Piller wrote this months later with very little idea how he was going to wrap up Part I. You really couldn’t tell that from watching this.
The show amazingly managed to maintain the momentum built up three months earlier without skipping a beat picking up right where it left off.
The teaser needed to resolve the cliffhanger regarding what would happen when the deflector fired on the cube. Would the cube be destroyed? Would Riker have to live with knowing he made the call that resulted in his captain’s death but could take some solace in knowing it saved the Quadrant from the Borg threat? Would the episode be over before it even started? What happens? Nothing.
To me that was a truly WTF! moment. It turns out that the Borg not only assimilated Picard’s body but all of the knowledge he possessed as well. It might have been just me but I never suspected, even for a second, that they would keep him alive by having the weapon fail to work due to Picard's knowledge that was assimilated by the Collective mind. I didn’t see this coming although in hindsight I really should have and it is the scene that sets up very nicely what horror is yet to come. The seeds were laid in Part I so subtlely that I wonder if Michael even knew that they were there to exploit until he sat down to write the second half.
Some writers plan ahead and intentionally go out of their way to put in place plot points in Part I that they know they’ll use to get out of a seemingly impossible situation in Part II therefore allowing for an exit from the corner they backed themselves into storywise. I never got that feeling here. This seemed more of an instance of a good writer being creative and using organically what was already there rather than setting up things in a very contrived manner. I just loved the brilliant simplicity of how Michael resolved this. I think this aspect tends to get overlooked by a lot of fans.
And then to cap the teaser off and ratchet the tension we have the revelation that the crew's leader who knows them better than they know themselves is now is being accessed by the Hive Mind. Very ominous.
Seriously? I was in the third grade when the episode premiered, and even then I knew it would fail. Or else there would be no episode
(oh, the mind of a 9 year old!)Don't get me wrong, a few pages ago I said that I loved Part II and found no real qualms about it other than music, but I think no one expected the weapon to work, especially not before the title sequence.
Completely agree. I have to say that I'm glad everyone decided to stick around, but looking at it from just from a story perspective, it was a letdown that after the big build-up everything just went back to the way it was before.
I don't really think there's anything wrong with it, but there was one thing I'd change about the ending. I think that I would've moved Riker over to Captain a new ship at the end and done something along the lines of a Law & Order: Criminal Intent premise where one episode follows one crew and the next follows the other.
M
Mr Troi
Guest
I would have liked to have seen Shelby again. It might have been interesting to have seen her return as a captain with her own ship while Riker was still just a first officer.
Picard was the heart and soul of the Next Generation. I loved all of the characters but if Picard had died in BOBW the show would have died with him.
Picard was the heart and soul of the Next Generation. I loved all of the characters but if Picard had died in BOBW the show would have died with him.
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