35 Years After “The Best of Both Worlds,” a Borgified America Is Staring Us Down
When “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1” brought the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation to a close 35 years ago this week, the moment that stuck with me most wasn’t the cliffhanger ending itself—even though it was plenty dramatic.
Like every other Trek fan (including Michael Piller, who wrote the script), I wanted to know how Commander Riker and the Enterprise would escape the Borg, now that the cybernetic collective had kidnapped and assimilated Captain Picard. With access to all of Picard’s knowledge, let alone a foothold into his soul, the Borg would surely be unbeatable. I had no clue how the story would resolve.
But the moment that still haunts me, 35 years on, is just before the episode ends, when the Enterprise away team, and we viewers, were first confronted with Picard as Locutus of Borg.
There he stands, still recognizable, but shockingly defaced by the Borg’s cybernetic implants on his face. Wearing the same black, brutal armor the Borg wear, he almost blends into the darkness surrounding him, which is pierced by the blood-red light of the laser beam shining from the implant around his right eye.
On its own, it’s a terrible sight. The Borgified Picard, staring his crew, his friends, down.
Then composer Ron Jones makes the moment even more horrific by scoring it with, of all things, a quotation of the classic, eight-note Star Trek fanfare.
The rhythm’s all wrong, but the notes are unmistakable. The heroic melody viewers had always heard as a clarion call to Star Trek’s highest and most positive qualities—wonder, exploration, adventure, courage, nobility—now sounds like a shocking mockery of all those virtues.
To hear that fanfare played, even in such a twisted way, for this monstrous version of a character who for three seasons had embodied that ethos, was, as Jones surely intended it to be, an assault on the ears and a punch in the gut.
The music underscores the apparent hopelessness of the situation, the seemingly self-evident futility of the fight. “See?” it seems to sneer. “So where’s that bright future you’re always dreaming about? How are Starfleet ideals going to help you now? Tech and terror win. Brute strength and cruelty carry the day.”
Even today—even knowing how that story resolved, and having seen Picard and crew fight and defeat the Borg several times since, from Star Trek: First Contact to Star Trek: Picard—that moment’s powerful, poisonous parody of Star Trek’s optimism and high aspirations still rattles me.
And the way I felt sitting in front of my TV at that moment 35 years ago?
That’s a lot like the way I feel looking at America in this moment.
Only worse, because the stakes are so much higher than a fictional captain, his fictional starship crew, and a fictional United Federation of Planets.
Day after day, we’re seeing an America that is shockingly defaced and surrounded by darkness. We’re seeing a brutal and bloody America, where tech and terror, brute strength and cruelty, are winning victories I never dreamed they would.
Overseas aid abolished, and the dedicated people who administered it summarily dismissed—in a weekend, on a whim?
People scooped up off the streets and disappeared, packed off to far-away prisons, having no opportunity to face charges against them, if such charges even exist?
The ones elected to preserve, protect, and defend our rule of law openly scoffing at it, defying the courts when they don’t like the decisions, daring the judiciary to hold them accountable?
Education and knowledge and research scrapped, no matter how many lives that learning has saved and might yet save, no matter how much it diminishes our ability to build a better society?
Support for those who are sick and poor and in need sacrificed so the wealthiest among us can get wealthier?
Respect for human rights, respect for basic decency, tossed out like trash so anyone who doesn’t fit some narrow idea of “real Americans” can be treated like trash?
I look at America today and don’t see the nation I thought I knew. I see some monstrous version of it staring us down—and not even assimilated by an outside enemy, but being eaten from within by powerful people who’ve decided we should be the worst possible version of America we can be.
I am aware America has never been a perfect nation.
And I know too many of our citizens have experienced far more of America’s flaws and failures and ugliness than I have.
The day after last year’s election, a woman in a Bible study I take part in said, yes, she was sickened by the results, but, as a Black woman, she wasn’t surprised. “There was a capable woman of color who could do the job,” she said, “but yet again, America chose this.”
President Trump doesn’t often speak truth, but he did early in his first term when—defending Vladimir Putin—he said, “What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?”
No, God knows, literally, America is not and has never been innocent.
But we used to strive to be better. We wanted to live up to our “worship words,” as another, older Star Trek story called them.
In “The Omega Glory,” Captain Kirk teaches the people of Omega IV that when the words of the U.S. Constitution are spoken “badly, without meaning,” without being made to apply to everyone, they may as well be gibberish.
Five years ago, in a post for Reel World Theology, I wrote:
As originally written … the Constitution, with its “three-fifths” circumlocutions about enslaved people, failed to live up to its own stated ideals. But, as Kirk recognizes, those ideals are stated, and the document can still inspire and empower a greater faithfulness to them than even the Framers’ generation achieved. This text … will only be worthy of reverence when [the people] treat it as … a living framework for continuing to build “a more perfect” society.
At the time, I didn’t think America would ever completely abandon that building project. Unfortunately, today, it seems we’re on the cusp of doing so.
Thirty-five years ago, Star Trek fans had to wait about three months to find out how “The Best of Both Worlds” cliffhanger would end. And, unlike what the general consensus seems to be, I think the resolution Michael Piller ultimately hit on for Part 2 is a strong and satisfying one. Telling the Borg to simply go to sleep, rather than blasting them out of the sky—more accurately, giving them a sleep command that triggers the Borg’s own self-destruction—strikes me as not only clever but also entirely consistent with Star Trek’s (generally) non-violent, humane ethos.
Who knows how long Americans will have to wait to find out how the cliffhanger we’re living through now will end, or how we’ll get there. Sadly, the solution won’t be as simple as commanding the opposing forces to go to sleep.
Of course, waiting is not all we can or must do. We can help bring about a strong and satisfying resolution in non-violent and humane ways. Speaking up and speaking out. Protesting, as so many millions did last weekend. Doing what we can, where we can, to embody the nation’s best ideals in our own lives. If we are people of faith, acting on those convictions that call us to righteousness and holiness—performing acts of kindness to those Jesus called “the least” of his family, loving mercy and doing kindness and walking humbly with God. We can and must do these things.
If we do, maybe we’ll be able to look back on this moment the way we can look back on our first glimpse of Locutus of Borg.
Maybe we’ll be able to look back at a moment we were confronted with a “Borgified” America—badly distorted, deeply violated, but still not altogether unrecognizable.
Maybe we’ll be able to remember how we heard the melody of America’s best ideals and highest aspirations played in a twisted way, a shocking mockery and poisonous parody, with the rhythm all wrong—but still unmistakeable.
Maybe we’ll be able to look back and remember how, yes, we were scared the opposing forces were unbeatable—but we made sure a brighter future came.