Best of Both Worlds

[Jason von Evil]

I haven't seen BoBW in years, but managed to watch it tonight. Holy fucking mother...wow!

I sort of remember when I saw the two parter for the first time and just sat in shock and amazement. It was like having sex with a virgin, but not as bloody. It makes that part of "Paralells" where Riker is Captain and Worf is commander seem credible.

All around, no wonder people consider it to be the greatest TNG episode and one of the greatest in Trek.

[JME2]

I haven't seen BoBW in years, but managed to watch it tonight. Holy fucking mother...wow!

I sort of remember when I saw the two parter for the first time and just sat in shock and amazement. It was like having sex with a virgin, but not as bloody. It makes that part of "Paralells" where Riker is Captain and Worf is commander seem credible.

All around, no wonder people consider it to be the greatest TNG episode and one of the greatest in Trek.

How couldn't you - that shot at the end of part 1 with the assimilated Picard just starring into the screen with the laser pointing at us - it's chilling.

[Jason von Evil]

Just imagine if Riker had had Shelby stop the feed back and Data managed to put the drones in some sort of perpetual regen mode.

[JME2]

Yeah, it truly is one of the best Trek episodes - one of the reasons my Star Trek/Star Wars crossover is titled after this great episode, as a tribute.

[Howedar]

I was just watching it myself. Back when Trek was good...

[Jason von Evil]

Berman was Executive Producer back then. @_@ Who wrote BoBW?

It did remind me of a fanfic idea I had once. It basically involved SF finding a cube just floating dormant in a nearby sector and them sending a Hazard Team to investigate.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Berman was Executive Producer back then. @_@ Who wrote BoBW?

It did remind me of a fanfic idea I had once. It basically involved SF finding a cube just floating dormant in a nearby sector and them sending a Hazard Team to investigate.

Michael Piller wrote BOBW.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/s ... 69090.html

http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0683522/

[AdmiralKanos]

It was written in a more civilized age. Before the dark times. Before the Braga.

Remember: always two there are. A master, and an apprentice. Berman needed Braga to help him fulfill his evil plans.

[Drooling Iguana]

Ah yes, the epsidoe where the Borg premiered their deadly "walk slowly toward the target" tactic, and had such piss-poor security that a single rogue drone was able to put an entire cube into sleep mode. Then again, the Feds weren't much better. "Okay, so we've got this huge warp-capable battleship heading toward us. We know exactly where it's headed, so lets mass our entire fleet at some random point between it and us. They'll never think of just going around our blockade, right?"

The Borg had one, and only one good episode. Q Who. I guess Scorpion was okay, too, except that Janeway should've died when she was snotted by 8472.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Ah yes, the epsidoe where the Borg premiered their deadly "walk slowly toward the target" tactic, and had such piss-poor security that a single rogue drone was able to put an entire cube into sleep mode. Then again, the Feds weren't much better. "Okay, so we've got this huge warp-capable battleship heading toward us. We know exactly where it's headed, so lets mass our entire fleet at some random point between it and us. They'll never think of just going around our blockade, right?"

The Borg had one, and only one good episode. Q Who. I guess Scorpion was okay, too, except that Janeway should've died when she was snotted by 8472.

Walk slowly toward target tactic huh. What if it wasn't a tactic at all, but a limitation in design?

A single rogue drone? Did you even watch this episode? Locutus was no ordinary drone, that much should be clear to even a child.

The borg would have had to deal with the fleet at some point, why not just deal with it then instead of dealing with it over Earth? I see nothing wrong with how the borg handled that situation they did afterall tear right through the fleet like tissue paper.

[Patrick Degan]

I remember when our little group held a viewing party for this episode. Part One conveyed a real sense of impending doom, highlighted brilliantly when Borg soldiers teleported on board and grabbed Picard off his own bridge. Little things such as the conversation between Picard and Guinan about Nelson at Trafalgar, Picard's reference to the Emperor Honorious being unable to stop the Visigoth hordes sacking Rome, Troi vetoing Riker's intention to lead a boarding party over to rescue the captain with her terse reminder that they were in a state of war and he was in command. When the episode first showed a cybernised Picard, everybody's jaws dropped to the floor at the same moment. It was the first time Star Trek actually delivered that kind of shock, and I was thinking at that moment that "Jean-Luc Picard" was dead and that thing was standing in his place —like any unfortunate victim of the Cybermen. The final moments of Part One were unforgettable, right up to Riker giving the command to fire.

Wouldn't it have been spectacular if the writers had decided to kill off Jean-Luc Picard in just that manner? What if Part Two had followed up with the Borg cubeship being crippled by the blast from the Enterprise's lashed-up wave motion gun, the Enterprise similarly crippled, a desperate fight for survival as both crews rush to make repairs while Hansen's fleet close in from all sides with orders to destroy the Borg cubeship —whether the Enterprise was in the way or not? What if TNG had shown that kind of courage?

They could have done so much in the way of true drama and instead made it into a comic-book fight dependent on character shields and a technobabble solution every bit as dissatisfying as the legendary Capt. Kirk dying for posession of a TV remote control clicker in Generations. "Best Of Both Worlds" was TNG's supreme moment. But it was also when TNG Jumped the Shark. From that point forward, the series would never again attempt anything so daring as Part One. The resolution of Part Two was disappointing to say the least and marked the beginning of the trend where the writers resolved complex, apocalyptic plots with an Ace up the sleeve. It was, in short, where Trek began, imperceptably at first, to go terribly terribly wrong. The result was the beginning of the process of decay which, after the intervening years since BOBW (I), has turned a once-great SF franchise to Total Shit.

[Howedar]

I disagree. While actually killing off Picard would have been good, TNG doesn't have to be B5. I have no problem with BOBW2, and I think the shark jump occured somewhere after this.

[Jason von Evil]

There is alittle continuity problem between BoBW and Paralells. In Paralells, Worf is first officer, while Shelby was Rikers FO in BoBW. Of course, that could just mean that she was either killed during the Borg conflict in that one timeline or that she was either promoted to Captain or transfered.

[Uraniun235]

When they shot Part 1 and ended the season, they had no idea how they would conclude it in Part 2.

Patrick: I would miss Picard too much. Sorry. I think it would have been good as a series finale, but not as a third-season finale.

[Jason von Evil]

You have to wonder what the rest of the series would be like if they did kill Picard off. How would Riker fare as Captain? Would he keep Shelby as XO?

[El Moose Monstero]

There is alittle continuity problem between BoBW and Paralells. In Paralells, Worf is first officer, while Shelby was Rikers FO in BoBW. Of course, that could just mean that she was either killed during the Borg conflict in that one timeline or that she was either promoted to Captain or transfered.

I'm reckoning she was probably transferred to give a report after the assimilation of earth, and then sent to 375 to continue borg anti-weapons research. Then probably got killed when the cube came a-hunting for new tech to assimilate. Take that! Muahaha!

[Darth Wong]

I disagree. While actually killing off Picard would have been good, TNG doesn't have to be B5. I have no problem with BOBW2, and I think the shark jump occured somewhere after this.

You honestly were not disappointed at the way the Borg cube was so easily destroyed? I can see where Patrick is going with this; the second part was only good insofar as we'd been waiting all summer for a resolution to the first part. But from the standpoint of the crew of the Enterprise (which is really the only part of the Federation we're concerned with when we're watching TNG), the second part of the episode was a giant fucking reset button. Picard is unassimilated, Riker and Shelby are just peachy together, Shelby leaves, nothing really changes in the status quo. And all of this because they found a cheat.

I was OK with the idea of Data hacking into the Borg cube via Locutus, but why the fuck did they have to make the Borg cube explode because it was put into sleep mode at the wrong time? The first time I watched it, I already thought that was stupid.

[Jason von Evil]

Well, one of us could write a fanfic where this error was corrected.

[El Moose Monstero]

Well, one of us could write a fanfic where this error was corrected.

One of us is giving serious thought to writing a fanfic where this whole issue is explored, it's just a matter of finding the time to do it and to get a solid idea of what happens when. I have a plan, but I don't want to start writing until I have a clear idea of what happens during the middle bit with respect to really having the Federation handed its ass and keeping in line my own ideas etc.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I haven't seen BoBW in years, but managed to watch it tonight. Holy fucking mother...wow! :shock:

I sort of remember when I saw the two parter for the first time and just sat in shock and amazement. It was like having sex with a virgin, but not as bloody. :lol: It makes that part of "Paralells" where Riker is Captain and Worf is commander seem credible.

All around, no wonder people consider it to be the greatest TNG episode and one of the greatest in Trek.

Yes, back when Trek used to be good. Back when the crew of the Enterprise was completely dumbfounded because the Borg encrypted all their high-priority tasks and made them accessible only to the root user.

And then it contains all the classic cheese of Trek, given how the Borg idea of internal defense was to shuffle stupidly towards the invaders and get shot. And how they secured all the harmful commands except for that last obvious one.

[Howedar]

I was OK with the idea of Data hacking into the Borg cube via Locutus, but why the fuck did they have to make the Borg cube explode because it was put into sleep mode at the wrong time? The first time I watched it, I already thought that was stupid.

I do think it was a little... quick. Maybe a few days later after the Federation had some scientists on the Cube, it could go up.

I could also see it as a failsafe to prevent the Cube from being captured, although if that were the case it would mean the Collective were aware of the security loophole, and one would think they'd have locked that up instead.


But honestly, it didn't bug me that much. They kinda had to resolve the immediate problem in that episode, and several other ideas had already been tried and failed. It wasn't the tired old cliche of "Hey, let's try this crazy hairbrained idea!" which then works perfectly.

[Ted C]

Actually, if they were going to let Data hack the cube through Locutus and screw things up, I think a good bet would have been to cause a failure of the newly-developed transport barrier the Borg had put up (since up 'til BOBW2, away teams had been able to freely beam onto Borg ships). This relatively new feature of the cube's defense might have been the most vulnerable in terms of hacking, and it would have allowed the ever popular "beam a bomb into thier ship" attack (although that would have begged the question of "why didn't they do that when they first saw the cube?").

Destruction of the cube would again have been Picard's release (although I would actually have preferred that he die... that would have been a huge step for Trek, reminding us that the "heroes" are mortal in a way that "Skin of Evil" failed to do).

Basically, I felt that BOBW2 was a cop out. Although I wasn't deeply offended by it, I think it could have been a lot better.

[Alyeska]

FYI, the Enterprise could not capture the Cube. The important systems that the Enterprise would have to shut down were to heavily encrypted for Data to hack in. Their only option was to put the Cube into a feedback loop.