“Descent” (6×26 & 7×01)
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This two-parter, which closed out Season 6 and kicked off Season 7, is ambitious to a fault. There’s a lot that doesn’t work, but there’s also a lot I really like.
The biggest problem is Lore’s grand return. His nefarious plot to rid the galaxy of organic life doesn’t really hold together, as Hugh himself identified. Lore is essentially all ego: His plot is a means to place himself in a superior position and hold authority over others, the plot itself isn’t necessarily that important to him.
So it just doesn’t hold together enough for me to buy Data betraying his friends and colleagues to sign onto it. I think the episodes needed more scenes where Lore exploits Data’s desperation for emotions to get him to act contrary to his emotional compass. For the story to work, Data needed to feel like a junkie, and Lore his dealer.
The other big problem is that the return of the Borg to Federation space is a big effing deal, and I think that plot gets lost as Lore takes center stage. We have an admiral that chews Picard out, all of these battle groups and organized patrols, and then all of that falls by the wayside when the Enterprise follows Data’s shuttle through the transwarp corridor. Part 1 raises the prospect of a major militarization of Starfleet, to the point where the admiral is mandating that Picard abandon some of the Federation’s core values in service to tactical expediency, and then we never hear about it again.
But, as I said, there is still a lot I really like. I love Crusher captaining the Enterprise with a skeleton crew, and overcoming steep odds with minimal resources. It helps further establish her as a capable captain, so we believe the anti-time future where she’s captain of the USS Pasteur.
The subplot with Ensign Taitt was a pleasant surprise, too. One of the most junior officers aboard the Enterprise, she finds herself called upon to serve in a senior staff role with everybody more senior than her assigned to mission on the surface of the planet. And when a crisis arises, she rises to the challenge beautifully. I would love it if “Picard” or another 25th century Trek show would bring back Alex Datcher as Captain Taitt, now in command of a Starfleet science vessel.
I also appreciated the attempt to do something different with the Borg. The very thing that makes them such a terrifying adversary also makes them two-dimensional. This builds upon “I Borg” to further explore what Borg are like when cut off from the Collective. Unlike Data, who is manipulated the entire time by Lore, Hugh is responsible for his own moral choices. It’s another terrific performance from Jonathan Del Arco, as Hugh has to decide whether or not to help the people he blames for his current predicament.
I can’t pinpoint exactly why, but the planet that Lore set up his base of operations on also felt more alien than most TNG Class M planets; part of it was the unusual lighting, with a pinkish hue to everything outdoors. But it was also the lack of anything that felt too soundstage-y or repetitive of the show’s usual design style. Even the little things helped, like the two moons in the daylight sky.
I enjoyed Stephen Hawking’s cameo, too; it was clear that he was enjoying himself immensely.
Impacts on Star Trek Continuity:
This is Lore’s last appearance in TNG. The way that character is left at the end of the second episode raises a number of questions for his return in “Picard”: After his plot was foiled, he was deactivated by Data and then decommissioned and dismantled. Even assuming someone was able to reassemble him, the emotion chip that Lore stole from their creator was removed prior to his decommissioning, and was last seen left in Data’s quarters in Star Trek: Insurrection.
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