We’re twenty episodes into Casual Trek! That feels like madness. Also we’re at 50 episodes (well, 50 and a film) into our big list of the best and worst of Star Trek.
We pick three episodes based around a theme and sometimes its fun to do some odd themes, or a real focus like our Tuvix and Jeffrey Combs episodes. Here we’ve got a quite broad category in talking about The Borg. We’ve done this I think once before with Klingons and that’s it. As it sounds like quite a general theme, we picked a curveball as well as a couple of iconic Borg episodes. Needless to say, there’s plenty of Borg material for future episodes, anyway.
Star Trek: The Next Generation “Q Who?”
We start with a Q episode, where the Borg are used to prove a point to Picard, but ends up drawing their attention for years to come.
This one’s got the Borg feeling the most alien, with any of the design and directorial choices being ‘how can we make them seem jarringly weird’. Their ship’s a big cube! They don’t even talk to people or show what they want, they just quietly go about their business! They hole punch a bit of the Enterprise out!
We also get a bit more about Guinan and the mystery surrounding who she is. She’s got previous with both the Borg and Q, which is pretty cool. Even so, she does weird angry cat hands at Q when they first meet.
I knew we had to do the first appearance of the Borg when we were queuing up episodes, and it’s always a joy to see John DeLancie lounging around on stuff and having fun with an otherwise serious show.
Star Trek: Voyager “Drone”
When I heard about this episode and how it was going to be like a single Borg as a Terminator type thing, I thought it would be very different. This was a lot more like a Frankenstein type joint at times, but you know, “what if Frankenstein’s Monster was in a mostly benevolent space society?”
One is jarring and worrying, but still gets on with the crew. Tuvix is freshly on my mind and I saw comparisons to that, only One isn’t a horrendous little swot who we’re gaslit into believing people liked.
We knew One was too powerful for this world, too weird, so they get rid of him and they do it well.
Oh, and this is a Bryan Fuller joint! I love his work, having first seen Dead Like Me so many years ago that I had to resort to the high seas to get it, and then pushed that, Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies on anyone who’s sit and watch a TV show with me. Then my partner made me finish Hannibal season three, which made everything go full circle.
I wasn’t sure which Voyager Borg episode to do, and Miles came back with this, which was a good choice given the similarities in the other two.
Star Trek: Prodigy “Let the Sleeping Borg Lie”
The children’s cartoon had a Borg episode! And they’re terrifying!
This was another dead cert that I wanted to add to the selection as everyone would expect a Voyager and the first Borg episode. Here’s something I had no idea about, so hopefully others won’t know much, either.
There’s some continuity stuff going on here, with a real Janeway hunting the crew and the Protostar, while the Protostar’s become deadly to anyone from Starfleet who get near, but that’s not why we’re here! We’re here for the Borg!
Having these loud, wacky kids cartoon characters wandering the halls of a deactivated Borg cube was nicely creepy, with the knowledge that these things are going to wake up. Of all characters, it’s the bodiless Zero who’s almost assimilated into the Borg. We also get a Rhino Man Borg, who just looks cool.
Talking points include: Paranoia, Watchmen, Before Watchmen, Doomsday Clock, Early Versions of The Boys, Into the Archives with Peter Fleming, Doctor Who (A LOT), Charlie being extremely slow to realise what ‘firing power’ meant although he’s talking to a man in America so it’s somewhat justified, Marvel’s post-Comics Code Teenage Years, Bryan Fuller, our first song mentioned with a Weird Al parody, hologram trading cards, Spaced, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, a passing mention of Babylon 5 & Blake’s 7, a game of ‘who has the worse fans online?’, the Star Wars film you don’t mention online, Charlie can’t think of “Whirlipede” from Pokémon, a rhino man borg!, Avatar (guess which one), Transformers Earthspark, . Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.
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The Big List So Far
Spoilers below if you’ve not seen the episode, but as at episode 20, here’s the big list:
Faked Tales 