#TNGWatch #S02E16 #QWho?

Oh shit, you guys. It’s the Borg. Also, my annoying ex-boyfriend is back, and he’s trying to win back my heart :D

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Ensign Sonya Gomez spilled hot chocolate on Captain Picard :'D :'D :'D

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I can’t remember what life was like before the Borg. Since this episode, we’ve had way more Borg episodes in TNG, plus First Contact, and basically the entire second half of Voyager, but I must have been fascinated and terrified in equal measures during my first viewing of this episode.

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Q is an abusive boyfriend who enjoys the abuse and attempts to gaslight the crew after the fact, saying things like he injects some much needed excitement into their lives when they call him on his abuse. It doesn’t help that, when he’s not being an abusive dick, he’s incredibly charming. In this episode, he is rebuffed by Picard and in a fit of pique, sends them 7,000 light years into Borg territory to teach them a lesson and prove the Enterprise needs Q.

The Borg are truly terrifying. They only speak once the whole episode to warn the Enterprise not to resist (but it’s not their most famous line of “Resistance is futile”), and basically just how ridiculously powerful they are to the point where Picard does beg Q to help them.

Besides giving us the nightmare that is the Borg for the first time, this episode also introduces the fact that Guinan is not human, and is in fact much older than she appears, and that she and Q have a history and they do not like each other one bit.

Some behind-the-scenes stuff: the first season of TNG ended on a bit of a cliffhanger in which various Romulan and Federation outposts in the Neutral Zone had been scooped up and, for lack of a better word, disappeared. Picard and the Romulan Dukat almost have a confrontation over it because they blame each other (the disappeared outposts were mentioned a few times earlier this season, and again this episode when Guinan spells out the link between those scooped-out outposts and the way the Borg scooped up her own people’s cities and whatnot). The first episode of the second season was supposed to be a continuation of that, revealing the Borg as the culprits behind the outpost disappearances. However, thanks the writer’s strike at the beginning of the fall season in 1988, the production team had to modify an unused script from Star Trek: Phase II (a proposed series that would have featured the original Star Trek crew, older and wiser) and make that the first episode of the second season. So we got that horrible Troi-gets-cosmically-raped-and-has-a-fast-aging-baby-the-next-day episode instead.

But this episode establishes the Borg as still very far away, and not hanging out in the Neutral Zone, so I’m not sure if we’re still supposed to think that the Borg are responsible for the missing outposts. If we’re not, what’s actually responsible for the missing outposts? If we are, how will they rectify this discrepancy in location in future Borg appearances?

Extra Fun fact: that same unused Star Trek: Phase II script was the basis for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which featured V’Ger, and many fans (myself included) consider this the first real appearance of the Borg, though V’Ger would only become the Borg after William Decker merges with it. Spock even says a version of the line most attributed to the Borg about V’Ger: “Any show of resistance would be futile, Captain.”