ST:TNG Season Four, Episode One "Best of Both Worlds, Part II"

ST:TNG Season Four Episode One "Best of Both Worlds, Part II"
Production Order: 1
Air Order: 1
Stardate: 4401.4
Original Air Date: September 24, 1990

Because our last episode was three months ago, the audience needs a bit of a refresher as to what went down. Though in truth, it wasn't really necessary, because people had been looking forward to this season opener for months now, and it was a hot topic among fans: was Picard dead? (Or as dead as one can be when one has been assimilated?) Was Riker now permanent captain with Shelby as his first officer? Had Patrick Stewart's contract not been renewed?

But it's courteous to offer a reminder that Riker ended the episode by telling his crewmates to kill their former captain, especially when we pick up in almost the exact same moment.

The weapon powers up. Everyone holds their breath. Dramatic music! The weapon fires!
...it's a dud.

"Hey, this crappy weapon that's not doing any damage to your enemies?" says Majel. "I'm having some real problems with it here."
Riker looks disappointed. "Yeah, shut it off."
Locutus drops the bomb: everything that Picard knew, the Borg now know. The Borg have the E's number, and can guess what they'll do next. Then he pulls a dick move.
"Resistance is hopeless... Number One."
Are... are the Borg mocking Riker?

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Riker log 44001.4: "The Borg are still headed for Earth. We're crippled in space. Basically, we tried to punch the Borg in the balls, and it turned out they were wearing some kind of stainless steel cup. We broke our hand, and they walked away laughing."

The group is in the Obs Lounge, talking to Admiral Hanson over subspace. They say that because of repairs, they're going to have to be fashionably late. Admiral Old Man's Fantasies says that them stalling the Borg was helpful, even if they didn't stop the Borg completely, because it gave them time to gather ships at Wolf 359, and also, they've talked the Klingons into joining.
"Thought about talking to the Romulans, too," he adds.
Lol. The Romulans would probably sigh, declare the Federation too weak to handle their own shit, then try to engage the Borg on their own. Instant assimilation. You should have asked them.
Shelby reminds Hanson that the Borg have all of Picard's knowledge. Hanson responds by telling them all a story about Freshman Cadet Picard, a kind of useless story about drive and determination that ends with him telling them that Picard would never help the Borg. I'm left asking myself if Hanson understands assimilation.
He's not giving them information, you dipshit. They're taking it from his brain.

Hanson says he considers Picard as a casualty of war, and they lost a great man, blah, blah.
"Sooo, we're not gonna shoot for rescue?" asks Crusher.
Hanson says no, that once the Borg get there, the Federation is going to throw everything they can at them, and only one side can survive.
"So anyway, I'm field-promoting you to captain," Hanson tells Riker. "Sorry the situation sucks."

Saddest field commission ever

On the Borg ship, we watch as Picard gets maintenance or upgrades or something. A prosthetic is fit over his arm and hand, so we know he hasn't lost those yet.
A single tear slides down his face.

Nope. This is the saddest field commission ever.

Riker and Worf get into a lift and discuss tactical stuff while riding to another level. They go into Engineering, and Geordi is glad to see Worf, who can help them with something. Riker is left to get a quick run-down from Shelby, who tells him what is needed and gives him an estimate of 2-3 hours for shields and warp core being back online.
They have a slightly uncomfortable conversation about whether or not Shelby is First Officer material. He says that she's a pain in the ass, but he'd like her to keep him on his toes. He teases her about being ambitious, then compliments her on doing a good job on the Borg ship.
"I didn't get Picard back," she laments.
"Yeah, but that trip was still beneficial," he points out.
Data calls. "Hey, Starfleet has engaged the Borg at Wolf Three Fifty-Nine."
(Side-note: I've always heard to it referred to as Wolf 3-5-9. Is that the proper name, or is it interchangeable, as Data just used it? Anybody know? Google is failing me here.)
Riker returns to the bridge.

The bridge gets a garbled message from Hanson, who says that the fight is going poorly. They're going to regroup and return - and then the message cuts out.

Dramatic music! Zoom-in on Riker's face! Commercial break!

Riker's Log (now "captain" rather than "first officer") 44002.3: "Finished repairs, rushing to battle."

The senior officers have gathered in the Obs Lounge for a meeting. Riker tells Data and Worf that he's glad he has them, and he considered them both for the job of First Officer, but he really needs them in their current positions, kicking ass. They both seem pleased to have been considered.
"I'm gonna make Shelby First Officer at this point."
Everyone seems surprised, including Shelby.
They go over tactics, talking about what will and won't work. Data and Crusher say they've been thinking about introducing the Borg to their little friends, the nanites. For viewers who don't remember what those are, there's Shelby to ask Crusher.
"Tiny robots that can enter cells," replies Data.
"That sounds good," says Riker. "How long until it can be viable as a plan?"
Crusher cringes. "Like three weeks."
"Nanites may be all that's left of the Federation in three weeks," sighs Troi.

Riker goes into the ready room alone and asks the empty chair what "he" would do.
Guinan comes in and asks if she can talk to Riker. "I'm hearing a lot of talk in Ten Forward," she says. "People like and trust you, but they think they're going to die tomorrow, and here's the thing: if someone thinks they're going to die tomorrow, they usually find a way to make it happen. You have to turn it around."
"How? We probably will die tomorrow."
"You have to let Picard go."
"Haven't you been paying attention? I tried to kill him yesterday."
"No. You tried to kill what's physically left of him, what's on the Borg ship. That's not Picard. The Picard I mean is the one in this room, on this ship."
"This is his ship," argues Riker.
"Yeah, and that's what you have to let go. Because the Borg now know everything he knows, which means you need to throw out all of that stuff in order to fight them."
He considers this.
"Also," she turns and points, "that's your chair."
She leaves and he hesitantly sits in it. Then he very pointedly does a Picard Maneuver.

Wes pages him onto the bridge, as they're entering the Wolf system. Riker sits in The Big Chair, and Data begins reporting no life signs at the battlefield, no energy signatures from the ships.
"Visual?" asks Riker.

FUCK.
As they pass through the battlefield, Shelby begins saying aloud the name of each dying ship, including the Melbourne, the ship that Riker was offered.
Riker swallows. He might be thinking about how close he came to death. (Though in truth, he was only offered that ship five or so days ago. I doubt a transfer would have happened that quickly.) Either way, it's hard not to think about the huge loss of life here. Forty ships, gone.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Riker gathers himself, then drops into beast mode. Data finds a current nearby that seems to match the Borg ship's trajectory toward Earth, and he directs Wes to follow that ship.
"That saucer separation thing you wanted to do?" he asks Shelby. "Make that shit so."
"But... Picard knew about that."
"I know. I got a plan."
"Oh!" She takes Wes and two others with her to the battle bridge.
"Also, Data and Worf, I got a special ops thing for you."

Riker goes to the battle bridge, where he calls Locutus.
"Hey, we need to discuss terms."
"Whatever," responds Locutus. "You don't want to discuss terms. You're lying."
"Oh, yeah? What's your Picard sense telling you? That I've never lied to Picard and that he trusted me completely?"
"Yes. But you might be lying now. You should surrender and escort us to Sector 001."

Riker cuts the transmission. He really just wanted to get Locutus' location. He calls O'Brien, who reports that the cube has shut off transporter access.
"Yeah, I figured."
Worf and Data turn on personal external transporter things.

Riker turns the sound back on. "We want time to prepare our people to surrender."
"Bullshit," replies Locutus. "You don't need it. We'll just force ourselves on you and do it. It will be as easy as assimilating Picard, Number One."
"Okay, I'm done. And I'm bringing the pain, asshole."
He cuts the transmission again and scrambles all communication between the saucer section and drive section. Then he tells Shelby to separate. He's put her in charge of the saucer. I think that's backward, and technically, he should stay with the saucer, but whatever. They can argue protocol later, if they don't die.
Riker gives the order to fire from both parts of the now-separated ship.

The cube ignores the saucer section, which is what Riker wanted. He has Shelby fire a bunch of antimatter weaponry. Worf and Data leave the drive section in a shuttle. They attempt to hide in the antimatter spread, but Locutus seems to see them, or at least, sense them.
"Cut the engines," Riker tells Data. "They've detected you."
The shuttle slides in under the radar and our boys are able to use the little emergency escape transporter on the shuttle to beam onto the Borg ship, once they get inside the shields.

Once on the Borg ship, they use the newly-adjusted phasers to take down the Borg around Locutus. Worf rushes forward to grab him, but Locutus puts up a fight. Not for long, though. Data steps forward and proves that there's a Borg neck pinch. He hits a button or something on Locutus' neck and Locutus powers down. They use the personal transporter things to beam Locutus onto the shuttle.

Once the shuttle has cleared the Borg electromagnetic field, O'Brien beams the trio off the shuttle. Just in time, too. The Borg blow up the shuttle as the boys reappear on the pad.
"Woot, got him!" reports Data.
Zoom-in on Riker, who smiles determinedly.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Fuck yeah, booooiiiii

"Dead in the water," reports Shelby to Riker. "Our impulse engines are out."
"Shit, they're gonna die," observes Wes.
But then the cube just takes off toward Earth again.
"O...kay," says Riker.
He has them connect the ship again.

Locutus is taken to a medical lab, where Beverly admits that she wants more time to study how the Borg implants have affected Picard's body.
"Yeah, but we don't have time," says Riker. "The Borg have access to all of his knowledge, and I'm hoping it goes both ways, that we can get info from him about them, especially how they might be weak."
She agrees, disappointed, and wakes up Locutus.
Locutus immediately figures out where he is and who is around him.
"That was a crap plan, going back for one guy. Picard would not have approved. Bad strategy, Number One."
He's really gonna milk this Number One thing, isn't he?
Locutus sits up, and Worf draws his phaser.
"You're fine," says Locutus. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm going to continue to speak for the Borg from this ship, while they're on their way to assimilate Earth."
Yeah. You do you, booboo.

Upstairs on the bridge, Data has found the commlink between Locutus and the Borg.
"It's like a transporter beam," he explains. "It's their collective consciousness."
"Can we cut it off?" asks Riker.
"Yeah, probably," Data replies. "But remember when we've seen Borg appear next to dead Borg and takes pieces off of them? They were probably cutting off the consciousness from the others."
"It's probably fatal to sever that tie," suggests Dr Crusher. "Ugh, this is crap. If it weren't for this commlink thing, I could just perform some surgery, and remove the mechanisms inside. But the commlink thing prevents me from doing it."
"I could access the machine parts," offers Data.

I love shots like this, where the different divisions are together.
The uniforms look amazing next to one another.

In the med lab, Locutus has decided to scan things and wander around. Presumably, none of this should be new, as the Borg already have this info, but maybe something in him is bored and wants to be entertained. He's being watched carefully by Worf.
"Worf. Klingon," announces Locutus to no one at all. "Your species will be assimilated, too."
Worf Sassy Moment: "I like my species the way it is."
Locutus drops some Borg truth: "Why? We take species from all over and improve their quality of life."
Seriously, that's their MO. They've convinced themselves that they are being helpful.
The others have arrived and Locutus approaches them.
He calls Data a "primitive artificial organism" and says he'll be as obsolete as a Beta Max player. Crusher takes his distracted moment as an opportunity to hypo his ass into oblivion, and now they can stop listening to his fascist bullshit.
Data and Riker haul Locutus off to Data's lab.

Shelby calls Riker from the bridge. "Hey, Borg in Sector 001."
The cube passes Saturn like a roadside attraction.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Riker enters the bridge and Shelby tells him that the cube has dropped out of warp, and the Jupiter Outpost has reported visual contact.
God, imagine a fucking Borg cube looming from out of the sky.
"Their defense systems are not doing well."
"Yeah, I bet," he mutters.
There are 27 minutes left until the Borg reach Earth. Wes sighs and reports that they are at least 42 minutes away.
Riker calls Data.
"I'm in!" says Data. "O'Brien is hooking up the Borg commlink through the transporter buffer."
"Cool. Keep me informed."

Data has Locutus in his Lal cage, and is hooking up his own brain to Picard's. Crusher and Troi are supervising. Crusher is there to make sure that Locutus doesn't crash, and Troi has been asked to see if she can detect if Data is getting through.
"Is there a point we might hit where I should disconnect everything?" asks O'Brien.
Sassy Data Moment: "I do not know. I have never done this before."
He takes the first step in the link-up. Crusher says that Picard is doing okay, but Data hasn't gotten through to the consciousness yet, and Troi says she isn't seeing any signs of him breaking through.

Three ships fly out to the Borg cube from the Jupiter Station, and are promptly eaten for breakfast.
The cube is now near Mars, and the E is just now entering the Terran system.

"Second step," announces Data. "That was a bust. Let's go to third step."
And everything jumps: Locutus' heartrate and involuntary responses. Data's systems suddenly react as well.
"Got access," says Data. "...cool. The consciousness is divided into smaller groups, who handle those things. Communication, navigation, that kind of thing."
"Whoa, hey -" interrupts Troi.
Apparently, Data set off the alarm, because Locutus is instantly awake. A security Gold dashes forward to help but is thrown across the lab by Locutus, whose Borg implants have clearly upped his strength game. He then uses his arm prosthetic to try to short out the cage or something, but Data grabs it. There's a staring contest as Data holds onto the prosthetic - does Locutus need to blink at all?

Data rips the tool part of the prosthetic off. Crusher reports that Locutus has increased brain activity, and O'Brien wonders from his data if the Borg are trying to sever the connection.
"Nope, still intact," says Data.
Locutus reaches out and grabs Data's arm.
"It's him!" says Troi. She calls the bridge. "Data made first contact with the Borg!"
"Can you talk to him?" Riker asks over the comm badge.
"Dunno yet," says Data.
"Cube has slowed its roll," reports Worf.
"We can be there in a little more than two minutes," says Wes.
Riker surmises that the Borg have stopped what they're doing because they aren't sure what the pesky humans are up to.
"You have two minutes to do the thing," Riker tells Data.
"They're not cutting the link to Locutus," Data replies.

"Oh!" says Crusher. "Maybe that's it! Maybe they can't! That's the weakness. They can't shut off one, because for us, it'd be like someone saying, "disconnect your hand." We can't do it, and neither can they."
"They operate as one unit," Shelby adds to Riker.
"One jumps off a cliff, they all do?"
She nods.
"Can we implant a command?" Riker asks Data.
"Maybe," says Data. "What command should I give?"
"Go simple. Disarm weapons would be good."
"Sooo, the Borg are making decisions again," reports Worf. "They're powering up weapons."
Data tells Riker that he's struggling to get around the Borg processors and stuff to input the command.
The Borg try to lock on their tractor beam.
"Try powering the Borg down," Shelby suggests.
See, this disarm your weapons thing isn't going to work. Picard was chosen to act as a voice to the humans. He's part of the communication subgroup, not defense. He has nothing to do with the weapons system, so getting a command from him to not fire weapons is ridiculous. That's not his pay grade.

 Shit starts to go down the tubes. Geordi reports that the shields have failed and the tractor beam is pulling them in. They fire all weapons, but nothing sticks. And Data cannot get around the firewalls that the Borg have put up so he can tell them to stop the assimilation. Shelby sadly predicts annihilation.
"Fuck it, let's ram her," says Riker.

"Sleep," says Locutus.
"Whoa, it's Picard speaking," marvels Troi.
"He's really tired," says Crusher.
"Sleep, Data. Sleep," repeats Locutus.
"Yeah," agrees Data. "But I don't think he's saying he wants a nap. I think he's suggesting a command."

The Borg turn on their cutting laser and try to slice into the hull around Engineering again.
"Get ready to fly through that POS at warp speed," Riker tells Wes.
Wes dutifully plugs it in, and I'm wondering how often this kid has prepared himself to die over the four years or so he's been on board. He always seems to cringe, so you know he isn't some kind of adrenaline junkie. But he's plugged in the coordinates to kill them all three or four times over the years and you gotta wonder how that affects a person.
"Eng -" starts Riker.
"Stand by," says Data.
Wes slams the pause button.
"I'm putting in a command for a really low-level subroutine," says Data. "Probably not heavily-guarded. Bet I can get in easily."
The Borg laser gets through. Hull breach, outer. Now hull breach, inner.
"Should I evacuate?" asks Worf.
"No!" yells Riker. "Data, hurry the fuck up!"

Suddenly, the laser cutter and tractor beam power down.
Everyone on the bridge exchanges looks.
"What happened?" Riker demands.
"I told them to take a nap," replies Data. "I sent them into regeneration mode."
"Cube power at minimal," reports Worf. "And, um, shields are down."
"Whoa. Okay. Shelby, take an away team to the cube to make sure they're napping."

Shelby, Worf, and another Gold beam over and take scans.
"They're all asleep," Shelby reports. "But the scans are nuts. Looks like the system is treating this like a malfunction. It's a feedback loop that will probably end with a self-destruct sequence. Should I stop it?'

You'd expect Riker to respond "fuck no!" but instead he goes to the lab.
Crusher and the others have been listening in, and Crusher says she isn't certain how the destruction of the cube will affect Locutus-Picard.
"It would be helpful to study the Borg some more," adds Data.
But Riker is thinking of the bigger implications of not allowing the cube to self-destruct.
"No, disconnect yourself, Data. Wes, take us way the hell out. Shelby, beam your team back. We're gonna let it happen."
They make it so.

Locutus is jarred violently in the little lab cage. He grips the beams to remain upright.
Crusher takes some scans. The DNA around the implants is coming back and righting itself.
Troi asks Picard how he feels.
"Almost human," he replies, examining the remaining electronics on his arm.
Crusher says she can now safely take the implants out.
"How much do you remember?" asks Riker.
"Fucking all of it."

The E is in orbit over Earth while Riker gives Picard a run-down on stuff that's probably been going on while he was getting his implants removed. It's going to take 5 or 6 weeks to repair the E. The door chimes and both call out, "Come!'
Shelby comes in and asks to disembark.
Apparently, she's been made head of some task force, and she says she thinks the fleet will be back up in less than a year. (That later proves incorrect, but eh, we'll let her be optimistic, shall we?)
"Bet you get your pick of the fleet now," she smiles at Riker.
(What's left of it, yes.)
"Everyone is so concerned with my career path," he replies good-naturedly. "With all due respect to both of you, mind your own beeswax."
"Hope to serve with you again," she says to Riker before leaving.

"So, McKinley Station for repairs?" asks Riker.
"Yeah, make that shit so."
Riker exits, and Picard goes to sip his tea.
But instead, he lowers the glass and stares off across the ready room.
Existential crisis.
He gazes out the window.

*******

Another awesome episode.

It's pretty good all on its own, but much better when paired with the first half, and I imagine that the anticipation built up for this episode helped it deliver.

When Michael Piller sat down to write the second half of "Best of Both Worlds," he had no idea how it was going to end, and didn't figure it out until two days before filming was due to start. In his case, he was writing the characters finding their own way through the problem, and allowed those characters to come up with the solution themselves. It's a great writing technique and often works well. Piller very much wanted the solution to come from something small and insignificant and clever, rather than merely beating them in battle.

However, he did feel that this installment was the weaker of the two, and I suppose I agree. He promised a lot with that first episode, and delivering on it completely would be nigh on impossible, though he certainly came close.

Some stuff that sticks out to me;

- I still don't buy 100% that humans are so special that we require a liaison, but going around that, the idea of taking Picard was pretty smart, and lead to a master-pupil set-up for Picard and Riker, one where Riker is forced to outdo his master. In the end, they slip back into those old roles, but Riker is now more confident that Fear of The Big Chair is not what is keeping him on this ship.

- Getting more info on the Borg was awesome. I like that they're not completely unbeatable, though we should guess that the Borg will be a lot more careful in future about guarding their subroutines, no matter how innocuous they might seem. Giving them that weird backstory of "we're improving life for everyone else" makes them a bit more relatable, which is what Piller was going for. (Though, of course, now I want to know more. Were the Borg originally some kind of gentle river-folk, changed forever by the advent of technology, who then traveled in search of others to "improve," precious?)

- Seeing more of the inside of the ship was fabulous as well. Previously, because there was no one entity that fit the role, there was no main bridge on the cube, and when they talked to another species on-screen, you simply saw the inside of the ship, presumably with thousands of Borg speaking all at once. Here, because of Locutus, there is a centralized location that features a cube of holographic screens. Cool! And the Borg do not seem to have all of the same components, pointing to different jobs that one might have aboard a cube.

- The ending was not left happy. "Hooray, you're back!" occurs, but the episode ends on an uncertain note. There's no way in hell Picard can bounce back from that unscathed. He remembers the entirety of what happened, as well as the struggle he most likely had in the part he played.

Interestingly, one of the biggest decisions made over the summer of 1990 was to make this story a three-parter, with the last part dealing with the fall-out. Most people probably did not do the math on that one, and assumed that the next episode is just a bit of an arc, but if you look it up on Memory Alpha "Best of Both Worlds, Part 2" is listed as "2 of 3" in the series. I find this to be a smart decision. A story does not necessarily end when the hero comes home and the pieces of battle are swept away.

- Fun Facts:

- The Battle of Wolf 359 was too costly to film for this episode, so the aftermath was shown instead. The series premier of Deep Space 9 had a much bigger budget, and that show was able to enact the actual battle.
- The end of the BOBW1 was filmed months before the beginning of this episode, and showrunners were banking on the audience not noticing subtle differences in lighting, haircuts, ect. Elizabeth Dennehy, who plays Shelby, said the hardest part about the difference was maintaining the same weight over the interim.
- LeVar Burton had to have emergency surgery at the beginning of this episode, and as a result, any shot he's in is a close-up, and never with main characters. A lot of Geordi's lines ended up going to Chief O'Brien.
- In the scene where Worf and Riker have a tactical discussion in the lift, the doors simply close and reopen on the same set. While they were in the lift set, stage people quickly changed the lighting to make the corridor look different, thus implying that they had traveled to another level.
-In this episode, the battle bridge features live television screens, rather than just backlit panels.

- Because of heavy interest in this episode, early script drafts were given false Jupiter Outpost numbers. The correct outpost number was 92.
- We won't see Shelby again. In a season six episode of DS9, there is a Captain Shelby mentioned, and Ronald D Moore had intended for it to be Shelby from these episodes. However, he had forgotten that the show had given Pocket Books permission to do what they wanted with the character because they had no intention of using her again. So novelist Peter David made Cmdr Shelby the First Officer in a book series called New Frontier. When Captain Shelby was mentioned in DS9, Moore went "oops, my bad" to licensing, and shrugged, "Well, we only mentioned a name, and nothing else. It's a big fleet. Could be anyone." Peter David later wrote that there were two unrelated Shelbys in Starfleet, just to alleviate confusion.

Dr Selar also serves aboard this ship.

- Someone made a fan script that circulated around, where Picard's assimilation was a prank by Q.
- Brannon Braga's first time meeting Michael Pillar was right after Pillar's contract had been resigned, and he was struggling with how to write part two. One of the first things he said to Braga was, "I'm trying to figure out how to beat the Borg. I have no idea how to do it."
- Though the secrecy of this episode made filming more difficult, the fact that they already had the sets and costumes made made it simpler.
- The battle bridge had to be updated for this episode, as the furnishings and accouterments had been pulled out to be used for the Star Trek movies.
- The battle bridge set has been used as a redress for quite a few other locations, including the courtroom from "Measure of a Man," the geology lab, and the bridge of the Enterprise-C. It was also used as the bridge from which Hanson contacts the Enterprise during the Battle of Wolf 359.
- The engineering lab where Locutus was examined is a redress of Troi's office, which was built specifically to be used for redresses. They might have normally done a redress of the battle bridge here, but the battle bridge was already being used for this episode.
- The curved upper wall in Data's cybernetics lab (with the backlit windows) is the oldest part of the show's sets. It came from the sets that had been built from the Star Trek: Phase II show.

- The control pad on the side of the screen in the Obs Lounge is different from the one in the first part. Unfortunately, that control pad was a popular thing for fans to steal from the set, despite the security guards assigned to the series.

- Make-up supervisor Michael Westmore worked with costume designer Robert Blackman to make the Locutus costume. Facial pieces were made from castings of Patrick Stewart's face. Westmore then explained that, because Locutus was not a full Borg, he did not need to be painted completely white. Instead, the skin around the implants was shown to be decaying by being painted white.

- Michael Piller was determined to use the less-utilized members of the cast more often, beginning in season four. As a result, this episode handles Troi, Dr Crusher, Wes and O'Brien more.
- Patrick Stewart's stuntman John Nowak was hired to do a stunt as Locutus, but that scene was cut at the eleventh hour, meaning that Nowak sat in the make-up chair for three hours for nothing.
- Michael Okuda was in the art department one night, painting battle damage on models, when Patrick Stewart walked in to use the copier. Okuda held up the model he was painting and joked, "Look what you did!" Frankly, I think the funny part of this story is that Stewart was using the copier as Locutus.

- The production team borrowed a model of Mars from the Cosmos: A Personal Voyage documentary.
- Visual Effects Coordinator Gary Hutzel explains that, once they had reached the part of filming where they needed a model for the Borg cube to blow up, the studio had run out money. He and FX guy Dick Brownfield had spent the money on the pyrotechnics for the explosion, but had no model. So they sat and meticulously punched out all of the model kit parts, setting aside the actual parts and keeping the little rectangular frames the pieces came on. The frames were glued together and layered one on top of another to make the Borg cube. They blew it up in one take.
- This episode marks the 80th for TNG, meaning it now officially had more episodes than TOS.
- This is the episode that establishes shuttles having their own transporters.
- This is the final episode to feature the Borg cube design.

Gary Hutzel adds battle damage to an Enterprise model.

Red deaths: 0
To date: 0
Gold deaths: 0
To date: 0

Blue deaths: 0
To date: 0
Unnamed color crew deaths: about 11,000
To date: 0

Obnoxious Wes moments: 0
To date: 0

Legitimate Wes moments when he should have told someone to go fuck themselves: 0
To date: 0

Sassy Geordi moments: 0
To date: 0

Sassy Wes Moments: 0
To date: 0

Sassy Worf Moment: 1
To date: 1

Sassy Riker Moments: 0
To date: 0

Sassy Picard Moments: 0
To date: 0

Sassy NPC Moments: 0
To date: 0
Sassy Data Moments: 1
To date: 1
Sassy O'Brien Moments: 0
To date: 0
Sassy Crusher Moments: 0
To date: 0
Sassy Troi Moments: 0
To date: 0
Sassy Guest Star Moments: 0
To date: 0

Number of times that it is mentioned that Data is an android: 1
To date: 1

Number of times that Troi reacts to someone else's feelings: 3
To date: 3

Number of times that Geordi "looks at something" with his VISOR: 0
To date: 0
Number of times when Data gives too much info and has to be told to shut up: 0
To date: 0
Picard Maneuvers: 4
To date: 4
Tea, Earl Grey: 1
To date: 1

Marion-berry reminds you that tacocat backward
is tacocat.