I feel like I should apologize for last week's weaksauce post. I've actually felt a little guilty about every non-robot pageview I've gotten this week; I'm sad because I disappointed all the humans and wasted their time. Not that I should get into the habit of apologizing to the internet.
As I said before, I've gotten back to watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I haven't been exercising the kind of arc discipline that I would have used watching Buffy or The Walking Dead, but ST:TNG doesn't enforce that kind of linearity the same way, either. It's actually kind of weird going back to an older show like this, after watching so many more recent dramas driven by season-long plot arcs, and find it of little consequence what order I watch the episodes in. The show's cozy status quo is as quaint as its 4:3 aspect ratio.
We skipped to Season 2, and skipped some of the lamer episodes there (though we blundered headlong into The Child, perhaps the lamest episode of them all!), and then on a whim jumped a season from the Borg's first appearance to "Best of Both Worlds."
It was interesting to watch the show face down futility, in light of the bleak, modern fare I've been watching. The relentless pressure of the apocalypse makes for good television, but not varied television. When TNG put the human race in danger, or seriously threatened a main character's life, it was special. (Though it occurred to me that if Joss Whedon had been at the helm, he would have had Jonathan Frakes re-record "Space... the final frontier" for Part 2.) TNG may only have visited the place where Battlestar Galactica lived, but I appropriately get the sense of the Enterprise actually flying around the galaxy from one kind of adventure to another.
I loved the Borg as a villain when I was young, and the way they were on TNG will always be the way they "really" are to me--before the Borg Queen deflated the ominous hivemind, before they got demystified and played out and tenderized. Looking back, it's actually interesting to see how much of what defined them wasn't there in their first appearance in "Q Who?" The words "Resistance is futile" were yet to be uttered. Assimilation was not mentioned or hinted at--I didn't even realize until Girlfriend pointed it out, but when [spoilers], that's actually the first indication that they have that ability. It makes me wonder if the writers knew what they had back in Season 2, or if they even had it, or if they only came up with the most important elements later.
The contrast between "Q Who?" and "Best of Both Worlds" is informative. Perhaps most importantly, the former spends about half its time telling us how scared we should be of the Borg. The latter spends its time better by having them do progressively scarier things, and giving the characters some time to be scared. It's a lesson I hope I can remember if I ever have as good an idea to work with.
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