The Picard Blu-ray Underscores Why Each Season Needed the Borg
Critics of Star Trek: Picard say the show focused too heavily on the Borg, but The Complete Series home release highlights why each story was crucial.
The triumphant final season of Star Trek: Picard is finally available for fans to own on DVD or Blu-ray, but The Complete Series feels more "complete" than the disparate stories may suggest. Each season was a unique narrative and visual experience more akin to a movie series than a television show. While the journey Jean-Luc Picard takes is the obvious focus of the show, watching the complete series highlights why each season needed to include the Borg. Beyond being Picard's greatest enemy, it tells an important story about how Gene Roddenberry's ideal future dealt with the aftermath of such a destructive force.
In the first season, the Borg are mostly a memory thanks to the events of the series finale of Star Trek: Voyager. The return of Seven of Nine, as well as another ex-Borg named Hugh from The Next Generation, highlights the struggles facing survivors of the Collective. In Season 2, a new type of Borg collective emerges, showing how the collective can still exist while not being an overwhelming force of consumption and destruction. It shows how the purity of Federation ideals can appeal even to a person like the Borg Queen. Finally, in Season 3, the "real" Borg return with one last desperate effort to destroy the organization standing between them and galactic domination. However, as they were in Season 1, the characters were in no shape, emotionally speaking, to face the threat posed in the final one. As much as Picard was about the continued growth of its titular hero, his story was inseparable from the Borg's after he survived assimilation. Just as James T. Kirk's greatest challenge was fighting and, later, accepting the Klingon Empire, Jean-Luc Picard needed to overcome his fear and anger toward the collective. Like Kirk, he defeated the last remnants of the species who only understand their adversarial nature. Yet, like the first USS Enterprise captain fans got to know, he also had to challenge himself to accept the idea they could exist while not being an active threat.
How the Journey Picard and the Borg Take in the Complete Series Works Together
When Picard visits "the Artifact," a deactivated Borg cube controlled by the Romulans, he's terrified. Despite what he faced in Star Trek: First Contact, the trauma of his assimilation still lingers. The Artifact is controlled by Romulans, another former enemy in need that Starfleet refuses to help. Hugh, the Borg who discovered individuality in The Next Generation, is the leader of the "Borg Reclamation Project." Picard, Seven of Nine, Icheb, and the other ex-Borg children from Voyager are shown to be very lucky. Becoming "unassimilated" is a difficult, brutal process, and the "xBs" (as they are known) struggle to exist outside of the collective. In fact, after the events of Season 2, many of the xBs likely sought out the Jurati Borg to rejoin a collective while maintaining their individuality.
In Season 2, Dr. Agnes Jurati is slowly assimilated by a Borg Queen from an alternate reality. While hunting her, Seven of Nine tells Raffi that the sense of connection inside the Collective is almost like a drug. Once one is separated from it, they yearn to feel that connection again. If the xBs aren't welcomed into galactic society, the appeal of the new collective Jurati forms is clear. Those who join her collective are people who don't "fit" in the universe. Yet, instead of being a nameless drone, the Jurati Collective includes individuality, empathy, and technological distinctiveness added to its own. Season 2 ends with the Jurati Collective as provisional Federation members standing guard against a gateway in space "attached to a threat." The formation of this transwarp conduit would've destroyed much of the galaxy, but the Jurati Collective working in cooperation with Starfleet "saved billions of lives."
In Season 3, the old, evil Borg resurface to threaten Starfleet and Earth one last time. The growth Picard undergoes in the past seasons, particularly dealing with his sense of connection to other human beings, is vital. The Jean-Luc from Season 1 couldn't have stopped the Changelings and the dying Borg Queen. The first two seasons highlight how there is life "after" the Borg, either as individuals "reclaimed" from the collective or a collective based on cooperation. Without these stories, Season 3's Borg plot makes far less "sense" for the once-unstoppable force.
The Complete Borg Story Arc in the Picard Series Has More Depth Than Kirk and the Klingons
One of the worst Star Trek enemies, the Klingons menaced the characters from The Original Series era through their final film, The Undiscovered Country. However, that movie ended with the beginning of the process of negotiating peace with them via the Khitomer Accords. Kruge, a rogue Klingon, killed James T. Kirk's son, so he was against helping them despite Starfleet ideals. However, the Borg weren't like the Klingons. They were the very definition of unreasonable, the kind of malevolent force in the galaxy that couldn't be negotiated with. However, in Picard Season 2, Jurati is able to reason with the Borg Queen. Putting aside the loneliness in the two characters, she points out that in "every timeline," the Borg are ultimately destroyed for that reason. So, the new collective they form together isn't just a provisional Federation member; they saved a significant portion of the galaxy.
Season 1 showed how the xBs were still feared by the Federation and exploited by the Romulans. Even though the threat was "over," the fear remained. Without these experiences, when Picard faced the Borg in Season 3 (if he'd even lived to see it), he would have attacked them with hatred, like in First Contact. Instead, thanks to his experiences with Soji, Talinn, and the others in the complete series, Picard beat them with love and compassion for his son. Kirk's greatest enemies killed his estranged son, but the Borg tried to turn Picard's estranged son into the weapon of humanity's destruction. If Picard had approached the problem with anger and a desire to destroy, he'd have lost.
As much as Star Trek: Picard: The Complete Series is about everyone's favorite 25th-century Starfleet Admiral, it's also about the Borg. The scars they left across the galaxy still ache. Fear of what they represent remains. Yet, through characters like the xBs, Agnes Jurati, and, most importantly, Seven of Nine, a brighter future dawns on the horizon. Gene Roddenberry wanted his universe's future to get "more" perfect as it went on. Thanks to Star Trek: Picard's focus on the Borg, it will.
Star Trek: Picard The Complete Series is available on Blu-ray or DVD, and the show is streaming in its entirety on Paramount+.