I missed a day last Thursday so I am doing double duty today! Luckily neither of them were the worst of season two. This one was even good I would say. The episode where Q tries to recruit Riker is quite a bit weaker than this one. Q-Who? also starts to show that this series isn't going to be limited to just single episode storylines and that broader problems for the Federation are going to be created and addressed. The Borg are I think TNG's greatest addition to overall Trek canon. Sure we got the Ferengi as well, but they aren't really fleshed out until DS9 where as the Borg are front and center for a lot of TNG and have left quite a legacy through the rest of Trek, especially VOY.
The episode begins with a light bit about a new engineering ensign spilling hot chocolate all over the captain and Geordi hitting on her the entire time. But when he gets her to Ten Forward Guinan isn't worried, and she should be. Instead of going to the deck with his quarters to change uniforms Picard finds himself in a shuttle with Q in the middle of no where. It seems Q has been kicked out of the Q continuum and now wants a place on the Enterprise. Picard agrees to return to the ship and they find themselves in Ten Forward. Guinan recognizes Q and he recognizes her from centuries ago. Q blusters about how humans aren't ready for whats out there and to prove his point throws the ship 7000 light years from the edge of the Federation. Instead of following Guinan's advice to turn around and head home Picard decides to look around.
They find an industrial planet with the cities missing in a manner resembling the missing outposts from The Neutral Zone (which actually implies the Borg are much closer than Q knows and are in fact already a direct threat to the Federation). Suddenly an unknown ship appears, it is in the form of a cube much larger than the Enterprise with apparently no lifeforms aboard. It locks a tractor beam on the Enterprise knocking out shields and starts cutting the ship apart. They manage to blast their way free but instead of getting the hell out of there they hang out and even send an away team over to poke around. They find lots more Borg and even Borg babies.
They also discover the ship is repairing itself. Now Picard is ready to run so he beams the away team back and heads out and high warp. But it is too late, the Borg are in pursuit. No matter how fast they go the Borg catch up and weapons seem totally ineffective. Finally after the shields are down and the tractor beam is dragging them in Picard asks Q for help and they are flung back to safety. Q rants about how inferior they all are and disappears to go burn ants with a magnifying glass or something.
Review: This episode does a really good job of introducing the Borg. Some of the ideas that it introduces that stick around the whole time are their quick adaptation, how they kidnap people to turn into Borg, and how impressively dangerous their ships are. Q is a pain in the ass as usual, but at least this time he seems to have a point about there being dangerous things in the universe, and not very far off.
7 out of 10
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