Plot Synopsis: The Borg begin a new offensive against the Federation, but this time they are acting as individuals; Data experiences his first emotions while fighting them.
Plot A and B Analysis: The four-and-a-half-minute teaser covers a lot of ground. Data is playing poker with Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, and it’s very cool. The Enterprise is called to defend a colony that is being attacked, and when they beam down they find…a Borg! Plot A is about the Borg and Data, there is no plot B. In fighting off the Borg, Data get angry and kills one! The ship gets away using an unknown technology, and in the aftermath Data tries to understand his emotional response. Admiral Nechayev shows up, rips Picard a new one for letting Hugh go back in I Borg, and Data seeks out Troi for help. In session he admits to feeling pleasure after killing the Borg(!). The Enterprise finds the Borg ship again–a little too easily–but when they try to get away this time Picard pursues them through the energy matrix they used. After the Borg send two drones over as a diversion one is captured, and shortly thereafter he is manipulates Data into smuggling them both off the ship and taking a transwarp conduit, which is how the Borg can zip around so fast. Picard wants to follow again and Geordi figures out how they can enter it themselves. Chasing Data and the Borg they find a planet which they can’t scan due to interference from the atmosphere, so they go down and search only to find a building full of 50 Borg (which Geordi predicted with uncanny accuracy)–along with Data and Lore! Despite some risky precedent-setting and questionable plot twists, the 45 minutes move quickly along and sweeps the audience toward the cliff-hanger ending.
Favorite Scenes: I have two. The first is the teaser, which is amazing because they actually got Stephen Hawking to do a guest spot on a Star Trek episode! The fact that it’s at a poker table is icing on the cake. My other favorite scene takes place in the 30th minute. The Borg in the brig (heh) is manipulating Data into admitting he felt pleasure killing the other Borg:
Borg: Data? Do you have a friend?
Data: Yes. His name is Geordi.
Borg: If it meant that you could feel emotions again, the way you did on Ohniaka III, would you kill your friend? Would you kill Geordi?
*Data pauses*: Yes. I would.
Use of Cast/Characters: Picard has a scene with Admiral Nechayev that impacts him, takes command of the search effort for the rogue Borg ship, and gets caught in a trap at the end. Riker, Worf and Beverly don’t have a lot to do in this episode, though they are used in it. Putting Beverly in charge of the Enterprise is a cool idea, because I like episodes where someone other than Picard or Riker takes charge of the ship. Brent Spiner is just a fantastic actor. He is inexplicably able to take a scene where Data is killing a Borg over and over again on the Holodeck in order to generate anger, and in the 22nd minute Brent makes it funny! Data goes to a dark and surprising place in this episode, one that startles the audience because it’s unprecedented, and that’s a decent twist. Troi is used as a counselor for Data, and later is the first one to understand Lore is there due to his emotional presence, so that’s something. Geordi has a good scene talking with Data about emotions, and a second one where Data asks him to help him do something dangerous in the holodeck. For guest stars, what can I say about Stephen Hawking, it’s amazing he is on a Star Trek episode! Natalija Nogulich returns as Admiral Nechayev and is again someone we love to dislike.
Blu Ray Version: Very nice and clear, but I didn’t detect many changes. However clarity occasionally comes at a price, when at precisely 7 minutes we can easily see that is a stunt double for Brent Spiner.
Nitpicks: I’ve got several. First, if the Enterprise is able to on-the-fly enter a transwarp conduit under their own power, why can’t the ship travel using them whenever they want from now on, and zip themselves wherever the conduits go? The idea of a transwarp way of propulsion is cool, but it’s a bit too powerful (heck Data accessed one in a shuttle). It creates a problem because either the Federation should be able to start using them, or the writers just have to ignore the precedent they’ve set. And in fact, the latter is what Paramount did. Second, I’m not a fan of the special effect they used in the 25th minute for traveling through a conduit, since it’s just a repetition of the exact effect we see at the end of Time Squared. Third, tachyons. Tachyons are the bane of my existence, because from here on out it seems that anytime anything technical needs to be explained or solved in DS9 and Voyager it involves the use of tachyons, or reversing the polarity of something. Who knew they could literally do anything and are also the solution to practically everything? Finally: “The Sons of Soong have joined together. And together we will destroy the Federation.” Really, the Sons of Soong? The Sons of Soong?! Come on, that is one of the worst lines in the history of TNG, and that’s including the first season. Awful.
Overall Impression: This is actually a promising first half of a two-parter, and is a decent attempt at an ensemble episode. It’s not bad, but over time Descent and Descent, Part II just haven’t held up for me. Yes we have the Borg, and yes we have a nice surprise in the form of Lore (whom we haven’t seen since Brothers), that’s cool stuff on paper but it doesn’t match the overall high quality of TNG two-parters. For example, even though a Borg is somehow manipulating Data in the brig, it’s a bit too far for me to buy he would be willing to kill Geordi. I’m also not a fan of manipulating tachyons to solve a problem. The writers even have Picard say something contradictory: “it may turn out that the moral thing to do was not the right thing to do.” This is inherently untrue. The moral thing to do is always the right thing to do. Doing the immoral thing is always wrong. The idea for this episode does have promise, but the execution keeps it from greatness. Descent does feel like a two-parter instead of ‘just another episode’, but rating this episode 3.5 out of 5 stars is the highest I can go.
Behind the Scenes/Trivia: This is the only Star Trek episode in which the episode title and guest star credits appear in the teaser. This is the second of four appearances Nechayev makes on TNG; the first, of course, was back in Chain of Command. We also learn how the Borg travel so fast through space, via a transwarp conduit which is “at least 20 times faster than maximum warp.” That’s pretty fast. It also explains how a Borg cube was able to get to Federation space way back in The Best of Both Worlds. Unfortunately it’s a bit too powerful, which is why transwarp conduits are only seen in four episodes in all of Star Trek. It looks like there are a ton of extras as Borg in the final scene, but only 11 extras were used because they only had that many Borg costumes. They were multiplied using split-screen overlays. Data says he has experienced his first emotion, but that’s not actually true. Back in Deja Q, Q gave Data a moment of laughter.
Evidently while Stephen Hawking was touring the set, he saw the Warp Core and said, “I’m working on that.” Hawking was on the Paramount lot to promote the video release of his movie, A Brief History of Time, and he wanted to visit the set because he is a fan of Star Trek. He asked to sit in the captain’s chair that day, later saying , “It is rather more comfortable and a lot more powerful than my wheelchair.” From here there are two different versions of the story. In the first one, some weeks later he called and said he’d love to be on the show. In the second one Rick Berman called and asked him to be on the show, and Hawking agreed. The “perihelion precession of Mercury” alluded to in the poker game is a real thing. It could not be explained by Newtonian physics alone, and was regarded as a major flaw of Newton’s theory, but it later was explained by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Hawking’s comment “Wrong again, Albert,” when revealing his winning hand is a reference to the professor’s life work in physics, in which he disproved some of Einstein’s theories.
Brent Spiner has said his favorite guest and “maybe my favorite moment of the entire experience of doing Star Trek” was the holodeck scene with Stephen Hawking. He said that he ran into Hawking again a year later. Brent is on the lot, looks down the street and sees Hawking again. He walks up and says, “Professor Hawking, it’s nice to see you again.’ He types into his computer and and this voice comes out and says ‘Where’s my money?’ I said, ‘the check is in the mail,’ and off he went.”
Missable/Unmissable? Even though it’s a season ending two-parter, it’s actually missable except in relation to part II. If you’re a big Lore fan or you need to see every episode the Borg appear in, then it’s unmissable. That’s it for season six!