Data is angry with a Borg that is trying to kill him. Like, really angry. He is confused by this, since he's never felt an emotion before. But then, we've never had Borg like this before. They are individuals. They have names, show concern for one another, and have their own personalities. Picard is concerned that perhaps Hugh is their leader, as he was the only Borg with a name that we know of. You remember Hugh, right? That drone that was too cute to use to destroy the Borg? Admiral Angry remembers as well, and gives Picard explicit instructions to not pass up another opportunity like that ever again.
Meanwhile Data has taken some time to himself to watch some porn in the off chance that he might become aroused and get a robot boner. I'm serious. But it doesn't work, he can get neither horny nor angry. That is, until he visits the Borg drone in the holding cell, who clearly activates something in the android that changes him. The cyborg and the robot both leave in a shuttle. The crew follow, and they discover all the Borg in a Nazi church of some sort, being led by...LORE! Put a cap on season six.A couple of interesting things are going on back on the ship. For one, the crew have discovered how to use the Borg's space conduits to travel from place to place very quickly. It takes them like a second to figure it out. They begin using it immediately and with ease, and it's only frustrating because we know that after the credits they will no longer remember how to move about this way anymore. The next thing going on is that so much of the crew has beamed down to the planet to search for Data, that the ship has been left under the command of Dr. Crusher and two noobs. Of course they all display great skills and courage, but who cares? We'll never see them again either. There's also use of tired tropes like a redshirt death. I spotted it two minutes before it happened. Suddenly there's this guy on the bridge that we've never seen before, hand on phaser, ready to battle for no reason. Then sure enough the Borg show up and he's the only casualty. Riker announces his death in a manner that would make Bones proud for sure. Speaking of Riker, check out his slick try-to-outrun-the-Borg moves:
But back to Lore, this is the first time that we've seen him since "Datalore" back in the beginning of season five, when we blew him out an airlock and took no further precautions to make sure he was dead. Apparently he had lucked into drifting into the exact ship that Hugh was serving on. Hugh's singular nature had the effect that Picard was hoping, and caused his individuality to spread to the other drones, but apparently only on his ship, not collective-wide. The power vacuum resulted in chaos, and Lore showed up at just the right time to fill the leader position. Hugh doesn't feel like the crew did him any favors, as things are quite bad for him now. Hiding from Lore, and tending to the needs of the drones that Lore has attempting to fully automate and failed. Lore's promise was that he could turn the Borg crew into fully robotic men, but he doesn't really know how to do this, instead he just butchers them. The same is about to happen to Hugh's buddy Geordi, as a compromised Data is tasked with jamming things into his brain to see what happens.
Anyway, there's no need to explain any further. You know what happens, Data returns to normal, the skeleton crew saves the day with technobabble, Lore is deactivated, and Hugh is challenged to ethically lead the rogue Borg. Blah blah blah. I think the main reason that this show doesn't work for me is that the characters of Lore and compromised Data are not at all believable. Lore is such a heel that he just makes no sense. Why did he contact the Crystalline Entity to help it destroy planets? Why does he want to train Borg to destroy civilizations? Why is he so angry? And then there's Data. We don't for one moment believe that he has changed his ways and is acting under his own will. It would have been better if the part of compromised Data had been played just like regular Data, instead of being played just like Lore. We know we're getting our Data back, but much could have been done to convince us that Data had actually made this choice. If Lore had an actual purpose, and Data had been convinced of that purpose as well, that would have been a good story. Instead we just get instant evil Data. I don't know if any of that made any sense, but my point is that I just didn't buy into the plot and none of it worked for me.However, this is still an important episode to the franchise. We knew Lore was coming back, and I guess this is the resolution they came up with for his storyline. I suppose it was good to finally find out what happened to Hugh after the ambiguous ending to "I, Borg," even if the plan for him didn't work out too well. All in all though, this episode barely stretches into Meh territory for me. Also, did you know that androids pupils disappear when they die?
Published February 9, 2020
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